Chapter 40: Ante tempestate placidium
The rest of the summer continued without much mishap. In fact, much of Hermione’s sixth year passed without any major problems.
Hermione avoided Sirius completely, and she particularly avoided James. They had progressed to speaking terms, but they hardly were what you might call chummy. Mostly they spoke to each other because they had to.
Her sixth year was so uneventful, and normal that Hermione often thought that this is what it must have been like for other students, who did not have to worry about horcruxs, or defeating the darkest wizard of all time. For the first time, Hermione was living in the present whilst Voldemort and his henchmen appeared to be laying low for awhile.
Sybil Trelawney had replaced the old Divination teacher. Hermione had panicked slightly when she saw the much younger Professor Trelawney at the staff table, at the start of term. It was only after a few words from Dumbledore that Hermione knew that he had only offered the job out of kindness and courtesy than anything else.
All was, so far, going to plan. They just had to extend that plan to include the final destruction of Lord Voldemort.
HPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHP
On the first day of September in 1977, Hermione caught the Hogwarts Express for the second to last time as she began her final year at Hogwarts school of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
Only to Hermione’s slight surprise, James was made Head Boy. She had already known that it was going to happen, but it had come as a slight shock to Hermione that it was seventh year, and James had not yet been expelled for his behaviour and creative use of Zonko’s products over that time.
Lily Evans had, of course, been made Head Girl. Hermione hoped that this somewhat academic bond between her and James would be the thing that would finally nudge them together properly. Hermione was quite sick of the cat and mouse game that had been going on over the past year, and she would have been delighted to lock them in a broom cupboard together so that they could sort out their differences.
Hermione turned her attention to the conversation that was now being held between her fellow Gryffindor seventh years, in their compartment on the Hogwarts Express.
“Well, Remus,” said Estrella, “gave me the most wonderful necklace. It is made of opals and moonstones, and it is charmed to appear as though it is glittering.”
“What was the occasion?” questioned Alice through a mouthful of chocolate frog.
“No occasion,” Estrella replied with a shrug of her shoulders, “Remus is just thoughtful like that.”
“That’s nice. All that Frank gave me on a whim was a Remembrall.”
Hermione hastily covered her giggles. It was funny that Neville so greatly resembled his mother. She wished that she had been able to tell him all these things about his parents that he had never known. She wanted to tell him that his parents really were as brave as his grandmother was saying. But that was not all that they were. They were smart and funny. Alice’s smile could light up a whole room even when she had burnt through her sixth cauldron in potions.
She wanted to tell Neville that his Dad had been very quiet as a boy, but he had a quick wit that would even have the most annoying Slytherin’s amused for hours.
Having grown up with Neville’s parents, Hermione was sure that they would have been very proud of their son and what he had achieved. If she had anything to do about it, she would be adamant that they would be able to find out for themselves what a wonderful son that they had.
Hermione was pulled back into the present by Lily’s commanding voice.
“Oi! Hermione?”
She waved a hand in front of Hermione’s blank stare. Hermione had not even noticed that she had come back into their carriage from her rounds.
“Huh?”
“I said: how is your love life going?”
Hermione grimaced.
“You know perfectly well that it is not.”
“Is it really that bad?” said Heloise with a look of concern.
“Well, it’s been over a year since Sirius,” sighed Hermione, wincing slightly at how strange his name sounded on her lips. “I guess that it just wasn’t mean to be...I still kind of miss him, though...”
“What a fatalistic way of looking at it all,” said Lily.
“You’re one to talk,” Hermione told Lily. “James has been pining over you since first year, and you won’t look at him twice!”
“That’s not true,” gasped Lily. She quickly clamped a hand over her mouth as she turned the colour of cooked salmon. She had only realised the true meaning of her word when it was too late.
Hermione’s eyes widened when she too realised what Lily had implied. She was sure that the other girls in the compartment had reacted in a similar fashion when she heard Alice say in an awed but slightly shocked voice, “You fancy him, don’t you?”
Lily sat there, her mouth opening and closing comically as she tried to figure out how to respond in a way that would not incriminate her further.
Hermione smirked a little at this, simultaneously thinking along the lines of, ‘Finally!”
Harry was on the path to existence.
The light that was straining through the soot covered windows of the train began to dim, and a Hufflepuff prefect was poking her head around the door, telling them that they were nearing Hogsmeade station.
“I guess I had better go and supervise,” grumbled Lily as she hauled herself from the seat that she had spend much of the train journey on.
“Who are you supervising?” joked Heloise, “The younger students or James? He’ll think himself to be invincible now that he is Head Boy. He probably thinks he’ll never get into trouble again because of it.”
“Oh, shush,” said Lily, once again turning pink as she bustled out of the compartment.
HPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHP
Hermione had been sitting in a quiet corner of the library when she felt the familiar prickle of that back of her neck, as though someone was watching her. She quickly turned her head around, hoping to catch the culprit.
She peered above the tops of the books on the shelf next to her, to find something rather unexpected. It was none other than Remus and Estrella. Snogging. It could not have been them. They were far too absorbed in each other.
Hermione gagged slightly at the sight of what was clearly a very private moment; however she was also pleased that Remus was looking past his ‘affliction’ and that he was allowing himself to be happy.
These thoughts were slightly marred by the fact that they made Hermione think of the future. What had happened to this relationship that had devastated Remus in such a way? Hermione could not fathom the circumstances that led to Remus leading such a lonely life. Granted, he had Tonks, and then their son; but why had he been so way of entering that relationship with her in the first place?
This then made her think of her relationship with Sirius, or rather, lack of. They had not spoken in over a year, but Hermione could not help wondering where they would be now if the scene by the Black Lake had not occurred.
She supposed that they had both reached some level of acceptance that any romantic relationship between them would be extremely volatile.
‘Although, I wouldn’t mind if it did happen,’ she thought.
Hermione stopped short.
‘Did I just really think that? That I wouldn’t mind if we could get back together again. Oh Merlin!!”
Hermione probed her own feelings all the way back to the common room.
‘I did love him,’ she reasoned to herself, ‘and we were together for a long time. It’s just probably some kind of residual feelings that I am yet to let go of.’
When she walked through the portrait hole, and saw him somewhat draped over the back of the armchair that James was sitting on, the flip flops in her stomach were telling her something else.
She still loved him and she wanted him back.