Wars of our Fathers
A fan fiction by labrt2004
Chapter Ten
Written for debjunk in the Autumn 2011 SS/HG Exchange
Disclaimer: None of it is mine.
Author's Notes: Thank you to my betas, la_syren and snarkyroxy, for your tremendous help. And thank you,debjunk, for the great prompt. And thank you mods, for another wonderful exchange! This story is shamelessly AU. I've basically just taken whatever bits of canon are convenient and tossed out whatever bits aren't. :) Hope you enjoy it.
Dejunk's prompt: Severus Snape's heart has been sealed against women ever since the fiasco with Lily. He finds himself paired with Hermione Granger in some sort of working atmosphere and is not pleased. Things warm up to amiable at some point and during a discussion Severus comments icily that women are heartless users and are not to be trusted. Our resident know-it-all sets out to prove him wrong, and eventually succeeds.
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Hermione stormed across the castle grounds to the Apparition border. His cutting words played through her mind again as she trod across the crunchy, frost-packed grass. She was almost breathless from pain. He had known how to hurt her in ways that no one else could. It had always been too much to expect him to be healed of wounds which ran too deep for healing, she thought, scrubbing a hand across her wet cheeks.
She still loved him, she thought miserably. She loved heartless, aloof Severus Snape. He had thrown her love in her face, yet he'd been the one who appeared on her doorstep all those months ago to pluck her out of her pathetic half existence, he'd been the one who pushed her to confront her fears, and at night, he been the one who soothed her through her nightmares.
Reaching the castle boundary, she stopped and took a breath. She didn't have time to think about how he could possibly have done all those things without loving her. There was still something important she had to do, and she was determined to do it, even if Severus was no longer there to infuse her with his strength. Squeezing her eyes shut, she dredged up a memory of ivy-covered gates and waxed linoleum floors. St. Michael's Psychiatric Hospital. As the collapsing forces of Apparition gathered around her, she steeled herself, battling her way through her heartache.
This wasn't his fight, it was hers.
When she flickered into being at her destination, she rolled her shoulders and shook out her limbs, wincing from the soreness of long distance Apparition. She looked about blearily, her eyes eventually focusing on the wrought-iron gates and the low-rise brick building beyond them. There were people sitting on benches by the massive lawn in spite of the cold, overcast day. A man threw a Frisbee to a dog. Two doctors in white coats stood at the building entrance, immersed in discussion. It was quiet, but not as austere and depressing as she remembered from the one previous time she'd been here. Then again, her recollections were not that clear. It had been a horrible day when she came here to commit her parents ten years ago.
She walked up the path and entered the hospital. The atrium was generally pleasant, if artificially so. Landscapes hung on the walls, and windows overlooking the lawn let in the anemic winter sunlight. She passed the waiting room, with its magazine racks and worn, slightly dated furniture, and proceeded to the information desk. The woman behind it looked up at her when she approached.
"I'm Hermione Granger," she said uncertainly.
The woman smiled encouragingly. "Hello, Hermione Granger."
"My parents are here."
"Ah, do you know their rooms?"
"No," she admitted uncomfortably. "It's been, um... awhile." So far, she'd been feeling mostly collected, but now she felt her hold over herself slip a bit.
The woman gave her an odd look. "Granger, you said?"
Hermione nodded.
"Your parents are Ian and Lisa, then?"
"Yes, they would be the ones," she said impatiently.
The woman was wearing an expression of undisguised shock. "Are you sure?" she asked absurdly. "They've been living here for years, and no one's ever mentioned a daughter, except to say that you were dead."
"Not quite dead," she said dismissively. "It's... complicated."
The woman nodded, then turned to her computer screen, looked up her parents' names, and wrote their room number on a slip of paper. "Actually, we get a lot of that around here. Committing a family member is very distressing business. Some people just can't handle it." She patted Hermione's hand sympathetically. "But better late than never, dear. I'll need identification."
Hermione's mouth had gone dry. "Right." She fished out her Muggle driver's license. "Thanks," she muttered after the woman scanned the license and waved her through to a set of double doors.
She first walked by a large window, through which she could see many tables and chairs. Residents were interspersed throughout the room, some simply staring into vacant space, while others were busy with drawing, knitting, or staring at the televisions. A few visitors were also present, including a bereaved-looking man holding a woman's wasted hand. Her pulse throbbing painfully in her temples, Hermione moved on and stepped into the lift.
When the lift opened, she emerged onto a quiet corridor lined with many doors. Room 358, the paper read. She studied a sign with directions, then turned left. Her parents were housed together. She had at least seen to that.
She stopped in front of 358, staring at the placards bearing the names of her parents. There wasn't really a point to knocking, so with her heart in her throat, she pushed open the door. Nothing about the room struck her as familiar. As if walking through a dream, she crept to the foot of one of the beds. Her mother lay beneath the sheets, still as a statue. Her face had grown thinner, and her hair was straggly, but for the most part, she was unchanged. In the cruelest of ironies, time had been kind to her mother's empty body.
Turning, she walked to the other side of the room, to her father. The sound of her own footsteps was deafening in the surreal silence of the room. Unlike her mother, her father bore visible signs of his age. Ridges and folds were evident in his face, and there was a prominent bald spot atop his head.
She wandered to the middle of the room now and stood between her parents' beds. "Hi Mum and Dad," she whispered. "I'm sorry I've been away for so long," she said, a little bit more loudly. She glanced from one parent to the other, searching for some indication that they might have heard her. When she saw that both remained senseless, she sighed, feeling foolish.
She straightened her father's covers and organized the medication bottles on her mother's nightstand. What was she supposed to do now? She stared at a spot on the wall.
"Not much has happened to me," she babbled, mostly just to say something. "I married Ron... and then I divorced him. We didn't suit... Oh, and I finished law school. But I was useless as a barrister."
She paused and glanced around, intending to stop. Then unexpectedly, more words came.
"I went to work for the Ministry... you would have hated that, Dad. The job was horribly tedious. Then Severus—Professor Snape—came and offered me a job at Hogwarts, teaching Potions. I like it much better than the Ministry... It's great to do something that has an impact. The children are mostly manageable, and I do enjoy working with Harry and Neville.
"And Severus..." She hesitated. The pain of their parting was still only a few hours old and a private burden. Hermione suddenly had the bizarre need to talk about it with her mother.
"Severus has been my strength," she confided. "He's a man of principle. Everyone respects him for how well he's risen from a dark past. He can be rather... unreasonable, as he'd rather be miserable than accept the love of people around him. But I—I love him." Hermione's voice cracked at the end.
Something inside her shifted. She braced herself against a wall. "Oh God," she choked, emotions finally descending upon her. Collapsing into a chair, she buried her face in her hands, wracked by violent, heaving sobs that were ripped straight out of her chest. A decade's worth of grief had chosen that moment to burst forth. She didn't know how long she sat like that, rocking to and fro, tears soaking her clothing.
When the episode finally passed, she rasped, vision still blurry,"I'm so sorry, Mum and Dad, for doing this to you. For everything."
It took a few seconds for her to recognize what she had just said. She was sorry, she realized with sudden clarity, but not in the blind, anguished way she had always been. She was sorry for a war that had visited suffering upon her family and had torn her childhood apart. She was sorry that her desperate bid to protect her parents had backfired. Sorry that they were no longer the vibrant people they'd once been.
"Sorry," she said clearly this time, as if she were uttering a benediction. There seemed to be more light in the room now as she slowly unfurled herself from her chair, letting go. Feeling the guilt lift away from her, scattering like a handful of sand tossed into the wind.
She closed her eyes, awash with memories. Running into her father's arms after her performance in the school play. Peeling peas with her mother in the kitchen on a warm summer night. The three of them crowding around the dinner table as she opened her Hogwarts letter.
With wonder, she discovered that she felt whole again. A piece of her soul that had been lost had returned to its rightful place.
Scooting the chair up to her mother's bed, she reached across the railing to take hold of her hand. A new sense of acceptance settled over her. "I think I'll be all right now, Mum," she said.
To her surprise, her mother stirred and turned her face toward her touch. She didn't open her eyes, but the faintest trace of a smile appeared.
Hermione gasped, smiling broadly in return.
She was free.
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