Chapter Thirty-Two: Alstroemeria

Severus was half convinced that Nagini had truly finished him off, and now he was in hell. What else could explain the presence of Hermione, living in his own home in a grim mockery of domestic bliss?

The first night she had stayed over, he had heard her crying on the sofa while he hid in the kitchen to read, and froze in shock for approximately half a second from the fact that she had not cast any silencing charms before rising from the table to hold her in his arms. They fell asleep on the sofa together that night, and all the nights after her nightly crying sessions, and so in the end he had expanded his sofa into a sofa-bed, somehow unable to sleep without Hermione crying in his arms at night, and also unable to suggest that they sleep in his perfectly fine bed together, because apparently this was where he drew the line.

In the morning, he would wake and curse his existence, and wonder at how he managed to wake up hard every morning when he wasn't even capable of sitting up for an entire day, so exhausted he was from his healing injuries. The human body was a miraculously frustrating vessel.

After berating himself for enjoying the soft feeling of her form moulded against his and debating whether he had suddenly turned into an arse man or just a Hermione man, he would carefully extricate himself from their compromising position, and then take a long shower. If he took longer and longer showers to relieve himself of tension that built up during the night, he told himself that at least Hermione slept through them, and that thanks to magic they didn't have to pay for the copious amounts of hot water he was using.

After finishing his now-daily wank and mildly hating himself for it, he would brew coffee while he waited for Hermione to wake up. She would rise soon after the scent of coffee wafted over to the living room, and then she would make them breakfast—usually toast and eggs with plenty of butter, and he would try to pretend he wasn't having some sort of existential crisis while they ignored the topic of the large elephant trunk in his pants. She would read The Daily Observer and The Daily Prophet while he brushed up on his rusty French by reading Le Dernier Monde. He would pretend that he wasn't bothered by the thoroughly judgemental expression on her familiar's face as Crookshanks impatiently waited for his breakfast.

After breakfast, she would accompany him on a short walk around the neighbourhood, and they would talk idly of the changes in his neighbourhood, what Pete the pub landlord had to gossip about the new young folks who moved in, and the residents who still persisted in living in Spinner's End. They would do his exercises for his left arm as they chatted idly about potions articles and the latest ministry laws.

For lunch, they would visit Pete himself at Pete's pub (oddly named The Malt Shovel); Hermione was not much of a cook beyond breakfast foods and Sunday roast, and leaving his home offered them both a reprieve from the oppressive silence inside. It heartened him to see Pete do so well, living his Muggle life, entirely divorced from the darkness of the wizarding world, reminding him of better times when Severus would visit the pub with some frequency before he worried his spy duties would put Pete in danger.

In the afternoons, he would sleep, and wake to a cup of tea brewed just the way he liked it. No one had managed to brew tea the way he liked it, not even the house elves of Hogwarts. But she did. He tried not to think soppy romantic thoughts but the ability to brew a proper cup of tea was incredibly arousing.

After his afternoon cuppa, he would correspond with Minerva about business with rebuilding Hogwarts (he still did not know whether he was Headmaster or not, and did not want to know), while Hermione worked on defence cases for innocent Death Eaters. As if there was such a thing. She had formed some sort of apprenticeship contract with his barristers, and he very carefully did not ask if she was working on his own case.

Then, she would pick up dinner from Pete's, and they would read from his library in companionable silence.

And then, in the evenings, she would retreat to the bathroom, and come out with tear tracks on her face, poorly charmed to look like they had never been there at all. Perhaps if Hermione had been a more vain sort of young woman, her charmwork in this aspect would have been less lacking, but that was not Hermione. Never Hermione. And so, after a day spent in near domestic bliss, he would receive his daily reminder that no matter how much this life approached the sort of companionship he had never even thought of in his wildest dreams, her heart was firmly grieving Harry Potter. Typical Harry fucking Potter, ruining his happiness from even beyond the grave.

Voldemort could not have designed a better form of torture for him.

The whole situation was untenable; he craved her very presence every day, he craved an existence when he wasn't reminded so strongly of things he could not have. He knew he could not live together with Hermione forever in some strange parody of domestic bliss where for 13 hours a day he could pretend that nothing was wrong, and she really was his fiancée only to be brutally reminded the hour before he slept that her heart belonged to another–but he couldn't send her away.

Severus Snape was a fool and a masochist and it seemed his heart had learnt nothing about falling for women destined for Potter men.

Hermione didn't know what she was doing. Days passed in a grey fog, where she barely managed to bring herself to cook simple meals for Severus and herself and feed Crookshanks. She thought that she spent the rest of her time reading and working on Draco Malfoy's defence, but she wasn't sure.

In the mornings she woke up wrapped in Severus' arms, being clutched tight as if he feared she would vanish in his sleep. Those were the only moments in the day when she didn't feel overwhelmed with grief; momentarily warm and safe and secure, protected from everything the world wanted to take away from her. That, and the moments before she fell asleep, when Severus held her as she cried.

She used all her powers of Occlumency to feign sleep in those precious early morning wakings, when her mind had just finished torturing her with memories of Bellatrix carving her arm or Harry laughing or Harry crying or Harry just existing to just feel the comfort of Severus' heavy arms holding her, the steady rise and fall of his chest while he breathed deeply, and the heat that always burned at her back of his morning wood. She tried not to think about it, since it was nothing to do with her anyway. If she sometimes woke up with an answering heat of her own, she tried harder not to think of it.

She would inhale the scent of Severus' pillow when he rose for his daily showers—he seemed more fond of heat now that he was injured, and it soothed her to smell the familiar cedar and green and masculine musk that was Severus while she tried to remember what day it was, what she needed to do, what new things she thought she could do in life now that Harry was dead.

Seven years she had dedicated to making sure he lived, all for naught.

During the days, she spent as much time with Severus as possible, because other people reminded her of her losses and made her sad, and because she loved him. It warmed her heart to see him improve day by day, even though she knew every day he became better was a day closer to the day when he would no longer need her and she would face the bitter reality that no one needed her anymore.

During the nights, she slept poorly, and woke at odd times in the night to berate herself for not doing better when Harry was alive, which would bring her into a new cycle of hurt and self-recrimination.

Days passed like this, not knowing where the time vanished in her fog of grief. She didn't know what Severus thought, as he gave her space and time, and held her at night. At St Mungo's she had been distracted by Severus' medical needs and Harry's funeral arrangements, but her days had stretched into bleak nothingness once they left the hospital, disturbed only by conversations with Severus where she wasn't quite there, and the grim reality of working to save Draco from Azkaban. She had wanted to work on Severus' defence as well, but Mr Hunter from Hunter & Fawley had told her she was too close to the situation at hand, though he did ask her for extensive eyewitness accounts for Severus' defence. It bothered her, not being able to personally work on Severus' defence, but Horatius Hunter had managed to get Severus acquitted after the first war with less evidence in his favour and he seemed confident he could do it again, so she tried to let it be.

She didn't know how to stop grieving, so she buried herself in the work of caring for Severus and Crookshanks and trying to save Draco Malfoy's unappreciative soul, unable to deal with the fact that Harry was dead, that he wouldn't be there when she turned around again, unable to cope with the feeling that a crucial part of her that she loved was missing and would never come back again.

Severus knew it had been a bad idea to let Hermione go see Ron Weasley while she was still lost in her grief. The boy frequently had his foot in his mouth at the best of times, and now was not the best of times. He had spent his entire morning hoping that it had been a month-late April Fool's joke when Hermione told him that she was going to be meeting with the youngest Weasley boy—young man, now, perhaps, now that he had been through a war—but she had been determined to try to bury their past behind them and remain friends. It wasn't as if Severus was going to do anything to stop her; he didn't have that sort of claim on her, nor would he have stopped her even if he wanted to.

Which was why he was now finding Hermione speaking to the ghostly apparition of Harry sodding Potter in his very own drawing room, lit from within like the bloody saint that everyone thought he was.

Severus took several deep breaths and resisted the urge to shout.

"What is the meaning of this?" he hissed, as he stepped into the room.

Hermione jumped, and nearly dropped the object in her hand. An object he was very well familiar with, as he had seen it perched on Albus' cursed hand for a whole cursed year, and so help him if one Ronald Weasley gave Hermione a fucking cursed ring after all his efforts to keep them all alive for—

"Hello Professor," Potter's ghostly visage said, grinning cheekily for someone who was undead. "We've been waiting for you."

Severus instantly developed a blinding headache. He had been free of this pest, his life as a spy was over—Harry fucking Potter was not going to ruin his life by haunting him—

"I…used the Resurrection Stone to speak to Harry," Hermione said, which was when Severus noticed that her face was characteristically stained with tears, but an unusual thing was that there was a small smile on her face. Of course Potter could make her smile, even in death. Then his mind caught up with her words, and he realised that she had not misspoken the words "Resurrection Stone", and that this was in fact the spirit of Harry Potter, who somehow had the bright idea to give a grieving Hermione Granger one of the famed Deathly Hallows so they could speak again even after his death.

The only reason why the stone had not been blasted to smithereens already was because it was clutched in Hermione's hands.

"I was just telling Hermione that she shouldn't be so sad," Potter then said, face uncharacteristically serious. "It's not so bad where I'm at—I'm with mum and dad and Sirius, and I am watching over Hermione and I was just telling her that if she died and I was moping around she would come back to tell me off for moping about something that wasn't my fault, so here I am." Potter grinned awkwardly.

Severus found himself momentarily speechless. Before he could say something cutting in return, Potter was talking again.

"Hermione, could you leave the room for a bit? There's someone who wants to speak to Professor Snape alone," he said, causing Hermione to startle again. She wordlessly handed the Resurrection Stone to Severus with a strangely tight look on her face. He held it gingerly as if it was ready to bite his hands off at any moment, but nothing was unusual about the ring except the unnatural coldness of the metal and the exceptional ugliness of the setting of the stone.

Once Hermione left the room and closed the door to the kitchen, Severus seated himself.

"Who wants to speak to me alone?" he asked. He assumed it was Lily but it was always possible Black would come back to haunt him from beyond the grave to make his life more miserable.

"I did, actually," Potter said. Seeing the look on Severus' face, he quickly added, "and Mum, of course. But I want to say some things first. I'm sorry for how difficult I made your life—I had no idea back then, of course, but still…and I hope you watch out for Hermione. She tries to be strong for everyone but she needs someone to lean on and she's a lot more fragile than she looks."

"I don't need you of all people to tell me that for how much grief you've caused her," Severus snarled.

Potter had the audacity to look abashed at that. "I'm sorry for that too. Look, I know we hated each other before—before I died, but I am truly sorry for everything. You didn't make it easy for me either, though I don't blame you for it anymore. I'm not looking to give you closure or find closure myself, but I figure with things with Hermione as they are it would be best to let that hate lie in the past. Not that I think we'll be talking again."

Severus grimaced, as he found himself in the unwanted position of agreeing with Potter for once.

"And what do you mean by 'things with Hermione as they are?'" he asked, because he just couldn't help himself.

"I don't think you actually want the answer to that from me," Potter said, with an unexpected display of insight.

"Is that all then?" Severus asked, because he did not enjoy the sensation of agreeing with Potter any more than he had to.

"That's it. Thanks for the talk. Mum's going to come through now," Potter said, and with a ghostly wave he vanished in a puff of luminescent smoke.

Then the ghostly figure of Lily Potter emerged. Severus ignored the sudden tightening of his throat—Lily looked so young; somehow in his memories he never noticed the distance between them, but now he could see clearly that Lily had left Hogwarts, married, went into hiding, had a child, while she had been essentially a child, and that had been her entire life. The worst part was his own life hadn't changed much since that time either.

She had never been to wizarding Paris like she had talked about, or discovered new potions, or made up with her sister after their falling out over Vernon Dursley like she wanted.

"Hi Sev," she said, and Severus couldn't help but feel bitter and distant instead of the fondness the old nickname used to stir up. Blaming himself for her death and trying to atone for it for nearly two decades had erased much of the fondness in his heart, and twisted it into something heavy that he had only felt free of once her child had died.

"Hello Lily," he said, finding it difficult to find his words. He had made his peace with never speaking to her again, yet here she was. Speaking to him. Something he would've given anything for twenty, even fifteen years ago. But now…

"How are you?" she asked, when the silence drew on too long.

"How am I?" he asked, incredulous. She had not spoken to him for over twenty years, and now as a ghost she was asking how he was. "I've been just fine, thanks. My life fell apart after you left, I joined the Death Eaters which was as you had told me an awful decision, then I killed you through the idiocy of my own actions and I've been teaching ungrateful school children ever since. It's been fantastic. Thank you for asking ever so much—"

"I'm sorry for that. I'm sorry for not being able to be what you wanted—"

"I needed a friend—I thought you would have understood—"

"I am not sorry for protecting myself from being hurt more by your actions though," Lily quietly broke in.

"I never expected you to be. All I wanted was your forgiveness, until I had lost the right to any of it," Severus said, calming.

"You should know that I forgave you a long time ago," she said, voice even softer. Of course he should have known exactly what she thought, even though she had no idea what he had been thinking at all, nor cared to find out. It reminded him somehow that despite how much Lily played at being a grown up when they were younger, she was always naive and somewhat self-centred, unable to see out of her own view of things.

"As I have told you before, Legilimency is not literal mind reading—"

"I know Sev—"

"Please call me Severus," he cut in.

Lily clasped her hands together tightly. "I'm sorry Severus. I'm really sorry about how everything ended between us. But I didn't come here to argue about old hurts; I wanted to come here and thank you for everything you did for Harry. I know you said you did it for me, but I think you did it for the same reasons as when you first met me and told me it didn't matter if someone came from magical parents or not. Because deep down you truly do care about other people. You care so much, and you always have, and I'm sorry that it took me dying to see that clearly," she said, silvery tears streaming down her face now.

"That's…unnecessary," Severus said, feeling deeply uncomfortable. It was easier arguing with Lily than speaking to this version of Lily—they had argued a lot, as friends, especially towards the end of their friendship, but Lily rarely apologised, preferring to pretend as if the previous arguments never happened.

"I care a lot about you, Severus, and I just hope that you will let yourself be happy now. My death may have stemmed from your actions, but at the end of the day Voldemort was the one who cast the curse, not you. You shouldn't have been bringing him any prophecies—"

"Thank you, Lily," Severus cut off, already feeling tired. He knew that he shouldn't have been bringing Voldemort any prophecies, but as a poor and ugly half-blood he had not had many options in the wizarding world, and he had been desperate not to live life as his parents had. He just didn't know that wealth and power were no guarantee against misery as well. His actions as a Death Eater had been inexcusable, but he also knew that Lily never would have understood what it had felt like to have been so looked down upon his entire childhood. She never would have understood, not even in death it seemed, what it felt to have been so powerless against the entire world. Love had always come so easily to her, and even the worst of the wizarding world had been shielded from her, first by himself, and then by Potter, who had been the rich Pureblood heir of one of the biggest fortunes in the wizarding world.

But he wanted to remember the best parts of her, the way she loved easily, as easily as she had been loved in return, and how she had made room in her heart for him for years as if he had been just as worthy as anyone else of her radiant attention, not the vast gulf that existed between them that ultimately had them on different paths in their lives.

"Thank you. I can promise you I am as content with my life as I can be, at the moment," he said, eyes drifting of their own will to the door where Hermione had left through.

"Then…that is all I wish for. I hope you continue to be happy, Severus. I really have missed you," she said, smiling through her tears.

Severus felt his mouth twist. "I have missed our friendship. I hope you are happy where you are as well," he said, because he could no longer honestly say that he had missed her. Too much time had passed for that. And perhaps that was for the best.

"Be well," she said, tears rolling down her face faster. It made him wonder if as much time had passed for her as it had for him. How did time even pass in Death?

"Be well. Goodbye Lily. Thank you for speaking with me," he said. Lily Potter vanished in a puff of pearlescent smoke, smiling and crying the entire time she went.

And then another figure emerged from the ring.

"Severus—" Albus Dumbledore started to say.

"No," Severus said, not ready to have a conversation with his former mentor, sometimes only friend, enabler of his tormentors, the fucking twat who decided that any part of a plan involving Death Eaters and schoolchildren was preferable to shutting down the school, and too many other titles to name. He was not ready for a conversation with Albus fucking Dumbledore while the gaping wound in his soul still hurt from killing the wizard.

He dropped the ring on the ground, and watched the ghostly image of the former Headmaster vanish with something approaching satisfaction.