A\N: I own a demon cat. I do not own Hermione or Severus. I also do not have any pad Thai at the moment.
"I had an idea while I was sleeping," she stated between bites of her pad Thai.
"And what might that be?"
"Maybe they didn't mean to hurt you, I mean, they did erase years of damage. Someone's deranged idea of a wedding present?"
"An interesting thought. Do we know anyone who would gift us such a lovely present, or that has the ability to bestow such a gift?' He asked. His mind made a mental list of everyone powerful enough to do that kind of magic. The list was extremely short and the main suspect was, of course, dead. He could see she was having as hard of a time coming up with any names.
"Even I don't know any spells that could do it, nor have I come across anything in my studies," she commented.
"If such a spell existed, wouldn't the healers at St. Mungo's have it, to repair damage?"
"Exactly, and we both know nothing like that exists there. What if the intention wasn't to undo the damage, but just to remove the dark mark? A sort of clean up that went too far?"
"But why would they do without telling us beforehand?" She shook her head unable to come with a decent answer.
"It is an interesting idea though. Do you have a list of everyone who gave us wedding presents?"
"Somewhere, yes, I had to write the thank you notes, of course, and I sent many things back, since...you know." He nodded, reached over and took her hand in his.
"Yes. We can look for the list after dinner if you're up for it. I would like to see what people thought was an appropriate wedding gift for us."
"There was a fair amount of poisons, a cursed ring, and a few booby trapped boxes. I returned most of those to sender."
"Most?"
"A few of the poisons were on the rarer side, untraceable if I wanted to kill you. I put them down in your lab...labeled of course."
"Thank you, I'm surprised you didn't pack up my lab and send it who knows where."
"I thought about it, I mean, I did get rid of some of the perishable ingredients. I just couldn't bare to do it. I locked the door so only I could open it. I thought maybe some day I might want to...I don't know."
"What did you do with the ingredients? Some were on the rare side," he asked running through a mental inventory of his lab.
"Donated them to Hogwarts, in your memory of course. I think they inscribed a bench or something for you."
"I can just see it now, the Severus Snape memory garden." He frowned slightly.
"Full of deadly plants and potion ingredients," she laughed.
"Teaching students to harvest some of their own ingredients is not a bad idea, some students, not the dunderheads that would mutilate them. Who did they hire to replace me?'
"I don't know. I'm sorry. I'm sure someone mentioned it at some point, but," she shook her head. "There's been so much going on."
"That's alright, I'm sure whoever they brought in is doing an adequate job."
"I'm sure Minerva will happily hire you back, if you want to continue teaching."
"I'm not sure. Let's figure this mess out and bring me back to life before deciding if I'm going to continue teaching."
"Okay. So far we have a list of death eaters, a non-existent list of people who wanted you gone for three months, and a theory that we both think is more than likely impossible."
"Dumbledore is still dead?"
"Yes. As simple as that solution would be," she sighed leaning against him, her head resting on his shoulder.
