Another chapter! Thank you, everyone, for the wonderful reviews last chapter! You've really restored my confidence! Here's a new chapter for you all!
~Creelluka
Disclaimer: Bolded print near the end is from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, chapter 33, I own nothing!
(Edited 10-3-2015)
July 23, 1998
Hermione woke midmorning, lethargic and with a splitting headache. Squinting against the bright light from the window, she fell back into her pillow, the bed frame knocking into the night table and making the soft clink noise of glass hitting glass. Sitting up again, Hermione fumbled to pick up the vials of potion. Seeing the labels 'Pepper-up' and 'Draught of Peace' written in a spiky scrawl on each potion label was enough for Hermione as she uncorked and drank both in turn.
Stretching, Hermione glanced around her room, sensing something out of place.
There. The desk chair was next to the window and was facing the bed. It had probably been Remus, watching to make sure I made it through the night. Getting up to put the chair back with the desk, Hermione picked up a book from the seat and glanced at the cover, "The Count of Monte Cristo" by Alexandre Dumas. A Muggle novel, which wasn't that surprising for Remus, he was a well educated half-blood who had been known to enjoy both Muggle and Wizarding fiction. Hermione set it on the desk to return when she went downstairs.
Tonks was still at Prince Manor when Hermione made it downstairs to the sitting room.
"Wotcher, 'Mione. How are you feeling?" Tonks asked, looking concerned for Hermione even as her pleasure bled through. Hermione smiled, knowing what―or likely who― had made the pink-haired witch so happy.
"A bit sore in the head, like I've got a bruise on my brain if that's even possible," Hermione said wryly, slumping down in one of the stiff-backed chairs. She set "The Count" down on a nearby end table.
"I don't suppose Bruise Paste will do anything to help?" Tonks suggested, half-joking.
"Considering I was your teacher for seven years, I would have hoped that you would have learned something." An unmistakable voice joined the conversation. Hermione jumped, startled by the sudden appearance of Professor Snape.
"Heh, you started teaching the same time I started Hogwarts, wasn't it?" Tonks asked. "Yeah, I remember now, you gave me so many detentions for no reason!" She grinned.
"You know exactly why you received those detentions, Miss Tonks," Professor Snape glared. "You were, and continue to be the worst Hufflepuff I have ever taught."
Hermione, curious now, asked: "What did you do, Tonks?" And had trouble hiding a smile as the pink haired witch grinned deviously.
"Oh I didn't have much control over my Metamorphmagus abilities and I frequently mimicked those around me," Tonks was now openly chuckling now, and Snape was looking irritated.
"Miss Tonks here used to copy my facial features during class." Snape bit out. And the look of pure distaste from recalling the memory made Hermione burst out laughing.
"Oh...I'm so...sorry, Professor...I just…"Hermione tried to contain her giggles, but Tonks had started doing her Snape Face while his back was turned and Hermione was having difficulty sobering herself under the dual looks of one cross-eyed and smiling, fake professor, and one very real, very glaring Professor.
Not looking back, Snape cast a non-verbal Petrificus Totalus at Tonks, whose face had unfortunately been in the process of another imitation of Professor Snape. The look on Tonks' 'Snape Face' when she had been frozen was enough to send Hermione into near conniptions, doubled over in laughter as she was.
"Control yourself, Miss Granger," Snape barked a few minutes later when Hermione had not ceased laughing. "I have regretful need of your assistance in a matter that can not be delayed any longer."
When Hermione managed to stop giggling, she followed Professor Snape to the basement, stepping through the door and into an empty room, save for a fireplace and a clay pot sitting next to the hearth.
Professor Snape strode over to the pot and pinched a bit of the silver powder.
"Er, Professor," Hermione said nervously. "Where are we going?"
Snape sneered and tossed the Floo Powder into the flames and said: "Spinner's End." And stood aside for Hermione to walk through the green flames.
"It has come to my attention that, in your grief, you may have a less tenuous grip on your mental faculties. I am apparently supposed to remedy that." Professor Snape sneered. He and Hermione were standing in the cramped parlor of Spinner's End.
"My mental faculties are perfectly fine, Professor, and my grief is under control as well. Thank you for the concern, but I'm perfectly fine." Hermione said imperiously. At this, Professor Snape seemed, to loom even higher above her, and Hermione felt almost like a first year once again.
"The hell you are fine! I am not doing this out of concern for you, nescient brat!" Liar "I have no wish for my house to be blown up every time someone tries to snap you out of your pathetic depression!—"
"Pathetic depression!" Hermione screeched. "My parents were murdered not even a month ago. By your father, no less, and you think my sadness is pathetic?!" Perhaps it was the fact that she'd had to grow up faster than anyone else her age, or that she felt, inexplicably, that somehow, sometime this school year, everything would be over, but Hermione suddenly felt old. House points, Head Girl, detentions, and yes, even Professor Snape (though he was still frightening) paled in comparison to Lord Voldemort trying to kill her best friend, eradicating the 'impure', and trying to take over the Wizarding world.
If Snape had merely loomed over her before, that was nothing compared to how he towered over her now. He looked almost as frenzied as when he had come upon Harry, Ron, Remus, Sirius, and herself in her third year.
"YES! You think that I do not care that my father is the one that has killed innocent Muggles? No one even knows how he did it since it was clearly executed with magic!" Snape was spitting mad with rage now, his eyes blazed feverishly and unknowingly, his right hand clawed at the sleeve of his left arm.
"Then why haven't you ever tried to find him, eh? He killed your mum and disappeared, have you ever even tried looking for him, or is he a part of your Death Eater brotherhood as well and you're protecting him?" Hermione shrieked.
They were both shouting now, magic crackling in the air around them.
"Do not speak of what you do not know! You are a child and if you had any sense you would have done a better job of finding friends instead of tethering yourself like the Giant Squid to a Grindylow, to the first people to give you the time of day! You are out of your depth and should never have even considered attaching yourself the one person that the Dark Lord wants to kill above all else! Surely in one of those colossal texts that you absorb must have mentioned that." Snape had gotten quieter and more furious towards the end, hissing the words.
"I stand by Harry not because he and Ron saved my life from the troll in first year, but because they are good, honest people and care about those around them. If they see someone in danger, they'll try their hardest to help that person. You only know them by what you see in class and that's─"
"Gryffindor impudence─"
"Would you say the same if I had been put in Ravenclaw? Hufflepuff? Slytherin?" She shot back. "The Sorting Hat said I was more than suitable for all the House. Or Harry, the Sorting Hat almost put him in Slytherin, but Harry begged the Hat to put him in Gryffindor instead. Would you have acted differently if he had been in your House instead?"
Both stood there, in the shabby house, glaring at each other, eyes flashing dangerously.
Hermione took a deep breath. "I need to take a walk."
"No," Snape growled.
"I can take care of myself! I've fought Death Eaters before at the Ministry." She shouted.
"They weren't trying to capture or kill you then." He seemed unable to speak in anything other than a growl. "And you were almost killed by Dolohov!"
"Try and stop me!" Hermione shot back, slashing her wand and casting a hasty but powerful Petrificus Totalus almost before the Professor had realized it. He froze, arms and legs snapped to his sides and he fell onto his side on the hard floor.
Fuck, this was supposed to be simple. Snape thought vitriolically as he watched the front door slam closed.
Hermione didn't know where she was going. She had run out of the house and was now by a playground.
Sitting on a swing, the chains so rusted it looked like they hadn't been replaced in twenty years, Hermione rocked herself gently.
Severus cursed himself yet again. He hadn't expected her to jinx him and it wasn't good to be unprepared in any setting. It hadn't taken him long at all to escape the jinx, but by the time he had, the stupid Gryffindor was nowhere to be seen. He cast a tracking spell, calling on the magic that connected every teachers' wand to their students' and immediately felt the pull towards her magic. He set out, walking briskly until he came to a park.
It was a familiar park, and it tugged insistently at his memories until he realized. It was the park where he had first spoken to Lily.
Hermione was now swinging. Big pumps and long extensions of her legs brought her higher and higher, the wind alternately making her short hair blow into her face and stream back.
Severus hid behind a honeysuckle bush not far away, watching the girl on the swings, his black cloak like great broken wings extending from his back.
The girl on the swing arched higher and higher before leaping off of the swing at its highest point.
To the onlooker, it seemed as if, for a single instant, there were two little girls there with the brown haired adolescent, the red-haired one on the same swing as the bigger girl, overlapping each other.
Both girls let go of the swing at the very height of its arc and flew into the air, quite literally flew, launching themselves skyward with a great shout of laughter, and instead of crumpling on the playground asphalt, they soared like a trapeze artist through the air, staying up far too long, landing far too lightly.
"Mummy told you not to!" The other ghostly girl shrieked, the one with a pinched face and dull brown hair pulled up into a ponytail.
And then the girls were gone, leaving only the older, brown-haired girl. Her eyes bright with happiness and the lingering feeling of flying through the air. She laughed out loud and it sounded like rain on a hot day, light and invigorating.
She noticed an overgrown honeysuckle bush near where she landed and approached it, picking up a fallen flower from the bush behind which Snape lurked.
Cupping it in her hand, the broken stem began to grow, curling itself around her wrist as the fluted white petals opened and closed.
And Severus Snape watched Hermione Granger, fascinated. And repulsed.
I don't know when the next update will be, I've got my STAAR EOC (you Americans hopefully know what I'm talking about), and an AP test next week, so I've been, and really need to study a BUNCH!
Read and Review, Favorite and Follow, I'll answer any questions or concerns you may have, and reply with abundant gratitude to your encouraging words!
Until next time!
~Creelluka