Out of pride, Hermione returned to her chair after her outburst and stuck out another half hour in the Common Room before retiring to the girls' dorm. It was early so she could crawl into her bed unobserved. She pulled the curtains closed, cast privacy spells and sobbed.

Hermione cried from her own fright at seeing the Snatcher. She cried for betraying McGonagall's trust in her by keeping secrets. She cried for James and Lily and Sirius and Remus. She cried for Caradoc Dearborn, a brave Phoenix murdered by Death Eaters, whose body would never be found and for Regulus Black, who would die trying to thwart an evil he'd willingly followed.

She clutched her pillow to her and wished more than anything that Harry and Ron were with her. They could face the worst together. But Harry and Ron didn't exist. Might never exist if she or Nott did something wrong. She could unmake her best friends without even knowing what she'd done.

She wept until her throat was raw and she was choking for breath, finally succumbing to exhausted sleep after midnight still in her uniform.

Her alarm woke her and pride again compelled her. Hermione dragged herself to the bathroom. She looked a fright with red eyes and elf-lock hair. A hot shower could only do so much. When she cast the braiding charm her concentration wavered, leaving her with a serpent's nest of plaits. Forewarned, the witch focused very intently on the spell to remove eye-strain, which took care of most of the redness. Muggle eye drops would've been easier.

Hermione got dressed, envied her still slumbering dorm-mates then decided she needed some fresh air. Grabbing her book bag, she left the dungeons, trekking all the way up to the Astronomy Tower to breathe.

If they were going to keep their secret, she had to rein herself in. Reacting because of events that hadn't happened yet was so far beyond sensible it was ludicrous. Throwing a tantrum would solve nothing. Throwing herself off the Tower wouldn't help either, and truthfully she wasn't tempted.

It would be nice if everything just stopped, though. Mintumble had been in the fifteenth century for five days and twenty-five people had been unborn. She and Theo had been in 1976 for a week, and she could admit now that she'd hoped they would snap back to their own time after the same duration away as the unfortunate Unspeakable.

"Miss Varinen?" A boy's voice not yet broken interrupted her pensive musings. Hermione turned her head, confirmed it was Regulus Black then made a desultory wave he could interpret as either greeting or beckoning.

He joined her at the railing, staring out at the morning sun on the lake. Regulus had left a decorous arm's length between them. The chivalrous gesture made her smile wryly.

"Good morning." It seemed polite to acknowledge him with more than a jerk of a hand. "You're up early."

"This is my OWL year. I feel I need every moment. I have to do well." He didn't say 'better than my brother' but Hermione heard it.

"Pace yourself." She advised, having never managed to do that personally. Hermione laughed softly at her own postcognition. "And don't spend too much time with Quidditch. Despite all evidence to the contrary, it is just a game."

"One at which we're being trounced." Regulus groused then glanced at the older girl. Ophelia was smiling fondly at him, which was something quite new from a suitable young lady. He was a Black, so of course he merited the best, but Sirius was the popular one. "Do you follow Quidditch?"

"Only if I'm dragged." On average, she spent more of a given game worrying than cheering. Even victories were exhausting when Harry or Ron were playing.

"Oh." Regulus stalled, unsure now what to say. The socially appropriate platitudes drilled into him seemed stilted. His mother approved of the Varinens, mostly he suspected because they'd helped her pretend Sirius wasn't causing as big a scene as he was. Most of ladies who came to tea seemed to think it was his mother's fault his brother enjoyed slumming. They always commented on it.

"I should go to the library." Hermione took a last deep breath of the crisp air. She and Theo had agreed to stay together as much as possible. Pining in the Tower, where so much had ended, was self-indulgent moping.

"Would you allow me to escort you, Miss Varinen?" He offered with what he hoped was suave nonchalance. It probably wasn't but she was kind enough not to laugh.

"Certainly." She would have preferred not but Theo had been quite intense about the etiquette of walking. Nicely brought up young witches did not refuse the arm of a wizard of their social class. Not without simultaneously giving the impression they were snubbing him, up to something and/or wanton. Hermione thought pure-bloods collectively needed some fresh air too.

They walked together, heading down to the Great Hall as it was easier to go with the tide of students than against it. Breakfast hadn't started yet but the novelty of having food just appear hadn't worn off for many of the Muggle-borns and half-bloods.

Regulus put on a well-crafted sneer as they were jostled by a group of Gryffindor First Years. Hermione marvelled at how small they were, how loud and how very very young. She was reminded of Colin Creevey and the peace she found watching the sunrise over the mountains disintegrated.

"Finally found yourself a bird, little brother?" The mocking question sailed over the chatter in the hall. Hermione choked back a word she did not want any nearby eleven year olds to learn from her. Regulus stiffened, stepping between her and his approaching brother.

Sirius, flanked by Remus and Pettigrew, swaggered through the crowd. He looked like he had just rolled out of bed, with hair artfully tousled and tie askew. He was grinning, his face alight with joie de vivre in a way she'd rarely seen except when he was looking at Harry.

"Your vulgarity ill suits you, brother." Regulus snarled, already on the defensive as they were outnumbered. The Marauders had a habit of ambushing their targets to which Severus could amply attest.

"I think it does suit me. Like this tie." Sirius waved his red and gold necktie. "Brings out the roses in my cheeks, don't you think, Varinen?"

"It brings out your cheek." Hermione snapped, too wrung-out to deal with his nonsense this morning.

"Oh, the viper bites." He grinned, enjoying his snake-baiting immensely. "Maybe if I ask nicely, she'll give me another little nibble." He said aside to his friends. Peter laughed. Remus shifted uncomfortably. It was only a few days to the full moon. He didn't want to think about girls, particularly ones who glared at him challengingly.

"Mother raised you better than to talk about a lady like that." Regulus was angry and embarrassed that his brother was making fun of one of the few girls who would talk to him. There weren't many pure-blood young women who hadn't been warned off because of his family's politics or because of Sirius's behaviour. Andromeda had been bad enough but two in one generation had gossips talking about the madness of the House of Black.

"Mother can kiss my arse." Sirius said with great enjoyment. He was back at Hogwarts after a horrendous summer of shouting, guilt and punishment hexes. He was free again. He felt like a phoenix reborn.

"This is where you say 'two points from Gryffindor for improper language', Lupin." Snape's snide voice filled the quiet in the wake of Sirius's declaration. The black haired boy strode through the throng to reinforce his Housemates. "Try to remember you are a Prefect."

"Slither off, Snivellus. My brother and I are having a private conversation." He might be a Gryffindor but Sirius could do the conceited pure-blood dismissal of his lessers as proficiently as anyone in green.

"Black and I are going to library. Would you care to join us, Snape?" Hermione asked quickly, hearing the distinctive cadence of Professor McGonagall's footsteps approaching. Something in her voice gave a hint to the other Slytherins that not being there would be sensible. As a group, they turned to go.

Pettigrew, wanting to curry favour with his bolder friend, cast a quick Levicorpus at Snape. He was fair game whereas it had been agreed that only Sirius could hex Regulus. If the Slytherin cast first, all bets were off but it still mattered to Sirius that his little brother wasn't picked on by anyone except him. And Peter didn't like hexing girls.

Snape stumbled as his leg was jerked out from under him by an invisible force intent on hoisting him up by his ankle. He regretted bringing that jinx to the attention of his fellow students by using it last year. Now everyone knew it. With duelling honed reflexes, he pulled out his wand to cast the counter-jinx.

Before his other foot was off the ground, someone else cast Liberacorpus. Snape straightened and noted Ophelia Varinen sliding her wand back up her sleeve as she herded them from the hall. He filed that observation away.

There was no reason why she couldn't know the counter to an obscure jinx he had found in a travelogue of an 18th century wizard's adventures on the Barbary coast. Bandits had used the jinx to waylay travellers, sometimes literally shaking them down for money. No reason, but Snape resolved to watch the twins carefully.

Orpheus Varinen met them in the library, looking more perturbed than a brother should at being denied the company of his sister for less than an hour. He didn't do anything so ostentatious as grabbing her arm and dragging her aside but Snape noticed another of those looks pass between the Varinens. They again spoke in gaps.

"It wasn't long." Hermione defended herself. "I had to go up there, anyway."

"We aren't here to sightsee." Theo scolded, disgusted by how relieved he was Granger was still here. The worry that she had disappeared back into the future had needled him since he'd not seen her in the Common Room. Or the hall. Or the library. Being marooned was terrible. Being marooned alone was worse.

"We would've been here sooner except we were waylaid by my blood-traitor brother." Regulus interrupted. He didn't want either Varinen to think he thought they'd needed to retreat. Or that he wasn't prepared to curse his own disloyal kin. When the Dark Lord came to power, he would see all betrayers punished.

"Keep your voice down." The three older Slytherins spoke almost in tune. Their shared moment of discretion settled Regulus's nerves. He was among friends. Like-minded pure-bloods, who doubtless understood how the world needed to change.

The quartet got an hour of review done before hastening to breakfast and thence to their separate lessons. With the air of a man going to his own funeral, Theo followed Hermione into the Muggle Studies classroom.

Professor Mordicus Egg was of the bearded variety of wizards. His was reddish-brown, meticulously groomed and halfway down his shirt. He combed his fingers through it when he was irritated, a habit he demonstrated throughout the lesson as paper airplanes, ping-pong balls and Lego bricks were thrown by largely inattentive students.

Theo and Hermione, the only green in a sea of yellow and red, hunkered down in the back row near a cabinet displaying vacuum cleaners. Together they had read through the textbook, the Philosophy of the Mundane, and as the lecture progressed disjointedly it became clear Professor Egg believed in out of class research.

"Perfect." Theo remarked softly as the teacher again referred to a book other than the text he had written. They had ample excuse now to linger in the library. "Are there any Muggle books in the Restricted Section?"

"None." Hermione had scoured the Restricted Section in her search for information on Horcuxes. "Lots of books on what to do with Muggles." She added grimly. "None germane to the study of them."

"Do you have an observation to make on the colonisation of Africa, Miss Varinen?" Professor Egg asked with determined patience. Few Slytherins persisted with his class, despite its reputation as an easy option, and he did not encourage them to linger. The Crouch boy had some promise and would likely follow his father into the Ministry. These two did not seem the type.

"It's not Tanganyika any more, sir. After the British administration left, the country merged with the Zanzibar Archipelago to become Tanzania." Hermione had been paying attention while trying not to wince at the outdated material. "Quite a few of the former colonies renamed themselves."

"Five points to Slytherin." It was difficult to see his smile behind his beard but the Professor seemed pleased. "Can anyone else name a country that changed its name after ejecting the colonisers?" There was a general silence. Theo raised his hand. "Mister Varinen, do enlighten the class."

"Botswana, sir. It was the Bechuanaland Protectorate, if you count that as a specific nation." Theo knew that because of the Fourth Year Divination text that had mentioned reading the shoulder blades of oxen and cited one of the best places to get untainted cattle was Bechuanaland. He'd asked Hermione where that was and she had provided the answer.

"Five points to Slytherin." Professor Egg gave the twins a nod, reassured they did not intend to sleep through his lessons. He surveyed the rest of the students in order to give the least dozy an opportunity to win points for their House. He selected a Hufflepuff with a quill in hand. "Mister Westenberg, do you have anything to contribute?"

Hermione didn't hear what Lewis Westenberg had to say. She couldn't hear anything over her own thunderous pulse. Not even in this most non-magical of subjects could she escape reminders of what would happen. She'd met the Westenberg family only twice. Lewis and his wife Maisie hadn't been in the Order but they'd sheltered Order members generously. And had been killed for it.

"One of yours?" Theo asked, catching her quill when it rolled out of her nerveless fingers. She nodded. He sat in silence taking notes for them both until his 'sister' recovered enough to reclaim her writing implement.

Homework was a deceptively simple assignment to list African countries and the Muggle nations from which they had gained their independence.

Hermione immediately recognised the sting; magical nations were not necessarily the same as mundane ones. Many wizarding folk referred more to cities than countries or had nebulous ideas of 'France' including all the French speaking people in Europe. The catchment areas of Hogwarts, Beauxbatons and Durmstrang was a classic example. They'd been drawn up in the tenth century then just kept.

"I wonder how many of our classmates are going to cite Prussia and Castile as colonial powers." Hermione mused, keeping her head down as the class concluded and the other students rushed out of the room.

"The Muggle-borns will get it right, surely." Theo looked through his notes, uncertain of half the spellings.

"There aren't that many in the class." Hermione was careful with her pronouns. "They don't want to learn about their own history. They want to learn about magic, do magic, be magical. They could turn on the telly or buy a book in the high-street or read a newspaper to learn about their own world. Ours is far more interesting."

"So it's ambitious blood-traitors and slack half-bloods?" He smirked, thinking that with Granger at his side he would be able to easily puzzle out the political ramifications of the collapse of the Muggle Empires. He was already better educated on the topic than he had been a week ago. Theo had previously been completely unaware Muggles were capable of organising anything more complicated than a horde.

Their next class was a free period the 'twins' spent in the library powering through their Arithmancy work and surreptitiously trawling Ministry statutes on time travel. The more they found, the more it became clear what they were looking for would either be very old or very illegal.

"We need to get into the Department of Mysteries." Hermione closed the heavy tome of legislation cautiously. It was thick enough that trapping a finger would bruise.

"After the Restricted Section." Theo agreed. They needed more information. They needed facts. Random oft repeated warnings about instability and undue influence did nothing to further their research. "Rookwood is there by now."

"I know. I..." She stopped suddenly, pulled her wand and flicked it sharply upwards. A rat floated into view, lifted by one of its back legs. It squeaked in alarm. "I do not like rodents."

"Surely a fluffy little bunny would appeal, sister." He had a good, languid tone for Orpheus. Theo could get used to using it. Smugly mellow was probably the best description.

"Rabbits look like they're hiding something." Hermione had been frightened by a teacher dressed as the Easter Bunny at nursery school and had never quite got over her distrust. Making the rabbit costume's cotton tail catch on fire had been her first public episode of accidental magic.

"That rat certainly looks like it's hiding something." Theo cast a Full Body-Bind Curse on the scabrous animal. "Pop it on the Magical Creatures shelf. Someone will tidy it up eventually."

Hermione did as he suggested, putting Pettigrew on the top of the bookcase where she and Theo would have a good view of him from their table. They resumed their Arithmancy homework. After twenty minutes, with no sense of surprise, they noticed the rat was gone. James Potter did have an Invisibility Cloak after all.