Finally! I know you're all thinking how long it's been since I updated...if you even remember at all. Well, this chapter was the first in a while that I had to start from scratch since the others were part of my older one...so, of course, it took me longer. Besides that, there's the fact that I had marching band, then loads of projects, and then what seemed like a school-wide agreement to assign tests on the last week before winter break...and I still have finals, too. But at least this is up, and I hope I can type up a few more chapters so I can post them even if I'm busy. So, to the point, sorry for the wait. I tend to forget the point easily.

You all know the traditional disclaimer...nothing here needs disclaimers this time, I don't think.

Tick, tick, tick…

It was silent in the small room, or very nearly. No window let in an ounce of sunlight, only a dim, fluorescent lamp illuminating the bare walls to a faint indigo tinge. The green glow of the monitors shifted silently, a small yet startling beep emanating as a screen shut down. Nothing stirred—no bed sheets rustled, no shoes squeaked on the waxed tiled floor. Every so often, a dim thump would come from across the hallway, the result of a heavy door being shut. And the clock on the wall continued ticking, never slowing down.

By the bed in the middle of the room, a chair was pulled up, its occupant slumped over. He stirred, wincing as the tension in his back, shoulders, and neck made itself known. Blinking and stretching a bit, Severus gazed down at the still form of the young woman sleeping in the bed. It had been two long nights (sleepless nights until he had insisted at staying at her side), yet Jane had never once woken up. It wasn't uncommon for her to stir a bit, or to mumble, but the movements gave no sign of her once eager self. Once, he'd looked forward to seeing those small fits, now, it gave him no more hope than the white hand clenching the whiter sheets beneath. The doctors and nurses that would check up on her dismissed her mumbling to just what they were—mumbling, yet Severus always thought he'd hear a spell, or a name of someone from what seemed like ages ago. Funny enough, the spells weren't just any, as he'd recognized this afternoon. They seemed to be ones that might revitalize her, or bring her back to health. Of course, Severus was…glad (for lack of better words) that her condition was stable, but he couldn't keep away the constant, gnawing worry that nagged at him and his thoughts.

Severus had no doubt that her mind was going through her childhood years, when she had still been a witch and the stubborn know-it-all piece of the Golden Trio. But what if she woke up, retaining those memories? He'd always known that there could be that chance, yet now, it seemed so much closer, as if it were almost reality. Pondering the idea of a Hermione Granger confronting him instead of the seemingly more sensible Jane had always been banished to the back of his mind…so what could he do now? Could he confront her with the cold truth as a friend after seven years of enmity? What would she think? That he was using her as navigation in the muggle world? Or maybe she wouldn't know that he had known her true identity. But what if she did? It couldn't get worse. She'd scream at him for lying to her about her past, for pretending to be her friend. Was he really pretending it? He'd given so much to gain a small sense of freedom, could he bear to lose it all now?

He was just about to reel in his line of thought when he felt a slight pull under his right hand, which was still on the blanket. Looking down, he saw her shift slightly, pulling the covers with her. Thinking she was goung to have another fit, he bent over, about to pull the sheets straighter around her body, raising his hand above her shoulder, when he met slightly dazed, cinnamon brown eyes watching him. Slightly disoriented, and not knowing what to do, he froze.

"…Severus?" Her voice was quiet, seeming to crescendo out of the expectant silence. Soft and blurry, the voice brought him back to reality.

"I'm here."

She made a soft, incomprehensible sound in her throat, then shifted a bit in her position on the bed. He studied her intently. Silence filled the gap between them, and while Severus felt a bit expectant, Jane looked content to close her eyes and doze a bit. He was beginning to wonder if she had fallen back asleep when she murmured, "What happened to that thing?" Her voice made it seem like a fact, for all in the world the thing she was talking about was in plain view before him. The question snagged at his curiosity, which until now had stayed unusually tame. He felt…hesitant, apprehensive of an unknown danger.

"What do you mean?"

Silence. Her eyes were still closed, the words coming out as if they were strung together with a slur. "That metal thing. You know, with the blue light?"

If she heard his sharp intake of breath, she pretended not to. He studied her calm features for a moment, the timeturner's image spinning in his mind. Why would she ask such a question? She should have at least heard it shatter. Or maybe she'd been delusional. But wouldn't it be more demanding to know how long she had been here, if she even knew where here was at all? She still lay there patiently, awaiting his answer.

"It…shattered." He could hear his own uncertainty in his voice, yet she didn't react to that either.

"Oh. I meant to ask you what you did with it."

His eyes narrowed, her calm demeanor starting to become suspicious to him. "I just swept it up…put it back into the box…why?"

"Hmm…just thought to ask," she replied nonchalantly. "The item just seemed familiar."

At this comment, he very nearly snapped. She'd kept him up with worry for forty-eight hours and all she could do was reveal her old habit of pestering him with questions like an annoying know-it-all again? Unlike the questions she used to ask, though, these seemed to have no point of connection to anything at all. And it was just him being thick, he was certain. Letting out a breath to calm his nerves, he gritted his teeth, whirling around to pointedly stare at the blank wall, feeling like he'd bore a hole through the other side any second.

"Were you ever a professor?" There it was again, the voice that was neither Jane, nor Hermione Granger.

"Yes." He bit out the answer, short and harsh.

"Why aren't you one now?"

Turning around so quickly that he almost tripped over his own feet, he leaned over the bed, a menacing growl on his face. "Do tell me how that concerns you."

She blinked, startled, his voice finally snapping some kind of emotion to her features. He smirked inside, feeling a kind of guilty satisfaction. She didn't reply, and he ignored it.

"Oh, did you forget? I wasn't aware." His voice took on a sarcastic, biting edge, one he recognized as something he hadn't used for months. "You seem to have recovered your memories well enough. Did you not remember what I promised, or do you hate me too much now?"

By now, his voice was wild, trying to console himself rather than trying to tell her anything. "I'm not that useless—" He stopped, frustrated at her, at himself, at everything. Straightening and then turning abruptly on his heel, he snapped his mouth shut, his hand resting on the doorknob for a mere fraction of a second. "I bid you good day, Miss Granger."

Without another word, he stalked out. Slamming the door behind him, he glimpsed the confusion and hurt on her face, her form in the process of pushing herself off the bed, before turning down the hallway to the exit of the hospital to the heavily pouring rain.

Later on that day, when he was staring at the table in the kitchen, he thought of how everything had been. That one small chance at happiness, the one chance of having an eternal friend. Now, he'd lost it. How could he have not? He'd let his tongue get ahead of him again, not feeling, not listening, never thinking back to what had happened. Perhaps she really hadn't deserved it. Whose fault had it been for her to lose her memories in the first place, after all, and have to suffer through this? Not her own, certainly. And he most certainly hadn't been expecting to see her again.

His thoughts turned back to those that had been in his head, when the room had still been quiet, when there had been no need to think of anything else. What would happen now? If, as he thought, she had gathered all her memories and habits back, what would she do? Act on her old prejudices as a bloody Gryffindor? It hurt him to think of the promise he had made to her that time in the café. Whatever had happened to the idea of being there for her? He certainly wasn't now, and at the same time, he most certainly was not going to go back. And the memory of her face, begging and hopeful, when she had asked for reassurance that he knew nothing of her past, stuck out prominently in his mind. If she did remember her memories, she would hate him for lying to her. And if she didn't, she still would. There was no way she could have not heard the spiteful "Miss Granger" that he had thrown at her before he left. From that, any intelligent young woman, especially her, could draw out the idea that he'd known her sometime before.

He sighed, cradling his head in his hands. It was all a mess, everything. His life, her life…unable to contain himself anymore, he let himself cry, head in his arms at the kitchen table, the rain pounding in sheets at the window outside, as it wailing with him. And for the first time in years, he felt no shame for the tears in his eyes.

He did not see her for nearly a week. Severus would still walk to the park, but instead of sitting down to read a book, as he had made a habit of doing, he would stroll around the lake, sometimes watching the ripples of the surface distort his reflection as the geese glided at the water's edge, or tossing a pebble or two into the water out of disgust of who he was.

He hadn't felt this depressed since the last battle had ended.

Severus had thought that leaving his past, his childhood, would give him peace and quiet for the rest of his years, yet, coming here had only made things worse. Keeping childhood toys probably hadn't been a good idea. He scowled, the good lord certainly didn't seem to want him to enjoy any rest at all. Maybe he should have moved to Italy.

But what could be wrong with keeping toys and trinkets? Even him, the mean, uncompassionate Snape, still wanted something to retain his fondest memories, the very best of them. At least, he still had them. Jane didn't…or hadn't. Or did she? Had she been asking questions like that the other day to get rid of him? After all, what place did he have in her memories? Part of him wanted to see her again, but the other half seemed, well, afraid, as much as he hated to admit it, even to himself. Suppose he was to meet her again: what would he say? If she had recovered her memories, would he have to pull back up the façade of the horrible bat of the dungeons? He didn't want to. Or if she didn't remember, what would he say to apologize for such an outburst, so uncalled for? He shouldn't have supposed that she remembered everything, he thought tiredly, especially in her condition. An emotional outbreak could do anything to her in that state. His heart sank at another possibility…what if she remembered nothing at all? What was it she had said?

She looked up at him, her eyes searching desperately for a bit of hope, anything. "I promise, if things get worse, that I'll be here to help you, okay?"

"But—but…what if I don't remember you? Or, or—"

"Shh." He cut her off, wondering when he had become so attached to the young Gryffindor. "It'll all work out."

"Do you promise? That you'll be here? That it'll all work out?"

He hesitated slightly, then, "I promise."

He sighed, running his fingers through his hair, from his scalp to the tips of the feathery strands. He was seriously beginning to lose his mind. She had already proved she remembered his name, which crossed out any form of the option that she had forgotten everything. So much for that shock…any reassurance he got only brought him back to his feelings in the beginning when he first got here. But what about him being an ex-professor? Maybe he should have just been stubborn and asked her why she'd wanted to know that bit anyway. Another answer to make another question out of, he thought wryly, if he'd ever collected that bit. She would have been just as stubborn, probably. Bloody Gryffindors. Or it could have been coincidence.

Tossing one last pebble into the lake, he walked back down the path.

Severus! Severus!

Thinking he'd heard something, he was about to turn, but dismissed it as the wind and his restless mind. His hair whipping at his face, he continued back home. Home. What a comforting word.

Severus!

The wind wailed behind him, matching his mood.

Wait for me! Severus!

Right before he turned outside the gate, he thought he saw a flash of cinnamon curls disappear from behind a curtain of blossoms, which were whirling to kiss the ground at the spot he'd just been.

Sorry for some of the longer paragraphs that seemed to just ramble on...if you want a breif summary, just skim, or ask me. They're just Severus's thoughts, nothing too important to the plot.

I'll try and update as soon as possible, and I'll reply to all my reviewers, I promise! Thank you!