Chapter Text
When Hermione Granger, Order of Merlin, First Class, first began to venture into the bustling streets of any given city with a gaggle of children barely out of their nappies, she pooh-poohed the idea of leashing them. “They’re not dogs!” she’d cried so righteously, ready to make badges publicising the coming liberation of children everywhere.
And then she learned that, indeed, they were not dogs. Dogs had more sense.
It had been a long time since she was that young.
“Has everyone got hold of the rainbow rope?” she asked of the neat line of children ages seven to ten before her. Everyone nodded, and sure enough, a quick inspection revealed eight little hands grasping the rope in question and eight little wrists secured to the rope by eight coloured ribbons. “Very good,” she said. “And is everyone’s buddy in attendance?” Everyone rechecked and murmured and turned their big eyes back on her and nodded again. “Excellent. And is everyone ready to behave for one last stop before we have our sweeties?”
A cacophony of cheers.
“Very well, chaps! Onward to the apothecary!”
Hermione had been eyeing it for months. A curious little shop in Old Town Edinburgh literally called The Apothecary; sleepy, with strange odds and ends in the window, the knick-knacks of a time gone by, as if bequeathed by an 18th century sawbones of a doctor. On the outside, it would not appear out of place in Diagon Alley, but a peek inside revealed a normal Muggle druggist’s, not overburdened by customers, and this made it perfect for her outing.
She marched her ducklings to the shop and they plastered their little faces to the window and shouted their appreciation.
“Look!” said Henry. “A snidget in a cage! And it’s dead!”
“Henry!” Hermione said. “What did we talk about?”
Henry subsided from the window, his shoulders rolling inward as he turned those big brown eyes on her.
“No home-words,” he said.
“What shall we call it instead?”
“Erm.”
“A budgie, darling. It’s a budgie. And does anyone know the process a formerly living animal might be subject to in order to be kept in such a manner?”
“Taxidermy!” Harry W. shrieked, and Hermione suppressed a sigh.
“Yes, Harry,” she said. “But what is the proper way to answer?”
Ermengarde, Hermione D., Albie, Verona, and Hermione L. all raised their hands. Hermione winked at them and said, “Very good, chaps. Shall we?”
Another vigorous round of nodding and they were in, the door tinkling as Hermione opened it. With an admonition to stay with their buddies and be extra careful and quiet, the children were loosed into the shop. They all went to the magazine section and huddled around something illustrated Hermione couldn’t see from her vantage. She would take them to the first aid section after she spoke to the proprietor.
Hermione made her way to the chemist’s counter in the back. There were no employees to be seen the last few times she’d poked her head in, and she wanted to explain herself before getting started. She schooled her expression into one of bland pleasantness and squared her shoulders. A school trip, she usually said, to learn about local businesses, and of course each child will buy something today to thank you for your forbearance. But the words dried up when she saw the man who emerged from the back.
Tall and gangly with skin the colour of porcelain and a nose that looked, to Hermione’s adult eye, less oversized and more repeatedly broken, Severus Snape was unmistakable, no matter that he was meant to be almost twenty years dead. Though his hair had been cut much shorter than he wore it at Hogwarts, it still fell about his eyes and ears and seemed, if anything, an anti-style of no particular fashion whatsoever. The years had shot it through with silver. It suited him.
There was, of course, a great scar that erupted from beneath the collar of his black button-down and curled ragged around his neck and shoulder.
“May I help you?” he asked. His voice was more gravelly than it had ever been, but the sneer was just the same. Hermione was aware that she was gaping at him but she couldn’t stop, and she saw, she felt as if by the echo of memory, the way he was gearing up to denounce her entire party as dunderheads and order them out of his shop. “Madam, what is the meaning of—”
He froze, eyes widening as they caught on her face for the first time. Curious, Hermione thought hysterically. They’re brown, not black. A very deep brown.
“I do apologise, sir,” she said. “We’re…” She wished she had some water for her parched throat. Juice. Whiskey. “…on a trip.”
One black brow hiked eloquently over an eye.
“And are all these ruffians yours, madam?” There, in the corner of his mouth, a barely contained smirk.
She tipped her chin up and drew a deep breath. “They certainly are,” she said. “As I was saying, we are learning about small businesses at school and—”
“And why should this be your classroom?” Snape said. “Is this how you go about your business, madam? Riding roughshod over the small business owners of Britain like a bulldozer?”
Hermione scowled but squared her shoulders. “—it dovetails nicely with our first aid unit and I thought it might not trouble you overmuch to have some schoolchildren come in and be taught to recognise basic first aid products as they might find at any chemist’s…”
“I suppose this is some pathetic attempt to get them while they’re young,” Snape hissed, voice dropped suddenly low, “nip any potential prejudices in the bud. Teach them about Muggles and they won’t be so ready to hate them, is that it? How facile. Purebloods, are they? Sometimes the rot comes from the core of the wand, Weasley, make no mistake.”
“No home-words!” piped a voice from below the counter. Hermione glanced down to find the riotous blond curls of Severus K. at her elbow. She patted him on the back.
“Hush, Severus,” Hermione said, and she heard Snape choking on nothing. “Go look at the magazines for just a moment.” He eyed Snape with a tiny scowl as if sizing him up and finding him wanting. Snape, for his part, stared at the boy with open horror. “Go on,” Hermione said, and Severus K. dragged himself back to the group with one last hateful glance back at Snape.
“I’ll have to obliviate you,” Snape said. “And then maybe myself.”
“It’s become a rather popular name, I’m afraid,” she said. “We have four of them at St. Hieronymus’ alone, second only to our eight Harrys.”
“I am uninterested in the ramblings of a schoolmarm!” Snape drew himself to his full height and clenched his fists at his sides. “Give me forty-eight hours,” he said, “before you alert the authorities.”
“I’m neither a Weasley nor a schoolmarm, and no one is calling the authorities, for God’s sake.” Hermione pushed her hair away from her face. “Calm down and think.” Had he always been this easily addled?
He blinked at her as if coming back to himself.
“St. Hieronymus’,” he said faintly.
“Indeed,” Hermione said.
“They’re—”
“No home-words,” Hermione said with raised brows.
Snape pressed his lips together.
“They’re…admirers of Mrs. Norris.”
A laugh clapped out of Hermione’s gut unbidden. Even Snape looked surprised.
“Oh, I like that,” Hermione said. “Much better than anything else we’ve come up with.”
“Why come up with anything when there’s already a perfectly good word?”
“Because,” Hermione said, and leaned in to whisper. “The ‘perfectly good word’ as you call it was most often used as an insult and a punishment in the homes they’ve come from and is therefore undesirable, and ‘non-magical’ defines them in relation to magic which in turn places having magic as the default and not having it as marginal.” She stepped back. “It’s time for a new term, but we’ve not had much luck finding one.”
“And I don’t suppose you’ve ever considered asking them instead of taking it upon yourself to speak for and define them.”
“Well I—”
“Typical, Miss Granger. Good day. I trust you can see yourself and the little admirers out.”
There were no robes to sweep him so grandly away, but he managed to convey the sentiment regardless.
There was no getting around it: S.O.P. needed its own educational facility, preferably in a major population centre like Muggle London. Hermione had turned the problem over and over, but there was nothing for it. The squibs from St. Hieronymus’ could no longer rely on bi-monthly “school trips” and questionably helpful books to acquire their practical non-magical skills, and the squibs not from St. Hieronymus’ needed a space to practice without the possibility of saying an embargoed word in front of an unsuspecting Muggle.
It was not merely the Snape incident. It was everything Hermione had worked for going to pot because the students’ skills were not being affirmed and reaffirmed often enough to be effective. In addition to early and frequent access to computer labs, by the time they were teenagers they needed their own laptops as well as mobile phones, and that simply wouldn’t do when they lived in a place saturated by magic. It was an impossible problem; St. Hieronymus’ was run by wizarding authorities and, though Hermione had finally chipped away at them enough to make being magic-free a requirement for working there, there was no budging them to move somewhere that wasn’t so ensconced in magic as to be alienating, not to mention incompatible with modern Muggle technology. And the M.O.P. and S.O.P. budget didn’t have enough room in the budget for a separate educational facility open to all Admirers of Mrs. Norris and complete with teachers of all manner of germane Muggle subject.
Hermione was of the opinion that M.O.P and S.O.P. should be separate programs in the Department for Social Welfare altogether, should never have been bundled together in the first place, but she could say it ’til she was blue in the face and nothing would come of it. She was pulling her hair out trying to bend the budget into a far bigger one when there came a knock at the door.
“Woo-ooo,” Phaedra Withersby called. Hermione suppressed the urge to sigh and swung her chair around to face the head of the Department of Social Welfare. She was dressed in purple ruffles today and leaned in the doorjamb, pretending at casual. “Hello, Hermione, dear,” she said.
“Madam Withersby.”
“Honestly, Hermione, when are you going to call me Phaedra?”
“When you let me separate the Muggleborn Outreach Program from the Squib Outreach Program,” Hermione said, and, predictably, Madam Withersby laughed.
“You’re so funny, Hermione,” she said. “Now, were you able to make it to Belfast yesterday?”
Hermione felt her face draw into a scowl.
“I’ve told you multiple times, madam, that I can’t do Muggleborn outreach when I am taking students from St. Hieronymus’ out for their practicums. These are two separate jobs.”
“They most certainly are not, Miss Granger,” Madam Withersby said, standing up straight and tall in the jamb. “MOP’n’SOP is a single entity—”
“Besides, how exactly would it work?” Hermione turned fully towards her in her chair and spread out her hands. “I was the only custodian for the day of eight nonmagical children from North Berwick to Edinburgh, and what did you think I should do? Side-along them one-by-one? Floo them? Take a portkey? All against S.O.P. measures laid out to teach them how to be self-sufficient without magic, and then what? I and eight, eight children appear at the door of these Muggles, who are no doubt at their wits’ end about the accidental magic suddenly besieging their home and their child, and in front of these eight non-magical, motherless, fatherless children, I must tell this Muggle family, ‘Congratulations! Your child is a witch! Let me tell you all about the glories of the wizarding world and here’s a pamphlet for all the programming I’ve developed to integrate them into our society before you send them off to a school you can’t fathom, rarely to be seen again!’ Is that what you wanted me to do, Madam Withersby? Because if that sounds just smashing, maybe it should be your job!”
“Miss Granger!” Madam Withersby said, hand splayed against her bosom. “Contain yourself!”
“M.O.P and S.O.P. has only twenty employees, Madam Withersby,” Hermione said. “Which, I might add, is woefully inadequate, especially in comparison to other programs in the department. Magical Creature Welfare alone has one hundred and seventeen.”
“The MCW houses programs for werewolves, house elves, goblins, vampires, sidhe, Veela, and gnomes, among others, which, Miss Granger, MOP’n’SOP do not! Human children, that’s all you have to deal with!”
“Regardless, surely Mr. Omwe’ke or Ms. Lorcan could have gone to Belfast for you yesterday.”
“They are merely your assistants and thus not qualified—”
“They are highly trained DOSW professionals, Muggleborns themselves, and certainly up to the task, Madam Withersby.”
“Very well! If they’re so qualified, they can do your job for a month!”
Hermione gaped and shot to her feet.
“Madam Withersby—”
Madam Withersby held up a quelling hand.
“You, Miss Granger, are clearly in desperate need of a holiday. You will take it, and we will see about your future with MOP’n’SOP after you come back with a formal apology.”
“My programming—”
“Our programming, Miss Granger!” Withersby had gone shrill enough to scrape at Hermione’s eardrums. “I can see you’ve become too invested—”
“Too invested!”
“—and are thus overemotional about the direction of—”
“I created Muggleborn Outreach!” Hermione said, raising her voice. “I created Squib Outreach! And with them, I created this whole department and your bloody job! I am the director of both programs and should have a damn say in their direction!”
Madam Withersby regarded her as if with great pity.
“Go home, Miss Granger. Relax. Think about your future.”
Hermione stopped off in North Berwick to tell Ephigenia Hillcut, matron, and the charges of St. Hieronymus’ Home for Wayward Squibs that she would be on holiday for the next month. Some of the littler ones cried, and Henry asked if it was because he’d used home-words where Muggles could hear. She assured him it was nothing to do with that. One of the teenagers, a Harry, stared at her with narrowed eyes and said, “You never go on holiday.” Hermione had no answer but a weak smile that no doubt reassured the lot of them, and she took her leave.
And landed promptly in Harry Potter’s living room, where she pitched herself face first into the sofa.
“Hello to you too, Hermione,” Harry said from the recliner.
“I’m being sacked,” she moaned.
“Now that can’t be true.”
“I mouthed off to Withersby, but I couldn’t help it! She’s just so damned infuriating.”
“Kingsley would never allow it,” Harry said. “You should be the head of the department anyway.”
“Ugh, I wouldn’t want it.” Hermione sat up and looked at him for the first time. He was warming his hands on a cuppa, legs drawn up like a pretzel in his chair. A medical book sat open on the armrest. “Would that M.O.P. and S.O.P. were their own department, and I were head of that. It’s what I was trying to do in the first place, and then everything went tits up.”
“The Ministry was never going to add another department and another floor, love. It had to be absorbed and rejiggered.”
“Ugh, the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures should never have existed, I mean what kind of second-class citizen rubbish—”
“All right, Hermione,” Harry said hastily. “What is the task at hand, immediately?”
“I’m not apologising to her!”
Harry laughed and closed his book. He unfolded his legs and leaned forward, elbows on knees.
“No, I don’t suppose you would.”
“A month’s administrative leave. Paid.”
“Oh, that’s not so bad. You should go to Ibiza. Or Lisbon. Oh! Or Mykonos.”
“Harry.” Hermione’s fists planted themselves on her hips quite without her say-so. “I’m not going anywhere. I have to spend this ‘holiday’ figuring out how to wrest M.O.P. and S.O.P. from Withersby’s grasp.”
“Privatisation?” Harry asked. “I’m not sure how possible that is.”
“She doesn’t even care about either program, did you know?”
“Yes, I did, from all the times you’ve told me in great detail.”
“Oh, Harry, I’m sorry! What a boor I am.” She scooted over to the end of the couch and patted his hand. “How are you? How is St. Mungo’s?” She carefully didn’t mention Luna, whose absence filled the walls of the cottage.
“The same, and the same,” he said. “Honestly, Hermione. I’m very well. Very happy. I should have been a Healer from the start. A wise witch once told me it’s never too late to start being who you wanted to be.” Now he raised his eyebrows at her and blinked meaningfully.
“Oh, don’t turn my words back on me, Harry,” she said. “I am quite happy myself, you know. I’m doing exactly what I wish to be doing.”
“I didn’t realise it was your dream to run underfunded social welfare programs by doing the jobs of thirty people on your own.”
“It was my dream to create resources and support systems for the most marginalised groups in the wizarding world, and I’m doing that, as imperfect as it may be,” Hermione said. “Did you know squib suicides are down by 70% from fifteen years ago? And Hogwarts is finally allowing the parents and families of Muggleborns onto its grounds for emergencies and graduations? And rates of moderate to severe depression and anxiety across both populations is falling more every year?”
Harry encircled her wrist and rubbed his thumb gently into the delicate skin there.
“Peace, Hermione,” he said. “I meant only that perhaps you could let yourself off the hook once in a while. The wizarding world is too heavy to carry on one person’s shoulders. Believe me, I know.” Harry pushed his glasses up his nose with a rueful smile.
“Oh, dear.” Hermione sighed. “There I go again. I’m sorry. I know I should relax, but I find it nearly impossible.”
“No one said achieving our goals would be easy, love, but I don’t think anyone meant it should be this hard.”
“Privatisation is the only way I see forward,” Hermione said. “I would need grants and a foundation and donors, maybe a board of trustees. It’s all too much to think about right now but, by Merlin, if I could pull it off it would be greater than anything I could accomplish in the Ministry.”
“Take your holiday, Hermione,” Harry said. “A proper one. Anywhere in the world, somewhere you’ve always wanted to go. Promise me you’ll put this away for one week, and then you can come back and chew on it to your bulldog heart’s content.”
“I can’t tell if I’ve been insulted or complimented.”
“One week, Hermione.”
“Come with me?”
Harry held up his book. Paediatric Spell Damage, 4th edition.
“Duty calls, love,” he said.
“I have duties,” Hermione said. “To the Admirers of Mrs. Norris.”
Harry cocked his head, smiling even as he furrowed his brow.
“That’s one thing to call them,” he said. “Where did you come up with that?”
“I just want to be of use, Harry,” she said. “I just…want everybody to be all right.”
Harry patted her arm. “I know,” he said. “Now get out of here. Have a drink. Get bloody laid.”
“Har har.”
He winked at her as she stepped into the fire.
Hermione meant to ensconce herself on a beach in Bali, truly, but the next day came and found her once again in Edinburgh, before a dusty shop without any customers in it.
Snape greeted her with a curled lip and a raised chin that said nothing less than with your shield or on it, man.
“I thought you’d have scarpered by now,” Hermione said.
“More fool me, taking you at your word.”
“It occurred to me,” Hermione said, “that you have no idea what your reputation is anymore. I thought I should tell you, in case it changed things.”
“I know what people think of me, Miss Granger. What you fail to grasp is that I simply do not care.”
“Order of Merlin, First Class,” Hermione said, and Snape’s jaw snapped shut. “Awarded posthumously, of course. Your birthday is a bank holiday along with Harry’s, and the poor Headmaster’s. There’s even a statue of you in Hogsmeade, and a rather odd group of witches and wizards leave love letters at it every day.”
It didn’t seem possible for him to grow paler, but he managed it anyway, and did she imagine it or did he sway a bit behind the counter?
“So you see, Professor, that no one could possibly come to throw you into prison. They wouldn’t even think it. Harry mounted such a campaign for the rehabilitation of your reputation right after the war, and you’re quite the tragic figure. People do love high romance. You could come home. If you wanted.”
“I have never wanted something less, Miss Granger,” he said, but it lacked the bite she was accustomed to.
“Only, I thought, if you knew who you were to us—”
“I am exactly who I wish to be!” The pallor gave way to a blossoming red.
“A Muggle chemist with no customers?”
“My God, you really are insufferable.” Snape huffed. “Why did you come here?”
“I told you, so you would know—”
“Why did you really come here? And remember I know when you’re lying.”
Hermione fell silent. He was in charcoal trousers today, and yet another black button-down. She imagined he had several identical shirts and varied them exactly never, just like his ubiquitous wardrobe of black robes in school. Really, if he were trying to hide, he was doing a piss poor job of it and it was only a matter of time before a witch or wizard wandered into this shop anyway. He was lucky it was her and not someone eager to run to the Prophet with the information.
“I’m being sacked,” she blurted.
“You? Sacked? Shocking.”
“I’ll have you know I am a bloody star at my job.”
“But let me guess: you rub people the wrong way. You’ve no concept of how to be subtle and find the back roads into getting your way. An overbearing know-it-all and a Gryffindor; a winning combination the wizarding world will never survive, I’m sure.”
“That’s rich coming from a man who wouldn’t know a polite word if it bit him on the arse!”
“I do not care that you and your sparkling personality are about to be out of a job, Miss Granger,” Snape said. “And, as I do not hire unbearable swots, I cannot imagine what any of it has to do with me. I bid you good day and hope you never darken my door again.”
“I’m asking how you did it, you overgrown bat!”
Snape paused.
“You think I owe you something, is that it? Whatever for, you foolish girl?”
“I don’t think that,” Hermione said. “I’ve never thought that. It’s just…I’ve dedicated my adult life to a cause that’s about to be taken away from me by someone who doesn’t care one whit about the populations my office serves. I want to be able to continue that work, and I need to be able to do it here, among Muggles. You have done so. I wish only to know how. I’m prepared to compensate you for any time you spend aiding me.”
“You take the little squibbies on excursions to the Muggle world. That will hardly fall apart without you, Miss Granger.”
“And the social workers I’ve installed in St. Hieronymus’?” Hermione asked, voice rising. “To treat the traumas of childhoods spent being abused and neglected by their families before finally being abandoned like yesterday’s rubbish? I suppose they’re useless too, don’t need them, nor the case managers who do the same for adults who had neither family nor St. Hieronymus’. How about the Wizarding/Muggle adoption liaison, who helps place our little Admirers into loving Muggle homes, I suppose she’s unnecessary too? And what about the witches and wizards and squibs who do all the Muggle skills training, particularly in computing, and Muggle employment coaching? They’re worn thin what with being short-staffed, so we might as well get rid of them, why not? Or the legal team fighting every day to scrub the books of outdated, offensive laws that declare squibs the non-sentient property of their parents? Honestly, why not let squibs wallow in abuse and poverty like we used to, they’re better off killing themselves anyway!” Hermione was panting by the time she was finished, and Snape was staring at her dispassionately. She leaned against the counter, shoulders slumped, quite exhausted. “And that’s just the Squib Outreach Program,” she said.
“There’s more?” Snape asked. Hermione nodded, ignoring the arch in his tone.
“I also run the Muggleborn Outreach Program.”
“Dear God, not—”
“Yes,” Hermione said. “MOP’n’SOP, they call it. And me. We’re all a bit of a joke around the Ministry, but it’s important work we do, Professor. I can’t…I can’t let people get to me, and if they won’t listen when I’m a woman then I will be a bulldozer, as you say. I’m not ashamed of that.”
Snape looked at the clock mounted on the wall to his right. He stared at it far longer than anyone would need to in order to glean the time. Then, he swept out from behind the counter, strode to the front door, locked it, and flipped his open sign to closed.
“Come with me, Miss Granger,” he said. “I’ll not have this conversation on an empty stomach.”
Snape lived above The Apothecary in a small flat he kept neat and bare but for the walls (and floors) lined with an endless array of books and records. The faintest magic hummed throughout the space. Hermione was surprised to find it equipped exactly like a Muggle home despite the traces of magic: electricity, internet modem, appliances, telly and even a proper sound system. Hermione tried to imagine it: the great bat of the dungeons and a marked Death Eater, surfing the internet and listening to, well, whatever it was middle aged Muggles listened to. Fleetwood Mac?
“Do you have a mobile?” she asked as he plunked before her a plate of fish and chips from the chippie down the street.
“Do you?” he said. Somehow he managed to imbue his contempt for her into the way he soaked his chips with vinegar.
“Yes,” she said.
“Amazing.”
“Do you listen to Fleetwood Mac?”
“Miss Granger, do shut up.”
Hermione shoved a chip into her mouth as Snape’s jaundiced gaze roved over her and doubtless found her wanting. He made her feel like a child with everything to prove again. She forced herself not to fidget or speak.
They ate in silence, Hermione bursting with questions and Snape alternately eyeing her and his food. When he was finished, he carefully unfolded the wet nap from its tiny package and cleaned himself fastidiously, methodically, finger by finger.
“Have you told Potter?” he asked.
“No,” she said. Harry, and his hard-won peace, did not need to be disturbed by this spectre from the past. She didn’t even know what he would do. Rage, weep, collapse? No, of course she hadn’t told Harry.
“The Minister?”
“Kingsley is not exactly my bosom friend, Professor, to be seen and told secrets at any possible opportunity.”
“Weasley then?”
“Yes, I told George.”
“Granger!”
“And Fred, who hangs about as a ghost shouting out points as his twin and I shag in increasingly creative positions.”
“I suppose you find yourself amusing.”
“I made you a promise, Professor,” Hermione said. “And like you, I keep my promises.”
Snape stood and gathered his plate and hers to deposit them at the sink. She watched him lean on his hands over the sink, head bowed, taking measured breaths. Hermione dropped her gaze to her own greasy fingers and made short work of her own wet nap.
Snape sat heavily back down beside her.
“I’m not your professor,” he said. “And you won’t like my answers.”
“It’s not about liking or not liking them, Mr. Snape. I simply want to emulate your path.”
“You shouldn’t,” he said. “It is as you say: I have few customers, and when I get them I prove a poor host. I believed being a chemist and running my own shop would provide me the freedom and intellectual stimulation I craved in a field that bore a passing similarity to potions; I was wrong. The master I serve now is merely...”
“Capitalism?”
“Quite.”
“Mr. Snape—”
“I go by Stephen Savage here, Miss Granger. But in private, I suppose you may call me Severus. It fell easily enough from your tongue the other day.”
“Oh. Then you should call me Hermione.”
“Shakespeare enthusiasts, your parents?”
“And that’s so much worse than being enamoured of the Roman emperors?”
“Not at all, I merely wished to commend them for their taste and pomposity.”
“How did you become a chemist?”
“The usual way.”
“You went to university? Just like that?”
“No, not ‘just like that,’ you twit,” Snape said. “I knew I wouldn’t survive the war. And if by some miracle I did, I still couldn’t, do you understand?”
“You planned this,” Hermione said. “You never even entertained the thought of staying.”
Snape rolled his eyes.
“Don’t look so betrayed, Granger; you didn’t even like me. I never expected to survive, but I had to make contingency plans for the off chance I would. That meant forging a Muggle identity, including a first from Cambridge.”
Hermione rolled her eyes. “Naturally,” she said.
“Where would you have gone, had you been nothing but a Muggle girl with no saviour to pull out of fires at regular intervals?”
“I—”
“Oxford or Cambridge, and do not pretend otherwise.”
“Maybe Harvard.”
“Do you want to hear this or not?”
Hermione swept a hand out in invitation.
“After a lifetime of frugality, invention, and few expenses, I found myself quite a comfortable man. I also collected inheritances as the scion of two old families on my mother’s side, half-blood or no. And Albus—” Snape cleared his throat. “—Albus left me a sizeable nest egg. His small way of trying to take care of me, I expect. In the years leading up to the final battle, I slowly converted my galleons into pounds sterling, bought a flat, and waited.”
“Who took care of you?” Hermione asked. “When you were bitten?”
“The NHS,” Snape bit out.
“That’s it?” Hermione said. “You really told no one? Confided in no one?”
“Do you want to hear the story or not, Miss Granger?”
“Proceed, Mr. Snape.”
“Recovery was a long road, as you surmise,” Snape said after getting a good glare in. “It took a few years to come back to something resembling my full strength, but I was also eating heartily and served no masters for the first time in my life. I felt…strangely light. It made me believe I should make myself useful. I had spent a great deal of time reading chemistry and other sciences, as I might have done had I attended university, so that by the time I applied for the MPharm program, I was behind in nothing but the social niceties of attending university.”
Snape stood and pottered about banging cabinet doors and clinking mugs.
“Tea?” he asked.
“Please,” Hermione said.
He set the kettle on and turned back to face her, bum leaning against the counter, arms crossed.
“Most small businesses require a loan from a bank, same as among wizards. I was able to bypass that. My business isn’t particularly flush, but it suits me fine. I do have some customers for whom the shop proves conveniently located. For you, you’ll have to set up a not-for-profit organisation. I do wonder if it would be beneficial for you to approach the Muggle government, private charities, or even a church. I may have a book around here somewhere with illuminating details, but you’re far more likely find something more up to date and useful at a proper library. And that, Miss Granger, is the rather uninspiring story of how I came to run my own chemist’s.”
“I thought we were going to call each other by our given names.”
“The way you bumble about like a schoolgirl makes that difficult for me.”
“I do not bumble,” Hermione said. “I simply don’t care for social niceties when they are employed to very nicely refuse to do what’s right. Which is not terribly dissimilar from someone else I know.”
“Hmph.”
“You’re actually very admirable you know.”
“‘Actually?’”
“Of course there’s the great tragic hero claptrap,” Hermione said, waving a hand. “Harry Potter, fresh off of killing Voldemort, singing your praises at every turn, never saying a thing in public that he didn’t find a way to connect to your great sacrifice. That Snape, that fantasy—of course it’s admirable, the same way a superhero is admirable. But I mean you, Severus. Just you, here with me, talking about how to make yourself useful to your neighbours, not how to make yourself an investment banker or a CEO getting rich off the backs of your employees, but as a chemist committed to easing your clientele through all manner of ailments, all in an effort to help me, one of the worst thorns in your sides in all your years at school, now that I have done nothing but disturb the peace you’ve built yourself. Yes, Severus, I find you quite admirable.”
The kettle was whistling. Snape stood frozen, staring at her.
“The water’s done,” Hermione said.
“You have a dizzying conversational style…Hermione.”
“I ask only that my conversational partners keep up.”
“Oh no,” Snape said. “I think the fact that most can’t is the entire point.”
Hermione smiled, too big, and Snape looked away. He busied himself preparing the tea and setting out an array of cream and sugar.
“I didn’t know Fred Weasley had died,” he said, seating himself beside her once again. “Was it during the final battle, then?”
“Oh.” Hermione cleared her throat. “Yes, I’m afraid so.”
“What a bloody waste,” Snape muttered, as if to himself. Old grief tightened around Hermione’s lungs. She wrapped her hands around the hot mug.
“Yes,” she said. “Would you…”
Snape looked up at her, eyes like a thunderstorm. He looked bewildered and, for all the lines around his mouth and eyes, like nothing so much as one of her charges at St. Hieronymus’: guileless, alone and so, so young.
“Would you like to know who else didn’t make it?” she asked.
He blinked and the effect was gone. He leaned back in his chair, gaze averted from her, and brought the mug up to his lips. He blew across the surface.
“No,” he said. “No, I don’t believe I would.”
It was deep into the evening when Hermione rapped at the door of Ephigenia Hillcut. The door swung open to reveal Hermione’s friend as well as the expected arched brow and pursed lips she levelled in Hermione’s direction.
“You’re meant to be waist-deep in muscular foreign men, Hermione Granger.”
“I’m afraid I’ve an idea.”
“Heaven forefend.” Ephigenia stepped aside.
Hermione crossed the threshold and scuttled her shoes against the welcome mat.
“You’re a star, Ephigenia.”
Ephigenia shut the door and swept past her to sit in her favourite chair, a recliner worn with age. Hermione waved off the offer of tea and settled into the settee opposite her.
“Tell me or you’ll burst, darling,” Ephigenia said.
“I think it’s time to take Squib Outreach out of the Ministry’s hands.”
Ephigenia folded herself into the recliner, propping an elbow on an armrest to cradle her head in one hand.
“And Muggleborn Outreach?”
“Has fewer initiatives and more support from the Department of Social Welfare, plus more people qualified to step into my administrative role and more still to do the field work. Really, without an entire additional starved program yanking at their attention, the existing employees would probably be in a better position to shore it up.”
A faint smile touched Ephigenia’s lips even as her eyes narrowed.
“You don’t actually want that.”
A single laugh clapped out of Hermione’s mouth. She brushed a hank of hair off of her forehead.
“In a perfect world?” she said. “Of course I would do both. M.O.P. is important to me, and I have intimate knowledge of the social challenges Muggleborns face as well as a thousand ideas about how to effect societal change around it. But contrary to popular opinion, I am actually aware of my limits.” She shrugged and twisted her mouth into something that had aspirations toward smiling. “No one can devote their full attention to both, and I can see that even if the Ministry can’t. The programs are essentially inversions of each other and should never have been linked at all. The truth is, I worry about Squib Outreach so much more. It’s less…” Hermione shook her head, casting about for politic words.
“You can say it, you know,” Ephigenia said. “It’s less respected. There are fewer advocates.”
Hermione sighed.
“I think it’s just not thought of at all, which is worse, somehow,” she said.
“‘At least those upstart Muggleborns have magic,’ they think,” Ephigenia said.
Hermione tried not to look apologetic, but she did nod.
“It’s ridiculous,” she said.
“Of course it is,” Ephigenia said. “But it’s what we’ve got to work with.”
“I know I…owe it to you,” Hermione said. “To be your contact in the Ministry. I know there would be complications, especially at the beginning.”
“Hermione,” Ephigenia said. “We would support you, of course. All of us at St. Hieronymus’. And I’m sure we could get previous clients and adoptees to come forward in support, and you might be surprised to find one of them can and will rise to take your place as our Ministry liaison. The stuffy old wizards at the Ministry might not like it, but we ‘wayward squibs’ are citizens of this government and we are allowed in the building.”
Hermione’s heart swelled and she had to resist the heat rising behind her eyes.
“Thank you,” she said. She cleared her throat. “I wouldn’t do it if you didn’t want me to. That is, if you or another…magic-free person—”
“Just say squib, darling, I’ll live.”
“—if a squib wished to take the reins and spearhead their own organisation, I would be happy to step aside.”
Ephigenia steepled her fingers together before her lips and closed her eyes for a moment.
“To be frank,” she said, “I do think that would be best, but that’s a dream for a far-off future. You are the only direct Ministry employee with the necessary resources and contacts in this position at this moment in time. Not to mention your social clout.”
“Ephigenia, you’re very capable—”
“Hermione.” Ephigenia’s hand came up to stop her. “I run a home for abandoned children, I do it well, and I don’t want to stop. I am not a bureaucrat, or a business person, or a powerful symbol, and I don’t have the temperament. At this time, other squibs who may be better suited for such a task have largely set themselves up in the Muggle world either on their own or through S.O.P. initiatives. You have been our staunchest ally for more than ten years, Hermione—I for one am not so boorish as to diminish what you’ve accomplished for us simply because you’re a witch working in a flawed system.”
“I want to make sure this is done right,” Hermione said.
“Tell me,” Ephigenia said, “if, years ago, some purebloods, say your Weasleys, wanted to set up a foundation to help Muggleborns enter more smoothly into magical society, would you refuse?”
“Well, no,” Hermione said. “Although I would make sure there were multiple Muggleborns advising them every step of the way so they didn’t fuck up.”
Ephigenia grinned and raised an empty mug of tea.
“And so you shall have a fleet of us Abominations Before God and Merlin pestering you at every turn.”
“Great Christ.” Hermione groaned. “We need to think of a better name.”
Ephigenia snorted. The mug came down on the side table without her lips having touched it.
“I’ll consult the elders at the next great squib caucus.”
“You should have one! We could make a website.”
Ephigenia laughed.
“One thing at a time, darling,” she said. “Let’s get us computer literate first.”
Hermione flung herself sideways in the settee with a great sigh.
“There’s so much to do,” she said. “Securing funding first off, and finding an actual facility, and arranging all the permits thereof….”
“How did this notion take hold in the first place?” Ephigenia asked. “Horrid old bag though she may be, you can’t imagine Withersby would actually sack you.”
“She might,” Hermione said, “but I’ve gone beyond that possibility anyway. It’s been unviable for so long, I’ve been going spare over it even before my blow up. Then I met someone who—well.” Hermione smiled and wriggled in her seat a little too keenly. “Someone who made breaking away seem like a real option finally.”
“How so?”
“He’s done it,” Hermione said. “He leads a Muggle life, turned his back entirely on the wizarding world. I can’t say he doesn’t use magic, precisely—it’s the sort of thing we can’t help but to be steeped in, being magical people—but he doesn’t exert his will over it the way wizards do. It wouldn’t surprise me if he doesn’t consciously dust or tidy up his flat because his magic is already doing it for him. Basic self-care type stuff, most likely unconscious. But it amazes me, to think a wizard could choose to refuse the power of magic. Once it was revealed to me, I knew I had been shown something essential about myself, and I don’t think I could live without it.”
Hermione shook herself as if from a reverie when she caught Ephigenia’s eyebrows bouncing in way that reminded her of old Groucho Marx skits her parents had on VHS. Ephigenia leaned forward in her recliner.
“His flat?” she said. “Hermione Granger, you’ve been sitting here all this time talking bureaucracy, meanwhile you’re keeping having met someone and been to his flat which you find just so fascinating from me all this time? How dare you, honestly.”
“Piffle!”
“Piffle? Are you a hundred years old?”
“It’s not like that!” Hermione’s voice had gone shrill, and Ephigenia threw her head back in a hearty cackle.
Snape’s eyes flashed in her mind: a deceptively delicate almond shape in a rich, burnt sugar brown, deep set and wide, lit with knowing. The image was gone as quickly as it came.