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Severus knocks twice at the door. There’s no sound from inside. He knocks again. Remembering he’s keyed to her wards, he taps the door with his wand, and it swings open at once. His eyes widen at the sight before him, instinctive alarm rising before he remembers whose flat he is in.
Every cabinet and drawer hangs at least partially open. An end table is upturned—likely knocked over when she got up to find a resource book and couldn’t be bothered to pick it back up again. The bookshelves themselves are bare, the tomes they held not missing but moved into precarious stacks closer to the center of the room.
He navigates carefully around stacks of books and bits of parchment, not daring to step on anything lest he receive another verbal lashing for getting a boot print on ‘critical research.’ His argument that critical research did not belong in the middle of the floor had, to put it mildly, not been well-received. He reaches the epicenter of the mess, frowning when he realizes Hermione has apparently not fallen asleep there as he first expected.
“Hermione?”
Silence.
Not yet concerned, Severus navigates carefully to the other side of the piles and into the kitchen. The task is made all the more difficult by the occasional cup of tepid tea tucked into any available flat surface, but he eventually reaches the eat-in kitchen. Or rather what was her kitchen. Now it’s a borderline biohazard, mold spores eagerly await the death of half-hearted stasis charms so that they may advance onto the territory currently claimed by half-eaten sandwiches, apples that looked like a toddler had gotten to them, and biscuit crumbs. There is a small tower of takeaway containers in the corner.
Severus flicks his wand and Hermione’s cleaning supplies go to work on the room while he advances to the hallway. He hesitates briefly by the door to the loo, the farthest he’s ever gone this way. The next door, he knows, is her bedroom, but he’s never had reason to go inside. Forcing aside his thoughts about how he’d hoped to enter under far different circumstances, he knocks as he had on the front door.
“Severus?” She sounds horribly congested.
“May I come in?”
The door clicks open. The heavy scent of lemon cleaner wafts out immediately. He steps inside and, expecting more mess, he’s almost alarmed by the pristine condition of her bedroom. Every wood surface gleams, he could bounce a galleon off her bedspread, and it seems she’s used a ruler to meticulously space the items of her desk. There is precisely one spot of disarray in the whole space, a mass of blankets he could only describe as a nest. As if sensing his gaze, it speaks.
“What are you doing here?”
“You were the one who demanded I come as soon as I was back, did you not?”
A beat of silence. “… It’s the fifteenth?”
“Indeed.”
The blankets shift and Hermione emerges slowly. She is an amalgamation of the rooms he crossed through to reach her. Her once perfectly pressed white button up is now dingy and wrinkled, the pencil skirt she typically wears has been replaced by oversized sweatpants, and there is chocolate icing of indeterminate age at the corner of her mouth. For a half-second she seems to consider forcing a smile, but then her lower lip trembles and she offers him a helpless shrug instead.
“I can’t fix it.”
“Of course you can’t,” he says arching a brow. “There’s not a single witch or wizard, living or dead, who could undo centuries of damage to leylines.”
“But they’re dying.”
“Are you strengthened by their departed souls? If not, I fail to see the correlation.”
She glares at him. “Every day that I fail to stabilize their habitat, they draw closer to extinction, Severus.”
“Did you damage the leylines?”
“I know the point you’re trying to make,” she snaps at him. “But even if I didn’t cause it, it is quite literally my job to fix it.”
“No, it’s not.”
“I am the—”
“It is your job to try, Hermione. It is your job to research the problem, to run tests and analyze data to determine if there is anything that can be done. Have you done those things?”
“Yes, but—”
“Then you have done your job.” He gestures towards her open door. “Far more thoroughly than anyone else in your position I might add. Not every problem has a solution.”
“So you’re saying that their deaths are inevitable so I should just, what, wash my hands of it?”
“Of course not. I’m a pragmatist, not nihilistic,” he objects. “If you cannot save them, what is the next best thing?”
“I don’t understand.”
“What can you do for them? Can you ease their suffering? Can you make them the focus of a campaign against environmental tampering? If they must die, what good can come of it?”
Her brow furrows as she considers his words, already taking an unconscious step forward, blanket trailing behind her. “I’m not sure. I need to—”
“You need to go take a shower,” Severus interjects, placing a hand on her shoulder. Her eyes snap to his, the spark of defiance already returning. “Shower. Put on fresh clothes. I’ll make tea. Then we will look over your materials again.”
____________
“Thank you, Severus.”
He doesn’t look up from the text. “Don’t mention it.”
“It’s just… I know I can be a bit, well, much for others when I’m focused on a problem like this. But you stayed. And you helped. You’re helping.”
“Hermione, if no one else is willing to go head-to-head with you in order to ensure you don’t wither away in your ball of self-loathing, that says far more about them than me.” He lowers his book slightly. “If I really wanted to help you, I’d make you quit.”
“Do you not think I’m qualified?”
He closes his book to look at her fully. “It is not about your job. This is about you and your inability to take the world off your shoulders. Is there ever a moment you’re not guilt-ridden over some perceived failing?”
“Sometimes,” she says quietly, addressing his knee. “When I’m with you, I forgive myself.”
“Because you remember all of the atrocities you got me pardoned for and realize that continuing to self-flagellate over your shortcomings is highly hypocritical?”
“Well, there’s that, obviously,” she says, rolling her eyes. “But I think it’s more about how you don’t look at me like I’m anything special.”
He stares at her for a moment, unsure of how to correct her without tipping his hand. She misreads his hesitation for confusion.
“Like when you come for a consultation, you’re there to talk about it. To collaborate. You don’t expect me to spit out an answer like some sort of machine. In fact, sometimes you come in with that look on your face and I know you’re confident I won’t have the foggiest idea about whatever it is you’re bringing and as infuriating as that is, it’s also so, so freeing. When I’m with you, I don’t feel like you expect anything of me except to… be me. Just Hermione. And I feel that it’s okay that sometimes that looks like … this.”
She gestures about her sitting room, nearly toppling one of her more precarious stacks. Her face, already a bit red from her rambling, flushes even more. Severus slowly lowers his tea. If he was ever going to play his hand, now was the moment. He clears his throat.
“I feel I should clarify some things. First, this research tactic of yours is an abomination to mankind and the reason you’re not permitted in my library unsupervised.” He ignores her scoff of indignation. “Second, and more importantly, while I do only want you to be yourself… you are very special to me, Hermione.”
“Special enough that you’d stay?”
“Pardon?”
“I’d love it if you were here more. With me. Not all the time, of course,” she adds quickly. “I know you love your expeditions.”
He shakes his head. “I only travel so that I don’t have to sit with the past.”
“Then why keep coming back?”
“You keep asking me to visit.”
“Oh.”
He swallows. “And if I free you of the weight of expectation, then I suppose you free me of the weight of my sins.”
“Then you should stay,” she says softly. “And we can let the life we build be our absolution.”
“You’d build a life with me?”
She smiles. “I think you’re something special, too.”