Twenty-Five

Disclaimer: They're not mine.

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Hermione had known that the past few weeks of Ginny's life had been unpleasant...heartrending, even...but she had never imagined that the girl she could not help but consider her best friend had been so absolutely destroyed. From the moment her arms went around Ginny's shoulders, the redhead seemed to lose whatever minimal energy had been holding her body upright. She collapsed into Hermione, her wet face pressing against Hermione's neck, her body shaking with sobs.

Through the blur of her own tears, Hermione managed to drag both of them out of the dungeons. They made for the nearest exit, which happened to be one of the lesser-used back doors near the kitchens, and burst out into the unforgiving daylight. Spring was making its imminence known only weakly, and both girls shivered, compounding their trembling.

"I'm sorry," Ginny was gasping. The effort necessary to staunch her tears and sobs in order to articulate words looked painful. She kept clutching at her throat, wheezing for air. "H-H-Hermione, I'm s-s-so s-sorry."

"I know," Hermione whispered, hugging her tighter. She stroked Ginny's hair, greasy at the roots and broken with dryness at the ends. Her first impression had likely been accurate: Ginny hadn't showered in days, and her clothes smelled musty and unwashed. "I know," she continued soothingly, biting her lip in the hopes that she herself could stop crying. "I know. It's okay."

"I m-miss you," Ginny cried, shaking her head so forcefully that her forehead collided sharply with Hermione's collar bone. "I th-thought... I thought Harry would be the worst, but I miss you..."

"I miss you too." Hermione placed steadying hands on her shoulders and drew Ginny gently away from her. In separating, the two girls had a moment to take in the sight of the other. Hermione expected there to be some kind of remorse, the lingering ache of knowing that while she could forgive Ginny for what she'd wrought, she could certainly never forget; Snape, of all people, wouldn't let her. And yet she felt nothing when gazing upon Ginny's face but a consuming pity, and she pressed her fingertips to Ginny's forehead, brushing away the mess of hairs stuck in the tracks of her tears.

"You must hate me." Ginny's lip continued trembling, and she drew her arms defensively across her chest. Hermione noticed that she had shoved her wand in her pocket so hastily and absently that it was nearly falling out, and as she reached down to adjust it, Ginny howled again. "I can't believe... what I said. I wasn't thinking. I didn't even... I didn't think."

"I assumed that," Hermione murmured and gave her a wry smile. "I was giving you the benefit of the doubt."

"Oh, Merlin, Hermione." Ginny's face crumpled again, and Hermione instantly regretted trying to interject some humor. "I never would have done that to you deliberately. I swear to you on... on Dumbledore's grave, I never would..."

"I know. I didn't think that you said it deliberately. I know you were upset. I can't imagine how outraged I would have been if Harry had..." She shut her mouth and raked her eyes across Ginny's face, searching for the signs of a total implosion of spirit.

But at the mention of her ex-fiancé, Ginny seemed to draw herself up straight for the first time and regain some composure. "The prick," she breathed venomously. "The absolute ass. I should never have said that about you and Snape, but he made me so...so..." She clenched her teeth shut so forcefully that Hermione feared blood might appear on her lips. "I was stupid. I thought he wanted to marry me and that he was just too scared, and I figured if I guided him... But I didn't guide him," she admitted shamefacedly, rubbing her hands across her eyes to dam the fresh tears. "I pushed him. I'm such a fool."

"You were wrong to do so," Hermione admitted quietly. She found she didn't have the energy to dissemble; being forthright with Ginny, now of all times, about her opinion of the other girl's behavior seemed the soundest course. "But I can understand why you did it. Harry's always been flaky and relied on other people to help him push through. I can see why you would have thought he wanted it and just wasn't really sure how to bring it to fruition."

"Yes!" Ginny cried despairingly, tossing her hands up as thought to implore some unseen deity. "Thank you! Someone understands! I can't believe you of all people..." She trailed off miserably and turned ninety degrees, staring into the Forbidden Forest. Eventually, seeming to rally her courage, she said quietly, "He was cheating on me, you know. That's what he told me right before I... went berserk. He said he'd been doing it for over six months and thought that if I was serious about wanting marriage or nothing, I needed to give him at least a few months to be open to sleep with other women. That's what he said, too...sleep with. Not date or see or consider. Just sleep with. I've spent how many years of my life wanting him, dating other boys and wanting him, and he can't manage to refrain from having sex with anything female that looks at him twice."

Hermione thought of Ron and voiced the thought she'd kept to herself for so many months. "I think some boys...some young men...need sexual attention the way we need their assurances that they love us. It's what gets them through the hard parts of a relationship. Maybe it is, to them, the relationship, and without enough of it they begin to think they deserve to find it elsewhere, like it's their rightful due regardless how they obtain it."

Previously she'd been loath to inflame Ginny by saying something so unflattering about Ron. She was vastly relieved to see Ginny begin nodding her head slowly in agreement, sagely, even, as though between her own experience and Hermione's words she'd begun to view an entirely different plane of human existence. "I guess you might be right," she conceded. "Are they all like that?"

"No," Hermione replied, unhesitating. She didn't know how she knew it instinctively, but she did. "I think they all need sexual attention more than we do, like a form of subsistence, but we're not so different, in the end. We both need to know that we're entrusting ourselves to someone who cares. It's just that you and I need words, and commitments, and maybe marriages. They seem to need something physical."

"I needed something physical," Ginny whispered morosely, staring at her feet. "But only with one person."

"Harry will too, eventually." Hermione hoped that she wasn't placing too much faith in Harry, whom she'd previously thought to be everything Ron was not, an upstanding young man who had his difficulties but could be trusted to keep his relationship faithful and secure. "You'll see. He's still young. Look at Ron...he's totally committed to Lavender."

"How can you forgive him?" Ginny was shaking her head. "I can't believe my own ignorance. All the time you and Ron were fighting, I thought...honestly, I admit it, even though I know you'll hate me...that you couldn't possibly have loved him enough to act so hurt. He did a terrible thing, but I thought at the time, 'Oh, she should be over it by now. She's just enjoying the self-pity.' But now I can't see how you could ever have forgiven him. I can't figure out how you can even look at him."

Hermione smiled wanly, drawing her robes closer to her body and brushing away an errant curl that had migrated its way into her puffy eyes. "I couldn't at first. I went through stages. At first I couldn't think about him without loathing him. Eventually that gave way to knowing that I could have been a better girlfriend and wasn't faultless; it made me feel guilty, and it took you and everyone else to pull me out of it."

"You did nothing!" Ginny exclaimed insistently. "Nothing to deserve that."

"But he deserves someone who wants him in a way that I never really did," Hermione pointed out gently, "and although he went about finding her in a way that was totally wrong, I can't begrudge him that. You deserve someone who will commit to you, and I would be willing to bet my graduation gift from my parents that Harry's going to find in that other girl exactly what he deserves: someone who sleeps with him and everyone else as well, without a care in the world for what they'll do to their health or whom they'll hurt."

"I hope she does catch something," Ginny muttered ungraciously, tugging her hands through her tangled, dirty hair. "Something foul. I suppose that makes me a terrible person."

"No," Hermione replied, smiling indulgently. "It doesn't make you terrible. It makes you a person, like you said. It makes you human. All I could think about the first few weeks after catching Ron and Lavender was how nice it would've been to have sent Crookshanks in there first to leave a few memorable punishments on Ron's bum."

Ginny burst out laughing, doubling over at the waist to contain herself. Hermione chuckled too, pleased at having been able to share her dirty little uncharitable secret with someone who would fully appreciate it. She let Ginny laugh until the laughter had given way to sobs, and the sobs themselves eventually gave way to hiccups, harsh and miserable.

"We should get inside," she said quietly. "Don't take this the wrong way, but you need to shower."

Ginny snorted. "What other way could I take it? It's my own fault...I haven't been able to sleep or shower or eat or... anything, really."

"Shower," Hermione said vehemently. "Please. You may be dwelling on Harry, but that's no excuse for smelling like him."

Ginny grinned wickedly. "I should tell him you said that."

"I make no secret of the fact that I find his tendency to skip showers unpleasant," Hermione countered, hauling open the heavy door to the castle and ushering her friend inside. "I wouldn't be surprised if Ron did the same...until Lavender came along, of course."

"It's a male tendency," Ginny agreed, sniffling. "Or a young male tendency, anyhow. Most older men seem to have learned..." She cringed. "I'm sorry. I suppose you don't need me to remind you what Snape smells like, do you?"

"Not at all," Hermione said with a sigh. "Something mossy, maybe a little citrusy. Perhaps it's his soap."

"Well, it's not his shampoo."

Hermione poked Ginny in the ribs and was gratified to hear her give a genuine laugh in response.

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After luxuriating in the shower, Ginny came knocking at her bedroom door. It was their room, really, as Hermione reminded her when answering her knock, at which Ginny blushed and shook her head. "I'm sure you don't want me to move back in after all that. I'm better off where I am."

"No, I want you to move back in," Hermione said firmly. She was sitting cross-legged on her bed, quill poised over a parchment containing her Arithmancy assignment. "It's been terribly lonely since you left, and Lavender's hardly a proper substitute."

"No," Ginny agreed, and a strange look crossed her features. "Although she's not so bad, really, once you get serious with her."

Hermione nodded in understanding.

"But I can't expect you to forgive me," Ginny protested, her voice still thick with unshed tears. "If it weren't for me, you and Snape might stand a chance. You might..." She stopped as Hermione began to shake her head sadly.

"He has to come to me," she explained regretfully. The ink from her quill had begun to pool darkly on her parchment. She hastily returned it to the inkwell on her bedside table and set aside the parchment, stretching out her stiff legs.

Ginny sank onto the mattress of her own bed and began to comb through her hair, wet but shiny and lustrous once again. "What do you mean?"

"I can't go to him. I could never make the first move. I'm just not... Well, I'm not so old-fashioned that I think women shouldn't be allowed to express interest in a man first, but I just couldn't do it myself. It's not what I want."

"You don't think he would have come to you eventually?"

Hermione sighed. It felt blissful to be able to discuss him with no overhanging guilt. She had nothing to lose now, no relationship to betray. He'd severed forever the tenuous connection they'd forged through pain, sympathy, and mutual academic toil; there was no reason for her to hold back in confessing to Ginny what had passed between them in his quarters only several weeks earlier.

"He would always be embarrassed," she concluded, satisfied to see that Ginny's eyes had grown wide and her mouth hung open in shock. No doubt she was dumbstruck by the thought of the acerbic Potions Master letting down his guard even briefly. To imagine his eyes softening as he leaned over a young woman with every visible intent of kissing her simply befuddled the mind.

"Just because he was embarrassed in front of Winky doesn't mean he would always be embarrassed," Ginny argued. "She's not human, to begin with, and he's only ever ordered around the house-elves like the servants they are. From what you're saying, it's more likely he was embarrassed by you."

Hermione frowned. "How so?"

"You made him react! He's always so unreadable, unless he's mocking your or furious with you. Don't you think that after so many years of being attracted only to a woman who's been dead since he was a teenager it must be hard"...she grinned and paused..."for him to deal with his reaction to you?"

"You think I aroused him?" Hermione was quite pleasantly overtaken by the thought.

"Of course! He was going to kiss you."

"I thought he was going to kiss me. That impression could have been completely inaccurate. Maybe he was going to lean over and tell me to get out of his living room and stop pestering him incessantly about his eating habits."

Ginny shook her head, her glorious hair finally clean and smooth. "I don't buy it. He was turned on, and he was going to kiss you. He wants you...you know that now...and I screwed up everything." She pawed listlessly, like an unhappy cat, at her hairbrush where it lay on the bed.

"If he really wants me that badly, perhaps he'll get over it and say something eventually," Hermione mused. She didn't put much faith in the possibility, but all the same she drew the vial out of her pocket and twirled it in her fingers, admiring the richness of its many commingled colors. "I still have to give this to him. Perhaps he'll say something."

"If he doesn't, I just want you to know that it's not you. I know you're sitting there thinking that it's ultimately due to the fact that you're ugly, or undesirable, or not smart enough, or something equally absurd." Ginny was staring at her earnestly. "It's not you, Hermione. He wanted you, and he probably still does. It was me."

Hermione shrugged, taking a moment to enjoy the smooth sensation of her fingertip gliding across the beautifully cut glass of the vial. "Perhaps. It doesn't matter now; we'll never know."

Ginny thoughtfully watched the progress of her fingers across the vial. Then, standing abruptly, she crossed the room and lifted it from Hermione's fingers. "Come on. Let's go."

Hermione glanced up, startled. "I beg your pardon?"

"Let's go. You're going to take this vial to Snape, and then we're going to leave the grounds. There's something I want to show you."

"I can't..."

"Yes, you can," Ginny interrupted. "I've told him everything he needed to hear. Merlin knows half the castle probably heard as well. I don't doubt he's sitting there in his study, all greasy-haired, hating me and hating Madam Pomfrey. The one person he's probably not hating is you, so it's now or never." She thrust the vial back into Hermione's right hand and grasped her left with her own, tugging determinedly.

Hermione didn't resist. Allowing her hand to grow pliant, she rose and stumbled toward Ginny. "All right. I do want him to have the potion whether or not he can stand the sight of me for the remainder of his life. Where are we going afterwards?"

"Just focus on getting him to open his door," Ginny teased gently. Hermione nodded and pressed her fingertips against her tired eyelids. A worrisome montage of the many undesirable reactions she faced from Snape had begun to flash before her eyes. Under Ginny's watchful, guiding gaze, she left her room to make her way tiredly down to the dungeons.

She wasn't at all surprised to find that the wards protecting his rooms were thrumming with an intensity she'd never before experienced. It hadn't struck her until that very moment how thoroughly representative a witch or wizard's spellwork was of their mindset at the time, but the traces of magic left an almost palpable sting of anger as she approached his door. Cringing, she doused the light emanating from her wand and raised her hand to knock, half expecting that she would be tossed violently upward and away by some great ethereal slap intended to protect its conjurer.

The heavy wooden door struck sharply against her knuckles, but no retaliation followed. Hermione stood utterly still, feeling the sweat leave her clammy palms and work its way down the vial to pool where its base made contact with her wrists. She was petrified by the thought of facing him but simultaneously driven to nausea by the thought of denying him the final potion and, with it, the opportunity to heal his lingering maladies.

She'd just begun to fear that she would put on an inadvertent and wholly pathetic show of fainting at his doorstep when the door creaked open slowly. She almost quirked a smile, thinking that he would try to hide behind its shadow like a shy child, but once he realized who stood before him, Snape threw the door open forcefully.

"Yes?" he ground out. She took in the disarrayed state of his hair and concluded that he'd been anxiously running his finger through it. It was a mannerism she suspected few had witnessed in Hogwarts' reclusive Potions instructor. She herself had been given scant few opportunities to watch him indulge in the nervous tics that marked him not as a cold and unrelenting force of authority but a human man insecure and on edge.

Hermione realized that she hadn't thought to rehearse her speech on her way to the dungeons and spent a moment in dizzy shock. Finally, having decided that being straightforward and concise was her best hope to transfer the potion to him before he slammed the door in her face, she proffered it plainly and with no words at all.

It had previously been hidden from his view in the shadows of the door separating them. His eyes alighted on it now and narrowed, and for a moment she swore the hard façade wavered as he calculated precisely what it was and why she'd been motivated to bring it to him. "The final product?" he finally surmised, his voice deep and businesslike. "You surprise me, Miss Granger. It must be your vaunted and foolish Gryffindor courage that led you to think I would find the sight of you anything but unpleasant."

She could only nod, her lip quivering. Perhaps it had been sheer stupid bravado on her part to assume that she could even come within the proximity of his rooms, but she was profoundly glad she'd done it. To her intense relief, he reached out a long hand and enclosed the vial in his fingers. Hermione let it go, praying that it wouldn't slip from his grasp from all the moisture imparted by her nervous palms.

"I hope..." She was terrified to realize that the words had come from her own mouth. "I'm sorry, sir. I realize that we have only a few weeks left of the school year, but I hope that this will help you. And I am sorry... for everything."

In speaking, she'd been impelled by his harsh, disapproving scrutiny of her to look downward. As she drew her lips shut and exhaled a painful breath, she looked upward, wondering if it was to be the last time they would make eye contact outside the rigid confines of his classroom. She wanted so desperately to drink him in, enjoying the sight of him, indulging the naïve hope that still flourished in her heart that this final formulation would restore to him full vitality.

Snape's eyes were unreadable, his face a mask, but she saw his knuckles tighten to whiteness as they gripped the vial and wondered whether it was fury or regret that she'd elicited. Deciding that it was the most poignant, if anticlimactic, end for which she could hope between them, Hermione turned on her heel and walked away with a steady gait. She felt his eyes upon her back for some time until, looking over her shoulder in tearful regret, she found that the light from his quarters had receded into total darkness.