Five

A/N: For ScatteredLogic, with heaps of thanks to OpalJade.

Snape was putting the garden to bed.

He had been dragging out the task, as he did not really want to find another use for his Sundays, and he had come to appreciate the labor, the stiff feel of unfamiliar denim, and Pomona's company. But even Pomona herself was absent today, apparently spending the day with Minerva. Why hadn't she had Longbottom build a decent greenhouse?

Instead, apparently, he had been building winter composts all week, and Snape spent the better part of the morning removing spent flowers and tossing them into the bins. Next he planned to begin tilling. That was not a task he particularly looked forward to. To him, Muggle tillers looked like particularly imaginative torture devices and not very efficient besides.

Therefore, he was surprised, though not completely disappointed, when Granger turned up around ten, wearing her ridiculous Hogwarts getup with a cloak overtop. She would at least prove a temporary distraction from the tiller.

"Professor, you need a jumper if you're going to be out in this weather," she said, making no explanation whatsoever for her presence.

"I can dress myself, thank you," he replied. "Hard work keeps the body warm."

"It does," she said, "when the temperature is more than three degrees."

He turned and glared at her. "Do you have some reason for being here? Or have you simply come to offer your opinions on my wardrobe?"

She shifted slightly from foot to foot. "I'm going to Hogwarts today--" she began.

Snape retrieved his wand from his pocket. "Protego Totalum!" he said, aiming it at her rather haphazardly and turning back to his task.

"Yes, thank you. But I came because I wondered if you might like to come with me."

Snape froze. Go to Hogwarts?

"Whatever for?"

"Well, I find that visiting helps me to imagine the logistics of Hogwarts without the house system. When I can walk the corridors and think, 'All right, the third and fourth years will live here, and when they leave in the morning for first lesson, half will head toward the Charms corridor, and the other half toward the dungeon,' it all begins to make more sense. The more confident I am in my impressions, the better I'll be able to convince the Board of Governors that this could be a real, working possibility."

Snape could not deny that he was curious to see how she planned to resolve the problems of housing and scheduling, but the idea of just dropping in to Hogwarts made him queasy. He was not entirely sure that he was ready to return, but if he were, he would want more than a silly young woman in a hardhat for fortification.

"I hardly see how you would require my company for a stroll about the castle."

"I don't require it, no. I only thought--you don't miss it?"

"Miss what, Miss Granger?"

"Miss Hogwarts? I find I miss it so much that I dream of it at night. It was my home," she said simply.

Yes, of course he missed it, he thought impatiently. He missed it every time he had to struggle to fill an endless day, every time he made a cup of tea, or sat down to an empty table for breakfast. He missed the corridors to pace in when he felt agitated, the library with its seemingly unending supply of books, the familiarity and quiet of his rooms. He missed his classes, if truth be told, for the routine of them, but also for the brief moments in which someone did something truly exceptional, and he got the rare glimpse of what a student might become. He missed Dumbledore.

"A trip down memory lane? Is that what you're proposing?"

She turned away. "It was only a thought. I can see you're busy here. Have a good day, Professor."

"Oh, for Merlin's sake," Snape said. Anything would be better than the godforsaken tilling, and if he left it, Longbottom would surely attend to it tomorrow. "You said yourself I cannot go about in this weather dressed this way. If you can bring yourself to wait a moment, I'll join you in the entrance hall."

He did not wait for a response and brushed past her into the house.

***

They arrived at the gates of Hogwarts within seconds of each other. Snape had suffered a brief moment in which he was not sure whether or not she intended to Apparate jointly, but it had resolved itself when she'd spun away from the top step of Grimmauld Place without so much as a "see you when we get there."

His first impression Hogwarts was that it looked like a sandcastle that a child had kicked over in a fit of temper. His throat closed, and he was momentarily unable to say anything.

Finally, he noticed that Granger was glancing up at him periodically and standing motionless by the gate, and he wondered how long she had been waiting here for him to compose himself. He cleared his throat.

"It's not as bad on the inside," she said quietly. "It's hard for me to look at it without the face and the front doors, but once you get inside, some of the magic takes hold, and there is more that was left untouched."

He nodded. She lifted her wand.

He thought for a moment to challenge her, to insist that he cast his own charms, but she was right that a Shield Charm cast by another was stronger, and he would prefer to have as much protection as possible if he were going in there. He'd wear a bloody hardhat if she had a spare.

He followed her though the construction site. Men in yellow coveralls were directing huge stone boulders with their wands, two or three of them to each slab of stone, while others milled about, drinking something steaming from paper cups and shouting to one another. Granger lifted her hand in greeting, and several raised hands in return, nodding as she passed. She stepped over what should have been the doorway, and they were inside.

It was quiet inside; perhaps it seemed more so in comparison with the noise of the men and the grinding of stone in the yard, but Snape thought that what he was missing was the sound of inhabitants. Had there ever been a time, even in the dead of night, when Hogwarts had been silent? Even the house-elves in the midst of their secret duties had bumped a fire poker here and there or shuffled on the stair.

Granger started up the main staircase, but he stopped her with a hand on her arm.

"Are the staircases sound?"

"They don't move right now. It took a dozen men to put a Sleeping Charm on them that would hold when the reconstruction began. They said it was too bloody difficult to be Levitating materials up to the third floor East wing and discover that you'd ended up on the fifth floor West wing."

Snape found that he could not climb it before casting a silent Sleeping Charm of his own. The moving staircases had always made him feel slightly ill, and the idea of one swinging out into nothingness gave him the cold chills. Ahead of him, Granger had turned back and laughed.

"I think most of us have done that at one time or another since all this began," she said.

"Where are we going?" he asked, refusing to acknowledge what she'd seen.

"I had hoped to walk the first floor today. I'd like to take a look at the classrooms. I've heard they're mostly finished."

Snape nodded his assent and took a tentative step up. "How are the dungeons?"

"They were the least damaged," she replied while climbing, "except where there were cave-ins, but predominantly, they fared well. They were obviously the first to be repaired--structural reasons and all that. The house-elves were able to live in them almost continuously. If you'd like, we can visit there next."

Snape did not know whether he wished to see the dungeons or not. It was not that he had not known that Hogwarts had sustained great damage; he lived at Potter's because of it. But somehow seeing it was very different from simply knowing it, and he already felt a bit shell-shocked. Still, it might be comforting to return to something that, if Granger were to be believed, was not completely alien.

"I suppose that will depend on how thorough an investigation you plan to conduct of the classrooms," he said dryly and climbed on behind her, careful not to look down.

***

But as it turned out, it did not matter whether Snape felt prepared to visit the dungeons or not. Following their tour of the renovated classrooms, Granger suggested lunch--in the Great Hall, no less, as if there were no more sensible place to procure food in all of Scotland.

"And trouble the house-elves to serve us?" Snape asked. "Miss Granger, I'm appalled."

"How did I know you would say that?" she replied with a slight smile. "It's not ideal, I admit, but I will pay them, and they are cooking for the construction crews anyway, so it isn't as if they aren't preparing food today. Besides, I want you to see this."

She opened the door to the Great Hall, and it was all Snape could do not to gasp. The Hall appeared untouched, from the four long house tables to the winter blue of the enchanted ceiling. The high table stood on the dais, clothed in gold as it had always been. He stood for a moment inside the doorway and took it in. Here was something he understood at last.

"Gryffindor or Slytherin?" he said finally, an eyebrow raised.

Granger huffed. "How I wish it could be neither," she said, but she steered them toward Slytherin.

"You see how pervasive it is?" she said once they were seated. "You can't even have a meal without involving politics, loyalty, tradition. Shouldn't we, as two adults, simply be able to sit down?"

"Tell me how you would have it."

"I would have it that students are not defined as people by a hat at the age of eleven!"

"So I gathered," Snape said. "How would you have the tables, Miss Granger? So far as I can see, despite your plans, there are four tables here. Four tables corresponding to four houses, four dormitories."

She seemed to settle into her chair then, her shoulders relaxing slightly, and there was a small smile playing around her mouth. Snape wondered if she knew how pleased she looked when she shared her ideas, how much at ease. Though she did look a bit as if she wished she could draw him a diagram.

"I'd like to see it divided by year. First and second years in what was Gryffindor Tower, third and fourth in Hufflepuff, fifth and sixth in Ravenclaw, and seventh alone as eldest's privilege in Slytherin."

Snape said nothing immediately, but fell to contemplating the room. Eldest to youngest, he thought, trying to imagine this room filled with students of descending height. The staff would have to have eagle eyes, he thought, as the youngest students would create the most obvious mayhem, but the oldest students would take advantage of the distraction. Not that that hadn't always been the case, simply with other names.

Granger seemed willing to leave him with his thoughts for the time being. She knocked smartly on the table, and two plates of beef and potatoes appeared. Snape pushed his food around with his fork. Although he had been hungry before, he found now that he was consumed with memories, of his own sorting and of those he had witnessed; of small, frightened-looking students running gratefully toward cheering upperclassmen; of speeches from heads of house, both given and received.

"You don't think something would be lost?" he asked at last.

"Lost?" she said. "Without question, something would be lost." She was quiet for a time, her face far away and dreamy, and he waited, somewhat impatiently, for her to speak again.

"I remember my own sorting," she said. "I'd thought for weeks about what house I'd want to be placed in, reading about Hogwarts from home. From there, it all seemed like a game, like something I could strategize and win. Ravenclaw was what I had decided on. But on the train, there didn't seem to be anyone I could look at and sort on sight. Everyone was lazy or stuck up or dull. I couldn't imagine anyone fitting into any of the lofty ideals of the houses I'd read about, and I certainly couldn't imagine anyone being my friend. And I know... I know how I seemed to them. By the time we'd reached Hogwarts, I had convinced myself that I was making a terrible mistake, that there was nothing extraordinary or magical about any of these people and that I'd be better off at home where at least I might attend a school based on academic merit." She paused.

"So why didn't you?"

"Why didn't I go? Well, because of the Great Hall, of course. I had never seen anything more beautiful, more strange, in my entire life, and I knew I could not leave a place that created such things."

Snape knew what she meant, though he would not have worded it in quite the same way. Even now, in the midst of the rubble and confusion of the castle, the Great Hall stood alone like a jewel, like a testament to magic itself.

"And for the first time, I began to understand that magic was not going to be anything like the world I'd known. That I'd never be able to control it, or win it, or own it. And I knew that, no matter what, I did not want to leave. So I just gave myself to the hat and let it put me wherever it would."

Snape considered her for a moment. "Do you think it made the right choice?"

"Do you?" she said pointedly, but did not wait for an answer. "I don't know if there was a right choice to be made. It gave me a family. As you so delicately pointed out the other night, it gave me friends for the first time in my life. It gave me a purpose and something to fight for. If those things make up a right choice, then I suppose it did."

"Hmm," Snape said, willing neither to agree nor disagree. "As a professor, I can only say that I find it a chilling thought, all those first years running amok without the tempering influence of the older students."

She smiled, but it did not reach her eyes, and he knew that the point he was trying to make was being lost.

"When I was a student," he began, and he watched as Granger nudged her plate to the side and leaned on the table with her elbows. She looked as if she had come to attention, and he realized a bit uncomfortably that she was interested in his childhood recollections. "When I was a student," he began again, "I remember the confusion of those early days, of never knowing how to get from the side of the castle I was in to the side of the castle in which I needed to be. The way the staircases seemed almost to chuckle as they delivered you to the wrong floor, the way corridors that you knew led to Charms somehow delivered you to Defense."

She laughed, nodding in fervent agreement. "I thought I was going mad."

"And I remember the relief I would feel when I saw another flash of green amidst the populace, that there were these older students duty-bound to point me in the right direction. I was not a child particularly gifted at friendship," he said and paused. He had no idea what was prompting him to relate these thoughts to Granger. Perhaps it was the Great Hall itself, infecting him with nostalgia, or some charm she'd set upon him. "But I knew which Quidditch team to cheer for. I knew where to sit at meals."

"You knew where you belonged," she said, and instead of being irritated at her interruption, Snape was relieved that he did not need to go on.

"Yes."

"And the loss of that belonging--for people like us--would be crippling, I know." Her head tipped back, and she seemed to regard the thin white clouds that drifted far overhead. "Of course I know. But it crippled us in other ways. It told us that to love our own place, we had to hate another. And I don't know how to undo that without taking the whole thing away. I don't think hundreds of years of assumptions can be changed. I don't think that we can just come in and say, 'All right, you Gryffindors, stop hating the Slytherins. Slytherins, same goes. And Hufflepuffs have value, and Ravenclaws aren't heartless and clinical. That clear? Excellent. On with you, then.'"

"I do not disagree," Snape replied. "Nor do I disagree that harm has been done over the years. But you are obsessed with your own ideology, Miss Granger, and I think you are failing to consider the practical ramifications of a strictly chronological system."

"Like what?" she said, reaching into her robes for a quill.

"First off, no professor could handle an entire year's worth of students at once. The groups would still have to be subdivided in some way. Would that be done on academic merit, or by some other system?"

Her quill scratched furiously at the parchment. "Secondly, there are," and he grimaced as he said it, "matters of school spirit to contend with."

She glanced up, looking startled and slightly amused.

"School spirit?"

He glowered at her. "The matter of Quidditch, for instance, or the House Cup."

"I cannot believe we are about to discuss Quidditch as it relates to equality and fairness," she said.

"We are not about to discuss Quidditch as it relates to equality and fairness," he said. "We are about to discuss Quidditch as a game played by students at boarding school. Like it or not, Quidditch is beloved by the grand majority of the student body and a fair number of the faculty. It is, Merlin help us, the most popular wizarding past time, and it will not simply go away because it doesn't fit your worldview."

She huffed, blowing a few strands of hair out of her face in the process, but she jotted something down all the same. "It isn't as if we couldn't form four Quidditch teams."

"Certainly," Snape said. "But you could not do it by age. Which one would get the best players? Would tryouts be held all at once, or would students apply to each team individually? How on earth would you keep friendship and legacy out of it? What if all former Slytherin players applied to a single team?"

"I--I don't--"

"Yes, I know; you hadn't thought about it. And the reason that you hadn't thought about it is that it doesn't matter to you, but what I'm trying to tell you, Granger, is that if you are serious about this, it must matter to you. Because it will matter to the Board of Governors, and it will matter to the students."

"So what do you suggest?" She did not look angry, only open.

"A house system to which students are assigned at random. Take away the names and the colors and the blasted animals, move the dormitories all to the same floor if you have to, but leave the house system in place. Do not be so obsessed with numbers and fairness that you take away the part of Hogwarts that was home."

Granger looked floored. She wrote nothing, said nothing, did nothing but stare. He had the feeling that she was not so much staring at him as she was climbing the staircases in her mind, opening doors to dormitories that no longer bore the colors she remembered and following faceless students to classes and Quidditch matches.

Suddenly, he found that her eyes were locked with his and that she had returned from her wanderings and was very much present at the table.

"No House Cup," she said, as if it were a challenge.

Snape opened his hands, palms up, as if granting her this stipulation, although it was not up to him.

"I want the all the dormitories in the towers, identically outfitted. Divination and the Owlery will simply have to be moved. No more students living in the dungeons."

This stung him slightly, but he understood it, and knew that there were Slytherins who had felt they'd been relegated to the dark and damp rather than gifted with it.

"I'll credit you, of course, with this."

Snape suddenly felt deeply uncomfortable. "It was merely a thought, not a plan for a revolution, Miss Granger."

"Hermione," she said distractedly.

"Whatever," he replied.

She laughed, a tired and mirthless sound. "Months of work and pacing these corridors, and you come up with this over lunch. Perhaps I haven't learned as much as I thought I had."

This seemed to be the moment in which he should step in and assure her that her simple wish to bring Slytherin back into the fold was proof enough that she had learned from the war. He knew there would be plenty of those who would propose cutting Slytherin altogether and going on with three houses, as if it were the seed of all discord, and by excising it, they could cut off darkness like an offending limb. But he did not know how to begin to say such a thing without it sounding like a platitude.

"As I said, it was only an idea."

"Well, it was a bloody good idea. And I cannot understand why I didn't come up with it."

"Because the moment that you sense any injustice in the world, you seize onto it like a bulldog and refuse to let go. Sooner or later, you will have to look beyond the trouserleg in your mouth."

She snorted. "Thank you for that lovely image."

"My pleasure."

They sat in easy silence for a while. Snape managed to eat a few bites of his lunch while Granger made notes.

"What on earth would they be called?" she said suddenly.

"Beg pardon?"

"The houses. What would they be called?"

"How should I know? As you might recall, this is not my proposal," Snape said and forked in a final bite of roast beef.

"True," she said. "And you haven't said a single thing of value yet, so I hardly know why I'm bothering to ask." She gave him a funny half smile.

Snape felt his neck turn hot at her backward praise. "Keep at it, Granger," he said. "I'm sure you can come up with something if you really try."

She laughed and caught his eyes, as if she meant to transmit her pleasure to him. He looked away.

She rose. "Shall we go to the dungeons?"

"I think not," he said. It seemed to him that he had dined sufficiently on memories for the day, and had no wish to be flooded with more. And besides, it seemed to him that if all were about to change--for he thought Granger had far more chance of swaying the Board of Governors with a modified house system than a sacked one--then he would rather let the dungeons exist as they did in his mind.

"Oh," she said, looking vaguely disappointed.

"Come now, you've seen the dungeons. What, were you hoping for a tour of the secret Slytherin inner sanctum?

She gave him a withering look. "Of course not."

And then it came to him that she would have marched him straight up to Gryffindor Tower if he'd asked--or if such a place currently existed. She would have given it to him in the spirit of this... whatever it was. Cooperation.

"I'm afraid I have left the garden in a deplorable state. Perhaps you would be so kind as to help me with it, seeing as you've traipsed me all over creation and stolen all my ideas?" he said.

"It does seem the least I could do," she said, and he wondered why in Merlin's name he should be so relieved that she seemed mollified.

***

Darkness fell early on the November night. To his extreme pleasure, Granger had known what to do with the tiller, and he had spent the afternoon weeding and sorting newsprint to lay over the beds, removing the glossy advertisements and setting them aside to be Vanished. Around four, Kreacher had arrived with tea, and they sat outside and watched the evening settle into the garden. Granger's hair was plastered to her head with sweat and the imprint of the hardhat, which she had not, for some reason, removed until they sat down to tea. Snape was cold--Granger was right; he needed a jumper--but he did not suggest going back inside.

"Heads of house," he said, apropos of nothing.

"Mmmm," she replied. "It wouldn't do to keep the ones we had."

"And yet you'll put me out of a job if you change them."

"It's true," she said. "I'll try to come up with something that would--"

"That was intended to be humorous," he said. "I daresay I wouldn't cry into my pillow over the loss."

"Did you hate it, then?" she asked.

Snape was about to reply when the back door to the house opened, flooding the garden with yellow light. The shadowy figure of Draco Malfoy stepped through and stopped before the white Adirondack chairs that he and Granger were currently occupying. Snape felt suddenly as if he'd been caught out of bounds. Granger sat back slightly in her seat.

"Severus," Draco said, and then, with what seemed some difficulty, "Hermione."

"Hello, Draco," she said.

"Mr Malfoy," Snape said.

"We were going to play some chess," Draco said, addressing Snape. "I came to see if you wanted to join us."

"I think not," Snape replied without rising. "I have reading to catch up on."

"Well, I know you didn't ask me," Granger said, "but I'll play if you need an extra."

Draco grinned. "So long as you're prepared to have your arse handed to you, Granger."

She rose and stepped toward the house. "In your dreams, Malfoy."

He watched as the door shut, leaving the garden dark once again.

***

It was half eleven when he heard her reenter her room. Funny how someone with so much to do could waste so many hours playing chess against Draco Malfoy. As he recalled, Malfoy was abominable at chess, and he couldn't imagine that Potter was much better. Who had played the fourth, he wondered. Longbottom? Well, he was certainly glad he'd begged off.

He heard her enter the loo, and then, to his shock, there was a knock on his inner door.

"Professor? Er--Severus? Are you up?"

"No," he said.

The door opened.

"I said, 'no.'"

"Well, but.... If you're saying no, then you're obviously up, are you not?"

"Rendering the question entirely pointless."

"Perhaps," she said. "But it seemed more polite than just barging in."

"I would deem the politeness only nominal if you intended to barge in either way."

She turned and left, shutting the door behind her. Damn it, he thought. What was the fucking secret to managing these things?

He was on the brink of following her through the bathroom to comment on those who spent the day reaping the benefits of other people's ideas and then repeatedly leaving those people without saying goodbye, when she knocked on the door again.

"Professor?" she asked.

"Yes?"

"May I come in?"

He started to say, Could I stop you? but bit it back. "By all means," he said instead.

The door opened again, and she stood there at the threshold with her freakish hair and imploring eyes, unable to come through, as he was blocking the entrance; an unfortunate result of having been about to charge through the door himself. He took a step back, and she took a step forward into the room, and yet they were still standing far too close to one another, a situation that he did not know quite how to remedy.

"Can I call you Severus?" she asked. "It feels a bit ridiculous to go on saying Professor when even Malfoy calls you by your first name."

"Far be it from me to make you feel ridiculous," he said. Which might not have been the most asinine thing he'd ever uttered, but it was not out of the running, he felt.

"Well." She sighed. "Thank you for going with me today, Severus. And thank you for your thoughts, which were, as usual, very helpful."

"It was nothing," he said and then wished he hadn't. The air was becoming too thin to breathe, it seemed, and nothing was coming out quite right.

"Perhaps we could do it again sometime," she said.

It seemed safer not to speak, as he was choking on the strange tension in the room, and he nodded.

"I'm sorry about the garden," she said. "I thought you were going to go, and I was already figuring out how to come along, and then--"

She rose up onto her toes and kissed him, the slightest brush of her lips over his. He could feel her warm breath against his mouth, and it seemed to him that the room was becoming sharper again. He pushed back against her kiss, and their noses bumped.

She laughed breathlessly. "Well, um, goodnight, then," she said, backing into the bathroom. His last impression was of her blazing cheeks as she pulled the door shut.

"Goodnight, Granger," he said to the empty room.