Seven

"I postpone death by living, by suffering, by error, by risking, by giving, by losing."

...Anais Nin

7th October 2004

Hermione is 33

I cry until my breath comes in heaving, soundless shudders from somewhere deep in my soul, until I can't breathe through my nose and the world is a meaningless blur through my tear-swollen eyes. My head is so sore, and my brain feels like it's thudding against my skull with each beat of my broken heart. I curl up in a corner of my couch, my knees drawn to my chest, and because I can't cry any more, I keen softly in a high-pitched lament.

I am too devastated to even lecture myself on how I should have known this would happen...that it was an inevitable punishment for meddling with Time, flouting the rules, loving without reason. I am too lost to find the energy to lie to myself, to tell myself that there is a way to fix the damage that I have done.

And when all of my energy feels like it has drained from my body and my limbs feel like rubber, I press my forehead against my knees and I fall into dreams.

3rd September 1992

Hermione was 32

Severus was in a particularly surly mood. His magical aura radiated from him in an irritated and jagged miasma that was so intense I could almost see it. It spiked to alarming levels when we walked past Hogsmeade's bookshop. I turned my head to look into the window and saw what had caused his reaction: Gilderoy Lockhart's new book, Magical Me, was boldly featured in the window, along with a full-sized magical photograph, which winked and waved at us. I couldn't help the giggle that bubbled up between my lips.

"I suppose you think he's Merlin reincarnated, too," he said sourly, quickening his pace.

"Oh, no... I think he's a pompous arsehole," I said honestly. And then I realised the source of Severus' antagonism was that Lockhart had just started to teach DADA up at Hogwarts, now.

He muttered something about Sprout and Vector and besotted fawning before veering into a side-alley, which led to Hogsmeade's little park. A mother pushed her little witch on a swing, but otherwise we were alone. When the weather was warm, like today, we often sat here at the little wooden tables at the park's edge. We'd played chess once or twice before Severus had declared me logically incompetent; now, he only suggested playing chess when he was in an absolutely foul mood and keen for a sharp and vicious victory. He pulled out a faded pack of playing cards.

"You still owe me five Galleons and seven Sickles," he reminded me with a smirk.

I sighed; he was very good at Rummy, too. "Yes, yes," I murmured. I had to be careful not to bring back money during my Travels (against the rules, and all); it would hardly do to have Galleons with a 2003 date stamp floating about ten years before they'd been cast.

He shuffled the cards expertly and dealt them with practiced ease.

I arranged my hand, humming to myself. "So, school has just started, then?" I asked with an amused smile as he discarded his teaching robes, laying them neatly across the back of his chair. The warm afternoon sun was obviously murder through the heavy, black wool.

He scowled over the edge of his cards at me. "Yes."

I lifted my hand to hide the way I had to press my lips together to prevent laughter. "Oh, come on, Severus... it can't be that bad!"

Usually he'd just say something like, "Yes, it damn well is," or he'd snort and roll his eyes. And that would be the end of any Hogwarts discussion, and we'd move on to more neutral topics or debate about Ministry politics or Muggle affairs.

But I'd forgotten that just two days ago, Harry and Ron had flown to Hogwarts in that old, blue Ford Anglia and made a spectacular crash-landing into the Whomping Willow.

"Potter," he spat, snapping down his first card. He drummed his long, elegant fingers against the wooden table, indicating that it was my turn and that I was taking too long to make a decision about which card to play.

I glanced up cautiously, feeling discomfort wind through my nerves like oily smoke. Harry wasn't something he'd ever really brought up before, and it felt too close to home. I was already taking a place in history where I did not belong. At this very moment, little Hermione Granger was up at the castle, revelling in the challenge of second-year magic. Hope Grant, interloper, did not belong here in 1992.

I picked up a card, biting my lip.

"Surely you know who Potter is?" He made Harry's name sound like the worst kind of swearword, even worse than the c-word, which I never uttered, let alone thought in the confines of my mind.

I tried to feign nonchalance, not sure how to handle this, and I chucked a Jack of Spades away. "Sure. Who doesn't?" I said.

A triumphant smile tugged at the corner of Severus' mouth for a moment as he snatched the card up, and then the sneer returned.

"Well... he's not the little saint everybody imagines."

And then he launched into a diatribe about what Harry and Ron had done, winning two hands of Rummy because I couldn't pay attention through it all. I nodded and made faces and commiserated about the Whomping Willow, and I searched frantically for a way to change the subject.

Obviously his spike in temper had made him hot because he started to roll up his sleeves, now complaining about how McGonagall had intruded upon his punishment of the brats and let them get away with murder.

He reached out to pluck a card from the pile and then he froze in place. His gaze flicked to the faded Dark Mark that was clearly visible on his left arm, and his jaw clenched tight as he turned his black gaze on me. Perhaps he was waiting for me to recoil, waiting for me to push back from my chair and run away as fast as I could.

But I glanced at the quiescent tattoo for a moment, and then I jerked my head at the cards. "It's your turn, Severus," I said. I kept my eyes riveted on my cards and away from his searching eyes.

His face pulled into a scowling grimace as if I was a particularly difficult student, and he refastened the cuffs of his shirt with meticulous and deliberate focus.

"Everybody makes mistakes," I murmured quietly.

Slowly, his expression slipped from its tight, angry lines, and he pressed his index and middle finger to his thin lips for a moment, his eyes focussed far, far away. I think, for the first time in his life, somebody had surprised him in a pleasant way. I could practically hear the gears grinding in his mind while he absorbed the weight and meaning of my statement. He rubbed his lips and then nodded.

"Yes, I suppose they do," he murmured as he spread another winning hand across the table. He glanced up and smirked at me. "You lose again."

I wake up, and it feels like I've got a hangover of epic proportions. My throat is still thick, and it's scratchy, like I've swallowed a wad of steel wool. It's late in the afternoon already; the sun steals across my lounge in long, golden-bright parallelograms as if it's oblivious to my misery. I can't mourn for him here, where I have spent so many hours recounting pleasant memories of our stolen friendship, where his dry chuckle can echo in my mind to fill the silence of my life.

I Apparate (with the three D's, just like in the beginning) to Hogwarts' gates. They recognise me as alumni and shimmer gold for a moment before opening to admit me. I realise that I haven't been back here since the end of my NEWT year...before I met Julia; before I became a Traveller; before I lost my heart to Time. It has been five years in the linear passage of Time, but according to my Chrono, it's about fourteen years!

I am not the same young woman who passed through these gates with her idealistic and lofty hopes and dreams. Minerva McGonagall's warning seems to have lingered on these grounds because I can hear her voice so clearly, feel the weight of her words come back to haunt me: "But I do not think that it is an... easy life, Hermione."

When the castle was rebuilt in 1998, a section of the newly-constructed wall was devoted to a memorial. The dead were buried with their families, scattered across the British Isles and beyond, but their memories remain here. I walk into the shade of the castle, where the warmth of the day passes into an apt coolness. Each large stone block is inlaid with a plaque: the memorial stretches a devastating six blocks high by fifteen wide. I trace my fingertips over Tonks' plaque, like I'm greeting an old friend, and then I drop to my knees at the foot of the castle with my head resting against the bronze plaque that bears Severus' name.

I'd thought my tears had all been wrung from me, each and every last one. But now I find that misery wells up again inside me like an endless tide, and I cannot hold it back. The waters have eroded into my soul, and I'm drowning in my loss.

Headmistress Sprout finds me a long while later. I'm still frozen in the same position, and the cold of the early evening has chilled my skin so that I'm cold and clammy like the dead. I don't resist as she leads me up to her office through a staff entrance. I barely recognise the office with its bright greenhouse of plants. Only the portraits on the walls are the same.

Portraits!

She turns to make tea for us as my eyes flick from frame to frame to frame urgently. Why didn't I think of this before? Obviously Severus has a portrait here, and he would tell me what I can do to make it all right again! My heart cinches into a tight knot when I see him hanging next to McGonagall. My old mentor's portrait is still and static; she's still alive and her soul's essence has yet to breathe life into her likeness. Severus' portrait captures his face...his beloved face...perfectly. Each shadowed plane of his face is a vivid and heartbreaking memory. But there's something strange about the portrait, and I step closer to it with a frown.

"Here you go, dear..." Professor Sprout sets a cup of tea on the desk, and then she takes a step closer to me. "Ah... you've found Severus," she says with a large degree of fondness in her voice.

"What's... wrong with him?" I ask. It's like the paint is slightly translucent, like the edges of him are blurred with some indefinable movement. He doesn't move like the other portraits do, but neither is he still.

Professor Sprout sighs. "I don't know, Hermione, dear...he's always been like that. He doesn't talk or move properly. All I can presume is that the artist did something wrong with the spellwork. It's like Severus is neither here nor there..."

Neither here nor there... My mouth drops open as I watch the strange, flickering quality of the movement. Professor Sprout's words make something click in my brain like a proverbial Lumos has gone off to illuminate the truth.

Did you know that if you open your eyes when you're Travelling through the event horizon, it's enough to make you feel nauseous for days. Because everything looks like it has been stretched into long strands of light and colour around you; the sea of quantum foam is blurred into long trails of movement.

"Have some tea, Hermione. We all need to grieve eventually. I understand." Perhaps she has seen many other mourners at the wall, rescued many other lost souls and warmed them with tea, too. She may not have healed my soul, but suddenly I can see a way to find the other half of mine! I sip my tea and she lets me sit quietly with my whirring mind.

I know, now, what it all means.

2nd May 1998

Hermione was 18

There was so much blood.

It soaked into his black robes and spread across the floor of the Shrieking Shack, draining his life away with it. His blood-stained memories swirled in the vial, glinting like copper in the Lumos light. After so many years, his job was finally done; his promise to Lily was fulfilled. He was free. His face started to go slack, the deep lines etched there by years of stress and worry and heartbreak softened.

"Look... at... me..." He clutched at Harry's robes like he was desperate for leverage... like he was straining to turn his head.

Straining through his last words and his last breath to look at me.

And then he collapsed.

It's amazing how a memory can change when you see it from an altered perspective; it's like I've never remembered Severus' death properly before. What makes my heart race is this: Was he trying to tell me that he had forgiven me? Or am I looking for absolution where none exists?

Here's what I think: His portrait is blurred because he's in the in-between. If he were to Travel with me from 1998 to whenever I had left in 2004, wouldn't he be moving in a blur that looks just like the world has been stretched around his edges? He would be neither here nor there, for lack of a better description. Nothing else makes any sense to me.

I know (I feel it in my heart) that I am the one who moved his body.

I smile at Professor Sprout and put my tea cup down again. "Thank you, Headmistress. I think I'm all better, now."