AUTHOR'S NOTE: J.K. Rowling owns Harry Potter, as always. Not me.

"Lately, I've been, I've been thinking
I want you to be happier, I want you to be happier

When the evening falls
And I'm left there with my thoughts
And the image of you being with someone else
Well, that's eating me up inside
But we run our course, we pretend that we're okay
Now if we jump together at least we can swim
Far away from the wreck we made

Then only for a minute
I want to change my mind
'Cause this just don't feel right to me
I want to raise your spirits
I want to see you smile but
Know that means I'll have to leave..."

-Marshmello feat. Bastille, "Happier"

x-x-x

She pulled her face from the pensieve for the thousandth time.

Why did she keep doing this to herself?

Hermione sighed deeply, pulling her deep maroon, Ministry issue robes tighter around her shoulders in an attempt to ward off the chill that was inevitable this far deep in the bowls of the Department of Mysteries. As gently as she could, she scooped the silver, shimmering memory strands back into their unbreakable vial and placed the vial back on the shelf where it was first placed nine years ago.

Of course, she knew why she kept re-watching them, why she had continued to watch them over and over nearly every day since she was hired as an Unspeakable. The internal question was, as always, completely rhetorical.

It was the only way she could see him anymore.

So she watched them. Over and over.

She had them memorized.

Fuck.

Hermione rubbed her forehead— she could already feel the beginnings of a migraine that threatened to ruin the rest of her day. If someone had told her when she was still at Hogwarts that after graduation, she would take a job at the Ministry of Magic as an Unspeakable, she would have kindly shown them the way to the Janus Thickey ward at St. Mungo's. Once the Ministry had failed them so spectacularly during the war, she had wanted absolutely nothing to do with it. Even when Harry and Ron had decided to become Aurors, she had never intended to follow them to a place she regarded with such contempt.

And yet here she was: a single, 28 year old Unspeakable who, really, only took the job in order to have access to a dead man's memories.

What the hell had her life become?

Once the war ended, all of her friends and everyone else she'd known had picked up the pieces and pushed forward, determined to live their lives to the fullest. Ron, to their collective shock, married Daphne Greengrass and promptly had a litter of red-haired children; Harry was quietly seeing Draco Malfoy, though why either of them imagined it was a secret was beyond her as it was glaringly obvious; and Ginny, who was three months pregnant, was happily engaged to Dean Thomas. Hell, even Neville and Luna Lovegood were living together now.

Hermione was the only one left who hadn't moved on.

She likely never would.

She slumped against the ornately carved stone basin and stared morosely at the shelf of various memories that were to never be revealed to the public, thinking back to when her life had started going to shit.

The Shrieking Shack.

Before then, she had never really noticed and even if she had, she always had much more pressing things on her mind. You know, like Voldemort and the impending end of the world. He had always just been an authority figure in her life, an admittedly intimidating one, but one that she implicitly knew she could trust. More times than she could count, Hermione had chalked up the anxious fluttering that erupted in her abdomen at the sound of his deep, silky baritone to nothing more than a conditioned response to his impressive presence. She blamed the scorching blushes that his passing gaze in Potions caused her on the bottomless obsidian of his deep-set, Occluded eyes. She attributed the shockingly inappropriate dreams to her overactive teenage hormones and the obliviousness of all boys she had ever gone to school with.

She never once imagined it was all because of something else.

Not until the Shrieking Shack.

She, Harry, and Ron had all watched in horror as Voldemort set Nagini on him. As Voldemort levitated the snake in her opaque protective bubble directly over his head, Hermione had the overwhelming instinct to burst in and save him. They all knew what was going to happen, even he knew. It was clear in his eyes that he knew it was the end for him, yet he never flinched. Not once.

Hermione had lunged forward, intent on doing something, but Harry and Ron held her back and muffled her panicked screams with their large hands over her mouth.

So the three of them had watched as Nagini tore open his throat.

They continued to hold her back as she struggled with all her adrenaline-fueled strength, only releasing her once Voldemort and Nagini had Apparated away. She burst into the room and immediately began assessing her memories of Potions lessons and healing books to determine the best way to help him. Not ten seconds later, Hermione had Accio'd vials of Dittany, Blood-Replenishing Potion, and anti-venin from the depths of her magically expanded beaded bag. He gargled something unintelligible and clutched at her arm but she kept going, forcing vial after vial of potions down his ravaged throat as she poured the Dittany onto the gaping, jagged skin.

When his glassy, obsidian eyes had caught hers, she knew.

She was in love with him.

Severus Snape; her greasy, acerbic, Death Eater professor.

Head over fucking heels.

She had pushed harder then, rubbing Dittany into his neck with her left hand and casting every healing spell she had ever learned with her right. Sweat trickled down the back of her neck at the sheer amount of magic she was expending but it didn't matter. She would have given every last ounce of magic she had if it meant saving his life.

But it was too late and the anti-venin wasn't strong enough.

Eventually, his grip on her arm slackened and he turned his gaze to Harry.

"Look… at… me…"

The silver memory strands slid from his eyes, his mouth, his nose as he looked at her best friend with desperation. Harry had snatched the empty vial from Hermione's hands and used it to capture the memories, never once taking his eyes from Snape's.

Then, he was gone.

Hermione remembered very little after that. She vaguely recalled a lot of screaming and begging and pleading, vaguely remembered clutching the front of his blood-soaked robes so tightly that her knuckles where white, vaguely recollected Harry and Ron forcibly dragging her from the Shack as she fought them with all her remaining strength.

Yes, she remember so little.

When they had finally watched his memories for the first time, Hermione was surprised to find that she was not jealous over the affection he had felt for Harry's mother. In fact, it was quite the opposite. She had felt… relieved. Since he died, the guilt had been eating away at her like a flesh-eating bacteria, always reminding her that he never knew someone cared for him the way she did. Always reminding her that he had died thinking he was unloved and unwanted. But when she saw, when she felt the strength of his relationship with Lily Evans-Potter in his memories, a tiny sliver of the guilt was assuaged.

Even if Lily never returned his romantic feelings, she had been his friend once and he had never forgotten.

The guilt eased just a little.

Now, nearly nine years later, the guilt was still there but it had a new friend to keep it company. The regret had crept in slowly, so slowly she hadn't even realized until it was far too late. Now, the guilt and regret she felt were like best friends and they never, not once, let her forget that they were there.

Even if it had been when he was dying, she should have told him how she felt.

But she didn't.

The regret was crushing.

Hermione forced herself to move away from the pensieve; she had already been down here far too long for her flimsy excuse to hold up. She may as well go back to her desk and try to get through some of the mountainous paperwork that was undoubtedly waiting for her.

She sighed again. Being an Unspeakable was not nearly as glamorous as everyone assumed it was.

x-x-x

She was almost to the lift when something glinted in the dim firelight and caught her eye. Sitting on a tarnished brass stand only a few feet from the gilded Ministry lift was a shimmering, opaque crystal ball not unlike the prophecies that resided on the floor above her. In fact, it looked exactly the same. Hermione knelt down, careful not to touch it. That was, after all, lesson one of being an Unspeakable in the Department of Mysteries— never touch something if you weren't a hundred percent sure of what it was and what it did. Quite a few of them had been killed or disappeared that way over the years from such foolishness.

The sphere, like all other crystal balls she had ever seen, was full of a soft gray smoke that twisted and danced under the glass. There was something… something dark moving inside the smoke. She leaned closer, her brow furrowing in concentration as she tried to make out the dark shapes. What was that? It looked so familiar…

Her breath caught in her throat as the dark figure materialized inside the glass.

Severus Snape.

He was resplendent in his immaculately tailored onyx robes, his skin a glowing alabaster and his hair a long, silk sheet of ravens-wing black. No longer far too thin and bony, he was lithe and slender as he moved through the smoke. His eyes sparkled.

Had she ever seen his eyes sparkle like that? Her heart twisted at the glaring answer; no, she hadn't. They'd never had a reason to.

What was this thing? Was this some sort of torture device, created to drive a person mad by showing them their deepest, most impossible desires? It reminded her of the Mirror of Erised, which now also resided on one of the floors of the Department of Mysteries…

A floor that she avoided with a quiet desperation, for if she ever saw him beside her, even in a mirror, she knew she would never leave again.

She watched him moving around inside of the glass sphere for far too long. This was some sort of trick, some sort of Dark curse meant to drive a person mad with longing. It was the only explanation that made sense. Why else would a random crystal ball show her the very thing, the very man, she desired above all things? No, she wouldn't fall victim to it; she knew better. She would walk away and perhaps suggest to one of her fellow Unspeakables that it was something that should be destroyed. Yes, yes that was the most sensible plan.

Hermione stood, straightening her hideous robes in preparation for returning to the top floor where their desks sat, when the image within the smoke changed. Severus was no longer alone, but instead he was holding someone in his long, slender arms. He was holding… no, no it couldn't be… was that…?

She gasped sharply and grabbed the crystal ball with both hands, bringing it to her face.

…Was that her?

Inside the smoke, Severus tilted Hermione's chin up with a crook of his finger and lowered his head to press his lips to hers.

Hermione screwed her eyes shut, cradling the glass sphere to her heart.

"I would have made him happy," she whispered fiercely, tears burning her eyes behind the lids. "I would have done anything for him to be happy."

The crystal ball warmed in her hands until it was almost scorching. Her eyes snapped open to see that the image was gone and the smoke was now a roiling crimson. It was too hot, burning her palms in its intensity, but when she tried to let go she found she couldn't. It was like there was a Permanent Sticking Charm on the glass.

The severity of what she had done hit her like a herd of stampeding hippogriffs and Hermione desperately tried to drop it. She never should have touched it! She knew she shouldn't, she knew it was something malicious the moment it conjured his image but seeing her in his arms, even if it was only once, was too tempting to resist.

She was fucked and it was searing into her skin.

Hermione quickly scanned the crystal ball to see if there was something, anything written on it to try and determine what might happen to her. Just below her thumbs there was a tiny inscription etched into the glass.

HEA

Happiness Ever After

She tried to recall if she had ever heard of something like that before, if she had ever come across any reference of something similar, but the pain of the burning glass was slicing across her mind, rendering any and all thought almost completely useless. Hermione fell to the cool marble floor, whacking the ball desperately against it to try and dislodge it from her grip but it was no use. There was nothing more she could do but wait for whatever this artifact intended to do to her.

Tears of agony dripped from her eyes and blurred her vision. Had the pain not been so intense, she would have closed her eyes and missed the inscription change, but as it happens she could not close her eyes and therefore did see the carved etching shift and change.

Happiness is only a kiss away…

But beware the price you'll have to pay.

There was not time for Hermione to consider the implication of the words before she slipped into oblivion and the world went black.