Getting the Hang of Thursdays

Chapter 3 - Who Was Left?

By Hayseed

Day Forty-One

When Severus woke up that morning, he had a plan. It was not a terribly well thought out plan, and it was probably dangerous and hopelessly stupid to boot; but it was a plan, which in Severus’ mind meant that it was better than doing nothing. And besides, once all of the issues had been sorted out and actions explained, Albus probably wouldn’t fire Severus.

Maybe.

Albus was generally a fairly forgiving soul, at any rate.

The endless litany of justifications running through his mind as Severus walked into the Great Hall for breakfast did nothing to ease his nerves, however. If anything, he felt more anxious than ever -- his teeth were on edge and his hands were practically trembling as he made his way up to the Head Table and poured himself a cup of coffee.

And even if he did get fired, what did it really matter in the grand scheme of things? So he would have to whore himself to a few commercial brewers’ firms, mass producing Pepper Up Potions and Skele-Gro for a couple of years. That wasn’t too bad.

Really. Honestly. And they probably wouldn’t even hold his shadowy past against him. Sure.

He gulped down his coffee without thought, barely even noticing as he scalded his tongue so badly that he was certain he would never be able to taste anything again. Severus glanced down at his watch. Two more minutes. He speared a piece of toast and began systematically crumbling it into bits, keeping his eyes on the leftmost door leading into the Great Hall.

“Erm, Severus?” someone asked at his right elbow.

Blinking, he turned his head just slightly, until he saw just who was speaking to him. He willed his hands to still and poured himself a second cup of coffee. “Yes, Minerva?”

“Are you all right?” she asked curiously, cocking her head and looking concerned. “Only you’ve covered your robe-front with crumbs.”

“Have I?” he asked, distracted as Granger came bouncing into the Great Hall, Potter and Weasley hot on her heels, laughing and talking about something or other.

“And you’re stirring your coffee with your fork.”

With a start, Severus glanced down at his hand and realized that she was right. “Oh,” he said distantly, putting the fork down and draining half of his cup.

Minerva watched the tendrils of steam float over the remainder of his coffee with wide eyes. “Severus?” she asked again.

“Excuse me,” he said, dismissing her as he stood and made his way over to the Gryffindor table. Specifically, made his way over to a still-laughing Granger, who was buttering a piece of toast as she spoke to the Weasley girl.

The table quieted as he approached. Granger looked up at him through her eyelashes. “Can I help you, Professor Snape?” she asked politely.

Knowing that he had to remain quiet in order for his plan to work -- the element of surprise was critical -- Severus did not speak. He put his left hand into one of his robe pockets as he stared down at Granger, wrapping his fingers around the bronze Knut he’d put there before he left his quarters earlier that morning. His hand was slightly sweaty and the Knut slipped around for a bit before he had it secured in the palm of his hand. Severus mentally counted down the seconds -- only ten left.

Granger’s smile slowly disappeared. “Sir?”

In response, Severus flung himself into motion, wrapping his right arm over Granger’s shoulders, jerking her off of the bench, and pulling the Knut out of his pocket in a single maneuver. Granger went limp in the surprise of the moment, just as Severus had anticipated, and he took advantage of her shock by forcing the Knut into her hand, threading his fingers roughly through hers as the impromptu Portkey came into contact with both of their palms. “Two... one...” he whispered.

And the Portkey activated. Severus felt himself jerked forward at the navel and smiled. His plan had worked.

Well... mostly. As he and Granger tumbled onto the floor in the Shrieking Shack, she recovered from her state of shock and began kicking at him and driving her fists into his chest. “Let me go!” she shouted right in his ear.

He hadn’t exactly anticipated such a response -- who knew that Granger was the brawling sort? “Granger--” he began in what he hoped was a placating voice.

“Let me go,” she howled again, her foot managing to find that spot on Severus’ left leg where his knee met his shin.

“Fuck,” he moaned, forgetting Granger and rolling over in the dust, grabbing at his poor knee with both hands. “Holy... what did you do that for?” he shouted.

Scrabbling onto her knees, Granger began rummaging around in her robes. “Don’t move,” she snapped, leveling a wand between his eyes.

“Granger--” Severus began again, still clutching his knee.

“No,” she interrupted, giving her wand a warning swish -- a few golden sparks flew out of the end and fizzled on the floor. “Keep still, Snape.”

With a sigh, he rolled his eyes. “Granger, if you would just let me explain...”

“I don’t want to hear it,” she spat, “just... just take us back to Hogwarts.”

I thought you said not to move, he thought hysterically as his knee began throbbing in earnest. “No,” he replied.

Her hand tightened around her wand. “Take. Us. Back.”

“I heard you the first time, Granger,” he said mildly. “No.”

Her knuckles were practically white. Her hair fluffed about her face and her cheeks were flushed.

Severus smiled thinly at her. “What, Granger, are you going to hex me? A Jelly-Legs Jinx, perhaps? Whatever will I do?”

“Shut up!” she cried, giving her wand another harmless wave. The sparks flew a bit further this time but still did not even fall halfway between them.

With a grunt, Severus released his knee and sat up.

“I said stay still,” Granger shouted.

He just looked at her. “Please, Granger. You’re not constitutionally capable of attacking someone who hasn’t directly threatened you, and I have no such intentions. Although...” Thoughtfully, he pulled his own wand out of his robes and sent a rather sophisticated Locking Charm toward the door leading out of the room. It swung shut and latched obediently. As an afterthought, he also erected a few wards for good measure.

While Severus went about his work, Granger remained motionless. As he stood, however, and put his weight gingerly on his injured leg, Granger gave him a moist, wide-eyed look that very nearly made him recoil with disgust. “What... what are you going to do to me?” she asked, a tremor in her voice.

Sighing, he just rolled his eyes. “Nothing, you silly girl. I hope.”

“Well... where are we?” Her voice gained a fraction of its usual overconfidence.

“You mean, you don’t recognize it?” he asked with a wolfish grin.

Granger squinted at their admittedly rather squalid surroundings. “We’re... the Shrieking Shack?” she asked. “What on Earth are we doing here?”

“It was the safest place I could think of,” he replied guardedly.

“But Hogwarts--”

With a lazy wave of his hand, Severus cut off her protests. “Hogwarts is not safe for you, Granger. Not at the moment.”

Her eyes rounded again and he resisted the urge to sneer at her. “Wh -- what?”

Severus shrugged minutely. “Best have a seat, Granger. It’s shaping up to be a long day.” Taking his own advice, he slumped back down on the floor, stretching his still-aching leg out in front of him.

Watching him warily, Granger followed suit, sitting cross-legged against the wall furthest away from him. “I don’t understand, Professor.”

He looked down at his wand instead of at her. “Of course you don’t,” he said. “Granger, we are caught in a loop.”

“A loop?” she echoed.

“We have been repeating the same day over and over,” he explained -- they were back to the plan, now, and he’d thought carefully about what to tell her. “By my count, we’ve had at least fourteen Thursdays in a row. Probably a fair number more, actually, as I’m sure it took me a while to remember.”

Granger’s face was horrified. “You’re mad.”

“Quite possibly,” he said with a straight face, giving his knee an experimental flex. No... it was still hurt. “But that does not detract from the facts. We’re stuck in a loop, Miss Granger. A loop that begins and ends on Thursday the twenty-fifth.”

“But how --?”

“I’ve no idea,” he said in response to her unasked question. “To my knowledge, a time-loop involving actual living beings is unprecedented.”

There was something in her eyes suddenly that he did not like. “You said you remember, then. You remember that we’ve lived the same day fourteen times in a row?”

“At least,” he confirmed with a short nod.

“Does this happen every day?”

Severus laughed and Granger actually jumped, which only served to make him laugh harder. “No, Granger. This is new.”

Regaining her composure awkwardly, her gaze turned shrewd once again. “But you said that we’re repeating the same day,” she exclaimed triumphantly.

“Not repeating. Replaying,” he corrected. “Each day is slightly different. Except for a few things. As far as I can tell, at least.”

“What few things?” she asked. “What stays the same as the day changes?”

Severus kept his eyes on hers, boring his gaze into her brain. “For one, Miss Granger, every single afternoon, you die.”

“And how do you -- wait a minute!” Blanching, Granger’s mouth fell open. “I... I die?”

“As I have said.” He inclined his head at her.

He noticed absently that she had a smattering of freckles on her nose -- they were stark against her now white face. “How?” she whispered.

Uncomfortable, Severus shrugged. “Various ways. But the earliest one I remember is an accident in Potions class. And that’s the one that we always come back to. Unless I actively... change something, you die in the dungeons, screaming.”

Granger swallowed. “That sounds...”

“It is awful,” he agreed. “Every attempt to change something that I have made on Hogwarts grounds has the same outcome. Logically, then--”

“Perhaps if I am not on the grounds, I won’t... die,” she interrupted.

His face soured. “That’s essentially the idea.”

“And... and if I’m isolated, maybe nothing on the outside will...”

Severus nodded.

Looking confused but decidedly less angry than before, Granger sighed. It was a noise of defeat and, judging by her expression, she knew it as well as he did. “So, what do we do now?”

“Now, Miss Granger,” he replied, looking down at his watch again, “now, we wait.”

The waiting was just as terrible as Severus had expected it to be. He had not had the foresight to bring anything to occupy that vast stretch of time between breakfast and two thirty-four, and a quick search of his pockets yielded his wand, a confiscated deck of Exploding Snap cards, and a broken quill. Granger’s pockets were equally empty -- a wand, half of a biscuit (which for some reason, elicited a blush from her as she turned it out onto her lap), a couple of useless scraps of parchment, and a single silver Sickle.

Granger regarded the cards with a frown. “Do you remember how to play Exploding Snap, Professor?”

“I hate Exploding Snap,” he said dully, recalling an incident in the Slytherin Common Room his second year of schooling that left him with no eyebrows.

“Would you prefer to count the stones in the wall, there?” she asked sweetly, picking the deck up off the floor and riffling them through her hands in a careful shuffle.

Scowling, Severus just inched closer to Granger and stuffed the quill back into his robes.

As inane as Exploding Snap was, it helped the time pass. Nine o’clock turned predictably into ten and before Severus knew it, his watch read noon and his stomach rumbled loudly.

“You know,” Granger began in a thoughtful voice, drawing a card from the pile and placing it in her hand, “it would have been nice if you’d picked up a couple of sandwiches or something from the kitchens before abducting me.”

He discarded two cards. “I’ll remember that tomorrow,” he said mildly, and something in Granger’s face twisted.

“I don’t understand you, Professor,” she said. “You claim that I’m going to die this afternoon and you seem to want to help me avoid it, but at the same time...”

“Just because I don’t want to have to watch you die again doesn’t mean that any other aspect of our circumstances has shifted,” he told her, switching around a couple of cards in his hand.

She threw a card on the top of the discard pile with far more force than was generally prudent in dealing with Exploding Snap decks and Severus raised an eyebrow at her behavior. “Our circumstances?” she echoed bitterly. “We have circumstances?”

Discarding one of his own, he made a mental note to take points off Gryffindor if -- when -- they returned to Hogwarts. “Miss Granger, you are one of my students. I am responsible for your safety.”

“So you’re telling me that if Ron or Harry were the ones who were supposed to die that you’d do the exact same thing you’re doing right now?” she asked, discarding three. She only had about five cards left, as opposed to Severus’ even dozen.

He thought about it and decided to lie. “Yes.”

Granger’s eyes told him that she didn’t believe him for a minute, but she fell silent just the same, and they continued playing.

Two-fifteen, now, and Severus felt a flutter in his stomach.

Maybe this was going to work.

“Is... am I supposed to die soon?” Granger asked into the quiet.

Blinking, he just stared at her in surprise.

“You’ve been looking at your watch more often,” she explained. “I thought--”

“Don’t worry, Miss Granger,” he replied, forcibly covering his watch with his robe sleeve. “And it’s your deal.”

“I can’t believe that I’m supposed to die today,” she muttered as she shuffled. “I’m only seventeen. I just can’t... and I’ve never...” Granger dealt the cards fiercely.

“Having regrets, are we?” Severus asked as he picked up his hand. “A life cut short and all that?”

With downcast eyes, Granger began rearranging her hand to her liking. “No, I just... Ron always said I’d die a virgin. I didn’t know he’d be right.”

Severus froze and Granger’s mouth fell open.

“I can’t believe I just said that,” she muttered.

Coughing, he discarded. “I, erm--”

“Just forget it, Professor,” she said quickly, discarding two.

Forgotten, he thought, unable to meet her eyes.

Two-thirty now. Severus’ nerves were singing.

“Professor?” Granger asked hesitantly, worrying the edge of one of the cards in her hand. “There’s something I have to--”

A loud banging noise interrupted her, however, and they exchanged curious looks.

“What’s --?”

Again, Granger was cut off, as the wards on the door were blasted away.

Severus’ heart rate doubled and then trebled as Albus Dumbledore stepped into the room, a thundercloud on his face. “Severus Snape,” Albus said dangerously, “what the hell are you on about?”

Flinching, Severus scrambled to his feet. “Albus, I--”

“Miss Granger?” Albus asked, ignoring Severus’ stammering and seeing the girl over his shoulder. “Miss Granger, are you all right?”

Granger stood and brushed dust off of her robes. “I’m fine, sir. It’s nothing really--”

“I assure you, Miss Granger,” Albus said, “we are treating this matter with the utmost con--”

“Expelliarmus,” a young man’s voice bellowed from behind Albus.

Instinctively, both Albus and Severus ducked the hex. As Severus hit the ground, however, he noticed that it had been poorly aimed and hadn’t come anywhere near either of them. Looking over at the doorway, he saw a pair of oddly familiar trainers come running into the room, scuffed and dirty. He looked up -- Potter, fury in his eyes.

“You dirty...” Potter hissed, pointing his wand at Severus again.

“Now, Potter...” Albus said, clearly surprised at the boy’s presence. “You can’t just -- Harry,” he exclaimed as the boy flicked his wand.

“Expelliarmus,” he said again.

Severus closed his eyes as the hex streaked toward him. Two thirty-two.

“Harry, no!” Granger screeched. As Severus’ eyes flew open, he saw her throwing herself forward.

Potter’s mouth rounded as his curse hit Granger in the gut, throwing her back into the wall. There was the sound of shattering glass. “Oh, God...” the boy whispered, turning pale. “No...”

Flipping himself over, Severus saw. There was blood.

A lot of blood.

The hex had tossed Granger into, and what looked to be through, the only window in the room.

“Damn it, Granger,” Severus cried, crawling through the hole and over to Granger’s feebly moving form.

It appeared as if most of the window had lodged itself in various parts of Granger’s body. Severus winced as he saw the largest piece of glass protruding from her belly -- it had gone right through her -- stained with blood.

The noise she made as he approached was halfway between a cough and a gurgle. “Shut up, Granger,” he muttered. “Save your strength.”

Her smile was sad. “No point,” she said, blood staining her lips bright red. “You were right, Professor.”

“I didn’t have to be,” he said fiercely. “Damn you, Granger. Don’t die again.”

More blood. “It seems as if I have very little choice in the matter, sir,” she said, sounding very nearly amused. The illusion was destroyed, however, as she moaned slightly.

Severus decided that this was far worse than the pleading. This quiet acceptance. If he could just --

Granger coughed again, her chest heaving against the glass embedded within it, and her blood flowed freely over his hands. He moved them away from her torso, using them to cradle her face and leaving bloody thumbprints on her cheeks. “Granger...”

“... something to tell you...” she whispered. “The time...”

“Granger?” he asked again as her lips moved soundlessly.

Her breath left her body in a long, final sigh as her eyes glassed over. That was it. Releasing her face, Severus stood and turned to face a solemn Albus and a teary-eyed Potter. “She’s dead.”

Two thirty-four.

Granger gave him a curious look as she walked into the Potions classroom. Severus ignored it as best as he could. But her eyes bored into his back as he wrote the instructions for the Restoration Draught on the board. “Do you have a problem, Miss Granger?” he asked coldly.

There was a pause. “I... uh... no, sir,” she eventually replied.

“Good.” He resumed writing.

“It’s just...” she began in a rush.

He actually turned around to face her, crossing his arms over his chest and inadvertently smearing his sleeve with chalk dust. “What?”

“Professor Snape, I thought I remembered that yesterday you -- no,” she interrupted herself.

“We did not have class yesterday, Miss Granger,” he said carefully, suspicion waking in his mind.

She looked increasingly confused. “I just... shouldn’t this be Friday?”