Chapter 2
Hermione slipped into the claw-footed bathtub that was now filled with wonderfully hot, sudsy water.
As she leaned her head back against the hard porcelain edge of the tub, she felt it again. And then she smelled the same scent that she'd smelled while still at the Weasley's house. What was wrong with her? Was she going absolutely crazy? Or was it something else?
She focused on letting her muscles relax, and then she felt it again.
Alright…this was obviously something that she was going to have to deal with. Any Muggle psychologist would have told her that she was imagining these things to keep him alive…but this was the wizarding world, and normal rules didn't apply there.
She thought it over in her mind as she let her body relax. Once she was physically relaxed, she would be more mentally relaxed.
Then it hit her.
What if it was him? And if it was him, then why did he choose her? They'd had no personal relationship of any kind...but she did understand him to some extent.
She had never truly been with Harry and Ron in the loathing category. She had looked up to him too much for her to loathe him in any kind of way. Hate was out of the question. When she'd looked at him, she'd seen someone who was truly the best at what he did and she had wanted nothing more than to learn from him.
Maybe that was why he was coming to her…if that's what it was.
Of course she could just be going crazy. But she didn't want to believe that that was the case. It had to be him.
But the still the question remained…why the hell had he picked her, of all people, to haunt?
Realizing that she was no closer to solving her problems, she pulled herself out of the tub, reaching for her wand. Suddenly, she felt a cold breeze fill the room, and her body had an all too obvious reaction. She quickly cast a drying spell, as she had no towel, and pulled her bathrobe from her bag next to the door of the bathroom.
After pulling the robe tightly around her body, Hermione slipped out the door into the empty hallway and grabbed her bag, and then headed to what used to be his room.
It was the most secure room in the house, and since she was alone she wanted to feel as secure as possible. Grimmauld Place was downright spooky even when it was full of people.
She pulled out some Notre Dame sweatpants that were once her mother's and slipped them on, along with a pair of thick, slouchy socks, a plain white long sleeved t-shirt and gray jumper.
Layering would be the only way to keep warm in the house that night. From her previous experience, she knew that it could easily drop to freezing temperatures, as the house had virtually no insulation because of the fact that it was at least a hundred years behind the times. Warming spells did little to help to keep the draught from slipping under the frame and eaves.
However, as she began to pull back the covers from the bed, she realized that she wasn't the least bit tired. Maybe some reading would tire her out. It was a tried and true method for her, and had worked many times before when she had been at school, so she put the covers back and left the room.
She quickly went downstairs to the library, lighting a fire in the fireplace with a twitch of her wand.
Walking over to the shelves, she carefully looked over the titles…and that's when one of them caught her eye. Potions and Pentagrams, by…no, it couldn't be. She took a closer look at it, pulled it out, and then brushed the dust off of it…but the name remained the same.
It was by Severus Snape.
She hadn't even known that he had written anything, let alone published. How had she not seen this before?
It was quite possible, knowing that sort of library and home that Black had owned, that the library chose what to show her at any given moment.
Hermione walked across the room, absentmindedly brushing back her damp and now drying, unruly hair away from her face, and pulled a cushion from the couch, sitting down in front of the fire. She was suddenly insatiably curious about what he had written, and she knew that there was no getting to sleep now that she had this book in her possession.
Slowly and carefully, she looked at the names of the chapter titles, trying to narrow down what exactly it was about.
She ran her finger down the page, trying to understand… Chapter 1 - Methods or Moronic Madness: How to Change Bad Habits in Potion Making. She snorted mentally at the title. Well, that didn't tell her a thing, but now she was definitely certain that it was by him.
But as she looked further down the page, scanning the chapters, the title of the seventeenth chapter caught her eye…
Chapter 17 - Meanings Behind the Patronus: Emotional Ties and Potions to Explain Them
Now that was interesting. Ever since Harry had told her about Severus's patronus being a doe and its' link to his mother, she had always wondered why hers was an otter and what emotional connection had caused it to be that way. Now was the chance to find out.
She flipped to the page and began reading.
"The full-corporeal Patronus of a witch or wizard is a very unique and singular kind of magic. It is one of the few magics that is psychically bound to the witch or wizard's psyche, as well as being subject to change due to traumatic emotional or physical events. Some witches and wizards that are unable to produce a corporeal Patronus may use the Patronus Potion, which allows the brewer to see the possibilities of the form of their patronus."
Hermione stared at what she read, surprised at herself for not having thought of it before.
She wondered if her patronus had changed since the war. She hadn't even tried to cast it in…well, in months.
Staring at her wand, which was on the floor next to her, she briefly wondered what it might change into. Ron and Harry had both told her that the otter seemed to fit her personality, but since the war, she knew that it must have changed. Things were no longer always optimistic. She had become much more of a realist…even a pessimist at times.
She reached down and fingered her wand, wondering if she should try. Well…it couldn't hurt, could it?
Carefully placing the book down, she stood up from her position on the floor and gripped her wand firmly in her right hand, and then thought about her happiest memory.
Images from when she received her first Outstanding on a Potions essay and the slight smirk that had crossed Professor Snape's lips flitted into her head. Why that particular memory came into her head, she wasn't sure. It was the only time that he had even come close to looking proud of one of his students. For some reason, that memory lingered.
Hermione's previous happy memory, from before the Final Battle, had been receiving her letter to go to Hogwarts. Knowing that she was a witch was the best thing to ever happen to her…but now it was something she almost wished that she could leave behind. All it had brought her so far was pain and heartache. Life was no easier with magic; if anything, it was even more complicated. Deceit was almost second nature to over half the people in the wizarding world.
She quickly shook those thoughts out of her head and focused on the newest happy memory that now graced the inside stage of her mind. The brief moment that they'd shared in a small unknown corridor in her sixth year of school. The moment where he had ceased for the briefest of moments to be a professor and where she had ceased to be a student. A moment that had, in some way, inextricably linked them together. A moment that now lingered in her like the first sip of mulled mead; warm, heady, but perfectly and absolutely needed. A moment that she had seen him in a way that she was fairly certain that no one else had ever seen him…and now brought a faint smile to her lips and a warmth to her chest.
Focusing on the sensations, she whispered the words in her head, trying to do the spell wordlessly…and she felt it happen.
The blue-white light flowed from the tip of her wand, and she simply stared at what she saw.
Part 2/6
