Completed: 3/2/05 10:00 PM
Posted: 3/2/05 10:07 PM
"Hermione..."
Hermione rolled her eyes at Harry's tone and sprawled out on the armchair beside her bookcase, one leg over the arm and an arm draped over the back. "Harry," she replied in a mockery of his tone. Honestly, he was being so childish.
Ron closed the door behind the two of them as they entered Hermione's room, and, in a fashion typically Ron, ignored the both of them. He returned from routing around in her closet to find them both glaring at each other. Shuffling over to the bed in Hermione's pink furry slippers, he tossed a few pieces of popcorn up into the air and caught them in his mouth.
"Maybe we should sort this bit out first?" He suggested, and plopped down on the bed.
"Depends..." Hermione commented. "Think anything will make it through that hard head of his?"
"You're hiding things again, Hermione," Harry sighed. He looked more frustrated than angry as he ran his hands through his hair.
"Hello, Kettle calling Pot," she muttered sarcastically. "It's not as if you haven't done the same."
"Hey!" He was indignant. "That was to protect you and Ron."
Hermione fixed him with a solid, unblinking look.
Throwing up his hands, Harry growled out an aggravated sound. "What could you possibly have to hide that would hurt us?"
Hermione waved at Ron, and he obligingly chucked the bag of popcorn to her. She caught it with minimal spillage of fluffy, white kernels and dug out a handful of the salty foodstuff. Just before feeding it to herself, she responded with: "Well, for that reason, you won't ever know, now will you?"
Ron snorted, but quickly stopped at the sharp look from Harry. "You're being ridiculous," the dark haired boy insisted.
"Listen, Harry," she started around a mouthful of popcorn. "It's nothing that would aid you by knowing it, so let's just drop it. So, why did you guys call this meeting?" Her redirection of the conversation was given in a no-nonsense tone.
Ron cleared his throat, and he became unusually solemn. "Sirius was asking questions earlier. They're going to find out, Hermione."
She paused, and then slowly lowered the bag of steaming popcorn to her lap, her jaw deliberately working to finish her last mouthful of food. Wiping at her mouth with the side of her hand, she worked to clear the last of the persistent shells stuck to her teeth before speaking.
"We haven't done anything to conceal their futures, Ron," she said with purposeful slowness that was pointed in its deliberation. "They're smart – I harbored no doubts they'd figure it out eventually."
Ron looked shocked, but Harry was the one who shook his head. "Won't that disrupt the timeline?"
"We have to do something," Ron added, rather hysterically. "Throw them off the scent!"
"They're not dogs!" Harry shouted back.
"You're the one that ran your mouth off when they first got here," he reminded him, in a voice that was much louder than necessary for conveying his words the short distance.
"THERE'S NO PROBLEM!" Hermione shouted, interrupting the fight. "Now shut up!"
The room fell into silence; the bag of popcorn overturned all over the floor in Hermione's hasty sitting up, and Ron's hands in his hair as he watched Harry's frozen pacing stop mid-stride in the middle of Hermione's bedroom. Running her own hand through the top layers of her hair, she ground her palm frustrated into her forehead with her fingers catching in her tangled curls.
"Nothing..." She swallowed, and started again. "Nothing they discover here will make any difference."
"Hermione..." Harry's brow furrowed and he took a step towards her. "Is there something you know, that we don't?"
Her eyes flashed. Dangerously. "I know more than you ever will."
Harry's face deepened with angry lines, but before any words could escape his opening mouth, Ron cut them both off. "We're not starting this again, you two. Sort your shit out later."
Quite honestly, it was freaking him out to see Harry and Hermione in a quarrel that had lasted this long. Maybe Harry had reached the end of his patience with Hermione's secretiveness, but whatever it was it hadn't ever happened before. And it was screwing with the only sure thing in his life.
"Hermione," he addressed her. "What do you mean 'it won't make any difference'...I'm pretty sure the things they could find out wouldn't be so non-timeline-changeable."
Hermione had slid off the chair and was on her knees picking up the scattered kernels. She cleared her throat and tucked her hair back from hanging in her face and behind her ear. Settling back on her heels she gestured to her bureau.
"In my knicker drawer...there's a book."
The two boys exchanged looks, but the sole female was staring despondently at her bed's pleated bed skirt like all of life's answers were about to peek out from between the folds. Harry, who was already on his feet, was the one who crossed past her and pulled open the top drawer of the aforementioned bureau – how he knew which one was her knicker drawer, Ron wasn't about to ask.
"Don't touch anything," she threatened, but it was hollow sounding, and from a bed of lacy bras and cotton briefs Harry quickly retrieved the book and closed the drawer.
The book was thick, the kind Hermione liked, and it was a bit musty and smelled like a mix of the library and springtime fresh. It looked a bit familiar, but he was forever losing his friend's nose into a book and the covers tended to blur together. He trailed a finger along the pages, and looked up at Hermione.
"It's marked," she told him, sitting back against the front of her arm chair; one leg stretched out on the carpet and the other bent up so she could drape her arm over her knee. It was a good thing she'd changed into her pajamas.
Meanwhile, Harry was flipping pages until he found the two that were separated by a bookmark. And not just some scrap of paper or a random receipt, but a true bookmark. It was paper thin red leather, with the initials H.J.G. embossed in gold at the bottom. At the top, a corded yellow tassel looped through a hole. He looked up in surprise, but Hermione wasn't looking at him; the door was garnishing all her attention.
It was the bookmark he'd given her for her birthday last year. Moving it aside, his eyes scanned down the old, inked words. His face furrowed again. "Hermione, this is…"
"Go ahead, read it."
Ron was looking at her in concern, for it wasn't often that such a defeated tone as this crept into the brunette's voice. Clearing his throat, Harry began to read as she instructed, moving with book in hand back to the bed.
"Time Travelers that journey to the past, when they return to their present and original time, remember all those they meet in the past as well as every experience. The person or person who had knowledge of the Time Traveler retain their memories as well until such time as they are reunited with the Traveler, or, in the cases of great time differential, until death."
"I remember those words..." Ron murmured.
Hermione didn't say anything to that, so Harry took that as a sign to keep reading.
"Witches and wizards who travel to the future are surrounded by much different circumstances. When such Time Travelers return to the past, they—" and just as Hermione had, all those nights ago...Harry stopped reading.
"What's it say mate?"
Harry swallowed slowly and sunk into the chair in front of Hermione's vanity. "When such Time Travelers return to the past, they lose all memories of their experiences for the future. Unlike Travelers to the past their memories have not yet occurred, and so they have no recollection of their time spent in the future until that time has come to pass."
Hermione's head was back, her chestnut curls spilled out across the armchair cushions. "Now you know," she said.
"But Hermione...they're all dead now," Ron said quietly.
The book hit the floor with a dull whump! and Hermione's leather bookmark stuck disparagingly out from beneath bent pages. "My mum...and dad..." Harry's throat stuck. "They're not going to remember me..."
Hermione turned to look at him, and though her tone was apathetic her face softened. "No..."
And just like that, all ill will between them melted away.
"This was...going to be my chance..." His voice cracked and he could no longer speak.
Hermione had moved to kneel in front of him, though he hadn't seen her approach, and in a gesture he hadn't seen in too long, she reached up and carefully brushed his bangs back from his eyes. "Harry...your parents sacrificed their lives knowing what kind of person you'd turn out to be," she told him earnestly. "Sirius knew too."
Harry nodded brusquely and lowered his head to compose himself. Face emotionless, Hermione stood and left his side, walking back to her bed. "What are we going to do?" he asked.
"I'm going to send them back." Her tone was even. "There's no telling what would happen to their past selves if they got hurt here, or worse."
"How?" Harry lifted his head from his hands and folded them together.
Hermione shrugged and lifted herself back up onto the high mattress. "I worked out a reversal of the original ritual back in...Azkaban." She quickly cleared her throat. "It's still on the walls."
"How soon?" Ron asked. The atmosphere of the room had since taken a dramatic plunge, and not even the gangly redhead could summon up any cheer.
"Depends. About a week." She looked over at him. "I wish I could, but I can't get them out of here before Samhain."
"Are we sure we should even be trying to get them back at all?" Harry asked, masking his growing anger by taking off his round glasses to polish the lenses on his shirt tails.
"They don't belong here, Harry," Hermione said thinly. "They can't keep living their lives in two different times."
"That's not what I meant!" Harry was on his feet now. "You could get sent back Hermione – is that what you want!"
"No one wants to go back," she yelled, outrage lining her face, "but I have to fix what I've done!"
"The spell brought them here to help defeat Voldemort, so why don't we use them?" No matter how angry he made his tone, he was pleading with her plain and simple; begging her not to leave them again.
"They're unsuited for war, Harry," she scowled. "You saw them – they think this is a joke."
"And you think you're the only one who as a say in all of this," he shot back. His anger deflated then and he picked Hermione's hands up in both of his. Pulling them to his chest, he looked her beseechingly in the eyes. "Losing you...Ron and I can't do it again, Hermione. Please."
Hermione's face was as blank as a slate, but she let him hold her hands as though it was some small token she was willing to be bestow for the moment. "What if the next time Voldemort attacks, he gets to Lily?" She had to pause a moment to regain the deadened sound to her voice. "You might never be born, Harry. What do Ron and I do then...?"
In the silence that followed, it was Ron who finally broke it. "When did our lives become so painful...?"
Hermione sighed and rested her head against one of the canopy posts, Harry still holding to one of her small hands as Ron's murmurs went on.
"When did we stop being kids? When did everyday life turn into a struggle just to survive to the next bitter day?"
Harry stared fixatedly on the carvings in the bed's headboard, and Hermione's eyes had returned to the door. Ron looked into the hearth as if there were flames crackling there that neither Harry nor Hermione could see.
"When did I turn to ice?" Hermione whispered, and both boys fought not to look at her, fearing what they would find.
Harry spoke next. "When did being the hero stop being enough?"
Digging the knuckles of a fist roughly into his cheek, Ron propped up his head and blinked back the glaze that had settled over his eyes. "When did Voldemort start winning?" he asked softly; and to that, no one had an answer.
They sat in silence for a very long time; longer than they ever had before. They did not speak, because none of them could find the words to bring back a hint of joy to the deadened atmosphere choking the room. And so, they refrained from speaking at all, preferring to keep the silence the way it was without risking further despair to work its way into their thoughts.
But then...the trio could always count on Ron.
"What are you gonna do about your boyfriends?" He asked in a voice that was a bit too soft to be joking; but he was doing his best.
Hermione smiled and gave a short chuckle, turning to look back at the two of them sitting on her bed. "Get them out of my bedroom and up to bed?"
"Aww…that's sweet of you to say." Harry reached out and tweaked her toes, knowing she was ticklish there and she responded in turn by kicking him in the shins. "But I think best friend Ron was meaning my godfather and our teacher."
"They're not my boyfriends," she said, snidely turning up her nose.
"Not yet," Ron corrected with a grin. "Don't you think they're gonna be a little peeved about you sending them back?"
"Yeah," Harry said. "How are you going to tell them?
Hermione bit out a smile and forced her gaze not to wander. "I don't think that'll be an issue."
"I'm surprised you haven't even tried with either of them..." Ron confessed, and Hermione was proudly able to hold back her blush.
"That's because they don't belong here – it wouldn't have worked."
"You should try saying that to 'em," Harry laughed and Ron snickered.
"Could you imagine their faces?" The redhead chortled. Hermione smiled faintly.
"You know, I bet ten galleons my mum'll be the first one to figure it out," Harry boasted confidently, jabbing a thumb into his chest.
"No way!" Ron countered, leaning forward. "Definitely Sirius. If he keeps pushing one of us is gonna let something slip."
"You mean you'll let something slip," Harry laughed loudly. Ron gave an indignant sound and chucked one of Hermione's good bed pillows at him.
The owner of said pillow closed her eyes and opened them just as slowly, taking the time to gather herself together. Swallowing, she bit the bullet and her eyes were on the door as she said, "Twenty knuts says they're listening right now."
Lily and the Marauders were knocked solidly back against the stairwell and sat up nursing their bruised cheeks where the door had been shoved stoutly into them. The knob above them twisted and the door swung inwards, but when they looked up the trio was still sitting on Hermione's bed.
Ron's mouth was as wide as his eyes and Harry looked like he was about to be sick. Lily's face was blank, but James wouldn't even meet their eyes. Sirius looked angry and Remus betrayed. Hermione sat in the middle of it all; hands neatly folded in her lap.
Detaching herself from the situation, Hermione left behind her investment in the outcome of this play's scene and simply waited for someone to say something...anything. When no one did – seemingly quite content to continue their staring contest – she slipped off the edge of her bed and padded across the carpet to the tune of six sets of eyes. Reaching up as she moved, she tugged out the binding that held her hair in its ponytail and the wild curls spilled down around her shoulders. Seating herself in front of her lighted vanity, she stared at her tired face before picking up her brush and beginning to run it through her hair as if there were no else around.
"I can't believe you kept this from us!" Sirius yelled into the silence. Hermione's unaltered rhythm continued as she worked the mahogany brush around her head. "We had to overhear it!"
She flipped her hair over her shoulder, and selected a lock from the bottom layer that had seen particular wear and knottedness. "I asked Lily to come tonight, Sirius," Hermione said quite simply.
"You did what!" Ron shouted.
"You knew they were there...all this time?" Harry's voice was strained, though Hermione's attention was focused on working the tangles from her curls.
"Yes."
She caught sight of a dark head raising and clouded brown eyes in the curved arc of her mirror. "I thought we were friends, Hermione..." James said, dolefully.
Her hand, brush held loosely in its fingers, fell back onto the make-up table and she looked at him through the reflective glass. "We are."
He shook his head, and an unfamiliar dryness threatened to stop her words. "No...friends don't keep secrets from each other."
Hermione closed her eyes. They were going back in a week, she had to remind herself – even whisper it under her breath for the words to have any effect on her. Like a favorite cloak, she draped her apathy around herself, wrapping the mask of detachedness around her with so tight a fastening, neither air nor light could slip through the cracks. And when she'd sealed herself off – burrowed so far into unfeeling – she felt cold.
When she opened her eyes again, the honey orbs that reflected back at her looked dead. "How long did it take for Remus to confide in you his lycanthropy?" She asked evenly; thoughtless to the pained affect her question had on the quartet sitting in her doorway.
"At least he told us!" Sirius shot back angrily.
"As have I," she replied, in that same cool tone without inflection. Her fingers worked deftly to wind her thick mane into a single, corded braid.
"That's not the same, Hermione," James insisted quietly.
"Isn't it?"
"You betrayed me—us..." Remus whispered, speaking for the first time.
"I'm sorry you feel that way," she said as she pinned up her braid, but her voice was void of any sort of apologetic tone; in fact, she sounded anything but. "You can feel as angry at me as you like, but in a week...it won't matter."
"You can't be serious about that, Hermione," said James.
She nodded, and if it wasn't her affirmation that cut them, it was the words that followed it. "You're useless to me."
Their pained and disbelieving faces hardly so much as scratched the surface of Hermione's apathy. She simply no longer cared...
"The only reason any of you know all of this, is because of Harry. I told Lily to come outside my rooms, because I wanted to Harry to know..." Hermione's eyes burned, and her mind couldn't seem to identify the wetness that was building up in them – there was no emotion connected to it, it was just there – pricking at the corners of her eyes. "...to know...that for one brief moment his parents knew what a wonderful person he had turned out to be; that they loved and believed in him...that they were proud of him."
Not a drop rolled down her face, but she had to sniff to clear her throat to speak. "That's all."
Harry had turned away from the Marauders, resolutely staring at the open door to Hermione's closet as she'd spoken. She looked over at him as his eyes moved to hers. Tears...like a thought that had been caught on the tip of her tongue, she remembered them. Harry hadn't been able to hold back his tears, but they were ones only she and Ron could see. He smiled then, and she knew her face must look a terrifying sight, all cold and empty, and he mouthed two words.
Thank you.
Hermione cleared her throat. "I've actually been looking forward to a bath all day, so if you'll excuse me..."
It was as if her mannerly words were spoken merely as a formality for none yet held the customary tones or sentiments behind them. It looked as though she wouldn't have listened if they hadn't "excused her" as even while she was saying the words she was giving them her back and walking to the door that separated her bedroom from the Heads' common room. A shrug of her shoulders and her robe slipped down her arms and pooled in a terrycloth pile behind her as she walked.
It was probably shock that struck the room mute until she'd opened the door, but the jumble of shouted words hardly penetrated her suddenly developed selective hearing and the door was pushed softly shut – Hermione on the other side.
"FUCK!"
Remus jumped as Sirius' fist dented the plaster along the frame of the door. With a canine snarl, the dark-haired wizard pushed himself onto his feet and was running through the Gryffindor common room before Lily, speaking for the first time since the interchange, could reach him.
"Sirius! Don't!"
Hermione had almost reached the sanctuary of the Prefects' bath, before the swift Sirius caught up and was upon her. He spun her around with one of his substantially larger hands clamping tight around her wrist. The cold stone wall made close acquaintances with Hermione's back as it seemed she wasn't going to be bathing in the near future, judging by the bruising grip on her forearm.
"Sirius...you're hurting me." She told him dully. The pale white of her arm looked all the more brittle and thin with his fingers curled around it and the baggy flannel sleeve of her pajamas scrunched down around her elbow. She, for one, did not like looking at it and being reminded of how such things had come to pass.
"No, I'm not." His voice was dangerously low in its surety. "No more lies."
Hermione stopped her pathetic excuse for struggles and gazed heavy-lashéd at him, honoring his request for an end to her falsehoods. It seemed her dream of a bath was going to go unrealized this night.
"You lied to me about everything," he hissed.
"Not everything," she said evenly. "And not even on this particular matter. I merely held my tongue. If Dumbledore did not see fit to tell you then it wasn't my place—"
"Bullshit! Don't you start acting the model student now! You run more of this school than he does!"
Hermione forced her gaze as stony as it would go, but his hot angry breath on her cheeks was distracting and flustering. "If you had come to me and asked me 'Do I die in this time?' I would have told you the truth."
"Well sorry if that particular question never crossed my mind!" He raged. He couldn't believe she had to the gall to say something like that to his face.
Hermione reached up and with slow, but unflinching, strength pried his fingers off her wrist. There were bright red marks where the pads of his fingers had squeezed too hard. "I would have told you the truth," she repeated, evenly.
His glare was hard and fierce, but Hermione did not falter. Instead, when it became too difficult to maintain her apathy she fixed her gaze on a fissure in the wall opposite the one against her back. Her hand still held Sirius' wrist, but the other was pressed palm against the stone, her entire arm flush with the wall.
At the moment, life pretty much sucked. If she had thought for a second she'd be calling for anyone aside from the Founders with that ritual she never would have done it. Respectable witches and wizards such as them would not have thrown hissy fits over being sent back to their time, nor have caused her so much inner strife. For some reason, Hermione couldn't imagine she would have developed any personal feelings for, say, Salazaar Slytherin.
Sirius' heavy sigh startled her enough to realize that she'd completely spaced off in her inner-discussion, and she reluctantly moved her gaze back to Sirius' face, mentally berating herself for not being able to remain detached as she used to. She never got the chance to steel herself over, because Sirius was leaning over her and for the most panicky of all seconds Hermione thought he was surely going to try and kiss her.
Head twitching spasmodically, in which she felt like a demented bobblehead doll, Hermione fought between facing him down and turning her head to put her lips out of his reach. She wasn't aware she'd been holding her breath until Sirius's forehead found the cool stone beside her own head and the pent up carbon dioxide slipped passed her lips in a hiss.
His hand had gone limp in her grasp, thumb dragging its edge along the back of her palm, and his long hair was clinging to her neck and pajama sleeve with crackling static electricity. They stood together that way – Sirius leaning dejectedly against the wall, and she keeping her breaths shallow so as not to close the infinitesimal distance between their bodies.
"You thought I was gonna make out with you, didn't you...?" Laughter bubbled just at the edge of his voice.
Hermione shot him a sharp glare out of the corner of her eye, trying to look disapproving but flushing slightly at being caught.
"I'm not completely sex-driven you know..." he said wryly.
Hermione considered a multitude of different sharp, and rather abrasive, comebacks to this, but she was just too tired. "You're sweet," she murmured. Lifting her hand off the wall she braced it against his chest and guided him back. "But I can't let you and the others stay in this time."
Sirius groaned. "Hermione..."
"I'm tired, Sirius," she sighed. "I just want to take my bath and go to bed. There's nothing you or anyone could say to make me change my mind. Not even if you trained from dawn 'til dusk or did something equally ridiculous to try and prove yourselves."
Hermione looked him straight in the eyes and repeated herself quite clearly. "You can't prove yourselves to me."
She patted his shoulder and said, if a bit awkwardly, "I'm sorry, Sirius."
He watched her step into the bathroom and close the door softly behind her, and only after he was left staring at the fissure that had earlier caught Hermione's attention that her words really sunk in.
"I have to tell them!" he muttered disjointedly to himself as he pushed off the wall and sprinted for the Gryffindor tower. He just hoped he could explain what had happened just now.
