Bella waited a moment, just in case Hermione had forgotten something. Once she was sure Hermione would be in the shower, she dropped her quill, made straight for the proper drawer set into Hermione's desk. It was locked and warded — a simple one against unlocking charms, by the feel of it — which she could crack easily if she wanted to. But picking it open with a hairpin was faster.

There, atop a couple muggle-printed novels, was a wooden box, the edges traced with silver, the air around it tingling with protective enchantments. Bella pulled it out, closed the drawer again. She set herself up on her bed, a sheet of parchment and a self-inking quill at her side, and started with her first detection charms. Maybe twenty minutes before Hermione got back, should be enough.

There had to be some benefits to having a famous cursebreaker for a tutor, after all.

Hermione, she'd noticed, was taking all five OWL electives. This in itself was not unusual — people had done it in her time, it wasn't unheard of for the occasional exceptional student to get Outstanding OWLs in every available subject. But, arranging such a thing was far simpler in her time. Likely due to the numerous wars they'd had over the last century, wars which had disproportionately affected the segments of the population the school drew its students from, this Hogwarts had far fewer students than hers had. Somewhere between a half and a third, she hadn't run the numbers exactly. In her Hogwarts, every subject had had two, sometimes three professors; depending on which elective, there could be anywhere between five and eight different sessions available. Shuffling schedules so everyone could get to every class wasn't that complicated.

Here, though, there were only two sessions of every elective. The fifth years, she heard, only had one session of Arithmancy. With the more limited options they had, she wasn't sure it was possible for third years to make every class. According to Blaise, it would be possible next year — there were enough second-years they were planning on extra sessions for electives and maybe even hiring new professors. But this year? Not so much.

For that reason, Bella had assumed Hermione was covering whatever electives she couldn't make it to through some kind of directed independent study. Professors in her time would do that sort of thing with promising students, after all — mostly in topics not covered by the Hogwarts curriculum at all, but still — and there was no denying that Hermione was especially gifted. Not as talented as Bella herself, of course, but she was quite good.

But then Blaise had mentioned that Hermione had never missed one Arithmancy class. According to a Hufflepuff friend of Justin's she never missed Muggle Studies either. And Bella could confirm she was always in Divination, they partnered for everything, it'd be hard not to notice.

The problem? Those three sessions were held at the same time.

Obviously, during limited windows throughout the day, Hermione was in as many as three places at once. Just as obviously, the only practical solution to this problem was that she was exploiting stable time loops. Nothing else made any sense.

Not that she had known before that that was possible. Well, theoretically possible, of course, but practically? Back in her 1963, the feasibility of time travel and the stability of the time loops established by short-distance hops had been experimentally verified, but it had still been limited to high ritual. Researchers at Miskatonic theorized it was possible to enchant a self-contained device to do it directly, but it had never even been attempted yet.

Things were clearly different in 1993. She'd even caught Hermione at it once. After Divs one day, she'd quick disillusioned herself and tracked Hermione. She'd slipped into a corner, pulled a sparkling golden device out from under her robes, fiddled with it for a moment, then disappeared. Further observation revealed Hermione put the thing in this little box before bathing or sleeping. This wasn't the first time Bella had gotten her hands on it — last time the risk of immediate discovery was too great to crack the protections.

But this shouldn't take long. With each charm, she sketched out her guess at the structure of the enchantment on the box. It was more complex than a simple ward against unlocking charms — there were several spells to protect the box and its contents, but the important bit was one keyed to Hermione, unsealing the box at her touch. The identification string worked through...blood magic, really? Wasn't that illegal in this timeline? Eh. She didn't need to fool the identification — which was fortunate, subverting blood wards was really difficult — she just had to find a formant that would trip the active string. Shouldn't be hard.

In fact, after about twelve minutes fiddling with the arithmancy, she'd whittled it down to the proper trigger charm. A wave of her wand had the box flipping open. Inside was an hourglass surrounded by a cage of narrow rings, a long chain threaded through a loop at the end, the whole thing glinting gold. Picking the thing up, she peered into the hourglass, obviously the functional part of the miniature time machine. There was something that looked like sand in there, sparkling silver and blue in the light like shattered quartz, but it didn't shift as she tilted it around. She cast a narrow detection charm, focused as well as she could on the sand itself.

When the results came back, she gaped — someone had managed to transfigure time? How the hell did they pull off that one? Damn. Color her impressed.

"This is going to be so much fun."

The near-giddiness in her sense of Eris's voice had her grinning to herself. Not that she disagreed, there were so many opportunities that opened up when she had a time machine on hand. If she had the first idea how to go about it, she might even have invented one herself. Transfiguring time, honestly.

Eris's giggling resonated through her mind, pulling her grin wider. "But you did invent it, ducky. Or, the you of this timeline did, back in the seventies. The Department of Mysteries got their hands on her work late in the war, reverse-engineered it."

You're joking. Seriously?

"Yes. But she was too lost by then, she never did use it to its full potential. Something we'll have to remedy, don't you think?"

Oh, definitely. Exploiting time loops is the best idea I've ever had.

Eris's agreement was a pleasant tingle running down her neck, distracting enough she fudged her next detection charm.

Unfortunately, her charmwork revealed the thing was absolutely buried in enchantments. It was too much of a mess for her to pick apart how to operate the thing without working through the script by hand. This was also keyed to Hermione, but that operator right there looked like soul magic. Which made sense when she thought about it — blood wards were much harder to work on metal — but that didn't mean it wasn't annoying. Soul magic wards were almost impossible to fool. She could figure it out eventually, but she'd need to take apart the script for the entire damn thing. Considering she had no idea how the actual time travel part worked, yeah, that might take a while.

But she didn't think that would be necessary. She just had to convince Hermione to take her along from now on. No problem.

Bella could be very convincing when she wanted to be.

A couple minutes later, Hermione wandered back into the room, pink-faced from the heat of the water, her hair darker and flatter, collapsing against her back from the added weight. It took a couple seconds for her eyes to find Bella, instantly freezing. Bella was still sitting cross-legged on her bed, her scratchwork still at her side. Slouching back, one hand behind her propping her up, she had the chain of the time machine wrapped a couple times around her wrist. She flicked her wrist, releasing the core, sending it spinning around her finger, caught it as it came back around. Then she flicked her wrist around the other way, spin, catch. Flick, spin, catch.

Hermione seemingly couldn't find her voice, staring at Bella with eyes wide in horror. "So," Bella said, grinning, "looks like someone has been keeping a secret. And here I thought we were friends, I might cry."

The other girl scowled at that — couldn't blame her, Bella hadn't been capable of crying since she was seven. (Not for real, anyway, and nobody believed it for a second when she tried to fake it.) Not that Hermione knew that, but she'd learned people who had much contact with her often came to scorn the idea that Bellatrix Black could possibly have normal person feelings like everyone else, even without knowing why. Anyway, the scowl only lasted for a second, switching straight into anger. "Were you going through my things?"

Flick, spin, catch. "Nah, I just took this, didn't touch anything else." Honestly, she doubted Hermione owned anything interesting enough for Bella to bother snooping around.

"Oh, and that makes it better, does it?"

"Do you expect me to not go for a bloody time machine when I know where one is?" Hermione paled, probably realizing just now Bella knew exactly what this thing was. Her grin stretched wider. Flick-spin-catch. "Honestly, Hermione, I'm only human." Sort of.

Hermione hesitated for a moment too long, before finally starting on what was obviously going to be a denial. And not even a very convincing one. "A time machine, really?" Flick-spin-catch — Hermione flinched at the slap of the thing hitting her palm. "Be reasonable, Lyra, time travel is imposs—"

"Do you think I'm an idiot, Hermione?" Flick-spin-catch.

That shut her up instantly. Hermione might not like her very much, but she definitely didn't think Bella was stupid. Hell, she was the only real competition for top of the class Hermione had in most of their subjects.

"Give me some credit, then." Flick-spin-catch. "I have friends in Slytherin and Hufflepuff, and they confirmed for me that you're going to multiple classes at the same time. The obvious solution is stable time loops." Flick-spin-catch.

Hermione gaped. "That's the obvious solution?"

"Well, yeah."

Bella shrugged — was immediately jumping to time travel weird? She'd long ago lost track of what was considered a normal thing to think. It was possible she had a bias here. Hermione's apparent short-hop time travel was pedestrian in comparison to Bella jumping three decades into the future, that was supposed to be impossible. (Not that the Powers really cared what humans considered to be possible or not.)

"So," Bella said, letting a slightly pedantic tone leak into her voice, "this is where you negotiate with me to get—" (Flick-spin-catch.) "—your time machine back."

"You can't just keep it! I need it to get to classes!" Hermione's voice had gone abruptly high, more than a little panicky.

"Hmm, that sounds like your problem. And, let's not play around here, don't go thinking you can just steal it back from me. Even if you could," flick-spin-catch, "I'd just take it again." Bella scooped up the box it had been sealed in, tossed it toward Hermione.

Hermione fumbled it for a second, managed to catch it before it tumbled to the ground. "It's... It's not broken. How did you get it open?"

She smirked. "Trade secret."

"I could just never take it off..." Even Hermione didn't sound particularly convinced of the viability of that idea, longing eyes fixed on the time machine as Bella spun it around again.

"Have to sleep sometime. Besides, that's assuming you could even get it back from me," flick-spin-catch, "which you can't. You saw what I did to my dear cousin — there's a lot more where that came from."

Hermione mustered a defiant glare, but she could only hold it for a moment. She let out a long sigh, her shoulders drooping, face abruptly a picture of exhausted dejection. "What do you want?"

"Oh, nothing much," Bella said, trying to keep any hint of gloating off her voice. Possibly failing, but she was trying, at least. "I just want you to bring me back with you."

Apparently Hermione hadn't seen that request coming — her mouth and eyes had gone wide again, just staring for a long moment before finding her voice. "But I can't! It's only designed for one person!"

Bella rolled her eyes. She flicked-spun-caught the time machine one last time, shifted slightly to lean back on both hands — that one wrist holding her weight was starting to hurt. "Was that what they told you? The energy required to travel through time is determined by the displacement. There is a term for the mass to be displaced, but it's a tiny fraction of the total, small enough to be negligible at this scale. Check the arithmancy if you don't believe me."

"They never gave me any of the arithmancy on it." There was a clear challenging note there, wondering how exactly Bella knew that.

Not that Bella could tell the truth there — possessing any literature published by Miskatonic was even more illegal here than it'd been in her Britain. "The theory is well-established, I'm sure there're books on it in the library. Probably in the Restricted Section, though.

"Anyway, getting off topic here. I really don't think my price is unreasonable. When you consider just how valuable this little trinket is, I'm not asking for much." Of course, Hermione's family probably couldn't afford to pay anywhere close to what it was actually worth. There were plenty of muggles who had that kind of wealth, but she doubted the Grangers were among them.

"McGonagall told me to not let anyone know..."

"That cat's out of the bag, isn't it? I won't tell anyone. I just want to use it too, that's all."

As hard as it was for her to believe, Hermione pouted at her. Really, the lips and the eyes and everything, it was bloody weird. The only people to ever look at her like that, as though they thought they could at all change her mind with begging alone, were Meda and Zee. "Lyra, please, can't you just..."

"No, I'm afraid I can't just." Bella leaned forward, looped the chain around her neck, dropped the hourglass down the front of her shirt. "If you decide you want to be reasonable, I'll be waiting."

Hermione didn't bring it up again the rest of the night, but that didn't mean it wasn't on her mind. She was quiet, and broody, sitting at her desk but not actually working, glaring at Bella the whole time. Even when she was turning in for the night, Hermione was still staring at her, chewing her lip, clearly deep in thought. She'd break. Bella gave it a day, at most.

Bella drifted off to sleep with a smile on her face.

Harry was getting the feeling something was going on between Hermione and Lyra.

Not that Hermione having disagreements with her dorm mates was unusual — they really didn't seem to get along. Which, that had never really made sense, to him. Sure, Lavender and Parvati were irritating, but Fay was fine, and Sophie... He didn't think he'd ever heard Sophie speak, actually. Honestly, he'd always thought the problem there was Hermione, not that he would ever tell her that. She was one of his best friends, but he could admit that Hermione could be a bit...much. He could understand why other people might not be able to get along with her.

Hell, these days Ron couldn't get along with her either. That was just as much his fault as hers, but still.

He'd never come out and asked, but it seemed like Hermione and Lyra were...well, if not friends, at least capable of putting up with each other. Lyra usually sat next to her at lunch, they partnered up in Divs. And, he didn't think he'd ever heard Hermione complain about her yet. Hermione complained about everyone, even him and Ron. (Sometimes especially him and Ron.) He'd been a bit relieved she had someone else to talk to, what with how she and Ron couldn't be within a few meters of each other for five minutes without arguing anymore.

But, something had clearly happened. Breakfast was even more tense than Hermione and Ron being around always made things these days. Not the everyone sniping at each other constantly sort of tense, their segment of the table was actually more quiet than usual. Lyra had ended up between him and Neville, but Hermione hadn't squeezed herself in next to her like she usually did. She was on the opposite side of the table, a few seats down. Just...glaring at Lyra, distractedly stabbing at eggs and mushrooms. Not an angry glare, exactly, but a thinking glare. Like, the glare she would give an especially uncooperative textbook, or the chessboard the few times she'd tried playing Ron. (Chess and flying were pretty much the only things Harry knew Hermione was bad at, even he did pretty well against her.) He didn't think she'd said a word, just sitting there silently staring. Keep that up too long, she'd probably chew through her lip or something.

With her mulling over whatever was going on with Lyra, it was just... Honestly, Harry had never had any idea just how much Hermione talked until he realized how quiet it felt when she and Ron weren't speaking. She and Lyra blabbing on about their incomprehensible smart person stuff at least filled the uncomfortable silence.

Pitching his voice in a whisper that hopefully wouldn't carry too far, Harry said, "Did something happen with you and Hermione?"

Lyra turned a crooked grin on him. "Oh, it's nothing. Hermione's just being stubborn. She'll get over it."

Harry winced — Lyra hadn't bothered lowering her voice, Hermione probably heard that. By the way her eyes had narrowed even further, stabbing a mushroom with a bit more viciousness than necessary, looked like she had. "Ah...okay." He was tempted to ask what exactly she was being so stubborn about, but he decided it wouldn't make any difference. If it was important one of them would probably tell him.

Er, Hermione would probably tell him, he didn't really know Lyra at all. She was smart — like, Hermione smart — she really liked Hagrid, she was friends with both pureblood Slytherins and muggleborn Hufflepuffs, she hated Malfoy — which made up for liking Zabini, he thought — and she was very...odd, sometimes. Ron was convinced she was completely mad, but, well, Harry was of the opinion that madness was relative. (Plenty of people thought he was mad too, after all.) That was pretty much everything he knew about her.

Well, not quite. Sirius Black was apparently her cousin, and she was quite literally the very first magical person ever who'd never seemed to care at all about that Boy Who Lived stuff. Even Ron and Hermione had made a big deal about it the first time they'd met. He didn't really know what to think about either of those.

"So, I was going to go see Hagrid after lunch."

Harry started, blinked over at Lyra. "Huh?"

Lyra rolled her distractingly strange eyes. (Was that magic somehow? Harry was pretty sure people weren't supposed to have purple eyes.) "Very articulate there, Potter. Anyway, yeah, Hagrid said he'd show me where he keeps the hippogriffs. Wanna come? We'd be back before Herbology. Not that I'd mind skipping Herbology, myself."

Before Harry could figure out what to say to that, Ron leaned around him, his voice thick with incredulity and toast. "Are you mad? One of those things near took your arm off, and you wanna go looking for them?"

"Sure," she said, shoulders flicking in a light shrug. "Not like he was aiming for me. I mean, who hasn't wanted to make Malfoy bleed from time to time?"

Ron coughed out a laugh, Neville on Lyra's opposite side clapped a hand over his mouth to keep in an almost girlish giggle. Smiling himself, Harry said, "Well, I guess, but... Hey, why did you protect him anyway?" She'd ended up reducing him to a weeping mess in a duel not long later...

"I didn't fancy the idea of my favorite professor being sacked on the first day. Lord Malfoy's on the Board of Governors, you know? Darling Draco would have written his daddy, and Hagrid would have been packing his bags by dinner."

He would never have thought of that. Especially not while it was happening, it was always so fast, there was never time to actually think about that kind of thing. "And you thought of that at the time?"

"Of course." Lyra met his disbelieving look with another shrug. "Are you coming or not?"

"Sure, why not." He'd never considered actually doing things while visiting Hagrid which, when he thought about it, was sort of stupid. Okay, Hagrid was the bloody gamekeeper, he had to know about all kinds of things around the grounds, and he'd never asked? He couldn't imagine sitting around drinking tea was Hagrid's favorite thing to do with his time either. Idiot.

Double Potions that morning was, quite possibly, the easiest time he'd ever had in a Potions class before. Not because it had suddenly gotten easier or anything, no, the subject was still just as opaque and meaningless as it'd always been. It was just oddly calm. Malfoy hardly so much as looked at anyone, still nursing his wounds over...whatever Lyra had done to him last week. Even Snape was less of an arse than usual, more silently glaring and less whisper-yelling. It was strange.

Not that he was complaining. He'd take what he could get.

Instead of actually staying for lunch, Lyra picked up a plate, loaded it with sandwiches, handed it to Harry, then filled a second plate. Before Harry could think of anything to say, she'd hooked him by the elbow, started dragging him out of the Hall. They were halfway to the door before anyone else caught him.

"You're not really going out, are you?"

Harry winced, glanced behind them to see Hermione, loaded down with her bulky bookbag, standing there and glaring at them. Or, Lyra, mostly — something was definitely going on with them. During Potions, Harry had talked to Ron about it for a little bit, had even nearly asked him along. The whole thing was Lyra's idea, though, he doubted she would appreciate him bringing someone else without asking her first. (Besides, Ron and Lyra really didn't like each other.) Thankfully, he'd hesitated long enough Ron had had time to say something about not understanding why he'd want to go near those things if he didn't have to, have fun without him. Hermione would have heard Lyra invite him at breakfast, but they hadn't had an opportunity to talk since then.

Again, before he could get his thoughts together, Lyra was beating him to it. At least she'd stopped dragging him around long enough to answer her properly. "Sure, why not?

"But, Harry, you..." Hermione's eyes flicked downward — lingering, for just an instant, where Lyra still had his arm trapped in hers.

For reasons he couldn't quite explain, he felt his own face warm.

"You shouldn't be going out right now. I mean, with..." Hermione hesitated, glancing toward Lyra again.

The sudden flash of anger came before he could stop it, but he mostly managed to swallow it down, it shouldn't be on his voice at all. "Honestly, Hermione, do you think Black is going to appear while I'm walking across the grounds and murder me in broad daylight?"

"Well, he could! It was 'broad daylight' when he murdered all those people in Edinburgh, you know! It doesn't make a—"

"But he won't show up when there are a dozen other third-years around." Lyra's flat voice had Hermione stopping in her tracks, blinking at her in surprise. "I mean, that's what you're saying, right?"

"That's not the point, you—"

"Sirius will pop out of nowhere to do Harry in when it's just the two of us and Hagrid, but not when we're in Care. Or going to and from Herbology, for that matter, why doesn't he just blow us all up then?"

Harry frowned — he'd never actually thought of that before. He honestly hadn't been that concerned about Black, not so much as everyone else was making it out he should be. But Lyra made a really good point. They went all over the grounds in Care, and it wasn't like a few third-years or Hagrid, who couldn't really cast much magic at all, would be a threat to anyone who could kill thirteen people with a single curse. Going out on his own or with a few other people shouldn't be any more dangerous, not significantly, than going to Hagrid's class a few times a week. And nobody had a problem with him doing that.

"It'll be fine, Hermione." Harry shrugged at the look Hermione gave him. "You worry too much sometimes."

In a low mutter, quiet enough he almost didn't hear it over the chatter filling the Hall, Hermione said, "Someone around here has to."

Lyra, as usual, grinned. "Honestly, you'd get so much more out of life if you get that stick out of your arse. Give it a try sometime. Come on, Harry." And then she was dragging him off again. Before they were out of sight, Harry sent back the most apologetic, helpless look he could summon.

So he caught the mix of irritation, thoughtfulness, and uncertainty on Hermione's face as she stared at Lyra's retreating back.

Once they passed through the outer doors, stepping out into summer's last gasp, Lyra dropped his arm. "That girl sometimes. Why do I even bother?"

Harry held back a wince. He knew other people really didn't like Hermione, and he could see why, at least some of the time. Her more irritating moods even bothered him, and she was one of his best friends. But even so, he wasn't about to go saying unkind things about her behind her back, even the thought made him uncomfortable. "She means well."

"That's the problem, isn't it?" Lyra scoffed, shaking her head. "She always means well. She's trying to be a good person so hard it's honestly a bit nauseating."

And that made him even more uncomfortable. He'd figured out by now Lyra was a less than perfectly nice person. Some of the things she said went a bit over the line, and that duel with Malfoy had been a bit...much. But, Harry couldn't judge too harshly — he was a less than perfectly nice person himself. He thought her jokes were funny, in a dark, guilty sort of way, and he'd definitely enjoyed seeing Malfoy getting slapped down like the empty bully he was. (Even if it had been a bit much.) So, it was a little complicated.

Not to mention, Lyra was literally the first person ever to not even comment on the Boy Who Lived stuff, and just now was going out of her way to hang out with him when she was under no particular obligation to. If anyone else had said something like that, he might have wondered if they were a secret member of the Junior Death Eater Brigade, but...

"There's nothing wrong with wanting to be a good person."

Lyra rolled her eyes. "Sure, if you like letting other people tell you what to do and what to think. For all the preaching about right and wrong, and morality, and justice, and blah blah, at the end of the day, being a good person means you're a slave. A boring, boring slave."

... Harry had absolutely no idea what to say.

"Why is Hermione so convinced Sirius is after you anyway?"

Harry shrugged. "I don't know. I mean, I do know why — I overheard Mister Weasley talking about it. But I don't know why Sirius wants to kill me so much, is what I meant. Because of Voldemort, I imagine."

Slightly to his surprise, Lyra didn't even blink at the name. It only took a couple years around mages for muggleborns to start doing it too. "What about him?"

"Well, because... Because I 'defeated' him, I guess."

Lyra snorted. "You didn't do shite. Your mother took out the Dark Lord, you just sat there."

Harry opened his mouth, then hesitated. "Ah, yeah, actually, that's exactly what happened." Dumbledore had said it himself, after all, way back in first year, that his mother sacrificing her life for him was what defeated Voldemort, not anything special about Harry. (Well, he talked about it like that was special, but mothers were supposed to love their children, that was normal.) "How did you know that? I mean, everyone else seems to think I must have superpowers or something."

"You do have superpowers, Harry. We all do. It's called magic."

That shocked a short laugh out of him. "You know, I never thought of it that way."

"That's because I'm smarter than you," Lyra said, the grin taking the edge off. (Though she wasn't wrong.) "Anyway, everyone knows Lily Potter had a talent for high ritual. I just assumed she'd done something. A life for a life is a fundamental sacrificial exchange."

Harry was distracted enough by the thought he wasn't paying proper attention to his feet, nearly spilling the sandwiches all over the ground. "What? My mother did ritual magic?"

Lyra looked up at him with a confused frown. "Er, yeah? I thought everyone knew that, anyway."

"But isn't ritual magic, like, really dark?"

She rolled her eyes. "No, of course it's not. People do ritual magic all the time. High ritual is 'dark' in the sense that it's against the law, but that doesn't mean it's actually dark. People ban things for all kinds of reasons, and half the time they have no idea what they're talking about. I mean, high ritual invoking the Light Powers is sort of the opposite of dark, isn't it?"

"Oh." Harry did have to admit that the rules in magical Britain didn't always make sense. He wasn't willing to extend that to the banning of dangerous magics but, well, Lyra knew more about it than he did, he wasn't going to start an argument about it. And he only had a vague idea of what the "Powers" even were — magic religion stuff, far as he could tell.

"Anyway, why is the Ministry so certain Sirius wants to kill you? I mean, I doubt he was sharing his murder fantasies with anyone who stopped by."

"How should I know? Nobody ever told me anything." Which was a subject of some irritation, actually. Most everything he'd learned about Sirius Black, his escape and vendetta against Harry, he'd learned either from the paper or by eavesdropping. Considering he was the target of a mass-murdering psycho, how little anyone had seen fit to tell him anything about anything was really quite annoying. "Mister Weasley said, back in Azkaban, he kept muttering 'he's at Hogwarts' all the time. That's all I know."

"That's all? Just, 'he's at Hogwarts', nothing about what he means to do to the 'he' that's at Hogwarts?"

"Um...no?"

Lyra snorted. "Gods and Powers, people are such fucking idiots sometimes." At Harry's questioning look, Lyra rolled her eyes. "Think about it. He's at Hogwarts — no name, just a vague 'he'. They are assuming he meant you, and assuming that he means to kill you. And the only reason they have to think that is because twelve years ago they decided he was a Death Eater without a trial and threw him into Azkaban to rot."

"There wasn't a trial?!"

Unfortunately, he'd run out of time to interrogate Lyra about that. (They just locked people up, with dementors, for the rest of their lives, without even having a trial to make sure they got the right bloody person? But this was Britain!) They'd gotten close enough to Hagrid's hut for him to see them coming, and he came bounding out to meet them with Fang at his heels. They started off for the hippogriff paddock, splitting the sandwiches between them on the way — one plate was apparently all for Hagrid, he and Lyra shared the other one.

Lyra even produced bottles of butterbeer from her pockets, two normal-sized ones for them and a much larger one for Hagrid. Where had she even gotten those? Couldn't order them by owl, Hogwarts blocked that somehow. Weird.

Again, not that he was complaining — turned out butterbeer was pretty damn good. If this stuff was available, he couldn't understand why people kept drinking pumpkin juice. Blech.

To be honest, he did think the hippogriffs were a little... Well, they were just a bit intimidating, weren't they? Huge bloody things, with their claws and their beaks, their hard, unblinking eyes. They had nothing on the basilisk, of course — by this point, Harry thought his definition of "scary" had become very different from other people his age — but they still made him uneasy.

At least compared to Lyra they did, anyway. For all the care she seemed to show, skipping ahead up to the paddock, they might as well all be tiny, adorable kittens. She more or less treated them like kittens too (after the curtsy as she neared, anyway), all patting and scratching and giggling. Really, giggling, it was weird. She even went up on one again, out of sight for a few minutes this time before they reappeared.

Which Harry couldn't personally understand. He tried it once this time, but thankfully it was a very short flight. It was just... He'd take his broom any day, that was all. He certainly wouldn't want to do it again, Lyra was weird.

The talking to Hagrid part was far more interesting, he thought. Most of the time, when they went to Hagrid's, they ended up talking about...well, whatever was going on with the three of them at the time. Sometimes Hagrid would mention something to do with something on the grounds, but it wasn't very common. And usually just when it was something horrible enough Hagrid was preoccupied.

Lyra, though, had all kinds of questions about what other creatures there were in the forest, where they were, what contact Hagrid had with them. Some of it wasn't news to Harry — Lyra looked particularly surprised by the news that there were acromantulas in the forest, said something about not knowing they could survive the Scottish winter — but a lot of it was. There were centaurs, which he'd known about, but he hadn't known there were actually three separate clans, who constantly feuded with each other. All kinds of creatures, augureys and pixies and thestrals and fairies and jarveys. And the lake too, apparently there were grindylows and merpeople by the dozens and even a clan of kelpies living in the lake. (Harry made a mental note to never go in there if he didn't have to.)

There was even some truth to the rumors of werewolves in the forest, though a bit off on the details. There were wolves out there, but they weren't werewolves — they were a tribe of wilderfolk, which was apparently a kind of being Harry had never heard of before. According to Hagrid, they tried to protect the unicorns as best they could, intervened in some centaurs' disagreements before they broke out into real violence, and hunted down the acromantulas when they wandered too far from their nest. (Hagrid spoke of that as though it were a bad thing, but Harry was on their side.)

Most of their time out, Harry just listened to Hagrid and Lyra talk. She clearly knew more about this magical creature stuff, so she actually had things to talk about, Harry too clueless to even know which questions to ask would have interesting answers. So he just stood there, idly patting at one of the hippogriffs. He didn't mind, though. Honestly, most of the conversations that ever went on around him, he had little to say about any of it. And this one was interesting to listen to, at least.

When it was starting to get close to time they had to go back to the castle, Lyra asked if they could do this again sometime, but go out to meet the wolves instead. Hagrid seemed at once enthusiastic and reluctant about the idea — he did always like other people taking interest in things to do with the grounds and everything that lived here, but the wolves were apparently a complicated topic. He didn't think they'd be happy with him if he just showed up with strangers in tow. But, after a moment hemming and hawing, he promised to ask if anyone in the tribe would like to come out and meet them. There'd probably be at least one, so. He'd get back to them on that, but it could be as long as a couple months, they could be hard to track down sometimes.

Then Hagrid led them back to the edge of the forest, and he and Lyra set back off across the grounds toward the greenhouses. A quick glance at his watch confirmed they'd be almost exactly on time for class, assuming they didn't get distracted on the way. Luckily they didn't need books or anything for Herbology because they really didn't have time to go all the way up to the tower.

"By the way, no, there wasn't a trial."

Harry blinked, took a second to figure out what she was talking about — apparently she'd skipped right back to when Hagrid had interrupted them. "That's... They can do that?"

Shrugging a little, Lyra said, "Normally, no, they can't. The Wizengamot granted the D.L.E. emergency powers back in the war. Well, not real emergency powers — if they declared an emergency, they'd have to select a Lord Protector, and they're not gonna do that — but they passed a law to expand the Director's discretion where Death Eater suspects are concerned, in certain situations. As far as they were concerned, they'd caught Sirius red-handed, case closed."

"Well, they did have some reason to suspect he'd done it." Lyra shot her a doubtful look at that. "I mean, I heard he was just...laughing, when they got there, standing there laughing."

Lyra let out a short laugh. Turning a bright grin on him, one crooked and sharp and slightly scary-looking, she drawled, "I don't know about you, Harry, but if I'd just murdered thirteen people, I wouldn't be standing there laughing. I'd be getting the hell out of there."

Harry had absolutely no idea what to say to that.

Thankfully, Lyra just smiled at him for a second before moving on. "That he'd apparently lost his bloody mind makes it less likely he's guilty, not more. Remember, Lord Potter had just died a few days previously. From what I heard, Sirius loved that man, practically betrayed the Family for him. It's not surprising he'd crack.

"Besides, a Black elf I talked to is positive he's innocent. And she rather dislikes him, so I'm willing to take her word on it."

There were multiple things there he could have decided to ask about. That Sirius had "loved" Harry's father, who "Lord Potter" was probably supposed to be, was news to him. He'd heard they'd known each other at Hogwarts, but. That bit about betraying his family, if that was true nobody ever talked about that, they only talked about the rest of the family so much as to say they should have suspected he was Dark all along because he was Black, and they all were. (Which Harry had always found suspect — he and the Dursleys were related, but that didn't mean they were the same.) Then there was the bit about the Black house-elf. There weren't any Blacks left (besides Lyra), and they still had house-elves? Did they just... What happened to house-elves if all the family were dead? Why was this elf so sure Sirius was innocent?

But, the thing he ended up sticking on was, "Wait, Lord Potter? You mean my dad was one of those magical lord people?"

Lyra shot him a faintly confused look. "Well, yeah? I mean, obviously, where else would you inherit it from? It's not like there are any other Potters out there."

Without really meaning to, Harry jerked to a stop. He felt oddly dizzy, just for a second, like his body had gone a few steps further than his brain had. At least he managed to not fall over. "What are you talking about?"

That just seemed to make Lyra even more confused. She stared back at him for a long moment, as still and silent as he was. "You didn't know you're a Lord of the Wizengamot."

"No!" The words almost burned in his ears, Lord of the Wizengamot, burning through his head and deep into his own memories. Memories mostly involving Number Four, Privet Drive. "No, nobody told me anything about that!"

"Nobody told you—" Lyra let out a hard sigh, hands coming up to rub at her face. She muttered to herself for a little while, low and hissing, in a language that definitely didn't sound like English. Eventually her hands dropped, and she looked up to pin Harry with a hard, cold stare.

He tried not to flinch, and mostly succeeded.

"That's unacceptable. I'll be putting you in contact with my—" Her voice caught. "—with a friend of mine, she'll help you sort this out. I'll write her today or tomorrow, you should hear from her next week." And then she turned on her heel, stalking off toward the greenhouses, her steps falling hard and stiff and angry.

Harry trailed after her, trying not to fidget. Despite himself he felt oddly...guilty, which was just ridiculous. It's not like it was his fault nobody had ever told him anything about anything. (Though, it was a bit hard to believe that nobody had thought to mention at any point, hey, your family happens to be one of those silly magic noble families, and what the hell had he been doing with the Dursleys in a cupboard, this was ridiculous.) After a few minutes walking in awkward silence, he managed to find his voice again. "I'm sorry."

"What for? Sounds like someone seriously neglected your education, that's not your fault. Honestly, what the fuck were they thinking, not even telling you about the Potters..." Lyra shook her head once, hard. "That's just fucking criminal. I'll make sure it's straightened out."

"Er, okay." The odd, dizzy feeling slowly slid away, Privet Drive fading away again. He frowned at Lyra's back, turning the whole thing over in his head. He didn't really understand all this family stuff mages got so obsessed over. Especially the noble families, he hardly even knew anyone from any of them, but what he'd picked up was just entirely foreign. It was just... It was weird, to think that his dad was one of those people, that it was his now.

Honestly, the thought was sort of making him a little angry.

But that wasn't really what was bothering him. They were a couple minutes away from the greenhouses when he couldn't suppress the thought anymore, he had to ask. "Why do you care?"

He really wasn't sure what was going on with Lyra. It was...weird. It was a confusing mix of nice and not nice at the same time. She did call people stupid a lot — which didn't really bother him, she was basically a more direct Hermione. She could have just disarmed Malfoy, she was obviously the better duellist, completely traumatizing him with a fake dementor was a little over the top. (Though Harry couldn't help but feel it was a sort of poetic justice.) But, on the other hand...

Well, people didn't talk to him very much. Other than Ron and Hermione and the quidditch team, he meant. And everyone always had a reason for talking to him. The quidditch team, it was always about quidditch, they hardly ever talked about anything else, he wasn't really friends with them. Anyone else... Most of the time, when people talked to him, it was very obvious they were aware they were talking to the Boy Who bloody Lived, it was all over the way they looked at him, how they said what they said. It was irritating. Everyone only cared about that, he could count on his fingers the people who talked to him like...well, like a person.

Even the muggleborns, who shouldn't care as much! The most annoying person about it was Creevey!

It hadn't escaped his notice, how Ron had reacted to his name, back on the train in first year. How Ron had gone nuts over his scar. He tried not to let it bother him, it was more than that now, but it was still... Even Hermione had lost her head the first time they'd met, everyone did, it annoyed him more and more as the years went on, it never bloody stopped.

Except Lyra. She hadn't mentioned it, at all. That Hallowe'en had even come up today, and she'd said the whole thing had been his mum (which it had). She didn't seem to think he was anything special at all.

But she was still going out of her way to talk to him. It was...weird. He didn't get it.

At his flat question, she stopped again, turning back to raise an eyebrow at him. "You're not a very subtle person are you, Harry?"

He felt a smile twitch at his lips. "Yes, well, neither are you."

"Nope," she said, popping the 'p' a little. She just grinned at him for a second, then shrugged. "Well, you're half a Black yourself, aren't you? I guess I just feel like it."

He blinked. "Huh?"

With another shrug, she drawled, "See, your grandmother was a Black, she was Sirius's godmother, and Sirius is your godfather, so... Since Sirius is technically Lord Black now, I just figured, close enough." And then she turned on her heel, started walking again.

It took Harry long seconds, staring blankly after her, for his legs to kick into motion again. He'd had no idea... What that even... He didn't...

What the hell was he supposed to do with that?

Hermione grabbed Lyra by the sleeve of her robes, started dragging her off toward a nearby classroom. For the first few steps, Lyra resisted, half-stumbling, but then she got her balance again, pacing Hermione at her side, a noticeable bounce in her step.

That just made Hermione more annoyed.

Hermione pulled Lyra inside, slammed the door behind them. A glance around showed this one had been long out of use — the desks, design rather archaic even compared to the normal Hogwarts furnishings, covered in a thick film of dust. It didn't look like anyone had been here in years, and they were certainly alone now.

Her arms crossed over her chest, she turned to face Lyra. She didn't bother trying to keep the frustration out of her voice. "Do you have it on you?"

A smirk spreading across her face, Lyra reached into a pocket, and pulled out the golden cage and chain of the time turner. Wrapping the chain around her wrist — probably so she couldn't grab at it, but after seeing Lyra duel Malfoy she'd have to be an idiot to think she had a chance — she cocked a single eyebrow. "Does this mean you're ready to be reasonable?"

"Reasonable! You—" Hermione bit her lip to cut herself off, hard enough it hurt, she winced. She took a long breath, forcing the anger back down her throat. "You won't... You'll be careful, right? If we get caught..." Hermione felt a little dirty even saying that much.

Sometimes, she didn't like what Hogwarts was doing to her. Well, okay, it wasn't fair to blame it on Hogwarts. She'd just... She hadn't used to do things like this. Ever since she'd gotten mixed up with Harry and Ron, but it wasn't really their fault, either. It hadn't been Ron's idea to set Snape on fire. She'd used a spell that couldn't actually hurt him, but still. It hadn't been Harry's idea to brew polyjuice in the bathroom. That whole thing had been her scheme, she'd even failed to mention that it was illegal to use it to impersonate someone without their consent. Not against school rules, illegal. And sometimes, these days, she just felt so...

At some level, she couldn't believe she was considering this. She'd been very strictly warned not to let anyone even know about it, much less bring them along! But she had to get to her classes — a quick glance at her watch confirmed she had fifteen minutes left or she'd be late to Runes this morning. And she couldn't take it from Lyra, she was too... She had to, she didn't have a choice!

But that wasn't really all of it, getting to classes wasn't the only reason she wanted this settled. She just... She'd managed to forget, that Ron wasn't talking to her these days. And if Ron wasn't talking to her that meant Harry was basically not talking to her either. It'd been less than a day, but even then...

She did like Lyra. Sometimes she felt she shouldn't, but she did anyway. She could be a little terrifying sometimes — that duel with Malfoy... — and she got the feeling Lyra tried to frustrate her on purpose. But... Well, she was interesting, and clever, and she knew more than Hermione about almost everything magic-related — especially where non-academic topics were concerned, like magics not taught at Hogwarts, or culture or history things — which, yes, that was a little irritating, but they could actually talk about magic, or whatever, Harry and Ron could never keep up, and she just...

It'd been less than a day, and she already missed her. Not so much Lyra herself as, just, having someone to talk to, anyone. She felt a bit pathetic even admitting it to herself in her own head, but there it was.

Besides, Lyra wasn't an idiot. She could handle this time travel thing without getting into too much trouble. Right?

That gleeful smirk on Lyra's face wasn't giving her much in the way of confidence. "Don't worry, Hermione. I won't get you in trouble."

Something about the emphasis she put on the words, the way she was smiling at her, had Hermione blushing, from anger or embarrassment, she couldn't tell.

"Anyway, it's in my best interest to not get caught either. If they take this little pretty—" Lyra spun the time turner around her hand again. "—away from you, that means I miss out on time travel too. I doubt you'd just trust me to keep to any demands you might have on what I do with my extra time, but I think you can give me enough credit to believe I wouldn't throw away the opportunity for no good reason."

...Hermione wouldn't have put it quite like that, but Lyra wasn't entirely wrong. "Right. Fine. Whatever. Just... Okay." Trying to shake off the guilt writhing in her stomach, Hermione started running down her schedule, when she turned and how far back.

She hadn't even finished explaining Mondays when Lyra interrupted her. "You're joking, right?"

"What do you mean?"

"You can have as much time as you want, and you're just stealing a few hours here and there? Gods and Powers, Hermione, I thought you were clever! This thing is wasted on you."

"I– But–" Hermione forced out something between a huff and a sigh. "We're not supposed to– We're only supposed to use it to get to classes!"

Lyra rolled her eyes. "So?"

... "So?"

"Really, Hermione, you've been carrying around a time machine in your pocket for two weeks now, which you can use whenever you want without permission, and you never thought to actually use it to the full?" Her smirk tilting, a laugh on her voice, "Shit, I'm shocked you didn't read your way through the entire bloody library in the first week."

"I..." Well, she'd just... McGonagall had implied she was being observed but, well, if she were she certainly hadn't noticed. She'd even been assured it would last far more than she'd need for the term — why would McGonagall tell her that if she hadn't expected Hermione to use it more than the bare minimum necessary? "I, ah, I couldn't have done that. There can only be three versions of the time turner in existence at once, and it only goes back eight hours, at the most."

Lyra blinked. "Oh. Well, that's still plenty of time. Piss on just taking a few hours here and there — go back twice every eight hours, that'd give a whole two extra days to do whatever you like with."

"I think someone would notice if we did that."

"Not if you don't get caught."

Hermione scoffed, shaking her head to herself. "Think about, it Lyra: two whole extra days over nine months means we'd age an extra year and a half. People would notice that, eventually." Especially around their age — shooting the rest of the way through puberty in the span of a couple months would be pretty conspicuous.

"Er, no we wouldn't."

"Yes, we would."

"No, we wouldn't."

"Lyra, it's basic math—"

"Hermione," she sang, adopting a higher-pitched, pedantic tone, "it's basic arithmancy. Haven't you read up on the theory of closed time loops yet? You're not actually creating more time, you're just experiencing the same span of time more than once. You'll age at the same rate, no matter how long you spend in the loop. Well," shrugging, "you do age a little faster than normal, but it's a tiny difference. It wouldn't be noticeable with three loops over the course of a year. I'd have to do the arithmancy to say exactly, but it's not very much, something like a couple days."

She did her best not to pout — she had tried to look into the theory of time travel, but there wasn't really anything in the Hogwarts library at all. McGonagall had been less than informative, she was just operating on basic logic. It was a bit silly, in retrospect, to assume time travel would work on basic logic. She meant, nothing else in the magical world did. "That's still a bit...risky. I mean, we'd have to be careful no one notices we're in more than one place at once, if we slip we could collapse the loop, where are we supposed to sleep..."

Lyra shrugged. "Well, obviously, we'd sleep for one turn every eight hours — we just use our own beds. They wouldn't overlap, and it's not like we have to worry about our roommates noticing."

Well. True.

"I think you're underestimating the self-reinforcing nature of a stable time loop. Just, don't overthink it, and you'll be fine. About people noticing, honestly," her voice sinking into a drawl, smirk tilting wider, "Hermione, how much attention do you think people pay you? There could be two of you sitting in the Hall at breakfast, and most people will be too absorbed in their own concerns to even notice."

"Please tell you don't plan on actually doing that."

"No, of course not — you're far more quiet than I am, they'd notice two of me."

She almost had to laugh at that one.

"I'm just saying. It's not nearly as much of a risk as you think it is." Lyra's smirk evened out a bit, but not into something warm, more suggestive, teasing. "Besides, think of what you could get done with an extra forty-eight hours a day. All the books you could read, all the magic you could practice on your own. Doesn't that seem like a far better use of this thing than just stealing a few hours here and there?"

Hermione frowned a little, biting at her lip. That did sound nice. She'd thought to herself before, frequently since getting to Hogwarts, that she wished she had more time to read. There was so much she didn't know, an entirely new world with its own history and peoples and sciences. And the Hogwarts curriculum was, to be brutally honest, inadequate to properly inform someone about the world. The history class was a joke. Where were the classes about other magical cultures, other magical beings? How about languages, or literature? Even when it came to magic, Flitwick and McGonagall were fine, but there was a lot even they didn't cover, and the other courses...

For all that British mages liked to proclaim it the best in the world, Hermione was increasingly coming to the belief that Hogwarts was, in fact, an objectively terrible educational institution.

"Fine. Just, fine." Part of her still felt guilty for agreeing, for going so far outside how McGonagall had told her to use the time turner. Part of her was still angry at Lyra for doing this to her, bullying her into doing things her way. But... Well, Lyra did have a point, didn't she? She hadn't been using the opportunity to its fullest. She wasn't even certain how many rules this would be breaking, but as long as they didn't get caught...

After all, it wasn't as though Hermione had never done anything wrong at Hogwarts before.

She sighed, glanced at her watch again. Lyra was smirking at her, probably about to say something gleefully smug, but Hermione didn't want to hear it. "Can I have it back now? If we don't turn back in the next five minutes I'm going to be late."

"How gullible do you think I am?" Lyra huffed, shaking her head. "No, I'll be holding onto this little beauty for us. Just so you don't go getting any ideas."

"Lyra, you said—"

"I never said I'd give it back. I'm keeping it. You'll get to use it, but only if you bring me back with you." Lyra turned it in her hand, peering at the hourglass in the middle of the rings. "How does this thing work, anyway?"

Hermione ground her teeth for a moment, glaring over at Lyra, before letting out a long sigh. Honestly, with how suspicious she was sometimes, Hermione had to wonder if the Hat had originally suggested she go to Slytherin. (Though, she did act rather...well, Gryffindor-ish, still.) "Fine, be that way. Just, don't forget to find me every time."

"Hey, it's not like I can go back without you."

That was true...

"Until I crack the enchantments on this thing, anyway."

She gaped. "Lyra, don't you dare—"

"Relax, Hermione," Lyra said, smirking again. "I'm not going to try. There's no reason to, when my tinkering might break it and you're bringing me with anyway."

With a last huff of frustration, Hermione drew her wand, cast a pair of notice-me-not charms over them. This room had probably been empty eight hours ago, but there was no need to take any chances with it. For a moment, there was an odd fuzzy feeling in her head, her eyes going unusually twitchy for a second, automatically trying to look away, but she'd already known Lyra was there so the charm couldn't take hold on her, the uncomfortable distractedness fading after a brief moment.

Annoyingly, Lyra hadn't seemed disoriented at all.

Taking a few hesitant steps closer, Hermione said, "Right, so, we'll have to put the chain around our necks."

One of Lyra's eyebrows ticked up a little. "Both of us?"

"Yeah, it might be a little..." Hermione caught her own fingers fidgeting, forced them to stop. "...er, tight."

And Lyra was smirking again. "All right. Come on, then." With a single flick of her wrist, the entire length unwrapped from around her hand, dangling next to her knee. Closing the distance between them so quickly Hermione thought for a second she was going to plough right into her, Lyra threw the chain over her head, then Hermione's. Holding the hourglass in the narrow space between the two, she gave it a little shake, the chain tinkling against the rings.

Trying to ignore the discomfort making her fingers twitch, Hermione took it. The chain wasn't really long enough to comfortably accommodate two people — Lyra had come to stand face-to-face bare inches away from her, angled slightly so there was enough space between them to handle the hourglass. Holding the thing with both hands, her right arm was brushing against Lyra's robes over her shoulder, she consciously angled her elbow at a slightly unnatural angle so the back of her forearm wouldn't be against her chest. Lyra was a little shorter than her, putting Hermione's nose at about her hairline, but she had to lean down and around a little too see what she was doing, their cheeks ended up only an inch or two apart.

And Lyra was right there, awkwardly close, it was hard not to notice. Hermione was an only child, okay, and she'd always been a bit of a loner. (Honestly, she wasn't certain she'd ever had a girl friend before Lyra, and that if describing them as friends wasn't a bit generous to begin with.) She'd never gotten had opportunity to get used to, well, physical closeness, with people. She wasn't used to the boys yet, squeezing under that damn invisibility cloak, and she'd known them a lot longer. But they were boys, she'd think it would be less awkward with another girl, but she still felt uncomfortably twitchy, nerves wriggling in her stomach, warm enough she was certain she'd be physically pinking.

Luckily, Lyra was looking down at the hourglass, so probably didn't notice. Hermione unlocked the hourglass with a flick, started turning it around, carefully counting under her breath. She didn't normally have to count out loud, but she'd never turned more than two or three times, and she was a bit distracted at the moment.

There was something very strange about Lyra's eyes. She meant, people weren't supposed to have purple eyes. It was possible for very dark blue or grey eyes to appear violet, but only under certain light conditions, and even then it was a dark, muted sort of color, not very distinct. But Lyra's were a deep, vibrant, obvious purple, which shouldn't be possible. In fact, it wasn't possible — this close, Hermione caught the slightest distortion just over the surface, a faint pinkish haze over her iris only noticeable from an angle. It was a glamour, Lyra charmed her eyes to make them look purple. (Or, perhaps, bring out the hint of violet from natural blue or grey, it was impossible to tell.) Hermione had never noticed before, she must cast it very early every morning. Which just seemed really vain, really, but Lyra was like that, it was peculiar how she could be nearly as, well, nerdy as Hermione and at the same time put so much effort into—

Lyra glanced up at Hermione.

With a start, hopefully small enough to go unnoticed, Hermione locked the hourglass in place. For a brief moment they flew back through time, her stomach dropping out of her and her head spinning as they went, the classroom around them a whirl of light and color. The only thing constant was herself and Lyra, solid objects in a smearing soup.

Then everything stopped, abruptly yet smoothly, settling them in the same room virtually unchanged by the eight hours that had un-passed. Lyra was smiling at her (too close), one bright and eager, nearly glowing with excitement. "So, I guess I'm a time traveler now. Neat."

Rolling her eyes, Hermione grabbed the chain. For a moment, she considered whipping it off Lyra's head and making a break for it, but she knew that would be pointless, Lyra would have her wand on her in an instant. Once she was free, she cleared her throat, searching for her voice again. "Right, so, I'll see you in eight hours."

"At the base of the Astronomy tower, around the corner from Charms? Around three?"

As flustered as she was, it took Hermione a second to figure out exactly what she was talking about. "Oh! Oh, sure, that'll be fine." She frowned. "Wait, why three? Eight hours would be at five..."

"I was just thinking long-term." Lyra tucked the time turner under her robes, patting her chest as though assuring it was settled in place. "I like seven, three, and eleven for our schedule. Well, ten or fifteen to, so we don't miss classes at three. Agreed?"

"Right, yes, fine. Bye." Hermione turned on her heel and walked, putting Lyra behind her as quickly as possible. Certainly not because she could still feel the blush on her face.

The way Lyra giggled at her back wasn't helping it go away faster.

And now a chapter written entirely by me. I know, Leigha's was better. —Lysandra

By the way, forgot to mention the potions exam from last chapter was inspired by something similar in one of the Jen Black fics by Dr. Silently Watches. —Leigha

Yes, Jen Black is great. Everyone go read the shit out of that. —Lysandra