Several things happened in rapid succession, none of which were particularly expected or welcome.
First, Hermione sat down rather abruptly, and waved for her ghostly companion to take the seat opposite hers. She was completely unaware of the circumstances surrounding the death of Albus' only brother, but was certainly flummoxed at this turn of events. She knew he would explain, and she would force her razor-thin patience to allow it to come to completion, because so little of this craziness made the least bit of sense.
As Henry...Aberforth...opened his mouth to begin his tale, there was a quick knock at the door.
"Don't answer it," Aberforth whispered. "Listen to me. They can wait."
Hermione looked stricken, as a second rap came, more insistent than the last. "Let me at least look, Henry. It can't do any harm..."
Aberforth shook his head and cut her off abruptly. "No one is as they seem. Don't you get it? They hide, sometimes under cloaks, sometimes in plain sight. You can't trust anyone!"
"You sound like someone else I used to know, Henry," she said with a sad smile. "Constant vigilance! Do you think I even trust you, at this point? I think you're crazy, just like they used to say about you when your name would come up in conversation in the Grimmauld Place days. I know about the goat thing."
Aberforth barely suppressed a smile on both the realization that she knew about his checkered past, and that she did a fine deadpan delivery of Alastor Moody.
The knock came a third time, this time loudly enough to wake the neighbors. "Let me see who it is," Aberforth said, watching her carefully. She nodded, and he walked over and peered out the peephole.
"Can't you just fly out, or something?" Hermione asked suspiciously.
"There's more to this than meets the eye, my girl," he said, turning around. "As you might have surmised about the whole situation. Severus Snape stands outside your door."
"Well, you're the one who claims to be all-knowing. Do I let him in?"
"He is the only person that I know you can trust."
"What about you?"
"I'm a ghost, not a person," he said with a wicked smile. "So?"
She threw up her hands. "Suddenly I don't feel like I'm calling the shots in my own life." Aberforth opened the door. She expected Severus to at least express surprise upon seeing the ghost there. Snape's expression didn't change, except for one raised eyebrow.
"Miss Granger, Mr. Dumbledore. Good evening."
Hermione crossed her arms, and looked from one to the other, unable to speak. She had no idea what to expect next in the unfolding drama, though for a fleeting moment she wished that Aberforth had been able to tell her more before Snape showed up on her doorstep. This day started off so normally. Now it's a runaway train, and I cannot look away or move for fear I'll fall off the tracks.
"Aberforth, I have to say, I had no expectation of your presence tonight," Snape continued, "but you are no longer required at this meeting. Go."
Aberforth narrowed his eyes. "Remember, Severus Snape. She did not allow you in. I did."
For a moment, Snape betrayed a look of confusion. "What does it matter? I need to speak with her, alone. In private. Good evening."
Hermione's most inner child screamed, "No! Don't leave me, Henry!" The more rational mind remembered Snape in the Quidditch picture - the one that looked upon her without disapproval, if not with warmth. This person in front of her was clearly five years older than she remembered, but his demeanor was that of the picture she had been studying. She couldn't understand Henry's frustration, or articulate her own hesitation, but something told her that her instincts might not be as dulled by the passage of time as she'd thought.
None of which addressed the fundamental question of whom she should trust.
"Look, Professor Snape," she said in a smaller voice than she'd intended, "Henry is a ghost. He's breaking no laws by being here. You are, and not only are you endangering yourself, you're endangering me. The terms of my parole are that if I am caught in the company of a Magical person, I will be sent to Azkaban. You know the law."
"You won't go to Azkaban. Of that, I can be completely certain. I won't repeat this again, Aberforth. Get out."
Aberforth turned to Hermione, who shook her head. "Hermione," Aberforth said, "unlike a poltergeist, I am bound to obey the commands of fully-qualified wizards and witches. That is a part of being in the spirit world - much like the servitude of a house-elf, I suppose. But I want you to remember one thing before I have to go. You did not invite him in here." With that odd cautionary statement - not that she should expect anything but odd from her ghostly office cleaner, of course - he vanished.
"Alone at last, Miss Granger," Snape said. "I have waited for this moment - for seven long years, I have waited for this."
"Seven years? Not five? Let me guess," Hermione said, "you aren't what you seem, either. Funny how Henry has a knack for stating the obvious."
Snape ignored her taunt. "I have a message for you. Albus Dumbledore wants you brought to him - alive, of course. He did not specify that he wants you whole or unharmed, only alive, however." Snape drew his wand and pointed it at her, startling her. The edge of voice sent chills down Hermione's spine, but she managed to maintain her outward composure. "Filthy, dirty Muggle girl. I have waited for my revenge..."
"Yeah, yeah. So you're an evil bad guy, but I'm willing to bet that you aren't Professor Snape." She tried to stall, hoping to think of a way to divert Snape's attention so she could get to her wand. Think, Hermione! You used to be good at thinking in deteriorating situations, remember? You were the brains of the operation.
"You'll never know, will you?" Snape began to swish and flick, uttering the words that would bind her for travel to - who knew where, but it certainly wasn't looking good.
Something in Henry's parting words suddenly clicked in Hermione's alcohol and exhaustion-addled brain. You never invited him in. Without knowing exactly why the instinctual move occurred, she held up both hands in front of her face as the curse shot out of the faux-Snape's wand. In the next moment, he was the victim of Petrificus Totalus. The person impersonating Snape lay on her floor, conscious but certainly not moving.
"Henry!" she said loudly to the air around her, "what do I do next?"
~*~*~*~
Half a country away - but not so far at all through the broadband world that connects us all - a man in dark green and silver teaching robes stopped pacing, his mouth set with both decision and remorse. He crumpled the parchment he had just received and tossed it into the fire, making sure it had burned to ashes before turning around with grim determination. Gathering his wand and a cloak with quiet haste, he exited through a little-known door from the Hogwarts dungeons into the night.
She had been online - had posted an entry, and he had responded within five minutes. He was willing to wager she would - should - have written right back to his tantalizingly nasty taunt, judging from the behavior she exhibited normally with her LiveJournal friends. Sometimes they all talked far into the night, about things that were both inconsequential and highly meaningful. He had felt somewhat like a voyeur reading through the snippets of her life - and Draco's. It was like being present for the emergence of the woman that the schoolgirl he'd known had become. Severus had found himself understanding all-too-well what Draco's attraction (obsession?) with LiveJournal was, and empathized with his interest in this particular girl's vulnerabilities and wit and crushing loneliness. She was a woman of contradictions - simplicity and complexity, brightness and pain that had been created through no real fault of her own. Now the chickens were coming home to roost. He certainly knew that he could not wait any longer. It was time to break yet another law in a long life of crime and punishment, but little justice.
~*~*~*~
The air of Hermione's living area held no answers for her. Henry was obviously a spirit of integrity, because she could wager that he would give anything to be with her right now. A wizard had banished him and so he had gone - her tired brain now recalled that section of Hogwarts, A History that spoke to the fact that only teachers could trump the ghosts, but only ghosts could keep Peeves in line. The greater mystery now: who - or what - was on her living room rug. It just could not be Professor Severus Snape. She was really staking her hunch on a Wizard photo and a few recollections of acts that had been performed in the service of Dumbledore and the Order, but...
Dumbledore. Another question begging an answer. What did the Headmaster of Hogwarts want with her? It seemed rather comforting that her Wizarding schoolmaster wanted to see her, but once again - she could not understand it, given the unjust circumstances under which they parted. Firstly, speaking to her was forbidden - even Albus Dumbledore couldn't get around that one. Secondly, even if it wasn't - why send whatever strange henchman was lying in her living room?
Before she could get to "thirdly", there was yet another knock on the door.
Let's see, she thought tiredly, I have a ghost waxing my floors, a wizard petrified on my hearthrug, and a knock at the door at midnight. Why do I suddenly feel like I'm thirteen again?
She crossed to the door to look through her increasingly-useful peephole - the one she used to laugh to her LiveJournal friends about because it was only used for Chinese delivery men. One day they'll insist you dance for a tip, she could hear QuIdiot's imaginary voice say. Spare us your "lonely in London" speech. If you're alone in the middle of that city, it's most certainly your own fault, she could hear her new Batty friend say. She put her forehead against the door, rather than chance a look through the glass.
Bats50. His undoubtedly ill-tempered reply went unread, unresponded to. Even though she'd only met him the day before, it made her unaccountably sad that she had not read his answer to her post. She suddenly found herself weeping aloud, with the emotional abandon of one who had just realized how alone - how truly alone, and afraid - she really was in this world. Perhaps, she thought, Dumbledore was going to fix everything. Yes, that was it - he must know of her predicament. This need to be complete, the magic now swelling within her, begging for release. The friends still left behind alive, the persons who would not look at her when she ached for their eyes as she stared at her pictures.
The knock came again, softly. Obviously, the person outside had heard her wails. Perhaps it was Henry? What difference did it really make, anyway?
She took another look at the shocked face of the person on her floor. It was still Severus Snape, the one she had wanted to believe in - the one Henry said she could believe in. She took out her wand, and considered casting another Petrificus just for good measure. She couldn't do it. She had expended all the latent energy she had, and now indecisiveness and fear were choking her.
"Hermione," a familiar voice called out. She stood up straighter, still wracked with sobs, nearly oblivious to her name being called. The running-joke-of-a-peephole had been forgotten in her self-pity. She could feel the magic calling her on the other side; this should have meant extreme caution, but Hermione had simply exhausted her ability to care in the passion of the act of self-defense and the realization of her precarious predicament.
"Open this bloody door!" The longing child within her responded to the authority of this voice as it always had, with unquestioning obedience; she flung open the door. "How dare you...how dare you..." Hermione cried out as she lost her composure upon seeing his face. This was the man she was waiting for, the one who had always protected her as a child even as he hurt her with his words. This was the Professor Snape from the photograph. Henry's voice whispered again in her ear, He's the only person that I know you can trust.
"It took you long enough to answer the door," Severus said his haughtiest of professorial voices, looking past her to his doppleganger Petrified on the floor before letting his eyes fall on the disheveled wreck of a woman in front of him.
Fear turned into rage in a split second. Without warning, she launched herself at him with her fists out, pummelling him until she was overcome with emotion. He grabbed her hands to prevent more bodily injury to either one of them, and suddenly found her in his arms.
"It's okay," he whispered, stroking her hair as her tears fell, "it's going to be all right now." He closed his eyes, hesitating briefly at this act of treason, before enfolding her in his cloak.
~*~*~*~A/N: Thanks to pigwidgeon37, kalinalea, and ozratbag2 for their invaluable assistance with this chapter! Thanks to all of you who have read and reviewed. And yes, *author cackles*, more to come soon...the next moment in time should prove to be quite...surprising...for both of them. *winks*