Mills
Hermione
At the girls’ dormitory, the 1977 edition of Pansy and Millicent assumed a concerned expression and deployed a tactic Hermione instantly found herself loathing: fake friendship.
“I’m only telling you because you’re new and I don’t want you to get hurt. I’m not surprised this slimeball is trying to get into your knickers. No one else would touch; him he’s so pathetic, and everyone in Slytherin wishes Ravenclaw had gotten him instead, with his books all day. He makes the whole house look weak. Or… Hufflepuff, he might have even been considered smart there!”
“He’s a half-blood, too,” the other one added in a low conspiratorial voice, despite there being no one else in the room. “Part Muggle, his father is a mill worker or something like that.”
In 1997, there were talks of making the Snape house in Spinner’s End a museum; he had gotten a posthumous Order of Merlin, First Class; his portrait had been hung in the Headmaster’s office. “You have no idea what you’re talking about,” Hermione lashed out at them. Astrid and Matilda were nobodies in the making, such nobodies that she had never encountered their names in all of her extensive research about what would come to be known as the First War. She saw no reason to worry about making friends with them.
“Don’t come crying to us when you find out what a loser he is,” Astrid said coldly. “We were only trying to help.”
Hermione sucked her teeth and released her anger with a sigh. She had never been popular with girls. Or girls had never been popular with her, not enough that she would cultivate a patience for their antics. Although, if one were to subtract her friendship with Harry and Ron, that only came to be because Professor Quirrell had planted a troll in the middle of the school, Hermione had to consider the possibility that she had never been popular with anyone. Unpopular, and yet Rita Skeeter had considered her a plausible threat. Unpopular, but in that same year, she had attracted the world’s foremost Quidditch player.
Quality over quantity, she figured, and noted to herself that Lily only managed to attract James. Why do you care about Lily? She asked herself. And what do you care if these idiots say these things about Snape? It was not even their fault - nothing they could know from their mundane and chronologically straightforward vantage point suggested who Snape would become. Sometimes Hermione would see flashes of the man in the teenager, but it was only with the gift of hindsight - foresight - that she could know what they even suggested.
And could she really be surprised at their overt obsession with parentage? This was what Slytherin was like during the First War, she could have expected as much - she had known Lucius Malfoy, at the very least. But did they have to be ridiculous, on top of being prejudiced? Honestly, a mill worker? Could they not picture a Muggle doing anything else? Maybe they could not comprehend the concept of dentistry, but they knew enough to spit out “mill worker” with contempt, not unlike many Muggles. And what mill worker could attract and keep a witch?
Perhaps I should have waited until an official biography came out before I left. But then, she had left with a heart too heavy to plan for the contingency of having to defend Severus’s reputation against babbling gossips. And, “makes the entire house look weak”? He posthumously almost single-handedly salvaged the house’s reputation, but even regardless, weak how? Did they expect everyone to strut and posture like Draco used to?
And why did everyone think she was interested in him, or he in her? It was bad enough to hear it from Druidia - she did not have to share her bedroom with Druidia.
***
The Defense lessons got progressively gory over time, as Prewett taught the class about grotesque forms of Dark magic. The conjoinding curse especially struck Hermione as nightmare-inducing, as she looked at illustrations of its victims, forced to share their bodies.
The sombre professor explained slowly that in their desperation to be the one chosen for survival, victims often tripped over one another (and themselves) to surrender all their intelligence or swear allegiance to the Dark side.
“If ever you're at risk of falling victim to that curse, you must decide ahead of time who would survive. It takes a long time to complete the spell and I suggest you use it.”
Severus seemed nonplussed by the pictures, only truly interested in the meaning of it all.
“I know it’s ‘dark’, but isn't it fascinating?” He whispered to Hermione.
“Sir,” a Ravenclaw student raised her hand. “You don't think any of these things will happen to us, do you?”
"My job is to teach you on the assumption that it can, and you must remember this is an elective. you don't have to be here if you don't expect this knowledge to come in handy.”
“I think we should all learn how to fight!” Sirius said, standing upright.
"I can't wait for someone to try to do this to me!" James added.
“Of course you're not scared, you're already sharing a brain,” Severus couldn't help himself. “Or… Is that not why you are always together?”
James and Sirius both had their wands out, and Lily, the next table over, looked away, her expression rigid, looking like she was trying to melt into her chair.
"Class, class,” Prewett raised his voice, and Hermione could just hear him thinking he does believe these wizards are of age.
“My saying that you must learn how to handle Dark magic is no encouragement to seek trouble! An ounce of prevention, as they say! And on that note, on to defences. Who can tell me how you might prepare for a skirmish with a Dark witch or wizard?”
Hermione's hand shot up, as had Severus’s.
“Swots,” she heard James murmuring to muffled giggles.
You could have been better prepared for a skirmish yourself, James, Hermione thought, narrowing her eyes.
“Supersensory charm, so you’ll hear if someone is coming,” she suggested.
“Giant leather robes might be very protective,” Severus added.
“Who told you that? Was it Lucius Malfoy? Does he like to dress his little princess in giant skin?”
Again, laughter dinned throughout the classroom and reverberated from the walls.
"Shut up, pointless clowns!” Hermione roared. She had never particularly liked Sirius, but James Potter amazed her with his boisterous, obnoxious manner; and Remus Lupin, who had always struck her as sensible and moderate and reasonable, seemed to double over in laughter right next to Peter Rettigrew doing the same. It might have been the tension of the war driving everyone to this behaviour, but… had Hermione herself not lived through a war herself? Had James not a moment ago declared that he was not scared?
“Both excellent ideas,” Prewett said, ignoring the disturbance. “The giant leather idea is positively inspired, but one must wonder where the average wizard might come across such a thing!”
“Who cares about average,” Severus wrote in the margin of his parchment and elbowed her to look. “I thought this was a NEWT-level class!”
Back when she was a Gryffindor, this talk would have upset her. Now, for the first time not held back by Ron and Harry in the classroom, she felt different and remembered Professor Snape’s admonishment, about two years ago, when she was 16: just being technically correct was not good enough in real war. The other side all had books too, after all, and in the end Voldemort had been defeated by knowledge he could never understand from reading a book.
Beside her, Severus scribbled other ideas, quite unrelated to what Professor Prewett droned about, and like Harry before her, Hermione found herself more interested in what the Half Blood Prince had to say than in the lesson.
"Sectum, against the conjoinder?" His spidery handwriting said.
“Now let us discuss how you might escape a tight spot if you should find that Disapparition is too risky…”
Hermione snuck a glance at James; Sirius and he were engaged in pretending to hex the students sitting in front of them. Considering James’s death, Hermione was not surprised he was not paying attention, and poor Lily, though not so disruptive, only just recovered from her embarrassment. What was she doing with him when she could have someone so much better?
Severus’s foot nudged her lightly under the desk. “Stop staring at them,” he wrote to her.
Severus
Granger did not know. She had no idea, thankfully, but unfortunately, what she had just done. Having known the pointless clowns as long as he had, Severus knew that just by spending her time with him, Hermione was attracting their ire; now she had provoked them. The next thing you know, Potter will try something with her, and Severus did not know if in this scenario, Hermione would be his new Severus or his new Lily, but he knew he did not want it to happen.
A wave of vertigo and nausea came over him. It happened, sometimes, but he could not afford it. Why did he have to invent that bloody spell, when the mere memory of it being used against him still shook him (and only him) like that? He could not look weak, not again, not in front of her. His hand curled into a fist. He focused on an arbitrary point and breathed, hoping he was not sweating too hard. Professor Prewett’s mannerisms did not help any - he seemed to walk with a skip and he waved his wand too much, in Severus’s opinion. It normally merely struck him as incongruent, considering the subject matter, but now he needed stillness and quiet.
He closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. Why did this have to happen while Hermione was looking? It was unlikely enough that a new student showed up in the seventh, final year, unlikely enough that she would seek him out, that she would be kind to him and intelligent. Even more unlikely, perhaps, than a witch sprouting up among the Cokeworth Muggles. He had to look strong, even if truly, he was weak. He still had not managed to cast a Patronus charm, despite her insistence that he could.
Staring at a point under the blackboard did not help.
He jumped to his feet, startling Hermione. He had to leave. “Show me your notes later,” he said, and scrambled away. He did not care who might follow him - at least she would not be there to see what might happen.