Chapter 12: For What Ails You
Hermione awoke in a warm, fluffy cloud.
No. That wasn't quite right.
She opened her eyes and stretched out a very human hand to find that she was covered in...snow?
She grasped at it, only to find it flutter away. It wasn't cold at all, which meant…
"Down?" Her voice sounded loud in the room, which, as she blinked and stared up at it, appeared to have a very high ceiling. Faded paintings of all manner of flowers ran along the support beams above her, and she wondered at their complexity.
It was like being in a dream.
She sat up slowly with a yawn, feeling the tickling wisps of the softest feathers surrounding her. She didn't need to look in a mirror to know that her hair was probably a fright.
And Severus…
Her eyes went wide and she turned from side to side, searching for him.
After...what they had done...Her face flushed red, and she could feel something purring deep in her belly like a phantom overlay of the manticore she'd been only hours earlier. There was something simpler about being a beast instead of having to muck around on two legs. Feelings felt so much more real on four paws and with razor sharp teeth.
Something warm and wet hit the back of her hand and when she touched the corner of her eye, she realized that tears were welling up and overflowing.
She was crying. Really, truly, crying.
She didn't hunch over, sobbing, but sat there, feeling them run down her cheeks, her eyes wide with the wonder of the thing. When the first sob escaped her mouth, she thought it must have been made by someone else. But there it came again, and she covered her her throat with one hand, feeling the sound vibrating there like tangible grief and joy all tangled up together.
A door opened and she faintly heard a sharp intake of breath and quick feet running to her. Something tapped gently against wood, but she couldn't see any of it clearly with the deluge of tears swimming in her vision. Warm arms curled around her, then, and she smelled him, so solid and there. She nearly cried out, but the sobs had taken over, pouring from her like an ugly melody that she couldn't stop singing.
Severus sat with her, holding her until she felt empty again. But, rather than the horrible hollow numbness she'd felt before, it was as though she'd purged all of the dark things that had settled inside of her after Ron had died and then the baby and then she had blamed herself for it. She touched her abdomen, remembering all that she had lost, and sniffed loudly. The time for blame was over, she knew. But it wasn't just the hollow words she had repeated in the mirror for so many months as though it would feel truer if she only kept saying them. It was like a door, shut firmly, the pain drained and gone, and a memory left over that would always be tinged with sadness, but that would not control her future days.
"Severus," she said softly, her voice husky.
"Shh, you don't have to say anything, not if you don't want to," he said, pressing his lips against her forehead.
"You're...human…" she said, because she couldn't think of anything else.
"Indeed. As are you, though, if you're ready to be more reliably human…" He trailed off, reaching to the side of her and picking something up with one hand and bringing it up to her face.
"Is that-?" Hermione suddenly remembered what he'd said...when he…
"Yes," he replied. "Are you ready?"
"It smells ghastly," she choked out as he unstoppered it.
"I was out of the lime flavored de-Manticorring-potion," he replied, deadpan, but when she looked up, she could see he was trying not to smile and failing miserably at it.
"I'm ready," she said bravely, taking a deep breath and pinching her nose.
"That's my girl," he said, and when he said it, she could feel her heart fill to bursting.
She choked it down and even the nose pinching didn't seem to have much effect. A strange tremor filled her and for a moment, she could feel something bigger than her stretching and pushing its way from her body like a second skin. Severus inhaled sharply as it seemed to rush through him, his pupils dilating and small, black ears appeared at the top of his head, flattening as he tried to look up at them as though they had a mind of their own.
Hermione giggled and felt something pop out of the back of her. Turning, expecting a snake, she held back a snicker as she saw a tufted tail. She grabbed it and waved the tip over his nose, making him squint as though trying not to sneeze.
"The potions should nullify...the…venom's curse," he said, finally. "But there might be some...er...side effects."
POP!
Leathery wings popped out of Severus' back, and he blushed crimson.
Hermione said something under her breath so softly that she almost couldn't tell what she was saying.
"What…?" When he looked up, it was a shy expression, like he was expecting her to be angry.
"I love them, Severus." She grabbed him tightly nuzzling his cheek. "I love your wings! I love your ears! I love you!"
He stood and twirled her around, the magic melting over both of them until they stood, dark lion and silver lioness, his batlike wings and her feathered ones outstretched and then gathered together just enough so that they could touch. She nuzzled him and he did the same, turning to twine their tails together.
They bumped noses and purred together until the room rang with the sound of their mutual happiness, and then, suddenly, they were human again, naked as the day they were born and falling back into the massive pile of feathers.
They laughed and they held each other and laughed some more.
You are my home.
Neither had to say it, but they knew it to be true.
When the blizzard finally abated, it was Mr. Snignibbon who earned a baleful glare from one very furious and human Hermione, along with the three goblins she'd brought from Gringotts along with Bill Weasley, who had helped her to explain the details of Mr. Snignibbon's scheme in Gobbledegook, which Hermione knew fairly well, but was not fluent in by any means.
Several notarized documents were looked at and from the scathing looks that Mr. Snignibbon received, it was obvious that he had broken the most sacred of goblin codes- that of the absolute contract. For, while goblins did believe that all land and items belonged to the goblins after the death of their contracted owners, they were quite clear about what was to happen if a goblin tried to steal what was rightfully given in contract.
After the dressing-down he received, it was obvious that Mr. Snignibbon would not be building anything, ski resorts or otherwise, and Severus Snape was awarded a hefty amount of Galleons directly from Mr. Snignibbon's account.
"Sub-paragraph 39, Section 12 of all goblin contracts," Bill said with a wink. "Gets the greedy ones every time."
He did seem rather flabbergasted at first when Hermione smiled back at him and thanked him warmly, but when she took Severus' hand, his scarred lips turned up in a knowing smile.
"Good," was all he said before Apparating away with his co-workers.
The drafty castle was still run down, but with the Galleons to fix it up, Severus and Hermione built a beautiful home together, one that housed a giant glass-ceiling greenhouse that two full-sized poison-free manticores could romp through without breaking anything. They did, however, keep the messy tower for when their manticore bodies got "frisky." There were always plenty of deliciously rippable down pillows inside, of course.
Mimi was overjoyed to know that the man that had saved her and the woman that had saved him were no longer chained to one form or another, especially when Severus and Hermione married the following spring and she was given the auspicious job of flowergirl. They adopted her not long after.
As for Charlotte, who mostly stayed as grumpy and surly as ever, she was able to receive a formal apprenticeship with one of Severus' masters that summer, and went on to be one of the youngest Potions Mistresses in the Wizarding World. She still broke down and cried when Severus and Hermione asked her to allow them to adopt her, even though she was almost seventeen and could have claimed adulthood in three months. She smiled more often, and she loved her adoptive parents, and, when Hermione gave birth to her first child- a son, who tumbled into the world as a gold-furred cub with tiny wings long before he grew comfortable in human skin, Charlotte became his second mother whenever she was home, carrying him around and teaching him everything she could about the world.
Though nothing could ever be said to be perfect, their family was whole and all were loved within those castle walls. The vibrant castle, so long in disrepair, finally matched the natural beauty of the surrounding wood as if to banish the darkness that had held them all for so long.
It wasn't just that they lived, oh no.
They thrived, and all the world was better for it.