Summary: SSHG, AU, Hermione Granger took on an apprenticeship in a far away place in the hopes to learn the secret that would help restore her parents' memories.
Written for Scratch that Niche
Prompt: spider
A/N: I've been out with a back injury. I can't sit. I can't stand. I'm stuck on my stomach laying prostrate on my bed to relieve the pain. It's horrible. People take for granted just being able to sit.
Beta Love: Dragon and the Rose, Dutchgirl01
Raindrop's Chance In Hell
The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever.
Jacques Yves Cousteau
Hermione landed with a swift pounce on the unwary lemur and the sentries of the conspiracy sounded the alarm too late for their unfortunate ally. Her teeth sank into the lemur's neck as her claws grasped the struggling prey animal, but its struggle was over quickly. She'd come a very long way from her first dreadful attempts at pursuing prey through the trees, and while she did not hunt to feed herself, there was a much greater plan for the carcass that meant a great deal to her.
There had been a time that now seemed so very long ago, when such hunts had appalled her, but she'd soon come to see things differently. While her prey did not go to feed herself, they did go to feed something in need, and it was enough for her to know that she was doing something for a greater good that was much more than a dream one man-made for the world.
Licking her chops fastidiously, she picked up and carried the dead lemur between her jaws, her paws easily finding the way down from the tree and onto the path through the forest without a map. She'd come to trust her paws over her human need for a physical map, and she'd trusted her sensitive nose even more.
The ocean called just over the ridge, and she could smell the salt in the air even as her ears heard the cacophony of sea birds calling out to each other. The coast in this particular area was far too rough to be attractive to human visitors, and it was a place that even the locals rarely came to unless they were fishermen out on their boats.
Her master had set up his life on this particular stretch of coast, and when the sun rose and set, it wasn't hard to see why.
He often said he could see the very breath of the gods in those early morning hours and view the glittering star trails the ancient Māori people used to navigate from place to place. She couldn't help but agree with him in those moments. There was something about this island that brought her so much closer to the primordial, to a time when the ancient gods still roamed alive and well upon the earth even while there were more "civilised" areas to be found.
Her musings occupied her mind until she reached the rocky coastline, and her semi-retractable claws made short work of her descent down to the shore. She was, admittedly, much better making her way amongst the trees, but that had taken a great deal of practice too. She had once been equally clumsy both in the trees and out of them enough to make her weary master think she was a lost cause on a great many nights.
But no, she was Hermione Jean Granger, and simply giving up was never in her plan. That was why she had taken on the apprenticeship to begin with—to save her parents. No known potion or spell seemed able to restore their memories to them, and the gods knew just how hard she'd tried. The rumour was that the great Master Atawhai could teach the secret remedy to his apprentice—one only to be shared with those who somehow managed to survive his apprenticeship—a commitment that would last for seven years at the very least.
None had ever made it that long.
The first test had been studying the art of Animagery, which he had said was a test of introspection just as much as the discipline itself. That alone had taken her a few years. The next was learning how to let go of her expectations. Then it was about learning to trust that what Master Atawhai had to teach her could not be found in any book, and after that it had been learning to finally become an Animagus.
By the time she reached her fourth year under his tutelage, she'd learned a great deal about herself as she had soaked in the myriad hidden stories and rich culture of New Zealand. She'd never be a true expert like one born to the island, but she had found more respect for the oldest of stories—the kind that were passed on only through word of mouth and not written down on paper.
She'd also been given a task to prove herself worthy of the cure for her parents' Obliviation-induced amnesia: satisfy the local taniwha, one of the supernatural spirits of New Zealand, to be given the answers that she so desperately desired.
It had taken a year for her to even find a trace of the taniwha in her master's territory, and he was not making it easy for her with clues or metaphorical hand-holding. He gave her access to the vast collection of stories in his head, answered questions that didn't directly solve her problem for her, and the rest was all up to her. It was beyond maddening, but she'd finally gotten used to it.
It took her another year to teach herself how to hunt like a proper predator and not a Londoner witch whose savvy was primarily reliant upon standard spells and "civilised" behaviour.
The gods had, at least, blessed her with an Animagus form that perfectly suited the climate she currently resided in, but she had to figure out how to be a fossa without having fossas for parents. She also had to learn how to defend her patch against the other fossas without feeling guilty that she was taking away the prime hunting territory of a wholly natural, full-time fossa.
Then again, she figured, maybe the same cliffs that made it less than desirable to humans also made it less appealing to the typical fossa. She wasn't really sure, and after a few squabbles in the daylight, dusk, and night, the local fossas all seemed to agree that she could have that territory until she started losing her teeth, claws, and her disturbingly tenacious attitude.
Not likely, Master Atawhai had told her. She was, he said, easily the most tenacious young apprentice he'd ever had.
As Hermione reached the very edge of the water, she dropped the lemur's body into a small waka she had crafted by hand only that morning. She used her nose to push the miniature canoe off the shore, watching the current carry the craft away and out to sea.
She lowered her head and said a small respectful prayer to the guardian taniwha that resided in the waters. To expect to see it would be foolish. To expect the kind of absolute proof Hermione would have demanded back when she was a little eleven-year-old swot at Hogwarts would have been equally unhelpful. Instead, she called upon a personal meditation to centre her mind and her emotions, and she whispered a prayer to the sea's elemental power.
A gift for you, guardians of the waves and land, she whispered. Hunted by my own skill and given freely.
When she opened her eyes, the waka and the lemur were gone. She smiled, her muzzle twisting into a fossa smile of flashing white teeth, and she bounded back up the steep incline and into the forest. Every day was the same, at least as far as her planning went. She woke up, had breakfast with her master, performed whatever tasks he required of her, and then she crafted a small waka and left it on the shore before going on the hunt. When she was done for the day, she'd return home to their shared abode, take a bath, and fall face first into her pillow.
While she didn't always catch lemurs, sometimes she got lucky getting civet cats, snakes, birds, bush pigs, or fish. Each day her catch was different, but no matter how small her successes were, she always placed her catch in the small canoe and sent it off to the ocean and the taniwha. She never took more than one, so no matter how meagre it seemed to her, she gave it a place of honour on the waka and sent it off with the same reverence that she would for a larger offering.
She had to admit that she'd come a long way from the shivering, starving refugee in the Forest of Dean. She wondered what Ron would have said to the prospect of a dinner of lemur or a fresh bush pig.
News came to her in New Zealand but only rarely as word of mouth required someone to actually care about what was currently going on in the UK. Her master had very little inclination to keep up with such things, and the few who visited them were equally prone to news stagnation.
Sometimes, when Harry found himself in a pickle he couldn't solve on his own, he'd send her an owl begging for but a moment of her precious time to look over his work for something that he might have missed. Otherwise, he didn't write often, but she didn't really expect him to. Her messy-haired friend had never been much of a writer.
She had once received an angrily screeching Howler from Molly Weasley demanding to know what she'd told Harry that had caused him to abruptly cancel his wedding to Ginevra. Ginny had apparently swanned off with Viktor Krum and the pair had gone off on a Quidditch world tour together, and it couldn't possibly be because they were a better match. That was what Molly believed, anyway. Why Molly believed that Hermione had told Harry to "call off the wedding" was a complete mystery to her. She hadn't so much as set foot in England for the greater part of seven years due to her apprenticeship.
Molly probably blamed her for Ginny's happy marriage to Viktor as well as the fact that Ginny had finally realised that her mum's (and her own) prejudice against people with foreign accents was not conducive to starting a family in Bulgaria where she was the one with the "funny accent." Perhaps, Hermione figured, Ginny had finally pulled her own head out of her arse where such things were concerned. Their treatment of Fleur had been utterly deplorable, and Hermione felt much regret for her own failings in judging people for being different when she herself was constantly judged by purebloods as being defective for her birth.
Almost a decade of serving as an apprentice in a foreign country with a culture very different from her own had taught her a great many lessons, enough to knock some practicality and sense into her wartorn brain. Between her apprentice duties and her daily practice of crafting her wakas and hunting for the taniwha she had yet to even see, introspection was something she needed to practice every single day. Learning patience and humility in a place where the ancient spirits would be watching her every move along with Master Atawhai had helped take her down a peg or two from the notion that because she'd survived a war it meant thatshe'd somehow become a more worldly and experienced witch.
I honestly hadn't a clue what was really out there outside of the war, Hermione confessed to herself.
Patience, too, had been a very hard thing for her to learn. Realising that just because she was magical that things couldn't and wouldn't always progress quickly as she liked had been one of the most difficult lessons of all. She was so used to always being on top of her game—the one who consistently got things done when others were floundering about—and in the wilds of New Zealand, she was nothing all that special.
There were no books that could teach her how to use the body of a fossa to hunt amidst the tree canopy. Oral traditions completely flummoxed her long-held belief that as books were so ancient that all important knowledge could always be found there. Even her apprenticeship had proven that some of the best-kept secrets were only passed down from master to apprentice, and it did not mean that said knowledge would be served up on a silver platter.
She had to work very hard indeed for every last scrap of it.
She had learned to respect people like Severus Snape even more because of it. He'd been the youngest potions master in all of Britain if not Europe as a whole and he'd achieved it shortly after graduating. She couldn't even imagine learning all the things she had under Master Atawhai in a mere handful of years or less. It had taken her an entire year just to get her brain together before she could start on the basics of trust in her master and a year after that to learn to become an Animagus.
Severus had, if a little begrudgingly, kept in touch with her via owl since shortly after the war was won. She'd come to him first in her quest to cure her parents, but he had no potion that would work on reversing Obliviation in a Muggle, not to the extent she had done. Potions were designed to work on magical people, and her parents were Muggles. She had thought at the time that it could eventually be reversed, at least at the same level of difficulty she'd managed whilst learning the art of Obliviation, but she'd been proven wrong.
She'd been wrong about a great many things, admittedly.
Taking in a deep breath, she gathered her wits about her and set about starting her day. She had a traditional waka lesson on top of her regular duties, and she wasn't going to get to that by behaving like a slug.
Hermione,
I haven't heard from you in ages! What have you been up to? Did you see in the news that Viktor snagged another world record for catching a snitch between his teeth in record time to win the game? He's such an amazing athlete!
He's told me he's considering retiring from Quidditch to spend more time raising the kids, but I can't even imagine leaving Quidditch behind. They'll have to pry my broom out from my cold, dead fingers! We have more than enough money to hire a nanny and we have a wonderful pair of house elves too, something Mum never had, and I'm so grateful for that. I cannot imagine staying at home doing nothing but cooking and cleaning and fussing over the kids all day long like Mum did. Ugh. No way!
If anything, I thought I'd try getting into sports writing when I'm not playing Quidditch, but I don't know how well that might work out.
Harry tells me that Mum is still beyond furious with him for abandoning me to go off and "fornicate with a bloody Death Eater." Her words, not mine. Frankly, I'm about ready to disown her completely. It's not Harry's fault that he's more of a wand than a Quaffle bloke, yeah?
Mum has really gone over the top with the family ever since Fred died, I think. She was always a bit eccentric and had pretty firm notions about who was meant for who, but I really think the war broke something inside her. Killing Bellatrix unhinged her even more. I think something about it settled deep inside her. Some kind of insanity. Some strange, unshakable obsession. I can't quite put my finger on it but Bill and Charlie both claim that Mum's been unhinged since the day I was born. I don't believe them. What the hell would THAT have to do with it? Honestly!
Oh, and thanks for the invitation to visit for the weekend, but I just can't stomach the untamed wilds. I might run into spiders, and while Ron might be a bit more extreme in being terrified of them, I'm much more worried about all the dangerous ones! I've heard Australia has all kinds of things that want to kill you and it's an island, so New Zealand is probably even worse! Emma, our kids' nanny, is such a fanatic about cleanliness and dirt. She'd try to sweep the entire bloody forest, I tell you! Why don't you come and visit us in Bulgaria instead?
I have to go now, I have a game in about two hours. I have to make sure Emma has everything she needs to take the children to the zoo with Dad. Mum may be nutters, but at least Dad is trustworthy around our kids.
Dear Ginny,
I'm sorry but I cannot travel away from my master. This weekend I will be free, but only after I finish my regular chores. We could catch up while I do them, but I cannot neglect my duties here. I took a formal Oath to my master and he did the same for me, so I will not be able to shirk off to travel to Bulgaria.
Viktor has always been a highly skilled athlete and showman, so it doesn't surprise me at all that he's catching things in his teeth, but he really needs to be more careful about stuff like that!
Molly sent me a real guilt-trip of a letter the other month about how my lack of responsibility in refusing to marry Ronald somehow caused him to go forth and multiply by fathering so many babies and all with different witches. I'm not quite sure what part of that is even remotely my fault. She really wanted grandbabies, so now she has at least eight just from Ronald alone!
I'm not really sure when her brothers Fabian and Gideon died, but maybe her psychosis first started back then, her total obsession with the family. Bill was telling me about it when we stayed at Shell Cottage after we escaped the Malfoy estate. I know Bill's forbidden Molly from seeing the kids until she sincerely apologises to Fleur, but that probably has about a snowflake's chance in Hell of ever happening, if you ask me. She never apologised to me after sending me that tiny chocolate egg while she sent both Ron and Harry the dragon-sized ones during our fourth year at Hogwarts.
I hope your latest game went well. I have no interest in Quidditch as well you know, but I hope you don't tumble into the goal post like your unlucky teammate did.
All my love,
Hermione
Dear Miss Granger,
I have achieved some small success in treating Muggle headaches using our headache potion mixed with ground kirin horn, but due to the rarity of the ingredient, testing it further isn't a viable option. A headache potion is one thing, but mixing it with higher level potions such as a custom memory restorer would be an unmitigated disaster. I will attempt to find a more suitable and readily available alternative that will not risk me blowing up my own laboratory.
The samples of various native New Zealand herbs and local reagents were most welcome. My thanks to your master for giving us permission to harvest from his home and the surrounding wilderness. I fear that for the uninitiated, those like myself are not welcome to take such liberties of harvest. I cannot recall the word you used for the taboo, but I understand the concept well enough. Those without any respect for the land cannot understand the significance of what is truly sacred.
Perhaps you have a true gift in what you have worked for there, Mis—Hermione. We've been in contact for years now, and I've never seen someone work so hard for something that could be. We both know that the chances for reversing the Obliviation of your parents are minuscule. It doesn't stop either of us from trying, but it is rare indeed to see such absolute determination. I cannot help but think that had I been a more tolerant man—a more courageous man—I could have taken you on as my apprentice back at Hogwarts and taught you in the manner you deserved rather than the way I treated most everyone back then.
Times were so different back then. Even I was different, and I cannot claim it was due solely to the war. I made the choice to act in the way I did, and not just because I was teaching the children of Death Eaters. Minerva has always been a highly respected teacher, and her reputation of being impartial when it came to discipline has been unmatched during her entire tenure at Hogwarts. If only I could have been such a person.
Instead, I was quite the horror from day one, I am sure.
I have little time for wool gathering as it were. I've had enough self-introspection to last a lifetime and know well how many foolish decisions I've made in my life.
I hear you're taking some of those official tests this week. I would say good luck, but I know you don't really need it. You have worked very hard and you will succeed. Standardised tests have no chance against you. Idiotic Ministry exams were not meant for the likes of you.
Yours,
Severus Snape
Hermione tilted her head as she approached the place where she normally placed her crafted waka and squinted. Something was out there. It was black and seemed to be dangling from a log branch, fluttering in the salty sea air.
She approached carefully and looked around. There were no other footprints or any other sign of humans, and her senses didn't notice anything amiss. She had become accustomed to feeling out situations without her wand since beginning her apprenticeship, and the pull of her magic danced across her skin as she reached toward what looked like a cloak.
"Kia ora!" a tiny voice cried.
Hermione blinked and looked more closely.
A black spider with a red and white emblazoned rump perched itself, or rather herself, Hermione suddenly realised, on the branch of a tree stump.
A katipō.
Well, it would be if it were smaller and didn't speak to her.
She raised one leg as if to wave.
"Kia ora," Hermione greeted in Māori, thanking her master for yet another skill he'd insisted she learn.
"Do you prefer English?" the spider asked her. "It's okay if you do. I'm multilingual. I have one language for each leg!"
"I do prefer English when I'm tired," Hermione confessed.
The spider bounced on all eight legs. "Okay! You must be the one we're waiting for."
"We?"
Hermione looked around.
"Myself and Walter here," the spider explained. "I don't have a name, really. Most people see me and start screaming 'pūngāwerewere' and run away or else they flail about and try to flatten me with something."
"May I call you Pūngā for short?" Hermione asked.
"Okay!" Pūngā said in happy agreement.
"You said you were waiting for me?"
"Yup!" Pūngā replied cheerily. "Walter here was getting pretty impatient, but I'm a spider. We tend to be patient hunters and let our prey come to us. Well, those like me do, anyway. There are some other spiders out there that take a far more proactive approach to finding food."
The black fabric on the log rustled softly.
Hermione blinked. "Walter?"
The fabric seemed to reach out to her, and she met it with her hand. A warm, pleasant feeling spread up her arm.
"We're here for you," Pūngā said kindly. "I mean, if you want us to be."
Hermione realised that gifts that turned up in the very spot where you launched your waka every day for the past eight years were probably not a mere coincidence. That was a fairly safe bet.
"My name is Hermione," Hermione told the pair after a good ponder. "Pleased to meet you."
"So do you want us, Hermione? We're both a little tired of being alone. Walter was tempted to eat someone the other day, and I told him it was a bad idea. Lonely Lethifolds are cranky Lethifolds," Pūngā explained.
"It does get a little lonely out here," Hermione admitted.
The Lethifold and the katipō waited expectantly.
"It really would be nice to have friends," Hermione confessed.
"Well, we'd be a bit more than just friends," Pūngā said. "More like forevermiliars."
"For—what?"
Pūngā bounced. "Kinda like forever friends but bound to your soul. It keeps us from ever losing you. Losing you after waiting this long would be terribly depressing. Do you have any idea how long we've been waiting? Master Atawhai has a long list of idiots that couldn't last a single month out here, let alone an entire year—we were honestly starting to think that we'd never find someone."
"You know him?" Hermione asked, her brown eyes widening.
"Not personally," Pūngā admitted. "We've been watching for a really long time, though. He's been watching over this patch of land for an even longer time."
Hermione wondered just how long a really long time was for creatures like Pūngā or Walter.
Master Atawhai had always told her to never doubt the gifts the gods sent, lest she end up like the characters in the stories his people told to teach their children what not to do. That was the last thing Hermione needed. She did not want her legacy to be a tale of "that idiot who was sent something precious by the gods and said no thanks," not unlike Harry's much-loathed Boy-Who-Lived moniker.
At least "Boy-Who-Lived" was a bit shorter.
"I accept your offer," Hermione said seriously.
"Yay!" Pūngā exclaimed joyfully. "We kinda have to apologise in advance though—"
"Oh?" Hermione asked, frowning slightly. "Why?"
"This might sting a little."
The last thing Hernione knew was the stinging heat of a venomous bite on her hand as a wall of impenetrable black swiftly descended upon her.
Hermione awoke with her face in the sand and her miniature waka bobbing merrily in the water, a small tether tying it to a nearby log. Her brain felt like it was made of taffy, and there was a distinct feeling that something quite significant had happened.
The young bush pig she had brought to the shore was laid in the canoe, and the tether was the only thing keeping the craft from floating out to sea.
Hermione groaned, rubbing grains of sand out of her face and off her arms, wearily pushing herself up. Then she released the tether and allowed the pig to float away from shore. She bowed her head respectfully, saying a quiet prayer of thanks for the day.
Even if she couldn't quite remember most of it—
Feeling as though she'd fallen into a wine fermentation vat while sleepwalking, she slowly opened her eyes.
The waka was gone.
She wondered what her parents would think of her adventures in New Zealand had she not Obliviated them. Her learning to construct and use the waka, the hunt for native plants, her hunts as a fossa, fishing, absorbing the ancient culture, stories, and language, and the magic she knew her parents had never quite understood but supported her learning anyway—what would they have thought of their daughter's wayward and eclectic studies?
Master Atawhai had taught her a great deal already and was teaching her so much more than refined magic. He had taught her to discover more about herself and the world around her, things that she'd never been able to truly understand. Mere book knowledge could never replace that kind of learning. It was one thing to read something written on reams of parchment but it was such a powerful thing to truly know what it felt like to feel the earth between her paws, to hear the sounds of the forest in her own ears, to grasp the delicate balance between life and death—
Magic now seemed so much easier to understand and coax to life after such grand epiphanies.
It was no longer simply about words and gestures or even the wand itself.
It was about truly feeling magic as it swirled in and around everything and knowing how to ask for it to create the wonders she envisioned. It was like taking the training wheels off a bicycle or casting aside the crutches she'd never even realised that a wand actually was.
In approximately the same span of time that she'd spent as a student at Hogwarts, she'd successfully transformed herself from a book-parroting swot into someone who genuinely cared about the truth.
She'd exchanged her pale English skin for something much deeper and darker, her hands now had calluses in places she'd never known calluses could exist, her bushy curls had been pulled back and tamed with a carved bone comb that her master had given her as he treated her hair with tītoki berry oil mixed with red ochre. He had said it was her duty to tend to her hair so that their mana did not clash.
It was strange to her at first considering that most Māori dressed as the English did anymore, but she realised that he was teaching her even then: about how things had once been to help her better respect how things had changed. While she'd not been born Māori, she had tremendous respect for where they came from, and it helped her to appreciate what she had right now instead of pining for the things she had lost.
As she trudged back to the home she shared with her Master, she gathered several hunks of dried wood for the fire as she went along, tucking them into the utility bag she had charmed to assist her with lugging logs and such to and fro. When she moved to heave it up onto her shoulders, she startled as her new "cloak" swiftly hoisted it up and carried it for her.
"Oh, thank you, Walter," Hermione said appreciatively.
The Lethifold cooled her shoulders gently as if to shrug.
Master Atawhai waved to her as she approached. He tended a line of fish smoking over the fire. "Ahh, apprentice. Come, come. You know better than to refuse my kai."
"I'd never be rude enough to refuse food prepared by you, Master," she said with a chuckle.
He smiled, offering her tea without asking. "Just pulled the jug off the fire. I made a new blend."
"Just now?"
"Of course," he said with a cheeky wink. "Had a guest from the far town earlier. Seems a British tourist went missing, and the DSS was wondering if we'd seen anyone out roaming the shore or forests."
"DSS Martin must be under a lot of pressure," Hermione murmured as she sat down and gratefully accepted the tea. "I know he hates trekking out here when it's not a sure thing that you'll know the answer to his questions."
"Most people make it a point to leave this place to the wilds," he replied. "That's why I like it out here."
"You don't have family you'd like to see from time to time?" Hermione asked.
Atawhai shook his head. "I fear we are far from each other," he said after a time. He stared into the fire. "The young, much like the young pup or cub, tend to wander in search of a patch that they can call their own. The world moves on."
He sniffed, took one of the fish off the fire and handed it to her, spit and all. "Eat. You've had a long day and made some new friends. You should put some food in your belly."
"I shouldn't be surprised that you noticed my new friends," Hermione said. She stroked Walter on the outer edge. "This is Walter. The lady katipō is Pūngā."
"Kia ora!" Pūngā exclaimed, bobbing merrily from the hair knot atop Hermione's head.
"Kia ora, e hoa," Atawhai greeted. He seemed to find the spider's name amusing as his dark eyes sparkled with suppressed laughter. "A Lethifold is a most loyal friend if you can get them before they become feral maneaters. The ones you hear horror stories about in the rest of the world are usually the feral ones. They spent too long being hungry and were often treated very poorly—much like spiders are. People see the pūngāwerewere and are prone to reacting violently. I think it is because humans had to be so paranoid when first starting out. They huddled around their fires and were all so terribly afraid of the vast unknown. Now, even thousands of years later, they still cling to the fear in their souls for the serpent and the spider and other creatures that lurk in the dark corners, hiding from the sunlight."
Hermione chuckled. "Nowadays I have much less fear of what lingers in the dark," she confessed.
Her master smiled and threw another log on the fire before moving the jug over to heat more water. "You caught some very nice fish for us," he said with approval. "The fishing lessons must be sinking into your hardened skull."
Hermione snorted. "Just because I never knew how to fish or tie a fly before I came here doesn't mean I wasn't open to learning it."
"Took you a while to get to that point," Atawhai said with a wink.
Hermione slumped. "I know it. I thought I had already grown up, but really I was just starting off."
"Learning is forever," Atawhai said with a shrug. "Anyone who does not believe this is doomed to stagnation."
He jerked his head after a moment and let out a quiet sigh of satisfaction. "Oh, the results from your last battery of tests came back. You failed miserably, of course."
Hermione's eyes widened in abject horror. "Gods, did I fall asleep during the test? Did I mix up Avanti's equilibrium in balancing plant and water ratio—" She blinked, staring at her master, who was turning purple.
"Hahahahaha, oh, the look on your face!" he cackled loudly. "You passed with flying colours, of course you did. I cannot believe how easy it was to pull your chain!"
Hermione groaned, rubbing her nose with her pinched fingers. "I really hate you, sometimes, Master."
"Tch, you love me, you know you do," he replied cheekily.
"Unfortunately," Hermione admitted with a soft snort.
"Have you been working on your bird transformations?" Atawhai asked.
"I think I'm just a little too close to my fossa shape," Hermione confessed. "The best I can do is become a fossa with some sort of bird wings."
Atawhai laughed. "You'll get it, my dear. Even the great Maui had to start somewhere before he was fishing Aotearoa me Te Waipounamu out from the sea."
"I don't plan on fishing any giant islands out of the sea anytime soon," Hermione said, grinning.
Atawhai chuckled. "Perhaps, neither did Māui. While many of his stories were grand epics and pretty hard to believe by today's standards, there is still a lingering belief in the great taniwhas that live both on land and sea, in the ancient gods—and yes, even in some of the stories where the gods were not any more perfect than we were. Many cultures view their gods differently, but, for a time, many believed ours walked upon the very same land that we did. We cannot judge those who have passed on and what they believed by our modern day standards. Now, we must walk our path with one foot in the past and one foot in the future and our minds in the middle forging a peace between them."
Hermione humphed. "You tend to be right on such things."
"Of course I am. Look at those winemakers further mainland. They fuss over choosing the most perfect grape, then use their science to find the perfect fermentation length and heat, open or closed vats, blah, blah, blah—" he rambled. "They have good enough swill that's fit to be sold with a fancy label and judged at shows, but there are other winemakers out there who still remember the art and soul of brewing." He tilted his head. "There are true artisans to be found in every craft, but you have to be willing to seek them out where they are hiding. In the end, that is when you find true companionship on your journey. A place to call home."
He passed her a small glass with a sparkling crystalline liquid inside. It seemed to hold the stars quite literally within its depths.
"Drink up," he smiled. "You deserve it."
Hermione nursed the glass in her hands with a slight tremble. This was his most special wine—a unique vintage that never saw the light of day or was seen by prying eyes—rumoured to hold either all of the answers or all of the questions.
There were a mere handful of Māori winemakers, all of them trying to leave a small footprint on the land they knew and loved while making some great wine, but Master Atawhai made a kind of wine that bore no label and never graced the spread of a fancy dinner party or backyard barbeque. His was, quite literally, magical.
She savoured the liquid as it moved across her tongue, her senses heightened from her years being out in the forests and hunting. She took in her breath slowly, allowing the flavour to tingle its way across her taste buds before she swallowed. It didn't taste like any wine she'd ever sampled; it tasted like an entire lifetime condensed and brewed into the most complex of libations. It felt as if she was drinking in the memories inside a Pensieve quite literally.
She understood in that very moment just how lonely her master had been for a very long time, and by a long time she meant that it was far longer than even the expanse of time in which Albus Dumbledore had walked the Earth… and then some.
"I will pin you, of course, so those thrice-damned Ministry folks can't take it away from you or spout some utter rot that makes it sound like you're a mere pretender, but I would also call you my tamāhine, my daughter, and paint upon your skin the whole of my ancestry that no being who truly matters would ever be able to deny who you are."
Hermione's eyes began to fill as emotion swelled in her chest. Just how long had it been? She'd eventually stopped counting as the seventh year flew by. How old were Ginny and Viktor's kids? They were surely attending Durmstrang by now. She'd come to this place to find a way to restore her family, but the throb deep within her heart told her that she'd found a family where she hadn't even been looking for it. Day after day, night after night, her new life had sort of swallowed her up and remade her into something as wholly different as her fossa form had been to her the very first time she'd taken it.
"Stay with me and protect this land as my daughter, Hermione, and free yourself from your guilt and the sad ghosts of your past. Continue to learn all that I can teach you, but as my tamāhine."
"Yes," she whispered as the last drop of Atawhai's wine fell upon her tongue. "Matua."
"Come then, to the waters," he said fondly. "And let both the land and sea bear witness to our combined joy."
Hermione barely remembered arriving at the beach and stood half in the water, her body glistening with drops of sea water, she realised she was not alone.
As her master walked further out in the surf and seemed to disappear into the waves, she scanned the incoming tides in confusion as the water churned all around her. She could swim—very well indeed thanks to her various lessons—but why had her master swanned off into the ocean?
The churning water grew more and more active, and large shapes began to rise from the ocean as one would imagine Godzilla rising up as he made contact with land. Gigantic shapes that appeared to be composed of wood, stone, or seething lava rose up in the moonlight. They began to glow, displaying intricate patterns all over their bodies, but their heads were all glowing with family markings—markings she had seen upon her master's face from the first day onwards.
Each design was subtly different, ages worth of stories of accomplishments and long forgotten status etched upon every curve and corner. They spread down the shoulders to the body itself, glowing like the moon in a dark sky over their flesh.
"We accept your offerings of kai," the taniwha rumbled around them from the largest to the smallest. Some seemed much like great mountains given life. Some were small like turtles. "We accept you into our whānau, our family, from now until the end of us. May you protect us as we have protected you."
Hermione met each of their gazes with wonder and awe.
All of her kai had gone into feeding the taniwha, from the smallest of the lizards to the largest she could manage, the lemurs and bush and feral pigs. Her master had said that her hunting the feral pigs had helped the forest to thrive, and their bodies went to strengthen the taniwha that watched over the sea and land.
Master Atawhai's family.
It might have been a token gesture for the largest of them, but like the gods that thrived on faith, the taniwha didn't grow weaker with some added faith in the mix. They grew even stronger.
A huge wood taniwha rose up from the water, great gushes of ocean water trailing off its body. Its head was like a shark adorned with branches, but the grooves of the "skin" glowed with a familiar pattern.
Her master's.
This—was her master.
"I mark you with the lineage or our family," her master's voice sounded in her head. "Your body will bear the markings from your shoulders down so as to not offend those whose bloodlines trace through the wholly human lineages. Your head shall bear markings that only the magical can see—and those who can will know you are ours and we yours.
His great head lowered, and streams of glowing blue-green liquid seemed to ooze from his markings and onto her body even as the other larger taniwha did much the same. The smaller ones seemed content to let their magic trickle into the water, allowing it to swirl around her. The glowing spread across her skin, seeping in as if following a groove. Her skin began to tingle and sting, but she carefully held her tongue, not daring to utter even the slightest sound of discomfort lest it offend the ancient spirits that were claiming her as their own.
"You are now your own master, tamāhine," Akawhai's voice rumbled, "and a part of our whānau. May your learning never cease."
"Now, take this offering to your friend that he may craft his potion."
Atawhai jabbed his "neck" with one curved talon, and a glowing green sap welled up like blood from a wound and trickled downward. She scrambled for a vial and caught it as it fell and the trickle stopped. Each of the elder taniwha did the same, and she caught each one of the precious streams of sacred lifeblood from the taniwha—the fluid that was both physical and not and most definitely still alive, even as it existed outside of the body of the taniwha that had donated it.
"Thank you," she said, tears streaming down her cheeks as the sheer enormity of the gifts she had been given settled into both mind and body. She carefully tucked the phial of precious fluid into one of Walter's convenient pockets.
"Now, sleep in the embrace of the elements that you may awaken reborn," the gargantuan taniwha rumbled from far above even Master Atawhai. His skin was that of an erupting volcano, crackling with the oozing lava of the forever forming island. Seaweed swirled around her body as did the ocean, wooden vines slithered over her body, anchoring her, as the great and mighty molten teeth of the living volcano clamped around her.
Everything went dark.
Hermione,
I'm not sure who to tell this to, but I was talking to Luna the other day, and she told me she'd been having tea with Hannah over at the Leaky Cauldron. Seems she's really worried about Neville. He's been obsessing over finding a cure for his parents, so they can be with their grandchildren. He's getting a little, well, strange about it. Do you think you could talk to him? I know you were working on finding something to help your parents, and since you haven't—I mean—I don't mean to be negative, but since you haven't found a cure for them either, maybe you could—
You know, help him out?
He doesn't seem inclined to take no for an answer, and I'm sure he's not about to throw himself off into the wilds like you did searching for a cure because it'd take him away from his family, but—
Maybe you can help him see sense? Hannah is worried sick about him.
Viktor says that Neville is falling into the same obsession that Mum is. Mum and her fixation on her vision of the perfect family all together, and Neville wants pretty much the same thing, only he wants his parents back to be there for his kids just as much as himself. I know you're working on that cure still, but you're doing so much more with your life too. You're being—
Healthy about it, I guess.
Neville, on the other hand, is willing to let his life slide for even the slightest chance at curing his parents, and I don't think what he wants even exists, if you know what I mean. Even if by some great miracle it does, it would probably take far more years than he has left with his wife and kids for him to find it.
The Cruciatus curse has been around forever, and no one has ever managed to find a cure for severe torture-induced brain damage. Viktor says his great-uncle Stanislav once fell while playing Quidditch and cracked his head open. It resulted in significant swelling and brain damage, and while they could regenerate tissue and repair some of the damage, they could never restore what was lost. He had to relearn everything. If there was something with even the slimmest of chances, Augusta would have surely tried it by now. There is a lot of Dark magic scarring that prevents their brain tissue from being regenerated like Viktor's uncle—
I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to prattle on so.
Look, I'm just asking you and Snape (I know you two have been exchanging letters for the last decade as you've worked on that cure) to keep a look out for Neville. I'm not sure when or where he'll turn up next, and I'm about as worried for him as Hannah is.
Viktor sends you his love, as do I.
Ginny
Hermione awoke on the beach with Walter acting as a lean to canvas for her. The sun was slightly muted by the dark gathering of clouds, and there was the distinctive smell of a storm in the air. It wasn't raining yet, though, which she admitted would have been a pretty rude way to wake up.
"Sleeping your life away, Miss Granger?" a familiar voice rumbled near her.
Hermione bolted upright. "Severus!"
She stared at him in shock. His skin was no longer the vampiric pale she remembered from her schoolgirl days. The lines around his eyes were a touch less harsh, and his eyes seemed to have softened to a light charcoal rather than the black of the darkest pits of Hades, which had been an all-too-familiar sight throughout her years at Hogwarts.
He was wearing a dark grey pair of shorts and a black t-shirt with a Māori style kiwi on it and the words "New Zealand just floo'ed and I must go!" printed on it. What truly astounded her, short of the obvious of Severus Snape suddenly turning up on her own patch of beach, was the sight of him looking tan and fit and not at all prone to spontaneous emotional explosions as he had been in the past.
"That is my name, Miss Gr—Hermione," he said with an unexpected chuckle. "I did give you permission to use it many years ago."
Hermione gaped a little, mouth working.
"Speechless? How terribly unlike you," Severus teased gently, his mouth forming a flat line with only one corner twitching slightly.
Walter gave Hermione a slight shove into Snape's body, and he caught her awkwardly, but his embrace was warm and firm. He smelled of parchment, ink, and herbs—so utterly familiar.
"Walter, you're terrible," Hermione moaned into Severus' chest. "I'm so sorry, Severus, my Lethifold seems to think we needed a hug."
She could feel his eyebrow rising without even looking.
"Prone to befriending man-eating XXXXX creatures?"
"He has far better manners than most people I know," Hermione defended Walter.
"I will admit, the new look seems to suit you," Snape said after a moment. One hand moved to brush a tendril of her hair to the side and out of her eyes. "Living amongst nature seems to agree with you."
"I could say the same to you, Severus," she said. "But how in Merlin's did you—"
"Master Atawhai sent me word to arrive this morning at precisely six in the morning, just in case you should wake up early."
"In," Hermione said with a pause, "case?"
"He didn't seem certain you'd wake up until about now," Snape said after a sniff. "Something about a life-changing assimilation of ancient magic into the soul."
Hermione's eyelid twitched slightly. "He makes it sound so commonplace."
"Perhaps only predictable in your case," Severus said. "You never did anything small. I had many miles worth of parchment to prove it."
"Psht," Hermione scoffed. "Not that much."
She eyed him curiously. "You've tanned up well."
"I could say the same of you," he said with an amused twitch of his lip. "I don't think there is a single one of your old classmates that would recognise you."
"You seemed to," Hermione pointed out.
Severus waved to the ocean and island in general. "There are only you and your master here, Miss Granger. Do give me a little credit."
Sheepish, Hermione just shrugged. "Did Master Atawhai tell you what was so important about coming so soon?"
"Like most ancient masters," Severus drawled with a sigh, "they rarely tell you the why of things and expect you to somehow figure it out on your own. They also enjoy when you can't and take bets on when you finally will."
Hermione slumped. "Sounds about right, not that I've had any other masters to compare him to."
"This is a truly beautiful beach," Severus said appreciatively.
"It's new," Hermione confessed. "I think the taniwha made it last night."
Snape's eyebrow arched again, sharp as ever.
"Normally, Master Atawhai's coastline is harsh and unfriendly so as to deter possible tourists and other unwanted guests."
"I suppose with a dwindling number of peaceful shorelines that are not infested with the crusts of humanity, such natural deterrents would be a good way to ensure a dearth of uninvited guests." Severus saw a shell on the beach and ran his wand over it with a spell.
Hermione arched a slim brow.
"After living in a place where almost everything is dangerous in some way, I have to be sure," he said as he allowed himself to examine the hollow, empty shell.
Hermione's brows furrowed. "You live in Australia?"
"Five points to Gryffindor, Miss Granger."
Suddenly, Hermione realised that he'd been telling her all along where he was. He'd detailed it in his letters, and she had somehow missed it for the obvious explanation on how he knew how her parents were doing even outside their home for a potions cure.
"I'm such an idiot," she sighed. "You pretty much spelled it out that you were creating an apothecary in Australia and I didn't even notice. I just thought you were just being fanciful in calling it the Bunyip Moon."
"Since when have I ever been fanciful?" he asked. "Tch, you've had your mind occupied here. It was to be expected that our correspondence did not rank the highest amongst your priorities."
"I truly looked forward to hearing from you each time," Hermione said softly. She rustled around in Walter's pockets and pulled out the treasured phial. "This is it."
Snape's eyes widened in astonishment as his fingers grasped the phial and tilted it to make the liquid slosh around. The liquid glowed, the light from the phial becoming radiant like a shining beacon. "The holy grail of all potions ingredients. The Water of Life.
"And yet you know it without having ever seen it before," Hermione observed.
"The Dark Lord once had me scouring every possible avenue of restoration," he explained. "Backup plans for the possibility that his future resurrection, should it ever become necessary, would restore his body to perfection. He had heard of Master Atawhai, and he even came here himself, hoping to glean the secrets he'd never had any problems prying out of others. It went about as well you might imagine, however. He wasn't satisfied by learning how to fish and construct a canoe."
Severus tilted his head. "I don't know exactly what happened. I don't think the Dark Lord ever told anyone, but he arrived back in England with no memory of where he'd been and none of us, quite understandably, ever dared ask him about it."
"I destroyed all the notes I'd made and hid every book that even hinted at it in the absolute last place anyone of the time would have thought to look."
"The library in Grimmauld Place," Hermione said with a grin.
"Indeed."
"Where I found it."
Hermione frowned. "Why didn't you just give it to me?"
Severus snorted. "And say what? What could I have said that would have erased all doubt in your mind? No matter what anyone said or what pardons I gained, I was still an ex-Death Eater spy. My entire adult life was about duplicity, and you would have not found it on your own and done what you had to do if that worm of thought anchored inside and had you wondering what my angle was."
"I saved your life, Severus," Hermione said softly. "I wouldn't have done that if—"
"You would have saved anyone's life, if you could have," Severus told her. "It is simply in your nature to help people, whether they deserve it or not."
"I would have believed you," she said earnestly.
"I couldn't take the risk that you might not," he said. "You have to decide to do it, regardless, and you still have to do the work. We all have things that are required of us, but you had to decide that it was something that you had to do."
Hermione let out a long sigh. "You're right."
"Severus?"
"Hn?"
"You said in your letters that once I'd obtained my mastery, you wanted to ask me something."
Severus' expression hardened, his eyes seemingly growing darker.
"Severus?" Hermione's brows furrowed.
"You would remember that of all things," he muttered.
Hermione made a face. "When someone as enigmatic as you says they have a question for you but won't ask until you've completed your mastery, it does tend to stick in one's mind, Severus."
Severus groaned and thumped back into the sand, closing his eyes. "I would like to court you, Hermione."
"You—what?" Hermione's brain stalled before it did an abrupt one hundred and eighty degree turn and took a runner straight off a cliff.
"I have grown very fond of you, Hermione," he said quietly. I could have my apothecary anywhere, but I would like to see if there could be something more than letters between us. A lifetime, perhaps."
Hermione swallowed hard. "I'm a bit—complicated, Severus. I have ties to the land here. Roots."
"As I said, an apothecary can be anywhere," Severus said. "If it is that you do not wish for it, then I will say no more."
"No," Hermione said. "I would like it. I just—I'm a bit of a lifetime commitment, I'm afraid."
"I have no problem with that."
"And I come with a Lethifold."
"Okay."
"And a magical katipō."
"Oh hai!" Pūngā greeted Severus, bouncing happily on Hermione's topknot.
"Okay."
"My matua will wish to teach you how to fish," Hermione added.
"Understandable."
"And how to craft and pilot a waka."
"I presume that means some sort of sailing craft," Severus said bemusedly.
"A canoe, yes."
"That is acceptable."
"Don't forget the biggest lesson of all," Atawhai said as he appeared out of the forest like a ghost.
Severus, unused to being taken off guard by sneakery, bolted upright. "And that would be?"
"How to catch a taniwha fossa."
Severus blinked.
Hermione flushed crimson. "Surprise!"
Severus tugged at his collar. "That is quite acceptable."
Atawhai grinned from ear to ear. "Then you have my permission to court my daughter."
Severus let out a deep breath in relief as the words set in, and then he bolted upright again. "Daughter?"
Atawhai smiled. "It was a ten year adoption process. We do things a bit more slowly out here."
Severus arched a dark brow. "I would like to finish this potion for Hermione first, if it wouldn't be too much trouble."
"Of course."
Hermione seemed a bit embarrassed, and Severus felt she was even more embarrassed than he was in having been caught by the then-unknown father with his daughter—
Yet the flutter in his stomach told him that he'd done something he'd never thought he'd ever do again: trust.
More than faith had brought Hermione Granger to this place in the world, and she had made it into her home. If he were to prove himself to her and be a part of her life the way he wished to be, he was willing to put his own faith on the line.
For Hermione.
For a life.
For his own peace.
"It's so rustic out here," Julia Granger said as she sat by the fire with her husband, Robert.
The sun was painting the sky and clouds a vibrant orange and red, and it was already feeling cooler than during the day. Both of the Grangers were nursing a glass of wine after having enjoyed a startlingly tasty dinner.
"Took us a while to get out here after having to move back to the UK and all, but after seeing these sunsets, I'm sorry we didn't get out here sooner, Hermione," Robert Granger said, smiling at his daughter.
"I'm just glad you came," Hermione confessed as she passed Severus and Atawhai each a tea.
"This has to be the very best wine I've ever tasted," Robert said appreciatively. "You said I won't be able to get any in the town? Pity."
"I'm sure I can box you up a few bottles to go," Atawhai said with a smile. "For family only."
Robert grinned. "Brilliant!"
"To think we pretty much slept through an entire war and never knew it," Julia said thoughtfully. "I've finally come to terms with how hard it must have been for you, Hermione, and it's strange, but we both feel like we're young again. Like we have a whole new lease on life. Seems a bit silly to complain about lost time when we've been given so much back. I'm sorry I was so angry with you at first—"
"It's okay, Mum," Hermione said. "I did something awful. I knew it was awful, but I did it anyway. I was sorry the moment I did it, but—"
"We understand it now, love," Robert said. "Those binders full of clippings and collected newspapers that Severus shared with us. We might have been angry at first, but then we saw why you did what you did. Telling us wasn't quite the same as reading all about it on paper. History. Made it much more real."
"I think I can see where Hermione got her fascination with the written word," Severus said dryly.
Hermione flushed and considered launching a katipō at him—or a Lethifold with the munchies.
Walter gave off a wonderfully cooling aura, and Hermione smiled. She decided murder by familiar was probably frowned on in the company of her refound parents. They'd been through enough already.
"I'll admit, I've never seen you so tan," Julia marvelled. "And those tattoos—at first I thought maybe you'd gotten a bit rebellious over all those times we told you we didn't want you rushing off and getting a tattoo, but it seems to really suit you somehow. They're beautiful."
Hermione smiled a little awkwardly. "Thanks, Mum."
"Well, time for the wife and I to go to sleep," Robert yawned. "Mr Atawhai said he'd take us for a tour of some key places here in New Zealand, and I can't wait to see the sights."
Hermione smiled. "I'm sure you'll have a great time," she said. "Severus and I will start a boar roast, so by the time you return, there will be plenty to eat."
"I have to say, I expected to be bedding down on a leaf cot and a dirt floor when you told us you lived in a rainforest, Hermione," Robert said with a chuckle. "I'm glad that didn't include no access to water, tea, and the other basic necessities."
Hermione smiled. "Of course. Have a good sleep, Dad."
Robert and Julia shuffled off to the small cabin Hermione and Severus had made for them before they arrived. Hermione knew her mother would have died rather than not having running water to shower and brush her teeth, so they had made a small guest home to serve for her parents' visit.
Whenever they weren't there, Severus would use it as a station to send out his potions via owl. He'd utilised the local morepork or ruru owl as to not upset the area with non-native owls. His potions laboratory had already been buried to allow his potions to be kept perfectly cool without significant enchantments, so building the small cabin above it seemed like the most logical thing to do. All shelters other than Atawhai's were very carefully concealed, lest their presence draw attention from passing fishermen, visiting constabulary, or lost tourists.
Master Atawhai seemed pleased that Severus was taking to his lessons with "almost" as much zeal as Hermione had, but even Hermione had to admit that the wizard was not the type to let any lesson go by. He seemed happy to get to know her and become part of her life, and she was glad that he was taking his own lessons with such zeal.
What the man had done to ease the Grangers into discovering the truth of what had happened during the war in Britain as well as his testament to Hermione's endless work in finding their cure had been crucial to their eventual acceptance and forgiveness. She couldn't have been more grateful for that any more than she had been to receive the blessing of the Elixir of Life that would help bring them back to her.
As Severus' hand closed around hers, she smiled up at him.
She was truly happy at last.
Man Who Washed Ashore In a Battered Boat None Other Than Neville Longbottom!
The formerly missing Neville Longbottom was found drifting at sea in a small canoe by a group of Muggle fishermen. Aurors say Mr Longbottom has no recollection of how he got there or even why, but his heart hasn't felt lighter in years.
"My wife tells me that I was terribly stressed about everything, but I feel just fine, now," Neville said in a bedside interview. "I just look forward to being with my family again. It's almost the hols, and my kids will be home from Hogwarts for Christmas."
When asked what he'd been working on before his disappearance, all he could say was, "Honestly, I haven't a sodding clue."
The canoe he was in, which was filled with enough food and supplies to last at least a month, seems to point to Mr Longbottom being well prepared for a long journey. When they found him, however, he was fast asleep and remembered nothing of where he'd been for the last month.
Hermione stretched and yawned as her mate draped himself over her. Their perch high in the treetops was being assiduously avoided by the group of lemurs in the nearby trees.
Severus had beaten the ever-loving tar out of the line of fossa suitors to prove that not only was he only one that was ever getting close to Hermione but he was also the finest in uncharacteristically monogamous fossa male specimens to be found in all of New Zealand.
Hermione, too, did not have the same desires as the fossa females she shared a physical form with, and she happily settled into an afternoon cuddle with Severus in the treetops.
The years had passed by quickly, and it seemed like Severus had only just arrived on the beach on that momentous morning before they were sharing tree branches and furry cuddles, hunting, chores, and the sending of a fat bush pig to the sea for their whānau. While their extended family remained mostly in the sea or roaming to and fro to other islands, Atawhai was blissfully happy to have a part of his family so near.
Their children, who learned quickly that their koroua had eyes on the back of his head, could rarely get away with anything but perhaps a lie-in from time to time when the weather was cooler. Atawhai took his role of grandfather both seriously and with great amusement, smothering them with attention but also being quite firm whenever discipline was required.
Both their son and daughter were highly skilled swimmers before they could even run, could climb a tree as if trying to imitate the lemurs, and knew how to work a waka long before knowing how to make one. They followed their koroua out to fish every time he went, and knew how to build a fire without setting the rainforest on fire before most children knew how to fold a simple paper boat.
When it came time for them to go to school—at least the way that Hermione and Severus had when they had turned eleven—they would have learned far more than Muggle school could offer in their relatively limited curriculum. That, however, would be for the future. For now, their children were fast asleep after having played themselves into utter exhaustion—with the latest poor sap that had thought himself ready to become Atawhai's new apprentice.
With their adult chores done for the day, Severus' latest orders shipped out, the owls tended and fed, and the smoking fires tended, it was just a pleasant time to sprawl out in the trees and share each other's company.
"I kind of feel bad for letting our children play with the potential apprentices," Hermione said, her long tail dangling as a counterbalance as she draped herself across the branch.
"If they can't handle being around our children, then being around Atawhai would be impossible for them," Severus pointed out. "Most people can't even seem to scrape up enough patience to stick around through the first bloody week."
Hermione's ear flicked in acknowledgement. "I suppose. Neville didn't exactly last that long."
"Waltzing right into the forest and harvesting without bothering to ask permission was bad enough, but making feeble excuses didn't exactly endear him to Atawhai either," Severus muttered, his ears flicking.
"He's just lucky that matua was in a generous mood and chose to send him home with his mind intact—well, save for the memories of the time he spent here." Hermione sighed deeply. "It took me until now to realise why the elixir cannot ever be given outside of those who manage to successfully complete the apprenticeship."
"Took you this long to realise it could only be created from the gathering of the family, and then, only if they were treated with proper respect?" Severus snorted.
"Well, at first I thought it was just about respect," she admitted with a huff. "Having completed all the tests."
"I suppose it would be easy to think that after having been so close to them for so long. As an outsider at first, it was easy to see that it was not just about passing an especially difficult test." Severus yawned, his tongue curling slightly. "I had my moments boggling over how I could end up a fossa when Animagi only match forms but rarely."
Hermione smiled broadly, her fangs showing. "You must really like me."
Severus mock-scowled, tail flicking. "Obviously."
"Don't get me wrong," Hermione sighed. "I would have loved to help Neville's parents in some way. "But the lifeblood of a taniwha is apparently even more fickle than any human. It decides its own purpose."
"Even if it was stolen," Severus mused. "It would be utterly worthless."
"I'm sure if there was someone researching it, they would quickly go mad trying to figure it out," Hermione said thoughtfully.
Severus seemed to smile as his ivory fangs glistened. "That would be quite amusing to watch."
Hermione rolled her eyes. "Severus."
"That is my name," he rumbled.
She licked his muzzle. "I love you."
"I love you too, but not enough to want your red-headed catastrophe to the natural world to come visit us again," he answered with a disdainful sniff.
"Severus! Ginny didn't mean to set the forest on fire!"
"I'm sure all arsonists say something quite similar."
Hermione slumped. "She just saw Pūngā and had a little nervous breakdown."
"They always blame the spider," Pūngā said with a weary-sounding voice.
"A mere nervous breakdown would have been fine. Hysterically casting the next flaming apocalypse was not," Severus grumbled.
He raised his head to watch one of his spawn trying to sneak into Atawhai's biscuit tin only to end up with an ever-watchful Lethifold herding them right back to bed. "I'll reconsider it when Walter has babyfolds of his own. They can keep an eye on Ginevra Krum and eat her if she misbehaves."
Hermione sighed. "She probably won't want to come back for a while, anyway. She's convinced herself that every spider here is a katipō, and they all want her dead."
"Thank Merlin for small favours from the cosmos," Severus replied.
Hermione splatted her paw on top of Severus' head.
Severus was quiet for a while, and Hermione nudged him with her nose.
"What are you thinking?"
He nuzzled her tenderly. "That I'm the luckiest wizard in the world," he said. "My life started out as complete shite, as you well know, but if trading meant not ending up here with you, our spawn, and our rather unique whānau, then I wouldn't change a thing."
"I wouldn't trade our family for anything, either," Hermione agreed.
Severus stood on the branch, tail swishing to give him balance. "I'll go fishing for our dinner while you go on your hunt," he said. "Tomorrow, we'll swap."
Hermione said nothing, simply disappearing into the tree canopy as silent as a ghost.
Severus bounded down the tree trunk and took on his human form as he headed out to the waka. As he walked out onto the beach, his swirling tattoos shimmered in the sun. On his left forearm where the Dark Mark had been was the stylised image of a fossa taniwha with her trusty katipō and Lethifold.
"Wouldn't trade this for anything," he said with a small quirk of his lips.
He pushed his waka out into the water, hopping inside with practised grace. Beside him, two young taniwha escorted him out to the deeper water, their bodies resembling a wooden mako shark and a manta ray as they swam alongside him.
His hand drifted into the water, his fingers brushing against the wet, smooth wood-skin of the oceanic taniwha.
No, he thought. I wouldn't trade this life for the world.
Fin.
A/N: I hope you enjoyed this story. I haven't been able to write much if at all due to my back injury, but this story wiggled out. Voting for the Scratch That Niche will probably be in a month or two, so if you liked this story, please save me a vote once the forms are out. Either way, I appreciate your patience during my unexpected hiatus.