Thank you for your support in the form of reviews, favorites and follows. I can't understand how a story I daydream into being, more or less, is read by so many people. It's rather humbling. As always the chapter is proofread by Donna10Girl, who has my eternal gratitude.
Love from Kia
Sirius
The exhausted owl that carries news of James's father's death wipes out all celebration spirit. Still in the nice clothes from the morning the three Marauders throw their things together in more hurry than they had planned.
"Can you ask Hermione to come and teach us that Shrinking Charm she knows?" Remus asks when he finally, with much force, manages to close his trunk.
"It's just a common Reducio. Her specialty is the Undetectable Extension Charm for small objects to hide away almost anything."
"Is she coming, too?"
"No, Peter. Not today," Sirius answers. "Said something about respect for James's mum. Not wanting to intrude on her grief. Maybe she's right. It can't be easy to meet new people when you just lost… Oh, Merlin, is he really gone? I've known him forever. He was…"
Sirius sinks down on his bed and buries his face in his hands. Remus pats him awkwardly on his shoulder, before he also sits down.
"Yes, he was. He was the best father anyone can imagine. James was lucky to have him for as long as he did."
The males in the Black family live forever. Some of my great grandfathers were more than a hundred when they died. My father will be around until I'm middle aged, and he will always be there, in the periphery of my life. I'll spend my life looking over my shoulder, fearing he will turn up with his dreadful code of statues, full of spite and xenophobia and locked forever in his unworldly dream of segregation and ruling other people. Damn him! I wish he were dead. Dying at least as painfully as James's dad.
They will travel with the Hogwarts Express to London, and then apparate to Godric's Hollow from there. Sirius is uneasy. He thinks of all the empty hours on the train, when he originally had planned to ask Hermione to a midnight picnic by the Black Lake. And then, after all the hours of travelling, James's home won't be the warm and welcoming constant it has been for Sirius for six years, but a house of mourning. He's never visited a house of mourning.
Hermione follows them to the railway station in Hogsmeade. There isn't much to say. Sirius wonders if Hermione knows how to act or what to say when you come to a home that suddenly is a person short and full of grief, but he can't think of a way to ask her, without sounding callous.
He wraps her in his arms and sighs.
"Just be yourself, Sirius. It's James. You've known him for years. And his mother too. Just do the washing up, or stay up late if one of them wants to talk about him. Make pots of tea. Take an interest in what the undertaker suggests. Agree with their choice of flowers for the funeral, and the spot they choose on the graveyard."
"I wish you would come, too."
"But I never met him. It wouldn't be right. I'll come on Friday, like we said. Things will be easier for James and his mum then."
"How do you know these things, Hermione? Make pots of tea and agree that white roses are pretty. Who taught you? Have you ever been where James is now?"
He feels her flinch and shift in his arms, and he knows she won't tell him the truth. Not the whole truth.
"Not really," she answers against his shoulder. "But close. I'll tell you one day."
The train whistle blows and with a heavy heart Sirius lets go of her and boards the train. He leans out of the window for as long as he can see her. She looks as if she is about to cry, and he doesn't think it's entirely to do with him going away.
She doesn't need me half as much as I need her. I have to make her love me just as much as I love her. She'll busy herself with her research for next year, and forget that I'm gone. She'll forget to eat and sleep and be as thin as when I first met her.
What if she stops in Askrigg on her way south next week? She has a whole life there, with friends who have known her for years. And her family. What if they turn up now, to spend time with her? It's winter in Australia, and here it's the loveliest time of the year.
Seven days. Seven days of missing her and not go mad with jealousy. And be… be there for James. How do I do that? This whole mourning business is all new to me. Remus. Remus will be there too. And Peter. It's not entirely on me. But, Prongs… How do you cope? What does it feel like to lose someone like your dad? The emptiness you must feel… If were to lose you, I would feel as if I had lost part of myself.
"Sirius?"
Remus touches his arm and brings him back to the here and now on the train, which is well into England by now.
"Hm?"
"Where did you go? In your mind? You looked miles away. Light-years."
"Well, maybe I was. I just can't stop thinking about James. What does it feel like, Remus? And I'm not even sure I want an answer to my question."
Remus leans back against the backrest, crosses his arms over his chest and looks at Sirius with expression that makes him look a decade older than he is.
He's so… composed. In control. I used to be that too. But this… As long as I didn't really feel, I could be just as cool. Now I'm all over the bloody place. I wasn't like this before Hermione came. I never knew this chaos of emotions leading me this way and that.
The train takes them through a summery England and arrives at King's Cross in the early evening. They find their way to The Leaky Cauldron, have a butterbeer at the bar, and then go out through the back door. Instead of knocking on the right bricks to open up the wall to Diagon Alley, they join hands.
"You do it, Remus. Or you, Peter."
"All right," says Peter.
Sirius empties his mind as well as he can and feels the familiar pressure from all directions. When his feet find solid ground again he lets go of the other two and looks around him.
The main street in Godric's Hollow is almost deserted. Some children are playing with an enchanted football opposite the church, with two dogs as audience. The dogs look like they know a much better game, involving a violent death, for the ball. Sirius wishes he could just transform into Padfoot and stay in his canine form for a week.
But when James opens the door to the two-storey house of yellow limestone, nothing is as complicated as Sirius has feared. This is his brother in everything but blood, and despite looking tired and sad, it's clear that James is glad to see him. He even laughs a little when he greets Sirius.
"Padfoot! Finally! I head about your award for 'outstanding achievement'. In Defense magic, Pads! I can't think of anyone who deserves it better."
Peter pats Sirius on his back and agrees.
"Thanks," Sirius says. "Where is Lily? And your mum?"
"They're in the kitchen. Come through, we were just about to have some supper."
May Potter stands by the stove. She smiles at her son's three friends and gestures to the laid table.
"Welcome. I'm so glad you came, I really am." She hugs each of them. When Sirius wraps the short woman in his arms he doesn't know what to say but the traditional condolence.
"I'm sorry for your loss, May."
She takes a step back and pats him on the cheek.
"I know your are, Sirius. Thank you. We are all sorry, but we need to be grateful too. When he…" She swallows and blinks a few times. "When Will was about to die, just a minute or two before he… before he stopped breathing, he got an expression of… of something I'd forgotten. I think it was the absence of pain, and that eased our pain too, didn't it James?"
"Yes," James agrees in a hoarse voice from his place at the table, next to Lily.
So, despite the absence of James's dad in a wheelchair or his ragged breaths from the room next door, the Potter House is still a warm and loving place. The supper doesn't really end, but carries on into a peaceful and nostalgic wake with shared memories and goblets of gooseberry wine from the garden.
The funeral is three days later, with guests from the village and some friends from other parts of Britain. Arthur Weasley, with his wife Molly, comes from Ottery St. Catchpole, with their five redhead sons. The two older are wild and they annihilate the enchanted football just as violently as the dogs would have done. Sirius knows that he is distantly related to Molly Weasley, but his memory of the Black Family Tapestry isn't clear enough to figure out how. Judging from her obvious joy in being a mother, he guesses they can't be related on his mother's side.
Sirius has always loved staying in the village, with James's parents or his own uncle Alphard. Godric's Hollow feels very far from 12 Grimmauld Place. It's bright and sunny, where his parent's residence in London is dark, cold and quiet. He has no intention of ever returning there, not even after his parents' death. He assumes the whole estate will go to Regulus, and this doesn't bother him. His uncle has left him gold enough to make his life comfortable enough.
The week after James's dad's death is not very different from every other holiday Sirius has spent in the village. They do, of course, talk about Will Potter, and they go through his things. There are half-finished scripts for children's books, and when Sirius suggests James should finish them, James doesn't laugh it away. But even though Will Potter is gone, there is some part of his spirit left in the home, which is now May's. Welcoming and open-minded. Free of preconceptions and the forcing of ready-formed opinions on anyone else. When Sirius asks May if Hermione can stay with her, the older woman smiles and tells him it would be a pleasure to have another young guest. Then she asks Sirius to tell her about Hermione and Sirius doesn't know where to begin, and ends up giving James's mother a rather unstructured picture of the girl he thinks about all the time.
Hermione, or her absence, is the only cloud in the sky for him. It's especially hard at night, when he crosses the street to his uncle's cottage and is alone. Remus and Peter stay with James's mother.
He tries to write to her, but throws parchment after parchment into the fire. He can't express what he feels, not in writing. He can hardly make heads or tails of his feelings in his mind. He just misses her, and somehow he thought it would be easier in Godric's Hollow, where she has never been. He is wrong, and when he is alone he has the sensation of a large black hole with extreme gravity next to him. Only Hermione would be able to vanish the pull from the darkness that is his want and desire for her.
Hermione
Five hundred miles north Hermione's least worry is missing Sirius, even though she hasn't slept a whole night without waking up missing him on the brink of tears. She picks half-heartedly at her breakfast in the sparsely populated Great Hall. Severus Snape sits with his back turned at the Slytherin table, and about fifteen other students, with extra curricular tasks or odd jobs over the summer make out little islands along the four long tables. Hermione wishes Hogwarts would keep the setting from the ball, with small tables along the walls, during the summer. She, for one, would feel less lonely then.
If I stay? Can I stay? Does he want me to stay? What happens in that other time line, if I stay? What happens with the young me in this time line, if I stay? Will that me just cease to exist, later, in twenty years? And has this happened before, somehow? The Sirius I knew later, had known me before, but what happened then? Did I leave? Did I die?
An owl drops a roll of parchment into her plate of buttered toast and splashes her with some pumpkin juice.
"Well, thank you," she mutters darkly and gives the owl the piece of toast that already has its footprint in the butter.
The letter is from Remus, whose handwriting is considerably easier to decipher than Sirius's, but also decisively less wanted. She knows what he has to say.
Dear Hermione,
The funeral was yesterday and all went well. You shouldn't feel as if you would be intruding. May, James's mum, is happy to have you staying, but, a word of warning, she will force-feed you if you turn up in your whippet weight class.
Have you told him yet? I don't care how, only that you will, otherwise I will. It's not right to keep your background from him, not when it's like yours. He's shared more than I ever thought possible about his background with you, apparently. Can't you see how precarious your existence is with us, when you don't even belong in this time?
Sirius tells me you will arrive tomorrow night. The day after tomorrow, I'll come over to his cottage, in the evening, and will start to speak freely about your time travelling. I won't try and force the true nature of your mission out of you, nor make you give promises you can't keep, but I won't keep him in the dark any longer. You don't have to tell James, Lily and Peter, unless you want to, but you'll destroy Sirius if your time travelling suddenly would snatch you back to where you belong, without him being prepared at all.
R
Hermione flees the Great Hall in tears.
Belong. Don't belong. Who is to say where anyone else belongs, Remus? How dare you pressure me like this? Belong. Don't belong?
She knows that Remus is right. When she, reluctantly, puts Sirius in the role of a time traveller in her other life, forgoing everything about him being Harry's godfather, and only sees, feels and breathes how she feels about him, how much she wants him, how much she loves him, her head spins at her own intellectual experiment. The thought that he one day would pull a Time Turner from underneath his shirt, pull the stopper and spin that hourglass, physically hurts.
She finds herself outside the Library, without really knowing how she got there. It's the same spot where her time travel landed her a little more than two months ago.
What if I just went back? Now?
Her fingers clutch the Time Turner through her blouse, imagining herself pulling out the stopper and…
I don't belong here. Remus, of all people, the sanest of almost everyone I've ever met, says I don't belong. Sirius and I can never… It will always be wrong. But I must stay, for Harry. Damn it! Why me? Why not… I don't know, someone who can think clearly in Sirius's company.
She leans against the wall and slides down to a sitting position on the floor. The Library is closed and the corridor is dusky. She wishes she was in her room, alone, but her furious tears rule that out. She is angry and sad and at loss for what to do. She pulls out the Time Turner and examines it while her tears wet her face.
Is there something in this damned thing that could just stop Time? Just stop Time at… well, when? When we sat by the Black Lake all night? Or the night of the ball? Or Graduation Day, out in the Viaduct Courtyard?
"Miss Granger? Hermione? What ever is the matter? I thought you and Mr Snape would go through the storerooms in the Potions Department with Professor Slughorn. Did anything happen to…?"
Minerva McGonagall towers tall over her when Hermione looks up.
"We finished late last night. All orders are placed and Professor Slughorn told us to take the day off. I think he hoped Severus and I would try to get along, but…" she shrugs, "no such luck."
The older woman squats down beside her.
"Let's leave Mr Snape to himself then. But what about you, dear? Can I help you in any way? You look even more lost than when I first saw you, if that's even possible."
Lost? Sure is. I don't belong, and thus I'm lost.
A new wave of tears makes it impossible for her to say what whirls through her mind. With a sigh Professor McGonagall strokes her hair, takes her hand and then rises.
"You can't sit here crying all day, dear. You're my goddaughter, and apart from sending you to London to get a dress, I've done very little in my godmotherly duties. Let's go to my rooms. You don't have to tell me a thing, if you don't want to, but you need a cup of strong tea and some cake."
Grateful for being told what to do, Hermione scrambles to her feet and follows the tall witch obediently. Her mind is as shadowy as the dark corridor.
"I know I said you shouldn't tell me more about the future, dear, but if there is anything at all you want to share, I'm happy to listen. Nothing you say will be repeated outside these walls, unless you want it to."
Hermione hiccups and clutches the warm cup of Lapsang souchong tea, breathing in the smoky scent.
…you don't even belong in this time… … snatch you back to where you belong…
And maybe it is because of Remus harsh words she succumbs. In no particular order she spills her heart out, to the most composed and resourceful witch she knows. She is vague about the grim future that awaits Sirius, James, Lily and Peter, but as honest as she can be about her own fear of not belonging, when she wants nothing but that. When she shares the contents of Remus's letter Professor McGonagall gasps and frowns.
"How can he say that, Professor? That I don't belong? How can he be so sure?"
"Call me Minerva, please, Hermione. I'm no longer your professor, and from now on and for the next academic year you are a member of staff, under Horace's supervision."
"Minerva." Hermione tastes the name she's never used before.
"Yes, it's a horrible thing to say, and coming from Remus Lupin of all people. But you need to understand the loyalty he feels towards Sirius. And James and Peter. He doesn't know you very well yet, even though I've heard you studied really well together and that he's pleased that you will be here next year too. But saying that only shows the same kind of loyalty that Sirius has shown him for years."
"I know," Hermione sniffs. "But I want to belong. Here. I will try my hardest at this… this mission you sent me to, about Lily… about her son, but I don't want to go back after that. Even though I know what will happen. Or might happen. What will happen to the young me, in this time line? Will that girl just cease to exist in 1998? Or will I cease to exist when the younger me is born? Can there be two of me, in the same time line?"
"Well, yes, theoretically. You do of course know the first rule of time travelling, Hermione. Not to be seen. Not to be seen by yourself is of course the most important, but if you are twenty years older, very few people, probably not even your younger self would make the connection."
Hermione leans back and sighs. The older witch cuts some lemon cake.
"What is your life like in the future? Have you got any unfinished… well, business there?"
We've just won the war. Everything needs to be rebuilt. Nothing is the same. I've done my fair share for… for everyone.
"No. Not really. Everything is in ruins, even though we won."
"But you have friends and family there? They will miss you, surely?"
"Yes, but…"
They already miss so many. And if I go back, I would just join them in their missing. Missing Sirius. Who is dead in my time line.
"What does your heart tell you, Hermione?"
"To stay." The words come without hesitation.
"Well then. There is your answer. At least for now. Things change. No one knows what will happen…"
Well, I do.
"… but we can't live in fear of worst case scenarios. Albus, Professor Dumbledore, has this saying, 'It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live'."
"I know. I've heard it so many times."
"Yes, he is particularly fond of that one, but I'd like to change it to 'It does not do to dwell on nightmares and forget to live either.' From what I've learned about you, you deserve some dreams to live, rather than nightmares."
The tears that stream down Hermione's cheeks have nothing in common with the tears that wet her blouse and the Time Turner earlier.
"Thank you. Minerva."
"Don't thank me. Time travelling is a tricky business, but so is life. We have rules for a reasons, but we can't let them rule out life."
Hermione drinks some tea to clear her throat. The other witch frowns and Hermione fears she has thought of snag that will thwart whatever her heart says.
"But I agree with Remus on one point."
"What?"
"You need to tell him. You need to tell Sirius about where… when you are from."
Fancy a bet on whether the next chapter will be "The Truth" or "The Seduction"? Which would you prefer? And why? /Kia