It hadn't taken Hermione very long to realize that she was being followed. Perhaps it was the years that she'd spent with a target on her back, being Harry Potter's muggleborn sidekick, but through that experience she had developed a sixth sense in detecting when she was being watched. She found herself looking over her shoulder during meal times, walks through the halls, and even in the library.
Her paranoia had grown large enough that she even agreed to revising with Rabastan (without Regulus's presence) for the two classes that only they shared together, letting him walk her back to the Common Room when it got close to curfew. Oh, how things had changed, that she would willingly subject herself to future Death Eater Rabastan Lestrange for protection!
She couldn't fathom who it was who would be that interested in her comings and goings. Certainly it couldn't have been Bernie — he'd given her an extremely wide berth since returning for the second term, suggesting that he'd had words with Regulus as promised, though she wasn't privy to the conversation. She didn't think that it was the Marauders, who'd seemed to be taking their own revisions for NEWTs seriously enough now that they were getting closer to graduation.
But finally, one Friday afternoon, Hermione was pulled into an empty classroom by a hand darting out to grab her. Before the door was closed behind her, she'd already drawn her wand and jabbed it under the chin of whoever dared to attack her. She came face to face with her invisible shadow and was surprised to see that it was none other than Sirius himself.
Hermione couldn't resist a confused smirk. "Big brother," she teased, knowing how much their familial connection (unexplained as it was) got to him. "I thought you'd given up on me."
Sirius looked annoyed. "Don't call me that," he snapped back, but he didn't make any move to say anything else.
She dropped her wand to her side, but didn't put it away. "Well, did you have a reason for grabbing me or did you just fancy a duel?" she asked, unable to stand not knowing why he'd sought her out again after so long.
It took a few beats of Sirius opening and closing his mouth, trying to determine what he wanted to say, before he finally just blurted it out. "You were kind to Remus," he said, finally. "I overheard you and Snape. You... you protected him, even though you had no reason to."
Hermione sighed and stepped further in the room, knowing that this was going to be a longer conversation. "Severus was being stupid," she said, shrugging her shoulders. "He would have regretted it later."
"I... thank you," Sirius said, sounding like it physically pained him to do so. "For not telling anyone that..."
"That he's a werewolf?" Hermione asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Yes," he confirmed. "How did you know?"
Hermione took a moment to really look at Sirius. He was not the man that she knew from the future, that was sure. He was boyish and handsome and she suddenly believed all of his stories about him being a heartbreaker that he'd shared with Harry and Ron the Yule before. Before he died. Even though her experiences with this younger Sirius had been horrible so far, Hermione could tell that Sirius did care deeply about his friends. That had never been more obvious.
Her mind drifted to her conversation with Cassiopeia over the holidays — about how she should make changes that benefited the Black family. And, even if Walburga had disowned him in a fit of rage, Hermione knew that Sirius being framed for Pettigrew's murder and association with the deaths of James and Lily, left to rot in Azkaban for over a decade, did not benefit the Black family in anyway. In fact, she was quite certain that Walburga would welcome him back with open arms if she could find a way to save face.
Could she make changes that would see Sirius living a happier, more productive life?
"Does it matter how I know that Remus Lupin is a werewolf?" she asked. "You hate me."
Sirius looked somewhat cowed at the accusation. "I don't... I don't hate you," he answered. "I—I had my suspicions of you. But now... now I can see that you aren't really what I expected."
"And what did you expect?" she asked, amused.
"Another Bellatrix," he said, his disdain for his cousin evident in the snarl of his voice.
"You didn't even know anything about me and you completely wrote me off," she said, crossing her arms over her chest. She detested being compared to that witch.
"You are right. I was wrong," he admitted, though she could tell that it pained him. There was still hurt in his mercurial eyes. "You're not... you're not a bad person. If you would help Remus how you did. So, how did you know?"
Hermione sighed heavily. Talking with Sirius, she was reassured that he was nothing like Dumbledore. And even if she was certain that Orion and Walburga would be furious if they knew, she just felt like she could trust him. Sirius wouldn't use it against her... not when she was sure this was a way that she could make his future better.
"Tell me, Sirius, how do you think that I'm related to your family?" she asked, wondering what he believed. Of course, he knew the Black family better than most, so he should be able to parse through the rumors more easily.
Sirius looked at her, his head tilted to the side, showing his more canine attributes. "People seem to think that you are Alphard's secret daughter," he said, looking at her shrewdly. "But, I know that you can't be because Uncle Alphard left me his fortune when he died. If he had a child, surely it would have gone to you."
"I'm not Alphard's daughter," Hermione agreed, hiding a smirk. "I didn't ask what other people were saying. I wanted to know what you think."
"I suppose the most logical explanation is that you are my father's child," he said, his eyebrows pulled right together. "But, you don't take after my father. You look closer to Bellatrix or Andromeda. You must be related somehow, I just don't know."
Hermione was surprised to hear just how much he'd considered this. She wondered how much not knowing who she was had gnawed at him. "I'm not Orion's bastard either," she said, before deciding to put him out of his misery once and for all. "Our connection is a bit more distant than that. Marius Black is my grandfather."
"Marius? But he's a squib," Sirius said, sounding shocked.
"Yes. I'm the product of four squib grandparents, apparently," she explained. "Amelia Selwyn married Marius. Owen Montague married Elspeth Urquart. Somehow, they all found each other after they were unceremoniously booted from their families, meant to be forgotten. Pretended like they never even existed."
"Until you showed up," Sirius supplied, a grin coming over his face. "And your parents — they must not be magical either, or we would already know about you?"
"For the first... sixteen years of my life, I've thought that I was a muggleborn, albeit an unusually gifted one," Hermione explained to him, walking over to one of the tables and hopping up on top, her legs dangling underneath them. "My grandparents never said anything about magic to me, even when I got my Hogwarts letter."
Sirius snorted in amusement. "I bet they loved that," he said, chuckling, seeming to truly enjoy the thought of his family's discomfort with her origins. "A muggleborn in the family."
Hermione sniffed. "Yes, well, they are rather convinced that I am a pureblood. I suppose it doesn't really matter to me either way, but your family has been a great help to me, so I can go along with them for now," she explained.
"That still doesn't explain how they found you," he said, a dark coloured eyebrow arching. It seemed that she couldn't get anything past Sirius. "I doubt very much that anyone was keeping tabs on Marius after her was erased from the family."
"Too right," she said with a wince. "I had a bit of a mishap and was able to Floo into Grimmauld Place accidentally, where your parents stumbled upon me and from there, Father deduced that I was family. Correctly, to my amazement."
"If you hadn't been, it would have made him crazy," Sirius suggested. "There isn't a better protected place on this Earth than Grimmauld Place."
Hermione smiled at him. "I like this," she admitted, surprised at just how much she'd missed Sirius. In her correct time they hadn't exactly got along, but, it felt better to be on the same side for once. "Getting along with you."
"Don't get used to it, Granger," he answered, though she could see that he was fighting a smirk. "You said that you got a Hogwarts letter, but you obviously haven't been here since you were eleven. How were you educated before coming here?"
She really was beginning to hate how perceptive all of the Black family was turning out to be. It reminded her that she would need to be careful what she said around Bellatrix, too. "That's a bit more complicated for me to explain," Hermione said, biting her lower lip, considering it. There was a limit to believability and she didn't want to chance that Sirius could betray her in a fit of rage. "A more dangerous truth. I'll need some sort of assurance that this will stay between us."
Sirius bristled. "I won't take an Unbreakable Vow with you," he said. "I barely know you."
"I don't think anything quite as drastic as that. Perhaps just a blood pact?" she offered, drawing her wand and making a cut on the palm of her hand, watching as the dark red welled up against her pale skin.
"Damn, when'd you find the time to learn blood magic, Granger?" he asked, though he didn't hesitate to repeat her actions with his own wand, offering her his bleeding hand.
"I'm sure you know that the library at home has all sorts of information on forbidden magics. It was a long summer," she said, teasing. She took his own hand in hers, letting their blood mingle together. "Do you promise to keep what I am about to reveal to you here between the two of us? You will not speak of it to anyone else?"
"I swear it," Sirius answered, a dark red light shining from between their clasped hands as the magic settled in.
"Good," Hermione said, feeling satisfied. "Because you really won't want to find out what happens if you go back on that vow," she added, thinking about the time that she'd jinxed the Dumbledore's Army sign up page and disfigured Marietta Edgecomb for less.
He didn't let go of her hand, but just waited for her to share her secret with him. Taking a deep breath, Hermione looked Sirius in the eyes, his gaze mercurial as ever. "I am Marius's granddaughter," she repeated. "I was born on the nineteenth of September, 1979. And I came back to this time from 1996."
Sirius was ripping his hand out of her grasp before she'd even realized what had happened. "You're lying," he said, grasping at anything that would disprove her tale. "It's not possible."
"It's very possible," Hermione said, blinking owlishly at him. "There was a time turner and —"
"Time turners couldn't take you back decades," he said, forcefully.
"They can, if they are broken, purposefully spun without any care for where you are sending a person," Hermione countered, thinking of the way that Bellatrix had snatched the time turner. Did she have any idea of what she was doing, sending her back like she had?
"You should be dead," he snarled, still unwilling to believe what she was saying, despite the evidence of her being there.
"Well, I'm not," she argued back with her brother. "Sirius, why would I lie about this?"
"Don't call me that," he insisted, taking a step back and putting more space between them. She could see the blood from his hand dripping down onto the floor.
"I am from the future and no matter what you think, that is the truth," she said, calmly, hoping to bring civility back into the conversation. "I know you, Sirius, from the future. And I know Remus, too. That's how I knew about him being a werewolf."
His eyes widened for a brief moment, but then they narrowed. "Why would I know a teenager like you in the future? I would already be in my thirties where you came from," he argued.
"Because, my best friend is your godson," she explained, not wanting to give away too many details when he didn't already believe her. But, she needed to give him enough to convince him that she was telling the truth, even if he couldn't go blabbing about it to someone else.
"You're lying," he repeated, his grey eyes blazing.
Sirius did not even give her a chance to respond — to argue her case more thoroughly — before he was storming out of the empty classroom that he'd pulled her into. Hermione could feel her heart sink, wondering if she had just squandered her only chance to change Sirius's fate.