Chapter Nine

Suspecting that a decade Down Under had ruined her ability to spend more than an hour in the cold, Hermione left her snowy scarf in place as she thawed in the kitchen with a squat, steaming mug of drinking chocolate. From the table where she was seated, she could see Ginny and Ron running about like mad with a slew of little ones before Harry pounced on one of the children, snapping up either James or Rose before he, in turn, let them all plough him into a snowbank. It was rather difficult to tell one apart from another when they were nearly completely covered in puffy coats and Molly's knit goods, and Hermione was never going to keep up with the constant flux of shared kid's clothes in the Weasley clan. Singing along to the wireless set blaring from the next room, Susan and George stood behind her chair, assembling sandwiches from the Christmas leftovers and unpacking all the homemade sweets that had yet to be gobbled up.

As she finally warmed up and hung her scarf on the hook by the door, she heard the Floo activate for the umpteenth time that morning. This time out stumbled Teddy and Andromeda from the flickering green flames, one of who came bearing a bushel of oranges and the other of who came barreling into a hug from his guide and mentor.

George promptly flipped him upside down, holding him up by his knees as he initiated the bizarre greeting ritual they'd shared since the boy was a toddler. "Sausage in a pan, sausage in a pan, turn 'em over, turn 'em over, The-o-dore." Bobbing the eleven-year-old in time to the rhythm of the words, George quickly righted him when it was over. "Good gravy, Teddy! You've grown a foot and gained a stone since I saw you last. Keep it up and I won't be able to do that much longer. What are the house-elves feeding you these days?" As the odd pair roamed off to the sitting room to find the set of Gobstones, the boy's hair morphed into a bright Weasley red.

Family members and friends came and went over the course of the day, playing games indoors and out, eating and drinking and generally making merry. Without a wedding looming or a baby expected, Teddy's first term at school was the biggest news in the Burrow this Boxing Day, so he eventually fell prey to the questions of the crowd sometime in the early afternoon. After he finished defeating George soundly in Gobstones and Exploding Snap, Molly pried the game pieces and cards from her thirtysomething-year-old son's hands, leaving the younger boy to face the Hogwarts Inquisition.

"Which classes do you like the best?" asked Percy.

"Do you miss home?" (Susan.)

"Have you found that corner in the library with the velvet cushions yet?" (Hermione.)

"Have you been IN the library yet?" (George.)

"Can you survive without your own broom?" (Ron, eyes welling up with empathy.)

The questions continued for quite some time, with Teddy holding court over the people who loved him and had all happily gathered around him to avoid yet another return trip to the kitchen buffet. Most of the questions they were asking were a bit redundant, since his owl saw more air traffic than any other first-year student's as it relayed letters and packages to and from the folks now seated around him. It was different to say things in person, and they all knew it, so they happily listened as he described all of his firsts and favourites at Hogwarts. Most of the younger children were running back and forth between the kitchen and the outdoors, but Victoire was attentively listening to every word from her standing position beside the couch, learning what she could about the place that would soon be her home away from home and trying not to think about how smart and kind and thoughtful and wonderful Teddy was.

"'Ow do you like ze professors?" Fleur asked the boy, sending a sly smile up at her husband.

"Professor Sprout's my favourite. She's the best," Teddy responded enthusiastically. A look of mortification crossed his face and he glanced up at Bill. "Er... but I like Professor Weasley, too. Of course I do."

"The best Defense teachers are all werewolf survivors," Ron said, ruffling Teddy's hair as it turned a bright shade of blue, the colour that signaled him at his happiest. "That's why I don't teach at Hogwarts. Never been bitten."

"Oh, of course," Percy said insistently. "That's why."

Bill chuckled at the thought of Ron instructing students. "It's okay, Teddy. And you know you can call me Bill outside class. Besides, Sprout was one of my favourites when I was a student, too."

"She was?"

He nodded.

"She throttled the Sorting Hat," Teddy excitedly explained to the crowd. "It was great. No one else's Head did anything like that."

"Old Kettleburn was a kick, though," Charlie chimed in.

"Who?" he asked in confusion. Teddy had never heard this name before.

"Hagrid replaced him for Care of Magical Creatures." Charlie grinned, reminiscing fondly. "I think we saw him lose at least one finger each year in some freak accident. That class was the best."

"Do you remember the time that Runespoor bit him on the arm?" Bill asked him with a mischievous grin as he slipped back into the mindset of a teenage boy. "Fifth year, maybe? Your fourth? It turned green from the elbow down and within a week, his fingernails fell..."

"Boys!" Molly shrieked, reaching down to the ground to clamp her hands down firmly over Rose's little ears as she played with her purple Pygmy Puff on the rug.

Percy coughed from the corner of the room. "It's a shame you won't have Professor McGonagall for Transfiguration. Her advanced classes were the highlight of my Hogwarts experience. Always stimulating and quite utilitarian."

"Well... I like her as headmistress all right," Teddy responded, not wanting to ask what 'utilitarian' meant. "Even though I'm not still not sure what all a headmistress does..."

"Advanced Potions was the same," Percy continued. "Professor Slughorn is a respected teacher, but he'll never really challenge you the way Professor Snape did us. By the time we made it to N.E.W.T.s classes, lessons were extraordinarily complicated and quite practical – a number of healing potions were on the syllabus. I don't think they get that with Slughorn anymore."

"However," Ron said in mock seriousness, "if you're not a genius like our Hermione and you still need a Potions N.E.W.T. to be an Auror, you should thank your lucky stars that Snape left when he did."

"He wasn't that bad, Ron," Bill reprimanded him jovially. "He loosened up in class a lot from that first year."

"Ha!" Ron exclaimed, pointing a finger at him across the room. "He may have loosened up over your seven years, but he tightened right back up again over mine."

"Can you blame the man?" Bill asked in reply. "Even with everything going on then, I doubt it compared to my first year. There was no speaking allowed, even if you were working in pairs. If you so much as spilled an ingredient, you sat out and watched someone else complete their potion for the remainder of the lesson. You earned your way back into the class by replicating whatever you had missed in detention, and you didn't get back in until you got it right."

"I'm pretty sure I would have failed out of Hogwarts if he had kept that up," Charlie stated grimly.

"Well, he was a first-year teacher then, and they're always nervous. Now that I've done it, I get it." Bill replied. "He was also, what, four or five years older than some of his students in his upper-year classes, and he'd just been cleared of some pretty serious charges."

"It was less than that. He was only twenty-one years old," Molly interjected. She shook her head. "That poor, poor boy. Teaching over students three years behind him in school..."

"Yes, well..." Bill began again. "I was nervous enough as it is about mistakes I made in class – still am, with some lessons – but I don't have a record or a Board of Directors that was pressured into hiring me against their judgment." He paused and looked to his youngest brother. "Can you imagine what they would have done to him if a student was injured in one of his classes back then? I can understand a little paranoia."

"Still, I liked old Sluggy when we had him," Ron said with a smile on his face. "It was like he was putting on a show for us in every lesson, and we never used spider parts for ingredients that year. Trust me, I tracked it. Slughorn returning to teach is one of the reasons Harry and I could both become Aurors, Teddy."

He looked up at his godfather, unable to believe it.

"It's true, Teddy. I was never the best student at Potions, but I'm still thankful we had him teaching us that year. I learned a lot that year." He looked around to Ron and Hermione, silently acknowledging their shared knowledge of the many things he now left unspoken: how it was the Half-Blood Prince who had taught him to concoct a proper brew, and how his instructions won Harry his vial of liquid luck. It was that Felix Felicis that had both kept them all safe on the night Dumbledore died and had secured the proof in Slughorn's memories of how Voldemort had distorted his soul in the vain pursuit of immortality. "I bet you'll be a much better brewer than I was."

Teddy spoke up again, happy that they were talking again about someone he knew. "I like Potions. Professor Slughorn asks me to tea in his office with some of the other students."

"Are you in the Slug Club, Teddy?" Ginny asked.

"The What Club?" he spurted out, doubting his ears.

"McGonagall disbands the club officially every year," Bill explained to the others. "Although unofficial meetings must still be taking place?" he asked the boy, who simply shrugged, not really knowing what they were talking about.

"Did you enjoy yourself at tea?" Ginny inquired politely.

"Well... he gave us sugared pineapples and teacakes. They were great. And he didn't quiz us about our lessons. That was nice." He dropped his head and stared at his darned socks. "But he asked an awful lot of questions about Harry."

"You know, Ted, I can tell you how to get crystallized pineapple whenever you want. You don't even have to listen to Slughorn yammering on about everyone important he knows." George came up behind the boy and slung an arm around his shoulders. "Have you ever seen a still life of a bowl of fruit in the basement of Hogwarts?"

"Sure! That's right outside our common room!"

"Well, if you tickle the pear..." He led the boy away, sharing hard-earned advice and sheltering him from further questions.

"Should I be concerned about that?" Andromeda asked the others, looking after her precious grandson in the care of a Weasley twin.

Molly merely patted her arm. "Now, now. I'm sure they'll be fine together."

"Besides that," Harry interjected, "all the secret passages out of the castle that George knew about were changed in the rebuilding process."

"I see," Andromeda replied, visibly relieved.

"It'll probably be tips on how to nick food from the kitchens, how to visit Hagrid without getting in trouble, and what to do in the Forbidden Forest with his pals."

Making sure Teddy was out of hearing distance (in fact, he and George had grabbed coats and brooms and headed outside), she took Harry by the hand. "I want to thank you and Ginny," she began, then looked up to include everyone, "and all of you for how much support you've shown Teddy during his time away from home. Your letters mean a lot to him, and it's been harder than he anticipated, I think. He doesn't want to show weakness, but I think he doubts himself because of his house. Some of the other students have said things, if I can guess from the way he talks about school, and I want him to be proud of who he is."

"What has been said?" Bill asked quietly. "Nothing's been done, has it?"

"I don't know. He won't talk about it. But, no, I don't think it's anything outrightly cruel. Children can be quite brutal in the smallest of ways."

"Will you send him to talk to me if he says anything else? Before anything gets worse?"

Andromeda nodded her acquiescence. "I think the thing he finds hardest is his smaller class size. He has fewer housemates in his year than any other house at Hogwarts, so there are fewer people to stick together. This is the smallest class of Hufflepuffs on record."

"A smaller class of Slytherins, too," Bill added.

"Bill, what did McGonagall do about everything?" Hermione asked. "She wouldn't stand for this, would she?"

"All the faculty have had a crack at it, but no one can find anything wrong," he replied. "Everyone's hoping it was a fluke."

"They can't keep the Hat anymore, can they?"

"What are they to do? They still have to Sort the students."

"Why?" Fleur asked her husband, frowning. "Why eez eet necessary? We did not 'ave zese same four 'ouses at Beauxbatons."

"From a practical standpoint, the building is set up for it. Four living areas for four houses with the two towers and two underground dormitories. Lessons are also split up by house, so they would have to restructure lessons for everyone." He curled an arm around his wife's slim waist. "And these are eleven-year-olds we're talking about. They're a long way from home and need the stability of some sort of family structure."

"Oui, mon petit chou, I agree zat zey should be like families," she stated placidly. "But why divide like zis, by your character or your behaviour? Zey should pick something else. Putting people 'oo are like each uzzer togezzer? Eet eez not ze best way."

"It's a thousand-year-old tradition," Charlie reminded her. "It won't change without a fight. Or without a very good reason."

"Zose poor Poufsouffles and Slyzzerins..." She tut-tutted and shook her head.

"I think you mean Hufflepuffs," Percy corrected her.

"'Ooever – 'Ufflepuffs," she repeated with a wave of her pale hand. "I theenk I would be a Slyzzerin or maybe a Ravenclaw, but not a Gryffindor."

"Nonsense," Ron responded. "You're a Weasley. Weasleys are Gryffindors."

Ginny walked over and smacked her brother on the back of the head on behalf of her sister-in-law.

"Well, I mean, Weasleys can be Ravenclaws or Hufflepuffs, too," he amended quickly. "It's just that no Weasley has ever been a Slytherin."

"I would be ze first, zen." Fleur smiled serenely. "Remember, I stayed at 'Ogwarts for a year. I know what people are like in each 'ouse. Gryffindors and 'Ufflepuffs are so emotional, but I 'ave refined ways and refined taste. I am ze contained and rational one."

"That makes you Slytherin?" Ron asked with wide eyes. "I thought that made you French."

Spending both Christmas and Boxing Day away from her job at the hospital had been quite the luxury. It was, however, one that had come at quite a high cost. She had bargained away her work days for the next two weeks, exchanging those two days off for the next twelve on and even agreeing to take on five overnight shifts at Ealing. She had come perilously close to the legally allowed limit of weekly hours, and one of those overnight shifts fell on New Year's Eve, the most dreaded holiday in the medical world. In those two weeks, she barely saw the people she was living with, and was only at home to catch up on sleep. Must find new job, she reminded herself each night as she dropped into her bed and drifted off into sleep. And soon. She filled the spare time she didn't have with answering owls from various friends and acquaintances. They were from Ron ("Yes, it's been too long; pick a day and I'll come by to visit you and the family for dinner"), from Snape ("Our exchange is set for my first free day; does noon work for you?"), from Luna ("I didn't know Snorkacks lived in Denmark, but best of luck on the hunt"), and from Neville ("Come to lunch with Ron and me later this month and we'll talk about how you can make your move with Hannah").

She was even more frustrated at her busy schedule now that she had a goal to be working for. Knowing that her parents would be in England in just a few months meant that she had to focus on learning as much as possible before their arrival. It had been about a year since their last Magical examination, although they'd never know it. It was a simple check-up these days, now that she knew the signs of what to look for and how to monitor their health. She would take them on at the same time, quickly sliding the pair into a state of limited consciousness before performing the same handful of Memory Charms to test their reactions. This battery of tests had formed the core of the exam since she was in college, but additional Muggle imaging was added to the regimen when she could safely have the scans arranged in her internship after medical school. MRIs and PET scans were tacked on to the exam then, after she had determined that CTs were unreliable for her parents' problems. She'd have to arrange something at Ealing to make sure she could still get the neuroimaging done there, but she had time to figure it out.

If she were ready, she would be able to try to reverse the Memory Charms. It could all be over in less than four months.

It was the use of Muggle scans on her parents that first set her thinking about using her medical background to improve various potions and charms. When she had first seen Muggle medicine at St. Mungo's during her fifth year, she was dumbfounded by the lack of understanding she encountered among the Healers there. The one Healer interested in Muggle medicine – complementary medicine, he had called it – had suggested common stitches to counteract a Magical venom, something even she at sixteen could have guessed was a long shot. Retroactively, she figured she had held higher expectations for them because they were doctors, but that was clearly a mistake. A world in which an enthusiastic and otherwise intelligent wizard like Arthur Weasley could still get befuddled by electric plugs was not a world where antibiotics, antiseptic, or anaesthetics could make sense.

She headed off to the Malfoys' before the battery of hospital smells had faded from her olfactory memory, less than fourteen hours after her last shift had ended. Carrying years of on-again, off-again research projects in her leather satchel, she arrived at the library at the agreed-upon time to find Snape sitting at one of the centre tables in front of the fireplace rather than the roll-top desk he usually used. She wound her way through the maze of tables and desks to the opposite side of his table, taking in the hoard of books and parchment rolls arranged beside him. He was casually reading a small volume as he leaned back in his chair, and he failed to look up when she stopped opposite him.

"Well." She set the bag down with a heavy thud onto the table. "How would you like to proceed?"

"I don't particularly think it matters."

"All right, then." She unhooked the brass latch to open up her brown bag and dug around for the first tall stack of notebooks. Dropping them with a flourish, she proclaimed anticlimactically, "Here they are – charms work." She pulled out the remainder, a shorter stack, and unloaded them onto the table as well. "And potions work."

He examined the taller stack, reaching over to trace the embossed name – Dr. Hermione Granger – on the pebbled leather.

"You can call me Doctor Granger, if you'd like. My patients and colleagues all do."

"I can," he said, looking up at her, "but I won't."

"Doctor Granger?" she asked with a cheeky smile. "You wouldn't like to try it out?"

His eyes returned to the notebook cover and he snorted back a laugh. "That won't be happening."

No, she thought, I suppose not. It was worth a shot. She had rather hoped that they would be able to get on collegially as Professor Snape and Doctor Granger, or perhaps just as Snape and Granger. Hermione and Severus was probably out of the question. Anything but the dreadful combination of Miss Granger and Professor Snape, which had never worked out smoothly for the two of them. So much for trying.

"Well, it's probably all for the best." She finally settled in the chair before her. "People say it and I still look around for one of my parents to respond. It's still a bit surreal for me, even after years of it."

He rifled through the stack, lifting up notebook by notebook as if counting them, but he didn't reply.

"Could you at least drop the 'Miss,' then?"

"And you, in turn, will call me... what exactly did you have in mind?"

"What would you prefer?"

"I don't particularly think this matters either, Miss Granger."

"Really, I would appreciate it if you would call me anything but Miss Granger. The last time I was regularly called that was almost half a lifetime ago."

His focus moved to the other stack as he took stock of the notebooks there, but again, he failed to reply to what she had just said. She supposed that she hadn't actually posed a question for him to respond to, but she would have assumed that he would be more forthcoming than this, seeing as he was the one who had proposed this exchange in the first place.

"You know, your name suits you." Severus Snape. The alliteration was a bit much, but it was as melodramatic as the figure he cut and the part he played throughout her formative years.

"If you proceed to unload some drivel about the severity of my demeanor, or any physical attribute, so help me, Granger," he began as she curiously wondered what his idea of painful consequences was outside the classroom, "I'll be forced to do something terrible in retaliation."

"Er... I just meant that you seem to be the type of person to have a Latin forename."

"How is anyone the type to possess a Latin name?" he asked. His attention had drifted from the notebooks and was now completely focussed on her, and he stared at her challengingly. He leaned back in his chair, slinging his right arm across the empty one beside him and tracing circles on the table before him with his other hand. "The very idea is absurd."

"Oh, don't begrudge me this, Severus. Medical terminology has just barely kept my Latin afloat. You don't even want to know the state of my Old Norse. Five years of Ancient Runes and what do I have to show for it these days?"

"You didn't find an audience of eleventh-century Vikings to castigate in twenty-first century Australia?"

"Shockingly, no. But if I had, and they had asked me to transcribe Norse Charms into Younger Futhark for the sake of posterity, they would have been completely out of luck."

"Poor souls."

She was thrown slightly off-kilter as she caught the smirk that had crept onto his face. Catching herself up to speed again, she continued in the same vein. "And had they come with a series of runestones for me to read? It would take me hours."

"Good thing Viking society was largely illiterate, then."

She peered across the table at him quizzically.

"Odds are high that if one that tracked you down across the centuries, he wouldn't be bearing anything for you to read."

"Right." Suddenly finding herself a bit uncomfortable, she removed the top notebook from the charms stack, opening it to the first page. "Shall we begin?"

The explanation of the notebooks took the better part of an hour as Hermione explained her system to the man across from her. Organised as she ever had been, her system was identical in each of the books. Each book was dedicated to a single potion or charm, and it was filled with three things: introduction, experiments, and conclusions. Her introductions had been gathered from wizarding spellbooks and medical treatises, consisting of the basic charm, the theory behind it, then the list of all known variations on the charm according to incantation and wand pattern. (Or the basic potion, followed by the theory, and the variations based on ingredients and preparation techniques.) Next came the experiments, one for each variation. Using anywhere from three to twenty patients for each experiment, Hermione had documented the patient's symptoms before and after treatment. She had also included scans of the patients' brains before, during, and after each treatment. All in all, it was a massive amount of data, so the last few pages of each notebook were dedicated to her written synopses. There she wrote up why Potion A worked best for Patient X, or how Charm B healed Patient Y. She wrote up how Potion C worked in all its variations: Potion C does this, Potion C.1 does that, Potion C.2, et cetera, et cetera.

As she pored over her notebooks, she felt a strange sense of relief overtaking her. She might not have been able to help her parents, but she was going to make damn well sure that her years of training were going to help someone. If she couldn't take comfort in seeing her parents well or hearing them retell stories from her childhood, she could be satisfied knowing that somebody got their happy ending. Hermione had written up all her results for the Healers at St. Wigbert's Hospital, the Australian equivalent of St. Mungo's. She had prepared charts for the Healers there to guide them into finding the proper treatment. If the patient has such-and-such symptoms, try such-and-such potion. If it works, job well done; if it doesn't, check the results and try the next treatment. It wasn't a cure-all, but it helped Healers find solutions for many witches and wizards who had been suffering for years.

When it was clear that Snape could follow her system and had learned to decipher all her shorthand jottings and abbreviations, they stopped to take a break. She was fairly worn out by the whole process, as she'd essentially explained her life's work over the past decade in less than sixty minutes. It was actually fairly depressing, when she thought of it, to realise that her time in Melbourne could be reduced into a satchel's worth of reports. She hadn't sought the friendship of her fellows in university because of her heavy course load and her part-time jobs to pay for her shabby little flat. Her mates in medical school were superficial at best, and by the time she hit her internship, the only relationship she worked to build was with her neighbours, the Wilkinses. Twelve years in a country had yielded her the companionship of her own parents.

Tea things arrived via house-elf as soon as Snape called her. ("Are you sure this is acceptable, Granger? I'd hate to force you into anything morally compromising.") Taking up a delicately carved chair at the table in the corner, she helped herself to a cup of Lady Grey and a buttery scone. ("Shove off, Severus. This is delicious.") Somewhere in the course of the afternoon, the polite reserve he had (mostly) employed for her since her meltdown months earlier was replaced by a sarcastic eye and a sharp tongue. She liked the change.

"Incidentally, you very nearly threatened me earlier."

"Did I? With what?"

"I didn't make any ludicrous statements about the severity of your... anything. I would, however, dearly like to know what you would do in retaliation. You can no longer take away points or put me in detention, you know."

"You're an easy one to decipher, Granger. I don't need to take away points from you."

She frowned, rather annoyed that he made such a claim with her.

"Actually, I never needed to take away points." He appeared vaguely pleased that he was, even now, getting her goat.

"That didn't seem to stop you when I was eleven."

"All I really needed to do is withhold approval. You worked ten times harder without recognition than you ever did with it."

There he was actually right, she realised. While she had loved Arithmancy and Herbology at Hogwarts, she had never logged the hours for Professors Vector or Sprout that she had logged for him. "How does that even remotely apply to us today? That worked when I was seventeen, yes... Actually, that may have saved my life at seventeen, since my Defense O.W.L. left a little something to be desired and your class directed my preparation before the War. Thank you for that. It still doesn't matter, since it won't work today."

"Won't it?"

She laughed heartily. "I've long since given up hope that you would ever approve of anything I did, Severus. You can no longer tempt me to work for something that I know I will never get."

His brow furrowed and for a moment, she thought she saw a certain unguarded expression pass before he returned his teacup and saucer to the table. She must have been wrong, though, for his next question was laced with the dry humour she was coming to expect. "You're denying me my retaliation?"

Her eyes narrowed in response, and she nodded firmly.

"How disappointing. Any comments on the severity of my person or any other ludicrously obvious statements on your part will result in... Merlin, Granger, I don't particularly care. Since you seem so up and bothered about names, I'll simply resort to calling you something dreadful like Reginald or Archibald."

After she returned her teacup to the table, they both returned to the table to begin the next part of the exchange: Legilimency lessons. They began by discussing the reading list Draco had prepared for her; this took the better part of two hours as they went volume by volume through the list. With each, he questioned her on the salient points of each book and had her demonstrate the charms contained within. When she needed a small correction to her posture, her wand stroke, or her incantation, he demanded that she rework the charm until it was correct. Satisfied that she had mastered the materials in the books she had already finished, they created a revised reading plan for her to complete the rest of the books on the list.

She was exhausted by the time they had finished this; after all, she had been living primarily as a Muggle for the previous decade and was unaccustomed to performing magic at such a high level for such long periods of time. Add that to the two weeks she'd just spent practically living in a Muggle hospital and there was no way she was physically able to continue. He called a house-elf for some chocolate, and they both began to sort through the pile on the table before them. Glorious medicinal chocolate, she thought as she gratefully broke off another hunk. Funny how many Muggles are subconsciously aware of its benefits without even being told. Working around her changing work schedule, they had set another date ten days away to continue this exchange. Next time, he warned her that he would be using Legilimency against her to encourage her awareness of someone entering her own mind.

Suddenly, a loud cry of "Unco Sevewus! Unco Sevewus! Happy Bewfday! Happy Bewfday!" came from a blond bullet that tore into the room and pelted the man. As quickly as Scorpius had climbed atop his lap, Snape pulled out the chair next to him and moved the toddler over to the seat beside him. It was his birthday? Why did he agree to a meeting on this day, of all days?

"Hello, Scorpius."

"Whatcha doin'?"

"I, young Scorpius, am learning to decipher the scribblings of a madwoman, in the unlikely hope that something useful may come from them."

The boy sat there, quietly blinking and completely oblivious to Hermione's presence across the table. For her part, Hermione was as eager to watch this interaction as she was to show him that she wouldn't be so easily riled up by the words he was tossing about. It was truly astonishing – Severus Snape, the strict taskmaster of the dungeons, chatting amiably with a three-year-old? None of her former schoolmates would believe it. It was painfully obvious that neither party fully understood the other, but they were chums nevertheless, and each listened intently to every word the other said.

After a brief pause, he spoke up. "Mummy made a castle wif me."

"Did you remember to construct proper buttresses? A castle is useless if improperly buttressed."

Scorpius held his gaze, but said nothing.

"How about crenellation? A moat?" He paused for a response that was not forthcoming. After a beat or two, Snape spoke again with a measure of sarcasm sure to be incomprehensible by the poor boy. "Did you and your mother intend to hold onto your territory at all or were you planning on giving it up in the first siege?"

Again, no immediate response. Hermione waited with a smile and watched to see who would break first and say something new.

"We got a cake!"

She finally burst into gales of laughter, startling the lad. He now looked up at her on the verge of tears.

"Hi, Scorpius," she offered, attempting to soothe his anxiety.

He crawled back onto Snape's lap and shyly hid his face against his chest just as his mother entered through the open doors.

"Severus, is Scorpius in..." she broke off as she saw Hermione. "Oh, Hermione. I didn't think you'd still be here. My, but you two have put in a long day."

"Hi, Astoria. If you're looking for someone else, someone much shorter than me, he's right there." She pointed across the table to the woman's son.

Astoria walked forward where the three were seated as Severus began sorting through the notebooks on the table, organising them chronologically as he carefully moved around the little boy still firmly wrapped around his torso.

"Scorpius, darling, do you remember Miss Hermione?"

He eventually lifted his head just enough to peer at her over his shoulder. He looked back at his mother and nodded.

"Have you already said hello?"

He buried his head again, leaving his words muffled in the fabric of Snape's shirt. "Hewwo."

Hermione decided to try to win him over. "Scorpius, I remember last time you told me you like reading about Babbitty Rabbitty."

He stiffened up, then nodded, still facing away from her.

"Do you know the story of Peter Rabbit?"

He pulled his head away from Snape's chest and shook his head 'no'.

"He's a very curious little bunny who wears a blue jacket and loves to eat vegetables."

He slowly turned around to face her.

"I have picture books that I can bring to share with you next time I come by."

He began to appraise her silently.

"Would you like that?"

"I wike wadishes."

"Peter Rabbit does, too. He loves them."

"I don't wike wettuce."

"Then I suppose Peter can eat yours."

He then leapt off Snape's lap and ran away to stand behind his mum. She gently led him around to stand beside her. "I would guess that's a 'Yes, Miss Hermione, I'd love to read about Peter Rabbit.' Is that right, Scorpius?"

"Wight."

Hermione was fairly pleased with this measure of success. "Consider it done. I'll pack them in my bag to bring them along, and we can read together."

He nodded wildly and began humming a song to himself while she put away her things, and his godfather moved her notebooks to his desk for later perusal. Then he tugged on Astoria's hand and whispered loudly, "I'm hungwy, Mummy. We can go now?"

"Yes, dear," she said patiently. "Let's wait a moment for Uncle Severus so that we can all go to dinner together."

All headed out of the library together: Hermione with her satchel slung across her arm, Astoria beside her, carrying a small volume she had picked up from the wall of Muggle literature, and Snape, who had picked up a giggling Scorpius around his middle and tucked him under his arm like a baguette. Ever the polite hostess, Astoria invited Hermione to stay for dinner, but knowing that this was a special dinner for Severus' birthday, she declined.

"No, I really can't tonight. Thank you, all the same."

"You're sure?" Astoria asked. "It's no trouble. We'd love to have you, wouldn't we, Scorpius?"

A high-pitched ring of giggles came from the boy, whose frantic wriggling led to his being swung up to a seated position on Snape's shoulders.

"Some other time? Besides, I would never dream of crashing a family birthday party."

Snape audibly groaned beside her. "It is most definitely not a party." He then looked at Astoria. "It had better not be a party."

Astoria said reassuringly, "It's not a party." She then looped one arm through Hermione's as they all ambled down the hallway. "Severus would never stand for it. He humours us by letting us have a cake for him, but that's about the extent of it. We all know better by now than to try anything."

"How many candles, Professor?"

"Not that it's any of your business, but fifty. Fifty candles, Miss Granger."

She scowled at him.

"Fine, 'Granger.'"

"Thank you." She adjusted her now empty satchel to her other arm. "Birthdays that end in a zero seem much more significant than others, don't they?"

"More significant than, say, prime numbers or perfect squares?" he asked dryly in reply. "Because last year was a perfect square year for me, and I experienced no such significance."

"This year was a zero year for me. I turned thirty."

"Was it terrible?" Astoria asked. "I'll be there soon enough myself, and I'm not sure how I feel about it yet."

"No difference, really." She greatly preferred seeing Snape with the Malfoys, as he was much more likely to be forthcoming in their company. Quickly calculating the numbers and determining that nothing terribly traumatic had been happening in the wizarding world at the time, she asked, "What was your thirtieth like?"

Looking back and forth between the two young women, he said, "I spent the evening in detention."

Astoria looked horrified. "That's terrible! You didn't even get the evening off to relax?"

"Not when Messers Weasley and Weasley are in your first-year class. I only recall the occasion because Albus somehow thought it appropriate to send a house-elf to the dungeon with three slabs of cake, each with ten candles."

"Then we have something in common," Hermione stated perfunctorily. "We both spent our thirtieth birthdays with George Weasley."

"You didn't have him scrubbing out the insides of cauldrons for yours, did you?"

"Didn't the cake undermine the principle of punishment?" Hermione asked, thinking back to Snape's earlier statement and wondering if Dumbledore knew he had undercut one of his professors.

"Yes, well, that was Albus at his finest." He smirked. "How ironic that you're saying something like that now, after having been on the other side for most of your own childhood."

"Yes, well... we were granted leniencies that we shouldn't have, but would you blame me as a child for accepting them? I truly loved authority for most of that phase of life, so people like Albus were infallible then. It took me a while into adulthood to realise the ways the adults in my life were not who I thought they were."

An awkward silence ensued as he considered her statement. Before he had a chance to respond, Astoria spoke up as they neared an intersection of hallways. "And here we part ways. Hermione, will you stay for dinner next time you're here? It would be nice to have the company."

"I'd love to. I'll owl when I know I'll be here next in order to give you advanced warning."

"Lovely."

Before the trio turned down the long portrait gallery, Hermione turned to Severus. "You know, I would have given those notebooks to you had you asked. You didn't need to finagle an exchange. If you have any kind of trial in mind, I'd like to volunteer my time. That is, if there's any way I can do anything useful."

"And I would have given you Legilimency lessons with nothing in return. In fact, I did offer them to you. As a gift, if you recall."

Astoria walked a few steps away and stared aimlessly at the far wall in attempt to approximate privacy.

"So you did."

"And you turned me down."

"I'll have learned my lesson by next time."

"Indeed, Archibald?"

And with that, he whisked around and walked away.