"After all this time?"
"Always." Snape paused, his face more sullen than usual. "But Hazel... I love her, Albus. What does it mean that it's still not her?" He looked up, coal black eyes meeting the twinkling blue ones. The glittering doe had just faded from the headmaster's office, leaving both if them in the warm light of the fire.
Dumbledore smiled kindly. "Severus, it is one thing to love the memory of a childhood friend who was your sole source of comfort and family for some time. You, dear boy, love and honor her memory out of regret. Professor Ashmore is another matter. I have watched you two since Professor Slughorn's Halloween party in your seventh year. Oh to be young and not know you are in love," he sighed, weaving his way past delicate golden instruments to pet Fawkes, who was dozing on her perch. "You may not realize it, but the two of you were meant to come back into each other's lives. In any world, it would have been so."
"Headmaster, seeing the future is one thing, but no one could possibly know -"
"No one can know anything for certain, but I did consult an old friend when I hired Hazel. She assured me, in all of the futures she could see branching out before us, the two of you... well, perhaps it is best that I just show you." Dumbledore raised his wand to his temple, extracting a silvery memory and throwing it into the Penseive before him. "Look."
"Sev, are you ready yet?" Hazel asked, popping her head into the office he suddenly found himself in. "They'll all be arriving any minute."
"Who?"
Hazel sighed, shaking her head. "I should've known. You've been locked in here all week. It's Christmas Eve, Sev."
"Chris Mass bees?" came a little voice, a girl of three or four appearing in the doorway next to Hazel. She had dark hair, far darker than her mother's. But thank goodness, she had her mother's nose.
"Hazel? Severus?" called another voice. From the way it echoed, he had to be downstairs. "Floo Network's busy tonight. I thought I caught Pandora and Xeno's fireplace for a moment. They'll be here soon!"
"Uncle Moony!" The little girl's face lit up and she dashed away.
Hazel came over to give him a kiss, glancing at the book in front of him. "I hope you're at a good stopping point. I wish you'd join us."
He nodded absentmindedly, standing so he could hug her. "If Lupin... Wait, Pandora's alive?"
A bit taken aback, she looked him over. "You've been inhaling too much essence of murtlap. Of course Pandora's alive. She and Xeno should be bringing little Luna soon. Molly, Arthur, Percy, Charlie, and Bill will be by in a bit too. Goodness knows Molly's got her hands full, and to think she's due to have twins in April! Oh, and the Grangers -"
Something had to be wrong. The timeline, it was all messed up, and that was just a start. "I thought - the war -"
"War? Sev, you really have been inhaling whatever confounding concoction you've been working on. The last war was a Muggle one. Well, unless you count Dumbledore and Grindelwald killing Tom Riddle all those years ago."
The war had never happened. Everyone was alive. And it was Christmas Eve. He was about to ask her another question when the scene shifted, Snape finding himself outside of a small house.
It was a well-worn house in a well-warn village. Not shabby, per se, but lived-in. "Go on," came Dumbledore's voice. He'd jumped into the string of memories with him. Silently, the two walked inside, finding a couple sitting in the living room. Hazel was sobbing, a crumpled newspaper clutched in her hand. Remus had his arms around her, telling her that he was sorry, that he wished her friend had gone another way, but this was inevitable.
Snape looked to Dumbledore, about to ask him what was going on when Hazel finally set the newspaper down. Splashed across the front page were photos of Death Eaters who had been killed in the previous night's raid. His own face was among them. "Remus, how?" she finally managed to ask in a strangled voice. "I know Dumbledore wrote to you this morning. How did it happen?"
"Darling, you don't want to -"
"How did it happen?" she snapped, finally looking up at him.
Lupin sighed, telling her that, "Dumbledore wasn't sure if it was a curse or the dementors that finished him off. If I had to guess, I would say the Killing Curse. Dementors don't... I'm sorry."
She stood, freeing herself from him. Her voice was low, measured in a way that said she was trying her best not to burst into tears again. "I'm going to shower. And then we're going to see my parents. I can't... I have to do something. Keep moving."
"You best go follow her," Dumbledore leaned in to say, Snape already on the way upstairs after her.
Instead of heading for a bedroom, Hazel stepped into what he could only assume to be her office. It was filled with books on all sorts of dark creatures and even darker magic. She opened one of the desk drawers, fishing out a photo of the two of them, from back in their Hogwarts days. In the couple of seconds the photo captured, they were smiling at each other in Hogsmeade, paying more attention to each other than to Pandora, who was trying to get them to actually look at the camera. She sat on the ground, leaning against one of the heavy bookshelves. "I should've stayed," she mumbled, staring into the photograph. "I should've stayed with you, Sev. Merlin, I love you."
"Merlin, I love you." This time she was smiling, but a few years younger than she had been in the last... memory? Future? Past? The two of them were sitting under a tree by the side of the Black Lake.
"I love you too." He saw his younger self smile, the two of them paying no attention to the antics of James Potter and Sirius Black across the water. One of them was trying to make a crystal ball skip across the lake, summoning it back every time the giant squid captured it.
"I'll tell you what, I'm glad you told Mulciber to shove off at the ball." She sat up in the grass, smiling down at where he lay. "His lot's no good.I'm glad you finally realized it."
"Marry me."
"What?"
It was his turn to sit up, both of them blissfully unaware of Dumbledore and a much older Snape standing nearby. "You heard me. We're both of-age, we're leaving Hogwarts in two days' time, we're both going to be in London working... not to mention the fact that I love you. We've been together for two years now. There's no one else I'd rather spend the rest of my life with. And Merlin knows how short people's lives are nowadays. If anything happens to either of us at the Ministry... well, I'd rather have asked."
"You're serious?" She was still incredulous, but everything was falling into place. She'd be starting Auror training the next week, and he would be joining the Department of Mysteries. "Sev, I... okay, first of all, yes. Second, I - come here." Beaming, she pulled him in for a kiss. "Professor McGonagall was right, you know. We're going to be that couple in the Ministry, aren't we?"
They could hear the voices from the road. "You only married me because you couldn't marry her! You know what, she's lucky she stuck with Remus! At least she got a few years with him before he was killed! And I'm stuck with you!"
"Lily, that's enough!" He could hear his own voice getting closer to the door.
"I don't know why I ever thought this would work out! Maybe because you'd been there for me after James and Remus died... what a mistake that was."
"I don't know why I ever bothered either." His younger self wrenched the door open, telling her, "This is it. I've had enough. I'm not coming back."
He apparated away, bringing his older self and Dumbledore with. They appeared in front of a block of flats in central London. People were looking at him strangely, but Snape didn't look back. he was intent on climbing the stairs, counting the doors carefully before he knocked. There was a second's pause, and then Hazel opened the door, her eyes full of worry. "Sev, what - What are you doing here? What happened to you?" She pulled him into a hug. "What's wrong?"
"Lily and I... It's over. I'm sorry. It's you, it's always been you, but you and Remus and -"
She cut him off with a kiss, leaving him more stupefied than ever. "You'd better come inside. There's a lot we need to talk about."
He blinked and Snape was back in Dumbledore's office. Hardly any time had passed. "Well?"
"Well?" he repeated, still confused. "What was all of that?"
"Just a couple of the things that could have been. Do you see it?" Dumbledore asked cryptically.
"Do I see it? What am I supposed to see?"
"No matter what, no matter what small choices you made that led to far greater ones, the two of you end up together. There are a million possible futures with a million possible outcomes, but Severus, do not doubt yourself," Dumbledore warned, extracting the string of thought from the Penseive and placing them back into his own mind. "I find that the two of you naturally gravitate to each other. You care for her, and she cares for you deeply. I know you have never been the best at understanding it - you have willfully guarded yourself from ever trying. But you love her. You just have no idea what that means."
Snape left the Headmaster's office more confused than when he'd walked in. He didn't have much time to dwell on it, though. As he rounded the corner to the grand staircase, he nearly crashed into Hazel. "Sev!" she laughed, reaching out for him. "You look... pensive."
"You have no idea," he answered as she pulled him into a hug. "Where are you going?"
"I was thinking about finding you, actually. Sometimes the castle has a way of knowing, doesn't it? I was on the stairs to take the shortcut past the Transfiguration classroom, but the stairs shifted, and here I am."
"Oh. What were you finding me for?" His voice was hollow as he still tried to process everything Dumbledore had shown him.
Hazel looked him over again, raising an eyebrow. "I haven't seen you all day, and I hardly saw you yesterday. You got back so late, I thought I'd just let you sleep. And you were gone again when I woke up. I thought we could go for a walk or something before it got dark out. Neither of us has been outside in days. Is everything alright?"
"Fine," he lied, taking her hand. "I'm fine."
"Hmm." She frowned, but she accepted it as an answer. "Well then... Let's go for a walk. And then I might need your help capturing the ghoul in the duelling room. It's been making quite a racket, and I could use it for class."