Where the Mewlips Dwell

Up until a week ago, Hermione had thought of time as a highway, stretching infinitely far into the future and infinitely far into the past. One could backtrack, but one would always be following the same road. There probably was a terminus at both ends, but she couldn't quite wrap her brain around what might be past them, so hadn't given them more than a few minutes contemplation and usually only when she was in a departmental meeting. As her thoughts had often devolved into creative ways to stuff the department Head's socks down his throat and pull them out his arse, thus ending the meeting, she hadn't considered her reflections as anything meaningful.

Now, she sat on the sofa in her flat, picking at fraying threads in a throw pillow and wondering if time might be more of a snow-filled field where the driver makes her own tracks, and if she were to revisit that field, then she could make a different set of tracks than originally laid. That is what her meddling implied, anyway.

She hadn't meant to change anything. To be quite honest, the idea of altering the course of time had not been more than a passing worry that had been discarded for more pressing anxieties. Her experience with the Time-Turner, only used to go backward hours at a time, hadn't had much more effect than to allow her to take more than one class during a given period, successfully rescue Sirius Black and Buckbeak, and on the occasions when she had burned the wick at both ends until the flames met, take a much-needed nap. And to study, of course.

Yes, Hermione was intelligent. Yes, she was clever and had a well-organized, logical mind. However, the top marks she had earned had not come easily; no, she had scheduled her time wisely and had worked her arse off. It was that which had allowed her to ace her exams, not some innate sense like the one the Half-Blood Prince had exhibited for Potions.

'Poor Severus.' Hermione hugged the abused pillow to her chest. He really was such a strange, pathetic creature. She couldn't imagine how miserable she would have been if she had never become friends with Harry and Ron. There would have been far less rule breaking, but loads more tears and loneliness. Nevertheless, she doubted she would have ended up joining the Death Eaters or any such nonsense. She wondered if she would have made it to graduation at all, or if she would have given the magical world the two-finger salute and returned to Mundania.

Hermione paused her train of thought for a moment, staring blankly at the pillow. 'Probably not.'

But could she affect some change that would drastically alter the course of the life that she had already lived? Could she go back to the past, knowing that the possibility existed that she could come crawling out of the well into a world ruled by Voldemort or where her friends and family had died?

Could she not go back, knowing what she did now? Twisting her body to dig into her pocket, she pulled out the miniaturized tome that contained an impossible fragment of her future... and the past.

"Alright, not an impossibility," Hermione conceded to Crookshanks, who was making himself comfortable in the crook of her elbow against her side. The fact that the photo had been taken in Diagon Alley, a location that she and Severus had not visited, taken ten days after she had tumbled into the future, made the existence of the photograph highly improbable. However, it now rested between the pages of a book that she had just Engorged, as real as the cat purring with his nose tucked into the weave of her pajamas.

It logically followed that she would return to the past and lure Snape to Diagon Alley, just in time for a stick-up at the ice-cream shop, to ensure that the picture was taken or else risk changing time once again. She had three days in which to accomplish this.

Setting aside the issue that she wasn't quite sure how she was able to traverse time in the first place, how would she convince Severus Snape, notoriously mistrustful Potions master who had just recently watched her vanish into a dry well, that he wanted to have an ice-cream cone with her? If she were unsuccessful, what consequences would manifest, and would she be immune or swept along unknowing with the rest of the world?

More importantly, if she were caught fiddling with time, would she be sent to Azkaban?

She doubted that Luna would rat on her. Despite their differences on where to draw the line between fantasy and reality, they had gotten on fairly well since their school days. She wondered if Luna knew how incredibly grateful she was for her discretion in this matter. No, Luna was safe. But had anyone else felt the odd shifting in time? Would they discount it or attempt to investigate it? With a devious smirk, she considered sending Professor Trelawney an owl to see if she had sensed anything. The smirk dissolved as the seriousness of her situation once again settled heavily on her shoulders.

As far as Hermione could see, there was no helping it; she would have to try to go back, and it was quite likely that she would succeed. She held the proof in her hands, as much as it gave her a headache to ponder it. She could only hope that she would be doing the Right Thing. And that she would not meet any more Aevumexesoris.

Hermione glanced once more over her task list, pursing her lips as she confirmed that all of the items but one had been checked complete. Nodding to herself, she flung a pinch of Floo powder into the hearth.

"Harry?" she called into the fire. "Are you home?"

Ginny Potter's head appeared suspended in green flame. "Hallo, Hermione. Harry has just stepped out."

"Oh, well, not a problem. I just wanted to let you know that I'm going to join my parents in New Zealand for a week or two. I've been feeling out of sorts, you know, and... what is it?"

Ginny's smile had tightened into a brittle grimace. "We need to talk, Hermione."

"About what?"

"I think you know what."

"Ginny, I assure you, I haven't a clue..."

Ginny sighed gustily and fixed her with a no-nonsense stare, one that had sent Harry scurrying out of the room and had turned Ron's ears red. It was disconcerting to have that look now boring into her. "About Ron, Hermione. I know that he can be a little thick and pushy at times... alright, a lot thick, but this... I don't think you are being very fair."

Hermione was at a loss, and her expression must have shown it because Ginny sighed again and rolled her eyes. "He asked you to go on vacation with him this summer, and you turned him down to work on your A.A.S.S. project."

He had done no such thing, at least in her time line. "I..."

"You know he wants to propose again! Do you have any idea how long he was planning that trip to make it special? And this, after you turned him down the first two times!"

Yes, Ron had brought up the subject of marriage almost a year ago. Hermione had suggested they wait until after he had finished his training. He'd pouted a bit, but had eventually seen the wisdom. "But we agreed to wait..."

Ginny gave her an incredulous grimace. "That's not how he tells it. I have to wonder if you're leading him on? Waiting for someone better to come along?"

Hermione gasped in outrage. "Ginny! I would never!"

Ginny hummed and shook her head. "I just don't know what to think, Hermione. Sometimes I wonder if this A.A.S.S. is more than it appears. All I know is that I don't like to see my brother hurt."

"It wasn't my intention to hurt him," Hermione responded softly. At least she knew now why Ron and Ginny had been so reticent toward her, but she couldn't imagine how she could have buggered up her relationship with him. True, she tended to get wrapped up in her work, but Ron had never felt neglected... that she knew. Perhaps the Hermione of this changed present was interested in someone else? If so, she couldn't imagine who it would be. It was more likely that she and Ron had had another blazing row and that he'd gone crying to Harry and Ginny. He could get smothering on occasions, and if he were pressuring her to get married, as it seemed from the conversation with Ginny, then she had probably told him to back off and give her space. Hermione nodded to herself in relief, feeling that she had solved that problem adequately. Besides, Ron hadn't seemed terribly upset when she had Flooed him about her vacation. He had taken it in stride, wished her fair weather and a safe trip, and had given her a good-bye snog.

Ginny was speaking again, and Hermione pushed her thoughts away to focus on what she was saying. "...owl me when you get back. Enjoy New Zealand with your parents."

Hermione promised and pulled her head from the fire, rubbing her nose absently to remove the soot that always collected there. It was an enlightening conversation, to say the least, but there was nothing she could do about it at this late hour. When she returned from the past, she and Ron would sit down and discuss thinks like adults and make up properly.

She was due at Fortescue's in two days, minus twenty years.

Early the next morning, Hermione stood at the edge of the well, a small pack containing clothes, money and toiletries slung over a shoulder and the phial in hand, lamenting the fact that she hadn't had a chance to do any more research on what could be the Starglass. She had been holding it on her prior two trips through time, so it seemed a good enough place to start. She had also been falling through space (and time), but she wasn't quite ready for that part, yet. For one thing, the bottle had been glowing, and it was currently rather stubbornly dull. The other reason she was staring into a pit as black and unfathomable as a particular pair of eyes, was that she was unduly excited to return to the past but uncertain of her reception. One mustn't forget chance encounters with Time Eaters, either.

There were too many unknowns for her taste, and without the persistent goading of two young men who wouldn't recognize a quadratic equation if it slapped their faces, she was letting those variables get to her. In fact, she would rather be solving equations than fretting over whether Severus would hex her, shout at her or do something equally unpleasant and demoralizing.

At least he would be alive.

That thought bolstered her courage, and she smiled as she leapt blindly into the darkness.

The bottom of the well met her feet with a jarring thud, and a sharp pain blossomed in her ankle. Staggering to favor the injured ankle, she howled in pain and clutched at the side of the wall to regain her balance. After letting loose a string of curses that would have made Harry proud (and perhaps check her for a fever), she lit her wand and gave the well a fierce glare. The earthen sides were solid as ever, the dirt dry and slightly crumbly. The floor was just as unyielding, as her ankle well knew. With a quickly cast spell and a tap on the swelling, she healed the sprain.

Hermione raised the hand still holding the phial and brought the illuminating tip of her wand close to the crystal. If anything, the dust was paler and finer than she had ever seen it, but it was not glowing. "Come, on," she encouraged, giving it a little shake, "let's go."

The dust seemed to darken slightly, the grains becoming coarser. Bearer's Intent, right. Hermione took a deep breath and focused on wanting to go back so that she wouldn't change the past. The phial remained decidedly dark. Frowning, she just focused on going back, in case a complicated intent would confuse it. Nothing.

For the next hour, Hermione concentrated systematically on each combination of wanting to go back and her reasons for it that she could think of, her frustration growing with each failure. Not long into it, she had settled on the floor, her legs splayed out in front of her. She felt ridiculous sprawled at the bottom of a well, wishing on a bottle. Time seemed to be slipping through her fingers like mist, and she was utterly failing to make any kind of progress.

"Think, Hermione," she chastised herself, bumping her fisted hand against her forehead. The back of her throat was beginning to burn with the telltale tingle of tears. She hated when she did that; it made her feel silly and childish to cry in frustration. Just the same, they began to prickle at her eyes no matter how hard she squeezed them shut. She clasped the bottle in both hands, her face clenching in concentration. His face rose in her mind, wearing a tiny smile as he called her an odd woman, and affectionate compassion coursed through her. "Poor Severus. Please, I want to help him."

Brilliant light colored the world red from behind her eyelids, and it seemed that she had been borne away on a gentle ocean tide before being deposited on a new shore. With a sigh of relief, she relaxed her body and opened her eyes, unsurprised to see the morning sun obscured by gray clouds, swollen with rain, that hadn't existed on the horizon but two minutes ago. She wanted to rush out of the well and up to Spinner's End, just to verify with her own eyes that he was alive and well, but she caught herself just in time. 'Proximity wards,' she told herself firmly. 'He can't know that I travel through the well...'

A plan forming in her mind, she Apparated to Hogsmeade outside Madam's little white gate. She was pushing it open with a smile for the cats lounging on the porch when she abruptly remembered that she had been gone a week (at least, she hoped it had been a week, but that was how this brand of time travel seemed to work) and had disappeared without saying goodbye. Butterpaws climbed to his feet and, with agility belied by his girth, darted around to the back garden. Then again, his plumpness could have been all orange fluff for all she knew.

"Oh, she's back, is she?" Madam's voice emanated from behind the house. Hermione blinked and shrugged, following Butterpaws' path to find Madam seated in her favorite chair sipping a cup of tea. Madam grinned and rested the cup on her paunch. "And how is her poor mother?"

Butterpaws trilled and bumped his head against the chair leg. Hermione cleared her throat uncomfortably and stammered, "She's, um. She's doing better. Thank you."

Fixing her with a doubtful yellow eye, the cat arched his back as the old woman let her fingertips drag over his fur. "Wonderful, wonderful. Such a considerate young man, to carry the message. She is a lucky young lady."

"Erm, yes." Hermione reeled slightly as she put the pieces together. She could only be referring to Severus. Had he come back to Hogsmeade, looking for her after her fall? And when he hadn't found her, had he given her landlady an excuse for her absence? She could hardly imagine, but hadn't everyone said that the Snape of her time had been "civil"? This went beyond civility to something entirely different. What, she couldn't guess, but it was not the behavior of the Snape she had known. So, her Severus was changing...

"Oh, she must come see, Butterpaws!" Madam Beetlebump lumbered out of her chair and began to hobble to the back of the garden where the catnip grew lush and green. "Peridot has returned with her new litter!"

Butterpaws chose instead to leap onto the table and help himself to the pitcher of milk next to the teapot, but Hermione dutifully followed Madam to the fence line. A black cat Hermione had never met before, with white stockings and bib, was watching over five kittens that clumsily pounced on sprigs of catnip, each other, and their mama's tail. They ranged from solid black to marked like their mother, with one kitten a pale gray with black points. With great force of will, Hermione did not melt into a puddle of cooing mush and instead complimented the proud mother cat, "Oh, Peridot, they are so cute!"

Alright, perhaps a bit of mush.

"Ah, here we go," Madam said as she bent forward, scooping a black kitten from the group and handing it to Hermione. It was soft and squirmy, and Hermione couldn't help but cuddle it to her face and squeal. "You're going to a nice young man who needs a bit of company, he does." She shot Hermione a reproachful look but continued talking to the kitten. "Looked downright miserable the other day."

Guilt shot through Hermione and she winced, burying her nose in the kitten's soft fur. If she hadn't met Mewlip on Snape's porch, she would have handed it back to Madam with a protest, but since she had, she simply nodded and, with kitten in hand, left the garden to put away her bag in her room. After she had descended the stairs, Madam pushed a care package of kitten kibble into her hands and shooed her out the front door with a few words to the kitten, "Now, you make sure she takes good care of him, hear?"

Severus was deep in contemplation of his seventh year syllabus when a knock sounded on his door. The ruddy little bastards would know him from his days as a student, and some would have the temerity to give him a hard time. Those who did ended up building upper body strength by scrubbing cauldrons, but the thought of their mocking, superior faces and sneers of "Professor Snivellus" were enough to distract him from the slight tingle of his wards. Rising from the kitchen chair with a curse, he stomped toward the door, ready to give the intruder the tongue-lashing of a lifetime, perhaps a hex to boot, especially if he were trying to sell something.

Flinging the door open, he shouted, "What in the name of all that is holy..." and stopped abruptly, staring with mouth agape. Impossibly, Heidi stood on his doorstep. She smiled almost shyly at him, and her arms fluttered from her sides as if reaching for him, then changed direction to clasp behind her back, her cheeks pinking becomingly. In apple green robes with her wild hair pulled away from her face by two combs, she as far from the avenging angels he had seen in his father's church as he could imagine.

If anyone had deserved to be struck down by a fiery sword wielded by the heavenly host, it was Severus Snape. Her startled eyes and shrill scream had been branded into his brain and had looped through his dreams, replaying his frantic grasping at the empty air as she had disappeared into darkness and light. Some nights, the white light that had enveloped her body had flared acid green, and on others, she had had auburn hair and accusing green eyes. He had woken with the bitter taste of remorse and failure coating his tongue more than once.

She had thoroughly vanished. No tracking charm could locate her. He had had a couple of curly hairs to work with this time, and two of his spells had erringly led him to a quiet Muggle neighborhood in London, directing him to an unremarkable Muggle family. When he had cast Spiritus Oratos, a charm that required the caster to build a clear vision and impression of the person being pursued and could foil all protections except a Secret-Kept location, and even then would lead the caster to a position within a mile of the target, had returned nothing at all.

Likewise, no amount of lurking around her home in Hogsmeade had evidenced her presence, magically protected or not. The ridiculous Madame Beetlebump had caught him one morning and had inquired after her, indirectly through one of her beasts, and Severus had mumbled something about an ill mother.

What could he have said? That he'd chased her through the rain and let her fall down a well over the possession of a trinket to which he had no rightful claim? Obviously not. He could have said nothing at all, would have, if the old bat had looked less pitifully worried. When she'd grinned and petted his head, singing his praises to Pumpernickel or whatever she called the blasted white ball of fur, he'd stifled the urge to retch the guilt from his gut.

He could have sworn on Veritaserum that she was as gone as if she had been banished bodily beyond the Veil. It had occurred to him that the flash of light could have been some sort of ascension, the gods deeming him unworthy and snatching away his last chance at happiness and the woman who carried it. He'd discounted the idea as absurd and the result of too much Firewhisky on an empty stomach, but the small boy who had quailed at the sight of bleeding martyrs shuddered at the back of his mind.

"Is this a bad time?" she asked timidly, derailing his musings as her hands darted around to the front of her body to twist together. Squinting up at him, the sheepish hunch of her shoulders betraying her nervousness, she prompted him again. "Severus?"

He closed his mouth with a snap, realizing that he must look like an asphyxiating guppy. A foreign warmth had begun creeping from behind his ribcage and up into his esophagus. His first attempt at speech was a hoarse cough that he tried to play off as something other than his Adam's apple trying to strangle him. Heidi's sympathetic smile indicated that he was not terribly successful.

Clearing his throat, he gave it another shot, but was uncharacteristically at a loss for words. "Heidi..."

"I'm sorry that I haven't come by sooner. You see, when I... fell... I Apparated and, erm, splinched myself. Badly." Her gaze darted across his face, but never quite met his eyes. Just the same, he could almost smell the falsity behind her words. He gave her an incredulous look. It hurt to be lied to, but not as much as believing her gone.

"Is that so," he drawled, careful to let the scornful skepticism smother the pain. "I looked for you," he couldn't help but add, and she paled, the unspoken accusation striking her hard.

"Yes, well, there were wards, you know..."

She was lying to him. But she didn't like lying to him. Lying or not, she hadn't died as a result of his actions. He would overlook the former only because of the latter – for the time being. He could be patient when the need arose, and he had little doubt that she could keep her secrets for long. It occurred to him that he was rarely this forgiving, but he was willing to overlook that, as well. These were extenuating circumstances: incredibly, she had rematerialized from... elsewhere. He doubted that her return was solely for his benefit, but here she was.

He swallowed convulsively and blinked back a sudden watering of his eyes.

Her next words stunned him, both by their generosity and naïveté. "My offer still stands. Do you want my help with your... project?" She waved her hand jerkily, tucked a curl behind her ear and then began wringing her hands again, all the while sending him a hopeful, hesitant smile.

His project. What an understated way to classify his intentions. If she knew what it was, would she still agree to help? He regarded her steadily and tried to not be affected by her sincere earnestness. It was inconceivable that she was offering her help without any knowledge of his plans. If he accepted, she would be honor-bound to help, whether she liked it or not; it was utter foolishness that he could use to his advantage.

He hadn't really considered, or desired, an assistant for his "project," but he had also planned to have the Starglass in hand. He wasn't about to attempt theft again. Perhaps she was meant to help him, the way that boy was meant to destroy the Dark Lord?

"Do you still have it?" he asked, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning against the doorway. He was such a cad to have not yet invited her in. Lucius would have been ashamed of him. Not quite smothering a grin, as the warmth had now spread throughout his body and was tugging insistently at the corners of his lips, he raised an expectant eyebrow.

She rolled her eyes and planted her hands on her hips. "Of course I do. Honestly, do you think I would bother to offer help if I didn't?" Her stance and tone were brusque and irritated, but he recognized the playful tilt of her mouth. When he simply stood there and stared at her, she huffed and reached into a large pocket of her robes. The pocket bulged oddly and uttered a muffled squeak.

"What is that?"

"Oh, this?" Heidi glanced down at the pocket that still contained her hand. For some reason, she seemed reluctant to withdraw it. She hummed nervously.

"Yes, that." The pocket mewled and distended outward.

"Oh, erm." He could almost see her pluck courage out of the air as she drew herself up to her full five and a half feet, pulling from the pocket a handful of black fur. Without warning, she thrust it toward him, catching him off guard enough that he held out his hands in reflex. A second later, he was holding a sleepy kitten. "From Madam Beetlebump, with her compliments to a nice, considerate young man. Thank you for covering for me, by the way. That was very... decent... of you."

Once again, he was rendered speechless. Snape glanced from the cat to Heidi's determined expression and back to the cat again. The only thing going for it was that it was black. It was also nudging the palm of his hand with its cold, wet nose, a sensation that should have revolted him but instead sent chills darting up his spine and the warmth in his chest inflating like a balloon. He found it quite impossible to shove the creature back into the hands of a woman who had miraculously returned from the ether to offer her help and who had just paid him three compliments (two of which were on behalf of another, but he wasn't going to quibble) in one breath. Quite frankly, he didn't know what to do with himself.

He had never wanted a familiar, and except for a lizard he had found when he was six and kept in a box until it died of malnutrition, he hadn't had any pets. Later, he would blame his acquisition of the kitten on an ambush by a pretty girl, an explanation Lucius would accept wholeheartedly with a sage nod and a comment on the clouding effects of pussy on a man's brain. Blushing, Severus would pretend that he meant the cat.

"So if that is settled," Heidi said bossily as she tossed her hair, "I will stop by tomorrow, and we can go have a spot of lunch in Diagon Alley while we discuss your project and develop a strategy."

He opened his mouth to deliver a scathing comment on her presumption, but to his horror, he said, "A quarter to noon would be acceptable."

She flashed him another bright smile and pulled a sack of little brown bits from another pocket, plopping it into his hand next to the kitten. "Right, then! See you tomorrow." Twirling gracefully, she disappeared with a sharp pop, and he was left alone on his porch, a quietly purring kitten in his hand the only proof that she hadn't been a dream.

A/N: Snape's cat's name, Mewlip, is from "The Mewlips," a poem written by J.R.R. Tolkien and found in The Tolkien Reader. It was one of my favorite poems when I was young. If you aren't familiar with it, then I recommend you Google it. Even those who aren't that fond of poetry might appreciate the mood and descriptions.