Severus and Rowena looked towards Siveon, not knowing how to react.
"I am glad that your weakness has finally paid off," said Siveon, showing his crooked smile. "You have made things a lot easier for me."
"Shut your mouth," Rowena snapped. She and Severus had jumped to their feet and were on guard, wands at the ready.
"I'm afraid you will be the one to keep quiet, Rowena, and this time it will be for good," Siveon raised his wand and pointed it at her. "Avada Kedavra."
"Flipendo!" Severus shouted, also pointing towards the woman. His spell hit Rowena and knocked her out of the curse's path, but he didn't stop to see if the trick had worked, because he turned on Siveon and attacked him.
Siveon created a powerful shield to defend himself and in turn attacked Severus, who was thrown backwards through the air, but had enough reflexes to send a curse before hitting the ground. Siveon screamed in pain but took revenge by sending a barrage of explosive spells against his former master. Severus lost his wand when he was hit on the arm and stayed on the ground, watching as Siveon approached him, ready to finish him off.
"Avada–"
"Flipendo" this time it had been Rowena who cast the spell, knocking Siveon down. Those precious seconds helped Severus recover his wand and get up.
He raised his arm to attack Siveon, but he threw a fireball at Rowena, who screamed in pain as she was helplessly enveloped by the flames. That scream distracted Severus, and Siveon took the opportunity to suddenly attack him.
Severus tried to concentrate, but he couldn't help Rowena because he was having serious difficulty stopping his pupil's rampant attack.
"It seems to me, Snape, that you will not be able to complete your mission," he mocked. Severus glared at him with anger.
"Finite Incantem," he shouted, pointing toward Rowena. Instantly, the flames around her disappeared, but Severus received a painful spell in the chest. He fell to the ground again, feeling how a piece of iron was pressing on his chest, preventing him from breathing. Siveon held the spell, smiling as he watched Severus suffocate.
"No!" Rowena shouted, running towards Severus and kneeling next to him. "Enough! Leave him alone!"
"Be quiet!" Siveon shouted at her, casting a Cruciatus. Rowena screamed as she felt the pain coursing through her body, piercing her. The curse seemed eternal, especially since Siveon was in no hurry to remove it. It amused him to see how his victims writhed at his feet, unable to defend themselves.
After a few minutes of agony, he decided to raise the wand and let the woman breathe.
"It's time to put an end to all this," Siveon gloated, approaching her. "It's been interesting meeting you."
Rowena tried to stand up to face him or go to Severus, but a new Cruciatus fell on her, harder than before. Severus heard her screams without being able to move, and barely breathing. Rage and helplessness filled him inside, competing with the spell that was suffocating him. He fought against that invisible claw with all his might, hearing Rowena's torment over and over again, and finally managed to free himself, inhaling a great breath of air.
He grabbed onto his wand and cursed Siveon. The masked man, who was not expecting it, received a powerful electric shock that pinned him against the wall, leaving him unconscious. Severus crawled over to Rowena, who was breathing weakly, and lifted her into his arms.
"Are you all right?" he asked her.
"Yes... I think so," she answered, with a look of pain on her face. "And you?"
"I've been better, but also worse," he conceded. Then he noticed the blisters that covered the woman's skin, caused by the flames. "Wait, I'll heal you with a spell. Don't move," Severus closed his eyes and concentrated on a rather long spell that eliminated the woman's blisters and burns. Then he murmured another incantation to dull the pain she was surely feeling. All that effort left him very tired, but satisfied to see that she stopped suffering.
"Thank you," Rowena whispered, rubbing her arms.
But they had lost precious time, which allowed Siveon to recover and regain consciousness. The death eater moved with difficulty, a grimace of rage on his face.
"I will take him away from you," Severus prepared to fight, brandishing his wand.
"Don't risk it," she pleaded, taking his arm.
"He doesn't want to kill me, he just wants me to see how he hurts you," he explained. "He won't do anything to me as long as you're alive. Besides, I know how he fights," he gently pushed Rowena's hand away and stood up. Siveon had also risen, staggering from the effect of the spell, and was looking at Severus warily.
"It's time to put an end to this nonsense," Severus muttered.
"Do you want to face me, Snape?" Siveon mocked. "I don't think you have much chance of winning."
"Always so arrogant."
"Humility has never been my thing."
"And neither is control over your magic," Severus replied, challenging him. Siveon lost his arrogant smile and glared at his former master with hatred.
Without saying anything, the masked man attacked, but Severus was prepared, and stopped all the spells almost effortlessly. Siveon became enraged and tried to attack Rowena again, but this time Severus stopped the curse and threw him backwards, knocking him out of the room and away from the woman. Pressing his former student, he made him retreat until he went outside of the building.
Siveon's soldiers were waiting outside the house, and approached their lord to help him, but he stopped them.
"Go after the woman and kill her!" he ordered, thinking that Severus would go to help her, but he was wrong.
Severus continued his duel, as if nothing special was happening. Suddenly, he had remembered the old lessons with his pupil, and watched with satisfaction as Siveon fell again and again into the same mistakes he made as a teenager. That helped him stay calm and sure of himself, and he faced Siveon as if he were still a fifteen-year-old boy.
Siveon went out of his way to try to defeat him, fighting with all his might and using his best tricks, but Severus stopped his spells with offensive ease, without saying a word and barely moving his wand. Siveon became desperate, because the minutes passed, and he achieved nothing. All he had accomplished was proving that once again Severus was much better than him.
Screaming in rage, Siveon cast an especially powerful curse, and Severus had to send a bolt of lightning to stop it. The spells collided in the air and pushed against each other, without quite coming together. The wizards held on tightly to their wands, mentally pushing their spells, knowing that the outcome of that strange fight would determine the rest of the duel.
Finally, the spells became so charged that they ended up exploding, throwing the mages backwards. Siveon fell to the ground, but Severus hit the edge of a half-ruined wall. The crack of his back was heard clearly, and Severus understood the consequences of that blow when he suddenly lost the use of his legs.
In desperation, he tried to use his wand to try to fix his injury, but he had dropped it when he hit the wall, and now the weapon was lost in the rubble.
Severus was completely helpless, unable to get up or defend himself against Siveon, who had risen to his feet and was advancing towards him. His mask had fallen, and he could perfectly see his crooked smile and his contemptuous expression.
"I told you that you had no chance."
ooo
Rowena stood up and ran towards the door as Severus emerged from it but had to stop dead and jump back to avoid the edge of a sword, which nearly severed her head. The soldier lunged at her, and Rowena ducked and somersaulted to avoid the attack. She got up like lightning, just in time.
The man raised his sword to bring it down on her, but Rowena grabbed his wrists, holding his arms up, and kicked him in the stomach. The soldier snorted, but didn't let go of his sword, pushing Rowena off her balance. She watched as another man entered the room and stood to her right, moving his sword in an arc to strike her, and following her intuition, she fell back.
The soldier struggling against her let himself be carried away by his own weight and fell too, getting in the way of his companion's sword, which stabbed into his side. The man screamed in pain and dropped his sword.
Rowena grabbed the weapon and quickly turned to her left, where another man was attacking her. The woman parried her attacker's sword, deflected it, and pierced the soldier's chest with her weapon, causing a fatal wound. Without wasting time, she turned towards the man on the right, making him retreat, and wounded him in the chest. The man fell on top of his companion, bleeding out like him.
Rowena didn't have time to think about what she had done, because more men had entered the room, closing ranks to catch her.
ooo
Severus saw Siveon standing in front of him, with a euphoric and arrogant expression, looking at him with superiority and pride, and ready to torture and kill him.
"In the end you became a death eater," Severus commented. He was very calm, because he knew he had nothing to lose, but he wanted to buy time at all costs, so he could grab his wand, which he had seen among the stones on the ground. His voice, however, expressed boredom.
"That's right," Siveon's smile widened. "The Dark Lord called me and marked me," he explained proudly. "He expressed his surprise for your lack of support."
"You weren't prepared," Severus replied, disdainfully. "And you're still not."
Siveon's smile disappeared instantly, replaced by a grimace of rage.
"Look at this," he said, rolling up his sleeve to show the Dark Mark. "Do you see it? He thinks I'm good enough."
"But not me," Severus replied, forcefully. Siveon became enraged and pointed his wand at him, red with rage.
"Damn you," he muttered. "I was never good enough, right? You were never satisfied with me."
"That's not true," Severus said, as calmly as before. "If I hadn't been satisfied, I wouldn't have wasted my time training you."
"But you didn't want me to become a death eater."
"No."
"Why?"
"There are other things that make a great wizard, apart from magic, and you don't have them," Severus replied. "As I told you, you were never prepared."
Siveon screamed in rage, and sparks flew from his wand.
"Yes, I was prepared! I was!" he shouted. "I proved it to you, I killed my mother!"
"And you think that makes you a great wizard?" Severus asked, disdainfully. "It doesn't, and anyway, you did no do such thing."
"Yes I did, Snape, you ordered me to!"
"Shut up Iven!" Severus ordered, with the authority he used in his time as a tutor. Siveon closed his mouth immediately. "You are still as blind as ever," he told him. "That wasn't your mother, it was a dog transformed with polyjuice potion."
"What?" Siveon looked at him astonished.
"Did you not notice how she moved? How badly did she talk when she did it? How did she scream? How did she shrink in on herself? No, of course not," Severus snapped, with contempt. "As always, you were more aware of the impression you gave than what you were doing."
"But–"
"You were arrogant, Iven, and you still are," Severus was using the same tactic that Dumbledore used with Voldemort, and to his surprise, it was working quite well; by treating Siveon as a child, without giving him all the respect he wanted to have, he was showing him that he still had authority over him. "And therefore, that blinds you. Learning dark magic is of no use to you if you are not able to distinguish your mother from a transformed dog, if you are not able to respect your superiors, and even less if you do not know what your priorities are. You were not ready when the Dark Lord called you two years ago, and you are not ready now either," he said.
Siveon remained silent, looking at him with disbelief and hatred.
"Two years ago?" he asked at the end.
"What?
"What did you mean by two years ago?"
"The dog episode happened two years ago," Severus responded, surprised by the question.
"No... it can't be. I've been here for more than twenty-five years!"
Severus stared at him, suddenly understanding what was causing Siveon's aging. Voldemort had made a mistake by sending Iven to the past! In his eagerness to prevent the construction of Hogwarts, he had sent his death eater until a few years before Rowena's birth.
"What did you come for?" he asked, taking advantage of Siveon's confusion.
"I had to kill lord Albert," said Siveon, referring to Rowena's father. "If he died, she would never be born," he began pacing back and forth, with a look of despair on his face. "It's not possible, you should have gotten older too," he murmured.
"Why did you fail?"
"Everything went wrong!" Siveon exclaimed, unaware of Severus's tactic to obtain information. "I tried to ambush him or cast a spell on him, but he was too sheltered, never traveled alone, and never went where I wanted. When I poisoned his wine, that servant came and drank it... and when I tried to cast a spell on his own dogs to attack him, his horse broke a leg and couldn't go hunting. In the end he died of natural causes."
"As it should happen," Severus murmured, understanding that Rowena's theory had been fulfilled perfectly. Then he remembered her and became worried.
"But today everything will end," Siveon continued saying. "I will kill Rowena and I will finally be able to complete my mission."
"Your arrogance borders on stupidity, Iven," Severus snorted. "You can't change the past; you've seen it yourself."
"Past? What past?" Siveon asked. "I have lived twenty-five years locked in this era, I am not in the past, but in the present, and I can change whatever I want."
"Iven, you speak again without thinking. You belong to another century, and right now you are in the past. When you return to the... future, you will realize how wrong you are, and that your actions here have been a waste of time."
"When I come back?" Siveon laughed, a dry, mirthless laugh. "Snape, you can't go back, this is a journey of no return. And even if it were possible to travel to the future again, you won't be able to do it."
Severus was going to reply, but Siveon stood in front of him again, pointing his wand at him.
ooo
Rowena looked at the men coldly, rocking on herself for balance. The soldiers were relaxed, sure that with their numerical superiority they could catch her without problems. She pretended to be scared and backed away, but it was only a ruse to draw her wand and utter a spell, which launched the men into the air and anchored them to the wall.
This immobility was temporary, so Rowena drew her sword and prepared to face the soldiers, one by one, as they freed themselves. The men were enraged, and they shouted and insulted her, and when they managed to free themselves, they attacked her with rage, ready to hit her with all their strength until she died. But Rowena had received intensive training, and her physical weakness was compensated for by her skill and her desperation. She wouldn't let them catch her again.
Remembering the lessons learned from her father, she faced the soldiers trying not to turn her back on them or get cornered. She used her magic to become stronger and faster, and after a few endless minutes, she managed to wound, defeat, and finish off her rivals with cold and calculated precision. As the last of her enemies bled to death, Rowena leaned on her sword, catching her breath.
The bodies of those men, the first ones she killed, were scattered around her. She did not feel proud of herself, scared by that explosion of violence, but she knew that she had had no other option. Something inside her had changed, as if her innocent part had died in that room, giving way to a cold, adult woman, capable of killing without hesitation.
She was disgusted with herself, and felt like vomiting and crying, but she overcame it with the same strength that had kept her alive during those days of torture in the tower. She repeated to herself that those men would not have hesitated to imprison her again and do all those barbarities to her once again.
Finally, with her conscience calmer, Rowena dared to leave the room, looking for Severus.
ooo
Severus couldn't take his eyes off Siveon, but he thought about his wand. He had to get hold of it, although of course he couldn't move, because his sudden paralysis prevented him from doing so. The distance between the wand and him was too great for him to push himself and fall on it, so he had to resort to an old trick.
"Accio," he thought, but nothing happened.
"Anyway, I don't care about not being able to return," Siveon continued, apparently eager to talk. "Here I am powerful, and everyone obeys me, I have no reason to return to my old life. Besides, no one will come looking for me, because they will think that I am still fulfilling my mission."
"Accio, damn it," Severus repeated, and this time the wand vibrated, but did not move.
"But you... you did not come here under the Dark Lord's orders," Siveon hissed, glaring at Severus. "You're hell-bent on protecting that woman at all costs, and that's interfering with my plans."
"I said Accio, Accio wand!"
"Under normal conditions, I would let you live, because you were my teacher. However, you are the only thing that prevents me from receiving all my honors," Siveon looked at him thoughtfully, twirling his wand between his fingers. "You know, Snape? They say that many death eaters killed their teachers because they couldn't match them, because they didn't let them... grow. Now I understand why," Siveon pointed his wand at him. "It has been a pleasure to see you again... and it will be even more so to kill you."
The two men stared at each other, without blinking, Severus standing firm, because he was not going to beg for his life, and Siveon with his demented smile.
"Avada Kedavra!"
ooo
Rowena came running towards the two men, just in time to see the green glow.
"No!" she shouted. "Severus! Severus!"
She saw the man sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall, and she knelt next to him, crying, repeating his name.
"Severus, please, tell me something, anything," she sobbed, shaking him. "Nononono–"
"Be careful," he whispered, scrunching his face in pain. Rowena started and looked at him in shock, her golden eyes wide.
"You are–"
"Beaten to pulp, I know," he replied, breathing hard.
"But..." Rowena didn't understand. She looked towards Siveon, who was still standing, although he was leaning against another wall. His face was pale, and his mouth was open in a rigid grimace. "Is he dead?"
"He should," Severus replied. "I was always faster than him," he explained, showing his wand.
Rowena did not believe that Siveon was dead, so she approached him cautiously. She discovered that his cloak had caught on a bush protruding from the wall, and that was why he had not fallen to the ground, but otherwise Siveon was completely dead.
Rowena studied the face of the one who had been her attacker and enemy for so long, and suddenly noticed something protruding from the collar of his shirt. Frowning, she took it, not believing what she saw.
Behind her, Severus was trying to stand up, but his legs wouldn't obey him.
"Damn it," he muttered.
"What happened?" she asked, turning and putting away the item she had taken.
"I hit the wall and now I can't feel my legs."
"Let me help you," Rowena knelt next to him and helped him lie face down. Then, she placed her hands on his back and began to transfer energy to him. Severus felt a sort of electrical current running through him, and suddenly, a snap and a creak, as if his spine were settling. His legs gave a slight shake, and Severus could feel the tingling of circulation through them.
"Thank you, thank you very much," he smiled, finally moving his legs.
"I'm glad you killed him," murmured Rowena, who suddenly seemed sad and absent, but helped Severus sit back down. Severus looked at her, surprised by her change of attitude, but did not want to delve into the subject.
"What happened to the men who attacked you?"
"They won't bother us anymore," she replied. Suddenly, the weight of those deaths fell on her like an oppressive blanket. Severus understood how she felt, and took her hand, giving her support.
"Let's get out of here," he murmured.
She nodded and they both got up. They did not turn to look at Siveon, nor even mention the idea of taking him down and burying him, but they returned in silence to the horses and mounted.
ooo
They did not speak as they rode, as if Siveon's death had driven an invisible wedge between the two. They traveled at night, without stopping, and when it became day, they saw the village of Hosmeade in the distance.
When they were approaching it, a group of armed, uniformed men on horseback surrounded them. Severus and Rowena were on guard, although the men did not attack them. The one who looked like the captain stepped forward.
"We are the Hosmeade guard," he announced. "Tell us who you are and where you come from."
"My name is Rowena Adler, and I have come to meet Richardus Ravenclaw," she introduced herself, sitting very straight on the horse. The captain looked at her with amazement and respect and bowed towards her.
"My lady Rowena, we were waiting for you," he greeted. "My lord Richardus has been looking for you since your servants arrived announcing your disappearance."
"I want to see him," Rowena ordered, with an authority that Severus had never heard from her, but that the captain took as normal, because he bowed again and ordered his soldiers to escort the couple to the village.
Severus watched as the captain created a kind of patronus, probably to warn his lord, and kept an eye out in case anything out of the ordinary happened. His concern was unnecessary because the guards simply did their jobs without incident.
They accompanied them to a fairly large house, where the captain led them to a very decorated room, telling them to settle in until Richardus arrived. The couple was left alone and silent.
Severus sensed that Rowena's silence was due to something she had seen on Siveon's corpse, but he did not dare ask her. Perhaps the woman felt guilty about so much death or was just nervous at the prospect of meeting the guardian her father had chosen for her.
After a moment, they heard the horses' hooves, and then the voices of two men talking. One of them was the captain who had received them, and the other was surely Richardus. The approaching footsteps made them stand up to see how the door opened, giving way to their host.
Richardus Ravenclaw was a tall, burly man, with a gentle appearance, brown hair and bright blue eyes. He greeted them with a bow and proceeded to introduce himself. He looked at Rowena with infinite relief, showing that he had truly cared about her disappearance, and displayed exquisite manners.
Severus made up a fairly believable story to justify his reasons for rescuing Rowena, but he let her do the talking, recounting what had happened since her father's death until that very morning.
The woman omitted Severus' strange magic and certain episodes she experienced with him, but she confessed the episode of her miscarriage, so that Richardus would know who he was going to welcome into his house, but he did not change his treatment towards her because of that.
Richardus told them that he had learned of Rowena's kidnapping with the arrival of the servants, and that he had been searching for her ever since. In fact, he had been following their footsteps all along, arriving at the keep one day after Severus rescued Rowena. He had momentarily lost track of them in the castle where they had been sheltering because the nobles, under the Imperius curse, had denied having seen Rowena, but he had not stopped looking for her.
Richardus had found their trail again the day before, and that same morning he had discovered Siveon's body, before the patronus arrived telling him that he must return to Hosmeade.
That story left Severus quite thoughtful, since he saw with irony that, if he had not traveled to the past, it would have been Richardus who would have rescued Rowena from her captivity, something that perhaps would have had to happen for the two of them to fall in love and getting married.
But after all, his actions in the past had not changed the course of history as radically as he thought, because Rowena and Richardus had ended up meeting, perhaps thus closing a cycle that had to occur. It was very complicated, but it made sense to Severus.
He knew that he was facing an event that would decide the course of history, although many others would have only seen the conversation between two young people who had quite a few things in common. It was clear that Richardus and Rowena were going to get along very well, beause after a few minutes of talking, they seemed to have known each other all their lives, but it was clear that there was something else involved.
Severus looked at them a little apart, finally understanding what the voice in his head had wanted to tell him, and accepted with a hint of sadness that this was what had to happen, that Rowena and Richardus would end up together after all.
She had managed to smile again, and it seemed that a luminous halo surrounded her and Richardus, as they spoke, looking into each other's eyes. Severus could feel the strength of that look, the power of that feeling beginning to be born, and he felt out of place, as if he were interrupting something private.
He understood that his presence at that time was only due to the need to counteract Siveon's actions, and that hurt him, because for a moment he had hoped that he could change history and stay with Rowena, but now, observing her smile in that way, he understood that it couldn't be like that. With the poor consolation of having done the right thing, Severus ended up accepting that he had to obey the voice: he had to return to the future.
ooo
That night a party was held in Rowena's honor, attended by guests from various places, especially some of Richardus's great friends: Godric Gryffindor, Salazar Slytherin and Helga Hufflepuff, who arrived accompanied by a bunch of children, some of her own and others adopted. It was she who suggested the idea of creating a school to educate the magical children of the region.
Rowena integrated very quickly into the group, with her usual friendliness, and felt very comfortable with them, as if they were lifelong friends, or as if they were destined to meet.
Severus remained apart, not speaking to anyone, but discreetly listening to the conversation, slightly excited to see that he was witnessing a historic event. That night the idea of founding Hogwarts would be born, as Helga's idea had already permeated the other three future founders.
The founders. They were the real ones.
Suddenly, Godric raised his glass and exclaimed.
"For the best magic school that will ever exist!"
Three other glasses joined his, sealing a pact that would influence future generations. There were Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Slytherin... and Adler.
Severus looked at Richardus, who had not taken his eyes off Rowena all night. He didn't blame him, since she looked magnificent, dressed in blue, and understood perfectly what that man felt. He also knew that he would play a fairly important role, although always in the shadow of his future... wife.
Severus had the impression that his stay at that time was ending, and he left the party without anyone noticing. His help would not be needed from then on. Once outside the house, he headed towards the lake, since he needed a quiet place to perform the spell that would return him to his time.
Along the way his mind cleared, and when he reached the shore of the lake, he had already assumed that his mission was over, that he no longer had anything to do in the past, and that nothing tied him there. He looked at the surface of the water in the moonlight, finding it strange not to also see the immense mass of the castle that would be built next to it, and he smiled when he thought that, in the future, Dumbledore would be waiting for him in his office, a very short distance away from where he was at that moment.
He took out the dagger that he had taken from Siveon and prepared to perform the ritual to return to the future. He cut off a lock of hair, and was about to cut his hand when...
"Severus! Wait!" Rowena was running towards him, picking up her dress so as not to step on it. "Please, wait for me!"
Severus hid the dagger, startled, and waited for her to reach his side.
"Are you going away?" Rowena asked, looking at him with her golden eyes.
"I have to do it," he replied.
"Are you going back to the future?" she asked. Severus was shocked to hear that.
"What?"
"You came from the future, just like Siveon," Severus looked at her with wide eyes. How had she found out? And how would that affect the story?
"How... how do you know that?"
"He told me so himself," Rowena explained. "When he caught me, he told me that he came from the future to kill me, because it was his mission. I thought he was rambling, until he used his strange magic to torture me. His wand and spells were very similar to what you use. And you... well, you exposed yourself when you told me about him. You confessed that you knew him and that you spent months at his side, and you told me about events and magic that do not exist in this time. Furthermore," she continued, "during my illness you asked me if history could be changed by traveling to the past. You wouldn't have asked me if you didn't know that you can travel through time," Rowena said all this very quickly, as if the words were burning on her tongue. She had really wished to be alone with Severus to tell him all that, but she hadn't dared before.
Severus was speechless with astonishment, but he finally managed to close his mouth and find his voice.
"You're the smartest witch I've ever met," he admitted. "But... you don't have any evidence to prove what you say."
"You have given me many clues," she continued. "The potions you brew to heal me when you rescued me, the spell you used to levitate those stones, your wand... these are things that haven't been invented yet."
"I never should have shown them to you," Severus murmured.
"It doesn't matter anymore," Rowena said, shaking her head. "I won't tell anyone what I've learned from you, it would be very dangerous. I know it could change the course of history, and I'm not going to allow it."
"Thank you," he murmured. "But since when... did you have the certainty that I am come from the future?" he admitted out loud for the first time that Rowena had discovered the truth.
"Since I saw Siveon's corpse," she answered, a little more seriously. "I found this with him," she took out of her pocket a golden chain from which hung the figure of an eagle split in half. It was the part of her pendant that had been used as a temporary cord by Siveon. "This convinced me that Siveon was telling the truth, because my father made this pendant exclusively for me, when I learned to transform," she pointed to the one hanging from her neck. "There cannot be another one like it... unless it is the same one," she looked at him as if asking to confirm her words.
"It's the same one," Severus admitted. There was a silence after his words, since neither of them dared to say that they belonged to different times, and therefore, they would never see each other again.
"In that case I want you to keep it," Rowena spoke slowly, extending her hands toward him. "There shouldn't be two pendants at the same time... and I want you to have it."
Severus took the piece she was offering him, and took out the other half, showing it to Rowena. Before the woman's watchful eye, he joined the two parts of the pendant, which of course, was identical to the one she was wearing.
"You should know that thanks to this we were able to reach this time," Severus confessed. For some reason, it seemed important for her to know that information.
"I'll keep that in mind," she tried to smile, looking at the pendant that Severus had in his hands. "Wear it around your neck, so it doesn't get lost," Rowena herself stood on tiptoe, putting the chain over his head. Severus looked at her intensely, and without being able to help himself he kissed her. She didn't shy away from him, but kissed him back, making it last, but when she finally pulled away from him, she was crying.
"I'm going to miss you," she murmured. Severus hugged her.
"Listen, you are the best thing that has happened to me in all my life, and I will always, always remember you," he said. Then he turned away from her and backed away, still looking at her. He took out the dagger and cut his hand, mixing the lock of hair he had cut with his blood.
He squeezed the mixture tightly and quietly recited the spell that Dumbledore had taught him, without taking his eyes off the woman, who still stared at him. He felt his navel being pulled, while everything around him became blurry, and very soon he stopped seeing anything, although he would always carry with him the image of Rowena looking at him.
She stared for a long time at the place where Severus had been seconds ago, crying silently, until suddenly, an idea made her smile: she already knew where the school would be built.