Sirius: 18
Remus: 22
Threesome: 4

Wow...that kiss got an overwhelming turnout for RL/HG shippers. But remember everybody – nothing is set in stone...we're only ten chapters in.

To Gayle: You're right. I went back and looked over what I'd written, and you're absolutely right. Now I dislike her too, lol. I shall try and correct my error in the future chapters, thought the triangle is an important part of the ending so I can't kill it completely. We'll just make her a little more conscientious and non-headgame-y, shall we?

Schedule:

Next chapter: Hogsmeade trip

Chapter after: Fast forward a couple weeks? Find out about what that parchment said. Will be LONG chapter. – get pumped.


Hermione held on tight, for if she didn't she feared she'd fall right out of his arms. He kissed her hard and deep with a passion that made her skin burn and her toes curl. But all good things must come to an end. When their need for oxygen became too great, Sirius pulled away with one last caress to her cheek.

"Hermione?" His warm breath burned on her flushed skin. "Hermione?"

Her eyes fluttered open, and she looked up at him with eyes glossy and lips bruised red. "Sirius..." she murmured, having a difficult time forming any sort of words at all.

"We should go back?" His raised voice at the end made it a question. His hands on her waist on the look in his dark eyes begged her to stay.

She swallowed, her throat suddenly dry, and cleared it. "Yeah...the others will be worried..."

She slipped off his feet and sunk a little into the sand. Sirius let her go.

This is wrong. This shouldn't have happened!

"Turn around," she told him.

"What?"

"I'm wet, my clothes are going to be clingy – turn around," she insisted.

Sirius bit back his laughter and did as she instructed, listening carefully to the slosh of water as she climbed back onto the bank and the odd suctioning sound as she peeled the clothes away from her skin.

"Are you decent?" he teased.

"Oh, just get out already," she griped.

Sirius turned around and was met with a long length of leg. Hermione was wringing out her skirt, and by the frustrated look on her face it wasn't making much difference.

He climbed out as well and tried to squeeze the water out of his pants. He took his robe and used it rub his hair dry. He offered it to Hermione, but she declined it saying, "It'll make my hair poofy".

She stuffed her socks in her shoes and threw her robes over her arm, grabbing the picnic basket, and then waiting for Sirius to do the same before they started the walk back up to the castle.

Dumbledore'd be furious if he found out. She groaned inwardly. I probably just killed Harry's parents before he was born or something.

Halfway up the stone path, Sirius put his arm over Hermione's shivering shoulders, but she stepped out of it by picking up her pace and admonishing him for making her stay out too late.

This is all such a mess...

Having created a dripping ruin that Filch would be furious over from the entrance to Gryffindor Tower, Sirius stepped back to hold the portrait door open for Hermione and she slipped inside. Sirius followed after.

Hermione had made it halfway through the common room before she was spotted.

"HERMIONE?"

She waved weakly at Harry's face appearing over the back of the couch. "Hullo, Harry." The others' faces appeared as well. "Hullo everyone."

"What the hell happened to you?" Ron interjected. "You look like a drowned cat."

Hermione glared at him. "Thanks, Ronald."

"We went for a little swim," Sirius commented causally, brushing back his long hair.

"In your clothes?" Lily cried in disbelief.

"Blame him," Hermione said blandly, and chucked the picnic basket at the smirking Sirius, who looked incredibly too pleased with himself. He caught it easily and tossed it off to James, who, consequently, got hit in the head and almost knocked out of the chair.

"I'm going to get cleaned up," Hermione informed them and disappeared into her Head Girl quarters without a backwards glance.

"So, Padfoot," James said slowly, taking the opportunity of catching Sirius alone. He was grinning from ear to ear. "You weren't at dinner."

"No, I wasn't," he agreed with a jovial smile. Kicking Harry's legs off the coffee table he propped his own up on the wooden furniture piece and slouched down into the couch.

James looked aghast. "Were you doing something untoward with our dear Miss Granger?"

"Blimey!" Ron gagged. "That's my best mate you're talking about."

Sirius and James both laughed heartily. "I never kiss and tell," Sirius guffawed snatching some ice mice from Lily.

"You didn't kiss her," Remus told him confidently. Sirius was a ladies' man, but he couldn't have gotten to Hermione, right?

Sirius just waggled his eyebrows.

Remus cursed his own slowness.

"It doesn't matter anyways," Lily announced primly. "Because Hermione will tell me everything."

"Yeah right, babe," James teased, flipping her immaculately straight hair over her head.

"Squeaky clean!" Hermione called loudly, bounding back into the room. She'd changed into a plain set of navy shorts and a white t-shirt, with her thigh-length, canary colored bathrobe loosely tied around her middle.

"You shower too quickly," Harry complained. "We were just getting to the juicy details."

He wouldn't tell everyone, would he?

Hermione's sharp eyes drifted to Sirius – whose look of innocence was too fake to be believable – and she smiled faintly. "I'm sure," she drawled, her words practically dripping sarcasm.

"Do you even own a nightgown, Hermione?" Lily blurted out in exasperation.

Hermione stopped halfway through a chocolate frog and its enchanted legs writhed between her lips. "Excuse me?" she mumbled through a mouthful of candy. She looked down at her pajamas.

Lily looked disgusted. "I think you've spent way too much time with the boys."

"And what's wrong with that?" Hermione laughed, slurping the frog's legs into her mouth while Ron laughed at her.

"Where's your feminine side?" Lily asked, incredulous.

Hermione grabbed another frog and glanced downwards at herself. "I'm pretty sure it's at the front."

The boys howled with laughter, while Lily became increasingly frustrated. Smacking James, she put her hands on her hips and frowned disapprovingly at Hermione who was laughing raucously.

"I'm serious!"

Sirius winked at her. "You can be me if you'd like, Lils," he teased.

A headless chocolate frog squirming in Hermione's fingers, she flopped down onto the corner of the couch where Harry was sitting. Putting her back to the armrest (and Lily), she stretched her legs out over Harry's lap and wrapped her arms around his neck.

"Oh, Harry," she bemoaned dramatically, pressing her face into his shoulder.

"You smell like strawberries," he told her, randomly changing topics.

Hermione pulled away to bat her eyes coquettishly. "Really? Oh I was so frightfully hoping you'd notice," she gushed, earning snickers from their audience.

"It's very feminine," Harry said seriously. He nodded his head sagely.

"You think so!" The sound she made was squealing sort-of high pitched yip that made Remus and his highly sensitive hearing wince. "Does that mean you love me now?"

Harry's lips were twitching to stay serious as he looked thoughtfully down into Hermione's wide and expectantly adoring eyes. "A bigger chest wouldn't hurt," he answered after much 'hmm'ing and 'huh'ing. "That'd make you more feminine."

"I can do that!" She insisted vehemently. "Really!" Her hands fluttered across his chest. "Anything you want, darling," she cooed.

"Kiss me!" He exclaimed dramatically.

Hermione fanned herself. "Oh my! You're such a charmer!"

Wrapping his arms around her waist, he lowered a ridiculously puckered face on her and she half-screamed half-laughed, pushing him away with one hand and shoving her half-eaten chocolate frog into his fishy mouth.

Chomping contentedly on his chocolaty reward, Harry resettled Hermione on his lap and draped his arms over her legs. When the group's laughter finally receded, Sirius put on his most pitiful face and tweaked one of Hermione's toes.

"You kicked me you know," he complained. "With all that flailing about."

"Aww," she cooed sympathetically. "That wasn't very ladylike of me, was it?" she asked, looking slyly at Lily.

"I give up!" The redhead exacerbated, throwing her hands up into the air and, consequently, hitting her boyfriend in the face. James just wasn't having a very good night.

"Seems you're a lost cause, best friend Hermione," Ron mused. He shook his hair out of eyes and rooted through the pile of sweets on the table.

"Really?" She had to lean her head back over the armrest to look at Ron and the upside-down view of him was rather disorienting. "That's the cause I've always wanted to be."

He crawled over to her and dangled a licorice wand temptingly in front of her. "You know," he said, taking a big bite out of the candy before she could grab it. "Harry never lets me sit on his lap."

"You're missing out," she said off-handily, snitching the licorice right out of his mouth. "Very comfy."

Ron chuckled as she happily finished off the candy wand and fell back against Harry. Used to having to work around her legs, Harry expertly reached for an acid pop and Hermione unwrapped it for him. Sirius cleared his throat, and Hermione – sleepy eyes closed – took it as a sign that she was kicking him again, so she curled her feet around Harry's legs and sighed softly. Ron however was eyeing the annoyed look on Sirius' face directed towards his two friends.

"It's getting a bit late, we should go to bed." Remus' voice was tight. When Ron glanced over at him, he could barely contain his amusement as he saw the lycan frowning at Hermione's back.

Ron shook his head. They'd probably never understand Hermione. Completely alienated from the bubble-headed females of their year and best friends with two males had, over the years, turned Hermione into a guy's gal. She was most comfortable around and in the company of guys. So far as he knew, his little sister was her only female friend (and probably Lily now too).

Circumstances had made her that way, and she filled her position as 'one of the guys' with gusto. Lily had hit the niffler right on the head – Hermione spent all her time with him and especially Harry. She'd once told the bespectacled boy that if he'd been gay it would have been TV show perfect. As it was, they were inseparably close and without doubt would be for the rest of their lives.

They were something Ron could always count on: Harry and Hermione; never one without the other. They would always be together – never dating – just together. It was a comforting constant in a life of inconsistency.

Of course, to his knowledge she'd never had any blokes interested in, much less two, and that made her behavior, personality, and relationship with Harry and himself much more easily misunderstood. At any rate, it was going to be amusing to watch.

The subject of his thoughts yawned and it was clear she was getting drowsy. Instead, she murmured; "I wanna sit by the fire a little longer."

Chuckling, Harry patted her knee and threw his other arm over the back of the couch. "I guess that means I'm staying too."

"Mmm hmm," she mumbled through a grin.

"Well, she has gotten all situated..." James reasoned, cracking a smile. He never could be serious.

"It would help," she sighed. "if Remus and Sirius would stop glaring at me."

She opened one eye, smiling faintly at the varied looks of embarrassment and amusement on the faces of her friends. She stretched, pushing her toes into Sirius' side and brushing her fingertips against the table lamp behind her. "Alrighty," she yawned. "Bedtime."

"Finally," Harry exaggerated. He started to laugh when Hermione made no move to get up. "Um, bestest best friend...you gotta get up and go to your room."

"Too sleepy," she complained into the armrest.

With a roll of his eyes Ron hoisted her up onto his back. She cooperatively wrapped her legs around his waist and clutched his neck, letting her head loll on his shoulder. "I'll get her to bed. The rest of you head on up."

As they all put their stuff away and trekked to their respective dorms, they could hear Hermione mumbling all the way into her Head Girl rooms. "This is how it works," she said. "You put me to bed and I wake you up...perfect..."

I'll talk to Ron about it...

Hermione was wide awake.


"This spell is designed to tap into one's sense of self," Knoll barked out her lecture with audible precision. "When you are balanced your spells are bloody stronger. All-in-all, a handy spell to know. The incantation is Liberatio Praebeo – long 'e' after the 'a'; don't want you turning into a ruddy milk carton."

Hermione had already written out the translation phonetically beneath the original incantation. It looked smart, but no one who was copying off her notes could make sense of it. Still, they copied it anyways.

"Now all you do is tap the top of your head and recite the incantation." She wrapped the top of her pointed hat with the long yard stick to demonstrate and barked out the spell.

"If you're unadventurous page one-ninety-two tells you what to expect," Knoll looked positively annoyed about divulging that fact.

Lily probably would have opened her book to read, but Knoll fixed her rather batty looking eyes on the redhead and she shifted uncomfortably in her seat trying not to open her DADA book. She glanced at Hermione.

"Are you gonna look?" She whispered, loud enough for Hermione to hear.

Hermione shook her head, in the middle of pushing up her sleeves. "I've already read this chapter."

Sirius groaned beside her, but Remus leaned in, almost conspiratorially, and whispered "me too". Hermione grinned.

"Did you read the part about Gwendolyn the Gorgon?" She giggled (for some unknown reason to the eavesdropping Sirius).

Remus started quietly laughing too. "As if she could use Atlantan dewdrops to—"

"—she might as well use a Himoglyphus charm," she finished for him, and they both laughed deliriously into their robe sleeves – a joke that Sirius was completely out of.

"You are such nerds," he sighed shaking his head.

"You think so?" Hermione scoffed.

"Yeah," he turned on devilish charm. "But it's sexy."

Hermione's eyebrow lifted as she prepared to cast her spell. "I wasn't aware you felt that way about Remus," she commented dryly.

Sirius groaned when Remus waved coquettishly at him.

"Liberatio Praebeo," Hermione recited perfectly as she tapped her hair with her wand tip. All around her students did the same.

She slipped into the predicted trance and waited for the blackness to fill her mind, but it didn't come. Instead, a bright blue sparkle darted across the white field of her vision. She watched it shift from red to gold to purple, and then it exploded in a silent burst of shimmering rainbow lights. The multitude of colors landed upon some unknown boundary and black ink spilled out from each contact point until she saw nothing but ebony. In time to the beating of her heart it pulsed to white and then back to black. Over and over again.

Sirius watched her eyelashes fluttering spastically against her face, a sliver of white peeking from beneath her jerking eyelids. "It can't be that bad," he muttered to himself and performed the charm as well.

He thought everything had gone dark until he focused harder and caught the faint navy outline of a building. It was large and castle-like with its turrets and raised drawbridge. As it moved closer he could see greater details; the flagless poles, the barred windows. It became too large to even see all of it and soon it was jut the pattern of bricks flying straight at him. He squeezed his eyes tighter shut and everything went blue.

One by one, the rest performed the charm as well.

Lily's vision was a small ring; its gem pulsating pink and maroon. The more she focused the faster the pulse went until it was a dizzying swirl of colors that twisted into a picture resembling the Muggle art of spin paint. The swirl grew greater than the ring and a vibrant cherry red heart flashed in front of her before pink filled her sight.

James struggled to keep his eyes open, but they fell shut and he fell into the trance. In a series of quick slides he saw a skull with a snake, a wand bursting into flames, and a rearing lion – its jaws open in a silent roar. The disjointed slideshow repeated, faster this time, slipping without a pause into the next cycle. Just when he thought he was going to be sick, the crazily spinning pictures slowed down and stopped on the lion, glowing green.

Brow furrowed as he watched his mum and dad twitch under the spell's influence, Harry received a stern look from Knoll and grudgingly tapped his head. Silver dripped down across the blackness that came without light, and once the shaking metallic sheen covered his vision an invisible hand inked the black outline of a mighty sword. A flash of light and the drawing was made real. A group of stars he hadn't noticed before flared to life and the faint outline of a man was made by the connected lights. Just as the star-man reached for the sword, it all disappeared and he was left staring into silver.

In his entranced state, Remus regarded the golden bell before him, but couldn't make sense of it. It swung silently back and forth being as unobtrusive as it could before it was replaced by swinging charms. Equally gold, equally silent. The bell reappeared faint and transparent as if a ghost, and overlaid itself upon its partner, the charms, making for a dizzying image that Remus wished would just disappear.

Ron was the last to be-charm himself (mostly because he'd lost his wand somewhere in the mess of his bag). A set of golden eyes immediately blinked back at him. He scrunched up his nose in surprise and the feline orbs were replaced by rapidly passing patterns of stripes and spots and possibly more that he couldn't catch sight of. As if they were moving too fast for themselves, the designs collided into a disastrously jumbled picture that, like a spill of paint, began dripping down and out of sight.

Hermione came to first, her eyes snapping open to the blinding classroom light with such suddenness that tears formed in her eyes. Then, like a set of dominos the rest followed in the order they'd gone – heads snapping up like a displaced wave.

"Whoa," Ron exhaled.

"That was bloody brilliant!" James agreed, thumping Harry on the back.

Hermione, on the other hand, exchanged worried looks with Remus. "You didn't see black, did you..." She made it a statement.

"No," was all he said in a quiet voice, while Sirius, who had been eavesdropping again, launched into a detailed reenactment.

Lily was nose deep in her textbook, realizing as she read that what she'd experienced hadn't been normal. Catching the tail end of Hermione and Remus' conversation, she offered a theory of her own. "Well, this book was copyrighted in '24. They've probably adapted the spell since then."

"But we didn't all see the same thing," Hermione brought up, the gears in her head already turning.

"It's probably user specific," Sirius said, and waved his hand frivolously as if brushing away the conversation. "Let's talk about something more important – like how we're going to set the Slytherin tablecloth on fire."

Sighing, Hermione turned back to her book but the words might as well have not been in front of her for all the reading she was doing. Her mind was going over the possible reasoning for their alien experience. She caught Lavender and Padme talking about how 'scary' their dark visions had been, and it only cemented Hermione's belief that what they'd all experienced hadn't been normal.

"I'll bet a fizzing whizbee you're not plotting fire-starting techniques," Remus said quietly.

She shook her head and managed a faint smile, before her face fell serious again. "I don't know what this means, and that bothers me," she confessed, glancing up into his blue-gray eyes.

"Do you think it might have anything to do with those Tempus Infractus scrolls?" He proposed. "The ones you used to bring us here."

She made a face. "That's the only thing I can think of, actually," she supplied. Tucking her hair behind her ears, she turned slightly in her seat so that she could look properly at her conversation companion. "I wonder if this spell is tied to it somehow."

Remus' lips pursed and she could tell he was rolling it around in his mind. "Perhaps – with the right people, of course – instead of tapping into a person's sense of self, it taps into...something else," he theorized, gesturing with his hand when the words failed him.

Hermione's expression became thoughtful. "'Something else'," she repeated. "What do you mean?"

"A hidden power, some blocked memory, a secondary identity..." he rambled off a few more, using his fingers to tick them off. "Who knows what was represented by what we saw."

"I'll talk to the Order and look in on it," she decided finally, telling him of her plans.

"I'll help," he agreed. "Two minds are better than one – especially in research."

Hermione smiled at the tiny joke and brushed back the hair that had fallen into her face yet again. "Thanks," she told him in gratification. "Who knows...we might actually be the seven warriors from the scrolls."

He grinned handsomely. "You had doubts?"

She laughed and waved her hand behind her without looking. "With this motley crew? We don't exactly fit the warrior genre."

"I'm sure you'll whip us into shape, Professor," his compliment was teasing and made a pretty pink blush rise on the apples of her cheeks.

"Speaking of training," she said quickly steering to a new topic. "There'll be a little bit of time afterwards to get a start down at the library if you want to meet up."

He nodded his consent. "Sure, but we should both probably shower first."

She nodded her head laughing. "You don't think you'll be too tired?" she gibed.

With a grin back, he replied with a modest "I'll do what I can".

Sirius watched Hermione's turned back with barely contained frustration. She was laughing at something Remus said and talking in depth with him about something Sirius couldn't follow.

But what he really didn't follow was Hermione's behavior. They'd kissed last night and here she was (right next to him, by the way) flirting with another guy. She didn't seem the promiscuous type, but the way she was acting confused him. He resolved to sort things out with her in Astronomy.

Hermione, on the other hand, completely unaware of Sirius' angry confusion talked with Remus the rest of class, finalizing their plans to meet in the library that evening, and when they were finally out in the hallway and on their way to Transfiguration she was too busy to notice much of anything, as she was checking Ron's essay while she walked.


They all left lunch together, walking slowly so they could continue chatting before they had to part for their separate classes. To Sirius' surprise, Hermione sought him out and pulled him away from the others.

"We need to talk," she told him as she lead him several paces back from the main group.

"Nothing good ever started with those words," he joked, waiting for an opportunity to ask her about DADA.

She got right down to business. "I wanted to apologize for last night," she said bluntly. "That shouldn't have happened."

"Excuse me?" He exclaimed, grabbing her arm. That was the last thing he'd expected out of her mouth.

She shot him a pointed look and twisted her arm free, resuming her walking. He caught back up with her and barely got a word out before she cut him off. "I don't know exactly what you thought was going to happen here. The spell brought you forward to save the world – not to start a relationship with someone."

"I like to multitask," the joke was dead, growled out in an angry voice as Sirius stalked along beside her crisp walk.

Hermione sighed, and a hand went to her aching forehead as she struggled to find the words. "I'm so sorry if I somehow gave you the wrong idea—"

"I know you think I'm attractive," he accused.

"Yes," she admitted easily. "You are very handsome."

"But?"

"But there is more than one reason why this can't happen – why it wouldn't work. The fact that you're from a past before I was born being a key one," she explained in exasperation.

"You have no problem hanging all over Moony," he spat. "Or is he just the exception?"

"What?" Hermione gasped in bewilderment. "What on Merlin's green earth are you talking about?"

"Nevermind," he muttered darkly.

"Listen," she ordered. "No one is going to be having relationships with anyone. It just simply isn't done!"

Sirius looked down at her in suspicion. "Do you know something I don't, Hermione?"

"Of course," she sniffed rather haughtily in response to his angry demeanor.

"You're being ridiculous, you know that right?"

"There are rules that are meant to be followed—"

"And there are rules that are meant to be broken," he interjected.

Hermione looked at him in muted shock.

"You want me to just go against all the rules and do whatever I feel like..."

"Yes!"

"Witches and wizards who travel to the future are surrounded by much different circumstances. When such Time Travelers return to the past, they—"

"Some are meant to be followed," she repeated in a low voice that brooked no argument.

"Hermione—"

"It would not end well for you, Sirius, and I don't want to be the reason."

"How could it not end well!"

"That's just one of those things I know that you don't."

"That's not good enough."

Hermione grabbed his arm. "Please, Sirius. I don't want this to ruin our friendship."

This hadn't been an easy choice for her and he had to know that. No matter what her friends thought, there were greater things at work here and they required rules be followed. So, she'd never know if she'd be able to care about Sirius having known his future self because she wasn't going to give herself the chance.

They were splitting off to go to their different classes and James was waiting ahead for the pair to catch up. Sirius was silent the entire way, Hermione's fingers digging into his arm.

Just before they reached James he spoke up. "You worry too much..." Though it was half-heartedly spoken, Hermione instantly smiled.

"Thanks for understanding," she whispered, pulling away to catch up with James.

But the truth was – Sirius didn't understand.

"Are you excited for the Hogsmeade trip?" Hermione asked James, hoisting her bag higher on her shoulder as she slowed down.

"Yeah. I want to check out those gloves Ginny mentioned," he rubbed his hands together excitedly, like a little boy on Christmas Eve.

"And we can finally get you lot your own set of uniforms," she reminded him, glancing over at Sirius on her other side.

He was recovering quickly from their 'little talk' and smirked as he said "And what will our little Miss Granger be shopping for?"

"Books, of course!" She laughed and pushed open the Astronomy door.