Hermione Weasley coughed loudly, stirring up yet more dust in the dark room. She struggled to find her breath. Why had she decided to clean the spare room? She asked herself, waving her wand sharply to clear the air. Her eyes watered and her nose burned and she was already in a bad mood. With a sigh, she set her shoulders and reclaimed some of her resolution to clean the room before Harry and Ginny arrived to visit.
The room was cluttered with the accumulated jumble of years, all protected by a thick layer of dust. Hermione began to sort out old, forgotten gifts from newspapers and paperwork, unfinished children's sculptures from broken magical devices. She mercilessly banished objects, generously kept others and drove dust out more often than she would ever have thought possible just hours before.
In the midst of her cleaning, Hermione came across an old Yearbook. With a sinking feeling, she recognised it as from her Second Year – there were pink love hearts with 'GL' inside them scribbled on the inside cover. She sat on the bed, turning the pages and sinking into memories.
Hermione cautiously opened the page displaying Dumbledore's picture. She was quite unprepared for the lurch of emotions his image produced. She still reeled with the loss of such a leader of the Wizarding community. And yet, after hearing Harry's stories about the man, she felt an edge of anger slice through the grief. The way he had used people, the way he had pursued the Deathly Hallows at the cost of his family and friends, the way he had manipulated people into doing what he required from them instead of communicating clearly rattled her cage. She turned the page quickly, letting him settle into the past once more.
Minerva McGonagall smiled her tight-lipped smile, and Hermione smiled back at her. The woman's no-nonsense attitude had been a great inspiration when faced with her own children's squabbles. She turned the page.
Gilderoy Lockhart's picture dazzled out of his page, his wide white smile on prominent display. Hermione couldn't help but feel sad for the man knowing he would continue to grow old and die in the permanent spell-damage ward of St Mungo's. Yet, here he was in all his youthful arrogance.
With adult's eyes, Hermione looked him over. Yes, she could see that he was attractive – her mother-in-law and most other witches at the time had thought so also. But the perfection of his skin, the straightness of his nose and jawline, the carefully-styled hair and well-practiced roguish look seemed false to her now. He looked like the actor he was, and – although perhaps her greater knowledge was informing her vision – she fancied she could see a small tinge of opportunism lurking around the edges of his expression. She turned the page with force, banishing forever her youthful crush on the man.
On the following page was Severus Snape. Hermione blinked, surprised to see the picture, then chided herself inwardly for not expecting it. The inside of her eyelids displayed, for one long moment, the terrible vision of Snape's broken form bleeding out on the floor of the Shrieking Shack. She was surprised that she still felt guilty about blaming him for being behind most of Voldemort's attacks throughout her schooling.
Hermione looked at the man's face, and was intrigued by the contrast to Lockhart. Where Lockhart carried the prideful smile of someone who knew he commanded many accolades, Snape scowled grimly from the page. Hermione found she didn't blame him. He looked tired, his eyes empty as though he had seen too many horrors in his short life. His crooked nose now spoke to her of unset breaks and his stiff manner told of his uncomfortable fit in the society he had chosen. She felt a well of pity for the man he might have been, had he been allowed to grow up properly.
Harry had told her of Snape's history. He had kept most of the story from the press, because he said Snape would have killed him if he had publicised it. Hermione had agreed. It was a story of pain and stress that most people had luckily avoided in growing up. She had felt bad, then, for the way she had treated him at school. But now, looking at his picture, the feeling was amplified enormously.
Hermione sat looking at the picture, weight settling on her heart. Eventually, she closed the book and continued her cleaning. But the heaviness stayed with her for a long while.