Author's Note: All that you recognize comes from Rowling. I'm just playing with her creations. This is a one-shot and is considered to be a "cut scene" from Order of the Phoenix that takes place during winter holidays. Thank you to the lovely grangerous for her amazing beta skills!
Severus Snape sensed fear. It assaulted him, washing over him in a flood the second he Apparated into Grimmauld Place. He was well acquainted with the sensation; long used to it after fourteen years in the classroom where he reigned.
He pulled out his wand in caution. Severus was not a stupid man, and he certainly did not take things lightly. Fear caused people to do unnatural things, radical things. After all, look at the Dark Lord. One of the most powerful wizards ever had been afraid of a child, prompting him to try to kill that child.
The sensation was coming from somewhere to his right. As much as Severus would have liked to ignore it, he turned down a dark hallway and stopped in front of the doors he knew led to the study. One would have thought it were empty if not for a faint flickering glow under the door that caused the inky blackness of the hallway to become a little grey.
Severus opened the door slowly, and was greeted with a loud whimper. Had something gone wrong? He knew that he had an appointment with Dumbledore, but if something had gone amiss with that plan, he surely would have been asked to be there at an earlier hour. He opened the door fully and was greeted with the sight of –
"Miss Granger." She was seated on the couch, with a candle lit on the table next to her. Her legs were drawn up and a book was open on her lap, and her hands had been gripping the text so tightly that her knuckles were white. He could tell from this far away, even with the light at her back, that her eyes were swollen from tears. "You should be in bed and asleep. Such a pity that we are not at Hogwarts – I could have deducted points."
He seemed to have startled her, and he doubted that she had heard much past her name.
Her eyes rose from the book to meet his, and she stared at him in shock. There were tear stains trailing down her cheeks and her eyes were swollen and bloodshot from the force of her tears. One side of the collar on the robe she was wearing was a darker shade of pink due to moisture. It was a somewhat pitiful sight.
"To the kitchen, and do not dawdle. I do not need any more of my time wasted." He turned and made his way to the kitchen, making sure that he heard the padding of her slippered feet on the floor behind him.
She finally decided to speak, and the pitch of it nearly made him wince in pain, "Oh, Professor!" she stuttered. "I'm sorry – I couldn't sleep -- I'm just…Oh, I'm so frightened!" This started a new onslaught of hiccupping and sniffles.
"Miss Granger, a Calming Draught is in order, and some Dreamless Sleep," he turned as he said this and began riffling through the cabinets. She stood in the doorway, clutching her robe to herself like a security blanket, watching him.
"I have found some Calming Draught, but I will have to brew some Dreamless Sleep. Black must be hoarding it all, no doubt, in hopes of escaping the memories of his… friends," he finished sarcastically. This did not seem to faze her as he hoped it would. Miss Granger answered him with a slight nod of her head and took a seat at the long table. Her terror seemed to seize her again and her eyes widened. "I'm so afraid," she repeated. He had to admit that it was a little unnatural to see her in this state. He was used to her usual lioness qualities of protecting her own and rising to meet her adversaries, not this unusual passiveness that he would have expected from a Hufflepuff.
He set the bottle of Calming Draught in front of her and she picked it up and began tracing the label. He had brewed it, and he could see her fingers tracing his spidery writing. Her nerves seemed to be slowing, and he contemplated her for a moment before he turned his attention to a cauldron he had found in the corner. He seized the opportunity to speak. "You have nothing to fear – everyone is as well and safe as they should be: Potter and Weasley have not dismembered themselves yet this year, and Mr. Weasley --"
"Not about that," she said, wiping her eyes once more. "Nothing seemed real until this year. There was always You-Know-Who, but not like this! It didn't seem like a real threat until now! Everyone is in real danger, and the Ministry isn't even acknowledging it!"
He leaned his head forward, letting his hair fall into his face as he sliced open a pod of poppy seeds.
"I'm so afraid for Harry and Dumbledore and all the Order members! And I'm so scared for my parents, what would happen to them? What's going to happen to them? And…and I'm afraid for you, sir!"
He let the silence between them hang in the air for a moment before flicking his wand to light a fire under the cauldron. "You do not need to be frightened for me," he lied. His stomach lurched and tightened. Someone was concerned for a reason other than getting information about the Dark Lord from him.
"But I am! Everyone treats you horribly, but who knows where we would be if it weren't for you?"
He knew where they would be. They wouldn't be in this mess in the first place. If he hadn't been so eager to get into the Dark Lord's good graces – if he hadn't been so blind to the Dark Lord's lust for power, well… those thoughts had been turned over so many times in his head, they were getting worn around the edges. He merely nodded to her statement, and began stirring the mixture in the cauldron.
She was suddenly brought to her feet, practically launching herself upon his form and throwing her arms around him. He could feel the stitches at his shoulders protest as she clutched the material of his robes. She even buried her face into them. Her body was shaking with the force of her tears. He was about to reprimand her sharply and pull away from her until Miss Granger's muffled voice rose to his ears amid her crying, "And where would I go? What would I do? I don't think that I would want to live in a world where I wasn't accepted."
In his fourteen years of teaching, Severus rarely had students come to him in tears. There was an odd one every year or so with the new batch of students, but the cause was usually homesickness. His usual manner of consoling them was to refer them to their house prefects. He could honestly say, though, that he had never had a student approach him like this. Not even three years ago during the Chamber of Secrets ordeal. He was at a loss of what to do.
An image rose to him of Minerva comforting some of her cubs after the Triwizard Tournament last year. He slowly and very awkwardly put an arm around Miss Granger. The other was occupied with stirring the potion. This seemed to calm her crying for a moment. He tried patting her back a few times, and her crying turned into sniffles. However, he would not let the words "There, there," escape from his lips, so he decided to skip this last step all together.
She finally lifted her head from its resting place to look up at him. Her sniffing was slowing and her eyes were drying, although the redness did not fade from them. She eventually released her hold on him to reach for a dish cloth that Mrs. Weasley had left hanging next to the doorway to wipe her face with. Severus seized that opportunity to put some distance between them, and moved to the opposite side of the cauldron.
"Miss Granger," he looked at her over the steam rising from the cauldron. He had been silent a long while after her confession. "I promise you that I will do everything – all that is in my power – to make sure that you have a place in our world." He would succeed where he had before, failed. He would atone for his previous sins.
Severus almost wished that he had a camera. Or a painter. But it didn't matter – he knew that the image before him would stay with him until his death. The look that Hermione Granger gave him, with her eyes so bright with gratitude and her smile so wide with happiness, almost struck him senseless. This girl, this insufferable know-it-all, was truly thankful for his work.
Severus ladled a small portion of the amethyst colored potion into a vial but hesitated before he handed it to her. "You did not do as I said," he stated, looking pointedly at the bottle in her hand. She seemed startled that she was holding it, but quickly uncorked it and swallowed the contents. He finally handed her the vial. "This should afford you at least six hours of rest," he said, and began making his way around the room, grabbing more bottles and vials of various sizes from random shelves. "That is, if your companions are not too persistent in the need of your company." He opened a cabinet and set the bottles inside, flicking his wand at them as he did as to identify the potion and the strength.
When he finished, he muttered a quick "Evanesco," towards the cauldron and then levitated it to the corner where it had previously sat. The girl had already downed the potion and had busied herself with setting the kitchen to rights.
"Come." It was more of a demand than a request. "You will feel the need to rest in a moment or two, and I imagine it would come as quite a shock to the rest of the house if they were to find your body on the staircase in the morning."
She quietly made her way through the doorway and he followed her. By the time they reached the staircase, her steps were becoming a little sluggish. In the twelve steps it took to reach the second floor, she began yawning. By the time they had reached the third floor and the door to her room, her eyelids had begun to visibly droop.
"I'm sorry, Professor. I just had a nightmare." She faced him and bit her lip. He could tell that she wanted to say something else, but as she opened her mouth, he cut her off.
"Go to sleep, Miss Granger."
She gave him a sleepy smile and turned to open her door. "Goodnight, Professor."
Severus waited until he heard the creaking of a bed before he turned to make his way down the stairs. There was a figure waiting for him at the bottom of the first landing.
"Growing soft in your old age, Severus?"
Severus glared at Dumbledore, with his damned eyes twinkling over his glasses. He scoffed. "Never."