If Things Were Perfect

It's five years since I lost him. Five years since I saw him. Five years since I touched him. I sit here wishing he were beside me. Where is he? What is he doing? Is he still alive? I am crying for him. I am living for him. I am also dying for him.

Severus, where are you? Why aren't you here with me, here beside me, like you should be? I know the snake-tongue curling around my arm is proof enough for reason, but still - couldn't you have stayed? It is at times like these that I crumble and wish our egos would shrink and our pride disappear.

But I digress. The sun is setting and my shift in the hospital starts soon. I'm an accident and emergency - yes, we too have one like the Muggles - mediwitch in the west of Paris. I've got to go. My shift will begin without me if I don't.

I cling to routine, you see. Change upsets me now. It's unpredictable. Just like him.

--

"Madame Granger! Madame, vous m'aidez, s'il vous plait?" Hermione looked up. One of the younger nurses, Célina, was running towards her. "Je regrette, Madame, mais le garcon à numero 6 est très abominable! Il m'à fait mal!"

With that, Célina held out her arm, which was covered in a palm shaped burn. Hermione's eyes widened. Roughly translating in her head what the girl had said - Miss, can you help me please? I'm sorry miss, but the man in (bay) number six is being horrible! He hurt me! - and spinning on her heel ran off to bay six.

There to greet Hermione was the most impossible thing she had ever seen in her life.

"Malfoy? Draco Malfoy?" she cried in disbelief. The pale blond man nodded. "But you're dead!" A small smile crept across his lips.

"I would have thought, Granger, that you would have noticed by my presence that I am not."

"Enough of your sparkling wit, Malfoy, I don't have time for this. You hurt one of my nurses."

"She was weak. Plus, I knew she'd go to you."

"I don't care, Malfoy, and you know it."

"He's finally getting to you, isn't he? I always knew you'd crumble in the end." Hermione's eyes narrowed and she drew the curtain on the cubicle.

"I would advise you to stop, Draco," she hissed, her wand twitching at her side. Draco's expression, for a moment, faltered. What had he come here to do anyway? Tease her? No.

"You want to see him again, yes?" Draco asked, face impassive. Hermione replied, equally impassively, in the affirmative with a curt 'yes'. "You'll find him where you most expect him," Draco said, and disapparated.

Hermione, the change-hating mediwitch with a nice settled down life, was, for the first time in say, five years, completely speechless. For a moment. Then she packed her bags and clinging onto hope, left France. For where, she did not know...yet.

--

Hermione sat in a Muggle café in Sutton, Surrey. Sipping away at her orange juice, her mind ticked through the possibilities. It took five glasses of orange juice for the answer to come.

Hogwarts. His home.

She left that afternoon.

--

Arriving at Hogsmeade station, Hermione strolled around the village. She couldn't arrive at Hogwarts at this time of night, and the inn was closed. She decided it was time to pay Harry a visit. It took most of her willpower to get her legs to carry her to the cemetery, and even more to find the memorial for the victims of the Great War.

Frankly she didn't know what was so great about it. There was the rose garden for those who had died during battle, but she was aiming for those who had died as a result of the war's effect. Harry's grave was simple, plain with only his name and dates scripted upon it.

Hermione noticed the dark shadow standing beside the grave of Sirius Black only moments after reaching Harry's grave. There was no mistaking the silhouette, and Hermione recognized it at once. She looked down at the floor and pulled her hood up. She wasn't ready for this.

He noticed her by her movements then, but the figure of a woman is often less distinctive - their stances are less different and their height similar from woman to woman. But this woman was wearing the green cloak of a French mediwitch, and he only knew one French mediwitch who had reason to be standing at Harry Potter's grave.

Least of all at three in the morning.

"Hermione?" he whispered, disbelieving his instinct, and stepped nearer her. She, for a moment, was not sure whether to reply or not.

"I changed my name to Julie like my mother when I moved to France, Severus," she whispered. "But yes, you can call me that if you like."

--

Hermione spent the night in unquestionable bliss. But it was short lived. For a death eater is not liked, least of all an escaped one, returned to the place that they were least welcomed. For two death eaters to purchase a night in the same hotel room at the early hours of the morning was even less acceptable.

Ministry assassins sent three shots of Avada Kedavra through the window.

One...the mirror catches it.

Two...an unsuspecting house elf is relieved of his duties.

Three...the too often heard sound of green light ripping through flesh.

--

Severus Snape died at 6:57am. They tore Hermione from his cold body that afternoon. Some say she left part of her soul behind her. Some say she lost all human thought. Some, however, believe her story. She did not just lose a lover. She lost a friend, and she lost her chance to be happy and content like the rest of us.

What did she gain? Change. That is what she gained. The chance to change things. Hermione Granger was cleared of all charges against her that very month. It was a fair, clean trial. For that she was very thankful.

Change? It had its' advantages. Sometimes it helped one to move on, Hermione thought to herself, as she levitated her trunk up towards the castle. Even if hope fails you when you cling onto it for life, there is motion. There is leaving the past behind you but remembering it.

That is how Hermione Granger-Snape came to be Potions Mistress of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft And Wizardry.

Hermione knocked on the door and waited. A stirring in her abdomen reminded her both of what she had lost and what she now had to her name. And his name. There is solace where one needs it most, she had read once, and now she believed it.

Her solace was born some seven months later, at 8:22pm on the 18^th of May. She had Severus' hair. And, the poor child, also his nose. It was the best gift Hermione could ever have hoped for. She just hoped he was watching...somehow, from somewhere.

So this is how loneliness feels. But there is no use crying and hiding away and crying out for if things were perfect...