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It's the last day of the Christmas holidays, and as far as Hermione is concerned, the new term can't start quickly enough. The days have dragged, drawn brittle and thin like translucent threads of bitter-burnt toffee. The emptiness of the castle; the lack of cooperation from the library; the thinly-veiled concern of the staff, most of whom have invited her for Christmas tea and academic natter during the last week; the disconcerting quiet of Gryffindor Tower... all of these things have waited around the corners and in the shadows, eager to pounce upon her and bruise her bitter heart.

There are a few Gryffindors staying at Hogwarts for Christmas, but they seem to scatter elsewhere just as soon as they sense her approach because she's only ever seen them at meal times. She realises that she doesn't even know the names of most of the first-year students. Asking for the salt or the butter is a minefield of awkward moments and stilted pauses that take the place of names. It's because she's not a Prefect this year, she tells herself.

The family-bereft students are sharing a single table in the Great Hall at the moment, but they gather in clumps along its length like they're still pigeonholed into their Houses. However, the exception to any rule will invariably be Gryffindor or Slytherin, and the two tiny students seated a little way down the table from her only compound the proof of this. At least they're well-behaved and conversing quietly, unlike the Hufflepuffs down at the end of the table, who are squealing and giggling childishly about the house-elves' unfortunate choice of pudding today (Spotted Dick and custard).

Hermione's eating her custard (she hates currants) when the two girls start to whisper urgently, stealing glances at her from beneath their fringes. The Slytherin elbows the Gryffindor as if to point out that being brave isn't her job at all. The little Gryffindor clenches her teeth and leaps off the cliff of courage: "Did you really ride a dragon, Miss Granger?"

For a singular, suspended moment, Hermione is stunned at the facets of respect and reverence and fear in the child's voice. "Ah... you can call me Hermione," she says because she's still a student, just like them. "And yes, I did ride a dragon."

The Slytherin gives her a calculating look. "Weren't the goblins cross that you stole their dragon?"

Immensely. Thank Merlin for Bill Weasley and his diplomatic intervention. "They were, yes, but we sorted it all out in the end."

"Did you really stay in a tent with Harry Potter the whole year?" the Gryffindor asks, her blue eyes wide and wondering.

Hermione hides the quirk of her lips by dipping her head, and she takes a mouthful of custard, only answering with a brief nod.

"Ask her if he's really got a Hippogriff tattoo on his chest," she hears one hiss to the other.

"Are you mad?" the other whispers back.

"So, why are you still at school?" the Slytherin child asks instead. "You're pretty old to be at Hogwarts, aren't you?"

"Because you can't finish school and save the world all at once," Hermione says with a touch of asperity.

"Harry Potter did," the little Gryffindor says, pride puffing her skinny chest.

The child is saved from a scathing lecture on how Harry Potter didn't really finish school...he was given a nice set of NEWTs like free sweeties...when the post owls swoop overhead, dropping letters and parcels like missiles from the reflected sky.

"Talk of the bloody devil," Hermione mutters as she opens a letter from Harry.

Dear Hermione,

Listen, I'm writing to give you a heads up before the Sunday Prophet arrives. Ron and Lavender are seeing each other again... it really was an eventful New Year's Eve. All I can say for them is they're lucky Molly didn't go up to the attic that night. Anyway, Parvati managed to snap a picture of them before that, and you know that she works for the Daily Prophet, now, yeah? I'm sorry to be the one to tell you about it, but I'd rather you heard it from me than from anybody else.

Love, Harry.

A delivery owl lands at her elbow like a feathered harbinger of doom. It's clutching the Sunday Prophet in its talons and gazing at her with expectant orange eyes.

"I'm not sure I really want the newspaper today," she says with a grimace as she tucks five Knuts into its leather pouch.

The happy news is tucked neatly next to Parvati's gossip column in the gutter of the newspaper, just where it belongs. She can taste something metallic and bitter on her tongue, like spite or envy. Ron looks drunk and Lavender looks slutty with her boobs almost leaking out of her low-cut Muggle blouse. The curve of her jaw is blurred in the photograph where she's obviously applied a heavy glamour to hide the scars of the war.

Hermione tries to fold up the paper neatly but gets frustrated when the sports section tries to escape. She ends up Vanishing the entire paper with a little snarl of frustration. She's just calmed her breathing again when she notices that Professor Vector (one of the few teachers who have not yet trapped her for tea) is eyeing her with a sort of pitying intent. Actually, she's getting that look from most of the teachers except Slughorn, who has been studiously avoiding her since before Christmas (maybe this means a grateful end to Slug Club meetings) and Snape, who is not at lunch.

Hermione quickly makes an escape to the Entrance Hall, clutching Harry's letter in her fist. She runs into Snape just as he's coming up from the dungeons. She is surprised to see him wearing Muggle clothes: black trousers and a Slytherin-green jumper over a white shirt. It's a bit old-fashioned and staid and predictable, but it's better than McGonagall's jacket from Christmas day (the double-breasted cherry-red one with the power shoulder-pads straight from the 1980s).

She nods and murmurs, "Good afternoon, sir," and she quickens her step because she just wants to go and sulk in peace. At a different time and in a different mood, Hermione would probably pause and search for an excuse to talk with Snape; she's been watching him this last week, looking for clues that might indicate he's anything but human. Sadly, aside from his pallor and his hair, he seems to be a living, breathing, ordinary (if a little sarcastic and sour) wizard.

"A moment, Granger," he says, though, halting her flight.

She turns to face him. She tries for a neutral expression, but there's a strained trace of pained impatience leaking through. "You're not going to invite me to tea, too, are you?"

"I beg your pardon?" he says, and his black eyebrows wing up sharply.

"It's just that all the other teachers have thrown a pity party for me all week..." And she's sure it's a conspiracy of concern that has been plotted and pondered in the staffroom. She hates the thought of the teachers talking about her and her issues there.

Snape's expression hardens into sharp annoyance. "Would you prefer if they bluntly stated that you are directly responsible for your parents' relocation, or perhaps that you should have had the sense never to have taken up with Weasley in the first place?"

Hermione feels a hot spike of indignation, and she glares at Snape, who has just reverted to spiteful again after months of seeming uncharacteristically mellow. Her bottom lip sticks out in a petulant pout and quivers lightly. She clenches her teeth. What she really wants is to be alone right now, and she's damned if she's going to let him make her cry.

"Dropping lip like that is childish, Granger," he snaps. "You have long been an adult, and it would reflect well upon you to behave as such."

"Being here at Hogwarts makes me feel like I'm still a child," Hermione retorts.

The muscles in his face tighten into a bitter grimace, and Snape mutters something under his breath as he turns and moves smoothly across the Entrance Hall. A crystalline gust of winter air chases up the staircase as he opens and closes the Great Doors with a bang.

Hermione rubs her arms and wonders about two things: What he'd wanted in the first place and what she'd said to make him mutter and flee like that.

Although the library has not yielded much in the way of research on the giant squid, it does hold pools of quiet peace like a church. And most of the other students are relaxing in their common rooms or playing on the grounds. She has to smile when she sees that Crookshanks lies curled in a slant of wintery light, almost like he's been waiting for her to arrive.

"Hello, boy," she says, scooping him into her lap. He rumbles his contentment beneath her fingertips as she stares out of the window and thinks about her reaction to the rekindling of what she can only recall to be an intensely physical relationship... She comes to the conclusion that it has to be a rebound thing. She also decides that it's not that she wants Ron back at all, not in that way (that deeply unsatisfying way). In the end, it's that she's bitterly envious of the fact that he can move on...with his life and career and plans...and she feels like she's stuck here, stagnating, even though it was her choice to finish her NEWTs in the proper fashion. She was always part of the Trio, right from that first Halloween, and now she's feels like she's been left behind. She feels like the lonely first-year in that bathroom, all over again.

She can see Hogsmeade station in the distance, and she's been watching the horizon for the tell-tale puff of engine steam, which will herald the returning stampede of students. To the left of the station, she can see the thatched roofs of Hogsmeade shivering under a blanket of snow and the little columns of wood-fire smoke that rise lazily from each household. The lake, which has so captured her attention, is still frosted over, capped with a thin, cracked slick of ice.

"It's like a fairytale out there, Crooks," she murmurs. "And I'm the ugly stepsister."

Time slides past like a lazy cat, and before she's even thought to check her watch, Hermione has half-dozed the afternoon away in the library window seat with Crookshanks warm on her lap. Under a mushroom cap of white smoke, the Hogwarts Express flashes scarlet in the distance. Hermione sighs softly. "There they are, boy," she murmurs, touching the glass with her fingertips.

Another blur of movement, closer this time, draws her gaze, and she watches Professor Snape stride up the steep path from the gates. From the stiff line of his shoulders and the brisk snap of his walk, it looks like he's in a grim mood. "I wonder where he went to today?" she murmurs. Crookshanks meowrls an indistinct answer and jumps to the floor. At the door to the library, the half-Kneazle turns and looks at her as if to ask, "Aren't you hungry, too?" She chuckles at her beloved familiar. "You go on ahead to the kitchens, Crooks... I'm sure the house-elves are wondering where you've been."

Hermione meanders up to Gryffindor Tower to put on her school robes. It'll soon be hellishly noisy in here, she thinks as she passes through the silent common room. She finds herself looking forward to that blur of activity.

On her way down to the Entrance Hall, a note materialises in front of her nose with a pop. It's from a teacher, she knows, because they're the only ones who are allowed to tag things like that to a student's magical signature.

Granger,

Prof. Snape.

In the spare lines of his note, it's easy to see what she's missed for several months: Professor Snape stopped calling her Miss Granger a while ago, replacing it with the more concise and brusque Granger. Whether it's due to increased familiarity or contempt is a mystery to her. Hermione shrugs and wonders what he wants as she trots down to the dungeons; she assumes it's about what he didn't get around to asking her earlier on.

The teachers never seem to realise how, in the empty and chill air of the castle, their voices carry like birds on the air; secrets spill up the staircase in a whisper.

"Severus is in a choice mood," Professor Sprout murmurs. There's a petulant edge to her voice that indicates she's probably recently been slighted with the full weight of Snape's dark mood.

"He's probably got good reason today; his father passed away in one of those awful Muggle homes this morning," replies Madam Pomfrey. "But don't let on, Pomona... you know how tetchy he can be about personal issues..."

"Oh, yes..." It's then that they hear Hermione's footsteps, and they cut their conversation short and smile at her from their gossip knot as she passes them in the Entrance Hall.

Snape's office is still a juxtaposition of all the things she loves and hates: bookshelves and rare books; dead things with metallic, dead eyes in glass jars. Hermione cannot fathom why he still keeps his office in the dungeons when there's a lovely office on the first floor next to the DADA classroom.

Snape stands at his desk, shrouded in his black teaching robes. The tight lines of his face bracket his grim expression; he looks so tightly wound she's afraid he's going to snap and shatter into tiny pieces all across his tidy office. She remembers the day her Granny died, how the strain of it all seemed to blur her mother at the edges like she was made of plastic. But Snape's grief looks brittle and hard.

"Yes, sir?" She almost says, "You Summoned," but she stops herself in time because it's only Dark Lords who summon, not mourning teachers, and she doesn't think that Snape will appreciate the reminder of Voldemort right now.

Snape nods slightly, and he gets straight to the point, as always: "I will not be here tomorrow, Granger. I'd like you to chaperone the DADA classes for the day; you have Professor McGonagall's blessing, of course." He sees the concerned look that flitters across her features. "Missing a single day of classes will not kill you, Granger. Make sure all students are in attendance and doing something constructive. I do not care if it is homework for other teachers. No wands out, though, which means absolutely no duelling."

"Yes, sir," she says, realising the trust that is inherent in the request.

"Out," he says tiredly, rubbing at his temple like a headache is eating his brain alive.

Hermione is halfway to the stairs when his secret expands like a balloon in her chest. It swells and it swells until she feels like she will burst. She wants to turn around and tell him she's sorry, but she's sure he'd hate the slightest flicker of pity from her. So, she touches the rough wall of the corridor and breathes past the pressure around her heart. "I'm sorry," she says softly, and she wonders if it will carry on the air like so many secrets do at Hogwarts.

Hermione and Ginny snag the best armchairs, right near the fireplace in the common room. It's good to see Ginny again, and although their conversation spirals away from Ron continuously, Hermione enjoys hearing about the rest of the holiday.

Ginny looks beautiful and radiant; it's like she's filled up with Harry's light over the holidays and now it's spilling over everywhere... It's in the radiance of her smile and the lilt of her voice. It even seems to wash over Hermione, so that the warmth of Ginny's companionship and conversation is more comforting than the soft glow of the fire.

"So... Harry told me about your brother and the... dragon," Hermione says blithely.

Ginny breaks into a peal of golden giggles. "Oh, Merlin," she groans, covering her eyes. "What a way to break the blood feud, eh?" She leans closer and murmurs, "And now Mum's wondering what Charlie's really been doing all the times he tells her that he's going to ride his broom..."

Hermione stomach is sore by the time she stops laughing, and tears of mirth are wet on her eyelashes. She presses her hand to her chest to ease the giggles. It feels so wonderful to have her chest hurt from laughing this time around.

Later, when she's on the edge of sleep, she realises that her top New Year's resolution will mirror Harry's. Harry and Ginny's friendship is precious to her, and she will always hold it close to her heart.

A/N: Thank you to Gelsey, as always.

Thank you to everybody who reads and reviews The Silvering Divide. Writing this story has been a shining and silver experience.