Chapter 6

The classroom was dark. She could only faintly sense the shadows of furniture as she felt her way to the front of the room, groping for something tangent to steady her.

My head hurts...

She sat on the table, shivering involuntarily.

Where is he? Why are the lights off?

"Hermione."

"I was waiting for you," she gasped out, the chilling air numbing her lungs, his fingers on her cheek ghostly and surreal.

It had to be a dream, this haze which surrounded her. This invaded sleep, adulterated by her own aggressive mind, sought sanctuary. The time turner. It lay in her palm like a golden halo, the epitome of power...

Time.

What a beautiful, wonderful thing is time.

It passes silently, exhaling our dreams like a powered dust, the dust of the ages.

She held it tightly in her fist, battling the images before her, fighting the memories. Memories? More like visions, the harsh prophecy of truth. How strange that her prophecy was everyone's prophecy.

How unsurprising, that we are all connected.

Someone came and left this here, but it was too late. Or too early... Was there still a chance to change this thread?

Time. What an odd concept.

The Hours started their drone, and the Minutes chimed in with tinny whistles. The Seconds sang in soft sopranos, while the Years gave depth with their bass voices. The Decades and Centuries hummed deeply in the background of the orchestra, so low their tunes could barely reach her ears. In the thin air of this place, it sounded like a song.

Everything spends me,
They try to buy me,
You cannot hide me,
You cannot see me,
Touch or hear me,
You cannot feel me,
Yet I am here.
You cannot measure me,
I have no sides,
On my back the universe rides.

I bite at rock and gnaw at steel,
I push the tide and roll the wheel,
I am neither old nor young,
Here when these first tales were spun,
And I am still here,
While they are told.

I am used, renewed and wasted,
The first and last; the apple tasted,
Friend of enemies,
Friend of friend, and foe,
Of all things.

I am King of kings,
I am peasant's slave,

I enslave,
All.

Kind, cruel, wise, fool,
Am I.

The future scared her, she could not deny that. And this future scared her even more. This future she came so close to bearing on her shoulders, this person she was almost to become. She held the time turner slightly, wishing for sleep, wanting the moments, to steal her away.

If that is what I was destined to become, what now?

She gripped the golden ring harder, encircling the fragile erection of glass with her fingers. Her mind was lost in thought, unaware of the glass cracking, breaking and digging under her skin. The device represented time, but it was not so impermeable, so eternal. It was mortal glass, embraced quickly by a responsive flow of warm blood.

But I changed it. I changed it.

She closed her eyes, willing herself to see it all again.

---

"And this little piggy went to market..." he laughed, reveling at the cheeky smile she returned to him. The cool morning light framed the dust in the air, and Hermione stretched her arms out to welcome him into her.

---

Later, he sat up and placed a small red box on her stomach.

"I bought you this."

She gave him a curious look and removed the satiny lid. Inside was coiled a thin gold chain, and attached to it, a large oval, cradling a slender hourglass. "It's beautiful! Oh darling, thank you." She kissed him softly. "But . . . is this really a time turner?"

"It is indeed!" he laughed. "Probably the only one that escaped the mess we made at the Ministry!"

Hermione seemed shocked. "But then you should have turned this over to them!" Indignantly, she shook his arm off of her shoulder. "It's too dangerous!" she exclaimed. "I don't want it, take it back!" Putting the lid back on, she pressed the gift back into his hands.

"And this little piggy went 'wee wee wee' all the way home!" he laughed, pinching her toe. She collapsed in giggles as he tickled her foot.

"Take it, Hermione," he whispered in her ear. "I think it's very old . . . you'll appreciate it more than I."

She laughed lightly, tossing her hair back in amusement. "Fine then!" she said, slipping the box into the pocket of her Muggle coat, flung over the end of the bed. "But when you find the world around you in chaos, it will probably be my fault!"

Her lover caressed the pink-and-white well-formed foot in his lap. "You have beautiful toes, Hermione."

"I do believe you have a little toe fetish!"

"I have a little Hermione fetish," he murmured.

"...'wee wee wee' all the way home..."

She could hear him screaming.

He didn't scream... I did.

She tossed fitfully amongst the damp sheets. The world was spinning faster, faster, faster, nothing was immutable; it was a jumble, a chaotic drug trip.

"Hermione Granger, I thee wed..."

"Stop joking around, I'm not marrying you and you know it," she laughed.

But her laugher faded and when she opened her eyes, she was no longer in the sunny attic with her lover. In a room furnished with dark red and blue velvet, there was no light. It was richly decked out but something was wrong . . . a smell, the smell of her own fear.

She reached for her wand.

"Don't touch me," she warned.

He grabbed her wrist.

No. No! NO!!

---

She looked at her form in the mirror, bruised . . . the cut above her eye, the purple blotches on her neck. The blood between her legs.

The next morning was a haze of narcotic smoke, willing her to let go...

---

Hermione woke up from her dream-within-a-dream masked in a cold sweat. She lay fully-clothed between the heavy covers of her Potions Professor's bed, a fire burning out dully behind the grate. She felt lost and oddly disoriented, as if someone had hit her in the head with a bludger.

Slipping out from between the blankets, she looked for a sign of her Professor Snape but he wasn't in the bedroom, nor was he in his parlour. Confused, she exited the under-ground apartments and crept upstairs to her own warm bed.

Five minutes later, she tiptoed across the common room she shared with Ron, opened the door to her room and collapsed exhausted on her four-poster. She was almost asleep when she remembered part of her dream, or vision. Quickly, she crossed the room, afraid of what she might find. Rifling through her trunk, she finally found what she was looking for. The black pea-coat she wore while in the Other World, wooly and warm and worn at the elbows. And bulging at the pocket!

As if placed there by some cruel twist of fate, she pulled out a small box, and inside –

The time turner.