Disclaimer: None of this belongs to me (except for perhaps the plot). But you knew that.

One other note: This is in progress of being revamped, which is why this chapter may seem better than successive ones. In case you were wondering.

Time Defyer

Chapter I: Bevroren

"But Professor, I really do need to finish this potion," Hermione pleaded. "It'll just take ten minutes, I promise. Please may I?"

Snape sneered at her, his beady black eyes expressionless. Apart from contempt, that is. Hermione wondered if the man had ever possessed anything but apathetic derision before. She doubted it. "No," he replied coldly. "Now run along before I take points away from you for annoying a teacher. Put away your ingredients first and then leave this room."

She looked at him with deepest disgust as she rounded up the various components to the potion they had been working on and darted up to the cabinet, storing them quickly back where they belonged. From experience she knew it was quite best not to linger. Slinging her bag over her shoulder, she walked over to the door, but paused with her fingers on the handle. She cast a glance toward the cabinet again and then calculated how long it really would take her to finish her potion, finding her previous estimate was correct.

Her eyes cast to the floor in apprehension about what the small diabolical part of her mind was telling her to do, she finally made up her mind. Turning around on her heel, she gave Snape a grimace. "Sorry, Professor," she said. His mouth opened in scolding, but before any sound came out, she muttered, "Bevroren."

Unable to help a little smile escaping her at the genius of her spell, she took no more than five seconds collecting the ingredients that she'd replaced a minute or so ago and rushed out of the room before Snape unfroze (she didn't know exactly how long the spell lasted; after all, she'd just found out about it that afternoon) and skinned her alive. Or, worse, taken points from Gryffindor.

Eight minutes and seven floors later, Hermione rushed into the dormitory that she shared with the other Gryffindor girls of her year. Seeing as how it was the start of dinner, the room was all to herself, which suited Hermione just fine. Taking an unnecessary glance around the place, she locked the door and then placed all the ingredients on her bedside table. She set up the cauldron and conjured a fire underneath it, quickly pouring the liquid of the potion she'd started on, where it quickly was brought to a boil.

After adding the herbs and creature parts the splattered book required (but leaving out one), she smiled as the concoction slowly deepened to a pearly blue-green color that smelled absolutely delectable. Which would make it that much easier to swallow. Without a second glance, she poured the contents into a glass vial and stoppered it, stowing it in her pocket where she knew she'd access it soon.

Not wanting to have herself found out, she Vanished the fluid, extinguished the fire, and stowed her cauldron next to her bed; she wouldn't be needing it where she was going. Stuffing a change of clothes, Hogwarts, A History, a picture of her, Ron, and Harry, and a notebook and pen where she knew she would document her adventures into her bag, she raced out the now-unlocked door and down to the Great Hall. Saying goodbye would be hard, but she knew the reason for it was well qualified.

"Hermione, what took you so long?" Ron asked her as he ate a bite of sausage. As per usual, he didn't wait to swallow before asking a question.

Hermione glared at him, and Harry also cast him a look of mild nausea. Even Harry had his limits on how much grossing out he could take. "Really, Ron," Hermione admonished as she started filling up her plate. "Could you please finish your food before speaking? It is not nearly as endearing as you may think it is."

Ron made a face at her but swallowed nonetheless. "That didn't answer the question," he said.

Harry looked at her with curiosity. "Yeah, where were you?" he said. "You had Potions last, yeah? I would have thought you'd've scampered out of there just as everyone else."

"Oh, fine, you don't have to beat it out of me!" Hermione relented. "I had to retrieve my potion from his class and finish it up in my dormitory. Hence my tardiness."

"Somehow I doubt Snape let you just take it out of the room," Harry said suspiciously. Hermione looked at him in guilt. "Hermione, what did you do?"

Looking at their accusingly prying faces, she knew she'd not be able to lie to them. "What would you say if I told you Snape potentially may have possibly froze as he started to reprimand me?"

Harry and Ron exchanged a look before turning back to her, mouths agape. "Are you admitting you performed a spell on a teacher?" Ron gasped.

"I wouldn't put it quite so harshly, but you've got the gist of it," Hermione replied snappishly. "And anyway, it was a necessity."

"And how is attacking a teacher a necessity?" Harry questioned. "Even if it is Snape, that isn't exactly orthodox, Hermione, let alone for you."

"It was a necessity because if it wasn't done by tonight at sunset it wouldn't have worked," Hermione said. "It would have taken another three months to have all the elements ripe and brewed."

"You've been working on this for three months?" Ron asked.

"No, Ron," Hermione retorted in exasperation. "I only found the book today. By luck, Snape had everything in its prime so I got to skip those months. Were I to have to rebrew it, it would take that much longer."

"Okay, what potion is this, then? What potion, pray tell, would cause you to go to such lengths?"

"It's called a Defying Time potion," Hermione answered proudly. Ron and Harry cast her blank looks, but this time Hermione couldn't exactly blame them, considering she hadn't known about it either. "Basically it allows the user to go back up to thirty years in the past or future, depending, of course, on if you add the Essence of Cremlyte or not."

"Okay, pretending I know nothing about how obviously Dark and Restricted that book and potion is, you're not seriously thinking of using it, are you?" Harry lectured incredulously.

"Oh, of course not," Hermione said sarcastically. "I was only doing it for the hell of it. It's a wonderful air freshener."

Harry sighed heavily at her sardonicism. "So why exactly would you need to go thirty years to the past or future? I mean, it's not as if there was a huge change in the world," he said. "Granted, the sixties were a little sketchy, the whole LSD thing lasting into the seventies, and the future probably won't alter the entire planet by 2026 (okay, perhaps, but that's beside the point)…so what do you need to find out?"

"Well, first of all, I'm not going to go thirty years," Hermione edited. "More like nineteen or so; I left out those pesky Cremlytes. There's just something I wanted to figure out."

"And what's that exactly?" Ron asked warily.

Hermione gave the both of them a beatific smile, taking one last swig of pumpkin juice. "I'll tell you when I get back, I promise," she said, smiling fondly.

"Don't you dare, Hermione!" Harry seethed.

But it was too late—before he could grab her, she had uncorked the bottle and downed it in one gulp. In front of Ron and Harry's very eyes, she vanished in a puff of amber smoke, the two men staring at it in amazement. They hadn't even got a proper look at the glass bottle—just the hint of a bright blue liquid before it, too, vaporized. Had they been able to look around, they would have found that not one soul noticed. Later, they would go on to think that either they'd imagined the smoke, or else it was only they meant to see it.

Well, I hope that was a better chapter than beforehand. It's only slightly longer than the original, but oh well. Of course if there are new viewers to this story, you'll have no idea what I'm talking about, but for those of you who decided to bless me with returning here, you'll know what I mean. Anyway, drop a review if you feel so inclined, and I'll be returning with a newly edited chapter in the near future.