Chapter Two

CHAPTER TWO

...

"...And I want the remaining three hundred of those Galleons to be converted to Muggle funds and used to purchase shares in a little company called 'Microsoft'," Cindy instructed her broker.

"All three hundred?" the goblin, Snapthroat, inquired, arching the fuzz that passed for his eyebrow. "Micro...soft?"

"Yes. I realize it isn't easy for Gringotts to invest in all these Muggle companies, particularly ones that are overseas, but I'm willing to accept the risks involved," she said.

"You mean the fees," Snapthroat replied, grinning. A goblin grinning was a very toothy, unsettling sight.

"Professor Miller!"

She jumped, dislodging a couple of coals under her hands. Shaking off her startlement, Cindy nodded politely to the goblin broker. "Forgive me, duty calls. Remember, these stock shares are to be held for the four names on the list I gave you, and only those four names. And those names..."

"...Are to be held in strictest confidence. We are Gringotts, madam," the goblin stated with gravelly, if still toothy, dignity.

"And that's why I wouldn't entrust this task to anyone else," she agreed, smiling.

"Professor Miller! Stop waggling your...your bum," Severus Snape hissed from behind her, "and get out of that fireplace immediately! What if a student saw you?"

Rolling her eyes, Cindy deliberately wriggled her bum a bit extra as she backed out of the Floo call. As soon as she was free and could push to her feet, the roaring green fire flared and died back down to its usual low orange flames. Dusting herself off, she smiled at him. He wrinkled his lip, then pinched the bridge of his nose.

"...Do you realize how difficult it is for someone of our age to maintain discipline in the faces of those only a few years our junior? Do you not remember the disaster of being nice to them in your first two weeks?" her fellow instructor demanded.

Cindy winced at the memory. Her students had thought her a pushover, and had grown progressively less attentive, to the point where half of them...half...had laughed off her homework assignments. After a miserable weekend thinking she was a failure of a teacher, she had finally pulled Albus aside that Sunday evening to ask him how to deal with the mess she was making. The Headmaster had suggested seeking out Severus for his own opinion on the matter.

She hadn't been all that keen on snapping and snarling at her students, threatening with lost House points and detentions with the younger but still unpleasant caretaker, Argus Filch...but then had received the brilliant idea of dueling with her students to get them to respect her and heed her instructions. She had announced that anyone who could best her in a duel...or best her two out of three for her advanced sixth and seventh form classes...could choose to ignore one homework assignment that week. But if anyone refused to do their homework, they had to face her in a duel.

Thanks to her experiences in the forthcoming war against Voldemort, facing off against his Death Eaters, and her training as an Unspeakable, which had included the offensive and defenses spells to help protect the secrets of the Department of Mysteries...none of them could best her, yet. It was an effective threat, for anyone who talked out of order or slacked off an assignment had to face her in a duel. All of them were doing their homework, and with quite a bit more respect in their eyes. In fact, the only person who dared challenge her openly was Filius Flitwick; the petit Charms Master was in his element as a duelist, now that he had a worthy opponent.

Severus studied her chastised look. "...I thought as much. Do remember the dignity of our position. Particularly if you expect me to assist you in the future."

Cindy's gaze dropped at those inadvertent words just as he turned to leave her office. To her surprise and distraction, a slight lump was visible at the center of his hips. That's an...erection? Severus Snape has an erection? ...Severus Snape has an erection because he was staring at my bum?

Her brain disengaged, much like a Muggle automobile clutch popping. That was the only possible explanation for why her jaw dropped and her lips and tongue moved, entirely of their own accord. "Well, at least you enjoyed the view!"

Snape whirled back to face her, his sallow cheeks flushing peach at her comment. She lifted her brown gaze to his black one, and lifted her chin slightly higher. Once said, it couldn't be taken back, but then he was the one with a stiffy. His mouth opened, shut, opened again, then compressed itself into a thin line.

And here comes my Gryffindor brashness and bravery...

"You are a man, and I am a woman, Severus. Provided you're not a poufter, it's perfectly natural for you to see my bum wriggling out of the fireplace, and react to that sight. I consider myself flattered that you did notice it wriggling...and as we are both adults," she added, pushing her bravery to its post-war limits, "should you ever wish to see it wriggling again, under any other circumstances...feel free to ask. But not when any of the students are around. Now, was there a specific reason why you came ?"

His mouth opened and closed a few more times, his cheeks paled and flushed again, then he shook himself slightly, muttered, "...It can wait," and took himself out of her office.

It took her a few moments to realize just how her last question could have been reinterpreted. Cheeks heating, she turned away from the door, discreetly fanning her skin. My, my...all those brains, and not nearly as sarky as he used to...er, will eventually become. Not to mention younger-looking... A pity he's still so deeply in love with Lily.

Still, you know why you came back in time, she reminded herself, staring up at the still-glowing pendant now preserved in a bell-jar she had placed on the mantle of her office hearth. She checked it every day to see if its heat had faded enough to touch, but after three months, it still glowed brightly, if with more of a yellowish cast than a white-hot one. To save the life of Severus Snape. You may have developed a crush on him during your sixth year...and broken your heart over it when Harry said he killed poor Albus, and tried to bury your feelings in your affection for Ron in the months following...but you conceived of the plan to save Severus Snape from that night in the Shrieking Shack because you still care very much for him, and you know he got a rotten deal all these years.

Even if he'll never love me, never know that I'm not just crushing over the idea of him...as if anyone could keep crushing on him after knowing his personality first-hand...I'm beginning to fall for the real man, this younger him. He deserves to live and be free in the future, and to have that chance to try and be happier again, post-Voldie. Even if he'll lose a lot of his humanity between now and then, I hope he regains it after I've rescued him. I hope he'll have a chance to regain it.

...But he did notice my butt, and enjoyed it to the point of an actual stiffy.

Smiling at that thought, she dusted off her clothes and pulled out the chair at her desk. A chair that one day both Remus Lupin and Severus Snape would occupy. That thought pleased her as well, until a horrid memory creased her brow. Urgh, and Dolores Umbridge's horrid pink butt...and that fakery fop, Gilderoy Lockhart. I cannot believe I was such a gullible little twit as to have had a crush on him.

Which reminds me, I must remember to go over the steps necessary to protect oneself from a basilisk with my fourth-year students...not that any of them will still be around when my second year comes to pass, but it never hurts to be prepared.

...

A knock on the door of Severus' office was met by a grunt. Opening the panel, Cindy poked her curly blonde head inside. "...Are you not coming to Hogsmeade?"

Seeing that it was only her, Severus returned his forehead to his palm. "No."

"Why not?" Cindy asked, slipping inside. She shut the door behind her, enclosing them in privacy. "Don't you want to get out of here, away from the students? I'll buy you a drink..."

"I have a headache. And a stack of atrocities to grade. Why is it we can find it in the budget to teach Divinations...the most horrid piece of twaddle in existence...yet we cannot find enough money to invest in writing courses?" he demanded.

Moving closer, Cindy spotted a photograph resting on his desk. It lay on its back, the frame encapsulating a single laughing moment in the life, the shortened life, of a young, redheaded, green-eyed girl. Unfortunately, he noticed her noticing his wizarding picture, and snatched it off the desk, tucking it quickly into a drawer of his desk.

"Let me guess. You've lost someone you loved," Cindy found herself saying, lifting her chin at the desk-drawer he was shutting.

"It's none of your business who that was," he muttered, picking up and jabbing his quill into the red inkpot on his desk.

"You're not the only one who's lost someone they loved," she said quietly. "I lost a very brave and worthy man...to the Dark Lord."

Severus glanced up at that, his dark eyes flicking to her face. For one moment, his expression was startled, his appearance extra-youthful. Then he shuttered his gaze and returned it to his students' abysmal essays. "My condolences. But a lot of people lost their loved ones."

"And a lot more will lose their lives, in the years to come." She knew she was skirting the edge of temporal diarrhea, by saying even that much, but she couldn't quite stop herself. Not when he looked up at her again. She did try to turn it into a random scenario, though. "One should be prepared, don't you think? Yesterday, it was a Dark Lord. Tomorrow, it could be a...a rampaging mummy, awakened by accident from the depths of the Royal Museum. Love and loss are inevitable...but the good thing about love is, you can find it again. Or it can find you, if you remember to stop and let it back in again."

Lifting his chin, he gave her a firm look. "I have lost my love, in such a way that it will never come back. If you think..."

"...What of your friendship with Albus? He treats you as a mentor with a prize, if puzzling, pupil," she pointed out, interrupting his bitter retort.

Severus snorted. "He treats me as a fractious horse, offering the carrot in one hand and the whip in the other...why are you bothering to talk with me?"

"Because you are worthy. Of conversation," she added, remembering her earlier words. He slanted her a sharp-eyed look. "You are intelligent, mature, closer than the other instructors to my own age, witty on those occasions you choose to lighten up, and not unattractive to me. And I bother to talk with you because I was hoping to entice you out for a drink at the pub and a chat about anything that has nothing to do with this school. The sight of which annoys me."

He grunted, and flexed his shoulders. "I have a headache."

The subtle movement between his arms and neck wasn't wasted on her. Moving forward, around his desk, Cindy stopped behind him. He glanced over his shoulder, then started, sitting up when she dropped her fingers lightly onto his shoulders.

"What are you doing?"

"Tension headache. I can see it in the way you hunch, and the stiffness of your neck. Relax; I'm quite good at this," she added, slowly circling the palms of her hands into his muscles. "I dated a man back when I was an apprentice who suffered from tension headaches. They're horrible, mood-destroying things, aren't they? But with just a little bit of care and attention, and a nice bit of massage...particularly up and down the tendons... There, is that feeling better?"

He grunted a little, but didn't deny her words. She continued to gently knead his muscles, stroking her thumbs along whatever skin she could reach, and over the top of his teaching robes wherever she couldn't. His hair was a little oily, just like it looked, but it was soft and sleek all the same. And though his demeanor was cold most of the time, his flesh was quite warm beneath her fingertips. Enjoying the thrill of not just touching him, but soothing away his pain, she carefully refrained from thinking of anything but what she was doing at that moment. Just in case his Legilimency had already been honed to the point of casual eavesdropping, though she guessed it was still quite early in his spying career.

When he was relaxed enough that his head was nodding, she cupped his shoulders in a gentle squeeze, and leaned down by his ear. "If you're feeling well enough to abandon your work and come down into town, I'll be at the Three Broomsticks until supper. My treat, if you choose to join me for a friendly drink. And nothing but a friendly drink."

Leaving him at his desk, she headed for the door. A glance over her shoulder showed him giving her a puzzled frown, but that was alright. If he was expecting her to go all heavy-handed and demand that they do more after all that sensual touching of his neck and shoulders...well, she had paid some attention to the way the other girls in her dorm had seduced and retained their boyfriends. Give him a taste of what she could offer, something to tease his senses, and then imply that she was only going to give him a fraction of that in the end. It would drive most men into seeking out more than that meager offering. Only time would tell if Severus Snape was like most men.

Not that you're here to seduce him away from the memory of Lily, she reminded herself. Just to seduce him into trusting you, so that you can eventually explain your great escape plan to him, with the hope that he'll actually follow through with it, when that night comes around again. When said night comes close again. Because if the Time-Turner heated up one way, traveling so many years into the past...I'll have to hop forward in carefully gauged increments, with pauses in between to make up for the heating problem...which means I'll be stuck spending fifty days at a time waiting for the Time-Turner to cool down, if I leap three years forward at a time.

Oh, yes, and note to self, sneak out tomorrow to get your hair re-cut and re-dyed. Your roots are beginning to show again...

...

The alarms from her bell-jar wards sent Cindy stumbling from her bed down through the hidden stair to her office. Dressing gown clenched over her nightshift with one hand, the other with her wand at the ready, she found her would-be thief whirling to face her as soon as the stone panel swung open. His wand was lit with lumos, illuminating the room.

"...Severus?" Confused, she stepped fully into the room, wand lowered slightly, but only slightly. He had tried to get into the bell-jar; nothing else would have set off those wards, and no one else but a fellow teacher could have bypassed the wards on her office door without setting those off as well. "What are you doing in here?" Squinting at the clock on the wall by the door, she read the time. "It's almost one o'clock in the morning!"

He took a few steps toward her, his wand still gripped in his right hand, his left pointing unsteadily at the orange-glowing object in the jar. "That is a Time-Turner! I investigated it over the Christmas hols...something I should have done a lot sooner. You have a Time-Turner!"

Releasing her grip on her dressing robe, she flicked her wand to activate the chamber's lights, then planted her hands on her hips. Part of it was exasperation, and part of it was a move calculated to draw his attention, or at least distract him. Her nightshift was thin and thus ever so slightly translucent, and without her robe being sashed into place, she knew it would reveal a few pertinent shadows here and there. From the way his gaze wavered, then dipped, lingering first at her breasts, then at her hips, it was working.

"If it is one, why would that be of any importance to you?" she demanded.

"If it is one," he echoed her words, his voice tighter than hers, "then I can go back. I can save her!"

Cindy rolled her eyes. "Oh, please...you're half Muggle-born! Surely you've read Orwell's story? Severus," she enunciated, "she is dead. Irrevocably, unquestionably dead. The hero of the Time Machine story could not save his beloved because she died, prompting him to create the story's equivalent of a Time-Turner in the first place. Without her death, he would not have been impelled to create the machine, and thus could not go back and save her. And there is absolutely no doubt whatsoever that Lily Evans Potter is dead!"

He blinked at her, face pale and wan. His mouth tightened, his nostrils flared, then he pointed his wand at her. "If I cannot go back, then why are you here? Why here? Why now?"

"It was an accident. I meant to go back only a certain, set distance...and got into a fight because I mistook the wrong bloody hour of my arrival. In that fight, I got tossed farther back. A lot farther. Even if you could break through my wards, you couldn't use it," she warned him. "It's literally still too hot to handle...or do you not remember this?"

Tugging sideways on the neckline of her nightgown, she showed him the slight scarring that remained from the hole the Time-Turner had tried to burn through her upper breast. She had made the mistake of absently scratching it when the salve had started to dry and itch, that first night. Giving him a good look at the swell of her breast as well as the thin pink line, she let go of her collar.

"How did you know her name?" he asked, his voice unsteady.

"What?" she asked.

"How did you know her name?" Severus demanded. "I never told you her name, I never spoke of her blighted marriage...and you certainly didn't attend Hogwarts with either of us!"

Oh, bugger... Rolling her eyes, she settled her shoulders. "If I am from the future, surely that means I would have ways of knowing such things? And an imperative to keep my mouth shut about them?...Look, your love for her is admirable. Your dedication is heroic. But there is more to live for than your memories. And there is nothing in the world that says you cannot open up your heart and learn to love someone else again! Or at least learn to love life again!"

He narrowed his eyes at that. Hoping she hadn't said too much, Cindy gestured at the bell-jar.

"Look, you're not going to get into it. If I am from the future, then you can bet I've used wards that haven't even been invented yet, let alone had any counters developed for them. Even if you could get into it, and the pendant cooled enough to be handled, you'd never be able to rescue her. She's provably dead. Paradox would prevent you from ever succeeding, so all you can do is go forward into the rest of your life."

"What kind of a life could I have without her?" he demanded. "What kind of a life do I have now?"

"A very important one! If things unfold as they should...and that is all I will say on the matter." Folding her arms under her breasts, she lifted them enough to hopefully distract him. Once again his gaze dropped to the thin cotton, and the faint dusky discs of her nipples beneath it.

Before she realized it, he had glided forward in that catlike, graceful way of his, and stopped when he was close enough for her to feel the heat of his body, though he didn't quite close the gap. Eyes flicking between her chest and face, he enquired, "So you think I'm important enough, you should flirt with me? Butter me up for whatever lies ahead? Gain secret insight into my life and my motivations? Or are all of your words merely a ploy to seduce me? You think I will forget her that easily?"

Shifting her hands back to her hips, she met his gaze steadily. "I know you won't. But you deserve a lot more than the misery you're putting yourself through. Some people cannot be saved, it's true. Others can. You think about that."

"Saved, for what? For you?" he challenged.

"Believe me, I know I have about as much a chance at having that kind of a relationship with you as a snowflake in hell, given what I know of you and your lost love," she admitted, doing her best to ignore the tightness of her throat. "But I'm still saying that there's more to your life than misery, repentance, and regret. A lot more."

He took a step forward, bringing their bodies together. He was warm, a wonderful contrast against the chill of her office even through the woolen layers of his robes. "Are you offering to show me all that I could have to live for?"

The offer was tempting, an unexpected opening...but the look in his eyes was shuttered. Closed. Cheeks heating, Cindy met Severus' gaze steadily. "Just like you, I will not be used. If you have an honest interest in me as a person, and not just a warm body, we can discuss this at that point. If all you want is a warm body...I suggest you try Knockturn Alley. But do see Poppy about contraceptive potions and the prophylaxis charm before you go. There are some nasty diseases lurking out there, and you'll not want to beget any bastards."

He stared at her a moment more, then stepped back, robbing her of his warmth. Without a word, he turned and strode out of her office. Cindy deflated her stern stance with a sigh, relieved he hadn't pressed the issue. Severus was the Half-Blood Prince; even at this young an age, he knew many more dangerous hexes than she did, and she had invested a good portion of her time in the Department in researching some of them, herself. Looking up at the bell-jar, she resolved to move it into her quarters and secure it behind some extra wards.

Just in case.

...

A lean, dark-haired, dark-clad body slumped into the seat next to hers. Cindy glanced at her sudden companion in curiosity. "What bring you out of the dreary depths of the dungeons, on such an equally dreary day? And into my company, of all possible people?"

He already had a drink, firewhiskey from the hue and steam rising out of his glass. Knocking back part of it, he stared across the table, not meeting her eyes. "What could I have to hope for?"

"I beg your pardon?" she asked, bemused by his strange turn of phrase.

"I dream only in nightmares, whenever I forgo a Dreamless Draught. What could I have to hope for?"

"Living." She couldn't tell him anything else.

He knocked back more of the drink, hissing through his teeth as it no doubt burned its way down his throat. "What's the point of living, without love?"

The question made her roll her eyes. "Oh, please... You make it sound like you'll only ever have one destined bride." The sharp look he gave her made her roll her eyes a second time. "I don't mean like that. I meant in the general sense. We are not given just one person to love. We start with a mother and a father...and for those who have them, brothers and/or sisters. Then come our best friends, our first crushes, and subsequent amours. A deep love is rarer than the love of a friend, but as you can love more than one parent, and love more than one sibling, and love more than one friend, you can love more than one woman. Nor will loving another shame your love for the one, just as it does not shame your love for your...for your best friend if you learn to love a new friend."

She had almost said his mother and father, but knew something of what his childhood had been like, and knew the analogy was the wrong one for that moment.

"The only failure in love is failing to love again, Severus. Refusing to love again is about as smart as locking yourself in a dungeon cell and tossing the key through the bars...and you have never struck me as a stupid man," she said.

"Never...?" he prodded, giving her a pointed look that pricked at the secrets he knew she held.

She met his gaze. "Never."

He sipped at his drink, taking more time with the fiery liqueur than before. A thoughtful grunt, a long pause, then he spoke again, changing the subject. "Your House points and detention for young Nott were excessive."

"I caught him with his hand up Melissa's skirt. You don't see Ermengarde complaining about the points I took from Hufflepuff for her inappropriate behavior, do you?" Cindy said, matching his calmness. "And you're not the Head of Slytherin."

"Yet."

He slanted her a look, no doubt wanting confirmation of his ambitions. She wasn't so easily lured. But she was secretly thrilled that he had sought her out. She might never have any relationship with him beyond this, a mild mix of the camaraderie and rivalry of fellow teachers, but it was enough that he had sought her out, and stayed for her company. Testing the waters, she asked, "So, staying over for the Easter hols?"

"They're over a month away...and yes, I am. I have nothing better to do."

"I was thinking of taking in a new musical down in London. I've snagged two tickets, and was going to offer one to Albus...but if you're on speaking terms with me, you could always come along in his stead."

"A musical? What musical?" Severus asked.

"Something about cats."

"Cats?" he repeated, skeptical.

"It's been getting some good reviews," she pointed out. "Besides, it's about as far from life at Hogwarts as one could get, and still be able to Apparate."

He grunted and sipped at the last of his drink.

"And if you go...I don't have to buy Albus any candy from the outrageously overpriced concession booth."

He snorted and shot her a veiled, ever so slightly amused look. "Just for that, I'll want two nougats."

She smiled. "Deal."

"...But this is not a date," he warned her.

Quickly lifting her hands, she negated that idea. "Absolutely not. Just two friends enjoying a trip to London. I'm well aware you wouldn't date me even if my life depended upon it."

He muttered something, at that.

"Beg your pardon?" Cindy asked, curious.

"I said, I'd date you if your life depended on it. But only if your life truly did."

Cindy sipped at her ginger tonic, hiding her smile. He really was quite witty, even if he didn't mean to be amusing.

...

"It's theatre!" Cindy protested, clinging to Severus' elbow as they walked through the streets of Muggle London together, looking for an appropriate dark alley to Apparate from. Her heels caught on a wonky bit of paving, and he quickly steadied her, keeping her from taking a header on the unforgiving, gritty cement. "Thank you."

"It's absurd," he countered. "And you're welcome. Yes, the singing was good, and the dancing athletic, and I'm never going to get that insipid tune about memories out of my head...but it was about cats!" He snorted. "It didn't even have much of a storyline to tie it together! Just a bundle of prancy little vignettes."

"That's because it's entertainment. More than that, it's entertainment for the television generation, people who are used to short segments of drama and plot interrupted by cheery commercial jingles. Though I'll concede your point about the tune," she confessed. "I'm not going to get that thing out of my head for a while, either."

"I suppose you'll say that makes it 'our song'," he scoffed. "Appropriate, in a way...given how it's persistently annoying. Just like you."

"Severus, darling," she drawled, mocking the endearment, "I should like to think I'd pick a much better song to encapsulate what the two of us feel toward each other."

"Like what?"

"Oh, I don't know... 'Monster Mash'?" she suggested...and surprised herself by surprising a laugh out of him. He tried to choke it back, but it escaped anyway in a breathless guffaw, leaving her the one holding him upright for a long moment. He swung around to partially face her as he straightened. Their eyes met, and for a moment...more than their eyes met.

Inhaling deeply, both of them looked away at the same moment. Cindy blinked a few times, waiting for her heart to finish skipping. "Erm...I think there's a good alley up ahead, on the left."

"I was thinking the one on the right. We may have to cross the street, but it should give us a chance to get rid of our shadows."

She quirked one brow, then discreetly glanced over her shoulder, using the pretext of a brief snuggle. A dual-purpose pretext, for he smelled pleasantly of herbs and soap and a dash of cologne. "...Those three thugs in denim jackets? They shouldn't be any trouble. If nothing else, I am authorized to use Memory Charms."

"A handy thing, given your mysterious mission. What is it, anyway? Aside from doing your best to dent survival skills into the heads of unappreciative teenagers?" Severus enquired.

Biting her lower lip, she debated for a moment. If she was ever to gain his cooperation for what was to come, she would have to start laying the foundations of a trust between them. "There was someone who fell. Someone important. We...the people I was with...had to leave the scene behind. Including that person. I went back after our primary mission was over...but the body was gone. No one else would have gone there, so this person may have survived...yet the person never showed up again in the intervening years. No body, no trace...no clue as to their whereabouts.

"The Minister of the day agreed with me that this person was too important, too deeply honored by those in the know, to allow their fate to remain unknown. So I went back in time to the scene of the crime...and, as you know, I misjudged the moment and got knocked for a temporal loop. With the pendant cooling down, day by day, I should be able to head forward again after the end of the school year. I'll do it a few years at a time," Cindy said, "and so only spend a couple months at a time waiting for it to cool while I return to the correct hour...rather than the wrong one wherein I forgot to calculate daylight savings time correctly," she confessed wryly. "I made a simple mistake...and so here I am, paying for it by having to dent survival skills into the thick, pubescent skulls of a bunch of semi-hopeless dunderheads."

"And here I thought you were brilliant," Severus quipped, hurrying them so they could make the crossing light. "I should never have put you on a pedestal, if I'd known you had temporally clay feet."

Cindy stuck out her tongue at him. "It's correctable! And it allowed me to help out Hogwarts...and even to befriend you. I've quite enjoyed our friendship, actually." A sidelong glance showed the three thugs were now tracking a new set of victims, heading for the alley she had first suggested. It was just as well; simply by being here, they ran afoul of the potential for mucking up the timestreams. "I guess they weren't following us. Which is just as well. I don't want to muck around too much with fate."

"You just want to clarify a fate. So why play the charity-case with me? Mending my broken heart and all that rubbish?" he asked her. "Not that you can..."

"Because at the rate you're currently going, you'll likely turn increasingly bitter and isolated. Even you deserve to know that others still care about you. And no, that's not foretelling. That's merely a probability based on your current pattern of habits," she added tartly. "Your future is not set in stone, after all."

"Says the woman who traveled back in time? How much of a probability is that?" he asked sardonically.

"Reasonable enough for me to plant a few seeds of doubt and possibility in your path. And for your information, I earned very good grades back in Arithmancy class," she shot back.

They stepped into the alley, spotted a huge rubbish bin, and aimed for its other side. Once there, Severus crowded her back against the old brick wall next to the bin. "Just in case someone thinks to follow us...we should make this look good, like a happy couple too happy to wait for a hotel room."

Leaning in close, he brought his mouth down to hers. Cindy quickly lifted her hand, covering his mouth, preventing him from kissing her. She could feel the slight rasp of his beard stubble, the warmth of his lips, the chilly tip of his nose. "No."

He pulled back, frowning at her. "No? ...Isn't this the classic setup for a tricked-into-it date? Convince me we're just friends, take me out, dine and wine and entertain me, and secretly expect to be groped at the end of the night?"

"No." As much as she wanted to be groped by him, this was completely the wrong moment for it. Cindy met his gaze firmly. "The only time I would ever want you to kiss me, Severus Snape, is if you meant it. You do not mean it, and you certainly do not want it. Or rather, you do not want me. I will not cheapen the memory of your affection for another woman by being a warm body to stand in her stead."

He stared at her for a long moment, his youthful face hardened with the concealing of his thoughts, echoing the older, more bitter man her younger self would one day know. Releasing her, he stepped back. "You are a very vexing woman, Cindy Miller. Or whoever you are. It would help if I knew why you pursue me."

"I pursue you...as a friend...because I admire you. Because you're intelligent enough to keep up with me, and you are not the least bit intimidated by my brilliance. Or offended by it. That's a rare quality in any man, and I thoroughly intend to enjoy it wherever I can find it," she admitted quietly. "I persuade you...again, as a friend...because I hate to see people wasting their potential. You have a lot of potential in you here and now. I'd like to see you keep that in mind as time progresses."

"Considering you've barely known me, what you know of me is what I will become in the future," he reminded her with a sort of smug bitterness. "And as you yourself pointed out so harshly, you cannot change me. What you knew, what prompted you to speak to me of these things, cannot be changed, else you will not be prompted to speak of them. George Orwell, The Time Machine. The hero cannot rescue his wife from her fated death, because it is her death that prompts him to try and rescue her."

"Yes, but there's a difference in your case," she said, giving him a tight smile. "You may be the same man you always were up until the moment of my temporal departure...but after that future point, when I return to my natural time...at that point, you may have the capacity to change."

His smugness faded, leaving only the bitterness in its place. "The only thing that could possibly change how I feel is for the woman I love to throw herself into my arms. Since that clearly will never happen...this conversation is over."

"Suit yourself. But, Severus," she told him, catching his elbow as he started to turn away from her. When he met her gaze, she gave him the truth. "The woman that I am, the woman I have become, I will always be your friend. As my grandmother once told me, 'Friends add up, but enemies multiply. You do the math.' When I leave at the end of the school year, I'll come back every few years...and I'd like to be able to drop in on you, say hello, and make sure you're still alright. As a friend."

"Because I'll have so very few friends?" he sneered, pulling back from her touch. "Is that what my future holds?"

"No, Severus. Because I'll have damned few."

That made him nonplussed. He blinked twice, frowned for a moment, then tightened his mouth. Not giving him a chance to respond, particularly if it was a negative, she stepped forward and looped her arm through his elbow.

"I'll Side-Along Apparate you as far as Carlisle, then you can manage the northern leg. Same as we did when we came down. Alright?" she asked.

"Fine." Squaring his shoulders, he braced himself visibly for the long squeeze of magic.