Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

July 30th

Hermione sat on the old carpet of her bedroom floor, her legs crossed, surrounded by various sheets of paper. Most were newspaper clippings, though she'd also laid out the few letters she'd received from Harry and Ron over the summer, as well as her O.W.L.s results.

It was a paper trail of madness, scattered across her floor. She'd laid it all out so that she could file them away properly in her luggage, but she was almost on the verge of scrunching it all up and throwing it in her waste paper basket.

The first clipping she’d kept was a notice of death for the Head of Magical Law Enforcement, Amelia Bones. Hermione had never met or heard of the witch, but it was the first death the prophet had officially reported as perpetrated by Voldemort. The first, and then as if a flood gate had been opened not a single edition of the paper had been printed since without some mention of a death eater attack or a disappearance.

Hermione had kept every single one. Some desperate part of her felt like it was the least she could do, to make some acknowledgement of the lives being dismantled. The clipping closest to her left toe boasted a small picture of a smiling Ollivander, waving at some camera person through the window of his shop. The disappearance of the wand maker had been a particularly chilling discovery.

She’d also kept the series of articles tracking the activities of the Ministry since Voldemort's appearance. Fudge had resigned just a few days after she returned from Hogwarts, his disgrace mocking him through the papers for weeks afterwards. Hermione couldn’t say she was very upset in that regard. She’d never heard of his successor, Rufus Scrimgeour, but according to the various pictures and statements that the prophet had printed he was a serious, no-nonsense sort. Also, apparently, very illusive, refusing to cater to the questions of most reporters. This had been frustrating Hermione to no end. The least helpful things to the wizarding world right now were secrets and veiled information.

The most recent clipping, the one that she’d cut out of the copy of the prophet earlier that morning, sat ominously in front of her crossed feet. It was rather small, given the content. It took up the top half of the front page but was nothing more than an announcement – no accompanying image or long article.

Hermione had already memorized the short excerpt. It felt like a nothing piece, a nothing piece about the most important event of her life. She’d known since Mr Malfoy had revealed his face to them at the Ministry that the war was not just inevitable, but imminent. But she still felt sick to see it in writing. Sick and hollow and like crying. She shoved the article aside with her foot, the repetitive flashes of cameras and the Scrimgeour’s stony face imprinted on her retinas, until it was hidden under the Hogwarts letter she’d received two days ago with her O.W.L results.

She supposed she didn't really have anything to be upset about grades wise – she'd received eleven O.W.L.s in total, ten of which were Outstanding. The one Exceeds Expectations did niggle at her. But the stress associated with and after her end of year exams stripped the results of much of their satisfaction. And who cared if she did well in school if there was going to be a war? She supposedly still cared a little, but she felt silly for doing so.

Snape had given her an Outstanding, even though she hadn’t studied for her potions exam at all and had in fact handed in a pile of philosophical garbage thoughts about the book she'd most recently read – a rather dull account of quidditch through the ages that she'd been perusing at night to try and put herself to sleep.

She looked down at her results letter. The ‘Outstanding’ grade printed next to ‘Potions’ was generic and impersonal, perhaps even scrawled there by a jinxed quill as part of an automatic grading system. But it still felt like the surest point of contact she'd had with him in the one and a half months she'd left Hogwarts.

She'd experimentally jinxed her necklace cold one morning three weeks into the break, and received a signal in return four whole hours later, but otherwise that particular mode of communication had been left untouched. She'd also felt nothing through the open connection in their minds, though she was grateful for that – if he ever drew on her energy that way there would certainly be cause for panic.

But she missed him. It wasn't as bad as she'd initially anticipated when she’d stared through the train window as it trundled away from Hogwarts. She had enjoyed her time at home, reveling in easy time spent lingering in her parents presence, and the simplicity of her life here. Missing him wasn't a jarring, all-consuming affair. More like a quiet sense of loneliness. What was far worse were the bouts of worry she'd experience after every new prophet article about death eater attacks and the increasing boldness of Voldemort. Many of the newspaper clippings on the floor around her were death eater excerpts she'd spent hours scouring for any hint of Snape's involvement or whereabouts. It was futile of course, but helped to ease her nervousness.

In between times, however, the summer had been a fairly happy one. That in itself was strange to her – how easily she could experience happiness alongside a slowly growing fear at the advent of the war and after the horrible ending to the school year. She was growing very used to paradoxical emotion. Or perhaps she was just becoming rather proficient at obscuring her own emotions from herself.

She'd been granted special permission from Madam Pince to withdraw a couple of books on occlumency for the summer and had devoured them all within the first two weeks of the break. She’d been putting everything she’d learned into practice for an hour each morning – sometimes meditating and sometimes building up the shields of her mind – and about three weeks ago she’d made a discovery that she was quite excited about.

From the beginning of the break she’d often found focusing on the presence of Snape’s magic in her mind to be comforting. Her ability to really feel it had still been weak, but as she’d become more and more adept at maneuvering through her mind she’d found her awareness of it growing stronger. And then fairly suddenly, as if she’d crossed some kind of line in terms of hours practiced, at one point she’d realized that if she sunk into her mind right after coming out of an hour of meditation, into that deep part where his magic seemed to belong, she could sometimes drag it back up. She couldn’t exactly describe what sinking in her mind was. It felt like reaching down in order to access the connection had when she’d been attacked at the Ministry, but more purposeful – not scrabbling and frantic. She’d practiced that for weeks, slowly drawing his magic out a little further each time.

At least for the past week and a half, she’d been able to reach into the depths of her mind and draw his magic fully up with her, expanding it, like water filling her head. And as if she really were submerging her thoughts in water, the effect was to cool and quiet everything down.

At first she’d only been able to hold his magic like that for a minute or so, but now she could maintain the state for at least twenty. Looking back at her progress, she couldn’t help but feel proud, and excited to show Snape as soon as she got back to Hogwarts. She was curious to see whether it was something he’d known was theoretically possible or something that took him by surprise just as much as it did her. She wasn’t sure what the implications were, if any. She’d found it helpful for regulating herself, for lessening the ache of missing him, but it hadn’t seemed to have altered the feel of her own magic.

Now, however, the act of packing all her things up again seemed to have stirred her emotions. Leaving her parents now felt like a more significant thing than it ever had, though she was also growing desperate to see the boys again. She wanted to spend some time with them before the chaos of the school year swamped them all.

A soft knock at her bedroom door drew Hermione out of her slowly spiraling thoughts. She recognized the knock as her mothers – three gentle raps; one two, pause, three.

“Can I come in, love?”

Hermione sniffed hurriedly, surprised at the teary stuffiness of her nose, and began to collect the various papers spread across her floor.

“Not right now, mum, give me a minute!”

“Are you sure? I have tea?”

Oh. That meant her mother already knew Hermione was upset, it meant she'd been expecting to find her daughter a puddle of teary mush on the floor. Hermione wasn't teary mush just yet.

Still, she hastily finished cleaning up the mess on her floor – while she hadn't lied about the intensifying political situation in the Wizarding world outright, she'd been keeping her daily prophet editions tucked away in her room and downplayed as much as she reasonably could. She placed the pile of parchment beside her on the floor and tucked her hair self-consciously behind her ears.

“Okay.”

There was a moment's silence and then the door was pushed gently open. Her mother slipped through, a soft smile on her face and a cup of tea in each hand.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

Hermione gratefully accepted one of the steaming mugs and watched her mother effortlessly ease down onto the floor opposite, leaning against the side of her bed. On one hand, Hermione was silently praying that she wasn't in a questioning mood. She didn't feel up to diverting her parent away from the state of the Wizarding world and having to argue for her return to Hogwarts. On the other hand, the simple presence of her mother made Hermione want to spew forth everything. She craved the comfort.

Equally torn between both instincts, she stayed quiet, blowing on her tea. Her mother tilted her head to the side, her face settling into that kind yet wary look she liked to adopt when she could sense something.

“How's packing going?”

Prompted, Hermione cast a quick glance around her room. She’d packed a little more than she usually did on the off chance that coming home might suddenly become a less viable option. It’d been an intimidating, nostalgic process, but she only had clothes to go.

“Good.”

“You know, just because the offer’s been extended you don't have to leave right now if you don't want to.”

Hermione smiled, shaking her head. “I know.”

In truth, she'd wondered about delaying her trip to the Weasley’s by another week, but she suspected the longer she left it the more difficult it would be to leave her parents. They re-opened their office on Monday morning, so it just made logical sense to bring her time with them to a close now. When she was emotionally undecided it was easier to yield to the logic of things.

“I miss the boys.”

Her mother hummed. “Of course you do. Don't feel guilty, love, we'll miss you but we'll survive.”

“I'll miss you too.”

Her mother took a sip of her tea and then cupped both her hands around the warm mug – she was always seeking out heat, even in the middle of summer. Hermione loved the summer months too but she’d never understood her mothers seemingly insatiable need for extreme temperature. The older woman then tilted her head to the side, worry threading through her expression.

“Are you going to tell me what's been on your mind all summer, before you leave?”

“I don't…” Hermione cut herself off, not even sure what she'd been going to say. She knew she'd been more subdued than usual. “There's just a lot going on in that world at the moment.”

“It's dangerous, isn't it? Much moreso than last year?”

Hermione worried the inside of her cheek with her teeth. She'd had a rather significant argument with her parents the year before when the time had come to return to Hogwarts. They didn't receive much information from the Wizarding world, but they weren't silly. She didn't want to repeat the confrontation. She didn't want to leave another disrupted relationship in her wake. But she also didn't want to lie to her parents about the state of the world she was heading back into – she owed them that much.

She shook her head, looking down into her tea. “I don't want to argue.”

She heard her mother sigh, but her voice was still soft and comforting when she replied.

“Hermione. Your father and I have known for a long time that you don't belong here. I think we hadn't entirely accepted it this time last year, perhaps your father still hasn't, but I have. What I would hate most, now, is if you felt like you couldn't talk to me out of fear.” Hermione felt the backs of her eyes burning as her mother continued. “I want to know what's happening, even if it scares me. I want you to be able to rely on me as someone you can talk to without having to worry about how I'll react.”

Hermione felt a rush of gratitude, stronger than she would’ve expected. She'd always relied on her mother to talk things through with, but had felt her ability to do that butt up against the increasing intensity of what she wanted to disclose. She so wanted to talk freely with someone for once. She took a deep breath, surprised at how wobbly it felt in her throat.

“There's going to be a war.”

She heard her mother suck in a breath, and release it slowly. “Against that unnamable wizard?”

“Yes.”

Her mother paused, and Hermione looked up at her. She could read both sadness and openness in the woman's eyes. Hermione wondered if she'd become better at reading the emotions of people in general. It felt that way.

She also noticed her mother's cheek hollow a little as she bit down against the tissue there, a habit she'd apparently passed onto her daughter. It was funny to see it from an outsider's point of view. Hermione had never thought of it as a tic someone else might notice.

“Are you scared?”

“I… no?” That obviously wasn't true, but Hermione didn't quite know how to explain it. She was both more and less scared than she’d been this time last year. Last year a war had been a foreboding question in the air. This year it was inevitable, but at least that question was answered. “Yes. Yes I am. Especially because Harry is so central to everything I know it's going to put a lot of the people I care about in a lot of danger.”

“Including you?”

“Maybe.” Yes. Hermione knew the answer was almost certainly yes. But that wasn't where the majority of her fear stemmed from just yet. “But not yet. Hogwarts is probably the safest place I could go right now. I don't know when that will change, I don't really know anything.”

Her mother's forehead creased into a beautiful landscape of worry lines. “This has been hanging over you all summer, hasn't it?”

Hermione frowned. The question was a straightforward one on its own but the way her mother had said it suggested some deep, cryptic undercurrent. “What?”

“You've been different, Hermione. So very grown, for one thing.”

“I've been worried, about… The people I care about.” Hermione stopped, feeling her throat close up. For a second she actually thought she felt her necklace grow warm against her collar bone, but it was only her imagination. She brought her fingers up to touch it anyway. “Mum, I'm not sure how to…”

She'd tried to speak again too soon and her voice had broken, her face scrunching up in resistance against the tears she didn't feel like shedding right this moment. She heard her mother make a small, upset sound and move across the carpet towards her, and then a strong arm was wrapped around Hermione’s shoulders and she was pulled into a tight hug.

“Oh, sweetheart.” Her mothers voice was strained, as if she too were holding back tears. “I hate seeing you this way.”

Hermione attempted a laugh to lighten the atmosphere but it turned into a sob. Her head resting against her mothers shoulder, she squeezed her eyes shut before blinking the tears away. They didn't last long – just a short rush of emotion that needed to work its way through her system.

Her mother loosened her hold around Hermione’s shoulders after about a minute, but kept her arm in place. Hermione sniffed, looking down at her hands. The small burns and cuts she'd accumulated while brewing the year before had all healed. It was the first time in many months the skin was entirely unbroken. They were a little rougher too – she'd spent a fair amount of time helping her father in the garden. Still, they itched to be back in the laboratory again.

She took in a deep breath, and released it slowly. “I met someone, last year.”

Hermione felt her mother turn to look at her, the hand on her shoulder squeezing a little.

“Are you in a relationship?”

“No… not really.”

“But someone you care about?”

Hermione nodded. “He's more than a friend.”

“Tell me.”

Hermione could hear the smile on her mothers lips. The idea of finally being able to tell someone about Snape made her feel incredibly light, but now that she actually had the opportunity she struggled to find the words.

“He's so strong. He comes across as quite harsh, often even unkind, but I think it's because he's had to, at least to some degree.” She spoke slowly, thinking back to those first few weeks in the laboratory, when she’d started to realize he was so much more than she'd ever thought. “He's the most intelligent person I've ever met but it's never for show, it's like this storm of curiosity he cultivates out of everyone's way. And he's so gentle. He doesn't think so. He's built this self protective layer but he's brave and loyal and he feels things so strongly.”

Her mothers fingers played a happy pattern on Hermione's arm, and Hermione felt the vibration of a hum on the top of her hair.

“But you've been sad.”

Hermione pressed her lips together. Her mother often saw straight through her. She weighed her words very carefully, knowing that a show of disapproval would hit her strongly.

“He’s– we're not acceptable.”

“Why not?”

“We just aren't. It's complicated.” Even if he wasn't older and wasn't her teacher she knew it'd be complicated. And because the thought had been burning in her head for weeks, perhaps even months, and she needed to say it to someone who would listen, “But I’m prepared – I want – to move forward anyway, even if it isn’t clear what moving forward looks like. And I would, but something in him won’t allow it. I think he sees himself as a conduit to a world that's too dangerous. But he ignores both the facts that I’m going to end up part of that world eventually anyway, and that he’s there alone. I wish I could draw him away from it just as much as he might want to hold me back from it. I’m worried about him.”

“He sounds like someone who can handle himself quite well.”

“He can, until he doesn't want to anymore. I'm scared he'll stop wanting to.” Hermione sucked in a breath, deciding to backtrack. She didn't feel like mulling over those thoughts right now. They touched a little too close to the nightmares she’d been having recently. “He– he doesn't talk a lot about his past, but I think it was bad.”

“Bad?”

“I don't know. I don't know. He's important to a lot of people who are using him for their own means. It's going to get worse if the war escalates. It’s probably gotten worse just over the summer and I haven’t seen him since school ended.”

Her mother didn't immediately respond, which wasn't abnormal but a sign that she was mulling her daughter's situation over. Long, purple painted fingernails clinked against her mug of tea.

“He doesn't exactly sound safe, sweetheart. It's not Harry, is it?”

Hermione choked. “Merlin, no! Not Harry.”

“But someone else close to this escalating conflict?”

“He saved my life last year– don't freak out,” she added hurriedly. She hadn't explicitly confirmed to her parents how bad her injuries had been. “I couldn’t say whether I'll be more or less safe because of him, but I think he's priorarised my safety over his in the past. That's part of what scares me, he's reckless with himself. Mum, I was scared and confused at the end of last year but I had you and dad to come back to. You're such a strong base, and then I have Harry and Ron. He has no one, and yet he's always at risk. I feel so useless all the time. And I think caring for me makes his life more difficult too. I know that it does.”

Hermione paused to breathe, her thoughts racing. It'd been something she'd felt often over the past few weeks – looking at her family and feeling their attention, and wondering how on earth anyone could be strong without the start she'd had. It was something she'd always been very aware of around Harry, too.

“And I've been keeping all these secrets from Harry and Ron. Maybe if I'd talked to them more and Harry had trusted me more, Sirius–” She couldn’t finish that sentence. “I really just… I really just don't want to go into this year hurting anyone.”

“It sounds to me, love, like you're taking on a whole lot of guilt for someone who's doing their best.”

Hermione didn't quite know how to respond to that. Was she guilty? That's not how she'd been framing her experience in her head but the emotion certainly didn't feel foreign to her. She felt unhelpful. If this was doing her best…

“Sometimes it feels like I can't do anything. At least guilt feels like something.”

A gentle elbow dug into her side. “You must know how silly that sounds, Hermione. I don't suppose you could take a step back and allow yourself not to do anything?”

“Mum.”

Hermione shot her mother a pointed look, which was returned with a sigh and an accepting nod.

“I know.”

They sat in silence for a long moment, and the tinkling nails began to tap out a pattern that sounded like a christmas song, though Hermione couldn’t quite place which one. Eventually, Hermione’s mother sighed in a wistful, reminiscent way.

“You know, when I was backpacking in Romania I had an affair with a man I met at a flea market. He lived in an old caravan and traveled around various villages performing psychic readings. I lived with him in the caravan for a few months.”

Hermione's eyebrows shot up incredulously. “A psychic?”

Her mother hummed, her eyes a little glassy.

“He was really brilliant, actually, even infamous among the smaller communities there. I broke it off when mum died and I came back to England for a while. I actually tried to find him again a few months later but couldn't. I dismissed his abilities as harmless tricks, of course, but since your first Hogwarts letter I wonder every now and then if he was the real thing. I doubt it, but you never know.”

Hermione watched her mother reverently as she spoke. She'd often talked about the few years she spent traveling before attending university, but she'd never told her daughter this story before. Hermione used to love these stories – the tales of a feisty, adventurous, beautiful woman walking the world with wits and a hiking pack.

She found herself captivated now. The light shining through her bedroom window cast a soft glow over her mothers already golden-tanned skin and haloed the brown curls around her face. Her long hair was tied back into a low ponytail, which was resting over her shoulder, and her eyes glistened in the way they always did when she talked about her past. Hermione had often thought as a child that her mother was the most beautiful woman in the world, a notion that hit her again now, just as strongly.

Except that when she’d been a child, she hadn't had the capacity to understand her mother as a whole person distinct from the daughter she'd had. She'd been Hermione's mother, the sun in Hermione's solar system. It struck Hermione now how singularly wonderful her mother was as a distinct entity, someone who’d thrived before Hermione had even existed. The thought made her happy.

She shook her head, her voice a little throaty, “Why are you telling me?”

Her mother sighed and smiled, shaking her head jerkily as if to snap back from whatever place she'd gone. “Oh, I don't know. I suppose to suggest I might be a little more accepting of the unorthodox than you might think. I want you to feel like you can talk to me about this person, if you want to. I think you care about him a lot.”

“How can you tell?” Hermione hadn't meant for her voice to come out a whisper, but it had.

“Just– just the way you've been.”

She met her mothers eyes, which were lined with worry, though softened and kind.

“I wish you could know what he's like.”

“Maybe one day you can introduce us.”

Hermione didn't know how to communicate how unlikely that possibility seemed, so she just smiled. She was also very aware that ‘meeting Snape’ and ‘knowing what he was like’ were two vastly different things. Her mother shifted a little, readjusting her legs in a way that suggested she was preparing to stand.

“Please keep us up to date with what's happening in your world, Hermione. Write as much as you can. I'm under no illusions that I might convince you to stay, or stop you, but that doesn't mean I'm not terrified. Sending you back becomes harder each year.”

“I'll write. Better than last year, I promise.”

Hermione felt a certain pang of guilt at that. Umbridge had censored all their letters the previous year, so she'd revealed very little about what had been going on in the castle. As a result, her parents had been rather dismayed to find their daughter arriving home in the recovery phase of a serious injury and it'd taken them a good week to get over the shock.

Her mother squeezed the arm she'd wrapped around Hermione's shoulders, pulling her in for an awkward side hug. Hermione half laughed, half yelped as her tea sloshed over the side of her cup and some of the lukewarm liquid began to seep into her jeans. Her mother gasped a small apology and petted the wet spot before Hermione battered her hand away. Tipping her head back, her mother downed the last of her tea and rose to her knees, fixing Hermione with that soft-intense look she managed so well.

“If this person makes you stronger, then hold on. It’s comforting to know that you have someone there who's on your side first.”

Hermione smiled genuinely. She wasn't sure if the sentiment actually applied – Snape was torn between so many sides, and to a certain degree so was she. And sides as a general concept was a little too simplistic. But he did make her stronger. Just taking a moment to sense his magic made her stronger.

“Thanks, mum.”

Her mother reached down to take Hermione's empty cup and padded silently out of the room, pulling the door closed with her heel. Kate Bush crooned near silently through Hermione's beside radio.

She didn't move for a few seconds, filing the conversation away for later, and then picked up the stack of unhappy papers beside her. She tucked them inside a laminated folder and stood, slipping them in between two hardcover books lying in the open suitcase on her bed. There was only the slightest chance a paper trail of the events of the summer would actually come in handy, but she wanted to be on the safe side.

Opening her wardrobe, she tugged a few random items from their coat hangers and folded them over her arm. She made sure she had at least two nicer dresses, a couple of pairs of jeans and jerseys, and a few lighter tops for summer. She spent so much of her time at Hogwarts in her uniform she never really put much thought into her personal wear. She'd already packed a pair of mittens and a thick scarf for Hogsmead trips during the winter.

She tucked the last few items into her bag and zipped it up, placing her hands on her hips and surveying her room. It was looking rather eerie – pillows in the bed, paintings and photos pinned onto lavender walls, all superficial decoration without any small knick-knacks to give it a lived in feel, decorated for a person a couple of years younger than she was now. Hefting one bag off the bed with each arm, she began the awkward trundle downstairs.