Disclaimer: I don't own anything from Harry Potter or the storyline to While You Were Sleeping, except the original characters that I created.
While You Were Sleeping
Hermione Granger sat in the ticket booth at the Queensway Underground station in muggle London, reflecting on her life. Her days as a child running ramped though the corridors of Hogwarts were long gone. Since she, Harry, Ron, and Professor Snape had fought the last battle against Voldemort during their 7th year, nothing had been the same. Voldemort had killed her parents and her best friends. Her anger and hatred for the dark lord had become so powerful, that she never realized that she, herself, had cast the killing curse that freed the wizarding world from the darkness.
Severus Snape had stood in shock as he watched Voldemort's body fall heavily to the ground. He never would have imagined that the Gryffindor Know-It-All would cast one of the unforgivables. He was soon shaken out of his thoughts when he saw that she was about to fall. He caught her just in time, swept her up in his arms, and quickly apparated them to Hogsmeade. From there, he took her to Hogwarts and explained to Dumbledore what had happened.
When she woke up in the hospital wing a few days later, everything came crashing down on her. She had to be forced to eat and given dreamless sleep potion to keep the nightmares at bay. Dumbledore had given her permission to skip the rest of her classes since she had already taken her NEWTs weeks earlier and passed with extremely high marks. She somehow managed to get though her first semester at Oxford, but slipped into a deep depression. She decided to leave the wizarding world and live in the muggle one, as her parents had always hoped she would do. With no muggle education other than almost finishing primary school, she only just managed to land a job at the Underground. And she'd been doing that for the past three years.
It was one day a few months ago that she had started seeing him. A tall, handsome man with short, wavy black hair, deep brown eyes, and a smile that could make any woman melt in an instant. He had started coming to her booth between 7:00 and 7:15 in the morning every couple of days. Hermione had never been one to really date, or believe in love at first sight, but there was just something about him that made her love him. They had never really spoken, but he always smiled at her as he walked by her booth.
"Hey, Hermione, you ok?" her boss, Kyle asks.
"Oh, what? Yeah, yeah, I'm fine," she lies.
"You sure? You were a million miles away."
"Yeah, I'm sure."
"All right. Umm…Hermione, would you mind working tomorrow too?" he asks hopefully.
"Kyle, I'm not working Christmas. I worked Thanksgiving and last Christmas," she whines.
"I promised my wife I'd be home this Christmas. My little girl is just starting to walk." Hermione sighs.
"Fine. I'll work tomorrow. You go see your family."
"You're the best, Hermione," he smiles, then hurries off to his office.
She sighs heavily and bites back tears as she watches happy couples and families walk by, holding hands or chatting excitedly about their plans for the holiday.
Her depressed mood continues even as she trudges to her apartment that's not too far away. Her cat, Crookshanks, greets her with a meow and rubs against her legs.
"Hey Crookshanks. How are you?" He meows again at her and she manages a small smile. "I'll get you some food." He meows again and trots behind her into the kitchen. After getting Crookshanks his food, she pours herself a glass of milk, then heads off to bed. Little did she know that the next day would change her life.
Hermione yawns as she sits bored to death in her booth, barely noticing it was a little after 7:00.
"Hey, Happy Christmas," the man of her dreams says with a deep, silky voice as he walks past her.
She looks up and he smiles at her before he heads off to his train. She becomes so tongue-tied, and just watches him walk away. Seconds later, two teenagers come up to the man and start taunting him. The teenagers take turns pushing him and he stumbles backward, hitting his head against one of the ticket scanners then falls hard to the ground. The two kids run off as Hermione rushes out to help him.
"Sir? Sir, are you ok? Can you hear me?"
His eyes flutter open for just a second, then fall shut again. She yells for one of the people in the station to call for help then asks another worker to cover for her as she hails a cab to follow the ambulance to the hospital.
"Miss, are you family?" the doctor asks.
"No, but-" he cuts her off.
"Then you can't see him."
Hermione stands there behind the glass doors watching the doctor assess the man's injuries.
"I was going to marry him," she says with a sigh.
A nurse overhears her and takes her to see him when he is admitted to a room. Hermione takes a seat next to his bed, and gently takes his hand.
"Aleksandr," she says, having heard the doctor address him. "Everything is going to be fine. I know it is." Hermione watches him for awhile before what appears to be his family walk into the room.
"How could he just all of a sudden end up in the hospital? Especially on Christmas day!" the older woman says with long black hair that has streaks of silver in it.
"I don't know, Gillian, but it's just like him to do something like this," her husband says.
"Father, don't be so hard on him," a girl says as she puts a hand on her brothers. Hermione slinks back away from the family.
"Why not, Andrea?" he replies back to his daughter.
"How did this happen?" the mother asks.
"He umm…was pushed by a couple of teenagers and hit his head on a ticket scanner at the Queensway station," Hermione offers. The family now notices her.
"Who are you?" the father asks.
"My name is Hermione."
"She's his fiancée," the nurse adds with a smile as she exits the room. Hermione's eyes go wide.
"His fiancée?" the family says together.
Aleksandr's mother walks over to Hermione and hugs her.
"I'm sorry, we didn't know. We haven't seen Aleksandr in a long time."
"But I-" Hermione starts.
The doctor comes in just then to explain that Aleksandr is in a coma. Seeing this as a chance to escape, Hermione leaves and heads back to her lonely apartment. She lays in bed with Crookshanks by her side and tosses and turns. Finally she can't take it any longer and goes to see Aleksandr. She explains to him that his family thinks they are engaged, even though she doesn't think he can hear her. She ends up falling asleep with her head lying on his bed.
"Hermione?" Aleksandr's mother, Gillian asks. "Did you sleep here all night?"
"Yeah. I guess I must have fallen asleep, but I should be leaving. I have to go to work now."
"Willem, honey, go on," Gillian pushes.
"Hermione?" he asks and she turns around. "Since we didn't get a chance to celebrate the holiday, would you like to join us tonight?"
"Yeah, you haven't met Severus yet," Andrea says.
"That's right, you haven't met Severus," Gillian repeats.
Hermione opens her mouth in shock. Surely this couldn't be the same Severus that she knew. But then again, she had no clue as to what the family's last name was.
"Please?" Andrea pleads.
"Ummm…," Hermione stutters.
Willem hands her a card with their name and address on it.
"Just stop on by if you can."
She shoves the card into her pocket and nods her head before hurrying off to work. Towards the end of her shift, she takes out the card that Willem gave her. Her heart stops beating when she sees what their last name is.
"Sn…Snape? I'm pretending to be engaged to a Snape?" she says horrified and almost faints from shock. Still shell-shocked from her discovery, she heads home. While she feeds Crookshanks, she decides that she should go.
"After all they did seem to be nice people, even if their other son is a complete and udder git," she tells Crookshanks as she grabs her coat.