"What's a Time-Turner?" Harry said again, with the patient persistence of someone who had asked a question and was not going to stop asking it until it received an answer.
Hermione reached into the inside of her robes and produced a short chain with a small golden hourglass, which she cupped in her hand and kept below the table with the instinctive caution of someone who had already been thoroughly briefed about the conditions of its use.
Harry looked at it. Then at her. Then at Ron. "And you knew about this," he said.
"Bill had one," Ron said. "Third year, doing all twelve O.W.L.s. Percy had one as well, two years later."
Harry appeared to file this information in the place where he filed things that surprised him and that he was going to think about later. "What does it do?"
"One turn for one hour," Hermione said, in the concise tone of someone who had the briefing fresh and was delivering the relevant parts. "It allows you to attend classes that are timetabled simultaneously. McGonagall applied to the Ministry on my behalf in June." She paused. "The conditions are very specific. It is not to be used frivolously. It is not to be seen by anyone outside the necessary parties. It is absolutely not to be used to change events."
"She must have been very clear about the last one," Ron confirmed.
Harry looked at the hourglass for another moment, and then at Hermione, with the expression he had when he was doing the mental arithmetic of something. "How many classes are you taking?"
"All five electives," Hermione said, with the calm certainty of someone who had made this decision and was not reopening it for debate. "Arithmancy, Ancient Runes, Care of Magical Creatures, Divination, and Muggle Studies. Plus the seven core subjects."
Harry processed this. "That's twelve subjects."
"Yes," Hermione said.
Ron looked at the Time-Turner, still cupped in Hermione's palm, and thought about what he had learned from Bill and Percy and had been thinking about since June — about the difference between a schedule that was theoretically manageable and one that was actually being managed by a person who also needed to sleep.
"Bill and Percy both dropped two subjects," he said. Not as a preamble to an argument. Just as a fact, offered in the way that information was offered when the person receiving it was going to do what they were going to do regardless, and the most useful thing was to make sure they had what they needed when the time came. "Both of them said the first month was the worst — before they understood which parts of the schedule were genuinely necessary and which parts could be compressed. Both of them gave the Turner back early, in the end. Not because they were failing. Because they decided that arriving at the examinations having slept properly was more useful than arriving having covered every possible supplementary reading."
Hermione was listening with the focused quality that meant she was filing everything, which was different from the expression she wore when she was being told something she had already decided not to apply.
"That's not me telling you to drop anything," he said. "You'll work that out yourself. I'm saying — Bill and Percy are both extraordinary at what they do, and both of them found it harder than they had anticipated, and both of them came out the other side having made adjustments. That's the information. What you do with it is up to you."
Hermione was quiet for a moment. Around them, the Sorting was concluding, the last of the first-years making their way to their tables with the slightly stunned quality of people who had just been placed in a category that was going to define the next seven years of their life. The Hall was filling with the warm noise of a community returning to itself.
"I'll note that," she said finally, in the tone that was Hermione's version of I have heard you, I'm not changing my immediate plan, and I reserve the right to refer back to this when it becomes relevant.
He nodded. That was enough. He wasn't trying to win anything. He was trying to make sure that when the first month arrived and the adjustment needed making, she had the information ready to make it without it feeling like defeat.
"Don't wear it where Crookshanks can get at the chain," he playfully added.
Hermione looked at Crookshanks, who was watching the Time-Turner with the assessing attention of a cat who had just been accused of having intentions and was neither confirming nor denying.
"Noted," she said smiling, and put it away.
The feast arrived.
Dumbledore's start-of-term speech had the quality it always had — the specific warmth of someone who genuinely liked the people they were speaking to and found the occasion worth marking properly. He went through the usual structure: welcome back, welcome to the new students, staffing changes, the things worth knowing about the year ahead.
The Dementors warranted their own section.
"The Ministry of Magic," Dumbledore said, with the careful precision of someone choosing every word deliberately, "has stationed Dementors at the boundaries of Hogsmeade village for the duration of this period of heightened security. They will conduct searches of the Hogwarts Express at the start and end of each term." He paused, and the pause looked like an old man who had spent a long time thinking about how to say what he was about to say. "They will not be stationed on school grounds. I have been very clear with the Ministry on this point, and we have arrived at an agreement that I find adequate and that I will be monitoring carefully."
The Hall received this with the uncertain quiet of people who had information they didn't know the full weight of yet.
"I would ask all students to remain within the school grounds outside of organised Hogsmeade visits. When those visits do take place, prefects and staff will accompany all groups at the village perimeter. The Dementors' effect can be mitigated, and the staff who will be accompanying you have been briefed accordingly." He looked out at the Hall with the steady attentiveness of someone watching for specific faces. "Should any student find themselves in proximity to a Dementor outside of those controlled circumstances, the correct response is to move immediately toward the nearest lit and populated area and to report the encounter to a member of staff."
His eyes moved, very briefly, to where Harry was sitting. Harry's expression had the quality of someone who had been given information he already had via a harder method and was receiving the official version with the patience of someone who could afford to.
"The Patronus Charm," Dumbledore continued, "is the effective defensive response to Dementor exposure. It is challenging magic — above the level we would normally teach in the general curriculum — but it is not beyond determined students. If any of you wish to learn it, I would encourage you to speak to Professor Lupin, who has considerable expertise in this area." He smiled, fractionally, in the direction of the staff table. "He is, I understand, a willing teacher."
Lupin, at the staff table, had the expression of someone who had been briefed on this mention and had accepted it with the quiet resolution of someone who had decided what their priorities for the year were.
Ron took a photograph of the staff table — Lupin at the end of it, looking out at the Hall with the expression of someone who had arrived somewhere they had not expected to arrive and was still determining what that meant. It was not a dramatic photograph. It captured something true, which was worth more.
"Finally," Dumbledore said, "it is my very great pleasure to introduce Professor Lupin, who joins us this year as Defence Against the Dark Arts professor. Some of you will have encountered him on the train this evening. Those who did not will have the opportunity shortly." The pause of someone who had been making speeches for over a century and understood the value of the beat before the last line. "I suspect you will find the experience worthwhile."
He thought about the compartment and Harry's face and Lupin saying it would have been good with twelve years of weight in it, and thought that worthwhile was a significant understatement but would serve.
The feast arrived properly then — the tables filling with the specific abundance of a school that understood that returning was an occasion — and around him the Great Hall became what it was supposed to be: warm and loud and full, the four houses occupying their respective territories with the comfortable familiarity of people who knew exactly where they belonged.