I'll be looking for you
It was only a rumor. A meadow with shards of bone in the soil where the wildflowers grew lush and tall.
But rumours existed only in order to be brought down under the light of truth.
When I die, I will be reborn amidst the bones, where I’ll make my eternal garden, she had read after his assumed death, on one of his books that the Headmistress kindly allowed her to peruse. And when she had brought this to her attention, the elderly woman had shaken her head.
“He was always a poetic one, only in secret,” she said, a woman who mourned her best friend to a woman who mourned the soulmate she never had the chance to know better.
Severus Snape was Hermione’s other half, and he was gone too fast for her liking.
As life returned to its usual pace, she sought to know more things about the man. She took residence in his chambers; looked at his work, hoping to ascertain more about who he was –all the while, the little ivy mark that seemed to wound around her wrist kept on existing.
How could her soul mark keep on existing when he wasn’t?
Unless–
I’ll go look for him, she announced one day to Headmistress McGonagall –the only person Hermione still felt comfortable talking to. We never retrieved his body; I feel that he is still out there.
And despite everyone’s misgivings, Hermione announced that she would spend some time travelling. Alone.
It was an impossible quest, looking around for a man that didn’t want to be found. She looked at his hometown for him, only to find his childhood home abandoned. But there, amidst the dust and the neglect, she found a journal, filled with his words. With the dreams he never got to achieve, and the places he never got to see.
If anything, doing the things he wrote about might bring her peace of mind.
The brightest witch of her age, with the man’s words as a guide, travelled around; looked for him, for the garden he’d have after he died. People looked at her in disbelief; a young woman asking here and there for someone seemed suspicious to everyone she reached.
Until–
We have a man living in our village for a year now, a woman told Hermione, right when she was ready to give up. And it was a little, Muggle village by the seaside; no one would suspect Severus being alive and living here, except the young woman with the ivy mark wound around her wrist. He bought a cottage on the outskirts. You can’t miss it; it is the last house before the cemetery; I don’t know why he chose to live so far from the rest of the houses.
Hermione though, knew the reasons why; she was certain, as she walked through a front garden filled with the most vibrant flowers, that he was there.
She knocked on the door, and sure enough, he was there. Fuller, more alive, dressed like a Muggle; barely reminding the man she knew, save for his sharp gaze that took her in.
I should have known you’d try to find me, he told her, his words both an irony and a compliment. But I’m not Severus Snape anymore.
Whoever you are, I want to get to know you again she replied, lifting her hand to show him her mark.
Severus opened his door to her just then, and she finally stepped in.