Around him the cave was dank, ever dank. It reminded Sirius of his cell only this had an opening with air moving freely in and out. When he was certain there were no dementors around sometimes he sat at the entrance to his cell...cave...and the sunlight touched his skin. At first he burned, but with each morning he sat out here to watch the sunrise his skin stung a little less and the cage around his chest eased. He was breathing easier, not at all miraculously cured, but the warmth of coming summer and fresh air felt as if he could finally take a deep breath.
This morning he was planning to go to Hogwarts to spy on a rat and speak to a half kneazle about some passwords. The half cat confirmed the Longbottom boy kept a list of them. The ginger fuzz agreed it'd get it for him. Nice little guy just like his owner. Familiars had a way of mirroring their owners personalities and strengths. From the cat he could tell the girl was smart, steadfast, a good judge of situations, slightly conniving, and very sneaky.
Around him the trees grew thicker before he reached the edge of Hogwarts grounds and they thinned. There he found them. The ginger fuzz, the whole family of red heads, his godson, and the girl. She looked older, significantly older. If this had been one of his foggier days he wouldn't have noticed, yet the difference here from summer was stark. There was also something oddly glowing about her which he hadn't seen in his human forms. The glow centered around her neck and twisted around her vital organs, predominantly her brain. Instinctively he backed off, knowing she was sharpening herself and that if he were careless she'd notice him there. Sharpening herself with what he didn't know, but it was best to be cautious. He couldn't afford to let his plans be ruined.
He couldn't smell Peter amongst their group. The rat must be inside. He always did like to nap his way through the nicest days. Usually the thought of Peter enraged him, but for the first time in a long time Sirius was calm. His eyes drifted from his godson to the girl. Part of him wanted to approach her again, to see if she'd stay and talk again, but his head was clear enough to rule out this idea. So he watched. When she laughed Harry smiled. When she complimented the two older redheads about the brilliance of one of their pranks they stumbled over themselves as if no one had ever thought their stunts could be smart or crafty.
"Oh thee great!"
"The Spectacular!"
"Our Majesty Granger!"
"Has recognized our work!"
Despite the twin speech they seemed rather touched. Before they left they walked all the way around the group to ruffle her already crazy hair. She squawked, thwacking them away, and the twins laughed. They looked so like the Prewitt twins and just as those two dead fools teased Lily, these two teased Hermione. That was her name. Until this moment Sirius had forgotten.
She was Harry's friend, the one from this summer and not only did her familiar agree to help, but Hermione herself stayed for a few minutes next to him. She was... She was... Present. He'd become so used to people walking straight past him. The guards or the visitors looking only to make a comment or gesture then move along. The people he saw here under his disguises too ignored him. He had to be careful to switch it up so people didn't get too used to any single face or body, especially his grim. People freaked out when glimpsing it, thinking they were about to be welcomed into a graveyard themselves the longer they were near him.
She hadn't. This one had been scared, but she stayed and she'd talked to him, talked to him as if she actually wanted a response. She'd been present and by doing so Sirius thought she'd given back part of his humanity. Funny, he'd never known something as simple as talking could trigger so much else. After that first encounter he'd felt a whole wave of long forgotten emotions. Curiosity, mischievousness, and a host of things which weren't fury. It felt good to put that down for a while. His plans, he decided, would be all the better for it to. While he'd originally planned to break into the castle during Halloween he'd put it off, waiting for more information. Now it was mid November and when the youngest red head boy wasn't looking he would sneak off with his class time table.
On December 24th Hermione turned 15. It was a Saturday, only when Hermione asked Harry and Ron if they wanted to hang out they said they'd rather look through broom magazines. She couldn't blame them for being morose. The dementor attack on Harry his last game knocked him off his broom and if it weren't for Dumbledore's impressive display of arresto momentum he'd have died. So she brought them a plate of dinner and told them she'd see them in the morning. It's not as if they knew she'd lived a whole year between September and December. Not even McGonagall knew as the Head of House hadn't checked in with her since that first conversation. A bit surprising really considering how strict she'd been on the rules of time travel at the time. Hermione would have thought there'd be some sort of guidance or enforcement.
Even without taking extra turns for sleeping (as much as Hermione suspected she should) using the time turner was aging her. Mentally she'd always been a bit of a granny stuck in a young body, but now her physical form was catching up. She began to notice the shifts in herself, her legs were longer and leaner, her emotions had stabilized, the hips of her jeans needed several seam alteration spells applied. Luckily the school standard skirts were more forgiving otherwise she'd have to write home to her parents for an entire new set of clothes months before they should be needed. Her parents were quick and to hide things from them she'd always had to be especially crafty. Things like time turner use would test that craftiness like she'd never had to before.
While the turner was distancing her slightly from her friends she made extra efforts to hang out with them and ignore Ron's more juvenile comments. With a bit of age Hermione was realizing they likely would have drifted apart anyways. It was sad, but she was happy to support them in their quidditch obsession and to help them where they needed her. Harry in particular had shifted somewhere between her first and best friend to almost a little brother figure. She had to walk around his moods and try to anticipate what he'd need before it happened, but Hermione had always been good at analysis and 9 times out of 10 she got it right with Harry. Even now with him so angry with Sirius Black after he overheard the details of it during the Hogsmeade visit, Hermione regularly convinced him to go for walks, to play games, to eat when she noticed it'd been a whole day in his time but two and a half in hers since he'd taken a bite.
All evening music drifted through the halls of Hogwarts. Both Christian Christmas and magical Yule tides sung and for Hermione getting to see the latter hit something in her. She'd been more sensitive to the magic around her after ingesting Trelawney's tea (she'd been dubious of professors and their drinks ever since). However, being sensitive to magic during yule was spectacular and made her feel as if she were floating. The few Slytherins and Ravenclaws who remained in the castle, Hermione found them out on the grounds next to a bon fire. She watched them as they performed a Yule right, made offerings to the earth's coming long night and jumped over a fire to signify prosperity and blessing on all life. Hermione asked to join and was surprised when the hulking Marcus Flint let her. After an hour of it she'd sat with him and two Ravenclaws and drank firewhiskey late into the evening of the 24th. Depending on which region in Northern Europe the families were tied to, they all had different significant days during winter, but this group decided the 24th was as good a day as any.
Hermione's cheeks were red from whiskey and when Marcus Flint slung an arm around her then gave her a kiss on the mouth, she kissed him back before playfully swatting him away. He grinned cheekily down at her, then moved onto the busty Ravenclaw making doe eyes at him. Watching the two of them spurred feelings of happiness and contentment, welling them so strong within her as she realized what she was seeing in their magic wafting around them. The Ravenclaw girl really did seem to like him and Flint didn't seem to be under gentle regard often. He soaked it up, his magic positively thrumming with happiness when the doe eyed girl reached out to hold his hand.
Hermione snuck back into the tower at 3:30 Christmas morning only to stumble over one of the twins. Her head was swimming too much to place which twin she'd accosted, but she slurred an apology, got a hair pat in turn, and stumbled her way up to her dorm. When the twin shouted advice about which way was up it startled a high pitched titter out of her. With the reminder her hand did find the railing and she pulled herself up to her bed.
For birthdays this was a good one. Not even the news of Harry's suspicious Christmas present the next morning could drag her down. The hangover wasn't bad, just a bit dizzying, and she even ate three pieces of bacon on toast. Why greasy food tasted so good she wasn't sure. But her body in this moment loved it.
Over the breakfast table as Ron and Harry gushed about the broom. Watching Harry's sudden and strong attachment to a stranger's present she speculated. If she were a man, hahaha, who wanted to kill a teenager what would she do? Get them via the one thing they seemed to enjoy more than anything else. Ooh Harry was happy to the point of making doe eyes at the broom just as the Ravenclaw girl had made doe eyes at Flint. Her friend, she could just tell, was going to do something stupid like ride it. Just as he'd been stupid enough to write in the diary and give a bit of his life and magical core away. It was with a good deal of cheer she spent Christmas in the library pouring over every broomstick curse method she could find. Turns out there were hundreds. However, by dinner time she realized she was hungry and wouldn't get any further on her own. Hogwarts didn't teach curse breaking and she simply didn't know where to start.
It was a good thing she came, just sitting there eating proved a spectacle. The hall around her was even fuller with Flitwick's newly added enchantments and with Hagrid's newest creatures brought inside just for today the hall itself had come to life.
Fairies twinkled, flying in and out of the great hall's holly lattice and evergreen trees. The feast's smells followed them out the door long after they'd all eaten as much Christmas dinner as they could. Ron and Harry lazily walked in front of her and didn't notice when Hermione drifted back. She wondered if the broomstick sender was particularly creative and if it'd need to be checked for the body dysmorphia curses including anything from turning the stomach inside out to eat itself, standard limb dismemberment, to alchemically turning the rider's body into stone. None of which Harry would want, she was sure. If they were lucky it'd been sent anonymously by a very rich benefactor. However with Harry's track record she was certainly going to make sure before she risked something terrible happen to her friend. Especially if he wasn't in the right mind to think of it himself, a worrying and increasingly likely possibility.
Ducking away from Harry and Ron, who didn't notice, she jogged after where she'd seen the clump of professors wandering off. It was the smallest Professor and Ravenclaw House Head she needed to speak with.
Spinning to a stop around the corner, she saw them and called out when the short man noticed her, "Professor Flitwick, is there a way to check an object for curses?"
He'd been trailing at the end of the line of teachers, but McGonagall and Sprout too turned around at her question. Suddenly finding herself under scrutiny of three Heads of House Hermione fought the urge to babble. Her rambling was notably worse when tired and she'd been tired for 5 months their time, one year her time. Hermione felt so old and cynically amused this morning when she saw the other kids, who used to be her age, just looked ecstatic at a free present to help them win a silly school game. Not a single other person in the room aside from Fred and George looked at it sideways. How she finally had some things more in common with the twins than with Harry, that was new and she wasn't sure what to think of it.
"Miss Granger is this a theoretical question or do you believe there's an object in this school which is cursed? After the last two possession incidents," Here Flitwick glanced at McGonagall. His voice turned sardonic, "You can understand how seriously we'd have to take any concerns."
Hermione looked back and forth between the two, not quite sure what tension she was sensing. Whatever it was had been long-standing and recently strengthened in passive animosity. Oh this was interesting. Hermione loved learning and the depths of magic here truly were something she'd never read about. She wanted to find more. But she could do that later.
"You're talking about Quirrell and Ginny."
"Right as always. You can recall Ginny's near dead state after exposure to a cursed object. You two did spend weeks in the hospital wing together after you children so brilliantly figured out the puzzle placed."
He gave one more sharp and pointed glance in McGonagall's direction, but only for the briefest moment. Then his typical jovial face was back in place. Hermione blinked. Purposefully dragging her attention away from that. Whatever it was she'd have to think on it later. Focusing instead on the diary incident as it'd been regurgitated to her. After she'd woken Hermione heard all of it in great detail from Ron around a mouthful of food. Harry had been sheepish, but proud as Dumbledore awarded him points for destroying the diary.
Oh yes, she'd remembered how easily that bit of nastiness had gotten under Harry's guard. He'd trusted the diary right up until it admitted to sucking away Ginny's life and tried to kill him. Hermione loved Harry like a little brother, but her first friend tended to be so uneducated about the magical world it often led to trouble. Trouble she helped navigate him out of for a long time now. Flitwick at least seemed to take her seriously each time she brought up a concern. Unlike McGonagall he'd never brushed her off, which was good for keeping Harry alive. It was usually when professors brushed them off that they got in the worst trouble.
"I'm not sure if this object is cursed. I just, it was a very expensive present and it came unmarked."
"Present?"
They pressed the whole story from her like a book presses out a flower. When the professors heard a firebolt had been sent to the boy who'd already suffered three personally targeted broom attacks, they were unanimously alarmed. When she stated how emotionally tied to the gift he seemed already McGonagall rushed her off to the tower.
Flitwick and Sprout trotted along to keep up. Flitwick assured her, "Most objects, once the curses are removed are perfectly usable. The tests can be completed in two weeks."
Two weeks wait for not dying. This seemed a good trade off.
Oh but dynamics often didn't change. She should have anticipated Harry and Ron blaming her. That she hadn't, well she couldn't always predict their reactions. She was bound to be wrong sometimes.
Unsurprisingly it was Neville and the twins who stood a bit behind her. They seemed hesitant to leave her alone but also all of them hesitant to interrupt Harry mid-tirade. He'd been dangerously angry about Sirius Black and now the anger seemed to transfer to her, blowing the pent up energy he'd been storing and releasing it on the common room once McGonagall left with his broom.
Hermione tried to remind herself he was only 13, would be 13 till July. He seemed so young in this moment and part of her wanted to justify it as behavior accrued from a fairly poor life. She leaned into this like a school councilor would and that part of her wanted to let him rage so he could be better afterwards. However, another part of her recognized this wasn't how healthy relationships go. He'd at some point need to learn this in order to heal and make better relationships in the future.
Speaking of Neville and the twins not abandoning her like the rest of the house, she'd never seen any of those three ignite like Harry and Ron were now. Hermione thought herself a fairly resilient person, but she did recognize her own weaknesses. Harry was one of hers. Harry was still clutching the broomstick servicing kit she'd given him for his birthday, he'd been planning to use it that night. Now he looked angry enough to throw it at her. Apparently she wasn't the only one who thought this a possibility.
Eying the raised service kit, Fred stepped in front of her. Raising his own voice when it became obvious Harry was still going, "Oi that's enough now. McGonagall said you'd have it back."
Soon George stepped forward as well, creating an effective wall of tall gangly red heads towering over them all. George actively shooed the boys up the dormitory stairs. Only when they were gone did Fred mutter, "Blimey you'd think they forgot what happened to Ginny. Harry's not always this dense."
"He's been this way since Hogsmeade, I really didn't expect him to act like so..." She waved after them. Hermione thought the rising tension all year had simply been too much for them. Sirius Black hadn't broken it, hadn't made an outward attack or triggered the tension, but now Hermione herself had.