Chapter Four

CHAPTER FOUR

...

...Fifty-eight...fifty-nine... Sixty! Thank God!

Breaking away from her corner of the Shack, Hermione hurried to the bloodied figure on the floor, lying next to the discarded Pensieve bowl. Slashing her wand through the air, she cleared away the obstacles in her path, all the way down to the excess blood on his collar and throat. That allowed her to see some of it still seeping out of the wound.

But is he alive?

Dropping to her knees, she wielded her wand, forcing her hand to move with confidence, rather than tremble. The diagnostic spell rose up from his body, but all of the colored lights were low and faint; he was near death. And yet...a second swish showed the potion she had covertly administered was working. His blood was clotting. With the wound in his neck and the poison in his veins his only damage, she carefully rolled him over.

Air escaped his lips, making her fear it was simply from being manhandled; he looked dead, still and pale...more so than normal. But no, his chest rose. A chest stained with a bit of liquid, and debris from a cracked vial. He had brought a vial of antivenin, though it looked like he hadn't had a chance to drink from it yet, as the cork was still in the fragmented neck on the floor. As she held him half on his side, he breathed again, a bit of glass clattering from his chest to the dusty boards.

He was alive. Profound relief washed over her, darkening her vision for a moment. Struggling to keep from passing out, Hermione grabbed for the illusion-cloaked vials she had set on the floor by his face. Dribbling some of the blood replenisher into his mouth, she waited for him to swallow it. He didn't move.

"Severus, it's Cindy. I've come to rescue you." No response. She couldn't massage his throat, not when it was so damaged she hardly knew where it would be the least painful to touch. "Come on, Severus...you're alive, I know you are!" she whispered fiercely, slashing her wand through the air. Catching the other potions, she tucked them into her pockets. "Swallow! Your life depends on it!"

His throat worked a little. The potion went down. It was enough to make her choke back a cheer. Flicking her wand, she floated him gently up off the floor. Rising, she dribbled more of the blood replenisher into his mouth; he worked his tongue and lips, encouraging her into offering more of the antivenin next. A check of the diagnostic spell showed he was regaining his strength, albeit very slowly. While he swallowed and rested, his breathing shallow, she quickly re-scattered dust over her footprints and knee marks, hiding her presence in the building. He needed to be in a far better place to recover than this.

A slight sound escaped him, and his eyelids fluttered. His fingers flexed slightly, as if grasping for something.

"It's all right...I'm still here," she reassured him, taking his nearest hand in her free one. The other Banished the remnants of the vial, which her younger self hadn't seen, she checked around her one last time. The future...his future...could be salvaged, but only if she got everything just right in the here and now. "Severus, I'm going to Apparate with you to a safer place. I'm going to take care of you. Just...just live, alright?"

She didn't add more. She wanted to say, I've waited twenty years and too many summers to rescue you, so don't you dare die on me now, but the important thing was focusing on the hotel room she had rented down on the Border. His fingers flexed again, tightening around her just enough to let her know he could hear. Closing her eyes, she firmly pictured both of them Apparating firmly and safely to Carlisle.

"Stay with me, now...because here we go."

...

Movement woke her, though she was very tired. Head snapping up from where her crossed arms had formed a pillow on the edge of the hotel bed, she had just enough time to snatch at his fingers, stopping Severus from touching the salve on his throat. "Don't scratch at it," she ordered quietly, slipping back into her Cindy persona. "You don't want to end up with a scar like mine."

His eyes had opened to slits. Those dark orbs studied her for a few moments in the dim light coming from the lamp over the bureau across from the bed. His mouth tightened for a moment, then he relaxed again, closing his eyes. "I was right. You came to rescue me."

His voice sounded rough, but then his throat was still injured. With those eyes shut, Cindy felt free to smile for a moment in her relief. She still held his hand, but allowed it to rest against his blanket-draped chest. Tending his wounds had required removing the upper half of his clothes; comfort required the removal of his shoes. But he was still clad in trousers and pants "Of course. How could I not?"

A crease formed in his middle-aged brow. "The war..."

"We've won. Or will have...I'm really not quite sure what day it is, let alone what hour," she added, trying to jest. She had ordered room service now and again since their arrival, but had been too nerve-wracked by his condition, to concerned about overseeing his recovery, to eat much of it. "Severus...you cannot go back. Not for the next three and a half years. Knowing the man you are, I know you'll want to, but you mustn't.

"Rest assured, the Dark Lord dies, just as was prophecied. His followers are stopped, and the wizarding world is freed from his tyranny." Her gaze shifted from his face to their hands, clasped lightly together. "Many good people will have died by the time this mess is all over, yes. But their ends were known. Yours never was. So I went to the Minister of Magic and got his blessing to track down what happened to you.

"But the other night, in the Shrieking Shack...or rather, outside the Shack, I materialized just as the Dark Lord emerged. He saw me, struck me with a spell...and I spent about a full year flying backwards as the Time-Turner spun, until I struck my head on a rock. The Time-Turner kept spinning, and the rest, you know."

"Naturally, you could not tell me that I was the one you had traveled to rescue, because of paradox," Severus half-rasped, half-muttered. "I had my suspicions...but you seemed sincere, so I let myself be convinced it was someone else." His fingers tightened around hers. "Until I fell.

"Then I prayed it was me."

"It was," Cindy agreed, smiling at him. "It was always you. You're my friend."

He made a scoffing noise, weak but still audible, and cracked opened his eyelids again for a moment. "You were my friend only when you inadvertently flew back in time. I know who my friends have been, these last few years. You weren't among their number, in my natural timeframe...friends whom I could barely have counted on the fingers of one hand, with multiples of enemies at my back."

"Well, I'm afraid you'll have to do without your other friends for at least the next three and a half years," she said with as much gentle sympathy as she thought he could manage. "I've arranged for a house, and an identity, and enough funds to see you safely settled for a number of years...but you will have to live far from England, and live as a Muggle."

"As a Muggle?" he scoffed, though there was a surprising amount of humor lurking in the bite-bruised raspings of his voice.

"Yes. No one in the wizarding world from this time to my natural time, for about three and a half years, will have heard so much as a whisper of your whereabouts. I'm even prepared to cast the Fidelis Charm and be your Secret Keeper, to further ensure your privacy. You'll be in the safest place in the world, because once you've recovered and been installed in your new home, I'll be busy traveling those last few years forward, into my natural time," Cindy reassured him.

His hand tightened around hers, startling her with the strength of his grip and his half-rasped shout. "No!" Dark eyes glittering, he glared at her for a moment, then spoke again, quieter but no less fierce for it. "No. Do not leave me."

"But..." She couldn't think of a reason why he should want her to stay, though she couldn't think of a reason to go, either. "Severus, this isn't my own time. I really shouldn't stay any longer than absolutely necessary. I was only flung so far back in time so that I would have the time to do all the things needed to save you. This, I have done. Once you're up and on your feet again, you won't need me anymore."

"But I do," he told her, holding her gaze as firmly as he held onto her hand. She shook her head, and he tightened his grip. "Listen to me...listen! When we were trapped in the Shack, when I realized what was about to happen to me, my suspicions came rushing back. And then that beast struck me, and all I could see as I fell was the face of the woman I loved."

She struggled not to flinch. "Well, once your Pensieve was examined by Harry and his friends, it became pretty obvious just who and what had motivated your true loyalties all these years." Nodding as graciously as she could, she added, "The Dark Lord was a fool to dismiss the impact of love. Your love for Lily Evans was what brought him down, in the end. It may have been...or will have been...bugger the time-traveling tense," she muttered as he frowned at her. "It was Harry's wand that struck the killing blow, yes, but he wouldn't have been there to use it, if it weren't for you.

"But there are plenty of people who care about you, and plenty...at least, by my time...who know the great service you gave for the whole of the wizarding world. Your love and your courage kept you there, the dagger hidden at the Dark Lord's back, the secret ear pressed to his fortress wall. And though Lily may not be alive, there are all those people who care about you," she repeated as the crease marring his forehead deepened . "I saved you so that you could finally know peace, and be free to live without fear.

"I realize you won't ever be completely free of your grief, but then the Weasleys won't ever be completely free of theirs. Yet they still go on; they still live, and they laugh, and they honor the lives of all who helped to give them the freedom to do all those things.... What?" she finally asked as he gave her a disgusted look.

"If you would cease your infernal babbling, I would tell you, woman. It wasn't Lily's face I saw as I fell," he growled, glaring at her. "It was yours."

She stared at him, taken aback.

"I saw your face as I fell," he repeated, voice rasping as much from the emotion gleaming in his obsidian eyes as from his slowly regenerating wounds. "You were the one who was there for me. Literally watching over me. Rescuing me."

"But...but the Pensieve," she offered. "All the memories in it, of you and her..."

"Put there deliberately, of course," he muttered. "You weren't the only one capable of careful misdirection and anti-paradoxical deception. Yes, her memory did motivate me for much of my life. But she abandoned me for Potter. You came back for me.

"You changed your original plans of just trying to find out what happened to me, you worked your way into my life, you prepared for this day, and you came specifically to rescue me. You have managed, in just sixteen years, one school term, and a handful of summers, to do what Lily Evans never did for me.

"I snapped at both of you, I snarled at you, I pushed you away, and yet you came back. You knew who I was, and what I had done...and you came back for me." He stared at her, a strange look on his face, almost as if he didn't quite know how to look at her. "She knew who I was and what sort of man I could have become...we talked about it often enough, our dreams of the future...but she left me. You already knew what I had become, yet you felt so strongly about my purported demise, you had to come back to save me. Not just to find out what had happened to my body, but to save me.

"You did it because you love me."

Bowing her head, she slowly nodded. She wouldn't lie. Neither would she allow him to think the wrong thing. "I didn't really know you before I was flung all that way back in time...but I admired you, and respected you, and cared deeply for you. And I knew you didn't deserve to be left on the floor like that, though the circumstances involved hadn't allowed your rescue at that time. But it was enough to send me back looking for you. And then we spent a year arguing and talking as colleagues. I saw the man you once were, so close to the events that originally motivated you...and I liked that man. Choosing to stick with my original mission would have been like choosing to hold back the tide after that, because you deserve to live."

"Yes. I think I finally do," he agreed dryly. "And I deserve to live with the one woman who really matters to me."

"But...that's Lily," she repeated, still not quite able to grasp the shifting of his lifelong loyalties. "Everything you've done over these years, you've done for love of her."

His brows lifting, Severus gave her a half-pitying look. "For supposedly being the most brilliant girl of her age, you really are as thick as mud sometimes, Hermione."

She opened her mouth to argue, then flushed hard, realizing he had just said her name. Her name. "Er...you...know who I am?"

"I told you. I saw your face as I fell," Severus stated. "I did not speak in hyperbole. In specific, I saw the horror in your eyes. There were shadows of that same look every single time you, Cindy, talked of the person you had come back to rescue. And your voice...it annoyed me for the longest time because it sounded oddly familiar to me, particularly as you grew. Your excellent marks in Arithmancy, your previous familiarity with Time-Turners...and the fact that you would have had to know exactly what happened that night, and when, to have planned to travel back to it so successfully.

"You had to have been there...and you were. And you were horrified when you thought I had died," he reminded her. "Having had so few people in my life who cared about me that I could have counted them on one hand...in that moment, I knew I also had you. The different hair, the change in clothes, the confidence you projected...the fact that you're a woman full-grown all added to your mystique. Not to mention I hadn't met you yet, and when I did, you were still a little girl." He paused, licked his lips, then asked, "...Would it be possible to fetch a glass of water? My throat is dry, and my tongue still tastes of blood replenisher."

"You're the one who brewed it and put it there, so you're the only one to blame if it didn't taste good," Hermione retorted, drawing her wand. A few flicks, and a glass partially filled with water floated out of the bathroom. Catching it as it reached her, she conjured a drinking straw and held the glass for him, careful to avoid brushing the paste smeared over the jagged, pink holes slowly closing on his throat. "Let me know if you need a pain-reliever. I short-jumped and spent a few days brewing in a room at the Leaky Cauldron last week, before heading up to the Shack to survey the territory. I did get very good marks in your Potions classes, though I knew I wasn't capable of brewing the antivenin."

"Your grades were good enough to get you into the Department of Mysteries," he said when she took the straw away. "...Or was that another deception? For that matter, who will be the new Minister? I can hardly conceive of most people in the wizarding world agreeing that I, of all people, needed to be tracked down after what would have been an otherwise politically astute demise. Publically, I served the Dark Lord's regime. One Pensieve, however filled with memories, cannot erase that stain."

Hermione smiled. "Since you won't be around to vote for him, I think it's safe to tell you that your good friend and fellow Order-member, Kingsley Shacklebolt, becomes the new Minister. And he'll be considered a vastly popular one, at that. He knew everything you'd done, and gave me full sanction to find out what had happened to you...though my mission was supposed to remain reconnaissance, and not evolve into the carte blanche it's become. Somehow, though, I think he'll forgive me, when he's finally able to learn that you're alive."

His mouth twisted in a wry approximation of a smile, his eyelids drooping tiredly. "I would have called him friend openly, if I had been able. I am glad he'll be in charge. Until then...you are right. I must hide."

"Yes. As I said, I've arranged for a house for you, one thoroughly warded against scrying, and an identity. You'll be able to go about in anonymity, provided you refrain from casting any major magics when you go outside of your house. You'll not want anyone catching you by your magical signature, as the Death Eaters finally caught the Durmstrang headmaster."

"Our house."

She blinked at him. His eyes, which had closed, opened to slits once again and his fingers tightened around hers.

"Our house. I will not tolerate you leaving me again."

"But..." Again, she didn't know what to say. Of all the possible outcomes, this wasn't at all what she had imagined. It wasn't what she had braced herself for. Him being angry about being forced to survive, that she could deal with. Severus still being obsessed with Lily, that she had expected. But for him to say he wanted her to stay? And wanted her to stay, knowing she was Hermione Granger, former student and Gryffindorish know-it-all pain in his arse?

His fingers loosened their grip, his expression picking up traces of uncertainty. "...It's my age, isn't it?"

"What?" Hermione eyed him askance. "What has your age got to do with it?"

"When I first met you, we seemed to be near the same age...but now I'm old enough to have been your father, while you haven't aged more than a few summers at best," he reminded her. Then wrinkled his lip in a grimace. "Or is it because I was your teacher?"

"Severus, when I look at you, I don't see my teacher. I did, once," she confessed, "but I don't, anymore. Ever since that year when we worked together, all I see now is my colleague and my friend. I see the man I finished falling in love with over a school term trying to dent Defence skills into my students...and a handful of summers wherein I hated having to go and stay at the Leaky Cauldron. I hated having to wait days and even weeks between contacting you.

"I couldn't, daren't interrupt your mourning for Lily. Not when I thought she was the woman who motivated you. And I still cannot believe that I motivate you! I'm Hermione Granger," she reminded him, simultaneously ending her Cindy persona. "Know-it-all bane of the classroom, best friend of the boy you hated for being the son of your stolen love. How could I possibly have motivated you?"

He clasped her hand firmly under his, pressing it to his blanket-draped chest. "You do. The proof of it sits in my quarters at the school!"

That puzzled her into a frown. "It does? What proof?"

"The chair from my attic. I didn't dare keep anything that was actually yours, for fear of causing some sort of temporal paradox," he told her. "But that chair was already mine...and I once told you how I used to go up there, while you were spinning your way forward through time. I would go up there, stare at your chair, and talk to you.

"You never replied, of course, and I never actually saw you sitting there," Severus added dismissively. "But you were there. Until the summer you told me you knew the Dark Idiot had returned, and could no longer stay in my attic. That it was not safe for you, up there.

"I never realized how lonely I could be until I came back from yet another mission to re-insinuate myself into the Idiot's graces, started to pull down the ladder, and remembered you were no longer there. That you would never be there again. I never knew how much your unspoken presence had comforted me, even in the summers when I couldn't speak with you, only at you. Not until you weren't there. So you will not leave me. Not again," he asserted quietly. "Not if you love me, and not if I love you."

"But, the future..." Hermione reminded him, blushing at his words.

"...Sod the future!" he snapped, then coughed. She quickly lifted the cup to his lips, adjusting the conjured straw so that he wouldn't crane his neck too much and disrupt the salve repairing his flesh. Waving her off after a moment, he licked his lips. "Thank you. I'd kiss you, if I had the strength for it. As for the future, it can go bugger itself. You aren't needed by the future for three and a half more years, Hermione.

"Stay with me. Let me get to know the real you. Get to know the real me," he urged her. Then added so softly, she almost didn't hear it, "...Love me. Be mine."

Tears prickled at her eyes. He tightened his grip on her hand once more.

"I won't even have the presence of your chair to comfort me, if you leave me. I certainly cannot go back for it, according to you. Don't make me spend three and a half more years without you," he murmured, his thumb gently rubbing the back of her hand. "Be mine. Please. Stay with me. Do not go."

Sniffing, Hermione tried not to let herself cry. This wasn't a moment for crying; for being emotional, maybe, but not for tears. She managed a wobbly smile. "No...no, I won't do that to you. I suppose we could share the house. I made sure it had a well-stocked library, if nothing else."

His mouth twisted up in a smile. Then pulled down in a pinched frown. A faint peach flush stole over his face, making her worried.

"Severus? Is something wrong?"

He winced. "Yes. I have to...you know. Use the lavatory."

"Ah." That was reason enough to make such a proud man unhappy. She freed her hand and switched the glass to the nightstand so she could draw her wand. Standing, she pushed back the chair she had been using for her perch. "Well, let me levitate you onto your feet, first. And remember to keep your chin level, so you don't crease the paste and cause an odd-looking scar. I'd send a house elf to help you, but as I don't have any available, I'm afraid you'll just have to rely upon me."

"As you are eminently reliable, I have no qualms about doing so," he told her, smiling slightly. Then grimaced and blushed. "But...bugger it...hurry. I really have to wee."

Biting her lip, trying her very best not to laugh, Hermione cast a silent Mobilicorpus on her former teacher, her friend, and...wonder of wonders...the man who loved her. That would take some getting used to.