Chapter 9: Talking to the Future

Harry, still stunned from his run-in with his mother, hurried down the corridor and pushed open the door to his godfather's classroom. He rushed in and Sirius turned around.

"Harry! Glad to see you made it," he said jovially.

"Help me!" Harry said desperately. He was almost glad of what had happened in the hallway with Lily, so he could talk to Sirius about it.

Sirius was, of course, puzzled. "With what? Harry, what's wrong?"

Harry was so flustered, and his mind was racing, therefore his mouth raced accordingly. "IwaswalkingthroughthehallwayandIranintoLilyand-"

"Whoa! Slow down, pup!" said Sirius, before Harry could get any further.

Harry took a deep breath, and he slowed down his thoughts and attempted to organize them. "Ok," he said slowly, and he related the tale of the run-in with his would-be mother. Sirius looked unphased, but he was, inwardly, disgusted at his best friend's wife's childish behaviour. Then he remembered that his best friend's wife was, currently, pretty much a child.

"Well, Harry," he began, "do you know what you have to do?" Sirius looked at the tatty green notebook in Harry's arms meaningfully.

Harry's face lit up as he thought of a beautiful face framed by brown, bushy hair. "Hermione!" he said enthusiastically, and he opened the book. Pulling a quill from Sirius' inkbottle and scribbled a hurried message to Hermione and Ron.

Ron, Hermione, you guys there?

Harry! came Hermione's neat handwriting. Harry smiled as he touched the ink on the page, thinking how good it was to see his name in her writing. It was almost the same as hearing her say his name, which pleased him to no end.

Ron there?

No, just me today. Ron's at Quidditch at the moment. How are you?

Eh, not so good. I need some advice. Sirius is here with me. He says I should talk to you.

Hermione's writing was delayed now. It was like she was hesitating.

Tell him I say hi. What's up?

On the other end of the time-space continuum, Hermione had to hold her tears in. She had a very great worry that he would find someone better than her in the past, but she would never tell him that. She would never tell anyone her true feelings for her best friend.

She started as she looked down at her red book and saw Harry's untidy scrawl there. The print was still coming, and it was almost a paragraph long. A scribble followed the 7th line of text, and then Sirius' tiny, adult-like writing came:

He's giving you the long version. Short version, please, Harry.

Hermione laughed. Sirius must have wrested the quill from Harry's hands, thus the scribble. Harry's scrawl came shortly afterwards.

My mom's got the hots for me. Sirius' words, not mine.

Hermione's jaw almost dropped. That was unexpected, yet not at the same. If Lily had married Harry's dad, who was almost his double in appearance, except that Harry was more tactful, and wonderful, and…ok, off subject. Advice now, thought Hermione.

Well… hmm that's a tough one, Harry. What kind of advice do you want? Do you want her to stop liking you, or what?

Something like that, but I still want to be able to talk to her, but without worrying that I'm saying something that makes it sound like I'm interested in-er, you know-

Hermione shuddered.

Yeah, Harry, I think I know.

Cause that' s how she's acting.

Ok, Harry, I get it. You should just tell her that you're her son from the future, and that would turn her off you pretty fast.

Should I tell her who the father is?

NO. Hermione knew that one right away. The rest of her advice, she had had to think on. Not this. No way. That would screw everything up.

Well, one thing's for sure, you can't not tell her who you are, because if she likes you and not James, then you would basically cease to exist. Not until the exact day that they "get together", but you know. You could start to flicker out of existence. And you can't tell Lily that James is the father; that would screw up their meeting and the whole future might change.

Alright, Hermione. Thanks for the advice; you're the best. Bye, beautiful. And tell Ron I say hi. Harry out.

Hermione sucked in a breath. Bye, beautiful. She would have to show that to Ron, just to see his reaction. She had been doing that lately; she knew that Ron knew Harry better than she did, and she had been showing him things that Harry had said that were confusing to her, and made it seem like a joke, and seen his reaction. Ron, being as thick as the hair on his head, usually said something that opened a door to Harry's mind, and Ron just didn't notice it. Hermione was learning more and more about Harry by the day.

Bye, Harry, she wrote, not knowing whether Harry had seen it or not. But she hoped he had.

Back in the past, Harry had seen it, and wondered what Hermione had thought of the Bye beautiful he had written. It was a bit of a reflex; in this past, the girls hitting on him from all years and hanging out with the Marauders had given him a flirty attitude in all hours of the day. In his own time, he had never had this attitude because he knew that the girls were just hitting on him because of an ugly scar on his forehead that, according to Hermione, made him rather desirable. Now, he knew that the girls liked him because of his looks and his way, and it gave him confidence. He was becoming more and more like his father everyday, flirting with everything in a skirt. It was kind of fun, to have all these girls hanging off him, except or when one of those girls was your future mother.