As soon as the door shut, she pressed her ear to the keyhole, listening for any hint of why Time's freaking portrait showed up on-command in Dumbledore's office.
"Traitorous old curmudgeon," she mumbled after a few seconds of silence. She whipped out her wand and started counteracting whatever soundproofing charms he'd affixed to the door. She had to know.
"Hermione," Remus whispered, gently putting his hand on her shoulder, "I already tried when you were in there. It's hopeless."
For a long minute she stared at the old wooden door as if her frustration alone could pierce the magical barrier. But she let Remus help her up and together they left, questions unanswered.
He held her hand and brushed his thumb back and forth across her knuckles as they walked back to the tower, but Hermione's mind was miles away. She needed to talk to Snape now more than ever. Perhaps she should see if he was in the hospital wing? This incident could be something that pushes him over to the death eaters. If Dumbledore won't offer him protection, maybe Voldemort will, and then all of Hermione's hard work would vanish. Maybe she could sneak the map out of Remus' pocket while he was sleeping or something…
"Hermione, can we talk?"
He had an earnest, slightly hurt look in his eyes. Exhaustion washed over her like a riptide, pulling her under.
"Could it wait?" she asked, barely managing to keep the whine out of her voice.
Remus nervously pulled on his hair. "If we waited, I would talk myself out of asking. I think it's kind of important."
Hermione sighed and looked around for a place to sit down.
A few minutes later, they were in an abandoned alcove. Remus tried sitting next to her, but he got up and started to pace. "You… you like me, right?"
"I thought that was obvious," she said, remembering their kiss in front of all the Gryffindors after the quidditch game.
"Right, I know," he said, wringing his hands together, "You seem really fixated on Snape recently, is all. I wasn't sure if you'd rather- I mean, did I do something wrong?"
"No! You've done nothing wrong, Remus. I promise."
"I thought you might say that. But you spend so much time trying to find Snape, and worrying about him, and probably thinking about him, that I wasn't sure if you'd rather... be with him."
Hermione opened her mouth then closed it, shocked at the conclusion he'd drawn. She knew he'd joked about it before, but she never dreamed Remus seriously worried that she'd pick Snape over him. She might have spent time on him trying to save the future, but she couldn't get around that. Remus had said he understood. Did he really not?
Remus pressed on, oblivious to her inner dialogue. "I get it, of course. Just because you're a werecreature doesn't mean you have to date one. You'd probably rather be with someone who doesn't turn into a monster once a month since you have enough to deal with yourself, but-"
"Remus, there's no one I'd rather date than you," she said, cutting him off and watching his eyes blink in surprise, "but that doesn't mean I can spend all of my free time with you."
"That makes sense. You're an amazing witch, and everyone wants to hang out with you."
"It's not that. Believe me, I wish I didn't have to spend so much time looking for and worrying about Snape, too."
"Has he done something to you? Blackmailed you or something?" she could see the gears turning in his mind, trying to figure it out, "I'll fight him if he's done anything like that. Prefect badge be damned."
"No, Remus," she said rubbing her eyes with the palm of her hand. If she didn't know how important reassuring him was, she might be able to fall asleep sitting down like this. "But I also can't tell you everything. There's stuff going on outside of Hogwarts that I'm wrapped up in, and yes it's dangerous, but I need to fix things on my own. Snape's like… like this awful top secret mission that I hate. If I told you about it, though, both our lives would be in danger."
Remus shook his head. "I don't know why I bother. You really are the worst liar I know, Hermione. But fine, if you don't want to tell me, you don't have to."
"No, Remus, really I-"
"Just promise me one thing?" he said, his face worn and disappointed. Hermione's heart sank.
"Of course," she said, softly.
"If you ever want to end this, this... whatever we have between us, just tell me. Don't string me along, playing bloody cat and mouse with me."
She nodded as he helped her up, not knowing what else to do.
That night, Hermione was sitting up by the window closest to her bed, wrapped in her blanket. She usually stocked up on dreamless sleep after the full moon since she went to Madam Pomfrey anyway, but with everything that happened in the morning she'd forgotten. Nowadays, it was hard for her to get more than two or three hours of sleep without the potion, so she'd stopped trying. A little voice in the back of her mind told her it wasn't good for her to become so dependent upon the substance, but she was too tired to care.
"Hermione?" a soft voice whispered from the other side of the room. Hermione turned around and saw Dorcas tip-toeing over, her own blanket dragging on the ground behind her.
"Couldn't sleep," Hermione said by way of explanation, not looking Dorcas in the face. She had a remarkable way of reading the truth on someone's face, and Hermione wasn't sure she wanted to know what Dorcas could see on hers. Sometimes, she wondered how Luna, who was the spitting image of Pandora, seemed to get so much of her personality from Dorcas.
"My Mum sometimes makes me hot chocolate with cinnamon when I can't sleep. I have a mix in my trunk if you'd like."
"That's alright, but thank you."
"I know, you've gotten used to Madame Pomfrey's potion, but you might be surprised with how well cinnamon works to get rid of nightmares. It's quite gentle on your stomach, too."
Hermione didn't bother asking how Dorcas knew she had nightmares.
"Sure, I'll try it, if you really don't mind sharing."
The two girls sat with one knee touching, both looking out the window as it fogged up with the steam from their mugs. Dorcas reached out a finger and began to doodle on the pane, and it reminded Hermione of the time Luna showed her what she thought wizarding fashion trends would look like in the future.
"Dorcas? Can you see the future?" Dorcas tilted her head to the side, and Hermione looked down, uncomfortable even asking. "I know you say you can see time mites, so I wasn't sure if you could see the future, too."
"You never struck me as someone who put much faith in divination, Hermione."
She snorted. That was an understatement. "No, I really don't. But there's something important going on. I just really needed to know if everything is going to be ok."
Dorcas sighed. "I don't like to look at anyone's personal timeline. Sometimes I see something I wish I hadn't, and sometimes I get anxious for them when it'll change soon anyway. It's not a very exact way of knowing the world."
"Right, but if you wanted to, you could look? You could look and tell me what's in the future for, say, Lily?"
"Do you want to talk about something, Hermione?"
Hermione clenched her jaw and took a deep breath. "I just need to know."
"If it means that much to you, I can check. I haven't looked at anyone's personal timelines in years. They all were looking so dark. But give me a second, and I'll see what I can see."
Hermione waited while Dorcas closed her eyes and bowed her head. From the outside it didn't look like much was happening, but Dorcas visibly twitched and gasped.
"What?" Hermione asked, "What do you see?"
Dorcas pressed her lips into a thin line and shook her head over and over again. Hermione could see the whites of her knuckles where she was clutching her blanket.
"Dorcas!" she whisper shouted, shaking her shoulders to pull her out of whatever horrible vision of the future she was seeing.
Dorcas gasped as her eyes flew open. Her hands were shaking.
"Dorcas I'm so sorry, I should never have asked you to look. I'm so sorry."
"Her lifeline was so short," Dorcas whispered, wrapping her arms around her knees and squeezing them tightly, "I've never seen anyone's lifeline that short.
Hermione pulled Dorcas into a tight hug, feeling awful. No possible knowledge of the future was worth this. She hadn't expected anyone to be dying soon, but all of a sudden, Time's words floated back to her- "you have so many friends. I'm sure you would do everything to protect them."
Had that been a threat Time would really follow through on?
"I didn't understand anything. There were three of her. I don't know… One was lit up with a green light in what looked like a hallway, one was hovering above the Great Lake, and one was in a pool of blood in the courtyard and they all... she just… died," she said, her voice breaking on the last word before she dissolved into sobs.
Three days later, on Saturday, the Gryffindor girls were holed up in their room planning the final stages of their prank. They'd never gotten back at the boys for the fizzy lifting incident, but they'd been biding their time. Hermione had been brewing some polyjuice, and today it would finally be ready.
"I can't believe we're doing this," Alice said, grinning widely as she watched Hermione add the last ingredient.
"They're going to wet themselves, they are," Marlene said.
"Ok," Hermione said, stirring the cauldron the final three times counterclockwise, "It's done."
"I still think we should all take one to look like Lily," Mary said, grumbling from behind her book.
"But we already decided," Dorcas said, eyeing Hermione. They'd all argued over the past three days to keep Lily out of the prank. Actually, they'd argued over the past three days to keep Lily away from anything potentially dangerous: they'd kept her out of the courtyard, away from sharp objects, and certainly away from the Great Lake. She'd been getting steadily more exasperated when they didn't want her to take part in the prank, until Dorcas had come up with a brilliant piece of reasoning. She reminded Mary of that now, saying, "If Potter sees two Lily's he's more likely to be turned on than scared."
"Ew, can we not talk about Potter's secret fantasies about me?" Lily said, shuddering.
Mary still wasn't sure. "But with two Hermiones, wouldn't Remus-"
"Remus isn't like that," Hermione interrupted, her cheeks burning.
"Mary, knock it off. Dorcas convinced us all and you got out-voted," Marlene said, "We need to get ready. Hermione needs to meet the boys in twenty minutes, and Alice needs to drink up."
Hermione plucked one of her hairs out and dropped it into the cauldron, and they all watched it bubble and froth. Alice took a cupful and, after a deep breath, knocked it back. Immediately, her short hair started to grow out and curl like a real-life Medusa. Her arms and legs outgrew her robes by a few inches, and she nearly choked on her necklace, which started to constrict around her neck.
"Shit," Alice's voice choked out from Hermione's voice. She reached behind her neck and unclasped the winding gold. She took a few coughing breaths before explaining. "I enchanted this packwood vine to look gold and to strangle anyone else who tried to wear it. Guess the spell gets confused by polyjuice."
Hermione handed her one of her own robes to change into, and realized only too late that in order for Alice to get into her robe, she'd also have to take off the one she was currently wearing. All the girls sucked in a gasp when the scar on her forearm was revealed.
"What the hell, Hermione?" Marlene whispered, horrified.
Lily looked back and forth between the real Hermione and Alice in polyjuice. "Is that real?
Hermione, figuring the cat was now out of the bag, rolled up her own sleeve to show the matching curse word. "Some people really don't like muggles," she said, hoping they would accept the vague answer.
Alice traiced the letters that had sprouted from her arm red and angry, and she winced, a misty look gathering in her eye. "I had no idea," she said, "I mean, people call Marlene and Lily names, but I didn't know people hated muggles this much."
She crossed the little circle to wrap Hermione up in a hug. Hermione, taken aback, took a second to return the hug. When she did, a familiar warmth bloomed in her chest. It seemed like Neville would get his mother's knack for giving great hugs, eventually.
"This is all very touching, but that polyjuice is going to run out in 52 minutes and counting," Mary said, pulling herself up off the bed and out the door.
The remaining five girls looked at each other. However careless she'd said it, Mary was right. Alice/Hermione pulled the borrowed robe on over the scar, the moment broken, and they all went to take up their respective positions, somewhat less excited about the prank.
Hermione's job was to distract the boys down by the lake. Hermione was supposed to try and convince the boys she discovered a spell that made bilocation possible, then hopefully trade the spell for something interesting. When they asked for proof, she'd snap her fingers high in the air, and Alice/Hermione would yell out a window from inside the castle where she'd been watching. While their attention was focused on the castle, the remaining four roommates would immobilize the boys and… well, Hermione hadn't asked for clarification on what Marlene was planning for that part.
At least, that was how it was supposed to work.
"I'd give my left hand for a spell like that," Peter said. "Can you imagine? Our doppelgangers could study and take our tests for us and everything."
Hermione had completed her end of the bargain, and was just watching them dream up uses for the spell until they asked to see the it in action. While she waited, she watched Remus. He said nothing, but looked intently at her. She suspected he knew she was playing them, but he hadn't quite figured out how or why. He was sitting cross-legged next to her, but it felt like there was an ocean between them. When she reached her hand out to him, he didn't grab it.
"Or they could pull the pranks and when they were about to be caught- disappear!" James said, oblivious to the tension between his mate and his mate's girl. He'd gone into full planning mode.
"Let's see it first," Sirius said. "I can't imagine you're just dangling this in front of us without something up your sleeve."
"You asked for it," she said with a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes, "but I expect payment once you've seen proof."
Hermione snapped her fingers in the air, high enough for Alice to see from her lookout point, but she didn't appear in the window.
Several seconds passed in silence before Sirius began to snicker. "Something wrong with your 'spell,' Kitten?"
Hermione sent him a dark look before snapping her fingers again, over-exaggerating the motion so it couldn't be mistaken as anything but a snap.
That was when they heard the scream coming from the courtyard. Hermione tensed up, pulling her wand out into a fighting stance, but then froze when she looked up. There, in the sky above the courtyard, was a dark mark.
A/N: *hides under a blanket* I'm sorry! It had to be done!
Thanks to my roomie for beta-ing this chapter. :) Also, can I take a second to thank you all? I feel like I do this every chapter, but I'm so grateful to everyone who's read. This story's now officially a year old, and despite everything, I'm still writing it. It's also the longest thing I've ever written and I'm damn happy with it, despite its flaws. I wouldn't still be writing without all the support from my readers, so consider yourself high-fived, hugged, or saluted, whichever your preference. You all wrock.