Everything Had To Stay the Same

Chapter 13: Everything Had To Stay the Same

She and Harry brought up the rear, ascending through a dark, dank tunnel. In front of them were Professor Lupin, Pettigrew, and Ron, with Black floating Professor Snape between them.

Hermione couldn't stop herself from screaming.

She woke up facing the living room, the space illuminated with the earliest rays of sunlight, her heart pounding from the dream. She often had dreams about the night Snape had died, but that event had never infiltrated another dream. Oddly enough, she rarely thought of the night that she and Harry had saved Sirius Black, and she was confused by her brain's choice of that event for her dream, let alone combining it with another horrible memory.

She focused on the sofa and realized that Snape was not there. She rubbed her eyes sleepily and wondered if she had forgotten to cast the charm. As her eyes surveyed the living room, she saw other things... empty cans of bitter, a casserole dish, plates...

Oh! Oh...

Everything flooded back into her sleepy memory. Him kissing her palm, her all but attacking him on the living room floor. Making lo...no, having sex with Snape. Severus now. There was no way she could ever refer to him as Snape again.

Bracing herself for quite possibly the most awkward situation of her life, she rolled over to face him.

Empty.

The door to the loo was open, and the light was on, so she donned her wrapper and crept towards it, hoping not to startle him.

Vacant.

Unless he was hiding in her closet, which was decidedly a rather silly idea, there were very few other places he could be...

She walked back into the main room and only then realized that the stairs to the lower floors were opened.

Bugger.

Summoning her wand, she quickly descended the stairs and ran at full tilt down the hall, turning her head to look in rooms as she went, finding them to be empty. It really did not make much sense that he would be hiding in these rooms, but she planned to make a second sweep if need be.

As she barreled down the second flight of stairs, she panicked. What if he had found his wand? He would have easily been able to dismantle the wards she had set up and fled...

Fuckingshitwankerbollocksfuckingfuck! This was all her fault. She let him get too close, and now he was probably gone, off to fulfill whatever the Dark Lord's request had been.

She skidded through the hallway and was surprised to find lights on. Following the lights, she ended up in her dining room.

Her research. He'd gone through it all.

He knows everything now.

Everything she had been researching, stacked neatly on the table, far more organized than her work had ever been in the midst of a project. In the center of the table was a piece of parchment with all too familiar handwriting scratched across it.

Hermione,

PS: The password is "Permissum lacuna videor."

She glared down at the offending piece of parchment. His regard for her? That's all he could give her after last night? And password? The journals had a password? That would explain the complete lack of reference in them to anything regarding this crazy week.

Itching to go scream at his portrait and knowing he would probably tell her to go do her reading like a good firstie (and somehow retroactively remove house points), she grumpily sat down in a chair, and flourishing her wand at the first journal, the one covering the time of her years at Hogwarts, she jabbed at it, reciting the password.

And nothing happened.

A swish and a flick.

Nothing.

A swirl and a tap.

Nothing.

Angrily, she opened to the flyleaf and cast a different incantation on it.

"I solemnly swear that I am up to no good."

Of course it wouldn't work, but it made her feel better.

Ever so faintly, words began to appear on the page.

Hermione,

Severus

The words faded after a few moments.

She really needed to figure out how to unlock these diaries.

Speaking the password had not worked, and if Ginny Weasley's experience her first year had been any indication of the type of spellwork present on this book, there was really only one other choice. Uncorking an inkwell, she dipped in her quill and scribbled the words across the flyleaf.

She pulled her hand away from the pages and waited, not knowing quite what to expect. The book lifted slightly off the table and slammed itself shut, the back cover facing upward. Thinking that was it, she made to grab the book when again it reopened, back to front, its pages flipping one by one in quick succession, green scrawling appearing between lines. When the spell was complete, the book landed softly back on the table top, the flyleaf once again facing her. Words yet again appeared on the page:

Hermione,

PS: The spell will work on all of my journals, revealing many more details about my life. I hope that you will be able to use them to set the record straight on a few things. –S.

More confused than ever, she settled down to read, wondering what she would learn about the Snape of her childhood.

June 4, 1992

Tonight was one of the stranger nights I have had since my return from the future. I knew tonight would be difficult: the return of the Dark Lord, sending three of my students into very real danger... but knowing what would happen and living through the event itself are far different situations.

Hermione, you were as brilliant as I knew you would be. I purposely put my all into creating that riddle, on some level hoping that you would not be able to figure it out and that I could keep you from harm. Foolish, as your discerning the riddle's answer really was necessary to set everything into motion; Potter certainly could not have solved it on his own. We can't change the present, can we?

You, of course, rose to the occasion. I was so proud of you, my brilliant girl. Of course, the height of my pride was then undercut by yet again feeling so very horrible, wrong even, for loving you as you are now. To be sure, I know the woman you will grow to be, but you're not quite there yet, are you?

Knowing you were entering into such danger, and not being able to do a damned thing about it, was one of the hardest things I have ever endured. I paced my office until I was certain I would somehow fall through the hole my feet were surely making in the stone floor. Did you know you can only break a quill so many times before it is no longer reparable by magic? The "magic" number is 13, in case you were curious.

I knew Potter was successful in an instant, as for the first time in eleven years my Mark began burning. It was faint, barely registering. Tonight really does mark the beginning of my end in so many ways. I wonder if it was enough to awaken my fellow compatriots.

Soon, I will have to go to Dumbledore's office and discuss what "all this means." As if I do not know. Spying for the Order has always come easily for me. Being a solo spy for everyone's future has been more lonely than I could ever have imagined. I wish I had you, Hermione, to talk over these things with. I wish I somehow had been able to keep the Time-Turner to go and talk with you about how hard this is. But after the way I left you, I'm not sure you would even want me to.

Hermione put the journal down, hands shaking. She hadn't thought about the night Harry found the Philosopher's Stone in so many years. She smiled, remembering the day she had set Professor Snape's robes afire, thinking he had been trying to harm Harry. All of the adventures of that first year...scary at the time, child's play in hindsight. She had been told that Professor Snape had created that riddle, and she had been proud of herself for being intelligent enough to puzzle it out, though even at the time, it had seemed remarkably easy. To hear Harry and Ron tell the story, it was the hardest question they were ever asked at Hogwarts...

But to know that Profess...Severus...had been so worried about her and so proud of her for solving his riddle... It was so inharmonious with how she remembered him.

Her dream from earlier swam back into memory. While she always remembered the terror she felt in response to Professor Lupin's transformation, she had quite forgotten how Severus had forced the children behind him and had taken on the werewolf directly. She had only learned later how Professor Lupin had almost killed Severus as a child, through no fault of his own. He must have really cared about them to face that sort of danger...

December 26, 1995

I do not know why I decided to torture myself last night. I had been lucky enough not to be required to attend the Yule Ball. I should have stayed away.

Instead, I attended, Disillusioned to not garner any attention. If I had known you were going to be there, dressed so lovely, I would have hid in my rooms for the duration of the Christmas holiday.

Last night was the first time I've seen you in so many years looking as I picture you...an adult. Hermione, your dress, just the right shade of blue, flattered you better than any outfit I had ever seen you in. I saw you smile at your friends, and for the first time, I saw your adult smile without the front teeth I wish I had not had to mock. You will never realize how horrible Draco's ill-timed hex and my response to it made me feel.

I left the ball right as Krum and you began to dance. Seeing you there, so lovely, so adult... It was the first time since leaving you in the future that I really got a glimpse of what I had left behind. I will not lie to you and say that it didn't affect me. I wept last night for the first time since the day I returned to my past, Hermione. I am so lost without someone who knows about us.

He spoke of them as if there were a relationship between them. That might be endearing if she had never had feelings for him, but with those in the mix, Hermione only felt sad... and slightly used. How dare he use her memory in this way? She was infuriated and yet oddly flattered. She had also had no idea he had been there that night. She loved those blue robes; they still hung in her wardrobe, and every few years, she would try them on, marveling that it still fit. So much of that night was tinged with sad memories...her row with the boys, specifically...and it was nice, even after all those years, to know that someone besides Viktor had regarded her as lovely.

Nervous and insatiably curious to know what else Sna...Severus...had written, she continued.

June 8, 1996

If nothing else, I suppose the burden of my secrets over the last sixteen years has finally been lifted. Dumbledore knows everything now, Hermione. Well, not everything. I was not foolish enough to give him my materials from the quickly approaching future. He believed a lie about my future self warning me that I was to share my journals and books with no one. I have, however, put as many wards up around my belongings as I can, knowing Dumbledore will probably try to find these writings the second I leave the castle.

But yes, he does know about us. And that using Lily as my excuse to join the Order of the Phoenix was a lie. He was surprisingly calm as I told him. As long as a love is in the mix, and yes, I still love you more than I ever thought possible, I do not believe he cares. Of course, I did get a stern warning that should I ever confront your younger self with this information, I would be severely punished.

Luckily, you were unconscious when the reason I had to tell Dumbledore everything happened, or I would have been "severely punished" as we "speak." I knew you were going to run off with Potter after Black, and yet again, I had to let it happen. I knew you would be cursed, but not with what. Given the nature of the battle, I was not surprised when Dumbledore called me to the hospital wing to look over some of the injuries...some of the spells are so Dark that Poppy is completely unaware of their existence.

I was not expecting you to be the only student in the room, nor that I would be the only adult present. As I rushed to your side, I saw that you were as pale as the sheets you lay on. Your hospital gown was ever so slightly opened, and I could see the scar that bisected your chest, curling around to your heart in electric green intensity.

The Heart Curse. The True-Love's Curse. The Snow White Curse. Whatever you called it, it was one of the most deadly curses in Dolohov's arsenal. Had I not had the cure, you would have died within forty-eight hours. I wonder if anyone ever told you that?

Its only cure was, of course, a kiss from your beloved. Krum was long gone, and Ron was in no state, given his own injuries, to come to your assistance.

I sat next to you on the bed. For the first time, I realized you had gained your full height...you were becoming ever more like the woman I loved. As I took your hand in mine, tears began to fall. I swear, Hermione, you are the only woman who has ever made me cry like this. Brushing your hair away from your face and feeling forever the pervert I suppose I am, I leaned down to kiss you. Your skin, which had been cold to the touch, flushed with warmth, and your lips pressed back to mine for just a moment. As I leaned back, your eyes flickered opened, and I quickly dropped your hand. I wonder if you even remember?

"Professor Snape," you said to me, a look of puzzlement flashing over your weary features, "what is happening? Why am I here in the infirmary? With you?"

As quickly as I could, I turned away from you, willing the glassy sheen over my eyes to abate. Turning back with my fiercest glare, I responded.

"To cure you from the curse you so irresponsibly received. Do try not to waste my time again with such unnecessary trips to the infirmary."

I stormed out of the room, not looking back to see your face crumple into what I assumed was tears at receiving my condemnation. I thought I had made it out with no complications when I heard a slight cough coming from the end of the corridor.

Dumbledore.

"Severus, I believe it's time for a long-needed conversation."

He must have suspected something, from God knows what action on my part. Either way, I found myself in his office, sitting in the students' chair across from his desk, pouring out my story to him. He gave me the task of protecting you, as well as Potter and Weasley, as I knew he would. I had already written it in these journals, so how could I be surprised?

As I sit here now, retelling this story to you, Hermione, I write hoping that you can at least forgive me. You have no idea what it is like to love someone you cannot be with...that through circumstances, time, and age, you have no right to even speak to. Loving you is my blessing, my Hermione, and my curse. I live day to day, just hoping that the things I must do lead to you living a happy, blessed life and that you remember our time together at least with some fondness. I know I have no right to love you as I do and no real reason...we were only together a week. And yet through all of the stress of my life, through knowing the exact details of my necessary death and ultimate vindication, you have become my touchstone, Hermione. I would not be able to survive without your memory.

Tears were streaming down her face. Severus was absolutely right...no one had ever explained to her the curse she had been hit with. She realized she had been absently rubbing the top of her curse scar through the entire reading, and she wondered if her feelings for Severus after his death had in any way been affected by it.

No, Hermione. Your regard for Severus went far earlier than the curse.

It was all so hard to comprehend: his treatment of her in school versus the very real evidence that he had loved her and had been protecting her at every turn. That somehow, her treatment of him, through her kindness and honesty, she supposed, had touched him such that he was able to go back and become the hero he was. All because Voldemort had sent him on this path.

She had to talk to him. But what to say? What could she possible say to him now? He had been waiting twenty years for this conversation, both in life and after death, and she had no idea how she was to respond. The memory of their night together, and the week before, was so new, so fresh... She had not even had time to deal with it. And to find all of these journals written to her?

Yes, she needed to talk to him. But first, she needed to sleep. And take a gratuitously long bath.

She could not believe herself, fidgeting with her hair, putting on makeup, picking a flattering outfit. She knew she was stalling, but at the same time, part of her was still angry in spite of all of the things she had read. Last night had been special to her...far more so than she could have ever imagined...and yet he had left her with only a short note. No morning to explain everything, no day to figure out the best way to send him home. As she had taken her bath, she had gone over every moment of their interactions and had come out wondering how, if he had such regard for her, he could just vanish like that? How he could just ignore all of her research and time and heartache and just leave? As sympathetic as she had been upon going back to her attic, her time there, seeing the leftover bits of him he had left behind, had just infuriated her anew.

She picked a deep V-neck periwinkle dress just to infuriate him, makeup meant to accent her eyes. Her hair, pulled back in an intentionally messy twist, was intended to remind him of their night together.

Hermione Granger had spent the last two years guilty and miserable in life; she was not about to give him any mercy in his death.

She moved through the house in a daze, trying to think what the first words out of her mouth should be, planning something so scathing his older self might be proud, had she not been herself. As she approached the door, she paused, pulling her dress into its appropriate shape, making sure she looked her best.

She had finally decided how she was going to address him...rather than come at him yelling, crying, and hurt, she would merely inquire as to what he wished to happen with his newly annotated journals and ask him for suggestions on a historian to write his true biography. In no way would she acknowledge the changed dynamic. For once since he was twenty, Snape wouldn't know what was coming, and she hoped to throw him off long enough to be able to keep it together. She had no wish to cry and sob in front of his portrait as she had the first night of his appearance in her attic.

Afternoon light poured into the gallery, bouncing off the hardwood floor. All of the figures in the wizard photographs on the walls seemed oddly still, as if they were waiting to see what would happen just as much as she was wondering that herself. Her apprehension must have reached new levels; as she arrived at his portrait, the sconces on either side flared into life. She had not performed uncontrolled magic since she was a child, and the abrupt outburst of light startled her.

Finally, she raised her eyes to take in his portrait. Headmaster Snape's portrait, usually depicting his entire body, showed merely his face and shoulders, life sized; his painted likeness stared down at her with an inscrutable expression.

She was taken aback. She had been so focused on the present-day Snape that seeing him this old and sad... It brought her abruptly back to the present. This was the Snape of her childhood...the man aged far beyond his years. The man who had abused her and her classmates far more than any other teacher.

The man who had saved her time and time again. Who had lived only to make sure she survived. Who had died because she had done nothing. The man she had just...

All the preparation, all the knowing exactly what she was going to say...all the preening and getting ready...gone. As she sank to her knees, she was aware of tears welling in her eyes and hated herself for the response. She looked up into his eyes and saw something there... Compassion? Sadness? Love?

One of his hands entered the frame and ran through his hair. He opened his mouth as if to say something, then closed it.

For so much of her life, this man had had complete control over every single verbal exchange they had. Seeing him this powerless to speak to her made absolutely no sense. She could not handle it.

"Please, Headmaster, say something..."

His eyes, which had wandered away from hers, shot back to hers. A look of shock replaced his earlier features.

"Headmaster? Headmaster? Did you even read the journals? After all of this, you call me Headmaster?" His voice, usually so strong and forceful, wavered through the entire phrasing, the scratchiness from the snake's bite worse than normal. She found herself even more frustrated.

"Well, yes, I do believe that is your title." She could not falter now...if she did, all of her control would be lost. She rose to her feet again, attempting to gain back what little confidence she had left. "I would like your input as to who should receive your journals. With all of this extra information, I believe an accurate biography should be written, one where your obsession with the proper Muggle-born is explained."

His face crumpled. At least she still had the upper hand.

"I suppose I deserve that. You should probably know that I spelled those journals so only you could see the information about us. The other additions throughout will be able to be seen by the public. Though, I wish you did not consider my love for you an obsession..."

"What else do you call a man who painstakingly chronicles his entire life for me to read? Who insists that he loves me after leaving me! Who..."

"Hermione Granger!" Her name, yelled in that tone, had always been able to make her freeze. He looked down at her apologetically, but continued.

"Hermione... have you not yet realized that the night I left you, which I had no choice but to do, I threw away, in one moment, the one good thing I have ever had?"

No, she had not realized that.

"Think about everything you know about me. You are as aware of the events of my life as I am. When has anyone ever treated me with the respect you did? You kept me prisoner, horribly I might add..." He smirked, and she felt herself smiling in spite of herself.

"And yet you made sure I was warm, well fed, and safe. You treated me like a human being, something my father, my Lord, my classmates, and Dumbledore certainly never did. In spite of our history, you still treated me kindly. When we were together that last night..."

"I do not wish to discuss that, Headmaster!"

"Severus! And you will listen to me. When we were together that last night, it was the first time, the first, that I was with a woman because it was what we both wanted. Without political aspiration, without someone losing a bet. In spite of knowing better, and I know you knew better, you had shown me true compassion that morning. The nightmare you comforted me from was one of the most terrifying of my life, and you made me feel safe.

"You brought me food that you had made yourself, with a recipe I swear you lifted from my mother, in an attempt to make me feel comfortable. You spent hours researching, trying to find me a way home, a safe way home. No one, not one person for the rest of my life, cared about me the way you did that week. And if I love you because of all of these things, you cannot blame me. It was all your doing."

She breathed in deeply, trying to quell the shaking that wracked her body. It was all too much to take in. "And your behavior the day I visited your portrait the first time? Why were you so cruel then? Your life was over...you had no reason to lie to me anymore."

The Potions master grimaced. "And have you and me get along? Become friends? Do you think that you would have treated my younger self with such skepticism, such mistrust, at first? If you had just come back from a nice chat with your former Professor? If we had come to an understanding in this life, would you have been able to send my younger self back? No, you needed to continue to have no attachment to me, or as little as possible. Everything had to play out as it had before."

"You didn't have to make it so hard... If we hadn't... If you had just gone back... Or let me find the answer..."

"If we hadn't what? Made love? It's been twenty years for me, but as I recall, Hermione, that was your idea..."

She cursed her traitor cheeks for flushing. He was right, though; while he had just been teasing her, she really had led them down that path. She looked away, focusing all of her attention on the flickering candles.

"You could have stopped me..." She was quickly falling apart. All of her intentions...all of her wishes to keep control, shattered in the presence of this man. So many dreams from the past and memories of the present slipped away as her heart broke, its pieces longer able to contain them.

His rich, deep laughter had survived the snake's bite, apparently. It filled the gallery, echoing off the walls and piercing her heart. "Look at yourself, Hermione. God, you are as beautiful as I remember. If I were alive, do you think we would be talking right now? Honestly? If my nearly forty-year-old self can't resist you, how could my twenty-year-old self?"

It just wasn't fair. As she brought her eyes back to his, she realized he was looking at her, even now, with more appreciation than any living man in her life. Tears began to fall from her eyes, and she could not bring herself to care.

"And what do I have now? I lived the last two years of my life trying to make up for what I did to you, just letting you die like that. And now you're telling me otherwise...that you had to die, that there was nothing I could have done to stop it. That you do not hate me and that there is no way we can actually be friends. I gave up my life, my education, my friends, to make sure you were remembered properly, and I am learning today that I do not even know you...me, the expert in your life! What do I have, now that you have taken everything away from me?"

"Ron. You have Ron."

Ridiculously long AN: Permissum lacuna videor in horrible Latin means "Let the words appear."

Yes, I did combine movie canon and book canon for the werewolf scene. I just think that there are good bits in both (the head scraping, mostly), especially the protective gestures Rickman gives in the movie. It fits with what I'm doing, so in this one case, I veered into movie canon.

For those of you who are about to burn me at the stake: this conversation between the two of them is not finished. You should now be hearing maniacal laughter in the distance.

Finally, muchos gracias to clairvoyant and dragonhideboot, who talked me off a ledge through part of writing this chapter!