Out of Time
By Rurouni Star
"Insanity -- a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world."
-R. D. Lang
Having the map was strangely satisfying. She had, of course, played with it (who wouldn't?) and made absolutely certain that the map did not show Sirius' hideout before timeturning back an hour. The secret passages were interesting – she hadn't known about the one behind the mirror, and she'd definitely have to ask what in the world the Whomping Willow was doing on top of a passage to the Shrieking Shack…
"-to transform-"
"What if you'd given the others the slip, and bitten somebody?"
"A thought that still haunts me…"
Hermione shuddered. Scratch that. She really didn't want to know.
But there was still one very, very important thing she had to do with this miraculous map. And it had quite a bit to do with Ron.
She sighed and walked up to the dormitory, wiping the map and tucking it into her pouch. How low had she fallen, helping a criminal, stealing a map – from the twins! – and now she was about to check and see if her friend's rat was an Animagus.
If this was a trick, someone was laughing very hard at her right now.
She spoke the password to the Fat Lady softly, and felt her eyes widen as she was immediately pounced upon by two boys.
"Hermione!"
"Where were you, we were worried!"
"Lupin said you were going to do homework, but we checked the library-"
"-and the common room, and the Great Hall-"
"-went to the Infirmary, just in case-"
Harry and Ron stopped short as she began to laugh. Not just to laugh, but to laugh, and laugh hysterically at something that shouldn't have been near so funny.
"Hermione…" Harry said, putting a hand on her shoulder. "Are you okay?"
She swallowed and nodded. "Oh, yes, yes, it's just- you two looked so funny-"
"Well I'm glad you thought so," snarled Ron. "Good lord, we thought you'd been kidnapped by Black or something, Harry was all ready to send out search parties…"
Hermione licked her lips and put her head down. "I'm sorry," she told them, "I was in an empty classroom, it was quieter in there…"
Tears pricked at the edges of her vision, though. I don't want to lie to them… why should I have to, I could just tell them, surely they'd understand…
She looked up then, to see Ron glowering at her and Harry looking somewhat unhappy to be stuck between them and she bit her tongue.
No. They wouldn't understand.
"I'm sorry," she offered feebly again. Then, on inspiration – "Hey Ron, where's Scabbers gone off to?"
The red-headed boy frowned. "What, so you can sic that beast of yours on him again – I don't think so!"
She stared at him, uncomprehendingly, for a moment. She was risking her life – more than that- to try and make sure they were safe…
Hermione shoved past him, putting her head down. This was not something fun and it wasn't a game. Some part of her knew that much too well – a part that was screaming sometimes, for Harry and Ron, for Dumbledore, for Sirius…
"Wait, Hermione, that was-"
She cut off Harry's voice by slamming the door to the dormitory shut. She then walked, quite calmly, to her bed – and collapsed into sobs.
She didn't need this. Not now.
-----
"Hermione? Hey, Hermione, are you okay?"
Parvati's voice barely penetrated the screen around her bed. Hermione woke up hazily, not quite sure where she was or why her face felt scratchy and inflamed.
"Hey, Harry said he and Ron were worried, you sort of disappeared up here-"
"I'm fine," Hermione clipped her off easily, though had her face been visible, it would have told a much different story. "They're just overreacting is all."
"Oh," said Parvati in obvious relief. "All right then."
The interruption to her nap had not been welcome, but it had reminded her of the needful.
Hermione reached down to her bag and pulled out the square of parchment. "I solemnly swear I am up to no good," she murmured, feeling oddly silly as she did so. Her wand tapped the paper…
And lines wove out from it, creating a now semi-familiar floor plan of the castle. Hermione quickly looked for the girls' dormitory – a dot named Hermione Granger was sitting on her bed. Parvati Patil's dot was quickly leaving and going down toward the common room…
Where Ron and Harry were sitting in their chairs.
With Peter Pettigrew.
Hermione swayed. There it was. Undeniable proof. If she wasn't insane.
Which was debatable, recently…
"Sweet girl… clever girl…"
"Don't touch me!"
Very debatable.
She hurried down the stairs, hiding the map in her robes and keeping her head down. As she emerged from her room, Harry leapt up to see her – but Ron stayed stubbornly put in his chair by the fire.
Harry nudged him none-too-gently, but the Weasley didn't budge."Hermione-"
"I'm going to go do some homework," she announced. "M-more of it."
And she passed him by quickly, shutting the Fat Lady behind her.
Hermione watched the dot labeled Harry Potter move toward Ron Weasley and Peter Pettigrew, and she felt a sudden wave of sickness clench her stomach. He was so close to his father's murderer, and he didn't even know it… and she couldn't tell him…
"HOW DARE YOU SPEAK TO HARRY?"
"You should have realized, if Voldemort didn't kill you, we would. Good-bye, Peter."
She managed to wipe the map before rushing into the girls' bathroom and throwing up violently into a toilet.
-----
When she limped into the room behind the wall, pale-faced, Black rose immediately to help her.
"What happened?" he asked, a note of panic in his voice. Because of course, he would think the worst, that Peter had attacked them…
"Nothing," she gasped. "Nothing, I'm just…"
As his hands closed on her shoulders, guiding her to the couch, she heard it still-
"…we will kill you. You agree, Harry?"
Hermione pushed and pushed and pushed, but the voices weren't going away now that she was in Black's presence. They seemed, in fact, to be getting stronger.
She pushed him away, a hand over her mouth, and groaned, pulling out her bookbag. Homework. Homework, like she'd said. It would clear her mind, it had to.
"What on earth happened to you?" he demanded.
"Nothing," she repeated. "I'm stressed."
That, she thought ironically, is a very mild way to put it.
She found the map folded in one of her books and shoved it at him. "Yours," she told him. "Take it."
And, as Sirius Black stared at her with wildly varying emotions crossing his face, she began to write down everything she'd ever known about Animagi.
Wizards that use magic to turn into an animal they have a particular affinity with… animals often resemble the wizard and their personality…
How could they have missed Pettigrew, then? she wondered with a headache.
You need to register to be a legal Animagi, because the process of becoming one is so dangerous…
And then, the ludicrous thought hit her and she couldn't help it. Black is an Animagus, Professor, does he count as one of my famous ones?
She sighed and let her head thud into her book.
If I survive this year, it will be a miracle.
Meanwhile, Black was watching her closely. "It seems that Harry and Ron are looking for you," he told her, darting his eyes between her figure and the map.
She nodded her understanding against her book, thudding her head into it again.
"They're probably worried."
Thud.
"Okay then. Just letting you know."
-----
Homework. Done. It had to be a miracle.
And yet, she desperately wished, for once in her life, that she had more of it. To keep her mind off of the day, to lose herself in it and stop hearing those blasted voices. Black didn't seem to have caught on yet, blessedly. If he'd called her insane, she wasn't sure she'd be able to keep herself from throttling something.
With a groan of weariness, she stumbled over to the wall, ignoring very hard the dinner Black had started into. Food was not the best thing to think about right now.
"Bye," she told him.
And left.
Turns.
One.
Two.
He hadn't been watching the map then, so it was okay.
Hermione heard the footsteps rather than saw the two people they belonged to.
And collapsed into a tired heap at their feet.
"I am sorry to say that from the moment you have arrived in this class, my dear, it has been apparent that you do not have what the noble art of Divination requires."
"HERMIONE!"
Her eyelids fluttered once.
"Liar," she muttered.
And everything went black.
-----
She awoke to white walls, cotton sheets, and a very nasty headache.
But-
"Gone," she whispered, amazed. "They're gone!"
The voices had disappeared again, or at least gone into a kind of hibernation.
She gazed out the window, then realized it was light outside. And groaned.
"Oh just peachy," she groused. "I missed the Halloween feast."
Madam Pomfrey bustled over to her almost immediately, tutting and cooing over her 'delicate condition'. "Typical stress symptoms," she insisted. "I've been trying to tell them it was a bad idea, letting you take all those classes-"
"It's not the classes," Hermione interrupted indignantly. "I'm quite capable of taking care of those. All my homework is done!"
The nurse shook her head. "Still, it can't help your condition-"
"What condition?" she muttered.
Still, the woman caught her words. "Your body is very weak. You've been pushing yourself somehow, though I'm not entirely sure how you could accumulate such an amazing amount of exhaustion…" She narrowed her eyes at her. "How long has it been since you slept?"
Hermione was thankfully saved from this question by a door opening quietly. However, at the face of her 'savior', she quickly decided she'd have rather stayed with Madam Pomfrey.
"Hermione," Professor Lupin acknowledged quietly.
She meant to say hello. It came out as more of a frightened squeak.
"May I speak to her alone, Poppy?" her Defense Against the Dark Arts professor asked kindly.
The nurse scowled at him, but it was very hard to stay angry at Lupin with his ever-pleasant expression. Her suspicion faded slowly. "I suppose. Don't strain the dear, though, she looks like she's had a rather trying time of it…"
Hermione stared at him as the other woman walked from the room, waiting for the cloud of disappointment or the angry betrayal that might signal he had discovered Sirius…
The door closed.
He raised an eyebrow.
"You wish to explain?" he asked her.
And, before she could stop herself, she shook her head 'no' emphatically.
The older man laughed, unable to stop himself. "Hermione, I have stayed out of your life out of a respect for you and your talents. But at this point, I really must insist that you tell me why you have so suddenly become… like this." He gestured at her and she immediately felt very uncomfortable.
"It's… it's not anything big," she muttered. Liar.
He smiled gently at her. "Hermione, you may tell me anything at all. Big or small, if it has you in this condition, you obviously need something."
Oh, yeah right. You don't really mean that. "Hey, your best friend, the murderer, is in the castle. I've been trying to get him back to sanity while I'm slowly losing my own…"
She swallowed, though, and decided she would settle for a half truth. Hermione's hand went to her timeturner self-consciously as she began to talk.
"Professor," she said quietly. "I've been fighting with Harry and Ron a little… normally it wouldn't matter so much, but with the extra strain, it's not going well. If I'd only been fighting with them, it would be different, and if they weren't fighting with me right now, it would be fine too. It's just that together, it's been rather…"
He nodded in sympathy. "I can certainly understand, Miss Granger. You've been having stresses from all sides. If you wish, and only if you wish, I could talk with Mr. Potter…"
"He showed me the Grindylow… I'm most afraid of the Dementors, imagine that…"
"Th-thank you but no," she said. Why? Why were they coming back now? The only logical explanation was that certain people triggered them… but these weren't quite so bad, around Professor Lupin. Most of the memories dealing with him seemed to be rather gentle.
Black, on the other hand…
Lupin put a comforting hand on her arm, and she noted that he was looking even more haggard than ever. "If you should ever need some tea, you know where to find me," he told her, rising and walking toward the door.
"GET AWAY FROM ME, WEREWOLF!"
Hermione choked at that one, gasping quietly. Lupin turned around abruptly, but she turned it into a sneeze.
"T-take care of yourself," she advised him weakly. "You don't look too well, Professor."
He smiled. "I've been through worse," he told her, "but thank you for your concern. This bug should pass in a few days, I imagine."
Hermione lay back on the bed as he left, staring at the ceiling apprehensively as the voices quieted again.
Things were just not working out this year.