Chapter 7

The next several days were spent carefully excavating Machu Picchu. They sprung several more traps as they did so, but there were no more almost-casualties, leaving Hermione free to run from site to site to inspect new ruins as they were uncovered.

It was exciting stuff, and Severus found himself reveling in it. Though there wasn't another puzzle the size of the hidden temple door, there were traps and little riddles throughout the city, and each time a squad found one, the Omega squad was summoned to help.

After the second day, Severus believed Tom was right – the Omega squad was the smart squad. Tom and he solved most of the puzzles as they were found, though Minerva solved a fair few as well. Regulus and Neville took up the logistics mantle, designating the best way to sort and catalog everything, as well as how best to pack it for transport. Soon, they were directing the other squads in what to do, with even the other squad leaders listening and obeying them.

By the time the city was emptied entirely, everyone had exciting stories to share around the campfire at night.

"So there I was, standing on top of a ramp!" Ron Weasley leapt on top of a log to demonstrate. "And then, as soon as I stepped forward, I heard this awful rumble, and this giant boulder was coming down after me!"

Half the camp gasped, listening avidly. The other half exchanged superior glances, indicating that they would never have gotten caught in such an obvious trap in the first place.

"It was all I could do to sprint down the ramp and hurl myself sideways, just out of the way!" Ron said, hurling himself to the side to demonstrate, tucking and rolling onto the grass. "I barely made it, as it was! I lost a shoe! But by throwing myself sideways, I ended up right inside the prince's treasure room!" He grinned at them. "That's worth a shoe any day, isn't it?"

"That's nothing!" a boy called Cormac McLaggen challenged. "Earlier today, I accidentally opened a door that had a giant wasp's nest on top of it, and all of the sudden, these magically-enlarged demon insects were coming after my head!"

Severus turned to glance at Hermione as Cormac continued with his story. Her lips were twitching upward, but not in the reverent awe that most everyone else had. Carefully edging backwards, so Tom didn't catch him sneaking off, Severus went to sit next to Hermione.

"You should hear my story," he said quietly. "I opened this giant door that said, "Do Not Open", and then Death himself came barreling out..."

Hermione burst into snickers and quickly tried to stifle her laughs.

"I only escaped by shoving my wand up my arse and casting the suicide spell," Severus continued. "Death couldn't kill me, because I'd already killed myself. By the time he figured out that he could claim me because I was already dead, I'd found the antidote hiding in a rock and resurrected myself, completely free of brain-damage and any lasting harm."

By the time Hermione could stop her giggling, her eyes were shining with mirth.

"Low opinions of your co-adventurers?" she asked, giggling, and Severus smiled at her.

"Not really," he said. "Just – well, some of them certainly aren't the shiniest sickles in the vault, are they?"

Hermione laughed. "No. I suppose not."

"Not everyone can be clever, though," Severus said. "We need dumb morons like Cormac to go barreling into traps we don't know how to diffuse. Otherwise, we'd end up staring at a bunch of heavily-warded doors, growing old as we try to break the long-lost spells."

"Well said," Hermione said, smiling. "You'll notice there are none of those on my squad, though."

"Was that a compliment?" Severus teased, and Hermione laughed.

"Severus, you have to know I think you're brilliant," she told him. "That's why I fought for you to be on my squad so hard."

Severus' grin faded.

"How'd you know I was so brilliant, though?" he asked her.

"Oh, it was all on your application," she told him, waving him off. "I thought-"

"Don't give me that," Severus said. "Hermione, when I look at you, I just get this feeling – of fate or something. Tell me, Hermione – did I know you, in the future?"

Hermione gave him a closed look.

"Rule number ten," she said quietly. "No interrogations about other timelines."

"I'm not interrogating," he argued. "I'm just asking."

Hermione's eyes were veiled, and Severus continued on, frustrated.

"I mean, it's obvious, Hermione. Minerva was my teacher in school, so you obviously selected her based on her future abilities with Transfiguration, which helped you know she'd be clever at seventeen, too," Severus argued. "For the rest of us, the ones you got from all over time, you must know of us somehow in the future too, right?"

Hermione bit her lip, and Severus pressed on.

"I mean, it doesn't matter anymore now, does it?" he urged. "We're not in your timeline anymore, Hermione, so it doesn't matter. Just tell me – were we friends?"

It happened in a second. Hermione's eyes closed over, as if sealed with ice, and when she laughed shortly, and it was cold.

"Friends?" she said. "Hardly. Now, if you'll excuse me, Severus, I need to get some reading done."

She strode off into the tent, not looking back, and Severus watched her go, frustrated.

"What'd you ask her?"

Severus looked up to see Tom and Neville looking at him curiously, and he felt the urge to punch them both.

"I asked her if she knew me from the future," he admitted.

Neville's eyes grew comically wide. "R-Rule ten states that-"

"I know what the rules are," Severus snapped. "I asked her anyway."

"What did she say?" Tom asked quietly.

Severus glanced up, but Tom didn't appear to be teasing him – on the contrary, he seemed deathly serious.

"She just said that we weren't friends," he said. "That's all she said."

Neville looked relieved, and Severus got a sneaking suspicion that maybe he should try and crack open Neville before having another go at Hermione.

Later that night, just as he was dozing off, Severus was jolted awake with a whisper.

"She wouldn't tell me either, you know," Tom said quietly.

"You asked her too?" Severus said. He sat up, quietly casting a Muffilato around them. "When?"

"You forget – she came to see me repeatedly," Tom said quietly. "All throughout my school years. She was always nineteen – I have no idea how she never aged. But one day, when I was sixteen, I asked her."

Severus couldn't have stopped himself from listening if he'd tried.

"I love her. I've always bloody loved her since I was seven, and she came to find me in that bloody orphanage," Tom said disgustedly, running a hand through his hair. "And when I was 16 – well, the age difference wasn't exactly a deal-breaker anymore. So I asked her."

"I asked her why she came back in time to help me," Tom said, his eyes dark. "I asked her why she saved me. If I meant something to her in the future, and she'd promised the future me to help ease my past. If we were friends, or lovers, or something more."

Severus held his breath.

"And she just looked at me," Tom said, his tone angry. "She just gave me this look, and I felt horrible. I knew I'd horribly disappointed her in that moment, just by asking, but I haven't the slightest idea as to why."

"She did the same to me," Severus murmured. "She just gave me this look – it was so cold, so heartless..."

They sat there in the dark.

"Maybe she doesn't want to think about the us she knew in the future anymore," Severus suggested. "Maybe she just wants to focus on us, the people she knows now."

"Yeah, but she picked us for what we'll do in the future, didn't she?" Tom argued, frustrated. "If I'm so great as to catch her notice in the future, why can't she tell me so I can become that person to catch her eye now?"

"Maybe she's seeing someone," Severus said quietly, though his guts clenched at the thought. Maybe she's seeing someone in her present, some boy she's going back to-"

"Please," Tom scoffed. "Have you seen the way the others from her timeline flirt with her? There's no way they'd do that if she weren't single. But if she is single, why won't she give us the time of day?"

"She gave you way more than the time of day," Severus said sharply, unable to stop himself. "She met with you repeatedly over a period of years. I've only known her for a fortnight, and I'm still trying to get to know her."

"She's just busy right now," Severus continued. "I get the feeling that for all Harry's the obvious leader of this whole thing, Hermione's the one who came up with it and planned the whole expedition. This is the trip of her life, the journey of a lifetime, for her, the culmination of all her work and planning. She's focused on that, Tom, not on us and our stupid little crushes. Only when her work is done will she be able to look up and find that she had us great guys helping her along the way."

Tom looked at him sideways. "Us?"

"Well, one of us would have to win out, I suppose," Severus said, clearing his throat. "But – in a manner of speaking – we're on the same side, as we're both fighting for her heart..."

"Didn't know you fancied her that much," Tom commented, examining him.

Severus met his eyes steadily, his Occlumency shields tightly shut.

"There are other ways," Tom said abruptly. "Ways where we wouldn't have to have her choose."

Severus stared at him. "Like what?"

"Triads are very strong, very powerful unions," Tom said, tossing himself back onto the bed. "She a very powerful witch – she took us all back in time 500 years, you realize? And us – we're both shaping up to be immensely powerful wizards. A triad with the three of us, her in the center. A triangle's the strongest shape, you know."

Severus carefully said nothing, and Tom rolled over.

"Just – think about it, Severus," Tom said quietly, yawning. "Us three, together. We'd be unstoppable. We could rule the world."

Severus had a hard time falling asleep that night. Though he knew Tom didn't know it, Triads had been outlawed since the 50s, found to be dark magic that corrupted the soul. The last one successfully pulled off had been Grindelwald's, with two of his followers, and both followers had gone mad and died in the end.

A Triad, with them and Hermione?

He shivered.

They'd be able to rule the world, all right, but what a twisted world it would be.