A/N: Thank you all so much for your reviews, favorites and follows after last chapter! And huge thank you to lanamarymack for alpha/beta reading! I have honestly been so excited to share this crazy premise with you and I am loving how much you all are invested in it. It really has been dreamy reading your thoughts on this. 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 fifteen and be on the lookout for chapter sixteen soon!
Hermione could not decide if the return to Hogwarts after Yule was welcome or not. She had surprisingly enjoyed herself more than she expected with Regulus, Walburga and Orion. While they could not replace the family that she had left in the future by any measure, it was hard to deny that they had grown to become her family over the time since she arrived. And, while Orion and Walburga were not the warmest surrogate parents she'd had, they did show her affection in their own individual ways.
She had actually truly enjoyed herself, trying on robes at an exclusive dressmaker while she was getting measured for her bridesmaid robes for Narcissa's wedding. Too often, people assumed that because she was focused on her education, she didn't like fashion or other girl things. And, while she did not spend much of her free time pouring over magazines like Lavender or Parvati (or even Mallory and Priscilla), Hermione did appreciate a flattering dress. Walburga had quietly bought her two.
To her continued surprise, Orion was not only interested in her school work, but he was actively invested in making sure that she was doing her best. That's not to say that her own parents were uninterested, just... they didn't and couldn't ever understand magic, let alone it's concepts, in the way that Orion did. It was nice to be able to actually talk to him about the things that she was studying.
Even telling them about what Bernie had tried with her had gone better than she could have hoped. Regulus finally sat them down, holding her hand while she recounted how she'd gone outside with him, feeling tears forming in her eyes. She still felt like an absolute idiot for having found herself in that position. As the words left her mouth, Orion was transformed with rage and it was like she was seeing Sirius again — spitting mad at Kreacher for saying something terrible to her. Walburga was shrieking mad, for once more like the witch in her portrait than the one Hermione had come to know over time.
To her relief, they were not upset with her. Not entirely at least. Orion's grey eyes were blazing while he promised a painful retribution on Bernie for what he'd done and his father for peddling ridiculous rumors about her. Walburga promised that it would be discrete — so that nothing would come back on Hermione. No one else would need to know about the mistake she'd made. Well, no one else but Rabastan. It was the most that she could really hope for.
Orion had been even more understanding when she asked to speak with him privately, away from both Walburga and Regulus. He seemed to know she had tidings from the future — important knowledge to impart for the glory of the Ancient and Noble House of Black.
"Regulus cannot be allowed to take the Mark," she warned in a low voice. "Not now or ever. You cannot give your son to the wizard who calls himself Lord Voldemort."
"I suspected that you had something to do with Regulus's sudden change of heart," he said, running his fingers along his thin mustache.
"It is a matter of life and death," Hermione explained. "Regulus's life… and perhaps your own as well."
"You do not know?" he asked, his attention completely on her.
Hermione shrugged her shoulders. "Certainly for him," she said. Although they weren't clear on the specifics of Regulus's death, Sirius had been sure that his brother had died doing some task for Voldemort. "Less clear for you."
"How do you mean?" he asked, obviously taking her very seriously, considering death was being discussed. Orion was a paranoid man. After all, very few people put Fidelus charms on their homes before the first war kicked off in truth.
"Well, you die less than a year after Regulus," Hermione said, drawing her eyebrows together. "But I do not know the specific details on how it happened. It stands to reason that it had something to do with it. After all, you weren't very old."
Orion's grey eyes were practically sparkling in the low light of his office. "How old?"
"It isn't far off," Hermione said regretfully. "The summer of 1979 for Regulus. You, before the year is over."
She heard the inhalation of his breath. Whatever he had been preparing himself for, it was not to hear that he had potentially only two years left to live. "That seems to be a good enough reason not to let him take the Mark," Orion capitulated to her. "Though, I do not want you to think that this is all so simple, Hermione. It will need to be handled delicately."
"Of course, I trust you to do what you think is right for this family," Hermione said respectfully, twisting her hands together. Of course, that didn't mean that she wouldn't try to strategically share information with the Black family to try to change the future to outcomes that she would prefer — namely, one where Voldemort never came back in the first place.
"And I would caution you to know that you do not have an endless power, knowing future events," he said, shrewdly. "If you change enough things — even small ones — the future that you came from will have evolved. And there are some things that fate will not allow you to intervene on."
Hermione was too giddy to argue with him, each step making her feel effervescent as she flounced up the stairs to her bedroom for her last night in Grimmauld Place before their return to Hogwarts. She went to sleep, feeling like she knew what she was doing for the first time since she'd come to the past.
The next morning, she and Regulus had dressed and floated their trunks down the stairs, ready to return to the castle that Hermione had long considered her home. Despite her pleasant holiday and productive talk with Orion, Hermione was quick to remind herself that Hogwarts did not feel like home anymore. It was more like... an odd approximation of Hogwarts, which was not her Hogwarts — not really.
Rabastan tried to approach her on the train to check in on how she was doing, but Hermione didn't want to speak to him about what had happened at the Yule party. She was grateful for him intervening (and she was sure that Regulus had praised him to the ends of the Earth), but she hated knowing that he had seen her looking so weak. She was certain that he probably thought she was a stupid girl, letting herself get so drunk with Bernie. Not to mention, he'd called her stubborn.
And, Rabastan was right. She had been stubborn. She couldn't pretend that the only reason that she drank the second glass of punch and slipped outside with Bernie was because Rabastan warned her that she shouldn't. She didn't want him of all people telling her what to do. But now, she just felt ashamed at her poor behavior.
She couldn't even begin to question why Rabastan had stepped in in the first place. She hoped that he knew she wasn't interested in Bernie and he was attempting to stop her from being taken advantage of, but that seemed too hopeful. There was a darker explanation that she was forced to confront. Rabastan was obviously a pureblood supremacist in her time and probably felt the same now, though he was not as open about it as others. Maybe he just didn't want Bernie to make a mistake with a witch with such dubious origins.
She thanked him, in a clipped tone, before slipping out of the compartment she shared with Regulus, in search of Elvira or Mallory. The two girls filled the remainder of the ride with breathless giggles about how they'd spent their holidays, which was enough to keep Hermione distracted and her mind off of darker thoughts.
Returning to the castle presented her with a new set of challenges. Sirius had blessedly decided to steer clear of her since she'd yelled at him, but that didn't mean that she was unaware of what the Marauders were up to. James Potter — even though he was now 'responsible' — still went out of his way to be hard on Severus, with Peter egging him on. And Severus gave just as good as he got, if not worse, now that it was clear that James and Lily were dating officially.
He had a plethora of secret spells that he used. He was really quite brilliant at spell creation and Hermione wondered what possessed him to ever become a Professor when he obviously disdained children. But, his ire was not reserved for James Potter. He could be vicious to Lily, too, in between puppy dog eyes, lamenting that she wouldn't forgive him, despite his open association with Death Eaters.
Hermione tried to talk to him about it, but Severus didn't want to listen to her.
Worst of all was his hatred of Remus Lupin, though Hermione figured that it was just because Remus was the only one that Severus had anything over. She wasn't sure when or how Severus had figured out that Remus was a werewolf, but he hinted at it at basically every opportunity, relishing the ashamed look that the Gryffindor would wear on his face, all but giving it away if you were paying attention.
When Hermione caught Severus slinking off after dinner one day, looking over his shoulder, she knew that she needed to follow after him to stop him from doing something stupid. He ducked into the potions storage room where the ingredients were kept. Hermione peered into the crack, only to enter in after him when she saw him grabbing things that would be deadly to a werewolf.
"What are you doing?" she demanded, catching him off-guard.
Severus spun to look at her, a vial of powdered silver in one hand and aconite in the other. "What does it look like? I'm going to brew something," he snarled at her. Severus had made it no secret that he didn't respect her, despite being Regulus's sister.
"It looks like you are going to brew something that you are going to regret," she said, crossing her arms over her chest. "Severus, you could kill him."
"It will only kill him if my suspicions are correct," he countered, jutting his chin up in the air. "In which case, he never should have been allowed to attend school with the rest of us."
"Oh? And just who put you in charge of deciding who could come to Hogwarts?" Hermione asked with a laugh. "Next you'll be saying that muggleborns don't deserve to be taught magic, like the rest of your awful friends."
"And you don't, Granger?" he countered, leaning back against the shelves.
"Of course I don't think that," Hermione said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Muggleborns are just like... like the rest of us. They just want to learn to control their magic." The lie — that she wasn't a muggleborn — felt like ash in her mouth.
"Then you are a blood traitor," he warned. "You should be careful who you share those sentiments with."
"Maybe I am," Hermione agreed, feeling good to share her true thoughts for once. "But you sure talk a big game for having a muggle father, Snape."
His cheeks went bright pink. "I'm an exception," he hissed.
Hermione felt embarrassed for him to admit something like that out loud. "So why isn't Lupin?" she asked, cocking her head to the side. "He hasn't done anything dangerous. He's just trying to finish his NEWTs, just like you are. So, why don't you put the silver down and we can pretend like you weren't trying to poison someone today."
Before Severus could decide, there was a commotion from outside the storage closet. Hermione spun around and realized that she had not shut the door completely. She recognized the mercurial grey eye spying on them immediately as Sirius.
"What a... cozy little rendezvous I've stumbled on, Snivellius," Sirius said, ripping the door open. "What? She wouldn't agree to meet with you where you could be seen together, eh? You had to resort to snogging in potions closets — pathetic.
Hermione was not sure who was more affronted at the suggestion that they were romantically involved with one another — her or Severus. "I'm not — I wasn't —" Hermione mumbled. For once, Sirius had completely stolen her ability to speak.
Severus was quick witted as ever, his skills well honed after years of going up against the Marauders. "As if I would touch someone who shared even a drop of blood with you, Black," he said with a practiced sneer. "I'd rather cut off my hand than touch your sister."
Then, he shoved her out of the potions closet and straight into Sirius's arms, before he couldn't leave the potions closet like a bat out of hell, his cloak billowing around him, reminding her very much of his future self. Hermione breathed out a sigh of relief seeing that the silver was left behind, the vial smashed on the stone floor.
Sirius cleared his throat, letting her go once he was sure that she wasn't going to fall. He looked at her, lips pursed in confusion, for a beat, before he took his leave as well. Hermione was left wondering what exactly he'd heard.