Will you still love me
When I'm no longer young and beautiful?
Will you still love me
When I got nothing but my aching soul?
I know you will, I know you will
I know that you will
Will you still love me when I'm no longer beautiful?
'Young and Beautiful', Lana del Rey
Remus Lupin sat on a threadbare couch in the cottage that his parents had left him. It was an unimpressive place, surrounded by tall, dense trees. The war was over, and his closest friends all lay dead. He only had one hope keeping him sane as he was driven forward by events that had happened some twenty years in his past, and yet hadn't yet occurred.
If he closed his eyes, the wind whistling through the dilapidated roof sounded almost like her voice.
"If you can wait for me, Remus, you can have me."
"I'll be yours again as soon as this all sorts out."
"If you want me when this is all said and done—if you can forgive me—I will be yours for as long as we both shall live."
Stretching out to lie down on the couch, he threw an arm over his eyes to shield them from the sunlight streaming in through a cracked and dirty window. Of course he'd forgiven her, and of course he still wanted her. But he wasn't who she would have gotten used to him being.
He wasn't young any longer—not young enough for her, at any rate. The stress of the past twenty years and his lunar malady had ensured that he looked far older. A new web of scars crisscrossed his body, his finances were in dire straits, and he lived in the last of the ramshackle cottages that he'd lived in as a boy.
He still loved her with every fiber of his being, but he didn't know what he'd have to offer her when he finally saw her again. He'd been holed up in the cottage since shortly after the Final Battle, knowing that the time that he'd see her again would be drawing near. He'd been afraid to stray out much, knowing that he had to allow her to come to him. It really wouldn't do for him to run into her before she came looking for him. She'd told him that she'd come and find him, and he wasn't sure when that day would be.
But when it came, he would be waiting for her.
He'd promised.
No doubt she would recognize him as Remus Lupin, but would he still be the man who would give her a jumper three sizes too big when they went for walks in the autumn? Would she see him as the man who made sure she kept herself healthy when working herself into a tizzy? Would he still be the man who always tasted of chocolate and the air after a rainfall?
A tapping at the window caused him to sit up quickly, right hand quickly finding his wand. A quick flicker of hope ran through him. Was it her?
No. It was a nondescript barn owl, and he could tell from the envelope it held that it was from Hogwarts.
Soon. She'd call for him soon.
Unfolding the letter, he was pleased to see that it was from Minerva. He was glad to read that she'd been making progress in replacing staff, and that the reconstruction on the building was going well. And, if he would please, could he meet her for tea later that week?
He couldn't help but smile. Minerva McGonagall had always held a special place in his heart, especially after the kindness and generosity she'd shown him when he was a boy.
He quickly responded in the affirmative, and lay back down on the couch.
The memory of her hand in his hair, the timbre of her laugh, the glint in her eyes when he had teased her. No, it wouldn't be long now before he'd see the only woman he'd ever loved again.
…
Hermione looked around her new living space, mouth slightly open. She'd be grumpy all the time too, if she had to leave a room this comfortable and spend all day in the potions classroom.
It appeared that the fireplace here was somehow connected to the one in her office, as a fire was already roaring in the fireplace. Above the fire was yet another large frame, in which Severus Snape was watching her observe the space.
The floors were a deep, dark wood, but a large rug covered nearly all of it. A single chair sat facing the fire here, and the walls were once again lined with tall bookshelves. A quick glance told her that these books were of a more entertaining variety than the ones outside. A large collection of fiction and lighter reading, from both wizarding and muggle sources, adorned most of the wall space in the room.
Another desk sat in here, with just a couple of books and a typewriter on it. She was surprised to see a typewriter in Professor Snape's room, of all places. Walking towards it with the purpose of checking to see if it worked, she was shocked into stillness.
Next to the typewriter sat a cup of tea, infuser still lying on the saucer, and liquid up to the halfway mark in the cup. It was this cup that finally hit to Hermione the fact that these were his rooms. His life was here. His past. What he'd expected his future to be. His cold cups of tea.
She walked over to the chair next to the fireplace and sat down in it, curling her feet up beneath her. She looked up into the painting of Professor Snape, mind whirling like a Dervish.
"Miss Granger, how much do you know about Roman history?"
She was surprised that he had spoken first, and even more surprised at the seeming non sequitur.
"Well I know a bit, sir. I'm not sure what you're really asking."
He gestured past her, and she turned in her chair. In an alcove facing the fireplace was a large statue, appearing to be Roman. "That, Miss Granger, is Septimius Severus. Do you know much of him?"
She wracked her brain, and was surprised to find herself at a general lack of knowledge. "Not much, sir. I've seen his triumphal arch in Rome, but I can't think of much having to do with his reign."
The professor nodded as though he had expected that, and rested on elbow on the arm of his chair, placing his chin on his palm.
"I can't say I'm surprised. Many don't know much about the man. However, I think you'll find this little history lesson to be quite… enlightening."
In the fervor since the war, it had been a while since Hermione had been able to just sit and learn. Despite his cantankerousness, Severus Snape was one of the most intelligent men that she had ever met. She was very much looking forward to whatever he had to say.
"Septimius Severus was born around 145 AD in North Africa, the son of a Roman and an African. He was intelligent and ambitious, and began his career early. In 193 AD he entered Rome with his army and disbanded the Praetorians, replacing them with veteran fighters and centurions from his own legions, making himself ruler. However, Severus had two rivals to his claim - Decius Clodius Albinus, a governor of Britannia, and Lucius Pescennius Niger, governor of Syria."
As Snape continued on with the story of Septimius Severus, Hermione found herself of two minds. One, she was absolutely fascinated by the historical aspect of what he had to say. But on the other hand, she could quite clearly see where this was going, and found herself getting rather uneasy.
"When he marched into Italy, Severus had declared Albinus his junior emperor, and thus was able to avoid conflict with him for the time being. Albinus and Severus, however, didn't agree on the amount of power that Severus ought to have, and Albinus only narrowly escaped being assassinated by one of Severus' messengers when he learned that Albinus was making moves against him.
"After a series of successful campaigns against Parthians, Arab tribesmen, and Mesopotamian people, Severus marched west and went against Albinus. The rivals fought an enormous battle, and while Severus' army was broken, Albinus' army became fatally disorganized whilst chasing them. Severus was able to rally his men who turned around and destroyed the pursuing soldiers of Albinus. Albinus committed suicide rather than fall into Severus' hands, and Severus became the undisputed master of the Roman empire.
"He was a brilliant man, a good organizer and administrator, and one of the finest military men of Imperial Rome, but also a brutal man, if not bloodthirsty. His wars and battles were characterized by vast numbers of casualties on both sides. He does appear, according to historical record, to have been a very capable and efficient ruler - if a cold one. Do you see my point, Miss Granger?"
Hermione nodded, her body feeling cold. In so many ways, Severus Snape's story closely mirrored that of Septimius Severus. She wondered how much of that was by design and how much was happenstance.
"How—how did he die, sir?"
Severus Snape chuckled wryly, a sound that she'd never heard come from him without any malice. "Surrounded by children, with words of the thing he loved most on his lips. At least the children on his deathbed were his own, and the thoughts in his head were of his Army, not of his wife, Julia. Now—I believe you have some moving in to do."
…
The next few days went quickly for Hermione. She decided to keep nearly all of Snape's books on the shelves, with the exception of ones that she'd already read or already owned. Rather than throwing those out, she simply boxed them up and banished the boxes to the storage unit which held much of the furniture from her parents' first house.
His clothing had been given to the house elves to use as they saw fit, with the exception of his frock coats. She had packaged those and stored them as well for reasons she couldn't quite identify. It just didn't feel right to her to throw away the item of clothing that was just so quintessentially him.
She was able to keep most of the furniture, as she thought it all fit quite well in the room and was all comfortable and well maintained. For not the first time since the end of the war, she was thankful that she'd moved back in with her parents instead of letting a flat somewhere—it was exhausting enough getting rid of what of Snape's things she didn't keep, and she had no idea how she would have dealt if she'd had a large amount of her own things to try to integrate.
It was the cleaning of the potions classroom that took the longest. She spent an entire day giving each cauldron a thorough washing. That needed to be done without magic to avoid contamination, and with multiple sizes of cauldrons and dozens of each size, it was no small task.
The books were repaired and stray marks all removed. At some point, the Half Blood Prince's copy of the book had made its way from the Room of Requirement back to the potions classroom. She made sure that this copy was relegated not to her office, but to her own personal quarters.
She had saved for last the task that she least looked forward to. The storage cupboard. With a carefully cast Bubble Head charm, Hermione checked out the room, dismayed at what she saw. The order that had been so carefully implemented and maintained during Professor Snape's tenure was long gone. While the shelves hadn't been trashed, per se, Slughorn didn't seem to spend the same amount of time ensuring that all jars were stocked, the preservation spells intact, and in the proper place. Many jars were empty, many were in the wrong place, some completely without labels, and many showed signs of spoilage.
Another whole day was spent just on the reorganization of the cupboard, never mind the inventorying. Each jar needed to be cleaned, the contents checked for freshness, label rewritten, and then alphabetized according to type of ingredient.
More surprisingly, Professor Snape had made a habit of loitering around the frames in her quarters, office, and classroom. He made good company as she cleaned and sorted, making fun of her with surprisingly little animosity as she combed through all of the physical remnants of his life. While there was still a tinge of formality to their dealings—they were still 'Professor Snape' and 'Miss Granger'—there was a new joviality to their conversations that had been simply impossible when she was his student.
As she drafted a list of ingredients that she would need to buy from apothecaries, the list of ingredients to be collected from the forest, and the list that Professor Sprout could provide, Snape offered her tips on how and where the ingredients she needed could be found, and the best ways to harvest them. Some would need to collected at dawn, others at exactly midnight, and a particularly annoying one would need to wait until the third Tuesday in August at 3:19 pm.
Finally, the day came for her to make her way to the forest. She headed out around 9 am, a light cloak around her shoulders, leather gloves on her hands, and basket in arms. Snape had told her of a meadow towards the center of the forest that was filled with goosegrass and lovage. These were both best when picked before noon, and so she hoped that she'd be able to make her way there before the sun reached its peak. He had told her of a trail that wound toward the meadow, and all she would need to do was to follow it until the fork, then continue down the left side for another half mile or so.
She had spent very little time in the forest during the day, and was surprised at how different it seemed. It was more vibrant than she considered a forest called "Forbidden" to have any right to be. The leaves and the flowers that lined the trail lightened the scenery more than she could ever recall. Finally, she reached the fork in the trail and continued down the left side, surprised to see it make almost a one hundred and eighty-degree bend, leading her almost back the way she'd came, but at an angle close to parallel.
She was about to turn back and try to rewalk the path when it veered over towards the right, and she began to go perpendicular to her previous path. Feeling more confident in her ability to follow directions, she carried on. The sounds of the flora and fauna of the forest were loud in her ears, and she took deep breaths of the damp, earthy air.
As she passed over a root sticking up and out of the path, something unexpected occurred. All noise of the forest ceased. She hadn't gone deaf, she could still hear her own slightly ragged breathing and a high pitched ringing. There were no birds chirping, no footsteps, no scurrying, no scuttling. She took one hesitant step backwards, and the noise returned. Another step forward, the ringing returned.
Well, she thought, Severus Snape didn't say anything about that.
She took a few more steps forward, when the wind picked back up, the force of it blowing her hair into her face. The ground began to shake below her, and she tripped over a rock, a branch, a root, a something, and pitched onto the cool, hard ground.
From the dirt on the trail before her, a stone archway had appeared. It was completely free standing, but looked as though there once could have been some sort of structure based around it. Remembering Snape's repeated warnings not to deviate from the trail, she realized that she would have no choice but to go straight through it.
She took a step towards the arch, and the ringing in her ears seemed to almost get louder. Her legs were shaking, and for not the first time in her life she wondered why she'd been placed in Gryffindor. Knowing what Ron and Harry would have to say about that, she squared her shoulders and took a deep breath.
She needed to go through the arch. As soon as she lifted her foot to take another step in that direction, something hit her hard from behind. Eyes flying wide, arms in front of her to catch her fall, she flew threw the arch.
She did not land on the ground on the other side.
…
Within moments, the ground began to shake again as a strong wind blew through the trees. The arch crumbled into dust, and the wind scattered the dust to all corners of the forest. The noises of the forest returned.
…
Remus Lupin walked up the path leading from the main gates to the front entrance of Hogwarts. As he began up the front steps, the doors opened and his old head of house stepped outside. She stretched out her arms and pulled him to her.
She would never admit it, but Remus Lupin had been one of Minerva McGonagall's favorite students. She certainly felt for the poor boy due to his affliction, and had always been impressed with the way he managed to stay on top of his studies considering everything else that he was forced to endure. She ushered him up to her office and poured him a cup of tea.
Sitting in this office, teacup in hand, Remus almost felt as though he were sixteen again.
"How have you been, lad?"
Remus smiled at the woman who had been almost like another mother to him and drank some of the tea. Her Earl Gray had just a hint of lavender in it, and he had been unable to find any anywhere else with the same proportion of herb to leaf. Just the smell had memories rushing back to him.
Two heads bent over a desk in McGonagall's classroom, their hands next to each other on the table top. They were facing each other, and two matching teacups sat on the table between them.
Lavender and Earl Gray.
Their legs were so close under the table that he could feel her body heat. While his eyes continued to scan the book in front of him, he was too focused on her scent and the electricity between them to focus on the assignment McGonagall had given them. He looked up sharply when he felt the soft feathers of her quill tap the back of his hand. She met his eyes, gave him a brilliant smile that lit up her face, and then went back to her note taking.
"I've been… well, I suppose," he told his former coworker. "I've been making due."
She gave him a sad sort of smile, and he knew that her mind was heading down a path parallel to his own. "I'm sure that the waiting has been hard, Remus. I don't think that you'll have to wait much longer, now. I have a feeling that she'll make her way back to you sometime soon."
He chuckled and snagged a biscuit off the tea tray before replying. "Well thank you for the assurances, Sybil. How has business been since your rise in rank?"
Minerva shook her head and made a movement that could almost have been described as an eye roll. "Business has been stressful. I'm still looking for a Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, you know. All of the students spoke highly of you in the past. If it had been up to the students and the faculty, you would have stayed on board. We have a new Board of Governors, and I don't believe that they'll be a problem if you decide you'd like to return. I know I would be more than thrilled to have you back."
"Do you think that'll be safe?" He wanted to say yes—oh how he wanted to say yes. But he could still remember the looks of fear in the eyes of the Trio when Snape had stepped in front of them to protect their lives.
"I have no doubt that you will be able to manage your situation responsibly. I hired a new Potions Mistress late last week who I know will be able to stay on top of guaranteeing you have a steady supply of Wolfsbane."
He was nervous. He had almost hurt people in the past—people who meant the world to him. But if Minerva McGonagall thought he should come back, then maybe she knew what she was talking about. Anyway, Hogwarts was as good a place as any for her to come looking for him.
He knocked back almost all of the rest of his tea before swirling the dregs in the cup and inverting the cup over the saucer.
"You know that's all claptrap, Remus. Whatever those leaves tell you, I know that you are a wonderful professor and the children would be lucky to have you. You've survived two wars—clearly you know something about defending yourself against the dark."
He sent her a half smile, turning the cup over and looking inside.
A chair. What looked like a frog. An ivy leaf.
An unexpected guest. Success stemming from a job change. A reliable friend.
He sent her a full smile, feeling ironically reassured, despite his skepticism in the validity of divination as an art form.
"Alright, Minerva. I'll do it."
She returned his smile, looking decades younger. "Oh perfect. I couldn't have hoped for a better outcome of this meeting. Now, before you head out, I have some prying to do."
At this, his eye brows shot up, a slight chuckle escaping him involuntarily. He was used to the headmaster of Hogwarts prying, but this was the first time he'd been given advance notice.
"How long has it been, Remus? How long since she left?"
He didn't even need to think about his answer.
"Nineteen years, come September 19th."
"Years went by, Remus, where I had thought she was just another casualty of that blasted war. Once I learned what had actually happened, or pieced together most of it, my relief for you was at the forefront of my mind. You deserve happiness. I've had the pleasure of knowing you for twenty-seven of your thirty-eight years. If any man I have ever met deserves that kind of love in his life, it would be you."
As Remus went to answer, a shrill whistle came from a clock on the wall behind Minerva. The clock was somewhat similar to that in Molly Weasley's kitchen, only this one provided the Headmistress with the whereabouts and safety of the faculty. The hand labeled 'Hermione Granger' began to spin wildly and showed no signs of stopping.
"Well Remus, I'd say that it looks like she's making her way back to you. And did I forget to mention? She's the new potions mistress."
