Severus watched Hermione. He meticulously drew up potions instructions for Hermione, he vigilantly watched for the order to reign both in the castle and in the laboratory, and he regularly brewed the Wolfsbane for the damn Lupin. Severus was still putting the safety of children above his own prejudices, he counted the days until the end of November and kept his vigilant watch over everything.
He watched everything together and everyone in particular, trying to understand how much the war, traumas, and personal loss had changed them. The castle itself, always noisy and filled with light, seemed to become quieter as if somehow frozen in anticipation of cold weather.
Severus was not afraid of the cold, winter was the eternal companion of his introspection. He loved to close the flaps of his winter cloak, put on his heavy boots, and leave to wander through the Forbidden Forest in search of rare plants that grow only in certain months of winter.
In the forest, as a rule, only silence reigned, interrupted by the cries of random birds or the rustling of the paws of animals disturbed by a sudden invasion into their space. Severus believed that he and the Forbidden Forest spoke the same language. Sometimes he saw a thestral foal timidly hiding behind its mother, or a raven, or red squirrels, who were not bothered by any bad weather.
Severus loved winter. The gloomy time seemed to test everyone's strength, leaving only the bravest to meet the spring. Or the most desperate. Snape recalled how, as a child, when he no longer hoped to win the love of his parents but still believed that Poppy Pomfrey was a good fairy godmother who would always help him, he often ran into the forest, slipping away from the watchful eye of the mediwitch, and wandered there in silence, listening to the whisper of the trees.
Poppy was sure that Severus was testing her patience with such antics, but she didn't even think about giving in to his provocations. Slytherin or not, Snape remained a little child for her, devoid of maternal love and paternal protection. All of them, the children of Hogwarts, one way or another, were under her care. Minerva shook her head and often reprimanded Poppy for being too sentimental.
"You must understand, our task is to educate them as worthy witches and wizards, and you constantly wipe their snotty noses."
"Of course, in your kingdom of severity and lost points, someone needs to remind the children that they are still children and not your experimental projects," Poppy lifted her nose and looked indignantly at Minerva. "And you're not hiding a box of ginger newts in a drawer to treat your homesick first years, are you?"
Minerva sighed.
"You know, sometimes I cannot stand your annoying perceptiveness. I'm guilty, your honor, I confess. But Poppy, you spoil them too much anyway, all of them! Especially Severus!"
"Did you see the scars on his back? The bruises? Or the haunted look? I have been working with children for more than ten years, Minerva, I see when they really have problems, and when they are just being capricious."
In response, Poppy usually took off her dark blue coat, wrapped a bright green scarf around her neck, took red gloves from the shelf, put a yellow hat on her head, and went looking for Severus. For him, she was a magic fairy who appeared to him in the colors of Hogwarts to help, not dividing his misdeeds and successes into "good and bad."
Severus stubbornly kept hiding in the corridors of Hogwarts from her. He made the Astronomical Tower his own kingdom, frequently running away from the Hospital Wing, and there, with bated breath, he waited for Poppy to find him late at night to take him by the hand and lead him to her quarters. There, in her bright and warm rooms, she usually fed him with pea soup and shepherd's pie, she gave him tea and sat him down to do his homework, while she was busy with hospital records and brewing potions.
As time went on, the wood in the fireplace burned out, the tea cooled, Severus finished his homework and sat down with Poppy, carefully watching her chop the ingredients, heat the cauldron to the correct temperature, and move the herbal board closer, suggesting Severus to chop the wormwood and valerian root.
These were his first lessons in Potions. This was Poppy: the first person who saw in Snape something more than bad character and unsociability.
In the moments of his greatest defeats, Severus always rushed to her to sit in her bright chambers, drink tea with rose hips, eat shepherd's pie and call her mother. Deep down, he really considered her his mother, but he never dared to admit it to her.
Now, walking through the snowy forest, Severus knew he missed her like Hell.
Outside the Forbidden Forest life went on as usual. Snape counted the days until the end of November, Hermione was a diligent student of Lupin. She plunged headlong into her apprenticeship, forgetting about lunches and breakfasts, and functioning, it seemed, only on coffee and her own despair.
In the morning, Hermione, as a rule, left the rooms allocated to her and ran to the Ministry to prove to them that she knew better, and they were just a flock of uneducated baboons. In the evening, she returned to Hogwarts, where she immediately rushed to Remus and spent long hours with him in the Dueling Room. Hermione had greatly improved her fighting skills since the war, fighting the werewolf on equal terms. But only Severus knew that she was motivated not by skill, not by the desire to become better, but by banal despair and anger at herself.
Snape knew better than anyone else that self-hatred and the inability to admit his own mistakes were inevitable. Hermione was never able to recover from her own perfectionism, and new setbacks only exacerbated her prolonged depression.
She armed herself with a wand and rage and learned new spells, practiced counter-spells, read about magical creatures that might appear in her training of the Mistress of Defense Against the Dark Arts, and believed that somewhere beyond the horizon, an exciting future awaited her, devoid of this all-consuming despair and vexation.
And closer to midnight, when it became unbearable to fight, she hastily took a shower, changed into clean clothes, and went down to Snape in the dungeons to bend over the cauldron in silence and watch the herbs turn into magic. Severus did not interfere with her personal meditation, preferring to leave written comments on the table, and silently left to work on his own research.
Hermione craved silence. Silence and warmth. Snape noticed how her gaze faded, how eternal enthusiasm disappeared, how she dropped her hands more and more often and fell silent in mid-sentence, he noticed everything but did not know how to help her yet. She lived as if out of habit, hoping that her stubbornness would be able to overcome her depression. Hermione, like mad, grabbed on new projects, never being able to bring any of them to the end. She had written and rewritten numerous complaints to the Ministry in an effort to create better conditions for the Magical races. On Friday night, she gazed wistfully out the Astronomy Tower windows, expecting an owl from Harry or Ron. Potter wrote frequently, invited her to visit, or shared his latest news. Weasley limited himself to polite phrases and a promise to definitely write a longer letter one day. Did Hermione love him? No. But she missed their former friendship terribly. On weekends, she took Teddy Lupin and went with him to London to pamper him to the point of impossibility, sometimes she drank tea with Remus after dinner, and in the evenings she came back to Snape's and brewed potions, now and then distracted by her own thoughts. On one such evening, Severus could not resist, he stood by and held Hermione's hand as she reached for the hazel stirrer.
"Miss Granger, it seemed to me that you passed Potion Making at a high enough grade not to neglect basic safety rules."
Hermione frowned, returning to reality.
"I don't understand, sir."
"Hazel will neutralize all the magical properties of wormwood, and your Soothing Potion will simply be spoiled. Such incompetence should not be shown when working with medicinal potions, especially with sedatives."
Hermione blushed but didn't even think to apologize.
"I've been making my own antidepressants for several years now, Professor Snape, I'm not as hopeless in potions as you say."
"Is it really so? Is it that incompetent brew of antidepressants, the bottles of which I continue to find in the trash can?" Snape rapped out and stood right in front of Hermione, crossing his arms over his chest.
"Will you again claim that I haven't learned anything in the six years of your mentoring?" Hermione responded harshly and fished a bottle out of her pocket and thrust it under Snape's nose. He moved closer and pretended to sniff: St. John's wort, valerian, ginkgo, ginseng.
"Miss Granger, this decoction does not even pull the lowest score, it is deadly dangerous. Valerian root, mixed with other sedatives, enhances their effect and can lead to unpredictable results. John's wort should not be taken by people who take antidepressants frequently. These herbs affect serotonin levels, and mixed with Muggle pills, they lead to unpredictable consequences. Ginseng is a popular herbal remedy for toning. Combining ginseng with antidepressants sometimes leads to manic psychosis, and combining with caffeine they can cause irritability. And you are unabashedly playing the mediwitch here, and constantly mix Muggle medicine with this herbal brew of dubious quality."
"You do not understand!" Hermione shrieked, reaching for her potion, but Snape held up his hand, preventing her from reaching.
"On the contrary, I understand all too well how you hide PTSD behind your work, how you escape depression by hiding in Hogwarts and pretending to be a diligent student of Remus, and how you seek silence in the dungeons. You need help, Miss Granger, not those dubious decoctions." With that, Snape squeezed the bottle sharply in his hand and poured the shards onto the floor.
"Do you even know how much these ingredients cost?" Hermione gasped, sinking to the floor and staring at the broken potion in shock.
"No more valuable than your common sense, which you seem to have lost somewhere along the way," Snape rapped out and left the room.
However, he did not manage to get far: Hermione's sobs pinned him to the spot, forcing him to stop and think. Yes, this time he acted in the best traditions of the soulless Slytherins, hurling the bitter truth in her face. Did it make him feel better? She was his wife, and he did not know her at all. They had a chance to get closer, but Snape spent it on meaningless quarrels and reproaches, and now, when Marriage Law loomed on the horizon, and she spent every free minute in the laboratory, he continued to hone sarcasm and to be inactive.
Snape clenched his fists and shook his head stubbornly; this was no good. Then he went back with a decisive step.
Hermione sat on the floor and perplexedly fingered the broken glass, large tears of resentment and disappointment flowed down her cheeks, but she did not notice this at all until an accidental splinter injured her palm. Hermione screamed and stared at her bloody finger. In the next instant, Snape was beside her.
"Here, now, Miss Granger, let's heal your hand."
Hermione turned her haunted gaze on him and suddenly grabbed onto his robes, hiding her face on his chest. Snape was at first taken aback, and then - gently pulled her to him, burying his nose on the top of her head and muttering all sorts of nonsense: that everything would be fine, and she was completely safe, and he was there for her.
She was shaken by a massive shiver, her ragged breathing breaking the silence of the laboratory, but she only clung tighter to Snape.
"Professor, will you… will you help me?"
"Of course, I will help you. Tomorrow we'll start learning how to properly brew sedatives" Snape answered, only now realizing that she was asking for something completely different.
"May ... may I c-come h-here?" T's so c-calm. And I ... I'm sc-c-ared of loud n-noises."
"Just stay out of the cold."
"I w-will ... thanks, P-professor."
The Marriage Act was just a few weeks away.