What Little Things Remain

They wound up in a Best Western on 55th street, paying an exorbitant price - but it was a good way from where they had been dropped off and Hermione put her foot down on walking any farther.

"At this rate, we won't be able to stay long in New York. I don't have the money with me," Snape stated flatly. "Tomorrow we'll have to fly to London first thing. The sooner we get to Hogwarts, the better."

"Fine," Hermione replied.

"And if you're planning to go out, we'll have to do something about that hair."

"I don't."

She lay on the bed, then, and stared up at the unrelentingly white ceiling - white, like the pages of the vacuita and the brilliant flash that would come out of it if she dared to open it. Her ex-professor made busy washing-up noises in the bathroom, running water. She listened to it and thought of Potions class, not so very long ago.

Water ran there out of taps like gargoyles, which spat and hissed. They liked Goyle the best, probably because of his name, and filled his cauldron beautifully with just the right temperature for whichever potion he was making. They liked Hermione too, but not as much. She caught Goyle talking to them, once, when she arrived early for class.

She hadn't known Goyle could properly talk, in complete sentences with the proper complement of nouns. Around Malfoy he was limited to queries, clarifying instructions: "Fight?" "Now?"

The students did not bend their heads over their cauldrons. Inhaling the vapor was not a good idea. The tightly spelled safety goggles pinched against Hermione's head, fogged up and left red rings around her eyes. Through the misty glass she could see her teacher, a black blur in the corner of her vision. He counted bay leaves as they entered one cauldron, criticized how Seamus was chopping his boomslang skin, reduced the flames under Parvati's potion to faintly glowing embers. At her place he stopped, glanced at Malfoy sitting next to her, then back.

"I see that by sequestering you, Miss Granger, Potter and Weasley have been reduced to gibbering idiots - and Longbottom is not to be mentioned," he said in haughty tones, taking her notes and glancing over them. "Your work, however, is... acceptable." As he laid her papers back down on the desk he smiled at his Slytherin, but Hermione did not look. Her eyes were on his hand, blue-smudged with bruises, fingernails still bearing blood beneath them.

After he swooped away, she saw him go to the sinks and wash his hands. The gargoyles meekly gave him temperate water and did not talk back.

"Did you see that?" Hermione whispered to Harry, leaning over to reach his ear. "His hand -"

"What?"

She looked again. Snape was heading back. "Nothing."

She came to slowly, realizing she was not asleep and testing each sense in turn. Touch, the slightly scratchy blanket; smell, muggle detergents; taste, her own cottony mouth; hearing, the soft subliminal whirr of an air conditioner. Finally she focused her eyes on the ceiling once more. She had not slept, but only dreamed. The memory had been so real - reinforced by Ron's recollections, tied into the vacuita and the geas.

"I remembered you coming to class with blood on your hands," Hermione offered unbidden. He had not asked about the content of her visions before, but she felt compelled to share it, perhaps because he featured so prominently. She sat up in the bed to look at Snape, propping herself against the headboard. "You only did that once."

He laid his book down on the night table - he seemed to have finished - and leaned back in the one armchair the room afforded. "This is the part where you ask me about my past, and pity me, and think perhaps the greasy git isn't so bad," he noted dispassionately.

"You've had practice with ex-students."

"No. Teachers mostly. I made the mistake of telling Madam Pomfrey my life story once in pretty, civilized terms. She followed me about for a week, trying to do something for me."

Hermione met his eyes, unembarrassed. "We have that in common, then. It's not a bad start."

Yes - he nearly smiled. "I have no intention of passing the time we still have in this purgatory by talking with you."

"Then think of something better to do."

His response was to go down to the lobby and purchase a copy of the New York Times from a vending machine. None of the articles in it could possibly be of any interest to him, but he made an excellent show of reading it, lingering over sections on science especially. Hermione finally got up and found the cartoons when sleep refused to come, but they were all either trite or of an incomprehensible serial nature.

"Miss Granger," Snape suddenly announced. "I think we have found the reason for the thumb. Señor Marquéz has been found."

The headline read, in bold print, "SACRAMENTO SERIAL KILLER CLAIMS 19TH VICTIM."

The article was vague, telling few details, but the victim's name - Joaquin Marquéz - and the picture fit the body they had found. "He kills by poison, and cuts off their thumbs," she read. "Muggles won't notice the Killing Curse."

"And he could easily cast spells to make the body appear poisoned. A serial killer loose will make them quick to assign blame." Snape picked lint off his cuff, a nervous habit Hermione had occasionally noticed in class. "And no magical authorities will ever be involved - not in the States, where magic detection is less tight."

That surprised Hermione - she had never given much thought to the mechanics of magical law enforcement. "How do they track it? I mean, I always assumed -"

"In Britain, densely populated areas are scanned constantly. Magical activity is hard to hide, if someone's looking for you in a city. In the countryside, it's scanned only occasionally, and not at all within private dwellings - the law, as you might guess, is quite complex." He grimaced. "The one failing in the system is that while the fact that a spell has been cast is detected, there is no way to determine who cast the spell without putting a special enchantment on each person's wand. And in the States the scanning occurs much less frequently. He probably got away scot-free."

"So when Sirius was arrested -"

Snape frowned. "Black."

"Yes. I know Professor Dumbledore told you of his innocence." She was tense as she waited for his response, wanting to know his real opinion of Harry's godfather. He had been so angry in third year, although his anger might have been magnified by her own young perspective...

"Surely you don't.... No, I see you fear it. Very well. I dislike Black. He is cocky, pretentious and ill-mannered. However, I trust Albus' judgement on his character as long as he trusts Albus' judgement on mine."

She was relieved. She sat properly up and brushed the shag carpet idly with her bare toes. "An uneasy peace, then."

Snape let a thin sigh escape his nose and mouth, blowing dark hair away from his face. "Yes, rather." She watched him contemplate their tiny, bright window, imagining him to be lost in thought about Sirius and the order of things in the New World - for so the papers called the world without Voldemort. Without Voldemort - what a laugh. Snape was black and white, almost a silhouette against the wall with a cut-out for his pale face. In this light, she knew her own skin was olive, her hair lighter than usual. They sat apart, each knowing the other was watching and thinking, she supposed.

Not such a strange thing, to befriend a teacher, she thought. Only to befriend this teacher.

"Oh shut up about Harry - !" Hermione turned vicious. She felt a quick angry burn in her heart at the mention of his name, and the walls she had let fall sprang up again. Being separated from mainstream wizarding society had lulled her into a false sense of security. My whole life, defined by Harry. Even in his death. But she had thought Snape would know...

A realization came. "Oh. You're referring to James."

"Both, actually," he replied, but his tone was combative. "You are beginning to see, now, I think." She knit her brows and curled up at the head of the bed, turning away and retreating, but he would not let it go. "You know the moment when you realize that your name will only be remembered in connection with his. That even if he doesn't want it to happen, it will be so. And very worst of all, you know the moment when you realized that you love him, that there's no way you can hate him - even when you want to be as bitter as you can imagine."

Hermione's eyes darted from the professor to the book that lay on her chest, rising and falling with her breath. The moments expanded, grew into a long tableau: he was standing, moving to sit next to her, and she was motionless. Finally, like a rubber band snapping back, they contracted.

"You have an over-developed sense of honor and reciprocity. But that's it exactly."

The sub-basements of Hogwarts were twisty mazes of passages and cubbyholes, bent in on themselves until they were inextricably tangled together. The darkness hid secrets yet untapped, laid down by the Founders Four or perhaps even earlier. Death Eaters now held the Great Hall, the entrance halls, and little else. The castle did not love them, so staircases spun at their approach, doors shut, coats of armor drew their swords and fought.

"Is it true that the castle's alive?" Ron asked, holding his wand in front of him like a green-lit torch. He probed the walls with one giant hand, excited as any little boy would be at the prospect of unnumbered basements to explore.

Hermione followed him, clutching Hogwarts: A History to her chest. "Well, nobody really knows, do they? Ron, I think we ought to go back."

"I think we ought to go back, Ron!" he mimicked, dancing ahead of her and then returning. "Ron, we ought to go back!"

"You promised Harry you wouldn't explore without him!"

A dark look passed over Ron's freckled face. "So it's Harry now, is it? I - gosh, I know you love him. I mean, we all do." He moved to stand very close to her, stopped walking, nervous in the soft light. "But doesn't - don't you love other people too?"

She played dumb and was silent in the wand light, which made Ron glow pale and ethereal against the black stone of the corridor. The air was still and musty, smelling of libraries and uncounted centuries.

"Oh, Hermione," he complained. "Make it hard for me, why don't you."

"I will," she answered with a perfectly straight face.

"You know I brought you down here because it's like sardines up there. You're absolutely the only one allowed out of the common room! Harry asked."

"I was there, Ron."

"You were? Anyway - I just - it's stupid, I suppose. Never mind," he ended lamely.

He was so stiff and worried - nothing like Viktor. "No, go on," she coaxed, smiling up at him through her eyelashes in a way she knew was attractive. She had practiced it before the Yule Ball, fluttering at Parvati and Lavender and laughing with them till her sides ached.

"Well - I only meant that I was hoping you'd. I mean. I like you, Hermione, a lot, and -"

She grinned. For Ron, this was torture. "Ah, shut up, you big ninny," she laughed good-naturedly. "I love you, too..."

It was dark when she woke up, mouthing her words and almost even saying them. Snape was not asleep: he was sitting in an armchair, resting his head in his hands. Startlingly she found herself bone-tired, not refreshed. When had she laid down? She couldn't remember. Laying her head down once more, she found herself falling into dreams - but they were not dreams. They were memories of long hours spent playing Exploding Snap in the barricaded common room, looking through the library on the few occasions they were allowed out. Once she felt Ron kiss her cheek and hold her close, and knew he was crying. That was when the owls finally made it in with news of her parents' and Bill Weasley's deaths, right before the siege was broken, right before the turning of the tide.

"You're awake?" Snape's voice cut through the crowd of memories. "Miss Granger, can you hear me?"

"Yes. I can hear you," she managed, sitting up. Her head ached and it was an effort to get it off the pillow.

"You were never asleep, I think. The geas grows more insistent."

"But we thought it would be better!" The haziness in Hermione's mind refused to go away. She remembered the one hangover she had ever experienced - this time it was a real memory, the sort that comes and goes. This was almost worse.

"We can talk more as you eat. The food is bad, but you have not eaten anything substantive for at least a day. That may be worsening matters." He pointed to a plate of chicken fingers, the sort of thing one would order for a child. They were largely tasteless, but she devoured them anyway, feeling better almost immediately. As she ate, Snape spoke. "The geas seems to be based on the amount of time you are away from Hogwarts - else why would you begin to worsen now? It does make a modicum of sense. If Minerva truly wanted to tie you to Hogwarts, there is no better way. She must have very strongly desired you to remain in the wizarding world."

Hermione considered, sitting cross-legged like a five-year-old on the bed. "Yes, I would go back to Hogwarts once I realized it was a magical illness. St. Mungo's could diagnose the geas, but I wouldn't go to them right off." Snape nodded. "And it would be worse than dragon pox - no way to doctor it. I couldn't remain in the Muggle world."

Snape was silent, and she followed his lead, pressing her lips together tightly around each mouthful of food. There seemed to be very little more to say. When she got up to wash her hands, she heard his voice drift into the bathroom behind her.

"Try to keep yourself from dreaming. You might be better off if you do not attempt to sleep."

She dried her hands on the towel, stared at her face in the mirror. It was regular, no cheekbones to speak of and a pert nose, eyes staring out from under dark brows. "Because I might not wake up, and you couldn't explain that away when we hit customs." Do I look like this when I dream? Do I close my eyes - so?

"I'm a Gryffindor," she replied, watching her lips form the words. "I don't know what tact means."

He paused, then muttered. "Tact. Adroitness in dealing with people or circumstances; intuitive perception of the right thing to do or say. Oxford English Dictionary."

Hermione couldn't resist. "Not really straight out of the dictionary?"

"Not really, no."

"All right, then."

It was only later, after their joking exchange, that she began to feel the pull of the dreaming. When she was on the alert for it, sitting still and silent in the armchair, she could feel the memories creeping into the back of her mind and vying for her attention. She recited the times tables to distract herself - Eleven times two is twenty-two. Eleven times three is thirty-three.

"This next save's for you, Hermione!"

"Keep your eye on the game, Ron!" One of the hearts followed his broom as he dived after a just-thrown Quaffle, stretching into a starfish-and-stick to graze it with his fingertips and deflect it just enough. She jumped and cheered, the crowd erupting into happy screams. His pink face was just visible over their heads as the heart returned to her. He was beaming. "Go - go - Gryffindor!"

But she wasn't at a Quidditch game - she was at a hotel, and Ron was in Scotland, and she was across the sea. She shook her head: there was Professor Snape lying on the bed, expression forbidding even as he slept. Eleven times four is forty-four -

"I don't know." That was a lie. A damned lie, because she did know, but McGonagall - Minerva, now, wasn't she? - should know too, because it was so long ago that she asked that question. Why -?

Her head was muzzy, but her lips still formed the next problem: Eleven times five is fifty five. And of course it had already happened. All she was doing was remembering things, like she had promised she wouldn't. "I am awake!" This time she was really saying it. Snape shifted and muttered. She stared at the carpet at the foot of the bed, willing herself to remain awake, until it swam in front of her eyes - until it formed Harry's illusory face in his coffin (because of course Fudge had been adamant on an open casket funeral, although no body was ever found), with bells ringing, tolling his death and Dumbledore's.

Later Hermione was told that she had sleep-walked through the airport and dreamed in the planes. She believed it. In any case, she never did remember the next day, spent traveling. She revived for a while in a hostel - or perhaps it was someone's house? Snape was talking with a tawny someone. Lupin? The lines of tension were clear and powerful in the room.

"Since you left ... frantic for wolfsbane," came Lupin's voice. It was her old professor, then. "Elspeth and I -"

Then Snape: "Elspeth Kneen? Hogwarts in 1990 - of Yorkshire?"

"It, ah, happened later." This was an unfamiliar person, female. Hermione struggled to open her eyes wider, but she had no control of her body. Strangely enough, it was not frightening. There was only an overwhelming lassitude that threatened to control her mind once more. And it did. She returned to her memory world, then, dreaming of church bells. They rang for Dumbledore's and Harry's funeral at St. Morwenna's cathedral - for there was a wizards' church, she found, mostly used for state occasions. People filed in. She hung behind, and was last, but there was a seat saved for her at the very front. A choir sang with magical amplification. It sounded as though a thousand angels were crying. It sounded as though heaven was falling.

Hermione was a mess, of course, clammy handed and red eyed, clinging to Ron like a lifesaver once she finally made it to the forefront. The white stone and black clothing contrasted as Snape had at the New York hotel. That was to come later, of course. It was bright. The stained-glass windows moved and bowed their heads to the crowd. St. Morwenna, who inhabited the great circular window above the altar, held the service, speaking in a gravelly alto that seemed to come from everywhere at once.

"We are gathered here today to mourn the passing of Albus Dumbledore and Harry Potter..."

When the memories finally released her she was lying in Hogwarts' hospital wing. Her eyes fell on Madam Pomfrey first and foremost, who was clucking like a mother hen over the state of her favorite student. Hermione had forgotten how much the teachers all appreciated her - and they all had survived except Dumbledore, thanks to Harry's Gryffindor heroics. "Oh, good, I was expecting you'd come around. Most of the time I wouldn't contradict Minerva on anything, but a geas - and Snape did light into her so, but she wouldn't say a thing till you were awake. Feeling better?"

Fortified with tea and food, Hermione did feel better. She suspected, though, that it had more to do with her location than anything. The hospital wing was as spartan as ever. She could almost swear she was in second year again - the year she spent almost entirely there amidst the clean white bedding. There was something in the smell of the air that made it home, more even than the old house she'd left to be sold. As she dressed in fresh black robes and the clothes she'd come in - now laundered, thanks to the efficiency of the house-elves - she reveled in it. Her head was clearer than it had been in months, her melancholy mood lifted. The sun shone bright through the high slitted windows. It was a summer morning, and she was at Hogwarts. For all its negative associations, this place remained her own.

The happiness clamped down almost instantaneously when McGonagall appeared around the screen that shielded her bed from the main hospital area. "Hermione," she said, holding out her arms as though she expected a happy reunion of mentor and child. "I was so glad you'd returned -"

Hermione looked at her feet in their hospital slippers. They were fluffy and very periwinkle. She fingered her vacuita. "The geasa. Why? Suppose you tell me that first."

The elder woman bit her lip. It looked as though she might have drawn blood. Snape appeared behind her, back in robes, as batlike as before. He looked at Hermione in a way that might have been meant to encourage. "Because I was forced to," McGonagall finally said, crossing her arms uncomfortably. "And because... I'd hoped you'd be healed enough to hear this, when you found your way back to Hogwarts. Lord Snape has forced my hand."

She didn't have the leisure to question the Lord. "Then he is a better friend than you. I thought you cared for me. I thought you trusted me."

"I do."

"Then tell me what forced you to put the geasa on me - geasa I can never break - geasa I'll have to live with for the rest of my life." She did not raise her voice, but instead simply let the words speak for themselves, and that they did. The headmistress lowered her eyes and took a deep breath before she began to speak.