Time
Preface
What is time? Is it minutes and seconds or is it something more? An invisible substance that you can neither hear, taste, smell, or see. But that is only four senses and it is common knowledge that the average person has five. You can feel time. You can feel as time passes. Time, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. For one person an hour may slowly trickle by giving the impression of eternity. For an entirely different person an hour may fly by and get lost in the blink of an eye. And where does time go once it passes? Is it gone never to be reached or does it go to a place where it might sometime, some how be grasped? And if so could a person that had the knowledge where time lay be able to affect and change the future? Maybe even their future?
Chapter 1
The now eighteen year old, Hermione Granger, walked swiftly up the stairs toward the Great Hall. She had graduated from Hogwarts two years ago on a special honors diploma that Dumbledore had set up for her. She stayed at school to give the impression that she was still a student. In fact in a way she was. She still went to all her classes, but the teachers didn't give her regular work. No in a way she was an apprentice to every teacher in which she had a class. Except for one. She was not an apprentice to the resident Potions Master, one Severus Snape.
Not that it was a problem. In fact it was quite the opposite. She had already studied under Severus and had earned the title Potions Master. Not that anyone knew the fact beside the teachers and the Headmaster. Oh and of course her best friends Ron and Harry knew. They were in their seventh and last year at Hogwarts, and were another reason she was happy to keep up the charade that she was a student. As long as she was at Hogwarts she could stay with them. Plus staying at Hogwarts had been one of the conditions for Dumbledore to put her on an early graduation schedule.
Snape, or Severus as she had started to call him now that she was not his student, had been allowing her to use his own personal potions lab. She spent most of her free time there trying to figure out the thing that confused her most. Time. It was a strange thing. But she had just figured it out. It was so simple. So clear.
And now she was on her way to the Great Hall to interrupt Severus' lunch and to rub it in his face. As she reached the Great Hall she threw open the doors, ignoring the gazes of people who had turned to see who entered. She waved at Harry and Ron, then made her way up to the teacher's table.
She went around the table so she could stand behind Severus. She reached over his shoulder and grabbed a sandwich off the plate in front of him. Severus turned to face her mock glaring, "Miss Granger I wish you would refrain touching my food." He looked her up and down. "And you really should wash your hands between working in the lab and eating."
"To big of a hurry." Hermione said in between bites. "Besides I don't think anything would happen to me."
"What are you rushing about in the first place? What is so important?"
"Oh I came here to tell you I figured it out!" she said eyes sparkling with excitement. Snape just looked awe struck.
"How…"
But he never got to finish his question because Hermione started to fade before him. Then disappeared all together. "Where did she go?" Severus asked into the silence of the confused room not really expecting an answer.
"The right question, Severus, would be when?" Dumbledore answered.