[A/N: Thank you to Calamity Owl for beta-reading this chapter!]


Harry stumbled out of his floo, straightened up, and turned around just in time to catch Hermione as she flopped out of the fireplace behind him.

"Thank you," she murmured, and he held her for another twenty seconds until he felt her legs firm up and reclaim her body weight from him.

"No problem," he said as he removed their glamours. "So, do I win the bet with Remus?"

"You don't even have to bribe me," Hermione replied. "That's awful. I'd much rather walk to their house, even in the rain."

"I understand," Harry said. "We should probably get you comfortable enough that you can manage flooing to and from Longbottom Manor on your own, though."

She sighed. "You're right. Can we try that tomorrow, though? My inner ears can only take so much of this at once."

"That's fine," Harry said. "Right now, are you feeling up to setting up the potions lab?"

"Sure. I need to work off some of that burger."

"I'm glad you liked it so much. What did you think of Diagon Alley?"

"Honestly?" Hermione said. "It was kind of terrifying. I mean, it was amazing, and I'm just blown away by how there's this whole world I never knew existed, but it was also terrifying and I don't think I'll ever be brave enough to go alone."

"That's kind of how I felt the first time, too," Harry said. "It helped that I had a huge, half-giant of a man showing me around. For what it's worth, though, I suspect you'll be one of the most dangerous people in the entire Alley within a few years."

She arched her eyebrows at him.

"You're a powerful witch," Harry said. "Once you've picked up some spells, you'll be able to go toe-to-toe with anyone."

"I'd rather they just not notice me," she said.

As they walked upstairs, Harry was tempted to tell her that she was going to show the entire country she was too amazing to be ignored, but he decided against that for fear of stoking her anxiety.

Setting up the potions lab took most of the evening, especially because Hermione was meticulous about arranging the ingredients as "The Prudent Potioneer" instructed. Harry was simultaneously annoyed about the slow pace and that he hadn't had her as a Potions partner in Hogwarts, because his grades would have been amazing. By the time they collapsed into their beds at eleven, the lab was roughly in shape for Andi's visit in a few days.

Harry had day shifts for the next several days, so he had to be up early the next morning. He skipped his pre-work workout that day just to get a little extra sleep, and Hermione hauled herself out of bed early to have breakfast with him even though he told her she didn't have to.

Hermione considered a nap after Harry left, but breakfast had woken her up enough that she decided against it. Instead, she finished setting up the potions lab and spent some time familiarising herself with the layout of ingredients and tools. After she finished that, she thought about trying out her new wand, but decided doing so without Harry present might be suicidally unsafe.

That left something else she'd been hoping to do with him, but the clock was ticking until Professor Tonks showed up on Thursday and she wanted to be ready. She dug out some parchment, ink, and one of Harry's incredibly useful self-inking quills, and sat down at the coffee table in the sitting room with Severus Snape's first-year potions textbook.

The idea that she could use this book to create magical items was still mildly brain-breaking, but the text was so dry and so like a cookbook that it felt like the reverse of Clarke's Third Law: magic so exhaustively (and drily) analysed and replicable felt more real, like she could trust it.

She made her way through the textbook carefully, reading each page twice just to make sure she'd seen all of it. Snape occasionally left neat notes in the margins, elaborating on something in the textbook or adding something his unnamed professor said the book had forgotten to mention. About six pages in, writing in a new hand intruded into the margins, angled as if the writer had been sitting to the left of the book rather than in front of it. The letters were lighter and thinner than Snape's, but more well-formed, and Hermione had a hunch it was a woman's hand.

"Can I ask a stupid question?" the writer asked.

"I doubt it, but you're welcome to try," the book's owner responded.

"How could I possibly overexcite the shrake spines? They're dead!" The other writer had pushed her quill extra-hard into the paper for the word "possibly," as if to emphasise her displeasure with the idea that pieces of a dead magical fish could be excited.

Hermione respected that.

"Shrakes were bred to destroy nets with their spikes," Snape wrote back. "That magic is still in their spines, and it can be activated if they're disturbed as if by being trapped in a net."

"Where did you learn that?" The other writer's text was cramped and hurried, as if she was angry a fact had slipped by her.

"The Appendix of Ingredients," Snape wrote. On the next line, he added, "Don't read it now! You'll get in trouble."

"Fine," the other writer replied. "I'll read it at lunch."

Hermione stared at the book for a moment before laying it on the coffee table with more reverence than she'd handled even the most expensive rare books that had come through Mr. Folkes' stall a few weeks and a lifetime ago. She pulled out a separate piece of parchment, wrote the page number of that conversation, and added the description "Shrake Spines and the Appendix." It didn't seem like much to repay Harry for his kindness, but it was a start.

If she'd any doubts the other writer was Harry's mother Lily, they vanished when Hermione found a conversation on the most complex potion yet a few hours after she'd eaten a quick lunch.

"I had to stop you," Snape wrote, his text cramped and hurried..

"You hit my hand!," the other writer responded.

"You were going to stick it in the lionfish spine jar!"

"So?"

Hermione furrowed her brows. Weren't lionfish spines—

"Those are venomous!"

"Oh."

"I'm sorry, but I was worried you'd hurt yourself and I didn't want Slughorn to hear me warn you and dock you points," Snape wrote.

"Thanks, Sev," the other girl wrote, and added a little stick drawing that was almost certainly a lily.

Hermione noted this conversation as carefully as the other handful she'd found, then sat and stared sadly at it. Eavesdropping on this friendship between two precocious children might have been fun had she not known roughly how it had ended. It reminded her of some of her friendships and she wondered what it would be like to listen in on her conversations with those children again. Could she see what poisoned each relationship ahead of time if she knew the ending?

Could she prevent it from happening again with Harry?

She shook her head and tried to force those thoughts away. She was shite at friendship, she knew, but assuming she'd fail or walking on eggshells for fear of that failure would only hasten their friendship's demise. No. She would be herself, apologise when she hurt him (she would hurt him, she always did) and never do it again, hold him together when he fell apart, and appreciate him when he made something difficult look easy.

A treacherous voice told her that wasn't enough and never would be, but she ignored it. She had one reason to believe that would work, one reason far better than anything she could come up with, pro or con: it was what he'd done for her.

The flare of the floo in the next room shocked her back to the present. Harry hopped out, staggered a little as he usually did, and dusted himself off.

"Welcome home!" Hermione said.

Harry's eyes flashed an unreadable expression for a moment before he smiled and said, "Thank you. How was your day?"

"It went by fast," she replied, hoping she hadn't somehow offended him. "I've been going over the Potions textbook and taking notes. I think I can have it finished by tomorrow night, so I should hopefully be ready to be a decent student for Professor Tonks on Thursday morning."

"Great!" Harry said. "In retrospect, I really wish I'd done what you're doing for my classes. Did you find any notes that might have been from my mother?"

"Yes, and I've been indexing them separately for easier locating." She held up the separate parchment. "I'll keep filling this out as I find more."

"Thank you!" Harry said. "I'd love something to take my mind off the day I've had. May I read them now?"

"Of course!" Hermione patted the couch next to her and he hurried over. He read the four conversations she'd found in order, wiped his eyes, and reread them. She'd put her hand on his shoulder sometime around when he'd started tearing up during the first read-through, and after he finished the second, she pulled him into a hug. He reciprocated, but didn't start sobbing again like he had when he'd first learnt of the books, and she wasn't sure if that was a good or bad thing.

"Is there anything you'd like to talk about?" she asked.

"They're so…normal," Harry said with only a hint of a catch in his voice. "Snape is only a shadow of the self-absorbed, bullying git he turned into, and my mother is…just a girl. A pushy, intelligent girl who seems like she's throwing herself at magical education and demanding all of the answers at once and doing a shockingly good job of getting them. Everyone's always talked about her like some combination of Albert Einstein and Mary, Mother of Jesus, so it's weird to see her being…well, human."

"Are you happy you've gotten to read these?" Hermione asked as she released him from the embrace.

"Definitely," Harry said. "I know I'll never have the chance to really know my parents, but it's nice to see some fragments of my mother and her personality. They're practically wizarding martyrs now. Hell, there's even a monument to them in the town where they died! Maybe the Wizarding World needed to see them as martyrs, but I needed to see them as human beings, and I'm glad I can."

"I'm glad you can, too," Hermione said. They sat there in silence for a moment while Harry stared at the book for a minute or two before his stomach rumbled.

"Oh, right," he said. "Food. It's been a long day."

"What should we do about dinner?" Hermione asked.

"You haven't eaten yet?" Harry asked.

Hermione shook her head. "I've been studying."

"It's well after six, you know," he said. "You didn't have to wait for me for dinner."

"It is?" She leaned over to get a glimpse of the grandfather clock in the floo room. "Oh, goodness! I completely lost track of time. I'd have waited for you anyway, though."

"You didn't have to do that," Harry said.

She smirked at him. "Harry, I enjoy spending time with you and it's not a chore to spend some more."

He laughed. "Well played. I'm not up for making anything right now, so do you want to just get some curry?"

"I will never say 'no' to curry," Hermione said. "I'm sorry I let the time get away from me. I could have made dinner."

"I don't expect you to do that," Harry said.

"I know, but I want to contribute around here," Hermione said.

Harry stretched, stood, and offered Hermione his hand to help her up. "That's fair," he said. "Let's work out a schedule of chores in the next few days, but right now I just want to get some food."

The nearest Indian place was about a twenty-minute walk and they were hungry enough that they ate there instead of getting take-out. On the way home, Harry finally opened up about his day.

"I had to stay late because they needed someone to liaise with the muggle police," Harry explained as they trudged through the cold, misty rain of a late September evening in London. "Most Purebloods think muggles are useless and stupid, and even the less bigoted ones are so culturally different that they come across as mildly insane."

"Wizarding culture is that different?" Hermione asked. "I've only seen a bit of it, and I didn't interact with many people."

"It's been developing separately for four hundred years," Harry said. "Kind of like Americans, except with no communication at all between the two groups."

"They act like Americans? That explains the 'mildly insane' part," Hermione said.

"That's not what…" he laughed. "You're taking the mickey, aren't you?"

"You caught on fast," she said, smiling.

He smiled back, but it faded. "We only interface with the muggle police when there's been a serious crime linked to magic use," he said. "It looks like there's a serial killer out there. The National Crime Squad found their third body last night. They've all been tortured extensively with what looks like the Cruciatus Curse."

"That's horrible!" Hermione said. "Do you have any idea why?"

Harry shook his head. "Sometimes, there's just no reason other than someone felt like it and thought they could get away with it."

She thought back to some of the people who'd bullied her in school. "That's just awful. How can people think of Remus as a monster when perfectly 'normal' people do things like that?" She made sure to make air quotes with her fingers when she said the word 'normal' so Harry didn't take offence.

"I sometimes wonder if people need to believe there are monsters out there to distract themselves from the one in the mirror," Harry said, "or in heroes to distract themselves from the failure in their mirror. Merlin knows I've been both in my time."

"Wait, how could anyone see you as a monster?" she asked.

"It's a really long story," he said. "The short version is that people thought I was the one attacking half-bloods when I was in a second-year because I could talk to snakes, and the other time it was because I got entered into a deadly tournament without my consent and they thought I was a glory hound trying to steal attention from older students."

"So they distrusted you because of things you had nothing to do with?" Hermione asked. "I mean, I'm assuming you didn't take 'snake' as an elective language course."

Harry smirked. "No, that class was full. You're right, of course; I was born a Parselmouth and had no choice in the matter."

She walked along in silence for a moment. "Harry, serious question: are wizards all insane and irrational? I'm starting to notice a pattern, and, if I'm being honest, Sirius and even Remus sometimes aren't exactly shining examples of critical thought."

"I've wondered about that a lot, too," he said. "First, I'm not sure they've evolved culturally in the same way muggles have since the 1600s. People where you grew up would likely have frowned upon pitting teenagers against each other in a deadly tournament, but that's not that weird for magicals, just like animal baiting wasn't weird for most people four hundred years ago. Second, magicals only get seven years of formal schooling, plus an apprenticeship in many cases, and they're not getting classes that encourage critical thinking the way the books you introduced me to did. I can transfigure a piece of wood into a cat, but I still don't understand formal logic."

"I see what you mean." Hermione drew her jacket a little more tightly against the chill and the world around her.

"Wondering what you've gotten yourself into?" Harry asked after a moment.

"Definitely," Hermione replied.

He arched his eyebrows at her. "Do you regret it?"

"Never," she said. "This is the first time since I was a child that I've felt…whole. Like I've found a missing piece of myself. I could no more turn my back on this world than I could forgo reading for the rest of my life." A little voice in the back of her head asked her how much of that missing piece was magic and how much was the man next to her, but the last thing her host needed was a clingy, besotted house guest trapped with him.

He smiled. "I'm glad you haven't changed your mind. To be honest, part of the reason I work late on nights like tonight is that it beats being home alone with my thoughts."

"I'm glad you're not missing being alone yet," she said.

"Definitely not, you?"

"Goodness, no," Hermione said.

"Good," he replied. "In retrospect, I probably could have just rented you an apartment for a year, but that didn't seem right. Like, if I was doing that I was just telling you to sink or swim, but this way I'm in there with you the whole time."

"You're right," she said. "I don't think there's an ethical term for this, but you're making an emotional commitment to helping me and that means a lot. I mean, my advisor still signs off on my yearly stipend requests and I think he's just waiting for me to fail. I'd be a lot more conflicted about walking out on him if he'd been right there with me the whole time, helping with research even if he couldn't get me money."

"I see what you mean," Harry said. "It's like when I was trapped in that death tournament and Sirius hired this insane ex-Hit Wizard to teach me how to stay alive, then took the training with me to get himself back in shape, too."

They walked along in silence for a few moments, shrouded in the comfortably distant din of the city at nightfall. Finally, Hermione said, "Harry, I really worry about you sometimes."

"Do I need to stop trying to listen actively?" he asked.

"No, just…maybe we need to get you some reference points that aren't traumatising, potentially lethal events inflicted on you as a child."

"Well, I did try branching out into the muggle world," he said.

"How's that working out?" Hermione asked him.

"Well, my plan was to start visiting one of London's amazing markets, buy quirky things, eat good street food, and meet interesting people. I suppose I succeeded."

She buried her face in her hands. "Oh, God, I'm part of your bad luck, aren't I?"

"Hey." His tone called her eyes out of hiding and into his own again. "I never said it was all bad luck."


Hermione forced herself to put aside the textbook around two the next day and set out for a nice Italian grocer she knew in Clerkenwell, not far from her university. Every now and then, she'd treat herself to fresh pasta there, and she had enough pound notes lying around that she could make the purchase with cash. The trip there and back took an hour, after which she stashed the pasta in the magical icebox and got back to work…after spending a solid fifteen minutes admiring the rune work on the icebox. A line of silver, interleaved runes was etched into the wood above the door, with another line of different, golden runes below. She couldn't wait to get to runes, but she'd never make it if she didn't pass her O.W.L.s.

Harry returned home from work around five, jolting her from a particularly complex potion recipe. "Welcome home!" she said.

He shot her a smile as he dusted floo powder off of himself. "Thank you. How's the studying going?"

"I've nearly finished my first pass on this textbook," she said. "I found a few more conversations to show you, but first let me put a pot on the boil. I thought you needed a proper dinner if you were dealing with a serial killer, so I picked up some fresh-made prosciutto-and-chicken tortellini for dinner along with a loaf of Italian bread."

"That sounds marvellous, thank you," Harry said.

After she started the water heating and Harry freshened up, they sat down together on the couch and went through the handful of new conversations she'd found in the book between Severus and Lily. Nothing really stood out to either of them, and even Harry had to admit that Snape still seemed like a perfectly normal, introverted, and intelligent first-year.

"Are you disappointed?" Hermione asked.

"Maybe," Harry said. "I mean, it's wonderful reading my mother's comments, but I was hoping for something more about Snape. He grew into such a hateful bully of a man, and there's a part of me that wonders if that was my fault. I mean, my mother liked him, so there had to be something good in him at one time, right?"

Hermione shook her head fiercely. "A teacher, a grown man whose job is caring for and encouraging students, should never bully. I don't care if eleven-year-old Harry was a little prat; you deserved punishment, not antagonism. Maybe he was a decent boy at some point, or maybe your mother was deceived, but nothing excuses a teacher bullying a student. You deserved better."

"Thank you," Harry said. "I know that's the truth, but a part of me still thinks I had to have deserved it. And do you know what the really stupid thing is? It all turned out to be unnecessary. Snape didn't need to be there at all."

"Wait, what?" Hermione asked. "He thought he had to be a teacher?"

"It's a long story," Harry said, "and I'm not really allowed to tell anyone." He sighed. "Let's just get started on dinner. Honestly, I'd rather think about serial killers than Snape."

"God," Hermione thought as they went downstairs to the kitchen, "I really need to get this boy some new reference points."