Time's Fool - Part Four
Author: vanityfair00
Title: Time's Fool
Characters: Hermione/Severus
Summary: Hermione uses a Time Turner to go back and change Snape's past. But his future is her present and Time is a fickle thing. Not your average Time Turner fic (I hope!)
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Not mine - Jo's characters and mostly Niffenegger's concepts regarding time.
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Come out of the circle of time
And into the circle of love.
Rumi
Hermione waits for what seems an eternity, before she lies on the bed and falls into a restless sleep. She awakes when she feels the soft touch of someone smoothing back the hair from her face. Opening her eyes, she sees Professor Snape standing over her with a gentle look that hardens immediately when he sees her looking at him.
“Get up,” he says, holding out the Time Turner to her. It dangles from the end of his index finger.
She doesn’t take it. Instead, she sits up, hugging her knees to her chest, and asks, “where-when did you go?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he says. He shakes the Time Turner in his hand for her to take, which she again ignores.
“What about our plan?”
“Our plan?” He sneers at her.
“My plan,” she says.
He leans over and puts the Time Turner around her neck. Still fingering it, he narrows his eyes. “The Dark Lord became very angry last month when someone discovered several key Ministry employees were under an Imperius curse cast by Macnair. I suspect you and your friends will have something to do with it.”
“Names?”
He drops the small hourglass and turns away from her. “McAlister and Smithson.”
“And what about things we haven’t prevented but might-“
“Might never change?” He turns back to her and his face is twisted in anger. Hermione drops the argument. She is surprised he has acquiesced to this so quickly after calling her a foolish girl and disappearing into who knows when. She wonders what has changed his mind, but is too nervous to ask. He has given her something. Perhaps, in time, he will agree to more. She almost laughs at that thought - in time indeed.
“I should go,” she says quietly.
“Yes, you should.”
Hermione holds out her hand. He scowls at her at first, but finally takes it. Instead of shaking it, however, he bows over it, making Hermione blush. Turning the timepiece, the last thing she sees is his silhouette framed by the window.
****
It doesn’t take long before Harry, Ron, and Hermione are on the run. When they are not trying to figure out what Dumbledore meant with his gifts left to them in his will or what and where the next Horcrux might be found, she sneaks off and uses her Time Turner. The information that Snape provides her goes a long way. She writes short detailed notes to Remus Lupin, who then mobilizes the Order of the Phoenix. And more and more, she finds excuses to stay longer with the man.
“I have a question,” she starts one evening. Months ago, she had bought the seventh year Potions textbook and several other manuals so she doesn’t fall behind in her schoolwork. After the boys go to bed, she pulls them out and studies them, but there is something that has stumped her.
“I’ve already told you everything I know, Granger,” Snape snaps.
“Yes, yes, and I appreciate that. I will make sure that Remus knows, but this is about Potions.” She pulls out her book and opens it to the page she has dog eared the night before.
Snape scowls at her. “I’m no longer you’re teacher.”
“It’s just one question,” she says, coming dangerously close to whining.
“It’s never just one question with you.”
Hermione snaps the books shut and shoves it back in her bag. “Fine, never mind, I’ll just figure it out myself. Or maybe I won’t. I’ll fail my N.E.W.T.s and will end up working as a receptionist in my parent’s dentistry office. And it will be your fault, you miserable git.”
She looks up to see that Snape’s eyes narrowed and his lips are pressed into a thin line. She has angered him.
“Don’t speak to me like that,” he hisses.
“Why not? You’re not my teacher any longer as you so generously pointed out.” She is angry, not really at him, but at the situation that means she can’t attend school. She loves school. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to yell at you,” she says with remorse.
He grabs her arm as she stands up to leave. “Sit down,” he orders her. He repeats himself more firmly when she hesitates. “Sit down.”
“You may ask me one question and only one question. I suggest you choose wisely.”
****
They play chess. She asks him one question each time about Potions. They do not discuss the war until right before she leaves. But she is grateful for even the few tidbits he can give her. It is the only way she can feel as though she is making a difference.
Things are working just as she planned until one day she arrives to find a future Snape near death. He is even paler than normal and doesn’t have the energy to even sit up when he sees her.
“What happened?” she shrieks, trying to remain calm. Her worst nightmare is that something will happen to Harry, Ron, or to Severus.
“It isn’t serious,” he says, waving her away, but just the smell of dead flesh and drying blood tells her differently.
“Of course, it’s serious!” she cries, pushing his hand away so she can inspect the damage. That he lets her is further evidence of the severity of the situation. “You could die, you stupid, stupid man! How could you let this go?” She takes out the many bottles from her Mary Poppins bag until she finds what she needs.
He shakes his head while she works. “I won’t die,” he murmurs again and again.
“How can you be so sure? You’re rotting from the inside out,” she argues.
“It isn’t my time to go,” he says again, his eyes half shut.
“How can you know that?” she asks. But he doesn’t answer and Hermione is suddenly glad for that. If he does know, then she doesn’t want to know how. She works a bit longer until she is finally satisfied that he will survive.
Finally finished, she tries to move away but he clasps her hand in his. “Stay with me,” he says in a tone that with anyone else Hermione might describe as pleading.
She stays. He doesn’t let go of her hand. She sits in the chair beside his bed and tells him the latest frustrations of their search. When their conversation lulls, she tries to take her leave again, but he insists she stay. He wants her nearby, he tells her.
To pass the time, she rests his hand palm up and with her index finger draws out the letters - VOLD. His eyes shoot open and he flashes her a deadly stare.
“Miss Granger,” he warns.
“Close your eyes,” she says. “My mother used to play this game with me when I was sick and abed.” She returns his stare until he does, then she finishes her sentence. VOLDY IS MOLDY.
He glares at her again, but his lips betray him, curling up at the ends. He takes her hand and insists on having a turn. With one long finger he ghost writes KNOW IT ALL on her palm.
“Always,” Hermione says with a coy smile. He takes her hand again and this time he writes I ALWAYS LOVED YOU.
She sucks in a breath and searches for the right words to say. How does she explain her feelings towards him? It is not as simple as love, but there is that in there somewhere. He looks away from her towards the wall. He can’t bear to look at her while she rejects him. She takes his hand and writes I KNOW.
“Is that all?” He pulls his hand out of her grip.
“It’s complicated, isn’t it?”
“I suppose,” he says, but he sounds hurt nonetheless. His injuries must be contributing to this sudden openness. She is unused to this side of the elder Severus.
Hermione moves from her chair and sits next to him on the bed. He looks uncomfortable at her sudden closeness, but doesn’t say anything. She raises her hand and brushes the hair from his face so she can look in his eyes. “I do care for you,” she tells him.
“But Mr. Weasley claims your deepest affections,” he says.
Hermione frowns. Ron held her at Dumbledore’s funeral when she thought her entire world was coming apart. He sat with her at the Burrow and they discussed their plans of helping Harry with the Horcruxes, and he has held her hand on occasion, but neither one of them has taken it any further. There simply isn’t the time to focus on trivialities such as romance.
“Ron is…Ron is a very dear friend to me,” she says. “And there are times when I think he wants…when I think I want…”
She looks away, only to feel his hand on her chin, forcing her gaze back to him. “Perhaps if things had been different…” he says. His fingers softly caress her chin and memories of that night on his couch the day before his first class as a teacher at Hogwarts flashes through her mind. But it could never work, would never work.
“If I had been born twenty years earlier and a Mudblood had somehow been Sorted into Slytherin, you mean?”
“Or if I had been born twenty years later and a lonely scrappy boy had somehow been Sorted into Gryffindor.”
“Then yes, definitely, you would be my first choice,” she says with an affectionate smile, which he returns weakly. She leans down and presses a soft kiss to his brow. “You should get some rest.”
He is sleeping peacefully when she leaves for the present.
****
Things go from bad to worse when Ron leaves. Hermione is convinced he will return the next day when he gets over his fit of anger. When he doesn’t she is crushed. Harry is more taciturn than ever and her only comfort is her Time Turner. Even the surly older Professor Snape is more cheerful than Harry.
She goes to the future with more regularity than she ever went to the past. She finds that if she twists the Time Turner slightly to the right before she spins it she is more likely to travel forward than back.
But it is not foolproof. Sometimes she still meets with a younger Severus. She finds herself spending one spring day with a seventh-year Snape. They talk a little until the conversation tapers off into a comfortable silence. They relax in the grass in a well-concealed copse near the lake. The gentle sound of the wind in the trees and water lapping on the shore almost lull her to sleep.
Severus rolls over, closer than ever. The sun, bright even through the shade of her eyelids, dims and when she opens her eyes, she sees him hovering above. Before she can react, he lowers his lips to hers.
He is more practiced than the first time he kissed her, though much more hesitant and less passionate than he will be a few years later the day before his first day of teaching. Hermione tries to forget about how Ron has abandoned her and Harry, Ron who might have stolen kisses by the lake or at the Burrow, and focuses instead on the here and now.
“We shouldn’t do this,” she says eventually.
“I only have two more visits with you,” he argues. “I’m still hoping you’ll tell me where my secret lab is hidden. I haven’t found it yet.”
Hermione frowns at him. “I’m not telling you. Besides, it was so long ago now I don’t think I would remember where it is.”
“So long ago?” he asks. Hermione can’t explain. The next time he will see her will be her first time, once more and then he won’t see her again for several years. By her calculations, she has one visit left to him in his third year and that last visit. It makes her head hurt to think about it, so she kisses him instead, pulling him down on top of her. Their snogging soon turns into more and she can feel the evidence of his growing excitement against her stomach.
With a push at his shoulders, she stops him from pulling up her jumper. “Severus,” she says. He nearly jumps at the sound of his name.
“We could…I mean, I’d like to…do you want…” he spits and sputters. Hermione puts her hand to his cheek and he stops talking.
Without a word, she moves her hand to his trousers. His eyes drift shut at her touch. She has no idea what she is doing. For one, this is the first time she has done this. Victor only asked kisses of her and Ron hasn’t gone farther than holding her hand before abandoning her. And for two, it breaks every rule she decided upon when she first set out to travel to the Snape’s past.
But the look on his face spurs her on. She has never seen him so open and vulnerable. He has let his guard down for her and her alone and she likes it. She likes him. It doesn’t take long before he is muttering an apology and fishing his wand out of his robe pocket to clean himself up. She giggles, but stops when he jerks his head up and looks at her in horror. He thinks she is laughing at him, when really it just the first time in months that she has been happy enough to come close to laughing. To still his nerves, she leans in and kisses him again.
“I should go,” she says with flushed cheeks after a few intense moments.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to return the favor? It seems unfair to have you running off so soon after,” he says, holding her to him. She nods her head, even as her heart beats wildly in her chest with desire. This is not real life. No matter how much she wishes she could stay here with him, she is in the wrong time.
“There is time,” she says.
He snorts at the irony.
“Try the third floor corridor,” she whispers in his ear. Why not? She figures, she has already broken all the rules today as it is. He smiles, watching as she turns her Time Turner and leaves him behind again. She realizes with a pang, that it’s starting to hurt her almost as much as it must hurt him.
****
The world spins around her, but she doesn’t land in the forest near Harry. She has gone from Severus in the past to Professor Snape in the future. She looks at his older self in confusion, trying to piece together how she landed here. She has never gone from the past to the future - the future to her anyway. He waits while she recovers.
“You weren’t expecting to be here?” he asks, finally reaching down to help her up.
“I was just with you - a younger you,” she explains. “I thought I was coming back to my time.”
“When?” he asks. It is the one question she has hoped he won’t ask. She is already flushed from their encounter, an encounter that happened just minutes before for her and decades for him, so she doesn’t blush as she might normally.
“I-uh-you were in your seventh year.”
He regards her warily and then turns away from her with a snort of disgust. He remembers. His scowl pierces her heart and Hermione wonders if his memories are good or if they have turned spiteful through the years when she didn’t return to him. She takes a seat and wills her heartbeat to slow to a normal speed.
“What happened to Mr. Weasley?” he asks.
“He left.”
“A taste of your own medicine,” he says cruelly.
Hermione cringes. Her anguish at Ron’s absence must be nothing compared to what he has endured with her comings and goings all these years.
“Do you have any news?” she asks, hoping he will accept the change of subject.
He nods. He is all business now. “I think I’ve discovered what the last Horcrux is, Rowena Ravenclaw’s diadem. It’s heavily guarded though.”
“Where?”
He shakes his head. “I haven’t figured that out yet. Perhaps you and Potter might do some of the work for a change.
“Guarded how?” she asks, ignoring his jibe. She is used to his caustic comments by now.
“An army of Inferi among other things. You are going to need more than just the two of you to get at it.”
“Harry isn’t going to like that. He refuses to tell anyone what we’re doing. He hardly tolerates me being with him. He didn’t want me or Ron at the beginning.”
“Convince him otherwise,” he says sternly. His black eyes glitter with anger. She knows he hates to talk of Harry. “Your lives depend on it.”
“I’ll try,” she says, conceding. He nods. An awkward silence settles upon them until Hermione feels compelled to say something, anything. “I am-I am sorry,” she says.
She turns the Time Turner once more, uncertain if she really hears him mutter “don’t be” under his breath as she goes or if it is just her imagination.
Go to the next part
Title: Time's Fool
Characters: Hermione/Severus
Summary: Hermione uses a Time Turner to go back and change Snape's past. But his future is her present and Time is a fickle thing. Not your average Time Turner fic (I hope!)
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Not mine - Jo's characters and mostly Niffenegger's concepts regarding time.
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Come out of the circle of time
And into the circle of love.
Rumi
Hermione waits for what seems an eternity, before she lies on the bed and falls into a restless sleep. She awakes when she feels the soft touch of someone smoothing back the hair from her face. Opening her eyes, she sees Professor Snape standing over her with a gentle look that hardens immediately when he sees her looking at him.
“Get up,” he says, holding out the Time Turner to her. It dangles from the end of his index finger.
She doesn’t take it. Instead, she sits up, hugging her knees to her chest, and asks, “where-when did you go?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he says. He shakes the Time Turner in his hand for her to take, which she again ignores.
“What about our plan?”
“Our plan?” He sneers at her.
“My plan,” she says.
He leans over and puts the Time Turner around her neck. Still fingering it, he narrows his eyes. “The Dark Lord became very angry last month when someone discovered several key Ministry employees were under an Imperius curse cast by Macnair. I suspect you and your friends will have something to do with it.”
“Names?”
He drops the small hourglass and turns away from her. “McAlister and Smithson.”
“And what about things we haven’t prevented but might-“
“Might never change?” He turns back to her and his face is twisted in anger. Hermione drops the argument. She is surprised he has acquiesced to this so quickly after calling her a foolish girl and disappearing into who knows when. She wonders what has changed his mind, but is too nervous to ask. He has given her something. Perhaps, in time, he will agree to more. She almost laughs at that thought - in time indeed.
“I should go,” she says quietly.
“Yes, you should.”
Hermione holds out her hand. He scowls at her at first, but finally takes it. Instead of shaking it, however, he bows over it, making Hermione blush. Turning the timepiece, the last thing she sees is his silhouette framed by the window.
****
It doesn’t take long before Harry, Ron, and Hermione are on the run. When they are not trying to figure out what Dumbledore meant with his gifts left to them in his will or what and where the next Horcrux might be found, she sneaks off and uses her Time Turner. The information that Snape provides her goes a long way. She writes short detailed notes to Remus Lupin, who then mobilizes the Order of the Phoenix. And more and more, she finds excuses to stay longer with the man.
“I have a question,” she starts one evening. Months ago, she had bought the seventh year Potions textbook and several other manuals so she doesn’t fall behind in her schoolwork. After the boys go to bed, she pulls them out and studies them, but there is something that has stumped her.
“I’ve already told you everything I know, Granger,” Snape snaps.
“Yes, yes, and I appreciate that. I will make sure that Remus knows, but this is about Potions.” She pulls out her book and opens it to the page she has dog eared the night before.
Snape scowls at her. “I’m no longer you’re teacher.”
“It’s just one question,” she says, coming dangerously close to whining.
“It’s never just one question with you.”
Hermione snaps the books shut and shoves it back in her bag. “Fine, never mind, I’ll just figure it out myself. Or maybe I won’t. I’ll fail my N.E.W.T.s and will end up working as a receptionist in my parent’s dentistry office. And it will be your fault, you miserable git.”
She looks up to see that Snape’s eyes narrowed and his lips are pressed into a thin line. She has angered him.
“Don’t speak to me like that,” he hisses.
“Why not? You’re not my teacher any longer as you so generously pointed out.” She is angry, not really at him, but at the situation that means she can’t attend school. She loves school. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to yell at you,” she says with remorse.
He grabs her arm as she stands up to leave. “Sit down,” he orders her. He repeats himself more firmly when she hesitates. “Sit down.”
“You may ask me one question and only one question. I suggest you choose wisely.”
****
They play chess. She asks him one question each time about Potions. They do not discuss the war until right before she leaves. But she is grateful for even the few tidbits he can give her. It is the only way she can feel as though she is making a difference.
Things are working just as she planned until one day she arrives to find a future Snape near death. He is even paler than normal and doesn’t have the energy to even sit up when he sees her.
“What happened?” she shrieks, trying to remain calm. Her worst nightmare is that something will happen to Harry, Ron, or to Severus.
“It isn’t serious,” he says, waving her away, but just the smell of dead flesh and drying blood tells her differently.
“Of course, it’s serious!” she cries, pushing his hand away so she can inspect the damage. That he lets her is further evidence of the severity of the situation. “You could die, you stupid, stupid man! How could you let this go?” She takes out the many bottles from her Mary Poppins bag until she finds what she needs.
He shakes his head while she works. “I won’t die,” he murmurs again and again.
“How can you be so sure? You’re rotting from the inside out,” she argues.
“It isn’t my time to go,” he says again, his eyes half shut.
“How can you know that?” she asks. But he doesn’t answer and Hermione is suddenly glad for that. If he does know, then she doesn’t want to know how. She works a bit longer until she is finally satisfied that he will survive.
Finally finished, she tries to move away but he clasps her hand in his. “Stay with me,” he says in a tone that with anyone else Hermione might describe as pleading.
She stays. He doesn’t let go of her hand. She sits in the chair beside his bed and tells him the latest frustrations of their search. When their conversation lulls, she tries to take her leave again, but he insists she stay. He wants her nearby, he tells her.
To pass the time, she rests his hand palm up and with her index finger draws out the letters - VOLD. His eyes shoot open and he flashes her a deadly stare.
“Miss Granger,” he warns.
“Close your eyes,” she says. “My mother used to play this game with me when I was sick and abed.” She returns his stare until he does, then she finishes her sentence. VOLDY IS MOLDY.
He glares at her again, but his lips betray him, curling up at the ends. He takes her hand and insists on having a turn. With one long finger he ghost writes KNOW IT ALL on her palm.
“Always,” Hermione says with a coy smile. He takes her hand again and this time he writes I ALWAYS LOVED YOU.
She sucks in a breath and searches for the right words to say. How does she explain her feelings towards him? It is not as simple as love, but there is that in there somewhere. He looks away from her towards the wall. He can’t bear to look at her while she rejects him. She takes his hand and writes I KNOW.
“Is that all?” He pulls his hand out of her grip.
“It’s complicated, isn’t it?”
“I suppose,” he says, but he sounds hurt nonetheless. His injuries must be contributing to this sudden openness. She is unused to this side of the elder Severus.
Hermione moves from her chair and sits next to him on the bed. He looks uncomfortable at her sudden closeness, but doesn’t say anything. She raises her hand and brushes the hair from his face so she can look in his eyes. “I do care for you,” she tells him.
“But Mr. Weasley claims your deepest affections,” he says.
Hermione frowns. Ron held her at Dumbledore’s funeral when she thought her entire world was coming apart. He sat with her at the Burrow and they discussed their plans of helping Harry with the Horcruxes, and he has held her hand on occasion, but neither one of them has taken it any further. There simply isn’t the time to focus on trivialities such as romance.
“Ron is…Ron is a very dear friend to me,” she says. “And there are times when I think he wants…when I think I want…”
She looks away, only to feel his hand on her chin, forcing her gaze back to him. “Perhaps if things had been different…” he says. His fingers softly caress her chin and memories of that night on his couch the day before his first class as a teacher at Hogwarts flashes through her mind. But it could never work, would never work.
“If I had been born twenty years earlier and a Mudblood had somehow been Sorted into Slytherin, you mean?”
“Or if I had been born twenty years later and a lonely scrappy boy had somehow been Sorted into Gryffindor.”
“Then yes, definitely, you would be my first choice,” she says with an affectionate smile, which he returns weakly. She leans down and presses a soft kiss to his brow. “You should get some rest.”
He is sleeping peacefully when she leaves for the present.
****
Things go from bad to worse when Ron leaves. Hermione is convinced he will return the next day when he gets over his fit of anger. When he doesn’t she is crushed. Harry is more taciturn than ever and her only comfort is her Time Turner. Even the surly older Professor Snape is more cheerful than Harry.
She goes to the future with more regularity than she ever went to the past. She finds that if she twists the Time Turner slightly to the right before she spins it she is more likely to travel forward than back.
But it is not foolproof. Sometimes she still meets with a younger Severus. She finds herself spending one spring day with a seventh-year Snape. They talk a little until the conversation tapers off into a comfortable silence. They relax in the grass in a well-concealed copse near the lake. The gentle sound of the wind in the trees and water lapping on the shore almost lull her to sleep.
Severus rolls over, closer than ever. The sun, bright even through the shade of her eyelids, dims and when she opens her eyes, she sees him hovering above. Before she can react, he lowers his lips to hers.
He is more practiced than the first time he kissed her, though much more hesitant and less passionate than he will be a few years later the day before his first day of teaching. Hermione tries to forget about how Ron has abandoned her and Harry, Ron who might have stolen kisses by the lake or at the Burrow, and focuses instead on the here and now.
“We shouldn’t do this,” she says eventually.
“I only have two more visits with you,” he argues. “I’m still hoping you’ll tell me where my secret lab is hidden. I haven’t found it yet.”
Hermione frowns at him. “I’m not telling you. Besides, it was so long ago now I don’t think I would remember where it is.”
“So long ago?” he asks. Hermione can’t explain. The next time he will see her will be her first time, once more and then he won’t see her again for several years. By her calculations, she has one visit left to him in his third year and that last visit. It makes her head hurt to think about it, so she kisses him instead, pulling him down on top of her. Their snogging soon turns into more and she can feel the evidence of his growing excitement against her stomach.
With a push at his shoulders, she stops him from pulling up her jumper. “Severus,” she says. He nearly jumps at the sound of his name.
“We could…I mean, I’d like to…do you want…” he spits and sputters. Hermione puts her hand to his cheek and he stops talking.
Without a word, she moves her hand to his trousers. His eyes drift shut at her touch. She has no idea what she is doing. For one, this is the first time she has done this. Victor only asked kisses of her and Ron hasn’t gone farther than holding her hand before abandoning her. And for two, it breaks every rule she decided upon when she first set out to travel to the Snape’s past.
But the look on his face spurs her on. She has never seen him so open and vulnerable. He has let his guard down for her and her alone and she likes it. She likes him. It doesn’t take long before he is muttering an apology and fishing his wand out of his robe pocket to clean himself up. She giggles, but stops when he jerks his head up and looks at her in horror. He thinks she is laughing at him, when really it just the first time in months that she has been happy enough to come close to laughing. To still his nerves, she leans in and kisses him again.
“I should go,” she says with flushed cheeks after a few intense moments.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to return the favor? It seems unfair to have you running off so soon after,” he says, holding her to him. She nods her head, even as her heart beats wildly in her chest with desire. This is not real life. No matter how much she wishes she could stay here with him, she is in the wrong time.
“There is time,” she says.
He snorts at the irony.
“Try the third floor corridor,” she whispers in his ear. Why not? She figures, she has already broken all the rules today as it is. He smiles, watching as she turns her Time Turner and leaves him behind again. She realizes with a pang, that it’s starting to hurt her almost as much as it must hurt him.
****
The world spins around her, but she doesn’t land in the forest near Harry. She has gone from Severus in the past to Professor Snape in the future. She looks at his older self in confusion, trying to piece together how she landed here. She has never gone from the past to the future - the future to her anyway. He waits while she recovers.
“You weren’t expecting to be here?” he asks, finally reaching down to help her up.
“I was just with you - a younger you,” she explains. “I thought I was coming back to my time.”
“When?” he asks. It is the one question she has hoped he won’t ask. She is already flushed from their encounter, an encounter that happened just minutes before for her and decades for him, so she doesn’t blush as she might normally.
“I-uh-you were in your seventh year.”
He regards her warily and then turns away from her with a snort of disgust. He remembers. His scowl pierces her heart and Hermione wonders if his memories are good or if they have turned spiteful through the years when she didn’t return to him. She takes a seat and wills her heartbeat to slow to a normal speed.
“What happened to Mr. Weasley?” he asks.
“He left.”
“A taste of your own medicine,” he says cruelly.
Hermione cringes. Her anguish at Ron’s absence must be nothing compared to what he has endured with her comings and goings all these years.
“Do you have any news?” she asks, hoping he will accept the change of subject.
He nods. He is all business now. “I think I’ve discovered what the last Horcrux is, Rowena Ravenclaw’s diadem. It’s heavily guarded though.”
“Where?”
He shakes his head. “I haven’t figured that out yet. Perhaps you and Potter might do some of the work for a change.
“Guarded how?” she asks, ignoring his jibe. She is used to his caustic comments by now.
“An army of Inferi among other things. You are going to need more than just the two of you to get at it.”
“Harry isn’t going to like that. He refuses to tell anyone what we’re doing. He hardly tolerates me being with him. He didn’t want me or Ron at the beginning.”
“Convince him otherwise,” he says sternly. His black eyes glitter with anger. She knows he hates to talk of Harry. “Your lives depend on it.”
“I’ll try,” she says, conceding. He nods. An awkward silence settles upon them until Hermione feels compelled to say something, anything. “I am-I am sorry,” she says.
She turns the Time Turner once more, uncertain if she really hears him mutter “don’t be” under his breath as she goes or if it is just her imagination.
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