It was always the end of the school year.

She'd had half a mind to take herself off to some Muggle pub away from everything; she'd go to headquarters in the morning and see what Dumbledore wanted her to do (other than sit still while he picked her brains out with his wand). Instead, she arrived at Grimmauld Place well after when she knew Harry would have made the Floo call.

She dressed in robes, with the beads in her hair and a scarf in her pocket to wrap her hair back with when she needed to. She'd look like Sam Barnes, not Hermione Granger. It was important.

The portrait of Mrs. Black glared at her, but it didn't know she was a Muggle-born so all it did was scowl. Kreacher was nowhere to be seen, and that was a good thing because she probably would have kicked him.

Sirius Black was in the kitchen arguing with Severus. She'd expected to see the Order gathered, ready to fall on the Ministry as she remembered them doing. Instead, Mad-Eye, Tonks, Shacklebolt and Lupin sat at the table looking tense and drinking tea while they listened to the fight.

"Well how can you be sure he's not out in the Forest with his friends? It's a big forest," Black said snidely, arms crossed over his chest.

Severus drew himself up—and he was several inches taller than Black—but noticed her in the doorway before he answered. He turned to look at her, raising an eyebrow. "Well?"

She frowned at him. He, of all people, knew better than to ask her something like that. "He's gone to the Department of Mysteries."

"How would you know?" Moody asked, not quite rudely.

"Arithmancy," she said shortly, still glaring at Severus. "Of course, I can't be sure. Maybe somebody should do another sweep of the Forest."

"That'll have to be you, Snape," Moody said, taking her at her word. (That had been the one nice thing about his knowing that she was the dragon; it had created an odd sort of respect.) "Anybody else would have to be let through the wards."

"Very well," Severus said with bad grace. "But Black must stay here. Somebody needs to be here to inform Dumbledore when he arrives."

"Fat chance!" Black said, rounding on Severus again, but Severus ignored him. She felt him brush against her mind, and she glared at him.

You asshole. You know better than to ask me something like that. Go find Dolores fucking Umbridge.

She turned away from him, throwing up her Occlumency shields to keep him out, and focusing on Moody and his plans for the Ministry until she heard Severus Floo away.

"You can't leave me behind. Kreacher can tell Dumbledore what's going on."

Hermione frowned, but she didn't intervene. Kreacher's treachery was already complete.

"Fine," Moody said. "We need all the wands we can get. Now Barnes, what else can your numbers tell us about what to expect?"

"I suspect a handful of students accompanied Harry to the Ministry. His Defense Against the Dark Arts group."

"They call themselves Dumbledore's Army," Black said, smirking fondly. The look made Hermione's heart ache a bit. He and Harry had almost had a good thing, and it was over before it had begun. It would be over before it had begun. It was about to end. Sirius Black would be dead before dawn.

"Right," she said, forcing herself to smile at Black. "Dumbledore's Army. Schoolchidren on a fool rescue mission, facing Death Eaters."

"Thank Merlin Molly Weasley wasn't due at this meeting," Tonks said under her breath. Shacklebolt shared an amused look with her before returning his attention to Moody. The retired Auror gave them an outline of a plan that Hermione was not in the least satisfied with, but she was in too much of a hurry to get to the Ministry to insist on more talk.

"Alright, then," Mad-Eye said at last, giving them all one last look over. He looked, of all things, pleased.

"Let's do this," Black said, pulling his jacket straight as he stood up. He had his wand held tight in his fist, and it didn't take Legilimency to know he was spoiling for the fight.

Hermione secured the scarf around her hair with a charm; it wouldn't do for it to come loose and get in her way. Shacklebolt was looking at her oddly and had been since she'd begun to get ready for the fight, putting her leather wraps around her hands and wrists after she'd put her hair back. She ignored him.

"Move out," Mad-Eye said, lurching to his feet and clomping his way out of the kitchen. For once, Tonks didn't knock over the umbrella stand on the way out.

They lined up along the edge of the road, just inside the limit of the house's wards. She glanced up and down the line, knowing that she was going into a fight with good wands at her back. That didn't do much to relieve the terror that had been clamoring at the back of her mind for days—what if her presence changed something, what if she made a mistake, what if she recognized herself, what if, what if, what if? All her worries stewing, as usual, with the added stress of remembered panic from the first time she'd lived through this fight; it had been her first real duel.

Hermione locked her mind down. She solidified the barriers always in place, compartmentalizing her memories and putting away the ones that would only distract her. She wouldn't think about how scary it had been the first time around, or how broken Harry had been after Black died. And she definitely wouldn't think about how angry she was with Severus.

"Three, two, one—go!" Moody shouted, and they all Apparated to the Atrium. The large space was obscenely bright after the darkness of the street outside headquarters.

For a moment, the only sound was the steady rush of water from the golden fountain.

"Hominum Revelio," Shacklebolt muttered, and nine dots of light shivered in front of him for only a second before he released the spell in order to react to the attack. Two Death Eaters were upon them, rushing from opposite sides. One had been behind the statue; the other had burst out of the shadows in one of the empty Floo grates.

The duels were quick. Shacklebolt Stunned one after a brief back-and-forth, and Moody had blasted the other back against the wall hard enough to knock him out. Tonks moved forward and secured the Death Eaters, tying them up and taking their wands. Hermione and Lupin trotted forward, wands out and Hermione with her knife, approaching the security desk where the last dot of light from Shacklebolt's spell had indicated a person.

It turned out to be the night guard. He was on death's doorstep. His eyes went wide when he saw Hermione and Lupin, and one hand flailed weakly for a wand that wasn't there, and then he died. Lupin closed the wizards's eyes, looking mournful.

"We keep moving," Moody said, reaching the bank of elevators first.

They split up, going down in pairs of two—Black and Moody, Lupin and Tonks, and Hermione with Shacklebolt.

"Muggles have staircases for this sort of thing, you know," Hermione said for the sake of something to say in the tense silence of the elevator car. "For sneaking downstairs. And for exercise. And in case of fire."

"That's nice," Shacklebolt said, sounding incredibly sincere. She couldn't tell if he was mocking her or not, but then it didn't matter because the grilles slid open and a cool female voice said, "Department of Mysteries," and it was chaos.

The torchlight flickered, the flames dancing from the arrival of the elevators as well as the displaced air from spells. There was only one Death Eater in the corridor, but he had the advantage. Nobody in the elevators could see him properly because whenever they tried he shot curses at them.

The advantage of Fiendfyre was that the caster didn't need to be able to see the target if they had enough control. Hermione had the control.

"Back," she told Shacklebolt, moving him out of the way and bracing her foot against the side of the grille (the elevator kept trying to close up and return to the Atrium level, announcing that they'd arrived at the Department of Mysteries each time the grilles slid open fully again; it was quite obnoxious, not to mention the grilles kept getting in the way).

"What are you—"

She'd been thinking of the illustration in her father's copy of The Hobbit, a line drawing of the dragon Smaug. When she was little, before she'd seen a real dragon, she'd thought it was cute. A bit lizard-like, a bit snake-like. Spikes along its back, a curl of smoke from its nostrils. That was the dragon she conjured of Fiendfyre, the length of her arm with a narrow head and a curling, almost fish-like quality to its movement. Shacklebolt went absolutely still the moment it joined them in the elevator.

Hermione flicked her wand, and the Fiendfyre roared out of the elevator, taking the ungodly heat of it away. The Death Eater in the hall screamed, then fell silent. She knew that the dragon had found him, had shot through his chest like a missile and left a fist-sized hole in his body. She could smell the charred flesh.

She left the elevator car and had to walk past the two other doors before she saw the Death Eater. The Fiendfyre dragon was hovering above the Death Eater's face, seeming to watch as the wizard's eyeballs liquefied from the heat and oozed down his temples.

Disgusted, Hermione squashed the Fiendfyre out of existence by force of will. It was easier to trick the cursed fire out, let it have its flourish and drama; she wasn't in the mood.

"Clear," Hermione said, because that was what they said on the cop shows her parents watched when the threats had all been rendered inert.

"Bloody hell," Tonks muttered at the sight of the body.

"He's dead," Lupin observed, sounding shocked. Hermione raised an eyebrow, knowing full well she was channeling Severus. She was uncomfortably aware that she didn't usually operate with an audience, and that only three people from the Order had actually known exactly what she did for Dumbledore. Until now.

"We can talk about morality and my poor, fractured soul after we retrieve Dumbledore's Army," she said, making the group she'd help found sound like a joke. She went down the corridor to the plain black door and held it open, mockingly formal, for the others.

Moody stumped through the door, mind on the task at hand. Tonks gave her a wary look. Shacklebolt and Lupin both looked worried, obviously forcing themselves to think of their priorities. Black's eyes roved up her figure as he passed, strutting cockily, and she raised an annoyed eyebrow but didn't say anything.

We really don't have time for this.

The room beyond was the round room of doors, all black. The ceiling and floor, black. The light was blue.

When she'd passed through with Dumbledore's Army, they hadn't known what the room was or how it worked. Moody seemed to have some experience with the Department of Mysteries. Instead of stumbling through blind and opening a door at random, being disoriented by the spinning walls and lights, he drew a zigzag with the tip of his wand and then jabbed the tip at a door.

All the doors flew open, and Hermione couldn't see what was beyond any of them.

"Damned 'mysteries,'" Mad-Eye said sulkily. "Split up. Find the children. Get Potter out."

They didn't need telling twice. She went through the nearest doorway, and into the Brain Room.

"No," somebody said weakly. The voice was horribly familiar. "No, I don't like it."

She almost tripped over her own unconscious body, and stared down in horror. She was so young. She didn't think of herself as old, but compared to this little teenaged thing on the floor she certainly was. The girl had mad frizzy hair everywhere, and a pimple on her chin.

The girl also had blood soaked through the front of her shirt. Hermione shuddered, her hand reflexively going to the line of the scar. She felt like she might throw up.

Hermione forced the fear and the panic away, dismissed the voice in her head that sounded remarkably like Dumbledore that told her she could not interfere with her own self, and knelt beside her younger form. She cast her usual diagnostic, though she knew what she'd find.

There was blood everywhere, and it was worse when Hermione tore open the shirt. The clothing had been holding the skin in place, more or less, and opening it for a look at the wound had let the wound itself open.

"Bugger," she said, then almost laughed at her own lack of creativity in swearing. (To be fair, though, her attention was mostly elsewhere.)

Hermione pulled her satchel out and Summoned her charmed thread from the depths. She knew it wouldn't do any good in the long run, but hopefully it would see her through the short term, possibly hold her innards in until they could get her to St. Mungo's. And then there would be just shy of a dozen potions to take while healing and a terrifying achiness whenever she moved for months, and she'd be lying to her parents about its cause in no time.

"Please, God, let this work."

The paradox, of course, was that it had to work or she wouldn't be alive to do it in the first place.

"Bugger," she said again.

She smeared the paste along her chest, wiping her hands on her robe when she finished—her wand kept slipping in her grip from the blood that coated her fingers after she'd put the stitches in. Smoky steam billowed up from the wound, and it was closed but barely. The two sides of the wound were barely together; in fact, they pulled apart in a few different places as she watched. Blood oozed ominously.

"Swallow," she urged, holding a Blood Replenishing Potion to her own lips, and her teenaged self swallowed, choked, then managed to swallow again.

"No. Stop it," Ron moaned from the other end of the room, and she remembered that he'd been attacked by a brain with feelers all over it. Or something. The story had been patchy coming from the boys, both of them running on adrenalin and Ron Confunded at the time.

"Fuckall," she muttered, pulling out a long length of bandaging and forcing her teenaged self into a sitting position with a spell. She wrapped the bandages tight around, holding the wound together and covering her own teenaged decency. It would have to do. She wouldn't bleed out, at least. And the wound would take more than enchanted thread to get it closed—if she remembered correctly, and she did, there had been a team of four or five Healers working on her, combining spells and potions, to put her together again.

When Hermione was sure she wasn't leaving herself to die, she slung her satchel back over her shoulder and went to find Ron.

He was on the floor, eyes closed while he muttered. He held the remains of the brain that he'd Summoned, and its tentacles were still wrapped around his arms and chest. The tentacles pulsed and squeezed, the spasms of a dying nervous system.

"Shit," Hermione said under her breath. "Ron!"

Her diagnostic spell confirmed that he'd been Confunded, and that was easy enough to take care of. But that left the issue of the brain—she had no idea what its purpose was or how it worked, but it was causing him considerable pain and distress even after the main of it had been destroyed by spells and Ron's desperate hands.

Carefully, using her knife instead of her wand when spells proved unhelpful, she separated the feelers from the brain and set about unwrapping them from his flesh. They'd dug in quite deep in places. He'd have bruises around his torso and could get Bruise Paste for them later, but she used charms to heal the spiraling cuts around his wrists and arms where the tentacles had been against bare flesh and had drawn blood. Quite a lot of blood, actually, for such slim cuts.

Renervate.

The spell didn't work, or it did but Ron still wasn't responding right. She recast her diagnostic, but he was physically fine.

Legilimens.

Ron's mind was a foreign swirl of happy childhood memories and cunning chess strategy. She could feel the structure to it, and she could feel that there was some outside influence stirring all that structure up like a hurricane. Memories that certainly weren't his—because he had definitely never been in an Aztec temple, nor had he paced at the front of a lecture hall—collided with memories that were, one bowling the other over.

Over the lot, Hermione could hear Ron's confused swearing as his conscious mind tried to sort out what the bloody hell was going on.

She wished she could knock him out and set his brain right, but Legilimency required a conscious subject. Gently, carefully, she set to work. She kept half an ear out for approaching enemies, but Ron was minutes from madness and, if she remembered the story correctly, the Death Eaters would be busy in the Death Chamber by now.

Slowly, his mind began to stop spinning. She siphoned off the foreign memories into conjured vials, not sure what to do with them or if they'd be of any use. Her guess was that the brains were donated, minds given over to research.

A think tank, of a sort, she mused, easing Ron's childhood back into its usual crevice of gray matter and resisting the urge to soften his arachnophobia with a mental wall to compartmentalize it away. That would be invasive and wrong.

The brains were both fascinating and horrible, and she was eager to tell Severus about them until she remembered that she was mad at him.

"H'mione," Ron said when she withdrew from his mind. He scrunched up his face at her. "Where's your hair gone?"

And he went limp. Hermione almost laughed. Dear old Ron.

"What've you done to him?" Ginny asked. Hermione looked up to see the younger girl pointing a wand at her, propped up against the leg of a table. She looked pale, very pale.

"He's alright, Ginny. He'll be fine." She held her hands up, turning her wrist so that Ginny would be able to see her wand safely away in its sheath. "Are you hurt?"

Ginny held out for only a few seconds before she dropped her wand to the floor and gingerly used her hands to move her leg around in front of her. She nodded in answer to Hermoine's question.

"Let's have a look at you," she said in her best Healer voice. Ginny didn't appear soothed by the tone, and she went stiff when Hermione drew her wand to cast the diagnostic. "It's a clean break. It'll just take a moment—brace yourself."

Ginny yelped when the break reformed at a tap of Hermione's wand, but she relaxed a moment later. She moved the ankle around, pulling up her pant leg to have a look. It was a bit swollen.

"Er, thank you."

"You'll be fine. Keep your weight off it as much as you can for now, and have Madam Pomfrey give you a proper exam when you get back to school." Hermione stood, tugging her robes into place habitually and reflecting that she'd spent much too long on her knees. "Stay with your brother. He's going to be unconscious for awhile; he needs guarding."

"Okay."

Hermione went past the youngest two Weasleys, leaving a charm on them to alert her if they were attacked. Neither of them were in any shape to keep fighting.

The door Hermione had entered through banged open, and Hermione was on her feet in an instant. She put herself between the Weasleys and the intruder, pointed her wand at him and gripped her knife tight in the fist hidden behind her thigh. Then she realized it was Dumbledore—tall and terrifying. He wasn't twinkling, and he wasn't wearing a hat with moons and stars on it. This was the wizard who had sent her back and back and back again, the wizard Voldemort feared.

Dumbledore glanced around the room, saw the blood down the front of her robes and the Weasley children so pale behind her. He also noted her younger self sprawled not far from where he stood, unconscious and with blood beginning to seep through the bandages around her chest.

She felt his mental probe shoot against her Occlumency shields like a fucking nuclear bomb, and she dashed his mind away from hers with such force that it made her feel like she'd just sneezed. Dumbledore strode towards her, glaring, his mind pressing against hers.

"Harry is in there," she said, jerking her chin toward the door behind her. She looked at his nose instead of his eyes. "The Death Chamber." Dumbledore's glare turned from her to the door behind her. "He needs you."

He shot her one last look, the sort that promised that they would have words later, and he strode through the door.

"Your nose is bleeding," Ginny said, startling Hermione. She just nodded, though; a nosebleed wasn't surprising after an encounter with the headmaster these days.

"Keep these two from further damage," she said, knowing her voice sounded dead and flat. She wiped her sleeve across her nose, fixed her grip on knife and wand, and followed Dumbledore into the Death Chamber.

"HE—IS—NOT—DEAD!" Harry roared, and Hermione wondered if there was some sort of ward between the rooms to keep sound from passing through. The Brain Room was dead quiet; the Death Chamber was reverberating with the sizzle of spells in the air, the blast of impact, the shouts and cries of the duelers, and Harry Potter losing his godfather. "SIRIUS!"

Hermione glanced down at the dais and saw Lupin physically wrestling Harry away from the veil, dragging him away from the dais.

The Death Eaters were panicking from Dumbledore's arrival. The headmaster had most of them grouped in the middle of the room, immobilized by invisible ropes. Mad-Eye was crouched over Tonks, whispering a counter-curse. Shacklebolt was dueling Bellatrix Lestrange. Then, with a bang, Shacklebolt was down and Lestrange made a run for it.

"Harry—no!" Lupin cried, but Harry had already ripped his arm from the werewolf's grip.

"SHE KILLED SIRIUS!" bellowed Harry. "SHE KILLED HIM—I'LL KILL HER!"

And he was gone.

"Fudge is on his way. Get everybody out and see to the wounded," Dumbledore said, addressing Lupin. Then he turned to her. "Make sure they don't remember who was here, then leave them for the Aurors."

'Them' was the Death Eaters immobilized by his spell. They cussed at him and struggled wildly, but it had no effect.

"Hermione Granger is through there," Hermione said, indicating the door to the Brain Room. "She needs St. Mungo's immediately. I've done all I can for her, and she's still bleeding."

Her fingers were twitching to rub at her scar, but she forced her hands to put her knife away instead. Lupin nodded and went through the door she'd indicated.

"What happened to Tonks?" Hermione asked Mad-Eye, making her way over to Shacklebolt. He was just Stunned, luckily.

"She'll be fine," Moody said. As if to prove it, Tonks tried to sit up and then moaned belligerently when he pushed her back down. "Keep flat while I finish."

"Neville," Hermione said, looking him over where he sat on one of the lower tiers of the amphitheater. "Are you hurt?"

His nose was obvious and she fixed that before he spoke. "I'm fine," he said, gingerly feeling his nose. She noted that he had her wand in his hand, that his knuckles were white from holding it so tightly.

Hermione turned to the Death Eaters. They looked back at her warily, a few of them turning the taunts they'd had for Dumbledore on her. One by one, she looked them in the eye and distorted their memories. It was a sort of softened Obliviate. When she was done, they'd be able to remember their actions, the planning and preparation and attack, but not the identity of the people they'd faced. They'd suspect, of course. And it was impossible (not to mention unnecessary) to remove Dumbledore from their minds, or Harry. She left enough for the Death Eaters to incriminate themselves, and removed enough not to incriminate anybody else. (The Order of the Phoenix was, after all, a vigilante group.)

"We need to get moving," Shacklebolt said. "Where are the rest of the children?"

"Let us get them. You need to go home so that you'll be there when they call you in," Moody instructed, and Shacklebolt nodded briskly. He created himself a Portkey and was gone in a blink. "You too," Moody said, hauling Tonks to her feet. She clutched at him dizzily a moment, then went the same way Shacklebolt had.

Hermione Confunded and Stupefied each of the Death Eaters after she'd modified their memories. The Healers would think the Confundus Charm had been too strong and blurred their memories, which, in turn, covered her tracks because the only reason this sort of magic wasn't classified as Dark was because mind magic (the manipulative variety) wasn't commonly practiced.

"Now," Moody said, limping his way over to Neville. Neville looked properly terrified, surely remembering the last year when the imposter Moody had been the Defense teacher. "How many of you were there?"

"Er," Neville said, glancing at Hermione and then speaking to his shoes. "Me. Luna, Ginny. Harry, Ron and Hermione."

"Harry's with Dumbledore," Hermione said. "Hermione's with Lupin. The Weasleys are in the Brain Room. Where's Luna, Neville?"

"She should be in the Brain Room, too. They Stunned her."

Moody hauled Neville to his feet none too gently, and they made their way up the stone tiers and out of the Death Chamber. Hermione was glad to leave the whispering veil behind.

"Where's Harry?" Ginny asked immediately. "Professor Lupin didn't tell me anything. What's happened?"

Neville went over to Ginny, explaining what she'd missed in an intense whisper. Hermione checked on Ron while Moody located Luna by one of the doors.

There was a pool of blood across the room, where her teenaged self had been the last time she was in the room. Hermione tried not to think about it.

"Take 'em to Hogwarts," Moody said, frowning. "Can't go back to headquarters with Black dead."

It would be futile to protest—she had no way to explain that Black had set everything up to pass to Harry, therefore keeping the secrets within the Order. Hogwarts sounded like a good idea, anyway. Plenty of wards, and a proper hospital wing.

Hopefully, Severus would still be out combing the Forbidden Forest for Umbridge and she wouldn't have to deal with him. She wasn't mad anymore, but he probably would be by now.

Moody left her to sort out Dumbledore's Army, taking himself away to clear out headquarters.

She used an illegal Portkey of her own to bring her friends back to Hogwarts. They arrived at the gates, her with her arms around Ron since he was still unconscious.

"Now we walk," she said, using her wand to levitate Ron in front of them. She kept them moving as quickly as she could, urging Neville to help Ginny along with her tender ankle. They were all going into shock, stumbling along after her stunned and silent. Luna was even more spacy than she usually was, and Ginny was too quiet.

"Poppy!" she bellowed when they finally made it. She felt like a clever thing to have in a magic castle would be a magic shortcut to the hospital wing. "Poppy, come help!"

The mediwitch appeared, yanking on the tie of her dressing gown, her hair braided for bed.

"What's happened?"

"I think I'll let the headmaster explain," she said, putting Ron down on a bed and tucking him in. "No lasting damage to any of them, I don't think. I'd be obliged if you'd double-check, though. I'm not at my best."

Poppy gaped at her for a moment, taking in the smears of blood, then nodded and Summoned one of her many aprons.

There wasn't much fuss when Poppy insisted the students all stay the night in the hospital wing. Neville tried to refuse the sleeping draught she plied on them all, but a frown and a fist on her hip was all it took.

Hermione felt herself beginning to shake about the time Neville dropped off into sleep. She'd sat on the foot of a bed and had her head in her hands when she was startled upright by the glow of a spell. Poppy had cast a diagnostic on her.

"I'm fine."

"You're covered in blood."

"Not my blood," she said, but then she had to laugh because it was her blood, just from a long time ago. And not so long ago at all.

I hate time travel. I hate it so much.

"What happened tonight? You said the headmaster was returning?"

"I—" Hermione started, but then stopped herself because she had drawn a complete blank. She couldn't think of a single worthwhile excuse. She briefly contemplated faking a fainting spell (not an easy thing to do, considering she was trying to fool a Healer), but was saved the trouble by Dumbledore's arrival, Harry on his heels.

"Madam Pomfrey, would you be so kind as to put Harry up for the night? I believe he'll want to be close to his friends."

"Where's Hermione?" Harry asked, looking from face to face. Hermione carefully kept her profile to him, tipping her face down so that she'd be mostly in shadow.

"Miss Granger was taken to St. Mungo's for the night. I'm sure we'll have her with us again soon."

"Come along, Mr. Potter. There's a dear," Poppy said, guiding him to a bed and handing him a pair of hospital pajamas.

"Miss Barnes, I believe you and I should have a talk. And then, I think, Poppy? You'll have questions I'm sure."

"Most definitely, Headmaster," Poppy said, but she was smirking.

Hermione followed Dumbledore to his office with heavy feet. She was too tired for another interrogation and she certainly didn't feel up to more shouting. She had half a mind to just lay the next year bare in front of Dumbledore—the attacks, his hand, everything.

"I owe you an apology," he said, sitting not behind his desk like he usually did but in one of the cozy chairs by the fireplace. (It was never too warm in the blustery old castle for a fire, and there was a cheerful one dancing in his grate.)

She blinked at him, and sat in the armchair across from his when he waved her down into it.

"This attack tonight, losing Sirius." He sighed. He looked very old, and for once not like he was putting on the airs of being an old man but as though he could feel every day of his life in his very bones. "It's already worse than I thought it would be, since we have Harry this time. And it must get worse, since this didn't prompt me to send you back. Something else did."

"Yes. Something else will."

If she wasn't so tired, she'd have a go at him for that about Harry. 'Since we have Harry.' Harry is a boy! He's not a weapon, and so help me if you try to make him into a weapon, I will move to Thailand and never speak to you again. And I'll take Harry with me. Fuck you.

"I'm not going to press you. You can stop looking so wary."

This isn't wary. This is angry. And tired.

"I asked you up here because I want you to stay at the school until the end of term. Somebody needs to watch over Harry, and it can't be me right now. He's too angry with me."

And with good reason, she thought petulantly, but found herself nodding. Harry truly had been particularly angry since the end of fourth year; she'd chalked most of it up to hormones, and then he'd been devastated when he lost Sirius. Most of the anger was directed at Umbridge or Severus, then Dumbledore, occasionally at the Slytherin Quidditch team.

"Do you want me to Disillusion myself and patrol the halls?"

"No, no. I want you close to Harry as often as possible. This is a particularly dangerous time—Voldemort's return will be public knowledge by the end of the week. There are many children of Death Eaters in this school; if any of them have aspirations for the Mark, or feel slighted on their parents' behalf, now would be the time that they strike."

Hermione thought he was being a bit paranoid, but, really, it was about time. He'd been throwing Harry into danger since he'd arrived at Hogwarts.

"What is it you want me to do, exactly?"

"Polyjuice. I'd like you to take Polyjuice made from the hair of your younger self. While she recuperates in St. Mungo's, you will be here with your friends. I'm sure you've missed them, after all, and they need your protection."


Severus had found Dolores Umbridge twenty minutes after he'd entered the forest. He'd spent most of those twenty minutes seething.

"Maybe somebody should do another sweep of the forest," he'd muttered under his breath. He'd been furious.

She'd known what was happening, known what was going to happen. Hell, she'd shown up at headquarters even though Dumbledore had given her so many nosebleeds over not giving anything away.

And Dumbledore hadn't even been there. She could have given them a proper warning for once.

His gradual buildup to a towering fury had been cut short by his discovery of Umbridge, prisoner of the centaurs. There had been bows pointed at him, and it had been strongly suggested that he find someplace else to be. If he'd liked Umbridge even a little, he would have put at least a token effort into her retrieval. Unfortunately for her, she was one of a handful of people he truly did hate. He'd left her to reap what she'd sown.

He'd seriously considered going to Hermione's flat because, oh, did he have words for her. But no. Somebody from the Order would be dead before daybreak, and Dumbledore would surely need him for something or other.

Severus forced himself to sleep. He took just enough potion to knock him out for three hours, sleeping until sunrise. He woke with his Mark burning more insistently with each breath.

\\

The Dark Lord had plundered his mind until he was bleeding from his nose and his ears. He'd been looking for any inkling of Harry Potter's plan, anything about what had happened following the attack. All Severus had had to show was his wasted time looking for Umbridge, and his quick retreat when he'd discovered her with the centaurs. (His brief meeting with Dumbledore before he'd answered the Summons, when he'd told Dumbledore where to find the toad and been informed that it was Black that had died, had to be held back.)

The Dark Lord had been disgusted that Severus hadn't had the information he needed. He'd been disappointed in his spy, just as he'd been disappointed in Lucius.

The Dark Lord had used a toe almost gently jabbed into his shoulder to push Severus to the floor and away from him. He'd gone on to other business, leaving his spy to crawl away to the Apparation room, dignity entirely forgotten.

He'd gone to Hermione's flat. He hadn't wanted to go back to the castle, and he certainly hadn't wanted to stay.

He didn't remember much besides the calm touch of her mind against his, a gentle caress against bruised and battered Occlumency shields. He wasn't sure if he'd wept or not, but he'd wanted to.

It wasn't until later, when she'd wiped the blood away and given him a potion for the pain, that he remembered he was supposed to be mad at her. Or she was mad at him. He couldn't remember.

"It has been a very long day," Hermione said, sitting on the floor next to him.

His head ached. It was better than it had been, but it still hurt. It felt like a tension headache. Actually, it could be a tension headache. The potion might have taken off the raw edge from the forceful Legilimency and simply left the headache simmering underneath. He was lucky like that.

Hermione pushed herself off the floor with a groan, and he smirked. He liked the little reminders that she was almost as old as he was. He hated them too, though—his best tactic in the past months had been constantly reminding himself that she was a student. Hell, half the letters he'd written her had focused on her younger self, all the obnoxious things she did. Unfortunately, it just sort of fell away when he was with her. This woman next to him was not a teenaged girl.

He stood up, intending to hug her or kiss her or something. But…

We can't do this. We know better.

We're so fucked.

She nudged his elbow with hers. It was a casual, friendly, familiar gesture, and he liked it. It was almost as nice as the way she brushed his Occlumency shields with her mind as a greeting when she walked into a room. Not nearly as nice as kissing her was, he knew, but they had gone almost a whole week now…

"Come on, then," Hermione said in her best impression of a busybody Healer, interrupting his thoughts again. "You need to lie down and sleep. It will help."

He didn't argue. She led him out of the kitchen into the living room. With a flick of her wrist, the sofa was longer and wider, not quite a proper bed but long enough that he wouldn't have his feet hanging off uncomfortably or anything. She removed his teaching robes and his frock coat, laying them out on the coffee table, then gently pushed him down onto the expanded sofa. It was surprisingly comfortable…

He was already beginning to drift off to sleep when she pulled a blanket out of the chest in the corner and laid it across him. The wool smelled of cedar, probably from the chest. It was pleasant. Not quite as pleasant as the kiss she put on his forehead before she left him to fall asleep, but still quite pleasant.

Severus dreamed he was in a bathtub. It was a large old thing, all warm white ceramic and elaborate feet. The water was the temperature of blood, and frothy with sweet-smelling bubbles. He couldn't identify the exact scent of it, which only served to confirm that it was a dream; he had a very acute, honed sense of smell after so many years of potion-making.

He was reclined in the tub, legs stretched out along the sides to make room for the woman sitting between them. There was enough water that she was almost floating there in his lap, warm and soft. Her skin was wet, and so was his, and that was very nice. It was Hermione, so there was curly hair everywhere, but she had her head resting on his shoulder to one side, so there was no hair up his nose at least.

They were very naked, and very relaxed. Her fingers were trailing wet lines up and down his arms, which were around her. She was hugely pregnant, big round belly protruding from the water in front of them. His hands were on that belly, gently touching, feeling the baby inside kick at him. They were so comfortable together, so very, very relaxed.

There was no Dark Mark on his arm, just pale skin. She had no scars. They were just two people in a tub, enjoying the pregnancy they had created together. A quiet, lingering moment between lovers.

He woke feeling utterly relaxed, as he had been in the tub in his dream, but it didn't last long. His morning wood was particularly forceful, pressing out against the flies of his trousers. He groaned and rolled off the couch, stumbling for the bathroom and a cold shower.

The perfunctory morning routine should have taken his thoughts to more mundane places, but they didn't. He washed his hair and cast cleansing charms on yesterday's clothes, thinking about secrets.

Severus had many secrets, and he kept them all close to the vest. His most embarrassing secret, his most cliché secret, was one that had been cropping up since he'd met Lily Evans as a child: He wanted to be loved. That was it. The big, bad man had a very soft place in his heart. The monster just wanted to be wanted.

It had disgusted him for a long time. He'd fallen head over heels for Lily when they were young, and that love had lasted much longer than it should have, weighted to his heart by guilt. She'd been dead and gone, her son living with some pathetic excuses for human beings, by the time he'd begun to hurt less from her loss. The love of her had been the reason he'd joined the Order, his reason for living for a long time.

These days, it wasn't about Lily, or revenge, or justice. He'd been fighting on principle for a long time. His subconscious seemed to be ready to get back to the game of torturing him with love, though, if that dream was anything to go by. (And all his resistance be damned.)

Dumbledore believed that Severus held some deep, lingering affection for Lily Potter, but that wasn't the case. There had been others since she'd died, short-lived things, flights of fancy. Sometimes it had been a smile or a kindness that drew his eye. Or, admittedly, sometimes it was a breast or the curve of a leg. He was a man and he was young, especially by Wizarding standards. He tried not to let it affect his life; he could never settle down with any of them anyway, not during a war.

But this woman… This woman was in it just as deep as he was, and that was saying something.

She was beautiful and brilliant and she wasn't absolutely repulsed by him or his past. She was kind and gentle. She could be softness and sunshine, and move through the shadows just as easily as he could. Better, probably, because nobody would expect it of her. She was hard without being brittle. She'd been through the wringer, and the core that had come out was amazing.

Bollocks. You really have gone and fallen in love, he told himself, rolling his eyes. There was nothing for it, though. He didn't do anything by halves.


Two days after the Department of Mysteries, Severus burst back into her flat. He'd been out of it when he arrived the first time, and distracted when he left. This time, he was furious.

"What's happened?" she asked, jumping to her feet. He turned and stalked over to her, glaring down at her. She looked up at him, confused. "Severus? What's happened?"

"You said it wasn't my fault!"

"What?"

"Your first bloody scar from the war!" He reached for her collar but thought better of it, dashing his finger along the line of her scar (more or less; he'd never actually seen it) from Dolohov.

"You didn't cast the curse—"

"I INVENTED THAT CURSE!"

She filed that away for later. "You didn't cast it, though, Severus."

"I've just seen you in the hospital. Blood everywhere. It's been days and they hadn't… They didn't know the counter-curse. They did it wrong." She was almost offended for a moment, but he was right about that. She hadn't known the counter-curse.

Well, you did say it yourself: You don't do things by halves. When you make a slice-them-open curse, it sure slices.

He turned away from her and began to pace, shoving his hands through his hair again and again. She watched him, absentmindedly rubbing at the old scar. "I could have fixed you. I could have healed you without a scar."

"It's just a scar, Severus."

"IT'S NOT!"

"Then what is it?" She sat back down, crossed her arms and legs, and glared at him.

"You should have told me," he said, continuing to pace. He was like a tiger in a zoo, pacing along the bars in the horribly frustrated way of a captured predator. "I could have gone to St. Mungo's and fixed it. You didn't have to—How could you just not say anything? You let me sleep on your bloody couch! You let me have a lie-in and a nice, long shower! You should have sent me to St. Mungo's straight off."

She considered slapping him. Or maybe hexing him. He needed to snap out of it.

"This was the way it always happened, Severus," she said, trying to sound soothing. She wasn't sure it worked—he stopped talking and looked at her, but he kept walking. Back and forth, back and forth across the small room.

"We could have changed it. We should have changed it."

"No, we shouldn't have," she said, insistent. "This is what we've been talking about the whole time. Better the devil you know."

"What could it have changed? Tell me that. What could my going and providing the proper counter-curse have possibly changed to the overall outcome of this awful—"

"Anything! Everything! We don't know, and that's the point!" She was on her feet again. He stopped pacing to stand in front of her and glare down at her. "It might not have changed anything. It might just have been a smaller scar, or no scar, for me. Or it might have aroused suspicion—why is the Head of Slytherin paying special attention to some Gryffindor fifth year? How does he even know that counter-curse? Questions. Repercussions.

"Severus, I'm fine. I have much worse scars than this one. It wasn't your fault; you didn't cast the curse. And besides, you don't have to protect me."

He took two steps and he was in her face. Not looking down his nose at her, not intimidating her, but standing so close that she remembered how nice it was to kiss him even through her haze of anger. They'd been so careful with each other. She'd wanted nothing better than to tuck him in bed next to her the other night, but she'd put him on the couch. And she hadn't kissed him goodnight. And he hadn't kissed her before he left the next morning.

Instead of looking down his nose at her, he was staring into her eyes intently. His hands were on her upper arms, holding her almost painfully tight. She had a feeling he didn't realize he was even touching her.

"Is it so bad that I want you safe and whole?"

"I am safe and whole."

She thought he might kiss her, and she was fairly sure she was going to let him, but instead he turned and left. The door slammed behind him.

\\

The strangest part about pretending to be her teenaged self was how easy it was. A large part of that was because she was supposed to be bedridden recovering from Dolohov's curse, and the rest was because her friends were all a little bit punch-drunk from their experience at the Ministry.

Ron was still in the hospital wing with her, but Harry was there constantly. Ginny, Neville and Luna were there almost as much.

Hermione spent most of her time reading, listening to her friends, trying to remember what it was like to be part of them. One of Dumbledore's Army.

The only problem was that Harry hadn't been hurt enough to keep him in the hospital wing. He visited, and Hermione dropped hints that he needed to be extra careful, but the majority of the day he was off on his own. She didn't know where he went. He was mourning Sirius, that much was clear. He told them he was visiting Hagrid, but she suspected he was spending the time alone.

Meanwhile, she and Severus weren't exactly talking. He knew she was masquerading as her younger self in the hospital wing, but there was no reason for him to visit her (especially not with Ron so close at hand). She Turned back each evening, slipping away to Edinburgh to go to work at the apothecary and attend Order meetings, but Severus hadn't come to see her since he'd marched out and slammed the door behind him.

She wondered if they'd broken up.

\\

Three days before the end of term, Ron was released from the hospital wing, so she went too. She tried to bring up Black, but Ron shushed her almost every time and Harry let him.

There hadn't been a funeral since there was no body and he was a wanted man anyway.

Hermione, who hadn't been particularly close to Black either time around and who had deliberately avoided him since she'd known the exact place and time of his death, felt oddly adrift.

She'd seen Severus in the halls twice. The first time, he'd swept by as if she wasn't even there, and she'd let him go. She'd decided to be angry with him if that was how he was going to be. The second time, she hadn't been able to stop herself from pressing a worried little mental question mark against his mind, and he'd stopped walking to stare at her.

"What's up with him?" Ron had asked after they were out of earshot. She'd just shrugged—she couldn't tell if it was a furious stare or a surprised stare or something else entirely.

The problem was that she was in love with him. Absolutely. Irrevocably. And he'd told her that he loved her. And he'd slammed the door on his way out and she hadn't seen him properly since.

He stood behind her chair at Order meetings, a dark presence glaring people down on her behalf. She'd witnessed moments of vulnerability when healing him, and that made him human, approachable. And desirability had never been in question: the thought had been set second year when he'd flicked his wand and put Gilderoy Lockhart on his ass. That easy grace, the jawline, the eyes, the voice. The breadth of his shoulders.

They couldn't even fight properly. They were constantly engaging in confrontations. Minerva called them arguments, but only because she didn't actually listen to what was being said. Most of the time, they agreed with the points the other made, but they couldn't seem to keep the heat out of their voices, couldn't stop the fist-clenching or getting in each other's faces when they made the same point. It was stupid.

She'd had her fair share of boyfriends when she'd been Turning, but none of them had been serious; she'd always been mentally and emotionally prepared for the next Turn. A simple conversation with Severus Snape, especially one that took place when one or both of them weren't bleeding, and she was wondering if he liked kids, if he wanted his own. If he'd want her to have them.

Stupid. Impossible.

And apparently they could fight properly. This had to be a fight. They couldn't be broken up—they'd never really been together.

\\

Harry kept wandering off. She'd forgotten that he did that.

She was supposed to be watching him, and she was doing her level best to spend every moment of the day with him, but he still managed to give her the slip. Finally, though, they were on the Hogwarts Express and he didn't have a whole castle to wander off and get lost in. Just a whole train.

For instance, the boys had gone off to the loo and returned talking about an incident with Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle. Apparently, the Slytherins had been left in a luggage rack somewhere to ooze, and Harry and Ron had returned with a story to tell. She had half a mind to box them both around the ears and dose them with sleeping draughts for the rest of the trip.

Instead, she read them bits of the Prophet, not finding their answers nearly as entertaining as Severus's would have been, while they played Wizard's chess.

"It hasn't really started yet," Hermione said when she'd finished the paper. "But it won't be long now…"

"Hey, Harry—"

And the conversation devolved into something about who was dating who. Hermione felt vaguely like she should try to keep up, but she hadn't been much interested in any of it when she had actually been a teenaged girl, so she didn't feel the least bit guilty when she tuned them out.

She could feel Harry drawing in on himself the closer they got to London. When the train began slowing down, she almost reached for him, the boy was just screaming for a hug, but then the moment had passed. They all gathered their things, joking about having too many bags and trying to get wands to stay in pockets while they passed pet carriers around to the proper people (Crookshanks knew something was up, but he hadn't figured out what yet).

When they crossed the barrier between the platforms, she almost hugged him again. Mad-Eye, Lupin and Tonks were there with the Weasleys, and she heard him swallow thickly. And then she almost cried when she heard what they were all there for, not just to say hello to Harry but to talk to the Dursleys for him.

They parted—she squeezed him tight and promised to see him soon. He'd looked… happy, almost, as he'd gone off with his aunt and uncle. Or maybe not happy, but pleased. He'd certainly had more pep in his step than she'd seen in a long time when he led the way out of the station, his relatives hurrying to keep up.

\\

The summer was interminable. She spent most of her time thinking about what the younger versions of herself were up to. There would be the original one spending the summer at the Burrow, the one with Minerva in Scotland, the one at Hogwarts, the one finishing up in France, the one trying to come up with a viable reason not to accept the job offers from St. Mungo's, the one hiding out in the Spanish countryside avoiding Dumbledore.

She couldn't attend the Order meetings because they were at the Burrow and so was her younger self. What little information she got came from Dumbledore, and he had been acting odd since the debacle at the Department of Mysteries so he wasn't keeping her abreast of everything. It was more like he stopped by once every few weeks to tell her who had died and how, maybe give her a name for the dragon.

Severus stopped by twice, but only briefly each time. He was on lockdown at Spinner's End since the end of term, saddled with Wormtail as a "reward for his services." She was careful not to leak any thoughts to him, and he did the same. But it was so nice to see him.

The first time he'd been in, it was because he'd been involved in a raid and it had gone badly for the Death Eaters. She took the opportunity to give him the folio on Dumbledore's curse, merely telling him that she hoped it would help him sort out a tricky situation in the coming months. The second time, she'd caught herself running her hands through his hair. He'd had a concussion, and she'd mended him and laid him out on the sofa for a short nap. Instead of going about her business, she'd sat on the arm of the sofa and massaged his scalp with her fingertips. It had been lovely. She had had to force herself to walk away from him before he woke up properly.

Both times, he left as soon as he could. She couldn't tell if he was still angry about their argument, or if it was something else. She didn't know what to say to him, anyway.


This should probably have been split into two chapters, but I couldn't bring my self to do it. I'd say I was sorry, but I'm not.

Cheers!

— M