Chapter 2
“It is somewhat remarkable,” Snape said from behind Hermione, “that even all this time after your school years have ended you are still incredibly reckless and witless.”
Hermione spun around to face Snape. He loomed over her, darkness cloaking him in the form of the night sky above them, and his flowing robes around him.
“I didn’t realize I was on lockdown.”
Snape lifted his lip in a familiar sneer. “Do not test my patience, Miss Granger.”
“It’s Professor Granger, and I wasn’t aware that you possessed any patience.”
“Are you determined to endanger your life?” He stepped closer to her, Hermione moved backwards and stumbled over a root protruding from the forest floor, causing her to stumble. Snape reached out and grabbed hold of her arms to steady her. “See what I mean?” he hissed. “What on earth has possessed you to come out here?”
“The star patterns.”
“What?”
Hermione freed one of her arms from his grip and pointed up to the sky. “The stars and the runes can correlate to make a sturdier portal for me to pass through.”
Snape looked up at the sky then back at Hermione, one of her arms still trapped in his grip.
“I was under the impression, Miss Granger, that you did not put much stock in Divination. Or is that only an attribute of this timeline’s Hermione Granger?”
“I admit that I used to think Divination to be a weak and impractical sort of magic, but as I began to study Ancient Runes more intricately I have come to find a respect for certain elements of the craft. There are numerous cases throughout the history of muggles supposedly possessing powers of divination even when they lack any other magical abilities that would make them a witch or wizard.”
Snape stared at Hermione silently for a few moments. Hermione felt chilled under his gaze and shifted against his remaining hold on her.
“I figured your passageway was a safe means of coming and going from the castle unnoticed.”
“And it did not occur to you to wait until I returned to tell me this?”
Hermione shrugged. His hand was still holding on fiercely to her right arm. With her left hand she touched his hand gingerly to try and pry it free from her. In doing so the sleeve of her oversized jumper slid down, revealing her scar beneath the moonlight.
Snape’s fingers unfurled around her arm at the same time his eyes went to her scar. When Hermione noticed where his line of sight had traveled she quickly removed her hand from his. Snape released her arm to grab her left wrist instead. Hermione tugged against him to no avail. Her loose sleeve slid back once more and the ugly word, forever carved into her skin, was completely visible between them.
“What is this?” Snape said, his voice soft but not quite a whisper.
“What does it look like?” she snapped, yanking her arm free.
Snape’s eyes met hers. Inky pools of black colliding against warm brown orbs. Hermione swore for a moment she could see sorrow in them.
“Who did that to you?”
“Someone who’s dead now.”
Hermione stepped away from Snape, mindful of the roots. Snape moved closer, reaching again for her wrist. Hermione hid her arm behind her back. “Stop it,” she breathed. She hated people looking at the scar, she could scarcely stand to look at it herself.
“Tell me.”
“Don’t you know who? Weren’t you privy to the knowledge of what went on in Malfoy Manor when they captured us?”
“Captured you?”
Hermione noted the confusion in his voice. “Oh.” She realized in that moment that the Hermione of this timeline had never been captured and tortured. This world’s Hermione was dead and cold in her grave with skin unmarred by Bellatrix’s cursed knife.
“Were we here for our seventh year?” Hermione asked. “Me, Ron and Harry.”
“Of course you were. Where else would you have been?”
“We went hunting horcruxes.” Snape’s eyes widened in obvious surprise. “Dumbledore told Harry about them before he…before you killed him. You even guided Harry to one of them with your patronus. We didn’t know it was you at the time. But…” her voice became whispery and weak against her own memories, they were forever battling her—fighting for dominion over her emotional state. She was determined not to let them win. “We were captured, the three of us, and taken to Malfoy Manor. Bellatrix thought we’d stolen something from her vault at Gringotts.”
“Had you?”
Hermione half-smiled. “Not at that point.” Snape raised one brow in curiosity. “She wanted answers. Malfoy—Draco—he identified me to them. As a…well.” Hermione let her arm hang back down by her side, nodding towards it.
“Bellatrix did that to you.” Hermione nodded. “But if that was years ago why hasn’t it healed? It looks fresh.”
“And it always will,” Hermione answered in her fading voice. “She used a cursed blade. There is no healing it. Believe me, I’ve tried.”
Snape looked at her arm again, then held out his hand. He locked his eyes on Hermione and waited. Hermione inhaled slowly, maintaining eye contact as she offered her arm to him. Snape took her wrist in one hand, using his other to push back her sweater, revealing the ugly word once more. He lowered his gaze from her eyes to the scar, studying it intently. He ran his thumb gently across the letters, his touch sending a small shiver throughout Hermione’s body.
“I can heal this,” he said.
“Don’t you dare give me false hope.”
Snape raised his eyes to meet her gaze. “I’m not.”
“No one can heal it. Everyone tried. Everyone. And besides—” she tried to pull her arm back but Snape wrapped his long fingers around her wrist, encircling her like a cuff. Hermione glanced down at his hand. “—besides,” she repeated, flitting her eyes back to him, “that’s not what I need your help with. I just want to go home.”
“I understand that, Miss Granger. I will help you return to your proper timeline. But I can also help with this.”
“Why do you care?”
“Because it is…”
“It is what?”
“Wrong.”
Hermione scoffed. She pulled again but Snape still held tight. Like she was the rope keeping his ship tethered from drifting out onto a stormy sea.
“Think what you will of me, Miss Granger. But I do not believe any muggle-born witch or wizard deserved the torture they endured during the war, and I certainly do not agree with this word.”
Hermione clenched her jaw to keep from saying the dozens of snide and cruel remarks dancing through her head at that moment, along with insisting he address her properly. And then she realized what should have been incredibly obvious. Of course he didn’t agree with the word or the torture of muggle-borns.
“Have you loved her in every timeline then?”
Snape released Hermione’s wrist. “Let’s return to the castle.”
***
The night wore on as Hermione and Snape delved into the books in search of answers to the timeline predicament. When the clock on the wall told them it was well after midnight Snape closed the volume in his hands with a sense of finality.
“There doesn’t seem to be anything here to help us. I will go to Diagon Alley tomorrow and seek some other texts.”
Hermione looked up at him from where she was seated across the room on his sofa. “What other texts?”
“Ones that are a bit more comprehensive than what the school library carries.”
Hermione closed the book in her lap. “You mean dark magic.”
Snape sighed in annoyance. “I wouldn’t call timeline hopping anything other than dark magic. Would you, Miss Granger?” Hermione narrowed her eyes at his miss-address. She could tell he registered her distaste but he ignored her. “What could any witch or wizard seek to gain by changing timelines that wasn’t nefarious.”
Hermione set the book aside, still keeping her eyes narrowed in frustration. “You’re right.”
Snape’s eyes widened a bit. “My, my, Miss Granger, how did those words taste coming out of your mouth?”
“I don’t know, Professor, how did my hand feel against your face?”
Snape’s eyes immediately filled with rage and Hermione’s filled with glee. She leaned back on the sofa, crossing her arms over her chest as she maintained a smug smile. “May I sleep on your couch?”
“I did not presume to ask you to sleep on the floor.”
“Wonderful. Goodnight.” Hermione kicked off her shoes and collapsed on the sofa, rolling over so that she faced the wall. She could feel Snape’s eyes on her for several agonizing moments but then she heard his footsteps retreat to his bedroom and the sound of the door closing behind him.
***
Hermione came back through the passageway to find Snape back behind his counter, working over a cauldron.
“Insistent on frolicking about through the hidden passageway, I see.” He never took his eyes off his work.
Hermione however rolled hers as she placed down the basket she was carrying across from him on the counter. “You’re charming in the mornings.”
Snape finally looked up at her, glaring. Hermione smirked.
“Snape looking absolutely loathsome towards me? However will I recover?”
“Graduating made you bold, Miss Granger. I only seem to recall Potter having such a smart mouth.”
“Surviving a war made me bold. Enduring torture made me bold. Losing those I loved made me bold.”
Snape held her now angry gaze for a moment before speaking again. “Who did you lose?”
That wasn’t what she expected him to say. She rested her hands on the edge of the counter, leaning against it to try and balance and steady her racing heart.
“Fred, Lupin, Tonks, Dobby…my parents.”
“Death Eaters got to your parents?”
Hermione suddenly felt tears in her eyes, she dropped her eyes to stare at the counter. “No,” she whispered. “I obliviated them and sent them away with new identities to keep them safe. The spell was too thorough to be undone.”
“That was foolish.”
Hermione’s gaze snapped back up to meet his unfeeling one.
“I’m leaving.”
She grabbed her basket and some of the books and headed for the passage. Snape was on her immediately. He grabbed her by the shoulders and spun her around, slamming her against the counter, the edge of it biting into her back.
“Don’t be stupid.”
“I’m never stupid.
Snape scoffed. “Where would you go?”
“Anywhere that you’re not.”
“Don’t be absurd, you need my help.”
“I don’t need anyone. Everyone needs me. It may have taken me years to realize it but The Boy Who Lived would’ve died during his first year at Hogwarts without me. And every year after. I helped save the day as much as he did. I will not be bullied by you ever again. Now, let go of me.”
“You think me a bully?” His voice was softer, it unnerved her.
“Hard to hear when you spent your entire life painting yourself as the victim of James Potter, isn’t it?” Snape’s softness melted into his tell-tale sneer. “Did it make you feel big to belittle and abuse children? To mock Harry for his fame when you knew very well how he acquired it? To hurt people and use the excuse of Dumbledore’s coercion? Am I supposed to believe our timelines so different that you were a kind man?”
Snape dug his hands harder into her shoulders. She refused to flinch. “I’m not afraid of you. I have survived far worse than a grown man who carries the petty wounds of childhood around like a talisman against any reprimand or rebuttal.”
Snape was shocked silent by her words.
“Let go of me,” she hissed.
This time he did as she said but he didn’t step back, he remained towering over her, blocking her in against the counter.
She held his stony stare with as much intensity as she could muster. “Touch me without my consent again and I will hex you. Is that understood?”
Snape nodded once, remaining silent for several more moments before seeming to find the proper words to say to her.
“Do you still intend to leave?”
“Are you going to continue to be cruel to me if I stay?”
“I am not a nice man, Miss Granger. You have said as much.”
“Nice is not the opposite of not being cruel.”
“Very well.” He nodded to her basket. “Were you foraging in the forest?”
“Yes. Certain natural herbs and fungus can help with the mental and physical projection across realms and space.”
“And you learned this how?”
Hermione half-smirked. “I went to a muggle library early this morning while you were still asleep.”
“And they had books on this?”
“No, I used the computer to research it.”
She saw Snape’s jaw tense and her smirk grew. She knew most magical folk understood that muggle technology existed but very few actually understood it. She loved when her muggle-born background gave her a leg up.
Snape opened his mouth to speak but Hermione cut him off. “Would you have ever called me an insufferable know-it-all if I were a boy? Or even a Slytherin?”
Snape clenched his jaw again and remained silent.
“That’s what I thought.”
Snape sighed in agitation. “I have a class to teach. Put that salve on your arm.”
He turned and headed for the door. “What salve?”
He looked back and nodded at the cauldron before leaving the room, slamming the door behind him. Hermione tentatively walked over to the cauldron and peered inside, sure enough a light red salve waited for her. She had tried dozens of salves and draughts over the years, nothing helped, nothing healed. She had no doubt that this salve would fail as well. Snape was just so arrogant he believed he could always succeed where others failed.
Hermione ignored the salve entirely and went to curl up on the couch and nap.