Chapter Twenty
Later, lying in a tangle of sheets and limbs, Emma knew what it was to be entirely content.
There was a warm sort of tiredness creeping along her limbs and all her muscles seemed to ache gently, in the sweetest way. It appeared that nothing could puncture this perfect moment of stillness that seemed to exist for just the two of them. Neither of them spoke, but the silence itself was part of the magic, wrapping itself around them like a blanket, cocooning them away from the rest of the world.
It was easy for Emma to suppress the questions that kept bubbling to the surface of her mind; unwilling to do or say anything that could fracture the delicate bubble that held them. She could ignore the strange, disturbing tattoo on his forearm and simply chose to forget Severus' belief that the spell soon would end. Nothing mattered save that the two of them were finally together.
Severus was likewise silent and seemed either unwilling or unable to stop touching her; the fingers of one hand toying with the tangle of her curls, the other drawing mindless patterns across the skin of her stomach, leaving tingles where they passed. His skin on hers, there was no chance of the spell stealing her away. Which was just as well, Emma mused; there was no where in the world where she would rather be.
She had no idea how long she lay there, drifting serenely in and out of sleep, moving only to stroke or kiss the body pressed warm against hers. As such it came as something of a shock when she woke to find him sitting fully dressed on the edge of the bed.
Searching his face she realised some of the tightness had returned to his eyes.
"You should get dressed," he informed her gently.
She scrabbled upright. "What? What's wrong?"
He placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. "Nothing's wrong, Emma," he reassured her. "I'm about to be called away and I don't know how long I'll be gone," he explained. "You might be gone by the time I get back."
She lay back against the pillow, suddenly forlorn. "Can I come with you?"
"You know you can't," he whispered. "The spell; it wouldn't be safe."
"The spell," she echoed, sadly. The one thing that threatened every moment she spent with Severus, yet the same thing that carried her to him time and again. The spell that, she admitted to herself, she was still desperate to understand. "I'll stay," she conceded unhappily. "Can I use the shower?"
"You can use whatever you want as long as you don't go beyond the sitting room door," he offered. "But are you sure you want to risk it?"
"It wouldn't be a risk if you stayed with me," she muttered resentfully. Realising what she had just said she glanced up to find that his eyes had become almost liquid in their intensity.
"Do you really mean that?" he wondered softly.
She ducked her head, suddenly shy. "That depends," she sat back up, carefully arranging the sheet as she moved. "Would it be enough to make you stay?"
His long fingers caught her chin, gently lifting until her eyes met his once more. Leaning in he captured her lips in the lightest of kisses. Emma let go of the sheet to wrap her arms around him and pull him close.
Nothing mattered but thi-
There was a thunderous volley of knocks at a door on the floor below and he pulled away from her with a groan. "I believe that's my queue," he muttered, his face becoming serious once more. "Emma, if I don't - that is, if you go, I just wanted to - I need to-"
"Just go," she told him, smiling. "I'll be here when you get back."
And somehow she knew she would.
-x-
Emma took her time in the shower. She could still feel the ghost of his touch upon her skin and as such felt no fear that the darkness would whisk her away.
She had emptied her meagre toiletries from out of the pink bag and was delighting in grooming herself properly, not just making do with cleansing spells and borrowed shampoo. Uncapping her own shampoo for the first time she took a deep sniff of the expensive looking product.
The sudden wave of nostalgia was so strong that it felt like a physical blow. She sniffed again, tears of homesickness and longing filling her eyes. The bottle smelt like home. Not some idealistic, far off place but an every day ordinary sort of homeliness built of routine and familiarity. She took another sniff but already the impact had lessened, the scent memory beginning to fade. One final sniff and the shampoo simply smelt like shampoo, like citrus and elderflower.
Cautiously she began to lather her hair. No further memories assaulted her but the bubble that had held her for the last few hours had popped. Her real life was out there somewhere. Somewhere there was a girl who looked like her and smelled like her shampoo and messed around with dangerous spells. That girl probably had parents who loved her, friends who missed her and an entire life, not just a bizarre spiralling existence focussed on one man.
She rinsed her hair and reached for the conditioner, working it into the very tips of her hair. Did she have a duty to return to her old life? At first it had been all she had wanted; to escape this place of shifting time and incomplete memories and to return to the place she belonged. Yet at some point that place had come to mean Severus. And hadn't she chosen to be with Severus in the first place? Wasn't that what this spell was about?
Emma gave her hair a final rinse before stepping from the shower and drying herself with her wand. After a moments deliberation she picked up her discarded clothes from the floor and hit them with several cleansing and freshening charms; until she was more certain in her own mind then she found herself oddly reluctant to wear anything that the other her had packed inside the odd pink bag. She unceremoniously stuffed her cosmetics back inside, noting as she did the envelope bearing the irritatingly vague direction "Prof S" on the front. That was another riddle that needed solving.
Returning to the bedroom she flushed to notice that the bed had been remade while she'd been dressing. Hogwarts; a History had made no mention of House Elves but she could recognise their handiwork in the unobtrusively tidied room. She sat back against the pillows of the neatly made bed, the wonderful sensation of being clean and safe mingling with the growing doubts that gnawed at her insides.
There was nothing else for it; she needed to talk to Severus.
-x-
She must have dozed off because the click of a door suddenly roused her and there he was, pulling her close. "You're still here," he marvelled, reaching down to press a soft kiss to her lips.
She returned his kiss with enthusiasm, reaching up to pull him further down. He laughed softly at her eagerness and she felt her heart lift. She wasn't sure she had ever heard him laugh quite like that before; softly and free from bitterness or irony. He submitted briefly to her, letting himself be pulled more deeply into her embrace before extracting himself from her grasp. "Emma."
"I'm still here," she murmured, keeping her fingers locked with his. "And I don't ever have to leave. Just don't let go of me."
And that was the problem; now he was back beside her there was no way that she could choose to leave. Whatever it was that was waiting for her outside of the spell could continue to wait a little longer.
-x-
It was Severus that finally broke the kiss, sighing sadly as he pulled away.
"You know you won't be caught in this spell forever, don't you?" he murmured. "That eventually you'll escape it?"
"Yes," she whispered, saddened that once more reality had intruded, bringing doubt and uncertainty with it. Saddened, and slightly hurt that he had been the one to remind her.
"You'll be your own person again," he pressed. "You won't be reliant on anyone anymore. You'll be free." His voice held such strange longing that she looked up sharply, propping herself up onto her elbows to better see his face. What she saw there finally convinced her to learn the truth.
"Tell me about the spell," she demanded, aware that she might be risking this new and wonderful understanding between them but unable to carry on in ignorance any longer, not when comprehension seemed so close. "Severus, tell me what you know."
He held her gaze for the longest moment, his face impassive. Something seemed to suddenly give way inside him and he rose from the bed in a swift, graceful movement and turned to sit across the room from her in one of the graceful oak-backed chairs. Emma wondered if perhaps she should move towards him but, as if sensing her confusion, he held up a hand to still her.
"You are right," he mused, each word slow and deliberate. "The time has come."
Emma sat up against the pillows and waited for him to continue. He seemed to be weighing his words carefully.
"I figured out long again that you came when I needed you," he began. "Not when I wanted to see you, you understand, though you were never unwelcome. I could long for you for years and you wouldn't appear. But then, when I least expected any comfort from any side, suddenly there you were.
"I didn't know who you were or why you were caught in such a spell. You just arrived when I needed to see you and left before anyone else arrived who might question your presence. My parents didn't count; they just wanted to be rid of you. James Potter was too embarrassed to speak of you again and I think the same was true for Lily."
"And Ollivander, what of him?" she interrupted, earning herself an irritated glance. She pressed on undeterred. "He saw my wand! He knew I wasn't from this time."
"He functions so far outside the realm of normal magic that I think that somehow he doesn't quite count either. I don't imagine he's told anybody. Actually," he admitted, "I asked him to inform me the moment your wand was purchased and he refused on the spot. Apparently wands are meant for those they choose, not those that take an interest."
Emma found it easy to imagine the odd, paled eyed wizard proclaiming something of that nature. "Maybe I should speak to him again, ask him if he's sold my wand yet. Surely he wouldn't turn me down?"
"You wouldn't find him. He's retired from wand making for the foreseeable future."
"So there's nothing you can tell me?" she sighed.
"There is something," he admitted. "I don't know if it's pertinent or not but there's been a lot of fuss in the press recently about a rather archaic piece of magic; a spell that in theory allows the caster to travel back to one moment in another's life without upsetting the surrounding timelines. To make the tiniest change for an individual that doesn't affect history as a whole."
"That doesn't really sound like what's happening to me, does it? I keep skittering all over the place."
"Well, the spell was abandoned hundreds of years ago because it was so difficult to get right. Most of those who attempted it had no results at all." Something in his voice told her she didn't want to ask what had happened to the few that had achieved results.
She turned the idea over in her mind. It was possible, she supposed, that her other self had learnt of the spell in the same way. Maybe other-Emma was out there at this moment, fascinated with something she had read as she ate her breakfast, already plotting away. Possibly deadly archaic spells and croissants. "Why is it being discussed now?"
Severus paused. "Due to the current political situation there are those that would like to amend the recent past."
"I wonder if anyone's succeeded." Something flickered in the edge of her vision, she looked up sharply, fearing the return of the shadows but nothing was there. Turning back to Snape she realised she had missed his answer.
"..wouldn't be here if they had." He wasn't looking at her anymore, his attention focussed on the end of the bed. "The most vocal in their attempts have disappeared. I do not believe they were successful."
"Do you really think it could have anything to do with me? That I've somehow managed to cast an impossible spell and gotten myself lost in the process?" Was that something that she would do? It sounded extraordinarily risky, especially as she still had no idea why she would have why she would have attempted such a thing in the first place, even if she were capable of it. "Why would it take away my memories?"
"That I don't know."
She stared at him glumly. None of it was very helpful and none of it had sparked the slightest flicker of recognition inside her. Sighing, she reached for the beaded bag and worked the zip loose. Perhaps he could be more helpful regarding the odd potions list. "What's this forgotten spell called then?"
Another odd flicker caught her attention and Emma felt suddenly cold. The darkness was close by; close enough for her to sense it. Frantically she turned to Severus to ask him not to tell her anything else; to beg him to return to her side and hold her tightly until the darkness passed, but she was too late. His rich, careful tones carried clearly across the room towards her.
"It's called Iustitiae Momento; a moment of justice."
And there it was. There was the flash of insight and the sense of dread, bringing with it the swiftly rising spell.
Its dark tendrils began to coil around her as she threw herself across the bed in an attempt to reach Severus in time; her arms outstretched, the silly pink bag still in her grasp. Severus, the one thing that could keep her from being swept away, sat still and calm in his chair, the same sad smile that she had seen all morning twisting the corners of his mouth. He made no move towards her and she understood what all his warnings had been about. He had expected this moment. No - he had been waiting for this moment.
He wasn't going to stop her from leaving.
Faced by such a sudden and unexpected betrayal Emma stopped struggling against the spell, falling back instead into that awful, swirling dark. It gripped her tightly and she could feel herself being dragged away, twisting her this way and that. Her eyesight dimmed and the strange roaring, white noise of passing time filled her ears.
This time it was different. This time, in that split second before she lost her self, she thought she had heard a voice. She thought she heard someone calling out a goodbye.
-x-
Goodbye.
-x-
As the darkness whirled her round and around she could feel the wonderful peace that had filled the last few hours being shaken free, and with it the precious stillness that had held her close. In their place came darker thoughts, memories of everything she had ignored in order to preserve the fragile perfection of her time with Severus.
"You know you won't be caught in this spell forever, don't you?...I want you to know that I have treasured our somewhat unconventional friendship over the years... I just wanted to let you know that before you go... I - I'll be forever grateful that I had this chance to tell you...Emma, if I don't - that is, if you go, I just wanted to - I need to-"
That sad smile; the look of resignation; the exhaustion of a man carrying a heavy burden.
He didn't expect her to come back.
-x-
She bit back a cry as her knees impacted with unforgiving tarmac, the momentum carrying her harshly to the floor. She brushed her sleeve against her face, dashing away the tears that had sprung unbidden to her eyes. He was gone. She wanted nothing more than to curl up where she had fallen and cry.
Yet again something terrible had happened, of that there could be no doubt. The Severus she knew could be sullen and caustic but he didn't give up. The man she had just left had seen the end was in sight for both of them, but what end?
Emma wiped her eyes again, harder this time, rubbing the fabric of her jacket against her face until it stung.
She scrambled to her feet and staggered to the pavement, common sense alone persuading her that she should at least get off the road. She looked around blearily and gave a little cry of triumph.
She was back at Spinners End!
She stumbled forward, heading towards the end of the dingy row, to the little house with the black door, her heart close to bursting with sudden, desperate hope. Surely this awful feeling of icy dread was nothing more than the spell at work? This was just another snowy day or another dark dormitory. No matter how awful it seemed now it would take her back to him. It had to.
The street was very quiet, she realised. No cars were parked to the side and she was the only person on the pavement.
Must just be early, she decided, ignoring the faint voice in her head that whispered again and again that something was wrong. She pushed her doubts aside and jogged the final few feet, desperate to find Severus.
Suddenly, she was stood in front of the house. She stood still, holding her side as she caught her breath. It looked tired and neglected; she wondered if it had always been so shabby looking. She raised her hand to knock, noticing the small white posted pasted to the door.
Odd, this wasn't the sort of place that would attract fly posting, she thought. It was too far from the town centre for a start and obviously didn't have much passing trade. Why, half the houses on the street had boarded up windows. . .
"Please, no," she whispered as she stepped closer to read the rain faded paper, the awful fear in her gut spilling over, making her feel heavy limed with nameless dread. "Please, please, please."
Condemned Building. Unsafe Property. Do Not Enter.
Glancing at the house next door she realised it bore the same placard. The entire row had been condemned as unsafe. Scheduled for demolition.
He wasn't there.
"Alohamora!" She had pulled her wand from her jacket without thinking. What did it matter if a Muggle saw her now? Azkaban was pretty much the only thing that would keep her from finding Severus. She determinedly ignored the little voice that amended that thought to "if he's still here to find."
To her dismay the door swung inwards on its stiff hinges - where were the wards? She entered the little sitting room, allowing the door to swing shut behind her. It had changed greatly since Emma had last there. The walls were now completely lined with shelves, all sagging with the weight of books, and the brown sofa had half collapsed. What struck her most though were the heavy layer of dust that covered every surface and the pervading, musty smell of neglect.
No.
She pulled open the little door to the kitchen, desperate for some sign of habitation. The dust was as thick in here and half the doors were missing from the units. The little oven had been pulled away from the wall and the gas apparently disconnected. She shuddered.
Making her way back to the front room she searched for the little staircase that would lead upstairs, frantically pulling books from the shelves until she uncovered the catch for the door hidden behind some shallow shelves.
She checked his parents' room first, then the bathroom, her eyes so filled with tears it was almost impossible to see, her throat starting to ache as she fought the spiralling panic. Everything was in tired disarray and looked as though it had not been touched in months, maybe years. It took every last ounce of courage she had left to open the door to his little bedroom.
The magically widened bed they had shared had gone, replaced by a battered camp bed and tattered blankets. The desk was missing and - somehow this was worst of all - the little bookcase stood empty against the far wall, its sagging shelves housing only dust and cobwebs.
Unable to check the tears any longer she began to sob, her shoulders heaving as she wept, gulping at the air.
This wasn't supposed to happen. The spell was supposed to take her to him. To be there when he needed her. Whatever time it was that she had been dragged too it would seem as if she'd arrived far, far too late.
She had to escape from this spell.