Shards Behind A Golden Frame
Summary: What lies behind wizard paintings and photographs? How much of the real person is contained in some pigmented magic, behind the glass? Do they have a soul? When a wizard becomes attached to the painting of a dead student, is he really in love with her, or fragmented shards of the person she was? HG/SS
AN: Slightly AU—applying some components of HBP while not others. Not beta read, so please forgive errors.
--
I've been looking in the mirror for so long.
That I've come to believe my soul's on the other side.
All the little pieces falling, shatter.
Shards of me,
Too sharp to put back together.
Too small to matter,
But big enough to cut me into so many little pieces.
If I try to touch her
And I bleed,
I bleed,
And I breathe,
I breathe no more.
--
Severus Snape was in a foul mood on this particular muggy and scented summer evening. Not that this was a particularly odd state for him to be in, but it was considerably fouler than usual. Severus's foul moods were quite different from his rages, which were what the students usually thought as his foul moods. A dark minded Snape was quiet. He did not storm; in fact, he hardly even spoke. Foul moods were moods inspired by deep thought, and therefore that is what they consisted of. Pacing, scowling, muttering, and thinking.
The man tended to add some dramatic effects during the school season—it would not do to see the feared Potions Master speaking to himself and pacing about like a deranged man. He added the yelling and the punishments to encourage others to leave him be while he puzzled out whatever terrible problem he faced.
Remus Lupin sensed that this was a different kind of problem the Potions Master faced. It didn't seem to involve sums or magic or potions. The man was distraught, and Remus was rather confused. He'd just returned home from the Prince estate (which was also partly his by inheritance, due to the deaths of all other viable heirs), where he went for at least two weeks every summer to check up on the home and it's assets. He had seemed to be in quite a cheerful mood—or what was considered cheerful for the dour man. He had made a few sparse comments in years past that he found the home a relaxing place, conducive to studying and experimentation. The other half was owned by a distant half-blood cousin who was well renowned in France for her Charms research. Apparently the two spent a couple of weeks arguing over Charms and Potions, and aiding one another with their research.
The sudden change in moods was not entirely unusual in itself, but the anger and puzzlement being over a kind of emotion was. It was not that Severus Snape was incapable of emotion—he just usually chose to ignore them.
"Good evening, Severus," Remus said calmly as he walked pass the man. He was duly ignored. Remus stopped and tried to make sense of the quiet and quickly spoken words that Severus was speaking.
"If you don't mind me asking…what is wrong?" Remus asked softly, entirely expecting him to get a snarled reply along the lines of "I do mind, now bugger off!". But he was completely astounded when Snape turned to look at him, his dark eyes stormy and deep.
"They put the bloody portrait in my laboratory! In my laboratory! Without asking!" he raged, indignant at the invasion of his privacy. But the emotion in his face showed his true feelings. Yes, he was annoyed at the presumption, but that wasn't the cause of all this.
Remus felt a slight pull of sadness in his gut, as if he almost knew the answer to the question he was about to ask.
"Whose portrait?" he asked quietly.
"Hermione Granger's," he said, and the voice he replied in was rather limp.
Remus winced. Ministry Officials really did know how to rub a tragedy in, didn't they?
"But why? She didn't die in your lab," he said conversationally, and Snape turned away again.
"Some tripe about how my classroom was where the "brilliant young heroine" attended her last NEWT, where she then proceeded to almost best my score. Therefore, it was the proper place for her photograph. Why not put it in the Gryffindor Common Room? The trophy room? Or even Minerva's office? Why in my lab!" He was getting worked up, and this was rather unsettling.
"Severus, you well know they couldn't put it in the common room. Those students knew her, how would it feel for a picture of your dead classmate to be brooding over anything you did in your common room?"
"But I bloody knew her too! I don't want a bleeding picture of Hermione Granger brooding over what I do in my lab!" he snapped, and then as an afterthought added, "Because she was an annoying know it all," but they both knew it was a feeble cover.
"It can't be that bad, Severus. It's not like it's real. She's dead…it's only a photograph."
In hindsight, Remus thought that might have not been the best—or truest thing to say.
--
Hermione Granger didn't really remember a birth or a waking up or anything. She wasn't, and then suddenly, she was. Memories stretched out before her, with the opaqueness of watching someone else through a silvery mirror. They were her memories, she knew this, but she felt totally detached from them—like they weren't hers at all, even though she could remember living them, and as absurd as it sounded, remember remembering them.
When her eyes finally focused, she couldn't see anything but darkness. She was slightly queasy, too, as if she was constantly in motion. This made her so sick, in fact, that she put her head on her hands and went to sleep, and didn't wake from phantom dreams for a long, long time. Perhaps she did, but didn't notice, because when she opened her eyes all she saw was that never ending darkness. At times, she even doubted her existence. She couldn't figure out where she was, but assumed it was the hospital wing. She'd hurt herself or been attacked or something, and now they wanted her to rest. So she did.
When light finally came again, it was searing and painful, but it was a blessed relief to her. This was proof that she was real, not just some forgotten shadow.
Hermione's surroundings were familiar—it was her room at Hogwarts, the one she'd had the past year as head girl. The only difference was that the window looked into another vaguely familiar room.
"I was just terribly hurt, and so they connected my quarters to a teachers', to make sure I am alright," she told herself, but with each passing day, the rationalizations grew fewer and feebler. She finally had to admit to herself that she had no clue what was happening—no one answered her calls, and the room she could see before her was always empty.
Until he came. Admittedly, Severus Snape had been the absolute last person she'd expected to see (she would have much preferred Harry or Ron…or even Ginny, she told herself) but he too, was a welcome—if somewhat painful--sight.
He hadn't been very happy to see her. He'd stared right into her room (Hermione still hadn't grasped the odd dimensional difference between her room and the one she could see) and then immediately turned and walked back through the door.
Now she was pacing angrily. She had no clue what was going on, and Snape had been gone for hours. She hoped that he would come back, because she'd given up entirely on figuring out what was going on, and it had been a long time since she'd been able to talk to anybody.
He eventually returned, looking rather the worse for wear. He came into his laboratory (Hermione had been annoyed to realize that she was looking out over the NEWT level lab that also served as Snape's private lab for experimentation. She couldn't believe she didn't recognize it, but then her memory had been rather foggy as of late) messy and very annoyed looking.
"Professor!" she called out, and Snape gave her a sharp wave of his hand.
"Not now," he snapped, and Hermione's anger broke.
"Don't you "not now" me! I've been in this room for at least a week, and in the Hospital or heaven knows where for weeks before that! I want to know what is going on, why I can't get out of my room, and why the hell I've been looking out over your empty lab for the past week!"
Snape froze. Very few people spoke to him like that, Hermione was sure, and she also thought she hadn't ever cursed in front of a teacher.
"You honestly do not know?" He asked calmly, stepping closer to her little window.
"No, I do not," she fumed, crossing her arms and glaring at him.
"Miss…Granger" he seemed to hesitate at her name, "come as close to my laboratory as you can," he instructed her. Hermione gave him an odd look, then proceeded to follow his directions.
"Now look down,"
She did so again. She could see a gilded gold frame surrounding her window, and at the bottom was a small silver plaque with some writing in a fancy font. Fortunately, after seven years of reading Harry, Ron, and sometimes Neville's handwriting upside down, she could read this easily.
Hermione Granger
Head Girl
1979-1998
"What!" She shrieked. It was rather high pitched and girly in it's anger and panic, a rather unHermione-like sound, but she didn't care at the moment.
"You are a photograph of the late Hermione Granger, it seems," Snape said softly, and she shook her head violently.
"No, I am Hermione. I know I am! I'm not dead! I don't feel dead!" She cried, and somewhere in the back of her mind she was surprised at how very…gentle Snape was seeming to be.
"Perhaps you are, but the real…pardon, the physical Hermione died over two months ago."
And then, with a sudden lurch, Hermione knew the darkness again. And this time she welcomed it.
--
A/N: Thoughts? Just the beginning. More soon, if people seem to like the idea. Thanks for reading.
