Disclaimer: I own nothing of the Hogwarts universe, I earn nothing. I am just playing - with a loving heart and neverending joy.

Finally they meet again...

Chapter 25

The following weeks passed for Hermione like walking through an unknown swamp, desperately avoiding the quicksand.

The escape from the Dursley house was a nightmare, not only because she had to endure it in a male body. It could have been an amusing experiment under other circumstances, but in that moment it was just disturbing and the relieved realization that she had been to the bathroom before the transformation was the only positive she could think about.

Moody's plan was simple and easy to understand, and yet, Hermione climbed onto the Thestral together with Shacklebolt and an uneasy feeling - albeit without a better idea.

They didn't get far until hell broke loose around them.
For the second time after Dumbledore's duel at the Ministry, Hermione encountered the powerful aura of the Dark Lord on that day and felt, next to the horror, that inexplicable fascination with which she scared herself.

By far the most terrifying thing, however, was when, among hte Death Eaters with their silver masks, she recognized his elegant movements, which were so familiar to her that her chest tightened painfully. Snape threw curses in all directions, calmly and deliberately, without the brutal rush of the others and so breathtakingly fast that Hermione had to pull herself together for a moment not to stare at him in admiration.
There was really no time for that.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw that Remus Lupin had been somehow trapped and she was trying to redirect the thestral to get close enough to Lupin for a protective spell. During her efforts, however, she saw that Snape had also noticed the situation and had brought himself into a direct line with Lupin and one of the attacking Death Eaters. She immediately realized that he had the opportunity to "miss" Remus and eliminate one of the attackers so that she stopped her own action so as not to interfere with him.

At the same moment, however, one of the Harrys raced past her, almost out of control and of course tumbling right into Snape's line of fire. She threw a Protego after him, but it didn't manage to completely reach the fake Harry anymore, so Snape's curse hit him after all. She saw a little fountain of blood and looked horrified at Snape, who was quick to repeat the curse - this time he met the Death Eater behind Lupin, as Hermione had suspected.

Then she was too far away and she lost sight of Snape. It was only in the safety of the burrow that Hermione realized that it had been George who had been hit by Snape. A sectumsempra. The other Death Eater probably had not survived this without a proper protective spell, Hermione thought, and her heart hurt as she noticed the angry hate of the others against Snape. Nobody would believe her what had really happened, that he had saved Lupin's life, that he had made it harder for all the other Death Eaters with his interfering, that he was probably somewhere wondering about whom he inadvertently had injured.
If only she could contact him somehow - but she didn't even know where he lived now.

The death of Mad Eye was a severe blow to the Order and only made it clear to Hermione once again how ridiculous it was to think about facing Voldemort in a face-to-face duel. How was Harry ever going to do that? They were already without any success with the horcruxes and couldn't even get hold of this bite-sized pieces of Riddle's soul.
She hated the feeling of helplessness. And all Dumbledore had to contribute post mortem was even more confusion when Scrimgeour handed out strange items, following his last will. Hermione wasn't normally a fan of strong alcoholic beverages, but at this strange event, she wished Dumbledore would have had at least added a bottle of firewhiskey.

Mrs. Weasley kept them all busy with the preparations for Bill and Fleur's wedding and despite there was by far not enough room in the house for all of them it was a nice distraction, especially since they all suspected that this would be the last reason to celebrate for a long time.

In the end it wasn't even that.
Head over heels the took flight from the Death Eaters when they attacked at the wedding and Voldemort suddenly seemed to be everywhere. As it became clear with the murder of Scrimgeour, Voldemort now considered his position so safe that he did not even use any cover-up and openly institutionalized his reign of terror.

The golden trio had become driftwood in this sea of threats and violence and for the time being they rescued themselves to the comfortable haven at Grimmauldplace, where they at least discovered the story of the medallion, finally got closer to this Horcrux, even if this meant they had to deal with the hideous Umbridge once more. If only Snape had left her in the woods with the zentaurs.

Meanwhile, time did not stand still at Hogwarts either and the castle was preparing for the arrival of the new school year students.
Severus Snape growled reluctantly when he saw Rita Skeeter climb awkwardly from one of the boats that brought the new and the returning students across the Great Lake. In his eyes there was only one positive thing about this woman: she was afraid of him. That should at least keep the encounter brief.

Followed by the murderous gaze of Minerva, the Carrow strutted through the corridors of the castle like award winning roosters and tried to disregard the rest of the teaching staff, who, however, regarded this as the only pleasant side effect. They would be thrilled with Skeeters's attention and that was fine with Snape.

He was no longer able to have any unobserved personal conversation with Minerva and he had to trust her understanding. To his relief she had apparently managed to somehow convince the remaining staff not to add him or the Carrows to the Hogwarts ghost inventory at the next opportunity.

"Professor Snahape!" The squeaking voice echoed painfully in his ears.
This ghastly manifestation of gossip journalism stumbled up the slope to the castle and - in contrast to the students, of whom the older ones now stood frozen and stared at him - immediately had spotted him on the balustrade with the eagle eyes of a paparazzo. Well, he couldn't avoid her anyway.

He sighed and went down into the courtyard to finish the inevitable interview. Voldemort took a downright childish delight in having a Slytherin installed as headmaster and Severus had to feed this positive attitude for his own good.

When he arrived at the courtyard, he let the stream of students first pass into the Great Hall, where they were welcomed by Minerva. As he had suspected it, Skeeter had already contacted the Carrows, who willingly posed with an expression of gloomy opacity, which, however, clearly showed how long they had had to practice for it.
At least he didn't have to pose with these freaks then. That minimum of personal pride was a delight.

Now they had seen him and with a raised eyebrow and a determined movement of his head he silently instructed them to go into the Great Hall as well. In the meantime the yard was almost empty and in a few moments the welcome ceremony would begin, so the Carrows followed his instruction unwillingly but quickly.

Rita Skeeter was now heading for him with a false beaming, her squill was swirling around her head and apparently tried to hide from him behind the bee-hive hair of Skeeter.
"Professor Snape, what a moment! What a career! Who would have thought that?" She shouted enthusiastically.

'You definitely didn't.' he thought dryly and straightened up with his hands on his back. She stopped and took her camera.

"Yes, Professor, just like that - that's wonderful."
At that moment it occurred to him that this image would also be seen by Hermione, wherever she was at the moment. She would see him standing there, returned to the scene of his crime, taking over her beloved Hogwarts and terrorizing her Head of House. What must be going on inside her, how betrayed she must be feeling by him. Her hatred was one of the few things he heartily regretted. He wished he had some way of telling her later - when it would be all over for him - his whole story and thus saving her from forever losing the trust in people the way he had done.
She would be the only one who maybe had a little interest in who he really was anyway. Or who he once had been, as there wasn't much left of him now and it would be even less tomorrow.
And that little bit of him had to pull itself together a lot for not to hex Skeeter something very ugly and annoying directly into her mouth, just so that she would stop with her hypocritical blabber.

He cleared his throat and finally, finally she went silent.
"Miss Skeeter. I welcome you at Hogwards." The greedy and expectant look from her was almost as bad to his eyes as the sound of her voice had been to his ears before.
"I am honored to take over the school leadership at Hogwarts and I will lead the next generation on the right path. As I have seen, you have already got to know the other new additions to the teaching staff. As for now, I beg your pardon, I have to attend the sorting hat ceremony for the new school year."

With that he turned around and just left her standing there. He had no doubt that she would sniff around the castle on her own, and he had even less doubt that Filch would be right behind her like a shadow so that he didn't have to worry about that.

The next day, Harry slammed the Daily Prophet on the table in the kitchen of the house at Grimmauld Place. "Read it for yourself," he said simply and disappeared. Ron picked up the newspaper and Hermione saw his eyes widen as he looked at the cover.

"Severus Snape new Headmaster of Hogwarts," he read in disbelief.

Hermione's heart stopped for a moment.
Severus. He was at Hogwarts. That was ... that was good. She tried not to show her relief.

"And Professor McGonagall?" She asked eagerly.

Ron turned the page and Hermione saw that the front page consisted almost entirely of a picture of Snape.

"She is still there. But she doesn't look happy. "He showed her a picture of the teachers, apparently taken after the hat sorting ceremony. Ron was right; Minerva McGonagall looked petrified and the other familiar faces next to her seemed no different. Hermione frowned. On the far left and right were two nasty-looking people she had never seen before.

"Amycus Carrow, Defense Against the Dark Arts," she read and gasped, "... and Alecto Carrow, Muggle studies. Muggle Studies ? "

"Do you know them?" asked Ron.

"They are Death Eaters, Ron! Death Eaters teach at Hogwarts! "
The names were only too familiar to her from studying reports about the trials after the first war.

Shaking his head, Ron read the report, then wordlessly crumpled up the newspaper and kicked it into a corner. The anger reliably aroused his hunger and he went off to the pantry; Hermione took the paper ball and went to the 'library' - this was how they had named the room in which they had collected all the books in the house and from Hermione's bag. There she was usually undisturbed by the boys.

She carefully smoothed the paper of the front page and looked into the dismissive face. The dark hair was blowing in and out of his face by a light wind and she noticed that he had grown thin in the past two months.
She didn't know whether it was sadness or anger that brought tears to her eyes when she looked at this picture, that clearly showed the self-chosen loneliness of this man who had managed to turn almost the entire wizarding world against him while he was trying to save exactly those who hated him and who would never know about his sacrifice.

"You bloody idiot" she whispered and wondered for the umptieth time what he thought of her. If he thought of her at all. She snorted.
That was probably rather unlikely; his priorities are likely to have shifted significantly. Before she could fathom why this thought felt like a rusty nail in her heart, she heard Harry call from downstairs and she quickly put the newspaper into her bag.

When she met the others again in the kitchen and Harry told them about his plan to snatch the locket from Umbridge, the planning for this coup came at just the right time to distract herself from the thoughts about Hogwarts and its new headmaster.

The next day everything went chaotically, but better than she had feared initially, and when they escaped with the locket, a tiny wave of pride surged up inside her - until she felt the terrible grip of Yaxley on her arm at the moment of apparition. He had followed them to Grimmauldplace and their safe haven was lost. The trio now travelled completely on their own through the most diverse areas that Hermione had picked out to be reasonably safe when she had done the planning in summer. The only supplies were those in her magically enlarged bag, from which she in the few moments in which she was was alone, pulled out the newspaper and looked at Snape's face while she pondered how she could safely get into contact with him. With the Carrows at Hogwarts, however, there was no chance of getting to him or McGonagall without the immense risk of being caught.

The mood sank to rock bottom and when Ron said goodbye in an argument and Harry's wand was destroyed in Godric's Hollow and they no longer had any idea what to do, Hermione longed more than ever for the conversations with Snape. In his clear and logical way of thinking and with his seemingly infinite knowledge she believed that he would be able to somehow help her finding a way out of this chaos. She smiled when she thought about how much he would scold and challenge her until she would find that way by herself, of course.

Winter had come and she and Harry had ended up in the Forest of Dean. They took turns keeping watch and wearing the locket; however, when Hermione awoke in the dark one morning, Harry was gone - with the locket and her wand. Wondering, she looked around and was sure to see a faint glow of light in an easterly direction in the dark forest. Protected by a slight warming charm, she startet walking carefully and silently; at least she had been able to practice these skills of wandless magic extensively in the past few weeks, she had had nothing else to do.

Someone else was near. He hadn't heard anything, but he felt the weight of a stare on his back.
Severus Snape jerked around and went into attack position, pointing his wand at the figure in the dim light in front of him. A woman, as far as he could tell.
How the hell did she get here and how did she get so close to him without him noticing anything? He really needed a vacation.

Hermione couldn't believe her eyes. Severus. It was him.
He stood there between the trees like a fatamorgana, she watched his back. Even from that point of view, she could see how tired he must be. What was he doing here, why hadn't he contacted her, what had happened, what had they done to him? All questions were running through her head at the same time as she stared at him, unsure how to approach him.

Apparently his reflexes were still working despite his tiredness, because without her moving at all, he suddenly straightened up and whirled around, pointing at her with his wand. When she saw his face with the deep shadows underneath the eyes, the bitter expression and the drained look, her heart broke. What on earth happened to him?
He didn't even seem to recognize her and tears welled up in her eyes.
"Professor" she whispered.

Hermione. Damn it, it was Hermione.
He hadn't seen her in months, and whatever had happened in between - it had made her grow up for good. He almost wouldn't have recognized her.
"No wonder, age comes fast when her supposed 'friend' kills her beloved protector and she has been on the run ever since," the spiteful voice in the back of the head reliably reported to him.
Thanks for the reminder, he thought.

She didn't have a wand in her hands, so he dropped his hand and just waited for her hatred to discharge over him.

She came running out of the darkness under the trees like the wind and before he knew it, she threw herself at his chest, wrapped her arms around him and buried her face in his cloak. In disbelief, he noticed that her back was shaking with silent sobs.

He had expected pretty much anything, but not that.

She held him so tight that he had no choice but to put his arms around her as well. He couldn't remember the last time he had been hugged and everything in him was in turmoil over this unexpected situation, from which he now did not know how to go on.

Meanwhile, human speech mingled with the muffled sobs and he bowed his head down to her for better understanding. She lifted her face a bit out of the black layers of fabric and looked at him with tearful, wide eyes.

"I was so afraid for you, so terribly afraid - what did they do to you? What happened? What can I do?" The questions poured out of her and he was unable to follow her thoughts. No reproaches? No anger? He was tempted to grab her at her shoulders and shake her, to scream at her if she was out of her mind.

Afraid for him, the murderer, the traitor who was responsible for her living a miserable life in a forest instead of sitting safely in front of the fireplace at Hogwarts. Afraid for him. Nobody was ever afraid for him.

No one had ever cared what happened to him in the first place.

And now of all times, at the blackest and lowest point of his miserable life, a young woman hugged him and cried for him, regardless of all the blood on his hands, his disgusting behavior towards her and his more than miserable appearance in general. That was too much, just too much. His hands began to tremble, he closed his eyes and just hugged this strange being; no one had ever told him how good a hug like that could feel.

Hermione suddenly had trouble breathing when he returned her embrace with vigor, but that at least cut off her sobbing and so she could calm down herself a bit. How the hell had that happened, she had just been sneaking through the forest in a ready-to-fight mode - and now she was in the arms of Severus Snape, who was obviously on the edge of what he could endure mentally and physically. What had these monsters done to him?

Without really realizing it, she began to stroke his back; only to notify that his trembling intensified as a result. Merlin, had this man never been hugged before? And how should it go on now?

Carefully she raised her head and looked directly into his face. Eyes closed, pale and exhausted, he leaned into this embrace like a boxer in his final fight. Even his hair was just hanging down like a tired curtain and Hermione couldn't help but softly put her right hand on his cheek and gently caressed his face with her thumb.
He had never been so close to her.

Severus slowly opened his eyes and looked at her so desperately and perplexed that Hermione's heart wanted to burst with compassion.
She was so relieved to see him again and maybe finally, finally get some help on her way through the fog she had seemed to live in for months now.
Merlin, it was so good knowing he was here.

For Severus the whole situation became more and more absurd and he almost thought he was hallucinating when he felt her hand as light as a feather on his face. She couldn't possibly be serious. But when he opened his eyes she was really there, right in front of him and looked at him with big warm eyes full of concern and affection.

That was enough. Now she had to live with the consequences of getting so close to him in his loneliness, and at the same time not only lacking the expected aversion, but also suddenly being so confusingly grown up. He closed the short distance between them and put his lips on hers.

He kissed her. Just like that. Hermione froze in a moment of disbelief when she felt his lips on hers. Then her eyes closed almost automatically and she returned his kiss with gentle pressure and a silent sigh, while her hand slipped from his cheek into his hair.

It felt so right, she would have never imagined. If she'd ever imagined something like that in the first place. Whatever had made him do it, she didn't care at all, she enjoyed every moment of it.

Distant noise suddenly made them both startle and apart. Severus cursed in a low voice, turned around and ran away, just left her standing there, with his warmth in her arms and the feel of his lips on hers. As for his reaction times he had always been unbeatable, Hermione thought while returning to reality, then she charged after him while she still had an idea where he had gone.

The noises came from the little lake, not far from them. Alarmed, Hermione realized that there had to be at least two people there. So if it was Harry he wasn't alone - and there was powerful magic in the air. She slowed down, because without a wand she would be powerless here. Before she could even think about where to take a safe look at the lake, she was pulled aside and a hand was placed on her mouth.

"Everything is fine. Go back to the tent as if you had been on your watch instead of wandering around in the woods." Severus whispered in her ear. She nodded and he let his hand drop from her mouth. "Please don't go away again," she whispered. "They are getting closer and closer to us and we don't make any progress. I need you. There has to be a way we can keep in touch." He shook his head. "Way too dangerous. Stay away from me, Hermione." He was already pulling away from her and she heard Harry stumble around not far away.

It was over.

She would lose him again.

A lump appeared in her throat, and she just hoped not to look as pathetic as she felt when he walked away from her quickly, looking back at her one more time, a bit longer perhaps than needed, but then pointing toward the tent with a short movement of his head. She nodded reluctantly, turned around and startet running.

"Good soldier" he thought and wished himself to be in his office in the dungeon, waiting for Miss Uber-punctual, only to pull her into his arms after the first cheeky answer and ... that's it.
Enough.
Stop, over and out.
That's just what he needed right now, uncontrolled hormones in the wild.

He took a deep breath, changed Hermione back into Miss Granger in his head, concentrated, and apparated to the gates of Hogwarts.
The somber headmaster was back.