Fragments of Fate.
oOo
The Mauraders of her time were ink names on a paper map.
oOo
"Sit down, please," he gestured with a single hand to one of the large chairs covered in purple velvet that sat in front of his desk.
She nodded, feeling light-headed but trying not to show it. Swallowing, she folded her legs neatly and tucked them to the side before placing her clasped hands onto her lap. The silence was thick and broken only by the smooth humming and whirring sounds of the many delicate instruments that littered the room. Hermione felt very glad of the enormous, gleaming desk that stood between them; it represented something familiar and comfortable - the roles of student and teacher.
"Asking your name would be the most sensible question. You have no need to lie, it will not affect the Time Line."
If it had been anyone other than Dumbledore she would have argued. She would have pulled up numerous quotes and Case Studies from the many books she had read on the subject just after Professor McGonagal had given her the Time Turner. But this was Albus Dumbledore and she trusted his knowledge. Brushing back her bushy hair was a cold, clammy hand she answered in a calm voice that did not reflect what she was feeling.
"Hermione Granger."
"Well, Miss Granger... You are a muggleborn, I presume?"
She nodded once, irritation beginning to surface as it always did when she did not have control, or full understanding, of a situation. Beside her the tiniest machine began to give off puffs of violently violet-purple smoke - it was an irrelevant thing which drew her attention for a moment. Across from her, Dumbledore was silent. She did not remember a time when he had looked quite so frigid, unapproachable. Perhaps she was just imagining the look of cold, clinical observation in his normally warm eyes.
After all, it was Harry who had the most dealings with the Hogwarts headmaster. To her on a personal level, he meant almost nothing. An authority figure, a role model, but nothing else. Her throat burned constantly, reminding her of her own foolishness. Dumbledore looked almost upset - that was disconcerting. Though, she never was good at reading people.
"And, tell me, do you have an adequate grip of the French language?" Dumbledore looked down at her coolly; eyes sombre. The silence between them was broken, but the thick atmosphere remained.
"Yes, but..." a wave of his hand cut her off for a moment, "I do not understand the relevance of these questions - "
"Miss Granger."
"- all I need is a Time Turner and I can leave."
"I truly wish it were that simple, Miss Granger."
In her time he would have called her by her given name, her first name.
oOo
The Sorting Hat was much smaller than she ever remembered it being. The thick, musty material hung just at the top of her eye line, not at all obscuring the view of the many curious eyes fixed on her form. The stool she sat on was also uncomfortably small. No row of tiny first years stood behind her holding their breath in anticipation. She had to be in Gryffindor - it would just be too strange to go in another house.
Dumbledore had been instistant that she do this in front of the whole school. It was well into term now - she didn't remember there ever being a Sorting during term.
Surely she should not be nervous? Her heart pounded violently, as though it was too large to fit in her chest and was struggling to break free of the constraint of her rib-cage. Clammy hands clamped her thighs as she waited for it to speak - she was sure it just stalled for effect, after all, this was the only time of year it was out of the Headmaster's Office.
"An excellent mind, loyalty... A good deal of courage. Ravenclaw would suit you, Hufflepuff too. Gryffindor seems best though, yes."
The exact thing the Hat had said to her in her First Year; probably just had the same rehearsed lines it used for certain types of people. She remembered it as though it was yesterday, but the fierce feeling of belonging she had felt at the time was absent now as she looked upon the faces of a generation that wasn't hers. No Harry and Ron waited at the benches to welcome her. There was no Golden Trio, but she was still Hermione Granger. She could fix this.
"Gryffindor!!!"
If it was possible to faint from sheer joy - she thought as she rose from the tiny stool and slid down to the cheering Gryffindor table - she would surely be slumped on the floor at this very moment. Stumbling off the stool she half fell down the stairs to cram herself between Remus and Wormtail. They had been insistent, she had been yielding - for once. Across the room she glimpsed Lucine and Xenophilius waving at her. Well, the former gave a smooth airy wave and the latter gave some kind of complicated hand gesture in her direction.
They had come to visit her in the Hospital Wing when she had been half dragged back in by Madame Pomprey and she had learned that they were the ones to find her and take her to the Hogwarts healer. By all accounts they had saved her life. Lucine Lacy was the image of Luna Lovegood without the dangling radish earrings and butterbeer cork necklaces. Her mother.
Xenophilius brought her some foul smelling purple flowers that managed to get acid green pollen all over her pillows and proceeded to sing in a deep throaty voice when a wasp (a striped Hornbee, according to him) found its way inside. For once she couldn't bring herself to retaliate with her usual sharp tongue. She half smiled at Lucine who gave a dreamy smile back - a secretive exchange that told her Lucine found it just as ridiculous as she did.
She didn't want to look at the boys so desperately trying to catch her eye. Looking at them really made it hit home just how much she had messed up.
"So," Sirius pushed back his long, black hair with a single hand only to have it flop back into his eyes, " you're from Beauxbatons..."
He cleared his throat. She hated the fact that he always seemed to need to be in the centre of attention.
"French chicks have always been a weakness of mine."
The look she gave him told him that she would hex off something very unique to the male anatomy if he continued. Beside her, Remus stifled a laugh. Having no choice but to speak to them she reluctantly allowed them to pull her into a conversation. Everything was wrong with this, she thought as Sirius made another lewd joke at her expense. She didn't even flinch; the older Sirius she had known had much more of an effect on her than this half-grown one.
Though she would never admit that to anyone, not even under the influence of Vertiaserum.
"I'm not French, anyway," she said crisply, sipping at the pumpkin juice in her goblet and trying to ignore the waves of nostalgia that came with it, " I just lived there for a while."
"Then I came here."
She shifted away from Wormtail (never Peter, he didn't deserve that kind of recognition) who had moved slightly closer to her. She was sure it was by accident, but her skin crawled at the mere thought of touching the traitor. In her minds' eye she saw him years later - balding, fat, filthy, repulsive and begging at her feet.
Sweet girl, clever girl...
Though it was not in her nature to be cold and unforgiving she could not repress the urge to move. She promised herself she would try to treat him as though she didn't know he was a traitor - who gave one of his best friends, his wife and child to Voldemort to save his own skin - and would be civil. At the very least the others would notice her treating him differently and they would start to ask questions.
Hermione didn't want them questioning her for any reason. She couldn't afford to let something slip, no matter what Dumbledore had said about her not affecting the Time Line.
"Is your neck feeling better, Hermione," asked Remus, quietly.
After much prompting she had finally given her real name. He had snuck up on her at the time, just after she had been allowed to leave the Hospital Wing so that she could be Sorted, and she had called him Professor before she could catch herself. He shrugged it off and asked after her health. The wounds on his face had developed thick scabs. When he spoke the one that ran just beside his mouth cracked and began to bleed.
She didn't notice how startled he was when she absently wiped off the blood with the corner of a tissue and muttered a quick "Episky". The scab sealed itself, but the wound did not disapper. Hermione did not expect it to. When he lead her to the Great Hall she had to remind herself that she shouldn't know where it was.
"Yes, thank you," she lied, fingering the bandages that wrapped around her neck and the upper half of her torso.
The conversation ended as quickly as it had began and she looked down at her steak and kidney pie (Harry's favourite) with no hunger whatsoever. Beside her the boys were shovelling food into their mouths - though none of them were as bad as Ron, admittedly. Her eyes flickered up and down the table as she crushed the pastry beneath her fork to make it seem like she had eaten something.
She half expected to hear the shrill voice of little Colin Creevy, or Seamus bellowing about the latest Quidditch matches. Instead she heard James talking - bragging - loudly about the new Cleansweep he had gotten. She was sure the almost absurd volume of his voice was mainly for the benefit of the pretty red-head she had just noticed. Lily Potter (Evans, if she ever referred to her as Lily Potter this James might die of sheer joy).
The rest of them seemed relatively uninterested in listening - it seemed like James had been through this more than a dozen times. Siruis was much more different than she thought he might be; no tattoos peeked out between the several undone buttons of his shirt, his face still had something of boyish roundness about the cheeks and chin and the stubble he was growing looked faintly ridiculous. She remembered how good he looked with his perfectly grown goatee and completely matured features (even if the man with the features was anything but matured).
This Sirius, with his half grown stubble that made her fingers itch for a wand to trim it off, oozed the charm that Azkaban had taken from the Sirius she had known. Grey eyes - with lashes thicker than she would ever have - were still bright and warm and filled with laughter. For a moment she wished she could have seen him this happy when he was grown. Hermione had seen him smile and laugh once or twice, but there was always something missing.
His smiles for Harry didn't reach his eyes - none of them did - but when he looked at the boy-who-lived she saw a wistful expression. Azkaban and fate had taken too much from him. He woud never be the same as he was here.
"You're staring, love," he grinned.
Stretching back with the languid grace of a feline (which was ridiculous considering the fact that his animagus form was a dog) he leaned his head on his hands. Arrogance radiated from him in cloying waves and she felt her mouth curl slightly at the edges. He was just a boy - a silly, little boy. She had spent enough time around men to recognise the difference. Harry and Ron too sported this absurd belief that they were grown up and adults.
"I was just thinking about how much I'd like you to have a shave."
"She's got you there, Padfoot, mate," James grinned, his monologue about Cleansweeps finally over.
"This?" he rubbed his chin with one slim, tanned hand.
"It's sexy," he winked at a few staring Ravenclaw girls to illustrate the point.
"Of course, the half sheered sheep look is irrestistable."
His face twisted for a moment as the other three howled with laughter. She smiled as though to ease the blow to his ego. Though he really could use deflating it by the looks of things. In front of them the golden plates melted away and platters of desserts appeared. Hermione slid a piece of apple pie onto her plate with no desire to eat it. She enjoyed her food as much as the next person, but at that particular moment the smell was faintly nauseating.
Wormtail reached over to lift a plate of something and abruptly she was pressed against him. He smelled faintly of peppermint and some musty aftershave he probably thought was cool. Perhaps on anyone else it might have been. Hermione wiped the disgust from her face and stared down at the plate of warm, cream covered dessert that made her feel sick. She had only left the Hospital Wing this afternoon and a fever had broken out again.
Muttering healing spells under her breath she tried to contribute to the conversation. Every so often someone called down to her from the table. Asking how she liked Hogwarts, whether she missed Beauxbatons, what she thought of Britain...
She had always believed in honesty; the ease with which lies flowed from her mouth was frightening.
When the meal ended she stood and made to move towards the doors with practised ease. Sirius slid between her and the crowd and the rest of them moved around her.
"Where do you think you're going?"
He laughed easily, enjoying her perplexed expression and the adoring stares of the female populous.
"We'll show you the way to the Gryffindor Common Room."
He slid an arm beneath hers and pulled her close to his side in a practised move. There was no choking intimacy in this gesture, it was simply something he did often that had little meaning to him. It was, perhaps, the only thing she had seen of his higher class habits. Other than the way he held himself and the forced accent and the expensive cologne.
"You'll love it," James swirled around them grinning," it's wicked."
"Definitely," Wormtail shrieked, eager to be part of the conversation.
"I'm sure it's different from Beauxbatons, I hope you don't get too homesick," muttered Remus, considerate as ever.
When she stepped through the portrait hole (password; butterbeer) she felt more at home than she had since she foolishly threw herself backwards in time. Until Sirius stuck his face in front of hers and demanded her prescence in a game of exploding snap.
His carefree smile made her sick to the stomach when she saw Wormtail sporting a similar one beside him.
oOo
Lying, staring at the star covered velvet curtains she waited until the heavy sounds of her new roommates breathing indicated that they were asleep. Lavender snored, these girls (Violet, Lucy and Eve) were almost absurdly quiet. Absently, she wondered if Lav-Lav was cooing over Won-Won right now; comforting him over the sudden, mysterious disappearance of one of his oldest friends.
Envy welled up before she could stop it. She slid up and pushed tendrils of her hair back from where they stuck to her face. The floor was blissfully cold against her heated skin, but the boards creaked as she tip-toed towards the door - stopping only to pick up the broken, cloth wrapped Fate locket that sat on her bedside table. If she tried to touch it now it scalded her skin. There were several, new, angry red burn marks as testament to that fact on the tips of her fingers.
A rush of cool air made her shiver with delight as she moved down the icy stone steps into the deserted common room. Hermione hated to beg, and yet she was practically forced to grovel at Sirius's feet to get the locket back. She remembered a similar smug look on his face when she had pleaded with him to allow her access to his private bookcase in Grimmauld Place. His entire being practically lit up as she was forced to take back numerous insults she had thrown at him over the time she was there.
And what was that comment about my level of maturity, Granger?
This Sirius was no different. She actually thought she might just die of shame when he told her to say;
The stubble is so sexy, Sirius.
Then he made her repeat it in a French accent of all things while he lounged in one of the armchairs with that special, holier-than-thou, expression she saw on Draco Malfoy's face every time he looked at her. Her teeth ground together at the mere memory. Just wait until she told Harry just how much of a git he was when he was younger. James even paused in his - painfully bad - flirting with Lily to come over and watch.
Her mind neatly pushed back the fact that Dumbledore had told her she could never go back, that her parents and family did not exist here, that her life prior to the turning of the locket was nothing but her memory and hers alone. For all her Gryffindor courage she could not face the possibility until she had cold hard facts and evidence to back it up.
When she stepped out into the corridor she felt bare, almost naked, without Harry and Ron on either side and the protective veil of the Invisibility Cloak over her head. The Fat Lady grumbled about being woken up behind her as she swung closed. Vaguely, Hermione wondered if Filch prowled these corridors still. Mrs Norris certainly wouldn't. Her feet, bare - shoes made too much noise, were already freezing from being pressed against the cold floor.
Her temperature had been fluctuating almost violently for the past few hours, but she remembered sudden flushes of hot and cold being a side-effect of Time Travel. Dizziness, nausea, memory loss and hysteria where also possible side-effects if a person travelled more than a few months back. Hermione still wondered why she wasn't reduced to a blubbering mass of female when she had travelled decades and decades back.
As she slowly descended the stairs the entire world seemed to tilt to one side briefly, and she knew she should have just stayed in bed and slept the symptoms off. At least she hadn't experienced memory loss, or hysteria.
The library had never seemed so far away. She actually breathed a sigh of relief when she crossed the familiar threshold to be greeted by the smell of old parchment and fresh ink. Her desperation for research had lead her here. It was useless trying to sleep when so many unanswered questions clamoured in her head, and it was a certainty that she wouldn't get a moment to herself during the daylight hours. Not when she was such a novelty - the new girl, the Beauxbatons girl.
For the first time ever, she veered towards the Divination section.
oOo
"You know you fancy her like mad, right?"
"Yeah, I saw the way you looked at her, not really my type y'know - especially with Evans about to crack any day - but she's pretty enough."
"And French."
"Shut it, Pads, you fancy any girl with a pulse."
"Defensive, are we? I saw you looking when she bent over to get that quill."
"Only because you were leering."
"Was not. And at least I wasn't dribbling, like Wormtail."
"No I wasn't!"
"Sure. Moony, you know she's your type; bookworm, anti-social... It's a match made in heaven."
"And my "furry little problem" doesn't get in the way at all."
"Christ, live a little, you stuffy git."
"You're the one who practically feels her up at every opportunity, anyway, Padfoot."
"Jealous?! Anyway, how can you -"
"D'you hear that..."
"Get the map out."
"Well, look here. Didn't pin her to be the type."
"Quiet, she's just coming round the corner."
oOo
And the first thing she noticed was the tell-tale swish of fabric moving across the smooth floor. That was right before the world veered alarmingly again and she ran head-first into a much taller, stockier person and went tumbling to the floor with her - quite frankly, im-modest - night gown gathering up in a way it really shouldn't have. Displaying every ounce of her Gryffindor courage she turned and ran for her life.
There hadn't appeared to have been anyone in that corridor, but the sound of fabric and footfalls were familiar. The invisibility cloak. After all the trouble of looking for Prefects, or Filch (who was much more of a danger than he was in her days, being younger and healthier), she had forgotten about the Maurders and their invisibility cloak. It was just natural, she assured herself, to forget when she had always been one of the ones beneath it.
The next morning, she was being lead towards her "first" Defense Against the Dark Arts lesson by Sirius - who had a large hand on the small of her back despite the fact she had told him to remove it several times. She freverntly wished that they wouldn't bring it up but -
"Never thought you'd be the type for frilly, black, lace underwear, Granger," he said, smirking.
She paused, mind half blacked out due to complete and utter mortification. She needed a longer nightgown. She needed a floor length, high collared night gown.
"Or sneaking out after hours," James interjected, completely disregarding her personal space to lean his head on her shoulder and whisper that.
Right now Hermione was sure that her face would be an unpleasant, unattractive shade of beetroot. She dearly wished that Remus would hurry forward and catch up with them and distract the two Mauraders looking at them with a strange light in their eyes.
It hadn't occured to her to try and make friends while she was here - for she was sure it would only be a few weeks at most - but at that moment she wished she was more socially adept. Then she would have been able to hurry over to some other female and start to talk until the circling sharks that were James and Sirius left her alone.
"How did you know I was out? I didn't see you," she answered, finally, deliberately side-stepping the previous statement.
"Ahh, but you wouldn't. High level spell, almost impossible. We're just that great."
A very un-lady like snort threatened to burst from her, but she managed to cover it with a laugh.
"I didn't know who I knocked into, it was one of you guys then," she said. A statement, not a question.
"And, what were you doing out so late, Miss Granger?" Sirius's voice took on the tone of her much admired teacher, Professor McGonagall, but she should not have known that, she reminded herself.
"At the library -"
She stopped suddenly as a jet of blue light almost struck one of them, hissing, black against the once white floor. Drawing her wand she fired rapidly - stupefy, expelliaramus - out of habit more than anything else. The night at the Ministry of Magic had not faded from her mind (and probably never would). She stopped firing, abruptly, when her own wand was struck from her hand and the two boys behind her surged forward.
"Why, Snivelly, that's no way to greet the new girl."
"I wasn't aiming for the Beauxbatons witch, Potter."
"Augamenti!!"
A frighteningly young version of the Hogwarts Potions Master stood, dripping from head to toe before her. Out of sheer habit she looked straight at his shoes waiting for his soft, sneering voice to point out some tiny flaw in her work. No scathing remark came, he watched her critically from between two curtains of soaking wet hair. His eyes - warmer than she ever remembered them being flickered between her, Sirius and James.
Remus rounded onto the corridor with a mildly irritated expression on his face, he looked down into his book without a word. She had known about this, but she would never have expected Lupin to just ignore it. She had always respected him - and now was no different - but for a moment her respect for him dimmed a little. Hermione forced herself to take a step back - she had never met them before, supposedly.
What would this look like to an outsider? Snape had attacked them and they retaliated. She retaliated. There were no grounds for her to accuse them if being -
"We washed your hair for you Sniv, shouldn't you be thanking us?"
Vindictive, bullying gits. She settled for picking up her wand, putting a hand on Sirius's shoulder and quietly saying that they would be late for class. Remus nodded and began to steer her away from the scene as she heard more jinxes being fired. Irritation welled up and she felt herself becoming less and less enchanted with the idea of getting to know them, they didn't seem to be a patch on the two men she knew, and respected, and admired and the one man she had heard so much about.
"Who was that?"
"Serverus Snape, we don't get on very well with him," Remus said, eyeing her over the edge of his book before adding, "he's a Slytherin."
As though that excused them.
Sirius came bounding up behind the two of them to casually throw his arms over their necks and drag them into a sort of tangled group. He was grinning, looking far more fierce and familiar than he ever had before.
"I saw your wandwork, Granger, you're just full of surprises."
"I was disarmed," she pointed out, considering pulling herself from beneath his arm and hissing all the things she dearly wanted to say.
Behind them James and Wormtail hurried along with the latter practically panting over the former and complimenting his spell casting ability. He smelled good, she thought absently as she was half-dragged into a dark classroom and introduced to a tall, thin man who was so ancient that it appeared a strong gust of wind would knock him over - never mind Dark magic. Professor Fleetwing.
She was pointed to the only empty seat there was, despite numerous protests. It was beside Snape. She took her seat quietly, without a fuss, but trembled slightly when he turned to look at her with his lip curled up and an expression of anger. He was no where near as intimidating as the man she knew, but he still had a very forceful air about him. Hermione turned to the page they were told to go to without a word.
His eyes bored into the side of her head, as she focused on re-reading the chapter about Dementors. A hand, pale, slim and speckled with moisture slid into her peripheral vision.
"What do you think you're doing?!" she hissed.
His hand clasped around the locket dangling broken and forlorn at her neck (her precious lifeline) and lifted it up to get a better look at it. The only part of it not wrapped in cloth was the locket itself which didn't seem to burn him either.
She saw the sudden flash of interest - greed, fascination - and she nearly flinched when he lifted it up towards her with a strange, un-nerving expression. He knew.
"Did you find what you were looking for, then?"
That's chapter Two out of the way with little, or nothing, said about Hermione's situation other than the fact that she can't get back. So, she's a "transfer student from Beauxbatons" and, yeah, she's met Luna Lovegood's parents. Who are awesome. Awesome, I say.
I've been on a bit of a HermioneRemus binge lately and I am so tempted to incorporate a bit of that in here - don't know if it shows or not. Lucius (Born 1954) is a bit older than the Mauraders (who were all born in 1960, and 1959) I think so he probably won't appear considering the fact that they are in their 6th year. As for Bella (Born 1951), and Andromeda (1953), I think they won't appear - much, if at all - either. Narcissa was born in 1955 so she is also too old to be at school with them.
Now that the scene has been set sufficiently I'll try and get much more character interaction (particularly between Sirius and Hermione, obv).
Thanks for reading.
Silver xxx.