Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or any of his wonderful little friends. The only thing that is mine is this sad little plot. Anything recognisable belongs to Ms. Rowling who I hope never finds out what we're doing to her innocent little creations (Hehehehe!!) (Wow I used the word 'little' in every sentence—creepy)
Chapter 4 Night and Day
Once the door was safely closed and warded, only then did Hermione really break down. It was the worst one she had experienced since that horrible night that had been the cause of all her problems.
No, that's not true, a small voice spoke in the back of her mind, You have no one to blame for the state that you are in except for yourself.
True, but Severus had been a real ass-hole—as usual. Taking a deep breath over and over again, Hermione slowly calmed the shaking and stopped the tears. She was so tired of crying and feeling bad—she just wanted to feel whole again. It had been so long since she had done anything for herself.
She had graduated from Hogwart's with some of the highest N.E.W.T. scores in the history of the school—she was guaranteed a spot in the best universities in the world so she chose Oxford. Harry and Ron, however, felt that going to university was a waste of time when they could get perfectly good jobs at the Ministry, earning money, right away.
"Yeah," she mused aloud, "With Harry riding off his fame, and Ron riding off Harry." It was a truly mordant thought, but true nonetheless—Harry had been placed as Assistant Minister of Magic while Ron became Harry's assistant.
The years flew by and before she had even known it had begun, Hermione was in the middle of being courted by Harry. She had supposed that both he and Ron had thought it only proper that one of them should marry her; Harry had won due to sheer luck—the luck that he was born into a family named Potter. After university she got a mediocre job at the ministry as a researcher in the Muggle Studies Department where she spent her days going over hundreds of statistics relating to every aspect of Muggle life; the job was complete shit. The only perk it had was the superficial bonus of it being 'noble' work and therefore befitting the future wife of the future Minister of Magic, Harry Potter.
All that time, everything after her three years at university, she had been like someone under the Imperius Curse—she wasn't herself, just Harry Potter's little girlfriend that he had known since he was eleven. She couldn't fight it…didn't fight it, at least, not until that night.
And now she was left like this—alone in an empty room full of the things that used to be important to her, things that she used to live for, but now, after years of suppression, she couldn't find the joy anymore. Walking quietly over to the large sofa located directly opposite the hearth, Hermione sank onto one of the cushions and sadly observed the room.
Severus had been right, she was weak. She was weak to Harry Potter, because despite what anyone thought, she had loved him. Maybe not a passionate, lifetime love, but she did love him as the best and first friend she had ever had. She loved him as he was then and despised him as he was now—how can that be possible? They were both the same person, or where they? Harry too had been right, the person he was, that boy, was gone forever.
Slowly she curled up into a little ball in the corner of the heaping folds of the sofa and cried.
Severus Snape woke up the next morning with one of the worst headaches that he had ever experienced, which was quite astonishing considering his daunting experience as a Death Eater for Voldemort. Moving cautiously, he climbed off of the large four-poster and placed his feet onto the cold stone floor that seemed to characterize the castle. Nothing like ice-cold stone to really make you want to get out of bed every morning, he thought invidiously before slowly making his way to the little bathroom opposite his bed.
Only once he was under the influence of a drastically warming shower, did Severus allow the altogether unpleasant memories of Hermione Granger to invade both his thoughts and his very being…well maybe she hadn't been completely unpleasant. In fact if he was in the mood for some brutal, uncharacteristic honesty, he would have to admit to himself that the only thing 'unpleasant' about her had been his own behavior. "Gods!" he groaned aloud, with the morbid satisfaction of knowing that if he had been aiming to offend her, he would have certainly accomplished that. Suddenly the warm water didn't seem quite so pleasant.
Severus soon found though that his only saving grace this particular morning was going to be his distinctive abhorrence for breakfast in the Great Hall, students or not—he was most definitely in no spirits to face her. He instead found it far more agreeable to simply sit by his fire and drink the habitual three cups of tea that the house-elves sent religiously, and brood over his horrifying behavior to Professor Granger. Yes. It was far safer to call her "Professor" inside his head; to call her anything else could lead to a section of thoughts and ideas that were clearly marked 'Do Not Disturb' in his mind.
He could not, for the life of him, figure why this 'woman' was having such a particular effect on him. She was nothing more than a former student now living across the hall from him. This particular thought caused him to cast a long stare at the door leading to her chambers only meters away—the image of her tear-stained face and the look of utter loathing in her eyes was once again dredged up into his visible memories. He cringed recalling it. No matter who she was, she didn't deserve to be treated in such a fashion by anyone.
"Even by the 'Evil Git' Professor Snape," he pronounced aloud while making the quick decision to go and see her directly.
Once outside her door, though, he was beginning to seriously regret ever having made such a haphazard choice—fortunately he was arrested in mid-knock by the all-together unpleasant voice of Minerva McGonagall strolling sternly towards her own door only a few down form his.
"Ah Severus, if you are looking for Hermione, I believe that you will find her in the library," she said with an obvious air of 'I-Know-Something-You-Don't-so-there!'
Severus, really being in no mood for such games of intellect, which he often found quite tiresome with Minerva, simply turned on his heel as if he had never been planing to knock on her door to begin with. "As if I would expect her to be found anywhere else, Minerva," he sneered, drawling out her name mockingly, causing the color to creep furiously into the Transfiguration professor's cheeks. The elderly woman came storming up towards him with full rage emanating from her.
"Now listen here Snape," she yelled in such a fierce tone that Severus took a step back, "I may not like you, and you certainly don't care that much for me, but you had better leave that girl alone. She's been through enough in the past few months; the last thing she needs is you sending her into another bought of depression." It was apparent to Severus that everyone seemed to know something about Hermione's past that he didn't, and what was this about depression?
If Minerva noticed the confused look on the dark man's face, she certainly made no particular effort to discern it from his usual sullen appearance—she instead gave him one last snarl of disapproval before walking briskly back to her own quarters and slamming the door rather forcibly.
Snape was now at a loss as to what to do. Walking across the hall was one thing, but to pursue her all the way to the library just seemed absurd. In fact now that he thought more heavily on the subject, the girl may not have been quite as upset at his comment as she had seemed—perhaps her crying might have been a result of the day's injustices and not his behavior to her. Why would she take anything I say that seriously anyway; no one really cares what I think. To Snape that was the truth, he really just didn't believe that any rational person would care what he thought, why should they? He was a former Death Eater for Circe's sake, they didn't have people that valued their opinions—that would be too much like having friends, and Death Eaters certainly didn't have those.
Feeling more dismal than usual, Snape made up his mind that he needed to go to the library in order to research a few articles from the Restricted Section. He wasn't going to look for her; he wasn't. However, if she should happen to still be residing there then there was really nothing he could do about that.
Turning swiftly towards the empty gilt frame hanging at the dead end to the hall-way, Snape muttered a few words causing an iridescent shiver to slide across the stones. He walked through and was directly deposited into the hallway outside the library.Hermione Granger, arched stiffly over a stack of books in a rather secluded area of the Hogwarts library, was in serious need of some sort of repose. She had been huddled for hours—ever since the first light of dawn peaked her Circadian rhythm—studying the perpetrating aspects of the Antiaccio charm. This particular charm had always been one of her favorites, but the definite skills needed and the effect they could have on the performer had always been a mystery to most wizards—a mystery that Professor Granger was dead set on solving.
Well at least she had been.Now, after five hours hunched over volumes upon volumes of circumspecting information, she was damn near ready to give up. There was also the added distraction of last night's occurrences.
It seemed as though the more effort she put into not reflecting on what that bastard had said, the more she couldn't seem to push the thoughts out of her mind. To be perfectly honest, it was an infuriating sort of Catch-22.
Why am I letting him get to me like this? He's not the sort of person whose opinion I think highly of, so what does it matter if he thinks I'm a weak, useless, pathetic…"That's it!" she shouted loudly enough for Madame Pince to throw her a decidedly filthy look and wave her wand in her direction. If there was one person besides Dumbledore that you didn't want to mess with in Hogwarts, it was definitely Madame Pince. Hermione gave her a tacit sort of apology before laying her head down upon the copy of The Indefinitely Extended History of Charm Work in Europe and Asia Major obstructing her access to the desk.
The truth was that no matter how much she told herself that she didn't want to think about Severus Snape, in reality the only thing she really felt in the mood for was to curl up in a large downy armchair and brood long and hard over the enigmatic aspects of that particular man's personality.
He was such a mystery. It had seemed, for a short period of time yesterday, that he could be almost…well, pleasant was the only word for it. He laughed with her, smiled and had even thrown out a few comical phrases of his own—something that was so rare that even mentioning it to another person was likely enough to get her thrown into St. Mungo's. Joking was not Severus Snape's known demeanor.
But then, before you could say "Root of Asphodel" he had transformed back into 'Smarmy Git' mode—distributing insults as Dumbledore would riddles.
Still though, there was something about him that made Hermione wary of falling back into her old habits of simply writing him off as puzzle with missing pieces and, therefore, not worth solving. Maybe the pieces weren't missing, just hidden—perhaps even by the puzzle itself.
No, she could not simply abandon him. Couldn't sit back and watch him sink further and further into himself; only too well did she know the dangers of allowing the soul to die.
Perhaps it was thinking too much that she could save him, but Hermione Granger, at least the old and recently rediscovered Hermione Granger, had never backed down from a challenge.
And Circe knows that man is one hell of a challenge if nothing else.~Yay another great chapter...well, maybe not, but at least it was full of semi-correct grammar :) R&R pretty please!!!