Out of Time
By Rurouni Star
"If you obey all of the rules, you miss all of the fun."
-Katherine Hepburn
Morning was a decidedly bad time to remember one's nighttime misdeeds.
Hermione was currently holding her head in her hands and wondering if she'd been hit with a Confundus charm at some point during her and Sirius Black's conversation, convincing her that he was somehow innocent. Because honestly – Ron's rat?
She groaned unhappily and got out of bed, slipping reluctantly into her robes and going downstairs into the common room.
Harry was already up and staring at her. "Hermione," he said, "Why aren't you in your casual clothes?"
She blinked.
Ron bumped into her from behind. "Oh- hey, Hermione, why're you all dressed up? Hogsmeade doesn't mind if you take a day off, you know…" he trailed off uncertainly at her expression, partially shocked, partially anticipating some kind of anvil to fall.
"Um – Hermione? Hello?" He waved a hand in front of her face. "Look, are you feeling all right, because I'll pick some stuff up for you if you want to stay…"
She looked at Harry once… and nodded. "Yes. Yes, I think I'll stay. I- I still have homework to finish."
A yowl behind her made her jump – and a ginger ball of fur went streaking past her, following another desperate blur with all its might. Hermione managed to catch the cat just in time as Scabbers clawed his way up Ron's pants and into his pocket to curl up into a quivering ball of fright.
"Get that thing away from my rat!" Ron told her angrily. "What does it think it's doing, anyway, it's not fair to pick on disadvantaged animals-"
Hermione didn't manage a reply. She only stared at the rat in Ron's pocket, a hissing Crookshanks following her gaze. She blinked again. Rat. Scabbers. Pettigrew. Oh god, I'm starting to go mad again.
She shook her head, let Crookshanks down, and hurried away, unknowing of the two suddenly concerned gazes that focused on her back.
-----
"Which way was it… oh yes, this way, I think…"
"Hermione?"
Not again. Oh god, you would not be so cruel to me…
"Professor Lupin!" she said brightly. "Did you ever get that business with Snape done?"
He looked very tired, but he was smiling. "Yes, yes, it's all settled out. And did you eat your dinner all right?"
She blushed. "Um… some of it. I've still got a few days' worth to go, though, I think."
His face turned concerned, though, a moment later. "Why aren't you at Hogsmeade with the others? Or are you trying to find the pick up point?"
Hermione swallowed nervously. "Well – well actually-" Plausible. Something plausible. "-I was going to finish up my homework today. I mean Ron offered to buy me a few things, so I thought I might use my time better getting some loose ends tied up…"
Lupin gave her a strongly disapproving look. "Now Hermione, I'm as much for working hard as everyone else, but I'm sure you've been wanting to go to Hogsmeade just like the other students. As your teacher I think I'm required to admire you, but as a person, I must insist that you march straight back up to get to Hogsmeade with everyone else."
She blinked.
"What?"
"You heard me," he told her in a stern voice. "Go on. I'm requiring it – as a learning experience. I'm expecting to hear a full report on how many awful things you bought in Zonko's."
Oh.
Any other time, she might've giggled at the way he'd tried to make her have fun. Right now, all she wanted to do was disappear into the wall.
"I- I really appreciate it, Professor Lupin, but I've got a lot to do, and so much has come up…"
She tried to look suitably disappointed (not hard) and he sighed once before apparently giving in. "You're going to work yourself much too hard," he told her quietly. "I know, I did it to myself in my fourth year."
Hermione shot him a shaky smile. "Yes, well, I'll just have to do my best. I'm sure I'll get through it somehow."
She moved past him with a friendly look (well, she certainly hoped it was) and into the hall beyond. At first, she was worried he might have followed her, but then she heard Harry's voice from behind her, and she knew Lupin would be taking him into his office to look at the Grindylow-
But how do I know that?
Hermione bit her lip – hard – then hoped it was a very good guess. She hoped harder than she'd ever hoped before.
She slipped inside the wall again, wondering if Black would still be there. She'd just given him the opportune moment to escape…
But what if he doesn't want to escape? What if he's a dark wizard but he's using me to keep him safe and fed-
For some reason, this explanation didn't seem valid. She didn't know why. Her mind had just rejected it outright and spit it out.
"Sirius!"
A happy voice, that one, and it sounded slightly like Harry, even. She shook her head. At least the voices were quieting down. They'd really been going the whole time during her first few conversations with Black, but now they were seeming to become manageable again. Hermione had, quite healthily, she thought, decided to ignore them. They weren't real, and eventually the voices would realize it too, and disappear.
A muffled sound came from the couch, and she immediately knew this time that it was her strange criminal… friend? Perhaps that was a bit much. Acquaintance, maybe.
Hermione moved closer to the couch.
He was thrashing now, moaning, as though his soul were being wrenched slowly and painfully from him…
But Hermione was frozen stiff by his transformation, overnight as it was.
Clean-shaven – clean period – with new robes (even if they did look like extra Gryffindor robes, enlarged) and soft black hair falling into his tormented face. There were still shadows beneath his eyes, and there were hollows in his face that would take weeks to fill. But…
He almost looked the part of innocent, now.
"James…" he gasped hoarsely. "No, I didn't- believe me-"
Hermione's eyes widened and she swore as a vision came to her like something in a pond…
Cold. Cold and dark, there was hunger all around, and they loved to brush you with their robes as you walked by, but they couldn't hurt her as much because she'd practiced and she knew-
"James. James, listen, please listen, it wasn't me-" The pleading voice of the damned man.
It wasn't her memory. But it felt like it, almost like it, so much that she could remember the biting winds, the darkness from the place, the need, the suffocating need to get out-
Hermione threw herself against the memory with every bit of might she had, displacing it with a hiss of pain.
It wasn't hers. It wasn't hers.
But-
He was still having a nightmare. She should wake him up.
Hermione reached her hand out, down, to shake him.
A desperate cry escaped him – it hurt her almost as though it were a knife, cutting deep into her heart. Somehow, she knew what it held in it. Pain, the deepest, darkest pain that any living being could experience, the kind that made you want to die-
"Mr. Bla- Sirius," she corrected herself in a quiet voice. "You're not there anymore. You're at Hogwarts, remember?"
He was shivering, gasping for air, and she felt pity inside of her because she suddenly knew, very acutely, that this man did not deserve these memories. In the same way she didn't want her own mockeries of life, the visions that had so suddenly decided to plague her.
And then he looked up at her and his eyes flashed, just for a moment, taking her in – his manner immediately changed to that of the man she'd talked to the night before. The seemingly carefree adult that could bicker with her almost on her own level. But it was too late – she'd seen him hide the truth, and it wasn't something she would easily forget just because he tried to make her more comfortable.
"Ah. Hermione," he acknowledged, as though she hadn't just woken him from his personal hell. "Did I manage a decent job, or do I still look like a stray dog?" The corners of his lips twitched.
She frowned but said nothing about the unspoken things. "I don't know," she told him lightly. "You look half decent, I suppose. As Madam Pomfrey would say, though, you need some meat on your bones."
He ran his hand through his hair – he seemed to do that when he was nervous, or covering up. "Yes, I'm sure she would say that. Thank you for the food, by the way," he added, almost on instinct. "I've found myself hungry at the oddest times…"
Hermione smiled in spite of herself, feeling a little glow light inside of her at the thought that she might be needed. "Yes, well… I supposed that might be the case. I'm almost glad the elves thrust it all on me…"
He chuckled. "They still do that, do they?" He then sobered for a moment. "I suppose I ought to tell you, if you end up going in there again… I don't want you getting into trouble on my account-" She snorted. Nice way of going about it, Black, having me set you up, get you food, come visit you like this- "Well I don't," he said quietly. "But there's another way into the kitchen. You know the painting of the fruit, with the pear in the middle? Tickle the pear and it'll let you in."
Hermione filed away this highly useful piece of information, even though she was almost certain Fred and George could have told her the same.
"Now then," Black said. "I think there's a few important rules we need to set-" Again, she had a few ironic thoughts about this, "-first off, you can't tell anyone about this. Not a single soul, no matter how much you trust them."
She nodded. She'd expected that.
"Also, and most importantly, you can't treat 'Scabbers' any differently. If he even suspects you know…" His face turned grim. "Well, let's just say you wouldn't notice until you were dead in your bed."
"Poor Ron," she muttered, though she still couldn't quite bring herself to believe the rat story.
"I'm serious," he said suddenly. "Don't do anything out of the ordinary. I can't do anything for you unless I'm with you. I'm sure you'd be ecstatic to know I'd avenge your death and all, but I was going to kill him anyway."
Hermione sighed. "I'm not stupid. I know you must have the most amazing opinions on thirteen year olds and their infantile minds, but I've already spent my first two years at Hogwarts getting tangled up in consecutive plots of Lord Voldemort's to kill Harry. I didn't die then, and I severely doubt that if the Dark Lord didn't manage it that a rat will."
That was exaggerating a bit, but it was worth the look on his face.
"I – what?" he managed.
"Another time," she told him. "Anyway, I don't know how often I'm going to be able to come down here. Already, I've met up with Professor Lupin twice-" Black twitched a bit at his name. "-and if it happens again, he's going to start suspecting I haven't actually gotten lost on my way to the library."
The man thought about this heavily for a moment – then nodded to himself.
"Hermione, I think I know a way to keep you from having to come down so much. And it would let me get to the kitchens on my own and investigate without being pounced on."
She raised her eyebrows. "That's quite some plan. What's it involve?"
He drew his teeth over his much-abused bottom lip. "Well… it would actually involve you stealing James' invisibility cloak."
The convict didn't have to wait too long to see the expected reaction.
"WHAT?" she screeched. "No! Of course not! Not only- well, I shouldn't because I shouldn't be trusting you that much yet-" He grinned at her as, obviously, this was not a true reason at this point, "-and he's very proud of it, it's one of his only things of his father's-"
Sirius' smile faded at that. "Yes, I should've expected that…" He put a hand to his forehead, rubbing circles in it. "I suppose… well. I suppose I could do something about that, actually."
This surprised Hermione so much that she stopped talking.
"I have a few things in my vault. Not nearly as valuable, but things he and I shared when I lived with him, during the summers…" His face went studiously calm. "If I could somehow get access…"
Hermione shook her head. "That's an enormous risk and you know it. The goblins may not care too much who their customers are, but if anyone happened to overhear…"
"Yes, well, I'll see what I can do about it. In the meantime, there's something else that would help a great deal if I could get it back."
"A map," she said, scrutinizing his face carefully. "You said so last night. What, does it lead to buried treasure or something-"
"You're thinking like a muggle," he told her. "It's magical, of course. Shows the school, who's where, what they're doing, and it has a few good passages out marked on it."
Hermione shook her head. "I've never heard of a map like that. It would've taken years and a great deal of magical power to make-"
"We made it," he emphasized. "All four of us. I'm going to have to find it at some point. This room isn't on the map, but if I have to leave, or if someone happens to see that you keep coming to a certain dead end and just disappearing…"
Frankly, she had her doubts. But she told him she would watch for it.
"If anyone knows how to work it, the keywords are sort of hard to miss," he told her – then demonstrated each on a spare bit of parchment.
She did have to admit… 'I solemnly swear I am up to no good,' was not something someone usually said in everyday conversation.At the point where he finished telling her about the wonderful niceties of Hogwarts and diverged into a tangent about getting lost in the stairs one year, she smiled.
"I have a few rules too," she informed him, "while we're at it."
His mouth fell open in surprise. Obviously, he'd not been expecting her to retaliate in kind, being a young girl…
"Firstly, you're not leaving this room unless it's something important. Secondly, no more scaring Harry witless – he thinks you're the Grim, by the way – and thirdly, no dark magic. Which, I know, not much of a problem, but it's there if I need it." She grinned. "Seeing as you have no wand, it really shouldn't be a problem."
Sirius contemplated this a few seconds before pulling out a long, sturdy oak wand. "I should think this counts as a wand," he told her.
She decided she really didn't want to know where he'd gotten it.
"Now then," he told her with a wink. "Why don't we see about getting you to Hogsmeade before you lose your whole day there?"
Hermione blinked at him, having completely forgotten the day. "What- how did you find out?"
"Halloween's always a Hogsmeade day," he told her. "And while I'm very much flattered you'd rather make top secret plans with me about killing rats, I'm betting you need a day off from all that homework."
Before, she hadn't quite trusted him. Hadn't even always liked him. But that cinched it for her.
Sirius Black was now a very good friend.
-----
She thought she could hear voices around the corner, but it might have been her imagination. Because now that she could see, the Humpbacked Witch was clear in all directions.
Hermione wondered where all of her new daring rule breaking spirit had come from. She certainly hadn't possessed it before…
Before what?
Before I started becoming someone else. Before I had someone else's memories of talking about invisible dungbombs to distract my teacher from my friend's communicating in a fire…
She shook it off. She had to forget these things. They were really, really beginning to scare her.
Hermione interrupted her own thoughts to tap the statue and murmur "Dissendium." If it really worked… he might be pulling her leg, for fun…
It opened, grinding out of the way rather more loudly than she would have liked. She bit her lip before looking both ways and diving in.
It was something of a slide – down into darkness, until she hit a plateau and had her feet on the ground. Ground?
Ground was not this soft.
"Owww…" moaned a voice – a very familiar voice – beneath her. "Fred, I told you before-"
"What are you talking about, George," said a slightly annoyed voice from up ahead.
Hermione panicked. George let out a surprised 'oomph!' as she hopped over him and tried to run for it. A hand caught her ankle, though, and her chin hit the ground hard.
She hissed in pain before George – she was assuming it was George – had the gall to sit on her. His weight settled on her chest and she gasped for breath before kicking vainly at him, trying to dislodge him.
"Oi, Fred, we've got a live one!" he said with a laugh.
"Oh?"
She struggled valiantly, but in the end, the two pranksters managed to hold her down, one taking her shoulders and the other her legs. "Lumos," one muttered.
Hermione cringed and then decided that now she wanted the ground to swallow her up.
"Hermione?" they both said at once, almost sounding impressed.
George got up immediately, offering her his hand. "Well now. Well now. That's certainly something else. Watch us go in, did you?"
"Watch you – what?" she managed. Her head was throbbing again. Jerks.
Fred and George exchanged glances in the pale, flickering light of Fred's wand. Hermione had a feeling they were communicating, even if they weren't speaking out loud. She frowned.
"If you're wondering how I got down here," she told them, "I was going to go to Hogsmeade myself. I was late to the pickup, so I decided to come this way."
George shifted uneasily. "You seem rather knowledgeable about secret passageways," he told her. She saw Fred fumbling with something in his pocket, though, as his twin tried to distract her.
"Mischief managed." The words were quiet but unmistakable.
How very, very coincidental.
"Yes, well, I discovered this one quite by accident one day," she spouted airily. "Practicing my Latin, you know."
The parchment went back into his pocket and the two relaxed quite a bit more. "Well then," George told her. "If you're going to come along anyway…"
She stiffened in surprise as each twin grabbed an arm, pulling her along with them cheerily. "Never seen Honeydukes' before, I would imagine," Fred said happily. "Their chocolate's the best."
"The Three Broomsticks has some good butterbeer – you won't have had that, unfortunately-" chimed in George.
"And Zonko's. Amazing place, really. First class merchandise."
Hermione dug her feet in stubbornly at this (even though she was quite outmanned and ending up being dragged anyway). "I thought you two said their stuff wasn't near as good as yours," she said suspiciously.
They laughed together, and she felt it vibrate through her, setting her teeth on edge.
"Truly, it's not," George managed.
"We've come up with better stuff, of course, but then, we're very good," added Fred.
They came up short of the end of the strange tunnel, and heaved as one, pushing their hands upward into the ceiling with practiced ease. Hermione found herself pulled up after them unceremoniously, and she huffed in indignance. But what she saw next was hard to ignore.
Candy. Barrels and barrels of it, shelves full of it, boxes with logos she'd never seen before. Some of them even wiggled gently, as though something inside were trying to get out but was being completely unsuccessful.
Before she could take this all in, the twins had picked her up by the arms and made a hurried dash for the stairs. They opened the door tentatively, then grinned at each other as a loud and quite obvious Lee Jordan asked for help in an aisle. Hermione thought she would faint by the time they got into the shop, becoming for the moment, very regular customers.
She glared at the two Weasleys for the moment, but they didn't notice – and by the time they had actually turned around to regard her, her face of anger had collapsed into an adrenaline-high giggling fit.
"Good lord!" she said. "That's how you kept getting in here without going by carriage."
"Fun, isn't it?" George asked with a grin. "It keeps us sharp for the real stuff." He looked around for a moment, then cleared his throat and leaned in toward her. "You can't tell anyone, of course."
Hermione thought about this for a moment, long and hard. Fred and George both gripped their wands tightly at her face, but there was more behind this than they knew. Normally, she would be dreadfully worried that Sirius Black was using this tunnel… but she had, after all, been the one to help him. What a quandary.
"Pleeease, Hermione," wheedled Fred. "It's important!"
She sighed. "I… I suppose. But you two need to keep an eye on this place, you don't know who could be getting through," she said, with a significant look toward the wanted poster outside the store.
"Wonderful!" George breathed. "Promise, really, Hermione, you're the absolute best!"
"We'll get you a toilet seat yet, just watch," Fred told her with a relieved smile.
-----
After a very strange but very fun day with Fred and George (they were wonderful when they weren't pranking you) Hermione found herself trying to figure out a way to very delicately get hold of the Marauder's Map. It just wouldn't do to ask them. Oh, she could imagine it:
"Fred, George? I'm helping Sirius Black hide in the castle so he can kill Scabbers. Could you possibly lend me that magical map he told me about so I can keep him from getting caught?"
"Oh, certainly, Hermione. Just as long as you return it by next school year."
Actually, come to think of it, they might say that. But she wasn't taking chances.
It just so happened that she'd been studying ahead the summer before school – just a little bit of fourth year material, to keep her sharp. One of the charms she'd looked at was the Summoning charm. She'd never been able to try it, of course, but she'd managed to understand the basic theory… and she'd bought some extra parchment in Dervish and Banges, just for this reason…
Hermione slid into the loose floorstone with Fred and George, and thought, unhappily, that there really was no time like the present.
She stayed a good distance behind them as they walked side by side, talking animatedly about the certain items they'd acquired in Zonko's – things that would be put to good use, she was certain.
She really, really didn't want to do this. They were nice. And they were Ron's brothers. And…
Ron. Rat. Pettigrew.
This would be her chance to find out, once and for all. And if it was true, then he was dangerous.
Hermione narrowed her eyes, concentrating on the piece of parchment sticking out of Fred's pocket. She summoned up her strength courageously, hoping she could somehow manage more than the twitter of paper she was undoubtedly going to get.
Finally-
"Accio Marauder's Map," she whispered with trepidation.
The paper twitched feebly, but did little else. She moaned, casting her eyes ahead to make sure she had time. No sign of the exit yet…
"Accio Marauder's Map," she repeated, a little more firmly this time.
It tugged, just a little, and her heart leapt into her throat. Yes.
And then-
"Summoning charms, Harry, you point like this and say-"
"Accio," she gasped, not believing it, not wanting to-
But the map flew to her hand, and she stuffed it hurriedly into her bag.
And then, the paper she'd prepared…
"Pello," Hermione whispered shakingly, banishing it.
The parchment flew to Fred's pocket, and she tried not to cry in relief as the deed was done. The results would show in a few days, of course, and if they thought she'd had anything to do with it, no map in the world would save her from their wrath…
As soon as they'd cleared the exit, Hermione gave them each a nice big hug (feeling very, very sorry for what she'd just done) and went sprinting off to the common room.
Fred pulled the Marauder's Map from his pocket, tapping it with his wand. "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good," he whispered with a look at George, wishing they could've used it like usual to make sure they didn't get caught in the cellar. But with Hermione around…
George blinked. Then looked closer at the parchment.
Messrs. Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs
Purveyors of Aids to Magical Mischief Makers
Regret to inform you that the Marauder's Map has been closed indefinitely for repairs.
Fred gaped.
"Did you know it could do that?" he asked George.
George shook his head. "I didn't know it needed repairs. It's a map, for goodness' sake!"