THE STRONGBOX OF MEMORY
This is a non-profit tribute to the works of JK Rowling who, together with her publishers and licensees, owns the characters and situations elaborated herein.
A/N: Spoilers. Thanks to all my reviewers. Re-posted with a few changes thanks to Bellegeste and Vickie211.
Severus Snape shifted in his chair and moved a warm, wonderful weight of clinging, penitent Hermione to his other leg. He wouldn't be able to walk tomorrow if she sat on this one much longer; it had never been the same since the muscles were stripped by a passing hex he hadn't been able to dodge in the final battle.
With a muttered "Here, let me," and without moving her other arm from around his waist, she briefly slipped out her wand to cast a cushioning spell, then snugged her head back into the crook of his shoulder and resumed hugging him as if she could never get enough. He burrowed his large nose in her impossible, springy hair and hugged back.
Her reaction to his explanation bewildered him. She'd closed the last few steps between them and flung herself into his arms, murmuring incoherent regrets and self-recriminations. As his arms had closed instinctively around her, he'd wondered if he was dreaming. He'd expected and dreaded her disgust, but she seemed to think of nothing but how nearly she'd lost him before ever knowing him. It was disorienting.
What had seemed to him, at seventeen, a cold act of reason, had been transmuted by three extra years of bleak endurance into a weakness to be scorned, a child's petulant tantrum against the unfairness of the world. It was almost worse than his subsequent impetuous decision to join, without investigation, a mysterious, secret group that had turned out to be both mad and murderous - almost. It paled beside the result of that folly. Yet if he still mostly thought he'd have been better off dead, he'd never felt tempted to repeat the attempt. By the time he was twenty, despair had long hardened to stony resolution. He would labour in the cold dark alone to repair his fault, to save the world that rejected him or die trying. There was honour in that at least.
Only he hadn't died.
Since the final battle, three years ago, he'd been trying to continue on in the same way, ignoring the painpricks of feeling returning to an appendage gone numb from disuse, the terrible aching hope of change. The fugitive glimpses from the corner of his eye had been too inchoate to be recognised at first, but gradually they'd coalesced into the glorious, irrepressible abundance of this eager, stubborn girl. She had too much of everything for most people's taste, too much curiosity, sense, steel and determination, too much dogmatic certainty and bossy perseverance, but he was too accustomed to nothing not to delight in sudden plentifulness.
He said nothing of his thoughts, only tightened his arms around her, not quite daring to believe in tomorrow. If this were his one moment of Heaven, he'd hold fast to it with all his strength. Hermione nestled closer, her head in the hollow just above his collarbone and her curls tickling his chin.
"I always hated her," she murmured at last, "for what she did to Neville's parents. I can't hate her now." Not when she saved you for me. Ridiculous to wish she could have been born twenty years earlier to save him herself; ridiculous to feel jealous that it had been Bellatrix and not herself who'd thrown that vial into the fire.
He wound a curl around his finger and tickled her cheek with it.
"You can still hate what she became," he demurred. "Time was, she'd have hated it herself. She wasn't like that then. None of us were."
Instantly, he cursed himself for reminding her that he, as much as Bella or any of his school-friends, had grown into someone she could hate all too easily. Someone she should hate. Fortunately, she didn't pick up on that.
"What were you like?" she murmured.
He stirred uneasily.
"Haven't I answered enough for one night?"
"Please understand," she apologised, rubbing small circles into his back with one hand. "All I've ever actually been told about your past came from Sirius. I used not to question it."
She bit her lip as he stiffened. The circles became larger.
"What did he tell you?" he scowled.
"Mostly how much he hated you. But he also named your friends and said they'd all become Death Eaters."
"They did."
His uncompromising honesty was one of the things she admired about him. Her other hand reached up to touch his rigid cheek.
"That's why I need to know what you were all like before that. Did any of the others regret it?"
"They wouldn't have dared to admit it if they did. We were like lobsters in a pot, once in there was no way out." Some had tried and died for it, but none of his particular friends, not after Regulus Black's example. "I think Lucius might have. Not then, but when we were called back after all those years of quiet. Not because his opinions changed, but he preferred the life he'd made without it."
She reared her head back to stare wide-eyed into his face.
"But he was one of the worst! The dungeons at the Manor –"
"Of course he was, with so much at stake. Waverers can't afford anyone questioning their commitment."
"What was he like before?" she asked, settling back against his chest.
"He was Prefect, then Head Boy," he summarised, hoping to pacify her with the least amount of detail. "He knew his worth to perfection and we worshipped him almost as much as he did himself. Poor Draco could never measure up. That's one of the things that ruined him."
He glanced at the sliver of countenance he could see under her hair, hoping she wasn't offended by his sympathetic mention of someone she'd always loathed. Lower lip caught between her teeth, she gave a thoughtful nod.
"Were you friends with him?"
"With Lucius? He was far too grand for little first and second years to call him friend. Protector, patron, adviser, defender, all of that and more till he left. Things were never the same for us after that."
The tide had turned against Slytherins after Lucius's departure, a proud house humbled by the envy and mistrust of the other houses. He'd built them up again when he'd returned to teach. There'd been seven years of glory before her best friend's arrival in first year had overturned their success.
"I always thought he liked you. Didn't he want you as headmaster in my second year? And I remember Umbridge saying he'd recommended you -"
"We've covered this before," he snapped. "Friendship requires more than liking." Perhaps as adults they could have been true friends in a different world, one where they'd stayed on the same side.
"Bellatrix then. She was a friend, wasn't she?" How had she known what he was planning otherwise?
She felt him shrug.
"Not really. She used to pick my brains because she didn't like failing, but she was popular and I wasn't. She had a way of looking at you as if you were the only person in the world and she was always laughing." It hurt to remember that. Azkaban had changed her laughter to mania and he was the one who'd sent her there.
"But she saved you," Hermione protested.
"Why should that mean anything? Wouldn't you try to save someone, even if you hated them?"
She took a deep breath of relief. Then he wasn't mourning her particularly. Good, she didn't think she could have borne that.
"Tell me about your friends. Please?"
He scowled, but he couldn't refuse her. Sighing, he rested his chin on her hair. Haltingly at first, for her he unlocked the strongbox of memory and, in doing so, reclaimed the contents as his own, all the sad, silly, funny and excruciating experiences he'd shared with the school-friends he'd grown up to betray. It still hurt to remember them, but she gave him strength to bear it.
Absorbed in reminiscence, they didn't register the intimacy of their position till at last he fell silent. Then they noticed at the same time. She gasped and flushed scarlet as their eyes met. His mouth went dry. He gulped and her eyes fell, and then the moment was past without either having taken the initiative. Hermione sprang up, hands fidgety and face carefully turned away.
"It's – it's late," she stammered, "and we didn't brew Wolfsbane after all."
He couldn't look at her either.
"Tomorrow will be time enough. The Ministry doesn't need it till Monday. Are you free to return? I'll walk you to the Apparition point."
"If you have a sofa, I could stay," she offered, then blushed redder than ever. She'd only meant that they could talk some more.
His eyes widened and his breath caught.
"Not in my rooms," he said after a moment. "It would be all over the school by breakfast." What an example for the students! "Is that how you want your friends to find out about us?"
He knew she hadn't told them and couldn't help wondering whether she was ashamed of liking him and whether their predictable outrage would deter her. The one small strand of comfort, she'd never betray a friend; he was her friend and she wouldn't betray him.
She didn't need to look at him to hear his uncertainty.
"No, not like that. But I will tell them, now that there's something to tell."
He got up and walked around the other side of the desk.
"It will be better if you stay in Minerva's rooms. I'll ask her."
"You don't mind her guessing?"
He lit the fire with a wave of his wand, threw in a pinch of powder and knelt towards it where she couldn't see his face.
"She doesn't need to guess," he muttered.
Smoothing her hair and straightening her robes, Hermione pondered this during his short colloquy with the headmistress. Ironic that such a private man had told a friend before ever she'd considered telling hers. As she watched his straight back and long, lean limbs, her lips curved up in admiration. He was so graceful, even kneeling for a floo-call. He'd never be conventionally handsome, but there was no one she'd rather look at. Then she thought back to the moment when they'd almost kissed and cursed her lack of Gryffindor boldness.
Professor McGonagall's matter-of-fact welcome soon dispelled Hermione's embarrassment. The two women eyed each other measuringly over cups of tea and slices of pound cake.
"You're not a student here now. Minerva will do," the older woman said.
"I'll try, but it's hard to get used to calling a teacher by their first name."
"You have experience though, don't you? Severus -"
Hermione choked on her tea.
When she finished coughing, she admitted rather shamefacedly, "I call him Professor." She'd grown so used to the name she'd never thought till now how inappropriate it was to their new – involvement. They were more than friends; she admitted that to herself at last, with sheepish self-discovery.
Minerva restrained a snort of amusement.
"If you're waiting for him to invite you, you may be waiting a long time," she said. "This is one occasion he probably wouldn't mind you being a Gryffindor."
A rueful smile curved Hermione's mouth. She poured herself another cup and stirred in a spoon of sugar.
"He always minds me being a Gryffindor."
That didn't bother her as much as it used to. His stiffening and silence this night, whenever his reminiscences had approached the subject of the Gryffindors who'd made his school life unbearable, had told her more than words could have.
"It didn't stop him falling for you. I wish you could have seen his face when he told us you wouldn't be yourself if you stopped asking questions."
"I suppose he was exasperated," Hermione muttered.
"No, besotted. I never thought I'd see that. I've been wondering ever since how you got together and when?"
"It was in January. We chanced on each other in the woods and –" She pursed her lips and cocked her head to one side. "I'd never seen him look that way. Relaxed and – smiling! Till he saw me, that is. We'd had words the last time we met and he was still angry." She paused and brightened, her eyes shining with pleasant memories. "Then all at once, it didn't seem to matter and Professor Marchant sent us off to have breakfast together." She stared at her half-eaten slice, remembering her hands nervously crumbling an apple-cinnamon muffin that first time. "And that was enough somehow."
"So Amory knew. He never said anything." The gleam in the older woman's eye promised the culprit a stern talking-to, but after a moment her face softened. "Perhaps I'd better mention that we're betrothed."
Hermione's eyes widened.
"Really? He said something that day about profiting from my changes to the Teacher's Spouse regulations but I'd no idea he meant himself." She'd wondered if he meant Professor Sna – Severus – and had felt absurdly relieved at the other man's disclamatory scowl.
Minerva set down her empty cup and took another slice of cake.
"That long ago? He didn't say anything to me till Easter."
"Each as slow as the other. That must be why they're friends." Hermione primmed up her mouth, then subsided into a grin. "You've known Professor Snape a long time, haven't you? You were so prickly around each other when we were kids, we thought you disliked him." The professor – Severus – was always prickly.
"My first year as Head of House was his first year of Hogwarts so I suppose you could say that we began the process of learning together."
"I hadn't thought about that. You were a teacher here when he was at school," Hermione mused. She thought of what the prof – Severus – had told her that night and felt a fire of resentment rise in her chest. "How could you – how could all of you let Harry's dad and his friends bully him like that and never stop them?"
Minerva's lips curved into a tolerant smile at her impassioned complaint.
"He gave as good as he got."
"But it was four against one." That wasn't fun; that was bullying, plain and simple.
"Sometimes it's better not to interfere. High-spirited teenagers -"
"It was more than that." Hermione closed her lips tightly. He'd told her in confidence. She couldn't say anything.
Unconvinced, Minerva shook her head.
"If he suffered so much, you'd think he'd know better than to be so harsh to his students."
Tight-lipped and fuming, Hermione pushed her plate away. She'd thought that too once.
"That's easy to say," she argued, "but what other way of dominance did he ever learn? He started teaching so young there were still students who remembered him as Snivellus. And he was already a Death Eater before he finished school. That wouldn't have taught him any better."
"That was his choice. He was always a sullen, difficult boy -"
"I don't want to hear what you thought he was like!" the younger woman snapped. "You didn't like him then, did you? It would be disloyal for me to listen."
The headmistress sighed.
"You might like to remember that he trusted me enough to tell me about you. Whatever we may have felt in the past, we're friends now."
Hermione took a long, deep breath that hissed out in a sudden sigh.
"Sorry, I'm being very silly, aren't I?" His revelations throbbed in her mind like a fresh bruise, but he must have come to terms with them a long while ago. Only in that case why had she had to pull the reluctant words out of him? No, he may have forgiven Professor McGonagall – Minerva – but he hadn't come to terms with the past. Probably he never would.
A/N If you're wondering how she knew Bella sent the vial into the fire I added that to the last chapter when I re-posted with a few small changes.
