Hermione Granger and the Fate Foretold

Chapter 3: Exhausting

Hermione did not bother searching the house for anyone else this time. She knew she was alone for the moment. Why—how—had she forgotten? It seemed unfathomable that all the new information she had acquired, considering the subject matter and how much time she had spent in that room, could have simply vanished from her head. And as the door of the reading room had disappeared shortly after she had entered, there had been no willing exit. Instead, it was as if some otherworldly energy sensing that she should not have been there had forced her ejection, kicking her back out to her own world where she belonged.

But now, she had found her way back. She remembered the pile of books, four of them still yet to be read and was gripped with a new determination, suspecting that there was going to be significantly less nostalgic and pleasant reminiscing this time around.

She ran out of the kitchen and into the room where her trunk was, hurriedly grabbing a bag and stuffing into it rolls of parchment, bottles of ink, quills, and her wand. Seconds later, she stood breathing heavily before the cupboard and crawled back into the welcoming darkness, her bag repeatedly hitting the soles of her shoes as it was dragged behind her. The voice she had heard before returned as well, punctuating her trek with ephemeral whispers. Just as before, the hallway expanded as she moved forward and soon, she reached the red door and turned the knob.

Almost everything was as she remembered. The fire still burned just as bright, casting its glow throughout the room. On the armchair was the book she last remembered clutching in her arms before she had drifted away. And beside the chair, there was still the small stand that carried atop it the remaining four thick books she had not yet read. She then turned her head to the part of the room she had scarcely paid attention to last time: the giant hourglass. As Hermione eyed the increasing amount of sand in the bottom half (close to a third had already flowed down), she understood. She quickly set her bag down before moving the pile of remaining books to the edge of the stand to make space for her parchment and ink bottle. She opened the fourth book, cover flashing the words Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and began to read, taking care this time to jot down notes and scribble reminders to herself, studying it with a sense of importance and much more enthusiasm than she would any other book.

Initial confusion was forced down as the story began not with Harry, but with an old Muggle man named Frank Bryce. It was the first passages since the Philosopher's Stone that Harry was not present. But as Hermione found, he was still very much at the center of things. Mr. Bryce had met his demise after overhearing Voldemort's conversation with Wormtail and Hermione was soon reflecting on how fortunate it had been that at least part of Voldemort's plan had gone awry.

It had been a dream Harry had. No—she corrected herself. Not a mere dream, but a vision. And this one, at least, had been real. She cast aside the foreboding sense of dread that had materialized at the thought of the many other visions she knew Harry would have. The description of her shrill and panicky imagined response to Harry's scar hurting was hastily passed over and Hermione instead focused on his hesitant tendency to keep these matters to himself. Her lips curved down to form a frown. She had noticed in the text with Dumbledore in the second book, with Lupin in the third. They had both asked Harry if something was on his mind, at times when very pertinent concerns were floating within him. And he had elected not to tell them, worried about how he would come across to them—weak. She remembered how much later it had been when he had finally told her and Ron about his scar hurting over the summer. Even now, as she read his letter to Sirius, he had only mentioned that his scar had hurt and completely neglected to mention the dream because he didn't want it to look as though he was too worried.

"Well, Harry," she spoke into the air. "You're lucky you have me to notice some things at least and force it out of you." Yes, it would take something very distracting indeed, to keep Hermione Granger from noticing things about Harry Potter. But this conviction faltered when she silently admitted to herself a moment later that she could not possibly know everything about him. Mildly cursing her lacking omniscience, she once again glanced with burning curiosity at the two bottom books on the stand.