A short break from "A Truth Universally Acknowledged." This fic, which should be complete in 4 installments or fewer, was inspired by another favorite Austen novel (Persuasion) and the lovely poem "Gray Room" by Wallace Stevens.

Gray Room

Five doors past the Hall of Prophecies, deep in the bowels of the Department of Mysteries, between the hours of noon and one in the afternoon, you can find her, sitting still for once. She sits cross-legged as she munches on corned beef, although she would much rather be curled in the same manner as nearly three decades ago in her mother's womb.

The room is neither as flashy as the now-defunct Time Room was, nor is it as eerily enticing as the room that houses the Veil. In fact, the room appears to be empty, except of course when she visits on her lunch break. Gray walls, windowless, forgotten by the magical world at large – which is just how she likes it. She sits quietly, inhales deeply, smiles tearfully. Peace.

/

Leaning back in his armchair and crossing his legs where they rested atop his desk, Kingsley Shacklebolt surveys the ever-shortening list of Unspeakables, the Department of Mysteries' discreet employees. Years after the mysterious murder of Unspeakable Broderick Bode so many years before, it is still difficult to find wizards and witches willing to brave the lonely road towards a career as an Unspeakable. The life of an Unspeakable was so classified that not many knew that the Minister of Magic, Kingsley himself, had begun his Ministry career as one. He privately feels that transitioning to a public life is not all that it is cracked up to be.

Kingsley smiles as he reads the names of his Unspeakable protégés. Hestia Jones, a particularly clever addition. She was significantly less socially awkward than the usual recruits; he chuckles, recalling a memorable staff Christmas party that ended with a festive combination of apple-cheeked Hestia, spiked eggnog, and some rather naughty mistletoe.

His smile fades as he reaches the next name, another whom he had assisted in her climb up the ranks of the Unspeakables. He had done so primarily at the behest of one of his own mentors: Minerva McGonagall, the formidable headmistress of his alma mater. There had been something odd about the job placement, he remembers. He quickly shakes off his sense of unease and returns to the task at hand.

"Not enough room in the budget to retain every employee," he thinks ruefully. He hates to lay off a perfectly good Unspeakable, especially when taking into account the Ministry resources that have been invested in each employee's rigorous training.

/

"You can't be serious, Minister!" she exclaims when he gives her the unwelcome news. It is telling that she is more fearful than angry. A decade ago, she would have been angry. Now, she simply does not wish to lose access to the gray room.

"You have worked very hard for a very long time," he tells her. "You have barely used any vacation time in the last five years. Consider this a long overdue sabbatical."

"An unpaid sabbatical," she retorts. "I must earn a living, sir."

"A young lady with your talents will always find suitable employment."

"In fact," cuts in a dignified, elderly woman as she breezes into the Minister's office, "that is where I can help you."

"Professor McGonagall," Kingsley nods. "So glad you could make it."

"Och, spare me the pleasantries," she twinkles. "So." She turns on her heel towards the Ministry's newest ex-employee. "The children at Hogwarts need you desperately, my dear. What do you say to a return to the castle?"

"The children?" the young woman gasps. She had dreams once, of small feet and dark curls and little voices. Picture books interspersed with the academic texts in her bookcase. She put those dreams away many years before, but she sometimes likes to take them out to air in the gray room.

The older woman softens. "They have need of a teacher, one who understands and respects non-magical ways. Naturally, I thought of you."

Pained, the young woman says, "I would much rather stay at the Ministry, perhaps in a different capacity than before." She looks hopefully at Kingsley.

"Nonsense! Hogwarts will do you good," Minerva says briskly. "You are left too much alone here. You are hardly ever seen, despite being a war hero deserving of the limelight, and you have become far too quiet. The children and the faculty will correct all of this."

"I like my solitude and my anonymity," she wants to reply, but in the last ten years she has become accustomed to self-denial. Her teaching contract is signed, sealed, and delivered.

/

"How is it that there came to be an opening at Hogwarts, Professor McGonagall?" she asks curiously as she follows the headmistress to what will be her living quarters during the school year.

"I seem to recall giving you leave many years ago to call me by my given name, my dear," Minerva reproves.

"I can't get used to it," she sighs. "Old habits die hard."

"In truth, I am getting old," Minerva says gently. "I hope to use this year as a transition of sorts. The new permanent staff, including my replacement, will run the show, while I will observe the goings-on from the sidelines. I will only step in as needed, to ensure that the new order of things does not deviate too far from the old."

"Who is the brave soul that dares to take the post which the right honorable Minerva McGonagall has lately abdicated?"

"A Professor S. Prince," Minerva confides. "Originally from our little isle, but it seems he spent the last several years in travel and study. The school governors were in charge of the appointment; they claim he is eminently qualified, although I have yet to meet the man."

"Oh!" The heir-presumptive's name stirs a gasp of recognition, of a memory that still powers her wistfully playful otter Patronus.

"My prince!" she laughs as a newly strapping, dark-haired man catches her about the waist and tosses her into the air.

"My princess," the man says seriously, catching her and wrapping his arms around her once more. She tilts forward to drop a kiss on his long, aristocratic nose. He pulls her back and gazes into her eyes. "You are, you know. The princess to my prince. I want no other."

She looks at him and feels an ineffable rightness, a sense of destiny being fulfilled. She of the princess's name, queen Helen of Troy's daughter. He, the Half-Blood Prince.

"Princess," he repeats as he sinks onto one knee and slips a hand into his robes' inner breast pocket.

"Do you know him?" Minerva asks curiously.

She says slowly, "If he is whom I believe him to be, then your school will be in safe hands indeed."

Minerva replies, "That is a comfort, for what a stuffy pureblood name the man has! I taught a Prince in my first years as a professor, you know. She never had two words to say to a Gryffindor. To be sure, this Prince must think very highly of himself."

The young woman smiles tremulously. "You would think that, wouldn't you?" And Minerva's chatter subsides.

Later that evening, Hogwarts' newest professor of Muggle Studies walks along the Black Lake, trails her fingers across the bark of a once-beloved tree. Visiting the tree had been tainted for her by the remembrance of pain. After so many years, she thinks that she can now look back with pleasure on the memories that the tree evokes. "In a month, he might be walking here again," she whispers to the tree. The leaves rustle restlessly in answer.

/

It began during the war. As her two friends slept more or less peacefully, she would stand guard outside the tent and tremble—with cold, with fear, with anxiety? She knew not the cause, only that she must not let the two boys see.

The portrait of an old Hogwarts headmaster that she kept on hand would watch faithfully and report, without her knowledge, to the current headmaster. "The Mudblood's shaking again," the portrait would tut. Each time, half-Muggle, half-magical remedies, made just for her, would mysteriously find their way to points just outside her wards, a well-placed word from the old headmaster's portrait cluing her into their location. Candles that filled the tent with calming scents when they were lit. A Muggle shot glass filled with a dose of the Draught of Peace. Even a pair of fuzzy purple earmuffs that crooned Celestina Warbeck songs into her ears during that exceptionally savage winter.

She was not the "brightest witch of her age" for nothing. Linking the lovely gifts to the current headmaster required only a minor expenditure of her powers of deduction; coming to grips with the possibility of the man's essential innocence, despite his association with the cold-blooded murder of his predecessor, taxed her a great deal more. In the end, she found that she could not hate the man who left her a basketful of freshly baked chocolate and Fizzing Whizbee biscuits on Christmas morning.

She was a fair-minded girl, so she asked the painting to keep an eye on her silent benefactor. Through the old headmaster, she learned that the man who had shown her so much kindness was shown very little kindness by the world in return. She also learned that he wore a John Lennon jumper, frayed with age and use, on the cold winter mornings when he completed paperwork silently in his circular tower office.

She did not have much in the beaded bag that carried all her worldly possessions, but one morning she used her wand to record herself singing Beatles songs outside the tent as the boys slept. Tapping a Muggle pen that she had found in a dark corner of her bag, she transferred the recording from her wand. When her patron pressed the little button on the pen, her voice would fill the room with her rudimentary but sweet music.

She agonized over her other gift, a small notebook that she told the boys was filled with notes on Voldemort's Horcruxes but in fact contained, in her meticulous cramped handwriting, a catalog of every single reason for her admiration of the man. Perhaps he would scoff at it. Perhaps he would not even read it. But she decided that it was time someone showed an appreciation for the stoic, solitary headmaster.

One morning, she told the boys that she was going to Apparate to the nearest town to obtain more supplies. Instead, she landed in Hogsmeade. Under the cover of Harry's invisibility cloak, she traipsed up to her old school. The moving staircases seemed to recognize her intent and carried her to the headmaster's lonely tower. At the stone gargoyle guarding the entrance, she finally found herself at a loss.

"Lemon drop?" she asked the gargoyle. No. "Wormwood? Bezoar? Nettle wine?" No.

A last-ditch attempt: "Oh, for Merlin's sake! Tell him it's Hermione Granger!" The gargoyle sprang aside, and she was filled with sudden warmth.

"It's Hermione Granger," she said softly as she dashed up the spiral staircase to drop off her gifts at his door.

By the next time she saw her benefactor—he was bravely facing doom at the wrong end of Voldemort's snake—she rather thought she was in love with him.

/

After the war ended, she returned to Hogwarts to finish her schooling. He had been saved in the nick of time by the combination of Narcissa Malfoy and Poppy Pomfrey, both of whom had heard Harry Potter's proclamation of the headmaster's true allegiance and immediately run to the headmaster's aid. Strong doses of dittany, barrels of Blood Replenishing Potion, and constant vigilance contributed to his recovery. In a room full of peers and staff members, it was she who clapped loudest and longest when he stepped onto the headmaster's podium that September.

During the war, they had gotten in the habit of watching each other from afar, and the temptation to do so without the encumbrance of a portrait intermediary proved irresistible to both. At long last, one morning at breakfast, a school owl delivered her a music box chock full of Tooth-Flossing Stringmints. The Beatles' "Yesterday," sung in an unpracticed but rich baritone, filled the room when she lifted the lid. Smiling fit to burst, she quickly closed the box. As the bell rang, she quickly made her way to the headmaster's office. It was the first day of the best nine months of her life.

/

She sits in her new quarters and pulls out the now-battered music box. She lets his voice wash over her, the bittersweet lyrics imbued with new meaning. It is not the gray room, but it will have to do.

/

They were private people, but a time came—her graduation—when the necessary people had to be told. Her two friends' surprise and discomfort came as no great shock; she had steeled herself to deal with it when it came. Her parents' silence on the subject was more difficult to bear, even though it too was not wholly unexpected. Her mother was tight-lipped when she saw his ring on her daughter's finger, disapproval radiating from her in almost palpable waves. She refused to have anything to do with the wedding planning. Her father said only one word to their faces, but it did damage enough. Murderer.

She fought for him still, although his customary sense of guilt threatened to do away with everything. She wanted to postpone her job search until after the wedding, until she had had enough time to help him realize that this was the life she truly wanted. That he was what she wanted.

When August arrived and all her friends had settled into promising careers, Minerva came knocking, demanding an explanation for her unemployment. Reluctantly, the newly minted graduate relayed her happy news, thinking that Minerva, who had emerged as one of the headmaster's most outspoken supporters in the past year, would understand. Instead, Minerva marched to the Ministry, practically dragging her favorite student behind her with the force of her magic.

"This young woman has the brightest mind that Hogwarts has seen in decades," Minerva said tersely to the Minister. "Give her the best position that you can find, one in which she will be able to distinguish herself instead of languishing in the Hogwarts dungeons, her only company a man who would keep her there with him because he never got the chance to leave!"

"He wouldn't keep me in the dungeons!" she said, stung into speech. "We're buying a house and—"

"And what, dear? He will always be tied to Hogwarts, but you are meant to soar higher. He will always be a widely disliked, unlikeable man, but you are the Gryffindor princess. He—"

"He loves me! And I love him." Kingsley gaped at her.

"He will always love a dead woman more than he is capable of loving you," Minerva said quietly. "How will you—how can you—live up to the memory of a ghost?"

It was perhaps the first question that she, the Know-It-All, could not answer, and its resonances had haunted the rest of her life since. Kingsley signed her onto the elite team of Unspeakables, the position's eponymous secrecy forcing her to renounce most of her ties. She went back to the school and quietly placed her love's ring on his desk in front of him, followed by the ring that each new Unspeakable was given. The ring signaled to passersby that this was a person who could not divulge what exactly they did for a living, thereby preventing the asking of any unanswerable questions.

The headmaster stared at the rings for a long while.

"Do you love me as much as you loved her?" she asked carefully, knowing that this was the question that would either make her or break her.

Slowly, as though combating great resistance, he covered the ring of the Unspeakables with one hand, grasping her small hand with his other. As he slid the new ring onto the finger where his ring had been, she sobbed freely.

/

She did not see him again. He left the next month to "make himself anew," Minerva told her one evening. She did not know when, if ever, he would return. In the meantime, Minerva would replace him at the school.

The nature of her employment exacerbated the tendency towards secrecy that her relationship with the headmaster had inculcated, and she found her social circle narrowing by the year. Her old friend Ron asked her to marry him, but the idea of marriage had been spoilt for her. Her isolation deepened with her rejection of Ron's suit, for his family, with whom she spent the bulk of her leisure time, took the perceived slight very hard.

She never told the headmistress of how her feelings about the whole affair had changed over the years. Left so much to her own devices, she keenly felt the loss of the headmaster's quiet generosity, his intellectual creativity, even his unrelenting sarcasm that he directed at everyone except her. She was bitterly aware that by now she might have been the mother of one of the first years she would soon teach. She did not blame Minerva; she blamed herself for allowing herself to be persuaded from the longings of her own heart. She may have plumbed the secrets of the Department of Mysteries, but her knowledge was dearly bought and did not give her the fulfillment she sought.

/

"Will you be sad to leave Hogwarts?" she asks Minerva on the morning before the new headmaster is due to arrive.

"I shall miss the faculty; they have been the family I could not have," Minerva says. "But everywhere I go, I shall run into a former student, and I daresay I will not be lonely."

The young woman wonders briefly if the headmaster had felt the same way when he resigned his post. It seems to her that her every thought can be linked to him. Pathetic to feel this way after so many years, she feels. But then, he felt the same way about Lily Potter.

The next morning, she treks the once-cherished path to the headmaster's office, determined to arrive neither too early nor too late to the first staff meeting. The staircases have a different idea, propelling her to her destination with ten minutes to spare. Panicking, she loiters in front of the stone gargoyle.

"What's the password?" a spirited voice asks. It is Ginny Weasley, Ron's sister. She is still kind, if a little distant.

"I don't know," she realizes. "Will you be working here, too?"

Ginny nods. "I'll be taking the younger years for Defense Against the Dark Arts." Ginny attempts a smile. "The two of us at Hogwarts again! It will be like old times."

"Yes." The two fall into an uneasy silence, which is broken only when the rest of the staff joins them, one by one, in front of the gargoyle. Nobody knows the password. The rest of the teachers buzz together in a little cluster, wondering when the mysterious Professor Prince will grace them with his presence.

"The password is 'memory,'" a very familiar baritone intones from behind the group, exciting a collective gasp.

The gargoyle jumps aside, and Severus Snape sweeps up the spiral staircase, soon followed by the ragtag gaggle of teachers. She alone remains rooted to the spot, overwhelmed by her impressions. His style, his scent that she catches a whiff of as he brushes past: these are unchanged. His indifference, his dark eyes sliding easily past her: these are thoroughly unwelcome.

/

"Any questions?" he asks by way of drawing the meeting to a close.

Tiny Professor Flitwick pipes up rather hesitantly. "Oh, Severus, it is so good to have you back among us. Do you mind my asking how you have spent the past ten years?"

"That has nothing to do with the logistics for the new school year," the headmaster rebukes. "But I will answer, rather than have the lot of you conjure up and disseminate your own fantastical ideas."

The little knot of professors leans forward eagerly.

"In the beginning, I went to Austria," he continues, "acquainting myself with my mother's family. They had heard of my … exploits ... during the war, and they decided that I should inherit my grandmother Prince's estate. Pending a thorough vetting process, of course."

"Oh, how lovely!" Professor Sprout gasps.

"As you can tell by my changed surname, I made the cut. Exchanging the Snape name for Prince was the only stipulation of the entail."

"What did you do with your inheritance?" Ginny asks curiously.

"I have not touched the bulk of it. I have simple needs. What little I have used, I have invested in talent. A good many of the most recent European graduates with a Potions mastery studied under me and financed their education on my knut."

"Once a prof'ssor, always a prof'ssor," Hagrid says gruffly, dabbing at his eyes with an enormous handkerchief.

The headmaster smiles humorlessly. "I thought I would try something altogether different with my newfound leisure time, but I have found that what kept me sane in the worst of times is all I want in happier times as well."

Throughout the meeting, she has been too shy to look directly at him. Still, she sees him, as her favorite Muggle author once wrote, "as one does the sun, without looking." She feels a pair of eyes on her at these puzzling words of the headmaster's, and she looks up. Ginny Weasley is boring concerned eyes into her, looking away only when the headmaster clears his throat and dismisses the group.

It's over, she thinks dazedly as her feet carry her down the spiral staircase. They have been in the same room together, and it is clear that he has no intention of behaving awkwardly in her presence. It is both reassuring and disappointing.

At the Welcoming Feast that night, Ginny leans over. "Professor Prince and I had a spot of tea and a chat after the staff meeting. He said that he would be co-teaching Defense with me to the upper years, so we will be spending quite a bit of time together. I asked him what he thought of how you had turned out, and he was as blunt as ever. He said you've changed so much that he hardly recognized you."

"Oh?"

"Yes, he was quite surprised you aren't Minister of Magic already! Although he did say that you're so quiet now that perhaps that is no great wonder. He seemed rather disappointed."

A disappointment, she thinks. That is all I am to him now. The realization is painful, but she feels an odd relief at knowing what to expect from him. She bites her lip and sags in her chair. She need not pretend to be anything more than what she is.

"Hermione," Ginny says softly, patting her hand gently. "I know we haven't really spoken in years, but I mean to fix that. When the thing between you and Ron ended, well, I suppose we all didn't consider what it did to you. We were only thinking about Ron." Ginny is close to tears. "I can see now that you and Ron wouldn't have worked. And ending it before it went too far was brave of you. I am so sorry."

From the vantage point of his central seat at the head table, the headmaster watches the two youngest staff members hug. He had returned to Hogwarts because he could no longer countenance living alone in the stately but silent Prince mansion, but he had no desire to see the woman to whom he had been affianced. Learning that she was to work at the school, contracted by the same person who had coaxed her out of his life, was a torment. He had paid a visit to the school governors this afternoon to see if he could remove her, but it was not possible without a ready replacement. And the part of him that refused to throw away the Muggle-inspired gifts that had brought the two of them together could not face removing her from the position. She would fill the post admirably, damn her.