An Unlikely Savior ~ (Edit) COMPLETED

Chapter 22 ~ Calling on Snape

When Ron came home from work, he found a half-decorated Christmas tree and a scrawled note on the kitchen table from Hermione that read:

Dear Ron,

I had to go collect a bit of very important research. Your supper is in the stove. I may be home late. You can finish the tree or not. It’s your choice. Love you.

Hermione

He blinked at the note, then put it back down on the table, walked over to the stove and opened it. Yes, his supper was in there. He washed his hands in the sink and took it out, setting it down on the table, getting out utensils and sitting down to eat. Hermione often took off for the library in the late evenings for one reason or the other, so he had no reason to be suspicious. He would have been livid if he had known where she had gone—alone.

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Severus Snape was dressed in his white shirt and black trousers and had just finished hanging a boxful of dried lizards on display chains, the flattened carcasses looking at him with dull, paper-like eyes as they swung slowly back and forth. He’d taken off his robes because the scales on the lizards would flake off and latch on to the fabric, giving the impression his robes were covered from head to toe with dandruff. He could Scourgify them, but the ones in back were hard to reach and they clung. So, rather than greet customers and giving them the impression his hair was in desperate need of a good shampoo, the apothecary just disrobed.

Snape moved from the lizards to a box on the floor in front of the shelves on the far right and began to stack carefully wrapped cakes of golem clay, spacing them so they could be removed without ruining the row next to them. Even then, every evening he had to go through his products and straighten them all out, because people didn’t care how they tossed things about when looking for something, or where they placed them.

As he was bent over stocking the lowest shelf, a little scream sounded, indicating someone had entered the shop. He popped up, looking over the shelving to see who the customer was. He frowned when he saw Hermione standing there, looking back at him, her brown eyes narrowed unpleasantly.

Oh Merlin. And he thought he was going to have a quiet, uneventful evening. Hermione wasn’t in traditional robes. She wore her curly hair pulled back and twisted in a bun against her neck, a heavy black wool coat that fell mid-thigh, thick denim jeans, high black winter boots, and a Weasley hat was pulled over her head. It was gold-colored, with a scarlet pom-pom on top. The letter H was embroidered on the front of it. Mrs. Weasley's work, of course.

Snape closed up the box of clay and slowly walked down the short aisle until he came out about five feet away from Hermione, and he looked at her soberly.

”May I help you, Hermione?” he purred at her.

Hermione stared at him. He was so smug, so cool, so damn unaffected that she was here. He seemed to be in complete control. She studied him. Almost twenty years had passed and it was as if he’d barely aged. He had to be in his mid-fifties. Wizards and witches could live as long as two hundred years, so Snape was still in his prime, technically. And his lifestyle had changed dramatically. He’d gained weight and had less stress, so those harsh lines didn’t get any harsher over the years and in fact seemed to have softened somewhat. But he still had that huge honker of a beak, prominent and slightly curved that often gave one the impression of a bird of prey. His thin-lipped mouth was pursed as he looked at her, those black eyes glinting in the ample torchlight. He kept his shop bright so the items he offered were easily seen and identified.

Hermione trembled slightly as she stared at the man who had brazenly taken a child from her without her knowledge and raised that child alone. She knew if Eileen hadn’t become sick, he would have never revealed her existence. They could have passed each other on the street and never known the bond that existed between them.

“I’m here about Eileen,” she said in a controlled voice.

Snape frowned at her.

”I told you at the hospital that you would be contacted if anything more was needed of you,” he said dismissively. “And I didn’t issue you a summons, so—be sure to close the door tightly when you leave.”

He turned away from Hermione as if she were no more important than a scrap of parchment on the floor. He started to walk back up the aisle when--

”Levicorpus!” Hermione cried, hitting him with a hex he was quite familiar with. Snape immediately turned upside down, dangling by one ankle, his black hair streaming downward as Hermione held him aloft, walking closer. He folded his arms.

“I suppose the innate perversity of your using a spell of my own creation on me isn’t lost on you,” Snape said quietly, looking at the inverted witch calmly as he dangled.

“Not at all,” Hermione said, forcing herself to sound just as calm as he hung there. “But the situation is no more perverse than you are, you son-of-a-bitch. Just think of this as a physical representation as to how you’ve turned my life upside down by stealing a child from me and using a Life Debt to justify it. You bastard, you.”

“As I said, I was within my rights to do it,” Snape responded. “You never missed the child, Hermione—“

”I wasn’t given the option to miss her!” Hermione snarled back at him. “You took away all our options. Mine, Eileen’s, my family’s, everyone’s. You cheated everyone, Severus! A Life Debt is supposed to be fulfilled by two people, affect only two people! What you did affected entire families, not to mention your own daughter. Our daughter!”

”Eileen is fine. She never lacked for anything,” he said.

“She did lack something, Severus. A mother! A mother. You didn’t give her a chance to know what it would be like to have one! You cheated her out of a full existence, gave her a one-sided upbringing. No matter how well you believe you’ve brought her up, you didn’t give her everything she needed, you selfish bastard. She has family outside of you, and it was her right to know them, to know the rest of her family history. And you kept her sequestered, like you owned her, like she belonged only to you. Well, she doesn’t. And don’t give me that bullshit that you deserved ‘something good in your life after your service.’ Something good isn’t a living breathing human being. She isn’t chattel, a prize or a reward, Severus. Eileen is a human being and you’ve treated her like a possession, something you hid away and coveted, like a miser hovering over his gold.”

”She is like gold to me,” he hissed back at Hermione. “She’s what I treasure the most in this world. I’ve put my heart and soul into that girl, Hermione. I—I worship the ground she walks on. She’s everything to me. Everything. All I do, I do for her, to make sure she will have a good life when I’m gone.”

Hermione stared at him. Yes, Snape loved Eileen that was clear, but to this extent?

”And you think that’s healthy, Severus? Do you think that’s good for her, or for you? Do you really think you did right by her, raising her to believe she was an only child? Did your wife believe Eileen was her child, Severus? Did she?”

The wizard didn’t reply.

”So, you lied to your wife, too. Then divorced her and took Eileen away from her as well. You selfish prick.”

”She wanted nothing to do with Eileen,” he growled. “She didn’t love her. She made no effort to stay connected with her.”

”I imagine you didn’t do anything to try and change that, did you? I bet you so alienated her that she probably didn’t even feel as if she were part of the family unit. Having a relationship with a Muggle requires more effort, and I’m sure you made no attempt to bring her in, to make her a part of the magical existence you and Eileen shared.”

Severus didn’t say anything. He hadn’t made the attempt. In fact, Delores became afraid of magic after a while, especially when Eileen began to unconsciously manifest it, floating above her crib, making toys move by themselves, drifting around the nursery and her mobile spin. And when the child got mad, things would fly about and smash. Glasses, plates, everything. It was as if the house itself was possessed. Snape had to deal with Eileen, because Delores had no idea how to do it. A magical child’s tantrums were much different than that of an ordinary child’s. She didn’t have the background or the skills, or the inner strength. Sometimes, Snape would arrive home and find Delores in the kitchen sobbing and Eileen in her crib sopping wet with a rash because Delores had been afraid to change her nappies. Afraid something would swoop down on her, or smash her aside the head. And he would get very angry and abusive, saying she was neglecting their child. He didn’t give a damn about her excuses and started taking the baby with him to work at the shop, caring for her himself, eventually closing Delores out completely.

And there, there was the reason Delores didn’t pursue a relationship with her daughter. Snape never helped her to understand and deal with the effects of magic or a child that had it. It wasn’t coldness, selfishness or lack of maternal instinct that made Delores turn away from her daughter.

It was fear.

And deep inside, Snape always knew that. And he did nothing about it because he wanted Eileen all to himself. Hermione had hit the niffler on the head and for the first time, Snape felt a tiny glimmer of guilt—of responsibility. Just a tiny one. He became aware Hermione was still addressing him.

“How did you do it, Severus? How did you make your wife believe Eileen was her child, and how did you manage to have her born years after we engaged? I might have been suspicious if she was nineteen, but she’s younger than that. The timeline is wrong, although I imagine you planned it that way too, as part of your deception.”

”Let me down.”

”No.”

”Let me down, Hermione. I knew you would come here sooner or later, and I’ve prepared all the answers you need,” he said softly. “I have the information about the ritual, a Pensieve of the night Eileen was conceived, and I can help you recover your memories of what occurred that night as well. Just let me down.”

”So you can hex me? No, I don’t think so,” Hermione hissed.

”I will not hex you,” Snape said. A swirl of magic whooshed around them, indicating a wizard’s oath had been taken.

The door to the shop opened and a wizened old wizard entered. Both Hermione and Snape looked at him, Hermione with narrowed eyes.

The wizard blinked at the inverted wizard and the expression on Hermione’s face.

”Er—I’ll come back later,” he said, and quickly hobbled out of the door, closing it behind him.

Hermione looked back at Snape, then lowered him close to the floor.

”Finite Incantatum,” she hissed, the wizard toppling over and landing hard on the tiles. He was lucky. She could have dropped him on his head. Snape got up and brushed himself off, scowling at her.

”You could have put me right side up,” he said to the witch.

”I could have, but I didn’t,” Hermione spat back at him, still furious.

Snape looked down at his shirt, brushing at it and didn’t see Hermione advance. When he looked up--

POW!

“Arrrgh!” the wizard hissed, clutching his injured nose as Hermione wrung her hand a little. A bit of blood trickled out of his nostrils. She didn’t have as much power as Ron did. She advanced again.

”That’s for Eileen—and this—this is for me!“

Snape caught Hermione’s hand by the wrist tightly before she hit him again.

“I’ve already experienced this scenario. I know how it ends,” Snape snarled a bit nasally because he was pinching his nostrils closed with his other hand to stop the blood flow.

His grip was like iron on her wrist. Hermione winced, and he roughly let her go. “Kindly refrain from assaulting me. I’m going to have to invest in a cricket mask if this keeps up.”

He’d been punched by Ron, slapped by Delores and now hit by Hermione. He hadn’t been assaulted so much since the days of Voldemort.

”You deserved it, and worse than that,” Hermione seethed at him, not the least bit remorseful.

”I know. I know,” Snape said tiredly, his voice still nasal as he walked behind the main counter, picked up his wand from beneath it and cast a small Episkey spell on his injured schnoze to stop the bleeding. He then picked up his robes and slipped them on, fastening them quickly as Hermione watched, narrow-eyed. She’d love to punch him again. Several times in fact.

“Just wait here,” Snape instructed, entering his back office.

Hermione stood there stiffly. She hadn’t intended to come there and just—hex him. But once she was face to face with him and he dismissed her so blatantly, she saw red. Punching him in the face had been an added, unexpected bonus, one that was extremely satisfying.

Snape returned, carrying a large book and a Pensieve. It was the same Pensieve he had given Eileen. Snape placed the book and the Pensieve on the counter as Hermione approached. He pointed to the book with one long, pale finger.

”This is the ‘Big Book of Fertility Rites,’” he told her. “Turn to page 1313 and you will see the details of the ritual I performed that night. Read it. You can sit in the recliner over there as I make a few adjustments to the Pensieve. After that, I will help you recover your memories up to when you entered the glade, then you can see the rest of the night through my eyes, via the Pensieve. Is that agreeable?”

”For a start,” Hermione said coldly, picking up the book and carrying it over to the recliner. She removed her hat and coat, draping it over the back of the chair, then sat down and leafed through the pages until she found the proper one.

”The Rite of Cernunnos”

As Hermione read, Snape pulled the blinds and turned the “Closed” sign around in the window, shutting down the shop so they wouldn’t be disturbed. He then returned to the counter and began making adjustments to the memories in the Pensieve, removing everything about his own life that he revealed to Eileen. That was meant for her eyes only. Then, he added ALL the memories of the ritual night. Nothing was blurred or fuzzed out. He put in everything, including the actual consummation of the act in all its primal, animalistic and lustful glory.

So Hermione wanted to know the truth?

She’d get her wish and then some.

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A/N: Ah, Hermione. Gotta love that woman. So, she got a little of her own on Snape, and we found out why Delores removed herself from Eileen’s life. Everyone has a story, don’t they? Snape’s a real rotter. Anyway, thanks for reading.