There's no good way to ask the question, but in a rare moment when they're both in the lab together Hermione decides to raise it before she can change her mind. She sets her paring knife down carefully, wipes her hands on her robes and turns to him.
She can see his face in profile, his mouth a thin line as he bends over a book, turning its pages slowly. She stops and relishes the image for just a moment, thinking maybe I can leave it like this. Maybe it's better if I don't know.
But she must.
"You never answered my question, Severus."
He looks up from the book and considers her. She has never been more conscious of her face, her body, and her thoughts than in the instant when Severus Snape makes eye contact.
"Which question?" he asks carefully.
"I asked you—" and here she pauses, takes a breath, hates her wobbling voice— "I asked you if you were trying to bring Lily back to life, too. I know her grave is with Harry's in Godric's Hollow. And I know how you felt about her."
Severus looks at her for another long, silent moment, and then he leans back and closes the book.
"To be perfectly honest with you, Hermione, sometimes I wonder whether the memories of my past have nothing to do with Lily at all, but rather a simpler time. An era in which I was a… a better person."
She goes very quiet. He, in turn, seems to be lost in thought. There's no light down in the lab at night except for the gentle lick of flames beneath the cauldron. The glow of it outlines his jaw and cheekbones in gauzy blue light.
He isn't a particularly beautiful person, Hermione knows. But she is still so drawn to him.
"Am I trying to resurrect Lily Potter? Is that something I desire?" He exhales. "I refuse to lie to you, Hermione. I refuse to lie and say I have not thought of it. Because I have, and you know I have. Because I did love her. Because I never had the chance to tell her how I truly felt about her. And if she gave Potter the chance to turn his life around to be with her… when I was younger, I wondered whether I could have earned that chance too. I have turned my life around for her, after all. I upturned everything." He averts his eyes. "And I'm still turning everything over for her. For her son. I'm not sure what that says about my feelings for her."
Something has risen in Hermione's throat and lodged there. She swallows hard and it hurts. Her eyes sting at the corners. She casts her gaze around the room, searching for something else to look at, and lands on the slimy eels on the table, their eyes bulging horribly.
"I am aware," he continues, softly, "That hearing this likely hurts you, given the recent developments in our relationship." He's lowering his head, trying to get her to look at him, which she keeps staunchly refusing. The eels. The eels. "And my past feelings for Lily do nothing to change the way I feel about you, now, in the present, Hermione. But it remains crucial that we are honest with each other."
Is this jealousy? Hermione hasn't been jealous in years—not as an adult, not of someone who wasn't named Lavender Brown. She wonders if he should be saying the things he's saying to her. If it's appropriate. She'd rather know than wonder, and yet she's afraid to speak now, afraid of what it will sound like when she opens her mouth to respond. Will she cry? Will her voice crack?
Severus is gazing at her with an expression like he's afraid she might explode, or break.
"Are you trying to ask how I feel about you?" he offers.
"No. I, um—" She stands abruptly. "I think I'll go to sleep now. You don't need two of us down here for this bit."
She feels so uncomfortable she could die. He casts one final, probative glance at her, but thankfully they have long established boundaries between others minds and he stays out of her head, returning quietly to his book.
She ascends the stairs slowly, feeling an exhaustion somehow even deeper than when she hadn't been sleeping, and comes to a halt in the middle of the living room.
It's March. The potion will be complete in just a few short months, at the end of May. Together, she and Severus will journey to Godric's Hollow, where Harry was born and where he is now buried. They will locate his grave, which is beside that of his parents. They will pour the potion out over the ground where Harry lies, in the light of a full moon, and what happens after that—well, that's anyone's guess.
Severus still hasn't clarified whether he will be doing the same to Lily's grave, she realizes. He seems to love her still, so why wouldn't he? And what will it mean for Severus and Hermione when the experiment concludes? Is there a chance that in a few short months, Lily Potter will reenter the world alongside her son?
In her gut, Hermione recognizes, she doesn't want this to happen.
Maybe her feelings for Severus are deeper then she realized.
Merlin.
Now each time they sleep together, each time they find themselves in a quiet, happy moment—at dinner or in the lab or the bed, there's a sense of accumulating dread hanging over the experience, a wistfulness Hermione cannot seem to shake. The idea of the end that's coming hangs over everything they do. She finds herself growing angry about the mere passage of time, and whenever she closes her eyes in exhaustion she fights it, because sleep means one less minute, one less hour, one less night that they have together in this blissful bubble away from everyone else.
How will she return to the real world? she begins to wonder. She'll still be doing magic, yes, but where—at the sandwich shop? Will she return to her lonely little life, and will Severus disappear from it just as abruptly as he'd reappeared—perhaps with Lily at his side?
But Harry. Harry will be back, she reminds herself. Maybe she'll lose Severus, but she'll gain Harry if everything goes as planned. She tries to frame it that way. But of course the way she feels about Harry is very different from the way she feels about Severus, now. She wonders if she'd ever be able to make Harry understand that. She barely understands it herself.
They're lying in bed together when Severus asks, apropos of nothing, "Hermione, what will you do?"
She turns over in bed and looks at him, their legs entwined.
"After we're done. After it's over," he clarifies. "What will you do?"
And she has no answer. She thinks of little eleven-year-old Hermione. The small girl with bushy hair and big brown eyes and such big dreams. What are those dreams now? She hasn't thought about the old ones in years.
"What will you do?" she evades, giving herself more time to come up with an answer.
He looks at the ceiling pensively. Twilight seeps in around them, darkening the room and settling over their bodies in a dreamy purple haze. It's April now, their little clutch of rooms getting warmer every day. It's been ten months, almost a year that she's stayed here, sequestered in the space that held Severus' youth, his adolescent anger, his adult bitterness. This space now as familiar to her as the crooks and curves of her own body. And his body now almost as familiar to her as her own.
"I never once imagined I would survive the second war," he says after a moment. He's clearly been ruminating, too—she can see it on his face, the wrinkles in between his dark brows. "I never considered what might happen to me after. So now… I still don't know what I'll do, to be honest with you, Hermione. I doubt it involves rejoining society. I don't think it would work, for someone like me. And not just because of… my history." He rubs his forearm absently. "Even as a child, I felt different. I didn't fit with the rest of the world. Muggle or wizard."
"You've done so much good, since, though," Hermione says urgently, pressing her hands to his chest. "What if you continued on that track? What if… what if you went to work at the Ministry? Became a real force for change. There aren't many with your experience and intel out there, Severus, you could—"
"I'm not you, Hermione," he says abruptly, and she quiets. "The Minister won't even publicly acknowledge that I turned spy. Not that I blame him, of course. Hermione, we're bringing Harry back to fill that hero's role. To make a change, to be the one people can look up to. That role was always his, and never mine. If there's one thing I know for sure, Harry Potter and Severus Snape were never interchangeable." He chuckles dryly. "Harry will come back. He will make things better. And you… you could too, you know. If you decide that's something you want."
"I don't know what I want yet," Hermione finally admits.
"Well, whatever it turns out to be, I know this is just the beginning for you." He laughs again, almost more to himself than to her. "I don't have to be a Seer to know this about you, Hermione Jean Granger. You're going to create change in our world. Change so strong it will ripple over into the lives of Muggles as well. I could tell from the time you were eleven years old." And she thinks back to his memory of her, spooning her perfect potion out so carefully into a small glass jar. Knowing it was good.
How time has changed them both.
"I don't see why I can't make change with you," Hermione argues. "Why does the end of this task naturally mean your disappearance? Where will you go?"
"You'll do great things, Hermione. I will be lucky just to bear witness." He pauses. "I am glad I survived, if only for this. And I'm sorry I have not said it sooner. But I am grateful I have done this much, with you. That we have shared these moments together."
They're holding each other now. The sun has set completely. Maybe it's still too soon to tell, but undoubtedly his unwavering confidence has awakened something within her. Maybe I was meant for more, she thinks. Maybe I can make a difference.
"What makes you angry?" he asks her. "What do you want to change? That's how I forged my path forward." His mouth twists. "Sometimes for worse than better. But in the end that question steered me back to where I needed to be. You're destined for great things, Hermione. You're practically half my age—look at the magic you're doing right now. This isn't the end for you. It's the beginning of something."
She starts to think of what she'll say to Harry upon his return. How she'll explain the last ten years to him. Everything she's done and hasn't done. She starts to imagine Harry sitting across from her and standing with her while she's doing her different day-to-day activities. Next to her at the stove as she cooks or beside the cauldron in the lab as she stirs. Explaining everything that's happened with Severus to him—that'd be the biggest challenge. The thing she still doesn't quite have words for.
For a while now, Hermione has thought of her life thus far in thirds. The first third lived without close friends or comrades. Mostly reading and thinking and being alone. The second third was Hogwarts, with Ron and with Harry, where she woke up every day knowing that someone in that castle cared very deeply about her, loved her. The best years of her life. And now, this last decade, where she has lived alone, without magic—mostly stagnant, just getting by. A return to the early loneliness.
But more and more she is beginning to wonder if this year with Severus has been the start of a new era. A new way to think of the next quarter of her life. The glimmering possibility of real change.
Harry would be disappointed in her, she begins to realize. Harry would be surprised she has not been reading and creating and making a difference, all this time.
She begins to think seriously of SPEW, the efforts she made in the face of everyone else's criticism and occasional ridicule. Of course, she can see now that her work was well-intentioned if imperfect, and she begins to imagine building upon it now that she's older. She recalls how she felt walking into the Ministry building in London almost a year ago. What if she did it again, to apply for a job? What if she started working for the liberation of all beings alongside likeminded people?
What if, after a decade of stagnation, she returned again to the idea of change?
She imagines Harry so frequently and viscerally that she can fully see him standing across the lab table from her. She sets down her knife and stares as he smiles at her and nods slightly, saying in a voice she can both hear and not hear:
"Well done, Hermione. About bloody time."
Later that same day, she brings it up with Severus in the kitchen.
"You know, I've been thinking… I don't know if you ever noticed at Hogwarts, I had this little… I guess you could call it a club, of sorts?" She clears her throat. "A society, rather. For the promotion of elfish welfare."
He glances up at her over the pages of his book and holds her gaze as she continues, the bemused hint of a smile twisting his lips. She twists a spoon in her hands. Why does he still make her nervous?
"Anyway. Can you see me at the Ministry, in some form? Continuing the fight for equality? I… I've been thinking about our conversation, and I know I don't want to go back to living as a Muggle. And I don't want work at the sandwich shop anymore. I want to make a difference."
He closes the book and smiles at her—a full, genuine smile. "Hermione, you organized Dumbledore's Army. I knew from that point on that you were capable of anything."
"Wait, how did you—?"
"Dumbledore," they say together—his in confirmation, hers in realization.
"All this time, you knew it was me behind the DA?"
He snorts. "Well, it certainly wasn't Potter. He would never have come up with that on his own. I knew it had to have been someone with intelligence, drive, and a certain innate authority…"
He comes around the table and wraps his arms around her waist in an unusually overt show of affection. Hermione blushes.
"I can't believe you knew all this time and never said anything."
"It's what I've always had to do," he murmurs into her hair. "Notice things about people. Years as a spy will train you for that."
She feels his smirk against her neck.
"Hermione, whatever you want to do, you'll do it. I fully believe that. But the thing about you is you'll do it regardless of whether or not I say you're capable. Because you've already made up your mind."