The early summer sun rose over eastern mountains and Hermione thought the rock she'd chosen must be the most comfortable in the world. Next to her the lake shimmered with magical energy, waves of it lapping the shore as the squid moved about, disrupting the otherwise quiet and still surface. The parcels sitting beside her temporarily forgotten as she stretched out in the sun. She'd have to go see Sirius soon, but just then she couldn't be bothered to move. When the squid floated closer to wave and brush her bare toes with a tentacle she laughed at the feeling and gave it a pat. The suckers grazed over her and the rotating hooks tickled before it pulled back and it's arms undulated, floating it away again. The waves of shimmering magical energy spreading in its wake. The one parcel for her friend dug into her side and Hermione remembered why she'd hauled the heavy thing out here.
"Winno do you have a moment?" She softly called.
When a pop appeared next to her she recognized its sound immediately. Some Elves have a harsh crack, some have a cantankerous creaking, some pop like excited kernels of corn over heat, and her friend popped like rocks clinking together.
"Oh Missy Mio this is pretty isn't it? Very pretty. You didn't sleep through the entire sunrise did you? I love it."
Hermione smiled. Her friend was clearly chipper. Knowing something delighted the other woman, so much so the Elf still bubbled even after a long night of work, well there were only a few guesses at why and most of them revolved around salacious gossip. Her friend prided herself in knowing the best news.
Hermione's smile invited whatever it was to spill, "How's your morning going?"
"Oh you won't believe what the teachers were doing last night. Week before exams and three crates of firewhiskey."
"That's a lot."
"T'was," The tiny woman hopped and glided where she stood. This was one of her days off and Winno loved her free time.
Hermione relented, "Alright, alright what happened?"
"Madam Sprout was dancing in a short dress and kissed Madam Vector."
Hermione's eyes went wide.
"Madam Trelawney predicted a "good night" and "happy ending" and Mister Snape laughed so abruptly firewhiskey came out of his nose."
The retelling came with many gestures while Winno stood atop Hermione's lovely rock like a performer in the continental shows. Her fellow was so happy, Hermione couldn't stop the ear splitting grin. She grinned at her friend who grinned back just as big.
"And you were watching because you had to protect the books."
"Of course!" Winno exclaimed.
Hermione giggled. If there was one thing sacred between them it was books. Winno promised to someday teach her Elvish so she could read some "proper history" as it should have always been recorded.
Winno, unlike Hermione, was fastidious in her ancient history knowledge and could spout spoken lore and legends like Hermione could spout the jokes from Much Ado About Nothing. Shakespeare was great if you read the right stories, his being a fanfiction writer and the questions of his legitimacy aside, those pointed and witty remarks were so relevant in the oft backwards wizarding world. Despite how muggle they were. It was an irony Hermione privately enjoyed. While she liked a good reference like Hogwarts a History, she'd never taken much to the subject itself. The ghost haunting their history classroom took all the meat and juice out of it. Besides, she was now well aware of how blatantly exaggerated some accounts proved to be and their library only held so many primary sources.
Apparently much of the local history older than a century, in the United Kingdom at least, was kept guarded in family libraries. Which is why the two of them had their sights set on the bigger libraries around the world. Winno and she had plans to someday visit the Tokyo Institute, Alexandria, and the Mesoamerican Archives. Those three alone were said to have enough magical texts to reach from earth to the moon. Some of it incredibly old and in pristine condition. Hermione often wondered if muggles had access to rooms laced with preservation runes what they'd be able to keep. Would worldwide advancement have happened sooner if the major nations all would have been able to keep copies of the best studies and designs? Hermione suspected it would. It's half the reason her dad raved so much about the internet. He said it was a game changer. Her thoughts devolved into what it'd take to create a magical internet... No she wouldn't think about this now. Hermione let the idea drift aside in favor of listening to Winno retell one of the Elves old water tales. This over the rise of grindylows and their deal with merpeople. Hermione's shoes tossed aside and her toes drifted in the water as she listened.
Winno spent the morning with her. Hermione foisted many treats her way and ended up showing the wandless creature tracking charm Flitwick had just taught her. Winno was suitably impressed and promised, in trade, to bring a spell which could work to remove even the nastiest portraits and paint graffiti.
At this declaration Hermione questioned, "Does Hogwarts get a lot of graffiti?"
"You's wouldn't believe!" The Elf's English slipped in her excitement. "The Hufflepuffs for 15 years have been painting the portraits in the basement to debase the Ravenclaws and the Cuddly Cannons."
"They're called the Chudley Cannons," Her knowledge from Ron finally coming to use. Harry would be proud, she was sure.
"We know!"
The exclamation knocked her over. Hermione scrambled, clutched her parcels to her sides after the tiny Elf nearly nocked them into the lake with an explosion of happy energy. Winno giggled and tugged an ear bashfully.
She eyed what Hermione held, "What's the two boxes?"
Hermione grabbed the smallest and held it out. "One is for you. No contract voiding clothes I promise."
Winno's ears wiggled in anticipation then she snatched the large and heavy box up. It did look so much larger in her tiny hands. The lid flew itself off and folded itself next to them. The Elf peered inside.
Hermione explained, "It's an old record player. I tested it with Flitwick and he only had to make a slight alteration so it could run in Hogwarts without electricity. There's three records in there. Oomph," With the air nocked from her and elf arms clinging to her neck Hermione toppled into the water. Only a last minute toss ensured the other parcel was flung far enough away. They hit the cold lake and Hermione felt herself slide across slick rocks before she could get her legs under her and drag them both up for air.
Winno still clung tight and murmured, "Thank you, thank you. Here let me dry you off and your hair, now I've done it. Now I must fix it. What once was huge is now swampy."
Hermione gave a derisive snort at the commentary only to be proven wrong when Winno's hand untangled a slimy stick from the thick and now utterly tangled curls. Thus she clamped her mouth shut and let the Elf help.
It was afternoon by the time Winno had dried them off and insisted on braiding Hermione's now dry but tousled hair. Hermione seeing the position in the sky, cast a quick tempus and muttered out a Lewis, "Late, I'm late... You only have to hint a whisper to Time and round goes the clock."
This year she really felt for Alice and what a trip down the rabbit hole must have been like. Not to mention nobody believed the girl anything but insane. Their poor society was so quick to judge and forget. How many times had she seen this leave someone broken behind? Maybe this is why Alice left the mad hatter despite how much he wanted her to stay, how much a little socialization might have helped him, because Alice simply didn't know any other way to be.
Hermione stood and doing so lifted Winno who still held onto the last bit of her new braids. Rushing through her excuse, "Winno I have to take this parcel to Hogsmeade."
She'd successfully avoided most of the Hogsmeade weekend crowd, those students who'd gone to Hogsmeade to alleviate the stress of upcoming exams, but perhaps too successfully. They'd be returning soon. While Hermione could use the time turner to fix this, to be frank, she was sick of the thing. Hermione's fingers now featured hard calluses from turning its little gold dials thousands of times. Hermione recognized she was a bit resentful. She hadn't quite realized beforehand how seriously the time turner would altered her life. No small amount upset with herself for not fully comprehending the consequences from the start. She had summed her hours just that morning and realized with a great watery huff that she'd soon be turning 17. By the end of exams she'd be giving the time turner back, but the damage was already done. Hermione would be 17 in early July. Her new birthday. The day Hagrid and Winno both said they had to work, then she found out Flitwick would be away negotiating with some Egyptian Goblins on the Scottish Goblins' behalf. So yes, she was emotional and irrationally upset with the device which allowed Hermione to place herself in such a lonely situation. She hadn't taken the time turner out once since this shattering little revelation. Using the Honeydukes passage would take time, but it'd solve her current problem just as well. She only needed to hurry.
At hearing Hermione needed to give the other box to someone in Hogsmeade, but avoid the students on the way as an earlier version of Hermione was with those arriving at 15:10, the tiny woman stated, "I'm not supposed to do this but you won't tell. Will you?"
"Tell what?" Hermione was confused. She needed to get to the passage.
Winno the Elf looked around then grabbed Hermione's hand, reached for the extra parcel, and with a snap of her small dexterous fingers she popped all of them away. Popped them into a copse of trees just outside the village. Hermione landed into a bit of shrubbery. She couldn't see the Elf for all the leaves in her face, but she could hear her squeaking out in surprised giggles. Hermione brushed them aside. This was the first time she'd ever found herself in the middle of a bush. The thing probably damaged from her body breaking through its main stems. She got a peak of the elf.
"Oh the wards do have some effect on the location calculation." Winno nodded to herself clearly reformulating something in her head. She spoke to herself in Elvish before finishing whatever sentiment had been confirmed in English, "Good to know."
Hermione's head popped up out of the leaves to give the tiny woman an incredulous look. At seeing her head the Elf squeaked again and bounded over.
"You are so cute!" She exclaimed. The words at once degrading yet somehow entirely earnest.
With one last wrenching hug the elf popped away, leaving Hermione and her parcel alone in the shrubbery.
The witch grumbled, "Very cute. So cute," As she extracted herself. Freeing a leg, then one last tug to free her robes, thinking her friend was laughing at her state just then. Hermione eyed the poor, dirt smeared, and dented parcel. While it'd once looked quite nice, it had been tossed, then nearly sat on or perhaps stepped on, and was probably in just as sorry a state as the woman carrying it.
She gingerly stepped out of the last bush and seeing a horde of students in the main street snuck around back, angling between shops and a row of townhouses. The sort of alley muggle children would race their bicycles through. Just then Hermione imagined what Flitwick, Winno, and Hagrid would think of bicycles. Oh yes, she must facilitate that spectacle, the image was too good she must plan to show them how to ride bicycles. She'd have to bring a Wizarding camera to capture their responses. Hagrid alone might need a steel fortified monster of a bike. Or a Featherlight charm placed on his robes.
As always she checked to make sure no one was following, she erased her footprints and cast a shadow charm, blending her into the tree filled western slope.
However, as she later amended, she should have cast a homenum revelio. She'd never before visited Sirius during an actual Hogsmeade weekend and she should have accounted for others being around. To see her, even if she couldn't see them. The things she learned when things went sideways.
She'd only just entered the cave and the man's eyes were sharp and easily focusing on her. Hermione immediately catalogued this as being one of his "good" days. He stepped forward to greet her, leaving the muggle book on the futon. She'd transfigured it for him, her eidetic memory working again, and since she'd done it the first time he'd asked for three more novels. Reading about other people's adventures seemed to do him good. Give him friends even if he wasn't physically there with them. He apparently loved the biography on Winston Churchill. He read through tomes nearly as fast as she did, Hermione soon discovered, and she'd taken to leaving him a pile at the end of each visit.
"You're not done yet?"
"It's my third read through."
Hermione shifted to glance at the title when she heard voices. Still far off but scarily clear.
"Oi, she went this way."
"What you think she's doing all the way up here?"
"If I knew that we wouldn't be follow'n her now would we?"
"Pretty little thing isn't she? Really filled out this year."
"She's a third year."
"And I'm still in school for a week. You can't tell me you wouldn't get your dick wet in that."
Hermione's mind already racing, making and discarding options, had just decided on what would be necessary to reduce the cost of losses and risks.
Sirius' hard face didn't pay her any mind as his wand was already trained on the entrance. A silent snarl smeared across his face. Hermione's wand shot back to the cave. She first vanished the books then the camping futon, the blankets, the food, the ash, and burned firewood. Next her wand swooshed and the air freshening charm swept across the whole place.
Her other hand unbuttoned her shirt. Her fingers went searching, scrambling in their haste to find the chain. There! She had it and yanked it out. Sirius side-eyed her, looking down as she stepped close, raised her arm and threw the time turner's chain over both of them.
"What are you doing?"
His breath brushed her face for how close she was to his chest. The height difference and width of his shoulders made it hard to get them both in the chain. It was uncomfortably tight on her neck.
"Trust me, " She insisted. Her fingers already worked to spin the hour dial once and then twice. She craned her head back to meet his eyes.
It's a good day, she remembers. His sharp eyes and his occasionally cruel slicing mind already cutting apart everything he's seeing.
His wand still raised towards the voices, his other hand grass her by the waist, fingers tightening in her shirt and nods. Then they're gone. Them, the parcel, and time turner all blip out of that present just before the curious 7th years round the caves' edge. The voices disappear. Head whipping around Hermione sees the second body of past Sirius sitting on his camping futon, head bent over that book. Sirius sees himself too, his eyes widening only fractionally. He doesn't resist as she carefully and quietly maneuvers them out the cave and around the bend.
Once they are clear, she jumps up to un-lasso him like the world's worst British cow herder.
He's looking down at her with so much amusement she wonders how many of her secrets he's just figured out.