A Hundred Years from Yesterday

"We all carry within us our places of exile, our crimes, and our ravages. But our task is not to unleash them on the world; it is to fight them in ourselves and in others."

The Rebel - Albert Camus.

Snape had been poked and prodded along into a holding cell before his eyes had adjusted to the light.

He blinked, thankful the guards had finally ceased to point their wands in his face. The sconces that lined the walls flickered dully, and gave his eyes a chance to adjust. Still murky, but at least the spots had receded from his vision. Slowly he raised his head to look at his keepers. Most were familiar, at least in scent, and had passed by his cell at least once during his confinement.

Snape's eyes dimly focused on a crack running along the aged stone wall.

One, two, three on the left. One on the right.

The habit of keeping his back to the wall hadn't been broken. Instinct told him how many people were around him even while he was lacking most of his faculties. Experience meant his unconscious took over whenever the rest of him was weakened. Cruciatus. Imperius. Order meetings.

Had he been able, Snape would have been reassured by his return to old behaviors.

The crack bent sharply to the left at the next stone.

Door bearing south-southeast. Window barred. Focus on the second; he's weak with rheumatism.

The guard in question limped past Snape's line of sight, rubbing absently at his hand as he opened the door. The light was much stronger outside the room and overwhelmed the quiet glimmer of the torches.

Snape frowned as his eyes became unfocused with the disturbance. It took him several attempts to find where the crack left off.

Auror, that one. Right sleeve, wand. Left sleeve, knife.

A dark shade moved into his field of vision and lifted his chin.

Snape recoiled. The touch felt cold and clammy despite how chilled he was. A grey mediwitch bustled around his immediate vision and made a diagnosis with her wand. She sounded like a fly buzzing in his ear. Had he been stronger, he might have swatted her away.

"He's lucky to be as well as he is."

He choked as she tipped a vial down his throat.

His vision misted. Edges became softer, and the fly seemed to be much farther away.

"Malnourished, dehydrated and he has what looks to be chronic pneumonia. Will he be getting the recuperative care he needs?"

Buzz buzz buzz.

She sniffed at the silence that answered her.

The crack split into three veins, meandering further apart. Each shattered into a spider's web of smaller splinters and disappeared, finally, into the floor.

Apparently satisfied, she signed away his health and removed herself from the room.

His head was pounding, the pressure made worse by the droning litany of Ministry decrees and formal declarations. Tedious, very tedious.

He hadn't noticed he had fallen over until he felt himself being roughly pulled upright. Grubby hands held his head still as they forced another vile potion into his mouth.

Too much Shrivelfig, was his last thought before the blackness came.

He would walk a free man a few hours later.

When Snape awoke, he was standing near the edge of the rocks outside the fortress walls.

The moisture in the air was refreshing; it had been a long time since he hadn't needed to breathe the stale air of the other prisoners. He inhaled and swayed on his feet. The guard next to him caught Snape's arm while he regained his balance.

Snape blinked until he saw the line of dowdy officials - Ministry by the look of it - neatly queued in front of him.

The wind whipping off the sea in a great gust led to a brief scramble to keep from losing their hats to the sea. Snape, far too brittle to notice, stood stock still while the parchment the Auror had been reading from flew back into his face.

They graciously transfigured his standard prison garb from the recognizable black and grey stripes to a drab, matte blue. Their generosity extended further to include a threadbare cloak to ward off the autumn air. This, too, passed unnoticed to Snape who was staring with an unhealthy fixation at the cragged walls plummeting into the waves below.

The chinking of coin caught his attention finally and he had a moment to look up before something was tossed at him. He flinched back as the coin purse made contact with his chest and landed in the dirt at his feet. Snape rubbed the bruise forming underneath his robes as he bent down to retrieve it.

He held the weight in his hands; it felt heavy to him.

The buzzing came slowly back into focus.

"...17 Galleons, 3 Sickles, 8 Knuts remitted to Prisoner four-ansuz-eight-zed-three-uruz, Snape, upon his release. Recorded this day..."

The voice faded from Snape's consciousness as he peered down at the pouch in his hand. Severance pay, he supposed. A pittance to be paid in full for time spent: a Galleon for every year, a Sickle for every month, and one old Knut for each day. Every moment of living hell recorded in a ledger and checked off by some faceless Ministry drone.

They were speaking again, much more closely than before, but Snape was lost again in memories. Parts of his mind that had been locked safely away realigned into a moment of pure anguished synergy.

Snape's fingers clenched into fists to keep from shaking as the warden inserted the key to his wristband. It glowed eerily and then disappeared, leaving Snape standing alone in the cold morning air of Scotland, far from where he had been. The exile returned.

Instinct took over once more. Snape took his first steps of freedom and began to walk.

---

Forty-five minutes after Hermione sent her first owl, the gates of Hogwarts swung obediently open for her.

Hermione gathered up the folds of her robes and briskly made her way across the uneven grounds.

Twice now, she had to stop and brace herself to keep from fainting.

Slow, calm breaths, Granger. You're not fifteen anymore and too old to be running this much. Hermione inhaled deeply, thankful for the crisp country air.

Snape. He had looked awful. She had stood in the street watching him pass her, hoping for some sort of recognition to flash in his eyes. Hermione prayed that she had been mistaken when he had stared right though her. That it hadn't been him. Awful.

Snape had shuffled through the small crowd of shoppers, dragging his feet heavily along the cobbled stone road. The toe of his shoe clipped an uneven edge and made him stumble. Stumble. Snape didn't stumble. She had watched him once during the final confrontation run headlong into the fray, dodging curses without so much as blinking. He had never been unbalanced around her before.

Had she not been frozen in shock, she would have rushed to his side. As such, Hermione could merely watch as Snape regained his footing and glanced around, looking all but lost. He looked almost... panicked. Frightened that he hadn't known where he was. That expression was enough to bring his appearance to the forefront of Hermione's dumbstruck mind.

His robes had hung loosely on his frame with the material opened at the neck. Hermione's eyes had settled on his shoulders; his collar bones jutted out in sharp relief to the rest of his chest. His skin had looked parchment thin, as if she could have touched him and watched as he crumbled in her hands. And Hermione would have sworn she would have been able to count every rib. Like too little butter spread over too much toast, was the first thing she had thought. She had forgotten who had first told her that.

She looked up at Snape's face then -- painfully thin and dehydrated -- and his complexion had a ghastly pallor to it. Like the mummies her mother had taken her to see at the British Museum. It was as though they had drained him of all colour until his hair and skin had taken on the same terrible grey tinge. Snape had long moved on by the time Hermione had run back into the owl post office to warn Minerva she was coming, but try as she might she could not forget the deadened look of Snape's eyes.

Hermione shuddered again and quickened her pace.

Once inside she made her way down the long corridors in search of the Transfiguration Mistress. Minerva's quarters were, naturally, at the base of Gryffindor tower, but sufficiently out of the way for Hermione to avoid the majority of the student body.

The Head of House in question promptly answered Hermione's anxious knocking.

"Goodness child, you look like you've seen the ghost of Tom Riddle."

You're not far off.

Hermione allowed herself to be pulled inside with a rare show of maternal affection. Minerva sat an unresponsive Hermione down in one of the well worn old armchairs that spotted the room. She joined her former pupil a few moments later, glasses in hand.

The younger witch always marveled at the speed with which alcohol materialized during these visits with her former mentor.

"Come now, take a sip." Hermione coughed at the first hasty swallow. "That's it. Now tell me. What prompted this visit, hmm? You're not one to get so easily worked up."

After several slower sips of Minerva's scotch, Hermione was feeling more like herself.

"Didn't you see the papers?" Hermione queried in lieu of an explanation.

The answering 'Pah!' was spat with considerably less vitriol than she knew Minerva was capable of. Dumbledore's death had dulled the venom in her voice but what took its place disturbed Hermione even more. There was the specter of vindictive glee reflected in Minerva's eyes. Very unsettling. Hermione could understand the anger and sympathize with the bitter frustration. She had spent almost half her life being indignant over one injustice or another: her Muggle-born status, house-elves, Quidditch fans. And she had always been more than willing to make her opinions known to whatever hapless fool who was tactless enough to bring it up with her.

But being pleased by another's death? No.

There had only ever been one person Hermione had ever wished dead, and despite everything she had seen, she still believed Dumbledore was no Voldemort.

"You can't tell me you were surprised by any of that rubbish," Minerva said.

Hermione shook her head. "No. I thought you might be pleased with the stipends."

"There have always been plenty of private donors to make up for the lean years in Ministry support. I'd rather go begging in the streets of Hogsmeade before I took that ruddy man's blood money!"

An unattractive red flush crept up Minerva's neck. She was piqued and had to run her hand over her hair to smooth her ruffled fur.

The mention of begging brought the image of Snape sharply back into focus.

"Did you read to the end?"

"Severus, you mean." Minerva's demeanor changed drastically then and she looked every one of her 93 years. "He was always the hardest done by. Even when he was a student here, there was a bit of hero worship on Severus' part. He was a bit like Harry in that way, but that overstuffed buffoon never gave Severus one bit of quarter. It's not difficult to imagine why he joined up with Riddle."

There was one awful moment when several windows aligned in Hermione's mind and brought her to one horrifying conclusion: Dumbledore had meant for this to happen. Forty years of careful manipulation led to this. She was certain Dumbledore manipulated Harry into helping to conspire against Snape. That degree of malice would never have manifested from teenage rebellion alone. He had had a hand in it. Nurturing the hostility until Harry had become so hardened against Snape to leave him to suffer. She could hardly expect the same not to be true here. Was that the plan all along? To have someone Dumbledore could eventually influence on the inside? That would mean Snape's entire life had be sacrificed, and for what?

Her eyes suddenly pricked with tears out of pity for the man and she quickly hid her face from Minerva by refilling their glasses.

If Minerva noticed, she didn't say and continued talking. "I never could forgive myself for not being there. We all would have spoken for him!"

But we didn't later. We weren't kept away all these years. We could have spoken up at any time.

"I saw him - in Hogsmeade - right before I owled you. It was awful."

Of course it was awful, Granger. How else would he be after 17 years in Azkaban? Stop twittering about.

"Did you? On his own? I did wonder whether they were just going to kill him anyway despite all that nonsense in the paper."

"He looked like a shell," Hermione stuttered. "There was nothing left of him!" She realized she was getting slightly hysterical. The risen possibility that he'd been thrown to the Dementors before his release raised an anxiety in Hermione she wasn't accustomed to.

A gentle hand reached out and pulled the glass out of her grasp and sat it on the table. The hand returned and began rubbing circles into her palms until the panic subsided.

"Are they just leaving him out there? All alone? He can't possibly be capable of taking care of himself. What about money? Didn't they strip him of all his assets like everyone else?" Hermione rambled on as each new concern sprung to mind, not thinking to censor her mouth.

She looked up at Minerva who was much closer now and was soothed by the compassion she saw in those eyes.

It didn't bring her comfort for long though, because Hermione had a suspicion that Minerva would forget this as soon as she was gone. The silence that lay between them was suggestive. Minerva was happy to stay cloistered in these hallowed halls, cursing Albus and his betrayal, and any guilt she still carried with her would not be enough to send her to Snape's aid.

The realization shook Hermione to the core. She needed space to clear her head and process everything she'd seen today.

"Thank you for the drink, Minerva, but I have to make the last owl times for work. You know how they are with after hours posts." Hermione forced a smile on her face and extricated herself from Minerva's embrace. I need to leave before I see any more.

The older woman did not seem to trust the abrupt volte-face but nevertheless led Hermione to the door.

"Do come back for dinner soon. It's a shame you won't take the position here, it's still open if you want another week to consider it. You'd be perfect for it. You practically wrote the curriculum."

Minerva tried for the fifth time to convince Hermione to teach Multi-Magical Incorporation -- the pompous new name for Muggle Studies with a special emphasis on integrating Muggle-borns into the new world of magic. It had been one of her specialties at the Ministry.

Torture is more like it. Hermione had tried to explain that teaching just wasn't for her as long as three rounds of Cruciatus curses were still not allowable disciplinary tactics.

And she had a bit more to think about after what she'd learned from Minerva tonight.

Hermione shook her head at the offer. "Bollocks. You just want me to run interference between you and the first years. Give off, Minerva; you get to keep that privilege all to yourself."

With a slightly less forced smile, she let herself out the door and headed off grounds.

She had to find out about Snape.