Chapter 29

XXIX.

Ron seemed to be off-kilter for the next few days. He sulked, glowered, and replied in terse words that he was 'fine', and that he was just 'thinking'. From the glares he sent her way, Hermione wondered if she was on his list of thinks to 'think' about...and worried that he'd gone and thinked himself into a wrong turn somewhere along the way. Like he'd done regarding her so-called 'pregnancy', that first time around.

She discretely asked Harry what was going on, but her blood-brother could only shrug. Ron wasn't speaking to him about it, either, though the two were still sharing a room. As one day become two, then three, he gradually stopped sulking and glowering and started staring and studying her. It made Hermione uneasy. Whenever she tried to get him to talk about it, he dismissed it and moved away. But his freckled brow continued to furrow in thought, and he continued to stare at her when he thought she wasn't looking.

...

Five days after Ron's sulks began, Russel met her in his suite of rooms at the school with a frustrated look of his own. Raking his hands through his blond locks, he paced a few moments, then faced her. Hermione, ready to go up to the seventh floor to work on the next stage of the potion, eyed him warily.

A heavy breath, another rumpling of his hair, and he spoke. "There's been a break-out at Azkaban. Among others, Lucius Malfoy is back...and he is giving his son hell."

"A break-out? When did this happen?" Hermione asked, confused. There had been an Order meeting just earlier that evening, and no mention of escaped Death Eaters had been made.

"Technically, four days from now. I was very close to getting the blasted thing back, when this temporal overlap occurred!" he added, frustration etching lines in his face. "And now I can't do anything until after the breakout officially occurs, to make sure I grab the right Time-Turner. But I've found out when Bones went, on Christmas Eve--the tall fellow you say you saw, that's Bones."

"...When he went?" Hermione asked, arching a brow.

"He wasn't present at the gathering on Christmas Eve because he was suffering from temporal compression," her husband explained. "Time-Turners aren't meant to be used to take someone back in time more than a few days. They're certainly not meant to take someone back in time three and a half years."

"Three and a half years!" Hermione exclaimed, startled by that thought. She wanted to know more, but a glance at the clock on the mantel warned her they were running out of time. "--Potion first, husband; explanations second--and I do want that explanation!"

Nodding, he grabbed some of the Floo powder from the pot on the mantel next to the clock, then grimaced. "Remind me to steal more of this stuff from Slughorn's supplies, as well as to make some for ourselves, in the next lull of simmering..."

It didn't take them long to transfer to a classroom hearth near the Room of Requirement, nor to conjure the Room itself. Once inside, she went to the lectern and read the next five steps. Only when they had begun those steps, Hermione coming out from behind the lectern to prepare some of the more innocuous ingredients, did he continue speaking on the previous subject.

"Time-Turners are also not meant to be used repetitively. As in, seven times in a row for the same set of hours. Or in this case, days. Bones is suffering once again from temporal compression...and he has aged, to prove it," Russel observed grimly. "Be very glad you were only turning back an hour or two at a time, when you used the thing yourself, in your third year."

There were times when she had turned back her own Time-Turner three and even four times...but only for a few hours each time, Hermione acknowledged. Well, that wasn't true; I did turn it back a handful of times for eight or so hours of sleep, tucked into that forgotten storeroom on the sixth floor...but that was only duplicating myself so that there were two and sometimes three of me. No more than a handful times had she duplicated herself up to four versions of herself in the same moment of time. Chronomancy really is complicated, isn't it?

As much as she was flattered and honoured and sincerely interested in following in Professor Flitwick's diminutive but skillful footsteps, Hermione couldn't deny that the work of Alphonse Lubbock had its own fascinating appeal...

Potion first, winning the war second, saving Severus' hide from the Aurors third, and then you can focus on your future career, Hermione, she chided herself, returning her attention to the text of the Diary. "At this point, you should be ready to macerate the nutmeg I just grated in the mandrake sap..."

...

Ron seemed to recover in the waiting period between the actual breakout, and the news of the breakout. Admittedly, Hermione thought he still looked a little stressed, and he didn't seem to be eating as much when they gathered in the kitchen of the Black House--now the Potter House, technically speaking--but he did manage to smile at her. As far as she was concerned, a happy Ron was a good thing, scads better than a sulking Ron...but he had just as much right to sulk over her relationship with Russel, if that was what it was, as she'd sulked over the fact that Russel was Snape.

Reassuring herself it was just a last vestige of jealousy on his part--since his fit had occurred right after returning from celebrating her husband's birthday--Hermione smiled at him as she passed him in the upstairs hall. She'd had another late night working on the potion, and was ready to take a shower and relax in bed. But when she opened her door, she gasped as the sight awaiting her.

Clothing lay strewn all over the place. Books had been scattered about, and her chair upturned. A withered, aged house-elf in a dirty Hogwarts tea-towel was busy pulling hairs from her hairbrush and tossing them onto a bundle of her clothes lying on her bed. "Kreacher! Stop that this instant!"

He tossed the hairbrush at her and scuttled towards her clothes; grabbing them, he vanished with a pop of house-elf magic.

Hair, clothes--this doesn't look good!

"Harry! Harry!" Hermione shouted, craning her head back out into the hall. The dark-haired wizard jerked open the bathroom door, extracting a toothbrush from his mouth.

"Wha' is it?" he asked her, wiping at the toothpaste on his lips.

"Summon Kreacher!"

He blinked and frowned at her, but ducked into the bathroom to expectorate, then reappeared. "Kreacher, you are Summoned!"

The house-elf appeared, bundled clothes still in his arms. Harry looked up at Hermione for guidance. She faced the house-elf.

"Give me back my clothes, Kreacher! And every scrap of my hair that you stole!"

"Stupid Mudblood thinks Kreacher will obey--hmphf! Mudblood has mud for brains!"

"Kreacher, give her back her clothes!" Harry ordered him.

The disgruntled house-elf turned and grudgingly approached her. Only halfway; as soon as he was close enough, he hurled her garments at her. Stooping to pick them up, she noted a subtle movement of his gnarled, grey-skinned hand, and realized he still had her hair.

"Give me my hair, too, Kreacher," she ordered, holding out her hand. "All of it!"

"I is not having to obey the likes of you!" the house-elf hissed at her, clenching the brown strands in his fist.

Harry strode forward and caught the house-elf's arm with his hand. He displayed the other palm and the crescent-shaped scar on its surface. Quickly moving closer, Hermione displayed her own crescent-shaped scar. That made the house-elf's eyes widen. Glaring at the elf, Harry snapped, "Hermione is my blood-bound sister, and as such, is heir to everything I own or control. That includes you! And you will obey her every order, from here on out!"

"--Or what?" Kreacher hissed, narrowing his rheumy, wrinkled eyes..

Hermione, Ron, and Harry all blinked in shock. It was the first time outside of Dobby they'd seen or heard of a house-elf defying authority. The creature wasn't finished.

"Give us clothes, Master! Kreacher doesn't care!"

A sharp look gleamed in Harry's eyes, glinting like the honed edge of a knife. "Oh, no, you're not getting clothes. You will obey both my and my sister's commands...or I will order you, to take down every last portrait of the Black family, including the picture of Sirius' mother, and excepting only the portrait of Phineas Nigellus...and you will destroy what you take down!"

That made the house-elf cringe. Hermione realized that she didn't feel much in the way of pity for the beastly old retainer. A tiny bit, but frankly, Kreacher was too deliberately horrible to engage more than a scrap of her normally very compassionate nature. Looking down at him as Harry released his arm, she firmed her voice. "Kreacher, you will give back all of my hair and clothing and anything else you have stolen from me. You will also tell us why you were trashing my room and stealing my things!"

"I'll tell you...when I'm on my death-bed," the house-elf muttered.

"You will obey our orders and commands promptly, and you will give back everything, and tell us about your motives now," Harry ordered Kreacher.

Grimacing, the house-elf tossed Hermione's hairs at her feet. "Kreacher was ordered by a Pureblood to get clothes and a bit of the Mudblood's hair!"

"You will call her Miss Granger, and refer to her respectfully, from now on!" Harry ordered him. "Even when speaking to yourself!"

Kreacher cringed. Hermione thought that might've been going too far, but even she was tired of hearing his not-so-muttered complaints. Serves the unpleasant little blighter right...

"...Miss Granger," the house-elf grumbled.

"Who ordered you to get all of that stuff, Kreacher?" Hermione interrogated him.

"Gregory Goyle--who is related to the Blacks by his great-great-great-grandfather, and is a Pureblood," he added snidely.

"Yeah, and the inbreeding definitely shows," Ron observed, moving closer to the trio. "Why did he want her clothes and her hair?"

Kreacher ignored him.

"Why did he want her clothes and her hair?" Harry repeated firmly.

"Kreacher doesn't know...but is happy to serve a Pureblooded relation of the Ancient and Noble House of Black!"

That just got on her nerves. Hermione sighed roughly. "Listen, Kreacher; you will take your orders from only the following, authentic, genuine people: From Harry Potter, from myself, from Minerva McGonagall, and from any other person that has already been or will be placed in direct authority over you by one of the three of us, as pertaining to your duties as a Potter-Granger house-elf, or a house-elf of Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry--and for your punishment, you will clean up my room, return, replace, and repair anything of mine that you stole or damaged, and have it all done by the time I get out of the shower, in half an hour. Accio dressing-gown!"

The worn but still serviceable rose-chenille robe from her school-days flew through the open doorway into her hand. Staring pointedly at the house-elf until he trotted into her room, she headed for the bathroom. Then checked her stride, remembering that her blood-brother was still in the middle of brushing his teeth. He smiled at her, ducked inside for a quick rinse, and gestured for her to have the bathroom all to herself. Grateful, Hermione caught him in a one-armed hug.

"Thanks, Harry. I can feel empathy for the plight of almost every house-elf out there...but that one gets on my nerves. And that was my last nerve!" she added, exasperation colouring her words.

"Yeah, I know what you mean," he agreed ruefully. "Kreacher's even more unpleasant than Snape!"

Hermione stiffened at the insult, reflexively meeting Ron's gaze at her blood-brother's comment. The redhead flushed, then paled. Letting it go, for Ron didn't seem to be heading back into sulking range, and that was all that mattered to her tired mind right now, Hermione ducked into the bathroom to have her shower. Why would Gregory Goyle want a bit of my hair, and my clothes, unless it's to impersonate me with some Polyjuice Potion? It's possible they had a little bit of the potion left over from its usage in sixth year, or someone in Slytherin could've brewed a bit more...

The only place Kreacher could've encountered Goyle was at the school. And someone had attempted to break into Minerva's study, in the past. But she didn't know who was behind it, nor what they were after, nor why. Without actually attending the school full-time, they didn't have enough access to what was going on there, and thus little hope of finding the answers to those particular questions.

...

The news of the prison-break--when it was noticed by the rest of the world, temporally--called an emergency meeting of the Order of the Phoenix into session. Several of the Aurors in their ranks admitted that they'd heard reports from citizens of the now missing prisoners having been on the loose before it happened, but no one could confirm those fleeting sightings. They were only slightly more frequent than the normal sort of I-saw-Lord-Thingy-lurking-by-my-rubbish-bins reports the Aurors typically received from overly nervous wizards and witches, late at night. Not that there weren't plenty of reasons to fear the Death Eaters, but Hermione listened to the reports, biting her lip as she exchanged looks with Minerva, who shook her head in negation of revealing the truth, and Ron.

Who, glowering at Hermione, stood and announced, "--I think they have a Time-Turner!"

That caused chaos. Hermione flinched, Minerva winced, and the meeting degenerated into fears of what the Dark Lord could do with such a chronomagic weapon. The Headmistress caught Hermione's eye and nodded, granting permission for the younger witch to go ahead and tell the truth. She rapped her wand on the edge of her makeshift podium, and tipped her head at Hermione again.

Standing, Hermione spoke loudly, cutting through the debate between Kingsley Shacklebolt, Tonks, and the Weasley twins, who were still babbling in spite of Minerva's attempt at regaining peace in the house. "--Listen, everybody! We've known about the Time-Turner for over a week! Russel has been trying to steal it for some time, now...but when he realized the prisoners not only escaped, but went back in time four days ago, he's had to wait for the overlap in time to catch up with itself, so he'll be stealing the right artifact!"

"Why hasn't he grabbed it before now?" Ron sneered at her. Several of the others voiced equal demands, siding with him.

"Because his top priority as our spy is remaining undiscovered! You can bet that 'Lord' Voldiefart is keeping close tabs on that Time-Turner," she added tartly, ignoring the snerk of barely suppressed laughter from Hagrid, seated to her right. "The moment his duplicity is uncovered, Russel's life will be forfeit--and I remind you that he has to appear to be a loyal, obedient Death Eater, in order to remain hidden in the heart of the enemy's camp!"

Ron flushed, then paled. Mouth tightening, he sat, leaving the aftermath of his outburst to the others. Hermione sat as well, feeling as though she were two breaths from trembling. It felt like something had just happened between the two of them, something important, but she didn't know whether she'd made it worse or better. If it was a contest of wills, Hermione thought she might've won. Anything else was still up in the air, however.

Minerva called everyone back to order. "...Hermione is right. I have known from almost the very same hour that she and Russel surmised the enemy had a Time-Turner in their possession. I have also known he has been busy seeking an opportune time to steal the Time-Turner away from the tall, thin wizard, the one Russel has named 'Bones'. We know him to be Theodric Pelsing-Groswight. We also know that he has aged considerably since the holidays from what Russel believes to be temporal compression sickness.

"Whatever Voldemort has been doing, meddling with time," she concluded, "it not only took place in the past, there was nothing at the time that we could have done to stop it from happening. Nor anything Russel could have done to prevent it." Peering over her spectacles, she stared at Ron until the youngest male Weasley looked away. "Not without compromising his position...and I will not allow his position to be compromised! He is our only window into the doings of the Dark Lord, and we literally cannot afford to give up our last opportunity to spy upon the other side.

"Do I make myself clear, Ronald Weasley?" she demanded. He glowered at her, but said not another word.

Hermione swung her gaze to the rest of the wizards and witches gathered in the meeting. "I am Russel's handler. I am his liaison to the Order. I was appointed to be so by Albus Dumbledore, whom we all trusted. The man who re-gathered this Order before the rest of the world knew that the Dark Lord had returned, preparing for the very war we are now embroiled in--and we are fighting back! Russel has saved many lives because of where he is, and what he is. A spy. I will not have his contributions downplayed, and I will not have the grave and life-threatening risks that he takes to make those contributions be derided and ignored!"

"...And neither will I," Minerva stated firmly in the silence following Hermione's rant. "Therefore, we shall wait, and trust in Russel's ability to secure the Time-Turner as soon as he safely can. For I will not have the identity of our only spy unveiled in the enemy's lair!"

"Do you even know his identity?" Ron challenged her, rising again from his seat, his lanky teen body towering over everyone else's. Save for Hagrid, but then the half-giant was just as tall when seated as Ron was when standing.

Minerva looked at him over the top of her spectacles, her tone quelling. "Indeed, I do."

"--Zen 'oo is 'ee?" Fleur Weasley asked, voicing the curiosity most everyone in the room was feeling.

"A brilliant, talented young man who once attended Hogwarts. A man..." Her gaze slid from Fleur's face to Hermione's, her voice faltering for a moment. The muscles in her jaw-line tightened, and she continued firmly, "A man whom I am willing to trust my very life with, if need be--and that is all any of you need know, at this time. We will leave the recovery of the Time-Turner in his hands, and in Hermione's, as our most direct contact with him. What we need to do is concentrate on finding and tracking the escapees.

"Our job at this moment is not to confront them, but to track their movements and report them to the Aurors, using Nymphadora Tonks, Alastor Moody, Kingsley Shacklebolt, and Violetta Whitehall as your primary sources for passing along any information that you have--but if you have a limited amount of time, use the Dicto-Quill charm and pen a note to the Auror Department directly, and remember to sign it 'Ring of Truth'. I'm certain Hermione and Russel won't mind," she added dryly. "I want to step up our surveillance on Mrs. Malfoy, the Notts, the Hogs Head, Mr. Ollivander..."

...

She had taken to meeting Severus in his quarters at the School; he would Floo directly from 42 Spinner's End, and she from 12 Grimmauld Place. From there, they would Floo to the Illusions classroom, and walk the last few dozen yards on the seventh floor. The potion was in another of its mildly-involved simmering stages, this time requiring cod liver oil added by the teaspoonful once a night, with a stir five times counterclockwise. Once they saw to that, Hermione intended to open the door to the junk-room so her husband could peruse his mother's stash of margin-scribbled books, and she would go down to meet Ron and Harry in the library for more study.

This time, when they arrived, he flashed a grin at her as he wrapped the ribbon of his disguise amulet around his throat. "I have a surprise for you. I'll show it to you after we've dealt with the potion for the night."

Curious, Hermione held her tongue, waiting for her surprise. They reached the Room of Requirement, walked back and forth a few times, and Hermione opened the doorknob for the suitably disguised Russel. She gestured him to enter first, being a bit of a feminist, then shifted to follow him inside. The doorknob dissolved under her fingertips, and she jerked to a stop, nearly hitting her face on a suddenly solid stone wall. Bewildered, she blinked at it, lifted her hand, and ran it over the surface.

No entrance. No doorway. No Room of Requirement. Frowning, Hermione backed up, paced, and concentrated hard on conjuring the right room, the one with the Anima Te in it. No door appeared for her to use. She relaxed her mind, re-gathered her formidable will, and concentrated on forming the door to whatever room her husband had entered. Nothing happened.

That unnerved her. Somehow, she didn't think this was the surprise he'd mentioned. It's like Harry, trying to get into the room where Draco was hiding last year, she thought. But Draco couldn't possibly be on the School grounds! And the only people who really know about that trick who do have access to Hogwarts...

The back of her neck prickled as the image of a certain glowering redhead rose in her mind. If there was a reason for Ron to glare and sulk, and then exclude her but not Russel from the Room of Requirement... This wasn't good. This was, in fact--

Her finger burned. The ring wrapping around it was shifting its scales, forming words. Lifting her glowing wand so that the light at its tip could illuminate the pattern, she read the words that formed.

...wouldn't she?

That was a strange thing for the ring to write. It wriggled into more lines. Hermione, glancing both ways, ducked into an empty room across the hall, lined with dusty old desks and a bank of windows glazed in blue. A whisper as she pulled out a stool and sat, and Sigurd appeared on the desk in front of her, his hide large enough to see the conversation unfurling before her eyes.

Does she know who you really are? Does she know what a sick bastard she married?

--Keep your hands on your head! One twitch, and she'll be the Widow Snape! And don't think I haven't fantasized about her being the Widow Fawkeson, either!

Oh, shite. Scooping up the dragonette as she stood, Hermione demanded, "Sigurd, take me to Severus this instant!"

A planting of one golden paw, a yanking swirl of the universe, and she stumbled into the lab next to her blond-haired, kilt-clad husband. Not even the Room of Requirement could bar her from his side, apparently. Exactly as she'd hoped. Ronald Weasley did have his wand out and pointed at Russel, who was standing near the door with his hands on top of his head. The wand-sheath at his hip was empty, and Hermione could see a bit of dark wood poking out of her friend's back pocket.

That irritated her. Jerking her wand out of her pocket as Sigurd shifted onto her other arm, she demanded, "Accio wands!"

Both lengths of polished wood yanked themselves out of Ron's keeping. They sailed across the room to her, but she only caught one of them; Severus' ebony wand. He caught the other one in his tanned hand, Ron's wand. They looked at each other as Ron glared. Hermione offered Russel his wand, and he offered her Ron's, and when they were exchanged, she glared back at her friend.

"--Just what in the world do you think you were doing, Ron?"

Face reddening with outrage, he jabbed his finger at the kilted Canadian beside her. "--He's Severus Snape! Greasy git of the dungeons! Black bat of the basement--he killed Dumbledore!"

"Pfff!" she snorted, affecting a grimace of disbelief. "Whatever makes you think that?"

"Because he's our one and only spy for the Order, because his birthday is January 9th--which the twins once told me was Professor Snape's birthday!--and because that wand is Professor Snape's wand! An ebony wand! In case you weren't paying attention to all those dissertations about wands at the exposition, last October, ebony wands are very rare in this part of the wizarding world! And because, now that I realize it and am looking at him," Ron added, flipping his hand at Russel, "he even looks like Snape, underneath that hair and that tan! Don't you tell me he's not Severus Snape! I'm not stupid!"

Thankfully, the older man at her side kept in his Russel persona, and didn't rise to the bait of Ron's words. Hermione felt her jaw tighten grimly. Mouth compressed for a moment, she planted her fists on her hips, still holding her and his wands. She couldn't deny his logic; those were many of the same things she had noticed, or would have noticed, in the same situation as him. "No. But you are an hypocrite!"

Ron blinked at her, his blue eyes wide with shock. "...An hypocrite? Hermione--he murdered Professor Dumbledore! And you married him!"

Drawing a breath to retort, Hermione felt Russel shift behind her. The touch of his arms wrapping around her made her forget what she was going to say; a tilt of her head showed that tanned mouth twisting in a smirk as he spoke. "Yes, and your wonderful, kind, caring and generous relatives insisted on throwing the two of us a surprise wedding on Christmas Day. How romantic."

Ron stiffened, reddening to an alarming shade of apoplexy. Hermione elbowed her husband in the ribs. Sigurd gave her a mildly annoyed look for disturbing his post, and vanished from the offending arm as she spoke.

"Stop it, Russel; that's not helping the matter," she muttered fiercely. Raising her voice, she stated grimly, "Alright, Ron, why don't we just run with this little scenario of yours, shall we? Whether or not he actually is who you're accusing him of being, let's just pretend that he really is Severus Snape, and see where that line of thought gets us?

"First of all, you're an hypocrite," she repeated. "Whether or not he is Snape, you are one. You said to me that you'd ask Snape himself to brew the Anima Te, if you could--and you also said you'd trust Severus Snape to brew a potion to save Percy's life! To stand here and threaten a man you believe to be Snape, after having said those things, is very two-faced, Ron!"

Some of his colouring had eased, but it re-flushed across his face at her pointed rebuke.

"Secondly, if he is Severus Snape...then I am married to Severus bloody Snape. But regardless of who I am married to, I am quite happy in my marriage! If I weren't, do you really think I'd go through a legal, Church-sanctified marriage ceremony, if I didn't want to be married to this man?" she asserted, arching her brow. "I could have come up with a dozen perfectly acceptable excuses as to why we shouldn't have been married, that day!"

"Then why didn't you?" he demanded.

Hermione rolled her eyes. "I told you; I'm happy in this marriage with him!"

"Yeah, but...that's because you don't know who he is!"

Russel spoke, his accented voice flat and implacable. "She does know who I am, Ron. She knows that I am the man who saved the Creevey family, and more than a dozen other families from attacks by the Death Eaters. She knows that I am the man who procured a salve to save your brother's life when no one else could manage the task. She knows that I am the sole source of information on the Dark Lord's movements that the Order of the Phoenix possesses, and she knows that I have Albus Dumbledore's complete trust.

"She knows that she--or even you--can ask Albus' portrait, in the Headmistress' study of this school, if he knows who I really am, and if he really trusts me, knowing all that he does about me. She knows that I am the father of our unborn child, and that I have given a considerable amount of protection to her, for it. She knows, and has known for some time...that I am Severus Snape."

Ron's lips parted from the shock of his adversary's freely given admission, staring as Russel continued.

"And she knows that I was indeed the only hope for a cure for your brother. I am the only hope you have for crafting this potion you need...and I am still the only hope you will have of uncovering the information the right side of the war will need to bring the Dark Lord's reign to an end. She's right, you know," he added with deceptive mildness as Hermione looked back and forth between them. "You are an hypocrite, if you cannot get past your prejudices long enough to see the truth of all that I have done for our side, in this war."

"But--you killed Albus Dumbledore!" Ron protested, finding his voice. Hermione couldn't blame him for not being able to get past that point. It had been a serious sticking point for her, too. A lump lodged in her craw. She had swallowed it down, though.

"You have my permission to go to his portrait, and ask him if he still trusts the man who murdered him, that night," Russel drawled, as if the subject were of no importance anymore. His tone hardened in warning as he continued. "But I would advise you, for the sake of victory, of not informing your other best friend of my identity. Harry must not be distracted from his goal. I know that he will be instrumental in the Dark Lord's defeat, though no one but Albus knew the details of how. If he is side-tracked by his blind hatred of me--"

"--Blind hatred!" Ron snorted. "That's the cat calling the cauldron black!"

"...Be that as it may," and Hermione could hear the impatience being stuffed into a chest and locked away, in her husband's voice, "if he allows his hatred of me to mingle with the knowledge of my true identity, it will blind him, and he will freeze on the battlefield. You cannot have two primary targets. The Dark Lord must be defeated. Potter and I can come to an...understanding...afterwards. If both of us survive."

Hermione hoped that little sneer on the word 'understanding' was simply part of his Snape persona's cover, but knew there was still too much bad blood between the two males. Christmas had been an act on Severus' part, as Russel; Harry had simply been ignorant of the truth. "I want your word of honor, Ronald. You will not tell, hint, write, gesture, or by any look, word or deed, inform or confirm to Harry that Russel is really Snape in disguise--your word of honor!"

Closing his mouth on the protest that had been forming, Ron studied her for a long while. Finally, he sighed roughly. A hand rumpled his coppery-red hair. He looked solely at her, not Russel, and the corners of his mouth were pulled down, but he did concede.

"...You have my word. I owe your...husband...that much, for saving my brother's life." The admission looked like it cost him. Hermione privately approved. Not because he admitted what he should've admitted all along, but because it looked like Ronald Bilius Weasley was finally making the same difficult, maturity-forging sort of decisions that she'd had to make in dealing with the identity of her husband, too.

Thankfully, her husband was gracious in his reply. That, or perhaps it was because her elbow was still bruisingly close to his ribs. He dipped his blond head slightly. "You have my word, such as it is, that I had no foreknowledge of nor hand in the attack at the Ministry."

"Yeah, well, you did get that Salve for him," Ron grudgingly admitted. "And it worked, even if the colour was a bit funny..."

"Now that the matter of my identity has been settled, you will have to leave. We have a potion to complete," the older wizard ordered him, sounding more like Snape than Russel in the brusqueness of his tone. Plucking the younger wizard's wand from Hermione's grasp, he approached Ron, who flinched. A slight, Snape-ish curl of his lip, and he held out the slim shaft. "I suggest you further your efforts in assisting your friend to close his mind and shut his mouth. Silence and secrecy will do more to help the lot of you survive, than brash, loud bravery."

Ron accepted the handle of his wand. Hermione warily gripped her wand, waiting tensely until the redhead sheathed his own at his side without firing any hexes. He did lift his finger, though, pointing the freckled digit at her disguise-altered husband. "You'd better watch your step, though. If I hear anything about you mistreating Hermione--"

"--You'll what?" Russel sneered, and for a moment, he was Snape, in tone and posture, coldness and arrogance, despite his distinctly different appearance. It was a reminder that, under the affable personality he'd cultivated as the kilt-wearing Russel, the man behind the mask was still a very powerful, very formidable wizard.

Setting his jaw, Ron replied, "I'll tell my whole family who you are, and what you've done, that's what. An edited version of all you have done. There won't be a wilderness remote enough nor an ocean deep enough to hide yourself in, if we choose to come after you, all together."

"What makes you think there would be anything left of me to go after?" the older, kilt-clad wizard challenged Ron, confusing both the redhead and his anxiously listening wife.

Ron frowned. "...Excuse me?"

"You underestimate the wrath of my wife, Ronald Weasley, should I be foolish enough to 'mistreat' her. Now, go. I will not have nearly a month's work on this potion ruined because you lingered too long."

Meeting Ron's gaze, Hermione tipped her head at the door out of the room. He crossed towards it, pausing near her. "If he does do anything--"

"Wait until I tell you he's done something I don't like, Ron. I can keep him in line for the little things," Hermione murmured under her breath. "Your help is appreciated, but at this moment in time, not really necessary. Go help Harry. Practice your Occlumency. I'll meet up with you later."

He gave her a dubious look, but left the chamber. Hermione made sure the door was shut, wished firmly for it to be impervious to interruption, then turned to the lectern. As strange as it might be, she felt like she might actually be able to keep him in line with the little things. She was managing so far, wasn't she?

"...Will he keep his word?"

"I believe he will. When he's had a chance to get over the shock of it, he'll know it's not wise to tell Harry. Or anyone else. He does have a brain," Hermione allowed, "and lately, he's been using more and more of it. Of course, that doesn't preclude the high likelihood that he'll give me hell for all of this, and likely will try to insult you every chance he gets, until he's accepted it."

He added the cod liver oil and stirred the cauldron five times counterclockwise. "And what will you be doing, while he is denigrating me?"

"Defending you, as always."

That made him grunt. "Not 'always'. The three of you--"

"The three of us, nothing!" Hermione retorted as she checked the directions in the text. "...Cover and let stand until tomorrow's addition of oil, and then the day after is when we add the dried, crushed maidensbreath petals and skullcap flowers," she instructed, closing the Diary before she continued. "I always defended you, while we were students at this school. I always gave you consistent respect. Even when you didn't really deserve any." Pausing, she added truthfully, "I suppose that's why your actions last spring really wounded me. The statue of respect I'd built for you might've been made from electrum, not from solid gold...but I didn't notice the toes were still made out of clay."

Cleansing himself as he passed through the wards, he stopped just beyond them and studied her for a long moment. "I am merely a man, Jane. The proverbial clay of my flaws stretch to my chin. Accept them, or suffer disappointment. I cannot change my past. Nor will I change my ways."

Her first impulse to snort was that he could change his ways. Her second thought kept her from doing so, however. For as long as the Dark Lord lived, he couldn't, daren't change his ways. Not overtly, and not outside of the context of one of his personae. Instead of remarking on either, Hermione shrugged. "You must do as you see fit. And I," she sighed, "must be getting back to the library."

"Not just yet." Turning slightly, he narrowed his gaze, staring at the wall behind her. A ripple in the wall turned itself into a Floo-sized hearth, with an ubiquitous pot of Floo Powder sitting on its mantel. "You and I have business down in my quarters. The Diary is closed?"

"Of course." Fetching a handful of the fine, greenish-grey grit, Hermione cast it into the flames. "Professor Snape's quarters!"

Whirling through, she caught her balance, then moved a few yards away to give him room to emerge. It occurred to her as she watched his blond locks flinging around with the force of his spin that she surely should be starting to feel nausea by now. Of course, not every woman feels morning sickness during pregnancy, but the vast majority of them usually do... She didn't know what being pregnant should feel like, really. All I know is, I feel great...

"So, what is it you wanted to discuss?" she asked her husband as he straightened and dusted off his clothes. The colourful hues of his amethyst shirt and red-and-blue plaid kilt were about as far removed from the severe, plain black of his professor's clothes as he could get. One would think that the red and blue would clash with the purple, but the lines of the plaid were small enough that it sort of gave an overall purplish cast to the wool, which the shirt matched very well. Spinning through the Floo only made it seem even more purple, albeit highlighted in a clashing green glow.

"In the bedroom," he directed her, gesturing with one hand for her to precede him.

Guessing what he wanted, Hermione smirked wryly. Well, at least my sex-drive hasn't diminished with pregnancy. If I were morning-sick all of the time, I'd not be in the mood...but I think I'm even more turned-on now than I was beforehand, back when the only man in my bed that I knew was Russel Fawkeson. Entering the bedroom, she flicked the logs and coals laid in the hearth to roaring life, and added a temporary Warming Charm to the air in the room, heating the winter-chilled chamber further. Only then did she start to strip off the layers of her clothes. When her husband didn't object, but instead started removing his own, she smiled again. As I thought...

He was thin, but there were muscles playing under that thoroughly tanned skin. Muscles, and very little hair. She only noticed when she was naked, too, when she shivered from a cold, uncarpeted patch of stone floor underfoot. Rubbing her upper arms, she shifted onto the carpeted stretch beside the bed, and smiled at him.

"So...is this what you had in mind, when you wanted me to come down here?"

"No, this is."

Hermione whipped around, shocked at the voice behind her. It came, she saw, from a sallow-skinned, dark-haired, naked version of her husband. He stood on the far side of the bed from the two of them, and had marks on his body, reddish spots where someone had suckled with their lips, and pinkish lines where someone's nails had scratched his skin. Even from the far side of the broad bed, Hermione could smell the scent of sex on his skin, and see it glistening on his loins and his chin.

"...Severus?" she enquired warily. Something else glistened. A long, deceptively delicate-looking chain, with a tiny, familiar disc in a setting that looked something like a gyroscope dangled down his chest.

Dark eyes gleamed with amusement, but it was the man moving up behind her that gave the reply. "Call me Russel, and him Severus. I'm glad to see I followed through with my idea."

"Set your alarm for fifty-five minutes from now. One turn will be sufficient. We don't need to exhaust ourselves. Or our wife," Severus commanded, smiling. It was a warmer smile than expected, though just as devious-looking as one would expect from the naked former Potions Master. As the original, Russel-version moved to comply, Severus removed the Time-Turner from around his neck, placing it on the left-hand nightstand on his side of the bed. "Place your Time-Turner on the other nightstand, over there, and remember to take it with you when the hour is through. And do not worry, when you become me, as to what you will say or do. There really isn't anything that's going to happen that would be too critical to worry about altering. Just an hour of mind-addling pleasure.

"As for you, wife...get on the bed." A jerk of his hand on the edge of the covers and they flipped back out of their way, revealing crisp, clean, white sheets. "Now."

Knees trembling at the sexy, authoritative command, Hermione crawled onto the bedding. He met her halfway, catching her arms as she rose onto her knees, and pulling her into a kiss that was almost alarming in its intensity. She could smell her musk on him, feel the damp prodding of his prick against her lower belly, struggled to adjust to the hungry thrusts of his tongue. The bed dipped behind her, and a warm body brushed and pressed against her back. Severus-as-Russel.

His hand fisted in her hair, tugging her head gently but implacably back. Severus kissed his way down her throat to her breasts, as Russel claimed her mouth with his own lips. Chest-length black hair tickled against her belly as the slightly older version licked her nipples into stiffness. Chest-length blond hair caressed her cheeks and shoulders as the slightly younger version tasted the flavour of her musk that had been left behind by his counterpart's kiss. A dew that had yet to be supped from her flesh.

The attack of two lovers, one light, one dark, and both perfect, was very arousing. Hands on her breasts, on her back, her arms, her buttocks, caressing her thighs, tugging on her hair, tickling her ribs. Lips nibbling, noses nuzzling, skin sliding, muscles flexing, they distracted her with a plethora of sensations. Somehow, she found herself lying on her side, facing the dark-haired version, surrounded by both men. When she tried to caress the male in front of her, he urged her to turn around and apply her hands to her other lover.

It wasn't easy, concentrating through their own ministrations, but she rubbed Russel's nipples, sucked on his tongue, and scraped her teeth down his throat. Hermione had come to terms with being a sensual person, first with the man she'd thought was merely Russel, and then after a struggle, with the man he really was, Severus. Now that she was in bed with both of them--and she knew they were the same man, though the blond one stayed more in-persona by smiling in between kisses--she wanted to participate as actively as she could.

It didn't help that their hands were everywhere, touching, caressing, melting her mind with pleasure. For such a normally bitter, harsh, unpleasant man, she had to admit he could take all of that negative passion and channel it into his lovemaking. Positive passion that overwhelmed her, or she thought overwhelmed her, until the dark-haired man behind her shifted her on top of her paler-haired lover. Four hands positioned them, two prying apart the folds of her femininity, two more positioning the turgid, tanned shaft prodding between her thighs. Sinking down onto his flesh with a sigh, Hermione focused on slowly riding the version Russel, forgetting about the version Severus.

Until the bastard pushed her over onto all fours, lifted one of her feet off of the bed, and licked between her toes. Instantaneous climax. Crying out, Hermione tossed her head back, leaning her upper body into the golden hands that cupped and kneaded her breasts. Severus alternated the torment between her two feet, his hair brushing against her ankles and soles. She didn't even try to ride Russel anymore, just shuddered and moaned as his counterpart played with her feet.

Grey eyes met her gaze as she came down from her sensual high. Feeling a little dazed, she slowly relaxed, licking her lips. She stiffened in the next moment, as the wizard behind her tapped his wand against her pelvis.

"Rectumundirenu."

Spell-scoured, Hermione held herself very still. Sure enough, he muttered the lubrication spell next, touching the tip of his wand to her puckered rosebud, followed by his finger. Probing her depths gently, he eased his digit inside, rocking it back and forth. That made her want to rock back into his touch. But when she did so, Russel's hands shifted from her breasts to her hips, holding her still. Rocking back onto his counterpart's finger meant rocking onto him, and he apparently didn't want that, just yet.

A second finger joined the first. Russel shifted one hand down to play with her clitoris, easing some of the pain of stretching. It helped when Severus added a third finger, wriggling his fingers a little to seat them deeply, but it also made her want to rock again. Movement would help ease the pain. They held her still, though, as he extracted his fingers, shifted closer on his knees, and slowly pressed the tip of his erection into her fundament.

Breath hissed through her teeth as he sank in, until his groin pressed against her backside. It was tight, a little painful, but so...full. Hermione heard herself whimpering with each pant of her lungs--and they weren't even moving, yet.

"Together, or alternating?" one of them asked. Hermione didn't realize her eyes had closed until he spoke. It came from in front of her, so it had to be Russel, the earlier version. The one behind her shifted, pressing her forward and down, until her breasts brushed his counterpart's lean chest.

"Together...to start with," the one at her back purred. Hermione shivered hard at the suggestive sound. Giving herself up to the sensations, she let them rock her hips in their hands, lifting her halfway off, then tugging her firmly back on again. The full, filling sensations dragged animalistic groans and grunts from her throat.

Opening her eyes, she blinked in startlement. For a moment, she'd forgotten that the one underneath her was blond and grey-eyed. If anything... her distracted mind informed her from one of the few non-pleasure-addled corners, ...this proves you're falling more for Severus than Russel... A twist of her torso as they bounced into her, and she caught the dark-haired version behind the neck with one hand. Kissing him was a little awkward, but she tried it for a few moments, then leaned down and kissed the light-haired version.

They tasted the same, save for a lingering hint of muskiness on the older version's lips. At some point, the blond version would go down on her, suckling her nectar from her petals, so to speak. The florid thought made her smile briefly. But the visual differences between the two annoyed her. As much as it was a fantasy to have both of the dark-and-light versions of her husband pleasuring her, she wanted to make love with Severus.

She wanted to make him understand without the clumsiness of words that she really was trying to love him. Not Kind, Fun-Loving Russel, and he'd not think she was interested in Sarcastic, Bitter Snape, but the complex, whole man who lay buried within each persona. The man who was burying himself repeatedly in her, in duplicate. Concentrating through her rising pleasure, Hermione fumbled at the back of Russel's neck. Two tries, and she unhooked the velvet band. Tugging the amulet and its ribbon out of the way, pushing it under one of the pillows, she smiled down at him as his hips slowed.

This was what she wanted. The rich, golden tan faded from his skin, leaving it pale and pink-sallow from his exertions. His eyes and hair darkened, sprawled on the white sheets with increasing contrast. Leaning down again, she kissed the former Russel, the younger version of Severus Snape. Kissed the daylights out of him.

"--Alternating!" the one at her back grunted, and the two men grabbed her hips for balance, plunging in with renewed, syncopated vigor.

That interrupted her kiss, but it was alright; breathing had become necessary again. Panting over her lover, she let her hair sway and curtain his face, staring down into his jet-black eyes. Abandoning his own grip on her hips, the Severus underneath her lifted his hands to her face, brushing back her wavy locks. There was some light from the candles in their wrought iron sconces, and light from the flickering fire, but her hair had been blocking too much light to see each other clearly.

Now they could, and she discovered it was shiveringly intimate. That shiver intensified into a shudder, and from there into a bucking of her hips as her pleasure boiled up rapidly from within. Though her eyes narrowed to slits as she moaned, lost in her climax, Hermione struggled to keep her eyes open. She wanted to watch her husband reaching his own peak.

The clenching of her inner muscles seemed to be the trigger. Biting his lower lip, he strained his head back, then grabbed her waist and stabbed himself up into her body, chanting her middle name. It was very erotic, watching him climax; doubly so to feel his semen warming her depths, and triply so to feel his counterpart still thrusting into her in steady rhythm, prolonging her own bliss.

The Severus at her back convulsed, repeating her middle name in a single, drawn-out growl. More wet heat filled her as he slumped against her back, sweating and gasping for breath. Glad she was braced on all fours, Hermione concentrated on getting her breathing back to normal. It was a futile cause. Her feminine muscles contracted every few heartbeats, making both men twitch where they were still embedded in her flesh.

Severus-on-top finally pulled out, rolling onto his back next to the two of them. One arm flopped over his eyes as he continued to calm his heavy breathing. Severus-on-bottom eyed his counterpart, equally flushed, but a little less breathless; it was only his first orgasm of the evening, after all, not his second. "...Budge over."

Squirming, Severus-the-elder complied. Severus-the-younger nudged Hermione off of him, guiding her into the space between them on the bed. Twisting onto his side, he stroked her slowly cooling body with his left hand. Severus-the-elder twisted onto his side as well, removing his right forearm from his brow so that he, too, could bring a hand into play. Lying on her back as she was, Hermione merely had to turn her head to either side to see Severus Snape in all his naked, pale-skinned, dark-haired glory.

Lifting her hands, she tucked her fingers behind their necks. A tug brought their heads into range; a slight lift of her own to one side and then the other allowed her to place kisses on their lips. Soft kisses that they returned briefly. Letting her head fall back onto the rumpled pillows, Hermione couldn't prevent a laugh from escaping her.

"Something amuses you?" one of them, the one on her right, asked her with an arched brow and a faint hint of smugness; no doubt he was remembering this conversation from his younger self's perspective.

She blushed, but decided to be brave and relate the thought that had prompted her giggle. "Oh...I was just thinking, some women have a fantasy about having two men at once, and sometimes in those fantasies...the two men have each other, too. But you're both, well, you, and the likelihood of watching you snog yourself is very, very low...isn't it?"

Her request for confirmation was asked in a very quiet voice. A part of her really did want to see--holy mother of Merlin! Eyes wide, Hermione watched as the younger version cupped the back of the head of the older one, his fingers covering hers, and pulled the older Severus into an open-mouthed kiss. Right on top of her. She literally had a front-row view, since they were snogging only three or four inches above her face.

Gobsmacked, aroused, she watched the two identical wizards making out for a moment more, then they broke apart. The one on her left wrinkled his long, thin nose at himself, before looking down at her. "...I trust that satisfies your curiosity?"

"Because I--we--would rather be kissing you," the version on her right asserted, putting a firm end to the subject.

Disappointed--that kiss had been hot--but compliant, Hermione sighed and nodded.

Elder Snape peered over his shoulder, then curled himself upright, shifting further down the bed. "You take the upper lips. I'll take the lower, then we'll switch."

It took Hermione less than the amount of time Severus-the-younger spent in closing the six or so inches between his mouth and hers to realize what Severus-the-elder had in mind. Parting her thighs, she lifted her knees a little, bracing her heels on the mattress. Settled between her legs, he caressed her legs with his fingers while his counterpart caressed her lips with his tongue.

After the first flick of the other tongue against her folds, it didn't really matter who did what to her body. It was all good, as far as she cared. She had one set of sallow muscles to play with within reach, another playing with her own skin, and she let herself caress as much flesh as she could grasp, clutching and rubbing and even lightly scratching all over. Little red marks appeared in the wake of her mouth as she twisted her upper body further into her lover, kissing and suckling whatever she could reach.

One leg stretched out, the other knee rose higher, and her body managed enough leverage to reach for his penis. A tug, and he scooted up the length of her body, sitting up by the headboard. A twist of his hips, and she took him into her mouth, tasting the flavour of musk from her own flesh, drying on his shaft. He endured it for a little bit, but pulled away when she fondled his scrotum while sliding her lips over his glans. "--Enough! Switch! Switch..."

The two men switched positions. Hermione started to reach for Elder Severus' penis, then remembered where it had been. Cleansing properties of the Voiding Charm or not, he had used lubricant, and she didn't exactly want to taste that. To her relief, however, he used his wand to tap his groin. "Virilis mundic!"

There wasn't much of a change after the spell, just a disappearance of the glistening creme that had coated his shaft. But when he crawled a little closer, he smelled very clean, as if fresh from a shower. Grasping his erection, she guided the hot, semi-hardened flesh close enough to envelop with her mouth.

"Oh, god, yes! Mmmh, good..."

The alarm by the bed rang, startling all three of them. Younger-Snape scrambled out from between Hermione's leg's, the only one most able to get to the old-fashioned, brass clock. Smacking it silent, he panted for a moment, licking his lips.

His hair was a little mussed, but he had the scratch marks, love-bites, and glistening body parts from before. Picking up the correct Time-Turner, the one on the right-side nightstand, he looped it around his neck. Since he had appeared on the other side of the bed, he padded over to that side. The older Severus crawled over Hermione's body, settling onto her left side; apparently, it was an invitation, or a remembrance, for the younger version leaned over the left side of the bed just long enough to snog his wife, and slide his fingers through her cleft. Pulling back, he suckled her dew from his skin, then wrapped his hand briefly around his erection, sliding the remaining moisture across his flesh.

"Time for me to go." Lifting the Time-Turner, he gave it a single, carefully gauged twist...and vanished.

Hermione sighed, head dropping back against the rumpled pillows. "Wow..."

"Precisely."

"I suppose you're too tired to continue?" she asked carefully, still feeling a throbbing between her legs from that interrupted bout of cunnilingus.

Severus--the one and only--smirked and shifted, turning to straddle her. "A pity we have to hand in the thing."

"Well..." For a moment she had to wait while he settled into place over her, head to her groin and knees beside her ears. "I've been thinking about that. Maybe we should just keep it here, where it's safe behind the Fidelius Charm. After all, if it goes back to the Ministry, they'll only try to steal it again..."

She felt the breath of his laughter puffing against her dew-soaked nether-curls.