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DISCLAIMER: I don't own Harry Potter, J.K. does, and she has every right to do whatever she thinks is best for Harry Potter. I just love writing. So sue me. Wait, seriously… don't.
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Ignoring the pain throbbing in her head, Hermione instantly bolted up from the bed and blurted out, looking at the guy staring back at her with lazy brown eyes. "Who are you?"
The boy looked at her smugly as he sat comfortably on the chair again, not bothering to ask if she was all right. "Do you have short term memory loss or you just like the sound of my name?"
"What?" Hermione asked unbelievably.
"You seem to be forgetting things within a short span of time." The guy explained, telling her, more than words, that he thought she was playing a joke on him.
"I'm not playing games here." Hermione stated knowingly. "I just have a lot of things in my mind."
"Sure, whatever you say." The guy exasperated a breath. "Cole."
"Cole--that's short for Nicholas, isn't it?" Hermione asked hurriedly.
Cole simply laughed a humorless laugh. "That's what I've been called since I was a kid."
"Who named you?"
"My parents. I look so much like my who-knows-how great grandfather, but with the exception of his eyes, that my dad insisted on naming me after him."
"Why?" Hermione asked. "What color were your grandfather's eyes?"
"Green."
Hermione frowned, and then her heart thumped madly. "Green?"
"Yes, green. Why?"
"Nothing." She said, a little firmer than necessary.
"You know what," Cole said frigidly, "Since you've been asking me who I am since this afternoon, I think it's my turn to ask you who you are."
"You don't know me?" Hermione gasped salaciously.
Cole looked at her coolly, not a slight trace of amusement on his face. "Am I supposed to know?"
She opened her mouth to speak, and then stopped.
After telling her who he was, Hermione had been sure that this guy was an impostor, and a really good one for that matter, playing a trick on her because he had said he was a Potter when everybody else knows that Harry is the last Potter alive. So was it safe to say her true identity to someone she didn't know? "Noelle Sheldon." She finally said, saying the first name that came to her mind, the name that belonged to her neighbors' daughter at home.
Cole shrugged. "What house are you in? Oh, wait. I suppose new students like you need to be sorted first. So have you been under the Sorting Hat, yet?"
She froze amidst his sentence and gaped at him, not sure if what she heard was right. "New student?"
"You are, aren't you?" Cole asked, uncertainly, eyeing her with exasperation.
"What makes you think so?"
"I've never seen you before."
"I don't understand." She stated numbly. "Never seen me before? What are you talking about? Surely you have heard of me and my best friends--don't you think you've seen me once and just have forgotten about me?"
He shook his head and calmly said, "If I saw you before, I wouldn't have bothered going back tonight cause I'm sure your 'friends' would have visited you. So, if you haven't been sorted yet, I guess you'll be tomorrow."
"Tomorrow?" Hermione repeated numbly and suddenly blurted out. "What day is it tomorrow?"
"Tuesday." He said matter-of-factly.
Hermione looked relieved--but only for a moment, because she disturbingly remembered something disconcerting. The day she was supposed to be in if the potion had worked was Friday--so how come it was a Monday?
Unless--unless she was still in her own time and the potion hadn't really worked. But what about the girl in the bathroom? Who was she and where were Harry and Ron if she was still in the present? Deciding to end her personal queries, Hermione took a deep breath and spoke shakily. "What year?"
Nicholas shot her a look of pure speculation and said. "From what place did you come from?"
'From the dimension of the deluded?' Hermione thought sarcastically, thinking that she might as well be considered deliriously incapacitated because she was already occupied with uncertainty at the moment to be considered sane. She sighed and said crossly. "Just answer the question."
"2104." Cole replied casually, crossing his arms, slouching even more, if that was even possible, on his chair.
'2104? Oh, God!' Her eyes immediately grew alarmed. 'Where am I? Who is this guy?'
Cole straightened eyeing her face warily as it got paler and paler by the second. "Did I say something wrong?"
"No, I don't think so." She breathed out when she could, feeling weak and terrified.
"I'll get Nurse Raeford." He said as he stood up.
"Wait!" The word was torn away from her mouth before she could stop herself. "I mean--before you go--can you please tell me how you are related with Harry Potter?"
"Took you long enough, didn't it?" He muttered profoundly. "I'm his descendant."
"Um, professor?" Ron asked numbly as he stared at the aged mentor pacing back and forth in his office.
"Is there something in your mind that you want to ask me, Mr. Weasley?" He stopped and flickered his eyes over to him, his spectacles glinting as the light of the room hit it.
"Yes, I do, sir." Ron replied courteously, which was completely diverting and satirical to the next words that came from his mouth. "How much longer is this going to take?"
"Time is a very imperative matter, Ronald. We cannot just cut through it without waiting for the precise moment." He paused then looked at Harry, who in turn gazed at him with a puckered brow. "I know that I don't need to inform you once more about Ms. Granger's proficiency in Witchcraft for she has already proven it countless of times by now, but I still daresay she is an exceptionally outstanding witch and her will to go back in time must have really been strong as she had managed to cross the threshold of the time zone without a good deal of difficulty. And it would be incredibly good chance for her if she had alighted herself into a set in the place of her own time."
"In the place of her own time?" Harry asked, taking a swig of the Pumpkin Juice he had been offered.
"Close to her own." Dumbledore explained.
"How close?" Ron inquired.
"A few millenniums." Professor Dumbledore informed nonchalantly.
Harry, in surprise of the unexpected answer, accidentally sputtered out the Pumpkin Juice in surprise, while Ron's jaws dropped in awe.
"A millennium! Bloody hell! Oh excuse the language, sir. A millennium?" Ron repeated.
"Hermione couldn't have gotten that far! Or had she? But, what if she's only a millennium away, or maybe even closer, how would that help us?"
"The paranormal resonance bearing that we are to conduct can pass through the corridors of time with no trouble within a close range--as that of a millennium." Prof. Dumbledore said as he read the Tome Aloc Lution Ron gave him. "So, if Ms. Granger landed in a time only less than a thousand years away, we may be able to communicate with her easily."
"And what happens when we communicate with her?" Harry asked, suddenly hanging on to every word the headmaster was saying.
"Well, naturally, ask if she's unharmed, tell her the miscalculations she had committed…and," He paused, staring intently at the page where the potion for traveling through time was. "…the admonitions she had missed to read in the book."
Harry leaned in as different sentiments (surprise, worry and confusion) began playing inside him--not to mention incredulity as he couldn't believe he hadn't already exploded with the so many emotions suddenly churning in him. "Admonitions?" He asked.
"As I said, until we communicate with her."
"But sir, would it hurt to tell us…"
"No, it wouldn't, Mr. Weasley. But it would be much better if the three of you hear it together." Dumbledore interrupted and said no more; a sign that he wouldn't be convinced to do otherwise.
Harry disappointedly slumped back on the chair while Ron buried his face in his hands, thinking how stupid he could have been, not seeing whatever those warnings were.
"Are you feeling all right now, Noelle?" Nurse Raeford asked her, her voice full of concern.
Hermione looked at her with an amused grin and sparkling eyes that caught Cole off guard. "I'm not feeling sick anymore, but I'm in no mood to dance yet."
Cole frowned in bewilderment on why Hermione seemed very familiar to him. Leaning back on the chair once more, he watched in awe as the efficient nurse buzzed around Hermione's bed professionally, giving her as much comfort as possible.
Before she went away, Ms. Raeford turned to Cole and said crossly. "You shouldn't be here at this late hour and neither should your friends."
"My friends?" He asked, confused.
"Before you called me, Mr. Potter, your friends had arrived and I couldn't let them in without Ms. Sheldon's permission. But with you practically standing there, waiting for me to go look at our patient, I couldn't tell you that they were there."
"Oh." Cole said, a grin slowly making its way across his attractive face, causing Hermione to stare at the perfect set of white teeth he had revealed for the first time. "It wouldn't be too late to let them in now, would it?"
"I'm afraid it is. Ms. Sheldon needs a rest."
"No." Hermione countered almost too quickly and added. "I mean--I should have some company right now, since I'm new and everything."
Seeing that she was quite right about that, Nurse Raeford said with a dignified poise. "Well, I'll give you 10 minutes." Then she added sternly, "And don't tell me it's too short because that's the best I can give."
"Oh, no. I don't think it's too short." Hermione said truthfully, thinking about Madame Pomfrey, who only provided 5 minutes as time for visiting Harry whenever he was in the Hospital Wing.
That thought suddenly brought her back to her current situation. Her shock had mellowed to slight alarm as soon as the nurse had given her medication, but the thought that she was a century away from her own time didn't leave her calm at all.
For whatever reason she didn't know, the potion had backfired, sending her into the future instead of to the past. But whatsoever explanation about the rebounding of her concoction was the last thing on her mind right now. Hermione knew her worst problem was how she would be able to go back to her own time without knowing the procedures of that mixture. Sure she remembered the ingredients, but she couldn't recall, no matter how hard she tried, the steps in making that potion.
The book, Tome Aloc Lution, would be impossible to find, since it could've been hidden after being used or passed on from one person to another after a hundred years.
So all in all, her chances of getting back to Ron and Harry were a hundred to 20, maybe even only 10. But as three persons appeared before her, grins flashing in her direction, Hermione pushed these thoughts away and forced a smile.
Two of them, a girl and a boy had flaming red hair. There was a modicum amount of freckles that could be found on the bridge of their noses that both stuck up identically. Their lips were slightly thin and their eyes were mirror images of the color of sapphires. It was pretty obvious to her that these two were twins and it was also as clear as crystal to her that they were the descendants of Ron, or his siblings.
She smiled back at them meekly and turned to the other person who came with them. She was a bit startled as her gaze flew instantly to the flaxen, sleek hair of a very good-looking boy who seemed to be shouting through his blue eyes the name Malfoy.
She doubled back.
A Malfoy, side by side with a Potter and two Weasleys? She never thought she'd see the day that his kin would accept the families, Potter and Weasley. Hermione mentally laughed as she thought of what Harry and Ron would think once she tells them what she found out, if ever she will have the chance to that is.
She shrugged away the feelings that were evoked by that thought and instead, wondered when their conciliation happened--and if it took place between Harry, Ron and Draco.
Cole's slightly soft voice interrupted her probing and motioned to the three people. "This is Erin (jabbing his thumb at the back, to the girl) and Shawn Weasley (then to the guy). Alex Malfoy (nodding towards Draco's descendant), my best friend."
"Hello." Alex greeted her first, his gaze sending goosebumps on her skin as he smiled at her warmly.
Hermione didn't know how to react at first. Perhaps it was the knowledge that Malfoy had always taunted her for being who she was that made her hesitant to extend out a grin at the boy who was probably too nice to be a Malfoy. But she couldn't help but offer her hand to him and hope he would take it and he did.
But as soon as Alex had let go of her, Shawn pushed him aside and winked at her with a very wide smile, showing his ancestor's (Fred and George's) exuberance. Hermione smiled back at him, but only to expose a very wide grin when Erin stepped in front of her brother and smiled sweetly at her while Shawn looked incredulously at his sister.
She instantly liked the Weasley twins, and was a bit surprised that she was in favor of Alex, too. But what unnerved her was the way Nicholas was behaving towards her. He was very cold and distant. And although Harry was also this way at times, he still couldn't alike Cole with him. As she continued to ponder on this, she consistently gazed at the new visitors as they all pulled up a chair and joined Cole beside her bed.
"So what house do you think you'll be in?" Shawn casually built a conversation when the moment's silence among them had passed.
"Gryf-…" Hermione paused. "I don't know yet."
"I hope you're in Gryffindor." Erin said with a sigh.
"I hope so, too." She said. Then with a slight smile, she added. "But you know, I think Slytherin wouldn't be too bad. At least there, I'll be safe from the hands of redheaded twin terrors."
Erin and Shawn stared at her at this proclamation, incredibly surprised at her familiarity, while Alex suddenly regarded her with amusement, as she didn't feel any timidity towards them.
Cole, however, looked at her with a frowning expression, vaguely stating he wasn't as ready to like her as his friends were.
"Where did you come from?" Alex asked out of the blue.
Hermione blanked out for a second. She had no background to tell them except the truth, but she couldn't tell them that since she was at risk of being discovered.
"I was born in England." She decided to stick as close to the truth as possible, but lied about almost everything. "But my family moved to America when I was just 5 years old. When the Wizarding School I was studying in got closed down because of some unknown reason, we moved back here and they entered me in Hogwarts."
"So in the middle of the year, they just closed it down without thinking of the students?" Cole asked skeptically.
"I guess so." She answered with a slight squeak, which, thankfully, wasn't noticed by anybody.
"Do you have any brothers or sisters?" Shawn asked.
"If I had any, then you would be seeing him or her here, wouldn't you?" She countered good-naturedly. Erin chuckled as her brother grinned smugly at Hermione.
"Excuse me…" Another voice interrupted their talk. "I hate to interrupt this lovely banter, but it's close to 9 in the evening and you must be getting off to beds."
"Oh, is 10 minutes up already?" Hermione asked, looking directly at the nurse.
"I don't believe so," Nurse Raeford put in. "But they have to go because the headmistress wants to see you."
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