A/N: I apologize, this chapter is awful. I even (duhn duhn duhn) edited it in an effort to make it work and I just couldn't do it. I needed them to move forward in this chapter, but it's just super forced and awful. So if you can fight your way through it, I promise the next chapter will be much better.
Song for this chapter: Ghosts That We Knew by Mumford and Sons
My face was pressed against a musty but soft couch cushion when I awoke, and at first I was terribly disoriented. Where was I and how had I gotten here? But then the previous night began to trickle back into my memory, along with the realization that I was not wearing a shirt. My memories of the night before were somewhat scattered, but I was in no hurry to collect them when I remembered just how pain I had been in.
"Are you hungry or thirsty?" a man's voice asked, and turned my head to try and see him.
"Could I have water?" I asked him when I finally saw him slouching in a chair off to the side, finally breaking the resemblance I had been seeing to Severus Snape.
"Yes of course," he said, and then he swept out of the chair, and the resemblance was back.
Who was this man? Why did he look so much like Snape? Were they related somehow? Where was I anyway? My mind was racing to find any answers as I sat up stiffly on the couch. The skin on my back felt a bit tight, and my muscles were sore, but compared to the pain I had been in yesterday I felt nearly perfect. I was exposed in just my bra, which was rather unsightly to look at stained with my dried blood. I looked around for a throw blanket or something else to cover myself with and discovered that a tshirt had been left for me on the couch.
I quickly pulled the shirt over my head, and kept my arms inside of the shirt so I could try to somewhat awkwardly remove my soiled bra. That was the position I was in when he walked back into the room with a glass of water in his hand. Some color rose into his cheeks, but he averted his gaze and allowed me to finish removing it and discreetly slide it under my thigh without furthering my embarrassment.
"I'm done now," I told him and he looked back at me and continued across the room to hand me the water.
"I thought you might like a shower," he said after I had taken the glass. "You should wash off the rest of the burn paste, and there is still blood in your hair."
Before replying I greedily drank the water he had given me. It helped to wash away the metallic taste in my mouth and it invigorated me in a way the room temperature oddly flavored water the boys and I had been drinking in the tent never could.
"A shower doesn't sound half bad," I said with a shrug. "Maybe we should get to know each other a bit first though. I don't even know your name so using your shower feels a bit… strange. My name is Hermione Granger."
"My name is Severus Snape, but you knew that already didn't you?" he responded with a quirked brow.
"No, I didn't," I said, searching his face in confusion. "You can't be. How old are you?"
"I assure you I am, but I don't see why you would say otherwise as clearly you've already met me at some point that I do not recall," he said looking frustrated. "The last thing you said to me before you fell asleep last night was about how I looked like Severus Snape. So I am now twenty, and I've been out of Hogwarts for two years. So what age does that make you? Where have we met?"
My stomach turned and I thought I may very well lose that water. I rubbed my eyes as if that would somehow change what I had just heard, and then I turned my attention back to the man sitting on the other end of the couch, that I sincerely hoped was lying to me.
"You aren't pulling my leg?" I asked him in as even a voice as I could manage.
"No, why would I? I don't even know you." He snipped, sounding even more like the Severus Snape that I knew.
"Could you please tell me what year it is?" I asked in a strangled voice.
"It is 1980," he said, his face clearly displaying that he thought I was insane.
I dropped my head into my hands and tried to process what I had just heard.
"The date?" I ground out from behind my hands.
"April third," he answered quickly, though he was starting to sound confused.
Eighteen years! Somehow I had fallen back in time exactly eighteen years, and at this moment in time I was existence here in this house at 19 years of age, due to the time turner, as well as seven months old in England with my parents. What was I supposed to do now? I had no idea how I had gotten here, and there was no way I could get back. A person could only make leaps in time when moving backward, there was only one speed at which to move forward. I fisted my hands in my hair in an effort to stop it, but I could feel my eyes burning with coming tears.
"What year should it be," he asked quietly as he shifted closer to me on the couch and put his hand lightly on my knee in a somewhat awkward comforting gesture.
"I'm not sure I should tell you," I choked as the tears took hold. "I could completely destroy the timeline."
"If your appearance when you came here is any indication, perhaps that wouldn't be such a bad thing," he said quietly giving my knee a squeeze when my crying grew louder. "Why don't you tell me?"
"You are nothing like yourself," I sobbed at him. "In my time you aren't at all nice."
"Things change," he said, and he sounded so sad that I couldn't help but turn and look at him to see his stricken face. "No one else knows you've arrived here, and I have no intention of telling them. So it is safe for you to confide in me."
"It should be 1998," I said as I scrubbed at my tears and tried to get my emotions under control. "Somewhere in England I am seven months old, and I have no way of reintegrating back into my life or returning to my own time line. I don't know what I am supposed to do now."
"Well what were you doing before you showed up here?" he asked, and I got the impression he was trying to get me to think about something other than crying in a pathetically male way.
"I was on the run," I told him in a dead voice. "We were working on a secret mission that was supposed to end the war. We had obviously run into some difficulties. I'd been taken prisoner just before I arrived here."
"How did you end up here?" he asked me his eyes searching mine. "You did not have a time turner on you, though even that would have been confusion."
"I haven't the foggiest," I said, finally gaining control over my tears as I tried to puzzle it out. "I was only halfway conscious at that point. I was bleeding and a chandelier had just fallen on me. I felt someone grab me, and I think I tried to apparate. Then I swear I was on a dock waiting for the ferry to the underworld, and then I walked through a doorway and I was here."
"What was the chandelier made of?" he asked, lurching up off the couch and crossing over to an overloaded bookshelf to look through it.
"How am I supposed to know that?" I asked him in frustration, through myself back against the couch and grimacing at the unpleasant feeling of the burn paste being smeared by the t-shirt. "That was my first time in Malfoy Manor, and there wasn't exactly time for a tour."
"Were you in the drawing room?" he asked as he spun around with a book in hand.
"Again no time for a tour," I snapped. "But yeah, I think it was the drawing room."
"It sounds like blood magic," he said distractedly as he began to flip through the book. "But it should have been an astral projection. Why did your body come with you?"
"I don't know," I sighed, scrubbing at my eyes again. "Maybe I'll take that shower after all."
"Up the stairs, and first door on the left," he said distractedly as he sat down on the couch while still reading the book he had taken out. "You can borrow any clothes you need."
I shook my head at the strange combination of rude dismissal that I was used to from Professor Snape and the offer to use a shower and borrow the clothes of a young adult who didn't look or act like someone who should become a teacher within the year. Why did Snape become a teacher anyway? Was it related to his position in the war? What was his position anyway? I thought for sure after he killed Dumbledore that his loyalty to the death eaters was certain, but a loyal death eater wouldn't take a muggleborn in and nurse them back from the brink of death would they?
I tried to push all thought out of my mind as I climbed into his tiny shower. But even his shower was an insight into this man's personality. He made his own soap, but purchased oil reducing shampoo from a muggle market. His shower was clean but still had a look of disrepair that made it seem a bit dingy. His whole house had a forlorn look to it, and I began to wonder why he didn't take care of it while I tried to wash the blood out of my hair.
"You look ridiculous," he said as I tripped over the too long leg of a pair of sweat pants I had borrowed from his drawer. "Why didn't you shrink them to fit?"
"I don't have a wand anymore," I said petulantly as I flopped down onto the sofa and started rolling up the legs to fit better.
"Here," he sighed and he drew his wand.
With a quick flick of it over me I felt his pants and shirt shrink down to fit me properly. It was the first time I had since I had gone on the run that worn an outfit that was my size, and I was surprised to see just how much weight I had lost. I could see him looking at me with a concerned face, and I thought he might be thinking the same thing.
"Are you sure you aren't hungry?" he asked, and I knew that was what he was thinking.
"Famished actually," I admitted before crossing my arms over my torso to hide it from his view.
"Do you want beans and toast?" he asked as he finally set the book to the side and I saw that it was entitled Ancient Blood Magic. "It's all I can make."
I couldn't help it, I laughed.
"Come on, how can a renowned potions master only know how to make beans and toast?" I chuckled, running my fingers through my still damp hair to fight off the tangles that were trying to form.
"So I do get my mastery then?" he asked and I realized my mistake.
"Oh this is going to be harder than I thought," I sighed.
"I think whatever future I had that you lived in has been thrown out the window, so you may as well forget to worry," he shrugged as he hopped up from the couch and offered me his hand.
"I certainly hope so," I said somewhat sadly, trying to make this polite young man mesh with the stern older man who had murdered my headmaster.
"That bad?" he asked with dark eyes. "Was I still a death eater in your time?"
"For a long time none of us knew what to think," I told him with a shrug. "You were working for the order, but something always seemed just a little off. Then you… well you killed Dumbledore and it seemed pretty certain that you must be a death eater. I heard after that you were made headmaster by.. him, but I had gone on the run by then so I don't know much about that."
Snape seemed lost in thought as he led me into the small kitchen off of the living room. I could see that the wheels were turning in his mind, but I hadn't a clue in what direction they might be going. Surprisingly I was unafraid. In this man's future he would do some very bad things, but he did not seem to be someone that I should fear in this time. He had been caring and gentle with me when I had appeared before him knocking at death's door, and he was still being a perfect gentleman to me.
"I cannot imagine killing Albus Dumbledore," he spoke finally as he put a pot on the stove to cook beans in. "Even in my darkest days when I absolutely hated him… I cannot fathom it. I do not wish to know what would have brought me to that."
"I couldn't tell you even if you wanted me to," I said quietly as I sat down at the kitchen table. "No one knows why you did it."
"I put myself on a very dark path," he said, keeping his face hidden from me with hair that was not as long as I was used too. "And perhaps the soul searching I had entered into about it would have gone differently had you not appeared before me. Everything is different now."
"How so?" I asked, intrigued.
"I regretted this mark the moment I took it. The initiation… I just don't see how anyone could…" he said before shaking his head, and I knew he would not elaborate. "But if you don't show up in that wasted factory, I think my meeting with Lucius plays out differently. I think I would have remembered what he was to me at Hogwarts. I think I would have inevitably capitulated."
"But now you won't?" I asked, unsure of if I believed him.
"No," he said firmly. "Now it is not only what he has done to me that I remember when I am in his presence. I see different things when I look into his eyes, and they shame me so much more because they were done to you simply because of your birth."
"Is that not the staple of the death eaters?" I asked somewhat stiffly.
"I did say I regretted it," he snapped before taking a calming breath and returning to the task of cooking. "Once upon a time my best friend was a muggleborn. I am not as evil as my future self must have been."
"Who was he?" I asked even though it might not be my place. "Why are the two of you no longer friends?"
"Her name is Lily Evans," he said quietly, no longer moving where he stood at the stove. "There were many reasons that we were falling apart, but we are no longer friends because I chose my death eater friends over her, and I called her something unforgivable."
"Mudblood," I whispered, looking down at my arm that was still scarred with the word that Bellatrix had carved into it.
"Yes," he said in a choked voice, gripping the stove tightly.
"We all make mistakes," I told him quietly, sensing that he still needed absolution for what he had done. "All you inflicted upon her was a word. Perhaps she did not understand how much worse it could have been."
"I would never harm Lily the way Bellatrix has harmed you!" he swore fervently.
"How did you know it was her?" I gasped.
"We went to school together," he said in a strangely soft voice. "I was there when she created the curse that she applied to your back."
When the pair of us had eaten, Snape forcing me to take another helping even after I was full, we returned to his living room. We had gone in together, but quickly left me sitting there alone and went upstairs leaving me alone. I could hear him moving about up there, but I wasn't sure that I was welcome to follow him. So instead I sat on the couch listening to him open doors and walk about. It should like he was moving things, and I was curious as to what he was doing, but I fought off the urge to follow him. Instead I just stared at the fire in the grate, waiting for him to return.
It took about an hour, but then he did and I was surprised to see that he had changed into sweat pants and a t-shirt as well. He sat down on the couch just a foot or so away from me, and he seemed a bit nervous. I turned to him, prepared to ask him what was bothering him and I saw that he was holding a wand that was different from the one I had seen him using all day.
"This was my mother's wand," he said, looking at the wand in his hand rather than meeting my gaze. "I thought you could use it. At least until we can figure out how to get you one of your own."
"You don't have to," I told him, waving my hands before me. "That's a family heirloom."
"I don't have a family anymore, I may as well put it to use where it can be of service," he said with a tight shrug. "I don't like the idea of you being defenseless if Lucius were to visit my home."
"Okay," I said with a shaky voice as I reached out to take the wand.
I felt a strange tingle in my hand as he set the wand in my hand. It was much like the feeling I had the first time I had taken a wand into my hand in Olivander's shop when I was eleven. It brought on a warmth in my chest, and at the same time a sadness that I could not share this moment with my parents or my friends. I realized as I wrapped my fingers around the wand, that all the people I knew were lost to me now. Much like he had said, I had no family now. My eyes stung at the thought of it, but I fought off the tears, and instead I raised the wand and directed it at the book he had laid down on the coffee table.
"Wingardium Leviosa," I said with a quick swish and a flick.
The book merely wobbled on the table, and I felt a strange pulling sensation in my chest. It was as if I had been pulled forward to meet something, and then whatever that thing was had pushed back upon me in a rush. I slumped into the couch feeling an exhaustion settle deep in my bones, and I had to fight to keep my eyes open. I was so frustrated. That was a rudimentary spell and I had failed to complete it. I refused to admit defeat, so I forced my tired body to sit up, ignoring the way Snape was staring at me in confusion, and I raised the wand again.
"Hermione," he said, stalling me. "Perhaps you shouldn't."
"Snape, I am not a witch that cannot perform a simple levitation spell," I snapped, turning my attention back to the book. "I am better than that."
"My name is Severus," he said quietly, and I turned to look at him once more, surprised to see that he seemed hurt by my use of his surname.
"Severus then," I said with a soft smile before turning to the book once more. "Wingardium Leviosa."
This time when I completed the wand movement the book obeyed my command. It jumped into the air, and I forced it to hover there for a moment despite the rushing sensation I felt in my limbs and in what I somehow knew instinctually was my magical center. It was the strangest sensation that was somehow emptying and filling me at the same time. It made me incredibly tired, and soon it was impossible to maintain the spell. The book crashed to the table, and I slumped back to toward the couch with the world trying to fade out around me.
"Like I said, perhaps you shouldn't," Severus said quietly as he plucked the wand out of my hand. "I think you should rest more before you attempt anymore magic. Are you able to walk upstairs, or will you be needing assistance?"
"I think I can walk," I sighed tiredly, silently admitting defeat. "What is upstairs?"
"I made up the spare room for you," he explained as he helped me off the couch and threaded my arm through his when he saw how wobbly I was on my feet. "I dug out my some of my mother's clothing that I think should fit you well, but we can re-size it if need be. The bed is old, but it is comfortable and the sheets are new."
"You know you don't have to take me in. You owe me nothing," I told him tiredly as I followed him up the small staircase. "In fact it is I that owe you."
"Friendships should not be based in debt," he said with a slight shrug. "And I think I'd like to be friends. I imagine you'll be needing one now that you are stranded in my timeline."
"Yes, I could use a friend," I said, feeling my lip tremble once more at the thought of having lost everyone.
"You aren't alone," he told me as he led me over to the over-sized bed that did look quite inviting. "I'll be here when you wake."
