Thanks, as always, to heartmom88 and ofankoma for all their help, and to everyone who has taken the time to read, review or favourite this story.

Chapter Thirteen

Emma found herself dragged inside the heavy canopy of the bed, long fingers digging cruelly into her wrist. She sprawled across the bed covers, aware of a wand being held only inches from her face, her own wand caught underneath her where she lay.

Effectively disarmed, her heart hammering in her chest, she squinted up into the wandlight at the tear-stained face above her.

Unthinking, she scrambled up onto her knees and threw her arms around the devastated boy.

"Oh, Severus," she murmured, her face buried against his neck. "Whatever's happened?"

The wandlight faded then as his arms came up to encircle her, pulling her tightly against his chest. She ignored the pain in her hand where the Stinging Hex had caught her, ignored the discomfort of her being held at such an awkward angle and just held him tightly, feeling the dampness of his tears on her cheek.

Eventually he pushed her aside and scrubbed at his face furiously with the sleeve of his pyjamas. Emma looked away, realising she had probably chosen the worst time to simply appear at his bedside. No one, especially someone as private and prickly as Severus, wanted to be caught crying themselves to sleep. She studiously placed fresh wards around the bed to allow them to talk unheard. A further charm meant that the wandlight she conjured couldn't be seen from outside. She healed her hand as well as she could without a salve, then added several warming charms for good measure.

"You're all wet," Severus informed her peevishly, his face hidden by his long hair.

"I've been out in the snow," she informed him, unclasping the cloak and drying the soggy wool with her wand. "I'm absolutely frozen."

"Snow? Now?"

"I don't know when it was," she shrugged. "Though I'm pretty sure it wasn't that far away from your house, but I was a bit lost. I was by a playing field between a social club and a row of tiny little cottages."

"That's Spinner's Rec," he informed her helpfully. Emma could tell he was grateful she was ignoring the elephant in the room. "I used to hide in the bushes running down the side whenever we went for a walk," he added. "If you cut across it you'll find a path that leads to the canal. Turn left and you'll end up near the house."

"Right," she replied as she kicked off her shoes, lowering them carefully to the floor so that they would still be hidden by the heavy curtain. Her recent experiences had left her uneasy at the thought of removing any of her outer clothes, especially is she might be whirled back into the snow. She ran a hand through her hopelessly wind-tangled hair and snagged a single strand, lengthening and strengthening it until it served to bind her shoes and cloak to her wrist

Feeling more secure – and a little irritated with herself for not having considered such a charm earlier – she glanced round for a topic of conversation to distract from the real question she wanted to ask him. Severus had pulled the covers up almost to his chin and was staring in the vague directions of her knees.

"How are your parents?" she ventured at last.

"Fine," he answered. "I've not really heard from them since term started."

"How about Lily? Is she talking to you yet?"

"Not really. On the plus side, she's not talking to Potter, either. It seems he may have shot him self in the foot by pulling his wand out in her front garden."

Emma giggled. "We girls are never as impressed by that sort of stuff as you might imagine."

"Strange creatures," he agreed.

Silence descended again, and Emma began to wonder just how much time had passed for him this time. If he was back at school, it had to be at least September, and judging by the temperature, it was probably much later still. She could have been gone for months, only to turn up unannounced at his bedside. No wonder the easy interaction between them had – at least on his side – become stilted.

He had grown older while she had stayed the same. It made perfect sense that they would grow apart, that what had linked them over the summer should begin to fade. Fade for him; for her it was an abrupt, heart-rending occurrence. That he might outgrow her. . .

Somehow that thought was worse than the thought she might never get home. Home was just an abstract idea at the moment, just an ideal she was aiming for. With no memories, there was nothing and no one that called her back. But Severus was real. She had already realised her dependence on him and her attachment to him were quite probably unhealthy but the thought that she had somehow lost him already felt like a physical blow.

Watching him now, his puffy eyes seeming over large in his angular face, refusing to meet her gaze, she felt her own eyes begin to fill. She sniffed determinedly and sought a way – any way – to undo the damage her absence must have caused.

"I missed you," her tongue tripped over the words. They seemed ridiculously inadequate, especially when his face became stony.

"I didn't think I'd see you again," he ground out.

She gave a little laugh, though even to her ears it sounded more like a sob. "Me neither," she admitted. "Yet this is the third time I've been here," she gestured to the room beyond his curtains. "This is the cold dormitory. Had I known you'd be here I would have—" he had looked up at her, a speculative expression on his face and she let her sentence hang unfinished between them.

"Did you ever see yourself? See the other times that you were here?"

After refusing to meet her eyes, this sudden attention her to falter. Luckily, Severus didn't wait for her to gather her suddenly scattered thoughts before continuing on, his voice pitched low.

"Everything I've read states that you must never let your past selves see you," he informed her gravely. "The magical books didn't explain why, but the Muggle theory is that you can't exist twice in the same place. That if you were to touch your former self you could destroy yourselves. And quite possibly the whole universe." Emma failed to wipe the rather wet smile off her face before he saw it. "What?"

"You've been researching time travel?" She marvelled.

He shifted against the pillows. "Of course. It seemed sensible."

"Even though you didn't think you'd see me again?"

"I thought it might be a possibility. And I was right."

Finally controlling her features, she simply nodded. "The Muggle theory isn't completely correct, at least not for those who possess magic. No one knows what would happen to Muggles who managed to travel through time. It might not even be possible without magic." It was odd indeed, she mused, that she could be so sure of her answer even when she had no recollection of how she knew the answer. "Wizards who have confronted older versions of themselves usually do end up dying rather nastily. Mostly they kill their other self."

"How do you know that?" Of course, he would be wondering that, too. She had already commented on the quickness of his thoughts. She could only offer speculation in answer.

"I seem to have retained a lot of my magical knowledge. It's people and places that are foreign to me. Maybe it's all stored in a separate part of the brain. I didn't lose my ability to speak," she reasoned. "Maybe it's the same."

He considered her answer, before nodding brusquely and continuing their previous conversation. "Muggle books also mention causality. I suppose you know what that means too?"

She nodded. "Wizards don't tend to mention it, as Time-Turner travel is so limited. There is only so much you can change, after all. For Muggles it's entirely theoretical, so their questions are limitless. If I am from the future, there is a good chance I could have changed something irrevocably," she shrugged, hoping he hadn't noticed if her unsteady voice gave lie to her unworried attitude. "I've considered all of this to a degree. The grandfather paradox; I may have destroyed any chance of ever making my way back home the moment I spoke to you, or your mother, or Lily. But without knowing where I'm from, it seems a bit early to speculate."

Of course, that hadn't stopped her. Ever since the idea of her having come from a different time had been asked, it seemed her wretched inner monologue wouldn't shut up about all the various ways in which she might be shredding her own timeline, not to mention the harm she could have already caused Severus. She had stalwartly ignored the knowing voice, but these last few hours, falling randomly through time, had made the questions seem all the more pertinent. Severus was still watching her closely, and she was afraid his quick mind had come to the same conclusion.

When he spoke again, his words took her by surprise. "I may have something of yours."

Had it not been so welcome, the abrupt change in topic would doubtless have irritated her. Now she was happy to watch as he twisted to examine one of his bed posts, his wand moving deftly as he began to remove several layers of warding and some rather nasty looking hexes. She watched him curiously, wondering once more about the tearful state she had found him in. Her concern was distracted as he leaned to retrieve whatever it was he had uncovered, and she was amused to see what she had taken for a pyjama top did not seem to end at his waist.

"Severus, are you wearing a nightshirt?" she asked in disbelief.

"All the Slytherins do," he replied defensively, straightening and pulling the covers back up over his chest. "Pure-bloods don't believe in pyjamas," he added wryly.

That was interesting. "So this is the Slytherin dormitory is it?" Yet Severus had a Muggle father. There also the more immediate question: "Will having a girl in your bed not have set off any alarms?"

He looked suddenly anxious. "I don't know," he admitted.

"Well, I don't suppose it matters if it has. We agreed I needed to meet Dumbledore eventually, even if this wouldn't make quite the first impression I'd been hoping for." His smile vanished and his face darkened again. "What is it?"she pressed. He didn't reply, but his face had taken on that cold, stony expression again.

"Are you going to tell me what's wrong?" Emma asked softly.

"I can't," he shrugged. "I promised not to."

"If you can't talk to me is it something you can talk to a teacher about?"

He snorted, his face bitter. "Dumbledore's the one who made me promise."

Careful conversation suddenly didn't seem so important any more.

"Budge over," she ordered, scrambling up the bed until she was sat beside him propped up against the pillows. Without waiting for an invitation, she wriggled her toes underneath the blankets, elbowing him pointedly until he moved enough for her to burrow down beside him. The bed was narrow, but she managed to squeeze in beside him, lying on her side. She let her head rest on his shoulder and looped both her arms around his as it rested on the counterpane. He made no move to resist her.

He still smelt the same.

For the longest time he didn't speak. He stared ahead, his face carefully blank, his long fingers playing with the thing he had retrieved from behind the headboard. It looked to be a woman's evening bag. It didn't seem in the least bit familiar, and she wondered why he thought it might belong to her and where he had found it. She was tempted to ask, but she didn't really wish to interrupt whatever was going on in his head, knowing him well enough to understand that he would take the opportunity to distract her away from whatever it was that had upset him.

So she lay quietly, watching him as he fiddled with the fussy bead work, until eventually he spoke.

"It was full moon last night."

She frowned. Obviously, he was taking his promise not to tell very seriously, but he seemed desperately unhappy. As such she reconsidered his apparent non sequitur.

"You got caught dancing with a Mooncalf?" she hazarded. He snorted, but something about his guarded expression told her to continue. "Full moon," she mused, wracking her brain for any related topics. Any arcane rituals? Anything on the Hogwarts syllabus that might cause someone this much distress? Lunar phases were mainly dealt with by Astrology and Herbology, but she could think of nothing dangerous in either. "You planted acanthus?" In desperation she added, "You met a werewolf?"

His fingers froze their idle play, and she felt the blood drain from her face.

"You saw a werewolf? In Hogwarts?" His eyes flicked briefly towards her in subtle confirmation. "But how?" He flinched then, and she understood he thought it was him she was questioning. "I mean, I know they're supposed to live in the Forbidden Forest, but there are enchantments keeping them away from the school grounds."

He looked at her directly and slowly raised one eyebrow. She wondered briefly if you had to be a Slytherin to understand this strange form of silent conversation, before examining his meaning. The werewolf hadn't broken through the enchantments. Therefore the werewolf must have come from inside the castle grounds...

"Was it a teacher?" she asked quietly.

"What?" He sounded genuinely shocked by the question, and Emma suddenly realised it had been a strange thing to ask. "No, no it wasn't a teacher." Something about the emphasis he used answered the question.

"A student? Oh God, they let a werewolf into the school?" She was frankly astounded, before the more liberal part of her kicked in. "Well I suppose they have as much right to an education as anyone else. But to let one near other students at full moon?"

"I shouldn't have been anywhere near him. Someone tricked me, told me how to reach him." He still wasn't looking at her and his voice had become coldly distant. "I was curious. I should have known it would be a trap." She wondered then how much of the hate and blame she saw in his face was directed at himself.

"How could you possibly have known that someone was sending you to meet a werewolf? What did the Aurors say?"

He snorted. "They weren't informed. No one is to be informed. There werewolf must be allowed to finished his education."

"But the person who told you how to find him—"

"Has been given detention."

Emma sat opened-mouthed, unable to process what she was being told. It wasn't that she didn't believe him; his fear and devastation were too palpable for his story to be anything but the truth – but for the incident to be just covered up like that? It was horrific. She could feel real anger beginning to bubble up inside her, flooding her stomach like acid.

"I actually saw the transformation.," Severus continued, his eyes fixed on some distant point. "He was shaking, shaking like he might fly apart. At first I thought something was wrong with him, and I called out to him." He swallowed. "He looked right at me then as his face began to change. . ."

His voice trailed off, but Emma was suddenly caught up on the imagery his voice had conveyed. A bright, moonlit night, under the canopy of a large, tangle-rooted tree. A figure growing taller and longer as it hunched forward, its unblinking eyes yellowing with hate and hunger, while its hands twisted into claws.

She shivered despite the warming charms when a new image struck her. The same moon, the same beastly transformation, but this time a dark figure separated her from the dripping jaws of the monstrous man-wolf, his outstretched arms shielding her from harm.

She swallowed.

"Severus," she whispered to the traumatised boy beside her. "I think I may have remembered something."

-x-

It was a confused memory, little more than a series of disjointed images but it was the first concrete memory she had. This was the only thing that belong to her. And it was horrific. That she had been so close to death.

Hearing her whispered story seemed to make it easier for him to speak. He described being pulled out of the way at the last second and of spending the night in the headmaster's office while the culprits lay in the infirmary.

"Was anyone bitten?" The question had apparently been a mistake. Severus froze beside her then began to extricate his arm from her grip. "What? You said they were in the infirmary?"

He relaxed, and she realised her error. He had believed she was scared he might have been infected. "Do you think it would change things if you were a werewolf?" she demanded softly. "You could be married to a house-elf and practising the Dark Arts on weekends and you'd still be my Severus." She tried to keep her tone brisk, but the tears she had been holding back finally began to run down her cheeks.

She wrapped her arms more tightly round him and buried her face against his arm. She heard him sniff, loudly and inelegantly.

"Look at the pair of us," she choked out a tiny unconvincing chuckle as she reached for the little bag he was still holding and unzipped it. Reaching in past her elbow, she rummaged through the oddments inside until she found the packet of paper tissues and offered one to her astounded companion.

"What?" she asked, before she blew her nose.