the_debt_of_time

After class ended, Remus watched Hermione pack up her things. He noticed her
eavesdropping on Harry and Ron, who he could hear were having a conversation about
Malfoy. A conversation that Remus noted he should, as a professor, be interrupting.
"I'm serious, Harry, the next time I see him I'm going to punch him in his stupid
face," Ron announced.
"'Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent,'" Hermione quoted to her friends,
who both looked at her with furrowed brows.
"Did you just call me stupid?" Ron asked, confused.
"Isaac Asimov," Remus said, drawing their attentions back to the front of the room.
At Ron and Harry's perplexed expressions, he chuckled softly. "Hermione was quoting a
famous Muggle author."
"You've read Foundation, Professor?" Hermione inquired with a smile.
"I read quite a bit," he answered, "and I have a knack for memorising quotes. For
instance, 'People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready
to do violence on their behalf.'"
"George Orwell!" Hermione exclaimed excitedly.
"I see you play the game," Remus said with a challenging smirk, nostalgia wrapping
around his heart snugly. "How about this one: 'Violence does, in truth, recoil upon the
violent, and the schemer falls into the pit which he digs for another.'"
Hermione grinned, looking just a bit smug. "Another famous Muggle author. Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle."
"Half right. Wizard."
"Really?!" Her eyes lit up excitedly.
The reflecting light from the nearby window made the chocolate brown or her irises
almost look amber, and the snug comfort in Remus's chest pinched in painful reminder of
who the girl both was and was not yet.
Harry and Ron stared between the two.
"If you're done talking Gobbledygook with the professor, can we go?" Ron asked.
Hermione visibly bristled and then turned around to reach for her bag. Remus
watched as she noticed a piece of paper on her desk that had not been there before. She
reached down and picked up the paper—a chocolate bar wrapper with the Honeydukes
logo printed on the front.