Disclaimer: Everything you recognise belongs to Rowling and Gato Azul.

16. Rain of Words

How could they fill the days' emptiness?

Hermione looked for him in the aphonic house, in the dim-lighted rooms, and sat next to him with curious, prudent gazes.

Snape kept on silent, walking slowly and peeping through the windows; he always seemed to be waiting for someone, and Granger got close to the mystery of what had the man lost, and she wondered if, when he looked outside, he thought about it, if he remembered his loss, whatever it was.

Something had been taken from him, that was obvious. Snape didn't smile, didn't seem at peace nor complete, she had always noticed that since she was a child. A happy person didn't try to hurt anyone, and Snape always hurt anyone within his reach. Neville, Harry, her.

And yet, when she imagined his loneliness, she started to forgive him.

He didn't talk, just ruminated over his secret moments, crouched on the couch, bitterly grimacing. Thinking.

Had he been like that all his life?

Hermione remembered the few memories she had of him, his years alone in the dungeons, surrounded by cauldrons and vials and dark, dissected creatures. She could see him sitting behind his desk, writing rude comments on the Gryffindor's essays, supporting himself against the cold, stone walls, always in silence, always alone.

To think about that overwhelmed her. What did someone become after living so many years alone? A beast, an outcast, a hermit.

And she slowly understood that the hate Snape threw to everyone had had a lot of time to ferment, to turn even more poisonous.

Snape went to the mail Granger had left on the window. The trustful Gryffindor abandoned the letters that she'd written on furniture next to the window, so Orestes got in and took it with his beak. She also left a small can with water and another one with owl's food. She was sure he wouldn't touch her letters. Critical mistake, to take a Slytherin's fidelity by granted. Snape smiled to himself with irony, he wasn't to blame; after all, she was the one to blame for leaving him the chance to infiltrate in her private notes.

He'd been reading the writings the Gryffindor sent to each other for several days, and yet the letter McGonagall had sent him was still unopened. In some of the messages he had read, Potter told Granger to make him read the letter and answer McGonagall back; of course, Granger had tried, but being already on guard Snape didn't yield a bit. He wasn't going to ease the old witch's conscience.

The bushy girl had written letters to Potter, Ronald and Ginevra Weasley. Snape only read the one addressed to his nemesis; at least he said interesting things, unlike the two Weasley kids.

The Granger girl was upstairs in her room; she barely left these last days, she seemed to be working on something. He sometimes looked through the half-opened door and found her sitting and reading with deep attention, taking rushed notes.

She was always teaching herself something.

He unfolded the letter with great care, so there was no evidence someone else had read it.

Dear Harry,

I read your last letter; I tried to convince him, but you know how he is. Poor professor McGonagall, I can't imagine how she must be feeling, she shouldn't worry anymore: she's not at fault and the professor will be fine from now on.

The Potion master scowled; the wise, mediator Granger, always finding the best solution for everyone. With a growl, he restarted his lecture somewhere else in the page.

… we only see a small part of what they are, only an instant of the true length of their lives. Have you thought of that, Harry? We only met him during his classes, barely a few minutes on a hallway or in the Great Hall. I think about all the other things we didn't see and that he lived. I can't forget his screams. Sometimes I think I hear them and I get up to see if he's okay. How can I explain the solitude I feel when I watch him snooze on the couch? I blame myself for having been so blind; maybe we were too young to realize what was really happening around us.

He stopped for a few moments, upset. The idea of Granger watching him from the threshold while he slept made him shiver. He wouldn't have imagined it. He told himself that the habit of reading foreign letters was quite beneficial, and useful.

… he doesn't talk to me about anything, I've told him all I can think about myself, I've tried to break the barrier that I feel is in between us, but I can't, Harry. I can't reach him and I can't help him. He doesn't believe me, doesn't trust me, and I get it. Who am I to him, after all? You at least mean something, but me? I'm just an annoying, intrusive student that he had to tolerate. During all these years at Hogwarts we barely exchanged two words, he rarely looked at me. Our biggest interactions were me, raising my hand, and him, telling me to shut up.

… I want to help him, I want to save him, Harry, I'm not even sure why; I suddenly feel like I have to, there's no one else for him except us. The neglect he has lived in is so big, it hurts me by just looking at him, it scares me to think about someone having to live like that. What will happen to him? When I think about his life, about what his life could've been, about all of us, turning our backs to him… Do you get what I'm trying to say? I want to help him, Harry, I want him to take the hand I'm offering him, I want him to talk to me, to look at me as if we were equals.

We're so lonely here, I sometimes find myself yearning for his company, but he refuses. I miss you and Ron and my parents. Harry, I miss you so much, write to me, I need your voice in my mind, I need to recognize you behind the lines I read.

Your best friend, always.

Hermione J. Granger

Snape had a hard time deciding to let that card rest between Orestes's hooves.

Granger was waiting for him on the kitchen table, with a cup of coffee in front of her hands. He had to admit that she, who he couldn't even consider a friend, was the only person he had left.

"Good evening, professor. How are you?"

Snape looked from above without answering. He sat in front of her and started to eat. The only noise one could hear in the house were the plates' clink.

The yellowish light of the lamp gave the room a depressive tenor. Hermione could barely avoid shrinking under the silence.

She noticed with discomfort and surprise that Snape watched her furtively on several occasions. His eyes got so still it was very hard not to notice it; his gaze had weight, like a couple of rocks.

They barely exchanged words during dinner; when they finished eating the Occlumens left again in silence.

At least his gaze had got him closer for a few seconds, at least he wasn't completely lost for her.

I looked at him sideways and he looked at me and we looked at each other.

We looked at each other, I fully met his huge nose, the dangerous, bold curve that bent. Have you noticed, Harry, that his upper lip is darker than the lower one? I'm sorry, I know you don't care, I actually wouldn't care either if his face wasn't the only human face I've seen in weeks.

He seems less sullen lately, maybe he read professor McGonagall's letter and that calmed him down. He still doesn't talk much to me, but he doesn't ignore me, he follows me with his eyes until I leave the room.

I think there's hope of erasing our marks. I've been practising with some fruits which I cut with dark magic and then I try to close the marks. I haven't achieved it completely, but I can diminish the gap's size. Maybe it's just a matter of time. With some luck, no one will see that on his forehead and you and I won't have a scar anymore.

He had few interactions with Granger. She was isolated in her books, she didn't chase him to talk about cats or oral hygiene, didn't insist that he taught her occlumency anymore (he'd never put a weapon like that in Granger's eyes, they were uncomfortable even without the ability to pierce him).

He waited in the living room most of the days, waited for the night, slept and woke up to keep waiting. In vain, because he knew there was nothing out there that he could find. He had been already ripped out from the world. That was why he read Granger's letters, to be the mere viewer of a life's events, of a true life, not like his.

The girl's letters boiled inside him, like bitter, hot potions. He waited, feeling the silence pulsating in his temples, for her to address him, for her hand to write his name somewhere in the page.

He existed because she addressed him. A strange jolt overtook his body when he reached that part of the writing.

Professor Snape ate the whole plate today and he seems more upbeat.

Then he wondered why she paid any attention to those details, which not even he noticed.

Every day he intentionally committed the crime of taking the letters and reading them, but it was hers that he was more eager to devour; with time he had stopped reading Potter's and despised Weasley's, throwing them aside, disgusted as he imagined his verbiage full of insipid romanticism.

He read them as if he needed Granger to tell him again the same itinerary of their joint days. The brunette wasted her hours with those manuals and he, who had disregarded her conversations, now looked for them, to steal them from the wooden bureau, from Orestes' hooves, as if he was a vagabond looking for crumbs.

When he watched her pass his side, or found her walking around the next room, an annoying longing for separating his lips gnawed him. But he never yielded. Granger distractedly touched him with her complicit eyes and smiled with fear. Air collapsed in his throat and she remained a bit longer, like a vision from the past, and went away without him letting out any noise.

Then he looked for her in the letters, where he didn't have to say or risk anything, just taking Granger's words and appropriating them and covering and filling himself with them.

Only scraps of lines to patch his loneliness, only Granger.

Life was sometimes almost intolerable to him; he thought about Lily and descended one more level in the pain scale.