"I'm going with you," Severus said firmly to the top of his wife's head, who was leaning over the table and enthusiastically scribbling something in his notebook with a Muggle pen. No, it was just some blatant impudence, in the very notebook that was "the property of the Half-Blood Prince." Snape chuckled - when Hermione had an idea, even as crazy as changing the past, she couldn't stop. And she had been unconvinced. But wasn't he himself the same enthusiast? Wasn't that their amazing similarity? And wasn't that what he was trying to achieve by weaving the web of these strange intrigues like a spider?
Hermione grunted something vague, crossed out the sentence, narrowed her eyes, and with a wave of her hand cleared the page in front of her.
"What are you saying?"
"I am saying, go ahead, cut the portrait out of the frame, or what kind of trick did you once do with the portrait of Phineas? I am going with you."
Hermione tucked her pen into a bun of her own hair and scratched the bridge of her nose.
"No, of course, I can honestly admit that having an ally in the person of you, I will be much calmer, but are you sure that you will not be erased from reality when we cross the line of the Mirror of Erised?"
Severus walked defiantly back and forth across the frame and stood right in the center.
"I will be erased from reality no matter what happens, whether you like it or not, but I can help. You do not know me from my youth, and I will not say that I was a terribly pleasant conversationalist."
"You're still a bit of a helper, to be honest," Hermione snorted. Her husband shook his head, letting the remarque hang in the air.
"You don't know the Marauders, you don't know Dumbledore, and we must at all costs prevent your fiery meeting. You don't know Walburga and a lot of purebloods, after all!"
Hermione leaned back in her chair and put her feet up on the table, a habit that annoyed Snape terribly, and glared at him.
"Admit it, my husband, you just don't want to be here alone with your own thoughts, do you?"
Snape beckoned for a glass of water from a nearby portrait and drained it in one gulp. Not that the portraits were thirsty or hungry at all, but the habits of the world of the living were dying hard.
"And if so? I don't want to hang here and think about the fact that you have been dispelled into atoms during the transition!"
"Is that why you generously offered to follow me so that we could be dispelled together?" Hermione laughed frankly, driving Snape into a fit. Well, let him at least once in his life feel his own style of communication on himself. And then, she herself could not fall asleep for a week, still thinking a hundred thoughts per second and not finding an adequate solution to the problem.
"Our whole event is pure madness, Hermione, and you don't have to be a prophet or a master of logic to understand that. You will call for a debt collection ceremony and, in theory, it should return you to the past, because that is where those who owe you the most are located. The magic of marriage, which still binds me to you, should lead us to the Other Side, and there... We do not know what will happen there. And you will not have another chance to return home."
"I don't want to go home, Severus, what is waiting for me here? Losses, the graves of loved ones, a possible Ph.D., and rare dates with unlucky suitors."
"You will lose your friends..."
"Wait a minute, you've been trying to get me hoarse all this time to listen to your crazy ideas, and now what are you doing?" Hermione raised her eyebrows.
Snape exhaled noisily and sank into a chair.
"Do I have the right to worry about you? Do I have the right to be honest with you about the risks? I still have the right, Hermione, I am the one to whom you are very dear. Mind you, not Maya, but Hermione! You have yet to put on a new disguise, but I will be the only one who knows and remembers the real you. And you'll remember the real me too!"
Hermione summoned a kettle from the kitchen and made herself a cup of strong coffee without sugar. She took a deep breath and wrapped her arms around her mug.
"Do you think that if I'm the Department's Chief Auror, then I'm not afraid? Or did I learn to smoke in the corners just because it makes it easier for me to endure PTSD? I'm terribly scared, Severus, but there's nothing holding me here anymore. This is a chance to give my friends a happy future. Even if they don't know me, this version of me. I don't know, it was probably destined from above, by Moiras, spirits, and magic, or who else cares about our fate high up there? But the Time Turner didn't just fall into my hands in my third year, you know? As if the very line of probability brought us together so that we, after all, achieved our goals."
"Insane goals, Hermione."
"Life is boring without risk," I'll quote Sirius to you."
"He didn't finish well," Snapped Snape.
"Who among us did well?"
Snape paused in shame.
"I was so afraid of ruining everything, but it turns out that I just had to take the first step. And who knows..."
"Yes, I should have listened to you..."
"So listen to me now, and stop clucking at me like a mommy."
"I'll go with you anyway, I'll ask Draco to cut the portrait out of the frame and put it in your suitcase. By the way, have you already decided what you will explain to your friends?"
"I will write a letter in which I will honestly tell them everything, I will attach my memories, let them look at them in the Pensieve. Let them declare me crazy."
"I think they will understand. They would do exactly the same."
"Not everyone is that crazy, Severus."
"But that's your strength, Hermione."
"Yes, I study all the rules, so that later I can break them with a clear conscience. It's worth the risk."
"And for starters..."
"First, let's save Regulus and get him to make peace with his brother. Or vice versa, let's finish off the impenetrable Sirius. It seems to me that it all started right at the moment when Regulus found the first Horcrux."
"I like your confidence," Severus smiled.
"There are a lot of things you like about me, Severus. So come on, get on the road. We leave tomorrow at dawn."
"Let's hit the road!"