Chapter 4

***Here are the links to the original fairy tales abused in part two.***

The Little Match-Seller: http://hca.gilead.org.il/li_match.html

The Little Mermaid: http://hca.gilead.org.il/li_merma.html

The White Wolf: http://sylvanawood.livejournal.com/707564.html#cutid1

(The last one is my own rough translation since I couldn't find an English version of that fairy tale on the web.)

Fairy Tales 2: Hermione Sleeps

Chapter 4

"Perhaps you could start by telling me why Miss Granger is lying on my bed?" Severus asked, but he didn't sound angry.

Poppy started to tell him what they had done, but in the meantime, Hermione dreamed.

***

The Girl with the Daydream Charms

It was Christmas Eve in Hogsmeade.

The last passers-by were hurrying through the streets, quickly buying a book here, some of the delicious Honeydukes chocolate there––they were last minute gifts, but just as welcome as other gifts.

A few teachers chased the last Hogwarts students out of the Three Broomsticks. As every year, a few children stayed at the school over the holidays.

The girl sat huddled in the shadows until the last passer-by had disappeared. She was very thin, her cheekbones were jutting out like over her sunken cheeks like a knife's edge, the brown, formerly lively eyes were sunken deeply into their sockets. Her face resembled nothing so much as a skull. Only the wild, bushy brown hair still seemed to be full of energy; it stuck out of her head in wild locks.

The girl dragged herself out of the shadows and shuffled over to the Three Broomsticks. Hungrily she looked through the windows and watched how the last guests were gulping down a quick dinner. Perhaps Rosmerta would give her something later? But no, no such luck tonight. Madam Rosmerta didn't want to undergo the risk and only glanced briefly at the girl, feeling slightly guilty. She locked the door and hurried away.

The girl followed her with her eyes, looking very sad. She shivered. The thin cloak couldn't provide much warmth on that cold day. And of course an outcast Muggle-born witch wasn't allowed to use a wand. She couldn't even cast a warming charm upon herself.

That only left her the option to freeze and starve. Her last meal had been two days ago.

Initially, she had wanted to sell some Daydream Charms from the WWW. Someone who was looking for a last minute gift might be willing to purchase banned objects and see the charms as collector's items. Perhaps...

At the moment, things didn't look very promising, however.

The girl who was once known as Hermione Granger had lost all hope. It wasn't funny to be interrogated by the Death Eater police. She had experienced these interrogations several times already. No one seemed to want to take a risk on Christmas Eve; everyone was hurrying past her; only sometimes someone cast a pitying glance towards her.

Hermione was desperate. What could she do? She didn't have any money or food, and the Death Eater police had destroyed her last shelter only yesterday. She would have to sleep on the street again.

Tiredly, she shuffled along until she came to a doorway that looked as if it could provide some shelter from the wind and the snow.

She huddled down in a corner and put her bundle with the daydream charms at her side. Today, no one would want to buy any, and tomorrow it was too late for Christmas gifts anyway.

A beautiful dream... How lovely it would be to dream again, thought Hermione. Should she risk it? Just this once?

With trembling fingers, she ripped one of the boxes open. The package showed a Christmas tree and Hermione let the charm wash over her.

Suddenly she stood in the living room of her parents' house. The Christmas tree stood besides the door to the garden, and her parents beamed at her.

"Good morning, darling," her mother said. "Come, look at your presents."

Hermione clapped her hands and hugged her father and mother. Then she knelt in front of her presents to carefully unwrap one after the other. It was wonderfully warm in the room, and it smelled of cookies and ginger bread, but all of a sudden, all the windows opened and a cold wind made Hermione shiver.

The frightened look on the faces of her parents was the last thing Hermione saw of them, before she became aware of her surroundings. A gust of wind had thrown some snow into the doorway and ripped Hermione out of her daydream. Hermione wept; her parents had looked so alive. In reality, they had been dead a year, murdered by Death Eaters. Oh, if only she could see them one last time!

Hermione wiped her tears off with her sleeve and opened another box of the daydream charms.

Again, she stood in a room with a richly decorated Christmas tree besides a window. However, she wasn't in the house of her parents but in the Burrow.

All the Weasleys were sitting around the large dinner table in the kitchen, and Harry was there as well.

"Hermione!" Mrs. Weasley cried. "Do come in, sit down and eat with us."

Hermione didn't need to be told twice and after she'd hugged Harry, Ron and Ginny, she dug in. They had glazed ham, mashed potatoes, peas and carrots, and mashed parsnips. Afterwards, everyone got a piece of plum pudding.

Hermione was about to pour herself a cup of tea when the twins started to throw snow at her.

"Hey, you two," cried Hermione, "stop that...." But at the same moment it went dark and a strong gust of wind tossed another handful of snow into Hermione's face.

"Oh no," she cried. "That was far too short..." She couldn't suppress the tears that were streaming down her cheeks any longer. Not one of the Weasleys had survived the war. The whole family had been extinguished; the Burrow had been destroyed and no one talked about them any more; no one dared to remember... And Harry, her brave, determined best friend was gone, dead, slain in the duel with Voldemort.

Hermione didn't quite know how she, herself, had survived, and she didn't know how she could go on living. Each and every one of the people she'd loved––even Crookshanks, her cat––were dead, murdered by Death Eaters.

Hermione was sobbing so hard that she got a hiccup. If only the dream had lasted a bit longer... It said on the box that a daydream charm would last for an hour, but it looked like this was only true if you weren't bombarded with snow during that time.

Hermione couldn't stand it any longer. She wanted to see her loved ones once again, to hug them, to feel their warmth. Determinedly, she ripped open all the remaining boxes with daydream charms.

Her hands were stiff from the cold and she could only open the boxes with difficulty and barely managed to activate the charms, but with a lot of patience and perseverance she finally succeeded, and all of a sudden, she didn't feel the icy cold any longer.

Hermione stood at the entrance to the Great Hall at Hogwarts. A long row of Christmas trees stood lined up at one wall. Candles floated in the air and all her teachers sat at the head table.

Professor McGonagall gave her a friendly wave, and the Professors Sprout and Flitwick smiled and nodded at her. Professor Dumbledore walked towards her, hands stretched out in her direction.

"Come, child," he said. "This is where you belong; this is your home."

Hermione took his hands in hers, happy that all her teachers whom she had believed to be dead were now sitting here together and being merry. She smiled back, but noticed that someone was missing. One of the teachers was missing. Confused, she looked around.

"I am here, Miss Granger," a soft, deep, velvety voice said. Hermione turned her head, and there he stood and looked at her with his piercing, black eyes.

"Professor Snape," she exclaimed happily. "You're alive!"

Snape put an arm around her shoulder––Hermione didn't find that odd at all––and said, "Yes, I live, and you should too."

Hermione looked at her former teacher and became lost in the gaze from his glittering, black eyes. Everything started to spin around her and she felt faint. Then she lost consciousness.

The people who passed by the doorway on Christmas morning cast a pitying glance at the unmoving bundle in the corner.

"She froze to death; she must have tried to find some comfort in the charms," they said. But before anyone could inform the police so they could remove the body, a man in a long black Death Eater cloak with a silver mask came to the doorway and picked the girl up into his arms. Walking swiftly, he went away.

***

"Severus, Severus, wake up! Are you all right? Merlin! Don't let him fall into a coma again... Severus!"

Poppy Pomfrey lightly slapped Severus' cheeks until he opened his eyes.

"Leave me be; I am all right. Just tired. Is there improvement?"

"At first she trembled horribly, but after you entered her mind, she became calmer. From time to time, her eyes watered, but I don't know if she cried or if her eyes had been irritated by something."

"She was crying. She had a nightmare. I don't know for how long she was in that dream; you didn't let me follow right away, after all, but from what I've gathered, she believed that the war had been lost and that her family and friends had all been murdered. I found her when she dreamed she was celebrating Christmas in the Great Hall at Hogwarts. From there, I could manipulate her dream."

"And now you'll understand why I had to give you a brief summary about what has happened in the last two years. Otherwise, you'd not have been able to help her."

"That's your opinion," Snape snapped. "Speak for yourself. In any case, I wasn't very successful. I'll have to try again."

"First you'll get some rest," Poppy said firmly. "If you think that I will stand here and watch as the two of you dream each other from one coma into the next, then think again. And if I have to secure you with a full body bind, you will first eat something, and then you'll get some rest."