Honour

III: Honour

“…for me,” she finished, placing her mug down on the table.

“Poor dear,” Molly said, dabbing her eyes with her apron.

“I don’t understand it – can’t make sense of it. However I reason it, it changes in the very next moment.”

“Poor dear,” the older woman repeated, patting her ex-daughter-in-law’s arm.

“Oh, Molly, I just don’t know what to think.”

She clucked softly, rising to get the kettle. “You think too much, Hermione. Merlin knows Ron was no match for you.”

Hermione smiled sadly. “Molly, we tried –”

“Oh, don’t apologize again. I’m his mother, but I’m not blind.”

---

“I know you tried, both of you. You were young, it was wartime, and things happened then that – well, just wouldn’t, otherwise.”

Hermione nodded. Her ex-mother-in-law’s compassionate acceptance of the divorce had surprised her; they’d grown closer since than they’d ever been before. “I know, and I know we’ve been over this, but…”

“But you have to be perfect, even now.” Molly smiled, refilling her mug with one hand and patting Hermione's shoulder with the other. “You’re far too hard on yourself, dear.”

“I just don’t know what to think,” Hermione said again.

“And that’s your problem, Hermione, dear.”

---

With a distracted finger, Molly pushed lemon slices around on a chipped saucer, evening the space between them, lining them up.

She’d been doing that since Hermione had appeared earlier with some nonsense about how the children had left something at the Burrow, something they were obviously doing perfectly well without at school.

She’d listened patiently, waiting for the younger woman to confess the real purpose of her visit, and, when she’d revealed what Severus had told her, her heart had warmed in a way it hadn’t in years.

“I can only imagine how he must’ve felt at your wedding.”

---

Hermione looked at her. “I don’t understand.”

Molly’s mouth opened then she smiled and patted Hermione’s hand again. “Of course you don’t, dear. You never did understand hearts. Oh, Arthur and I hoped that you and Ron could be as happy as we were, but you couldn’t, really – Ron’s far too simple a man – no, you need a nice, knotty problem to hold your interest.” She laughed gently.

Hermione warmed her hands around her mug. “What am I missing?”

A foreign country of wisdom in Molly’s smile.

Hermione didn’t know the language.

“The fact that he loved you.”

---

“He wanted to rape me, Molly.”

Molly set her mug down firmly. “Hermione Granger, if you insist on being a fool – ” At the look in Hermione’s eyes, she bit her tongue, and continued more gently. “He made the potion for you, dear, you, of all the women and girls at Hogwarts. He knew he couldn’t possibly protect them all from the horrors he was right to fear. I’d bet my life that that tore him apart. How couldn’t it?”

Hermione’s eyes were distant as she stared into her tea.

“He didn’t want to rape you. He chose you.”

---

“The chances of his being able to do anything for you – for any of us –” Molly shot Hermione a look that reminded her that she, too, had risked the very same fate. “Oh, my dear, the chances were slim indeed. If you’d been…” She stopped herself, not wanting to say it. “… in danger, and he’d had to choose between saving you and helping Harry…”

Hermione bristled – why, or in whose defense, she wasn’t sure. “He’d’ve chosen Harry. It’s one reason he killed Dumbledore.”

Molly took Hermione’s hands in her own. “He’d’ve done no worse to you.”

---

“I just wish,” Hermione began, her voice a whisper, “I wish I could see it that way for more than a moment at a time.” She heard him again in her mind: “I hoped.”

She’d been so reasonable at the time. So ready to thank him.

She had thanked him. Reflexively.

She shuddered. “It’s too slippery. My thoughts won’t stay straight. One minute I’m grateful, the next I’m angry… I wish I’d never seen that stupid potion.”

Well, this won’t do, Molly thought, sitting straighter. Briskly, she said, “Do you ever wonder what would’ve happened if there’d been no war?”

---

“Poor dear. War’s all you knew, isn’t it?” She sighed sympathetically. “Let me tell you how it should have happened. He’d’ve courted you. Honourably. He’d’ve spoken before you graduated, I think.” She smiled wistfully. “I’d never have had Rose and Hugo, but you might have been happier.”

Hermione’s cheeks went pink.

“Do you really think, Hermione, that in the whole history of Hogwarts, no master ever felt anything for a student?”

“But there was a war. And if he’d had to – I don’t even want to think about it.”

Molly shook her head. “He didn’t either, but he did.”

---

“If he’d had to –” If Severus could think it, she could say it. “– to rape you, Hermione, he’d’ve found some way to protect you.”

“Obviously – the potion –”

“More than that, so much more. He’d’ve told you with his touch. A whisper. In the way he held you. If you could have seen it, his eyes would have told you.”

Hermione’s hands clenched on the heavy mug as she compared Molly’s words to the man she’d been ready to embrace as her lover not three nights before.

“He’d’ve found a way.”

Perhaps he would. She’d never know.

---

Molly sighed. “You said yourself that you could read him, didn’t you? When you saw no portrait in Minerva’s office, you knew he’d taken steps to keep himself alive, and you knew what to do, after you thought about it, yes?”

“I pieced things together.”

And she had. The way he’d sneered at her for her ignorance of footnotes in books way beyond the Hogwarts curriculum – knowing she’d read them. The way he’d delivered his most scathing criticisms of her – the ones she’d remember and cry over, after class – every time, he’d been standing in the same spot.

---

He’d deliberately humiliated her from the corner of his classroom. Everyone else received his cutting criticism from wherever he happened to be.

But for her, he’d stalked away dramatically, each footstep echoing like an academic funeral bell in the vast Defense classroom.

By his tolling steps, they’d all known his worst was coming.

For her.

Only for her.

He’d hidden everything she needed in a house-elf gargoyle that stood in that corner.

Untransfigured, it had contained instructions, in his own hand, for restoring him to himself, no matter how he’d appeared to die.

He’d known her so well.

Trusted her.

---

Hermione sighed.

“He’d’ve let you know, somehow, that he was sorry. That his heart was breaking. He would’ve told you, somehow, in the midst of whatever he had to do, that he’d keep you safe. The potion was only one clue, and if there’d been no time for it – well, he’s an honourable man, whatever the rest of us wanted to believe. He’d’ve found a way.”

Hermione swallowed. “How do you know?”

“He loved you.”

Hermione brushed tears from her eyes. “Oh, Molly,” she said, helpless to control the break in her voice. “I hit him with my shoe.”

---

Nine nights. Nine amongst thousands.

He’d slipped silently through the dungeons, counting each footstep, each closer to his cauldron.

He’d whispered, stirring gently….

It deserved to be caressed.

The forces of life in his hands.

There were other nights for death, he knew.

For nine nights, he’d allowed himself to imagine.

However horrifying.

Imagining telling her, silently, that he was sorry.

That his heart was breaking.

He had to imagine to plan, didn’t he?

With the forces of her life simmering beneath his hands, how could he not find solace?

When he despised himself for it afterwards, it didn’t show.