The Guardian

The Entrance


Hermione stood at the entranceway of the great hall of Hogwarts. The last time she had been there was during the final battle of the war. A flash of the violence went through her mind like a knife. It had her pulling away from the door slightly. She looked down at her hands to see them shaking ever so slightly. She fisted her hands and pulled her emotions under her tight control.


“Scared?” he asked quietly.


“What a coward I must seem like to you. I am afraid of ghosts and memories.” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “The last time I was here, I killed…” She cleared her throat. “I killed…”


“I know,” he whispered, feeling her pain as keenly as if it had been his own.


“I didn’t want to,” she told him, her voice thick with tears. “I had to.”


He took her into his arms. “Hiding from your demons hasn’t worked. Now you must face them, but not alone. You are never alone.” He tilted her face towards his own. “Now where is the most feared witch in all England?”


That had her giving him a watery smile.


“There she is,” he murmured, pulling back in mock pain and clutching his shoulder after she playfully slapped him.


The doors opened and all the occupants in the room went still. Hermione walked into the great hall with her head held high. Snape was right next to her as she made her entrance. They heard the gasps and the horror filled whispers as they past the students.


It’s her!


They ignored them as they continued on to the head table where Minerva the new headmistress of Hogwarts was now standing. The older woman rushed over and hugged her.


“Oh my word, child! I never thought I would live to see the day you came back,” Minerva whispered, pulling back. “Enough of my fussing! You must be famished…”


“Hermione.” She turned to see Harry Potter standing not two feet from her.


“Harry,” she murmured. “I hear congratulations are in order.”


“For what?” he asked. “You never bothered with them before.”


She didn’t so much as wince, but Snape knew that the younger man had made a direct hit. Hermione nodded. “But it doesn’t mean that you don’t deserve them.”


Before Harry could say a word, Snape slid between the two of them and hissed, “She has yet to eat or sleep in two days, Potter. You will have more than enough time to trample what is left of her emotional well being later.”


Harry’s eyes widened in shock, as he let his anger go to really looked at his old friend for the first time in years. She had lost so much weight that her clothes simply hung off her, her skin was a pasty white, and the dark bruises under her eyes stood as testament as how very little sleep she was getting.


“Severus, I need to sit,” Hermione breathed.


Snape shot off a warning glare to Harry before offering his arm to her and walking her over to sit at the head table. Within minutes a steaming bowl of soup was in front of her. This made her smile to herself as she turned to Snape. It was their habit when they ate together to thank the other for something before eating. It had started as a silly game, but along the way it had been for them a simple reminder of what to be grateful for.


“Thank you for walking me to the table,” she whispered.


“Thank you for smiling,” he muttered. “Now eat.”


Hermione ate quietly as she listened to the conversations around the room. It was something that she learned from Mad-Eye Moody when he was training her for information retrieval. Most of the conversations were about her and Snape, with a scattering here and there about quidditch and homework assignments that were due. The library, she thought, she wanted to go to the library.


“Hermione? Is that you?” came from next to her.


She looked over to see Ron standing next to her. Smiling she stood up and went to him. “Yes it is. Now give your old friend a hug before your wife curses me.”


He laughed softly as he hugged her carefully, telling her, “You realize that Snape would curse me first.” That only got her laughing a little more as she pulled back. “I would ask you how you are, but you don’t look so good.”


She nodded. “This last…It wasn’t a good hunt.”


He understood as he had gone on more than a few of those hunts with her at the end of the war. “Are you done?”


“I quit if that’s what you mean,” she told him. “I don’t work for the Ministry of Magic.”


“I knew that a minute after you quit,” he said dryly. “My father told me. My Mum told Minerva and I told Snape.”


“The Weasley information superhighway?” That had Ron chuckling and agreeing with her.


“I better get back to eating,” she told him. “Before Severus goes up in spontaneous human combustion.”


Ron looked over to Snape and found the wizard glaring at him, all the while stroking his wand as if waiting for the moment to hex him. “How did you know he was watching us?”


She smiled a slow, cryptic smile as she answered, “A wife always knows when her husband is watching her, Ronald.”