Summary: SSHG, AU, EWE, Almost a decade ago, Severus Snape told Hermione Granger to go solve a problem on her own, casting her out of his life as he hid behind duty. He told himself often it was for the best, but his heart never forgave him. #scratchthatniche2021 (COMPLETE)

Prompts: Il Palazzo Maledetto (Ca'Dario), Gaze, Foe-glass, Lethifold

Rare Pair: Susan Bones/Dennis Creavy

Across the Great Divide

"Be careful when you cast out your demons that you don't throw away the best of yourself."

― Friedrich Nietzsche

The moment he saw her, he remembered the softest brush of her breath against his neck, the curl of her fingers as they entwined with his. He remembered the rise and fall of her chest as she slept nestled against him and the featherlight touch of her lips against his, the way her hand felt as it enclosed over his own— that warmth that matched the radiance of her genuine smile.

He took a step towards her, drawn to her as powerfully as opposing magnets, longing pooling in his stomach and heart even as he knew there could never be anyone but her.

But he saw her eyes as she looked towards him—

Cold.

Void of warmth.

A stab of anguish spread pain through his body as both his mind and body remembered the ecstasy of companionship only to realise something had taken it away— and that something had been him.

He had sent her from his side alone to deal with some matter Potter insisted she help with. She had asked him to come with her, and he had turned her away saying nothing Potter needed could possibly require the both of them. He had a school to help rebuild.

She could handle anything on her own, he had no doubt.

He had duty to attend to.

Hundreds of students to think about.

The good of the many—

Now— almost half a decade later, he saw her. All the walls he had built, all the memories he had buried saying it was for the better, all the lies he had told himself that he didn't need her of all people.

He didn't need anyone.

It was all a lie.

"Headmaster Snape," a disgustingly cheerful younger wizard greeted. "Do you know Master Granger? She's been sent by people above my paygrade to take care of your little problem with nightmares in the school."

"Master Granger," Snape managed to say without a tremble in his voice but only just.

"Headmaster Snape," Hermione replied, tilting her head with a respectful nod.

Nightmares.

That was a good way of putting it.

Poppy called it trauma from the war, but she had started to change her mind when new students who hadn't been in the war-torn school had started to have strange night terrors too like they were somehow contagious. It was because of Poppy's worry that he'd requested a professional to deal in the area that none of them had any experience with.

It wasn't haunting. It wasn't Peeves. It wasn't a ghost trying to possess someone. Minerva had even considered it could have been some sort of summoning, but the truth was, none of them knew what was inflicting the school with nightmares—paralysing nightmares that locked the body in place as the mind screamed in terror.

They'd tried so many times to fix the problem on their own even to the point of dragging out a Foe-glass to see if there was some common enemy none of them realised was there, but while it showed them many a horrible teenage idea of danger, it wasn't the war or anything common that showed upon it.

The episodes, as far as the staff could report, were random. No one particular person was prone to them than others, and no traits seemed to connect the victims save they were all at Hogwarts.

If the attacks kept happening, they would have to close the school until a resolution could be found— if it could be found.

So, Severus had bitten his tongue and agreed to bring in a professional from the Ministry—

And that professional had been none other than the witch he had practically banished from his side to take care of Potter's problem almost ten years previous.

From his side.

From his life.

From his bed.

The younger wizard seemed pleased as punch to catch Severus off-guard, and Snape contemplated hexing him into having nightmares of his own just to make himself feel better, but it would have been hard to do so in front of a witness such as Granger.

She'd always been more aware than others of her ilk.

He'd assumed she left and found out she was more suited with her childhood beau than him. Part of him had preferred to think it rather than contemplating his life as some sort of lecherous old man, but she was Master Granger. She had never married the Weasley idiot.

Relief chased guilt through his system.

He'd never owled.

He'd never tried to make contact.

She'd never returned, and he'd taken it for the sign he thought it was: she'd moved on to greener pastures. Happy in her choices.

He'd even made himself rip-roaringly drunk on a few occasions just thinking about how happy she was without him, throwing the ring box he had hidden in his pocket for months into the fireplace and watching it burn.

Coward.

She had had no tie, promise, or even words from him that would have given her an indicator of what he'd wanted to share with her—just his silent acceptance of her into his life and his cock.

He'd never promised her anything.

He'd never wanted to promise anyone anything again, so the ring had stayed in his pocket unrevealed, his feelings hidden, his words frozen on his lips.

And when she'd asked him to come with her, the one time she'd asked for him to choose her over duty, he'd told her to go alone.

If he had gone with her, they would have known—

Known that she wanted him in her life.

Known that he was special to her.

Revealed.

Exposed.

So he hid behind his duty and pushed her away.

And she—

She never came back to his side.

Master Granger was no longer the witch who had just won a Wizarding War with her two limelight friends. She was no longer the young woman that had tended him as he recovered from Nagini's bite, shared both books and philosophy, quandary, and banter, nor was she the one who had accepted his silence and companionship in secret and believed it was enough.

"And what is your—speciality, Master Granger?" Severus inquired, his voice low and even.

She turned her head to him, her eyes meeting his unwavering. "Dark entities and curses," she said.

He couldn't help the scoff that escaped his lips.

Granger? Dark entities and curses? What maddened pipe dream was he currently trapped in?

"I assure you, Headmaster," Hermione's voice said, cold and formal, "I am sufficiently qualified."

"And how exactly does one become a master of dark entities?"

Hermione's expression did not change. "Become one, of course."

The young wizard laughed nervously, obviously discomfited by the course of conversation. "I'll leave you to discuss quarters while she is here at Hogwarts, Headmaster Snape," he said with a tremor in his voice and hands before dashing off into the crowd.

"Idiot," Snape growled.

"Most men are," Hermione said, and again her expression did not change. She did not waver in looking him straight in the eye, but her tone was not venomous or even emotional.

It was not a barb at him, though he knew it could have been. Easily.

"What is it you do at the Ministry?" Severus asked.

She blinked once, eyes unmoving. "I find Dark objects or entities and deal with them."

"Deal," he asked, "with them?"

Hermione's twitch of lips was so brief, he knew he wouldn't have even noticed had he not been looking.

"I let them devour me," she said, "and we come to terms."

Unsure what she meant by that but knowing it wasn't literal, Severus frowned. "I see. How long do you expect to reside at Hogwarts?"

"Until the problem is either identified and known to be out of my expertise or identified and dealt with," Hermione said.

"Do your assignments usually span a certain amount of time?"

"Alas," she said. "Each one is different. The longest assignment was over a year. A young wizard and a witch disappeared after supposedly visiting the Grand Canal in Venice. They eloped there, hoping to escape the scrutiny of their disapproving families. Rumour said the Ca'Dario ate them— drove them mad and caused them to—" She trailed off, her gaze flitting to the left. "Behave erratically and succumb to a curse after leaving. Unknownst to Muggles, a Wizarding family owns Ca'Dario and rents it to Wizarding travellers in Venice, and the locals believe the place cursed or haunted or both. Most call this nonsense, but when those two came back "wrong" I was told to investigate. The pair were under two powerful compulsions, and it took a greater part of two years at St Mungos to free them of them, but the hard part for me was tracking down anything and everything they may have touched or been exposed two while they were enjoying their honeymoon. That is what brought me to Ca'Dario. My first and longest negotiation, I suppose, and cemented me in the role I now have."

Severus felt a shiver run down his spine. "That was the disappearance of Susan Bones and Dennis Creavy."

Hermione nodded. "Yes."

Severus realised why the case seemed so familiar with a sinking in his stomach. "That was Potter's request that sent you out there— the one you—"

Hermione's eyes seemed to glow— a trick of the light, surely. Her expression remained dispassionate. "The one you told me you had full confidence that I could handle it on my own." There was no emotion to her words. She spoke with the impartiality of a machine. "I would appreciate being escorted to my quarters, Headmaster. I have some preparation I will need to do before I can begin work tomorrow evening."

Stunned, he nodded numbly and escorted her to where the guest quarters for visiting lecturers normally lived. "These will be your accommodations while you are here, Master Granger."

"Thank you, Headmaster," Hermione said. "I will inform you of any developments as they occur."

Snape closed his eyes tightly and moved his head down to the left before jerking his head up to blurt, "Hermione, I—"

"You do not need to feign niceties to me, Headmaster," Hermione said. "I had come to terms that duty is and had always been more important to you than the shattered feelings of any person."

"Not when that person was you!" he insisted, slamming his hands down against the door frame. "I loved you! I wanted you to return!"

Hermione shook her head. "I sent you letters every day. Every day, Headmaster. And if you had cared even a little outside of secret meetings and hidden intimacies, I begged you to write me back. Not one letter ever came to me. I know exactly where I stood when Ca'Dario swallowed me up."

She levelled her gaze at him, unflinching. "When I left Ca'Dario, I stopped writing. I stopped living."

Snape's brows furrowed. "What do you mean you stopped living?"

Hermione blinked once, her eyes casting down to the left. "They say there are only a few ways to leave Ca'Dario, Headmaster. "Insane, cursed, or dead. And there are many, many types of death."

When Snape heard the knocking on his chamber door, he had no idea what to think. His dreams had been jarbled, and the ones he did remember involved the warm embrace of a young witch that had once loved him more than he realised until it was gone.

He staggered to the door with his robe tied haphazardly hoping that at least his bits were covered if it was a student coming for some last-minute trauma or punishment from one of the other staff.

"Headmaster," Hermione said, her expression grave. "I think whatever is affecting the school has retreated to your chambers."

"My—" he mumbled. "What are you talking about?"

"I've been chasing it all night," Hermione said, "but it lost me going up these stairs."

Snape's brain was muddled and half-functional. "Tea." He brokered no argument as he gestured her in, closing the door. He waved his hand to a shelf, and tea service floated out. He poured the tea into two cups, threw in sugar and milk, stirred, and passed her one before knocking back his own twice before the glassiness of his eyes seemed to fade.

"Now, what do you mean about something being in my chambers?"

"A Dark beast of some sort," Hermione said. "I am unsure what until I see it. I think it's been causing the night terrors that have infested the school."

Severus shook his head. "Why my chambers?"

"I do not know," Hermione said. "Perhaps, this is what it considers the safest place to hide. No one could question what was here. Few people stay here long enough to notice anything out of place."

Severus sighed, having no argument for it. "Very well, you may search."

"You may wish to leave the chambers while I conduct my search."

"I will remain if that does not affect your ability to search. There are some things here that require specific handling in jostled."

"As you wish," Hermione said with a nod. She sighed deeply and pulled off her cloak, and Severus felt a wave of cold as she did so just before he saw her shudder and take in a ragged breath. She stroked the cloak in an affectionate manner. "Thank you, Walter. I need you to stay here a moment while I find this thing, okay?"

Severus blinked as her cloak floated up from her hands and seemed to touch her arm in comfort.

"I'll be okay. It'll just be a moment."

He noticed she was pointedly avoiding looking at him, as if afraid to look him in the eye, but that was impossible considering how much lack of emotion she had already demonstrated. Why would it have mattered now and not then?

And what was that floating cloak all about?

He watched Hermione scan the room with spells, her wand sending out different coloured beams of light as her spells pinged off various objects. He followed her, slightly unnerved with her "cloak" floated nearby like a loyal hound.

He watched her pause at a few of his secretly enchanted objects he kept to prevent House Elves from teleporting in and out while he was not in his office. He admired that she found them through the thick layer of spells he'd cast upon them to conceal them from notice.

It wasn't until she paused at the coat rack where his cloak was hanging that he realised her posture had changed. He could feel her pulling on some inner magic as she put up some sort of web around the room just inside his personal wards.

"Where did you get that cloak, Headmaster?"

Severus frowned. "Molly gave it to me for Christmas the year before you— the year Miss Bones and Mr Creavy disappeared on their honeymoon. She said she may never get me to wear something that wasn't black, but at least I'd be warm with a new cloak."

"You may not know this because it is not common knowledge, but Lethifolds are not usually found in cold climates despite their ability to survive the cold."

"I am aware that they are beasts from the tropical regions," Snape said.

"But," Hermione continued, "in order to survive in the colder climates, they switch strategies and feed on human emotions instead of flesh. Strong emotions feed them the best. Positive, negative, either or. But the eviler of them prefer to half-smother their victims to induce a sort of terror-filled panic in their prey. They feed on that and then retreat to their lairs and or back to their host, which they use to find more victims. We know this evolution because there are some Lethifolds that have offered a sort of symbiotic relationship with their host that allows them to feed on radiant emotions instead of predating on humans."

Snape stared at the floating cloak as the gears turned. "Oh."

"Walter" floated nearby, unconcerned.

Hermione pointed her wand at Snape's cloak and a soft green light made the cloak glow red. She tucked away her wand.

"What are you—"

Hermione shook her head, and she sat down on the floor, back to the cloak, looked at him straight in the eyes— and dropped her shields completely.

Grief.

Anger.

Frustration.

Agony.

Suffering—

Longing.

Loneliness.

Betrayal.

Rejection—

So many emotions flooded his mind as they cast off Hermione in waves.

Staggering emotions that made his knees give out to the point he stumbled and sat onto the nearby chair.

She hadn't been emotionless at all, no.

The Lethifold had been feeding off her excess, radiating emotion to allow her to function.

He felt her agony at seeing him and the deeply seated betrayal that he'd never written her back. The self-flagellation that she believed he didn't care for her more than his sense of duty to Hogwarts but still longed for him was enough to bring him to tears.

Crippling rejection.

He wanted to scoop her into his arms and cradle her, whisper all the things he'd wanted to say to her since she had left— all the things he should have told her long before then.

That was when he saw his cloak move off the cloak rack, floating in the air as it seemed to transform into something sinister and large. It loomed over her, and he saw the glint of teeth forming in the dark folds of "fabric." It moved to cover her in a flash—

Walter hit the other Lethifold with a screeching roar, and the two Lethifolds battled in his office, knocking over tables, books, globes, fixtures, statues, vases, and everything in between. The curtains went crashing to the ground, the portraits all went screaming off to hide, and nothing was spared. The Lethifolds slammed into walls, scraping each other across it, hit the ceiling, rolled across the floors, and then smashed into the glass of the balcony door and flew out the broken hole, knocking over the potted plants as they screeched off the edge of the tower.

Severus gained his senses enough to pull his wand, ready to summon his Patronus to put an end to the fight. "Expecto Pat—"

Hermione stayed his wand arm and shook her head back and forth adamantly. "You'll hurt Walter!"

Part of his immediately thought, "Fuck Walter, what about the school?" but then he saw her emotion-teared face— twisted in pain as her devoted friend, Lethifold he may have been, was fighting for her sake. He saw it in her eyes: her only true friend that had stayed by her through all of her pain and suffering.

He realised his compulsion to protect the school was obnoxiously strong, and if he accidentally took out Walter, then what? The school would be in more danger when the other Lethifold decided that psychic emanations were not enough to satisfy the craving for flesh!

He struggled to lower his wand arm. "Take it," he said hoarsely. "Take it! Take it!"

Hermione didn't seem to understand at first, but her eyes widened as she took the wand and tucked it away, staring at him in the face as the Lethifolds continued to battle each other as the first rays of the sun started to peek above the horizon.

Severus braced against the solitary not-tipped-or-destroyed chair and bowed his head. His knuckles whitened as he fought with the compulsion to put the school's concerns over anything else.

"I love you," he said through gritted teeth. A prayer, an Oath, a mantra—

He repeated it over and over as he struggled. "I've always loved you."

Suddenly, the sun rose over the treeline, cutting a swath of light over the Hogwarts' grounds, and they heard a deafening shriek as the Lethifolds broke off their fight, one of them screeching as it dove for the shade of the Forbidden Forest and away—

The grip on Severus' mind seemed to fade instantly, and he fell to his knees, panting.

"Severus?" Hermione whispered, her hand tentatively touching his cheek.

His head jerked up and his expression softened. "Hermione." His hand reached up to caress the bottom of her chin with his curved finger as he tilted her head up and descended upon her mouth in a passion-driven kiss. His arms wrapped around her like an enraptured octopus as he pulled her tight against him. "I love you," he groaned with a ragged sob against her hair. "I love you."

Hermione's body quaked with emotion as she cried into his body, her fingers curling around the fabric of his robe as she burst into a waterfall of tears and sobs.

He rocked her against him, holding her tight as Walter slither-floated in the cracked window and lovingly wrapped around his mistress, content to soak up her tears as he let her emotions burst the dam and overflow without devouring them.

News of the Headmaster's engagement travelled far and wide as the Ministry's specialist in Dark Creatures and Curses found herself kissed awake every morning and proudly attended by the Headmaster of Hogwarts in public as well as private spaces.

On the threat of his leaving and happily putting Minerva in charge if he didn't get permission for Hermione to live at Hogwarts with him, the Board of Governors frantically signed in an allowance for the exception that may or may not have had anything to do with the cat scratches on many a board member's robes where their privates would have been.

The nightmares at Hogwart's ceased, save the normal kind that paralysed a typical student: having not studied for their test and facing exams in the morning, having detention with Mr Filch, or having to face disciplinary action in the Headmaster's office.

Walter, the ever dutiful Lethifold, happily dined on the excess love and ecstatic lovemaking that a certain couple as well as the excess emotionally charged randomness a school full of adolescents carried in abundant supply. The content Lethifold never went without food and never fed so much that Hermione returned to her emotionless coping state. As the only Lethifold in the territory as well as being well-fed and happy, he cheerfully terrorised anything stupid enough to invade his territory, sending them packing from Hogwarts faster than lickity-split.

If that also included driving out a bunch of Acromantulas out of the Forbidden Forest, no one may have noticed by Hagrid.

Whether Walter was feeding on the half-giants great and ample tears remained a secret to everyone. The centaurs were not complaining.

Severus went to St Mungos regularly every weekend to mend the damage done by being regularly compelled for half a decade or more, but with the fleeing of the Lethifold that was providing his daily compulsion, the healers were happy to report that he was well on his way to full recovery.

Agents from the Ministry Aurors Office as well as the DoM were particularly interested in the origin of the curse, but without the Lethifold in question, tracing it was proving to be a mystery that did not lend itself to being solved anytime soon.

With the school safe from the "evil" Lethifold, however, things at Hogwarts were returning to normal— save the very unnerving sight of the Headmaster smiling at the Head Table as he had meals with his fiancée and then later, wife.

Life was good, and the war faded along with the memories of the night terrors as peace descended upon Hogwarts along with a healthy dose of happiness that things were good and as they should be.

Meanwhile, back in St Ottery-Catchpole, Arthur found a dusty, torn up looking cloak laying on the windowsill, and he took it inside the house, hitting it with a quick cleaning spell, and hanging it on the coat rack for Molly to mend up later. She was always mending things, so he figured that the cloak was just one more project she was yet to finish. Molly was off visiting Ronald again, trying to convince to settle down and have some kids.

It hadn't worked with Hermione, and he wasn't sure why ol' Mols was so obsessed with the idea the two were meant to be when the Prophet had made it clear (with pictures even) that Hermione was happily with none other than Severus Snape.

Arthur yawned and put himself to bed, figuring he'd tell Molly about the cloak in the morning.

When Molly returned and tucked into the bed with him, all seemed like any other night in the Burrow.

As their snores filled the bedroom, the tattered, hungry Lethifold floated off the coat rack and loomed over the bed.

It was hungry.

Fin.