Chapter 8
Draco looks dazed when he pulls away.
"You were in there a long time," Hermione says.
Draco is silent long enough to make Hermione fidget and furrow her brow. When he finally speaks, his voice is awed. "I saw my children. Two children. Two living children."
Something twists inside Hermione. She's accepted that she'll never be able to give Draco a child, never be anything but his muddy little secret. Not because he wants it that way, but because of the world they live in. "Who was their mother?" she asks.
"Astoria Greengrass. I married her after you left me at the altar."
"After I what?" She left him? The Mudblood who's only allowed to teach at Hogwarts because the Dark Lord killed everyone else even halfway competent jilted the pureblood prince? A fallen prince, to be sure, but even so.
"We were engaged. You threw me over for Severus," he says, looking at his godfather's portrait.
Hermione opens her mouth to speak, then falls silent as she looks at Draco. His expression is one of ineffable sadness, and all the fight goes out of her. "You really aren't having me on, are you?" she asks.
"No."
She looks at Draco, waiting.
"In their world, the Dark Lord is dead," he says. "He never came back after that business with the Potters in 1981."
"But the Horcruxes…?"
"Becky has never heard of a Horcrux, as far as I can tell." He looks at the children for confirmation, and they look at him blankly.
"Becky," Hermione says. "She said her name was Rebecca."
"But she's called Becky, and he's called Gus," Draco says, gesturing to the boy. "They're both who they say they are."
"You named me after your Gran," Becky says to her father's portrait. "The one who read you the Winnie the Pooh stories. You used to read them to me when I was little."
Snape is looking at the girl intently, then shifts his gaze to Draco, who nods confirmation, and finally to Hermione, who quickly averts her eyes from the portrait.
"My Dad was your apprentice," Gus tells Snape, and Hermione is struck both by how much he does look like Neville and by how much more at ease and confident he is than Neville was at his age.
Snape sneers at the boy from his canvas. "Longbottom was my apprentice?"
Gus nods.
Snape looks at Hermione. "Perhaps they're having both of us on, Professor Granger."
"You were happy, Severus," Draco says, his tone still one of wonder. "You smiled. You laughed. You loved your children." He glances uneasily at Hermione. "You loved her."
Snape straightens cuffs that aren't crooked.
"Can we fix things?" Gus asks. "Go back to where we came from?"
"I don't know," Draco says, and looks at Hermione, then at Becky who is trying to stifle a yawn. "We'll figure things out tomorrow. For now, you must be tired from your adventure. Blinky," he says, and the elf appears. "Make up the two adjoining guest rooms near Professor Granger's quarters." He turns to Hermione. "I'll side-along them to their rooms. Meet us there?"
Hermione nods, then heads for the door as Draco, who as Headmaster is the only person who can Apparate within the castle grounds, disappears with the children. She refuses to look at Snape's portrait, but can feel his dark, painted eyes on her as she leaves her lover's office. The lover who has two children in that other timeline with someone other than her or that bitch Parkinson. The lover she apparently rejected for Severus Snape.
The boy who claims to be Neville's son asked if they could fix things. Assuming all this is true—and despite what Draco tells her, she's not yet willing to admit—then she should want the answer to be a resounding yes. A world where the Dark Lord never came back, where Neville isn't dead, and presumably any of the others either. A world where she and Draco both have children, just not with each other. A world where Draco isn't the only person in the world who knows her, loves her, needs her as much as she needs him, two people who have lost everything and everyone else they ever cared about, clinging to each other as though their very lives depend on it.
Of course destroying the Dark Lord is worth losing Draco, she tells herself sternly. In that other world, according to what Draco saw in the mind of the daughter she doesn't know, Hermione doesn't love Draco, doesn't want him. She threw him over for Snape of all people, a Snape she can't even begin to imagine, a Snape who read Muggle children's stories to a little girl who looks disconcertingly like both of them.
Her steps slow as she approaches the guest room door. That little girl is on the other side of that door. Her daughter. Snape's daughter. She knocks and Draco opens the door. It's the boy's room. "I'll get Gus settled if you'll see to Becky," Draco says, gesturing at the open door between the rooms.
Hermione nods and walks through the en suite bathroom and into the connecting guest room beyond it. The girl who claims to be her daughter sits on the bed twisting a lock of her curly black hair around her finger. Hermione used to do the same when she was young, twisting those horrid curls she hated before she learned to tame them. When Hermione first saw the girl, in Draco's office, Becky's hair looked the way Hermione's does when she charms it. Now, the charm is wearing off and the child's hair is starting to curl up into the tight ringlets it forms naturally. The same curls as her own, only black like Snape's.
There are tears in the girl's eyes, and Hermione realizes that the way she's been staring at the girl must be upsetting her.
"I'm so sorry," the girl says, as the tears spill over. "I've ruined everything," she says as sobs rack her slight body. Hermione has no idea what to do. Students generally don't cry in her class—she isn't bloody Snape after all—but on the rare occasions one does she ignores it until they stop, or sends them to the Headmaster's office if they don't. Draco is better with crying children than she is. Draco likes children.
"Oh, Mummy, I'm so, so sorry," the girl says, sinking down onto the bed and sobbing harder.
Hearing the girl call her Mum was disconcerting enough, but the word Mummy breaks something open inside Hermione. She never thought any child would call her that, especially not a little girl looking at her with tears in Snape's dark eyes. The Headmaster's pet Mudblood. Draco's whore. That's what people call her. What that bitch who stands at Draco's side in public calls her. No man's wife. No child's mother. Not Mummy. She feels tears prick her own eyes, and busies herself tidying the room that's already tidy.
"I'm sorry," the girl says again. "I should probably call you Professor Granger, shouldn't I?"
"I don't know," Hermione says. She sits down and looks at the girl. "What kind of mother am I, in your world?"
"You're the best mother in the world. And I stole your Time Turner and made it so you don't even know me and I'm so, so, so sorry."
"You must be terribly afraid."
Becky nods.
Hermione hesitates. Should she take the girl's hand? Put her arm around her?
"What if we can't fix things?" Becky asks. "What will happen to Gus and me?"
"I don't know."
"You don't want us to fix things, do you?"
Hermione looks at her sharply, guiltily.
"The Headmaster loves you," Becky says. "I could tell when he was in my mind. Do you love him?"
"It's late," Hermione says, standing. "You should sleep."
Becky looks as though she might cry again. "Yes, Professor Granger."