It's like a couple of minutes after midnight, but I'm awake and it's technically Monday morning, so here you go. As always, thanks to CMDRHill (JaneGlen) for beta reading.
November 1999
Years ago, Harry had told her, "Hermione, you're good on feelings and stuff, but you just don't understand about Quidditch."*
Nearly four years later, this was still true. Harry's atrocious grammar aside, he did have a point. She didn't understand a thing about Quidditch. Why was is so popular? Why did it have to be so dangerous? Why was it so long?
However, the first Quidditch game of the season was that weekend, and Hermione had resolved to attend, if only to support her house. Minerva had also slipped her a few Galleons, which Hermione had reluctantly used to enter the betting pool. Hermione had hoped the Headmistress would forget her reluctant agreement to act as proxy, but the gleam in Minerva's eye told her that the woman had thought of little else over the past few months. She had already let Minerva know that the boys were planning on dropping by for the game. Hermione expected that there would be quite a crowd when students realized that Harry Potter would be present.
As almost an afterthought, she invited Lavender to come watch the game with them. Lavender agreed after some prodding from the other professors. There would most certainly be a high attendance rate, not only due to the longstanding rivalry between Gryffindor and Slytherin, but also because of the bets that the professors had made. Hermione had a sneaking suspicion that students were making similar bets despite such activities being banned. That had never stopped the Weasley twins, and she doubted it would stop these students either.
The day of, Harry and Ron arrived early, decked head to toe in Gryffindor red. "Don't you think that's a bit uncouth?" Hermione had whispered to them. "It will end up all over the newspapers."
Harry shrugged, "It's Quidditch. Everyone knows rivalries run deep. Besides, we're not the only ones with house pride -I've seen McGonagall."
"She's a professor!"
"She's the headmistress. If she can wear Gryffindor colors, so can I," Harry said with finality.
Hermione sighed in defeat and then checked her watch. It was about time for them to head to the stadiums, especially if they wanted decent seats with the rest of the staff.
She informed them of this, "All I need to do is get Lavender, and then we can head done."
Ron gulped. "Lavender?"
"She's watching the game with us. Didn't I tell you?"
"No," Ron said, looking slightly panicked. "I don't know about this, Hermione. I haven't seen her since-"
"Ron?" They all looked up guiltily.
Lavender stood there looking uncertain. She had made an effort with her appearance, her hair bright and springy. Hermione thought she was wearing a small amount of makeup. Lavender's Gryffindor scarf was wrapped securely around her neck, obscuring the worst of the scarring.
"And Harry," She walked over and gave them both a hug. Hermione was not sure the last time Lavender had seemed so responsive to people.
"L-Lavender, it's good to see you," Ron said.
Harry chimed in with something similar.
Lavender smiled tightly, and there was a lengthy pause.
Hermione was unpleasantly reminded of the last time she had stood with Lavender in the hall, just before the start of the school year.
She cheerfully suggested that they head to the game, the looks from all three of them confirming that she was overly enthusiastic in her attempt to make the situation less awkward.
Her heart sank slightly when she saw who was already sitting at the stadium. Minerva and Severus were bickering, as per usual. Filius and Pomona both cheerfully waved at the group, and Remus laughed when he saw them.
"Harry! Should have known you would stop by!"
Out of the corner of Hermione's eye, she saw Severus stiffen, looking like a student that had just been trapped by Mrs. Norris.
Harry, for his part, gave both Minerva and Severus a brief acknowledgement without interrupting their argument and then sat down beside Hermione. Ron was sandwiched between herself and Lavender.
"Where's Tonks, Remus?" Hermione asked, leaning across Harry to better see him.
He sighed. "Teddy caught a cold, nothing serious, but Dora decided to stay home and take care of him."
Harry and Hermione shared a glance.
"Oh, that's too bad," Hermione said. "I hope he gets better soon."
On her other side, Ron seemed desperate to make up for his loss of words earlier and was attempting to strike up conversation with Lavender to little avail.
Suddenly a fourth year Ravenclaw cast the sonorus charm and cleared her throat. Hermione squinted. Was that Becky Arncliffe? She was a quiet student; Hermione couldn't imagine that she would be the Quidditch announcer. "Welcome to the first Quidditch game of school year! GRYFFINDOR VERSUS SLYTHERIN!"
There was a roar from the crowd that only grew as the game began. The bludgers and the snitch quickly shot up into the air, and quaffle was thrown directly after.
"And Gryffindor has the quaffle! Kelleen is moving today, and it doesn't look like anyone's about to stop her! And she scores! That's 10 points for Gryffindor!"
Minerva whooped, and Severus shot her a look, which only made her laugh. Minerva's delight only grew as Gryffindor scored twice more in quick succession.
"And Kelleen scores for the fourth time today! Hey, Sage, let someone else score for a change!"
There was an appreciative chuckle from the crowd. Remarkably, the usually quiet Becky Arncliffe was the best announcer that Hermione had heard since Lee Jordan.
"Slytherin is not off to a great start this year. They have three players sitting this game out due to injuries and/or detention. I can only hope that the rest of the year goes similar. I wouldn't be surprised with the way that Slytherins are getting into fights this year."
"Less gossip, Arncliffe!"
"Sorry, Professor.
"Once again, Gryffindor has the quaffle. Oh! Jaspers just took another blow from a bludger. Without their usual beaters, Slytherin is getting hammered today. Let's see if they can turn this around."
Within twenty minutes, the score sat at 100-0 with Gryffindor in the lead.
"If this keeps up, it'll be a short game," Harry said, and indeed it was.
"And Ryan has caught the Snitch! Gryffindor wins!" Becky Arncliffe yelled. The crowd gave a weak cheer, clearly torn between excitement over the win and disappointment that the game had barely lasted an hour. Hermione cheered along with everyone else, privately glad the game was at an end.
At the conclusion of the game, Severus begrudgingly passed his money over to Granger. She gave a questioning look to Minerva, who winked at her and gestured for her to keep it. Rolling his eyes at the pair, he quickly stood up to leave, eager to get away before a certain former student had the opportunity to talk to him.
"Professor?"
No such luck. "Potter," he said, descending the stairs out of the stands.
"I was hoping to speak to you for a moment in private," Potter said as he followed him down the stairs.
"I'm afraid that I have neither the time nor the inclination to grant such as request."
"Please, sir. Just a moment of your time," Potter insisted.
Severus sighed. He had managed to put off a conversation with Potter for this long, but he had known this day was coming. If Harry Potter wanted something, he was going to get it, and who was Severus to stand in his way?
Potter said nothing more to him, but he followed Severus inside the castle to his office. Once inside, Severus allowed the door to slam before sitting down at his desk. Potter sat down across from him.
Severus raised an eyebrow at him and gestured for him to speak. Potter swallowed. "I wanted to thank you."
"Unnecessary."
"I don't believe so," Potter said, staring him down. "I really don't."
"Potter-"
"Harry," Potter interjected.
"What?"
"Call me Harry," Potter said. Severus felt his lip curl up in disgust at the feeling of deja vu. If Potter and Granger had their way, Severus would be on a first name basis with every witch and wizard in the immediate vicinity. Potter continued to look at him, although Severus could not imagine what he could possibly want in response.
Harry sighed. "Thank you. For everything that you did, both for the war effort and for… for me."
Severus simply sat there waiting for the other shoe to drop. Potter had aged considerably since his time at Hogwarts. His face was angular and he had kept his hair longer than he ever had as student. Right then it was tied into a ridiculous knot atop his head, reminding Severus of Granger's suggestion that he should pull his own hair back. Still the same ugly glasses, though, and the same bright green eyes behind them.
"There was one other thing," Potter said. "Um, I wanted to talk about my mom." And the other shoe drops.
"No," Severus said.
Potter stared at him stubbornly.
"Out of every topic in the world that we could discuss, that would be the last one," Severus said.
"Why?" Potter said, his voice gratingly gentle. "Because you loved her?"
Severus glared at him. "Because it is not something that we will 'bond' over. It is not something that will bring us together and 'mend our broken hearts'."
The truth, which he would never admit to Potter or to anyone else, was that his love for Lily Evans had faded rapidly over the course of the trial and the months leading up to it. Like an sunbleached picture, too much exposure had washed it out. It hadn't happened in one moment, although he suspected that there a few specific ones that contributed to it, like when the world had been made privy of their former relationship, or when her son knew what had happened.
Perhaps it had happened when he had seen the headline with Lily Potter-non Evans-'s Lost Love as a headline in the Daily Prophet. Regardless, he had managed to do what he had never been able to do when she was still alive. He let go. Former feelings or not, Severus Snape was convinced that he had given enough of himself up for the scrutiny of others. For that reason, he never planned on speaking of Lily Evans Potter ever again and that included having a heart-to-heart with Harry bloody Potter.
"I won't push you on this," Potter said, rising. "But I want you to know that I will continue to ask, and I hope that one day you will be gracious enough to tell me about her." He headed for the door, but stopped before walking out. "You know, you're the only one left who really knew her. Remus knew her somewhat, of course, but he's already told me everything he knows. I didn't get a chance to know my mom when she was alive. I hope that I get the chance to know her now."
So saying, Potter left, leaving Severus sitting at his desk, feeling just a little smaller than he had felt before.
The schedule for professional Quidditch ran slightly longer than Hogwarts', however both started in November. So the following weekend, Hermione, Harry, and Ron went to see Ginny's first game of the season. Ginny played brilliantly as a Chaser. She moved so fast that Hermione mostly followed the bright streak of Ginny's hair as she swooped around the Quidditch pitch. Harry and Ron cheered so loudly that she thought she would be deaf by the end of the match. It was not at the level of the Quidditch World Cup, but the crowds and enthusiasm were still overwhelming compared to the relatively quaint Hogwarts' matches.
Ron was bellowing his support on her right, and Harry was yelling on her right, albeit not quite as loud. Harry looked starstruck as his eyes easily kept up with his girlfriend's speedy travel around the field.
"How can you keep up?" Hermione called out to him, over the roar of the crowd as Ginny sent the quaffle through yet another ring.
"What?" He yelled, not really paying attention. "YES, GINNY! PERFECT!" He screamed.
Hermione laughed and resigned herself to missing out on the key details that everyone else seemed to get.
The game was reaching a feverish pitch when all of a sudden, everyone jumped to their feet and started screaming as loudly as they could. Peering around the broad shoulders of the tall man that sat in front of her, she saw a member of the Harpies diving towards the ground, her dark hair falling out of its bun.
"GO KATIE!" Ron and Harry were yelling. "Lean to your left!" Harry added, although there was no way that Katie could have heard him from that far away with everyone screaming. Even Hermione was on her feet, screaming with the rest of them.
Almost as if Katie had heard him, though, she did lean towards her left and then jerked up suddenly. She flew around the stadium, proudly holding the snitch. As she passed each section of the stands, the crowd grew louder, and then the whistle sounded announcing the end of the match.
"Hollyhead Harpies win with 270 points!"
Hermione, Ron, and Harry had to wait almost fifteen minutes before a red faced Ginny managed to reach them at the entrance of the stadium. Katie Bell was with her, and she said a quick hello to them before moving on to sign autographs for fans. She had joined the team the previous year when she had been offered the position of Seeker.
Other players began to exit as well. A starry eyed Ron shook hands with Gwenog Jones, the Keeper and team captain of the Holyhead Harpies. She stood well over six feet tall, and her shoulders were broader than Ron's own. When Ginny introduced him as her brother, Gwenog patted him on the head, which everyone but Ron found highly amusing.
On one evening Monday when Severus was feeling unusually generous, he opened his door and stuck his head out of his office.
"Granger!"
She turned around at the sound of her name. He beckoned her to his office. "Lost in thought, Granger?" He asked dryly.
"Hermione," she corrected as she entered. "How did you know it was me before you had even opened the door?"
"You have a particularly stompy gait. I could tell it was you before you even turned down the corridor."
"That's not true! I have a perfectly normal gait," she said. His lips quirked upwards at her indignation. He managed to hide his reaction by turning away to grab a stack of essays.
"Your stomping aside, I have received numerous tomes from the personal library of an, ah, acquaintance," Severus said. "Some editions I already own, and as such thought you might be interested in looking over some of the duplicates."
Hermione stared at him. "Are you serious?"
He quirked an eyebrow. "I don't make a habit of spending my time talking to you for the hell of it."
"Well, then, yes! Of course I'm interested," Granger said.
About what he expected. "They're in my rooms; I didn't want to leave them around where students might run across them."
Together they walked down to his rooms, still located deep in the dungeons. Granger, pillar of predictability that she was, chatted the entire way. Outside of the door, he undid the wards to his room and gestured for her to enter.
It was her first time in his quarters, he knew. He rarely allowed other faculty to visit, even regarding business, and never, never students. Both he preferred to confront in his office where he kept all of his experiments from early on. Most of the ingredients he had out were worth thousands of dollars, but students and even his colleagues only saw slimy things in jars. Which was probably for the best. Visits to his office were short and quiet, and theft was a rare occurrence. In fact, the only notable instances of it happening were when Potter & Co. attended.
He glanced at Lackey #1, who fell silent as she stepped into his room. As it tends to happen, the unfamiliar presence of another person allowed him to see the room with new eyes. It was already accumulating a light layer of dust that the house elves had not cleaned off yet, and was poorly furnished, but overflowing with books and papers. He tossed the fifth years' essays on top of the nearest pile.
As he probably should have expected, Granger made a beeline for the line of bookshelves propped against the far wall. It took a few minutes, but Severus was finally able to pry her away from his shelves long enough to look through the box of books resting on his three legged end table. Granger peeked around him.
"An acquaintance you said?"
"Of sorts," Severus said. He tapped on the box, which carried the Malfoy seal. She frowned, but did not immediately recoil. There was one book in particular that he thought that she might like: Wounds, Runes, and Yews: Where Moderne and Ancient Collide. In fact, he was almost positive that she would love it.
He held the book out to her, and she took it gingerly, as though just holding it would cause it to crumble to dust. Seeing the cover, her face lit up in recognition, and any hesitation she might have had over holding a Death Eater's book seemed to vanish. She flipped through a few pages, eyes frantically searching, trying to absorb as much as once. After a few moments, she reluctantly tried to hand the book to him.
He shook his head. "Keep it."
"What?"
"I said that you can keep it- get off me, you silly witch."
"It was just a hug!"
"Sentimental fool. You're worse than Dumbledore," he accused. "I don't hug."
"Thank you, Severus." Hermione bounced slightly on her toes, gazing adoringly at the book in her hands.
He sighed. "You're welcome, Granger."
"Hermione," she corrected automatically, still staring at the book.
He hadn't expected her to stay, but Granger had plopped herself down on a chair and began reading right away. Deciding that there were worse ways to spend the evening, Severus joined her, sitting opposite with a book of his own. They read in silence for several hours, Severus comfortably seated on the large sofa, and Hermione tucked into the overstuffed armchair.
After some time, he glanced up and saw that she was blearily rubbing her eyes but seemed determined to carry on.
"Granger," Severus said. "Go to bed." If only he had a Galleon for each time he said that phrase to her.
"I'm reading," she mumbled, eyes shutting.
"Granger."
Her head bobbed once, twice, and then she was truly asleep. He sighed and went back to his book. He contemplated shaking her awake and then kicking her out, but he figured this was one of the few times he would have the opportunity to be in her presence silently, so there he sat. His reading was slow moving, as research typically tended to be. The cat joined him after some time, and Severus absently combed his fingers through her fur as he read.
Unfortunately, he knew most of this already. It looked like Severus's project was going to be more trial and error than research. He was looking for answers that had not been found yet, a cure that had not been invented. His fingers thrummed over the spine of the book as he considered his next move.
Granger gave a soft sigh in her sleep, and shifted dangerously close to the edge of the chair. The movement was enough to jar him from his thoughts. While he had been reading, Granger had curled up in his chair like a cat herself, wrapping around herself in a small ball. Shortly after she had drifted off, much to his exasperation and albeit slight amusement, the witch had kicked off her shoes in her sleep.
Severus eyed her precarious position and glanced at the flagstones that awaited her. He was one of the few professors that did not cover the stones completely with rugs, but typically he was not trying to prevent a young woman with a penchant for danger from concussing herself on his sitting room floor. He gently shifted his still-unnamed cat to the floor, where her dark fur disappeared in the shadows. Severus regretted what he did even as he did it, carefully plucking Wounds, Runes, and Yews: Where Moderne and Ancient Collide from her hands and rolling her back to corner of seat. After a moment's hesitation, he summoned the quilt on his bed and placed it over her.
Her hair, normally a frizzy mess, had turned into a fuzzy disaster shortly after she had started reading that evening, and had only grown more outrageous as she moved around in her sleep. There was a curl that currently in her face, and seemed dangerously close to being inhaled every time she took a breath.
He sighed and brushed the curl back to join the rest of her hair before moving back to his seat.
Hermione awoke suddenly some time later to the sound of a quiet sneeze. Feeling disoriented, she looked around the dim room, trying to get her bearings. She was still in Severus' sitting room, and as her eyes adjusted to the light, she realized he was still up, reading by candle light.
"Severus? What time is it?"
"Two, perhaps three in the morning," he replied, not looking up from his book.
"I'm sorry for falling asleep. I barely even remember it happening. I'll head back to my rooms now," Hermione said as she uncurled from the seat, pulling the blanket off. "I hope you did not stay up on my behalf."
He scoffed. "Hardly. It just seemed that some wayward colleague had made use of my bedspread."
"This is your only blanket?"
"I don't exactly have need for another, do I?" He said stiffly. "Oh, don't give me that look, Granger. I'm typically up at this hour."
"Still, I hope I didn't inconvenience you."
His expression let her know without a shadow of a doubt that her very existence was an inconvenience, but he made sure he told her anyways.
She tried to school her expression as she folded the quilt up and stretched. "I'm off to bed. Goodnight, Severus."
"Goodnight," he said, making no movement from his spot on the sofa.
"Thank you," she said as she deposited the neatly folded blanket beside him. He gave a curt nod as she left the room.
*Quote from OotP.
Thanks for reading. Reviews are super encouraging and always appreciated.
