Disclaimer: I am not J.K. Rowling.

The Dool Tree

Chapter 9

Everyone was relatively chipper at breakfast that morning. Lily had given flowers to all the girls in the dormitory, and Jenny, Deborah, Hermione, and Dorcas had spent time affixing them to their bedposts. Lily didn't want to see them or smell them, though, so they'd all invested in putting charms over their beds to prevent the smell and sight of the flowers. It was dreadfully silly, Hermione thought, but at least the productivity of the activity had cleared up her melancholy.

Deborah was lording over the girls, asserting how it'd been her idea to use the certain charm that she deemed most effective in hiding the flowers. Jenny was chewing with her mouth open while she listened patiently to Deborah, her plate nearly clean. Dorcas was eating too many sweets, and received a scolding from Mary to put back her third pastry on pains of gaining back all the weight she'd lost last year. Lily was scribbling furiously, her eggs barely touched, out of tune with all the world.

Laying aside her fork, Hermione decided she wasn't hungry, and bid adieu to her housemates in favor of the company of books. The library beckoned to her, especially in her melancholy over the loss of Ronald Weasley. (At the Gryffindor table, she half-expected to see him shoveling food into his gullet every time she turned her head.)

Thus, she was occupying her (and Snape's) favorite corner when the dark wizard strode into the library, eyes fixated on an unopened letter and his lip curled in a frown.

"Hullo," she greeted, noncommittal, and Severus merely grunted in reply. He sat down heavily beside her, his thin frame proving surprisingly dense as the chair creaked beneath his weight.

"What'ch you got?" Hermione asked, though she was only marginally curious.

"Nothing." With a terse frown, he screwed up the letter and thrust it in his bag. His face was otherwise emotionless.

"Fine, be a secretive bugger," Hermione said absentmindedly. She wasn't really that interested, but she recognized that if it was something that captured his attention so avidly, it must be interesting. "I don't want to know anyway." In the back of her mind, she was hoping that he'd take the dismissive comment as bait for his ego and therefore rise to address her challenge. However, at the rolling of his eyes, she realized that he wasn't that stupid.

He got out a few books and parchment and a quill, and joined Hermione in work. For about an hour, they worked in silence, until Hermione rose and went to the bathroom.

When she returned and resumed her place next to him, she saw that his eyes were alight, though fathomless and impassive, and that he seemed captivated by her. Despite herself, she couldn't help but feel exhilarated at being noticed.

Even if, she realized with a sqeamishness befitting the situation, he used to be my teacher.

"What, do I have something on my face?" she demanded, fishing for a compliment, though she rationally knew that the likelihood of her receiving one from the likes of Severus Snape would be minimal.

He seemed to consider his answer carefully, leaning forward a little. She saw a hint of tongue swipe across his lips, shadowing them with saliva and its curious darkening properties; they became such a deep red that, contrasted against his pale lichen-colored skin, he looked frost-bitten.

"Not on your face," he said, one hand raising slowly, as if to caress her cheekbone. In her astonishment--What is he doing? Is he going to kiss me?--she leaned back, her eyes wide, emitting a gasp of immense disgust and feeling her lungs heave with indignation. He better not...she thought, her fingers slipping from the table to touch her wand in its side pocket.

Snape seemed unfazed, his eyes not lingering on her face but twitching along her jugular vein. Then, like a viper striking, his nails caught against her hair as he snatched the lily from behind Hermione's ear, where it had sagged (unremembered) all morning.

"Where did you get this?" he asked, his voice smooth but thinly concealing anger, like a paper screen that attempted to veil a burning inferno.

"My room-mate gave it to me," rasped Hermione. Her anxiety had ebbed, and now she began to put pieces of information together in her head.

Lily got lilies this morning...they're flowers she's loved for a long time...someone who's known her a long time gave them to her...and that person is Snape? And yet they're estranged somehow...and she wants nothing to do with him...and that letter she was writing today...and the letter he was just holding...oh!

She shouldn't have been such a dunce.

"Lily?" she heard him ask, and she heard the hurt in his tone.

"Erm..." She could crush him and say that Lily had, or sponsor false hopes and say something else... "She wanted to share," Hermione said, glossing over the truth.

"Mhm," came the stoic reply, and she couldn't tell if he was amused or didn't believe her. He said nothing else, crushing the flower in his fingers and placing the remains on the table. He turned back to his bookwork, and Hermione couldn't help but feel intense sympathy for Snape.

I...I think he's got a huge crush on her, if he's so upset over their estrangement that he sent her that bunch of her favorite flowers, Hermione began to hypothesize, I wonder if this situation...well, it's pretty obvious that Lily would never go out with such a nasty Slytherin boy as Severus Snape...so I wonder if this situation is, in part, what made Snape the bitter man he was when he was our teacher.

The idea that she had landed in the middle of a mess that would have such an impact on the man's future (as she perceived it) was fascinating.

I guess they've been friends for a long time, but then sometime lately he made it so clear that he desires her as more than a friend, and she doesn't know how to reject him. When she rejects him, I...I guess it will destroy him.

Hermione then felt the mantle of responsibility settle upon her.

I suppose I should help him. Maybe that's the reason that fate has dropped me here. What if I'm here to prevent him from going deranged and maybe destroying Hogwarts? Or even the world?

She remembered how Dumbledore had suggested that 'things happen for a reason', and wondered if perhaps this was her 'reason'. Maybe, if she could prevent Snape from being completely heartbroken by Lily Evans' inevitable rejection...which she never doubted for an instance...well, there was no telling from what doom she might save him or the world.

Her better sense told her she was self-aggrandizing her own importance, but her better sense did not warn her against pitying Severus Snape.

"It's all right, you know," she told him, and he jerked his head up from his book in surprise. "You shouldn't lose hope of finding happiness just because she doesn't want you."

She felt, with that pronouncement, as though she were emulating Luna Lovegood: penetrating, astute, and a touch clairvoyant.

For a moment, however, she felt incredibly stupid, because Snape's expression was one of bewilderment.

"What?"

Obviously her guess was off-mark...or so she thought.

"Who told you that?"

She'd mistaken his tense appearance for confusion, but too quickly it turned much uglier. A searing revulsion emerged on his visage, his sourness to the conjecture akin to the reaction of baking-soda and vinegar.

"I...presumed," she said, demure but a little frightened at the emotion on his face. "It's obvious from the flowers and the note you sent that you...fancy her...but it's also rather obvious that James Potter fancies her too." From there, she felt awkward, not wanting to outright acknowledge Snape's inferiority to the pureblood Gryffindor, but the implication was clear. "And honestly," she continued, feeling flustered, "why do you care so much?"

She realized that sounded callous, and so she opted to quell the fury she saw in his eyes with some well-placed sympathy. "She's...she's just one girl, Snape. There's plenty more to be had in the world. Why set your sights on someone so unobtainable? Why not look for someone with which you have more in common?"

With that, Severus Snape stood, his wiry strength emanating rage beyond comparison. Leaning forward with a sneer to rival all those of his adulthood, he questioned coldly: "Miss Granger, I hope you'll excuse my ignorance, but what business does a lecherous little lemur from Australia have with my affairs?"

"What?" She stood up too, feeling affronted that her condolences had been taken so badly. "I'm just trying to be nice, Snape!"

"Of course you were, witch!" he spat, "Nice. And in return, a hilarious anecdote to take back to your little Aussie friends, 'I had a pity shag with the Hogwarts oddball'."

"What makes you think I want to...to...do anything with you?" exclaimed Hermione, horribly taken aback.

"Oh, only the fact that you've been staring at me for the past half hour, the fact that you're poking your bushy head into my personal life, and, first and foremost, your little 'be nice to the wretched Slytherin' campaign. Really, Miss Granger, do you think that I'm an idiot? Even if I were...unsuccessful at wooing the attentions of Miss Evans, I wouldn't be interested in you."

"I'm not doing this to shag you, Severus Snape!" snapped Hermione. "Why can't you understand that? I'm not trying to seduce you or make you into a laughing-stock, for crying out loud! I'm trying to help you because no one else will!"

To her surprise, he laughed, but it was forced and mirthless. "I suppose," he said dispassionately, "that you're right about that. But that's no excuse," he went on, his anger rising again, "to presume. Not every underdog needs your help, Granger."

"Fine!" she replied, "I won't interfere any more. I really am just trying to help you."

"And I want none of it, Granger. I keep my business private, and I'd appreciate if you didn't churn the rumor mill." Calming a bit, he added, "If your intentions are truly honorable, as you say they are, then I might be inclined to...compensate for your silence."

"You mean, you'd...pay me for keeping quiet?" Hermione said, frowning. "I've already told you, I don't operate that way, Snape. That's a Slytherin tactic."

He shrugged. "I didn't think it'd suffice. If you're determined to be so Gryffindor about it...would you give me your word not to divulge it?"

"What? Your affection for Lily?"

He looked shocked, spooked, llke a horse that shied from the truth.

"Yes...that."

"I promise not to tell," Hermione said.

He nodded, unable to say thank-you. With that, he seemed to fold up, like a bird with a broken wing, and said nothing more until Hermione packed up and left to go to her dormitory. She heard him sigh and, as she glanced back in concern, saw him break the seal of the letter with his thumbnail.

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