Keeping

Summary: In which everyone has ample time to poke at things. Some things break, some things steam, and Mimi gets a new toy.

A/N: There is always a chapter that buggers one beyond belief. My thanks to Anastasia, AnnieTalbot, Indigofeathers, and Lady Karelia for their patience as I wrestled with this one.

31: Keeping

"Meee?" Mimi yowled from the kitchen, and Severus heard the tell-tale scratching noise that indicated that his long-ago detention must be over.

---

"WHUT IZ BASTRD?"

Severus stopped in the kitchen archway, his eyes raking the tabletop, where Mimi was licking the question mark experimentally.

"Dare I inquire who is the bastard du jour?"

Mimi turned and looked at him.

"'Of the day,'" he muttered. "To which bastard does the good Doctor refer?"

Mimi skittered out of the way as the cereal rearranged itself sharply. "YOO AND BUMBLFORK." She stared at the cereal, eyes wide. Letters went flying off the table as the last word rectified itself to read, "DUMBLDOR."

Mimi peered over the table at the scattered letters, and Severus picked them up, crushing them with his thumb. "Tell Hermione that the Librarian insists Dumbledore is not a problem."

"IZ. HE SCARF... SCRFIC... KILLT U. " The letters scattered and started over. "VOLDMORT BASTRD KILLT U, OFF COURS, BUT DUMBLDOR 2. HATE THEM."

Severus watched as the cereal continued to rant.

"U KICKT MI OWT OF DUNJIN. SED GIT OWT NAOW."

He nodded, remembering.

"WHUT NXT?"

He closed his eyes, trying to anticipate his past self's next actions...

But he didn't need to anticipate. Memories flooded recklessly into his mind with no regard for his usually rigid mental order....

Keeping his face harshly blank as he ordered her out of the dungeon lest she see...

It can't be real can't be real it can't IT IS REAL.

Severus paced Hermione's floor. He had accepted Demetrios's expertise without hesitation – of course he had, given his prestigious position; the fact that he was dead meant he was politically neutral – but when it came to trusting Hermione...

That Granger girl will bear watching...

In Hermione's flat, Severus snorted, but the memories continued.

Wondering what her purpose was; how it involved him; against his will, as always; nothing new there...

Turning abruptly from his empty hearth and moving toward his desk where a small pile of essays lay as if meekly awaiting the lash of his quill, which – Blast it – he'd left it in the classroom...

Severus eased himself into a chair at Hermione's kitchen table, still remembering...

Stopping abruptly in the door to the classroom, his eye falling on charred remnants that had been quill before she had sparked it into ashes...

A Gryffindor. Minerva's problem, then. Then, No.

Realizing that... that what? That other than Trelawney...

A snort, both in past and present.

... that other than that lunatic Trelawney, he was the only one who could hear her. How had the mad Archivist put it? The "object" of her "float."

Distilling what he knew of human character generally and of that student in particular, concluding with whip-blinding accuracy that she was here, she must be here to plague him on the matter of...

None. Obviously. He was no potions ingredient to be measured and used in her calculations.

In Hermione's flat, a short, mirthless laugh. "Of course you are, you idiot."

---

Hermione sat at her usual table in the library still muttering to Crookshanks, who had been waiting for her outside the classroom door and who was now blinking at her from the nearby window ledge.

Leaning her head on her elbow, she stared at her History of Magic notes, asking them, "So what now?"

A brief pause whilst Crookshanks relayed her query through Mimi, then her neat handwriting exploded into, "NAOW U WAIT 4 ME."

She blinked at the size of the letters. "Wait for you? Wait for you to do what?"

"WAIT 4 PAST ME 2 STAWP KICKNG FURNICHUR. IDJIT JUST BROK HIZ TOE."

She rolled her eyes. "Lovely. Do you anticipate coming to your senses any time soon?"

Her History of Magic notes waited whilst Crookshanks washed an urgent bit of his tail. Then, "DEPENDZ."

"On what?"

"NO CLOO. IZZINT EVRY DAY U LRRRN U R OBJCT OF DIVYNE INTURV... INTRUST..."

Hermione's watched the cats struggle with spelling.

"... BUGGRING GREK GODDISS IN FORM OF STOODINT. CURISTY WIL OWT IN TYME."

She laughed shortly. "We can debate the question of my divinity some other time. What are you doing now? In your memories, I mean?"

"REZENTNG U."

"How spectacularly self-indulgent of you, Professor."

"RIGARDLSS, TROO."

Hermione leaned back in her chair and pushed her hair away from her face. "Well, I hope you don't make too long a business of it. Fourth Year wasn't exactly a basket of Pygmy Puffs the first time around, and I'd really like to get out of this uniform–"

---

"Great Merlin, Hermione." Severus swallowed.

---

"– it's getting rather too small – and back into my own life before this castle gets any colder."

Her notes said nothing for several long moments.

Her lips twitched as she folded the cuffs of her blouse over the scratchy wool and pushed her sleeves up to her elbows.

Crookshanks leapt from the windowsill to her lap and shoved his head into her hand. Her notes rearranged to read, "MIMI SEZ HIZ THINKIN FUZZD UP."

She nodded. "Tell Mimi to give him a few minutes."

"MrrrOW."

Hermione rubbed Crookshanks's ears and waited.

Finally, her notes seemed to regain their composure. "I WILL PRBBLY AVOYD U FOR WEEK OR 2."

"Weeks?" She paled and sat straighter, her sudden movement sending Crookshanks to the floor. "Weeks? But... but you have a choice to make, yes? And a potion?"

"BREETH. IZ STIL SAYM NYTE U LEFT."

Hermione couldn't begin to understand how time was passing differently in the present and the past. "Shite."

"LANGUIJ, MIS GRAYNGRR."

"Oh, bugger your buttoned-up self and the Thestral you rode in on." She frowned, still trying to encompass the impossibilities of two independent yet conjoined times.

"PLEEZ STAWP THINKIN ABOWT MI BUTTONZ. TOO HARD."

Her eyebrows flew up. Although she knew, somehow, that he meant that she shouldn't make this any harder on either of them than it already was, a small gleam grew in her eye, matched by a quirk of a dimple in her cheek. "And how, exactly, am I not supposed to think about them... about you... when here I can see them and all I want to do is slowly undo each..."

Crookshanks' whiskers twitched as the ink blotted murkily on the page. "PRFSSR CHOK."

"U R CHYLD."

"Did you know you have nine buttons on each cuff? Really, Severus, how long did it take you to dress in the morning?"

"REPLY HAYZY – AKS AGIN LATUR."

Hermione's lips twitched. "Are you going to take points from Gryffindor because I fancy you, Professor Snape?"

A very long pause, then her notes re-formed to read, "PRBBLY."

"Bastard."

"BYND UR WYLDST DREEMZ."

"Oh, really? Tell me – what do you dream of?"

Her parchment emitted a faint layer of steam.

Crookshanks arched his back, tail bushing, and he skittered backwards off the table, disappearing into the endless rows of bookshelves that screened her seat from the rest of the library.

She chuckled, running her fingers through her hair and braiding it loosely. Although her mood was improved for the moment – and how could it not be? – she knew there was nothing to be done. For whatever reason, she remained stuck in her own past, her only viable human ally a living, breathing... mmm... physically commanding Potions professor, whom she wanted very badly to... well, yes – 'though she'd prefer to be at least a bit taller when that happened...

She leaned back again and closed her eyes.

She'd never borne the onslaught of the full strength of his magic before – it had been all she could do to hold her Shield Charm against his Summoning spell. A simple spell, really; if he'd pulled anything more out of his arsenal, she wasn't sure hers would've held.

In its way, a duel was as naked as a kiss.

Eventually, she shook her head and forcibly derailed that particular train of thought. Sending a mental burst of exasperation in the general direction of Athena, Demetrios, and the Potions classroom, she took to the shelves where the advanced Arithmancy texts were kept.

Arithmancy had always calmed her nerves in school. She didn't think it would have the quite same effect under current circumstances, but there were a few problems she had left hanging in the Archive, and...

---

Severus had barely recovered his command of himself after the button conversation when Hermione's Floo roared in the living room and he heard the voice of the operator spell.

"Mrs. Potter for Dr. Granger..."

He stood very still.

---

However Hermione might have wished for her current Potions professor to sort out the finer points of divine intervention, history had its own opinions regarding the niceties of timing – and, for that matter, time.

One moment, she'd been snug in the library, focused completely on one of the Archive's more challenging organizational problems (Atlantis was always threatening to slip its mooring and drift down the Thames). In the next, and with absolutely no warning, she was blurring through several days as though clinging to a racing broom gone berserk, watching her fourth-year self speed through long stretches so banal she couldn't imagine what history was thinking.

---

When the operator spell received no answer, it continued, "Dr. Granger is unavailable, Mrs. Potter. Would you care to leave a Floonote?"

"Yes, thank you... oh, Harry, will you please take the baby or... no, just get me a quill... no, not the one James has been scribbling with – one of the new white ones." A pause. "Oh, I don't know where you put them. Here, just hold him..."

A few minutes later, he heard the connection close.

Mimi hopped off the table and scampered to the archway only to freeze in response to something he couldn't see.

He looked into the living room as the last of the flames died away around a small, perfectly shaped apple on Hermione's hearth.

Mimi stalked it, crouched low and twitched her tail, preparing to pounce.

"That's Hermione's, not yours," he chided her, reaching for it.

At his touch, its peel unfurled, resolving itself into a gently rounded, perfectly smooth parchment.

Mimi wove hopeful figure-eights around his boots, looking up at the parchment as he read,

"H, Crooks is beside himself and the baby's throwing an awful fuss... when you get in, will you please, please come through and see if you can calm at least one of them? Thx ~ Gin.

P.S. Yes, Harry finally got us an iFloo. Frightfully trendy, I know - but I'm helpless to resist good design!"

He placed the parchment on a side-table, where it immediately turned back into an apple.

Leaving Mimi to sniff the apple and casting a hooded glance at Hermione's softly breathing self, he checked the potion – glimmering softly, just as it ought – and reached for the Poe volume he still carried tucked inside his robes.

A wordy bastard, but he required distraction.

Within a few moments, Mimi was dozing curled on his lap, and soon he was muttering scathing commentary on what sort of fool buries a heart in the bedroom?

---

In the few moments when time slowed down and behaved properly, Hermione flung her thoughts through the cereal to check what time it was in present-day London.

The answer never varied: "FYVE MINNITZ AFTUR LAST TYME U INTERRPTID MI. WHEN IZ THER?"

But history never granted her enough time to answer.

After a particularly harrowing transition from her evening bubble bath to streaming out of the Great Hall after lunch an unremarkable few days later, she blurted, "Bugger Athena, anyway!" only to find herself on the receiving end of Lavender's impassioned and rather high-pitched censure.

"Hermione! Even though you're too mundane to appreciate the influence of Astral Entities..."

"'Astral Entites' my empirical arse," she muttered, wheeling away and heading toward the Entrance Hall with Crookshanks on her heels. "As if you'd believe the half of it if I told you, you ridiculous cow..."

She felt rather than heard an eyebrow lift in her immediate vicinity and drew herself up short.

Shite! Where did he come from? "Professor Snape?"

"A word, Miss Granger."

Nerves taut from hurtling in short, fast-forward bursts through days at a time, she snapped, "What is it? I've Arithmancy in five minutes..." I think.

"Five points from Gryffindor." As the Hall emptied around them, he loomed over her. "For insolence."

His voice seemed curl under her hair, and she blushed. Sweet Merlin...

With her younger self quiescent and apparently blissfully unaware in the back of her mind, Hermione looked down, trying to school her features into something resembling a neutral expression. Pixies preserve me, there are buttons on his trouser cuffs, too...

"If you're quite finished examining the floor..."

"Yes, sir. Sorry, sir."

The last student footsteps echoed away, and he spoke. "I've no use for legendary coins."

"I've little patience for the actual one," she muttered through clenched teeth.

He crossed his arms, and she risked raising her gaze to his hands.

Strong. Capable. Um... bad idea, Granger.

"What is your object in coming to this year?"

"I don't know."

"Impossible."

Hermione abandoned all efforts of not meeting his gaze. "What possible reason do I have to lie to you?" She crossed her arms back at him, and they glared at each other.

"Fifty points from–"

"Take as many as you like! It makes no difference to me; if it does to history, then history will glue those rubies to the top of the hourglass with a Sticking Charm the likes of which not even the Founders ever imagined."

"You will address me as befits your..." Here he faltered.

"My what?" She laughed sharply. "Age? That hardly applies. My height, perhaps?"

He said nothing.

"Well, get used to it, sir; I don't get much taller."

A flicker of interest crossed his features.

Unnerved, she queried, "What?"

"So you survive to adulthood."

Oh. Chiding her ridiculously hopeful heart, Hermione shook her head. Of course he'd want to know how much time... "It happens this year – I'm going to have to send my dress robes to London for alteration before too long – if I haven't already. What month is it, anyway?"

His eyes glinted sharply. "You don't know?"

"I keep fast-forwarding."

"It is presently the 19th of September."

Happy Birthday, she thought sourly.

They stood there uncomfortably for a few moments. Finally, she broke the silence. "It was a nice bit of logic to try, though. That bit about my height, I mean."

Their silence outgrew awkward and hurtled toward unbearable.

Finally, he spat, "This is most unnatural."

"You're telling me, sir?"

He said nothing, his eyes seeming to measure her against some standard she could not begin to perceive.

When he reached no apparent conclusion, she said, "You don't trust me, do you, Professor?"

His eyes hardened, and she continued, "Well, of course you don't; how could you be expected to? You at least trust Demetrios, though, don't you? About the coin?"

He regarded her coolly. "The Archivist's credentials are impeccable."

"Well, you're going to have to trust someone. And he's utterly beyond politics, given that he's dead."

Something in his eyes glimmered briefly, and even as she saw it, she understood it immediately. Professor Snape - this Professor Snape – wanted to die.

"I won't let you, you bastard," she said flatly, turning on her heel and heading toward the stairs.

"Detention! And fifteen points from Gryffindor," he snapped.

"Fine," she spat, not looking back. "I'm late."

As always.

---

"I won't let you."

Book and kitten forgotten, Severus moved to Hermione's side.

She lay still, breathing softly.

"You're not going to make this easy on me, are you?"

Held rapt by the curve of Hermione's immobile brow, he didn't notice when Mimi extended a small, curious paw toward the apple.

Floatnotes:

~ A.