Snape stared dispassionately through the enchanted glass portal into the padded room in a tucked away corner of St. Mungo's Hospital. The gloom of the corridors masked any emotion that might have passed in his eyes but anyone knowing the man well would have noticed the slightest hint of tenseness that clouded his face. He wasn't even sure why he was here but found he could not stay away.
The girl curled into the corner of that room had saved his life with her brilliant bushy-hair covered brain when the Dark Lords snake tried to end him at his Lord's command. Him, a traitor covered with the blood of a dear friend and mentor as far as she was concerned and still she'd saved him. He'd given the Boy the memories as he'd been instructed and waited to die, while she'd been digging away in a tiny beaded bag like it had the answer to all of life's woes inside. He remembered the light fading and the sight of her still rummaging away up to her shoulder in that tiny bag pulling potion after potion from nothing.
His recovery had been slow, painful and completed utterly alone, not that Snape would have had it any other way. His pain was the only thing that had tethered him to this life since the night of Lily's death over 20 years previous. He wasn't about to share it.
The war was won but the price...
Harry Potter had not survived. The Boy-Who-Lived died. Bellatrix LeStrange with her dying breath used that cracked and wild voice to cast an area wide Avada Kadavra spell in the deathly silence that rippled through the crowd as Voldemort's last breath rattled from his dead throat. Bella might have been completely mad but her love and loyalty to the Dark Lord coursed through every cell in her body. She'd cast the spell making herself the epicenter of his revenge.
Snape had still been lying in a pool of his own blood fighting for survival and aware of nothing. Thankfully the memories of everyone present had been freely offered to all of magical blood who wanted answers after the war. A permanently powered Pensive was placed at the newly finished Blood War Monument set in front of the huge ornate iron gates of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The names of the fallen magically carved into the massive obsidian block with their birth and death dates.
Most were in alphabetical order but for the few that had played the biggest role in the Dark Lords defeat. They were set in the center, larger and boxed in on all sides by beautiful carvings of Phoenix's in flight. Albus W.P.B. Dumbledore, Harry James Potter, James Charlus Potter, Lily Evans-Potter Remus Lupin, Sirius Orion Black, Nymphadora T. Lupin, Luna Lovegood, Neville Longbottom,nearly every member of the Weasley family, the only survivors had been Arthur, Charlie and George. The list of names seemed endless. All the more so considering they were just the magical blood spilled. The muggles were given their own memorial at the Ministry of Magic.
The girl curled in that dark corner had been just outside of the range of that last deadly attack. Down already from a head wound sustained in the chaotic fighting. She came to hours later and after being released from medical care, helped in the clean up of the aftermath. She donated her own memories of the event and used a rather inventive spell to form the memories into some sort of coherent time line of the events all without saying a word after being told what had happened. She never cried. Never mourned at all that any one could tell. In the confusion and grief of what had happened no one gave thought to the last of the Golden Trio and she'd slipped away in the night.
It was only the fact that she'd donated those precious memories that Snape was able to stand there a free man at all. If she'd died every hope of ever him having a life outside of Azkaban would have disappeared. Like magic, he thought with a slight sardonic curve of his thin lips.
Minerva had finally pulled it together enough to think of checking on her, finding her missing had immediately panicked the older woman. She's put out a Trace on the girl and finally found her in a small borough in Queensland, Australia. The ashes of her parents home were still warm, the last comfort she'd had in the world the victims of faulty wiring that burned the home and took them to the next life like a thief in the night.
Fate uses Her chosen ones like a spoiled child with to many toys. He though bitterly to himself.
An entire squad of Aurors had had to be dispatched to Obiviate the memories of the witnesses as the girls magic had exploded shattering every bit of glass for a six block radius and attacking her own body like it was the enemy. Wandless and silent her magic had done some of the most despicable damage to a human body he'd ever seen and considering his previous associations that really was saying something.
Several weeks into her interment in the magically dead cells in St. Mungo's her body was still bearing the remnants of her wounds. Every time the wards to her room were breached the magic attacked her again. Sliced and blistered skin where there was skin left at all covered her everywhere but her face. That remained untouched as if her magic knew it would cause more harm for them to see such innocent beauty treated so violently. The healers couldn't even apparate to bring her food without her magic seizing onto the chance to cause harm. She still said nothing, still didn't cry, still didn't mourn. She was a hollow thing, broken and alone.
Snape could relate.
But where her magic considered its vessel rightful prey his lashed out at anyone foolish enough to put themselves in his way. With the events of the last two decades finally a matter of public record his freedom was assured but if the bloody fools thought he'd ever acquiesce to their idiotic ideals of making him into some sort of dark fucking war hero they should check themselves right in next to the girl.
The girl cried out in her sleep tossing her wild hair back and making the cords of her throat stand out from her neck and his hands suddenly white-knuckled around his wand while his breath stuttered in his chest. The sight was a kick in the stomach. She was a real hero standing against an evil the world at large would never understand. Tossed aside in an empty room when it finally all brought her so low her mind fractured under it like broken glass.
He sensed her presence before Minerva evened opened the door at the far end of the wing but he ignored her until she made her way to his side. "Why are you here Severus?" she asked quietly, her brogue thicker than its usual lilting tones. She wasn't looking at him, choosing instead to face the same portal as he. Perhaps it was that small kindness that let him answer truthfully. "I don't have a bloody clue." his low voice was raspy from disuse.
She flicked her eyes over his thin but strong frame wondering at his motivation but kept her attention trained on the girl. "I've spoken to the healers that are on her case. None of them have any idea how to treat her without breaking her magic or Obliviating her back into her childhood."
He never said anything but the swirl of dark malevolent magic that filled the hallway without his awareness let her know that the man was still not as fully in control of himself as he'd have them all believe. "Bloody fools." he bit out, clearly incensed with the very idea of it. "They do know that if they break her magic it would break her mind all over again?" he asked as casually as if he'd asked how she took her morning tea.
"They know Severus but they're running low on options. They can't even feed her without her magic siphoning their own and fueling her self destruction." He sighed quietly, in frustration from the sounds of it, but the feel of her spine being drenched in ice water lessened as his magic pulled back into himself. She wondered if he was even aware of it happening. Not since he was a boy had Minerva seen him lose control of his magical essence that way. "That still leaves us with the option of Obliviating her." she ground out, painfully aware that they might as well be considering killing the girl everyone knew as Hermione Granger.
Snape snorted quietly at the words, nearly laughing aloud at the stupidity of anyone that thought he'd let them do such a thing to the girl. Hearing him Minerva half turned, training faded green eyes narrowed in anger on him . "Care to share with the class Snape?" she snapped, nearly vibrating at the idea he found any humor in the present situation.
He snorted again and fell silent, content to ignore her until she went away. He'd never taken his eyes off the girl. Wasn't even sure that he could. They'd felt cemented to her form since the moment he'd looked through the glass. She was unhealthily pale, thin to the point of emaciation and starting to stir from the restless slumber she'd been in since he arrived.
He quizzically watched her grope about her person, the wall, the floor of her cell in search of something even before she became fully awake. Panicked from not finding whatever it was she was looking for, Her wand. his ever observant mind suggested, she began to claw at her skin leaving blood trails behind on the bits of unmarked skin she still had, pulling her hair until his own head prickled in sympathetic pain. His hand was fumbling at the handle of her door, scrambling the wards that held the magic out before he was even aware of what he meant to do.
"What the hell are you doing Severus?" Minerva barked at him, grabbing his arm to wrench him back away from the door. "Are you going barmy you idiot?" He spun on her so fast she backed up a few paces reflexively at the suddenness of it. The emotion in Snape's eyes was unreadable. The fact that it was there at all unnerved her. He took a deep breath and composed himself, back rigid as a board.
"I've already told you I don't bloody know what I'm doing. Alright Minerva?" His tone fairly dripped with malice. "I haven't known most of the last two decades why the hell I was doing what I was doing. I was just getting on with it. Smarter men than I will ever be were pulling all the strings. I was just the bloody puppet. But I tell you this I will cheerfully Avada anyone that tries to muck about with her memories. She earned them. Through all of this she's earned the right to keep every horrid one of them. They will not destroy who she is to save the shellshe lives in. Not while I live." Just to prove his point he whipped the ebony length of his wand from his robes to point at his chest intoning Sic Voveo aloud for her benefit.
The blood red haze of the spell was still clinging to his vision when her hand connected with his cheek leaving it throbbing like mad. "Bloody fool!" she snarled "You would leave her here like this for the rest of her life? Even you would be kind enough to put an animal out of its misery Severus. How could you do this to her?" It was the closest she would ever come to saying it would have been better for Hermione to die with the rest. Turning on her heel she rushed for the door at the end of the hall brushing impatient tears away from her eyes. When she heard his deep voice rocking up in broken laughter she idly wondered just how long it would be before Severus Snape claimed his own room in St. Mungo's.
He watched her walk away. It was not unexpected. People had been walking away from him his entire life. At least this time it was over something he'd chosen. My choice. He thought with a internal smirk. Never would such an undignified expression cross his cold hawkish face. It wasn't until he apparated out that he realized the rusted mocking laughter floating the halls had come from himself.
The girl neither knew nor cared that she was once again alone. In her mind she had all the company she would ever require. She, Harry and Ron basked in the heat of a late summer afternoon spent by the small pond at the Burrow. No one spoke but she was comforted. For her it was enough. It had always been enough. She would drift from memory to memory, the brightest mind of an age working to capacity to convince her it was all real. She smiled even as the nails of her own hands scored skin battered and bruised and knew it not.