Disclaimer: The characters, settings, etc. of the Harry Potter series are not mine. I just play with them.

Regarding Time Travel
Six

At supper that evening, Albus Dumbledore introduced two new members of the staff. Their names were Mr. and Mrs. Jamie Palmer. They had recently returned to the UK after a six year teaching stint in Italy. In fact, Mr. and Mrs. Jamie Palmer had met and married in Italy, Venice if one were interested in the details of their relationship. Their chance meeting amongst the towering and teeming shelves of an historic library had been, according to Mrs. Jamie Palmer's account, simply magical. They had both been terribly lost, searching the library for at least one guidebook written in English when they had stumbled upon each other. They were two English speaking persons, wandering through Venice quite alone and had been lucky enough to come across someone as disoriented and lonesome as they each were. They had supper together that evening. Mrs. Palmer often told those who asked that it was Mr. Palmer's eyes that had captured her during that candlelit meal and had led her to fall desperately in love with him. She would go on to say that she hadn't been able to escape them since.

Now, Mr. and Mrs. Jamie Palmer sat in the dungeon lair in Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry they would be cohabitating during their stay at the castle. Both were trying desperately to pretend the other was not there.

But Mrs. Palmer, née Hermione Granger, was having a very difficult time accomplishing this. Sitting at the small desk located in the corner of the room that she had claimed as her own, Hermione found that she simply could not focus on the task she had appointed herself and was making no more sense of this Michelson text than she would be able to make of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Sighing, she turned around in her seat to see what Mr. Jamie Palmer, née Severus Snape, was doing.

Snape sat reading in one of the arm chairs before the fire. He looked quite relaxed, almost as though he didn't have a care in the world. Goodness, it was almost as if he belonged there.

Hermione frowned. He did belong there. These were his rooms back in the future. She sighed once again and turned back around in her seat to again look at Michelson's notes.

"Miss Granger," Snape said a second or so later, "you're tired. Why don't you go to bed?"

She frowned again and raised an eyebrow, but did not turn around to look at him. "Eager to get rid of me, Professor?" she asked quietly as she kept her eyes on the papers before her.

He made an exasperated sound, and she could practically hear his eyes rolling. "Yes, in fact I am. You see, you're constant huffing and sighing noises are quite distracting, and I am trying to read, Miss Granger."

Hermione turned around quickly in her chair to give him her angriest glare. "Well, pardon me for ruining your relaxing evening at home! I apologize for actually worrying about the situation we're in and for making an effort to correct it!"

Snape watched her quietly for a few moments, just as Hermione was about to turn back around in her seat, he spoke. "You realize there's no point," he began softly, "in getting worked up over this. We'll do what we can, and if we find that there's not much to be done, we will live as Mr. and Mrs. Palmer until we find an answer to our problem."

Hermione could not help but let her mouth drop open as she stared at him, horrified. "How can you be so calm about this, Snape? We have lives that we've left behind. The world and our lives and our work and our friends are moving forward. The world is charging on without us. And you don't even bat an eyelash!"

He smirked at her. "In case you hadn't noticed, Miss Granger, there isn't much about my life in the future that I enjoy." He paused to shrug. "In this particular existence, I've managed to come as close as I ever will to saddling my dream job, I still get to reside in the place that has been my home for most of my adult life, and I find myself with a rather attractive and young witch for a wife." Hermione watched the smirk transform into something that bordered on a leer. "All in all, I've got it pretty good, my dear Mrs. Palmer."

Hermione narrowed her eyes as she watched him. "Are you pissed? How much wine did you have at supper? I knew I should have said something before that seventh glass."

He snorted and assumed that amused expression she had seen a few days before in his office. "Well, yes," he said, "now that you bring it up, I am believe I am fairly well lubricated."

"Hmph," said Hermione, pursing her lips in a manner that would have made Minerva McGonagall proud.

"You, my dear Miss Hermione," Snape was saying, resting his head on the back of his chair as his eyes slipped close, "should think of this as a holiday of sorts. No work, just play. In the weirdest fucking circumstances possible."

Ah. So, that was it. Though Hermione had failed to spot Snape's younger counterpart among the throngs of students in the Great Hall, he had apparently not gone unnoticed by his older self. "I imagine it was terribly odd seeing yourself at dinner," Hermione said gently.

Snape snorted. "You've no idea."

Hermione frowned. She most certainly had an idea. "In my third year," she began, "I used a time turner to take extra classes. Do you remember?"

Snape grunted. She took it as an affirmative.

"Anyway," she continued, looking down at her hands, "there were a few times I would see myself in between classes and whatnot. It is very odd to actually look yourself and see yourself objectively, as others see you." She paused to shake her head. "At first, you know, I figured if I saw myself it would just be like seeing a picture. The same sort of thing; an image of yourself. But it's just so different. Pictures are just fleeting moments. Images of instances when you're posing. Here, with this sort of thing, you see yourself as you really are. No posing. Just you as you are. It's scary, isn't it?"

When he did not immediately respond, she looked over to the chair. His eyes were still closed, and his chest rose and fell rhythmically.

Sighing, Hermione tried to make a decision. She could leave him in the chair and allow him to wake up in the morning with a terrible crick in his neck. That, she supposed, might teach him that seven glasses of wine at dinner was not conducive to a good night's sleep.

Or, she supposed, she could be understanding. She could realize that though her day had been trying, it was by no means as stressful as his had been.

Hermione stood from her seat and grabbed up her wand. Waving it in his direction, she muttered, "Mobilicorpus." She directed his body through the common room, through the doorway to his bedroom, and onto the bed.

She tried to set him gently atop it, but he didn't seem to notice when he bounced a little on the mattress. Hermione placed her hands on her hips, watched him as he slept on peacefully, and debated over what to do next. She doubted he slept in his robes. She'd heard rumors of a grey nightshirt, but she had no interest whatsoever in undressing him.

Hermione settled for moving to the foot of the bed and pulling off his boots. She set them down on the floor beside the bed and decided she had done her duties.

And in any case, it was probably more than he would have done for her had their roles be reversed.

She strolled over to the wardrobe that had been set up in the corner of the room. The House Elves had taken it upon themselves to supply both she and Snape with enough clothes to last them at least a month. She searched through the drawers of the wardrobe until she found what they had given her for nightclothes.

Out of the drawer Hermione pulled a very modest, very dull, and very unattractive white cotton nightgown, complete with a high neck, long sleeves, and enough length to cover the very tips of her toes. Shaking her head, she quickly transfigured the nightgown to more closely resemble her usual black cotton number. She remembered, though, to make the neckline a bit higher and to add a bit more length to the bottom than the original had.

She was determined not to give Snape a show if he happened to see her in her nightie.

Hermione took her new transfigured nightgown and walked through the common room to the spare room that Dumbledore had asked the elves to add on to the dungeon chambers. She stepped inside the bedroom, closing the door behind her. She quickly undressed and slipped into her nightclothes. When she'd done this, she placed her wand onto the nightstand, clambered onto the bed, and crawled under the covers. Once she'd curled up into a ball under the warm sheets and duvet, she closed her eyes, and whispered, "nox," flooding the room with darkness.

Snape had been right. She was tired and, accordingly, sleep came to her quickly.

-

Hermione was awoken just after five by the sounds of someone cursing and stumbling around in the bathroom that separated Snape's bedroom from hers. She blinked, her grogginess hindering her abilities to immediately comprehend her surroundings.

But suddenly, it all came back to her in a flood of memories, causing her stomach to flip over and her heart to beat almost erratically.

She sighed, flopping onto her side and punching her pillow in an effort to fluff it up. She heard Snape curse again, followed by the sound the toilet flushing and the shower being turned on.

She closed her eyes resolutely but knew she'd never be able to get back to sleep with all the noise the old bastard was making. She'd need to remember to put up silencing charms when she went in there to ready herself for the day. She refused to let him listen to her use the toliet. Nor could she chance that he might hear the early morning warbling that usually accompanied her hair washing.

She rolled onto her back and started to think about the day ahead of her. It was Saturday, luckily, so she didn't have to worry about assisting the Potions professor with his teaching. She did, however, have to meet with the man and go over the particulars of her responsibilities as his assistant.

She imagined Snape would be meeting with the DADA professor that day, as well. She wondered if they would have breakfast in their rooms. She doubted Snape wanted to see himself again so soon.

She frowned as she examined that line of thought a bit more closely. She knew just what it was like to see oneself; she knew the horror that accompanied being able to see, really see, just how round her arse was, how huge her hair was, and that she really did walk with a bit of a stoop because of the book bag permanently attached to her back. But she didn't know what it was like to have to stand before herself in a classroom, nor did she have any idea what it was like to be forced to speak to herself at least once a week.

It was going to be wretched for him. Not only would he have to stand by and watch himself live his life, but he'd also have to watch the people he'd hated living theirs as well. For the second time in his life, he'd have to see Sirius Black and James Potter sauntering about the school. And if they were quite as bad as Harry had lamented to her one evening, then she supposed it would be quite difficult for Snape to view.

She tried to imagine just how awful it would be, by thinking of what it would like to stand by and observe herself live through her most humiliating moments without being able to help. She could barely conceive how difficult it would have been to simply stand by and watch as, for example, Snape had made fun of her teeth. Or had called her a know-it-all in front of the entire class. Or had sneered at her during the final battle when she had asked him once if he'd been hurt, causing her heart to twist in her chest and the indignant protest that she had just been trying to be nice try to escape from her lips. Or…

Goodness, why on earth could she only think of things Snape had done to her?

Well, that didn't really matter.

She turned over onto her stomach and frowned as another thought struck her. This had the potential to be a quite dangerous situation. Voldemort was reaching the heights of his power. He was, of course, not a wizard to be trifled with. If anyone recognized Snape, if any Slytherin recognized Snape, and word got round to Voldemort, well, to put it in the simplest terms possible, they would be totally, completely, buggered.

She supposed Voldemort would want information from Snape. Would demand to know why he hadn't gone to him immediately to help him with his knowledge of the future. Snape, either Snape, could very likely end up dead.

Hermione turned onto her back and sighed, her brow furrowed as the full implications of their situation finally settled into her mind.

Snape was in danger. She'd had unwittingly taken him into a life or death situation. But was it her fault? Had she forced him to come?

No. No, Albus bloody Dumbledore had done that. But she was the one who'd simply had to conduct the experiment. She was the one who couldn't just go on her own, like a big girl, and deal with whatever situation she'd been presented with to the best of her abilities.

And now Snape might die because of she hadn't.

She heard the shower shut off and the sounds of him stepping out of the shower. She waited at least thirty seconds before she launched herself out of her bed, scurried across the floor, and flung the bathroom door open.

"Shit!" Snape yelled as she came charging in.

"You might die!" she exclaimed in response. She felt quite bad, though, when she recognized the surprise on his face and saw the way his hand clenched around the top of the towel at his waist.

He raised an eyebrow and placed his free hand on his chest. "God willing," he murmured, rubbing at his chest. It was only now that Hermione realized Snape was, for all accounts and purposes, standing before her naked. And soaking wet, as well.

She swallowed quickly. Why on earth was she finding the sight of his dripping wet hair and the droplets of water beading on his chest and shoulders appealing? Why wasn't she running from the room screaming?

Snape sighed as he leaned back against the sink and stared at her. "Did you have a nightmare or something, Miss Granger?"

"No," she said, feeling her cheeks redden. "I was just thinking about the nightmarish situation we've found ourselves in."

He nodded. "I see."

"I was just thinking," she continued, "about what would happen if someone recognized you and went to Vold—the Dark Lord."

"I have the Beautification Potion, Miss Granger," he said. "As long as I take it in the mornings before we go down to breakfast, then no one will ever see me in a form that could be even called remotely familiar."

Hermione blinked as she looked up at him. She hadn't really noticed when she'd come barging in, but he did look like himself again. The potion must have worn off sometime during the night. "But it doesn't change your voice. It doesn't change your personality."

He smirked. "None of these people know me as an adult, Miss Granger. I am as much a stranger to them as myself as I am as Mr. Jamie Palmer." He paused to give her a serious look. "You needn't worry yourself about me. Just worry about keeping your head down and endeavoring to not draw too much attention to yourself. We must leave this time causing as little change as possible."

Hermione watched as the smirk reasserted itself on his face before he continued. "Though I imagine the attractive, young, female addition to the staff will sadly create a few cases of unrequited love amongst the male half of the student body."

She frowned. "Are you still drunk?"

He snorted. "If only. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a potion to take and clothes to put on." And Hermione watched as he swept out of the bathroom and into his bedroom, closing the door that separated the two rooms swiftly behind him.

The action, she thought as she stripped off her nightie and cast a silencing charm as she prepared herself for her own shower, was not quite as dramatic when he was clad in only a towel.