A Time Before Tears

Sunlight fell into the Infirmary in sheets, dead-set on oppressing Hermione's hopes of opening her eyes completely. All she could manage was to barely squint, but at least she could see some things. It was better than groping around in the dark again. In the brief moments it took to open her eyes she almost forgot where and when she was but it slowly came back to her and the wall fell into and out of focus as Hermione realized that she was probably nearly twenty years in the past with no idea how to get back home.

The cover story she created the night before was, at best, marginally acceptable. Hermione was going to say that she had been in Hogsmeade because her mother had suddenly taken ill and could no longer teach her from home. Her mother, Hermione would say, suggested asking Hogwarts for lessons until such a time as she could be taught at home once more.

"Madam Pomfrey?" Hermione called out as she reached for her crutches. The woman came running out. She saw Hermione, with her eyes clearly trying to see things, and walked briskly over to her side. She took the student's head in her hands and turned it slowly left and right. Then she stared intently into her eyes and finally nodded, as if Hermione had passed some kind of test.

"You look better."

The woman handed Hermione a steaming goblet that materialized out of thin air. Hermione, still only sitting on the edge of her bed getting ready to walk, took the cup cautiously and drank all of the contents without pausing to smell it first. It was a bit like the saying when walking the tight rope, don't look down- when drinking a potion, don't smell first.

This morning was the first time Hermione had gotten a good look at the nurse. All of the rest of the time she had been awake (excepting the incident with Harry's parents the day before) were at night. Not even a candle had been lit. Now, in the bright light of day, she was surprised and pleased to find the woman looked exactly as she had in 1995. Hermione's heart slowed down. Maybe everything wasn't as different as she thought it would be. Maybe everything was going to be okay.

"I'll fetch the headmaster. He wanted to talk to you. It's not as if he hasn't been in here enough already but he insists that I get him..." The nurse moved to leave when a thought popped into Hermione's head.

"Wait!" Hermione said loudly, startling the nurse and halting her progress towards the door. "What year-"

Hermione stopped herself. She had been about to ask the date but realized only a little too late that the nurse would have thought she was either crazy or had amnesia- both of which would have warranted more potions, something Hermione wanted to avoid after tasting the first.

"Yes?" The older woman looked closely at Hermione in her bed. Hermione blushed; the nurse was already looking at her like she was crazy.

"What year were those kids in? The ones that visited me yesterday?" She stumbled over the words.

"Oh. Sixth year. Now I really must go get Albus." Madam Pomfrey bristled, shifted uncomfortably, and then headed out the door.

Reaching for her crutches, Hermione considered the current situation. If Mr. and Mrs. Potter are sixth years that means it is... Hermione did some quick calculations in her head. That means it's 1972. 1972!!! The year Professor Binns died! I do read Hogwarts, A History too much.

Footsteps at the door told Hermione it was time to really prepare herself for the lies that were obviously about to begin. Her mother was ill. She needed to study. She did not know why she passed out. She did not know where she was found.

"I see you are feeling better," the headmaster said, entering the room only moments after the nurse. Hermione didn't look up. She was replaying her carefully planned speech in her head. She was going over it again and again. She looked up slowly with a crafted smile on her face. She saw him and the smile disappeared. The words Hermione had prepared beforehand got stuck in her throat- she couldn't make a sound, she couldn't move, she could only stare. When his eyes began to question her, she forced words out.

"Who are you?" She didn't know how she could speak.

The man in front of her was not the wizard that she knew. Her headmaster- the man who had befriended Harry and given her the Timeturner and believed in Sirius Black- had wrinkles lining every inch of his face, from the corners of his mouth to the tips of his ears. This man was someone else. He had far fewer wrinkles and more laugh lines. He seemed less tired as he walked.

While Hermione realized that he was almost twenty years younger, that did not account for the drastic changes in this man. This man was youthful. He could possibly be the son of the man that she had known and come to respect as headmaster.

Is this what You-Know-Who does to people? Does he steal their lives like he has stolen Dumbledore's? Is this how much Harry's changed? Is this how much I've changed?

"We've spoken before. Do you not remember?" he asked but did not wait for an answer. "I am headmaster of this school. My name is Albus Dumbledore." He smiled and she couldn't remember if she was smiling back.

"If you're feeling well enough, I'd like to have a discussion with you about your current situation," he said.

Hermione continued to stare at him, into his eyes, and saw there something that undoubtedly reminded her of her own headmaster. She had been foolish to not see the resemblance. Yes, the wrinkles were gone. Yes, the body seemed stronger, but he still had the same twinkling blue eyes and warm, inviting voice. He still held that silent wisdom and infinite power.

"I'm feeling well," she replied robotically, still staring at him. He smiled at her then with both his mouth and his eyes.

"Would you care to grant me your name? I do not enjoy calling people, 'you'."

"My name's Hermione Granger," and even after she said it she was unsure as to whether she should have. What would happen when he saw her name down for Hogwarts in eighteen years? Would he remember?

Then Hermione remembered the day she had received her owl. She wasn't sure how the other muggleborns learned that it wasn't a joke, but Professor McGonagall had personally given her a tour of Diagon Alley. The woman that Hermione admired had taken her hand and led her to stores that she loved. In fact, the only stores they had visited had been about things that Hermione loved: books, animals, and wands. Did she already know me? Know what I liked because I had been here and told her?

The looks that Hermione had received on that first day had been interesting. Two of the Professors had taken a special interest in her: Snape and McGonagall. The others had been focusing on Harry, but she remembered that in Potions it had been her own name that had been stumbled over and double-checked. It had been odd, but overlooked by everyone; her name was especially hard to pronounce without aid.

"Excuse me?" she asked, for only then did she realise that Professor Dumbledore had spoken.

"Do you know what happened in town the night you were brought here?"

"Um- Er-" she stumbled as she looked into his clear blue eyes. Her story suddenly felt too weak. Even if it she had thought it was strong, she knew she could never have lied to this man who so patiently waited for her answer. I wish I were Harry. Harry could sit in front of this man and lie to him if he believed it was for everyone's benefit. Harry always does what he thinks is right. "I don't exactly know. I remember some of it, but it's hard to explain."

"Could you tell me why you were there?"

"I was coming to Hogwarts," she said truthfully, taking note that his eyebrows raised.

"Is there anything you'd like to tell me?"

"I'd like to study here." He didn't say anything in reply so she continued. " You would find me thoroughly prepared." She sounded like she was begging and she knew it, but she truly feared he would not let her stay and if he didn't, where would she go? She needed to stay here. He nodded at her statement and Hermione felt the muscles in her back, which she hadn't realized were tensed, relax.

"How old are you?"

"Sixteen," she replied before she even had a chance to question her motives.

"You would be in your Sixth Year. The students have already taken their O.W.L.s and are now preparing for their N.E.W.T.s. Are you quite prepared for that after your hiatus?"

"Even if I'm not currently, I need to be and so I will be." He nodded curtly, then tilted his head and looked at her from above his half-moon spectacles.

"I am sure you are aware that we live in dangerous times, when people advise that strangers be kept at arms' length. You ask me to allow a person I do not know to live within the protection of my castle." He did not sound as though he were warning her, rather he sounded like he was merely letting her acknowledge that to do as she requested would be require a large leap of faith.

"I'm sure you have ways of verifying my person, ensuring I am not under the power of the Imperious or using polyjuice."

"We have already tested you for potions and curses, Madam Pompfrey found traces of neither, but that does not lessen the threat that you might pose to those under my care."

"I don't know how else you can ensure that I am not a threat, but I am willing to do just about anything."

"Why do you trust me so?" he asked. The question startled Hermione into telling the truth.

"Because you are the only one he ever feared."

There was a moment where the world seemed to shine out through the eyes of Albus Dumbledore, where the blue of the oceans and green of the land revolved inside the powerful wizard and melded together before shooting out in his glance.

"There is one test that no person has ever been able to fool. It can detect an impostor, cruel intentions, and even unknown influences that might be controlling a person. It is one of Hogwarts great possessions, and you will have to undergo this process if you mean to stay here." Hermione nodded.

"All right."

"I will bring the Sorting Hat to you shortly after lunch."

"The Sorting Hat?" Hermione whispered, confused. A flash of understanding- or maybe it was confirmation- buzzed through Dumbledore's mien and left just as quickly.

He explained the process to her, how she would live and interact mostly with her housemates. He also gave descriptions of the houses and as he listed off all of the traits of a Ravenclaw, Hermione could not help but admit that she had every one of those qualities. Dumbledore never once asked her where she came from or why she had come. And she had the feeling that he would never again ask her about the incident in Hogsmeade.

~*~*~

The Sorting turned out to be more stressful for Hermione than she would have guessed. After nearly five years living as a Gryffindor she thought she had gotten over her unwarranted fear of not belonging, fear that the hat had made a mistake by not putting her in Ravenclaw, but apparently she was still more than a little worried that the old singing Hat would change his mind. Ravenclaw seemed a more likely house for her even now, especially now. Having a table in the library that Madam Pince recognized as your own did not seem the type of thing that exuded Gryffindor. She paced a little faster as the Hat's old words rang in her ears.

"Hermione Granger I've been waiting a while for you haven't I? Let's have a look. Definitely smart, hard-worker, trust-worthy, and quite a need to not only prove your self but also be better than the other students. You are every house put in one. I can choose on my own then. You'd be great in Ravenclaw if only it weren't for the fact that you are braver and stronger than you could ever guess. You're definitely a GRYFFINDOR."

And for all of her years in her beloved house Hermione questioned her placement. The Hat seemed to have picked her house arbitrarily. Why was she in the house of the brave? Why was she with people who didn't like studying? Merely because the hat thought that she might be braver than she thought she was? That was weak logic and not the sort of thing that drove confidence into her heart.

So, instead of pacing around the Hospital Wing in crutches worrying about what the hat might say, Hermione sat on her bed with her eyes closed and listed all of the possible reasons why she would not be a Gryffindor.

By the time she was up to twenty-seven, Hermione wanted desperately to just open her eyes and stop counting. She could not do the former because while she could open her eyes, she tended to blink so much that it was similar to be in a room with a strobe light. She could not stop counting because Hermione was obsessive compulsive about some things, especially her own faults. But other than that, things were great. Well everything was great except that she was stuck twenty-three years in the past, she was about to be sorted again, she was joining a year of study that she wasn't prepared for, she still walked with crutches, and she was scared out of her wits.

"Miss Granger?" The voice was loud and close, shocking Hermione and causing her eyes to fly open as a small yelp escaped her lips. With her eyes closed she had not heard the headmaster walk in and then having him speak was just terrifying. She turned towards him quickly, only briefly seeing his small grin behind the still-large beard, carrying the Sorting Hat in his left hand. "Normally this remarkable Hat would recite a poem, but in the absence of a large audience the Hat has declined the effort."

Hermione would have smiled if she hadn't been so scared, The Hat's vain? But instead of smiling Hermione sat like a stone, as still as possible. Only briefly driven out by the shock of Dumbledore's words, Hermione's nerves were slowly flaring up again. What if she really wasn't a Gryffindor? What if she was a Slytherin? What if the hat had made a mistake, a fluke accident? When she went back would she have to change houses and everything?

"When you place the Hat on your head it will speak in your ear. Do not be alarmed. It is merely trying to find the best house for you. After a moment it will announce the house, Hufflepuff, Gryffindor, Slytherin, or Ravenclaw." Hermione picked the Hat out of Dumbledore's hands carefully and put it on her head.

The first sound Hermione heard was that of a cry of anguish, if a hat could make such a sound.

"I did not want to know this information," the hat said in his tiny voice, and guilt consumed Hermione. She had no right to change the future. She had no right to burden the Hat this way, to let him know that the next generation of people to be sorted would most likely be dead by the time she was born.

"Don't think that," the Hat commanded. "This is not your fault. And you do not burden me. I will forget everything I learned in your head the moment you take me off. But, yes, the Founders did a good enough job creating me that I do feel anguish over the future you have shown me. They are all good people."

There was a pause.

"But for nearly a thousand years I have Sorted, and I will not stop today. I see that you are nervous about your placement. How amusing."

"Why?"

"Because from what I can see, when you were a First Year I would've put you into Ravenclaw." Her shoulders slumped and head turned down, heart sinking so deeply in her chest that she didn't quite catch the meaning of his next words until after he paused to let her. "But I remembered you from this Sorting, which to myself seemed nineteen years earlier, and I remembered the person you were (or are) during this conversation and remembered what a perfect Gryffindor you make."

"What?"

"You are brave, giving, passionate about friends, and still amazingly strong. Those characteristics did not show themselves until after you befriended Ron Weasley and Harry Potter, and began your long battle to protect them both. Your adventures in the last five years have dramatically changed you. No longer do you cry when you hear nasty insults. Instead you stand proud and remember who you are, what you are fighting for. You're a GRYFFINDOR through and through. Never doubt it again."

Hermione took the Hat off slowly and tried to sort out the feelings coursing through her. Her eyes became large and she thought she might cry, but held that back long enough to hand the Hat to Dumbledore and flash him the largest smile she had ever given anyone in her entire life. And at the same time, he knew there was a lingering worry in her that she had irrevocably changed the sorting process forever.

"This Hat," the Headmaster started, turning it over respectfully in his hands, "is truly remarkable. It sees the very thoughts and conditions of a person. It recalls generations of placements of the family. With all of that knowledge it could do irreparable damage. So the people that created it, the founders of this school, added precautionary measures. It will remember generations while connected with a person, but the moment it leaves that head it cannot remember a single piece of information about that person. Remarkable." Dumbledore looked again at the Hat in his hands before looking back at Hermione.

"Tomorrow night one of the prefects in your year will arrive here and lead you back to your dormitory. There, you will find five uniforms and three new robes sitting on your bed. They will adjust themselves to your sizes when you first put them on, though it might not work as well as an actual seamstress it will have to suffice. You will also find two new cloaks hanging up and all of your books, quills, parchment, and other necessities in a bag at the foot of your bed."

Not knowing what to say, Hermione stared dumbly at the headmaster. He was just going to give her everything? Everything? She did some quick calculations in her head and could not find a way for the total to be less than a hundred Galleons.

"I don't have any money. I can't pay you back," she stumbled. The headmaster tilted his head forward, looking at Hermione over his half-moon glasses.

"I believe you will find a way."

"So you no longer harbour doubts about me?" Hermione asked, though she knew she shouldn't.

"We live in dangerous times, Miss Granger," was all the headmaster would say about the matter.

~*~*~

Hermione had never considered reaching out to girls for friendship. The ones she had met in primary school were mean little things that had treated her horribly. So when Lily Evans came to collect her the next day, Hermione was feeling off-kilter for a lot for reasons.

The prefect reintroduced herself to Hermione when she came to the Hospital Wing to lead her back to the Common Room. It was a challenge for Hermione to pretend not to know the way to the place she had called home for the last five years. In the dorm, Hermione met the two other female Gryffindor sixth years: Valerie Nguib, from Africa, and Noelle Matthews, from southern England.

"I'm Valerie," she had introduced herself the moment Hermione walked into the dorm.

"I'm Hermione Granger."

"Neat!" Then Valerie had quickly jumped on her bed and bombarded Hermione with questions about family, friends, and love interests.

Coming in at five feet exactly, Valerie was the shortest seventeen year-old Hermione had ever met. Her dark, dark skin reminded Hermione of one of the chasers on the Quidditch team whose name Hermione had never learned. Her hair was long and brown- plaited it still fell to the middle of her back. Valerie's eyes were a dead brown colour that seemed to absorb the light in the room, instead of reflecting it back.

"Don't mind her," said a tan girl who was about the same height as Hermione, coming into the room just as Valerie began asking about pets. "She's a little excited to see a new face."

"Oh, uh," stuttered Hermione, still trying to climb out of the daze that seemed to have settled on her. She was in another time, pretending to be a sixth year, meeting people who were dead, trying to come to terms with the fact that everything and everyone was foreign to her.

"Would I ever bother a stranger with unnecessary questions? So Hermione, do you have a dog?"

"I'm Noelle Matthews," the girl said, extending her hand towards Hermione and ignoring Valerie.

Noelle was a softer version of Pansy Parkinson, as far as Hermione could tell. She had long, dark hair that fell to shoulders, but unlike Pansy who always made sure each strand looked perfect, Noelle's hair was quietly tucked behind her ears and gave her a friendlier, more down-to-earth look. Her blue eyes twinkled in a way that reminded Hermione of Dumbledore, so that though Noelle only rarely smiled (and did not do so at this initial meeting) Hermione instantly trusted the other girl.

"Hermione Granger."

"Bet you're getting sick of introductions, eh?" And now Hermione really liked her.

The conversation that followed only rarely included Lily, who had slipped into her bed and was practicing the art of being a wallflower. The conversation did not flow nicely- often times one girl would interrupt the other, always muttering an apology but ploughing ahead with their comment anyway- and Hermione spent the majority of the time trying to grasp the idea that these people were grown-ups in her time. They were adults while she was not even born yet. She should not have been there, getting to know them, but she was and it made her head hurt to think about as she continued to blink her eyes a lot and use the crutches when she needed to go to the bathroom.

Already cautious around Lily for obvious reasons, Hermione was doubly so when casually talking to the other girls in her new dorm. She thought twice about everything she said before actually saying it aloud because she knew that if she messed up even once and said just one wrong word, she could accidentally change history. It was hard being so close to someone as historically important as Lily because Hermione, having studied a lot about Harry's past, knew more about Lily than she should have (including but certainly not limited to the fact that the older girl would marry James and have Harry).

While the conversation went bumpily along in their dorm, in her head Hermione was having a more important discussion. She was convincing herself to tell them nothing. She had only known Lily for less than an hour and yet Hermione felt something inside herself tugging at her heart to tell Lily everything about what was going to happen. Looking at Lily laugh, Hermione found her hands clinching themselves as she acknowledged that Harry would never get to hear that laughter if time went on as planned. But using self-restraint she didn't know she had, Hermione Granger kept her mouth shut as her brain told her to and her heart berated her for it. She needed to stay quiet because unless this young girl next to Hermione died, Voldemort would not be stopped.

~*~*~

Getting to classes on Monday, two days later, proved to be a greater problem than Hermione anticipated. Firstly her eyes were still not back to normal and sometimes she found herself not seeing a certain person in the hall and running into them (it was a good thing she knew how many steps there were in the castle, otherwise she would have really had some trouble moving around). Secondly with her crutches, Hermione found it difficult to tote around the bag of books and quills that, as Dumbledore had said she would, Hermione had found at the base of her bed (including a timetable).

Proving themselves both kind and courteous, Noelle, Valerie, and Lily all offered to help carry her things for her. Though Hermione would normally have declined them, after two times dropping the bag just on her way down the stairs, Valerie simply took the bag away from her and put in on her left shoulder.

"If you carry it, it just makes life harder for me," she had said.

The idea of breakfast in the Great Hall on Monday terrified Hermione. Even with her crutches, she found her feet dragging more and more and she came closer to the door that led to the room with hundreds of students in it. Spending Sunday with Lily had been so stressful for Hermione, who had been making sure everything she said came out exactly as she wanted to, that the prospect of walking into a hall full of people whose stories Hermione knew and whose children went to school with her- well it was not a pleasant prospect.

She resolved to keep the future a secret, but that did not make her anxiety lessen. She did not think she could do this. She did not belong here. How had she gotten here? What if she changed something? What if something she said let Voldemort take over the world? What if something she happened to say in passing gave a future Death Eater a way to kill Harry? Could she live with herself? No. No. No. She could not do this. She could not handle this.

Feeling desperately out of place, she sought comfort in the people that she knew, but Hermione came up empty handed. There was no one in this Hall who Hermione knew. No one at all. So Hermione watched the ground carefully as she moved toward the Gryffindor table, Valerie by her side and gratefully blocking her view of the general populous of the Hall. She did not want to see her friends in the faces of their parents, the soft face of Albus Dumbledore, or the changes in the place she had called home for five years. Hermione kept her head down, ate quickly, and left early, saying she wanted to get to class on time and that she knew her crutches would slow her down.

Valerie agreed and hopped up to join her and show the way. Hermione worked to keep Valerie in her sight and focus completely on the short girl. When they left the Great Hall, Hermione let out the breath she seemed to have held throughout breakfast.

"You eat quickly," Valerie commented, obviously wanting to make small talk. Hermione was spared this when se heard the pattering of feet running behind her. Upon hearing the noise, Hermione casually turned to see if it was someone coming for her, forgetting for a moment that this was not her time. Valerie, meanwhile, spun quickly around and pulled out her wand, only to put it away when she saw that it was Lily and Noelle. Hermione thought that behaviour odd but did not comment.

Lily was obviously one of the more popular students, for as she walked through the halls it was not merely with grace but also with familiarity. Students and professors alike stopped walking in order to chat with her. Valerie and Noelle seemed to accept this as they continued briefing Hermione on how to get around the halls.

"We all have Defence first with Professor Flutey."

Flutey, Hermione remembered, would be replaced next year by a woman named Cooper after Flutey died at the hands of Death Eaters, the first Hogwarts professor to suffer that fate. It was like Hermione had suddenly become a part of her favourite book, but she felt only dread as she acknowledged that fact.

Professor Flutey was killed by You-Know-Who in June of '73, she remembered reading. Can I save him? In the years to come the attacks on the staff became more pronounced until nine years from then when all of the attacks stopped because Harry Potter lived.

"You all received Os in Defence?" Hermione asked, shaking her head to try to clear her thoughts.

"Yes," Noelle said. Hermione wondered if that had something to do with Voldemort. She knew that very few people in her year received Os in Defence. Why was everyone here so good at that particular subject?

As her thoughts drifted, Hermione forgot to concentrate on focusing her eyes. That was why she did not see the boy who walked right in front of her until she had tripped over him, lost her balance on the sketchy crutches and fell to the ground. Luckily for her, the other girls had been carrying her books, but the other person wasn't so fortunate. His things were strewn all over the ground.

"Sorry!" both Hermione and the boy said together. Hermione tried to get herself up and pick up his books at the same time but a bolt of pain shot through her leg as she tried. She looked up only briefly to smile apologetically at him before quickly going back to the clean-up job. Soon there were many more pairs of hands helping.

"Nice work, Wormtail. Now we'll all be late," said a voice to Hermione's right and she froze in the middle of standing up, one crutch under her shoulder at an angle and the other pointing forward not yet touching the ground.

"If we could just use magic in the hallways..." another voice offered but Hermione couldn't hear it. She couldn't hear anything except the pounding in her ears- the loud bangs and sirens that seemed to be going off inside her head. She couldn't think of anything except the single word that consumed all of her being. Wormtail?

Hermione looked up from the books clutched in her hand to see a boy struggling to fit all the fallen books into his bag as he continued conversing with the people around him. She stared for such a long time, still hearing nothing, that someone took her arm with their hand, obviously thinking she couldn't stand on her own.

Still, Hermione continued to stare at the boy's face, his motions, the silent movement of his mouth, the stillness of his smile. His blond hair was bright on top of his head and his sparkling blue eyes were full of laughter. He was large but not fat exactly, just shorter than the rest and not evenly distributed.

Hermione hated him instantly.

She forgot to concentrate on her muscles and began sinking back to the floor, not even registering doing so, as her mouth fell open and eyes widened. If she'd been a bit saner she might have remembered to thank the boy that kept her from really falling to the ground. But all she could seem to think was, Wormtail? She should have expected to meet him. He was one of James' best friends. He was trusted. He was now in her year and in her house.

None of that made up for the fact that he was a traitor.

Can I stop Wormtail? Should I try? Were the Potter's deaths worth it? They saved Harry and the world, but You-Know-Who came back anyway. Fourteen years of freedom from murders versus the deaths of the people standing to your left.

"Are you okay?" a voice pulled Hermione out of her thoughts.

She nodded, not really noticing that she was doing so. She looked around at the group surrounding her. James was there, picking up a book and laughing, the laughter echoing distantly in Hermione's ears. Next to him stood Lily, hair in a ponytail, shaking her head but still grinning. Valerie was making some wild gestures with her hand as she picked up one piece of parchment at a time. Noelle was rearranging all of the books that Peter had shoved into his bag in order to make them actually fit. And that left only two boys to her left. One was Peter. Peter, the betrayer. The other was the one still holding her arm.

"Hermione, this is Remus and Peter and you already know James," Lily said, pointing to the three boys.

"Sorry about Pete. He's a bit big and a bit blind so people tend to run into him a lot," Remus said, laughing.

Hermione should have expected to meet them. She should have known that they were a part of the world that she was stuck in. She shouldn't have reacted. But she did.

Hermione felt herself going faint. Instead of the heaviness that she had felt going into the Great Hall, Hermione felt light as air and wanted to just float away, but the boy to her left, who was her old professor, kept her fastened to the ground. His light brown hair and soft eyes were only a shadow of the man that Hermione had hailed as her greatest professor. He was certainly the same man who lived with being a werewolf and yet, like Dumbledore, he looked nothing like the man that she knew from her own time.

In this case, though, the difference was age just as much as stress. The boy on her left was sixteen years old and the man that had trained her to fight Boggarts was thirty-six years old. There were other things that were different, things that a first glance could never have told her but Hermione would find those things in time and even come to understand them, but at that moment she was consumed with her thoughts about Peter.

"Flutey's going to think we're all skiving off his class if we don't move it along," Noelle said loudly as she placed the last piece of parchment in Peter's newly organized pouch. "Remus, could you help Hermione to class so the rest of us can go ahead?"

"You're a clever one!" Peter said, running off with Noelle and Valerie towards the dungeons.

Lily helped James up and then the two of them were off as well, taking their time, smiling, bouncing off each other as they went. Hermione couldn't take her eyes off any of them.

They were legends, heroes, and archenemies. They were the death and rebirth of the world.

Hermione found that she was moving and continued to do so. Remus did not badger her with questions but she could see that he would have liked to. His eyes kept skipping down to her crutches back up at her face.

"Peter hasn't seriously injured you or anything?" Remus asked with a light smile on his face, and Hermione found herself wondering who this man was. He certainly wasn't the battle-worn professor who owned shabby robes and stood in front of Peter in the Shrieking Shack, prepared to kill him.

"No. I just had a bit of an accident in Hogsmeade."

"I know. I was the one that found you," he announced as they turned a corner. Hermione could now see the Defence corridor.

"You were?"

"Yep," he said as they entered the room. The professor accepted their reasons for tardiness and introduced her to the class as an exchange student from Beauxbatons. Whether or not he believed it she did not know.

~*~*~

"What classes are you in?" Remus asked her as they left Defence.

That class had been the worst experience of Hermione's life. Not only was she under prepared because of her sickness, she also had not realized how much more advanced seventh year was compared to her normal sixth year. There were obviously some basic skills that she lacked because of the shifty first five years of her magical education in Defence Against the Dark Arts.

"I haven't properly looked at my timetable yet, so I am not sure," she said.

Hermione had been about to tell them her marks in Arithmancy and Care of Magical creatures but refrained doing so when she realized that Beauxbaton might not have those classes.

"I've Divination, Arithmancy, and Care of Magical Creatures," Remus said.

"You're also in those classes," Valerie said, having heard the conversation and gone through Hermione's bag to find her timetable. "Actually those three are all you have."

"I've got Muggle Studies instead of Divination," Peter said and Hermione held back a shudder.

She did not want to talk with Peter. She did not want to look at his clear, innocent eyes or see his happy face. But she tried to do it anyway because this Peter was not the person that he would grow up to be. He could not be blamed for the faults of the future, but that didn't stop Hermione from avoiding his eyes and saying a silent thanks that he wasn't in one of her classes.

~*~*~

It had been a hard day and possibly one of the worst in Hermione's life. She had been to classes where she was normally the top student and failed. She hadn't even been to Divination yet and she knew that would be even worse than the explosion in Defence Against the Dark Arts.

But while the learning part of her classes had gone horribly, Hermione could not say the same for the entertainment value of them. She had heard stories about the Marauders. Mainly she'd heard them through Harry because no one who had known them liked to talk about those days; it seemed too painful to dredge up memories of people dead, betrayed, or imprisoned. But from everything she did know, Hermione had expected greatness.

The Marauders had been powerful enough to teach themselves the Animagus forms on their own and that was just the tip of the iceberg. The map that they'd created had been a work of art and skill; complex spells had been used to put that map together- spells that Hermione was sure most students couldn't perform unless taught directly by a teacher and even then there was no guarantee. That map was a combination of locking, tracking, building, changing, adjusting, moving, naming, finding, and protection spells. They had been youthful, crazy, and brilliant. Professors and students alike loved them. Even though there were only three of them present that day, the three Marauders lived up to everything that Hermione had ever heard about them.

They told her History of Magic seemed to be their favourite class. Hermione, of course, was more than a little confused because in her own time History of Magic was the most boring class of all. She considered that maybe since Binns wasn't a ghost yet he was a bit more lively, remembered students names, and didn't read directly out of the book. She was wrong. Professor Binns, while he was alive, had been no different than he was dead. The difference was in the way the students acted in his class. Instead of sleeping, the Marauders used his boringness to their advantage.

It had been odd seeing Binns turning a doorknob and writing on the board and holding a wand that actually worked.

At the beginning of class Hermione found the parchment and quill that lay neatly in her bag and begun to prepare to take notes, though she knew the marks she received while here didn't matter, she also knew that it'd be good preparation for the next year when she would surely learn the same lessons.

The Marauders raised their hands while she began her notes and asked to act out the scenes as Binns read them. Binns considered them for a while, as though they had done this before and no harm had come then, and nodded. James, Remus, and Peter jumped to the front of the classroom.

With their wands shooting harmless sparks (as representations of the powerful spells in the Leprechaun Rainbow War of 1317) Hermione found herself so amused that she stopped taking notes. The boys also shouted out suggestions to the professor who seemed at a loss for words as they said things like "and then did he do a back flip and land on the top of a house before winning the battle because a stray cat jumped in the way of the hex that would have hit him otherwise?"

"No. No he didn't," the professor always said before looking confusedly at the excited students and back down at the book he was reading from.

Even with the fun and excitement of that one class, Hermione felt young and really behind as the other Gryffindors answered questions easily all day. She felt shame in seeing that she really was not prepared for seventh year. She had not even had Transfiguration or Potions yet and Lord only knew how badly she would do there.

"I need to go to the library," Hermione announced at the end of History of Magic.

"Ew! Why?" Peter chimed in. While Lily, Noelle, Valerie, and Remus laughed Hermione found herself wondering, once again, what exactly had pushed this carefree boy to betray the people closest to him.

"I'll show you where it is," Remus offered as he waved good-bye to his friends. They all walked off in a large group and Hermione could hear to laughter echoing down the corridors and her heart hurt. How can I change it all? I can't. I won't.

"Why're you going to the library so soon? I should think you'd avoid it for a little while longer," Remus said, laughing. His soft chocolate eyes locked on hers and her crutches caught on a crack in the floor causing her to slip forward before she quickly caught herself.

"I'm not normally this big of a klutz. I promise. It's just these stupid things," she lifted her crutches a little of the ground before shrugging her shoulder and letting them hit the ground again.

"Madam Pomfrey can't help you with a potion or anything?"

"She said I should be better in a couple of days," replied Hermione. They walked in silence until they reached the library and while Remus went to sit at a table near the middle of library Hermione went off the find her books.

Hermione was relieved to find that this room hadn't changed on the large scale; the bookshelves were just where she remembered, the tables too. The only difference she could see right away was a different woman behind the front desk.

She needed things on time travel, mixing spells, and history books (not many but enough about recent history to know what she up against). Hermione found and brought back to the table dozens of books about time travel, hundreds about mixing spells, and none about modern history. Not a single one.

"Remus?" He looked up from his parchment. "Why doesn't the library have any books on recent history?" Remus' face fell a little before he caught himself.

"I don't know what it's like at Beauxbaton but here the problem with Voldemort's getting bad. He hasn't attacked the Ministry or Hogwarts or anything stupid like that but that sign is cropping up more and more. People're saying he has a lot of followers calling themselves Death Eaters and I don't think anyone wants to read about any of it." He shrugged but Hermione saw that it hurt him a lot more than he let on. It hurt her more than she hoped she let on.

"But this is Hogwarts, surely Dumbledore has some books about it," she prodded.

"I'm sure he would if anyone would write them. It isn't that they're missing, it's that they don't exist."

She thought back to the hundreds of books on recent history that her own time had. They were everywhere- many with pictures of a baby Harry grinning on the cover. Hermione had read almost every one of those books. Harry joked that she probably knew more about his life than he did, but even with all that knowledge she'd never truly realized what it must have been like to live in You-Know-Who's rise or how much Harry had really done for the world.

Harry's fame came because before him the world could do nothing other than wait to die. It was only two years into you-know-who's eleven-year rein of terror and people could not even write down what their lives were like because it would include his name. They were afraid of their own stories. They were afraid of almost everything. Harry put an end to that fear. Harry Potter represented the ability to overcome every evil, even that which the world fears to think about. He brought hope back to the wizarding world.