Her lower back ached like it had when she'd been pregnant to bursting with the twins. The muscles of her left leg were twitching, too. Otherwise she was very relaxed, almost limp. It was muscle relaxant-limp; she'd been given a potion to ease the post-Cruciatus tremors, then. That was good.

Severus's large, warm hand settled just where she needed it at the small of her back, fingertips pressing in on either side of her spine. For a moment, she was sure she was dreaming. But she hurt too much for it not to be real. She groaned.

"What was that? Is she dying?"

That was Harry. His voice was thready with panic. That explained Severus's presence; he was the only one who knew.

"I'm not dying," she muttered roughly.

Severus brushed her mind, and she managed a weak, fluttery response. She wasn't in full mental form, apparently. Not surprising after the battering her Occlumency shields had taken at the manor.

He presented her with an image of a battered Bellatrix sitting stiffly, resentfully at the far end of a long black table. She'd been thoroughly punished, it seemed.

"I should feel bad that that makes me feel better," she said to Severus, trying to roll over. He kept her on her back, though, preventing her from turning. He kept up the gentle massage; the ache continued to ease away.

"I was sorry I wasn't the one to do it," he admitted quietly.

She wondered who else was in the room.

"Do what?" Ron. He sounded vaguely accusing. That made at least Ron and Harry watching. Were there others? Where were they? How did they get away?

"How are you here?" she asked. "Where is here?"

Severus finally let her sit up, and Harry gave her a quick summary. Dobby had responded to a desperate plea from Harry and died for his efforts. She'd had a chandelier dropped on her. They'd ended up at Shell Cottage, Bill and Fleur Weasley's house. Fleur had seen to the scrapes and bruises and given her the muscle relaxant for the tremors. Harry had gone to get Severus when Bill hadn't been able to remove the curse from her leg after a day.

She sighed and scrubbed her hands over her face, then jerked her hair back into a twist, securing it with the broken quill Severus produced from a pocket. She smiled at him.

"Hello, Sev," she said, pecking him on the cheek. "I missed you."

He smiled back at her, lacing his fingers through hers. He looked down, braced himself, then met her eyes again.

There was a car accident.

Okay.

In Australia.

In—!

I'm so sorry. Your parents are dead.

She waited for an emotional response, anything. There was anxiety, and her heart clenched a bit, but something told her the sadness would come later.

Severus… the— She swallowed. I should be devastated, right? They were my parents.

I'm not the one to ask. I hated my parents.

Maybe I'll feel it later? Right now I'm just worried about—

The children are alright. Sleeping when I left.

Are they really alright? After all that—not just the crash, but being Malfoy and the—

For now, they're just exhausted.

What if they wake up and you're not there?

Tup will come get me the moment they begin to wake.

Tup?

One of the Hogwarts elves.

She nodded. How are we going to do this? We never even close to planned for this.

We've deviated from almost every plan Dumbledore had, and every plan we had, in almost every way possible.

Such rebels. She rolled her eyes.

"You're hilarious," he said dryly.

"What just happened?" Ron asked.

"Er. Legilimancy." The conversation had been quick as thought, of course. (It had been thought.) To the others, it would look like they'd been holding hands and staring at each other, and that he didn't believe she'd missed him.

"How?"

"Simultaneous Legilimency."

"That's not helping."

"They were reading each others' minds."

"Bill?"

"Cool," Ron said.

"I thought I heard your voice. It's good to see you with your eyes open."

"Thank you for hiding us."

"How are you feeling, dear?" Poppy said, bustling in with a tray of potions.

"Brilliant," Hermione said warily, eyes on the potions. She didn't feel like she needed any potions; the muscle relaxant was doing its work, and Severus had removed the nasty that had been making her leg and back hurt. Then she saw that the potions on the tray were those most commonly used for malnutrition, and she frowned. "I don't need—"

"Hermione, for once," Severus began, but Hermione shot him a look.

"I'm not malnourished. Meals have been meager, but it's stress."

"That's nice, dear," Poppy said, handing her the first of the potions. She stared at her blandly until Hermione downed it. "And the next one."

"Thank you, Poppy," Hermione said when she'd finished. Poppy nodded, business-like, her eyes darting down to where Hermione's fingers were still tangled with Severus's.

"I think it's time for the explanation, Headmaster," Poppy said, Vanishing the tray. The feel of the room changed as everybody's attention focused in on them.

"The short version?" Severus said, the flippant tone entirely belied by his grip on her hand. "We had a Time Turner."

"They married last Christmas before Hermione came back to Hogwarts," Harry said. He was off to one side grinning, looking much too happy with himself to be the one in on the secret. Of course, he was usually the last to be told anything, so she couldn't really blame him for enjoying the novelty.

"You handed me a photo album with pictures of children," Poppy said.

"You gave me Blood Replenishing Potion the night Dumbledore died, and I didn't think of it. When I realized I was pregnant, we used the Time Turner—actually, we broke the Time Turner. We went back further than we'd planned—"

"What about Dumbledore?" Bill interrupted. He was leaning against the door jamb, arms folded, tense.

"It was planned," Hermione said.

"You saw it," Bill said, turning to Harry. "You said it was murder, out and out."

"I saw what they wanted me to see."

"You know perfectly well that removing his arm wouldn't stop the curse. He was dying. It was slow and painful," Hermione said, glancing from Bill to Poppy. "He wanted to put his death to use."

The selfish wanker.

Severus snorted at the thought, and she squeezed his hand. Bill and Poppy shot him looks for the inappropriate laughter. He narrowed his eyes at her, then rolled them when Bill stood up from the door jamb, half going for his wand.

"I made an Unbreakable Vow to Narcissa Malfoy, swearing to help her son kill the headmaster or do it for him if and when it came to it. I discussed it with Dumbledore. He decided that it was more strategically important for me to uphold the Vow. The curse would've killed him before the summer was out," Severus said. His voice was calm, but his shoulders had tensed. Hermione squeezed his hand again.

"Strategically important?" Bill sneered. Poppy was nodding, though.

"He was dying. There is no arguing that."

"He chose the means of his death," Severus said. "Most of us don't get to do that."

There was a very tense moment. Bill frowned. Poppy had her hands clenched in front of her. Ron was looking from face to face, obviously wondering who would hex first. The look on Harry's face reminded her strangely of Dumbledore—conflict boiling over around him while he looked on like it was his favorite soap opera on the telly.

"So what happens now?" Bill finally asked.

Hermione hadn't realized she was holding her breath until Severus let his out.

He liked to think that he had absolute control of his temper. It had run him when he was a teenager, led him to the sort of trouble he was still paying for decades on. He liked to think he'd learned his lesson.

Yet when the wards alerted him the Carrow had closed his office door with a female student, directly after dinner, entirely outside office hours… Irate didn't begin to cover it. And not only because it was partially his own fault for missing breakfast, missing that daily dose of impotence potion in Carrow's pumpkin juice. Not only because his bloody daughters were in the castle.

He left Shell Cottage with a bang after a too-brief goodbye. The door slammed shut behind him and he Disapparated the moment he crossed the line of the wards.

Naturally, Minerva was standing outside his office, empty vial in hand, indecision practically etched into her skin.

"It can wait," he told her shortly. She glared, but he was already striding away.

She followed him, of course.

"Carrow," he said, knocking as he opened the door. "Miss Hamilton. What a surprise. I do apologize for interrupting, but you'd better return to your dormitory. I need to speak with Professor Carrow."

Hamilton had been chosen as Head Girl because she was a very safe choice. Ravenclaw, excellent marks, no discipline issues. And her parents were half-bloods, but her paternal lineage gave her a pureblood name. Politically safe.

If there hadn't been a war, it would have been Hermione. No question.

"Yes, Headmaster," the girl said. She ran for it. Smart girl.

"We've talked about this," Severus said, rounding on Carrow. Carrow just smirked. "She is a child."

"She's of age."

"She is your student," Severus snarled, but Carrow shrugged. "If you cannot behave as a professor of this school, I will be forced to request a replacement." Carrow paled, and Severus decided to leave it at that.

He wasn't surprised that Minerva was just outside the door, out of sight but clearly eavesdropping. He glared at her for form's sake.

She didn't follow him back to his office like he'd hoped she would, but Poppy was waiting for him there.

"The children are fine," she said, fussing with her kit. He had to sit down. "Just worn out, the little dears."

"What children?" Dumbledore's portrait asked. Poppy raised her eyebrows, looking over at him.

"He doesn't know?"

"Considering how well he took my marriage—"

"He didn't know you were married?"

"We never told Dumbledore since we knew he wouldn't approve." He glanced up at the portrait, seeing a familiar narrowing of the eyes. "The spy and that assassin. Bedfellows best avoided."

"I'd suspected you were together after watching you tend to—" She cleared her throat. "—after watching you tend to Dumbledore's arm together."

"We were married by then. The Christmas before that."

"I thought I must have been mistaken when…"

"She knew it was coming."

Poppy nodded, waiting for him to continue.

"Hermione was pregnant that summer. That was why we decided to use the Time Turner; we couldn't—it would've been—"

"I understand."

He nodded. "It's good that we did. We needed the time. I wasn't in a good place after—" He had to pause to clear his throat. "After killing the headmaster. It gave us years away from this… shit."

"And the children?"

"Hidden away in Australia. Ideally, nobody would know about them. Not even the portraits." A few of the portraits in question shifted uncomfortably, faces set stubbornly as if they were prepared to shout at him if he tried anything. That was not a fight he planned to have, though. "Things have gone off-plan, though."

"You said there was an accident?"

"They were staying with Hermione's parents. There was a car crash and they were killed. Bast Apparated the twins out of the truck."

"That's horrible." Poppy sank down on the nearest chair.

"And now they're here," he said, rubbing his forehead. "I can't send them away, but the castle is not a safe place."

Poppy surprised him. She got up, walked around the desk, and hugged him. It was like it always had been, only he wasn't sure he could remember if she'd ever hugged him before.

"How long have they been here?"

"A few hours. I called you as soon as we arrived back."

"Back?"

Quickly, Severus outlined the story for her. Their shuffle through the International Office, Malfoy's intercession.

"I wouldn't've expected him to be helpful."

"Helping me is to his advantage," Severus said. They'd settled on the velvet-upholstered sofa near the fireplace in the alcove off the main office. "If the Dark Lord triumphs, Lucius will have invaluable information on me. His position will rise, my position will fall. If the Order triumphs, he's able to say that he helped me when I needed it."

"Conniving."

"Yes. Lucius has always liked politics."

"It's done in either case."

"Yes, and now here we are."

"And Minerva as well," Severus said, standing when the wards alerted him to her presence. She was in her cat form, surely, otherwise there was no way she'd be able to make such quick work of the stairs. "She may be on her way to try to kill me again."

"Again?"

"Oh, yes. She's tried twice. Fiitwick had a half-hearted attempt just before I went to Australia." He glanced at her, shrugged. "It means that I'm playing my part in all this well."

"Too well," Poppy said, frowning.

"Poppy." Minerva's voice was cold. "Are you hurt? Ah, ah, ah!" He'd begun to turn, slowly, but Minerva pressed the tip of her wand into the side of his neck. "Hands where I can see them, Snape."

He hadn't heard her voice so cold since he'd known her.

"Minerva!" Poppy snapped. "I promise you, all is not as it appears."

"Imperiusing the staff now?" Minerva asked him snidely. He'd turned full to face her now. Her eyes were cold, the lines of her face deep and shadowed in the dim light.

"No," he said simply, careful not to move. He kept his expression blank, neutral. "Poppy? Would you please Summon that photo album I showed you?"

She did, then held it out to Minerva. Warily, his deputy drew back from him and looked down at the book. She gasped, grabbing the book, flipping quickly through the pages.

"Is this somehow supposed to explain anything?" Minerva asked. She'd taken a few steps away from him, giving herself more time to react if he tried anything. He just stood there, wand away, waiting.

"As you remember now, you were the witness at my wedding." He spoke slow and low, calmly. He wanted to shake her; she was being ridiculous. "We removed the memory because Dumbledore didn't know and wouldn't have approved—hell, his portrait circles back to his disappointment in us whenever he runs out of things to talk about."

"I certainly do not!" Dumbledore's portrait said, back stiff, beard twitching.

"As if he ever runs out of things to talk about," one of the other portraits muttered sullenly. It made a few of the others laugh, and Dumbledore scowled at them.

"His portrait is awake," Minerva whispered, looking at the painted Dumbledore as if it had just turned her world on its ear.

"Of course it's bloody awake. How else do you think—?"

"And he talked to you? To you?"

"Minerva," he groaned, rubbing at his face. He'd hoped she would put the memory back in place and reason a few things out.

"Get up, Poppy. We're leaving." She said it like she'd just been waiting for him to be distracted and she'd found her opportunity. He raised an eyebrow at her.

"Don't be absurd, Minerva," Poppy said, crossing her arms. She was using her matron voice, the one that kept students from sneaking out of the hospital wing and made grown men sit still even when she applied stinging antiseptic. "Put your wand away, sit down, and hear him out."

Minerva finally began to waver. Her wand didn't leave him, but her elbow unlocked.

"Let's have a pot of tea," Poppy suggested, walking back towards the alcove where they'd been sitting earlier.

"Please, Minerva," he said. She glanced behind him at the portrait. He looked, too, and wanted to hex it when he realized the old man was feigning sleep again.

Minerva didn't put her wand away, but she sat in the empty wingback and watched he and Poppy doctor their tea.

"You have two minutes to explain," she said when they were all seated.

"He was dying. You knew that," Poppy said.

"I can't believe you put Hermione through all that," Minerva said, not looking at Poppy.

"She knew it was coming."

"Dumbledore—"

Severus rolled his eyes and interrupted her by striding over and rattling the frame of the 'sleeping' headmaster. "Dumbledore. Get up and explain yourself. I'm tired of doing it, and nobody ever believes me the first time anyway. There is too much to be done to waste time on—wake up you infernal thing."

Phineas hooted with laughter.

"All right, all right," Dumbledore said, making shooing motions with his painted hands. They were both pale and long and thin, no hint of the gray bruise darkness that had defined his last months. "Minerva…"

The portrait explained, and then was mostly silent while Severus told her how his children had come to be in the bed upstairs.

"You're a dead man," Poppy said, nibbling the corner of a biscuit the house elves had sent along with their second tea tray.

"If the Dark Lord triumphs, most definitely. If we will, I will owe Lucius. He has the Dark Lord living in his house; I believe he's beginning to hope… well." Severus selected a tiny triangular cucumber sandwich for himself, wishing he'd had the forethought to request an actual meal. "You've both seen Draco this term. So has Lucius."

They were quiet a moment. Severus put the whole sandwich in his mouth and remembered he didn't like cucumbers. He washed it down with a gulp of too-hot tea, then startled when Minerva burst out laughing only to clap a hand over her mouth.

"I spend most of my time talking the Carrows out of raping or maiming the students," he said when he realized Minerva wasn't going to say anything further. "Eventually I'll overstep myself. Or a thousand other things could go wrong."

"Raping the—" Poppy started, but Severus kept talking. Minerva just looked grim.

"I'm deviating," he said, leaning forward and looking at the two witches he'd known for the better part of his life. "Dumbledore had the next stages of the war planned out. Harry had his task. I had mine. Now my children are here, and I don't… I can't run by that plan anymore.

"We need to end it sooner—as soon as possible. Potter was captured over Easter; they just barely escaped." He glanced at Poppy. She was nodding, looking down into her teacup instead of at him. "It can't go on like this. I can't go on like this."

Hermione and Poppy had both check him for ulcers. He hadn't had any, but that only meant that the sick feeling was coming from his soul instead of his actual guts.

"I assume Potter escaped?" Minerva asked, tense, fingers clenched around her teacup. Severus blinked, realizing he'd skipped over that part of the story.

"He's with Bill Weasley," Poppy said quietly. "He's fine. It was Hermione that—"

Minerva's focus swung over to him, intense. He worried she might break the teacup. "Is she alright?"

"She'll be fine," Poppy said, settling back more comfortably in her chair. Severus fidgeted with his teacup. "She will be, Severus. I checked her over myself, and she was already up and around before I left."

"That's… good."

"This is why," Dumbledore's portrait said, making Poppy jump. Severus frowned, looking over at the portrait and raising an eyebrow. "This is why I told you it was a bad idea. You're not thinking clearly."

"I will bring out the turpentine, insights be damned," Severus said. It was more of a mutter than anything else; he didn't have the energy to be properly threatening. He was suddenly exhausted.

\\

Poppy left a short time later. There weren't any students in the hospital wing, but curfew was approaching and it was just before curfew that students snuck in to see her for a vial of Dreamless Sleep or, in the worst cases, a muscle relaxant.

"Come," Severus said softly to Minerva after Poppy had gone, and he led the way up the stairs to his private sitting room. He knocked on the low table to order a proper dinner, then cracked the bedroom door the check on the children.

Bast was still in the middle. He'd kicked off the blankets, too hot with two sisters nestled in on his sides. Severus silently crossed the room and put the blanket back in place. Bast stirred only enough to smile sleepily at him before drifting back to sleep. Severus stroked his son's hair a moment before remembering he had an audience and hurrying back out to the sitting room.

"If anything happens to me," he said, looking at the fire instead of the Head of Gryffindor, "hide them. If something happens, get them out. Make Lucius think I hid them away…"

"Minerva?"

She sighed, and settled in front of his low table with the supper the house elves had delivered before she spoke again. "We were so awful to you. You'd just done what he asked, and we—and I—" She suddenly looked up at him, eyes wide. "I tried to kill you, Severus."

"That means I played my part well. You were supposed to be awful to me."

"And Hermione knew the whole time?"

"Yes."

"The poor thing. Oh, Severus, you should have seen her cry the night Albus died!"

She was crying for me more than for him. She hated him, hates him. Like I do.

"I didn't—" Minerva said, looking down at her hands clenched in her lap. "She was fussing with a hangnail; soon it would bleed. "Why didn't you—?"

"Minerva," Severus said, trying to decide how to say what needed to be said. "Hermione was the only one who knew what Dumbledore asked me to do."

He let that hang for a moment.

"She was my Healer. We weren't supposed to… love each other. We were supposed to work together. She'd patch me up and send me back.

"You know she's skilled with mind magic, a Legilimens. When you get two Legilimenses in the room together—well. You try not falling in love with somebody when you can see their whole mind spread out in front of you, read their trials in their skin, hear the echoes of their emotions in their psyche just with eye contact." He took a deep breath. He hadn't meant to say any of that. He looked Minerva in the eye as he continued, glad once again that she wasn't a Legilimens herself. "Also, she can hold up her own end of a conversation. And she makes adorable babies, as it turns out."

He hadn't meant to say that last part, either. It just slipped out.

He could see the questions boiling behind her eyes. She wanted to ask him everything, she wanted to sit him down and make him explain it all from the beginning in minute detail.

Severus sighed, scrubbed his hands roughly over his face—he was beginning to get stubbly.

"How? How could you do it?"

"What, specifically?"

"All of it."

Oh, is that all? "Occlumency, mostly. I've gotten very good at presenting the front I need to over the years. Doing my feeling later, in private."

"But… Dumbledore—"

"Asked me to. No, actually, he ordered me to." He pushed his hair back from his face and glared at the fire a moment before speaking again. "I tried to… Well. I didn't want to, I tried—I asked to be done, actually. I asked him, on several occasions, if I could just… leave. I didn't want to do it any more."

"Because of Hermione."

"Yes and no." The Vow would have killed him if he left. He would have lost Hermione, then. He'd just been miserable. "Mostly I had just reached my saturation point." He shrugged. "None of it was pleasant, from the moment the Dark Lord returned. I never expected it to be, mind, but… The prospect of going on without Dumbledore after killing him, even if I knew it was what he wanted me to do and Hermione would know... Well." He shrugged again. "You know what I mean. Carrying on in this school without Dumbledore, such an impossible thought."

They carefully didn't look at each other for a long moment. The portrait downstairs was heavy on both their minds.

"I'm sorry, Severus," Minerva said eventually. "I know you were… I know it was impossible…" She sighed, collected herself, started again. "You are a very good liar. And thank you, because you've saved us all so far with it. But I'm still sorry I fell for it."

"I'm glad you did," he said quietly, staring at the teapot instead of looking at her. "It would have been harder. Hell, it was harder." He smirked at her. "Hagrid figured it out when I sent those three to detention in the forest with him." Minerva glared at him, but he just raised an eyebrow. "The Carrows thought it was an awful punishment, but I'm fairly certain they all went for a nice walk."

"A picnic, actually," Minerva said. "Hagrid cooked."

"Maybe more of a punishment than I'd intended, then." They shared a smile. He'd missed this; the camaraderie.

"So Hagrid knows."

"Yes. And he's almost given me away more times that I care to think about." He rolled his eyes and sat back. It was nice to talk about it. "He smiles at me when he thinks nobody's looking."

Minerva actually threw her head back and laughed. "Dear Hagrid," she said. "Dear, dear Hagrid."

"We named our son after him, actually," Severus said, glancing back at the door to the bedroom. "Sebastian Rubeus. We call him Bast."

"Bast," Minerva echoed. He glanced at her, then away. He knew she'd been married once, when she was young, before she'd come to Hogwarts. He wondered if she'd had children; he'd never asked her.

"And the twins," he continued. "Sofia Minerva and Elaine Poppy. They're identical, but only when you look at them. Sofia is the mouthpiece of the pair. She came into the world squalling and hasn't stopped since."

"I don't know what to say," Minerva said after a moment.

"You're… important, Minerva," he said slowly, still not quite able to look at her.

"Oh, shut up." He was glad that she was as uncomfortable as he was. "Give me a hug."

She was taller than Hermione, willowy. She hugged him like she meant it, and he hugged her back.

They separated and sat back down. They talked for a long time. They compared notes on the political situation of the world, the oppressive lives of those at Hogwarts. They talked about the Order, and Hermione and Harry. They talked about the children and Australia and Hermione's parents.

A/N: I'm off to work now and if I have an inbox overflowing with reviews when I get home, I'll post the next chapter before I go to bed tonight!

Cheers!

—M