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He tinkered and tinkered with the Time-Turner until he was confident it would work as he intended. Turning it over ten times, turning back time to ten years ago. To a time when he was a student at Hogwarts rather than the Potions professor.
Severus knew it had worked when he saw a sixteen year old version of himself walking with Regulus Black and Evan Rosier.
He disillusioned himself and headed to the Shrieking Shack, where Black was waiting for him. He clutched the crumpled, old letter in his fist as he walked closer to a choice he hadn’t made when he was younger. He needed to know. What had Black wanted to say to him?
He poked at the knot in the trunk, and before entering the passageway, he drank a potion to make his appearance look younger. With a deep breath, he entered the shack and saw Black pacing around the place.
His eyes shimmered with an emotion that Severus could not decipher as he glanced up at his entrance.
“You came,” he sighed in relief and kissed him. Severus had forgotten what Black’s kisses felt like, all consuming and full of desire. “I thought you wouldn’t come.”
“Why was it so important for us to meet today?” Severus put distance between them and clenched his hands into fists as he itched to touch Black everywhere.
“Don’t join You-Know-Who,” he blurted out, and he rushed to say the rest before Severus could interrupt. “I know you’ll say this is your only option, but it really isn’t. Let me take care of you. I may no longer be the Black heir, but I still have my inheritance.”
Severus felt dazed and stunned. “How can you say that when you refuse to tell anyone else about us?”
“I’ve already told James and Remus about us.”
“What?” Severus whispered, stumbling onto a scratched chair.
Black ran his hand through his hair and sighed. “They didn’t take it so well, but that doesn’t matter. Now we can be together."
Before he could do or say anything, Severus felt himself being pulled forward in time. The last thing he saw was Black’s expression of shock. He tried grasping at the past's edges, but it slipped through his fingers as easily as water.
He was back in his own time, and nothing had changed except that he now knew that if he had made a different decision, he could have had everything he ever desired. He filled a glass with the expensive liquor Lucius had given him and took a sip before sobbing and throwing it across the room.
All he could do was give up. No way back.
Then an idea dawned on him, and a ray of hope flickered in his pitiful heart. The past was immutable; however, the future was yet to happen, and change was possible.
He penned a letter and sent an owl.
After spending half a decade in Azkaban, Sirius Orion Black was given a fair trial and found to be innocent of the crimes he was accused of. Severus folded the newspaper, knowing he had paved a new path for himself and Black.
He departed from Hogwarts’ grounds and Apparated at the only location Black would ever go back to after becoming a free man. Severus approached a hunched-over man who stood in front of James and Lily Potter's gravestones, and he seemed to be talking to them. He waited at a respectful distance until Black acknowledged him.
“I knew it would be you,” Black rasped, touching the gravestones and then turning to look at him. “It took you long enough. I’ve been waiting over a decade.”
As the men embraced in the cemetery, the first snowfall of the season fell.