A Word: I restarted this story recently after a sudden resurgence in my love for Harry Potter, and especially my disappointment at the lack of good fanfiction out there depicting the real consequences of the war. Hopefully this eases some of you who have had similar experiences!
On pairings: this is first and foremost a character development piece focusing on Hermione, and as such most of it will be told from her point of view. The romantic involvements of this fic, then, will be both canon and absolutely not canon; Ron and Hermione are obviously together in the books, and of course I want to keep this story as cohesive as possible with them. But I am a sucker for Sirius, especially the idea of a teenage Sirius/Hermione pairing, and so there's going to be a great deal of that, as well. How it ends remains to be seen!
Reviews are always lovely; I appreciate any time you take to write one.
A disclaimer that applies to this entire work: I do not own anything about Harry Potter, and I'm glad I don't—I would've butchered it.
II: Cippi
There was a sudden bang, and Hermione was sure she was being attacked. She snapped open her eyes; yanking her wand from her jeans and sitting up straight in the chair, legs tensed to dodge or run, she surveyed the room, eyes flicking to windows, searching corners, scanning underneath futons and tables. She was not, she realized quickly, in the Headmaster's study anymore; no, she was still in the room that she, Harry, Ginny, and Ron had been talking in earlier. She must have—did she really dream that whole scene with Dumbledore? Her friends, she remembered, had vacated the room and it was now quite still; she was alone, Hogwarts, A History still tucked protectively in her spare arm, as if it was the real target of attack, as she held the other out, wand aloft. Noise drifted to her from the open door to the stairs—it must have been a pot or pan hitting the floor, maybe someone slamming a door. There were no threats. Hermione took a breath. She was at Grimmauld Place, safely in 1998, and the war was over. No one would curse her here. "Have to keep reminding myself," she murmured, stowing her wand away again and snorting disparagingly at herself as she uncurled the book from its secure position in her other arm. Trust her to try and keep the damn thing safe while defending herself.
She glanced at her watch—how much time had gone by? How long had she slept?
What was that dream?
It had been only two minutes since Harry had left the room. Hermione tumbled ungracefully from the chair, putting the book on a coffee table and rubbing her right temple with two fingers. Her head still throbbed a bit, but it was not nearly as severe an ache as it had been in her dream after Dumbledore had delved into her mind. She'd never felt pain like that in a dream before. The whole thing had been incredibly realistic; in fact, it had been entirely too lucid for her taste. For a while she'd genuinely been frightened of the possibility of time travel, of having been sent to a past she had no business interrupting and no desire to experience. Time-Turners wouldn't go that far back, she reasoned to herself, so she supposed it was only natural that her brain had conjured some ridiculous magical object that could send her to the late 1970s, presumably just (although she couldn't imagine exactly why) to talk to Dumbledore. She felt herself frown as she moved down the stairs; the sounds of music and chatter led her past Regulus' room, at which she glanced curiously. Stopping in front of it, teetering on the landing as she considered the door, Hermione felt ludicrous for even thinking that she might check for the made-up device.
I may have seen it when we were in the room before and just repurposed it in my head, I suppose…
Worth a look, anyway.
"Alohomora," she muttered, pointing her wand at the lock; when she pushed at the door it stayed resolutely closed in spite of the charm, as if to prove her foolishness. Shaking her head, she stuck her wand in the waistband of her jeans again and continued down the stairs. Of course it was locked; Kreacher had probably taken every precaution within his power to secure the room of his favorite master after it had been thrown in such disarray, first by Snape and then by the three of them as they searched for the Horcrux.
The beginning of 1978—that would have been halfway through the Marauder's seventh year at Hogwarts, and right before the first peak of Voldemort's power. It made logical enough sense that she would have sent herself to that date in her dream: a perfect twenty years past, when the people she'd just been thinking about were her exact age. Thank god, she thought to herself, evidently still unable to shake the Muggle expression no matter how much she tried, the dream didn't continue. Living through Voldemort's first rise to prominence was not something she was particularly interested in attempting after so narrowly surviving his second.
"I know you all—we all—I know we all suffered tons of losses. I know good people died and I know you're all so tired, now, so exhausted. I know you all had—had such hope and faith in me—in us, in each other—and I just—"
Harry stopped speaking for a moment, holding his glass high to a roomful of people and wishing fervently that he had collected his thoughts a bit better before attempting to make a toast to such a crowd. He gazed round at them: The remaining members of the Order, all battle-worn and fiery, standing all round Sirius' parents' enormous drawing room: among them was Minerva McGonagall, hair tightly wound behind her head as usual, barely able to suppress her pride as she watched him speak; Kingsley Shacklebolt, tall, arms crossed, looking powerful and, improbably, mentally untouched by recent catastrophe; Hagrid, beaming, whose head only just fit under the high ceilings of Twelve Grimmauld Place; Hestia Jones and Dedalus Diggle, obviously happy to see him alive and well and, Harry reckoned, probably cheered to be around wizards again after what their experiences with the Dursleys must have been like. Then Dumbledore's Army and other Hogwarts students: Neville, Luna, Dean and Seamus, Lee Jordan, Oliver Wood and the rest of the Griffindor Quidditch team, Hannah Abbott, countless others. Hogwarts teachers, Flitwick and Slughorn included, and even a couple centaurs that had fought with them. The Weasleys: Bill and Fleur with their arms around each other, Charlie crossing his burned and scarred arms, Percy with his hands on his mother's shoulders, Mr. Weasley with a hand on Percy's own, Mrs. Weasley looking at Harry with tears in her eyes, George smiling slightly and twisting a shockingly colorful tie, Ginny gazing at Harry in that fierce, blazing way that made his stomach feel as if it was warm and full; Ron, tall and thin and freckled and smiling lopsidedly at Harry's usual awkwardness at public speaking and then moving to the side slightly so that Hermione, who had just entered, could join him at the front of the crowd, and when she did he put an arm over her shoulders with uncharacteristic tenderness and she wrapped her arms around his chest, and the happiness on Ron's face made Harry feel like his heart might explode. Hermione looked at her friend with his glass upraised; he grinned at her, and she gave him a tired smile, her eyes dark. He realized that her collarbones stood out more than they used to, that she looked older, that her grip on Ron was rather looser than his was on her—it looked like Ron was supporting her to stand.
Suddenly, the words gushed out.
"I just know I wouldn't have been able to do anything without all of you. Everything you all did was… it was incredible. And I can't thank you enough. And I know it's hard to walk around and clear all the rubbish of this fight away and get on with things, so just please use each other for that, use me for that. It'll be just as much of a struggle to get past Voldemort as it was to finish him, but a good kind of fight, I think, a fight that actually builds things. So—really—I just—well, thank you lot. Again. Always. I just wanted to get you all together and say that." He paused again. "And as much as we've commemorated all of the deaths—" The absence of Remus Lupin and Fred Weasley hit him in the chest suddenly, a physical blow, and he coughed—"I want this toast to be to all of you. Just because you're survivors doesn't mean you did any less, any less at all—and I'm so bloody glad that I have all of you with me today that I need to drink to it." He raised his glass higher to all of them and drank deeply; whatever he was drinking burned him on the way down, invigorated him, made him feel a bit less of a rambling prat. The room reciprocated as Kreacher, who was standing proudly in the corner of the room, conjured glasses for each person; toasting Harry and each other, they drank and then applauded him. He saw McGonagall's eyes shine and looked away; he saw Ron's smile, still crooked, and had to turn around. Ginny pulled free of her family and he took her hand with his own right hand and her face with his left and kissed her, surprisingly (he realized) for the first time since Voldemort's fall, and when he stopped she was grinning so widely he felt fifteen and expectant again, Cho Chang approaching him under the mistletoe in the Room of Requirement.
As if on cue, Kreacher snapped and the music returned; the food that he and Mrs. Weasley and Fleur had prepared appeared on trays and plates all around the parlor and the surrounding rooms, and the Order of the Phoenix dispersed from their single body, hugging each other and smiling, and Harry stood there staring at Ginny, smiling at her like a fool, a bit weak in the knees at this strange and new feeling of being safe and content in a place he could safely call his own home.
Hermione was still thinking of spinning triangles when Ron grasped her firmly by the elbow, shaking her out of her daze. "Hey, you," he said gently, "'Mione, are you alright? You're, er—kind of limp."
She snatched her arm back and unwound herself from around his torso; Ron looked momentarily worried that he'd irritated her. "I'm fine, just exhausted still," she answered truthfully, "and I've got the worst headache."
"There's got to be a spell for that, yeah?" Ron turned, looking over the crowd. "I know Mum's around here somewhere, she can—"
"No, really! It's fine, you don't have to bother her now," Hermione interjected, exasperated and amused at his eagerness to please. Ron turned back to her with a sheepish face, perhaps realizing how he was doting on her, and she couldn't help but laugh a bit.
"Awright, you don't have to laugh," the Weasley huffed. "Why're you so thoughtful, anyway? You looked like you'd gone off."
In a split-second decision and for no discernible reason, Hermione decided to lie. "I keep thinking I have to go back to Hogwarts and finish school, get my N.E.W.T.S. My parents would be furious if they knew I dropped out. When they know I dropped out."
Ron laughed in disbelief. "Reckon they'll forgive you, considering."
"But all the explanation—do you know how hard it'll be to explain Horcruxes to Muggle parents? 'Oh, yes, Mum, and when I stabbed the cup a bit of Voldemort's soul flew out, that's right, but we still had to behead a snake and drop a tiara into the maws of an enormous fire'—brilliant, right, they'll understand everything."
"That… that's a fair point," Ron conceded, chuckling. "But you haven't even found them yet, so there's still loads to figure out before how to tell—" Hermione had pressed her lips together subconsciously; he saw her eyes take a dark cast at the mention of her only sketchy understanding of her parents' whereabouts. Frantically, "Here—" he snatched a sandwich from one of Kreacher's trays. "You should eat, you look bloody terrible." He winced instantly.
"Charming as always." Hermione was giving Ron that withering look he was so familiar with, which for whatever reason reassured him more than any smile would have. He smirked at her and shrugged. "Well I reckon now I can always win you back by talking about elf rights, so charm's not really my problem here."
The withering continued, but he took it as a good sign when she at least accepted the food, and he was pretty sure she was fighting down a smile that looked to be originating at the right corner of her pretty mouth. "Honestly, Ronald, I'm not a prize to be won. Attitudes like that are what—"
Ron's freckles congregated at the corners of his eyes when he smiled, and he chucked her chin like she was eleven, freshly turned out of the Hogwarts Express for the first time, successfully shutting her up as her eyes flashed with shock and fury at being treated thus. "There's the Hermione Granger I was looking for," he remarked in mock-wonder.
She scoffed audibly and rolled her eyes, shouldering herself away from his touch and maneuvering towards McGonagall, who was in conversation with Hestia Jones—but as her back was turned, the right corner of her mouth lifted in full, and she smiled softly as Ron watched her go, gazing at the slope of her shoulders as she marched away from him. How many times had he watched Hermione walk away in a huff? He threw a napkin at her head and was rewarded by a smoldering glare and a flick of her wand; the napkin smacked him in the face with at least three times as much force as he'd thrown it. Ron laughed with delight.
"There she is again!"
"Miss Granger?"
so tired
"Hermione Granger?"
tired
please leave me
so tired
please just let me be
"Ennervate."
Hermione's eyes fluttered open to find blue hovering over her. Professor Dumbledore stepped back at her awakening, a hand on his mouth in a familiar gesture of thought. "Curious," he said.
She surveyed her surroundings—the Headmaster's study again, the armchair again, although this time, thankfully, the headache was gone. Hermione sat up; Dumbledore was wearing the same robes he had been before. No time had passed? When did she—oh, right. "Professor," she said carefully, "this is a dream."
"That's precisely what's so curious," he agreed with a small smile, seemingly unconcerned at this pronouncement. "A dream which to you is unreal, a sleep-life, and which is waking life for me—or, at least, for the Dumbledore of your mind, which for all intents and purposes is as much me as the Dumbledore in mine. Or at least, I'd think so."
Hermione shook her head, confused and far too exhausted to deal with it. "No, Professor, this isn't a dream I want to have." She stood. "I don't want—I'm sorry, it's just so difficult to see you—like this."
That serene smile was almost chilling. "Alive?"
Hermione said nothing.
Dumbledore paced, his long robes sweeping around his ankles as he did so. "What is interesting," he told her, "although you already are aware of this, is that this is not a recurring dream; you see, even from my point of view, we have not started over our conversation. It has continued rather than repeated, and there has been no break in my time with you. You spoke about your headache and then fell asleep, or fainted, in the chair; fifteen seconds passed, and then when I Ennervated you, you awoke. Presumably you were awake in your future world at that time? And doubtless," he added before she could answer, "experienced much more time than the fifteen seconds you were asleep to me here."
Hermione shook her head again in disbelief. Dream-Dumbledore was setting out to be quite as confusing a man as the Dumbledore she knew from life. "Yes, I was awake," she muttered, "I went downstairs to the party and had a conversation with Professor McGonagall, and afterwards I read with Harry and Ron, and then I went to—I went to sleep, I fell asleep. And I apparently started dreaming."
"And you're quite sure you're not awake now?"
Hermione let out a little "buh" of vexation. "Well of course, Professor, I—"
He held up a hand. "How does it feel here, Miss Granger?"
How did it feel? Her hands flexed when she moved them; she could feel the chill of the January morning on her face from the patch of sky glimmering through Dumbledore's window to her right; her body looked the same as it did in life. She felt for the scar on her neck; it was there. She took a breath; her ribs expanded accordingly. There was, admittedly, none of the usual feelings that dreams entail—everything was sequenced and regular—there was nothing like the floaty feeling of being separated from oneself that usually came with dreaming. "I feel awake," she admitted, frustrated by this fact. "But I know that it's not 1978, Professor, not for me. I have no memories of anything happening—here. You were right, I don't belong."
"So why are you here, even in your dreams? Why come to this time, why come to me?" It was a rhetorical question, and he didn't wait for an answer. "Miss Granger, I know you've seen war very recently."
She gave a dry chuckle. "Too recently for me to want to dream about these years, Professor. I know who's here, I know what happens. When I wake up, I'm going to have to… I don't know, get Muggle sleeping pills, visit St. Mungo's, talk to Professor McGonagall, see if I can stop this somehow. It's lovely to see you, Professor, in my head and all of that, but I'm afraid I can't…" Handle it. I can't handle this.
Dumbledore did not look at her; he had circled round to his Pensieve and was peering into its depths. After a moment of silence, he stirred the stuff with his wand. His voice was a bit gruff. "I think, Miss Granger, you may have trouble evading these dreams." At her questioning glance and opened mouth, he lifted a finger. His tone was pleasant once more. "But we shall see. You can certainly try!"
"I can try? Professor, this is all in my head! Surely…"
"The Muggle sciences," he said quietly, "have discovered incredible things about the nature and power of the mind, have they not? It may be difficult to accomplish anything if you're fighting against yourself."
Hermione stood from the armchair. She felt a knot in her stomach grow tight. "I'm going to wake up in—I don't know, however many hours, Professor, and I'm not going to have these dreams anymore after I do. This is—this must be some sort of accident, a completion of a dream I never finished. An anomaly."
He was still looking at her so kindly, so compassionately; she thought she might cry, which was absurd, because, as she told herself rationally, she was imagining every part of this scenario. None of it was real. None of this is real. "Until you have the chance to get rid of me, then," Dumbledore said (and smiled at her passionate "No, that's not at all what I—!"), "would you care to accompany me on a tour around the grounds? I doubt they are all that different from twenty years in the future, but the cold air may help me think, and of course the students are back from holidays. You may want to spend the remainder of your time in 1978 outside of my study."
Hermione couldn't help herself from giving her old Headmaster a skeptical look. "Walk the grounds, Professor?"
He chuckled. "I, for one, find cold air to be refreshing and the Hogwarts grounds to be beautiful this time of year. If you'd be so kind as to lower that lovely left eyebrow of yours, Miss Granger, you may remind yourself that if this is a dream for you, and a realistic one, you may as well enjoy it. I myself would be honored to have the company of a lovely young future witch as I stroll."
Trust Dumbledore to make her feel like an inconsiderate fool in her own dreaming of him. Rather flabbergasted and with cheeks reddening, Hermione tore her gaze from those kind blue eyes. "I—why not?—I mean, of course, Professor—the grounds are always lovely, and, er—I would love to."
"Why not, indeed?" he exclaimed jovially, grabbing his cloak with surprising agility (He's twenty years younger, Hermione thought, and then rolled her eyes at herself: No part of this is real!) and conjuring a spare for Hermione at the same time. She slipped it on gratefully. The soft gray wool on the inside was necessary; she realized for the first time that was still dressed for a 1990s summer. Of course her mind wouldn't take care of that. "And we journey forth!" Dumbledore cried.
Hermione followed the headmaster down the spiral stairs from his study, recalling suddenly her trip down the stairs to Regulus' room. Dumbledore was correct—this was a continuation. Her dream had begun in Grimmauld Place, with the mysterious object. How odd that this dream was so linear, so chronologically sensible. How odd that she'd generated a magical object such as the triangle device out of nothing—that her brain had created a means and an excuse for time-travel when she had no idea in real life how to do it and no desire to try. "Professor, would you mind waiting a moment?" she asked suddenly, and Dumbledore obliged by stopping at the bottom of the staircase, still smiling at her like he knew what was on her mind and was waiting for her to figure it out. He put his hand on the gargoyle that guarded the entrance to his study and watched her as she frowned in concentration. Could she generate such a thing now? Focusing hard—she remembered for a moment the "Destination, Determination, Deliberation!" of her Apparition test—Hermione tried to will into being a sweater. She pictured it in her head: soft, knit tightly by the capable hands of Mrs. Weasley, cream-colored, warm, folded neatly in her dresser at Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place. Unfolded—hanging, the sleeves longer than the body. On her person, covering her arms, pricking the back of her neck. The sleeves rolled up so that half her arm felt the cold. Pressing against her stomach in the wind. Cozy against her cheek as she brushed hair out of her face.
She opened her eyes: nothing.
She looked at Dumbledore, flushing. "I'm sorry, Professor, I wanted to see if I could use this dreaming to my best advantage." She gestured to her bare arms. "A sweater. Just to see if I could."
The Headmaster nodded. "I would have tried a pair of socks, myself," he told her gently, "but I'd be a dishonest man if I told you I'm not in the least surprised that that did not yield what you expected."
"But why?" Hermione blurted, a bit perturbed that he hadn't said anything prior and then doubly perturbed that she kept attributing Dumbledore's actions to himself—none of this is real! This is in my head.
Professor Dumbledore gestured for her to accompany him as he began walking swiftly down the long stone corridor of the 7th floor, heading towards another staircase so that they could reach the grounds. "Though this dream undoubtedly belongs to you, Miss Granger, it does not seem to respond to your conscious will. You do not wish to be here, and yet here you are; you would prefer to be wearing a sweater, and you stay in the clothing you arrived in; you would rather me be more direct and give you definite answers to the questions you ask, but alas, I simply have none for you, and you cannot by virtue of dreaming make me have them."
Hermione considered this as they continued to follow the stairs. Some students wandered the hallways, talking and laughing, a couple frantically reading essays on long scrolls of parchment or textbooks, using their wands to levitate the reading in front of them as they walked. Hermione felt a curious constriction in her chest as she watched them pass by; never had she so keenly felt the loss of her seventh year at Hogwarts. Whenever students noticed that the headmaster walked in their midst, they flashed smiles or bowed their heads in respect, all greeting him, "Afternoon, Professor Dumbledore," or "Professor! Hello," to which he would reply with a dip of his chin and a twinkling eye cast in their direction. Then they would notice Hermione, walking so closely to him and in such strange attire; she wrapped the cloak around herself and kept her gaze on the walls, drinking in the familiar insides of the castle with great gulping sweeps of her eyes. It was blessedly, beautifully similar; she half expected to see Harry and Ron running towards her, puzzled and in need of answers or excited, going up the stairs three at a time, ready to share with her some story or idea. It instilled a strange longing in her, this image—in some ways she felt she'd outgrown Hogwarts and its patterns of class and work and library and common room and secret passage and Hogsmeade and Ron and adventure, and still she wanted it all back, she wanted to fold up this place and keep it with her to peek into when she could, when she wanted to go back to the time in her life when she had never seen someone die, when her greatest dangers were trolls in bathrooms and basilisks in the bowels of the castle. It all seemed very small now that she was part of a generation of Hogwarts students who would always see the thestrals that pulled the carriages that took young witches and wizards to a school that had seen a siege.
"It's very unpleasant, actually," Hermione responded at last, quietly, "to feel so clear and present in a dream and find you have no power over what happens there."
Professor Dumbledore nodded as they approached the great doors leading to the courtyard behind the castle and beyond. "I would imagine it," he said, not mockingly, "to be rather like being awake."
The doors opened for them and Dumbledore's stride slowed as they made their way outside. Hermione was struck by the cold at once and smiled at its force, watching her sandal-clad feet make prints in a recent dusting of snow that covered the courtyard. The sky was a hard sort of blue, a winter's clear sky, and the sun glimmered palely, leaning towards the west and barely caressing Hermione's face with enough warmth to counter the biting January cold that was so familiarly icing her toes. A Hot-Air Charm fixed that and cleared the packed, accumulated snow in front of them as she and Dumbledore strolled onto the grounds proper, for which the headmaster gave her genteel thanks; but besides that interaction they walked in silence. Hermione had a sneaking feeling Dumbledore had taken her outside to comfort her; the grounds were truly beautiful, reminiscent of nearly every winter of the past seven years. Everything she could see was coated in sparkling white, and the tracks of students slogging through the snow to and from the Black Lake and the greenhouses. The windows of Hagrid's hut glowed a comforting orange and Hermione could picture the scene perfectly: Hagrid sitting by the fire with a mug of something in his giant hands, petting Fang or doting on some newly-procured illegal creature in a cage that it would surely break out of within the coming days. So many people seemed to just belong at Hogwarts, to linger here in her mind—Dean and Seamus would be throwing snowballs, and Fred and George, as well; Ron and Harry would be in the Gryffindor common room with her, grudgingly doing their homework under her supervision until it was time for them to go have tea with Hagrid; Neville would be in the greenhouses all evening, experimenting with the Venomous Tentacula until his return later on, bruised and happy with whatever inane observations he'd made about the plant.
Hermione glanced towards the lake, where the White Tomb would someday be, and watched a group of older students charm snow into forming a rather unflattering portrait of Argus Filch. Professor Dumbledore, stopping next to her and following her glance, chuckled. "Ah, yes. Youthful exuberance—and rejection of authority. Every year."
She thought of so many nights sneaking around hallways under the Invisibility Cloak—a Hallow used for pranks and subterfuge. By the lake, the snowy face of Filch was being divided into balls, and the charmer, a tall, dark-haired boy, waved his wand menacingly. His friends got up quickly, laughing; as the dark-haired boy directed the snowballs with his wand, two of the others scampered. One was smart enough to use a Shield Charm, but a sudden bombardment had him falling backwards into the snow—the other two ran to help him and were promptly smacked in the face with ice. They were shouting and guffawing, slipping around in their Hogwarts robes.
Hermione's heart swelled—she couldn't quite explain the happiness and deep, deep loss she felt traversing these grounds. "Professor," she said, turning to him, "thank you for this, really, it's lovely."
"Nonsense," he replied, raising his voice slightly as the shouts of the students by the lake got louder and closer, "Hogwarts is always yours to walk if you wish it. Even in dreaming."
Hermione gave a dry laugh at this. "I just—"
A sudden hit at the back of her neck had her stumbling forward; before she realized that it was only a snowball, she pivoted neatly on one foot and reflexively shouted, "Expelliarmus!" at the only person she could see whose wand was up, the dark-haired boy who continued to pelt his friends.
His wand went spiraling out of his hand; Hermione grabbed it out of habit, and he turned angrily to see who'd Disarmed him. "Oi, what's the deal?"
Hermione flushed and glanced at Dumbledore, who all of a sudden was standing some distance away and looking peacefully at an owl circling overhead as if he had no clue what was happening. "You—I wasn't expecting—you should take a care to aim!" she huffed, knowing she sounded defensive.
One of his friends—the one who'd cast the Shield Charm—laughed at that and brushed himself off. His hair, long and light, was sopping with cold water; the other boys were struggling to free themselves from the snowbank.
The dark-haired boy scoffed and folded his arms. "You should relax," he retorted. "I didn't hex you, I hit you with snow. My apologies for icing your pretty little neck."
Her temper rose. Why was she dreaming up an arrogant miscreant? "My pretty little neck," she replied coldly, "is quite fine without your apologies, thank you. Do you want your wand back or not?"
He looked angry, incredulous. Hermione felt herself blush redder at his gaze. "What, are you thinking of keeping it? Who the hell are you, anyway?"
Dumbledore chose this moment to intervene at last, calling from his distance: "This, Mr. Black, is Hermione Granger—a guest of mine."
His long-haired friend raised his eyebrows, and the dark-haired boy glanced at Dumbledore in shock. "Professor!—Er… hello," he finished lamely.
"Hello," Dumbledore responded amicably. "Miss Granger, I understand you've been done a great disservice, especially given your present attire, but if you wouldn't mind returning Mr. Black's wand…?"
Hermione's sigh poorly disguised her frustration. Embarrassed, she held out the stranger's wand. "Yes, of course, Mr. Black, here's your—"
She stopped, blinked, mouth open; her suspended arm, which the dark-haired boy and been reaching for, fell by her side at the moment he tried to grasp his wand, and his fingers closed over air, at which he shot her an irritated glance that she barely noticed. How could she not have realized it before? Standing in front of her, carelessly handsome, with longish black hair and gleaming gray eyes and the sort of stance she'd always associated with pureblood wizards, was Sirius Black.
"My wand, yeah, that's it," he said, pointing at it and grinning mockingly. "D'you fancy giving it back? I promise," he said in mock piety, "no more threats to what is, truly, an outstanding neck."
Hermione had to forcibly remind herself that she was dreaming, that it was 1978, that that of course Sirius Black would be here, that of course it was him making the snow into Filch's face. "Oh, shut up," she said wearily, handing him the wand, "I already Disarmed you, you don't have to flatter me."
The boy with lighter hair, who laughed again, was quite obviously Remus Lupin: a younger, handsomer, fresher Lupin than she'd ever seen before. His robes were shabby but his face was bright in the company of his friends. And the two others, who were now walking towards them from the snow, were Peter Pettigrew, that mousy face, how could she forget it, and—she drew in a breath—James Potter, essentially Harry's exact twin except for something around the mouth and—of course—the eyes. She turned to Dumbledore as if in supplication and knew she must look wild; she could barely keep herself together, she felt as if all the atoms of her body were shaking with suppressed tears. The Marauders. Here and alive and looking at her. Frantically, she turned back to them, wanting to embrace them, scanning over their young and beautifully rosy faces. Her eyes landed on Sirius again last and he seemed to take notice of the fire in her staring; surprised, he twirled his wand in his fingers and ran a hand through his hair. "What's the occasion for your visit, then, Miss Granger?"
Hermione couldn't help but give a throaty laugh; how to explain? How in the world to say that he wasn't real, that he lived in her mind and there alone, and that the real Sirius Black was dead and beyond the Veil, drifting somewhere, that they were all dead, that she was standing in the company of the deceased and—
Her eyelids were heavy but opened despite that, as if against her will, and it took her a fair bit of time to adjust to the darkness of her bedroom in Grimmauld Place compared to the stark whiteness of a snowy Hogwarts. She waited, then, as her room materialized out of the blackness: the dresser in the left-hand corner and the window, drapes drawn but for a crack of moonlight that fell on the lower half of the bed, on the wall to her left; the bathroom across the way; the door in the right-hand corner that led to the third-floor hallway; the table next to her bed where Hogwarts, A History lay next to a glass of water and a hair tie, all where she'd left them. Her watch read 3:34 AM.
She felt paralyzed—the young faces of Peter, Remus, James, and Sirius floated in her mind's eye, so alive, and for a moment she thought she saw Sirius smirking at her from the foot of the bed, but of course that was nothing, wishful thinking, really—cruel that she dreamt of them, cruel of her mind to take her to 1978 and cruel of Bellatrix Lestrange and Voldemort to have taken the Marauders' lives like they were taken, coldly and without, really, a second thought, and without honor in Peter Pettigrew's case, without recognizing their strong handsome faces—
In 1978, James Potter had only three more years to live—
And Hermione lay silently in a borrowed bed, staring at the ceiling, drained and incapable of closing her eyes once more, terrified both of sleeping and staying awake.