Disclaimer:- I neither own nor own anything from this story. My plot is my own but the world of Harry Potter is the intellectual property of JK Rowling and associates.

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A/N:- Thank you to you all for your reviews and alerts for the last chapter, all were appreciated. Here is the next instalment. I'm still posting with a beta, so all mistakes are mine, but I hope you enjoy the chapter.

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Chapter Two – Learning Who The Little Boy Is

Hermione had to say that she was distinctly disappointed when by the next morning Severus was still a young boy, she'd really been hoping that Ron's work would simply dissipate while Severus slept. However, being a potion and not merely spell work, something Ron was not good at, she realised that this would behave a little differently.

The previous afternoon, they'd easily eliminated the known ingredients from the equation. Hermione had even owled Fred and George to ascertain which recipe Ron was most likely to have used. She was shocked to find out that it was one out of a magazine; The Witch Weekly's guide to looking younger.

It took a while for Hermione to manage to find a copy of that particular magazine though because every witch she knew who actually devoured that sort of trashy reading was also friends with Ron, and they were all pissed that she'd hexed him into a nappy wearing man-child. However, finally Luna, who she'd appealed to for help as the only rational friend she had left—and wasn't that a contradiction—found someone with the magazine, and the little blonde witch brought it over to Hogwarts for them.

"I promised that I'd get it straight back," Luna said, as she waved to little Severus, who was reading about one of the more obscure ingredients in a large book they'd taken from his personal library.

Hermione quickly used a copying spell on the pages concerned and handed the book back to her. "Thank you, Luna," she said, giving it back.

"I'll just take this back to Eloise, and I have a date with Nev, but can return and assist tomorrow, if you want," Luna told her friend.

Looking at Severus for his approval, he looked at Luna and said, "Your mother used to have a set of moon crystals," in a surprisingly adult sounding voice.

Both witches gasped as the hint of the adult below the child's persona, and Luna smiled. "Yes, I believe they would help," she said giving a nod of approval.

"Agreed," Severus answered, his voice having returned to his child age.

"Then by all means, I will bring them over when I come back," and she pulled Hermione to the door with her as she started to leave.

Once they were outside the door, the blonde witch said, "It's so strange to hear him saying professor things and then reverting back to a child's voice, isn't it?"

"Yes, it's a bit disconcerting, but I'm hoping that we'll have him back to normal soon," Hermione stated, but her voice cracked as said it. "I still can't believe that magic performed by Ron could be permanent, even if it's a potion," she finished, clearing her throat.

Luna hugged her. "You love Severus, don't you?"

"Oh, Luna, I think the world of him, but I just can't shake the feeling that despite what I've just said, that some permanent change has happened," Hermione told her friend softly.

Luna rubbed her back. "Don't worry, 'Mione. Whatever has happened has enhanced what he was. Did you know that he currently has two auras? "

"What?" Hermione cried, wiping her eyes. She wasn't certain that she believed all the things that Luna went on with sometimes, but she did know that she was a very good aura reader.

"Yes," Luna went on calmly. "The professor's aura has always been a steely grey colour with reds and blue and the tiniest flecks of black in it. It was and is very beautiful, and his full-sized adult aura is still there, but now he also has a child's clean aura within it… His older self's aura is standing over his younger self and they are fused somehow from the waist down. That's the reason that he wants the moon crystals," she added when Hermione seemed to become engrossed in her own thoughts.

The Gryffindor witch smiled. "Okay," she said uncertainly.

"Then I will return with the moon crystals tomorrow, the full moon isn't until Thursday, so we have time…"

"Time for what?" Hermione asked, completely clueless on anything to do with divination. She'd decided in her third year as a Hogwarts student that it was complete bunk, and she'd seen nothing since to change her mind.

To Hermione's displeasure Luna snickered, but then rested her hand comfortingly on the Gryffindor witch's arm. "'Mione, you only have Professor Trelawney as an example of how Divination works, and I'm afraid she was a poor representative of her craft. Yes she made a couple of accurate predictions, but in essence she was a bit of a dud whom Professor Dumbledore had to keep on staff for her own safety," she said, her clear blue eyes earnest as she squeezed Hermione's arm gently, trying to offer comfort. "There is much more to it than her ravings about death, the grim and destruction."

"Oh!" Hermione gasped sharply, but nodded her head as she admitted, "I guess she traumatised me so much that…" and her words trailed off into thoughts.

"I can bring you some books on the subject of crystal healing if you like," Luna offered.

"Yes, perhaps I should read more on it…" and she glanced back into her quarters. "Especially if it will bring my Severus back to me…" but as she said it her lip wobbled, and she slipped it between her teeth to try and get her emotion back under control. "Thanks, Luna," she said after a moment, aware that the blonde witch was watching her carefully.

"There's a spell you can use to see auras if you wish, I think you'll find it quite illuminating," Luna told her calmly, thinking that perhaps her friend had heard enough about magic she'd never subscribed to, and she pulled her into a hug, her lips kissing Hermione's face. "I can relieve some of that stress for you, if you like, love," she said.

Hermione was beyond shocked. "N-No!" she cried. "T-Thank you, but no, I'll see… w-we'll see you tomorrow," and she hurriedly went back inside.

The little Ravenclaw witch was a brilliant friend, but she did have some way out ideas, and occasionally she was very inappropriate, and now was not that time for Hermione to be dealing with it. For goodness sake, she'd just as good as admitted to her friend that she loved Severus, how could she think that propositioning her was the right thing to do right now. Besides, she was with Neville at present… wasn't she?

Hermione tried to get her mind back to other things, she already knew the spell Luna was speaking of, and she walked back in deep in thought, but as she did she saw little Severus scurrying back to his seat at the table. She turned to him and eyed him speculatively, but knew that there was no point in calling him out on it, he was a master at subterfuge, even in a child's body. "I'm not going to ask if you were in my bedroom, Severus," she told him, wanting him to know that he'd been rumbled, even though she was not offended by his snoopiness, and reasoned that it was just a child's natural curiosity.

Hermione smiled at the imperious look he gave her in reply as she walked over and watched him going back to examining the recipe intently. He was starting to fidget and yawn, a sure sign that his child's mind was sick of helping the adult trapped inside. She could see that he hadn't made any more progress since they'd gotten the recipe in the magazine. "It's no help, is it?" she said as she stopped beside him.

"No, not really," Severus replied, a plaintive sigh hissing through his lips. "And there's still those odd ingredients, the yellow rue, and lady beetles. They'll be the ones that have screwed this potion up, and they are in neither of the recipes for a conventional de-aging potion. Also there had been another ingredient too, but only a trace amount, and not enough for any empirical measurements," and he sighed again, looking defeated.

"And the moon crystals?"

"I'm at a dead end with the ingredients," and he shrugged. "Hermione, I'm not as ignorant of Divination as you are," and he heard her huff. He chuckled, a strange sound coming from a child's mouth. "I can see what's happening to my aura, even as the child I currently am, some of my legilimency skills are bleeding through, and I can visualise that my person now has two distinct sides."

"You mean your personality, don't you?" Hermione asked softly.

He smiled at her, and for some absurd reason she knew that the smile was coming from his adult self. "No, I mean me, I appear to be currently two people." However, just as suddenly that adult smile was gone, and she saw a frightened little boy looking at her again.

"Come here, love," she said, pulling him into a hug as soon as he arrived by her side. "Don't be frightened, little man, I won't allow anything to hurt you." This declaration saw her with her arms full of sobbing child. "There is nothing that I wouldn't do to protect you, sweetheart." She hadn't even registered that she'd added the endearment, because her mind was flying, making many more connections.

It was like this hurt little boy was the embodiment of Severus' suffering, and Hermione instinctively knew that she was being handed a golden opportunity here. If she ended the suffering of the little boy then the man would come back to her not as broken. The problem was that only after a small amount of time, the little boy was starting to feel like the son she'd known that she would never have, and she was not certain that losing him would not break her in another way, and she fought her tears at the thought of having one without the other.

Thanks to the war, Hermione Granger was not capable of having children, it was the reason that her and Ron had not worked out. Well, there were many other reasons too, the facts that he was a juvenile, lazy slob who couldn't keep his dick in his pants had also figured heavily in what she'd told him, but she'd known that if he knew about her problem that he'd have hurt her more than he did.

Severus knew, and he'd commiserated with her about it. However, it hadn't seemed to make any difference to him, and Hermione came back from her thoughts as the little boy in her arms spoke.

"My mum used to call me Toby when Da was not around," he admitted, his voice still heavy with tears. "I wish you were my Mum."

Hermione's lip quivered wildly as she tried to swallow down her emotions, and finally she said, "Then I will be happy to call you Toby, my little man. Now, it's a lovely afternoon, and it doesn't appear that we can do much more here. How about we have a break, we could go to Brighton and have some fun. Go on a few rides and get fish and Chips for tea perhaps," and she smiled as his face lit up.

"Really?"

"Of course," she answered. "You go and freshen up, and we'll go."

xox

When Hermione came back from freshening up herself, she found little Toby waiting for her dressed in an olive green tee-shirt and dark jeans. They'd gone through the lost property room in Gryffindor Tower and found him enough clothing for his temporary state, and she'd had her elf launder everything and make it all the appropriate size for him.

When she smiled at him he snorted. "Well, I'd have looked bloody stupid in my usual clothes, wouldn't I?" his adult voice said.

However, she could see the child there too, and she opened her arms to him. "Yes, I suppose you would have," and she kissed his head. "Are you ready?"

"Sure am," he cried.

She apparated them to a known apparition point in Brighton, and they spend a blissful afternoon going on the rides at the Brighton Pier, and Hermione felt just like any of the other mothers taking their child to the amusement park; it was a heady experience.

It seemed to be exactly what they needed, the joy on Toby's little face and the carnival atmosphere completely blocked out any of her darker thoughts. It wasn't until the sky was starting to turn pink as the sun set and they were filled with fish and chips, milkshakes and donuts, that Hermione decided that it was time to go home when Toby was leaning heavily on her and starting to yawn widely.

She apparated them back to her rooms and smiled down at the drowsy little boy in her arms, leaning against her. "Okay, bath, teeth and bed, young man," she commanded.

"Then story?" he asked, and the hope on his face made her heart ache.

She smiled, it was very frightening how quickly she was becoming accustomed to this little person's presence in her life. "Yes, then story."

He whooped and dashed off into his room with not a care in the world, and she watched after him with a pensive look on her face. She knew that she had to stay strong for him—that sweet little boy—but this was getting harder and harder. Having already been told by adult Severus that his life had not started to unravel until he'd displayed accidental magic and soon after his father had lost his job, she hoped that Toby might never understand what it was like to be persecuted in anyway.

Thinking about it, she remembered that she'd been about four or five when she'd first had a magical mishap, and she wondered if whatever had occurred yesterday had reset Severus to a time just before those two events had shaped his life enough for him to grow into the bitter teenager that he'd become. At this stage of his life, she wagered that he'd still been a mostly innocent child looking for the love of his parents; love that they obviously only gave sparingly. However, it was then though that she had to tell herself that couldn't possibly be the case because this had been a careless mishap and nothing else.

From what he'd told her about his mother, Hermione was convinced that the woman had bi-polar disorder, and that she'd erred on the more depressive side for most of the time. She'd never know beyond what she supposed, but as far as Hermione could ascertain it was the best explanation, and his father had been just a typical lower class bully. Although, she supposed that the man had had his own demons too, and that Eileen had at one point loved him enough to run away from her pure-blood obligations. Hermione shook herself from her thoughts and put their jackets down on the closest arm-chair.

While he was washing and cleaning his teeth—cleaning his teeth properly was something that she'd had to show him how to do the previous evening—she made herself a calming pot of tea, and brought a mug of it with her into his bedroom to find him sitting up in his bed with his chosen book in his lap looking at her expectantly.

His hair was damp from the shower, and she cast a soft drying spell over it so that it wouldn't be sticking out at all angles tomorrow morning, and then she looked at the book he'd chosen. She'd gifted him some of her children's books last night when she'd first read him a story, and he had proudly housed them on his chest of drawers this morning.

"Ah, more of the Magician Nephew," she said, smiling. She had to say that the Horse and His Boy was her favourite from the CS Lewis classics, The Chronicles of Narnia, but starting with the first book was a very sensible idea. She picked it up and opened it to chapter two as she made herself comfortable on the end of his bed, putting her tea on the dresser, and curling her feet up under her bottom.

xox

After his busy afternoon, it did not take Toby very long to be in a deep sleep. Allowing the book to fall into her lap, and she relaxed back. To her surprise, she found arms supporting her, and she fought not to yelp as she realised she was not alone. However, on looking around she was very shocked to see adult Severus sitting next to her, holding her. Her eyes snapped back to the sleeping little boy, concerned that her very short moment of motherhood might be over, but he was still sleeping soundly in his bed, and as her eyes panned down the length of the little boy, she saw that he and the adult Severus seemed to be fused at the feet, and that even though he was holding her, adult Severus was not quite corporal.

However, that was when something else hit her, in the low light of the room all three of them were glowing, and the auras of the boy and the adult were exactly as Luna had described them this afternoon. Hermione held her own hand up in front of her face in wonder as she examined her own aura, and she gasped looking at the reds and oranges with wisps of purple before her eyes.

Adult Severus kissed her head. "It's very beautiful, you are very beautiful, Hermione," he murmured close to her ear in his delicious low voice. "I have wanted to tell you that for a long time," he admitted as she turned and looked at him, her eyes channels to her very soul right at this moment. "Will you tell me your thoughts, love?" he asked.

Being so tired and emotional over her current position tears sprang from her eyes. "Oh, Severus," she cried. "I know it's only been a little under forty-eight hours, but the thought of losing either of you fills me with such dread that it will tear my heart out when it happens."

Severus pulled her closer. "Who says it will happen, as I said to you this afternoon I can feel a split between the little boy that I was, that hope that I'd carried inside of me from a more innocent time and guarded against everyone zealously, and the man I now am. It would be nice if we both got a chance to be happy."

Hermione couldn't hold it in any longer, she twisted around and kissed him. "I love you, Severus, and I'm currently wishing that I'd have told you long before now," she said to him against his lips, and wondered if it would be the only time that she got to say it.

His lips caressed hers in answer, before he said, "And I you. As you say, we will work it out," and they kissed for some time until the book on Hermione's lap slipped over the edge of the bed and hit the floor with a soft thud.

Her eyes opened and her heart stuttered when she looked around and found that Toby was stirring in his sleep and she was alone. "I must have nodded off, it was a dream," she muttered, and quietly slipped off Toby's bed as he settled again without her saying anything.

She liked the name Toby for him, it suited him, and she carefully bent down and kissed his cheek. "Good night, little man. Sweet dreams," and her voice was very uncertain as she did so. Then she leant down to pick up the dropped book, her eyes full of tears. "Oh, Severus, I miss you so much," she murmured, attempting to swallow down her emotion, as she placed the book on his dresser and collected up her cold tea. The problem was that it all seemed so futile at this time of night, and also after just experiencing such a vivid dream. She walked out of the small room, leaving the door open, and she wiped at the tears stubbornly running unchecked down her cheeks as she wandered off to her own lonely and empty bed.