Author's Note: Dear readers: Suspend your disbelief for this chapter. Thank you. ;)
- Menolly
Chapter Nine: Youth and Experience
It had always disconcerted Hermione how easily one could walk around unnoticed, and through other people in pensieve memories. Having experienced the sensation several times before, she was certainly used to it, but that didn't mean she had to enjoy it. It always made her feel as though she were a ghost, and she rather preferred the land of the living.
Predictably totally unaware of her presence in the memory, several figures were lying on the grass next to a lake, just a few feet away. Hermione glanced up and around her, and discovered that she was standing outside of Hogwarts School, next to the Giant Squid's lake. A wave of nostalgia of her own swept through her as she remembered the days that she'd spent with Harry, Ron, and Ginny sitting by this very like, looking up at the sky and discussing their own plans and promises. Things were going to be different after the war, they'd assured each other. Everything was going to get better.
Someone snorted loudly, and someone else laughed, distracting Hermione from her own thoughts. She turned her attention back to the figures she'd noticed at first, and almost immediately identified one of them as a near copy of her own Harry Potter. That must be James Potter, then, she decided. The man on his back next to him was unmistakably a young, much healthier looking Sirius Black. Teenaged Remus Lupin was perched on a tree-limb, not far from them, and below that tree was a man who, by process of elimination, could only have been Peter Pettigrew.
"I didn't expect it to suck this much," James was saying, sighing as he tossed a small, golden ball which looked suspiciously like a snitch from one hand to another. "I mean, we talk and talk about the day that we're gonna graduate, and then we get there, and…that's it."
"Nah," Sirius replied with a shrug. "This is definitely not 'it.' This is just the beginning. We're legal adults now, so there's no end to what we can get up to. Nobody's gonna stop us, this time. We've got the world at our feet."
"You sound like Dumbledore," shot James, "with all of his lofty pep talks about life after Hogwarts."
"Well, he's right, anyway." Lupin swung down from the tree, narrowly avoiding stepping on Pettigrew as he approached his other two friends. "I mean, the real world really is a much freer place than Hogwarts."
"Maybe I don't want a freer place, "muttered James.
Sirius gave him an incredulous look, clapping him on the back with one strong hand and almost bowling him over with the force. "Shut up," he insisted amiably, "you're just sulking cause you're not gonna get to see Lily Evans every single day anymore. I tell you what, I'll sleep better at night when I don't hear you two kissing in your bunk every single morning. I'm relieved."
"Yeah…but." James shook his head, apparently unable to express what it was that was really bothering him. "It's not just that. I mean. Yeah, I'm gonna miss Lily, of course. But I mean…what about us, right? Are we gonna just forget about all of this, like it never happened? Talk about it in passing, like my dad does?" He straightened up, then, and adopted a quavering, reedy voice. "When I was your age, I had these three friends, and we were just nightmares when we were at school…" Trailing off, he frowned, and slumped down against the grass next to Sirius.
"That," promised Sirius glibly, reaching down to poke James in the ribs, "will never happen."
Pettigrew stood up, nodding emphatically. "I'm with Sirius," he insisted. "That's just not possible."
"Of course it's not," agreed Lupin, smiling his nonchalance. "Life would be so boring without you, you can't imagine that I'd let you all get away from me."
Sirius laughed, and the other three joined in, filling the quiet lakeside with the sound, until Hermione found herself smiling along with them. It was then that she was aware of a sound to her right, so soft that she could barely hear it through the raucous merriment.
Turning towards the sound, she saw the aging Remus Lupin whom she'd torn from the Townsend theater, standing stiffly across from his younger self, his face suffused with grief. His sobs were almost as silent as his laughter had been when he'd laughed at her at the theater, and yet the tears streamed down his face with ceaseless persistence, with Lupin making no effort to staunch them.
"But we were wrong," he muttered hoarsely, as Hermione hurried over to join him. "I wasn't supposed to let them get away from me, but…" he trailed off, the tears on his face hardening into streaks that marked up his cheeks and made him look even older and more tired.
"Let's go, Professor," whispered Hermione, but Lupin shook his head emphatically, pushing away the hand that she'd attempted to lay on his shoulder. She was forced to stand and watch as he continued to gaze at the happy figures on the grass, until she thought her heart was going to break for watching his do the same.
When she'd finally had enough, she took his hand, and turned on her heel. She couldn't take much more of this.
They pulled themselves back out of he pensieve in Sirius' bedroom, and Hermione shot a glance at Lupin, to see him wiping his eyes with one hand, his back to her. She waited, allowing him to get control of himself again as she got to her feet, and took a look at her watch. To her chagrin, the watch appeared to have stopped working, as it still read "10 PM," and the windows were flooded with light from outside, marking the mid-morning very clearly.
"I shouldn't have done that," whispered Lupin, shaking his head as if to clear it. "I…apologize. I guess I got carried away. I came up to Sirius' room, because I didn't remember if he had a fireplace up here, and I…well, I found his pensieve. I suppose that, unconsciously, I was looking for it."
Hermione nodded. It made sense that this was Sirius' pensieve, and she didn't blame Lupin for wanting to have a look. She'd probably have done the same thing, if she'd come across the memories of a long-lost friend of hers. Still, from the haggard look on Lupin's face, she wished she'd been fast enough to distract him from the attempt. It certainly hadn't made him feel any better.
"I guess," he said, "that I thought it would be fun to relive that ravishing thrall of youth, of thinking that you and your friends would be together forever, no matter what." Shaking his head, he laughed, but it was a derisive, self-reproachful sound. "I wouldn't exactly call that experience fun, now that I come to think about it. I don't think I ever want to do it again. After all, it doesn't do any good to live in your memories."
The desolate look on Lupin's face told Hermione very clearly that he wished one could live in one's memories, and she was suddenly very glad that she'd never kept a pensieve of her own, so that she wouldn't ever have the opportunity to dwell on what had, or could have been.
"Well," she said, trying to smile, "it's good that you don't have to, then. Live in your memories, I mean. You've got a present to live in, after all, so there's no reason why you need to spend all of your time being nostalgic, is there?"
Lupin looked thoughtful. "That does make sense," he murmured, "but it's hard to compare the past and the present, to tell you the truth. All of the things that could have been, that we could have had together…and I didn't try hard enough to make those things possible, because…well, you heard us. We all thought that we were inseparable, anyway. What could possibly have gone wrong?"
"I've lost people too," Hermione began, but Lupin cut her off with an impatient wave of his hand.
"You can't compare the loss of one person to the loss of another," he told her. "I know that we've all suffered, but that's no reason why I shouldn't be allowed to regret."
Hermione stepped forward, and took him by the shoulder, gently turning him to face her so that she could look into his now dry eyes. "Definitely, regret as much as you need to," she said. "Just don't forget to live, because we care about you, and respect you, and trust you enough to want you to be with us, right now, in the present, and we want you to feel as though it's worthwhile. You survived the war. Sometimes I feel like you, and Harry, and even I don't remember that we're all still alive. It sounds weird, but in the aftermath of something like that, I suppose it's an easy thing to forget. That's what we've got each other for, to remind us."
Lupin stared at her, his eyes widening as he registered surprise at her words. Then he smiled, slowly, shaking his head in disbelief and regarding her with a greater respect than she'd yet seen from him. "You're wise beyond your years," he said, "and beyond mine too, in many ways. We're lucky to have you."
Hermione's heart lurched unexpectedly, and she caught her breath at the unfamiliar sensation. He'd said "we're lucky," not "Harry's lucky," this time. Looking into his careworn face, Hermione wanted him to feel lucky to have her, wanted him to take some comfort in the knowledge that he wasn't as alone as he had been. Harry needed to know that, and Lupin, apparently, needed that reassurance just as badly.
He reached out and clasped her hands in his, squeezing them in a gesture of thanks. She was reluctant to withdraw her hands, and let them linger in his grasp for several minutes, as the smile Hermione had provoked lingered in the corners of Lupin's eyes. She still loved it when he gave her that genuine smile, and she felt for a moment that she understood why Harry didn't want to leave Ginny. In those few moments when the two of them were in accord, those rare times that Harry, and no one else could make Ginny happy, Harry must have felt as though Ginny was the most perfect person for him in he entire world, no matter what she'd done before.
"I've got to get you out of here," Lupin said finally, breaking the silence. "As soon as possible. We've got to get you back to Harry."
"We'll both go," insisted Hermione. Lupin nodded. Hermione wished she had some idea of how to make that assurance a reality, but she smiled at him, hoping he wouldn't see the unsurety lurking behind that smile.
She turned away for a moment, and removed Sirius' pillow from it's pillowcase. Discarding the pillow, she tossed the pillowcase over the pensieve, allowing it to settle over the bowl and cover the entire thing. She didn't want it to sit there as a temptation for Lupin any longer, but at the same time, she didn't quite have the heart to throw it out. Throwing out someone's memories was a much better thing than throwing out an old wand or set of robes. Still, this would suffice for the moment.
"That'll do," she said, with some satisfaction, turning back to Lupin. To her surprise and alarm, he was staring past her shoulder, horror and consternation etched into his face. "Professor? What's wrong?"
Lupin didn't say anything, and Hermione spun around to follow his gaze. He was staring fixedly at the window, and it didn't take her more than a second to figure out why.
Through the window, they could both see very clearly that the moon was rising, dazzling and full, through the parting clouds. Hermione's heart began to beat very, very fast, and she spoke over her shoulder, afraid to look back at Lupin. "What...should we do? I don't' know how to make a wolfsbane potion…"
"Run," whispered Lupin, in a very dark voice. "Run. Now."
