A Time For Heroes

Chapter 3: Incompleteness

Hermione was lying alone in her bed the next morning when she awoke. The first thing she registered was a pounding headache, and the second was a wave of nausea. She groaned and rolled over, closing her eyes again. A moment later she dragged herself out of bed with a grimace and stumbled out of her bedroom into the living room.

She grabbed a handful of orange powder and flung it into her fireplace, carefully enunciating as she spoke, "Ministry of Magic, Department of Mysteries, front office." She stuck her head into the fireplace. She found herself in the very familiar room, though admittedly she was not used to seeing it from the perspective of the fireplace.

A small, pretty secretary was seated at the desk, charming memos to fly to other departments. She looked up to see Hermione's head in the fireplace and smiled pleasantly.

"Hello, Miss Granger," she greeted.

"Hello, Liatris," Hermione said, "I'm sorry, could you please let Mr. Harris know that I won't be able to come in today? I'm ill."

Liatris nodded. "Sure, Miss Granger, I'll let him know. I hope you feel better!"

"Thank you," she managed before pulling her head out of the fireplace and running to the bathroom to vomit.

At least she'd already planned on taking the day off. And, she admitted grudgingly, she'd actually had a good time last night. That was important, she supposed.

As she trudged wearily back to her bed, she spotted something that she'd overlooked earlier. It was a small vial filled with a translucent purple liquid. She picked it up and noted upon closer inspection that attached to the vial was a note, written in neat script: "Don't be an idiot. Take me."

Hangover cure was a different potion from hangover prevention, and Penny would have had no reason to bring this with her when she'd expected that they would both take the prevention. She must have left to get the potion and come back again to drop it off.

Hermione was momentarily taken aback by the quiet thoughtfulness of Penny's actions, by the simple, unassuming consideration.

She took the potion in one swift gulp and collapsed into her bed to go back to sleep.

------

Hermione woke several hours later feeling more refreshed than she had in years. She stretched languidly, enjoying the warmth of the sun on her face and her comfortable bed, knowing that she didn't have anywhere she needed to be or anything she needed to do.

But now that she was awake she found that she was bored just lying in bed, so she rose after a moment to head to the bathroom for a shower.

She emerged towel-clad from the bathroom fifteen minutes later, and headed over to her boudoir to find some casual robes.

She clasped the white towel around herself and rummaged through her wardrobe. She frowned when she found that she didn't actually have anything that quite qualified as casual.

She eventually settled on a powder blue summer robe that she'd bought the previous summer for a garden party she had attended with Ginny and hadn't worn since. It was September, but it was still technically summer for the next few weeks, and the weather had been warm lately.

After she dressed, she stood in her bedroom for a moment, staring at the mirror and wondering what to do next.

Breakfast, she remembered, so she went to the kitchen and made herself a nice, large meal that she didn't usually have time for.

She checked the clock. Only half an hour had passed. Maybe she should have cooked the Muggle way, instead of simply doing it with magic. It would have taken longer, and she knew many people found cooking relaxing.

...She didn't know how to cook the Muggle way, she realized after a moment. She stood in her kitchen rather blankly.

This is ridiculous, she told herself. You haven't had a real break in years. There must be things for you to do.

Well, there was a shelf of books she hadn't gotten to yet in her living room, so she headed out of the kitchen to one of her bookshelves. She reached for a recent publication that she'd been meaning to read, "Theory of Runic Substitution for Time-Related Variables", by Elle Apsing. Before she pulled the volume out, however, she stopped herself.

It would rather defeat the purpose of playing hooky just to do research for her job, wouldn't it? She tried to think of what Ron or Harry would say about it. Yes, they would definitely agree that she should not be doing anything for her work today.

They would probably agree that she shouldn't be reading scholastic texts at all, actually, but when she tried to think of something else to do she came up blank. They would want to play or watch Quidditch, of course, but that was no help to Hermione.

(She steadfastly refused to consider what Ginny's advice on what to do today might be.)

Hermione thought of Penny then, though she realized that she didn't know the other woman very well at all. They'd had a good time last night, Hermione was pretty sure, but her memories were clouded by alcohol and pot.

Pot. Hermione shook her head. How had that happened? And she was pretty sure that she and Penelope had done more than talk and smoke together. She remembered kissing her, and some other things, but the memories were elusive. She hoped they were equally so for Penny, because things had the potential to become quite problematic at work.

Realizing that she was just staring at her bookcase, Hermione sighed and grabbed "The Sky Is Not Flat: Why Stars' Distances from Earth and Each Other Matter", by Al Phagamma, which she'd bought on a whim one day in Flourish and Blotts. She headed over to the couch and kicked off her shoes (why had she bothered putting shoes on?). She curled up comfortable in the corner of the sofa, her legs tucked underneath her, and began to read.

It was an interesting book, certainly, and she enjoyed reading it. But when she went to the kitchen to fix herself lunch after a few hours, she was hit again with the feeling that she ought to be doing something.

There must be things besides reading that she enjoyed, she reflected as she ate a sandwich.

Then what were they?

It was ridiculous. She had hobbies and interests. Everybody did. How could she be unable to find anything to do on her first day to herself in years?

Eventually she gave up and went back to her couch to continue reading.

In Arithmancy, Hermione had learned that identities had no actual content. Identities were simply used to change one equation into another that meant exactly the same thing, but was of more use in the problem.

She sighed. She knew that she couldn't quantify self. Like most things in real life, outside a classroom or lab, it just wasn't something one could measure. She couldn't figure it out with a quill and piece of parchment.

That might be, she thought, why she was so horrifically bad at real life.

If only she could neatly plan out her life as she did her study schedule or her research methods. Gods knew she'd tried, but they were always messed up.

Too many unknowns, she reflected wryly.

There was a sudden knock on the door, and Hermione started. Her book toppled from her knees and fell to the floor with a soft 'thump.' Who would be calling on her in the afternoon, when she was always at work?

"One moment!" she called. She picked up the book and placed a bookmark where she'd last read, then set it neatly on the coffee table.

She swung open the door to see Ron standing there awkwardly with his hands in his pockets. He gave her a hesitant half-smile.

"Hullo, Hermione," he said hesitantly, "er, why aren't you at work?"

"I wasn't feeling well this morning." She eyed him in confusion. "Why are you here if you thought I'd be at work?"

"Um, ah, well... I guess I thought I'd leave a note or something," he explained lamely, seemingly speaking to a spot about a foot and a half above her head. "Mind if I come in?"

Hermione shook her head and stepped back, holding the door open to let him through. He entered her flat without quite looking at her and headed over to her sofa. She followed him wordlessly, and they both sat down.

"Hi, Ron," she said quietly. She realized that she was biting her lip, a nervous habit of hers of which she'd never quite ridden herself, and attempted a tight smile instead, though it came out as more of a grimace. "How are you?"

"Fine," he said a bit too loudly. He swallowed. "Er, how are you?"

Hermione shrugged and looked down. "As well as can be expected, I guess."

"That's... er, good." There was silence for a moment, and then he continued timidly. "You look nice."

"Oh." Hermione looked down and remembered her nice robes. "Thanks."

There was another silence.

"You haven't come by in a while," Ron spoke eventually.

Hermione stared down at her carpet. "Well, just, with everything, it seemed like things would be... well... strange," she finished weakly.

"You know this won't affect our friendship, right?" he asked her.

She looked up, actually managing a real smile of relief. "Well, I didn't know," she admitted.

"Herm," he said incredulously, "for such a smart girl, you can be awfully dense sometimes. We remain friends after you leave me and begin dating my sister, and you think our friendship won't survive this?"

Well, now that he said it she did have to admit that it sounded a bit ludicrous.

"Well, we were already broken up..."

Hermione trailed off as Ron gave her a look.

"Okay, okay, I wasn't thinking," she conceded with a rueful smile. Then she sighed. "How are they?"

He didn't have to ask who 'they' were. He opened his mouth to speak, then paused and closed it without answering, clearly trying to figure out what to say.

"They still want to be friends with you," he told her, "they're afraid to come by to see you, in case you don't want to see them, or it'll just hurt you more. They... they didn't mean to--"

"I know," Hermione interrupted abruptly. She shook her head and gazed past Ron, at the wall. "They did the best thing they could have."

"I'm sorry, Hermione."

Hermione let out her breath heavily. "Me too." She stood up and fidgeted slightly before she forced herself to stop, clenching her arms at her sides. "Do you want something to drink?" she asked him, pacing over to the kitchen.

He stood up and followed her. "Just water is fine," he said.

"Ice?" she asked.

"Sure."

Hermione opened the freezer, and Ron made a noise of surprise. She looked back at him in confusion.

"What?" she asked.

"Just the booze, is all," he replied, "I didn't think you drank..."

"Oh." Hermione looked back, and there were the vodka and the schnapps sitting in the freezer. She hadn't even noticed them, she had just assumed that Penelope had taken the alcohol back home with her. She grabbed the ice and dropped it into his glass, then closed the freezer door and turned around, handing Ron the water. "I don't, usually. I just had a friend over for drinks last night, and she left the bottles here."

"A friend for drinks?" he asked in surprise as he took the glass from her. "You mean, like a--"

"Oh, no, just a friend," Hermione assured him quickly, "you might remember her, Penelope Clearwater? She was a few years above us at Hogwarts."

"Yeah, of course I remember Penelope," Ron replied, eyeing his friend with frank curiosity. "Percy used to date her, yeah? She was Petrified our second year by the basilisk."

"Yes, that's her," Hermione answered, a bit too primly.

"Okay..." he said, still giving her a searching look. "I didn't know you were friends with her?"

"We work together." That was true enough, after all.

"Right." He took another sip of water and his eyes darted around the room. "So, er..."

"Yes?" Hermione asked when it became clear that Ron was not going to speak on his own.

"Well, Mum wanted me to invite you over for dinner this weekend."

Hermione bit her lip again. "Oh, Ron, I don't know..."

"You do still want to remain friends with all of us, right?" he asked her carefully.

"Of course!" she exclaimed, staring at him. "Of course I do. I just... it's just so soon, Ron. Why does it have to be so soon?"

"Well, it's your birthday this weekend, Hermione. We always spend our birthdays together. It's tradition."

Her birthday, this weekend? Already? She stared for a moment as she realized that it was true.

How had she forgotten that it was her birthday?

"Ah, well," Hermione cast about wildly for an excuse, "I already told my parents I'd spend my birthday with them."

She had no idea where that came from. She had done no such thing. She hadn't even seen her parents in over a year, nor thought about them much really, so why she chose that of all things to blurt out was a mystery.

Still, she knew that they'd be happy if she came for her birthday, so she decided abruptly that she actually would.

"Oh." Ron looked surprised. "Okay then. Well, she told you that you're welcome to stop by any time you want."

"Thanks," Hermione murmured. She took another sip of water simply because she had no idea what else to do or say. Usually she and Ron enjoyed light, amusing banter, but neither of them was in the mood for that kind of interaction.

Ron was one of her best friends. He'd matured greatly since she'd first met him, and they'd come through for each other time and again. Yet as they stood there she realized that she had no idea what to talk to him about.

He was shifting uncomfortably, clearly thinking the same thing. They both glanced at the clock and saw that he hadn't even been there half an hour, and it seemed awfully short for a visit.

Hermione tasted blood, and realized that she'd actually broken the skin of her lip. She forced herself to stop.

"So how are you doing?" he asked again.

She shrugged helplessly, clueless about how to describe how she was feeling. "I'm getting by," she said. "Is there anything new in your life?"

"Not a thing." He paused and considered. "The Chudley Cannons beat the Wigtown Wanderers," he offered, "but I don't suppose that means much to you."

"No," Hermione confessed with a half-smile. She had never much cared for Quidditch.

"I guess I should go, then," he said, "but definitely come by sometime soon, Hermione. We miss you, and we all really want you to stay a part of our lives."

She nodded. "I will, Ron. I promise. Really, it won't be forever, but I need a while to get over it. It'll be easier when I feel a bit more removed from it. I just need a few weeks or something."

"Okay." Ron nodded. "I'll see you, then."

"Yes, I'll see you. Thank you for stopping by," Hermione told him sincerely. "It really makes me feel better, knowing you're here for me."

Ron swallowed and shifted a bit, as he often did when she was talking about emotions. "Er, you're welcome. So, um, see you soon."

"Goodbye."

He Apparated away with a soft 'bang!'

Then he was gone, and it had only been half an hour, and Hermione still had most of the day to kill.

She went back to her book.

----------

She ran into Penelope almost immediately the next day at work.

"Hi, Hermione," the other woman greeted her amiably.

"Hello," Hermione replied distractedly, "tell me--I was reading Al Phagamma's book last night, about star distances and light speed. Do you know it?"

"Yes, of course I do," Penny answered, "why?"

"I have a couple questions, if you have some time," she said.

"Well, I have a couple of experiments I need to check on now, but my lunch break is at noon, is that okay?"

Hermione nodded. "Yes, that's fine. I'll meet you by your office?"

Penelope agreed, and they both headed to their laboratories.

Hermione's research was very theoretical. Some of her coworkers in other areas were working on new spells or potions to eventually be released to the public or used in other fields, but Hermione's research group was concerned solely with expanding their bank of knowledge about the nature of time. Other groups sometimes dug up information from their archives for more practical use, but the Time Distortion Research Group had no direct connection to such things.

She quite liked it that way. Some things were by nature practical. Defense Against the Dark Arts, for instance, she thought darkly. But Hermione enjoyed hiding away in secrecy, generally unanswerable to anyone, with no goal but to expand knowledge for knowledge's sake.

Just now she was studying the aging effects of time travel on living beings. The issue of how organisms aged during participation of time manipulation was still far from resolved in the academic community.

It was very rare that she was ever allowed to publish her research in full, and she could never use her own name on papers, but it was not unusual for her to be able to scrape up something to submit to a journal after a few months of research.

Anyway, even if she could not tell anybody but her coworkers, Hermione would be very happy to know how it worked. Not only did she love to obtain any new knowledge she could, in this case it had bearing on her personally. She'd calculated that she could be nearly seven months older than she thought through the use of her time turner.

She took out the lab rats with a regretful smile. She did not enjoy testing on animals, but in this case it was necessary. She was not hurting these ones anyway, and they got quite adequate care. When she'd first discovered that some of her coworkers were doing less savory experiments on animals, her first instinct had been to go on a wild rampage, setting them all free.

Of course, eventually, rationality prevailed.

She was releasing two rats from a common time-freezing charm and beginning to write down her final notes when a memo came flying in through the door and hovered five feet from her, waiting patiently.

Hermione sighed, closed the latch the rats' cage, and beckoned it over to her.

There had been some outcry in the Department of Mysteries shortly after the Ministry introduced the flying pieces of paper almost a hundred years ago. Owls were smart enough to know when someone is not to be disturbed, but the memos had not been as intelligent. She'd heard stories of them flying into an Unspeakable's face in the middle of an experiment, nearly killing ten people.

The memos were still nuisance, and often were a distraction, but the five-foot rule, in which the memos could not fully approach until invited, was the best the Department of Mysteries had been able to procure. The Unspeakables really did seem to be in a state of constant battle with the idiocy of the Ministry.

Some things would always be a constant in her life, it seemed.

As Hermione opened the memo and read it, it looked like more idiocy was in store for her now.

Miss Granger,

Mr. Stone from the Bookkeeping department is here to see you about records you've requested.

She eyed it unhappily. "Records I've requested?" she muttered. "They're required to give me those."

She'd told Harry their third year that history was full of stories of people who had gone back in time and accidentally killed their parents or ancestors. Now that she was better versed in the subject, she was certain that such a thing was impossible, and at first she had just assumed that they were tall tales. Yet to her dismay, she'd found Ministry records detailing such events, and she was determined to get to the bottom of the matter.

She sighed. Much as she would like to make the man wait for a while simply out of spite, she knew that if she put him in a bad mood, it would make the encounter just as unpleasant for herself.

She shrugged off her lab coat and went back to the front office, the only place in the department where someone outside her department was allowed. A short balding man was sitting in one of the chairs.

"Mr. Stone?" she asked him in a determinedly respectful voice.

He stood. "Yes. Miss Granger, I presume?" He, as well, was insincerely pleasantly.

She nodded. "Do you have the records I require?"

"I'm sorry, Miss Granger," he said in a smug voice that was anything but sorry, "the content of the records you've asked for is public knowledge, we really don't see the point in going through the efforts to reproduce them in such detail."

As she always did in such situations, Hermione took a deep breath and counted to five before she spoke. It certainly required almost as much manpower to send somebody down here to argue with her as it would to simply go through with her request. This man, or his superior, was simply resentful of the authority of the Unspeakables and was trying to give her a hard time.

When she spoke, her voice was very calm.

"Well, as you don't know what it is I'm studying, you don't know precisely what it is I'm looking for in those records, do you?"

He sneered at her. He was less skilled than she was at maintaining the polite façade. "There's nothing of value in those records that isn't easily obtained through the public information bank. Just because it's just as easy for you to get records from us as it is to get them the normal way doesn't mean you should cause us more work!"

"Nothing of value to you, perhaps, but I've already checked the public records, and I assure you that only what I'm asking you for contains information I need."

"That's impossible," he told her priggishly, lifting his chin and looking at her as though she were stupid.

This was ridiculous. "You're required to give me those files," she told him.

"We refuse to do extra work when it's not necessary!" he shot back snippily.

Much as she did not want to validate his actions by offering an explanation, she did not have time for this. Hermione tried to figure out how to explain why she needed the files without giving away classified information.

"The information in the files cannot be accurate," she told him, "I need a complete replica of the originals, as well as related records from the same time period, to ascertain what is true in the reports and what is fabrication."

"I assure you," he sniffed, "the records are accurate."

She stared at him in disbelief. "The first of the records is from the first millennium," she pointed out, "there's no way for you to know."

Plus, she added to herself, the universe could not support a paradox. Hermione had full faith in the law of non-contradiction. If those records were true, then reality itself could not exist.

"Even if whoever wrote them was incorrect, which I sincerely doubt," he replied, "how would you be able to tell?"

She reflected for a moment that it would actually be quite nice if reality didn't exist. She would not have to deal with any of this.

"I don't think that the writer of these was wrong." She kept the polite smile on her face with the skill of someone who had many years practice. "I believe that they were deliberately placed lies. Spook stories to discourage people. The records can help me figure out why."

"The Ministry, young lady, does not lie."

At this, she could not stop herself from dropping her polite expression for just a moment. She stared openly.

"Hello, perhaps we should repeat those introductions," she said slowly, "I'm Hermione Granger."

"Yes, I know quite well who you are," he said irritably.

"The Ministry doesn't lie? So I suppose that Voldemort never came back after all?" she asked.

The man flinched noticeably at the Dark Lord's name. Even though Voldemort had been defeated over five years ago, some sillier (more cowardly) people were so used to being terrified of the name that they were still unsettled when they heard it out loud.

She was not surprised that this man fell into that category.

"That was an honest mistake on the part of the Ministry," he told her angrily.

"And I can tell you, someone in my field supplied the abstracts of those records, and such a person would have to have known the impossibility of what he or she wrote."

"Well, that's the problem of people in your field, then, isn't it?" he asked her, clearly feeling very proud of himself.

"Yes," she told him patiently, "yes, it is. That's why I am attempting to get these records in order to set it right."

His jaw dropped as he glared at her, but clearly could think of nothing else to say. He looked something like a fish, gaping at her.

"I'm glad we've come to this understanding, then, Mr. Stone," Hermione said briskly, checking her watch, "I have a meeting now, I'll expect to see the records in my mailbox first thing tomorrow morning?"

She gave him a viciously civil smile as she headed back into the Department, where he was not allowed, to go meet Penny for lunch.

She had expected that things with Penny would be strained after their little... incident... the night before last. Yet instead it seemed to be the opposite. Despite the residual tension left over from that unexpected piece of annoyance, Hermione found herself actually smiling widely in anticipation of lunch.

She even caught herself humming as she walked to Penny's lab.