Let them bury your big eyes But your voice,—never the rushing --"Elegy," by Edna St. Vincent Millay
In the secret earth securely,
Your thin fingers, and your fair,
Soft, indefinite-colored hair,—
All of these in some way, surely,
From the secret earth shall rise;
Not for these I sit and stare,
Broken and bereft completely;
Your young flesh that sat so neatly
On your little bones will sweetly
Blossom in the air.
Of a river underground,
Not the rising of the wind
In the trees before the rain,
Not the woodcock's watery call,
Not the note the white-throat utters,
Not the feet of children pushing
Yellow leaves along the gutters
In the blue and bitter fall,
Shall content my musing mind
For the beauty of that sound
That in no new way at all
Ever will be heard again.
Hermione tried to appear interested as her daughter prattled on about quidditch. It was the last night of the summer holiday, and tomorrow Rose and Hugo would return to Hogwarts. Hermione couldn't wait for them to be gone.
The walls and ceilings of the house seemed to lean into each other when the two rambunctious Weasley children were co-occupying it with their parents. She longed for the silence that usually flowed between the rooms she'd so eagerly decorated as a young bride so many years ago.
"And then I intercepted the quaffle, threw it to Scorpius, and he scored!" Rose finished her story triumphantly, and leaned back, crossing her arms over her chest smugly.
"That's great, Rosie!" Ron exclaimed with complete sincerity.
"I talked to James, and he said I might be able to make the team next year." Hugo added lamely.
Hermione held back a biting comment. Hugo wasn't very good at anything, and she was almost certain that James was treating her son with the same kind condescension his father Harry had shown Colin Creevey back when they'd been in school together. The parallels she could draw between her son and the obnoxious, incompetent boy sickened her.
She looked at both of her children and realized that neither of them would have been able to survive the war unless they'd imbibed large amounts of Felix Felicis before facing any death eaters.
As her children continued to talk and laugh without her, she struggled to see something of herself in either of them. While it was true that Rose was clever, her intelligence was much more similar to the random, creative, and disorganized ingenuity of her prankster uncle, George, than to her mother's meticulous, deep, and painstakingly-acquired knowledge. Hugo, on the other hand, was every bit as stupid as his father, and without any of Ron's (admittedly few) good attributes. He often reminded her of Neville, but without any hope of metamorphosis into a brave rebel leader.
She took a few more gulps of wine when she realized that Rose was as old as she'd been when she had battled death eaters in the Ministry of Magic with her friends. What had her children done? Rose's athletic accomplishments seemed so trivial compared to what Hermione had done when she was in Hogwarts. And Hugo...
When she realized her glass was empty, she silently summoned more into her glass from the bottle in the kitchen, pointing her wand from under the table hoping no one would notice anything. They didn't.
During a lull in conversation, Hermione began to clear the table. When she came back into the dining room after depositing a few dishes into the sink, where she'd charmed a sponge to clean them, she stopped in the doorway. How happy the three looked together. They could relate to one another. They were idiots. For a second she imagined going in and asking about their opinions on a recent article she'd read in Arithmancy Monthly. She decided against it when she remembered that it would only give them a chance to laugh at "Mum, and her silly hobbies again."
25 years. She thought numbly. I've let myself rot for a quarter of a century.
She turned around abruptly and walked upstairs, leaving her family sitting there, oblivious to how she was feeling.
In her and Ron's bedroom, she undressed. Naked, she stood at the open window, closed her eyes and began to take deep, calming breaths as the moonlight streamed in on the summer breeze and caressed her body in a way that her husband never had.
It's my own fault, really, for confusing sexual tension with love.
She sometimes indulged in a daydream in which she and Ron had died together in the final battle, clutching one another, convinced that they were wholly in love.
She turned away from the window, and toward the mirror. Her face had lines now. Her eyes had dark circles under them. Her body bulged in places it hadn't before the children. Her hair was streaked with silver. She was an old 44.
Her eyes were drawn to the large, framed photograph on the wall facing their bed. She walked over to it and scrutinized her younger face to see if she had revealed any doubt on her wedding day. She thought she saw a bit of uncertainty in her younger gaze, but it might have just been her older perspective putting it there.
Her eyes made the inevitable shift to the other figure in the photograph: Ron. Ron gazed at his new bride with the same open look he had had when he looked at Hermione at dinner that evening.
Yes, he loved me. He still does. She thought sadly. But in a broad, general way. No different than how he loves his sister, or Rose and Hugo. He doesn't know the difference. The difference between friendly love and...
Hermione had thought these thoughts before and always ended at the same point, unable to continue. She wasn't sure if she believed in romantic love, but a small, wild part of her longed to believe in an acute, passionate love-a love reserved for one person alone. She was sure that she could love someone like that, but she felt as if she could never be matched in her love.
She was suddenly angry. The room was too small, the window too far away, the voices floating up from downstairs too loud and merry. How could Ron not notice how miserable she was? The answer came to her even as her mind was posing the question. She had always taken care of Ron and Harry in their schooldays. Ron didn't know how to take care of another person. It wasn't his job to look out for her--she was always supposed to be the one in control. She was torn between the instinct to vomit and the urge to cry.
After standing still for a brief eternity, she recalled herself to the moment and put on a large t-shirt and a pair of Ron's boxers. She lay down on top of the bed, as it was too hot to use a blanket. She couldn't sleep.
She got up and paced around the room slowly, letting her hands and eyes fall on the pieces of her sad life. What wasted potential!
There was a time when there was no doubt in her mind that she would be great-that she would make a difference in the wizarding world. She let out a hollow chuckle, which sounded unnatural in the still room, as she thought about her job. She was a mediwitch at St. Mungo's, good at what she did, but unable to advance to a higher position due to the unspoken prejudices that still existed against muggleborns like herself.
She dropped to the floor and, on her hands and knees, rummaged under Ron's side of the bed until she grabbed the handle of her old school trunk. Grunting, she dragged it out and opened it.
The inside of it reeked of what she had once been. She could feel her ambition and expectation as they breathed past her, out the window, and dissolved in the warm night air.
She looked longingly at the baubles and keepsakes of her schooldays. She fingered the tip of one of the basilisk fangs she and Ron had collected from the Chamber of Secrets on that famous night so many years ago. She let her hands trace her old school books fondly, and picked one out at random.
Funny...it wasn't hers, but Harry's old potions book. The Half-Blood Prince. Snape. Suddenly her mind was swimming with images of her deceased potions professor. She spent a long time thinking of his love for Lily Potter. That was the type of love she felt she could give. A painful, self-sacrificing love. She smiled coldly at the thought that the only one who she thought could match her love was not only dead, but dead because he loved someone else enough to give his life for her son.
She opened the book to the inner cover, Accio'd a quill, and wrote in careful script "SEVERUS SNAPE: Lover and Hero."
She frowned, and after a moment's consideration, added, "(and snarky bastard, of course)." She began to close the book, but right before she did so, her eye was caught by a flash of green. She opened the book again to see that what she had written had disappeared, replaced with writing in bright Slytherin-green ink.
"WHO ARE YOU?"
The handwriting was spiked, and familiar. Hermione had seen it on a hundred of her returned and graded potions papers. She held her the quill over the book, ready to reply, but it shook as she considered the implications of the book's responding to her. Of course she immediately made the connection to Tom Riddle's diary. Did this mean a young Snape had created a horcrux?
"Are you Severus Snape?" She wrote quickly.
"WHO ARE YOU?!" The book replied.
"A former student of yours. Hermione Granger." She wrote, not knowing why she used her maiden name. She wasn't worried about writing to the thing; she knew how to deal with horcruxes, if she found that this one had any bad intentions.
"Student?"
"You were the Potions Professor at Hogwarts."
"Were?"
Hermione paused. How to tell someone he's died...
"You died."
She winced. Then, she added "You died saving the son of Lily Evans."
It was a long time before the book showed a response.
At last, "Not my son, though."
It wasn't a question, and so Hermione didn't answer it.
"You were a hero." She wrote.
"And a lover, apparently." She smiled as she detected the familiar, biting tone.
Before she could reply, he added, "Whom did I love then, if not Lily?"
She thought of Ron and her children downstairs and impetuously scribbled, "Me."
She both longed for and dreaded his response. Could she experience some of the love she longed for? Or would he see her lie?
"How did we meet?" He asked, at last. "Tell me our love story, so that I can love you now, again and for the first time, Hermione."
She shivered at the romance which she never would have imagined coming from her former professor. Then she began to invent and write.
"I was your student. I was brilliant at everything, and your subject was no exception. There was a war. You were a spy, and you saved my life. Many times. After I graduated, we stayed in contact. We had a sort of mutual respect, which grew into friendship, which grew into love. We loved each other intensely, passionately, but then you died. I still love you." As she wrote the words, she realized that, absurdly, she did love him. She loved him more than she had ever loved her husband. It was intense and passionate, just as she had described to him, but it was acutely painful, for she knew that his reply to her love wouldn't be real.
"Tell me about the first time we made love."
She inhaled sharply at the command. She was at a loss for how to reply.
"How would you make love to me?" She asked, instead of answering.
"Describe yourself."
Hemrione closed her eyes. She imagined Snape as he would have been when he'd split off this part of his soul. Young, lonely, confused. How similar they had been. She opened her eyes and began to describe the Hermione that she had forgotten. "I have thick brown hair, and chocolate brown eyes. I'm smart, passionate, brave-"
He cut her off, writing "You don't sound like a Slytherin. Gryffindor or Ravenclaw?"
"Gryffindor."
"Of course. Hermione, if I could, I would kiss every inch of your body. I would worship you. I would plunge into you until we screamed each other's names while staring into each other's eyes. Was our first time like that?"
She was shaken by his description. Sex was never like that with Ron. It was perfunctory and dispassionate.
"Yes. Oh yes. Just like that."
"I wish I could know you, Hermione."
"I'm sorry you can't."
There was a long, terrible pause as both digested those words.
At last, "You're going to destroy me."
"It's what you would have wanted."
"I don't suppose I could persuade you to-"
Hermione began writing before he could begin to persuade her not to undo the dark magic he had created. She didn't trust herself.
"No. You wouldn't have wanted this."
"Goodbye then, love of my future. Of your past."
"I love you."
And with that, she snapped the book shut and grabbed the basilisk fang from her trunk. She plunged it into the book before she could convince herself not to.
When every trace of green ink was expunged from the carpet and the fang was safely nestled in the trunk, along with the now-lifeless potions book, she allowed herself to cry.
Ron came in and lay down next to her. He rubbed her shoulder consolingly.
"Don't worry, Hermione. They'll be back for Christmas before you know it."