A Time Before Tears

CHAPTER TEN

It was nearly the middle of the night, and it was cold.

Presently Lily, Noelle and Hermione stumbled back through the Hogwarts gates, hiccupping as they went. They were drunk. Very drunk.

Valerie walked calmly beside them, rolling her eyes occasionally as they hiccupped. They had spent the day in Hogsmeade, the night at the Three Broomsticks, and now, it seemed, they might not be coherent enough to find a way back to the castle (which at that moment seemed really, really far away). They needed to cross the huge expanse of land between the gate and the Quidditch pitch, after that they needed to make their way back past Hagrid's hut, sneak in the front doors of the castle, and rush back to their dorm without being noticed.

The chances seemed to be one in a million.

Making odds worse was the fact that Hermione had had a few too many of those steaming glasses at the bar. She couldn't even remember what they were called. All she could really say about the drink was that it had contained alcohol - a lot of alcohol - and Hermione didn't seem to be coping very well. Noelle had had about six drinks of whatever it was that she'd had and Valerie was trying very hard to keep her moving forward. Lily, having drunk about ten beers, was having trouble just standing up.

The reason they were drunk was a little more complex (well except for Noelle who had started drinking because Hermione and Lily had). Going to Hogsmeade had been just the same for Hermione as it was in her own time. She had gone joyfully from shop to shop with Noelle, Lily, and Valerie never letting her out of their sight. It reminded her of second year when the Chamber of Secrets was opened.

She should have realised there was a reason for the close watch. She should have realised walking off by herself would have been stupid. But she didn't. So she did walk away. And then... well... Then Hermione had seen a man. A man who politely asked for directions but never let Hermione see his face. He carefully kept his head under his very dark cloak and hood, and then his hand reached out faster than she could react and he grabbed Hermione.

Presently Hermione shook her head violently, trying to erase the memory. Why couldn't she just forget it! She had had goblet after goblet of alcohol and still she could remember what had happened a few hours earlier.

"Why can't I just forget?" Hermione yelled. "WHY CAN'T I FORGET?"

Hermione made a sweeping gesture with her arm, lost her balance, and ended up on the ground. Noelle stumbled a few metres away, leaned over, and threw up. Valerie quickly ran over to her and helped her keep her hair out of her mouth. After that was accomplished they both headed back to the castle. The last Hermione saw of either of them was as they passed behind the Quidditch stands.

"Are you okay?" Lily asked Hermione.

"No! I would have died if it hadn't been for you. I BELIEVED he just needed directions. Oh, what's that, you scary, dark, hooded stranger? You said you wanted a sixteen year old to tell you how to get somewhere? What's that? You have bad hearing? You want me to come closer? Of COURSE I will. I'm stupid!"

Hermione swung her hands around as she paused in the middle of her speech. She took another breath and continued her ramblings.

"Yes. You are stupid," Lily conceded, turning her back on Hermione.

"What's happening now?" Hermione continued as if she hadn't heard Lily's comment. "Lily's running over and waving her arms and then dragging me away? No. I still don't get it. Why can't I talk to him..."

"You're naïve," Lily said simply, pausing in her wavering step.

"I could have died! I would have gone right over to that man if you hadn't been there, if you hadn't come up at just the right moment, I don't know what would have happened."

Hermione, it turned out, was a sloppy drunk. Her words didn't slur exactly, but they weren't as crisp as they were when she normally spoke. She also tended to cry a lot more.

"I hate this place! I hate it!" Hermione screamed the last part of her exclamation. She tried to get up and failed miserably - instead she landed straight on her backside and it hurt. Because she couldn't stand and swing at anything, she resorted to hitting the ground. A lot. "I hate this place. I hate it. I hate it."

The brunette sobbed again and hiccupped. Lily didn't respond, so Hermione just kept going, her state causing her not to notice the anger starting to boil up in the redhead.

"These people are idiots. Remus and them just laugh as though You-Know-Who isn't killing everyone they know!" Hermione continued.

"And what would you have them do? Give up?" Lily spat.

"No,"Hermione said, still trying to rid her face of her tears. "It's just that if they were in my time things would be different. I wish I were back there. Things were simpler there. Much simpler."

"Then why don't you just leave?" Lily yelled. She marched back over to Hermione, grabbed her wrists, and yanked her to her feet. As soon as she'd lifted the other girl up, Lily backed away and started yelling again. "You came here and upset everything in my life. You tell me my BEST FRIEND is going to betray me and you can't do anything about it. It's his destiny to become a Death Eater, you say, and then you have the GALL to say that you hate this place?"

Her words shocked Hermione so much that she forgot to cry anymore. Instead her mouth dropped open and she stared dumbly at the other girl.

"You complain about being here as though this is the worst place on Earth. Well what if I think where you come from is horrible? I'm dead there! James is dead! My best friends betray me! I have an orphaned son who grows up with Petunia (who suddenly hates me) and you dare to say that you hate it here! This is my home! My family! My friends! Your world can go fuck itself."

"I didn't think -"

"No. You didn't," said Lily.

Lily suddenly sat down on the field and started crying. Hermione was shocked by the sudden mood change in the other girl. She'd been angry just a moment before, hadn't she? Hermione was too drunk to see that the other girl had finally released every emotion inside of her. Lily never did anything to show emotion, and suddenly the alcohol took away all of her inhibitions and so Lily let everything inside of her come out in a single moment.

In that moment Lily Evans was not the calm friend Hermione had met only a few months before when she stood over Hermione's hospital bed. She was not the girl that got along with everyone. She was not the perfect girlfriend to James. She was not the motherly figure to the rest of the student body. She was not a Prefect. She was not the perfect mother that Harry adored. She was not the brilliant witch who all professors loved. She was not the hero of the wizarding world. For that moment, Lily Evans was simply a very sad, very lonely sixteen-year-old girl.

To see Lily crying was something that scared Hermione more than anything else that had happened in this time. It scared her more than when she realized she'd been transported into another time. It scared her more than seeing Professor McGonagall crumple to the ground at the hands of Death Eaters. It scared her more than it would have scared her to see anyone else crying - anyone except maybe Harry.

"And I know what you're thinking. I'm supposed to be perfect. I can't cry."

Hermione didn't respond. Her mind wasn't clear enough for her to be able to think of anything smart to say. Hermione sat down again (or more like she slumped to the ground) and patted Lily on the back a little too hard.

"Well I'm sick and tired of being perfect." Lily said in a childish manner. "This world is going to hell and you've told me that You-Know... No. You've told me that Voldemort," - she emphasised his name with hatred Hermione didn't imagine she could feel - "will kill everyone that I love. He'll even kill me."

"Hey. Hey. Hey," Hermione said in the singsong way only drunk people can manage. "He didn't kill Harry. You saved him -"

"No!" Lily scrambled to get up and glared at Hermione. "I don't love Harry. I don't even know him."

"You do!" Hermione squeaked as she too stood up. She was getting a little dizzy with all the getting up and sitting down that she was doing so she had to sort of lean against Lily for support. She extended her right hand and clutched Lily's left shoulder, inadvertently forcing them closer together and causing their eyes to lock. "Your love saved him."

"NO! I don't love him! I don't even know him!" Lily yelled, violently pushing Hermione's hand off her shoulder. She took a few stumbling steps backward and then turned to look up at the sky. She made a huge motion with her hands and pointed straight up to the heavens. "Do you hear that? I don't love him! Is there some trade I can make? My future son for the rest of my friends? I'll make that deal! Right now!"

Hermione started laughing. Lily turned and glared at her.

"Sorry -" Hermione said between laughs.

"You don't think I'm serious!"

"I know you are, but you haven't met Harry yet and you're already making that deal." Hermione collapsed in another fit of giggles. "The deal you just made was silliest thing ever. You sold your friends out."

"No I didn't! I made a trade: future children for current friends."

"And you think you're going to choose Noelle and Valerie -"

"Severus and James -"

"It doesn't matter who your friends are. You won't choose them." The laughter had stopped by this point and the still dizzy Hermione stumbled over to Lily and leaned within two inches of Lily's face. The she whispered as if it were a secret, "I don't know anyone I would pick over Harry. And neither will you."

Hermione laughed easily and pushed off Lily. She stumbled her way back up to the castle, shaking her head and thinking about how foolish Lily was. How naïve. How childish. How silly.

~*~*~

The day after the drunken episode was a hard one for Hermione. She'd never been much of a drinker. In fact, the only time she'd really had anything to drink was some wine with her parents at dinners and some butterbeer on Hogsmeade trips. The type of drinking she'd done the night before was on another level. She couldn't even remember most of what she had done and said. She could remember the man and going over to him, but she preferred not to. It caused her stomach to spasm as she thought about how stupid she had been. Sitting up, Hermione realized her head also hurt, but that was more of a constant thing rather than something induced through memory. She had barely been able to stand up after she'd woken. Noelle and Valerie's beds were made and looked unslept in but Lily could be heard in the bathroom, throwing up.

That was something that shocked Hermione. It was such a normal, everyday thing to happen. People get sick and they throw up, but for some reason, Lily never seemed the type to do something normal and everyday.

For her part, Hermione could only remember bits and pieces the things she and Lily had said the night before. She remembered raised voices and something about Harry, but apart from that she couldn't really remember anything. It was fuzzy. Very, very fuzzy.

Putting her hands on her temples, Hermione shook her hed a little and instantly regretted it. This 'morning after' feeling somewhat reminded her of how she'd felt after first waking up in the seventies. She lay back down and pulled the covers over her head, but that didn't help the pain any.

The bathroom door opened and shut. Feet made shuffling noises across the floor, and Lily's bed creaked.

"Are you up?" Lily's voice was soft and sounded scratchy. It also sounded very tired. Hermione pushed back her covers and rolled her head so that she faced Lily. Lily was laying on her back in her bed with her sheets pulled up to her chin. Her head rested on its pillow with her eyes closed.

"Sort of." Hermione winced at the sound of her own voice. Not only did it sound and feel scratchy, but it was much too loud within her head.

"Listen." Lily rolled her head to the side so that she could look at Hermione. "I feel really bad about last night. I shouldn't have said anything about Harry. He's your best friend, I know you miss him, and I know you're frustrated with everything. I didn't have a reason to snap at you about anything."

Hermione raked her mind to try and remember what Lily had said about Harry. She tried to think why she would be apologising, and came up with no reasonable answers.

"To be honest -"

"I just got scared, that's all; and I don't want you to think I'm the type of person that would normally yell like that."

"I understand," Hermione said. She was very much out of her depth in this conversation. She only remembered chunks of what had happened the night before, she was still dealing with the painful headache, and she was trying to be comforting too. "Sometimes -"

A loud banging sound at the door kept Hermione from continuing her thought. Both girls turned to look at it as it flew open and a blur ran into the room and dove onto Lily's bed (the one closest to the door).

The blur, who (it later became known) was James Potter, grabbed the quilt and slid right under it. Then there was another bang at the door, and again Hermione turned to look, annoyed more than anything else that someone would make such a loud noise on the very day she didn't seem able to deal with it. This time the door opened slowly.

Sirius looked terrifying. Maybe it was just the half-light of the room, but the shadows around his eyes were so darkened that it almost looked like they weren't there. Hermione shuddered a little and hoped no one noticed.

"Do you want to hear a story, Lily? A story about a boy named... oh, let's call him James. Let's say this James just happened to go up to Christine Mancello during breakfast and talk to her for a long, long time. In fact, it was such a long time that one begins to wonder if he remembers that he already has a girlfriend. He sits there and FLIRTS with her, LAUGHS with her, and finally HUGS her goodbye."

Hermione looked over at Lily as Sirius' monotonic voice fell over her. Lily should have looked... Hermione didn't know, but she thought Lily ought to have looked jealous or anxious or hurt, but she didn't. Hermione could only describe what she did look like as regal. She looked like a queen hearing both sides of a dispute.

Sirius took a few more steps forward until he was right next to Lily's bed. Then he made a move with his wand hand and Hermione tensed.

"You will not do anything dangerous to my bed, my dorm, my dorm mates or anyone else that happens to be in here."

Hermione had heard Lily use this voice once before: the night she'd told her about knowing the future. Hermione knew without having to look at Sirius that he would not disobey her. The comparison to a queen seemed even more fitting now. But Sirius did something that Hermione had not expected; he picked up the jug of water which was a constant fixture on Lily's bedside table, and in an instant, began pouring it over the lump under Lily's quilt.

While it only took him an instant to begin pouring, it took Lily less time than that to stop him. Her wand suddenly appeared in her hand, she froze the water and then turned to Sirius. He was glaring at the jug and the frozen water. He released it from his right hand and it remained hanging in the air. He tapped the water a little with his knuckle, shook his head, and said to her, "He practically jumped into another girl's lap!"

"He was probably talking about you," Lily replied tiredly. Sirius turned and looked directly at Hermione. She hadn't known he'd known she was there.

"What do you think?" He was almost yelling, and her headache was still pounding away, so she said the first thing that came into her mind.

"You're so stupid. He won't steal your crush. James is obviously in love with Lily." Out of the corner of her eye, Hermione saw Lily turn bright red and smile. Sirius shook his head again, half smiled, and stormed out of the room. James popped up with the sound of the closing door.

"Thank you Lily. That was fabulous." She waved her wand again and the water (and the jug) fell right on top of his head. He looked at her incredulously. "What was that for?"

"It was just so perfect. It was right above your head and... You can't tell me you wouldn't have." She shrugged and slid back down completely under her covers. Sometime during her conversation with Sirius she had become more upright.

"You look horrible," James observed. Lily's eyebrows rose and he was quick to try and make up for the slip. "But even when you look this bad I still like you. That must mean I like you a lot." Hermione shook her head. That was some of the same male reasoning Ron might have tried to use.

"Wow. Thank you," Lily said mock earnestly.

James rolled out of the bed, pulling down the quilt as he stood up. He puffed out his chest and looked distinctly proud of himself, wriggling his eyebrows up and down before he winked at Lily. Then his entire demeanor changed. His visage turned suddenly to one of sympathy and caring. He pulled the quilt back over Lily, made sure her feet were covered, leaned down and kissed her on the forehead.

"Get better." He turned and left.

It wasn't more than a minute before Hermione saw Lily had fallen asleep again. She looked over at the redhead and felt mildly jealous of her. Hermione, in her own time, had two best friends and they treated her well, but she had no one like James. She couldn't imagine Harry or Ron being quite so comfortable as to jump under the covers with her. She couldn't imagine that they would look at her with the respect and kindness and love with which James looked at Lily as he tucked her in so carefully. Hermione suddenly wanted that. She wished she had thought to take a picture, but as her headache pounded and as sleep consumed her, her thoughts were filled with pictures of Remus rather than anyone else.

~*~*~

Another pounding at the door woke Hermione up once again. She suppressed her rage and fought her urge to hex whoever it was.

"Come in," she said. She turned to see who was at the door, and noticed Lily's bed was empty. She must have felt better.

The door opened, and standing there - looking very nervous - was Remus.

"Hi," he said awkwardly.

Hermione sat up quickly (consequently causing a severe pain to shoot through her left temple). Hermione and Remus had made a point to spend sometime alone together every day since after that first kiss (even if it was only a few minutes or eating lunch together). Neither of them wanted to appear cliquish in front of the others, nor did they want to make their relationship publicly known. Sirius seemed to respect their wishes, and refrained from telling anyone about finding Hermione and Remus on the roof. Hermione supposed the rest of the group must have known about it anyway, but none of them brought it up around them. The group seemed to respect them both, and when they disappeared no one said anything.

But while they had spent quite a lot of time together in the past month and a half, she wasn't comfortable having him see her lying down in bed; she wasn't comfortable with anyone seeing her like that.

"Hi," she replied, pulling up her sheets so that her dressing gown was completely covered.

"I heard you were sick, so I brought you some soup and a potion for headaches." Remus still hadn't made a move to come into the dorm. He was too respectful to move into her space without her permission. She liked that a lot.

"Come in," she offered. He smiled in return and walked in, bringing with him a tray. "Who told you to bring me these things?" Remus smiled as he carefully gave the tray to Hermione, and then sat down on the edge of Lily's bed, facing her.

"James said you were sick, and Peter hit me on the back of the head when I said I hadn't gone to see you yet."

"But I didn't need you to bring me anything."

"That's what I told them. Then Peter threw a roll at my head, Noelle started laughing hysterically, McGonagall got angry, and I asked Poppy for a headache potion." Hermione smiled gratefully at him and drank the potion from the goblet. She winced at first but then the awful taste was forgotten as she realised that her headache was immediately dissipating.

"Is that better?" he asked quietly.

"Yes. Now my head doesn't throb every time I hear your voice." He laughed then, easily and lengthily, his eyes shining on her.

"Well that's always a plus, isn't it?"

"I suppose," she said. They sat there in silence for a while, both knowing the other was as comfortable not speaking as they were in the middle of a conversation.

"So what happened last night anyway?"

"You mean Lily didn't tell you?" He just looked at her and Hermione got it. "Right. I forgot. Lily doesn't like sharing."

"And Noelle told Peter she didn't remember. Valerie was trying to tell us something about a party at the pub, but she had to stop in the middle because McGonagall walked up. I tell you, McGonagall comes to check on us for absolutely no reason. We weren't even doing anything. You know what that means? I don't think she trusts us - any of us. And we're in her own house." He sounded very affronted. Hermione snickered a little.

"The Marauders probably have more detentions between them than everyone else in this entire school combined."

"Probably." He nodded his head a little. "But now back to the important things. What happened last night?"

Hermione thought about that. While she didn't remember much that happened after the fifth drink, she did remember what exactly had sent her into that bar. She looked up at Remus and their eyes locked for more than a moment. She saw that he wasn't just curious he also cared.

"Do you remember that first day we kissed on the roof?" He nodded. "You told me not to talk about the past but I'm going to anyway, okay?" He nodded a little more. "Where I come from there isn't a constant fear. People deny You-Know-Who to the point where they don't even believe he's alive. We don't have the same instincts as you all have. I don't grab my wand when I hear a loud noise; it isn't the first thing I reach for in the morning. Strangers are friends that aren't properly introduced... I don't think I ever realised how very different this place is until last night.

"I was walking around town by myself. I had told Noelle and Valerie that I was going to wander. They told me I shouldn't and I ignored them, thinking I could handle myself. I went walking and soon found myself on a street I didn't recognize. There was a man a little ways away from me. He was wearing a cloak and I couldn't really see his face. He asked me if I knew how to get to Hogwarts. I started explaining it to him but he said he couldn't hear me, and asked if I would please come closer."

"You didn't though, right?" Remus asked, moving to the edge of his seat.

"I really thought he just couldn't hear me. So I went closer and began explaining it to him again. I turned to point out a street and saw Lily running towards me, waving her hands. I had no idea what she was doing and said so to the man. Then he reached out and grabbed my arm." She unconsciously touched her upper left arm. Remus moved off of Lily's bed, took the tray off Hermione's lap, placed it on Lily's bed, and took Hermione's left hand in his right. "Then he told me I was going to die. He said not to try to run because that would just make him want to hurt me more. I started struggling to get away but it didn't matter at that point because Lily had come and cursed him or something. He let go of me as she grabbed me and pushed me down the road, away from him. I never looked back."

Remus leaned forward then and pulled her into a hug. She laughed into his shoulder, uncomfortable with sounding so stupid.

"Then we all got completely drunk," she finished. Remus laughed.

"You're one of the strongest people that I know." Now Hermione laughed and shook her head. "No really. I think you're amazing."

"That's always nice to hear," she said, still letting go of their hug. When he left he didn't check to make sure the sheets covered her toes and say 'get well' as James had to Lily. Instead he just smiled at her as he took the tray away, and that was more than enough for her.

~*~*~

Nearly a week later Hermione was still trying to forget how stupid she had been that night. Noelle made small jokes about it, but on the whole she maintained that she didn't remember anything that had happened. Valerie didn't talk about it at all; when the topic was brought up she carefully didn't respond. Lily only looked at Hermione with sorrowful eyes when anyone said anything. Soon the Marauders, who were the only people to bring up the subject, learned that it was a sore spot and didn't bring it up anymore, but not before James and Sirius could have a small conversation about it with Hermione during History of Magic.

"So," began Sirius as he sat down on Hermione's left. She tensed a little, sensing teasing coming. She didn't like being teased. She didn't know how to handle it.

"We hear you got a little crazy last week," James continued, sitting on her right. She tensed a little more.

"Got a little tipsy."

"Had a little too much liquor."

"Got smashed."

"And basically couldn't walk for a day."

They were taking turns speaking but Hermione was momentarily distracted as Valerie walked right past them, without once glancing at Hermione. Valerie, actually, was starting to worry Hermione. For a while now the short African had been looking more and more sickly and seemed to avoid speaking to Hermione. She was looking increasingly stressed out. Normally that was how Noelle looked.

"We didn't think you had it in you," Sirius was saying.

"You didn't think I had what in me?" she asked, coming back into the conversation only a split second too late it seemed.

"The ability to break so many rules in a single night," James answered for Sirius. Hermione was still astounded by the fact that they could carry on a conversation as though they were one person.

"We knew about the Halloween thing, but this..." Sirius shook his head. "This was amazing. It was a whole new level."

"Err," Hermione said, trying to arrange her notes as she thought back to her second year and began slowly ticking off all of the rules she must have broken then. It was somewhere upwards of twenty.

"So were you really drunk or just kind of liquored up?" James pressed.

"I don't remember."

"Which means she was hammered," Sirius supplied, pulling the quill out of Hermione's hand and disrupting her preparations for class.

"Give that back."

"Sirius, she's getting upset with us. I think she doesn't want to talk about it." James said sadly to his friend over her head. "Maybe we ought to leave her alone."

"But History of Magic has just started and what else are we going to do the rest of the class? Binns says we can't re-enact stories anymore because of the cushion incident."

"And Lily might not like it if I blow up her book again."

"She laughed the first time."

"But not the second or third," James responded thoughtfully.

Hermione, seeing that Binns had already started his lecture and that James and Sirius were not about to let up, decided that passiveness and politeness would not work with them. They had too much personality to merely give her back her quill and let her take notes again. She needed to find a way to stop them from talking all together...

"We could throw things at the Hufflepuffs," Sirius continued their list.

"Or we could just keep annoying Hermione," James countered. Sirius seemed to think that over. Hermione took the opportunity and ran with it.

"Sirius." He raised his eyebrows as she locked eyes with him and said deadpan, "You smell fantastic - like roses but better."

He kind of stared at Hermione, unsure how to respond to her serious face. Hermione grabbed her quill out of his hand and turned to listen to the lecture. After a moment of continued silence Hermione looked up to see Sirius still staring at her, flabbergasted. She turned and saw James looking the exact same way. Then she smiled.

"She bested us."

"Only because I wasn't adequately prepared for that comment," Sirius responded, seeming truly affronted.

"I think we underestimated her again."

"Well who would have thought she would have resorted to complimenting us? No one else ever does that." Hermione snorted but didn't make a single retort.