Out of Time
By Rurouni Star
Before anyone panics – no, this is not the end of everything. There's obviously going to be a sequel, which I am currently working on. Unfortunately, it will probably be a while until it goes up – I'm not as started on it as I'd like to be.
Chapter 15 – Exams
"Time is a cruel thief to rob us of our former selves. We lose as much to life as we do to death."
-Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey
"Would you stop that?" she asked him, annoyed, as he swayed his wand lazily and turned the chair into a brown-spotted goat.
Sirius shrugged. "Just trying to help," he said as the goat turned to bite at her untucked shirt interestedly.
"Your technique is absolutely horrendous," she muttered with a frown. "I don't see how you manage such perfect results…"
He grinned. "The furniture likes me, what can I say?"
Her goat confirmed his theory as it walked over to bite at his hand in what looked to be an affectionate attempt. Sirius yelped and she snickered to herself as he tried to hurriedly fix it back to its original shape.
Hermione's exams during the next few days went fairly well. Her cheering charm was superb (best in the class, Flitwick told her in secret) and her History of Magic final essay was feet longer than anyone else's – probably the only one with any amount of true information on it, as well, though Harry seemed to know his own share of witch-hunt trivia.
No, the problem came in her one of her last exams. Defense Against the Dark Arts.
She was, for the first time, late for an exam. This because she really didn't want to see Lupin that badly. Ron and Harry looked at her askance as she entered the room, then gestured to her to follow as they fell into ranks with the class, walking outside in a line.
"We've got an obstacle course," Harry told her in a hushed voice.
"Lupin said it'd have all kinds of things we've been studying all year," Ron added. "But nothing that requires herbs to get past or anything like that. You have to shoot up red sparks if you're in trouble."
Hermione felt a part of her tense as she watched their professor's back warily. She barely heard Ron and Harry's suggestions as to what might be in the course, or even their hurried reviews of charms to repel grindylows and boggarts.
What if Lupin resented her for lying to him? Worse, what if he thought she was a nosy, empty-headed idiot for trying to get into the Shrieking Shack? She'd put him in danger – put everyone in danger–
"First up," Lupin's voice called. "Adrians!"
Hermione stopped, watching as the boy walked tremulously up to the magically erected stone walls – a circular path around to the beginning again, no maze, no detours. She could already hear the hum of the hinkypunk and its lantern…
And then, before she knew it, red sparks shot up from half way through the maze. Lupin disappeared inside, and reappeared a moment later, dragging the poor boy behind him, waterlogged.
"Cantory!"
A blonde girl she seemed to recognize from throughout the year stepped forward then, and the names began to blur together. The grades varied from fairly low to nearly perfect – surprisingly, Neville came out grinning, and Lupin smiled back at him as he checked his name off with a mark.
His smile turned to a faint frown as he consulted his list. "Ah, I'm sorry – it seems you should've been just before Neville, Hermione. If you would go ahead and try now…"
She blinked, realizing dimly that it was her turn as she walked slowly up to the obstacle course, as though in a daze.
"Three," Lupin's soft voice came. "Two. One."
Perhaps he told her to go. She wasn't sure. But she was now walking through knee-deep water, wishing they'd thought to teach them the water-walking charm in third year. Thankfully, it wasn't cold – it was warmed in the midday sun, and was only slightly uncomfortable. She did know drying charms, she could do one at the end…
Hermione stifled a scream as something surprised her from behind, grabbing at her ankle with a hiss. Grindylow, her mind supplied, as she turned to face it, fumbling for her wand (why hadn't she had it out, damn it?). A few of its fingers were missing – apparently some students had already taken that way out. Hermione brought her wand to bear, ignoring the pain that was quickly gathering where its fingers dug in.
"Relashio!" she cried, sending scalding sparks from her wand. It pulled back, its taut features snarling as it dove back into the water, assumedly to wait for its next prey.
Hermione trudged onward, feeling a slight stinging sensation where its fingers had once been. She hoped she wasn't bleeding. This water had to be absolutely filthy.
A light caught her senses next, as she'd expected. Hermione pointedly ignored it, trudging onward and putting her hands over her ears to keep the hinkypunk from persuading her to follow it. It wavered in front of her face with a slight scowl – and at some point began to shove its lantern into her face insistently – but Hermione stunned it reluctantly at this and left it behind her. Mostly routine. Not anything to worry overly about.
It was then that she came to the wardrobe – and stopped.
Hermione watched, entranced, as it twitched a little, as though knowing she were there. A boggart, that was why Neville had been so cheerful-
Well, it wasn't as though she hadn't handled one before. Certainly she could manage it now.
She hesitated only a moment before moving her hand to the wardrobe and pulling it open.
A figure moved inside, shifted in the shadows. It moved fluidly into the light the next moment, the darkness cringing back at the light that spilled upon its features…
Hermione's eyes widened, and she stumbled back, mouth open. Her ankle caught on something; she tripped backward into the muck, her wand disappearing into the swampy mush.
The woman's hair was a light chestnut, hanging limply in front of her brown eyes. There were lines in her face that told much of the agony she'd endured. She wore Gryffindor robes, though – and there was a pin, a silver pin on them, that had the Head Girl emblem engraved upon it…
She looked down at Hermione, and the corners of her lips turned upward sadly, despairingly.
"You can't do it," she told her. "No one can. They're going to die."
Hermione looked up at herself with a silently working mouth, without so much as the presence of mind to find her wand.
"Didn't you hear me?" her older self demanded, sweeping down on her to pull her up by her collar, looking into her eyes with a maddened, grief-stricken stare. "They're going to die, and it's all your fault! If you had tried harder – no, you haven't tried yet, but you won't- they'd be alive, don't you understand-"
"They won't!" Hermione gasped. "No, no, it won't happen- I won't let it-"
"It already has!" the other Hermione wailed. "It has, Harry dies, Fred dies – and you let them, even though you know-"
"Shut up!" Hermione gasped. "Shut up, I'll try harder, I won't let it-"
"You don't have a choice!" the woman told her. "You never did! It just happens, over and over and over and over-"
Hermione wrenched herself from her grasp, stumbling backward to feel for her wand in the water, unable to tear her gaze from the sobbing wreck in front of her. She found something, and pulled it out, crying desperately, "Riddikulus!" But it was only a gnarled stick, and the thing in front of her looked at her pitiful attempt before smiling and shifting to-
A red-eyed figure, laughing at her as she scrabbled in the water, looking as hard as she could…
"He's dead already, girl, you're too late…" the Dark Lord hissed. "Your attempts are for naught… perhaps I'll end your life here and now, to spare you the trouble later…"
"You're not real!" she told him in a gasping voice. "You're not- not real-"
She found her wand then, bringing it to bear. "Riddikulus!" she managed.
But she had no coherent thought in mind, and so he shifted once again, melding into a dark man, a man with pitch black hair and a tired, defeated expression that made her stare and try to swallow…
"You failed," he told her, looking down at his hands tiredly. "I failed. We all did. The kiss would be more bearable than this…"
"No," she whispered. "No, you can't… you can't give up, not you…"
Sirius looked up at her, and a strange expression took him. "Why not?" he asked her. And then- "Why not, Hermione?" he was yelling hoarsely, standing and staggering over to her with rage in his eyes. "Why shouldn't I give up, when I needed you and you failed?"
Not real, her mind supplied faintly, unhelpfully. He's not real, you know it…
"Please," she found herself crying instead. "It's not my fault, I- It's not my fault-"
"Did you think because I wasn't there that I didn't know?" he asked in a furious whisper, close enough to touch her. "That I wouldn't do anything because I couldn't see it…"
"I thought you'd understand," she whimpered, and Hermione felt a part of herself coming to the forefront now, a part that had been locked away, pushed aside… "You always said I was smart before…"
"I was wrong," he said coldly. "I was wrong about everything. You're nothing but pretensions and dissembling. I should have seen it before."
It was so awful seeing that disappointment and anger on his face, directed at her…
"I'm sorry," she whimpered. "I'm so sorry, I should have been quicker… I should've managed, somehow…"
"You didn't," he hissed at her, and she felt the back of his hand connect with her cheek, stinging. Hermione stumbled back at the force of it, clasping one hand to her cheek in horrified pain. "Sorry doesn't fix anything, Hermione," Sirius told her, seething with anger that was trying to fill a kind of hollow emptiness. "It doesn't bring Harry back."
But a part of her was beginning to struggle, to wonder. Because none of this had happened yet – what was she afraid of, Sirius was clearly not here- he was angry at something that hadn't occurred yet, he couldn't be real-
"Riddikulus," that other part of her said calmly, watching as his expression changed to confusion – he was wearing Harry's sweater from Mrs. Weasley, a bright red, and Hermione laughed as she saw the almost aristocratic man stuck in such a piece of clothing.
The boggart winced, stumbling backward as her laughter increased, almost hysterical, and the wardrobe slammed shut on it, moving as it did so she could make her way out to the exit.
People stared at her as she limped out, favoring her ankle and feeling at her cheek, which had begun to bruise slightly.
Lupin said nothing as he put down her marks. Harry had no time to say anything as he went after her, but Ron looked ready to say something.
"I'm going to go get cleaned up, if that's all right," she said in a surprisingly mild voice.
Professor Lupin nodded. "Yes, that's perfectly fine, Miss Granger."
She left without another word, to make her way numbly up the hill, into the courtyard, up the steps…
Hermione stopped, staring, as another figure hurried past her. An adult she'd never seen before, in a large bowler hat – he looked harried and slightly nervous…
"Um, excuse me?" she asked, and he stopped in surprise. "Can I help you? Is there somewhere you need to get to?"
The man turned around, gasping for breath. "I – well – no, my dear, that's quite all right – I know where Hagrid's hut is – but thank you for the offer-" He paused again, still breathing hard as she frowned and tried to assimilate this information.
"You're a witness to the appeal, then?" she asked, puzzled. "Do you work in the Dangerous Creatures department?"
He chuckled, surprising her. "Oh my heavens no, my girl." He stuck his hand out and she took it uneasily, feeling acutely the sweat on it and vowing silently to herself to wash her hands later. "My name is Cornelius Fudge – I'm going down to sign off on the death warrant for the Hippogriff."
Hermione flinched, pulling her hand back before she could stop herself. "That's awful!" she said. "The appeal isn't over yet, and already you've decided to kill the poor thing?" Some part of her insisted that she was talking back to the Minister of Magic, but her voice of reason rarely took precedence in times of crusading.
Fudge blinked, then stood back up straight, flattening his robes. "I – well, there's not much hope for the thing, is there? I'm sorry to have brought up such a conversation topic – don't you have exams at this hour, in any case?" He was eyeing her suspiciously now, as though she were skiving off some important exam to run about the stairs up to Hogwarts, knocking into people.
"I finished," she told him, one hand going instinctively to the bruise on her face. "I'm done with all of them, in fact. I was just returning to my dormitory."
The Minister seemed slightly put off by the fact that he couldn't ignore her as just another rule-breaking teen, but he stood straight nonetheless. "Well, Miss – ah – miss. Perhaps you should continue up to your dormitory. There is a mass murderer on the loose, after all."
Hermione's eyes moved to the dementors patrolling the grounds, and her mouth flattened into a grim line before she could stop herself. "Yes, there certainly is. I won't keep you from your business, then."
Fudge blinked, as though expecting a retort, but hurried away again as quickly as he had been before, having caught his second wind.
Hermione waited until he was out of sight – and ran up the stairs as quickly as she was able, toward a secret room, in the corner between two walls…
000000
Sirius groaned, rubbing at his forehead and staring into the fire. He'd had something of a long day, between continuing talks with his old friend, planning with Dumbledore on the rather important topic of his innocence, and trying to decide whether it was a good thing or not that Hermione was going to be helping him again next year.
She was brilliant, he'd very easily give her that. And loyal, and infinitely helpful, and would probably work herself to death without him to stop her (as Harry and Ron quite obviously were still unaware of the timeturner and therefore able to do nothing about it). However.
Yes. There was that 'however' again.
He was putting her in an inordinate amount of danger by keeping her close. He was a hunted man on both sides of 'the lines'. And Hermione had a very good future ahead of her, as long as she didn't get into any serious trouble.
Housing a convict was serious trouble. In fact, it was the kind of serious trouble that warranted time in Azkaban.
Sirius flinched at this idea, watching the flames lick at the logs in the fireplace with tension taking his limbs. It would never come to that. He wouldn't let it. He wouldn't wish Azkaban on anyone but one very special rat, and most especially not on her. His fingers twisted on the arm of the chair as he remembered – every happy thought, every little bit of joy, sucked ruthlessly away until you were little but a suffering husk, watching visions of the dead, for they were dead, and it was his fault they were dead, sometimes, and sometimes they'd accuse him of it-
He felt suddenly that his breathing had sped up, and that his expression had twisted into an agonized mask. Sirius closed his eyes, pushing away the vision of dancing, mocking flames.
He would never wish that on her. Never.
Just the thought of her eyes, so warm and so full of life, staring at unseen horrors, sunken in with shadows put behind them…
A slight noise from behind him made him spin in his seat, hand going for his wand. No one was there.
His eyes narrowed, and he brought the wand up to point toward the spot he'd heard it from. "Show yourself," he stated, having had quite enough experience with invisibility cloaks to recognize one at work.
Sirius' glance flitted toward the chair, where the borrowed invisibility cloak was still hanging. Not that he'd expected it to be gone.
"Well?" he said, straining his ears for any stray sounds.
"Oh honestly," came an amused voice. "It's just me."
He didn't relax at the familiar tone until the cloak was thrown off, however, revealing a slightly frazzled but dazzlingly smiling Hermione Granger. His mind gave a jolt as he remembered his prior thoughts on her, and he purposely took in her happy figure and committed it to memory. Every wrinkle in her clothing, every stray hair – the way her lips were slightly parted, and the slight flush on her cheeks, her triumphant manner...
In her arms was a very sullen looking black-spotted dog, which was struggling madly to get free of her grip.
"You shouldn't have," he said wryly, lowering his wand slowly. "Seriously – what's the dog for? And where did you get hold of another cloak? Those things are supposed to be extraordinarily rare, unless something important's happened in the last twelve years."
Hermione grimaced. "I'm about to go back in time and replace it, actually. And this dog… ah…" She was suddenly looking down, fiddling nervously with her robes. Sirius had a bad feeling – her face looked like Remus', after one of their more guilty tricks. As though she were preparing to throw herself on the ground and beg forgiveness.
"Hermione," he said slowly, beginning to dread her answer to the question he hadn't even asked yet. "What about the dog?"
She swallowed. "Well – see – it's not really a dog. It's sort of a – um -"
The girl paused, as though waiting for some miracle to save her. Sirius waited patiently as the miracle didn't come. "Yes?"
Hermione gulped. "It'sahippogriff!" she burst out. "It's Buckbeak – oh, I'm so sorry to ask something like this of you, but they were going to kill him, and Hagrid looked so miserable and that prat Malfoy was gloating-"
Sirius' eyes widened. "What- what exactly are you asking me, Hermione?" he asked, assimilating the information and finding he really didn't like what he was hearing. And then – "What about Malfoy?" Sirius said sharply, watching as she began to hyperventilate. "He didn't try something, did he?"
Hermione blinked.
"Um – no," she said, confused. "Why?"
He dismissed the thought that came to him, then, that she might not necessarily have known it if he had- "Nothing," he reassured her, keeping his face carefully blank. "But you're saying you want me to take care of this thing?"
She smiled nervously. "Well – well yes. I can't do it, they'd find him. But you're going to have to leave at some point, you said, so if you could just take him with you and drop him off somewhere in the wild… all the books I researched said they readapt really easily, so it wouldn't be too much trouble-" Hermione broke off as she realized she was beginning to ramble. "I'm sorry," she said shamefacedly. "It was utterly against the rules, but I felt it was the only right thing to do."
Sirius did something then that she probably had not been expecting. He laughed.
"It was clever of you," he told her, watching as her face turned surprised and relieved and maybe just a little gratified. "There shouldn't be a problem with it, the way you say it," he continued, feeling inordinately pleased with himself as she brightened immediately. "Hippogriffs live in the hills, don't they?" he said, trying to stretch his mind back to Care of Magical Creatures.
"Oh – yes," Hermione said, finding her voice. "Temperate climate," she added helpfully. And then, her face fell as she let the poor puppy to the floor. It moved immediately over to the rug next to the fireplace, lying down stiffly, as though ruffling its non-existent feathers, before closing its eyes – and snoring.
"I… I don't know how to change him back," Hermione admitted shame-facedly. "I can only do the forward side of the transformation, and I thought, as you're well acquainted with dogs…"
He shrugged, brow knitted as he thought of other things. "Shouldn't be a problem, if I look up Hippogriff anatomy before I go."
He inwardly ruminated on the complications of the whole idea, knowing as he did that he would be taking on the creature whether it was practical or not. It was a relatively small request, and worth quite a bit to quite a few people – among them, of course, Hermione.
That was the crux. Hermione. How could he refuse her, when he'd just been thinking how much she was risking on his behalf?
He looked up at her, ready to reply, but stopped abruptly.
There was a darkened spot, blackish blue, on the side of her right cheek. A bruise, spreading just over the pronounced cheekbone, as though she had been hit…
Before he could stop himself, his hand rose to it, fingers brushing it confusedly. Hermione flinched, and pulled back, looking at him in a very strange way that he couldn't quite understand.
"Hermione," he said, his voice tinted with something he himself didn't recognize. "What happened?"
She smiled, but he instantly recognized it as the smile of someone trying to hide something. "Buckbeak hit me accidentally with his wing while I was getting him away," she lied, too easily, so easily that he saw right through it.
Sirius felt his face darken. "Then it was a person," he said quietly, in a tone that seemed to set her slightly on edge. Something inside him constricted as she stepped back in what she must have thought to be an unobtrusive way. "Who was it?" he demanded, stepping forward stubbornly to match her, grabbing her shoulders. "It was Malfoy, wasn't it?"
Hermione stared at him, eyes wide, slightly frightened and slightly confused. "Why is it always Malfoy?" she asked in a high, quivering voice. "He hasn't even come near me since…"
"Since what?" Sirius asked, immediately suspicious.
And then, she did something peculiar. She looked down at her hand quickly, as though remembering something.
"Since I slapped him," Hermione answered promptly, her gaze still fixed with a horrified fascination on his angry face. "Look, I can take care of myself, Sirius-"
He glared down at her. "I think we've already established that you can't," he told her coldly. "Hermione, you're only thirteen-"
"Fourteen," she interrupted in a strange voice. "I'm fourteen."
Sirius shook his head. "Your birthday is during the summer, you told me. You're still thirteen, even if it's only a few months away."
"No," she repeated, slightly stubborn and slightly offended. "I'm fourteen because of the timeturner. Thirty-six hour days, all year, sometimes more. It easily makes up the time between now and then."
Sirius wondered for a moment when she'd become so perceptive and so frightening. Then he remembered she'd always been that way.
He released her reluctantly, searching her for some kind of clue, some kind of give away motion that would tell him what it was that had happened to her. Hermione seemed unable or unwilling to admit that anything had happened at all, though, so he determined to himself to find out on his own, if at all possible. She, for one, was not going to say a word.
"I'm going now," she informed him, still sounding slightly spooked. "I'll – I'll come see you later tonight."
And before he could stop her, she twisted the small golden hourglass from her shirt and turned it twice.
Hermione disappeared.
Two more hours added to her age, this time. Why hadn't he thought of that before?
Sirius shook his head, disturbed by his lack of understanding on the subject. The timeturner was a dangerous object, for all that she'd been allowed its use. And he had a feeling that he still didn't know everything about her connection with it…
000000
Hermione didn't come back that night.
Nor did she come the next. Or the next.
It was at this point that Sirius decided things had gone far enough and scattered caution to the wind. If nothing else, it would wake her up.
So it was that the night before Hermione would be going to King's Cross station, he slipped on the invisibility cloak, activated the Marauder's Map, and stalked quite easily up to the painting of the Fat Lady that guarded the Gryffindor commonroom. It was hard, staying out of the way of the throngs of students that walked the halls – he'd had to leave in time to have someone open the portrait – but Sirius Black had been and always would be a master of invisibility.
"I – I'm sorry, I seem to have forgotten it again-" a frazzled student was saying, looking close to tears. "Hermione told me again this morning, and I wrote it down somewhere, but I seem to have forgotten where I placed that too-"
"Oh just go in," the Fat Lady snapped exasperatedly, apparently used to this situation and this particular student. At his sudden hopeful look, she sighed and opened wide. The boy walked in quickly, as though not believing his luck, and Sirius leapt through jovially behind him, neither entity the wiser for his entrance.
The commonroom was almost exactly as he remembered it. He'd only been in there once before since his departure of Hogwarts as a student, but he'd been slightly preoccupied with Hermione at that point in time. Upon noticing that she'd not moved from the commonroom for a while, and that her classes were supposed to be going at that time, he'd felt a fear grip him that something might be terribly wrong…
But she'd merely fallen asleep on her book, murmuring equations and shifting uncomfortably against the table, her messily tangled hair spilling over her face and catching in her mouth.
And he'd felt something unfortunate in his stomach at the sight, at the sudden and very clear knowledge that he'd been part of the cause. So he'd picked her up, gently, so as not to wake her, and murmured the counter-charm to the ward on the girls' dormitory as he settled her in her bed, turning her timeturner back and watching with bemusement as she disappeared, not to reappear in the bed. Because she had, of course, been gone when he'd gotten there…
Now, just as before, he was certain that something was wrong. And, as this had been the solution before, it would have to be again.
Sirius swept past the milling students, grinning wryly at two older red-heads, who were plotting in a corner, their voices carrying plans of mischief over to his ears. He stopped at the stairs to the girls' dorm, then whispered the exonerating words that would let him pass (oh, how James had delighted in the discovery of that particular spell in seventh year!) and moving upstairs to the room on his map with a little dot named Hermione Granger resting on her bed inside of it.
He opened the door cautiously, quietly, not wanting to scare her…
She was there, sitting quietly on the bed; her knees were pulled up to her chest, her hands resting over them, twined tightly in a little golden chain… Hermione's lip trembled as she pulled the timeturner into her palms, staring, twisting unhappily…
Sirius found himself oddly entranced as her hand tightened on the hourglass. Her knuckles turned white, and he wondered fleetingly at the fact that the glass hadn't broken at the pressure.
She seemed to realize what she was doing, the next moment, because she hurriedly pulled the hourglass up by its chain and tucked it inside her shirt. Hermione took a deep breath, cleansing her face of its worried expression, before lying back on the bed and closing her eyes…
He didn't want to disturb her, but there was really no better time.
Sirius moved silently to the small bed, reaching out gently to touch her on the shoulder…
Hermione jerked awake, eyes wide, looking around in panic-
"It's just me," he whispered, leaning back on the nightstand. "I'd rather not take off the cloak if that's all right."
Strangely, Hermione didn't seem reassured in the least. She was grasping at her heart as though it had been struck by something, and her face was twisted in the exact expression of agony he'd feared to see on it. There was a darkness, a haunted blackness, because some things could barely be endured, let alone remembered…
On instinct, he moved forward to pull her to him, to take that horrible look away. She was cold, he noted dimly, her hands frozen as though she'd steeped them in snow in the middle of spring.
Hermione pressed into him, at first, trembling, acting for all the world like a frightened animal. But she soon calmed, and when he pulled away, she was looking much more like herself again.
The darkness had disappeared. Completely.
"What's wrong?" he asked, concerned though she couldn't see it.
"I- I don't know," she managed, rubbing one palm down her face. "I really don't know, I just felt so awful all of a sudden-" Hermione broke off then, as though remembering something, and that look passed over her eyes again, the one that spoke of permanent suffering, but the one she seemed somehow able to banish…
"It was a dream," Hermione whispered, shuddering.
His shoulders slumped in relief, even as he wondered where she'd acquired such nightmares. He wanted to ask, but it was obviously a personal matter. Instead, he said, "We need to talk."
She nodded vaguely, still looking slightly unsettled. "Yes. I suppose so."
He wanted to tear that scared, uncomprehending expression off her face. And while he was at it, he wanted to make the fading bruise on her cheek disappear completely.
"Who gave you that?" he said in a low voice. Hermione didn't seem to understand what he meant, so he brought his hand to the bruise again, and she tensed for just a moment.
"No one gave it to me," she insisted weakly. "Buckbeak-"
"Had nothing to do with it," he finished in a dark voice. "Tell me who did it, Hermione."
The girl sighed suddenly, deeply. "If you tell me why you're so suspicious of Malfoy, I will," she said wearily.
Sirius felt his expression darken. No, she wouldn't be hearing the truth, but if he told her a secret, made it sound convincing- "I'm related to him," he said reluctantly, noting with satisfaction the surprise on her face. "Distantly, but it's there. I know his family, Hermione, they're… well, they're the kind of people you stay suspicious of."
Hermione hesitated for a moment, as though wanting to ask something more – he wondered for the moment if she'd caught the fact that he hadn't told her the full truth, but she shook her head the next moment and said instead: "It was – it was the boggart. The one in the exam. It's not something you need to worry about, I just – it's slightly personal. It's not something that would ever happen in real life, if that helps."
He felt a little bit of tension drain from him, though he was certain she wasn't telling him everything. They were even, in that respect, and Hermione probably knew it. She was a smart girl.
"I suppose that's good enough," he sighed. Then, awkwardly, he patted her on the shoulder and turned to leave.
She stopped him before he could get too far, flailing for a moment, then putting a hand on his arm. "You- you will owl me, won't you?" Hermione said anxiously. "I just wanted to ask, I don't know if I'll see you again before we leave tomorrow…"
Sirius felt her cold hand through his robes. Always cold, Hermione, despite the fact that she had the warmest heart he'd ever seen. "If I can," he promised. "As long as you write back."
She smiled, looking just a little bit teary, and nodded. "Of course I will. And – and take care of Buckbeak, won't you? Let me know if he picks back up his hunting instincts…" she trailed off uncertainly, apparently at a lack for any last minute things to say, as he stepped back from her hand and moved slowly toward the door.
He left the room then, but turned just before he closed the door to catch a last glimpse of her, to hold her in his memory for the two months he wouldn't see her.
Sirius' last memory of Hermione in her third year was a girl of tousled chestnut hair, piercing brown eyes, and a slightly wistful expression – he remembered later, though, that she had held a glittering golden timeturner in her hands then, and that her knuckles had been tightfisted around it with worry as he left.
END YEAR 3.