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“Professor Snape?”
On instinct Hermione glanced around for her husband, before realising that the little fourth-year was addressing her. That was…going to take some getting used to. “Yes, Miss King?”
“I had a question on the homework you assigned us last week. The rune charts…”
“...Are due on Wednesday after next. I’ll have office hours on Monday; I’d be happy to look over what you have then.”
The little Ravenclaw shuffled her feet. “But I’d like to work on it over the weekend…”
Hermione crouched down, feeling a deep empathy for the girl. She vividly remembered what it was like, being so obsessed with homework, before the war had taught her other priorities. Of course, this child who enthusiastically enjoyed her Ancient Runes classes hadn’t even started at Hogwarts when the war ended.
“Miss King, look at me, please. There we go. Now, I understand how exciting it is to work on a new assignment - I was the same way when I was your age! - but it’s Halloween. I hope you’ll take a day or two to relax. There are no exams coming up, no deadlines. Enjoy yourself with your friends. You normally eat with Miss Laverre and Miss Smith, right?”
Miss King nodded slowly, glancing down at her feet.
“You know you can tell me if there’s something wrong, right?”
“Yes,” the girl sniffled. “It’s just…it’s a silly argument…”
“Ah, I see. Let me tell you something. I was friends with Harry Potter and Ron Weasley in school-”
“Oh, I know, Professor Snape! I read all about it in Hogwarts: The Wizarding Wars!”
“Yes. Well. What your history books won’t tell you is that we had some pretty awful arguments ourselves. Sometimes it seemed like the boys would never want anything to do with me again. But you know what? In the end, we pulled through. Even now with me here at Hogwarts, Harry at the Ministry, and Ron at Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes, we’re still friends. It may take some time and patience to heal from this argument, but maybe you can take this time to make other friends, maybe even in other houses. Try to stay hopeful, alright?”
“...Alright. Thank you, Professor.”
Hermione smiled and gave her student a pat on the shoulder, encouraging her to head down to supper.
Then she turned and raised an eyebrow at her husband, who was lurking in one of the alcoves outside her office. “May I help you, Professor Snape?”
His sneer almost hid the humour in his eyes. “I believe you’ve done quite enough, Professor Snape.”
“Oh?”
“Your little terrors set up another portable swamp on the third floor corridor this afternoon.”
She winced. “...Ah.”
“The third one this month.” His sneer became a touch sharper. “The Weasley idiot is planning to come over this weekend, isn’t he?”
“He is.”
“Excellent.”
Hermione didn’t share her husband’s enthusiasm for retribution, but she also didn’t defend Ron. Those portable swamps were a pain to clean up after, and she didn’t appreciate the fact that they seemed to exclusively find their way into the hands of Gryffindor students. Being Head of Gryffindor House and married to the Head of Slytherin, keeping the Gryffindors quiet wasn’t just a matter of professionalism, but of marital peace.
His Slytherins were just as bad, of course, but they had the annoying habit of not being caught in the act.
“Ready for the Halloween feast?” she asked instead. It was a genuine question, not merely a deflection; she was well aware of the awful connotations the holiday had for him.
He closed his eyes, considering. “I do believe I am.”
She gave him a peck on his cheek for his honesty.
Severus glanced at his wife out of the corner of his eye, not willing to risk turning his back on the little nightmares under their care. Seven years of education, three years as colleagues, and four months of marriage, and she still managed to surprise him.
He’d long since separated Miss Granger, the student from Hermione, the fellow professor. He would’ve been unable to work with a brilliant, attractive (and, somehow, interested) colleague otherwise. The reminder that the two were the same person, and that person was his wife, made him…uncomfortable.
Potter had been the main focus during her school years; Miss Granger had been a walking textbook with a semi-sentient mop of hair, perpetually in Potter’s shadow. Whatever teenage drama she and her friends had gone through either hadn’t made it to Severus’ ears or hadn’t been important enough to his duty to bother remembering.
Looking back on that time as a lovesick newlywed, he couldn’t help but feel immense pity for the lonely little Hermione. Pity, and…empathy. After all, his own lonely school days and the feuds that grew out of them had shaped his entire life.
Had he and Hermione been at school together, would they have been friends? She had some friends in Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff, he knew. Would she have befriended a shy, vaguely creepy Slytherin boy, obsessed with Potions and the Dark Arts, too clever to be sociable?
They’d never know, of course. Both during her educational years and his, Slytherin House had been downright hostile to muggle-born students. He had been ribbed enough for his friendship with Lily, only tolerated because he was a half-blood. If he and Hermione had been in school together, would she have reached out? Avoided him? Would it have mattered, in the end?
He shook his cobwebs away. They were supposed to be supervising the Halloween Feast, making sure the current batch of terrors didn’t burn the Great Hall down around their ears. Still, for the first time in memory, he found he could appreciate the festive atmosphere instead of being reminded of his failures.
“Severus? Hermione? With me, please.”
Severus took in the tense, wide-eyed headmistress and cursed quietly under his breath. Of course he’d jinxed himself.
Hermione reached out to her husband as they hurried down the hallway after Minerva. It took him a moment to notice, but when he did he took her hand in a firm, sure grip. The heavy dread weighing her down lifted, just a little.
“I must warn you both,” Minerva said as they hurried up the staircases. “It is not a pretty sight. I’d hoped, after all this time, that we had seen the last of…such things.”
A squeeze to her hand kept Hermione moving forward. She’d taught Ancient Runes for three years, since leaving her staid little Ministry position. Severus had been offered his choice of roles after his exoneration, settling on teaching N.E.W.T.-level Potions and Defense Against the Dark Arts and leaving the junior levels to others with more patience. What manner of horror would require their specific skillsets?
They followed the headmistress up numerous staircases - all strangely cooperative - and through a series of corridors. They swept past Classroom 6A where Hermione taught her classes and the tall windows that looked out over the castle courtyard before finally stopping outside the East Wing, the large open hall sometimes used for dance lessons where Severus liked to patrol. Filius was standing guard outside, his face pale.
With one more worried glance over her shoulder, Minerva pushed the doors open.
Severus didn’t gasp, as Hermione did, but his hand clamped down hard on hers.
Runes, bold and glistening, gleamed in the torchlight on the far side of the hall. Hermione hardly noticed her husband tugging her along after him, her mind whirring with possible meanings.
Dark…Master…Rise…Sacrifice
Each rune she translated added its weight to the pile of rocks in the pit of her stomach.
Severus, she realised, had been a bit more proactive, casting spells nonverbally so as not to distract her. “It’s not cursed,” he said, when he noticed her eyes on him. “But…”
He reached out two fingers and touched one of the runes, still dark and wet, then pulled away to show her. The dark red liquid clung to his fingers, half-dried and sticky, but there was no mistaking it as anything other than blood.
“The message,” he murmured. “What does it say?”
“Not to get too buried in the intricacies of translation, it reads something like: ‘The dark master will rise again with the power of our sacrifice.’”
Minerva hissed. “Merlin - it’s the Chamber of Secrets all over again.”
Hermione had never wished harder that one of her colleagues would be wrong.
Severus held his wife’s hand through the meeting between the heads of house and the headmistress. It had taken an extensive internal debate to decide to do this, but in hindsight the comfort he knew she took from the gesture was well worth the knowing, giggling stares of his colleagues.
Holding Hermione’s hand had been the high point of the meeting, all things considered. The blood on the wall was confirmed to be human but Poppy couldn’t determine more than that. Calling in a specialist from St. Mungo’s would be tantamount to inviting the Daily Prophet as well, and Hogwarts most certainly did not need the bad publicity.
It also didn’t need a gang of students sacrificing themselves (or each other) in an attempt to resurrect the Dark Lord, he’d pointed out. He’d fully expected to be ignored, but in a show of loyalty (or common sense) Hermione had backed him up. Astonishing, for a Gryffindor.
(...He should probably tamp down on the inter-house rivalry, in light of his new circumstances, but it was a treasured and longstanding pleasure.)
Ending the Halloween Ball early was going to disappoint a lot of students, but safety had to come first. That was one advantage Minerva had above Dumbledore: without the worries of an impending war hanging over her, she was free to prioritise the students’ wellbeing.
Pomona and Filius were taking care of that piece. Severus and Hermione were in charge of figuring out what in Merlin’s name was going on. On the balance, Severus would almost rather deal with the crowd of disappointed students.
“Cheer up, love,” Hermione murmured to him as they scanned the runes for the third time. “I’m sure we’ll figure this out soon enough, and then we can curl up by the fire with that new Italian Potions journal.”
The thought brought a reluctant smile to his face. Hermione cared little for Italian potion experiments, but she had expressed an intense interest in listening to the Italian language read aloud. Especially when he was the one reading it, apparently. This revelation was one of the many nuances of married life he’d come to appreciate, well worth the growing pains they’d faced when forcing two entire lives (and libraries) into one living space.
Yes, it was far more pleasant to dwell on his new life than this creeping horror that seemed determined to drag him back into his old one. Students hurt at Hogwarts…his nightmares were digging themselves out of their graves yet again.
Hours later, Hermione collapsed into an all-too-familiar chair in the Hospital Wing. Though the little private room - cheekily named the Harry Potter Ward for Special Cases - was open to staff and any student who required the extra privacy, she and Severus had been the primary occupants by quite a wide margin.
The war hadn’t been kind to either of them.
She glanced down at the man on the bed. It seemed impossible that just a few hours before, he had allowed her to hold his hand - a rare gesture of affection in public - when they were facing the trauma of unknown assailants in the school.
She wished with all her heart that she dared to return the gesture, reach out and take his hand now, but…no, she couldn’t possibly.
It had been a group of students - Slytherins, caught in the act for once - who had left the message. On the whole, Hermione had to admit that they were some of the most principled Dark Witches and Wizards she’d ever come across. They had left the message for the teachers using their own blood, correctly assuming that the school would be put under lockdown when it was discovered. The only casualties would have been themselves and the teachers who inevitably stumbled across the ritual.
Time travel, of course, wasn’t nearly so victimless, but beating the reckless dunces over the head with a SciFi novel wasn’t going to help the situation.
Their little would-be martyrs had estimated that the Snapes would be most likely to find them. A message of runes written in blood? Of course the most likely pair to investigate would be the Ancient Runes professor and the local Dark Arts specialist.
They had vastly underestimated their teachers’ capabilities.
Severus had been glorious, Stunning the students and moving them out of harm’s way before Hermione could do more than cast a Shield Charm. He had broken loose from the (rather juvenile) trap that had been set for them, disrupted the ritual, and ensured that neither Hermione nor the students would be harmed by the backlash of magic that resulted.
Unfortunately for him, the students had been closer to their goal than anyone would have dared to guess. And in protecting his wife and his students, Severus Snape had failed to adequately protect himself.
Hermione looked him over once more. In her fourth year, the Weasley twins had tried to enter their names in the Triwizard Cup by brewing a temporary ageing potion. Whatever magic the students had cooked up had acted in reverse, and it was anyone’s guess how long it would last.
The man - no, the boy - on the bed before her couldn’t have been more than sixteen, maybe seventeen years old.
For the first time in her life, Hermione viscerally understood Severus’ complaint that he was too old for her.
Severus groaned. Potter’s gang must have caught him again. He was going to bloody kill McNair; the idiot had promised to keep the Gryffindorks occupied!
He opened his eyes-
He blinked twice-
He…wasn’t where he expected to be. Was this…St. Mungo’s? He looked around. He’d never been to a proper hospital before. It was nicer than he thought it would be. The walls were a pale green, the light through the window was bright but not blinding, the sheets were soft under his fingers…
And a beautiful woman in silky black robes was curled up in an oversized armchair next to him.
Tentatively, he reached out a finger and poked the woman’s elbow, and she flinched away. She was real, alright.
“S…Severus?”
The beautiful woman knew his name, he realised in awe. Hang Potter and his little friends; if this was what hospitals were like, he was going to abandon the Dark Arts and become a healer! Merlin…
“Oh, Severus, are you alright?”
He nodded, dumbly. The witch’s robes had shifted in her sleep, exposing the very top of a tantalising swell: not even proper cleavage, like in Dolohov’s magazines, but on a real live witch (who knew his name) it felt like the most enticing thing he’d ever seen.
“Do you know who I am? Can you say something?”
“No. Yes.” His face had to be that ugly splotched red he saw in the mirror sometimes, and he was babbling like a second-year. He cleared his throat and forced himself to look away; it was the only way he could possibly regain his composure. “I don’t know who you are, Miss. But I…I can talk.”
He cursed himself thoroughly. No matter how much he practised, he couldn’t help but sound like a manky Northern rat or some…some Hufflepuff who had no idea how to talk to women. It wasn’t like he didn’t know how to talk to women, either! He’d talked to Lils for ages! Well, before she’d thrown him over for Potter and refused to forgive him for…things.
He’d show her, though. He’d show them all.
The beautiful woman shifted closer to him, close enough to send a tingle through his arm from the barest sensation of her body heat. He fancied he could feel the tingle…someplace else as well. “What’s the last thing you remember?”
A frisson of cold chased away all tingles instantly. He’d forgotten something, hadn’t he? Memory loss…it was something that had always terrified him, doubly so after Professor Dumbledore had threatened to Obliviate him to protect Lupin’s stupid secret.
Slowly, carefully, he explained the situation with Potter, being sure to paint Potter and his cronies as the instigators and him and McNair as defenders. The woman’s expression was odd. She knew more than she’d let on, he realised.
Well luckily, he was telling the truth. This time.
…Mostly, anyways.
“Severus,” the woman said, cutting through his train of thought entirely, “Do you know what year it is?”
His vision went funny as he struggled to breathe, his hands going to his throat as if that would help. He could hear the woman trying to calm him down, but her pleasant voice was almost drowned out by an annoying high-pitched buzzing that seemed to fill him up from the inside.
A wonderfully warm hand settled on his back, right in the middle, just below where his father had once extinguished a pair of cigarettes on his bare skin. The memory made him flinch, but the woman’s hand remained. It gave him something to focus on, even if he wasn’t entirely comfortable.
“Breathe with me,” the woman was saying. The hand not on his back was tugging at his own, pulling them away from his throat. After a moment, he let her have his hands; he couldn’t imagine he was doing much good with them, anyways.
Impossibly, she took one of his hands and put it on her own…chest. The heat was even more intense there, compounded by the faint smell of whatever perfume or shampoo she’d used, and though he could feel the rise and fall of her chest it took some concentration to even begin to decipher its rhythm.
As a distraction from whatever…attack he’d suffered, it worked fantastically.
“Better? Do I need to call Poppy?”
She said the name like he was supposed to know who that was. “Who?”
“Madam Pomfrey. Do I need to call her?”
Severus stared. “I’m at Hogwarts?”
The woman winced and disentangled them. (He resolved to accept this disappointment stoically, as if grown witches took liberties with his person all the time.) “I’m afraid I don’t know the best way to tell you this, Severus. The last thing you remember was from sometime in early 1977. It’s currently 1 November, 2005.”
“...What? I’ve…time-travelled?”
“It’s a bit more complicated than that.”
He glanced the woman over again. She had to be pulling his leg. Of course a pretty, grown-up witch wouldn’t want anything to do with him. Potter must have put her up to this…somehow. “Who are you?” The question came out a bit harsher than he’d intended.
Impossibly, the woman didn’t seem to mind. She simply smiled at him, that strange, sad smile, and said, “I’m your wife.”
Severus felt his eyes widen as he looked the woman over again. Merlin…if he really was an old git, he was a bloody lucky old git!
As terrible as the situation was, Hermione couldn’t help but find this new version of her husband rather endearing. She was used to a world-weary man who had learned subterfuge and manipulation on his knees before two of the most powerful wizards in the world. This was just a teenage boy who was very confused…and trying, to his credit, not to stare at her tits too obviously.
(The tit-staring brought her conflicting emotions. He was the same age as her students, which felt…nasty. He was almost a complete stranger to her, which made her want to slap him. And somewhere, underneath it all, he was still the man she’d fallen in love with - a man who wouldn’t be caught dead staring at her tits no matter what she wore - and seeing his obvious appreciation was…actually quite nice.
She split the difference and ignored it entirely.)
Poppy and Minerva had both stopped by to give Severus their well-wishes for a speedy recovery, spooking the poor boy into near complete silence. At least Poppy had been able to determine that there wasn't anything affecting him, aside from the obvious.
“He can’t teach like this,” Hermione had whispered to Minerva while Severus was distracted. “He’s only a sixth-year!”
“He probably both knows more than any sixth-year even in his current state, both in Potions and Defense. But I do see your point - there’s no way the students would take him seriously. He hasn’t got his…” She’d waved her hand at the bed, thankfully not catching Severus’ attention.
Hermione nodded. She understood entirely.
In the end, Severus had been given a clean bill of health - for a teenage amnesiac - and sent back to their shared rooms. What else could they do? He had nowhere else to go. The only one who could have given them a more complete understanding of the magic affecting him was Severus himself, aged forty-five instead of seventeen. If it looked like the effects would be permanent they could re-enroll him at school, but Hermione desperately hoped it wouldn’t come to that.
Taking him to their rooms had showcased both his curiosity and his brilliance. He touched everything: his desk, his books, her books, the sofa where he liked to read his Potions journals, Crookshanks, the cupboard full of his teaching robes…just everything. And along the way, he picked up little clues about the man he had become in the years he couldn’t currently remember.
The pots of ink on his desk - a small but high-quality black she’d gifted him for his birthday and the larger, cheaper red he used for grading - made him laugh about being a strict teacher.
The indents on the sofa told him that they liked to read together, and although he couldn’t (yet) read Italian, he’d been suitably impressed.
The relatively few pictures (all ones she’d framed and hung since their wedding) gave him a glimpse into how new their relationship had been.
And then he found the Order of Merlin, First Class stowed in his desk drawer under his academic certificates.
“I became someone important,” he breathed, turning the shiny medal over in his hands. He hid it well, but he looked like he might actually cry.
Hermione’s heart bled for this boy. “Of course you did.”
“Lord Voldemort won, then? He did everything he said he was going to do? I’d hoped-”
“No.” The word was sharp enough that both of them flinched. “No, Voldemort…he was evil. He tricked-”
“You take that back! He’s the greatest wizard alive!”
“Except Dumbledore,” Hermione reminded him. “And he’s not alive anymore.”
Severus took a step back, his already pale face going an unhealthy white. “...What?”
“Voldemort is dead. Dumbledore is, too.”
“...No, Lord Voldemort, he…”
“Wanted to live forever? He tried. He tried very hard, and sacrificed many people - enemies and allies alike - to try to achieve that goal. And yet, he’s dead.”
Hermione dug through her own desk, finding the copy of the Daily Prophet from 3 May, 1998. As much as she generally hated the newspaper, this particular edition was one she kept close for those days when the students’ brains dribbled out their ears and her patience wore thin. It reminded her of exactly how capable she was.
She slapped it down on her husband’s desk proudly. There, right on the front cover, was the still, dead body of Tom Riddle, surrounded by Kingsley and his ragtag group of dubiously-legal Aurors. “He’s been dead for years, nothing but a bad memory.”
It hurt, seeing Severus pine for the man who’d tried to kill him. She wanted to scream, to shake him awake. “Look!” she wanted to shriek at him, rubbing his nose on the newsprint like a puppy. “Look at the ugly monster your great ‘lord’ became! Turn to page 3 and see what he did to you! Turn to page 12 and read the list of lives his pointless vendetta claimed!”
She didn’t, of course. Severus had never spoken to her about why he’d joined the Death Eaters, and she’d never asked him. As far as she was concerned, it simply wasn’t any of her business unless he wanted to share.
This version of him? Oh, it was all too easy to see how he had tripped down the wide road to Hell.
Severus read the front article slowly, one finger tracing the words as if to keep them from escaping. As horrible as some of his beliefs were, Hermione felt her heart ache for him all over again. She couldn’t imagine how she would react if someone dragged her out of her sixth year and plopped her into her current life. She probably wouldn’t have dealt with the situation half as well as he had.
“I’m sorry to spring this all on you,” she said, exhaustion dragging at her eyelids after staying up most of the night in the Hospital Wing. “It’s probably pointless telling you all this, anyways. I imagine you’ll be back to yourself shortly. I…I’m tired; I’ll transfigure a bed in my office. You can sleep here.”
She closed the door with a click, not willing to look at the face of the boy who became the man she would one day marry. It hadn’t escaped her notice that, through whatever quirk of magic those students had cooked up, his left forearm remained unmarked.
Severus banged his head on the stone wall of these strange rooms.
Jumping 28 years into the future wasn’t as cool as the telly made it sound. There weren’t any aliens or flying cars in the Muggle world, and no exciting new spells or potions either. He’d looked through the Potions journals (the ones he could read, at least) and discovered many of the same arguments he’d read in the old reference copies in the Hogwarts library.
The one great thing going for him was that he’d been someone, someone powerful and brilliant enough to lure in a pretty witch (who also appeared to be intelligent in her own right), but he’d botched that up by insulting her within hours of meeting her properly.
How could he have known that she was some Muggle-lover who didn’t like Lord Voldemort? Back when he was a student, everyone either supported Lord Voldemort or pretended to. Except the Gryffindors, of course, but they hardly counted.
A thought stopped him in his tracks. Was his wife…a Gryffindor? He’d noticed the Black Lake pressing up against the windows, comforting and familiar; what Gryffindork would willingly live in the dungeons?
He’d seen the photographs of himself as an older man. Despite his ma’s promises, he never had grown into the nose. Or the hair. What the hell had he done to convince a pretty witch to marry him if he didn’t have looks, Dark Magic, or the backing of the Pure-bloods?
The door to the rooms opened, revealing his wife. “Hello…”
Then he stopped. He realised he’d never asked for her name, and flushed bright red. Of course she hated him; it was a stupid mistake.
Thankfully, his wife was both better rested and more forgiving than he’d dared to hope. “Sorry, I guess with all the excitement yesterday I forgot to introduce myself. My name is Hermione Snape.”
She held out a hand. He took her fingertips in his own and gave them a little kiss, like Lucius Malfoy had told him to. “My pleasure, Madam.”
He wasn’t sure why the witch - Hermione - turned such a funny colour, but since she hadn’t (yet) run away screaming he chose to take it as a good sign.
She cleared her throat. “Thank you, Severus. Sorry - do you mind if I call you Severus?”
He shrugged. It was a bit odd, but not any more so than waking up to realise you were bloody pushing fifty.
“Thank you. I’m sorry for not explaining things properly yesterday. I’ve spoken with Minerva - she’s the current Headmistress - and we have a plan in place in case you don’t revert back to your…usual self by Monday, so there’s no need to worry about classes. In the meantime…well, I suppose you have a lot of questions.”
“I…yes, I do.”
“I’m happy to answer them, but I don’t want to cause you undue distress. I can’t imagine how disorienting this has been for you. If you decide you really do want answers, I’m prepared to give them.”
He gulped. ‘Disorienting’ was putting it pretty bloody mildly. He wanted answers, of course he did, but what to ask first? “You said…Voldemort is dead.”
“He is, yes.”
“Did I join him?”
Hermione glanced away for a moment, rubbing her fingers together. When she finally turned back to him, she looked…sad. “Yes, you did.”
“Why? If he’s everything you said…”
She sighed. “He is, but I’m told he was a charismatic man, back in his prime. I suppose you’d know that better than I would. I only ever knew him as a monster hell-bent on killing my best friend and witches and wizards like me. I imagine you had your reasons.”
Oh…that explained it. Hermione was Muggle-born. The thought disturbed him for a moment, but only a moment: Hermione hadn’t shown any signs of being…well, the kind of Muggle he was familiar with. He supposed not all Muggles were the same, just like not all wizards were the same, but it was strange to think about them like that.
Even Lil’s parents had looked at him funny, with his dirty and oversized clothes, talking about things they couldn’t possibly understand. And the less said about Tuney, the better.
So…”Why did I join him?”
“I don’t know.”
Severus looked up, startled, but Hermione didn’t look like she was lying. “You don’t?”
“You never told me. It was a decision you made before I was even born, when you were barely out of school. I know it was a decision you regretted. It’s always been difficult to tell what you’re thinking, even after we married.”
“I know what I was thinking,” Severus muttered, glancing at his wife’s robes. They were flattering without being revealing, and he found himself…entranced by the fall of fabric over her form.
“What was that, sorry?”
He flushed. “Sorry, I don’t think I should say.”
“No, please do.”
“I…I said that I knew…what I was thinking.”
She was quick on the uptake, his witch. She gaped at him open-mouthed…then threw back her head and laughed at him.
He jumped up, unwilling to sit there a moment longer. She said she wanted to know!
“Wait, please, Severus. I’m sorry…” It took her a moment to regain her composure. Severus wasn’t sure why he didn’t just leave her there, but he waited as she asked. “Sorry. I…I wasn’t making fun of you, it’s just…oh, how do I explain this. You grew up to be a man of few words and fewer compliments. I love him dearly, of course, but I very much doubt he would ever be quite so…um, forward.” Her little smirk turned downright impish. “Although, I must say I wouldn’t mind it if he was a touch…distracted.”
“You…wouldn’t?”
“Well. I was an insufferable bookworm all through school. My best mates frequently forgot that I was female at all, and my first boyfriend kissed me exactly once - in a toilet in the middle of a battle - before he decided that actually, he didn’t like kissing me at all. I don’t mind a bit of appreciation now and again.”
“Your first boyfriend was a dunderhead! He must’ve been a Gryffindor.”
“He…was, but I don’t think that really matters. I’m a Gryffindor too, after all.”
For the first time in his life (that he could remember), Severus hated being right.
Three days. Hermione had lived three days with this…baby version of her husband, and it was driving her mad.
On the one hand, it was a rare opportunity to get to know him in a way she never could have - that he would never have allowed - otherwise. Even as a teenager he’d been brilliant, curious, and so, so angry. He was clearly on the path to the Dark, but without being unburdened by the consequences of his choices he was almost playful with his creativity. He’d stopped asking questions, clearly fearing the answers. He also obviously didn’t know what to do with a woman, let alone a wife nearly a decade his senior, but he thought highly of her even if she was a…Gryffindor.
(The horror!)
On the other hand, Hermione missed her Severus with an ache approaching the physical. He was dark and brooding, and his words could cut deeper than any knife, but he was hers. She hadn’t fallen in love with some clumsy teenager: she’d fallen in love with a grown man, with his snark and his scars: body, mind, and soul. As often as she’d wished that he could be freed from the guilt he carried, actually sitting down and having tea with such a reality made her feel conflicted.
Was she a terrible person for wanting her husband back? Could he be happier with this second chance to grow up, free from the memories of Voldemort and his war?
Classes had started up again, both a welcome distraction from her troubles and an enormous hurdle to her attempts to research the ritual those students had used. With Severus indisposed, the junior Potions professor found herself scrambling to accommodate N.E.W.T.-level classes, and had complained at length to Minerva. Hermione had very little sympathy: Severus had taught all seven years of Potions through two wars, and had done so to devastating effect. Pointing this out had not endeared her to her colleague.
Hermione did her part by taking half of Severus’ Defense classes, thankful that he wasn’t in any state to appreciate the irony that Neville Longbottom - of all people - took the other half. If he wanted to scream about it, he would need to return to himself first.
“...Hermione?”
She turned to see Severus balancing a book open on his arms. He looked unsure of his welcome.
He should never look like that. Scolding herself for allowing the strangeness of the situation to get to her, she gave him what she hoped was an inviting smile. “Hello, Severus. How was your day? Still feeling alright?”
He hummed, not meeting her eyes. In Snape-speak, that could mean anything from boredom to near-mortal injury. Hermione didn’t see blood anywhere, so she assumed she at least had some time to prepare if he decided to collapse on her.
“If you could have your…your real husband back, would you?”
“What?” She gave him a more thorough once-over. “Severus, are you alright? What’s happened?”
“Just…answer the question. Um. Please.”
Hermione sighed. “I won’t lie: this situation is…strange. It’s very difficult to remember that you and Sev…um, that you and the man I married are the same person. It’s like you’re a stranger who shares a name and a face.
“You’re so…carefree, I suppose. You smile more, you’re more open. As much as I miss the man I married, I can’t help but think that you might be happier the way you are - as a clean slate, as it were.”
It was more than she’d intended to say, but…in a way, he deserved to know.
“So…you don’t want him back?” He scrunched his nose, looking at her sideways.
“That’s not what I meant, not at all! I would give anything to have him back! But…the situation isn’t that simple, is it? Getting him back would mean giving up this version of him - of you - oh, it's all so strange!” She huffed. “I wish I could ask him what he would want, if he’d rather be young and unburdened again, have a second chance to make better choices. I’m not sure it matters; we don’t know the effects of the ritual, remember. If there’s a choice to be made I think you should be the one to make it, not me, but I’m not convinced that will be the case.”
He nodded slowly. “Could we…could we spend some time together?”
“Sure?” Hermione was taken aback. They’d spent nearly every minute she wasn’t teaching together in their rooms, talking or going over research into the ritual, but she had a feeling that wasn’t what he meant. “What would you like to do?”
“We could, um, play Wizard’s Chess?”
She giggled, trying not to laugh too much; he was still so sensitive. “We can, but I’ll warn you: I’m terrible.”
She was. Still, she managed to make him laugh every time she lost, which felt a bit like a win.
Severus glanced down at the sleeping witch on the sofa. Three days he’d had with her, and they had been some of the most exhilarating and confusing he could remember.
It had been humiliating, learning that he’d been wrong about so much. He’d been wrong about Lord Voldemort's character and plans, he’d been wrong about his mates in school, he’d been wrong about Slytherins being better than Gryffindors.
After all, Hermione was a Gryffindor - the Head of Gryffindor, he’d learned - and while she could be every bit as terrifying as McGonagall or Dumbledore, he didn’t think Potter’s gang would have gotten away with their reign of terror on her watch.
She knew about Potter. It was one of the few things she’d volunteered about life after the war, actually. Potter and Lily had married and had a son, Harry, who was one of Hermione's best friends. Potter and Lils were both dead, betrayed by Pettigrew, of all people. All the Marauders were dead.
Lily was dead. That thought still hurt his heart, no matter how angry he'd been at her.
Severus had outlived his tormentors, and - it appeared - had gone on to torment future generations of little witches and wizards, angry and alone. The one bright spot in it was the witch curled up on the sofa, making funny little snoring noises.
She had treated him better than he deserved, after he’d insulted her. It hadn't crossed his mind back then that she could’ve been Muggle-born. It was stupid of him, especially after…after what had happened after his O.W.L.s, down by the Black Lake. He clearly hadn’t learned anything.
Hermione had never said, but Severus knew deep down what had happened to him. He’d gone and joined the Death Eaters, the same people who had put scars on his wife’s body and shadows in her eyes. He had hurt…untold numbers of people.
He couldn’t actually bring himself to ask. He didn’t think he could bear to hear her tell him how awful he’d been.
And yet…that was the man Hermione cried over, late at night when she thought he was asleep.
Severus glanced back down at the book in his arms. The stupid students who had started this whole ordeal had attempted to bastardise a very Dark piece of magic indeed. It would never have had enough power to fully reverse time, but it had been enough to reverse time for one person. Unfortunately, that was where it had stopped: all that ritual magic lay, dormant and incomplete, inside him.
He was lucky to have lived this long. Either he needed to complete the ritual and stabilise his condition, or…break it.
He could either remain as he was, dealing with whatever legal and physical side effects arose from dangerously Dark experimental magic, or go back to being a sour old guilt-ridden git.
The sour old guilt-ridden git who had married Hermione.
It would have been incredibly tempting to try to remain as he was. He didn’t think Hermione would turn away from him, not if she hadn’t done so already. He had grown into a powerful wizard once, and he was confident he could do so again. He could have lived his life over again, perhaps under a new name…
…except that Hermione had seen something good in him, something worth spending the rest of her life on.
Perhaps, Severus thought as he made his way out of the room, book carefully clutched to his chest with one shaking arm, there was something worth saving in him after all?
Hermione woke with a start. Something was wrong, she knew it.
“Severus?”
There was no answer. Severus slept lightly - even without the weight of two wars hanging over his head - and the silence sent a shiver down her spine.
She pushed open the door to their bedroom, but there was no reassuring lump on the bed. She lit the room with her wand, trying to regulate her breathing.
He wasn’t in the bedroom. He wasn’t in the bathroom. He wasn’t hiding in their quarters, her office or his…
“Hermione?” Minerva stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. “Whatever is the matter? Is it Severus?”
“He’s gone,” Hermione gasped, realising at that moment that she was openly crying and running through the school in her pyjamas and dressing gown. “I can’t find him-”
And then, she knew where to look.
Minerva reached the conclusion at the same time she did. “You don’t think…”
They both took off running. Hermione felt no qualms about leaving the headmistress behind, not when her husband’s life could be at stake.
The doors to the East Wing were heavy and protected, but Hermione broke through them easily.
The Aurors had cleaned up the crime scene - both the runes that had been written on the wall, and the site of the ritual - but the staff had decided to protect the site until they figured out what was wrong with Severus.
He wasn’t in the main hall. Hermione hadn’t expected him to be.
The door to the chamber where the ritual had been set up was open just a crack, allowing a thin grey mist to creep along the floor.
No.
She bolted for the door, ignoring the calls behind her.
The narrow circular staircase on the other side of the door led up, up, up. The mist grew thicker the more she climbed, pressing down on her with a weight she didn’t think she was imagining.
She was going to chain her wizard to her bed once she found him. The alternative…didn’t bear considering.
Severus was unconscious in the centre of the room, bleeding profusely from a slice on his palm. A small trickle of blood smeared across his face but she couldn’t tell its source. Still, a hand on his wrist proved he had a pulse, and his breath tickled her hair.
She was so focused on reassuring herself that he was alive and (relatively) unharmed that she didn’t recognise the change until she heard Minerva’s soft Scottish expletive behind her.
This was…her Severus. He was back.
He had figured out the ritual and had reversed it. Without telling anyone.
How could he be so reckless? Shaking him like a ragdoll and demanding answers probably wouldn’t help, so Hermione settled for wrapping herself around him like a second coat. Had she said or did something to make the younger Severus believe he was unwanted? That she would criticise or disregard what he’d found? Or had he thought that she would demand that he forcibly eliminate himself in favor of…of himself?
“Come, lass.” Hermione could feel Minerva’s surprisingly strong arms lifting her off Severus. “It’s back to Poppy with him. Merlin…he’s as bad as he ever was as a student here.”
Severus blinked awake, and instantly he knew his plan had worked.
He was old again. The juxtaposition between his teenaged body and his adult one was stark and unflattering in equal measure. Perhaps if he’d remembered how much his pain his old injuries (and the progression of age) caused him, he wouldn’t have been as eager to restore himself. He would certainly miss being able to sit and read for long periods of time without aches, or the mobility he was gradually losing.
What he would not miss was the stark emptiness, the knowledge that a chunk of himself was just…missing. His memories settled back into his head with a sense of rightness: good or bad, his mind was his own again.
Thus, it was with a deep sense of deja vu that he turned his head and saw, for the second time in under a week, Hermione curled up in the chair next to his hospital bed. She was dressed differently - her pyjamas and dressing gown were somewhat less flattering than the robes she’d worn for the Halloween Feast - but in his eyes, she was no less beautiful.
Reverting to an amnesiac, hormone-riddled youth was an experience he most certainly did not want to repeat, but it had been a revelation in its own right. Hermione had dealt with his younger self with more grace than he would have expected, given the insults he’d heaped on her, however unintentionally.
How had he ever considered giving this up? Yes, it had taken him decades of misery and torment to reach this point in his life, but now…now it unfurled before him, golden afternoons of academic discussions over tea and hazy evenings of Italian journals and mutual love.
He had been right, despite his youthful folly, in assuming that a life with Hermione would be well worth the return of his many years of sorrow and guilt. Could he have appreciated the glory of her half as much without the weight of the lonely years behind him?
On the topic of appreciation…he remembered her reaction to his poor attempt at flirting with her. It seemed he ought to be more vocal about how much she meant to him. As her husband, it was both his duty and his honour to make sure she never felt wanting ever again.
Lifting one hand to her sleeping face, he leaned forward and let his fingers trail over her forehead, her cheek, and into her chaotic mess of curls. With a whisper of wandless magic he settled her onto the bed beside him, her head pillowed on his chest.
His appreciation could wait until she’d gotten some rest.