The crashes and booms of battle welcomed Rose to the past.
She arrived near the great Whomping Willow, just out of reach of its flailing branches. The night was unusually dark but she could see the signs of war: jets of light flew around in the darkness, occasionally illuminating the caster; in the distance the Black Lake was in an uproar, waves thrashing about like the ocean during a storm; the Forbidden Forest was swaying as one, magnanimous and terrifying.
Rose clutched at the Invisibility Cloak in fear, her teeth chattering of their own accord. She turned slightly and saw a boy being hit by a green light. He fell, not gracefully, not elegantly, but like a person who’d lost all control of their body. Rose opened her mouth to scream, but no sound left her. She had never seen someone die like that, instantly, fighting one second, dead the next.
Just then, she spotted someone she recognized. For a moment, she thought it was Albus – they looked so much alike – but then it hit her. It was her Uncle Harry. He’d just arrived at the Whomping Willow, only a foot away from her. He was looking at the trunk of the large tree, and just before Rose turned to follow his gaze, she spotted her own parents. They ran up to Harry, panting and out of breath and Rose heard her father say something about Crookshanks but Rose was too dazed to follow their short conversation properly. She was seeing her parents and her uncle when they’d been her age. They couldn’t have been older than she was, and it was quite possible that they were all slightly younger.
Around them, the battle swept on. Ron lifted his wand and used a tree branch to stop the Willow’s branches. Harry seemed to hesitate, as Rose watched from under her own Invisibility Cloak, but Ron quickly pushed him forward and Harry took the hint and slipped into passage beneath the tree.
Rose waited until all three of them had entered before walking forward herself. She peered down into the earthy passage and wondered if she’d fit with the Cloak on. If her parents saw her there would be no telling what could happen. Rose didn’t think either Ron or Hermione would recognize her for who she was, but what explanation would she have for following the trio into the Shrieking Shack?
It was a claustrophobic journey. The tunnel was so cramped the Rose had to crawl through it – her parents and Harry were doing the same ahead. It was difficult to keep quiet – Rose had to control the urge to start hyperventilating. She hated cramped spaces and this place was dark and earthy too. Rose couldn’t light her wand so she followed the very dim light coming from upfront where Harry had illuminated his wand.
It seemed to take forever for the tunnel to start sloping upwards. Rose could hear her mother telling Harry to put the Cloak on, just before Harry put his wand out. Rose hesitated, and then realized that the entrance to the tunnel seemed to be blocked by something. She watched, straining her eyes, as Harry crept right up to the edge of the exit and peered through a small crack between the tunnel wall and the obstacle, from which a sliver of light was entering. Rose realized she wouldn’t be able to see anything. She needed to get closer!
Rose wondered if she’d be able to Apparate from this tunnel to the front of the Shrieking Shack, in Hogsmeade. She couldn’t do it here, so close to her parents but Apparation was her only choice. She’d try it from further away and hope that everyone ignored the noise it’d make, hoped they’d think it was an explosion from the battle above. She managed to squeeze around herself and turn back. For a few minutes she speed-crawled the opposite way through the tunnel, until it flattened out. There she pulled out her wand and sucked in as much air as she could before doing her best to turn on the spot.
It worked. When she opened her eyes, she was standing at the front door of the large, intimidating building. It was boarded up but Rose took out her wand and managed to quietly burn through the pieces of wood that blocked the door. She pushed through the door, ran through the front hall and scrambled up the stairs, praying she was heading in the right direction.
She found the door. It was half-open and Rose, pulling the Cloak tighter around herself, crept closer. She saw a wooden crate in the corner; her parents and Harry were behind that. She saw Severus Snape standing near the box, a dark-haired, dark-eyed, tall man who, at that very moment, looked anything but daunting. Her heart twisted with combined amazement, shock and excitement as she set eyes on the living man for the first time in her life. Then she saw Lord Voldemort.
Rose had not been born with the fear of Voldemort’s name, but she was sure as hell afraid of the man himself. His red eyes were focused on Snape, his snake-like face expressionless. His long, white, unearthly fingers curled around a wand. Behind him was a strange looking sphere floating in mid-air. In it a snake coiled and uncoiled – Nagini. Fear swathed Rose, her heart was beating so hard she felt sure it would burst forth from her chest.
‘The Elder Wand cannot serve me properly, Severus,’ Voldemort was saying, his voice smooth and terrible, ‘because I am not its true master. The Elder Wand belongs to the wizard who killed its last owner. You killed Albus Dumbledore. While you live, Severus, the Elder Wand cannot be truly mine.’
‘My Lord!’ Snape said, lifting his wand, and Rose sensed his fear.
‘It cannot be any other way,’ replied Voldemort silkily. ‘I must master the wand, Severus. Master the wand and I master Potter at last.’
Rose was so shocked to hear Voldemort utter her Uncle’s name, despite the fact that she’d heard all the stories, despite the fact that she knew Voldemort had been after Harry, that she almost missed what happened next. The realization that the threat had been so real, that it was more than a story to tell the children, was so astounding that it took Rose a second to grasp what was happening.
Voldemort had flicked his wand, the snake behind him, sphere and all, swept forward, and surrounded Severus, enclosed his head and shoulders. Voldemort hissed something softly and suddenly, the snake struck. Rose stumbled away from the door as Severus screamed, clutching her wand in one hand; her other hand was clamped over her own mouth to keep from screaming out. She collapsed against the wall just outside the door, as Severus fell to the floor inside.
In the Invisibility Cloak, pressed against the wall, Rose clapped her other hand over her mouth as well and squeezed her eyes closed.
She heard Voldemort cold voice from inside. ‘I regret it,’ he murmured. Rose heard movement from inside, another muffled thump and suddenly Voldemort was sweeping past her. Tears streamed from Rose’s eyes and she screamed in her mind, prayed that he wouldn’t hear her thoughts or see her somehow or hear her breathing. She kept her eyes clamped shut until she heard a sound from inside.
‘Take… it… Take… it…’ someone was rasping in a terrible voice.
Rose opened her eyes and crawled, on shaking limbs, back to the door. Harry was leaning over Snape; something was pouring from Severus’s mouth, his ears, his eyes – something silver, not red. Rose watched Hermione appear from the tunnel, conjure a flask, and thrust it into Harry’s hand. Using his wand, Harry pushed the silvery substance into the flask.
As soon as the flask was full, Snape whispered something else, which, even in the silence, Rose could not hear. Harry looked right at Snape and then, without warning, Severus’s hand slipped from where it had been grasping Harry’s robes, and thudded to the floor.
Harry remained kneeled next to Snape for a long moment and didn’t move until a voice suddenly exploded into the Shack and caused him to spring to his feet. Rose’s heart jumped into her throat – but Voldemort hadn’t returned to the Shrieking Shack. His voice was reverberating from somewhere outside, filtering through the walls and the floor.
Rose didn’t hear his words. Her eyes were glued to Snape’s body. She wanted Harry and her parents to leave and leave quickly. He couldn’t die, not yet. But she couldn’t see his chest moving at all.
Ron and Hermione said something to Harry and the three of them left though the tunnel soon after. Rose waited a total of five seconds before getting shakily to her feet and rushing into the room.
Please, please, don’t let him be dead.
She tumbled to the floor next to him, threw off the Cloak and pulled a vial of the antidote she had James had made out of her pocket. She pressed two fingers to Snape’s wrist as James had instructed her, and felt a faint pulsing there – he was alive, but barely. It took a moment to get the cork off the vial with her trembling fingers but she did eventually. She put her hand under Snape’s head, getting blood all over herself in the process, and lifted him up, before pouring the antidote into his throat. She kept a few drops in the vial and rubbed these directly onto the wound on Severus’s neck. And then she pulled out a flask of Blood-Replenishing Potion and poured this into Severus’s mouth too, rubbing at his throat to get him to swallow. Her teeth chattered as she worked.
He didn’t wake immediately but Rose hadn’t expected him to. Now she needed to get him away.
She, Albus, Lily, and James had discussed all sorts of places they could take him – Grimmauld Place, the Burrow, Snape’s own house – all were almost certainly empty at this time. But all were also wizarding areas and Rose didn’t know if they were being watched or not. In the end, she and her cousins had decided that the safest place to go would be somewhere surrounded by mostly Muggle people. Luckily enough, Rose knew a perfect place. And she knew without a doubt that the place would be empty and without any protection against witches and wizards entering unannounced. And she was pretty sure that with Harry Potter at Hogwarts, and the house’s usual occupants long gone, the place wouldn’t be under surveillance.
Putting a hand on Snape’s wrist, Rose did her best to cover herself and him with the Invisibility Cloak (just in case), stowed her two now-empty vials in her pocket again and, wand in her right hand, spun slightly on the spot.
With a crack that no one heard, Rose Weasley and Severus Snape vanished from the Shrieking Shack… and with another crack that three Muggles heard, arrived in front of Number Four, Privet Drive. The three Muggles all ran to peek through the curtains hanging on their windows, but when they didn’t see anything unusual, decided the sound had been made by a car backfiring and returned to their beds.
Down on the street and under her Invisibility Cloak, Rose had forgotten she was a witch and was trying to drag Snape into the house without hurting him more than she had to. When it occurred to her to use magic, she rolled her eyes at herself and flicked her wand at Severus’s body. He rose into the air and the Invisibility Cloak fell off his feet, but there was nothing Rose could do about that but hurry. She used Alohamora on the front door and guided Severus inside. She closed the door after her, locked it with magic and used a few spells that her father had taught her to avoid detection.
She set Snape down on the couch in the living room and slumped onto the loveseat across from him.
Severus was now breathing visibly but showed no signs of waking and Rose, for the first time since she’d arrived in the past, found herself surrounded by peace and quiet. Flashes of the events of the past two hours appeared before her eyes. Voldemort’s face tormented her more than once. She couldn’t stop seeing the snake lunge out at Severus. She looked at his still form across the table that separated their two couches and realized the Voldemort had taken his life – or tried to take his life – without a second thought, for a wand. For a wand that would kill Harry Potter. Rose was suddenly struck with fear for her uncle, even though she knew he survived. Would keeping Severus Snape alive have any consequences on the events of the night?
The flashes of Voldemort, Snape and Nagini were suddenly merged with flashes of Hugo’s final days, of Scorpius’s funeral. Rose had watched them lower the body into the earth. It had been a quiet funeral, with only his parents and grandparents at his side. Rose hadn’t asked to be present – she’d watched everything from behind a tree, but had seen Draco Malfoy glance at her more than once. She was sure he’d seen her but he hadn’t told her to leave. No one had.
Sometimes she wished someone had told her to leave. She’d seen her best friend’s lifeless face and the sight would never leave her. And because they had almost been more than best friends the pain would never leave her either. Why had God killed him? And Hugo? And why was God killing James? Why?
How could she fix this? She watched Snape’s chest rise and fall. Would he ever wake up? Would he even help her? What would she say to him? How would she get him to help her? Why would he help her? What if James died while she was here, waiting? What if there was a time limit? What if the cure only worked at a specific time?
What if the cure didn’t work at all?
Rose wasn’t a crier, but the past few months had done a lot to convert her into one. The thought that this might all be for nothing brought a flood of tears and with a shuddering breath, before she could even control it, she was crying. Crying as she hadn’t cried in ages. She was crying for Scorpius, Hugo, James, and every other child who’d died in such pain and lost a life that could have been so full. She cried for her parents and for her aunt and uncle and she cried for the people at Hogwarts who were fighting for their lives and she cried for that boy she’d seen die. She cried in anger and belated fear and grief. She cried for Nymphadora Tonks and Remus Lupin and Fred Weasley and Sirius Black and all the relatives and friends she was never able to meet, who had died already in this time or would die soon. She cried for Albus Dumbledore who’d worked so hard, only to lose his life in the end, never to see the fruits of his labor. Most of all, Rose realized, she cried for the man lying still across from her who had been killed mercilessly and disrespectfully, who had been left to die, bleeding on the dirty floor of the Shrieking Shack, with absolutely no one he cared for by his side, with no one to thank him for what he’d sacrificed. It was all so real – nothing like what she’d read.
James had been right. Why would he help her? What did he need to give to the world? Why would a man so scorned ever agree to what she needed him to do?
The tears stopped eventually, and Rose was left curled on the couch with wet cheeks and swollen eyes and the recognition that saving Severus Snape had been the easy part – convincing him to help her would be next to impossible.