Smalltalk.
Cat and Mouse.
Hermione turner back the time-turner. People blurred backward around her and now, back in the common room, She stayed in the dark shadows watching herself and Ron bicker.
Two hours ago Hermione and Ron had ended their friendship over a cat and a rat.
Yet two hours ago and now were the same moment for Hermione.
It had ranked as a good stinker of an arguement. All the ingredients of stubborn denial, childish reasonings and a sprinkling of name-calling had served up a wonderous feast of destruction. Yet watching the argument, Hermione was chastising her old self rather than Ron. She should know better, after all Ron was just a boy.
As old Hermione stormed off, old Ron stared at the slammed door. The old Ron stormed off to see old Harry and rekindle old arguments.
Hermione lingered on that moment Ron stared at the door. What was he thinking?
"Then again, what had I been thinking?" she whispered.
Sneaking out to her alternate lesson, Hermione did not focus that well. In fact at the end of the lesson her margins were full of doodles of broomsticks.
"At least none of them were skewering lovehearts," she smirked. Perhaps it was her alternate self sending her messages, or her own subconscious. Some less cynical people would say it was her heart but Hermione was never one to listen to such gossip.
Being in two places simultaneously yet sticking to only one timeline had been causing Hermione to sometimes lose focus a lot. Professor McGonnagal had said she was suffering exhaustion when this was happening, though Hermione's own research in the library had discovered that time-travel had many inherent dangers, even if you did obey all those rules of conduct.
So currently "old" Hermione was continuing on her sniping at Ron two floors down. "Travelling" Hermione – she reasoned that to keep track these labels would help – would always go into her lesson knowing what old Hermione was doing, yet old Hermione never knew what travelling Hermione was doing. Sometimes she wondered if her past self was interfering more than her travelling self could ever do. Right now, Hermione was sensing herself hating Ron and lamenting her actions.
To act knowing you were acting foolishly was worse than not knowing how to act, and yet as she made her mistakes two floors down, her regrets were eating her in this lesson.
As the two timelines converged once more, Hermione snuck back in behind Ron and Harry.
"Bloody hell! How do you keep doing that!" snarled Ron.
"Sorry Ron," she said dully, her voice a hoarse whisper as if Hermione had spent the past three hours crying.
Harry shot her a quizzical glance. Then he reasoned that Hermione was an extrodinary girl – and he had problems figuring out the ordinary kind - so let it go.
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Disclaimer:-
Boyflea says:-
Finally found the angle back in – a variation of the flashback.
And thankyou all for your interest. Spread the word, read my old stories etc. Give an old man a reason to keep on writing. ;)
Boyflea said before:-
This will be the first in a series of tiny "off-camera" shorts primarily between Hermione and Ron spanning all books to date.
Boyflea maintains:-
All Harry Potter characters and references are solely owned by JK Rowling. I just love the setting.