Prompt: Severus & Hermione (Addendum)

An answer to the question: "What *did* McGonagall do to get Snape to accept Hermione as his apprentice?" by just-things-i-like-mostly.

She called in a favor.

There was a time, several years ago when Lily Potter's death was fresh and Severus had just turned coat on the Death Eaters, when he felt like he had nothing to live for. He accepted the position at Hogwarts and spent his days listless and his nights sleepless. Because of his affiliations and general attitude, all the professors gave him a wide berth.

Save two. Everyone knows of the friendship between Dumbledore and Snape, but the relationship that developed between McGonagall and her co-worker was far more interesting.

It was hard to let house rivalries completely die, of course, and when she visited him in his office after school hours, it was under the guise of seeing how he was dealing with his school-related work. He detested her nosiness and although he endured this "surveillance" for about a week, soon he snapped at her to either lodge a complaint or leave him alone.

She did neither.

She wore into his life like a river cutting through a mountain, popping up at the same times, the same days, for the same reasons. Sometimes she requested tea and made him make some for her. Sometimes she demanded to know why he never had biscuits, and he'd tersely reply that he was not a coffee shop. Sometimes she accused him, almost offhandedly, of targeting her house's students, which he always scoffed at; the idea that he'd care about any students or their house affiliations was ludicrous to him in the wake of Lily's passing.

But the most important part was that she was there. When he came back from the Death Eater revels tired and soul-worn and wishing for death, she was there, pursing her lips at him and telling him to quit being so dramatic. Because honestly, Slytherins and their drama.

One day was darker than the others.

It was the Christmas holidays, his first year on the job. McGonagall had decided to return to her home to visit with her nieces and nephews. It was a Tuesday, at 6pm, and he glanced at his office door.

At 6:30pm, he felt fidgety.

By 7pm, he realized he was waiting for her, and cursed himself. When had the routine become so deeply ingrained?

Worse yet, why hadn't he realized how much he depended on that small measure of human interaction?

Another week passed, and it was nearly Christmas. He hadn't seen another soul, and barely left his quarters. No one came to find him. No one sought him out. No fellow Death Eaters, even in the lonely soul-searching absence of their Lord, had even so much as owled him. He'd never felt so alone.

He turned his wand on himself and turned his wish for death into a reality.

He wasn't sure how much time passed before he was being rudely re-awoken, feeling as though his heart were going to erupt out of his chest. He gasped for air, his lung burning, and stared up into Minerva's wide, stricken eyes. As soon as she realized he would make it, she began to curse in that thick, Scottish brogue of hers. He'd never heard her utter a profanity in all this time together. Not once.

She called him gutless and stupid – the former he was accused of rather often, but the latter never. It cut him to the quick, and he recovered in his quarters, tended only by her. She missed Christmas with her family all because she'd chosen to check in on him on Christmas Eve.

He'd wanted to apologize, but as time passed, the thought of doing so became fainter. The 'sorry' he'd always longed to mutter lodged in his throat and festered there, like a pearl.

As much as she complained, though, she seemed to understand. It was mid-January when their mid-tea conversation came to an awkward halt, and he gave her a desperate, searching look, and she'd sighed. "Please don't worry about it, Severus. You'll owe me one," she offered, a bit sarcastically, and he'd chuckled darkly. The thought of her trying to commit suicide seemed about as likely as her flying to the moon.

Imagine his surprise, a full quarter-century later, when she finally pulled that favor out of thin air and said, "You will take Hermione Granger on as your apprentice, or Merlin help me, Severus, you're going to spend the rest of your life regretting crossing me."

And so he did.

Quotes: N/A