And Loyal Hope Survives

Is life worth living? Yes, so long
As there is wrong to right.

So long as faith with freedom reigns
And loyal hope survives,
And gracious charity remains
To leaven lowly lives;
While there is one untrodden tract
For intellect or will,
And men are free to think and act,
Life is worth living still.

Alfred Austin 1835-1913

And Loyal Hope Survives

I can feel the power of the spells crackling past me. They're being shot left and right and center; people are getting over zealous in their desperation. Slowly I back us up down the hallway, trying desperately not to remember this from Fifth Year, this same hallway, this same feeling of being trapped and scared and soon to be dead.

I wish to myself that I'd had the courage to approach Severus. I know how he feels about me. I also know that he would never come to me. Both his natural Slytherin caution and his many many years of disappointments would prevent him from being able to reach out.

"If I get out of this, I promise I will tell him how I feel. I promise." I whisper my new mantra over and over, wishing it didn't sound like Famous Last Words.

I can see Harry's comforting dark shape, just beyond me, walking sideways to me to cover our left side. Ron has our right. I am covering front and back; we've lost Julie Esterhasy somewhere in the maze of corridors. I hope she makes it out.

My back hits something solid, and I spare a glance behind me. Good, we've arrived at our destination. The Time Room. Harry has been Seeing something recently, in Voldemort's mind, something about the different time streams. Harry had spent as much time as he could in Voldemort's mind, trying to get a clear picture of what ritual that bastard was going to try, but he could only get something about merging the timestreams. When he'd gotten as much information as he could and presented it all to Albus and the rest of the Order, there was pandemonium for several moments.

We couldn't allow this to happen, that was clear.

So, we are raiding the Ministry, trying to set specially designed wards on the Time Room.

I gesture sharply to my co-raiders, and we skitter into the room. Harry groans as he sees that something, some ritual, had already been worked in the room. The room had changed shape, and there were different bits of paraphernalia on the shelves. Most striking, however, was the tremendous tapestry that dominated one wall. It looked like a rushing river, flowing ever downwards, pouring, no - cascading down the wall. Parts of it flickered and changed, it was easily the most beautiful and awful thing I'd ever seen. Harry spares it barely a glance, except to mutter about things being later than he'd hoped.

I drag myself from the tapestry and set the locking wards on the door. Then, reaching into my pocket, the one I always keep spelled to be bigger on the inside, I pull out the ritual supplies I'd been detailed to bring. The three of us settle into our different roles quickly, Harry provides raw power and a flexibility with spells, I provide the knowledge and understanding of how to aim the spell we are attempting, and Ron provides the strong anchor, without which Harry and I would have been lost to the power as it overwhelmed us. The three sides of a triangle, that's what we've always been, I think, giddy for a moment when I see how quickly we all settle into our work. Three is a good number... and then there isn't time for me to think anything else.

The triangle is, in fact, the shape we always take when we try these powerful magics. We sit, tailor fashion, with knees touching and arms reached out towards each other. I have Harry on my right and Ron on my left - my right hand grips Harry's left arm just below the elbow, he grasps me in the same way. The three of us make a tight, strong shape, unbreakable from the outside.

We begin our chant, working quickly in an attempt to hurry through the beginning. This part is mainly set up; what Harry means for us to do is ask the Fates to lock the room entirely. He figures that if there's no way Voldemort can get into the Time Room, then he can't continue with his plans. I just think that locking the damn room up makes some basic sense. I don't want Voldemort or the Death Eaters having any access to Time Turners or any of the other devices in here.

What we're actually trying to do is to lock the Time Room in every time line. Just ... seal it entirely. There's a chance that we'll be trapped inside unless we're very careful, but we have to try. This is too important, and leaving the time lines vulnerable to Voldemort and the Death Eaters is just too risky.

As we work, I can feel the powers outside the room thicken. The locking spells on the door are bulging in with the pressure from the Death Eaters trying to break them. Just as they shatter, we get our first set of Wards set. With a gasp we break our triangle and catch our breath.

None of us turns to look at the door. We all felt the door wards break. The only thing holding Voldemort out is our collective will, at this point. We focus inwards again and lean forwards, gripping each other tightly. Time for the hard work. Through the murk of spells I can see the stone doorway to the Fates' Domain we're looking for begin to form in front of me. There are wide stairs leading down into their domain.

We have practiced this, as much as we were able to, without actually performing these spells. Each of us has a different task. Harry will be drawing fire from Voldemort; providing a distraction, I guess. Ron will be making sure that we're both defended - he's always been the one to protect us. I have to perform the sealing spell. This will require that I bargain with the Fates for their help. I don't know what they're going to demand of me; all I know is that whatever it is, I will willingly give it. Sealing this room from Voldemort is worth anything they ask of me. Including my life, if that's what they want.

Harry was the one who found this spell. I teased him about his long hours in the library at Grimmauld Place, but we both knew that things were getting dangerous. He asked, when we discovered what casting the spell would require of me, if I wanted to talk to Severus about how I felt for him. I thought about it, but decided that I should have something to do in this time line - maybe it would make sure I came back to it. I didn't want to think about what it would feel like to be myself on every single time line in existance. I could only hope that the Fates would allow me to come back to where I started.

As the forces of dark press into the room, I can feel the powers we've raised ripping through me. My last thought, before the power becomes me, is of Severus. If I get out of this, I will tell him how I feel.

I promise.

Chapter One

Year One; Part 1

Severus never knew how hard it had been for the Grangers to accept him. They had got to know him when he was at his absolute worst. First he'd been dealing with the tail end of the war and the Reconstruction, and then he'd been utterly destroyed by Hermione's death. He'd had no reason to hold his tongue and no thought to controlling his acidic words.

There were two reasons they didn't hate him for everything he said and did. One, he was clearly devastated by their daughter's death, devastated to the point of becoming completely self-destructive. It was hard to despise someone who loved their daughter that much.

The second reason was one they never mentioned to him.

He'd almost convinced them that he was the hateful, evil man he wanted to believe himself to be. Then, late one night they'd heard odd sounds coming from the baby monitor set up in what had been Hermione's room. They eyed each other and crept silently down the hall.

Peeking carefully into the baby's room, they saw Severus in Hermione's old rocking chair, Ariel in his lap. He was holding the baby bottle for the baby and was humming. They recognized the song as an extremely old tune, one they'd heard Hermione singing when she was pregnant. She had said it was an old Wizarding lullaby, a spell to bring peaceful sleep. While he hummed and cradled the baby, he allowed tears to fall down his cheeks. Quietly, the two older parents walked back to their room to listen to the soft sounds coming from the baby monitor.

Severus was gone by the time Mrs. Granger went in for Ariel's morning feed and changing. She picked up the baby and cooed at her. As she cleaned and wrapped the baby, a baby she'd never expected to see, she laughed as Ariel kept trying to capture the exotic and elusive Feet that were waving around just beyond reach.

Sitting down in the kitchen, with a cup of hot coffee to drink while she fed the now whimpering Ariel, she watched the baby girl's face. It felt like the first time she was really looking at her grandchild. She had looked for hints of her lost daughter, but now she saw both the little girl's parents in her face. Her eyes were a brilliant snapping black, with irises almost indistinguishable from the pupils. Her face was still round and soft, but the eyes were really striking.

Ariel's hair was the same soft brown as Hermione's ... here Phillipa's thoughts skittered to a halt. She'd thought she'd lost the ability to think about Hermione easily, but something about seeing Severus' obvious grief last night had helped her begin to accept both her loss and the joy of having at least a small part of Hermione to love.

"So, love, what are we going to do today?" She posed the question to little Ariel, and got the expected response. Yes, it was time to eat. Maybe do a little scooting around on the floor. Big plans.

Her voice felt rough and ragged to her own ears, but at least she felt better on the inside.

Hermione's office in the Ministry of Magic was a smallish room off to the side of the Department of Information. Hermione loved the lift ride down to the Atrium, and enjoyed seeing the beautiful open space grow around her as the lift doors opened.

She strode towards the fountain, refusing to look at it. The new Minister had rushed the repair job on the Wizard Society statue and Hermione hated the sight of it. It was still golden, and portrayed the same basic grouping as it had when she was younger, but the feeling was completely different. This statue felt angry. The Wizard, instead of looking beneficent, looked stern. The Witch, at his side, didn't look up at him worshipfully; she looked Imperio-ed, her eyes were absolutely blank. None of the accompanying Beings looked happy to be there. In fact, they looked terrified. The Centaur was wearing a rope around his neck and the House Elf was cowering at the Wizard's feet.

Hermione hurried past the fountain, averting her eyes from what she felt was a perversion of everything she and her friends had fought for.

Downstairs in her own department, she stopped to chat with some of the other witches and wizards who were also doing research with her. Many of them were working on projects she didn't understand, but she was sure they were all as interesting and vital as her research was. Most of them were older than her, but she did have a few colleagues who were her age.

"Hey Hermione!" called Dean. "Look at what I found last night!" He vigorously waved her over to his cubicle, and she grinned at his irrepressible exuberance. Moving carefully, she maneuvered her always overfilled bag past the others' desks, worried about disturbing someone's carefully arranged stacks of paper and ruining months of study. Proud of herself for making it to Dean's desk without knocking against any of the dramatically overfilled surfaces, she smiled up at Dean's bright eyes.

"Yes? What is it?"

He smiled down at her and pulled out an old battered book from behind his own desk pile. With a nervous smile, he handed it over to her.

She looked at him curiously, raising an eyebrow at his attitude, and opened the book to the first page. Suddenly she sucked in her breath and held it. The pictures on the pages in front of her wavered as her eyes filled with tears.

"Oh, Dean, your old sketchbook," she murmured, "Look. There's Ron. And Harry... Gods above, they're so young." She turned page after page, lost for the moment in the dearly missed past. Dean moved around her so he could look over her shoulder.

Chuckling softly at one drawing, he said, "Remember that day? Ron was so sure he could beat Seamus at chess. Seamus was so proud when he won." The pictures showed Ron, sitting behind the chessboard looking sulky and frustrated with Seamus grinning in his chair, practically glowing from the joy of having beaten the Chess Master.

Hermione and Dean laughed at several more of the images, enjoying the memories the pictures triggered. However, Hermione's laughter died at the sight of the next image.

It showed the old Potions classroom, set up for the NEWT classes Dean and Hermione had been in. Professor Snape was sitting at his desk, in an unusually relaxed position. He was resting his chin in his hand, studying the student sitting in the front row on the right. That student, unaware of the scrutiny, was carefully adding precisely measured ingredients to the small cauldron in front of her. What had caught Hermione's breath was the expression on the usually dour and scathing teacher's face.

He was gazing at his student with undisguised longing and misery. The expression was so open and vulnerable, and such an unthinkable one for that person, the most hated and feared teacher in Hogwarts, to be wearing - let alone showing in public. With a shock that made Hermione feel as if her very heart had stopped, she realized that the student being so regarded was herself.

Blankly she turned to Dean. He smiled sadly down at her baffled face, and reached out to cover the hand with which she was stroking the picture of her teacher.

"I drew this in our Potions NEWT class. I was just sketching - you remember how he would have each of us working on different potions so we couldn't compare notes and cheat? I was working on the Memoria Potion, the one that can recall memory from Obliviated people; you know that one has to simmer for 30 minutes. So, rather than jump around, bored, I would bring my sketch book and draw. I saw that expression on his face and had to catch it. It wasn't until later that I realized he was looking at you that way." He gently tugged the book from her hands. Looking thoughtfully at the complex and difficult man in the image, he continued, "I think I knew from that moment how things would work out with the two of you. I'm so sorry," he looked at her, "so very sorry that things didn't work out better. They didn't go the way they should have." He closed the book and held it out to her. "I want you to have this book. Consider it a belated birthday present."

Hermione's eyes sparkled with unshed tears as she took the book from him.

"You're the best, Dean. You know that, right?"

With a big laugh, he threw his arm over her shoulders and said, "Only too true, my darling!"

~*~*~*~*~

Later that week, Hermione was in the middle of a particularly complex Arithmancy problem when an owl arrived. Rather distractedly, she untied the letter from the owl's offered leg and hunted around on her desk for a treat to feed to it. Instead of waiting, however, the owl leapt up off of the desk, its powerful wings causing a minor paper whirlwind in the back draft from its first wing beat.

With an irritated humph at the mess she'd have to clean up, Hermione set the letter aside unopened and returned to the puzzle she'd been working on. Within moments she forgot that there had been a delivery at all.

Every so often, she'd glance up from her writing, but she was clearly not looking at her office. It had dark brown walls, with one window in the middle of the farthest wall. That window was set to look out over the North Sea; the Maintenance Department had found out that Hermione loved the wild raging storms there, so they set the window to show her that view. She'd responded to the gift with a home-baked cake, left on her desk for them to take and share.

Surrounding her were tables holding strange instruments and covered in drifting banks of parchment. She'd made sure to clear off the small table at the side of the door, and she kept her purse and jacket there. The others were fair game for any experiment or equipment she had. Currently, since she was working on Arithmancy, every piece of open desk and table space was covered in parchpads with numbers. There was an odd, flat device with floating balls over it - that one appeared to be sparkling every third minute. Next to the sparkling balls was a round orrery globe, but instead of showing planets, it appeared to display the movements of her friends. Each of the smaller globes was labeled with a person's name. Several of them were settled in one place, and were shrouded oddly, as if they were under a heavy shadow.

She was perched up on a tall stool at the main desk in the center of the room. Her back was to the window; she'd discovered that if she could watch out the window, she would drift off. Her hair was pulled up and back into a roll, with the curls cascading out of the top of the roll and down her neck. Her Wizarding robes were hung on the wall near the door, and she was in Muggle jeans and a soft woolen jumper. And socks - she didn't wear shoes in her office. Sometimes the experiments were damaged by the sound of hard shoes.

She was working on a way the Order could figure out who'd really been affected by Imperius Curses and who hadn't, and had therefore been actively working for Voldemort. She knew there had to be a way, and since the Order no longer had access to any Master level potions, they were all working on alternate methods of information retrieval. Hermione was working with Professor Vector, who'd been wounded badly in the Battle of Hogwarts the year before. The two women had been working together for months now, and Hermione thought they might be close to a partial solution.

"So, if we just add this variable..." she began, muttering to herself, "and then divide by the Runic symbol for will, I think we can start controlled trials." Triumphantly she turned to her companion, but she chuckled when she saw that her colleague wasn't even in the room. I didn't even hear her leave! She laughed at herself.

Hermione sat up at the desk and raised her arms over her head. Smiling softly, she stretched up as far as she could reach and then put her hands at the small of her back and twisted from side to side. The stretch felt wonderful to her cramped back and shoulders. Standing up, she bent over forwards and grasped her ankles to pull the stretch further.

I really should remember to move more when I'm at my desk, she thought, but then that wouldn't be me, would it? Still smiling, she turned to the door to see if Dyava Vector was coming in soon. A moment later, she heard the distinctive sound of her companion's footsteps and smiled at the news she had to give.

Dyava had lost a leg during that last battle, and had refused a magical replacement. She'd asked for and received a wooden leg, and secretly confessed to Hermione that she'd wanted one ever since she had met Alastor Moody. During the months of recovery and physical therapy, Dyava had carefully carved her new teak leg until it crawled with wild animals, Muggle and wizarding. Then, she bespelled it so that the creatures climbed around and played with each other. She'd shown it to Alastor the next time they met and was amused at his reaction. He'd been unable to keep his magical eye from fixing on the creatures, and had looked flabbergasted for the only time Hermione had ever seen him. The two women had laughed until they cried after the man left the ward.

Hermione's smile faded as she saw the stricken look on Dyava Vector's face.

"What - what is it?" Hermione's hand clenched so hard that one of her fingernails poked a hole right through the parchment.

"Oh, Hermione," Dyava started. "Sit down, pet. You're going to need to be sitting."

Slowly, not taking her eyes off of her colleague's face, Hermione lowered herself back down onto the stool she'd been perched on at the tall desk. Dyava's face was pale and drawn, but that wasn't as scary to Hermione as the complete lack of any humor in her dark eyes.

Dyava leaned a hip against a desk and reached out to hold Hermione's hands. "Hermione. They found Draco. He's been," she took a deep breath, "he's been tortured, but he's alive. He's asked for Ginny. Do you know - could she..." Dyava's voice failed her. "They've gone to get her to bring her to him."

Hermione's face had lost all its color. "He's alive? But we thought - " her voice broke also and she put her hands to her face to cover the sudden tears that were pouring out of her eyes. "Oh, but this is such good news..." she sighed and rubbed her face with her hands, only then noticing the parchment still clutched in her left hand. Bursting into laughter, she held out the parchment to her old teacher and said brightly, "I have good news for you! Look, I think I've found the place to start on the testing!"

The two women found themselves laughing and crying and hugging for several minutes after that. With a joyful feeling burgeoning within her, one she hadn't felt in far too long, Hermione grabbed her cloak and prepared to whisk out to St. Mungo's to see her friends be re-united.

Dyava's hand on her arm stopped her in her quick progress to the door.

"That letter," said Dyava, "when did it come?" She pointed at the large letter the owl had delivered earlier that morning.

"Oh," cried Hermione, "I'd completely forgotten. You know," she blushed, "I don't even remember if I offered that poor owl a treat or not." With a happy smile on her face, sure that nothing in the world could change how happy today had made her, she pulled open the flap without even checking the return address.

She pulled out a thick packet of parchment and set the envelope aside. Opening the folds, she began reading the words on the first page. With a fierce gasp and shaking hands, she began shuffling through the papers in her hand.

Blindly looking up, she stared at her friend. "Dyava?" Her voice was small and scared. "Dyava? Where's Lightbringer and Janus, the law firm? I need to go there." Her hands were shaking so hard she dropped the parchments and, with a soft cry, she covered her face with her hands, crouched down and began to cry into the safety of her hands.

Dyava carefully got down on the floor and gently reached out to hold her younger friend. Crooning softly, she stroked Hermione's back. When the tears and sobs had abated, Dyava pulled back to look into Hermione's face.

"Are you better now? Can you tell me what that was all about?" she asked.

Hermione's eyes, large and haunted in her pale face, stared out at her friend. With a hitching sigh, she turned and gathered up the papers again.

"It's Severus' will. The reading is tomorrow."

Dyava sucked in her breath sharply. She opened her mouth to say something, then clearly thought better of it. After a moment, she came out with "They want you there?"

Hermione nodded, looking down at the stack of parchment in her hands. Her hair had come partially out of the roll and strands were stuck to her face, making soft curves on her cheeks.

"Oh, Dyava. I miss him so much..." her voice trailed off as she gulped and took a deep breath. Visibly forcing herself to stop crying, she folded the papers and pushed them into her overly large bag.

With a few more quick and deep breaths, Hermione rubbed her hands on her face, erasing as much of the tear damage as she could.

In a brittle and bright tone of voice she said, "Let's go see Draco and Ginny."

With an answering smile, one that didn't change the sadness in her eyes, Dyava led the way out of the workroom.