A Rose by Any Other Name

Disclaimer: Don't own it.

Edited by thyme_is_a_cat

Hermione cleared her throat and waited for brilliance to strike. His eyes shining with a greedy light, Severus watched her without blinking, as if she would vanish at his slightest inattention. He was clearly waiting for something. An unpleasant realization struck her: he didn't think she could Side-Along-Apparate them to Canterbury. Not because she couldn't Side-Along-Apparate, but because she wasn't familiar with Canterbury enough to Apparate there. And he would be correct.

In hindsight, she thought it would have been smarter to lie about coming from a city that she had actually visited. Greenglass of Canterbury had been chosen off the cuff and for the simple reason that a coworker in the Ministry had the surname Greenglass and had been born and bred in Canterbury. Granted, she had had the charm of a matchmaking Malfoy directed at her person and would have had no reason to suspect that she would be spending an extended amount of time with Severus, but she certainly could have come up with a better false identity.

And the longer she stood there fidgeting, the more suspicious Severus would get. If his outburst before Lupin's arrival was any indicator, then he had suspected that she had been lying about herself for a while now; she wondered when he had first begun to speculate. She cleared her throat again and hoped that she would think of something once she started talking.

"It's such a nice day; wouldn't flying be more pleasant?" she asked hopefully. It wouldn't pass for brilliance, but it might get her through the afternoon.

Severus crossed his arms over his chest and glared at her down his hooked nose. "No, I don't think it would."

"I wouldn't mind flying," Lupin interjected, his glare becoming speculative as he watched Severus work himself into a fit of pique.

Without bothering to look at him, Severus said, "Give us the name of the shop and be off. You aren't needed anymore, werewolf."

"Severus!" Hermione gasped, outraged at his words. He shouldn't take his anger with her out on Lupin. "That was uncalled for! Mr. Lupin, we really are grateful for what you've done for us."

"For you," he corrected her adamantly. "I told you that I would bring you to your phial, and I will, even if it means flying to Canterbury." He gave her a somewhat soppy smile that she returned hesitantly. If she didn't know better, she would suspect that Lupin had brought up flying to Canterbury again just because he knew it would anger Severus. The angered man in question had retreated behind a curtain of black hair and was frowning so hard that she almost expected his face to freeze that way. In a way, it would: his knotted eyebrows and curved lips foretold the heavy lines that would be carved into his face when he became her professor.

"Going to hump her leg while you're at it?" he snapped, smashing Hermione's illusion of the matured Potions master that had hovered over his younger self.

Lupin had opened his mouth to retort when Hermione grabbed Severus' elbow, still firmly folded against his chest, and hustled him deeper into the woods and out of sight of their companion. With a flick of her wand, she cast a quick Muffliato. She didn't realize her mistake until he hissed, "Where did you learn that?"

'Shite,' she thought. She had forgotten that it had been one of the spells penned into the Half-Blood Prince's sixth-year Potions book. Oh well, nothing to be done about it now.

"Where I learned it doesn't matter."

"I beg to differ, Heidi, or whatever your name is." He was holding himself rigid, his arms still crossed, and his face set in tense, angry lines.

"That will do. I know you are angry, and you have every right to be, but I have very good reasons..."

"I don't want to hear reasons, I want the truth!" Whirling away from her, he stalked away several steps, then paced back toward her, stopping only inches from her. "I want to know who you are. I want to know how you knew I was a Death Eater. And I want to know where you learned that spell!" With each clipped sentence, his eyes had gotten wider and wilder, and his normally resonant voice had gotten harsher and louder until he was shrieking furiously into her face. He seemed to loom around her, his presence pressing in on all sides. Needing space, she took a step backward, and his hands shot from his sides to wrap tightly around her forearms, preventing her retreat.

"I can't tell you that," she said quietly. He wasn't hurting her, so she did not object to his grip. Yet. "Not because I don't want to," she quickly added as he opened his mouth to speak, "but because I cannot. For your own protection."

"You think I can't protect myself?" he growled, his face twisted into a feral snarl. "You think I can't protect you?"

"Not from this," she said, grasping his arms in a movement mirroring his. Staring directly into his eyes, she tried to convey her earnestness through her hands and surface thoughts, hoping that he would recognize the gesture for what it was and not take liberties. She was telling him the truth, just not what he wanted to hear.

For a moment, she was afraid that he would actually use Legilimency to extract the information from her mind, but he simply stared into her eyes searchingly. When he spoke again, his voice was low, soft as velvet and subtly poisonous, and she couldn't help the shudder that rippled down her spine. "Tell me."

"I..." she started, almost submitting to an odd compulsion to confess all. It wasn't Imperius, but it was insistent, intensified by her own desire to keep his trust and give him the reassurance that she trusted him. She wanted to fold him into her arms and spill her heart out on his shoulder, whisper the secrets of the future into his ear, give him the key to his own continued existence. So what if her life as she knew it changed irrevocably? She could live a new one, on this timeline, with him. Who would notice two Hermione Grangers aged forty years apart? The lives she could save! The suffering she could prevent! All she would have to do is tell him...

She tightened her fingers, drawing him closer until his breath washed her face and she could see the faint circle of his iris where it delineated his pupil. Her yearning was a physical force, pulling her into him as surely as if she had been netted and dragged ashore. Only yielding to the simplest of things, this most basic of her desires, would ease the pain of gasping breathless on the beach. "I..."

A rushing of wings and an angry squawk broke the still of the forest, and a shower of pine needles dusted their hair and clothes. Hermione blinked, and the spell was broken. She was standing on her tiptoes, much closer to him than decency would allow; their arms were locked together in a reciprocal knot. Shaking her head, she tried to pull herself together. What had she been thinking? She had been about to tell him everything and, gods, how she had wanted to. Glancing up, she caught a glimpse of his raw, hungry expression and wet, parted lips before his face settled back into his typical scowl.

She was struck with fondness wholly at odds with the situation, and she smiled sadly, wanting to ease the crease between his eyebrows with her thumb and comb the black strands of hair, now peppered with pine needles, out of his face. Instead, she squeezed his arms and then released him, stepping backward. He let her go and dropped his arms to his sides.

"If I told you, you would understand the danger, but then the damage would be inevitable."

He stared at her inscrutably for a long moment, and the forest sighed around them. Straightening his spine, he gave her a final, closed look before moving his gaze to the trees beyond and stepping determinedly around her, carefully keeping his distance.

"Severus," she called after him, turning to watch him walk back the way they had come. He made no indication that he had heard her. Sighing, she trailed after him morosely and more than a little shaken. She was disturbed by the strength of her emotions concerning the furious, reticent man and her desire to toss everything to the wind and start a new life. That he had ensorcelled her earlier, she had no doubt, and that it had been a Dark spell was a given, but it had only amplified what she had wanted in the first place. She couldn't even work up a good snit in the face of her weakness. And where, in all that roiling morass of longings, was Ron?

She was a fickle, disloyal, despicable creature, and she had failed. She had failed Severus, she had failed Ron, and she had failed herself. With leaden feet and a heavy heart, she plodded slowly behind him and blinked away her tears.

Severus gripped the handle of his broom tightly, angling down toward the city of Canterbury while keeping the shabby figure of Lupin on his spare broom in his peripheral vision. He wouldn't fly behind him; he flew to the side and matched his movements, presenting the illusion that he knew where he was going, that Lupin was not leading. No one was fooled: the werewolf had refused to discuss the details of the shop's location, insisting that he would bring Heidi to her possession like a fucking knight-errant. He hated Gryffindor chivalry.

He was also flying much too close for Severus' comfort. Every few minutes, the werewolf would shoot the woman behind him a concerned glance and then glare meaningfully at Severus. He would return his glare two-fold and put distance between the brooms, but Lupin would eventually close the gap. She seemed oblivious, her head turned away from them both instead of resting comfortably on his back, as she had done on the ride over. Scanning the sky as he flew and catching glimpses of her out of the corner of his eye, he tried not notice that the wind was whipping tears off of her cheeks.

She had been crying, off and on, since they had argued. He hadn't noticed until the werewolf had asked her what was wrong. She had denied being upset, despite her red-rimmed eyes, and had smiled, explaining that she'd gotten dust in her eyes. Though he'd been too angry at that moment to care, he was now beginning to get concerned. Never had he seen her quite so downtrodden.

'Serves her right for lying to me,' he thought, unclenching his teeth and willing himself not to miss her warmth against his back. Riding two up as they were, she was trying to touch him as little as possible, sitting ramrod straight and holding her knees taut to the side instead of letting them rest against his thighs. Somehow, she had found a grip on the broom's shaft between them. That was fine with him. He preferred it that way. He had almost told her to ride with Lupin, but when she had mounted behind himself and he had seen Lupin's stricken expression, he'd bit his tongue.

The thing was, he didn't understand why she was so wretched. She had gotten what she had wanted: she had kept her secrets. Even his modification of the Entrancement Charm, which would encourage its victim to do the will of the caster if that person already had the inclination, had failed to draw them out of her, though it had been a close thing. Perhaps he should simply enter her mind and be done with it. He didn't owe her anything, and her friendship was obviously a sham. She was using him, though for what he didn't know, just as he was using her. These were terms he knew, though they tore at his insides like tiny, barbed hooks.

It didn't matter. Let her be unhappy. People the world over were unhappy and yet it still kept turning. He had a purpose to fulfill and she was a tool, to be discarded when no longer useful.

Her face rose in his mind, pupils dilated as she slipped under his Entrancement. She had risen to her toes as she had pulled him down toward her, her long, delicate fingers kneading his arms and her breaths quick and shallow against his cheeks. She'd smelled of tea and rye toast, and he'd wondered if she had somehow reflected his spell back onto him. For one brilliant instant, he'd wanted nothing more than to close the tiny gap between their lips and taste her, her secrets be damned, but the spell had broken. She'd pawned off some half-baked riddle in lieu of explanation, and he had walked away before he'd hexed her. Now she had the gall to be miserable.

It had been a ridiculous fantasy to think that a woman like her would be interested in him, anyway. He didn't even want her interest. No, he craved her interest, which was much more dangerous. He wouldn't have her, though, not that lying harpy. He had other plans.

The inside of her thigh brushed against him as she shifted, but was instantly snatched away. A pang of regret poked his gut with an almost physical presence, and he had to stop himself from reaching behind him to touch her, to pull her closer.

He suddenly wished with a desperate intensity that she would put her head on his shoulder.

Just as suddenly, he wanted to hex himself. When had he become such a sentimental sop?

"Snape!" Lupin's shout cut through his thoughts. "It's somewhere in those six blocks!" He drew in a wide circle with a sweep of his arm over the rapidly approaching city. Severus nodded and aimed his broom at an adjacent park.

A couple of block's worth of rich, green grass and tall shade trees, the park had a flat, circular area with a large, red rune, the symbol for safe havens, painted in the middle. Four wooden racks, one at the end of each leg of the rune, ringed the circle. Three were empty, but the other one held several brooms attached to the wooden structure with curls of wood that, upon close inspection, seemed to have grown from the rack itself. Once they had landed, they relinquished their brooms to an empty rack and watched as two slender twigs pushed through the braces to wrap snugly around the brooms' shafts.

As he tried to ease the stiffness out of muscles that had spent too many hours on a broom and not enough resting in a decent bed, Severus stared determinedly away from Heidi. He had no desire to make himself more miserable than he already was by ogling a woman he wouldn't have. He was rather successful, too, until he heard Lupin's rough, anxious voice speaking quietly.

"Alright, Miss Greenglass?"

"It's Heidi. And yes, I'm fine. Thank you." She sounded as miserable as he felt. For some reason, it didn't make him feel any better.

At least she was maintaining the charade with the werewolf, though it irked him that she had asked him to address her informally, even if it was a false name. Positioning his body so that he could watch them surreptitiously out of the corner of his eye, he affected a pose of bored indifference and rolled his shoulders. Her eyes, slightly bloodshot, darted toward him, and she blushed. Lupin laid a hand on one of her shoulders, drawing her attention back to him. Severus wanted to wrench that hand off of its wrist.

"You just seem upset. If he hurt you..."

"It isn't his fault."

"You don't have to protect him."

"I'm not." She smiled wryly, more of a grimace, really, and shrugged dejectedly. "Don't worry about it, Pro... Mr. Lupin.

"Remus."

"...Remus. We really should be moving on." She stepped away from his hand, and Severus breathed a small sigh of relief when Lupin let it fall to his side. What had she been about to call him, though? She smiled again, a brittle curve of her mouth that he recognized from the first few days of her acquaintance; the smile she used when she was getting annoyed but was trying to be polite. "Where to now?"

When he offered his arm to her before answering, Severus decided it was time to intervene. Spinning sharply, he stalked toward them, a sneer curling his lip. Lupin met his stare challengingly. "If you two don't mind," he said, all artificial conciliation, "I would like to wrap up this business as quickly as possible. Or did you fancy a twilight stroll?"

Heidi gave him a sad, long-suffering stare, so he scowled at Lupin, unwilling to meet her eyes and, perhaps, betray his own unhappiness. "Severus is right," she said finally, "the shops will be closing soon. Let's go."

A sheer, shimmering curtain hung through the middle of the park, seemingly suspended from the fiery sunset to be absorbed into lawn. On the other side of the translucent veil, a Muggle family ambled by, sporting light jackets and a mop of a little dog, oblivious to the oddly dressed group that gave them little more than a passing glance. A small child wearing a bright red baseball cap suddenly tugged out of his mother's grip, darting toward the veil with a fascinated, gape-mouthed expression, his arms stretched forward and fingers reaching. The woman, pink-cheeked from the slight chill in the air, ran after him, snatching him off the ground before he could touch the barrier. His mother cast a slightly anxious glance toward the veil, her eyes roving but unseeing and then carried him bodily back to his father, who was still walking the dog.

The magical side of the park was empty except for a solitary witch wearing snug-fitting riding leathers. She was carrying a bag slung over her shoulders and gave the threesome as little attention as had the Muggle family as she strode purposefully toward the broom rack. Beyond the park, darkening streets too narrow for autos, but straighter and wider than those of Diagon Alley, were lined with storefronts as dark and deserted as the streets. One kiosk was still open. Manned by a sour-faced witch and shining a small puddle of cheery light on a roughly cobbled street, it emanated the odor of hot grease and pork. It wasn't very many minutes before she doused the light and shrunk the entire contraption down to the size of a small box, giving the three a suspicious glare as they walked by.

Wizarding Canterbury was closing up for the night, and it seemed that good folk didn't wander the town at this hour.

The short search for the shop might have been considered a stroll for three friends to the casual observer, had there been any, but Hermione wanted to scream through the tension that threatened to smother her. She had finally managed to shore her tears, though they were backing up against her eyes like floodwater behind a dam. It was as if she was grieving, but she couldn't quite pinpoint what it was she had lost. Or, perhaps, there were too many things to name and confront.

Severus' trust, for one thing. He wouldn't even look at her. Lifting her gaze, she caressed the hard line of his shoulders with her eyes, willing him to glance back at her as they walked along the sidewalk. Already, his inky hair was blending with the shadows of the evening, shining softly only when their steps led them through the pale glow of a streetlamp. In a scant few minutes, his black-clad figure would be indistinguishable in the darkness except for the flash of silver lace at his wrists. In a scant few years, he would be beyond her reach: untouchable behind the Veil.

'So, I have lost the trust of a dead man,' she forced the thought through the pain it derived. 'And, I have developed feelings for a dead man.' She couldn't say which was more tragic. Biting the tip of her tongue against the surge of tears, she felt a desperate need to talk through this with another woman – over a big bowl of mint-chocolate-chip ice cream. Ginny wouldn't understand; she would be defensive of Ron, but Luna... she would have some odd insight or other to share. At the very least, she wouldn't attempt to have her committed.

Oh, what to do about Ron? She squeezed her eyes shut and willed herself to think analytically. Had she been happy with him before her first trip down the well or was she simply comfortable in a safe, familiar relationship? Were her drifting feelings a result of close proximity with an interesting, forbidden man or a natural tendency to move from a sputtering relationship to the next male that fascinated her? Despite her efforts to shut her emotions out of her musings, they pounded against her heart, tangling her carefully considered questions into a knotted mess.

"I think this is it," Lupin said, and Hermione surfaced from her thoughts to stare at a dowdy storefront with dusty picture windows that were crowded with so much junk that one could hardly see into the store itself. A domed, red awning with a scalloped border stretched over the door and declared the name of the shop, "Curiouser and Curiouser."

"You think?" Severus drawled next to her, on the side opposite of Lupin. "I do hope it doesn't cause any irreparable damage."

Hermione wanted to elbow him, but didn't think that their strained relationship could handle that now, despite the fact that all logic concluded that she shouldn't care what a dead man thought of her. But she did care, very much.

"It's closed," she said, pointing out the obvious in lieu of screaming or crying, which was what she really wanted to do. She waved a hand at the little sign hanging from the door's grimy little window.

"No matter. It will have a back door," Severus said as he eyed the lock and darkened interior beyond the clutter in the windows.

Lupin frowned at him and then turned to Hermione. "We can come back tomorrow when they're open."

"I doubt that this is the shop we want," Severus said, just to be contradictory. "You're just stalling, leading us on."

Lupin crossed his arms over his chest. "I wouldn't do that. I am not a deceitful, miserable, little sod who betrays his friends."

"No, that would be your friends, if I recall correctly." Lupin blanched, and Hermione thought suddenly of Peter Pettigrew, a revolting rat of a sycophant who had handed the Potters to the Dark Lord. Lupin would believe it was Sirius, however, and she wanted nothing more than to tell him that he had been wrongfully imprisoned.

She was so tired of it: the false identity and foreknowledge that she couldn't use; the mean-spirited bickering and dark glances; the broom riding and relationship, doomed before it could even begin; the crazy cat woman and her innuendos. She had been gone for over a day, now, and if Madam Beetlebump didn't believe she was sleeping with Severus before, then she certainly would now. With an aching desperation that compressed her stomach into a leaden pit, she wanted to get the whole fucking affair over with and go home. She would retrieve her Starglass, help Severus with whatever it was he had planned (gods, she didn't even care what it was, anymore), and then try to pick up the threads of her life and make sense of it. Perhaps there wasn't anything wrong with Ron and her except her, and perhaps she would fix it or move on. Perhaps she would have to relearn the course of history. Whatever, it would be her life, and the people she loved would call her by her own name.

Later, she would lay the blame of her next decision on lack of sleep, hunger, and this all-consuming exhaustion with her situation. She hadn't been thinking clearly. Who would be? She would also think, ironically, that for someone who knew the future, she had made some terrible decisions.

Rubbing her hands over her face, she made a frustrated noise in the back of her throat. "Maybe we could just take a quick look to see if they have it."

"You want to steal it?" Lupin asked incredulously.

She dropped her hands to her sides and gave him a weary stare. She wasn't comfortable with breaking and entering; it was against the law, after all. However, this wouldn't be the first time she had done something illegal, and, as she had many times in the past, she decided that the end would justify the means. "It's mine. I just want to get it and go home."

"But..."

"Not the shy violet you were expecting, Lupin?" Severus asked snidely. She resisted the temptation to smack him. He could be nasty when he wanted to be, and yet here she was, suffering at his lack of attention.

"I never claimed to be," she snapped at him.

"You aren't what you claimed to be, either," he said silkily, looking directly at her for the first time since their fight in the woods. Beneath the sneer, she could see a thin veneer of hurt glazing his eyes, could almost taste it on his words. Could she give him something harmless, a small morsel of truth that might salve his wounded trust? Would the benefit of regaining his regard outweigh the possible cost of revealing some small truth about herself? Probably not, but she did it anyway.

"The initials are the same."

"And you presume that I care."

'Never mind, then,' she thought tiredly, turning away from the two men to walk back the way they had come, scanning the row of shops for the alley that would take her between the shops to their back entrances. Even magical shops had backdoors that led to the rubbish bins.

Maybe she wouldn't even stick around to help him with his project; he might not want it. Though, she had promised... He could borrow the damn thing and get on with it, leaving her in relative peace. She could have tea with Madam and pretend she had read about this adventure in a book, distancing herself from his accusing, black eyes and sharp tongue.

"Heidi!" Lupin's voice sounded unnaturally loud in the empty street, and her fake name ringing against the stones spurred her to walk faster. Two sets of footsteps slapped on the cobble behind her, one booted and the other the whisper-soft tread of worn, leather soles. Biting the inside of her lips, she resisted the irrational urge to dash forward and leave them behind. She could break into the shop by herself; hadn't she snuck into the Ministry at eighteen? She didn't run, however, and they caught up quickly, following her into the narrow passage between two shops.

"Heidi, you can't let him get to you. He's a..."

"Leave it alone, Mr. Lupin. He's right. I just want to get this over with," she said, not slowing her pace or sparing him a glance. He was dead, too.

She spotted the backdoor to the shop easily: it was painted red, and the name was lettered in white. Pulling her wand from her sleeve, she began to cast the diagnostic spells that would reveal wards placed against intruders. She had barely finished three when Severus cleared his throat and said, "Allow me. Your Detection Spells are mediocre at best."

In five minutes, he had dismantled the last ward and sprung the lock on the door, which had been, oddly, a Muggle tumbler and bolt. She had chalked that strangeness up to the eccentricities of an owner who had named his shop after a quote from Alice in Wonderland and thought nothing more of it.

Until, that is, she took five cautious steps into the store and lit the tip of her wand to investigate a tiny, blinking, red light that had caught her attention.

"Put that light out!" Severus snapped as he closed the door behind him, just before Hermione gasped and whirled on him.

"Don't close the d..."

The rest of her sentence was drowned out by a shrieking claxon that rattled her eardrums. Severus seemed to have realized his mistake instantly, for he was already tugging at the door handle and swearing. It was shut fast, however, and no amount of physical force, opening charms or blasting hexes would budge it. Lupin was hunched over with his hands pressed to his ears and his face a rictus of pain.

Abandoning the door, Severus reached her in two long strides and shouted something at her.

"What?" she tried to yell over the din, wanting to plug her ears with her fingers.

He grabbed her arm and pulled her close enough to see the flaring of his long nostrils. "Apparate!"

Nodding, she gave it a frantic attempt and was approaching panic when she realized that she was still in the store. Severus swore again, the words lost in the noise, but the meaning clear, and dragged her after him deeper into the shop. Clinging to his arm, she was glad that in their current crisis, he felt compelled to overlook their quarrel and keep her close.

"Lupin, come on!" she yelled back at the man who looked like he might drop to the floor at any moment. He must have heard her, somehow, because he staggered after them, hands still clutching his ears.

The back room was a veritable obstacle course. It was littered with boxes, some opened and some stacked to the ceiling, with packaging strewn across the floor. She had only just realized that they were making a beeline for the door to the front of the shop when Severus veered sharply to the right and snatched an object off of a bed of thick, opalescent packaging bubbles. He hustled them forward again before she saw what it was, secreting it somewhere in his robes.

Severus' hand was on the doorknob when several loud cracks sounded in the shop on the other side of the door. Many voices, too muffled by the wall and the continuous wail of the siren to be understood, called out to each other. A moment later, the door blew against them, and they were knocked backward. Hermione landed hard on the floor, a sharp pain exploding through her skull as it bounced off the crate on her way down. Severus landed hard on top of her, knocking the wind from her lungs, and everything went abruptly dark.

A/N: Yes, another cliffhanger. Sorry about that.