In all the hustle and bustle that had been the Second Task, time had entirely slipped past Hermione Granger, barely acknowledged and barely noticed. It wasn't the first time she'd run out of, well, time. But unlike the previous year, she couldn't simply grab her Time Turner, give it a little twirl, and suddenly right a misstep or cram in an extra couple hours of studying. For one, she'd happily given that little mischief-maker back to the Deputy Headmistress last June, and for two, she'd have had to turn it far, far too far back.
Instead, she'd simply have to deal with the fact that Valentine's Day had snuck up on her and caught her entirely unawares.
She'd made no plans.
Purchased no chocolates.
Written no cards.
In fact, besides hastily asking Viktor at breakfast if he wanted to have a butterbeer in Hogsmead over the weekend, she'd made no attempt to mark the day at all.
And neither had Viktor.
Which made her feel vindicated in her own short-sightedness and something else queasy and miserable that she wouldn't deign to acknowledge, not even so far as to call it disappointment.
Instead, they'd had breakfast together as always. He'd given her a quick kiss to the temple, murmured that he'd see her later, and disappeared to his classes just like any other Thursday morning. And just like any other Thursday morning, everyone at the Slytherin table pretended that Hermione wasn't actually there, which made it incredibly easy to shovel her last bit of eggs into her mouth, gulp down the cooling dregs of her tea, and march straight to the library so she could finish rereading her Transfiguration notes before class.
What she hadn't expected was to be followed to the library by Harry. He'd been acting strange all week, staring at her like she'd turned purple or perhaps grown an extra limb. Just yesterday, she'd snapped at him at dinner and told him to keep his eyes to himself. If he felt the need to stare at someone, she'd happily point out where Cho was sitting.
He'd turned bright red of course, and Ron had gotten rather incensed on his behalf. The twins had laughed. And that had been the end of it.
She thought.
Waffling between the competing impulses to march at top speed into the library and to slow down so that Harry could catch up, she dithered too long in the corridor and, after a moment, felt Harry gently touch her elbow.
"Hermione? I've been meaning to ask you something."
Oh really.
She'd never have guessed.
Please, please, please let it not be relationship advice. His continued mooning over Cho was pointless and destined to go nowhere. Besides, she didn't have a lick of advice to spare, having been born with naturally low reserves of romantic notions.
"Yes, Harry?"
He looked at her, his face screwed up in that way it always did when he was gathering his courage to ask her to please stop doing something that was obviously (to everyone but her, naturally) bothering everyone around her. She watched his Adam's apple bob as he swallowed hard.
"I, er…well…that is." Harry paused and gave a quick glance to make sure they were alone. Of course they were, it was just past seven in the morning and the hall was deserted save for a couple NEWT students who had entirely too many worries of their own to notice two Fourth Years.
"What is it?" Hermione asked, squashing the impulse to tap her toe against the flagstones.
Harry gulped again. "It's just, something that Remus asked me about, when we were at the Three Broomsticks. And I don't know exactly what he meant, but I think I know. And you're not, are you?"
Clear as mud, as always.
"Not what?"
Eyes firmly locked on a point somewhere over her right shoulder, Harry scrunched up his nose like his thoughts were causing him physical pain as they whizzed around his empty noggin.
"Engaged. Not engaged."
"What?!" she screeched, drawing the attention of two upper years.
Without thinking, she snatched Harry's elbow and dragged him towards a bench at the end of the hall, one of his favorites when he was waiting for her to leave the library and was tired of being shushed any time he breathed too loudly.
"What is this about me being engaged?" she whispered harshly.
"Well. I mean, this was Remus, not me, okay? But he, well, he thought maybe Krum would be asking your folks for a betrothal contract soon. And that seemed really weird to me, but, well, has he?"
Oh lord.
"He better not." The vehemence in her voice surprised her.
She loved Viktor.
Didn't she?
Yes.
Yes. She did.
She most definitely did.
Even if she hadn't had the courage to tell him that yet.
But getting engaged?
They'd talked about betrothal contracts, all those months ago, when she'd wanted to know what they were. And she was certain her confusion and disdain for the whole barbaric arrangement had been clear. But then, he'd also said he wanted one someday, because it was some sort of rite of passage and culturally important and other things she couldn't fathom. But he'd also said maybe he could find some other tradition to follow if he just so happened to hitch himself to someone who wasn't a super-traditional Pureblood. And Muggleborn Hermione Granger, with her dentist parents living in a London semi-detached, was about the farthest thing from a Pureblood that she could imagine.
"Hermione?" Harry interrupted her spiraling thoughts. "Are you ok?"
With a firm blink and a mental shake of her head, Hermione banished as much of her turmoil as she could. It would keep.
"I'm fine, Harry. No, Viktor and I are not engaged, and we're not going to be. I'm only fifteen, for Christ's sake." While she'd started out evenly enough, the final words had erupted like steam from a whistling tea kettle, shrill and urgent.
Harry nodded awkwardly, his shoulders slumping in what she imagined was relief, both at her answer and at having the question finally in the open instead of just pinging around in his head. If he noticed her continued distress, he wisely ignored it.
"I'm glad. Not that I don't like Krum," he quickly added, "but, you know, it's a bit weird, isn't it? Wizards and betrothals and stuff? I mean, we're just kids."
Caught between the desire to defend Viktor, who was a Pureblood wizard, and acknowledging the truth of how very alien that culture seemed sometimes, Hermione simply hmm'd and nodded and tamped down her desperate desire for this conversation to be over.
"Well," Harry said brightly, his relief blossoming into good cheer, "I guess it's time to head up to Transfiguration. Think you can help me get rid of the last feathers on my guinea pig? I swear, I've tried everything."
"Of course, Harry," Hermione said without thinking, biting her lip slightly as her thoughts drifted elsewhere.
After all, she certainly had a lot to think about. And none of it was Transfiguration.
=/=/=
"Out of my way, Granger." Eloise Midgen shoved past her, red-faced, eyes flashing. She'd never been one of Hermione's favorite year mates and this latest outburst certainly didn't endear her to her.
Pushing open the door to her dorm, Hermione was greeted with the smell of burning and the sound of laughter. Tendrils of smoke rose from a stick of—something unidentifiable but somewhat woody—perched precariously on the edge of an abalone shell. As she watched, Lavender grabbed a dried leaf from a pile and shoved it against the burning end of the stick, her lips moving in a silent chant of 'please please please' until, finally, the leaf caught and began to glow.
"What on earth are you doing?"
Which was the wrong thing to say apparently, for two sets of eyes snapped up to meet hers and Lavender dropped her leaf, where it began to smolder on the carpet. Only a startled shout and a quick batting with her hand prevented the carpet from catching alight. With a huff, Lavender tossed the now-extinguished leaf into a bin and grabbed another, her face pulled in dramatic frustration.
"You going to join us, Granger?" Parvati asked, propping herself up on her elbows from where she'd been haphazardly sprawled in the middle of the floor.
Her skepticism must have been obvious, for Parvati sniggered and continued. "Oh come on, it's tradition! Eloise wouldn't have been so upset if she'd just admitted she fancied Neville."
"What?" Hermione asked, tossing her bag onto the end of her bed and beginning the long process of unbraiding her hair. It had gotten so tight over the day that she would happily swear that it weighed at least five pounds, and she'd been eagerly anticipating releasing it from captivity for the last several hours at least. Maybe it was time to get it cut again, she thought idly.
"It's Valentine's Day," Lavender said, her eyes still glued to her little leaf.
Of course. Explained everything, that did.
Hermione shook her head and kept undoing her hair, now working her fingers under the French braid and gently rubbing at her scalp.
Parvati, ever the more conscientious of the two, grabbed a leaf and held it out for Hermione. "It's an old ritual. You use the balsam to catch a bay leaf on fire, and after it's gone out, you put the rest of it under your pillow. And then you dream about the future."
Hermione barely kept her knee-jerk response of 'what a load of hogwash' behind her teeth. It wasn't like the two idiots were actually hurting anyone, even if they definitely weren't supposed to be burning anything except candles in their dorm room.
With a crow of delight, Lavender gently cupped her now-smoldering bay leaf, blowing on it gently and breathing in the smoke so deeply she coughed. Having finally succeeded (again), she looked up at Hermione and smiled.
"Oh come on. I know you don't like Divination, but witches have been doing this for millennia. It's fun!"
"Come on, Hermione. It's supposed to make you dream about the boy you're going to marry," Parvati said, desperately trying to keep a straight face and ultimately failing.
"Eloise didn't want to admit she wants to marry Neville Longbottom," Lavender explained, her eyes back on her bay leaf while Parvati let out another peal of laughter.
"But we all know who you'll be dreaming of," Parvati giggled.
Oh, not this again.
First Harry and now these two?
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Uh huh. Sure you don't." Parvati waggled the bay leaf between her fingers, flapping it up and down. "It must have been someone else I saw attached at the lips to Viktor Krum."
Hermione flushed hot. "You did not," she spluttered, opening her trunk and burying her face inside it as she, ostensibly, searched for a book she definitely needed right this moment.
"Oh? I didn't see you snogging his brains out in the greenhouse? Or I didn't see someone else?"
Refusing to dignify such gossip with a response, Hermione simply huffed and withdrew a book at random.
Spellman's Syllabary. Not the most useful text, since she was six weeks ahead in her Ancient Runes reading, but she supposed she could reread chapter twelve again tonight.
When she glanced back up, both girls were looking at her again, their faces a little more somber. Smoke trailed from Lavender's bay leaf and, as she watched, the tiny ember winked out. Thin whisps of pale blue smoke curled and danced in front of her face, lending her, for just a moment, an almost ominous appearance.
If Hermione had been of a more fanciful disposition, she might have imagined she was seeing a glimpse into the future, a future where Lavender read tea leaves and burnt balsam and gave hope to downtrodden and hard-hearted witches desperate for love.
But she wasn't.
She was just seeing Lavender.
But perhaps, she thought for a moment, she was seeing Lavender the downtrodden witch desperate for love, who was in just this moment trying to give herself a little injection of hope.
When was the last time someone besides Ginny or Harry or Viktor invited you to do something? Hermione's traitorous thoughts whispered.
Hermione snapped her trunk shut a little too forcefully and one of the clasps rattled in the silence.
You're never going to be my silly little girl, are you? This time, it was her mother's voice, wistful and quiet as seven-year-old Hermione sat at the kitchen table working her way through the Encyclopedia Brittanica.
"Oh, fine." Hermione snatched the bay leaf from Parvati's fingers, pursed her lips, and sat down on the lid of her trunk. "What am I supposed to do then?"
It was stupid.
It wasn't going to work. Because it wasn't real magic and it was stupid.
But the comradery was real. The way Lavender and Parvati talked to her and laughed with her and giggled over which boys they wanted to dream about was real.
And if Hermione went to bed equal parts excited and terrified of dreaming of Viktor Krum, well, she needn't admit it to anybody.