Chapter Twenty-Two: After a great deal of consideration, Pete punched Repeat in the nose…

Day ?

Severus was always cold. It did not matter that thunder crackled almost constantly, that the air was so hot it was difficult to remember how to breathe, let alone think. Even as he fought the urge to tear off every single stitch of clothing he wore in the oppressive heat, he pulled his robes tight around his shoulders with a heartfelt shiver.

He did not think it was psychological, either. Hermione had constructed a clever spell some todays ago, explaining some curious Muggle device to him as she demonstrated what she was doing. A thermo-heater or some such thing — its function was to display the temperature of the surrounding environment. "I just want to know how hot it is," she'd said, stone-faced. He had not responded, only watched passively as she cast her spell several times in rapid succession, producing several numbers inscribed on a sheet of parchment.

At first, Hermione thought her spell was a failure. But Severus, silently skimming her results, noticed a pattern and said as much. The obvious solution was so absurd that neither of them was able to believe it without rigorously testing her spell even further.

But eventually, they both had to admit the truth. The fact that Hermione's thermo-heater spell was registering two distinct temperatures in the same space, one much higher than the other, meant simply that the air actually was at two different temperatures.

This morning, then, as Severus cast her spell, his parchment told him that his office was simultaneously both forty-seven degrees below centigrade and sixty-two degrees above.

He did not think about it much, other than the usual lingering consideration that it was Hermione's spell telling him this.

On his bad days, on the days when he ran out of brandy, when he saw another collapsed ceiling or wall with exposed, fractured support beams, riddled with the unthinkable holes he'd come to detest, he wanted to blame her. For stealing the Time Turner, for breaking it, for not trying hard enough.

Mostly, though, for being wrong.

He'd kissed her, all of those hateful todays ago. The first time they had prevented her demise, delirious with their power, their casual avoidance of her death, he'd wanted to mark her, to own their victory as much as she did.

And he'd kissed her again the next today, after he awoke to an empty office and an untouched supply of brandy. She had stumbled into the room, hair wild and uncombed and wearing childish-looking pajamas that had been buttoned incorrectly. Saying nothing, he'd allowed her to kiss him, tasting salt on her lips and carefully wrapping his arms around her, smoothing his hands up and down her back.

Some time long after that, after both Severus and Hermione had given up, as they wiled away their respective eternities with talk and drink, she had spoken of Muggle books and Muggle science, trying to explain an analogy that he suspected she herself only half-understood.

"Muggles don't have Time Turners, of course," she'd told his ankles, an inane giggle belying the sheer amount of alcohol in her system — in his experience, Hermione was not one of those females prone to frequent giggling. "They talk about building machines, though. Machines you could use to go back in time. Or even ahead."

"Ahead?" he remembered asking his brandy glass. "That's not possible."

She'd giggled again. "They don't even know that going backward is. It's all a… whozzit. There's a German word for it, you know. An experiment. In your head, like. And since they don't know all the rules, they think up all sorts of stupid things. Like, what if you went back into the past and killed your grandfather before he met your grandmother?" For a single, bleary moment, her eyes had managed to focus on his.

Severus's brow creased. "If you killed your grandfather, then you wouldn't exist."

"Yeah," she sighed into her glass, emptying it with a practiced motion.

"But wait…" he continued slowly, brandy making thinking entirely too difficult. "If you didn't exist, you couldn't kill your grandfather. So he'd meet your grandmother, and then you'd exist. But you'd kill your grandfather, so you couldn't…" Trailing off, Severus scowled at her.

"Exactly," she told him, reaching for the decanter by his chair and allowing him a full view of her chest as her robe collar gaped open and not noticing his frank stare. "But there's this one fellow — I can't remember who. And he said that all of those paradox things are just bollocks."

"Well, they are," he'd replied, still eyeing her cleavage as she finally wrapped a hand around the brandy and began leaning back.

"He said," she continued, shakily refilling her glass, "that nature would keep you from killing your grandfather. That your pistol would misfire, or your poison would go off. There wouldn't be any way to make it happen. That's how much nature hates paradoxes."

Severus had simply grunted and realized his own glass was empty.

"Like us," she'd said, cradling the decanter like an infant to her chest with one hand and gesturing wildly with her other, sloshing brandy from her glass all over his hearthrug. "Like our loop."

"Twenty points from Gryffindor for being a drunken slob," he said with a frown.

"Shut up, Polly," Hermione said, glaring over at him. "I'm making a point. About us and our loop. Nature won't let us out, because we'd have to cause a paradox, and that Muggle chap says there's no such thing."

If he recalled correctly, she'd burst into tears at that point, and he'd been required to reclaim his decanter before she broke it.

She'd been correct, in any case. Her death or her survival — neither seemed to impact the time loop one way or another. If there was a key to the loop, it wasn't anything preventable. Which, of course, meant that there was nothing to be done.

He had one nightmare any more — his old professor's teacup, shattering and reassembling itself endlessly. In his dream, the cup was screaming as it faded, as entropy scattered it to the proverbial winds.

He had not lost count of the number of times he'd woken up with a scream in his head — he'd merely stopped counting many todays ago. The same today he'd stopped counting the number of days they'd been in the loop.

The same today he could not find Hermione

She had not been the first to disappear. She had not even been in the first noticeable group of people to disappear.

But she had been the first one he'd looked for. The first one he'd actively noticed.

Actively missed.

Not the last, though.

He missed Minerva, twittering anxiously about her classes at breakfast. He missed yelling at Thomas Ashcroft in the middle of Potions class for absolutely no reason at all. He even — Merlin and Vishnu save him — missed the idiots Potter and Weasley, squabbling over the last breakfast sausage. Although he'd had to be careful toward the end not to hear them wondering aloud about Hermione's whereabouts.

So many were gone now. As Severus forced himself to drink his morning tea, he looked out over the Great Hall and saw less than twenty people, all told. Some of them smiled cheerfully and conversed with empty chairs, nature and the time loop helping them forget the truth of their surroundings. But the majority of them surveyed the remains of their school with a mixture of horror and fear glazing their eyes.

He did not know how many people had gone to their deaths knowing the truth, but he suspected many of them did. No one remembered as well as he did, though. Him and Hermione.

They always had an unsettled look to them. Tight around the edges, like. Always asking what day it was, always giving people second, third, fourth looks.

Until she'd disappeared for good, Hermione had always delighted in the look on Potter's face when she appeared at breakfast, alive and healthy. Which was, really, why it took Potter and Weasley several todays to notice her absence, probably. They weren't expecting to see her. And it wasn't as if Severus was about to unburden himself to either of them.

It did not matter now. Both boys were just as gone as she was.

Just as dead.

If Severus thought about it, he felt slightly sorry for the rest of the world. While he was blessed with an eternally Voldemort-free existence, those on the outside of the loop were not. And with Potter the thrice-damned prophesied child dead and gone, not to mention the number of high ranking Order members that were also trapped and dying or dead, the likelihood of Voldemort even having a chance at a downfall was grim at best. Fortunately, this was no longer Severus's problem.

Let Weasleys and Malfoys alike kowtow to the Dark Lord — Severus would likely be long dead.

He tried to let such thoughts be a comfort to him, as he had little else to amuse him as the todays wore on and out.

There was precious little of Hogwarts left, missing students and professors aside. The slope leading down to the lake disappeared even before Hermione did — neither she nor Severus was brave enough to attempt walking even remotely close to the terrifying, seething nothingness. And he had not been outdoors since she'd shown him the missing hill that day.

Well, not technically. Although he'd certainly been in rooms with missing ceilings, watching rain fall onto desks and ruin textbooks. His own classroom, complete with perpetually caved-in ceiling, had flooded many todays ago, and he had not bothered holding class in more todays than he could remember.

But he could remember the very last class he'd taught. His fourth years. Thomas Ashcroft was but a bitter memory at that point, leaving poor Graham Pritchard to brew in peace.

Pritchard had been having trouble, though. The fingers on his right hand just couldn't manage to wrap themselves around the handle of his ladle. Severus had watched the boy's hand chase the spoon futilely around his cauldron, halfway expecting Pritchard to ask for help and not knowing what to do. And then he'd blinked and his entire world came tumbling down.

Pritchard had no right hand.

His arm tapered down to a frail wrist, poking out from his robe sleeve, and then… nothing.

Severus continued to watch in horrified fascination, the illusion now completely shattered, as Pritchard tried to conduct himself as if his hand were intact. It was both pitiful and terrible, and it had taken a great deal of self-control to refrain from gibbering like an idiot at the sight of it.

And he had not been able to bring himself to hold class since. He knew he could not watch Pritchard clumsily bump his ladle with an imaginary hand ever again without literally crying, and he was determined to get through all of this with a minimal number of tears.

After that today, though, it had been difficult for Severus to continue to behave in a rational manner, for Pritchard's hand had not been the only illusion to fade.

He could see everything as it truly was. Everything and everyone — his mental barriers were, for all intents and purposes, completely gone.

Pritchard had no hand, Neville Longbottom had no nose. Daphne Greengrass had empty spots dotting her cheeks in a grotesque parody of adolescent acne, and a full quarter of Poppy Pomfrey's entire body was simply gone.

The absolute worst, however, Severus decided on this particular to day as he pretended to be interested in his tea, was the pathetic man sitting across from him.

"Bit muggy today, eh, Severus?" Albus asked with a hatefully vacant grin.

"It's storming, Headmaster," he replied obediently.

"Oh, I know," he said, nodding sagely. "I think the noise is what's scared Fawkes off. I can't find him anywhere."

"He's been missing a long time, Albus," Severus said, sighing and trying very hard not to look at him.

Albus's voice was very nearly petulant. "He was in my office just yesterday, Severus." A raindrop landed in Severus's teacup with an audible splash. "Oh, is it raining?" Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Albus look up. "Something must be wrong with the ceiling."

"Why, yes, Albus. Yes, there is. Actually, it's riddled with holes." He wanted to cover his face with his hands but kept himself from actually doing so.

"Holes? I'll have to ask Argus to take a look, then," he said placidly, leaning over and dunking a bit of his toast in Severus's tea, smearing raspberry jam all over the lip of the cup.

He ignored the toast, fighting a sneer. "Filch is gone. Has been for ages."

Clearly confused, Albus bowed his head, allowing Severus a sickening glimpse of the wide gap in the top of his head, grey brain matter obviously exposed through the opening. "Is he on vacation? I don't remember authorizing a holiday."

"No, Albus," Severus said patiently, dragging a finger along the sticky rim of his cup. "He's disappeared. Because of the time loop."

"Time loop?" His brow furrowed and the skin on the edges of the fracture in his skull pulled back, showing raw, red flesh.

"We're in a time loop, Albus," he said slowly, as if he were addressing one of his stupider first years. "This same Thursday keeps repeating, over and over. I told you before."

Albus's eyes brightened for a moment. "By Jove, you'd think I would remember something like that. A time loop… really?"

"Really," he replied, sighing once more.

He did not like talking to Albus for many reasons, but mostly because Albus always managed to remind him that when he looked into a mirror, a haggard but intact version of himself returned his worried gaze. And Severus did not believe himself to be nearly as lucky as all that.

If the rest of the population of Hogwarts had been reduced to a handful of terrified, lurching zombies, then, in all likelihood, so had he.

Sometimes, Severus wondered what he would really look like, if he could see past the mental barrier. How disfigured would his missing parts make him? How deeply could he fool himself into even the tiny semblance of normalcy he'd managed to retain?

"A time loop," Albus was saying. "My goodness, how singular. Does the Ministry know?"

Severus was also almost pathetically grateful that Hermione disappeared intact. Or, at least, before he'd noticed Pritchard's hand. So if something had been wrong with her — apart, of course, from the usual, he thought wryly — he had not had the faculties to notice.

In his more maudlin moments, moments like these, when Albus chattered endlessly and Severus deeply regretted the fact that the time loop had prevented any and all of his suicide attempts, he found himself thinking about Hermione. Regretting Hermione.

He sometimes wondered what it would have been like if he'd given in and bedded her. He would have hated himself for it, of course. Cursed his weakness even as he would have doubtlessly held her close in the dark of the sunless morning. He wondered what her bare skin would have felt like against his, slicked with sweat and need and desire.

He probably should have told her that he loved her, even if it was a lie. The tightness in his belly as he thought about her even now had to signify something, and it would not have hurt him to give her that small comfort.

Besides, he knew that even if he did not already love her, that he could have loved her.

Easily.

It would have been better to love her than to mourn her, even though he was beginning to suspect that it would have felt the same way.

In any case, it would have ended the same way.

He watched moodily as another raindrop fell into his cold tea, startling Albus in mid-word. "Oh, I say!" Albus exclaimed, breaking off his rambling. "Is it raining?"

Snarling, partially at Albus, but mostly at himself, Severus wiped a tear out of his eye with a single, trembling finger.

Thursday, 23 March 2987

Kieran hated it when Jenny made him go with her to the fields. It was so boring. "Come on," he practically moaned, hating how she made him feel like a little kid, "at least in the village, we can go over to Honeydukes and get free tastes or something."

Jenny's responding look was contemptuous at best. "That's where everyone goes. Don't you want to be an individual, Key?"

"If being an individual means that all the kids at school think I'm some bizarre, tree-hugging freak, then, no," he said. As an afterthought, he stuck his tongue out at her. "And don't call me that."

Laughing, she grabbed his hand and tugged him forward a few steps. "Oh, why not? After all, I am your oldest, bestest friend, for all that you wouldn't know it when we're at school."

Kieran sighed and pulled away from her. "Jenny…"

"I don't mind, Key," she said, sounding mostly serious. "I know the other chaps give you hell for spending time with a girl." Her voice turned thoughtful. "At least, a girl that you aren't trying to fu–"

"Jenny!" he cried, feeling his cheeks redden.

"What?" she asked innocently. "All I'm saying is that your mates don't give Tom Weasley half as much trouble over Lucretia Malfoy." And she waggled her eyebrows at him in such a ludicrously suggestive gesture that he couldn't help laughing at her. After a pause, she even joined in.

With a hand on his belly, Kieran flung his other arm around her shoulder. "Jenny, if that's why you won't be seen with me in Hogsmeade, you don't have to worry." He grinned broadly at her. "It's hols, you know, and none of the fellows live around here."

Huffing indignantly, she drove an elbow into his side. "You, Mr. Mackenzie, are very lucky that we have Underage Magic Restrictions, else I might have to transfigure you into a slug."

"Nah," he said, elbowing her in reply. "You stink in Transfigurations. I figure you'd just poison me or something."

"I really hate you, Key Mackenzie," Jenny pouted.

Kieran rolled his eyes — sometimes she could be such a girl when she set her mind to it. "Great," he said, pulling away from her. "Then you won't mind if I ditch you and go back home. They're having a sale on Filibusters this week in Zonko's."

"Oh, Kieran, don't get in a strop," she said, putting a hand on his arm.

"Me?" he asked incredulously. "I'm in a strop?"

"Besides," she continued brightly, "we're not too far off."

"From what?" he asked, feeling both irritated and impatient with her. "As far as I can tell, we're a good ten kilometers from nowhere in all directions."

"No," she said, tugging on his arm again. "My dad told me it was right nearby."

"What was nearby? I swear, Jenny…" Kieran groused, but good-naturedly, allowing her to pull him along.

"Dad said that like a million years ago, there was a school around Hogsmeade," Jenny explained as they walked. "A school for wizards."

He frowned, deep in thought. "But why would we need another one?"

"No, stupid," she said with a sigh. "It was before Glengrove. I told you it was a long time ago."

"So there's some old, abandoned, falling down school up on the moors," Kieran said. "Big deal. If we want ruins, we can Floo to Edinburgh and go through the crypts again. I bet this time, I can scare more Muggles than you. Without magic."

"Key, you are, without a doubt, the most boring person I know," Jenny replied, not missing a step. "Are you telling me you've never heard the stories?"

"No," he said in a mocking, high-pitched voice, "I've never heard the stories. Which just proves that your dad's been feeding you a line. If there was an old school up here, I would have heard of it, too."

Shaking her head at him, she just made a face. "They covered it up. When everyone disappeared."

"Disappeared?" he echoed, interest piqued.

"That's what Dad said. He said that about a thousand years ago, the whole school just up and disappeared one day, people and everything. And no one knows why."

"Schools don't just disappear," Kieran scoffed.

"Well, this one did. They sent owls and everything. The Minister himself tried to find it, but no one could," she said matter-of-factly.

"What, did they lose their map?"

Jenny smacked him soundly on the back of his head before he could even think about ducking. "They knew where it was supposed to be, you great idiot, but they couldn't get to it. My dad told me that there was some sort of barrier. And if someone got too close to finding it, they would disappear, too."

"Convenient," he said before he could help himself, dodging her next blow with a smirk. "Boy, you really don't want to have to face Dumbledore in the Quidditch match after holidays, do you? I don't blame you — their Beaters are terrifying. But what I don't understand is why I have to disappear as well."

"Is it really hot all of a sudden?" she asked, flapping the edges of her robes and swiping at her forehead. "I'm hot."

Kieran shrugged. "I can't feel a difference. You're just having me on, aren't you? There's no such thing as this dumb, disappearing school."

Eyes wide as she swiveled to look at him, he could read the protest in her expression. "Kieran, honestly," she said. "You can go ask Dad if you don't believe me."

"I ought to," he grumbled. But he kept walking alongside her.

"Can you see that?" she asked abruptly, raising a hand to point at the horizon.

He squinted. "See what? I don't see anything."

Jenny looked rather chagrined. "I thought… no, you're probably right. It was all weird and blurry anyway — just the sun playing tricks."

"You're playing tricks," he said, rolling his eyes.

"Why would I lie about this?" she asked. "You could probably look it up if you wanted. I'm sure it would be in one of the histories on Glengrove, at least. Dad told me that the headmaster of the old school was one of Lord Voldemort's biggest opponents."

"Opponents?" Kieran asked, raising he eyebrows at her. "Who would be dumb enough to be against Lord Voldemort, of all people?"

Jenny laughed derisively. "Boy, you really don't pay any attention in History of Magic, do you? Lord Voldemort wasn't recognized as a hero until he helped the Ministry deal with the leaks to the Muggle press back at the turn of the twenty-first century. We would have been exposed for sure if he hadn't set up the Muggle Accords and gotten the Prime Minister to sign. And even at that, he was still terribly controversial, even as late as when he founded Glengrove almost a hundred years later." Her voice had taken on a superior quality that grated on his nerves.

"Well, hark at Little Miss Know-It-All. I expect for your encore, you're going to prove that black is white, and Alexander Dursley is really a kind, loving soul," he said snidely.

"See if I ever help you with your Potions essays ever again," she retorted with a haughty sniff.

Grinning, Kieran hooked an arm around her waist and gave her a sideways embrace, kissing her cheek for good measure. "Oh, don't be pissy, pretty Jenny. I was just teasing you."

"Yeah, right," she said, clearly unconvinced.

"I'll even believe in your stupid missing school story, if you want," he told her, mouth twitching as he tried to force himself into a serious expression.

Her frown did not budge even slightly. "It's true whether you believe me or not."

"Well, we can try to disappear finding it some other time," Kieran said, hugging her again. "It's freezing out here, you know. Come on and I'll buy you a butterbeer."

Jenny's face softened minutely. "You can't sneak sips of it like you always do."

"I promise."

After a long silence, she grinned at him. "All right, then, Key. It's probably just an old kiddy story anyway."

As they made their way back to Hogsmeade, neither of them noticed the strangely shimmering sky nearby, both a beacon and a warning, hinting at a secret no one had really ever known the truth about. It was, after all, just a story.

FINIS