The Mortician

The Mortician

Happiness is a fish.

And the Wizarding world was drowning in an enormous ocean.

Sunlight lit up the broken stones of Hogwarts at dawn. It was early, but Wizards and witches were already busy around the castle, repairing all the damage that had been done. The excitement and thrill of victory had not yet worn off, and the entire world was in a state of euphoria; much like the first time Harry Potter defeated the dark wizard. All over Britain, magical folk were congratulating each other, not even caring if a Muggle accidentally saw them running down the street with sparks flying out of their wands. It was a bizarre day.

Hogwarts was equally jolly and good spirited. Only the headmaster's office contained something, or rather, someone somber. That is not to say the rest of the room was as well. The portraits were all chattering and laughing excitedly as they had done for the past two days, walking in and out of each other's frames. They all stopped, however, as the melancholy person emerged from the Pensieve in the corner. And then the former headmasters began again to fill the room with noise, one by one.

"Is that powder on your face? Because you really shouldn't use such a pale shade..."

"...I once had a cousin who painted her face..."

"Goodness, girl, have you seen a Boggart?"

"Oh, my dear, I dare say you look just positively dreadful."

"Phineas Nigellus, don't be so insensitive," said Dumbledore, returning to his frame.

The other headmaster rolled his eyes and replied defensively, "She had the nerve to put me in that awful handbag of hers."

Ignoring the portraits, the white-faced witch turned to leave the office. There was something distinctly unpleasant about the room, as if that person's lingering presence was floating all around her. She headed for the door without so much as a look back.

"Miss Granger, you do look a tad bit unwell," said Dumbledore in his soft, kind voice.

Hermione turned toward his portrait behind the desk, only to give him a dirty look, before she exited and slammed the door behind her. Two days ago, she had respected Dumbledore and all of his choices and actions. Now, she wasn't so sure.

Asking Harry to allow her to see the memories had been a terrible idea. She wished she hadn't opened this Pandora's box. Oh how she wished for blissful ignorance now. Learning about Harry's surrender to death was exciting and inspiring, but seeing the crooked ways it had been engineered stirred up anger and disappointment. Hermione didn't want to feel this way, not when everyone else was smiling because of victory.

Aimlessly, she wondered outside of the castle. It was a beautiful day with blue skies, cheerful clouds, and a light breeze. Not at all reflective of how she felt.

"Hermione!"

She spun around to see who had called her. Harry, just the person she wanted to see. His minor cuts and bruises had healed and his messy hair was cut back to its old length. That stench of weeks without showering seemed to have gone away as well.

"Did you go into the Pensieve?" Harry asked eagerly while running a hand through his now short hair. He had an odd expression that said he really wanted to talk about it. Hermione couldn't find words to say and simply nodded.

"What do you think? I find it hard to wrap my mind around it all. I can't believe Snape really loved my mum. I mean, that's sort of a strange thing to find out, him being so harsh and all. I'm not sure how I feel about him. I've hated him for so long and now suddenly..." Words spilled out of Harry's mouth like a long unstopping train.

"He loved my mum! Can you believe that?" the wizard exclaimed. Hermione wrinkled her forehead and tried to follow the non-sequiturs.

Harry went on. "And I just can't imagine how he managed all this time. I don't think I could have. If Ginny were to love someone else..."

Hermione finally decided that she had no interest in listening to all of this. That wasn't what was on her mind. The professor's love for a woman was important, but it seemed so trivial to her now. She felt an irritation toward Dumbledore that, for some odd reason, Harry didn't seem to feel. It was probably because Harry had met the manipulating old wizard during the whole dying ordeal and heard some type of reassuring and well-phrased half-truths.

He continued speaking, the words flying past Hermione's ears. There was simply too much on her mind at the moment to listen.

"Have you buried him?"

The boy wizard stopped abruptly and scrunched up his face in confusion. "Buried who?"

"Professor Snape, who else?" she said impatiently.

By the lack of response, she knew he hadn't. Harry's apologetic face was suddenly attracted to the grass below as if it were the most interesting thing in the world. "I...I'm having trouble making myself go see him. It's like every time go near the Shrieking Shack, this sort of itch runs through me all over and I can't go any further. It's sort of creepy."

"That's no excuse, Harry. You could have gotten someone else to do it."

"NO!" he shouted immediately, "it wouldn't be right. It feels disrespectful if someone else were to do it."

Hermione gave him a withering look and said sharply, "And of course it's not disrespectful to leave him lying there for two days like nobody cares."

"Well...you'll get Ron, and come with me, won't you?"

Before they could discuss it further, a letter arrived by owl and was fluttering around Harry's head, impatient for him to open it. Harry swatted at it, trying to get it away from his eyes. His friend wasn't so patient and snatched it from the air forcefully then gave it to him.

"Well, what's it say?" asked Hermione, leaning close to see.

Harry made a face and replied, "Kingsley wants to see me at the ministry, right away--something about needing a witness to identify something. He was rather vague..."

"That's pure rubbish, I swear, Harry, they're just trying to show you off to as many people as possible, using you as a calming potion or something." Hermione rolled her eyes as she said it.

Harry Potter gave her a weak smile as he shrugged. "Sparing a bit of my time for the greater good, I guess. If you could go see about, you know...I'd be really grateful. Not the funeral or anything. Just...get him in a coffin maybe." The greater good, as if they all hadn't given enough already. Then it was up to her, Hermione, to go retrieve the body of Severus Snape.

The trip to Hogsmeade was long and grey. Good weather seemed to be reserved only for Hogwarts. Thick clouds floated over Hogsmeade. The village was full of happy wizards, though, despite the leaden sky. It made her task all the more inappropriate. Her heart seemed to speed up as she approached the shack. It was leaning and frail looking as always, threatening to collapse at a mere breath.

Hermione drew in a long breath and placed the tip of her wand on the latch that would open the door. Inside her chest, her heart was thundering against her ribs, ready to burst. She barely thought the charm and the door swung open, sending a cloud of fine, sandy dust into the air. Her feet seemed glued. It took quite a bit of effort to take the first step inside. She didn't see where he was and thanked Merlin that she couldn't. Intense dread was quite an understatement.

This wizard was her professor, was a man of unspeakable courage and misery, and yet for all his greatness, was dead. Hermione hesitantly stepped toward the corner where she knew he lay. All the dead she had seen in the recent past had made her numb to the sight of them. To her, they had become people who were simply in a long and deep sleep.

Still, this time it was different. She caught sight of him at last, lying on the ground in a dried up pool of his own blood. There was something unsettling about actually seeing Snape dead. The ground all around him was stained an accusing deep brown. One foot in front of the other, she inched closer to the body. Her trainers crunched against the dust and wood chips on the floor. She took another step forward, now on the blood filled section.

His face was so pale that it was almost translucent.

Blood covered the part of his face that was touching the ground. The most gruesome part was that his eyes were open and looking straight ahead.

"Professor Snape," she whispered, as if it would wake him up.

Nothing except creaking wood responded. The man's eyes were remained blank, but there was something disturbing about his silence. Hermione bent down and reached out slowly with her left hand. She placed her fingers on his neck near the wound, feeling for a pulse. It hadn't occurred to her until now that her hands were trembling madly. The skin under her touch was ice cold. After a few seconds, she drew away feeling reassured that he was, in fact, dead. Flakes of dried blood came away with her fingers.

She suddenly felt extremely ashamed that she'd looked at his memories. He hadn't given them to her. Hermione looked down at her hand and her fingertips burned. The sensation pulled recollections out of her. Sitting in class, passing him in the hallways, conversing in the library. A strange boldness overtook her and she found her voice.

"Remember when you told me that you didn't believe in God because you couldn't believe in something that wanted to be praised all the time?"

Hermione sat down on the bloodied ground beneath her. The body beside her seemed so much bigger now. He had been a tall man after all. "I know I argued with you, but I'm not sure I believe in him or her either now," she continued. "It seems so idiotic to put my faith in a God as cruel as this one."

Empty black eyes stared straight through her.

"After all you've endured; knowingly sacrificing your reputation, your sanity, your life...it isn't fair. Professor Dumbledore used you without mercy. He bent you into bitterness, led you to be consumed by obligation. I think he purposefully made you more obsessed with Harry's mum than you were originally. And you know, I think he even meant for you to die like he meant Harry to die.

"Oh, that despicable old man! Never told you all of the truth either. You gave your life on blind faith. We all questioned Dumbledore's trust, but in reality, we should have questioned yours. For the greater good...it wasn't fair. But then again, I suppose you understood and accepted that better than most," she paused before saying the last bit.

"You always did make sure your students learned that life isn't fair."

Hermione could almost hear the angry and sarcastic reply that he would have given her. He would have yelled at her, insisting that she was a mere child that had no right to see any of his secrets, much less discuss them with him. Instead, there was only a maddening quiet and the awful scent of stale air.

"Death. That's what it was all about, wasn't it? And what did your death mean?" She laughed inwardly at the question then said, "Absolutely nothing."

His voice echoed through her mind again.

"We all die someday, Miss Granger. Today is as good as any."

He hadn't been afraid of death. No, she was sure he hadn't. Yet seeing him plead with Voldemort and the expression on his face now spoke of a form of fear--fear that she couldn't understand. But she was sure it hadn't been fear of death. The girl sat idle and picked at her scabs, desperate for something to do while she thought of more to say.

She glanced down and saw that his wand was still clutched tightly in his right hand. With careful grace, she extracted the wooden wand from his stiff fingers. The wood even felt stiff in her hands. There was a type of coldness in it, as if it knew its master had died.

"Holly, would you imagine that. That's the same as Harry, you know."

Those black eyes stared further through her. They saw, but didn't comprehend. The two black orbs might as well have been made of glass. Hermione reached out again and put her hands over his eyes to close them. Even when they were closed, Snape didn't seem to be peacefully sleeping like all the other bodies she'd seen. The man beside her was intimidating, even in death.

"Do you hate him? Professor Dumbledore, I mean," she asked tentatively, absently waving the wand in the air. "He took so much from you in the name of the greater good, completely stole your freedom. I'm not sure how I feel about him anymore. I think, for the most part, I'm relieved that he didn't do the same to me. The mission he gave us was terrible, but compared to what he did to you, it didn't seem so bad.

"Harry told me that Professor Dumbledore admitted he wanted glory and fame. And he got it too. I wonder if you ever wanted it. But surely leaving a mark in a human heart is equal to leaving one in history. You told me that. I know Harry seems like he doesn't appreciate you or understand you much, but I think he will."

There was no reply. She hadn't been waiting for one, but the silence was so prominent that she swore her ears could hear buzzing in it. Hermione looked down at the mass of dried blood under her. It was amazing that there was so much blood in one body.

She drew a breath, long and calm.

Something close to grief was creeping up on her. The world had lost such a brilliant wizard. Even she herself had been so jealous of his mind, the Half-Blood Prince. His old potions book practically drove her insane. And what magic had he created since then? Now she'd never know, for he'd never be there to teach it to her.

Hermione stood up and flexed the stiffness out of her legs. She didn't want to stay there any longer, for fear Snape might suddenly jump up and scream unpleasant things at her. He was dead, she knew, but he didn't seem dead at all. Words caught in her mouth as before and she could no longer speak so freely to him. Gently, she placed the wand back in his hand.

With her own, she pointed at a chair in the corner and transfigured it into something to carry him. He would be cleaned up and buried on Hogwarts ground. As she turned to levitate his body onto it, she found that she couldn't bring herself to move him. There was a strange sensation traveling through her. It was what Harry had described, that awful itching that flooded him. But Harry had been wrong.

The feeling wasn't any type of itch; it was a painful burning fire.

It was similar to what she felt on her fingertips before--numbing fire that burned from her heart and spread into her blood vessels. Hermione stood frozen to the spot and clutched at her chest. It made her weak, made her shoulders cave instinctively to protect her heart. She wanted to leave, feeling urgency in it.

Without thinking, she headed for the door; hand still over her numb heart.

But before she was too far, Hermione turned around and felt she needed to say one last thing to her dead professor. It was what she had felt was stolen most from him.

Voice on wind, she whispered softly, "Thank you."

She swore she saw the glimpse of a smile on the dead man's face. Shaking her head, Hermione looked again. He was as unmoving and empty as ever. The dead didn't smile; she must have imagined it. Not that she would have known what Snape's smile looked like. She doubted anyone except Lily Evans had ever seen that.

Still, whatever she had seen--it had been beautiful. She couldn't help but smile herself.

While Hermione was leaving Hogsmeade, Minerva McGonagall was in the headmaster's study, hanging up a newly painted portrait. After hearing the story from Harry Potter, the hired painter felt so inspired that she worked feverishly all night to complete it. However, she received no pleasant thanks for her dedication. The first thing out of the subject's mouth was a complaint about the gaudiness of his frame.

Currently, the person in the portrait was criticizing the old witch's unsteady hand.

"Merlin's sakes, McGonagall, you're going to break this before you get it on the wall properly," he said before harshly adding, "At this rate, I'm going to have to die twice now won't I?"

McGonagall finally placed the portrait level on the wall and stepped back with a mixture of pride and annoyance. It also did seem somewhat amusing to her that he was the only dark-haired wizard among a wall of old grey-haired ones. She also felt a twinge of sadness at the thought. He had been so young, so very brave...

"I'm proud of you, boy, another Slytherin on the wall," said Phineas Nigellus.

Snapping out of it, she continued with her job. Now, there was just the permanent sticking charm to be applied. Just as she raised her wand, the portrait looked to the right of him and yelled for her to stop.

"NO! I am NOT going to be permanently stuck next to HIM!" he shouted, pointing at Dumbledore who was awakened by his outburst and adjusting his half-moon glasses.

"Well that's just too bad, Severus, there's an order to these portraits, you know."

Muttering and looking sour, Snape could do nothing but watch as McGonagall applied the charm. Now that her job was done, the witch put everything back in order and prepared to leave. Before she did though, she heard the recent headmaster say something else.

"McGonagall, I think I will consider not holding a grudge if you do me a small favor."

She raised an eyebrow.

"Please tell Miss Granger that she's welcome."