Fly Away

~*~*~*~

It makes sense that it should hurt in this way,
That my heart should break, and my hands should shake,
As if to say

Sure it don't matter, except in the most important way.
As if to say

Fly away, sweet bird of prey,
Fly, fly away.
I won't stand in your way.
Sweet bird, if you knew the words
I know that you'd say

Fly, fly away.

~*~

She left, and she learned. Learned in much the same way she used to, absorbing knowledge like a sponge, as quickly as possible. History, philosophy, anatomy, psychology, sociology - they were all fair game, and she studied till she understood them all, and could begin, as a detached observer, to apply them all to the War.

Of course, none of her colleagues knew what her real work was, nor did they care. They were Muggles, and university employees at that. The fights over theory (and grants) could get quite vicious, and Hermione kept to herself for the most part. As far as they were concerned, since she had only joined their ranks a year ago and was 3 decades younger than most of them, she wasn´t really worth bothering with.

That suited her just fine.

Her office was pristine, with a stack of term papers from her one, graduate-level class. The students seemed to like her, though she already had the reputation of being very tough. Her home, however, was quite the opposite. The small flat was buried in papers, textbooks and a long series of hand-written notebooks, all of which were somehow starting to pull together to form something coherent.

She wasn´t sure what her final answer would be - sometimes she wasn´t even sure of the question, but she knew that if she used magic, in any way, she´d be cheating. Objectivity was the key, and for objectivity, she had to detach from that world, that life. It would have helped if the nightmares ever stopped.

For a while, when she had first left, owls would sometimes swoop up against the window of her first flat, letters in their claws. She would let them in, provide water and some granola, and then, once they had left, she would burn the letters in a metal wastepaper bin she kept for such purposes. She never opened them.

After a while, the letters became infrequent and eventually stopped altogether.

Her life continued; day after mundane day at the university, night after sleepless night in her flat.

She was hesitant to venture out into the city, because though London was large, and the chances of seeing someone who would recognise her were slim, it was always a possibility. But sometimes, she couldn´t resist the lure of being in the presence of other people. To interact with them was now too intimidating, but to simply sit in a café or walk through a park, surrounded by life and laughter and conversation could do wonders for her nerves.

And so she indulged. Not very often, perhaps five or six times a year and always in the most mundane, Muggle areas she could think of.

It was near the end of her second term of teaching and working that he found her, in Knightsbridge of all places.

~*~

Snape liked Knightsbridge for the exact same reason Hermione felt safe there - the chances of running into another witch or wizard were ridiculously small, a one in a million chance really.

Unfortunately, it´s a well-documented fact that one in a million chances crop up nine times out of ten.

And so Snape, walking through the infamous northeast corner of Hyde Park on Saturday afternoon, wondered why the innocuous woman with curly hair seemed so familiar. She was listening to a man rant on about the Prime Minister´s personal grooming habits, and he joined the crowd, a few feet away from her. When she turned to leave, he caught a glimpse of her face.

Hermione sodding Granger. Of all people.

While debating what he should do, she noticed him. He caught her eye for a moment, and neither person moved. It was only when she spun around and started off in the opposite direction that he decided he did actually want to speak to her.

He caught up easily, and when she didn´t stop or acknowledge the fact that he was walking alongside her, he lightly touched her arm.

She started so violently, Snape almost jumped himself.

"Fuck off," she muttered, before darting off into the crowd again. He followed easily.

"I think not, Miss Granger. You´ve been gone for seven years, and no one has heard anything from you - not even your family. And you expect me to blithely let you trot off again?"

"Yes," she hissed, looking up at him with fear and anger. The anger he could understand, the fear was a surprise. He watched her impassively.

"I could place a tracing charm on you, you know."

"I know."

"I´m not going to, though, if you talk to me."

She shrugged. "I´ve never made it a secret where I am - it wouldn´t have been very hard to find me, had anyone actually cared enough to look."

Her voice was very bitter, and Snape felt an unexpected surge of guilt. She smiled wryly.

"No. I´m not accusing you. Come on. We can take a taxi."

"Why not just Apparate?" he asked, eyebrow raised.

Hermione shook her head. "No. No magic. You want to talk, we´ll do it on my terms."

"All right, Miss Granger."

She led the way to Bayswater Road, and flagged down a cab. They climbed in, and Snape wondered what, exactly, he had gotten himself into.

~*~

He followed her up two flights of narrow stairs and down an even narrower hallway. She stopped suddenly, and he almost ran into her, pulling up at only the last second. She pulled a set of keys out of her jacket pocket and unlocked the door in front of which they had stopped. She pushed open the door, and he stared in amazement at the confusion revealed.

Every available surface, including much of the floor, was covered with stacks of paper and piles of books. He walked in, and immediately picked up a textbook, which was sitting open on the small loveseat.

"Neo-Freudian Theories," he murmured, and continued reading down the page, noting that the heading, `Anxiety and Coping Strategies´ had been highlighted with some sort of yellow ink. He glanced at the cover. A Muggle psychology textbook, focusing on personality.

"I was doing a bit of research," she said quietly, looking around his shoulder at the book.

"About what?"

"Just research. Trying to make some sense of it."

Snape nodded, and put the book back where it had been before turning to face her.

She looked much the same, but there was a faded quality to her now. As though she had been working too much and sleeping too little.

`Which,´ Snape reminded himself, `is probably the case.´

She looked up at him, and like she had seven years ago, kissed him.

She turned, and walked into her bedroom. He followed in silence, and closed the door.

~*~

When she woke up, he was gone. There was nothing to mark that he had ever been there, except a slight dent in the pillow. Even though she was certain she hadn´t expected him to stay till morning, nor wanted him to, she felt a vague, aching sense of loss, and stayed curled up in bed for the remainder of the day.

She was cooking dinner the next evening when she realised she couldn´t lift up a dish because her hands were shaking too much. It didn´t matter, she told herself, again and again, it was nothing. Just nerves. Too little sleep, too much coffee.

But when the bottle of wine slipped through her fingers and shattered, she couldn´t make sense of it.

~*~*~*~