"Professor?" Hermione's soft, innocent voice snapped him out of the sour thoughts he currently had running through his mind as they ambled along slowly.
"Yes, Miss Granger?" He asked with a sigh. More questions, he just knew it.
"What happened to you?" Soft footsteps echoing off the walls of the empty halls as they walked closer to the guest quarters of Hogwarts. A wing usually reserved for visiting teachers or students of other schools.
"That is a very broad question, Miss Granger. What happened to me when? What happened to me to cause me to be such a miserable bastard, what happened to me during my childhood? You may have to elaborate a little on the subject."
The two walked in silence for a little longer as Hermione pondered the words ever so thoughtfully in her head so as not to offend.
"What happened to your body. The way you walk, the pain etched into your face. You can hardly keep up with my pace and my legs are half the length of yours." She stopped abruptly and he almost ran right up against the back of her. She turned slowly towards him just to see him skidding to a stop. "You used to almost glide effortlessly, you were intimidating."
"Are you saying I'm no longer intimidating, Miss Granger?" A sneer formed on his thin lips showing his yellowing teeth. He was still as intimidating as every thank you very much.
"Well yes, but not as much. Before you used to command presence and now…" She looked shyly to the floor before continuing, "now you shuffle along like an old man…"
"If it has escaped your notice, Miss Granger, I am an old man." A single brow quirked as he cast a solemn look in her direction, she blushed under his heavy gaze.
"Well, yeah, kind of, I guess. But your gait and movement mimic that of someone in their eighties."
"Some days I feel like I am in my eighties." He chuckled sadly. "Let's get you to the guest quarters and I may tell you what happened if you are lucky. And only because I feel sorry for your plight. You never know what prying ears may be lingering the halls at this twilight hour so I feel talking in private would be ideal."
He felt a little awkward calling her Miss Granger like she was still his student, a child. Well, he guessed she was still a child and quite possibly his student but, in his head, this didn't add up. He knew deep down that she shouldn't be a child, nor his student and he took pity on her. He didn't pity many people, but he felt it called for it in this situation.
While she was still in the body of a Seventeen-year-old, technically she was much, much older, an adult to do as she pleased. How would the ministry delegate over such an issue? This had never happened in Wizarding history. Would they deem her to still be the seventeen-year-old, or would they deem her to be the young adult she was supposed to be?
He thought long and hard as they approached the entrance to the quarters and slowly stepped through the door. Hermione plonked herself down on the lounge unceremoniously, as if she were carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders.
Severus sat down gently in a single armchair. Tenting his fingers, he tapped his lips in deep thought as neither said a world and Hermione was thankful for the moment of silence so she could think and try to process the whirlwind of information that was thrust unceremoniously onto her.
"So what happened with you?" She asked when she had managed to process a minuscule amount of what she had to think about.
"Nagini," He said simply, looking to the ground with sadness in his eyes.
"Nagini?" Hermione asked in a surprised, upward inflection, almost like she didn't believe it.
He nodded solemnly, onyx hair sway to and fro gently. "Voldemort thought I were the master of the elder wand and tried to kill me so he would have possession. The truth was, Harry was the master of the wand having disarmed Draco who disarmed Dumbledore the night he was killed."
She clamped a slender hand to her mouth as fast as lightning. "Draco killed Dumbledore?" She managed to blurt out as bile threatened to spill forth from her stomach.
"Not quite. No. I did."
"You!" She screeched, doing her best impression of a barn owl as anger danced in the depth of her chocolate brown eyes.
"Let me explain before you pull your wand out and hex me from here to next week. Draco was tasked to kill Dumbledore but his mother, Narcissa, knew he wouldn't be able to go through with it so asked me to take an unbreakable vow to do the deed that Draco wouldn't be able to. Dumbledore was already dying anyway, and it was discussed that I would kill him instead of condemning Draco to have to live with the guilt of murder for the rest of his life thus keeping him from Azkaban and the retribution that would follow."
"Wait, wait." She held two hands up as she tried to work out what was going on here. "Dumbledore didn't want to condemn Draco to the guilt of murder AFTER he had condemned me to a life of misery and possible death by bringing a portrait into the school that possessed power beyond what he could even imagine. Dumbledore felt sorry for him?!" Standing up she pulled her hair slighting in utter frustration. Dumbledore with a fool.
"Yes. Basically. Dumbledore did many, many things that I could never explain even if I wanted to." He watched as she paced backwards and forwards, much like a caged lion in the zoo looking as if she were ready to pounce and tear his throat out with her bare teeth just out of pure anger and frustration.
"So Draco commits a heinous crime, thus trapping me in a portrait, gets off scot-free and then gets all of the pity from Dumbledore while I am trapped and the world just skips by merrily without me?" She snarled, her entire body shaking, and tears of pure anger flowed gently down her reddened cheeks. Whipping her wand from her pocket she made a line for the door.
"I'm going to kill him, right now. Where is he?" She snapped, stopping to turn to look at Snape with anger dancing in her eyes freely and he reeled just ever so slightly. She was a girl possessed.
He thought for a moment, it would be interesting to follow and see her extricate Malfoys balls from his boxer shorts and shove them down his throat. It would be amazing to see him cowering in the corner as Hermione Granger threw ten hexes in a row at him before he even had a chance to deflect the first one. It would be great, hell, it would be the best thing he had seen this year, but morally he knew it was wrong to let her do such a thing. Morally wrong that no one would get to witness it, that was.
"Or, you can wait till the morning when you have an audience?" He suggested, a wry grin tugged at the corner of his thin lips, amusement etched into his face.
She lowered her wand. He had a point; an audience would be much better.
"You have a point. Now please continue your story." She sat back down, having realised that he never did actually tell her what happened.
"So, Nagini attacked me. She possessed magic and darkness beyond measure. I survived. Just. And now I have a curse swirling around my body with no known cure. I am weakened and unwell and not a damn healer in the country can find something to counteract the curse. It gets worse every day and it won't be long before I am bed bound, I assume."
Silence hung thick in the air. "I'm sorry."
"I don't need your sympathy, Miss Granger."
"I wasn't giving you sympathy, I was just expressing my sincere thoughts. Professor."
"I've come to terms with it." He shrugged with a large upheaval of his shoulders. "It's been a long night for you, Miss Granger. Rest up and in the morning, I dare say more information will be divulged to you." With a curt nod, he rose to his feet and shuffled off, letting himself out through the door.
A/N: Wow. Just wow. I cannot even fathom the amount of follows and favourites I have received for not only this story but for me as an author. I am going away for a week and I'm not taking my laptop with me so there won't be any updates for a while, so please bear with me.
I love seeing all the reviews sitting in my inbox after I post a new chapter. It really does motivate me to write faster because I know you are all out there waiting for an update.
-Aliasmel1