Aftermath

The Godfather - Chapter 25

"Hermione?"

The voice was friendly and soft, and before she opened her eyes she felt a hand lightly brush some strands of hair from her face.

"Ginny?" Hermione croaked when she recognised her friend, who was sitting on her bedside. "What are you..."

"I've been worried about you, Hermione. We haven't heard from you in three days," Ginny said, still caressing the dishevelled locks. "Harry told me what happened."

Hermione flinched as if an invisible hand had slapped her cheek. Immediately, she felt the treacherous burning in her eyes. "Oh," was everything she managed to say when she blinked up towards Ginny, who was eyeing her with a concerned expression. On one hand, she wished that Ginny and the rest of the world would simply leave her in peace and without any observers to lick her wounds. On the other hand, it felt strangely calming to know that her best friend was near.

"Listen," Ginny said calmly, but in a voice that allowed no argument. "You will get up now, drag yourself into the shower and make yourself look and smell human again. In the meantime, I will prepare some hot cocoa and tidy up your flat." With a determined gesture, the redhead pulled on the duvet that had shielded Hermione from the world like a fortress in the last few days. Then she grabbed her friend's elbow and forced her to move her feet out of the bed and get up. "Come on, Hermione," she said, "I will not allow this. You won't keep hiding in this cave of yours!"

Any protest would have been in vain, so Hermione just nodded her consent and let herself be pushed towards the bathroom by Ginny. When she became aware of the chaos inside of her flat, she was quite embarrassed, but Ginny just smiled at her encouragingly, unsheathed her wand and had everything in order in no time.

Usually, Hermione did not take the ostrich approach towards her emotional crises, no matter how bad they were, but in this case, hiding under a duvet until the worst pain was over had seemed the easiest thing to do. She knew that this could not be a lasting solution, but since too many confusing things had happened in the last few days and weeks, she felt that she could not face them alone.

From a distance, she heard Ginny murmur some incantations. Her clothes, which had been scattered all over the place, swished as they folded neatly in the air and arranged themselves in the cupboard. The first tentative smile in days sneaked onto Hermione's face when she realised how much her best friend took after Molly. While she silently closed the bathroom door behind her, a fleeting thought crossed her mind: having friends like Ginny made life much more bearable.

Hesitantly, Hermione stared into the steaming mug of cocoa in her hands and asked herself whether and how she could find the words to tell Ginny what had happened.

"Talk to me," Ginny said.

Hermione shrugged and answered, "I don't know where to begin..."

"Why, at the beginning, for instance!" Ginny suggested and patiently leaned back in her chair.

"I wish I knew when that was," Hermione retorted with a painful smile. "When did respect turn into admiration? Where does pity end and affection start? The edges blend into each other, Ginny, and I have no clue when I started crossing borders. Have you ever experienced this very special moment in the morning when the sun is about to rise? Everything is bathed in a blue light, the horizon is still dark as the sun is not there yet – but in the time you take to blink several times, before you even know what has happened, it is there and everything is bright?"

The redhead nodded silently and sipped her cocoa while observing Hermione.

"I guess it was something similar... I was suspecting something, but denied it. And suddenly I was right in the middle of it, not knowing how I came to having these..." she swallowed hard, "these feelings." In slow, controlled movements, Hermione undid the towel from her moist hair and started brushing her thick curls. It felt much easier to get everything off her chest while her hands were busy.

"I don't know if I told you the whole story of our encounter in Hogsmeade. You know, during the Alumni ball. He looked up to the Shrieking Shack and when he saw me, he asked me to tell him what happened the night Voldemort's snake almost killed him.

"There was this desperate expression in his gaze, as if he'd wish nothing more than we had left him alone to die that night. And I... I wanted to make it better somehow, do you understand? I touched his Dark Mark, and something happened inside of me in that moment... I wanted to take away a part of his pain and guilt because I could not stand seeing him like that. I think that was the moment that triggered my first suspicions..." Her words got lost in the silence, and she fought her tears, although she knew that there was no reason to be ashamed in front of Ginny.

Sniffling, she searched Ginny's gaze. "You must think I've gone completely insane, right?"

"No," Ginny objected immediately. "Certainly not, Hermione." Ginny took Hermione's hand and pressed it for a moment, giving Hermione an encouraging smile. She was burning to ask her questions, but she knew that it would be better to let Hermione just talk first.

"I don't know. From that moment on, I went headlong into the situation I'm in now. I didn't see him from a student's point of view anymore, but with the eyes of a woman. When I was a student, I was afraid of his biting sarcasm and his sharp tongue. Now I find them very attractive. Back then, his habit of sneaking up to people and suddenly appearing out of nowhere got on my nerves. Today, I admire the smoothness of his movements. At school, I used to see nothing but the unrelenting teacher who would give you a hard time for the tiniest of mistakes. Now, I feel captivated by his brilliant mind." She covered her face with both hands, and Ginny could hardly understand the words that followed. "Oh, God, I feel so stupid!"

"You are not stupid," Ginny said appeasingly. She slid closer to place an arm around Hermione's shoulders. "I hardly think that anyone can choose their feelings, you know! And I can't believe I am telling you this, but I fully understand why you fell in love with him, Hermione."

Hermione took the hands off her face and gave her friend a doubtful look while Ginny gazed at her with an earnest expression. "I was too blind to see," Ginny continued. "The way you behaved when you met him at our place... it should have made all the alarm bells ring, but somehow the thought seemed too absurd for me to see it for what it was."

Ginny gave Hermione a compassionate pat on the shoulder. "When you and Ron separated, I took a long time to get over it. I had this silly, trashy little girl's dream, you know... you and I and Harry and Ron, two little houses next to one another, a white fence... But somehow I always knew that the main reason for your separation was not the fact that you had different goals in life. Ron and you... you live on different levels, not necessary intellectual ones. Severus and you, on the other hand... you have more in common than I thought. You are both brilliant, and you value knowledge for knowledge's sake. Do you remember, a long time ago, when you two fought because he did not want to acknowledge your performance as a student?"

Hermione nodded. As if she could ever forget...

"It was as if you were throwing a ball between you. First you had the upper hand, than he had, then you... you are on a par. His greater experience is levelled by your creativity. To cut a long story short: you are on the same level."

Hermione was kneading her hands, deep in thought, and remembered how she had written this reader's letter as Leontes Pearson to defend him against Rita Skeeter's defamation. He had seen right through it and answered in his own way. Ginny seemed to be right, but what did it help? He had made unmistakeably clear how he valued her.

"After we... after that night..." Hermione's voice broke. She was embarrassed and looked away. A short glance in Ginny's direction told her that she didn't like thinking about it either. Hermione took a deep breath and continued: "He told me quite clearly that there will be nothing at all between us apart from this... one-time experience. He told me that my idea of being in love was completely absurd and naïve." She did not look Ginny in the eye when she repeated every word Severus had thrown at her, and although she tried very hard, she could not help the tears flowing down her cheeks.

When she finished, Ginny said nothing, but gave her a handkerchief and a hug. Then she murmured soothing words until Hermione calmed down and leaned back, exhausted.

"It's not only the words, but also how he said them... Cold and dismissive, as if I were nothing more than the dirt under his shoes." She hugged herself while thinking of it. The coldness he had exuded had almost been tangible. It had been a stark contrast to the night before when he had shown her a part of himself she had never thought she'd see.

Ginny was lost in thought and stared at the floor. Then, without looking up, she said, "It looks as if he had done his utmost to get rid of you as quickly as possible."

There was a moment of silence in Hermione's small living room. Then she asked desperately, "Oh, Ginny, what am I going to do?"

"What you always do," Ginny said. "You get a grip on yourself, go your way and don't look back."

It sounded so very easy and Hermione wanted to believe that she'd manage. More as a favour to Ginny than out of conviction, she nodded and forced herself to smile. "I have faced worse and kept my chin up," she said. To herself, it sounded as wrong as if she were a ventriloquist's puppet, operated by someone else.

"That's my girl," Ginny confirmed and smiled. Then she hugged Hermione, patted her back and whispered, "You know that Harry and I will always be there for you to pick you up whenever you fall... not that you will need it, of course."

Steeling herself for anything she might be facing, Ginny shifted her weight from one foot to the other and knocked on the massive wooden door for the umpteenth time. "Come on, I know that you're in," she mumbled impatiently, asking herself whether it would be better to just go home. Harry had no clue where she was, and she had a bit of a bad conscience about lying to him, as she had told him she would be visiting her parents.

In the past few days, she had replayed the conversation with Hermione over and over again in her mind. But no matter how she put it, something about Hermione's story – particularly the way in which Severus had given her the boot – had Ginny wondering. "Severus, just open the bloody..."

The front door was flung open in the middle of her sentence and her hammering fist missed his chest by inches. "What do you want?" he snapped and planted himself in front of her in a menacing pose.

"To talk to you," she answered. Her hand sunk down slowly while she looked him up and down. She had never seen him look so bad and could not help but gape at his dead-pale, emaciated face for a moment.

"No!" he grunted. "I do not wish to be rude, but you should go now!"

"You are being rude already," she corrected, lifting her chin belligerently. "Severus, you won't get rid of me! All I want to do is talk to you... You owe me that much."

"I don't owe you anything," he said coldly while his eyes became slits.

She shrugged, but she did not budge. "Okay," she said slowly. "Maybe you don't owe me... but you sure owe Hermione."