Where are you?

This is a story by the great Marisol, a German FF writer whose stories can be found at http://www.harrypotter-xperts.de/fanfiction?author=17037

Translated from German into English by Muggline

Disclaimer: Neither Marisol nor Muggline are making any money out of this. Everything you recognise belongs to J.K. Rowling.

A/N: Once again, Professor M McGonagall sacrificed parts of her weekend to purge this one of stray commas and weird wording. She rocks!

Chapter 29 – Where are you?

With all the excitement that accompanied Lily's birth and her being named the godmother, Hermione did not forget about her promise to Severus. As soon as she found the time, she worked on his will, polishing the wording until everything felt good enough for her.

Some days later, she sent him a copy by owl, but to her utter astonishment, the owl returned shortly before closing time with the letter still attached to its leg, untouched. "Oh, didn't you find him at his home?" asked Hermione. With an absent mind, she caressed the little tawny owl's feathers while it nibbled her fingers affectionately. Hermione decided to send the letter again on the next day, but the next evening the owl returned again with Severus's will still unopened.

"Erm, did Severus contact you lately? It seems that he hasn't been home the last few days," she asked Harry and Ginny on the third evening after the owl had once more returned with the letter. She was sitting in the Potters' living room, holding Lily, while she told them how she had in vain tried to send him some important papers. Just as he had asked, she said nothing about a will and told them that he had asked her for information about a particular case instead.

"Well, don't owls usually find the person a letter is addressed to anywhere, even if said person is not at home?" Ginny asked with a frown.

"Usually, they do," Harry replied thoughtfully. "But there are precautions if you don't want to be found. There's a certain spell..."

"I know, I heard about that one," Hermione interrupted. "I never applied it, though." For a while, they discussed possible explanations why the Ministry owl had not delivered its letter. Then Harry said, "Now that you mention it, Hermione... Severus hasn't been in contact for a week or so. It's nothing out of the ordinary – he doesn't call us on a regular basis, nor we him. Who knows, maybe he's got a large order from St. Mungo's and had to go on a trip, or maybe he's visiting someone."

"Now who would he visit?" Ginny asked in a doubtful tone. "He doesn't have anybody!"

They all fell silent for a moment until Ginny seemed to realise that her words sounded quite harsh. "I mean... as far as we know, he isn't in close contact with anyone. At least we don't know about anybody. Of course, this doesn't mean he has no friends..." She fell silent. They all looked in different directions as if they were too embarrassed to voice what they all thought: apart from them, Severus had no one who even came close to being a friend.

sSsSsSs

The days went by, and neither Hermione nor the Potters heard anything about Severus. Every single one of Hermione's attempts to reach him was unsuccessful. While she tried to talk herself into believing that there must be a good reason why he had obviously disappeared, the thought that something might have happened made her panic rise. Her rational mind assured her that it was no good losing herself in wild speculations. Her irrational mind, however, kept coming up with all kinds of horrible scenarios of what could have happened to him, a potions accident being one of the more harmless ideas that haunted her.

After a week, she could not stand the uncertainty any more. She Apparated to Spinner's End one evening. Upon approaching his house, she saw no lights. Nevertheless, she went to one of the dusty windows and peeked inside, hoping to get a hint, but she saw nothing suspicious. Fighting the feeling of her own silliness, she knocked at the front door, but just as she expected, nothing moved inside.

More days passed, and panic started to eat her from the inside like some strong acidic solution. Even Harry and Ginny, who had not been worried in the beginning, started thinking on Snape's whereabouts more and more often and asked themselves whether something might indeed have happened to him.

"But where are we supposed to look for him?" Hermione asked for the umpteenth time during her next visit to her friends. Nobody answered.

Then Harry said, "I was at St. Mungo's today and asked whether he's there... had an accident or anything."

"Don't laugh," Hermione answered bitterly. "I did the same thing two days ago. All they said was that his last delivery of potions had been about four weeks prior and that it was not unusual at all, as he had not contracted regular deliveries."

"I don't understand this," Ginny said. "Where could he be?" They kept discussing in circles, and their ideas got more and more abstruse the longer they talked.

"Maybe one of his old Death Eater pals has done something to him. Somebody who has served his sentence at Azkaban and wants revenge now," Harry thought aloud.

"Maybe he has some distant relative he never mentioned to anybody and is visiting just now," Hermione said.

"Or maybe," Ginny said with a frown while she stood up, "I'll get my children to bed now and stop thinking about someone who doesn't even care to inform us when he is away for whatever reasons." She disappeared upstairs, but Hermione knew her well enough to see that Ginny did care, in spite of her anger.

SsSsSsSs

More than three weeks later, nobody had any life signs from Severus, and with every day that passed, Hermione's nerves wore thinner. She was sure that something had happened to him, and whatever it was, it could not be good. She had made a habit out of browsing through all newspapers she could get hold of in the morning, hoping to find the tiniest hint of his whereabouts, but they disappointed her every day. In the evening after work, she would go straight to his house to check on him, but he was never there.

She knew that she looked like a woman in the middle of a nervous breakdown – and she felt like that, too – but that didn't keep her from pursuing any possibilities that came to her mind. For days, Hermione had been working on a spell that was supposed to track down people who had put an untraceability spell on themselves. So one evening, while she was standing in Severus's garden as usual, she thought that she had perfected the spell well enough to give it a try.

Taking a deep breath, she pulled out her wand and did some complicated movements, murmuring various incantations. Hoping that the spell might be more powerful when she had something of Severus's at hand, she had searched the Potters' living room and found one long black hair that could only be his. She threw it in the air, aimed at it with her wand and managed to make it glow green before it fell down to the floor. After a while that felt like eternity to her, she had murmured the last part of the incantation and said aloud, "Severus Snape!"

"Yes?" answered a well-known voice right behind her that made her jump.

With his arms crossed in front of his chest, a mocking smile on his lips and his trademark cynical expression in his eyes, he observed her, while she gasped for air and made an awkward movement in his direction, then stopped as though stunned to stare at him as if he were sprouting a second head.

"Quite impressive, I must say. But I must inform you that the untraceability spell cannot be broken by anything. Must be the reason why they call it 'untraceable'."

Several seconds passed without a word. When Hermione found her voice again, she asked him with a calm tone that astonished even herself, "How long have you been standing behind me?"

"Quite a while," he admitted, his mocking smile even growing even broader.

"And? Did you have a good laugh?" she asked bitterly. All the relief about the fact that he was very obviously all right was replaced by boundless anger about the fact that he had scared her so.

"Very," he answered coolly.

Hermione's feet seemed to be lifted off the ground while she covered the distance between them and started pounding her fists on his chest. "How dare you disappear like that, not telling anyone?" she cried. "Don't you realise that Harry, Ginny and I have been worried sick? How can..."

He effortlessly caught both her fists in his right hand, fetched his wand with the other and said, "Silencio!" Hermione's flood of words stopped immediately.

"Well, first of all, in case you hadn't noticed: I am an adult. Even if I weren't, I'm not accountable to Harry or Ginny or you about where I go," he informed her.

She tried to free her hands from his vise grip to continue pummelling him, but it was of no use.

"Moreover, you have to respect the fact that I don't want to be contacted sometimes!"

He loosened his grip a little and said, "I will only lift the spell if you promise that you'll stop shouting, okay?"

Hermione realised that she had no other choice since he was physically and magically stronger than she was, so she nodded angrily and took a deep breath when he lifted the spell.

"Where have you been?" she asked, trying hard to control the volume of her voice.

"Away," he answered, and she knew with unwavering certainty that this was the only answer that she would get. Then he asked, " Could you please explain what this was all about?"

She stared, and before she could get a grip on herself, the words kept gushing out. "I have been worried sick, don't you realise? For almost four weeks, not a soul has had any life sign of you. Nobody knew where you went or why. Anything could have happened... you could have had an accident in your laboratory, you could have accidentally poisoned yourself, or... oh god, who knows."

She tore at her hair, which had been hanging down unkempt for days, but she did not care. She did not care either, that the traces of many sleepless nights could be clearly seen in her face. "I thought... I thought you were dead." Without any warning, her eyes overflowed with tears of anger, pent-up fear and humiliation. "I couldn't bear it! Do you understand? I just couldn't bear it... and there you are, laughing about how incredibly stupid I look in my pathetic attempt to find you. It must have looked very funny, yeah! Oh how very laughable are those people who worry about your disappearing without a trace!"

With a resolute gesture, she wiped the tears from her cheeks, managed to free her hands and took a step back. She wanted to get away, just far away. But while she backed off, she realised that he had not uttered one single word since she had started ranting.

"It was not my intention for anybody... for you to get worried," he whispered. And suddenly she saw the sheepish, astonished look on his face, and she realised that it must have been a very long time since anybody worried about him. If anybody had ever worried about him at all.

She stood and observed him. The tree, under which he stood, put deep shadows on his pale face. He approached her and stood about one arm's length away. "I am not used to giving reports about where I go and why," he said. But there was no sharpness in his voice.

They stood in silence for quite a while. Then Hermione turned around to go. She was too agitated and emotionally exhausted to be in his presence any longer, but when she had taken a few steps she heard him say, very quietly and gently, "Do you know the feeling: you are sure that you aren't hungry at all, but then you smell or taste something... or see something you like, and you realise that you are close to starving?"

These words hit her completely by surprise, crept under her skin and made her stop.

A weird prickle started spreading inside of her. It felt just as her first roller coaster ride, the first time she had been dashing downwards in that little car... only she wasn't screaming on a roller coaster, but standing still and silent, asking herself whether she really had heard those words just now. She whirled around, but all she saw was his billowing robe while he walked to his front door.