AN: It is good to be back writing! I've missed the fun! I don't think this will be a very long story, 6-7 chapters probably, but it just kept rattling around so much in my head I had to get it out. I've rarely published anything romantic on this site, and I realize that might not be everyone's cup of tea, and that's okay. I hope some people are enjoying it! I love interacting with readers, send me a message or a review, I'd love to hear from you.

"White, no sugar," she told him.

"Here is your tea, then," he told her. She reflected on how the words sounded benign, but somehow they managed to sound threatening.

"Thank you," she took the tea and then sipped.

"And for your second answer?" he pressed.

"That is a more complicated answer," she answered, selecting one of the egg and cress sandwiches. "How much do you know about Arithmancy?"

"I did take it at Hogwarts," he conceded. "It did not interest me enough to study further beyond what was necessary for potions."

"Bill and I have launched a study on what went wrong during the battle of Hogwarts," Hermione explained. "Most of what we used was Arithmancy, but we also used some prophecy codebreaking and such that Bill knew about from his work with the Goblins. I even used some Ancient Runes . . ."

"Enough with how you got there," he snapped impatiently. "You certainly bury the lead! Tell me what you've come to tell me!"

"There is a chance to change fate," she told him simply. "We can go back and right the wrong of what happened in the battle – we can win. I have pieced together every last tiny detail of the battle, and there were three points of failure. I believe that if we fix those three points of failure, then we will change fate."

"I have many questions," he told her, leaning back and sipping his tea. More questions than were proper to ask her, he conceded quietly to himself.

"I imagine you do."

"Firstly, why me?" he asked. "Surely Mr. Weasley or one of the other survivors would be a better choice for you as a companion on this venture."

"It has to be you," she explained. "Two of the points of failure are things that you can directly do, more than anybody else. First, we need to kill the Carrows."

"Just do that easily?"

"Yes," she pressed on. "It needs to happen early, the fact that they're inside the castle means that they are able to take out too many of our people even as the dome goes up. I think the best time would be when McGonagall confronts you in the Great Hall. But you should maintain your spy status for a bit longer."

"Why can't I just admit my status to McGonagall and fight from the inside?" he asked, not telling the girl that it was actually his fondest wish that he had been able to do. McGonagall attacking him and banishing him from the Hall had been one of the worst moments of the war, somehow even worse than seeing her dead body lying on the bridge later. She had likely been a victim of said Carrow.

"Because we need you later to face down the Dark Lord, and he needs to think you're still his man," she told him. "We cannot change the timeline too much; we risk total chaos."

"So I'm supposed to take the hit from Nagini and then give Potter a pep talk?"

"He never knew anything about what you did for him," Hermione explained. "Or how everything was Dumbledore's plan. Dumbledore should have told him about the plan, but he didn't. The Arithmancy shows that it would have made a difference."

"I'm not sure how my opinion of Potter would have made a difference to him," Snape snorted.

"You don't know Harry well," Hermione insisted. "It would have. How did you survive that attack anyway?"

Seeing Snape this way was not what Hermione was expecting. He had always been so arrogant, so sure. But this was different – changed. Not diminished, really, but more . . . approachable.

"How did you survive that, anyway?"

"I carried an antidote on me," he explained simply. "I had a . . . premonition that it might come in handy one day."

"It was a handy way to fake your death."

"Not too handy if you lot still know that I'm alive."

"I think the dark ones don't look for you because they think you're gone," Hermione explained. "But the order has known you were alive all along. Dumbledore made a roster, one that shows people's loyalty and, well, their status as an alive person. We found it among his . . . things he had with the Order. That's how we know that not only were you alive, but that you were always loyal."

"And finding my house?"

"It's not difficult for someone who works for Gringotts," she explained.

"That information is supposed to be private," he growled.

"The French are not as worried about these things," Hermione answered, more glib than she felt. In truth, how he was talking to her put a shiver down her spine – nobody talked to her like this. Most of the people in the order were kind and business-like, knowing that her status as Harry's best friend involved a lot of grief and also a lot of danger – the Deatheaters would love to get ahold of her. She felt like the moment she turned 17 she was treated like she was 35. But somehow talking to her former Professor made her feel like a schoolgirl again.

Snape sighed deeply, putting his teacup down and rubbing his face. "You are as much trouble now as you were in school."

"It's the good kind of trouble," she smiled, trying to engage him. She knew that part of getting him to agree to her plan was to charm him, and she also knew that she was absolute rubbish at charming people. This should have been someone other than her – almost anybody other than her, to be honest – but she knew there was hardly anyone left.

"Alright, I'll bite. What's the third point of failure?"

"The most obvious," she told him. "We need to kill the snake. That's why it didn't work – Harry and the Dark Lord squared off, and his body was killed, but he couldn't be killed because his Horcrux was still alive. My job will be to make sure that the snake is killed. It shouldn't be me directly, as historically, I'm nowhere near where Nagini is. We can't give away that we're time travelers. The most logical is Neville Longbottom."

"How do you intend to time travel?" he asked her. "Time turners are gone."

"Almost gone," she told him with a smile. "I have one."

"You have one?" he echoed. That surprised him.

"I do," she told him. "And that's part of the cost of it all. As you know, time turners have gone extinct because there was a curse placed on them, and if they are used, then they destroy themselves. We have one, and to use it means that we cannot come back. We believe it is the last one in existence."

"So that is the plan then?" he asked her, raising one eyebrow. "Just as simple as that, then?"

"As simple as that," she replied. "I can show you all of my work, I've brought it with me . . ." she began to extract parchments and notebooks from her small bag.

"That will be unnecessary," he told her. "Finish your sandwiches and your tea. My answer is no."

"But Professor . . ."

"No is a complete answer, Miss Granger."

"But why? If we have a chance to make things better?"

"You can't possibly think there could be anything worse," she told him with exasperation.

"Things can always get worse," he told her. "Bill Weasley has found a wife and has moved on, I suggest you do the same."

"Do you think that there could possibly be any happiness left in this world?" Hermione asked. "We know that the Wizarding world has infected the muggle world, and that things cannot hold out for much longer. Crazy people are in charge, and there is nothing we can do to stop them. This is something we can do."

"So you will go off on this half-baked scheme, a young girl with no real battle experience, trying to change the course of the world," he observed cruelly. "If you can get the time turner to work, if you survive the battle, the chance of you actually being able to make these changes is infinitely small. The most likely chance is that you will end up back in time, either killed or broken and stuck in another time."

"And what is so great about our lives now?" she asked him. "I'm living in the hell of grief and so are you!"

"Do you think there is anything that can still that grief?" he demanded, his voice dripping distain. "There is nothing that will stop it. Your life is now just existence, the sooner you realize that the better."

"When did you give up?" she demanded. "The Severus Snape that I knew was a double agent, he did everything he could to protect the life of his friend's son, and he was one of the bravest men I ever knew!"

"And where did that get your Severus Snape?" he thundered. "As a double agent I lost all my friends, on both sides. I was hated by everyone. I had to kill Dumbledore! I had to sit by and watch Deatheaters kill my friends, colleagues, and innocents that I didn't even know. And all of that was for a purpose – to protect the one person that could save us all. Lily's son. For the first time I believed, I was a part of something bigger. And it all came to naught."

"But what if it's not over?"

"He's dead, Miss Granger," he answered, but this time without anger, just sadness.

"Then we get him back."

"That is a job for a younger man," he smiled sadly. "Seven years ago I may have followed you. But now my life is . . . quieter. I tend my garden, I oversee my lands, I care for my tenants, and I read. My life may not be much, but it is enough for me."

"Don't you miss being part of something greater?" she asked. "Your life used to mean something."

"I do not need your validation," he told her, the stern Professor persona returning. "Now, if you are quite done – and I see your sandwiches seem mostly eaten – you can be on your way."

"The storm has grown worse," Hermione observed, looking out the window and grasping for anything. All of her work and all of her plans couldn't end here! "Lightening can interfere with apparition."

"Nonsense," he barked. "Do you take me for a fool, Miss Granger? Don't think you can wheedle an overnight invitation."

"Are you really going to throw me out in the storm?" she asked, incredulously.

"I absolutely can," he told her. "You probably planned coming here in a storm so I would feel compelled to keep you. Well, you are clearly a survivor; you can survive a little storm."

"Professor Snape . . ."

"I am not your bloody professor!" he thundered. "I am not responsible for your antics or plans any longer! Leave at once!"

"I will not!" she retorted, crossing her arms in defiance, but keeping her voice cool. "I won't leave until you thoroughly look over our plans. You, Severus Snape, are our last hope."

"Then all hope is gone," he told her, acid in his voice. "Because I am no sooner going to go off on some hare-brained scheme of yours than . . ."

Suddenly, the room was filled with the smoke of spellfire and battle, and Snape sprung to a defensive stance, his wand drawn. He might have known that the chit would bring trouble with her. But instead of a Deatheater, he saw Miss Granger being accosted by a small house elf, barreling into her at full force and nearly knocking her down.

"I's let her in, Master Snape," Tilly confessed, wringing her hands. "I knows her, she's the Delacour elf. She says shes had to get to Miss . . ."

"It's alright, Tilly," Snape answered her, trying to gentle his voice for the poor anxious creature. "Go and check the wards again. I trust your judgment on the elf."

"Mixie!" Hermione gasped in surprise. "What are you doing here?"

"Deatheaters," she gasped, clinging to Hermione's stomach. "Theys came, Miss Hermione. They came. The house was afire, it was. We coulds not fight, we could not, we tries, oh we tries. Master Bill, he made me come tos you, hes said . . . hes said to tells you that it's now the only hope."

"Is Bill gone?" Hermione asked quietly, patting the elf.

The elf nodded. "Theys all gone, Miss. I tries, I tries to save Mistress, and the baby, but . . . I could not . . . it was Belatrix Miss, shes sos mean to us elves . . . she stunned mes and I saw, I saw . . . the baby . . ."

"How did you get away?" Hermione asked the small elf, trying to comfort it as it sobbed.

"Master Bill," the elf replied, hiccupping. "Hes saw, he saw his . . . his family . . . hes told me tos go to you, he unfroze me, I – I tried tos grab him to take hims with me . . . the Carrows . . ."

Snape could picture the scene all too well as the house elf described it, he had been on enough Death eater raids to know how they operated. If you killed the family first, especially children, the men were often much easier in their despair. Nobody in the house survived. He blinked, trying to get the picture of Bellatrix Lestrange murdering a baby out of his mind, but he had too many memories of it. He knew just how it happened, she delighted in this type of work. Though he had not known Bill Weasley well, he felt sympathy for the man – probably one of the best of the Weasleys.

"I must go . . ." Hermione mumbled.

"You must not," Snape told her, with a quick movement of his wand. "The wards are now modified, neither you nor the elf can leave."

"A minute ago you were insisting I leave," she snapped.

"A minute ago your home base wasn't wiped out by Deatheaters," he countered. "If you go now they will get out of you where you have been and they will come after me."

"I would never tell them!"

"You are not a child any longer," he told her brutally. "Surely you know that anybody can be broken given enough torture. And you heard the elf, Bellatrix was there. No, you will stay here. They are all dead by now anyway."

With that, tears began to stream down Hermione's face, and she cuddled the elf even closer to her chest. Her legs gave out underneath her and she began to sob.

"Tilly," he barked.

"Yes, Master Snape, sir."

"One calming drought for our guest, one firewhisky for me, a healing kit for the elf," he assessed the small group and then sighed. "And please make ready the blue guest room for our . . . guest. She will be staying the night."