Merlin's wide, saggy Y-fronts, socks and pyjamas. She'd told him. Of her own free will. That she was from the future. After kissing him, which was dumb enough on its own. Without a back-up plan. Without a back-up plan to the back-up plan. He'd be raging. He'd lock her up again. He'd have her head for this. She needed to obliviate him right now, before …

He just looked at her. Not even with a look of shock on his face, it was just … blank, his eyes barely focusing on her. He was still a bit pink and puffy after the crying spell. It made her want to hug him, even though she was scared.

"Hen… Your majesty?" Hermione asked, rolling the wand in her palm in case she'd need it. "Did … did you hear me?"

It was another few seconds before he responded, shaking his head a little. "Aye."

Hermione pushed a strand of hair behind her ear. "Well?"

He took a deep breath and knitted his brows. "Um … my apologies. I think mine head cannot take any more."

"We don't have to talk about it now, if you don't want to. Or at all." The fear changed into disappointment. This was too much for him. She was too much. The logical side of her knew that it was a positive thing, because no good would ever come of them being together, but … she feared her logical side had taken a back-seat when it came to Henry.

"We evidently need to discuss what you presently stated." He closed his eyes. "I simply need a moment."

The disappointment changed back into cautious excitement and fear all over again. "Yes, of course." She nodded a bit too frantically and got to her feet. "Take all the time you need, I'll just … be … over here," she said and walked to the other side of the room, where she had absolutely nothing to do but to stand and look awkward. Should she say something? Talk about something else? The only topic she could think of was the weather, which was just ridiculous.

With his eyes still closed, Henry interrupted her thoughts, asking, "What try you to say, 'from the future'? That you've seen what has not yet passed? Are you an … oracle, of some sort?"

It would have been so much easier to explain to someone who'd seen Back to the Future. Or someone who'd seen a plane, a car, or even a train, for Merlin's sake – the printing press was still a rather new invention here. (Not to say that the printing press wasn't the greatest invention of all times.)

"No. I was born in 1979. I came here from the twentieth century."

"The 1900s?" He looked at her like she'd told him she was an alien – partly questioning her sanity, partly fearing she'd zap him into a spaceship (if he'd known what any of that was, of course).

"I know it's a lot to take in," she said in a low tone of voice.

He laughed a weird laughter. "That's the understatement of the century. Or millennium, I guess I should say."

This wasn't going the way she'd expected at all. "… do you have any questions?"

"Too many to even know where to begin. The 'how' is given for I guess it could only be done by magic, so maybe 'why' is a better one."

It was a bit embarrassing to admit. "Um, it was actually a mistake."

He raised an eyebrow. "Want you for me to believe that? That you came upon my castle merely by happenstance?"

"I know it's unbelievable, but this is really just a big coincident. It was Crookshanks' fault, really, for playing with a broken time-turner."

"… are you blaming your cat again?"

She crossed her arms. "He's a half-Kneazle, actually – their whiskers can channel and magnify magic. Okay, maybe I'm a little bit to blame for taking a time-turner in the first place and not storing it correctly, but –"

"Wait, wait, stop," he said.

She did, not a clue what he'd do next.

He smirked. "Do you know what that means?" he asked.

Confused, she said, "No?"

"I was right."

"About what?"

"You did steal it."

It took her several seconds to puzzle together what he meant. Then she remembered – when she said she was looking for the hourglass, he'd thought she'd stolen it, and she had denied it.

"… I said 'take', not 'steal'. I tell you that I'm from the future, and this is what you focus on?"

He laughed, heartily this time. "Forgive me, go on. Pray tell, if this was all a mere mistake, why have you stayed?"

"The time-turner – the hourglass – it only brings you back in time, never forward. And only a few hours, usually. It's some sort of safety measure, I imagine."

He looked confused. "So how would one usually return to the starting point?"

"You wait where you are, for the hours to pass, until you're back where you started."

"Oh. Thus, the short travels." He stared at the ground. "So, you really cannot go back, unless you were to find a way to become immortal. And then you should yet be almost 500 years older than your peers."

His words caught her off guard.

Immortality.

Why hadn't she thought of that? It wasn't impossible – she'd read about it during her first year in Hogwarts. Nicholas Flamel had done it, with the Elixir of Life. You-Know-Who had also managed to gain immortality, possibly with unicorn blood. And knowing what she knew, she might even be able to take advantage of living throughout history, and … Hermione's thoughts were interrupted by the expression on Henry's face – he looked at her with growing disbelief, horror and fear.

Oh. He hadn't meant it as a suggestion, she realised. He'd said it in the same way you'd say, "You wouldn't be able to survive after the plane crash unless you turned to cannibalism." He probably thought it included dark magic, which to be fair, it probably did. She wasn't sure how Nicolas Flamel had proceeded to create the Philosopher's Stone, but she was fairly certain that sort of information would have been put in the library's restricted section.

"I'm … I'm 488 years older than you," he said, interrupting her, still not blinking.

Oh. So he didn't think she was as bad as a cannibal, after all.

"I … I could be your great-great-great-great …" He trailed off, shaking his head. "And you, you're not even a baby, nor a fetus, nor are your parents, or their parents, or their –" He interrupted himself. "Unborn, nonetheless you stand before …" He waved his hand towards her, up and down.

"Seriously? That's your problem with this situation?"

He took a deep breath. "Well, forgive me for wanting to cling to logic in a moment like this."

The words warmed her heart and made her smile. He liked logic.

"It's best not to think too much about it, or you'll go mad as a hatter – trust me."

In a confused tone, he said, "As a hatter? Why would a hatter be mad? I understand not what you wish to …" His eyes narrowed, as he seemed to realise something. "That's the reason for your singular speech, is it not? You speak with the tongue of the future."

She nodded.

"I knew it sounded far too outlandish for it to pertain to logic. But in your time, certain words have taken on other meanings, and others are new altogether. Not to mention the accent, which is unlike anything I've ever heard."

Even though it was ridiculous, she felt offended. She thought she'd done an okay job.

"Well, you should be glad I always enjoyed reading Shakespeare," she retorted.

"Who?"

She rolled her eyes. "Never mind." She'd forgotten he wouldn't be born for another fifty years or so.

He raised his eyebrows. "Say you I sound old-fashioned in your ears?"

Old-fashioned didn't even begin to cover it – the grammar was one thing, but what was giving her a headache was his accent. At some point, she'd thought he'd been talking about his good "raisins", only to realize that he was actually saying "reasons". And in his songs, he'd made company rhyme with die, and crave with have.

"… it's taken some getting used to," she said.

"Fie." He glanced at her. "… You say yet 'fie', do you not?"

"Not for a few hundred years."

"S'wounds. You must think I sound the way The Canterbury Tales sound to me. You think me a relic, do you not?" He looked like that was the worst fate anyone could ever suffer.

She made a face. "Honestly? I kind of like it."

"Truly? Weren't mine ego so hurt, I'd jest about fancy older men."

Her stomach flinched, but before she had time to think about whether she should just admit that he was right, he tugged at her skirt, pulling her closer into an embrace. And she let him, completely forgetting about what it was that she had wanted to say.

… … …

"So, pray tell, what wonders holds the twentieth century, more than time travel? Flying machines? Under-water cities? God's heavenly kingdom on earth?" Henry asked, his arms yet around Hermione. The revelation had explained so much, and changed nothing. He cared not that she was a witch, or from the future. She had proven her worth. This was all he wanted.

"Flying machines, yes. The other two, no," she said, gazing at him for a few seconds before looking away.

He twirled a lock of her hair around his finger. "Really? Machines that actually fly? They must run on magic, I presume?" He pushed it back and stroked her cheek.

She blushed. "Um, no. The muggles – the non-magical people, I mean – manage to do quite a lot without magic, actually, and they invented a way to make them fly without it."

"Truly? How?" he asked, and even though he cared for the answer, his gaze was focused on the way her lips looked when she spoke. Her lower lip was slightly plusher than the upper one, and she had a way of smiling crookedly, like she knew something he didn't. She did, of course. So many, many things. He felt strangely proud of her for that.

"The first one was run with a steam engine, I think, and the modern ones with some sort of gas turbine. I've got to say I haven't read too much about them though, so I can't really go into detail."

"I should love to fly, I think." He pressed his lips to her head. "Tell me more. What other wondrous things have you seen?"

"Um, well, there are telephones, which allow you to speak with anyone wherever they are, as long as they also have one. Cars, which are like self-propelled carriages, which can run by a speed of more than 100 miles per hour. Electric power, which allows you do use electricity to give energy to equipment, like refrigerators that keep the food cold and light bulbs that can burn for years." Though she spoke of wonders he could scarcely have imagined, the words seemed to bring her down.

He took a guess. "Do you miss it?"

"Well, I could use magic instead of most of those things, but it is really nice to have flushing toilets and running water inside the house."

"Flushing toilet?" he asked, confused by the combination of words and strange pronunciation. "A swift-moving, small piece of cloth?"

She blushed again, and stiffened. "Um, never mind."

Her reaction made him really want to know. "Pray tell, I'm curious."

"It's nothing important, I promise," she said, avoiding looking at him.

"Fine, I shan't press the matter any further." He took a breath. "So, I guess that the story about the nunnery wasn't true after all?"

She shook her head. "Not even close. I … I'm actually a student here at Hogwarts, in the future." She looked at the walls that surrounded them. "The part about being away from my parents since I was eleven is true, at least for most of the year."

"You never did strike me as someone who'd lived in a house of the Lord. Does that mean that the ridiculous stories of trolls and dragons and transforming into a cat are actually true?" He remembered, then, that she'd already told him this. That she'd travelled through time. When they were travelling back from Portsmouth in the carriage. He hadn't believed her, of course. He'd thought she jested.

She nodded. "A troll broke in here during our first year. That's how Harry, Ron and I became friends – they saved my life. In our second year, we wanted to learn the secret of this really vile boy so we prepared a potion that would let us disguise ourselves as his friends. Only …" She cleared her throat. "Well, you need something from the person you want to turn into, and I managed to grab a cat's hair rather than a human one."

He laughed heartedly. "I would have paid a small fortune to see that. And your friend truly fought a dragon? I would pay even more to get to do that." Arthur would have loved that, too – he'd been slightly obsessed with the mythical animal, referring to himself as Arthur Pendragon, Chief of Dragons, even when they weren't playing knights, and being the Prince of Wales, he had the Welsh flag with its red dragon everywhere.

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Harry didn't actually fight it, he just had to trick it long enough to get the treasure."

Thinking of Arthur made Henry remember the rest of Hermione's tales. "Wait," he said. "I thought you said that Ron and Harry were your brothers? But you now said that you became friends when they saved your life? … were those falsifications, too?" He remembered the tears filling up her eyes when she had spoken of them – they had been convincing, but perhaps she was a better actress than he had first believed.

She shook her head, sighing. "No. Well, not … they're not my brothers, but they might as well be. Harry and Ron are my best friends. We've grown up together, we'd do anything for each other."

"Why would you not simply say that?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. I panicked. I tend to ramble when I do that. I guess I thought you'd find it more convincing that I'd do something like that for family, rather than friends."

"At the time, perchance. Not now. Seeing what you've done for me, even after how I treated you … I'm certain you'd do anything to save those for whom you care."

Nodding, she said, "Yeah." She paused. "But the terrifying thing is … that might not be enough. There really is a man who wants Harry dead. V-voldemort. And I'm so scared he'll succeed," she said, her voice breaking.

"Well …" Henry started, wishing to comfort her the same way she had him before. "Think of it this way … as long as you are here, nothing can happen to him, right? That's in the future, so it hasn't happened yet."

"… I guess you're right," she whispered.

He pulled her closer, pressing his lips to her head again. Her hair tickled his chin. "Why is your friend so important?" he asked.

She shrugged. "There was this dumb prophecy when Harry was a baby, that he was the only one who could defeat you-know-who. So he decided to kill him."

"And what makes this Voldemort so powerful?"

"He's a dark wizard. He … uses dark magic. Banned magic. He can't be killed."

Hearing Hermione speak made Henry want to protect her from all of that. But after seeing what Lord Malfoy could accomplish with a wand, he realized that a sword wouldn't put up much of a fight, nor would an entire army. And the small amount of magic that apparently floated through Henry's veins would be like a breeze against a storm.

He tightened his embrace and whispered, "He can't reach you here. And while you're here, the future is yet an unpainted canvas. It has not come to pass."

They stood like that for a while, in each other's arms. Quiet, eyes closed, not talking of the things behind them or in front of them, simply feeling the warmth of her body, smelling the sweet scent of her skin, hearing her breath. They both knew that they couldn't stay there forever, but for now, neither would let go.