the_debt_of_time

"It's the hospital wing." She gestured to the second voice coming from the bed. "I'd
been unconscious for several days, and you didn't want the lights to give me a headache."
"How old are we?"
"This is going to be an awkward conversation."
He eyed her suspiciously. "Why?"
"In this memory, I'm sixteen," she explained quickly. She paused, perhaps doing the
math in her head before continuing, "You would have been thirty-six, I believe."
"I'm twenty years older than you?" His eyes widened in absolute shock. All at once
and completely unwillingly, a flood of his own memories passed through his mind. Far too
many that took place inside the Room of Requirement beneath a fake full moon, several
within the curtain-drawn four-poster bed in Gryffindor Tower, and one specific memory
that took place in a dark alley of Muggle London. Remus felt his cheeks warm over, and
he put his face into the palms of his hands while Mia chuckled beside him.
"Technically, when I arrived in 1971, I was eight years older than you. I took a De-
Ageing Potion so I could attend Hogwarts with you and the others and be adopted by the
Potters, all without drawing attention to myself. So, instead of complaining about age, why
don't we just call it even?" She put a hand on his shoulder, pulling his gaze back to her.
"Besides, witches and wizards live well past one hundred. What's twenty years compared
to a century-long life?"
"Can I see it?"
Mia, or the girl she had once been—would be?—appeared to be waiting for the
older Remus to reply, but he did not speak. However, about a minute later, he wordlessly
lit the end of his wand and handed it to her.
Remus watched with interest, his eyes falling to the girl as she hesitantly took the
wand—a wand he recognised as his own—and light passed over her face. "Merlin, she
looks just like―"
"She is me," Mia explained. "She's my past: Hermione Granger."
The girl in the bed—Hermione Granger—tried to smile at the older man before
looking down at the bandages covering her small frame. Remus smiled appreciatively when
he noticed his older self turned away to offer her some privacy, and the flood of intimate
images in his memories became slightly easier to deal with knowing that, at the very least,