A Time Before Tears

CHAPTER FOUR

The Sunday after Halloween passed in a blend of sleep, food, sleep, homework, sleep, and more homework for Hermione. She didn't even leave her dorm room. If she'd been in her own time she knew that Ron would have come up and dragged her downstairs. Harry would have helped him, but that was only if they both hadn't been playing Quidditch. As it was, Hermione Granger was in the seventies and no one came to visit her with her.

Hermione sat at breakfast on Monday completely refreshed and ready for a day of classes. She smiled at the people sitting around her (Noelle, Lily, Valerie, and a couple of sixth years whose names Hermione didn't know). While talking with them about the homework she'd so diligently finished she suddenly realized that she'd momentarily forgotten that this wasn't her time. She'd forgotten that she knew the future and that she didn't belong with these people, and she'd carried on a conversation filled with smiles and laughter. It felt good.

Without her realizing it, Hermione's stomach had been tied up in knots over what had happened that past Saturday night- Halloween night. She worried about Lily's seemingly impossible execution of a perfect divisionary charm. She worried about Lily finding the inconsistencies in her made up story. She worried about what had caused the tower to turn blue. She worried about nearly everything, but as Sunday passed and Monday began all of that tension was melting away as it became apparent that Lily was acting no differently towards Hermione and it didn't appear that she'd told anyone about the incident on Halloween.

This should have comforted Hermione, and it did for a while. For that breakfast Hermione felt safe, as though her secret wouldn't be told. She never had a reason not to trust Lily. Actually, she'd never really had a reason not to trust anyone. When people promised her something, Hermione simply expected them to honor their word. Some people might call her naïve. Some people might think Hermione should have known not to trust people to keep what they knew about her to themselves. But consider that maybe Hermione Granger was simply innocent. She was full of hope. Her innocence and trust would surely be taken away from her as the war escalated whether she was in her own time or in this one. So for now, enjoy the pleasures of seeing a girl whom had never been betrayed and maybe also wonder why the Sixth Year Gryffindors didn't have that same innocence.

Hermione thought of none of that as she looked at Lily across the table and was grateful for the other girl's silence. It reminded her of her own time and of her own best friends who would have reacted the exact same way. How many times had Harry been this calm after something explosive had happened? How many times had Ron ignored huge inconsistencies to save a relationship? How many times had they both tried to laugh of something terrible?

The differences between the two times were even more apparent though. For one, she was hanging out with girls all of the time. Hermione was used to being near Harry and Ron only and exclusively. She knew Partvati and Lavender only because they'd shared a dorm with her for five years. Now, in this time, Hermione was close with her dorm mates. All of a sudden Hermione was close with girls and it was odd. They didn't talk about Quidditch all the time. They didn't laugh at themselves as easily. And they communicated in completely opposite ways. Hermione sometimes wished that Remus would hang around her a lot more, if only because he offered her a type of conversation tht wasn't available to her with Noelle and Valerie, but the guys stayed by themselves. In fact, most of the time no one knew exactly where they were or what they were up to.

The separation between the girls and the guys was ever more apparent in classes. The Gryffindor females normally sat towards the front of the classroom while the guys remained in the back. Both worked hard to avoid being closely linked with the other group in any professor's mind, but that didn't stop Hermione from noticing how closely linked the seven of them really were. It was in the small ways that they stopped to talk to each other- it was completely different than how any of them spoke with anyone else, including herself. When they were speaking to people in other houses there always seemed to be a hesitation before any of them spoke.

With the notable exception of Lily they all seemed guarded around nearly everyone who wasn't in their house (and occasionally even with Gryffindors who were in their year). Hermione was sure that no one else noticed what was happening besides her. The only reason she noticed it was because she was living with these people. She saw the way they were with each other and the completely different way they were with other people (professors and students alike). As a group they worked to keep other people from getting too close to themselves. It was as though they were protecting themselves and their fellow Gryffindor Fifth Years- an example would be at the Halloween Ball, Sirius and Valerie both sat at their dates tables instead of with the Gryffindors.

Hermione noticed this, she was sure, only because she was from another time- another time when inter-house friendships were few and far between- and so she looked more carefully into the relationships between people in different houses. These three girls seemed to have friends in other houses but Noelle and Valerie did not treat those friends as equals. Hermione thought it odd that they would be good friends and yet hold something of themselves back.

~*~*~

That Tuesday, during Potions, Hermione continued to watch all of her friends. She watched them even as she made her potion so meticulously. Once she had done with her potion and waited for it to simmer, she put all of her energy into watching them.

Potions quickly became one of Hermione's favorite subjects. She tended to enjoy things she knew she could do well and Potions was, ironically, by far and away Hermione's best subject.

"You know, you may even be better than Severus at this," Lily said as she continued to adjust her potion. Hermione's had finished hers long before.

"What?" Hermione asked. She hadn't seen her Potions Master since the dance and wasn't hoping for another encounter. He seemed to know more than he should and she couldn't deal with that right now. She already had enough to handle with Lily.

"Snapey's a potions expert," Valerie offered, throwing some more ingredients in rather violently.

"Best in the class. If anyone has trouble he's the one to go to," Noelle said with a nonchalant toss of her head as she watched her potion turn from blue to green when it was supposed to be red. "Though now we may be able to go to a Gryffindor for help and that would be great."

"Was potions always your best subject?" Valerie asked, as her eyes got wide with anticipation as she saw what Noelle's potion was doing.

"No. I just had a really good professor," Hermione replied truthfully.

Hermione could clearly see the differences in skill levels between her normal class and this one. She thought that even Neville could have done better than some of these students. Well maybe not Neville but Seamus could definitely crush even the top student in this Ravenclaw/Gryffindor class. Just as she allowed her eyes to drift over to Remus in the corner there was a quick and brilliantly red explosion in the cauldron next to his, Peter's. Wormtail was lucky he was so funny. He wouldn't have fit in with the group in any other way, especially talent wise, but maybe Hermione was a bit biased. A lot biased.

True to the girls' words on the night of the dance, the guys hadn't spent nearly as much time recently with them as they had the first week. Except for Remus being with Hermione while doing homework she never saw him. She could never guess where it was that he went and she wasn't sure if she wanted to.

"That looked remarkably like the explosion on Saturday didn't it Hermione?" Lily said loudly.

"We really didn't do it Lily," James called back before coughing. The professor was busy trying to clean up the growing orange-ish stain on the roof. She told the class they should leave immediately and the students eagerly obeyed.

"James, that potion can't explode. No matter what Peter did there is no way any mixture of those ingredients could have blown anything up. And it did look a lot like the tower explosion," Lily continued the conversation.

"Maybe we wanted out of that class, but that doesn't mean we did the one on Halloween," James countered.

"Yeah why would we try to do that? All it did was scare the staff and students. We aren't into creating mass hysteria," Sirius joined in while Peter continued to try and salvage his robes and Remus fell in step with Hermione.

"Do we always have to use my cauldron?" asked Peter, rhetorically.

"Why would they have colored it blue anyway? Wouldn't they have wanted it red?" Hermione added.

"We'd have colored it green to frame Snape," Peter piped in. The girls laughed but the boys gazed at Hermione.

"We never knew it was blue. The staff cleaned up the mess before we saw it," Remus said.

"Hermione and I decided a trip to the Quidditch pitch was in order that night and just happened to be there," Lily laughed but James had suddenly gone white. No else seemed to have noticed except Hermione as the conversation continued until everyone seemed to go in different directions.

Hermione saw James purposely drop a quill and stay behind to pick it up, keeping Lily at his side as Peter, Remus, and Sirius split one way and Valerie and Noelle went another. Hermione traveled down one corridor just long enough to avert any suspicions that she wasn't going to the library. Slowly she made her way back, using her newly found eavesdropping skills, she heard the following conversation.

"-doing out there?" James finished a question Hermione had only caught the tail end of.

"It was Halloween," Lily replied.

"It was dangerous," he replied matter-of-factly. "Especially after everything Dumbledore has told us-"

"He doesn't know everything." Her voice left no room for argument.

"I know that but he still knows more than us, or at least he knows more than me." His voice sounded light but Hermione could hear the same compassion and caring in it as she heard in Harry's so many times.

"I'm not about to be caged," Lily said As the conversation continued, Hermione had to force her thoughts to remain with it as the words and sounds caused her to think more and more about the tendencies Harry shared with his parents. Lily gave him her independent nature and James gave his loyalty.

"Why not? It's not so bad in here. You can always go to the kitchen, hang out with me, finish homework, hang out with me, see friends, and hang out with me. You can do all that and still be within the protection of the castle! It's a fantastic deal." James paused in his lighthearted speech. When he continued his voice had changed completely. "I'm not saying leaving the castle is bad or anything, but what if you'd been in that tower? Next time you go I just want you to bring the map or something. At the very least you ought to bring me along." Hermione found the distinction between father and son almost nonexistent.

"I had Hermione with me."

"And? We don't even really know her."

"There's something about her James. She knows stuff. She knows what to do in bad situations. The only thing that I'm surprised at is that she doesn't-"

"That isn't the point Lily," James said softly.

"I know that isn't the point but I don't want to fight with you and I am trying really hard not to!" Hermione could hear Lily taking a couple long breaths before she spoke again. "I never go out. I never break any rules. I never do anything like you, Sirius, Peter, and Remus. I never will except for one night every year when I can't stand to be inside."

"I know," James agreed. "It's just a little... scary... to think you might have been in that tower when the explosion happened."

"That's why I train," Lily said and Hermione heard footsteps walking in the direction away from her. If she had peered around the corner she would have seen a boy that looked a lot like her best friend staring at a corner that the girl of his dreams had turned.

~*~*~

Hermione's mind had so much to digest, from catching up in classes she wasn't ready for to getting to know the new housemates, that she would have forgotten her meeting with Professor McDermott if Noelle hadn't reminded her. Her head seemed to be so far away lately.

She was heading up to the Divination classroom when suddenly she felt arms spin her around. Had she truly been a part of the time she was living in, she would have been more on guard. She would have pulled her wand immediately. She would have stunned them. She would have screamed, and then she would have been highly embarrassed to find it was only Remus. As it was she merely spun around with curiosity and a little anger at having been caused to loose more preparation time before meeting with this woman. Soon her irritation changed into curiosity as Remus held out a plate to her. On it there was a large slice of chocolate cake.

"What's this for?"

"We just raided the kitchens and Donnelly saw us coming out. So I'll be in detention for a while to come and I wanted someone to enjoy the fruits of our labors before I went." Remus smiled at her and Hermione's heart almost melted. And then she wondered why.

"How'd you find me?" she asked before she really thought about the answer. He shifted only slightly but Hermione could tell the answer was not something he wanted to talk about. Hermione realized what it must be. The Marauder's Map would have been able to tell him where ever she was. She quickly ate a bite of the cake and changed the subject.

"This is really excellent!" she said.

"Why else would I have wanted it?" he joked. From a distance they could hear someone yelling his name. "I guess that means I have to go."

"I would think so," she smiled as she watched him go and turned to continue her journey to the Divination tower, but for the first time in her life she found herself wanting to forget about a meeting with a professor and stay just where she was. She wanted to sit on these steps, eat her cake, and remember the look of pride in Remus' eyes as she'd taken a bite.

~*~*~

The meeting did not begin well. It did not end well. And everything in between did not go well. Hermione later figured she should have guessed a meeting with a Divination professor would be iffy.

"Hello," Hermione said as way of a greeting when she entered the room.

"Hello," came the reply. Hermione looked over to see the old woman sitting quietly in a chair in the corner of the room reading what appeared to be Witch Weekly. Hermione was more than a little surprised that the woman would read trash like that and even more surprised that the woman said nothing after the greeting. Hermione waited a couple of moments, staring at the wall, before she finally decided to say something.

"Er... You wanted to see me?" Professor McDermott still did not respond for a while. Then she bent the corner of the page she was on and put the magazine down by her feet. She slowly got up and walked over to Hermione and seemed to inspect her.

"I am old and do not have time to beat around the bush. On that first day I saw you I sensed something about you and I wanted to make sure I was right. And now that you're here alone with no interference I see that I was right. I was. You know the future."

"What?" Hermione challenged, too shocked to deny it.

"I suppose you already know this, but I will indulge your question. You know the future more clearly than any Seer in history. You remember it as if it were your life, and I am beginning to believe that it might have been." The old woman still stood staring into Hermione eyes. Professor McDermott's eyes might once have been bight blue, but now they were a dullish blue with a strange yellow oval rimming the color. Hermione memorized those eyes in that moment.

"No," Hermione began, having somewhat regained her senses.

"I told you already. I don't have time for that. I might keel over at any moment, fighting what I say will do nothing for either of us. I have seen it Hermione, only bits and pieces though, traces of what you were and who you are, snippets of conversations. Our war rages on where you come from and you're only now joining it. We can help each other."

Hermione didn't say anything as all her traces of the happiness she'd found with Remus and chocolate cake drifted out of her head. She put her plate on the table. This woman could single handedly destroy her life. She could expose her, and for some reason the cake suddenly looked much less appetizing.

"I..." Hermione began. She didn't know the words to express what she was feeling. She didn't know how to convey the feelings and emotions that were coursing through her. She felt scared and helpless, and yet on another level she was immensely relieved to have someone know- especially an older person that might help her figure out how to get home. "You won't tell anyone will you?"

"Not if you don't want me to." The woman's face hadn't changed but something in her manner had. She looked excited.

"Could you help me get back?"

"Then you would have us die?" The excitement drifted out of the old woman's features, only to be replaced with whiteness.

"I need to get back to my time before I do anything here that changes it. I can't risk that." Hermione found that voicing the fears she'd been holding inside her for these long weeks came as an amazing relief. "I've researched this and there are too many problems to think about. One wrong move, one hint as to what's going to happen could upset everything."

"And your world was perfect?" the woman's incredulous voice startled Hermione and got her thinking on a course that she'd often considered. In her time a war had raged for eleven years that was only just starting in this time period. The death toll had been huge. The violence had been shockingly brutal. Families were torn apart. Children were orphaned. The Ministry was nothing more than a name. Hogwarts was the only place left but even there the fear was thick. Students quit coming. Muggle-borns stayed muggle. Professors died. The Dark Lord had almost risen. But then, as always, Hermione remembered the only part of the story that was happy. Hermione reached the part in the story that was most crucial to her future. She reached the point in the story that would be the easiest thing for her to stop from happening and she couldn't do that. She reached the part in the story where the last two deaths took place, the part where Voldemort had fallen.

"It's not perfect but it is better than any other alternative. I have thought about this. Something happens in a few years that changes everything, but that thing was not inevitable. There were so many factors that created the situation..."

"I deal with prophecies every day. I know a little bit about the burden of hiding. In my years I have come to realize it isn't worth it." The Professor picked up her wand and summoned a crystal ball from the corner of the room. She levitated it almost directly in front of herself and then cast a spell Hermione didn't know. It went straight through the ball.

Suddenly images lined the previous white walls as though they were pictures, moving pictures. In those pictures Hermione saw what she considered the literal manifestation of depression, agony, and suffering. People lined the streets wearing nothing but half torn robes in one scene. They were not standing, but rather they were lying on those dark roads. Some looked dead and others looked starved. In the middle of the street, a family was tortured in broad daylight. Hermione had to turn away to keep from throwing up as a baby fell from high in the air and landed with a sickening crack on the ground.

"What is this?"

"A moment in the future," the professor of divination said sadly as she looked around at the fates of men and women in the generation to come. The images came only in flashes, and Hermione realized they must have meant nothing to people without her knowledge. The darkmark flashed on the wall before disappearing and Hermione could tell by the lack of emotion of McDermott's mien that she did not know what it was. "If you would not change it for me. Would you change it for my children? For my grandchildren?"

"This isn't right," replied Hermione with her eyes inadvertently returning the horrific images. "This isn't what happens."

"I have spent my entire life learning to read the images that my wand produces and I can tell you that as things are right now, this is the future that will come. If no one changes anything these people will die as you see them." She looked back up at the wall and Hermione followed her gaze, shocked and disturbed by what she saw. Snape was being killed and by his side was Lily, withering in pain.

"Stop! Stop! STOP!" Hermione shrieked.

"This is the future the world is headed for," she replied. "The one that will come into being if you do nothing."

"This isn't what happens. Voldemort is destroyed! I know that's what happens, so unless there is someone else that would create this havoc, YOU ARE WRONG! You made this up and you are sick." There was an edge in Hermione's statement.

"Time is never certain. You cannot tell me that your timeline will happen anymore than I can tell you that the one I show you will happen. Only the actions of those in the present can determine the future," the white haired witch stated. Hermione stood tall looking at the woman. The brunette refused to blink.

"This isn't the present. This is the past," said Hermione simply.

"This IS the present! And on these walls is the future we can expect with you continuing to do what you are."

The old woman gestured toward the walls where a man with red eyes slowly came into focus. Now there was a movie with new people in it. People Hermione recognized immediately. It was a young Ron. Ron and Ginny lying, dead, at the foot of the most evil man in history. Yes, Hermione knew who the red-eyed man was even if she'd yet to meet him face to face. It was Voldemort. It could have been no one else. No one else would have felt that evil. No one else would have sent such a shiver down her spine. No one else would have looked so remarkably like Harry.

In that moment every piece of information that Hermione had been hiding within herself came pouring out. It fell out of her and the old woman caught it all with ease.

"There were thirteen years of peace. Thirteen years when the children came back to Hogwarts and learned. Thirteen years for the fear to ebb. Thirteen years without that sign showing up. We had time to build forces and for Dumbledore to grow strong and Harry to learn how to fight," Hermione shouted, desperate to reject the picture in front of her.

"Were those thirteen years worth the price?" Hermione thought about Lily and James as tears ran down her cheeks at the picture of Ron and Ginny... how could she measure the lives of the people she knew so well versus the lives of those she was getting to know?

"I don't know," she answered truthfully.

"Then make it so that you do know. Make everything worth it."

"What can I do?" Hermione finally asked.

"You can work your damndest to change what you know is wrong. You can tell everyone everything that you know. You can CHANGE things Hermione," the woman said, pleadingly.

"There are so many things that would have to change. Many of them are things I couldn't change. I wouldn't know how to change-" Hermione babbled as she thought about Snape, Lily and James, Peter, Sirius, Minister Fudge, Mr. Crouch, Quirrel, the diary, the Chamber of Secrets...

"And you only have a short amount of time. You better get started."

"But there are laws," Hermione said, desperate to cover all questionable areas. "If I change anything I could disrupt the entire universe."

"Or you could save us all from the fates I showed you. If you had to pick between the world you grew up in and the world I showed you, is there a question as to the better of two?"

"Then why don't you do it if you know so much!" Hermione cried out

"I don't know much more than what will happen in the days to come, but I know that you don't belong here and I know that you have information that can save thousands of lives if you would just let yourself."

"There are rules!"

"Are you willing to let those rules govern your life? Are you willing to know that you could have done something and did not? Can you live with yourself after that?" The woman's dark brown eyes glared at Hermione with the burning questions.

"I'm going to have to," she replied, ready to leave. "Because I don't believe my being here is on purpose, and I am not egotistical enough to believe that the choices I make could change fate." She turned, picked up her things and stomped towards the trap door. She would have made it too if only the next words hadn't been spoken.

"What about Remus?" Professor McDermott said so quietly that the room seemed to shatter; Hermione's heart constricted as she thought of the boy with the playful smile on his face. What about Remus? Could she do anything to save him?

The Professor, seeing she'd caught Hermione's attention, went on in the same tone, "Can you tell me honestly that the life he grows into would be fine without your interference? Can you tell me that the world is at peace and everyone is happy? If you can't, then it doesn't matter if you believe the images I show you on these walls are true. What right do you have not to try and save Remus from the life he comes to lead?" the woman paused again and walked over to Hermione. She turned the young girl's head so that they were facing each other once again. "All I'm offering you is a few years head start. You won't change the future because it hasn't been created yet. You can create it."

"I can't-"

"What happens to Remus, Hermione? What becomes of the boy whose eyes follow you as you walk to your dorm? Does he live? Does he die? Does he ever find you again?" the teacher asked, not really wanting an answer. "Can you change any of it?"

And Hermione thought of Remus' story. The one story she had never considered before this bizarre turn of events. She had known Lily and James Potter's story. They died. She knew what they lost.

She knew Sirius lost his two best friends and sought vengeance. She knew how horribly that plan had gone.

She knew Peter was taken for dead and lived for twelve years as a pet rat only to rejoin his unforgiving master. But through all of that death and pain and tragedy she had never once considered what it must have been like to be the only one not to be imprisoned or taken for dead. She never considered how painful being the survivor really was.

Remus had gone from being the werewolf freak with few friends, to having the best friends in the world. They supported him and trusted him and leaned on him. He was happy and then it was all torn from him in a single night. He watched his three best friends disappear from sight and got rejected as guardian to Harry, the only remaining link to his old life. He lived alone and friendless for so many years. Hermione's heart couldn't stand it. She couldn't think about it anymore. And he loses me too doesn't he?

Hermione wondered what kind of strength he must have had to withstand all of that and go on living. All she felt was kinship with him and that made it worse because she knew she wouldn't stay with him either. When she continued to not speak the professor spoke for her.

"I am not asking you this for my own sake. I am an old woman of more than a hundred ten years. I will not live to see the terror on these walls. I ask you this for the sake of Remus and all in his generation that would live to lose family and friends. It is something no one should go through.

"The future as you knew it, is not a guarantee. I know that your being here has made this the present and erased the world that you knew. Make what you can of this time."