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Severus Snape stood at the edge of the cemetery, watching her kneel in the damp grass.
He remained several paces back, half-concealed by the bare branches of a yew tree whose roots cracked through the earth like old bones. The wards he had laid were light—habitual, more reflex than intention. No one ever came here this time of year.
Except her.
She knelt with her gloves abandoned beside her, dark curls pulled loose by the wind. Her posture was familiar to him now—he knew the way she leaned forward, the way her shoulders tensed as though bracing for something that never arrived. He had seen it before, many times over the years. The headstone lay directly beneath her hands.
Severus Tobias Snape
1998.
He did not look at it. He did not need to.
She traced the letters with extraordinary care, her fingers moving slowly, deliberately, as though precision mattered—as though the stone might answer if she were careful enough. He watched her lips move before sound reached him, watched the slight hitch of her breath.
"I'm sorry."
The words carried easily in the still air.
"I'm so sorry."
Her voice fractured on the second apology, thin and brittle, like ice cracking underfoot. She did not look up—she never did. She spoke to the stone as if it were listening, as if it could absolve her of whatever sins she believed she carried.
She returned every year. Always on the same date. Sometimes she came more often—rain did not deter her, winter did not stop her. He had seen her soaked through, coat clinging to her frame, hair plastered to her face. He had seen her kneel in frozen ground, breath fogging in the bitter air, fingers red and raw with cold. She came anyway.
Her shoulders began to shake.
At first, the sound she made was quiet, restrained, as though she were trying desperately to contain it. He had seen that restraint before—in classrooms and corridors and battlefields. It never held for long.
"I wish I had been faster," she cried, voice breaking. "I wish I could have saved you. You were a hero."
The word struck him oddly. He did not move.
Her forehead pressed against the cold stone, and she spoke again, the apology repeated until it blurred into a litany, words bleeding into one another.
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."
She wept without dignity, without reserve. The sound filled the space between the graves, raw and uncontrolled, and Severus remained where he was, his fingers curling once at his side before stilling again.
He had not intended to speak. He had intended to leave, as he always did, before she finished—to slip away like a shadow, unnoticed and unremarked upon.
Instead, the words were already falling from his lips.
"Why do you weep, Miss Granger?"
She froze.
He saw it instantly—the way her spine locked rigid, the way her breath stuttered and caught. She did not turn at once. For a moment, he thought she might not turn at all, that she might simply remain there, paralyzed by disbelief.
When she did, it was slow, cautious, as though she expected to find nothing behind her—as though she feared her mind had finally broken under the weight of her grief.
Her eyes widened.
"It's you," she breathed.
He did not answer.
She was on her feet before he could step back, before he could prepare himself. She crossed the distance between them with no hesitation, no restraint, colliding with him hard enough to knock the breath from his lungs. Her arms wrapped around his middle, her face pressed against his chest, and the sound she made was not entirely human—a keening, desperate noise that seemed torn from somewhere deep within her.
"It's you," she cried again. "You're alive. Merlin, you're alive. You're alive!"
Her hands fisted in his coat as though she could hold him there through sheer force of will. She clung to him as though letting go were unthinkable.
"I can't believe it," she gasped against the fabric of his robes. "Where were you? I was so afraid—I thought I would never see you again. I'm so happy. I'm so happy you're alive. I missed you."
Severus stood rigid, caught utterly off-guard.
For a heartbeat, he did nothing. The force of her against him, the heat of her breath, the sheer weight of her grief rendered him momentarily paralyzed. Then, awkwardly—stiffly—he lifted his hands and placed them at her back. He did not hold her tightly. He did not push her away. He simply remained, uncertain and unmoored, while she trembled against him.
She cried against him until the shaking eased, until her breathing slowed. He lowered his head slightly, resting his chin against her hair because it seemed expected of him, because removing himself would require effort he did not possess in that moment.
"I did not realize I would be missed," he said at last. It was an understatement of catastrophic proportions.
Eventually, she steadied. He stepped back a fraction, just enough to look at her properly—to see her face blotched with cold and tears, her eyes red-rimmed and shining, her lashes clumped together with moisture.
Then, gently—as though even asking might fracture something already unstable—Severus spoke again.
"Why," he asked quietly, "have you been coming here? Why do you weep for me?"
Hermione lifted her head, meeting his gaze without embarrassment or hesitation. She looked at him with an intensity that made his chest tighten unexpectedly, as though something were constricting around his ribs.
"Can't you tell?" she said hoarsely. "I'm in love with you."
The words struck him with physical force.
For a moment, Severus could not breathe. They rang in his ears, absurd and misplaced, like a sentence spoken in the wrong language, in the wrong world entirely. He stared at her, uncomprehending, as though waiting for her to correct herself—to laugh, perhaps, or to clarify that she had misspoken.
Shock drained the blood from his face.
"You," he managed faintly, barely able to form the words. "Love… me?"
It was not false modesty. It was not deflection. It was disbelief, pure and absolute—the kind of disbelief that comes from a lifetime of being unwanted.
"I have been for years," she said, unaware of the devastation she was wreaking. "I didn't know how to say it. And then, I thought I had missed my chance to tell you." She smiled up at him as though he were the sun itself. "I love you, Severus."
Such simple words, and yet they threatened to overpower him entirely.
For years, he had watched her kneel at that gravestone, had listened to her apologies carried on the wind. He had catalogued the evidence with cool, clinical detachment, assigning reasons that made sense: obligation, respect, survivor's guilt. A conscientious nature unable to let the dead lie.
Anything but this. Anything but the idea that it had been *him* she mourned.
Because that was not a thing that happened. Not to him. Not ever.
"I had no idea," he said quietly, and it was the plainest truth he had spoken in years. "I thought you mourned the idea of me, perhaps. Or that you felt guilt for not arriving sooner. But I could not understand why you kept coming."
"I missed you," she said simply. "The world is darker without you in it."
"I doubt that," he replied automatically, but the words lacked their usual acid.
Silence settled between them, thick and unwieldy.
She studied him for a long moment, then swallowed hard and asked, almost shyly, "Do you live alone?"
"Yes."
"Are you married? Do you have a family?"
"No."
Her voice softened further. "Are you happy?"
The question landed with unexpected weight, sinking into him like a blade between his ribs.
He looked away.
Happiness was a childish word—vague, useless. And yet it pierced more deeply than any accusation ever could.
"I did not expect to be alive," he said at last. "The process of surviving was… excruciating. Painful in ways I cannot adequately describe." His mouth twitched in a reflexive sneer without heat. "I am no longer answering to masters, which is an improvement. But being officially dead is a curiously isolating state. One recovers, only to discover there is nothing to return to."
He turned slightly, as though the cemetery itself were too exposed.
"So no," he finished quietly. "I would not describe myself as happy."
She reached for him then, her fingers warm and small as they closed around his hands, anchoring him to the present moment. He was dimly aware that he did not pull away, that he did not even tense.
"Then marry me," she said.
The words were simple, bald, unadorned—and they knocked the breath from his lungs as surely as a curse.
"What?" he asked incredulously.
"I promise I will make you happy," she added, her voice earnest and unwavering. "You will never be alone again."
Severus shook his head at once, the refusal sharp and instinctive, as though warding off something dangerous.
"No, Miss Granger. I do not love you—I scarcely know you as an adult." He shook his head again, more firmly. "You have paid whatever debt you imagined you owed. Now that you know I live, you are free of that guilt. You may go on with your life. You should go on."
It was the sensible thing to say. The correct thing. The thing that preserved what little dignity he had left.
Hermione's breath caught, and her grip on his hands tightened.
"But I don't want to go on," she said, and now the words came too quickly, tripping over one another as if time itself were running out. "Please. I know what my life looks like without you in it." Her voice broke. "I will be useful. I can cook, I can clean. I have a job at the Ministry—I can pay the bills. You don't even have to love me. I will fit into whatever shape of life you can tolerate."
She stepped closer, and he could see the effort it cost her to remain standing, to remain composed.
"Just please don't disappear from me again," she whispered. "I cannot survive losing you twice."
Something in him gave way.
Not dramatically. Not all at once. But enough.
He had known hatred. He had endured fear. He had become intimately acquainted with revulsion. But he had never—not once—experienced being wanted.
It was disorienting, almost intoxicating. The sheer fact of it made him feel unsteady, as though the world had tilted beneath his feet without warning.
He knew, with a clarity that bordered on resignation, that this was a mistake—that it would complicate everything, that it would end badly, that he was not built for this. But he was tired. And alone. And she was standing in front of him, offering herself without demands, without fantasy, without expectation of being cherished.
For some inexplicable reason, he found that he could not bear to disappoint her.
"Very well," he said quietly.
The words cost him more than any vow he had ever sworn.
Hermione Granger collapsed against him, relief breaking through her restraint at last. Her arms wrapped around him as though she had been holding herself upright by sheer will alone, and now that will had finally fractured.
He did not move. He did not push her away. He stood there and let himself be held, dimly aware that something irreversible had just occurred—that his life had shifted on its axis, and there would be no returning to what it had been before.