"What is the matter with you?" Harry poked at Hermione. She was slouching in one of the chairs on the Malfoy's back veranda and if looks could kill her glass of lemonade would have been long deceased.
She shoved the parchment she'd been carrying around since she'd arrived for their near daily excursions to Malfoy Manor at him. Narcissa, or rather the house elves at her direction, set out sandwiches, crisps, pumpkin juice and lemonade for the stream of not-quite-pre-any-more adolescents who straggled in and out of the fireplace. On any day you could have found Harry, Hermione, Theo, or Pansy gobbling up the lunch and arguing about Quidditch and was it really possible that this year there'd be a school dance because Ron's older brother Percy had overheard something and mentioned it to his mother in front of Ron who'd told Dean who'd told Seamus who'd owled Neville who'd written to Pansy and so it had to be true.
Harry took the parchment and read it and looked back at the girl with confusion. "You asked for a time-turner? Why?"
"So I can take more classes, obviously," Hermione said with a huff. "The way the schedule is set out I can't take Muggle Studies and Divination and Runes and I want to take all of them. It seems really unfair."
"So you want to travel in time just to do more studying? Are you mental?" Pansy demanded. "Never mind. You're a Gryffindor. Of course you're mental."
Harry threw a wadded up napkin at her but, because the Malfoys, unlike Sirius, set out cloth napkins it just fluttered to the ground instead of smacking into the girl with a satisfying thwack. This made her smirk more broadly and take a sip from her own lemonade. "Face it, Potter," she said. "We're the winners and you are not."
"Why would anyone travel in time?" Draco demanded. "What good could possibly come of that?"
"I could take - "
"You could lose your bloody mind from the strain," Theo said. "And what if you changed something and everything was different?" He shook his head. "What kind of idiot would give a restricted object like a time-turner to a third-year?"
"I'd only go back long enough to take extra classes," Hermione said looking put out by Theo's disgust with what had seemed like a perfectly good idea to her . "I'm not stupid. I wouldn't, I don't know, go back and kill Hitler or anything."
"Hitler?" Draco asked.
"Muggle tyrant," she said shortly. "All around bad guy the world would be better off without except Theo's right. I mean, you'd erase the present if you changed something that major about the past. But I wouldn't do that. I'd never do that. I'd just take - "
"More classes," Draco, Theo, Harry and Pansy said in unison.
Harry handed her back her letter from McGonagall. "Well, you can't," he said. "So stop whinging and sulking about it." He looked around and said, "Well, one more week of freedom before we're third years. I'm taking divination. It's supposed to be the easiest class at Hogwarts."
"I'm taking Runes," Theo said.
"Of course you are," Draco said with a roll of his eyes.
"I am too," Hermione said, flashing one of her smiles at Theo.
"Not divination?" the boy asked her.
She snorted rudely. "I was curious about it, of course, but it's not like you can really predict the future. That's hogwash."
"There are seers," Harry said, glowering at her. "And prophecies." When she gave him a derisive look he said, "There are, Hermione. Just because you don't know something doesn't mean it isn't real. Sirius told me."
"You mean the Sirius who spends all his time on the floo with Blaise's mum? That Sirius?" Hermione asked. "Because I'm not sure I'd trust his judgement."
Harry flushed. "She's very pretty," he said. Sirius had spent a lot of the summer pursuing the beautiful woman and she'd alternated between being coy and unavailable. They'd all overheard Lucius complaining to Narcissa that she needed to tell her cousin to stop making a fool of himself and, since then, Harry's godfather's not-girlfriend had been fair game.
"What if they get married," Pansy asked with malice. "Wouldn't that make you and Blaise brothers?"
"Gross," Draco opined and they all laughed.
. . . . . . . . . .
"You seem peaked," Augusta Longbottom said, peering at Neville across the dinner table. She insisted on setting a full table with china and crystal for every meal and he lived in fear of breaking the delicate things she set out. Whenever anyone asked her about it she launched into a lecture on standards and how one mustn't let things slip because civilization could only be preserved if people upheld standards.
"It's what's the problem with people like Sirius Black," she would say with a sniff. "No standards."
"Peaked, Neville, Peaked," she said now as she examined her grandson's pale countenance. "You need to spend more time outdoors and less time writing in that journal of yours."
"Yes, gran," he said.
"Well," she continued as if he hadn't spoken, "It's off to the train tomorrow and back to Hogwarts. Are you looking forward to your third year?"
"Yes, gran," he said. "I'll be happy to see my friends again."
She sniffed as she poured herself another glass of wine. "You go to school to learn," she said, "not to hang about with no-good ruffians like Draco Malfoy or… people… like… what's that girl's name?"
"Pansy Parkinson?" Neville asked. He'd owled the Slytherin several times over the summer and she'd always responded right away and they'd discovered a mutual interest in flowering bulbs.
"Not that one," Augusta Longbottem said. "The one in Gryffindor."
Neville blinked a few times though watery eyes before he asked, "Hermione?"
"Yes, her." Augusta pursed her lips. "Nothing against Muggle-borns, of course, but they can have a hard time adapting and you need to spend your time studying, not helping some girl." She patted her lips with a napkin before asking, "Did you learn anything this summer, Neville? You don't want to go back to school even further behind."
He smiled at her, a bland smile so unlike his usual unsure one she sat up a little straighter and examined him more closely before she decided the odd expression had been a trick of the light.
"Yes, gran," he said softly. "I think I learned a lot of things this summer."
. . . . . . . . . .
Narcissa and Remus sat down over the tea table. "You plan to take the train?" she asked him, eyebrows raised. "Why?"
Lucius had had a number of opinions on the wisdom of permitting a werewolf - "an actual monster, Narcissa," he'd said - to teach at Hogwarts and had expressed himself with clarity and purpose until she'd put a hand on his arm and said, "He can keep an eye on the boys, Lucius. Stop behaving like one of the ignorant masses; Remus Lupin is one of Harry's guardians and have you ever had the slightest worry about sending Draco over to visit?"
Lucius had had to admit his main concern about the children spending time at Grimmauld Place was that he didn't trust Sirius to adequately hide his pornography. Narcissa had discreetly not mentioned the magazine she'd found shoved between the mattresses in Draco's room and Lucius had stopped fomenting about Remus, recognizing he was being absurd.
"I just want to… it is like a trip back into my own childhood," Remus said. "James and Sirius and Peter and I used to get up to all sorts of things and I guess a part of me wants to relive that."
Narcissa's eyes softened as she regarded the man, aged past his years because of his monthly transformations. Small scars spanned his face and, though she'd never seen them, she suspected the rest of his body was similarly marked. It was tragic what had happened to him as a child.
"Everything just went tits up," Remus said, his fingers twitching on the delicate handle of his tea cup. "James murdered, Peter dead too, no one knows who did it. The war ended and it is fine now but… Harry is safe and he and Draco were the cutest little tykes as kids and now they are… they are interested in girls, Narcissa."
"Oh, I know," she murmured, thinking of that magazine.
"I miss them so much," Remus said with a sad laugh. "I am sure I am being pathetic and it will just be a tedious trip I could have avoided simply by apparating to the gates of the castle but - "
"I understand," she said, reaching a hand out to rest it on his. "We all lost things in the war, but you lost so much." She let her hand sit there for a moment before pulling it back and saying briskly, "but dwelling won't do you any good. I understand Severus is to make you your potion while you're at the castle?"
Remus nodded but his eyes shuttered and she sighed. "I know he's… difficult," she began.
"We have a history," Remus said. "And not a good one. He hates me and, as much as I am loathe to admit it, he is not totally wrong to do so." He looked down at the table. "Boys can be very unkind to one another and James and Sirius went after him like a cat after a rat."
"And you and Peter?" she asked.
"We just stood by and watched it happen," he said, still looking down. "It was not… it was not well done of us, Narcissa. There are not many things in my life I am ashamed of, but the way I did not… that is one of them." He shook himself as if trying to rid himself of the memory. "Anyway, Narcissa, you can trust me to let you know that the boys are up to. Innocent hijinks, I am sure, is all I will have to report."
Narcissa wasn't so sure about that. She remembered all too well how an innocent search for adventure had landed the pair, Hermione Granger in tow, in front of a man possessed by Voldemort. That had been hushed up, of course, but she knew it was just a matter of time before he was back. She had suspicions about the sudden awakening of the basilisk last year and they all centered around Voldemort somehow being back in Hogwarts. She just couldn't figure out how.
"I'm sure it will be fine," was all she said. "With the boys and with you." She raised her tea glass in a little toast. "To Professor Lupin, Hogwart's newest luminary."
. . . . . . . . . .
Neville almost ran to join Draco and Hermione when he saw them on the platform. Only a disgruntled huff from his gran kept him at her side until it was time to board the train, at which point he flung himself into their compartment and dropped onto one of the seats. "I'm going to kill her," he said without preamble. "All summer long it was that I needed to study harder and work harder and why wasn't I more like my father. I'd hide in my room and she'd tell me I looked pale and peaked and needed to spend more time outdoors. I'd work in the gardens and she'd tell me I was getting dirty and to go clean up." He made an unhappy face and shook his head. "I am so glad to be going back to school."
There was a loud meow at that pronouncement.
"What is that?" Neville demanded.
"My cat," Hermione said happily. "I wanted a familiar. You have the toad and Harry has the owl and Draco has all the stuffed otters and I wanted one of my own."
The cat let out another loud yowl.
"Isn't he beautiful?" Hermione asked, leaning down to peer through the holes in the carry case at the cat within. Neville bent down and squinted his eyes. The cat glared back at him. If he'd ever seen a less beautiful or less friendly cat he couldn't remember it. The cat's nose was squished and its eyes were narrowed in what he suspected was a permanent glare. It was a cat who's every twitch promised death to anyone who messed with it. Hermione reached her hand into the cage and scratched at the monster's ears and it let out a loud, rumbling purr and rubbed the side of its face against her hand without ever stopping its glaring at Neville.
Neville straightened up and looked at Draco who mouthed, 'Tell her it's beautiful' at him.' Neville suspected that suggestion was borne of unpleasant personal experience with telling Hermione the truth about her cat's appearance and so he said, "He's really pretty, Hermione. What's his name?"
"See," she said, turning her head to look at Draco. "Neville thinks my Crooksie is beautiful."
"Crooksie?" he asked her.
"Crookshanks," Draco said. "He's half-kneazle."
"It shows," Neville said. When Hermione shot him a look he said as quickly as he could, "Because he's so big and seems so intelligent."
"He is, isn't he?" Hermione cooed. "You can let cats just wander at Hogwarts, as long as you've done a contraceptive spell on them so, you know, no kittens. I had the guy at the pet shop do it just in case but he showed me how."
At that moment Ron Weasley opened the door of their compartment and said, "Do you mind if I sit here? Most every place is full up."
"No problem," Draco said as Neville moved over to make room. "How was your summer?"
"Good," Ron said with a grin. "Dad won a little lottery and so we all went to Egypt on holiday. Bill works there, sometimes. He's a curse breaker," he added in explanation to Hermione who nodded. She'd heard a lot about Ron's illustrious older brothers, the curse breaker and the dragon tamer, over the past two years. Ron pulled Scabbers out of his pocket and smiled at the mangy rat. "Scabbers got to go with us. It was fun, wasn't it?"
The rat just sat listlessly on his palm until, as the train lurched forward and their trip began, Crookshanks let out a loud hiss and pushed a paw out one of the holes in his box towards the rat.
"Watch that thing, would you?" Ron demanded, cradling the now frantic Scabbers up against his chest. "I thought cat familiars were trained well enough to not go after pets."
Hermione frowned at the cage. "I'm sorry," she said to Ron. "I don't know what's gotten into him. Maybe it's just the movement of the train?"
"Maybe," Ron said.
