"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.