Snapshot for silverdoe

AN: This is a drabble written to go along with silverdoe’s second place winning video “How Ron Lost Hermione.” See end for its link.

Thanks go to lyn_f for reading over this!

I remember it like it were yesterday: that pretty little brown-haired girl who’d helped Harry Potter in the war. She and that Weasley boy fell in love while off on some camping trip with the Boy Who Lived More Than Once. That’s what they called him after the second time, see?

Anyway, you could see 'em smiling and really happy in the beginning. Everyone thought they were destined to be together. I probably still have some of the articles the papers and magazines printed about them. Always wished I’d had a whirlwind romance like they had. So many different pictures of them surfaced, usually her snuggling up to him or standing between Weasley and Harry Potter at some function or other. Why, I remember a rather scandalous photo one of Rita Skeeter’s mates, she was a right cow, mind, had taken and printed in the Prophet.

It was of the Granger girl with Weasley in a risqué position, her legs wrapping around his body as they stared into each other’s eyes. Quite romantic if you ask me, but I tell you that girl was furious. There were rumors—always had rumors going round, like people thinking the three of them were a couple—but this rumor was that she’d marched down to the paper’s headquarters and threatened to blow the place right up if they didn’t agree to only publish pictures she approved of. Something about not wanting to be a bad role model for all the school kids growing up. Whatever she did to 'em, they never put any more of those compromising pictures of her up.

Well, they later published some that was on the other side of the spectrum as it were. Weren’t no loving going on in there. Didn’t know about that, eh? Well, I’ll tell you all about it. That poor girl spent most of her time trying to help others, like Snape and the Malfoys, who needed it, but him? No help at all! He were too busy going round the pubs and even getting entertainment on the side if you know what I mean. Seen him meself one night right in the Leaky Cauldron with some young slapper. I thought, ‘How dare he go round with this bint when he’s got that fine young girl waiting at home!’

Don’t know why but she married him. Can’t be she didn’t know about his ways, what with people mentioning it when they could. I sent an anonymous owl once to say I’d seen him with another woman. She never said a word that the papers mentioned—might’ve thought I were lying about it all. Some people do that shite, you know? Make trouble just to do it. But not me.

Once he started playing Quidditch, we seen less ‘nd less of ‘em together in public. Weren’t long after it was that he and Potter had that row in Diagon Alley with everyone there to see it. I didn’t see it firsthand, but I paid a bloke a few Galleons to watch his memory of it in his Pensieve. I don’t think anyone who saw that could ever doubt that Harry Potter defeated Lord Thingy—damn, I still can’t say the sod’s name out loud.

More and more rumors came out, mostly in those young folk’s magazines, but Granger couldn’t deny what she saw then, her husband off with others, and he couldn’t say he were just signing autographs neither. His hands and eyes and lips were everywhere, more than once.

That’s when the other pictures started surfacing. You’d see her with a bruise now and then, always laughed off as some experiment gone wrong, but I always wondered about them, even before I knew it were him doing it to her. What I always wanted to know was why she didn’t conceal them! She's a witch, right? Probably just something else he forced her to do, to show her who’s boss I expect. He looked right thunderous in one set of pictures and had even gone after the photographer, but not before we saw her face—big cut on her cheek, lip busted, hair a mess, tears in her eyes.

We knew then he’d done it, but she’d gave some cock-and-bull story about how she’d been attacked and her husband had just come to her rescue. Weren’t nobody ever caught for doing it. Looked too suspicious anyway. I heard Potter tried to talk to her about leaving, but she didn’t. Not for a while, not until she suffered more.

When the Prophet posted a series of pictures of Weasley with one of the little tarts they’d gone to school with, Lavender Green, I think, she'd... No, Brown, it was. Lavender Brown. Anyway, that’s when the Aurors got called over to their house. Can’t keep that kind of news out of the papers and mouths of witnesses. Even Potter had been there that night. His co-workers had to make him leave the premises, under Weasley’s orders.

She disappeared that night. Most of us thought he’d killed her, but he said when he woke up, she'd gone. Everyone was in an uproar over it. He had to leave their house; people had taken to standing round outside and heckling him about it all when he’d come out. We sure thought he’d done something terrible. Come to find out, she was all right the whole time.

Snape had offered her a place to live. Weasley tried to go there to get her back, but all that happened to him was a trip to St. Mungo’s. Snape worked him over real good. I expect it taught his rude arse a lesson. Never heard of him being abusive again. Never seen much of him after that. His Quidditch career was shite, and though he’d tried to stall their divorce, the Ministry forced him to let Granger go—especially after the evidence Potter and others gave. They had no choice.

Granger, well, I should call her Snape now, too, right? She and he ended up marrying and having children of their own. Just a couple I think. Not like Weasley. He ended up like his own mum and dad, more mouths to feed than he could handle. I expect he’s all right though. Still working in his brother’s shop last I heard.

But that’s the best love story I ever witnessed: not Weasley and Granger’s but Snape and Granger’s. I always thought it romantic, him swooping in like that to rescue her, him making certain to defend her where others had failed her, him loving her enough to let her fix her broken life and then give her a new one. Ah, hell, I’m not but ninety-two. There’s still time for me to find someone like that. Tall, dark and handsome was always my preference. But, yeah, that’s the story of how Weasley lost Granger.

AN: I have no idea why I decided to use this type of pov and language, but it was kind of fun. Something different than my norm anyway. :)

You can find the video at the following link:

http://www.thepetulantpoetess.com/viewstory.php?sid=14891

Congratulations, silverdoe!