Chapter 316: The Flaw of Comparison and The Hourglass Secret

For three seconds, Hermione Granger looked as though she had been struck by a localized lightning bolt.

Her breath hitched, her chest heaving violently beneath her heavy cardigan. Her face drained of all color, only for a furious, humiliated crimson to rush back into her cheeks in an explosive wave.

"How..." she choked out, her voice trembling with an agonizing mix of rage and heartbreak. "How dare you?!"

She shot up out of the velvet armchair, her chair screeching against the floorboards as she stood towering over the mahogany table, glaring down at him with tears spilling freely over her eyelashes.

"How dare you presume to know me, Malfoy?!" she shouted, her voice cracking, echoing violently off the walnut-paneled walls. "You sit there in your tailored robes, sipping your tea, analyzing me like a specimen under a microscope! You have no right! Absolutely no right!"

She balled her fists, her bruised knuckles throbbing, but she was too distraught to care.

"You might say all of that!" she screamed, the dam of months of repressed inadequacy finally bursting. "You can sit there and critique my reactions! But not everyone can be as effortlessly perfect at studies as you are! Not everyone can master N.E.W.T.-level Transfiguration in their second year! Not everyone can walk around acting like an untouchable, invincible prodigy who is magically prepared for every single crisis this world throws at them!"

She was panting, sobbing, staring at him with a desperate, bitter accusation.

Orion didn’t flinch. He didn’t raise his wand. He didn’t even set his teacup down.

He simply looked up at her standing over the table, his dark indigo eyes cool, steady, and utterly immovable.

"And you don’t have to be like me, Granger," Orion said softly.

Hermione froze.

The shout died in her throat. The furious momentum of her tirade slammed into a brick wall of absolute, gentle indifference. She stared at him, her mouth slightly open, tears hanging on her chin.

"Is that what this is?" Orion asked, his voice dropping into a quiet, instructional murmur. "Are you genuinely standing there, exhausting your nervous system, because you are comparing yourself to me?"

He tilted his head, letting out a slow, heavy breath.

"I am a fundamentally paranoid person, Granger. I assume catastrophe is around every corner. Yes, I am prepared. But I also fumble. I hit roadblocks. I spent an entire month failing to cast an advanced spell in my bedroom, and I have spent countless, grueling hours training my body and mind to the absolute brink of exhaustion just to survive."

He leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table.

"You have zero comprehension of the reality of my private study sessions, or the sheer, relentless discipline of my training. And the most important part, Hermione... is that you should not care about it in the slightest."

Hermione blinked, the tears blurring her vision, unable to process the lack of mockery in his tone.

"My growth, my training, my preparation... that is what makes me me," Orion stated flatly. "It is my path. It is my burden. You, on the other hand, should remain Hermione Granger. The girl who reads the books front to back, yes. But more importantly... the girl who is actually smart enough to look around her environment and realize that there are a dozen different ways to solve a problem, rather than panicking because the single answer you memorized isn’t working."

He watched her.

The fight completely drained from her posture. Her shoulders slumped forward, her fists unclenching, her head bowing beneath the weight of his words. She looked small, frail, and entirely shattered.

Slowly, her knees gave out, and she fell heavily back into the velvet armchair, collapsing into the cushions as if her strings had been cut. She buried her face in her hands, weeping silently, her narrow frame shuddering with every breath.

From the rug near the hearth, Crookshanks finished licking his whiskers.

The heavy ginger half-Kneazle trotted over, leaped gracefully onto the armrest of her chair, and settled his thick, warm body directly onto her lap. He began to purr, a deep, rhythmic rumble, pressing his flat face against her wrist.

"You alright, sister?" the cat asked through the All-Speak, his tail wrapping around her knee.

Hermione didn’t push him away. She didn’t answer. She merely buried one trembling hand in his thick fur, anchoring herself to the physical reality of her pet.

Orion sat quietly, watching the display of raw vulnerability.

The only reason she hasn’t bolted from this room, Orion noted internally, is because on some deep, subconscious level, she actually trusts me. I saved her from a Troll in our first year. And I threw myself between her and a Dementor’s Kiss in Hogsmeade. If anyone else in this castle had spoken to her with this level of brutal honesty, she would have fled ten minutes ago.

He let her cry for two minutes, waiting until the ragged sobs subsided into quiet, exhausted sniffles.

Hermione pulled a handkerchief from her cardigan pocket, wiping her eyes and blowing her nose, staring fixedly at the mahogany tabletop, refusing to meet his gaze.

"You are a remarkably brilliant witch, Granger," Orion said softly, breaking the quiet. "Truly. Your capacity for theoretical retention rivals my own. But... you are trying far too hard to be someone you are not."

Hermione sniffled, stroking Crookshanks’s back, her voice barely a whisper. "I have to be."

"Why?" Orion challenged gently. "To prove to the pureblood bigots that a Muggle-born can outwork them? To prove that you deserve to stand in this castle? Is that why you are pouring every waking second of your existence into your electives?"

He leaned in, his gaze sharp and knowing.

"Is that why you stubbornly chose to take every single subject on the curriculum? Why you stretched your schedule past the point of biological sanity... to the point where you actually managed to convince Professor McGonagall and the Ministry to hand you a freaking Time-Turner?"

The air in the Room of Requirement instantly froze.

Hermione’s hand stopped mid-stroke on Crookshanks’s fur.

Her head snapped up.

Her brown eyes were wide, dilated with an absolute, heart-stopping terror that far surpassed anything she had felt when she punched Cormac McLaggen. Her jaw dropped, the color draining from her face so completely she looked like a ghost.

"You..." Hermione choked out, her voice failing her, her hand instinctively flying to clutch the secret, golden chain hidden beneath the collar of her shirt.

"You know about the Time-Turner?!"