A/N: Just a dumb little aside about the song choice for this chapter: The whole thing is amazing and it's hard not to want to quote it in its entirety. Worse yet, there's a remixed version with different verses that's also just as good, so if you like rap, I recommend you go check out both. I have long listened to this song (either version) and thought of Snape, particularly in all of the fics where he's been hidden/pretending to be dead after the final battle.
"Ayy, treat it:
Like I was coming from Billings on the way to Spokane
And you found me twisted and mangled inside our road van
Like it's so ugly, the paramedics say "Oh, man!"
There go Tecca N9na with no life but more fans
Like in hell or I'm in heaven, just fell in from 9-11
Propelling from high and dove in the concrete
Like my name was McVeigh and I check the mail and a bomb beeped
Like having Griselda's dope and sell it beyond cheap
Like I was in the mood for set tripping
Fights begin and Rugers get splitting
Like my life is through and death slips in
Like there's no air left and my chest stiffens"
Like I Died – Tech N9ne
Hermione found herself back on the streets of Waldweirness-on-Thames a short time later. Her excursion to intercept the suspicious person stalking Eileen's house had ended in a sort of truce with the woman's long-lost son.
A son, who had frustratingly been insistent that he not reveal himself to his mother.
Hermione fumed silently as she took the long walk back, having opted to pop to the gates of the residential area rather than directly to Eileen's terraced abode.
She'd tried to argue with him—had tried to make him see reason, but indeed it seemed Nagini had raddled his brains... or maybe he would have been this obstinate anyway. She couldn't be entirely sure.
When she'd parted from him, she'd asked his plans for his mother. She'd even guaranteed that they could meet in secrecy, that no Aurors, Harry or otherwise, need be involved. She could escort the man to and from his mother's house, and he could conduct his relationship with the woman in that way, going forward.
All of these reasonable requests and recommendations he ignored entirely.
No. What would the man do?
He'd insisted, quite rigidly, that he would maintain his cover as one of her paranoia-prone residents, and had sworn her to a wand oath that she wouldn't reveal his true identity to his mother until he was ready. To what end he imagined his readiness, Hermione couldn't be rightly sure.
Stupid, silly man.
Doubtless Eileen would be heartbroken when and if she ever realized that she could have had her son back in her life earlier. Without question—Hermione would shoulder the blame for being sworn to secrecy by the taciturn Potions Master. But he'd not given a fig about that. Whether Hermione lost her increasingly valuable friendship with Eileen Snape was of absolutely no consequence.
It was selfish of him, and she was furious, but she had little recourse. She'd taken the oath, thinking that he was considering presenting himself to her in his own way, but quite soon. She now realized that he had no intention of revealing himself in an immediate fashion, and she suspected she understood why, though perhaps Snape himself didn't know so.
He hadn't the faintest clue what his mother had revealed about himself to her on their numerous meetings. That the last time they had seen each other she had torn him to shreds over his lack of judgement in joining with Tom Riddle's crew. Hermione had been spending enough time with her friend's toddler children to recognise the behaviour: he was behaving like a recalcitrant child.
He was afraid of her. He was afraid to face the wrath of his mother, but still wanted her—badly enough to fake being someone else entirely—just to be in her presence without her, likely justified, censure.
She'd almost called him a coward to his face but had lately remembered Harry's account of the time he had done so himself and Snape's rather... colourful reaction.
Perhaps in this Snape was being a bit cowardly: but she didn't feel that she'd yet earned the right to call him one outright. Afterall, it didn't ring true. He wasn't a coward in the truest sense of the word.
There must be a way to force his hand... there had to be a way of expediting the process...
But she didn't get a chance to think of anything before she arrived at Eileen's door and undid the wards, announcing her presence with a knock and a loud call through the wood-grain to identify herself.
She found James and Eileen precisely where she had left them, though at this point James was brandishing a plush dragon that roared magical lurex flames (a gift from Charlie Weasley, no doubt) and Eileen was feigning fainting like a damsel, James leaping up to help after she swooned dramatically.
"O' vile devil! O' thou art a wicked wyrm!"
"I save, Ant Leen!"
"O' brave knight! O' help—help!"
James clumsily picked up his toy wooden sword (carved to resemble the same one his father had wielded to save his mother so many years ago in the Chamber of Secrets) and brought it down on the poor Hebridean Black he'd dropped in his transition from playing the dragon to playing the saviour.
The poor thing let out a piteous enchanted wail, and James raised both fists in the air, triumphant.
"You're free!"
At this, Eileen sat up in her kneeling position and laughed heartily, ruffling the small boy's auburn hair with fondness. "Aye, lad. Well done. Now I need you to wrangle that dragon into his pen for me, think you can do that?"
James nodded with glee as Eileen climbed, slowly and with the groaning one would expect from an elderly woman who'd spent too much time in a leg-locked position, to her feet. She approached Hermione and the two witches leaned against a wall in the entrance to confer quietly with one another while James Potter played, quite impervious to reality.
"So who was he then? I saw him take off running..."
Hermione sighed deeply and wished she could do something to bless herself with luck in this sure to be ill-fated endeavour. She'd never been a church goer, but had she been, she may have crossed herself. There but for the grace of God, I go.
"He was one of ours. A bit paranoid. Not a bad sort. One of the other ladies had checked him in a week ago, and he'd lost his way and forgotten the way to his house. I had to take him back to the office to find out where he belonged, and then it took a bit longer for him to settle, but I think he's happy enough now."
The older witch sagged with relief. "I thought it might have been one of Tom's boys—"
Oh if only you knew. Hermione thought.
"No, poor fellow. Just lost his way. Anyway, I've got about fifteen houses to get to and am behind schedule. Have you and James been having fun?"
At this, Eileen flashed a quite genuine smile. "Little lad's been keeping me on my toes! He's been a lark, a real treat. I think we're both enjoying it. It's no trouble at all to watch him, he's at least fairly well behaved. Gets into less trouble than my boy used to—he was a lot sneakier. And he was happy enough when the dragon would get to kill the damsel," she said with a sad smile and an indulgent roll of her eyes. "Far less chivalrous, he was."
With an inelegant snort Hermione reddened, both from the hilarity of the comparison and from the shame of her secret. "I'd imagine."
She turned behind her to heft up the two bags she'd brought with her and turned back to Snape's mother. "You're sure you'll be alright,"
"Ach," Eileen almost sneered, though curiously, with a smile, "Begone with you," she said, taking a playful swipe at the brunette's shoulder. "You're liable to start insulting me if you keep asking me that. We're fine."
Bestowing upon the witch a grateful smile, Hermione turned herself out the door and began her short trek down the terraces.
She barely could remember, by the end of the day when she ultimately returned to Eileen, how her visits had gone, her mind having been occupied elsewhere. She felt ashamed over it, feeling it to be a dereliction of her duty.
By six o' clock when she'd gathered James into her arms to apparate back to her apartment she was furiously trying to replay her visits in her mind, anything to be able to find crucial details she may have missed about any of her clients in case they should be needed later.
It was rather useless, really. Her mind felt as porous as a sponge, any memories she may have imprinted from her rounds falling out the bottom like water through a sieve.
Stupid, stupid Snape. She cursed him silently, in her own head, fearful that otherwise James would return to his parents' care with a rather more colourful vocabulary than he'd had before he'd left.
They'd not thank her for that.
She managed to keep her tongue compliant throughout the remainder of the week, James taking up residency on his enchanted quilt besides her desk for the duration.
She hadn't cause to visit her charges again—the other witches in her office had fairly insisted on taking over grocery duties themselves in order to relieve her, which she wasn't entirely satisfied with. If anything, she felt a minor bit of regret that she hadn't been able to allow Eileen to babysit once more: the woman clearly benefited from the fun as much as James himself did. She felt ill equipped to entertain him while she was taken up with paperwork, and he had started to ask about the old witch, wondering aloud every few hours if they'd see "Ant Leen" that day.
By the time Saturday rolled around and she was due to drop the tot back at his grandmother's, she was feeling entirely wrung out.
She'd avoided the Burrow for some time, though she had a standing invitation to Sunday dinner with all of the in-laws. Perhaps it was the knowledge that Molly had always expected her to become a formal member of the brood, but she knew in reality that it didn't mean she was any less welcome...
No. It was more a sense of humiliation, though she could hardly tease out the knots that undergirded the emotion. It'd been as such ever since she had awakened her own parents and they'd all returned to England together. She was no longer Harry or Ron's school friend... well—in some sense she always would be—but they were no longer "her boys." With her own parents awake, and with her schooling finished, and with no marital claim on an actual Weasley male: perhaps she simply felt that she didn't belong. That it should be shameful for her to feel more connected to the Weasley matriarch than to her own mother. That it was indeed truly shameful for her to suspect that Arthur regarded her with more familial affection than her own father did...
But that could all have been nonsense.
In any case, coming with James, knowing that he would get to spend the night with his beloved grandparents and probably a handful of his aunts and uncles before Harry and Ginny returned for their children in the morning gave her enough of a pretense to not be embarrassed to show up and sup with the family for the evening.
Besides, any sense of shame she herself may have felt over her preference for the Weasleys was her own, clearly. Molly greeted her as she had ever done.
"Hermione Granger, bring your skinny self and that little lamb over to me this instant!" The woman beamed over the door: the top half opened to air out the cooking smoke.
Taking only as long as it took to cast a stasis charm on whatever delicious course she was preparing, the greying ginger woman threw open the second half of the door and rushed over, hurriedly wiping her hands on her pinafore before embracing both she and James in a loving bear hug.
"Is that James, dearest?" Hermione heard Arthur call from a distance. He must be making his way out from further in the Burrow to meet them.
"It's my grandbaby and my prodigal baby!" she fairly sung back to him; her voice amused. Before she released the two, she'd pressed a series of kisses to the squirming toddler's forehead and face and had managed to place a well-aimed kiss on Hermione's brow to boot.
Hermione blushed to her curly hair-roots with pleasure, wanting to sulk but finding herself curiously unable to do anything other than to smile in spite of herself, to which Molly gave her a knowing smirk.
"You'll always be my daughter, dear." She offered, whispering to make it feel more conspiratorial.
As soon as James began to fuss between the two women, Molly hefted the toddler onto one hip and led the trio into the warm Burrow.
"And what did you and your Maio get up to, my little love? Did you have fun this week?" She asked conversationally, carrying him over the the old cooker to manage both cooking and baby talk all at once.
"Yeah..." He said, short on words when far more interesting things were happening below on the range top.
"Tell me, did you behave for Maio at work?"
Hermione settled herself into a seat, content to watch the two together and to wave a silent hello to Arthur as he helped himself to his customary seat at the head of the table, watching his wife and grandson with adoring eyes.
"Nice and good, Grammy. Maio said Nice and Good."
"I'm sure you were—what did you play?"
"We watched a Loony, Grammy!"
Molly paused, throwing a curious look over her shoulder at Hermione who had hidden her face behind handfuls of her hair.
"Is that so..."
"James," Hermione broke in behind her hair, "I told you 'Loony' wasn't a nice thing to say—"
"Oh yeah!" he giggled with evident delight. "Maio played seek and find with the... with the..."
"Just a man, James." Hermione said, tiredly. She no longer hid herself, knowing that she'd have to explain her actions to James' bewildered and worried grandparents after the fact. James wasn't doing her any favours, little devil.
"Maio played tag—and then the man ran really fast!"
"And where were you during this game of tag, James?" Molly asked, her brows pinched in worry.
"With Ant Leen."
Instead of asking who the boy could be talking about, Molly turned an expectant eye at the week's babysitter.
"Eileen. He means Aunt Eileen... Snape."
Both older Weasleys gave a conjoined gasp of horror, Molly clutching her grandbaby against her torso with more force than necessary.
"I asked Harry first, Molly... he's met Eileen. She lives in Waldweirness, and she's completely harmless. Harry... well... he wasn't exactly thrilled, but he agreed I could drop James off with her while I took groceries to the residents."
"She's not... she doesn't have—"
"She's not a Death Eater, no. Otherwise she'd be in chains and manacles like any other." Or more likely dead. Both Weasleys knew this to be the actual case, but there was no need to say it so explicitly in front of a child.
Molly didn't seem to know how to respond, whether to ask more of James or to go directly to Hermione. In the end, her curiosity won out, and she knew that Hermione would likely have to clarify any of James' statements anyway. "Was Severus her only child?"
"Yes. She hadn't seen him since he was seventeen and took the Mark." Hermione said to her knees, twisting her hands together under the table.
In the end, it seemed that Molly's motherly principals had won her out. "Poor dear... she must miss him terribly."
"She does, yes."
"And does she—"
"She knows he's dea... er... gone. She didn't know that he had been a spy, however. I told her... I think it's been at least some comfort."
Molly sighed and looked at her husband. "Well, I suppose that does explain how Albus ended up in one of Severus' old baby sweaters."
Hermione gave a tight smile. "Yes, Eileen gifted it to Harry after his visit. I'd told her that he named Albus after her son. I guess I'm glad that Harry actually dressed him in it."
Molly nodded. "I was curious, it wasn't one of mine... and it seemed far older. But it was well made."
Arthur was nodding with almost uncomfortably earnest sympathy. "Always was fond of Severus... though I distrusted him as much as the rest of us did after... well we know after what. But he wasn't a bad sort."
After this there came a few moments of silence. They could have been awkward, but instead, Hermione felt as if they were moments of silence for a fallen man. A fallen hero.
That was before she remembered her ire and extreme irritation at the very alive, erstwhile Headmaster and Head of Slytherin, Severus Snape. Fucking bastard.
It was one thing to hide himself from the world to avoid unjust prosecution. To allow the Weasley's to mourn his loss, given they weren't well acquainted with him. It was another thing entirely to allow his elderly and quite alone mother to wallow in regret and sorrow for the rest of her earthly days—never knowing that her son had neither been lost to her, nor was he a faithless, evil sycophant for the Dark Lord.
At least Hermione had been able to disabuse her of one of the notions.
"What did you do with Aunt Eileen while Hermione was working, James?" Arthur asked, his kind eyes showing genuine interest.
"I save her from the dragon!"
"Ohhh! How brave of you!" Molly crowed with pride, she pecked his little auburn head and turned once more to Hermione, "He means with his toy dragon and—"
"And the 'Sword of Gryffindor', yes," Hermione grinned, giving air-quotes. "When I came back, he was quite valiantly slaying the beast to save a damsel—Eileen said he was very chivalrous. More than Snape was at that age, apparently."
At this both the older Weasleys laughed, likely because of their near three decades of playing make-believe with children.
"Fred and George never saved me from the dragon either, little rascals," Molly recalled, her eyes showing fondness for the distant memory. "They always split up and one of them would distract me, pretending to save 'the damsel' and the other would grab the treasure chest—then they'd both make away with it.
"And Charlie!" Molly shook her head, looking almost irritated, "That boy just wanted to be a dragon. Still does. He had more fun acting like he was roasting me alive."
Laughing heartily, Hermione relaxed into her chair, smiling a contented smile. She could listen to stories of the Weasley children for hours, their antics had all the workings, and even the intrigues, of a thousand small comedies.
Before long, dinner was served, and Arthur had gone to wake Albus up from his nap, bringing the groggy infant to sit with the four of them as they ate their supper.
"No one else tonight, Molly?" Hermione asked around a spoonful of soup. It was held aloft in the air so it could cool before she scorched her mouth on a too-hot potato.
"Nope, just the five of us." She returned, looking rather wistful. "It's all for the better, I suppose. I wouldn't want them all living here with their families. Merlin knows I wouldn't have wanted to live at Arthur's mother's house after we'd been married."
Arthur chuckled, "A nightmare, that would have been."
Molly turned a bit red in the face. "No doubt. A bit of a nightmare, she was. Heaven rest her soul." She added the last bit hastily, looking nervous as if she might be struck down for speaking ill of her dead mother-in-law.
Her husband merely shrugged. "Don't worry yourself, my dear. I know who my mother was, and I know her faults."
"I know, Arthur, but still, I shouldn't."
"If you say so." He replied with an even shrug.
The rest of dinner passed amiably, with both the senior Weasleys asking Hermione about her job, the residents, the so-called "loony," (whom Hermione was still quite cross with), and about her week with James, which, with the exception of their day with Eileen, was rather uninteresting.
After they'd all made it most of the way through their pork medallions with roast apples, Albus began fussing for his bottle, which Molly warmed with her wand and Arthur insisted on giving to him. He paced a lap or two around the kitchen before drifting into the sitting room with his little bundle suckling happily from the rubber nipple.
The two women cleaned up the dishes and set them to washing in the sink. Magic, indeed, was a wonderful thing that allowed them to sit and chat at the table rather than to supervise, excepting when the two boar-bristle brushes began fencing one another and throwing suds into the air.
"What has you looking so glum, Hermione." Molly finally asked, her eyes not even on the brunette but on the needlecraft she held in her hands. "And don't you bother to argue, you've seemed preoccupied all evening."
Hermione frowned at the woodgrain, tracing the patterns absently with her finger. She studied James, who was babbling to his Hebridean Black now, apparently no longer seeing it as a dragon but as a special stuffed friend in whom he could confide.
Her soul felt heavy with the weight of Snape's secret.
"I have a rough case at work... it's... it has me questioning things, I suppose. Questioning what the right thing to do is."
"You've never had a hard time knowing right from wrong in the past," Molly offered gently, her hand bringing the needle and thread up all the way and pulling it tight against the fabric.
"I haven't, no. I know what the right thing to do here is. But I can't do it. I... I took a wand oath, and I'm such an idiot, Molly... I should have realized that the oath was to make it so I couldn't tell..."
"Couldn't tell what to whom?"
Hermione sighed, scrubbing at her tired eyes with both hands. "It's all confidential, you understand?"
"Of course, dear." Molly said with a solemn nod. In that moment Hermione felt irrationally jealous of Ginny, growing up with a mother to whom she could actually confide things. Oh well, it was what it was.
"Well," she began, heaving a deep breath, There by the grace of God, Hermione. "I have a resident, whose child has reached out to me—the resident is quite unaware that the child is around—my client thought that this child..." and she hesitated, not wanting to implicate Eileen or even bloody Snape, "thought their child had abandoned them. But the child... the child wants to be involved with the client, and swore me to secrecy.
"I feel bloody awful for both of them to be honest with you," Hermione continued rubbing the back of her neck. "There's a lot of bad blood in the past... and knowing how his childhood went, I don't entirely blame him... But he's behaving like a little kid still... wanting his parent but too afraid of getting in trouble with my client to reveal himself. I guess I just wonder what I should do, Molly. I imagined you might have something helpful."
Molly clucked, "Gor, that's a sad state of affairs."
"Don't I know it."
"I would insist that you tell your client about this child, but you bound yourself to the point where that's not possible."
"Uuuuuuurrg, yes I did," Hermione groaned loudly and into the wood of the table, gathering her curls around to bury her face in once more.
"All you can do is to try and make it right, dear. Encourage him to speak to his father and to tell the truth—I can't speak for how your client will feel, however. If it were me, I'd be quite furious." Hermione made a small sigh of relief. If Molly presumed it was a father and son, she certainly wouldn't suspect that the prodigal child in question was one Severus Snape.
"So would I," Hermione moaned into the table.
Molly gently tugged on of her hands away from her face and patted the back of it soothingly. "There there, dear."
"Dere, dere, Maio." James parroted, looking sad for her, though he had no way to understand the situation.
Raising her head, Hermione took a brief second to smile at each of them. "I'm afraid it will undermine all the trust I've built up. It's been a real process creating a workable relationship with this person. I'm afraid there's every reason to hate me after keeping the son's secret."
Molly heaved a deep sigh and regarded her with sad, soulful eyes. "You may be right, Hermione. As I said earlier, I can't imagine I'd react well to the circumstances. But hopefully, given time, and a good explanation—and I presume that means it ever all comes out in the open,"
"Quite right. It may never. And that'd be far worse." The social worker agreed.
"Too true. So, I'd hope and pray on there being a reconciliation between the two. If your client is already in care at Waldweirness, and has an adult child, I presume he's elderly already." Molly looked to be on the verge of tears, and Hermione considered that she was probably thinking on Fred, and the years she had lost with Percy. "Life's too short. Even for our kind.
"Given time, and a good explanation," Molly repeated, poking her needle into its next planned descent, "perhaps he will come around. I want to think that I would."
"Play my music like I died! (To the DJ)
Like the N9na ain't alive! (Quit the replay)
Like I took the long ride! (On my D-day)
Like everybody love my music
And the whole world cried
Like having super pneumonia without taking my z-pack
Like me off in a C function flamed up with a B hat
And I'm pattin' my pockets yellin' "Where's my piece at?"
Like an ink session getting a Snake and the Bat tat
Got a gun n' kicked in the face and I ran to the back "Skat!"
Through the alley under a ladder tripped over a black cat
Fell in the street got hit by a Toyota with a hatchback"
Like I Died (reprise) – Tech N9ne