PG-13; Harry Potter - Highlander; Learning to live in peace time is even more difficult than in war time since there's only the good guys left to fight. Methos shows up at Hogwarts, Hermione apprentices to Dumbledore, and Sybil Trelawney sees Death.

Disclaimer: I don't own any of these characters. The only benefit I'm gaining from this writing is (hopefully) reviews.

A/N: Yes, it's been a long time since I worked on this fic. I had thought about giving it up, and then I had thought about trying to write a quick ending so I could tag it with the label "completed". But I thought it might be best to wait for it to call to me again. And it finally did.

A/N: As of the Half-Blood Prince coming out, this fic is now hopelessly A/U, even more so than the simple fact of it being a crossover. It must be accepted that for the duration of this fic, Snape is a pureblood and Dumbledore is alive, and all sorts of things that happened in HBP did not happen in this one of my universes.

A/N: I hope you all enjoy and, of course, let me know what you think.

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Life & Loyalty

by MarbleGlove

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Sacrifice

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Hermione had always admired Professor Dumbledore's study with its plethora of books and trinkets and little objects that seemed sure to have wonderful abilities and stories. The study made it all the harder to concentrate on what was happening which was the negotiation of her apprenticeship with Dumbledore.

Of course, her first reaction was to jump at it before the offer got away, however, "I, ah, rather get the impression from Harry that, um," Hermione tried to think of a polite way of phrasing her question, came up blank, and decided to forge ahead regardless. "You're not always as forthcoming with knowledge as he'd like. I can hardly be a proper apprentice if I'm kept in the dark."

"Ah. I promise you, Hermione, that I will do my best to never lie to you or even mislead you. There will be some things I cannot tell you, but in such cases I'll simply tell you so, and give you as many of my reasons for silence as I can. Is that acceptable?"

Hermione startled. This was the first time the Headmaster had ever called her by her first name. She had always been Miss Granger before this. Being an apprentice would take some getting used to.

"Yes, Sir. Thank you."

"A large part of the study of alchemy is philosophy. We will be having many discussions on all sorts of topics over the years. But, I have to warn you, I'm going to be as honest as I can be, and in exchange, you need to keep many of my secrets in confidence. There will be times when you may tell others and times when you may not, and you're going to have to develop your own abilities to make those judgment calls. You're also going to become privy to some knowledge that will give support to the saying "ignorance is bliss".

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Hermione recalled that conversation as she sat, eighteen months later, and felt her nails did ever deeper into the flesh of her palms. She didn't want to hear what he was telling her even as she continued to listen. Dumbledore was answering her question with an answer she really, really didn't want to have to hear.

She had asked, "how could a mother's love protect a baby? And if it was that simple, what did that have to say about all the other parents and children who had died to Lord Voldemort's wand?"

He replied, "Lilly's love made it possible for Harry to live, as did her sacrifice. But, no, it was not that simple. Those were crucial but not the only crucial parts of that night so long ago.

"We had known in advance that the Secret of where the Potters were might be broken. And we knew in advance that if that happened Lord Voldemort himself might come after them. So we planned for it. If anything happened, first James would try to fight them to protect his family, but if he failed, then Lily had a fall back plan to protect her son.

"Lily's last words were "Not Harry, kill me instead." You know that, Harry must have told you when he heard them in his dementor visions. However, I know that because I worked with her on those words. Getting the phrasing and the cadence just right so that she triggered a contract she had written up.

"She was a bright student, and she loved her son enough that she was willing to sacrifice her life to protect him. For nearly twenty years I've kept the secret of how Harry survived, of how Lilly managed to actually tricked Voldemort into agreeing to not kill Harry. It was a tacit agreement, but magical contracts don't care about that. And she had written up a contract with a heavy punishment for breaking it. When he killed her before killing Harry, he tacitly accepted her offer to kill her rather than Harry.

"I gave her some blood from one of the Death Eaters we had captured before. The blood had been pulled out with a needle straight from the middle of the dark mark. She mixed that blood with her own and some of Harry's and she had written a contract At her death the contract she had written in blood on the floor of her own living room and then covered in a rug accepted that she had fulfilled her portion of the contract by willingly being killed by Voldemort. When Voldemort then tried to kill Harry, the contract prevented him and attempted to kill him for breaking his agreement.

"Even though Voldemort managed to survive somehow, he was still incapable of killing Harry. Of course, anyone else could, and so Voldemort had to be made to think that he alone had to kill Harry. Any other Death Eater could have killed Harry, but not Voldemort. So as long as Lord Voldemort told his followers to save Harry for him, Harry was safe."

When Dumbledore finally fell silent, Hermione took a long shuddering breath. The thought of carefully planning out her own manner of death and then willingly being the sacrifice in a contract written in blood was ... horrifying. She could imagine the small house that couldn't be entered or left, containing two adults and an infant, and every day the adults waiting to see if that day was the day they were to be betrayed by a childhood friend, whether that day would be the day they implemented a plan of murder and suicide.

Blood magic leaves a taint that Hermione could feel when she passed the books in the library that discussed it. Harry's parents would have been able to feel it coming up around their feet every day as they walked through their living room. Dumbledore watched as Hermione thought through everything he had said. She laughed slightly, a little dry sound, "and Voldemort was so dark already that he wouldn't notice the aura."

"No. He never noticed. He died again sixteen years later never knowing what had caused his first downfall. It was a constant and unknown threat.

"Tom Riddle was a brilliant young man and he understood the fine line between power and insanity. As long as he tread that line, he was more powerful than me. We had to make him tip his balance over into insanity."

"Yes," Hermione was still trembling slightly from the horror of mere knowledge. She had to remind herself that she had willingly decided to learn everything she could. There was no turning back at this point, no saying that really she only wanted the nice, comforting knowledge. She needed to learn everything. As bad as Dumbledore's response to her previous question, she had a sudden insight that his answer to her next question might be worse. She asked it anyway, "if it was all planned out to leave Harry an orphan, why was he not left with a better family to raise him?"

"I think you might already know the answer to that question."

Dumbledore knew that she had a guess, even if she didn't know it to be true, even if she didn't want it to be true.

"Are there any powerful magic users who did not have an abusive childhood in some way?"

"Occasionally." There was a long pause. "But, no, it's rare and the historians still argue about the veracity of the few cases suggested."

"Is that what you did? You left Harry there in that house, with that family, with the Dursleys, just to make him more powerful?"

"No." Hermione looked pitifully happy to hear this. Dumbledore had spent the last several years thinking about how wonderful it was to have an apprentice. And it was fun, most of the time. He had simply forgotten how gut-wrenching awful it was at other times. Part of the teaching and learning process involved the destruction of innocence. He wanted to look away but instead he looked her directly in the eye with no apologies and said, "Not entirely. I also left him there to make sure that he didn't come into his full potential until later in life. Harry and Voldemort were connected. The contract made it so. The prophesy confirmed it.

"Whenever Harry fulfilled his full potential, so too would Voldemort fulfill his. So the trick was to make sure that when Harry was at his full potential he was stronger than Voldemort. Harry could not be allowed to reach his potential when he was two years old, five years old, ten. He had to be kept at as low a percentage as possible for as long as possible, so that Voldemort would be down too.

"It wasn't Lily's love that saved her son, it was her sacrifice. Her death. Power is not about love, not about safety, it's about sacrifice. In white magic, you sacrifice of yourself, in dark magic you sacrifice of others, but in the end it is all the same. All magic is about sacrifice."

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"The books didn't betray you, you betrayed yourself by believing in them."

Hermione wondered how it was that Snape always knew how to giver her the perspective she needed. As she went down to the dungeons to deal with her most recent lesson with Dumbledore, she thought about the last time she had gone to the dungeons.

"At least I was willing to believe in something!"

There had been dead silence, and Snape had looked down.

"I'm sorry. That wasn't true. I was just hitting out."

Severus looked up again and she hadn't been sure how to interpret his expression. "I know it's not true. I may not believe easily, but when I do believe, I believe strong."

"Yes, sir. I know."

"You, however, have apparently decided to believe anything printed in book format, failing to realize that books are written by people. Books are people talking to you. Just like any other form of communication, you have to decide how much you trust the speaker."

The issue that time had been about books and witch hunts and hidden deaths. She had come to his office just to here him talk about whatever he wanted to talk about in between the visits of various students getting help on their potions work.

She had laughed at something he had said. "Ha! Slytherin just didn't think muggleborns were good enough but I think I'm proving him wrong."

"How much do you actually know of the history of Hogwarts?"

"I've read Hogwarts: A History."

"Mm. I was thinking more about the founders."

"Not all that much is known about them."

"Of the four founders, only Slytherin was born of muggle parents."

Hermione was surprised, but over the years she had learned when to keep her mouth shut. Snape shot her a suspicious look but then, after a moment, continued.

"When he argued against muggleborn students being invited to Hogwarts, he wasn't denigrating them, he was being wary. He was the only founder that had sufficient respect for muggles to be nervous of them. The others, Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, and Hufflepuff were all from wizarding families and they considered themselves better than muggles. They thought they could send out messages to muggle households labeling the children witches. They had no thought of the muggle view of witches. A great many children, and their parents in some cases, have been killed over the passing centuries."

Hermione's eyes were wide. "But, the books say that no real witches or wizards were killed."

"Ah yes, and what is it that makes someone a 'real' witch or wizard?"

Hermione frowned. "Having magic. The ability to do magic."

"No. At least not legally. You will find that according to Ministry law, a 'real' witch or wizard has a wand. That's why underage magic is not regulated for muggle born children before they attend Hogwarts and acquire a wand. Before that point, they are not considered 'real' witches or wizards."

"But, but, the books lied then. Real witches and wizards died."

"You are a rather ruthless creature, aren't you?"

"What?"

"You don't appear to care that muggles died."

"I, it's just," Hermione tried to sort out her thoughts, knowing that if she was ever to impress the potions master it would not do to be disorganize and easily flustered. "I've always known that the muggle world was not perfect. That death and pain and stupidity and, and just bad things are in the muggle world. But the wizarding world has always seemed so perfect. Even as we fought a war, I never doubted that I would, and could, be healed from any injury. After all, how many people can tell you what a basilisks eyes look like? And I was proved right. All my friends and professors survived. Good triumphed and evil was defeated."

"Ah yes. Reality is so much more real in the muggle world, isn't it."

"You're a pureblood, aren't you?" Hermione was confused. "What do you know about the muggle world?"

"I've spent my entire adult life as a spy during a wizarding war. The one benefit to having such sharply defined wizarding enclaves is that when I required a break from it all, I could simply leave. I spent most of my vacations sans magic."

"Oh."

"Curiously enough, I followed in Slytherin's footsteps in this matter. He too left the wizarding world after his argument with Gryffindor, and lived out the rest of his life among muggles."

"How come none of the books tell me things like this? All they talk about is how safe and wonderful it is to have magic! They lie to me!" Hermione had been horrified at the whine that had crept into her voice.

Snape looked equally appalled at the whine. "The books didn't betray you, you betrayed yourself by believing in them."

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The books hadn't betrayed her. Dumbledore hadn't betrayed her, either. It was her beliefs, her interpretations, her expectations, that had betrayed her. It was her own silly self that had set her up for such hideous disappointment repeatedly. But she had to have some faith in someone or something. She had to.

But if it wasn't books, and it wasn't Dumbledore, it seemed impossible that she could find her comfort in the presence of the potions master. But it was Snape that she went to when she felt adrift and in need of grounding. It was also Snape that she went to when she felt in need of a good, sharp conversation, though, so perhaps it wasn't need but just desire that brought her to the dungeons.

Hermione tried not to become dependent on the talks with Snape, but it was hard. Their conversations helped her get her focus when she was lost, when she was overwhelmed, when the world didn't make any sense. Even as the world changed, Snape remained the same. If she felt different about him now than she had as a student, she knew it wasn't because he had changed but because she had. Snape was like lead. Immutable.

Snape was so concentrated. He was pure in a way that no one else was. When he was a potions professor, he was completely a potions master, caring for nothing but his potions. When he taught a class, he was a teacher, he was completely present. Be here now. When he hated, it was with a rage that bordered on insanity. Hermione didn't think she'd ever forget the look on Snape's face when he was confronting Sirius Black in the shrieking shack. She wondered what he would be like if he were in love.

The emotions of the wizarding world needed to be much stronger because reality was so tenuous here.

Hermione remembered his metaphor for magic, of standing on the edge of reality and looking down into the abyss of insanity. Dumbledore was showing her everything she needed to know about reality and insanity and the magic edge in-between the two. But it was Snape who helped her maintain her grip on that edge.

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