Addendum Two

"And others had trial of cruel mockings" Hebrews 11:36

(The day after the Christmas Party in Addendum One)

"Why did you call Lily a mudblood when she was trying to help you?" Hermione asked, as they sat over breakfast. Hermione took a bite out of a pear and looked at Snape questioningly.

Snape was pushing his scrambled eggs around his plate without any real interest. He glanced up at her sharply. "Are you still thinking about that?" he asked abruptly, looking displeased.

"Only that bit. I mean, why be so nasty to someone who was trying to help you? She was the only one who did," Hermione added pointedly.

Snape mentally cursed Potter once more for telling his secrets. His lips thinned. "I don't know. Obviously I was angry and she was the easiest target. It was humiliating enough being ganged up on by James Potter's stupid little friends without Lily getting involved too. I didn't want her to help me," he spat.

"Pride," Hermione accused, pointing her pear at him.

"Of course it was! Lily was little-miss-popularity-queen. Everyone loved Lily, especially James Potter!" Snape snarled, putting down his knife and fork finally with a look of disgust.

"You didn't want her help because she was well-liked?" Hermione said, confused.

"I was so sick of people like her; kids who were popular and good-looking and brilliant at everything. They thought that they ran the school and could do anything they liked to anyone, especially Potter," Snape sneered. "They didn't have to play by the rules because they were 'special'. Harry was just like his father," Snape added with a hiss.

"So you didn't want Lily to help you because you were jealous of her and people like her at Hogwarts?" Hermione said with a frown, still trying to understand. Suddenly her face cleared as she comprehended the real problem. "You hated them because they were happy, didn't you?" she said softly.

Snape stared at her. Once again, she had uncovered a truth about him that was hidden even to himself.

"You've always hated anyone who is happy. You'd think you would have gotten over your dislike of Harry by now, his last 2-3 haven't exactly been happy," she sighed. She considered him for a minute. "That's why you picked on us at Hogwarts, wasn't it? You could tell that Harry, Ron and I were happy together. You'd never had real friends in your life and it got under your skin to see us together."

"I did not pick on you lot. I just never let you get away with anything. I don't understand why Dumbledore let you three get away with so much. It was like James' stupid friends all over again. They got away with everything. No-one ever stopped them breaking rules, no-one ever punished them and they could do what they liked," Snape said coldly, his gaze frigid.

"Including torture you," Hermione said gently.

"Yes," Snape hissed, his dark eyes glittering with anger. He turned away from her and stared moodily at the stone floor.

"They shouldn't have gotten away with that," Hermione agreed after a long silence, her grey eyes sad.

Snape glanced at her and was once again amazed to find her looking upset on his behalf. He was simply unused to sympathy. Hermione looked up abruptly and her eyes were gleaming with fun. "And now you're living with a filthy mudblood," she teased. "Poor you!" She got up and went to sit close to him.

He took her hand. "Don't remind me how brainwashed I was, please," he murmured, staring at their joined hands.

"No, I think you do a perfectly adequate job of beating yourself up," she assured him tartly. "I just wish," Hermione added, "that you'd given Lily more of a chance. She probably would have been a friend to you if you'd let her. Perhaps that would have made James lay off a bit too. I like the sound of her."

Snape sneered, looking quite like himself again all of a sudden. "I suppose looking back I regret not having seen that Lily was trying to be nice but as that was something I was unused to, it's unlikely I would have recognized it at that age. However, I will never regret doing anything I could to make James' life difficult," he added with real malice sparkling in his deep-set eyes.

"Well, James is dead. Being nasty to Harry won't hurt him now," Hermione said bluntly.

Snape's dark eyes examined Hermione's calm face. "I won't bother Harry as long as he stays away from you," he said flatly.

"We're best friends, Severus. That's not going to happen," she said unequivocally, caressing the hand she held.

"You know what I mean," he said, his eyes narrowing marginally.

"In that case, there is no need to worry at all. Ginny would scratch my eyes out long before you had a say," Hermione said, throwing back her thick mane of hair and laughing frankly.

Only Gryffindors, Snape reflected, could laugh like that. However, once more he felt mollified and simply pulled her hand to his mouth to plant a kiss in its palm.

* * *

It was the first time that Hermione had stayed at Snape Manor. They had been still living either at Hermione's old home or the new cottage in Hogsborough that she had recently bought with her inheritance. Snape was reluctant to live at the Manor more than necessary and he had brought Hermione there only for the odd few hours here and there during the past 3 months. The Snape Manor held bad memories of loneliness and abuse for Snape, and he had no desire to live there. Hermione preferred her small, warm cottage anyway so it worked out well. However, Hermatica and Severus- the-first had suggested that maybe they should be there over Christmas for Draco's sake so he had some company. It would be Draco's first Christmas without his parents and away from his old home. Hermione had immediately seen the sense in that and persuaded the reluctant Snape to spend two weeks there over the Christmas and New Year period.

Snape had given Hermione an entire wing for her own use although they shared a bedroom in the main part of the Manor with an elaborate series of dressing, bathing and private rooms off the main bedroom for each of them to use privately. "I can't believe how many rooms this place has," Hermione had muttered after Snape had shown her around her own wing and her private apartments off the main bedroom.

"If you ever need to find me and get lost, just use a location spell," Snape advised.

"How many House Elves do you have to keep this place clean?" Hermione asked, ever practical.

Snape paused and thought. "I have no idea," he admitted, unperturbed.

As it was, they didn't see much of Draco anyway as he spent a lot of his time either up at the Ministry or at Malfoy Manor during the day.

A few days after they had temporarily moved in, Hermione got lost trying to find her way to Snape's own wing where he did his work and his potions laboratory. "I can't believe this place," Hermione muttered. "Not only is it a mausoleum but it's also a bloody maze too!" She knew she was on the ground floor but after wondering around for a good half an hour, no longer had any idea which wing she was now in. In desperation, she did a location spell on Snape. Her wand pointed down a long, dark passageway much like many other long, dark passageways she had already seen. With a sigh she set off. Her wand skewed abruptly off to her left when she reached a junction and following it she found herself in another long hallway. As she glanced up, she saw the hem of Snape's robes swish around a corner at the end. With an irritated sigh, she followed him at a fast trot.

As she neared the end of the hallway she was sure she could hear voices. Hermione was already used to the oppressive silence of Snape Manor and so felt ridiculously alarmed by it. She snuck up to the end of the hallway and noted the voices were coming from the direction that Snape had turned down. She was just about to follow and announce herself when she heard a very unpleasant voice hiss,

"What are you doing back here? I thought your parents had gotten rid of you for good!"

"Obviously not," returned Snape's voice at its coolest.

"I can't believe a weakling like you would darken the doorway of the great Snape house. Your parents should have drowned you at birth when they realized what a little runt you were. And you! The heir! What a cruel joke fate has played on this great dynasty," the voice continued viciously.

Hermione stood frozen and horrified. What kind of abuse was this, she wondered? She felt a bit sick.

"Well, I am the heir and you had best get used to it," she heard Snape say silkily. Hermione knew that tone was dangerous.

"The heir!" a sharp woman's voice suddenly joined in. "Your parents couldn't stand the sight of you! They thought you were a disgrace and they were right. All you did was sit in the library or in your room reading! Then you deserted the Death Eaters like the yellow-bellied traitor that you are," she continued cruelly. "If they could have killed you when you were little without that fool Dumbledore interfering, they would have."

Hermione leaned against a wall and breathed deeply. She couldn't believe what she was hearing.

"Well, it's too bad they didn't. They missed their chance, didn't they?" Snape replied grimly.

"You're a disgrace to the Snape name!" yet a third voice hissed but Snape's footsteps were retreating to the other end of the hallway.

Hermione waited until she could no longer hear him and crept into the hallway he had just left. It was lined with family portraits and there wasn't one pleasant face amongst them. Tears of fury had welled up in Hermione's eyes at the outrageous lies and taunts she had just heard. Was there no-one who left him alone, she wondered?

"Ah, it's his filthy little mudblood whore now!" the first spiteful voice said. She saw that it came from a squat, grey-haired, square-jawed man in medieval garb on the left wall. "Are you running after your pitiful, weak, pathetic traitor of a lover?" he jeered.

Hermione pointed her wand at him. "Silenus!" she hissed. The man in the portrait looked furious. She levitated his picture off the wall, turned it around and put it on the floor leaning against the wall.

"You can't do that!" a woman's shrill voice said.

"Oh it was you too, was it?" Hermione spun around and looked with hatred at the hard-faced, hawk-nosed woman in the portrait behind her. "Silenus!" she repeated and put that portrait on the floor too.

"This is outrageous! You do not have the authority to treat us like that," another voice said indignantly. Hermione recognized it. With a distinctly malicious smile, she gave the ugly, dark-haired, middle-aged man in the portrait the same treatment as the rest.

"Any more objections?" Hermione asked, her wand akimbo as her gaze raked the paintings along both walls. There was silence. "If I ever hear any portrait in this house ever abuse or criticize or belittle the current heir again, that person will get the same treatment as these three. Please ensure that message is taken to every portrait in this house," Hermione ordered crisply. She then put a sticking charm on the three portraits so that they could not be moved by House Elves or anyone else until Hermione personally took the charm off.

As she continued down the hallway, a wave of whispering broke out and Hermione smiled to herself. She was sure every portrait in the Snape Manor would hear this story within the hour.

She was right. By the time she finally found Snape, Hermatica was already excitedly telling him the whole story from the frame of an old-fashioned alchemy painting. She smiled at Hermatica behind Snape's back before he swung around and saw her there.

"I can't believe you did that," he said in his deep voice, his face stunned.

"I'm sorry. I know it's your house and I shouldn't do things like that without your permission but I was furious," Hermione admitted, not looking at all sorry.

He simply stared at her. Her authority or lack of it had not entered his head. "Why did you do it?" he asked, mystified.

She looked at him incredulously. "What do you mean 'why?' Because they were being abusive and vile, that's why. To stop them doing it again, that's why. Because it was shocking and sickening and unacceptable, that's why!" she said, her voice increasing in volume as she got angry all over again.

He stared at her in silence. Loyalty was an unknown quantity to him. No- one had ever defended him in his life. Suddenly his mind went back to their conversation about Lily earlier that week. That was untrue, he acknowledged. Lily had tried to defend him 20 years ago and gotten abused herself as thanks. Snape burned with shame but his face remained mask- like.

"They called her names too," Hermatica said suddenly.

Snape swung around to look at her again. "What do you mean?" he demanded harshly.

"They called her a filthy mudblood whore," Hermatica said, her face tight with disapproval.

"Thanks for repeating it," Hermione said with resignation.

"He should know!" Hermatica defended herself, pointing to Snape. "He should know what these dear ancestors of his are like!"

"Do you think he doesn't?" Hermione replied with irony.

Snape's face had gone white with fury. "Those paintings are going to be destroyed!" he said, his voice shaking with rage.

Hermione's eyes widened. She had never seen Snape in a temper like that before. "You can't do that. It's family history!" she protested.

"I don't care," Snape said venomously.

"You can't anyway. I've put a sticking charm on them. Only I can move them," Hermione said. "And I'm not going to let you destroy family heirlooms just because they have nasty mouths."

"I could just vaporise them where they are," he said with narrowed eyes but he had begun to calm down slightly. He noticed Hermione was staring at him fixedly with that expression that made him uncomfortable.

"Did you have to put up with this growing up?" she asked in a small voice.

His lips tightened and he gave a single nod and looked away.

"No wonder you stayed in your room," she remarked. "Very sensible." Then another thought struck her. "And no wonder you didn't encourage friendships. Imagine bringing friends back here to listen to utter garbage like that."

"Exactly," he said broodingly, his dark eyebrows drawn together in a frown.

Hermione sighed and felt depressed. She glanced out of one of the high, slit-like windows in the thick stone wall. "Let's get into our Muggle clothes and go outside into the sunshine. All these long, dark hallways and massive dark rooms are getting me down," she suggested, looking with sudden distaste around the potions laboratory.

"Good idea!" Hermatica said emphatically and went off in search of Severus- the-first to tell him all the news.

Snape suddenly felt the same way. They changed quickly in their vast dressing-rooms into jeans and went outside. The minute the pale sunlight hit Hermione's skin and hair, and she felt the cold late December air on her cheeks she felt better and laughed. Snape pulled her into his embrace to kiss her. "You taste of snow," she said.

She was glad to see him looking suddenly happy and relaxed. Those moments were rare and Hermione treasured them. She glanced back at the cold, grey, stone house and understood why Snape didn't want to live there. She looked up at Snape to see him watching her carefully and she knew he had read what she was thinking. She bent down and began gathering up snow and patting it into a snowball.

"You wouldn't dare," he said forbiddingly.

She grinned and took a few steps away and pegged it straight at him with a laugh. He took it on the right shoulder but as it had been deliberately loosely packed, it didn't hurt him.

"You'll live to regret that," he threatened calmly, pulling out his wand.

"Hey, no fair! You have to use Muggle rules," Hermione protested, already gathering up more snow.

"Says who?" he asked coolly, using his wand to make a perfectly round snowball.

"Me!" she shouted back and easily dodged his first attack. "You're not very good at this," she taunted gaily as she got him on his left arm with her second missile.

Finally, when they were both cold and wet and Hermione was helpless with laughter they called a pax. Using a drying charm, they quickly dried their clothes off. Hermione's cheeks were pink and her lips very red. Even Snape had a feint touch of pink across his fleshless cheekbones.

"You're a nasty, ruthless opponent," Hermione accused, still laughing at the bits of snow in Snape's hair.

"Thank you," Snape said sincerely.

Hermione just snorted and then turned her wand onto Snape's hair to dry it. "It's so fine that it dries quickly. Just as well or you'd end up with pneumonia," she said but Snape was looking at her scarlet mouth. Hermione stepped willingly into the circle of Snape's arms. She didn't notice a thin, dark shadow move away from one of the leaded windows on the second floor; a shadow with moonlight pale hair.