Chapter 4

She would have fallen asleep curled up on the settee, had he not chivvied her off and towards his private office.

"Who knows what sort of magical drain the transfer from one universe to another has had on you," he said when she protested. "You need to rest."

They'd settled on the term, "universe" to describe their two, disparate, worlds. It seemed to encompass so much of what they'd already found to be different between them, their histories and their cultures.

To Severus, the thought of an entire universe filled with people who had never heard of either Potter or Voldemort sounded a real treat. He could hardly imagine how that was possible, though; how did two or more parallel worlds develop so very differently?

"I couldn't possibly sleep," she protested, even as he directed her to the sofa across from the desk in his inner office. "Where can I find a quill and some parchment?"

He sighed. This, then, would be a detail on which their two worlds coincided completely.

"There is blank parchment, quills and ink in the desk. Help yourself."

"Where will you be?" She looked uneasy, and he was surprised. Most people were all too pleased to see the back of him.

"I need to do a thorough patrol of the castle. Don't wait for me to return; I may be gone until morning."

She nodded and he detected hesitation on her face. Was she... worried?

"You'll be perfectly safe here, Miss... Hermione."

"It's not myself I'm worried about."

Well, then.

He cleared his throat.

"I can assure you that I am capable of taking care of myself."

At least for now.

"The ghosts and portraits are my eyes and ears. I am likely the most dangerous witch or wizard in the castle at the moment."

Her expression was still wary.

"Try to sleep. I would prefer you functional in the morning."

She eyed him for a moment and then smiled.

"Thank you."

He nodded and turned to leave. So much more to do before he might rest.

It had long been their custom to meet in an abandoned corner of the dungeons, wizard and ghost, to complete their late night patrols of the castle and to share reconnaissance information.

"You're late," remarked the ghost, and Severus saw the faint frown lines between the Baron's translucent eyes. That made two people tonight who were worried about him (if one considered a ghostly imprint a person... and he did).

A day for the record books.

"Detained," he said shortly as his long stride brought him side-by-side with the ghost.

"Send a message next time, Snape," said the Baron as they turned the corner to the potions classroom. "Something odd is afoot."

If he only knew.

Severus stopped short.

"Odd? What do you mean?"

The Baron turned and wafted back towards Severus.

"This will be difficult to explain to the corporeal," he said, looking uneasy.

"Give it your best effort."

The Baron drew in what passed for a deep breath in a ghost. Severus crossed his arms. Waiting.

It had taken years to build rapport with the irascible ghost. Years of conflict over which one of them should have the final word on how to handle an out of bounds Slytherin or how best to manage the Headmaster had been settled once and for all the night Severus had returned from the Riddles' graveyard, nearly shattered by what he had seen and by what lay ahead. The Baron had stayed with him that night, hovering nearby despite Severus's efforts to expel him from his chambers. He'd been grateful, honestly, though he'd never have asked, thankful the ghost knew not to leave him there, haunted by far more than old castle spirits.

But when it came to things spectral, the Baron couldn't help but preen a bit.

Severus closed his eyes, impatient. He'd spent the last two hours prowling the corridors. Thinking. Turning every possibility over and over and inside out, trying to make sense of the impossibility of the woman sitting in his office. If the Baron could shed some light on the matter, he wished he would do it soon. He was nearly done in.

"There's been a disturbance," the ghost said, a ripple running through his translucent image. He'd never before seen the Baron shiver. Severus wrapped his arms more tightly around himself and listened.

"We ghosts," the Baron continued, "are acutely attuned to the spaces between... to the borders separating one state and another. After all, we have each stood at the ultimate threshold and chosen not to cross over."

Severus nodded. "Go on."

"So whenever one does cross, we take note."

"Understood." His heart was racing, but he knew that the best way to get the Baron to talk was to wait.

"Deaths, births...they all create ripples, and we notice them. But they are not unusual."

"No, they wouldn't be, would they?"

"No, they are not. However," The ghost appeared to squirm, "there has been another sort of crossing over tonight. We all noticed it. There has never been anything like it...it was like nothing any of us have ever experienced in our time as spectrals."

"How was it different from a birth or a death?"

"It was a living being who crossed over, but there was no change of state, as there would be with a birth or death," he said.

"Crossed over from where?" Severus hissed, his patience exhausted at last.

"We don't know," answered the Baron. "I told you. We've never experienced anything like it."

Severus sighed and massaged his temples with his fingertips.

"But," said the Baron, "I just might know who to ask."

the Great Hall, beyond the high, arching windows that line the walls [in the head's office; in the entrance hall; in the dungeons, in the library, in the headmistress's office], four figures stir in their beds of stained glass.

One after another they shake off centuries of sleep, reaching out to feel for the telltale tingle of magic, opening their eyes to look around and see who has awoken them.

At last.

Asleep on the floor of Snape's chambers, quill and parchment spread all across the plush rug, discarded now in favour of the inexorable pull of dreams, Hermione shivered.

She was asleep when he returned to his rooms. Curled on the floor, head pillowed on her hands, her hair spilled out of a band obviously inadequate to contain it. Notes were scattered across the desk and around her on the rug, filled with Arithmantic equations, lists of questions, and on one notable sheet, a sketch of what must be the window on her side of the barrier through which she had fallen.

Or was pulled.

Whichever.

Years of spying had made Severus an expert at deception; but early on, he'd made a pact with himself that self-deception could never be part of this game.

There were already enough twists and turns to navigate without having to second-guess his own motives. So, in the aftermath of Dumbledore's brutal confrontation following Lily's murder, he'd vowed to be honest, at the very least, with himself.

Therefore he acknowledged with remarkable easiness (if only in the privacy of his own mind) the warmth blooming in his chest as he watched her sleep. Her chest rose and fell, the occasional catch in her breath the only sign of disturbance.

She felt safe enough here...in his rooms...to fall asleep.

Of course he'd suggested it. Encouraged it, even. But he hadn't actually expected her to be able to let down her guard, here, in what was...in spite of the familiarity...a strange place. Not here, in the chambers of a wizard who had just acknowledged to her that he was the most dangerous being in the castle.

His heart ached, unexpectedly, for the Hermione Granger of his world.

He shook his head. He couldn't do that. Couldn't go there. This woman was someone else. She was Granger, but not.

Ah, no, the girl hiding from the Dark Lord was Granger, but this woman was Hermione.

She muttered something incomprehensible in her sleep and twisted her head into what must be an incredibly uncomfortable position.

Without thinking, he stepped closer, gathering the parchment into a neat pile and putting the lid on the ink that she'd left open. It was only once they'd all been carefully set on the desktop that he hesitated.

He tried to tell himself that she was afraid of his wand, and so he would refrain from using it on her, even to levitate her to the couch. But deep inside he knew that was a lie. He felt strangely unbalanced. He tried to make himself believe that the need to touch her, to feel the weight of her body in his arms, tangible, real, was nothing more than an attempt to physically reorder his suddenly chaotic universe.

Without giving himself another moment to think better of his decision, he crouched down and slipped his arms beneath her, lifting her gently, cradling her against his chest. She sighed and curled into him, her arms wrapped around his torso as if to anchor herself there.

Oh, bloody hell.

He took a deep breath, a futile effort to slow his racing heart.

The sofa was only a few steps away. Right there.

He knelt beside it and lowered her onto the cushions. It took a few moments to untangle her hold on him, and his heart leapt at her soft moue of disappointment when he finally slid his arms out from where they had been cradling her, leaving her alone on the sofa. She settled into the soft cushions and sighed again when he pulled the blanket off the nearby chair to cover her.

He leaned his head back against the edge of the sofa alongside her and closed his eyes. Just a few moments, he told himself, and then he would get up and retire to his room. His bed. A few more moments to be sure she was sleeping peacefully, and he would go. He turned to her one last time and tucked a stray curl behind her ear. A deep sense of contentment and an unfamiliar sense of safety enveloped him. And when he woke in the morning, her hand still clutching his arm, he couldn't even remember having fallen asleep.

In the drowsy moments before she woke, when random memories of the previous day floated through her mind, she felt caught in a bizarre dream.

A parallel universe? A wizard as headmaster? The wizarding world at war? That was too absurd to contemplate, even for her; she always did have a rather active imagination.

When she opened her eyes, with no small amount of trepidation, the weak rays of sunrise bathed the unfamiliar room in a soft orange glow.

Not a dream, then.

He was sitting on the floor beside the sofa on which she slept, leaning against the cushions, his shoulders twisted, his breathing shallow and fitful, even in sleep.

Hermione shifted slightly, the better to look at him. Her hand had curled around his arm at some time in the night, and she wondered how he'd moved her to the sofa. A vague memory of steady arms and a solid body reassured her that he'd not used magic to move her, and she felt a surge of gratitude for his unspoken consideration.

Up close, he looked every bit as exhausted as he had when she'd seen him in the glass. The soft morning light was kinder than the night's flickering firelight had been, emphasising the circles beneath his eyes less and softening the lines of his face.

Still, he looked done in, barely on the edge of sleep, and she sent her magic out through the palms of her hands. Down past the gruff surface, winding along the twists and turns of his defences, she found it. Skittish, yes, but tender. Young and gentle.

She knew he wasn't dangerous to her, she just knew it.

Ever so slowly, she drew her magic around the tiny doe like a cloak. Soothing, calming. Lulling it to sleep, gentling his fear with the stroke of her thumb over the curve of his bicep.

I'll watch over you. Rest.

He drew in a deep breath and his entire body relaxed.

That was good, then. He needed to sleep. To recover from all the hardship draining him so profoundly.

And she? She would have some quiet time in which to think while he slept.

He woke from slumber as if he was rising to the surface of deep water. With a gasp, he opened his eyes.

She was asleep, but she'd shifted closer sometime in the night. Her forehead was resting nearly against his, and he could feel her soft puffs of breath against his face. He closed his eyes again, trying to isolate the hum he felt beneath his skin. It was soothing, as if he were in contact with the rush of energy below the surface of the world. Counterpoint to the hum was a steady beat, like blood pumping through veins. Steady. Reliable. Necessary.

It felt as if he'd been melded into a river of pounding hearts and flowing souls. Each one beating its own rhythm and yet, together, symphonic.

Oh, no. No no no.

Hermione, he thought. What have you done?

She could feel his energy shift.

Awake, then.

A tingle of awareness ran over her skin and she opened her eyes. Not only was he awake, but also alarmed.

"Did you sleep well?" she asked, bewildered by his unease. She knew the answer, had felt it, and his restful sleep had, in turn, enhanced her own.

"Surprisingly well," he answered, sitting up and attempting to straighten his rumpled robes.

"I thought so," she said, smiling.

He was staring at her as if she were a puzzle, which she supposed she was, in a manner of speaking, though no more than he was to her.

"What's the matter?" she asked, sitting up and clutching a cushion to her chest. The way his expression shifted felt wrong, not like the wizard whose spirit she had calmed just a few hours past.

"You did something." A statement of fact.

"Yes." What she had done was obvious, wasn't it? And nothing special; any fifth year could have done it with ease.

All at once, he was angry. "What did you do? What were you thinking?" he shouted, and Hermione clutched the pillow even more tightly against herself.

"You were exhausted," she explained, not sure why this needed explanation at all. "Too tired to sleep. How could I not help?"

"It's not just the sleep," he spat. "You did something else."

She shook her head.

"I don't know what you're talking about." She could only whisper in the face of his anger.

"I can hear it. Feel it. It's like a... a hum beneath a heartbeat."

"Well, yes," she said. "But hasn't that always been there? Wasn't it there before?" It had to be. It was as essential as the spinning of the earth and the rising and setting of the sun.

"No!" he shouted. "It was most certainly not there before you..." He waved his arm in her direction and huffed. His face was red and he looked...

She took a deep breath to centre herself and closed her eyes. When she opened them again she could see it in the stiff set of his jaw and the fine tremor in his hands.

"You're frightened."

"I most certainly am not," he snapped. "Have you forgotten? We are at war Miss Granger. War."

War. Ah, right. That.

She shook her head to try to clear it, as if she were trying to. clean the surface of the stained glass. The situation felt surreal. Being here, with him. At Hogwarts, but not her Hogwarts. A war out there...

No, she realised with a wave of nausea. The war was also in here. Inside Hogwarts. And he? What was his role? Distantly, she remembered the history of ancient wars, and the parts witches and wizards and non-magical folk had played in those conflicts.

So what was he? Infantryman? General? Strategist? Spy?

She shivered. Children lived inside this castle, too, and, if what Severus said was true, outside as well, snarled up in this war. Another Hermione Granger out there, with two of her friends, doing something essential for the cause. She could hardly imagine what it would be like to face that sort of responsibility. That sort of risk.

Her chest tightened.

"I don't know how to live through a war," she said. "I have no experience..." Her voice caught. "I'm not her," Hermione whispered. "I'm not the Hermione Granger you taught. Remember?"

But he hardly seemed to hear her. He was trembling, struggling to regain control of himself. What had she done to shake him, so?

"How am I supposed to Occlude..." he muttered, more to himself than to her.

"Occlude?" she echoed past the lump that had risen to her throat. Just when she began to think she'd got her head around all the things she didn't understand, along came something new.

What sort of world was this? Why use Dark magic? He wasn't a Dark wizard.

"Why would you want to do that? From whom?"

Perhaps it was the stricken look on her face, or maybe he had regained his senses enough to remember that she did not, in fact, share what was common knowledge to everyone in his world. At last he stopped shouting and muttering and just looked at her, brow furrowed. She willed him to see her spirit as fully as she had seen his, though he wasn't touching her.

"You really don't know."

She shook her head and wanted so much to reach out for him again, as she had in the night.

"I really don't. I don't understand any of this, Severus, and I don't want to do anything that would hurt you. Please. Please, help me understand."

He was pacing again, just has he had been last night when she'd reached out her hand, not knowing that he would find it. That he would take it.

"It's a long story. More than you need to know."

"But I want to know," she said. "And you must want me to, as well. You took my hand and brought me here, Severus. You could have left it alone. I would have pulled it back through the window and that would have been the end of it." She crossed her arms, discarding her cushiony shield. "Is there anybody in this castle who knows your story?"

Severus snorted. "One," he said reluctantly. "The former headmaster. Now deceased." He stopped, swallowing thickly.

"Portrait?" she asked. Headmistress McGonagall's office was lined with portraits of former headmistresses. It stood to reason that those witches and wizards on the wall of his outer office had been former Heads as well.

"Portrait," he confirmed. "Pretends to sleep, mostly."

To sleep? Hermione felt anger rise up. Who was this wizard who withdrew from Severus when his job as a portrait...his only role...was to support him?

"Was he like that in life?"

Severus's laugh was like a bark. Harsh. Angry.

Ah.

"Sleepy? Hardly. Obtuse? Incessantly."

"Why would he be obtuse? That makes no sense."

Severus laughed the ugly laugh again and Hermione shivered.

"Let's just say that he tended to secrecy, but only with the best intentions, of course."

She couldn't tell for certain if he was being sarcastic, but already she had grave reservations about this former Headmaster.

"The best intentions?" she echoed. "If that's so, why has he left you all alone?"

He stared at her, shocked into silence. How could this girl, this stranger, cut to the heart of his situation so quickly? Was his isolation so obvious? Did it radiate from him? The need that always gnawed, hollowing him out from the inside?

"You wouldn't understand," he choked out, but she just rolled her eyes.

"Try me."

Fear and anger tangled inside him, and he felt a knot in his throat.

"I wouldn't explain this to the real..." He cleared his throat. "I wouldn't give the Hermione Granger I know this information."

I must be losing my mind, he thought. Sitting here as if we are sharing afternoon tea, talking to this woman...this girl...as if she could be a confidante. He knew he could have no confidante, and if he did, it certainly wouldn't, certainly shouldn't be a girl...a woman...half his age with none of his experience.

"Are you finished thinking yet?" she asked. "It's not getting you anywhere, you know."

He drew breath to speak, but whatever he might have said was interrupted by pounding at his outer office door.

"Snape!" The voice was muffled, but Severus leapt to his feet.

Amycus Carrow had made a habit of dragging students to his door at regular intervals, despite the clear guidelines Severus had set for the staff. Guidelines the Carrows refused to follow, instead either haring off on their own to punish students at will, or dragging them to him to do the same. Testing him. Pushing him to demonstrate his sadism. To prove it.

He bit back the bile that rose to his throat. The students were due to leave this morning on the Hogwarts Express, leaving the castle blessedly empty. What had the little devils managed to do in the last hours before leaving for home?

"Stay here," he murmured. "Not a sound."

Severus swept from the room and closed the door behind him, sealing it with a silencing spell. He could afford to let her listen, but he couldn't risk Carrow hearing even the smallest rustle from behind that door.

Amycus pounded once more on the door to his office.

"Snape! Open up! I have miscreants here needin' punishin'."

Snape cursed under his breath as he strode towards the door and swung it open with the wave of his wand. Carrow almost fell into the room, dragging a red-haired girl and a lanky, dark-haired boy behind him.

"Amycus," he growled. "Must you make such an infernal racket every time you wish to see me?"

"It was urgent, Headmaster," Carrow said. "Students in the hallways without a chaperone." He bared his teeth and shook the students by the scruffs of their necks. "My money's on it being them that's been writing that Mudblood loving graffiti everywhere."

He pushed Longbottom and Weasley into the centre of the room with a grunt.

"Yes, Amycus," said Severus. "Thank you for sharing your well-considered opinion on the matter."

Amycus frowned, unsure whether he'd been complimented or insulted.

"You may release them now," said Snape with a scowl at the students.

Gryffindors. Inevitable, that.

"What do you have to say for yourselves? Longbottom? Weasley?" He was nearly too tired to make his voice properly menacing, but they flinched just the same.

Predictably, neither student said a word as he circled them, arms clasped behind his back. They just pressed their lips together. Obstinate. Why couldn't they just lie low and wait it out? Stay out of the line of fire until it was over?

This anger, he didn't have to feign.

"You persist in flaunting the rules," he hissed. "As if you know better than your superiors." He gritted his teeth against their defiant glares. "No amount of punishment or restriction has been sufficient to teach you to consider the wisdom of your elders." He paused, walking one last time around the two stubborn Gryffindors.

"Shall I take them to the dungeons, Headmaster?" asked Amycus too eagerly. "There's some Slytherins needing to practise their Crucio."

"No," said Snape. "I dislike the mess they leave behind, and should they inadvertently kill one, it would be highly... inconvenient, especially with their families awaiting their return from school this evening."

He strode to his desk, wrote a short note, sealed it, and handed it to Amycus.

"When you return from your holiday, you will spend every night for one week with Professor Hagrid," he said. "Detention in the Forbidden Forest."

Weasley lifted her head just a bit and for an instant, her eyes met his. He thought he saw gratitude there, but before he could be sure, it was gone.

"Excellent, Headmaster," Amycus cackled, the idiot. "That'll show the filthy blood traitors."

"Indeed, Amycus," said Severus softly. "I certainly hope they get the message at last."

She stood, her hands pressed against the door, and listened.

Hermione didn't need to know who the older wizard was to know that he was an aberration. The sort that couldn't remain part of the collective because he sought to cause others pain. What was a man like this doing at a school...and, unless appearances were deceiving...and Merlin knows, they might be...in charge of children?

Severus had obviously silenced the inner office but not the outer one, so perhaps he wouldn't mind if she made the other room visible as well as audible. And so, it was after she'd whispered a revealing spell against the thick wooden door, allowing her to see the outer office, that she gasped.

There in the centre of the room stood a very battered Neville and an obviously insolent Ginny. What was Neville doing here, and in school uniform at that? He was an apprentice, and there wasn't a magical plant alive that could do what had obviously been done to his face.

Bruised, with a cut on his cheek that held traces of dried blood, Neville stood in the centre of the room with an expression of utmost contempt on his face. Ginny's hair looked messy, but she was free from blood or other marks of abuse though her expression remained defiant.

They...these students...children...looked like they had been in battle. As if they were fighting a war. Inside Hogwarts. With Severus right in the middle of it.

She looked back and forth between Severus and Neville and Ginny.

Hadn't anyone told them they were on the same side?

When, finally, the door to the outer office closed ("Get them to the train before it leaves, Amycus. We don't want these two here over the holidays, do we?") and Severus waved that blasted wand at it and his shoulders finally relaxed again, Hermione sat back on the sofa. Thinking.

The inner door opened silently as if it, too, were too worn out to make a sound. The wizard who came through the door avoided her eyes and stood by the chair, head bowed. Silent.

She was shaking, there on the sofa. The shock of seeing Neville, beaten and in school uniform, and Ginny, dishevelled but defiant...towards Severus...had left her even more shocked and confused.

One thing, though, she knew for certain.

"Something is very wrong here," Hermione said, her voice trembling. "And I want to know exactly what it is."

He nearly laughed...the situation was so absurd.

"Nothing is wrong. Everything is precisely as it's meant to be."

"Rubbish."

The look on her face was so familiar that, for an instant, he forgot that the other Hermione Granger whose eyebrows habitually scrunched together when she was particularly determined wasn't standing in front of him.

This Hermione Granger had lived a life that hadn't been consumed by war.

This Hermione Granger had already achieved academic distinction and was on her way (if he wasn't mistaken) to a shining career.

This Hermione Granger wasn't a child, lost in the wilderness, but a woman who looked at him with soft eyes and apparently didn't assume that everything was so blasted complicated.

Again warmth spread through his chest, and he took a deep breath to dispel it. He could do nothing for the Hermione Granger out there, except to get Potter the information he needed at the right times. But this woman had no reason to get tangled in this war.

"It's no concern of yours," said Severus, bowing his head again.

"Of course it concerns me," she shouted. "I don't understand you at all!" She smacked a cushion down onto the floor.

He sank into the chair beside him, dropped his elbows to his knees, and cradled his face in his hands.

"Say something!" She looked as if she might stamp her foot, and he levelled his gaze at her.

What would it hurt, really? It wasn't as if she were going to wander around the castle or, Merlin forbid, leave. She would stay right here, under his protection but also confined until they could find a way to return her to her own world.

What could it hurt to tell her his story? For once, to tell someone the whole story.

He closed his eyes, imagining.

The idea was intoxicating.

She was still looking at him when he opened his eyes.

"All right," he said, finally. "But it's all or nothing." He put up his hand in anticipation of her questions. "And no interruptions until I'm finished."

She pursed her lips for only a moment before nodding. "Agreed."

"And then," he continued. "You're going to explain to me exactly what you did to me while I was asleep."