Out of Time

Chapter 54

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor –
And this, and so much more?

- The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, T.S. Eliot

"What is that?" Draco asks, understandably flummoxed. Hermione's holding it up to the poor candlelight, tilting it back and forth to inspect it. It won't change; she knows this, but she can't stop staring. It's beautiful. So beautiful, pure, full of hope and optimism and everything they need.

"It's felix felicis."

What if she'd had this before they'd been dragged to Malfoy Manor?

They'd had it, of course, but she'd been stupid enough to forget about it months ago. She's not alone in that; they'd all forgotten. The only one of them exempt from it is possibly Draco, who (now that she's begun to recall it all) told Hermione to take it the night the Death Eaters breached Hogwarts. She hadn't. And she'd never had the chance to tell him she hadn't.

One could understandably believe she had. She wasn't even hurt that night. But they'd rolled the dice, not wanting to waste it on a night in which nothing particular happened. By the time things had begun to happen, they hadn't had time to drink the felix. She hadn't even recalled it was there, and it had probably been back in Gryffindor Tower, anyway.

But now... she has no idea what their idea to breach Gringotts might look like. No matter what it ends up being, they now have an advantage none of them had remembered even existed.

* * *

Their first night in the tent has been blissful. Magical, almost, in a way that Hermione would have absolutely ridiculed from the outside. She'd spent months and months in this sodding tent. How could she possibly want to go back to it?

But when placed alongside the sofa of an overly-crowded cottage, one where every occupant had to slink past with a silencing charm to obtain food, it feels damn good.

Hermione and Draco stay in a bunk (not necessarily hers, either; all three bunks come into equal play), revelling in a sense of open acceptance entirely foreign to her lately. They could be anywhere. They could be anyone. Draco plays with this, transfiguring components of the tent's interior into silly things - visuals from ornate hotels in the richest locales Hermione could picture, silent expanses of countryside estate with no one around, the perfect, isolated locales that could be only theirs.

It's all a silly, juvenile farce and she couldn't care less, exalting in the mental and physical break they provide. She rolls in the grass with Draco next to her, clutching her hand and letting her laugh. She straddles his hips in the sand by the ocean, but it's not by Shell Cottage and its cliffs. They're somewhere free and relaxed, maybe in France, surrounded by partially nude Muggles walking around like every day is Tuesday. She laughs behind a cupped hand and he laughs with her, and they collapse in a pile of two together with his hands clutching her close.

Even when she wakes, in a taupe tent she knows too well, it's still just them. And it's all she wants - today, every day, forever.

Do they ever have to leave? Hermione knows they must. Even in a daydream, this can't last until the real world's dangers are dealt with. Forget dreams altogether; wizards and Muggles alike will lose their daydreams and their lives if Voldemort isn't defeated. And if her own mind and body are recovering here, slowly and painfully, it still must culminate in a final payoff sooner or later - or none of them will be able to rest.