6. Tried

A/N: My dear readers! I want to apologize profusely for missing a few updates. This month has been rather horrible for me. On V-day weekend I had a very unfortunate incident, involving a wasp and a very severe case of allergies. Stayed in hospital for a week, my lungs shut off, sort of. Next thing, it got complicated with a pneumonia. Another ten days in hospital sans Internet, but for my cell.

I'll try to make it up to you. I'll also try not to deviate from my self-imposed schedule of one post a week in the future. Thank you to everyone who sent notes, letters and PMs. And a giant thank you to potionsmistress23, a beta to die for. Enjoy the chapter and drop me a note if you like. Reviews are love! Send some! :)

Shrugging her coat about herself with grim resolve, Hermione started after Professor Snape. She was determined not to screw up anymore. Well, at least for a stretch of time, she thought. She wasn't yet ready to give herself as much credit as being sure something wouldn't pop up and mess up her laudable intentions.

She trotted after her taciturn companion, his cloak's billow a mad dance in the wind, and thought about ways to reset their working relationship to a blank page. Her Gryffindor brain, buzzing like a disrupted ant-hill, provided only one measure to be taken. Truth.

She should tell the professor about the twins. A little sliver of her mind, the devious one, the one that was rapidly growing of late, wasn't planning on that being now. It had to go to hell.

"Professor Snape!" Hermione called to the man marching purposefully ahead of her.

He didn't stop.

He didn't even demonstrate as much as a sign he'd heard her. Hermione found that especially troubling.

She hurried her step, and after a short run she was beside her mentor, cloak and hair whipping in the wind.

"Professor, I need to tell you something!" Words were bursting from her like confetti from a Christmas cracker. "I went to see Fred and George earlier today." She waited a bit and added, "In London."

That made Professor Snape stop abruptly.

"And you are telling me this because, Miss Granger?" he asked, his voice standing out in the violent wind, not with the volume but with the sheer maliciousness.

"I want a fresh start," she breathed out. "Please," she added when his cold glare was all she got for an answer.

"Do you even realize how close to death we were a few minutes ago?" he demanded, his voice rivaling permafrost for coldness.

The dim light of the stormy night cast sharp shadows on his face, making him even more ominous, making his words and the could-have-beens he was pointing at even more terrifying.

"No! I don't! And that's exactly the thing!" she said passionately, trying to channel all of the frustration the not knowing brought her. "I'm trying to trust you here! But all those elliptical remarks and assumptions that I somehow must know things don't help!"

He looked at her, seemingly taken aback.

"We are not having this conversation right now, in this weather and in these circumstances," he answered haughtily, lifting his chin a bit, which caused the shadows on his face to rearrange from harsh angles to softer shapes. She noticed then, that he was not as furious as she thought he would have been.

"When are we having this conversation?" she asked, sounding way too petulant even to herself. She immediately thought that her intention to start afresh by being mature was quickly going down the drain.

But she couldn't back down. Hermione felt she was on the verge of negotiating something important.

He looked at her with a curiosity she couldn't see etched on his face but could feel as a tangible substance emanating from him.

Without deigning to answer, he started to turn on his heel slowly, his eyes never leaving her ruffled form, and then he was walking towards the Apparition point again, slower this time, as if there were a stretching cord between them which would break if he moved too fast or too abruptly.

A test, she realized. It was a test. Trying not to dwell too much on the whys and hows of it, she firmly put a foot on her own desire to stomp, yell, and demand an answer and willed her feet to follow him. Silently.

Merlin, this was not going to be a thing she could get used to in a hurry.

They reached the Apparition point in a few minutes, and he turned to her, a small, battered stuffed animal of unidentifiable species in his outstretched hand. A Portkey. The location of the Midwife must be pretty far away if even such a capable wizard as Professor Snape was not risking to Apparate there, Hermione thought and resisted the urge to ask about the Portkey.

It immediately occurred to her how silly her asking would be, since his intent was obvious enough. The thought that came after put a crimson of shame on her cheeks. She suddenly realized that she must have been doing a lot of this questioning the obvious, not just with the professor. Maybe she was indeed the pain in the neck everyone thought her to be.

An arch of an eyebrow prompted her to action with the practiced, silent eloquence of a simple gesture she had come to associate with her mentor. She sighed, bracing herself, and put her hand on the toy's soiled tummy. And then there was spinning and lurching and tugging of assorted parts of her body in all directions, and then, just about when she was panicking over her having to breathe soon and there not being any air to inhale, the excruciating sensations stopped. She landed on her unsteady feet and almost bumped into a broad expanse of black, which was her professor's chest. His eyebrow rose again, this time in what she thought was a back-handed version of an 'are you okay' question. He'd never outright ask her, she knew. She nodded in the affirmative and felt a strangeness at the thought how easy and straightforward it was to communicate with her mouth shut.

Hermione straightened herself out and looked around. She appeared to be in the middle of a snow drift, knee deep. And that snow drift appeared to be in the middle of a vast, starlit valley, full of its unnumbered peers. She had never seen so much snow, not even when she went skiing in the Alps with her parents. It was magnificently untouched, it glimmered softly in the starlight, it covered slumbering pine trees with a thick coat, and it appeared somehow ancient, like it had always been there.

"Where are we?" she asked, awed and feeling totally justified asking, especially after a brief glance at Professor Snape had confirmed that he was somewhat confused by their whereabouts as well.

"We are here to see the Midwife, and apparently, she has relocated since I last saw her," Professor answered and, seeing as she was still staring up at him with eyes like saucers, continued reluctantly, "The Portkey is issued by the Midwife herself; there's no telling where it takes you."

If Hermione was somewhat miffed at the idea of her mentor using a Portkey, the destination of which 'there was no telling' for, she let it rest.

"I take it you have seen the Midwife before, sir," she said with tentative politeness, framing her question into a statement carefully.

"Obviously," he answered, but maybe her previous compliance had mellowed him somewhat because he added, "Once for my own self, and then when I went with the twins."

"Oh," she puffed out lamely and looked around for any sign of habitation.

There wasn't so much as a path in the snow or a trail pattern left by some misfortunate animal to indicate there was even life around.

However, Professor Snape seemed to have figured out their location soon enough. Performing a series of complex wand movements, he obviously acquired a sense of direction in the snow-covered waste and gestured for her to follow him. Their walk was slow and unsteady. Even though the professor was removing excess snow off his way from time to time, Hermione's feet still managed to get caught in the uneven ground's nooks, covered by thick, downy snow.

As she stumbled and wobbled after Professor Snape, who seemed as lithe and steady as if he were walking on a paved road, her tongue itched again. She was not deluding herself that the issue of her little London trip had been dropped for good, but oh, how greatly his silence and withholding of all things Mage-related got to her.

Immersed in thoughts and questions, which were whirling inside her head like the snowflakes outside it, she lost her balance when one of her feet went into some hole in the ground, and a second later she was being severely disillusioned about how fluffy and soft the snow looked. Her face particularly was not fond of the experience, hitting the crust hard.

For a minute, she lost her bearings and only started to scramble up when the needles of icy cold began to prickle at her skin in a way that was rather more than she could tolerate. The snow was deep, the place immediately seemed hostile, and her mentor's ever cold attitude only fit into this sordid land of winter, glaciers, and austere pines, wherever the hell it was.

Hermione felt an entirely different, hot prickling at her eyes and battled with her soggy cloak to get up. Just about when her struggle with her attire seemed to be dropping on the losing (and very humiliating) side, a firm hand grabbed her elbow and hauled her up, none too gently but very efficiently.

She was solid on her feet and realizing that snow was everywhere inside her clothes. Her impossible hair was chock-full of it, it sneaked in her sensible boots, and some of it was currently melting behind her collar and slithering down her back in cold little trickles. Her professor sighed beside her, and she couldn't discern whether it was a sigh of frustration or aggravation or disappointment. An insane part of her desperately wished it was a sigh of compassion at the sight of her misery, and (very untimely so, she thought) she instantly remembered how safe it had felt when his cloak had given up its dominant billow to be wrapped around her like a cocoon of security.

Fighting hard against tears that were dangerously close to spilling, she asked the first inane thing that popped to the surface of her mind.

"Was it so horrible with Fred and George? Put you off... training... entirely?" She finished with an embarrassing sniffle.

Her question must have caught the Potions master completely unaware because, for a fleeting moment, his face showed unguarded wonder and something altogether... tolerant. Well, almost.

"At times," he answered, quickly collecting himself, "they were so... absolutely... atrociously... insufferable that a quick Avada seemed like a merciful end to both of them." His voice could have put the snow kingdom around them to shame. But there was something to it, some barely there undertone which she couldn't discern. A fondness of sorts, maybe, if she considered it viable to put 'Professor Snape' and 'fond' in the same sentence.

And Hermione felt normal again, strangely. She could very much imagine the extent of the word 'insufferable' when applied to the twins.

She brushed the snow off her face, hiding a small smile with the gesture. Her cheek appeared to have been scratched on the hard crust, and the melting snow was smarting on the cut. Professor Snape's eyes fixed on the small abrasion. The tip of his wand touched her cheek lightly, and she felt the skin there tingle, healing.

Hermione mumbled her thanks and followed the man in front of her when he started walking again.

Soon enough, the pines started to get taller and form small orchards, and then, beneath a cozy clutch of trees, Hermione noticed a light. It was faint as if it were coming out of a small window with a tainted, uneven glass in it, which was probably the case. After another three minutes of barraging through the snow, they saw a timberwork hut. It looked old and rickety, half-sunk into the ground and almost entirely covered with snow.

"It appears we have reached our destination," Professor Snape said, halting his step.

"This is where the Midwife... receives visitors?" Hermione asked, shivering with cold. Judging by the darkness of the hour and the surroundings, she assumed they were somewhere up in the Northern Europe.

"This is where she lives. But the last time I went, the place was different," her surly companion answered, and Hermione had a sharp feeling that he was slightly confused. She didn't like it. It retracted from the solid ground under the whole situation.

Suddenly, the door, which was half snowed in, flew open, letting out a draft of cozy warmth and a beam of juicy, ochre-coloured light, the kind that can only be exuded by a flaming hearth, and a tall, lissome creature flew out, wrapped in a halo of pale blond hair.

At first, Hermione thought she was a Veela, at least in part, so ethereally, otherworldly pretty she was.

"Terve!" the glowing... girl... or woman, Hermione could not decide, exclaimed and dashed towards them with an expression of ultimate rapture on her smooth, perfect face.

"What is she saying?" Hermione asked no one in particular as the girl (yes, definitely a girl; no, not Veela, either) ran up to her, took her clammy hands into her warm and soft ones and gave her a peck on the cheek which could not be described other than loving.

"Oh, you English!" the fairy-like creature squealed with delight as if this discovery had brought her utmost joy.

"I beg your pardon, Madam," Professor Snape ventured stiffly, folding his hands across his chest in the numerous folds of his cloak when the girl was about to give him the same welcome. "But where is Signora Consuelo?"

Apparently, he had expected something different altogether, Hermione thought with some unease.

"Come inside! I wait for you. Tell you all," the angelic girl said with a little less elation, which made her at least a bit more humanlike.

They followed their exalted host inside her little dwelling, and Hermione was very relieved to find a blazing fire in the hearth and a vacant chair right next to it.

"Oh, I so happy!" the pale-haired girl chirped, bustling about the tiny kitchen (sitting room and dining room) with tea. "You my first clientele!"

Her speech was heavily accented, but Hermione could not place it. She looked tall and willowy, pale-skinned; she had blue, azure eyes with light-brown lashes and a delicately curved mouth. Stunningly beautiful and a bit on the crazy side. The girl was clad (for she was exactly clad, not dressed or attired) in a hand-knit dress, a strange, fur-made footwear Hermione could not put a name to, and a shawl with something looking eerily like rabbit paws instead of tassels. She had golden hoop earrings on, so large a small parrot could perch on them. Everything about her screamed North.

"Are you... the Midwife?" the blunt Gryffindor in Hermione asked before she could shut it up.

"You can say so," the strange creature replied, smiling and showing a perfect set of snow-white teeth. "Oh, I sorry. Venla. My name."

"I'm Hermione Granger and this is Professor Snape, my mentor. We're both from Hogwarts in Scotland." Hermione gestured to her professor, who was standing in the corner next to the low-set door and giving out the air of a highly superior creature, a posture Hermione was coming to associate with his confusion.

"Yes, nice meet you, Hermione, Professor," Venla said, managing to shake both of their hands in quick succession.

"Well, Miss... Venla," Professor Snape pronounced her name as if it were something distasteful, "are you going to let Madam Consuelo take your place seeing us any time soon?"

"Madam Consuelo died. Old. Last winter. I instead. I move from Spain. I her... her..." she suddenly looked very sad and was desperately searching her obviously meager English vocabulary.

"...her apprentice?" Hermione provided, her heart going out to the girl.

"Yes, yes! You new?" Venla asked.

"I... guess so."

She turned to look at her professor, who strangely wasn't doing the talking. Snape seemed to be taken aback by the news of the older Midwife's death.

"Good grief, I'm surrounded by amateurs. Do you even know what to do?" he asked the sunny Venla in his patented condescending tone.

"Yes, I know. I learned. Consuelo showed," the young Midwife answered, taking the challenge up and a step closer to the Potions master.

She was young, Hermione thought. Probably only a few years older than herself. In a Luna-like way, Hermione somehow really liked the girl. Or maybe it was the fact that her mentor obviously thought her, too, not worthy of his while.

"So, you new! How exciting!" Venla chattered away, turning back to Hermione. "But you so old..."

Apparently, either tact was not her strong suit or she did have a serious language barrier.

"I... uh... I'm Muggle-born, you see," Hermione answered and tried to hold her head up high.

"Muggle-born? Parents Muggles? So strange!"

"Yes, you'd think. Well, anyway... can you... tell me what you do? I didn't have a... chance to read up on Midwives." At that Hermione gave her saturnine companion a look full of reproach. She hated not being in the know, and the book of Mages provided zero information about Midwives.

"Not Midwives, stupid." (Hermione was pretty sure Venla meant silly, so she went right along with it.) "Midwife. Only one. In whole world."

"There's only one Midwife at a time. No one knows how it is regulated, just like not a single Mage would be able to tell where or how they find their successor. Midwives deliver new Mages. That's their sole purpose. They help the young ones break the shell and find out their kind." Professor Snape finally joined the conversation, albeit very, very reluctantly.

"Yes, yes, I tell your kind and wake your magic!" Venla added enthusiastically and turned to the professor. "Consuelo said me about you. You are..."

"Your mentor had no business telling you what I am," the professor barked through gritted teeth, effectively shutting up the young Midwife.

She didn't cow. She laughed, a young, exuberant sound that made Hermione proud of her (and doubtful of her sanity, too, because few people dared to laugh in his face when Severus Snape spoke in such a tone).

"Consuelo told you quick-tempered. You interest me. I want to know more you." (Merlin's starry, pointy hat, Venla, fifty points for the amount of bluntness that would make any Gryffindor a scheming master of intrigue in comparison, Hermione thought.) "Come, Hermione, we need start," Venla suggested kindly, dismissing a seething Snape with a graceful wave of a hand.

"Not before I have a few words with you, Madam," Snape interrupted smoothly and stepped into the only other room in the small hut with the spring-like Venla, shutting the door firmly behind them.

Hermione took a minute to appreciate her surroundings. The hut was small, the timbers large and roughly hewn, and the low ceiling was strewn with dry herb tufts and various witching objects hanging from it. The tiny space was crammed but rather neat; the furniture seemed old and handmade. Hermione wondered how Venla, so young, was living in this snow desert all by herself and shivered slightly at the thought.

The Midwife and Professor Snape chose this moment to reappear from the adjacent room. Indignation rolled off the professor like scent off a Yeti, woken up in the middle of hibernation.

Hermione looked up at the pair quizzically.

"Everything fine. Your teacher thinks I worthless, but it okay," Venla informed her brightly and bestowed a dazzling smile on both of them.

She really had taken a few raps in the head somewhere along the journey, that Venla, Hermione thought quite fondly.

"Go in, Miss Granger. And try not to do anything that would make me carry you back to the Hogwarts Hospital Wing in my pocket," Professor Snape said and sneered unpleasantly, suggesting with an elegant hand that they should start whatever it was Venla was supposed to do.

Now it was Hermione's turn to enter the adjoining room and shut the heavy door, draped with furs of unidentifiable animals. The room was also tiny and stuffed with various paraphernalia, both magical and domestically mundane. Hermione was particularly surprised seeing a warm knitted sock sitting on top of a stack of ancient looking books, together with a piece of stale bread. The ceiling was even lower, if it was possible, and created a feeling of being watched from under hooded lids.

"I don't know much about the Mages and what I'm supposed to do," Hermione confessed apologetically, sitting in a chair which was made of something remotely resembling antlers and laid out with animal hides.

"I can see that. Your mentor not talks. No bad. You still learn," her sunny-haired counterpart replied, plucking herbs and other ingredients from around the room and throwing them in a small cast-iron pot which was hanging over another hearth.

"You my first new Mage. I saw many Mages Consuelo woke. She helped find their nature. Not always lucky. I try hard."

"What will you do?"

"I touch you."

"What?"

"Your soul, magic. I touch. It wake."

Not that she didn't trust Venla to do her thing, not exactly. But Hermione caught herself thinking how embarrassingly much she wished her mentor was here with her right now. Even seeing him roll his eyes and sneer in disdain at her would take an edge off her generalized discomfort.

The pot bubbled merrily, and its lid wobbled as if something were trying to crawl out of it. Venla put on something that looked like an oven glove that had been hand-made by an ogre child and poured a generous cup of steaming liquid...something, which smelled like herbs and mead and sunlit, ripe fields...and handed it to Hermione.

"Drink," she said, grinning like she had just brewed the Elixir of Life.

Hermione did. It tasted earthen and not altogether bad. Tangy liquid that enveloped the cavern of her mouth with a buttery film. She wanted to have another draught, irrelevantly wishing to get a better taste and, maybe, to nitpick the ingredients.

But everything chose to go black at exactly that moment.