#hp fic request

[fluxweedstem]

prompt: snape gets a head injury and is unusually happy and friendly to everyone

[januarywren]

Hi if you don’t mind can I request a Snamione fic where he witness hermione’s mental breakdown upon knowing the death of her parents? Hehehe we are going angst today!

EEEEP, I’m really sorry - I’ve been feeling awful the past week, and I mixed up your prompt!! I thought that you wanted a sevmione scene about Hermione Obliviating her parents, not their death. 

The fic that I wrote is an Epilogue AU and takes place ten years after Voldemort’s death, but I’m sorry for the mix-up!! If I have time, I’ll write something that fits your prompt entirely. I’m posting the fic below, as well as linking it here! I appreciate you sending in a request, and I’m sorry again. 

-

“Hermione – “

It had been weeks of silence, with his lover hiding away in their rooms. There was more to the former golden girl of Gryffindor than anyone knew, and Severus watched, and he worried, as her cheeks grew pale and her words became fewer and fewer.

He felt the distance growing between them, even at night when he wrapped his arms around her, and she nestled close against his chest. Sleep was beyond them, yet they enjoyed the intimacy of it still – at least they had until she'd turned from him.

(Why? What had he done?)

“Trust me,” Severus ached to say. “Please, Hermione, let me in again.”

But he didn’t.

Couldn’t.

For underneath it all, Severus knew that he was a coward still, regardless of his duplicitous role at the Dark Lord’s side. The Ministry had given him a medal – a scrap of worthless tin – as if that could make his hands clean again.

He’d witnessed horrific things, things beyond anyone witch or wizard’s imagination, aside from Voldemort himself, and perhaps, Dumbledore. The later was hailed as the guiding mentor of the wizarding world, but above all others, Severus knew his true nature: Dumbledore willingly accepted what others would have cringed at, as long as it would aid his efforts during the war.

It was right, and it was wrong, and Severus –

He wanted little part of it.

His own Change was because of the Dark Lord after Voldemort explored the nature of vampires. Severus acted as his servant and was changed first – he'd burned in agony for days until his heart stilled, and he burned anew, his throat aching with thirst. He was a creature without morals, or limits, and had slaughtered as other Death Eaters had, and was privy to horrors that only those closest to the Dark Lord were allowed. There were so many innocents that suffered, regardless of their bloodline or their nature -

He never raised a finger to stop them, nor spared the unfortunate a single word, and he knew that he would burn for it –

Something that Hermione knew as well, for he’d wept in her arms, and confessed his sins to her. The world would never know the weight of his heart nor the true workings of his soul, but she alone would always know.

“Don’t.”

Severus flinched as his lover turned away from him, his heart thudding inside his chest. "It's over then?" he asked, forcing himself to swallow nausea that rose in his throat.

He’d always known he wasn’t good enough for Hermione, the same way he wasn’t good enough for Lily. (What had he told Hermione at the start of their relationship? “I’m less of a man than I am a creature, Hermione”? It was an understatement by far.)

And yet, Hermione had stayed by his side, freely and wholly of her own will. She’d accepted him when his nature became clear; his fangs grazing her wrist when he kissed her there, and his dark eyes had bored into hers. Her blood was ambrosia on his tongue, her nature as enthralling as a siren’s call.

And when they had reached the point of no return, she had done more than accept him –

She’d chosen him, as her Sire.

Her Mate.

They knew each other as no one else did, as they brewed countless potions together, in their little nest that was hidden from the world. They lived in muggle London, a place where they could live as they wished, and where no one noticed if a petty criminal or two went missing. (In fact, their formerly crime-ridden neighborhood was grateful for the dramatic reduction in crime, as stolen items were returned, and doors were left unlocked once more.)

He withdrew from her, as his familiar friend, anger, found him once again. “Have you realized what I am?” Severus asked, “A foul creature, a sniveling beast – “

It was easy to slip into his former skin, as the greasy-haired and embittered potions master. He knew what the students thought of him and remembered how the staff had avoided him. He reveled in their distance, as it fueled his bitterness; something he had ceased to feel in his life with Hermione. But he was weak then, and exposed, and wanted to hide away where she wouldn't see how he lived for her.

If she left him –

No, Severus thought grimly. When she left him, he would be the creature the world knew before, the one who snapped and snarled without remorse. He wasn’t meant to have others near, he was his father’s heir.

“Stop it,” Hermione said, closing the space between them.

“Why should I, Ms. Granger – “Severus sneered, stilling as her hand rose to cup his cheek.

"Severus," Hermione said as if his name meant something to her still. "This – this isn't about you, or us. I'm not," she hesitated, searching for the right words to say. "I know that I haven't been myself lately. I…”

“You haven’t,” Severus croaked, his tangled feelings exposed. He felt as anxiety entwined with his simmering anger, and his hand covered hers. “Please Hermione, let me in.”

“I did something a decade ago,” Hermione whispered, “something during the war that I cannot let go of. It…it happened next month, and I – I can’t stop thinking of it.”

Severus’s brow furrowed, as he rested his temple against hers. “You were a child during the war,” he said, his tone as gentle as his words were overused. “Dumbledore used you as a soldier – whatever you did is not yours to blame yourself for.”

“But it is,” Hermione replied, with a sad, little smile. “I wanted to keep my parents safe, and I…I took their lives away from them, Severus. I Obliviated them and sent them away to Australia, where they would be safe.”

He kissed away the tears that slid down her cheeks, as shame pooled through his veins. It was his nature to interpret his mate’s hurt as because of him, with his father’s words ringing in his ears – feelings of worthlessness and self-loathing always seemed just below the surface, as if he were a child still.

He wanted to be better for her.

He had to be.

She hadn’t made the decision for him to change her lightly, no, and it was entirely her decision alone. The cursed knife that Bellatrix had used to carve the horrid word into her skin was slowly killing her, the dark magic imbued within her wound leeching her very life from her. Hermione told him she wasn’t afraid to die, after cure after cure had resulted in little change.

Nor had Hermione proposed it at first, after Severus confessed his love for her. She asked for nothing from him but stayed at his side, faithfully stirring his potions, and spending her nights awake with him, even before he changed her. They kept the world at bay outside their door, and wanted nothing but privacy, above all.

She wrote letters frequently to Harry and his wife, as well as his godson, Draco Malfoy who sought redemption after the war and he apologized for his treatment of her. She wrote letters too, to George Weasley who mourned for the loss of his twin, and she wrote to Ron, who struggled to find his stride as an Auror still. Hermione had a longing for the outside world that Severus lacked, though he never sought to prevent her from having friendships.

Yet it was Severus who held her during the Change, allowing her to weep in his arms, as she writhed, and she burned. It was an experience that bonded them closer to one another, the fury of the Change driving the Dark Magic from her soul. It fled her body, but Severus never left her, nor did he want to.

“I’m sorry,” Severus whispered, before kissing the tip of her nose. “So very sorry, Hermione.”

She had always taken comfort in his voice, and like a purring cat, rubbed her cheek against his. “I can’t help but think they are safe but not whole,” Hermione confessed, “Or maybe it’s too painful to think of them as being happy and whole, without remembering me at all – “

His arms circled around her waist, as he pulled her flush against him. “I understand,” Severus said, having once felt the same about Lily, as she burned with life when she was married to James Potter. Yet his feelings for Lily were nothing like how he felt towards Hermione, the only soul to ever accept him wholly, and unflinchingly.

He never would regret the rainy night that he'd come across her, when she'd sat alone at a train station, with her beaded purse in her arms. She'd broken up with Ron and fled from the wizarding world – straight into his arms after they left the train station to eat at his favorite curry place instead. The dull flavor of human food had seemed spicy and danced across his tongue when he sat across from her, and they had simply never parted afterward.

Nor would they if Severus had his wish, and Hermione truly wanted to stay.

“I miss them,” Hermione murmured, “Every night and every day, even though I never forget that I’m the one to blame. I chose to send them away, without a memory of the child they had, or…or anything of their former lives. Their true lives,” her voice cracked at that, and she moved to bury her head against his shoulder. “I don’t have a right to feel this way.”

“You do,” Severus said, his hands resting on the small of her back.

She was a mess of contradictions; her small frame holding a soul that was far stronger, and bolder than his own. He wanted to curse himself for leaving her to the wolves during the war, though they weren’t lovers, nor friends then. His focus then was consumed with thoughts of Lily and twisted bitterness about protecting her son.

“Merlin, Hermione, you did the only thing that you could. The Dark Lord would have never allowed your parents to live. The things that he did to muggles – the things that I did to them – “ he dragged a ragged breath in.

He wanted her closer still as if he could hold on to her, so she never let go of him.

“You saved them, my love,” Severus said softly, though they were the only ones in their room. There would never be another between them, nor a child born from her womb, as their kind was unchanging.

There was only the low purr of her familiar, Crookshanks, who chose then to wind about their legs and rub his face against Severus' foot. With a little blood magic, he would live out his immortal days with them. "My love, my life - believe me. I wouldn’t lie to you.”

He wouldn’t.  

“Promise?” Hermione asked, quieter than he’d ever heard her.

He prayed that she would believe him, as truth dripped from his words. No one would have helped his mate and her parents, not even him. Dumbledore had cared only for Harry, zealously arranging his pawns so his king was protected, and at the forefront of the chessboard. Harry was the one that mattered – Harry was the only one that truly mattered and was needed in the war against Voldemort.

“I swear it,” Severus whispered. "I'll take a Vow if you wish."

He wanted to free her from her pain, her guilt, even as he knew that it couldn't be undone. It was an ache inside of her soul that wouldn't leave her, yet he wanted to try as he never had for any other. Offers rose to his tongue, ones of finding a reversal to the spell, and finding her parents once again.

Severus held his tongue still, knowing that wasn’t what his mate needed, not then. Later, perhaps, when her tears had dried and she nestled close to him, and she knew that he would listen to all that she wanted to share.

She pressed closer against him and grasped the fabric of his robes with her hand. “I wish that I didn’t remember,” Hermione confessed, “over and over again. I see their eyes glaze over and I…I just can’t – I want to forget but I never want to let them go.”

It was all that she could give him then, the wound too raw, and exposed as it was. (Yet she didn't turn her heart away, no – it turned toward him, as she sought the comfort of his hold and the honesty of his soul.)

“I know, sweetheart,” Severus said, knowing more than most how she felt. There were memories that haunted him once, a tangle of faces and a mesh of names that were engraved across his skin. “I know.”

They held each other close, saying nothing then.