A/N: Oh my dear sweet sanity, God bless anyone reading this. Life happened, and I had to let go of things, and FanFiction was one of the first things I dropped for time's sake.
I did learn French, more or less. C'est tres tragique I did not before, since it would have informed the story in very positive ways, I think, had I known the language from the start.
Then again, isn't that life? If we wait for the perfect times, we will never get anything done at all. I do hope you all enjoy this conclusion, or at the very least enjoy that it has concluded. It's better to hate the ending than not have an ending to hate, I think.
Thanks for all the lovely notes, especially from those who had an idea of the chaos going on. This is dedicated to myself, actually. If I never write another FanFiction or write a thousand, I can find joy in moments like these.
You're all brilliant. Do awesome things!
-Crystal
Beginnings in life are peculiar things because they are seldom noticed until middles or ends. One might, for example, wake up one day and realize that one's ever-receding hairline is due to one's inexplicable habit of casting aesthetic charms in one's sleep, and until that moment one doesn't realize how horribly memorable Madame Mireille's Mostly Magnificent charms lecture circuit actually was, and then one must live one's life as a charms professor with a frightfully shiny head.
In other circumstances, beginnings are hard to identify because Fate must be sneaky. Falling in love, for example, is not something most people do on purpose. So to get 'round a pair's unwillingness to cooperate with a Very Good Thing, Fate often twists in tiny moments throughout life which will lead to an inevitable Event.
This moment, in the lives of Hermione Jean Granger and Severus Snape, was not only the beginning of something profoundly beautiful, but the culmination of roughly eight hundred tiny things which created a beginning entirely unexpected by no-one save the pair in question.
The endless fights between Tobias and Eileen Snape sent young Severus to the library more often than not, and though he would sooner take a flying leap off the astronomy tower than provide his first edition copy as proof of his enthusiasm, it was there he first discovered the story of Emma Woodhouse, a girl who somehow married someone sixteen years her senior without anyone batting so much as an eyelash. Of course he loved tea; tea touched the tiny part of his cynical heart that secretly hoped his own parents would learn to behave like the people in his book.
Even Very Much Grown-Up Snape still had his inner child intact, that part of him that held a flare of hope he wished he could ignore.
Of course Hermione had read Emma as a child. Her perfection-seeking parents wanted nothing more than a perfect little Oxford graduate who spoke Latin and knew all the classics. Of course she loved it! It was romantic and exciting and everything her expected life was not. Pursuit of knowledge for the fun of it rather than the prestige was still her hallmark, but every girl wants a fairytale.
And naturally, they both grew up despising the idea of normalcy, the oppressiveness of ignorance, and anything pertaining to that unholy concept of decaffeinating one's tea. Fate knew nothing short of miracles would prompt the arrogance of intellectuals to risk offending sense and reason. Falling in love is not reasonable; this is why most must be pushed.
Seamus Finnegan had the oddest of dreams. In the dream, he was a giant slug in a great garden, and three trees were very intently attempting to squish their heads through a solid door. He turned to see a great black bat come screeching into the garden behind him and practically jump a cat sitting pathetically on a giant mushroom.
The cat and the bat gurgled at each other quite horribly, and the bat took off its wings and tried to put them onto the cat.
He would later insist that the dream had ended with himself valiantly vanquishing the giant bat when he was discovered by Owen Flaherty (who, upon finding his best friend dead to the world in a bush, naturally availed himself of the chance to draw eighteen rude words on Seamus' face), but the dream in fact then turned to a cavalcade of dancing lemon drops, which is not at all what actually happened.
As Hermione sat completely befuddled beneath Snape's black cloak, the potions master dashed around the infirmary cursing Poppy for not being there and telling Hermione not to panic and cursing himself for ever taking up potions and wishing he had been killed in the war and urging Hermione not to panic and knocking things over and setting a bed on fire by accident and losing his wand and in general was exceptionally panic-inducing.
It was odd, seeing him in hysterics. It suddenly struck Hermione that for something to be bad enough to merit his worry, it had to be near-catastrophic, and the befuddlement gave way to panic. She leaped off the bed with all the grace of a recently anthropomorphicized toadstool and collided head-on with the potions master with a terrific thud that would have outdone Norse mythos.
Outside the door, the rooted professors all started. In that noble tradition of all Fidgety Frans, Minerva instantly switched her stance.
"Oh, this is madness!" she hissed. "They'll kill each other as soon as be sensible. Albus, do something this instant."
The venerated headmaster was used to such outbursts of panic and as such completely ignored it. Meanwhile, Poppy practically had the entire side of her head glued to the door listening to her precious infirmary being quite upended and sighed the pained sigh of one who would soon be scrubbing Essence of Erta Alean Beetlewax out of corners.
As the two generally composed weavers of magic sat unceremoniously next to each other on the floor sporting concussions and the bed previously set ablaze began to melt, something very peculiar happened. Without any attempt at social mores, completely unwound, each saw the other in their entirety for the first time.
"Hermione, I…" Snape fumbled slowly.
"Yes?" she replied, fixated.
"I…don't think you have actually been overdosed on anything." He nearly whispered it, as though it were some great secret, as though it meant something else.
"Why do you speak French?" Hermione asked, though she never would have.
"Because I learned it," he answered dully. He felt a million miles away talking to her like this, like a normal person. She seemed extremely distraught, and he knew it had to have been his doing, this entire mess.
"Hermione," he said after a moment, and he would later laugh at himself over how horrifically awkward he became in that moment. "Would you like…perhaps a cup of tea might help?"
"Help what?" she asked, just as dazed by the odd feelings coursing through her like exceptionally good coffee. Snape realized he didn't know what he was meant to help, only that he wanted to very much.
"Perhaps your mother," he paused. "It may be she was right. I know tea always helps me, especially from…" he trailed, uncertain. It was one thing to uncover a schoolgirl crush, but quite another to assume any position of relationship, or even friendship to a student afterwards. Particularly when one was as undesirable a mate as he was certain he was. Rather suddenly, Hermione snorted, attempted to hide it, and finally laughed.
"This," she gestured vaguely, staring amusedly at the charred remains of the bed next to her. "Is all ridiculous." She looked decidedly at the ground. "But tea does sound nice."
And the pair did laugh at themselves then, and again over tea that night, and again when they saw each other in the hallway the next day.
Of course they didn't kiss then; that came much later, in a moment both perfectionists attempted to make faultless and which ended with Hermione in the lake and Severus rescuing her from a tree that was not supposed to be disappearing.
Of course they weren't married soon thereafter; that came even later, after both established themselves in the Potions community and Hermione dragged her ex-professor on so many field trips to ancient caves of sorcery that he felt marriage was necessary to save honor, though of course he respected her more than anyone he had ever known.
Of course they had children, of course both were terrified they would become their parents, of course the children were happy, of course the tea had caffeine, of course they reread Emma, and of course they spoke French.
Some will claim the mishap in the infirmary was their beginning, others will claim it was the misbegotten game or the moment Hermione took up French. But if you ask one twinkly-eyed headmaster, it is all very simple.
"Albus," snorted Minerva. "Much as it might surprise you, the stories of the world do not in fact begin or end with you."
"Of course not," Dumbledore smiled serenely. "Stories can all be traced to one, mythic source."
With that, he pulled a bag of lemon drops from his desk and offered them to Minerva, who rolled her eyes with a half-smile.
Le destin prend de nombreuses forms, after all.
A/N: Review, don't review, go drink some tea, hug someone. I don't control your life any more than I own this story, which, for the purpose of disclaimer, I do not.
