Soulsavers

Severus

Severus could not decide if Potter had first started going after him because of Lily, or if James had now gone for Lily because he knew it would drive home the point more powerfully than anything else, how little Severus mattered, even to his erstwhile friend. Although, if I mattered so little, you would think Potter would find something else to occupy his time.

James Potter was incapable of such complexity, even if Severus could swear he missed no chance to sneak a wink at Severus before lunging toward Lily for a French kiss to the sounds of “ooohs” and “aaahs”.

“I’m sorry,” Hermione said softly as Severus stabbed at his egg with a fork.

“For what?” He asked her, perhaps too pointedly.

“Potter, Evans, that is quite enough!” Professor McGonagall shouted from across the room. Lily blushed red to the root of her hair, looking none too happy herself (inasmuch as Severus could still trust himself to understand her). Potter went about kissing her like he did chasing balls around the pitch: too fast, too aggressive, too showy. Not that this surprised Severus any, and Lily, he thought, scowling to himself, had no right to be surprised either. If she wanted him, she deserved him. Still, the image haunted him, attacked him out of thin air like the real James, and he found himself preoccupied with base thoughts: How far have they gone? Did she like it? Did she really like it? Would he remain behind forever, while other witches and wizards kissed and fondled and fucked? Consigned forever to brewing and dreaming up spells, and never truly living? Did you choose Potter because of me, Lily? To spite me, to punish me? Or did you not think of me at all? And how long ago did you start fancying him back? Did you want him even as you told me you know he’s an arrogant toerag?

His plate looked like the battlefield of a war between eggs and sausages. You grovelled and apologised, and sunk so low, and she… She called herself your best friend and even then she wanted HIM?!

He felt the bile rising, abject humiliation as he remembered how he had begged forgiveness, and realised that she must have been happy to be rid of his friendship, which had been the only obstacle to what she truly cared about.

He remembered his mother, cowering and apologising before a towering hulk of filth, and how much he had hated his mother for that. He had never felt himself more his mother’s son than right now. “I’ll show you sorry,” he said out loud.

“Huh?”

Of course, from Hermione’s perspective, she had said I’m sorry, and he asked her what for, and then apparently, threatened her. “Nowt,” he answered, staring daggers into his plate. Dunderhead. Bad enough that Lily is with Potter, why can’t this girl stop trying to make me feel better?

Hermione

As Hermione had made no noticeable progress on the Severus front, she figured she might as well attend the Slug Club meeting. Once she recovered from the shock of the future Potions Master’s absence, she realised that James and Sirius were conspicuously absent themselves - the only time Lily could be sighted apart from James since they'd started dating. 

"Good family, the Potters. A good, good family. I won't be surprised if he turns out to be a late bloomer!” Slughorn decreed James. “Many fine wizards only come into their own in their 30's!”

This one won’t, Hermione thought. She focused on keeping her tongue glued to the roof of her mouth and wondered if she could cast the tongue-tying spell on herself. From her vantage point as a Muggle-born, Hermione knew many wizards ran out of opportunities before they turned 30. Potters could count on their family's reputation as a fall back, an infallible safety net. "I might even consider inviting him, Lily dearest,” Slughorn winked. “I've never been one to get in the way of young love!”

Two students made sure Slughorn’s back was turned and imitated putting their finger in their mouth to induce vomiting, and Hermione quietly agreed. When did I get so cynical? She never minded Slughorn much, before. Perhaps the Slughorn she had known had learned from the war? But no, Hermione knew that even by 1996, Slughorn was more likely to cast his mistakes and misjudgments under the rug and revise history than to actually learn from it.

"I don't think he’ll be interested, Sir. James and Sirius always said they're not interested in tea parties," Lily laughed, flipping her hair back.

"They'll eat their words when Marius Flint - yes, that Flint – pays me a visit, and I daresay it’ll be soon enough!”

The desperation, the falsely bright remarks Hermione had once mistaken for keen interest, for skilled diplomacy… But if Severus was unwelcome, while “Dolly Umbridge” was considered a prized member… even so, the food was good.

"Hi,” Crouch said, and Hermione yelped.

“You snuck up on me!”

“Speaking of good families!” Horace boomed. “Poised to become Minister soon enough, your father - if ever the Ministry should finally negotiate with ... but you must be growing tired of hearing about it, eh?”

Well, he’s as diplomatic as Grawp, Hermione thought.

“What about you, Crouch? Have you given any thought to what you might want to put your considerable potential toward?”

“Whatever I do, Sir, there will be whispers. ‘His father set it up for him.’ I don’t expect my success to mean much if failure’s impossible.”

Slughorn smiled, obviously very pleased with himself. “Spoken like a true Ravenclaw! Admirable sentiment, Crouch, but you should never be ashamed to use the tools at your disposal! Many wizards would give an arm and a leg!”

Finally, Slughorn moved on to someone else, and Hermione had an idea.

“You know, Barty, you could make an excellent Auror.”

"Haven't you heard the man? My dad's a shoe-in at the Minister's office. I've had enough of him for a boss”.

Hermione remembered how much Crouch Sr. despised his son, and she nodded solemnly. "I hate being his son,” Barty blurted out, louder, perhaps, than he’d intended – the room was not so large.

"He expects me to make him proud but no matter what I do, people will always say I have connections. Not that he'd dream of using them for me… ‘no, Barthemius, there are rules, and they apply equally to all of us!’” His imitation of his father was flawless.

“But there are!” Hermione answered instinctively. “And look, don't you think it would be better to do what you want? Who cares what people say?”

Barty held back a smile and whispered: “when you’re a Crouch, what people say is the most important thing in the world. But I’m planning a surprise for him. A big surprise, you’ll see.” Hermione gulped.

The Potters’ death and the end of the first war ( we just call it the war, just the war ) turned the whole world on its head. Hermione wanted to shake Barty, yell at him not to do it, not substitute one insatiable tyrant for another, more insatiable and tyrannical still.

After all, Crouch Senior only had about sixteen years left, and if Hermione’s math was right… and then she went white again. Crouch Jr. never died, she realised. Professor Slughorn clicked his tongue in disapproval at her expression and wondered aloud if she might be allergic to shellfish or quail eggs.

For lack of a better idea, she went to the library, heels clicking as she walked.

Never one to wear heels, she cursed herself profusely by the time she arrived, and could not guess, first, why had man devised such contraptions, and second why had any woman ever fallen for it. She did not notice Severus, but he must have heard her coming, and he shot an annoyed look at her from above a pile of books and many feet of parchment.

“I’ve been listening to you coming for ten minutes, though I'm surprised it's you and not some vapid witch trying to find someone to take her to the Yule Ball. Dressed up for Slughorn, then?" Hermione blushed and glanced at his essays, holding a chair for support.

“That's too long,” She pointed out. “Teachers hate it when you go over.” Severus himself would tell her so, in no uncertain terms, awarding her the first mark lower than 10/10, because she would turn in an essay with an entire extra page. “I have phrased the question carefully, Miss Granger, and as your teacher I can be presumed to know the content of the textbook you had regurgitated on the page. Pay more attention to the instructions next time, and less to trying to impress me,” he would write at the margin, and though his criticisms still stung, she never forgot any of his lessons.

“It's not my fault the books leave so much to be desired," he frowned. She gave up and sat down on the chair, wishing she could remove her shoes and soak her feet in warm water and murtlap essence.

He even had something to say about History of Magic, she noticed with some curiosity, as very few people had chosen this NEWT. Even she sat this one out, feeling it irrelevant considering she knew the future. Funny, you also used to say divination is irrelevant.

"Professor Binns really comes alive, if you will, for the NEWT students. You should see him going on about the enactment of the Statute, the attempts to abolish it and how they were suppressed… oh, the absurd codification of Dark Magic in 1886... I can't say I agree with him on everything, but it's much more interesting than the OWL lessons.”

She decided she would join that class. In the meanwhile, however, she pulled out her many books from her trunk and laid them out in front of her. Only now did it occur to her that bringing textbooks that hadn’t been printed yet was not wise – the covers were different, and Severus noticed, making her breath catch in her throat. “They use the same books in Australia?”

“Er, colonialism, you know. They like to model themselves after Hogwarts.” This turned out to be plausible enough, and he returned to his essays to her great relief.

After some time of quiet study, Severus packed his belongings neatly, and Hermione saw no purpose in saying behind while he walked back to the Slytherins’ lair.

How do other women do it, Hermione thought miserably, to the beat of her painful, swollen steps, as they walked the tree-strewn path the uneven ground. So many of the school’s amenities felt further now that she was a Slytherin - had it been because the Slytherins liked to keep to themselves, or because someone else preferred it that way?

“Why do women do it?” Severus asked aloud, echoing her own sentiment, yet rude in his suggestion that women were silly; stupid, even; even as he supported Hermione along their way to the dungeons. Step by agonizing step, they got closer to their Common Room, where she could remove these torture instruments and rub her feet.

“To make a good impression,” she suggested, annoyed at the idea that women were categorically sillier. “Why do men fight and kill each other over every little thing?”

“Only overgrown boys,” he corrected her. “Overgrown boys and hooligans. I attempted to avoid asking why you, specifically, do it, and your answer is not helpful. Only idiots are impressed with shoes, superficial idiots at that, and only for about 15 minutes before you start to moan, at that.”

“I would rather be called stupid for what I do than for what I am!” Hermione exclaimed with indignation.

The Half-Blood Prince was cleverer than she, Hermione had to acknowledge this much, but not because he was a bloke. “Splitting hairs,” Severus dismissed her.

“And I’m never wearing these again,” she grumbled. He let go of her at once, and she overbalanced and tripped as he transfigured her shoes into sensible flats, first the left and then the right. He held a hand out and she pulled herself up, brushing dead leaves and pine needles off her dress.

“You could have transfigured my feet!” She shrieked, two full octaves higher than her usual pitch, and birds fluttered their wings above her in alarm. Honestly, Hermione .

“Wouldn’t have, your shoes are made of cow leather and plastic, the least magical substances known to man, and your feet are magical.” She blushed in the darkness. He means it literally, factually. He didn’t just call you magical.

Also, she knew he wouldn’t have Transfigured her feet. She should have remembered this. Her burden of gratitude and guilt toward Severus weighed on her so heavily that she desperately wanted his help to be somehow misguided, to have a legitimate complaint to throw at him. Alas, her shoes were now very comfortable, although none could predict what they might transform into when the spell wore off.

She offered a begrudging thank you. “Walk faster,” he said simply. “It’s almost curfew.”

“When did you make Prefect?”

Hermione had no idea what had gotten into her, must’ve been the singular opportunity to be the one less concerned with obeying the rules.

“Never - exactly why I must be vigilant. The prefects obey a… higher law.” Odd choice of words, Hermione felt. ‘Vigilant’ instead of ‘punctual’, the bitterness in the words ‘higher law’.

She caught her breath as she caught up with him, long legs and quick steps, her feet still not fully cooperative.

“I love Transfiguration,” she said, trying to make conversation. “Useful,” Severus decreed, “but too limited, in my opinion. In the end, if you need a snuff box but only have a rat, you should sell the rat and get a snuff box.”

“But that’s just the exercise! Didn’t you just say, about the magical properties of materials? Isn’t it fascinating?”

“Fair enough, suppose I just prefer learning about things as they are instead of trying to force them to be something they’re not.”

This would have put her in a philosophical mood had they not been rushing to get back inside the Common Room. It had always fascinated her, how something could become something else, or even nothing at all. Rather than forcing the rat to change into something it was not, Hermione had always felt that with Transfiguration, she was simply coaxing another aspect of her subject into being.

“I don’t think it’s about forcing it, exactly… the property is already there in the -”

“Right, yes, but the rat didn’t ask to be made into a snuff box, did it?”

She had nothing clever to say as a retort, which would have been refreshing if it wasn’t so humiliating. Was this how Ron and Harry and Ginny always felt around her? Was she only smart enough to impress them?

At long last, they reached the Slytherin Common Room, so dimly lit that it took her eyes no time at all to get used to it after their journey across the grounds. Several Slytherins turned their heads toward the pair of them, taking a little too long for her liking to return to their own conversations. Worst of all, their numbers included Druidia.

“Nice shoes,” Druidia said, and Hermione kicked them off and ignored her. The quiet chuckles around the room died out. Druidia might have been a natural at wearing heels, but Hermione doubted that she could recite the principles of Transfiguration like Severus.

“Good night, Granger. Errr, nice chat.”

She smiled and watched him go up the stairwell to the boys’ dormitory. The rat didn’t ask to be used as an ingredient either, did it?Blimey. That’s what I should have said.

Severus - at the library, before Hermione comes, then in bed

Who’s coming?! His body tensed as he heard footsteps coming closer and closer; clack, clack, clack. Heels. Good. Potter and his goons did not typically wear heels. He was even happier when it turned out to be Hermione. She looked at him differently. He had not forgotten to collect examples and keep track of how she seemed to know too much and too little at the same time, how she seemed to have come into existence fully formed out of thin air, but he liked the way she looked at him without hatred, fear, or pity. Most of the time. The people in his life who found him interesting beyond using him for target practice had long graduated. And she could carry a conversation, a real conversation, and keep up with him like few could. He had always felt set apart by his utter fascination with magic, and wondered if it was the sign of a curious mind or the sign of someone who grew up around none. Everyone else seemed to view their studies as a chore, except Granger. Even Lily, Lily from Cokeworth, didn’t care about magic itself as much - once she started studying it became a chore, instead of an intriguing novelty. 

Even so, Severus had to take initiative and help Granger with her shoes even though she had had a wand, just the same as him. You bloody ponce, he berated himself. If you hadn’t helped her, she would have had to lean on you all the way to the Common Room. And it would have felt good. Oh, you even bigger ponce! His thoughts attacked him. It would have felt good for you , not for her. And besides, are you truly as pathetic as everyone thinks you are, trying to steal the odd caress? You might as well just Confund her into thinking you’re attractive.

He decided he was not foolish to help her, but gentlemanly and chivalrous, and that chivalry was yet another quality that set him apart from the Potters of the world. So what if he didn’t have a girlfriend? When he did, she would not be with him because he somehow conned her into it. And he resolved never to date someone who ever called him an “arrogant toerag” or “Snivellus” or anything else. Granger never did, he realised. Perhaps because she’d not seen it used so much, but Severus suspected that she never would have, even if she’d been around since their first year, and suddenly he wondered what that might have been like.