"Who are you?" Dumbledore demanded coldly.

Hollis sent out a small magical pulse, placing everyone in the room instantly and finding that there was a wall behind her. There were fifty-three people, pretty evenly divided between men and women. There were three large windows total, but they all lay behind the ranks of Order members. And while there was a door off to the side, only behind four people, she didn't know where it led and she hated turning her back on unknown people.

There was no way that this was a potion-induced hallucination and she didn't know a single spell that could induce this kind of thing. She had never known some of the people in this room, had never seen their faces, so there was no way that her mind could use them against her.

Dumbledore raised his arm a little higher. "I will only ask once more – who are you?"

"Don't presume to order me around, Headmaster," she said coolly, reassuming her usual air of control and intent. She hadn't always felt it, but her men had done better when she appeared to feel that way. "I'm Field Marshal Grey," she lied blithely, only just remembering to change her last name. She'd have to figure out a new first name later – Hollis was a bit too distinct.

Dumbledore stared at her queerly and she stared back evenly, conscious of all the other wands pointed her way, of the fearful, confused, and surprised faces in front of her. And horribly, achingly aware of Severus' coffin just behind her.

How was he dead? Who'd killed him? What had killed him? Had that emotion - that bright, fierce emotion - been what she always hoped it was? If he had lived, would there have been a future for them? She knew he hadn't seen her as James Potter's daughter in a long time, but had he progressed that far? She remembered the little tin in her hand and slipped it into the same pocket that still held Texas and Maine's letters.

"Field Marshal Grey?" he repeated slowly, watching her movements almost as carefully as she was watching his.

"Yes," she said. "Where am I?" she added after another moment.

"We'll ask the questions here, missy," Moody said. She noted that his nose was still intact and he had both of his eyes as she set her face into a hard mask her underlings had learned meant danger.

"It's Field Marshal or simply Grey to you, Auror Moody," she said. Moody's face twisted into a sneer and he made ready to retort.

"Settle down," Dumbledore told them both. She did no such thing – defiance would cover her grief long enough to get out of there and find some sense of reality.

"Where am I?" she repeated firmly, her grip tightening on her wand. It was slippery with blood and she made a mental note to clean it as soon as possible. Hollis shifted her weight to the balls of her feet, keeping her knees bent slightly. Her ankle throbbed, but she could heal it later and she shut out the pain entirely. Being able to move quickly meant more than her comfort.

Pain is a message. Messages can be ignored.

And then she realized having to make a fast exit would mean leaving Severus' coffin behind and she was torn. She severely doubted that they'd desecrate it in any way and they'd probably bury it properly, but she hated the idea of leaving him behind, left with virtual strangers. But, she decided, if it really came down to it, she'd have to. He'd want her too. He would say he had done too much for her to get taken out because she didn't want to leave his body behind.

Severus Snape was - had been - nothing but practical.

"You're in a safe house," Dumbledore said vaguely. She hadn't expected a clearer answer, but it still irritated her. She had grown used to getting her answers quickly; she hadn't had to ask twice in a long time. "Where did you come from?"

Answer for answer then, she thought as she answered just as vaguely, "A battle."

She wouldn't have even said that much if it wasn't for the state of her person. Dirt and grime covered her from head to toe, along with the blood and stench of sweat. Her closely fitted dragonhide coat and pants had mostly protected her, but there was a cut on her face that had, thankfully, stopped bleeding but crusted to her face. She could feel it crack and flake when she shifted her features or spoke. And that didn't even begin to describe the blood soaked into her clothing, some of it hard and dry, the rest sticky and various degrees of fresh.

The overwhelmingly copper scent of all the blood gave her that gross metallic taste in the back of her throat and she wondered, briefly, how Remus Lupin was handling it with his heightened senses but didn't spare the time to figure it out.

"What's the date?" she asked, knowing it was her turn.

"February 18, 1981," he answered quickly. "What battle?"

She didn't answer, trying to figure out if he was lying or not. Taking a small risk of their paranoid retaliation, she waved her wand, casting aTempus charm. Thankfully, no one tried to curse her, as she doubted she could have reacted out of anything but simple lethal instinct just then.

He wasn't lying.

Her face must have given something away because Dumbledore asked, "What?"

Hollis looked up at him, wondering if she should tell him the truth. The implications of what had happened were sinking in and she knew she was holding the golden ticket to stopping the war in its tracks. But could she use it without making everything worse? She started seeing faces, each and every single person she had seen die, no matter how briefly. Flashes of battles and skirmishes and desperate duels came back to her. How could she justify not doing it? How could she not risk it in the hopes of saving millions, of saving Texas and Maine and all the other states, of Mary/Carrie, the kids she'd gone to school with, of saving Severus from his awful, hard fate?

Hollis felt the peace that normally accompanied making a hard decision set in and she took a deep breath, letting it out slowly and carefully.

How to phrase this?

She raised her wand at a mild pace, so as not to alarm them. "I solemnly swear on my magic that I am from July 14th of 2002 and that I will never knowingly help Voldemort by either action or inaction," she said evenly. A white flash of gold-tinged magic flared out from the tip of her wand and confirmed her oath.

Disbelieving and shocked murmurs buzzed through the room and she could see Dumbledore thinking hard and quickly about what to do.

"Do you know how you got here, Miss Grey?" he asked after a long moment.

"Field Marshal or simply Grey," Hollis repeated. "Even General works."

"General Grey, then," Dumbledore corrected himself, a hint of something unreadable in his gaze. Everyone had instantly quieted to hear her answer and she simply shook her head. "Who is in the coffin?" he asked more gently.

She gritted her teeth, clamping down on the tears before they could rise. "A good man. You need to know nothing more than that."

Thankfully, Dumbledore left it there. "What happened before you arrived?"

"That's a bit of a broad question. Clarify."

"Tell us about the battle, please. Perhaps we can find a reason for your being here."

"Going into detail will take quite some time, so I'll sum it up," she started. "At 7:32 pm, I received word from S - our spy that Voldemort will be launching a major attack against the last of the Light bases in England. We had a plan for it, so I enacted it and alerted the other bases. At 2:57 am, Voldemort attacked, according to schedule. We waited for them to close in and then exploded maybe a two-thirds to half of their forces and charged the rest.

"Understand that the Second War with Voldemort has turned into World War III. The Muggles were involved and everything. My generals, Texas and Maine – two of the many Special Forces and other military forces that America sent throughout the world – and I went in, seeking out Voldemort as per custom. He's been obsessed with killing me for some time, and I'm usually one of the few that can hold him back for any period of time.

"I found him, and we dueled until dawn or thereabout when I got a lucky Blasting Hex in and he lost his sternum, parts of his ribs, lungs, and heart. I waited for him to bleed to death, then announced it to the rest of our decimated armies. The Light rallied and the Dark fell. Depending on how well the other bases did, this could've been the end of the war in England, so long as we kept out other Dark Lords. It wouldn't, of course, be the end of the war – we'd have to assist other nations as their wars spawned from ours – but that's a separate issue and now null and void anyway.

"After Voldemort's fall, I went seeking out what was left of my army and I found a close comrade who had been cursed, but hadn't yet died. It was incurable, he said, so I sat with him until the end and put him in the coffin. And then I was here. No one could have hit me with a spell without my seeing or hearing them, and it wasn't a latent curse of some sort. Voldemort only landed a few and they were all things I recognized, things I was willing to risk getting hit by in order to get in a better retaliation shot.

"So there's no reason for being here, but I'll let you know now that you'll have to kill me to keep me from changing the future," she finished, putting all her considerable will behind the statement.

Dumbledore looked conflicted. "Miss – General Grey, do you understand the dangers of time travel?"

She fixed her violet eyes on him – she had been observing the room, where many looked disbelieving. Her eyes had been green originally, but an improperly brewed potion to correct her vision had turned them violet. Mercifully, that was the only side effect and her vision was still properly corrected.

"Probably better than most," Hollis said, letting down her Occlumency shield just enough for him to see that she was telling him the truth without showing the memory itself.

Dumbledore studied her for a long moment. Eventually, he only nodded. "Very well. We'll do all we can to help you. What do you know about Voldemort?"

She smiled thinly. "It's more of what I don't know, and I know everything, from his birth until his death less than twenty minutes ago."

Dumbledore blinked and the Order shifted uneasily. "How?" he asked curiously.

"You told me some of it, our spy told me a lot, and Voldemort told me a fair bit himself," she said flatly. "As I said, he was rather fixated with killing me and he has a strange way of boasting to his so-called victims. Now, do you have a leak in your Order?" she asked Dumbledore. He nodded.

"You know who he or she is?" he asked in return.

"Yes," she said, having already spotted Wormtail in her peripheral vision. She had kept her stance and her muscles tight; it was an ingrained habit, a pose she could hold for hours. "May I deal with it?"

He contemplated it and Wormtail made his move then. She brought down her shield at the first sign of movement and by the time he was uttering the incantation for the blasting hex, she had darted through the first few ranks and stunned him. He hit the ground and she summoned his wand and bound him. She cast an additional spell that locked his Animagus ability.

"Holy sh – " she heard several people murmur in shock, all of them having automatically backed away from her, keeping their wands pointed at her. She twirled Wormtail's wand between her fingers.

"Check his arm," she ordered a small blonde man. He warily approached them, skirting around her quickly, and bent over Wormtail's left arm. When he had the sleeve pushed back, he swore and moved back so that all could see the inky black Mark burned into his arm.

"No," a man next to Hollis gasped. She didn't look at him – she didn't have to. She remembered that voice well. It was Sirius, which meant Remus, and James and Lily were nearby.

"Yes," she said evenly. "And there was no Imperius Curse. No torture or loved ones being threatened. He's a coward who was scared of dying, of losing the war, so he turned to Voldemort, offered to spy in return for his life being spared."

"How do you know?" a different voice, one she didn't know, asked lowly, sounding hurt and betrayed. She chanced a glance and met the hazel eyes of James Potter, her father. It was the first time she had seen him alive since before she was old enough to remember things.

"He told me one night, when I was thirteen," she answered back softly. "He was trying to talk Remus and Sirius out of killing him."

"Why you?" Lily asked. "Why were you there?"

Hollis considered how best to answer and then said, "I'm willing to tell you lot the story later, but not just now. He needs to be taken in and I...I have work to do."

She tossed the wand to Remus, who caught it with a heartbreaking expression and turned away, walking back to the black coffin. She stared down at it for a moment. Hollis had nowhere to go, no money to speak of, and hadn't the first clue about what to do with the coffin. He had to be buried, obviously, but he needed a proper resting place. A headstone. That kind of thing.

But she couldn't think there. There were too many stares boring into her back and she thought best with movement anyway. So she levitated the coffin, her heart giving an inexpressibly painful squeeze, and started for the door.

"Where are you going?" Dumbledore asked gently, his voice sad.

She didn't look back. "I don't know. But I'll find you. Don't worry about that," she answered blandly, suddenly feeling tired. There were murmurs, some of concern, some of less kind emotions, but she ignored them and walked out of the room.

The door led to an average hallway and Severus had to float behind her instead of beside her. She didn't look at the pictures hanging on the wall, solely focused on the front door, which was a dark wood with stained glass in the center on the top half. It depicted some sort of plant and, once through it, she was on a wide, wooden porch that was covered. A rocking chair sat in one corner, along with a swinging bench.

The air was bitterly cold, especially in comparison to the muggy summer morning she had just left behind, and she was grateful for the heavy coat. Stars shone brightly above and the moon was only half full.

Quickly, Hollis tried to think of all the places she had been too, the places she could Apparate to, a place Severus would like as a final resting place. Only a couple stood out in her mind, and she stepped off the porch and touched the coffin. She had already deduced that wards would give her no trouble and she prepared to Apparate.

"Wait!" she heard a woman call out behind her. She turned and saw Alice Longbottom running out of the house after her. She was pulling on her great coat, her gloves, and scarf in hand.

"Yes?" Hollis asked.

Alice hesitated for a moment and Hollis had a few moments to notice how much she looked like Neville. He'd had her nose and ears, her eyes and a hint of her in his face. And they looked the same when summoning up their courage and determination.

"I want to come with you," she said. "You're going to need a place to stay and someone who knows what's all going on. I mean, you don't look very old, so you're probably not as familiar with this time as you could be. Well, you might be, but..." She shrugged as she trailed off, a little pink-faced but her brown eyes still determined.

Hollis turned it over quickly in her mind. "I'll accept your company and help under one condition." Alice gestured for her to continue. "You swear that whatever you see or hear, you keep to yourself unless I give you express permission to the contrary. It's not harmful to anyone – just...personal."

Alice nodded and held up her wand and made her oath with the addition that she would uphold it only so long as innocents weren't harmed and it wasn't self-harming either. "Where to first?"

Hollis sighed. "I'm going to bury him," she said. She waved her wand, cleaning off her dirty hand, and then held it out to Alice, who accepted it. Her hand was warmer than Hollis', and a little larger than hers as well. Hollis twisted.

With a crack, she landed them on top of a hill, just beneath a towering oak tree. A river was frozen along at the bottom of the hill and the oak above them stood slightly apart from the rest of its brethren, at least twenty yards from the rest of the forest around it.

She gently lowered the coffin and looked around, her breath like puffs of smoke.

It was almost exactly the same as the only other time she had come here with Hermione, after Ron had abandoned them and before he came back. It was a silent place, mostly, the animals having been quieted by her sudden appearance, but she thought Severus would like it. It exuded peacefulness and he was unlikely to ever be disturbed.

Before the grief could overwhelm her, she set to work, waving her wand and thawing the earth at the base of the tree. She then shifted a load of earth off to the side. It only took a couple of more waves for the grave to be deep and perfectly rectangular. With a wave to set up spells to keep animals away, she set off into the forest to find some good sized wood or a boulder to transfigure into a headstone. To keep from dwelling on what she was doing and for whom, she started plotting in her head, taking satisfaction every time her many plans ended with Voldemort's painful death.

It didn't take long to come upon a good sized log and she levitated it out of the forest and set about transfiguring it into a simple headstone that she thought would be more to Severus' understated style. Her eyes blurred as she tried to think of what to inscribe on it and Alice, who had been staying at a respectful distance, came close.

"Who was he?" she asked softly, crouching next to her.

"Severus," Hollis said, taking slow, deep breaths. Alice said nothing but Hollis could feel her surprise. Steadying her hand, Hollis started engraving what she wanted on his headstone.

'Severus Snape
Who Died as He Lived
Fighting to End the Dark

'It matters not how strait the gate
How charged with punishments the scroll
I am the master of my fate
I am the captain of my soul.'

"It's beautiful," Alice murmured.

Hollis nodded and slowly turned to the rest of her task – actually burying him. She stood and went around the grave, to the other side where his coffin rested and stood next to it, looking down at it.

Why hadn't she done anything? Why hadn't she found the courage to speak up, even just once? Or, if she was particularly bold, steal a quick kiss? Why hadn't she done something, anything to find out if he felt the same way? Why had she left it like this? It would have been painful, so very painful, if he had died and there had been affection there – or if she had been rejected – but anything had to be better than standing here, not knowing and full of regrets.

"So much for bravery," she murmured, levitating the coffin carefully and lowering it. She tossed in the customary handful, Alice doing so as well, and then smoothed over the rest with her wand. Alice placed the headstone at the head of the grave, nestling it between two roots of the tree. It looked beautiful and ethereal in the moonlight. "I'm sorry I wasn't there sooner," Hollis told the grave in a whisper.

If she stayed there another minute longer, she was going to lose what little control she had left. She could feel it pressing down on her, the tears welling up, and the throbbing ache in her chest that encouraged her to just sit on the ground and cry her eyes out, cry until there was nothing left, until that numbness came back.

"Ready?" Alice asked.

"One last thing," Hollis said, pulling out the slender silver chain from around her neck. The pendant was simple - a small black heart encased in silver – but it reminded her intensely of Severus now. Black and silver were the only colors she had ever seen him in possession of – and the silver only coming from his pocket watch and the more recent dusting of it in his hair. With a wave of her wand, she made the pendant into a permanent port-key to his grave and then tucked it back under the collar of her coat. "Now I'm ready," she told Alice, who held out a hand. She took it and Alice twisted.