Hermione leaned forward, set Ancient Runes in Arithmancy on the coffee table, and sighed. She reached for her mug of tea and folded herself back into the cushions.
It couldn't be true. It couldn't.
But it was.
She was sure of it.
She sighed again. She tried to draw comfort from the familiarity of her tiny flat, her wool socks, and her favorite flannel, but the cold that had crept into her marrow wouldn't budge.
The memories wouldn't budge, either.
0o0o0
It was time.
Severus leaned against the sink with both hands; he let his head fall forward and his hair obscure his eyes.
He'd never known exactly when the spell would unravel, but he knew it would happen soon. Last night, the trace he'd placed on her blazed with life, and he knew the final tendrils of his magic had faded.
He glanced up, and surveyed himself in the mirror. Would she like the grey in his hair, new these last three years? Would she even notice? Was he still too thin? Did his eyes look less sunken than they had a month ago? A week ago?
He'd been waiting for this, for fuck's sake, so why was he so nervous?
Well, at least he knew where to find her—no matter what she would think of him now.
0o0o0
The sound of knuckles on wood startled Hermione out of her quasi-slumber.
At first, she was too shocked to respond. No one ever appeared at her door, and certainly not at this hour of the night.
A second knock, clear, sharp, and urgent, drove her off the couch.
I'd better tell them they've got the wrong flat before Mrs Alby comes out into the hallway and starts yelling.
She opened the door, and blinked. Hard.
"Severus…?" she whispered. The word felt both foreign and familiar on her tongue, as if she had never said it before, and yet, she somehow knew it better than her own name.
In response, the tall wizard at her door scrubbed a hand down his lean face.
"Hermione. May I come in?"
Yes, she'd read that he'd been released from Azkaban. Seeing him now at her doorstep confirmed what she had only just begun to believe.
She opened the door a bit wider, and stood aside for him to enter. He lingered just inside the doorway, as if he were unsure where to place himself.
"My dreams. They're real, aren't they?" It was the only thing she could ask. It was the only thing she truly wanted to know.
"Yes."
With simple finality, she walked away and tucked herself back down into the couch. He settled across from her on a chair and waited.
"Why are you here?" she managed, barely more than a whisper. Hermione reached for her tea, knowing she should offer him some, but not really trusting herself to be steady enough to brew it.
"You know why I'm here."
"You left me." Now that she knew it was real, this, this had become the only thing that mattered.
He spoke then. "I had no choice."
"And how, exactly, do you measure that?" She tried to keep the venom out of her voice and failed.
"I was being sent to Azkaban," Severus started evenly, "and you told them—rather you announced it to the entire Ministry—that if they sent me, they would have to take you, too." His voice got louder as the words tumbled out of him. "You would have never survived it."
"How dare you judge me and my magic! I've been casting wordlessly since I was twelve! I—"
"I had my shields, Hermione—the ones that kept me alive at the feet of a dark lord. They were able to keep me sane in there. You have never been particularly good at—"
"I have my own shields! What you never knew—and never bothered to ask—is that I always kept them down for you!"
She was shaking now, shaking with rage.
He seemed to swallow her words as if they tasted bitter. After the span of a breath, he asked, incredulously, "Why would you do that?"
"Because you constantly needed assurance that I wasn't in love with someone else! That I wasn't planning on leaving you and marrying your worst enemy!"
She saw him flinch at her reference to Lily. She didn't care. At this moment, she just wanted to hurt him.
He stared at her. And she stared back.
Silence grew between them like a sea.
"You promised me that if we survived the war, we would have a future together," Hermione said, tears welling. She retreated to the thought that now veiled every other. "And you left me."
"You're going to talk about promises?" Severus thundered. "You promised not to save me in the first place! You promised to accept the sentence from the Wizengamot! You promised—"
It was her turn to flinch at his vehemence.
He stopped abruptly, as if he were unwilling to say anything more.
A knock at the door made them both jump.
"Keep it down in there!"
Gathering her voice, Hermione called, "Yes, of course, Mrs Alby. I'm sorry."
Severus cast a Muffliato.
She regarded him from across the expanse of wooden table. "What did you do to me?" she whispered, not for the sake of the neighbor, but because it was hard to admit she'd been a victim of his magic.
Severus sighed. "A modified Obliviate, with an expiration date built in. I combined it with something similar to a Forget-Me-Not and, quite frankly, an altered Imperius."
"You'd been working on it, then."
He nodded. He'd planned it.
Bastard.
"I didn't know exactly what day it would dissipate, but I knew it would be roughly around now."
"I've been having dreams of you—of us—of what happened—for the last six months. Lately they've become longer and clearer, and after last week's, I realized they weren't dreams at all. They were memories. My memories."
She tried to quell the ache to run to him, to hold him, to tell him she still loved him, but the hurt of what he had done stripped her muscles away until she was left with only bones that were unable to obey his call.
"How could you do that to me?"
"You know why, Hermione. Because I loved you. Because I love you." He put his head in his hands. "I knew you wouldn't stop—I knew you'd never stop." He met her eye. "Do you remember when they sentenced me?"
She didn't answer.
"Do you?" It reached her ears as a snarl.
"I remember now, of course," she said flatly.
"You flew into a rage. You announced to everyone in the courtroom how 'fucking pig-headed' they were, and if they dared to condemn one hero they 'damn well better do it to all of us'. You personally threatened the Ministry and the Minister. Kingsley wanted you arrested. They had to carry you out of there. You terrified everyone in the room, including me."
She huffed a halfhearted laugh through her pain.
"You are the most stubborn person I have ever met. You would have allowed them to send you to a prison guarded by Dementors just to prove a point. I would have never allowed that to happen. Never."
"They wouldn't have sent me to Azkaban."
"Are you so certain?"
For a moment, she let the question hang in the air between them.
"I could have visited you. I could have petitioned for your early release. I could have been there when they finally released you. I—"
"No. I didn't want any of that for you."
"What about what I wanted?"
"Hermione…" He sighed. "You know it's not that simple."
"They were going to make an example of you," Severus continued. "It didn't matter what you had done during the war—hell, it didn't matter what any of us did during the war. You had become a threat. I had to hide you. I knew that once you were gone, they would find something else to keep them busy." He took a long breath. "I had to make you forget us, at least temporarily."
"You left me!"
"Because they sent me to Azkaban!"
"You lied to me." She fought to keep her voice steady. "You lied to me and you used me. Every day I wake up and don't understand why my life feels so empty." She stood. "And now I know."
He looked at her, his black eyes pleading.
"Get out," she said. "Get. Out."
Severus stood but kept her eye. "If you change your mind, you know where to find me."
And he spun away.
0o0o0
Three Months Later
The halls of Hogwarts had been meticulously repaired after the war, each new stone perfectly matched to the ancient, each new wall seemingly identical to the old. The intentional deception unnerved Hermione, in a way she was unable to articulate.
Perhaps because it felt like a ruse, a lie.
Perhaps because most things in her life were exactly that.
It didn't matter. She wasn't staying long.
Hermione strode the empty hallways she knew so well, her destination, a curved staircase still guarded by a timeworn gargoyle, a silent gatekeeper and solemn reminder of the headmaster that died not yet a decade ago, at the hands of the man she had loved.
…Severus…
She relayed the password to the stone creature and climbed the circular stairs slowly, as if her feet were unwilling to deliver her to her fate.
She'd stayed away for three months; the war, the Ministry, and the God-forsaken prison was no longer keeping them apart. It had been her. Her choice. She couldn't deny it.
And she could no longer bear that responsibility.
So it had come to this.
She'd come to find him.
The thought made her dizzy with anticipation, and wild with self-hatred.
Straightening her posture and her robes, Hermione knocked, pounding sharply on the ancient wood of the door to the Headmaster's office.
"Come."
She stepped inside.
"Hermione."
"Where is he, Minerva?"
0o0o0
Hermione blinked and surveyed the little home. Warm light sang through the windows of a sitting room crowded with books, as Bell Heather preened on either side of a stone walkway. The roar of waves resonated through the air.
Merlin, how had he managed to find it?
The cottage was almost exactly as they had pictured it during their breathless conversations murmured between tangled sheets, sweaty after their efforts to comfort each other from the horrors of the day. They would take turns describing each delicious detail of their future home: he would tell of the heather that would line the garden path; her words would paint the stone trail would lead down to a secluded, sandy shore.
It was as if the cottage had sprung from their desperate, fanciful dreams, ones they had only whispered, in case speaking too loudly might tempt fate.
War had made them hungry for hope. They had fashioned that hope into a facsimile made of stone and sand, as if picturing it clearly enough would will it into existence—and will themselves into surviving the war.
They had both survived.
And the cottage was sitting before her. Waiting.
0o0o0
Slowly, Hermione drew closer, the gravel under her feet announcing her arrival.
Severus wasn't inside.
She strolled out to the sand as the breeze played with her hair, only to find him sitting, elbows on bent knees, watching the tide, seemingly oblivious to her approach.
Of course, he knew she was there.
She settled down alongside him silently, her eyes ahead on the setting sun. If he were surprised to find her suddenly next to him, he didn't show it.
"Three months," he said finally.
"I mourned you a month for every year you were gone."
"How fitting." He sneered at the open water. "Was it to punish me or yourself? Because as I understood it, you were angry because I kept us apart."
"When you feel betrayed, you make unusual choices." She took a deep breath. "And I had some things that needed to be sorted."
When he didn't respond, she said, "There are things that I need you to know."
He said nothing.
"I almost married Harry. Some seven months gone."
Severus kept his eyes on the sea. She saw him grip his knees until his fingers turned white.
"I loved him. Well, I tried to. Funny thing was, it turns out he isn't you."
He cringed, but stayed silent and let her speak.
"I never knew what was wrong with us, but something always was. He…we…when he proposed and suggested that we get the bonding papers signed, I…I just couldn't, and I couldn't explain why."
"The Ministry would have told you that you were already bonded." His flat tone told her that she had wounded him. Badly.
"That would have been a bit of a surprise at the time." She sighed. "I hurt him so badly. I never wanted to."
She knew that her confession was necessary, yet on it hinged the very real chance that he would never speak to her again.
Silence.
Her heart leapt when he finally cleared his throat to speak. "I knew there was a possibility you would find a new life. I didn't want you to remember us until just after I was released. The magic did its job."
There was a finality to his tone. It terrified her.
"You owe me, Severus Snape."
He turned and raised an incredulous eyebrow at her.
Hermione took a deep breath. "Do you know what it's like to say goodbye to someone every single day and not know if you'll ever see them again?"
This, this was hard to admit. A weakness had been carved into her heart by the war, a paranoia that crept into her every relationship, a clingy desperation that coloured ordinary, everyday goodbyes.
"It was the war that did that, not me," he said offhandedly.
"But you never seemed bothered by it. Do you have any idea what that's like to live in fear that you'll never see the person you love most in the world ever again, when they leave for work, or go to a Death Eater meeting, or simply leave the flat to pick up take away?"
He gifted her a soft smile. "I do, Hermione. You know I do."
It was then that she remembered the pieces of his childhood, the precious ones he had shared with her, the bits of his soul that had found purchase on her own.
His father the sot.
His mother the abused.
…I'd leave the house and not know if I'd ever see my mum again…
"It was the same for me very time you left." As he spoke the words, Hermione heard the truth in them, but she still needed him to recognize the cost she had paid, every single day, for the last three years.
"So you lived it, too—even before the war. And we both lived throughit—together." She gathered her voice.
"But when I realized my dreams were actually memories, I also realized that one day, you actually didn't come back. Do you understand now? You did the worst thing you could have done—you made my worst fear come true. You spelled me, and disappeared. Suddenly. One day, you just never came home."
She looked into his fathomless eyes. "I never got to say goodbye."
"I never intended for it to be goodbye."
"Every single day, I can't shake that feeling that nothing around me has permanence. Nothing is safe."
"Hermione," he said gently, "I'm not going anywhere ever again."
"How do I know that?"
She let her question determine the distance between them.
"Why didn't you come for me right after you were released?" she asked.
"I was waiting for the spell to wear off." He met her eye. "Can you imagine your confusion if I had just shown up at your door before you had fully remembered?"
"My life was empty, and I had no understanding of why I felt an indescribable loss. Maybe it all would have made sense."
Severus looked out to the dark water in front of them. She allowed her gaze to follow his.
After a moment, she whispered, "I'm your wife, Severus. I wanted to help, and you didn't let me. I wanted to fight for you, and you took that away. That's who I am. You know that. I wanted to be there for you."
"You were. I knew where to find you," he replied softly.
"You—"
"I made Minerva take a vow to make sure you were set up in a flat. But I'm not talking about that." He took her hand. "Every memory we shared—everything we had together—that's what sustained me while I was in there. It was knowing you were safe. Every time I needed you, I found you in those memories."
"I didn't have any memories of you to sustain me."
"I'm sorry, Hermione."
"I would have done anything for you," she said. "I still would."
"Then forgive me."
He turned to her. His black eyes were sorrow and hope and desperation.
And all other things.
She surrendered to them.
"Come here," he said.
So she did.