A/N: Hello again, my lovely friends. I'm back with Chapter 1 of this fic, and I'm posting it much earlier than I originally intended! The reason for doing so is because you all made me feel so warm and fuzzy from your enthusiastic reception of the first chapter. I was going to wait until next weekend, but I'm feeling generous and didn't want you to wait in suspense! Once again, special love to Luca Agneta and mamaHD for their much-needed beta and alpha work on this fic, for without them there would be Americanisms abound.
Special shoutout to Coralyne, Nantai, .Stuff221, dramione101, WildflowerWeasley, Virginie Cires, TimeyWimeyMagicWagic, and, last but not least, percabethbooklion for the wonderful reviews on my first chapter. I sincerely appreciate the love!
Slight trigger warning for a scene questioning religion (just covering my bases). Without any further ado, on to Chapter 1!
I wrote this chapter to Our Last Night's cover of "Heavy" (originally by Linkin Park).
You say that I'm paranoid/ But I'm pretty sure the world is out to get me
Vicis ● 1
For as long as she could remember, Hermione had worn long sleeves. Or, at least, a long sleeve. She did not talk about the scar on her arm, and she did not permit the curious looks she received if the sleeve happened to ride up. At only eleven years and eight months old—nearly twelve, she reminded her mother every time it came up—she had perfected a sneer that made even the most meddlesome of adults shy away. None dared to ask her parents about it either, for fear that their sneers were even more cutting. She had to have learned it somewhere.
Her parents, however, would be of no help to anyone either. The scar had appeared as she had grown.
Her father had noticed it when she was nearly nine months old. He'd been bathing her before laying her down for the night when he noticed a patch of angry red skin on his daughter's arm. He had frowned and called her mother in. Both of them had peered closely at the spot, then resolved that it was merely an allergic reaction to the bath soap. They'd thrown out the soap, dried Hermione off, put her in a fresh nappy and her duck pyjamas, then put her to bed for the evening, hoping it would be gone by morning.
Hermione's wails had awoken them mere hours later, and they discovered that the rash had not gone down overnight as they had hoped but instead erupted in angry red boils, almost like the entirety of her arm had been plunged into too-hot water. Her mother rushed her to the hospital.
The doctors had been bewildered. The phrase "never seen anything like this" had been uttered back and forth until Mrs Granger, raw with nerves and worry, had shouted at the doctors that she didn't care what they had and hadn't seen; just help her bloody baby. Startled by her outburst, they had stared dumbfounded at her until the same nurse from Hermione's delivery had swept in seemingly out of nowhere and comforted the small child. Promising to get to the bottom of it and lancing the doctors with a deeply disappointed frown, the man had swept out of the room with Hermione in his arms and the dumbfounded doctors trailing in his wake.
Twenty minutes later, the nurse had returned with Hermione's arm wrapped in gauze and an unlabeled bottle of lotion. He had passed both baby and bottle into Mrs Granger's hands.
As he handed off the baby, the nurse looked Mrs Granger in the eyes and said, "Use this on her arm once in the morning and once in the evening until it's gone. No more, no less." The nurse swept from the room without giving Mrs Granger any time to respond.
The lotion had done its job and the blisters had disappeared, though not without leaving a small, ugly scar about three and a half inches long.
All had been quiet for nearly two months until Mr Granger again noticed something strange on his daughter's arm. Anxious, they rushed her to the hospital again, but the doctors said it was nothing to worry about. Once again, the nurse reappeared, pressing the same bottle of lotion into the distraught mother's hand and leveling them with his stern eyes. He repeated the same message: Once in the morning, once in the evening until the lotion is gone. No more, no less. Sure enough, the mark disappeared a few days later, leaving behind a slightly darker tinge.
Though neither Mr nor Mrs Granger would acknowledge it, both of them wondered if the other thought the scar was beginning to look like writing.
All had been quiet over the next year. The Grangers had tried not to make a fuss of the scar on her arm, but they still received odd looks whenever someone saw it. It was for that very reason that Hermione's first word had been "stop," accompanied by a glare she undoubtedly adopted from her mother, though it was vaguely reminiscent of the stern nurse's. As good as her parents' intentions had been, they hadn't been able to stop Hermione from developing an aversion to the mark.
Anyone would be ashamed of something that caused their parents to visibly recoil and scowl.
Nearly a month after her second birthday, the spot flared again. Hermione had woken up crying for her parents in the middle of the night, and they flew down the hallway to the purple painted room. Angry red welts had popped up again, that time an unmistakable M.
They had rushed to the hospital, foregoing the doctors that rushed to their aid, and asked for the one person who had been able to help them. But he was gone. The staff hadn't known where he had gone, and they hadn't had any records of him having worked there in the first place. Reluctantly, they handed Hermione over to a doctor outfitted in a white mask and blue surgical gloves, and they set up vigil in the waiting room.
Two hours later, the doctor had emerged from the room with no more answers than before. They left with silent tears streaming down Hermione's face while she clutched a small stuffed dog to her chest. The doctor had wrapped a pitiful sterilized bandage around the welts but said he could do no more until he knew what was causing them.
That was the problem; no one knew what was causing them.
Hermione had been put to bed still silently crying, and Mrs Granger sat beside her bed keeping watch. When Hermione had finally fallen asleep, Mrs Granger had cried herself to sleep in the rocking chair.
The pattern repeated every few months. The scar would flare to life for a few days, then the mysterious nurse would sometimes appear—though not always—and provide Hermione's parents with the mysterious salve. During a particularly bad night when she was five, Hermione's parents rushed her to the hospital when they discovered her in her bed with bloody scratches crisscrossing the strange mark where she'd been scratching at it in her sleep.
They'd once more rushed her to the hospital, but to no avail. Her mother had once more cried herself to sleep in the rocking chair of Hermione's lavender bedroom while her father nursed a finger of whiskey neat, both at a loss for what to do.
Early the next morning, a knock at the door startled Mrs Granger awake. She'd tried to tiptoe down the hall, so she wouldn't wake Hermione, but her daughter had also been awoken by the sharp rap on the door.
Though she was sure her mother would be heartbroken over it, that evening and the following morning were Hermione's first clear memories. She'd crept down the hall after her mother and watched as she opened the door and startled at the man standing there.
Once again, the nurse from the hospital had come to save the day.
Her mother, still agog at the man showing up on her doorstep, hadn't stopped him from sweeping over the threshold and into the house. He had stopped at the piano just inside the living room and pulled three large containers of salve out of the small, worn bag he carried in one hand.
There's no way that a bag that small can carry so many big bottles, Hermione thought, but she didn't want to give away her spot in the shadow just beyond the doorway. Maybe the bag just looked smaller than it was from so far away.
By the time the man had finished putting the bottles on the piano, Hermione's mother had regained her wits.
"You—you're the nurse from the hospital. The staff said they had no idea who you were. That you just—showed up the day Hermione was born and again when we brought her in with the blisters."
The man inclined his head once, a pained grimace on his face, as though it annoyed him to be remembered so well. "I am."
"Who are you?" her mother whispered.
The man sighed and pinched the bridge of his rather beaklike nose. Hermione had thought that he almost looked like a wizard, much closer to a wizard than her father had looked when he had dressed up as one for the previous Halloween, but her mum had said that wizards weren't real.
The man looked up after a few seconds and said, "I cannot tell you much about me, but you may call me Sev." The man looked physically ill to say this; he was obviously not comfortable with the nickname but looked disinclined to disclose his real name.
Hermione had tried not to giggle. He had not looked like a Sev.
Her mother had apparently agreed. "Sev?"
The man had given yet another single, weary nod and beckoned toward the hallway. "I believe the child is in need of help," he paused, then said in a drawling voice, "You can come out."
Hermione had felt like she'd been caught with her hand in the cookie jar, but she slowly walked out of the corridor where she'd been crouched by the stairs.
She couldn't remember much of what had happened after that—she'd only been five, after all—but she remembered that the man—Sev, she'd reminded herself—had once more applied the cream to her blisters and left.
Sev became a relatively permanent fixture in Hermione's life, though Hermione could never be sure where he lived or how he managed to know exactly when she needed help. Hermione had a normal childhood other than the scar. It had flared up periodically, and each time it changed its appearance. However, despite the salve that Sev periodically brought her, by the time she was in primary school, the scar had looked less like blisters and more like a word.
She tried to tell her classmates that she hadn't actually cut a word into herself, but none of them believed her. No one wanted to play with a little girl who had the word Mud carved into her arm.
So, she had learned to play by herself. She read as much as she could and tried to ignore the way the other children made fun of her. She requested long sleeve clothing and wouldn't wear a shirt without sleeves. She stopped talking at school and eventually was sent to the school counselor because the teachers were worried about her.
At just six years old, the school counselor told her that maybe she needed to try to be less strange around her classmates; her silence made the other students scared of her. Her parents had pulled her out of school and her mother left her parents' dentist practice to teach her.
By the time she was eight years old, Hermione had asked her parents to remove the large full-length mirror in her bedroom so she wouldn't have to see the scar in the mirror. She didn't know what she had done to deserve it, but she hated to be reminded that it was there.
She hated that it made her different.
Hermione had asked her father to remove the mirror on a weekday, so she should have known that he wouldn't get to it right away. However, every time she looked at it, she felt the same deepening well of anger rise up in her gut. It was a visceral reaction; she was powerless to help it.
One afternoon, she had stared into the mirror as though she could will it away when the mirror had shattered into pieces. She remembered leaping back, momentarily shocked before a small smile curved her lips upward. Her mother had come running into the room only to find Hermione standing before a pile of broken glass, shards in her hair where it had blown outward.
She'd become withdrawn and angry, but her parents tried to make up for the loss of school-age friends by spending as much time with her as they could. They showered her with books and love, and they still loved her, no matter how ugly the mark on her arm was.
Sev still brought her lotion and it made it better. It became less red every time she used it, but it still maintained the shiny, pink quality of a particularly nasty scar.
By the time she was ten, the scar spelled out a word: Mudblood.
Hermione didn't know what that meant. She wasn't sure she wanted to know. She went to church with her parents, and she knew about God. She wasn't sure what she had done to make Him mad, but she thought He had obviously marked her so that He would know not to let her in when she finally came to heaven.
Maybe that was why she could make things move if she really concentrated enough. Maybe she actually had broken the mirror without touching it. She'd tried to tell her parents, but neither of them had believed her.
Sev had believed her.
Shaking herself from her trip down memory lane, Hermione rubbed at the sleeve over her scar. Even when it was covered, she could feel its presence like a giant, ugly tattoo.
Still, Hermione had decided when she had turned ten that she was going to be different. The stupid scar wasn't going to make her hide away anymore. She wanted to ask her parents if they would put her back in school. She knew her mum missed being a dentist, but she would never say anything to Hermione. Her mum loved her and would do anything for her, but she'd already done a lot. Too much, Hermione thought. Besides, she was almost twelve, and twelve was when all the heroines of her favorite books started making their own decisions.
A knock at the door sounded, but Hermione ignored it. She was trying to read even though her mind kept drifting. It wasn't until she heard her mum call her name that she put the book aside. She sat up and stretched. She'd been sitting in bed too long, but she was enjoying the last bits of her summer. If she convinced her parents to allow her to go back to school, she'd have to start term in September. Even though it was only the end of July, Hermione wanted to enjoy her remaining freedom. Rubbing at her arm one last time, she swung her legs over the bed and marched down the corridor to the living room.
Once she got there, she saw Sev sitting stiffly on the settee, arms resting uncomfortably at his side and eyebrows slanted downward. Hermione started. She'd seen Sev quite a lot, but today he looked—different.
In place of his usual attire of a plain jumper, black trousers, and trainers, he was wearing a strange robe. Forbiddingly black in colour, it looked much too thick to be worn in the middle of March, even in England. The robe reminded Hermione of a frock coat, which she decided was a decidedly unflattering look on the man. His strange dress was accentuated with his loose black hair, which Hermione had never seen free of the black fabric tying it back.
Stepping out of the shadows, Hermione bounded forward to wrap her arms around Sev's middle. Despite his severe look, Hermione felt his body shake with a small chuckle, though she would never have been able to tell from the expression on his face when she leaned away.
"Hermione," the man bobbed his head in his signature, solitary nod.
"You look different today," Hermione tried to inquire stealthily. Hermione knew that she hadn't quite succeeded when she saw the Sev's eyes brighten slightly with buried mirth.
"I do. We'll wait for your mother and father for a while, and I'll tell you why," Sev responded solemnly, inspecting the framed photos on the wall across from the sofa.
Hermione dipped her head and sat obediently next to Sev on the sofa. She knew her mum was in the kitchen making tea for their guest and her father would be home shortly from work.
Hermione asked Sev about his newest book, and she tried not to feel too important that the man was talking to her, even if it was about science and things she didn't quite understand. Sure enough, in the middle of the conversation, her father walked in the door.
"Sev!" her father greeted. "I wasn't expecting you. Give me just a minute, if you don't mind?"
Sev waved him off. "Take your time."
A few moments later, both her father and mother walked into the room, her mother bearing a tray of good china and tea. After making the tea to Sev's liking—as dark as it could be steeped—her mother settled in and leveled an expectant look at him.
"I believe you said you had important news for us, Sev?" her mother prodded.
Another single incline of Sev's head met her mother's question while she sipped her tea. After a beat, he rearranged himself on the couch and reached into the folds of what Hermione could only describe as robes. From within, he produced a letter sealed with a large blob of wax.
"I've come to give you this." Hermione was surprised when Sev turned to hand the letter to her. She met the man's eyes, a question obvious in her own.
Sev sighed. "My name is actually Severus Snape. I am the Potions Master at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry." A beat passed while every Granger in the room stared at him with their mouths agape.
"I am here today, Ms and Drs Granger, to extend an invitation to attend our school to your daughter. We also have many other things to talk about," he explained. Sev—Severus, Hermione reminded herself of the odd name, too shocked to process the other parts of the conversation—turned back to Hermione, and she noticed the man's gaze linger on her forearm, where the scar was, before he said:
"You're a witch, Ms Granger."
Thanks for reading! ~C