She had wanted to ask him about his part in their victory for a very long time.
Why had he chosen the side of Light? Harry and Voldemort were equally matched then. It could have gone either way. In fact, without his help, Harry might have run out of time before he found the final Horcrux.
She was waiting for a day when he was in a good humor. The wait was proving too long.
At last, she found herself asking, with no real plan of action, "Why did you do it? Help us, I mean. Help... Harry."
He laughed bitterly- a sound that wasn't really a laugh at all. "Because it had to end somehow."
"And you decided to do the right thing, finally?" She winced at her own triteness, as soon as the words left her mouth. "I mean, to save your own life and everyone else's."
"Lives were lost on both sides. Death-eaters could be cruel and violent. They were rapists. Murderers. A moral void." He paused to sip his tea. "But they still had friends. Lovers. Spouses. Family. There is no absolute evil, Miss Granger, no matter how hard you look for it."
She began to mention names, off-handedly, recalling those who had surprised everyone when their true allegiances were revealed. He stopped her with a wave of his hand.
"I know you know the facts and figures." This time, he looked at her. Really looked. She felt a warm blush creeping over every inch of her exposed skin. It was uncomfortable and troubling and she could not bring herself to look away. He narrowed his eyes as if reading very small scrawl on a parchment, then shook his head. "You are not the woman I met during the war. Nor the one I have met since then. You have retreated to the know-it-all of the classroom, today, and I am not interested in carrying on any conversation with a textbook."
"Then, perhaps you should stop treating me like the know-it-all of the classroom!"
In a lazy tone that made Hermione want to wring his neck, Snape murmured, "Earn it."
The blush had reached her cheeks and burned there as she searched for something hurtful to say. His disinterested expression left her nothing and slowly the anger dissipated. Dully disappointedwith herself for allowing him to goad her, she broke away from his gaze, trying to look anywhere but at him. With an exasperated sigh, she settled for an earnest study of the doorjamb. "I can't win with you."
"Perhaps I've taught you something after all." He rose, reading her attempt at recovery, incorrectly, as a desire to leave. When he made to show her out, she laid a hand on his arm. They froze in an awkward tableau.
It was the only time they had made any physical contact since that day she first appeared at his door- the day that had begun this strange association.
Despite his admonishments and her pride, she had returned. He never seemed to care much for her company, but he never turned her away. She swore each time that she would forget this hateful man completely and go back to her life as it was. Yet, every few weeks found her trudging back up those narrow stairs, looking for comfort in the one person who was less adjusted to life after the war than she was. Some days, they exchanged only a few terse words and she left, grateful for the release her fury provided.
It was so easy to be angry at just one person.
On the fourth visit, he had grudgingly invited her in.
She didn't cry after every encounter. Only when he told the truth.
By the sixth visit, tea was offered.
She had lost count by now. The bare walls of his dingy room were beginning to feel just a little too much like home.
As she touched him, she could feel every sinew and ropy muscle in his forearm as it tightened in response to the light pressure of her hand. Something felt off-kilter here. The formality of it all was so... uncalled for. They were, for lack of a better term, friends.
Hermione Granger was friends with one of Hogwarts' most hated former professors, hero/traitor Severus Snape.
A laughed escaped her then. Snape quirked an eyebrow, perhaps amused, despite himself, by her apparent break from sanity. His arm relaxed, as did the set of his shoulders. He looked almost human. He was almost human, she realized with a jolt.
And then Hermione did something she would later think on as the second most impulsive act of her post-war life.
She hugged him.