Chapter 4: Snape's Secret
He knew the moment that he laid eyes on her that she was special, which was saying a lot, since she had come from a purely muggle background. He'd grown up being told that purity mattered, that Mudbloods were destroying the wizarding world with their strange, non-magical ways and worse, diluting bloodlines until every drop of magic was squeezed out. His mother had been a hard woman and she had taken her lot in life poorly and with very little grace. His father mostly sat uselessly on the couch with a bottle or two at his side and aimed blows at his scrawny son whenever young Severus had the misfortune to get too close. But his mother had taken out her anger on him in a far more insidious way. Her anger at him for simply existing made him feel utterly alone and a bitter seed took root in that loneliness and it overpowered every other feeling in his being.
Even then, he had been gaunt and corpse-like with the hint of a sneer at his lips. But Lily did not disparage him for existing. She looked into his black eyes and saw the light of his soul, a sentiment that had made him laugh wryly when she had said it, but that had struck him deeply in a way that never allowed him to forget it. She could be so effortlessly sentimental and yet she never put up with shenanigans, not from her friends and certainly not from her enemies.
He'd been drawn to her power in childhood, not fully knowing how to articulate it in his awkwardly harsh way. He had pushed her away, true, but at the time, he had been far too proud and far too ashamed to admit it.
"Sev," she had told him one cold afternoon by the lake only a few months before she had stopped talking to him altogether, "You need to think beyond finding someone with the answers, with the power to control this or that. It's not about being at school forever. You need to think long and hard about what sort of man you want to become. You're brilliant, you know, but you don't take care of yourself and you're prone to following the biggest, baddest wand-carrier. There's a part of you that desires so badly to follow someone that you almost don't care who owns you or if they parade you about like a dog on a lead, and that kind of desire can take you to terrible, dark places."
He had wanted to ask her if she wouldn't mind showing him the right road, to walk along it with him and show him what she meant, but he wasn't smooth with his words and somewhere between his brain and his tongue, his words had simply jumbled into, "I know what I'm doing. You don't have to worry about me."
"You know how much I care for you," she said gently, "Please, Sev, I feel like I'm going to lose you."
She was the only one who called him Sev, or indeed could get away with shortening his name. Well, perhaps that was generous. There really was no one, not even Dumbledore himself, who desired the level of familiarity required to call him by a nickname.
He knew it was wrong for him to do it. He knew and still he made the decision to do it because denying himself the fleeting pleasure of seeing her face staring back at him in the mirror, even if it was for a short time, was almost too much to bear. It was all his fault and he could never allow him to forget that fact. That she had turned from him, that she had given a chance to that blowhard Potter and married him shortly after graduation. That she had died protecting a child that was not his, that now he was forced to look into the eyes of her son- so very similar to her eyes that he had to force extra contempt out into his face just to look at Harry without losing his composure.
He knew that he was a bastard. That his behavior was inexcusable. The temple of her skin felt defiled when he walked in it and yet he could not stop himself.
For indeed this was the reason he flew off the handle more readily when his Polyjuice Potion stores ran low. It took a month and a half to make it perfectly with his own improvements, of course. Indeed, he had barely been able to part with the small bottle to help Malfoy and fulfill his duty to the Unbreakable Vow.
He opened a hidden compartment in the dresser by flicking a small raised flower on the right side of the mirror's frame and pulled out a clear crystal decanter with facets that threw faint rainbows around the room, even in the soft and muted light. It was filled part way with a dark, thick liquid.
He poured a small draft of potion into a crystal cup and then added the strand of hair. A small heating incantation later and it was bubbling slightly. He knew she would have been proud. They both had had a knack for potion making and their professor had even said at some point that they were like two Mogwart peas in a cauldron. His mouth twitched into a ghost of a smile at the memory. Working together in potions class was where many of his best memories were created. When it was just the skills and the ingredients and her green eyes focused and steady next to him, it was the closest to a fulfilled fantasy that he could get. Why did the houses have to become so cliquish in his fifth year? It was as though the professors were encouraging more hardcore competition and it had driven a wedge between himself and Lily that eventually had widened into an uncrossable chasm. Perhaps, though, it was simply his miserable sentimental mind playing tricks on itself- trying somehow to grasp at a scenario where his loss was not his fault.
"Now to leave it to set for twenty minutes for full potency," he muttered as though reading the instructions from the air.
He set down the brush again and rose from the chair. A small door to the side of the chamber was slightly open, revealing a toilet and three walled stone shower with a cloth curtain that fluttered slightly in the draft that whistled between the crack in the door. He despised showers on principle but she was worth it. Clean skin made the transformation more complete.
Silently, he disrobed and carefully placed each black garment over the back of the chair, making sure to store his wand in the inner fold of his robes. The hot water and steam would not be a good environment for a wooden wand. Still, he felt oddly vulnerable without it, like he was forgetting something. He was so singularly focused on his task, that he did not notice that the door to his office had been left slightly ajar.
Hermione felt a drunken pulse fill her body, obsession roaring in her ears. She wanted to possess him, to get so close that she could slide under his skin and never be parted from him. A small part of her in the back of her head shuddered in disgust- he was so much older than her. Not to mention the fact that he had treated her stellar abilities in every one of her classes as though it were barely worth notice instead of the outstanding work she knew it was. In her mind, she had worked hard enough that it wasn't bragging to say that she was highly skilled in both potions and defense against the dark arts. But another part of her wondered if she wouldn't have spent so much energy trying to prove Snape wrong if he had complimented and congratulated her as readily as the other professors.
Her prefect badge caught the light of the green torches as she cautiously pushed open the door to the office. She couldn't remember walking there- her feet moved as though pulled by an invisible thread. Somehow, even though classes had long been over for the day, she knew he was still in here. The open door felt like an invitation. Come in and find me, it said to her, and she didn't tarry in the hallway out of fear of being seen.
She walked cautiously past the darkened antechambers of what she guessed were Snape's personal collection of potions and personal work area. There was a hallway and at the end of the hall, a door with ornate gold patterns on it. This door too was not fully closed, a small piece of cloth had stuck around the latch and prevented it from closing completely.
She ran her fingers through her hair, trying to tame some of the bushiness. A new feeling washed over her- a kind of fear and self consciousness that almost made her nauseous. She should have done herself up before coming. Her mind raced, feeling terrible about the state of her appearance, still in her plain grey uniform.
She steeled herself and pushed the door open.
Inside the chamber was the sort of vanity that would belong to a young woman. She saw the cup sitting on the table and yet again felt that tickly feeling inside of her that this was meant to happen, that it had been left there for her.
She sat down softly and raised the glass to her lips in an almost trance-like motion. It was still rather warm as though it had recently been over a flame and had a sweet, grassy flavor, like the scent of air in the evening at the end of a summer's day.
She felt a cold sweat cover her body then. Her skin began to pale from the sun-kissed tan of the summer months that had stubbornly held on to an even, milky white.
Her skin felt like it was bubbling and melting, but in a peculiarly funny sort of way, as though she were rising to the top of a champagne bottle. The bubbling turned into a tickly strange flutter that started in her chest and traveled to her groin, cultivating an even stronger wave of heat and desire than what she had felt before.
Her hair fell flat and silky with only a slight wave that framed her face, auburn melting into a reddish copper. And as soon as it had started, it suddenly and abruptly stopped. Hermione's sight snapped into a sharp focus and she cautiously pulled herself from the floor, righted the chair and was about to tend to the garments that had slipped to the floor when she had tumbled from the chair, when she happened to glance into the mirror and couldn't help but stop what she had been doing and stare, open-mouthed, at her new appearance.
She looked into the mirror, touching her face in a slight shock. The young woman she had transformed into was about her age but a bit taller and somewhat more willowy. Her torso was longer, pulling Hermione's shirt up enough to show her navel, and the skirt was dangerously close to slipping off her meager hips. Somehow, the feeling of loose cloth against her new body felt deliciously pleasurable.
She kept looking into the green eyes in the mirror, feeling a hazy sort of déjà vu. It was then that she noticed the half torn photo. With a start, she realized that the face reflected back at her was a somewhat younger version of a woman she had seen quite a few times dancing with her husband in a photo next to Harry's bed that she'd seen several times when visiting the boys in their dorm. She gasped with knowing, but a thrill rolled through her body.
Why would Snape have a potion to transform someone into young Lily Potter?
It was then that she noticed that among the clothing on the floor were a set of familiar black robes. She knelt down a bit unsteadily on her new legs, and before she knew what she was doing, she dug her face into the folds of the garment and sucked in the scent of him. Remarkably, they did not smell terrible, as one might imagine someone who worked for years in a potions classroom might. A part of her brain knew that they wouldn't. A sense of knowing him that Hermione had never felt in all her years at school began to seep in around the edges of her consciousness like a whisper in another person's voice. It only served to deepen the frantic obsession beating in her heart. The small logical voice deep in her head was telling her that she was only doing this because she'd drunk something strange in the butterbeer, but a part of her felt out of place and was assuming a stronger control over her body as though she was being worn like a set of clothing. And somehow, she knew that whatever she had taken in the glass on the dresser was more than just a way to transform the body.
"Mmmmm," she moaned, inhaling deeply into the fabric and smelling a cinnamon and citrus scent, as well as a dark almost earthy smell that she couldn't quite place. She hummed absentmindedly and was only half surprised that she didn't sound like herself anymore. The last time she had taken Polyjuice potion with Ron and Harry, everyone had kept their original voices. But this time was different.
She became aware of another noise, the sound of water. She picked up the robes and draped them reluctantly over the chair again, noticing the wand inside of an inner fold of the black overcoat. A part of her realized that as much as she was hoping the object of her affection would fall all over her, leaving a wand where he could easily Stupify her if he took it badly probably wasn't a good idea and so she took the wand and slid it down the side of the back of the vanity. She still wanted to wrap the cloth around her- the desire was almost like a physical pull-but she also knew that her object of desire was beyond that side door and she hungered to join him.
She willingly lost her battle with the loose skirt and let it slide to the floor.
