Middleham Jewel

Every single day, for the rest of my way

I live without my love – my God – I have to stay in shade

When I'm old and gray, I remember that day

When she came, that perfect dame, and she blew me away

~ Sonata Arctica, San Sebastian

She blinked twice and looked around. As her myopic eyes brought to focus the severe portraits, which decorated the hall, the truth of what she had done came back to her from the recesses of sleep: she had fallen asleep in the library. Her neck was aching from using the back of a Georgian sofa as a pillow. She stretched her arms and massaged her aching nape.

Apart from her, the hall was empty. She turned to her right while her neck protested. She observed the bumps in the stuffing of the sofa, indicating that someone remained seated there for a long time. Luckily, Snape appeared to have made the right choice and left by now. Evidently, she had been lulled by his voice into sleep... the last thing she remembered was listening to some absurd story he was telling her. She remembered plunging into the unreality...

Hermione didn't know what time it was exactly, but she knew she had to leave the library as soon as possible. If she were to Disapparate, she hoped she would Apparate directly into her room and convince Mrs. Neill that she had come back home as usual. It would be quite embarrassing to Apparate in the kitchen, instead, next to Mrs. Neill preparing her breakfast. Obliviating people made her uneasy. Anyway, extreme circumstances call for extreme measures. Hermione bent down to collect her wand from her bag.

At that moment, she heard the loo flush and the toilet door open. Then Snape popped in the corridor and strode into the hall, fastening his wristwatch on his bare left forearm. When he noticed her, he halted.

"Miss Granger? Have I awakened you?" he asked.

"No, you didn't," she replied, standing up.

"We have to leave," he said, rolling down his sleeves and buttoning them before she could catch a glimpse of his Dark Mark.

"I agree." She nodded, rubbing her eyes behind her glasses. "What time is it?"

"It's almost ten o' clock."

"Ten o'clock! And it's Saturday! How long did I sleep?"

"About six hours, I believe. It was about four when you drifted off to sleep, and a little later I dozed off as well."

Oh, God. "We have to get out of here, and let's hope that no one will notice us. I would Disillusion us both, but someone could see the door open... We can Side-Along Apparate." Praying no one will see us when we Apparate in the middle of York. "Unfortunately, this place doesn't have a rear entrance."

"Don't fret so much, Miss Granger. Nobody will care about a library door," remarked Snape, stepping forward and flinging the front door open. The bright sunlight encased Hermione, and she shielded her eyes with a hand. With circumspection, she trotted along Snape outside the library.

Halfway through the front garden walk, Snape turned and peered at her. "There's something I would like to show you," he said with a grave voice. "Would you mind following me?"

Hermione took a moment to make her decision. You've come this far, you might as well finish. "Let me at least go to the toilet, first," she replied.

She followed him through the streets of York, with the trail of their nocturnal conversation still lingering in her. August proclaimed glorious its arrival, for the day was sunny and hot, and tourists and inhabitants alike swarmed in the roads like lizards. Snape and Hermione walked down Monkgate and went on to Deangate, passing across York Minster. A huge crowd surrounded the cathedral, brandishing cameras and water bottles. Hermione's stomach growled.

Snape turned left on Duncombe Place and continued toward Museum Street. At their right, the green of the Museum gardens was shining, and groups of people lay on the grass, enjoying the sun. Hermione's stomach growled again.

Snape agreed to take her to a bakery where Hermione bought a buttermilk scone. He didn't take anything for himself, explaining that a cup of tea usually sufficed him in the mornings.

Munching on the scone, Hermione followed Snape as he entered the gardens, and up to the classical palace, which hosted the Yorkshire Museum.

"There," he said. They climbed the flight of steps and found themselves engulfed in a large queue.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we apologise for the wait," announced a rotund young woman with a long, carrot red braid at the ticket office microphone. "Since August the first is Yorkshire day, we offer free entrance to our collections. However, due to the number of visitors, we are forced to allow entrance in turns. The next group will be allowed in at half past eleven."

Snape checked his watch. "It's a quarter to eleven now, Miss Granger," he said. "What do you want to do?

"Now that we're here, we can wait," she replied. "I've never visited the Yorkshire Museum before, and today is free, in addition."

"Tsk. This is one of the finest museums in York," he paused, "I have never come here with someone, though."

Hermione lowered her eyes. She was still wearing the Camberwell t-shirt from the day before, obviously, which was all rumpled and now started to become sweaty, too. Snape's shirt was creased as well, especially on the back, and the shadow of a beard was growing on his chin. They both had a terrible aspect, as if they belonged more in a shower cubicle than in the white columned hall. Hermione was sure she had dark circles under her eyes, and she didn't even wash her face after crying the night before. Her glasses were dirty with dried tears and fingerprints. Among the relaxed faces of visitors waiting to get into the museum, they had to look like the most improbable. Not to speak of their respective hair.

"What did you want to show me here?" she asked.

"An object related to what we were discussing yesterday," he replied. There were circles under his eyes as well.

"About that... I wanted to ask you something, if you don't mind." After his nod, she continued, dropping her voice, "You told me you were going to... dispatch yourself after the war. Then you explained it as if it was an obsessive thought. I don't understand."

Snape snorted gently. "It's easy to take your obsessive reflections for reality once you're inside them. In truth, this is one of the basic mistakes made by people with obsessive tendencies: to mistaken their thoughts for reality, imagination for their will. To think about something doesn't necessarily mean to wish it to happen, yet it's a common misunderstanding." He took a breath. "No matter how well you may know these rules in theory, you will always fall in the same trap when anxiety interferes with your logic. I'm not exempt from this mistake either."

"So you didn't actually want to kill yourself?" she whispered.

"Caring, Granger?" he sneered. "You lost the chance to attend my funeral. I never actively tried to kill myself, if that's what worries you. I didn't even plan to do that on any said day. As for thinking, I thought about it a lot, I won't deny it. Sometimes I believed in what I was thinking, sometimes I didn't. The thought penetrated deeply in my mind, along with the emptiness and the feeling of senselessness, and stayed with me for so long, that even after leaving the hospital, that I found it hard to distinguish between what was generated by my anxiety, and what were my real convictions. And then I started brooding over the loss of my magic."

Standing in the middle of people packed at the entrance to the Museum was supposedly opposite to being sat on a silk-covered sofa in the hall of a deserted library, yet it felt like a continuous event. The buzz of people queuing covered their voices, and they were talking as if they were alone. Snape was calmly speaking of suicide, like he would of a bubotuber. In a certain sense, it was comforting; it prolonged the sense of release she had strangely felt when she had confided in him about her failures. Snape's way of dealing with obsessions was so matter-of-fact to deprive them of their threatening aspect. In his words, the tricks of the mind were not a symptom of insanity; they seemed a subject like any other.

"Have you healed, now?" she asked. "From the suicidal obsession, I mean."

" 'The goal of all life is death' ", Hermione. We always live in order to die." The corner of his mouth turned up in an ironical smile. "But yes, I've long overcome the period when I thought about it every day. With time, all kinds of obsessions fade. You cannot totally eradicate them from you; once you develop the disease, you know you'll always have the predisposition to obsessing."

"Uhm," Hermione commented sadly.

"But experience teaches you how to make intrusive thoughts more manageable. You recognise them coming, and you start to differentiate them from normal thoughts because they pretend to have an immediate, irrefutable answer. You learn how to deny them that answer, or to delay it, at least. Eventually, the thoughts that previously alarmed you begin to pass through your mind without harm, as I've already tried to explain to you in vain."

Hermione shook her head, faking a reproachful look while smiling.

"Some phrases you used to repeat yourself would remain in your head like an echo, though, as well as some avoidance habits," he continued. "I'm still afraid of heights, for example, and I feel uneasy stepping on balconies."

"Of heights? Because – because you feared you would throw yourself out of the window?"

"That's where it all began, I believe," he snorted, then frowned. "My moment of trespassing. When I jumped out of the window of a classroom, chased by Minerva and Filius. Your friend Potter was somewhere and I couldn't find him. I thought everything was going to the dogs."

When he spoke like this, with such calm and honesty, without the spite that had hurt her so much, she felt herself fill with calm and relaxation. Even if the conversation could appear depressing, at that moment Hermione was pervaded with peacefulness.

When they were finally allowed in, Snape headed directly towards the Medieval Galleries on the ground floor, skipping any other gallery, up to a room equipped with wood and glass cabinets. There, he led her to an aisle in a corner, tight between two cabinets, and he stopped in front of the one placed against the wall. Next to the display case, a panel announced 'Middleham Jewel', showing two enlarged pictures of the item and the portrait of Richard III below them.

Hermione got closer and looked through the case. The Middleham Jewel was a little, rhomboidal work of gold, engraved with a Crucifixion scene and decorated with a sapphire set between its top angle. For a jewel, it was simple, almost austere, but the deep blue hue of the sapphire was enthralling, giving it a really royal allure. She loved it at once.

"It's a reliquary pendant," explained Snape, "it was probably worn for protection. It was discovered by a metal detectorist near Middleham Castle, hence the name, and there's no proof it actually belonged to Richard III. But I like to believe it is somehow connected with him."

"It's beautiful," whispered Hermione. She admired it for a while, until Snape touched lightly her shoulder to inform her that other visitors came. Hermione moved away from the display case. They remained in the narrow aisle while a group of people crowded around the case.

"Why did you want to show me this?" she asked quietly.

"Richard III is a person I can easily relate with. You should be able to tell, by reading my books."

"I've read only Against a Brick Wall," she minimised. "But I suppose I understand what you mean."

"He spent his last year among rumours and suspicions, suffering first the loss of his son and then of his wife," he said lowly, "the only woman he had ever loved."

Hermione bit her lip. She realised she hadn't thought of Chris' marriage since she woke up. She marvelled at her quick recovery. Was her pain superficial, after all? She had fancied other boys after him, but those were lighter attractions; she still considered Chris the man she had loved the most. Circumstances had forced her to put the thought of him aside. Yet she wouldn't delude herself: he did fade with time, and the news of his marriage came out of the blue. Could you really stay in love with someone only by having him near?

"Do you still love her?" she asked with a hollow voice, without looking at him.

When it arrived to her ear, Snape's voice was soft. "I have been in love with one woman for a long time, yes. For years, after we parted our ways, I continued to remember her and to cherish her memory." He paused to swallow. "But she was dead, murdered, and beyond my rage life was going on. I stirred up the embers of my love, but they couldn't burst into a blaze."

The group of visitors went away, and they moved closer to the Middleham Jewel case again.

"Despite my oaths, she slowly slipped away. Time changes, and nothing stays the same. We are subject to change, to history, to the present."

"But you seemed to admire the fact that Richard III was in love with only one woman," she murmured.

"She was his wife," Snape specified. "She was always his present. In youth he fathered two bastards, but after his marriage, Richard III seems to have been faithful to the person he chose." He indicated the Jewel. "Sapphire is the stone of loyalty and fidelity. Richard's motto was 'Loyaulté me lie', loyalty binds me. Middleham Jewel represents that bound, for me. Something between the living. Because he was the king and had to have an heir, after Anne's death Richard looked for a new wife. He did that unwillingly, perhaps; but nevertheless, he set off negotiations to marry Joana of Portugal. Sapphire is also the gem of wise rulers."

He turned his gaze to her and she looked back, finding herself blushing even if there wasn't any reason to blush. In that cramped aisle, disturbed by other visitors, she felt driven to step even closer to him, almost to stretch out her hand and touch him, even if it had no sense. She searched his face and smiled awkwardly before averting her eyes.

When they left the museum, it was past one o'clock and they had visited but one room. The sun was burning. Snape apologised with an unusual clumsiness and walked away. Slowly, Hermione made her way home.

The sensation of unreality was still with her. Where had all their harsh words gone? Their Tuesday discussion was forgotten, as if it had never happened. Did they need to argue to get on so well?

Resentment had vanished. That day, as the night before, he had been serious and caring, and he had listened to her attentively, without offending or scoffing at her. He told her a story. He behaved like a friend... or something close to that. Did their quarrel remove something between them? "Rage is always better than depression," he had said. Was rage necessary to settle whatever might have started in the Shrieking Shack?

He opened up to her, too. They had talked for hours. He revealed to her something very personal, whereas he had previously been so secretive. When he was sincere, when he was serious, he elicited all her attention without effort. She wouldn't mind an occasional sneer if it was delivered with such warmth in his eyes.

Maybe it was all a bubble. The next time she met him, he would be again unjust and ungenerous. But even if it lasted just for one day, it was a pleasing bubble. Under that bright sun, in that summer afternoon, there was only the present, as Severus had said. Their past, the past that had brought obsessions to the both of them and had painfully associated them when she had almost fainted in the library, was so far way, erased by the sun's rays.

Severus had lent a sympathetic ear to her musings over Chris, and to spill it all out had done her good. It had been an absurd decision to confide in him, yet it had proved right. It had lightened her sadness with the balm of a shared experience. Company in distress makes sorrow less.

However, at present she didn't know if her sorrow was made more of realising she had lost Chris to another woman, or of acknowledging that Molly's curse was still working and that she was going to die a spinster. The painful thing is to have all this love inside and not have anyone to whom you could give it. It's not to be unreciprocated, but to be unable to send your love out. To watch it consume in yourself, unused.

She wasn't a woman who would value herself only if she had a man at her side. She knew she could stay on her own and enjoy it – she had done it for years. She had never actively gone out to seek a boyfriend. But she knew as well that she would be good to someone going out with her – proven that he suited her, of course – and that she would enjoy a closer company, sometimes. That's why people have children, she considered. To have constant company. The idea of having children had long been discarded from her plans, but she still foolishly hung onto the hope of having a relationship one day. She might well discard that too. But it was harder to abandon, for sometimes she simply felt overwhelmed by the need to give out the flaming beam radiating from her chest.

That afternoon was too hot, and she wished she had a hat. She could smell her own sweat and she could feel sleep approaching her again. By the time she reached the bridge over the Foss, she felt positively done in, but she remembered it was Saturday – shopping day – and she dragged herself to the supermarket. She also bought a pre-made sandwich and nibbled on it along Haworth Road. She opened the door imagining Mrs. Neill, arms folded, ready to glare at her, but the house appeared deserted. Hermione gulped the last bits of sandwich, removed her sandals and threw herself heavily on her bed. She would take a shower later; the sheets had to be washed, in any case. In a few minutes, she was asleep.

On Sunday, she dutifully studied Essays on the Status of Witches in Librarianship, vol. XXI: 1952-1972, without letting her mind wander.

Mrs. Neill, who went visiting her daughter in Leeds, never found out that Hermione had spent Friday night away and never complained.

(Long) A/N:

Dear readers,

This (and a following scene that I can't reveal you yet) is the chapter whence all this fic originated. Those of you who already knew me from deviantART may remember my fascination with Richard III (I even wrote a graphic novel about him), therefore, won't be surprised to find him peeping in this story as well. The Middleham Jewel is of course real and it's on display at the Yorkshire Museum in York. A replica can be found in the church of St. Mary and St. Alkelda in Middleham (North Yorkshire).

In 2010 the Yorkshire Museum undergone a general refurbishment and the Middleham Jewel is now in the lower floor, not in the ground floor. My deepest gratitude to Mr. Bateson of the Yorkshire Museum, who kindly described to me the new exhibition. You can find a photo of the old layout here: http://a4.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash1/20451_299569588468_38539983468_3362841_4973774_n.jpg

August 1st is indeed the Yorkshire Day, but I don't know if museums really allow free entrance for the occasion.

Of course, I'm not the first person to draw a parallel between Snape and Richard III. Please check, for more details, "Snape Castle, Richard III and Professor Snape" by Serpentine (http://www.thehpn.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=19&Itemid=9) and "Loyaulte Me Lie" by Red Hen (http://www.redhen-publications.com/Loyaulte.html).

'The goal of all life is death' is a quote from Freud's Beyond the Pleasure Principle, and the following sentence is adapted from James Hillman's Suicide and the Soul.

"I stirred up the embers of my love, but they couldn't burst in a blaze" is adapted from Little Women, Part 2, Ch. 41, Learning to Forget (the original sentence is "He carefully stirred up the embers of his lost love, but they refused to burst into a blaze").

Essays on the Status of Witches in Librarianship refers to Kathleen Weibel and Kathleen M. Heim, The Role of Women in Librarianship, 1876-1976: The Entry, Advancement, and Struggle for Equalization in One Profession, Phoenix: Oryx, 1979 (with supplements).

Deep thanks to valady and RobisonRocket for their beta-reading.