IN MY FAVOUR

Disclaimer: This is a non-profit tribute to the works of JK Rowling who created and, together with her publishers and licensees, owns the characters and settings elaborated herein.

A/N: This chapter completes the AU arc that began with the final ch 7 letter, in which Snape did not answer Voldemort's summons to the Shack, but notified Harry of Dumbledore's message by Patronus and returned to help the defenders, only to be captured and later sentenced to execution by Veil (a medieval punishment reinstated for lack of obedient Dementors). I intend that chs 10 and 11 will comprise an alternative DH-compatible ending. Thanks to all my reviewers and especially to my previewers, Bellegeste, Cecelle and Lady Memory.

The story till now: Since Harry's first year, Snape had eased his troubled mind by sending time-spelled letters twenty years into the future to Hermione. He never expected that she would return to save his life.

They pushed him roughly through the door of the Death Chamber, unwashed, unshaven and unfed, and slammed and warded it behind him. He stumbled to a halt just before the first stone step, his arms flung out for balance, and looked up and around for that one face.

But there were too many, and in a moment he was clawing at bats erupting from his nose, shying away from the sulphur of rotten eggs, slipping on slime underfoot. Boils, a tickling hex, Tarantallegra…

He danced and skidded and crashed and slid his way down the stone steps. The crowd roared with laughter when he confusedly lurched sideways, and shouted suggestions to the designated hexers seated on either side of the aisle. Shielding his head with his arms, he turned and struggled on.

The floor was level under his feet now and he could hear the Veil murmuring. It was almost louder than the crowd. And then the crowd's noise dropped away and his hands met fabric.

Soft arms came around him, held him as colours swirled and the world dropped away from under and finally resettled. He buried his face in curls and rough wool, peripherally aware that they were simultaneously in the same place and not: the room was hushed and dim and cavernously empty, but for the whispering Veil. Fingers tickled the back of his neck, plucking at his hair, and then the crush of Apparition took them sideways to a new refuge, equally dim but smaller and somehow rounder, with something dark and angular reaching above his head. He pulled away and dropped to his knees, retching till the bile came.

She conjured a basin, a hand-towel and some kind of soft blue light, and followed him down to hold back his hair from his face.

"You're safe, I have you, you're safe, I have you," she crooned.

"Sorry," he muttered at last, turning aside to mop his face and neck, and rub at his hair. The towel was dampened and smelled slightly of lavender. "Sorry." Not sure what he was apologising for, but unable to stop himself.

"We're safe here," she said, and he looked at her, finally curious.

The light proved to be a jar of blue flame, set partway up a spiral staircase in the middle of the room. He blinked. She was… she was… He glanced around the circular room painted in the lurid colours of delirium with a riot of flowers, birds and insects, and then back to the woman. She was older than the girl he had last seen almost a year ago outside his office as he raced off to the Tower; older, sadder, grimmer, but her eyes were as brown, her hair as heavy.

He put out his hand and dropped it before it touched her. "Hermione?" he said.

"Yes."

"I – I died? I fell through?" It must have been closer than he knew. That swirl of colour? But the pull had felt backwards. The Veil had been in front. Hadn't it?

"No, Severus," she said softly, lifting the Time-Turner on her necklace to show him. "I came back for you."

He bowed his head, rubbing at the deep creases in his brow. "Why?"

From the corner of his eye, he could see her smiling at him.

"Because I could."

He knew he was gaping, but it didn't seem to matter. How could it when it wasn't real? One could say anything in dreams, do anything, be anything. He drank the potions she pulled out of her small beaded bag for him, lay down on the bed she conjured, closed his eyes and let her mutter counter-curses and cancelling-spells over him, and didn't stir until he heard "Scourg –" He flinched and covered his mouth, and she stopped.

"I won't if you don't like it," she said. "I was only going to clean the muck off to make sure I hadn't missed anything."

"Someone choked me with that once," he muttered. "I don't suppose it matters now."

"No, it doesn't matter now." She laid a soft hand on his cheek and smiled at him briefly. Then she was rummaging through her bag again, pulling out a frypan, kitchen utensils, a pile of blankets, a string bag of onions, a jar of coloured balls, and a footbath. "Ah, here it is." She sent it around the staircase to the far side of the room, enlarged it till it would hold a man and filled it with an Aguamenti Fervens. "Shall I conjure you a screen or do you trust me not to look?"

He shrugged and she handed him the jar of coloured balls and a towel she'd just pulled out of the bag. He turned the jar around and over dubiously, and handed it back to her.

"Yarrow bath bombs," she told him, wandering over to the bath and dropping one in. "Very refreshing. Don't dawdle, Severus. The quicker you get in, the quicker I can make you supper and get you to bed."

Even for a dream that was startling enough to jerk his head up and make him stare. But she had walked over to the table and was opening a carton of brown eggs.

"Fried or scrambled?" she asked.

The bath was fizzing. He dipped a finger in thoughtfully.

"Fried," he said.

There was no need for modesty in dreams. He made short work of undressing and slipped into the steaming water. There was just enough room to stretch his legs almost straight. He closed his eyes and only opened them when the smell of eggs on toast passed under his nose.

"I'm not ready to wake up," he said.

"You don't have to."

He awoke the next morning, refreshed, and hot with embarrassment. He had not objected to her pushing their beds together the previous night, and she was still there, curled up against his back, and so were the painted cupboards, the remains of last night's dinner and, just on the edge of his vision, the bath he'd luxuriated in, right in front of her.

"You're real," he said, sitting bolt upright.

She blinked and yawned and mumbled something unintelligible. He wanted to shake her and he wanted to leave, very quickly, before she even woke up. But there was nowhere to go. His nightshirt had rucked up in his sleep and his legs were bare under his blanket. He tugged the shirt downward and the blanket upward and wrapped both more tightly around himself.

"Severus?" she muttered. She squinted up at his face, rubbed her eyes, and sat up next to him, her feet tucked under her and her knees poking his thigh through the layers of cloth. "You're properly awake now, aren't you?" she said resignedly. "I was hoping you'd sleep longer, but I should have known you wouldn't. I don't suppose I could persuade you to hold the interrogation until after breakfast and the loo?"

"What did you mean 'because you could'?" he asked. His bladder could wait a bit longer.

"You of all people should understand. If you have the chance to save someone you love, how can you not try? Even if they don't love you back; even if they never will."

He winced and she touched his hand lightly. He snatched it away. It was she who didn't understand.

"I am Cain," he said simply, clenching his fists on the blanket's edge. "Cursed." My brothers' blood cries out from the earth. "I must be hateful, for everyone has hated me." Hated or despised. There was a difference, he supposed, but not enough to matter.

"They didn't know you. They saw the mud on your clothes and thought that was you." He shook his head. Had anyone known him better in his youth than Lily, in his teaching years than Dumbledore?

She seemed to catch his thought from the air. "Dumbledore trusted you."

"To kill him. It's not a job one gives a friend."

Her eyes kindled and for a moment he thought she would argue, but then she shook her head and sighed.

"To protect the children. To look after them when he couldn't."

"And what a magnificent job I did!" he said bitterly. "How many died in the battle? They wouldn't tell me." They'd hexed him for asking. Why would the Traitor want to know, if not to count his successes?

She chewed on her lip as she silently ticked them off on her fingers. He wanted to rail at her for not knowing the numbers by heart. So what if it had been at least twenty years ago for her? For him it was yesterday.

At last, she was done. "Twenty-six who were current students. Five who would have been current students if they hadn't been on the run. Thirteen who used to be your students. Two who were at school with you. Six were members of the Order." She hesitated and swallowed. "Ron was one."

"I'm sorry," he said helplessly. "You should hate me."

"I did, for a long time," she admitted. "But it wasn't your fault that Ron died. It wasn't your fault any of them died. You did your best."

"Not my fault? I killed the old man myself. And there were so many I betrayed to their deaths; Moody, Vance, the Potters." His voice failed and he swung his legs off the bed to leave. He flinched when her arms came around him, but he didn't resist. "He that touches pitch shall be defiled," he muttered.

"Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow," she said, carding her fingers through his hair. It was already greasy again, he knew. "But you're not a believer, are you?"

"I believe in Hell," he said. Fire and brimstone.

"Of course you do. You've been living there."

They couldn't stay like that forever, of course. He pulled away first, looking around the circular room at stove, sink and cupboards brightly patterned with burgeoning nature. With the sun streaming in, it hurt his eyes even more.

"What is this place? A banshee's bakehouse?" he grumbled.

She choked down laughter. "It's Luna Lovegood's kitchen. July, 1996. They went Snorkack-hunting that year and they won't be back for almost five weeks."

"Lovegood's kitchen?" he thundered, aghast. "Was there nowhere of your own to take me?"

"It's not as easy as you seem to think," she told him, standing up and stretching out the kinks in her shoulders as he tried not to notice how the sunlight outlined her shape. "I needed a building I could rely on being empty and unwarded, where any magic would pass unnoticed. I wondered about Spinner's End, but how was I to know when it was empty and what wards you might have had? You were in no fit case to tell me last night."

"Why not a tent? We could have camped out somewhere and not inflicted ourselves where we weren't wanted," he said bitterly.

"Luna's been on your side longer than I have," she replied, pulling out her little bag again and rummaging inside. "There's never been a time she wouldn't have welcomed you. And if you're worrying about her father, don't. He owes me. Or he will in two years time when he tries to turn us in and we still protect him. Here."

He stared at his wand, miraculously whole.

"They told me they broke it." He ran afinger along the smooth wood. There was not even a hint of a join. He flexed his fingers and took it into his hand, whole again, his breath catching.

"They did. But, well, the pieces were kept in the archives and I knew where Harry hid the Elder Wand –"

"The Elder –? He found the Deathstick? When?"

He looked again at his wand and then past it to the flowered wall. There was even a spray of purple anise hyssop with Gatekeeper and Chalkhill Blue butterflies flitting around it. He closed his eyes tightly and rubbed them with his other hand; opened them again to notice a kingfisher painted on the tap. His lips tightened.

"He didn't find it. It came to him after Vol, er, You-Know-Who took it from Dumbledore's tomb and tried to kill him with it. Did you know Dumbledore had it? I feel a bit guilty about tricking the mastery away, but it's probably for the best. Harry doesn't use it, you know, and he's not such an exceptional dueller that he couldn't lose it in a fight. But with me in the past and the wand in the future, it should be safe."

Mallows and heartsease on the nearest cupboard, with hollyhocks and cowslips and maidenhair, swallows and lacewings and hungry dunnock chicks, berries and acorns and bluebells. Wasps, he thought. There ought to be wasps.

"He had to die to bring the Dark Lord down. But I was told he lived. Are you sure there's no remnant of the Dark Lord wandering the world like last time?" He raised his head, his voice suddenly sharp. "Or is there, and that's why you came back? I don't know what use you imagine I could be; what use was I until now?"

"You were the pivot the whole story turned around," she said. "If you hadn't loved Lily and begged for her life, Harry wouldn't have survived the first time they met. Her death became sacrifice because she was given a choice. And if you hadn't told him he was a Horcrux, he'd not have known to let You-Know-Who kill it. He passed through death then and came back and the next time the wand was raised against him, it backfired, and no more Dark Lord. All the other Horcruxes were already gone by then, luckily. He won't be back. You're free."

He snorted at that. "Free? Don't you mean finished? Used up, consumed and thrown away?"

"No, I mean completed, fulfilled, discharged. You don't owe anything to anyone but yourself. You're free. And I'm glad."

Breakfast was eggs again, scrambled this time. He was hungry enough not to care.

"You were wrong, you know," she said, after the silence became too long. "When you said Harry would never defeat Him with Expelliarmus. That's exactly what he used." She grinned at him. "The first Defence spell you taught him. Funny that it became his signature spell."

He concentrated on buttering his toast. So at least he'd managed to teach the boy something, even if only by accident. Not that the boy would ever have acknowledged his help; even saving his life hadn't been enough for that.

"I wish the two of you could have known each other better," she said. "He really liked the Half-Blood Prince, before he knew it was you. He wouldn't hear a word against him, even after he half-killed Malfoy with a spell from the Prince's book."

"And when he knew it was me, I suppose he wouldn't hear a word in my favour."

"You weren't judging him any more favourably," she reminded him. "Even when he did something right, like sending Katie with Hagrid after the necklace got her, you didn't for a moment think that could be Harry. You thought any quick thinking must be me. I never thought, back then, that I'd ever accuse you of praising me too much."

He scowled at his toast and took a sip of tea. If she was fishing for compliments, she'd fish in vain. But she changed the subject without rancour.

"You must have so many questions that I can answer. We have time and to spare. Ask whatever you want."

He thought about all the nights he'd lain awake, imagining the future to distract himself from the present. "Tell me about you."

So she did. She started with the aftermath of the war, worked forwards to her decision to return for him, in the process answering his unasked questions about friends, colleagues, ex-students, enemies and other acquaintances. The Malfoys had got off lightly, on the plea of duress and, for Narcissa and Draco, the proof of having turned against the Dark Lord before the end, however passively. No one could dispute that Draco had known all along how to enter the Room of Requirement, and kept silent.

Then she skipped backwards to the years he'd just lived through, speaking of Dumbledore with, he thought, as much polite restraint as disillusion would allow, then forwards again to her plans for the immediate future.

"It's up to you, really," she told him, and he tried not to flinch at a new responsibility so soon. But she noticed, anyhow. "I don't mean you decide for me, only that I want you to feel completely free to decide for yourself. I told you, you don't owe anything to anyone. I've burned my bridges behind me, coming back, but don't think I didn't think it through completely beforehand. I made the choice as much for my benefit as yours. I want to go adventuring in the past. But you don't have to come with me. What you choose is up to you, even if –" Her voice trailed away. He watched her swallowing and wondered.

"If?"

She stared at her fists. "I have wondered if you might choose to go through the Veil, anyway. You said in one of your letters that you weren't sure you wanted to ... I mean, you weren't sure what you wanted. If that's what you want, if you're really and truly sure that's what you want after you've had time to think, I won't stop you. I'll even come and farewell you through." She scrubbed viciously at her nose with the back of her hand. "If you want that."

Well, he thought, she was a Gryffindor.

There was one topic they still hadn't covered. All day, he'd listened and watched and prompted her to continue, and she'd taken him into her confidence as comfortably as if they were friends. It was a payment, he knew; a trade-off for the secrets he'd confided to her. She would not have him feel daunted nor indebted. She was making things even. But he was ready to ask now. He was even ready to hear her answer.

"This morning, you called me 'someone you love'," he said, as he gutted a fish from the stream. She was peeling potatoes for chips.

"You are."

"I love Lily." It was freeing to say it without qualification or apology. He never had, not aloud, not where anyone could hear. "I love Lily. Always."

"Of course you do," she replied. "I love Ron. I've always loved Ron." She looked at him. "And now I love you. Because we loved once, should we never love again?"

That was a new thought. He turned it over as she continued.

"I've thought about this a lot. I've had time to. There never was a choice. If you know anything about Time-Turners you know I never could have saved him, I only could have saved you. But if there had been, if I'd had to choose, I would have chosen you. How could Ron understand the woman I've become? He didn't even understand the person I was then." She rinsed the potatoes under the tap and dried them carefully.

There was more to it than that. He could read in her eyes that she thought Weasley hadn't needed saving, hadn't needed her, really. He'd died to save Lily's boy, and he wouldn't have thanked her for stopping him. She'd always been second-best in that menage. But he chose to answer only the spoken thought.

"And you think I could? I barely knew you then. I don't know you now." He had cut off the head and broken the backbone.

"You know enough. I'm the person who read your letters instead of burning them. I came back for you when you didn't even know to ask. You commended your spirit into my care, and I am here to care for it. Isn't that enough to start with? I'm not asking for an irrevocable commitment. I'm just hoping that you'll be willing to try. You're starting over now, and so am I. I would like – I would very much prefer – to start over together."

"You're making a mistake. You think you know me, but you don't." She knew more than anyone ever had, but it was what he thought, what he felt, not what he was. Not how he lived.

"Did I know Hogwarts before I went there? Did I know befriending Harry and Ron meant spending the next seven years fighting a Dark Lord? Being left grieving? Of course I didn't. We never know what our choices will bring us. That doesn't mean we can't make any."

"You have no regrets?" He pulled the dorsal fin away from the tail end outwards, and vanished bones and fin and head all together, then sluiced the fish under the tap.

"Some. But not about being who I am or loving whom I do. Love is its own reward." She put down the knife and turned towards him.

Love had never been other than a punishment to him, he thought. It had kept him alive when he would rather have died, kept him bound when he would rather have sunk into oblivion.

She was watching him as if she couldn't get enough of his face. It was absurd, but the colour came into his cheeks.

"I know that I want to know you," she said quietly. "If you can't want the same, I have at least the satisfaction of having told you, having tried. If loving Ron taught me anything, it was to reach for what I want with both hands. Not to wish in silence."

He bowed his head. He had wished in silence once, too. But that time was gone now.

She wasn't finished. "I'm going far enough back that I won't accidentally meet my other self or have to live through this war again. I can take you with me or leave you wherever you choose or give you the Time Turner to keep going, if you prefer. Think about it, Severus. That's all I ask."

"With," he said. "I'll try with."

With each passing day, he felt more comfortable with that decision. Three weeks later, when he did one last sweep of the room to make sure there was nothing left behind, he knew that his time in this place had been like re-entering Eden. They left the kitchen exactly as they had found it and, entwined as when they had arrived in it, stepped out into the future past, together.

THE END (of this arc, anyway)

A/N Thanks to Whitehound for inspiring me to use Luna and to Lady Memory for "Love is its own reward".

"Lack of obedient Dementors" is AU. They were obeying Umbridge/Ministry people in DH, but we don't know whether or how quickly they switched sides again after the final battle. "Death Chamber" is not canon for the Veil room.

I discussed Time-Turners at the end of ch 7; they do not "change" the past, they merely move people into the past, where they can direct the course of events as they happen. Future-Hermione knows that Snape was rescued by an unidentified woman. She knows that Ron died. Those facts are unalterable, and only the first allows wiggle-room for a time-traveller to effect a rescue.

After snatching him, she time-jumped first to summer 1996, then Apparated. The Death Eater invasion had occurred over a month earlier, but in the confusion of Fudge's ousting, the Ministry still hadn't got around to warding the DoM against Apparition ;~P

Aguamenti Fervens is an AU version of the canon spell that conjures water. "Fervens" means hot, but the two together are ungrammatical.

The death toll figures are invented. Some Order members fit other categories.

The religious-sounding quotes are from the Apocrypha and Psalms(51:7). Chronologically, this scene is less than two days since his last letter, which had a slight liturgical flavour.

Canon doesn't specify which birds, flowers and insects were painted all over the Lovegoods' kitchen. I've chosen mainly native English flora and fauna. Anise hyssop is not native, but flourishes in the UK; it is popular for companion planting, butterfly gardens and herbals.

I've left open whether Snape had ever noticed that Dumbledore's wand was the Deathstick. He must have seen it, but I'm not convinced the Deathstick concept ever caught his fancy to the point of searching for clues to its existence or whereabouts.

The method of gutting a fish came from "Back in the Day: 101 Things Everyone Used to Know How to Do".