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mini_festTitle: Till By Turning, Turning We Come 'Round Right
Author: ???
Rating: PG
Characters: Hermione/Snape, with cameos by Ron, Harry and Professor McGonagall
Prompt(s): Every year, Hermione uses her time turner to secretly leave a Christmas present at Spinners End for a young Severus, hoping she might be able to change his fate. Every year she returns to her own time and Severus is still dead - will this year's present be successful?
Warnings: Gratuitous abuse of physics, epilogue endangerment, and a short-lived last-minute red herring.
Summary: Hermione's greatest Christmas gift goes to an unsuspecting recipient.
Word Count: 7800
Disclaimer: Thank you, JKR, for giving us these characters. No copyright infringement was intended, no money was made, but a lovely time was had by all.
A/N:Enormous thanks to my kind and speedy betas ND, EB, and NE; any purple prose remaining is no fault of theirs. And most humble thanks to prompter for giving me a nugget of pure gold to work with. I hope that despite my minor alterations it still shines for you.
**********
23 November, 1998
She was in the room again, stone-walled and stone-floored, with thick rugs in deep rich colors on the floor. A tapestry in green and silver hung on the wall, its shapes indistinguishable in the shadows. Firelight flickered on the supple, well-oiled leather of the deep chair drawn up before the fireplace, and on the crystal wine glass in the right hand of the man seated in the chair. She sat on the floor beside the chair, legs tucked under her, her head leaning against his knee, watching the flames leap and dance. She could feel the man's fingers twining gently in her hair. When he spoke, the familiar beloved voice sent shivers down her spine.
"We're running out of time," Severus said softly.
"I know," she whispered. The light caught her tears, making them sparkle as they fell. "But I don't know what to do."
His fingers continued their slow caress, sliding down to stroke her cheek. "Then this is all we have. And not even this for much longer. Another month, perhaps, and after that it will be too late."
She closed her eyes and leaned into the warmth of his hand, agony piercing her at the thought of never hearing his voice again...
...and awoke in her bedroom to find that she was crying. Outside her window the grounds of Hogwarts were quiet and cold in the pre-dawn hours, only the rattling of dry leaves on bare branches disturbing the November night.
**********
Midsummer's Eve, 1998 - five months earlier
Hermione sat in the common room assigned to the Eighth Years, the small group of former students who had chosen to return and complete their interrupted Hogwarts education. Although the term did not begin until September she, Harry and Ron had chosen to return early to avoid Rita Skeeter and her ilk, who insisted on trailing them everywhere. A book lay open on her lap. Engrossed in its pages, she didn't look up when Ron and Harry entered, arguing amiably about the latest Quidditch match (the Chudley Cannons had miraculously eked out a win over the Wimbourne Wasps).
Ron flopped down into a chair facing the fireplace and Harry sat down cross-legged on the floor. "Oi, Hermione," Harry said, throwing a crumpled piece of parchment at her. "What's got you so interested, then?"
She looked up. "It's a biography."
Both boys paused expectantly, but no more was forthcoming. "Who of?" Ron asked finally.
" 'Of whom'," she corrected absently.
"All right, of whom, then?"
She closed the book, marking her place with a thumb . "Professor Snape." Her look dared them to question her choice. "It's a new one, just out, by Juniper Vetch. Quite detailed."
Harry and Ron exchanged glances. In the weeks that had passed since Voldemort's defeat and death, Hermione had grown increasingly focused on what she saw as the injustice of Snape's death at the hands -- or rather fangs -- of Nagini. While they agreed that victory would not have been possible without Snape's efforts, Hermione's intensity on the subject was beginning to worry them.
"That was fast," Ron said after a moment. "It's only been six weeks."
"Well, I can understand why there's a lot of interest in him," Harry said. "'Secret Hero Revealed' and all that."
Hermione didn't appear to have heard him. "It’s not fair that he's dead," she said, as if to herself.
"It's not fair that a lot of people died," Harry reminded her, his tone gentle. "Tonks. Remus." He nodded at Ron. "Fred."
"And they all died doing the same thing Professor Snape was doing," Ron pointed out. "Fighting Voldemort. It's not like he was the only one."
Hermione sighed. "The difference is that they could fight him openly. They could be proud of what they were doing, and so could the people they cared about. They didn't have to lie, and hide, and put up with everyone thinking they were traitors." She paused, then added softly, "And they didn't have to do it alone. That's what makes it unfair."
"I grant you he had a harder job than the rest of us," Harry said. "At least we didn't have to fool a lunatic Dark Wizard every day. Or work with Lucius Malfoy."
"Not sure which would have been worse, actually," Ron added with a yawn.
"Don't joke, Ron." Hermione turned to Harry. "You should read this, Harry. I know you know the important parts -- how he felt about your mother, what he did for you and for Dumbledore. But there's so much more. Listen to this." She opened the book. " 'Albus Dumbledore was known to have stated on several occasions that he believed students were Sorted too early. This is perhaps borne out by an incident that occurred in December of 1971 during Snape's first year at Hogwarts. In a letter to his mother, he writes of being alone in the Great Hall on Christmas Eve where he had a conversation with a young woman, a Prefect of Gryffindor House. He told her he believed he never would have been Sorted into Gryffindor because he was a coward. She replied that courage didn't mean you were never afraid, and that she was certain he was brave enough to have been a Gryffindor. Events later proved her certainty was well-founded.' " Hermione closed the book, swallowing past the lump in her throat.
"Hermione." As Harry leaned forward and put a hand on her knee, she looked up to meet sympathetic green eyes. "He was one of the bravest men I ever knew. But he's gone. We can't change that."
"She says he spent every Christmas holidays at Hogwarts, like you. Lots of times he was the only one here. He'd go down to the Great Hall late on Christmas Eve..." Her voice trailed off. "I...I think I'll go to bed. Good night, you two."
She managed to hold herself together until she was alone in her room, but when the door closed behind her the tears came, hot and bitter. A quick Ignito and the logs in the fireplace crackled to life. She wrapped the coverlet from her bed around herself and curled up in the overstuffed chair near the hearth, her mind painting a picture of eleven-year-old Severus Snape, alone on Christmas Eve and believing himself a coward. Fifteen minutes later she was asleep, soothed by the the warmth of the flames drying her damp cheeks.
**********
She stood in the doorway of an unfamiliar room, stone-flagged and stone-walled, windowless and small but warm and welcoming nevertheless. Thick, soft rugs in deep crimson covered the floor. A warm fire burned in the hearth, and she thought she could see bookshelves in the shadows beyond. A man stood there, broad-shouldered in black robes, holding a glass of wine in one hand and leaning on the mantelpiece as he gazed into the flames. She knew him at once, of course. There was no mistaking that profile, or those dark hooded eyes. He didn't look around and she hesitated, afraid to break the silence. Finding out that someone you thought you knew was -- and always had been -- a completely different person was, to say the least, disorienting. His head lifted and began to turn...
...and she woke.
**********
Once they had learned the truth about Severus Snape, the filter of suspicion and dislike through which she and the others had seen him had lifted. (They weren't alone -- the Prophet had published a positively cloying article extolling his innumerable virtues which Hermione, despite herself, had been unable to read without laughing.) Over the past few months she had revisited in memory his every word and action, all the way back to the night they'd first seen him at the Head Table, after their Sorting. She had realized that much of what she and the others had perceived as anger and contempt arose instead from something much different: a painful brew of loneliness, sorrow, fear and guilt, finished with the bitterness of having to bury them all unspoken, unacknowledged, and unhealed.
By the middle of October, in addition to the biographies by Juniper Vetch and others, she had tracked down his research papers, from his student days to his last two published works ("Topical silver for preventing wound infections" and "An ethnobotany of Western Cape Rasta bush medicine"). The more she learned, the more her respect for his intelligence and skill had grown, as had her regret that she had never had a chance to tell him so. That he had never in life been given the honour he was so liberally granted in death.
But it was the dreams which finally taught her that her true feelings ran deeper than that.
She hadn't thought much about it that first time, back in June. After all, Severus' actions had still been a common topic of conversation, and she had been reading about him that evening. But it happened twice more in the following weeks, and each time, on waking, she shook off the illogical sensation that she had missed another opportunity. She began to wonder.
The fourth time she found herself there in that firelit room, she gathered her courage. Even if he hates me for how we treated him, she thought, I will speak...
And when she did, and he turned towards her, relief washed over her. There was no anger in those dark eyes. The bitterness, self-hatred and despair that had lined his face so harshly were gone, leaving a weary but peaceful man, and he treated her with a courtesy and respect that thrilled her inordinately. Now that she had broken the silence, almost every night she closed her eyes on the curtains around her bed at Hogwarts and opened them on that room of firelight and wine and the tall, dark-haired man waiting for her there.
Their conversation, hesitant at first, became more comfortable as the weeks passed. She grew to appreciate the disciplined mind that had enabled him to play his double role so well for so long, and to admire the man who had chosen a thankless path that he knew from the beginning was likely to lead to his death. For his part, he seemed younger, more relaxed than she had known him in life; he smiled more easily -- even laughed! -- and she sensed that he admired her intellect and her willingness to challenge him. The first time he addressed her as "Hermione" instead of "Miss Granger," a delicious finger of heat trailed down her spine.
She had thought that speaking to him would resolve her feeling of something left undone, but it did not; instead, the feeling increased to a faint but perceptible tension that she could no longer shake off even in her waking hours. And then one September afternoon, sitting by the lake and replaying their conversation from the night before, she realized that she loved him. That there was no one she would rather have had beside her, no one whose voice she would rather hear.
She said nothing to Harry and Ron, of course. They would think she was being ridiculously sentimental and might even think she'd gone crazy. Ron would say, "I told you your brain would overheat and start to melt..." and Harry would look worried.
But she said nothing to Severus, either, fearing that if she admitted her feelings he might laugh at her -- or worse, pity her. Logically, of course, it shouldn't matter. They were only dreams. But she was unwilling to risk disturbing them because, after all, the dreams were all she had. No matter how desperately she wished it otherwise, Severus -- the real Severus -- was dead.
Perhaps it was time she confronted that fact squarely. Perhaps that was the thing she had left undone.
**********
Hermione stood before the gargoyle guarding the entrance to the Headmaster's -- now the Headmistress' -- Tower. In celebration of tonight's Halloween Feast someone had hung a necklace of miniature pumpkins on it and Charmed them to say "boo" repeatedly in tiny high-pitched voices. She hesitated only a moment, then squared her shoulders.
"Wee sleekit cow'rin' tim'rous beastie," she recited. Dumbledore had been fond of passwords such as sherbet lemon and acid pops, but Professor McGonagall leaned more towards the literary. The gargoyle moved aside, revealing the circular staircase and Hermione began to climb, knowing that what she did was necessary but feeling reluctant nevertheless.
Professor McGonagall was on the ladder searching for a book on the topmost shelf when Hermione entered her office. "Oh, Miss Granger," she said, looking over the tops of her glasses. "How may I help you?"
"I was wondering, Professor, if you could tell me...where Professor Snape is buried." Now that Hermione had asked the question, she realized how odd it was that she didn't know. With all the publicity and attention his actions had received, she would have thought it would have been common knowledge.
Professor McGonagall glanced sharply at her. "May I ask why you wish to know?"
Hermione looked away. "I just…I thought I'd visit his grave," she said. Professor McGonagall made no reply, and the silence stretched out uncomfortably. Finally she met the Headmistress' eyes and added, "I need to visit it."
The Headmistress did not answer immediately. She descended the small ladder and moved slowly to the massive carved desk where she sat down, folding her hands on its polished surface. "I'm sorry, Miss Granger, but I cannot give you that information."
"I won't tell anyone," Hermione reassured her. "I know there are probably still a few Death Eaters out there who hate him for what he did and who might try to vandalise it. And wherever it is I'm sure they don't want people traipsing through leaving lilies and wreaths and things, either. But I really do need to know."
"Oh, I have no doubt of your discretion," the Headmistress said. "You have certainly proven yourself trustworthy. I would tell you if I could, but the fact is I cannot. No one can."
Hermione had already begun considering other possible avenues, but this stopped her. "What do you mean, no one can?"
"I mean that no one knows where he is buried. His body was never found."
**********
By midnight Hermione had spent hours casting every locator spell she could think of, beginning with the simplest Qua est form learned by First Years so they could find their quills and ending with a fiendishly complicated spell in an obscure dialect of Uto-Aztecan that required (among other things) breast feathers from a homing pigeon. They had revealed nothing. Or rather, they had shown clearly that there was nothing to reveal. What she was searching for simply did not exist.
She sat on her bed, deep in thought. Could Voldemort have taken Severus' body and destroyed it? No, Voldemort had left while she and Harry and Ron were still watching, hidden behind the crates. Could he have sent someone back to do so? But why? Besides, there hadn't been time. There was clearly no way Severus could have survived both Nagini's venom and the wound in his throat -- she shuddered at the memory of the blood, so much blood -- but even if he had, and for some reason had then chosen to hide himself away for the last six months, her spells would have found him. They could see both the living and the dead.
Severus Snape, apparently, was neither.
Exhausted and puzzled, she lay back on her pillow. She needed just a little sleep so she could think clearly...
**********
"Severus," she said softly. He rose from the chair and turned to face her. Being with him was harder now, every moment bittersweet because of the secret she was keeping from him. The words she wanted so much to say to him but did not dare. She opened her mouth to say something, ask about the weather, anything, but before she could speak he was standing in front of her, smiling, his hands on her shoulders, dark eyes looking down at her with a hint of -- was it joy? -- in their depths.
"I have had enough of secrets," he said, and kissed her.
**********
24 November, 1998
"What do you think, Hermione?"
She started. Severus's words the night before -- we're running out of time -- had intensified the frustrating and ever-present feeling of having forgotten something, and she'd been so deep in her own thoughts that she had heard nothing of her companions' conversation. The windows of the Three Broomsticks were so fogged that only a small circle in the middle of each pane was clear. Through it she could see the late November wind blowing snow in whirling gusts down the street. "Sorry?"
Ron rolled his eyes. "I asked," he repeated with exaggerated patience, "how you think the Time-Turner managed it."
Hermione dragged her mind back to the present. "Managed what?"
"Well, there's no way it should have worked, is there?" he said. "I mean, how did Harry manage to survive the first time round, so he could be there to go back and save himself? How did he go back after he was dead and stop himself getting killed?"
"Way to look a gift horse in the mouth, Ron," Harry said. "Thanks, mate."
Hermione smiled. "I wondered about that too, actually. I did some reading in Muggle physics last summer, just for fun, because I was curious--" Ron bugged his eyes out and mouthed the word fun!? at Harry "--and I think he survived because he was there to cast the Patronus, and he was there to cast the Patronus because he survived."
Ron and Harry stared at her blankly.
She laughed. "It turns out that if you look at time as a constant, then anything that does happen has always happened -- in other words, you can't change the past, you can only fulfill it. Make it happen the way it did anyway. So you had to go back, because you'd already done it."
"Ah." Ron nodded sagely. "Like when you ask Mum why you can't do something, and she says, 'Because I said so.' "
Harry rubbed his forehead, feeling a headache coming on. "I still don't get it."
"Honestly, Harry, try to use that giant lump between your ears for more than holding your glasses up!" Hermione took a quill and a scrap of parchment out of a pocket in her robes. "Look, let's call the moment when you were on the shore with Sirius and got saved from the Dementors point S, for being Saved, and we'll call that version of you Harry(S)." She drew a short horizontal line punctuated with a dot on the right-hand end which she labelled S. "A few hours pass--" she extended the line past the dot further to the right, "--and then we use the time turner to go back." She looped the line up and back around to point S, where she punctuated it with a second dot slightly above the first, which she labelled C. "This is the moment when you were on the other side of the shore conjuring the Patronus so we'll call that C for Conjuring. So you conjure the Patronus and now you're Harry(C)--" she extended the line from C on to the right "--and Harry(C) goes on his way. You were there both times, because you always had been."
Harry pushed his glasses up his nose. "But S and C aren't two different times, they're the same time. I was conjuring the Patronus--"
"Harry(C) was conjuring the Patronus," Hermione corrected him.
"Okay, Harry(C) was conjuring the Patronus, at the same time as Harry(S) was being attacked by Dementors on the shore. Obviously."
She nodded. "From an outsider's point of view, yes, it's the same moment. But those two things happened three hours apart from your point of view, didn't they?" She traced the loop in the sketch. "And in that three hours, you changed from being Harry(S) to Harry(C). You had to, because you'd already done it. You said it yourself, remember? That's how you knew you could cast the Patronus, because you'd already done it."
Ron tapped his finger on the spot where the line crossed back over itself. "So this here, this is midnight, where it all came together. You and...and Harry(S) disappeared from the hospital wing to go back just as you and Harry(C) were coming through the door afterwards."
"Exactly."
Harry nodded. "Okay, I sort of get it. But look here." He pointed to the segment of line between the S and the crossed lines that marked midnight, the moment Hermione had taken them back. "This bit just here, after we'd been there but before we left, if that makes sense. Right then, there was still a chance that we might not go back. So shouldn't I have been, well, sort of half-there and half-not?"
She sighed. "You're not listening. It was too late not to go back. It was always too late, because we'd already been. We didn't undo your being killed; it never happened. You can't undo something that's been done."
"We undid Buckbeak's being executed," Ron pointed out.
Hermione's heart gave a sudden leap and she felt her cheeks flush. To undo someone's being killed...to go back in time and prevent a death... Then she shook her head. "No," she said wearily, realization setting in. "Buckbeak was never executed. We only thought he was. We heard the axe and we assumed." She felt cold, sick with disappointment.
Harry and Ron hadn't noticed her wild swing of emotion, thankfully. Harry had turned his attention back to the sketch, frowning and tapping the quill on the parchment. "What if the person who was supposed to go back didn't know it? We never saw our later selves beforehand, you know. I didn't even see myself, only the Patronus. We only knew what we were supposed to do because Dumbledore told us."
She opened her mouth, then shut it. "I...I don't know. If something happened, but the person who had to come back to make it happen didn't..." She gave a short laugh. "Now my head hurts."
"I bet whatever they were supposed to do is sort of in limbo," Harry said. "Waiting for them to figure it out. And if they never do, then poof!"
Ron swallowed a mouthful of chips. "And there's another poser," he added. "How did Dumbledore know?"
Harry shrugged. "Maybe Trelawney did another prophecy." He pitched his voice high and quavery. "Oooohh, beware the hours twixt buck and beak, the girl will punch the white-haired freak, ooooooh..." and he and Ron fell about laughing.
Hermione didn't hear them. She was feeling again that sensation of something left undone. Something waiting for her to figure it out. Something...in limbo?
**********
The rest of their Hogsmeade trip was agony for her. Harry and Ron wanted to go into every single shop on the High Street, it seemed, but she pleaded a headache and her silence combined with the pinched, intense look on her face had persuaded them to go back to the castle. She managed to fend off their concern, their invitations to dinner and their offers to bring her something back, until they finally went down to the Great Hall without her.
Now, alone in her room, Hermione took the Time-Turner from her jewelry box. She wasn't sure Professor McGonagall had believed her clumsy story about wanting to analyse the composition of the sand contained in the glass, but the Headmistress had handed it over without demanding further explanation. Hermione laid it on the bed and stared at it, trying to think calmly and rationally. Trying not to let hope run away with her or fear paralyse her.
In her mind, she heard Harry again: Shouldn't I have been sort of half-there and half-not there? Severus' low voice from the night before: We're running out of time. No one knew where he was buried and what was more, the most powerful spells couldn't locate his body. I don't know what to do, she had said. Harry, laughing: And if they never figure it out, then poof!
That nagging sense of something left unfinished, undone.
We're running out of time.
In the case of Buckbeak and Sirius, Dumbledore had known from the first what they would do. And Harry had known that he could cast the Patronus because he'd seen himself do it. But there was no evidence whatsoever that what she was contemplating had ever happened.
But there was no evidence that it hadn't.
She drew her legs up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them and resting her forehead on her knees. She sounded crazy even to herself. She closed her eyes, feeling tears sliding unchecked down her cheeks. If only Ron hadn't mentioned Professor Trelawney, she thought. What if it's just wishful thinking, my own need to have someone to love and to love me? She heard again the woman's hollow voice: Your heart is as shriveled as an old maid's...as dry as the pages of the books to which you so desperately cling.
Abruptly she stood up. She was done crying. If she couldn't change the past, only fulfill it, then whatever she tried couldn't hurt. Right or wrong, she would see this through to the end.
**********
She sat on his lap, her head on his shoulder and his arms curved protectively around her. The heat of his body on one side balanced the heat from the fire on the other and she felt as relaxed as a cat in the sun, as though warm honey ran in her veins. She could feel his heartbeat, slow and strong, and it soothed her until a sudden vision of bright red blood pooling on a worn wooden floor flashed in her mind. She shivered.
"You intend to try, then?" His voice was low, controlled. She wondered if a dream could feel fear. Perhaps he too was afraid to hope.
She nodded, enjoying the feeling of the fine black wool of his robe against her cheek. "I have to try," she said. "Potions was never my best subject, but --"
"Perhaps you had a poor teacher." She could hear the smile in his voice.
"Perhaps I was never properly motivated." She tilted her head up to kiss the corner of his mouth. Silence fell; a log broke in the fireplace with a soft “poof”, releasing a shower of sparks. "Will it work?" she whispered, watching the sparks die one by one.
"How can I know?" he answered, pressing his lips to her hair and tightening his embrace. "I'm only a dream."
**********
The next two weeks flew by in a blur of books and late-night research, made more difficult by the fact that she wasn't entirely sure what she was looking for. She avoided hope and concentrated on facts. Harry's actions that last day, culminating in Voldemort's defeat, hinged on the knowledge he had gained from Severus' dying memories, so whatever she did (or, she told herself firmly, had done) could not save Severus from that. He had to come to that, to be lying on the floor of the Shrieking Shack with Nagini's fangs buried in his throat. She knew that because she had seen him there.
Somehow he had to survive both the venom and the loss of blood. She couldn't save him herself, obviously; by the time she and Ron and Harry were gone from the Shack (the earliest moment to which it would be safe for her to return) it would be far too late. She had to find something that would allow Severus to survive on his own.
Finally, at the end of the first week in December, she stumbled on something. The library was silent and deserted. The lights were low and even the students cramming for exams had given up and gone home for some sleep, but the sense of urgency driving her wouldn't let her stop just yet. She pulled a stack of books towards her, blew the dust off the top one, and looked at the title: Wild Beafts of the Southern Continent and Their Medicinal Ufes. She sighed and opened it at random.
And there it was:
She read the text, slowly and first and then faster, her eyes racing down the page. Goldenseal, silver nitrate, mistletoe berries, unicorn horn, powdered bezoar... It was clearly a combination of a blood-replenishing potion and anti-venom, but she'd never seen either prepared in such massively powerful proportions. Other ingredients -- asphodel, valerian -- made no sense, until she reached the last paragraph:
She sat back in her chair, her heart pounding and her mind racing. Clearly the properties and effects of the potion were precisely what she needed. She looked back at the first sentence of the last paragraph: "...a sort of time-capsule..." She closed her eyes and, for the first time in two weeks, allowed herself the faintest flicker of hope.
**********
The next morning she began the search for her ingredients. There were only twelve, but not all were easy to find and it was three days before she was able to gather everything. Some of them had properties she knew: mistletoe berries and unicorn horn to counteract the venom, valerian and poppy for sleep, silver nitrate and goldenseal to stop the bleeding (the mistletoe would help with that as well). Others she had no idea of their purpose: evergreen needles, fresh snow harvested in the moonlight and melted over a fire of rowan twigs, powdered rose quartz, six beeskins complete with wings.
The actual brewing wasn't terribly complicated, but each ingredient had to be added in a specific order, one each day and at a precise time of day for a total preparation time of twelve days. The mistletoe berries -- to be added last -- were the most troublesome. To be most effective (and Hermione was taking no chances with substandard ingredients) they should be plucked on Christmas Eve, just after moonrise. Because their potency began to break down immediately upon plucking, they had to be added quickly and any potion containing them had to be drunk within two hours of completion. This meant that the potion would have to be timed to finish on Christmas Eve, just two weeks away. It also meant that once the potion was ready, there would be no time to waste.
Which led to the second half of the puzzle: how to get the potion to Severus? Hermione sat on her bed holding the time turner suspended on its golden chain, watching it sparkle in the winter sunlight as it swung back and forth. Theoretically, she had Severus' entire life to work with, which at first seemed like an immense amount of time. However, since the potion would be ready and must be drunk on Christmas Eve, that reduced her options substantially. Still, thirty-eight Christmas Eves wasn't unreasonable, surely she could manage one success with thirty-eight chances...
Her heart sank. Severus might have thirty-eight Christmas Eves, but she had only two hours of this one. The tiny letters Y and H on the Time-Turner gave the option of Years or Hours (why there was no Month or Day option, she had no idea). When set to H one turn would take her back one hour; when set to Y one turn would take her back one year. One year precisely. Right now, at three in the afternoon of 10 December, 1998, one turn would take her to three in the afternoon of 10 December, 1997. If she stayed fifteen minutes, one turn the opposite direction would bring her back one year precisely, to a quarter past three on 10 December, 1998. Once the potion was done, the two hour countdown began, and every second spent in the past was a second gone in the present as well.
Merlin, it might take me two hours just to find him, she thought, then on the heels of that: It might take me two hours just to find him the first time! She threw down the Time-Turner in sudden anger. What was the point of all this? Covering her face with her hands, she let herself feel the bone-deep exhaustion she had been pushing away for days. She sat silent and still for a long time, refusing to cry but numb in the face of this fresh discouragement.
Suddenly she raised her head, mouth open in surprise. She did know where he'd be Christmas Eve! Or at least, she knew where he'd be on seven Christmas Eves between 1971 and 1978. She jumped off the bed and ran to her desk, throwing papers aside madly until she found Juniper Vetch's biography. Quickly she flipped through the pages until she found it: "Although he could not avoid going home for the summer, Severus routinely remained at school during the Christmas holidays, likely preferring the solitude of Hogwarts' deserted halls to the violence that was all too common at Spinner's End. It was his custom to go down to the Great Hall near midnight each Christmas Eve, where the Yule Tree would be lit..."
On Christmas Eve each of those seven years, Severus would be in the Great Hall. Despite the knowledge that now she was down to only seven chances Hermione's spirits rose. That it should be Hogwarts itself presenting the solution seemed somehow fitting. It had all begun there, and she felt a strong though indefinable sense of comfort, as if the castle were well-disposed towards her plight and was offering her what help it could.
**********
They stood gazing at each other, not touching, one on either side of the stone fireplace. Love and determination was in her eyes, love and acceptance in his.
"I have to do this," she said. Even as she spoke she was memorizing every line of his body, every tone of voice, aching with the knowledge that this might be her last chance to do so. "I have to try. Even if it means I lose you."
"It is in your nature to fight for those you love." As always, he heard the things she couldn't put into words. "Don't torment yourself with might-have-beens," he said gently. "It is too late for that. It always has been."
" I know." She reached out a hand, needing to touch him one last time. "But whatever happens..."
He took her hand in his. "Whatever happens, we have had these last few months. We will always have had them." He gave her a crooked smile. "After all, you cannot undo something already done."
**********
24 December, 1998,11:00pm
Hermione shook the snow off her cloak and dropped it on the floor of her room. She took from her pocket a branch of mistletoe, cut moments ago from the ancient plant that grew twined in the branches of the Whomping Willow. Ice glistened on its dark-green leaves. Gently, one by one, she plucked the seven pearl-white berries it bore and dropped them into the small iron cauldron that bubbled and steamed on the hearth. Over the past twelve days the mixture in the cauldron had changed colour with each added item: sapphire blue, sea green, violet, pale rose. As the last of the waxy berries dissolved, the liquid went transparent as rainwater for a moment and then changed to a deep ruby red, a shimmering gold haze swirling across the surface.
She sighed and dropped into the chair. Her parents had been disappointed that she would miss Christmas with them, but had accepted her excuse of wanting to stay to work on an advanced research project. Which, really, had not been a lie. Harry and Ron had been harder to get rid of: Ron must have asked her fifteen times what she was going to do there all alone, while Harry had insisted that she was working too hard and worried whether she would remember to eat properly (or at all) if they weren't there to remind her. They'd finally left, promising to send her a Christmas package from The Burrow.
She still had no idea whether she was on the right track, but since beginning to make the potion twelve days ago her doubts had vanished. She had no second thoughts. For good or ill, she knew she had to do this. That feeling alone, she thought with a wry smile, could be taken as evidence, but for the moment she was content to operate on faith.
Given the limited ingredients she had been able to obtain on such short notice, the potion had made enough for two full doses, no more. From her bag she took two glass flasks. While she would have preferred something unbreakable the recipe had specified glass as being the least likely to react with the potion and reduce its potency. The risk of breakage seemed lower than the risk of an ineffective potion. Carefully she filled each one, sealed it and slid it back into her bag. She wrapped her Gryffindor scarf around her neck for luck, picked up the Time-Turner and hurried down the stairs. To give herself as much time as possible she had decided to do her time-turning just outside the Great Hall so that she would be in the right place already. The foyer outside the Hall had several niches that would be dark at this hour of the night, and since only four other students had remained at Hogwarts for the holidays, she felt confident she would not be seen. They were probably long since asleep.
Standing outside the tall carved wooden doors, shadows shrouding the corners and making the familiar entrance look dim and mysterious, she took a deep breath, lifted the golden hourglass from where it hung around her neck, and began to turn...
**********
24 December, 1971, 11:15pm.
The doors to the Great Hall were pushed almost closed. A faint line of light showed in the gap, widening as Hermione slowly and cautiously pulled them open enough to slip through. The Hall was dark except for the enormous Yule Tree at the end, whose bright lights had been dimmed but gave enough of a glow that Hermione could walk without stumbling. At first she thought the room was empty and steeled herself to fail before she had even begun, but as she crept closer she saw a slight dark shape standing silhouetted against one of the windows. His head was turned to look out at the moonlight flooding the courtyard, and she saw with a catch in her throat that there was a smile on his thin face. She could almost hear his thoughts: Magic's real...and I'm really here...
Just as she reached the end of the table her foot caught one of the wooden chairs, making it slide across the floor with a screech. Severus jumped and whirled around, half-raising one arm defensively in front of his face.
So much for slipping it unseen into his pumpkin juice, she thought. Oh, well. She smiled at him, seeing in the child's face hints of the man's she had come to know so well. "I'm sorry I frightened you. You're Severus Snape, aren't you?"
"Yes." He looked at her suspiciously. "How do you know my name? Are you a Prefect?"
And at his words a profound sense of déjà vu filled her, as though she had walked into a theatre to see a play and found that she knew the words. ...he wrote of being alone in the Great Hall on Christmas Eve where he had a conversation with a young woman, a Prefect of Gryffindor House... "Yes," she said. "Yes, I am."
He looked closer and saw her Gryffindor scarf. "I'm a Slytherin," he said, his tone challenging. "I wanted to be there," he added.
She nodded. "You must be smart. A lot of very smart witches and wizards were in Slytherin."
He gave a shy smile. "Gryffindors are brave, though," he offered, as if to console her. Then his eyes fell. "That's probably why I wasn't Sorted there. I'm not brave."
"I'll bet you are," she said.
He turned away with a shrug. "No, I'm not. I'm smart but I'm a coward."
"Severus," she said gently, kneeling in front of him and taking his hand. "Look at me." Slowly, unwillingly, he raised his eyes to hers and although the pain in them wrenched at her heart, she couldn't suppress the joyful certainty rising in her that she knew what to do at last. "I know you think you're a coward because your father hits your mother and makes her cry, and you can't stop him." His eyes widened in shock. "I know sometimes he hits you too. You see? I know things about you." She took a deep breath. "And I know you are more than brave enough to be a Gryffindor."
She thought for a moment he would cry, but even at eleven he had that self-control that was so much a part of the man she loved. He swiped his nose with a threadbare sleeve and fought back the tears. "Really?" he whispered.
"Really. Now, let's have a Christmas toast on it." She stood up, waved her wand and conjured two goblets. "Hand me that pitcher of pumpkin juice on the table, would you?" While his attention was diverted, she quickly uncapped the first flask and poured the contents into one of the goblets. Severus brought her the pitcher and she filled both goblets. She handed him the one with the potion and took the other herself. She raised her glass towards him and he echoed her motion. "To Severus Snape," she said. "The bravest man I ever knew."
And watched as he swallowed the potion and, all unknowing, took the first step towards their future.
**********
24 December, 1998, 11:45 pm.
Had she counted the turns correctly to come back? She wasn't sure, so tired she could barely stand and hardly able to see for the pounding headache throbbing in her skull. Had something gone wrong? The Hall was empty, the Yule tree lights sparkling in and out of focus. She staggered, took one stumbling step and felt herself falling. She thought she caught a glimpse of black robes swirling towards her but there was so much blackness now and it was all closing in around her. Well, it was a good dream while it lasted, she thought, and then darkness took her.
**********
Christmas Day, 1998, 12:30 am
She swam back to consciousness to firelight, a soft coverlet, the deep silence of a winter's night. Bayberry candles burned on the mantelpiece filling the room with their spicy scent. For a moment she thought she was in the room of her dreams, until she recognized the diamond-paned windows and knew she was lying in her bed in her own room. She closed her eyes again, searching... The lingering feeling of There's something I have to do was gone. Whatever the outcome, her part in it was over. But--
"You are a very foolish woman, Miss Granger."
Her eyes opened wide at the sound of the voice she had hardly dared hope to hear. But...Miss Granger? "Oh..." she whispered in disappointment.
"The physical stress of using a Time-Turner increases exponentially with the number of years traveled, as you should have known," he went on in that familiar didactic tone. "And traveling back before one's own birth is...particularly dangerous."
I always knew it might end like this, she thought, even as inside her something broke and began to ache. That the dreams might have been no more than the means to show me what I had to do. And I did it. I brought him back, that's all that matters. "I'm sorry," she said faintly. "I won't do it again." After all, he lived with a love he couldn't have. I can do it, too.
"I should think not," he said. She turned to look at him as he stood up from the chair but he was only a dark silhouette between her and the fire, his face in shadow. "I will leave you to rest. You should expect to feel very weak for two or three days, but there should be no permanent damage." He hesitated, then added formally, "There are, of course, no words to thank you for what you have done -- and I am at a loss to explain how you accomplished it -- but if there is anything you wish...anything you require...you have only to name it." He turned to go.
If she hadn't been so weak, so tired, and feeling suddenly so very alone, she would never have said it, but she was, and so she did. "Severus...will you kiss me goodbye?"
She heard a half-smothered sound, and in a movement so fast it seemed like Apparition he was leaning over her, his hands warm on hers, dark eyes intense and questioning. "Then...it wasn't a dream," he whispered. "I was afraid to hope..."
"If it was," she said softly, reaching up to trace the contours of the beloved face she had gone so far to find, "then it was mine as well."
"Oh my love," he said, and kissed her, and after that they had all the time in the world.
Author: ???
Rating: PG
Characters: Hermione/Snape, with cameos by Ron, Harry and Professor McGonagall
Prompt(s): Every year, Hermione uses her time turner to secretly leave a Christmas present at Spinners End for a young Severus, hoping she might be able to change his fate. Every year she returns to her own time and Severus is still dead - will this year's present be successful?
Warnings: Gratuitous abuse of physics, epilogue endangerment, and a short-lived last-minute red herring.
Summary: Hermione's greatest Christmas gift goes to an unsuspecting recipient.
Word Count: 7800
Disclaimer: Thank you, JKR, for giving us these characters. No copyright infringement was intended, no money was made, but a lovely time was had by all.
A/N:Enormous thanks to my kind and speedy betas ND, EB, and NE; any purple prose remaining is no fault of theirs. And most humble thanks to prompter for giving me a nugget of pure gold to work with. I hope that despite my minor alterations it still shines for you.
23 November, 1998
She was in the room again, stone-walled and stone-floored, with thick rugs in deep rich colors on the floor. A tapestry in green and silver hung on the wall, its shapes indistinguishable in the shadows. Firelight flickered on the supple, well-oiled leather of the deep chair drawn up before the fireplace, and on the crystal wine glass in the right hand of the man seated in the chair. She sat on the floor beside the chair, legs tucked under her, her head leaning against his knee, watching the flames leap and dance. She could feel the man's fingers twining gently in her hair. When he spoke, the familiar beloved voice sent shivers down her spine.
"We're running out of time," Severus said softly.
"I know," she whispered. The light caught her tears, making them sparkle as they fell. "But I don't know what to do."
His fingers continued their slow caress, sliding down to stroke her cheek. "Then this is all we have. And not even this for much longer. Another month, perhaps, and after that it will be too late."
She closed her eyes and leaned into the warmth of his hand, agony piercing her at the thought of never hearing his voice again...
...and awoke in her bedroom to find that she was crying. Outside her window the grounds of Hogwarts were quiet and cold in the pre-dawn hours, only the rattling of dry leaves on bare branches disturbing the November night.
Midsummer's Eve, 1998 - five months earlier
Hermione sat in the common room assigned to the Eighth Years, the small group of former students who had chosen to return and complete their interrupted Hogwarts education. Although the term did not begin until September she, Harry and Ron had chosen to return early to avoid Rita Skeeter and her ilk, who insisted on trailing them everywhere. A book lay open on her lap. Engrossed in its pages, she didn't look up when Ron and Harry entered, arguing amiably about the latest Quidditch match (the Chudley Cannons had miraculously eked out a win over the Wimbourne Wasps).
Ron flopped down into a chair facing the fireplace and Harry sat down cross-legged on the floor. "Oi, Hermione," Harry said, throwing a crumpled piece of parchment at her. "What's got you so interested, then?"
She looked up. "It's a biography."
Both boys paused expectantly, but no more was forthcoming. "Who of?" Ron asked finally.
" 'Of whom'," she corrected absently.
"All right, of whom, then?"
She closed the book, marking her place with a thumb . "Professor Snape." Her look dared them to question her choice. "It's a new one, just out, by Juniper Vetch. Quite detailed."
Harry and Ron exchanged glances. In the weeks that had passed since Voldemort's defeat and death, Hermione had grown increasingly focused on what she saw as the injustice of Snape's death at the hands -- or rather fangs -- of Nagini. While they agreed that victory would not have been possible without Snape's efforts, Hermione's intensity on the subject was beginning to worry them.
"That was fast," Ron said after a moment. "It's only been six weeks."
"Well, I can understand why there's a lot of interest in him," Harry said. "'Secret Hero Revealed' and all that."
Hermione didn't appear to have heard him. "It’s not fair that he's dead," she said, as if to herself.
"It's not fair that a lot of people died," Harry reminded her, his tone gentle. "Tonks. Remus." He nodded at Ron. "Fred."
"And they all died doing the same thing Professor Snape was doing," Ron pointed out. "Fighting Voldemort. It's not like he was the only one."
Hermione sighed. "The difference is that they could fight him openly. They could be proud of what they were doing, and so could the people they cared about. They didn't have to lie, and hide, and put up with everyone thinking they were traitors." She paused, then added softly, "And they didn't have to do it alone. That's what makes it unfair."
"I grant you he had a harder job than the rest of us," Harry said. "At least we didn't have to fool a lunatic Dark Wizard every day. Or work with Lucius Malfoy."
"Not sure which would have been worse, actually," Ron added with a yawn.
"Don't joke, Ron." Hermione turned to Harry. "You should read this, Harry. I know you know the important parts -- how he felt about your mother, what he did for you and for Dumbledore. But there's so much more. Listen to this." She opened the book. " 'Albus Dumbledore was known to have stated on several occasions that he believed students were Sorted too early. This is perhaps borne out by an incident that occurred in December of 1971 during Snape's first year at Hogwarts. In a letter to his mother, he writes of being alone in the Great Hall on Christmas Eve where he had a conversation with a young woman, a Prefect of Gryffindor House. He told her he believed he never would have been Sorted into Gryffindor because he was a coward. She replied that courage didn't mean you were never afraid, and that she was certain he was brave enough to have been a Gryffindor. Events later proved her certainty was well-founded.' " Hermione closed the book, swallowing past the lump in her throat.
"Hermione." As Harry leaned forward and put a hand on her knee, she looked up to meet sympathetic green eyes. "He was one of the bravest men I ever knew. But he's gone. We can't change that."
"She says he spent every Christmas holidays at Hogwarts, like you. Lots of times he was the only one here. He'd go down to the Great Hall late on Christmas Eve..." Her voice trailed off. "I...I think I'll go to bed. Good night, you two."
She managed to hold herself together until she was alone in her room, but when the door closed behind her the tears came, hot and bitter. A quick Ignito and the logs in the fireplace crackled to life. She wrapped the coverlet from her bed around herself and curled up in the overstuffed chair near the hearth, her mind painting a picture of eleven-year-old Severus Snape, alone on Christmas Eve and believing himself a coward. Fifteen minutes later she was asleep, soothed by the the warmth of the flames drying her damp cheeks.
She stood in the doorway of an unfamiliar room, stone-flagged and stone-walled, windowless and small but warm and welcoming nevertheless. Thick, soft rugs in deep crimson covered the floor. A warm fire burned in the hearth, and she thought she could see bookshelves in the shadows beyond. A man stood there, broad-shouldered in black robes, holding a glass of wine in one hand and leaning on the mantelpiece as he gazed into the flames. She knew him at once, of course. There was no mistaking that profile, or those dark hooded eyes. He didn't look around and she hesitated, afraid to break the silence. Finding out that someone you thought you knew was -- and always had been -- a completely different person was, to say the least, disorienting. His head lifted and began to turn...
...and she woke.
Once they had learned the truth about Severus Snape, the filter of suspicion and dislike through which she and the others had seen him had lifted. (They weren't alone -- the Prophet had published a positively cloying article extolling his innumerable virtues which Hermione, despite herself, had been unable to read without laughing.) Over the past few months she had revisited in memory his every word and action, all the way back to the night they'd first seen him at the Head Table, after their Sorting. She had realized that much of what she and the others had perceived as anger and contempt arose instead from something much different: a painful brew of loneliness, sorrow, fear and guilt, finished with the bitterness of having to bury them all unspoken, unacknowledged, and unhealed.
By the middle of October, in addition to the biographies by Juniper Vetch and others, she had tracked down his research papers, from his student days to his last two published works ("Topical silver for preventing wound infections" and "An ethnobotany of Western Cape Rasta bush medicine"). The more she learned, the more her respect for his intelligence and skill had grown, as had her regret that she had never had a chance to tell him so. That he had never in life been given the honour he was so liberally granted in death.
But it was the dreams which finally taught her that her true feelings ran deeper than that.
She hadn't thought much about it that first time, back in June. After all, Severus' actions had still been a common topic of conversation, and she had been reading about him that evening. But it happened twice more in the following weeks, and each time, on waking, she shook off the illogical sensation that she had missed another opportunity. She began to wonder.
The fourth time she found herself there in that firelit room, she gathered her courage. Even if he hates me for how we treated him, she thought, I will speak...
And when she did, and he turned towards her, relief washed over her. There was no anger in those dark eyes. The bitterness, self-hatred and despair that had lined his face so harshly were gone, leaving a weary but peaceful man, and he treated her with a courtesy and respect that thrilled her inordinately. Now that she had broken the silence, almost every night she closed her eyes on the curtains around her bed at Hogwarts and opened them on that room of firelight and wine and the tall, dark-haired man waiting for her there.
Their conversation, hesitant at first, became more comfortable as the weeks passed. She grew to appreciate the disciplined mind that had enabled him to play his double role so well for so long, and to admire the man who had chosen a thankless path that he knew from the beginning was likely to lead to his death. For his part, he seemed younger, more relaxed than she had known him in life; he smiled more easily -- even laughed! -- and she sensed that he admired her intellect and her willingness to challenge him. The first time he addressed her as "Hermione" instead of "Miss Granger," a delicious finger of heat trailed down her spine.
She had thought that speaking to him would resolve her feeling of something left undone, but it did not; instead, the feeling increased to a faint but perceptible tension that she could no longer shake off even in her waking hours. And then one September afternoon, sitting by the lake and replaying their conversation from the night before, she realized that she loved him. That there was no one she would rather have had beside her, no one whose voice she would rather hear.
She said nothing to Harry and Ron, of course. They would think she was being ridiculously sentimental and might even think she'd gone crazy. Ron would say, "I told you your brain would overheat and start to melt..." and Harry would look worried.
But she said nothing to Severus, either, fearing that if she admitted her feelings he might laugh at her -- or worse, pity her. Logically, of course, it shouldn't matter. They were only dreams. But she was unwilling to risk disturbing them because, after all, the dreams were all she had. No matter how desperately she wished it otherwise, Severus -- the real Severus -- was dead.
Perhaps it was time she confronted that fact squarely. Perhaps that was the thing she had left undone.
Hermione stood before the gargoyle guarding the entrance to the Headmaster's -- now the Headmistress' -- Tower. In celebration of tonight's Halloween Feast someone had hung a necklace of miniature pumpkins on it and Charmed them to say "boo" repeatedly in tiny high-pitched voices. She hesitated only a moment, then squared her shoulders.
"Wee sleekit cow'rin' tim'rous beastie," she recited. Dumbledore had been fond of passwords such as sherbet lemon and acid pops, but Professor McGonagall leaned more towards the literary. The gargoyle moved aside, revealing the circular staircase and Hermione began to climb, knowing that what she did was necessary but feeling reluctant nevertheless.
Professor McGonagall was on the ladder searching for a book on the topmost shelf when Hermione entered her office. "Oh, Miss Granger," she said, looking over the tops of her glasses. "How may I help you?"
"I was wondering, Professor, if you could tell me...where Professor Snape is buried." Now that Hermione had asked the question, she realized how odd it was that she didn't know. With all the publicity and attention his actions had received, she would have thought it would have been common knowledge.
Professor McGonagall glanced sharply at her. "May I ask why you wish to know?"
Hermione looked away. "I just…I thought I'd visit his grave," she said. Professor McGonagall made no reply, and the silence stretched out uncomfortably. Finally she met the Headmistress' eyes and added, "I need to visit it."
The Headmistress did not answer immediately. She descended the small ladder and moved slowly to the massive carved desk where she sat down, folding her hands on its polished surface. "I'm sorry, Miss Granger, but I cannot give you that information."
"I won't tell anyone," Hermione reassured her. "I know there are probably still a few Death Eaters out there who hate him for what he did and who might try to vandalise it. And wherever it is I'm sure they don't want people traipsing through leaving lilies and wreaths and things, either. But I really do need to know."
"Oh, I have no doubt of your discretion," the Headmistress said. "You have certainly proven yourself trustworthy. I would tell you if I could, but the fact is I cannot. No one can."
Hermione had already begun considering other possible avenues, but this stopped her. "What do you mean, no one can?"
"I mean that no one knows where he is buried. His body was never found."
By midnight Hermione had spent hours casting every locator spell she could think of, beginning with the simplest Qua est form learned by First Years so they could find their quills and ending with a fiendishly complicated spell in an obscure dialect of Uto-Aztecan that required (among other things) breast feathers from a homing pigeon. They had revealed nothing. Or rather, they had shown clearly that there was nothing to reveal. What she was searching for simply did not exist.
She sat on her bed, deep in thought. Could Voldemort have taken Severus' body and destroyed it? No, Voldemort had left while she and Harry and Ron were still watching, hidden behind the crates. Could he have sent someone back to do so? But why? Besides, there hadn't been time. There was clearly no way Severus could have survived both Nagini's venom and the wound in his throat -- she shuddered at the memory of the blood, so much blood -- but even if he had, and for some reason had then chosen to hide himself away for the last six months, her spells would have found him. They could see both the living and the dead.
Severus Snape, apparently, was neither.
Exhausted and puzzled, she lay back on her pillow. She needed just a little sleep so she could think clearly...
"Severus," she said softly. He rose from the chair and turned to face her. Being with him was harder now, every moment bittersweet because of the secret she was keeping from him. The words she wanted so much to say to him but did not dare. She opened her mouth to say something, ask about the weather, anything, but before she could speak he was standing in front of her, smiling, his hands on her shoulders, dark eyes looking down at her with a hint of -- was it joy? -- in their depths.
"I have had enough of secrets," he said, and kissed her.
24 November, 1998
"What do you think, Hermione?"
She started. Severus's words the night before -- we're running out of time -- had intensified the frustrating and ever-present feeling of having forgotten something, and she'd been so deep in her own thoughts that she had heard nothing of her companions' conversation. The windows of the Three Broomsticks were so fogged that only a small circle in the middle of each pane was clear. Through it she could see the late November wind blowing snow in whirling gusts down the street. "Sorry?"
Ron rolled his eyes. "I asked," he repeated with exaggerated patience, "how you think the Time-Turner managed it."
Hermione dragged her mind back to the present. "Managed what?"
"Well, there's no way it should have worked, is there?" he said. "I mean, how did Harry manage to survive the first time round, so he could be there to go back and save himself? How did he go back after he was dead and stop himself getting killed?"
"Way to look a gift horse in the mouth, Ron," Harry said. "Thanks, mate."
Hermione smiled. "I wondered about that too, actually. I did some reading in Muggle physics last summer, just for fun, because I was curious--" Ron bugged his eyes out and mouthed the word fun!? at Harry "--and I think he survived because he was there to cast the Patronus, and he was there to cast the Patronus because he survived."
Ron and Harry stared at her blankly.
She laughed. "It turns out that if you look at time as a constant, then anything that does happen has always happened -- in other words, you can't change the past, you can only fulfill it. Make it happen the way it did anyway. So you had to go back, because you'd already done it."
"Ah." Ron nodded sagely. "Like when you ask Mum why you can't do something, and she says, 'Because I said so.' "
Harry rubbed his forehead, feeling a headache coming on. "I still don't get it."
"Honestly, Harry, try to use that giant lump between your ears for more than holding your glasses up!" Hermione took a quill and a scrap of parchment out of a pocket in her robes. "Look, let's call the moment when you were on the shore with Sirius and got saved from the Dementors point S, for being Saved, and we'll call that version of you Harry(S)." She drew a short horizontal line punctuated with a dot on the right-hand end which she labelled S. "A few hours pass--" she extended the line past the dot further to the right, "--and then we use the time turner to go back." She looped the line up and back around to point S, where she punctuated it with a second dot slightly above the first, which she labelled C. "This is the moment when you were on the other side of the shore conjuring the Patronus so we'll call that C for Conjuring. So you conjure the Patronus and now you're Harry(C)--" she extended the line from C on to the right "--and Harry(C) goes on his way. You were there both times, because you always had been."
Harry pushed his glasses up his nose. "But S and C aren't two different times, they're the same time. I was conjuring the Patronus--"
"Harry(C) was conjuring the Patronus," Hermione corrected him.
"Okay, Harry(C) was conjuring the Patronus, at the same time as Harry(S) was being attacked by Dementors on the shore. Obviously."
She nodded. "From an outsider's point of view, yes, it's the same moment. But those two things happened three hours apart from your point of view, didn't they?" She traced the loop in the sketch. "And in that three hours, you changed from being Harry(S) to Harry(C). You had to, because you'd already done it. You said it yourself, remember? That's how you knew you could cast the Patronus, because you'd already done it."
Ron tapped his finger on the spot where the line crossed back over itself. "So this here, this is midnight, where it all came together. You and...and Harry(S) disappeared from the hospital wing to go back just as you and Harry(C) were coming through the door afterwards."
"Exactly."
Harry nodded. "Okay, I sort of get it. But look here." He pointed to the segment of line between the S and the crossed lines that marked midnight, the moment Hermione had taken them back. "This bit just here, after we'd been there but before we left, if that makes sense. Right then, there was still a chance that we might not go back. So shouldn't I have been, well, sort of half-there and half-not?"
She sighed. "You're not listening. It was too late not to go back. It was always too late, because we'd already been. We didn't undo your being killed; it never happened. You can't undo something that's been done."
"We undid Buckbeak's being executed," Ron pointed out.
Hermione's heart gave a sudden leap and she felt her cheeks flush. To undo someone's being killed...to go back in time and prevent a death... Then she shook her head. "No," she said wearily, realization setting in. "Buckbeak was never executed. We only thought he was. We heard the axe and we assumed." She felt cold, sick with disappointment.
Harry and Ron hadn't noticed her wild swing of emotion, thankfully. Harry had turned his attention back to the sketch, frowning and tapping the quill on the parchment. "What if the person who was supposed to go back didn't know it? We never saw our later selves beforehand, you know. I didn't even see myself, only the Patronus. We only knew what we were supposed to do because Dumbledore told us."
She opened her mouth, then shut it. "I...I don't know. If something happened, but the person who had to come back to make it happen didn't..." She gave a short laugh. "Now my head hurts."
"I bet whatever they were supposed to do is sort of in limbo," Harry said. "Waiting for them to figure it out. And if they never do, then poof!"
Ron swallowed a mouthful of chips. "And there's another poser," he added. "How did Dumbledore know?"
Harry shrugged. "Maybe Trelawney did another prophecy." He pitched his voice high and quavery. "Oooohh, beware the hours twixt buck and beak, the girl will punch the white-haired freak, ooooooh..." and he and Ron fell about laughing.
Hermione didn't hear them. She was feeling again that sensation of something left undone. Something waiting for her to figure it out. Something...in limbo?
The rest of their Hogsmeade trip was agony for her. Harry and Ron wanted to go into every single shop on the High Street, it seemed, but she pleaded a headache and her silence combined with the pinched, intense look on her face had persuaded them to go back to the castle. She managed to fend off their concern, their invitations to dinner and their offers to bring her something back, until they finally went down to the Great Hall without her.
Now, alone in her room, Hermione took the Time-Turner from her jewelry box. She wasn't sure Professor McGonagall had believed her clumsy story about wanting to analyse the composition of the sand contained in the glass, but the Headmistress had handed it over without demanding further explanation. Hermione laid it on the bed and stared at it, trying to think calmly and rationally. Trying not to let hope run away with her or fear paralyse her.
In her mind, she heard Harry again: Shouldn't I have been sort of half-there and half-not there? Severus' low voice from the night before: We're running out of time. No one knew where he was buried and what was more, the most powerful spells couldn't locate his body. I don't know what to do, she had said. Harry, laughing: And if they never figure it out, then poof!
That nagging sense of something left unfinished, undone.
We're running out of time.
In the case of Buckbeak and Sirius, Dumbledore had known from the first what they would do. And Harry had known that he could cast the Patronus because he'd seen himself do it. But there was no evidence whatsoever that what she was contemplating had ever happened.
But there was no evidence that it hadn't.
She drew her legs up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them and resting her forehead on her knees. She sounded crazy even to herself. She closed her eyes, feeling tears sliding unchecked down her cheeks. If only Ron hadn't mentioned Professor Trelawney, she thought. What if it's just wishful thinking, my own need to have someone to love and to love me? She heard again the woman's hollow voice: Your heart is as shriveled as an old maid's...as dry as the pages of the books to which you so desperately cling.
Abruptly she stood up. She was done crying. If she couldn't change the past, only fulfill it, then whatever she tried couldn't hurt. Right or wrong, she would see this through to the end.
She sat on his lap, her head on his shoulder and his arms curved protectively around her. The heat of his body on one side balanced the heat from the fire on the other and she felt as relaxed as a cat in the sun, as though warm honey ran in her veins. She could feel his heartbeat, slow and strong, and it soothed her until a sudden vision of bright red blood pooling on a worn wooden floor flashed in her mind. She shivered.
"You intend to try, then?" His voice was low, controlled. She wondered if a dream could feel fear. Perhaps he too was afraid to hope.
She nodded, enjoying the feeling of the fine black wool of his robe against her cheek. "I have to try," she said. "Potions was never my best subject, but --"
"Perhaps you had a poor teacher." She could hear the smile in his voice.
"Perhaps I was never properly motivated." She tilted her head up to kiss the corner of his mouth. Silence fell; a log broke in the fireplace with a soft “poof”, releasing a shower of sparks. "Will it work?" she whispered, watching the sparks die one by one.
"How can I know?" he answered, pressing his lips to her hair and tightening his embrace. "I'm only a dream."
The next two weeks flew by in a blur of books and late-night research, made more difficult by the fact that she wasn't entirely sure what she was looking for. She avoided hope and concentrated on facts. Harry's actions that last day, culminating in Voldemort's defeat, hinged on the knowledge he had gained from Severus' dying memories, so whatever she did (or, she told herself firmly, had done) could not save Severus from that. He had to come to that, to be lying on the floor of the Shrieking Shack with Nagini's fangs buried in his throat. She knew that because she had seen him there.
Somehow he had to survive both the venom and the loss of blood. She couldn't save him herself, obviously; by the time she and Ron and Harry were gone from the Shack (the earliest moment to which it would be safe for her to return) it would be far too late. She had to find something that would allow Severus to survive on his own.
Finally, at the end of the first week in December, she stumbled on something. The library was silent and deserted. The lights were low and even the students cramming for exams had given up and gone home for some sleep, but the sense of urgency driving her wouldn't let her stop just yet. She pulled a stack of books towards her, blew the dust off the top one, and looked at the title: Wild Beafts of the Southern Continent and Their Medicinal Ufes. She sighed and opened it at random.
And there it was:
"All of the animals mentioned above -- moft particularly the komodo dragon -- are highly unpredictable and can be vicioufly aggreffive. Poifoning and draftic loss of blood are not uncommon, and any ftudent of fuch creatures fhould take the moft careful precautions. The following potion is highly recommended as a prophylactic meafure, and has preferved the author's own life on more than one occafion... "
She read the text, slowly and first and then faster, her eyes racing down the page. Goldenseal, silver nitrate, mistletoe berries, unicorn horn, powdered bezoar... It was clearly a combination of a blood-replenishing potion and anti-venom, but she'd never seen either prepared in such massively powerful proportions. Other ingredients -- asphodel, valerian -- made no sense, until she reached the last paragraph:
"As the aftute reader will perceive, the potion is thuf latent in the body and is triggered only when needed -- a fort of time capfule. It refults in a deep almoft coma-like ftate in which the rates of all bodily proceffes are draftically reduced. This allows the body time to replenifh the blood and retards the metabolifm of the poifon, giving the antivenom time to do its work. It muft be remembered that this latent protection, being hazardous in itfelf, is triggered only in the laft extremity, when the victim has, to all intents and purpofes, died, so any minor injuries fhould be treated promptly by traditional methods..."
She sat back in her chair, her heart pounding and her mind racing. Clearly the properties and effects of the potion were precisely what she needed. She looked back at the first sentence of the last paragraph: "...a sort of time-capsule..." She closed her eyes and, for the first time in two weeks, allowed herself the faintest flicker of hope.
The next morning she began the search for her ingredients. There were only twelve, but not all were easy to find and it was three days before she was able to gather everything. Some of them had properties she knew: mistletoe berries and unicorn horn to counteract the venom, valerian and poppy for sleep, silver nitrate and goldenseal to stop the bleeding (the mistletoe would help with that as well). Others she had no idea of their purpose: evergreen needles, fresh snow harvested in the moonlight and melted over a fire of rowan twigs, powdered rose quartz, six beeskins complete with wings.
The actual brewing wasn't terribly complicated, but each ingredient had to be added in a specific order, one each day and at a precise time of day for a total preparation time of twelve days. The mistletoe berries -- to be added last -- were the most troublesome. To be most effective (and Hermione was taking no chances with substandard ingredients) they should be plucked on Christmas Eve, just after moonrise. Because their potency began to break down immediately upon plucking, they had to be added quickly and any potion containing them had to be drunk within two hours of completion. This meant that the potion would have to be timed to finish on Christmas Eve, just two weeks away. It also meant that once the potion was ready, there would be no time to waste.
Which led to the second half of the puzzle: how to get the potion to Severus? Hermione sat on her bed holding the time turner suspended on its golden chain, watching it sparkle in the winter sunlight as it swung back and forth. Theoretically, she had Severus' entire life to work with, which at first seemed like an immense amount of time. However, since the potion would be ready and must be drunk on Christmas Eve, that reduced her options substantially. Still, thirty-eight Christmas Eves wasn't unreasonable, surely she could manage one success with thirty-eight chances...
Her heart sank. Severus might have thirty-eight Christmas Eves, but she had only two hours of this one. The tiny letters Y and H on the Time-Turner gave the option of Years or Hours (why there was no Month or Day option, she had no idea). When set to H one turn would take her back one hour; when set to Y one turn would take her back one year. One year precisely. Right now, at three in the afternoon of 10 December, 1998, one turn would take her to three in the afternoon of 10 December, 1997. If she stayed fifteen minutes, one turn the opposite direction would bring her back one year precisely, to a quarter past three on 10 December, 1998. Once the potion was done, the two hour countdown began, and every second spent in the past was a second gone in the present as well.
Merlin, it might take me two hours just to find him, she thought, then on the heels of that: It might take me two hours just to find him the first time! She threw down the Time-Turner in sudden anger. What was the point of all this? Covering her face with her hands, she let herself feel the bone-deep exhaustion she had been pushing away for days. She sat silent and still for a long time, refusing to cry but numb in the face of this fresh discouragement.
Suddenly she raised her head, mouth open in surprise. She did know where he'd be Christmas Eve! Or at least, she knew where he'd be on seven Christmas Eves between 1971 and 1978. She jumped off the bed and ran to her desk, throwing papers aside madly until she found Juniper Vetch's biography. Quickly she flipped through the pages until she found it: "Although he could not avoid going home for the summer, Severus routinely remained at school during the Christmas holidays, likely preferring the solitude of Hogwarts' deserted halls to the violence that was all too common at Spinner's End. It was his custom to go down to the Great Hall near midnight each Christmas Eve, where the Yule Tree would be lit..."
On Christmas Eve each of those seven years, Severus would be in the Great Hall. Despite the knowledge that now she was down to only seven chances Hermione's spirits rose. That it should be Hogwarts itself presenting the solution seemed somehow fitting. It had all begun there, and she felt a strong though indefinable sense of comfort, as if the castle were well-disposed towards her plight and was offering her what help it could.
They stood gazing at each other, not touching, one on either side of the stone fireplace. Love and determination was in her eyes, love and acceptance in his.
"I have to do this," she said. Even as she spoke she was memorizing every line of his body, every tone of voice, aching with the knowledge that this might be her last chance to do so. "I have to try. Even if it means I lose you."
"It is in your nature to fight for those you love." As always, he heard the things she couldn't put into words. "Don't torment yourself with might-have-beens," he said gently. "It is too late for that. It always has been."
" I know." She reached out a hand, needing to touch him one last time. "But whatever happens..."
He took her hand in his. "Whatever happens, we have had these last few months. We will always have had them." He gave her a crooked smile. "After all, you cannot undo something already done."
24 December, 1998,11:00pm
Hermione shook the snow off her cloak and dropped it on the floor of her room. She took from her pocket a branch of mistletoe, cut moments ago from the ancient plant that grew twined in the branches of the Whomping Willow. Ice glistened on its dark-green leaves. Gently, one by one, she plucked the seven pearl-white berries it bore and dropped them into the small iron cauldron that bubbled and steamed on the hearth. Over the past twelve days the mixture in the cauldron had changed colour with each added item: sapphire blue, sea green, violet, pale rose. As the last of the waxy berries dissolved, the liquid went transparent as rainwater for a moment and then changed to a deep ruby red, a shimmering gold haze swirling across the surface.
She sighed and dropped into the chair. Her parents had been disappointed that she would miss Christmas with them, but had accepted her excuse of wanting to stay to work on an advanced research project. Which, really, had not been a lie. Harry and Ron had been harder to get rid of: Ron must have asked her fifteen times what she was going to do there all alone, while Harry had insisted that she was working too hard and worried whether she would remember to eat properly (or at all) if they weren't there to remind her. They'd finally left, promising to send her a Christmas package from The Burrow.
She still had no idea whether she was on the right track, but since beginning to make the potion twelve days ago her doubts had vanished. She had no second thoughts. For good or ill, she knew she had to do this. That feeling alone, she thought with a wry smile, could be taken as evidence, but for the moment she was content to operate on faith.
Given the limited ingredients she had been able to obtain on such short notice, the potion had made enough for two full doses, no more. From her bag she took two glass flasks. While she would have preferred something unbreakable the recipe had specified glass as being the least likely to react with the potion and reduce its potency. The risk of breakage seemed lower than the risk of an ineffective potion. Carefully she filled each one, sealed it and slid it back into her bag. She wrapped her Gryffindor scarf around her neck for luck, picked up the Time-Turner and hurried down the stairs. To give herself as much time as possible she had decided to do her time-turning just outside the Great Hall so that she would be in the right place already. The foyer outside the Hall had several niches that would be dark at this hour of the night, and since only four other students had remained at Hogwarts for the holidays, she felt confident she would not be seen. They were probably long since asleep.
Standing outside the tall carved wooden doors, shadows shrouding the corners and making the familiar entrance look dim and mysterious, she took a deep breath, lifted the golden hourglass from where it hung around her neck, and began to turn...
24 December, 1971, 11:15pm.
The doors to the Great Hall were pushed almost closed. A faint line of light showed in the gap, widening as Hermione slowly and cautiously pulled them open enough to slip through. The Hall was dark except for the enormous Yule Tree at the end, whose bright lights had been dimmed but gave enough of a glow that Hermione could walk without stumbling. At first she thought the room was empty and steeled herself to fail before she had even begun, but as she crept closer she saw a slight dark shape standing silhouetted against one of the windows. His head was turned to look out at the moonlight flooding the courtyard, and she saw with a catch in her throat that there was a smile on his thin face. She could almost hear his thoughts: Magic's real...and I'm really here...
Just as she reached the end of the table her foot caught one of the wooden chairs, making it slide across the floor with a screech. Severus jumped and whirled around, half-raising one arm defensively in front of his face.
So much for slipping it unseen into his pumpkin juice, she thought. Oh, well. She smiled at him, seeing in the child's face hints of the man's she had come to know so well. "I'm sorry I frightened you. You're Severus Snape, aren't you?"
"Yes." He looked at her suspiciously. "How do you know my name? Are you a Prefect?"
And at his words a profound sense of déjà vu filled her, as though she had walked into a theatre to see a play and found that she knew the words. ...he wrote of being alone in the Great Hall on Christmas Eve where he had a conversation with a young woman, a Prefect of Gryffindor House... "Yes," she said. "Yes, I am."
He looked closer and saw her Gryffindor scarf. "I'm a Slytherin," he said, his tone challenging. "I wanted to be there," he added.
She nodded. "You must be smart. A lot of very smart witches and wizards were in Slytherin."
He gave a shy smile. "Gryffindors are brave, though," he offered, as if to console her. Then his eyes fell. "That's probably why I wasn't Sorted there. I'm not brave."
"I'll bet you are," she said.
He turned away with a shrug. "No, I'm not. I'm smart but I'm a coward."
"Severus," she said gently, kneeling in front of him and taking his hand. "Look at me." Slowly, unwillingly, he raised his eyes to hers and although the pain in them wrenched at her heart, she couldn't suppress the joyful certainty rising in her that she knew what to do at last. "I know you think you're a coward because your father hits your mother and makes her cry, and you can't stop him." His eyes widened in shock. "I know sometimes he hits you too. You see? I know things about you." She took a deep breath. "And I know you are more than brave enough to be a Gryffindor."
She thought for a moment he would cry, but even at eleven he had that self-control that was so much a part of the man she loved. He swiped his nose with a threadbare sleeve and fought back the tears. "Really?" he whispered.
"Really. Now, let's have a Christmas toast on it." She stood up, waved her wand and conjured two goblets. "Hand me that pitcher of pumpkin juice on the table, would you?" While his attention was diverted, she quickly uncapped the first flask and poured the contents into one of the goblets. Severus brought her the pitcher and she filled both goblets. She handed him the one with the potion and took the other herself. She raised her glass towards him and he echoed her motion. "To Severus Snape," she said. "The bravest man I ever knew."
And watched as he swallowed the potion and, all unknowing, took the first step towards their future.
24 December, 1998, 11:45 pm.
Had she counted the turns correctly to come back? She wasn't sure, so tired she could barely stand and hardly able to see for the pounding headache throbbing in her skull. Had something gone wrong? The Hall was empty, the Yule tree lights sparkling in and out of focus. She staggered, took one stumbling step and felt herself falling. She thought she caught a glimpse of black robes swirling towards her but there was so much blackness now and it was all closing in around her. Well, it was a good dream while it lasted, she thought, and then darkness took her.
Christmas Day, 1998, 12:30 am
She swam back to consciousness to firelight, a soft coverlet, the deep silence of a winter's night. Bayberry candles burned on the mantelpiece filling the room with their spicy scent. For a moment she thought she was in the room of her dreams, until she recognized the diamond-paned windows and knew she was lying in her bed in her own room. She closed her eyes again, searching... The lingering feeling of There's something I have to do was gone. Whatever the outcome, her part in it was over. But--
"You are a very foolish woman, Miss Granger."
Her eyes opened wide at the sound of the voice she had hardly dared hope to hear. But...Miss Granger? "Oh..." she whispered in disappointment.
"The physical stress of using a Time-Turner increases exponentially with the number of years traveled, as you should have known," he went on in that familiar didactic tone. "And traveling back before one's own birth is...particularly dangerous."
I always knew it might end like this, she thought, even as inside her something broke and began to ache. That the dreams might have been no more than the means to show me what I had to do. And I did it. I brought him back, that's all that matters. "I'm sorry," she said faintly. "I won't do it again." After all, he lived with a love he couldn't have. I can do it, too.
"I should think not," he said. She turned to look at him as he stood up from the chair but he was only a dark silhouette between her and the fire, his face in shadow. "I will leave you to rest. You should expect to feel very weak for two or three days, but there should be no permanent damage." He hesitated, then added formally, "There are, of course, no words to thank you for what you have done -- and I am at a loss to explain how you accomplished it -- but if there is anything you wish...anything you require...you have only to name it." He turned to go.
If she hadn't been so weak, so tired, and feeling suddenly so very alone, she would never have said it, but she was, and so she did. "Severus...will you kiss me goodbye?"
She heard a half-smothered sound, and in a movement so fast it seemed like Apparition he was leaning over her, his hands warm on hers, dark eyes intense and questioning. "Then...it wasn't a dream," he whispered. "I was afraid to hope..."
"If it was," she said softly, reaching up to trace the contours of the beloved face she had gone so far to find, "then it was mine as well."
"Oh my love," he said, and kissed her, and after that they had all the time in the world.
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Date: 2011-12-27 02:50 pm (UTC)This was an amazing love story. Fantastic job!
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Date: 2012-01-07 03:04 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2012-01-07 02:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-27 04:55 pm (UTC)~Sniffles.~
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Date: 2012-01-07 02:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-27 05:10 pm (UTC)http://one-bad-man.livejournal.com/175235.html
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Date: 2012-01-07 02:38 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2011-12-30 05:58 am (UTC)That was beautifully done. :)
And the way Hermione explained how Time-Turners work! *g* That was perfectly her. :)
Great job!
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Date: 2012-01-07 02:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-01 11:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-07 02:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-01 09:30 pm (UTC)*happy sigh*
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Date: 2012-01-07 02:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-02 11:28 am (UTC)Thanks!
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Date: 2012-01-07 02:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-07 09:55 am (UTC)I so wanted to follow this fest but life got in the way of properly doing so.
This is so much better than I could have ever imagined!
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Date: 2012-01-07 03:03 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2013-01-02 02:44 am (UTC)So satisfying, moving, heartwarming. Those last few paragraphs made me happy to be an SSHG shipper, knowing that talented storytellers like you are sailing with me.
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Date: 2017-12-09 06:41 am (UTC)YUM
This fic is wonderful! It really made my heart sing. So sweet and touching - and I really loved Hermione's explanation of how time turners work and the scene between them in the Great Hall was perfection. Happy sigh :)
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Date: 2018-01-07 05:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-01-07 06:21 pm (UTC)