Beneath the Surface

A/N: If you’re reading this, Persia, I kept my word, your name’s finally in^_~.


Beneath the Surface

Chapter the Twenty-Thirde: When the Time Comes and Reason Leaves


Professor Snape was striding purposefully down one of Hogwarts’ many corridors, on his way back to the dungeons from supper in the Great Hall. It was a Friday, and he didn’t have a single class to teach until first thing Monday morning. Needless to say, he was more overjoyed than nearly any of his students were at the prospect of having the weekend to himself.

He pushed through clusters of conversing and loitering students as if he didn’t see them, and rewarded the righteous gasps of indignation and foul-mouthed mutterings with the taking of an overly large amount of points from the offender’s House. He took very few from his own, of course (Slytherins, for the most part, just didn’t loiter).

“Professor Snape?” a small, feminine voice called up to him, halting his swift progression down the hall.

He looked down; standing directly before him was a pretty, dark-haired, rather minutely sized Second Year Slytherin by the name of Persia Ferguson. He almost smiled as he addressed her, so pleased was he with himself that he’d managed to remember her name.

“What is it, Miss Ferguson?” he drawled, not in an entirely unpleasant tone.

The girl’s eyes lit up, encouraged by his friendliness (for, compared to his normal behavior, Snape was being very polite to this child indeed). She held out a stack of parchments that had been held together by some twine tied round them, and offered them to Snape as if they were a sacred gift. Not knowing what they were, Snape raised a questioning eyebrow at the child, who hurried to explain their significance to him.

“These are the First Year tests you had me grade for extra credit.” She again politely pushed the parchments on him. Snape nodded curtly, recognizance flashing across his features in the form of lowered brows and a murmured ‘ah’.

“Yes, thank you, Miss Ferguson, I’ll take them down now.” He snatched the paper from the girl’s awaiting hands, and then nodded to her before making to turn and continue on his way.

It was just then that he noticed another girl standing behind Miss Ferguson, her figure made shadowy by the dimly candle-lit hall. Seeing that he had finally seen her, the other girl stepped forward, looking t hit him dumbly.

Snape knew her name this time; it was another of his Slytherins, Miss Pansy Parkinson. He briefly wondered how he hadn’t recognized her before, as she was a youthful mirror image of her esteemed (meaning wealthy and powerful) mother. He knew the Parkinsons only socially, and that was more than enough for him; they were patronizing, pretentious people, and there was little he despised more than pretension in any form. He knew nothing of their daughter save for her marks in school (which were adequate), and he made a firm effort not to judge her based on his knowledge of her parents. He’d had to make the eff effort for many of his other Slytherins. Sometimes a child would disappoint him, others would surprise him, but he didn’t know this girl well enough to have come to a conclusion in either direction.

“Was there something you wanted, Miss Parkinson?” Snape prompted the girl when she did not speak. He was slightly impatient at this point, because he really wanted to get down to his dungeons before his next class did (for some reason, putting Seventh Year Ravenclaws and Slytherins together was a formula for disaster).
Parkinson gave her head a small shake, as if coming out of a trance, and lowered her eyes from his face dejectedly.

“No, sir,” she answered, her voice just above a whisper. Her eyes shifted rapidly in their sockets for a moment, as if she were searching her mind for a certain piece of information, before she contd. “d. “I was just accompanying Miss Ferguson here; she was a bit shy to stop you on your way.”

The other girl shot her a dubious look, but did not refute her story. Snape, in too much of a hurry to get to the bottom of this girl’s obvious fabrication, simply nodded curtly to both students and, after bidding them a hurried ‘good day’, turned and continued on his way to the dungeons. He did not hear Miss Ferguson bickering with Miss Parkinson about her little white lie, so quick was his pace.

Halfway down the twisting staircase that led directly to his potions classroom, however, he stopped dead in his tracks and clutched the pack of parchments he’d been given to his chest, covering his suddenly racing heart.

He was experiencing a severe chill, one that ran straight through the bone and into his very marrow. He didn’t know what, and he didn’t know how, but he knew that right at that moment, something irrevocable was going to happen to him, and there was nothing he could do about it.

A memory that he wasn’t sure even existed flashed behind his eyes and then vanished before he could grasp it. Three fellow Slytherins. Gryffindor robes. Bushy hair and dark brown eyes. All of his breath was expelled from his body as he put these vagaries together.

He knew who it was, where she was, and what she was doing. Without a second’s pause, Snape ran to the reading room.

~*~

Meanwhile, Hermione Granger, who had secreted herself within Severus’ reading room on Hogwarts second-to-highest floor, was madly scribbling down calculations on a previously empty journal that she had been given by her parents for her thirteenth birthday. It had taken her two scented and flower-embossed (her parents really didn’t know her tastes at all) pages to complete, but she’d managed to figure out just how many times she would need to turn her Time Turner back so that she would find herself in the year 1974; Snape’s Third Year at Hogwarts.

Before she performed the action that wosendsend her back in time, however, Hermione remained seated on the ground for a long while, just staring at the amazing little device she was holding in her hands.

‘I swear I’ll only stay an hour; I just *have* to get a look at him, I HAVE to. But it’s still so dangerous. Anything could happen, no matter what precautions I take. What I’m about to do is just completely wrong on so many levels…’ Hermione sighed dolefully, but then fixed her eyes determinedly on the object in her hand. ‘I just said ‘what I’m about to do’… that means that I’ve definitely decided now. I’m going to do it. It’s going to happen. I’m going to go back in time. Here I go, one, two, three.’

Hermione shook every doubt out of her head, her single-minded resolve taking control. Her mind was blank as she turned the tiny hourglass within the golden circle of her necklace back the appropriate amount of times, and waited with baited breath and sealed eyelids for the now familiar sensation of all order that existed within the world to twist and reshape itself around her.

It finally came, and she squeezed the Time Turner so tightly that its imprint would remain etched in her hand for at least an hour afterwards. Time itself was swirling about her, sped up to an obscenely fast motion as the events of the last twenty odd years replayed themselves around the small, oblivious girl who had ordered it to be done.

The whirling finally stopped after what seemed to Hermione to be approximately twenty minutes (though there was no way she could be sure), and the time had settled in the year 1974. She slowly opened her eyes.

Severus’ sanctuary (as she had taken to calling it in her mind) appeared almost exactly the same as she knew it in her own time, minus several artistic artifacts and the generally newer condition of the room’s furnishings. It seemed brighter,ost ost several shades lighter in color, though the light of day was not able to seep through its windowless walls.

Hermione rose abruptly, remembering that she had only meant to stay in 1974 for but an hour. Perhaps the heinous crime she’d committed against time could be slightly alleviated by the promise she’d made not to remain within this era for too long. She checked her watch: the time read 7:34pm. She resolved to be back in this very room by 8:34, Time Turner at the ready.

The second hand on her watched was ticking away unmercifully; time was alreaastiasting. With shaky steps and trembling fingers, she made her way to the door, unlocked it and then swung it open as if something horrible could be awaiting her outside of it.

But there was nothing. Just the empty hallway that she had come to know so well; it too seemed lighter in color and slightly newer in furnishing. She began to traverse it, slowly at first, and then more and more rapidly as the soft ticking of her watch boomed in her sensitive ears, setting a pace for her steps.

The door that led to the empty room which was, in her time, a portkey to a similar room on Hogwarts’ fifth floor, came swiftly into her view, and Hermione prayed that it served the same function in 1974 as it did in her time when she opened it and stepped inside.

Thanking whatever deity was watching over her, Hermione did indeed end up in the little bare room on the fifth floor by way of apparation. Warily, she opened the door a crack and poked her head through it, surveying the length of the hallway on either side of her with her eyes. No one was in sight. She let loose a relieved breath and timidly stepped outside of the room, closing the door behind her as softly as she could.

Walking quickly yet carefully, aware that she must not be seen by anyone in this time, she swiftly made her way through corridors and down staircases (making sure to keep to the walls and shadows; luckily, only several people passed her on her journey, and none of them detected that she was hiding behind this statue or that pillar) until she reached the vestibule which housed the Slytherin dormitories on the second floor.

She had passed it by many a time, never daring to allow her eyes to linger upon any part of it for very long. Slytherins were notoriously very private people, and did not appreciate the prying eyes of their curious Gryffindor peers. Now that she was here, however, Hermione hadn’t the slightest idea what to do next. Young Severus was nowhere to be seen, and she couldn’t waste her precious time here crouching behind a large bust of Salazar Slytherin.

Just as she was about to creep out from behind it, the tell-tale swishing of robes and tapping of footsteps on stone heralded the approaching of people. She immediately shoved her body back behind the bust, edging as close to the shadowed wall as was possible. Thankfully, she was able to see a great part of the corridor from her vantage point, without being seen herself. She made not a move and breathed as shallowly as she could while she watched.

Two boys and a girl had stopped to stand together in the hallway at a safe distance from her, but Hermione could still make out their general descriptions. The girl was tall and willowy with fair skin, long, waving black hair and sparkling green eyes.
These features made her very attractive, but the air of superiority that hung about her regal posture and aloof expression contributed to making her seem less so in Hermione’s eyes. Still, there was something oddly familiar about this girl that Hermione, for the life of her, could not place.

The boy to the raven-haired girl’s left side (not familiar at all) was considerably shorter than her and a great deal stockier, but carried with him no less of an imposing presence. He had shortly cropped chestnut hair with matching, almond-shaped eyes that seemed to flash powerfully of their own free will.

But it was the tall, slender boy walking between the two Slytherins that was the most eye-catching of all; Hermione had purposefully waited to regard him the last because she knewwoulwould be the most beautiful of these three striking children. And he was.

With icy-pale, flawless skin, shoulder-length white-blonde hair that appeared to be gossamer soft, and flinty grey eyes that managed to be both calculating and inviting at the same time, Hermione knew without a doubt who this gorgeous youth was.

Though he looked very much like his own son, Draco, Lucius Malfoy possessed a cool and mysterious charm that he had not passed down to his foul-mouthed and uncouth progeny.

‘That’s what makes him all the more evil,’ Hermione thought with a scowl, countering her unabashed admiration of the boy Lucius with the knowledge of the monster he’d become as a man. ‘It’s the tactful, charming ones that are always really bad.’

She decided to ignore how childish that sentence seemed and focused instead on listening to the three students, who were softly speaking with one another. Their voices were far-off and hard to hear, but Hermione was able to make out most of what they were saying.

“...Then why can’t we find him? It’s like he’s deliberately avoiding us!” the girl was saying in a slightly aggravated tone. “I thought you said that he was going to help us out.”

“Patience, Trixie,” Lucius purred at her confidently, his voice a younger and slightly higher version of the one he’d used in the few times Hermione had heard him speak in her time. “He will.”

“And do you know this for certain? Did he specifically tell you that he would make it for us?” the girl, Trixie, cut in sharply. Lucius frowned pensively and lowered his head just slightly.

“Not exactly… But you know he never gives anyone a straight answer!” he insisted at Trixie’s exasperated scoff. The other boy only looked back and forth between the two of his friends as they spoke, seemingly satisfied not having to say a single word.

“Which is why he t bet be trusted! Honestly, Lucius…” Trixie obviously wasn’t finished with her tirade, but she had trailed off when Lucius began to shush her soothingly, as one would a distraught child. Hermione’s nose twitched in irritation as she watched Trixie give in to him.

Lucius was now moving closer to the chagrined girl, pinning her against the stone pillar they were standing behind with his long arms. Hermione saw by his profile that he was staring into her eyes seductively, the corner of his mouth quirked into a confident smirk. Though the girl was making a stout attempt to stay angry with him, Hermione could see that her barriers were already beginning to crumble, for her lips smiled of their own accord as her posture relaxed considerably.

Lucius began to gently stroke her cheek with his hand, and had leant in to whisper things into the girl’s ear which were making her giggle. The short boy with them looked away but did not leave; Hermione assumed that he was a mute, permanent fixture in this odd relationship.

After several murmured words between Lucius and Trixie, the three simultaneously went on their way down the corridor, doubtlessly to the Slytherin Common Room.

Hermione sighed in relief, glad to be rid of them. She allowed her cramped body to uncoil itself from its guarded position just slightly; she neither saw nor heard anyone else around her. As she often did, Hermione idly raised her left arm to her eyes so as to check her watch. She strangled a startled gasp in her throat: twenty minutes had passed by! She hadn’t much time left.

‘This school is enormous,’ she mentally wailed. ‘How am I EVER going to find him? Oh, I shouldn’t have done this at all; it will probably be for nothing in the end!’ A single tear trickled down Hermione’s cheek, and a wave of remorse and guilt engulfed her. With resignation, she stood up and emerged from behind the bust, having made doubly sure that the coast was clear.

She should have checked again; right at that very moment, a single pair of barely audible footsteps was making their way towards the corridor in which she was standing. Hermione froze, both bodily and mentally.

She waited for whoever it was to say something to her, to ask what business a Gryffindor had down here before they found they didn’t recognize her and asked who she was. The footsteps drew closer and closer until Hermione knew that the person was walking right beside her and… and they kept right on walking.

They didn’t pause, or even slow their step as they walked by. Utterly relieved and completely mystified at the same time, Hermione turned around to see who it was. Her jaw literally dropped open.

It was him. Hermione knew him instantly---would know him anywhere---though his back was to her as he continued to stroll down the corridor adjacent to the one in which she was still standing. She need search this time no more, nor could she possibly go back now to her own.

His robes billowed just slightly behind him as he walked (a dim likeness of those he wore as an adult Professor), his back completely straight and his head facing the path before him. Young, Third Year Severus Snape had been oblivious to Hermione’s presence as he’d passed her by.
Hermione knew nothing at that moment except that she had to go to him.

“Severus!”

She ran after him as if her very life depended upon reaching the boy, and without thinking, she clenched a fistful of his robes in her hand and tugged hard, stopping his progression at once. The shocked youth emitted a small cry and whipped around to face his perceived attacker.

Seeing his face was like viewing his yearbook photo close-up, and Hermione stared up at the tall boy in awe. There were the long, unkempt black haire hie high cheekbones and the delicately defined jaw line; the aristocratic nose and the long, graceful neck. This was Hermione’s Potions Professor as a boy of no more than fourteen years of age, and he was baffled by her very existence.

He had not yet learned to guard the emotions within his jet black eyes, and they stared back at her in both horror, outrage, and a fraction of fear. It was obvious at once that he had no idea of who she was, but he would not let this stranger get away with such an infraction.

“Let go of me.”

It took Hermione a moment to process what he’d said, so taken was she by the sound of his voice. It was like a younger and higher version of the voice she knew and loved so well, but it was far less cold and not half as somber as her Professor’s. It was decidedly much more priggish than piercing.

“I’m sorry.”

Blushing, she hastily let go of his robes and backed away from him a few steps. Though she tried to keep her head bowed, she could not stop herself from sneaking glances at him every few seconds. This boy was fascinating to her.

Severus did not take his glaring eyes off of her as he smoothed out his robes, not wishing to let her out of his sight. It was quite clear to Hermione that he didn’t trust her at all. But then, why should he?

“Who are you, and how do you know my name?” he interrogated her suspiciously.
Hermione bit her lip; she’d just shouted it out without thinking. One of his elegant black brows rose at her silence, and Hermione had to suppress a smile; he was so like himself. How silly and how truet stt statement was.

“I can’t tell you that, and I… I just do,” was all she could say, her voice sounding childish and stupid even to her.

Severus had crossed his arms tightly and was looking down his nose at her dubiously; it was more than obvious that he was not satisfied with her explanation at all. She sighed and focused her eyes on her shoes, trying to collect herself. Being in the presence---right IN FRONT OF---Third Year Severus Snape was proving to be too overwhelming even for the infamously levelheaded Hermione Granger.

“Listen, all I can tell you is that I can’t tell you anything,” she gushed suddenly.
She looked up at him to gauge his reaction to her ambiguous words, but Severus’ expression remained guarded. However, his eyes had darkened considerably, and she could tell that he had grown even more suspicious of her. She bowed her head again.

“But I want you to know… that I came a very long way just to see you,” she whispered, her face flushing red as Ron’s hair.

Severus seemed quite taken aback by her last statement; he backed away from her in surprise, but his expression had changed from distrustful to fascinated. He opened his mouth as if to say something to her, but snapped it shut a second later, for the sounds of students’ voices had begun to emanate from the hall adjacent to them.

“…Could be in the library, you know how *studious* he is,” mocked a now recognizable, drawling tone.

“If not there, then in the potions lab. If we catch him there, he’ll have no choice but to make the potion for us,” responded an equally familiar high, rather shrill voice.

Without a moment’s pause, Snape grabbed Hermione by her wrist and practically dragged her along with him while he ran down the corridor. (She noted that his long hair brushed pleasantly against his shoulder blades as he ran, and that he executed the motion with both grace and ease; an action which she would never have attributed to her Professor Snape).

“Where are we---” Hermione started to ask, but Severus shushed her warningly.

“Don’t make a sound,” he whispered. “We’re going someplace where they can’t find me.”

‘So it was him who they were looking for… I wonder what it is they want him to do?’

Though Hermione detested athletics of any kind, she was in a state of utter bliss as Severus forced her to run with him down another hallway and then up a flight of stairs. It took her a moment to realize it, for she was quite distracted by the boy in front of her, but when she found herself and Severus before the door to the empty room on the fifth floor by which she had come to find him, Hermione knew just where he meant to take them.

‘How ironic,’ she thought with more than a touch of amusement.

Severus opened the door and quickly entered the room, pulling her along with him, is fis fingers were still clenching her wrist. Once he had closed the door, however, he dropped her hand as if she were diseased, and stood as far away from her as he could get, despite how close their quarters were.

“Close your eyes,” he said, and did so himself.

Hermione knew what was going to happen to them, as she had been through this room many times before, but she said nothing. She couldn’t have if she’d wanted to; immediately after he’d spoken, the two were apparated to the matching blank room on the second-to-highest floor of Hogwarts.

Severus allowed himself a moment to reorient his senses, and then stalked over to the door and opened it. He did not wait for Hermione to precede him, but obviously expected her to follow. Hermione did so, again smiling to herself as she compared the behavior of young Snape to that of his elder self.

They walked several feet apart down the corridor to the door to the reading room that Hermione knew so well, had been to so often with Professor Snape. Now she was going to enter it with Severus.

Once inside the room, Severus went to the left side of the impressive marble mantel and leaned his elbow awkwardly against it. He did not face his guest.

Hermione silently walked to stand on the other side of the hearth and bowed her head, waiting for him to speak first. She was afraid to say anything, lest she say something she oughtn’t, therefore infringing on the boundaries of time.

She could feel him looking at her, sizing her up, for a long time before he finally spoke.

“I think you ought to tell me who you are and how you know my name,” he commanded gently. Hermione did not look up at him, but shook her head vehemently, her eyes growing wide and frightened.

“I can’t do that.” Her words were soft, but final.

This flashing in his eyes made it clear that Severus was frustrated by this answer, but, strangely, he did not press her further.

He nodded his head imperceptibly and turned his eyes to hisht hht hand, the fingers of which were fiddling with a stray piece of black thread that had loosened itself from one of his robe sleeves. He remained silent for a moment or two, mulling over what he would say next to this mysterious stranger.

Hermione took this time to study Severus himself; her heart was hammering a mile a minute within her breast as she did so. Though not an example of physical perfection as Lucius was, this boy was stunningly beautiful in his own, dark His His white face and hands fairly glowed in contrast with his stark black robes, hair and eyes.

He harbored many secrets within that brilliant brain of his, things that Hermione knew no one else in the world could possibly know, and they rendered his face a mask of guarded hardness and intense vulnerability. She’d never seen such a paradox of feeling exist in one person, and the affect this had on his entire being was purely captivating.

This made him more beautiful to Hermione than anyone she had ever before seen, and she felt awed in his presence, as if he were a celestial being that had been manifested on the Earth into a human body. She found that she craved to hear him speak to her again.

“So…” she began lamely, searching for a topic of discussion. She suddenly remembered how eager he had been to get away from Lucius and his friends, and how curious she was as to the reason why.

“Who were those three students that you ran from?” She instantly regretted having asked him that question, for it had caused him to abruptly turn around to face her, eyes blazing with a quiet fury. She was about to apologize, but he turned away from her again and shrugged his shoulders, becoming visibly calm once again, if still defensive.

““Those people” are my friends,” he informed her, bitterness suffusing the last word.

Hermione was consumed by pity for him; those were almost the same words he’d said to her as an adult about his social life as a student. Confronted by his depressing anecdote personified was rather overwhelming for her, so she simply resumed her line of questioning.

“What, er, did they want you to make for them? I heard them whispering in the hall about trying to get some boy to make a potion for them, and I presumed when you ran away from them that it was you who they were looking for,” she elaborated when he shot her a curious glare.

“Oh,” he said, waving his hand dismissively, a sneer of disgust contorting his features. “They wanted me to concoct a contraceptive potion for them.”

“Ew!” Hermione blurted, her own expression twisting into one of revulsion. And here she had thought that someone like Lucius would want something deadly and dangerous with which to wreak havoc upon his unsuspecting Muggle peers! He just wanted what every heterosexual male student of their age (usually older) did, so to speak.

“My thoughts exactly,” Snape returned dryly. Then, all of a sudden, his eyes lit up with a mysterious, grim realization and he spun around to stalk menacingly towards the stunned girl.

“Wait just a minute,” he seethed. “What right have you to ask me anything about myself when you won’t even tell me your name?”

Hermione could only stare blankly at her shoes, feeling too trapped and guilty to be able to say anything.

“Exactly.” Severus’ voice had softened considerably, indicating that her silence had served to somehow mollify his temper. Warily, she raised her head to look at him, and saw that he had resumed his position at the far end of the fireplace mantel.

A tingling sensation rushed through her body, reminiscent of the near delirium she had experienced when Professor Snape had kissed her. She caressed the young Severus’ face with her eyes, imagining that she could feel every ridge of bone and plane of skin.

“Very well, then,” Severus was saying. Hermione’s eyes were now glued to the movement of his lips. “So you won’t tell me what is most important for me to know. Why don’t you tell me something else, then? Such as, why you’ve sought me out in the first place?”

Hermione’s eyes shot up to his; she was quite taken aback by his question. Head bowed, he slowly shifted his own eyes upwards to meet hers. She blinked and gulped down the thickness that had settled in her throat.

“Well, I really shouldn’t tell you that either---”

“Oh, come now,” Severus interrupted her in an almost petulant tone. “You have to give me something.”

Hermione’s brows rose high on her forehead, her mouth opening and closing while her brain ran through the many possibilities of what she could say to him. Severus rolled his eyes at her and smirked dryly. He pushed away from the mantel once again and began to slowly pace the room, his expression deeply pensive.

“Well, here are the things I already know about you: you go to this school, a fact which is made evident by your…,” Severus’ lip curled upwards in a momentary sneer, “Gryffindor robes. Either that, or you’ve somehow stolen a set of them; something which is nearly impossible to do, what with the sophistication of the wards they’ve set about this school…” He had reached the wall on the other side of the room, and so pivoted on his heel to prowl to the opposite end before continuing in his delineations.

“Though I’ve never seen you before, you can’t be more than…” Here he looked her up and down briefly, “twelve, so that makes you a Second Year at the most---”

“ExCUSE me, but I am almost fourteen years old! I don’t see how you could have thought…”

But she did see; she knew just how slight and small she was, and how those aspects could easily deceive one into thinking she was younger than her actual age. Severus was grinning mirthfully at her, revealing fairly white teeth with fanged incisors.

Seeing this grim boy smile made Hermione more than happy to return the gesture, never mind that it was at her own expense.

“So you’re a Third Year, then,” he said in a conversational tone, the smile melting from his features and being replaced by his serene and slightly superior countenance once more. Hermione nodded tentatively. She was still afraid of giving up too much.
“Why in all this time haven’t I ever seen---”

Time! Hermione’s eyes widened and she clutched at the Time Turner beneath her robes; it must have looked to Severus like she was having a heart attack, as he’d trailed off in the middle of speaking to stare at her concernedly. She hastily pushed up her left robe sleeve and read her watch. Only ten minutes until she had to leave.

“Are you quite alright?” Severus asked, confused. She looked back at him and smiled thinly.

“Yes, of course, it’s just… I need to leave here very soon.”

Severus raised his eyebrows sardonically.
“Right. You must understand how cryptic that sounds.”

Hermione giggled bashfully, now well aware. “I wish I could explain more, I really do.”

“Mmm,” Severus grunted as if he cared not whether she did nor didn’t. Hermione knew that he did, though, for if he didn’t he wouldn’t have dragged her up here with him and practically begged her for an explanation.

She smiled sadly; she only had five minutes left with Severus, and she felt in that moment as if she never wanted to leave him again, like she wd tod to stay and grow up with him. But she knew that so many things would go wrong in the lives of so many people, including her own, if she gave in to that wish.

And somehow, she knew in her soul that she would prefer her Professor Snape over young Severus if she were forced to make a choice between them. Mature beyond her years and always hungering desperately for a special brand of attention that only an adult figure of authority could bestow upon her, Hermione knew intrinsically that she would never be able to form a bond any closer than friendship with another person of her age.

But, like all le dle do, she would always miss what she could never have. She looked into Severus’ face again, committing to memory the nearly untroubled and completely unlined visage that the youth possessed. She wondered what it would be like to kiss her Professor when he was no older than she; ‘legal’, as it were. A few more seconds of entertaining this notion and she yearned to act it out with him.

“Severus?” she asked softly, not seeming to notice the dreamlike quality her voice had taken on. The boy glared at her sidelong, his expression wary; he had definitely noticed it.

“Yes…” he replied cautiously.

“May I kiss you before I go?”

Severus’ eyes grew larger than she had ever seen them before, adult or child. He choked down a surprised gasp.

“Why in the world would you want to do a thing like that for?” he shouted at her, completely unnerved.

Hermione herself was surprised at her own gall, but the fact that she was about to go back into a completely different time gave her the confidence and courage to say what she pleased. Or, what had suddenly popped into her head at that exact moment. Plus, the fact that she had transcended time itself made her feel rather like she were in a fairytale, and that she should act and speak accordingly. Years later, she would recall this clumsy request with the utmost embarrassment.

“I don’t know,” she said quietly, shrugging, but no real shame suffused her voice or posture. “I just want to.”

“Well,” Severus huffed, “we don’t always get what we want.”

Hermione’s shoulders slumped and her face fell in defeat. Perhaps it was because he innately trusted this girl, or, more likely, because she was about to ‘leave’ in a few minutes time and he somehow knew that she wasn’t ever going to come back, but Severus decided to at least give her a reason for his adamant refusal to kiss her.

He crossed his arms over his chest and tilted his head upwards. He could feel her looking at him expectantly, as if she knew that he was about to tell her something deeply personal. Why he was about to do this, Severus could not for the life of him comprehend.

“You see, I can never kiss a girl,” he began haughtily, “because I don’t favor them.”
When Hermione said nothing, he turned to look at her and saw that it was because she was utterly confused. He rolled his eyes and heaved a dramatic sigh.

“I favor men.”

Hermione couldn’t help herself, her eyes bugged out and her mouth fell completely open; one would have been able to look directly down her throat from several feet away.

‘What the…? Then why does he like us when he grows up? I am SO confused right now.’

“Do you have a problem with that?” he asked her in a defensive tone, noting her exaggerated reaction to his admission.

(It should be said that, in the Wizarding World, one’s sexuality isn’t nearly as much of an issue (for lack of a better word) as it is in the Muggle one. Just because two men or two women can’t procreate with one another does not mean that they cannot or should not embark upon a serious relationship together. The parents of homosexual witches or wizards are only unhappy with their child’s choice of lifestyle---if they are unhappy with it at all---because no heir to the family will be born to the same-sex couple.)

“N-no, Severus, I don’t have a problem with it at all, it’s just---”

“Just what?” he cut in, eyes flashing. Hermione gulped, and thought fast.

“Just that it’s a surprise. After all, you’re the type of wizard that a witch would go mad over. Take me for example.” she smiled at him encouragingly. He sniffed arrogantly, but seemed satisfied with her clarification, and just a bit flattered as well. Hermione let out a silent breath in relief.

Even as a mere boy, this person was terrifying! And as always, she loved being frightened by him. What a strange person she had turned out to be, a person who was thrilled instead of cowered in the face (the very personage) of animosity.

“Well…” she murmured sadly. As much as she did not want to at that moment, she really did have to go. Severus tilted his head to the side and allowed his shoulders to sag; he was very nearly pouting as he all but glared into her eyes.

“You have to leave,” he said for her, his voice dripping with resentment.

Hermione’s head drooped remorsefully, but she could not and would not succumb to Severus’ frigid charms. ‘Frigid charms’. Her pale lips quirked into a tiny smile as she inwardly chuckled at both herself and him. Severus apparently did not notice it.

“I guess this is good-bye then, ‘mystery maiden’”, he taunted. Hermione lifted her face so that he could see her smile. Such a warm expression being directed at him startled him slightly, and she laughed.

“Oh, I’ll see you again, Severus. That is a promise,” she avowed jubilantly. Severus jumped again at hearing hime, me, having forgotten that she knew who he was. He barely noticed her walking over to the door, unlocking it with her wand and then opening it.

He never got a chance to ask her just how she knew his name; the girl was upon him in seconds, forcefully pushing him out of the room and then shutting the door in his face and locking it with a loud click before he could even begin to yell at her.

And yell he did when he realized what she’d done, threatening to hurl such creative curses at the girl locked within the room when he got his hands on her that Hermione could not help but laugh aloud, thinking that he had a lot to learn about terrorizing people before he would be worthy of becoming Professor Snape. Unaware of the cause of it, her laughter only fueled the boy’s furor. He began to pound on the door, to struggle with the locked knob and then to finally warn her that he was going to open it with magic.

This threat did it. Hermione’s laughter died on her lips upon hearing it, and she yanked the Time Turner out of her robes, her eyes catching on the glinting watch face on her left wrist as she did so. It was 8:34p.m. It was time.

The number of times she was to turn the tiny hourglass counterclockwise loomed in her mind as if it had been literally wen ten there, and she quickly accomplished the task. The dizzying spinning of matter around her commenced immediately afterwards, and she squeezed her eyes shut so tightly that painful stars exploded behind them. The last thing she would ever hear Severus say in this time floated into her ears as if she were underwater:

“Alohomora!”

But when the door burst open and the boy flung himself inside the room, he found it to be empty. The ‘mystery maiden’ had disappeared from his life just as swiftly and strangely as she had come into it. He cursed and threw his wand to the ground.

~*~

Hermione was crumpled up on the reading room floor, a human heap of flesh and robes that gasped for breath and clutched at her madly throbbing head. While trying vainly to reorient herself to her own time as her mind struggled to hold on to everything that she had experienced during her hour in 1974, the door to the room was abruptly and unmercifully thrown open.

Standing so still that the fact that he was a living, breathing being was barely evident, was Professor Severus Snape. His anger infused with his magic, and dark waves of it flowed from his body like smoke from a simmering cauldron.

Hermione had never seen anyone this furious in her life. She stared up at him dumbly, blinking heavily and slowly as she continued to adjust to her surroundings. At this moment, there was no semblance of caring or compassion for her in Snape’s eyes; they were soulless, black cavities of condemnation and rage, and Hermione could do nothing but submissively accept what she saw within them. His voice, when he spoke, sounded like that which his eyes projected.

“What have you done to me?”