Stories of imagination tend to upset those without one
-Terry Pratchett
Chapter 12
Hermione was not the only student whose mood was darkened by the death of their Herbology professor. Many of the students, some of whom were too sheltered to ever know the death of someone near to them were shaken by the whole thing. He had been a friendly teacher, decent to his students and imminently fair regardless of house or talent, and many students were obviously unhappy and scared. If he could die than any of them could very well be next and many were obviously afraid of being next.
As the rest of the students returned from the holidays there was a subdued feeling in the castle. Herbology had been temporarily postponed and fear was running high.
Hermione found herself thinking back to the few weeks after the war with Voldemort had become public, when disappearances and deaths had started to fill the pages of the Daily Prophet. She was thinking about Harry and Ron, about how long it had been since she had been home, and about whether she would ever be able to manage to get back.
The Headmaster had tried his best to reassure her, but she could tell that he honestly didn't know how to send her back. The only thing he could do was tell her that she would have a place at Hogwarts for as long as she remained in school and that it was best that she not discuss her private life with anyone. That she already knew was imperative.
"Professor," she found herself asking him as she sat in his office one day late in January. "If I don't get back to my future, if I have to stay here forever, what do you think I should do?"
Professor Dumbledore simply looked at her for a moment before asking: "What would you feel best doing?"
"I would like," she paused for a moment to stare at the brilliant plumage of his bird Fawkes perched beside his desk before answering, "That is Professor, I'm very afraid of altering time, but I know that I would like to join the Order of the Phoenix." As her Headmaster didn't answer her at first, she found herself growing less bold. "I know about it and I maybe shouldn't say so, but I don't know what else to do."
"Perhaps you would like to take the rest of your education before deciding on such a thing," Dumbledore said gently. "You are quite young and things might turn out differently." From beside him several of the portraits were listening quite attentively and Hermione found herself wondering how it all must sound to the occupants of each frame.
"I know that I'm afraid I will never get back," Hermione told him. It was the first time she had been able to voice this fear aloud. "I'm so afraid that my being here will alter things terribly."
"We are unable to fully know how our actions will affect our futures," Dumbledore said softly. "Your being here Miss Perkins, might have a better effect than you think on the future. Time only will tell of this."
"I hope so Professor," she said back just as softly.
Back it was not so easy when she wandered the halls that month, or attended classes to ignore the terrible feeling that she was going to be more of a hindrance to the past than a help. It was time to do what Hermione did best in times of crisis. It was time to hit the library.
She had read through several books on the subject of time travel when she had first got sent back but now she positively tore the library apart looking. There were many books on time travel but none that spoke of being able to go back so many years, nor any that she could find that spoke about what happened if a person was trapped back in time. More than one mentioned what would happen if a person meddled with time, how they could erase their very self from existing. It was horribly discouraging.
Pandora came and joined her after two afternoons of this. She had been looking through a journal of a wizard who had gone back in time three months and accidently stopped his neighbors child from being conceived and was completely unaware that the blonde haired Ravenclaw had even sat beside her until she felt a gentle tap on the shoulder.
"Pandora!" she exclaimed, her book falling to the ground. "Please don't scare me like that!"
Pandora stared at her. "I didn't mean to scare you. Are you okay Rose? You have looked preoccupied lately."
Hermione bent down and picked up her book, uncomfortably aware of Pandora's blue eyes glancing at the cover before she put it back into one of the piles she had made. "I'm fine Pandora. I was just taking advantage of the lull in our schoolwork to catch up on some recreational reading."
Pandora smiled. "So you like time travel then?"
"Ever since I was a child," Hermione said. "My father was a huge sci-fi fan, he used to read books on it and when I was little he took me to see Back to the Future twice."
"I hope you don't decide that you like time travel so much that you decide to leave us," Pandora teased her. "We like you just fine here."
"Of course not," Hermione said nervously, "things like time turners are heavily regulated by the Ministry of Magic anyway and for good reason." She thought a minute before adding, "Though I wouldn't mind the extra time to take more classes."
Pandora looked amused. "You would say that," she told Hermione. "You are such a Ravenclaw Rose, it's like you were tailor made for the house or something." She got back to her feet. "If you want, Aurora sent me to look for you, she got some early Valentine's Day treats from home and she's feeling generous enough to share them with us."
Hermione forced a smile. "That would be great. Let me just put these books away and I'll join you." She figured that she might as well call it quits for the day. It wasn't getting her anywhere.
It seemed almost hopeless and yet life went on. Hermione spent time with Remus and Pandora and the other Ravenclaw girls in her year. She attended classes, Slughorn invited her to meetings and Professor Sprout, younger than Hermione had ever known her, showed up to teach. The weeks went by and Hermione could do nothing but try and keep up.
The only thing that occasionally broke through the routine was the occasional moments of communication between her and Regulus Black. She had read The Tales of Beadle the Bard and found herself stopping to tell him one day in the library that she thought Babbity Rabbity was a ridiculous name for a fairy tale creature.
"I couldn't stop laughing at it," she told him as he glared at her.
"Well Cinderella isn't exactly a normal name," he replied with a haughty air. "Who names their heroine that anyway?"
"It's because she was a cinder girl," Hermione said. "It says so in the story."
They weren't likely to see eye to eye on this though, nor on any of the other works that they discussed. She wasn't finished however. Hermione was not sure what made her decide to write him a list, but perhaps sheer stubbornness found a list of muggle books, fiction and non-fiction being stuck into his bag one day while he was searching the shelves for a book.
It was foolish to think she could change his mind on anything, and more than a little interfering considering just how much she had already worried about screwing up the future, but Hermione couldn't help but feel like his mind would bend if he would stop being so stubborn. He needed time, a chance away from his dear friends, and a considerable amount less stubbornness. It was a project that she shouldn't have undertaken but found herself thinking about the stubborn child, and really what was he but a stubborn child, and how he might be capable of more than just being a Death Eater wannabe.
Still it was risky due to how it might affect the future and she found herself thinking of this instead of concentrating on Remus Lupin as the two walked the streets of Hogsmeade on their Valentine's Day date. It wasn't until she realized that Remus had repeated the same question about where to go that he was even speaking to her at all.
"We could go to the Three Brookmsticks?" he suggested. "It's still kind of cold; a butterbeer would warm us up a bit."
Hermione smiled. "That would be great." She slid her hand into his and let him lead her to the tightly packed pub. They managed to find seats near the back across from a group of rowdy Gryffindor fourth years. "I'll get us our drinks." Hermione pulled off the scarf he had gotten her while she waited for him to return. Out of the corner of her eye she spotted a familiar flash of red hair and saw Lily Evans settling into a seat not far away. With her, to Hermione's surprise, was Ravenclaw prefect Dirk Cresswell.
"How long have they been going together?" Hermione asked Remus as he returned with their drinks.
He blinked before turning to regard Lily and Dirk who were chatting animatedly. Hermione thought he looked a bit uncomfortable for a moment before answering. "You know, I don't really know. I think maybe since Christmas." There was definitely discomfort there. Hermione wondered how annoyed James Potter was about this but decided not to ask. Remus looked discomfited as it was. She took a long sip of her butterbear, her mind wandering to Harry as she thought of Lily Evans and James Potter. How exactly had they gotten together?
"Are you alright?" Remus asked. "You often seem preoccupied." He was smiling but Hermione could see that he looked preoccupied himself. He was pale and peaky looking and she felt a stab of pity when she thought of how he must feel every time the full moon came around.
"I'm great," Hermione told him, with a smile she didn't quite feel.
He kissed her again later that day, before dinner in the Great Hall. They were near the hourglasses where she and Regulus Black had fought several months earlier. The kissing was tentative at first but then more firm. Hermione only had Victor Krum to compare with, but she thought that Remus's kisses were sweeter, yet somehow more needy. He kissed her like she imagined he did everything, with an interest in pleasing. His hands were soft, one on her upper arm, the other around her waist. Hermione felt herself slipping back to her original time-traveling days in thought, if not in reality.
She had had a crush on him then; it was only after he had stopped teaching that she had acknowledged it to herself, the embarrassment of having liked Lockhart the year before holding her back from full admittance. He had been funny, intelligent and instructive, the best defense professor they had had up to that point, one of the best ever really. He was still an intelligent boy, kind and hard-working and far less cruel than his friends. It was easy if she shut her thoughts down, the part of her that said that this wasn't a good idea, to allow herself the soft comforts that were these moments.
"Rose," he murmured as they briefly broke apart. He ran his hand lightly up her arm, a gentle, unobtrusive touch. He smiled at her and she smiled back for an instant, charmed for the moment by how young and happy he looked. If only that could last forever.
Pandora and Aurora had been confused at seeing Hermione poring over Wizarding fairy tales and she honestly couldn't blame them. She had been given a book after all as well as a list, found discreetly folded in her bag after leaving the library two days after the Valentine's Day Hogsmeade trip. None of the stories interested her very much, but then she was also now an almost grown woman, not the five year old child that used to listen to Rose Granger read Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast before being tucked into bed.
"I liked Babbity Rabbity," Pandora told Hermione after Hermione admitted to not liking it. "The Wizard and the Hopping Pot is good too." Hermione rolled her eyes while Aurora giggled. "So what's with the sudden interest in fairy stories anyway?"
"I've been clashing in literary tastes with someone," Hermione admitted. "And I guess if they are going to read my muggle choices, then I must keep up with the wizard ones."
"Oh, who?" Aurora asked. "Another Ravenclaw?"
"No, not a Ravenclaw." Hermione hesitated. She was not sure why, but she suddenly felt self-conscious about admitting to her connection to Regulus Black. She remembered how odd her dormmates had found it the few times she had worked with Severus Snape at Potions. "Actually, it's Remus. We have been swapping book ideas."
"I always pegged Lupin for a bookworm," Pandora said as Aurora smiled dreamily. "Should have been a Ravenclaw, that one."
Hermione felt a bit of guilt at lying. What was the problem with admitting to swapping stories with the younger Black brother? Was she really so afraid of what others thought?
It was irrelevant as neither girl, nor Emmeline asked any more questions about her reading habits after that day. No one did except for him. Over the month of February he never once stopped her in the hall but on several occasions notes found their way into her bag, notes on books she should read and comments on things he had read that she had suggested, almost all of them rather dismissive, though none without some little observance or other. It wasn't until the day before a Quidditch match that she found herself passing him a copy of Shakespeare quotations she had pulled from the library.
Unfortunately he was not the only one in attendance. Evan Rosier had been on his way to meet Regulus and had seen the little exchange. It was with much disgust that Hermione found herself being cornered by Rosier later that day outside of her Arithmancy class.
"Got yourself a new boyfriend Perkins?" he asked her smugly as she came out of class. "Is Lupin not enough for you?"
"I don't know what you're talking about," Hermione said as she looked up from stuffing her book in her bag.
"Oh nothing, only that you and Regulus Black seem to have become rather cozy passing things like books to each other lately." The blonde haired boy smirked at her. Hermione, who had never cared for Rosier on the best of times, found her face flushing. Several students exiting the class gave them strange looks, including Lily Evans and Emmeline Vance. Hermione ignored them as she focused her attention on the fifth year Slytherin in front of her.
"I wasn't aware it was any of your business who I exchanged books with Rosier."
"Oh, it's not," Rosier said. "It's just I thought that after all that time you two spent together in detention, it would be a bit funny if you ended up book buddies from it. Regulus does like to read." His smile was devilish as he said the next part. "Or was I right and it's more than that between you? Did you both get all cozy in detention? Regulus wouldn't tell, but between us old buddies, I figured you couldn't mind too much."
"Why do you want him for yourself?" Hermione asked coldly as she hitched her bag on her shoulder. She was going to be late for Potions with Slughorn if she didn't hurry up but as she tried to move passed him, he stepped forward, blocking her way.
"I was thinking maybe you wanted him," Rosier said. "Those detentions? They don't mean a damn thing. You two could have gotten real friendly. I bet Slughorn would be delighted. House unity and all that."
"Well you will have to ask Black that," she told him in exasperation. "Now I need to get to class, so will you let me through?"
"Or what? Will you hex me if I say no?" His smirk was more repugnant than ever. "Sure go, but remember Perkins, you're best sticking with your own kind like that peaky Lupin and leaving real witches and wizards alone."
"Right, then when I find a real wizard I'll do that," Hermione said as she stepped past him. She did not want to have this discussion with him anymore. He watched her go with a look of amusement that was rather unsettling, his arms crossed and his mouth turned up in a self-satisfied smile.
"Here," Regulus Black snarled as he tossed the copy of Shakespeare quotations back at her. The book landed on the table with a sharp thud, drawing the eyes of a watchful Madame Pince from her desk, ever on the alert for mistreated books. She glared at the pair of them as Hermione regarded Regulus Black carefully. It was the day of the Quidditch match and Hermione had instead retreated to the library, not in the mood to watch the Slytherin versus Hufflepuff match that was soon to occur. Regulus Black, already clad in the green robes of the Slytherin team, was looking livid as he stared at her.
He said nothing, simply standing there staring at her. Hermione, torn between annoyance and curiosity, finally spoke up. "So I take it you didn't like the book?"
"I'm not doing this anymore," he told her stiffly as he looked from both her and the leather clad book as though unable to tell which offended him more. "I'm not reading these foolish books. As though any of them have anything important to say."
"They are likely meant more to entertain than inform," Hermione told him. "That's largely the point of literature. And you must have gotten something out of them, or you wouldn't keep reading them." Ignoring his look of mutiny, she continued, "I know you are a reader and…"
"You don't know anything," Regulus cut in angrily. "Evan thought it was ridiculous me reading things like that, and I agree. It's a total time waster."
"Oh, Evan said so," Hermione nodded in understanding. "And naturally you must listen to everything Evan tells you. So glad we have him around to determine what is ridiculous and what is not."
"I can think for myself," he told her. "And I think it is foolish."
"Of course you can," she told him scathingly. "What Evan Rosier has to say is just an added incentive
Regulus flushed. "To hell with you Perkins," he said. "I don't have time for this. I'm going to be late for Quidditch." He started to turn away only to feel a pull at his arm. He turned to find that it was Hermione who was now glaring. She stood beside him, the discarded book in her arms.
"I want you to take this book," she said to him. "And I want you to keep it until you can find a reason to give it back that doesn't involve Evan Rosier, or your parents or your brother in Gryffindor, or anyone else." She reached for him then and placed the book in his hand. "Read it or don't, I don't care, but don't ever tell me that you can or can't do something because of another people and what they said and think."
And that was all she had to say. She gathered her things and left him standing there, in his green Quidditch robes, clutching at that book in confusion and annoyance. He didn't try to follow her. He didn't try to give the book back. And if he tucked it inside an inner pocket before heading down to the Quidditch pitch, well no one was the wiser.
There was no more mention of his spot in the library, no detentions, no grumpy meetings or detentions or fights. Hermione, determined to shove the irritable boy out of her head, split her time between schoolwork and reading up on the war. Voldemort had been active since the late sixties and things were only getting worse. Hermione knew that for over four more years things would rage before Voldemort would go after the Potters, she just hoped she wasn't there for that whole time. How could she be expected to be there if this was all going on and not work to try and alter things?
The worst part was the very real sense of tension amongst the upper years. Too many of them, especially the Gryffindor's and Slytherin's, had already drawn lots in the war. Voldemort or Dumbledore. Order of the Phoenix or Death Eaters. She had to sit back and watch as it all swallowed them up. It was more than she could possibly take.
She found herself trying, of all things to find out anything she could on the young Tom Riddle. It was a near impossible task. He had been a halfblood wizard with a muggle father named Tom Riddle and a wizard grandfather named Marvolo. He had attended Hogwarts between 1938 to 1945, was a Slytherin student, a prefect and headboy. He had killed Myrtle when he opened the Chamber of Secrets and had pinned it on Hagrid. He had once owned a diary that he had placed his memories in. And a very strange and confusing bit of magic that diary was. Without going to Dumbledore she couldn't imagine that there was much else to go on. Yet maybe if she found out something now she could help Harry later.
So Hermione found herself pouring over Dirk Cresswell's copy of the Daily Prophet after him in the mornings. He was one of the only students she knew who received it and she wanted to be as informed about the war as possible. Luckily he was a good sport about her looking through it after he had read it. Unluckily other than the occasional mention of a death or mysterious disappearance there was little to go on. She was just reading it one day when she saw Lily Evans take a seat beside Dirk, a smile on her pretty face.
"It feels like spring," she said cheerfully. "I can't wait for the water to warm up a bit more."
"So you can go swimming with the squid?" Dirk asked her. "I always knew you preferred that squid over everyone else. We just can't compete."
Lily gave him a cheeky look. "I've always loved the squid best, everyone knows that."
From out of the corner of Hermione's eye, she could see James Potter glaring at them from the Gryffindor table. What she did not see was that he was not the only boy looking their way. From over at the Slytherin table, Regulus Black kept glancing over, but it was certainly not Lily Evans he was staring at.
So the plot thickens. Things are picking up a bit now, as I try to gear things towards the end of this year and into the next year. I thank everyone who has read this and reviewed. If anyone has any questions or comments, I'd love to hear them. Remember reviews are love!
