Chapter Three

CHAPTER THREE

...

"...Professor Miller? Good...you haven't left yet."

Cindy turned in time to see the young professor smoothing down his robes, as if he had hurried up the stairs to her quarters, disarranging his garments in the process. She resumed tucking the small sundry items she had collected over the school year into her valise, though she did arch a brow at his choice of greeting. "Professor? The children have been seen safely to the train station. I would think you'd call me by my given name."

"If that is your given name," he reminded her, stepping into her quarters. Closing the door almost completely behind him, he approached her. He cast his gaze over the table in her sitting room, the little knickknacks given to her by the other teachers at Christmas, and choice presents from a couple of her more appreciative students. "Is it?"

"In the sense that I gave it to myself...perhaps. Perhaps it is a part of my real name. Or a name I wish I could have had." Making sure she had the key to her Gringotts vault tucked into her jeans pocket, she double-checked the presence of the chain slung around her neck.

"It's cold enough to touch, isn't it? I suppose you'll be leaving for...whenever," Severus said.

Facing him, she nodded. "Yes."

"Will you be leaving from here...or out where we found you?" he asked.

"Out there." She lifted her chin slightly, aiming at one of the windows. "I wouldn't want to interfere with the fate of the school by popping into existence at the wrong place and moment. Too many people walk these halls too many days of the year."

"But outside, you could find yourself emerging in a lightning storm, or a blizzard...or in a place where you shouldn't be found." Facing the table, he picked up a small figurine of a witch posed in a classic dueling stance. "The hair's too dark to be you. Unless you stopped dyeing your hair."

"I like it dyed. Blondes do have more fun," she quipped. "And I'll try to pick a spot that's out of the way. Someplace I can use repeatedly, since I do have to make my trip forward in several shorter, safer stages."

"I could suggest an alternate solution..." He glanced quickly at her, looking for her reaction.

Cindy didn't know what to make of that. "Go on."

"I have a house. It's untenanted most of the year. Protected under charm from Muggle intrusion. You could...spend your time there. And send word to me when you have arrived, if it isn't the summertime. The Headmaster says I have job-security, so long as he's Headmaster," he added, attempting a brief smile before losing it again. "There's a spare room; I hardly ever go in there. Or the attic, if you won't mind the low ceiling," he added. "I'm headed there this evening, via the Floo."

She weighed the potential troubles versus the possible advantages. Finally, she nodded. "I'd like that. And I appreciate the offer. But only up until a certain point, time-wise. Then I'll have to position myself more carefully."

"Understood. Seven o'clock, in front of the Headmaster's office," he told her, setting the figurine down. A last, inscrutable look, then he took himself out of her quarters.

Is this a good thing, that he came to me like this? Or is it only going to complicate things? Hermione nibbled on her lower lip. No...I still need him to trust me. And I need to know what's going through his head. What will go through his head, on that night. Even if I have to plant those ideas personally...

I will save you, Severus Snape, she thought, staring at the closed door of her suite. I've spent a year getting to know you as a man, not just a teacher or a spy. I cannot get to know you, and to like the man you are, and not try.

...

Three years and five days later, the rather warm-feeling Time-Turner stopped spinning. The dim, grey twilight of the attic at 42 Spinner's End brightened a little, picking up a dusty, golden glow from the tiny pair of west-facing windows. For Hermione, it had only been thirty-six minutes since she sat down in the chair Severus had provided for her. For him, it had been a lot longer than that.

Drawing her wand, she thought for a few moments, then pictured the happiest moment in her life, the defeat of Lord Voldemort, and Harry's survival. A whispered pair of words, and a silvery otter emerged from her wand. It blinked, craned its head up to peer at her, and awaited her orders.

"Find Severus and tell him I'm here."

Twisting, the otter dove down through the planks lining the attic floor. Hermione stretched, then stood, stooped both to clear the ceiling and to pick up her valise, and made her way to the trap door. Lowering it, she started down the steep steps it formed. No sooner had she reached the bottom than Severus appeared at the end of the short corridor, hurrying up the steps. He looked a little older, a little surer of himself.

"Cindy...I thought you were due two days ago," he admonished her, in lieu of greeting.

"Three years and five days was the easiest leap to calculate," she replied, allowing the ladderway to rise back up into the ceiling. Once again she was Cindy Miller, and not Hermione. Lifting the chain, Cindy indicated the Time-Turner. "It's a bit hot, but not unbearable."

"That's good. Um...how long will you have to wait before the next one?" he enquired.

"Based on my observations during the school year, and my calculations for my trip forward, I have about forty-five days to wait."

"I see..." He looked a little uncomfortable at that.

She took pity on him. "I'll go and rent a room at the Leaky Cauldron. It wouldn't be appropriate for me to stay here. But we will get together and chat, right?"

"Of course. You're still fresh from your year of teaching...you'll want to know all the latest school and staff gossip, no doubt. I was just about to start making supper, if you'd care to join me?" he offered.

That made her smile. "You fed me right before I left. It's only been just over half an hour for me."

A hint of peach tinted his sallow cheeks. "Oh..."

"I know it's been three years for you," she reassured him. "Don't worry about it. You can have your supper, and I'll have a cup of tea...oh, that salve you made for me," she added, gesturing at her right shoulder. "Do you suppose you could make up a pot of it for me? Just in case I should, oh...trip and accidentally spin too far one way or another through time again?"

Severus eyed her skeptically for a moment, but merely nodded and gestured at the stairs down into the rest of the small house. "Of course. Earl Gray with...a dollop of honey, was it?"

"Why, yes...you remembered!" she praised, giving him a smile.

"It may have been three years, but I haven't completely lost my wits in the interim. Even if I am still teaching pack after pack of increasingly dull-minded twits," he added under his breath.

"Oh, please. Surely it cannot be that bad?" Cindy challenged him.

He scoffed. "You haven't been there for the last three years. Let me tell you about a fumble-fingered first-year named Timothy Blake. The very first thing he did was lose his wand over the side of the boat! And then, he sat on his toad. Squashed it flat, the dunderhead. Of course, toads are too stupid to move out of the way; Albus is thinking of banning them from the list of acceptable pets. Even Minerva despaired up through the Christmas hols of ever teaching him anything more complicated than how to turn a matchstick ever so slightly metallic..."

...

Two years, ten months, and fifteen days after she sat down in the attic again, Hermione emerged, mentally turned herself back into Cindy, descended to the ground floor, and sat down to a supper-and-tea with a slightly older Severus Snape. He was barely beginning to hit his prime years, yet those years were weighing down upon him. Anyone who had spent the last three-ish years with him might not have noticed the changes, but to her, they were very fresh and very apparent.

When the last wry chuckles over student and faculty antics had died down, she poured herself another cup of tea, stirred in a dollop of honey, and sighed. "...It's been too long."

"Cindy, you have only been gone half an hour," he chided her.

"I meant, for you." She looked up at him, seated across the dinette table from her. "I feel like I should be there for you, instead of popping 'round at the start of every few summers. But...I can't be."

He looked down at his emptied plate, marred only by a few smears of gravy and a bit of broccoli stem. Lifting his napkin, he wiped his mouth, then set it down. "The sentiment is appreciated, but unnecessary. I am becoming the man I am fated to be. Teacher of dunderheads...and waiting to see if the future unfolds as I fear it might. I want to ask you so many questions, to ease so many of my doubts, one way or another..."

"...But I cannot do that," she reminded him. "And we both know why. Temporal paradox."

Lifting her cup, she blew on the hot liquid, then sipped carefully. It was a warm summer night, but she didn't mind. It gave her something to do. Severus surprised her in the next moment, drawing his wand. He flicked it, Summoning something from the front room.

A black leather portfolio flew into the kitchen. Catching it, he sent his dishes to the sink with another flick, and unzipped the case. "I've been saving articles of some interest. At least, of interest to me. I thought we could discuss them before you Floo to the Leaky Cauldron. If you do not mind, that is. I...don't know that many people who are interested in as many different subjects as you and I."

"I'd be more than delighted to discuss them with you," she agreed, smiling at him. "A man of your caliber, Severus Snape, is very difficult to find in any timeframe."

A hint of peach in his cheeks suggested a pleased flush, but he merely pulled out the first one, an article on the latest advances in defensive charms. Glancing through it quickly, he summarized its salient points for her.

...

"So...I will see you in another three years? Perfect as ever? Unaging?" Severus asked Cindy as they reached the spot in the upper hall where the trap door to the attic would come down. "Presuming that another three years of having that boy in my classroom doesn't drive me mad...in which case, sending a Patronus to find me might be a bit problematical, as I'll no doubt be in Azkaban."

She had done some calculating, and shook her head. "Actually? No. Things will start to get temporally uncomfortable, if I leap ahead a full three years. Instead...I plan to go only one year ahead."

He frowned at her. "Only one year?"

"Yes. I'll have a request for you, at that time. A difficult one. But...vital. A favor, for a friend."

"As if letting you stay up in my attic isn't favor enough," he retorted, though there was little rancor in his tone. "...What is it?"

"I'll tell you in a year, of course...you didn't think I'd lose my caution this close to my goal, did you?" she added.

A slight smile twisted his lips. "No. But one can always hope. Albus presses me for any possible thing you might have let slip during our conversations each time. Even the littlest of things."

"Well, the only thing you can tell him is that I'll be heartily glad to stop living in a perpetual English summer," she asserted. "It's pleasant to see so much sunshine, but it's also unnatural. I think I'm actually longing for winter."

"That's unnatural. So. Will it be one year from now, or roughly a week after the school term ends, as usual?" Severus wanted to know.

"...Roughly a week after the school term ends. And I won't send my Patronus further about than this house. If you're not actually here, I'll move on to the Leaky Cauldron and send an owl-post back here," she told him.

His dark eyes narrowed in suspicion. "You make that sound as if I won't be here."

She merely smiled, and pulled down the ladderway. "I'm merely being practical. I won't always be here, spinning my way through time in your home. But I'm sure that'll be something of a relief for you."

"Cindy." His fingers touched her elbow, halting her move to ascend into his attic. "I... Sometimes, in the summers and occasionally during the holidays...I go up there. I sit on the trunk across from your chair, and I talk to you. Not for long, and you probably have never noticed me up there, but...I would miss your presence, if you were not there. As a friend," he added quickly. "My heart..."

"Is still very much in love." She managed a smile. "Your constancy is your strength. That's admirable. Now, if you don't mind, I have to go play 'truant child' and sit in my corner for almost a year...hand me my valise when I'm at the top, will you? I'll see you in a year, I promise."

"In a year," he agreed, watching her climb back up the steep steps.

...

He had aged as much in a single year as she had ever seen him age in three. Guessing the reason was easy; Cedric Diggory was dead...and the Dark Lord was not. He hadn't been in his house, when she arrived. Apparating to the Leaky Cauldron, Hermione had taken a room under her assumed name of Cindy Miller, and sent a post-owl to his house with an innocuous note, the sort of thing an old acquaintance might send to a former colleague when in the area, an invitation to supper, or perhaps just tea.

When he finally wrote back, telling her of a day and time he could meet her, it was a full week after her arrival. Two evenings later, Cindy Miller escorted Severus Snape into her room at the Leaky Cauldron, along with a supper tray fixed up for two by the inn's cook. Closing the door behind him, she set the tray on the table, then quickly warded the whole room with an Impeturbable Charm.

Severus arched one brow, but didn't protest the security measure. Only when she had finished layering a couple of extra spells for good measure did he speak. "...I wish you had told me. I know why you did not, but you could have told me he was coming back."

"Well, now you know. And we both agree as to why I did not. Delicate times lie ahead," she warned him, pulling out one of the two chairs at the small table.

Severus echoed her movements, seating his increasingly middle-aged self with an economy of movement. "Indeed. What can you tell me? And what was this request you spoke of, a year ago?"

"Well, the Dark Lord has a certain snake," she started.

He winced. "Yes. I've met it."

"It has a particular venom. An anti-coagulant, as well as a poison. My request is that you get me an antivenin for it. A counter-agent of some kind." She smiled slightly at his narrowed, wary eyes. "I know your position, and have always known it. I know that you will have far more access to that snake than I."

Studying her silently for several seconds, he finally asked, "Is this why you have been cultivating my friendship all these years? For my potions expertise? And my position as a spy?"

"No...but your proficiency has inspired me to move beyond the parameters of my original mission." At the slight lift of his brows, Cindy explained tersely. "From merely finding, to hopefully rescuing. I know I will encounter that snake. At some point, somewhere, somewhen, I will encounter it. My current self, that is, not my earlier self. Odds are, the snake will bite either me or someone near me. If I have the antivenin with me as a precaution, I should be able to complete my quest."

"Yes, your quest to save this valuable person whose disappearance you were sent to investigate," he agreed, his expression shuttered, wary. "To meddle with both time and fate. What makes you think you'll succeed?"

"It's more than that, Severus. I have been building up resources," she confessed. "Playing the stock market, investing in financially sound companies...I now have enough money accumulated to help this person disappear, should I find them in time to assist their mysterious disappearance."

"...Really."

"Yes, really," she retorted. "How else could this person have vanished without a trace, if not by a huge load of money? Where else could they have gone, if not to the house I will purchase in a distant place, and by using the identity I have carefully prepared for them over the last several years? I think that my accidental displacement by twenty whole years was predestined to happen that way, and happen for this very purpose."

"Saving the savior of wizard-kind!" he scoffed.

"Yes!"

His lip thinned, curling in a sneer. "Potter!"

"Yes...what? No!" she protested before she could stop herself.

"Do not lie to me!" Severus hissed. "I was there. I was the one who overheard Sybil's prophecy...and I was the one who betrayed her!"

She knew he didn't mean the flakey Divinations teacher. Rolling her eyes, she gave him an exasperated look. "...Contrary to popular belief, Severus, the world does not revolve around Harry James Potter! Yes, he's important to the future, but I was sent back to look after someone else. Someone every single bit as important as Potter!"

Severus paled as the implications hit. "Albus..."

Carefully keeping her expression neutral, Cindy leveled him with a look. "You know I cannot tell you who it is. Or when, or where."

"Other than that it takes place somewhere near the Shrieking Shack...since that's where we found you," he reminded her.

"If you're so smart, then don't forget to make some of that antidote for yourself," she shot back. "Just in case. My younger self didn't exactly know what you were going through all of the time, so there's no sense in not taking simple, logical precautions. After all, you'll come into contact with it far more often than I ever will."

Severus lifted his chin slightly. Arrogantly. "I had already considered that possibility for myself. But I cannot guarantee when I will get my hands on that serpent for a sample of her venom, let alone when I can brew a counteragent. Or when I could get it to you."

"That's alright," she allowed. "You can secure it in the Shrieking Shack. On the upstairs mantle, behind the old clock, there should be just enough room to hide a small bottle sealed with a stasis spell. When you have done this, send a letter to Gringotts, and ask that they hold it for Cindy Miller. I'll check for it when I come back again."

"Why not just wait until you reappear in my attic?" he enquired.

"I don't think it would be safe for me to reappear in your attic," she returned dryly. "Not when you consider all the uncertainties of what now lies ahead of us."

"Ahead of me, you mean. Very well. A letter to Gringotts...and for added security, I shall sign it in another name, with a Dicto Quill. What alias should I use? 'George Miller'?" Severus quipped.

That made her smile. "Actually, I've always been more partial to David. Use the name 'David Miller'. Gringotts already has that name on file, in case I ever needed to use Polyjuice to turn myself into a man for a good disguise, but I haven't actually needed to do so, yet."

He smiled faintly, a wry twist of his lips. "'David Miller' shall be my alias, then."

"Now, as Tom has acquired a decent cook this year, shall we eat our supper and discuss far simpler and more innocuous subjects? How has the school been, this last year?"

"I wouldn't call the unparalleled disaster of that Longbottom boy an innocuous subject," he told her. "He has a talent for Herbology, but that boy is a fumble-fingered fool when it comes to actually using what he grows."

"Oh, come now, Severus. I seem to remember you decrying these very same things when it was Timothy Blake," Cindy chided as she separated out the two plates on the tray. "Only with him, it was Potions versus Arithmancy."

Severus passed her a set of silverware and removed the covers on the plates, revealing steaming vegetables, brown-drizzled potatoes, and slices of pink-roasted beef. "Well, at least Blake always weighed out his proportions exactly, even when making a reduced or doubled batch, for all he could never get his actual brewing techniques right..."

...

The vial was exactly where it should be. Behind the old clock on the upstairs mantel. Not only had Severus placed it there, he had thoughtfully added a pair of stasis-sealed vials of blood replenisher, and a health restorative draught. Adding the jar of flesh-regenerating salve, Hermione turned around and examined the dusty, age-weathered rooms.

The events of that night were still vivid in her mind. She paced from room to room, remembering. There was the spot where Harry had fallen. There was where she had knelt in despair...and there was where Voldemort had captured Severus. Where Nagini had bitten him. Where she and Harry had been forced to leave his body in the dust.

And over there, in that corner...that was where she would wait. Nothing had happened over there. No one had come near it, no one had fired off a spell in its direction, and the snake hadn't slithered close. She would have to cast a scent-stopping ward, to make sure the vicious beast wasn't accidentally lured in her direction by the odour of another person in the room, just to be on the safe side. And she would disguise herself further, via not only a Disillusionment Charm, but with the aid of a very expensive Invisibility Cloak, purchased yesterday with some of the funds that she had been shrewdly investing over the last sixteen and a half years.

Mindful of her footprints, Hermione swirled her wand through the air, scattering and resettling the dust to hide the traces of her movements. She had arrived five days early, specifically to purchase what she would need, and especially to walk through these rooms, to pick out her hiding spot, to prepare the means necessary to save Severus Snape's life. With any luck, she would.

If she failed...well, practical to the last, she had bought a tiny estate up here in the wilds of Scotland. It was barely big enough to go camping upon, but it held plenty of room for burying a man with at least some dignity and honor, if quietly, in anonymity.

But I will not fail...

Much as she had done each time she wanted to succeed at a task or pass a difficult exam, Hermione mentally rehearsed what she would do. I will stand over there. From there, I can silently Disillusion the first of the vials, and float it to his wound, to counteract the anti-coagulant. His head will lie facing in my direction, and if I move the vial slowly, no one else will notice it in the mess of the confrontation. Then the blood replenisher, floating the first one to his lips.

And then, when my younger self and Harry are gone, when Lord Voldiebutt has fled the scene...knocking my middle self backward in time...I will come out of hiding and see if my efforts have saved Severus. As soon as I can, I'll Summon the remaining bottles, and Apparate both of us to...oh, gods, I've forgotten where we'll need to flee to first!

There's the rub, as Shakespeare would say, she admitted, staring sightlessly at the dusty, cobweb-festooned contents of the Shack. From the moment my younger self leaves this place...nothing is guaranteed. Absolutely nothing.

But that's what makes this task worth attempting. Because nothing is guaranteed. Not even his death. Nodding to herself, Hermione checked the floor for stray footprints one last time, concentrated on the secluded park in Carlisle that she and Severus had used before, and Apparated away.