Notes: Now betaed! All my love and flowers to my beta =)
Patricia Berry, a first-year Slytherin girl, chastised her twin brother, Peter, as her mother had done hundreds of times in the past. Treacherous sobs came to her throat, but she could not fill her mother's shoes. She had almost lost her brother and Patricia knew her mother would look on them from Heaven cursing out her reckless behavior.
While she had been able to find her brother, Professor Granger was still nowhere to be found. Peter had left the Great Hall several hours prior to go in search of snowdrops which he had intended to present to Professor Granger. While Peter and Patricia had searched, she was now faced with the task of admitting to Professor Snape that the smiling woman with a shock of brown hair, who was so like her mother, was also lost.
"Miss Berry, may I ask, what are you doing near the greenhouses at this hour, and long past after the curfew?" Snape asked in a levelling tone, as he strode over to the children.
Patricia sobbed and suddenly buried herself in her professor's robes, wiping snot on the sleeve accidentally.
"Professor Snape, sir, help, something terrible happened! First, Peter disappeared, I was looking for him for so long, and I was in the Tower, and in the dungeons, then I ran in search of Hermione..."
"It's Professor Granger to you, Miss Berry, you ought to show some respect!"
"Sir, I was so scared! She is so kind! She always visits us in the library, she talks about different books, so Peter decided to give her snowdrops, and now she is gone. Professor, help, please!"
"Hush, Patty, calm down, and tell me about everything without all the rush." Realizing that he would not get anything from the girl if he continued using this orderly tone, Snape squatted down in front of the children and looked Patricia in the eyes. "I'll help you, just tell me what happened."
The more Patricia sobbed, the more Snape felt cold inside, and after listening to her story, he summoned Patronus and almost shouted after the flying raven: "Lupin, come to the greenhouses, Miss Granger is in need of our aid."
Then everything spun like a whirlpool. Remus rushed to the rescue and took the children with him. Minerva sent her Patronus off on a hunt to report back if it was able to find Hermione. Once she was found, limp and cold, Poppy told Severus to take Miss Granger to the Hospital Wing immediately. However, it seemed the headmaster had his own plans on how the crazy evening would continue.
Officially, Snape never handed over the management of the School to Minerva, therefore, in fact, Hogwarts had two Headmasters. In any case, the castle still obeyed his orders and assisted if the need arose. The cunning Head of Slytherin, of course, did not tell anyone about the lifting of the ban on Apparition on the territory of Hogwarts.
So, his orphaned Slytherins wanted to please Hermione and almost got into trouble. Recklessness, of course, but was not as though Severus had never done the same. He remembered drawing cranes as a child and secretly leaving them on Poppy's desk. He remembered how he collected bluebells at the very edge of the Forbidden Forest to secretly slip them to his second mother, Minerva. Deprived of parental love, little Severus tried his best to earn love one way or another and was very afraid that he would simply be pushed away, and his cranes would be thrown into the trash.
The apparition whirlwind momentarily confused him, and Snape did not immediately realize that he was in the Hogwarts greenhouses, where real winter had suddenly come. The frosty air burned his lungs, forcing him to cast a warming charm in an instant, the wind that came from nowhere threw a handful of prickly snow into his face.
Snape brushed off his robes and was about to look around as the barely audible sobs made him alert and he rushed to the sound.
At the edge of the snowy clearing, on which here and there snowdrops had already begun to break through, Hermione lay, pressing her knees to her chin, and smeared the tears down her cheeks.
Snape swore floridly through clenched teeth and rushed to her.
"You foolish girl! Why tell me, why could not you have waited for me for only five minutes more? Bloody Gryffindors with their irrepressible passion for futile exploits."
He kept swearing and scolding, reprimanding her for her negligent behavior, but she did not hear him. She saw only the red flashes of the Cruciatus, she felt fear and tasted bitterness and failure in her mouth.
Of course, Snape knew about his wife's uneasy relationship with the cold. This persistent fear and the accompanying panic attacks were one of the reasons for their many quarrels in the past when Snape tried to convince her to consult either the mediwizard or the Muggle psychologists. Hermione Snape, the curse breaker in Gringotts itself, was adamant, of course.
Snape gritted his teeth and knelt in front of her, throwing off his heavy winter robes along the way.
"Here, just a moment. Everything is fine, you are safe, nothing threatens you."
The next minute, Snape lifted Hermione into his arms and Apparated away from the greenhouses.
Of course, if Poppy Pomfrey had learned about his arbitrariness, she would have pulled off his ears. No matter that he was the Headmaster and she was a simple school nurse. Severus has always had a rocky relationship with strong women. One of them, who was desperately clinging to him now, looking for warmth, by a strange coincidence of circumstances appeared to be his wife.
At the very entrance to the Slytherin dungeons, he was overtaken by Peeves - an eternal prankster and a source of headache for Snape.
"Bitter-batty, pantsy-Princie, it's not easy being Peevsie!"
"Peeves! One word. I'll tell you just one word," Snape hissed in response.
"So what? What? What will you do? The batty Headmaster will threaten Peeves with the Bloody Baron again?"
"No, the Headmaster will use exorcism. Don't forget that poltergeists also obey the Headmaster, as well as ghosts."
"Peeves is the embodiment of Hogwarts himself, please don't drive him out," Hermione muttered somewhere into Snape's collar in a low voice.
"I won't drive him out, dear heart, it would be too easy, but I can quite expel him from the Dungeons," Snape murmured in a half-whisper.
"Batty and Swotty sitting in a tree,
K- I- S- S- I- N- G.
First comes love,
Then comes marriage;
Then comes Poppy with a baby carriage."
"Peeves, get lost this instant! Mucus ad Nauseam!"
"Uh-oh, the Headmaster has put a cold spell on Peeves! The Headmaster is cruel!"
"So, who is Snivellus now?" Snape muttered after the departing poltergeist.
It seemed unbelievable, but in fact, in Snape's childhood, he and Peeves were almost friends! In any case, Snape was the only one who was not afraid to answer the poltergeist with a prank for a prank and a cruel joke for a cruel joke.
Friendship with a poltergeist... Well, until Narcissa found Severus and practically adopted him, he had no friends at all.
There was, of course, Regulus, a lonely boy wandering the corridors of Hogwarts and dreaming of getting his brother back. There was the brilliant Prefect Lucius Malfoy, too smart and just as unattainable for Severus to try and make friends with him. For some time, there was Lily, but friendship with her turned out to be fleeting, like a short-lived second summer. She melted like a spider's web in the wind, leaving Snape only bitterness and vague melancholy. And Severus was alone.
It was then, in one of the gray and immensely dreary evenings, that a prankster poltergeist found him. He threw water bombs, tried to take the bag of scrolls from Severus, he substituted the steps, but the disappointed and angry teenager did not react to his pranks in any way, stubbornly walking forward. And when Peeves scattered the vials of herbs that Severus had been collecting in the Forbidden Forest for two days, the latter could not stand it and threatened Peeves with exorcism.
At first, the poltergeist was taken aback: in the entire history of Hogwarts, no one had thought of such impudence. Then, gradually, he began to look after the unsociable boy, he taught Snape all the secret passages, he warned him about which of the teachers patrolled the corridors and he simply told Severus various stories from the past.
It was believed that the poltergeist was the embodiment of the very consciousness of Hogwarts, ancient as time, and as mischievous as spoiled children. Peeves understood the true essence of things and never hurt those who could not stand up for themselves.
Snape watched him wistfully, remembering how many times Hermione had had to complain to him in the past when Peeves had happened to catch her off guard and ruin her new suit, spill ink, or mix her reactive potions together.
It seemed to Severus, that the harmful poltergeist seemed to have guessed that his longtime friend was consumed by jealousy and indecision and in such a strange way Peeves expressed his support for Snape.
Hermione came to consciousness, then plunged into darkness again. Everything around her was filled with the familiar smells of the Potions lab, the subtle aromas of juniper and cedar that she always associated with Snape, and apple pie, which the elves must have baked in the kitchen.
The last thing she remembered was the intolerable cold and the horror that bound her, it seemed that she even lost her wand through carelessness, and what would happen now? Who would come to her aid?
The deep baritone, whispering something to her in an undertone, was surprisingly soothing, and Hermione thought she was floating.
She recalled the winter of her fourth year when the entire School was enthusiastically preparing for the Yule Ball, and Hermione was hiding from everyone in the farthest corridors, not wanting to see anyone. Ron threw an ugly scene of jealousy at her, accusing her of cheating on him with Krum, and disappeared. Harry was too absorbed in his girlfriend's attention that evening to pay attention to where Hermione had gone. And Hermione was too sad to share her grief with her friends. That was why she did not think of anything better than to hide in the most secluded corner and shed tears into the darkness.
It was where, a few hours later, Snape found her, finding himself no better thing to do than patrolling the corridors.
"And what, may I ask, are you doing here, Miss Granger?" he asked insinuatingly, habitually emerging from the darkness.
"Mourning my first ball," Hermione grunted angrily. On this dreary evening, the best student at Hogwarts did not care at all that Snape could take off a lot of points for insolence and mock her at detentions until the end of the next year.
Snape gave her a thoughtful look, thought for a couple of seconds, then held out his hand to Hermione and ordered:
"Come with me. Of course, I could deduct points from you for walking around unknown places unattended. I could also start giving you an inspiring lecture that first ball is one of the most important events in every girl's life and should never be missed, but I will leave this dubious honor to Professor McGonagall. You, as I see, have already guessed by yourself that the first love is fleeting and cruel, therefore, come with me. You need not mourn the injustice of life in the dark and cold corridors."
Hermione was so taken aback that she grabbed his outstretched hand and obediently followed.
At some point in the traditional patrolling of the corridors, Snape took off his heavy winter robe and handed it to her, arguing that it was December, and it was not worth wandering around the castle in a dress that was too thin. They didn't talk about anything else, but the silence and his confident presence were strangely soothing, and Hermione no longer seemed so grief-stricken. And the winter, which she hated, turned out to be quite bearable.
So now, Hermione had a vague feeling that she and her professor were wandering through the corridors of the School, looking for troublemakers in secluded corners, and she was wearing his winter robes, smelling of cedar and juniper, and instead of the fierce cold, she felt warmth.
She was on the verge of reality and sleep, with the edge of her consciousness distinguishing the crackling of logs in the fireplace, the rustling of book pages, the gurgling of herbs boiling in the pot over the hearth, and the barely audible sounds of human steps. Snape wandered through his private chambers, looking for a blanket to wrap up Hermione, then sorting various medicinal plants for a warming drink. She wanted to sit on the couch, to ask him about something, to admire the interior of his rooms (she was once in his quarters when she helped rebuild Hogwarts, but she had never felt at home here before), but the weakness caused by the panic attack did not let her say any a sound.
Snape found a blanket and, as if nothing had happened, transfigured her evening dress into flannel pajamas, blue with white clouds as if he had done this a hundred times. Hermione had no answer to his familiarity, and Snape, too worried about the health of his future wife, ignored her displeasure.
He knew perfectly well that in the morning Hermione would not remember his schemes to save her, so he was not too worried that she might suspect something.
Two or three more hours would pass, the ball would end in the Great Hall, and Minerva and Madam Pomfrey would come running here to insist on Hermione's immediate hospitalization so now Snape had every minute counting.
He gave Hermione some herbal pomegranate juice, marveling at the irony of the situation. According to the beliefs of the ancient Greeks, Persephone, the spouse of the gloomy Hades, ate seven pomegranate seeds and got the opportunity to resurrect, to return spring to the world. The pomegranate was also considered a kind of marriage contract, the fruit of the tree of knowledge, a symbol of erotic love. A sign of immortality, renewal, abundance, hope for rebirth.
Of course, Snape was far from being Hades, but he really wanted spring to come into his and Hermione's life. She slept on his couch. He read for a long time by the fireplace, sipping his herbal tea. She dozed on the couch, occasionally listening to the story about the pomegranate tree that Snape read aloud, and it seemed to her that someone was stroking her hair.
Hermione was warm. Hermione felt at home.