Time Has No Boundaries

Hermione walked into the dorm and was greeted at once by a group of unfamiliar faces that she would now be living with. Renee introduced Hermione to all of them, and from what Hermione could tell, they had masked their faces with forced smiles to attempt to make her feel welcome.

"Where did you come from?"

"Why did you move here?"

These were just some of the many questions she was asked as she unpacked. Being the clever girl she was, she had already planned how she would respond to most of these.

"Well, I lived with my father in Paris for awhile, but after the divorce, my mother and I moved to London," she lied with a straight face.

"Paris! Oh, I've always wanted to go there!" said Pearl, another fellow Slytherin fifth year.

"What is it like, living there?"

Hermione had an aunt who lived in France that she once visited over summer vacation, and she also had read several books on the country. She told them everything she knew about the historical places, her favorite restaurants, and even spoke a bit of French to them. Lie after lie she spoon-fed them, and they ate them up without question.

As she was telling them about the palace of Versailles, her eyes caught a glimpse of someone in the corner. It was a girl, probably a year or two older than her, with a pale ghostly face and piercing blue eyes. She was lying on her bed, staring at Hermione with a snarl and a look of pure jealousy. This made Hermione very uncomfortable, but she decided the best thing to do would be to ignore her.

The girl got up and left after she realized that Hermione would not be intimidated by her, muttering quite a few awful curse words.

The moment the door shut, Hermione asked, "What is that girl's problem?"

"Don't mind Anna, Hermione. Her bark is worse than her bite. She'll warm up to you eventually," Pearl reassured her.

Hermione brushed Anna off rather easily. She had more important things to worry about, and she didn't want to make enemies. She continued her story, taking out her photo album to show them her house, which was actually her aunt's.

"Why aren't your pictures moving?" said a pureblood first year, squinting her eyes at the picture.

"Oh, it's because I took them on a Muggle camera; the pictures don't move on them."

"You have quite a lot of Muggle things, I noticed. Are you a half-blood?" asked Renee, who was also a pureblood, but had an interest in all sorts of Muggle things.

"No, I'm actually a Muggle born," she said, answering her first truthful answer besides what her name was and what year she was.

Oh, God, how could I let that slip? Any other house wouldn't matter, but this is SLYTHERIN; they hate Muggle borns! Prepare to be shunned...

"Really? Interesting. There's not many Muggle borns that the Sorting Hat places in Slytherin. Guess you are one of the lucky few," Renee replied with a grin.

Hermione was surprised that no one made a big deal of the fact that she was a "Mudblood", as Draco Malfoy liked to put it. She then concluded that the prejudices the future had on blood and houses was probably heightened due to Voldemort being a Slytherin and the heir to Salazar Slytherin himself.

***

Hermione was getting ready to go to the library with Tom. She looked at herself in her dresser mirror, and for the very first time, attempted to put on the makeup that her mother had given her for her birthday last year. She had never cared enough to bother with it until now. The only time she had ever really cared about her appearance was last year before the Yule Ball, in which she had spent countless hours trying to tame her wild hair.

As she began to put on some blush, her mind was thinking about how stupid her plan was. She knew nothing of how you go about being a temptress. She hadn't even had her first kiss yet!

I'm only fifteen; I don't know what the hell I'm doing! I've never had a boyfriend, unless you count Victor Krum. I think they have to at least know how to pronounce your name before you can call them your boyfriend, though. I've never gotten made up to go to the library. I look like a damn clown.

She gave up and wiped all the make up off, then ran her brush through her hair a few times and straightened her robes before proceeding to leave the dorm.

She walked into the common room, but Tom was no longer there. She turned to two boys playing wizards' chess and asked them if they knew were he was.

"I'm not sure. He's not in the dorm though," said one of them, not even bothering to look up from the game.

"Well if you see him, could you tell him I'll at the library?" she politely asked.

"Okay. Ha! I win again! You owe me ten chocolate frogs," he said as he put his opponent in checkmate.

She thanked him as she walked to the library, but after the loser threw the boy's game onto the ground, he was too occupied with fist fighting to pay any attention to what she had said. Renee, sitting at a table trying to catch up with all the summer homework she hadn't done yet, was the only one who had noticed Hermione leave. She quietly wondered how Hermione even knew where the library was.

Hermione weaved through the bookcases looking for Tom, but the library was completely empty. She sat down at a small round table and pulled out a tiny brown book from beneath her robes. She took a self-inking quill that she had purchased at Hogsmeade the previous year, and she scribbled down all the lies she told everyone about herself that day. She didn't want to cause any suspicion, so she was going to have to carefully keep track of everything she said. She whispered a spell, and the ink sank into the pages, leaving them looking like they had never been written on. Hermione then locked the book with a charm as an extra precaution.

Tom came into the library a few minutes later, apologizing for how he had to make her wait.

"Where did you go?" she asked curiously.

"I was just up in the dorm reading. I didn't know you were already here waiting for me."

Hermione felt her stomach turn as he talked, knowing that he was flat out lying to her.

What is he hiding?

Hermione tried not to sound like she was accusing him of lying to her while she said, "I asked someone, and they told me you weren't in the dorm."

Tom kept his cool and replied simply, "Well they were mistaken."

Hermione couldn't believe how convincing his voice sounded.

No wonder everyone took his word when he blamed Hagrid for opening the Chamber. He could take a lie detector test and pass it with ease.

Tom led her to the spot where the art book was supposed to be, but it looked as though it had been checked out.

"Oh, bloody hell. It's just my luck that it's not here," he said.

Suddenly, his eyes lit up, and a coy grin appeared on his face.

"It doesn't matter. There are much better books, but of course, you would have to go with me into the Restricted Section to get them."

Hermione swallowed hard, feeling quite uneasy about his look and what he had just said to her.

"Restricted Section?" she asked, making sure she had heard him right.

"Why yes." He paused, reading the look on her face. "You're not the type to break rules are you?" he asked in a teasing manner.

Forgetting who it was she was talking to, she said in her know-it-all sort of voice, "Well, not really, but I don't think you should be either. Aren't good prefects supposed to mind the rules?"

He laughed a devious laugh that sent shivers down her spine, and he whispered into her ear, "What people don't know won't hurt them."