Fifteen Minutes

A/N: Profuse thanks to my beta Caren, who not only helped me with this story but suggested I write it in the first place!

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It wasn't working this year. Every year since, as the still heat of July waned and faded listlessly into the still heat of August; every year Hermione had done the same thing. Every year she had distracted herself, searching for the perfect birthday present to give Harry. It had worked well for the past two years. It wasn't working now.

Hermione sighed as she stared out her bedroom window, clearly not seeing the well-kept garden outside. Thinking about Harry's birthday didn't help this year. Thinking about Harry made her think about Sirius, and he brought it back all over again.

It had started, she supposed, during her second year, when she was lying petrified in the Hospital Wing. Mum had sent a letter, but she hadn't been able to read it. Professor McGonagall had kept it for her, unopened, in a pile of other letters. Hermione had finally read it, but not until the middle of June. She did not have time to for it to sink in.

Mum and Dad had talked to her about it on the ride home from Platform 9 3/4, but they had been bent on keeping everything as normal as possible. Mum hadn't been dealing with it too well, and Dad felt she needed to get away. No one had asked what Hermione wanted; Gran was the only one who ever did that. They left for France two days after Hermione came home. There was no time to visit; they just left.

Their month long holiday from reality had been lovely, at least until that morning when Aunt Eleanor called the hotel. Dad, at least, was finished with denial. The cancer was taking over. Gran was dying, and Mum needed to be there. No one mentioned Hermione; it was Gran who would have done that. The family had left for England immediately.

The next day had been July 31st, Harry's birthday. Hermione didn't think about him once. All her thoughts had been focused on Gran. She remembered that day so clearly. She remembered the horror of that night, when Gran had fallen into a coma. She had not been allowed in the room; Mum hadn't wanted her to see it. She remembered being awoken early on August 7th, long before the sun, to be told by her father that Gran had passed away. She remembered the funeral and how she had held back her tears until after the final hymn. It had been Jerusalem, Gran's favourite. She remembered her silent goodbye as Margaret Jane Rathbone was lowered to her final resting place. Most of all, Hermione remembered those fifteen minutes, the fifteen minutes she had spent with Gran on the final day of July.

It had been three years now, three long years. Those fifteen minutes were ready to come out. Hermione reached out and grabbed a quill and a red leather journal. She paused to hug the journal to herself, inhaling the scent of the leather before lowering it to her lap. With her finger she slowly traced the figure of the unicorn embossed upon the front cover. It was red like the journal, a proclamation of the place of those fifteen minutes in her life. Hermione eased the cover open and, although the journal was empty, turned gently to a page in towards the centre. Never before had she been so slow to open a book. Dipping her quill in her inkwell, she began to write.

Dear Gran,

It comes back to me every year. Each year as July fades to August I remember that day. It was wonderful and horrible. I can't forget. Mum and Dad said so little about what was happening to you, so little about the cancer. I thought that meant everything would be fine. I was wrong.

It was a beautiful day; the air was hot and still. Or maybe it was the house that was still. Or maybe neither was still at all and it was I who was still inside. I tiptoed through your house. Your house, where I had so often laughed, so often cried; your house, where we would sing in our terrible out of tune voices when no one else was there to hear. Your house is empty now; empty and waiting. Waiting, I suppose, for me to come back. It is a house of memory, and a house that I love. It is also a house of sorrow.

I couldn't even look at you. Instead I stared at the dresser and its rounded wooden knobs. I spent precious minutes staring at those knobs. They were red. Or white. I don't remember. They were there.

Then there was you: the queen upon the hospital bed, so incongruous with the rest of your home. Your silvery hair dissolved into fluff, solidity faded to translucence; your face-- there was nothing but wrinkles; wrinkles and eyes. I knew the queen but not the hospital bed, the eyes but not the face. Blue grey. The blue was your warmth, your playfulness, your compassion. The grey tempered the blue; made it strong, made it regal. Your eyes-- as soft as the pale fuzz that covered your head. I had to look into your eyes, or I could not have borne to look at you.

Hermione paused and sighed, looking up to gaze at the light playing upon the rounded leaves of the tree outside her window. Memories flooded back. She hadn't told her friends about Gran. It would have been too cruel to tell Harry, who had no real family to lose. She hadn't dared tell Ron for fear that he would tell Harry. At least that was the reason she had given herself. Had she been more honest with herself she would have known that she did not ask Ron because she was so afraid that he would not care.

Harry and Ron were always amazed by her enthusiasm and eagerness to start school in September. They had never known the real reason. Her first two years, she supposed, she had been excited to learn. Since then the joy of learning new spells was only an added bonus. Hermione loved returning to school in September was because it meant the end of August, the end of painful memories. Preferring them to think her overzealous, she had never explained to her friends. They did not need to know. Harry and Ron had realized that something was wrong, but when they found out about the Time-Turner they had assumed that she had told them. She had never had to explain.

The Time-Turner had been a stroke of luck. It had been the perfect excuse, as she had realised when Professor McGonagall gave it to her the first day back. When she had been tired and drained, all the teachers had assumed it was due to the Time-Turner. Only Professor McGonagall had seemed to suspect anything, and then only after she had discovered Hermione asleep in the Transfiguration classroom, dried streaks of tears on her face. She had been concerned, but she hadn't taken any points, despite the late hour.

Hermione shuddered. Third year had been a nightmare. She had kept so many secrets, pretended so hard that everything was as it had always been. She had been so alone, caught in the past with fifteen minutes-- fifteen minutes she had lived a thousand times. But now, in light of all else that had happened, …now those fifteen minutes made sense. They did not hurt anymore. They were hers. Glad in spite of her pain, Hermione bent once more over her journal, and once more she began to write:

It was the shortest fifteen minutes of my life. It was also the longest. It was the most hopeless and the most hopeful; the saddest and the most precious. We spoke much and said little. I said only two things that were important: I told you for the thousandth time that I loved you. And you told me for the thousandth and first that you loved me too. I also told you that I missed you. It had been two years since we'd really had time together. I used to go to your house almost every day after school, but since I started Hogwarts I hadn't been able to do that. It had been two long years since our afternoons had ceased. Two years was forever, or so I thought.

Of what you said, I remember only the ideas and not the words themselves. It would happen this way, wouldn't it? The one time in my life when I would give anything to remember the exact words is the one time I cannot remember them. I do, however, remember perfectly what you did. I remember how your eyes fixed on me, how hungrily they sought me. Most of all I remember how you held my hand. It was after I bent down and kissed you, just before I was about to leave. I didn't expect it. You reached out and took my hand. And you squeezed, harder than I would have thought possible. I looked at the sheets of your hospital bed; I could not look at you. If I had, I might have known.

You knew. You refused to let me go. You did not tell me, but you knew. Instead you left me this memory, so that later I would know. Later, when you were not there to tell me for yourself. I did not understand, or at least I didn't want to. A week later I knew. The day Dad woke me up at 4 a.m., the day Mum stopped pretending you would stay. I'm sorry, Gran. I'm so sorry. I thought I'd have another chance-- another chance to say goodbye.

Hermione

It was good, oh so good, to share those fifteen minutes, even if she only shared them with a book. A small smile danced around her lips, a shred of joy in a moment of sorrow; for much of her life, books had been her truest friends. But books did not share experiences; they only recorded them. Books could not hug her back.

She hugged the journal tightly to her chest before placing it upon her carved cherry nightstand. Absently she traced the tail of the red unicorn as she gazed out the window once more, absorbed by the movement of the light as the leaves on her tree were tossed in the wind. August was approaching, and with it her departure for Spinners End, the new headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix. Perhaps… perhaps with August would also come the time to share, the time to allow the memories to have their place. Hermione nodded slowly to herself and peace settled upon her face. Gran would have wanted it.

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