AN: This was written ten years ago. Disclaimer from first chapter applies.
This really happened:
Dear Hermione Malfoy, (Original name I wrote under!)
Congratulations! Your fanfiction story, Dearest Hermione, has been nominated for Best Voyeurism, in Round One of the Sirius Black/Hermione Granger Fanfiction and Fanart Awards. To visit the community point your browser to sbhg_awards. Please feel free to join and vote for your story which takes place at the community between January 26 and February 6, 2009.
Please let us know at your earliest convenience if you object to your story being nominated.
Good Luck!
sbhg_awards_mod
I hope it is still just as good...
Dearest Hermione
THE REVELATION
Severus sipped his beverage with ease and poise, taking only a minute drop before he set it back down on the table to look at the beautiful young woman before him, being ably protected by the Potter brat. She had her elbows on the table and her chin resting on the back of her laced up fingers. Severus sat back and stretched his feet out, deliberately forcing Harry to move out of his seat to sit in between the two of them instead of just next to Hermione.
"May I call you Hermione?" Severus asked. "I should think that as I am no longer your teacher, Miss Granger is too formal."
"Yes, you may," Hermione said gently. Her soft breath reached Severus fingertips.
"And you may call me Severus," he said, grinning madly.
Neither of them had ever seen him look this happy before. They swapped glances at each other; both held identical airs of confusion.
"Or Slime-ball!" Harry said in clear, audible tones.
Severus decided to ignore that comment. In fact, Severus decided to ignore anything Potter said from now on. His attention was more agreeably used. Hermione sat back and then folded her arms across her chest. Severus looked at the chest for a minute before he regained his composure. This meeting was to prove him better than Black, and to do that, he had to stop ogling her like she was a coveted object.
"I was cleaning things up in Grimmauld Place when I stumbled across something addressed to you, Hermione. I thought, as it was addressed to you, you would want to read it."
Hermione furrowed her brow and chewed the corner of her lip. Severus wished Potter wasn't here. No! Must prove to be a man... the resolve to be better than Black was beginning to crumble when she leant forward, giving him an ample view of her cleavage. Better than Black, had to become a mantra otherwise this whole meeting would be for naught.
"I suppose," Hermione said. Severus reached inside his robes and brought the letter out. He had resealed it after he had read it. She opened the letter and gasped as her eyes scanned the parchment to find out it was from Sirius.
"What's wrong?" Harry asked.
"It's ... it's from Sirius," she stammered.
She sat back and read the letter thoroughly. Severus watched her every facial movement. He was absolutely pleased to find a look of pleasure turn to shock, amazement, and a hint of horror in her eyes. She began to blush and towards the end of the letter her hands shook visibly. Crinkling the paper, rage palpable in the air.
"I do have a calming potion on my person," Severus offered.
"How did you know she would need that, Slime-ball?" Harry asked.
"It is always good in time of war to carry a calming draught or two in case someone needs an emergency supply," explained the former Potions Master and Defence Against The Dark Arts Professor. "I always have some on my person," Severus explained calmly and smoothly.
The answer was too pat for Harry's taste. Like he had practised a script and managed to memorise his lines to a t without stumbling over a line. There was such a thing as the right thing at the right time, yet Snape had perfected the art of lying smoothly due to his dual role within the Order and the Death Eaters.
Finally, the young woman finished the letter and the flash of anger present soothed Severus dark side, as did the hurt and betrayal she felt too. He was eagerly looking forward to the conversation regarding the revelation.
"What did Sirius say to you, Hermione?" Harry asked.
Wordlessly, she shoved the letter on the table, in Harry's direction. The boy picked it up and started reading it himself. Severus decided to watch his reaction to the letter and almost exploded at what that Potter brat said.
"Poor Sirius!"
"POOR SIRIUS!" Hermione yelled. "I defended him because he was lonely, been in prison for something he didn't do for twelve unforgivable years! But this," she hissed taking the paper from her friends hands. Angrily waving the letter in Harry's shocked face as she continued, "was a crime. He spied on me, Harry. Watched me undress! He was in love with me when I was fourteen! How do you think I feel now I know that? But, oh no, with you it's Sirius this, Sirius that! You always take his bloody side of the story even when you found out what a jerk he was as a teenager."
Severus couldn't believe it, this was working out better than he expected. He knew she'd feel disgusted at the thought of a man old enough to be her father gloating over her naked body when she was still a child. Harry looked up at Hermione.
"But he knew it was wrong," he stated.
"That doesn't make me feel any better, Harry," Hermione said coldly, "he could have turned around when he realised what I was doing. He could have whined and asked to be let out... but no, this was deliberate voyeurism on a minor!"
Severus looked at Hermione; he contemplated her expression, and listened to the tone of her voice. What was she hiding? He was a secretive enough man to understand that someone else was keeping a secret, too.
Severus handed Hermione the calming draught and she swigged it down in one gulp, he was about to say that it was powerful and to sip it, but he was too late. As soon as she drank it down, she collapsed on the table. Severus shook his head: Silly girl, he whispered fondly.
Realising how useless the boy was, Snape rolled his eyes and stood up, a swirl of black velvet. None to kindly, Severus shoved the boy out of the way and sat next to her, efficiently producing smelling salts to wake her up with. After a few moments, she woke up calm, and with a dreamy expression on her face.
"Are you going to be all right, Hermione?" Severus asked gently.
"I fink so," she slurred.
He shook his head. "No you're not," he turned to Potter. "Take her home, and for Merlin's sake, please whatever you do, do not defend Black as is your wont. Not all women actually feel flattered at being spied on when they're having a bath. Some might even call it perverted. Others will attach darker appellations to the person." The Professor stopped and thought for a moment. "What am I saying? Black was a dog, and he certainly acted like one at times."
"Why did you do this?" Potter enquired through gritted teeth.
"Why do you think? You're precious Black was no better than me in some respects, and yet you worship the ground he walked on, and I can't even earn your respect by doing all what I had done... I'd have thought saving your life in your first year might have told you something! Not you, no, you're so dense you have to have it spelled out in baby language."
Severus didn't know it at the time but his arm had gone around her shoulders in an unconscious gesture to help the floppy girl sitting next to him.
"Murdering Dumbledore doesn't make you a good guy," Harry said. "Quite the opposite, in fact."
"It does if Dumbledore had been dying all year anyway. Despite what you may think, you are not that important in the general scheme of things. You would not even have become famous if Wormtail had kept his mouth shut," Severus sneered. "Oh that's another thing, you kept him alive, when it was his information that killed your parents. Not mine!"
Harry frowned; he couldn't deny that what Slime-ball said was true. It was Wormtail's information that had killed his parents. He had to re-think a lot of things.
"How can I trust a single thing you say?" Harry asked.
You can start by believing me when I say that I didn't want to hurt Dumbledore; but Narcissa, Draco, the Dark Lord, and even Dumbledore left me no choice," he paused again and sat back into the seat, rearranging the sleeping girl about his person to be more comfortable. "You can also try to see this letter from Hermione's point of view rather than your own rose tinted spectacled tunnel-vision view of the bastard."
"How did you know the content?" Harry asked.
"I am a spy, Potter, I read the letter. I thought Black might have had something useful to the war effort stashed away in there. Some hope," he rolled his eyes. "Reckless and rebellious! No thought for this war and the outcome. His death proved that. Off he sauntered to get himself killed when everyone else told him to stay put, even me."
Harry saw how bad Hermione was. "All right," he sighed, "but this doesn't change my feelings for you, Snape."
"Likewise, Potter."
Severus propped Hermione up with a cushion; he turned to the boy, nodded curtly at him and then walked out of the Leaky Cauldron into Diagon Alley. Smartly walking in Knockturn Alley in wide, confident strides. Job well done! He thought. He even managed to keep his voice quiet, for the young woman's sake.
Oh how he loved to sully the reputation of the the Marauders, he could see Black's gold pedestal tarnish right before the boy's eyes. He breathed in the glorious summer air. Miss Hermione Granger was quite lovely to hold, he noticed, but he put that thought away. The whole point of this exercise was to show him to be better than that Son of a Bitch. He smirked at that one, because, when all was said and done, that was what the last hope of the so-called Ancient and definitely not Noble house of Black was.
Beautiful day, indeed!
Finis
