Chapter 28: Answers & Questions
Hermione was quite certain that she was doing something that was very wrong.
So far as rule-breaking went, messing with the timeline was far worse than anything she had ever done, far worse than anything James and his friends had ever conceived of doing. The Prefect in her was screaming for her to turn back now and leave the timeline and Remus Lupin alone. Still, her feet kept walking farther from the fire with Remus following behind her.
It was wrong, but she didn't care.
She liked him.
"What?" he demanded, arms folded and face impassive.
She flinched at his tone. "I wanted to apologise," she said quietly. "I'm sorry I behaved the way I did."
"You're sorry you were scared of me?" he asked, eyebrow raised in what felt like a very condescending manner.
"I was not!" she insisted, too annoyed by his stubborn refusal to accept her to bother wondering where he got the idea from. "You surprised me, that's all."
He scoffed derisively. "I know the difference between shock and fear. You froze, Hermione. You were terrified."
"Not of you!" she stamped her foot. "Why would I be scared of you? I was terrified of what it meant that I like you so much, of what it would mean when it was time for me to go home."
His scowl curled upward as he stepped closer to her. "I knew you liked me."
Her brow knit together as she watched his transformation, watched his anger vanish instantly as if it had never really been there at all. No one got over being rejected that quickly. Catching sight of the glimmer in his eye, she understood his game too late. "You tricked me! You just wanted me to admit I liked you," she glared up at him. "That was a dirty trick, Remus Lupin!"
He smirked. "I know. But how else was I supposed to get the truth out of you? You're much too good at sidestepping my questions. If I asked you for the truth, I would have gotten the same old rubbish about liking Ron and not getting attached. When you're angry, you tend to say things without thinking. Quite handy for me, really."
"That's completely unfair," she grumbled.
"Let me make it up to you," the boy said, pulling her close.
The fear of consequences reared up again making her heart race. "I—"
"Don't start that again," he warned, diving down to kiss her before she could launch her protest.
It was a far better kiss than their first. As he tasted her lips with his tongue, the worries and terrors of what she was doing faded into an irritating buzz, like a mosquito that was easily ignored. Knowing her true feelings gave him more courage and he took every inch she would allow him.
Pulling away, he held her eye, that spark of delight still bright. "Now, what were you about to say?"
"That you're a cheater," she pouted.
"I can't have you thinking ill of me," he insisted gently. "I'll make that up to you as well, shall I?" Smirking, he took hold of her pouting lips with his own. He gained a bit more ground, slipping between her barely parted lips, teasing her sweet pink tongue until she mewed.
"Still think me an arse?" he asked.
She shook her head. "No."
"Good," he grinned. "Because I don't think I can stop." He stole into her mouth again, taking all that she would give him, knowing that she would give it all. What little fear he had sensed in her was gone now, lost to the intoxicating aroma of her pleasure and the heady tang of something he never imagined he could cause in a girl: desire.
Her fingers gripped painfully in his hair and she moaned into his mouth. "Hermione, slow down."
She blushed, though it was virtually impossible to tell when she was already flushed with want. Knowing he had done that to her, he smirked. At that tiny, confident gesture, the girl launched herself at him again, taking his mouth with far more vigour than he had hers.
"Damn, Moony," Sirius called. "What the hell did you do to that girl?"
Squeaking in embarrassment, Hermione pushed him away. The whole common room was looking at them, had been for the past five minutes. She covered her face with her hands and ran for the girls' dormitories, spurred on by the cheers and wolf-whistles that followed her.
"You are a right bastard," Remus informed his friend.
"I know," Sirius grinned and dropped back onto the couch and Harry's lap.
Remus raised his eyebrow at the scene, devious smirk pulling at his swollen lips as he considered spoiling Sirius's fun the way that Sirius had ruined his. Harry, great bloke that he was, clearly was oblivious to the fact that Sirius was properly flirting with him. Knowing Sirius as long as he had and having the extra-added werewolf senses to aid his awareness, he knew beyond doubt that Sirius wasn't flirting for information anymore; he really, properly liked Harry.
"They tell me I'm supposed to threaten you," Harry said blandly.
"No need," Remus insisted.
"I know," he replied.
"That's just boring," Sirius whined. "Where is your sense of brotherly obligation? You should at least hex him a little bit."
"He just wants to see you all hot and bothered," Remus warned the boy, letting his eyes drift down to meet Sirius's as he spoke. The grey eyes were wide in silent supplication for him to stop talking, to not give him away. Remus just smiled, "I wouldn't encourage him if I were you."
Harry snorted, ignorant to the silent conversation that had passed between his friends. "Like he needs any encouragement from anyone."
Poor idiot really didn't have any idea what he was getting himself into. Everyone knew Sirius was not the sort to fall for anyone. He wasn't intentionally malicious; he never set out to break people's hearts. He dated and went through the motions, but after a while it was obvious that he was bored with whatever girl or boy he was seeing regularly. There was always something missing, so he gave up on them. This level of potentially-romantic attachment was unnatural for Sirius. He had already spent more time with Harry than he had any two of his previous partners combined.
Remus shrugged and turned. Far be it for him to lay the truth down before the oblivious Harry James Granger.
Glancing over at the doorway that lead up to the girls' dorms, he sighed and trudged through the other opening. He had never before cared about the chastity spell on the stairs up to the girls' rooms, but he suddenly found it highly inconvenient. He wanted to go kiss Hermione some more.
oOo
Fresh from a freezing cold shower, Hermione found herself still flushed from the kisses she had given and received.
"Ooh," Tildy grinned. "Looks like someone's been naughty!"
"Leave her alone," Lily scolded, though her eyes were as bright as her friend's. "I guess you two made up."
"Made out, you mean," the excitable girl interjected. "What happened to your Weasleby in Johannesburg, eh? I thought nobody could hold up to comparison with him."
"Oh shut up," Hermione scowled. "This is all your fault. You put ideas in his head… and mine."
"Trust me, Remus needed no help from me," she smiled toothily. "Was he good?"
Blushing, Hermione nodded. "Yes," she sighed and dropped onto her bed. Without him there to keep her going, the worries started to pull at her again. "I hope things work out when we have to leave."
"Leave?" Tildy frowned.
"Harry and I aren't staying," she said. "We're going home… eventually."
Lily sat down beside her. "When was this decided? I thought you were here for good."
"It was decided as soon as we got here," she replied.
"No wonder you didn't want to get involved," Tildy said. "If I weren't staying long, I wouldn't want to get attached either."
Hermione threw her hands up. "Now she listens! You are insufferable sometimes, you know that?"
"Yeah," the girl nodded. "I get that a lot."
"Then try learning!"
Lily laughed, a light tinkling laugh like the sound of a bell that made everyone in the room smile and laugh along with her. This would be hard to give up. Hermione liked it here. These girls were so different than the girls she knew in her own time.
"I'm going to miss this," Hermione admitted.
"Well, you could always stay," Lily offered.
"Not possible."
"You don't get letters," the girl said matter-of-factly. "I know that mean there's no one back home, Hermione. Not even parents. If it's just you and Harry, there's no reason for you to leave. You can decide where you want to be."
Hermione stared at the girl, horrified that she had noticed no one wrote to them, amazed that she cared enough to pay attention, touched that she wanted them to stay and completely desolate that she had to say 'no'. Steeling her nerves for the marathon of lies that she would undoubtedly be drawn into, she shook her head. "Just because there aren't any letters doesn't mean there's no one to go home to. Harry and I already know we're going. We just don't know when."
"Why are you so determined to leave?" Lily demanded.
"Because… there are people waiting for us," she insisted.
The sides of her mouth pulled down into a disapproving frown. "I hoped you would have trusted us by now."
Fear, sharp and painful, stabbed hard at her chest and temple at the girl's words. She knew that tone and the look that was passing over Lily's face. "What?"
"Hermione, I don't know what your secret is, but I know you aren't from South Africa," she said flatly. "If I had to take a guess based on what I've seen, I would say you used to study here. You know the castle too well."
"I voted for time travel," Tildy said eagerly, "but they shot that idea down. Said it wasn't possible even with magic."
"That's not true," Hermione said, her voice hollow and distant as if it belonged to someone else. "It is possible if you have a Time-Turner, but they will only take you about five years in either direction."
"Ha!" Tildy crowed. "I knew it. Are you from five years in the future?"
She couldn't withhold the laugh that bubbled out of her at the girl's childlike glee. "No, I'm not from five years in the future."
"Well, damn," she dropped onto the floor, chin in her hands, glowering at the carpet.
"That was very specific, Hermione," Lily commented, eyes narrowing. "If she had asked me, I would have simply said 'no' or 'no, I'm not from the future'. I wouldn't have repeated the number of years… "
"I just answered the question," Hermione insisted, growing breathless as the noose tightened around her.
"Yes, the exact question," Lily smirked with an understanding that made Hermione squirm. "I've been dealing with that prat Potter long enough to recognise that as a form of lying. So are you from more than five years in the future? It would explain how you know the castle so well. And why you were so determined not to get involved with anyone. And why you're so set on 'going home'. And why you and Harry don't have South African accents despite claiming to have lived there for several years."
"And why Harry looks so much like James," Tildy added eagerly. "If you're time travellers, then Harry is totally James' son."
The horror must have been clear on her face and in her posture and in the fact that she couldn't breathe for the panic. Lily gripped the sides of her face, forcing her eyes level with those vibrant green eyes that were exactly like Harry's. "It's true? Are you really?"
Hermione refused to reply, but she didn't have to. The truth was obvious in her every anxiety-laden breath.
"This is brilliant!" Tildy declared. "One: they totally owe me an apology. And two: we have our very own time travelling friend! Can you take me back a few years? I had the most unfortunate haircut second year and I would love to talk myself out of getting it."
"Even if I could, that's against the rules," Hermione replied in a miniscule voice. "You can't contact your past or future self."
"Rules?" the girl scoffed. "There are bound to be rules against snogging someone from another time, too, but that didn't stop you."
"I tried to stop it," she insisted, hysteria mounting. "I did! I turned him down and kept insisting I liked Ron, which I really did until he came along. You think I wanted to fall for my teacher? You think I want to destroy the timeline and spend the rest of my time here worrying about what's going to happen when I walk into his classroom third year? I tried!"
"Hermione!" Lily cried and pulled the girl into a hug. "Calm down. We know you tried. Tildy is just impossible to put off."
Tildy edged slowly closer, quietly asking, "So, Remus is going to be a teacher?"
"Go away, Tildy," Lily said sharply.
"I—"
"Away. Now."
The girl grumbled and complained but stomped away and down the stairs.
"She won't say anything," Lily promised, though how she could make such assurances was beyond Hermione. Still she trusted her because she was desperate to believe that it would be fine, that she had not just blown the future to smithereens with her manic confession.
Lily held her tightly and let her slowly regain control of her breathing and sanity. "One thing confuses me," the girl admitted after a long silence. "If you're so worried about keeping things as they should be… why are you still here?"
"We're stuck," Hermione muttered. "That's what we've been researching. We need to find the spell that sent us here." She explained, as vaguely as she could, about the train ride, Malfoy and the portkey. "Until we find the spell, we can't go home."
Lily nodded as she listened, her brow creased in thought. "Well, I'll help. Tildy, too, though you might not want her around too much. She's very excitable and might start asking some very personal questions."
Hermione laughed despite the dire situation. "The more eyes we have, the quicker we can go home."
oOo
Down in the common room, Tildy was still grumbling about being left out. She helped solve the riddle; she deserved to have some of her questions answered. Looking toward the fire, she saw Harry sitting on the worn couch and grinned. She ran across the room, leapt over the back of the couch and landed beside the boy.
"Fuck!" Sirius gasped.
"Oh, didn't see you there," she said, hopping off him. "Sorry."
"Dammit that hurt!" he wheezed and rubbed his stomach where she had landed on him. Glaring at the girl with all the anger he possessed, he left quickly with what little pride he still had.
"Sorry!" she called after him, turning to Harry with a pained grimace, "I hope I didn't break him."
"He'll be fine," Harry said. "James does that to him every other day."
Tildy turned her gleaming eyes onto the boy. "You're awfully close with him, aren't you?"
Harry frowned. "Who?"
"James," she said. "I mean, isn't it a little weird hanging out with your own dad like that?"
If she did not already believe it to be true, Harry's reaction would have convinced her one hundred per cent. His eyes grew enormous, larger even than Hermione's had when they had started to figure it out. The blood fell away from his face and his spine went as straight as a broom handle.
"W-what are you talking about?" he asked with obviously feigned indifference.
"Oh, please," she snorted. "We sorted it out. You are so totally Potter's future son. So what, did you come back in time to see what the old man was like at your age?"
"Did Hermione tell you this? Because she was just pulling your leg," he insisted.
"No, she started freaking out about the timeline and snogging her teacher," she said, mouth turning down in a slight frown at the thought of kissing a teacher before she brightened once again. "Is Remus really going to be a teacher? I can totally see that."
Harry scowled as he realised she was not just making things up to fool with him. "What the hell is she playing at telling you all that stuff?"
"We sort of tricked it out of her," Tildy said. "Sorry. We didn't think the future was in danger or anything. We just wanted to know why Hermione was so secretive. We won't say anything. But are you really James's son? I mean you look just like him. It's pretty obvious once you've got the time travel stuff in your head."
"Could you keep it down?"
She dropped her voice to a whisper. "This is so exciting! Are you going to tell James? He would freak if he knew!"
"No," he said, standing and glaring at the girl. "No one else finds out. Too many people know already. The more people know, the harder it is to keep things from changing… no matter how much we want them to." He looked down at her with eyes too like Lily's to be believed, the pain on his face clear for anyone to see, and he strode away, disappearing up the stairs to the boys' dorms.