Christmas morning

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: Hugs and kisses for ladyinthecloak, who managed to read this in spite of her huge amount of work here at TPP and in real life. You are amazing!

Chapter 6

Hermione took a sip of her wine just to occupy her hands. She felt the others' eyes on herself and wanted to say something witty and funny, something that would avert from her state of perplexity. Yet, she did not know what to say and how.

"Some more pudding, anyone?" Ginny asked cheerfully, but only Harry answered.

"Thank you, no more pudding for me or I will burst."

"Of course," Snape suddenly said as if there had been no break. "I hope that you have at least foregone the annoying habit of writing in this unreadable miniature handwriting in the meantime. As for me, it regularly drove me to distraction."

Hermione almost laughed aloud. He really was unable to do it. He could not praise someone without revising his words in the next second, rubbing their actual or alleged flaws under their noses.

"That's just so typically you," she blurted out. "You have a remarkable capacity to make each compliment sound as if it were censure. Do you remember when Madam Hooch introduced her fledgling husband to Professor McGonagall? It was in our third year, just before the Christmas holidays. You stood nearby and I happened to hear what you said."

"I remember," he said casually. "That fellow was not quite the showpiece, was he?"

"Maybe he was not very attractive," Hermione answered in a cutting tone. Silently, she thought, As if you could arrogate making fun of other people's attractiveness! Then she said, "You told Madam Hooch, 'Well, he suits you'!"

Snape sneered. "I was under the impression that people wanted me to say what I thought. And I did."

"Indeed? What was your comment about their baby, one year later? Let me think... 'Well, it is obvious what it is supposed to be.' Right?"

Harry choked on his drink. Ginny, who did not even try to suppress her grin, cheeringly patted his back.

"Well, if you would like to know my exact words, Miss Granger, my comment was, 'At least he is healthy!'" he answered, unperturbed.

"Oh, how incredibly tactful," sneered Hermione.

"Cliché, but true," he answered with a shrug. As far as that could be said about him, he seemed to find the discussion quite amusing.

"So we ought to be very happy that you have not called your godson 'imperfect, but basically acceptable,'" Ginny said, grinning.

With a hint of a smile, Snape answered, "The boy is quite presentable."

"Thank you. That was very interesting," Harry added dryly. Ginny burst into laughter and Harry joined in.

Snape turned to Hermione again and said, "Referring to one of your earlier remarks, Miss Granger, you said something was 'typically me'. By using the term 'typically', you imply that you know me. However, you do not. You know only a very small part of me at the most."

"Maybe," Hermione retorted, getting more and more angry. "I only know you as the teacher who – please excuse my bluntness – had made most of his students' lives hell. I just tried in vain to imagine why you make so little effort to be nice to people. I thought you were..." She fell silent and broke the eye contact. Partly because an unpleasant expression had appeared on his face, partly because she felt that she was about to enter areas she would do better to stay out of.

"You thought that I was really a different person, hiding my personality behind a mask of impoliteness and lack of tact? Is that what you wanted to say? From the moment you knew about my role in the war, you probably thought that I was not the horrible bastard you had met at Hogwarts? Am I right, Miss Granger?"

She stared at him, feeling as if she was caught. Indeed, she had thought that Snape was a man with such complex motivations for his words and deeds that it was merely impossible to figure him out. Yet – what seemed most relevant to her was the fact that everything he had done in the last few years had one basic motivation: his love for Lily. Snape's gaze seemed to drill right through her, but she remained silent.

"Well, it seems that I have finally found a question Miss Granger cannot answer," he said very quietly.

oOoOoOoOo

Long after midnight, Hermione tossed and turned restlessly in her bed. For one moment, she considered searching her bag for some Sleeping Draught, but she quickly rejected the idea. She kept thinking about Snape's words earlier that evening. She would not admit it for love nor money, at least not at that moment, but one thought kept stubbornly creeping into her consciousness: Snape had not been entirely wrong in his assessment of her. She never was a person who could handle other people's criticism well. Even less so, when it was worded as hurtful and full of sarcasm as Snape's. He was a man with an extremely sharp power of observation. Maybe he was not entirely wrong about the fact that much of her studying at Hogwarts had been motivated by her will to be the best student.

However, there was one thing Snape had not taken into consideration – and she doubted that he had the necessary instinct in this regard. Her characteristic feature of always wanting to know everything and working twice as hard as her fellow students was her attempt to stand her ground in a world that had been completely unknown to her until her eleventh birthday. As a Muggle-born, she had not even dreamt that there might be such a thing as a magical world. There was only one thing she had been able to do: read everything there was to know in books.

Every human being was prone to searching for his or her place in life, pursuing different approaches to reach that goal. It was her approach to respond to all possible insecurities by accumulating comprehensive knowledge about any given subject. At Hogwarts, books and notes had always made her feel in control. Control she desperately needed to find her best possible way in this world.

She sighed and turned over for what felt like the thousandth time. Pity, she thought with a grim smile, there is no book to explain Professor Snape's place in life. Whether he has one at all, or is at least searching for one.

She did not want to think about Snape. She did not want to think about anything at all. She only wanted to fall into a calm, relaxing sleep without any irritating questions. A very difficult task, since Ginny and Harry had convinced him to stay the night after a lengthy discussion. Hermione assumed that his decision to accept the invitation had been influenced a great deal by the prospect of seeing his godson again in the morning.

oOoOoOoOo

She felt shattered when she opened her eyes and realised, looking at the window, that dawn had just started breaking. Tiredly, she swung her legs out from under the duvet and groped for her wand in the dark. "Lumos," she finally mumbled and grabbed the water bottle on the nightstand, but it was empty. She decided to go to the kitchen to fetch a drink. She got up and padded out of the room barefoot. When she had almost reached the bottom of the stairs, she heard voices and stopped.

.. "...always awake at this time?" she heard Snape's voice.

"Most of the time, yes. He sleeps through the night rather well, but he wakes up very early. I took him out of his bed before he could wake Ginny. She ought to sleep a little longer. She has been quite exhausted lately."

"Always the Gryffindor," Snape said with a hint of sarcasm, but it sounded less spiteful than usual.

"Yes, that's how I am," answered Harry. Judging from the sound of his voice, he had also noticed that Snape's voice lacked the usual harshness. "My typical Gryffindor selflessness and devotion has saved me from Voldemort, but I might just snuff it from exhaustion because I want to ease the burden on my wife a little."

Her heart beating madly, Hermione stayed where she was. She felt uneasy, eavesdropping like that. On the other hand, she could not just stroll into the sitting room. To be honest with herself, she was just too curious to hear what Snape and Harry would be talking about.

"What about you, why are you up so early? Was the bed in the guestroom not..." Harry asked.

"The bed was impeccable," Snape interrupted. "I do not sleep very much."

There was a small pause. Harry cleared his throat and finally said, "Listen, I would like to give you something."

Hermione heard him cross the sitting room and open a drawer with a squeaking noise. She held her breath, suspecting what Harry was up to. Her stomach clenched painfully.

"Here," Harry said quietly. She just could not help it and tiptoed some steps down to peek into the sitting room. Harry saw her at once and his eyes widened, but Snape seemed to not have noticed her. He sat on the sofa, very stiff, holding something in his hands.

Harry and Hermione exchanged a glance and he signalled with a furtive nod that she should stay where she was, lest any movement should interrupt them.

However, his warning was unnecessary. Snape seemed to see nothing but the photograph Harry had given him. Hermione thought she knew which photograph of Lily it was. He had shown her most pictures of his parents, and she was quite sure that Snape was holding the picture in which Lily had been around seventeen. In this one, she wore dress robes, and her thick red hair fell over her shoulders in soft waves; she laughed about some long forgotten event. Her face expressed pure joie de vivre and some deep, inner kindness that nobody had to teach her. It just had been a part of her.

Hermione swallowed when she saw the expression on Snape's face. He looked at the photograph, no longer aware of anything around him. He was looking into some other world of memory or imagination with an almost rapt expression, as if he would observe some play performed for just one spectator.

"Would you like to take it?" Harry asked hesitatingly. Snape did not answer.

Hermione clutched her hand to her mouth, suddenly realising that Snape's normally expressionless black eyes held glittering tears. She had asked herself how Snape might look when he did not exhibit his mocking, spiteful or bored expression. Now that she saw his tears, she suddenly did not want to know any more. His tears shone like diamonds on his pale cheeks and burned like flames in Hermione's stomach. She could not tell why she was so shocked to see this very personal, vulnerable side of him.

"How was she... Mom. What was Lily like?" Harry asked in a whisper.

Without taking his eyes from the picture, Snape said after what felt like an eternity, "She was radiant. She was the only spark in my world of shadows that nurtured from darkness."

Upon hearing these words, Hermione gasped silently. Suddenly, she remembered all his verbal attacks, his mockery and disdain. None of these things had really bothered her. But these simple words hurt her. They burned parts of her heart and soul. Yet, they were not even for her ears.

While she observed him sitting there, she realised two things. Obviously, the words had not even been for Harry's ears because Snape started as if he had realised that his thoughts had somehow found their way outside and he had not been able to stop them. Moreover, he had been right when he had stated that she did not know him at all.

Very carefully, she took a step backwards. Maybe this hesitating movement finally caught Snape's attention. Maybe it was the exhalation from the breath she had held. She did not know. The only thing she knew was that his head suddenly snapped up and the brows over his black eyes furrowed.