November's Spring
Clang
The sound of the falling restraints reverberated in the damp room, and Severus could finally Episkey some injuries. Moody looked extremely displeased with the new development and promptly showed Dumbledore an impressive murderous look. Dumbledore looked like his usual infuriating undisturbed self.
“The Death Eater is under arrest. He should be restrained, Headmaster!”
“Severus is a spy for the Order, Moody. He has been for quite a while.”
“You don't think I'll trust him just because he has a little obsession with Mrs. Potter, do you?”
Mrs. Potter
What a foul name for such a lovely person.
Severus almost growled. They didn't even give him a measly pick-me-up potion. Savages.
“Of course I don't, Alastor. That's why I'm not asking you to.”
Severus must have dozed off. Extremely out of character for him. But he figured that if Dumbledore couldn't protect him, then he might as well die in his sleep. Severus doubted he could run back to the remaining Death Eaters for protection, after assisting in Voldemort's rhinoplasty and all.
Although, come think of it, Voldemort never quite liked his nose. It didn't match his chin, he said.
“What of the child?” Severus asked.
The droning noise of the conversation came to an abrupt halt.
“I was about to ask you that, Severus. Where did you send the Potters and their child?”
Severus, quite childishly, he'll admit, huffed.
“Not the Potter child, the other one, the Granger. What of her?”
Dumbledore seemed peeved at not getting the information about the Potters’ location from him. Such peeve of his was utterly surprising, Severus thought, considering the last time Dumbledore had had that piece of information he gave it to a bloody rat. Which, you’ll never guess, ratted him out.
Severus was quite sure he had already heard that silly joke. He dreaded learning what kind of buffoon he had taken it from.
He was also quite sure that no one checked on what should now be the corpse of Peter Pettigrew, pusillanimous prick extraordinaire. He needed to make sure he was completely dead.
On further thought, he wasn’t quite sure Voldemort was dead. That would prove quite the obstacle to his general condition of living. Shouldn’t they be discussing the definitely-not-insignificant issue of Voldemort being more angered than usual, more noseless than usual, and well, probably a little less lively than usual? Severus, for once in his life, felt like being stupidly optimistic.
Who were they talking about, again?
“Ah, the Muggle, yes,” Dumbledore said dismissively “She'll have her memory wiped and be sent to an orphanage.” If what Dumbledore told him about sending young Voldemort to an orphanage was true, one really should doubt the old wizard’s aptitude for nurturing the new generations.
The Dark Lord had been possibly dead for an hour, and a Dark Lady was already on the rise.
Someone had to stop this nonsense. And that someone wouldn’t be the wandering-eyed madman.
“Dumbledore, the girl’s a witch,” The Headmaster didn’t seem to be taking him seriously, “She set fire to the whole top floor of her own house. You can't send her to the Muggles, she'll have someone killed in a week.” he was hissing.
For some reason, he was hoping that the wretched Auror, who was sat about half a meter from them, wouldn't insert himself in this conversation. That was more wishful thinking than he ever entertained in his life, and he once upon a time fully believed he would have married Lily J. Evans. So that was saying something for sure.
“Absurdity! No toddler would be able of magic that strong!”
Wishful thinking indeed, the bloody Auror obviously had something to say. “It was surely a Death Eater’s work. Yours, if I had to wager.”
“Mine?! I was the one to put it out!”
“Well, it most certainly wasn't Bellatrix’s work, seeing as the child still lives.”
“Of course it wasn't bloody Bellatrix!”
“The girl barely speaks, Severus. You mean to tell me that she wordlessly Incendioed an entire floor?”
“YES, AND THAT'S EXACTLY WHY SHE CAN'T GO TO THE MUGGLE WORLD, YOU GORMLESS EEJIT!” Hecate help him, he was screaming himself hoarse.
“Now, now Severus, no need to worry yourself with this,” Severus felt like there was quite the need to worry himself with this, and he would’ve told him how much he wanted to worry himself with this, but Dumbledore interrupted him. “Even if we wanted to keep her in our world, we simply couldn’t. As of now, we have many more children than we do parents.”
And that was the ugly truth of war, of misery, of life. The losers kept on losing, while the winners spent a cosy evening with their family of three in a manor or a safe-house.
He thought about that small, terrifying and terrified child. How the only thing she would remember of her previous life, of what she had called home, of her happiness, would be her parents’ agony.
Severus knew memory spells quite well. They didn’t erase the pain, the turmoil. Those who had tried to forget their lost ones spent the rest of their lives in harrowing pain, lamenting the names they wished no one ever spoke again.
The memory charm would get rid of the magic, of Moody and Severus himself. It wouldn’t free her from the nightmares, the terror. She’d live as a slave to torment, in reminiscence of people she couldn’t remember.
Admittedly, that life wouldn’t be very long. Children who harboured such potent magic were rare, but easily recorded in history nonetheless as they were usually found… post-mortem.
They couldn’t leave that girl unattended, she could set herself ablaze in her sleep.
Severus couldn’t let them take her away. It was his fault. If only he had killed Bellatrix sooner, if he hadn’t wasted so much time with Barty, that girl would still have her parents.
He spared a child and doing so, condemned a baby.
“I’ll take her,” the words were out of his mouth before his brain could tell them to go. “for a few days. I’ll watch over her until her magic settles.”
“Fair enough,” Dumbledore said uncaring as ever.
In hindsight, that was a perilously fast answer, that should have rung a couple of alarms.
“Dumbledore, are you actually going to give a Muggle to a Death Eater?”
“Ex-Death Eater, Alastor. Now, onto more pressing matters: Where did you send the Potters, Severus?”
Severus almost begged for reprieve. Merlin, he needed to sleep.
_____________________________________________
As Severus sent a Patronus to Meadows Castle to warn Dorcas and her merry gang of Gryffindors of Dumbledore’s imminent arrival, a high-pitched whisper reached his ears. “What is that?”
Among his thrumming headache and the underlying anxiety at all the loose ends, Severus had forgotten for a moment about the child he allegedly decided to foster. Her eyes were red and swollen, her voice a little strained.
“That,” Severus lectured gesturing at the pitch-black horizon “is a Patronus spell. It enables me to communicate with some people far away.”
“How far?”
“Wales,”
“Tha- That is not very far, sir,” she said hiccuping, “you could have used a phone.”
“Yes,” he conceded, “But this is nicer, don’t you think?”
“It is.” the girl nodded. “Can you call my mummy and daddy with t’ose?”
Severus had to admire her syntaxes. They struck a cord within himself. Such linguistic intelligence. He definitely wasn’t moved by her glazed eyes or the delicate hope reflected in them, the very one he was about to wipe away. Shit, he was too tired to occlude.
“What’s your name miss?”
“Hem- Her-mione, sir,” she sniffled, “My mummy and daddy, tey were screamin’ and- and the fire, and-” Severus lent her a handkerchief and diverted the conversation as she blew her nose.
“You’ll have to stay with me for a while, Hermione. I’m an old friend of your parents.” Severus really hoped the toddler’s memory wasn’t as good as her grammar already. He needed time to research the effects of memory charms on such a young mind before trying to render the night’s event less vivid. “Give me your arm, we’ll set off right away.”
“No!” She shrieked as she lunged herself away from him, “Mummy always says that I cannot talk t-to strangers.”
“I’m not a stranger, I’m your parents’ friend,” he sighed.
“But you’re not my friend. I wanna go back home!”
Severus didn’t have time for a — understandable — tantrum. The only thing he could truly understand at the moment was that he really, really, wanted to sleep.
“Stupefy.”
________________________________________________
The sunlight filtered through the cottage windows. Odd.
The sun seldomly graced the hills of Antrim, spring must have come early. Unfortunately, it was peculiarly chilly for a spring day.
Except it wasn’t spring.
It was the 1st of November. The Dark Lord had fallen, the Order was decimated and Severus wasn’t alone in his house.
He startled awake from the sweet lull of dreams. The sun was indeed shining, and a child was nested in heavy blankets on his favoured armchair.
Bloody hell.
He didn't waste a second to think, to mull over last night: over what happened, what didn't and what will. He took a shot of his last batch of Calming Draught with two drops of Euphoria Elixir before the anxiety and the tiredness could start clawing at him, and set to research.
________________________________________________
“Possible side effects: migraines, nausea, shortened life-span! – No.” Severus kept skimming through the old manuals.
“Side effects may include: vertigo, life-long short memory loss, deterioration of brain matter?!” Severus threw another book on the discarded pile, or how he affectionately called it: “the Shelf of Shame”. He was getting desperate: his euphoria slipping through his dusty fingers. He reached for the next tome, and his hand dropped with a thud on the wood: he ran out of potioneering books.
No volume in his library offered the faintest help on how to modify a child’s memories without causing serious permanent damage. It was supposedly risk-less to do so on babies but not on toddlers of talking age, and the Granger girl talked alright.
He checked his pocket-watch and swore under his breath: she had been stunned almost twelve hours ago.
As he planned his next steps, he coaxed her to swallow a Calming Draught and cast a Leniens spell on her.
He would have to go back to Spinner’s End to get the Prince Grimoire, hopefully he could find something useful in his mother’s notes. Luckily he had the forethought of taking all valuable books from Prince Palace with him. He wouldn’t get any help from Dumbledore, or the whole Hogwarts’ faculty for the matter. Since Bellatrix was likely already on her merry way to Azkaban, and her useless cousin had probably already arrived in Wales, he could try the Black Libraries. He would likely only find torture methods in them, still, it was good to know what not to do. His last resort would have to be Malfoy Manor. He would have to pay dear old Lucius a visit anyway after yesterday’s developments. The manor was definitely his best chance, but he couldn’t be less eager for the Malfoys to learn what he was looking for and for whom.
“Renneverate.”
_______________________________________________
The child looked, as expected, disoriented.
Severus stood near the window, planning to give her some space. She glanced around the living room without moving from the armchair, holding the heavy quilt to herself as a shield.
He decided to interrupt her puzzled search before she inevitably decided to call for her parents. According to Ignatius J. Walwatruß et al., toddlers started forming permanent memories at three years of age and were bound to lose most memories antecedent that point; thus, Severus was vainly hoping the toddler —Hermione, he remembered— would forget the murder of her parents and live a long, happy and murder-free life.
He also vainly hoped she wasn’t three yet.
“Good morning, Hermione”. he said with an unbearably calm voice, not to startle her.
The child, as expected, was startled.
“Who-”
“I’m Severus, remember?” he didn’t wait for her to answer, “The family friend? we met last night.”
“Where a-”
“We’re in Ireland. Your parents told me to bring you here as they have to spend some time at the hospital, do you remember what happened?”
“Fire”
“Yes,” the Elixir and his traineeship as a spy made making up a believable story incredibly easy, “your parents were injured. They're fine, but they had to remain at the hospital.”
The girl nodded, but Severus could read on the forefront of her mind that she didn't trust him.
“Ca-ehm, may I call ‘em?” Sure thing, if you're chummy with Charon.
“I tried before you woke up, the nurse said they were resting. Let's try in a few days, yes?” that would give him enough time to pull some memories of her parents’ voice from her and enchant the communal telephone to talk back. He used that same trick plenty of times when he was still a student; The girl nodded again.
Severus didn't give her time to form more questions and set a full plate in front of her, if the gurgling of her stomach was any indication, the diversion was a success.
_______________________________________________
On Tuesday afternoon, Severus accompanied Hermione to the telephone cabin down the road. The wind smelt strongly of salt as it ruffled their hair. Severus hated it but Hermione seemed to enjoy it very much. She looked almost happy as she opened her little arms and let the air inflate her jacket. The wind was so strong that he feared she would fly away.
“Here we are,” he said, opening the cabin's door, “do you know how to use the phone?”
“Mh” she nodded, “coins,” she pointed at a crack in the plastic, “I don't have tem”
Severus hummed and surreptitiously transfigured what he had in his pockets — an old receipt, a lolly and a tissue — into three Muggle coins. The Muggles never noticed that his money was fake and he was sure that the Auror department had bigger issues than a bit of forgery at the moment.
He put the money inside the little crack and waited for the girl to call her parents. To his horror, the girl was looking back at him expectedly, arms extended over his head, waiting for… “What?”
“I can't reach te phone.” she was on her toes, and she was indeed still very short.
Severus considered conjuring a stool but he noticed that there were patrons in the café and bookshop nearby. You bore worse, Severus.
Severus lifted the child and waited for her to dial the number. She didn't. She was still looking at him.
“What now?”
“The number”
Severus lifted an eyebrow and sighed, of course she didn't know it, she was a toddler. “And a terrible burden you decided to look after” he snidely reminded himself.
Severus made a show of putting the coin in and then told Hermione some random numbers to dial as he cast a Mimo Loqueris spell on the phone. He had already connected the handset to a Mind-Reading Quill with a Protean charm that same morning, when Hermione was still sleeping.
All he had to do now was thinking of an answer, the quill hidden in his sachet would then write it down and the handset would speak it miming the Grangers voice.
It was truly an ingenious and useful spell combination: it helped him get through a lot of Professors-Parents Floo meetings back in the day.
“Mum, Dad?”
“Yes, honey?” Thankfully he didn't really have to think, he simply had to push some interactions he saw in Hermione's head in the past few days to the forefront of his mind.
Her father's voice reassured her that Severus was a friend and he would take care of her for the time being.
They would meet soon, said her mother.
Hermione talked for a long time, surely longer than three coins would have bought her, and longer than his arms were willing to hold her for. But for the first time since their meeting she seemed… serene. Tentatively happy.
And for the first time since that night, Severus felt like he could pull this off. If Hermione only heard her parents' voices once in a while, without ever seeing them she would certainly forget them. He would start only referring to them by their names and maybe, hopefully, one day she would start too, until they'd stop being “Mum and Dad” and they'd become “Ophelia and Malcolm Granger”.
In that moment Severus realised that, in order to forget her parents, Hermione would need another family, another surname, to replace them with.
Severus looked into the big brown eyes of the smiling girl, her hair moved in the wind as a thunderous cloud, her cheeks were rosy because of the wind: she looked as if she was crated by Magic Itself.
It could work, he told himself.
He could see it, 10 years down the line, she would be attending Hogwarts where he taught. He would have taken care of Voldemort by then, she would have forgotten the Muggle couple they used to call once a week when she was little. She wouldn't suffer. She would have everything he never had.
On the way to the cottage, Hermione was prattling about making yesterday's lemon crêpes again. She was starting to forget a lot of t’s and -ing’s — a typical sign of her tiredness he discovered— and Severus held her a bit tighter.
As the sun started to lower on the cliffs, and the birds became black lines in the sky, Severus made the first life-altering impulsive decision he will always be proud of.
He decided to be a father.