Preordained

Hermione hugged her new book to her tightly as she scampered back to Gryffindor tower. She felt ten pounds lighter than when she had left it to serve her detention. A huge weight of anxiety had been lifted away, and it was almost as if she had to keep herself from floating off the ground.

She was of a fair mind to run around the castle telling each and every person she had ever heard say something bad about Professor Snape, that he was, in fact, the most magnificent person in the castle. She was even of the mind that he was a far better personage than Professor Dumbledore, himself. After all, she knew her professor. She didn't really know the Headmaster at all. She'd read about him, but those books had been written by mere mortals.

She giggled at her own audacity.

She bounded up the stairs and, after giving the password, through the portrait hole and sat down in a chair by the fire to begin her essay. She kept her new book tucked next to her in the chair as if it were one of her old dolls. Occasionally she would stop and lift it up, open the cover to where it said 'From the Library of Severus Snape,' and stroke her finger across the words as if that would prove they were real. Then she would tuck it away again and throw herself back into creating an essay with her own thoughts.

She was still there, hours later, when she heard the sound of feet coming down the stairs. She looked at the clock and then peeked around the side of the chair.

"Who's there?" she heard Ron call out.

"Oh, Hermione!" Harry looked nervous and guilty. "I see you're still working on homework. Shouldn't you be in bed?"

"I lost track of time. What are you three doing up?" she asked Neville. The guilty looks were universal now. "You're sneaking out again, aren't you?" She planted her fists on her hips. "Don't you think that 150 points is enough to lose? Your adventures are ruining our chances to win the house cup. I'm sorry, but the three of you aren't going anywhere tonight. If you walk out of this room in any direction but the one that leads to your dormitory, I will have to stop you."

Harry looked chagrined but determined. "Look, Hermione..."

"Petrificus Totalus!"

Hermione didn't have any time to react. Neville's hex locked her in place and to her panicked mortification, she started to fall forwards. She landed on her face, which had been frozen open in the act of further reprimand. She couldn't feel anything, but she knew she'd hit the floor hard.

"Hey!" shouted Ron. "What did you do that for?"

"We had to get by, and she was going to stop us. Someone had to do something."

She heard Harry's voice much closer to her ear. "I'm really sorry about this, Hermione. We'll come back and release you soon!"

Ron leaned over and murmured, "I'm really sorry."

"I'm sorry too, Hermione," said Neville from somewhere to the side. "If you understood what was at stake, you would have done the same."

"Do you think we should at least roll her over?" asked Ron.

"I think she might be more upset if she were manhandled," said Harry. "Muggle girls take exception to that sort of thing."

She heard the sound of their boots scuffing across the rug before the portrait door opened and closed. After that, she was left with the sound of the crackling fire.

She was there all night. The carpet she had been staring at without focus for hours was starting to grow lighter in tone as the sun began to filter in the mullioned windows of the common room. She could hear the stirrings of the other students and was mortified that she was about to be discovered in such an undignified position. Mercifully, when she did finally hear the shocked chattering of the first students down the stairs, she couldn't see them at all.

She had never been so grateful for Lavender and Parvati before. They wiggled through the gathering crowd and announced that since they were Hermione's roommates, it was their responsibility to get her some attention. Between the two of them, they managed to float her up off the floor. As she lifted up off the carpet, she saw something that made her want to start screaming in despair.

"Aye, but would you look at that," said Seamus. "Whoever did this to her broke her pearlies, they did."

"Perhaps Madam Pomfrey can fix them?" said a horrified Lavender.

"Maybe she can even make her look less like she could eat apples through a fence as well," said Seamus. A hand, presumably his, swiped up the broken bits of her teeth and the floor moved swiftly under her as she was floated out the door of the portrait hole and up to the infirmary.

They hadn't made it far into the infirmary when she heard her professor shout.

"What's this? What has happened?"

"Please, sir. We don't know. We found her like this on the floor of the common room this morning. Is that Harry? What happened to him?"

"Never mind about Potter and his friends. You may all go back to your rooms. Immediately."

"Begging your pardon, Professor Snape, but here's her teeth. We found 'em on the floor under her face."

"Thank you Mr. Finnigan. You may go."

She was lifted up higher and turned over swiftly, then deposited down on what she assumed was a bed. The experience was nauseating enough for her to be grateful that she was Petrified or she might have been sick.

"Alas, poor Miss Granger." The Headmaster's voice drew closer to the bed. "Mr. Weasley tried to tell me something about her, but his injuries were too great. From what I gather, I suspect our newest patient tried to stop the boys from leaving their tower last night."

"Headmaster, surely you can see my logic now. Not only did they nearly get themselves killed last night, but they have willfully harmed another student. They should be summarily dismissed, the three of them."

"Now, now, Severus. They also stopped a dangerous plot and confirmed my worst suspicions, thus giving us some much needed warning. I believe the good outweighs the bad."

Professor Snape actually growled.

Hermione would have been intrigued by the conversation had she not been too busy being mortified. She was stuck lying on her back looking up at the ceiling with her mouth gaping open and an unknown number of teeth broken. She had no idea how many people could see her like this.

"Now, since our esteemed school nurse is busy with her other charges, I will see what I can do about our little trooper here."

The Headmaster's face floated into her line of vision, eyes twinkling merrily down on her.

"Miss Granger, I am going to remove the hex now. Unfortunately, you might experience a sudden pain. You have suffered an injury. I will want you to sit up as fast as you can and drink the potion that Professor Snape is procuring for you at this moment. All right? There's a girl, and here's our Potions master with the remedy."

The Headmaster's face disappeared and she heard the words, "Finite Incantatum."

Nerves. All the nerves in her mouth surged back to life at once, and the pain was overwhelming. She screamed. Memories of all the sounds from all the patients in her parents' practice flooded her with new understanding, and she continued to scream and scream and scream.

There were voices shouting and hands pulled at her own hiding her face and trying to press the incredible pain away, but she was beyond being able to acknowledge them. Beyond being able to communicate. Beyond rationality. She was locked in a nightmare where she was one of her parents' patients, and her choices were to be in pain and wither until she died, or to be in worse pain only to end up healthy and permanently disfigured. She continued to scream until she heard a loud voice shout, "Stupefy!" and then the pain stopped as blackness flooded across her world.

Snape lowered his wand with a shaking hand. He stared at the girl in shock. Certainly tears and discomfort were to have been expected, nearly all of her front teeth had been shattered, but the howling creature on the bed acted as if she had been Crucioed. Panic filled him with dread, and he quickly cast spells that he hadn't used in years. Spells that he'd needed to learn when he'd been the one curled up into a ball howling. His diagnostics picked up no trace of Dark magic, thank the merciful fates.

"Anything?" asked Dumbledore with sober concern.

"No. Nothing except for that which we see. Whatever that was all about, there was no curse involved." Snape raised his eyes to Dumbledore. A darting look at the other beds made him cast a strong Silencing Charm around the girl's bed. "Yet. It could easily have been. As long as that boy is in the school, every student will be in danger. The Dark Lord was in the school, Albus. Right under our noses, and this entire year you have been downplaying my concern. I sensed something was wrong about Quirrell from the start, and you acted like I was playing jealous bridesmaid. I sense the same thing about the boy. There is something dark about him. He is a danger to everyone around him. Look at Mr. Weasley. And Longbottom could have easily been killed; he's barely got enough magic to defend his toad! Can you imagine what would have happened if they had made it past my ward? If they had, by some chance, actually recovered the Philosopher's Stone before Quirrell grew impatient and attacked?"

"Severus, I will not, nor have I ever, ignored your expertise in this. However, I have my reasons, and I cannot tell them to you."

"Why not? Why ever not? Why leave your best sword half blunted?"

Dumbledore gave him a look of such concern and worry that Severus actually stepped back.

"Because I fear that this was only the first attempt, my boy. That thing is all fury and purpose and will not stop now. Tom Riddle is still not at his final rest. I fear he will come back. Not just to Hogwarts, but to life. And when he does, he will call his faithful."

Snape swallowed thickly as the blood drained from his body to his legs, making them suddenly shaky and weak. This was it. This was the doom he'd felt crawling towards him all this time.

"And I will be one of them," he said in a dry voice. "So you cannot tell me what you do not want him to know."

He looked down at the student who he'd helped overcome her own limitations just the night before. He could still taste the satisfaction he'd felt for hours afterwards until he'd been alerted to the situation with Mr. Potter. And now she was lying insensate, curled into a ball. Victimized by the hero of the day.

She'd been innocent. He looked at her and sighed. She was Muggle-born. Mudblood. If his understanding of what Dumbledore was implying was correct, then his very life could be in danger over lesser things than helping her hone her mind. He looked back at the Headmaster.

"I can't."

"You must."

He felt the blow like a kick in the gut. "This is why you kept me all these years. Not to be a champion, but to be a spy."

"Spies are silent champions, Severus."

Understanding lit a corner of his mind. "This is why you refused to allow me to confront Quirrell. You knew he was in league with the Dark Lord. You knew if I discovered his secret, I would have fought him."

"And Riddle would have still made his escape, knowing you were my man completely now."

"You play fast and loose with my life, Albus."

"The stakes are all or nothing. I cannot afford to be softhearted. You more than anyone understand what is at play on the table."

Oh, yes. He knew quite well what the stakes were.

"What say you, Severus. Are you still my man?"

He looked down on the girl in the bed, with her broken mouth and her tear streaked face. "I am," he replied.

"I am most gratified to hear that. Now, let's see about our patient here."

Hermione stared at herself in the mirror and wept silently. Her face was a mass of mottled bruises, already fading to light green. Her eyes were bloodshot and swollen from the tears she'd cried when the pain had gripped her in its claws, but the pain itself was only a memory. What made her cry was her teeth.

They were perfect. They were neat and white and everything she had ever wished they could have been. She remembered her mother's warning about how life only cruelly teased their kind with glimpses of paradise and understood the lesson her mother had been desperate to teach.

She pulled her robes tightly around her and hurried out of the lavatory and down to the dungeons.

Her timid knock was answered immediately by a curt, "Come."

She pushed open the door and slipped inside her Potion master's office and over to his desk.

"Miss Granger," he said. "To what do I owe the interruption?"

"Sir, there is a matter of some urgency that I must ask your advice about."

"Yes? Go on."

"It's my teeth, sir." She lifted her head up and looked him in the eye as she opened her mouth and clenched her jaw, embarrassed at treating herself like a horse being judged as to its age.

"What about them? I see no difference. Are you now to be a vain girl like all the others?"

"How can you say there is no difference?" Realizing she had raised her voice when he had raised his eyebrow, she hastily added, "Sir." She clasped her hands together and wrung them. "They are perfect."

"And? Get to the point, you silly little girl, I have things to attend that have far more importance than whether or not your teeth are perfect."

"It's my parents, sir. They are dentists. Or, rather, my father is a dentist, but my mother is also expert in the field, if in an unacknowledged way. My former teeth were healthy and strong but rather large with a pronounced flaw in the fact that they stuck out rather unattractively. I can think of no way to explain their sudden state to people that know my visage as intimately as a set of parents that pay particular attention to a person's mouth."

He laid his quill down on his blotter and sat back. "I begin to see the point."

"I knew you would, sir."

"Have you considered telling your parents the truth? It struck me that they were rather forward-thinking individuals."

"They are, sir. But even they have their limits."

"Do you want them returned to their former state?"

She couldn't masque the disappointment and hurt. "Yes, sir. I fear that is exactly what must be done."

He looked at her for a long time in silence, and she bowed her head to evade his penetrating gaze.

"Miss Granger, if there were another alternative available, would you accept it?"

"I would, sir. I am not usually vain by nature. How can one be when one has been told they have no redeeming qualities repeatedly? However, I find I am loathe to go back to how I was."

"Then you will trust this situation to me. I will take care of it. However, there is a caveat. You must never mention my part in this, and in the future, you must take these issues, and any others you might have in the future, to your own Head of House. I have enough students to take care of without the added work of mollycoddling Gryffindors."

"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. I will make sure not to bother you in the future, sir."

"See that you don't."

Severus Snape walked through the streets of London in his best Muggle morning coat of soft grey, with a matching hat, and a fine walking stick. He felt like a fop. He usually kept to a more subdued style of dress, but as the saying went, if you are in Rome, live as the Romans do.

He could have hired a hackney carriage, but he needed the walk. His gut still burned with anger and resentment over the Leaving Feast the night before. How dare Dumbledore change the points at the last minute like that? And the way he had called out Miss Granger as the recipient of just enough points to steal the cup from Slytherin was like throwing acid in his face. Bastard.

The long walk did little to calm his mood, or if it had, then it was certainly needed, for if his mood had been any worse, he'd be close to raving. He had to have his wits about him for this task he had set himself, and if he was any angrier he would make a hash of things for sure.

He found himself at the doorstep sooner than expected and looked up again at the window where he'd first spied the girl. He remembered the shiver that had gone through him when he'd first thought her a ghost. Ghosts that haunted Muggle houses were often violent and unreasonable and not to be dealt with lightly. He snorted. She might not have been a ghost, but Miss Granger was still not to be taken lightly.

He gained the stair and rapped on the door with his cane.

A rising wail from beyond the door made every hair on his body stand up. He shouldn't have been thinking of ghosts, surely his imagination was playing tricks on him. The door opened and the sound of shouting grew louder. No, that wasn't a shout, it was a blood-curdling cry from the soul. Only the placid look on the housekeeper's face kept him from reaching for his wand and bursting into the house.

"May I help you? Oh, I say! You're the gentleman from Miss Granger's school!"

"Indeed. I was in the neighborhood and was hoping to be able to have a few words with her parents if I may."

"Come in. I'll take your things."

He followed her into the small foyer and stripped off his gloves, handing them over along with his walking stick.

"If you'll wait here sir, I will see if the mistress of the house is available. Please don't mind the cries. Doctor Granger is with a patient. It will be over very soon. He really is a gentle doctor; the poor people already come in such pain, and they are always better off for his care."

Snape didn't reply. He just nodded his head as the housekeeper turned to walk away.

The sound of screaming and begging went on, and he found himself moving without his own volition to the doorway off the entryway. In a normal house, this would be a parlor. He pulled aside the curtain just enough to peer into the surgery. What he saw made him shudder. How barbaric. How tragic. These foolish Muggles had no concept of how their lives would have been improved had they not chosen to persecute his kind. There was no pain remedy. No antiseptic. Nothing looked sterile, only clean. Except for Mr. Grangers' hands. They were covered in blood, as was the pile of rags he wiped them on.

Severus finally had an understanding of what had gone on inside Miss Granger's head when her hex had been removed. This is what she'd lived with. This is certainly the first association she would have had. By Jove, no wonder she'd gone spare.

He stepped away from the curtain and back to the door as the housekeeper made her way back down the stairs.

"The missus will see you, sir. Right this way."

Snape followed behind her with a nod, slipping his wand out of his sleeve.

Severus headed down the drive, away from Lady Granger's overly grand home. It was such a statement to bad taste. As was Lady Granger. That woman had been the most absurd Muggle creature he'd dealt with in a dog's age.

He hated dealing with Muggles. He had since he'd finally gone off to school. And especially Muggles of her class and above. They always made him feel like he was unworthy, and he resented it with a steady burn that hadn't gone away since he'd been nearly run down in the street by an Earl's coach, as a wee tyke, and kicked for his pains by the outrider.

Thank goodness that Miss Granger was an only child and a solitary little mouse of a girl. He was drained to his core and grateful that there were few people in her life whose memories needed tampering with. It wasn't the altering of memories that was so draining. It was the scouring of their memories to find who else needed to be dealt with that tired him. There was another Aunt in Devon that she was fairly close to, but he thought enough time had passed since she'd seen the child that her teeth might not be an issue. He was too tired to Apparate back to The Leaky, never mind Devon.

Now that he was done with his mission, he put aside all thoughts of his student. He had performed this last service as a form of letting go. From here on in, pains taken with Muggle-born students could be fatal. He had no idea how long it would be before the Dark Lord rose again, but there was no longer a doubt in his mind that he would. Best thing for it was to start planning for the eventuality.

He headed down the avenue, blending in with the other people of the town out strolling, making their early calls, dropping their cards, putting a great deal of importance on the simple act of inviting someone over for some fucking tea. He detested them all.