Barely More Than a Whisper

Summary: In which finer points are lost in translation and detention is served in unusual ways.

A/N: About a bazillion thanks are due for this chapter. First, to J.K. Rowling for writing the first year Potions speech and to Alan Rickman for his brilliant delivery of it. To Indy and Ana for alpha-reading the last versions of this one when it threatened to do me in and then looking at a million versions of the art. To Melenka for listening to me whinge about writer's block. To my students for being such honest, sharp, funny writers and social critics. To everyone who heeded my call for introvert recharge time. To the group Skillet for the song "Awake and Alive," which provided the writing soundtrack. And finally to Hermione, for knowing better than I did where this chapter would find its center. Clever, clever girl.

27: Barely More Than a Whisper

He spun and zoomed toward the Herbology section, where, as he'd suspected, several recently extinct heirloom tomato plants had reappeared, laying vigorous claim to several extra feet of space, jerking their branches back and forth with exaggerated self-importance.

He threw back his head and laughed.

-----

In the very little time between the end of Potions and dinner – which she was determined to eat plenty of, no matter what history had to say about it – Hermione raced for a private corner of the library, Crookshanks bounding behind. If he can communicate through Crooks, then I can... maybe... She barely kept her feet to a civil pace as she wove her way through corridors filled with students, all of whom seemed to be in her way.

No sooner had she reached her favorite study table than Madam Pince arrived, delivering a note from Professor McGonagall.

"Notice of Special Merit..." Hermione crumpled the parchment to her chest. Breathe. Breathe, dammit.

As the librarian walked away, Hermione whipped out a sheaf of notes. "Crooky," she whispered, "please tell Mimi to tell him 'Thank you.'"

Crookshanks leapt to the desktop with a "Rrrr" that was borderline smug.

"U WILCOM."

Hermione closed her eyes and took a full breath for the first time since waking up in her fourteen-year-old life. "Oh, Crooky... such a clever, clever boy you are..."

His "Rrrr" left no doubt as to his agreement on that matter.

Scritching the puff of fur behind his ear, she murmured, "How fast can you translate, old man?"

He stared intently at her as she whispered, "Ask Severus whether he has any idea why I'm here now?"

---

"Meee?"

"Precisely. Tell Hermione that spectral excuse for a librarian says..."

---

"GOST SEZ MIMI FLOTZ." Crookshanks looked at Hermione as if to shrug, plainly telling her not to blame the messenger.

Hermione wrinkled her nose. Demetrios. Of course.

She kept whispering. "What wisdom can she be seeking in my fourth year? She's only a baby! She wasn't even born yet!"

A moment later, her notes informed her, "MIMI LYK HERMNY."

Hermione let out a soft laugh that might have been tinged with a bit of panic. "That helps not at all, Crooky."

Crookshanks's tail twitched, and his look accused her of missing the point entirely.

---

If Severus had known how eagerly he was leaning over the cereal, he'd have been appalled, even with no one but Mimi to witness it.

The letters shuffled around to read, "WIZDUM? WHUT IZ?"

His brow furrowed. "That is your question, I presume?"

"Meee," she chirped, rubbing her face against his cheek.

"You sent Hermione careening back into the past seeking wisdom... and you don't even know what wisdom is."

"WHUT IZ?" She stared at him with trusting eyes.

Severus exhaled. How to explain wisdom to a cat? His mind frayed just a bit as he realized he was actually wrestling with that problem.

Mimi gazed up at him as if he were the repository of everything of any importance in the world.

This made him only marginally less uncomfortable than the memories of Hermione's too-wise eyes.

He stroked her cheek. "I wish I could explain it to you, little one."

"U NO CAN XPLAIN?"

"No."

"STOOPID WIZDUM."

Mimi rubbed against his hand in an ecstasy of faith.

"PLAY WIF KITTEH?"

He swallowed a strange lump in his throat.

"Mimi, little one, please tell the Kneazle to tell Hermione..."

---

"U HAZ PROBLIM."

"No shit," she muttered, placing a hand on Crookshanks's back to maintain some kind of equilibrium.

Okay. So Mimi has no idea why I'm here either. Or Severus can't get her to understand the question. She remembered Crookshanks's baleful looks as she'd tried variation upon variation asking him what was wrong with Harry and Ginny's son, only to be met with "BAYBE NEEDZ KITTEH."

"But why?" she'd asked, countless times in countless ways.

The cereal's message had never changed.

Crookshanks butted her hand. "MIMI KITTUN," her notes informed her.

"Yes, I know. That's the problem."

"IZZINT."

"What do you mean, Crooky?" How she knew when she was reading Crooks's thoughts instead of Mimi's, she couldn't say; she was nonetheless certain of it.

Crookshanks blinked at her as if he couldn't believe how thick she was. "KITTUNZ GRO UP."

Hermione swallowed. She really didn't want to wait that long. Even Crookshanks's grasp of subtle concepts was fairly limited, and he was both fully-grown and part-Kneazle. Mimi was just a cat, and only a kitten...

Hm. How fast was time moving when she was versus Severus and Mimi?

She asked the question, and Crookshanks relayed it.

"U IZ GON FOR SOM HOWRZ."

Time was moving much more slowly for them, then. Well, even assuming cats could properly appreciate the concept of wisdom, she definitely did not want to wait for Mimi to grow up before learning why she was in fourth year. Definitely not.

"RRRR," Crookshanks insisted, and she turned her attention once more to the page.

"WHUT KITTUNZ WANT?"

"I don't know what she wants, Crooky."

"ALL KITTUNZ."

Hermione blinked. "Erm... any kitten wants food, warmth, toys... she has all of those."

Crookshanks very gently bit her hand.

Oh. "Love."

Crookshanks stomped across her notes, flopped down on them heavily, and set to washing his huge paw.

So, she wants love... which gets me where, exactly?

---

"LOV?"

Severus blinked and coughed roughly, gesturing to the word. "You again?"

"Meee," Mimi affirmed, rolling onto her back and grabbing his hand with her front paws, batting insistently at his wrist with her back legs.

"Silly thing..."

He allowed her to wrestle with his hand for a while.

The silly thing purred.

---

All through dinner, Hermione wrote furiously in order to hide her communication method, sounding the words as softly as she could so Crookshanks, who now refused to leave her lap, could hear.

"All right, Hermione?" Harry asked.

"I'm trying to finish this before detention."

"Yeah, okay." He and Ron both flashed her sympathetic looks with only mild undercurrents of "better you than me" and left her more or less in peace.

Glancing around as if history might be as visible as the castle's ghosts, she muttered, "You too, sweeping forces of history, wherever you are. You keep your perving tides away from me for one meal, understand?"

History didn't reply. She hadn't really expected it to.

"How am I supposed to get through detention without creating more disturbing memories for you?"

---

Underneath the kitten, the cereal moved. In one awkward roll, Mimi disengaged her paws from Severus's wrist and flipped over to sniff it.

Severus read the question then dictated, "Do the best you can."

---

"NO CLOO."

Hermione gritted her teeth and muttered, "No throwing myself into your arms, then. Check."

"What'd you say?" Ron asked, turning toward her, his eyes a little wide.

"Huh? Oh... uh... just working on an Ancient Runes translation, Ronald."

He waggled his eyebrows. "Bit racy for homework."

"Veela poetry," she temporized.

Ron cocked an eye to her parchment, which she covered with her arms. "It's a very sensual language, you know – it's designed to evoke a physical sensation in the listener when read aloud."

Ron visibly paled, and he turned back to Harry's Quidditch talk.

The part of Hermione that was Dr. Granger chuckled.

---

"HERMNY WANT SNUGGL."

Severus blinked. He could only hope something had gotten lost in translation.

---

"What will detention entail, Crooky?" she whispered.

---

The cereal queried, "WHUT IZ TENSHUN?"

"Tension?" He scowled. Too bloody apt. "One assumes you mean 'detention'?"

Mimi batted a "D" into place.

"Torture," he muttered. "It's torture."

---

"CRUSHYO," Crookshanks provided helpfully.

"Paying attention in DADA, were you?"

"Rrrr!" He blinked proudly.

Hermione put her notes away and leaned her forehead on her hands in frustration. Somehow she didn't think her failure to manage her familiar merited Unforgivables.

That said, there was no telling what recourses might seem advantageous if this situation persisted for too much longer.

Her lip twitched wryly.

---

The cereal stopped moving, and Severus refilled his brandy.

Nothing to be done.

---

Try as she might, Hermione had been unable to convince Crookshanks to follow Harry and Ron back to the common room when they parted ways after dinner.

"Fine, then. Destroy my permanent record," she said through gritted teeth, wondering with every fiber of her being how to get through the next several hours without incurring detention for the remainder of her career.

She knocked on the door to the Potions classroom.

"Enter."

She stepped through the doorway, and a light flashed behind her, the oaken door swinging shut on Crookshanks's wide eyes.

Professor Snape sat at his desk, marking essays. He barely looked up as he said, "As you are incapable of managing him properly, I have warded my classroom against your familiar."

"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir." She stood in the doorway, not knowing where to look and whether or not to move.

"Leave your satchel by the door. You won't need it this evening."

With that went any hope of any external assistance.

She'd have to get through this on her own.

She nodded, setting her bag down.

"Sit in your usual spot and place your hands palm down on the desk."

This reminded Hermione uncomfortably of a Muggle film she'd seen once. What the...

"Do not move, and say nothing for the next hour." He returned his full attention to the stack of essays.

Hermione sat obediently still. This is it? This can't be it.

But before ten minutes had passed, she realized that he'd devised the perfect punishment for her – a punishment as effective at 26 as it would have been when she was 14:

Nothing.

---

Well done, Severus congratulated his past self. Well done, indeed.

---

In her effort not to stare at her very visible, very much alive Potions professor, Hermione forced her eyes to stay focused on her own hands.

She heard a hush of parchment on wood as he slid the next essay toward him. The creak of his chair as he leaned slightly, freshening his quill. The sudden scratch of quill on parchment, growing sharper. Harsher. Faster.

The brush of wool on wood.

A final sound, barely a whisper as another a completed essay was placed aside.

The sounds recommenced and she listened to the hush, the creak, the freshening, the scratch.

Harsher. Faster.

A brush.

A final whisper.

Look at me.

Even as she realized he hadn't spoken, that it was just a memory, she was glancing up, no way to stop her eyes, to keep from seeing...

He was still marking parchments, leaning his head on one hand, his eyes flicking rapidly as he read, his hair falling between his fingers, and her breath quickened.

Steady... she told her unruly mind, but she nonetheless stared, transfixed, at the wizard before her.

Even his most simple, mundane movement – unrolling a scroll, refilling a quill – revealed contained force, power of mind and magic held deliberately and overtly in check. His bearing was calculated, she realized, to raise the hairs on the back of anyone's neck – and, moreover, to pose a measured, palpable challenge to anyone with wit enough to spot it.

For good or ill, Dr. Hermione Granger had that in spades.

In the flickering light of torches and oil lamps, her gaze came to rest on his free hand, on the sudden, sharp line where pale fingers met black hair, and her skin felt the memory of his touch, of the strength of his hands in her hair, drawing her forward, her face to his, her eyes closing (nothing to see), his lips, warm, on her own (only feel), her hands sliding into his hair, seeking...

Her hands twitched of their own volition, and his eyes flickered to hers.

"Five points from Gryffindor. Do not move again."

She blushed, swallowing, trying to breath normally.

He returned his attention to his grading.

Their eyes had met for only a moment, and she saw that they weren't yet as empty as she'd once thought them.

Hard, yes, but she thought she detected a flicker of worry.

She wouldn't have seen it had she not known to look for it, had she not already known that the Dark Mark was growing clearer with each passing day.

Why of all times was she here now?

---

A memory of her skin, coloring softly in the torchlight.

A trick of torchlight wherein she could have been fourteen or forty.

Her eyes, full with knowledge.

Severus shifted in her armchair, muttering darkly, "Don't look at her, you fool."

It didn't matter now that he hadn't thought anything of her then.

She knew too much now for him to miss it in the past.

It was only a matter of time...

He leaned his head wearily on his fist.

Look away, Hermione. Look away.

---

Look at me.

It was just a memory – only a memory of blood, of terror, of hands, his hands, red with shining blood, clamped over his throat, his boot heels scraping spasmodically on the dry, rotted floor, out of rhythm, out of time...

... of his summoning his last strength to reach with unspeakable urgency for Harry, pulling him roughly closer, his eyes sharp, glittering, boring into Harry's as ghostly tendrils of memories began to rise from the cold sweat of his poisoned skin...

She closed her eyes.

There, in but a moment, she could have saved him.

She hadn't known and had looked away, her shaking hands searching for a phial to receive the memories it was worth his life to give...

Whatever he was giving Harry was raw. Desperate. Final.

And private.

She looked away.

As she turned back, the hard, dark glitter was fading.

She closed her eyes in the Potions classroom.

"Eyes open, Miss Granger," he said in a bored monotone. "This is not nap time."

She looked up.

---

In London, Severus saw his death in her remembered eyes, her helpless understanding a blow to his soul.

For himself, he felt nothing.

But her – to be unable to hold her, to whisper comforting nonsense into her hair.

His gaze fell on her recumbent form on the lounge.

He stood slowly and moved to kneel beside her, brushing a stray hair from her forehead.

She didn't respond.

He groaned.

---

The torchlight blurred into golden prisms and she inhaled, choking on her own breath, willing her tears to stop.

Professor Snape smirked and continued grading.

Source Note:

1. Severus's thought, "Nothing to be done." ~ The opening line of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, a bit of light-hearted existential fluff in which Godot takes longer to arrive than the play takes to perform. Pretty fair assessment of how Severus and Hermione are starting to feel about her current temporal predicament, really...

~ A.