Saturday Morning
What little remains of Snape's office
Severus isn't a man who breaks things.
He breaks hearts, he breaks prides, he breaks attitudes, sure. He breaks the overconfidence of his cocky students, when they strut into his classroom like they own it, demanding grades instead of knowledge, demanding acknowledgement for their meagre achievements.
Severus breaks people with words and glares, but he never stoops so low as to break anything with his hands.
As he fastens the cuffs of his teaching robes, he surveys the havoc he brought down on his own office last night. The desk is overturned, splintered and cracked with only one of its legs intact; it lays across the room, far from its usual position, having landed there after his magic hurled it to the wall. All pens and inkpots and essay piles are now strewn across the floor. Even some of his precious books are torn apart and crumpled; some pages carry the red blots of his own blood that dripped from the backs of his own fists after he pummeled the stone walls with them. The smell of stale whiskey and tobacco smoke permeates the air.
There are bad nights; and then there is the night that has Severus feeling like the dirtiest, unsophisticated lowlife, no better than Tobias Snape.
"Professor Snape? Are yeh in there, professor Snape?!"
A hurried knock on his office door threatens to throw it off its hinges. Ιf Severus wasn't aware of Hagrid's strength, he'd think the door was his nightly victim as well. With a lazy horizontal swipe of his wand, the office returns to its usual neat state. He opens the door, just as the last book slides into its place in the shelves, and the lid closes over the inkpot with a soft clink.
"What."
The giant baboon that is another one of Dumbledore's pets bursts into his office with jumbled up explanations -so called- about an attack on a student. He showcases an opal necklace, and it takes a few questions to draw the actual facts out of the rambling oaf, but in time Severus has formed his well-founded suspicions.
On top of everything, he has Draco's carelessness to deal with.
~~~~~~~~ … the following day… ~~~~~~~~
Sunday, 22nd of October, 1996
Gryffindor Common Room
Hermione has quit trying to explain to Harry how unlikely it is that Malfoy is the culprit in this whole affair. More than 24 hours later, Harry has dropped the issue at last. He sits huddled over his blasted Prince and pointedly ignores all of her homework-related jabs.
The brat told you.
She has also stopped explaining -to herself this time- how Severus Snape is a pureblood, and therefore he hasn't attended any other school but Hogwarts. Unlike Harry, she has gotten the gist. That he was bullied, Hermione has no doubt. He practically admitted it himself, and what would Snape have to win out of admitting something as belittling as that?
Yesterday she was forced to stand uselessly on the snowy path, watching a girl barely a year older than herself writhe in agony; not even that experience is enough to take her mind off Severus Snape, it seems. She blinks and is transported back into his office, stared down by the bottomless orbs that are his pitch-black eyes, pupils bloated by equal measures of wrath and desperation. She feels the phantom of his steel-like grip, hovering around the still-tender imprints he left on the skin of her elbows; he wafts that inexplicable musk-flowery scent that can only be identified as jasmine. Hermione can't fathom what Snape is doing, meddling with such pleasant smells. He dares to invade her personal space, he dares to seize her like a pup and throw her out of his office, but he never offers any explanations.
How can someone who's been bullied turn out to be such a bully themselves?
Hermione sighs, gaze sweeping idly across the common room; Ron has sneaked off again, to wherever he disappears in the evenings. He thinks he's being subtle about it, but even Harry has started to notice. Hermione desperately needs to divert her mind off images of him wrapped up in some faceless girl's embrace.
"Harry, can I ask you something?"
"Ahm-hm."
That brat pretended he pitied me and then he ran back to his precious friends to snitch. How many an evening has he spent mocking me with Weasley?
She remains silent for a moment too long, which has Harry looking up from the book. He's sending her an inquiring look, but Hermione is alone in this. No matter what the Headmaster says, these lessons are a chasm between her and her friends. She cannot ask Harry what he knows about Snape's schooldays, because how will she explain her own knowledge on the matter? That she and Snape bonded over their schoolyears of abuse, while she was scrubbing cauldrons during her detention?
Between one breath and her next, Hermione knows she is left with no other choice, but to follow her half-formed plan.
"Can I borrow the Map for tonight?"
"The Marauder's Map?" Harry asks, even as he reaches into his bag to find it. "Sure, but what for?"
Hermione snatches up the yellowed parchment and she's already on her feet. "Thanks. Don't forget to add that paragraph in McGonagall's essay. She said in the last lesson that if we don't, we'd get a Poor. "
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, now listen to this." Harry has already returned his attention to the Prince's book and he's ready to bombard her with intel about some dark and vicious spell no doubt.
Hermione is already half-way to the portrait hole.
She might not be allowed to learn what's going on in the war efforts against Voldemort, but she'll be damned if she doesn't even try her best to figure out Severus Snape.
~~~~~~~ … Half an hour later… ~~~~~~~~~~
4th Floor, West Wing Corridor
Severus does the rounds on the 4th floor tonight.
He's not obliged to, but the walls of his private quarters smother him, so here he is now, checking alcove after alcove. Dumbledore has fucked off again, to wherever he keeps disappearing to, these past few months. Minerva has been giving him the thin-lip ever since she heard about Granger's punishment, so their Sunday evenings of chess and scotch are put on hold until she calms down. This is the only pleasant turn of events; Severus is saved from exchanging niceties with her, while trying to seduce her favourite lion cub behind her back.
None of these alters the fact that he feels like an animal locked in a cage, one that's too exhausted to even snarl against the metal bars.
A loud BANG! echoes across the stone and the animal lifts up his nose.
At the same time,
Filch's Office
Admittedly, it's a bit therapeutic when you break things.
Even if you do it by remote control.
Collecting all objects she could find and piling them all in a haphazard imitation of the tower of Pisa was no trouble. Setting up the timing and exploding spells took a bit longer, but now Hermione shuts Filch's door behind her, and is alone in his empty office that smells of humidity and cat. Filing cabinets line every wall. Her frantic heartbeat echoes the blast of her impromptu vandalism.
" Point me Severus Snape's file!"
Her hopes aren't high about finding anything substantial, but the little blue light that breaks out of her wand gets divided into three smaller little dots. They fly gracefully through the air, completely ignoring Filch's cabinets. They head for the right wall, where they pass through a nondescript door. Hermione hasn't noticed it till then, hidden as it is behind one of the tall cabinets. Stealing another glance on the Map, she feels safe enough to tear the mysterious door open. She is faced with a narrow corridor, lined with towers of web-covered carton boxes, each with a numbering on their front. Each one of her spell's little blue lights has attached themselves on a box, lighting up the dark cupboard in a blue hue.
Hermione proceeds with her shoulders set in a firm line and her heart filled with doubts.
"This wasn't Peeves." Severus picks up a brass candlestick that's battered and bent; he sweeps over it with his wand. "There are traces of spellcasting attached to many of these objects. Someone used magic to stick them all together, then blasting spells to break the pile and rocket them to the walls."
Severus doesn't want to admit thinking such a soppy thing, but it's strangely comforting to know that this weekend, he hasn't been the only one destroying objects. Not that the dunderhead who caused this mess is haunted by their violent fathers–
At least, Severus hopes they aren't.
At any rate, he stands up just as Filch mutters and grumbles about the little piece of shit that loaded him with an entire classroom to clean up.
Severus doesn't lift his wand; it would take mere seconds to tidy up most of this pointless mess, and a more thoughtful wizard would have saved the caretaker from hours of monotonous labour. They would also win Filch's sneering offense, for daring to imply that the squibb isn't able to do his own job.
If there's one thing he learnt out of having a bastard for a father is to know better than to step on a bastard's tail. Though, of course, capitalising on their weakness when you find them on their backs is another thing entirely.
Filch doesn't fall on the second category however, so Severus leaves the caretaker alone with his broom.
There are no student files kept in Filch's office.
All Hermione holds now are a couple dozens of detention cards bearing Snape's name, the occasion of his misconduct and the punishment he received for it. That's all the records that remain from the years Snape spent as a student.
Well, there is the Trophy Room, but I have no trouble imagining Snape's academic success. It's the picture of him being cornered in a bathroom by a bunch of kids that I can't come to terms with.
And Hogwarts has no record of that, of the raw anger of an adult man who is still haunted by whatever he went through in school. McGonagall was there, Dumbledore was there. There was no Umbridge at the time, ruling over their heads. There should be record of this; punishment for the kids responsible, and Hermione doesn't care that they were kids. If they did half of what her own classmates did, they should pay, and pay dearly.
Even for the sake of Snape.
Ensuring that the office is just as she found it, Hermione hides the cards in her inner pocket and brings out the Map. There's nobody in the neighbouring corridors… and Filch is still upstairs. Hermione watches his dot sway rhythmically back and forth. He is sweeping. She stares transfixed for a moment, even though every moment spent in here, is a moment closer to getting caught. Filch is a squib. He can't clean up her mess with magic.
It's not like Hermione isn't aware of that. It's not like she forgot it exactly, either. She just… had too many things on my mind! Because no matter how hard she tries, she always fails to be in control of every little thing.
And poor Filch will have to spend his Sunday evening sweeping because of it.
Her eye falls on another black dot that's walking away from the scene of her crime. Severus Snape is taking the shortcut to the first floor, heading further away from Filch's dot, and also Filch's office.
As Hermione stands in the middle of the musty, cramped office, a very novel sensation grips her: she wants to go to him. She's burning to go to him, to corner him like he's cornering her, to shout at him like he's shouting and to not give a… damn!... about his feelings, like he doesn't care about anyone except himself. She wants to head down to the dungeons right now and rub his own detention cards on his face. That's what your behaviour made me do! She wants to yell and grumble.
And why shouldn't I? Because it's not true? Why can Snape lash out, and I cannot?
She wants to give in to all this anger, let it break free instead of muzzling it behind her teeth; she's tired of how she must always be the polite one, the sweet one, the forgiving one. The proper little Ms Granger her parents raised her to be.
She closes Filch's door behind her (the man left in such a haste, he cannot possibly remember whether he locked it or not).
It's for her parents' sake, that Hermione forces herself to stomp her way back to Gryffindor tower. She has done enough to earn their disappointment; barging uninvited in her professor's room, after hours, mainly to vent her anger and the disappointment she feels at herself is far more than even she -in her tattered state- can justify.
I can hold on until tomorrow evening, when I'll be meeting him again.
In Snape's office, she will at least be able to vent, if nothing else.
A/N: A million thanks to my wonderful beta, the Author KyloRen.93 for helping me shape this chapter with his pointed remarks!
Go ahead and give his new story a read! "Through My Eyes: A Weasley's Tale" is the first part of an ongoing series, and you're going to love it! Just don't forget to leave a review!