DISCLAIMER in Chapter One.
NOTES: A big thank-you to my very gracious reviewers, and of course to Patricia Wilson. I love you guys!
***
Hogsmeade! It was still as hectic and full of activity as it had been more than six years ago, maybe even more so. As the train pulled into the Hogsmeade Station, Hermione looked through the windows and saw a sight she had never expected to see again- the comings-and-goings of innumerable wizards and witches.
Men and women in colorful robes and long, pointed hats bustled to-and-fro, chattering and laughing companionably. The station echoed with the screeching of owls and the howling of cats. Vendors ran around hawking their wares, and trains were constantly pulling in and out of the several platforms.
Hermione had watched this scene so often in her life. She had watched it with the same mixture of feelings that flooded through her now. A feeling of relief to see the bustling activity of Hogsmeade and the large castle of Hogwarts, but a tight anxiety within her at what she would face in Professor Snape's class for another year.
She looked around at large, spacious compartment that she had all to herself. How many times had the Hogwarts Express conducted her across England? How many times had she met the train at Platforms 9 and ¾ and been transported, cheerful and merry, to the school that she loved while she was a student, and then again while she was an adult during the war? How many times during the Great War had Severus Snape waited by the Hogwarts Express Platform to take her to the tense and stressful atmosphere of Hogwarts to work on obscure potions with him?
She could not even begin to count the times. It seemed that the whole of her past life had been here, that she had waited always as she waited now for a sight of the tall, dark figure who would be leaning against the wall and who would stare at her coolly as he had always done, assessing, probing, watchful, before taking her trunk and coldly kissing her cheek.
Hermione could see herself as she had been then, slim and uncomfortable, almost too thin, her hair almost invariably wild and bushy, her brown eyes wide and anxious, waiting with almost tearful anxiety for any sign that her appearance displeased Snape, because she had learned very early on that the cold, detached face of her professor-turned-partner meant either despair or a kind of happiness. Snape was the only one at the great castle whose behavior had any kind of affect or influence on her.
She was neither thin nor unkempt now, however; she was grown up, no longer an anxious child. Only the wide brown eyes were the same. Her slender height was not ungainly now, her figure was a woman's figure, smooth-hipped and high-breasted, and her chocolate hair was smooth and groomed, her make- up as perfect as she could make it. She would not now be meeting Snape in anxiety, watching for any sign of his approval. In any case, she knew know that there would be none- she had known that for a long time. As a child, she had been vaguely bearable, but as a person she was unacceptable.
"At last you are back home at Hogwarts, Miss Hermione."
The voice cut into her thoughts and she turned to the house-elf in the doorway, Winky's daughter, and met her smile with one of her own.
"For a very little while, Ashie," she said softly.
"I'm sorry about.We are all sorry that you are here because of your great tragedy." She began hesitantly, but Hermione waved her sympathy away gently.
"Thank you, but I'll recover from it." She forced a smile and moved her hand to take in the business of Hogsmeade. "It is still the same, chaos and disorder."
"Yes, it remains the same; it can do little else." Ashie's eyes were suddenly dancing. "You are changed, though, Miss Hermione. You are- grown up- different." Her wide, laughing eyes skimmed over Hermione and she gave her an answering grin.
"Yes, Ashie. I am grown up and different. And I also have a very sharp tongue and a nasty turn of phrase."
"I'll try to remember, miss," Ashie assured her, bursting into pleased and mischievous laughter. "I hope that Professor Snape remembers, too. I have often heard his criticisms of you in the past. You will now tell him where to go?"
"Yes," Hermione answered flatly. She would. She was not going to be at the mercy of Snape's tongue every again. At the first sign of any criticism, any temper, any orders, she would.
Her thoughts died away in her mind just as her words would have died away on her tongue had she been speaking, because he was there. The train had slowed down and was now pulling into the platform. Snape was there just has he had always been, just as if this were so many years ago.
She could see him clearly, tall and lithe, leaning against the car, heavy dark robes cloaking his magnificent body, his dark eyes narrowed as he watched the train pull in.
God! He was still the same! Her heartbeat changed like an instrument that moves to the rhythm of a remembered song, her skin tightened on her face, and tiny pinpricks of alarm raced down the backs of her arms and hands. She was grateful for this advance warning, grateful for the chance to grasp her racing feelings and pull herself together. He was not able to see her. The windows on the train were tinted darkly.
Hermione took deep, steadying breaths and won her small battle. As the train stopped, she was in control of herself, the knowledge that there must be no weakness when she met Severus Snape bolstering up her courage and stiffening her resolve.
Ashie turned to Hermione with a grin. "We are here, miss. Welcome back to Hogwarts."
"Thank you, Ashie. Thank you too for a very pleasant ride. Before too long you will be taking me back to London, a few weeks at the most, I expect." Ashie nodded but didn't seem too impressed with Hermione's plans.
"I am at your service, Miss Hermione. Whenever you wish, or whenever Professor Snape wishes," she added softly, her wide eyes twinkling. She grinned widely as Hermione opened her mouth to make a sharp comment and shook her head.
"We'd better get out before the temper surfaces, I think."
Ashie led Hermione down the corridor to the doors and opened them for her. She began to move down the steps, not waiting for any assistance, but she was a little too late. As she stepped down, strong hands came to her waist and she was lifted the rest of the way. Hermione found herself turning pale- faced to meet the dark, watchful eyes of her former professor.
"Welcome home," the deep voice said wryly. "I was beginning to think that you had decided to stay in the train and return to London."
"Hardly," she said coldly. "I do know my duty, after all."
"Yes," he countered, "when you have been reminded of it. Now that you have renewed your acquaintance with Ashie, perhaps we could go?"
Her brown eyes met the wide eyes of Ashie as the elf came back from bringing out Hermione's luggage, and she saw the rueful, "I told you so" written across her face. Hermione had been met with criticism as usual, but the sharp tongue and nasty turn of phrase that she had boasted of seemed at this moment to have deserted her. For the time being, she could think of nothing to say to Snape, who continued to hold her lightly but firmly by the waist.
"A good idea," she said flatly. "The sooner I start teaching the better and the sooner you find a permanent teacher the better too. I'm too busy to linger for long in this place."
She pulled away and began walking up the path that led to Hogwarts, suddenly annoyed that he had not brought one of the horseless carriages with him.
"Why didn't you bring a carriage?" she said crossly. "Now we have to walk all the way up to the castle."
Evidently, the human side of Snape was uppermost today, because he grinned as he grabbed her trunk and caught up to her easily.
"You are too delicate to walk for a few minutes?"
"I'm tired from my trip. And I hate walking."
"I think you can handle it," he assured her quietly. "We all must do some things that we hate sometimes. And anyway, there are no carriages. I lent them to the Ministry of Magic for Merlin knows what."
"The path is filthy!" Hermione said irately, drawing the skirts of her green robes around her.
"I remember when you were only too happy to see it," he said softly. "I remember when you ran down the path and let the wind blow your hair into a greater state of wildness. You never complained then."
"I was too young to recognize discomfort," she reminded him tartly, "and I am no longer wild."
"That I can see, little girl," he commented wryly, his eyes leaving the path and skimming over her face and figure. "Your hair is controlled at last."
"I am also controlled!" she said sharply. "And I'm not a little girl, either," she added in a tight voice, her face flushing at his small but well-remembered endearment.
"I can see that, too," he told her softly, lapsing into silence as he normally did when he had said everything that he intended. He was not a man to hold pointless conversations, and she could tell after a quick glance at his face that he was slipping back into his usual aloof manner, the burst of humor over.
Hermione clenched her teeth and kept silent too. Not one word had he said about Minerva, not one word of explanation about his outrageous conduct in barring her from the funeral. She was here because he needed her help, because he was having trouble finding a Potions professor. No doubt he would never recover from the astonishment that the realization of that had brought. No doubt he would not even have bothered to inform her of the accident and Minerva's death if he had been able to find a new teacher as coolly and quickly as he coped with everything else. The bottled-up anger grew and exploded into words when they had gone only a very little way.
"I hate you, Snape! Do you know that? I hate you!"
"I know it." He never even looked at her, keeping his eyes on the path ahead, his hands gripping the handle of her heavy trunk.
"You suffer from no remorse, do you?" she stormed on. "You have not one bit of regret in you that you failed to get me here for the funeral."
"No." Short and to the point, his answer drove her further.
"You didn't want me her because I renounced the wizarding world, because I live as a Muggle. No doubt I would have been an embarrassment at such a gathering at a funeral where everyone would have whispered about how I don't appreciate being a witch!"
"MERLIN!" He halted suddenly, causing her to walk into him, and he had his hands tightly and cruelly on her arms before she could recover. "No," he rasped brutally. "I did not want you there! I did not want you to be brought to Hogwarts in time to see the remains of Minerva, a thousand pieces strewn across the savanna! I did not want you to be on hand for the necessary identification! Have you any idea what it is like when a graphorn attacks? Have you, Miss Granger?" He shook her, his lips tight and angry, and the picture he painted with such cruel words swam into her mind.
"Oh, God!" Hermione was suddenly sick inside, nausea washing over her as she fell to her knees to kneel in the dusty path, her head in her hands, glad to feel the hot wind blowing at her face and hair.
The nausea passed, and she let the deep sobs of shock and grief that welled up inside come to the surface. Turning away to face the green landscape and hide her face from Snape's, she sobbed quietly, racked with pain and unhappiness. She hadn't seen Minerva since the end of the Great War, and her only comfort was that they had still kept in touch via the Muggle postal system. Now even that was gone, and Hermione would never see her mentor again, and the ghost of the cruel past would roam through the school with very little to remember that was good.
"Stop! Hush! Hush!" Snape was beside her silently and swiftly, pulling her up and into his arms. "You'll make yourself ill and it will do no good."
"I- I'm sorry." She struggled weakly, but he held her fast, his hand smoothing her hair in an oddly comforting gesture that threw her far back into the past. "I should have realized that.Did the students go to the funeral?"
"Of course not," he assured her quietly. "They are children. I wouldn't let them suffer anything like that. For the time, I forgot that you are no longer a child. I tried to protect you from the- misery of it all." He sighed and released her. "I did not do the right thing, but I suppose I saw you still as a girl. You're a woman and well able to face things. I suppose I had forgotten. It's been such a long time since."
He turned away and looked out across the lush, green hills, his dark eyes shuttered and cool.
"I'm sorry, Professor," Hermione whispered. "I shouldn't have said all that. Sometimes my tongue runs away with me, and- and I suppose that I'm a little bitter."
He turned to look down on her, much taller than she, although she was not in any way small. For a few seconds, their eyes held and communicated without words, and Hermione's face lost its pale grief and flooded with color.
"Bitter? Yes, I suppose so," he said in an odd voice. "However, you are here, and there are the students."
"Yes." She bowed her head, ashamed of her outburst, ashamed that she had once again shown her inability to keep calm and indifferent to circumstances. Once again, she had thought of her own grief and only belatedly of the students. Snape had thought of both.
She was startled to feel his hands on her arms again, and she looked up into dark, unreadable eyes. For a second, he stared down into her face and then bent his head, kissing her lightly on the lips.
"Don't let your conscience trouble you so much, Miss Granger," he said softly. "You usually have more common sense than feelings."
He turned back to the path and she followed, suddenly very weary and defeated. She was not like him. Snape dealt with all problems coolly and systematically. Hermione couldn't do that, couldn't keep all of her emotions hidden.
"Once more you are windswept, little girl," he said softly, and she lifted startled eyes to see him waiting with the car door open, an amused quirk to his lips as she hastily tried to straighten the unruliness of her coffee- colored hair.
*** A/N: This chapter is the longest one yet, because I felt bad about how short the last one was. I hope you enjoyed it, and please review!
NOTES: A big thank-you to my very gracious reviewers, and of course to Patricia Wilson. I love you guys!
***
Hogsmeade! It was still as hectic and full of activity as it had been more than six years ago, maybe even more so. As the train pulled into the Hogsmeade Station, Hermione looked through the windows and saw a sight she had never expected to see again- the comings-and-goings of innumerable wizards and witches.
Men and women in colorful robes and long, pointed hats bustled to-and-fro, chattering and laughing companionably. The station echoed with the screeching of owls and the howling of cats. Vendors ran around hawking their wares, and trains were constantly pulling in and out of the several platforms.
Hermione had watched this scene so often in her life. She had watched it with the same mixture of feelings that flooded through her now. A feeling of relief to see the bustling activity of Hogsmeade and the large castle of Hogwarts, but a tight anxiety within her at what she would face in Professor Snape's class for another year.
She looked around at large, spacious compartment that she had all to herself. How many times had the Hogwarts Express conducted her across England? How many times had she met the train at Platforms 9 and ¾ and been transported, cheerful and merry, to the school that she loved while she was a student, and then again while she was an adult during the war? How many times during the Great War had Severus Snape waited by the Hogwarts Express Platform to take her to the tense and stressful atmosphere of Hogwarts to work on obscure potions with him?
She could not even begin to count the times. It seemed that the whole of her past life had been here, that she had waited always as she waited now for a sight of the tall, dark figure who would be leaning against the wall and who would stare at her coolly as he had always done, assessing, probing, watchful, before taking her trunk and coldly kissing her cheek.
Hermione could see herself as she had been then, slim and uncomfortable, almost too thin, her hair almost invariably wild and bushy, her brown eyes wide and anxious, waiting with almost tearful anxiety for any sign that her appearance displeased Snape, because she had learned very early on that the cold, detached face of her professor-turned-partner meant either despair or a kind of happiness. Snape was the only one at the great castle whose behavior had any kind of affect or influence on her.
She was neither thin nor unkempt now, however; she was grown up, no longer an anxious child. Only the wide brown eyes were the same. Her slender height was not ungainly now, her figure was a woman's figure, smooth-hipped and high-breasted, and her chocolate hair was smooth and groomed, her make- up as perfect as she could make it. She would not now be meeting Snape in anxiety, watching for any sign of his approval. In any case, she knew know that there would be none- she had known that for a long time. As a child, she had been vaguely bearable, but as a person she was unacceptable.
"At last you are back home at Hogwarts, Miss Hermione."
The voice cut into her thoughts and she turned to the house-elf in the doorway, Winky's daughter, and met her smile with one of her own.
"For a very little while, Ashie," she said softly.
"I'm sorry about.We are all sorry that you are here because of your great tragedy." She began hesitantly, but Hermione waved her sympathy away gently.
"Thank you, but I'll recover from it." She forced a smile and moved her hand to take in the business of Hogsmeade. "It is still the same, chaos and disorder."
"Yes, it remains the same; it can do little else." Ashie's eyes were suddenly dancing. "You are changed, though, Miss Hermione. You are- grown up- different." Her wide, laughing eyes skimmed over Hermione and she gave her an answering grin.
"Yes, Ashie. I am grown up and different. And I also have a very sharp tongue and a nasty turn of phrase."
"I'll try to remember, miss," Ashie assured her, bursting into pleased and mischievous laughter. "I hope that Professor Snape remembers, too. I have often heard his criticisms of you in the past. You will now tell him where to go?"
"Yes," Hermione answered flatly. She would. She was not going to be at the mercy of Snape's tongue every again. At the first sign of any criticism, any temper, any orders, she would.
Her thoughts died away in her mind just as her words would have died away on her tongue had she been speaking, because he was there. The train had slowed down and was now pulling into the platform. Snape was there just has he had always been, just as if this were so many years ago.
She could see him clearly, tall and lithe, leaning against the car, heavy dark robes cloaking his magnificent body, his dark eyes narrowed as he watched the train pull in.
God! He was still the same! Her heartbeat changed like an instrument that moves to the rhythm of a remembered song, her skin tightened on her face, and tiny pinpricks of alarm raced down the backs of her arms and hands. She was grateful for this advance warning, grateful for the chance to grasp her racing feelings and pull herself together. He was not able to see her. The windows on the train were tinted darkly.
Hermione took deep, steadying breaths and won her small battle. As the train stopped, she was in control of herself, the knowledge that there must be no weakness when she met Severus Snape bolstering up her courage and stiffening her resolve.
Ashie turned to Hermione with a grin. "We are here, miss. Welcome back to Hogwarts."
"Thank you, Ashie. Thank you too for a very pleasant ride. Before too long you will be taking me back to London, a few weeks at the most, I expect." Ashie nodded but didn't seem too impressed with Hermione's plans.
"I am at your service, Miss Hermione. Whenever you wish, or whenever Professor Snape wishes," she added softly, her wide eyes twinkling. She grinned widely as Hermione opened her mouth to make a sharp comment and shook her head.
"We'd better get out before the temper surfaces, I think."
Ashie led Hermione down the corridor to the doors and opened them for her. She began to move down the steps, not waiting for any assistance, but she was a little too late. As she stepped down, strong hands came to her waist and she was lifted the rest of the way. Hermione found herself turning pale- faced to meet the dark, watchful eyes of her former professor.
"Welcome home," the deep voice said wryly. "I was beginning to think that you had decided to stay in the train and return to London."
"Hardly," she said coldly. "I do know my duty, after all."
"Yes," he countered, "when you have been reminded of it. Now that you have renewed your acquaintance with Ashie, perhaps we could go?"
Her brown eyes met the wide eyes of Ashie as the elf came back from bringing out Hermione's luggage, and she saw the rueful, "I told you so" written across her face. Hermione had been met with criticism as usual, but the sharp tongue and nasty turn of phrase that she had boasted of seemed at this moment to have deserted her. For the time being, she could think of nothing to say to Snape, who continued to hold her lightly but firmly by the waist.
"A good idea," she said flatly. "The sooner I start teaching the better and the sooner you find a permanent teacher the better too. I'm too busy to linger for long in this place."
She pulled away and began walking up the path that led to Hogwarts, suddenly annoyed that he had not brought one of the horseless carriages with him.
"Why didn't you bring a carriage?" she said crossly. "Now we have to walk all the way up to the castle."
Evidently, the human side of Snape was uppermost today, because he grinned as he grabbed her trunk and caught up to her easily.
"You are too delicate to walk for a few minutes?"
"I'm tired from my trip. And I hate walking."
"I think you can handle it," he assured her quietly. "We all must do some things that we hate sometimes. And anyway, there are no carriages. I lent them to the Ministry of Magic for Merlin knows what."
"The path is filthy!" Hermione said irately, drawing the skirts of her green robes around her.
"I remember when you were only too happy to see it," he said softly. "I remember when you ran down the path and let the wind blow your hair into a greater state of wildness. You never complained then."
"I was too young to recognize discomfort," she reminded him tartly, "and I am no longer wild."
"That I can see, little girl," he commented wryly, his eyes leaving the path and skimming over her face and figure. "Your hair is controlled at last."
"I am also controlled!" she said sharply. "And I'm not a little girl, either," she added in a tight voice, her face flushing at his small but well-remembered endearment.
"I can see that, too," he told her softly, lapsing into silence as he normally did when he had said everything that he intended. He was not a man to hold pointless conversations, and she could tell after a quick glance at his face that he was slipping back into his usual aloof manner, the burst of humor over.
Hermione clenched her teeth and kept silent too. Not one word had he said about Minerva, not one word of explanation about his outrageous conduct in barring her from the funeral. She was here because he needed her help, because he was having trouble finding a Potions professor. No doubt he would never recover from the astonishment that the realization of that had brought. No doubt he would not even have bothered to inform her of the accident and Minerva's death if he had been able to find a new teacher as coolly and quickly as he coped with everything else. The bottled-up anger grew and exploded into words when they had gone only a very little way.
"I hate you, Snape! Do you know that? I hate you!"
"I know it." He never even looked at her, keeping his eyes on the path ahead, his hands gripping the handle of her heavy trunk.
"You suffer from no remorse, do you?" she stormed on. "You have not one bit of regret in you that you failed to get me here for the funeral."
"No." Short and to the point, his answer drove her further.
"You didn't want me her because I renounced the wizarding world, because I live as a Muggle. No doubt I would have been an embarrassment at such a gathering at a funeral where everyone would have whispered about how I don't appreciate being a witch!"
"MERLIN!" He halted suddenly, causing her to walk into him, and he had his hands tightly and cruelly on her arms before she could recover. "No," he rasped brutally. "I did not want you there! I did not want you to be brought to Hogwarts in time to see the remains of Minerva, a thousand pieces strewn across the savanna! I did not want you to be on hand for the necessary identification! Have you any idea what it is like when a graphorn attacks? Have you, Miss Granger?" He shook her, his lips tight and angry, and the picture he painted with such cruel words swam into her mind.
"Oh, God!" Hermione was suddenly sick inside, nausea washing over her as she fell to her knees to kneel in the dusty path, her head in her hands, glad to feel the hot wind blowing at her face and hair.
The nausea passed, and she let the deep sobs of shock and grief that welled up inside come to the surface. Turning away to face the green landscape and hide her face from Snape's, she sobbed quietly, racked with pain and unhappiness. She hadn't seen Minerva since the end of the Great War, and her only comfort was that they had still kept in touch via the Muggle postal system. Now even that was gone, and Hermione would never see her mentor again, and the ghost of the cruel past would roam through the school with very little to remember that was good.
"Stop! Hush! Hush!" Snape was beside her silently and swiftly, pulling her up and into his arms. "You'll make yourself ill and it will do no good."
"I- I'm sorry." She struggled weakly, but he held her fast, his hand smoothing her hair in an oddly comforting gesture that threw her far back into the past. "I should have realized that.Did the students go to the funeral?"
"Of course not," he assured her quietly. "They are children. I wouldn't let them suffer anything like that. For the time, I forgot that you are no longer a child. I tried to protect you from the- misery of it all." He sighed and released her. "I did not do the right thing, but I suppose I saw you still as a girl. You're a woman and well able to face things. I suppose I had forgotten. It's been such a long time since."
He turned away and looked out across the lush, green hills, his dark eyes shuttered and cool.
"I'm sorry, Professor," Hermione whispered. "I shouldn't have said all that. Sometimes my tongue runs away with me, and- and I suppose that I'm a little bitter."
He turned to look down on her, much taller than she, although she was not in any way small. For a few seconds, their eyes held and communicated without words, and Hermione's face lost its pale grief and flooded with color.
"Bitter? Yes, I suppose so," he said in an odd voice. "However, you are here, and there are the students."
"Yes." She bowed her head, ashamed of her outburst, ashamed that she had once again shown her inability to keep calm and indifferent to circumstances. Once again, she had thought of her own grief and only belatedly of the students. Snape had thought of both.
She was startled to feel his hands on her arms again, and she looked up into dark, unreadable eyes. For a second, he stared down into her face and then bent his head, kissing her lightly on the lips.
"Don't let your conscience trouble you so much, Miss Granger," he said softly. "You usually have more common sense than feelings."
He turned back to the path and she followed, suddenly very weary and defeated. She was not like him. Snape dealt with all problems coolly and systematically. Hermione couldn't do that, couldn't keep all of her emotions hidden.
"Once more you are windswept, little girl," he said softly, and she lifted startled eyes to see him waiting with the car door open, an amused quirk to his lips as she hastily tried to straighten the unruliness of her coffee- colored hair.
*** A/N: This chapter is the longest one yet, because I felt bad about how short the last one was. I hope you enjoyed it, and please review!