A/N: I'm not sure where this came from, it's been months and months since I've written anything. I'm also not at all used to, or comfortable writing SSHG fiction, but there you have it.
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
I will if you will
He stumbled upon her buried in a book.
This on its own wasn't noteworthy; it was well known among the staff that the swot of Gryffindor could be found with her nose buried in a book nearly every waking hour.
The circumstance that made the meeting noteworthy was that their meeting took place in a book store in muggle London, and he hadn't seen her for almost five years. For a moment he considered turning around and stalking out, forgetting that he'd ever seen her. Unfortunately, his plans were thwarted when she looked up from the book in her hands.
Her brown eyes widened in surprise. "Professor Snape! What are you doing here?"
His left eyebrow twitched. "I've not been your, nor anyone's, Professor in many years, Miss Granger."
Hermione smiled nervously. "Sorry, sir. Old habit, and all that."
She tucked a piece of curly hair behind her ear, and he noticed it was considerably shorter than last he saw her, now barely grazing her shoulders. Perhaps this change from the mane of frizz was the reason he'd not recognised her at first glance. It was the silhouette which he'd been used to during her school years, which made her recognisable even from afar. That and the two dunderheads she used to associate herself with. Still probably did, one could assume.
"Indeed."
"So how have you been, sir? I haven't seen you since..." she trailed off.
"The trial," Snape filled in. "Is this uncertainty with words something new you're testing? I seem to recall the problem used to be to keep you quiet."
She winced. "Sorry, sir."
"Stop calling me sir."
"Sorry."
"And stop apologising! Sweet Merlin, your conversational skills have deteriorated. Or is this stumbling over words what is considered all the rage among youth nowadays?"
Hermione laughed, covering her mouth with her hand. "Sorry. And sorry for apologising, again. Seeing you have caught me a bit off guard, to be honest. I didn't even know that you were still in the country. Things were a bit crazy after the war, for all of us." As if suddenly realising they were standing in the middle of a muggle book store, she stepped closer slightly. "Maybe this isn't the place to have this conversation. Would you like to come back to mine for some tea?"
Snape's eyebrows practically met his hairline. He wasn't sure what he was expecting her to say, but it certainly wasn't that. He studied her face for any sign of trickery and malice but found only nervousness in her flickering eyes. He nodded curtly. "Lead the way."
Hermione put the book she'd been holding back on the shelf, picked up her bag and motioned for him to follow. She stopped on a small side street, no more than an alleyway really, next to the book store and held out her arm. "Are you alright with side-along?"
Rolling his eyes, he grasped her arm. "I've been apparating since before you were born, Miss Granger."
She cleared her throat. "Right then. Off we go."
They disapparated with a crack and with no evidence that they'd ever been in the alley, save for the fluttering of some leaves on the ground. She didn't Apparate them straight into her flat but instead to the small park across from her building, since it was a muggle neighbourhood. Once they landed, Snape let go off her arm and took a step away from her.
"This way." She lead him into the building and up the two flights of stairs to her flat. As they neared her door, she glanced at him over her shoulder. "You might want to stand back a bit until I've disabled the wards. They're set to trigger an alarm if a witch of wizard not authorised by me comes near."
"A wise choice, I can feel the wards even from here."
With him standing halfway down the hallway, Hermione set out to disable the wards. She'd learnt to do this wandlessly out of necessity, and it now took her barely 30 seconds to bring them down. She motioned for Snape that it was safe to approach, and they entered her flat. The wards reset themselves as she closed the door behind them.
Glancing over the living room, she blushed. Last night's empty take out boxes were still on the coffee table along with a pile of books she'd been reading until too late in the night. With a wave of her wand, she vanished the trash to the kitchen and the books back to the overflowing bookcase behind the sofa.
"Please, sit."
Hurrying into the kitchen to put on the tea, she heard him cross the floor and the sound of him sitting down on the sofa. While she waited for the water to boil she opened the cabinet next to the stove in search for some biscuits. It made her feel slightly on edge, having the feared Potions master in her flat. He looked better than he did at the trial, still thin and pale but no longer skeletal. He looked healthier, and ten years younger though by her calculations ha had to be in his mid-forties by now.
Putting the pot, two teacups and some biscuits she'd found in the back of the cupboard on a tray she walked back to the living space. Hermione was not at all surprised that he took his tea plain, having declined her offer of sugar and milk, and added a splash of milk to hers. It was strange, sitting on her sofa drinking tea with Professor Snape, of all people! No one had heard anything from him after his trial, in which he was acquitted for the murder of Dumbledore and his role as a spy during the Second wizarding war. He'd simply vanished from the public eye. Watching him, she noticed for the first time that he was dressed in muggle clothes, though they were black. She could see the shimmer of a glamour above his collar, and it struck her that it had to be hiding the scars from Nagini's bite. A shiver went through her as she remembered his cry when the snake struck. Blood and the silvery substance of his memories mixing on the floor of the Shrieking Shack.
Something touched her shoulder lightly. "Miss Granger?"
Pulling back from her thoughts, her face flushed. "Sorry."
"There are no doubt many questions you wish to ask me, so unless you plan to stretch this visit until the morning I suggest you get right into it."
There were a million questions she wanted answers to. What had he been doing since the trial? Why had he vanished without a word? Did he blame them for leaving him to die in the Shrieking Shack? Was he still in love with Harry's mum? Why was he in a book store in muggle London? Despite all these questions racing through her mind, another one came to the forefront of her mind.
"Will you drop the glamour?"
He froze, and she cursed her over-inquisitive mind. No doubt he would give her a scathing remark and storm out of her flat, never to be seen again. She fixated her gaze on the seam of her jeans, not wanting to see the look on his face.
Instead, he said the last thing she expected. "I will if you will."
Her head snapped up, mouth hanging open in surprise.
"I...Okay." Hermione had no idea what possessed her to do it. She never took off her glamour in the presence of others. Before she could talk herself out of it, she pulled her jumper over her head and tossed it behind her on the sofa, leaving her in her vest top and jeans. Her voice was slightly shaking as she spoke the incantation, and she felt the glamours fade away.
She didn't need to look at him to know where his gaze had gone. Belatedly she realised he'd already seen one of her scars, the slicing hex Dolohov had used in the Department of Mysteries in her fifth year. She remembered waking up in the hospital wing, practically delirious with the pain raging through her chest. His low voice speaking some sort of incantation as he worked to heal her injury. It was still a purple hue, but no longed raised and warm to the touch. The first scar she'd received in the fight against Voldemort, it was the one she had made the most peace with.
His touch on her left arm made her flinch, which effectively did what was the plan and bared her inner arm fully to his view. Chancing a glance to his face, she was taken aback by the murderous look on his face.
"Who did this?"
"Bellatrix, when we were held at Malfoy Manor. She's responsible for this as well," she motioned to the smaller scar on her throat, where Bellatrix had held the cursed knife to stop them from escaping. "I'm not ashamed of them, not really. They're just scars. It's just easier to keep them under the glamour," she shrugged, "especially around muggles."
"Of course."
Hermione crossed her arms, hiding the scar from his view. "I showed you mine."
For a moment she thought he'd refuse, rise from the sofa and leave the flat without a word. She was therefore a bit surprised when, with a wave of his hand, the glamours faded. The collar of his shirt still hid most of the scarring, and she raised her eyebrows in surprise when he undid the top button so he could fold down the collar and expose the scar to the air. It was not the clean, two puncture scar she'd expected. It was a rather mangled looking scar, still an angry red and looking like half his neck had been torn out.
Before she could stop herself, she'd reached her hand out. He flinched when her fingers came in contact with the warm, scarred skin of his throat, but didn't move away from her touch.
"Does it still hurt? Mine does, sometimes, which I've been told is because the knife was cursed."
Snape cleared his throat, black eyes surveying the content of his teacup. "It does not, thankfully."
She dropped her hand back into her lap. "Small mercies." She felt naked with her scars exposed and resisted the urge to reach for her jumper.
Snape looked at her, mouth opening and then closing. Then he rose from the sofa, and his glamours shimmered back into place. "Thank you for the tea, Miss Granger, but I must be going."
"Oh." She stood as well. She shouldn't have asked about the glamours, now she'd practically frightened him away and there would be another five years until anybody saw or heard anything from him again.
"My leaving is no reflection on you or your question about the glamour." He met her confused look with a smirk. "Your face is like an open book, Miss Granger."
"Hermione. It makes me feel like I'm back in school when you call me Miss Granger." Hermione hesitated. Though their meeting had been fairly brief and a bit uncomfortable, she was loathed to see him disappear again like before. "May I see you again, sir?"
"Have you nothing better to do with your time than impose yourself on old teachers?"
She let out a short laugh. "I do, actually. But I also imagine that your social calendar isn't very full these days. Sir."
Snape sighed. "Still an advocate for lost causes, I see."
She raised her chin. "Not lost. Just wayward, who need a nudge in the right direction."
"I am too old and have seen and done too many terrible things to be someone's project, Miss Granger."
"Hermione. I don't think of you as a project, sir, at all. I simply want to be your friend."
"Your taste in friends has always been abysmal."
"If you don't want to see my face again, sir, you need only say so. I won't be offended."
There was a pause. "I didn't say that." He looked up at the ceiling and sighed. "I'll probably regret this." Looking back at her, he produced a piece of paper which he handed to her. "Goodnight, Hermione."
He was out the door before she had a chance to respond, and she stood blinking at the closed door for a few seconds before she turned over the note in her hand. A simple message was written in his familiar spiky handwriting, one that sent a warmth through her chest and something akin to hope rising through her.
Severus Snape lives at Spinner's End number 9, Cokeworth.
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