Completed: 1/22/05 2:42 PM
Posted: 1/22/05 6:00 PM
A/N: Oh! So glad my SATs got cancelled for this weekend. Yay bad weather! Anyway --- SO sorry it's been ages, but school's been murder. I'm thinking that once I get back into the groove of classes the chapters should be coming out a great deal faster. Right, this chapter doesn't really have much of what I promised it would because it was just getting so long, and I thought it would be better if I split it into two. Besides, that means I'm five pages closer to finishing the next chapter, lol.
Also have a challenge due...er, next Sunday. It's a short ficlet though, and I already have the plot lined out. That'll be posted either after the deadline or after the winners are announced – don't want no stealing.
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Next Chapter: Training and Hermione has a fireside chat. (if you guess with who then you win a cookie)
ETP (Estimate Time of Postage): 1/24/05 ( for safety. I'm going to Barnes & Noble with my mum tomorrow and my friend's mum who's like my 2nd mum, and we'll be there most of the day. Plus, I'm thinking I might start on the contest entry instead of TR. So, if y'all are lucky I'll have it up late tomorrow night, but more than likely it'll go up Monday night after my guitar lesson ((my first one! Yay!)) )
Side note: Once TR is completed, I'm going to be putting my main focus on writing fantasy/science-fiction short stories for competitions. Anyone who would like to beta – that would be WONDERFUL. You have some time to think about it too. I'm hoping that TR will be done sometime around early-mid march.
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Remus woke to the annoying chirping of his Muggle alarm clock and, with a great deal of mental protest, rolled over and turned it off. He'd lost a perfectly good alarm clock to James the week before when his speed in turning the loud object off hadn't been to the Seeker's liking. He'd since moved it to the other side of his bed and out of reach of anyone save himself.
Rolling back onto his stomach, he buried his head in his pillow and began the daily ritual of convincing himself to get out of bed. This morning, however, it just didn't seem worth it and he'd just decided that he would very much like a day of sleeping in when a soft sound, like a sigh, caught in his werewolf senses.
Another debate.
Should I look up? Well, that would take an awful lot of effort, you know. Yes, I know, but I really am quite curious. But what if you get up and can't get back to sleep? That's what will happen. Are you daft? Don't do it! I know I really shouldn't, but I do have classes anyway...
With a groan and a little more kicking of his legs than was necessary to push back the heavy covers, he finally extricated head from pillow and stretched slowly up onto his knees. After allowing a rather long-winded yawn he smacked his lips together and cringed at the taste of his morning breath. Vowing to go straight for his toothbrush, he shifted onto his bum and turned around to scan the room.
James was wrapped up in his bed next to him, huddled around his snitch pillow. Just past the edge of the wardrobe, Sirius' bed stuck out with its curtains closed but a tan foot sticking out over the footboard. Then there was Ron's bed. Pigwig was still asleep in his cage atop the trunk at the bed's end, and his owner – more precisely a lump of blankets – seemed to be as well. What he saw at Harry's bed, however, made his jaw drop.
In the space between the two beds a rudimentary mattress had been transfigured, most likely out of some stray sock judging by its ugly gray color, and, wrapped in the fleece maroon and gold checked throw that the dormitory had a dozen of, was Harry. His glasses were still on, albeit a bit skewed, which meant he'd gotten up sometime in the night and put them on to make the ramshackle bed on which he was now sprawled.
And now the sixty thousand galleon question: Why wasn't he in his bed.
Another sigh revved his curiosity and he saw the blankets on Harry's bed shift. Alllright. If Harry wasn't sleeping in his bed, then who was?
Leaning slightly over the edge of his bed he was able to see around the curtains bunched in the corner of Harry's and over the footboard, where the faint outline of a shape beneath the blankets was visible. Despite the bulgy comforter, he could still make out the slight frame curled underneath it, and so, before he even saw the pale arm wrapped around a lump of sheets or the fan of toffee curls across the white pillow, he knew exactly who'd joined the boys' dormitory.
Hermione shifted again, mumbling something in her sleep and throwing an arm back against the pillows as she unconsciously resituated herself. She must have been coming out of REM sleep to be moving so much, and therefore near waking. Since his alarm had just gone off he knew it was only a little after seven, and if she was waking up on her own this early after such a busy day and after everything she'd been through, he wondered how early she'd trained herself to wake up on a normal day.
"Uhhnn...Moony, what time is it?"
Remus turned sharply at the sudden distraction James provided with his head beneath his pillows. He glanced back at the clock, raking his bangs back so he could read the digital letters. "7:10. We have to meet Tonks in an hour."
"Ehh, great," was the grumbled reply before James finally popped his head out into broad daylight to converse like normal people. "Another fun-filled training session with Sirius goggling at his 'baby cousin all growed up'..."
Remus laughed, but it was half-hearted as his attention and his eyes were being quickly drawn back to Harry's bed. "Harry...Harry wake up."
WHUMP!
One of Remus' pillows hit the sleeping boy squarely on the face and he sat up with a start. James saw the shaggy head pop up over the foot of his bed and clambered over to the edge to peer at Harry sitting disjointedly in the spill of maroon and gold and tassels.
"Oi! Wotcher doing on the floor?"
"Was sleeping," he grumbled, but ran a hand over his face to dispel his earlier grogginess.
"Mmm..." The curtains around Harry's bed billowed outwards as a hand stretched sleepily against it, thus, gaining the trio's attention. "Good morning."
A slender hand it was that parted the curtains and hooked the folds behind the ring attached to the bedpost for that specific purpose. Buried from the waist down, a very disheveled, but smiling, Hermione looked out into the dorm.
"Hermione?!" James choked. Out of the corner of his eyes –now locked on the young girl – Remus watched his friend hastily stuff the worn snitch toy back under his pillow.
Hermione didn't seem to have noticed the "unmanly" object, for she was arguing with Harry. "How did you end up on the mattress – I told you to take the bed."
"Really, Hermione," Harry scoffed. "Did you think I was going to let you sleep on the floor?"
"It's a mattress!" She corrected, loudly; no longer asleep in any sense of the word. "And that's where I started..."
"Ah ha!" Harry held up a finger to signify a revelation of sorts and he waved it teasingly at her, winking behind his crooked glasses. "But you made the mistake of falling asleep before me and Ron. We levitated you into the bed."
Hermione spent a good minute scowling at him before she kicked back the blankets a bit too forcefully and climbed on top of the sheets. "It's 'Ron and I'," she muttered snippily under her breath, then proceeded to slip over the edge of the bed on Harry's side, and none-too-accidentally land on his legs.
"Ow!" He yelled, and if the rest of the dorm hadn't awoken earlier they had now.
"You deserve it you Slytherin twat," she reprimanded, kicking him lightly onto his side. She had an evil smirk on her face. "You're as bad as a Marauder."
Three 'hey!'s chorused throughout the room, from each Marauder respectively. Ron, however, was with lips twisting back a laugh as he rolled over and hung above the squeaking side of his bed. "Morning Hermione Jane," he drawled, propping his elbow up on the bed and supporting his jaw on a fist.
She jumped off the lumpy mattress, her bare feet hitting the wooden floor with a slap!, and stretched her arms high above her head. Her hair was an unkempt mess that bordered on something from Remus' original time of the seventies, and several curls were caught beneath the collar of the oversized dress shirt that was quite obviously not her own. There was a long 'v' of her throat and chest revealed before the tip showed the pale crème-colored fabric of her tank top. The middle three buttons were all that held it together, so that the sleep-softened fabric of the shirt hung loosely off her shoulders and brought the cuffs of the sleeves down past her fingertips. The rolled up waist of her shorts was a lighter blue than the rest of the cloth and the whole piece was probably only visible when her stretching arms lifted the shirt tails out of their obscuring position, and...hey! were those his boxers?!
Yawning, Hermione wanded her hair into an even messier pile atop her head and stuck her wand through the rubber band, all the while with Remus' mouth hanging practically unhinged.
Harry was the first to notice. "Oh, sorry for snitching your skivvies, Remus, but you're the closet fit to Hermione and she needed something to sleep in."
"He wouldn't let me go back to my room!" Hermione defended, obstinately. She crossed her arms across her chest, and they continued bickering as if Remus wasn't staring at his own boxers on someone else's body, open-mouthed in embarrassed disbelief.
"It was two in the bloody morning," Harry shot back, with a roll of his eyes. "I couldn't trust you to sleep if my life depended on it. Probably have gone right back to your books, you would've."
"I'm not the one who needs a babysitter." Her look was pointed.
"We offered our own shorts..." Ron reminded her.
"Oh, yes," she gushed, clearly about to engage in a debate. "Yours would probably reach all the way down to my ankles, and merlin only knows how long it's been since Harry's were laundered. Honestly, Remus is the only one out of you lot that can be depended on."
Remus pushed aside his curtains and swung his legs over his bed's footboard. "You remember me?" His bewilderment was buried beneath the wary tone.
The annoyed face that had been bantering with Harry and Ron, softened into smooth elegant lines as she turned to him and she smiled in the eye-crinkling, cheek-dimpling way only she could; no matter if the sun was barely up or she'd just left a grueling double-period of Potions.
"Of course." She laughed lightly. "I'm not as slow as Harry, you know."
"HEY!"
"I think that was all just an excuse to spend the night in the boys' dormitory."
Hermione turned to the far bed, where Sirius was lounged against the corner post and winking roguishly at her, having to lift curly bangs back from her eyes with the back of her palm to see him properly. "You're right Sirius – I'm so terribly, madly in love with you I just couldn't stand to be apart for one night."
"Glad, you've finally come around. Shall we have an extravagant wedding, or just damn it all and elope?"
She 'tsk'ed discouragingly at the boy, and turned to help Harry clean up his temporary bed. While he retransfigured the bed back into one of Vernon Dursley's smelly tube socks that were usually used to line Hedwig's cage, she levitated the pillow back up onto his bed, and charmed the throw to fold itself back up neatly and disappear back into one of the wardrobe drawers.
"I'm never going to get that shirt back am I?" Ron commented dryly, heaving himself out of bed and moving to get dressed.
"I think she just stock piles them," Harry replied. He'd finally corrected his precariously situated glasses.
"They're comfortable," Hermione interrupted. When Ron laughingly, focused his gaze on her, she pouted and wrapped her arms around herself, just in case he happened to be thinking off ripping his shirt right off her. "Besides, I only have one or two. I'll give them back as soon as I have time to get them pressed."
"Look at me, Hermione," Ron instructed with a flamboyant gesture that involved jabbing his fingers at his chest. "Do I look like I care if they're pressed or not?"
"You look a great many things, none of which are kind enough for me to say out loud."
Ron stuck out his tongue and made a rude gesture.
"I'm gonna go get dressed and you lot had better do the same because I'll have your heads if we're late," she swore, fisting her hands onto her hips.
"Well, aren't you demanding in the morning," Ron teased, pulling the 'R'-embroidered jumper out of his trunk.
"I'm here – why not command you?" she said back logically.
"Go!" James growled, though the outburst came out odd-sounding through the cottony fabric of the t-shirt he was attempting to pull over his head. Hermione giggled to watch him finally worm his way out.
"Unless you're planning on dressing right here, you can get going; we don't look half as good changing as you do." He mirrored her outlandish position with dramatic flair; sticking his hips far to the side and slapping his hands onto his waist.
Hermione, in turn, copied him, even going so far as to ruffle her hair in that I-think-this-makes-me-look-rougishly-handsome-but-really-is-just-annoying way that made upstanding young ladies like Lily Evans cringe. Sirius gave a loud bark of laughter at the display and they all listened to the numerous banter as they got ready for training.
"And how would you know the way I look when dressing, Mr. Potter?" She countered. "Have you been sneaking into the girls' loo?"
He raised one hand with a ho-hum smile. "Guilty."
At least Hermione was laughing when she chucked a pillow at him. "You're lucky I know you wouldn't," she warned. "You're not like Sirius."
"Hey!" The object of insultation objected. He threw the set of trousers he'd been about to change into on the bed, and shook a fist at Hermione, who'd sought refuge behind Harry's bed.
"I resent that!" He had to shout to be heard over his dorm mates loud guffaws.
"You mean 'represent'," Remus corrected, sitting back down on his bed.
Sirius glared. "You'd better hope you're not my partner today, Lupin."
A giggle.
"You too, Granger."
Hermione bit her lip to keep from laughing and attempted to look chagrined. All she managed was to turn her face hot red from lack of oxygen.
"Oh, just hurry up and get Lily," Harry finally declared by throwing his hands up in exasperation.
Blowing an apologetic kiss in Sirius' direction, who grinned and made a Quidditch show of catching it, the brunette scooped her diary off the nightstand and headed out the door. It was Ron who jogged to the open doorway after her to yell down the stairs:
"I THINK REMUS MIGHT ACTUALLY LIKE HIS CLOTHES BACK!"
"Damnit Potter!"
Both identical boys looked up from the chocolate frog cards they'd been passing back and forth, looked at Hermione, then at each other, then back. "Which one of us is she talking to?" Harry asked.
"The one I'm about to decapitate," she growled, slipping out of the portrait hole after the group.
Another shared look. "No seriously," James grinned. "Who are you talking to?"
To say that she "leapt at them" was an understatement. It took both Sirius and Ron to restrain her from attacking them, but as it was, with all her squirming, she dragged them quite a ways down the hall.
"You were in the bathroom for half an hour." She jabbed a finger painfully into Harry's chest. "What the hell were you doing?"
"He was cleansing," Sirius answered, moving his arm from restraining her bodily to linking it with her own arm, confident that she wasn't about to go banshee on her best friend.
"It's true..." James said solemnly.
"I don't care if he was meeting with Lady Sheba – we're late!" She reminded with an unnecessary tapping of her watch which was at an awkward angle due to the hooking of arms with Sirius.
"Now we don't even have time to eat," Ron bemoaned. He rubbed his stomach pitifully and looked to Hermione for sympathy.
"It's his fault," she said blandly, looking pointedly at an amused Harry.
Ron narrowed his eyes at his friend, and solemnly drew himself up to his full height, which – in all honesty – was very tall. If Harry hadn't been so amused at Hermione, and inwardly overjoyed at her regaining her memories, he might have been intimidated. Or maybe not...
"Thou art a stealer of breakfast, sir; an undisciplined, sacrilegious hooligan, and no friend of mine. A pox on your children!" He decreed.
"Come on, Hamlet – finish your breakfast soliloquy and let's go." Remus sighed, giving the significantly taller boy a good shove down the hall and following after.
"Guys, wait up!" Lily, who had heretofore been trapped in the portrait opening while they mingled up front, jogged to the other side of James and huffed her bangs out of her eyes as she fell into step. "I have food."
Ron looked as if he would kiss her right then and there, future husband and son be damned.
With her often seen kind smile, Lily pulled a miniature basket from her jeans' pocket and enlarged it barely in time before Ron snatched it greedily up. Sirius was practically hanging over the redhead's shoulder – the only one tall enough to accomplish such a feat – and he looked positively doglike; salivating over the well-stuffed picnic basket in Ron's hands.
"It's beautiful."
"Since I saw that we were gonna be late, I had the house elves send up some food through the floo."
"Oh, you're wonderful!" Hermione exclaimed, flinging her arms around Lily's neck. Lily, who had been informed of Hermione's return to normal as the girl ran past the dorm steps in someone's boxers and shouted the news to her before rushing to get dressed, found that the girl, flinging herself at her wasn't doing much to lessen the shock.
"My..." She exclaimed dumbly to James as Hermione bounded over to Sirius and Ron. "She certainly has a lot of energy this morning."
"Mmm food!" Hermione moaned exaggeratedly. "I love food. I think I shall abandon my plans of the Ministry and become a professional eater."
Ron thumped his chest proudly and held up the basket so she and Sirius could dig through it while the circus troupe headed down to the grounds. "Already taken."
Both he and Sirius laughed loudly, sharing a joke only true connoisseurs of food could wholly appreciate, while Hermione remained bent on her breakfast-time mission.
"Did you get any sticky buns?" Hermione asked. "They're my favorite, you know."
Lily looked interested. "No, I didn't know. The house elves didn't send any; though, I'd be happy to go with you to the kitchens after training—"
"Oh! Here they are!"
James looked toward his girlfriend in surprise, shock making her jaw drop in an unnatural fashion. Hermione resurfaced from her scavenger hunt with a sticky bun in each hand and left Sirius to continue deciding over what, out of the varied selection, he would eat.
"There's just so much to choose from! And you know how famished I get when walking – so, maybe I'll just take a little of everything..."
"Sirius! Keep that bottomless stomach of yours out of our food."
"You're no fun when you're hungry, Remus."
"You can't eat it all if it's already in my stomach." An evil cackle.
"Shut up, Ron."
"Do you hear something? Certainly it cannot be the famed breakfast betrayer...ah, no. It's just the wind."
"I love sticky buns."
"James!" Lily hissed, dragging him down the hall from the group by his shirt collar. When she released him, he gave his neck a grateful rub, but it was hardly any competition for his concern, while Lily's serious face was beside him.
"What's got you all worked up, Lily?" He asked anxiously.
"James, there were no honey buns in that basket," she whispered fretfully, jabbing her finger back in the direction of their approaching friends. He looked right back at Hermione, who was either laughing at something one of the boys had said or at herself, for after wolfing the first bun down in an instant she was tearing off dripping pieces of the second and dropping them into her mouth, but leaving her fingers coated with sticky honey. He was staring open-mouthed until Lily elbowed him painfully in the chest.
"Don't stare!" She hissed.
James turned back to her and jerked his head in Hermione's direction. "Do you think its..." He widened his eyes suggestively, and waved his hands eccentrically, and hardly discreetly, in front of his face.
Lily shrugged, but it was clear by the expression on her face that she believed the unspoken thought to be true. "You remember what happened with Remus, and we all saw the papers..." She trailed off.
"I think we're just lucky that the Skeeter woman published a rather favorable report," James reminded her, starting to walk again as to avoid the group behind them getting within earshot. "I suppose she might have felt 'indebted' or something – she was at Azkaban when it happened you, know."
Lily sniffed disdainly. "I don't think that old cow feels much of anything, except fear that Hermione might come after her next."
"Lily! She'd never—"
"We don't know that for sure, James!" Lily whispered fervently. She glanced hastily back behind her, and picked up her pace. James matched her speed after a few seconds of watching her tense back stalk ahead of him.
"You can't be serious..."
She sighed loudly, and he was surprised to find her fidgeting with the hem of her t-shirt. Lily never fidgeted. "I feel so terribly awful for even thinking it, but James..." She looked almost forlornly out the windows streaking by. "James, she doesn't know the kind of power she has, and the fact that she has no control over it...it terrifies me."
A heavy weight settled on her elbow and drew her upset gaze from the high arched windows. James' hazel eyes were locked hard on hers, like the grip of his hand on her arm. "You 'sensed' this?" Lily nodded her head stiffly. "Are you sure?"
"James..."
"No, Lily," he looked positively freaked out and Lily wished she had never said anything at all. "Dumbledore called you in when the aurors brought Hermione back after the raid, you were there. She was unconscious without any shields up to stop you from sensing her, and you told me she was still near impossible to read."
"You know we still haven't discovered all the qualities of our...powers. I was frightened, and..."
"Lily—"
"It's not just my sense, James. Can't you see it? She pulled a honey bun out of bloody nowhere."
Aside from fidgeting, cursing was something Lily rarely, if ever, did. James was once again reminded of the affect of this time on those closest to him. One look at Lily's strained face, however, and he curbed his own fears – he knew she was already regretting having voiced hers and piling his own worries on top of hers was something he'd learned to think before he acted about since getting together with her.
"I don't think she'd mean to do anything, but the truth is – Hermione has probably the most powerful point of the star and no idea that she has it. That's dangerous."
"She's our friend, Lily—"
"But that's just it! How much do we really know about her? About any of them?" Lily rubbed her hands down her arms in an attempt to bring heat the goosebumped flesh. "Hermione was only with us for a few weeks, and even then she was hardly around. Even Sirius and Remus know nothing about her, and she spent all her time with them."
"You don't trust her." It was a statement.
For Lily, who'd been brought up to believe that treating others with kindness was the only acceptable way to act, no matter how high her intelligence, she simply couldn't fathom Hermione's radical swings in personality.
"I never said that," Lily amended. "I simply said we don't know anything about her. I mean...how could a person be so wonderful and kind one minute and then completely ice the next?"
"Have you met Remus?"
Her lips pursed. "He's different, James. I know he changes when his with you and Sirius, but at least with everyone else he's just indifferent – he's not harsh. His secret isn't something most people could deal with."
He didn't look at her, but instead watched the dusty rafters pass over head with his hands stuffed into his trouser pockets – an infallible sense of direction keeping his feet walking a straight line. Then he answered. "Why can't Hermione have her secrets too?"
Lily looked away and didn't answer.
A good distance behind them, Hermione walked with Harry by her side as she licked her fingers, having completely forgotten that they were running late. "Why are they so far ahead?" she asked.
"Probably appalled by your atrocious eating habits," Harry jibbed, biting into an apple.
She stuck out her tongue and moved to walk beside Remus. "Hey," she said warmly.
"Hello, Hermione."
"I wanted to ask you about the potion I left for you," she said, jumping right in. Her hands, now damp after their bath, were rubbed dry on the back of her jeans. "Did it work all right?"
Remus thought back to the night of the full moon. It had gone just like any other night, but when the customary unbelievable pain of his monthly transformation had subsided the wolf had retreated to the back burner as well and his human consciousness had taken over. He had seen with human eyes the five of them standing across the room from him; seen and recognized. He'd taken control of the beast.
Hermione was looking at him with the friendly patience one might have if they had just inquired as to the weather, much less a werewolf potion, and he, in all honesty, didn't know what to say. Running a hand through his shaggy hair did little to stall for time. "I don't know how to thank you. What you did for me was..."
"Nothing." She finished for him. "I care about you, Remus, and if there's anything at all that will help you, then I'll do it no questions asked."
He couldn't believe what he was hearing. "Hermione, you don't have to—"
"We're friends," she said stoutly, linking arms with him. "And I'm sorry, but I'm going to continue to do nice things for you. That's what friends are for, and you my dear Remus –terribly sorry by the way – are stuck with me."
He laughed and let her bright mood set him at ease as they walked across the grounds. "After Sirius and James you shouldn't be too much of a trouble."
She laughed too, but it was a far cry from its usual bell-like quality. The observation made Remus wonder if Hermione would ever completely recover. "I really wanted to be there with you that first time; I know the potion didn't exist in your time."
"Don't worry about it, Hermione. You're, er, welcome to come next month..." He let the invitation drop. Talking about his lycanthropy was never easier and it still overwhelmed him that so many more people knew about it than before.
But all his inhibitions were set aside when Hermione smiled at him and made no sign of acknowledging the reassuring squeeze upon his hand, but let it remain unspoken and discreet. "Wouldn't miss it," she said. "Maybe I'll even read you a bed time story – Red Riding Hood or the Three Little Pigs?"
"Red Riding Hood, definitely." He answered right away. "Honestly, who would want a career where all they do is go around blowing down houses all the time. Now me, I'd much rather fancy a pretty girl in red."
Hermione grinned impishly. "Should Lily watch out?"
"Only for James. That ponce'll be the death of her." Remus chuckled at his own joke, but Hermione was a bit slower on her own laughter and it seemed all the more forced than before. Was it something he had said?
He was saved, however, by the climsy appearance of a green haired witch as she tripped out of the dark forest. "Oi! Hermione! It's good to see ya on your feet again!"
