BITTERSWEET
Chapter 3: Through Time
September 1977
Hermione had taken a step back to get away from Draco. She remembered stumbling over her trunk, then pitching forward while trying to catch her balance. She thought she heard something smash as she began to hit the floor, but the floor stopped being there. Hermione was vaguely concerned about the crash she heard, but that became the least of her worries.
The world seemed to be spinning around her. Hermione shut her eyes, feeling like she was both falling and flying at the same time. The endless vortex engulfed her, and then it stopped. Hermione's first thought was that she wasn't on the floor anymore. She had landed on something soft. Hermione opened her eyes to find herself staring into a pair of dark brown eyes.
Remus, Sirius, Peter and James were on the train to Hogwarts discussing the upcoming Quidditch season when a striking redhead appeared in the door of their compartment.
"Lily!" James exclaimed, quickly getting to his feet and trying to run a casual hand through his messy black hair. "What brings you here?"
"Nothing that you should be concerned with," she said, coolly appraising him. "Remus," she said, turning to shaggy brown-haired boy trying to hide his snickers at James being turned down yet again. "Dumbledore would like the former prefects to come to his office at some point during the first day so he can explain to us our duties in training this year's Gryffindor prefects."
"Alright," Remus said, looking slightly pleased at this addition to his responsibilities. James and Sirius just rolled their eyes at the way Remus always seemed so eager for more work. Sure, they managed to get nearly perfect grades themselves, but none of the other students needed to know that: they had a reputation to uphold as the two most mischievous, laid-back, sought after boys at Hogwarts. James and Sirius could have their pick of any of the girls in the school, most of whom were throwing themselves at their feet in an effort to get a date with one of them. Sirius enjoyed the attention, but James' heart was set on the one girl who didn't really seem to care whether he existed or not. Remus, however, was slightly different in that he was a marauder, but the most responsible of the four of them, always concentrating on his schoolwork and achieving higher honors such as prefect instead of maintaining the bad boy image James and Sirius were proud of.
Lily was the other Gryffindor prefect last year. Sexy and sophisticated, she had half of the boys at Hogwarts drooling after her, none so much as James. The only problem was she didn't seem to care for any of them. Although drop dead gorgeous, she was extremely innocent and a bookworm with the top grades of their year, rivaled only by Remus.
James tried once again to get Lily's attention before she turned away and left. "Uh, Lily," he stammered, "um, uh, how long was your summer potions essay?" he finished lamely. Sirius tried to turn his laugh into a cough, but ended up with a snort that didn't fool anyone.
Lily was turning to give them a piercing stare from her emerald green eyes when she was suddenly distracted from her current train of thought. Even James' mouth dropped open in amazement when a beautiful brunette materialized on Sirius' lap.
Sirius immediately lost his air of suaveness and nearly dropped the girl that had managed to fall so perfectly into his arms. He was peering down to get a better look at her when her chocolate eyes opened and started into his. To say that she freaked out would be a bit of an understatement.
"Oh, my god!" she shrieked, leaping out of Sirius' lap. "Who are you and what have you done with Harry and Ron?"
Remus gave her a quizzical stare. "There's nobody here by either one of those names." She turned around to look at him, her eyes falling on James in the process.
"Harry!" she cried. "I was getting so worried that something happened! Thank god you're here."
"I'm not Harry," he said. "My name is James. James Potter, to be exact."
Hermione gasped as the full impact of what he said hit her. If this boy really was James Potter, then that meant...
Her hand flew up to her neck and she paled considerable when she felt the gold chain around her neck with only a few shards of glass attached. Lily had been watching her, and she recognized the familiar sparkle, as she had one herself for her schedule.
"It broke." Lily said, a statement and not a question.
"Yes," Hermione replied, surprised. "But how did you..." Lily responded by pulling her own time-turner out from underneath her shirt.
"Holy shit!" Sirius yelled, looking from Hermione to Lily and back again. "Not only did you have a time-turner, but you were wearing it when it broke?"
Light dawned in James' eyes as he finally understood what happened. His face went white. "You mean that... oh, my god."
"I know that it is against the law to do anything in the past that may alter the future while using the time-turner, but do you think you could tell us what happened to you?" Lily asked.
Hermione looked at each one of them, and saw that they were sincere and cared what brought her to them. Making up her mind, she took a deep breath, and nodded. "Okay. I was on the train with my two best friends, Harry and Ron, and Ron's little sister, Ginny." She decided to omit the fact the Harry just happened to be James' son, as that little piece of information could have drastic consequences. "Our enemy, Draco, came into our compartment and called me--" she hesitated, then said the word. "He called me a mudblood."
Sirius' eyes darkened in fury at the boy from the future who dared to insult the lovely female that had landed on his lap.
"That's what Lucius and Snape call me all the time," Lily murmured, her dislike for the marauders forgotten in the light of this new event. Hermione's eyes widened, as she realized that Draco's father and their hated potions teacher went to school in this time also.
"Continue, please," Remus said, breaking into her thoughts. He looked eager at hearing more of the events that brought her to their time.
"Let her take her time," Sirius responded.
"It's okay," Hermione said. "I'm ready to continue. Ron was trying to attack Draco, and I was trying to keep him from fighting so he wouldn't break any rules."
"Sounds like you, Lily," James interrupted. Lily's green eyes flashed with annoyance as she turned to glare at him, before giving her attention back to the strange girl who had appeared so suddenly from the future.
"I was hoping Draco would leave, not that he ever does, but I didn't want to get into a fight this time," Hermione continued. "He's normally just kept to insults, but today he started making, um, sexual comments towards me. He was stepping closer to me, and I got out my wand to keep him back. I was going to hex him, but I tripped over my friend's owl cage and, well, you know the rest." She paused. "Oh, I almost forgot. My name is Hermione Granger. I go to Hogwarts in my time--I'm in Gryffindor. And your names are Lily, James, Sirius, Remus, and Peter."
A stunned silence greeted the end of her words. Remus was the first one to break it. "How--how did you--" he started.
She cut him off. "I knew some of you in my time, I knew of the others, and I've heard the stories. That's all I'm going to say, so don't even bother trying to find out more." She flashed them a lopsided smile.
"I wonder how much she knows," Sirius muttered to James.
"That depends on who was doing the telling," he whispered back. Sirius nodded in assent, then turned back to Hermione who was still standing next to Lily.
"We aren't going to hurt you, you know," he said, trying to calm her nervousness at being in an unfamiliar time. "Have a seat, relax, and we'll take you to Dumbledore as soon as we get to Hogwarts. In the meantime, the four of us can fill you in on everything you need to know about the school in our time. Wow, I still find it amazing that you go to Hogwarts in the future. At least you're a Gryffindor." He patted the seat next to him. She tentatively sat down. James looked at Lily with a hopeful expression, but her face told him that the only reason she continued to stay with them was Hermione, and there was no chance she would be sitting down next to him.
Sirius began to tell Hermione everything she would need to survive in their time, with the James and Remus jumping in every now and then. As they talked, Hermione told them what she already knew so they wouldn't have to keep too many secrets, but she was careful not to say anything unless she was sure it had already happened for fear of changing the future, her time, beyond recognition.
While Sirius talked, Hermione's mind wandered back to that instant when she had landed on Sirius' lap. Her first thought when she opened her eyes, before her mind even registered that she was sitting on an unfamiliar boy, was that Sirius was hot. Although her position was uncomfortably close to him, it sort of felt nice. She liked the way his arms held her protectively. Hermione had never really had any experience with boys. Sure, there was Viktor, but she was only fourteen and they never really did anything beyond going to the Yule Ball together. He was more of a good friend to her, although she could sometimes sense that he wanted more.
Hermione had never before experienced the feelings she did in that brief instant when she was on Sirius' lap. When she leaped up, the spell was broken. Privately, she had wanted that moment to stretch on for a while.
Hermione mentally berated herself. 'This is Sirius Black we're talking about. Sirius Black. Harry's bloody godfather, for Merlin's sake.' Still, she had to admit that he was handsome. There was no getting around it: at this age, Sirius Black was sexy. And that adorable smile of his...
Hermione snapped back to reality to find herself listening to Sirius tell her about one of the marauders many escapades. He had gotten to proudly boasting about the marauder's map the four of them had created, when he realized they had forgotten all about Peter.
"Oh!" he started. "We forgot all about Peter!" James and Remus looked guilty, and Lily had a look of disgust on her face.
"I've never really liked Peter," she whispered, leaning over to Hermione. James' eyes caught the way her luxuriant red hair fell across her face. "James and Sirius, they're just full of themselves," she continued, "but something about Peter has always rubbed me the wrong way." Hermione started to nod in assent, then realized that she shouldn't know too much about Peter.
"Peter, well, he's the fourth marauder," Sirius continued. "He's, well..." Sirius and James exchanged a glance.
"He's a nice boy," Remus added, "but sometime he tries too hard to be accepted." Hermione bit back a comment about Peter's true nature, trying her hardest to look like she knew nothing of his future.
"Anyway, back to our adventures!" Sirius said brightly. Lily rolled her eyes and began scribbling on a piece of parchment.
Sirius continued to tell Hermione all about the professors, the students, everyone, and Hermione made an effort to remember all of the information, although her mind was still reeling from being so abruptly taken out of her own time and placed in another. Lily was just trying to be civil to James and Sirius, although she seemed to have no trouble liking Remus. However, when James started bragging about the narrow scrapes they had gotten themselves into and out of with the help of his invisibility cloak, Lily suddenly whirled around and began to stalk away, tossing a folded sheet of parchment into Hermione's lap as she went.
"Oh, you never change!" she threw back over her shoulder. "It's always about you and your ego, isn't it? You make me sick, Potter!"
James looked stunned. He laughed nervously. "What's her problem?" he said, trying to act as if it didn't matter to him, but looking like Lily hit him,
Sirius clapped James on his back. "One of these days, James. She actually talked with you this time!"
James brightened briefly, then looked glum again. As silence fell on their compartment, Hermione took the chance to read the note Lily gave her. "Hermione," it said, "I can just imagine how you might be feeling right now. Stuck in the past, not knowing how to get home. Also, I assume that you know our futures, and you have the terrible burden of secrecy upon you. I, too, have a time-turner for my studies. I know the dangers that come with traveling in time. You seem like a wonderful person, Hermione. Smart and kind, I can already tell that we're going to get along great. I hope that you are placed into Gryffindor in this time, so that we have that chance to get to know each other. I apologize for my rude exit; I cannot stand Potter and Black. You seem to like them, so I'll try not to say anything bad about them right now. But I can tell that the two of us are going to be soul mates. We're so much alike, it's scary--we're both muggle-born, we enjoy our schoolwork, we get top grades (I'm assuming so, anyway, because of the fact that you were deemed responsible enough to have a time-turner), and we both have very strong personalities. There's so much I want to talk to you about, sometime when we're alone! Find me when you get to the Great Hall. --Lily." Hermione looked up, a smile on her face as she refolded the note and placed it in her pocket. Lily sounded so much like her; it was an incredible coincidence. Who would have thought that Harry's mother would be like this?
The thought stuck her. 'Harry's mother? Sweet Merlin... But Lily hates James with a passion! What happened?' The idea that she was here, with Harry's parents and their friends, Sirius Black next to her and Remus Lupin, her professor in another time, across from her, was almost to ludicrous to even think about.
"Hermione?" Sirius asked gently, his voice breaking into her thoughts. "We'll have to take you to Dumbledore when we get to Hogwarts, but for now you can just relax and enjoy the ride." He moved his arm so that it rested softly on Hermione's shoulders. Without thinking, she leaned into him, responding unconsciously to his touch as she laid her head on his shoulder and shut her eyes.
James and Remus looked on in disbelief. Sirius, notorious player, sexiest male at Hogwarts, the one boy who was content to sit back and let the girls fawn over him instead of chasing them, was taken with the mysterious brunette from another time.
"Hey, Remus," James said. "Looks like our Sirius has finally found a girl he wants to settle with." Sirius glared at him as a faint blush crept up his cheeks, but didn't say anything back so he wouldn't wake the beautiful female asleep against his side.
