Twenty

Disclaimer: They’re not mine.

Hermione truly believed herself to be happy for Ginny, but she was in a more contemplative than enthusiastic mood as she made her way back to Hogwarts. Ginny had opted to remain behind in Hogsmeade, so Hermione—making the most of her unauthorized time spent off castle grounds—had popped into the bookstore the moment it opened, spending the last of her pocket money on a new novel and several mediwizardry journals. She hadn’t been sure whether she did or didn’t want to see the friendly middle-aged witch who’d teased her about Snape, but as it turned out, a young man had been in her place at the desk.

Something about the entire wedding situation felt off to Hermione. As she kicked at the drifts of snow before her, disgruntled, she was forced to admit that she felt increasingly disconcerted by it, but had someone demanded an explanation, she couldn’t have provided one. To employ an expression she’d always felt was apt, she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. She abhorred the frustrating feeling that one simple fact was eluding her, darting before her brain but refusing to allow her a clear glimpse of it—and its implications.

She had plenty of work awaiting her at Hogwarts to distract her from her brooding, fortunately. She had her university applications to complete and send out as soon as possible and her mediwizardry journals to read as a treat after that. It wasn’t often that she had the money to spend on additional journals, but she’d been frugal about spending her Christmas gift from her parents, which had been a pretty significant sum, and so she’d had a delicious surplus of academic reading that term.

Walking into Hogwarts, she stopped and stared in the direction of the Great Hall. Every sane person in residence was currently straggling in for breakfast, having slept until nine in the morning. Hermione would likely have been among the latest arrivals if she’d had the opportunity to get as much sleep as she needed. Fortunately, the lack didn’t seem to be affecting her concentration all that much anymore. Dwelling on Ginny’s behavior and the fact that something about it seemed contrived was consuming all her attention.

She knew she ought to attend to her university applications, but she was rather hungry, so she ducked into the Great Hall. Instinctively, her gaze strayed to the teachers’ table, causing her to immediately note Snape’s absence.

Perhaps it was the bolstering effect of the lingerie she carried. Hermione needed to see him, to hear his voice and watch him eat a meal, to reassure herself of his continued improvements. She spared herself just enough time to dash to her room and put away the Gladrags package—the idea of striding into his office carrying that made her feel even more out of breath than the many stairs she’d ascended—before making her way to the dungeons, one of the journals still in hand.

His office was empty and warded. He wasn’t in his lab; she could tell by the thrumming that intensified as she approached, recognizing her as possessing the next highest level of authority. Hermione continued on to his private chambers and knocked boldly before she could give in to her nervousness.

Several moments passed before there was a response. A muffled clicking alerted her to the fact that the door had unlocked automatically. Terrified but interpreting it as a tacit invitation, Hermione pulled it open and peered inside.

The hallway was dim, but she could just distinguish his silhouette as he emerged from his storeroom, locking and warding it with a graceful flick of his wand. “Miss Granger,” he greeted her. He hardly had to raise his voice for its low tones to resonate along the entranceway.

“Hello, Professor. I just wanted to make sure—”

“That I’ve eaten?” he supplied. She nodded. There didn’t seem to be any sneer about the set of his lips. She made the split-second decision to take it as a good sign and press on.

“Yes, sir, and that you’ll eat three meals today—at least three meals.”

He halted approximately halfway between her and the living room entrance, his eyes unreadable in the shadows. “Will my word suffice, Miss Granger, or must I suffer your presence during my morning meal?”

She opened her mouth, but the words faltered. She wanted so badly to eat with him, to be with him, but she could think of no manner of reply which wouldn’t betray the inappropriate eagerness of her feelings.

“Very well,” Snape muttered, waving her in with a brusque hand movement. “I can see that I shall have to satisfy your concern in person. Have a seat, if you must.”

Hermione flashed him a smile and closed the door behind her. She could see his sharp eyes catch sight of the journal she held, but rather than inquire as to its identity, he merely led her into the living room. A fire was already ablaze, and parchments were strewn across his table. He’d likely been in the process of grading when he’d gone to the storeroom to check on something that had suddenly occurred to him. She’d seen him do it several times while he surveyed her progress on the healing potion in the lab.

He was sipping from a cup of tea. Noticing her eyes on his beverage, he summoned one for her, and she took it silently and gratefully. Placing her journal on the table between them, she leaned back into the couch and sipped, closing her eyes in relief. The crushing fatigue she’d expected had yet to settle in, but a cup of tea was anything but unwelcome.

“What shall it be, Miss Granger?” He’d crossed his long legs, one at a right angle to the other, and balanced several parchments across them to resume grading. She found herself unaccountably fascinated by the simple black socks and leather shoes he wore, so different from the formidable boots to which his students had become accustomed. Like his generally relaxed demeanor and rolled-up shirtsleeves, they suggested that he hadn’t planned on leaving his rooms for some time. Hermione was relieved that she’d stopped by to insist he eat something.

“It’s your breakfast, sir,” she replied mildly, already half finished with her tea. “I would never presume to give you orders.” He must have noticed the small smile she wore because he barked a laugh before sipping again from his own cup.

“Impertinent,” he chastised her, but there was no venom to his words, and several moments later he’d arranged for the house-elves to send along heaping plates for both of them and an enormous platter of fruit, a luxury Hermione had never witnessed at any of the House dining tables. Sensing her appreciation, he wordlessly lifted it and held it toward her so she could make her selection.

“Sir, I have a question for you,” she said after he’d finished off a hefty portion of his breakfast. It was astonishing, really, to see him evince something approaching what she’d always imagined when thinking of a healthy male appetite. But then, Madam Pomfrey had mentioned that when in top form, he was a relatively athletic man. She inferred that to mean well built, and from the way he appeared to be gaining weight and muscle, she could believe it.

He sighed, leaning back in his chair and indulging in a vicious strike of his quill, the blood-red ink destined to make some poor fourth-year unhappy indeed. “If you must.”

“Would you like me to keep researching modifications to the potion, or do you feel that this is…”

“The best I can hope for, Miss Granger? Is that what you are attempting to imply?”

“I don’t want to stop helping you, sir, if you think there’s more that can be done,” she hastened to say. “Professor Vector and I are working on publishing a paper with the current results, but I have some time yet before I need to really worry about revising for N.E.W.T.s, and I’d be happy to keep working. I’ve brought along this issue in case you’d like to look through it and suggest anything…”

Snape had paused with his quill in midair. He then placed it down fully and clasped his hands together. He had a gaze that could be called intense during even the most fleeting of encounters. The way he pinned her now, levelly and uncompromising, made her acutely aware of every tiny muscle in her face and every breath she drew. She’d almost given in to the compulsion to bite her bottom lip when he spoke.

“You have, Miss Granger, in the space of less than three months, given me more respite from pain and greater reason to have faith in the return of my health than the combined efforts of the best Healers out there. I hardly dare to hope that anything further can be done, for I cannot imagine as it is that I shall ever be able to repay you your kindness.”

Hermione had always suspected that if he chose to do so, he could use his voice to reduce a woman to tears of an entirely different sort. There was no blatant affection, but neither was there any reserve; it was the most respectful and admiring tone that anyone had ever taken with her. She swallowed hard, realizing that tears were pooling in her eyes.

“I’m glad it’s helped you, sir,” she replied softly, knowing that the words were inadequate. Her voice caught in her throat and came out squeaky.

“If you should wish to continue for your own purposes, then I would be willing to continue testing whatever product you develop. I shall not, however, personally request that you do anything further.”

“Do you think, at this rate, that you’ll ever feel normal again?” She wanted so badly to know what, for him, constituted normal before the pain and subterfuge had begun. It was entirely possible that he hadn’t felt normal, felt healthy and vigorous and virile, since he’d been a teenager.

“I shall have to rediscover what ‘normal’ is, Miss Granger,” he remarked with a wry smile, returning to his grading. “However, you have given me a stepping point, and that is far more than I deserve.”

“Do you really feel that way?” she asked, horrified. She didn’t want to push her luck—he’d been extraordinarily friendly and tolerant since she’d knocked on his door—but the idea that he viewed his recovery as anything short of absolutely deserved was appalling to her.

Snape looked up, genuinely puzzled. “Do I feel what, precisely, Miss Granger?”

“Do you really feel that you don’t deserve to get better? That you don’t deserve to feel healthy and move on with your life?”

He was silent and pensive.

“I’m not trying to pry, sir, really,” she promised him wholeheartedly. “That’s not what this—any of this—has been about. I know that you’re a deeply private person, and I know that it took a lot for you to bare your past and your difficulties in this way. I have nothing but the utmost respect for you and for your privacy.

“But this—all of this—was the result of ill treatment. You didn’t ask for it. You didn’t deserve it.” She paused, breathless. “I would feel that I’d failed in what I sought out to do if you honestly think that you don’t deserve to be well again. You’ve just as much right as anybody to live a good life, and that needn’t just mean sleeping through the night.” She’d been rambling rather distractedly, but she forced herself to meet his eyes, pleading. “You should be able to pursue whatever your passions are, and play Quidditch, and get married and have children if that’s what you want—”

She ground to a halt, seeing his chest shaking, barely perceptibly. He was laughing.

“Sir?”

“Quidditch, Miss Granger?” he inquired, amused.

“It could be one of your hobbies,” she returned stubbornly. “A lot of wizards enjoy it. I don’t know whether or not you played in school.”

His eyes grew solemn. “I did not. By the time I was old enough to develop an interest, I had not the… influence to overcome certain prejudices.”

“Harry’s dad,” she said flatly, knowing before she’d even spoken the words that she was right.

He inclined his head slightly. “Had I been chosen for my House team, many of James Potter’s allies would have gone out of their way to make my experience less than enjoyable.”

“Knock you off your broom is more like it,” she muttered.

Snape ceased writing, watching her. She felt something shift in the air between them, as though he’d reached a conclusion only hinted at before, and then he put down his parchments altogether and waved his wand, banishing their plates back to the kitchens.

Hermione shifted in her seat. She found herself startled by the how hot she suddenly felt, as though the fire had doubled its intensity in the past ten seconds.

“I fear, Miss Granger, that Poppy Pomfrey has engendered in you belief of an innocence I don’t possess.”

She leaned forward to run a hand nervously over her jeans. “I don’t follow, sir.”

“You have worked largely with Poppy Pomfrey in this venture. She is an admirable woman and a talented mediwitch, but she is also biased in my favor as a result of treating many childhood injuries that were the… special attentions, shall we say, of James Potter and his cronies.

“I am not, however, without blame. I imagine, for example, that she did not tell you I gave up my life to join with the Dark Lord’s forces willingly. I did,” he insisted, his voice almost a hiss, “and I did it knowingly and deliberately, hardly the actions of an innocent man.”

“I didn’t say you were innocent,” she said softly. “But I believe that you are remorseful.”

“No amount of remorse will negate the fact that out of loathing for my Muggle father and in order to indulge a perverse childhood need for power, I allowed myself to be taken in by hateful and supremacist rhetoric.”

“Is that why you did it?” Her voice was hardly a whisper. “Because you hated your father?”

A silent minute passed between them. She recalled Harry’s descriptions of Snape’s memories, the brief glimpses he’d had during his training in Occlumency. All had reflected a difficult and at times cruel childhood. Cruel treatment, it seemed, had been the recurring theme of Snape’s life, braiding together years of struggle and misery. The best that the young Severus Snape had been able to hope for in return from other people was indifference. “I hated a great many people,” he finally murmured in a steely tone, “my father among them.”

“And Harry’s mum?”

There. She’d said it. She couldn’t bring herself to say the woman’s name aloud. She connected it too indelibly with numerous Daily Prophet articles extolling her many virtues. It was impossible not to feel a jealous twisting in her gut when thinking of the myriad reasons any man, and especially Snape, would fall in love with Lily Evans before someone like Hermione Granger. It was sick and disrespectful, she knew, but the sensation was there nevertheless.

“Lily Evans was kind to me, one of few who were. I mistook that kindness for something deeper. She did not appreciate the additional sentiment.”

Hermione nodded, unable to do anything but focus hazily on the floor. Shadows from the fire danced to and fro, and she found it difficult to fathom that it was scarcely ten o’clock in the morning. Outside, students would be plowing their way through the snow to fly on frozen broomsticks and skate across the ice, but there, in Snape’s subterranean living room, she saw nothing in the shapes skirting across her vision but a beautiful, alluring woman who might monopolize his feelings forever.

“She did not,” he finished, rising slowly to his feet to stand before the fire, “grow into someone with whom I was compatible. I would not have married her, if that is what your comment was meant to suggest.”

“I didn’t mean it in reference to Lily Evans, sir.” Forming her mouth around those two words was more difficult than saying Voldemort had ever been. She, too, stood and positioned herself in front of the fireplace, standing before him with her arms crossed over her breasts. “I meant that even if you did make mistakes, you’re not a bad person at heart. You reacted poorly to a poor situation, and you’ve paid your dues. What you want—whatever you want—should be yours now.”

“Is that so, Miss Granger?” He didn’t remove his gaze from the fire. In his left hand he twirled his wand absently, the movement almost mesmerizing. His right forearm was draped across the mantel, opening his chest in a way that made her want to splay her hands across his body and run feverish kisses along the newly defined muscle of his shoulders.

“Yes.” She had to marshal her thoughts and behave herself. She couldn’t imagine him taking her to bed when she was still his student and he a well-respected, if less than beloved, teacher. “I didn’t mean to be improper. I just said that because… it’s what people do.”

“That may be the case, but I am not the type of person for whom that is possible.”

“I should think a man capable of loving a woman that devotedly is precisely the type of person for whom it’s possible,” she retorted without thinking. Unchecked, her mind envisioned him as a husband and father: anything but ordinary, to be sure, but he would be strong and intelligent and protective, and it was a terrible shame he couldn’t see the fact.

He hadn’t replied to her comment, and Hermione was waiting with bated breath. She’d never noticed the strong lines of his brow bones and how beautifully his eyebrows could express emotions other than fury and disdain. He’d drawn himself up to his full height, imposing beside her modest stature, but she refused to take a cautious step backward.

She didn’t doubt, now, that he could see something of her feelings for him. It had to be painfully, pathetically obvious to him that the girl before him was enamored of him. She couldn’t drag her eyes from him. They wanted to linger on the muscle now cording his arms, only hinted at beneath his formal shirt, and the color that had returned to his previously sallow complexion. She’d never realized how the light olive tones in his face and throat were brought out by the firelight.

Images of Lily Evans appeared, unbidden, in her mind. She wondered if Lily had ever, even for the most transient of interludes, moved past the lank hair, scowling features and unfortunate teeth to see the rest of him. Madam Pomfrey had said that he’d seen potential with her that she simply hadn’t been able to picture. Hermione already knew she was hopelessly taken in by his intellect, but she couldn’t imagine how one could not feel a physical attraction as well.

Her breaths were growing shallower. She wanted him to speak, to miraculously alleviate the tension so that she could stop focusing on everything she loathed about herself. She wondered whether he looked at her and wanted someone taller or shorter; someone whose arms were more delicate, with little wrists and hair straight and silky; someone with a tiny waist he could wrap his hands around as he kissed her.

He shortened the distance between them incrementally, with movements noticeable but not too overt. Hermione forced herself to put aside the self-defeating thoughts and lowered her arms, opening herself up to him. She couldn’t prevent her gaze from straying to his lips as she waited in agonizing anticipation.

For a brief, searing moment, she thought he wanted her. She thought she saw his eyes move across the contours of her throat and breasts to her legs and up again as he shifted toward her. But then a small, pert voice rang out, frighteningly nearby, and she released an instinctive gasp.

“Professor Snape!” It was Winky, her large eyes concerned. “Is Winky to be sending over more food? You is under strict instructions from Miss Hermione and the woman in the white coat—”

Madam Pomfrey, Hermione surmised. She would have been amused if she hadn’t wanted so badly to get her hands on a Time-Turner so he would have the opportunity to finish whatever she sensed he’d wanted to start.

“—to be eating big meals,” Winky continued shrilly. “Is Winky to be sending some toast, maybe, or some more—”

“Miss Granger and I are finished,” he replied gruffly.

Hermione winced at his snappish behavior; Winky was only doing what she herself had requested.

Hermione watched his eyes flicker to the far wall and then to the floor. She’d sought to detect some alteration in his usually imperious tone, desperate to know if he was as flustered as she felt, but he’d turned away from her and was rapidly crossing the room.

“Yes, Professor,” Winky replied diligently.

Hermione released the breath she’d been holding when both the elf and Snape disappeared, only to find the Headmaster twinkling down at her from his portrait like a large, interfering, bearded star.

“Good morning, Hermione,” he said benevolently. “And to Severus as well, though I confess I can’t see him from this vantage point. Where has he gone, my dear?”

“I—I think he went to the storeroom,” she told him, facing away in an effort to regain her composure. She raked her hands through her bedraggled ponytail and adjusted her clothes, anything to occupy her twitching, dissatisfied nerves. “How are you, Headmaster? I haven’t seen you in some time.”

“Please do call me Albus, Hermione. As I said before, there’s no need for these formalities.”

She already knew that he’d correctly guessed the truth of her feelings for Snape, so she wasn’t surprised to see a small smirk crossing his lips as he watched her.

He was a kindly old man in his way, but he no doubt found her awkwardness a little amusing. “Ah, Severus,” he called, “splendid to see you. So you’ve deigned to join us.”

Snape had indeed reentered the room, carrying several issues of a highly reputable potions journal, a subscription to which Hermione had never been able to afford. She rather suspected that her application would be laughed at and promptly disposed of if she couldn’t legitimately append ‘Potions Mistress’ to her signature. Potions researchers were a rare enough breed already, and only the crème de la crème, the masters and mistresses themselves, had access to the details of the most cutting-edge research.

Snape offered only a grunt in response to the Headmaster’s friendly greeting before handing over the thick volumes to Hermione. She accepted the bundle excitedly, albeit uncomprehendingly. “If you insist on researching further modifications, Miss Granger, I suggest you look through these. In particular, the second issue focuses preponderantly on medicinal potions.” He must have felt the Headmaster’s—Albus’—eyes on him, for he turned to face the portrait and demanded, “Must you eavesdrop on every conversation in which I take part, old man?”

“I was simply asking Hermione how she’s faring,” Albus exclaimed in mock hurt. “Really, Severus, you wound me. N.E.W.T.s are approaching, and I am allowed, after all, to have an interest in my former students’ performances and wellbeing—”

“Yes, Albus, but do try not to annoy her unduly,” Snape interrupted him, pulling his frock coat off the back of his armchair and slipping into it on his way out of the room. “I cannot claim an overabundance of women willing to suffer your inanity in order to help me. Good day, Miss Granger.”

She hadn’t been afforded the chance to glimpse his face as he said the words, but the grudging admiration in his voice was all she needed to hear. Albus watched her with joy evident in his eyes as she stared at the journals that now begged to be read, replaying the moment in her mind. He’d finally—after all her research and toil, all the heart-wrenching conversations, and the struggle to find a sense of maturity—revealed that he could view her, in some small way, as a woman.