Falling Leaves
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Hermione had never before been faced with the magnitude of her own mortality. She wasn't conceited or foolish enough to believe death wouldn't come for her, but being trapped inside the Ministry, caged in by adult Death Eaters with neither the Order nor Professor Dumbledore being any the wiser… It was perhaps the first time she had noticed how very feeble the spark of life seemed amidst the darkness of death, and there was nothing she could do to stop the mounting terror that accompanied such realization.
Seeing the Ministry completely silent and devoid of any staff apart from the disembodied voice that reverberated through the empty halls had ignited an acute, bothersome feeling inside her stomach as they pressed on. They were not at Hogwarts anymore. And she had an inkling Dorothy and Toto wouldn't have liked this place.
Far too filled with adrenaline and defiance as Hermione had been, she had failed to consider the odds of having six teenagers face a veritable army of Voldemort's followers, not to mention the wizard himself, one of, if not the most powerful wielder of Dark Magic to ever live. Her chances of making out alive ranged from small to non-existent. In fact, all members of their ragtag little group - some more intimate and of adventures far-reaching than others, but absolutely none of which she would have risked in a fool's errand had she pondered things better - might succumb to horrifying, excruciating deaths.
If not for the hormones and rebellion of their age, and perhaps, in her case in particular, even an innate fear of not-belonging that crept up from time to time, she would have given this a great deal more thought than she had. Would have thought to at least warn someone - anyone - before taking off on the back of a Thestral she couldn't even see. Would have reasoned that one life, however cherished and important it was, might not be worth the loss of six others. And though she didn't know Sirius well enough, Hermione somehow felt she was letting him down more by allowing Harry to come to his aid than she would have if she had stopped him by any means necessary. As she had been doing with the nagging of her consciousness ever since they left Hogwarts, however, she pushed that thought away and focused on keeping up with the others.
For what it was worth - which ought to be very little - the analytical, detached part of Hermione was glad the mystery of the riddled door would come to an end at last.
Except of course that small consolation, too, would be taken away from her. When the door to the Department of Mysteries opened without needing any of the knowledge on Celtic traditions she had gathered over the past few months, Hermione wished she would live long enough to throttle Professor Dumbledore. She had even asked Professor Vector for more books on the subject, hoping to be better prepared when things inevitably went sideways. Then they reached the room of the many doors, and she retracted her wish, only to reinstate it soon after.
Next time Professor Dumbledore decided to be crypticly well-meaning, she would make sure to ask for some clarifications. Which, when it came to her, meant posing a million and one questions.
Prior to Harry's dream, Hermione had known trouble of some sort was imminent for some time now. In her experience, it always was, and the past few months hadn't boded well at all. Things had changed and escalated ever since Umbridge had become Headmistress, yet Hermione hadn't expected it would be anything related to Sirius, of all people, that would land them in trouble. But Harry had been unable to locate him at Number Twelve, and so, after leading the toad as prey to the Centaurs, something Hermione only felt marginally bad about, they had mounted on invisible, flying creatures and set off to place themselves exactly where Voldemort wanted them.
Such belief steamed from the fact that, as time dragged on and they made their way in between the tall shelves full of greyish glass globes, it became clear that this was not a rescue mission like any assigned by the old Order to witches and wizards more than capable to defend themselves or seen in spy stories. It was, instead, a poorly planned out - if one was generous enough to call it planned at all - confrontation that bordered on suicidal and was weaved in a trap and all of this didn't occur to her - not in a fully conscious state, at least - until they found themselves in the midst of it, enemy wands drawn and trained at them.
The one time she fully embodied the Gryffindor spirit, and the reward for her troubles would be death. A noble death, perhaps, if such a thing existed - they would fight to the last of their strength, there was no hint of doubt about it - but Hermione was under no delusion that it wouldn't be an utter massacre. There was, after all, defeat, and then there was carnage in its goriest form. The D.A. would fight to incapacitate and to defend - stupefies, protegos, expelliarmus... But the others? The others would torture and maim and delight in the screams until none of them was left breathing.
So they ran, shouted spells, took cover, then ran, shouted more and hid, and all the while a wet sort of coldness crept up Hermione's spine and down her arms until it reached her hands, forcing her to tighten her grip on her wand or risk losing it. The air seemed much too heavy to go past her nostrils and what little managed through lacked enough oxygen to maintain both her body and her focus.
So when the spell traveled through air and landed on her torso, she was propelled backward by its force alone, the oppressive weight of darkness crawling and whirling all around her, and at that moment Hermione found herself thinking not of the goals she wouldn't achieve, nor of the knowledge she wouldn't acquire. She thought, instead, of the people she would never again see, the faces that would be swallowed by death. They flashed before her watery eyes in the millisecond that it took her to land on the ground.
There were the loving ones of her parents.
Harry and Ronald's as they looked at each other and let laughter break free.
The entirety of the Weasley's smiling as though for a photograph.
Hagrid's, as his eyes shone whenever he got his hands on a unique, and certainly dangerous, creature.
Viktor's, with its strong, almost harsh features. Neville's shining with his newfound confidence after the D.A. meetings, and Luna's, with her dreamy eyes and silly accessories.
The ones of Professors McGonagall, Dumbledore, Flitwick, Sprout, Vector, Burbage. All of them either sober, soft, or proud. And Professor Snape's, too, though it changed in her mind's eye between either severe or displeased. A rather subtle difference she had learned to spot over the years.
Her fellow Gryffindors' mischievous ones and the Order members', which had always struck her with their unwavering loyalty.
And then…. Then there was Remus'. Unlike the others, he had a set: the boy's face, with the rare and therefore precious half-smile she had come to look forward to seeing, and the man's, with its understated charm and the gleam of undisguised intelligence in his eyes.
Tears escaped through the corners of her eyes as the collision with the ground hit her like an implosion. Of all of them, Remus was the only one who had no clue whatsoever of how much he meant to her. If only she had sent that blasted letter instead of being too much of a coward and allowing it to sink to the bottom of her trunk, he would know that, for her, what they had had meant so much more than he could fathom.
Her last thoughts went to the garden they had been growing together. It had been sheer luck that Hermione had chosen to cast a self-contained atmosphere charm before the O.W.L.s started. But as she felt unconsciousness tug at her senses, she wondered to whom she had left it. Young Remus would only ever see his garden, and present-Remus would likely never step foot inside it ever again. And in those fractions of a second before every single sense ceased to work, Hermione made the connection: the door professor Dumbledore had talked about was likely the time-traveling gate of the garden.
Pity she likely wouldn't live to test that theory. And thus she found that, when faced with death, the thing that hurt more was not the way you were killed. It was the regrets you took along and the feelings that faded with you.
And hers burned behind her eyelids and her heart as she closed her eyes for the last time.
When they opened once more of their own accord, it happened in concomitance to a chest-heaving gasp, something she immediately regretted. Her ribcage contracted, closing into itself and crushing all her organs into a jumbled mess that stuttered and lurched and threatened to stop. Her torso upreared from where her body lay without her control, and a force of some sort dragged her back by her shoulders, restraining her movements. She could see very little over the haze of pain and heat, her thoughts spaced and senseless, and when her eyes focused on something, it was an image she could hardly process.
Remus was looking at her, his expression one she couldn't place, but that had caused a bag of stones to sink to the bottom of where her stomach should be nonetheless. And something inside her broke, because her heart knew why before her mind could think it, but then a viscous liquid reached her lips and oblivion brought her peace once more.
The next few days - if they were indeed days and not weeks or months - went by in a disconnected manner. Sometimes it would be dark, others bright. Sometimes she would be alone, others in company. Sometimes awareness would set in, and then she would crave for the others when it didn't. The only constant throughout it all was the dull pain in her chest. And it hurt and ached and itched and she wished she could crawl into herself to not to feel it, but it was there, the mangled skin, it was hers and she could never rip it off.
After days of continued treatment, her mouth could no longer discern taste – too many potions were being forced down her throat on a regular basis, all of them atrocious, and the expression on Professor Snape's face grew more haggard as he brought them until he stopped showing. Tears would gather in her eyes at times and Hermione didn't know what they were for. For having lived, she supposed. From wishing, at the times the pain overtook her common sense, that she had died.
Until the time came that the tears were no longer for herself.
At first, they had kept the truth from her. She had asked about Harry and Ron in between bouts of consciousness, of course, and had been assured they were fine, but no other information was provided. And then she overheard the whispers, the news that traveled from mouth to mouth, gaining different, exaggerated details each time.
Sirius Black was dead.
So Hermione cried. For Sirius himself, for Harry. And then the sight of Remus she was half-certain had not been a conjuration of her own mind made sense. The reason she had failed to identify his expression, other than the searing pain that hindered her mind, had been because she had never seen fury etched on his face before. Not even when his secret had been divulged, first by Hermione herself at the Shrieking Shack, then by Professor Snape to the whole school. Remus had resigned, surely, but he held no ill will towards Professor Snape for telling it and didn't seem particularly mad about it. Disappointed and sad, perhaps, but never enraged. Yet now...
The sinking feeling she had felt had been justified. Not once had he shown to visit her, not since she saw - or hallucinated - his presence. But then it was no wonder Remus had been avoiding her.
The painful truth was that, while Hermione couldn't have known Sirius would die, she had known everything else.
James and Lily's deaths.
Peter's betrayal.
And she had allowed him to suffer through it all for the sake of preserving the future. Her future.
He really ought to hate her and she couldn't blame him for it. What sort of friend did it make her?
So when the new school year began, she wasn't quite sure what led her to seek the garden and Remus out. It felt like a trickery to meet young Remus again, who couldn't possibly know how her actions - or rather her inaction - would impact his life. Yet she trudged through the pathway that led to the garden, pushing any moral quandaries that kept making their presence known aside and put Professor Dumbledore's theory to the test.
When she entered the room, she was met by a picture-perfect garden. The charm had held, the self-sustained micro-climate generating tiny dark grey clouds above the blooming flowers and greenery. The multitude of plants, both those she had planted with Remus and the ones she had done so alone, had survived intact - and shall she say it, trived - even without her care.
Hermione did a little here and there, while chanting a feverish litany in the back of her mind, comprised of two words:
Come back.
And when she wore herself out, a fairly easy feat ever since the battle at the Ministry and one Madam Pomfrey assured her would sort itself out in time, Hermione sat down next to her rucksack on the floor and placed her head atop it, just to rest her eyes a little.
It took Remus a moment to realise that the garden he had entered wasn't his own. Plants, herbs, and flowers - more than half of them in bloom - were everywhere around, though not quite in the order they had been. Yet even with the fullness of the greenery the small plot of soil they had cultivated together remained marked by the little fence they had placed to protect it from the weeds. When understanding hit in its entirety, his blood sped inside his veins, his gaze darting all around until it found a small figure asleep on the ground, her back against the same wall they had leaned on to watch the butterflies almost a year ago.
She looked so peaceful and the ache inside his chest from missing her was such that the sight drew him nearer without conscious thought. He stared at her, at her wild hair and the curve of her nose and the darkness of her eyelashes against her fair skin... A strange yet not unsettling sense of perfect peace set in as his blood flow slowed and the muscles he hadn't noticed had clenched relaxed. Regardless of how little time they had spent together, she had always managed to calm him as though a melodical lullaby, though it had taken its absence for him to acknowledge its previous presence. And balming as the sight of Hermione - one he hadn't contemplated in such a long time and hadn't expected to for a lot more to come - was, the feeling didn't last.
He had to leave. Before she woke up, he should make himself scarce and never return. Stupid though it was, he didn't believe he could do it. And he hardly even knew what he meant by 'it'.
The deceit about his lycanthropy had been by omission alone thus far when it came to her, yet it was now laced in actual lies. He could just tell her his scarring was the result of a prank, the same explanation they had given the entire school as cover. According to their little tale, he had acquired the scars on his face as the result of a run-in with a deadly creature while he, James, Sirius, and Peter were exploring the Forbidden Forest unauthorized. They had barely escaped with their lives, but the creature had had a much worse fate. Or so the story went.
But then he couldn't. Remus had not minded the lie all that much, nor what everyone thought of his new marks, not quite as raw as they had been before the summer, yet still raised and red. What he had minded- had dreaded- was what her reaction would be to them. Maybe leaving would be better than lying. It certainly seemed better than telling her the truth and facing her aghast rejection.
He had never told her about his condition. Had never considered needing to- they were friends, yes, but he hadn't told the Marauders either, they learned on their own. And despite Remus' feelings, there was nothing romantic about their relationship, of course, nothing that justified having to warn her. They were good friends if almost always out of touch, with similar interests, and who happened to have other friends with an inexplicable tendency to get into trouble and no excuse other than "it's in a Gryffindor's nature to do so". That was all there was to it. Yet something in his chest rebelled at the thought of walking away.
There were arguments for staying, too. Being a time-traveler, Hermione would have seen his injuries before and might let the subject lie, right? Unless, that was, if his future-self had found a way to glamour the affected tissue and she had never been aware of them. The prospect gave him hope. His current self so far hadn't. And then, the best argument for staying was Hermione herself. With everything that Remus had seen in the Wizarding World, she was the most magical thing he ever laid eyes on. Could he really live with himself having left her behind? Having turned his back on the one thing that escaped his knowledge of adjectives, it was so beyond mere words?
In the end, his inner debate had lasted long enough that, when he focused on her face again, her eyes had opened.
"You came."
And he found he was not ready. Not ready to be deceitful or truthful or anything else in between, so the words that came out from his mouth were, "I thought you had been expelled."
"No, nothing so dire as that. Just threatened with Veritaserum. Well, and an Unforgivable. But I kept coming here, as you can see."
"So did I. I could never find you."
"I would say it was odd, but I actually have a theory. Well, Professor Dumbledore has it, actually. I thought he was talking about something else at the time."
"You told Professor Dumbledore about the garden?"
"No, but that doesn't really mean anything, does it?"
"Omniscience."
"Don't be silly. Legilimency, perhaps, along with the perks of being Hogwarts Headmaster. The point is, judging by what he said, the window for the time travel here must be that - from Lughnasadh to Samhain."
"Celtic rituals?"
"Yes, you see, Lughnasadh marks the beginning of the harvest and Samhain its end."
"There are no crops here. Why just during that time?"
"Well, your guess is as good as mine. And the last time we met was just before Halloween, wasn't it? But then, it's Hogwarts. We may never know for certain. Why is there a room that comes and goes?"
"There's a room that comes and goes?"
"Precisely."
As the subject died, he felt her gaze bear down on his face and felt the urge to cover it. But then she was closing the distance between them, stopping just short of touching. As she skimmed her fingers over the raised, still angry-red skin, tracing each and every line, Remus had to force himself to be still. To not recoil from her touch and hide.
There was a twinge of sorrow in her voice when she spoke, "I know, Remus. I've always had."
"Know what?" A shot of panic ran through his body and he tried to force the lies and excuses out of his mouth with no success. Oblivious to his struggle, Hermione raised herself on her tiptoes and closed the remaining distance, kissing the scars and causing his heart to go into overdrive, the feeling of her lips akin to the texture of a rose petal. Then, in an even more baffling move, she lowered herself just a little, and touched her lips to his, holding them captive under the slightest of brushes. He wanted to draw breath, to gasp and take in her scent along with the hint of her taste, but he held himself as still as possible, shoulder and arms and legs rigid so they wouldn't melt and meld to her because, if they did, there was no scenario in which they would ever split again, his body would be hers the way his heart already was.
When she lowered her feet fully to the ground, she spoke again, "That you're a werewolf. And that I love you anyway."
His ears plugged up with the rush and pounding of his blood, and he had to struggle to hear what she said next.
"I didn't know when you had gotten them. But they're not new to me, nor is the wolf. I have known all along, Remus, have seen it, too. I know far more than I let on, under the threat of disrupting my future." Tears sprung from her eyes at that and held fast to his hand, as though afraid he would leave. "And I apologize for what happens when I do find out about your lycanthropy. Know that it was never my intention to hurt you, not in a million years. Not in any way."
And as per usual since he had met a traveler tumbling her way through time, Remus had to take a moment to wrap his head around her words.
He had reacted far better than she anticipated. He had asked questions and shook his head quite a bit, but then it was to be expected. And before evening arrived, they had kissed once more. Then thrice more after that. And another time still, until the time came when Hermione didn't know whether her cheeks hurt from the kissing or from the permanent smile that had taken residence on her face.
Though happiness tended to be short lived as of late, and this time it was her own consciousness who destroyed it. There was something she needed to get off her chest, but there was no guarantee that once out, things would retain their soothing loveliness ever again.
Remus must have felt something was bothering her, because he turned and contemplated her face, pushing a lock of hair from it and trapping it behind her ear. Or perhaps it was her guilt that made her think so, and he was just being sweet. Either way, she decided to break the silence, steeling herself and introducing some distance between them, just in case.
"There's something I wanted to ask you. Well, not exactly ask, since you couldn't possibly know the answer, but... Not once these past couple of years you - the you from my time, I mean - mentioned this ever happening to me. To us."
He contemplated her words in silence for a bit. "Maybe I'm trying to keep from changing things. I wouldn't risk creating a paradox, would I?"
"No. No, you wouldn't." But perhaps, as she had thought before, that wasn't the reason at all. More than once she had wondered, as she recovered from the spell Dolohov had hit her with, if the source of his anger was not directed to the cruelness of fate, but rather at her. She surveyed his face, taking in every detail before meeting his eyes. "But I think I will."
After Sirius' death, Hermione had gone over the thought non-stop. She could tell him about Sirius. About everything now. It was nice, this little idyllic interlude they found themselves in. Yet his life was about to take a turn for an unending worse as hers might as well. The difference was that his misery she could try to prevent.
"Hermione?"
Was it madness? Absolutely. But she refused to take any part in causing him excruciating suffering when she could choose not to.
"There's a war coming, Remus."
"What? No—"
"Yes. It's right at your doorstep. Mine, too. But there are things I can do."
That was met by silence, and she could see Remus trying to process what she had told him. When he spoke, there was a tremor to his voice, "You want to prevent it?"
"The war? No. I would if I could, but it's too big a change and it likely wouldn't work. Some things can be altered, though."
His eyes met hers, unyielding. "And whom will it save?"
"You, Remus. It'll save you."
"You told me I hadn't died."
"You haven't."
"Then—"
"Just because you lived—Just because you lived it doesn't mean you haven't lost anyone. You had everything, everyone, taken from you. You lose them all. And I can't, I can't let it. Others will be helped by this, too, friends of mine. But no one else lost everything the way you did. The way you would. I've thought about it. I've changed the past before, when I had the time-turner, and this will be trickier, infinitely more so, but… As long as my perceptions of reality remain the same, it will be fine. It has to be."
"I don't follow. Not sure I can, to be honest."
"It's a small part of it, but when I changed the past, I saved a Hippogriff's life. It belonged to a friend and had been unjustly sentenced to death, and I had seen and heard the bardiche's blade come down on its head from a distance. Except I didn't really see its head, it was just outside my range of sight. So, when things were changed, it didn't affect my perceptions, you see, because, instead of its head, the blade came down on a giant pumpkin. So, if you manage to change things, and everything goes to plan, it will be as if..."
"Nothing's changed."
"Yet everything will."
"And if things don't go according to plan?"
Hermione pushed her chin forward and stared him in the eye. "You're worth the risk. We'll hope for the best, but if the worst takes place... I won't regret anything."
A/N: Sorry I'm late, but hope you enjoyed it!
*smiles and winks*
Oh, and for those of you who didn't manage to access chapter 35 of Tie Your Heart, it seems the website is finally back to normal, so check it out :)
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