A/N: This story is working without a beta, since my beloved beta is working on editing The Laws of Attraction and I don't want to stress her. :D

Chapter 2

Yellow Tulip

~.o.~

"A mighty pain to love it is,
And 'tis a pain that pain to miss;
But of all pains, the greatest pain
It is to love, but love in vain"
- Abraham Cowley

~.o.~

September 18, 1997

"Severus, stop being so jittery," scolded Minerva.

She hid her knowing smile behind her cup of tea as she watched Severus pace her office floors. It was unusual, indeed; she had yet to see him display any other reaction other than annoyance and spite, and here he was, brows furrowed in agitation and nervousness.

The last time Minerva had seen him put down his walls of solitude was when he was in his 7th year, and that was only when he was with her. When she had left, however, he was back to pretending like the rest of the world didn't exist. Who could blame him, though? He had gone through many difficult and hurtful things in his childhood.

As a child, Severus had been a very proud but dignified boy. He tended to be alone, a book clutched in his pale hands. He was brilliant, even back then, though he was constantly picked on for it. Minerva still remembered his first day of school, where he was still quite the jolly little boy. What Minerva couldn't remember was how he had looked. She just couldn't imagine a happy Severus anymore.

He had used to be a very jubilant child. In fact, Severus reminded her of Hermione Granger. On Severus' first day in Hogwarts as a first year, he was as nervous as everyone else was, yes, but was excitedly shifting his weight from one leg to the next. His hair had been ruggedly short, then, and was rather adorable for a child. Minerva had been his Transfiguration Professor, and she remembered how he raised his hand slowly with a bored look on his face to answer a question. Minerva could tell, however, that he was fighting back the excitement. She had seen how his dark eyes twinkled with renowned joy and amusement. Keeping up with Slytherin attitudes, he kept a calm and cool exterior while his insides were buzzing with excitement. He had wanted to fit in so badly that he had observed other Slytherins and adapted their 'cool, calm, and proud' traits quite quickly.

His eagerness and desire to fit in, however, was his first big mistake. The students saw it as haughtiness and misplaced pride; the way he walked with Slytherin confidence, the way he boredly raised a hand to answer, as if it was the easiest question in the world, and the way he looked like he couldn't care less about what you think or do. Where for Severus it was simply wanting to fit in, the others had taken it as bad character.

And so, the others though he needed to be taught a good lesson. Sadly, he was a small and frail child, and he ended up being bullied by his other classmates and upperclassmen. Teased on being intelligent and 'different', outcast-ed by all, picked on by the ever-famous Marauders, and holding on to unrequited love, the Severus that used to hold so much life in him slowly vanished. As the years went by, it got worse and worse, until he had lost all life in him when Lily Potter, his one true love, cut all ties with him because of another mistake. He had lost his only true friend and love, and since then he had built himself emotional walls to protect him from anything else that could possible hurt him. Without anybody that seemed to care for him, he relied on himself and kept to himself.

That is, until Hermione Granger came along.

"Minerva, I assure you: If I had a choice, I would sit and drink tea in complete calm and serenity. But sadly, I don't," Severus drawled, still pacing.

"You know that she won't be back for days, right, Severus?" Minerva said calmly, though was grinning rather widely behind her tea cup.

It was all just too amusing. Severus Snape, nervous? The man who had faced more dangers and had stood beside the Dark Lord, nervous for something as small as this?

The most amusing part, however, was the fact that he came to her. As soon as Hermione had left, he had knocked on her door and entered, simply standing in front of Minerva's table and looking at her, eyes questioning. It was only when Minerva had said, "She's going," did he numbly sit himself on a chair, only to stand up minutes later to start his pacing.

Severus didn't answer her question. How typical of him, avoiding questions he didn't want to hear, especially when the answers weren't to his liking.

"Just a few more days, Severus. Surely you could wait for a few more days? You have been waiting for so long-"

"Yes, and that is precisely why I feel agitated. I have been waiting for so long, always wondering whether the time would come at all!" he said, waving a hand in the air frustratedly.

"I know watching her had been hard, Severus," Minerva said kindly, "and believe me when I tell you I wished that I could have helped you. But it was too dangerous, Severus. We couldn't tell her-"

"I know we couldn't tell her, Minerva. As you have told me every waking hour of the day, 'it might alter the time stream'," he quoted.

Severus stopped his pacing to stiffly seat himself on the chair in front of Minerva's desk, looking blankly at a spot on her table.

Minerva simply nodded.

When a few minutes of silence had passed, Minerva decided to move on to lighter topics that would hopefully distract Severus.

"I bet you were surprised to see her in her first year," she said, smiling fondly.

The edges of Severus' mouth quirked up a bit. "Certainly. You can only imagine my bitterness towards a certain Professor for forgetting to tell me..." he drawled on, letting the sentence hang in mid-air.

"You know I couldn't tell you, Severus. It would have been too dangerous. When she came to me then and told me she was from the future, she made me swear an Unbreakable Vow that I wouldn't tell anyone about how she was from the future. "

Severus sighed. "I know, Minerva. I should have known; I had just refused to accept it. I had seen the time-turner on her neck, then; an accident, of course, but nevertheless, I saw it. I didn't know what a time-turner looked like at the time, so I convinced myself I was seeing things," he said in a bored tone, which was now his normal way of speaking.

When Minerva didn't reply, he continued, "I was surprised. That day when Albus summoned me to his office. It was right after her Sorting. And you were there as well, and we discussed her and the past..."

When the sentence was left to trail on, Minerva pushed her spectacles up the bridge of her nose and replied, "Of course. Albus and I remembered her quite well. She had been a brilliant student, back then in 1978, and when we saw her during the 1991 Sorting, we knew immediately that it was her, albeit she was a lot younger than we remembered her."

Severus nodded. "Yes, she was 17 back in 1978."

"The time line fits perfectly. It simply means she's meeting your past at the moment. For her, she's meeting you for the first time right now, as she travels to the past," said Minerva. "I coached her on what to say to my 1978 self so that my past self would help her, actually. I just repeated to her everything I remembered her saying to me all those years ago, which made me believe that she was telling the truth about being from the future. That was how I knew, back then, that Hermione was from the future. I had believed that my future self sent her to tell me things only I myself would know. Now that History has virtually repeated itself, and the time line is right, I think things are going quite smoothly."

Severus did not reply. He kept his gaze at his fingers, which were folded neatly on his lap.

Unbeknownst to Minerva, Severus was thinking:

Will she still love the past me?

Knapsack slung over he shoulder, Hermione crept out of the Head Girl's dorm at 12:00 midnight. She cautiously strode to the girls' bathroom on the third floor, careful to be quiet and stay uncaught. Relief washed through her as she pushed the lavatory door open. There was no sign of Moaning Myrtle, and a good thing that was, too. Hermione poked a bathroom stall open, disgustedly noting the grime covering the ancient stall door, and slipped inside. She closed the door, just in case, and fished the time-turner out from under her uniform. Taking a deep breath to steel herself, she fingered the cold metal nervously. It's now or never, she thought. It's time.

Her fingers moved quickly, turning the time piece in her hands over and over again. In her mind, Hermione counted every flip of the time-turner. She closed her eyes, having learned the hard way that traveling back to the past with your eyes open could cause a serious migraine: the seemingly back-tracking surroundings in full fast forward speed was extremely dizzying.

Finally, Hermione's fingers went still, holding on to the cold metal piece around her neck. She pried her eyes open, and was face to face with a clean bathroom stall door. The grime and horrid smell had gone, and it seemed like everything looked a bit new. Well, newer than it had been at her present time, of course, where it had been nothing but dirt and dust.

Pushing the stall door open, Hermione stepped out, only to stop dead in her tracks.

Someone had just entered the bathroom, and also stopped to look at her. Hermione was drawn to the girl's auburn hair that seemed to be burning as the sun from the bathroom's high windows seeped in. She had a just-as-red tulip tucked behind one ear, and her eyes were a beautiful and striking bottle green.

It was all the proof Hermione needed that she was, in deed, in the time she wanted to be.

She was in 1978.

And she was facing a 17 year-old Lily Evans.

September 18, 1978

"Are you a new student? I have yet to see you around the school..." said Lily Evans, her head tilting to the side to examine Hermione.

"Oh, yes. I just transferred. In fact, I was looking for Ms. McGonagall? My mother is a friend of hers, see, and Ms. McGonagall was the one who referred Hogwarts as a brilliant teaching institute when I decided to transfer from my old Wizarding school," recited Hermione from memory, as she had done with the McGonagall of her own time.

When Hermione had told Minerva of her plans to learn about Severus Snape's past, Minerva had helped her come up with her 'undercover story'. She was to be the daughter of a good friend of Minerva, and she had come from a not-so-famous Wizarding school. Minerva supposedly saw her potential and had recruited her for Hogwarts right away.

Another thing that Minerva and Hermione had talked about was what she had to do first and foremost when she arrived in the past: Hermione was to find Minerva McGonagall of 1978 and convince her that Hermione was, indeed, from the future. That was her number one priority right now. After that was finding what she came to this time for: Severus Snape.

"I could bring you to her office, if you want. No wonder; I was surprised to see a student in here, since nobody ever comes to this bathroom anymore. You're new, so you don't quite know about the history of this bathroom," said Lily, gesturing to their surroundings.

Though the bathroom looked cleaner and newer than the one from Hermione's time, it still had the age-dust of disuse to it. Hermione knew the history of the bathroom quite well, of course: the ghost of Moaning Myrtle was there, the girl that was killed by Tom Riddle years ago – even way before 1978. Hermione couldn't tell Lily she knew, though, and must continue pretending to be a lost and wandering student who just needed to go to the loo really badly, thus ending up here. Though now that Hermione thought about it, what was Lily doing here?

"There's a history to this bathroom?" asked Hermione innocently.

Lily nodded. "Yes, but I'll save that story for next time. We must get you to Professor McGonagall's office before lunch ends, else I'll be late for my next class," said Lily, smiling at Hermione kindly.

"Of course. I apologize for the trouble," said Hermione, tucking a strand of her wild hair behind her ear before following Lily out of the 3rd floor bathroom.

As the pair walked to McGonagall's office, they talked cheerfully. Lily was very friendly, and Hermione was reminded very much of Ginny. It made Hermione wonder if she should tell Harry that his girlfriend was exactly like her mum. When she got back to the present, of course.

"And that's the courtyard," said Lily brightly,stepping on the long patch of lively green grass, where students around them were scattered.

Hermione smiled, noting that Hogwarts castle looked exactly like it did in her present time. Though the Hogwarts she knew had undergone repairs after the war, it still looked like an exact copy of what she was seeing now. As they crossed the courtyard, some students stopped to stare at them. Hermione shrunk back a little – she was never one to be comfortable under the penetrating gazes of a lot of people.

Lily seemed to sense her nervousness, and slung an arm over her shoulder to calm her.

"It's alright; everyone in Hogwarts is really very nice," said Lily, smiling at Hermione.

Hermione nodded and gave back a meek smile, feeling the same comfort Ginny gave her all the time emitting from Lily Evans. When she was about to say something in reply, a shout was soon heard from a few meters away from them.

"Listen up, everyone: Snivellus is finally admitting that he's gay!" a laughing voice boomed.

Lily groaned from beside Hermione. She withdrew her arm around Hermione's shoulders and jogged to the source of the noise. Hermione followed suit.

As Hermione grew nearer to the site, she spotted her favorite her bench: the bench she always sat on when she wanted to read. It was under a large Cypress tree that provided shade, and Hermione was always reading there if she wasn't in the library. It looked exactly the same as she remembered it, except the bright yellow tulips that grew around the bench weren't there. There was just grass growing the surroundings of the bench.

Someone was sitting on the bench. He had long, chin-length black hair, and piercing dark eyes. His facial features were sharp and angular, and on his lap were dozens of flowers.

Hermione caught a breath.

It was Severus Snape.

"Lily, excellent timing! See, we just caught your friend red-handed. Seems as if he has finally admitted that he's leaning towards the other gender, see. He's playing with flowers, now – the flowers are all the proof anybody needs," said one of the boys, who stood with 3 others haughtily.

The boy had shaggy black hair that gave him an attractive rugged look, with piercing blue eyes and a charming smile. He had an air of gleeful superiority around him, and Hermione then knew that the group she was looking at was the famous Marauders. The one who had spoken was Sirius Black, who at Hermione's present time was back in Grimauld Place and was working as an Auror.

"This again? Don't you ever get tired of picking on him?" sighed Lily, raking a hand through her hair in frustration. The red tulip tucked behind her ear fell in the process, causing Hermione to bend down and pick it up. As she rose to hand it back to Lily, she froze.

The flowers on Severus' lap were red tulips.

It seemed like Hermione wasn't the only one who noticed, however, because one of the boys from the Marauders stepped toward, looking at the flower in Hermione's lap, then to the flowers on Severus' lap.

"Lily-" started the messy black-haired, boy, who wore glasses and had brown eyes, only to be interrupted by Lily.

"You gave me the tulip?" she addressed to Severus, ignoring James Potter, a tone of accusation and wariness in her voice.

Severus just looked at her, unmoving.

Lily sighed again, taking the flower from Hermione's hand and walking over to Severus to place it on his lap. She was returning it. Without another word, she turned back to Hermione.

Sirius looked like he wanted to laugh or say something mean, when a sandy-haired boy who Hermione assumed was Remus Lupin held him back, shaking his head. Remus gestured towards James' annoyed look as he followed Lily.

"Hermione, let's get going," said Lily, smiling again, at the same time that James said, "Lily, we need to talk."

Lily and James had a stare down, and only when Hermione said, "It's alright, Lily; I can find my way from here," did James reach out to hold Lily's hand and pull her back towards the covered hallway of the castle, away from the courtyard.

The other three Marauders followed, with Sirius passing Hermione with a wink, Remus pushing Sirius forward, and a small, plump boy with rat face features waddling behind them – Peter Pettigrew.

Hermione turned to watch the horrible man's back, and grit her teeth. He was the one who sold Lily and James Potter out to Voldemort. If they knew...

No. She couldn't. It would change the whole time stream, and something could end up horribly wrong.

"Are you another one of those brainless witches who fancy those idiotic Marauders?" drawled a voice from behind her.

Hermione whipped around to see that Severus was talking to her. Well, he wasn't looking at her. He was looking at the red tulip that Lily had returned. Hermione thought she saw a flash of hurt in his eyes...

She didn't answer him and instead walked over to sit beside him. Surprisingly, he didn't jump away, but he did stiffen up.

"A red tulip. It means a declaration of love," stated Hermione, recalling her book on Floriography.

Severus looked at her then, with that cold and unnerving look the older Severus in Hermione's time always had. He didn't reply, and just turned back to his flower.

"Multicorfors," he muttered to the flower.

Hermione gasped in awe as the flower turned a bright yellow. Following the flower in his hand, all the others in his lap turned yellow, as well. Severus stood up abruptly, letting the flowers fall to the ground. Hermione continued to look in amazement as the flowers seemed to have planted themselves on the ground. They now stood around the bench, just like the yellow tulips that Hermione had always smelled and smiled at back in her own time.

"They're beautiful," she found herself unconsciously mumbling, as the flowers swayed with the wind.

Severus just walked away.

But that was before Hermione heard him mutter:

"But they don't mean well."

Going through Severus' phrase in her mind, she understood it after a few minutes.

Yellow tulips meant unrequited love.

Severus was hurting from his one-sided love of Lily Evans.

A/N: What do you guys think! Leave me a review!

Again, I apologize for grammatical errors. I suck in editing my own work, and this story is working without a beta since my beloved beta is working on editing TLOA.