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She shouldn’t be in here, if she was caught, there would be hell to pay. Not that the former occupant of these rooms would have anything to say, but Minerva would probably lose her mind if she found Hermione snooping through Snape’s rooms. As far as the woman knew, she and Snape hated each other, and to the outside world, they did. She suspected he probably had still hated her, right up to the bitter end, but she did not hate him.
Somehow, Hermione had come to begrudgingly respect the surly, grumpy, sarcastic potions master. And, someway beyond that, she had come to love him. Hermione had no idea how, not really, nothing had really changed between them. He was still nasty to her, calling her a know-it-all, teacher’s pet, used the word Muggleborn like it was an insult. But, she had still fallen in love with him.
Harry thought her stupid, Ron demanded she get tested at St. Mungo’s for love potions, even Ginny, who had steadfastly always supported Hermione, had thought she’d lost her mind. It was Neville who had oddly understood how she could feel this way for someone so bitter and filled with self-loathing.
It was then she had written to him, just the once. A long-winded letter of all the things she respected and admired him for. Her hand had ached for hours after she’d finished writing it. At the very bottom, she had signed it, and post scripted it to inform him that should he find himself surviving the war, she would wish to go on a date, just one, and ended it on a question if he would agree. Hermione had no illusions the man felt no desire for her.
Frizzy hair, lips too plump to suit her face, eyes a boring shade of brown, complexion perfectly ordinary with a smattering of freckles across her nose that she’d never outgrown. Her figure was nothing to write home about, breasts rather small, hips not very wide, legs not exactly long, fingers always ink-stained. Really, she was probably the poster child for plane Jane!
There had never been a response to her letter, but neither had she been hauled into the Headmaster’s office for writing such a forbidden letter to her potions professor. Either he had never received it, or he had decided it nothing more than the ridiculous scribblings of a lovesick teenager. If it was the latter, Hermione couldn’t really begrudge him that. Severus Snape was the youngest professor in Hogwarts, he probably dealt with a lot of crushes in his years.
But, back to the present. She wasn’t really sure what she was looking for, but she’d know when she saw it. There was no one thing in her mind she was seeking, only that she wanted to have something she could remember him by, some small token that once belonged to him. He wouldn’t miss anything. Hermione cut off that line of thought before her tears could flow again.
The large desk that sat just under the only window in the whole of his quarters was bathed in the rays of the early morning light. The battle had been over for a couple of hours now, the bodies would be retrieved, but Hermione had slipped away before she could be noticed. It was on his desk she spotted it.
The letter lay untouched on his desk, its creases marked by dust. Her letter. The only one she had written him. He’d read it. Possibly. It was also just as possible he had gone to read it and been pulled away, the parchment laying forgotten on his desk. The thought filled her with misery, so, she chose to believe he had read it. And not destroyed it.
Her tears did fall then, large ones. They dripped off her chin to fall down her chest, great, heaving sobs echoed around the room and Hermione collapsed to the floor beside the drawers of his desk. She cried and screamed, and screamed and cried. Her heart didn’t break, it shattered. Completely irreparable.
Familiar slippers swam into vision and Hermione was horrified to find the Headmaster standing over her, his blue eyes twinkling ever so gently. Dumbledore lowered himself to kneel beside her and one gnarled finger raised her chin. “He wrote you back, my dear.”
Dumbledore handed her a small piece of parchment, no larger than her palm. Yes, it said, the familiar, spidery writing she had known for seven years mocked her broken heart.