Chapter 7: The Tip of the Iceburg

The days wore on and Hermione became increasingly nervous. She reread the spell a dozen times to make sure she had it memorized and then reread it a dozen times in a vain attempt to shake off the sense of unease she always felt when she thought about it. She had begun snapping at anyone who asked her something that they should already know, which meant she was snapping at Ron and Sirius quite a lot. They, like she, were uneasy about it and apparently decided to do exactly as Hermione, except by asking her constant questions instead of reading it.

At noon on the third day, Ron approached Hermione with a look of determination on his face.

"I can't let you go through with this."

Hermione sighed. "No one else can do it."

"I can," Ron said. "Sirius can!"

"Neither of you know the spell and time has run out for you to learn it. You have to trust me, Ron."

"I do trust you!" Ron said emphatically. "I just don't want you to get hurt!"

"I'm not going to get hurt," Hermione said in what she hoped was a reassuring tone. In all honestly she had no idea whether or not she would get hurt but Ron didn't need to know that. "I know all I can know about this spell and nothing in it says anything about getting hurt or trials you have to take." Actually, the book said nothing at all about what it would portain, just that it would do what she wanted it to do. She really was telling white lies today.

Ron sighed and sat down at one of the desks in her classroom. "Why don't you tell me more about this future Harry that never showed up?"

"He may yet," Hermione pointed out. She was actually quite worried about him, and while her brain told her that it was ridiculous, her heart told her otherwise. Why had he never shown up? Surely he knew that they needed his help. He always seemed to pop up when you least expected him to and knowing more than you expected he would. Only he hadn't yet...

"Forget it, Hermione," Ron said. "We should just accept the fact that he's not going to show. And why would he? No one told him what was going on."

Hermione sighed. Ron simply did not know this other Harry well enough yet. No one ever told him anything, but he always seemed to know everything anyway.

"Why don't we go get some lunch," Ron suggested standing up. "Talk somewhere where the chairs aren't much smaller than I remember them being."

"I have work to do," Hermione said. In truth she simply did not want to go eat with Ron. She knew that if she did, he would talk her out of doing what she knew she had to do.

Ron sighed and nodded. He made to leave, but when he reached the door, Hermione stopped him.

"Ron?" He turned back. "Will you be my guide?"

He looked at her for a second and for the briefest instant, Hermione thought he was going to say no, instead he said calmly, "Hermione, you know I'll always be there to guide you."

She relaxed and smiled. "Thanks."

"No problem," Ron said. He smiled back. "Tonight then?"

"Tonight," Hermione agreed.

Hermione swallowed hard. "I can do it."

Ron looked at her worriedly. "Are you sure? This is very advanced magic, Hermione."

Hermione's eyes flashed. "Well we clearly can't ask Harry, can we? We know what he'll say!"

"He'd do it," Ron said stubbornly. "I know he would. It's for Remus, after all."

Hermione sighed and nodded. "I'm sorry I snapped, Ron. I'm just so nervous. Besides, Harry's already made it perfectly clear that he doesn't want anything to do with the Death Eaters."

"He would do it," Ron said stubbornly.

"I know he would," Hermione said. "But you weren't there, Ron. You didn't see the look on his face..."

Ron frowned. Hermione knew she should hold her tongue, but she was so scared that she had trouble. She had never, out of respect for Harry, told Ron anything about the night Harry had defeated Voldemort.

"What happened?" Ron asked carefully.

"It's nothing," Hermione said briskly. "If we're to do this, we should get it over with."

Ron's face suddenly set very hard and he stared at Hermione so calmly and firmly that she blinked. "We have been quiet too long, Hermione. This is serious now. If there's something I should know, I want to know it. People have gotten hurt over what they don't know. I'm not about to let someone else get hurt."

"It's nothing to do with this," Hermione said firmly. "It's Harry's business. If he wants to talk--"

"He won't bloody talk!" Ron said angrily. Hermione had expected everyone's nerves to be on end during this occasion, but even she was having trouble controlling her nerves. "He'll never say anything! I'm tired of being the friend left out! The only bloody person who doesn't understand his pain!"

"Watch your language, Ron," Hermione said, but her heart wasn't in it. "There's no time for this. I'll loose my nerve if we don't do it now."

Ron looked about to argue but one look at Remus's still form convinced him to drop the subject. "I think I should do it."

"You don't know the incantation," Hermione said automatically. "Only I can do it. The clock is ticking and Remus could be dying as we speak."

"Are you sure this will work?" Ron asked.

"I'm not sure about anything," Hermione whispered. "But we have to know, Ron. If we can't wake him up, at least we will be able to protect ourselves from whatever hit him."

"What if it sucks you inside well?"

"It's a risk I'm willing to take," Hermione said firmly.

"What-," Ron swallowed hard. He seemed to have a hard time talking. "What if I don't want you to risk it?"

Hermione smiled up with him, a tight smile. Her heart went out to Ron, but she had to do this and he knew it. "I can take care of myself."

"I know you can," Ron said firmly. "I--I just don't think you should risk it."

"I can do it," Hermione said firmly. She drew herself up firmly and said calmly, "Did you bring the herbs, Ron?"

Ron sighed and nodded. He pulled a small pouch of his pocket and handed it to Hermione. Hermione took it with trembling fingers that she tried to hold steady. She knew that Ron saw right through her act, but she wasn't trying to convince Ron. She was trying to convince herself.

She opened the pouch and a pecular scent wafted up to her. Nodding in satisfaction, she reached in and scooped up a handful. Careful not to let any slip between her fingers, she sprinkled a bit on Remus's unmoving forehead. Meshing the rest between her palms, she wiped a matching line across her own forehead.

She looked straight ahead, all too aware of Ron watching her worriedly. "Remember," she said, not looking at him. "I may need you to pull me back."

"Don't worry," Ron said.

Hermione swallowed and took a step forward. Ever so gently, she placed her fingertips on the herbs sprinkling Remus's forehead. She closed her eyes.

Cold filled her so completely that she was only dimly aware of her mouth opening in a gasp, so consumed as she was in the icy barrior of absolute cold. She barely felt her lips moving in the memorized chant. Firmly, she made herself mentally push the cold away and as she did, she became more aware of her body around her. Her words faultered.

No...Hermione thought. She was breaking the tiny connection she already had. Steeling herself, she pulled the cold back, embracing it until she though she would die from its freezing cold...and quite suddenly, it stopped.

She felt her body around her again, but it seemed Remus's forehead had vanished beneath her. Opening her eyes in surprise, she was surprised to find herself in a house. It was Remus's house.

"Do you know where you are?"

She whirled around. Ron was standing before her, no longer nervous looking, but calm and collected. She swallowed and tried to acheive the same look.

"I do."

"Do you now?" a slight smile quirked Ron's lips. It was his appearance down to his toenails, but it was not his mind behind that face and she knew it.

"I am inside Remus Lupin's mind," Hermione said with assurance.

Ron laughed aloud. "Is that so? It has been long since someone has called me forward. Perhaps memory has died with the last visitor."

"No," Hermione said, trying to hide her confusion. "I have read everything I can about this spell. I am inside Remus's mind."

"Don't be a fool," said the person in Ron's form sharply. "Do you think the mind is a house like this miserable little shack? Something you can just walk into? You think sprinkling a few herbs and saying a few words can take you deep inside the skull of a human being? In his mind, you say? You are barely standing on the surface of his brain, to speak metaphorically, seeing the bare tip of the iceberg! The mist over the lake! The bark on an ancient tree!"

"I get it!" Hermione said hurriedly. "How can I find Remus here? How do I get further, bury deeper?"

"Try a shovel," said the person behind Ron's face in disgust. "I will not help those that come in ignorance."

"I won't leave here until you help me!" Hermione said stubbornly. "I must know what is wrong with him!"

"Then you will never leave!" Ron snapped. "Expect no help from me!"

Hermione's jaw set stubbornly, but slowly she took in her surroundings. "Why am I here? Why this place of all places?"

"Fool," Ron muttered. "For centuries I wait and all I get is a fool."

Hermione was not paying attention. "You say I am barely on the surface. If that were true, doubtlessly I would be in the hospital. That is probably the surface of his brain. Unless he is asleep. Then perhaps this is a dream."

The man with Ron's face said nothing and Hermione did not expect an answer.

"If this is a dream, then Remus should be here."

Ron snorted.

Hermione sent him a cool look. "But dreams are deeply inside the subconscious. I am on the surface. This is probably the most basic of his senses, the mere surface of what he's thinking."

Hermione did not look at Ron, but she had the impression he was watching her and shaking his head.

Hermione frowned. "Surface of his mind or no, there must be a reason I was brought here."

"Unless there isn't," Ron said with amusement.

Hermione ignored him completely and began to walk around. "A reason. This is where he was attacked. There must be a reason he would bring me here."

"You do know that you're not powerful enough for this spell," Ron said, laying down on the couch so that he took it up completely.

"I was powerful enough to get here, wasn't I?" Hermione asked, still looking around the room.

Ron snorted. "Doesn't take much effort to get here."

"I am powerful enough," Hermione said.

"Why didn't you ask someone who did have the power to do it?" Ron asked. Hermione looked at him sharply, but he had his arms behind his head and was staring at the ceiling.

"Like who?"

"Don't think of me as a fool," he snapped. In one quick movement he was on his feet, staring at her. For an instant she saw tiny souls reflected in his eyes, souls shrieking in agony. Then he blinked and his anger visibly faded. His eyes returned to normal, but Hermione did not forget them. Who was this person?

"Not a person," Ron said, sitting back down on the couch. "Then again, if you'd done proper research, you would have known that."

Hermione's mouth opened slightly in surprise. "Can you...read my thoughts?"

Ron laughed. "This is your mind! The words you speak and your thoughts come through just as clear for me. So answer the question properly.

"What question?"

Ron's jaw set in a way that said he was getting tired of her stupidity. "The question I asked before."

Hermione was distinctly of the impression that he was not going to repeat it but expected an answer. She cast her mind around and found it. "Oh. Harry never showed up. We couldn't find him."

"Of course you couldn't," Ron said with another snort of laughter. "He's rather...indisposed, isn't he?"

"What do you mean?" Hermione asked quickly, her heart rate quickening. What in the world could make that Harry 'indisposed'?

"Why didn't you ask the other Harry?"Ron asked. "He's just as powerful, even if most of that power is yet untapped."

"He doesn't want to be involved in this."

"Do you think this is a game?" Ron asked. "You have barely enough power at this point in time to keep from burning yourself out!"

"One is born with a certain amount of power," Hermione said. "I alone could perform the spell so I alone had to have done it."

"So use an angreal," Ron said with an amused grin as though it were an inside joke.

"A what?" Hermione asked blankly.

Ron sighed and his smile vanished. "Here I thought you knew how to read. Never mind then. Are you quite done? There so much to be done right about now that I really should be doing something else."

"You wouldn't even exist if it wasn't for me," Hermione said vaguely, her eyes went back to roaming around the room.

"Don't be ridiculous," Ron said in a tone that suggested the conversation was barely holding his attention. "I have always existed. You have simply called my presence for a short period of time."

"But you cannot leave until I do," Hermione said, bending down to pick up a book. "Such detail," she muttered. "For the mere surface of the brain."

Ron snorted in laughter. "If someone feeds and takes care of your body until you die of old age, it will matter not to me. A simple human life is such a tiny thing compared to the great scheme of things. Short lived and pathetically lived, doing nothing with your lives that will truely last. Or-" he let out a bark of laughter. "You make something that does last, but is utterly useless! Stonehedge for example! Such a simple-minded race you are! One little comment about how worthless you are and you go and stack a bunch of rocks on top of each other! As though that proves something!" He laughed again, but Hermione was ignoring him completely. Something had just caught her attention.

A small round ball was sitting on the neat desk, looking quite odd and out of place. "What is it?" she whispered. Carefully, she reached out to pick it up. The second it touched her finger, vines shot out and wrapped themselves around her. She screamed.

The vines seemed to be alive, reaching for her, wrapping around her and binding her tightly. Pain flashed through her as two vines shot at her face, burrying themselves into her eyes, blinding her and making their way to her brain. Darkness filled her...

Her eyes opened and she sat up straight. She was lying on the floor of a completely white room, but instead of there being plain walls, they were slashed as though a monster had been let loose and ravaged it. She looked around wildly and saw Ron leaning lazily against one wall.

"What was that?" she gasped, unable to stop herself from reaching up and touching what she almost expected to be ruined eyes. They were whole. There was only a dull aching behind her eyes.

"You asked the right question," Ron said with a shrug.

Hermione got to her feet, swaying slightly as her world seemed to spin. "The right question? Where am I? What is this place? Why am I here now?"

Ron raised his eye brows.

"Good morning!" said a cheerful voice behind her. "How was your night?"

"My what?" Hermione asked blankly, looking at the woman in confusion. She blinked and realized that she was no longer herself. She was the height of a child and it was certainly a child's voice that came from her throat. She turned to where Ron was and saw that she had to look up at him. A startled exclamation came from her throat and she wheeled back to the woman who had come through a door she had not seen.

"You night, child," said the woman kindly. She was wearing a mediwizard's robes. She bent down and felt Hermione's forehead. "It's okay now. We heard you screaming half the night, but there was nothing we could do. At least you don't remember it."

She took Hermione's arm very gently and lifted up her shrunken robe. Hermione gasped and jerked it out of the woman's grasp, taking a step back as she looked at her arm.

There were teeth marks and sratches all over it. Suddenly she felt acute pain all over her body and dropped to stinging knees. She bit back tears and felt her face, which was scratched when she had been sure it hadn't been before. Her body hurt all over as though she had been ripped to shreds and hastily put back together again.

"Don't worry, dear," said the woman kindly, but with a hint of worry. We'll have these cleaned and tended to." She wasn't using magic though. She took a gentle cloth and applied alcohol. Gently but firmly, she took Hermione's arm and dabbed it with the cloth. The stinging pain that followed brought tears to her eyes. In a chocking voice she asked, "Wh-What ha-happened to m-me?"

The woman looked at her calmly. "Please, child. Don't make this harder on yourself."

"It hurts, doesn't it?" asked a voice close to her ear. She looked up into Ron's face. The woman was ignoring him completely, as if he wasn't there.

"Wh-What's wr-wr-wrong with m-me?" Hermione asked, trying to control the sobs that now wracked her body. The wounds were so deep and painful and try as this woman might, she was simply not gentle enough.

"There's something blocking the werewolf's mind. You've run into it."

"Wh-What d-d-do you m-mean?" Hermione said, tears steaming down her face as she tried not to jerk her arm away from the woman with the stinging solution.

"It could be a block of his own making," Ron said calmly. "He might not want you inside."

Hermione shook her head hard, trying to control her tears, but it hurt so much...

"Or perhaps someone else doesn't want you in his mind."

Hermione gasped, her tears faultering for a moment in her shock. "Th-That talisman! What was it?"

Ron said nothing, his lips curved into a sardonic smile.

"Wh-Where am I then?" Hermione asked, wincing and gulping tears as the woman moved to her other arm, her first one a solid wall of stinging bandage. "I-I have to b-be somewhere. Am I st-still in Remus's m-mind?

Ron sighed and put on the long-suffering tone of someone who had explained something a hundred times and was tired of the student not paying attention. Hermione knew it well as she herself used it often. "The mind more complex than teaching a Muggle a hovering charm and more simple than human intelligence--and about as impossible too. No, Hermione Granger, this is not the mind of Remus Lupin. This is the mind of Hermione Granger."

They were only words, but at the sound of them, the room came into sharper focus, the pain became more acute and the woman's alcohol stung more sharply.

"M-My mind?" Hermione repeated, dumb-founded. "B-But I--" she broke off, took firm control of herself, and wiped her tears on the bandage of her finished arm. "I didn't want to come to my own mind!"

"Don't be a fool," Ron snapped. Then he appeared to reconcider. "Perhaps it is too late for that. But try to think on your feet a little. There's a block. That block is trying to prevent you from getting into the werewolf's mind. Thus far it had been successful. It can't push you into nothing, so where can it push you?"

"This isn't my mind!" Hermione protested, tears filling her eyes again. She wiped them away, controlled herself again, and went on. "Last time I checked, it didn't hurt so much!"

"Are you sure?" Ron asked calmly. "When was the last time you really checked?"

Hermione stared down at her paining arms. Blood from the cuts was beginning to seep through. "Why would I do this to myself?"

"Why indeed," Ron said disapprovingly. "But I can't tell you. It doesn't work that way. It's amazingly simple. Or, perhaps for someone with your limited intelligence, it's amazingly complex. Why don't you take a look around?" He nodded in the direction of the door the woman had come through.

"Who is she then?" Hermione asked, trying to change the subject.

A small, knowing smile touched Ron's lips. "She is the one tending the wounds."

"But she's not a Muggle," Hermione said, not defensive, but trying to understand. "Why isn't she using magic?"

"If the healings of the mind were as easy as the healings of the body, everyone would do it."

Hermione did not want to go through that door. She was rather afraid of what was behind it. "Do I have to work out my own problems before I work out Remus's?"

"No," Ron said shortly. "And normally I would tell you to ignore it, but by the look of you, you'd die of blood loss."

"I have to hurry and get this done," Hermione said. "I have to finish before the full moon. I don't have time to heal myself."

"It's not my problem if you die," Ron said dismissively. "What's one human life in the overall scheme of things? You will die, however, before you get anywhere close to where you need to be."

Hermione swallowed hard.

She brushed the mediwizard aside. She did not resist, but she looked at Hermione in surprise.

"It's about time," she muttered.

Every step stung, but Hermione reached the door. With a determined grunt, she pulled. Nothing happened. Ignoring Ron's sniggers, she pushed.

A/N: Tadda! See? I'm not unreliable. It's Friday and that's my usual updating day! Or, it was before summer vacation.

Gilthas: Glad to see you've gotten back into the swing of things.

Me: I have. Sort of. I've got a lot of work to do this year, but I promise that I WILL NOT leavet his story incomplete and if I start another one, it will be finished too.

Gilthas: Yay! That makes me happy!

Phath: Ditto!

Me: Ga! stuffs Phath's head into a box You didn't see that!

Gilthas: Quick! Go to reviewer response!

LuminescentWings0127: I have and that makes me happy!

The Best witch of all: I'm trying to write as fast as I can! I have another chapter after this and I hope I can write more soon!

Lady-of-the-Dragon-Flame: Yay! I'm keeping you in suspense about what happened to Future Harry, aren't I? More will be revealed in the next chapter. I like to make these mind chapters because I think the human mind is really cool. Hey, I was thinking of another one after this one that's going to be in Future Harry's world. It's only a plan so far, but I hope I can write it. I really like to write these demensional ones and that one's going to be really interesting in that way without another time travel. :)

grand admiral chelli: Hehehehe! I'm not telling you what happened to Future Harry! More will be revealed about what happened to him in future chapters. I don't think it explains it next chapter, but it does in one of the next ones!!!

RunningInCircles: Me too! I hope I can keep updating!

shadow-n-the-dark: Yeah, I don't like this one as much as my other two stories. That's probably why I haven't been writing as much. As soon as I finish this one though (and it's going to be shorter than the others) I can work on a different story that I've been looking foreward to! Stick with me!! Please!

megan: Yay! Did you read them all? That's awesome! I'm going to update a bit more now that I have more time. I was just never there this summer and it took me a while to get going this year. I have more time to write now though so expect more updates!

Robbly: I feel special! It's been 3 months since your last written reveiw? That's crazy! It's a new chapter, but no Harry in it! This is something I've never done before. Normally I stick only with Harry and never go to anyone else except for once in a blue moon. Now it's all centering on Hermione! gasp! Don't worry. Harry's story will pop up next chapter or so! Okay, I've updated! Now you update your story!

A/N: Okay, crisis averted.

Gilthas: How did he get in here?

Me: No idea. Just forget it happened.

Gilthas: Right! So everyone reveiw!