The children had been asleep for hours. Early, they'd driven out to Yabba Creek and spent the day swimming and playing. Sebastian had found the biggest spider in the universe and chased the twins around with it. Hermione had finished a novel.
Severus looked up; Hermione was across the table from him. There were papers spread out on the table between them, mostly covered in her arithmancy.
She'd lost weight, he realized with a frown. After the twins had been born, she'd been rounded and healthy; the stress of dread had worn all that away. (He'd gone through the same thing, he knew; he'd filled out when Bast was born and slowly lost it just as she had.) She was brown as a nut from all the time in the garden, and rosy with health. At least that hadn't faded. She did look tired, though.
"What do you think?" she asked, handing him the page she'd been working on and biting the cap of her pen.
"I think the trick will be finding something that can't be used against us if somebody else tries to use it."
"I had a thought about that…"
"But?"
"But you're not going to like it."
Severus sighed and set the paper aside, waiting for her idea. She shuffled her papers a bit, and then handed him another. It looked like a variation on a Protean Charm.
"You must be joking."
"I was thinking of the galleons we used for the DA."
"And the Dark Mark?"
"A little bit." He raised an eyebrow, but she ignored the implied not-quite-question and carried on. "Only in that it's on a body part, though. There isn't any further connection than that."
"You've tested it?"
"Only the theory."
"It looks solid to me."
"It should be."
"Our palms."
"Easy to look at without giving anything away. And the specificity you designed for that fog fits in to make it private."
"When did you want to do it?"
"You don't want a test run first?"
"It's not something that lends itself to testing."
"Right."
They stood and held up their hands, left palms up. He touched the tip of his wand to the center of her palm, the spot he liked to kiss. She did the same to hm. The incantation was simple but long, adding the specifics and restraints. Her magic tingled across his palm, and he could feel his skin prickle as the spell settled into place.
"Well then," she said when they finished, flexing her hand.
Severus Summoned one of the felt tip pens she had everywhere and tipped his hand away from her. He wrote the word "blueberries," and it faded from the black of the ink to a solid gray. He looked up in time to see her roll her eyes and grin. "Are hell to clean out of the carpets," she wrote back, the navy of her pen coming across closer to royal blue on his palm.
"Seems to work," he said, showing her his hand.
"Excellent." She showed him her hand, which appeared blank, as his must to her. "And now, terminus."
She looked at her palm and nodded, and he repeated the finishing on his palm. It went blank, as it was supposed to.
"Did it stick?" he asked, bringing pen to palm again. He wrote "Tomorrow is Friday."
"It tingles," she said, smirking and looking down at her hand. "Yes it is," she said.
They tried several variations of beginning and ending messages to be sure the spell had "stuck" properly. (It had.) The spell allowed for message and response; they'd be able to pass information back and forth. And the best part was that they were the only ones who could read their hands, so even if a message came through in the middle of dinner he wouldn't have to worry about Minerva catching sight of it.
It was an exciting spell from a theoretical perspective. It might even be possible that they could embed it into cards or something and sell them. They just had to survive the war first.
They returned to the table, flipping through papers, trying to decide where to focus next. Then the wards went off. They'd never actually done that before. They'd had plenty of alerts from the wards—Muggles redirected, the familiar ping when the Atkinses arrived for a visit—but never an actual alarm. It was like a claxon clanging at the back of his head, not painful but absolutely impossible to ignore.
"The Ministry?" Hermione asked, conjuring a hair elastic and pulling her hair back out of her way.
"You'd think they'd send more than one person, though."
"Maybe they only caught wind of the kids. Maybe they think they have an especially uppity Muggle-born."
"With wards?"
"They wouldn't have known about that before they sent just the one."
"Let's go."
They Disillusioned themselves and he rose into the sky once they cleared the doorway. Flight was usually exhilarating, but this time all he could feel was the rage. Someone had crossed the wards using secrecy charms, trying not to be noticed, likely intending harm. His children were inside the wards.
Hominum revelio.
One light moving swiftly down the driveway; that would be Hermione. The other was farther off, creeping its way along the edge of the driveway. Hermione was headed straight for it.
He flew over silently, looking for a clue, but whoever it was had Disillusioned themselves, too. He hovered, waiting.
"Finite," Hermione said crisply. In a blink, Jane Atkins stood on the edge of the driveway. She wore her usual jeans and tank top, but she had her wand in one hand and a rolled up newspaper in the other. Hermione kept her wand trained on their friend, flicking, casting detection spells.
"Cora."
"What are you doing trying to sneak up on the house?" Hermione asked. She was doing a much better job of sounding neutral that he would've if he'd been the one talking. He hovered just behind Jane, wand clenched in his hand.
"I didn't want your husband to catch me."
"Simon?"
"I don't think that's who he really is," she said, her voice now a whisper. She drew closer to Hermione, seemingly oblivious to the wand still pointed unerringly at her heart. "Have you seen the paper?"
"No."
They didn't get the paper.
"Look. Here." Jane stuck her wand in her back pocket and unfolded the paper. Severus easily slipped the wand away and up his sleeve while she was orienting the front page for Hermione's perusal. "Cora, I don't think Simon is who he says he is."
"So he looks vaguely like some bloke from back home. Why are you so worked up?"
"This isn't some bloke!" Jane said, forgetting herself and almost shouting. She looked around like he might pop out of the underbrush, and returned to whispering. "This is Severus Snape. And Simon looks exactly like him. You'd be able to tell in better light."
Severus had completely lost track of the date. It was strange, since they'd been counting down to these events for so long. The other, younger version of himself had killed Dumbledore only a few days ago. It shouldn't have come as a surprise that the act had made international news—Albus Dumbledore stood out around the world, either for defeating Grindelwald or for his academic successes or for being the Headmaster of Hogwarts.
"So what?" Hermione asked.
"Cora…"
"You think Simon is really Severus Snape somehow, what, hiding out as my husband? The father of my children?" She was a very good liar. He'd almost forgotten. "Jane. We've lived here for almost seven years. How could he manage to have that sort of double-life? Be in two places at once?"
"Maybe he has a Time Turner." Jane sounded almost petulant, like she was defending her knee-jerk reaction even though she recognized that it was a bit ridiculous.
Hermione sighed, putting her wand away and rubbing her forehead. "Do you want to come in?"
"Is he in there?"
"Of course he's in there." Hermione put her fists on her hips. "The wards went off. He's with the children."
"I didn't wake them, did I?"
"No."
"He just sent you out here all by yourself?" There was suspicioun creeping back into her voice. Hermione huffed in annoyance.
"And I'm doing okay, aren't I?" she asked. Severus could see that she had an eyebrow raised, but he doubted Jane would know it. He had exceptionally good night vision, and he could practically hear her expressions in her tone of voice most of the time.
"I'm not actually an intruder."
"Jane," Hermione sighed.
Still not the war, he heard her think. Relax.
"The resemblance is uncanny, I will give you that. Maybe they have a cousin in common or something. I'll ask him later. Right now, I'd like to go assure him that we're not being attacked and go to bed."
"Right," Jane said, hands fidgeting across her clothes nervously. "And I should get back before Ed gets nervous and calls the Aurors."
"Aurors?"
"If I didn't make it back in half an hour he was going to call the Aurors because Severus Snape was probably hiding out pretending to be our neighbor."
Hermione laughed, but it was a fake laugh. "That must have been some article."
"You should read it." Something in the way she said it made Severus think she hadn't entirely given up on the idea that he wasn't who he said he was. For a split second, he had half a mind to Obliviate her. But Ed knew about the article, too, and it would only make it more obvious that something wasn't right if she returned missing bits of time.
"Sure."
"Sorry, Cora. Really," Jane said. "We might've worked ourselves up about it, talking after dinner."
"Don't worry about it. I'm just glad it was you that set off the wards and not something dangerous."
Jane laughed, Hermione smiled, and Severus stuck Jane's wand back in her pocket. A few minutes later, Jane was gone and they were in the kitchen again.
"Do you think they called the Aurors?"
Even if the Aurors were called off at this point, they'd know something wasn't right. There were no witches or wizards—let alone a couple with three children—living in the area besides the Atkinses.
This was why we wanted to live in the middle-of-nowhere Australia.
"We'll have to wait and find out."
\\
They considered telling the Atkinses the truth for all of five minutes. The simple fact was that, if they told the Atkinses, they'd be involved. They'd probably want to help—they were nice like that. And if anything did go wrong with Australian authorities, they'd be implicated as well.
Therefore nobody mentioned the encounter on the driveway on Saturday when their families gathered for their usual dinner. Everybody sat and talked and ate and smiled, but there was that elephant in the room of what was not being said. Ursula, the Atkins' eldest, noticed it, but luckily she didn't say anything.
They were standing around in the kitchen, chatting and drinking coffee, the kids upstairs in the piano room by the sound of it, when the wards went off again. There was no sound for the Atkinses to hear, but they knew something had happened from the way he and Hermione both jerked.
"Did you tell the Aurors about your… suspicions?" Severus asked, setting aside his coffee and moving to the nearest window. There was just darkness outside, the light of the room reflected back at him. He flicked his wand, closing all the curtains in the house. Upstairs, one of the children yelped in surprise.
"What? No. Well, actually." Ed cleared his throat. Hermione set aside her coffee, too,and headed upstairs. "I mentioned the whole debacle to a friend at work. He doesn't live anywhere near here, though. What's wrong?"
"Five of them. Two on the driveway, three circling around," Hermione said. She'd pulled back her hair again, and her wand was in her fist.
"Don't tell me you really are Severus Snape!" Jane said. Her hands were trembling.
"I suggest you leave now, get the girls, go back home, stay out of it," Hermione said, putting herself between Severus and Jane. Ed had his head tipped to one side, considering something. Severus watched him. "If you're not here when they get here, you're not implicated in… whatever happens."
"We'll stay with the kids," Ed said before his wife could reply. Severus nodded.
"Alright."
"But—" Jane started, but Ed squeezed her arm and she stopped.
"Let's go."
Severus had worked out a number of useful spells over the years. Some of them were more practical than others. Some of them were more tinkering than useful.
Hermione went out the mudroom at the back of the house, Disillusioned herself, and activated the wards on the house itself. The wards shimmered vaguely, likely letting the Aurors know that they'd lost the element of surprise. That didn't matter so much.
Severus rose into the air, and Hermione swirled her wand, conjuring up his fog spell. It poured out of the tip of her wand, dense and boring enough until she added her bluebell flames from so long ago. The bluebell flames lit the fog blue-white, intense and flickering in patches and leaving curling swaths of gray-black shadows. The flames also generated electric sparks that would shock whoever she intended—anybody in the fog without a Dark Mark, for instance.
The nearest Auror, on the driveway in a thick bit of shadow, yelped when the bluebell lightning shocked him. There was a flash of spellfire—brilliant red glancing off white-violet. A flicker of orange sparks. A shout from the Auror. Then silence.
The fog curled further away from the house. When it hit the property line, the line of the wards, it began to curl up, spooling around backward like a wave when it encountered a barrier but in slow motion.
It was hard to keep track of the events in the fog. She couldn't see anything worth a damn. All she could do was listen, hearing a yelp from one direction when an Auror was shocked by the bluebell lightning, then a shout from another direction when Severus found one. Colored shadows refracted back to her through the fog.
And then, after a short eternity, Severus walked out of the fog. There were five Aurors floating after him, all unconscious.
Hermione flicked her wand, ending the spell. The little balls of bluebell flames disappeared, and the fog began to dissipate immediately.
Meanwhile, Severus arranged the Aurros along the front wall of the house. It was quick work with the two of them—Obliviate them, leave a false memory in place. The Aurors would remember the dark, splitting up once they reached the driveway, and approaching the house. They'd recall a boring encounter with a Muggle couple and their wizard son. Different thoughts were brought to the forefront to help gloss over the false memory—this one's preoccupation with an upcoming date, the other one's excitement for a vacation.
When they were finished, the Aurors left, walking down the driveway gazing into the middle distance as if they'd been Confunded.
"Alright?" she asked him when they'd felt the last of the Aurors cross the line of the wards.
"Fine. You?"
"Fine."
They went inside. It took half an hour to calm the kids down, not because they were scared but because the spellfire had looked like fireworks from their view of the windows and they wanted to stay up in case there were more. The Atkins girls realized something wasn't right, but luckily they kept quiet.
The children in bed, they all settled in for a nice, awkward silence around the breakfast nook. Hermione set out tea and everybody took their time assembling their drinks to they sat there and wondered where to start.
"I should be turning seventeen this September," Hermione finally said. The Atkinses exchanged looks. She wished they kept something stronger than the beer and wine they'd had with dinner in the house.
"What?"
"I had a Time Turner."
"That's absolutely ludicrous," Ed interrupted. Hermione just shrugged.
"So you're from the future?" Jane asked, skeptical.
"I suppose so, yes," Severus said.
"From this September," Hermione added.
"Why would you—" Ed began.
"You were about to have Bast," Jane said, cutting her husband off.
"Exactly," Hermione said. Those days seemed like a very long time ago, the utter panic flooding her system not quite able to overwhelm the happiness of the thought.
"How did you even manage it?" Jane asked. "That's not how Time Turners work… hours, not years."
"It was a prototype," Hermione said. "Dumbledore fiddled with it."
"You knew him?"
Hermione laughed (maybe a little bitterly). "Yes."
The silence was awkward.
"You really killed him?" Ed asked, looking at Severus.
"He asked me to."
"The papers didn't get the full story, as usual," Hermione said.
"You killed him?" Jane asked.
"It wasn't that difficult," Severus snapped. "He was already dying. His cursed hand was killing him even after she amputated it. And he'd just swallowed down a vat of damned poison…"
It was probably a good sign that he was bitter about it instead of sad or guilt-ridden, but…
"You amputated his cursed hand?" Ed asked, turning to her.
"Er, yes. I'm a Healer."
"But you couldn't find work as a Healer here because you were trying to go unnoticed," Jane said, nodding to herself.
"Right."
"That does explain you a bit," Jane said, looking at Severus. "Your brewing at least. I talked to some of the people who submitted potions to you. They were always surprised when they realized you weren't a Master."
"Magical credentials are hard to forge," Hermione said. "And nearly impossible to do it without being noticed. We needed to be hidden for years; we had to be careful."
\\
"What are you more scared about, Mummy—Daddy at the school by himself, or us with Granny and Granddad?"
Elaine asked the question, but the way all three of them went quiet was telling. Hermione raised an eyebrow at the little girl—how could she, they, already be four?—and tried to smile.
"I think you'll all be just fine. Your dad's pretty clever. And the three of you should be able to keep your grandparents in line."
Sofia giggled. Bast rolled his eyes. Ellie settled in closer to Hermione's hip, content to let the topic drop but not fooled for a minute.
"You don't need to worry, Darling," Hermione said softly, tucking Ellie's mad curls behind her ear. (Funny how tedious it was to deal with her own curls when it was so adorable on her children.) "We'll all be just fine."
"That's what Daddy said, too," Ellie said, plucking at a frayed thread on one of the pillows. "But he's quiet a lot at night now. And he looks at you funny sometimes."
"Funny?"
"Uh-huh."
And she was gone. Off to join her twin on the floor with a puzzle.
\\
Severus was trying out a beard. She didn't know why. He'd gone into town with Ed one afternoon, there had been some male bonding or something, and the next day he hadn't shaved.
It was sort of a goatee and mustache with scruff everywhere else. It softened the planes of his face, made him look younger. And it tickled when he kissed her. (That wasn't a bad thing.) He looked more the part of hip university professor than ever, with the beard and his hair always tied back the way it was.
He was tan, too. Despite the solid block of time in his lab every day, his pallor had given over a bit. He—and the children, since they took after him more than her—was prone to sunburn still, usually winding up with him nose tipped pink and a sun-flush to his cheeks and forehead.
"You're staring."
"Am not."
"You are."
"I'm observing, not staring."
He raised an eyebrow; she smirked.
"I like your tan lines."
"Shut up."
He lay down again, curling up a bit so that he could trace a finger up and down her back. The ridges of the scars there had softened and evened out a bit in the past few years, but it was still not a smooth thing. He seemed to like it anyway.
"I'm going to miss this," he said quietly, resting his cheek in the dip of her back. He was looking away down toward her legs, his fingers now trailing along the back of her thigh instead of up and down her spine.
She hummed, trying not to move, not to disturb the peace. And then Severus shifted and the mood shifted with him—he kissed the side of her hip, and his fingers shifted from the back of her thigh to the inside of her leg, light and gentle. She hummed again, shifted, spreading her knees, lifting her hips.
"You are the best husband in the world," she moaned, grinning down at him when he rolled her over and slid his finger inside at the same moment he pressed a gentle kiss to her clit. His beard was… stimulating.
\\
"This is the worst day possible for this," Hermione said, standing next to Severus outside his shed lab. The Atkinses had asked about it ages ago; neither of them had even thought about the date.
"It always is."
"You could go to Melbourne."
"Hell no. It's going to be awkward enough when they get here and we can distract them with the kids."
"It's not going to be awkward."
"I appreciate that you have to sit in the truck with them for several hours and you're putting a happy spin on it, but I know you remember sitting at the kitchen table with them in Edinburgh."
"Honestly, I'm hoping they're more concerned about the time travel than you and me."
"I'm fairly certain they're not going to be particularly thrilled with any part of the package."
"Pessimist."
"No: Realist."
She rolled her eyes and wrapped her arms around him, laying her head against his chest.
"I thought of something last night."
"I did, too."
It was the first night they would be apart since they'd arrived in Australia.
\\
The drive was interminable. And then she sat in the airport for an extra hour because the flight had been delayed.
At last, her parents made it out of baggage claim. They dawdled in the gift shop, but didn't buy anything. They took a taxi to the hotel she'd booked them in, and went up to the room. Hermione followed, Disillusioned,
They went in, and Hermione stood outside the door for longer than she'd meant to. The whole thing was simple: Go in, Stupefy them, put their memories back in place, wake them up. They'd stay in the hotel for the night, then drive back to the house in the morning.
Finally, she shook herself out of it and knocked.
"Yes?" It was so neutral, so simply polite that it almost hurt. She hadn't seen her mother in seven years, and the woman didn't even blink.
"Sorry," Hermione said, turning and pointing to the door across the hall. "I've locked myself out. Can I borrow your phone to call my husband? He has the other key."
And she was in by means of reflexive politeness. Yes, the front desk could've sorted her out, but she'd asked them.
A few flicks of her wand, and her parents were lying comfortably on the bed. They could've been sleeping except for the odd, stiff way their heads rested not quite on the pillows.
It was a standard hotel room. Big bed, glossy dresser with a TV on it, ensuite bathroom with soaps in packaging.
She replaced their memories, lifted the charms keeping them still and asleep, then sat back and waited for them to come around. She sat in the overstuffed chair in the corner, staring at her hands. They hadn't changed much in the past seven years; she hadn't acquired any new scars, for one. A few of her old scars had even faded a bit.
Her dad chose that moment to sit up. He went from comatose-looking to blinking narrowly at her, then rubbed his forehead with his palm.
"You did it again, didn't you? Used the time gizmo."
"Yes."
"How long?"
"Almost seven years."
"Seven. Wow."
Her mother sat up, looking resigned and something else. Something Hermione couldn't put her finger on.
"Start talking," she said, her voice flat and controlled.
"I've been sitting here for ten minutes trying to think of where to start," Hermione said.
"Not even a week ago," her mum said, "we were at home going about life as normal. We thought you had only been gone long enough to get your Healer certification. We were going to invite you around for supper soon to catch up properly with everything you coulnd't put on paper.
"And then we had to make an escape from our home. It was destroyed by a man who you turned out to be married to. You're not only older than you're supposed to be, you're covered in scars. You weren't even surprised when your husband walked through the door covered in blood. And then we were on a plane with no memory of any of that, and now we're in a different country."
Hermione opened her mouth to answer, but her dad cut her off.
"Is the war over, then?"
"No."
"I didn't think so." He sighed. "What happened?"
"I got pregnant." It just slipped out, like when she'd told them Severus was her husband.
That was not how I meant to drop that particular bombshell.
They were silent a moment, looking at her as if they expected her to pull a baby out of her purse and hold it up as proof. Hermione launched into her story before they could start asking questions or being angry. Or both.
"I didn't figure it out until September. At that point, we Turned back. We only meant to go back a couple years, buy ourselves some time. The Time Turner broke, though. We ended up in 1990.
"'90," her mum echoed.
"We came to Australia to hide until we caught up to ourselves. We have a house outside Kenilworth in Queensland."
"Why did you return our memories if the war isn't over?" her dad asked suspiciously.
"Because we have to go back, and the children absolutely cannot come with. It's not safe."
"Children?" her mum asked.
"Bast—Sebastian—is six and a half. The twins just turned four. Sofia and Elaine."
"Three of them," her dad said. Her mum had started weeping quietly.
Hermione took the small folio out of her satchel and handed it over. There were two dozen pictures in it, the kids over the years. They had several photo albums at home, but she'd wanted to bring a condensed version to begin. Ease them into the idea that seven years had really gone by for her and Severus—her parents could academically accept time travel easily enough, but it still boggled them. The folio was mostly focused on the kids, but there were pictures of the house, her and Severus, and them all together as a family.
Oddly uncomfortable, Hermione shifted in the overstuffed chair and gave them a moment to flip through the folio before she spoke again.
"After we sent you here, Severus went to Hogwarts and I went to the Burrow. He had to prepare for the school year, and I had things to do for the Order. Then the Ministry fell, and I had Harry and Ron in a safe house. We were working from there when I realized I was pregnant. Like I said, we Turned back farther than planned when the Time Turner broke."
"And now you have children that need looking after while the two of you go back," her father said.
"You can't go back!" her mom cried. Hermione shook her head.
"We have to. And we have a plan. If things fall into place the way we think—the way we hope—they will, the war will be over in less than a year."
"What if somebody comes looking for us?"
"Nobody will. You didn't even know who you were when you left the country, and you didn't use wizarding transportation. And they think you're dead; they don't even know they should be looking for you." Hermione ran her hands through her hair, feeling it frizz up as she did. Annoyed at herself for fidgeting, she pulled it back into a ponytail and planted her hands in her lap. "We came here years before the Dark Lord was back, and we will appear to have never left. They won't know to look for us, either."
"They won't know where to look if you stay."
"But they will look. And Severus's Mark can be tracked. We'd be found eventually."
"Leave him."
It was logical; callous, but logical. Hermione opened her mouth, closed it. Then she got up and left the room, the door slamming behind her.
Her parents hadn't been able to watch her relationship with her husband evolve. They'd only met him the once, and that hadn't gone particularly well. He'd been her teacher, he'd been the one to destroy their house.
She made it to the end of the hallway, turned around, took a deep breath, and reentered the room. Her parents were exactly where she'd left them, sitting in silence.
"No," she said, glad her voice was calm. She didn't feel calm. She felt panicked. The idea of it made her physically ill, queasy. "No, I won't leave him."
They were silent. She wondered if they'd said anything to each other while she was walking down the hallway, running away from the idea in the room.
"The whole war is about people like me," she said, reiterating what she'd said to them at the flat in Edinburgh before she'd taken their memories. "It's wrong. So many things are wonderful with magic, but so many things are backwards. The two of us are placed to change it, to make it better, to fix it for our children. And we're going to do it."
"Darling, I didn't—" her mum started, but Hermione held up a hand. (Her left hand; the one covered in scars, but also the one spelled so that she could communicate with Severus as long as she had a pen.)
"I know. I understand." Because she did. "This is my fight, and this is his fight, and he's my husband, and it just has to be how it is. I'm sorry. I know it's hard, and it's awful, and I swear I hate it just as much as you do. We just need to… carry on."
"What is it you want us to do?" her dad asked. Her parents were sitting on the end of the bed, facing her, holding hands. She hadn't noticed when they'd shifted; she'd been too busy trying to think of how to explain herself right.
"I need you to take care of my children," she said. Her voice cracked and she had to clear her throat before she could continue.
How the hell does Molly Weasley make it through a day? She has more children to worry about than I do, and hers are directly involved in this shit.
"I need you to be… stability. I need to know that—" She cut herself off, biting her lip. All this had gone unsaid with Severus because they both knew it, and they could see it, feel it, in each others' thoughts. "I need to know that they're with people, family, who love them even though I'm not able to be there. And if one or both of us end up dead, I need to know that they won't be alone, that somebody can tell them this fucked up story someday so that they can know, so that they hopefully can understand…"
Her dad held her, stroking her hair like he had when she was small and had had a nightmare. She felt like she should be crying, but she wasn't. Her mum was, though; shoulders heaving with great sobs.
"We dreaded this, you know," her mother said through the tears. "When you got your letter. It was wonderful that there was a place for you, that you could fit somewhere, but we just knew that it would take you away from us."
"I'm right here, Mum," she said, her voice muffled by her father's collar.
"But you live in a different world. First you had to practice floating feathers for homework; now you've had a family by going back in time. Magic took you away. We didn't get to see any of it."
Hermione did cry, then. She tried to imagine what they could be feeling, imagining if Bast or the girls had walked up to her a decade older than she'd last seen them and with a spouse and children in tow.
She'd feel lost. She'd feel cheated. And she had the benefit of understanding magic, of seeing remarkable things every day. Her parents had had the normal lives she'd been so jealous of for their entire lives. Or at least until she'd come along.
"I'm sorry."
"You don't need to apologize," her dad said, still stroking her hair. "It's not your fault."
"I volunteered. I agreed to do it."
"We do know you, love," he said. "You could never have said no, just like you can't hide now."
"I don't regret it."
Maybe that's why I'm sorry. I wouldn't change any choice because it led to these last few years in our little secluded bubble, Severus and me and the children pretending to have normal lives.
"Then you know it's right."
It was far from settled, she knew that. Some of the tension had gone out of the room, though.
\\
She'd intended them to stay in the hotel for the night, and then drive back home in the morning. It was barely suppertime when they left, though. Her parents wanted to meet their grandchildren, and Hermione didn't like being away.
The drive wasn't as bad as she'd feared. They mostly talked about the children. Her parents looked through the folio again and again, asking about little details. The questions they asked—and the ones they didn't ask—about Severus made her suspect her dad at least (but probably her mum, too) planned to corner him in the near future.
It was late when they arrived, the gravel driveway crunching under the tires. Severus had modified the wards while she was gone; her parents didn't freak out about leaving the stove on at home or anything.
Thank you, she thought, mentally sighing. I hadn't thought about that part 'til now.
They made it around the last little copse, and there was the overlarge house. It still felt too big most of the time. Too many bedrooms turned into a piano room or a play room, but still empty most of the time. It was comfortable, though. And it was home.
She parked on the side of the house, just within view of the garden around back that was split in two—one half for vegetables and herbs, the other for potions ingredients. Severus's lab, on the far side of the garden, was dark and locked up for the night.
"This is it," Hermione said lamely. Of course this was it. They'd seen the pictures. And why else would she stop the truck?
"It's lovely," her mum said. Hermione smirked at the reflexive politeness.
"Thank you."
They walked in the front door. The house was quiet, everybody asleep. The Atkins girls would be picked up in the morning- they'd be in the spare bedroom closest to the stairs. Bast had given her directions on transfiguring the perfect bunk beds. Then the piano room. Bast's bedroom next to that, her little boy probably flopped on his belly with the sheets falling off the bed. Sofia and Elaine in the next room, each of them with a foot poking out from beneath the covers. The study, with the sturdy desk, mostly used for storage since the library room downstairs had the better couch.
The house had too many rooms. Six bedrooms, when they only needed three. It was comfortable, especially after her crazy nesting period at the end of her pregnancy with Bast when she'd dragged Severus through furniture stores and made him think deep thoughts about curtains and rugs.
"Everybody will be asleep; they weren't expecting us until tomorrow afternoon."
Severus had probably woken when they crossed the wards, but he'd likely just stay in the bedroom and save the inevitable confrontation for daylight.
"The bathroom is here. And this is you." The biggest spare room. She and Severus had made it over last week, clearing out the puzzle collection to make space for the bed and dresser.
At the moment, the room looked a bit impersonal compared to the rest of the house. The bedspread was cream, the sheets pale blue. The walls were green. There were little bedside tables with matching lamps. The dresser was large, simple. The girls had picked flowers and put them in a tall cup on it.
"That's Bast, and that's the girls." She pointed to the respective rooms. "Severus and I are at the end of the hall." She tried to think of what else to say. "I should warn you Severus makes up spells in his downtime, and we've had a lot of downtime. You put laundry in your hamper, and it will be clean in the dresser by the end of the day. The dishes do themselves, but they don't put themselves away." The cabinets had never cooperated; they'd ended up with broken dishes all over the floor for a full week before Severus modified the spell. "Do you need anything?"
"Just don't expect us to be knocking on your door in the morning," her dad said with a surprisingly amiable smile. It took Hermione a moment to remember the awkard morning such a long time ago, but then she smiled back.
Severus was sitting on the edge of their bed in the dark. It was just light enough, with none of the curtains down, to see his raised eyebrow.
"Their idea," she said, closing the door gently behind her.
"I'm glad." He held out a hand and she took it, sitting down next to him and lacing their fingers together. "I couldn't sleep."
She leaned her head against his shoulder. They were quiet for awhile.
"How did it go?"
"It wasn't bad. We talked." She felt like she had to move, had to pace, but she didn't want to move away from him. "It's strange. I'd forgotten how recent it was for them, how fresh. It was only days ago for them—my dad was just out there joking about walking in on us."
"Is that a good sign?"
"I hope so." She sighed. "I think it will be more real for them in the morning when they see the kids. Really, I'm just glad they're taking it in stride for now."
"Maybe they're still in shock over the first round."
"Could be."
"It's going to be hard to go back."
"Yes."
"There's time yet," he said when they'd been quiet for awhile. "We have time."
"September 20."
"Right."
He let go of her hand and turned to face her, kissing her cheek before she could turn to look at him properly. He began undoing the buttons on the plaid shirt she was wearing.
"Come to bed, Mrs. Snape. We'll face it in the morning."
\\
Breakfast was unusually chaotic. The Atkins girls were in school, racing against the clock to eat and gather their things before their Portkeys whisked them off for the day. (Boarding schools were popular in the UK, Europe and most of Asia, but Australia and the Americas had classes during daytime and sent students home every evening. It meant underage magic was handled differently, among other things. Schooling began at age seven; they got their wands at ten, so Ursula already had her wand but Amy didn't yet.) There was the addition of her parents to the morning routine, too.
It probably would've been awkward if it hadn't been so hectic. Making sure Amy had all her things in her bag, and getting Ursula to sit down and finish her toast were an easy distraction from the way her parents sat so quietly off to one side together. Bast watched them, his stare as intent as his father's ever was, entirely silently.
Then the girls were gone, and Severus set Bast up in the library with his math workbook. (He had a workbook for each subject, working his way through the basics of a Muggle homeschooling curriculm.) The twins grabbed their own workbooks (learning letters and numbers, matching colors and shapes) and joined him, tracing the dotted lines to and from letters, muttering the letter sounds as they went.
Hermione was quite proud of them. All three were ahead of schedule for their age level, at least according to all the books she'd been able to find on it and everything Severus knew of early education. Bast had practically taught himself to read, and the twins were eager to follow his example. They were clever and diligent—not particularly patient, but stubborn enough to make up for it.
"Routine?" her mum asked when it was just the three of them in the kitchen. Hermione put the dishes in the sink, almost smirking when she watched their faces as the bubbles rose up of their own accord, washing and rinsing quickly and efficiently, leaving the dishes next to the sink on the drying rack to drip.
"It works for us," she explained when the spell had finished with the first dish. "We get the school stuff out of the way, Severus gets a block of quiet time for work, and I get—"
"—Do you work?"
"I don't have to." It might've come out a bit petulant, but that was only because her mum had sounded so affronted when she'd interrupted. "He makes enough to cover the expenses. And it gives me time for our research; it lets us all be home together."
She'd been running the arithmancy, solidifying the variables in their plan. It had taken months, but it was finally workable. At least it was hypothetically workable—there was always the chance they walked back into things, something changed immediately, and all their careful planning was for naught. She coulnd't think like that, though.
"So you keep the house?" her dad asked skeptically. Not only had he been married to her mother's feminist leanings for twenty (twenty-two?) years, he'd known Hermione fairly well, at least up until she'd begun using the Time Turner. And even then, the root of her hadn't changed. She'd be bored if all she was doing was keeping a house; she needed people to argue with, points to make, books to read.
Severus actually laughed aloud as he reentered the kitchen, earning himself a pair of harsh looks.
"Yes, I keep the house. And I help the kids with their workbooks. And I do my research." She rolled her eyes, watching Severus make his escape to his morning brewing. "Sometimes I help in the lab, too."
"Lab?" her dad asked at the same time her mum said, "Research?"
She wasn't about to explain the particulars of her research—it varied from soul-rending to arithmancy work so close to fortune-telling they'd surely laugh at her—so she pointed out the window. They looked just in time to see Severus disappear into the shed.
"We have a potions lab in the shed. He tests experimental potions for a private company—modifies or makes suggestions on modifications as needed. He also stocks a few apothecaries with the basics. He's good at it, so it's good money. And he's good at it, so it doesn't take him the whole day."
"Yet he sometimes needs your help?" her mum asked, almost condescending. Hermione wished they'd back off, though, intellectually, she knew why they found him so difficult to accept.
"He doesn't really need it. It just makes things faster to have two sets of hands. Or I'll brew something simple for an apothecary order while he finishes an experiment, and then he's done working for the day in time for lunch."
Her mother chewed her lip. Her father stared hard at the shed. Hermione rolled her eyes, beginning to put away the breakfast dishes.
A/N: Sorry I missed last week! I wish I had a decent excuse to give you, but, really, I just chose to go see Jurassic World (twice) instead of working on this when I planned to. I will try to make it up to you this week—after the next chapter, I have a giant block of text pre-written so that should be post-able much faster.
And also I've already seen Jurassic World now, so I shouldn't be so terribly tempted to run off and see it again. Hopefully.
Cheers!
— M