Disclaimer: It all belongs to JKR. No infringement intended.
Rating: PG, don't know about later.
Summary: A young girl flees her deepest fear, and finds herself face to face with the Potions Master in the dead of night. Time-travel.
Pairing: Severus/Hermione
A/N: I'm going to stick with that summary for right now, because I don't want to give away where I'm (hopefully) going with this. This original character is obviously very important to the story, but this will ultimately be a Snape/Hermione romance. Trust me *veg*
Lightning Strikes
by Auror Borealis
Chapter 2
Professor Hermione Snape regarded her sleeping daughter with undisguised worry. She and her husband had both hoped that their only child's phobia of storms would decrease as she grew older, but the terror had never abated. Neither of them had any idea where this fear had come from. Hermione reached to tuck Bertie, Callie's stuffed dragon, more securely into her arms.
"This has to stop," Severus said, joining Hermione beside the sofa where they'd settled Callie for what remained of the night. He had just come back in from his office, where he'd gone to lock up the mild sleeping draft he had insisted his daughter take. "She cannot run down here every time she hears thunder."
"It's practically a hurricane tonight, Severus. And she tries so hard. It started more than an hour before you found her. I thought that tonight she just might stay put." She laid her head on his shoulder. "I can't stand to think of her running through the corridors, scared and alone. But no, it can't go on. I just don't know what we can do that we haven't already tried."
Callie was a source of constant anxiety to her parents. They worried not that she failed to live up to some unrealistic idea of her potential, but that she thought that she did. As the child of a union that had stunned the wizarding world, she had been watched closely from birth by a great many people. She was used to people looking for her mother's brilliance, her father's great magical ability, in her, and finding her a baffling disappointment. Enormous sums had been wagered in her earliest days over whether she would eventually be sorted into Gryffindor or Slytherin. These wagers, made with such anticipation for the fireworks that undoubtedly lay ahead within the Snape family, were quietly declared draws before she had turned five. By the time she entered the Great Hall with the other first years, no one was surprised when the Sorting Hat called out "Hufflepuff!" before it had time to settle on her head.
Her mother and father both assured her that she was exactly what they had hoped for in a daughter, and that it was absurd for her to think that anyone expected her to grow up to be the greatest witch of her generation, after the Potter girls, of course. Her mother had encouraged her to study Arithmancy, but hadn't pushed the issue. Her father was in a more delicate situation, as Potions was a required course, but he told her often that doing her best was all he could ever ask of her. And she did do her best; she was, after all, a Hufflepuff.
Caledonia Snape did not lack bravery or intelligence. She was her Care of Magical Creatures instructor's star pupil. Hagrid beamingly told anyone who would listen that she could give Charlie Weasley himself a run for his money when it came to handling the most irritable dragons. And Professor Lupin, her Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, taught very few classes with the third year Hufflepuffs in which he was not awarding the house points for Miss Snape's ingenious and original solutions for dealing with dark creatures and minor curses. She was a gifted and daring Quidditch player, holding the position of reserve Seeker for her house. She would have been starting Seeker had she been able to play the game in all weather.
Callie did not lack intelligence or bravery. What she lacked, she felt, was drama.
Her parents' lives, and those of nearly every adult of Callie's acquaintance, had been marked with a surfeit of the stuff in the years when her mother had been a student at Hogwarts. Her father's school career had reeked with it. Their strong personalities guaranteed that they would always be thrown into sharp relief against those around them, never in the background, or at least not for long. But more than that, the times in which they had lived were a backdrop against which legends were born. The time before Voldemort was defeated, once and for all, by Harry Potter were dark times indeed, and people emerged from it heroes, villains, or dead. They didn't just go to class, do their homework, and sit down to dinner at their house table in the Great Hall only to find that it was meatloaf yet again. Or so, from the stories she'd heard all her life, Callie believed.
The Snapes had long since recovered from any disappointment they might have felt that Callie was not a brilliant Potions student, or ahead of everyone in her year in Charms and Transfiguration. They valued the excellence she showed in other areas. On the one occasion when Callie had played Seeker for Hufflepuff against Gryffindor (the starting Seeker had been too ill to play), it had been Hufflepuff's colors the Arithmancy professor and alumna of Gryffindor had worn. When the announcer's voice reverberated through the stadium, "Caledonia Snape has caught the Snitch!" Hermione had cheered Gryffindor's defeat so enthusiastically she hadn't been able to talk for a whole day. The taciturn Potions professor had smiled and hugged a startled Professor Sprout.
Loving, supportive parents were not dramatic.
Hurrying, frightened, through the darkened corridors of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry on storm-battered nights was a bit dramatic, but mostly it was just very embarrassing.
Callie's parents cast such long shadows, she didn't know how she could ever step out into the sunlight on her own.
Hermione rose early to rouse her daughter, and sent her back to Hufflepuff just before it was time to get up for breakfast. An idea, something they had not tried before, for helping her child had occurred to her as she lay awake. She needed to discuss it with Severus, and she hoped that between them, they could make it work.
Rating: PG, don't know about later.
Summary: A young girl flees her deepest fear, and finds herself face to face with the Potions Master in the dead of night. Time-travel.
Pairing: Severus/Hermione
A/N: I'm going to stick with that summary for right now, because I don't want to give away where I'm (hopefully) going with this. This original character is obviously very important to the story, but this will ultimately be a Snape/Hermione romance. Trust me *veg*
Lightning Strikes
by Auror Borealis
Chapter 2
Professor Hermione Snape regarded her sleeping daughter with undisguised worry. She and her husband had both hoped that their only child's phobia of storms would decrease as she grew older, but the terror had never abated. Neither of them had any idea where this fear had come from. Hermione reached to tuck Bertie, Callie's stuffed dragon, more securely into her arms.
"This has to stop," Severus said, joining Hermione beside the sofa where they'd settled Callie for what remained of the night. He had just come back in from his office, where he'd gone to lock up the mild sleeping draft he had insisted his daughter take. "She cannot run down here every time she hears thunder."
"It's practically a hurricane tonight, Severus. And she tries so hard. It started more than an hour before you found her. I thought that tonight she just might stay put." She laid her head on his shoulder. "I can't stand to think of her running through the corridors, scared and alone. But no, it can't go on. I just don't know what we can do that we haven't already tried."
Callie was a source of constant anxiety to her parents. They worried not that she failed to live up to some unrealistic idea of her potential, but that she thought that she did. As the child of a union that had stunned the wizarding world, she had been watched closely from birth by a great many people. She was used to people looking for her mother's brilliance, her father's great magical ability, in her, and finding her a baffling disappointment. Enormous sums had been wagered in her earliest days over whether she would eventually be sorted into Gryffindor or Slytherin. These wagers, made with such anticipation for the fireworks that undoubtedly lay ahead within the Snape family, were quietly declared draws before she had turned five. By the time she entered the Great Hall with the other first years, no one was surprised when the Sorting Hat called out "Hufflepuff!" before it had time to settle on her head.
Her mother and father both assured her that she was exactly what they had hoped for in a daughter, and that it was absurd for her to think that anyone expected her to grow up to be the greatest witch of her generation, after the Potter girls, of course. Her mother had encouraged her to study Arithmancy, but hadn't pushed the issue. Her father was in a more delicate situation, as Potions was a required course, but he told her often that doing her best was all he could ever ask of her. And she did do her best; she was, after all, a Hufflepuff.
Caledonia Snape did not lack bravery or intelligence. She was her Care of Magical Creatures instructor's star pupil. Hagrid beamingly told anyone who would listen that she could give Charlie Weasley himself a run for his money when it came to handling the most irritable dragons. And Professor Lupin, her Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, taught very few classes with the third year Hufflepuffs in which he was not awarding the house points for Miss Snape's ingenious and original solutions for dealing with dark creatures and minor curses. She was a gifted and daring Quidditch player, holding the position of reserve Seeker for her house. She would have been starting Seeker had she been able to play the game in all weather.
Callie did not lack intelligence or bravery. What she lacked, she felt, was drama.
Her parents' lives, and those of nearly every adult of Callie's acquaintance, had been marked with a surfeit of the stuff in the years when her mother had been a student at Hogwarts. Her father's school career had reeked with it. Their strong personalities guaranteed that they would always be thrown into sharp relief against those around them, never in the background, or at least not for long. But more than that, the times in which they had lived were a backdrop against which legends were born. The time before Voldemort was defeated, once and for all, by Harry Potter were dark times indeed, and people emerged from it heroes, villains, or dead. They didn't just go to class, do their homework, and sit down to dinner at their house table in the Great Hall only to find that it was meatloaf yet again. Or so, from the stories she'd heard all her life, Callie believed.
The Snapes had long since recovered from any disappointment they might have felt that Callie was not a brilliant Potions student, or ahead of everyone in her year in Charms and Transfiguration. They valued the excellence she showed in other areas. On the one occasion when Callie had played Seeker for Hufflepuff against Gryffindor (the starting Seeker had been too ill to play), it had been Hufflepuff's colors the Arithmancy professor and alumna of Gryffindor had worn. When the announcer's voice reverberated through the stadium, "Caledonia Snape has caught the Snitch!" Hermione had cheered Gryffindor's defeat so enthusiastically she hadn't been able to talk for a whole day. The taciturn Potions professor had smiled and hugged a startled Professor Sprout.
Loving, supportive parents were not dramatic.
Hurrying, frightened, through the darkened corridors of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry on storm-battered nights was a bit dramatic, but mostly it was just very embarrassing.
Callie's parents cast such long shadows, she didn't know how she could ever step out into the sunlight on her own.
Hermione rose early to rouse her daughter, and sent her back to Hufflepuff just before it was time to get up for breakfast. An idea, something they had not tried before, for helping her child had occurred to her as she lay awake. She needed to discuss it with Severus, and she hoped that between them, they could make it work.
