Chapter Six

Hermione awoke some hours later alone in Severus' bed. It felt odd to be there without him, and she shivered despite the warmth of the blankets. Trusting her with his room...his things!...was nearly as intimate as their earlier joining. It was consummation of a different sort. How odd that nineteen years from now (or last year, if she wanted to be really surreal) he wouldn't even trust her alone with a size 2 cauldron.

It occurred to her as she pulled on her clothes that there must be some reason as to why Severus was so different from the Snape she knew. Why on earth would he treat her of all people so horribly in her own time when they had just shared the loss of virginity in his? Honestly, was it possible for two people to get any closer? What exactly was going to happen that would scar him so badly? Not to mention her part in all this. She had never been one to rush into any sort of intimacy. Why on earth had she jumped in so fast with Severus? She had barely known this aspect of the man forty-eight hours, and she was already giving herself to him without reservation. She'd told him she loved him, for God's sake! Under any other circumstances, it was unthinkable.

The heavy thoughts weighed on her mind as she made her way to the gargoyle guarding Dumbledore's office. She leaned over to the stone beast and whispered in his ear, "Fizzing Whizbees," as if it were a secret. He smiled sardonically as the door opened, and she stepped onto the revolving stairs.

The door to Dumbledore's office opened while her fist was still in midair. The man is still maddening, even twenty years ago!

"Do come in, Miss Granger." Hermione hesitated, then entered. Fawkes immediately fluttered over to her, crooning, and began to preen her hair. She absentmindedly reached up and scratched his head where he appeared to be molting.

Allowing Fawkes to ride on her shoulder, she made her way to one of the squashy chairs in front of Dumbledore's desk and sat.

"I thought I might come to see you, sir. I was... wondering if you'd made any progress on how to get me home.... Well, my home in... my time, not my home now, since there's no real need for me to be looking at the house twenty years before I should really be there...." She let the sentence fade as she realized she was babbling.

The old man studied her for a moment with half a grin and a glimmer in his eyes before answering, slowly. "I'm not sure. You say you made a perception enhancement potion and went to sleep, only to wake up in this when, correct?" She nodded. "Well, it seemed to me that perhaps you hadn't made the potion quite right, and that was what caused it, so I went into the library to research potions with time travel side effects. I even went to the Library of Alexandria for a more comprehensive search. I didn't find anything. So it may be that the potion wasn't what brought you back at all. I believe a few more questions are in order...."

Hermione sighed. Of course it couldn't have been that easy. Even the Time-Turner she'd been given third year, the simplest of time devices, was so complex she was amazed they'd even thought of allowing her to use it. Compared to this, that was cake.

"Perhaps you've forgotten something," Dumbledore suggested. "Did anything happen after taking the potion but before you woke up here?"

She opened her mouth to deny it, but her tongue remembered better. "Yes, sir. I was on my way back to Gryffindor Tower when Professor..." She hesitated on naming him, for fear of giving Dumbledore too much information about his own future. If her relationship with the boy-who-would-end-up-being-the-man cocked up the timeline, so be it. But adding to that knowledge of Snape's tenure as Potions master was just begging for trouble. "...when a professor stopped me in the hall," she finished. "It was after curfew. When he let me leave, I went straight to bed." Then something else occurred to her. "I had a dream...."

Dumbledore's eyes lit up. "Oh?"

"Yes. It was very strange." And she told him everything she could remember about it, from the chill of the water to the blue of the sky, from the billowy clouds to the random faces floating with her on the river. Hermione amazed herself at how clear it still was, even a day and a half later.

Dumbledore just sat there, eyes sparkling over his half-moon spectacles, fingers steepled in thought. And then his lips twitched upward in a grin.

"Professor?"

"Miss Granger, this is absolutely magnificent."

"Sir?"

"That wasn't a dream. You managed to project yourself out of realspace. Now, as I am certain there isn't a potion with that kind of effect either, would you perhaps share with me which potion it was you were trying to make and at which failed so... spectacularly?"

If Snape had asked her that, the tone would have been completely different, and meant in a mocking way. Coming from Dumbledore, though, she had to chuckle along with him. If time travel was the side effect of the perception enhancement potion she'd made, she had failed. Spectacularly, in an amazing discovery kind of way. "I'm not sure, exactly," she said. "I was browsing the stacks and pulled down a book that looked like it might have what I wanted in it. And it did. Or, I thought it did. I can't even remember the name of it."

"Would you be able to find it again?"

Hermione thought for a second, then nodded. "I believe so."

"Off to the library, then."

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Hermione walked into the Restricted Section and began gazing at the aisles in thought, before wandering over to a shelf and running her fingers over the titles. In the twenty years' difference, some new books had been added, and some had been removed, so the one she was looking for was in a different place, but she found it and pulled it out. It was a large tome...so large in fact, that she brought the book down to the floor before flipping through the recipes.

She came to the potion in question and stopped. "Professor?"

Dumbledore sank down on his knees beside her and studied the book.

"Sir, this is the correct book, and this the correct potion, I'm sure of it. But...."

"But?"

Hermione didn't know how to say it. It was different, really. The perception enhancement potion...Tincture of Acumen...began with the ingredients at the bottom of page 109 and continued onto 110 for the instructions. "I remember at least two more ingredients on the next page, and completely different brewing instructions."

Dumbledore hemmed thoughtfully, then turned the next page and said, "Is this more like what you remember?"

Hermione cringed, then nodded, sighing exasperatedly. "Yes." No wonder she had botched it in such a fantastic manner...she had managed to combine two spells. How could she have been so careless? Morbidly curious, she turned back a page and looked at the potions there. A groan escaped her throat when her eyes caught the name of the potion spanning the two pages: Elmer's Adhesive Elixir. She sighed. The pages must have stuck together in her book. Somehow. And we know how that happened, don't we?

"So I must have combined the potion I was trying to make with this one at the bottom? Morphambulus Potion? What is that?"

"Fascinating," Dumbledore breathed. His twinkling eyes had already been through the description and half the ingredients on this page. "Apparently, it's a potion for dreamwalking. Combining this with the Tincture of Acumen.... You must have been dreaming of time in order for this to work, especially since you missed the ingredients to actually travel to another's dream. Your potion did indeed enhance the perception of your surroundings, but it did so as you were observing your own dream of a river, which represented time. If the results weren't so unreliable, this would be a marvelous discovery."

She was confused, and her face showed it. "I don't understand, sir. How does a river represent time? Isn't it more like a... a road?"

"Nonsense," Dumbledore chuckled. "Whatever gave you that idea? No, time is most certainly like a river. It carries us forward as the natural course of events. When you stood up in the river, time continued to flow past you, effectively putting you upriver. Twenty years upriver."

"Ah." That would certainly explain it. But it also made her reevaluate her understanding of the Time-Turner.... "So what does that mean for my returning home, sir?"

Dumbledore mused, "I think the best course of action may be to view your memories of the dream through a Pensieve in order to capture all of the details. If we can recreate the potion, you could view an altered version of your original dream in the Pensieve instead of sleeping naturally and possibly dreaming of something else entirely. In the altered dream, I would be with you...using the Morphambulus potion myself, as a matter of fact...conducting the flow of the altered Pensieve to guide you back down the river to your own time. Your mind can be cued to wake you up when your memories in the Pensieve end."

He smiled, satisfied at himself for discovering a solution. "Although," he amended, "I may still need time to give some details additional thought, in order to ensure that you make it back to the correct place in the timeline. We wouldn't want you being sent too far forward, for instance, or backward yet more. And I will still have to think of how to keep you floating freely in the river, to make sure nothing at this point is keeping you here. There will be no room for errors."

At that thought, Hermione looked down at her shoes.

"Miss Granger? Is there something you wish to tell me?"

She looked up to the very blue, very concerned eyes of Albus Dumbledore and lost her voice. What came out was no more than a whisper. "I've discovered something, I think, sir. Something to... keep me here." She hesitated, then shook herself out of it. So much for keeping certain future faculty information to herself. She proceeded to tell him about getting a pass for the Restricted Section from Professor Snape for the potion to begin with...about how he checked his calendar and granted her the pass without question...and then reiterating the story of the confrontation with him later in the hall, only filling in the details she'd tried to protect him from.

She refocused on the Headmaster's face to find him frowning and tried to continue without biting her lip. Her feet were already wet; she might as well jump in. Slowly, then with more confidence, she recounted the meeting of Severus in the library and how they'd become friends...but that was as far a relationship as she was willing to describe, thank you. No need for him to know of his trips to Lily's room or their romp in his sheets only a few hours ago. She did tell him that her Snape was a former Death Eater turned spy for the Order of the Phoenix, but she knew for a fact that it hadn't happened yet. "... And so I think I might have been given a chance to stop him from joining," she finished in a rush.

Dumbledore was pinching his nose in a way that suggested that he had received entirely too much information in much too short of time for his brain to process and was feeling the beginnings of a repercussive headache. "So both Severus and I must have known you were coming and allowed you to do so in order to avoid paradox...."

She nodded fervently, completely missing the look of irony on his face.

"Miss Granger, I am not certain that I understand all the facets of the situation. It may also be that you have told me more...much more...than was strictly necessary. Even knowing one's own future can sometimes lead to paradox." Hermione squirmed. Yes, she was quite aware of that. "But perhaps the time for worrying about that is over. Continue your friendship with Severus for the time that you are here. It may serve some purpose that you and I cannot yet see, but I must urge you not to encourage him to change what is to be his future. It could set events in motion that neither of us would be able to prevent." A pause. "Especially if he turns out to be a spy for the Order."

Hermione looked at the elder wizard in shock. "But, sir! Morsmordre...the Dark Mark...has ruined his life! He spends all of his time in bitter regret. He can't even forgive himself, much less anyone else. If I could change that for him, think of how much pain he wouldn't have to endure. Think of how much better the quality of his life could be!" And in case all else failed, she tried an appeal to his stark practicality. "Think of how much better a professor he would be!" She could hear her decibels creeping up along with her rage, but couldn't control it. This man had all the power in the world to help Severus to stay Severus and not the loathsome, overbearing man he was to become; and he was going to forbid it for fear of changing the future?! Wasn't that the entire idea? She was willing to sacrifice whatever she had to in order to help Severus, even if it meant giving up her very existence and the existence of her entire specific timeline. Why wasn't Dumbledore, the alleged epitome of Goodness and Light, willing to do the same?

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

It was the wee hours of the morning when she finally left the library. They still didn't see eye to eye, but he had gotten her to promise that she wouldn't tell Severus his future and that she would leave him to make the choices he would, which wasn't to say that she wasn't still furious, just resignedly so.

As she made her way through the Gryffindor common room, she noticed something odd: the bedroom light was on. She was certain that she had extinguished it before she and Severus left for their walk.

She very carefully put her hand on the doorknob and turned. The wards were most definitely down, because the knob turned in her hand with no resistance.

Panic rose in her as her heart forced its way into her throat. Had Lily come back early? Were Dumbledore's hopes for avoiding paradox now moot because the girl's Muggle family couldn't handle her all the way through the holiday? She was halfway into deciding on her apology speech when the knob was pulled out of her hand as the door opened on Severus.

"Ye Gods, Severus! You scared the daylights out of me!"

"Well, I was trying to surprise you, Jane, although I thought it was going to be in waking you." His eyes looked away while his lips parted in a devilish grin. "Are you hungry? I brought you a tray from the kitchens."

All of a sudden, Hermione realized that she was famished. She hadn't eaten since he thought to bring her breakfast this...no, yesterday...morning.

As they sat on the bed feeding each other, as had become their habit, Hermione sensed something different about the man in front of her. He seemed quieter somehow, more subdued.

"Did your meeting go well, Severus?" she finally ventured.

"As well as I expected, thank you."

"Only you're being awfully quiet. Would you like to talk about it?"

He glanced up at her then quickly back at the tray. "I decided to ensure that Potter and his friends aren't going to be so problematic in the future." And with that, he rolled up his sleeve to reveal the unspeakable outlines of the Dark Mark.