It was ten minutes later that four Slytherins and three Gryffindors were waiting in the seventh floor corridor, not really sure where the door was to the room they always met in. Both houses kept a firm ten feet from each other and awkwardly averted their gaze. Remus refused to meet anyone in the eye and just stared down at his feet, but Sirius knew that whatever bothered him and Hermione, was still haunting his friend's thoughts. That meant it must have been bad. James kept trying to get Remus to talk about it, but Remus ignored him completely. Either that or didn't really hear him. All except Remus stood straighter when they saw the honey colored wolf walk up to them before pacing in front of a blank patch of wall three times. All except Remus gasped when the door appeared out of nowhere and all entered.

When Hermione phased back into her human form, her usual witches robes had been changed for a muggle tank top, skirt and sandals. Everyone's eyes were fixed on various scars all over her body and Sirius noticed that her eyes were guarded, her very posture was forced indifference. This is what had Remus so haunted. This is why Remus couldn't look anyone in the eye. He had pushed a boundary with her and she showed him what was underneath her confident exterior. Sirius wanted leave the room, smack his friend in the head, and pull Hermione close to him and shelter her from the hard world she had to live in all at the same time. But he chose to do nothing, and watched her carefully, waiting for her to speak.

"This is the world I come from," she started in a hard voice. Gone was the playfulness that she had with him the first night, gone was the thoughtfulness she had every other time, and gone was the kind-hearted girl that he was so far used to. "In the year 1999 I was captured by Fenrir Greyback with two of my friends, all because one of us was Voldemort's Undesirable Number One; Harry James Potter."

James' head shot up to meet her eyes.

"When Voldemort kills James and Lily Potter three years from now, his soul is split and part of it latches onto Harry, marking him as Voldemort's equal, the only one in the wizarding world that can kill him. Because of this and the Horcruxes, Harry, Ron and I were on the run, searching for these artifacts to destroy them so that Harry could defeat Voldemort." Hermione looked at James at this, then looked at Narcissa and Lucius. "We were taken to Malfoy Manor."

Lucius' eyes widened.

"We had something in our possession that was believed to have been kept in the Lestrange family vault, put there by Bellatrix Lestrange herself."

Narcissa's attention was caught at that and she tore her eyes away from the words carved into Hermione's arm.

"Because of this, the boys were taken to the cellar and I was tortured on the parlor floor by Bellatrix." Hermione turned away from them all. She couldn't take the looks of horror and pity that the story would undoubtedly put on their faces. "I was carved up and down my arms and legs and across my chest. And then, when Narcissa Malfoy couldn't take my filthy blood being spilled onto her precious floor, I was tortured at wandpoint." Hermione heard a sob behind her, and could only guess that Narcissa was openly crying. Something that was near unheard of from the noble Blacks, outside of Sirius. "By the end of everything, I was fading in and out of consciousness, but somehow my friends and I managed to escape. I can't even remember most of the details."

Hermione turned around to face them, Remus' face was in his hands, Sirius stared her right in the eye, not a note of pity or horror in his eyes, only calm understanding. Narcissa couldn't look at her at all, and Lucius kept his arm around his fiancée the entire time. James was crying silently, and Severus and Regulus' eyes were guarded. They showed her nothing of what they were currently feeling.

"If there is anyone in this room right now that has any right to feel hate and anger to anyone it's me, but I don't let any of this touch me. I don't let any of my past rule me into making decisions based on someone else. I will still fight for every single one of you, even though there are only two people in this room who didn't cause me any form of pain in my life. Severus, you were my Potions Professor, and you did everything in your power to mock me and belittle me, and make sure that I felt that my intelligence was below average. But even after all of that, here I am, protecting you. Narcissa, Lucius, I was tortured on the floor of your future home and called a filthy, little mudblood by both you and your son. But here I am against my better judgment, fighting for you and your son to have a life outside of the darkness that you had in my time. Do I hold anything against you? No. And it isn't because you haven't reached it yet, because I will be perfectly honest with you, I trust you only because I know the outcome of your actions in my time. I have a bad history with most of you, but I can move past it because I know what is in your heart."

Severus was almost hurt by the honesty, knowing that she really didn't like him, even though he believed that after the time they spent together they were friends. He understood that after everything that the people in this room put her through, it would always be a little hard for her to accept him as anything other than his older self.

Lucius and Narcissa didn't know what to make of her. She was brutally honest with them, which they could easily blame on the fact that she was a Gryffindor, but even they knew that she normally didn't talk like this. She sugarcoated certain things for the sake of the other Gryffndors in the room. She hid certain aspects of herself from them all for whatever reason, whether to protect them, herself or both. It didn't really matter what her intentions were, because the fact of the matter was, she was fighting for everyone in this room no matter how horrible they were to her, when even Narcissa knew that the actions that she had made towards Hermione should be punishable by death in any other civilization. It was the simple fact that Hermione pushed past it and tried to treat them all with courtesy, even friendship, that showed them all the sort of person she was.

"Bella isn't like that," Narcissa whispered.

"Forgive me if my arm tells me differently," Hermione snapped back.

Narcissa looked like she had been burned and Lucius growled in agitation. "Don't take this out on, Cissy!" He snapped, but Narcissa laid her hand on his arm to calm him.

"She has every right to be angry at us," Severus said from beside her. He looked down at his hands. "We are responsible for any doubts about herself she may have ever had in her time."

"James' son has it worse off than me," Hermione said. "Because of your hatred of James and Sirius, Severus, you treated him worse than me. He had Voldemort chasing him at every turn. He lived with his aunt and uncle and I'm sure that you, Severus, can understand what kind of person Petunia was to him."

Severus nodded.

"He had to grow up early on and he did a much better job at accepting things than I did. I will admit, that for a year after he defeated Voldemort, he went through a tough time. He hid himself away from us all and he barely took care of himself because he didn't know how to live without constant danger. He even went looking for it sometimes, hunting down rouge Death Eaters on his own before even going through Auror training, but he got through it. He was protected because Voldemort demanded the honor of killing him, but because I was a muggleborn, I was free game."

"We can understand that you pretty much hate us, even though you are forcing yourself not to, but what brought all of this up? From what I can tell, before today you had no intention of sharing any of this with any of us," Regulus said.

Sirius wanted to smack him for being so rude, but he forced himself to behave for Hermione's sake. When Hermione wasn't around, Regulus was going to get an earful, that was for sure.

"I decided I wanted to start an organization, but some of us don't believe that others would be capable of getting past our prejudices enough in order to work together peacefully. I believe that all of you are capable of pushing things to the side to better our world, but I also wanted to force you all to realize what prejudice does to a person. None of us will be able to get past any of our prejudices if we don't try. If we don't, then all of my efforts will have been completely useless."

o~O~o

It was well over twenty minutes before everyone left the Room of Requirement. Hermione never looked away from the fire as each person walked out of the room solemnly. Some glanced her way with mixed emotions in their faces, others couldn't bear to even look at her. Hermione wasn't really surprised by either response. She had opened herself up to these people in such a way that she had never dared open up to anyone from her own time. Harry and Ron were aware and had even seen the scars, but they didn't know the fight that she lived through every day to rise above it all.

It wasn't until she heard a body hit a wall that she spun around on her heels and realized that Remus and Sirius never left the room. Sirius had Remus pinned to the wall by the collar of his shirt; Remus looking surprised, Sirius looking murderous.

"I don't care that you don't believe that I'm mature enough to set aside my differences. That doesn't matter. What does matter is that that woman over there just opened herself up to you in a way that I'm pretty sure that she never did to anyone else, and you can't even look her in the eye," Sirius snarled.

Hermione was stunned by the violent response she had pulled from Sirius.

"That woman has been through more than you could ever imagine, more than I could ever imagine, and you treat her like you're ashamed to admit that you love her! She is your mate. You don't deserve to be within ten feet of her!"

Remus snarled, "I am not ashamed of her! I care about her! It was just a shock!"

"That is no excuse Remus! She lived through it, not you," Sirius glared. "She had to live through the physical pain of being carved into, she has to live with the emotional and mental scars every day of her life and probably will never heal, and there you are saying that she's your mate, talking her into being with you when she was trying to protect you and herself. What's worse is that the moment you see her you shy away from her like she has the plague! That is not how you treat a woman you supposedly love, Remus! That is not how you treat a woman in general!"

Hermione stared at both men in wonder. Sirius was right to a degree, but she couldn't really blame Remus for his reaction either. Hermione was used to that treatment from Ron. He shied away from her, he turned the lights off before any thoughts of being intimate were considered seriously. He begged her to wear long sleeved shirts and robes too keep the scars covered up, and he placed glamours over them when she refused. But Sirius' reaction was very new to her. He wasn't shying away from her, he wasn't looking at her with pity, he was defending her tooth and nail to a friend he had known for seven years, when he had only known her for a month. And the fire with which he fought was flattering to say the least, but she knew that this had to stop. "Sirius let him go," she said calmly.

Sirius and Remus both looked at her. Remus averted his eyes almost instantly, which in turn made Sirius push him harder against the wall.

"Sirius..." Hermione warned him.

Sirius let Remus go grudgingly and glanced at Hermione.

"You don't deserve that kind of treatment, Shadowpaw," Sirius whispered to her.

"It doesn't bother me, I'm used to it." Hermione whispered back.

Remus watched the exchange.

"I can't expect everyone to accept me, because chances are, no one ever will."

"How can you be used to that kind of treatment? How can you even accept that from anyone?" Sirius snarled.

"What choice do I have Sirius?" Hermione snapped. "I'm never going to be truly accepted by anyone. If turning off a light before being undressed with my fiancé brings a small comfort, then so be it."

"You can wait until the right person comes along and treats you the way you deserve to be treated," Sirius whispered in her ear after moving closer to her.

Hermione couldn't help the shiver that ran down her spine, and took a step back blushing wildly. "Sometimes, we believe the right person is the one who is less than we deserve," Hermione whispered back, before turning around and leaving the room.

Sirius and Remus watched her go. "You love her," Remus accused.

Sirius froze and glared at him. "I do not. I care about her and I feel protective of her because of what she's been through, but I do not love her."

"Don't you dare lie to me Sirius, I can smell it on you!" Remus snarled.

"She's yours. She's your mate and it's you that she thinks about, not me. But let me tell you this right now. If you continue treating her the way you are, then I will personally make sure she has a man that makes her feel beautiful despite the scars," Sirius threatened before walking out of the room, leaving Remus standing there alone, wishing that the world would consume him right then and there. Anything to avoid the humiliation that he knew he put her through and the shame that he himself felt.