Snape allowed himself a frown, sighed, and waved toward the two familiar chairs, which slid over the shiny carpet and stopped facing his desk. "Take a seat, Miss Granger."
Her head was spinning with what she had witnessed. What 'family matters' had they been talking about? Clever move, she admitted to herself, while Snape put his wand back into his robes, then reached out for a pile of parchments, pulling out a scroll with neat handwriting on it. Trying to get access to family secrets through a mere writing exercise.
That pulled her back to the present, pushing her to focus.
"There is, I am afraid, a problem with your essay as well", he said, ignoring the leftover of her bewilderment on her face. He had not taken the seat next to hear, but not withdrawn behind the desk, either. Instead, he leaned against the top, half-standing a few steps away from her. Arms crossed, the position created distance and low gradient between them, which he had probably chosen on purpose. "It seems that you, too, have ignored the instruction to stick with the literature These elaborations on forced marriages upon unplanned pregnancies are not backed up by the source material."
"I must have – let my attention falter", she admitted.
"Might I ask", he said, arms unfolding and clenching the edges of his desk, "What made you think of such a social phenomenon?"
Something felt strange about his inquiry, Hermione noticed, but it took her the fraction of a second to realize where this irritation came from: He had not dismissed it as false. She felt his gaze rest upon her face, and decided to not even try hiding her intentions, for she had never mastered Occlumency, after all.
"I was thinking of Bellatrix Lestrange", she said, looking up straight at him, "And her liaison with Rabastan, before she married Rudolphus. How Rabastan planned a perfectly acceptable approach, but she ended up with his brother, who was under the influence of a love potion."
His eyes met hers. "You really are", he whispered, apparently drawing closer without moving at all, "the brightest witch of your age."
"BASTARD! Crucio!"
The curse would have hit her straight to the chest, if she was not permeable within his memory. Snape grabbed her arm, pulling her out of Bellatrix way, and down behind a huge pot. The Devils Snare did not react to her almost crashing into the pottery. Though she knew whom Bellatrix must have been aiming at, she did not spot Severus between the overlarge purple leaves of the Manjuron trees, dimly lit by a descending moon over thick glass of the greenhouses.
"SHOW YOURSELF", Bellatrix yelled, crashing several windows with another unforgivable curse. "Show yourself so that I can MAKE YOU PAY for what you've done!"
The moonlight broke to fragments in the glass, casting white sparkles over the deep green, impervious jungle. The plants moaned. It sounded like storm over seashore, loud, muffled and disturbing.
"I'll BURN IT DOWN if I have to", Bellatrix threatened.
"We should get a little further away", grown-up Snape said, cowering next to her, still a little pale. "She'll use Fiendfyre at some point, and that might actually hurt us."
As if proof to his words, they heard her scream, "Incendio!", and several braches of the Snare went up in flames.
"We can stay in there", he pointed to a narrow path on a slightly elevated field. She had not seen in the dark. "They don't keep such large areas of wild plants any more at Hogwarts, but in my days, we made it a challenge to climb the trees before Madam Sprout caught us."
Two steps onto the field, she felt indeed like having entered the Forbidden Forest, with roots, grass and dried up leaves all across the floor. "Up there", Snape urged her, casting a look to the clearing they had come from.
"Where?"
"You CANNOT HIDE from me, Snivellus! Crucio!"
"Any tree you can occupy!"
She managed to pull herself on a thick branch at the height of her hip, then crawled until she could make out a the shapes of the castle through the leaves. Snape followed her with speed and agility she had not at all expected.
"What's happening?", she inquired, letting her legs hang down in between the a thick branch fork, clutching another part at her shoulder's height.
"You'll hear", Snape replied evasively. "Do you mind -?"
"No."
He sat beside her, apparently in no need to stabilize his position.
Her spells had reduced the greenhouse to a skeleton of steel and wood, when she first spotted young Severus, covering himself with the last intact leaf the size of a tent.
"Lumos maxima", he whispered, blinding the four of them, "Stupe -"
"Expelliarmus!", Bellatrix pointed roughly into the direction the bolt had come from, and Severus lost his wand, watching it soar toward the witch. She did not bother to pick it up.
Its tip lit the scene. Aflamed by the neutral, even cold light of Severus wand, Hermione was able to see Bellatrix face as if in bright sunlight.
She was badly bruised, blood trickling from her nose, one eyebrow barely distinguishable from the swelling beneath it. Her robes were dirty and lacked the hood.
"Incendio!", she repeated, and the rest of the leaf evaporated in a fireball, revealing crouched Severus, head and hands covered in ashes.
"You BASTARD CHILD, look at what THEY DID TO ME", she screamed, loud enough for the entire castle to hear her. "Crucio!"
This time, she aimed properly: Severus tilted on the spot, moaning and tossing in pain. For a second, Hermione spotted a flash of gold at her hand, illuminated briefly by the spell.
"She's married already?", Hermione looked at Snape, puzzled.
"She' just married."
Her make-up, so carefully applied in the mug shots from Askaban, was spread over her face, drawing black lines over her cheeks.
"You're telling me, Rudolphus -"
"No", Snape replied, evading her gaze. "It's been a Hogsmeade weekend. She was asked to meet her parents in the Hog's Head, where they introduced her to – friends – of the family. They beat her up. But she is not hurt beneath the clothing."
"How would you -?"
"Listen."
"LOOK AT ME", Bellatrix yelled, wand held up high, keeping up the torture, "Look at me, this is all your fault, you filthy half-blood -", her anger subsided and dissolved into heavy sobbing. "I cannot -", she lowered her wand. Severus unfolded his limps and got to his feet.
"They made me marry him", she cried. Another black line escaped the corner of her eye. Hermione could not help but pity her.
"Didn't you want Rabastan to marry you anyw -"
"Not him", she shouted, "Rudolphus! Crucio!"
This time, she watched Severus drop to his knees, whimpering. She dropped her wands when he slammed on the ground.
"He shouldn't have taken you -", Severus began, but she exploded again with righteous desperation.
"OF COURSE NOT! BUT HE DID!", she yelled, "And now I'm with child! Crucio!" When her tears subsided, she lifted the curse.
"I wasn't aware he was that obsessed with you -", Severus tried to mislead her, but Bellatrix was way too much a cunning Slytherin to be deluded by him.
"He's been drugged with your potions, immature as you are, and now my life's RUINED! My future, my education – I'm not even allowed to return after summer -"
"For the child's sake?"
"YES, you IDIOT, I'll be due in December, and until then -"
"So you're not that far along, are you?"
Hermione thought this one of the most unsympathetic, unfitting responses she had ever heard.
"What's that supposed to MEAN?", Bellatrix half-cried, half-shouted at him.
"Do you", Severus dared not to get back onto his feet, but looked at her the way as if he wished to see her innermost desires, "Want to give birth to this child?"
"What are you -"
"There is an option", Severus said slowly, careful not to provoke her into torturing him again, "An immature potion. It would save you from this fate."
"This fate?", she echoed.
"Carrying to term."
"Are you offering me -"
"Yes. If it truly is your wish."
"We'll leave now", said grown up Snape next to Hermione, and the scene dissolved into night first, before his dark eyes and posture regained shape.
He lowered himself into the seat next to her, where she sat, frozenand appalled beyond expression from what she had witnessed.
"There was a chance once, that Bellatrix might turn out a smarter version of her sister, Narcissa. A cunning, capable witch, dangerous to those she truly despised, but not plain evil. Not necessarily", Snape laid out, carefully examining her features, "She was not determined to become the cruel, devoted servant to the Dark Lord she now is. But that part of her, that future … it died with the child she carried."
Hermione had never imagined herself feeling truly sorry for Bellatrix, the woman putting Neville int the condition she knew him in, let alone his parents.
"Bellatrix, to this day, has never worn anything but black. Most regard that as referring to her family – the part she doubtlessly feels closer to -, but it is as much a tribute to them as an expression of grief. She grieves not her unborn child, but for her true love, which lies with Rabastan." He paused. "The three of them stuck together after Hogwarts. Barty Crouch joined them when Rabastan was seriously considering an application to the ministry's Auror program, and talked him out of it for discern of his father, who devoted his life to his job, which Barty never forgave him for. To this day... fighting for an order with wizards reigning over muggles is all that matters to Bellatrix. She has never had children with Rodolphus, nor been ever pregnant again, as far as I am aware of. Loyalty to her family keeps her alive. Fighting for a pure-blood supremacy gives it a purpose, and coherence to her own most personal hardships - makes it worth living."
The empty, joyful face of Alice Longbottom on the closed ward rose in front of Hermione's eye.
"How can you defend her?", she gasped, before she could stop herself. "It's horrible what Rodolphus did to her, but she might have found another way to end this pregnancy – if she really wanted to – Do you feel guilty for giving her an option, the ability to choose - ?"
"I don't", he refused.
" – how can you possibly justify what she has done to people, muggles and magic folk alike -"
"I'm not justifying what she did", he rejected her point, " I am -"
"But you're defending a torturer, a murderer, for -"
"I am not defending politics", he stated firmly. He did not yell at her, but Hermione realized him to be really angry at her now. "I am defending the person. I've watched the very memory you've just seen over and over, and it is very well likely that she used torture for the first time that night – with me. I haven't heard of her exercising cruelty in the determined, willful state that is required for the Cruciatus curse ever before."
He might as well have hit her in the face. "You would know that, wouldn't you? The state of mind required?
"Yes, I would."
They were inches apart from each other, as when she had first shared her emotions with him. Learned about encompassing pleasure in ways she never dared to speak of. Met the young Severus, a smart, shy, immeasurably talented student, who withdrew from lessons to brew wolfsbane for his arch enemies best friend. How had this lonely teenager become the former Death Eater she faced – with her wand in his pocket?
"You can't separate the person from politics."
"In times of peace, perhaps", Snape replied, looking rather tired than angry now, "But choosing which side to act on, regarding personal values or politics - its a luxury not all of us can afford."
Had they ever been truly close?, she wondered, biting down tears. Or had it all just happened inside her head?
"I am sorry I've let you in on this", he apologized, "I might have – overestimated – your maturity."
They sat in silence, fuming from their fight and sad for their distance.
"It's not passion Rodolphus acted on when he raped her", Hermione heard herself say, expecting him to get him angry at her again, "He probably wished to possess her, claim her as his own, or simply humiliate her -"
"That would be my interpretation as well. Rodolphus never had his brothers magical talent, and dedicated himself to sports and martial arts, to become a warrior like their father had been in the Foreign Legion."
"She did not have a chance, if she did not have her wand with her", Hermione heard herself say.
"No, she did not. Which reminds me." He reached into his pocket. "I'm not planning on claiming this as my own, so you might want to have it back."
"That's a great expectation to live up to", she acknowledged, taking her wand.
"What expectation?"
"Assuming that I posed a worthy opponent to you – with my wand."
"Are you planning on dueling me tonight, Hermione?"
"No. - Not that I would stand a chance."
"Don't you hide under your cauldrons cap."
"But I'm -", she brought herself to smile wearily, "I'm a mudblood, remember?"
"Don't you use these words with me", he whispered, and covered her mouth softly with his lips.
A tingle spread through her, bright as the moonlight in the broken glass, hot as the fire they had witnessed from their hiding spot. He tasted like honey, with a faint, distinct bitter tone, as if harvested too early from a hive. "And don't you ever humiliate yourself on this idea."
The tingling stayed on her lips. Some large, vicious creature had suddenly possessed her, demanding to pull his hands onto her hips, fling his arms around her waist and kiss several other parts of her.
"You might want to go back.", he suggested after a while, which might have been seconds as well.
"Yes, I should." Pulling herself together in a strenuous effort far outreaching all her investments in Occlumency, she rose from the chair.
The door had never felt as heavy before. She did not pull it shut behind her.