Chapter 7

Chapter 7

A/N: I know it's been a ridiculously long time since I updated this story and I am so sorry about that! Thank you to those of you who sent me messages of support and have waited patiently over the past six months while I got my act back together. This chapter comes to you courtesy of beaweasley2, nagandsev and Clairvoyant, without whom... without whom....

Hermione is missing and a reluctant Severus has been dragged to the Department of Mysteries to find her....

ooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Ron recoiled in shock as he saw Hermione's apprentice master grovel at his feet on the patterned blue carpet of the Time Room. The forced transformation had left Peverell breathless and Snape clearly badly drained, half-collapsed on the benches beside them, his laboured breathing harsh and painful.

He watched, unable to move, as Peverell clutched at the carpet beneath his pale, thin fingers. The sight reminded Ron suddenly of the moment when Sirius and Remus had transformed Scabbers into Pettigrew all those years ago in the Shrieking Shack. The memory of that horrible time made him feel a bit sick, and he stepped backwards a little to where Snape was slumped on the benches next to them.

Ron rolled his wand between his fingers. "What do we do now?" he whispered at Snape, uncertain.

Snape's eyes were squeezed shut, and he was pulling air into his lungs through his teeth with an audible hiss. His lips moved. Ron leaned closer.

"Aurors," he heard the older man whisper harshly in his ear. "Coming soon... illegal spell... ask him!"

Peverell coughed, a dry and hacking sound, and began to lift himself onto his knees. Ron turned away from Snape and held out his wand in a shaking hand. "W... where is she?" he stammered, cursing himself for a prat.

The old wizard recoiled, his face slack, eyes bulging as they focussed on the tip of Ron's wand. "Don't...! Please!" the old wizard gasped, pushing himself backwards onto his heels and blinking rapidly, both hands held out before him like captured Muggles in a war movie. He was shaking badly, as though terrified, as his eyes flicked between Ron's face and his outstretched wand arm.

Ron felt a wash of guilt wash through him. He hadn't threatened anyone since the War, and the realisation that Peverell was shaking with terror, kneeling before him, made him feel ill. He lowered his wand, holding his other hand out instead in what he hoped was a soothing gesture.

Behind him, he heard Snape hiss again in annoyance.

"Master Peverell?" he asked, ignoring Snape.

"Ronald?" Peverell's thin voice quavered.

Ron's insides twisted again. He shoved his wand into its sheath in his jeans and reached forward to try to help the small man rise to his feet. Peverell clutched at Ron's arm, his thin, bony fingers digging painfully into the exposed flesh.

"Ronald? Is it you?" Peverell asked again, blinking myopically up at the tall redhead.

"Oh, for fuck's sake...!" Ron heard Snape mutter behind him.

"Yes, it's me, Master Peverell," he said loudly and, he hoped, soothingly, to the old man. "Hermione's boyfriend," he added deliberately for Snape's benefit. "Are you alright? Let's get you sat down, shall we?"

He carefully manoeuvred Peverell to the dentist's chair, feeling Snape's exasperated stare of disapproval burning into the back of his neck.

"You came, you came!" The old man was still grasping Ron's wand arm and breathing heavily, a thin whistle of air, but he stared trustingly into Ron's eyes as he sank into the cracked leather seat. Gripping Ron's forearm with his fingers, he turned his head to look at Snape. "She said that you would!" he added.

There was a pause, and Ron looked on in confusion between the two other men as Snape glowered back at Peverell, his eyes bright and black in the dancing light from the Bell Jar. The Potions master had collected himself, but it still looked as if every breath he took was an agony. However, his eyes burned with a fierce intensity as he stared back at Peverell.

"Um, yeah," Ron stammered, turning back to face Hermione's Apprentice Master, placing himself in the old man's line of sight.

Peverell focused again on Ron, then dabbed at his eyes with his crumpled sleeve, his other hand still clutched hard on Ron's forearm.

"Weasley...," Snape's voice was harsh, "the Aurors are coming...."

Ron gestured irritably behind him for the man to be quiet.

He cleared his throat. "We're looking for Hermione, Master Peverell," he began. "D'you know where she is?"

Tears spilled from Peverell's pale blue eyes, glinting on the rough texture of his stubbled cheeks. "I told her not to," he whispered, leaning forward, his thin fingers digging further into the flesh of Ron's wand arm. "We needed to run more tests, but the algorithms were lost... I'm so sorry...."

A sense of terrible dread settled in Ron's stomach. He shook his head, as if to clear his thoughts. "I don't understand," he blurted out. "What the hell has happened? W-where is she?"

Peverell flinched, but did not speak, eyes wide in horror and panic. Ron drew in his breath to try again...

"Oh, for fuck's sake, get out of the way, Weasley!"

Ron felt himself shoved roughly to the side as Snape pushed past him to grab the little old man by his collar. Snape was clutching his side with his other hand, digging the fingers into his stomach, and his face was shining with sweat. He looked dreadful, his face contorted and his lips pulled back from uneven, yellowing teeth in a snarl.

"We don't have much time, Peverell," he growled. "Answer the fucking question, and no more of your fucking delaying tactics. I've been manipulated by a master, and you're not even fucking close. The question isn't where is she, is it? It's when? And how are you going to get her back?"

oOo

Hermione came back to herself slowly, her consciousness swirling and coalescing as her senses began to orientate themselves once more.

Oh, Merlin! She had a headache. It pulsed and throbbed from the back of her head through to her temples. She pushed herself shakily upright, her fingers digging into the rough fibres of the rug beneath her body. She could still feel the tingling running through the nerves of her skin.

The sharp prickle through her fingertips focused her memory.

Wards. On the door.

She looked about herself, remembering her disorientation, stumbling to the tent's opening, the sight of ancient Alexandria and that feeling of savage joy that she had accomplished everything she had hoped to do – then, suddenly the shock of the wards on her fingers, falling to the floor...

Her fingers scrabbled uselessly in the sheet that was wrapped about her, but after a few seconds, she caught herself sharply, feeling foolish and panicked.

She fought to calm her racing heartbeat, to take deep, meditative breaths. Just because your wand is gone and there are wards on the tent doesn't mean you're a prisoner, she told herself, but the words rang hollow and unconvincing in her mind.

oOo

Severus knew the Aurors were on their way - the sudden onset of the pain in his guts a few minutes ago had told him that his doppelgänger's mind-block had broken, which could only mean that the Trace was active on him once again. Forcing Peverell's Chameleon Charm to break – in clear contravention of his parole – was a sure way of pointing the fucking boys-in-brown straight towards him. How long will it take? he thought to himself, half-surprised that the idiots weren't already trying to bash the door down to arrest him.

He had to find her!

The cramping in his stomach was so bad he felt as if any further movement might cause him to actually vomit. What the fuck is the matter with me? he thought, baring his teeth against the torment in his belly. In vain, he tried to reestablish the Occlumency shield that the other Snape had put in place to reduce the impact of the pain, but his focus was in tatters. Hadn't his other self told him that the pain was something to do with the fact that the stupid girl was missing? He was disturbed that Peverell had recognised him, that he had been sure he would come – why the hell was that?

"Watch the door, Weasley," he gasped.

"Why? What're you...?" The redhead closed his stupid mouth when Snape flashed him a savage look. If Peverell would not tell him directly.... He stared into Peverell's eyes, silently casting Legilimens while damning himself for a fool. Legilimens would land him in Azkaban for sure.

Peverell struggled beneath him, but he kept his fingers tightly wound into the old man's robe. The strange anxiety that he was feeling about Granger redoubled in force, and he twisted Peverell's collar tightly, the material digging into the soft flesh of the old man's neck. He struggled to connect with the old man's mind. There were defences there that he had not seen since...

A sudden thundering impact on the door to the Time Room interrupted his concentration.

Snape recoiled.

Oh, Fuck!

Fuck it!

The Aurors had found him. Thank the gods they had thought to ward the doors to the Time Room when they arrived.

His hand clutched tighter at Peverell's throat.

"Professor Snape!" Peverell squeaked in alarm, his rheumy eyes darting from side to side.

Snape could feel time passing with every thump of his heart. "I've read her notes," he grated through his teeth. "And I've seen your machine. But it's all about the outward journey. What do you need to do to recall her?"

"Wait! What? Recall her from where?" Weasley's voice was high with fright. "What the bloody hell is going on, Snape?"

The door thundered again. "SEVERUS SNAPE!" a magically amplified voice reverberated in the room. "WE KNOW YOU ARE IN THERE! COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS UP, OR WE WILL BE FORCED TO USE FORCE TO APPREHEND YOU!"

Snape rolled his eyes. "Forced to use force?" Do they always have to speak in clichés? he wondered

"Weasley..." he began.

"I'm on it," Ron interrupted, and Severus shot him a surprised look. The younger man's face was flushed but determined, his freckled jaw set.

Ron turned away from Peverell and Snape and pointed his wand through the open screen towards the door at the end of the room. Severus watched, nonplussed for a moment, as Weasley's lips began to move, sending strengthening spells towards the ancient wooden doors. Who knew that the boy could actually do something?

Peverell wriggled under his grip, and Severus' stomach clenched violently again. He shook his head. Concentrate. He redoubled his grip on Peverell's robes, virtually hauling the old man out of his seat, focusing his will on pulling the truth out of the cowering wizard beneath him.

"Speak," he enunciated clearly. "Where may she be found?"

Peverell licked his lips nervously. "You know already, Professor Snape," he said hoarsely. "Miss Granger has gone into the Temporal Accelerator... into the machine."

Snape nodded. That much was obvious. All Granger's notes, the machine itself with it's use of the quantum gases from the Bell Jar... the odd allusion to her secretive research going on at the Ministry... the owled requests from Peverell for him to... wait!

Snape twisted his fingers harder, looked deeper into Peverell's mind. "You...she wanted me here – why?"

Peverell had the nerve to smile in response to his question, but then he began gagging ineffectually. Snape realised that his fingers were so tightly wound into the man's robes that they were choking him. He relaxed his grip a fraction. "Why, Peverell?" he snarled.

"Please, Professor Snape! May I explain?" the old man wheezed. "We seem to have got off on the wrong foot, so to speak!"

"Snape! I can't hold them for much longer!" Weasley shouted, his hand wavering under the strength of the Auror's assault.

"Up!" Snape ordered, pulling Peverell out of the dentist's chair and to his feet. "And don't lie to me,"...he hissed...Merlin! This fucking hurts!..."I've been lied to before, and I can recognise bullshit when I hear it. Now where and when is the bloody girl, and what's this got to do with me?"

Peverell fussed with his robes, straightening them. "Mister Snape, if she has survived the journey, she should be exactly where she planned to be." The old man paused, his eyes narrowing shrewdly. "And judging from the connection that you still clearly feel to her, she has indeed survived the transfer."

"What's he saying?" the boy shouted, pausing between the incantations he was using to shore up the wards against the Aurors.

"Weasley, keep your wand on the door!" Snape bellowed back above Weasley's spell casting and the sounds from outside the Time Room.

"What connection?" he hissed at Peverell. "What did she do to me?" His mind was whirling with the possibilities, fearful of the answer.

At the end of the cavernous room, the door heaved and groaned under the Auror's spells.

Once again, the magically magnified voice of one of them echoed through the room, "OPEN THE DOOR, SNAPE! DON'T TRY TO RESIST ARREST!"

"Peverell...," Snape growled, advancing again. "They come for me – they come for you, too. Judging from the way you were hiding before we arrived, I think you know that your experiment wasn't exactly legal. What – bloody – connection?" Merlin, his stomach!

Peverell held up his hands, and they were shaking. "Why, your New Year charm of course!" he babbled. "The one that you shared with Miss Granger!"

Snape froze in surprise. The Redemption Charm? How is that possible?

"What?" Weasley practically howled. "What's he on about!"

"Have you not wondered why you did not return to Spinner's End, Professor Snape?" Peverell continued, "and why you feel her... loss... so keenly?" Peverell leaned forward, his eyes alight with something like excitement. "We believe that your Semper Meminere created a bond between yourself and Miss Granger which in some way linked you together, much in the same way as... your previous experiences." Peverell's eyes flicked pointedly to Snape's left forearm.

Severus' hand instinctively covered the remnants of the Dark Mark, his stomach churning and cramping.

That was what his other self had meant!

There was another crash at the door. The floor shook, and a few clocks on the wall began to shake and fall, smashing on the desks and floor.

"Snape!" Weasley bellowed, "They're coming!"

Fuck! Severus ripped his attention back to Peverell.

"How can we get her back?" he snapped, already knowing the answer. Adrenaline pumped through his veins, adding to the pain in his nerve endings, making him shake and quiver with anxiety.

Peverell's shoulders slumped. He shook his head. "The Temporal Accelerator acts like a slingshot, providing an uncontrolled method of time travel. It can move a witch or wizard far beyond their own timespan – far further than the old small-scale Time Turners! This machine enables us to travel to a time far, far in the past. The body is projected backwards or forwards in time, but there was no telling where it would end. It could be thrown into free fall, or find itself emerging deep in the ocean... even buried in the earth! To fully function, it required a navigational device, to focus the energy to a specific place – much like the chain on a Time-Turner anchored the user to that very spot."

"She found it." Snape stated flatly. "A way to fix the arrival point."

"I... I think so," Peverell's voice quavered a little.

Snape remembered Hermione's research, the genealogical tables... the genetic studies.

"Blood," he said with sudden inspiration.

Peverell looked startled, but nodded again. "Quite so... quite so. Hermione posited that she could form a temporal bond with someone who shares her genetic signature – or part of it."

"A relation? I was not aware that Miss Granger had a family?" Snape had a vague memory of her being an only child whose parents had been lost in the War.

"No! Further than that! Miss Granger is an academic, Professor!" There was reproof in Peverell's tone. "The opportunity to study the distant past! To meet those people that we can only read about in the historical records. That is what she is – was – consumed by!"

Snape gave a cynical snort. Consumed...! But then he had a sudden vision of her earnest face, open and passionate... the way she spoke of her desire to be useful, to make a difference... and then the careful notes in her diary....

"An... ancestor, then?" Snape frowned. "How could she trace her roots back so far...?"

Peverell leaned forward. "Indeed! She believed that she had found a way to link with the famous Hypatia of Alexandria herself!"

Whatever Snape was going to say in response was lost as another deafening crash echoed throughout the room, sending more clocks tumbling to destruction from the walls and cabinets. The Aurors had finally overcome the wards on the door. They burst in, shouting loudly, their wands spitting spells into the Time Room.

Weasley cried out, falling backwards through the ornate screen towards where Snape and Peverell were standing. He was breathing heavily, and his hair was plastered to his forehead with sweat.

"Sorry," he gasped.

"Severus Snape! Show yourself!"

Severus recognised the voice of the smarmy git from Level Two.

"What now, Snape?" Weasley wheezed.

Snape heard the Aurors muttering among each other. He knew that they would be spreading out now, cautiously moving forward, nervous of cornering him... Snape the murderer... Snape the Death Eater....

He grabbed Weasley and hauled him to his feet. "Don't come any closer!" he yelled out. "I've got Ronald Weasley here with my wand to his throat!"

"Wha...?" Weasley sputtered.

Snape rolled his eyes. "Shut up, Weasley!" he hissed. And now I'm a kidnapper, he thought wryly. But it might buy us enough time.

The muttering from the Aurors in the main body of the room took on a more urgent tone.

Severus turned to Peverell. "What now? Quickly!"

Peverell spread his hands widely in gesture of hopelessness. "I told you! She was so stubborn... We needed to run more tests on the machine to be sure. It's not like a Time-Turner, you know – the power and unpredictability of the quantum mist is so great... sand is so much more stable... but we only had a tiny amount left, and she used it all in her transference...."

Snape suddenly remembered the golden pendant about his neck, thrust upon him by his other self. He scrabbled to pull it out of his shirt. Glistening sand filled its hourglass core.

He shoved it towards Peverell, who took it with eyes bulging. "Where did you get that?" he breathed.

"You have one minute to let him go, Snape!" The Probation Auror's nasal whine called out.

"Can you use it?" Snape snapped at Peverell, beginning a silent countdown from sixty.

"Yes... yes...." The old wizard tilted the little device, eyeing the contents critically. "But it will only help to stabilise the transfer, to enable you to reach the time you need to find her. Your spelled bond will do the rest!"

"Do it," Snape bit out.

Weasley looked from one man to the other. "You can find her?" he said eagerly. "Where is she?"

Snape ignored him and focused on Peverell. "If by any possibility I am able to locate the woman, how do we reverse the process to return?"

Peverell scuttled over to the ancient circular mechanism that was connected to the rest of the machine by the strange, twisted cables and tubes. He laid his hand reverently on the rusted metal. "You must find this device, newly made," he breathed. "And harvest the original sands. Miss Granger will then be able to use her magical abilities to craft a new Time-Turner, one far bigger than this." He waved Snape's pendant dismissively in his hands, but then he froze. "Unless you can find the original sands from the Alexandrian astrolabe, there is no returning, Professor Snape."

Fuck it. "I stand in there?" Snape asked, pointing at the narrow chamber beneath the hourglass. Thirty-eight, thirty-seven, thirty-six, thirty-five....

"Yes," Peverell stepped forward tentatively, his hands hovering over the various knobs and switches surrounding the astrolabe. With shaking fingers, the old man muttered a charm and carefully poured the magical sand into the heart of the ancient, twisted metal.

"Wait! What are you doing?" Weasley asked loudly, catching hold of Snape's arm.

Snape bared his teeth at the younger man. "Getting your fucking girlfriend back," he snapped, shaking his arm free. Twenty-nine, twenty-eight....

He stalked over to the machine and ducked his body inside. The air seemed cooler inside. His heart was thundering in his chest, but oddly, the pain in his stomach appeared to have lessened a fraction.

Over at the controls, Snape watched as Peverell activated the machine. A low hum began to grow, and the blue gases above Snape's head began to circulate more actively. Severus took a few deep breaths, trying to quell the fear churning in his guts. He had burned his bridges and gone to his death before. He reached for his Occlumency skills to control his emotions.

The hum from the machine began to turn into a whine, something that could not go unnoticed.

"Snape? What are you doing? Mister Weasley, are you alright?" The Auror sounded panicked.

Snape sneered. Idiots. Weasley was staring at him with his mouth open, immobile, his hand raised as if to ask a question.

The giant hourglass began to spin above him, and Snape was sure that it was slowly sinking towards him. He breathed more deeply, willing himself to stay still, to not disgrace himself by falling apart.

If he survived this, he was going to kill Granger.

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOo