Chapter 21

A/N: All praises for the incomparable JKR as well as the adorable beaweasely2 and fabulous Clairvoyant. Thank you to everyone who is sticking with this story. Some of the answers I keep promising you lie within...!

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Chapter 21: In which dreams are made....

Robert Granger held his little girl's hand. They were walking along Brighton Pier in the bright sunshine of an early summer's day. Hermione was laughing happily, her wild curls bouncing and vibrant, her face turned up towards him in joy and trust. Her hand felt small and tacky in his; the other was clutched around the stick of seaside rock* that she was waving about as she chattered away. The pier's old wooden boards were solid and reassuring beneath their feet, and Robert drank in the heady combination of the seagulls' cries, the shouts and laughter of the surrounding people, and the swirling slaps of the waves about the ancient iron pillars that held the pier above the sea. He smiled down at Hermione and stroked her wonderful hair, feeling the soft bounce of her curls beneath his skin as his fingers teased and tangled.

"You don't have to, Daddy," he heard Hermione say in his mind as she looked up at him with a satisfied smirk. "You can't help me – I can do it myself!" Robert's heart ached. He felt an acute sense of loss and powerlessness.

The memories became fractured – images of similar incidences where Hermione had used her magic instead of accepting his aide. Like ticker tape images, they blinked past him mechanically. It was like watching an old home cinema Super 8 reel. His father had taken home movies like that. He remembered sitting on an uncomfortable sofa watching hour after hour of the flickering pictures, his father's chest puffed out with pride at his technological wizardry...

Robert awoke with a start. His hand was still curled about hers, but the Hermione before him was silent and still. He felt his heart spasm again and the hot swell of tears in his eyes.

***

Harry arrived at St Mungo's with a powerful sense of determination thrumming through his body. He had not felt this heady level of adrenaline rush since facing his first lesson at Hogwarts as a new teacher ("Worse than the Dark Lord any day," he had joked to Neville in the professor's common room afterwards). Vector's confusing explanation was racing around in his head. All that talk about aligning runes and temporal parameters had washed over him, but he had clung onto the idea of blood activating a link between the present and the past, and that idea had filled him with the hope that they might be able to awaken his friend.

He and Flitwick had tried for two hours to detach the mosaic portrait from the wall in the Headmaster's study to no avail. Eventually, conceding defeat and sweaty with magical depletion, both wizards had come to the conclusion that they had to bring Hermione to the portrait rather than risk dismantling the castle to move the image to the comatose witch.

Harry reached the fifth floor of the hospital. Blood was still pumping erratically through his veins as he tried to marshal the arguments he would need to employ to Hermione's parents and to the Healers looking after her. It would not be easy to persuade either party to take such risky action, but there was something about Vector's research, allied to the lack of progress through conventional Muggle or magical methods, which had convinced Harry that something more had to be done. But how to form the right words...?

As he walked along the corridor approaching Hermione's room, he was relieved to see the familiar auburn flash of his best friend's hair. The sight of Ron, his shoulders hunched as he bent forward over something in front of him on the low coffee table in the visitor's area, filled Harry with an absurdly happy emotion. With Ron beside him, suddenly his mission did not seem quite so daunting.

"Hullo, mate," he called, coming up behind the sitting man. Ron turned around and grinned up at him. His broad face lit up as he stood, and he returned Harry's greeting with a huge bear hug.

"Any change?" Harry asked.

Ron shook his head ruefully. "Nah. Nothing. She's just lying there still. The Wiggenweld Potion didn't work. Robert went mental."

Harry pursed his lips in a rueful grimace and nodded. He had sometimes been on the receiving end of Robert Granger's temper.

Ron looked at him shrewdly. "You've got something, haven't you?"

"When did you learn Legilimency?" Harry countered and then grinned. "I think so. It's a bit of a long shot, but..."

Ron laughed and clapped him on the shoulder again. Harry winced at the impact. Ron moved back to his seat, gesturing for Harry to sit down next to him. He shuffled some sheets of parchment out of the way. "We've got a new American coach. I'm trying to learn some 'plays' for the end of the season," he explained wryly at Harry's inquiring look. "Sit down, Harry, and tell me what you've got."

"Okay," Harry began. "Vector seems to have worked it out, I think. She's been looking at the runes around the edge of the portrait, and she thinks that there's somebody out there who tried to set himself up to cheat death and live forever... in Snape's portrait. But it's not Doge, 'cos he just painted the picture, he didn't paint the runes around it; they just appeared after the painting turned into a mosaic! So the runes make a line that does not bisect a living lifeline, just, sort of, keeps going... like you can't die... And that power drew Hermione into the picture. Well, not her exactly... but some sort of shadow of her, like, erm, well, her mind, her..." Harry floundered, staring at Ron, hoping that his poorly worded explanation and half-arsed summation of the situation would be understood. Ron was staring at him as if Harry had just been babbling Mermish.

"Her soul?" asked Luna brightly, sitting down lightly down bedside them on the hospital chairs. Harry jumped. Neither of the men had heard her approach.

Ron rolled his eyes in a well-practiced motion. "Oh, don't be daft, Luna," he moaned. "There's no such thing as, oooooh, 'soul magic'." Ron hooked his first two fingers into a mocking gesture as he pronounced the last two words. "That's just stupid nonsense for soppy teenage witches." He snorted at his own joke and then grinned for confirmation at Harry.

Luna made to argue, but Harry lifted up his hand to silence both of them. Harry looked seriously at his friends. "It's all about the blood," he said, pointedly agreeing with neither of them. "Blood seems to have activated the mosaic – do you remember that Hermione had hit her head when she passed out?"

Luna and Ron both nodded.

"Well," Harry continued, encouraged. "We – that is, Filius, Septima, and I – think that we need some of Hermione's blood to set the mosaic off again and sort of activate it so that she can stop dreaming and come back to us. I want to take her back to Hogwarts with me, and I need your help to do it."

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Severus was dreaming. It was the same dream that he had had for years.

He was trapped in a cold, dark room, unable to move, the atmosphere pressing down upon him, claustrophobia threatening to overwhelm him. He was not much more than a consciousness trapped in nothingness. There was nothing to think of but guilt and remorse.

Severus felt the roughness of the scuffed wooden floor underneath his head, the pain of his wounds, and the pressure of her body upon his... But he also experienced an absurd sense of peace and hope as she put her hands on him. Her face was made beautiful by her generosity and his obligation.

But now for the first time in this familiar dream, her face began to age imperceptibly into the woman he had known in the last few days.

Now she teased him and smiled gently at him and closed her eyes, rolling her head back as he moved his fingers through her hair, stroked her face, ran his hand lightly down the taught line of her throat, between her breasts, to finally rest at her waist. His breath caught, and he began to drift into arousal. A delicious tightness began to spread throughout his groin, tingling tendrils spreading upwards through his lower belly and to his spine. There is redemption here, he thought. I could begin again....

Then, however, he began to feel cold seeping into his chest, and a frightful tightening began to restrict his breathing as, to his horror, he saw Hermione's face began to change again. Her features flattened, her skin paled, her lovely eyes grew cold and burning. Her irises elongated, her pupils dilated, and he tried to cry out in fear and anguish as, before his terrified gaze, the corrupted face of the Dark Lord took her place.

His head began to clear gradually, and he became aware of a restraint at his wrists and a burning pain that was shooting up his arms and into his chest. His weakened shoulder was particularly sore. There was a metallic taste in his mouth, and as he swirled his tongue gingerly around his mouth, he realised that it was blood. He appeared to have lost a tooth.

He became aware of light, and the atmosphere moved from black, through dark shades of red, to orange, to yellow, to white light as his eyes slowly flickered open. He could smell the sickly sweet aroma of votive incense and hear the sounds of a burning fire.

He could sense that he was in a large indoor space. It was chilly – he could feel gooseflesh rising on his skin. A hall? No, he thought, a temple...

The ancient Time-Turner about his neck was hanging on its thin golden chain in front of him, catching the early morning sunlight that was slanting in through the roof. He blinked stupidly at it as it turned lazily on its chain. Its sands were fused... useless.... A few inches below it, his mother's perfume phial swung gently on its slightly longer chain. As he breathed in and out, gasping for air, the two pendants began to intertwine with each other. He blinked furiously to try to clear sweat from his eyes.

Before him, as awareness of his surroundings slowing improved, dressed marble flagstones swam into his view.

He was on his knees with the front of his tunica ripped open. He looked slowly to his left and saw that his wrist was bound to a nearby pillar by a thin, pale cord. His hand was swollen due to the constriction. He could feel that his other hand was similarly tied. The ropes were pulling his arms out from his sides in a cruciform shape. His chest muscles hurt with the stretch from the ropes, and his breathing was laboured.

Slowly, and trying to make as little sound at all, Snape shuffled his knees forward and underneath his body, trying to relieve the pressure on his chest from the ropes. As one leg inched forward, it scraped slightly on a patch of fine grit on the flagstone floor.

Immediately, there was an intake of breath in front of him, and Severus froze. Clearly, he was not alone.

"Ah," Marcus Fiducius said silkily, "you're awake, I see. Good morning, Severus... my dear friend."

***

"Lumos."

"Lumos."

The light from the two wands flared and stung her eyes. The office was eerily quiet. Hermione was not expecting anyone to be in there. Harry had described how Snape had just fled Hogwarts, the erstwhile Headmaster diving through a window, sending the shards of coloured glass tumbling after him as he leapt to freedom. The Headmaster's office was still and silent. She shivered, conscious of how cold it seemed. The room was dark and bare, dominated by the ancient oak desk in the centre of the lower level. Beside her, Ron shifted uncomfortably, as ill at ease as she was in the atmosphere.

Ron grunted and walked further into the office towards the great desk. She followed him, casting her eyes about at the bookshelves, searching for anything that might help. Her eyes alighted on the Sorting Hat, high on the shelves... But it looked silent and still – almost as if it were aloof from them. No help there, she thought with sudden insight.

What are you playing at?

Hermione awoke with a start in the cold light of early morning, a sickening rush of adrenaline rushing through her chest, the echoes of Ron's accusation still ringing loudly in her ears.

She couldn't have been asleep for very long. She was sitting in a low chair in the laboratory. In front of her, Marcella was asleep on the pallet that she had healed Severus on.

The women had wolfed down the remaining cheese and dried meat in Pertus' stores before Hermione directed Marcella firmly (and with a little magical compulsion) to lie down and rest. Then she had walked about the internal perimeter of the house, resetting wards and attempting to strengthen Severus' protection of the building. Marcella had wanted to find Conviva immediately, but Hermione had been too frightened and weary to go wandering about the city looking for him, knowing that Sabazios was abroad. She – Hermione – had needed to rest and regroup.

She also had hoped desperately that Severus would return.

Thinking of him again now caused another spike of adrenaline to rush through her with a force that was painful. Giving in to the feeling of loss that still swept through her, she had tried to find his glass potions phial after she had settled Marcella down to sleep, but the little container was nowhere to be seen. She couldn't imagine where it could have gone. She had dashed away her frustrated tears at its loss and schooled herself sternly to think instead about the portrait runes.

Her last conscious thought, before exhaustion had claimed her and she had drifted into sleep in the chair, had been of the Arithmantic sequences surrounding the portrait of the young woman in the triclinium and the mosaic picture of Death in Severus' bathroom.

***

"You don't have much time, Severus."

Snape tried to focus. Why the hell was he so tired? He could barely move his head and shoulders as he fought to look up towards Fiducius' voice. He scowled as he tried to focus on the man before him. Marcus was sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of Severus, his black robes pooling around him, his hood pushed back away from his face, and the twisted metal mask on the flagstone floor beside him. His face was pale, but his eyes were glassy, and there were twin spots of bright pink flush in his cheeks.

Snape rolled his tongue in his mouth and tried to speak. All that emerged was a dry cough that sent droplets of blood from his lips onto the white marble floor.

Fiducius tapped his fingers on his knees. He regarded Severus for a few moments more, then tilted his head on one side.

"Sabazios is sleeping in one of the rooms at the rear of this sanctuary with the rest of my new brothers," he said eventually, in a matter-of-fact tone.

Severus said nothing, concentrating on drawing in breaths to his starved lungs. His arms were mostly numb, and he could barely feel his hands at all.

Marcus leaned forward, cupping his chin in his hands, resting his elbows upon his knees. More seconds ticked by.

"He will awaken soon, and will want to talk with you." He leaned forward, whispering confidentially, "After that, I think you will probably be dead." The Aedile took a deep breath, rocked backwards and hummed a quiet, little tune.

Severus was silent, apart from his panting breaths, but his eyes flicked to Fiducius' face, noting the madness in his eyes. The potion, he thought. He's got more potion. Then, suddenly, he remembered: Hermione. He felt his heart lurch in his chest. Oh, gods! He tested the strength of the ropes that bound him. They dug viciously into his wrists and didn't break.

Fiducius teased something from between his teeth with one of his nails, flicked it into the darkness to his left, shivered, then regarded Severus again, his eyes dancing with an inner fire.

"He was magnificent last night, Severus. I have never seen power like it. He had those fools in the Forum bowing to us all! With him, we are unstoppable. Those bastards in the Senate, Titus and his cronies, will not stand a chance. All armies will be swept away." He leaned forward again, and Severus could smell the desperation, and the sweet smell of the potion on his breath. "Once Sabazios has control of the Empire, all will bow to our will. Celts, Egyptians, Persians, the fucking Jews in Palestine... No one will be able to withstand us...."

"You look like shit." Fiducius added and smiled nastily, rubbing the side of his neck. "How the tables are turned, eh, Severus? Not quite the all-powerful 'wizard' now – are you? What on earth were you thinking last night, trying to intervene to save that stupid human." Marcus spat the word out with loathing in his voice.

Snape frowned at him. He remembered watching from behind a crumbled pillar in the forum as Sabazios had silenced and levitated the heckler and drew him close. He remembered the man's flailing arms and legs, his body arched backwards as the Pompeian screamed silently and writhed, trying to escape. He remembered the sudden rush of fury that had suffused his mind, the almost involuntary shout that had exploded raggedly from his throat as he had raised his hands, casting a crude Protego as he did so, Sabazios' head snapping around to see him standing exposed and with his hand extended as he had attempted to protect the silently screaming man from his fate.

He remembered a heavy hand falling on his shoulder and the crushing Stupify that had sent him tumbling into unconsciousness.

Foolish! What had possessed him? It was the sort of unthinking behaviour he would expect from a sentimental Gryffindor.

He tried to gather his magical energy, but found it sluggish and unresponsive. He frowned again and tried once more to marshal his powers.

"Your stupid display of energy drained you," Fiducius explained evenly, darting a look at the ropes that bound him to the pillars. "I know how that feels...."

"While he grows stronger every day," he added with a smile.

Severus followed Fiducius' look to the ropes and reached out with his senses. He could still sense the wards around the city. He had bound the magic so carefully into them that they would be the last part of him to fail. Nevertheless, he could sense the critical drain on his reserves. He needed time, food, and drink to regain his strength. He was so tired. Fiducius' face swam in and out of focus.

"I expect you'd like to know about Hermione," Fiducius taunted casually.

Snape's head snapped up, searching the Aedile's face. He coughed again in his throat, willing his vocal chords to function.

"Where...?" Severus' voice was a bare whisper.

"Sorry, brother, I didn't quite catch that." Fiducius smiled nastily and crawled closer to Severus. As he grew closer it became easier to focus on his features again. With a tremendous force of will, Severus looked at the Aedile.

"If you touch her...," he began and felt impotent frustration when the smaller man simply giggled in response.

Then Fiducius' face grew predatory and calculating. Snape recognised once again the signs of addictive madness from the Metamorphmagus Potion.

"The magic in my veins is wearing thin, too, brother," the Aedile said, his voice trembling as he spoke. "You know I took more from your private stocks when I killed that insolent slave of yours after our... difference of opinion... at Conviva's house. When I realised that Hermione had brewed more of it, I was able to take that, too – after our little... display... in the Forum. I need to know how to brew the potion so I may never be without it. You can do this for me, Severus." He smiled and tried to appear solicitous. "You know what I want. What do you want, Severus?"

Severus shook his head. Nothing. Hermione. I want Hermione.

"I can get her for you," the Pompeian spoke into Severus' ear, his cheek hot against Snape's. Severus started – had he spoken those words out loud? He cursed himself for his lack of control.

Fiducius leaned forward again. "I know where she is being kept. In my master's cavern beneath the volcano."

He pulled back slightly and then cupped Severus' face with sweaty hands that trembled against Severus' skin.

"I will help you both to escape from here. You can save Hermione. You need only show me the secrets of the potion."

***

It was about six o'clock in the morning. Hermione had left Marcella sleeping in the potions laboratory and walked out into the peristyle. The sun had risen, but it had not quite gained sufficient height to shine directly into the garden. Hermione cast a worried look into the sky.

Pliny's account of the eruption in 79AD clearly stated that the mountain had blown its top at midday. Hermione hoped desperately that he had written accurately and not simply placed the eruption at a suitably dramatic time of the day for additional poetic impact. If Pliny was truthful in his account, they had about six hours until the first explosion. Deep in thought, as she tried to remember as many details about the eruption as she could, Hermione climbed the stone steps to the triclinium and the portrait that she had fallen through into this time.

Her feet crunched on the sandy stone of the steps, her mind a jumble of questions.

Where is Severus? What am I going to do about Marcella? Can I find Conviva? How am I going to get back? Am I going to die here? Oh, Severus, where are you? I need you! – Ooops!

Her foot slipped on a step, and she fell on her knee, putting out her right hand instinctively to stop herself. The heel of her hand scraped painfully on the rough stone, and she hissed at the pain of the graze in her skin. Shaking her hand to ease the throb from the little cuts, she recovered her footing and walked into the room.

The portrait was still and inviting. She moved closer to it, her mind a whirl of Arithmantic equations. The young woman in the portrait stared frankly out at Hermione, her stylus pressed invitingly to her lower lip, her expression in the image beckoning Hermione forward.

Hermione bit her lip as she approached the painting, feeling a light earth-tremor rumbling beneath her feet; another reminder of what was certainly to come.

There was something obvious about the runes that felt just out of her reach.

Another rumble sounded deep in the earth, and the ground shook again. Thrown off balance, Hermione reached forward with the flat of her hand to steady herself against the wall.

As soon as her right hand touched the portrait, she felt the prickle of magic activating, and a hollow tug behind her navel.

Beneath the heel of her hand, the runes were shifting and changing. The portrait had begun to sink backwards like a tunnel beginning to deepen before her.

She pulled her hand back sharply from the image and looked at her tingling palm. The smear of fresh blood from her abrasion met her eyes. She looked again at the portrait and saw that it had stilled again and was flat.

Oh gods, that's it! That's the way home. Blood activates the runes and opens the portal.

Triumph surged in her chest. She had done it! She had fucking done it! There was a way out. She punched the air with her grazed fist.

It was then she heard the frantic shouts and hammering on the back gate to the garden.

********************

"She moved, I tell you!" Robert Granger's voice was raised and shot through with frustration as he shouted at the Healer. "You don't bloody well know what you're doing! Go and get Spleen! My daughter bloody moved."

As the young Healer fled to find his senior, Robert collapsed back in his chair by Hermione's bedside, still holding her hand in his. She had moved. He sighed and closed his eyes, resting his head on the back of the high backed leather chair.

Was he going crazy?

A noise at the doorway prompted him to snap his head sideways, his features still scowling, as Harry, Ron, and Luna edged into the room. Robert looked at their concerned faces and relented. He knew how much they cared for his daughter. They had proved it many times.

Harry stepped forward and held out his hand.

"Mr Granger," he began, "I've got a proposition for you."

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*Seaside rock is a traditional sweet (hard candy?) in the UK. In its original form, it is a mint-flavoured cylindrical stick of boiled sugar, measuring about an inch in diameter and about a foot long. It is traditionally sold at seaside resorts. It is probably responsible for more emergency holiday trips to the dentists than any other sweet in the UK. Hermione, therefore, has really got her dentist father wrapped around her little finger if he's allowing her to have one. It also explains her very sticky hands....