Extinctus amabitur idem

Rating: MA
Warnings: DH-EWE, AU, M/F, some angst
Genre: Drama, Mystery/Suspense, Romance
Summary: When Hermione Granger realizes that important details of her memory are somehow missing, she finds that a powerful Charm has erased all memory of Severus Snape the night he was supposedly killed. In the process of regaining her memories, Hermione finds instead the man, but not the memories she so desperately needs to save him.

Disclaimer: The Harry Potter books and their characters are the property of JK Rowling. This is a work of fan-fiction. No infringement is intended, and no money is being made from this story. I am just borrowing the puppets, but this is my stage.

This work was original written for the 2010 SS/HG Fic Exchange on LiveJournal

Chapter One

I knew I was far too young to be losing my mind, and the concept of Alzheimer's was as foreign to the Wizarding world as online shopping. All the same, the fact that I was mixing up details of my past was alarming sign of something not being quite right. Dementia was not something that ran in the Granger family, and I had not hit my head enough times to explain the gaps and misinformation my brain was feeding back. At first, I thought it was post-traumatic stress. I had read of cases of post-traumatic stress sometimes interfering with memories, and for a while I chalked it up to the fact that I, at the age of seventeen, had experienced enough wartime traumas to need intensive therapy.

Psychology was as much a pseudo-science in the Wizarding World as it was to some people in the Muggle world, and I, for one, considered psychology that—something not substantially based on empirical fact. Yet, here I was, sitting in a waiting room, hoping to get my head 'shrinked.'

Dr. Martha Jones was a well-respected psychiatrist, and like myself, Muggleborn. She was in her sixties, an elegant woman with perfect ebony skin and sparkling violet eyes, and when she admitted me to her office, motioning for me to sit down on an antique velvet upholstery chaise, I noticed that she had warded her office for silence. I was sure her Muggle clients felt much at ease with the embedded wards in the walls, inducing a sense of security. I sat, and looked at the walls with its fine décor, warm colors, and a window overlooking a small park. Dr. Jones sat down in an armchair across a glass-topped coffee table, my file in her long fingers, and a pair of half-moon reading glasses perched on her long nose.

This was the first meeting, and being such, scheduled to last an hour and half to give her time to become acquainted with whatever it was I needed to be analyzed. I was nervous, just as I was always nervous when about to open myself up to scrutiny.

"You just finished an apprenticeship with Minerva McGonagall?"

I cleared my throat and crossed my ankles, leaning slightly into the side of the chaise, not sure whether to lay back or sit on the edge. Personally, I thought the chaise was a bit stereotypical of a psychiatrist's office and not exactly functional for someone like me who liked eye contact. I did not feel the need to lay back and relax, spilling my guts to a doctor who took notes in the distance.

"Yes, and I have an interview at the Ministry later this week—that is part of the reason I am here."

Yes, my interview for a position in the Department of Mysteries... I knew the process in which one was to become an Unspeakable, and I knew that there would be psychological screenings. The Department did not want someone who had the slightest mental deficiency or defect. Megalomaniacs and kleptomaniacs would never be able to work in the Department of Mysteries for obvious reasons, but what about a young woman who kept confusing her memories? I doubted that the Department would want someone who could not remember important details of history. It did not matter that I was Hermione bloody Granger, friend of Harry Potter, and my reputation, no matter how important, meant little to the Department of Mysteries. It only mattered that I was of sound mind and body, able to face whatever challenges presented to me. I did not feel that my mind was sound at all...

"And you have written here that you are concerned that stress has made you unable to pass your interview?"

I nodded, hoping that the hasty notes I had written on the admittance form were legible.

Dr. Jones set the file down on her lap and removed her glasses to smile at me. "Well, I certainly hope that I can help, Miss Granger."

I agreed. I knew less than a week was not nearly enough time, but it was a start.

"I should start by saying that whatever you say will be kept confidential. Of course, I am sure you know this, but I must say it aloud."

I nodded again.

"I do offer a service, casting a series of vows, if that would be more reassuring?"

"I do not suffer from paranoia, Doctor, just post-traumatic stress," I said with a smirk.

Dr. Jones chuckled, and crossed her legs, the hiss of her pants legs the only sound in the silent office. I inhaled and waited for the Doctor's most logical question.

"Tell me about your memory loss?"

"I would not call it 'loss' per se, but confusion," I corrected the Doctor.

Dr. Jones nodded, "Then about this 'confusion.'"

And so, I started.

Several months before, I was sitting in the garden at the Burrow, having just returned from a tenth anniversary memorial service at Hogwarts. The occasion also marked the end of my apprenticeship with Professor McGonagall, but the true reason for my return to Hogwarts had been to unveil a plaque to mark the place where Dumbledore had fallen. It was needless to think about all the emotions that played through the crowd that had gathered, let alone Harry, who was silent through the whole affair. The occasion was nothing short of depressing, but important.

Lest we forget...

The gardens outside the Burrow were a marked change to the cold rain at Hogwarts, and drinking cold drinks and watching Harry's first-born toddle in the grass erased the depression. All the same, we were all waxing nostalgic. It had been years since we were all together—myself, Ron, Ginny, Harry, Molly, Arthur and the children who had been born in those ten years since the death of Dumbledore. Molly was playing with her grandson and Ginny was lying in a hammock, rubbing her swollen belly and dozing.

"Has it really been ten years?" Ron asked and I looked to my old friend and former lover as he rubbed condensation from his icy glass of pumpkin juice. "Will it feel so long after twenty?"

Harry remained silent, sitting next to me, watching Ginny as her hand stopped moving over her belly and she fell asleep.

"I think so," Arthur answered from beside Ron, his voice trying to introduce a little cheer among us. "I feel like an old man now that I am a grandfather, and that my twilight years have come and gone."

I smirked. Arthur had barely aged since those darker days, even with the loss of his son, and the death of so many of our friends.

"It is so strange," Ron murmured. "Everything seems like a blur, and even in ten years it is hard for me to remember their faces..."

It was hard for me as well, hard to remember the faces of our friends who had died, and I felt ashamed. I could not even remember the sound of Dumbledore's voice anymore, or how Fred's laugh sounded. It was a sin, if I believed in such a thing, to forget, and I bowed my head.

"Do you remember, Hermione?" Ron asked, and I looked to him, missing his initial question to me.

"Hm?"

"Snape? Then how we had to leave him? I think that was maybe the worst..."

I blinked. "Snape? Professor Snape?"

Harry regarded me then.

"How we never found his body?"

I frowned. I had not thought about Professor Snape in a long time, but as I tried to recall him, I suddenly drew a blank.

"We didn't?"

Harry blinked his green eyes at me, but still remained silent.

Ron set his glass down in the grass and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, regarding me with confusion. "Yeah, when we went back to the Shack, there was only blood...don't you remember?"

I could not. In fact, I could not even remember being in the 'Shack.' I supposed Ron meant the Shrieking Shack. I shook my head.

"Do you not remember V-Voldemort...the snake?"

No, I could not. I remember coming through to the Room of Requirement, I remember meeting with Neville, I remember how Harry and I searched the Room for the diadem, but I... I shook my head again. I knew we must have found Rowena Ravenclaw's diadem, destroyed the Horcrux, but how did we do it?

"He gave me the memories..." Harry said finally, in a whisper. "Memories of my mother..."

How could Professor Snape done that? I could feel my mouth working, but nothing was coming out. I could remember many things, but the harder I tried to recall the tall, dark, taciturn man, the less I could recall. The last image I had of Severus Snape was the night he murdered Albus Dumbledore, and even then he had fled past me with Draco Malfoy as I was trying to fight off Amycus Carrow... I remembered that he looked at me in passing, his pale face screwed up in a scowl more intense than I had ever seen it in the classroom.

Merlin, I could not remember my marks I received in his class when he taught DADA!

My hand moved to my useless, flapping mouth, and I sat back in my old lawn chair, eyes focused on the grass of the garden.

The touch of Harry's hand on my shoulder caused me to gasp and I suddenly realized that everyone, with the exception of a softly snoring Ginny and the baby, were looking at me as if I had something growing out of my face.

Harry patted my shoulder, rising and going to Ginny to wake her, and soon all eyes moved pointedly away from me. They thought I was going barmy, I supposed, but no more was said on the subject of my memory loss.

That night, I returned to my flat in London and started searching boxes. I had kept clippings of everything the Prophet had printed in the wake of the War. There were lists of names of those killed in action, printed memorials, details written up by interviews with those who survived, and exclusives on the trials of the surviving Death Eaters. I found Snape's name on the list of those Missing in Action, and the in-absentia trial where he was exonerated with Harry's testimony. I even found my own account of the War and Last Battle, but I could not remember speaking the words. I had not been asked about Severus Snape, it seemed.

After the trials, there was nothing in my clippings remotely related to Snape, and it appeared as if the matter of the missing body was of no importance to the Wizarding World. This disturbed me, and as I lay in bed that night, I kept recalling the events of that night in May almost ten years ago. My personal timeline was oddly truncated, whole hours missing and replaced with unexplainable blankness.

The next morning, I performed a few diagnostic spells on myself, finding no abnormalities, finding that I had no hexes or curses working on my body. All I found was that I was nearly thirty years old, slightly overweight from lack of physical activity, suffering from allergies to the dust I had stirred up by going through boxes, and over tired. I had not slept much the night before. Other than the minor physical deficiencies, I was completely fine, but I was not...

I located my copy of 'The Last Great War,' Luna Lovegood had written a few years before, part of a series of articles published in the Quibbler to which she now owned. I had read the book once, but even that memory seemed oddly faded in my brain. Luna, despite her eccentricities, had taken time to write about the events of the Last Battle in the end chapters. She was somewhere in Scandinavia now, working on cryptozoological research with her husband and returned the Quibbler to something short of a tabloid newspaper dealing with what the Quibbler had been devoted to—the existence of the paranormal in the Wizarding World.

'The matter of Severus Snape has never been quite explained,' Luna had written and I had to give her credit for being quite the wordsmith. 'Upon the return to the Shrieking Shack (see full notation about the Shack's history in Chapter Two), Harry Potter and company found that the body of Severus Snape was missing. The amount of blood was evidence enough that the man had died from the snakebite witnessed earlier. However, the body, wand, and any trace of the former Headmaster were missing and never located. During the Ministry trials, it was speculated that a Death Eater had removed the body to another location to either destroy the remains or inter them. It was not until after the trials did the matter of Snape's involvement with the Order of the Phoenix was revealed. There is much speculation among historians as to who had removed the body and why, but this writer will leave speculation out of this analysis. Currently, Severus Snape is listed as Missing in Action, presumed Dead.'

I could not remember reading this short paragraph about Snape's supposed death, and as I closed the thick tome, I tried to recall my supposed witnessing of other deaths.

I remembered Voldemort's final death, and if I knew that if I would ever forget that event, I would commit myself to St. Mungo's. I remembered Molly slaying Bellatrix Lestrange, and I remembered Dobby... I tried to distance myself from the memories of losing my friends, and this was the hardest thing to do—I remembered Sirius, I remembered when we got word that Mad Eye Moody was killed, I remembered Fred, I remembered the moment when we thought Harry was dead... No matter how I tried, and although I was supposedly only one of three people to witness it, I could not remember Severus Snape.

"Why does this bother you, Hermione?" Dr. Jones asked.

I was suddenly back in the office with Dr. Jones, tracing a pattern in the velvet of the chaise, leaning fully against the back.

"Because it was important," I sighed. "Because Severus Snape was important."

Dr. Jones crossed her arms about her waist, leaning back into her chair. "You admired him?"

I shrugged. "He was my professor, and he was brilliant, but I would not go as far to say that I admired him. I esteemed him."

"And you have been examined at St. Mungo's?"

I shook my head. "I did not want to bother. If anything, I trust my own ability."

Dr. Jones nodded and moved her hands to her lap. "Would you consent to me examining you?"

I snorted. "You can do that?"

"I am a trained Healer, Hermione, besides my Ph. D. I do have a specialization..."

"Yes, yes, if you think it would be helpful," I sighed.

Dr. Jones nodded again, and I was starting to find it slightly annoying that she nodded so much at my words. However, when she rose, drawing a wand concealed in her sleeve, I was tuned into that wand, fifteen-inch balsam wood and by the weight of it in her hand, and I determined that it must have a unicorn hair core. I tried to relax when Dr. Jones sat on the chaise next to me, inhaling her perfume of a mixture of sandalwood and musk.

"It might help if you close your eyes," Dr. Jones said softly, and I did so, waiting.

A faint tickling spread from the crown of my head to my toes, and I knew the Doctor was performing a simple diagnostic spell, much like my own. Then, the tickling turned to an itch behind my eyes, as if I had caught a mote of dust behind my eyelashes. I reached up to rub, but Dr. Jones made a tutting noise and I dropped my hand to my lap again.

"This might feel a little uncomfortable, Hermione, but do endure?"

I nodded.

The itching turned into a burning behind my eyes and I felt the need to sneeze as the burning moved to my ears and nose. Then, the light I saw through my eyelids turned from red to black. The sudden change startled me as the burning began to fade, replaced by refreshing coolness.

'Curse you; you should have let me die...'

The voice had come from a distance, sounding as if spoken through a tin can, echoing and thin. I knew the voice, and as quickly as the voice had come, it faded, and I opened my eyes to stare at Dr. Jones who was frowning at me in a manner that made me feel as if I had done something wrong.

Dr. Jones rose and slipped her wand back into her sleeve, moving to sit down in her chair. We regarded each other for a long time. When the Doctor posed her next question, not to me but to a point just behind me, I fell against the back of the chaise and covered my mouth.

"How long have you been following her, Severus Snape?"

In the nearly ten years since the battle at Hogwarts, I lived my life much as I wanted it. I divided my time between Harry and Ron, and studying at University before my apprenticeship. I took a flat in London where I would retreat when I wanted to be alone, and I attended the family functions at the Burrow. Ron and I had started and ended a relationship not long after the War, and decided to remain good friends. The truth was, however, I had purposely distanced myself from my oldest friends, claiming to want to do well in University, studying Physics.

I had wanted to believe the unease I sometimes inspired in my old friends had much to do with what we had gone through together. We were growing up, and some things and some memories had to be forgiven and forgotten. Yet, I was aware that now that the War was over, the kinship we felt was waning. We had been brought together out of necessity, or by fate, what have you, but now that we were able to be our true selves, the 'Golden Trio' found that we really did not have much in common. I would always be ambitious and inquisitive; Ron would always be oddly brilliant, but more suited for more jocular pursuits. And Harry...Harry would always be brooding, introspective, and somewhat miserable.

I loved them, correction, I love them, but as well as we functioned as a unit, we needed to be individuals. And so, I went to University, aligned myself with people much like myself, but often returned to the boys when I needed that sense of security and familiarity. In the times when I was away from Harry and Ron, I felt a freedom I had never known. In those free moments, I never felt as if I were somehow cut off from the Wizarding World, I still was a witch no matter how much time I spent in the Muggle world. All around me, even in Muggle London, I felt magic running in a vein deep under my feet, or in the air. Magic followed me, curiosity clothed me, and I never felt lonely.

All the same, I was solitary, living alone, with not even a familiar since Crookshanks died two years after the War. I did not feel the need to pursue personal relationships beyond a few dates with fellow students, or the times Ron would show up on my doorstep wanting a quick go-around, which inspired a mixture of anger and guilt afterward. I always felt that I had been rewarded somehow for all that suffering I had seen and experienced, rewarded with confidence and ability.

It never occurred to me until recently that the magic I felt was not natural. It also never occurred to me that the satisfaction I felt in my work, my wellbeing, and myself was not exactly of my own making. Introspection and self-analysis rarely came, and I was a goal-oriented personality. Once I graduated with honors from University, I went on to the next goal of apprenticing in Transfiguration and Arithmancy, and once that apprenticeship was completed, I would go on to interview for a position as an Unspeakable and work my way toward another goal. These were things I wanted, things I needed, and I did not think for a moment that I would not be able to do these things until I started to find that my own memory had somehow been edited and replaced with darkness.

There was a voice inside me, and I called it my Ego, that compelled me to continue with my studies. I always did talk to myself, weighing options, working out logistics, and working through challenges. My Ego was my mind's way of keeping order to my thoughts, and I never denied this voice when it spoke to me. I assumed everyone had this inner voice, whether they paid much attention to it or not. Call it conscience; call it inner self, but my inner voice had the shape and tone of Severus Snape, a man I did admire, though I would never admit it. I supposed Harry's inner voice sounded a lot like Dumbledore or his parents, and Ron had an inner voice of his own. These things were not something anyone ever talked about, and why should they?

But here I was, sitting in a psychiatrist's office in London, and just behind me, unseen and unfelt, was Severus Snape.

"How long have you been following Hermione?"

I felt my eyes grow wide at the insanity of the question. Yes, it was insanity.

'Ever since the night the Dark Lord was destroyed,' the voice came, and I could not determine where the voice had come from. I whirled, standing, and let my wand fly from my skirt pocket to my hand.

There was no one besides Dr. Jones who had also risen from her seat.

"You are no ghost?" Dr. Jones asked, her eyes still pointed behind the chaise where I had been sitting.

'No, I am quite alive.'

The voice was still distant, and obviously audible to Dr. Jones. I could not see anyone, not even the hazy outline that would alert human eyes to the manifestation of a ghost.

"Why are you following Hermione?" the Doctor asked, taking a step toward me, but not looking at me.

'You are quite impressive, Doctor, with your spell work, but I do not believe you were one of my students?'

The Doctor smirked and laid a hand on my elbow to lower my wand hand. "I studied in France, Professor, courtesy of Madame Maxine. Now, could you please explain yourself?"

Silence.

My mouth was quivering, in fact, my whole body quaked and even if I could somehow cast a defensive spell, my aim would have been terribly off.

'I do believe that Miss Granger should do that, she is the one with the answer.'

The voice had not changed from my memories, and the intonation was just as sardonic and biting. It frightened me, intimidated me upon hearing it with my own ears. For years it had only been inside my head, and much softer.

"I... I..."

I was completely useless, in a state of shock I had not known since the War.

Then as if from the wallpapered wall, a flash came, and suddenly Dr. Jones was blown from my side, flying across the room to fall into her chair.

'Obliviate.'

I whimpered, seeing for only an instant, the outline of a shape near the window. The spell had brought the shape into being, a tall, thin shape with sharp outline. In that instant, I saw a wand, and then nothing but the park outside behind the fading shape of a man...

'Destroy that file, Miss Granger, and flee.'

I obeyed, though my brain was screaming to resist. The file Dr. Jones had with all my information was Vanished, and I, my body somehow not in my control, moved to the office door and left the waiting area without anyone seeing me. I could feel the press of a body against my back and a wand tip digging into my ribs.

I was a hostage to an invisible man.