Be Silently Drawn || Remus Lupin & Hermione Granger

Chapter 16

Hermione was sitting across from Dumbledore, trying to remain calm but the sudden rush of memory that had overcome her a short while ago was making it very difficult to do so.

"Professor, I remember everything, but I still don't understand."

"Let us start at the beginning, Miss Granger," Dumbledore said. "You have previously described to me that you were at a birthday celebration when the time traveling incident occurred. I believe you were asking a friend about a job he'd been offered."

"Yes. We were out in the garden by the gate," Hermione said, relaying the memory to Dumbledore as it played like a movie in her head. "I asked him about the job, and he said he wasn't sure yet if he was going to take it. Then he asked me about Hogwarts, and I had just gotten some really good news so I told him about it. He congratulated me on my achievement, and he — and he picked a rose from the garden and gave it to me."

Hermione stared down at the chocolate rose she still held in her hands.

"It smelled lovely. Like a rose, of course. But there was the faintest hint of another scent..."

She paused again, thinking about the memory so vivid now in her mind's eye, while Dumbledore waited patiently for her to continue.

"I thanked my friend, and when he said he had to go, I asked him if I would see him at Hogwarts. He told me perhaps, and then he left. Disapparated. I didn't go back to the party after he was gone. I felt strangely compelled to be on my own, to go to bed. So when I went inside the house, I went straight upstairs, but I felt odd while I was walking up the steps, blissfully dazed — like I was in some sort of trance. And I also felt a bit dizzy because of the rose. The whisper of a scent I'd detected before had grown stronger, and it didn't smell like a rose at all anymore. It — it smelled like him."

"Like the friend you had just been speaking with?" Dumbledore asked.

"Yes," breathed Hermione, consumed by the memory of the rose's fragrance and by the same scent of her boyfriend, which still lingered on her from their date earlier.

"What happened next, Miss Granger?"

"I went into the room I was staying in and got ready for bed. Then, while I was lying there, the rose — it started to glow from the bedside table where I had put it. The room was dark, but I could clearly make out the rose, glittering faintly at first, then more and more vibrantly. I wanted to get up and examine it, but my limbs, my eyes, were growing too heavy and I couldn't. The last thing I saw before I fell asleep was a blinding flash of light coming from the rose. When I woke up later, I was at Hogwarts with — with the friend I had been speaking with before. Except he looked much younger, and he had no idea who I was or how I had suddenly appeared. That was when I ran to find you, Professor, because I didn't know what else to do."

Hermione set the chocolate rose down on the desk before her and looked up at Dumbledore anxiously, wondering what he would make of all this.

"Before you time traveled, why did you ask your friend if you would see him at Hogwarts?" he inquired. "Is he a professor?"

"Yes, sir. Well, he was."

The Headmaster nodded and continued to sit there deep in thought, his hands clasped together with index fingers to his lips. Hermione knew she shouldn't interrupt his mental processes, but she had to voice what had been troubling her since she'd regained her memory.

"Professor, do you think my friend could have somehow enchanted the rose to send me back in time?"

Dumbledore refocused his gaze on her.

"Do you believe he would do that, Miss Granger?"

"No, he wouldn't," Hermione answered her own disquieting question with utter certainty. "And he couldn't have, could he? I don't know if that's even possible. Enchanting a rose with the power of time travel would take extraordinary skill and extremely powerful magic. And anyway, the rose seemed like a normal rose. I saw him pick it from where it grew in the garden. It only changed after he gave it to me."