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Wake of War	By : sshgdifferentfan Category: Harry Potter > Het - Male/Female > Snape/Hermione Views: 4060 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor any of the characters from the books or movies. The characters and canon situations in the following story belong solely to JK Rowling. I am not making any money from publishing it.

Chapter List
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Sorry for re-posting it but somehow the first version of the story disappeared.

1. An Unfinished Letter

The war is over. The boy who lived, lived through another killing curse to finally defeat Lord Voldemort and save all our arses (Wizards and Muggles alike) once and for all (until next madman comes along looking to be God among Muggles and Wizards).

It's quiet now -- well, as quiet as four months after that dreadful end of an era of fear could get -- no more Death Eaters around (they’re either in Azkaban or had fleed), no more Muggle-borns and Muggles being hunted down and killed, no more terror. The Wizarding and Muggle Worlds are starting anew (Merlin knows, what that shite even means - I got it from a speech the Minister gave a while back here at Hogwarts). You might have noticed something different too: better weather, less crimes, less everything actually. It was in the Muggle news.Your Prime Minister gave a speech on the end of recession or something a couple of days ago -- I read it in the Daily Prophet -- that was all this ‘starting anew’ shite.

Impressive, eh? Not so much on this end… Here’s there now ‘anew’ - not yet anyhow. There’s tears, sweat and lots of magic to build it back to how it was. Even that fucking statue… you know the one - wizards are best, the rest is scum… well, they’ll be keeping it. Some stupid thing about ‘being a symbol of what never should have happened’. Bullocks! I think’s gonna be a symbol of what did happen and could happen again.

But how am I to judge, right, just a Muggle-born witch, barely started into adulthood? It’s not like I’ve been fighting this war for the second I stepped foot in Hogwarts, plus last few months, right there in the first line.

We have a new Minister for Magic, by the way, Kingsley Shacklebolt -- I think I told you about him once, the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Great guy they say -- Potter and Weasley can’t stop praising him -- but I doubt it somehow. He doesn’t seem great, just… I don’t know: ordinary?

Anyhow… it is the dawn of a new age, the age of light and all that shite… I don’t know where I got that from but…

…………

You’re not going to read this, are you? Of course you’re not, because I’ll never finish it…

Hermione draw her wand, thought 'Incendio' and before she even finished the thought the parchment full of her thoughts was turning to ashes on top of the table. It was the sixth one to have the same fate in less than an hour.

Stupid letter, she thought sneering at the slowly fading flames as if it were to blame for her mess. Well, of course she was in a mess, and of course it was totally her fault, but she wouldn't really be a Slytherin if she'd just take it, now would she? No, she had to find a way around it, a way to get rid of the mess, cover her arse and make it look like somebody else was to blame. She had to be cunning and selfish and… well, her.

But who can you really blame when you erase your parents' memories and send them on the other side of the globe?

Voldemort?

It could work… for a while… before the whole 'Did Voldemort put the wand in your hand?' or ‘Did Voldemort made you?’ nonsense would come up and then she would be back to square one: angry obliviated parents and her, not really knowing how to get out of it.

So, how else was there? Dumbledore? Potter? Minister fucking Scrimgeour?

It wouldn't work. They would see right through her and be even angrier because of the lying and everything. But, honestly, what did they expect from a Slytherin? Oh, yeah, nothing because no matter how much she wished they could understand all about Slytherin and the Wizarding World -- they simply couldn't.

Even back in her first year of knowing she was a witch, when she first wrote to them, that first night in the castle, most of the parchment drenched in burning hot tears, that she had been sorted into Slytherin of all places, they had sent her a green and silver Muggle book bag and a letter that contained no more and no less than fifty six 'congratulations' - she counted them all and cried once more for each and every one of them.

How could they understand? They were normal… not like her, the abnormal Muggle and then the abnormal witch.

And then, later on when her house mates’ teasing got too bad, with all the calling of names and hexing in the corridors or common room, she wrote to them again, telling them all that was happening, begging them to take her home, but they didn't. They simply wrote back that teasing was normal, that they (her house mates) just needed time to see what a good girl she was.

She had stopped writing the truth after that and started making up friends and stories and adventures, some invented, some that have belonged to others, telling them all about Harry Potter, the Great Albus Dumbledore and all sorts of other wizards and witches that roamed the halls of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry at one time or another. They were happy with it and because of it, she was happy too, in a way. They still didn't understand, but at least they could all pretend that they did. It was fine like that.

That was the moment when she became a true Slytherin. She hadn’t been one up to that moment -- though the Sorting Hat thought her Slytherin enough to place her, the Muggle-born daughter of dentists, in Salazar’s House --- but in that moment, that precise moment when she received their reply to her first lie filled letter and read their pride and happiness for their daughter, the witch, she had become one -- a Slytherin true and true. Oh, she didn't suddenly belong in Slytherin House, even now, she still doesn’t -- not always, anyhow -- but back then, that frightened twelve year old Hermione Grange had embraced Slytherin and even though Slytherin never truly embraced her and she was fine with it.

The years started coming and going, the same cycle every year: nine months of school, where she was the abnormality of the lot -- the only Muggle-born Slytherin Hogwarts had ever seen, the know-it-all bookworm, the bossy student with the highest grades. Then there were the summers, when she was the abnormal daughter -- the one that had to lie to friends and family just to go through the day, the one that fought with every ounce of her strength to keep her magic from imploding or exploding whenever things got too hard, the one how was still teased and called all sort of names. The only difference was that the Muggle world never hexed her -- no, all of her physical scars came from the Wizarding world. -- but they did damage as well -- physiological damage.

And all because she didn’t fit at all, in any place: not when nine months of twelve she was the Muggle-born pretending to belong to Pure-bloods that hated her and all like her and not in the three months out of twelve when she was the witch pretending to be Muggle.

And so the years passed. Sometimes too fast and other times not fast enough, but they always passed, one after another, after another, after another… until… one year, one day Voldemort came back and with him all her barely there peace disappeared.

The war took longer than she’d expected it to take. She had imagined weeks or maybe months before Voldemort would be caught, but it was longer… so much, much longer. It took years, actually. Years of living in fear for her life, years of praying to see another sunrise, years of going to bed not truly knowing if she would wake up again next morning, but by then she was Slytherin enough that she did..

Year after year she got up, went to classes, spent time in the library, did Merlin only knew how many independent studies and projects -- the professors where actually running away every time they saw her walking towards them, all except one, but she simply didn't have anything else to do with no other social life than avoiding the other Slytherins -- got the highest marks Hogwarts had seen in years and late at night, when she was sure her house mates were asleep she would finally let herself drift to sleep with her eyes closed and her consciousness in full alert, waking up at the slightest noise.

And then -- on that night that for her changed everything -- the one man, the one person in the whole Wizarding World whom she trusted above anyone else, killed Dumbledore. It wasn't like she cared much for the old buffoon of a Headmaster, but he did stand as symbol for all that was right and good and decent, and all that was opposing Voldemort. And Professor Snape, her Head of House, the man she would have trusted with her life, had been the one to kill him. A Death Eater… He’d been a Death Eater…

That was when her life started falling to pieces.

She had gone home the day after Dumbledore's funeral and told her parents for the first time in years, the truth. It had been strange looking at their faces as truth after truth registered in their eyes as lies, sorrow and fear. And still, after hearing it all, after listening to stories of Death Eaters and attacks and deaths, of their own life being at stake, they still understood little of it. They, nevertheless, begged: for her to never leave their sight again, to abandon school and the Wizarding World all together, to stop being a witch and just be normal once again.

She would do none of those things of course and after what seemed to be the longest week of her entire life, a week of sulking all day long and planning through the night, she fled. But not before doing the deed as she had planned it all week long. She’d cast a Memory Modifying Charm on her parents, an Obliteration Charm on all their belongings -- making it as if she’d never existed -- and send them packed and ready, with new identities and all, on the other side of the world, all the way to Australia.

And then she fled...

She had been on the run for about a week when in the Forest of Dean -- a place she’d gone when missing her parents seemed to overwhelm her -- she’d come across lamely erected wards and a tent just behind them. There, in the middle of nowhere, when she was most afraid and the loneliest she’d ever been, she had run into the Boy who lived and his faithful sidekick.

They fought for minutes -- it was only natural for Slytherins and Gryffindors to fight -- before Potter suggested that she stay with them and so she stayed. It had been fun… Yes, she could admit that now, here in the privacy of her own mind, she could admit she had some fun, some laughs and much too many brink of death experiences, but she had fun. She loved riling the poor sods over and over, until one of them broke and then doing the not so Slytherin gesture of apologising only to start it over a few days -- sometimes just hours -- later.

Of the two, Weasley, the sidekick, was the easiest to rile, especially after she discovered that the poor imbecile had a thing for her. She liked him too, in a 'just like I would like a pet' kind of way -- okay maybe a bit more, giving she slept with him and not only once, but it was nothing… nothing that could or would last anyhow. He was just fun to rile, to snog and… okay she had to admit it -- more than just fun to shag. What more could a girl want? Well, girls usually wanted a hell of a lot more -- flowers and candy and late night dates on the Astronomy Tower. Not her though. She only wanted the present and their present, as it was there in that tent, had nothing to do with flowers or candy and everything to do with running all around the country looking for pieces of the evilest of souls.

And then there was Potter.

The boy that even now, after more than half a year living in a tent together and fighting side by side in the Final Battle, still remained a complete mystery to her. He is just too Gryffindor -- much too… Gryffindor. Sacrificing his life left and right, blaming even the rain wetting the hem of their robes on himself, rushing to danger without a second to weigh the possible outcome, acting before thinking and thinking when it was much to late -- the screwiest of them all up in Gryffindor tower, in her opinion, but the nitwit did had the best of hearts and all that he did, he did because of that huge organ. Well, in the end the muttonhead did it… killed Voldemort, saved the world and all because of that big heart of his.

Hermione sometimes wondered if that would have been her -- without the fucking prophecy and Voldemort of course, but close to how he was -- if the Sorting Hat would have listened seven years ago to her silent pleading of “Gryffindor… please just let it be Gryffindor!”.

It hadn't obviously, but she could dream, right? She could and did, and often too.

She’d dream of an world where Hermione Jean Granger got sorted into Gryffindor, where she was best friend to Harry Potter and Ronald Weasley, where all the adventures of those two had been hers as well, where she had always been happy, where someday Ronald Weasley would be good enough for her and she would good enough for him and where one day, one very far away day, Rose and Hugo wouldn't be just the name she used to give her dolls when she was little, but the names of her little girl and boy.

She did dream, but it was only that: only a dream…

Could she put that in her letter? Dear mum and dad, let me tell you about my dream…

“I don't think so,” she murmured and with a silent “Accio!” a fresh roll of parchment zoomed into her outstretched hand. Dipping her quill she thought for a moment before starting writing the blasted letter that tormented her once again.

Mum and dad,

I've missed you. I really did, still do -- terrible so -- but it was the only way I knew how to keep you alive. I was a target… maybe the main target, lower on that maniac's hit list, than only Harry Potter. I was the Muggle-born that shouldn't have been placed in a house that took pride in blood purity, the Slytherin that should never have been and you ... you are my parents.

They would have come for you faster than you could’ve said 'Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans' and I had no way of protecting you. Even if I've had stayed, they would’ve still come. I couldn't have protected you, not by simply being the witch of the family. I am good at duelling, really good, but not 'taking on a gang of Death Eaters' good.

I did the only thing I knew. I'm a Slytherin, remember. I protected what I need to have protected by taking the easiest -- not it wasn't easy… it was fucking hard giving you up, making you believe I never existed -- but it was the only solution I could think of.

I should have come with you -- now that I had time to think about it -- I know I should have come. It would have been easier, better, safer… I can't really tell you why I didn't. Maybe because of some almost extinct Gryffindor gene -- Professor Snape would hex me for even thinking I have Gryffindor genes -- but I have, don't I, and it's stupid and as a consequence I do stupid things; like staying with Potter and Weasley for half a year or throwing myself into a war or … there were a hell of a lot of stupid things during this last year. Thrust me when I say -- you don't need to know it all, maybe not even half, or a quarter or… Hell, I'll tell you only what you do need to know, for now at least.

I've missed you… (I said it before but it's true)

I need you to… to not stop loving me… to not stop trusting me…

Hermione crumbled the piece of parchment before tuning her wand on it and burning yet another one to ashes.

I'm a fucking Slytherin, not a half-bred of Gryffindor and Hufflepuff!

She was pathetically sentimental sometimes, idiotically loyal to a handful of people and the brain of the school: Gryffindor, Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw -- so why the fuck was she in Slytherin?

Oh, yeah, because I'm a nasty piece of shite in my best days, Hermione thought as she watched the parchment burn out and the flames dying out, I only look out for myself, I'm good at hiding what I feel, what I want, what I need, I'm cunning and proud -- I'm a fucking contradiction or the most balanced person on Earth -- either way I don't fit.

She dragged her feet onto the sofa and laid her chin on her knees. She was watching the fire, the one in the grate this time, burning a rainbow of colours: red and green mainly, some blue here and there, some yellow also… Even the fire was house colour coded, she noticed and the smallest of smiles crept to her lips, and it was just as fucked up as she was, so maybe there was hope for her yet…

“Not likely!” she puffed.

“Talking to yourself often, Granger?”
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Wake of War