He returned to their home to find her sitting in the room she had worked hard in his absence to make into the nursery for the baby.

The reason they were here.

The reason he'd let this witch … in.

It wasn't as difficult as he imagined it would be to do it either. Nearly ten months into this and there hadn't been a single time he'd thought a stint in Azkaban would be easier than her twenty-four hour a day chatter. There had been moments she'd been more talkative than he'd prefer, but she seemed to realize that on her own and stopped talking.

Not to say that he didn't have annoying habits either. The day he'd realized that went a long way toward letting her in. He didn't confess his sins to her. She didn't need nor, likely, want to hear them. He shared his books and papers with her, though. And that was something Severus had not done since Hogwarts.

With anyone.

She'd come home with the baby first a few hours ago. The less he was at the orphanage or anywhere but their home the better. Severus stayed behind to ensure any and all who'd had exposure to Merope Riddle had been obliviated.

He watched from the doorway for a moment as the witch held the newborn wizard in her arms.

Tom Riddle.

Obviously, that would not be his name this go around. Still, though. They both knew who he was. What he became.

It was such an … intimate moment. Truly her son or not, she was holding him, rocking him as Severus pictured any new mother would. Her head was bent over the hours old newborn, her unruly curls likely would tickle him if he was any older than he was. She appeared to be murmuring something, but Severus couldn't hear what she was saying and her mouth was not visible so he couldn't read her lips to know. He felt a little invasive and, yet, she had to know he was here. He wasn't quiet with his approach. He wondered if his mother had ever sat with him like this. He obviously had no idea.

He saw an empty bottle on the small table by the rocking chair they were in, so he'd been fed it seemed. Her research as to what to give him evidently worked. They'd discussed before heading to his home whether he should stock up on infant formula before heading back. She had known that by the time he was born it would be close to expired anyway. He'd bought a couple of cans anyway, not to give to Thomas but to see if he could make something that would be better than the sugar mixed with a blend of evaporated and cow's milk. He'd come up with a few possibilities, and had recently gotten permission to get some mice for testing purposes. The headmaster didn't know what these experiments were, but there were many different things to experiment with in potions so he hadn't been questioned too severely. What he'd be giving them wouldn't hurt them, but he'd need to see if they grew and such as they should.

It might be too late for Tom when he finally came up with something, but it was something he'd be able to patent and sell going forward. He trusted Hermione's research enough to believe the option she chose was the one she deemed the best.

There were lactating goats and wet nurses, of course, but neither wanted the responsibility of a goat just yet. And a wet nurse could not be employed.

"He is well?" He finally spoke up. She didn't start or move, so she knew he was there.

"He seems to be," she said, cradling the small, swaddled infant in her arms almost instinctively. "He looks so normal, Erik. I've sat here with him since getting back, assuming I'd see some indication. Some clue that he became what he did. I see nothing different about him than any other baby I've seen."

"You know I've thought of that over the months. I've had a bit of time on my hands since September, knowing this day was fast approaching. In March, it seemed so far in the future. My being at Hogwarts meant it wasn't that far off any longer. Anyway. A child growing up with nobody. I think in some ways that's why I was," he shrugged. He leaned against the doorframe a bit. He didn't want to get any closer for fear of startling the seemingly quiet newborn. His wife's attention was on him now, though. And he saw … interest and caring in her eyes. "Taken in as I was. I had parents, of course, but they were awful. Well, my father was. Mum," he huffed. He didn't want to be overly negative. One day, like with this day, sooner than he realized, this witch would meet his mother. He didn't want her to dislike her or hold things against her. And she was the type of witch who would do that. "She just stopped caring after a while, which may have been worse than the physical abuse I suffered by my father. For a while, I at least knew I could get comfort from her. He," he said, gesturing to the newborn. "Never had anyone. Orphanages were not kind, and as you and I both know, hard times are coming which would only bode worse. You saw the state of that place. They were negligibly able to care for the children entrusted to their care. Imagine with financially difficult times what it would look like."

"Hopefully, even this small thing will make a difference."

"It's not small, Marie Rose, and we are not my parents."

In his eyes, already what they'd done was rather huge.

This much, removing him from the orphanage alone was huge.

He wouldn't starve. He would be cared for and loved. Even the way Hermione was holding him was probably more closeness than he'd ever gotten the first go around as a baby. The only advantage he had was that the orphanage his mother had chosen was muggle, so at least he had to be held for the essentials like feedings and nappy changing. A magical orphanage, there were spells to do those things.

"No," she said.

She'd come to his rooms at Hogwarts most every weeknight since that first night. It seemed ridiculous to have this house and not use it, but he understood and never complained or said anything about her choice in sleeping accommodations. She went home every morning and spent her days doing whatever it was she had on the agenda for that day. He never asked her for an itinerary or assumed she was doing nothing. He knew she was not.

Every night, she came to him freshly bathed, hair still damp from washing it. He knew, between the gardening she was doing and the housework, that her days were busy and not spent doing needlepoint (though she had been practicing her knitting, but she was making things for the baby so it wasn't simply knitting for amusement). He didn't think she never picked up a book or took an hour for herself here and there, but he knew she was hard at work. He never once asked her to account for any of her time and she never attempted to do so. Once a week she gave him a rundown of her NEWT preparations.

It was an odd thing for him. To have a routine that involved another person. Even when he'd liked Lily, his thoughts never really took him past Hogwarts to what he had come to have the past ten months with this witch.

Companionship. Friendship. Trust. By both parties.

He woke up each morning to her in his bed. Some nights they made their way toward one another, but to this point he had (thankfully) not embarrassed himself by doing anything he wouldn't do while awake. He got ready for his day and went to breakfast, knowing she'd make her way home when she woke. Some days she was awake before him, but those days were rare. She was talking about adding some animals to the property, so he suspected between those and Tom, her days of sleeping later than him were pretty well done for now.

He would go about his day, teaching classes and such, having lunch and dinner in the Great Hall. He'd go to his rooms in the evenings. Some evenings he'd go home to join her for some reading or a game. Walks in the evening before the weather turned real bitterly cold weren't unheard of either. Some evenings she came to him and brewed with him or just sat with him while he graded potions turned in that day. He always had her assist him with grading. She seemed to enjoy it, and it led to some discussions that he was certain she got as much out of as he did. He'd never allowed anyone to get close enough to talk of these sorts of things. His word was final, but he would ask for her opinion on something, or would tell her the grade a paper or potion had gotten and see if she could figure out why. Those evenings led to some very nice discussions.

A few had gotten heated, but neither took the discussions personally. They were discussing academic subjects as two people who valued not only their minds but academia. It was … heady to have that. It was something he never imagined he'd get. He certainly never would have imagined it came from this witch.

He found himself thinking of her ten months into this as more than a wife, but a friend. Something he really couldn't say he'd ever had. His friendship with Lily counted, certainly, but they'd been so young when they first met that it was just different. Looking around at others as he'd gotten older, very few remained friends with people they'd known as children. It wasn't unusual for people to grow apart as their interests, and more generally their lives, diverged.

So, yes, he liked to think they'd taken the nearly ten months to build something sustainable. He knew now why Albus had chosen to send them back so early. At first he'd thought he was insane, but it was necessary for him to get to know Hermione as a person. Equally so for her to know him as Severus (Erik) and not her professor. Coming back very close to Tom's birthdate would have essentially thrown them immediately into chaos. The shift in their relationship couldn't have progressed as naturally as it had. He liked to think they were better for having had the extra time.

And now, he and this woman were responsible for this child. A child they both knew and understood they may have to make the decision to end his life if things did not change. That was what they were here to do, change the future.

To ensure that the Dark Lord never came to be.

Or else.

"I know you're tired, likely exhausted. You did way more than I did tonight, but are you hungry?"

He smiled slightly. Her thought of and concern for him touched him. He was admittedly a little afraid that with Tom's arrival, she'd see him differently. Holding the newborn that he'd essentially indentured himself to might make things more real for her.

"I am both, though not famished. I will make myself some toast or something and then rest. If you have everything handled in here for now."

"I do," she said.

"Would you like me to bring you anything?"

She glanced at him, clearly surprised at the offer. The smile she granted him suggested he did the right thing by offering. He stored that away. He tried to be considerate, but this was very much her domain anymore, even if he had been home for the holiday break. "I'm okay for now. You could take the empty bottle with you. I expect he'll want another one soon, so I'll be down shortly anyway. I'm just going to hold him for a while longer."

"Very well," he said with a nod. It wasn't as if he wouldn't offer to bring her something, just that prior to tonight there'd been no reason she couldn't join him in the kitchen.

"And Erik," she said, fumbling over his name so he knew Erik was not what she wanted to call him.

"Yes?"

"I'm glad that you're all right."

"I am glad that you are, as well," he said, bowing his head politely before heading to the kitchen after retrieving the empty bottle. In truth, he was glad both she and Tom were all right.

She found him about two hours later in his bedroom.

"He is resting?" he asked.

"Yes, for now. He took another bottle, and I changed him. He'll wake soon, I'm sure. I have bottles boiled and everything so all I'll have to do is prepare one."

"Good." He had seen the bottles out, presumed they were clean (other than the used one he'd brought with him).

She seemed prepared. He wasn't sure he would have thought of bottles, or boiling them at any rate.

"Did you need something else?" he asked. It had been quite a while since he'd used that much magic, so he was more than just a bit exhausted. He wasn't going to complain, though, that would be incredibly selfish considering she'd be waking up with him every couple of hours. He'd assist if she showed him, but until Tom was actually here it was not something that could really be demonstrated. So, he would learn, and offer to take a feeding off her hands. Likely, it would be an early morning one since he'd return to Hogwarts.

"Well, no, I just," she said, biting that lower lip.

"Spit it out." Normally, she wore her emotions rather plainly. He was having a hard time deciphering what this was tonight.

"You're sleeping in here?"

"Yes, this is my room."

"Yes, but," she said and stopped. "Never mind. Good night then."

She turned to leave, and he scowled with a shake of his head.

"Marie Rose," he said, stopping her from leaving the room entirely. Their rooms connected via the bathroom and shared closet, however, they never used that connection to visit one another.

"It's nothing."

He knew what she wanted. He had to admit, he did as well.

Her coming to him when he started at Hogwarts was because she didn't want to be alone in this house. He could completely understand her desire not to be alone here.

Him going to her now would be changing things. It was need, desire, and want, not fear or insecurity. It was him admitting he needed her, too. And he'd come to find that he did. If there was an evening she didn't join him, or he her, for some reason, he missed her. He had not gone to her yet while he'd been home over the term break, but now that Tom was here and they were truly parents and the huge unknown of what they were embarking on from this point was weighing on her. He could understand why she'd want that closeness that sharing a bed gave them. Proof they were in this together.

It was on him, too. The past ten months it had almost seemed a dream, other than the lack of modern items he was accustomed to.

"You are ready for that step, Hermione?" he asked.

"Are you?" she asked, back still to him.

He scoffed.

"Don't scoff at me."

"Don't ask me ridiculous questions."

"It's not ridiculous. I know that you are not accustomed to sleeping with …"

"And yet you've slept with me every night for months. Something I've never done with another woman before. That, to me, is far more intimate than anything physical that might occur between us."

"Might?"

"I don't want to make assumptions."

"Well, I know I don't plan on dying a virgin, Erik."

"When there's a not even day old babe in the home may not be the time to embark on changing that."

"I wasn't planning on it tonight. I, however, like sleeping with you and have missed it."

"It may be difficult with Tom to go back and forth evenings."

"I'm aware."

"It was why I did not when I returned home. I knew that his presence would change things."

"Well, and I have little trouble sleeping when I know you're a room away."

"I am glad to know that is true. When we first got here it was my duty to keep you safe."

"You no longer find it a duty?"

"I do not."

She turned then, facing him and closing the distance between them. She dropped her hands into his.

"I think until tonight it just didn't seem real. Now it's very real. He's here. In our house. The brunt of ensuring he turns out differently falls to me."

She lifted her eyes to meet his then, until then seeming to talk to their joined hands. Her brown eyes, which he found to be quite expressive once he started paying attention to them, depicted uncertainty and fear. She was right. No matter how involved he might want to be, the fact was, she was the mother and he was the father, and teachings on how to be a good human being would begin with her. He had never really gotten those instructions.

"Let me change and I'll be there."

"He'll wake you."

"He'll wake you, too. That's what being a parent is about the first little while from my understanding."

She smiled at him then, releasing his hands.

"Thank you," she said.

She left then and he readied himself for bed before leaving his room. He stopped first in the nursery. He knew better than to touch or talk to him. Let sleeping babies sleep. He may not have had one, but that was the rule. However, he could not help but be curious.

Would he feel anything? Would the nursery feel different with this baby now having taken his spot in it?

Thomas Marvolo Riddle.

The man he'd sold his soul to.

The man he'd turned against, committed to Albus to bring about his end.

The man who had killed his only friend, leaving her son essentially an orphan.

The man he'd come here for.

He'd been so busy at the orphanage that he hadn't really taken the time to see the baby boy they'd traveled seventy years into the past in an attempt to save. He stopped by the crib, but not too close. His arms behind him, one hand clutching the other wrist.

This baby.

He looked so normal. Did anyone know, looking at him, that he would grow up to be the man hundreds would willingly follow and do evil acts for? When had he come up with the idea for the Dark Mark? Was it at Hogwarts? Later? What had he said to the first person to take it? How had he … justified the need to essentially have a protean charm embedded in their skin?

And it wasn't just his life they were trying to save but his soul. The lives and souls of each and every witch and wizard who'd followed him.

And Severus felt that by doing that, he'd be saving a piece of his own as well.

It would be so easy here and now to end it, and avoid the risk entirely. No one would know, except Albus. Babies in this era didn't automatically survive. So many deaths, so much horror and destruction could for certain be avoided.

And yet, Albus had sent them back here to give the baby, the boy who had become Tom Riddle, a chance. He hadn't said to go back, kill the baby, and go on with their lives.

He had wanted to give him a chance.

He sighed heavily, his grip on his wrist tightening for a moment.

He turned then to make his way to her bedroom, surprised (though why he was he couldn't say) that she was in the doorway watching him.

He saw understanding in her eyes, and he realized, not for the first time tonight, that he'd fallen in love with this witch. The first time he'd realized it? When he'd come in to see her holding the baby, Tom, close to her as any new mother would do. There was genuine affection in that gesture so many likely took for granted. She would love this child as if he was her own. It didn't matter that ten months ago he was someone who wanted her dead. He closed the door most of the way, and followed her to her room. Their room now he supposed.

"I thought about it, too," she said.

He nodded simply. He should be bothered that she knew what he'd been thinking in there, but it didn't. Being able to read him at all was granting her immense power. He hoped it wasn't a mistake, but he hadn't felt the need to occlude for months.

"We'll have to send Albus an owl so he can ensure the document is done for his birth."

"I already did."

"Oh? And his name? Are we keeping Thomas?"

"I thought we'd agreed to."

"You hadn't mentioned a middle name."

"Magnus, of course," she said.

He thought on it, said it in his head, and then "Thomas Magnus Prins". He nodded then. "It's passable."

"Shut up," she said, "It's more than passable. I thought it sounded nice, and doesn't stray completely away from the name he had."

"It was a good decision."

"Thank you. Albus already replied, by the way. It will be taken care of, and he congratulated us on the birth of our son."

"Of course he did."

"I'm just so grateful I'm not stuck here anymore!"

"As am I."

He'd taken to doing the grocery shopping every weekend because she couldn't very well go into town not pregnant much after the time he'd started at Hogwarts. Not that he minded grocery shopping. He didn't, but if he had rounds one weekend, or if it was a Hogsmeade weekend, he had to balance his time carefully so she wouldn't starve the following week.

Of course now it was January and winter, so she wouldn't be leaving to go anywhere for a while with a newborn. So, likely his weekends home would still be a requisite for the time being. Eventually, next school year he hoped, they could close up the house for the most part and she and Tom could reside at Hogwarts most of the year.

She could come and go during the day as she pleased to tend to the gardens and such, but he really didn't like the idea of her being alone with just Tom days at a time. In a year or two when they'd had the chance to, he shook his head at the thought, make friends. Well, then they could rethink how much the house got used. For now, though, no one on the staff had asked him if he was hosting a holiday party or anything. Eventually, yes, they likely would need to do that.

He watched as she slid into her bed, turning down the covers for him to join her. To make it their bed. Because if he slept in it tonight he was not going to go back to the other one. He was pretty sure she was aware that was the case. No, he wouldn't expect sex when a baby was going to be waking her up every three hours or so, but he would not return to separate rooms.

What was more.

He didn't want to.

***

January 1967

"How did you come by this again?" Minerva asked, glancing at the obviously old and ornate item Albus was gushing over for being in possession of. She couldn't quite blame him.

"It was the strangest thing," Albus said. "Hepzibah evidently willed it to Hogwarts in the event of her death."

Minerva and Albus regarded the cup that both knew for a fact was the long-been missing cup of Helga Hufflepuff. No one knew what had happened to it, but it was one of the things that indeed should have been here and not in a private collection.

"And she never told you?"

"No," he said.

She was a crafty one indeed to keep such a thing from Albus for all of these years. Her eyes shifted to the second item that had come with the cup.

"And the locket?"

Albus picked up the item in question fondly and carefully. It was, obviously, old, too. A bit more … delicate seeming than the cup so he treated it appropriately.

"It belonged to Salazar Slytherin."

Minerva's brow arched at that. She was no expert, but what was someone who bragged about being a descendant of Helga Hufflepuff doing with a Slytherin heirloom?

"I've asked at Borgin and Burkes since receiving the item, and the last known documentation of the locket was back before the Depression. It came to them from a Merope Riddle, a poor and desperate girl whose father and brother were imprisoned in Azkaban. A sad situation, and I get the impression they did not give her nearly as much as they should have for it, not realizing how valuable it was."

"What happened to her?"

"She died while having a miscarriage, the story goes."

"How tragic."

"It is," Albus said.

He had vague recollections of the time the locket came to be at Borgin and Burkes, but he was rather occupied with other - more important - things.

He also knew that the estimated death of Merope Riddle nee Gaunt timed with the birth of the wizard he - and all of the magical world - knew as Thomas Prins. He wasn't a stupid man, but as the letter to himself indicated it was a world-threatening event that brought the Prins' to his safe house in March 1926. Well, it was a secret he'd kept for years now.

The stories he'd accumulated about Merope since coming by the locket had not painted her in the most … sane or caring light. There were rumours that the wizard, Thomas, had been created via the use of a love spell or potion. Abhorrent behaviour for a magical person to do, especially to a muggle who wouldn't even stand the chance of being able to protect himself against such a thing.

What was more, he did not believe that Erik Prins, his long time friend, had murdered the woman. He didn't know what kind of man he was in the 1996 Severus Snape knew, but he liked to think he didn't send him back to 1926 to commit murder.

From what he knew of Merope Riddle and the Gaunts' in general, the child would have had a miserable childhood. He had everything but that from Albus' observations over the years.

"Well, we will have to find somewhere grand to put them both for the time being."

"I think you are right. Erik might have some ideas. He knows the castle perhaps better than most."

"Even you, Albus?" she asked, amused.

"Even me, yes."

Minerva left and Albus picked up the locket.

"What sort of story could you tell, hmm?" he asked, peering at the locket over the tops of his glasses.

His floo went off, alerting him to a visitor so he set the locket down.

Story ©Susan Falk/APCKRFAN/PhantomRoses.com