FicWad

Hermione’s eyes fluttered open and, not for the first time since she’d arrived in the past, she was greeted with the sight of the high beamed ceiling of the Hospital Wing.
She groaned; the light streaming in through the many high windows was too bright for her eyes. Looking around, she realised that she wasn’t the only one admitted to the infirmary. In the bed opposite her, Sirius was laid, his dark hair starkly contrasting the white bed sheets and paleness of his face. He looked so young when he was sleeping, so innocent, and his eyelashes fanned across his cheekbones. Hermione didn’t think she had ever seen someone look as peaceful as Sirius Black when he slept.
She remembered what happened, of course. Remembered his boggart, and her heart clenched at the fact that what Sirius feared, above all things in the world, was himself. She also remembered the instability of his body, the tremble to his hands, faintness to his being; that was probably why he was here. It didn’t seem like he could stomach anything in a state like that.
She frowned. Then why was she here? Immediately, she felt the hot breath of air that had fanned across her face. Hermione closed her eyes.
What did it even mean? She had no idea what her boggart was supposed to be, least of all what it represented. She wasn’t scared of Voldemort… Well, she was, but everyone was scared of him. It was You-Know-Who for Christ’s sake! What she meant was, he wasn’t her biggest fear. But he’d told her that himself, told her to think, to really think, so that Draco hadn’t died in vain.
Hermione opened her eyes.
A loud snore from her side startled her, and her head whipped to see Remus. His head was resting on his arms, which were folded on her bed. His hair, golden in the midday light, tickled her elbow. His mouth was gaping open. She smiled softly, reaching out to run her fingers through his locks. He stirred.
The door to the Hospital Wing flew open, bouncing off the stone walls. Remus’ head shot up, just as James strode in.
“Where’s Peter?” Remus asked groggily, frowning when their fourth friend didn’t turn up.
James looked at him in surprise, clearly not expecting anyone to be awake here. His eyes took in Remus, from his messy hair and sleepy eyes, and swept onto Hermione. He froze, redirecting his attention quickly.
He glanced at Remus again and said, “In the class I’m currently skipping.”
Hermione scoffed, eyebrows knitting together in disapproval.
Remus looked at her, as if he was seeing her for the first time. He was slightly dazed still from his slumber, but his eyes cleared once they locked on her. He offered her a small, wonky smile and she let herself smile back.
Leaning his head closer to her, he reached up to tuck a loose curl behind her ear and said in a low, tired voice, “How are you feeling?”
Hermione gulped. The gesture was so intimate, in a way that was completely unintentional. She whispered, “I-” Her voice cracked. She cleared her throat. “I’m not sure. What happened?”
“You don’t remember?” Remus asked, interested, his brown eyes flicked to hers before letting them drop to his hand, which he realised was still lingering near her face. He lowered it haltingly, before letting it stay where it was; whisperingly close, but not yet touching. She could feel the heat radiate off of his fingers. “You passed out shortly after Meryl got rid of the boggart.”
Now, his eyes shot to her.
Hemione felt strange, and her cheeks flushed. She could feel the unasked question burning in the air between them, but knew that he wouldn’t ever ask it. Remus was too courteous. “I remember that,” she paused, and then added, half-apologetically, “I don’t know why it was… what it was.”
Perhaps he could sense her confusion, and then her anger at her confusion, but he let his hand fall gently on hers. “It’s okay.”
She licked her lips. “No, it’s not.”
“Hermione,” Remus began. “It’s not important why the boggart took that form. It just matters that you’re okay.”
She sighed in frustration, wanting to pull her hand away, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. “Of course it matters. It means something. I need to figure out what it means because I don’t know at the moment, but it means something. I know that for sure.”
He stared at her, sucking his lips in, before he shrugged daintily. “If you say so.”
Hermione swallowed, looking away. She disentangled her hand from his, and he sighed.
Her gaze settled on James, who was stood next to Sirius’ bed, clutching something to his chest. “How long have I been asleep?”
Whether or not he knew the question was directed at him, he looked up, eyebrows raised. “It’s lunch soon. You’ve only been asleep a couple hours.”
“Two hours?” Hermione exclaimed. She let her head drop back on her pillow, and a defeated sigh left her lips. “It’s my first day and I’m already slacking!”
Remus huffed a laugh. James snorted. “Don’t worry, you didn’t miss much. You don’t even have a timetable yet, so I doubt it really matters,” he said, trying to console her.
“Still.”
Silence settled over them. It was at this point that Madam Pomfrey decided to check on her patients. The woman moved with the same hurried bustle she had always moved with, but it was obvious she was younger as her actions were somewhat more delicate than they had been in Hermione’s original time. She swarmed on Sirius first, who was still sleeping serenely, and it drew Hermione’s eyes to him once more. It really disturbed her how untainted he looked in sleep.
Remus checked his watch.
“Cach,” he swore gently, wide eyes darting to her. She frowned at his choice of words, and he just blushed and said, “I’ve got an essay for Ancient Runes that has to be in next period. I’ve gotta go.”
He stood up, his chair clattering from the haste, and Madam Pomfrey frowned at him from Sirius’ bed. He didn’t seem to notice however, as he looked at Hermione.
Remus cupped her jaw and leaned forward to give her a quick kiss on the forehead, before he swooped down to pick up his bag, and left the infirmary.
Hermione was frozen, staring at the place he had stood. She reached up, stunned, to let her fingers graze the place his lips had just touched. Why had he done that? More importantly, why was she acting like he had just snogged her senseless? It was just a peck, a friendly peck- that was all.
James coughed.
Her head darted up, eyes wide, like a deer caught in headlights. He wiggled his eyebrows at her.
Hermione coughed.
She changed the subject quickly. “What did he say?” She asked, looking expectantly at James, and trying to control the blush still staining her cheeks.
“Beg pardon?”
“What did he say? Remus. Before he left, he… Well, I don’t know. It didn’t sound English.”
“Oh.” Understanding dawned on his face. “His mother’s Welsh. He likes to swear in the language. I think he thinks it makes him exotic.”
“Exotic?” Hermione repeated, amused. “From a country that rains 365 days a year, and has a population that is 80% sheep?”
“Well, that’s Remus for you.”
Madam Pomfrey stopped fussing over Sirius, who had slept through her medical ministrations, and crossed over to see to Hermione. She looked at the woman, with veiled caution. Madam Pomfrey fluttered, checking her temperature and pulse, conjuring two glasses of two thick, gloopy potions and forcing her to drink them. Hermione had no idea what the point of it all was; she felt perfectly fine, and told the nurse as much.
“You were admitted to me for a reason,” she simply replied, stern and professional.
“Well, when can I leave? I’ve slept, and I’m no longer… troubled,” she argued. Madam Pomfrey sent her a look, which was answer enough.
Hermione sighed.
"You can leave this evening, but I’m keeping you until then,” the nurse pointed her finger at her, before leaving to her office.
As soon as the door clicked to a shut behind her, Hermione let out a long groan, flopping back on her bed. James laughed at her, wrinkling his nose to try push his glasses further up.
With decided and determined actions, Hermione swung her legs off the side of the bed. James sobered up. "What are you doing?"
"She might be preventing me from leaving, but I'm not bedridden."
She hopped lightly down, and tiptoed over to stand beside James. Only when she got this close did she realise what he was holding in his arms. It was a blanket, dark red in colour, with golden lions trailing off into swirls at the corners. It looked worn and loved, and the thread was tangled and fraying at the edges.
"My mum made it," he said awkwardly, in way of explanation. He must have noticed her staring. "For Sirius, when he first moved in with us, for the nightmares. I just- he never really sleeps without it, so I thought I'd bring it to him, you know?"
Hermione felt her heart melt, and she smiled softly. James was a dark pink at the confession. He was still holding the blanket close to his chest.
She reached up and covered his fingers with hers, guiding him to throw the blanket over his best friend's sleeping form. Only, they both seemed to miscalculate the distance, and the cover simply billowed back to them. James' head ducked forward and he laughed slightly. Hermione closed her eyes, grinning.
They looked at each other.
"Well, that worked," she said lightly, sarcasm lacing her words. He smiled.
"Let's try that again," he suggested.
They did, and this time was a little more successful. The blanket actually made it to Sirius' far leg! Hermione leaned over to tug it so it covered his body completely, tucking him in, folding him into the warmth.
She stepped back. James wrapped an arm around her shoulder, and she moulded into him, letting her head fall into the nook of his arm.
"I wasn't in class today, but Peter told me what happened," he said. Hermione closed her eyes. "He was really angry you know. He wanted me to see if you were okay; in fact, he wanted to come and stay with you himself, but he kinda needs to catch up with Charms if he wants to do well... So I told him I'd send my regards."
She huffed a laugh. "You make it sound like I'm dead."
James chuckled, then his arm seemed to tighten. "Meryl shouldn't have done that. How could any teenager ever be ready to face their biggest fear? I mean, come on."
Hermione paused, conflicted. Finally, she offered weakly, "She didn't know..."
"It doesn't matter! What did she think was going to appear? The Easter Bunny? I'm just glad Sirius didn't see-"
He broke off, letting his eyes trail over Sirius' face. His cheek dropped to rest on the top of her head; it was the way Harry used to hold her.
"I just worry about him, you know?" James said, in a strangely strangled voice. "He can only take so much, and I'm- I'm really scared he's reached his limit."
Hermione didn't speak. She knew he had to get this out, and she felt touched that he shared it with her.
"I mean, Sirius... He's tough, but he's got so much inside of him, so much sadness and so much happiness and I think it's gonna destroy him. They're just too different to coexist. They're gonna destroy him. From the inside out..."
She didn't know how to reply. Her eyes were glued to the sleeping boy, and she knew the turmoil he had bubbling under his skin. Hermione hadn't known him well in her time, but Harry had told her enough; but she guessed she'd just put that down to the twelve years he'd spent in Azkaban for a crime he didn't commit. Now, though, she thought that maybe, just maybe, it was something so much deeper than that.
Hermione turned her face into him, breathing him in, and she was once again encompassed by the smell of James. She breathed him in and he was everything warm and safe.
The Hospital Wing doors swung open, and Hermione jumped. They stepped apart from each other.
His beard draped across the floor and his deep purple robes sparkled in the sunlight that pooled in from outside.
Dumbledore walked slowly, but regally, with an effortless grace that he seemed to apply to everything in his life. He beamed at the two of them.
"Mr Potter, Miss Granger! What a pleasure!" He made his way towards the centre of the infirmary. His eyebrows furrowed, but his eyes twinkled. "If I'm not mistaken, you should be in class, should you not James?"
James smiled easily, and it was such a different person to the one she had seen a few seconds ago, that she couldn't help but stare. "Of course, Professor," he grinned, striding to the door, before he stopped.
He turned around and his eyes sought Hermione's. They stared at each other, and she didn't know for how long, but it seemed like for ever. Eventually, he winked, glancing at Sirius, before leaving.
The doors closed behind him.
Hermione couldn't bring herself to look at the headmaster.
"I was hoping to speak to you, Miss Granger," he said. His voice trembled as it usually did, with an undertone of something more, something wise. "I'm glad to see you're well."
She nodded numbly, playing with her hands.
"Why don't we sit down? I wouldn't want Madam Pomfrey thinking I'm trying to interfere with your healing in anyway."
Hermione, without looking at him, crossed back over to her own bed, and climbed into it, pulling the covers up her body. She felt chilled to the bone.
"I supposed you heard what my boggart turned into," she said bitterly. Dumbledore looked surprised, then grave.
"I admit I did, and that is what I came here regarding," he said. "But Miss Granger, I wish you would give me another chance. As a fool of a man, I know that I will undoubtedly make many more mistakes, some of which will warrant you to feel nothing but contempt for me... But please, I have not made those mistakes. I am not the man you knew. I merely wear his face, and carry his bones."
Hermione felt a stab of guilt, fuelled by the tinge of desperation and actual upset in both Dumbledore's voice and words.
She sighed. "You're right."
The old man looked humbled by her admission and smiled softly. Then his face grew solemn, and she knew what he was going to say. "I must confess, I was deeply surprised when I heard the story from Professor Meryl this morning."
"Not as surprised as I was, sir, I assure you."
"I can imagine." He surveyed her quietly. "Miss Granger, I am required to ask, what was your boggart inspired by? What caused it to assume such a form?"
Hermione faltered, looking him in the eye. "Honestly, I have no idea."
He considered this. "Have you ever come across one before?"
"Yes..." She replied, confused at where this was going.
"You have... I see. And what did it show you then, Miss Granger?"
Hermione frowned, remembering, and her cheeks grew hot. "Failure... I had failed all my classes, and I was going to be kicked out of Hogwarts."
Dumbledore hummed in thought. “That’s very different.”
“Tell me about it,” she said, rubbing her temple from the headache that was creeping up on her. Then she paused, a thought entering her mind. Hermione glanced at the headmaster, feeling her throat tighten, and asked hesitantly, “How- how much did Professor Meryl tell you, sir?”
He froze imperceptibly. “Enough.”
Her lips pursed. “And what exactly is enough, sir?”
Perhaps sensing her slowly ebbing anger, Dumbledore sighed and said, “Professor Meryl allowed me to view the scene from her memory. That is to say, all of it.”
All of it.
Those words resonated with Hermione, and she felt her stomach turn uneasily. Despite trying to hold them back, tears flooded her eyes.
“He said I was going to let it burn,” she whispered.
Dumbledore exhaled deeply. “Miss Granger, it was simply a figment of your deepest and darkest imagination.”
Her eyes locked on his, and the blue there seemed dimmer than usual. She shook her head. “Even you know that’s not true. It means something. Something important. I just don’t know what yet.”
“You’re not afraid of Lord Voldemort, are you Miss Granger?” He asked instead, disregarding what she said. Hermione noticed this change of subject, but didn’t comment on it.
Instead, she replied bitterly, “Everyone’s afraid of Lord Voldemort. He’s rather famous back in my time too.”
“But they fear him in a way you do not. You’re fear derives from something that is so much more than fear for your life.” Hermione swallowed, not completely understanding where the headmaster was going with this. He hummed in deep consideration of something. "It seems that what you are scared of is abject. The boggart merely assumed the form it felt would best represent your deepest fear, in hope it would convey the message to you. Since you are an intelligent witch, Miss Granger, it happened to present to you a dangerously tricky puzzle," Dumbledore explained.
Hermione looked at him in warped disbelief, eyebrows knitted together tightly. What was he saying? That her boggart was somehow trying to tell her something? How was that even possible?
“Sir,” she started, before breaking off. “Sir, I don’t understand.”
"Hm, let’s see… An example: what would one face if one's most profound fear was fear itself?" He asked, eyes boring into her in a way that didn't demand an answer, merely a thought. Hermione remembered Harry, and the dementor, and she felt sick. "Nobody knows. Because the fear for each person holds a different meaning, and so the fear would be symbolic." Dumbledore obviously sensed her confusion. "Here, let me explain. A vampire, the type you see in Muggle literature, steps before a boggart, and it turns into the sun; the vampire is not actually scared of the sun, but what the sun represents- daylight, and the burn of the daylight on vampiric skin. You see?"
Hermione did see, but her mind seemed to be slow at processing it. “And so, if a werewolf were to come across the boggart, and it turned into the moon… Its fear would be down to the effect the moon has on the werewolf, not the full moon itself?”
Dumbledore smiled proudly, and nodded.
"So you're saying... That my fear is abstract? Something that can't be properly conveyed by an object. What I saw was symbolic." Dumbledore nodded again, and his wrinkled face wanted to beam, before she asked, "But what was it symbolising?"
He shook his head morosely. "That is the question, my dear."
Feeling like she had been doused in freezing cold water at the revelation, Hermione relaxed back in her bed. What could her subconscious be trying to tell her? Was it something to do with her actions in the past, or in the future? But regardless of these new fizzing questions, it always brought her back to the same one: How was this even possible?
As if reading her mind, Dumbledore said, “Magic is a fickle thing, Miss Granger.”
Hermione huffed a laugh.
He grew solemn suddenly and said, in a delicate voice, “There was something else I wished to speak to you about, something the boggart said.” She watched him, caution bubbling away at her insides. “About you ‘thinking you can change the world.’”
She inhaled slowly, waiting for him to continue. When he didn’t, she said, “Professor, what are you trying to say?”
Dumbledore sighed, caught out. He stood up, and his presence was overwhelming. “I just ask for you to remember what I told you the last time we spoke. Regarding time, and how-”
“Dangerous things happen to those who meddle with it,” Hermione finished for him in a quiet voice. “I know, sir. I haven’t forgotten.”
“Good,” he replied. He stared at her, his eyes bright and piercing, before nodding and saying again, “Good.”
Then, he clapped his hands and announced, “Well, I’m glad you’re all right. We wouldn’t want you hospitalised for your first week at Hogwarts! Ah! Which reminds me…” Dumbledore waved his hand, and a small piece of parchment appeared out of thin air. He picked it up, and held it out to her. She took it; it was her timetable. “Now, you’ll know where to go. I took the liberty of enrolling you for the more advanced classes.” He winked. “You seem like a smart girl.”
And with that, he turned away and started walking out of the Hospital Wing, stopping just before he reached the double doors. Dumbledore looked at her a final time and said, in a wise yet hinting voice, "Remember, Miss Granger: it would not have chosen that form, if it did not believe you could solve the riddle!"
And then he left.
Hermione stared at the place he had disappeared from her sight, her mind precariously blank, before she finally shook her head and looked down at her timetable. It did look difficult- not that she minded, and she was pleased to see that the classes were all classes she would have picked in her original time, if she had had the chance to. Once again, Hermione was struck with that strangely nostalgic feeling, and a bouncing excitement that she would be able to live out her seventh year the way she was supposed to.
A groan from the other side of the infirmary caught her attention. Sirius groggily sat up, eyes bleary, hair all over the place; his hand was tangled in the crimson blanket. He noticed her looking and smiled sleepily.
“How long have I been out?”
“A few hours,” Hermione replied. “How do you feel?”
“Okay,” he said, yawning like a lion. “Pomfrey gave me something that pretty much knocked me out.” Then, he frowned. “Why are you here?”
“I’m suffering from trauma,” she said sarcastically, paraphrasing the nurse’s verdict.
Sirius’ face shut down. “Oh, from Defence.”
“Yeah…”
There was silence.
“Sirius, I-”
“What time are we allowed out?” He asked, changing the topic of conversation and dropping his eyes onto his hands, which were busy picking at a loose gold thread.
“Once Grumpy Knickers in there decides.”
His lips curled to the side, showing that he recognised her attempt at a joke, but could not bring himself to laugh. Hermione sighed, at a loss for what to say.
Luckily, it was at that moment that the aforementioned Grumpy Knickers decided to retreat from her office. Her eyes zoned in on Sirius, and she immediately went about checking his vital signs.
“How are you feeling, Mr Black?”
Hermione watched the teenage boy carefully, monitoring his face for any flicker of tension, but he simply replied with a smooth, “Much better now you’re here, Poppy,” and she was unnerved at how he could switch between emotions in mere seconds. It was scary how someone could hide themselves away, and spin a newer, shinier version of happiness as a wall, to decay behind in private.
And that thought invoked another question, one which had Hermione feeling deathly ill. She looked at him, her eyes tracing the curve of his throat, and the strict lines of his cheekbones, and the curve of his lips as he laughed, but the question just repeated itself over and over again, begging to be brought to attention.
Just how far was Sirius into his decomposition?