Out of Time
By Rurouni Star
"You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you."
-Eric Hoffer
She was, of course, up and running by Monday.
Class. Timeturner. Class. Timeturner. Class. Deal with Ron and Harry. Class. Timeturner. Class. Timeturner. Class. Lunch, somewhere in there.
Over and over and over, it was beginning to wear her out. Luckily, the voices seemed only to come in waves and to recede at almost regular intervals. By the end of the night, though, when she snuck away to nip more food for Black, it was getting dizzily mixed up in her head.
"All you all right?" he asked her as she chewed on a bit of chicken.
"Sure," she muttered, reading her Muggle Studies book avidly. "Just got to finish a few chapters…"
He didn't ask her again after that. In fact, he didn't ask her anything at all, which made her somewhat nervous. After all, as soon as he found a way into his vault, she was going to have to make the switch…
Tuesday was more madness. Her head hurt by the third timeturn, and her stomach began to growl partway through Arithmancy on Wednesday, and by the end of the night when she made her way to Black, she was becoming very much fond of the little room where everything was quiet and she could get her homework done without any distractions but a dark haired murderer (who was looking better and better by the day, thanks to the food she'd gotten him).
Thursday, Hermione woke up late. Not only did she have to skip breakfast because of this, she had to use her timeturner in a slightly uncomfortable fashion that reminded her vaguely of misuse of a powerful magical item.
It was Potions, first thing, of course. For the first time that week, a voice interrupted her during Potions as she stared at Snape, looking particularly tense behind his desk.
"He's got it, just on his left arm, I saw it, Hermione-"
"What are you staring at, Granger?"
She blinked, trying to clear her head as Harry and Ron each gave her a furtive but supportive look.
"Sorry, Professor," she managed, "I- I'm not feeling very well."
He frowned more deeply at her. "Five points from Gryffindor for your lack of attention."
She managed to make it through the rest of the class, surprisingly, but by Defense Against the Dark Arts, after lunch, she was fairly close to keeling over. Lupin, though very, very pale looking at this point, seemed to go easy on her, asking her questions to which he knew she knew the answers.
Hermione gave him a very grateful smile as she left, which seemed to revitalize him a little.
"I know it's hard, Hermione, he was my friend too… I can assure you, though, that everyone will be missing Padfoot horribly in the days to come…"
When she stumbled into her secret room, as she called it in her mind, Black had to catch her before she hit the floor.
"I'm never going to get through this," she muttered into his robes, spitting out his sleeve.
He shrugged. "I did warn you."
As she settled, exhausted, into her large chair, he watched her with shadowed eyes.
At one point, he opened his mouth to say something… but closed it again a moment later, as she nibbled desperately on the end of her quill and flipped through her book for the Grindylows' region of origination...
Then, just as all hope seemed lost, he was suddenly leaning over her shoulder, smirking.
"Britian," he told her.
She blinked sleepily. "What?"
"I said, they originated in Britain. They live in the bottom of lakes here."
Hermione looked up at him, sure that she had shadows under her eyes, but feeling too much gratitude toward him to care. "You're sure?"
Black rolled his eyes. "I've already been through this year. Here, look – I'll finish this for you and charm the handwriting to yours-"
"That would be cheating!" she said in surprise.
He laughed and scratched at the traces of a beard that had appeared on his chin, "Oh come on, you're helping a known convict evade arrest. How much worse can you get?"
Normally, this wouldn't have flown with her at all, but it was a token of just how tired she was that she let him take the paper.
"I'll – I'll be reading it, though," she said, rubbing at her eyes. "And… I'll make sure… I know it… for the exams…"
Things were getting blurry. It was just so hard to keep her eyes open…
Something warm was draped across her back, and Hermione found herself snuggling into a very convenient pillow. Funny, that had been on the couch, how had it gotten beneath her head…
Sleep took her.
-----
Waking up was an experience, in and of itself.
Firstly, Hermione's neck hurt. Probably because she'd somehow managed to get to sleep leaning on the table with a much-too-soft pillow beneath her head. A blanket had been pulled around her, but had slipped off sometime during the night.
Black was nowhere to be seen.
She gasped, stumbling to her feet and swaying as the blood rushed to her head all at once.
And there, sitting on top of the table, was a neat stack of books, correlating papers sticking out at the tops like bookmarks.
Everything. All her homework. All in her handwriting.
Bless him. He was an awful liar, but bless him all the same.
But where was he?
Hermione yawned, and was just wondering what time it was and whether or not she'd have to change time to make it to her first class (What was it again? For that matter, what day was it?) when the wall opened abruptly, and a slightly damp Sirius Black moved to sit down on the couch heavily, Marauder's Map clutched in one hand, wand in the other.
"Where were you?" she asked.
He looked up, surprised, perhaps, that she was awake, then grinned. "Shower, obviously. You don't really think I'd want to end up like Snape-"
"I thought it was important things only!" she said, not quite angry but not quite happy with him either.
Sirius shrugged. "Seemed like an emergency to me. Anyway, not much danger of me getting caught with this thing." He tapped the map once. "One of the reasons I needed it, for going outside."
She sighed, too tired to argue, but already feeling much more refreshed than the day before. "What time is it?" she asked, stretching. "I hope no one noticed I never came back…"
He scrubbed at his hair, annoyed, as the water seemed to want to stick. Hermione choked back a laugh as he seemed only to stick it up more in the process. "It's about six o' clock," he informed her. "Quite enough time to go back to sleep, if you want."
Hermione stared down at the parchments on the table, then smiled at him. "Thank you."
Black waved his hand. "Oh come on. I've been through my NEWTs, none of those can even touch seventh year."
But she could tell he was pleased.
And, for the first time in a while, when she looked at him, she didn't see anything, didn't hear any voices.
"I'm sorry," she said suddenly. "I haven't been helping as much as I ought…" She tucked a curl behind her ear nervously. "I suppose I've actually been in your way a bit-"
"Nonsense!" he said, amazed. "You'd have done enough just by helping me here and getting me food. You even got the map back for me, and I was expecting to see it at least a couple of months from now. Besides which, you're company." He strode to her briskly, sitting down in front of her. "Do you have any idea how wonderful it is to just have someone around again?"
She was sure she was blushing to the tips of her hair roots. "Probably not," she said quietly. "But I can imagine."
He got up again, ruffling her hair in the way he knew annoyed her, making her seem a child. "Go ahead and take the couch. You've got a couple of hours before breakfast in the Great Hall. You might even eat something here, to save yourself time."
Hermione did so gladly, but found that she was still thinking about the Invisibility Cloak. He gave me a scare when I thought he was gone – what if someone had seen him while he wasn't looking at the map? I don't even know where he'd go to find a shower, they're all in the dormitories…
She decided that it would help too much for him to have the Cloak, poor Harry not withstanding. There just had to be a way to find something to replace it, or almost… her eyes drifted shut tiredly, and her mind wandered…
Hermione sat up abruptly. "Sirius!" she said. He turned to her in surprise.
"Yes?"
Her eyes sparkled. "Crookshanks. Crookshanks can help, I know he can. He's smarter than most owls I know, and he's good at hiding…"
"You'll have to talk a bit more sense," he told her wryly, munching on a stick of cheese.
Hermione shook her head to clear it of its lethargy. "If you know anything in particular that would work, Crookshanks could get it from Gringotts. All he'd have to do is take a note – no one's going to notice if a stray cat wanders in!"
He blinked, looking at her intently. "You know… it's possible. As long as I have it delivered to you, by the cat…" He frowned. "But you'd have to switch the Cloak yourself, Hermione. No, that's not going to work, if Pettigrew saw you-"
"What?" she said, incredulous. "Are you insane? You were just saying, the other day-"
"No," he told her flatly, and she thought that perhaps she was seeing a little more of his famous stubborn side. "You are not putting yourself in danger like that. I'll get into the dormitories somehow-"
"And get yourself killed," she told him. "Look, we both know it's better if I do this. If Harry wakes up, I can always tell him I need to borrow the Cloak and do it another night. If he sees you…"
The man frowned, obviously trying to find a way out of this logic. He seemed to decide to settle for steering the conversation away from choosing. "We don't even have anything to switch it with yet. Why don't we get it first and then decide?"
She was sure there was something sneaky about this, but she sighed and relented. "Have you any idea what to get from the vault?"
He paused, thinking hard. "There are a lot of pictures, but I somehow doubt he'd appreciate seeing me and his dad together in all of them. I have a few of his old school things – wait! I have quite a bit of the things from when he was on the run-" His expression was concentrated, trying to remember twelve years past.
Hermione meant to help him, really – but the next thing she knew, he was shaking her awake gently.
"Time to go," he told her.
Her dream was finishing, even though she'd opened her eyes. And for a moment, she was in the library, and it was dark, and she was – under the invisibility cloak?
"Thompkins" the spine read. And she knew it was important.
She blinked and was brought back to the real world and Sirius was looking at her strangely.
Hermione yawned and shook her head to clear the sleep from it. "Thanks. Today's… Friday, I think. Herbology."
She picked up her books with a last grateful look at Sirius, then slipped out of the room. With a last, quick look around, Hermione started on her way to Herbology.
-----
After about five classes, she had finally made it to the last class of the day. Defense Against the Dark Arts.
She felt something twist nervously inside her. If Lupin really was… the night before would have been it. And now that she was going into his class, she felt hesitant. What if it stirred up more of the violent voices this time…
"Are you going inside or what?" Dean demanded from behind her. She gave him a weak smile, then headed inside.
Only to stop immediately, stunned. This time, Dean echoed her.
Snape was sitting at Lupin's desk.
"Sit down, please," he sneered. "You're holding up the class."
Hermione looked back, bewildered, and noticed that this was true. People were trying to get inside.
She moved to her seat, trying to decide whether or not to be happy about this new development. On the one hand, Snape did not conjure very many voices. On the other hand – he was Snape.
Ron sat next to her, then, his own gaze on Snape. "You reckon he killed Lupin?" he asked her.
Hermione shook her head. "No. I just think he tied him up and left him in a closet." Not.
Ron snickered at this, but he turned to look at Harry's seat next, a puzzled expression on his face. "Where's Harry?"
"How should I know?" Hermione asked, leaning down to push some of her extraneous books beneath her desk, tucking a curl behind her ear.
Her friend turned to her curiously as she leaned back with a relaxed sigh.
"You're certainly looking better," he said. "Get a massage or something while we weren't looking?"
She smiled. "No, just got all my homework done. It's an amazing thing, you should try it sometime-"
"We will begin class now," Snape said, rising from his desk. "Your usual teacher is not available at the moment, so I will be taking over for him. The notes here are not well organized-"
Hermione tuned him out for a moment, twisting her head slightly to look at Harry's still-empty seat. What was he thinking, being late-
The door opened hurriedly, and Harry gasped. "Sorry I'm late, Professor Lupin, I-"
Snape turned to look at him with a nasty smile that seemed to say Christmas had come early. "This lesson began ten minutes ago, Potter, so I think we'll make it ten points from Gryffindor. Sit down."
Harry's face had taken on a funny expression. "Where's Professor Lupin?" he asked.
"He says he is feeling too ill to teach today… I believe I told you to sit down?"
Harry still didn't move, and Hermione quashed the instinct to hiss at him. "What's wrong with him?" Harry asked cautiously.
Snape's eyes glittered with a kind of satisfaction, and Hermione instinctively knew there would be more points taken in a moment. "Nothing life-threatening." Sure enough- "Five more points from Gryffindor, and if I have to ask you to sit down again, it will be fifty."
Harry went to his seat then, and Hermione cast him a strange look, wondering if he could possibly have guessed…
If he had been thinking about Lupin more, though, his expression didn't show it. He was glaring unabashedly at Snape, who (thankfully) was not looking their way as he expanded on Lupin's lack of preparation. The last word she heard was
"-werewolves," and Hermione immediately jumped. How could he- not in class, he couldn't say that-
"Werewolves?" Ron muttered. "Aren't they at the back of the book, though? Why today-"
"Sir," she said quietly, inwardly relieved. "We're not supposed to do werewolves yet, Professor Lupin has us down for Hinkypunks-"
"Miss Granger," he said in a cold voice, and she shrunk back at suddenly having caught his full attention. "I was under the impression that I was teaching this lesson, not you. And I am telling you all to turn to page 394." His gaze swept the room. "All of you! Now!"
She swallowed hard and did as he said, noting as she did the table at the top of the book that listed a few important procedures for proper disposal of werewolves…
You bastard, Snape, she thought suddenly, surprising herself with her language. I know why you're doing this.
"Which of you can tell me how we distinguish between the werewolf and the true wolf?" he asked silkily, and now that she knew what to look for, she could see the genuine pleasure in just the asking of the question.
Hermione raised her hand calmly. She knew. She wanted him to know that she knew, and more importantly, that she didn't care.
He seemed not to notice her hand, though. "Anyone?" he said, smiling in a chilling way. "Are you telling me that Professor Lupin hasn't even taught you the basic distinction between-"
"We told you," Parvati interrupted, "we haven't got as far as werewolves yet, we're still on-"
"The snout of the werewolf is more angular," Hermione interrupted her. "The eyes are human instead of wolf, though they can see just as far. The paws are padded differently and the tail is shorter."
Everyone turned to look at her in amazement, but inwardly, she was wondering exactly the same thing they were. How had she known?
Hermione stared at Snape with what she hoped was an expressionless face. His eyes were boring into hers, though, and the thought came, unbidden, from that part of her she still didn't understand-
"He's an Occlumens, if he catches your eyes, he can-"
She diverted her gaze to the wall behind him, breaking contact immediately. Snape's eyes narrowed.
"That is the second time you have spoken out of turn, Miss Granger," he said quietly. "Five more points from Gryffindor for being an insufferable know-it-all."
She felt her gaze shift to the floor, her face reddening. How dare he- angry tears pricked at the corners of her eyes-
"You asked us a question and she knows the answer!" said Ron, from beside her, "Why ask if you don't want to be told?"
Hermione looked over at him wildly, immediately knowing he'd done something stupid. "Ron-" she hissed in a desperate voice.
"Detention, Weasley," Snape told him in a frighteningly even tone. "And if I ever hear you criticize the way I teach a class again, you will be very sorry indeed."
The class ended badly – two rolls of parchment on how to recognize and kill werewolves. Hermione couldn't stop herself from glaring at Snape at the end of class. She hoped she'd gotten her message across (the one where she wished he'd spontaneously combust) but she doubted it since he wasn't even smoking.
Harry was saying something from next to her as they left, wondering about why Snape seemed to hate Lupin so much.
Hermione's mouth set into a line. "Because Snape is an evil git," she told him shortly. "And Professor Lupin isn't."
Ron came out before Harry could answer this, saying something very rude about Snape that would've made Hermione's face burn just a few weeks ago. "Why can't Black be after him?" he muttered angrily. "He could at least do the world a service if he's going to be a mad criminal."
Hermione swallowed, not comfortable on the subject. "Let's not talk about him, please Ron?" she said.
She hoped they thought it was because she was worried for Harry.
Hermione found that night that she wasn't able to get out to see Sirius, but she half wished she could have told him about Snape and his hatred toward Lupin. She had a feeling he'd be able to tell her why.
-----
Hermione woke with a yawn, trying to ignore the whistling winds and pounding rain outside. She fumbled with her outdoor robes, remembering just in time that Harry had a game today.
With a look outside, she wasn't sure she wanted to see what would happen to him in this.
Perhaps she should go see Sirius, though – it would take a turn or two on the timeturner, but she was too far past breaking rules now to worry about that little problem.
She slipped out of the dormitory and clicked the timeturner once, waiting for the world to stop spinning before she got her bearings and went down to the commonroom.
To her surprise, Harry was already there, sitting by the fire glumly. Probably thinking about how awful the game was going to be.
"I miss him, Hermione. It won't ever go away."
"Hermione," he said in surprise, looking up as she froze, staring at him. "What- it's half past four!" he told her in a whisper.
She waved a hand and swallowed. "I heard you get up." She moved to sit down in the other chair, staring into the flames. She couldn't leave with him here. And, to tell herself the truth, she really didn't want to. She'd barely gotten to see Harry this year, and it was nice to just be able to sit near him in silence for once.
"Hermione," he said suddenly. "What's going on with you recently?"
She blinked and looked at him.
"What?" she asked intelligently.
Harry turned to look at her, face half-lit by the flames. "You've been really strange. Half the time I feel like you're not even listening when I talk."
Hermione sighed heavily. "It's been such a long year, Harry," she told him tiredly. "I feel like everything's decided to happen all at once, and it's not a good feeling."
She lapsed into a troubled silence, thinking about all of the things she wished she could tell him. That he had a godfather that loved him enough to risk his soul for his well being. That she was really putting in longer days than he was. That she was hearing things that couldn't possibly be true but that turned out to be that way one way or another. That she'd suddenly developed a penchant for rule breaking and she didn't like it in herself.
Instead of telling him all of these things, she said, "Harry, what do you want for Christmas?"
It was important that she get him something nice, for putting up with her. And maybe to offset her guilty conscience.
He seemed surprised. "For- for Christmas?" he wondered aloud. "I don't know, you usually get me a-"
"Book, yes," she confirmed. "But… I really want to get you something good this year. Something you'll like."
Harry grinned. "You could always get me a Firebolt," he said.
Hermione laughed and pointed at his current broom. "That seems good enough to me," she said. "Good enough to refrain from a couple hundred galleon upgrade."
Harry sighed. "Worth a shot, you know," he told her in an over dramatized voice. "But seriously… whatever you get me will be good, I know. Even a book."
She rolled her eyes. "That doesn't help me much, Harry," she told him. "But in any case… I'm sorry I can't tell you everything," she said honestly. "There's just some things I can't…"
And, to her surprise, Harry looked at her with understanding. "I know," he said.
She felt a sniffle escape her. "How can you know?" she asked him. "You're supposed to be mad at me."
He grinned and leaned back. "That's Ron's job, I should think. Especially since your cat is trying to get up to the dormitory again as we speak."
Hermione hissed in annoyance and leapt up from her seat, rushing to grab Crookshanks. The cat was trying to sneak into the door, and it was slippery. "Crookshanks," she told it angrily, "would you stop that?"
It turned to look her straight in the eyes, though, and she could swear-
It knew.
Her grip loosened, just a little, but it didn't go anywhere. Instead, it flicked its tail, annoyed, as though to say, Well what, then?
"Hermione?" Harry asked. "You got him?"
She picked her cat up and hugged him to her chest. "Yes, Harry. I've got him. I think I'm going to take him out for a walk, though, he seems restless…" He just finished telling me he understands and I lie to him. Wonderful.
Harry nodded and rose himself. "I'll come with you. It's better than waiting around for breakfast for a few hours…"
Hermione bit her lip. Well… "Actually," she told him. "If you wanted, we might be able to get you some food right now."
He looked at her questioningly. "They don't open the kitchens until eight, though," he pointed out.
"Well… yes," she said carefully. "But I sort of found a way in…" Better to tell him. He deserves something nice to happen to him every once in a while.
Crookshanks followed them out, as they made their way to the painting of fruit, talking animatedly about the match, what was going to happen, Harry's chances of beating Diggory…
All in all, a nice, quiet morning. A much needed taste of normalcy.