Chapter 5

A/N: All the characters you recognise are JKR's and not mine! Again thanks and hugs to the wonderful beaweasley2 for her alpha reading and to lyn_f for her beta work and her patience! Thank you also to my lovely reviewers; I really appreciate your time and effort.

Thank you to beaweasley2 and Jay for the wonderful banner!

Now it's time for some introspection....

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Chapter 5

Hermione stormed out of the staircase and out into the fierce sun of the new day. That... that insufferable man! she fumed as she stomped across the courtyard towards her room. How bloody dare he? Flourishing his wand like some sort of... sort of..., her mind searched for a particularly offensive epithet as she rushed into her room and began to tear off her borrowed clothes.

"'I like it here'," she mimicked him savagely, pulling her T-shirt over her head. "'Here I am safe and protected... I am no longer the plaything of others.' Bloody rubbish!" She dragged her jeans on, shoving her legs roughly into the clothing, pulling hard on her belt to secure them. She heard his condescending sneer echoing in her mind. "'... now I can live quite comfortably....' Bollocks!" She shoved her feet into her boots and tied the laces quickly. "'this life here in Roman Italy is in so many ways much more... satisfying than my life in your time....' Bloody... unbearable... Slytherin!" She picked up her wand. The adrenaline rushing around her system was invigorating. She shoved an errant strand of hair out of her eyes, and her jaw jutted out defiantly. Dressed again in her Muggle clothing, with her vine wood wand firmly in her grip, Hermione felt much, much better.

She sat down with her arms crossed on the cushioned seating area outside her room to wait for him to come out of the baths. As she calmed down and the thumping of her heart receded, she brought out the little pendant on its silver chain that she always wore and rolled it between her fingers.

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Severus Snape watched her leave his bathroom with a baleful glare, acutely conscious of the pain returning to his body as the adrenaline rush that had fuelled his furious response to her presence subsided. Slowly he allowed his wand hand to drop, and he took a careful breath. His chest still felt as if it had been battered with broken glass, and his left arm ached very badly. The enhanced bruise-healing paste would do its job soon; he could already see the deep blue haematomas on his arm begin to fade, and the heat of the bath was soothing his lower body. Thanks to the Dittany he had administered earlier, the injury on his back had already closed, and he knew from past experience that the new skin would knit well and not scar too badly. It was just his ribs. He could feel that at least two of them were broken and more than that were probably bruised. It would be a short while longer before he achieved a better recovery. This morning's visit had been punishing.

Slowly, gingerly, he turned around again in the bath and forced himself to relax once more into the water. The steam helped him to breathe more easily, lessening the burning in his lungs, and the heat of the water eased the pain in his torso. He needed to think. He had to stay calm and keep focused. He breathed in again, more easily this time. He allowed his eyes to close. He breathed out. He had overreacted. He should have stayed calmer and kept control. He could have warded the doors to the bath suite, but he knew that Pertus would not disturb him, and he had assumed that she would sleep for a longer time after the exertions of yesterday. Only once his breathing had returned to normal did he allow his thoughts to return to Hermione.

He had, of course, lied to her yesterday when he said that he had done nothing to bring her there. He'd all but summoned her though that bloody portrait.

He had commissioned the portrait when he had begun to fear that his memory was losing the clarity of her face. He had carefully described her features to the painter who had drawn a number of sketches in charcoal before he had been satisfied.

The painting had been done into wet plaster. As it dried, he had watched in fascination as her face began to emerge. Her eyes were its most compelling feature. Soft, amber hues shone out of a broad and pale visage. Her unruly hair was coiffed so that it framed her face in the familiar hairstyle of highborn Roman ladies. Initially she had seemed too young to him, and he was more than uncomfortable that his memories had been dominated by his image of her as a child, but as the painter refined his work, under his direction, she grew and aged in front of him until the face that he saw became that of the young woman who had shared his last moments in her reality.

Why was she so important to me? Did she remind me of Lily? He cast off that thought almost immediately; Lily had rejected him, had left him wretched and squirming with shame and self-loathing on the staircase outside the Gryffindor common room. He had thought he loved her above all others and was incapable of doing any more, but that emotion now seemed ages away. Time and distance had lent him perspective. He had paid his dues to her memory.

Lying in the bath, as the hot water and bruise-healing paste eased his injuries, he allowed the memories of that time in the Shrieking Shack to fill his mind. He remembered Hermione's fingers on his chest, the awful burning of the liquid that she poured over his neck and chest and the feeling of the potions that she had forced down his throat. He remembered the profound and pathetic sense of gratitude he had felt because someone would be with him when he died – but, oh god! It had hurt!

He shifted his body in the hot water of the bath and remembered how the paralysis from the venom had felt as it spread through his veins. He thought what an odd sensation it had been, like burning hot needles, and then he recalled how he had thought the balm of the potion was spreading faster, overtaking the venom and attempting to cleanse his body of the poison. He remembered his gratitude again, but then how his shame and anger had overtaken that emotion. Yes, I'd been grateful, but why should I have been lying there in a pool of my own blood and piss on the floor of a shack while a madman fought a war outside? Surely, that had been the final humiliation?

She had leaned over him and something had flashed golden in the periphery of his vision. He had grabbed it – a Time-Turner! Perhaps there was a way of escape after all. Was that cowardice? I'd done my fucking job, hadn't I? Potter had the memories – only swirling mists remained for him. He had coughed blood and potion up and struggled for breath. It was getting worse. He'd known that he was surely dying, but he'd also understood what he had to do.

Dumbledore had told him nothing about what Voldemort had created to preserve himself, fearing that the Dark Lord would break him. In those circumstances, Dumbledore's plan would have surely foundered, and Potter's sacrifice would be for nothing. Once again, however, the old man had underestimated his spy. Snape had known anyway. There could have been no other explanation for how Voldemort had survived the Killing Curse that had rebounded onto him all those years ago at Godric's Hollow.

Lying on that filthy floor, he had looked up at her again as his eyes began to clear. She was still crying over him, and snot was running from her nose. Blood pounded in his head. He remembered thinking, Try to focus, damn you! Got to get away, regroup, recover... Can't stay here. He could not focus enough to know how far he had twisted the golden thing in his hand. Will I see her again? Can I get back? How can I anchor myself?

Severus Snape understood Horcrux-lore and knew what it cost the wizard who invoked it. To create such a thing, a person's soul had to be rendered by an action so damaging that one's essence, one's soul, literally fragmented. Murder was the most commonly used mechanism to create the damage required, but Snape now knew that other actions could bring about the same outcome. The cumulative effect of his actions during the last year, the murder of Dumbledore (no matter that the old man had begged him to do it), his complicity in the death of Charity Burbage, his allowing the Carrows to torture and maim children at school while he, their headmaster, had made only token efforts to protect them. He was broken in ways that could not be healed, and his soul was torn, scarred, battered and broken.

He knew that nothing could be done to mend the damage that had been caused to him. It had been a long time forged. He thought back to that evening in the headmaster's office and to the look on Dumbledore's face as he had asked him to kill him to protect Malfoy. He remembered the burning sense of indignity and anger that had come with this revelation. At that moment, he had known that Dumbledore really would sacrifice him without remorse and that his loyalty, therefore, should be to himself alone and to his own survival. His pride had flared at that moment, and a new determination had surged through him. He had sworn to himself that whatever happened over the next few weeks or months ahead, he would refuse to accept a meaningless and degrading death in this war. Whatever happened, Severus Snape would endure.

So, that evening he had begun to prepare his own receptacle for a Horcrux.

He knew that the vessel had to be something he valued, something that was significant in some way to him. He had chosen one of his mother's possessions, a beautiful Daum perfume bottle. It was one of the few things he still had from her. The bottle was made from French cameo glass with a silver cap and chain. It was something she had worn round her neck to refresh her perfume. She had charmed it to shrink to the size of a small coin and always wore it around her neck. He remembered how he had loved the smell of her perfume as she rocked him to sleep as a small child. For months after she died, he had only to open the little vial and he could be transported back to those happier times before the drink had taken hold of his father and had soured their lives.

Another wrenching spasm had shaken his body as Nagini's venom warred with the antivenins Hermione was administering. He had tried to focus. There was not much time, he had realized, before he succumbed. He had struggled to concentrate once more on the little perfume bottle in his breast pocket while beginning to chant the incantation that would place part of his broken soul within it. Hermione had been scrabbling through his clothes, looking for more potions to administer.

Suddenly, she had captured his hands in hers, slick with blood, and had leaned forward even closer to him. He had felt her breath on his skin. He had coughed and inhaled in return. She had smelled of smoke and sweet lavender. He had realized that she had been wearing a perfume that was not unlike his mother's scent. Hungrily, he had breathed in again, distracted by the aroma that was so familiar. His hands had flapped weakly on his chest as he had sought to show her the little bottle as he fought for breath. Perhaps, he had thought foolishly, she will keep it and, in so doing, keep me safe too.... He had begun the curse again, watching her try to hear what he was chanting. As he had completed the first phase of the Horcrux invocation, her eyes had grown even wider in her pale face. She could not have understood what was happening. She had shaken him. "Professor – what can I do? I have tried everything I can. We need to get you to the Infirmary; I'm sure that Madam Pomfrey will be able to help you...."

He remembered locking eyes with her and marveling at the flecks of light in her amber irises. He had continued to utter the words of the enchantment voicelessly and had felt, as he did so, the ripping sensation that he had expected to feel in his chest, but her fingers had dug into his body again, and his breath had snagged. Undeterred, he had continued to work through the incantation, focusing on the words, the intent, directing his soul to inhabit the perfume bottle and to rest there within its charmed protection. Only then, as he had stared into her face, he had realized that he could suddenly hear her thoughts, sense what she was feeling... and it was overwhelming. He had felt her anguish over his injuries, over his impending death, had felt her confusion and compassion towards him, her sorrow and regrets. Her emotions had flooded into him, soaking him with their intensity. I can't bear it, he had thought frantically, I can't contain it.... Desperately, he had wrenched himself away, completing the spell and feeling the final tear and the strange sense of loss that it had brought.

His fingers had twisted the Time-Turner once again convulsively. He had felt it activate as he took one last, final breath, and he had watched as her face suddenly contorted in front of him and her body had become rigid as the room spun.

As the room had disappeared, the pain in his torso had suddenly blossomed – a wrenching, hot and burning thing in his chest and belly. For an insane moment he had thought he could see her lurching forward over his body, her face contorted, screaming with pain–

– Gone.

Heat, light.

Peace.

Lost.

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At first he could not believe that he had survived, or that the incantation had been successful. As he had lain in the stinking street under the boiling Italian sun, surrounded by concerned people who were trying to help him to stand, offering him wine mixed with water and asking him (in an archaic language that he struggled initially to understand) who he was and how he had simply seemed to appear in the street in front of them, he had realized that the Horcrux had been made and he was safe. Whatever else had happened in the shack, the Time-Turner had activated and he had woken in a new world and a new time.

Hours, then days, had passed, and he had continued to endure, as he had promised himself he would, building a new existence away from the idiots and dunderheads of his classrooms, those whom he had betrayed and protected, lied to and suffered for. As the weeks passed his Mark had faded and did not burn, and he had begun to feel a nervous and tentative sense of relief and freedom. Severus Snape had found his place in the world and, finally, a sense of peace and calm and liberty. He was content under the patronage of a rich and civilized Pompeian.

Of course, he quickly realized that his freedom and independence had once again been a mirage. Very soon, he had found himself in a familiar arena of danger and betrayal...

... And as that danger had grown over time, so had an increasingly desperate desire to see her and to be joined to her again.

How could he explain how his feelings had swirled and developed over the last few months in his exile? How he had relived those few precious minutes in the Shrieking Shack over and over again as she had tried to comfort him, had cried over him, had pressed against him and into him? He had thought of her face above his, her image fading in and out of his memory. This passion those memories had stirred had prompted the commissioning of her portrait and led him on that extraordinary day.

He had pressed his forehead against the cool of the painted wall. He had felt the smooth texture of the plaster through his cheek and his fingertips. He had dug his hands into the image as if he could physically feel her skin, warm and vital and real, rather than her cold and imaginary image. He had thought of the last time he had looked upon her face, stricken with despair and confusion, mud and blood smudged across her cheek. Her eyes had been wide and bright and full of such emotion. He had not been able to focus properly, his mind a whirl of emotions, memories of another face that had blurred into obscurity as he had offered them to Potter. He had also felt a profound and childish sense of the unfairness of it all. Of course, he also had felt remorse – a feeling that burned within him like a cancer, stunting his emotions.

As he had stood leaning against her image with his forehead and hands placed against the cool of the plaster fresco, murmuring words of need, want and desire, he had felt the magic build in his body to a point where it had felt like his fingertips were conductors and his body was about to shatter. His eyes had closed in a kind of rapture as the power built and built, the tension thrumming in him like a sweet pain looking for release.

Abruptly, something had hit him hard in the chest and face, pushing him roughly backwards until he fell onto the stone paving.

As if a sack of fluid had burst, disgorging its contents over him, there suddenly had been a body in his arms, all flailing arms and legs and hair and awkward angles and corners. She had fallen across him, and her face had smacked hard into the concrete floor beside his ear. He could not breathe from the shock of it as well as the sudden weight of her body on his.

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Now she was here. She was real, a fact, not just a memory. She was taller than he had remembered her and not as delicate. He thought about what she had told him. The Dark Lord was dead and gone. Potter was alive and victorious. He searched his feelings for a reaction to the news but felt nothing but a dead sense of emptiness. He had other more immediate threats and concerns.

His memories of her face, anxious and desperate above him, had long been his clearest link to his previous life. This image was now mingling with other, more recent, impressions of her. Her look of horror and dismay when she had realised what had happened to her, the set of her jaw as she had argued with him yesterday morning before she strode out into the city, the capable way that she had assimilated her experiences. The thoughtless swing of her hips as she walked.

Her emotional collapse in the evening after she returned to his house.

Now she had seen him naked, and she had seen the damage that had been done to him. From his reaction she would have known that this was not the result of some accident. For an absurd moment he had been grateful that she had seen his injuries. It would be good to have an ally.

Fucking hell, stop being an idiot! he thought. You don't know her; you can't trust her!

He wondered what she would do next as he shifted a little. He felt his chest easing further under the influence of the healing paste. She would not run again. The city's wards meant that there was no way for her to leave Pompeii, and with no money and little experience, she would not survive without his protection. He allowed himself a little smile at the memory of her wandering around, blundering from one unrealised disaster to the next.

Then his smile died on his lips. He must not forget that she was not a fool. She had evaded capture with Potter and Weasley for months – he had forgotten that she could be resourceful and tenacious when required. This time she would not be fobbed off with blandishments and vague assurances. He scowled. Would she help? Can I trust her? His survival in the past had always been based on his reliance on nobody but himself. He knew she was loyal, but he was not Potter, or Weasley, or Dumbledore.

His chest was definitely feeling better. He took an experimental deep breath and knew that the paste and healing potions were working. He would have to be far more careful in the future. Banishing the introspective thoughts that had been consuming him, he scrubbed his right hand through his hair and stood up, water sluicing off his body. He stepped out of the bath and walked over to collect a sheet of linen towelling. He placed his wand down beside a fresh tunic and began to dry himself gingerly.

She could not know that he had in some way summoned her. He would need to give her some answers and at least indulge her futile attempts to find an escape. In doing so, he might be able to judge whether she was worthy of his trust.

His complicated plan may still work. He shook himself mentally. No – it would still work if he held his nerve and followed through. Whatever happened, Severus Tobias Snape would continue to endure.

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(The Daum Perfume Bottle – a 1920's antique – something that Severus' mother might have owned...)