Fifteen

September, 1998

"Try it again, Potter."

"Severus, I'm doing my best."

"Try it again."

"Really, Severus, the lad is doing his best," Minerva interjected. "Perhaps, Harry, you could try and focus a little harder."

Snape subsided, sitting back in the uncomfortable chair in the corner of the cubicle Poppy had hastily erected in the Hospital Wing.

Potter sighed and gave him and Minerva a reproachful look.

"I take it," Snape demanded acidly, "that several hours deep in the mind of Albus the flaming lunatic Dumbledore yielded no new information?"

Minerva glared at him.

Snape both felt and looked smug.

"Would you mind?" Potter snapped, uncharacteristically authoritative. "This isn't exactly easy!"

Indeed, the young man was sweating as again and again he murmured "Legilimens", trying to enter Hermione's mind.

Outside, younger students romped in the unseasonably warm sunshine as the trees adorned themselves in their autumnal glory. A late meadowlark trilled its tune.

With a dispirited shrug, Potter turned away from his efforts to reach his friend.

"I can't find her, Severus. I'm sorry. Wherever she is, she's not in there."

The buzzing in her head was not as irritating as it had been in weeks past, Hermione noted as she carefully applied her makeup before the mirror.

Blusher, lippy, there. Ready to go. Resolutely, she ignored the temptation to ask the mirror what it thought. The dream of last night still hung heavy upon her: confusing visions of a running through a castle's corridors, odd smelling books with frightening symbols, and a growing sense of horror.

"Hermione? Are you ready?" Jocasta's voice called up to her.

"Coming, Mum!" Hermione smiled at the reflection in the mirror: partly pleased with her first efforts at dressing to go out, and partly relieved to hear her mother's familiar voice.

"Bill and I will have to go." Potter looked resolute.

"What about your studies?" demanded Minerva, pursing her lips as an unusually rowdy bunch of Gryffindors rioted past the open door to the hospital wing. Behind them, a harried Prefect tried to herd them back to their dormitory. Even with the Houses half-full (and Slytherin almost decimated), the children still made an unearthly racket.

"Hermione is my priority," Potter insisted, rising suddenly from the hard chair beside Hermione's white draped bed. "And if I can make contact with her parents, then, perhaps there's hope. I won't have her becoming another victim of Voldemort."

Snape flinched, despite himself.

"Who else will go, Minerva?" he asked, shifting his weight on his cane. "I'd not dare incur your wrath by seeming to shirk my duties as Potions master and Head of Slytherin House, you cannot leave the School for any length of time at the moment (unlike some Heads I could name), Filius has his hands full with the first years, Poppy cannot be expected to leave in the middle of Quidditch season..."

"So it's settled, then," Potter said, heading for Poppy's Floo. "I'll call Bill, and we'll be back by the end of the week. We won't be able to arrange for an international Portkey until Wednesday at the latest, so, that will give me plenty of time to pack and, erm, finish my homework," he amended with a guilty glance at Snape and Minerva.

"Good thinking," Snape muttered, turning away. "And best of luck with Weasley," he added. "Ever since Miss Delacour fell pregnant, he's more attached to his home than ever."

"Heavens, Severus!" Minerva exclaimed. "Fleur is pregnant? How did you know? Why did you not tell me?" She hurried past Potter, all but shoving him aside in her haste to reach Poppy's Floo.

Snape allowed himself a quiet smirk.

"Erm, well," Potter said, "I suppose I ought to go and see if I can get a word with Bill, then."

"Yes, I suppose you ought," Snape replied, turning to lean against the frame of Hermione's cubicle.

Behind him, he heard Potter shuffle awkwardly. He allowed himself another quiet smirk at his success in discomfiting the boy.

Before him, Hermione lay as if Petrified, sightless eyes fixed upon the ceiling.

"So, tell me," asked the kindly lady behind the desk in the admissions office. Her nameplate proclaimed her to be Miss Haverworth. "Tell me what you want from your life."

"I'd like to be a barrister, a human rights barrister," Hermione replied, folding her hands in her lap and meeting Miss Haverworth's gaze confidently.

"Oh, a barrister!" replied Miss Haverworth, "that is ambitious. We don't get many fledgling human rights barristers at Guildford College."

Hermione managed a smile. "I suppose not."

"Now, what A-levels do you have?"

"Erm, none."

"GSCEs?"

"None. As I stated over the phone, I've not been in a traditional school setting since I was eleven."

Miss Haverworth frowned. "Oh yes, of course," she replied. "If you don't mind me asking, what happened?"

"There was an accident," Hermione replied flatly. "I have only just begun to recover."

"Well," Miss Haverwoth said briskly, "you'll have to demonstrate competency in several subjects. And I would suggest you investigate our AS and A level courses. Perhaps even a Foundation Course." She handed a sheaf of leaflets across her desk.

"But these are all about business courses and accountancy and information technology!" she protested.

"Well," Miss Haverworth rejoined, glaring at Hermione over her glasses, "one does not, after seven years out of school, with no GSCE's or A-levels, merely waltz in here and expect to become a lawyer."

Hermione forced a smile and tried again.

"Perhaps I didn't make myself clear," she began.

The weather in Enmor was surprisingly cool.

"It is early spring, here," Bill pointed out.

"I suppose so," Harry agreed. "What's that address again?"

"Fifteen Arcadia Lane – right down this street."

Together, the two men turned the corner and walked confidently down the pleasant, tree-lined suburban street. It had taken a great deal of fast talking for Harry to convince Bill to come with him to New South Wales to find Monica and Wendell Wilkins.

But Bill had eventually agreed to accompany Harry in hopes of finding Hermione's parents and discovering what Hermione had done to them.

"Here, it's this one." Harry pointed. In the small front garden, a curly-haired woman was clearing out old, dead undergrowth.

"Have you ever met them?" Bill asked.

"Once – at Flourish and Blotts right before our second year."

"And?" Bill raised an eyebrow in an uncanny imitation of Snape, albeit a redheaded Snape.

"It looks like Hermione's mum."

"Shouldn't she be at work?"

Harry shrugged. "I don't know – maybe she's taking the day off – or she only works in the mornings? I really don't know, Bill."

"Uh, Harry?" Bill asked. "Are you sure you have the address right?"

"Yeah," Harry replied, referring back to the paper. "Why? That's definitely her mum."

"It has to be the wrong house," Bill insisted, frowning.

"It can't be – we did the tracking spells. It's the right house," Harry argued.

"Harry... look."

Harry's head snapped up and he reached for his wand.

"Oh, shit," he gasped, "She wasn't... how did that happen? I thought that..."

A curly haired girl of about eleven or twelve was coming down the street from the opposite direction. Confidently, she turned at the gate of Number Fifteen.

"Fiona?" the woman looked up from her task. "How was school?"

"Fine, Mum!" Fiona replied, swinging a heavy book bag off her shoulder. The gate closed behind her, and Hermione's mum rose and dusted off her hands. "I'm starving," continued the girl.

"How about a quick snack before tea, then?" asked Monica Wilkins.

"Wicked!" enthused the girl.

Bill and Harry stood rooted to the pavement.

"What the hell?" Bill began.

"Who the hell?" Harry asked.

"You're sure this is the right address?"

"Yeah. And that's Hermione's mum."

"D'you think they could've adopted? No," Bill immediately answered his own question. "Fiona is the very image of Hermione at twelve."

"Yeah." Harry scratched his head. "Now what?"

"Well," Bill said slowly, "I'm not sure. Do you still want to talk to them?"

Harry frowned.

"It can't hurt, I suppose," he agreed.

Hermione sat up in her bed, scribbling frantically on a yellow pad by the light of her bedside lamp. Around here were scattered GSCE review books and A Level brochures.

"Hermione, darling, it's late." Jocasta stood in the doorway, wrapped in a dressing gown. Outside, the sunny day had given way to a cool, rainy night.

"I'll go to bed in a bit, Mum, I promise."

Jocasta smiled sympathetically. "I'm sorry that today didn't work out the way you wanted it to," she said.

"Thanks, Mum." Hermione did not look up from her notes.

"But you'll start working, and maybe we can find you an apprenticeship somewhere."

"Mm hmm."

The silence between mother and daughter stretched. Outside, the rain slammed into the house and the wind whistled among the trees.

"Just... don't stay up too much longer," Jocasta said.

"Mm hmmm."

October, 1998

It was late. Outside, the rain slammed into the windows and the wind moaned among the turrets of the castle.

Completing his rounds, Snape crept silently into the hospital wing. Gentle snores emanated from the house-elf on duty.

In Hermione's cubicle, a candle burned low.

Drawing a chair close, Snape eased into it and sat beside her bed, leaning his cane on the headboard.

"You must try, Hermione," he murmured, taking her hand into his own. It was cool, the skin soft. "You must try. Potter's worried sick about you. Minerva can barely stop fretting over you. Filius needs his star pupil back, even if you are a Gryffindor. And I ..." he paused. Somewhere deep in the castle, a door slammed. Peeves, probably, frightening the first-years in their beds.

"Try, Hermione. For my sake. For the sake of a broken old man who doesn't need one more fatality weighing upon his soul."

Hermione did not reply, but as Snape sat in the dimly lit cubicle, he felt her hand tighten around his.

Poppy found them in the morning – Snape, asleep with his head pillowed on the edge of her bed, and Hermione, out of her trance and gently sleeping with her hand on his lank, greasy hair.

AN: Not mine, no money. Special thanks to Bluestocking, Subversa, and SavineSnape for their invaluable help!