Disclaimer: I own nothing.

A/N: Apologies in advance for any spelling and/or grammatical errors, this is unbeta'd.

Chapter One: Life Force

It felt like it was raining.

Hard.

Ultra-thin needles pounding sharply, relentless.

One might have said it was pouring had it really been rain.

But they didn't.

Not now.

Not anymore.

Not ever.

Because there was no now.

No when.

No here or then or soon or later or noworpresentorpastorfuture– there was no time, no space, no direction.

There was not even a we or you or him or her.

There was simply existence.

And even that was twisted.

And it was so hot, hot, hot– burning, scalding, melting until everything was nothing and nothing was everywhere and everything.

It was eternity in a second and second in all of eternity.

And then, quite suddenly, there was a him and a her and you and me and then there was remembrance.

ReAmemAbrance.

Merlin, her head hurt.

Why did her head hurt?

Did she trip and fall down the stairs again? Had Harry botched up another attempted prank? Or, oh no, did the twins finally manage to sneak into her office? Or did–

Oh, thought Hermione as she felt a body materialize on top of her, that's what happened.

After the devastating attack on the Ministry, Hermione had eventually found herself in what once would have been a rather comical situation, had the circumstances been different– sharing a bottle of old port with a profoundly intoxicated Severus Snape.

"Merlin's balls, can you believe it?" Slurred Snape while snagging the bottle from her hands and taking a swig. "I mean– it's alright that you didn't catch it," Hermione looked mildly affronted at this but the man continued on, oblivious. "but, gods, this is me we're talking 'bout! I'm a bleeding spy for Salazar's sake! I should've seen this coming a mile away– fuck, I should have smelled it coming!"

"Severus," Spoke Hermione as she attempted to subtly snatch the bottle back, her tone similar to that of a patient mother. "you're not making any sense. Even you, oh Great and All-Knowing–"

"And Brilliant and Powerful and Dashin–"

"Yes, yes," Hermione continued hurriedly, not wanting to get him started. "all of that too– Severus Snape could not possibly have seen this coming."

"I suppose..." He said, though he was frowning and looking all together suspicious as he began to cradle the bottle closer.

Damn! Thwarted!

Too busy trying to think of a new plan, Hermione completely missed everything Severus had said beyond that point.

Perhaps if she pretended to be sleepy and snuggled into his side she could manage to

"Hermione! Now, I know I'm the Great, All-Knowing, Brilliant, Powerful and Dashing Severus Snape, but there's really no need for that." He said with a smirk.

Looking up at him, Hermione realized that instead of just thinking her plan, she had begun to act on it. She was not, evidently, in full control of all of her limbs and as such, currently had both legs over Snape's lap and her arm on top of his head.

Blinking slowly, Hermione made some incomprehensible noise, shrugged, and then proceeded to fall asleep.

Snape, not yet noticing her unconscious state, continued speaking.

"We're completely fucked, you know. Completely fucked. As in, absolutely-no-possible-chance-of-survival fucked. I mean, I know I used to say all that rubbish about how I was risking my life daily and never knew if I'd ever come back alive and all– but I wasn't really being serious! All I did was make potions for Merlin's sake! I didn't actually think I'd die anytime soon!"

Here Snape paused and gulped down the rest of the drink. With a deep breath and a long sigh, he looked around at his small flat, for what he assumed would be the last time.

It wasn't very nice, rather dirty in fact; books lay thrown about, pens and quills littered the floor, and had he not been as drunk as he knew he was, he would have sworn he saw a pair of eyes poke out from underneath a pile of robes in the corner.

One loud snore from the sleeping Hermione, however, forced him to look away from the living robes and down at the woman.

If only he could do something. Everyone had been in that building, it was a miracle that Hermione herself hadn't been.

Well, thought Severus, his mind centered on their impending fate, not quite a miracle.

A chime rang deep throughout the flat as the old grandfather clock announced the hour, and a startled Hermione jumped up, graceless.

"Wha'the?" She muttered under her breath.

"S'just Midnight."

"Oh," She frowned and sat back down. "I hate that bloody clock."

"Mm."

Glancing sideways at him, Hermione saw that he was about to fall asleep. She poked him.

"Don't." She commanded.

"Don't what?"

"Fall asleep. Don't. And don't let me."

Snape blinked slowly and after a few seconds, nodded.

"'Kay."

He yawned.

"Why?"

"Because," She replied, summoning another drink before resting her head on his shoulder. "This could be are last night alive. We may be drunk, but I want to remember it."

Snape did his patent eye-brow raise. "You do realize that once you're dead you probably won't remember any of this, right?"

"Of course I will," She scoffed. "We have to."

"Care to elaborate?"

Hermione debated rolling her eyes, but in the end, she decided she didn't really feel like it.

"What keeps up alive?" She continued on, not bothering waiting for his answer. "Energy, right? And energy can be neither created nor destroyed, only changed from one form to another. So something has to happen to all of our remnant energy when we die. Not to mention that we know that souls are real from dementors and all, and the fact that there is a sort of limbo of life and death that you can go to from ghosts; so, really, it's only a logical conclusion."

She gave her old Professor a few minutes to process this but once he began drooling she nudged him with her elbow.

"Wha's'it?" He jumped with a start before settling his eyes on her scowl. "Oh. Sorry. Didn't mean to."

"Do you always sleep with your eyes open?" She asked, half curious and half miffed that he hadn't been listening.

"Mm, yeah, pretty much. It's a spy thing, I suppose."

"Oh. Right. That makes sense."

"Mhm." Hermione convinced herself that he looked to be nodding off again and punched him on the arm.

"Oi! What was that for?" He asked, rubbing his arm and watching her warily.

She simply looked at him innocently.

"Hmph."

They sat in silence for a while after that, it was only when the clock chimed again that one of them spoke up.

"So this Energy, then, it can only be converted, not made or destroyed?"

Hermione blinked, surprised. "You had been listening! And yes, basically."

"And you think it's connected to the soul somehow, that they both change form after death?"

She frowned and bit her lip. "Well...yes, but–"

"But you believe it?" He interrupted, bloodshot eyes startlingly intense for a drunken man.

She hesitated only briefly before nodding. "Yes."

"Then- then do you think it's possible to convert this 'life force' to another form, one that can travel faster than light, one that go through time?"

"Well, yes. That's essentially what happens when using a time-turner– just in different terms. However, when using a time-turner your only traveling a few hours, at best, back. You can't, as I think you're getting at, travel days, let alone years, back. It's just not possible.

"You see, when traveling back years – theoretically, of course– you can't pin point an exact time. Hell, you can't even guess what decade you'll appear in. It's like, um, well– Oh, here!" Hermione exclaimed, grabbing a nearby sheet of parchment and a sickle. "Pretend, for a moment, that this sheet of parchment is actually the fabric of Space-Time and this sickle, Subject A, is the person traveling through time. Now observe: When one attempts to move the sickle backwards on the parchment, one has to shake the paper a little. Thus Subject A is stuck traveling not only backwards, but also sideways on the fabric. This results in Subject A winding up in a completely random period in the past of an equally random parallel universe.

"Well, not random, per se, it's just that there are so many possibilities that it's just not worth doing the math.

"Understand?"

"I think."

Hermione let out a breath of relief that she hadn't realized she'd been holding, thankful that he wouldn't be doing something so foolish. "Good."

"But I think I want to do it anyway."

"You're mad." She stared at him, incredulous.

"You're one to talk, Miss Granger. But really, it's not like we've anything to lose anyway, right?"

Hermione didn't know when 'I' had turned into 'we' but somehow she found herself nodding along with him.

"I suppose not." She answered bitterly, resting her head against his chest.

She felt Snape's head nod above her. "Tomorrow then."

"Tomorrow." She echoed softly before succumbing to sleep.

After they each had heavy doses of Sober-Up! potions, both Severus and Hermione went straight to work. Their first idea was to study the arithmancy and enchantments that made up the Time-Turner and see if they couldn't replicate and tweak them to fit their needs. While this was very promising, they both recognized how little time they had (and the irony of this escaped neither). Thus they came up with a plan: Severus would continue to work on the Time-Turner theory while Hermione would explore any other potential ideas.

In the mornings, while Hermione ate her breakfast and Severus had his coffee, Hermione would read the front page of the Prophet aloud– it was clear that the dark was on the rise, slowly and subtly, but nevertheless, taking the advantage.

It was in these moments that they were each reminded of just how important their mission was. They may not be able to save their world– it was too late for that– but they could at least save another from the same fate.

"You know, if you look at it right, it kind of evens out." Hermione said suddenly one morning.

Severus snorted. "I think it's time you got some glasses."

Hermione gave a small, sad sort of smile. "Just trying to be optimistic."

He gave her an exaggerated grimace. "Please, keep it to yourself– I'm allergic, you know."

A few slightly forced chuckles later and they were back to work.

It had been roughly two months now, and they were grasping at incredibly thin straws.

Severus insisted that he was onto something but Hermione couldn't be sure whether or not that was simply his pride talking.

Hermione knew she certainly didn't have anything. Sure, she had found a few useful muggle ideas and some promising looking spells– but nothing terribly substantial. After a few weeks Hermione had given up entirely on finding anything else and began trying to create something new instead.

Her first idea had been to try and apply arithmancy and mathematics to the subject, but every equation she wrote came up with impossible values. Hermione realized quickly that the reason her equations were ending so badly was that she forgot to factor in one major element: the unbelievably high temperature. Traveling faster than the speed of light– the virtual speed limit of the cosmos– would produce so much heat that everything would melt and blend together. Including magic.

And that was where she hit her wall; no one had ever really attempted to change the state of magic. It was either 'solid', i.e wards, charms, and spells, or it was simply free flowing particles, not unlike light's photons.

With a disgruntled huff, Hermione pulled back her hair and viscously stabbed it with a quill to keep it in place. She leaned back in her seat and stretched her arms out high above her head and yawned widely.

Gods, she hadn't worked this hard since she first began in the Ministry, fierce, determined, and dead set on proving herself.

She grinned in an extremely self-satisfied manner– Oh, how she had missed it! This was real work, work that stretched her mind in ways that she hadn't experienced since Merlin only knows how long and she now regretted terribly not having taken up a researching position earlier.

"I told you I was on to something, you doubted me?"

"Well– yes! I thought you were lying!" Hermione made a desperate grab for the roll of parchment Severus held high above his head.

"Lying? You thought I was lying? Honestly, we're not in Hogwarts anymore, Granger; I can get my kicks elsewhere now." Severus swatted her on the head as though she were an annoying pest. Walking swiftly past her and into the study, he unrolled the parchment and began to speak:

"One plus one equals two."

Hermione stared. Snape stared back. Was he mocking her? By the gods, she really couldn't tell.

She settled on a sarcastic, "Profound, Severus."

Her gave her a boyish grin. "You've absolutely no idea."

"Now," he began. "two plus two equals four." Hermione swore that he looked exactly like her little cousin, Matty, when he won the school spelling bee.

"Severus, for the sake of my sanity, can we please skip over the dramatic pauses? I'm sorry, dear, but Mummy lied when she said they added to the speech. They just make me impatient. And a Not Amused Hermione plus an Impatient Hermione equals a Pissed-Off Hermione." Hermione gave him a pleasant looking smile. "Understand, dear?"

Snape ignored her.

"Three plus three equals seven."

"No, it doesn't." Hermione yawned.

"Why not?" Snape's eyes seemed half-mad in the dim of the room and were ridiculously intense for all the rubbish he was sprouting.

"Because if one plus one equals two and two plus two equals four than three plus three must equal six or there would be unequal values and nothing would equal anything." She stated, completely matter-of-fact.

"Why do they need to be equal?"

Hermione looked at him like he was completely off his rocker.

"Well, what else would they be?"

"Unequal." Hermione was about to interject but was silenced by a wave of Snape's hand.

"You see, Granger, when doing my research I had come across a little road block: whenever I attempted to dissect the mathematics behind the Time-turner I always came up with ridiculous products– Hermione, please put your hand down this instant. For Merlin's sake, woman, I'm not your bloody professor anymore. Good, now shut up and listen. Now, I approached this problem first and foremost as a scientist– rationally, intelligently, and pragmatically. Needless to say, this failed miserably.

"So I decided to try a new attempt, following what I have labeled the Dumbledore Philosophy: Sit, think, and eat barrelfuls of lemon drops. The answer came to me as though in a dream: Heat was the key.

"At the speed we would be traveling everything would be so hot that it would all meld together– magic being no exception. Thus I realized that in order to accomplish our desired goal, we would need to unravel the mystery of how to change, how to mold, Magic. And do you know what, Hermione? We can't. Why, you ask? Because we simply, do not have enough time. Ironic, I know, but I am not finished so put that damned hand down, girl." Snape paused now and ran a weary hand through his greasy, unwashed hair.

Hermione sat quietly, waiting for him to continue. She really didn't have a clue where he where he was going with this. She was still wondering how in the name of Merlin did this make three plus three equal seven?

"Now. At this point to say that I was disheartened would be like saying that the Minister is– sorry, was– only a little bit slow–"

"Amen to that." Hermione interjected. She wilted under his glare. "Sorry." She mumbled.

"Anyway, eventually I reverted back to the old Dumbledore Philosophy with little success until I realized what an utter moron I was being. The answer was so bleeding obvious! We're too smart for our own good, Hermione. So smart, that we think that whatever brilliant idea we have could not possibly have been thought of by another," He practically oozed sarcasm. "The Time-Turner, Hermione. Every time one travels backwards in time, there is always that heat. No matter if you're traveling seconds or days, it's the one constant. The Unspeakable's have already solved this problem for us, Hermione."

Seeing Hermione's eyes on the unrolled parchment in his hands, Snape nodded.

"This is where I was today, Hermione, I contacted an old friend of mine who just happened to have a copy of the original Time-Turner plans. It wasn't meant to be a device, Hermione. It was meant to be a ritual. It was only once the Ministry stepped in that the plans were changed. Better for everyday convenience, evidently. But all the better for us anyway, the ritual was never tweaked for ordinary, everyday usage; in fact, it was never measured how far back it could go. None of the test subjects ever returned."

Hermione took a deep, calming breath.

"Never returned? So they went so far back that they didn't live until their date of birth? Severus–"

"No, Hermione, don't you see? Even if we do go too far back, or even not at all, it's still better than here," Snape put one hand on her shoulder and pushed her chin up with the other, forcing her to look him in the eyes.

"Hermione. You have nothing left here. Nothing at all. Your friends, your family, they are all gone. So you now have two choices: you can stay here and watch the world fall down around you like a helpless little girl clinging to her broken doll, or we can do this. You can create a new life, a better life. You can change everything, every little mistake you've ever made, every wrong you've ever committed. Start again, blank canvas, no preconceptions, no expectations, the world is yours for the taking and you can be anyone you want to be, do anything that you want to do.

"So what is it, because if you'd rather stay then I must bid you farewell and ask you to please take care of my potion stocks, some of them are rather delicate, you know, not meant for clumsy, Deatheater hands."

After a moments pause, Hermione placed her hand over Snape's.

"You're right," She met Snape's gaze and nodded, her eyes hard. "let's get this over with, then."

However complex the concept was, the ritual itself was rather simple.

Severus already had much of what was needed so Hermione only had to travel to a rural wizarding village in Ireland to pick up the last few ingredients; she didn't want to risk Diagon, what with all the Pureblood propaganda floating about these days.

She also picked up a used copy of A Housewife's Guide to Transfigurations that she thought might come in handy; they didn't know what time period they'd end up in so she figured this would help them fit in clothing wise.

Hermione sat heavily on a bench outside the used book shop. God, she felt like such a coward. She should be staying here, fighting this- this– Gods, whatever this mess was!

Where did she go? Where was the Hermione of old who would stand tall and brave no matter the circumstances? Where'd did that little girl, that House-Elf advocate, that mini revolutionary, go? Merlin, she needed her now more than ever.

Tears came unbidden to her eyes. She should be fighting for Harry (Don't worry Hermione, don't worry, it will all be better soon, I promise), and for Ron (Calm down, 'Mione. It'll all pass over soon enough, no worries), and her parents (You're growing up so fast honey, we barely feel like we know you anymore), and– god!– her poor, innocent Aunt Elaine (Just wanted to pop by for a visit, love! Haven't seen you in forever!).

But she couldn't.

Perhaps it was too many years spent in politics or simply her true, selfish nature coming through, but not matter how hard she tried, she could not make herself stay.

It was like Snape said, she was too damned smart for her own good and staying behind? She gave a bitter chuckle. That was just signing her own death warrant.

Everything was ready.

Snape had prepared everything, from potion that was to be poured in a neat circle around their feet to the Egyptian sand they were to stand on, and he had even made little flash cards that showed should which runes she would be drawing and when. She looked up when he handed them to her.

"Nervous?" She asked, amused.

"Obviously." He gruffly replied.

"Well...so when do we start?"

"Hm. Now I suppose. Do you have everything in order?"

She nodded. "Yes. You?"

"Just finished."

They stared around for a bit, each nodding to themselves. It wasn't at all how she had expected it would be, really. It wasn't dark or stormy, there were no Deatheaters pounding at the door, forcing them to perform the ritual quickly or something equally ridiculous. Instead, it was warm and the stars were bright against the evening sky; to Hermione, it was in perfect equilibrium with her mind which was full of tumultuous thoughts and fears.

"Well, we had best get started then."

"Yeah. Oh, wait! I had forgotten to ask, what on earth does three plus three equals seven have to do with any of this?"

Snape gave her an odd look before pulling her onto the mound of sand.

"You figure it out."

The ritual was nothing showy, not like any the Dark Lord provided for his followers; no unnecessary glowing, no migraine-stimulating flashes of light, no this was definitely Severus' kind of ritual. Nothing but a little bit of wind inside the circle and some kicked up sand in his hair.

He heard Hermione inhale quickly as they came to the last flash card and silently grabbed her hand in an out of character gesture of comfort. Hell, he was a bit frightened as well.

But as they completed the last of the runes, Severus could not help but feel as though he were throwing a big, "Fuck you!" at destiny.

And he had to admit: it felt good.

A/N: Yes, I know Snape is OOC. Seeing as how this is going to be a Hermione/Tom fic, you can pretty much guess that everyone is going to be out of character. Don't like? Don't read it.

Now, in regards to where Snape got the plans I just want to tell you that I had originally intended to add Hermione asking whether or not he killed the man for them. It's not crucial to the plot, but I figured I should tell you all just so that you don't think the guy just popped out of nowhere.

And...yeah. That's pretty much it, hope you enjoyed it!

Oh! And encase you hadn't figured it out, the beginning of this chapter is actually the end of it. Meaning that the very first little segment is occurring after Hermione and Snape preform the ritual.