Remember

CHAPTER 21: Out of Their Hands









On the morning of her departure Hermione and Severus awoke well before dawn. They were wrapped tightly around each other inside the sleeping bag tucked into a dark corner of an abandoned room. They didn’t speak as they came together that morning, their bodies now familiar with the others moved together fluidly. It was slow, tender and heart breaking as they made love for the last time.







Severus kissed her to the point that her lips were bruised and raw from it and he did not let a moment pass when his hands were not upon her in some way shape or form. They slipped into the prefect’s bathing chamber where they held each other in the large, sunken tub with Hermione weeping into his shoulder.







Dumbledore was expecting them and as they made their way towards his office Severus began to tremble. Desperation the bordered on insanity began to fill him as they crossed the threshold into the sitting room.







“Don’t go.” He said softly, his fingers wrapping around her wrist as he jerked her to a halt. Their eyes met and she could see the frantic glint in his gaze. “Don’t go.” He said again.







“I don’t have a choice, Severus.” She whispered hoarsely, her heart breaking.









“Yes, you do! We will tell Dumbledore to cast another spell, to make it so you can stay! If he can send you back here he can keep you here.” Severus said as he grasped both her shoulders.







“Severus, I don’t belong here…me being here can change everything; the proper course of history will be altered…”







“NO! You belong with me! Damn it…it isn’t right to let me love you then leave me alone, please don’t leave me alone.” He pleaded his words a rough whisper.









“I don’t want to leave you, Severus.” She said as the tears rolled down her cheeks. She cupped his cheeks in her hands and kissed him gently. “I don’t want to go back and have you look at me with that cold, unfeeling gaze when I know what we shared. I love you so much.”









“Then stay with me…we will get married after graduation, we can live with my mother…I will get a job somewhere and we will find a way to make it work, just stay with me.” He begged, shaking her slightly.









“It is out of your hands, Severus.” Dumbledore said softly from the doorway.









“You brought her here you can make it so she can stay.” Severus looked like a wild creature as he turned on the headmaster. “I will take care of her for the rest of her life, I promise you that, Headmaster, just don’t let her go back.”









“Severus, my boy, I can not do that. She needs to return to her own time, to her life there. She doesn’t belong here.” Albus felt his heart aching to see the boy so filled with desperation and fear.









“She is mine!” Severus snapped. “What…was this some cruel joke? Bring the girl here and let poor, pathetic, antisocial Snivellus finally find something good, someone who he could love and who could love him back then rip her away from him?”









“I can not tell you what my motivation may have been twenty years from now, Severus. But I know that the witch can not stay here, it will greatly alter the way that the future was meant to play out. She has to go back, dear boy.” Dumbledore said quietly, though it pained him deeply to do so.









“So that is it then?” Severus said, his tone hopeless and wounded. He looked back down at the witch who had her head lowered as she sobbed. He pulled her to his chest and held her for all he was worth. “You are the only happiness I have ever known.” He whispered into her hair as tears began to roll down his cheeks. “Loving you is all that is good in my life and I will never forget that.”







The room began to fill with a low, dull buzzing sound as the last granule of sand slipped through the funnel. Hermione looked up, her amber eyes overflowing with tears.









“I love you; I love you so very much.” She said on a choked sob. She pulled his head down to hers and kissed him, the kiss flavored by the mixture of their tears and sorrow.







“I love you.” He whispered brokenly. Hermione laid her hand against his cheek and stared up at him sadly as she began to feel the pulling on her clothes and hair.







“You won’t remember how much I loved you.” She whispered. Severus held on to her until he could no longer withstand the pain of touching her as the spell pushed him away.







“I will remember.” He told her just as she was taken from his sight. He fell to his knees the moment she was gone from the room. Every bit of strength he had in him was gone until he was nothing. He felt the headmaster’s hand on his shoulder and he shrugged him off.









“I know it is hard to love someone and lose them, Severus.” Albus said, staring down at the young man who was swiping angrily at the tears on his cheeks. “I know what it is like to be forced into accepting the way of things when everything in you knows that it is wrong.”







“You know nothing.” Severus spat as he shoved himself to his feet, anger quickly replacing the pain inside him.









“Face me, Severus; let me take the pain away so it does not eat you alive.” Dumbledore said as he withdrew his wand and aimed it at Severus. “Obli….”









“NO!” Severus roared as he reached out and knocked the headmaster’s wand aside. “You can take her from me, you can make it as though she never existed to anyone else in this school, but you will NOT steal my memories of her.” Severus snarled.







“These memories will torment you, son, and you will not be able to talk to anyone about them because no one will recall the girl was here.” Albus said gently. Something inside him clicked with the knowledge that this was what he really wanted; he wanted Severus to have these memories.









“I no longer have anyone who wishes to talk to me anyhow, Headmaster, so it doesn’t really matter anymore.” Severus said unfeelingly as he began to compartmentalize his emotions and lock his love for the girl into a hidden part of his memory. “I will need a pass for this weekend, Sir. I promised a friend that I would attend a special engagement.”







“Very well.” Albus said as he watched the young man nod and walk away, slamming the office door behind him. “And so it begins.”







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Hermione felt as though her soul was splintering as she was jerked through the vortex. She didn’t even notice the nauseating spin as she was transported back to her time. All she could focus on was the fact that she was being separated from the other half of her heart.









She landed with a thud on the hard, stone floor of Albus Dumbledore’s office curled into a fetal position and sobbing. She didn’t open her eyes, she did not look up and she did not move. She couldn’t move, she could only lay there and cry.







“Welcome back, Miss Granger.” Albus said as he stood beside the weeping girl. He watched her lift her head to look at him through tear filled eyes, her hair clinging to her tear dampened face.







“Headmaster?” She could see that this was the older, familiar Headmaster of her own time and she began to shake and sob all the more. She really had been ripped from him forever and by now his memory of her would have been erased.









“Now then child.” He soothed, crouching down beside her to guide her to her feet. He pushed her hair back from her face, his memory of her departure clear in his head. She was grieving just as Severus had done. He was amazed to some degree to see the strength of the emotion the two had shared, the hold that first love had managed to get on them. “Dry your eyes, Hermione.” Albus soothed as he withdrew a silk handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes. “There now, stop crying.”









“I can’t.” She whispered as tears continued to fall. “I did not expect it would hurt so much to leave him.”









“You could not stay with him, Hermione.” Albus said as he led her by the shoulders to a settee and sat beside her.









“Why?” She asked suddenly as she looked up at the headmaster. “Why would you send me back there and let me fall in love with him that way?” She asked. “I never thought you a cruel wizard, sir, how could you do this?”









“Severus needed you then, Hermione. He needed what you could bring to him. Your love opened a place in him where he could go to keep the darkness at bay.” Albus said softly. His guilt kicked in when he saw the pain in her eyes.







“But he doesn’t remember.” She sobbed. “I gave him all of me and he doesn’t remember.”









“But he remembered how to love, Hermione.” Albus said, refusing to reveal that Severus had not allowed his memories to be altered. “Because of you he was able to feel compassion, remorse and even love.” He saw her shake her head in distress and he reached out his hand to stroke her shoulder. “Would you like for me to take away the last six months?” He asked.







Hermione got to her feet quickly and backed away from the headmaster with an expression of fear on her young face.







“No, you can’t have my memories, no, no, no.” She swung his door open and fled, running as fast as she could from the castle and into the forest towards the hot spring.









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Severus sat up in his bed abruptly. Sweat rolled down his face and chest as he panted, struggling to catch his breath. For the first time in six months he noticed that his head was not aching, the pressure that had tormented him everyday as his memories were altered was no longer there. Every day he had swallowed pain potion to ease the ache and every night he would go to sleep and watch the images of his altering past play out in his dream only to awake and discover feelings for a young witch that were inappropriate for a professor to have for his student.









It felt as if these things had just happened to him instead of them occurring nearly twenty years previously. Every tender emotion he had felt for the little chit was right there on the surface, raw and suffocating as though no time had passed. He recalled every single moment in vivid detail. The way she had pressed for his friendship, shoved herself into his company and into his life. He couldn’t forget the way she had shown him such tender affection, the aching, saccharine sweetness of those first, fumbling kisses, every burning second of newly aroused passion and exploration.







He hardened at the images of making love to her, the recollection of feeling her snug heat wrapped around him as he struggled to make it good for her too in his adolescent quest for satisfaction. The girl had loved him so completely that no one else had ever come close to her. He shook his head as though trying to clear it and made his way into his lavatory for a shower.







As the hot water poured over him he was bombarded with memories of an unselfish girl who loved the school outcast, who cast aside her reputation with her own house to belong to him. Heated arguments followed by even more heated couplings filtered through his mind, kicking his arousal into full gear. He took his hardened shaft in his hand and stroked firmly as he recalled moments in the hot spring, that first time when he felt her come with him buried inside her and the night beneath the Slytherin table in the great hall when she had screamed his name so loudly he was certain that Filch was going to come running in before he could finish.







He came with a rough shout as he leaned heavily against the shower wall, his eyes closed as he let the water wash away the evidence of his release. The pain flowed through him as their last moments together played out. Her tears, his tears, her whispered declarations of love, his petition for her to stay and marry him just before she vanished. The fervor with which he fought to retain his memories of the witch.









That weekend, in his anger and grief over the loss of his love he had gone to the first of what would become many revels with Voldemort and his death eaters. He understood now that had she stayed, it would have changed the course of his life and they would not now live in a world free of the despot. But it did not change the agony of love lost.







Severus rubbed a towel roughly over his skin as he dried off and dressed for the day. He reached for a pain potion out of habit when he recalled that the pain had lifted. He looked into the mirror, his eyes wide as the realization hit. If there was no more discomfort then it meant that his memories were no longer being altered and that could only mean one thing. Miss Granger had returned and gods help him, Severus Snape was still in love with the witch.







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OK…so I have these fantastic days at work, come home to these amazing reviews and I cant help myself but update!! So here you go…..sorry so sad…..next few chappies will be angsty but….well……please don’t leave me! I promise it gets better!!!!!!!!!!!!