Summary: Harry had always been their strength. When they found out how Dumbledore had been hurting him, they decided to be Harry's strength too…even if they had to abandon everything to do it. Time Travel

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.

Categories: Time travel, abuse, slash, het

Chapter Summary: They all met with Hermione, they made plans that only she knew, but they trusted her. She'd earned it. None of them expected this.

Chapter 17: Their Goodbye Pt. 2

Severus knelt so that his head was level with Harry's. They had avoided being alone together for a long time, but the need for privacy today outweighed their fear of the horcrux. They both knew that, but still Harry looked so small and brittle standing there in the middle of the clearing. Even with a neutral expression on his face, he seemed to be suffering so much.

"You're sure you want to go through with this?"

"It needs to be done," Harry said dully, clenching the fabric above his heart. "Besides, you said you'd fix me, didn't you?"

"I did."

How had things gone so wrong?

He had succeeded at first; the boy was training, and gaining control of his fears, and he'd finally smiled again with gryffindorish excitement after they robbed the apothecary in Knockturn Alley. But that was also when he started to slip off the edge. His friends all found him, and their intentions were good, but they'd appeared too soon. Harry could take his private suffering, but he couldn't bear it when others were kind to him.

Severus understood that — Lily had always been his undoing, too. When everyone was cold to him, he could defend himself by lashing out, using his suffering and his rage as a shield against the whole world. But when just one person was kind to him, he'd had to lower his defenses so that he wouldn't hurt her, trying to conceal his suffering even without those shields. Severus had eventually failed and hurt her anyway, choosing to protect himself over her. He had kept his suffering concealed, so she didn't understand what he was doing. His defenses only drove her away.

It was even harder for Harry. His friends knew what he had suffered, so they would stay by his side even if he hurt them. He couldn't drive them away, so he had to tolerate their kindness instead of hiding from his pain. He had to face the cruelty of what was done to him every time he saw them, and he hadn't been ready yet. So he'd found a different way to hide.

Dark eyes noted the tension in Harry's shoulders; observed how he stared at Severus's arms with almost desperate focus. The boy's chest rose and fell steadily, breath tightly controlled as he considered the dread hidden away behind mental walls. Someone who had suffered as much as Harry wasn't likely to forget the sting of those wounds, even after a more than a year of numbing himself.

"Harry," he called.

Emerald eyes jumped to his, stoic and determined. It seemed cruel, to strip away the boy's last defenses, but Harry had been the one to come to him. He had been the one to decide that he should face his pain.

It must have taken such courage.

Unwilling to draw this out any longer than he had to, Severus slipped into Harry's mind. Gripping the boy's shoulders to keep him from running, he cut through the void of Harry's defenses, searching for the dam of emotions that was surely pressed into a corner somewhere. But there was no dam to be found.

What did he do to himself then?

Severus let his mind pulse outward, looking for any trace of emotion. His will invaded the whole of Harry's mind, coating it with his presence as he slipped through shelf after shelf of grayed-out memories. The boy stayed distant, letting him search but offering no assistance.

Desperate to find something before Harry withdrew too much, Severus shoved the boy onto his back and loomed above him, dark still boring into emerald. Harry gasped, remembering the last time the man had held him this way, when the horcrux had driven him to attack.

There.

One memory among millions flared to life on his radar, and Severus grabbed it, violating it mercilessly in search of missing emotion.

Snape forces him to his stomach, mounting his small body from behind. The man's body pushes the air from his lungs, and then begins to grind against him, slow and powerful and completely in control. Harry notices the man's bulge between his cheeks, but before he can react, icy hands slide under his robes, raising goosebumps across his skin. He whimpers loudly at the sensation as his mind blurs and his body begins to stir.

The man is so large. He eclipses Harry completely, and the boy is overwhelmed by the weight of the man's body, his scent, the erotic sound of lips on his neck. When the professor's nimble fingers unfasten his pants and start stroking him in a firm, slow rhythm that matches the press of his hips into Harry's rear, Harry forgets his worries. It's such a relief to feel something familiar.

Ignoring his own shame at reliving the memory, fighting past the buzz of the horcrux in his head, Severus clamped his mind around the relief in Harry's memory and yanked it out with him, drawing it like a thread from a ball of yarn into his student's mind. That was all it took for him to unravel.

Tendrils of emotion appeared everywhere, crawling from the boy's memories until his mind writhed with them like a pit of snakes. The darker emotions, the pain and grief and rage caused by Dumbledore, reared up wildly over the others, lashing out dangerously at Harry's mind. They gathered together, accumulating negative memories every second and drawing them to the surface.

Ah. Now he understood what the boy had done.

When faced with this chaos, he hadn't been able to stop it. This negativity ricocheting through his mind had been too much for him to handle as it twisted his weaknesses to subdue him. Harry had done the only thing he could to stop it — smother his emotions at the source. He hadn't intended to make himself stop feeling, so he hadn't removed those emotions and locked them somewhere. Rather, he had just wanted to stop the thing hurting him. He had built a screen over his memories so that his emotions couldn't reach him, thus stealing Dumbledore's power to hurt him.

That was all Severus had time to observe before a shock of pain across his cheek drew his attention to Harry, who had struck him as he flailed violently, trying to wriggle out from beneath him. But of course, the potions master could never let him run off in this state.

Dodging the flailing limbs, he captured both of Harry's small wrists in one hand, pinning them behind his head so that he couldn't strike out again. The boy shrieked immediately, renewing his struggles as a memory of Dumbledore pinning him the same way rose to the surface of his mind. Barely able to keep a hold on him, Severus channeled his magic into his limbs to strengthen himself and pressed his free arm across Harry's shoulders like a metal bar.

The boy was sure to have bruises from this later.

"Argh, bloody hell,"he hissed as Harry defiantly dug his teeth into his arm, gouging deep holes in his flesh.

Pissed, the man stopped worrying about hurting his charge. Taking advantage of the teeth clamped onto him, he shoved his arm backward and pushed the boy's head into the ground, nearly smothering him with the limb over his face. Harry responded to the violence by kicking his feet, hurting himself more than Severus as his heels slammed into the earth.

"Stop, Harry," Severus growled, trying to dislodge himself so that he could pin his charge more humanely.

But Harry wouldn't remove his teeth. He bit down harder, snarling as he locked his jaw so hard that Severus imagined he could hear the bones grinding.

The sting of teeth brought water to his eyes as he tried to tear free, but he quickly forgot everything when Harry shrieked against his arm, tears glistening in his eyes too. He could see the boy growing desperate at his captivity, losing his hold on rational thought as he turned into a creature acting on pure instinct.

Another scream tore from Harry's throat, but Severus barely even registered it as it broke against his skin. Instead, he stared at the Gryffindor's face. The teen's features contorted as he lost control — spilling over with panic and fear and unhinged fury. The boy began to struggle so hard that he could hurt himself, his flight response urging him on too strongly.

But Severus held him in the present. He weathered Harry's violent struggle, ignoring his own pain and forcing his student to face reality so that he didn't retreat again. He'd once knocked the boy out when he started to panic, but as tempting as that method was, it wouldn't help this time. If Harry didn't conquer this on his own, he would never be able to recover.

The man shoved his upper body forward to get a better grip on the arms straining against his grasp; the boy's nose would have been smashed if he hadn't released his jaw and moved his head away, finally releasing Severus's flesh from his teeth.

Neither expected it when the boy's angry lips crashed into his own to replace the lost contact, violent tongue coating Severus's mouth with the taste of his own blood. The man's grip weakened in surprise, so that when he tried to pull away, the boy's hands were free to grab his head and yank it forward, seeking to provoke the darkness within him.

It was akin to breathing an imperio.

The horcrux's buzz filled his mind, getting louder and louder like an approaching swarm until he felt his control melt away. After all, the boy had kissed him first, right? The man moaned, tongue reaching out to entangle Harry's. His arms fell to either side of the boy's torso to hold himself up as his knee slipped hard in between the other's legs. Looking for something, anything to keep him away from his memories, Harry crashed his hips wildly against the other man.

Harry's breathing was harsh against his mouth as the Gryffindor pressed their bodies together as closely as possible, but Severus could feel the change from agony to lust as the boy's eyes glazed over. Their lips parted briefly for air, and Harry's tongue followed his out of his mouth, hovering in the air in an exquisite picture of desire.

The teen writhed like his body was on fire, mind clearly lost as his hormones stirred. He whimpered, hands tugging urgently at the robes dulling the sensation of their bodies moving against each other. Feeling his own blood stir in response, the larger man pulled back to let the boy begin undressing beneath him, getting a better look at his partner as he did so.

He was so tiny.

This is too dangerous.Severus wrenched his mind from the horcrux's control and let his magic wash over them, putting out the inferno in their blood. The boy gasped as if he'd just been soaked with cold water. He stared at his mentor with shell-shocked, betrayed eyes as his mind refocused.

"Please, sir," Harry begged, his voice nearly breaking. "I need this."

"I will not let you turn me into Dumbledore," The older man snarled, perhaps too harshly. He would not take advantage of an abused child, no matter how sweetly the horcrux sang to him.

"But I trust you," The teen pleaded brokenly, bringing his hands up to cover his eyes. "You save my life, sir; you always do. You're not like him at all."

"Merlin, he really damaged you," Severus murmured. If he was interpreting his charge's behavior right, Harry was so desensitized to simple touches that he actually craved violence to make himself feel.

He climbed off of the boy to put some distance between them, watching as the Gryffindor struggled to gain control of himself, breaths ragged in the warm evening air. Were there tears beneath those hands? There must be; the boy was surely disoriented from feeling so much after so long.

The man waited several minutes as, in an act of extreme will, Harry pulled himself together and removed his hands from his face. His eyes were dry as he sat up to face his professor.

"Thank you for doing that, sir," Harry finally said, clearly shamed by his violent reaction. "It can't have been pleasant."

"You're welcome, Harry. Thank you for coming to me."

The boy grimaced as though he'd eaten a bad jellybean. "It was Hermione who convinced me," he admitted. "I didn't want to do it."

"Yes you did," Severus disagreed. "You didn't want to worry your friends any longer. Some part of you knew that they wouldn't be able to stop worrying unless you took this step. Miss Granger may have influenced you, but this was your own act of courage. Don't take it as anything less."

"You're all so stupid, worrying about a piece of shit like me," Harry sobbed, face crumpling.

Severus had pulled him into his arms before his mind caught up, knowing that the boy's fit had passed for now. There were so many things wrong with that statement that he didn't know where to begin disagreeing, so he didn't bother. Harry surely understood that none of them saw him that way.

"Kindness always hurts. It makes you think about how unfair it all is, and that's painful, but it's something you must face. You didn't deserve it, Harry. What Dumbledore did to you was wrong."

"I hurt everyone," Harry protested, unwilling to be comforted. "Cedric, and Sirius, and now all of you. I —"

"Shhhh," the older man soothed, rubbing circles into the boy's back. "You didn't deserve it. Life is unfair — it has been to all of us — and we're going to try to pick up the pieces now. I know you don't trust that you're innocent right now, but can you trust me, Harry? You said you did. Can you accept that I'm going to help you? That I won't turn on you?"

The boy shuddered against him, grabbing fistfuls of his robes. When he spoke, his voice shook with hysteria. "You said you'd fix me, and now look! Am I fixed?"

"Harry —"

The words continued spilling out, breathlessly. "At least I could pretend, at Hogwarts. Now you've taken everything from me and I don't have anything left that I can bury this pain in! Don't you know how lonely it is, when nobody understands what you've been through?"

"I understand."

"But you won't help me," the boy hissed, emotions shifting again as he struggled to decide which one he should be feeling. He lifted his head to glare at his protector. "You won't distract me from this pain."

"That wouldn't be any different than letting you disengage again. You can't hide forever, Harry."

"You think this is any better? Look at yourself! Can you really say any of this will ever go away?" Ouch. That was a heavy blow, but he wouldn't let Harry know it.

The teen was only lashing out because he was hurt; he was trying to pick a fight so he had something other than himself to turn his pain towards.

"This was the first step," Severus soothed. "It was big step towards facing this. Going back to the past is the next one."

"Ha! You think so, do you?"

"Is it not?"

"We're just going back to hide more. We'll bury ourselves in our new identities and lie to everyone," Harry half-laughed, half-sobbed again. "How will we ever really belong there if we're hiding the truth? How will we bond with anyone?"

Severus hadn't even thought of that. He just wanted to help Harry and stop Dumbledore; he hadn't considered anything beyond that.

"There are ways," he stalled.

Harry wasn't fooled. "You don't know either, huh? This is bloody crap."

"Harry —"

"Just leave me alone," the boy snarled, but his voice cracked and Severus knew that was the last thing Harry wanted, so he pulled him closer.

"I thought you weren't going to do this," Harry muttered after a moment.

"A hug is different from letting you hump my knee," Severus teased kindly, trying to elicit a smile.

His student stiffened in his arms. Had he accidentally triggered a bad memory? Severus loosened his grip as if to release him, but then he heard a sniffle, and felt the boy's head fall limply against his shoulder.

"Drat." The teen's voice broke, and Severus felt tears wetting his clothing as he finally gave in. He sobbed the word over and over again as he began to cry. "Drat."

Kindness really was Harry's greatest weakness. Just one hug, just one refusal to let him hide away and damage himself, had undone him.

"Relax," Severus murmured. It was always hard, when you were used to holding yourself together, to let someone else help you. "I'm with you"

"…alright." The boy mumbled weakly against his chest, voice groggy as the exhaustion from his struggles finally caught up.

It would be hard, but Severus thought that they were going to be alright.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Harry woke to the low murmur of his friends' voices. He lay still, not giving any indication that he was awake.

"Can't we wake him up yet?" Ron was whining.

"Ronald, quit asking that. He's been through a lot and he's going to be really sensitive, so he needs his rest and —"

"Hermione, Harry's just going to be Harry. Snape didn't change who Harry is, he just brought him back. He's not going to suddenly be weak. Harry's never been weak."

There was a lull in the conversation as they all focused in on Ron.

Hermione finally spoke. "Ron — he's been through a lot, you know. He's suffered a lot, and he's in a lot of pain."

"Yes, but Ron's right, Hermione," Neville spoke up from somewhere near Harry. "Treating him like you expect him to be suffering is just going to make it worse."

"And don't pretend you're not excited to have him back too," One of the twins teased.

"Well of course I am!" Hermione said, indignant. "I just —"

"I'm alright," Harry said, instantly drawing all eyes in the clearing to where he reclined on his mat.

"Harry! You're awake! How are you? I was —"

"Harry, mate, good to have you back. We were —"

Ron and Hermione looked sheepishly at each other and went to sit at their friend's side. A tense silence built, as if they were old friends who had not seen each other for so long they didn't know what to talk about anymore.

"I was cruel to you. I'm sorry," Harry said.

"Oh Harry," Hermione said, pressing her lips together to hold back the urge to cry. "It's okay. We're just glad you came back to us."

"But I made you worry for so long," Harry protested, feeling like scum. "For years."

"Harry, mate, forget it," Ron said. "Hermione's right. We're just glad you're here now."

A hand swept down onto Harry's head, energetically ruffling his hair. The boy looked up to a grinning Fred, who winked at him.

"Welcome back, Harry," he said, exchanging a cheerful glance with George before looking back down.

Harry looked at the twins nervously for a moment, measuring the proper response in his head. They weren't as close to him as Hermione and Ron — would they forgive him? Of course they would. It was Fred and George. The boy grinned at them abruptly, pleased to feel the warm feeling he associated with intimacy welling up in his chest. It had been ages since he felt anything so wonderful.

"Harry!" Luna said, unable to hold herself back any longer.

The blonde leapt on her friend's back, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and nuzzling her cheek against his like a cat. Harry laughed, finding her to be as overzealous as usual. A memory came back to him — grey eyes narrowed in a mixture of horror and anger, a normally high and lilting voice deepened and raised at him. Harry had already locked away his emotions when Luna joined their little group, he realized. For the ravenclaw, it had been a very long time since she had actually seen him as himself.

Harry touched his hand to the girl's where they were clasped around him, gentle and affectionate. As he tilted his head, his gaze found Neville, who was standing to the side, watching the group fondly. Merlin, the other boy looked exhausted. Dark circles under his eyes stood out in stark relief against naturally pale skin.

"Thanks, Neville," Harry said.

"Me?" Neville asked, crinkling his forehead in confusion as he pointed at himself. "What did I do?"

"You've been staying up to help me with nightmares a lot. I may not have been able to appreciate it in my state, but I did notice," Harry said. "So, thank you."

The other boy smiled shyly back at him.

"Anytime, Harry," he said.

A nervous silence fell over the group as Harry's gaze wandered, finally, to Snape. He scanned the man, noting his disheveled robes and hair from their struggle. There was a time that he would have been pretty pleased with himself for doing that kind of damage to them man. This time, though, a nauseated sensation swirled in his stomach, followed by acute embarrassment. Gods, he'd actively tried to seduce the man — if you could even call that kind of begging seductive.

"I'm sorry, sir. I shouldn't have — are those scars from me?" Harry asked, suddenly noticing some teeth-like scars in Snape's arm, just below where his sleeves had been rolled up at the elbow.

"They most certain are," Snape said, lips twisting faintly in amusement. "If all else fails, you could fight the Dark Lord with those teeth of yours."

Everyone tensed, collectively holding their breaths as they waited to see how he reacted. Harry snickered, the sound distant and raw to ears that hadn't heard that sound in a long while. The professor returned his amusement with a smirk, glad his reassurance had worked on his charge.

And just like that, it hit those in the group that hadn't been entirely sure of Snape's intentions — these two were close. If not friends, they were at least some kind of makeshift family. Ron in particular felt the tension he had been carrying around with him dissipate with the realization that this thing between them was ok. None of them were whole, but together they were going to be alright.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

The time had finally come. The group watched as Hermione drew complex lines in the dirt, stretching her arms out as far as they could go to draw sweeping circles, looping over other lines symmetrically. Ron wondered if she had always been such a good artist, while Snape presumed her technical accuracy came from her love of Arithmancy. As she drew, she would occasionally pause, just staring at the earth for a moment as if she was trying to recall what to do next. They all knew she had it perfectly memorized though — Hermione had probably even been reviewing it in her sleep.

It was dusk, so the sun cast a sort of rusty light over their clearing. They had emptied it of all their things, even clearing and covering up their fire pit, leaving a large circle of barren dirt and absolutely no trace of all the living that had happened among them there. Even though he had been prepared for it, Neville regarded the vacancy uneasily. They really were about to vanish without a trace from their world. Though they were all going to come out on the other side and resume their lives, there was something really gloomy about how easy it was for them to disappear.

Of course, it wasn't actually all that easy. Neville had miniaturized some of his plants to take with him, and before she agreed to let him do it, Hermione had made him examine every detail of what he brought with him to make sure nothing was included that hadn't been invented after the time they were traveling to. And there was nothing easy about the complex spell lines she was drawing on the ground. She paused occasionally to measure an angle before she resumed, making sure everything was precise.

Wind whistled through the trees around them as they watched; it sounded like a great rumble from some distance away. There was probably going to be a large storm later that night. None of the others were superstitious, but Luna believed that things like this weren't just coincidences. Either Hermione had chosen this night because she knew a storm was coming and wanted the energy for her spell, or the universe was just stirring, knowing something was afoot. The blonde studied her friend, noting that her aura was tight and focused, with no trace of the instability it had demonstrated the other day.

That was good, though a little bit surprising considering what they were about to do. Hermione drew the final circle and rose, regarding the quiet onlookers. She hadn't told them they had to be quiet, but it just felt wrong for them to be making conversation on an occasion like this one.

The girl set her hands on her hips for a moment, surveying her work one last time. With a satisfied nod, she started to direct them to different points within the lines. There was an identical loop for each of them excluding her near the center of the circle, kind of resembling the petals of a flower.

"Where will you stand?" Harry asked, contemplating the lines and noticing there was no matching loop for her.

He had studied enough arithmancy to recognize a few of the designs — shapes for protection spells, shapes he'd seen in portkey spells, and even a shape he recognized as indicating time. The complexity of the ritual was way beyond his level though.

"I'm in the middle of all of you," Hermione said, taking her place in what would be the center of the flower. "It's the epicenter of the ritual. When I cast the activation spell, we'll all be unable to move from within our circles. It's a way to keep all of the individual pieces of the spells from getting mixed up, so we don't accidentally switch ages or something like that."

"That makes sense," Ron murmured as they all fell quiet, looking at each other and the clearing around them.

"Is everyone ready?" Hermione asked, taking her wand from within her sleeve.

She turned in a slow circle, meeting all of their eyes one by one and waiting for a nod before she turned to the next person. When her gaze at last met Harry's, he nodded without hesitation, a determined set in his jaw.

The girl beamed at him, returning his nod.

"You shouldn't all look so solemn, you know," she said. "This is a good thing we're about to do!"

And with that she began the incantation, swishing her wand in different patterns in each of their directions as she spoke the words rapidly and clearly. Wide eyed and grinning, she never tired. It took ages, probably two hours, for her to say the whole thing, but she never stumbled over a single word. The group regarded her with awe, amazed even though they knew her tendencies at how she had absorbed so much information in such a short time. Ron's heart filled, and he found himself grinning along with her, thinking of all the possibilities for their new life.

Finally, thrusting her wand directly upward into the sky, Hermione spoke the final word.

The air around them shifted instantly. It was like oxygen being sucked out of a room, leaving them breathless. Magic sparked in the clearing around them, and suddenly Harry wasn't so sure this was a good idea. He looked frantically to Snape, who looked as concerned as he felt. They'd all known this was dangerous — from what Luna had told them about demons, they knew it would be intense. Somehow though, feeling it was different.

The lines on the ground glowed blue as the magic began to work. The spell lines outside of their loops started to shift, forming even more complex patterns and interacting with each other in a way that none of them had ever seen before. Uneasy, the group turned their attention towards the lines, finding themselves transfixed.

Luna watched Hermione, sensing a change. As the magic in the air intensified, Hermione's aura began to shrink, just vanishing in wisps like it was being burned up. The ravenclaw had never seen anything quite like it. She got caught up in watching it, finding it as hypnotic as the others found the moving spell lines. It was rather beautiful, but somehow, something felt off…

Luna's heart stopped, sinking into her gut. A memory surfaced — "What if I had been killed when I went to find the demons?" — and suddenly Luna understood that Hermione wasn't risking anything by doing this ritual. She was consciously throwing away her life.

"HERMIONE!"

Her friend's name clawed its way out of her throat even as her body froze, stunned and horrified and helpless as she understood that her friend, her first female friend, was about to die in front of her and there was absolutely nothing she could do to stop it now.

Luna's cry snapped the others out of their trance, and they all turned to Hermione just in time to see her fall to one knee, gripping her chest and breathing heavily as the ritual drained her.

Ron was the first to move, taking one running step before slamming into a wall of magic extending from the loop around him.

"Hermione!" he called, pressing against the barrier with all of his body weight as he watched her. "Are you alright?"

Before she could even answer, a shadowy figure rose above her, its killing intent as strong as that of any dark creature that any of them had ever encountered. Hermione didn't even look at it as it loomed, instead struggling just to regain her breath.

"YOU STUPID CHILD!" Severus roared, slamming a fist against the barrier around him. "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?"

"Is that a demon?" Fred asked frantically. "That has to be a demon, right?"

"Why is it here?" George asked, equally astonished.

"HERMIONE!" Ron yelled louder, throwing himself against the barrier around him. "Let me out of here! Hermione, I'll save you!"

"You can't stop it now, Ron," Hermione gasped, struggling to balance speaking and breathing. She managed to direct a grimacing smile in his direction. "This ritual requires a catalyst — the person who casts the spell has to power it with their life."

"BULLSHIT!" Ron screamed, taking out his wand and trying to blast through the barrier. The energy only ricocheted back, knocking the wind out of him. "I'm not going to let you do this to us, Hermione!"

"You can't stop it!" Luna cried over the crackling magic, her voice breaking. She buried her face in her hands. "The demon was already inside of her from the first time she went to its cave. It's not going to let her go."

"You can't be serious." Neville said, face crumpling as he looked from Luna to Hermione. "We're not going to let it have her! Severus, do you know how to get through this kind of barrier?"

"If you managed to step outside of that circle, you would kill us all," the potions master grimaced, "The ritual would backfire and we'd all end up dead or worse. I…I think Granger has outsmarted us once again."

The magic around them crescendoed, forcing Hermione to fall completely to her knees, grimacing as she struggled to speak her final words to them. Gods, they were so upset. She'd known of course, but she'd hoped she wouldn't have to see it. She'd hoped they would just wake up in the past and she wouldn't be there and that would be the end of it. Tears welled in her eyes as she looked at Ron, throwing himself so destructively against the barrier.

"R-Ron, stop it," she gasped. "You're just going to hurt yourself."

"You think I care!?" the redhead asked, his one eye narrowed determinedly. "You're trying to kill yourself and you think I care about getting hurt?"

"Please," Hermione pleaded. "I need to tell you some things before it's over."

"It's never going to be over!" Ron yelled, slamming his shoulder into the barrier again. "Hermione, this is never going to be over."

"Gods," Hermione sobbed, breaking. "Somebody make him stop!"

"Stop it Ron!" Fred ordered his brother. Ron was the only one who hadn't accepted that they were powerless to end this.

"Ron, please," George pleaded, lips trembling. "It's over, it's over. Just let her talk."

Hermione watched her almost love intently as he finally stopped, sinking to his knees just as she had. The despair on his face was almost too much for her. Gods, why did it have to be like this? She wanted them to love her. She wanted them to value her for the rest of their lives. She felt as though casting this spell and giving them a chance to put the world right was the reason she had been born. But she didn't want to cause them this much pain. She hadn't understood.

"Ron, everyone, listen, please," Hermione said. "I promise, this will be a good thing. Maybe it doesn't seem that way right now, but it will be good. This is how it had to be. I'm happy, I swear — I chose this of my own free will. Luna, remember our promise. Please try not to be sad. I'm doing this for all of you. This is the most important thing I've ever done in my whole life!"

"Bullshit," the twins whispered, dejected.

"Miss Granger, I assure you, even just the words you speak casually are extremely important to us all," Snape said.

Hermione's heart warmed, reducing some of the aching she felt as the spell forced her breath from her body. "Thank you, Severus," she murmured. "That means a lot to me. I'm sorry it had to be this way, but you all have to look forward now."

"Please don't do this, Hermione," Ron pleaded. "You can't do this to us."

"It's too late to undo it Ron," Hermione told him. "And even if I could, I wouldn't change anything now. Now listen. There are a lot of things you should know, and I wrote instructions that are in the luggage that will tell you most of them. There's one thing that just occurred to me — shut up!" she paused to growl at the demon who had been gloating in her head. "This monster will follow you there. It won't have any interest in you once you're there, but don't go seeking him out again. There's nothing you can do to undo what I've just done and it will just mean that another one of us will die."

Her head turned sharply to look at Harry, the only one of them who hadn't spoken. He stood there, emerald eyes wide and horrified and betrayed as he stared at her.

"Harry, please," Hermione whispered. "Don't let this break you. Not after we just got you back. Ron will need you and I promise this will be good, I promise, just don't think you can go after the demon as soon as you get there. Don't even think about doing what I'm doing now to everyone."

"I will not let him, or any of them." Severus interrupted softly, regarding the young woman he'd recently come to respect so much with sad eyes. He was angry, but it was hard to stay angry as she lay there, trying to save them even with her last gasping breaths. Merlin, these children were going to be the end of him.

The girl smiled up at him, tender and relieved and loving eyes meeting his for one long second before she turned back to Ron.

"I love you," she said, speaking the words in her heart for the first time. "Merlin, I love all of you so much. I had to do this for you. I know, I'm sorry, I know you'll be angry and hate me and I'm sorry but please!"

She broke off, gasping for air as the world around them blurred and suddenly they weren't in their clearing anymore but in a similar clearing covered with a thin layer of fresh snow.

"Please, heal," Hermione pleaded in a near whisper before falling forward into the snow as the lights from the spell faded and the barriers around them collapsed.

They had made it to the past.

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