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Chapter Eighteen

Emma teetered for a moment, arms flailing hopelessly, before her momentum carried her forwards. She threw her hands out in an effort to save herself and hissed in pain when her palms and knees connected with the hard, cold ground. She didn't even need to glance upwards to know that the horrid sensation of falling had carried her down the stairs and back to the bleak, snowy emptiness of the odd and apparently eternal winter.

She blinked blearily at the dark bundle of cloth beside her, feeing a momentary stab of pride as she distantly noted the charm on her possessions had held, dragging them along with her through time and space to this chilly nowhere. She might have skinned her knees, but at least she had her shoes and her warm clothing with her. Pride receded slightly with the recollection that it had been that very binding spell that had caused her to stumble in the first place. Or had that been Severus, had he been the one to push her away?

She swallowed convulsively, trying to shake off the giddy nausea.

Severus.

She had left him behind, their sudden distance unresolved. She climbed shakily to her feet, brushing the snow from her clothes before reaching for her shoes. She needed to find a way to make things right.

-x-

Emma set off at a slight jog the moment the world had stopped spinning. Careful not to slip on the light covering of snow, she paused only to fasten the cloak more securely as she sped down the street.

This felt right.

For the first time since she had pulled the bed curtains aside in the Slytherin dormitory, she was finally taking things into her own hands. She had no idea who, or even what, was hidden behind that thick wall of hedge growth on the playing field, but if there was even the slightest chance it would either take her to Severus – hopefully a Severus who had forgiven her – or end her journeys to this nightmare world of continual snow and half-light, she would grasp it with both hands.

It felt like she had finally solved the puzzle. It was like being caught in a strategy game where each level had to be solved before she could move on to the next. Once she had found out how to escape this northern Narnia, she would hopefully find her way back to Severus and be allowed to stay with him until she had solved that particular riddle as well: not just how to have him forgive her, but how to make him happy again. Hopefully for a long time.

He just had aged so quickly. Not physically, though there was no denying he had grown into a captivating adult, but he seemed to have aged inside, as if his youth had been stripped away by whatever had befallen him in the few years they had been parted. He had the look of someone who had seen and felt too much, his eyes haunted.

It made his reaction to her all the more puzzling. His kisses had been unexpected, certainly, but she would have been lying to herself to suggest that they had been unwelcome, even though she had known it would be foolish to encourage him. But how they had gone from such a heated embrace to him almost running from her was beyond her. Once again, she had the feeling that far more had transpired between them than she had been aware of. She wanted to be angry with him. Hell, she was angry with him, but it did nothing to ease the feeling that she needed to be by his side.

-x-

She was out of breath by the time she reached the Social Club, the cold air burning in her lungs. She paused at the edge of the Rec to get her breath back, her fingers pressing into the stitch that had started to needle fiercely at her side. Glancing up, she froze.

There was someone ahead of her, away across the field towards the hedge – figure in a dark green cloak. She watched in silent fascination as the figure edged towards the sprawling laurel and hawthorns. Emma knew she should hide, but the fascination of seeing her past self made it impossible for her to think straight. Seeing herself as others must see her.

Other-Emma had taken her hood down, and Emma watched as the wind tumbled her hair around in a riotous display of curls. Honestly, did her hair really look like that from the back? As she watched the wind carried a voice to her.

"Hello?"

It was her own cry from earlier, uttered moments before the spell had carried her away. Feeling spellbound herself, she watched as the cloaked figure flickered and disappeared.

Her heart was thudding in her chest. Terrible things had happened to witches or wizards who had encountered themselves from different times. Although she had spoken to Severus of the perils of time travel, she hadn't truly comprehended how much danger she must have been in. How many times had she trodden this snowy path on this one day? How many times had she just missed herself in the Hogwarts dormitory? To have been caught up in time loops like this and having never once come face to face with one of her other selves was nothing short of miraculous.

It had to be the spell. Whatever magic she was caught in, this must have been one of the properties, that she could travel through time without fear of herself. When Severus had suggested that he had called her to him, she had dismissed the idea, but now she wasn't so sure. What if he had learnt of another aspect of the spell? What if he had worked out what it was, had been about to tell her until, well, until they got distracted. Until she had hurt him.

A sudden childlike wail snapped her attention back to the moment, and she started across the field towards the hedgerow. The wind dropped long enough for her to clearly hear sniffling sobs. She moved to the nearest gap and attempted to peer through the thick tangle of foliage. The branches in front of her moved suddenly, writhing and lengthening in a way that had nothing to do with the buffeting wind, and she stepped back in alarm. As she watched, they twisted and grew, closing the narrow gap.

Magic.

She was momentarily nonplussed. She was certain Severus had told her that other than himself, his mother and Lily Evans, there were no other witches or wizards for miles around. The chance of her stumbling over an unknown magical child in the middle of a snowstorm seemed unlikely, even given her recent experiences with time magic. But who, then, could this be?

She slipped her wand out of her pocket and briefly wished she could use a swift Diffindo on the tangled hedge, but a cutting curse could well harm the child behind the leaves if she should misjudge the strength needed.

"Hello?" she called instead. "Can you hear me?"

There was no reply, but the tangled branches abruptly ceased their strange movement before beginning again in a frenzy of leaves and thorns. It had to be magic; there was no other explanation for it. A child's uncontrolled magic. But Severus had told her that—

Dear God, it couldn't be.

Could it?

"Severus?" she called again, feeling utterly foolish. "Severus, is that you?"

There was a long silence during which even the wind seemed to die away. Eventually a small voice answered her, "I'm stuck." The child's voice was at once tremulous and defiant. It was him. Emma stared blankly at the twisting branches, completely at a loss. How could that possibly be him? She had never travelled backwards in time before, leastways not that she could remember, yet here she was, at least ten years before their original encounter.

Feeling slightly surreal, she raised her voice above the wind once more. "My name's Emma, Severus. I've come to help you. Can you see a way out?"

"The leaves won't let me through," he explained. Emma could imagine the look of contempt on his face at having to clarify such an obvious fact. Perhaps it had been a silly question.

"It's magic, Severus," she called. "You somehow made the leaves move, so theoretically, you should be able to make them stop."

There was a long silence as the branches continued to twist. One snaked uncomfortably close to her face, forcing her to step backwards, and Emma conceded that, once again, she had probably said something slightly inane.

She carefully poked her wand through the leaves, turning her face to angle it away from the whipping leaves. "Can you see the stick, Severus?" She took the answering sniff to be a confirmation. "It's a magical wand. I want you to touch it with your fingertips and imagine the hedge stopping moving. I want you to tell it firmly in your head to let you free, can you do that?"

She felt her wand twitch as fingers grabbed the other end. There was a good chance the Trace would kick in, but hopefully her presence would hide any infantile magic from the Ministry. "Very good," she praised the dense foliage, feeling terribly patronising. She really doubted she had any experience with young children or that she was making a particularly sterling effort. Honestly, meeting a baby Severus was going to make what had just occurred in his bed a hundred times more complicated.

"Now, I want you to keep that picture in your mind and say 'Finite Incantatem' as clearly as you can. I'll say it with you. Are you ready?"

They spoke the words together, and Emma felt her magic rise up to join that of the child beyond her reach. The branches stopped their awful scrabbling, content now to simply twist about in the dictates of the wind. A small figure freed itself from the branches by her feet, its face both tearful and speculative.

He was three, maybe four – old enough to be walking and talking, but not old enough to be in school. Certainly not old enough to be on his own so far from home, Emma judged. He was small and skinny with unkempt hair and clothes even shabbier than the ones he had owned as a teenager. His eyes were the same though, deep and black and filled with that awful combination of hope and mistrust all at once. Oh, Severus.

She searched in her bag and handed him a handkerchief. He took it solemnly and held it tightly until she took it back off him and wiped at his face. He really was rather snotty. She held the tissue to his nose and told him to blow. The result was rather impressive, especially considering his nose had yet to lose it childish roundness. She left him keep the tissue.

"Where are your mummy and daddy?" When that didn't yield a response, she tried again. "What were you doing in the bushes?"

"I wanted to play hide-and-seek, but it was time to go home. I hid, but he found me, and I wanted to stay. The hedge pushed him away. It was funny. . ."

"But then it got scary?" She concluded.

He nodded. He hadn't been a very attractive child, she noted, but he really had the most beautiful eyes. They almost seemed to fill his face. She pulled herself from her musings when she realised that he was shivering. He wasn't even in a proper coat.

She pulled the cloak from around her shoulders and wrapped it round him adding several more layers of Warming Charms. He watched her carefully.

"Are you a witch?"

"Yes I am," she answered truthfully.

"Are you going to eat me?" he pressed. To his credit, he looked more interested than frightened. Apparently he had gotten over his shock with the hedge.

Emma contemplated an impromptu lecture on the benefits of magic and Severus' own status as a wizard but reasoned that it really wasn't her place. "I'm going to take you home to your parents." There the lecture might come in handy.

She held out her hand, and he took it casually enough. His fingers were icy cold, and Emma wondered just how long he had been left outside in the snow. From what she had gathered, he had either frightened or angered his father with a childish display of magic and been left behind. She had to shorten her steps for him to keep up, and he kept treading on the trailing hem of the cloak. They were less than half way across the field when he started to flag.

She lifted him easily, grateful when he automatically wrapped his small form around hers. He had the sweet, sour smell of neglect and she whispered several Cleansing Charms over him as well as a slight Lightening Spell. How hard could it be to keep a child clean? He clung to her, his ratty hair blowing against her face as they moved slowly forwards across the uneven ground towards the towpath. The edges of the canal had iced over, and the ducks were nowhere to be seen as Emma cautiously crept along, the boy in her arms apparently asleep.

She focussed all of her efforts on simply moving safely along the frosty towpath, conscious of the freezing body of water running at her side. It wouldn't do to dwell on the strange situation she had found herself in, moving to confront the parents of a boy she wasn't supposed to have met yet – parents that might well remember her in the future. She might be about to change her own timeline, but she could hardly make the exhausted child walk home on his own. Besides, she admitted, there was a good chance that she might burst with indignation if she didn't get to tell someone off for the state the poor boy was in.

Eventually she turned off the path and headed up the back alley towards the Snape house, hoping that the high yard walls would keep away most of the wind. She was rosy cheeked and breathing heavily from having carried Severus all the way home, despite the Featherlight Charm, but her hands were swiftly becoming icy in the sharp wind.

". . .unnatural. I couldn't stand to be near him."

They had just ducked down the side alley to reach the main street when the raised voices reached them. Emma froze, glancing at the still sleeping child in her arms. He stirred slightly, his sleeping face puckering into a frown.

"You knew this could happen," came the shrill retort.

"But he was meant to be my boy." The man's voice was thick with anger and sadness. "Now he's going to be a freak for the rest of his life!"

Severus began to cry fitfully as the voices crescendoed. Emma rocked him gently as a door slammed and the shouting ended. "Hush, darling," she soothed. "We're almost there." He began to struggle in her grasp, but she held him firmly, peering round the corner at the street at Mr Snape's receding figure, glad that he hadn't ducked down the side alley and found them there. Once he had turned towards the canal, she hurried to the front door and balanced the child on her hip to allow her to knock.

The door opened with alarming speed and Severus was pulled from her arms before she had time to explain herself. He began to cry properly then and Mrs Snape began to unclasp the cloak and chafe his hands, alternating between attempting to sooth him and scolding his for the fright he had given his parents.

"He has magic," Emma imparted, nearly flinching as Mrs Snape's eyes finally flew to her face. "He needs to know his heritage."

"He never showed any signs before now," the older woman informed her sadly, shaking out the old cloak. "Here," she made to pass it back. "I'm very grateful to you for bringing my son back but I can't invite you in. This is a Muggle neighbourhood."

Emma stood back, shocked. "Keep it," she waved the cloak away. "It was only borrowed. Tell Severus—" but the door was already closing, leaving Emma stood in angry confusion on the street.

She wandered back down the street in the vague direction of the canal, hoping for one last glance of the dirty water before she left. How very odd her life had become. She had always moved forward through time until this point. Skipping so far back into Severus' past effectively destroyed all of the patterns she had been following in her head. The only constant seemed to be Severus' distress, but even that didn't hold quite true. The first time they had met he had simply been bored at home during the holidays, hadn't he? And last time he had been recently bereaved, but didn't seem to be suffering hugely because of it.

Remembering that Mrs Snape had died a very sad, lonely sort of death made Emma instantly contrite about her less than charitable thoughts towards the woman. She had only had the briefest glimpses into her world, after all; it wasn't really for her to judge her actions, even if they seemed bizarre, or even, when it came to Severus, slightly callous.

She reached the tow path and was surprised to find a coal barge making its way under the bridge. She'd never seen any traffic on the canal before, unless one counted the ducks, and she watched with interest as it cleared the low bridge. When was it that Britain's waterways had stopped being used regularly for heavy freight? It was connected to the growth of motorways and the decline of the rail industry, but she was a little hazy on the details. Which, though frustrating, didn't surprise her much. Had she forgotten, or was it something she had never known?

She ducked under the bridge to escape the ever present wind, her hands firmly tucked inside her pockets. There was a disgruntled quack, and she realised she hadn't been the only one seeking to escape the cold: a number of the straggly ducks had chosen to bed down under the arch. One had untucked its head from under its wing and was giving her an appraising look, as if wondering whether she were enough of a threat to warrant moving. After a moment, it tucked itself away again, and Emma felt as if she had been dismissed.

As if on cue, the darkness began to rise up around her, and she pulled her hands free to steady herself. The sensation was as dizzying and unpleasant as ever, but this time Emma welcomed it.

"Yes," she whispered into the darkness. "Take me to him."