Third Watch
Though she avoided him like the plague for a week afterwards, the fact that Severus Snape had apologized to her was enough to keep Hermione Granger going. The mere strangeness, the refreshing newness of it, was startling, like a splash of cool water, and their conversation played over and over in her mind.
Then, perhaps ten days after their unexpected conversation in her office, something occurred to her - a snatch of words she had not fully analyzed yet. Why did he say he resented her marriage to Harry Potter? Disagreed with, disapproved of, yes, but why resent?
Whenever she had been perplexed, whenever confused, Hermione had always sought to comfort of the library. Knowledge surrounding her made her breathe easier, like a weight slipping from her shoulders. Now as every other time, her puzzle led Hermione to the library. Hermione had always liked the Hogwarts library - it brought back happy memories from a time long past. There was something about the dusty scent of old books, the smell of glue and parchment she could only find here, that was comforting. To her, of course, it was the smell of knowledge. She found the same seat she had always liked as a student, and pulled the yearbooks from her days at Hogwarts, starting with her seventh year.
The first page she happened to open to contained an image of her and Harry, in their first days of dating. It was a picture snapped of them kissing, reveling in the newness of the relationship. The caption below it was 'Class Couple'. It had been expected, of course, for the two of them to wind up together. Either Harry or Ron. She had even overheard a few debates about which one she should choose: she had laughed at that, at least at first.
There were pictures of Snape, of course. As she went further back, she found a shot of him refereeing Harry's famous five minute game back in their first year. Yet nothing that pointed to why, exactly, Severus Snape hated Harry Potter.
"I remember sitting with Harry and Ron, right here at this very table," she said suddenly to no-one at all. They were always trying to figure out some elusive spell for their adventures or how to cram a year's worth of lessons into the boys' minds the night before final exams. In fact, it had been here in the library that she and Harry had had their first kiss, at the end of their sixth year. She'd loved him almost from the start, though she'd never dared let on for years.
At last, Hermione had pored over the yearbooks from her time enough. There was obviously nothing here. But the answer is always here someplace, she thought. Don't give up so easily.
The next logical step in her scientific pursuit was the the yearbooks from Snape's day. They were yellow, and not in the comforting, wise way the others were, but rather like the textbooks her parents had kept from dentistry school.
She flipped through one at random. It was sprinkled with pictures of James and Lily Potter the way her later books featured her and Harry. She would have recognized her once-in-laws, even without the captions, from the album Harry looked at every night.
Yet today she found a shot she was sure Harry didn't have. It reminded her of the picture of the two of them as class couple: James and Lily frozen forever, eternally kissing outside in the yard. Harry had always looked like James, even more as he got older, she thought. Perhaps it was something in the way Lily was standing, the way the sunlight caught her dark auburn hair as she moved against her future husband, but, in a revelation that made her blood switch away from her heart, Hermione thought that Lily looked an awful lot like her.
It was like another splash of that icy water each time, as Hermione kept looking though the books, year after year, studying every photo and reading every caption. Sometimes, she almost forgot what she was looking for, captivated by her resemblance to Lily, even if it was only in a very few shots.
One thing that surely did not escape her, however, was how rarely Severus Snape appeared in the yearbooks from his days as a student. He was listed, she saw, in his house Quidditch team, but she had to search to find a single picture of him.
At last, a small shot of the man, almost accidental, in the corner of a larger picture of a corridor. He was young, that was undeniable, but he looked much the same: the same black eyes that glinted with dark malice, the same curtain of black hair that fell over those eyes to his shoulders, the same black robes that flowed behind him like a mist. With a devilish half-grin, she wondered if he had that characteristic swish even back then.
"Oh," Hermione said, picking up Minerva's copy of the Prophet. The girl had gotten pretty as she'd grown up, Minerva thought. Though they'd owled a few times a month since Hermione had graduated, they had never found the time to get together. "Harry shaved the goatee."
Minerva had kept up with Harry Potter's career more than the next witch - after all, she had been his Head of House - and was sure she must have noticed his goatee when he had first grown it, but now it just seemed a part of his image. "Has he?"
"I told him to grow it," Hermione said, proudly. "Ninety percent of men are flattered by facial hair, and half of them need a goatee. Harry, for example. And Ron finally looks like a grown-up with his moustache."
She set down the Prophet, with its headline of "England Wins!" and gave a fond smile at Harry holding aloft his trophy.
"Severus, of course, would look ridiculous with a beard," she continued, absently.
Behind her teacup, Minerva hid a smile. "Speaking of whom, did you know he once played Quidditch?"
"Slytherin Beater." Seeing Minerva's look of surprise, Hermione quickly added, "I looked through the old yearbooks last night. What I can't figure out is why I've never heard about it before."
"Severus is a very private person, Hermione."
Hermione's face fell. This was not the disclosure she had expected, not the apocrypha she had wanted to hear: she did not want to be defeated, not when Minerva seemed so close to the brink of telling.
Minerva sighed tiredly, as if the same old song had just come on the radio. "You are too curious for your own good. Or mine. Very well: there is quite a tale behind it. The Bludger got away from Severus and he lost control over it. His injuries, including a broken nose, kept him from being able to play again. He might have been killed had another player not pulled it off him."
"You don't mean - James Potter, do you?" There was real horror in Hermione's eyes on her predecessor's behalf. The humiliation .
"Oh, no: Preston Wood. Severus would rather have died than let James help him again. He could never get over having to be rescued - especially by James, a Gryffindor. He never again let Quidditch become so central."
"In the woods, with the Whomping Willow," she whispered, remembering.
"And you're too smart, too." Minerva stood up and started to shoo Hermione out. "Severus learned more about sacrifice and honor in those woods than any of the Slytherins you know ever will, and that's why Severus hated him. And now you know, Miss Granger. Go to bed."
Hermione smiled her thanks and exited out into the corridor, heading straight for her rooms. Had she bothered to turn around, though, Hermione might have seen a handsome green-eyed cat trotting toward the private quarters of one Albus Dumbledore.
It was nearly two in the morning - Hermione groaned as she checked her Muggle watch, a contraband gift from the past. She had not spent a stormy night alone in as long as she could remember: the cracking thunder and flashes of romantic illumination had once been an irresistible excuse to make love. Now, alone in her bed, she was simply being kept awake. Finally fed up, she kicked off her covers and pulled her kimono over her nightdress.
The halls of Hogwarts once again found the frightening size they had lost as she had grown up, now that she was alone in the darkness of night. A few years ago, wandering the corridors at such an hour would have meant excitement: she, Harry, and Ron would have been together on some adventure. Now she wondered if they would ever be able to spend time alone in the same room again. And it was all her fault.
Hermione thoughts soon led her to the library, seeking their solitude and solace: there was sure to be some comfort in the solitude there. She had expected most extreme isolation, yet in the reading chairs by the windows sat a dark figure.
Forgetting all decorum, Hermione gasped, "What are you doing here?"
"Mustn't let the lightening go to waste," Severus said, lingering on that second to last consonant. "Miss Granger."
I'm a Griffindor: I must be brave, she told herself, hearing Minerva's voice in her head, and sat down in the chair opposite him. "You know," she said, with forced straight tone and cheek. "If you're going to be working on this with me, you should get used to calling me by my first name."
"Working on what?" he snapped.
"The pig's toe," she said, trying to keep the edge of annoyance mingled with fear from her voice, given who she was speaking to.
"I absolutely am not."
That was abrupt, even for him. A bit stunned, Hermione sat in silence. She tried to calm herself down, and, as she sat there, she could smell a particularly rich scent of coffee rising from his direction. In a powerful flash of lightening she could see a cup sitting on the table at his side. "You're not nearly as frightening as you used to be."
"I'm not ..?" he said, softly. Was there a hint of amusement in that tone?
"You're really somewhat . human. I talked to Minerva today. She told me about you and your house Quidditch team."
"Oh, that," he said, as dismissively, she thought, as humanly possible. He looked back down at his book, his mood shifted again to black.
"Why don't you ever talk about playing?" Oh, Hermione, will you ever learn not to cross that proverbial line?
"Do I ever talk about anything?" he snarled. "Why don't you talk about being married to Harry Potter?"
Touché. This time, however, Hermione didn't allow his verbal thrust to get to her.
"It's somewhat an unpleasant thing for me, at present," she said, knowing full well what he was pushing for. "But it wasn't always so bad: we were very happy for a long time. I bet things weren't always so bad for you, either," she pressed. "Certainly not so you can't think about them ever again."
She leaned a bit towards him, trying to see if he had reacted at all. In the darkness of the library, she couldn't see much, but it certainly seemed that he had not. She listened to the thunderclaps in silence, waiting for him to say something. Anything.
"There is nothing you need to know of my past, Professor Potter." He spoke so softly she was not sure he had spoken at all. "And nothing of my present, or future. I bid you goodnight." He rose then, and swept from the room, his robes the only sound in the silent library.
No matter what her all too natural fear demanded, she wanted to call after him, this other human being, to beg him to stay with her in the stormy darkness, to share her solitude, but she found that her voice would not obey. And so Hermione was pitifully alone yet again that night.
After an excruciatingly sleepless night, Hermione found her way into the Great Hall for breakfast. She was exhausted, but sleep seemed remarkably not tempting. She asked one of the house-elves for a cup of coffee on her way to the head table - they automatically brought tea to everyone. As she dragged herself to her seat, she saw Dumbledore and Snape talking rapidly and quietly, standing behind the chairs. Snape was shaking his head, the sleeves of his robes flapping like wings with the gesturing of his hands. It seemed that Dumbledore won in the end, however, because, grudgingly, Snape at last nodded.
And then he walked toward her. HermioneHerm realized she had been staring, too tired to stop herself, but facing Severus Snape snapped her out of whatever reverie she had been in. "Miss Granger," he said, in his silky voice. It was obviously an effort for him to be as civil as he was. "Will you join me?"
This sudden courtesy, despite its insincerity, was yet another shock to Hermione. She nodded in stunned silence and sat in Flitwick's place beside his. He pulled out the chair for her - that much did not seem forced - and sat himself, arranging his billowing robes around him.
"How is the research?" he asked, not looking at her. He was trying to avoid anyone noticing who he was talking to, she realized.
"What research?"
"The cornstarch, professor. What on earth else would I be talking about?" he snapped. There was more than annoyance in his voice: he seemed genuinely angry with whomever had sent him over.
"Oh," she said, trying to remember if she had started working with it. "I haven't gotten to it yet."
He glared at her now, malice glittering in his black eyes. "I would have hoped you were happier to have something as obscure as Muggle spices. That you would have, at least, begun your work."
Dumbledore leaned over to look at them, listening to the conversation. Was it possible he was forcing Snape to talk to her?
"I am happy. I've just had - other things on my mind lately," Hermione managed.
She very much expected an angry comment like "Potter," but he said nothing. In fact, he said nothing the rest of the meal, and disappeared immediately afterwards in a cloud of black robes. Later that evening, all Hermione would be able to tell Minerva was that it had been the strangest conversation she had ever had - and for someone with a past like Hermione Granger's, that was saying a lot.
Though she avoided him like the plague for a week afterwards, the fact that Severus Snape had apologized to her was enough to keep Hermione Granger going. The mere strangeness, the refreshing newness of it, was startling, like a splash of cool water, and their conversation played over and over in her mind.
Then, perhaps ten days after their unexpected conversation in her office, something occurred to her - a snatch of words she had not fully analyzed yet. Why did he say he resented her marriage to Harry Potter? Disagreed with, disapproved of, yes, but why resent?
Whenever she had been perplexed, whenever confused, Hermione had always sought to comfort of the library. Knowledge surrounding her made her breathe easier, like a weight slipping from her shoulders. Now as every other time, her puzzle led Hermione to the library. Hermione had always liked the Hogwarts library - it brought back happy memories from a time long past. There was something about the dusty scent of old books, the smell of glue and parchment she could only find here, that was comforting. To her, of course, it was the smell of knowledge. She found the same seat she had always liked as a student, and pulled the yearbooks from her days at Hogwarts, starting with her seventh year.
The first page she happened to open to contained an image of her and Harry, in their first days of dating. It was a picture snapped of them kissing, reveling in the newness of the relationship. The caption below it was 'Class Couple'. It had been expected, of course, for the two of them to wind up together. Either Harry or Ron. She had even overheard a few debates about which one she should choose: she had laughed at that, at least at first.
There were pictures of Snape, of course. As she went further back, she found a shot of him refereeing Harry's famous five minute game back in their first year. Yet nothing that pointed to why, exactly, Severus Snape hated Harry Potter.
"I remember sitting with Harry and Ron, right here at this very table," she said suddenly to no-one at all. They were always trying to figure out some elusive spell for their adventures or how to cram a year's worth of lessons into the boys' minds the night before final exams. In fact, it had been here in the library that she and Harry had had their first kiss, at the end of their sixth year. She'd loved him almost from the start, though she'd never dared let on for years.
At last, Hermione had pored over the yearbooks from her time enough. There was obviously nothing here. But the answer is always here someplace, she thought. Don't give up so easily.
The next logical step in her scientific pursuit was the the yearbooks from Snape's day. They were yellow, and not in the comforting, wise way the others were, but rather like the textbooks her parents had kept from dentistry school.
She flipped through one at random. It was sprinkled with pictures of James and Lily Potter the way her later books featured her and Harry. She would have recognized her once-in-laws, even without the captions, from the album Harry looked at every night.
Yet today she found a shot she was sure Harry didn't have. It reminded her of the picture of the two of them as class couple: James and Lily frozen forever, eternally kissing outside in the yard. Harry had always looked like James, even more as he got older, she thought. Perhaps it was something in the way Lily was standing, the way the sunlight caught her dark auburn hair as she moved against her future husband, but, in a revelation that made her blood switch away from her heart, Hermione thought that Lily looked an awful lot like her.
It was like another splash of that icy water each time, as Hermione kept looking though the books, year after year, studying every photo and reading every caption. Sometimes, she almost forgot what she was looking for, captivated by her resemblance to Lily, even if it was only in a very few shots.
One thing that surely did not escape her, however, was how rarely Severus Snape appeared in the yearbooks from his days as a student. He was listed, she saw, in his house Quidditch team, but she had to search to find a single picture of him.
At last, a small shot of the man, almost accidental, in the corner of a larger picture of a corridor. He was young, that was undeniable, but he looked much the same: the same black eyes that glinted with dark malice, the same curtain of black hair that fell over those eyes to his shoulders, the same black robes that flowed behind him like a mist. With a devilish half-grin, she wondered if he had that characteristic swish even back then.
"Oh," Hermione said, picking up Minerva's copy of the Prophet. The girl had gotten pretty as she'd grown up, Minerva thought. Though they'd owled a few times a month since Hermione had graduated, they had never found the time to get together. "Harry shaved the goatee."
Minerva had kept up with Harry Potter's career more than the next witch - after all, she had been his Head of House - and was sure she must have noticed his goatee when he had first grown it, but now it just seemed a part of his image. "Has he?"
"I told him to grow it," Hermione said, proudly. "Ninety percent of men are flattered by facial hair, and half of them need a goatee. Harry, for example. And Ron finally looks like a grown-up with his moustache."
She set down the Prophet, with its headline of "England Wins!" and gave a fond smile at Harry holding aloft his trophy.
"Severus, of course, would look ridiculous with a beard," she continued, absently.
Behind her teacup, Minerva hid a smile. "Speaking of whom, did you know he once played Quidditch?"
"Slytherin Beater." Seeing Minerva's look of surprise, Hermione quickly added, "I looked through the old yearbooks last night. What I can't figure out is why I've never heard about it before."
"Severus is a very private person, Hermione."
Hermione's face fell. This was not the disclosure she had expected, not the apocrypha she had wanted to hear: she did not want to be defeated, not when Minerva seemed so close to the brink of telling.
Minerva sighed tiredly, as if the same old song had just come on the radio. "You are too curious for your own good. Or mine. Very well: there is quite a tale behind it. The Bludger got away from Severus and he lost control over it. His injuries, including a broken nose, kept him from being able to play again. He might have been killed had another player not pulled it off him."
"You don't mean - James Potter, do you?" There was real horror in Hermione's eyes on her predecessor's behalf. The humiliation .
"Oh, no: Preston Wood. Severus would rather have died than let James help him again. He could never get over having to be rescued - especially by James, a Gryffindor. He never again let Quidditch become so central."
"In the woods, with the Whomping Willow," she whispered, remembering.
"And you're too smart, too." Minerva stood up and started to shoo Hermione out. "Severus learned more about sacrifice and honor in those woods than any of the Slytherins you know ever will, and that's why Severus hated him. And now you know, Miss Granger. Go to bed."
Hermione smiled her thanks and exited out into the corridor, heading straight for her rooms. Had she bothered to turn around, though, Hermione might have seen a handsome green-eyed cat trotting toward the private quarters of one Albus Dumbledore.
It was nearly two in the morning - Hermione groaned as she checked her Muggle watch, a contraband gift from the past. She had not spent a stormy night alone in as long as she could remember: the cracking thunder and flashes of romantic illumination had once been an irresistible excuse to make love. Now, alone in her bed, she was simply being kept awake. Finally fed up, she kicked off her covers and pulled her kimono over her nightdress.
The halls of Hogwarts once again found the frightening size they had lost as she had grown up, now that she was alone in the darkness of night. A few years ago, wandering the corridors at such an hour would have meant excitement: she, Harry, and Ron would have been together on some adventure. Now she wondered if they would ever be able to spend time alone in the same room again. And it was all her fault.
Hermione thoughts soon led her to the library, seeking their solitude and solace: there was sure to be some comfort in the solitude there. She had expected most extreme isolation, yet in the reading chairs by the windows sat a dark figure.
Forgetting all decorum, Hermione gasped, "What are you doing here?"
"Mustn't let the lightening go to waste," Severus said, lingering on that second to last consonant. "Miss Granger."
I'm a Griffindor: I must be brave, she told herself, hearing Minerva's voice in her head, and sat down in the chair opposite him. "You know," she said, with forced straight tone and cheek. "If you're going to be working on this with me, you should get used to calling me by my first name."
"Working on what?" he snapped.
"The pig's toe," she said, trying to keep the edge of annoyance mingled with fear from her voice, given who she was speaking to.
"I absolutely am not."
That was abrupt, even for him. A bit stunned, Hermione sat in silence. She tried to calm herself down, and, as she sat there, she could smell a particularly rich scent of coffee rising from his direction. In a powerful flash of lightening she could see a cup sitting on the table at his side. "You're not nearly as frightening as you used to be."
"I'm not ..?" he said, softly. Was there a hint of amusement in that tone?
"You're really somewhat . human. I talked to Minerva today. She told me about you and your house Quidditch team."
"Oh, that," he said, as dismissively, she thought, as humanly possible. He looked back down at his book, his mood shifted again to black.
"Why don't you ever talk about playing?" Oh, Hermione, will you ever learn not to cross that proverbial line?
"Do I ever talk about anything?" he snarled. "Why don't you talk about being married to Harry Potter?"
Touché. This time, however, Hermione didn't allow his verbal thrust to get to her.
"It's somewhat an unpleasant thing for me, at present," she said, knowing full well what he was pushing for. "But it wasn't always so bad: we were very happy for a long time. I bet things weren't always so bad for you, either," she pressed. "Certainly not so you can't think about them ever again."
She leaned a bit towards him, trying to see if he had reacted at all. In the darkness of the library, she couldn't see much, but it certainly seemed that he had not. She listened to the thunderclaps in silence, waiting for him to say something. Anything.
"There is nothing you need to know of my past, Professor Potter." He spoke so softly she was not sure he had spoken at all. "And nothing of my present, or future. I bid you goodnight." He rose then, and swept from the room, his robes the only sound in the silent library.
No matter what her all too natural fear demanded, she wanted to call after him, this other human being, to beg him to stay with her in the stormy darkness, to share her solitude, but she found that her voice would not obey. And so Hermione was pitifully alone yet again that night.
After an excruciatingly sleepless night, Hermione found her way into the Great Hall for breakfast. She was exhausted, but sleep seemed remarkably not tempting. She asked one of the house-elves for a cup of coffee on her way to the head table - they automatically brought tea to everyone. As she dragged herself to her seat, she saw Dumbledore and Snape talking rapidly and quietly, standing behind the chairs. Snape was shaking his head, the sleeves of his robes flapping like wings with the gesturing of his hands. It seemed that Dumbledore won in the end, however, because, grudgingly, Snape at last nodded.
And then he walked toward her. HermioneHerm realized she had been staring, too tired to stop herself, but facing Severus Snape snapped her out of whatever reverie she had been in. "Miss Granger," he said, in his silky voice. It was obviously an effort for him to be as civil as he was. "Will you join me?"
This sudden courtesy, despite its insincerity, was yet another shock to Hermione. She nodded in stunned silence and sat in Flitwick's place beside his. He pulled out the chair for her - that much did not seem forced - and sat himself, arranging his billowing robes around him.
"How is the research?" he asked, not looking at her. He was trying to avoid anyone noticing who he was talking to, she realized.
"What research?"
"The cornstarch, professor. What on earth else would I be talking about?" he snapped. There was more than annoyance in his voice: he seemed genuinely angry with whomever had sent him over.
"Oh," she said, trying to remember if she had started working with it. "I haven't gotten to it yet."
He glared at her now, malice glittering in his black eyes. "I would have hoped you were happier to have something as obscure as Muggle spices. That you would have, at least, begun your work."
Dumbledore leaned over to look at them, listening to the conversation. Was it possible he was forcing Snape to talk to her?
"I am happy. I've just had - other things on my mind lately," Hermione managed.
She very much expected an angry comment like "Potter," but he said nothing. In fact, he said nothing the rest of the meal, and disappeared immediately afterwards in a cloud of black robes. Later that evening, all Hermione would be able to tell Minerva was that it had been the strangest conversation she had ever had - and for someone with a past like Hermione Granger's, that was saying a lot.