Fearless

Summary: A short piece taking place just after the scene from PoA, in which Hermione comes running out of the boggart-infested cabinet crying, in the middle of her Defense Against the Dark Arts exam. RemusxHermione.

Fearless

By Menolly Mark

Hermione sobbed uncontrollably, shooting horrified glances at the cabinet behind her, as if she expected the boggart-Professor-McGonagall to come chasing after her, waving a slew of papers marked with zeros. Harry masterfully suppressed his laughter, not wanting Hermione to see how funny he found the whole thing.

She clearly didn't think there was anything funny about it. Crumpling on to the floor, she curled her arms around her knees and took several sharp, shallow breaths before she was able to look up into Professor Lupin's sincerely concerned face. "I'm sorry," she said, "I'm so sorry, Professor. That was really silly."

"That's quite all right, Hermione." Lupin bent down and offered her a hand, helping her to her feet again. "I'm sure it would be quite jarring for someone like you to hear that all of your hard work's gone to waste. I can't imagine that you fail your exams very often. That alone should have reminded you that all you were facing was a particularly malicious boggart."

"That's easier said than done," replied Hermione, in a very small voice. "Besides, I've failed this one, haven't I? I must have done, since I couldn't even get past a stupid boggart." She sounded more irritated than afraid, now. "I guess that just goes to show that sometimes you can't fix everything by studying really hard."

"Amen to that," muttered Ron. Harry glared at him, but Hermione didn't seem to have heard.

Lupin shook his head at her, smiling. "The boggart was only a small part of the overall test," he reminded her, "and you performed admirably on the rest of it. I'd say that you exceeded expectations, but my expectations for you, I'm afraid, are too high to be exceeded. I wouldn't worry about it, Hermione."

Somewhat abashed at the praise, Hermione flushed, and then smiled. "Oh," she murmured, holding a hand to her head, "oh, I really don't feel so well...I'm a little light-headed, Professor...I think I'd better go sit down over there for a while and get out of the way so that the other students can take the exam."

Lupin shrugged. "There aren't any others," he reminded her. "You're the last one. Everyone's finished."

Hermione looked around. "Oh," she murmured. "Well, that's all right, then."

Lupin took Hermione by the arm, gazing with some concern on the pallor her face. He helped her into a chair, and she let him place her in it, her breathing coming a bit easier as she relaxed into the folds of the armchair. "I suppose it's all the stress," she remarked, apparently feeling the need to justify herself. "It could happen to anyone."

"It could," Lupin agreed. "And as I understand it, Hermione, you've been taking on more responsibilities than most, lately."

Hermione looked away from him, and, glancing up to where Ron and Harry were standing, she shook her head at them, waving them away impatiently. "I'm fine," she insisted, "I'll be along in a few minutes. You two go ahead on without me."

Only when Harry and Ron had departed did she turn back to Professor Lupin. "Yeah," she said, "only that didn't work out as well as I'd hoped it would. I thought that taking more classes would allow me to learn more all at once, not completely wind me and make me incapable of doing much of anything."

Lupin chuckled. "Well, we live and we learn, Hermione. You get points for effort, in my book."

Lupin took a couple of cups and a teapot down from on top of a nearby bureau. Pouring a cup for each of them, he pressed one of them on Hermione, and she accepted it with a smile. He snaked one leg around a chair behind one of the classroom desks, and moved that over, seating himself across from Hermione and taking a sip of his own tea.

Hermione spent a few minutes drinking her tea in silence, her eyes roving around the various cages and tanks in the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom. Some of the color began to return to her face, and Lupin was pleased to see that she seemed to have regained most of her usual poise and composure. He smiled encouragingly as she drained the last few drops of her tea, and leaned forward slightly in his chair to accept the cup back from her. "Are you feeling better?" he asked. Hermione nodded.

"Thanks, Professor. I'm really...sorry about this."

"Don't mention it," murmured Lupin. "I only hope that next year, you remember this valuable lesson. Studies aren't about quantity, they're all about quality."

"Yes sir." Hermione grimaced.

"All the same," he added, with some respect in his voice, "I don't think anyone else would have been able to carry it off for quite so long."

Hermione thought about that for a minute. "How did you know?" she asked, after a moment. "Did Professor McGonagall tell you about the time-turner? I thought that she, Professor Dumbledore, and I were the only people that knew about it, because the Ministry of Magic gave McGonagall explicit orders not to tell anyone that they'd allowed me to use it."
Lupin shrugged. "I guessed, to tell you the truth," he replied. "I have some experience with time-turners myself, and I know what it looks like when someone's overtaxed themselves in time. One of the Lupin family heirlooms was a time-turner, and my father used to use it to make sure that he wasn't ever late for work. My friends and I got hold of it one day, while he was out, and we thought it was great fun. We only realized how dangerous it was when we decided to go back a day, and almost met ourselves coming."

Hermione nodded. "I'm very careful about that," she assured him. "I've never met myself, or seen myself, even. I've been sure to time it precisely so that I'm always in two places at the same time, but there are never two of me in the same place."

"Good girl," said Lupin. "You're a good deal less reckless than I was as a child."

Hermione looked surprised at this, and a bit skeptical. "You don't seem like the reckless type," she admitted. Lupin laughed.

"I guess most children are reckless," he said thoughtfully. "Perhaps not all of them," and he inclined his head respectfully towards Hermione, "but I was a bit more so than most. I thought I was invincible. After all, a boy like me, who could go through everything that I went through and still, be all right..." He trailed off, looking suddenly alarmed, and shot a calculating glance at Hermione, trying to see if she'd caught the import of his words. Hermione seemed not to have noticed anything.

"I guess to be reckless," she was saying, looking at the wardrobe in the corner, which had once housed a different boggart, "one also has to be somewhat fearless. I've never been fearless, Harry and Ron could tell you that. And I suppose you've seen it today for yourself." She bit her lip, looking annoyed with herself again. "Every single day, Harry wakes up knowing that Sirius Black, the only man ever to have escaped from Azkaban, broke out intending to hunt him down and kill him, but Harry isn't afraid. It worries me, sometimes, how easily he shakes off things like that. I suppose I have to be afraid for him, then. Isn't that a funny thing to think?" She let out a little, derisive laugh. "But I can't help it. I'm afraid of everything. Afraid of what might happen to Harry, to Ron, to Ginny, too, after last year. I'm afraid of what might happen to my parents. In the face of all of that, I'm still afraid of failing my studies. I'm just a bundle of uncertainties. I wish I could be a little more like Harry."

Lupin regarded her for a long moment, until the silence clearly began to make Hermione uncomfortable. She cleared her throat, and shifted one leg over the other in her chair, as Lupin watched her pensively. "I don't wish that," he said finally. "I'm very grateful that you have enough sense to worry. You're safer that way."

"Well," whispered Hermione, "I can't help it, so I guess that's one way to look at it."

She looked as if she wanted to say more, but, before she even opened her mouth to speak, Hermione glanced up at the clock on the wall, and gave a start of surprise. "Oh, goodness," she said, "I've got to go meet up with Ron and Harry, I promised them I wouldn't take long." Standing up from the chair, she gestured at the teapot, smiling. "Thanks for the tea, Professor, I really needed it. I feel a lot better now." After a moment, she added, "and I think...I really think you're the best Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor Hogwarts has ever had. And I should know! I've read about all of them in Hogwarts, a History."

Lupin felt a slow smile spreading over his face, and Hermione blushed a second time, something that he'd never even seen her do before that day. He watched her go as she hurried out of the room, making sure to close the door behind her, before depositing his teacup on the top of the nearby wardrobe.

Lupin could hear the boggart moving around inside of the wardrobe, bumping unhappily up against the walls as it trundled about in it's annoyance. He'd thought many times about releasing it, as he had no more use for it in his classes, but he also knew that one couldn't simply let a boggart run free around the hallways of Hogwarts School. He'd tried vanishing it, but every time he opened the wardrobe to get rid of the thing, it found a way to get the better of him. He'd never encountered such a stubborn boggart before, or one that was clever enough to get through his mental defenses and choose the form that would really stun Lupin into submission. He'd thought that he'd been careful enough not even to admit to himself what it was that he feared the most, but this boggart understood things that he wouldn't allow himself to comprehend. Perhaps that was the reason he was so hesitant to get rid of it. It forced him to tell himself the truth.

Lupin pulled open the wardrobe, and stood back as something fell out of it, hitting the classroom floor with a sickening crunch. When he looked down, he saw a boggart-Hermione, lying dead on the floor. She was curled up, her arms and legs locked rigidly around her, and her eyes closed, and her right fist clenched around a tiny time-turner.

Yes, thought Lupin, his heart lurching painfully as he stared down at the inanimate form. He was very glad that Hermione wasn't fearless.