Five

"And now here is my secret, a very simple secret; it is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye."
—Antoine de Saint-Exupery

5th August 2004
Hermione is 32

I am so weak.

After I attended Severus' trial in 1981, the dreams got stronger and more vivid. They shifted in nature, too. Where we used to sit and play chess or fill in the crossword or talk and talk for hours in the calm and restful dreams, suddenly I was panicked and desperate. I saved him from death each night, faced nightmare creatures and impossible circumstances so that he could be safe in my arms before I woke. And his gratitude in the dreams was overwhelming: he'd fill me and cover me so that sometimes I'd wake and run my hand down my arm, wondering if he was under my skin.

It got to the point where I couldn't bear not to go back with the express goal of watching him, until his face was more familiar than my own, until I lost my heart to Time again. And then when even that was not enough to fill the yawning hole in my soul that grew from my ever-growing longing, I did something even worse.

23rd March 1989
Hermione was 31

In all the time I'd spent watching Severus Snape behind a slew of glamours and Polyjuiced faces, I'd discovered he'd adopted an indulgence… perhaps something to drag him through the long years, the quiet and silent years, of indentured service under Dumbledore.

He didn't have classes on Thursday afternoons, and more often than not, he'd hole himself up at a corner table in the Hog's Head and slog his way through the daily crossword with the help of some tea or some (or more than some, occasionally) Firewhisky.

I ran through scenarios in my head the entire morning, like:

a: I sway my hips slightly as I walk across to the bar. I glance over my shoulder nonchalantly. He looks up from his crossword puzzle and gapes. I smile in a sultry fashion. He almost falls over his feet in his haste to buy me a drink.

b: I pointedly ignore him until I'm seated… in his line of vision, of course. He glances up and a spark of recognition gleams in his dark eyes. He stands up and walks over. "Hope," he says in that chocolate and chilli voice of his, "I've been hoping to run into you again."

What really happened didn't involve a sultry me or a pickup line from heaven.

I ordered a Butterbeer from Aberforth, pretending that I wasn't aware that this simple action might haunt me in my past and in my future. Severus didn't so much as flicker a glance in my direction. Trying not to walk with slumped shoulders under the weight of my disappointment, I sat at a halfway across the room from him. The Butterbeer was bitter on my tongue, as if the makers had forgotten to imbue it with warming magic. I sighed and opened the Daily Prophet, and then, in a silly notion, I began to fill out the crossword puzzle, as though our linked actions would bring me closer to Severus.

Perhaps, I told my sore, sore heart, it was better this way: if I did this for much longer I was going to lose my soul to time, as well.

The sun fell through the grimy windows in long, meagre slants, and my Butterbeer was almost a memory in its bottle when Severus grunted with disgust. "Five across?" he muttered, and for a moment I thought he was grumbling to himself, until he raised his raven-dark eyebrows at me when my gaze flickered up.

Hope, like my false name, glittered like Felix in my heart and suffused through my veins until it warmed my cheeks. "P-pardon?" I stammered.

"The answer to five across," he repeated slowly, and his lip began to curl into a sneer that told me I was perilously close to achieving dunderhead status.

"I'll trade you for three down," I said after a moment's hesitation.

His lips quirked and there was an amused glint in his eye. "Very well," he said smoothly. Well played, Slytherin, said his appraising expression.

I'm afraid that addiction is a slippery slope. From then on, I made deals with myself: I'll trade you five days of recording this or that dead-boring historic event for just three hours of another Thursday afternoon with him. I gave a weak pretence of arguing with myself about it, but I knew that I was just fooling myself.

I hid the stolen hours recorded by my Chrono within the other trips I made, adding an hour or so to each of my other Travels until my time was in perfect reconciliation.

My lies to Julia started to feel less heavy on my tongue, and somewhere along the line my guilt eased into a dull, background pulse. For a while I was worried that she'd figured it out; she certainly sensed that something was wrong.

4th June 2004
Hermione was 31

Julia closed my travel log and placed it on top of my latest notes. She beamed at me—a huge smile to match her sunflower-patterned robes. "Well, you have been diligent, my dear. Those centaurs can talk in endless circles, can't they? I must commend you for making sense of it all… I always thought it a great pity that the Ministry never gave them their due."

I nodded distractedly and gave her a weak smile. "They… had some good points, yes." I sat with my legs tucked up underneath me, a cooling cup of tea in hand. My mind had drifted, thinking of Severus, while she'd scrutinised my week's efforts, although I'd slanted a watchful eye as she'd glanced at my travel log. Week after week my stomach would curl itself into a tight ball and I'd just wait for her to spot some small inconsistency in my accounting.

She frowned and gave me a concerned look. "Are you… all right, Hermione?" she asked.

I tried to smile more genuinely, but my effort wasn't good enough because she shifted closer to me on the couch.

Perhaps the tenuous hold I kept on everything, like trying to keep a huge armful of wet laundry from dropping to the soil, was slipping. I didn't feel remorse for Travelling to see him (it was the only way I knew my heart could still beat), but I felt horrid for lying to Julia.

"Oh, Hermione," she said in a voice full of empathy. "I know how hard it can be sometimes… how lonely. You should have said something to me sooner." She smiled kindly at me.

To my absolute horror, tears began to well in my eyes. I swallowed hard and shook my head.

She rubbed my arm. "It will get better with time, I promise. It is always difficult to let go of friends from your life, friends who love you and will not let go easily." She sighed softly, like there was some secret pressing against her lungs.

And then my heart lurched so painfully I put my hand to my chest. I hadn't owled Harry or Ron in months and months of the present time, I realised. I'd just forgotten in all of the rush and excitement of having Severus. But what actually hurt more was that they hadn't owled me, either.

And… my problem wasn't who I was letting go—it was who I was holding on to.

He was my secret, and I think, I was his. I was a diversion outside of the life that leeched the vitality from him. I was easy. I didn't ask him for anything. I sat in my chair across the bar each week and waited for him to come to me, like a child baiting a timid dog.

I won't lie to myself and say that he fell desperately in love with me during that time; the promise that he'd made to Lily was like a dense shroud around his heart. He carried her with him in the shadows that haunted his eyes; the reticence of his infrequent conversation; in his absence from the Hog's Head for three whole weeks after Halloween.

But sometimes, just sometimes, I saw, mostly with my soul, who he could be to me, if only I weren't an intruder who was sneaking into his life when I shouldn't, stealing time where it wasn't meant to be stolen.

22nd February 1990
Hermione was 31

It was a Thursday afternoon, much like all the others I'd Travelled back to. Hogsmeade was still bitterly cold, and the wind clung onto winter with long and icy fingers. It was worse that I was coming from the lovely and warm summer of 2004, but I gritted my teeth as I ducked my head into my hood because nothing could warm me more than the first glimpse I'd get of him through the greasy front window of the Hog's Head.

I was getting better at lying to myself: I deserve a little break from the goblin treaties; it's just a little conversation; no harm can come from this; I just like doing the crossword with somebody intelligent.

My mind just wouldn't accept what my heart and soul already knew: I was in love with a man who was condemned by Time to die.

When I drew close to the Hog's Head, I didn't notice the difference at first because my head was dipped low and my hair whipped in the wind, tugging loose from its plait.

"Hope."

I squeaked with surprise and jerked my head up. He stood, leaning against the wall of the bar, waiting for me, apparently.

"Oh." I was gaping like an idiot. "Um... hello, Severus?" My greeting was more of a query about the change. It's odd how quickly I'd become accustomed to the quiet routine we'd built around these afternoons.

He stood up straight and gestured toward the dense woods that fringed and cradled the small wizarding village. "I have something to show you," he said, and he began walking in that direction without glancing over his shoulder to check if I would follow.

I would follow him, yes, wherever he wanted to go.

I finally caught up with him—he had long legs and an efficient and measured stride. "Um... w-where are we going?" I huffed. Sitting on my arse at so many historic events had made me a little unfit.

But he didn't answer or stop until we reached a clearing just a few minutes into the verdant forest. And there, at his feet, taking shelter in a stiff and shivering copse of grass were the prettiest white flowers I'd ever seen. "Oh, how lovely," I said, bending to brush a fingertip to their velvety petals. A soft and melodic tinkle wound its way around me like a lullaby. "Oh! They're Snowbells..."

"Yes," he said brusquely. "I came across them yesterday when I was harvesting knotgrass."

I squinted up at him from my kneeling position. His arms were crossed over his chest, like he was waiting impatiently for me to finish. Like I was being an imposition on his time.

And then I realised: I'd told him I was a Herbologist. He'd brought me here to see these very rare flowers. I glanced back at the Snowbells, and suddenly I couldn't breathe through the intensity of my emotion. I struggled through my awe for several long moments, steadying my emotional response.

And then I stood again and nodded, my smile carefully neutral. "Thank you."

And then we went back to the Hog's Head and resumed our usual routine like he hadn't shown me a glimpse of his heart through all of that hurt.

I have to remember that for me it has all come in a four month rush. It has escalated to the point where steal a piece of Thursday for my heart almost each and every day of the week, now.

In Severus' frame of reference, I have been around for almost two years. I'm not quite sure what I am to him. Perhaps a History of Magic reference; a friendly face once a week; a woman who (amazingly enough) does not push him for personal details about himself (I know them all already, anyway).

He's never made a pass at me—I don't think his broken heart has space for another epic and tragic love story—but I know that in his own way he's become fond of me. Our friendship, for that is what it has become, has shifted over time. Severus has never invited me up to the castle, nor to any other private space. But perhaps every second or third Thursday, he waits for me outside of the Hog's Head and we do things that oddly distant friends do. I pretend to bitch and moan when he drags me to a potions exhibition, and he pretends to get hay fever and sore feet at the botanical gardens. I yawn and roll my eyes at the art gallery, and he snores rudely at a matinee.

But I am ever aware that my stock of Thursdays is running out fast; they are rushing like a river towards the first of September, 1991. That was always a golden date for me: the day I first stepped into the magical world and grasped at my destiny with clutching and greedy hands.

I get a fist-sized knot of nerves in my stomach when I think about it. Will he see beyond the round and childish face of an eleven-year-old and recognise my eyes at once?

Or will I agonise and fret while my younger self matures and grows into her face?