It was as if the house recognized subconsciously when everyone needed to have space. The only person who was remotely aware of the corners being called knocked on the master bedroom door. It was a solid rapping, which drew the attention of the witch. Hermione climbed from her station on the bed and cracked the barrier.
"Hermione," Severus hummed.
She smiled and breathed. "Oh, Severus, I thought you were Sirius."
"By your relief, I'm assuming he made a moron of himself?" He asked.
Hermione giggled and shook her head. "No, I just presumed he'd try and come patch things up."
"Your concept of friendship is insanity," Severus huffed. "I wanted to speak to you, privately. Shall we head down to the drawing-room?"
The witch glanced around him before tugging the wizard into the room. "No, let's not chance a run in," Hermione groaned.
Snape glanced back at the open door, and Hermione snapped it shut. "A large disagreement?"
"No," Hermione puffed as she flicked her wand. "I'm just hiding out."
"Hiding? From Black and Lupin? What have they done?"
Hermione shuffled by the Potion Master and collapsed on her bed in a seated position. "Nothing, it really isn't their fault."
Severus smirked as he pulled over the chair at the desk. "So, you're not as brave as you seem."
"Hardly," Hermione moaned with a smile. "I'm great at putting on a brave face when needed."
"Tell me, because I'm rather curious, did you truly quote school text? Mr. Malfoy told me you had, and it drove him to annoyance," Severus questioned.
Hermione laughed as she folded her legs over the edge of the bed. "Yes, I did indeed. It caused you a bit of irritation as well."
"Do you ponder what it would have been like for you had you not felt you needed to prove yourself?" Severus asked.
"Why do you ask?"
Severus dug through his robes and pulled out a sheet of parchment. "I took notes on what Draco had told me."
"You took notes on me?" Hermione laughed.
Severus nodded with a hint of a smile. "I needed to understand, Hermione. There are many things I don't get about you and your friends," he hissed the last word.
"Firstly, my friends are your former classmates," Hermione said. "Secondly, they aren't as bad in their older years, Severus. I wish you all would let the past go and enjoy the present."
"And lastly?"
Hermione scrunched her nose. "Lastly, I'm asking you to understand what position I'm in. I'm scared, and honestly, I'm fighting my natural reaction."
"What's that?" Severus asked.
"To take care of all of you. To not run from Remus when he tells me how wonderful he finds me. To not pull away from Sirius when he wants to take care of me. To dance around the room with Fred. Even to get you to see that just because our houses were different doesn't mean we have to be at ends."
Snape shifted and handed her the sheet. Hermione took it and read the notes. The Potion Master proved to be a precise note taker. Quoting things Draco had said such as, 'Bloody ridiculous, but so intelligent it's scary.' It was impressive, and Hermione smirked at him after reading his notes.
"What did you think?" Hermione questioned as she handed it back.
"Well, I do believe you had optimistic ideals in your younger years. Now I can see you've struggled with finding the acceptance you've strived for. Something supportive of the large structure you've been trying to build. However, your recent disruption to that foundation had been demolished. So, as you have those that you believe in you and support you surround you, it's your gut reaction not to trust it."
Hermione blinked. "That's, well, uh, that's accurate."
Snape shifted and reached for his wand, swishing it in the air. The drawer on the desk slid open, and the bottle of spirits Hermione hid floated out. He then flicked his wand at the glass on the night table and duplicated it. Drinks were soon poured, and he offered her a glass.
"I would like to talk," he mused.
"About?"
"About why it was so important for you to mend this. To be whole. I can relate," he hummed before sipping his drink.
Hermione pinched her brows together and thinned her lips. "I find it hard for you to say you relate to not being able to deliver a natural and normal human drive."
Snape dropped eye contact as his fingers ran along the glass. "I don't need to sweeten my words for you to understand that once you've done something that can't ever be undone, it ruins you."
"I had no choice," Hermione huffed.
"And neither did I," Severus voiced as he narrowed his eyes at her. "We do what we naturally are susceptible to falling for. I remember beginning to see that, but not the consequences. To hear it from someone's perspective that felt as I had, I know just how horrific I'd fallen."
"I just wanted to be normal and happy for once!" Hermione exclaimed with a glare.
"We aren't normal. Not one person in this house. Lupin with his condition. Black with his damaged childhood. Even the Weasley boy with his now older twin. We all have monumental things to climb over. When are you going to see that normalcy is a farce."
"It doesn't take away the fact that I wanted it. I wanted to have a child," Hermione growled.
Severus smirked and drained his glass. "The cusp of the issue. You wanted it. Someone took that from you, and you thought that mending that error would save your destitute. That in itself contradicts your desire for normal."
"Why are we even dancing around this?" Hermione questioned.
"Because I enjoy it. I found the second-hand review of your personality engaging. You spent your entire life trying to be better than average, only to do a rather extraordinary thing to be average. There's a piece missing. It's a puzzle of imperfection," Severus voiced before reaching for the bottle once again. "Don't you agree?"
"It was something I failed at," Hermione whispered before gulping her drink. "I couldn't change it without something more."
"You see, I thought so too," He responded with a nod. "Until this moment. We are sitting here, and you hold conviction behind what you did. Not to justify the means, but to prove you could do it better. When all facts rested at your feet, you weren't satisfied with the life you were living. That is why this potion worked in the manner it did. Your interpretation was different than the meaning by which you used it. Another loss destroyed you."
"Are you accusing me of lying?" Hermione groaned as she set down her empty cup.
Snape smirked with a nod before pouring her another glass. "Yes, precisely."
She snatched the glass off the night table. "What would I be lying about?" Hermione asked before draining her drink in one large swallow.
"What the potion was for, Hermione," Severus declared. "I've read the notes. I know what was in your mind. I dare not dig because I want you to trust me. As hard of a feat that may seem for you."
"To take away the loss," Hermione retorted. "I wanted to be whole again."
"Interpretation is quite the stickler," He mumbled.
"Stop accusing me of something and say it."
"You knew it would bring one of us back. Who were you trying to resurrect to fix your life, Hermione?"
She set the glass down and stood up, only to place her hands on each arm of the chair. "Don't be ridiculous," she mocked with a sneer.
"Could you not decide?" he whispered as his demeanor remained calm.
"Of course not. Why not play a game with rules I'm not able to translate," she rolled her eyes.
They were close. Severus could smell the alcohol on her breath as she exhaled. "Then you only thought it would work to fix your world. No focal point? No grounded thought of whom you wanted to mend ends with? I need to know," Snape murmured.
"No, my world was already lost when I took the bloody potion. Ron sent me papers that day. I thought if I could make his life more whole, my loss would be lessened," she confessed. "I wanted to fix it, Severus. I needed to make my family whole again."
"And the potion wasn't meant to heal your scars?" He asked.
Hermione pulled away from him and tossed her hand in the air. "Of course it was, at first. I wanted to repair my deficits. But magic doesn't work without something, a profound change. I spent months looking for the source of what could be a solution. When I came across the old texts of a Greek witch who birthed life with the river by channeling loss and using it for a potion. I wasn't expecting the entire world to have to suffer from my desire to fix the lives around me, Severus."
"The witch who birthed the souls from Styx, I know that tale," Snape voiced.
"It made her whole," Hermione huffed. "It was many sleepless nights at Andromeda's, but I managed to hunt down a semblance."
"And you expected to right the wrongs how? I know you had no clue as to the severity of what you were asking. Your goal was to prove you weren't a failure. How?"
She winced and sat back down on the mattress, staring at him with contrite reaping her expression. "It was intended to bring forth new life from loss, Severus. I was just as gobsmacked as anyone else that you four showed up. That only proved that I was selfish at the life I lost in the war that took you all from us. You were never given a true chance. Hiding in the dark like a bat while strategically pacing yourself. It was wrong."
Severus exhaled with a nod. "Draco told me of your conversations. He expressed his loss as much as you had for the others. Each of us represents a piece of life you felt was lost for those around you. Your interpretation of what you were asking was misguided."
"If I hadn't used the potion, all four of you wouldn't be here. The world wouldn't have lost its magic, and memories wouldn't be gone. I imprinted myself to your lives by removing the sully visions of what you became. It was not the results I was expecting from an unexpected situation."
Snape shifted and sipped his drink. There were many questions he could be asking. It could be an entire night of sifting through the manic thoughts of a woman losing everything. There was one question that kept haunting his mind. It wouldn't let him continue. "Did you feel relief to see each of us?"
"Yes," Hermione sighed.
"Then we can fix this crisis," he said with a nod.
Hermione scrubbed her face and breathed. "How?"
"By not doing a damned thing," Severus replied.
"What?" She spat.
Snape set down his glass. "The effects of the potion will wane once the intention is complete. Only then will it solve its own barrier," he announced while standing up.
"We can't just expect it to work like that!" Hermione shouted.
He bent down to her eye-level and touched her shoulder. "It's the only way. I've examined every piece of work done. If you believe in trust, then you will trust my evaluation."
"I do," she sighed. "But what if it doesn't?"
"Then you haven't relinquished its purpose. Now, I have to deliver Lupin his potion and prep some draughts for him. When you're ready to seek council, I suggest talking to Black. He's the promiscuous one of the lot," Severus declared before straightening his form. "It is after all new territory for you, I assume."
"I was not a tart," Hermione huffed.
Snape shrugged and shifted his robes. "I would never presume such. However, it seems you left many things unsaid to a vulnerable bystander."
"I don't think I like you very much right now, Snape," Hermione groaned.
"I am not here to coddle you, Hermione. I'm here to request you be honest with your intentions. If you want lies and good humor, Black will gladly supply. If you want to be scolded for acting like a child, then we shall talk more."
Hermione scowled at his towering form. "I was not a child. What gives you any right to say that?"
Snape lifted the page from her night table and waved it with a tiny smirk trickling into his stoic expression. "I'd like to think character is based on perspective."
"And what perspective do you hold?"
"You're a witch of honesty and courage. Traits I happen to be fond of. If you stop treating those, at times morons, like fragile creatures and more like wizards you wanted back in your life, they will deliver. Disrupting the past has happened, there's no changing that. Acceptance is your only option."
Hermione scrunched her brows as her eyes wandered to the wall. He remained unmoved in the moments of her analysis. The Potion Master watched it unveil on her lovely face. The realization of her own actions creating a different story. The stroke of genius in her amber eyes as she twirled in a dizzy mental drawing. Hermione Granger was far more fierce and intelligent than he'd imagined one witch could be.
"Alright, I see your point," Hermione finally sighed as she met his gaze. "I'll gather my thoughts and speak with them."
"Good, I shall be occupied with my tasks," he declared before turning to the door.
"Severus," Hermione started.
He turned to see her lips pulled in a delightful and subtle smile. "Yes?"
"I appreciate the dressing down. Sometimes I don't have someone to oppose me enough to have perspective."
The Potion Master nodded and left the room. He let out a massive sigh with a shake of his head. Whether he enjoyed the bantering or not, there was more to come. The worse thing you could ask a fighter is to stop fighting. Severus was almost sure it was still going to take time to warm her up to the real task at hand. Hopefully, it could be organic. Hopefully.
