17 Chapter - 17 :Paradigm

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She wanted to deny the knowledge, but knew he didn't meant it. Still, it was nice to hear it, even if it was just him joking. And it was nice for him to play at flirting with her. It made her feel less frumpy and unlovable. Although she desperately wished it could be real, and couldn't quite squash all hope it was.

"Well, now we're late." Harry sighed, looking at his watch. It was a purely mechanical on that could work inside the magic fields of the castle. "C'mon, we'll spin back two hours, and spend forty minutes of it in the library."

Hermione sighed and licked her lips, a little disappointed the teasing was over, even though it had been more than she could bear at times. Finding her courage, she took a step back into old habits and scolded, "We'll just have to be late. Professor McGonagall made me promise not to use it any more than necessary, and specifically mentioned I was not to overuse the library."

Harry took his own necklace, brought her close, and looped it around both of their necks, an arm around her waist to keep her near and tight. As he spun it back the two hours, he calmly argued, "But what is necessary? Tell me, oh divine Hermione. How long is a day?"

"Twenty four hours," she answered primly, then sucked in her bottom lip. "Divine Hermione?"

"I've got to practice our act." He winked saucily at her, exactly the sort of thing that made her unsure of whether he was kidding her or not. Argh! When did Harry get so confusing?

"And how long is a typical working day?" he continued, not yet releasing her.

She tried hard to ignore that part, licking her lip again. "Eight hours. Actually nine, but that includes an hour for lunch, and doesn't account for commute or traffic. Some people have to work longer, but it's generally agreed that's not healthy. So it can't count as average, only extreme."

"Exactly!" he gave her a little squeeze, then released her and took his chain off from around her neck (actually disappointing her a lot as they lost that close contact). "Do the math yourself. Employers ask everything they can get out of their employees without doing lasting harm. Over centuries, more has been tried and tested over and over again, but what they can get away with without 'lasting harm' has been determined to be about eight hours of work a day. That leaves two hours of taking care of yourself and sleeping for every hour of work."

He swept her out of the broom closet into the now-empty hallway, and led her by the hand down the stairs a little less than an hour before Divination was to start, chatting all the while, "More work changes those proportions, so demands more support time to compensate to avoid becoming unhealthy. Say our two extra classes only add on four extra hours of work, two sitting in the room listening to lectures, and another hour apiece doing homework. That's a fairly standard program. But to maintain a healthy paradigm, we must have not only those four hours, but another eight in addition to them: four for sleeping, and four for doing whatever, taking in an extra meal and playing around I suppose, just to stay happy, healthy human beings. Anything less does lasting harm, as has been proven by what we've already discussed."

Hermione was thinking hard, chewing on this argument he'd offered. "Yes, I suppose I can see that," she allowed, then spoke doubtfully, "But that's not going to be easy to adjust to. Our bodies have a certain rhythm of their own. Mom always calls it our Body Clock. It won't be easy going to thirty-six hour days, even if we are getting a large enough proportion of sleep."

"You know? You're absolutely right," Harry agreed. "The body has a wisdom all its own. We should listen to it. After all, they are right about most things concerning them. Well, that settles it, then. Twenty-four hour days it is!"

"But that way we'll never get to all our classes!" Hermione halted, objecting.

Harry allowed his momentum to carry him around to face her, grinning. "Ah! But you misunderstand me! I said we would be forced to take twenty-four hour days, but I meant we must take two of them for each everyone else experiences! That way our body clocks stay in alignment with what is both healthy and normal, and we are not overworked or damaged in any way."

"But even supposing we do, three of our classes are held at the same time!" Hermione shook her head, disagreeing. "Twice through each day wouldn't be enough to get them all, and three is just preposterous! Where would we eat and sleep for one thing? We can't afford to risk running into our past selves!"

"One set of meals in the kitchen, one sent up to our quarters, and one in the Great Hall with our classmates, is a complete solution as far as meals go," Harry informed her with a grin. He'd been originally shooting for two days, one of twenty five instead of twenty four hours, which was a comparatively small adjustment. But since she was the one to bring up three, who was he to disagree? "And, if I can arrange proper sleeping quarters so we only have to spend one night in our dormitory beds, things should work out. Don't you agree?"

Then he sweetened the pot, leaning closer to touch foreheads and whisper, "Just think of all of the extra side projects we could get done in all that time, and the additional reading."

Hermione blushed, flustered that he could play her buttons so easily, and amazed that he'd almost convinced her using logical, reasoned arguments. It wasn't like the old him, but he'd really changed over the summer. "They'd have to be just as secure as our dorms. I don't want to have to explain things to McGonagall if anything goes wrong, or wake up to find some Slytherin has found us and done something awful to us in our sleep!"

"Deal!" He shook her hand almost too quickly, before trotting off. "There is one place not far from here that I can show you right away. It's called the Room of Requirement, and is one of the most secure places in the building. Even the Headmaster's office is easier to gain entry to - mostly because this room is so secret that far fewer people know about it. That secrecy would be lost if we were to invite scads of people in, and the room would be useless for hiding out in after that. So you must agree to keep it private between us, even if we don't agree to use it as our alternate quarters. For the other, there are some VIP quarters near the greenhouses that have been unused in a couple of centuries. The last person to even visit them graduated in 1945, but I just happen to know the password, and they are clean."

"I'll have to look, before I approve of anything," Hermione insisted.

Harry brought her to a stop in a seventh floor corridor, still grinning. Holding her hands, he ordered, "Think of your ideal living quarters, then walk back and forth three times to make the door appear."

Puzzled, she did so.

The room was absolutely perfect.

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