A/N: I don't own Harry Potter or any related characters

This is for the Hogwarts School of Witch and Wizardry

Sci fi September - "You're from the past, and you joined me in my time-travel adventures. I know history says you go back, so I'm trying not to get close, but I'm falling in love with you." AU

Word Count: 758

"I can't, I mean, it's been fun, Severus, but I can't keep taking you with me. If I do, there's so many things that will go wrong, that could be different. You need to go back, you're important to a lot of time lines," Hermione said, looking out at the river. She'd brought Severus here, to this time, a time after the war, one she had wanted to share.

The whole sky was on fire, the world felt right with the air of celebration hanging around them. It was one of her happiest memories. She'd hated who she had shared it with the first time. This time, this was much better.

If someone had told her that becoming an Unspeakable would lead to her time-traveling back to the time of Severus being a young man, she would have laughed. If they had said she'd fall in love with him, she would have smacked them.

Now, she wished she had never taken that job. Things had gone from wrong to worse. She'd lost years of her life, becoming younger with the jumps. Now she was about fifteen, the same as the boy standing next to her. Fifteen... and she wasn't entirely sure she'd managed to stablize the deaging process.

She hoped she'd gotten it right. She hadn't told Severus that part of it, only that she'd learned to time travel. He'd figured it out soon enough though, as she as now the same age as him. That hadn't stopped him from wanting to do the same, see the world beyond the walls of his own time.

They'd jumped around a bit, with her being so careful not to be in the same time and space as their other selves. She'd brought him here, to this moment to do the one thing she didn't want to do.

"Hermione, I don't want to be important to those time lines, I only want to be important to one," Severus stated, looking in her eyes. She blinked back the tears. Severus put an arm around her. She sighed, looking over to him.

"I can't keep taking you with me. You need to do so many things before we even meet. We weren't supposed to meet, not until I'm much older, younger, whatever," Hermione said, throwing her hands up. Severus watched her for a moment.

"Tell me. Tell me what I am to you, Hermione. What the future me is to you," he asked.

"Nothing. He's nothing to me. He was my teacher, that's all. He was a pawn in the war same as everyone, we never... we never connected. It was all just, it wasn't like this, it wasn't me falling head over heels in love with someone I can't, that I'm not supposed to, have."

"You love me?" Severus stated. Hermione nodded.

"I do, and I can't."

"Why? What would be so bad if you stayed? What would be so bad if we picked a time, disappeared there entirely?"

"It would completely screw the time line, things wouldn't happen like they're supposed to. People might not exist that need to exist. People would live who shouldn't, it would be complete chaos, disrupting the whole universe," she whispered.

"Hermione, right now, we're teenagers, teenagers do really dumb things," Severus stated. Hermoine snorted back a laugh.

"I am not some silly teenager! I am twenty-three mind you!"

"They can restore your original age?" he asked, looking at her. She sank slightly.

"No, I'm stuck looking like this."

"You could come home with me, be an exchange student, make sure everything that is supposed to happen, happens..." Severus said, thinking about it.

"It would still change things. I would change you."

"And you're not saying no," he commented. Hermione shrugged.

"I'm not, but I'm not saying yes. We can maybe give it a try? But then... I'd have to give up traveling, even with you. We'd never get to see so many things?"

"I don't care about those things Hermione. I care about you, and maybe smacking Sirius in the face?"

"We could smack him in the face... It wouldn't make too much of a difference in the grand scheme of things," she commented. "But if I stayed, I'd be at risk of spoiling everything. I know too much."

"I have a solution to that. If the only thing stopping you from living in my time, starting over, is the memories, we could put them somewhere else, somewhere save. Ever hear of a pensive?" Severus asked.

"Yes, yes, that would work and then I wouldn't be a potential time bomb set to unravel everything," Hermione exclaimed, kissing Severus as the sky burned around them.