Her Own Making

A/N: My thanks to docmara and Anastasia.

Chapter 8: Her Own Making

It was almost as though it could see her.

-------------------------

When Severus Snape entered the Great Hall for dinner, all conversation at the High Table ceased.

Only Hermione Granger kept eating.

His hair slightly damp from a shower, he made his way slowly between the house tables, which were standing empty. As he neared the raised platform where the staff dined, the staring stopped, and the conversation returned.

"Severus, thank you for joining us," Minerva said formally.

He inclined his head, but said nothing.

He didn't quite trust his voice. That chair had always been Dumbledore's.

Minerva gestured him to a seat that was waiting for him at the far end of the table, on the other side from his formerly customary place.

It was, of course, next to Granger.

"Miss Granger," he said, pulling out his chair.

"Professor Granger, Mr. Snape." She did not look at him. Had not, in fact, since he had entered the Hall.

"Of course."

Behind her usual façade of practiced indifference, Hermione's mind was snapping at its own heels. Just a coincidence. No, it can't be... Why is he here? A coincidence. Just a...

Even in the low torchlight, he could see that her hair held more silver than his own.

They ate in silence for a time, the low hum of conversation offering a ready focus behind which Hermione could have politely withdrawn.

But she remained rigidly apart.

It brooked no notice by the staff, the buzz of their conversation telling him her separation was normal. Expected. Everyday.

Except it wasn't normal.

There was something unexpected in the tightness of her posture, some betrayal that she did not hold herself apart as much as hold herself up, firmly, demanding as much of her body as it could give, and what it could not give...

Something tightened in his gut, and he knew.

He knew that Hermione Granger's shoulders wanted to droop, her head to fall forward, and her hands to clutch the edge of the table while she screamed.

He knew it intimately, without knowing her at all.

Something went quiet in her mind, and she realized he was scrutinizing her. She turned her head toward him a fraction.

"I am surprised, Mr. Snape," she said calmly, placing her utensils down.

He doubted if she had ever had enough real dueling experience to know why she had emptied her hands before speaking. He shifted easily in his seat, resting his arms on the chair back, on the table; open, hands empty, away from his wand.

"Surprised... at?"

"That you would have the audacity to appear within these walls."

The High Table held its collective breath. No one moved, but he felt them all straining through the silence so as not to miss his response.

Ghouls. No doubt exactly what she'd been counting on.

His voice was even, and it carried. "Albus is no less a presence in my own home than here."

She turned to him fully then, taking his measure, calculating him as though she were already reaching for a different angle, one with a sharper edge.

But he knew she would find none; he had already accepted her best blow.

He was not even bleeding.

Then the stray wisp of hair fell over her eye, and she reached automatically to tuck it behind her ear, and there was a grace in its escaping, in its fall and containment, a grace so at odds with the rest of her that Severus had to catch himself from catching his breath in surprise.

He'd missed the grace in the sweep of her hand earlier, in the Library. He should have seen the contradiction. Twenty-two years ago, he would have.

Summoning his voice, he remarked, "I understand from Minerva that you are nearing completion of another essay."

And all of her grace was gone, replaced by a curt nod, delivered without eye contact.

"I shall look forward to reading it, then."

She took a slow breath, and, to his eye, seemed to disappear into herself. "It's not ready."

"I understand. I would nonetheless welcome the opportunity to discuss your work..."

A wary, sideways look. "Why?"

"Your work interests me."

Just a coincidence... What she intended merely as a scathing glance seemed to catch and hold, and it grew into a challenge. "In what way?"

In her hard, tight eyes he glimpsed... something.

Despair he had expected. Shame, envy – those were present; those he had seen years before.

But now, behind stone, behind ice, a corona of rage.

A rage with no object, no direction, no purpose.

His fingers twitched, obeying instincts a half-century old, but he merely inclined his head, and murmured, "Surely you will admit that I have a vested interest in the metaphysical implications of murder and the state of a murderer's soul?"

At the other end of the table, sudden silence; half-sentences left dangling from mouths half-open.

Hermione's gaze bled full cold. "I work in the realm of theory, Mr. Snape. Pure theory."

He hesitated, deliberately, for a fraction too long. "Of course you do."

Her voice low, her tone guarded. "Have you become an Unspeakable, Snape?"

He let out a short sound that might have been a laugh.

The staff flinched, but Hermione was unrelenting. "Well?" she demanded.

"Most assuredly not."

"Then why are you here?" Her voice held a low, practiced authority, but within it he detected a trace of uncertainty.

Nearly perfect, Professor, he noted, nodding unconsciously before replying, "As I told you..."

She thought he leaned toward her then, almost imperceptibly; more a change of balance than actual movement, more felt than seen.

Before she could retreat, his eyes caught hers, and he spoke directly to whatever disturbed the emptiness in her eyes, to what should not have been there, to whatever it was he had seen in Diagon Alley so many years before.

To whatever within her remembered whatever it was she'd forgotten, he said, "... I came seeking you."

Hermione stared at him for a moment, and, briefly, he saw in her eyes the sacrificial scream that no one could hear.

Fight or flight, Professor? he thought mildly.

And she stared at him, her chin dropped – a nearly invisible, almost involuntary nod, and her hair escaped, and it was down, and falling, and she swept it back over her ear, and stood abruptly.

"I shall be in the Library after breakfast should you wish to discuss my research."

She rose and left the Hall.

Severus' eyes glittered strangely as he tracked her exit, sitting motionless until the great doors swung shut behind her.

The heavy echo of their closing sounded deep within his gut, and his fingers twitched reflexively with the urge to wrench them open.

Wide open.

Deep within, he didn't care if he destroyed them in the process.

Slowly the staff's conversation returned, burning, to his ears.

From her place at the center of the table, Minerva cast a shrewd, hooded eye at the former Potions professor, who seemed unaware of the magnitude of Hermione's invitation or of how legible his expressions had become during his years of self-imposed exile.

He had no way of knowing that Hermione had refused to discuss her research with any of them, stating that conversation distorted the clarity her reasoning required.

Sipping her wine thoughtfully, Minerva watched Severus do the same.

She would not be particularly surprised if his strategy proved effective on the reclusive Professor Granger. Relieved, yes. But not surprised. If, indeed, Harry had been Dumbledore's parrot, it was all too apparent whose mirror Hermione had become.

Still, Minerva's lips twisted into a wry smirk. She should be very surprised indeed if the former Potions master realized how very high the stakes had just become for himself.

----

Deep in the night the wind whispered, whistling through the trees, seeking, reaching for the castle, wrapping, rounding, higher, a window, a small, tiny crack...

----

Far underground, too far to feel the wind as it swept the castle's skirts, chased its heels, circling ever higher above, Severus stared into the space below the glowing embers in the dying fire.

It was somehow his.

He had done it, if not for her, to her. He had shown her how to hide, how to deflect, how to foreclose proximity before it began with dark civility and uncensored truth.

He had had to do that, to seem that, to be that, to survive.

He had had to.

His life, their lives, had depended on it.

Would it have been different if he had died?

The question hung low in the deepening shadows of the lengthening night.

No.

She still would have been born.

And Albus still would have been wrong.

True, he had killed Voldemort's mortal body at the end, but any knife aimed correctly can kill.

Even twice.

Slughorn could have brewed the potion for Albus, that last year, the year he knew he was dying, to keep him alive...

... for Potter.

And still, she would have been born; she, with her curiosity, her courage, her ruthless, brutal practicality...

She would have made a fine Slytherin...

But no.

She had been born to Muggle parents.

Her mind was entirely her own making.

Would it really have mattered if he'd died?

Worse... Did it really matter that Albus hadn't, until he had?

And he shoved that question aside...

... but it returned, darker, angrier, to stare at him blindly from the depths of the embers, darkening to black, lightening to ash, falling showering through the solid iron grate.

----

"Baron..." the dying man's voice a dry crack in the dim chamber.

The Bloody Baron drifted closer to the bed as Horace Slughorn's eyes searched through him.

"Baron?" the voice round, beseeching.

"Here, Horace."

A weary hand beseeching from the counterpane; the Baron's own removing, distant. Not touching. Not yet.

"Baron, I'm afraid."

A mournful look that Slughorn, through failing eyes, could nonetheless feel.

"As are we all, Horace. As are we all."

----

Her hair tangled, damp on the pink-stained pillow.

Ron's head turning to look at her, in his eyes the trees tossed, rising, consuming, the moon open empty deep within his empty open eyes.