Make a Wish

A/N: My thanks, as always, to Anastasia, for her unerring eye and constant vigilance. Thanks are also due Melenka, for being the sounding board for the storyline.

Pay no attention to Jacques Derrida, an actual Muggle theorist whose work is mentioned briefly in this chapter. None whatsoever. That way lies madness, indeed.

Chapter 9: Make a Wish

"You know you want to."

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

Her first thought was that her eyelashes were stuck together.

Her second, that the pillowcase was stuck to her cheek.

Her third, that she was meeting Snape in the library.

Damn it, Granger. She rubbed her finger along her gritty eyelashes and tried to open her eyes.

She winced as her rubbing tugged an eyelash free. She opened one angry eye and glared at the lash on her finger as though it had arranged to meet Snape that morning.

"Make a wish, Hermione."

Her brow furrowed – where had that come from?

Ginny.

She screwed her eyes shut and clenched her fist on the pillowcase for one urgent moment before getting out of bed.

The house-elf would find the eyelash on the pillowcase later.

----

If her footsteps clacking through the stone corridors that morning lacked something of their usual snap, if her eyes were focused even more inward than usual, if her hair was tied back with a ferocity she usually reserved for slashing comments on student essays, Hermione was unaware of all of it.

Why, why had she offered to discuss her work with him?

He knows.

She squelched the thought half-born, but it returned. He knows.

Sweeping around a corner, flattening herself against the rough chill of the castle's ancient stone, her heart pounded as though she were being followed.

Chased.

No.

There was no one.

She heard no footsteps behind her, no long strides nor deliberate boot-heels nor the swift, heavy rustling that had often been the only warning to miscreants that Professor Snape was...

Mister Snape. Mister.

She was the professor now, and however abreast he had stayed of developments in his field...

She shook her head and willed her wits to order.

His voice in her mind: "I came seeking you."

And her wits scattered again. She closed her eyes, and thumped her head softly on the wall.

What did he know?

Her eyes narrowed. There was not much to know – she had killed Voldemort, she had no idea how, and she had told the Unspeakables as much – the first time, and when they had returned, years later.

She was sworn to secrecy. It was supposed to have been Harry, so Harry it was. He was the perfect symbol for the Ministry's cultural reunification program – full-blood, if not pure-blood; not Muggleborn, but raised as one. Yes, he was the perfect symbol of hope and the future.

Whereas she was only... she was...

And Harry and Ginny made such a photogenic pair.

There was talk of his going into politics when his Quidditch career ended, but thus far he had always demurred.

Exactly the way one should demur who plans to do exactly that.

Hermione sighed. He'd be Minister of Magic someday, if he lived long enough.

And then he'll know.

"Does anyone know that it was m- that it wasn't Harry?" she had asked the Unspeakables twenty-two years before.

"Ourselves and the Minister of Magic."

"Scrimgeour?"

"And whoever succeeds him. There are other, similar arrangements in place on other issues."

She had nodded, not bothering to ask more questions.

If – more likely, when – Harry became Minister of Magic, would they tell him?

The scene sprang to her mind, fully formed.

"Oh, one more thing, Mr. Potter. A few high-level government secrets, you understand... that business with Voldemort a few years back – you remember, surely – it didn't go quite the way we led the public and, hrm, well, yes, you to believe."

She closed her eyes again.

Of course they wouldn't tell him.

That had been the point.

Harry had never been a good actor. No, that role had fallen to...

And Hermione's thoughts slammed back to the present and to the former Potions master who had materialized at her elbow.

"Holding up the castle, Professor Granger?"

She glared at him, and his lips twitched.

"Repeated pounding of one's head against stone has never done much to clarify one's thinking."

"Voice of experience, Snape?"

His eyes grew still. "Perhaps."

Hermione wheeled about and headed for the Great Hall.

Severus followed, more slowly.

She had looked more like herself, for a moment.

He wondered what she had been thinking of.

He did not wonder at himself for wondering.

----

Minerva looked up as the Baron hovered by her desk.

"He had a difficult night, but Madam Pomfrey says seems to be holding his own now," he said.

"Has he turned a corner then?"

The Baron shook his head, his long wig flowing slowly in the air. "No, Minerva. There remains but one corner for Horace"

She closed her eyes. "One cannot help but hope, Baron."

"The living seem always to think so."

----

"... so you see, Professor, I am quite interested to know how your thinking has developed since," he said, setting the last volume of Ars Necronomica aside.

They were seated across from each other at her usual table in the library with the mid-morning sun slanting down from the windows.

She glanced at the vaulted ceiling. The contrast was always at its starkest at this time of day.

His eyes followed hers and lingered on the arches soaring overhead, but he did not comment.

Their conversation that morning – a summary of her extant work, and his careful compliments on it – had been punctuated at key moments by her involuntary looks skyward.

He had discerned no pattern to them.

Hermione's voice brought him back to himself. "Your familiarity with my work seems quite thorough, Mr. Snape."

He inclined his head. "I have enjoyed the luxury of ample research time for many years, Professor Granger, and your work touches centrally on matters of no small import."

"To you personally."

"Yes."

Her eyes were clinical, sharp. "I find that too emotional an investment in theoretical matters impedes clarity, Mr. Snape."

He took her measure and decided to test her. "Indeed. That way lies blindness."

"Madness," she corrected him automatically.

"Ah, yes, of course. Madness."

The hackles rose on Hermione's neck, and she placed her quill on the table. "What are you playing at, Snape?" she asked.

"As I've stated – I find your research intriguing and am curious as to its current direction."

Tossing her head, as if to toss her hair over her shoulder, she countered, "Very nice, Snape. However, I present the following for your consideration. Item: You are as familiar with my research as I am. Item: You've returned to Hogwarts after a twenty-two year absence, after departing under circumstances that were – how shall I put it diplomatically? – less than amiable. Item: You never misspeak, and item: you work alone." She leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms. "What game are you playing?"

"I assure you, Professor, I play no game." He pushed his chair out slightly and steepled his fingers, rubbing his finger on his lips for a moment whilst he examined her eyes.

The rage he'd seen the night before was held far in abeyance.

Deflecting her attention from his purpose, he observed, "You base some of your later work on the commentaries that appeared in response to your early essays."

She nodded.

He flicked one of the library's copies of Ars Necronomica open. "Particularly those of the French."

She frowned, but nodded again, leaning slightly forward. "Their application of the Muggle theory of Deconstruction to Metaphysics is fascinating. I special-owled the source texts from Paris. It took me years to work it all out."

He raised an eyebrow. "You've read Derrida in the original French?"

She gestured impatiently. "Of course. He makes no sense at all in English."

"Quite," he agreed, watching her eyes. The rage in them was dissipating as she lost herself in ideas.

"His introduction of the extra-systemic to reveal a system's intrinsic flaws – using something from outside the box to break the box, as it were – that's what cued me to the possibility of the three-part process..."

She continued at great length and in tremendous detail, to which he half-listened as he watched her face achieve a kind of luminosity that triggered his visual memory... an advanced student; her features softening, the silver in her hair displaced, briefly, by a remembered image of a warmer tone.

"... revealing, of course, that assumptions regarding 'order' and 'meaning' are nothing more than a means of cultural control, a drugged sleep in which everyone participates, more or less voluntarily." Eyes blazing, she paused for breath. "Sheep," she spat. "They're all sheep." She paused, her eyes seeming to search for the right phrase somewhere in the vicinity of her nose. "On opium."

She crossed her arms emphatically, and glared at him, as if daring him to "Baa."

In response, he crossed his own arms and raised an eyebrow.

She blushed, and the mark near her ear disappeared briefly.

"Well summarized, Professor Granger. But do you not agree that..."

And they were off. For hours, during which mugs of tea and platters of food appeared and cooled and were whisked away, untouched, by house-elves, Hannah Abbott, and, finally, Minerva, whose curiosity regarding their progress got the better of her.

Late that night, when they had finally beaten to death a point so small that neither could remember why they were on about it in the first place, they leaned back and assumed identical expressions, part exhilaration, part exhaustion.

So alive in his mind, so tired in body, he almost missed the fact that the rage in her eyes was gone.

They were silent for several minutes, allowing their minds to return to something resembling normal speed.

Finally, he shifted his chair. "It's getting late," he said.

She nodded, a sober expression returning to her face. She flicked her books and parchments into her bag and moved to stand.

"May I join you tomorrow?" he asked.

She hesitated, searching the table's surface as if it held the right answer to his question, but saw nothing written there save a tracery of shadows in the moonlight.

"If you wish," she said finally, not looking at him.

They stood to leave, and she glanced out the window.

The wind had calmed somewhat, but still stirred the distant trees.

The trees... and she glanced upwards at the lowering shadows, sensing again the weight of the castle drawn upward from below, rising around her, over her, to lower, pressing down upon her, groaning from the relentless vaults above....

Seeing her expression change from hesitation to something like panic, he held out his hand for her bag. "Let me."

She neither moved nor gave any indication she had heard him.

"Professor Granger," he said quietly.

No reaction.

Where is she?

"Hermione."

She blinked once, slowly, her eyes dropping her gaze, uncomprehending, to his outstretched hand.

"Your bag. You're exhausted..."

She nodded and held it out to him.

A strange warmth grew in his eyes. Careful not to touch her hand, he took her bag, held the library door open for her. "Come, then."

She stepped through, and, as they walked in silence to her door, he watched her carefully for any sign of... anything.

But there was none. As she accepted her bag, she thanked him, her voice strangely thick, somehow distant.

"Good night, Professor Granger."

"Good night, Professor Snape."

After she closed the door behind her, he looked at it for a long moment, then looked down.

A tiny ghost was sitting on the floor next to Hermione's door, toying with a seeded flower stem. She solemnly put her finger to her lips and pointed to the door.

Without knowing exactly why he did so, he echoed her gesture and nodded, equally solemnly.

The ghost smiled shyly at him.

As he turned to leave, the little ghost blew the seeds off of the flower stem. Their feathery stems carried them quickly upward, hovering, then floating downward to swirl gleaming in the torchlight against the billowing black backdrop of his departing cloak.

In the torchlight, the drifting seeds were the same color she was.