A/N: Thanks to everyone who's reviewed this recently, praise is definitely what keeps me going! I'm sorry if the POV changes are confusing sometimes – unfortunately, the formatting trick I use on AO3 in the hope that it makes it clearer doesn't work on here because I haven't fully figured out this website yet.

Also, thanks to the guest reviewer who pointed out my maths mistake in the first chapter! I also changed another minor thing about it because of something you pointed out, so thanks for that as well.

Anyway. Onwards and so on.

Chapter 5: Over

She had avoided returning to the Common Room for as long as she could after her practical exam, but it was almost half past eleven and she knew she would be in trouble if she was caught roaming the castle. With a sigh, she scooted of the ledge by the window of the abandoned classroom and began her way back.

It had been an utterly weird day and Hermione was not ready to deal with the consequences of her actions. She had been determined to stay on the sidelines for as long as she was here, to keep her head down. Instead she had now not only been part of a massive public spectacle, she had also caught the attention of James and Lily Potter, Remus Lupin, Sirius Black, Peter Pettigrew and most likely Severus Snape – in short, of almost everyone she had wished to avoid. Going back to the dormitory she shared with Lily Evans made her stomach churn. What would the other girl say to her?

With a sudden pang, she though of Harry and Ron. Moving through the castles alone so very late at night made her miss them more than ever before, though she had kept the longing for them at bay by simply not thinking about them too much so far.

It had been weird and sad to visit Hagrid's without them all the same.

She had not planned to see the Gamekeeper, but after the incident by the lake her feet had carried her there almost automatically. He had been surprised to see her, a completely random student he had never interacted with before, but invited her in nonetheless. It had been awkward and reminded her of her third year. Back then, she had arrived at Hagrid's hut all by herself because Ron and Harry had been shunning her. Now she had had to go there alone because Ron and Harry did not even exist yet.

Would she ever see them again? And if so, how? Who would she be by then? Hermione could already feel herself changing ever so slightly. Her belief that Snape was fundamentally someone they could trust, for example. She had always been firm that if Dumbledore trusted Snape, so should she, that Dumbledore knew something about Snape that proved he was a good person. Today, she had learned that Snape had known exactly how the humiliation he had subjected her and Harry to had felt. She had wondered, briefly, if that hadn't been part of it – that he'd humiliated Harry so much as a sort of payback for the way James had treated him. But it had sounded so weird to her. Snape was – or would be? had been – a grown man by the time he had taught her and Harry.

She turned into the hallway where the portrait of the Fat Lady was and flinched violently. A figure was sitting on the floor across from the portrait in the dimly lit hallway. She drew her wand and very quietly whispered "Lumos."

It was Severus Snape. Hermione stopped for a second to examine him.

Even as he was sitting on the floor, his body was lanky and oddly angular, his bones protruding sharply under his worn and threadbare robes. His hair was greasy and almost damp, his skin already sallow as if he had not seen the sun for weeks. But the sneer of disdain that had seemed permanently etched onto his face both during the scene at the lake and in his future – her past – was gon. Instead his face was entirely blank.

She steeled herself internally, knowing full well that he might attempt to speak to her when she walked past. Snape was not yet the man he would become, he had no idea who she was and probably no reason to dislike her, but the thought of having to interact with him still made her tense and twitchy. She knew his cruelty almost as well as the back of her own hand.

When he heard her, Snape jumped up from the floor and, she noticed, drew his wand. Only when he recognized her did he lower it. "Oh. It's you," he mumbled in a small voice, looking oddly ashamed and angry at the same time

"Yes. The other girl who helped you, the one you didn't insult deeply and cruelly." She couldn't help but feel a little satisfied as he avoided meeting her eyes out of shame. "What do you want here?"

Snape shifted his weight from one foot to the other, looking like twitchy spider.

Asking for help was not something that came easy to him. "Can you just tell Lily I'm here? And that I need to talk to her."

The cold, disdainful look she gave him made his heart sink. "And why would I do that?" The girl asked evenly.

"Just… I need to talk to her. I need to…" He swallowed, his throat oddly tight. "Explain."

She could feel the sudden anger in her entire body. "Explain? What, and you think explaining why you called your friend you one of the worst things in the book is going to do anything? I should have hexed you then and there."

He looked humiliated and also angry, and for a second as if he wanted to hurt her. Then the moment passed. "Please just tell her I'm here. Tell her I won't leave until she talks to me." He took a deep breath. "Please."

She shook her head in disdain. "You're… pathetic, you do know that, right?" Her anger surprised her. "I'll tell her. I'll also tell her that she deserves so much better than your bullshit." She glared and turned around abruptly. For a second, she wondered whether this would be responsible for how her potions teacher had always disliked and mistreated her. Pushing the thought from her mind, she mumbled the password to the Fat Lady's portrait and marched through the portrait hole.

Climbing into the Common Room, she was surprised to find Remus still up, sitting at a table facing the door. He immediately looked up when she came in and smiled warmly but hesitantly. Had he waited for her?

"Granger," he called out. They had not spoken at all since she had arrived at the school, though Remus had been looking for an opportunity. The fact that she seemed to have simply appeared in Dumbledore's office still made him curious. Since he had gotten back to the Common Room after a sneaky trip to Honeydukes with James and heard that she had been introduced to the Gryffindors by McGonagall, he had found himself keeping an eye on her. That Lily had told him that the girl often cried herself to sleep but kept them all at arms' length only made him more curious. It reminded him of his own first year at Hogwarts, the way he had hidden away from his now best friends. Something was going on with her.

She hesitated for a second. Seeing Remus or Sirius always made her apprehensive, while seeing James Potter or Lily Evans just made her sad. But with the two boys, it was different. She knew them already, even if it was only the older, hardened versions, and it felt strange to pretend that she did not. She had never been close to Sirius, his recklessness and anger sort of scared her, but they had spent a lot of time cleaning up Grimmauld Place together and she admired Remus' courage and kindness. They were different now, of course, younger and in much less pain, and they saw her as an equal rather than as a much younger friend of Harry's.

Hermione smiled hesitantly and said "Lupin, right? What's up?" as she stepped closer to his table.

"Yeah. You can call me Remus, by the way." He smiled at her more warmly. "I just wanted to say thank you for stepping in earlier. You didn't have to do that, and I wouldn't have let James take off Snivellus' pants anyway."

She arched an eyebrow at him, her tentative smile fading, and he wondered if he had said something that annoyed her. "I didn't do it so you'd thank me," she said rather coolly. "I did it because it was the right thing to do. You're a prefect, you shouldn't have let it get this far!"

Remus sighed. "Look, if you knew Severus Snape as well as I did, you might understand better why I didn't step in immediately." He remembered the times Snape snuck around the infirmary on days of the full moon, and the way he would sometimes imitate wolf howls when they ran into each other in the hallways or in the library.

Hermione snorted derisively. "I've heard enough to know he's got some twisted opinions. Still, what your friends did was cruel." He wanted to agree and disagree at the same time: James and Sirius had gone too far, but he had also just told them about the wolf howls, and Snape's opinions were more than twisted. However, she spoke before he could. "I need to get to the dormitory. See you 'round, Remus."

Turning away, Granger didn't even wait for him to say goodbye. As he watched her bushy ponytail swing with every step she took, he realized he had the slightest of goosebumps and that as strongly as she had disagreed with him, she had also used his first name. He wondered what she and Lily would say to each other in their dormitory. Maybe Lily would tell him the next time he saw her.

Some part of her had expected something like this to happen for a while, but she had held on to hope that it wouldn't. Their friendship had to be stronger than that, she had assumed. Curled up in her bed, staring out of the window, Lily wondered whether she had missed the crucial moment that would have allowed her to prevent this. Mary and Dorcas would of course tell her that she hadn't, that it was inevitable and she should stop beating herself up.

But they had never known Severus the way she had. She remembered how shy he had been, but also how sweet with her and how enthusiastic about the Wizarding World. He had been her first friend, and for a really long time he had also been her best friend. Then their relationship had started to change and Mary had slowly but surely taken his place. She and Dorcas had tried their best to comfort her and then left her alone when Lily had asked them to. She could still hear them talking, despite the noise blocking charm she had put on her bed, but she could no longer make out the words.

A loud knock on one of the bedposts jolted her out of her thoughts. She sat up, turned around, mumbled a "Yeah, what's up?" and was quite surprised to be face to face with the new girl.

She smiled apologetically at Lily. "I just wanted to let you know that Snape is sitting outside the Common Room."

She felt her heart at the same time sink and soar. Somehow, she had expected that he would try to apologize to her and at the same time not really dared to believe that he would, just in case he had truly stopped caring about their relationship. She also knew that it didn't really matter: there was nothing Severus could say to her that would change her mind. She had defended him in front of her friends for years and argued with Remus, trying to make them see that he was different because she had genuinely believed that he was. Only for him to prove her wrong.

"He said he won't leave until you talk to him," Hermione said and wondered if she shouldn't just have kept that part for herself. Surprisingly, she really didn't want Lily to go outside and talk to Snape.

For a moment, she was tempted to just lie back down and let Severus spend the night in the hallway. At the same time, she felt that it would only prolong the inevitable: he would probably try to apologise again if she didn't go to talk to him now. Lily sighed and swung her legs off the bed. This had been a long time coming.

Mary whirled around when she heard the springs in Lily' bed creaking. "Don't tell me you're really going out there to talk to him," she exclaimed in horror. "Not after what he just called you!"

Lily sighed. "I won't be long. I promise." She smiled at the new girl. "Thanks for telling me. And thanks for stepping in earlier, you didn't have to do that."

For some reason, the girl turned beet red. "It's no big deal," she lied. Lily smiled at her sadly and walked out of the room, leaving her with Mary and Dorcas eyeing her curiously. "It really wasn't," she said meekly, adding a silent 'please stop staring at me'.

"It was, though. You really don't know what a massive arsehole Snivellus is," Mary started to explain. "He and Lily have been friends forever. They grew up together. And he's never once done anything to defend her against any of the other snakes, but she got into so many fights with Potter and Black and the Prewetts for him. He's a spineless little coward, and I hope she punches him in the face."

Hermione sat down on her bed, suddenly floored. "They grew up together?"

Dorcas nodded. "Yeah, they were essentially neighbours. Lily said he told her about Hogwarts and magic and everything."

Mary sat down next to her on Dorcas'S bed, opposite Hermione, and started to play with her wand. "I don't get why she's still so attached to him. She better not believe whatever apology that slimy git cooked up again."

She thought back to another apology Snape had made to Lily at the beginning of the year. They had run into Mulciber and Lestrange in the dungeons, after one of Slughorn's many parties to which she had accompanied James as a favour, and the two Slytherins had disarmed and cornered them. Her stomach still churned when she thought of the threats they had made and the racist drivel they had spewed at her. Snape had come across the situation on his way back from the library, but rather than actually defending them in any meaningful way, he had told Mulciber and Lestrange that the Ravenclaw prefects patrolling the dungeons were about to come their way. When Lily had confronted him about it the next day, Snivellus had claimed that he couldn't have actually defended them without making Mulciber and Lestrange turn on him next, and she had believed him. So Mary had refused to talk to Lily for almost a month.

A couple weeks later Mulciber had tried to ambush and curse her again. The thought of it still made her shiver. It had been a stroke of genius to ask James about the Levicorpus hex after the first incident and she was still proud of her wherewithal to immediately use it when she had heard Mulciber's voice in the empty corridor. She really did not want to imagine what he would have done otherwise.

"Come on, Mary. You saw how upset Lily was today," Dorcas reached out and squeezed her hand. "There's nothing Snivelly could say to make her forgive him. Trust me."

She had been staring at the exit of the empty Common Room for what felt like at forever, tapping her foot and trying to figure out what to say. The seconds seemed to stretch out and speed up at the same time. She had felt so ready when she had left the dormitory, but now Lily wished she was anywhere but here. It felt like a door would close the second she did what she had decided to do. Still, there was no getting around it. Finally, she took a deep breath, shook her hair out of her face and stepped through the portrait.

Severus started talking before he had even scrambled back into an upright position. His voice was small and desperate, high-pitched and unfamiliar to her despite the fact that they had exchanged so many words. She realised that he felt like a complete stranger to her.

"Just spare me," she interrupted him. "I don't care what you have to say for yourself."

"I'm sorry. I – "

"I'm not interested," Lily repeated, folding her arms in front of her chest.

"I'm so sorry!"

"Save your breath," she shot back instantly. "I only came out because Hermione told me you wouldn't leave if I didn't." Lacing every word with anger, she hoped he wouldn't notice how much effort it took her to keep her voice from cracking. She wanted to cry. She wanted to hug Severus and she wanted to push him down a very steep flight of stairs.

"I wouldn't have, and I won't leave until you accept my apology." Lily realized that he looked not just defensive, but almost angry. "I never meant to call you Mudblood, I really didn't, it just –"

"Slipped out?" Her voice was icy and he felt his heart sink. She remembered something Mary had said to comfort her before the practical exam. "If it slipped out that easily, you must have thought it about me quite a few times."

It felt like a slap to the face but before he could defend himself, Lily started talking again. "I've defended you for years, do you know that? None of my friends can understand why I still talk to you. Do you know how much I've argued with Mary about you just this year?" She took a step closer to him, her bright green eyes almost slits. "You and your Pureblood supremacy bullshit. I'm sick of it. Of trying to get through to you. You've chosen your way, I've chosen mine and I can't pretend any more that we can still be friends."

"No – listen, I didn't mean – "

"To call me Mudblood?" She saw him flinch and took another step closer to him. He shrunk away from her, and as sad as it made her, she also felt weirdly triumphant. "You call everyone with parents like mine Mudblood, Snivellus." She laced the word with all the venom she could muster, hoping the hated nickname would hurt him as much as he had hurt her. "Why should I be any different?"

When he struggled to speak, she remembered how resentful he had been when she had dated Frank Longbottom a year ago, how enraged he was that Potter fancied her. How Mary had speculated that it was because Severus himself was in love with her. For a second, she wished he would tell her that but then the thought made her even more angry. Was she the exception he placed on a pedestal while he looked down on everyone else with Muggle parents? How could he be in love with her and still hurt her so much?

"Don't ever speak to me again. I'm done with you." She turned on her heels and, as she took the few steps to the portrait, yearned for him to say anything. He didn't. She walked into the Common Room and collapsed onto the floor, finally allowing the childlike sobs trapped in her chest to escape.