E-mail: Spikesluv666@netscape.net

Title: Twins of Peace Book Three: Time Hopping (working title)

Spoilers: all four HP books, Buffy up to the end of season six, and my two fanfics Twins of Peace books one and two

Category: General, Supernatural, Action/Adventure, and Romance

Rating: PG-13

Disclaimer: Jesus people, if I owned this do you think I'd be bootlegging CD's 'cause I'm too cheep to pay the fifteen bucks?

Summary- Chapter Four: Hermione's just been knocked unconscious and the portal's been reopened. Where will she find herself? Obviously still in 'Mione's view. I have no idea why I decided to use her to narrate, oh well, it helped the writers block.

Authors Note: Did you hear the good news? JK Rowling says the fifth book will be ready to be sent to her publisher within a few weeks! ::screams:: Finally!! And Anne Rice has a new book out! Now all I need is a new Anita Blake book and life could be somewhere near perfect! This note is being written before the chapter, and right now I think this chapters going to be short…but don't quote me on that! Oh well, please R/R

Chapter Four: Trails and Tribulations

"Hermione?"

I think it was the tenth time someone had called my name, and it was getting quite vexatious. I didn't want to be pulled out of my sleep. It was comfortable, the bed was soft, the blankets were warm, and someone was asleep next to be. I could tell it was Adrian.

"Hermione wake up. I know you're conscious at least, your breathing just changed."

"Spike's right Hermione, up!" I became excited when I heard that. Madam Morela's (or Leandra, I remembered what Adrian had told us. I shrugged it off for the moment, deciding to thing about it later) voice was always easily recognizable. It held many dialects that were coated with a proper sounding voice. Hearing Morela's voice meant we were home. As quickly as my stiff body would allow I opened my eyes and turned around in the bed.

"Spike, are we…" I was about to ask if we were back at Hogwarts, but when my eyes swept through the familiar looking infirmary I knew the answer to that question. I looked at Adrian and smiled contently. We'd gotten home.

"Back at Hogwarts Mite." Spike said. He put a hand on my shoulder when I tried to get out of the bed to look around. I had to know that it was real. William squirmed in his other arm. "Not yet. Sorry."

When I looked at Morela hoping for support she just shook her head. "He's right. You'll have to stay in until I'm able to get some medicine into your system, make sure you didn't pick up anything nasty on your trip."

"I wasn't anywhere to—"

"New York subways Hermione. You forget, I was there." Spike grimaced at the memory. "And besides she means magical nasties, from the bloody portal."

I felt fine, but I didn't say that. It wouldn't have made a difference. "Where're the others?"

My inquiry was met with a bleak stare, as tension overflowed the room. One didn't have to be clairvoyant to notice; even I, proclaimer that all divination is cracked, felt choked and smothered. Spike and Morela looked at each other and down at Adrian who slept on.

"They're in Diagon Alley." Morela said quite casually. She turned to the nightstand and poured a potion from a vial into a goblet, and handed it to me. "Drink that please."

"All of them? Why are they all there?"

She looked flustered. "well…that is, th-they had… I'm not supposed to stress you. I'll be right back, Spike watch her please."

I turned to glare at Spike, who's face was passive and unemotional. I noticed he still wore the gold chain around his neck. "Spike, please?"

"You've been out for awhile, four days since you all got back. Sirius was in Azkaban for two of them, the third the prosecution presented their case, and today the defense presents theirs." He explained. "Things are looking pretty good all things goin'. I'm thinkin' he'll get off."

I gulped, and tried again to jump out of the bed. Spike pushed me back down again and forced the potion from the vial down my throat all in one swift motion. "Stay in bed Hermione. Leandra'll do what ever, and then we can go."

"What about Adrian, why isn't he there? He should be!"

"Same reason I'm not. We're watching over our girls. Buffy just woke up about an hour ago."

"You two were very close to the portal when it opened, so our spell hit you the hardest. Everyone else was just slightly petrified." Madam Morela stepped back into the room with her wand and her composure. She'd also changed from white nurse robes to baby blue ones. Her hair was now black, and her eyes blue. She looked like Leandra Wren Black now, not Madam Morela.

"Good luck. Don't be nervous." Spike addressed her seriously. "You'll do fine."

"Thank you Uncle William." She said, a slight teasing tone in her voice. "Hermione, take those two potions, the green and red, and wait an hour…in the bed I might add. Then you, Buffy and Adrian can come. Alright? They should be reading the verdicts a whiles after you arrive. Pray for the best won't you?"

"Are you going to give testimony?" I asked

"Naturally. I want that rat put away for everything he did, and that includes murdering Livia." She said with vehemence, and left the curtained area. 

I shrank back into the bed, suddenly feeling quite small in the face of the woman's anger and also nervous about the outcome of the trial. 'Important things always happened while people are unconscious or confined to bed' I thought, remembering how Ron had been unconscious while Harry and I had rescued Sirius in our third year. 'I could've given testimony, done something!'  I sighed as Spike handed me the greenish potion and watched as I downed it. It tasted horrible, but some of the cotton in my head started to clear up immediately. Madam Pomfrey used to say, 'the worse it tasted the more useful it was', and here it held true.

"Y'know," Spike finally mumbled after a few minutes of silence. "It's amazing how I always end up sitting with you Bits while you're hurt, but I've never done it this quietly. C'mon Hermione, what do you want t' talk about? We're gonna be here for the next hour."

"Er…" I stuttered, taken aback by his forwardness. We'd never actually talked before, as in had a conversation where insults weren't flowing beneath the surface. "How did we get back?"

"We didn't all come back at once, they just got us all into the portal at the same time and sealed off all of the exits into the future and past. Then they extracted us one by one, Pettigrew first, and the Whelp last. Red, Cordy, and Dumbledore did it." Spike said. "The Time Turner that started this mess was something Adhara had been toying with. She's yet to explain exactly why she put it into the hands of a sixteen year old boy, but that's Adhara for you. That chit has major issues."

I laughed slightly. "Spike she's a goddess, I think she's allowed as many problems as she wants. Not that I condone it, but I assume it comes with the territory. And why hasn't she taken the Strand back from you?"

"Don' know," He said with a shrug. "And personally, I'll be glad if she doesn't. I haven't used the shape changing power, and I don't want to, but for the first time in one hundred and twenty six years I can see my reflection."

"That must be nice." I said with rare sympathy for Spike. "I'd want to keep it too. Not being able to see myself, I can't imagine it…n-not that I'm vain in that manner, but-"

Spike smiled at my stuttering and flushing cheeks. "You're not that type, thank God."

"May I hold William please?" As the burning in my cheeks resided I held out my arms to the squirming baby. Here was someone else I'd missed, along with his twin. "How's Buffy?"

"Awake, very active. She wants out, don't blame her m'self. She has Damon right now, but he won't keep her contained for long. I'll have to go back and forcibly keep her in the bed."

When he grinned wickedly at the end of his comment I made a disgusted face. "That was unneeded and unwanted information."

"Oh c'mon, It's not like none of you have never walked in on us."

"Spike!"

"The look on your face is bloody hilarious. You looked like the Whelp after he walked in on us once." As he went on my thoughts turned to stakes and dust busters. Spike looked at my scowl and sobered a bit. "Sorry Ducks. Listen I'm gonna go make sure Buffy's doin' alright. Ginny Weasley brought you some clothes, they're under the bed. Get dressed and wake up my nephew there. When I come back we can go over to the court house.

I gave a heavy sigh. "You don't have to leave. It's just…you're incorrigible at times."

"So I've been told…yeah 'Mione, I know what incorrigible means." He said when I became slightly surprised. Ok, small note to self, though one might think it upon first glance, Spike is not stupid. I actually had known that he wasn't stupid, but for reasons I could not place I kept thinking of him as less than he really was. Something told me that that really needed to stop.

"I'm sorry." I blurted out, when he bent to take William from my arms.

"For what?"

"Thinking... never mind. I'll be ready soon."

Spike just laughed as he walked out of the curtained cubicle.

*~*

I felt small amount of guilt as I walked back into the court room, but not anything too overbearing. I'd only been away for one day after all, and dad had told me himself that I should go back to Hogwarts. So I'd gone, sat next Hermione all night, and felt Spike's eyes watching me with worry. Buffy also eyed me wearily, I saw it beneath her smile, but Buffy seemed to be eyeing everything with apprehension. It had a lot to do with were the portal had transported her first, that much was obvious. But when I listened in on her and Angel talking I heard that she was also worried about the outcome of the trial. Of course we all were. I could've sworn Piper and Harry had developed some sort of nervous twitch within the past four days.

Not to sound conceited, but I knew that I was having the worst of it all among us kids. Piling the stress of the trial, on top of the reoccurring nightmares makes for one very stressed Adrian. Dumbledore didn't want us attending classes until the verdict was in and Leandra had given us a clean bill of health. I, eager to avoid fellow students, spent all of time when I wasn't in the courtroom in the Forbidden Forest as a wolf. At nights I was with Hermione who, until two hours ago, was still sleeping off the effects of the spell used to bring us back through the portal. I was tired and bruised, Leandra discovered the latter the second day we were back. That was day she'd let me out of the wing. I went directly out to the forest and ran until my paws and flank were bloody. When I came back Leandra yelled at me for awhile then healed my huts and sent me to bed. Thus has been the cycle for the past four days. If anyone else other than Leandra found out that I was running myself stupid every night, I'd be dead. Luckily, Leandra was an adequate secret keeper.

My feet and hands were in pain as I walked into the courtroom, ignoring pawing reporters, and gripping Hermione fiercely. Before falling asleep with her, I'd been running. Leandra hadn't known; I'd tell her later. I felt Buffy's fingers on the small of my back guiding us to the wooden benches. Somehow I had stopped moving. Funny, I didn't notice. Hermione squeezed my hand as we sat down. Her sign of comfort. It helped, but not much. Especially when I saw my father. Dementors can work quickly. Even when they have only two days.

"You're bleeding." Hermione held my hand gently after she noticed that I winced after she'd squeezed it.

"It's nothing. I'll have Leandra look at it when we get back." I lied on both counts. The cuts on my ahnds were no where near nothing, and I wasn't going back to Leandra because I'd promised her that there would be no more midnight death runs. Though as Spike said it's almost impossible to hide anything from our girlfriends, and when we stood as the judge entered the room I staggered. Hermione shot me a suspicious glance. She'd find out.

After we'd stood up and sat back down for the Honorable Judge Moore, Peter Pettigrew was led into the room by three aurors and one unspeakable who walked behind. He was, like dad, chained from head to foot. He looked clean, but his faced showed the effects of the dementors. Peter hadn't had the choice of escape from the dementiors clutches. The ministry had  cast a spell on him inhibiting his animagus powers, so he'd taken the full brunt of Azkaban. There was a cheery thought.

"We rejoin from recess to hear the verdict for case number four fifty three, The Retrial of Sirius Black, and case four fifty four, Peter Pettigrew vs. the state. Jury, if you will."

Hermione didn't grab my hand this time, but a fistful of her own robes, and her pulse, along with every other persons in our row, rocketed. I stroked her hair with the hand that wasn't bleeding profusely. Down the row Harry nervously swung his legs back and forth as Dawn just looked ahead expectantly (yes, she was here as well. I believe her absentee card for school had been marked 'death in the family'). Piper had her 'brave little solider' face on, but I knew her well. If anything went wrong she'd brake down right there on Draco's shoulder.

A nondescript woman from the jury stood. She held a peace of yellowed parchment in her hand decided our future. "Based on the evidence heard at this trial, we the jury have come to these decisions. Sirius Black is cleared of all charges placed before him now and in 1981, except for the fact that he is an illegal animagus. All possessions possessed by the ministry at the time of his previous arrest are to be returned to him immediately, and he has a full ministry pardon."

I think that the only way to describe exactly what happened next would be the word pandemonium. Piper's scream was the loudest; she always has to be heard. I didn't immediately say anything, but I grabbed Hermione into a fierce hug. We stayed that way for quite awhile even after I regained use of my vocal chords. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Leandra and Remus making out like teenagers, Harry was jumping up and down with Dawn. Candra gave Piper, Harry, and I a genuine smile before turning back to Oz. I'm not even going to describe what they were doing, a, because it's just wrong, and b, because I figure we all deserved to celebrate. When we tried to leave the row, we were stopped. It was then that we realized the jury wasn't quite finished.

Judge Moore banged her mallet until everything was pin-drop quiet. Then the jury continued.

"Pertaining to Peter Pettigrew, we find him guilty of fourteen counts of murder, the thirteen Muggles in 1981 and Livia Black in 1980. We also find him guilty of undergoing illegal animagus transfiguration, and conspiring with He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. His lawyer would like to motion and appeal to the last charge. The suggested sentence is life in Azkaban with all animagus powers introverted."

"Motion denied, sentence passed." The judge said with little effort.