Chapter Sixteen: Pete and Repeat Went For a Boat Ride…

Day Three Hundred Twelve

"Blast it, girl!" Severus exclaimed. "Didn't you used to knock?"

Hermione merely gave him a serene smile and continued to settle herself in her chair to her satisfaction, slipping off her shoes and tucking her feet under herself. "I figured that you disapproved of timidity, in the long run, at least."

Pursing his lips, he threw his quill to his desk in disgust. "I'm not going to get anything accomplished this morning, am I?"

"That's a rather perilous question, isn't it?"

He absolutely refused to take the bait. "What was your purpose in coming down here?" he asked abruptly. "Are you in search of alcohol, or have you merely made it your goal in life to distract me beyond all reason?"

With a slight eye roll, she flicked some invisible speck off her robe front. "Would you believe that I had an idea I wanted to talk about? Or, rather, something's been bothering me."

Making a great show, Severus leaned forward in his chair, propping his chin in one of his hands and giving her an expectant look. "Please, Hermione, take your pick."

Hermione blew out a sigh and muttered something under her breath that may or may not have been, "Slytherins." Severus decided to leave it alone. At his continued silence and raised eyebrow, she began to speak in earnest. "I was thinking about the time-loop."

"And here I was thinking that you were going to attempt to enlist me in a conspiracy to liberate Draco Malfoy's underthings from his trunk and display them on the coat of arms in the Great Hall," he replied in a mild voice.

As her mouth fell open, he decided that whatever he was going to have to endure from her for the rest of the morning was worth the look of absolute shock on her face. "I hadn't…" she stammered. "You wouldn't, would you?" There was a dejected note in her voice and a glimmer of faint hope in her eye.

Severus smirked and tilted back, enjoying her distress. "No."

"You just can't–" she began furiously.

Smoothly, he interrupted her. "I believe, Hermione, that you wanted to discuss the time-loop?"

After a long moment during which her face was a study of mixed rage and frustration, her shoulders slumped. "By my count, we've lived this Thursday at least two hundred eighty-six times," she said, ostensibly in introduction.

"You've kept count of the days?" he asked in a neutral voice, hiding his incredulity fairly well in his personal opinion. "I find it hard to believe that you keep track of how many days it has been and yet you never know what time it is."

"I don't wear a watch any more," Hermione replied with a scowl. "Besides… you always know."

Having nothing to say to that, Severus merely inclined his head in an accepting nod.

"So, we've lived two hundred eighty-six Thursdays," she repeated.

"At least," he supplied mildly.

"At least," she added, jerking her head curtly at his words. "And I've been thinking. About the outside. I know that you said a long time ago that you don't think that the rest of the world has stopped."

"If we're using this much energy just to continue the time loop," he said, holding up his quill and nodding at the gaping hole in its feather, "I can't imagine that an even larger system of living creatures could be suspended without far more devastating effects."

She sighed. "But there has to be a boundary."

"Yes," he agreed evenly. "Because of the Floo network."

"And the owls," she said, giving him a tiny nod. "I didn't believe that there was a boundary, you know? Even with everything. Because it's just so… unreal. Since we've stopped, it feels like the rest of the world ought to have stopped as well."

Slowly, Severus leaned forward in his chair, resting his elbows on his desk and propping his chin in his hands. "When I was a student," he began thoughtfully, "my Defense professor had a teacup that had been involved in a Time Turner incident. It shattered itself over and over, caught in a time-loop that was, for all intents and purposes, infinite. But it was definitely restricted. My professor could pick the cup up, move it around. But every minute or so, it would just… fall apart."

Hermione looked absolutely miserable. "It would be easier to believe that the whole world, the whole universe was caught."

Certain that he was about to offer no comfort, he smiled humorlessly. "Would you like to shoulder the burden of condemning the entire universe to its death, then, Hermione?"

Her shoulders slumped and he quickly squelched the ludicrous urge to go to her side. "It's hard to look them in the eyes any more," she whispered. "And I'm so terrified that when they begin to remember…" As she trailed off, she looked up, a tear trickling down her cheek. "They'll know that I killed them. I don't think I can…"

Cursing himself, he did move, coming around his desk to crouch beside her chair and placing a hand on its arm, nearly touching her. "It's not your fault," he heard himself say as if from a long distance off. The next time he had the urge to say something cutting to her, he was going to keep it to himself, if it was going to produce this result. "It's not your fault," he repeated, feeling stupid.

"But I–"

"The Time Turner happens to be around your neck when it breaks," he said, hand inching closer to her forearm. "You're not the one who broke it the first time, Hermione."

"They'll all hate me," she said dully.

Severus watched his fingers slide over her wrist and up her hand, covering it completely. "What do you care if they do?" he asked in the gentlest voice he'd ever heard coming out of his own mouth. "You know the truth — you know where the responsibility lies."

Why was he saying these things? He barely even believed them himself.

And they did not appear to be helping — Hermione looked skeptical. He reminded himself that she had been on the verge of tears, so perhaps he had managed to ward those off, at the very least. "But what if I think they're right? What if I hate myself for what I've done?"

The words tumbled out of his mouth before he could stop them. "Then you're more of a fool than I thought."

"Do you not have a single shred of emotion, sir?" she asked bitterly, another tear falling down her cheek.

Biting down on his lip, he withdrew his hand from hers as if burnt. "My emotional capacities are not up for discussion, Miss Granger."

Her eyes narrowed. "Then neither are mine."

They looked at each other for a long, tense moment. Her forehead was furrowed, and her nose wrinkled. A lock of hair had fallen into her face, but she was apparently willing to ignore it. Severus's hand itched to move it out of her eyes, but he willed it still.

"I will not talk about it any more," she said stiffly.

With a soft sigh, he leaned back on his heels. "You have made that clear, I believe."

"Besides, responsible or no, we're still the only people in any sort of position to try to break the loop." Her gaze was fierce.

Inwardly, he groaned. So they were back to this again. "Hermione…"

"It seems so hopeless, doesn't it?" she asked, shifting gears completely, a note of sadness in her voice now.

It was on the tip of Severus's tongue to inquire after her sanity, but he managed to rein in the question before it could escape. She had been so rational lately that he'd almost forgotten his conviction that she was absolutely mad. He needed to remind himself on more of a regular basis.

Granger was mad. Hermione was mad.

He was probably mad, too, come to think of it, but that wasn't the focus of his thoughts at the moment.

She was.

And she was talking again. He watched her lips open and close with minimal comprehension, not listening to her so much as watching her. The way her teeth fitted together when she pronounced a 't' sound. The tightening around her lips as she said her 'm's. "…not listening to me, are you?" Severus heard her say, eventually.

"What?" He blinked and flailed for balance as his knees chose that exact moment to protest his squatting position. Only by grabbing onto the chair arm did Severus keep himself from falling flat on his rear end. Which would have been entirely unacceptable, of course.

"I merely pointed out that you aren't listening to me," Hermione said, a hint of snide glee in her voice. "I just informed you that Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy were shagging on the desk behind you, and you didn't even blink. I would think that such a comment would have elicited a cutting remark at the very least."

Sniffing, he pushed himself to a standing position, using the arm of her chair for leverage and studiously avoiding coming into contact with her own arm. "If you are going to behave in such an overtly juvenile fashion, I think it would be best if you left, Hermione," he said, mentally wincing at the sulky note in his tone.

She rolled her eyes and did not look fazed in the slightest. "Now you threaten to throw me out of your office, after everything that's happened? Forgive me if I am dubious, Professor."

"Maybe I am simply tired of silly schoolgirls," he said with a frown, folding his arms over his chest and glaring down his nose at her.

Hermione's mouth opened slightly — forty todays ago she would have screamed at him until she had no breath left, and he found himself perversely hoping that was what she would do now — and closed without making a single sound.

Severus huffed under her steady gaze, conceding defeat with poor grace. She was right, damn her. He would not expel her from his office.

"Before we… went off track," she said in a delicate sort of tone, arching an eyebrow and offering him a twist of the lips that was halfway between a grin and a smirk. "I asked you if you would help me find the boundary. See how far away from Hogwarts the loop extends."

"I fail to see the purpose in such an endeavor," he said. "Besides, why would you want to?"

"Maybe we could…"

With a wave of his hand, he interrupted her stammering. "I expect that is where the energy is most highly concentrated. It's not a place I would want to go, at any rate."

Unbelievably, she continued to protest. "But what if–"

"Tell me, Hermione, are you looking for exotic ways to die?"

Her glare was withering. "If you would ever let me finish, sir, I was going to say that it might be possible to break the loop at the boundary. Certainly, if we could get something to the outside… or bring something in…"

Severus sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and pointer finger. "What makes you think we could even get close enough to this boundary of yours, even if it is as well defined as you suggest? A tree would probably fall on us, or a mad squirrel would chase us off."

"What makes you think we couldn't?" she countered irritably. "For that matter, what do you mean by 'well defined?'"

"Do you really think that there's a clear line between… Hogwarts and the rest of the world? Some point where the time-loop begins and ends? Drop a Knut on one side of the line and all will be well?" he asked in a voice that practically grated with cynicism.

Wrinkling her nose defensively, she pushed some hair out of her eyes. "Well, when you put it like that…"

"Maybe it's not even in the same place, day by day," he continued, more thoughtful now, as he began to actually think about her question instead of simply refusing to consider it. "Every bloody other thing seems to change bit by bit, why not the edge of the world as well?"

"The edge of the world?" she echoed with a faint grin.

Severus shrugged. "Might as well be," he said gloomily.

"But the world doesn't have edges."

"Which makes it even worse to consider," he replied in a voice that he hoped communicated to Hermione that he was done discussing it.

With a little huff, she folded her arms across her chest. "Moving boundaries and fuzzy edges. I wish we knew more about all of this. Why doesn't Hogwarts have a single physics textbook?"

Clearing his throat, he raised an eyebrow. "I seriously doubt that there are Muggle textbooks out there that discuss the mechanics of a closed time-loop, Hermione."

"Still," she replied, making a frustrated gesture with her right hand. "It would help if I felt like I knew something about what was happening to us. Even if I could do some calculations to find out how much longer we have until… everything breaks down. Much less try to find the boundary or poke holes in it. We still don't even know why every day I…"

He found himself taking pity on her at that, her face twisting as she hesitated to affirm her own death. "It doesn't matter," he said. "Knowing would not lessen the burden, would it?"

She did not reply, but the skin under her eye jumped. Severus reminded himself that she already was in the unfortunate position of knowing when she was to die. Even though he did not want to count down to his own demise, marking off their existence on a mental calendar, she already was.

After a long pause, Hermione rose to her feet, smoothing her robes agitatedly with her palms. "I think I'm going to lunch today, Professor. Are you?"

"Do I usually?" he asked absently, leaning against his desk, feeling its edge dig uncomfortably into his hipbone. He ignored it.

"Well, then," she said, her feet shuffling awkwardly as she took a few steps back. "I guess I'll see you later, then. If you don't cancel class."

As she turned to walk out of the door, Severus watched his hand reach toward her shoulder and jerked it back before he could touch her. No, wait, was on the tip of his tongue — he nearly bit himself as he held the words in.

What was wrong with him?

One moment, he was coddling the girl, telling her she wasn't responsible for condemning them all to a slow death, another, he was on the verge of asking her not to leave him alone.

Closing his eyes as her robe hem swirled out of view, he searched his memory, trying to recall if he'd sustained a head injury recently that could possibly explain his behavior.

Or maybe the madness was worsening. He'd always thought that Hermione was approaching the void more quickly than he was, but he might be wrong. How did one go about determining if one was sane, anyway?

With a sigh and a headshake, Severus sat down at his desk, cradling his head in his hands as it hit him.

He liked the girl.

He genuinely preferred her company to an empty room.

This was unprecedented. Severus could count on one hand the number of people in his entire lifetime that he'd truly liked, including Hermione, and three of them were currently dead.

Groaning audibly, he let his head slip to the desktop, the polished wood smooth under his forehead. This was not acceptable. She was his student, and nothing more.

It was fine to be concerned over her death — he was responsible for her safety, after all — but it was not fine to actually care. To worry about the look in her eye before it happened. To want to soothe her tears even before they began. To…

Severus lifted his head and let it fall to the table once again, not flinching at the thudding noise.

He couldn't let this continue.

Day Three Hundred Nineteen

"Minerva, are you all right?" Poppy Pomfrey asked pleasantly as she poured herself a cup of tea.

Minerva frowned and ran a hand over her face. "I'm fine."

"You don't look fine," she countered, echoing Minerva's frown. "You're sweating like a pig. In fact, you look downright–"

"I'm a little warm," she told Poppy quickly, giving her robes a flap. "It's a bit stuffy in here."

Smiling slyly, Poppy took a sip of her tea. "I'm fine, Minerva. Are you sure it's not your hot–"

"Poppy!" Minerva interrupted, bringing her hand against the table in a surprisingly loud gesture. "Poppy," she said more calmly once the mediwitch raised her eyebrows, "I don't think that's appropriate conversation for mixed company."

"Oh, my dear," Albus said abruptly, mouth twitching underneath his beard, "don't worry. All of us here are familiar with your… warm tendencies as of late."

Her hands convulsed once more on the tabletop. "Albus Dumbledore," she cried, voice tight with fury, "how dare you–"

"Really, Minerva," Poppy interrupted with a smile. "It's not as if it isn't perfectly normal and healthy. Every woman goes through her change differently; some just take longer than others."

"Could we please discuss something else," Minerva moaned, covering her eyes with one hand.

"And besides, Minerva," Albus said in a neutral voice, "I don't think that your, erm, femininity is exclusively to blame — it is rather warm in here. Unnaturally so, really, given that it's only March."

"You'd think the rain would take the edge off, wouldn't you?" Pomona Sprout said, reaching for another slice of toast. "But it seems more humid now than it was when I first went out to the greenhouses."

Scowling and unable to bear the conversation for even a second longer, Severus pushed his chair away from the table and walked out of the Great Hall as quickly as his feet could carry him, robes swirling around his ankles.

Day Two Hundred Twenty-Four

There had to be a reason for it. A simple one, too, probably. But Severus was damned if he knew what it was.

Hermione had come in for breakfast at her usual time, not even glancing up at the professors' table as she seated herself among the few Gryffindors that were in the hall that early and poured a cup of tea. She smiled as her friends sat down around her nearly an hour later, laughing outright as the Weasley boy dug his fingers into her side during one disgustingly playful moment. Saying something he hadn't heard as he systematically tore a piece of bacon to shreds as he watched her, she had excused herself from the table and walked out. Making no mental excuses and no apologies to his tablemates, Severus had followed her with little pretense. If she'd noticed, she had yet to call him on it.

Severus wasn't sure where she was going — he first thought she might be going to the Gryffindor tower, as she didn't seem to have her usual bookbag anywhere on her person, but she led him in nearly the exact opposite direction. He kept his footsteps as quiet as possible, avoiding eye contact with passersby, trying to appear as if he were on the most important of missions and not, in fact, staring at the back of Hermione Granger's head.

What was it about her?

It wasn't as if she had any particularly redeeming qualities. She could be loud and irritating and so utterly… Gryffindor that it made his teeth ache. She had the enraging audacity to argue with him, even to yell at him on occasion. Her taste in companionship was dreadful, and her hair most closely resembled a snarly forest where hairbrushes went to die.

It didn't even matter that she was as often kind as she was thoughtless. That she was more capable of sitting still and not speaking than anyone else he knew. That she could make him laugh. That her eyes sparkled when she smiled.

Severus stopped walking immediately, nearly crashing headlong into a suit of armor. He saw out of the corner of his eye that Draco Malfoy was approaching from the opposite direction, but it barely registered — he was trying too hard not to swear aloud.

This was even less acceptable.

He couldn't really be attracted to her. For one thing, Albus would literally kill him. For another… well, did there really need to be another reason?

Hermione was closer to Malfoy, now. Severus saw her turn toward the staircase in a deliberate motion, though, and, based on what he knew of her opinion of Draco Malfoy, he suspected she was trying to avoid the boy.

He must be mad — there was no other possibility. Caring about Hermione's welfare was one thing (and a ludicrous thing, at that), but this was another one entirely.

Hermione's foot hit the top step.

In fact, he'd refused her previous advances, hadn't he? Proof positive that he was currently either insane or feverish. But he grimaced as he recalled exactly why he'd done so — he cared. He cared and there was just no way around it.

Malfoy's head jerked in her direction as she turned completely away from him, and he took a couple of nimble steps toward her, a grin spreading across his face. Severus furrowed his brow, coming out of his funk enough to wonder what the boy was about. Was he going to speak to her, or was he just following her, much like Severus himself?

He suppressed a snort. The day Draco Malfoy developed designs on Hermione Granger was the day Severus would put on sparkly, pink robes and offer to do the can-can with Albus on the professors' table during luncheon.

As Malfoy's hand reached toward Hermione, apprehension rose in Severus's mind. By the time the hand connected with her back, Severus's wand was out of his robes and he was walking forward. Hermione's surprised cry as she was shoved echoed in his ears, and Severus's field of view was abruptly red.

Time skipped a few beats — Severus went from standing ten feet away from the stairs to hurtling down them in what he thought was a blink of his eye. "Hermione!" he heard himself shout as he saw her continue to tumble.

What time was it?

"No!" he all but screamed as her head made an audible cracking sound as it connected with the stone floor at the foot of the staircase, almost falling himself in his haste to get to her. He took the last four steps in a single jump and was at her side, unsure as to whether or not he could touch her.

What time was it?

He blinked again and suddenly she was in his arms, her skin pale and her eyes closed. "No, no, no," he mumbled. "Hermione?" His nose almost brushed her cheek as he pulled her even closer.

Groaning, her eyelids began to flutter, and Severus permitted himself an audible sigh of relief. "Severus?" she muttered. "What–?"

"You fell," he told her quietly. "Down the stairs. And you landed on your head, if I saw correctly. By all rights, I shouldn't be able to have a discussion with you at the moment." Severus told himself he ought to let her go now, but his arms refused to obey.

"My arm hurts," she said, wincing as she shifted in his loose embrace. "I think it's broken." Her eyes finally opened fully, clearly confused.

"Did I mention that you landed on your head, Hermione?" Severus asked, doing his level best to smile at her.

Giving her left arm an experimental twitch, she moaned — her face was chalk-white with pain. "You did. What time is it?"

"I don't know," he said dismissively. "But, Hermione, you ought to be… your head…"

With a one-shouldered shrug, she pulled away from him slightly in an obvious effort to sit up. Mindful of her arm, Severus put a hand on her back, realizing again that he shouldn't be touching her like this. "It seems as if that question has been answered."

Severus blinked. "Pardon?"

She wrapped her right hand around her left elbow, ostensibly supporting her injury as best as she could. "I'm not dead, and I really, really ought to be. That means it has to be two thirty-four, doesn't it?"

Choosing not to reply, he just looked away.

"So either my headache means that I've got internal bleeding in my skull, or my arm is absolutely shattered and I've got bone shards floating around in my bloodstream just waiting to lodge themselves in my heart," she said lightly. "Do you really think I should even bother going to Madam Pomfrey? Maybe I ought to wait until after luncheon. Or perhaps I'll just pass out. You never know…"

He found her remarks just short of crass and continued to look in the opposite direction. "I don't think–"

"Please," she said, sighing, "whatever you're about to say, I'd appreciate it if you didn't. I'm well aware that joking about my own death isn't exactly tasteful, Severus, but what do you expect me to do?"

Again, he found himself speechless.

Hermione's shoulder bumped into his chest as she moved again, and his head jerked around, wanting to make sure she wasn't going to cause herself further damage — she was trying to stand, now, and it was taking more self-control than was proper for Severus to refrain from sweeping her into his arms and carrying her to the Infirmary. "What happened, anyway?" she asked, sounding almost dazed. "I know you said I fell, but…"

Feeling his face twist into a scowl, Severus's eyes flicked involuntarily in the direction of the staircase. "You were pushed," he said lowly. "I saw it."

Her mouth was an 'o' of surprise. "Pushed?" she echoed. "But who…?" Trailing off, Hermione's face settled into a dark look that he was fairly certain matched his own. "Malfoy," she said, more than a trace of venom in her voice.

"Hermione–" Severus began, not sure what he could say.

Before he could come up with so much as a second word, his wand was out of his hand and Hermione was nearly a third of the way up the staircase, moving unbelievably quickly for someone with at least a broken arm and probably a life-threatening head injury.

"Hermione!" he said again, struggling to his feet. How had she managed to take his wand away like that?

She ignored him and continued moving up the stairs with that same uncanny speed.

But she just had too much of a head start. "Enervate," he heard her say before he'd even made it halfway to the top of the stairs.

Had he Stunned Malfoy? He must have, but he certainly had no recollection of doing so. "Er… Granger?" Malfoy's voice sounded muzzy and confused.

"You… you putrescent, vile, little rodent!" Hermione spat — Severus could only imagine her expression. "I ought to…" She shouted the words to several curses in rapid succession, hexing Malfoy with afflictions ranging from hemorrhoids up to belching spiders and back down to athlete's foot.

He doubled his efforts to get to the top of the stairs before she managed to kill the little prat.

"Any day but today, Malfoy," she continued furiously, adding a hex that would leave him unable to…

Where had the girl learned these curses, anyway?

Practically crawling, Severus reached the top step just in time to see Hermione deliver a vicious kick to Malfoy's groin. "That is enough," he said, less furiously than he might have if he hadn't seen the boy push her in the first place.

"Professor Snape," Malfoy wheezed, clutching at his crotch and curling into a feeble imitation of the fetal position. "She just–"

"Save it, Malfoy," he snarled. "I saw everything."

His mouth closed abruptly.

"And, Hermione," Severus continued, raising an eyebrow at her, "I cannot let your actions go unpunished. Four hundred points from Gryffindor for attacking a fellow student. And as further punishment, I think you will be the one to escort Mister Malfoy here to the Infirmary."

"But, sir–" Malfoy said, voice reeking of incredulity.

"Or, Malfoy, we could take this matter to the headmaster, if you would prefer," he said in a deliberately bland voice. "Your word against Miss Granger's. Keep in mind, of course, that I saw you push her down the stairs in addition to hearing her little tirade after the fact. And I make it a point to never lie to the headmaster."

With a sullen look, Malfoy nodded shortly. "Understood, Professor."

"Now, can you walk?" he asked. "Or does Miss Granger have to carry you through the school?"

Painfully, the boy dragged himself to his feet, shifting his weight from foot to foot as the various curses continued to work their way through his body. "I can walk," he said dully.

"Good," Severus replied, avoiding Hermione's eyes as the humor of Malfoy's predicament finally hit him. "Get along, then. Both of you."

As the pair walked down the hall, as far away from each other as they could be, Severus was torn between laughing aloud at Malfoy's hemorrhoid-induced waddle and wanting to run after Hermione to make sure that she made it to the Infirmary safely. She still had his wand, too.

Hands balled into fists, he forced himself to walk in the other direction, telling himself he could retrieve it later. It would be best for everyone involved if he simply put as much distance between himself and Hermione Granger as he could.