Chapter Two

Whether 'tis Nobler in the mind to suffer the

Slings and Arrows of outrageous Fortune

Severus listened. Hermione met him at the banks of the lake, and looking occasionally behind her at the progress made on the castle, Severus absorbed her words. The sound waves of her thoughts moved through him, of course, unimpeded by flesh. But they clung, somehow, to whatever ephemeral sense of being he still possessed. She talked about the Weasley boy, his bravado and ineptitude and possession of her heart. Severus wondered if she remembered how they'd interacted in life: how they'd been not much more than strangers. How he'd ridiculed her in Potions class and put her through the paces more than he ought. She must have been extremely lonely if he was the receptacle for these thoughts.

"Did you ever want to get married?" she asked, tossing a pebble into the lake.

"It was never really a thought," he confessed. "It was never possible, so I didn't consider it."

"It seems so unnecessary," she said. "What is the point?"

"Commitment," he told her. "The only person who doesn't want to get married is the kind of person who doesn't want to commit."

"Well, look at Tonks and Remus," she said. "They were married and that didn't stop them from dying. God, Professor, you should see Teddy. It's just awful to look at him."

"Maybe I shouldn't," he said.

"When are you going to come see the others? I'm sure Harry has a lot to ask you..."

"No," Severus said firmly. "There is no way after what I showed him."

"It was brave of you," she said.

"I thought I was dying."

"You were...you did."

"Yes," he said. "But not really. I wouldn't have chosen this if it had occurred to me that I'd have to deal with Potter and all of the aftermath. Maybe I should go somewhere else...Ireland, perhaps. That seems like the right place for a ghost."

"You're here for a reason," she said. "You're haunting Hogwarts because you have to, not because you chose it."

"Now, that's just an assumption. Who says haunting has so much significance?" Severus asked. "It seems pretty damn random to me. I closed my eyes and showed up here. I died here...maybe I just need to go somewhere else."

"I wish you wouldn't," she mumbled.

"Why?" he asked.

"For starters I believe in fate." She tried skipping a stone again, assuming a logical tone. "I really think there is a reason you are here. And I'm interested in seeing what that is."

"Oh, you'll see it, will you?" he said. "This confidante arrangement is going to continue, then?"

"You're the only one I have to talk to," she admitted. She looked even more exhausted than the first night they'd met. Her skin was incredibly pale. She wasn't sleeping. She barely moved her jaw when she spoke...she too was an imprint: an imprint of the pert, nubile school girl he'd known before he died. Womanhood settled on her like a disease. He was starting to feel as though kindling her soul was his key to feeling less hopeless.

"Come with me back to the tents, Professor," she pleaded.

"Severus, please. Merlin."

"Sev...Severus," she stuttered, then let out a faint giggle.

"Say it again," he said, "Severus."

"Severus." She made eye contact. It was sleepy yet hungry. "Severus. Severus. Severus." She said it slowly; she said it quickly; she let the syllables melt over her lips. "Severus."

"Hermione," he replied.

"Severus, come back with me. Can't you make yourself invisible? Have you tried that yet?"

The idea wasn't half bad. He focused, looking down at the wispy, Patronus-like edges of his robes. He, in a feeling that resembled deliberate swallowing, became invisible. He swallowed his image. He tried to speak.

"Okay," he said. "I might as well try."

She smiled. His sight was a little less clear, but he was able to hover behind her as she trudged through the field. He wondered how her knees felt, if her joints ached. His own pain wasn't too acute at present, but he expected it would return as soon as she fell asleep. How had he developed this symbiosis? And with Granger of all people? He refused to believe it was fate...just a random coincidence like the rest of this mess.

"You still there?" she asked.

"Severus," he urged.

"You still there, Severus?"

"Yes, Hermione."

They neared the tents and he again began to worry. In a feeling like a cough, he was momentarily visible before he was able to again swallow himself. She didn't notice. They passed through the threshold to her tent. It was dark and strewn with snoozing forms. How he missed sleep. Could he sleep as a ghost? He'd maintained such vigilance since his re-birth that he hadn't even tried. This wasn't the moment to let his guard down...perhaps in the Shrieking Shack some night. He moved to hover over a bed that turned out to belong to Neville Longbottom and watched as Weasley leaped out of bed to greet Hermione.

"Out walking around again?" he asked, rubbing her arms roughly.

"Yes," she confirmed, shrugging him off and climbing into bed after taking off her shoes.

"Your skin is bloody freezing," he noticed.

"Is it?" she asked quietly. She massaged her ankles and closed her eyes. Severus watched the entrancing bend of her fingers as she pushed an errant flyaway behind her ear.

"'Mione," Weasley implored, "what are you doing out there every night?" More importantly, Severus thought, what am I doing here?

"I've told you, Ronald," she said, "I'm just thinking." She nervously looked in Severus's direction, wondering if he was still there.

"If this is about the proposal..."

"It isn't, Ron, it really isn't!"

"I told you we could take our time. We don't even need to get married for a while. A year even!"

"Ronald," she begged, exhausted.

"No, I want to talk about this," he whisper-yelled, advancing toward her. Longbottom grunted loudly in his sleep. Severus moved to see that he was still asleep. He seemed to be, though his eyelids began to twitch suspiciously.

"Ron!" she yelped, wrestling her forearm out of his grasp. Several sleeping forms flipped over, but Longbottom sat bolt upright in bed. The sudden move took Severus by such surprise that his invisibility slipped through his grasp. He and Longbottom locked eyes, and the young man bellowed at the top of his lungs. Weasley dropped Hermione's arm and stared, dumbfounded, as she motioned that he should leave. Severus nodded and glided, full speed, through Weasley and out the other side of the canvas.

Once alone, he wondered with a grin how terrifying it must have been for Longbottom to behold him as a ghost. After years of incessant mocking and intimidation, Severus had built himself a form that would inspire fear at first sight. But what was this existence good for? And furthermore, why had he been selected for it? He couldn't brew potions, he couldn't partake in any physical pleasure, and he'd be damned before he joined Professor Binns in post-mortem instruction.

He allowed the wind to seduce him high above the Forbidden Forest. He twirled to float on his back and looked up at the spires of clouds bathed in moonlight. On closing his eyes, he wondered briefly at life...considering the outrageous fortune of birth and all the pain and heartache that went with it. He heard a stampede of centaurs beneath him and momentarily considered the fascinating extent of the strange form he'd adopted: robes that billowed incessantly, hair that floated around his scalp, silvery buttons that adorned his wrists and chest. It seemed the uniform he'd adopted for most of his adult life had translated directly into death. But as a few glimpses into the surface of the lake had shown him, he looked wizened and equally as exhausted as his lakeside companion.

An overwhelming longing for the trappings of life comingled with his ghostly agony, and he almost doubled over midair. Luckily, he still had his memories. He mentally re-created the string of lewd encounters he'd had over the years in the heart of Knockturn Alley...intoxicated trysts with all and sundry young, callused whores, each higher-priced than the last. He'd drowned himself in flesh, and been proud of his aptitude in finding, almost exclusively, red-haired prostitutes to quench his loneliness. His fantasies delivered him to morning, when he resolved to swallow his physical imprint and descend, invisible, upon the camp.

Severus spotted Hermione in the line for breakfast. Molly Weasley had charmed several ladles to dole out porridge. He watched Hermione from a distance, making sure to be out of range of anyone who might walk through him. She looked exhausted. Her limbs seemed barely up to the task of putting brown sugar in her bowl. He watched her spoon heap after heap and wondered what a night's rest would do for her...what a miracle it would be to see her wan face alight with laughter.

Once, in life, he'd emerged from the Restricted Section of the library, holding a book on deadly fungi, and seen her reading. Something about the sight, something he couldn't place, had made his heart leap into his throat. He'd pulled back into a row of books, and pretended to glass the titles with his unfocused eyes. He'd watched her slender fingers caress her earlobe. He'd balled his fist in his pocket, feeling a thin film of sweat form on his cheeks as she stuck a hand under her thigh, removing it from the chair. And in a motion so fluid he couldn't pinpoint when it had begun, she'd begun to giggle at something she'd read. With that he'd stormed out of the library, wondering whether she had looked up to watch him go. They had bothered him...these thoughts...so in her next Potions class, he'd bullied her to the point of tears before turning his attention to Potter's inexplicably found prowess in brewing sixth year potions.

He would have given anything now to see her smile, see her cheekbones rise, see her skin tauten. Without meaning to, he floated closer, and he watched, consumed with longing, as she pulled her hair into a bun atop the crown of her head. She sat, decidedly alone, on the outskirts of the assembly of picnic benches that constituted a sort of outdoor mess hall. Once he'd spotted Weasley chatting furtively with Potter, he floated behind her.

"That's quite a bit of sugar," he said in a low whisper, right into her ear. She turned slowly as if to validate who'd spoken.

"What are you doing here, Severus?" she asked.

"I have to reveal myself at some point," he said.

"I'm not sure I'm ready for Ronald to see you."

"Why is that?" he asked, his tone bordering on flirtatious. "What do you have to hide?"

"Nothing..." She stopped speaking when Ronald bounded towards her.

"You sleep at all, 'Mione?" he asked.

"No," she said. "You?"

"Like a log," he said. He gestured toward the ruins. "You up for a day of it?"

"Not really," she told him. "Maybe I'll try to nap."

"Oh, come on," he groaned. "You're so tired all the time."

"Perhaps I am," she conceded.

"That was pretty weird last night...that ghost."

"Ronald, for the thousandth time, I didn't see a ghost."

"Neville saw it! He looked right at it! Look, Harry and I have been talking about it. It all adds up. Snape had unfinished business...I mean, he was clearly the most miserable son of a..."

"Ronald," she reiterated firmly, "you're making things up. Even if there were a ghost in our tent for all of two seconds, so what? How do you know it wasn't The Bloody Baron? You know what? I'm not even going to dignify all this conjecture with logic. You and Neville can think what you will, but it's rude to spit at Professor Snape's gravestone. I'd have thought you'd have known better." And with that she got up from the table and walked, seemingly alone, toward the lake. But she wasn't alone. Her feet pressed into the dewy grass, and her companion cast a shadowy chill over all he passed.

After several minutes of silence, he could tell that she was beginning to wonder if he was still there. He resolved to make conversation.

"I had terrible insomnia when I was alive," he admitted. "Have you tried tea?"

"I've tried tea; I've tried breathing; I've tried warm milk; I've tried it all." She scratched her scalp, irritated. "Nothing works."

"Few things work better than a warm body beside you."

"Severus!" she said, scandalized. "You always struck me as a loner."

"Perhaps," he said, "but I did have my fair share of lovers."

She smiled, surprised and a little bewildered. His pain momentarily alleviated, he became visible again as they passed the shadow of the castle and rounded a corner out of sight of the encampment. He knew he would have to reenter society soon, but for now he existed almost solely in her imagination. He followed her over hill and dell, watched her walk and flex and speak. He appreciated her words and took on her thoughts and concerns as his own. He saw her hair framed in the sunlight and remembered warmth as he gazed at the way she rubbed her hands together to stave off the winter chill. And when she smiled, for the briefest of moments, he was alive again.