Ten years later . . .
"Be good at school, don't prank any of the teachers please!" Heather cried out to her two daughters who were on the Hogwarts Express. Maria had been sorted into Gryffindor the previous year, and Elizabeth was due to start her first year along with Harry, and the Lupin twins. Neither of the twins were werewolves, something, Remus was glad for. He didn't want to have to put them in the pain that he went through every full moon. Hermione stood by, it was a full moon that night, so she was just waiting for her husband so that they could head home and prepare. Hermione had contacted a world-famous potion maker known as Damocles Belby, and both were currently working on a potion that they hoped would help the werewolves. They were missing only a few touches on it, but couldn't figure it out. Lily had offered to come and help with the research, but Hermione declined the help.
"Don't worry Mom, I'll keep an eye on them, and help them." Maria said.
"I hope so, and don't go trying to play detective either, mind your own business."
"Mom!" Maria said. "We'll be okay, I promise, that prat of a cousin Malfoy better mind his own business though, he bothers us, I won't mind getting in trouble just to set him straight."
"See you at Christmas Mom!" Elizabeth said as the train started to pull away. When the train was gone, Heather turned to see Hermione and Remus disapparate away. They obviously didn't want to deal with the crowd today.
In the years following the attack on Lily and James, they had stayed secluded inside Potter Manor, a place thankfully no reporter could get to, as you had to be invited in by a Potter or be a Potter to enter the gates. Thankfully, with Heather's blood bond, they were allowed inside without any hassle. Turning to Sirius, Heather gave him a kiss, before he apparated off to work, and she off to the house. They were still living in Godric's Hollow, comfortably, and had raised their three children. So Heather was surprised to find Nathan reading a book that she didn't recognize.
"Hi, sweetie." She said, "What are you reading now?"
"I don't know exactly, I came in here to wait for you to come home Mom, when an owl dropped this off. It left soon afterward, and I started reading. But I found a counter to a gender-changing spell in here." Heather paled at that.
"Let me see that." He handed the book off to her, and she began to read.
"Gritio Verducto-Gender Changing Curse, the counter spell is "Britio Deverducto." 'That I already knew.' "While it may be a fun spell to mess around with the Gender Changing Curse, it has some very strict guidelines to reverse it. Most of these have been forgotten with time, but the most distinctive one, is that the victim of this curse cannot become pregnant or else they lose the chance to return to their former selves."
"Mom why are you so interested in that spell?"
"Well, it's a long story, but not one you need to know about right now." She had added the last part when he had hopeful eyes.
"Did you know anyone who has been cursed by this spell?"
"I don't know about cursed, but it definitely gave them a blessing." She said referring to herself. 'That's why Ron became himself, Bellatrix knew the counter, only she messed it up and reversed Ron instead of me. Gotta tell Hermione this.'
"Okay Mom, when's Dad gonna be home? I want to go flying!"
"Actually he won't be home till late, but I know a thing or two about flying, used to be pretty good myself, but I didn't play Quidditch." 'Not exactly a lie, I didn't play Quidditch in this life.' Heather thought.
"Why?"
"I didn't want to bother myself with it, as when I was introduced to the magical world, I was four years behind everyone else."
"Oh, I see." Nathan said, "Do you want to go flying Mum?"
"I don't know, I've got to make sure the house is well taken care of. Plus, I'm planning on going over to Remus and Hermione's before the full moon."
"Can I come?"
"Maybe, depends on how you help me today." Nathan jumped up, he never missed a chance to go see the Lupins. Even though the kids weren't at home, he still liked to help Hermione around the house.
Truth be told, there was little to do around the house, so Heather and her son went immediately over. They were greeted by Hermione, since Remus was weak at the moment.
"How are you Heather?" Hermione asked, "We haven't visited in a while, have we?"
"No we haven't, but could I talk to you privately, away from eavsdroppers." She knew Nathan wanted to know what was going on, but didn't want him to know, at least not yet anyway.
"Why?"
"Its about your sister." Heather said. Hermione understood at once. She led Heather into a spare bedroom, and left Nathan to bother Remus, while they were talking.
"What about my 'sister'?"
"Well, I came home from Platform Nine and Three Quarters today to find Nathan reading a book, now that's strange all together, but it was a book I didn't recognize."
"So, he hid a book from you."
"Hermione this is Nathan we're talking about, he never reads unless he's forced to." This got a look of understanding on her face.
"So what book was it?"
"I didn't look at the title, but I think it was a copy of that book that had that gender-changing spell in it, and it had the counter-curse."
"Did you try it?"
"Can't, the most frequently remembered condition for the counter is that the victim cannot have been pregnant while under the curse or it becomes permanent." Heather said, "Like I'd use it anyway."
"You didn't want to change back anyway did you?"
"No, but I'm sure if being pregnant hadn't been one of the stipulations to the counter working, Albus would have had me use it."
"Try to return time to normal that fool would. It wouldn't work, so now we're stuck here for good, changing things as we please. Well you will until I get my memories back."
"Well, I guess me and Nathan will leave you to your time with Remus, Nathan wants me to go flying with him."
"Can you fly?"
"Duh, I was the best Seeker Hogwarts had seen for six years remember, oh wait I forgot you don't." Heather said. Hermione lightly smacked her on the arm, "Plus I've got my phoenix form."
"It's been a while since you used your Animagus form, why don't you come hang out tonight?"
"I would, but Nathan would be stuck home alone. Sirius isn't getting home till quite late tonight. Scrimigour is driving him nuts with all of the work he's been set to, he's lucky he even got time off to come see Maria and Elizabeth off to school."
"Well, I hope it shapes up soon, otherwise we're going to get quite lonely out here."
About ten minutes later, the mother and son were back at home. Heather was getting Sirius' broom which he had updated to the latest model, the Nimbus 2000. Nathan grabbed his as well; Sirius had bought him one too.
"So let's see how good you are Mom." Nathan said before mounting his broom and taking off.
"Well it's been a while, but I guess I can try." She mounted the broom, and surprisingly, she was still a natural at flying. 'I guess that's one thing a Potter is good at, flying' she thought. While she was a Black in name, she was still a Potter in blood. She shot up into the air, and hovered around her son.
"Are you sure you haven't flown before, Mom?"
"Yeah," she said lying through her teeth, "Well, your uncle was a natural at flying so, when we blood-bonded, it might have given me the Potter's natural ability to fly, but like I said, I never flew because I was behind on a lot of things."
"Too bad no one else is here; we could have gotten a game of Quidditch going with enough people." Unbeknownst to the two, Sirius had arrived home, and was watching the two fly. It was only when they landed that they noticed him.
"Hey Heather." He said. She ran over to her husband, and kissed him on the lips.
"How was work today?"
"Turns out Scrimigour decided to give me the day off, but I worked for a little bit, just filing some papers and such." Sirius said, "You know I've never seen you fly before, did you fly in your past life?"
"Yeah, I was the Gryffindor seeker for six years, first through sixth, didn't I tell you this already?"
"Not that I remember, and contrary to popular belief I do remember a lot of things." Sirius said, "So how was your day?"
"Boring, but we did find a copy of that one book, but the curse is permanent so, Albus couldn't use it to try and change time back. He could if he went back in time to before we got together, but I would say that he wouldn't. The outcome this time was better than last."
"So I'm guessing you told Hermione about it?"
"Yeah, she invited me to come hang out with them tonight, but I declined, I've had enough for today, I don't think I could handle staying up the whole night."
"You could, you're just worried about Nathan, don't worry, I'll stay here, you go have fun, its been awhile since you've had fun." What he said was true, most of the time lately was dedicated to taking care of their kids, but now with two of them gone, maybe she could handle the night. Besides, it's not like there would be any problems.
Giving her husband a kiss, she walked to the edge of the wards surrounding their house, and apparated to the Lupins. She walked up to their door, and knocked. Hermione once again opened the door.
"Heather, this is a surprise, what are you doing here now?"
"Sirius got home early so I decided to come hang out tonight if the offer is still available." Heather told her.
"Yeah sure, come on in, we'll be getting ready to go in just a few moments."
Hermione led her into their sitting room, where sitting just like a normal person would, was Remus reading the Daily Prophet.
"So, how's the potions project coming along?" Hermione was surprised by her question.
"It's fine, we're just missing something to speed up the potion and something to slow the immune system."
"Hermione, I've told you before, silver is something that slows a werewolf's immune system down. I don't know what to tell you about the speed up, but silver is something you need."
"But silver is deadly to you Remus. I don't want to kill you."
"Not in small amounts, but we need to fix that. Slowly I'll become accustomed to the silver in the small doses and be able to stop the poison, but the potion will still work." Remus said. He sat the newspaper down, and stood up, "I'm ready to get tonight over with, you coming with Heather?"
"Yeah, Sirius said he'd watch Nathan. So I'm okay." Heather walked over to the doorway, and let Remus through. Following their lead, she walked out back to a shed that she assumed would be Remus' holding place. They walked inside, and Remus laid down on the bed.
"How much longer?"
"About five minutes." Came Hermione's reply.
"I'm going to go phoenix this time, so I can watch you from above and warn you Remus." Heather concentrated on the silver and gold phoenix, trying to recall it from memory. Closing her eyes, she felt herself shrink, her arms become wings, and soon enough there was a phoenix in the shed. Hermione got up and locked the door, so that Remus wouldn't get out during his transformation. After securing the door, she transformed into her wolf form. Heather flew up to higher ground so she wouldn't be in the way, and so that Hermione, or as they called her in her Animagus form, Silverfoot, could take care of settling Remus down. Heather, was called Firewing, for one of her forms, as she had the two, the other was Roughfoot, due to the markings on her front left paw. A few seconds later, Remus began to transform. When he was done, he looked roughly like a normal wolf; he was just a bit bigger, with a few subtle differences from them as well. Silverfoot immediately went over to him as his mate. Seemingly recognizing her, she looked up at Firewing, and nodded, the signal to flash outside and unlock the door. Firewing did so, briefly turning human again, to use her wand, and then back to the phoenix form. She took off into the air, and the two wolves bounded out of the shed.
They'd been out for maybe two or three hours, when Silverfoot dropped away, Firewing, noticed, but kept tabs on Moony, as she figured the other woman needed a drink. The pair walked/flew around for about ten more minutes before Moony's head perked up, and he started off back to the house. Firewing followed, hoping he had just smelled his mate. She was proven wrong however, when a pircing scream sounded just moments later. She flamed down to the ground and shifted into her dog form and took off to where Hermione screamed. She found the woman moments later in human form with a large gash in her stomach. She shifted back to phoenix, and grabbed the injured woman, and with a flash, flamed away to St. Mungos.
Moony was confused, his mate who said her name was SIlverfoot, had gone missing. He had smelled her moments after she disappeared, but found a human where her scent had led him. Getting angry he had attacked the human, and fled when he heard another animal come up behind him.
Heather arrived in St. Mungos, in human form, as she had changed back halfway through the flame. At her feet was Hermione. When the Healer's saw them they lifted Hermione up onto the stretcher and took her into an emergency section of St.Mungos.
"Excuse, Miss . . ."
"Its Heather Black, wife of Sirius Black." She said. "Is my friend going to be okay?"
"She should be, but do you know what attacked her?"
"A werewolf, but it was her husband. My guess is that she had left us to go get a drink of water, and he smelled her scent and thinking it was her animal form followed it and attacked her before she had a chance to change into her Animagus form." She explained, "I brought her here as soon as I found her, and I'd better try and go catch her husband so he doesn't end up biting someone else, I just feel sorry for her now."
It was close to dawn when Heather found Remus, the moon had set close to an hour before. She approached his still figure, and quietly robed him before waking him up.
"Heather? Where's Hermione?"
"Remus, I'm sorry, but . . . she's in St. Mungos, you bit her last night, when she was in her human form." He immediately jumped up, with his werewolf agility.
"Take me to her now!" He shouted.
"Okay, I'll take you to St. Mungos, they might not let you see her yet, she was still in surgery when I left. She had a huge hole in her side. I'm surprised she survived that, but I don't know if she'll live."
"If you got her to St. Mungos, then she'll most likely live." Heather hoped so, or her friend would be dead, and it would be her fault for not watching Remus closer.
A/N: Another time jump, there wasn't much to say, but I have been planning on Hermione becoming a werewolf for quite some time now. Actually since I started writing this. And this was a time when Heather's phoenix form came in use. I hadn't had any of them in their Animagus forms for quite some time now, so I decided to put Heather in this. I'd originally planned for Remus to bite her and not as severely, and have him change back soon after, but with Heather there, I upped the injury and made it priority for Heather to get her to St. Mungos. Despite her dreams of becoming a Healer back when she graduated, her family came first, so Sirius was forced to provide for them. So Heather couldn't have done anything right then to help Hermione.