A/N: Wow, thank you so much for your reviews, favorites and follows to the last chapter! As I said before, I really have no update schedule for this. Initially, I had planned for it to be a oneshot but then it just kept getting longer and longer. I don't know...maybe it will end up being 20-30k words. You can follow me over on tumblr (nauticalparamour) where I post sneak peeks, story updates and answer questions!
Please let me know what you thought of chapter two and be on the lookout for chapter three soon!
Hermione woke up late the next morning. Sitting up in her bed, she felt like she hadn't slept a wink, her mind still somewhere in the past where she'd talked to famous witches and wizards, like Morgana and Nimue and Godric bloody Gryffindor.
That had happened right? Rushing to get herself ready, Hermione stared at herself in the mirror and decided that she wasn't going crazy. It wasn't just some fantastical dream that she had concocted. She wasn't sure how it had happened, but she had gone through some kind of portal that took her to the time of the Founders.
It only made sense. All of the fighting had weakened the magical protections on the castle. It seemed perfectly plausible that she was able to access something previously inaccessible due to some lapse in warding. Right?
Once she was dressed for the day and determined that her hair didn't look completely crazy, Hermione ran down the stairs to meet the rest of her friends at breakfast. In a completely uncharacteristic move, Hermione was also late to breakfast.
Ron seemed to think it was odd enough to comment on. "What time did Pucey finally have to pry you away from the library, Mione?" Ron asked, between bites of porridge, when she finally slipped into the breakfast table.
She licked her lips nervously and looked around, not wanting to be overheard. While she was confident that she hadn't imagined it, she didn't know what everyone else would think. "I did stay up too late," she agreed. "But I think that something happened last night."
His face immediately went red. "Did Pucey do something to you? Because I swear to Godric that I'll-"
Hermione cut Ron off before he could finish his thought. "No, Pucey wasn't even there," she insisted, wondering why that was immediately where his mind had gone to. "I took a weird shortcut back to Gryffindor tower and I think that I might have...gone through some sort of time portal, okay? I met the Founders."
"What?" Ron asked, eyebrows drawn together in confusion, a fork suspended halfway between his plate and mouth.
"Well, I guess I didn't meet Rowena yet, but I was pulled into a party being thrown by Helga Hufflepuff," she continued, feeling a little bit manic now that she was explaining everything out loud. "I chatted with Godric and Salazar."
"Hermione, this all sounds ridiculous," he insisted, looking vexed with her. "You aren't on a first name basis with the Founders of Hogwarts!"
"Fine, don't believe me - I'll show you!" Hermione said, knowing that Ron wouldn't believe her until he witnessed it with his own eyes. She hoped that the portal trick would work again, because she had a lot more questions. "Stay with me in the library tonight and we will go together."
Ron got a look on his face that Hermione didn't quite know what to think of, but he was agreeing. "Alright, I think I can swing that," he said with a smirk.
Happy that she was going to get some confirmation, Hermione tucked into her breakfast before what was sure to be another full day of book restoration. Once she was finished, she led the group of Gryffindors back to the library to spend the day completing whatever tasks Pucey assigned to them.
Lavender had been quite keen to spend another day near to Ron and was quite peeved when Pucey instead shuffled her off to another part of the library to do some dusting. Ginny had gone with her without too much complaint after Ron insisted that he would remain with Hermione that day, just the two of them. Lavender had looked even more crestfallen when Ron had batted away her invitation to the Three Broomsticks again, saying that he instead had plans with Hermione after work was done.
Ron had been able to talk Pucey into letting him help her with the rare texts that day, but only after Hermione promised that she would keep a very close eye on him. As it was, Ron wasn't much in the way of helping. He mainly sat on one of the tables and watched while Hermione worked to preserve individual parchments.
"I don't know why you are bothering to restore anything that has to do with Salazar Slytherin," Ron griped, seeing that Hermione was beginning to save the bits of correspondence he had remaining. "If you ask me, we should get rid of everything he did - scrub him from history. After all, it was his ideas that caused this whole mess in the first place."
Hermione heard a snort come from the other side of the shelves, revealing that their conversation had an unwilling third participant.
"Well, it's a good thing that nobody asked you, Weasley," a very snide-sounding Pucey called out, obviously having overheard Ron's flippant comment.
Ron made a little face when the Slytherin interjected himself. "Of course you would want to keep everything he did, Pucey," Ron goaded him. "You probably hang on every blood supremist word, like the good little Slytherin you are."
"Don't be ridiculous, Weasley," Pucey answered, walking around the shelving so he could come face to face with them. He crossed his arms over his chest, which Hermione reckoned were probably a bit too impressive for a Ministry worker. "Salazar Slytherin is no more responsible for what You-Know-Who became than anyone. Of course, his views were not progressive and were rightly shunned both at the time and today, but he is still an important part of the school's history."
"You don't know what you are talking about, Pucey," Ron countered hotly.
Hermione rolled her eyes at Ron's ignorance. This was what he always did when he was in a losing argument. But, Ron could never admit that he was wrong.
"My mastery would disagree with you," Pucey quipped, rolling his brown eyes as well. "Are you going to be alright, Granger?" he asked, looking at her with concern.
Hermione blushed when he turned his attention to her. She hadn't expected Pucey to give her a second thought at all, outside of respecting her work as an academic. But, she supposed it was a bit touching that he would be concerned for her. She gave him a quick nod. "I'll lock up again before I go," she agreed.
"Just try to make it before midnight tonight," the older wizard added, before taking his leave of the library.
Hermione's cheeks only grew hotter when she realized that he must have made note of when she left the library, too. A small part of her had hoped that Pucey would be impressed with her work ethic, but realized now that he must just see her as some sort of try-hard.
Once they heard the massive doors echo closed, Ron hopped down off of the table. "Thank Merlin. I thought that he was never going to leave," he said, closing the distance between them.
Hermione took a step back wondering what Ron was playing at. Her back hit the shelving behind her just as he pressed himself against her, dipping his head down to catch her lips in a kiss. She pushed him back immediately.
"Ron, what the hell are you doing?" she demanded, pulling out of his embrace.
He pulled her back. "Come on, Hermione. I know you asking me to stay behind was just a ploy, so we can, you know, finally do it," he said. He tried to kiss her again, but she turned her head and he caught her jaw instead. "Does our first time being in the Library turn you on? I knew you must have been holding out on me for a reason."
"Ron, stop it!" she said, ducking out from under his arms. "Just think of the books. These are irreplaceable. Can you imagine if I damaged them? What would I tell Pucey?"
"How can you mention him at a time like this?" Ron hissed, upset at being rebuffed and hearing the other wizard's name. "Are we really not going to have sex tonight?"
"No!" Hermione answered, honestly perplexed as to where he would have gotten that idea from.
"Well then I'm leaving," he said, ready to walk away. "I can't believe I passed up another night at the Three Broomsticks for this."
"Come on, Ron. Don't you want to meet the Founders?" she pressed, wanting to know what would happen if she went back a second time. She had expected that he would be just as excited to go on another adventure with her, just like they had so many times before with Harry.
Ron didn't even dignify her with a response. Instead, he just left in a huff, leaving her alone among the books.
"The nerve of him!" Hermione muttered to herself under her breath, wondering just what had happened to the sweet Ron she knew before. Of course, he had his flaws, just as she did herself, but he'd become so pushy ever since the war ended and it was a complete turn off. She wasn't just going to jump in bed with him because everyone expected it to happen. She wanted romance and attraction building until it boiled over and they just couldn't possibly keep their hands off of one another!
Annoyed, Hermione returned to focusing on her work instead of Ron. She hadn't come back to Hogwarts for Ron, afterall. She was here to help repair the damage to the castle and that's exactly what she would do.
Really, maybe it was for the best if Ron didn't come with her to the time of the Founders. Afterall, she'd heard what he'd said about preserving Slytherin's correspondence. Imagine what he'd say to the wizard if he actually met him!
God, she could just imagine Ron doing something stupid like trying to kill Slytherin. And, while Ron's dueling skills were certainly nothing to sniff at, Hermione wasn't sure that he would like his chances to go after one of Hogwarts' Founders. All the Founders were incredibly powerful people, magically speaking.
Not to mention, Slytherin still seemed to have the support of his friends. Godric had been quite friendly with him.
And, while Slytherin's views on muggleborns were widely known, Hermione had no idea what level of veracity there was to those claims. History had a way of twisting things horribly around, so maybe he wasn't as bad as the textbooks made him out to be. Sure, he'd been a bit prickly when she'd spoken to him, but he didn't seem that awful either.
Then again, he had hidden a basilisk in the castle, so who knew, really.
Maybe she would ask him.
Hermione worked her way through a whole shelf of rare books and before she realized it, the massive clock was tolling the midnight once again. Biting her lower lip, Hermione waved her wand to return everything to its place for the evening, before skipping out of the library. Her heart was pounding away against her ribcage, as she made her way to the corridor from the night before.
Should I even be excited about this? she wondered. It might not even work. It could have been a hallucination after all.
Letting her feet guide her, Hermione continued down the empty halls, hoping that she would remember the unfamiliar route that she took the night before. When she turned the corner, she practically ran into a tall, spindly man, with a beard more impressive than even Dumbledore's.
"Are you on your way to Helga's?" she asked, cautiously, hoping that she was correct.
He nodded. "Yes, I am. Shall we walk together?" he asked, offering her his arm. "I go by the name Merlin."
Hermione couldn't help but smile at that. "Of course you do," she answered, excited to see what the night had in store for her.