A Very Dangerous Man

Disclaimer: I own nothing Harry Potter related. I'm making no money. Please, powers-that-be, leave me alone to play with my thoughts.

Chapter Three – A Very Dangerous Man

Spring 2000

She moved through the house, turning off lights and closing blinds. She would have to wake up early and dust before the visitors arrived once again.

Can't have a dusty museum, now can we?

She always started from the basement and worked upward. The basement housed his potions lab and was always fully stocked with the sort of potions he would have brewed there, no matter what the cost. Only the best for our hero, she had been told. She was responsible for brewing the simpler potions...a brewer was sent once a month to deal the more complicated brews, a situation that again reminded her of her deplorable lack of seventh-year education.

Casting a few dust-repelling spells, she renewed the wards on the shelves. Only she and the brewer were able to access these potions; heaven knew what sort of trouble the guests of the museum would get into if they were able to play with these stores.

She came up the stairs and into the kitchen, surveying the state of the toaster. Sure enough, someone had yet again shoved a piece of buttered bread in it. Luckily, they had not figured out how to depress the lever. She had lost count of how many times she had rebuked a young witch or wizard (or Arthur Weasley) for setting the counter on fire.

The boxes and cans of foodstuffs in the pantry were a nightmare, and she set about straightening up the shelves. This batch of prop food would have to be donated to the local shelter soon, and new food would need to be purchased. She added it to her ever-expanding to-do list.

She grabbed a can of soup off the shelf and moved back to the kitchen. Standing over the sink, she removed the lid, heating the soup with her wand while it was still in the can, yet not heating the can itself. Tada, magic. She snorted, amused at her own sarcasm. Using a spoon from the drawer, she ate her meal slowly, trying to enjoy it. Mostly, she just felt saddened by the fact that she could not cook food worth eating...only Ron had managed to keep down half of the food she had cooked on their camping adventure. She cleaned the spoon and replaced it in the drawer, Vanishing the can to wherever it was that Vanished things went.

She left the kitchen and moved to the living room. This room was always the worst...visitors felt they had the right to look at everything but never bothered to put things back where they belonged. It was as if they had never been in a home before; books were strewn over the sofa, potted plants had been moved from the floor to rest on ottomans. This room had the least amount of Muggle technology, and yet it was as if they forgot everything about common decency.

Everyone wanted a piece of him, to touch the things he had touched, to read a part of the book he had read; one strange wizard had even tried on his boots. She simply must get the Ministry to approve assistants. The house should never be in this condition after only one day!

Two years. It had been nearly two years since their professor had died. The not-so-reluctant hero. The man who had made it possible for Harry to be the Boy Who Lived Yet Again. The man who loved for all of those years, even after his love's death.

The man they all had reviled in some way was now the biggest hero of the war.

She snorted at this thought, wondering what he would think of his father's working-class home being turned into a shrine. Probably would scream at the dunderheads to leave his ottoman bloody well alone. She smirked; her brain-Snape always made her smile.

She needed to get out more.

Finishing her evening duties, she walked up to the second floor before pulling the string that released the stairs to the attic. She ascended to her new home. Well, not so new now. She had lived here for well over a year at this point... long enough to consider the attic "home."

She walked through the attic of number nine, Spinner's End, straightening up as she walked. The attic originally had been one large, drafty room. She had hired carpenters to install a bathroom at the far end. The main portion of the room was split into a bedroom and living room area. It didn't afford much privacy when guests came, having no partition between the two, but she didn't mind much. Guests rarely visited, anyhow.

She continued moving through the attic, picking up a little here and there...books on the coffee table to be reshelved, socks to be put in the hamper. She did not know why she bothered; no one ever came to visit her here. For Ron and Harry, the house was connected with the guilt they still had for letting a man die; for others, it was a dreary, drafty attic that would never be more than a set of rooms.

To her, the attic was a home. The space was ample, the shelves full of books she never could have afforded on her own, books from his own library, the hearth warm in spite of the draftiness. It was a place to hide, to recover, to heal after the war.

No, no one ever visited of their own accord, certainly not Ronald. Their row eighteen months prior had been final. The boys dealt with their war guilt by fleeing it...she mastered hers by confronting it head-on. When she had announced to them that she intended to take the position of curator of the Severus Snape Museum, Ron had been livid. In his mind, in his perfect world, Hermione would move in with him in a small house adjacent to the Burrow, and then they would live happily ever after. Happily ever after did not happen in Severus Snape's attic; Ron had told her as much before asking her to leave his parents' house.

And certainly not her parents. She had never returned to Australia to find them. Until she could answer their questions about the war to her own satisfaction, she could not face them. She often wondered if they were okay...if she had made the right decision to send them away. Somehow, she thought that going back to them might actually be worse. How would they react to their only daughter doing something so horrible to them without their consent?

She had taken on the curatorship, expecting it to be a temporary job, while she studied for her NEWTs. The position had quickly taken over her life: books to archive, personal notes to bind and collate, musty boxes in the attic to delve through. Days spent sifting through the moldering pieces to determine Snape's favorite childhood toy or type of tea. Much of the work was mindless, exactly what she needed to deal with her post-war thoughts.

At this point, she probably knew more about Severus Snape than anyone who had actually known him. She knew that he had a small scar on his hand where Hagrid's puppy had bitten him when he was a fourth-year. Tears had poured down her face when Hagrid recounted that story; the idea of Severus Snape playing with a Great Dane puppy was just too endearing and out of character, and she had collapsed in a fit of giggles.

She knew that his father had not been a physically abusive drunk, which most people had assumed. No, Tobias Snape was much more subtle, much like his son. His barbs were sharp and they cut deep; even years later, Snape had written with vivid emotion about the slurs and insults cast on him as child, as if he still heard the words daily.

And yes, though he was loyal to Lily for all of those years, he had companionship...a woman named Barbara who lived on his street, another younger woman from Hogsmeade. No, Snape was not the promiscuous type. He found one woman and went to her faithfully. Kind of flew in the face of all those jokes...about Snape wasting Galleons on whores...that were whispered in the halls of Hogwarts

At this point, she knew more about him than she probably cared to, but the person responsible for his memory had to know and care. Lord knows Rita fucking Skeeter hadn't given him the respect he deserved. To be sure, she painted him as a hero, an Edward Rochester of a dark, brooding man. And naturally, there was some small room for comparison. But hell, she had basically used Snape's life as a vehicle to rewrite Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights combined, and no one had seemed to notice.

The sun had set, and Hermione readied herself for bed. Her routine was comforting. It gave her purpose in the evenings after the hubbub of the day had diminished and the visitors had left. She moved to the bathroom, setting the tub to fill with a flick of her wand. She clipped her hair atop her head; it was shorter these days, no longer than her shoulders, really. She wasn't sure it did much for her looks, but at least it wasn't as heavy.

Her evening bath was her time...no cataloguing Severus Snape's life, no annoying visitors, no one demanding she keep living in the memories of the war. She soaked in the tub for maybe twenty or thirty minutes every night, but it was what she needed to soothe her sore muscles and tense shoulders.

When the water got cold, she got out, wrapping herself in an oversized towelling robe. She continued her ritualistic preparations, applying moisturizer to her skin, brushing her teeth, preparing a bedside glass of water. Sliding off the bathrobe, she hung it over the back of a wooden chair before crossing to the bureau.

She always wore the same types of nightclothes, short, satiny nightgowns skimming the tops of her thighs, thin straps over her shoulders barely holding it on. It helped her to go to bed feeling pretty. She knew it was probably silly, but if she felt happy and pretty going into sleep, her nightmares didn't come.

And she did have nightmares, usually about him; as if she didn't get enough of his life during the day, visions of his death haunted her. And, of course, her guilt for leaving him to die. Once she had realized that trying to make herself happy every night actually helped keep the dreams away, she started doing small things...like her bath, her silly lingerie, and reading truly pointless fiction before sleeping. If nothing else, it kept her occupied on lonely nights such as... well, every night.

It was a warm night in Spinner's End, the first of the spring nights that give way to warmer summer days. She opened the window to allow a small breeze to course through the room before crawling into bed, luxuriating momentarily in the feeling of cool sheets on her skin. She reached for the book on her bedside table, the latest Muggle fantasy novel about witches and magic and a land far away. She had a fascination with Muggle fantasy novels and loved seeing how close to or far off the mark the authors were.

She was deeply immersed in her novel when a noise pulled her from the pages...a low, keening noise...almost like someone screaming from far away. The noise intensified in volume before a loud burst of energy rocked the house.

Though nothing noticeably fell, the sound of something landing in her room was deafening. She scrambled to the edge of the bed to look; whatever had "fallen" had "landed" beyond her line of sight.

On the floor was a man, curled in the fetal position, facing away from her, a silver chain with a glowing bauble about his neck and a small travel bag lying next to him. He was whimpering. He slowly rolled to his back, his hair moving away from his face.

The face was that of her nightmares, unlined and young, the body lying in the same position she had last seen in the Shrieking Shack. He opened his eyes and stared directly at her face.

The volume of her scream shocked even her as it left her body. The man's eyes rolled back into his head, and he went limp from loss of consciousness.

Hermione fled the room, grabbing her wand on the way to the bathroom. Once inside, she warded the doors heavily before violently retching into the toilet.

---

Hermione knelt over the toilet, her forehead resting on the cool porcelain. In any other state, she might have been horrified by her lapse in proper hygiene, but right now the cool sensation was grounding her.

Pull it together, Granger. Whatever just happened out there was the result of an overactive imagination. It's just a boggart or something. Just keep it together. Go out there, and take care of it like the witch you are!

She stood and looked at her face in the mirror, noting how pale she looked. Wiping her face with a damp flannel, she tied her hair up, washed out her mouth, and went back out into the room to deal with the intruder.

She went into the room, expecting to find whatever had frightened her to be gone. It was still there.

She walked towards him slowly, attempting to be as quiet as possible, which was difficult as most of the old attic floorboards groaned when walked on. She managed to make it across the room without rousing him and took a closer look.

It was definitely a young Professor Snape, or someone glamoured to look like a young version of him. If this is a boggart, why does it look like this? The Professor of her nightmares was always older and more... dead.

She squared her shoulders and conjured up her happiest memory. She had to go back a long time, now. All her memories of school were marred by the war, and her memories of Ron had stopped bringing her happiness. She thought of the day she received her Hogwarts letter and the subsequent visit from Headmistress McGonagall. She remembered how happy she was to find out that at least in someone's world she was "normal."

Hoping whatever was in her house would stay asleep, she quietly crossed the room, wand in hand. Raising a shaky hand, she cast the spell she hoped would solve her problems.

"Ridikkulus!"

This was no boggart. The man jerked awake, fiercely clawing for his wand.

She quickly disarmed him, his wand flying into her other hand, and Summoned his bag. Thick ropes issued from her wand, and she used them to lift the man into a nearby armchair, binding him tightly to the chair, gagging his mouth. She placed the bag next to her. A second flick of her wand sent his medallion into her hand.

She had really hoped the creature was a boggart and that her first spell would solve her problem. As such, she would now have to deal with whatever this was.

Whatever it was, it was clearly outraged by her behavior. His eyes bulged, and his cheeks puffed in anger. He pulled against the ropes, trying to free any part of himself.

"Sir, my name is Hermione Granger. Given your unannounced, uninvited entrance to my home, I can only assume you mean me harm. I do not wish to injure you, but rest assured I will if you so much as attempt to hurt me. I am a war veteran, and you will not win any fight you enter into with me. Is this clear?"

His eyebrow arched, and he gave her a look that clearly meant he didn't believe her. She breathed in sharply, a response to a gesture she had not seen these past few years. While it was clear he did not find her threatening in the slightest, he did, however, calm his movements and began staring at her blankly.

"Sir, I will remove the gag on your mouth in a moment, but you must know that if you say anything remotely untrue to me, I will have an Auror here in less than a minute. Do you understand?"

He gave a small nod of acquiescence, one that she would not have recognized as such without years of classes with the man. She slowly crossed the room, hands in plain sight, trying not to startle him.

Her hands came around his head to untie the gag. She cursed inwardly as she realized one of the straps of her negligee was slipping from her shoulder. As she pulled back, she noticed he was ogling her breasts. As she removed the gag, she quickly righted the strap before Summoning her robe. More suitably dressed, she sat on the end of her bed and stared into his eyes.

"Who are you?" she asked, maintaining eye contact with him and probing slightly into his brain. One of the benefits of being an expert on all things Professor Snape was that she had read all of his journals multiple times, including the passages where he recounted how he had learned Legilimency. Hermione Granger had never read anything she could not master, and she had quickly learned the art.

She had expected some resistance and was surprised when she slid easily into his mind. And yet she felt fear...a memory of being Legilimized by the Dark Lord very recently. Whoever this is, it isn't the Severus Snape of the war.

"My name is Severus Tobias Snape. What the fucking hell have you done to my attic!"

Her eyes widened; she almost fell off the bed. Whoever he was, he wasn't lying to her. This man definitely thought he was Severus Snape. His eyes narrowed; he knew she was in his mind. She kept the connection open.

"And, Mr. Snape," she paused, "how old are you?"

"Twenty," he ground out.

Again, no trace of lying. She could feel his hesitance, though. "Do not consider closing your eyes, Mr. Snape; I have Veritaserum."

He flinched. She pushed farther, searching for the events of his last days before today.

"Mr. Snape, this is no longer your house. I have lived here nearly eighteen months. Why are you here?"

She could tell he was trying to come up with a lie...anything to keep a secret. But what was the secret? She broke the connection with his thoughts, fingering the medallion. The etchings seemed very familiar... but normally, these items were... gold?

She gasped. It was a Time-Turner. It had to be. But why was it silver?

She crossed back to him, grabbing his face between her hands and jerking upward to force him to look at her. He struggled but stopped when she roughly dug her fingernails into his cheeks. She stared into his eyes hard, searching for answers. Normally, she kept from using her Legilimency skills; she knew what it was like to have your mind open as such to someone, and she didn't like making anyone feel that vulnerable. But, in this instance, she was terrified of the idea of not finding the answers she sought more than she was concerned about causing him mental anguish.

She rifled through his memories, finding every single thing Harry told her he had witnessed in the Pensieve the day Professor Snape had died. She pushed in further, but the reason he was in her attic was eluding her like a child trying to evade punishment. He clearly was no Occlumens, but his survival instincts were in full gear.

She finally pinned the memory in a corner of his mind, witnessing everything from the night before. She watched his body being broken. The sight of Dobby caused her to actually gasp aloud as a sharp reminder of how much the elf sacrificed for those he cared about tore through her heart. She clutched her chest as she thought of it, unconsciously rubbing the spot where Dobby had been mortally wounded by Bellatrix's blade.

She pressed onward, watching the breakfast, the conversation with Voldemort, his willingness to go forward in time and murder a complete stranger, his thoughts in the attic; regardless of how he felt about saving his mother, this was definitely a fully committed Death Eater in her attic.

She witnessed the pain of the time travel itself.

The object definitely was a Time-Turner.

She reeled backwards, once again breaking the connection. She tripped over her feet and spilled to the floor. Hunched over, she sobbed in long body-wracking wails. She had not cried like this since the end of the war, and the tears came. It was him. It was really him, somehow, some way. Everything she and Harry and Ron felt so guilt-ridden about was currently sitting, tied up, in his... her home.

She went on like this for several minutes before an exasperated growl roused her.

"Woman, would you please desist. If you really are a 'war veteran' as you claim, nothing you saw should have surprised you."

She looked up, glaring at him. She rubbed her nose with the sleeve of her robe, trying to stave off the mucous pouring from it. Her other sleeve dried her tears.

"You have no idea what I know about what I just saw... how this factors into... now. Your future. Do not dare tell me to desist. You have no idea what you've shown me."

This seemed to remind Snape of why he was here. "So, I have arrived in my future, then, yes?"

She winced at his choice of phrasing. My future.

"Yes, Mr. Snape, in a manner of speaking."

"And when did I sell my house?"

"About eighteen months ago, sir." Old habits died hard. It was hard enough to drop the use of "Professor" when addressing him, but the "sir" snuck in like it had her entire childhood.

He looked at her strangely before continuing. "And where do I currently reside?"

Unbidden memories surfaced in her mind. She remembered the day they had all attended his funeral, standing around the mausoleum in the new veterans' cemetery. She remembered being sandwiched between Harry and Ron, the three of them holding each other and weeping.

"Just outside Hogsmeade, Mr. Snape."

Snape did not seem terribly surprised by this.

"And when do you plan on letting me leave, Miss Granger?"

Hermione had not thought that far ahead. What was she to do with him?

"Well, given what I now know, how could I possibly let you leave? As you can see from my arm," she thrust her pale unmarred forearm under his nose, "I do not espouse the same... beliefs as you. Why would I consent to assist you in going against everything I believe in?"

Snape spat. "Because, my darling girl, I'm a very dangerous man."

This was getting out of hand. If she didn't get a handle on her emotions, this man was going to get the better of her in her own home. And the last thing she needed was a confident follower of the Dark Lord controlling her. She had to turn the tables, catch him off guard in some way. In exactly the way he would have done to her as a child...

"Dangerous? Were you so very dangerous when you were being hung by your ankle with all and sundry staring at your graying y-fronts? Or how about when you let a Gryffindor Mudblood steal your heart? Or, for that matter, when you failed your master by not being able to even hear the entirety of a world-changing prophecy? No, you are not dangerous. Petty, sad, and angry, maybe. But you are not dangerous, and you do not scare me."

And he didn't, really. He had not yet become what had terrified her as a child...the imposing, vile man who had mocked her teeth and graded her harshly for no other reason than her house affiliation and her choice of friends. Now he was simply a man...merely a year younger than she...who had recently made a bad decision. A man who, judging from his response to his torture last night, might still yet be able to be turned.

Veins were sticking out on his forehead. She knew he must be livid. Her Silencio sliced through the air, effectively ending whatever vitriol he may have eventually come up with once he stopped sputtering.

"You will not be leaving this attic, Severus Snape. Not until I can send you back the way you came. You will not change everything we worked so hard and lost so much to achieve. I will not allow it."

He began thrashing, doing anything he could to try to loosen himself from her bindings. He nearly toppled the chair.

She hit him with the strongest Stunner in her arsenal. His head lolled to the side; he was completely unconscious. She sank to the floor in complete shock and without knowing what in God's name she was going to do.

---

It was nearly two o'clock in the morning when Hermione finally pulled herself together. Realizing that she only had a few hours, she began preparing for him to awake. She felt bad about leaving him tied up in the chair and levitated him to the sofa in her living room. Laying him on it gently, she pulled blankets over him., casting a Sticking Charm designed so he could move, but at least one portion of his body would be touching at all times. Finally, she put a bucket next to him in case he awoke and needed the facilities.

She snuck downstairs, wrapped in her dressing gown. She made her way to the gallery, an addition to the house created by an Extension Charm and cast by the best charmers money could buy. The gallery housed a copy of Snape's Headmaster portrait, wizarding photographs of Snape and the Prince clan, and framed copies of the newspaper articles about his death and heroics. She never came into this room... it was too difficult to face him. Once a week, Winky came down from Hogwarts and cleaned it for her, receiving a Galleon for her efforts (which Hermione knew for a fact Winky Vanished). Even now, Hermione hesitated, her hand on the doorknob, her forehead resting against the cool door. She had spoken to him just once, the day they hung the portrait.

"Hello, Headmaster."

He gave her an appraising look, judging her for every physical flaw: the frayed end of her sleeve, the scuff on her patent leather pump, the flyaway tendrils from her bun.

"I am not sure why you're calling me that, Miss Granger," he sneered.

"Pardon?"

"It is not as if you bothered to grace the school with your presence until the day I left office."

She sputtered, "B-but, sir, you know why we were gone..."

"I do. And frankly, it is a wonder you managed to find any of the Horcruxes, given how mismanaged and ill fated your mission was from the beginning."

"Well, it's not as if we could have asked you for any help, what with you giving every appearance of being a loyal Death Eater."

"And now, in hindsight, Miss Granger, I suppose you're feeling a bit foolish for trusting in appearances? You were always supposed to be the intelligent one..."

She glared up at him; the guilt and sorrow for her actions overwhelmed her.

He continued. "From what I've been told, you are now the curator of this ridiculous museum. Tsk tsk, I thought we were going on to big things, Miss Granger. I guess I would be disappointed by your complete lack of NEWTs, if I were actually surprised. Had to traipse off after the rest of your Trio. Had to go off and save the world, didn't you? Well, those worth saving, I suppose. Not obvious Death Eaters bleeding out from a snakebite..." He trailed off, using the silence to add more sting to his words.

She began to tear up; before he could actually see her cry, she fled the room.

She had not returned in over a year. Because, as unnecessarily nasty as he had been, he was right; they hadn't taken a moment to check for a femoral pulse or to Summon anything that might have helped him survive. She could have at least tried Dittany. That had worked in Godric's Hollow when Nagini had bitten a chunk out of Harry. But no, they had just collected his memories and fled. They had believed there wasn't enough time to spare...

Nor had there been enough time later to come find him, apparently. By the time they went back for him two days later, he... She couldn't even think about the state of rot they found him in. The autopsy indicated that he died seven hours after the bite. They could have saved him.

They hadn't saved him.

And now he was here, in her living room, alive and young again. She had to do something; she didn't know what, but she had to do something this time. Anything to make her feel like the hero everyone else thought she was, instead of the failure that she knew herself to be.

She stood up straight, reaching up to undo the tie from her hair. Shaking out her curls, she took a deep breath, opened the door, and walked into the room.

The room was always faintly lit...portraits did not like complete darkness for some reason. The Ever-Burning Candles in the sconces cast a warm glow upon the room, giving the room a cozy feeling that did not go at all with the heavy weight that had taken up residence in the pit of her stomach.

She made her way to the far end of the room, looking up, fully expecting to find him looking down at her with derision marring his features.

He was not there.

She withdrew her wand, touching it to the portrait frame. "Headmaster Snape, would you please come to the museum gallery?"

She paused, waiting for him to appear. He did not come.

Nothing about tonight was making any sense. She had read all of his personal writings backward and forward, and at no time had he alluded to anything even remotely connected to time travel or herself. How dare he keep these from whomever needed to know!

She could barely process what she had seen tonight. She had witnessed his torture at the hands of the Dark Lord, and trying to reconcile feeling bad for her professor, yet at the same time being horrified at the young Death Eater, had overwhelmed her brain. Seeing him had caused so many memories, dreamed about nightly, to surface. It was too much.

She screamed, a loud, angry screech that filled the entire house, which in all likelihood woke the prisoner in her living room. She knew she was overreacting; on any other night, she would like to think she would be in better control of her emotions. Her hands began seeking out items of their own free will, fragile items, breakable items.

The items flew across the room...a teacup, a paperweight, a vase...crashing into the portrait, shattering into bits of glass, some embedding in the canvas, others raining down to the floor.

"You were never there when we really needed you, were you? You couldn't face us...couldn't once find us in the woods and explain to us who you were. You sent your Patronus and tricked Harry into jumping into that frigid lake, but you didn't come. You didn't give us the luxury of knowing who you were before it was too late. And now, when I actually need you more than I ever have, you're not here, and you refuse to come help me."

"What am I supposed to do, Professor? You know what's going to happen now that your former self is here. You have the memories of this night. Why won't you help me?" She lowered her eyes, noticing the shards of glass for the first time, surprised at her own violence. Wincing, she stood before casting Reparo repeatedly. She began setting each of the items back where they belonged, delaying the moment she would have to walk upstairs to deal with her... hostage.

A loud thump from upstairs broke her reverie. She sprinted towards the attic...the gallery still in disarray...terrified that he had found some way to escape.

---

AN: And now we know what is going on in the attic. Thanks, as always, to the lovely team of women who beat this chapter mercilessly into shape.

Thank you so much for the reviews so far. After working on this story for over two years, it's so wonderful to know that people are enjoying this story.