Disclaimer: As always: nothing's mine, all is borrowed.

A / N: Again, my beta cmemlovr did her best with this story.

Thanks also to Amuerion for your help.

This is an AU-OS, settled in post-war time.

She stood hunched over in front of his grave, looking down at the grey stone. Her arms were protectively crossed in front of her chest, even though it was too late to protect him.

The howling of the wind in the distance startled some birds in the trees around her, whirling leaves around in the cold air.

She didn't pay attention to the upcoming storm and the icy air, in fact, she tried to ignore it. Maybe it'd work the same way with him. Ignoring his death might make him somehow still alive.

She curtly wiped a lock of brown hair away. The wind was getting stronger, blowing more and more strands of hair into her face, making her look even more lost and hollow. The dark shadows under her eyes and the emptiness in her heart did the rest.

"It should have been me laying there, not him" she thought.

Giving the stone a gentle look, her hand reached cautiously. It felt like trying to touch him, reaching out for him, although he wasn't there anymore.

And never would be.

"It should have been me."

The thought ran through her mind constantly, chasing all other thoughts from her mind uncontrollably. It rampaged like a beast, and made her feel at once alive and guilty that she had lived and he hadn't. It pursued her every evening when she went to bed; intransigent and steely, it knocked her down and forced her to face her reality as she lay in the dark, staring at the ceiling.

Every morning when she woke from a night of weeping and countless self-reproaches, the thought was there.

Oh, she'd tried to convince herself that she was blameless in this regard.

Too many had died; Ron's absence had hurt her the most. There was no one to cheer her up with silly jokes, no shoulder to lean on. Harry had cut ties with the Weasley family; it had been too hard to continue talking to them after they'd lost Bill, too. It made her sad when she thought about her other best friend, knowing that he could never really be happy with Ginny.

She knew Harry had his difficulties carrying Ginny's grief as well as his own, and she couldn't help but worry that he'd taken on too much in supporting her when he'd just lost his best friend.

And she had tried her best to help him; but how can you help a person who was barely an adult, and had already lost too much in his life?

And besides, she didn't want to be another burden for her friend since he was the only one who knew about her feelings for him.

She could still picture his look in her mind – she didn't want anyone else. She wanted sarcasm, irony, sharp comments, potion time, conversations, difficult discussions – she wanted all of it. All of him; the sarcastic bat of the dungeon.

She knelt down, not noticing the tears streaming over her cheeks. Her hand reached out again, her cold fingers following the inscription on the anthracite stone. She felt it – the only thing she felt these days, after they had quickly build the graves for the dead, trying to look forward, not back. She stayed behind, not able to manage all these feelings.

She felt it under her fingertips – the rough structure of the stone, the matte inscription saying Severus Snape. Died for the light.

Died for the light. An inscription that was written on every grave.

But he died for her. She saw it coming like in slow motion – she heard the shouting, saw the wand waving, and then there it was. The green light. The light that should have ended it all.

"It should have been me," she thought again.

Seconds before the curse reached her, a black-clothed man threw himself in front of her, shielding her from the Killing Curse that would have ended her life.

When she looked down, she saw him lying there, motionless. She had no time to stay with him, to weep over his death; the fight was still going on.

Instead, she fell to her knees, stroking a black strand of hair out of his face. Before another second was even over, the sound of shouting and incantations surrounded her once more forcing her up to her feet and back into the battle.

The few days after that were like being another person. Although they had won, the feeling of happiness and freedom was immediately diminished by sadness and despair.

They hadn't found his body, but he wasn't the only one who couldn't be found. So they put up the graves, honoured the dead and moved on. So many others, survivors, who needed help so urgently. She shuddered.

A long shadow fell on the grave. She looked up –

And saw grey dragon hide boots, black trousers, a black cloak, and a face peering curiously down at her.

"Why are you sitting on the ground in the cold?" There it was – the voice that sounded oh so familiar, so dark and rich.

She looked shocked, an expression that made him worry a bit about her. He knew that it would be shocking to see him, but she was getting paler and paler with every second.

She did her best to stumble back to her feet.

"But you're dead. I –" She stopped. It hurt too much to think about how he'd looked at the moment that he'd taken the curse intended for her.

He glanced down to her with his arms crossed and raised his eyebrow slowly, in that way that was too familiar to her. She noticed somewhere in her mind how much she had missed the sight.

"Do I look like a dead man? Silly girl." The usual biting tone in his voice was missing, instead it almost sounded like a term of endearment. The wind had blown some strands of hair in his face. The longer she looked at him, the more she marvelled at how beautiful he was.

"Sometimes you do not see the obvious. Like this storm." He shook his head.

Once they were inside his private chambers, he would tell her.

He would tell her that his gravestone had been too hastily erected; that he'd survived and destroyed the bloody beast, Nagini. He'd tell her that he'd only been freed a day ago, and that Dumbledore had been right all along; love conquered all, including death.

"Come along, Miss Granger." She stared at him, not daring to move. The wind was strong now, the cold air making her shiver. Some leaves had landed in her hair, and he reached out to pull them from her mess of brown locks. Another shiver ran through her body.

With a sigh and something that could count as a faint smile, he took off his thick coat, laying it over her shoulders. It would've been a sin if she'd frozen to death or got blown away, small as she was. She seemed to drown in the black cloak, making her face paler than it was.

The cloak had slipped off her shoulder, and he reached out to rearrange it again, pulling the woollen material tighter around her. He didn't let go of it; in fact, he held it until she looked up at him.

Brown eyes glanced at him; he never had seen anything sadder. She was too young to carry all that grief and sadness; all that guilt.

"It should have been me." she voiced her thoughts for the first time.

New tears started to flow, and he wiped them away with his right hand, before gently tucking a curl of her hair behind her ear.

"It does not do to dwell on what might've been, Hermione."

He cautiously laid his hand on her back, gently pushing her to get her walking.

A few moments passed, and they started their way back to the castle, his arm now around her shoulders, holding her tightly to him.

Later they would stand in his rooms in front of the warm fireplace, she tightly wrapped in his arms, pressed against his chest. Her hands would run up and down his back, the wonderful scent of herbs and potions and something uniquely his surrounding her. She would feel his soft white shirt press against her cheek and she would feel his lips pressing a kiss to her forehead as he buried his nose in her hair.

She would finally be with him.

Dear readers, if you enjoyed reading this OS as much as I enjoyed writing it, please let me know :)