There are times in life when people must know when not to let go. Balloons are designed to teach small children this.

—Terry Pratchett

"Come on, you damn thing," she muttered, staring at a random page in the book. Words had been there moments before, but disappeared when she flipped back to the page.

Infuriating.

It was only a matter of time before Riddle asked her about the book or stole it back from her. She needed to find her way inside it to possibly meet with Salazar Slytherin again. Or any of the Founders, really. She wanted answers, advice, and she most definitely wanted to get in it before Riddle. She had to find her way out of this—to help herself and to help Riddle, the bloody sociopath.

Closing the book, she flipped it spine up and took out her wand. She placed it against the emblem and stopped chewing on her chapped bottom lip long enough to mutter the Revealing Spell.

The sensation of immense power washed over her and her eyes opened up to the second sight, the ability that let her see the power behind the book. Like opening herself up to a tidal wave, the image consumed her and she blinked to regain focus on the task at hand. There was Godric's magic, intense as a forest fire; Helga's deep, still lake; and Rowena's soaring, windy skies.

Then there was Slytherin, deeper than the others, dark and Dark.

Taking out her quill, she opened the book to the first page. The sleeve of her nightgown bunched up around her binding tattoo. She avoided the snake's malevolent glare and yanked down her sleeve.

She wrote.

There were some things her best friend didn't need to know about her. Her dreams, however, Harry did need to know about, especially if they led to her being mauled near to death. Harry had listened. He said things that made sense. That allowed events to shift into place. He always had such a unique out-of-the-box view.

Treating the book like a sentient object was no good. She had to treat it like a person. Like four very separate people, in fact.

So she did.

I am in trouble, she wrote. I need help. If someone could give me guidance on my next steps I

She gasped as a small whirlwind swept her quill from her grasp and then the book closed with a loud snap.

She stared at the book. She had a feeling it watched her back.

She opened the book again. A vicious tug, a zap to her fingertips, and it closed.

Blowing on her fingers, she stared at the book. It looked back.

Something had finally penetrated the book. She just didn't know how she did it.

"Well, hell."

Hermione woke up around two o'clock with the most urgent need. She stood, grabbed her robe and slippers, warded her bed, and shuffled out of the dormitory and toward the toilets.

"Hey, Harry," she murmured as she stepped into the common room and found him sitting on the settee in front of the fireplace, rubbing her sleep-encrusted eyes. Red coals burned and shifted in the grate, but the fire had long died down.

She re-entered the common room a few minutes later, shuffling and yawning, when she realized.

Harry didn't have on his glasses.

She stopped. Frowned at the figure, still staring into the fireplace. She took a second swipe at her eyes.

In his hand was a goblet and he rolled it in a circular motion, a familiar movement she couldn't quite place… It made her think of the Headmistress' office.

She stepped forward. Long, lank hair distinguished itself from the shadows, along with the pale glow of his cheeks.

Her hand went to her throat. "Professor Snape?"

Why had she thought he was Harry?

More importantly why was Professor Snape here?

He turned his head. "I've been… waiting."

She maneuvered around the chair, saw his face, and gasped. His chest—she swallowed and pulled her gaze from the wounds. He looked just like the night of the war, the last time she had seen him alive.

"Professor?" she whispered. I must be dreaming.

"You're…not." His whisper came in and out like a badly tuned radio, a choked sound. His eyes burned like oil. "Herm—ne."

She sat like her legs had been chopped out from under her. Her hand to her mouth, she could only stare. His face had a blurred quality to it, as if she had put on her father's spectacles. But he seemed… relaxed, as if he had just come back from grading a dozen Potions essays. She tried to imagine that instead of his real image.

His eyes glinted in the shadows. "Com—to help. Book. Wrote."

"I wrote in the book," she whispered, her voice but a faint breath. She blinked rapidly, until she could see him more clearly. "And you came to help me?"

A dead man jumped out of his timeline.

A dead man.

Snape drunk from his goblet. She glanced away as his Adam's apple bobbed, his chest rising and falling. Dark stains shimmered on his robes.

"Fate sent you?" she asked, still whispering. Don't wake the dead.

What had she done?

He lowered his goblet. Wine soaking his lips, he said, "Need to stop—him. Book … a tool you can use." The long sentence made him gasp and cough. She blanched, watching silver streaks running down his face. Tears. The memories he had given Harry. His hand clawed, he patted his chest, and when he moved his hand down it was bloody from Nagini's wounds. Fate couldn't give her someone whole; it made him relive the last dreadful moments of his life.

Magic was really fucked up.

But she couldn't just ignore the help the Fates sent her. "I have to stop Riddle," she murmured, staring at him for answers.

"No—yes."

"How?" she asked.

"Godric," he whispered. "Faint. Dead."

Shaking her head, she sat forward. "Professor—Fate—I don't understand. How do I stop him?"

Surreal enough as watching her dead professor be desecrated by Fate, she needed answers.

"Riddle," Snape snapped between coughs. "The key. Blood. Free."

With that, he dropped his goblet. It hit the thick rug and poured out and only because of her experience during the war did she recognize the liquid for what it was.

It pooled around her slippers, soaking them. His body followed after, liquefying and running off the settee, a waterfall of Snape onto the rug. She gagged, though the liquid had no smell. Other than that, she made no noise.

When the liquid has seeped into the floor and disappeared, leaving no trace, she ran back to the bathroom. She vomited and groaned and wished she were anywhere, anywhere but here watching the desecration of a brave man. The cold floor comforted her. She got up after a few minutes, went to the sink and dipped her head under the faucet. It flowed around her, cool and refreshing. A feeling Snape will never feel again.

"What the hell," she gasped and lifted her head, her wet hair soaking her robe and into her nightgown. In the mirror, a scared girl looked back, pale and shaky. Her mouth sour, she took out her toothbrush.

What did I get into? It was one thing that the timeline had been changed; Harry and Draco in the past; and Unspeakables after her, but this? Gruesome didn't do the situation justice. Clenching her eyes shut, she forced the image of his dissolving body—thin enough to be sucked through a drinking straw—sinking into the rug. She didn't want to think about how Snape's body could be there or what the contents of his grave looked like now. That way of thinking led to madness and ruin.

She left the bathroom, stomach rumbling, and tiptoed to the boys' staircase. Now three in the morning, no one would disturb them if she just slipped into Draco and Harry's dormitory to tell them what had happened. She had to tell someone. The blood and…other things were gone from the common room, but they were still raging in her mind.

But before she could take two steps down the stairs, Wilkes climbed out of the darkness. They stopped upon seeing each other. Hermione thought of her wand, still beside the sink where she left it, useless. Wilkes didn't look happy either, his sleep-mussed hair hanging in his eyes. She wondered where his wand was.

"Dumbledore," he said.

"Wilkes."

He climbed another stair. The leer on his face made her think of the clown she used to have nightmares about when she was six. She had always climbed into bed with her parents after those dreams. She wasn't six anymore, though, and monsters did exist.

"What are you sneaking around for?" Another stair, and they were closer now. He could reach out and touch her if he wanted. Could choke the life right out of her. From his face, that scenario was practically a wet dream for him.

"I heard a noise when I came down to go to the bathroom," she said, moving to the side to let him pass. But he didn't pass; he paused on the stair beside her, his sneer full force. Too close for comfort.

"Yeah right. I'm not betting on you lasting, you know."

Her expression plainly said, As if I care, you twerp. Pursing her lips, she said, "You should take that up with a higher power."

"Hmph."

And he left, closing the door to the loo behind him. She thanked Merlin above his bladder had been full or else that conversation would have gone south quickly. Hermione tiptoed into the girls' bathroom, grabbed her wand, and stood by the door until she heard the plumbing squeak and clatter through the walls. She gave it a few more minutes and then peeked into the common room.

No one.

Not anticipating laying in her bed and staring at her ceiling for the rest of the night or possibly being caught in Draco and Harry's dormitory, Hermione crept to the kitchens. She passed the Bloody Baron by the Potions classroom. He turned his head to stare and the bloodstain on his robes shimmered in the green light of the corridor, but he said nothing. Another victim of fate. She reached the kitchens without incident and the house elves by the door quickly found Missy for her.

Missy's green eyes were round with worry when she came out of the back and caught sight of Hermione. "Is Little Mistress hurt?"

Ignoring that, because Hermione didn't know the answer anymore, she said, "Missy, I need help."

"Yes, Mistress, yes!"

"Okay," she said, and knelt in the floor. "There's a book on my pillowcase I need you to hide. Hide it in the deepest corner you can think of and don't let anyone get their hands on it. Not Professor Dumbledore, not Tom Riddle, not even Draco or Harry. No one. Okay?"

"Oh, Little Mistress, no Master?" she squeaked, wringing her long ears in her hands.

"No," Hermione said gently. "Can you do that? It's very important. It will just be for a few days."

Her gut told her Riddle would try to take the book back soon. After the spectacle she put on yesterday, he would look for ways she could be playing him and he would pinpoint the book. He hadn't asked her about it yet, but he had to know by now his copy wasn't the true one. He would come back for the book—he needed proof she could betray him, and failing that, he wanted insurance she couldn't betray him.

Once the danger was over, she would hide it somewhere else.

Missy, huge eyes wet with fear, nodded and cracked out of the kitchen.

Hermione stood up and leaned against the wall, waiting. Two house elves, one after the other, came up to her to see if she wanted anything, offering coffee and tea, pastries and sandwiches, but she shook her head.

Missy appeared in the kitchen in only a minute. She hurried to Hermione. "Is done and hidden! Not even house elf could find it."

"Thank you, Missy," she said, smiling. "Now, I have to ask you if you want to do something else for me. I'm going to tell you what it is first, and then you can decide if you want to do it or not. It's very dangerous. I don't want you to accept just because you want to do things for me."

Missy fell silent and once again her innocent eyes went wide. "Yes, Mistress, I is understanding."

"Good." Hermione swallowed. "If I draw a rune spell, could you use it with your magic? Even if average wizards can't use it?"

Missy stopped wringing her hands and nodded, ears flapping. "Oh, yes, Mistress!"

She released a breath. That made things a lot easier. "Can you, as a house elf unaffiliated with a family, enter that family's warded home?"

Though she recoiled, her gaze going to the other house elves to see if they had overheard, Missy nodded. She lowered her voice to an excited whisper so as to not let the other awake house elves overhear. "It is not liked, but is not forbidden for us to do these things."

She considered. If Voldemort caught her, it would give everything away—and Missy would be tortured or worse. But Voldemort disregarded non-humans. He disregarded Kreacher, had never even bothered to question him after Regulus stole the locket Horcrux.

Missy had some level of protection from him, but only just.

"Then I need you to bring this letter and leave it where someone—not a house elf, I don't want anyone harmed for this—can find it. By the front door, perhaps. Then immediately come back to Hogwarts and use the rune spell to come back here to me."

Missy frowned. "Use rune spell in Hogwarts again? Is this time?"

"Yes," Hermione said. "You'll be going forward and then backward through time. It's a reliable spell. I've used it before." Unintentionally and not with her own power, but Missy didn't need to know that. "But if you don't want to do that, it's absolutely fine—I can find another way to do it."

But though there was a Backward Time spell, going forward proved more difficult. This spell, however, the one the book had somehow helped her find while prisoner of Voldemort, could be used both ways. Unfortunately for her, because if Voldemort came back to the 40s, he could do indeterminable amounts of damage and then pop back to the 90s. He could even kill James and Lily's parents and then pop back to see what happened. Hermione had witnessed the strength of house elf magic before, so she knew Missy could be her only chance to hop forward and back.

"I can do it," Missy said quietly. "If it help you and if you thinks I can do it."

"I think that you'll be in a foreign house filled with bad wizards," Hermione said. "It depends on if you want to do it, not what I think you can do."

"Bad wizards?" Missy whispered. "Like ones Little Mistress fought in Diagon Alley?"

She nodded.

Missy took a deep breath and released it. "I will do it," she squeaked.

Hermione wrote the letter in the kitchens, wording it carefully. She checked the clock over the fireplace when she finished. The sun would rise soon. It didn't seem like it should be that early, but perhaps Snape had occupied her attention longer than she thought.

She stood and Missy hurried to her, fearful eyes darting to the letter she had sealed with the end of a potato. "Let's go to the Astronomy tower," Hermione said. "We'll have to find an unused classroom that's still unused in the time I'm sending you to… Or wait…"

The Room of Requirement.

"Actually," Hermione said, "I know the perfect place."

Hermione sat beside Riddle at breakfast. From the expression on his face, the slight tilt of his lips when he glanced at her, Wilkes had already told him about her presence on the boys' staircase that morning. She wouldn't make excuses now. It would be obvious.

Instead, she looked over at the Gryffindor table. Minerva sat at the end, hair in the strictest knot Hermione had ever witnessed. With an expression that sour as she cut into her sausages, Hermione had her work cut out for her.

Better to have a friend when you don't need one than to try to find one when you do.

Hermione finished her toast quickly, packed up her unopened post from the few owls that had dropped by—probably more marriage proposals, they had been suspiciously missing for the last few weeks—and headed out. Riddle, for once, made no comment. No telling her to wait, no asking her where she was off to, nothing. Not wanting to know more about the thoughts in his head, she lingered only a second longer as Minerva swung her bag over her shoulder. Hermione left. She passed Draco and Harry on the way out of the Great Hall and said brief hellos. Harry held her gaze and she nodded. "Tell you later," she whispered.

Draco's gaze narrowed. Hermione left it for Harry to explain.

Nott tried to follow her, but she had gotten better at Imperio since she, Harry, and Ron had to use it during that dreadful year. Her stomach roiled afterward, still did now, but she would be safely alone and Nott wouldn't remember a thing.

At least one of them wouldn't know what she had done.

She waited in the third floor corridor for Minerva and the witch turned the corner right on the dot. Seeing Hermione, her expression soured even further, as if a Niffler had .

Hermione kicked off the wall where she had been leaning and braced herself.

"Minerva, I need to talk to you."

"Aye, you would," Minerva said. Hermione never noticed how her accent deepened when the witch was angry. Professor McGonagall had very little accent altogether but young Minerva had it tenfold. "You sure got a way of sneaking about, don't you."

"I needed to speak to you alone," she said, drawing her books close to her chest. She made her eyes big, allowed her face to show her worry, her fear. "Please?"

Minerva studied her. Hermione waited, aware of the ticking of time passing by, time when Riddle would be coming up the stairs. She swallowed, but kept still, allowing the tall girl to discern what she needed to about Hermione.

Jaw hardening, Minerva nodded.

"I'll hear you out."

Hermione breathed out a sigh of relief.

The explanation was brief. They sat in a corner of the corridor by a rusting suit of armor that creaked when the wind hit the windows. Minerva sat beside her, morbidly fascinated by Hermione's quick retelling of events. The Founder's book, the blood, the joining—

"Wait, but—you're married?" Hermione flinched at the shock in Minerva's hissed whisper and nodded.

"Unfortunately. We're trying to find a way out of it," she added quickly. "But I need to know more about the creators of the ritual we went through. The only person we knew who could sever the tie was killed in the Diagon Alley attack."

Minerva eyed her shrewdly. "I wondered why you were there that day."

"Well, that's the reason. Getting out of this stupid—oh Merlin, the time! We have to go!" Both scrambling to their feet, Hermione with her wand already out and the Memory Charm for Nott on her tongue. Minerva put a hand on her arm to stop her rushing off.

"You'll be okay, won't you? He's not…" Her lip trembled in disgust. "Forcing himself…?"

"No," Hermione said, but her voice didn't have the right amount of reassurance in it. She tried again when a terrible frown started forming on Minerva's face. "Honestly."

The bell rang. Hermione glanced up and down the hallway, but it was clear for now. It wouldn't take long to get to the classroom she had sequestered Nott. "I have to go. Thanks, thank you, Minerva."

Minerva hugged her briefly, and then pushed her away.

"I'll ask my dad. Now go!"

Hermione did. Finding Nott, she closed the door to the classroom behind her so no children could peek in. She undid the spell quickly and rushed out a Memory Charm.

Nott groaned and rubbed his head when she finished. She arranged her face into a helpful position.

"You okay, Nott?"

"Yeah," he grumbled, and dropped his hand to look around the room. "Why are we in here?"

"Just finishing some homework before class." She held up her Arithmancy homework in front of her. To Nott, who didn't have enough O.W.L.s to take the class, it probably looked like a bunch of squiggles.

"Oh." Nott blinked. "You know anything 'bout Charms?"

"Yes, I do," Hermione said, with feeling.

Doom was coming down on her soon. She could feel it in the air, as if a prophecy with her name on it hovered in the ozone. She shivered as they walked into the corridor and up to the Astronomy tower.

She squared her shoulders, pushing down the fear. She had to be prepared to meet it.

Now she just had to wait for a reply to her letter and prepare for the Unspeakables. She also had to find who her attempted murderer was before Riddle did.

And boy was there a lot of suspects.

Feeling more productive than ever, she gave another Hail Mary to Harry's presence and wonderful ideas, and quickly caught up to Nott's long strides.

Missy did not know these house elves, but she knew house elves in general. She was not a young elf. She told them her Mistress sent her to supply a message, that no one could know of her presence or else her Mistress would not be happy, and the house elves looked at the envelope, bobbed their heads and Missy knew they would not tell a soul. After all, it was just a letter, it would not harm their Master.

Missy knew house elves could not be trusted to keep secrets in the face of a demand from the Master. But they would do as they did. Missy had to be content with that.

Missy surveyed the house for hours. She found the people in the wine cellar and shuddered. She saw the snake slithering down the hall and shivered. She saw the Bad Man's red eyes and cried. When she decided on a place to leave the letter—on the side of the dining room table where she watched the Bad Man sit with his snake—she popped in quickly during a brief empty period, placed it, and popped outside of the manor's walls.

Wiping the sweat from her brows, she headed toward Hogwarts.

That was a bad, bad place.

But Little Mistress had told her the danger. Had asked her opinion. She had given choice. Her! Missy! She must be a good Mistress just like the Master.

Mistress would not demand, but Missy would follow to every bad, bad place.