"Severus, however did you do it?"
It had been almost a month since Cecilia had returned to the cottage and back to her old life. In some ways, it was like she had never left. In others, expectations from the other life – people missing who she had known; places she had been which were altogether different here.
It had been nearly a week after Remus had returned that they had allowed any visitors at all. They needed time, lots of time together, to try to start again and begin their lives. Now, with the Order being disbanded and the need to fight against Voldemort eliminated, wizarding people were getting back to their lives.
The first thing Cecilia noticed, when they had begun to get visitors, was the time. Twelve years had passed in the other reality, but yet here her body was that of a twenty-nine year-old yet she still remembered everything that had happened to her there. Her mind covered years and yet she had, with respect to this dimension, left it for less than a second.
And so, that morning, when Remus was at the Ministry receiving an official apology from Pierre Bonaccord, Severus Snape came to the cottage to see Cecilia. It was the first time she had seen him since the Department of Mysteries and she made him tea as he explained how it was that she had gone there and been able to come back. He also explained the purpose.
"It was you, if you remember, Mrs. Frobisher?"
"You sent me my notes, to Petunia Dursley's," Cecilia murmured. "Lunar caustic – that's how I knew that it needed silver nitrate."
"But that was only half," Snape replied, sipping at the tea Cecilia had made. "The wizard you knew as Lindvald Halen allowed you to work in a different universe so that you could bring back that secret to me and and have me adjust it."
"But..." Cecilia hadn't wanted visitors, not yet. After everything she had been through, she just wanted rest in this beautiful place so she could contmplate everything, not least her rounding stomach. She had made an exception for Snape; he was always good company, at least back there. Here, she hoped he would develop it more now that Voldemort was no more.
"Background magical energy signature," replied Snape. "If you cancel this off, the spell will work perfectly. Sirius needed to be with them...a balance of background energies...it's the only way the potion could work, having been manufactured in a different universe.
"But when the plan changed, Tabitha was informed by Dumbledore that you were coming instead. Tabitha helped by Lindvald, helped you by testing out the route...the Tabitha in your new place had to go back to the memories and pick her way back...she was the only other person with you who had used the veil's memory-store as a way of manipulating realities. I believe Dumbledore, and the Ministry, are pleased that it was we who have tested it out rather than the enemy. Lily's notes too. The tea is excellent," he added, looking at the Royal Albert rose-patterned crockery that had once belonged to Remus's grandmother Bessie. "It all needed to be just right; it all needed to be perfect." Cecilia sighed, sinking down into a chair.
"It all had to be just right!" she repeated, in imitation. "Dumbledore risked a lot to do this!"
"Not just him," Snape added. "He has had this task passed down to him in his capacity of Head of the Order for nearly fifty years."
"But those people..."
"Have lost their Abus Dumbledore and Gellert Grindelwald. They have gained peace...you can look at it like that."
"But they've lost...me...? Septimus...?"
"Septimus?" He looked at her abdomen, fleetingly. "All of the intransmutable objects had to be present in order for Dumbledore and Grindelwald to be able to pass into this exact universe, just as all of the horcruxes had to all present for Harry's potion to work. Septimus is here, Cecilia...or at least he will be."
Cecilia felt her eyes widen at what he was telling her, but before she could collect the words together to say something, Severus Snape added, "it is not my place to discuss this with you," then turned his head. But something else had occurred to Cecilia.
"You and Tabitha Penwright?" she asked, remembering the Severus Snape in the other world...how much they adored one another, the embryonic beginning of that she had witnessed in the Department of Mysteries. And she was not that bumbling fool that she had pretended to be.
"We have taking it very slowly, the new Head of the Department of Mysteries and I. We are both...damaged...both need to ensure understanding on both sides."
There was a smile...a smile she recognised on...a Severus Snape's face...but not this Severus Snape...that was the rarest expression of all. Cecilia smiled too, knowing now that the future was there to be had in this world...by all.
And then she closed her eyes as another memory, one which was particularly painful. Lily and Remus. But, without Lily caring for Remus as she had done, there would be no glass bottle, deep brown so as to prevent a reaction with light, waiting for the next lunar eclipse for Remus to rid himself once and for all of the disease. Snape has done right by Lily in the end; Sirius has done right by trusting her in the end.
She looked at Snape's face, feeling the blankness on hers, like a daydreamer in lesson when a child has been asked a question by the teacher all of a sudden.
"I can make it so you forget, and I have the ability to make Lupin's changes permanent...a parting gift from Aloysius," he added.
Lindvald, thought Cecilia, affectionately, but then steeled herself to look at Snape.
"It's his choice, Severus, it has to be," Cecilia said, closing her hands around her teacup like it was a precious jewel that she could never let go. "All that gone though," she continued, her voice soft and beguiling, as if recounting a dream, "free of the werewolf bite".
And, Cecilia added to herself, gone would be the anxious, nervous, narcissistic, Machiavellian Caelius Lupin, absent in this world; the mans' neuroses and thoughts only of Lily. She had loved him there, and had tried to be dutiful, but he had not loved her.
"It's his choice."