1994

Sirius

Sirius Black is not a patient man. He does not believe in the saying "good things come to those who wait." Instead he has always lived by the motto "boredom comes to those who wait" and when he was a boy and a young man he made sure he was never bored. He was impulsive and reckless, and as a leopard can't change its spots, neither can Sirius become quite as composed and controlled as he sometimes wishes.

As a boy at Grimmauld Place he used to say or do something, anything to get a rise out of his younger brother. Sometimes he was found out and punished, but most often he found the physical pain worth the action. Winding Regulus up was good fun; playing nicely with Regulus, who most often wanted to practice some kind of undetectable, under age wizards' Dark Art, was not.

When Sirius came home after his first term at Hogwarts, he was punished within an inch of his life for being sorted into Gryffindor. He spent Christmas in bed, beaten and broken, actually asking Regulus politely to bring him food, just to survive, but still it was worth it. Befriending James Potter, Remus Lupin and even little, chicken-hearted Peter Pettigrew had been the best thing that ever had happened to him. Well, second best, but at that stage of his life his new friends pretty much guaranteed boredom was kept at bay.

Later, much later, Sirius found himself in the hell of Azkaban. To the impatient 21-year-old it was double hell. Designed to deprive the prisoners of all their happy memories, the only survival strategy possible was to wallow in unhappy thoughts and memories.

I suspected Remus, but it was Peter who betrayed James and Lily. I can't protect Harry from here. I'm innocent. When my brother joined the Death Eaters I hated him, when I found out he was a double spy, he was already dead. I sent my lovely, lovely girl into the future. I have no idea when, or if I'll ever, ever see her again. Good, Bellatrix is here too…

The last thought faded rather quickly, as the malice and spitefulness in it was remotely related to happiness. Over the years Sirius stopped himself from thinking about the girl as well, he didn't even dare to whisper her name at night. He knew that if the Dementors got hold of his memories of her, and took them, swallowed them, burned them, or whatever the nightmarish creatures did with the happiness hidden in the prisoners, he would go irreversibly insane and loose all ambition and desire to one day escape.

The other, double dimension of the hellish experience of the wizarding prison was, of course, waiting. Even though he was too terrified and depressed to be bored, it was waiting all the same. When Minister Fudge, on a whim, granted Sirius' polite request for a newspaper, his waiting became more focused than before. It became preparing, rather than waiting. Preparing for the day his Animagus form would be emaciated enough to slide through the bars of his cell on a day when a new prisoner had been brought in and kept the Dementors feasting on the new happiness in the three-cornered maze in the middle of the North Sea. And on a day the North Sea would be relatively calm. After twelve years the day came.

Sirius is at Remus' cottage. He is lying low, off the radar of both Death Eaters and the Ministry. He has the feeling Remus' cottage will be his haven more than once, Remus being the only one Sirius trusts, and Remus, once again, trusting Sirius. After having suppressed most feelings for years, Sirius is more or less drowning in them now. Anger, guilt, sorrow, denial, shock, longing… In short, most negative emotions under the sun. Hints of relief, calmness and love prevent him from going insane.

He has briefly considered going to London, to Grimmauld Place. He has found out it has been empty for eight years, since his mother's death, but the fact that his mother was the last living creature in his family home doesn't appeal to him. He still remembers her vile perfume clinging to every piece of fabric outside his own room, and he has a hunch that the portrait that was being painted the last time he was there, seventeen years ago, was something more than just narcissism on his mother's part. His eyes flick open when he sees the mounted elf-heads in his memories. No, he does not want to go there. He does not want to be alone. He has been alone enough for a lifetime.

Remus enters the room and sinks down in an armchair in front of the hearth. A fire is roaring, gradually warming Sirius. He has been cold for over a decade and the process is slow. He sits on the floor, closer to the fire than Remus does, and rests his back against the other armchair. Partly to be closer to the fire, partly because he can't really handle the plush furniture. The softness is suffocating to a man whose greatest luxury for twelve years has been being able to fall asleep, regardless of the material he rests on. Even Remus' threadbare carpet feels a little unsteady underneath Sirius' gaunt body.

"Sirius?"

Sirius hears himself growl in response. He focuses on his human personality and struggles to switch to a more versatile language than 'dog.'

"I'm sorry. Padfoot had been more wordy than I for a long time."

Remus watches him with more compassion than Sirius can handle. He looks into the fire, relishing the heat against his skin. His skin is tender and dry after countless baths, and he can't feel his hair that has been a constant, itching, heavy helmet of dirt on his head for as long as he can remember. He doesn't like his reflection in Remus' bathroom mirror, where it's far too easy to see exactly what his skull looks like. His eyes and cheeks are sunken on each side of his cheekbones. There were spots of grey in his beard before he shaved it off. There is even a strand of grey in his hair, but he keeps it shoulder length anyway. It helps to hide his face.

Remus sighs and Sirius ventures a glance at him. Remus looks, if not old, at least grown up and weary. The last time they spoke, before everything went to hell and Azkaban, Remus still had boyish features, as did Sirius. There is nothing boyish about the werewolf now, only angles and scars.

"How long have you known it was her, Remus?"

Remus meets his gaze with a confused expression, as if he doesn't know what Sirius means. He doesn't really answer the question when he speaks.

"Sirius, up until two days ago I believed you were the one who betrayed Lily and James. For twelve years I have tried to put you out of my mind, feeling the wolf in me baring his teeth every time I thought about you. When Harry told me he'd seen Peter on the map, our map, I spent a night trying to rethink everything, I even went to see Sybill Trelawney."

Sirius raises an eyebrow and the left corner of his mouth. Divination was always a subject for Remus' scorn during their Hogwarts days.

"Well, what would you have me do?" Remus blurts. "I could hardly discuss your possible innocence with Severus. Albus was not available, and Hagrid is… well, not very subtle. It's either/or with him, and I knew he became as convinced as I back when… When you were arrested. We suspected each other, you and me, didn't we? And then you spent twelve years knowing we were both innocent, while I was sure as hell you were a Death Eater who had sold James and Lily to…"

"If things had been different, the other way around, I would have done the same. I never thought Peter had it in him; he just wasn't clever or brave enough. He was just scared enough, and I will, by Merlin, find him and make him pay."

"And I'll help you, Sirius. But to answer your question, I recognised her on the train before we even got to Hogwarts. I was dozing in a compartment of my own, it was no more than three days after the full moon, and I was a wreck. I heard the door open and a few kids come in. I pretended to sleep, wrapped in my coat, hearing their voices distantly. I recognised her voice before I even saw her. Two boys, Harry and Ron, it turned out, discussed who I was, and she told them. With that sharp deduction of hers she said my name together with my new title, Professor R. Lupin, after reading it on my trunk. Her voice is more like who she was when we knew her, than her looks, she is still very young, just a child."

Sirius grinds his teeth and supresses a very doglike whining. He sighs and hides his face in his hands. Remus continues.

"For the better part of this year, well, as I said before, up until two days ago, I saw her in the light of what I believed was true about you, Sirius. She is bright, exceptionally so, but I've pitied her. I've seen her as this bright, young, compassionate, loyal witch who will grow up, for some reason slip through a time warp and meet you only to be… I don't know, sometimes I thought you had killed her before you drove to Godric's Hollow that Halloween."

"Killed her?" Sirius whispers through his hands. "Are you insane? I sent her away, I turned the hourglass on her time turner myself, forcing the chain into her hands, being the one who let go, she begged me to let her stay, telling me all the secrets about the future we had tried to coax out of her for as long as we had known her."

"I hoped that was what happened. When I met her last September, so young, I wondered if she might be your daughter."

"My daughter?" Sirius voice is still a whisper, his eyes somewhere behind Remus head. He is too exhausted to use complete sentences, too emotionally unstable to maintain eye contact with his friend.

"Yes, if… Hermione," Remus uses her name for the first time, and Sirius closes his eyes, "had been pregnant when she… eh, went back…"

"She wasn't." Sirius voice is hoarse. "If she had been I wouldn't have sent her away. I wouldn't have gone to James and Lily's if… No, I think I would have fled the country. With her of course."

"I believe you. But she is just a girl now, she is thirteen. I knew her, I remember her as an adult. How old were we? Nineteen? Barely adults. And if she had been your daughter she would have been at least two years younger than Harry. She is a few months older, I've checked."

Sirius leans back against the armchair, craning back his neck so he watches the exposed beams in ceiling.

"I hid my memories of her while I was in prison. During the past year, when I've been on the run, I've relived them, fearing I'll never see her again, and now when I have I wish I hadn't. How can I…? She's Harry's best friend. She is your student. She has no idea."

"You can be her friend, Sirius."

Sirius tilts his head and meets Remus' amber eyes.

"I can never be her friend."

Remus frowns, not directly at Sirius's statement, but at something his quick mind concludes. His gaze wanders around the room, at the fire, the mantelpiece with candles, the desk and bookcases, before he faces Sirius with determination written across his tired and scared features.

"Oh, yes you will. Back then, you had been her friend before. You might even have been more, I don't really want to know, but the confidence she showed when she landed among us during our last term came from somewhere. She knew both of us before, she didn't know James and Lily, and she shuddered when Peter touched her."

"She couldn't change the future," Sirius mumbles. "She always said she couldn't change the future. The outcome, she said once, but she wouldn't say the outcome of what. But outcome, Remus, that is a word you only use about wars, isn't it?"

Remus nods.

"But you still need to be her friend, Sirius. To give her older self, and your younger self what you once had."

"I know, Remus. But how can I? How can I be her friend without being repulsed by my own memories? She is a child! And I feel sick when I see how pretty she is."

"She wasn't a child then. She is now. And remember what Albus said when we graduated."

"What was that? Never do anything that you can get someone else to do?" Sirius snarls.

"It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live. You haven't got your 20s back, but you are out of Azkaban with most of your sanity intact." Sirius huffs at this. "You have me and Albus on your side. You have Harry. You matter to him. To me. You can matter to her too."

Sirius faces the fire and nods.


Hermione

Hermione and Harry run, almost bent double, after Crookshank's bobbing tail in the tunnel. Ahead they hear Ron cry out in pain. Her shoulder aches and she feels blood trickling down her chest, the metallic scent fuelling her panic. Somewhere in her mind she has a hunch about where they are going to end up. She always had a good sense of orientation. Wooden stairs in front of them confirm her suspicions; they are in the cellar of the Shrieking Shack. Harry grabs her right hand, she holds her left hand across her chest to keep her cut shoulder as still as possible.

Her imagination plays various scenarios in her mind. Ron dead. Ron being beaten up by that dog, or is it a wolf? Care of Magical Creatures has been a neglected subject during their years at Hogwarts. Hagrid started out with good intentions, but being Hagrid he has focused mainly on really rare creatures. Hermione wants to know more about the semi-magical creatures like wolfs, rats, toads, bats and owls, but Hagrid is more info fire crabs and unicorns. What are the odds that you come across those in real life, compared with a man that turns into a werewolf once a month? Her mouth goes dry at the thought. She knows about professor Lupin and his sick leaves every month. Does he have a mate? Or is the dog another shape of their professor? Somehow she knows the dog is connected to professor Lupin in one way or the other.

"Mind that step," Harry whispers and pulls her close, next to a large hole in the worn wood.

She feels his heart beat furiously against her back. He grabs her left shoulder and a shot of pain clears her mind. They nox their wands and creeps closer to the half-open door.

"Together," she whispers with more confidence than she feels. Harry nods and they burst through the door together.

It is Crookshank's who undoes them. Lying on a once magnificent four-poster bed and purring his heart out, they lose their focus and are totally unprepared for Ron's rambling that reveals who is behind another half-closed door.

Not a dog. An Animagus. Sirius Black, mad mass murderer on the run from prison. Most wanted in Magical Britain for the better part of a year, even wanted by muggle authorities. Here? Going after Ron?

Hermione's quick mind can't put the pieces together they way she usually does. She only knows Harry is the one she needs to protect. She takes a step to stand in front of him.

"If you want to kill Harry, you'll have to kill us too."

Black looks past her, straight at Harry behind her. Then Harry shoves her aside and goes for Black.

"No, Harry!"

Then a blur of Harry actually bringing the adult wizard down, professor Lupin appearing and disarming Harry, allying with Black and turning her world upside down. Tears of disappointment fall down her cheeks while she screams at her once admired professor, whose secret she has kept since October.

"I trusted you!" she yells at professor Lupin. The words come without her thinking about them or how to string them together. Her panicked, fearful wide-open mind registers Black having gone silent and still, almost paralysed and not watching them anymore. He stares into space while she argues with his friend. After only a few seconds Black snaps out of it and begins a litany of killing, waiting and Azkaban in his hoarse, broken voice. While Professor Lupin considers Black's plan, demands and inevitabilities, Black looks at her from across the room. Harry holds her left hand, hard enough to top the pain from her shoulder, but she doesn't want it any other way. They both need someone to cling to, having been robbed of the trust they have felt for their all time best Defense against the Dark Arts teacher ever. But Black looks at her for two seconds worth of silence. He looks at her as if he recognizes her. His sunken but shining eyes look straight at her. Softly. Sadly. Painfully.

"Very well," says Professor Lupin and gives Harry's wand to Black. "Kill him."

Hermione wakes up with a gasp and bolts up in a sitting position.

Did I scream?

But only light snores and deep breaths are heard from the other beds in her dormitory. She can't wake up anyone else. What they did two nights ago, only Professors Dumbledore, Snape and McGonagall know, apart from those who were in the Shrieking Shack. She wishes she could wake up Harry. Ron is still in the hospital wing. Silently she creeps out of bed, pulls on her dressing gown and continues down the stairs to the common room. A house-elf immediately appears and asks her if she needs anything or if she is feeling ill.

"I'm fine," she assures the small creature with her concerned tennis ball-sized eyes. "A dream woke me up. Could you bring me a cup of tea, please? Or would you rather I came down to the kitchen and made it myself?"

The house-elf looks appalled.

"To the kitchen, miss? No, no, no. Penny will make your tea. You take milk, but no sugar?"

Hermione nods, moved by the elf's infallible memory, and actually feels her eyes becoming teary.

"Was it a bad dream, miss?" the elf asks. "Would you like Penny to make you chamomile tea? Penny's chamomile tea chases nightmares away."

Hermione smiles warmly at the little elf.

"No, Penny. It wasn't a nightmare, just a very vivid dream. I'd like a cup of tea and think about it, rather than going back to sleep and forget it."

Penny is gone with a small crack. Hermione puts a few pieces of wood on the dying fire and ignites them with her wand. Then she sinks down in the couch and thinks about the dream. It pretty much replayed what happened two nights ago. It was the most overwhelming night of her life. She can still feel her stomach drop when she remembers the flight on Buckbeak. She doesn't like flying. Not on brooms, not even in airplanes with her parents in the muggle world. She did, however, feel a lot safer after Harry and she had rescued Sirius from the Dark Tower and she flew on Buckbeak's back with Sirius' hands around her waist. Though high above the ground she felt safe and grounded. When they landed with a clatter on the battlements Sirius asked for her wand. Without thinking she handed the worn piece of vine to him and didn't even flinch when he pointed it at her.

"Vulnera Sanentur," Sirius muttered under his breath and she felt the gash in her shoulder clean and close itself with a sensation similar to the xylocaine her parents used in their dentistry. Sirius handed the wand back to her, took her by the hand and ushered both Harry and her to a bench around a corner. When he released her hand she felt empty, as if she lost something important. When he turned to Harry with an urgency she wasn't part of she felt rejected and went back to calm and pet Buckbeak. She heard Sirius' voice distantly.

"The ones who love us never really leave us. And you can always find them…" During the short silence Hermione felt something tug at her heart, and knew, could see in her mind's eye, Sirius' calloused and tattooed hand over Harry's heart, before he finished his sentence. "…in here."

She was inexplicably flushed when Sirius took the chains around Buckbeak's neck and mounted the hippogriff.

"You really are the brightest witch of your age," he said and Hermione knew that is the most heartfelt compliment anyone ever has paid her.

The stairs from the boy's dormitory creaks and Hermione holds her breath until a dishevelled Harry appears.

"Dreams?" she asks.

Harry nods. Penny apparates with Hermione's tea and magically doubles it for Harry as well.

"I dreamt about Sirius," Harry says, mimicking Hermione's thought. "Do you think he is all right?"

"He is with professor Lupin over the weekend. They have twelve years to catch up on. Yes, I think he is all right. I'm more worried about professor Lupin. The parents won't let him continue teaching now that his lycanthropy isn't a secret anymore."

"Damn Snape," Harry mutters. He sips his tea before he leans his head against Hermione's shoulder. It's her left shoulder, but the healing spell Sirius fixed it with seems perfect. She feels Harry breathe into her hair. Their relationship has always been less complicated then Ron's and hers, and since the night they went into the tunnel under the Whomping Willow Harry and she are even closer than before. She was more than prepared to stand in front of a killing curse to protect him, and that knowledge made her relax against his chest when he embraced her to shield her from the werewolf's attack in the Dark Forest. Maybe they protected each other at the exact same time, with the help of her time turner. She will always protect Harry, and she will always trust him to protect her. She takes his hand and they sit in silence.

"Sirius said I can move in with him when he has been cleared of all charges. He has a house in London. I'd love that. He can tell me things about my parents no one else can. He was their best friend, he and Professor Lupin. They are the only ones alive who actually knew them well."

Hermione has a feeling Harry is forgetting someone who also was close, really close to his parents, but she can't put her finger to who it would be.

Peter Pettigrew betrayed them. Molly and Arthur are a fair bit older than they were. Neville's parents? They aren't dead, are they? But why is he living with his grandmother?

A sudden flash picture outlines a small group of young people in her mind. They are sitting in the same couch she and Harry are. One looks like Harry, but older, almost a grown up. Ginny is sitting next to him, no, it must be Lily. Professor Lupin, before he became a professor, still boyish and very handsome, points at something in an open book in his hand. On the other side of Lily a dark young man, it must Sirius, sits. He has his arm around a girl, a girl Hermione can't place from the stories she has heard about Harry's parents' Hogwarts days. The girl leans her head against Sirius' chest and her dark golden curls hide her face completely. On the floor, closer to the fire, Peter sits with an unhappy expression across his features. Hermione blinks, repulsed by the poor, weak, scared rat Animagus, and the image is gone all together.

Hermione faces the fire and nods.