Getting the Hang of Thursdays

Chapter 7 - Pete and Repeat Went For A Boat Ride...

By Hayseed

Day One Hundred Twenty-Nine

There was someone in his office.

Blearily, Severus opened his eyes and rolled over in his bed, scrabbling about on his nightstand in search of his watch. What time was it, anyway?

Something in his office banged loudly.

Bugger the time... Severus climbed out of bed and walked through his bedchamber as quietly as he could, a vague plan to catch the intruder flickering in his mind. Still making an effort at stealth, he crept toward the entrance to office, reached his hand into his robe pocket, and...

He mentally swore as his hand encountered only bare skin. Of course he wasn’t wearing his robes -- he’d just been awakened out of a dead sleep.

This, naturally, meant that his wand was currently lying under his pillow.

With a bit of a huff, he turned around to fetch it. Wouldn’t do to --

A definite crashing noise, followed by the tinkle of broken glass.

Damn it, he thought viciously. There’s no time. Reaching out blindly, Severus grabbed the first remotely threatening object that came to hand -- his fireplace poker.

Maybe the sight of their Potions professor clad only in his underwear, waving a rather sharp poker through the air, would be enough to frighten away whoever it was -- he was nearly certain it was a student; a fellow staff member would simply have Flooed him, and he also knew very well that the fact that no one could leave the time-loop meant that no one could enter it either.

But which student? This was certainly a new development in today’s events. In the more than one hundred loops that Severus could remember in any remotely distinct fashion, not once had he been awakened by a student rummaging through his office before.

His hands tightened around the handle of the poker.

The yell he’d been preparing died on his lips as he flung himself into his office. Granger just looked up from her -- his -- bubbling cauldron and shot him a confused look. “Sir?”

Suddenly aware that he was standing in front of her practically naked, Severus lowered his poker and scowled. “Granger?” he exclaimed. “What the bloody hell are you doing here, girl?”

“I’m... erm, brewing a potion?” she replied, still staring at him.

Severus found himself unwilling to budge in order to find his dressing gown and simply crossed his arms over his chest, nearly skewering himself with the poker in the process. It was his office, and if he wanted to walk around in his boxers, it wasn’t any of her business. “Are you aware, Granger, of the time?”

Apparently, she wasn’t willing to budge either. “It’s around four, sir,” she said diffidently.

As he fumbled and dropped the poker on his foot, Severus realized that he’d just lost the upper hand in this scenario, if indeed he’d ever had it to begin with. “Four?” he echoed, trying very hard not to swear. “As in four in the bloody morning?” Dimly, he noticed that the largest toe on his left foot was now throbbing like hell.

“Are you all right, sir?” he heard her ask.

“Granger, it’s four in the morning,” he repeated in his exasperation. “And for some reason, you’re in my office, brewing a potion that I, oddly enough, don’t remember authorizing.” His brow furrowed. “How did you get into my office, anyway?”

“I watched you take down your wards a few days ago,” she said with no small degree of smugness in her tone. “I would have just used the classroom, sir, but you don’t ever seem to take down the wards yourself, so I don’t know them.”

“They’re automatic,” he said. “Moreover, they’re set by the headmaster.” Wait... why was he telling her this? Severus reminded himself that he ought to be raging at the girl, belittling her and deducting points besides. “That is, however, immaterial, Miss Granger. What would you think if I showed up in your dormitory at an obscene hour in order to... brew a potion?” It sounded lame even as he said it, but Severus kept the frown on his face regardless.

Granger just smiled at him, and he decided in that moment that she had overstepped her bounds entirely. “That would be absolutely brilliant,” she exclaimed. “Give the girls the scare of their lives, if you did that. Would you do it, sir?”

With a sigh, he unfolded his arms. “Granger, whatever the maximum number of points I can take from your House in a single day is, you’ve just lost it.”

Seemingly unfazed, the girl merely returned to stirring her potion. “How’s your foot doing, sir?” she asked calmly.

He’d forgotten about it, but now that she came to mention it, the throbbing returned fiercely. He wouldn’t be surprised if he’d broken his toe, but he wasn’t about to tell her that. “It’s fine,” he said through grit teeth. “Now, Granger, collect your things and get out. You have a grand total of ten seconds, starting now.”

“I’m almost done, Professor,” she replied, not even giving him so much as a second glance -- hadn’t she once respected authority when she saw it? “If you’ll just permit me...”

For thirty seconds of absolute bliss, Severus came very close to denying her high-handed request and throwing her out of his office. But his common sense -- and consuming curiosity -- won out; Granger most likely had an excellent reason for being here. She probably never did anything without an excellent reason.

And, what’s more, he wanted to know what it was.

“What are you brewing, Miss Granger?” he asked before he could change his mind, almost walking over to her cauldron but remembering in the last minute that he was still very close to naked.

“The Restorative Draught, of course,” she said. “At least, up until the point Neville’s usually at when Malfoy’s mystery jar lands in it.”

He frowned, puzzled. “To what end?”

Looking rather conceited, she waved a small glass jar at him. With a start, Severus realized that it was the one that Malfoy always managed to throw into Longbottom’s cauldron. “I’m testing a theory,” she said, laying the jar down on his workbench.

“But how --?”

“Borrowed a leaf out of Harry’s book,” she said tartly, giving her cauldron a quick stir.

“Or perhaps a parchment out of his trunk?” he asked with a raised eyebrow. That damned boy and his damned bag of tricks.

“Perhaps,” she replied in a noncommittal voice. “Erm, sir? I’m just about to toss the jar in, and I don’t think you should be in the room.”

He glared down his nose at her. “And why not, Granger?”

Granger appeared to be resisting the urge to roll her eyes with great effort. “Because, Professor, I know that I’m not going to die for many hours yet. You don’t have that same guarantee, unless there’s something you haven’t shared, sir.” She cocked her head and gave him an inquisitive look.

Deciding that it would be easier to capitulate than to argue -- and what’s more, Severus was getting distinctly chilly standing here in his office clad only in his boxer shorts -- he walked back into his quarters in search of warmer clothing. A muffled bang as he fished a set of robes out of his closet suggested that Granger had just added the contents of the jar. Once he was sufficiently dressed, he went back into the office.

A bit of red potion was splattered on the table, and another bit was smeared on her cheek -- that was the only hint that she’d finished her work. “I took the liberty of shielding the cauldron with a charm,” she explained to his inquiring look. “Figured you wouldn’t appreciate it if I plastered your office with a potion.”

“Probably not,” he agreed with a straight face. “Although I did not think that a shield would work -- that was one of the first things I tried to do upon realizing we were...” he trailed off delicately.

Granger, however, didn’t appear to have a delicate sensibility in her head. “Trapped in a fatal time-loop?” she completed with a sarcastic grin. “No... the shield probably wouldn’t work ten hours from now. But I suspected that it might work now.”

“I also notice that you’re not burned,” Severus said, walking over to the table in order to examine her work. “What was in that jar, anyway?”

“Would you believe me if I said it was empty?” Granger asked, giving the potion one last stir. “I think there’s some residue that reacted with the Restorative Draught. And I also think that it might not matter if the jar falls in the Draught, but it’s best to only have one variable at a time, isn’t it? As for the burning...” Fishing around in one of her pockets, she pulled out the hateful Time Turner and laid it down beside the cauldron. “I think that this is what causes that little effect.”

Severus fixed the inoffensive looking object with a nasty glare. “Miss Granger, while I am just as mistrustful of that... thing as you are, I don’t think that --”

“Haven’t you ever noticed that the burning doesn’t start until after the Time Turner is broken, sir?” she interrupted. “I realized it the day that Harry broke it in class. I got the dust all over my hands, remember?”

“Vaguely,” he replied, unwilling to admit that the image of the bloody-handed Granger erupting blisters all over her body as she hovered over the shattered Time Turner was burned into his memory as if it had happened... well... today.

“The potion didn’t start reacting until after it came into contact with my hands,” she continued. “And so...”

“Hrm,” he sighed, considering the hypothesis. “I honestly had not considered that possibility, Miss Granger. Although, in my defense, Time Turner dust is hardly a common ingredient in potions making.”

She snorted. “It’s hardly a common anything, sir -- I haven’t been able to find much on it in the library. And believe me, I’ve spent the past little while researching Time Turners exclusively.”

“Whatever happened to preparing for the NEWTs?” he asked in a snide tone.

Fixing him with a baleful stare, Granger just remained silent.

After meeting her gaze for a long, tense moment, Severus relented, blowing out a sigh as he said, “I’m not surprised, Miss Granger. Time Turners are a relatively new technology.” He wrinkled his nose at her skeptical face. “Granger, apart from the Time Turner, which if I recall was only made available to the Unspeakable community in 1937, the next most recent innovation in wizarding culture was the Invisibility Cloak, more than five hundred years before. A fact of which I am positive you are well aware.”

Granger bit off what Severus assumed was a protest in mid-word.

“Furthermore,” he continued, shooting her a look that smacked of victory, “the use of Time Turners is so heavily regulated by the Ministry that in one way, I’m surprised that you found any information of use at all. What did you find, just out of curiosity?”

Reddening, she looked down into the potion and busied herself with scraping the sides of the cauldron clean. “Just the standard Ministry pamphlet,” she muttered, unwilling to meet his eyes. “Talking about how dangerous they are.”

Severus graciously maintained his silence.

“And how limited. They don’t say, of course, but Professor Dumbledore told Harry when he gave us -- erm, him -- the Time Turner that it can only go about twelve turns... twelve hours back. After that, there are too many causality loops, he said. I gather, from the pamphlet and what Harry was told, that you could go back further, but you couldn’t so much as move from the spot you were in when you flipped, else the potential for paradox would be too great.” Granger continued to swirl the spoon around in her potion rather thoughtfully. “I tried turning it back,” she admitted. “When I began to... remember. I thought that if I could just go back far enough...”

He did not immediately catch her meaning. “For what, Miss Granger?”

Misery was written all over her features. “Maybe,” she began in a near whisper, “if I could go back to yesterday -- the real yesterday,” she clarified with a grim smile, “even if I couldn’t do anything, that just being there...” Granger looked pensive for a moment, but it soon passed, and, clearing her throat, she continued to speak. “It won’t work. I can flip myself back to midnight, but after that... the Time Turner just stops working. I tried it over and over, Professor. It won’t work.” Her eyes were large as she glanced up from her work and Severus did not like their expression.

Struggling to keep his face impassive, he leaned over her cauldron, mimicking her earlier behavior, noting as he did so that watching the red mess bubble as she lazily continued to stir was far more comfortable than actually having to look into her eyes. “Nature does have her tricks,” he said neutrally.

“I have recently come to the conclusion, Professor, that Nature is a cold-hearted old bitch,” she replied with no small degree of bitterness.

“At least, Miss Granger, this has been an educational experience for you, then.”

“In more ways than one.” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Granger’s hand tightening around the Time Turner, suddenly bringing it up into the air, level with her shoulder.

Severus realized in that instant that Granger intended to deliberately smash the thing. An impulse that he did not fully understand taking him, his hand snaked out as his head jerked up from the perusal of her cauldron, fingers curling around Granger’s wrist and halting the descent of her arm. “What are you doing?” he very nearly shouted in her ear. “Have you lost your mind?”

Granger looked relatively unruffled. “I need the dust for the potion,” she said placidly.

“It’s not time yet,” he heard himself say. “The Time Turner doesn’t get broken until --”

“It doesn’t matter,” she interrupted, still eerily calm. “I’ve broken it in the morning, in the afternoon. Other people have broken it. As long as it gets broken, it doesn’t seem to particularly matter how. Although, I suppose I could just carry a sample of the potion around with me for the rest of the day and add the dust to it when the Time Turner breaks later, if you’d rather. Seems awfully inconvenient, though. Besides --”

Vaguely irritated with both Granger and himself by this point, Severus just cut her off. “Fine, Granger. Do what you will.”

“Only if you’ll let go of my wrist first, sir,” she answered, now sounding bemused.

With a start, he realized he was still holding her arm rather tightly in his hand and quickly released her. Granger raised the Time Turner in the air again -- it was still unsettling to watch, no matter what she said. In fact, Severus found that he did not want to watch it in the slightest, and before she could so much as twitch a finger, he’d actually snatched the thing out of her hand.

Granger looked at least as exasperated as he felt. “Professor?” she asked, an edge of irritation sharpening her voice.

Turning the thing over in his hand, careful not to activate it, Severus regarded the Time Turner with open distrust. “Such a harmless little thing,” he muttered, more to himself than to her, as he delicately pinched the stem of the hourglass in between the pointer finger and thumb of his left hand. Severus gave it a quick twist, feeling the glass give way in his grip. “Senseless violence never got anyone anywhere, Granger,” he said in a louder voice, handing her the glass bulb that held all of the dust.

He could have sworn that he heard her mutter, “Would have felt good to smash the bloody thing,” as she tipped the makeshift container over the cauldron and emptied the Time Turner dust into the gently bubbling red potion contained within.

The reaction was immediate and nearly terrifying. Within seconds, the cauldron contents began to smoke, giving off great vents of a sulfurous nature that Severus hated to think they were currently breathing. At half a minute, both he and Granger stared as the cauldron literally started to melt, burning a bright red, then white as the potion continued to froth. Granger’s hands hung senselessly at her sides, and Severus was struck at the notion that the girl had gotten covered with this liquid fire an indeterminate number of times before.

No wonder she’d screamed.

The wooden table under the cauldron was now beginning to char. Simultaneously recollecting himself and remembering that his blasted wand was still under his pillow, Severus leapt forward, grabbed Granger’s wand out of her limp hand, and brandished it at the entire mess. “Evanesco,” he cried, hoping against hope that his all-purpose clean-up spell would work for the horrific potion Granger had just created.

It did, thankfully, and he and Granger watched the cauldron collapse completely, now more or less a pile of molten metal. The table was still gently smoking, and Severus found himself oddly grateful that tomorrow’s today would find it fully repaired.

“Are you satisfied now, Granger?” he asked, not liking the quiet that had fallen between them. He prodded her with her wand in an effort to catch her attention. “Proven the point you were looking to prove?”

“I thought...” she said in a dry whisper, not bothering to take her wand from his hand.

“What?” he interrupted acerbically. “Now that we know just how horrible the potion is, somehow everything is magically better?”

“Well... it is a magical school, after all,” she mumbled, shooting him a wayward glance that let him know that she knew as well as he did what she was saying.

Severus waved his free hand around the room at large, “I see no difference, Granger.”

“What am I supposed to do?” she asked, now glaring up at him.

“What you will,” he replied with a one-shouldered shrug. “But I fail to see how knowing the combination of ingredients that renders the potion fatal will help you break the time-loop.”

“It’s something, isn’t it?” she cried, voice rising a note. “At least I’m trying to do something.”

“Granger, I --”

“I know,” she interjected furiously, “you’ve tried.” Granger managed to put a mocking emphasis on the word ‘tried,’ making it sound very nearly obscene. “And so have I. What do you think I’ve been doing for all of these days, Professor? Just because you’re determined to ‘go gently into this night’ doesn’t mean that I have to.”

“And the results of your efforts have been prodigious, I see,” he could not help commenting.

Granger’s face contorted. “Damn you,” she spat. “God-fucking-damn you!”

Severus ducked as the spoon she’d been clutching in an increasingly tight fist came flying at his head. Malfoy’s glass jar, a bottle of ink, and one of Granger’s textbooks rapidly followed, and he sidestepped them all, dropping her wand as he did so.

He took a cautious step forward, and Granger’s fists raised in the air as if she were about to strike him. “I --” she began, nearly panting for air through her rage.

Taking another step, Severus reached out and wrapped his hands around her wrists once more as she swung her fists at his face, arresting them in midair. “Granger,” he said quietly, lacking his usual venom.

“I...” she said again, less angry than depressed now.

“Granger,” he replied, still gentle. “Hermione.”

Apparently that was all she needed to hear -- Granger’s face twisted, shifting from ire to despair in less than a breath’s span. “I’m...”

“It’s okay,” he said, still holding her wrists.

Even though he was half-expecting an emotional reaction from the girl, it still took him quite by surprise when she launched herself at him, burying her head in his chest. After a few brief moments of shock, Severus realized that the shaking meant that Granger was crying. Another few moments passed and he released her arms, placing one hesitant hand on her back, between her shoulder blades, and the other very cautiously on the back of her head, fingers instinctively entwining in her hair. Granger took this as the invitation it was, evidently, and, if anything, cried harder, burrowing even further into the fabric of his robes. Severus fancied that he could literally feel her hot breath against his skin, through the material. He wondered if he ought to make any sort of soothing noises but decided that she seemed to be managing quite well on her own.

“I’m so sorry,” she moaned into his chest, muffled. “It’s all my fault.”

Ah... perhaps this was the time for noises of comfort. “Granger, that’s --”

She cut him off, tugging at a fistful of his robes as she did so. “It’s true,” she very nearly wailed. “I broke the Time Turner. I took it from Harry in the first place -- Harry didn’t want it... he was worried that... and I’ve killed us all,” she sobbed, shaking even harder.

As cautiously as he could, not wanting to startle the girl in her current state, Severus began stroking her hair. “Come, now, Miss Granger -- Hermione. It’s not as bad as all that. We’ll find a way --”

Again, she interrupted him, looking up at him with wide, tear-stained eyes. “I’ve been trying,” she said frantically. “I’ve done everything I can think of, sir. No matter where I go, no matter what I do with the Time Turner, it always happens. The Time Turner breaks, and I...” She drew in a shaky breath, hiccupping. “I spent three days in my bed, when I first... remembered. I thought if I didn’t go anywhere...” The handful of robes tightened and she turned her face back into his chest. “I think I suffocated. I can’t remember very well. And I tried to sneak into different dormitories, everywhere I could think. But I can’t... I always...”

“It will be fine, Miss Granger,” he muttered to the top of her head.

“It won’t,” she argued in a listless voice. “I’ve thought about it -- the fact that we both know what’s going on, that means that the loop is causing everything to deteriorate even faster. And some of my textbooks have those awful blind spots... it won’t be fine.”

In response, Severus just continued to embrace the distraught girl. She’d given up. She’d given up just like he had, and somehow that made the whole situation worse. Maybe Granger was right. Maybe it wouldn’t be fine.

“Granger, why did you come to class?” he whispered fiercely, wishing he could shake her in his exasperation.

“Maybe, Professor, this is how it’s supposed to be,” she replied in an agonized voice, reaching up with a blistered, reddened hand and touching his cheek.

Severus did not like the look in her eyes but could not bring himself to tear his gaze away. Similarly, the hand burning into his cheek both turned and compelled him. Severus found himself laying his own hand over hers. “No, Granger,” he murmured.

With one final gasp, the girl went still, her hand slipping out of his.

Two thirty-four.