Disclaimer: I am not J.K. Rowling.
Oh Escoger, you're so wonderful to keep dangling carrots in front of this stubborn fat lazy mule to get her to update. Readers, you have him to thank. All the brilliance is pretty much his.
The Dool Tree
Chapter 14
The time for leaving Hogwarts drew near. Seventh-year students had their graduation ceremony, which Hermione shunned out of disinterest, and then everyone packed up their bags to go home.
Everyone, of course, excepting Hermione.
It was finalized with Dumbledore; she would be staying the duration of the summer at Hogwarts.
"It shouldn't be too terrible," he promised, serene as usual, "and in fact, you in particular, Hermione, might enjoy the festivities."
The festivities being, to Hermione's surprise, an academic symposium.
"Scholars from all over the world attend the Hogpath Research Symposium," he explained without the slightest hint of dignity. Hermione even supposed that he sounded a bit like he mocked the event. "It's truly magnificent. Do you consider yourself an academic, Miss Granger?"
Hermione noted that she did indeed consider herself such.
"Then you should enjoy the lectures and workshops very much," Dumbledore said, in a manner that Hermione found comfortably conciliatory. "Perhaps they shall contribute to your O.W.L. studies."
It was true that Hermione was increasingly anxious about her O.W.L.s. What if she failed something that she didn't devote enough study to, what if she got a T on something? Or worse, what if she got all E's because she didn't study enough in general, or was generally incompetent? This fear was not irrational, it was just...
(Well, maybe it was a bit irrational.)
Still, she felt herself quite torn indeed, forced to choose between her love of pure academia and that of needing to get good grades...and beat Lily Evans at Potions. Hermione reminded herself sternly. For once, it was about even more than her unending thirst to prove herself, it was about her need to defeat the one who would replace her. It was an odd thought, as really Snape was just another boy in this time-line, but Hermione clung to the last reminder of her former past with a ferocious determination.
As such, she was about to politely reject the headmaster's offer when he said in an offhand sort of way, his blue eyes twinkling, "Oh, and Mr. Chode Littles, a noted scholar who works at the Wizarding Library of Edinburgh. He is planning to give a brief lecture on the study of time-travel, a particular favorite subject of his. Perhaps you would care to see him?"
Hermione's eyes widened, and she couldn't agree fast enough, her head bobbing like an eager lamb. "Yes, Professor Dumbledore. I'll gladly stop by! If it's not too much trouble to accommodate me, that is."
And as such, in addition to her nigh-endless studying, Hermione spent each day breathless in anticipation for the arrival of Mr. Littles' lecture. As much as she might want to defeat a certain red-headed girl, she'd give it all away just to see Harry and Ron again. Ron...
But she refused to think of Ron. Or Harry. Or anything except the task ahead of her. She had to succeed, and there would be no distractions.
No distractions meant no boys. Not even boys who might have been a help to her studies, like Severus Snape.
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Being holed up in her room (and the library) for weeks on end made Hermione lose all notions of time, save for the knowledge that two exceptional dates existed in the near-future. July 26th through the 31st was the research conference, and on August 2nd through 6th were her O.W.L.s.
Of course it would follow that the conference would immediately preclude the examinations, she grumbled to herself numerous times over the weeks prior. At least Little's discussion was on Friday the 30th, giving her two days of uninterrupted study before her first test.
Over the course of the two months between the other students' departure and the conference, Hermione devoted barely any time to thinking about home. At night she occasionally lusted after Ron, and sometimes she felt so depressed that she wished that she might talk to Harry and cry on his shoulder, but other than these feelings she managed to maintain her own focus on her studies. It was frustrating, lonely, and tiring, but still she pursued her goal with the dogged determination and stubbornness that had qualified her for Gryffindor. Even more rarely still did she think about Going Home; she put a hold on that priority until she had some more answers from the Hogpath lecture. Once the O.W.L.s were over and she was safely and academically settled in the new world, she could begin the nearly-impossible process of preparing to go home. But some things were more important for the time being.
The conference arrived much sooner than Hermione expected, to her great displeasure. Some of the student dorms were allocated to teachers and lecturers from around the world, and it was immensely distracting to Hermione to have so many academics milling about while she was trying the study. The library was, understandably, a very popular venue for the conference attendees, and became comparable to the common room in activity and chatter.
Still, Hermione managed to put blinders on for the majority of the week, moving as infrequently as possible from her own dormroom, which was thankfully not entertaining any conference attendees but herself.
The 30th found Hermione both sleep-deprived and hyper-emotional after a long week of super-studying. It was Friday, so she had promised herself that she'd get (gasp!) seven hours of sleep that night, since she'd been subsisting on three or four and was feeling the aftereffects acutely.
However, that didn't mean that she wasn't in the room of Little's conference presentation half an hour early, poring over Arithmancy notes and also fingering her Potions textbook as though to derive its information via telekinesis.
"What are you studying so intently?"
A plump old man with a neatly-trimmed gray beard and boxy glasses entered the room, placing a dingy briefcase on the center table.
"Arithmancy and Potions," Hermione replied, her response snappy and automatic.
"Are you taking the O.W.L.s on extension?" he asked, pleasant but curious.
"Rather," she said, then added shortly, "but I'm an Extenuating Exception." There was a vast difference, of course, between Extenuating Exception students and Required Revision students. The latter, of course, were those who had simply done so poorly on their O.W.L.s prior to the examinations that the school was mandated by the Ministry to give them one more shot at the tests, with a permanent record of 'R.R.' on their scores. E.E. students, on the contrary, had no blasphemous mark on their permanent records. As Dumbledore told her, there were four R.R. students that year, and two E.E. students, including Hermione.
"Ah, I'm sorry," he apologized, satisfied with her response.
Ten minutes later, people began to file into the classroom, and Hermione began to realize that the stocky little man she'd addressed so rudely was probably the lecturer in question. He was in the process of shredding a piece of paper in his hands, nodding his head in little jerks towards the people who greeted him.
Finally, clearing his throat and shuffling a bunch of crinkled parchments self-consciously, he tried to get the attention of the populace.
"Erm, hullo to you all," he began, and Hermione reluctantly laid down her papers. She was rather inclined to leave at this point, seeing the unprofessional attitude that Littles seemed to have and not being very impressed by it.
"I'm really very glad to be here, as you might imagine...simply tickled pink, you might say..."
He began to babble about what an honor it as to be there, which bored Hermione to death. She continued her revising without paying him much attention.
"...Everyone like the lunch today?"
This question irritated Hermione, who was reminded of how hungry she was (after skipping the aforementioned lunch), and she began to shuffle her notes together. Her inclination was to leave, in spite of how important the topic was to her.
"Reminds me of the years we spent here at Hogwarts, eh Weatherby?" he addressed an audience-member cordially, and Hermione thrust her hand in the air.
"Excuse me, sir," she said, barely able to keep herself from snarling with indignation, "but might we get to the topic?"
"Oh, of course, now then..."
However, even as Hermione tried her best to pay attention, giving the man's lecture the same sort of attention that she would give Professor Snape or Professor McGonagall's instructions in class, she found her normally-strict focus had been compromised by exhaustion. Her eyelids began to droop, and not because of the lecture itself--Ron had once said that if Voldemort sent his entire army into Potions class, she'd still keep her eyes on the blackboard as they fought-- but because she simply couldn't manage to stay awake.
As such, she soon dropped off to sleep, but not before hearing one terrible phrase, camouflaged with hypotheticals and the theories of academia:
"...I suppose the most clear way of explaining this phenomenon is that Time is like a tree, really. As such, if we change the past too much, such that our future is no longer possible, we are no longer able to return to it by any means. If we slide back onto the trunk, and climb onto a different branch of time, then there is no link between the new reality and our former future, much like how there nothing but air between the tip of a branch and the original trunk..."
Even as she slipped into a world of dreams, Hermione couldn't help but feel a tragic sense of loss at his smiling pronouncement, as it meant that her chances of seeing Ron or Harry again (without being old enough to be their mothers) were most likely zero.
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Hermione spent the next several days pouring herself into her work, although this time she made sure to get enough sleep--it wouldn't do for her to fall asleep during the middle of an exam after all. In spite of the fact that she had no teachers to do demonstrations, she wasn't unduly hampered, as she had always been one of the best book-learners of her class. Even better, she had no-one around to hamper her--a very good thing, as she very much doubted that Harry or Ron would have been willing to let her go undisturbed when the last minute to study arrived.
Still, even though she was working as hard as she possibly could, she was very aware that she was using this as a distraction. There were certain things that she would rather not contemplate...such as that revelation from Littles' lecture.
The problem wasn't that she believed him entirely, per se, but rather the fact that if she went and looked up the data that he had draw his opinion from, there would be no possible denying that there would be an unbreachable wall between the now and the world she had always known. If Littles were right...then in all likelihood, she might have already changed things too much for her future to be regained. Hermione just wasn't ready to face that, so she buried herself into her studies in the last few hours prior to her O.W.L.s with an effort that she hadn't mustered since third year exams.
This paid many dividends; she could tell that she had made Outstandings on most of her O.W.L.s, save for in Defense the Dark Arts.
However, she took the most pride in her last practical exam in Potions performance. (For her, the written exam was a joke, as it would be to anyone who took the time to read the textbook. Albeit, she had read it no less than fifty times.)
She brewed every single potion to perfection, having memorized the entire textbook beforehand in her last, supreme effort of studying; even Snape himself would probably have a rather difficult time trying to replicate her feats. Every ingredient was chopped, sliced or diced to exaction, every stroke of the potion was smooth and seamless and every potion came out exactly as the textbook described.
Her examiner wasn't the same one who had proctored the rest of the Hogwarts students, because, as the jovial academic explained, his superior was en vacance in France for the month, and had left him in charge. Even so, he had the look of someone well-versed in the art of Potions, and Hermione took pride in how she was able to impress the man. He was in a visible state of awe as he watched her from his seat at what she still thought privately of as 'Professor Snape's desk'. When she turned over the samples for each of her potions, he would look at them in wonderment, his eyes wide and mouth slightly agape.
She turned in the last sample, sweaty but with a satisfied grin on her face as the proctor lifted it up and turned it around, looking it from all sides. Hermione couldn't help but to bite her lip, although she was supremely confident in her performance.
Finally, the man turned at her and gave her an impressed smile as he said, "My dear, you've done superbly; I can hardly imagine what doors might be open for Hogwarts students if you are a representative of their talent!" Lowering his voice, the man put a hand on her shoulder as he continued, "I shouldn't be telling you this, but you've gotten one-hundred-and-five percent if you've gotten ten. Well done, girl!"
Hermione's grin widened as she imagined what Snape and Lily's reaction would be when they discovered this. For some reason, Littles' lecture seemed trivial in comparison to her outsmarting of Harry's hoity-toity mother...
She could hardly wait to rub Lily Evans' too-perfect nose in it!
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