Out of Time
By Rurouni Star
Two cookies! Congrats to Almaseti and Marstri for knowing their proverbs! Yes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. As for the grammar, I'm an anal obsessive-compulsive editor of both my own works and others'. It's not as fun as it sounds, but at least it turns out readable stuff.
Now this latest plot development near the end of the chapter – I really debated on it. But it was way too ironic to leave out, and very funny, in a sadistic kind of way. Have fun.
Chapter 11 – Unfogging the Future
"Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plausible it seems -- but as you approach the present, it inevitably seems incredible."
-Salman Rushdie
"Where is it?" Ron bit out, his eyes flashing. "I'll hex that stupid cat into next week- where is it?"
Harry was shoving the locket into his robe, now, looking at the sheet in a similar state of shock. "What are you talking about, Ron?" he asked, unable to see the blood. "It's a sheet-"
"Her cat killed Scabbers!" Ron snarled. "He's gone, and there's blood on the sheet, and I saw that cat leaving the dormitory as we left for the hall-"
"That's quite far enough!" Hermione hissed back. "Crookshanks has been really good lately! He hasn't so much as looked at your stupid rat!"
"So why is Scabbers gone, then?" Ron asked indignantly. "You're defending that bloody beast, I don't believe it!"
"I'll defend him all I want!" she said angrily. "He didn't do it, and you can't convince me he did!" Even though it would serve that bastard right, being eaten by a cat-
This thought inevitably lead to Sirius and the fact that he may have disappeared from the castle. It made sense immediately. Pettigrew faked it – he saw Sirius in the commonroom and decided he had to leave- Crookshanks was there to get him inside, somehow, and he'd brought the locket- Ron's right, that beast listened to him instead of me, I don't believe it-
"-and if you think I'm going to just sit here and do nothing while that pug-nosed thing goes free, you're dead wrong!"
Hermione's jaw clenched as she felt something inside of her pushing to get out. It might have been a scream or a sob – she wasn't sure. "And if you think I'm going to sit here and take this kind of abuse because of a rat that never did anything but get fat, Ron, you're insane." I've been doing nothing but stress over him and his situation right next to Pettigrew, the least he could do is not throw the first thing he can in my face…
"You're just defending that lump of a cat!" Ron yelled, scarlet faced.
"Ron, Hermione, please-" Harry hissed. "Keep it down, or people will start looking to see what it is-"
"I DON'T CARE, HER CAT KILLED SCABBERS-"
Hermione spun on her heel and pushed open the Fat Lady angrily, feeling frustrated tears in her eyes. It seemed every single person on this earth was determined to make her worry herself sick about them by the end of the week. "Shut up!" she screamed. "Shut up, you don't know what you're talking about!"
And she slammed the poor Fat Lady closed before stalking off to her little sanctuary.
Hermione swallowed as she entered it, her hands tight in fists. The room was pitch black. He wasn't here, but she wanted to kill him, he'd not listened- and he was probably cold and alone now except for his damned invisibility cloak he'd so needed.
"You bastard!" she said angrily, pushing away angry tears. "I trusted you – I trusted you-"
She collapsed into a chair, burying her face in her arms. "You could have died," she sobbed. "Why didn't you let me…"
It made sense now, all of it – the lessons in defense, the constant warnings about Peter. He'd been planning to make the switch himself the whole time, and to leave, if things went wrong… or maybe he'd been planning to leave regardless…
Hermione remained in the room for a long time, feeling chilled and exhausted and afraid. She fell asleep and woke up alone, after some amount of time she wasn't sure of.
But he never came back.
By Christmas day, Hermione found herself in a state very similar to what she'd been in before the whole thing. Buckbeak the hippogriff's case was not looking up, and she was working very hard at turning the deflection theory she'd read up on into a reality. Just because Sirius wasn't there anymore didn't mean she had to give up learning how to defend herself.
Harry was delighted with his present, but Ron had been pointedly ignoring her for weeks and didn't even open his. Fred and George were amazed that she'd even thought to get them anything, but they proudly proclaimed her set of indoor fireworks their best presents yet.
And then, there was the last present of Harry's. A brand new Firebolt, the newest and greatest broom sensation. Ron almost forgot to be nasty to her as he took it in, staring unabashedly.
"Who do you think it's from?" the red-haired boy whispered in awe.
Hermione snorted and buried her head in her book on Hippogriff habits, inwardly feeling tired and slightly hurt as she tried not to think about where Sirius might have been at the moment. Harry probably knew, or at least suspected, who it was from, but she'd not put it past him to use the thing anyway. She was right, of course. He took it to the next practice with him.
McGonnagal wanted to confiscate it after the first time he used it – the woman seemed to have the same suspicions, for different reasons. But after it having been used for hours with no ill effects, she couldn't find any good reason to do so.
She wondered sometimes where Pettigrew had gone – worried about it every spare minute, actually. But she didn't have the map, and she couldn't ask Sirius about any places in the castle he might be hiding. Lupin was, as usual, out of the question. A thrill of doom went through her every time rats were mentioned, as though there were a time bomb ticking somewhere in her stomach.
Lupin was once again looking concerned for her during classes, though he said nothing. Hermione found herself in the library more often than not these days, trying to either find that paragraph that would save Buckbeak or learn some kind of jinx that blinded one's senses.
"Hagrid," she said weakly one time, as she visited his hut and dumped a new load of vaguely hopeful data onto him. "I'm so sorry, I just can't seem to find anything good-" And the next moment, she was crying, tired tears pouring down her face as the poor man rocked her back and forth comfortingly.
"You been doin' a great job," Hagrid told her confidently. "Bucky migh' even have a chance, with all o' this."
"I-it's just I've been so b-busy," she sobbed, ignoring his comforting words. "C-classes and Ron and his s-stupid rat-"
"He still goin' on abou' that?" Hagrid asked with a frown.
"He thinks Crookshanks killed him, but I know he didn't-"
"How d'yeh know tha'?" Hagrid asked in surprise.
She sniffled and tried to remember what she'd told Harry. "W-well, there was blood on the sheet- and Crookshanks didn't have any on him, and he still ate n-normally…"
The Care of Magical Creatures teacher frowned. "I'll give 'em a talkin' to, Hermione, don' worry-"
"No!" she burst out, surprising herself.
Hagrid looked curiously at her and she shrank. "I just- I don't want him pretending to be nice just because you tell him to…"
The tall man sighed. "If that's what yeh want, I won' say anythin'." He didn't look at all happy about it, though.
Hermione went back to the room again later that night, sitting in the darkness and trying to get hold of herself before having to go back. She wondered how Sirius was doing. She was angry with him for taking that awful risk, but she still wondered if he'd been eating all right, if he'd found somewhere to stay…
She'd drifted off before she could stop herself.
"It's awful, Hermione, he was staying in a cave, eating rats! I wish he'd never come, I wish he'd stayed wherever it was he'd been before- he sounded a lot happier then-"
"And he's dead, and it's my fault, I should have listened to you-"
"Hermione?"
"Hermione?"
"I miss you so much, Sirius…" A choked sob.
She sat up with a gasp, clutching at her chest. For the strangest moment, she'd thought Sirius was dead.
"Maybe he is," she whispered to herself uncertainly. "For all I know, he might be…"
Hermione left the room darkened, as she'd found it, and hurried along the corridors toward the common room.
But for some strange, inexplicable reason, she wasn't going to the common room. No, her steps were taking her elsewhere, as though her feet knew better than she where she was going…
I need something to take my mind off of all of this… she thought desperately. Maybe if I found Malfoy, I could hex him – sort of satisfying, even if it is utterly stupid and impulsive and against the rules…
But then, she saw a door – inset with glass and glowing slightly, as though there were something inside, waiting…
She pushed it open, completely aware that she was being stupid. Then gasped as her hand slipped off of the handle.
Books. Films – old films, and a projector – and something that looked like a record player…
The projector was going, casting a shadow of a dancing couple onto the wall opposite it. Hermione walked toward it, mesmerized, as she recognized their steps as a variation on the single box step she knew…
"Viennese Waltz," she choked out, laughing. "What an awful coincidence!"
It was beautiful – refined – the two people floated across the screen as though by magic. But it wasn't magic making them rise and fall like a sigh. Hermione recognized an extreme level of muscle coordination, upper body strength, and supreme grace.
There were footprints trailing on the floor in imitation. She realized then that someone was obviously meant to follow them.
"Me?" she muttered, confused. "But why would I want to learn how to dance…" The answer came a moment later. She'd been looking for a distraction, and here it was. Something interesting to learn, even if it wasn't strictly book knowledge.
"Well then," she said brightly, "No time like the present."
By the time she'd gotten back to the commonroom, Hermione was wondering just how someone could hurt so much from trying to learn posture. Of course, she'd worked on it before (a little bit, a tiny bit) but now she was beginning to think she knew the true meaning of sore.
She'd started on Waltz – the normal one – and quickly found she had no idea what she was doing. There wasn't just a box, of course, there was something called a change step, too, where you kept going backward in half boxes…
Hermione fervently hoped no one would ever test her on her dancing. She loved trying to learn it, but she didn't fancy falling over someone else's feet in public.
She calmly ignored Ron as she went up the stairs to her bed, and he did the same to her. They'd learned something of the proper procedure for this sort of thing by now.
She couldn't help imagining, though, surprising Sirius as she asked him to dance. You? he'd say. But you don't know how!
And then, of course, Hermione would do the Viennese Waltz perfectly, gliding like the woman in the film, all over the floor…
A snort escaped her as she realized she was daydreaming far ahead of where she currently was. It would be nice to shock him, of course, but she hardly had time to learn such a thing, and so far she hadn't seemed to progress very well in it.
No, she'd work on Buckbeak's trial first…
Exams were fast approaching when she got the news.
An owl flew in the window of her dormitory, catching her eye, and Hermione gasped as she read the hurriedly scrawled note at the bottom.
Dear Hermione,
We lost. I'm allowed to bring him back to Hogwarts. Execution date to be fixed. Beaky has enjoyed London. I won't forget all the help you gave us.
Hagrid.
She rushed down the stairs, intent on seeing Hagrid immediately, but ran smack into someone. Hermione groaned and clutched her head in her hands, seeing stars.
"Sorry- oh. It's you." Ron's voice sent an angry shudder through her.
"I- I suppose you wouldn't want to come anyway," she burst out, surprising herself with a teary voice. "But you ought to know- Buckbeak's lost the trial."
What followed was something even she couldn't quite comprehend. A blur of apologies and tears that she hadn't known she possessed. "We'll help for the appeal," Ron was promising fervently. "You won't do it alone this time."
Harry's hand patted her on the back consolingly, and she realized he was there too. "We'll talk to him tomorrow, in class," he told her. "You look like you need the rest, though."
Hermione deflated. "Yes. Yes, I suppose I do…"
But sleep was hard to find that night, and she found herself slipping into the strange room yet again, learning how to do a brush twinkle the best she could without a partner and finding things were coming easier now. When she heard the bell that rang for breakfast, Hermione blinked and wondered idly whether she'd last the day. It reminded her a bit of a fairy tale her mother had read her a long time ago, called the Twelve Dancing Princesses…
Missing a fairy prince to that one, though, aren't I? she thought wryly as she walked down to breakfast, a light sheen of sweat on her face.
Being outside during Care of Magical Creatures kept her awake admirably well. They talked to Hagrid, but he didn't seem very optimistic at all about Buckbeak's appeal. Hermione left with an unhappy lump in her stomach, but this didn't make her miss the obvious laughter from behind her…
"Look at him blubber!" Malfoy crowed. "Have you ever seen anything so quite as pathetic-"
An intense anger bubbled inside her, a hatred that was more intense than anything she'd felt in a good long while- she'd walked up to him, she realized. Her hand was raised-
SMACK.
"You bastard," she hissed at him. "You're sending an innocent creature off to die because of nothing-"
Malfoy was staring at her in surprise and perhaps a bit of alarm. Because Hermione Granger the mudblood never fought back, she always put her head down and walked away without a fight…
Ron and Harry were holding her back now. There was a red mark staining Malfoy's pale white face, and he glared at her. "You ought to be more grateful, Granger," he told her angrily. "If it hadn't been for me…" he trailed off, apparently realizing he didn't want to say what he had.
"What?" Hermione asked, her anger making her shudder. "If it weren't for you, my hand wouldn't hurt!"
But he was walking away hurriedly now, with his cronies behind him. Hermione gritted her teeth and thrashed in Harry and Ron's grip. "Let me after him, I'll hex him into nothing-"
"Hermione!" said Ron, sounding impressed. "I didn't know you had it in you!"
She glared at him. "I mean it. Let me go and I'll-"
"Charms!" Harry gasped. "We're late!"
Hermione's eyes widened, and she involuntarily looked down at her timeturner. She'd have to go to Arithmancy-
Harry and Ron released her, going at a run, but she slipped the turner out of her shirt and flipped it twice, giving her time to get to the class…
In Arithmancy, though, her lack of sleep was beginning to catch up with her. She caught herself drifting more than once, and only barely made it up to the dormitory to pick up her Charms textbook…
"Oh," she said tiredly, setting the Arithmancy book down on the commonroom desk. "Oh, I'm so tired… what chapter did we do today, I need to… need to check…"
She only managed to turn to the nineteenth chapter before dropping her head to the page, staring at the words. She could still see them from here, even if they were swimming a little… no need to not rest her head… and maybe she could let her eyes stay closed a little longer, they were just becoming so uncomfortable…
Hermione was only vaguely aware when someone behind her chuckled – the book below her cheek slid away gently, and someone warm was picking her up, walking up some stairs…
"Have I been asking too much of you?" he asked her quietly as he set her beneath her covers. Hermione shifted with a sigh, only really half awake, and felt her breathing begin to regulate again as someone brushed the hair away from her face, warm fingers lingering just a little longer than normal. "I'm sorry."
She smiled in her half-awake state, feeling something awful that had settled into her chest disappear. "N'ta problem," she sighed, knowing as she did so that she wouldn't remember anything of this when she woke.
He seemed to freeze for a minute before figuring out she wasn't really awake. "Right then, off to sleep," he murmured with amusement. "What've you been doing without me to make you get some rest…"
Hermione fell asleep, then, to a soft blanket against her cheek and a blissful feeling of completed weariness within her.
"This is my pensieve, yes, Miss Granger. The memories inside are not all mine, however – Professor Snape has kindly donated a few of his, as did Sirius, before he left us."
"Why do I need to look into the pensieve?" she was asking, puzzled and not a little bit distressed at the almost casual way Dumbledore talked about Sirius being… being…
"You'll find a common theme soon enough, I expect."
And she was falling, losing herself, seeing something else…
Waking up was disorienting.
Partially because she was not sitting at a table reading her Arithmancy book. No, in point of fact, Hermione was snuggled in her own bed, smiling dreamily at something-
Oh.
That dream had been so odd, though. She knew she should have known what a pensieve was – she'd heard of it somewhere, probably in some book or other. But whatever it was, why would Dumbledore be showing it to her? And what did Snape have to do with all of this? And why- why had Dumbledore talked so casually about Sirius as though he knew he were innocent, and then as though something had happened to him
Hermione shuddered and chalked it up as a bad dream. She was still allowed to have normal bad dreams, wasn't she? She threw the covers off, rubbing at her arms as she felt herself suddenly go cold.
The next moment, Hermione's eyes widened. "Oh no, Charms-"
She flew down the stairs, pulling her book with her and hustling through the corridors, wondering how much she'd missed-
"Miss Granger?" Flitwick's surprised voice said as she burst in the door, gasping. "Is something wrong?"
Hermione almost sobbed as she noticed that the room was empty. "Oh no, I missed it, didn't I?"
Flitwick laughed. "I should hardly think so, at noon. Aren't you supposed to be at lunch, Miss Granger?"
Lunch?
She gaped at him before he made a quick shooing motion at her, and Hermione hurried outside, closing the door behind her.
I must've gone back too far… but no, that's impossible, I would've been in the wrong Arithmancy class then…
The concept unsettled her more than a little as she walked down to lunch. Food was sounding rather good, actually.
Hermione was just beginning to think that things might be looking up a bit when she got to Divination.
She should have known better than to turn optimistic so soon.
As Hermione entered the room, coughing and waving away the incense smoke that was trying to worm its way into her nose and mouth, she looked around for Harry and Ron. They were sitting at a table together, looking tiredly at a crystal ball in the center of the table.
"Oh no," she muttered as she sat down next to them, the warm air and hissing whispers of smoke already making her drowsy. "She's starting us on crystal gazing?"
Ron sighed miserably. "Yeah, I know. I looked through the chapter-" Hermione stared at him, jaw slack at the idea of Ron actually reading something independently, "-and it looks like more of that usual mumbo-jumbo. Open your mind and all that bunk."
Hermione resisted the urge to toss their ball out a window, annoyed. "This class is so useless-" she hissed at them, meaning to say more but being forced to stop as Trelawny appeared from the back of the room, seemingly out of nowhere.
"I have decided to introduce the crystal ball a little earlier than I had planned," she told them mistily. "The fates have informed me that your examination in June will concern the orb, and I am anxious to give you sufficient practice."
Hermione snorted to herself, but said nothing. Honestly, the fates… Trelawny was the one that set the exam!
The woman was still talking, but she didn't bother to listen. Hermione set her chin in her palm and stared into the swirling white mist of the crystal ball instead. It was almost soothing, the way it rose and fell in waves… if nothing else, the thing was worth a bit of mental relaxation.
Hermione amused herself by trying to find shapes in the ball, like in clouds… yes, there, that – that looked a lot like a dog. Maybe if the eyes were more defined, she could see it as a wolf of some sort… oh look, the eyes were coming into focus…
She blinked lazily as she saw the dog-cloud changing, turning into a man- Sirius, it looked like, a Sirius that looked just as wild and untamed as she'd found him. And though seeing something like this would have been considered very unusual by her standards at any other time, now Hermione found it was a very normal thing to her mind. The girl continued staring, watching as he held another man by the collar, threatening him with a wand, eyes burning madly…
But it was twisting, turning hazy before her eyes, and before she could focus more on it, it melted away, to become something entirely different. The wolf, beneath the full moon, but it was unmoving because the man Sirius had been throttling before had done something to it, his eyes burning with a strange, fervent light… and there was her, too, she wasn't moving, she was lying beside the wolf as though she were dead…
"Miss Granger?" Trelawny's voice cut through her dreamy musings. "Would you care to read the crystal ball?"
Hermione sighed, still feeling strangely detached, and looked at it again. The swirling mist was back, but it was coalescing again…
"Mm," she murmured, eyeing the mist. It was changing into a twisting snake – a skull – something burning-
She knew, however unfocused she was, that this was a very bad sign. But somehow, her mouth didn't agree with her. "It looks like a skull," she said, eyelids drooping, vaguely aware that Harry and Ron were now staring at her, alarmed. Because Hermione didn't believe in any Divination mumbo-jumbo, she didn't think it held any significance… "And a snake," she continued. "No, the snake is its tongue… strange, that… it's hissing at me now, I don't think it's happy…"
A dread silence had descended on the room, but no one interrupted her. They watched, listened in horrified fascination. "The snake is trying to get out, but it can't," she said. "It wants to bite me, but it's stuck inside the ball… it's waiting for the rat." She didn't know how she knew this, but she did.
Hermione blinked, then felt her mind clear. She shook her head, sitting up and rubbing at her eyes. She'd seen something, maybe she'd found a funny shape, like with clouds…
"I'm sorry," she said to the Professor, who was standing above her. "There's nothing but a bunch of white fog. I think I drifted off for a moment, actually."
Harry and Ron were staring at her, slack-jawed. She felt herself become annoyed. "Oh, it's not like one of you two doesn't do it every so often!" she snapped.
"N-no, Hermione," Ron stuttered. "Didn't you just- don't you know what you just said-?"
She frowned. "I didn't say anything. The heat must be getting to you."
"My dear!" Professor Trelawny was saying, sounding impressed. "You have just seen!"
Hermione narrowed her eyes. "I very much doubt that," she said sarcastically, "seeing as I don't have an ounce of talent."
Wait.
Trelawny hadn't said that. That had been one of her strange visions.
Visions! No, it wasn't possible! Had she been seeing the future, the whole time? Hermione felt a shudder wrack her suddenly, and she stood up hurriedly, feeling the blood rush from her face. No. It wasn't possible. Divination was stupid, and imprecise- it wasn't true!
"This class is rubbish!" she gasped. "I'm leaving! I'm leaving!"
No one moved to stop her as she ran out of the room, slamming the trap door behind her.