Hermione couldn't remember a time she'd ever been happier. The last several days with Remus had been nothing short of wonderful. Although they'd spent a lot of time together as friends over the past couple of months, the dynamic between them had changed since they'd revealed their feelings for each other. The energy between them felt different now and it seemed to spark every time their hands joined or their lips met.
Hermione really liked kissing Remus…
It was the last day of classes before Christmas break when they had the snowball fight. Hermione and Remus were out on the snowy grounds with their friends, jovially making snow angels and building snowmen that danced with a flick of a wand. James was decorating Lily's creation with his own glasses when somebody (no one saw who, but many suspected Sirius) surprised him with a snowball to the back of his head. A merry melee ensued.
Snow was flying everywhere, either hitting the mark with a slushy thud or being dodged in often times entertaining ways. Kirsten displayed her previously undiscovered dance skills when she avoided a snowball by performing a perfect pirouette. Peter evaded Lily's shot by clumsily falling face first onto the ground as he tried to get James. Then, when Sirius fired a snowball at Marcia that caused her to topple over and crush the snowman she'd so proudly built, a war was waged between the girls and boys.
At some point, Hermione and Remus separated from the group and began a private battle of their own. Near the frozen Great Lake, they each hid behind a snow-covered tree, a snowball ready in their hand, and playfully tried to bait each other out into the open. Remus pitched a snowball in Hermione's vicinity in an attempt to draw her away from her tree, but unfortunately, he did so just as she suddenly stepped away from her cover. His shot accidentally hit her hard in the stomach, and as she fell back she reflexively flung her own snowball and caught Remus, who was rushing forward with an apology, square in the jaw.
Hermione quickly apologized too, but Remus grinned. He proffered his hand to her figure sitting in the snow. "Truce?"
Hermione took his hand with a smile. "Truce."
Remus pulled her to her feet and then she was in his arms. His embrace sheltered her from the icy breeze and his lips felt surprisingly warm against her own. He was like a haven of heat in the snowy wonderland, and Hermione thought vaguely of the pleasant warmth of bluebell flames. She had no desire to move away from this fire kindling between them but was forced to break apart from their kiss when a barrage of snowballs hit them.
"Traitors!" Marcia screamed, and a second onslaught of snowballs tore through the air at them.
Hermione and Remus swiftly launched a counterattack, stooping low and rapidly scooping up handfuls of snow to send at their friends and adversaries. Although they were outnumbered, it didn't matter for long. Soon the fight became a free-for-all.
When the gang finally returned to the castle, everyone was exhausted and wet from the snow. They made their way to Gryffindor tower and settled themselves by the fireplace to warm up and dry off. They remained there for the rest of the evening, laughing and chatting and enjoying one another's company. This was the last night they would all be together before everybody went home for the holidays. Everybody but Hermione and Remus. Hermione didn't have a home to go to in this time, and Remus, upon hearing that she would be staying alone at the castle, decided to spend his Christmas break there as well. She was grateful. She couldn't imagine having to spend this time of the year without any of her family or friends.
"Smile, Jean," Lily said, and Hermione turned from her conversation with Remus to see the Head Girl had procured a camera and was focusing it on her.
"Oh no, please don't — I hate having my picture taken," Hermione told Lily hurriedly, putting her hand up to obscure her face from the view of the lens. She knew a photograph of her in this time would be hard evidence of her time travel and she should avoid that danger at all costs.
"Fine," Lily said, respecting her friend's wishes and lowering the camera.
It wasn't until later that night, however, after Remus and James had walked them to the Head Girl's dormitory, that Hermione learned Lily had already taken a picture of her prior to her realization of the camera's presence.
"Here," Lily said, holding out a photograph for her. "Look at this."
"It's not of me, is it?" Hermione asked warily. "You know I don't like—"
"Just look at it."
Hermione took the photograph. It showed her and Remus sitting together by the fire. Their attention was initially directed at someone out of the frame, but when their hands subtly met in the space between them, their gazes found each other as well. A tender look passed between them.
"When did you take this?" Hermione asked breathlessly.
"When you were too distracted to notice, obviously."
Hermione continued watching the moving photograph for several more seconds, entranced by the moment Lily had captured between her and Remus. The way they were looking at each other… she blushed.
Lily smiled at her. "You two look like you're in love."
Indeed, they did.
After breakfast the next morning, Hermione and Remus stood outside the front doors of the castle, bidding farewell to their friends who were leaving for home.
Sirius was chuckling as he said goodbye to Remus, and Hermione overheard him tell her boyfriend in an undertone, "Behave yourself, Moony."
"Have a happy Christmas," Lily said brightly, hugging Hermione and Remus in turn. Then the redhead joined hands with James and set off with him and the others.
As their friends and other schoolmates trudged through the snow toward the school gates, Hermione and Remus reentered the castle. Peeves was gliding around the entrance hall, gleefully singing a naughty rendition of a classic Christmas carol, when he spotted the pair. The poltergeist leered at them and pointed at something over their heads. Fearing Dungbombs or something equally unpleasant, they looked up to see mistletoe hanging above them.
"Kissy kissy, Moony and Frizzy!" Peeves sang, and Hermione self-consciously put a hand up to her hair.
"It looks fine," Remus assured her, a smile playing on his lips. Gently taking a lock of her hair between his fingers and twirling it, he said, "I like your hair."
"Kisssssyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!" Peeves squealed as he swooped down towards them. He circled around the couple, making loud kissing noises, but Hermione ignored him and turned back to Remus.
"Why didn't you kiss me the first time we were under the mistletoe?" she asked him curiously.
"Well, we weren't actually beneath the mistletoe," Remus replied, which was certainly true and a fair enough answer.
"What about during that Truth or Dare game? You said you've liked me for a while now. Why didn't you kiss me then?"
She'd always wondered about this. If he had liked her, then why hadn't he taken advantage of that moment which Sirius had called a perfectly good snogging opportunity?
"You looked very nervous," Remus said. "Did you want me to?"
"Well, yeah. Didn't you?" But he shook his head slightly, and Hermione, a bit hurt and surprised, said, "Oh. I just thought—"
"I did want to kiss you," Remus told her, "but I didn't want it to happen during a game like that. If I were going to kiss you, I wanted you to know it was because I really wanted to, because I liked you. Not because it was a dare."
"Oh," Hermione said again, this time content with his explanation.
"But if I'd known you wanted me to, I definitely would have."
"Well…" she said coyly, glancing up at the mistletoe.
Remus smiled and then his lips were on hers.
"Looky looky, Dumby! Moony and Frizzy are kissy kissy! Ha ha ha!" Peeves chortled.
Hermione hastily pulled away from Remus to see Dumbledore had just come out of the Great Hall. His brows raised fractionally when his eyes met hers and she felt her face go pink. What would he think of this? What would Dumbledore make of her kissing someone from twenty years before her time?
"Good morning, Mr. Lupin, Miss Wilkins," the Headmaster greeted pleasantly.
"Good morning, Professor," Hermione and Remus said in unison.
Then, without another word, Dumbledore went on his way up the marble staircase, Peeves whooshing away after him.
Seeming to sense her nervousness, Remus asked, "What's wrong?"
Before Hermione could answer, though, she saw something else that made her feel considerably more uneasy. One of the Slytherin boys who'd attacked her, the one who inexplicably reminded her of Bellatrix Lestrange, had just walked out of the Great Hall. Remus followed her gaze. Upon seeing the Slytherin, he made a sudden movement, as if going for his wand, but there was no need to draw it. The Slytherin just scowled at them before continuing on his way to the dungeons. Unfortunately, it appeared he would be one of the few staying at Hogwarts for the holidays as well.
Hermione did her best not to worry about the Slytherin, and for the rest of the day she successfully managed to keep him out of her mind. That night, however, she had no control over the matter. Her dream began beautifully but quickly turned into a nightmare. She and Remus were chasing each other, laughing, across a snowy courtyard, heading toward a torch of bluebell flames in the distance. But just as they were about to reach it, the Slytherin boy appeared out of nowhere. He blocked their path, and Hermione stumbled and fell to the ground. The scene dissolved around her, rearranging so that the snow beneath her turned to ash and the bluebell flames flickered into an orange red fire surging in a familiar ornate marble fireplace.
With terrible dread, Hermione realized she'd fallen onto the drawing room floor of Malfoy Manor. Remus had disappeared along with the snowy courtyard and she was alone, powerless, before the Slytherin, completely at his mercy. He pointed his wand at her, tilting his head slightly, and Hermione watched, horrified, as he morphed grotesquely into Bellatrix Lestrange. Her dark hair hanging over her face and her black eyes alive with sadistic pleasure, the Death Eater cried out in a jarring voice, "Crucio!" and Hermione was seized by pain so intense, so excruciating, she wished for death rather than to endure any more of this torture…
Hermione awoke, screaming and struggling to free herself from the bonds, from the grasp of the Death Eaters. Then she realized that she was only fighting with her blanket. It had just been a terrible dream. There was no Bellatrix. She was alone in her dorm at Hogwarts, perfectly safe. Still, it took her a long time to get back to sleep.
She wasn't the only one having trouble with sleep that night.
In the Gryffindor common room the next afternoon, Hermione looked up from her book to study Remus who was sitting beside her at a table, quietly composing a letter to his father. He had been rather quiet all day. She waited for him to break from his writing before asking him if there was anything wrong.
"I didn't sleep very well last night," he told her. "I'm a bit tired." He paused before adding, "You look tired too."
"Thanks," she said sarcastically.
"You look lovely as always, of course," Remus quickly amended, and the corners of Hermione's mouth twitched up. "But also tired."
"I didn't sleep very well, either."
Remus examined her more closely and concern crossed his features. "Was it because of that Slytherin boy?"
"Sort of. He made an appearance in a dream I was having. A nightmare, actually," she said, faintly embarrassed acknowledging that she'd had a bad dream, that something about that Slytherin made her feel afraid. "It's silly that he was in it at all. He didn't even hurt me that day I helped Alex, but I was scared anyway because…"
"Because you've been attacked before," Remus said shrewdly, and Hermione nodded.
She had never really talked about the incident with Harry or Ginny or anybody else before. There had been too many important things to focus on after the escape from Malfoy Manor, so she'd suppressed what had happened as well as she could and concentrated on the greater, more vital task of destroying Voldemort. Then, after he was gone, after the Battle of Hogwarts, none of her friends spoke explicitly about anything that had happened. Everyone had been scarred by the Second Wizarding War and was in the process of healing. She and her friends had a tacit understanding to be there for one another but not pry into each other's darkest moments.
But right now with Remus, she wanted to speak. So she told him softly, "It happened a few months ago. The witch who attacked me — she was powerful. And cruel. She used the Cruciatus Curse on me, over and over again. It was…" Hermione shook her head, unable to find the words to describe the unbearable pain and accompanying terror. "I didn't think it would ever end, but I wanted desperately for it all to be over, even if that meant not surviving. I just wanted it to end."
Remus took her hand in both of his own, his expression solemn.
"I'm sorry you had to go through that," he said quietly. "I know what it's like to be attacked… I was very young the night I was infected, the night I became a werewolf."
With a shock, Hermione made the connection just then that the werewolf who had bitten Remus was the same werewolf who had captured her and her friends and taken them to Malfoy Manor, the same notoriously savage werewolf to whom Bellatrix had offered her as a treat after she'd had her fill of torturing her — Fenrir Greyback.
"I don't remember everything that happened," Remus continued, "but I remember the fear and the pain and the blood. And the smell — the reek of his filthy fur."
Hermione squeezed his hand. She hated to think of Remus, who must have been a sweet young boy, being attacked so viciously. He had been forever changed that night, forever affected with lycanthropy, and he would always have to deal with the damaging physical and emotional effects.
"Did you have nightmares about it too?" she asked.
"Yeah. A lot when I was younger. But it gets better."
For a while, they sat there quietly, Remus gazing down at his and Hermione's caressing hands, unseeingly, apparently absorbed in the memories of his nightmares and of Greyback.
Or so Hermione thought until he asked her, "Did that witch attack you because you're Muggle-born?"
"What?" she said, completely caught off guard by his question. He was supposed to think she was half-blood.
"I heard the Slytherin call you 'Mudblood' when he attacked you," Remus said, watching her closely. "And Alex said you told him you were Muggle-born and proud of it."
Hermione was silent, her mouth suddenly dry. Her words to Alex had totally blown the background story Dumbledore had conceived for her when she'd first arrived to this time.
"Are you Muggle-born?" Remus asked her again, directly this time.
Should she try to deny it? Somehow she thought he wouldn't buy the lie. So, feeling like there was really no other option, she responded to his question with a timid, "Yes."
Remus stared at her, frowning slightly.
"So your father doesn't really work for the Ministry of Magic?" he asked.
"Um, no," Hermione admitted uncomfortably. "My parents are both dentists, actually."
Remus lowered his gaze to their hands again and Hermione watched him nervously, trying to gauge how upset he was with her for her dishonesty. But he was a person who possessed great self-composure, making him very difficult to read sometimes.
Her nerves unable to take the silence stretching between them, Hermione asked him, "Aren't you going to ask me why I didn't tell you?"
"If I did," he said slowly, looking up at her, "would you tell me the whole truth?"
Something in the way he said this gave Hermione the impression that he wasn't only referring to her being Muggle-born. She didn't know how to respond.
"W-what do you mean?" she asked.
"Nothing," he said, appearing to have regretted his question. "Forget I asked."
He released her hand and turned back to his letter, and Hermione bit her lip as she tried to figure out what to say to him. She knew she couldn't tell him the whole truth, but she had to explain herself to him somehow.
"Remus," she said after a while, "I'm sorry I lied about my father and said I was half-blood. When I first arrived here, I just thought it would be better — safer — to make people think that."
"I understand," he said, slowly putting down his quill to face her once more. "You wouldn't want to be harassed or attacked again for being Muggle-born. I get that. I just… I can't help but wonder if there's anything else you haven't been honest about. Sometimes I get this strange feeling when we're together. I can't explain it, but I feel like there's something you're not telling me."
"You — you think I'm hiding something from you?"
"Are you?" he asked, his eyes searching hers.
Hermione knew Remus was a very perceptive person, and she feared now that he'd been able to read in her eyes the guilt she'd felt whenever she'd had to lie to him about something from her past in order to maintain Dumbledore's story. Could he have also read the guilt she sometimes felt about dating him without the knowledge of the Remus she knew in the future? Could he read her guilt now?
With a touch of defensiveness, Hermione said, "I didn't realize you were so — so suspicious of me."
"I'm not suspicious," Remus told her steadily. "I'm curious. There are some things about you that are — well, a bit mysterious."
"Like what?" she asked, staggered that he found her so suspect.
"Like the way you claim to have been transported to this school by Portkey even though you were asleep and empty-handed when you first arrived here, and we both know a Portkey couldn't have really transported you directly into Hogwarts even if you'd had one in your possession. And your appointments with Dumbledore are unusual. He doesn't meet with students very often unless they're in trouble, and I know you've met with him at least three times in the short time you've been here. And the Marauder's Map says…"
Remus trailed off, frowning again, while Hermione's heart nearly stopped.
"The Marauder's Map?" she repeated anxiously, knowing what it must have revealed to him. How could she have not foreseen this danger?
"That's the map you and Lily used to follow James the night of the last full moon," he explained to her needlessly. "It tracks the movements of everybody in Hogwarts, and when I was checking it last night I — I noticed something strange."
Remus paused, looking puzzled, and Hermione struggled not to reveal her panic under his watchful gaze.
"I knew you were in the Head Girl's dormitory," he continued, "because I'd just walked you and seen you go inside. But the only dot in your dorm that the map showed, the dot that should have represented you and been labeled with your name, was labeled 'Hermione Granger' instead."
He gave her a questioning look and Hermione swallowed.
"That certainly is strange," she agreed. Then, thinking fast and hoping her voice wouldn't betray her by trembling, she said, "I don't know why the map would mislabel me like that. Maybe — maybe it's malfunctioning and mixed up my name with somebody else's."
"Right," said Remus. "The map must be wrong."
Hermione remembered Remus saying in her third year, in regard to Peter Pettigrew's name showing up on the map when he was thought by everyone to be dead, that the Marauder's Map never lied. She strongly doubted that he believed it was mistaken now.
The pair contemplated each other in silence for several seconds, Hermione apprehensive and Remus uncertain, until the Marauder spoke again.
"Jean, if there is something you're not telling me… I don't want you to feel like you have to hide anything from me. You can talk to me about anything."
Should she tell him? But Dumbledore had insisted she shouldn't. He'd made her promise not to because it would be too dangerous for him to know the truth…
"But I also understand," Remus went on, "if you don't want to tell me."
"It's not that I don't want to tell you, Remus — I can't," Hermione said before she could stop herself. Then, her voice rising in pitch, she quickly added, "Because — because there's nothing to tell."
Her last statement sounded false even to her own ears, but after a few tense moments Remus simply nodded and said, "Okay."
He picked up his letter and got to his feet, and Hermione stood up as well.
"Remus…" she began, but she broke off, not knowing what to say next.
As she struggled to find words, Remus told her, "I'm going to the Owlery to send this letter. I won't be long."
Hermione didn't want him to leave, but she didn't know what to say to him, what to do. So she only nodded. "Okay."
Remus hesitated for a moment, then softly kissed her cheek and turned away. Feeling uneasy, Hermione watched him walk out of the common room.