A/N: Thank you for your reviews, favorites and follows after last chapter! Huge thank you to lanamarymack for alpha/beta reading this chapter, too! I am so excited that you guys are all in on this third arc of the story and I am hoping to make it worth it for you. We've got a lot of questions to answer, but we will see Rabastan soon, I promise! You can find me on tumblr (nauticalparamour) where I post sneak peeks, story updates and answer questions.
Please let me know what you thought of chapter fifty 😳 and be on the lookout for fifty-one soon!
When Hermione woke again, the sky was a dusky purple outside. She couldn't decide if it was simply evening or if she'd slept an entire day and it was dawn once again. Assessing her body while sitting up in bed, she was pleased that her body did not seem to hurt as much and her headache had faded as well.
In the occupied chair next to her bed, she spied Sirius with his head resting on his hand while he slept. Honestly, at this moment she was of two minds about him. Hermione was so happy that he'd (apparently) lived a life without the mental and physical scars of having been in Azkaban for thirteen years for a crime that he didn't commit. The other part of her... well, she was furious with him.
On her bedside table, there was a pitcher of water and a small glass. Salazar, she hadn't even realized how thirsty she was until she saw it. Getting up onto her knees, she tried to pour herself a glass, only to be surprised at how weak she felt. She set the glass down abruptly.
The horrible clanking sound must have startled Sirius awake, because he was standing at her side in an instant. He took the glass from her and poured it into the cup, before holding it up to her lips. "Here," he offered. "Let me help you."
She glared up at him. "I don't know. You have a funny way of helping me," she said bitterly, but the cool water was too much to resist. She took a greedy drink and then another, using the back of her hand to wipe away the bit of water that had spilled on her chin.
Sirius barked a bitter sort of laugh. "Oh come now, you couldn't think that I would try to poison you," he admonished. "Even if I have wronged you in the past."
Hermione sat back against her pillows, letting him fluff them up a bit with his wand. Oh, how she hated to be treated like some sort of invalid, but the truth of the matter was that it did help. "I'm surprised that you acknowledge it," she said, feeling the beginning of tears swirling in her eyes. "Why did you do it, Sirius? I didn't want to go back. I was so happy with Rabastan and —"
He ran a hand through his hair, sitting heavily back down in the chair. "Believe me, I've asked myself that same question a thousand times," he explained. "I just... at the time, I thought about how hard it must have been for you in the past. You are just a girl and —"
"But it was not your choice to make, Sirius. I am not some little girl who can't make her own decisions," she seethed, even more upset.
"I wouldn't have done it if I hadn't thought it was the right thing to do. You shouldn't have had the weight of this responsibility on your shoulders, of trying to stop you-know-who, when you were still in Hogwarts," he said fiercely.
She scoffed at him. "You were barely any older, Sirius," she argued, her voice going a bit shrill. "What made you think that you could bear it on your own?" What a silly boy he was, thinking that he could do it all by himself!
He ran a hand across his face. "I know that now. I can admit that I was young and foolish, but I still think that it was the right thing to do," he insisted. "I... I promised you that I would get you back to your time and I had to follow through on it."
Hermione felt cold fury simmering up inside of her. "Regardless of your desire to make it right, you should have listened to me!" she insisted. "Now, I've been brought back and am in an even stranger world where things are so topsy-turvy I don't know what is even real. I... I should hurt you, really."
Sirius glared at her. "I know that you are mad, but I promise you that I've been punished enough," he said, bitterness in his every word. Self-loathing, she realized. "I thought I could do it all on my own, with everything that you told me, but I still fucked that up, like I do everything."
"What — what do you mean?" she asked, wanting to know what he was getting at. Her mind felt as though she couldn't focus between the two sets of memories that she had, which was the real and which was the imposter.
He stared up at the ceiling of her bedroom for a moment and when he met her eyes again, she could see tears, barely held back, in his grey eyes. "I couldn't save them," he whispered, a haunted look in his eyes. "James and Lily, they still... they still died."
"Oh," Hermione said, her breath leaving her in a rush. A knot formed in her throat and she knew that she would struggle to get past it.
"Yes, I... I couldn't get what you told me about Peter out of my mind. I tried warning them, but... I suppose that my sudden and fervent insistence that they drop our other friend came off as increasingly suspicious," he explained, his eyes firmly on the coverlet.
She swallowed, willing herself not to sob. She couldn't believe that for all her time in the past, she had still left Harry an orphan. Despair filled her and she began to feel like she hadn't really accomplished anything at all.
"You... you can't be held responsible for who Lily and James put their faith in," she said, gently, knowing that they simply had trusted the wrong person.
Sirius looked at her with wild eyes. "Don't absolve me of this. I should have done more — I should have made them understand, but..." he trailed off, in dark thoughts once again. "James was my best friend in the whole world. I should have done more."
Hermione wanted to hug him and tell him that it was alright, but she knew that there was blame to go around. If only she'd been in the past, she was sure that they could have done more. Or maybe there was some truth to what Arctutus said when she'd spoken to him. That some events just couldn't be changed. Maybe Harry really was the Chosen one all along.
"What's happened with Harry?" she croaked, needing to know what had happened.
"I wasn't even his godfather," Sirius said, the agony clear in his voice. "Dumbledore insisted that he go live with Lily's muggle sister. He said that her blood would offer some sort of protection, but Remus does go and visit him."
"So, you and Remus are friends at least?" she asked, a little flood of relief in her belly.
Sirius gave her a resigned smile. "No, he didn't believe me about Peter for a long time. He... he wouldn't let me see Harry," he explained. "But after your third year... after he saw you again, he reached back out to me, he...he realized that something must have happened and—"
If Hermione concentrated, she could remember kindly Professor Lupin, teaching her in her Third Year. She remembered discovering that he was a werewolf and the... the rather attentive looks that he gave her, that she didn't understand at the time. She simply thought that he'd known she knew about his lycanthropy. But now, the questions about her family seemed to make more sense.
When she looked up again, Sirius was staring at her with baleful eyes. "I'm so sorry, Hermione," he said, taking a great shuddering breath. "You have no idea how many times that I wished I could pull you back. That I could have stopped myself from being so impulsive. I hoped that you would find a better world than you left and I didn't accomplish a single thing."
She was tired, but she pulled herself from bed, ignoring the chill on her bare feet, so that she could close the distance between them and wrap Sirius into a big hug. Only once he was wrapped in her embrace did she feel his shattered sob. He whispered his apologies again and again.
Already, she could feel herself thawing to him. She was still angry about the life that he ripped her away from, but she could see that he must have suffered a lot, living through his on his own. She wasn't ready to forgive him, but she knew that he wouldn't have done it if he didn't think it was for the best.
"It will be okay, Sirius," she promised him. "We are together again and now we can figure things out, together."
Hearing that she was not going to completely shut him out improved his mood significantly, though Hermione could tell that he was still tortured by what he'd done. He cleared his throat after a moment of staring at her — willing himself to believe that she was really there. "Father wanted us to join him in his office once you were feeling up for it," he said softly. "There is still much to discuss."
"Yes," Hermione agreed, with a grin. "Like how you came to call him Father once more and live in this house again."
Sirius snorted. "Not much to tell you there," he explained. "Once you were gone and I saw how worried they were about you, well I... I had to come clean, didn't I? I had to explain what it was that I'd done, so they wouldn't exhaust themselves looking for you."
"I don't think that could have endeared you to them," she answered, with a smirk.
"No, I daresay that Regulus will never actually forgive me for it, even if you are here now," he said with a sigh. "But, Father used it to his advantage. He used it against me — the shame, the guilt that I felt — until he had me back, reinstated in the family, doing as I was told."
Hermione knew better than to tell him, but she thought that it was probably a good thing for him to have that sort of guidance. Yes, the Sirius she knew was independent, always boldly charging ahead, but he was adrift without James and Lily and Remus (and even Peter to a certain extent). Having someone to tell him what to do was probably exactly what he needed to weather the storm. His life was undoubtedly better than the one he'd lived before — when she'd met him the first time — despite the loss.
"I'll leave you to get dressed," he said, after taking a moment to collect himself. "I'm sure that you can find your way to Father's office on your own."
Nodding in agreement, Hermione was happy to have a bit of time to herself, to think about what she'd been through. She didn't even know how long she'd been back in 1996 yet and she was still settling in with her new memories. She wondered if her original memories would fade with time, seamlessly replaced by the life she had lived. Honestly, thinking about the complexity of the time travel loop she was stuck in made her head ache again.
Looking at the bedside table, she found a veritable collection of potions. Unstoppering one, she gave it a delicate sniff, before identifying it as a dreamless sleep potion. That certainly wouldn't help her now, so she opened another — this one vaguely pink — and identified it as a pain potion. Wanting her mind clear for the next big conversation, she drank it all in one go.
Rolling her shoulders, she felt the lingering aches in her muscles ease. Walking across the room, she opened her wardrobe, a fond smile forming on her lips. All her clothes from her school trunk had been hung up and flawlessly protected with preserving charms. It was as if a day had passed, not over ten years. Her heart ached when she thought of her mother, taking such care of her things. Why, she dared to guess that no one had changed a single thing in her room since she'd last been home, though it had obviously been meticulously cleaned throughout the years.
She pulled down a china blue set of robes that was a particular favorite of Walburga's, wondering if the fashion had changed in the last decade, even though it was more clear than ever that it was in the middle of the night. Sitting down at the vanity in her room, she found a pretty ribbon and quickly tied back her hair, hoping that she made a pretty picture. She wanted her family to know that she was back and she was well.
Because, it was clear that there were still a lot of things that needed to be fixed. If Death Eaters had still managed to duel with a bunch of school children in the Ministry of Magic, things were in a woeful state. And, even if Hermione was not as well positioned to make changes with her future knowledge, there was no way that she was not going to join the fight.
She'd just have to drag the other Blacks along with her, kicking and screaming.