Chapter 2

I lay back against my new duvet and stretched my toes into the sunlight. Sleeping in an improvised huddle of cushions and blankets and my new, fluffy, warm, single-bed duvet was much more fun than I had expected. I could have laid beside the window of my cousin's council flat all day if I hadn't felt the necessity to find a more permanent occupation than "unemployed", and a more stable residence than "used puddle of soft furnishings". It was warm, and there were books.

The sounds that a city usually makes outside a cheap council flat seemed novel compared to the general sombre gloom of Grimmauld Place, the noises of the emergency ward at St Mungo's, and the sounds of the forest at night within the magical tent. I didn't end up segueing into thoughts of my childhood here, or the war. I could use the screams and shouts, the cars and buses and after-school clatters of children to punctuate my day, connect me to an unknown world. It kept me busy, imagining the sources of these noises. Inventing a universe around an upset teenage girl, or the smell of a curry dinner in the stairwell at night.

I needed things to think about, while I boiled the kettle or got myself food. I immersed myself in Muggle novels for a month. Stories about computer AIs, bombs on trains, and endless fantasies about vampired and aliens. Until, stretching luxuriously in the warmth of the afternoon, and feeling exultant at the thought that even these dingy places were graced by the rarest golden summer afternoon in London, I realised that I had been running from everything.

It washed the happiness from my afternoon, and brought it all back heavily down on my shoulders. I decided to rinse it away in the shower, bringing myself at least four minutes more of allocated peace.

I'd set my owls up to redirect to my parents' house. It was convoluted, and I still wasn't quite sure how the spell worked, but I was glad that it did. I'd told Mum I'd had a messy breakup, and that if they came back from Australia to find any nasty letters addressed to me, to ignore them.

I assumed that Ron, or perhaps Molly, had sent Howlers. I wondered if the neighbours had heard them, and what they had thought. I decided that I was probably better off not knowing.

Then I gathered my hands together in my lap, sat on the floor, deliberately away from my warm soft haven of books, and stared glumly at the worn rough carpet. I was dodging things mentally that I would have been desperate to have been aware of, when I had still been affected by the Memory Charm.

I needed to talk to Ron. Which was going to be painful. Should, rather than needed. For Harry's sake, rather than my own. In retrospect, walking out in the middle of the night hadn't been the best course of action. In my defence, I hadn't known that Snape had left that night. I hadn't expected Ron to think that I'd run off with him, but then I hadn't expected Ron to think that we were in a close relationship in the first place.

He'd proposed. Fucking proposed to me. I'd run, and left, and spent that first night in the Leaky Cauldron. He'd shown up the next morning, heartbroken and enraged alternately, demanding that Snape show himself.

I'd apologised, and pitied him, and agreed that I'd been a heartless bitch, and shut my door against him as quickly as I could. I'd wanted to slap him, to scream. To tell all of Diagon Alley that we'd agreed to nothing verbally. That we'd fucked, in the dark, quickly and without love. That we'd never spoken, aside from our usual friendly banter, which we shared more with Harry than each other.

I'd thought we'd both move apart, in time. That we'd heal our emotional trauma from the battle, and learn in our bodies as well as our minds that our losses and scars could never be healed by sex. I'd tried to talk to him about it. I'd been trying to leave him, cut it off, and still be friends.

I wanted to set his jeans on fire, and claw my face open with my fingernails. Scream as I bled, tearing at my hair. We'd had a deal, an unspoken pact. We'd had bitterness and emptiness, and how dare he pretend that it was worth marrying.

"Here is a suit, will you marry it?" I asked the empty flat. I felt hateful and spiteful and bitter. Circe on her island. Penelope unweaving her own work at night. I wanted to spin and burn and collapse and rot in a glorious finish.

It wasn't fair that I'd survived. Better people had died. People who could love, or feel. People who were more to the world than regurgitated knowledge and a hollow empty body. A quick lay, numb and easy.

Tonks would have been breathing, and clasping people to her breast. Smiling and laughing and loving. I felt drained and sick of it all. I wanted to throw it all up, and walk away forever.

I missed Snape.

It was survivor's guilt, I knew, and stress-related anxiety. Depression was the numbness, and self-destructive tendencies. But knowing and being are very different things. I wanted to forget everything, and just exist again, without questions or thinking myself into these loops.

I wore the ring on my left hand, as if I was engaged to the concept of a complete loss of self.

This wasn't working. I wanted to go lie back down in my duvet, but the sun had moved. Cloudy again. Tears pressed against the back of my throat and my eyes, until I slapped my hands down decisively on the carpet.

I couldn't stay like this. I had to find something to do with my days, and somewhere to live where I could use my magic again. Throw myself into learning, and forgetting. I knew, theoretically, that I could get myself one step further, to pull myself back.

Harry was probably worried. I'd better owl him, all things considered.

It was surprisingly easy after that internal dialogue to get dressed, pick up my wand, and walk to the bus stop. The bustle of public transport, and the length of the trip there, gave me the time and atmosphere I needed to compose a letter.

When I'd sent off my Dear Harrys and So Terribly Sorrys from the Diagon Alley post office, I settled myself with a simple Notice-me-not charm at a cafe to plot. I counted out my last galleons, and decided I could afford lunch, just this once.

Well, a plate of toast, at least.

The pot of tea I'd ordered arrived hot, and with a nice amount of milk. But I couldn't survive on tea alone, or toast. I needed an income. Work. And once I had work, I needed somewhere to live and actually be able to perform magic. I wouldn't be able to afford my own house, at least not at first. I didn't have enough of a grasp on the pound-galleon exchange rate to even contemplate trying to understand mortgages.

That I would work as a witch was unquestionable; I'd get a far better wage, because intelligent witches – witches at all, after the casualties of the war – were harder to come by than unemployed Muggle girls.

I wondered if there was much of a young sharehousing community in the wizarding world. If anyone would have me. If I'd be able to find people I'd tolerate. If I could afford to think about it at all, when I wasn't employed yet.

The tea was nice, but the toast was dry and too cool to melt the butter properly. I found a copy of The Daily Prophet discarded on a nearby table and nicked it. I'd never really paid attention to whether or not there were classifieds, or if they might contain "help wanted" or "to let" advertisements.

But, yes, there they were. A very small listing, to be sure. Far more obituaries, which was understandable. Curses and wounds and other fallout from the Death Eaters. Suicides, some of them, surely. Not that they'd say as much in the paper, but still. I wondered how many real victims of emotional trauma there were. Did we even have an official counselling service?

The "Help Wanted" section was relatively bare. I felt a bit let down, but realised that with such a small population, where anyone can transfigure most things they wanted, that the wizarding economy must be very small. There were menial jobs, casual jobs. Night staff. I blanched, and finished the pot of tea entirely before I turned the page to risk seeing the advertisements for P-Z.

And then, there it was. Small font, in one simple sentence. Wanted: Ollivander seeking intelligent youngster for low-pay, long hours, and Ministry approved apprentice contract.

I supposed that with a name as notorious as Ollivander, contact details were somewhat redundant. It seemed a good, if the only, place to first attempt to find work. Feeling silly, I folded the paper and walked down the street for perhaps three seconds before I was pushing open the door and stepping into the dark and musty shopfront.

Almost at once, as if he'd been expecting me, Ollivander shuffled forwards from the gloomy darkness in the back of the store, and set a very thick book down on the table.

"I want," he stated solidly and immovably, "for you to read this, cover to cover. I'll have enough work teaching you the finesse of the art without having to brief you on basic theory. When you've absorbed it all, I'll expect you to be here from eight every morning, no later, no earlier. Lunch at eleven, bring your own or buy it on the street, you're not allowed to eat in the shop. Except for biscuits. I prefer Monte Carlos, but will accept anything other than those pissy wafers."

I blinked at him, and cleared my throat. That was just uncanny. I knew that he remembered everyone's name, wand, the year they bought it, but it was still unnerving. I supposed that, given a limited number of surviving adolescents of the appropriate age, and the very public circumstances of most of my graduating year, it wasn't too difficult for him to predict my arrival.

He'd probably seen me sitting at the cafe, through the glass of the front window. If I squinted, I could almost make out the cafe as a series of brown blobs. Irrespective of how he'd known, for I refused to be shown up by his mystic and theatrical airs, I planted my hands firmly on the counter, and met his old rheumy eyes with my own.

"The apprenticeship contract?"

He smiled, and shrugged his shoulders. "I sent a copy to you, weeks ago. Assumed you'd need a job, and my desire to have a competent apprentice could only be fulfilled by somebody as capable as yourself. If you've lost it, I've a spare out the back."

He hobbled out, then in again, and we signed the parchment where it mattered. He nodded, slipped it into his robes, and brushed past me towards the door.

"I'll be back in an hour. Don't expect any customers. Off to set up the banking, you'll get the first month in advance. You'll need it, to set yourself up. I don't want it being said that the employees of Ollivander's are roughing it in Muggle accommodation, oh no."

He bustled away, and I was left to sit, baffled, at the small counter in front of the book. He'd been expecting me.

I felt a little miffed, and just stared at the book. Was I really that predictable? I hadn't seen him since...

Well, it had been a while. Things had happened. I closed my eyes against the last year, and wished for another cursed ring. I twisted my ring around, three times. My new personal ritual. My wish for forgetfulness.

I should have been reading my mail; I kept it in my bag of course. But, I still didn't want to. To chase away the thought of Harry's and Ron's letters, fuming in a soft pile, I opened the book to the introduction.

The intricate nature of wands, the importance of balance and symbolism as well as magical power to their construction was romantic. Interesting. Compelling. I resolved to finish the first chapter, and make a list of questions to research, by the end of the day.

Mr. Ollivander had been right; nobody entered all afternoon. When he returned, and began poking about in the back room, opening and closing drawers, I decided that this was perhaps the most peaceful place in the world. Even more so than any of the libraries I had visited. Dark, musty, unclean. Disorganised and so chaotic, yet everything had its own place and purpose and logic. It felt like I was cocooned within my own heart, my mind. A psychological womb. I fit, somehow.

"I'm going to be here until I die, aren't I?" I asked, closing the book and lifting my head to look up at the cacophony of boxes. I heard a dry chuckle from the back room.

"Do you mind, too much?"

"Not at all." I stood, stretched my stiff legs, and walked about as much as I could in the small cramped place. "May I look around a bit?"

He grunted in what must have been assent. I let my fingers trail over the boxes, dragging clean trails through the dust that covered some of the older ones.

"Pick a good one," he cautioned. I paused, froze.

"Pardon?"

"A good one, I said. You don't need a wand for a schoolgirl, after all, anymore. You've changed, so have your requirements."

"Oh." It made sense. I had more power, was older, and given the last few months, was a very different person. I doubted that the Hermione who had stood here, excited about magic and essays and homework could have ever imagined a dry fuck in a street alley with someone who was not-quite a childhood friend anymore.

I contemplated the boxes, and the taste of the dust on my tongue. I thought about who I was, where I was going, and I closed my eyes.

"Oh hurry up," Ollivander finally complained, "I don't want to rush you, but you've kept him waiting for quite some time now. Take the book, and come back here, twelve, tomorrow. You can choose it while I have lunch."

Him? There was indeed a gloomy, vague shape against the dust of the shop window. I squinted, and felt a suspicious surge of happiness and hope. Only one person could be that tall, and that looming. I hefted the book against my hip, waved a silent goodbye to the shop, and slipped outside into a cleaner, harsher, stark world.

The air felt sharp, crisp and angry against my skin. I was already wishing that I could return to the soft-edged warmth and intimacy of the dark rows of wands. But Snape was there, nodding silently and lifting my book from me. He didn't even brush against my hands, or sleeves, but withdrew. He was a cold figure, as we started to walk along the emptier streets towards the pub.

"I've missed you," I tried, first off. He didn't respond at all, and I sighed. And followed.

"Did you meet him at the bank, today, then? Is that how you knew I'd be here?"

He grunted, and we walked on. Our feet echoed off the cobblestones and our cloaked shadows flashed against the shopfront windows of the stores that flanked us.

"I haven't read my mail at all." I rushed out, realising as I spoke that he had most probably sent me letters, that he was waiting for some response or reaction from me, an answer to a correspondence that I was unaware of.

"I mean," I continued, "I set it up to be sent to my parents' empty house. I didn't want to... Harry and Ron would probably... and Molly..."

I trailed off, and cursed myself inside. I felt lame and impotent and adrift again. Not in an uncomfortable way. I just felt that whatever I said, whatever I did, Snape would stand there immovable. That the small moments of amicability that I had missed far more than I should have were barred to me.

I wished, more than anything, that Ron would feel this way when I was talking to him. That he would trail off, seeing the distance between us, and just give up and go home. Give us both time to recover.

But, I realised, during my drifting thoughts Snape had started laughing softly. Not a friendly, relaxed laugh, but a nervous and slightly frantic one.

I stopped walking, and looked at him for a moment. He turned to me, and shrugged.

"You haven't read any of it? At all?"

I shook my head, and allowed an embarrassed laugh of my own to escape.

"I've read a sum total of none. If I'd known you'd sent some, I would've, though."

"Oh?" He smiled, wryly.

"Of course! What's this 'Oh?' nonsense? All things considered, you're probably the only friend I've got, aside from blood relatives." I pretended to be scandalised.

We walked on in the darkness, slower now, easier, towards the Leaky Cauldron.

"Not," I quickly amended, "to presume anything on your part. I've just, more or less, burnt all my other bridges."

He snorted, and as we had arrived, pressed the brick that let us into the Cauldron's courtyard.

"I'll drink to that." He said, wryly, and led the way into the pub.

The pub was comfortably dark and dingy. I considered the Wizarding world, which seemed to pedestal these old-England fuzzy-lens-filmed shops and eateries. There was not, and I doubted there would ever be, a new and flash magical nightclub. We settled myself and my book at the end of a large table, and Snape quickly ordered some drinks. I didn't pay attention, really. I'd never had the opportunity to try that many drinks. I'm sure he knew better than to order me Butterbeer, with all the connotations it had for me of Hogsmeade weekends and classmates.

He sat, and we were silent for a little while. I was still reeling from the speed at which things were catching up to me, as if when I'd opened the flat door I'd released the tension in a large rubber band. He was probably trying to un-associate a month's worth of unanswered correspondence from his mind. I could imagine it, staring at the circular marks in the stain of the table. Wondering exactly what he'd said or when he'd written, and what would be pointlessly stupid to mention or ask about.

I decided to save him the trouble, and started getting things out of the way.

"So, a quick catch-up so save on awkward questions. Not reading mail to avoid dealing with Ron, homeless but sharing with a cousin, and until about six hours ago unemployed. Surprised and touched to find that you've kept in contact."

The drinks arrived, and I blinked down at the glass in front of me. He'd ordered, of all things, a glass of pineapple juice. I hadn't been aware that wizards juiced anything other than vegetables entirely unsuited to the Muggle juicing process, and had assumed it was an inherited snobbery. He lifted his, the same as mine, and I lifted mine in response.

"I," he began, "Left when you did, to avoid Weasley at breakfast. I'm assuming he will have assumed far worse than the truth, so you should keep that in mind when you read his letters."

He grimaced, and drank some more.

"Moved into Spinner's End, a decrepit hole, but free and therefore affordable. I've spent a month being rejected from every place I've applied to for work, and composing letters to you fueled by increasing levels of social anxiety. Burn them, please."

I smiled, laughed, and nodded. I was planning, now, on apparating to my old place and finding those letters as soon as I left his company. By the sour face he made as he settled back in his chair, I could tell that he knew exactly what I had planned, and that he had no way of stopping me. It soon passed, though. Groups of ministry officials on after-work social drinks and store-owners chatting about the day's take created a hubbub that gave our company buoyancy. Without having to talk, or stretch for interesting conversation, we could float in silence at the end of our day and feel companionship.

"I feel comfortable," I said, quietly. Half hoping that I hadn't been heard above the noise of the crowd.

"Oh?"

Damn. I sighed deeply and continued. "Even at Hogwarts, before everything went wrong. Sharing a dorm with the other girls, I always felt a little on-edge, a little set-upon. Like I had to find a way to retreat."

I paused, and he waited patiently.

"I've never felt completely at ease. But today, in Ollivander's and now here, I feel comfortable. It's as if I've spent my whole life wearing shoes the wrong size, and have only just now realised how it feels. To not feel itchy and hedged in, and uncomfortable."

I took a deep breath, and clenched my toes within my shoes, trying my hardest not to blush. Snape watched me with his half-smile in silence for a few minutes.

"That," he said finally, "Was quite a soliloquy."

I had finished my juice, and was confused. Was he laughing at me, or sympathising?

"I," he breathed deeply, "I feel like that, a little. More like I have been pushed, suddenly, from a world that I knew into a warmer, more comfortable one. A universe with armchairs. But," he drained his own glass, and rubbed his hands along his forearms as if he was cold,

"But, it doesn't feel right. I feel as if any moment now, someone will walk up, point at me. Shout that I'm not someone made for a slow demise with scones and tea. That I should be arrested and removed from comfortable society."

I didn't know what to say, so I sat there for a few minutes. I supposed that Wizarding society in general was still scarred by the past. Having seen Remembrance Day ceremonies, and veterans twitching in supermarkets during my childhood, I wondered if the small community we lived in would ever recover. If the memories would ever heal, or if like me some of us would crave an absence of thought.

Whether there would be an increase in the misuse of memory modification spells. If there was any psychological treatment available. As I had learnt at work, from that book, a magic-user's psyche was intimately intertwined with their magic. Fear or pain or anger could trigger unconscious magic, and a change in temperament or mood could affect the relationship between a wand and its' user.

"I suppose," I ventured, "that the howlers and letters don't help. You haven't found a spell that works, to keep them away, have you?"

He grunted, and allowed his frown to melt into a smile again. His face was so changeable, so inconstant, I could hardly believe that he'd seemed monolithic and static during my school years.

"I like to take it as a compliment," he explained, "proof that I was very good at what I did."

I felt awkward and apologetic.

"I'm sorry, that I brought it up again."

He blinked. "What? No, no, don't be. There isn't anyone that I can really talk to, at all. With you, it comes easily. Just happening."

He stared down at the table, his empty glass.

"It's late," he mumbled, and I nodded. Sucked my breath in between my teeth, and pulled my book towards the edge of the table.

"I'd better head home. I have to read some of this, before I come back in to work."

We parted, and I apparated to the designated safe point in my suburb, then trudged up the stairs and made my way inside. My skin felt hot, and my mind confused. Mixed in with jumbled memories of everything, and the slow trickle of information that I had absorbed, were new thoughts and emotions that I didn't feel quite ready to assimilate into my consciousness.

Instead, I ate some toast and settled down in bed to immerse myself in the rich and novel history of wand making.