The long and winding road to love

Well, Guys… I





Well, Guys… I
do hope you are finding this fic to be quite
interesting. I appreciate your support a lot and I wish to say: thanks to those
who appreciate my work. What do you think of the story so far? Some things will
be answered in later chapters so… stay tune.

Well… here it
is; chapter 20… enjoy!

 

Chapter 20: The
mirror of the dark desire

 

“I love him, Gin,” Hermione confessed her feelings for her
Potion’s Master and current husband to her best friend.

 

“Of course you love him. Why would you have married him if you hadn’t?”
she asked with a big innocent grin on her freckly
face.

 

“No, Ginny. You
don’t understand. My feelings towards him have changed a lot since the last
time we talked. Let’s say I love him more now than I’ve ever loved anyone in my
life, but we are going through a rough period in our marriage, do you
understand?” she asked, trying to explain the situation to her red haired
friend.

 

“I don’t want to discuss this with you, ‘Mione. Don’t get me
wrong; I love you, but your choice in men is not particularly normal and
furthermore Snape is my professor and I certainly cannot picture him in bed,”
she tried to say, but Hermione who looked puzzled at what Ginny was saying
interrupted her.

 

“Ginny, this is not like that at Thi Things here in the castle are
not as they used to be with Malfoy in between us,” she said. Ginny looked
surprised and shocked at this; Hermione couldn’t quite figure why.

 

“’Mione, Malfoy has gone. Henot not here anymore; he gave a silly
little speech today at breakfast, speaking highly of your marriage to Professor
Snape and how you two were a couple with principles. Then, we all had breakfast
while Malfoy kept chatting with your husband; they looked really amused at what
they were saying. He, then, suddenly stood and without saying a word he left.
One can say his mission here was over,” she simply explained to her best friend
who had missed breakfast that morning as she had decided to go directly to
Professor Flitwick’s classes.

 

Hermione smiled. Yes. His job at Hogwarts was done indeed. He,
sure enough, had spoken to her husband and they had made plans to destroy
Dumbledore somehow. She knew little about it but if Lucius Malfoy were involved
the scheme would be utterly predictable.

 

“Are you going to be ok with Snape?” Ginny asked with a worried
expression on her face; an expression that resembled Molly Weasley’s a lot
&n
 

“Yes, I think so,” she lied. But she knew for a fact that now she
was alone, for neither Ginny nor Harry and Ron were there to comfort her; no
one was there for her to speak her mind about her marriage with Hogwarts most
feared Potion’s Master; no one was there to listen her moan about a fake
marriage that had caused only pain. She had never felt more alone. Not even in
her bachelor days in the library when she hunted for consolation in books. She
was in love but she wasn’t loved and she wondered if it was true that the more
she loved him, the more he hated her… because he hated her. She knew he hated
her for using her body as a weapon in a silent war
against evil.

 

After kissing Ginny goodnight, she departed towards her old
chambers but when she reached them she understood that her Head-Girl badge was
no longer on her chest and that the dungeons were now “home” at Hogwarts. She
belonged next to Snape now, in his bed, but suddenly she remembered that the
cold chambers of Severus Snape were not as warm as she thought they would be in
her honeymoon days.   

 

But as she reached the narrow corridors that led to Severus
chambers she heard her husband’s voice. She quickly hid at the end of the
corridor where she could easily hear him speak. Little did she know that what
Severus had to say would arouse different feelings in her heart.


 

“You fail to understand that I love her,” he whispered to someone,
to something, Hermione couldn’t quite distinguish from where she was standing,
“I really do love her,” he added as if his previous words wouldn’t have been
clear enough.

 

“Who does he love?” she kept asking to herself while still
listening to his husband’s manly voice; that manly voice that made her wet
ben hen her legs. But it took Hermione seconds to realize that the person, the
thing, standing in front of him was not answering back. And he looked like he
didn’t care; he looked like he didn’t care at all. In fact, the only thing
bothering him was the bare presence of the person, of the object, that stood
silent amidst the silence.

 

“I love her, yes. That, however, has nothing to do with the fact
that I also detest her,” he added, resting his forehead on the person, on the
object’s surface.

 

“He is speaking of me,” she said to herself; her heart filled with
pain. Of course he was speaking of her; who else could possibly arouse such
contradictory feelings in his heart, if not Hermione Granger herself?

 

The person or the thing standing in front of him never answered.
In fact, that person- that object- was not making any noises at all. But
Severus’s rage grew stronger for the minute; she could tell because of the
little vein on his neck that she used to kiss when making love; that vein was
now accelerating pumping blood to his head, as if the oxygen would prevent him
from destroying the object- the person- into pieces.

 

“STOP! STOP!,” he desperately
shouted, grabbing his hair like a madman,
“who brought you here? Who? Where you supposed to be discovered by her? THAT
WILL NEVER HAPPEN! Destructio!” Snape shouted pointing with his wand towards the thing
standing in front of him. And as soon as the green light touched the surface ofe obe object that Hermione would soon discover was a mirror, the object blew into
pieces, finally resting on the stone floor of the dungeon’s corridors.

 

Snape’s body, Snape’s hair was covered in glass and Hermione
noticed that his cheek was also covered in blood because of the cuts the glass
had produced on his hands. Little did Hermione know that a particularly big
chunk had flown directly into his left calf and that his journey back to his
chambers would indeed be a painful one.

 

While she watched her husband painfully walk towards his room, she
started thinking about the mirror he had destroyed. Could have been the mirror
of Erised that Dumbledore had used during her fist
year to protect the Philosopher Stone?

 

But all her doubts were dissipated when she carefully and silently
walked to where Snape had been standing only minutes ago and taking a piece of
mirror on her hand, discovered what had driven her husband so bloody insane.

 

It was her hanging from a thick theatre rope; her face covered in
blood.

 

But the image was so incredibly real that it scared Hermione and
so with a loud scream she threw the piece of glass on the floor where smaller
pieces of glass reflected dead Hermione’s.

 

“Miss Granger!” he shouted from the far end of the corridor, with
his leg covered in blood because of the glass, “Please, walk
with me. I am having trouble with my left leg,” he asked, his hand stretched as
much as he could. She was so shocked about what she had seen that she ran
towards her husband and wrapping her arms around his neck, she hugged him.

 

They silently walked towards Severus’ Chambers. She served him as
a crutch, for his calf was so badly injured he could barely walk. But they felt
extremely lucky; they were together. For wpeoppeople face death they find love
to be the only assertive antidote for pain.