Author's Note: I have been amazed for the support for this story and want to thank everyone who has given their time to read it, and especially those who have reviewed and followed, and favourited. I hope you continue to enjoy it!
Hermione found herself alone and nervous as she approached the scarlet train. This was where her life would change, and she took a deep breath as she stepped into one of the cars, trying to remember everything Aurora, Lucius, and Narcissa had told her to expect. The train itself was a challenge, but it was a warm-up compared to what was coming after: The Sorting. She tried to recall everything she had ever heard about Gryffindors and repeat it to herself mentally: Brave, bold, courageous, short-sighted, eager to right perceived wrongs and tend to see the world in shades of black and white. She didn't know if she could do all that, but Narcissa had assured her that she could do almost as much good in Ravenclaw. Wit and learning were much easier. She could do books and cleverness...but she wanted to do her best, and that meant Gryffindor.
Her reverie was broken by an awkward boy opening the door to the compartment she had found for herself. "Um...sorry to disturb you, but have you seen a toad? Trevor...my toad...seems to have disappeared again."
"No." Hermione admitted, and then reminded herself to make friends and be nice. "I'll help you look, though! I'm Hermione Granger." She stuck out her hand with a smile.
"Neville Longbottom." The boy answered, a bit nervously, shaking her hand with a sweaty one.
"Charmed." She said, wiping her hand on her robes when he exited the car, looking for his missing toad. "Thanks, Hermione."
While she hadn't found the toad, she did find Harry Potter and a redhead who didn't seem to grasp the difference between basic magical theory and nursery rhymes. She might have been taught the difference; but that didn't make stepping into the Great Hall any less intimidating. She was shaking with nerves, eyes scanning the room so fully that she could barely even hear herself talk about the ceiling and Hogwarts, A History.
She focused on the Head Table, her eyes searching out Aurora, needing some reassurance from her godmother. She was relieved when Aurora nodded, just slightly, and then Hermione's eyes wandered across the table, cataloguing the faces and matching them with Aurora's lessons on the school and who was who...until she saw...him.
She had always known that she took after her mother. Everyone always said so, even the muggles from primary school who only knew Dr. Celia Granger. Despite knowing this, and despite knowing she shouldn't let her eyes linger, she searched his face for pieces of herself, something that she could cling to as an obvious tie or connection between them. Maybe the tilt of her eyes or the shape of the ears, she desperately wanted something. Still, better sense prevailed and she forced herself to refocus on The Sorting and the talking hat as Professor McGonagall (Head of Gryffindor House, Transfiguration Professor, Deputy Headmistress, strict, subtly favours her own House but thinks she's fair, cat animagus with too many pet birds to not be suspicious) called out the names of her fellow First Years to be Sorted.
When the woman called out "Granger, Hermione!" Hermione didn't even have to pretend to be nervous, muttering platitudes under her breath. She buried the bitter thought of what might have happened if the professor had called 'Snape, Hermione' instead as far down in her stomach as she possibly could. She walked up to the unsteady looking stool, feeling all of the eyes on her as the brim of the old, worn, and slightly smelly hat fell over her eyes, cutting off her ability to see.
A voice spoke, in her head or in her ear, she couldn't quite tell. "You are a surprise." The voice sounded...oddly pleased. "Whatever will I do with you? You've a sharp mind, quick and thorough, and logical for one so young. You could be another Hypatia if I put you in Ravenclaw, moulding the world with numbers…"
"Gryffindor." She whispered quietly, thinking it even harder. "I want to be in Gryffindor."
"Yes, you do…" The Hat agreed. "But does it suit you? Slytherin would nurture that ambition of yours, the vindictive thoughts you try so hard to suppress. Slytherin would be so much easier for you. Simpler almost. Part of you wants to be there as well, to make them proud, to prove yourself worthy. You could even tell him if you were a Slytherin."
The Hat was trying to tempt her, trying to move her from what she needed to do, from who she needed to be. It saw into her mind and was offering her forbidden fruit it knew she wanted. She squared her shoulders, setting her jaw and narrowing her eyes against the darkness of the inside of the hat. She didn't like being manipulated. "I can make them proud in Gryffindor." She hissed quietly, not even audible to herself. "Just because it's not easy doesn't mean it's not worth it. I'm willing to sacrifice him never seeing me if I'm doing the right thing."
"Hmmm…" The Hat hummed, and she wondered if she had pleased the damn thing somehow, before it spoke again. "This is a hard road, child, harder than you know. You may well lose yourself, you will lose others if you take it. There will be pain. Ravenclaw would suit you well, Slytherin too. You will never be first if I put you in Gryffindor, there will always be others seen as greater. Would you really choose to be Nimue over Circe or Hypatia?"
Hermione resisted the urge to roll her eyes. She was hardly great, hardly the calibre of a mythical Witch, even if she desperately wanted to be that. "Yes. There are things more important."
"Well then, I hope you know what you've chosen. Off you go to…" The voice was not longer quiet, and shouted: "GRYFFINDOR!"
Flushed with victory as the Hat lifted from her head, Hermione scurried over to join her table, feeling as though she had done it. She had taken the true first steps into what she was always meant to do and be...and if she looked over at the Head Table and wished...well, it didn't matter, not really.
Lily's son was coming to Hogwarts. Severus knew that, it was all the staff was talking about, and something inside him ached as the first years entered and he scanned their young, excited, nervous faces. Draco stood, a small mirror of Lucius hiding nerves behind an arrogant mask, and there, not far from him was the boy. Dumbledore was right, he did have Lily's eyes, but the rest of him...the rest of him was all Potter. Another cursory glance however, and he felt his heart skip. While Draco might be a miniature of Lucius, and Potter look identical to his father save for the eyes, there was a girl. A girl who was a tiny Cressida, down to the whiskey-coloured eyes and the ridiculously wild curly hair that Cressida had always kept straightened, slicked back and restrained with hair potions of her own invention unless she was alone...or with him.
He had to be imagining things. This was impossible. Cressida Dagworth-Granger was a Beauxbatons witch. She wouldn't send a child to Hogwarts. It was just his past trying to torment him, the image of Cressida in the same year as Lily and Potter's son. It was impossible. Severus thought of Cressida often, even more so after the war, when he had thought she would return, and he could make amends for how he had treated her unconsciously and by omission...until Narcissa had informed him kindly that this had been a failsafe of the Dark Lord, that she was hidden in a place for the Dark Lord should he fall. That had made him wonder in his most cynical moments if he had sentenced both of them to isolation by aiding the Order. If he had put Lily before Cressida yet again without even intending to do so. He had wanted to save his first friend, his first love, and Dumbledore had assured her safety. he had promised to protect Lily if Severus spied, and Severus had had nothing of his own left, but the old man had failed and turned his guilt on Severus, who had acquiesced. Now, knowing that Cressida had been out there, waiting, hidden and now had to stay hidden made his guilt even worse. He had failed both of them. Again.
"Granger, Hermione!" Minerva called, and the girl scurried forward, sitting on the stool. Severus felt the knot in his stomach tighten. Granger? If she was Cressida's daughter, shouldn't it be Dagworth-Granger, or whatever her father's surname was? Hermione was a Shakespearean name, as the Dagworth-Grangers always used, the Queen of Sicily from A Winter's Tale, transformed or resurrected after dying from a broken heart when unjustly accused of adultery and treason.
The girl was a hatstall, the hat muttering to itself for over five minutes, as the girl's shoulders straightened and tensed. Finally, the hat announced to the entire hall. "GRYFFINDOR!"
Hermione Granger jumped from the stool, looking strangely victorious, as if she had won a war in those five minutes, and scurried to the damnable Gryffindor table, sitting down gracefully next to the Prefect Weasley. He watched Lily's son get Sorted to the same House and then tried his best to go about his night as normal. but his thoughts were haunted.
He could remember clearly the night that Aurora had burst into the Death Eater meeting, saying Cressida was bleeding out and rushed off with a bag of blood replenishers, Narcissa, and his entire stock of dittany. It had been hours until Narcissa and Aurora had returned, at least three in the morning. Very few things took so long to heal even with an incompetent healer. That had been September...if Cressida had given birth that night, the child would be a first year now. More importantly, if Cressida had given birth that night, that meant that he was the father. If Hermione Granger was the daughter of Cressida Dagworth-Granger, then he was her father. He felt a bit sick.
In the Post-Sorting staff meeting, while most everyone was going on about Harry Potter, Snape had another student he wanted to bring up. "Yes, well, about one of the other new Gryffindors." Severus said with a sneer. "The Granger girl...any relation to Hector or Orsino Dagworth-Granger and their family of potions masters? I did my apprenticeship with Orsino."
Minerva sniffed at him. "Not unless they've a few squibs in the family tree, Severus. The girl is a muggleborn. Aurora had the duty to break it to her mother and escort her to Diagon Alley and teach her about our world."
Severus shot a look at the dark-skinned witch in the corner. He and Aurora had come to a truce after Barty had been sentenced to Azkaban and she had been protected from overzealous Aurors by Dumbledore, taking the Astronomy position at the school and convincing everyone that she, like the world, had been fooled by Barty and had no idea where his loyalties had lain. The once feisty and vivacious witch had receded into a quiet, lonely one without her other half and Severus knew how she felt...twice over. They were something resembling friends...unless the topic of Cressida or Lily came up. She was viciously loyal and hadn't forgiven Severus for what she perceived as his part in her friend being sent away. Even at eighteen she had been a kind of den mother, wanting to protect and heal, not to fight, which was why she never took the Dark Mark and only acted in a support capacity.
"She's dead clever," Aurora admitted, looking up from her usual lesson plans. "I think she wanted to buy out the entirety of Flourish and Blotts. Gravitated right to the section on jinxes, though. She'd have made an interesting Slytherin, if it weren't for the hat's orders."
Severus nodded, taking in this information as Minerva made an offhand comment about Slytherin blood politics. He would have to wait until Friday to see the mysterious Gryffindor closer up. Wonderful. He wasn't about to go on a wild goose chase until he was sure, and he wasn't sure whether he wanted to be right or not. He had always assumed that Cressida had gone on the mission because of him, because he had not been circumspect with his feelings for Lily and hadn't understood his feelings for her. To be honest, he still didn't understand the knot of feelings he had for Cressida. He had never imagined, however, in his wildest imaginings that she might have been pregnant. Those imaginings were particularly creative and had included being chained up somewhere brewing impossible potions for years, married off for magical artefacts or secretly recruiting foreign wizards to new Death Eater groups, but never anything like what wouldn't leave his mind now.
He was both dreading and anticipating Friday.