Chapter Two

"How are you doing, dear?" Madame Pomfrey asked her, cheeks flushed with concern. "There's going to be a rather large scar, I fear, and you will have to take at least ten potions a day to prevent any infection, but—"

"I'm fine," Hermione responded as convincingly as she could. She watched the Weasleys hug Ron with teary eyes. "I'm fine," she repeated, gaze returning to the older woman, "I think I can leave now."

The Weasleys were finishing up with Ginny and Ron, and would next be on her. So too would Harry and Sirius once they were finished hugging and scolding each other for their respective recklessness that night.

"I suppose there's no healing left to do, and I trust you not to mess up my work," Madame Pomfrey acknowledged with a slight frown. "Very well. Turn in early tonight and get some good rest, you hear?"

Hermione nodded dimly, already slipping out of the hospital bed and out the door. Leaving the noisy hospital room made the silence of the dimly lit hallway sound deafening.

As soon as she entered another hallway, she crumpled.

Thank god Professor Dumbledore had shown up when he had, because everything had quickly fallen into shambles after Harry had smashed the prophecy. Voldemort had placed him under the Cruciatus Curse, Hermione had been too distracted to avoid Dolohov's curse, Sirius, Lupin, and Kingsley had been struggling to contain Black. And Dumbledore…

…Oh god, did Dumbledore know? That…that she had…

Killed a man—even if she hadn't been the one to cast the curse.

The urge to vomit hit her immediately, and it was only by pressing down on her recently healed injury—allowing pain to overwhelm her nausea—that she managed to tamp it back down. She had this—some part of her recognized, irrational—urge to keep scrubbing, chafing at her skin until it all fell off, until she had paid just a little penance for the act her hands had put into motion and—

Hermione recognized with what limited clinical capacity she had left that she was decidedly not coping well. She knew, intellectually, that talking to someone openly about a traumatic event was the best course of action when it came to dealing with one.

And yet for the life of her—Harry and Ron? They could never understand, though she was sure they would try. Her parents? A resounding no. They were ordinary, law-abiding dentists whose greatest concerns were figuring out their taxes by the deadline.

And she really, really could not bring herself to go to Professor McGonagall and Dumbledore. What would they think of her after she told them? She would only be able to read the look in their eyes as disappointment.

She stumbled numerous times, barely catching herself against the wall, but somehow managed to reach the Gryffindor common room within the next half hour. Although there was no need for stealth, as everyone was asleep, she made her way silently to the girl's restrooms and crept as quickly as she could into the shower stall.

She cast a spell around her bandage to keep it safe from the water and stayed there, under the pelting of the water, until the early hours of the morning.


A week passed. Despite the events occurring beyond the walls of the castle, the fifth years, Harry and Ron included, had ostensibly called upon a heretofore unseen collective diligence in replicating their regular end-of-the-year cheer. Even the professors had become less strict about attendance and homework, as though striving to help them to that end.

Hermione tried her best to take part in it, but found her efforts failing and her temper becoming short. Maybe it was because she could not wear the mask of levity in the same way they could. The sentiment sounded awfully presumptuous, but Hermione did not mean that they had not had their own share of suffering. It was just that her burden was…different from theirs. She had done something terrible, not been the victim of it.

Sometimes, she feared she was growing too self-pitying. Other times, she couldn't bring herself to care. Her thoughts had become an enraged litany of—Why me? Why did I have to do that? Couldn't someone else have acted?

In moment of clarity, she tried to tell herself that she simply had to live with what she had done—what if's were pointless. If only she could maintain that clarity.


When Hermione arrived at the dungeons for her first period class the next day, she reached her seat a minute before class started. Snape had not entered the room yet.

"Hermione," she heard Ron say casually beside her, "I don't know if you've noticed, but most of your hair is gone."

She ignored him, pulling out her potions textbook and a quill. Indeed, her hair was much shorter than it had been the previous day. She wished she could say that the shift had had symbolic significance—perhaps a reclamation of the changes being imposed on her through a modification she had engineered (unlike the scar Dolohov had left her).

It wasn't. In truth, her hairbrush had gotten stuck in her hair once again that morning. And because Hermione found herself caring a lot less now about the things she had previously spent a modicum amount of time on, she had given up after two minutes of painful tugging and just sliced the affected area off. So, yes, the hair that had once been well past her shoulder blades was gone, shortened to the tops of her shoulders. It looked like, she dared to say, normal people's hair now.

"How's Sirius, Harry?" she forced herself to ask calmly, eyes roving over the room.

"He's good," Harry responded softly, taking care to make sure no one overheard them. "Cooped up in Grimmauld Place again, but…well, if I have my way, he's never leaving there again."

Ron reached up a hand to pat Harry's back. Hermione nodded and opened her mouth to add something when the noise of a group of students' entrances drowned her out.

Scowling slightly, she looked behind her to see who was to blame for the noise. Malfoy was predictably at the forefront, followed by his usual entourage.

They passed her without a glance, but sent Harry vicious glares. Ah, that was right. Lucius Malfoy was in Azkaban now. Hermione couldn't help a twinge of unwelcome sympathy as she took in Malfoy's haggard appearance.

"Silence," a voice hissed out from behind them. Abruptly, everyone became silent. Snape stalked his way to the front of the room.

"I understand that the other professors have sought to offer you a reprieve in these last final days," Snape declared boredly, "I, however, have not. You will find ingredients for the Calming Draught at the front; successful potions will be stored in the infirmary for the hysteria you will no doubt undergo at the beginning of next semester as you increasingly realize how inept you are going into N.E.W.T.S. Assigned pairs are listed to the right."

Hermione's gaze followed the motions of his outstretched wand to the list of groups. Her face tightened when she read the cursive script.

"For Merlin's sake," Ron groaned beside her, "Parkinson."

"Tough luck, mate," Harry muttered, looking at his own pairing with a pleased expression.

"I've got Malfoy," Hermione noted darkly.

"Bloody hell," Ron offered after a moment.

With a thunderous scowl, Hermione gathered her things and made her way to the table in the very back corner.

"Mudblood," Malfoy offered tonelessly.

"Don't call me that," she snarled, hand flexing for her wand. Then, she inhaled sharply. She knew she was beginning to skate on thin ice; if she continued to let her temper grow this dangerously short, she was liable to explode at the slightest provocation. "Let's just get this over with."

She went up to the front table, gathered all the necessary ingredients, and brought it back to their shared space. Malfoy watched her blankly, before reaching over to open up his textbook. They prepared and stirred in the ingredients with minimal communication and then waited, as the book instructed, for the next fifteen minutes and thirty-four seconds.

Unable to find anything to do with herself other than glare at random objects, Hermione's gaze inevitably fell on Malfoy. His own attention was directed to somewhere off in the distance, gaze seemingly absent of life. Malfoy had always been pale, but the past week had left him with a pallor that broached sickly.

Hermione felt her lips thin. It was such a strange thing—at home, the criminals who appeared on the television were never people she actually knew. Here, everything was different. And somehow, everything—including this—made her unbearably frustrated.

Snape began walking by the finished potions, his face contorting into sneers as he saw each one. Harry's and Ron's had both ended up entirely different colors from the one listed in the textbook. They each received specifically tailored scathing remarks.

Finally, the tall man reached Hermione and Malfoy's potion. He peered into the black cauldron, sniffed delicately, tested its consistency, and then took a decisive step back.

"Well done, Mr. Malfoy. Stunningly, I believe you are the first to produce anything resembling a passable Calming Draught."

Hermione stilled at his words. It wasn't the first time he had done something like this—ignored the fact that she had been someone's partner. Certainly not the first, by a mile-wide margin. And yet, despite her awareness of this fact, it was sufficient to incense her more than she could ever recall being in class.

The words slipped out of her mouth before she could stop them. "I contributed too, professor."

Snape paused in his movement to the next cauldron, turning swiftly on his heels to face her. "What was that, Miss Granger?"

"I said I contributed too. I thought it was curious and unfortunate that you forgot. Just thought to remind you."

Her tone, low and confrontational, did not help temper her words. Dimly, she realized that she had managed to shock even Malfoy out of his lifeless stupor.

"I must say, Miss Granger" Snape murmured after a pregnant pause, "you have the dubious honor of having surprised me. Detention. Next Saturday. Noon."


Another week passed. Hermione only grew angrier.


"Hi Hermione!" She jerked in her seat, interrupted from her thoughts. Hermione looked up to see Lavender and Parvati settle across from her at the table.

"Hi," she responded, shutting her tome to be polite. What day was it again? Saturday. Darting her gaze at the giant clock, she frowned. She had detention with Snape in ten or so minutes.

Lavender beamed brightly at her as she ladled some broth into her bowl. "How are you?"

"Oh. Good…How are you?"

"Good. Good."

"You know, we've been dying to ask you what diet you're on," Parvati burst out. The smell of her perfume wafted to Hermione's nose. "I swear, you've lost half a stone in the past week!"

Lavender nodded eagerly and leaned in, her flowery perfume joining the mix. The pair of their faces— both too bright, too unknowing, and too pretty to mesh well with her current grim sense of reality—suddenly became too much.

A cold, seething rage settled in. All she wanted to do was cover them with the pumpkin juice at the corner of her eye so that she could obliterate their silly—

Hermione recoiled, horrified at the tenor of her own thoughts.

"I'm sorry," she snapped out too harshly to be polite, "I've got to go." She grabbed her belongings and walked as quickly as she could out of the Great Hall. Once she was out of sight of other students, she abandoned walking for full-out running.

A cursory glance revealed the first bathroom she reached as deserted. Locking the door behind her, she went straight to the sink and dry-heaved. When she was finished, the sound of her panting filled her ears. Looking up finally into the mirror in front of her, she confronted the image that met her gaze.

The person gazing back was alien to her.

She had lost weight, because she had spent most of the last weeks upheaving meals she was trying her best to keep down. But the picture was by no means pretty: the bony face looking back at her was now dominated by dark, too-pronounced brows, pale, cracked lips, and bruised eyes.

When the great clock rang throughout the castle, she was forced to grab her things and leave the restroom. She walked blindly toward the dungeons where the potions classroom was located and knocked on the door.

Snape opened the door immediately and swiftly summoned a long assembly of filthy cauldrons.

"You will clean these," the potions master commanded coolly. "No wand, brush and water only. I expect them to be spotless." He settled behind his desk and began to grade some papers.

Hermione stiffened, gazing at the filthy cauldrons in front of her. Gritting her teeth, she grabbed the brush, dipped it well into the water, and began scrubbing.

It was tiring work. It was also the first of its kind that Hermione had ever experienced, having never had detention. Narrowing her eyes, she wondered why he had not made her do something more useful. Scrubbing cauldrons without a wand was a waste of time, when a wand could accomplish the same task in a fraction of the time. She would have been put to much better use if she had been required to brew the Calming Drought potions most of her classmates had failed to make, in order to supplement the infirmary's stores.

Growing increasingly angry, she scrubbed at the dirty cauldrons. One particular patch of mold refused to come off. Hermione scrubbed against it with more violence, snarling under breath. When that failed, she scraped at it with all her strength, numb to the damage the rough side of the cauldron was doing to her exposed forearm.

The stupid thing would not come off.

Losing her temper, she shoved the cauldron away from her, watching it hit the stone ground of the dungeons with a loud gong-like sound. Distantly, some part of her was horrified by her own actions.

The scraping of the quill a few meters in front of her slowed to a stop.

"Miss Granger," Snape spoke at last, his voice insufferably cold, "do you happen to find yourself above the task I have assigned you for your detention?"

Her jaw tightened.

"I see." The dark-robed man stood until he towered over her, dark eyes visibly measuring her and finding her lacking. "You have always had a deplorably inflated sense of your own intelligence and importance. It has grown dangerously unchecked."

She tensed, hand paling on her grip around her brush. "Really?" she spat, standing up as well. She was taller than many of her peers, but still a head shorter than him. "Forgive me, professor, for my impertinence, but I find that somewhat ironic coming from you."

Snape raised an eyebrow. She could tell that he was taken aback by her attitude—but Hermione was beyond being concerned with what she had been and what she should be, at the moment.

"Alas, I believe you are lashing out, Miss Granger," Snape told her boredly, "Tell me, what recent tragedy has befallen you that you feel so righteously indignant these days, that you may foolishly treat your betters this way?"

"A poor grade on an assignment, perhaps?" he continued silkily. There was a scathing look in his eyes. "Did your precious parents not get you the book you wanted for the holidays, despite your wishes? Or is it typical school girl drama: an ill-received—" his voice passed over the word derisively—"crush? An insult about your…teeth?"

Hermione was almost senseless with rage. Yes, she remembered that horrifying melt-down she had had only a year ago when she had been hit by the teeth-growing charm—Snape, apparently, did too. To have this—to have her inanity thrown back in her face like this, the most childish, petty cares she had nursed before she had known any better. It was—

Intolerable. "Stop," she hissed.

But the potions master had scented blood now. His lips curved in dark amusement. "You are just as self-involved and ignorant as your counterparts, Miss Granger, deluding yourself that your petty school dramas warrant such copious amounts of angst, brooding, and impertinence."

The smile had vanished from Snape's face. What was left now was cool and uncaring. "You have no idea what true hardship means."

She could feel herself shaking. She knew she was teetering on the edge of something dangerous, and she did not know how to keep herself back from the abyss.

Snape noticed. He viewed her with the sort of disparaging scorn humans normally reserved for wild dogs. "Control yourself, you foolish—"

"I can't," Hermione whispered with tightly contained rage, "Believe me, I can't!"

Snape scoffed. "Listen to me, Granger. Stop being overdramatic. I have neither the time nor the mind to indulge your ridiculous frivolities—"

"It's not frivolous!" It burst out of Hermione before she could stop it. Her face was wet, she realized dimly. She bent her head—helpless, terrified, enraged. She had to—she had to

Snape's face held terrible mockery. "Then pray tell, what terrible thing has happened to you?"

And she could not hold it back, now, no more than she could hold back a tidal wave. The broken, defeated words escaped her, barely audible. For a long moment, she believed that Snape had not heard her. But when she looked up, she knew that he had. The silence echoed thunderously around them.

"Excuse me?"

When she was finished, Snape's face was pale and unreadable.

Eventually, the silence lasted too long.

"Aren't—" she grunted, "aren't you going to say anything?" She had no idea what her face looked like. She didn't want to.

He gazed at her impassively. Then: "Whom have you told?"

Hermione's jaw tightened, sending her professor a vicious glare. "Believe it or not, it's not the kind of thing I use for small talk—"

"Granger," Snape snapped, his voice low.

"I-I can't talk about it," she hissed out. "I can't. I don't even know how—why I told you. But—" and suddenly, she was begging, rocking back and forth like she was child again—"please…just please…"

She did not know what she was begging for.

But there was a certain tension in Snape's face that made it seem like he did. He stared at her for a long moment, a strange expression on his face that she could not begin to understand.

"Nott Senior was hardly an innocent man," he said at last. His tone was distant, removed, similar to the one he used during potions lessons.

Hermione opened her mouth, but he silenced her when he turned to face the chalkboard behind them instead. The next words came to her without the assistance of his expression.

"But he was also a husband and a father. He fulfilled, for better or worse, what many would call a…valued formative role in the lives of others."

Snape turned and noted her reaction to his words with a slight twitch in his jaw.

"Perhaps if you talk to someone else, they will encourage you to vilify him and ignore that reality," he told her coolly, lips tightening. There was an accusatory edge to his voice. "Personally, I believe to do so serves neither one's intellect nor any altruistic sense of justice benefit in the long run. Humans, unfortunately, are rarely so conveniently single-faceted."

She stiffened, trying to find some semblance of dignity as she mustered the nerve to pose the question that had been plaguing her. "So, am I—" she asked fiercely in a voice so soft it could barely be heard, "am I a monster, then?"

"Perhaps?" Snape responded tonelessly. "But make no mistake that if you are a monster, you are certainly not the only one. There are more of us than there aren't, and half of them are on the side we belong to."

He delivered the words curtly, almost callously. Which was unsurprising—Snape had never liked her, she knew. Perhaps, she was too pathetic for even him to turn away. But, for the moment, she greedily took advantage of even that pity.

"And…" she hesitated, grimacing. Then, she demanded hoarsely, "And atonement?"

The potions master looked her in chilling silence for a long moment, his dark eyes seemingly fathomless.

"I would not know," Snape responded flatly.

"But if you could try, professor," She pressed tightly, gaze narrowing.

A pause. Then, almost angrily: "I have been informed that, if it exists, it comes to each man or woman in his or her own time."

"Speaking from personal experience?" she snapped, ineffectually displeased by his words. A part of her had selfishly hoped to be vindicated after this confession, or at least, given a clear answer as to how to conduct herself. But Snape did not afford her the luxury, for once (and perhaps this was ironic), of looking down at her—nor did he feed her the easy comfort she imagined another adult might have.

She did not how she felt about that.

His gaze moved to the clock on the wall in response. "Your detention is over. Leave."

Despite herself, Hermione wasn't surprised or overly upset by the abrupt dismissal. He seemed to have finished saying all he was inclined to say.

When she did leave, it was with a strange sense of a heavy burden being slightly eased from her back, though she did not really know how it had come to be.


Author's Note

So...I honestly have no idea how this popped into my head. I really shouldn't be writing this—given the other stories I need to update more regularly—but lo and behold...here I am. Should I continue? Please review and let me know :)