"Expecto patronum," said Hermione, trying to find an appropriately happy memory to power the charm.
The world became darker and darker with each attempt. There had to be a swarm of eighty or ninety dementors bearing down upon them, and all she can think about is Colleen and falling. Some things were better left in the past where they belonged.
Everything had seemed to be going so well, despite Snape's refusal to give Sirius the benefit of the doubt-although in all fairness Hermione was relatively sure that had something to do with Sirius almost feeding Snape to Professor Lupin, which was a story she still couldn't decide if she wanted to know all or nothing about-and then everything had gone to hell so very quickly. Pettigrew had escaped and Professor Lupin had forgotten his potion and was now running about somewhere on the grounds, completely uncontrollable.
'Run,' whispered a voice on the wind.
'I can't,' Hermione wanted to say.
This entire night was… insane. The only way to describe it was insane. Time travelling to get to class was one thing, to try to save a man's life without accidentally creating an alternate reality or a paradox was another thing entirely.
Hermione held onto Buckbeak's lead tightly, watching from the inside of Hagrid's cabin as Harry ran toward the lake, presumably in search of his father's ghost-not that he would willingly admit that. She was terrified that Professor Lupin was still out there, however Hermione could not bring herself to let Harry do this alone.
She opened the door and followed in Harry's footsteps. Almost as if in response to her wishes, the shadows seemed to twist, hiding herself and Buckbeak. Harry looked so lost, like he couldn't quite believe that his father wasn't there, however Hermione's attention was on their past selves.
All she could see was a dementor lowering its hood. It pressed its mouth to Hermione's past self. Hermione stared, horrified, as what she had assumed her several different coincidences coalesced into a picture that made no sense. She died. Her soul was eaten by a dementor, and yet, she was still there, still alive and aware. Technically, the Dementor's Kiss left behind an empty shell, however she chose to ignore that for the moment.
And then Harry figured out what had really happened when he thought he saw his father and cast what had to be an incredibly powerful patronus charm. From there, it was a race against time to save Sirius, leaving Hermione very little time to think over what this might mean.
When she finally returned to her bed in the Hospital Wing, Hermione was left with only her thoughts for company. How many times had she died? At least twice, possibly thrice, that she could remember, but were they the only ones? Why did she survive? How did she survive?
Ending Notes: I did my best not to copy anything directly from PoA, however, scenes from about page 382 to page 413 were used as reference material to ensure I got the order of events right. I prefer not to rehash events which occurred within the books, however in this case, I had to.
