"This is the last time", Hermione swore as she headed once more through the Leaky Cauldron floo on the next Saturday night. Her emotions were getting too mixed up between the facsimile Snape and the real one, and she knew she had to sort things out with the real one once and for all, but the idea of an evening's … well, an hour's sweet canoodling was too much for her. Ron had never been one for snuggling sessions, and Hermione had now discovered she had a taste for them.
And besides, it was her last saved "Snape" hair too.
She brushed the small quantity of ash off her clothing that always managed to get there after using the Floo, then looked up to see Hannah standing by the bar. The normally-unflappable woman was looking as upset as a house-elf caught in a lie, and Hermione went straight over to her.
"Is it the baby?"
"It's ... come into the back." The blonde-haired woman led the way into the private rooms, and Hermione felt that the news wouldn't be as good as the last time she was here. Hannah turned to her, tears streaming down.
"It's Neville."
"Has something happened to him?"
Hannah gulped, and pulled Hermione down to sit beside her on the sofa. "You saw his arm last week?"
"It was ghastly. How has he coped with that for all these years?"
"He hasn't." Hannah fished for a handkerchief and blew her nose. "It wasn't that bad. Not to start with. He had a few side effects but they were brief spells of dizziness and an occasional numbness. His arm was barely marked. But about ten years ago, I realised that it was getting worse. That he'd disappear off into Knockturn Alley for a couple of hours, then half a day, and come back reeking of cheap painkilling potions."
She looked up at Hermione, her eyes bleak with concealed fear. "And he's so afraid of looking like a coward, or making a fuss. He won't tell me, says it's nothing, just an allergic reaction to Gurdyroot or a late-Autumn rash or something. But I know. I've known for a long time." Hannah paused, trying to gather the strength to stay it, because saying something makes it true.
"It's Nagini's poison. And I'm so afraid for him."
Hermione swallowed, a small dark fear starting inside her. "What do you want me to do?"
"Tomorrow night, when you come to dinner, help me. Talk to him. If we confront him together, maybe he'll listen."
"But then what?"
"You get on well with Professor Snape, don't you? Neville's still terrified of him, despite getting the painkiller from him. And I'm so glad he's getting the right stuff now and not some cheap back-alley version. But he's afraid Snape will be angry at him for not telling him the truth. Tomorrow night, we could persuade him together, then you could take Neville to Snape."
She paused, then took a deep breath and smiled through the tears. "He wants to be so brave, but I'm afraid it will kill him."
Hermione wrapped her arms around Hannah and hugged her hard, just as the door opened and Neville walked in. "Everything all right?"
"Pregnancy hormones, Neville. Your poor wife is going to have hair-trigger emotions for the next several months, and you'd better be ready to deal with them."
Hermione stood and smiled at Hannah, whose back was to her husband. Hannah mouthed thank you to her, then turned to Neville. "I'll be fine. Some stupid pictures of puppies - they never tell you about this. Hermione, don't you have a date?"
"Oh Merlin, yes. I'm late." And Hermione waved to the Longbottoms and rushed out the door and out into the darkness of the London October evening.
The wind blew her in through the door as if it was trying to hurry her, and she laughed as she shook the rain and sodden autumn leaves off her umbrella. The usual clerk sat at the concierge's desk, and she bustled over just as the clock struck seven.
"I'm …"
"He's waiting for you. Room thirty-two." And he thrust the key at her and pointed her at the stairs. Hermione stared at him for a moment at disbelief at his rudeness, then took the key and hurried up. After all, if her date had arrived then the timer was already ticking.
She let herself into the room, glad that the fire had been lit and it was warm and cosy. The familiar dark shape stood beside the fire, wearing the soutane-like school robes she usually saw him in.
"You're late" he grumped.
"And you're being incredibly rude, which is the closest you've ever been to the real thing." she muttered to herself, but dropped the raincoat and umbrella on a chair and made sure the door was properly closed. Turning to her "date" with a smile, she tried to think of the most straightforward way to sat what she needed to say. Which was too long for the other.
"Well?"
"Sorry – just trying to phrase this right. Would it be all right with you if we just went straight to the physical stuff?"
He took three long strides over to her, grabbed her in his arms, and kissed her so hard she felt her lip bruise.
"Like that?"
"Hmm. Yes. Like that."
"Little know-it-all." And he wrapped his arms hard around her and kissed her as if his life depended on it. Hermione's breath wasn't just taken away – it was seized, tied up, packed in a box and sent to China – she stood immobile for five whole seconds then started kissing him back.
His hands roamed all over her body, the lust desperately obvious, which she returned in kind, nibbling and biting his neck and ears. Within two minutes clothes were being discarded over the floor as Hermione found herself in a position much like an earlier dream – except that he didn't stop. Not then, anyway. Some time later, him down to a pair of nondescript underpants and she practically naked (one stocking really doesn't count), he slowed, hesitated, then looked her in the eye.
"From here, my dear, you are going to have to help me. I'm afraid I don't have much experience in this area."
Nice touch she thought, but the supposed innocence of her partner sent her even further into a red haze of lust, and the next little while was a muddle of legs and hands and fire and a deep screaming frenzy that built in both of them until it came to a wild and passionate climax.
Much later they were curled up around each other, still panting and sweaty but starting to come down to relative normality. He leaned over and kissed her gently on the nose, and she wrapped her arms around him and smiled.
"I suppose", he murmured, "we don't really have enough time to try that again. I think my technique needs refining."
"Not tonight, I shouldn't think." Hermione nuzzled his shoulder and bit playfully on his neck as the clock in the nearby church chimed a quarter past the hour.
She stopped. "That can't be right."
"What can't?" He nibbled down her throat, heading for the hollow where her breasts started to swell.
"It can't only be a quarter past seven. I heard the half-past chime go just as you …"
He pulled back and looked with shock and horror into her eyes. "HERMIONE?"
"Oh sweet Merlin – Severus – is that the real you?"
"As real as you." He scrabbled out of the bed, a pillow clutched at a strategic level. Hermione sat up, the sheets falling to her waist as she held her head in her hands and tried to make some sense of it all. Finally something else clicked into place.
"So you … all this time .. every Saturday night …"
"Saturday nights I spend my time as befits an adult, in private. And now you've deliberately invaded … " He reached for his robes, still trying to hold the pillow as he shook them out. Hermione reached the logical conclusion and climbed out of bed, wrapping the counterpane around her. She walked up to Severus, who backed up to the wall. Eventually he couldn't go any further, and he looked in horror as she approached, but then she gently took his hand in hers.
"Am I right in assuming, Severus, that you spent the previous two Saturday nights with a simulacrum of myself because you were afraid to ask the real me to join you? Were you afraid I would say 'no'? Or was it easier practice before the real thing?"
"Do you honestly mean to tell me", he spat out, unable to meet her eyes, "that you had no idea that this is what I was doing?"
"See for yourself, Severus. Look into my mind and tell me what you see there."
He wouldn't look, so she held his face in her hands much the same way as he had held hers less than a week before, and kissed him gently, her eyes open, the counterpane falling unnoticed between them. He drew back a little as she finished, and looked, searching – not reading inside her mind but searching her face for the truth.
"You were …"
"I was looking for you, Severus. I wanted you, and only you, and I didn't think you wanted me the same way. So I came here to see if this was truly what I needed."
"And was it?"
"I didn't know until tonight, but now I'm certain that it is." And she kissed him again.
This time the passion rose for both of them as he took her in his arms and gently kissed her as if she was sweet and precious to him, as indeed she was. Severus ran his hands though her hair and over her back, and Hermione indulged in her long-held fantasy to run her hands through his thick locks, and to kiss him as if she would never let him go. Their joining this time was not the fiery passion that came of suppressed desires and limited times and needs that might not truly be met. This time it was the wild heat of two souls who have finally admitted to the other that this, without a doubt, was what they wanted.
Afterwards, curled up in each other's arms, Hermione ran her fingers up his arm and across his shoulder, noticing the scars and lines of age and pain still present after all those years.
"Severus?"
"Hmmm?"
"I found out something about your mystery rescuer."
He half-sat up and looked down at her. "How? Who else knew?"
She flinched, realising she was close to betraying a confidence. "I'm not at liberty to say, but I can tell you that it was almost certainly a man, fully grown." A sudden horrid thought went though her, and she sat up and caught him by the shoulders. "And whatever you do, if it was you – don't do it. I don't care if it causes a time paradox or a rift in space or whatever – I couldn't bear it if it was you."
He took her hands and enclosed them in his own, long, agile fingers, kissing each finger of hers in turn. "No, I don't think it was me. I'd like to think I would have recognised myself. But whoever it is, they're going to do it, whether they've changed their minds now or not. Time has a habit of happening, no matter what, and events in the future that affect events in the past will occur."
She leaned over and kissed him once more. "We should return. I'm only supposed to be out for the evening, and I'm sure you're under the same restrictions."
Their walk back to the Leaky Cauldron was eternally long yet also too short. The concierge at the Hotel gave them a knowing look which both of them chose to ignore. The streets, although wet, were fairy-lit lanes of wonder. They talked of everything and nothing, and the puddles gleamed up rainbows that soaked their shoes unheeded.
"How did you get my hairs, Severus?"
"You left your hairbrush in the staffroom one day, right next to a pile of those stupid leaflets. Did you know I've been using the advertisements to wrap little portions of ingredients?"
"Like salt for your boiled eggs at a picnic? I'd like to go on a picnic with you, Severus."
"And I you. But not until the weather is better."
"Or we could go and visit my parents in Australia. It's warm enough there."
"Australia." He stopped and looked at her, concern in his eyes. "The only other person at Hogwarts who has received something from Australia is Longbottom. And that South African envelope was in the staff room waste paper bin."
"I don't believe it – Neville? What would he be wanting – oh."
Severus looked at her curiously as she grabbed his hand and held it hard. "Severus, what is the antidote to Nagini's poison?"
"Phoenix tears, unicorn bezoar and the calyx of a white-centred lupin crushed together in the light of a new moon."
"Which is tonight. Did you ever tell Neville that?:
"I did. He asked me when school started. And unicorn bezoar was one of the ingredients stolen from my storeroom last week."
She clutched his hands so tightly the bruises would show the next morning. "And what would happen if you took the antidote before the poison hit, instead of afterwards? Would it work? Would you be safe if you took the antidote too early?"
"I doubt it. Without the poison to work on, the antidote would begin to dissipate. You might get a slowing effect, but eventually it would catch up to you."
"As in years later?"
"Possibly."
"Is that what's wrong with Neville? His arm so withered and the skin wasting, and he looks so haggard all the time."
"I didn't know. I've been supplying him with painkillers for the last three years, but he said it was for headaches. If I'd known that it was Nagini's poison – he never told me. And he has been asking me for a stronger mix lately." Severus stopped and put his head in his hands. "Oh Merlin no – if he still has the poison in him, then the painkiller would have made things worse. Shortening his life. Draining his energy."
"Severus – RUN!" And she took his arm and dragged him pell-mell through the streets of London to the Leaky Cauldron where they burst through the door to see Hannah standing in the middle of the taproom, crying.
