AN: *emerges into the post college sun from beneath a rock* Er, hi. Been a while. I know there are about a million Sirius/Hermione time travel fics, but I've been inspired to add mine to the pile. Hope you guys enjoy. As always, please let me know if you spot any mistakes and I will do my best to fix them ASAP. I don't have a beta reader, so if you have any complaints, I invite you to volunteer as tribute.

Chapter 1: Before She Falls

It was the morning of September 5th, and Hermione Granger and Ronald Weasley were engaging in what was already a becoming a very tired argument at the Gryffindor breakfast table. This, despite the fact that it was only the fourth day of their third year term.

"I just don't understand why you hate my cat!" Hermione was saying for what must have been the umpteenth time that morning alone. Or so it seemed to Harry Potter, who was sitting next to the arguing pair, and doing his level best to stay out of the crossfire and simply focus on his toast.

"Well first off, it's unbelievably ugly-"

"Ron!" Hermione gasped in outrage, aghast on behalf of her new familiar. "He is not!"

"AND," Ron continued loudly, cutting Hermione off, "it's got it in for Scabbers!"

He said this in a triumphant tone, as if Crookshanks' dislike of his pet rat settled the matter of the feline's character once and for all.

Hermione scoffed. "Crookshanks is a cat, Ronald, they aren't exactly known for their natural affinity for rats! You can't blame him for acting on instinct! And I'd appreciate it if you would stop referring to my cat as an 'it'. Crookshanks is a boy, and very handsome one."

"You're deluded," Ron said flatly. Harry, who privately agreed with Ron that Crookshanks was indeed, very ugly, quickly shoved a bit of toast in his mouth in order to keep from laughing.

Hermione, on the other hand, was far from amused. "If you think that it's anything but normal behavior for a cat to chase after a rat, then you are the one who's deluded Ronald," she said, folding her arms across her chest defensively.

"I think that beast has got it particularly in for Scabbers!"

"Well!" Hermione said huffily. "Maybe there's just something particularly nasty about Scabbers, did you ever think of that?"

Ron's mouth dropped open in a rather unflattering expression of stupefied outrage. "You've got some nerve, Hermione!"

"You're the one who-"

"If you two are quite done, I think we had better get a move on to Herbology," Harry interjected quietly.

Hermione promptly closed her mouth, and with a considerable air of righteous indignation, began to pack up her things.

A few minutes later, it was in a rather tense fashion that the trio made their way across the Hogwarts lawn to the greenhouses for their first Herbology class of the year.

Hermione was exhausted. It was only the second week of term, and already she felt like she needed a calming draught. Professor McGonagall had warned her that using the time turner would be an adjustment, and Hermione was finding that it certainly was. Quite aside from the bizarre and disorienting effect of traveling back and forth through time, and frequently being in two places at once, Hermione found that the most disconcerting aspect of the whole thing was having to hide it from her friends. She hated lying to Harry and Ron so much. Every time they questioned her, it felt as if the time turner was an albatross around her neck, dragging her down and burning a hole in her chest where it was hidden beneath her sweater. Obviously, she appreciated the tremendous opportunity she had been given; she felt incredibly lucky to be able to attend all the extra classes she otherwise wouldn't have been able to. But she wouldn't pretend that it wasn't difficult at times. And it wasn't just the time turner that was sending her stress level skyrocketing either; there was also the matter of Sirius Black.

It felt like Black was a specter casting a pall over the entirety of the Hogwarts, and Hermione found that her usual start of term excitement had been dampened a bit by the aura of fear and paranoia which currently permeated the castle. It had been frightening enough over the summer to find out that there was a terrifying mass murderer on the loose in wizarding Britain, but when they had found out that he was after Harry, it had all become so much worse. Sirius Black wasn't just an abstract threat, he was after one of her best friends. And Harry attracted trouble the way the Weasley twins attracted detentions; with worrying frequency. Hermione was scared for him.

That absolute nonsense with Trelawney predicting his death in their first Divination lesson certainly hadn't helped matters. There was a course she actually wouldn't mind dropping. What a load of utter nonsense! It was only serving to make everyone even more paranoid, and that was something they most definitely didn't need at the moment. She just hoped Harry wasn't taking it too seriously. He was so introspective about his own emotions that sometimes she couldn't tell. She and Ron were so often close to the surface; 'emotionally expressive', as her mother would say, but Harry tended to burry things.

And that was another thing! Ron was making a right arse out of himself over her cat. She simply didn't understand how he could be so irrational about the entire matter. In her most shamefully vindictive moments, Hermione couldn't help but hope that Scabbers would just die already so they could put the matter to rest. After all, she reasoned, twelve years was an exceptionally long time for a common garden rat like Scabbers to live; death had to be coming soon. It was actually quite strange that Scabbers was still alive, Hermione thought curiously. Maybe he was under some sort of spell? Of course, if Scabbers actually were to die, Ron would probably claim that it was brought on by stress and unfairly blame Crookshanks. The whole situation was a frightful mess.

On top of everything else, Hagrid's first Care of Magical Creatures class had been an unmitigated disaster, thanks to Malfoy and his unprecedented depths of both stupidity and arrogance. She, Harry and Ron had wanted so badly for Hagrid to do well, and now Malfoy had gone and mucked it all up. Hagrid had pivoted drastically from the excitement of his first lesson, and was now glumly teaching them how to care for such mundane creatures as flobberworms. It was hardly what she imagined Hagrid wanted to be doing (what any of them wanted to be doing), but the giant of a man had been understandably cowed by the experience with Malfoy and the hippogriff. An inquiry was now underway, driven by Lucius Malfoy's position on the Hogwarts Board of Governors, and it all just seemed hopelessly unfair. So all in all, Hermione had a litany of reasons for which to be stressed out this year; the time turner being just one of them.

Despite her stress and exhaustion, Hermione found that she was greatly enjoying her classes so far, with the notable exceptions of Divination and Care of Magical Creatures, now that they were stuck with flobberworms and a moping Hagrid. On the bright side, it seemed they finally had a competent Defense against the Dark Arts teacher in Professor Lupin. In retrospect, Hermione could now admit that Lockhart had been a talentless hack, and she was embarrassed that she had been even momentarily blinded to his inadequacies by a childish crush. From their first meeting on the Hogwarts Express, when he had acted so decisively with the dementor, Hermione found that she could respect Professor Lupin. It was a pleasant deviation from their previous DADA teachers. She highly doubted Lupin would turn out to be either a murderous stooge for the Dark Lord or a fraudulent coward. So things were looking up on that front.

The man was a bit strange though, Hermione mused. He seemed quite as exhausted as she was, which, frankly, was something of an achievement, albeit a dubious one. And a few times she thought she had caught Professor Lupin looking at her in rather a strange manner; almost a puzzled sadness. It was quite unnerving. But perhaps, Hermione reasoned, she was imagining it. Even though it was just the beginning of term, she was already under quite a bit of stress, what with all her extra classes and the commensurate homework load. Her sleep schedule had suffered considerably, and the time turner was disorienting all on its own. It was only reasonable to think that her perceptions might be a little off at the moment, while she was still adjusting to everything. And after all, what possible reason could Professor Lupin have to look at her in such a way?

"My birthday is in a week," Hermione said aloud, as she, Harry and Ron navigated a particularly drafty corridor on their way to charms one September morning.

Ron raised a ginger eyebrow. "Is that a hint, Hermione?" he asked playfully.

"No," she said with a mild eye roll for her friend. "Only I've just realized."

Ron stared. "You forgot about your own birthday? Even I remembered, and I'm rubbish at those sorts of things. I even got you something!"

"Because I reminded you," Harry put in wryly.

Hermione grinned at them both, touched that they had remembered her birthday, even if Ron had had a little help. "That's very sweet boys, I appreciate it. And I didn't forget," she said primly. "It simply snuck up on me. I've been quite busy with all my classes, and the start of term is always hectic."

"I suppose," Ron mumbled, as though he were skeptical that these were proper excuses for forgetting one's own birthday.

While she didn't acknowledge it aloud, Hermione was a bit surprised that she had only remembered her birthday just now. The time turner was messing with her sense of time more than she had expected. But in any case, she would be fourteen in a week, and that was something to look forward to. A bright spot in the bleakness that had so far characterized this term.

It was four days before her fourteenth birthday when Hermione had what could only be termed an unfortunate encounter with Professor Trelawney in the seventh floor girls' toilet. Little did she know how fateful said encounter would turn out to be.

Hermione was just exiting one of the stalls, when she found herself confronted with an overwhelming smell of mothballs, tinged with a bit of what she thought might be sherry. Professor Trelawney had just swished into the bathroom in all her malodorous glory, the bangles on her wrists clinking in what Hermione thought was a highly irritating manner. When she caught sight of Hermione, Trelawney stopped abruptly, swaying slightly on her feet, before pinning the girl with a disconcertingly shrewd look.

"It's you," she said, which Hermione thought was quite a rude way to greet a student. She set about quickly washing her hands, desperate to escape her Divination Professor's presence as quickly as possible. She hardly liked or respected the woman, much less her supposed area of expertise, and she had the feeling her Professor had similarly negative feelings about her.

Undeterred by Hermione's clear desire to get away from her, Professor Trelawney continued to address her. "The fates have informed me we will not be seeing you very much longer, my dear."

Hermione turned to face her. "Excuse me?" she queried. Was Professor Trelawney insinuating that she was going to drop her class? Well, Hermione, wouldn't lie, she had been considering it. She had enough on her plate without the load of rubbish that was Divination. She highly doubted, however, that the so called 'fates' had informed Trelawney of any such plans of hers.

"It will not be long now." Trelawney was telling her.

Hermione scoffed, flicking water off her hands in a rather more aggressive manner than normal "We'll see," she said tightly.

"Indeed," Professor Trelawney responded, widening her bug like eyes as though she had just made some kind of significant pronouncement.

"You are positively inane!" Hermione declared, shutting off the tap angrily and striding toward the bathroom door. Normally she would never dream of being so disrespectful towards a teacher, but Professor Trelawney was simply beyond the pale.

"She's mad!" Hermione muttered to herself as she hurried down the corridor, drawing the stares of several portrait subjects. "Absolutely mad!"

Well, she had made up her mind now, Hermione decided as she began to descend the seventh floor staircase; she was dropping Divination, and she didn't care if that made Professor Trelawney's supposed 'prediction' accurate. That class was a detriment to her mental health. She could scarcely believe how Trelawney had just accosted her. In the loo, of all places! It occurred to Hermione that she was now three for three on traumatic experiences in girls' bathrooms at Hogwarts. First year there had been the incident with the troll, second year the Chamber of Secrets (not to mention accidently turning herself into a cat), and now this! It was becoming something of a worrying pattern, she thought darkly.

So consumed was Hermione by her torrent of righteous anger toward her batty Divination Professor, that she didn't notice when the staircase began to move. Suddenly, just as Hermione was thinking that perhaps she ought to just avoid bathrooms altogether, the normally smooth trajectory of the staircases' movement was altered and it gave a great lurch. With a choked gasp, Hermione lost her balance, and when the stairway jerked once more, she found herself tumbling backwards over the edge of it. Air rushed up all around her as she hurtled downward, her body flipping this way and that like a dolls, and she found that she could not distinguish between the rushing sound of the air and her own screams. It was either an eternity or seconds later that Hermione hit the stone floor with a sickening crunch. The sound of her body hitting the floor covered the sound of breaking glass as her time turner shattered; shards of glass embedding themselves in her chest like a million sharp needles, and the sands of time mixing with her blood. Hermione registered none of this, for her world had gone black.

Padma Patil was screaming hysterically. She had been on her way to dinner, when she had stumbled upon the body of her fellow third year. She had been screaming hysterically ever since, and she was still screaming when she was happened upon by Professor McGonagall.

Before she could reprimand the child and instruct her to cease her infernal wailing, Professor McGonagall caught sight of the body. The normally composed witches' face crumbled, and all the color drained from her visage as if she had suddenly been set upon by a vampire.

She rushed toward Hermione, turning the child's body over to face upward. Professor McGonagall gasped at the sight of her student's blood soaked chest, eyeing the unusual wound with great worry. Wandlessly, she conjured a patronus. "Fetch Madam Pomfrey." She ordered it hoarsely. "And the Headmaster! Fetch the Headmaster!"

"I am here, Minerva." Dumbledore said, appearing just as Professor McGonagall's spectral cat vanished around the corner. His voice was exceptionally grave.

Reaching for Hermione's wrist, Minerva McGonagall felt for a pulse. She could find none. "Gracious, Albus," she said, turning hopelessly to the Headmaster. "I believe she's dead."