Chapter Text
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August 1997
Fourteen years had passed since he'd last felt the searing bite of the cruciatus curse. Fourteen. Severus often told himself, during that long, pleasant reprieve, that he remembered what it felt like, that he would never forget such a sensation, that he would never take the peace for granted.
He was wrong.
The reality was far worse than anything his feeble memory could conjure up.
Two years passed in the blink of an eye after The Dark Lord's resurrection— or was it a haze of stress and cruciatus-induced delirium? Whatever he called it, the years of relative peace had slipped out of his grasp as if they'd never been at all.
Was this what his future held?
Was this what his life's work had led him back to?
Perhaps he'd come full circle, and this was karma finally coming to finish what he'd set in motion all those years ago.
The one thing he knew was that it became less and less likely with every passing week that he would survive whatever new hell the world was coming to. He'd never been more sure of anything.
The Ministry had fallen just the evening before. While the mission to secure the Minister of Magic was a success, the subsequent raid of the Weasley household in search of Harry Potter had been a failure. It seemed even the overwhelming triumphs of the day was not enough to save them from his wrath at their supposed failures.
But with the Ministry in their hands, that also meant that the manhunt for him had ended. The murder of Albus Dumbledore was forgiven in the eyes of the new law, and he could finally return home. He'd spent the past month sequestered in a safe house with only Draco Malfoy for company—aside from the occasional summons to Malfoy Manor—suffering as the boy oscillated between whining and weeping over his own failures and ranting for all to hear about how the Dark Lord would be victorious and all would be well before they knew it. If the insufferable boy could pick a damn position, Severus might have had something to work with, but as he had apparently not yet decided where he actually stood on matters, there was little Severus could do but attempt, futilely, to tune him out.
Now, he was no longer the most wanted man in the country. That honour had fallen to Harry Potter and his cohorts, who had wasted no time going into hiding as he had been. Good for them. It left him the opportunity to finally go home and exist in blissful silence and solitude, for at least a while. It was only a matter of time before he was announced as Headmaster, then a whole new journey of shit would begin. He was determined to thrive in his short reprieve while he had it, everyone else be damned.
Night had taken over completely by the time he finally made it home. Rain pelted down from above like it had something to prove, leaving the air thick and moist in the summer warmth. The clouds blocked out any light that might have shone from the moon, and mist hung around the scattered streetlights, casting the street in an eerie haze. It had been a lovely sunny day down south, but in Cokeworth, the weather was nothing if not predictable and sufficiently drab, not unlike his mood.
He climbed the three short steps to his front door, his hair and robes dripping onto the stone steps under the awning. The wards hummed around him as he let himself in and he had a brief, pleasant sense of welcome before he remembered where he was, though he shoved it aside. Home was home no matter how shitty it was, and no amount of shit would make him prefer the Malfoy's ostentatious safehouse over his own solitude.
His pleasant mood lasted all of two steps into his sitting room before he halted, the hairs on his arms standing on end to tell him that something was wrong.
A light was on in the kitchen, only the barest slivers of it visible from down the hall. He hadn't been home in over a year, and he knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he wouldn't have left the light on when he last left.
Then, a shadow shifted out of the corner of his eye. He turned, wand in his hand, a curse on the tip of his tongue, but just as his eyes registered the figure sitting on his threadbare sofa, he heard—a second too late—the shifting of footsteps behind him as a hand landed firmly over his right shoulder and a weapon pressed into the left side of his neck. He cursed himself for letting his guard down after an excruciatingly long day, but it couldn't be helped.
"Drop your wand," a female voice ordered from behind him.
He tried to turn to see her, to identify who his attacker was, but a glint of reflective light and the press of a sharp edge into his neck told him that the weapon trained on him was a knife, not a wand, and he froze.
He couldn't see her. She was shorter than him, hiding behind his back just out of sight, and he didn't dare move and let her slice into him. There was no hesitation of firing a spell with a knife. One wrong move and his jugular would be severed, and Severus was no fool to think he could outrun it.
The person on the sofa turned to face him, but shadows shrouded their face. They stood, tall and broad-shouldered; a man.
The blade pressed into his neck a little harder, and the woman spoke again as the man approached. "Drop it."
His fingers flexed over the wood, and against his better judgement, he did as told. His wand clattered to the floor and rolled away.
The man stopped his approach as the wand rolled toward his boots, then bent down and picked it up. He twirled it between his fingers reverently.
"It's been a long time since I've seen this wand," the man said. Severus' eyes widened, searching desperately in the dark. That voice… It couldn't possibly…
The man came closer. His hair was short, trimmed neatly and slicked to the side. A beard covered his jaw, neatly trimmed and just as dark, and it was obvious from his silhouette that he was dressed entirely muggle, his jacket and trousers a sharp difference from the robes that Severus wore.
But as the man stepped closer and his face slipped into the light, Severus' heart pounded furiously in his chest.
The eyes staring back at him weren't a strangers, but his own. Older, more wary, more grizzled, and more crazed, but undeniably his. The lines on his forehead and around his eyes were not enough to disguise him, nor were the streaks of grey around his temples, because it was a face that Severus knew well. He'd seen it every day for his entire life. It was his.
But that couldn't possibly be right.
The man's eyes bored into Severus' as he tried desperately to make sense of what he saw. The man, by contrast, didn't seem the least bit perturbed by seeing Severus. They'd been waiting for him.
"What's the date?" the man asked. The hand on his shoulder and the knife against his neck squeezed just a tough tighter, letting him know that this was not an idle request.
"The second of August," Severus answered.
"And the year?"
Severus paused as more pieces clicked into place. "Nineteen-ninety-seven," he whispered.
The man swore under his breath. His eyes darted over Severus' shoulder where the woman hovered just out of sight.
"It's later than we wanted."
"But not too late. There's still time," the woman said.
The man's eyes flicked back to Severus and narrowed.
"Who are you?" Severus asked before the man could ask another question.
The man's lips curled into a grin, far more predatory than Severus had anticipated. His crooked, yellowed teeth gleamed in the dim light."Do you really need to ask?"
He didn't, but the impossibility of the situation demanded it. "Would you believe it, if you were me?"
"But I am you," the man said.
In one swift move, the man twirled the wand one last time until he was holding onto the tip, and held the handle out toward Severus. He stared at it, then his eyes flicked back up to the intruder.
"We're not here to hurt you," the man said, then pushed the wand closer. "We just want to talk. Can I trust you to remain calm?"
Severus nodded.
"Take it."
Severus cautiously grasped the handle of the wand. The man took a step back then looked over Severus' shoulder once more. "Let him go."
The knife and the hand both slid away. He glanced over his shoulder as the lithe woman with long hair step back into the shadows, but he couldn't make out her face.
The man pulled his attention back when he turned and stalked back to the sofa where he'd been sitting. "Take a seat," he said with his back turned. "Let's have a chat."
He waved his hand and the lamp on the side table flickered to life. Severus followed and sank into the wingback beside the empty hearth, facing the sofa. The woman, more cautious than the man who was fool enough to turn his back on an armed opponent, followed behind Severus and didn't take a seat herself until he had done so. Only then did she sink onto the sofa beside her companion, with no space whatsoever between them, their hips and shoulders pressed together, and wrapped her dark blue travelling cloak around her body. The woman's hand then came to rest on the man's knee, her fingers squeezing gently. Neither of them seemed perturbed by this closeness, and Severus couldn't take his eyes away.
This man—this man that looked so very much like himself, that was by all suggestion actually himself—was nothing like him. To turn his back, to have such closeness with another person, a woman no less, was unheard of for Severus. But this man seemed nothing but content with the status quo. It sent waves of confusion through Severus as he watched.
But then his eyes flicked over to the woman and he saw her face for the first time. His heart stuttered.
The most pressing thing about her was her eyes. Where colour should have been was only a cloudy, ghostly white. No irises, no pupils, nothing. He could see the faint shadow of where colour had once been, but it was muted, as if they'd been covered by a heavy veil.
It wasn't until he managed to tear his attention from her eyes and see the rest of her face that he made his second, all the more unsettling discovery. He recognised her. The woman was undoubtedly Hermione Granger— a decade older, all traces of baby fat gone from her cheeks, her face hardened by time. The third, and possibly most disturbing realisation of all, was that she was bloody gorgeous.
And she was staring at him.
Well, he assumed she was, anyway.
He couldn't actually tell since her eyes showed no direction, but her face was turned toward him and he felt that prickle of being seen, like she was staring into his very soul. His heartbeat picked up speed and he wasn't sure where to look, as he wanted more than anything for the sensation to go away.
There was also the smell. It was cloying, overwhelming, and surrounded them both like clouds of invisible mist. Sweet, burnt, and tinged with decay—it was the scent of dark magic, and they were both positively bathed in it.
He tore his eyes away from her and instead looked at his older self, who watched the silent interaction with a quirked brow and one side of his lips twitched up in the beginnings of a grin.
"How did you do it?" Severus asked through his mounting panic.
"A ritual," the man said.
"A dark ritual," Severus answered for himself.
"Of course."
"Why?"
"Because we lose."
The surety he said it with, the acceptance, the resignation, made Severus' blood pound in his ears. They lose. No ambiguity, no hope for success, only the plain hard fact. He didn't have to ask which side he referred to, the presence of Hermione Granger at his side was evidence enough. The Dark Lord wins, and the light is stamped out.
"What year did you come from?"
"Twenty-twelve," he said. "Fifteen years from now."
Severus gulped before asking his next question, the one burning in his mind. "How long do we have?"
He didn't need to elaborate. He knew that they knew what he was asking.
"Less than a year," his older self said. Then he shrugged, as if the information was inconsequential. "Nine months."
"To the day," the Granger woman added.
"To the day," the man agreed.
"Why are you here?" Severus asked, his eyes flicking between the two of them when the silence between them grew too heavy.
"To fix it," his older self said simply.
Their nonchalance was beginning to irritate him, or possibly it was the sleep-deprivation. Most likely, both. "And you thought… What? Just drop in here in the middle of the night and all would be well?"
"This was the only place we knew would be safe in both times. And we knew we would need help navigating this time. And who, of everyone that is still alive here, could I trust more than myself?"
Severus glared and bit back the urge to sneer. "I'm just supposed to believe this?"
"Do you think we're lying?"
"I don't know what to think."
"Then look."
The man's eyes met Severus', the offer as clear as day. His fingers twitched around his wand. He didn't hesitate. "Legilimens."
In a flash, he entered the man's mind. Memories and images swirled through his mind at lightning speed. First, it was memories that Severus knew well. The Triwizard Tournament, his first summons since the resurrection, dinners at Malfoy Manor, being tortured, torturing others, the light leaving Dumbledore's eyes as he fell. Then, there were new images. His patronus in a forest, The Dark Lord screaming about losing Potter once again, duelling with Minerva, the snake, then pain. Blood. So much blood. He could practically feel it burning on his skin. Then, the girl, hovering over him, crying, vowing to help him, vowing to come back. Then running. Hiding in the shadows while Death Eaters searched a room. Small villages, muggles, violence, pain, passion. He could feel the whip of dark magic around him, feel the tears the man shed, the desperation he felt. The memories moved so fast he couldn't grasp on any of them to see them in more detail, but he felt them all the same. Then, he was there, in his house, dusty, mouldy and abandoned and falling apart at the seams. The Granger woman sat across from him, performing a ritual to take them back, the whisper of intent so strong in his mind that he could feel it tangibly. And then he saw his own face as it was now, dripping wet from the rain outside and still twitching occasionally from cruciatus aftereffects, staring back at him with shock and confusion. He felt the regret the man felt at the sight of him. It was too much.
He pulled out of his mind, reeling. He watched as Granger squeezed the man's knee tighter before he squeezed his eyes shut. He didn't want to believe it, but he couldn't deny it either. They lost. They lost the war, all of it was for nothing.
He panted, his hands fisted in his robes and his face cast down while he processed it all. He was exhausted, beyond exhausted. He wanted to take a shower hot enough to scald the deepest depths of purgatory, then he wanted to sink into bed and sleep for the next three weeks until he had to return to Hogwarts and start a whole new fresh Hell.
But he could never be so lucky.
Now, he had bloody time travellers in his sitting room, expecting things of him. Another person to answer to. More secrets to keep, more lies to tell. It wasn't as if he didn't already have enough on his plate. What was another element of risk to add to his miserable life?
Tears stung the corners of his eyes, from exhaustion, from pain, from the memories, and from the sheer injustice of the situation.
"We can tell you our plan whenever you're ready, but take all the time you need," his own voice said from across the room.
Rain battered against the window outside. The patience in his voice grated on his nerves, and he had the sudden urge to destroy something, to blow a bookshelf into ashes or to smash a window or anything. But he didn't. Instead, he gritted his teeth, willed the tears of frustration away, and looked up.
"Tell me what you need."