A Time Before Tears

CHAPTER SIX

Sunlight was pouring through the open window and shining brightly on the bed that Hermione was staying in. It woke her slowly; her head hurt like hell and her vision was blurry, but other than that Hermione couldn't find a cause for the feeling in the pit of her stomach. She propped herself up onto her elbows. Where was she? It took her a moment to realize it was the Hospital Wing and even then she wasn't sure why she was there.

"You all right?" a voice sounded out quietly. Hermione turned to see Remus rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. He looked so tired, so worried, so young... suddenly all of her memories from the previous day came rushing back at her. The Potion...

She quickly turned her eyes away from him in order to gain her composure. She didn't want him seeing her eyes tear up again. She forcibly put the pictures of Remus, Peter, and Sirius out of her mind. For the first time in her life, Hermione wished she didn't have such a good memory.

"Have you been here all night?" she asked as she turned back to him with her face revealing nothing.

"Yes," he said simply, staring at her as though immensely grateful that she was awake. Hermione understood that feeling completely; after four years of being friends with Harry, she knew exactly what it was like to worry. But she didn't understand why Remus was having those feelings of anxiety for her. Sure she'd probably looked very strange in the Dungeon but to stay here all night... That meant he considered her a friend. Hermione would have smiled if her head still didn't hurt so much. "Are you alright?"

"My head hurts a little but I am much better than before. I guess I must have... done my potion wrong," she replied. "Nothing serious though." For a moment Hermione thought she might have seen something is his eye, but it passed fast enough that she couldn't have been sure.

"Are you alright now?" he asked.

"Yes," she said. She looked quietly at the boy in front of her- the boy with soft brown eyes and hair. He was the unassuming boy that laughed quickly and honestly. He was the boy that loved his friends dearly. He was the boy that would not be a boy much longer because he would grow up, but when he did he would never become the man the potion predicted.

Then she thought about Ron and his fading memory but quickly tried to stop these thoughts because whenever she thought about Ron she saw the picture of him and Ginny, dead. She tried to shake off that memory and think of her best friend the way she'd last scene him: laughing and playing chess with Harry. She tried to imagine the redhead growing up and she wondered if something was going to happen to him too that would change him as much as it was going to change the Marauders. Would Harry change that much? Would he, like his parents, die too early to find out? The thought made Hermione's heart constrict. She couldn't bear to lose either of them. Ever. So how were they dealing with losing her? Did they think that she was dead? Were they trying to avenge her?

But Hermione remembered then as she looked around the hospital wing, that she wasn't on a holiday. She wasn't in Germany. She was in the past. Harry and Ron didn't even exist yet. By traveling back in time, Hermione had erased all of the events of her childhood. Now this was the present, or at least that was what Professor McDermott said. Hermione shook her head again, wishing the two boys were there to help her. She'd never really done anything big without them. Excepting, of course, S.P.E.W.

"What is it?" Remus asked, startling her out of her thoughts. She almost forgotten he was there. "What are you thinking about?"

"I miss my friends." He ran his hand through his hair, breaking eye contact with her. She was too immersed in her own train of thought to realize what he must have assumed. The future... is not a guarantee... "They would know exactly what to do. They would have done it by now." Make what you can of this time.

"I can never replace them." Remus' voice came ringing through the air and knocked Hermione into the present- the new present.

"I would never ask you to. You're fine the way you are," she said absent mindedly, not really noticing his reaction. His reaction didn't matter, his future did and if she was going to change that for him she needed to start thinking and planning now.

~*~*~

Over the course of the next night Hermione did some mammoth thinking. She thought about all of the words that people had said to her throughout her stay in the seventies. She thought about Dumbledore and his disappointment when she told him she would change nothing. She thought about his words back in her Third Year, the warnings about time travel. She thought about Peter's innocent face. She thought about Lily's suspicious looks on Halloween. She thought about Professor McDermott's words. She thought about the choice she'd made to leave the thread of time alone. She thought about the completely impossible chance of getting home.

Because it was impossible, she decided. There was no way she could ever find a way to get home. She was stuck here, forced to live the rest of her life here. Maybe she'd live long enough to meet her younger self... But that would mean Hermione would remember meeting her older self... wouldn't it? But if that were true then all of her memories would be of the improved future... What did this mean?

Hermione tried to work it out in her head backwards, but never came up with any understandable answer. Instead she decided to believe the Divination professor. Professor McDermott said that by coming back in time, Hermione had started a new time line. The future was what Hermione could make of it. Her own time and memories would stay with her, but the events that happened were erased. They may never happen. She may never be born, but since she was already in the past nothing could take her back. It was as though the hundred and fifteen year old woman had been trying to completely clean Hermione's conscience. Maybe she was, but Hermione was still going to believe her. It was the only possibility that made any sense. Time travel was complex.

If anyone could have seen Hermione thinking about the consequences of her actions they would have laughed. Her face gave away her every emotion and it looked like she was confusing herself. If someone really was watching her then they would have also seen the moment Hermione decided she needed some sort of plan, whether or not she actually would use it was beside the point, she needed something to occupy her mind. She needed something to figure out.

Hermione decided right away that there would have to be rules in her quest. She would have to have a detailed plan of action including a list of everything she wanted to change. So she created a list. No, not a normal list, but a Hermione list- a list with categories and subcategories and a point system of importance. But the basic shape of it was simple enough it was divided into thirds: Things she actually change, things that she definitely couldn't control, and things that were consequences of things she could change. An example would be: Lily and James switching their secret keeper (changeable), James and Lily's reactions to her words (not under control), Sirius going to Azkaban (consequence).

She spent Wednesday day and night working on her list. She went to classes and meals but her project was what she focused on most (she was so absorbed in it that she completely missed a perfect executed pie toss in Charms performed by the Marauders). She decidedly needed help with her endeavor and knew Dumbledore would be the best person to ask and she asked if she could have a meeting with him that Friday. He'd agreed and smiled at her in way that made her think he might have known a lot more than she'd ever dream. Hermione also decided that whether or not she stayed in this time she would have to do better in all of her classes if she wanted any kind of respect from these people. That included, unfortunately, Care of Magical Creatures. It was her last class of the day that Thursday.

"Miss Granger!" Professor Kettleburn came running over. He was a little man missing three fingers and a couple teeth in the back of his mouth. "Thank goodness you're here. Peter was supposed to be a part of my demonstration but after the fiasco last night with his friends he obviously can't do it with his useless wand arm. Will you do it?"

"Do what?" Hermione exclaimed quickly. The professor took her by the hand and dragged her into the middle of a circle of students assembled in the middle of the Quidditch pitch.

"Miss Granger has very admirably volunteered to take Peter's place on the obstacle course-"

"Obstacle course? No I haven't!" Hermione said dumbly.

Peter and James looked quite concerned as she was pushed into a gigantic clear bubble that lay in the center of the Quidditch pitch. She looked around for Remus as if by instinct and found he wasn't there. She felt very alone as she turned back to the bubble. It seemed to contain different animals- different dangerous animals. When she turned around and tried to get back out of the "bubble" she was stopped by the wall. It felt like cement as her face hit it.

"The course will start as soon as you say the word Miss Granger."

"No!" Hermione yelled, spinning around to face her professor, but it didn't matter. It seemed that at the sound of her voice the obstacle course had started, or at least that was what she assumed as she was roughly attacked from her side. It was the same fairyish creature that she'd encounter the first day of class. If she'd been prepared she could have blocked its attack, but as it was the creature slashed at and deeply cut the back of her left hand. She looked down to see the blood already pouring off and quickly glanced at the professor but the wall had turned opaque; all Hermione could see was the ground in front of her. She supposed it must have been a path. She didn't have time for that. Another fairy thing was coming at her.

Once she had dealt with the fairies, she ran into a unicorn, a kappa, and nearly every other creature that Hermione had learned how to fight throughout the year. But that wasn't fully true, she realized as she sent a black spell at the animal attacking her, they were also the creatures she'd learned back in Third Year... with Professor Lupin. She would have tried to work out the significance of it all if she hadn't had to fight off yet another attack right at that moment.

She could not explain how long it took her to battle all of the creatures, surely no longer than a couple of hours since class didn't last that long. She was tired and nearly worn. She didn't understand why the Professor wanted her to do that. She didn't understand how Peter could have handled this all on his own. She wasn't even sure how she could handle this all on her own.

Then it happened. It was only the second time that she'd seen one and it was the second time too many. The Boggart appeared out of nowhere. She hadn't been prepared. She knew it was a Boggart not because she saw it but because she heard it. That same horrific sound that she had heard all those years before and yet still struck fear in her heart. She closed her eyes almost immediately and told herself to breath. No fear. Fear feeds the Boggarts.

She didn't want to open her eyes. She didn't want to see what was there. But still her eyes opened. And there was Ron. Dead. Lying in a position that was so unnatural that she had no doubt all of his bones were broken. Lying over him was a sobbing Harry.

She held back a scream by covering her mouth her with left hand, forgetting, for a moment, that it was covered in blood.

"This is your fault," Harry said, looking straight at her. Harry would never lie about something like that. Ron was hotheaded he let his emotions make him say false things; Harry's emotions made him bluntly honest. If he said it was Hermione's fault, it was. She was trying not to cry as she focused on her breathing.

She had spent a long time after the first encounter with the Boggart (during her Exams) thinking about what she would do if ever she encountered one again. She had come up with many plans of action. At the moment, she couldn't think of a single one of them. She couldn't even think as she raised her arm and said that Riddiculus spell, but just as she said it, a picture popped into her head that she hadn't intended to see. She suddenly saw Lily very clearly in her mind.

The beam that hit Harry and Ron wasn't what it was supposed to look like. It didn't look nice and clean and fast. It looked like a great wave of red that fell completely over the pair. Both people were covered in the red sheen and then they began to morph into different shapes, different people actually. Suddenly Harry and Ron turned into Lily and James, but they weren't the same.

Lily and James were standing, their backs quite straight, smiling and looking at one another. James was holding something that Hermione couldn't see. She moved a little to the left, still spellbound by her own creation. Then she saw it. James seemed to be holding a baby. Hermione saw now that it was Lily and James on either side of a baby Harry. It looked exactly like the photo she'd seen in the photo album.

Hermione stared as the baby started laughing and so did Lily and James. All of them started to shake with happiness. They shook violently for a long while and then eventually exploded into tiny, sparkling, blue fragment that looked like fireworks. It was almost as though the Boggart had self-destructed. And with it with the black bubble that surrounded her collapsed.

"Brilliant! That was excellent work Miss Granger. Well, excepting the whole left hand thing. You ought to get that checked out. Did everyone see how she brilliantly followed the path even with the-"

"Professor, may I take Hermione to the Hospital Wing?" Peter asked politely. The professor nodded as he quickly returned to his conversation with the other, noticeably antsy students. Peter did a sort of side step and danced out of his place in the group to reach Hermione.

She registered turning and seeing him approach her. She saw him push her shoulder and gesture towards the castle. She turned and saw his mouth moving but didn't listen. They had just entered the castle when she finally began hearing him. It was the throbbing in her hand that made her come back into reality.

"Arg." She grabbed her left wrist with her right hand.

"Looks pretty bad. It's probably going to leave a scar," Peter said. She nodded. "Are you tired or anything?"

Hermione shook her head but whether she was responding to his question or trying to erase the image of Harry and Ron she did not know.

She wanted to cry, but she didn't. Instead she blocked their image from her mind and tried to figure out what Lily and James had been doing in there. Hermione wanted to know what it meant that the boggart exploded. She couldn't think straight. Her thoughts jumped erratically from one thought to the next with no logical connection.

Just a little while ago she had been walking to a class, thinking of nothing much. Then she'd been dragged into a life threatening demonstration that she had not been prepared for. She was exhausted. She was confused.

She felt lost, and Peter (still watching her carefully) looked worried.

"Are you sure you're okay? Do you need me to help you walk?" She shook her head again and he nodded, but still looked a little warily at her. "I am sorry you had to go through that. It was my fault really. I was meant to be the one in there and I would have been if I hadn't gone out last night." Hermione was still working to clear through the fog in her brain and focus her thoughts. "I wonder what Dumbledore thought of all of that."

"Dumbledore was there?" She hadn't seen him.

"Of course." Peter was silent for a moment before continuing, "Can't believe Kettleburn made you replace me at the last minute. Stupid arm." Peter proceeded to hold up his right arm and complain, once again, about the accident that had happened the night before- the accident that resulted in his complete and utter inability to perform magic for at least another day.

Once they were in the hospital wing Hermione felt immensely better. She knew it was foolish but she could not image anything bad happening in the Hospital Wing. This was a place where students came to get better and they always did.

Madame Pomfrey gave her some chocolate first and foremost and, as the heat spread down to her toes, Hermione found she was able to think much more clearly. Her heartbeat slowed down and she wasn't so out of it. She was able to clear her mind and reason that she'd imagined the boggart had turned into Lily and James. That could not have really happened... It probably exploded and Hermione's mind had just been playing tricks on her. She'd been through a lot in the last couple of days and it wouldn't be out of the question to assume that she was hallucinating. Yes, that was probably what happened.

That thought made Hermione feel better than anything else the nurse gave her; even the potion that caused all of the marks on her face to disappear did less for Hermione than the knowledge that she wasn't going mad. She was able to joke around with Peter while she sat there and drank three different, disgusting potions. It turned out that Madame Pomfrey could do nothing about the gash on the back of Hermione's hand- she would have a scar there for the rest of her life. Madame Pomfrey was having a fit about it all. She muttered under her breath a lot about how careless that man was to let students do something so dangerous, and how it was obvious why he'd lost so many fingers.

"Well that was a blast. Let's do it again sometime," commented Peter dryly as the headed back to the common room, having decided to miss the rest of the Care of Magical Creatures class.

~*~*~

It's funny how fate works sometimes. Had Peter not gone out the night before, had Sirius not performed a charm incorrectly, had Peter not been the one he was practicing on, had the professor chosen anyone else to replace Peter, had the fairy not cut her hand, had they decided to go back to class, she would have not been in exactly the right place at exactly the right time. As it was, all of that did happen and so she did see Sirius standing at the window of the common room, laughing slightly as he was looking out across the yard.

"Sirius old chap we've got to go. It's almost dinnertime," Peter said, taking a seat next to Sirius on the sill.

"Trust me when I say this is going to be better than food."

Hermione hadn't stayed around to watch. Instead she went up to her room to change for dinner and wash up a little after that ridiculous episode in class. During her meeting with Professor Dumbledore on Friday she was going to be sure and bring this up. She came back downstairs to see the boys still sitting near the window.

She turned to look at the dark sky and saw that there was a tremendously bright moon hanging in the sky. She wanted to take a picture, so she ran back up stairs to grab her camera and came back to snap a shot of it. As she was on the stairs the voices of Peter and Sirius came to her.

"Snape's not going to know what hit him," Peter muttered and Sirius laughed. Hermione would have left then, thinking nothing of it, but instead her mind went to work with the little information she had. She hadn't even realized she was processing information until the realization hit her about exactly what she was witnessing and felt sick. The moon. The laughter. The prank. Her feet moved swiftly down the stairs and she shoved right up next to them and looked out at the dark landscape to see if Snape was already on his way. He'd just left the castle.

"He'll die!" Hermione yelled into the silence of the common room. Sirius and Peter turned and stared at her. The sudden outburst rocked them both. She whipped around to be sure no one else was around before continuing, "I know you think Remus is sweet and everything but that won't stop him. Nothing will. He'll bite Snape or just kill him!"

"What did you- How did you know?" She ignored Sirius' question.

"If either of you have half a brain you'll go get a professor now!" Hermione said and turned to head out the door and follow her own advice. She almost ran straight into Lily as the redhead entered the room. Hermione turned right to her.

"Go get James and tell him that Sirius told Snape about the Whomping Willow. Tell him Snape is going there right now!" Lily didn't say anything, just turned and ran out the picture frame.

"You idiots," Hermione accused Sirius and Peter, before following Lily out of Gryffindor Tower. She ran straight to the tree, unsure what she'd do if she got there first but knowing she'd have to try. Without Crookshanks there she wouldn't know what to do. She couldn't even freeze the tree.

She was speeding through the front doors when she saw another figure nearing the tree. She was fifteen, never worked out, and yet somehow she found the strength to sprint faster than she'd ever thought she'd be able to. She caught up with the other person and discovered who it was: Albus Dumbledore. The Headmaster came running beside her and in a moment of pure intuition, she grabbed his wrist tightly and stopped herself and him.

"Miss Granger, you need to be inside." He made as if to move but she held tight to his wrist, knowing he could have pulled it away if he'd really needed to. He turned on her and suddenly she didn't doubt that this man could defeat Voldemort. He loomed over her with a presence that terrified her. And still she trusted her instincts and kept him from moving.

"I'm sorry Professor but you can't," she said, still trying to catch her breath from the run.

"A boy might die-"

"If Peter or Sirius told you to come then they are smarter than I thought but you can't try to save Snape." She looked him straight in the eye and repeated it. "You can't try to save Snape."

"Miss Granger-"

"Professor you can't save him." Hermione's mind was working at even faster paces than normal. She rapidly considered the consequences and unfixable mistakes and blurted out the truth as it came into her mind. "If you do then Snape won't owe James anything and then I don't think he'll turn back. Even if he does then in First Year he won't protect Harry. Please Professor just stay a moment and wait."

She didn't know if she'd made any sense or not. She didn't know if he believed her. She did know that he wouldn't wait. He had no reason to trust her, especially not with something this important. He would have run off, but then a moment passed and he didn't move. Then another moment passed and she turned to look at him. He seemed to be staring at something in the distance. She turned and looked to see what he was seeing. It was James, in what Hermione had to guess was his animagus form, charging towards the Whomping Willow.

He changed back into his human form and dove for the knot under the tree. When it froze he jumped into the passage and disappeared from site. He came back a minute later dragging Snape with him. As Hermione watched, Severus Snape ripped his arm from James' grasp and turned towards him. They seemed to be having a heated debate.

"Go to my office and wait there in the second room on the right. The password in 'sugarquill.'"

~*~*~

Hermione had been waiting in the office for five minutes before she began to hear a conversation in the other room. It was obviously the Headmaster and Sirius, James, Peter, and Snape talking about their punishment. She tuned out, not at all interested in knowing about what happened to them. She was much more interested in what had just taken place.

In her own time James had saved Snape and that had caused a certain chain of events, like Snape protecting Harry in First Year. That made sense to her. She understood that- it had already happened in her past. The part that confused her was the fact that if she hadn't been there, Dumbledore would have saved Severus instead. If she hadn't been here, her history would have been different. Suddenly everything McDermott said was clicking into place. Maybe the future really wasn't written yet. Maybe she could write it.

"Miss Granger," the Headmaster called and she walked over to the door. She found the room void of people excepting herself and the old Professor.

"Professor I can explain." He held up and hand and shook his head.

"Today you saved a man from death by asking two boys to tell the truth. You trusted one friend enough to believe he would save even his worst enemy. You also caused one of your friends to loose all of his faith in his Headmaster."

Hermione thought about this for a little while. Who was he talking about? She wondered, until suddenly occurred to her exactly who he was talking about : Peter. Peter had asked Dumbledore to save Snape and he hadn't. Peter probably hadn't even seen the old professor until after the fact. He'd come out just in time to punish them. Any faith Peter might have had in the old man to save people was probably shattered. Maybe today had more importance than Hermione ever considered.

"I was at today's demonstration of Care of Magical creature and although Professor Kettleburn may be losing his sight, mine is only improving." She couldn't look him in the eye after realizing that he must have seen Lily and James and the baby. She couldn't even imagine what he must have thought of her Boggart.

"After seeing what you did today with Severus and James, after considering everything I've heard you say in the past, I want you to know that you have my complete confidence." It almost brought her to tears to hear him say that. Harry had this kind of relationship with Dumbledore, she never expected to.

"Is there anything you'd like to tell me?" She almost shook her head, but once again her instincts took over and she was learning to trust herself.

"You need to forget that you saw James as a stag." She looked up and saw that he needed no explanation but that only motivated her more to give him one. "You would be killing a good man if you knew because then you'd have to tell the Ministry and that would only cause problems."

"Anything more?"

"No," Hermione said, shaking her head.

"In that case, I think you ought to know that Severus Snape would do anything for Lily Evans. He would keep a secret for someone else for the entirety of his life if it meant her well-being was ensured."

"Why are you telling me this?" He gave no reply other than to offer her a piece of candy and congratulate her on the Care of Magical Creatures demonstration.