Out of Time
By Rurouni Star

O Athene! How I do love thee! How I dote on thee!

Can anyone tell I've been to play practice recently? Anyway – fanart was so worth the wait. You're a very good person.

The dancing reference will be important later, for those that care to notice. Actually, it will be important in the next part of the series – fourth year. Yes, there's a fourth year, sillies. Whether all our friends will be alive during fourth year is questionable.

Aaaaand… a cookie to anyone who knows where the chapter title comes from.

Chapter 10 – With Good Intentions

"'He means well' is useless unless he does well."

-Plautus

Hermione woke later – how much later, she wasn't sure – and blinked as she discovered she was tightly snuggled beneath a heavy Hogwarts quilt on a soft feather bed.

The first thought was, of course… "Where am I?" she muttered groggily.

"Same place as usual," was Sirius' answer from right next to her. He was sitting in a familiar stuffed chair, just in front of the bed. "I just transfigured the couch is all."

Hermione yawned and found that her headache had completely disappeared.

"What-"

"You passed out," he told her quietly. "In the library."

In the library? Was that right?

But she remembered walking out… and staying, falling asleep, at the same time…

"Someone's tampered with my memory," she hissed. His face fell at this, and she glared at him. "You did it?"

Sirius sighed. "I did try, after the first-" he stopped and coughed, but it slipped from her hazy mind exactly what this was supposed to mean. "My memory charms are fairly awful, though. Can we just say you don't want to know?"

Hermione shrugged, forcing herself up. "I suppose. I've got enough things to worry about as it is." She focused instead on the lingering strangeness in her head, her brow knitting as she tried to lift the fog from it.

"I picked up your books for you," he informed her, rising momentarily to grab her bag from beside the temporary bed. "Breakfast should be starting in about two hours."

She gasped. "What? I slept a whole day-"

"No," he told her, face puzzled. "You only slept a few hours… I know, I've been here the whole time."

Hermione frowned, trying to figure it out. "But- I was awake at three, I thought- and the library was at least three hours-"

"I think you must've come awake quite a bit earlier than three, then," Sirius told her. "What clock were you going by?" He was looking very much concerned by the fact that she'd awoken at three am, but Hermione avoided his eyes carefully.

"My bedside one," she told him. "You're right, it must've been wrong."

Hermione pushed the covers off herself, but he stopped her with one hand on either shoulder. "You're certain you don't need to rest a bit longer?" he asked her.

She sniffed, but twitched as her head twinged a little. "I'll be fine," she said. "Thank you for- well, for everything, I suppose. That was quite a bit of trouble to go through on my account."

Sirius chuckled. "I should say you've gone through enough for me as well. I'd have to do this a few more times to make us square."

"I hope you don't ever need to," she told him fervently, then noticed that the invisibility cloak was draped over the back of his chair. "Have we found a solution for that yet?"

He followed her gaze. "I… think so," he told her hesitantly. "Your cat visited a while back-"

"He doesn't know where you are, though!" Hermione exclaimed.

"He does," Sirius said. "He's a smart cat. In any case, I told him what to find. I'll only really know once it gets here, but it should do."

"You'll let me know, then?" she asked, twisting the covers absently.

"Yes, I'll let you know," he said. Then sat back. "You should get a bit more rest. Maybe eat something from the food I nicked from the kitchens."

"I hope you didn't go to any great lengths-"

Sirius reached over to grab a plate, putting it in front of her. A cinnamon roll, scrambled eggs, bacon-

"Oh, you're wonderful," she amended, taking a fervent bite out of the roll.

He grinned. "Eat up, then. I'll be out for a bit – mind if I borrow that cloak for just a little while?"

Hermione bit her lip, wondering whether she ought to have been so eager to give away Harry's most treasured possession so easily. "I- no, go ahead," she managed lamely. "Just try to have it back before I leave."

Sirius was already gone.

As she ate and then lay back to get some quick sleep, Hermione had to wonder about quite a few things – not the least of which where Sirius had come up with whatever potion he'd used. She dearly hoped he hadn't stolen it from Snape – the bat-like teacher always noticed when the least thing went missing from his stores. Not to mention his eyes as he'd talked of Sirius Black's escape… Snape knew something, she was certain.

By the time Sirius had gotten back, she was dozing lightly, still trying futilely to make up for weeks of lost sleep – his entrance made her blink awake tiredly as he shoved something into her hand. He looked slightly weary but ultimately triumphant. "Take this after your stomach's settled," he told her. "It should help quite a bit."

Hermione blinked as she looked at it. It was a clear, gold color, shining brightly in the darkened room. She'd never seen any potion even remotely like it.

"Where did you get it?" she asked suspiciously, looking past him to the cloak that was draped across the chair once more.

"Don't worry about it," he told her, waving his hand. "I didn't steal it, if that's what you're implying."

She relaxed at this. "Well… thank you."

Class started normally, just as he'd said – she hadn't missed a thing, even after stashing Harry's cloak back in his trunk. Partway through Charms, she excused herself to the bathroom and drank down the potion Sirius had given her. It spread through her warmly, tingling a bit in her throat, and she felt a surge of something pleasant jolt through her. Hermione blinked, suddenly feeling better than she had in days – and decided not to dwell on it too long, because Charms was still waiting.

Hermione's quill wrote the most grammatically correct sentence on its own, and she glowed proudly as Flitwick pointed this out to the class in delight. During Defense Against the Dark Arts, she noticed that Malfoy was eyeing her with something akin to surprise on his face, but when she turned to look at him severely, he quickly diverted his gaze to the floor. Something inside her leapt at making the Slytherin so uncomfortable, even though she wasn't quite sure why he would be that way.

Even the timeturner couldn't quite get her down – and though she was still hearing voices, they seemed strangely muted, as though coming from far away…

Hermione returned to the room that night to thank him profusely, but he was sleeping when she got there. Instead, she left him a note and a bar of Honeyduke's best chocolate, which she'd been saving for a rainy day.

"Hey, Hermione?" Harry asked her as she hummed happily, working on her homework in the common room. "Do you still have my trunk key?"

She stopped and blinked a moment, furrowing her brow. "Oh. Yes, I'm sure I do-"

Key. She'd need the key to- to steal it, later. Oh bother.

"I'll get it from my room, I think I might've left it in there."

Hermione excused herself quickly, walking up the stairs to the dormitory and pulling the curtains of her bed, pulling the forgotten key from her robe's pocket. "Genero key," she murmured, pointing her wand at the small metal key in her hand. Happily, though she'd never really practiced the charm, it worked perfectly. A perfect copy popped into existence right beside it, and she smiled to herself as she stowed it back in her pocket.

The girl walked downstairs then, to hand Harry back his original with a happy smile. "All in order, then," she told him, before sitting down to tackle her homework with a vengeance.

Harry just stood there, though, staring at her. For a moment, she thought wildly that he might have noticed something-

"Hermione," he said in amazement. "You're – well. You're happy!"

She laughed to herself as she finished her Potions essay and went smoothly onto her Transfiguration homework. "What's wrong with that?"

"N-nothing," he said hastily, "It's just- different. Usually you're so stressed-"

She shrugged, marveling at how easy things were when you actually had the energy for them. "Things are getting better."

Hermione managed, miraculously, to finish all of her homework for the week and to get to bed by eleven.

Things were definitely getting better.

The next day wasn't quite as good as the last – the timeturner had begun to wear on her again, and the homework was as bad as ever. The voices came back, too; whispers about Voldemort and his greatest servant, a tournament and a spare…

Hermione was slightly frazzled by the time she got to Sirius' room, but still feeling better than normal.

He was sitting in the chair, staring into the fire seriously – she found herself surprised that he didn't notice her presence immediately.

"Sirius?" she asked.

He blinked, then turned to her. Without so much as a 'hello', he immediately said, "I think I should start showing you how to duel."

There was a pause, during which Hermione decided that this was one of the last things she would have expected from him.

"What?" she asked blankly.

He raked his hand through his hair unhappily, looking just a little tired. "I know it's sudden, but I've thought this through – and if Peter figures anything out, if I'm not there- I want you to be able to do something about it."

Hermione might have protested anyway – her work load was worse than ever before – but something in his expression disintegrated any negative answers that might have come out of her mouth.

"I – I suppose," she sighed heavily. "I'll figure something out."

The tension in his face smoothed out at this, and Sirius looked so relieved that she found herself gratified at her own response.

"We'll see when you have the time," he promised. "Just whenever you can."

The next few weeks could very easily be described as pure hell. The burst of energy that had come with the potion had gone by the end of the week, and Hermione found herself once again hurrying to keep up with her work. Sirius was still working on something she wasn't certain about – he was now reading books by the dozens and frowning, taking notes while she worked at Lupin's Defense Against the Dark Arts essays and tried not to curse Snape too loudly for his awful assignments. Dueling lessons were always short but intense; after Sirius got over his initial reluctance to hit her, Hermione found herself learning an inordinate amount of material. It was, surprisingly, her most gratifying 'class'.

As Christmas approached and the break finally came (along with sleep, bless the world), Hermione found herself in the very unique position of trying to come up with a few good presents for a few very unique people. Firstly, the Boy-Who-Lived really deserved something nice, seeing as she was going to take his cloak (still guilty, but still necessary). Secondly in her guilty presents area, the twins really needed something nice to brighten their days (they'd moped for a full two weeks after she'd switched the map). And she always got Ron a nice present other than his hand-knitted sweater.

The real challenge was, of course, Sirius Black.

What on earth did one get for a man on the lam?

While at Hogsmeade with Fred and George, Hermione found herself pondering this very question as she snuck their presents from Zonko's to the front and bought them beneath their notice.

It took a chunk out of her savings, but Hermione decided to buy Harry the astronomy model he'd been eyeing for some time, and Ron would get a wonderful wizard's chess set she'd found at discount, which consisted of the teams that would be competing in the Quidditch World Cup soon – Ireland and Bulgaria, if she was correct.

Sirius, though – what on earth was she supposed to get him?

She was still struggling with the answer as she collapsed wearily onto the sofa that night, after about an hour of trying to properly jinx a very dodgy Sirius Black.

A string of sweet, chiming music floated to her ears, and Hermione blinked in surprise as she saw that Sirius was listening intently to a small musical locket.

"What's that?" she asked him. "It's beautiful!"

His face turned odd, but she thought she must have imagined it a moment later, because he was smiling.

"That," he said, "is a Viennese Waltz."

Sirius must have caught sight of her absolutely puzzled face, so he elaborated, snapping the locket shut and putting it down on the table. "A dance," he explained with a pleasant expression. "Quite a bit like the normal Waltz, but it's a good deal faster. And more fun."

Hermione laughed. "How do you know that?"

Sirius raised an eyebrow. "I was raised as a pureblood, you know," he said, pretending haughtiness. "I did, of course, learn to ballroom dance."

At this, her eyes opened just a little wider, and she found herself highly interested. "Oh?"

He chuckled, leaning back in the chair. "No one around here knows how to do the Viennese, though, I would wager," he said, with a slightly wistful look in his eyes. "It's not the easiest of dances, Merlin only knows…" He blinked at her. "You wouldn't have taken a bit of dance, by any chance-"

Hermione blushed. "A bit of ballet, when I was young. But I'm afraid the most I know of ballroom is the basic Waltz. You know, the little box step."

Sirius shrugged. "That's more than most people. If you'd like, one of these days I could show you how to do some of the other moves…" His face turned amused, though. "No, I would guess not. I'm probably awfully rusty, anyway."

She felt a gentle smile making its way onto her face as she imagined him learning how to dance, as a boy. For some reason, the idea wasn't quite as ridiculous as she might have thought it before. It seemed she'd found a little spot of happiness in his years with the Blacks.

A thought hit her, then, and her mouth quirked. "Does this mean Malfoy knows how to dance?" she asked with a slight snort.

His reaction wasn't quite what she would've expected. His face turned tight and slightly angry. "Yes, I suppose…"

Hermione decided not to ask what he had against the boy – it was rather obvious, after all. No one with an ounce of decency liked Malfoy.

As Sirius moved to pick up one of the books in a pile next to him, she found herself staring at the title. Advanced Transfiguration: Book Five. "What have you been reading?" she asked, surprised.

He blinked, then grimaced. "I've been trying to find a way to freeze an Animagus in one form," he told her. "It's a lot trickier than it sounds, let me assure you."

Hermione bit at her lip. "I'd assume so – about as difficult as becoming one in the first place. You do realize you'd have to completely reverse the process on a contingency basis-"

"No," he shook his head, having apparently already researched this particular lead. "That's impossible. You'd have to start, in effect, from before you cast the spell. The calculations don't work out. What I've been looking at instead is a way to just block the first part of the spell – the trigger one. Especially since I rather have to prove the little rat was a little rat to get my innocence, and the other way would make it impossible for him to transform again."

Hermione chewed at her lip before giving up tiredly. Her brain was already working on overdrive. "I'd try to help," she sighed, "But I have this feeling I'd only get in the way."

Sirius shrugged. "I've got enough time to research it – you, on the other hand, look like you're going to keel over at any moment. I'd suggest sitting down."

Hermione realized he was right – her hands had begun to tremble in weariness. "Oh," she murmured, "No, I have to get back to the common room, I think."

He shrugged and turned a page, brow furrowed in thought. Hermione tried not to be envious of his obvious relaxation. "I think I'll be back tomorrow," she yawned broadly. "If I don't keel over first, like you said."

Sirius' watched her pensively as she slipped out of the room.

So it was with a slight trepidation that she returned to the common room, thinking of presents and curses and all kinds of things that she really ought not to be.

So preoccupied was she that she almost ran straight into Harry and Ron as they hurried out of the portrait.

"Hermione!" Harry gasped. "You have to come, it's Hagrid-"

"What?" she said, losing her other thoughts in a whirl of concern. "Nothing's happened to him, has it?"

"It's not him," Ron managed. "It's – it's Buckbeak! Lucius Malfoy came up to the castle and talked with Dumbledore – he's putting the thing on trial as a dangerous animal!"

Hermione dropped her books off in the common room quickly, forgetting everything else as they found out about the poor beast whose fate rested in poor Hagrid's hands. Hermione vowed then and there, as she looked at Hagrid's tear-stained face, that she would do everything she could to rescue it. For the moment, she forgot that she had already made quite a few vows of this sort to herself.

She fell into bed, exhausted, that night.

But it seemed that only moments later, someone was shaking her, panicked. "Hermione!" Harry was gasping. "Come on, Dumbledore wants us out of here, all the students are going to the Great Hall-"

"What?" she managed. "I'm sleeping, Harry, what time is it?"

"Hermione, it's Sirius Black! He got into the dormitory!"

Her eyes shot open immediately, and she tumbled out of bed. "What?" Hermione gasped. "No, I don't believe it, he wouldn't!"

"He did," Harry said grimly. "He's gone now, but no one even knows how he got in or what he was after." A strange shudder overtook him. "I wouldn't have recognized him… he looks so normal…"

She found she had no choice but to follow Harry down to the Great Hall with the others, stumbling along as she did. Harry was uncomfortably quiet… she realized it must have been because he thought Sirius had been in there to kill him. Hermione impulsively moved to grasp his hand comfortingly, squeezing once before letting it go. Harry only had a moment to look at her askance before they got to the hall and separated to different sides of the room as the girls and boys were asked to do.

Hermione knew she ought to go to sleep, so as not to look suspicious. But there was just no way to know- teachers were coming and going, in the dark of night, she could hear them murmuring, what if one of them had found him-

Lupin's unmistakable silhouette broke her from her grim thoughts as he moved toward the Headmaster, near her.

"Not in any of the old passages," he said quietly. "I checked the Shrieking Shack, but it doesn't look as though he's been using it either."

Dumbledore nodded at him. "I do not believe you were helping him," he said abruptly, as though it were in question.

Lupin sagged in relief. "You know I wouldn't," he said in a quietly pained voice. "Not after- not after Lily and James. Never."

The Headmaster patted him on the shoulder. "I have a feeling he is no longer in the castle, in any case. Not even Sirius Black would chance a full search for him."

But Hermione noticed, as Dumbledore moved away, that Lupin was frowning deeply in the moonlight.

"There's nothing he wouldn't chance," Lupin sighed.

She felt her mouth open before she could do anything to stop it. "Professor Lupin?" she whispered.

He stiffened, turning to look at her. "Miss Granger?" he asked sternly. "Aren't you supposed to be asleep?"

"I'm sorry," she said truthfully. "I- I just can't. I don't know very much about what happened…"

"Sirius Black somehow made his way past the Fat Lady," Lupin said quietly, walking toward her sleeping bag and kneeling down so as not to disturb the other students. "No one was hurt, and the whole matter should be resolved by morning."

Hermione tensed. "Do you believe they'll find him?"

For a moment, it looked as though Lupin were on a precipice, trying to decide whether to tell her the truth or a nice lie. "No," he said finally. "I don't think they will. He's much smarter than most people give him credit for."

And that was apparently the end of that.

Hermione was surprised yet again that night, though, by a figure sneaking across to her bag. She fingered her wand absently as they approached, knowing even as she did that no one would dare try anything in the middle of a hall of witnesses.

"Granger," a very familiar voice breathed in her ear.

She bit back a screech and lay still. "What do you want?" she bit out, hand tightening on her wand.

"I never did it," he told her, the words carrying some sort of hidden meaning. "I even came back, to look for you, but you were gone. Tell whoever found you. Tell them I saved you. You've got to remember it, Granger, it's my life we're talking about."

And then, inexplicably, he was gone.

Day came without sleep, but her hazy mind had forgotten his visit. Finally, the teachers announced affirmatively that Black was no longer in the castle and had not been caught. The students went back to their dormitories – where she discovered something that sent chills down her spine.

"It's gone, Hermione," Harry hissed to her as he stormed into the commonroom. "That's what he was after, it's gone!"

"What's gone?" she asked fearfully, not understanding what could make him so angry-

"The cloak," Harry bit out – he was holding something in his hand tightly, a crumpled note, and a locket-

"What is that?" she asked, eyes fixed on the tiny golden chain that hung from his hand.

"A trade," he said quietly, a little of the bitterness gone. "I don't know why, though, unless it's jinxed."

Hermione pried open his hand and took the note, reading quickly through it. It seemed to have been torn from something official, the parchment slightly yellowed but still very important looking-

"-that should any ill befall Lily or James Potter, this locket should be given to their son, Harry James Potter, along with the assurances that it was his mother's, and was charmed by her hand with heavy protection spells-"

And then, something scrawled at the bottom, in a completely different handwriting, tight and neat and somehow reminding her of the man she'd helped to hide.

"I'm sorry."

"I don't understand," Harry said, suddenly looking absolutely wretched. "I don't understand anything… how would he know about the cloak, how would he get his hands on this, why would he-"

Hermione felt something inside of her hurting. "I'm so sorry, Harry," she whispered. "I don't understand either." But when she checked her pocket, the key was gone.

"I remember waking up," he said quietly, looking around the room once and finding that the rest of the students had gone upstairs again. "I remember seeing him, standing over me- he looked so strange, he was just staring, like he knew me from somewhere…"

Hermione made a decision, then, and grabbed the locket from his hand, pushing it over her head. Harry let out a gasp of surprise and fear, but… it simply hung there, suspended from her neck.

"Not cursed," she said, pulling it back over her head again and handing it to him. "And delay spells are fairly easy to find, if you want me to check…"

"Why did you do that?" Harry demanded. "You don't know what he could've done to it- what if it had killed you-"

"I just had a feeling is all!" she snapped. "Look, if you want, I'll check this and give it back – I just- I just figure if you asked a teacher, they'd take it away…"

Harry was looking at her in surprise now. "Hermione," he said, sounding slightly impressed. "You're not going to hand it in?"

She flushed a bright red. "No, I'm not."

He was fiddling with the catch on the locket now, and as it opened, he stared inside.

A soft strain of music was leaking from it, a Viennese Waltz-

"It has her picture," he whispered. "Her and my dad."

Hermione moved sharply to look over his shoulder and saw that this was true. The two people weren't moving – a muggle picture?

"Is he making fun of me?" Harry asked in a miserable voice. Hermione opened her mouth instinctively to reassure him-

It was in this moment that Ron came down the stairs, his eyes moving around the room hurriedly – they fell on Hermione, and he rushed down, red-faced. "You!" he said angrily. "You- you and that bloody cat!"

She pulled back, surprised and slightly afraid. Ron stopped in front of her – he was holding something in his hand, a sheet-

"Oh," she whispered.

It was stained with blood.