A/N: Written for the 19,000 Prompts, 500 Words, One Week Challenge by andthearrowflies on the HPFC Forum. Prompt: 'hourglass'

Wishful Thinking

It was the sound of Hermione's gentle footfalls that jolted Harry out of his half-sleep. Jerking upright, he tried to make it look as though he was alert as he should have been.

'If you're that tired, maybe you should go to bed and let me take over,' she said, peering down at him. Even in the feeble light, Harry could see dark circles under her eyes. Had she got much sleep? If he was tired, he was sure that she was even more so.

'I'm fine,' he said hastily. 'Dunno about you, though. I can keep going; you get some more rest.'

To his surprise, Hermione did not leave.

'I'll stay here and keep you awake,' she said, settling herself beside him and resting her head on his shoulder. 'I couldn't sleep, anyway; I kept waking up, hearing noises and thinking -' She stopped abruptly, as if she'd been Silenced, but they both knew what she had been going to say.

A thick silence descended.

'I was thinking about the Time-Turner,' Harry said. He had been thinking about it - it wasn't a lie - but he mostly said it to change the subject. 'You used it loads of times, didn't you? Didn't anything ever go wrong?'

'Professor McGonagall wouldn't have let me use it if it had been faulty,' said Hermione. 'And I was always careful to make sure nobody would see me disappear from nowhere.'

'You didn't think to go back in time to get yourself some extra sleep?' (This was a long-standing joke between him and Ron.)

'I was only supposed to use it for lessons,' Hermione said severely. She lifted her head, but Harry could see that she wasn't annoyed. He felt a bit more cheerful; a Hermione who could take a joke was an improvement over the last few weeks. And then he realised that a Harry who could tell jokes was another.

'In movies, people always end up doing something spectacular when they use time travel,' said Harry, trying to keep Hermione's spirits up. 'Like in this movie I watched when I was a kid. In it, this boy travelled back in time and almost erased himself from existence.' He didn't add that he had only been able to see it because Aunt Petunia had been busy and Dudley too fond of the television to get up and chase Harry away from it.

'Was it Back to the Future?'

'I dunno, do I? I was only about nine or ten.'

'Did he accidentally stop his parents from falling in love and then have to play matchmaker to get them back?'

'Yeah, that's it.'

'That's Back to the Future,' said Hermione, with the air of having just solved a great mystery. 'But it's terribly unrealistic, really. Time-Turners can't go back more than a few hours, and it's a stable time loop - you can only change what has already happened.' She sounded almost like her old self, confident and bossy.

'Too bad we destroyed them all at the Ministry, then?'

'When you think about it, we did do something spectacular with the Time-Turner,' said Hermione softly. 'We saved Sirius and Buckbeak, and you saved us from the Dementors.'

'And let Wormtail go free,' Harry added bitterly.

'But you know there's nothing you could have done.'

'Yeah, but still ...'

Hermione gave a small smile. Harry, noticing this, said, 'Do you remember how furious Snape was when he found out Sirius escaped?'

'And when you cast a fully-formed Patronus?'

'You didn't seem to enjoy riding Buckbeak much.'

'You know I've never liked flying.'

The conversation lulled, and the two of them settled into a comfortable silence. Hermione stifled a yawn and laid her head on Harry's shoulder again, breathing deeply.

'You OK?' Harry asked. 'You sure you don't want to get some rest?'

'I'll stay here for a bit,' she said, and cast a charm so that a layer of warm air separated them from the cool of the forest. If one of them fell asleep, the other would know - but neither did. Instead, they just sat together in the stillness, Hermione's wand in Harry's hand as he kept watch.