Seven

Disclaimer: All characters are the property of J.K. Rowling. I intend no infringement and am making no profit.

***

Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place was a riotous mass of chattering, shrieking Weasleys as Harry prepared to legally take possession of Sirius' former home. With his seventeenth birthday having passed nearly a month before, he had packed all his earthly belongings, bid the Dursleys good riddance, and moved his things to The Burrow, where they had waited while the final confrontation with Voldemort passed.

Professor McGonagall, as it turned out, had been delayed because Tonks was not only awake and pissed off, but she was making tremendous progress in moving her lower body, a feat for which the Healers had warned none of us should waste our time hoping. Her progress over the past few days, according to Professor McGonagall, had been nothing short of miraculous. When Mr. Weasley informed me after the conclusion of the trial that she had woken up two days prior and was now out of the hospital, under Remus Lupin's unceasing supervision, I was anxious to see her immediately.

Despite the wan cast to her features and her unusual thinness, she was very much herself, enjoying Remus' close attention. She was wrapped tightly in several layers of clothing, seated on his lap, her legs propped up on a nearby chair at the kitchen table. Mr. Weasley and I had arrived to find Professor McGonagall pursing her lips in disapproval at their rather intimate arrangement and Tonks loudly demanding food.

"I'm hungry," she announced again, and Remus sighed.

"Is this really... necessary?" Professor McGonagall demanded, motioning toward the two of them, her brows puckered in distaste.

"If I don't keep a hand on her at all times, she tries to move," Remus grumbled. Tonks promptly stuck out her tongue in his direction and loudly demanded food again. Remus looked slightly tired.

"Not to worry, dear, I'll fix something," Mrs. Weasley promised. Both Weasley parents were there, as well as the twins, Ron...curiously accompanied by Luna Lovegood, a development which aroused my interest greatly...and Ginny. She and Harry, having gotten back together in the two milliseconds after Voldemort's defeat, were currently entwined in one of the other chairs, staring with sickening devotion into one another's eyes. Fred and George had their latest girlfriends with them, but I had no idea what their names were. I hadn't bothered to pay much attention, in all honesty.

While Mrs. Weasley fixed Tonks a heaping supply of food...she had plenty of weight to regain; that was certain...Professor McGonagall informed me that I was eligible to move into Hogwarts that very evening and take possession of the Head Girl's suite of rooms. I thanked her, saying that I would sleep there but that I had promised to spend the remainder of my time with my parents. She understood and bid us all goodbye, saying she wanted to be back at Hogwarts when Professor Snape returned.

"Oh!" Ron exclaimed suddenly, staring at me with renewed interest. Luna had not moved her hand from his shoulders in the hour that I'd been there, and I was definitely getting the vibes of a fairly well-developed relationship from the two of them. "How'd the trial go?"

"They acquitted him of the murder charge," I said blandly. He raised an eyebrow.

"Why do you sound so unhappy? You wouldn't shut up for so many weeks about how unfair it was that they were keeping him locked up..."

"I am happy," I insisted, though I suspected that my exhausted tone would seem to indicate otherwise. "It's just... He knows that I'm the one who viewed his memories, and I think he's really upset. He hates me," I finished lamely, alarmed to feel tears begin to well in the corners of my eyes.

Ginny had the decency to pry her mouth away from Harry's and look at me worriedly. "He doesn't hate you, Hermione," she said gently. "And even if he did, who cares? After this year, you'll never have to see him again...and we all know you're the reason he's not spending the rest of his life in Azkaban. That's what matters."

I felt my eyes beginning to water even more, and she looked startled. "Hermione, do you...?" She seemed unsure how to finish the sentence, and just when I became alarmed that her usual perspicaciousness would land me in even more trouble, Mrs. Weasley bellowed from over in the vicinity of the stove.

"Done!" she announced loudly, and she proceeded to serve us the most enormous lunch imaginable. I had little appetite, but I made a valiant attempt to munch on my sandwiches and eat some of her soup. Tonks nearly inhaled three servings and then impolitely inquired if dessert was included.

"I'll make dessert," Ginny interjected emphatically. "Hermione, would you give me a hand?" She nodded toward the cupboards. I rose stiffly to my feet and followed; my stomach felt terribly queasy, and it wasn't from overindulging.

As she began to whip up a chocolate mousse and boss me around with surprising familiarity, she murmured under her breath, "Why is Snape bothering you so much?"

"I just... I think I embarrassed him."

"How? You got him set free. He owes you his life." Her bright eyes searched mine, and she seemed to be attempting to read the emotions on my face. I schooled myself to be expressionless and shrugged.

"I doubt he wants to be remembered as the war hero who owes his life to some stupid student."

She actually brandished the whisk at me. "You are not stupid!" she exclaimed, the words a little too loud. Several heads turned in our direction before drifting back to their owners' previous conversations. "Don't you dare say that. And you know Snape doesn't think you're stupid. They took the vote for Head Girl before last year ended, and McGonagall told me it was unanimous. They all wanted you."

Pride flashed through my heart, and I was relieved somewhat. I decided to change the subject before she asked me to elaborate on why I might have embarrassed him. "By the way, Gin, are Ron and Luna dating now?"

"Yeah. For a couple weeks now. He's crazy about her." She tested her confection and then offered me a bit. I declined, and once again worry flashed through her eyes. "Does it bother you?"

"No!" I hastened to assure her. "No, not at all. I'm glad, actually. The end of last year was a little... awkward for both of us, you know?"

She nodded understandingly. "I think he figured you guys were both on the same page and it was okay to move ahead. I'm glad too, actually. I don't think he's right for you."

"No, he's not," I agreed, glancing back at the table. Luna was laughing at something he'd said, her face positively lit up with enjoyment. I could see his satisfaction at the reaction he'd provoked dancing in his eyes. I was surprised to find that it ached just a bit to see them together, but not in an unpleasant way. It was more a melancholy desire for someone with whom I could share such moments, not jealousy for Luna in particular.

She would, in fact, likely prove to be a wonderful partner for him. Ron made no secret of the fact that he wanted a big family environment like the one in which he'd grown up, and I knew Luna liked kids as well. If theirs proved to be an enduring relationship, they might one day raise such a family together. It would be a wonderful thing to see, I thought.

"Hermione?" Ginny was waving a hand in front of my face. "Are you sure you're okay? You seem really distracted."

"I'm all right. Still a little nervous, I think. I'm going to go back to my parents', if it's okay with everyone."

She nodded, and I followed her to the table, where she proceeded to serve the dessert to the guest of honor, who would have polished off the entire thing in mere seconds if not for Remus' hasty intervention on everyone else's behalf. Tonks feigned a pout and thanked Ginny before digging in heartily. I wished her a speedy recovery and then said goodbye to everyone else before Flooing for my parents'. We would be starting classes very soon, and I needed some time to regroup before being faced with the sight of him again.

***

School commenced, it seemed, before I'd even had the opportunity to blink. The Welcoming Feast was chaotic, as usual, and I collapsed into bed that first night thinking I would never have the energy to move my body again. My rooms were beautiful, very spacious and homey, but I had practically no chance to enjoy them. The next morning I was up and out early to take a brisk walk around the grounds before breakfasting with everyone at the Gryffindor table and beginning classes.

NEWT-level classes were going to be an enormous challenge. I had Transfiguration first, followed by Arithmancy and then a break for lunch. After lunch I had Herbology and then Potions, and I was terrified at what Potions would bring.

It was, as I had feared, an absolute nightmare. Recalling the necessary information for our lesson was not the issue, of course; I had read through the vast majority of the text already, and I had reviewed the first chapter before coming to class, as I always did. Still, I raised my hand only once before the force and cruelty of his expression drove me to absolute silence. He made several undeserved, cutting remarks as he stalked around my cauldron. Rather than maintaining the vindictive silence he'd trademarked during my first six years whenever I presented a flawless potion, he mocked my technique. When he demanded to know if any of us had already considered the topic of our research projects, he sneered at me for being the only one to raise my hand. Naturally I had to admit that I hoped to learn how to brew the Wolfsbane. He stared at me for a moment before brushing me off as though my stupidity didn't even warrant a response.

Finally we escaped, and I rushed immediately back to the Great Hall for dinner. Once I entered, however, I found I couldn't stand to be in my classmates' presence. I couldn't stop dwelling on the coldness in his eyes as he'd stared at me.

I muttered a lame excuse and dashed for my rooms, but I hadn't managed to do much more than pull out my Transfiguration text before the tears became too great and obscured my vision. I was curled in one corner of my massive bed, shaking with the force of my silent sobbing, when I heard a knock on the door.

Terrified that one of the professors would find me in such a state, I called out in a broken voice which belied my condition, "Who is it?"

"It's me," Ginny called back. I wasn't sure whether to be relieved or dismayed. Surely she would discern the cause of my misery. I wasn't going to be capable of lasting much longer before sobbing his name.

I let her in reluctantly, and she gasped when she laid eyes on my red, puffy face and tear-stained shirt. "Hermione!" She threw her arms around my shoulders and began stroking my hair. "What's wrong? I knew you didn't seem normal the past couple days. What is going on?"

We managed to make it back to my bed, where I collapsed once again on the pillows, and she murmured soft words of comfort to entice me to open up to her. "You know you can tell me anything," she said gently. "This has something to do with Snape, doesn't it?"

I didn't need to voice my shock. She smiled and chuckled a bit. "You thought I didn't notice? When I mentioned Potions to you at lunch, you actually turned green."

"I..." I couldn't get a sentence out without spluttering on my own tears.

"Would you just tell me what's wrong so I can help you?" Desperation was beginning to creep into her voice, and I felt terrible for not admitting my problem sooner.

"I'm sorry, Gin, I really am, it's just... There's nothing you can do to help me. I..."

She sat up suddenly, impossibly rigid, and stared at me for a good thirty seconds. Then she emitted a small gasp and put one small, warm hand over my own clammy, trembling one.

"You like him, don't you? I mean really like him," she whispered. I nodded, my eyes filling with refreshed tears, and she groaned.

"Oh, Hermione.... When did this happen? When you were looking at those memories? I don't have to see what happened when he was younger to know that you feel sorry for him, but really... You're smart. You're brilliant, in fact, and you don't need me to tell you that he's not the same person." In the faint light of my bedroom, she seemed impossibly petite and tiny, suddenly far too young to be so mature and perceptive. I was barraged by flashbacks of our first years together at Hogwarts when we were still so young. I hated myself for what I couldn't help but feel was a retrogression in maturity. Hogwarts' Head Girl...after so many years of relentless ambition and unshakable independence...had degenerated to a wet, sniveling mess.

I took several deep, calming breaths and focused on her once more. The Ginny of the present day had returned, and the sympathy in her gaze warmed me somewhat.

"No, it wasn't the memories." I grabbed a tissue and wiped at my runny nose, uncomfortably aware of how pathetic I sounded. "I've liked him for years. It's just... After seeing those things, I can't ignore it anymore, you know? And then they almost incarcerated him for the remainder of his life, and I wouldn't have stood a chance. Now that that crisis has been averted, I feel like I need to do something."

"Why? Why do you feel like you need to do something all of a sudden? Hermione, love, listen to me: we've been talking about Snape in my family for years. All my brothers had him, and not a day has passed that he hasn't been a truly horrible person to someone. I can't..." She pressed her hand against her eyes as though warding off a sudden, pounding headache, the waterfall of her beautiful red hair cascading forward to hide her face. "I can't imagine what he's done to deserve your tears. He's not worth crying over, really." She spoke with such soft regret that her words were almost inaudible.

"But he knows!" I cried far more loudly than I'd intended. She winced and lifted her hand away, brushing back her hair.

"He knows how you feel? How?"

"They made me take Veritaserum at the trial. Umbridge was there. She..."

"She asked you about him and made you confess." She said it in a flat, toneless voice entirely devoid of emotion, but the anger and hatred flashing in her eyes was astonishing. "I can't believe that she would abuse her authority like that."

"Oh, please," I retorted with a cynical snort, grabbing another tissue. "She's made a career out of abusing her authority. And I'm pretty certain that if she hadn't asked me, I wouldn't have had the courage to speak up and say what I did. I don't regret having it out in the open if it means that he avoids Azkaban, because we all know he didn't deserve it."

"How can you be so sure?"

"You didn't see what I saw, Gin. The things he's done... They're terrible, yes, but he was in far too deep before he ever realized what was going on." I groaned and buried my face in my pillow. "I shouldn't even have spoken about it."

She pried the pillow away and wrapped her arms around my shoulders. "I know you can't tell me what happened. I wasn't trying to press you. I just want to know why you feel like you owe it to him to say something just because he's heard them drag it out of you that you like him." She wiped a tear from my cheek. "You don't owe him anything."

"On the contrary...I owe him an apology." My wracking sobs had subsided somewhat, so I grabbed my brush and began to work my way through the many tangles in my hair. Ginny shook her head and motioned for me to hand it over to her. I did so, feeling numb, and she crawled around me and positioned herself at the head of the bed. Slowly and gently, she began to brush through my curls. I closed my eyes, and for several minutes we simply sat there while I enjoyed the meditative rhythm of the brush strokes and attempted to calm my breathing.

"Say you did decide to say something to him, even though you don't owe him an apology." The emphasis was still present, but she sounded much more accepting of my decision, as irrational and hysterical as it must have seemed to her. "How would you do it? Just march into his office and say, 'By the way, Professor, I'm sorry you had to find out from Umbridge how I feel about you'? Do you really think you could face him?"

I had a momentary vision of the harsh, stony look that would cross his features before he informed me in that impossibly silky tone that my actions were entirely out of line and condemned me to detention for the remainder of the year. In fact, that was probably giving him too much credit. The Professor Snape I knew would undoubtedly seek to humiliate me thoroughly before handing me over to Professor McGonagall for serious reprobation.

"I have to. I can't go the rest of the year like this. As if the trial wasn't bad enough, he was further humiliated by having the entire Wizengamot find out that one of his students has a ridiculous crush on him."

"It is not ridiculous." She was now plaiting my hair into a long braid. "You don't owe him an apology for how you feel.

"Look..." She set aside the brush, having finished with the long French braid, and crawled around my body to face me again. "I'm going to go to bed. Do you have to do rounds tonight?"

I nodded. "Third floor and up."

"Then you'll have plenty of time to think this over," she said in an almost lecturing tone, "but I would really discourage you from making any quick decisions before you've slept on it and thought about this seriously. I'm not saying that telling him you're sorry for what happened would be inappropriate, but I really think you might regret it afterward, and you can't take it back. Just bringing up that subject with him is going to be horribly uncomfortable, you know?"

I sighed. "Yes, I know...I've been dwelling on it all day. Listen, Gin, I can't tell you how incredibly grateful I am that you've listened to me. I needed a rational viewpoint on all this."

She smiled, a genuine, beaming smile. "You know I'm here whenever you need to talk. I wouldn't have gotten through all that stuff with Harry if you hadn't been there."

I nodded, feeling my eyes tear up again slightly. Seeing the two of then together was almost achingly beautiful. They were enormously, blissfully happy to the extent that it was almost impossible to imagine how their lives would have progressed without the other's involvement. Ginny had, I believed wholeheartedly, really and truly found the man with whom she would spend the rest of her life. Though I despised their frequent and extended public displays of ardor, I couldn't have been more thrilled for them.

"I'm going to go to bed. Get some sleep and think about it carefully, okay?"

I nodded again and followed her to the door. "Goodnight. And Ginny... Thanks again."

"You're welcome. And don't forget..." She turned, her hair whipping over shoulder, sparkling in the soft light of the torch hanging outside my door. "Whatever happens, he ought to be proud to have you feel that way about him."

I watched her small, retreating form, shimmering in the firelight, and tried to bring myself to believe her.

***

I had set my alarm to wake me promptly at quarter after six the following morning. I was in the bathroom, charming my hair dry after my shower and attempting to wrestle it into submission, when there was a soft knock at the door.

Thinking it must be Ginny once again, I dashed out still wearing my bathrobe and opened it to find Luna Lovegood staring off somewhat dreamily into another world I couldn't see. She was humming gently to herself. In one hand she held a rather ratty old book bag with many odd-looking stickers; in the other she clasped a copy of the Daily Prophet. It was, all in all, a classic Luna encounter; I felt heartened, thinking she only wanted to say hello.

"Hi, Luna. Come on in." I was a little surprised to see her, actually, as she'd seemed somewhat uncomfortable in my presence since I had found out she was dating Ron. Still, I bore her no ill will and was anxious that we should become good friends, so I wanted to invite her in.

"I can't stay," she said in her lilting, ethereal voice. "I was just off to the Owlery. Have to send my dad a message. Anyway," she said, "I got this in the mail this morning, and I thought I should warn you."

I glanced down at the copy of the Prophet, nervousness beginning to sink into my chest. "Warn me about what?"

She handed me the copy of the paper, and my heart plummeted. Umbridge had gone tattling to the Prophet. I suppose I shouldn't have been so astonished...she, of all people, would have been utterly incapable of handling defeat gracefully and rationally...but it still hurt abominably to see my face splashed across the front page, my eyes narrowed and my expression impassioned as I lit into the Wizengamot about keeping Severus captive illegally. The headline read, Hogwarts Head Girl in Love with Professor and Ex-Death Eater. Beside my face was a shot of Severus, glowering in what appeared to be the Wizengamot's general direction. I could only hope his malice had been directed solely at them.

I stared at it, feeling as though I had entered a brand new nightmare. Luna's face took on a surprisingly grounded expression, one of complete pity, and she said, "I'm really sorry, Hermione. I just wanted to warn you before you go down for breakfast, because all the common rooms get the Prophet every morning for the students to read..."

I nodded shortly, regretting that I came across as a bit too brusque. "I know."

"Hey," she said, smiling at me, her eyes regaining their mistiness, "don't let them get to you. They didn't see what you saw. Whatever they say, it's out of total ignorance."

She left me standing there gaping slightly, still holding the Prophet in my hand, my burgeoning respect for her only slightly less profound than my absolute dread of what the day would bring.