Getting the Hang of Thursdays

Chapter 4 - Pete and Repeat Went For A Boat Ride...

By Hayseed

Day Forty-Nine

Severus wasn’t entirely sure why he was doing this. It had seemed like a good idea early this morning, as he tossed around in bed and thought about that look of confusion in Granger’s eyes the moment before she died. But now, as he turned to Albus at the breakfast table, it seemed laughable at best.

“I, erm, I have an ongoing experiment that I need to baby-sit today, Albus,” he said, keeping his eyes on Albus’, willing the man to believe the lie. “Would you mind...?”

“Of course not, Severus,” he replied with a slight smile. “I always did enjoy teaching Potions. It’s an interesting challenge.”

“Thank you, Albus.” Clearing his throat, Severus took a sip of coffee. “I also have a more... unusual request.”

He quirked an eyebrow.

“I feel that I need a bit of assistance today,” he continued.

The eyebrow rose considerably.

“Just for the morning,” he said quickly. “The potion requires a constant eye -- it is quite unstable but promising nonetheless -- and I don’t think that one person is adequate.”

“The staff--”

Severus shook his head before Albus could even begin properly. “I know that the staff is busy, Albus. And also, for the largest part, underqualified for a task of this nature. I was thinking more along the lines of one of my NEWT students?”

There went the eyebrow again. “Which one, Severus?”

“Granger,” he said quickly, else he changed his mind. “Granger would be... sufficient. I also expect that she’s caught up enough on coursework that missing her morning classes would be feasible.”

Albus shrugged and the eyebrow lowered fractionally. “You’ll have to take that up with her. For my part, I see no problem. She is, of course, one of our finest students.”

Feeling as if that did not merit a response, Severus chose to excuse himself from the table rather than continue the conversation, which was threatening to descend rapidly into banality. He already had an owl prepared -- he expected no real problem from Albus on this front; it was common enough for other professors to ‘borrow’ students -- and the request should be reaching Granger...

There it was. One of the Hogwarts owls flew into the Great Hall and deposited a parchment scroll neatly on Granger’s plate. Unrolling it, she skimmed it and shot him an incredulous look. Trying his best to be inscrutable, Severus merely answered it with the same sort of quirked eyebrow that Albus was so fond of giving him. Granger continued to stare at him for a few long moments but finally gave him a slow nod.

They would meet at nine, then. That just about gave Severus enough time to throw a handful of ingredients into a cauldron so that they had an ‘experiment’ to watch for the morning.

He barely made it -- not five minutes after he adjusted the flame under the cauldron in his office, there was a pert little knock on his door. “Enter.”

Granger poked her head in, clearly curious. “Professor Snape, you wanted to see me?”

“Indeed.” He folded his hands on his desktop and cocked his head. “The potion over there... you are to watch it and assist me if it becomes volatile. I cannot be expected to keep an eye on a cauldron for four straight hours.”

She turned and regarded the cauldron with a frown. “And this would be...?”

“An experiment I’ve been assembling for a number of months,” he replied smoothly. “It is at a critical stage, of course.”

“Of course,” Granger echoed, placing her bag on the floor beside an empty chair. “What does it do?”

His mind raced. “It is a Wolfsbane variant,” he lied, improvising freely.

“The cauldron’s not silver...”

“A variant, Miss Granger,” he repeated firmly.

“Oh,” she said in a quiet voice, sitting down. “And I just watch it?”

“If you like, of course,” he said after a short pause. “I am not able to force you to stay -- you have classes to attend if you’d prefer.”

Granger made a face. “They’re just doing NEWT revision papers -- I’ve done most of them already. Years ago. We’re only doing new material in Arithmancy. And Potions, of course,” she added as an afterthought.

“The faculty are currently divided as to whether it is the individual student’s sole responsibility to prepare for exams or the professors should play a role in facilitating said preparation,” Severus found himself saying.

He was making small talk with the girl?

In for a penny... “It should be obvious to you which professors hold which view,” he continued.

Was that a smile or a passing shadow? “Of course,” she said in a demure sort of voice.

Shooting her one last look, Severus returned to marking his third years’ essays. He wasn’t entirely sure why he kept doing it, today after today; habit, probably. And after reading through them more than twenty times, he knew what any given student’s score was going to be even as he unrolled the scroll. He glanced down at Apollo Early’s abysmal endeavor and scratched a failing grade in the margin in red ink -- it was entirely too much effort to bother to write comments on the thing. As he waited impatiently for the ink to dry, he looked up at Granger again. More correctly, he looked up at the back of her head -- she was watching the cauldron, as instructed.

It was as if she’d been cued. “Professor?”

Quickly, he pulled his gaze away from her hair. “What?”

“Is today -- I mean, that is to say, I just...” She chuckled humorlessly. “Something feels wrong about today. Not this, I mean,” she said, waving her hand at the cauldron. “But ever since I woke up this morning, I feel... stretched, like.”

Severus did not speak, not trusting himself.

“It’s probably silly,” she said, more to herself than to him. “All the stress...”

He did speak up at that. “Stress, Miss Granger?”

“Well, it’s NEWT year, isn’t it?” she replied defensively, turning away from the cauldron just enough so that he could see her profile. “Lots of coursework, lots of studying. Not to mention everything with--”

“Yes, yes,” he interrupted. “I know.”

Unbelievably, the girl continued to speak. Severus wondered what on Earth made her think that he cared -- on the heels of that thought came the realization that he hadn’t yet told her to shut up. “If my parents weren’t so... did you know that they didn’t want me to come to Hogwarts at all? They thought it was silly rubbish. Even when that man from the Ministry came by and did a demonstration. It’s not that they don’t believe in wizards, exactly -- it’s just very hard for them to get their minds around me being a wizard.”

He stayed silent and told himself that taking points away would be a bad idea, remembering the feel of her hot blood on his hands as she spoke. Less than three hours away now.

“They warned me before I got on the train -- if my marks weren’t top notch, they were going to pull me out. They feel like they’re indulging me, you see, and it wouldn’t be fair if I just wasted my time at ‘wizard school’ when I could be getting a perfectly good normal education.” Her voice was bitter. “I know this is my last year, so their threat isn’t really... erm, valid anymore, but still...” Trailing off, Granger turned away from him again. “Old habits die hard, I guess. And it would be nice if they were proud of me. If they really understood. Maybe once I’m of age and I can show them what I’ve learned...”

Granger fell silent and Severus returned to his essays in self-defense, asking himself yet again why he’d thought this was a good idea. Watching Granger die was going to be that much worse with her voice in his head, talking to him as if she cared at all what he thought about her.

Luncheon came and went without comment. Severus was not in the habit of regularly eating dinner, and he guessed, by Granger’s lack of enthusiasm on the subject, that she was not either.

She did look stretched thin, now that he came to look more closely at her. Tired eyes betraying her probable late nights, hollow cheeks speaking to her skipped meals, Granger was the walking personification of ‘frayed about the edges.’

Although, truth be told, the same could probably be said of him. He was making attempts to eat regularly, though -- Poppy had taken it upon herself to lecture him about proper nutrition and had threatened on multiple occasions to set the house elves on him, telling them that ‘Professor Snape needs double portions at every meal and he needs to finish them, too.’

A scraping noise startled him out of his musings, however. Granger was on her feet, giving him a curious look as she slung her bag over her shoulders. “Professor, class is in fifteen minutes,” she said.

Severus opened his mouth. For one moment, he almost told her. Everything. She might think him mad, but at least he would have tried.

“All right, Miss Granger,” he finally said, abandoning his essays and picking up his increasingly unnecessary lecture notes.

Graham Pritchard walked into the Potions classroom looking nervous. Severus did not know why and he did not care, but he kept his eyes focused squarely on Pritchard all the same.

The boy slouched into his usual seat and began pulling his equipment out of the bag at his side, carefully arranging his ingredients neatly beside his cauldron. Other than perhaps Percy Weasley, Severus had never seen such a meticulous child -- it was a shame that Pritchard appeared to have the surly temperament of a rabid hippogriff in addition to his fastidious living habits. To date, he had never seen Pritchard in the voluntary company of a single other student. It just made him a child to watch.

And today in particular.

He began the lecture as usual, writing the ingredients for today’s potion on the board and asking a few questions as to the nature of the expected result, docking points for incorrect answers and nodding silently for correct ones. The students set to work with barely a rustle, and Severus began pacing the aisles, as was his fashion.

Pritchard’s workbench was only two seats away. Severus had to pause, however, at the second seat -- one of Pritchard’s fellow Slytherins had worked herself into a foaming, seething mess. After a few quiet barbs, Severus emptied the student’s cauldron so she could begin afresh.

And now... Pritchard.

Making a great show of leaning over the boy’s cauldron and examining his mostly correct potion, Severus eased his left hand over the beautifully organized ingredients, heading unerringly for the armadillo bile. As he straightened, then, the vial holding the bile was secured in his hand, and Severus palmed it with a secretive smile, glancing down at his watch. Thirty seconds until...

“Ack!” Pritchard exclaimed, stumbling back as the Slytherin girl at a nearby table accidentally bumped his bench and tipped the contents of his cauldron onto the floor. He slammed into Severus’ back as he did so, and the armadillo bile flew out of Severus’ hand, across the room, and smashed onto the ground.

Severus sighed.

Some things he could change. But others...

“Goddamn it, Granger,” Severus swore under his breath. “Breathe!” He pounded once on her chest, ignoring the blisters under his hands -- one of them popped, covering his fingers with clear lymph.

The girl’s eyes shot open and she took in a deep, gasping breath, full of pain.

“That’s it, Granger,” he said. “Not nearly time, yet.”

Her nose wrinkled in confusion.

“Besides,” Severus continued, knowing he was babbling, “Poppy’s not here. She stepped out of the Infirmary a couple of minutes ago, and you wouldn’t want to deprive her of the joy of forcing horrible medicines down your throat and prodding you with her wand every five minutes, now would you, Granger?”

With a chuckle that was more of a wheeze, Granger’s cracked lips lifted in a half-smile. “I’ll try,” she whispered, wincing as one of the blisters on her thigh practically exploded. “Hard...”

He held her hand loosely in his own, hating the heat that radiated from her palm to his. “I thought you liked a challenge, Granger.”

“Didn’t know you told jokes...” she said dreamily, allowing her eyes to drift closed.

“No!” Severus said in a sharp voice. “Eyes open, girl, or it’ll be points from Gryffindor.”

“Sorry,” she muttered, eyes peeking out from under her eyelids. Her cheeks were beginning to redden and that smell was intensifying again. “Tired, you know.” Fingers fluttering in his palm, Severus realized that Granger was trying to squeeze his hand.

“Just hang on,” he said, perilously close to cajoling.

The skin on her shoulders was practically shriveling under his gaze -- it would start to blacken in a minute. “Professor... why...?” she sighed, a tear running out of the corner of her eye.

Severus permitted himself to briefly touch her hair with his free hand. “I don’t know,” he said, smoothing down a stray curl.

Her eyes were wide and her gaze seemed to go right through him. “Happened before...” she whispered faintly, her eyes slipping shut a final time.

Glancing down at his watch, Severus released Granger’s hand. There was no point now. Two thirty-four.

“Hermione, I think you might need a bit more sleep than you’re actually getting,” Potter was saying as he and Granger walked into the classroom. Severus pricked his ears with interest.

“You mean, you haven’t noticed?” Granger asked.

Potter snorted, shaking his head. “Have I noticed that it’s been Thursday for a while? Good Lord, Hermione, are you listening to yourself? No one needs to study this hard.”

“Harry...” she said in a strangled sort of voice.

“What you need to do, Hermione,” he said placatingly, “is go on down to the Infirmary and talk to Madam Pomfrey about stuff. I’m sure she’ll... you know... give you something that’ll clear all of this up.”

“I don’t need drugs, Harry,” she said, drawing herself up indignantly. Severus caught himself watching the pair entirely too closely and made himself look away -- it would not do to be caught out.

Putting a hand on her shoulder, Potter looked into her eyes in a sort of searching gesture. “You need something, Hermione. I’ve never seen you like this before.”

Granger uncoiled slightly. “I expect that’s because I’ve never really been like this before.”

“Hermione...”

She withdrew from Potter entirely. “Just forget it, Harry. Professor Snape’s going to start class soon. And promise me you’ll leave Malfoy alone today.”

Grinning at her, he shoved his spectacles up his nose. “Only if he leaves me alone.”

“Professor Snape, sir,” Pritchard said primly, waving his hand in the air in a gesture that reminded Severus suddenly of a younger Hermione Granger.

“What is it, Pritchard?” he asked, looking up from the Ravenclaw’s cauldron he was currently examining.

“Please, Professor, my armadillo bile is missing.”

Severus idly fingered the vial in his pocket, lifted from Pritchard’s workbench in the first five minutes of class, as he was pacing the aisles. “This potion does not call for armadillo bile, Pritchard.”

Hands twisting, Pritchard stared down into his cauldron. “But it’s missing,” he repeated unnecessarily. “It’s not in its proper place. It should be there, sir,” he said, pointing at an empty spot on the table -- the spot from which Severus had taken it, of course--”and it’s not.”

“I can see that, Pritchard, but I tell you again that you don’t need it for today.” He didn’t want to take points from his own House over such a thing, but if worse came to worst...

His face contorted, alarming Severus slightly. “But I need it,” Pritchard said in an agonized voice. “If it’s not in its place, I can’t finish.”

Making a mental note to have a serious talk with this child at some point in the future, Severus stalked over to a supply cabinet and made a great show of rummaging around, surreptitiously extracting Pritchard’s missing vial from his pocket as he did so. “Will this suffice, Prichard?” he asked, an edge of exasperation in his tone, waving the vial at him.

The boy heaved a sigh of relief as Severus placed it in his hands. “Thank you, sir.”

As Severus turned back to the Ravenclaw’s cauldron, he heard a smashing noise and the rare sound of Graham Pritchard’s subsequent swearing.

“Professor Snape, sir?” a familiar female voice asked him as he stared down into his coffee cup.

Severus’ head jerked up, and he stared at her. “Miss Granger?”

Clearly uncomfortable, Granger nodded and shifted her book bag strap on her shoulder in a gesture that he was beginning to recognize as a nervous tic. “I was wondering if I might have a word with you, sir.”

“Very well.” He gave her an expectant look.

She shifted the strap again. “Erm... perhaps your office would be a better place, Professor?”

With a shrug, he finished his coffee and pushed his chair away from the table. “As you wish, Miss Granger. Come with me.”

The girl was silent on their short walk to Severus’ office. He stole sideways glances at her as they went along. Her hands made agitated, fluttery gestures at her sides, and she kept her gaze firmly on her loafers. Uncombed hair and wrinkled robes, Granger looked even more of a mess than she usually did. As they reached his office, Severus cleared his throat, halfway worried that in her distressed state, Granger would walk into the door before he could unlock it.

Sitting down in his desk chair, he extended a hand toward the empty seat across the desktop. “Have a seat, Miss Granger.”

Still fidgety, she placed herself gingerly in the straight-backed chair, dropping her bag unceremoniously to the floor. Her hands moved from her sides to her hair, nervously straightening the curls.

“You had something to discuss with me?” Severus asked, tilting back slightly in his chair.

“I...” she began, body language suggesting that she was rethinking her decision to speak with him. “That is to say, Professor, I--” Granger made a strangled sort of noise.

He felt an odd sort of pity for the girl and gave her the closest thing to an encouraging look he could manage. “Take your time, Miss Granger.”

“Professor, I think I’m losing my mind,” she whispered in a rush, hands snaking back down to grab fistfuls of her robes and tug restlessly at them. “I keep thinking... and I have these dreams... but when I ask, no one seems to know...” Snapping her head up, Granger regained a tiny bit of her usual composure. “I thought you might know, Professor. I think you know what’s going on, because I keep dreaming that you do.”

“Dreaming?” he asked carefully -- the girl was walking a fine line and he did not particularly want to push her. Hysterics were never fun to deal with, but especially not before his early morning class.

She replied with a short laugh. “They must be dreams, because they can’t be real. I think...”

Leaning forward, Severus tucked his hands under his chin. “What, Miss Granger?”

“I think,” she repeated slowly. “I think that I’m dead. Or I’m dying. I have these memories, Professor.”

He kept silent but gave her an encouraging nod.

“I remember you, Professor, leaning over me. And there’s... pain. The worst pain I’ve ever felt. I keep trying to tell you something, but I just can’t... everything goes away. And it’s always today.” Again, Granger snorted with laughter. “It’s just not possible.”

“I didn’t think so either, Granger,” Severus said quietly, attempting to gauge her response to such a statement. Her eyes widened but she remained otherwise calm, so he decided to continue. “But my memories match yours. Every day, for a long time now, has been today. And every day, Miss Granger, you die.”

“You mean... it’s true?”

“Yes.”

She shifted in her seat again. “Today, I’m going to die?”

“Yes,” Severus repeated with a short nod. “It’s a little different every time, but the outcome is the same.”

“It doesn’t make any sense,” she wailed suddenly, burying her face in her hands.

“No, it doesn’t,” he agreed. “But I’ve watched it happen, Miss Granger. Enough that I no longer doubt my sanity.”

“How often?” she asked dully, muffled through her fingers.

Sighing, Severus wondered whether or not it would be kinder to lie to her for now but, in the end, decided that the truth would be a better option. “Forty-seven days, at least,” he said. “By my count.”

“Oh, my God,” she cried into her hands. “I’ve died forty-seven times, and you’ve just watched it happen?”

“To be fair, I’ve only seen it happen forty-three times,” he said in a mild voice. “And I wouldn’t say that I just watched it, either.”

Jerking her head upward, Granger glared at him with red-rimmed eyes.

“Miss Granger,” he replied to her stare, “don’t you think that I’ve tried? Great Merlin, girl, I’ve tried nearly everything I can think of. Whatever I come up with, there’s always a factor that I didn’t take into account. Do you understand me? Always. There’s nothing I can do.”

“We could tell someone...” she said, almost sounding hopeful. “Headmaster Dumbledore--”

“Again, Granger,” he interrupted, “I’ve tried. Hell, Granger, I’ve even told you once or twice.” Her eyes widened. “Until someone figures it out on their own, you can tell them until you’re blue in the face, and they’ll just forget tomorrow. Today. Tomorrow’s today.” He made a frustrated, disgusted noise and gave up.

“So, what? We just... do nothing? And I die.”

Severus didn’t have a good reply.

Something in Granger’s face hardened. “Right. Okay. I think, Professor, that I’ve wasted enough of your time. I’ll see you on my deathbed.” And with that, Granger grabbed her bag and flounced out of his office.

Severus resisted the urge to mimic her earlier actions and bury his head in his hands. He hadn’t even told her his suspicions about the time-loop.