"Remus, could you pass the butter?"

He doesn't answer right away. It's only when Peter elbows him in the ribs that he realizes Lily is looking at him expectantly. "Sorry, what?"

"Pass the butter, please."

Even when he's handing it over, he fumbles and nearly drops it into her porridge.

"Are you alright? You've been acting strange all week."

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine." Without even thinking about it, he lies easily. "It's probably just because we're getting closer—"

Lily scoffs and shakes her head. "No, no, the full moon isn't for another week. I know that's not what's going on. What's really bothering you? You can tell us."

Of their own accord, Remus's gaze briefly strays toward the staff table. He takes in Hermione, who is engaged in what appears to be a rather lively debate with Professor McGonagall. Lily lets out a low hum. "Right." Then: "She's pretty, don't you think?"

"Yes. I mean, no. What? Who?"

Peter sniggers beside Remus, but Lily shoots Peter a look that silences him immediately. "Don't make me remind you of all of the girls that you can't so much as speak a word to without stuttering and blushing," she chides, making him grimace.

Turning her attention back to Remus, she says, "Honestly, I'm relieved. I was worried you were still trying to sort out who she is. This is good. From what it sounds like, James and Sirius have been saying for years that you need a distraction from… your furry problem."

Under his breath, Peter remarks, "I don't think they meant a crush on a staff member." Lily ignores him.

Remus, on the other hand, bristles. "It's not about that, Wormtail. I just… I think she and I could be real mates, is all."

And he might be bluffing slightly, but she certainly could use a mate right now; based on what she said earlier in the week, he gets the impression that she has nobody. He's sure she's capable of handling herself, but she shouldn't have to.

His attraction to Hermione is not the only thing that Remus is doing his best to under-sell. Whether intentional or not, he feels rather certain that she has come close to giving him all of the information he needs to piece together who she is. He suspects that one missing piece will be enough to make him understand, although he has no clue what that missing piece might be.

From across the hall, some of the people at the Ravenclaw table begin to shout, drawing Lily and Peter's attention away from Remus. It seems that the Ravenclaw quidditch team has finished eating and is headed out to the quidditch pitch, and the other members of the house are trying to give them a proper send-off.

"We should finish quickly," Lily says. "James would be disappointed if we missed the beginning of the match. Sirius has probably already saved our seats."

But watching a quidditch game is suddenly the very last thing that Remus Lupin wants to do.

He clears his throat. "You two go ahead. I'm on patrol duty tonight, so I think I'd like to get an early start on that Defense Against the Dark Arts essay."

"Are you sure?" Remus knows very well that, even as Lily asks the question, she is anticipating his answer.

"I am. James won't miss me, and it'll give him an excuse to recount the entire match at dinner."

Lily smirks. "You are right, I'll grant you that. Alright."

So, as they leave the Great Hall, Lily and Peter follow the other students trickling out of the castle toward the quidditch pitch, and Remus retreats up the stairs alone.

He briefly returns to Gryffindor Tower to collect his bag – he wasn't lying, he is scheduled to patrol and it is in his best interest to work on his Defense Against the Dark Arts essay instead of attend the match – but then he makes his way to the library, picturing all of his friends laughing at him as he goes.

As he enters the library, Remus is already running over his excuse to Hermione for why he is here, repeating his words to Lily over and over again in his mind.

But she's nowhere to be seen. When the library is open, she is almost always bustling in between the shelves, sorting and reorganizing everything to suit her liking. As far as he can tell, though, he is entirely alone.

Moments later, Remus hears a crash from somewhere in the vicinity of the office, so he rushes down the nearest aisle to determine what happened. He finds a jumble of books in the aisle adjacent to the open door of Hermione's office and assumes that this must be the source of the noise.

"Hermione? It's – it's Remus, are you here?" He peers into her office and finds that it, too, is empty.

She can't have been gone long. There's an open book and a steaming mug of tea on her desk, and she's left music playing. Scanning the cluttered room, he notes the small record player perched atop a large stack of books. He spots the album jacket on another stack of books and steps around the desk to look at it, but something else catches his eye.

The picture from Hermione's desk in the Room of Requirement is sticking out from underneath the album jacket. Despite the fact that he examined it closely the first time he saw it, his curiosity gets the better of him—when Hermione was with him, he felt too self-conscious to look at it as thoroughly as he'd wanted to before.

Remus frowns down at the two boys. They, along with Hermione, are waving cheerfully up at him. He'd already forgotten precisely how much the shorter boy – Harry, she'd said his name is Harry – looks like James. The resemblance is truly disarming.

He traces his thumb over their faces, flips the photo over, and inhales sharply at the same moment that Hermione's voice comes from behind him. "Remus?"

Immediately, the photo falls from his hand as he jolts. "Hi, sorry, I…" His apology dies at his lips when he sees her expression and realizes that she's not cross with him for looking around. She just looks curious. "I like the record," he says, nodding toward the player. "You don't hear much Muggle music around here. I didn't know Fleetwood Mac had a new album out."

She nods. "Yes. My… my dad and I used to listen to them. I think this is their best album."

"Yeah?" Remus smiles weakly.

"Mhm." Hermione takes a few steps into the office, folding her hands behind her back. "Why aren't you at the quidditch game?"

"I was hoping to finish an essay before my patrol tonight, so I thought I'd work on it here. I was just going to settle in, but then I heard those books fall and I thought I'd just make sure…"

Exasperation suddenly crosses Hermione's face as she rolls her eyes. "I didn't see him, so I can't say for sure, but I think it was just Peeves. He's been making it impossible to keep this place neat. It's driving me mad."

"Oh, alright. I'm glad it wasn't anything more serious."

They are both quiet for some moments, as though not wanting to step on each other's toes by speaking. Finally, Hermione grows tired of waiting. "Remus, you're clearly itching to say something. Go ahead."

Remus swallows hard. "You're not going to want to explain."

"I thought you were going to ask me any questions you had in case I'm willing to give you an answer." She actually looks a bit amused.

Another silence stretches between them.

"Why is that photo labeled, 'July 1996?'"

"I suppose there are a few options, right?" Her voice is shaking almost imperceptibly. "Either that's when it was taken, or it wasn't labeled correctly."

Somehow, this makes it even more difficult to ask the next question. "How could you be in a photo that was taken in July of 1996?"

Hermione raises her eyebrows. "Don't tell me that you don't already suspect the answer."

"No. If what you're saying is true… But the answer doesn't make any sense."

On the one hand, she's not arguing with him, not pressing him to consider the possibility… But she's still watching him. Making him feel ridiculously self-conscious. Remus tells himself that he wishes that he were out in the quidditch stands with Lily, Peter, and Sirius, but he knows even as he's thinking it that it isn't true. He begins to talk very fast.

"Let's imagine you're from the future, then. Which should be impossible, except it explains so much else. Like how you… how you got past all of Hogwarts' security when you arrived. How you know about me and my friends when we don't know about you. And you're… if you attended Hogwarts, if you were in Gryffindor, it would explain why you ended up at the common room the other day. And that friend of yours, Harry, he's… what, a cousin of James's or something, hasn't been born yet? He looks to be at least 15, and I have a hard time imagining that James would already…"

But Hermione's mouth twitches at this slight mistake, and Remus notices. His eyes widen. "He is James's. Is that… is that really what you'd have me believe?"

A rush of pride courses through Hermione. She wonders whether this is how he felt when she revealed that she'd figured out his identity as a werewolf. Then, feeling suddenly more flustered, she wonders whether, at that moment during her third year, he was remembering this moment in a similar way.

"Do you believe me?"

Remus hesitates. "I don't want to, but… I think I might."

She lets out a sigh of relief. Before she can speak, though, he continues. "The only thing is, I just don't understand… Why are you telling me? If you know me, shouldn't you be avoiding me like the plague?"

This is precisely the question that she was hoping he wouldn't ask, at least not yet, because she's still not really sure why.

"Would you rather I modify your memory?" Hermione asks, drawing closer to him and reaching into her pocket as though to retrieve her wand.

"No, no, please don't, you misunderstand. You know that I won't tell anyone, yeah?" She nods, and Remus rushes to continue. "I want to believe you, I do, but if this is true, you should be lying low, trying not to meddle."

"So you'd like me to leave you alone."

"No!" Remus exclaims with a sense of exasperation and urgency that extends even beyond his refusal of the memory modification charm. "But I don't understand why you're not leaving me alone."

Hermione might actually explain to him if she had a better sense of it. As it is, her thoughts are a muddle of agony over the poor chances for her return, mourning – essentially – for the world that she's left, frustration at her lack of control over the situation, and something that she's reluctant to call attraction to Remus (because she can't tell whether she's actually interested in him or just enjoying his flirting). She can't sort through it all for the life of her.

"I don't know," she tells him. If Remus is frustrated or annoyed, he hides it well. "Now, Peeves has done a fair amount of damage to my library, so may I take you up on your offer to help me sort it out, or should I leave you to your essay?"

"Yeah, sure," Remus stammers, moving aside as she steps past him to return a book to the stack closest to her desk. "I'd be happy to help."

They don't talk about Hermione's claimed time travel after that. For about ten minutes, Remus seems to be in shock, but after that he begins to interact with Hermione normally.

After they've straightened up Peeves' mess, Remus sets up at his usual table to work on his essay and Hermione hovers for a good fifteen minutes before apparently acknowledging to herself that she's going to stick around. So she sits down across from Remus and gives him suggestions as he talks through his essay aloud.

"You must have been a teacher's dream," he remarks at one point, and Hermione smiles, only just resisting the temptation to tell him that he'll have an opportunity to experience that for himself in about 15 years.

Other students begin to filter in at some point around mid-afternoon, indicating that the quidditch match must have ended. Remus finishes up his essay not long after. Beginning to pack up his ink and parchment, he says, "I think I'm going to go find my friends before they come here looking for me."

She nods. "Of course. Be safe this week, alright? Don't wear yourself out too much."

"What are you talking about?"

"Full moon is next Saturday, isn't it?" Hermione furrows her brow, running over the month's calendar in her head to figure out whether she'd gotten her dates wrong.

But Remus is just staring at her in amazement. Lowering his voice, he says, "You know, I don't think I quite believed you until right now."

Hermione considers this to be a tremendous victory.

Looking over at him mildly, she says, "Perhaps this should go without saying, but your friends…"

"Won't hear a thing about you. I doubt they'll even ask," Remus adds with a chuckle. "Seems like the match went on for a long time, so they'll have a lot to talk about."

Remus is less than halfway back to Gryffindor tower when the question occurs that he wishes he had asked immediately upon learning that Hermione had traveled back in time.

Does that mean she's as young as he thinks she is?

He wonders whether she's been born yet. He wonders how old she will be when she meets him. He wonders how they know one another. They must be fairly close in her time, at least enough so that she knows he's a werewolf and trusts him implicitly anyway.

For the first time, Remus feels as though he's made a fool of himself.