Mirror, Mirror

Mirror, Mirror

Chapter Three – What to do with a Drunken Snape?


It all belongs to Rowling, except what you don’t recognize

“So, tell me. How did you two get together?” Hermione felt strange to be speaking to her old professor on such an intimate, no, absurd matter as them having been involved. It felt so wrong, as she looked at him, with his black eyes, sunken in a thin and ascetic face. He had always looked harsh, so very tyrannical, and yet, he looked worse than she remembered him, he was too thin. Unhealthy looking even back when she was a student, he was now just a scarecrow of a man.

He sat down on the hospice cot and exhaled. He looked up at the ceiling, around the room and then his eyes settled on her. To his relief, Madame Pomfrey came in from the hallway.

“I just spoke to the Headmaster. It seems that Severus may leave here, if Miss Granger is willing to take responsibility.”

“Is he well enough?” asked Hermione.

“I’m right here, Miss Granger, why are you acting as if I’m not? I’m the one who needs this information.”

“He--,” Pomfrey looked at him as he very loudly cleared his throat, “all right Severus, stop glaring at me. You were brought in unconscious last night. It was obvious that you were a victim of some abuse, but you were not seriously injured. It looks like you have been denied food and water, or perhaps have only been given enough to survive. Your body was covered with cuts and some irritants had been put into the wounds to increase the pain.”

“He was being tortured?” Hermione was trying to understand what in the world had Severus Snape gotten himself into. And why now?

“But nothing that couldn’t be easily fixed. His nose was damaged and bones in his hands broken. All his injuries were simple to repair. I have the name of a medi-wizard to help with that nose of yours, the injury was such that even after I repaired it, it’s a bit crooked. You’re going to need a specialist if you want it to look exactly as it did before.”

“Let me look.” Hermione came closer to inspect his face. She touched it gently, “I see what you mean. Could you remove your shirt, please?”

“Excuse me?” said Snape, looking rather surprised.

“Miss Granger,” said Pomfrey trying to not look too pleased, “Is in the final stages of her training to be a medi-witch.”

“Oh. Hmm. I always wondered what would have become of her.”

“Begging your pardon?”

“My wife, if I hadn’t married her.”

“Oh… What is she, a housewife now?” Hermione inwardly cringed.

“No, no. We are a research team. And frankly, no matter how good a doctor I’m sure you will be, I’m glad that we are both working together in my world. We’ve made some excellent discoveries. I just always feared that she had some unknown artistic talent or something and you had become a novelist or playwright or something Mugglish.”

“You’d feel bad for her?” Hermione was trying yet again to fathom where reality lay with this man. Truth or fantasy?

“No. It’s hard to explain. I just worried that maybe I’d taken her off her life path. But you becoming a doctor is quite reassuring. You’re happy at it?”

“Very,” she said warily.

Pomfrey looked back and forth, uncertain what was going on, but not liking it. “Anyway, you can head back to your rooms. I’d take it slow and get a lot of rest. You’ve been through a lot it seems.”

Snape took Pomfrey’s hand in both of his. “Thank you, you’ve been like a mother to us all.” He quirked a smile and started to leave, ignoring the astonished look on her face.

“Hermione, keep a close watch on him. He’s tetched, I’d swear to it.” Said Pomfrey keeping her voice very low.

“Don’t worry, I shall.” And Hermione hurried off to follow him down to the dungeons.

“Our wonderful Headmaster informed me earlier today that since they didn’t know when, or if, I’d be returning they gave my job away.” He was walking at a swift pace, which left Hermione trying to keep up. “How’s that for loyalty?”

“You do know that it’s rude to walk so quickly. I could just leave and then the Headmaster will simply ship you off.”

“I’m not insane. But here, I apologize. My wife has become used to speed walking,” he snorted, “it was either that or follow me on a broom.” He stopped and waited for her to catch up and then walked at an exceedingly slow pace. “Is that better now?”

“Damn you, I’m not a cripple.”

“Could have fooled me.” He chuckled.

Hermione felt like killing him and she’d only been with him for part of the afternoon. He was the most arrogant, pompous, annoying excuse for a man she’d ever met.

Finally, they arrived at his chambers. He hesitated at the door, “Well, it’s been a few years, but let’s try ‘Bloody Jackanapes!’”

The door swung gently open and they stepped inside.

“The Aurors who rescued me haven’t sorted out if my wand was there. So would you do the honors?”

Hermione waved her wand, “Lumos!” And the rooms were lit.

“My sound system!” said Snape with some annoyance.

“What sound system?”

“Exactly, it’s gone. Or rather-- I never got it. And I was hoping for some Mozart. Bother, look at this place, depressing isn’t it? It’s a wonder I didn’t just string myself up. Problem is I probably would have become a ghost or something equally appalling and been stuck here forever.”

He was stalking around the room, looking at the books in the shelves, pouring himself a brandy, and basically acting like someone would coming home after a very long trip.

“Come and look at this,” he had gone into the adjoining room and had opened a closet. “Can you believe it? A man in his forties dressing like a pimply-faced teen Goth? Talk about an arrested adolescence.”

“You know about Goths? How?”

“The same way I know about Mozart, DVDs, and hideous rock groups like Nine Inch Nails. When you have a wife twenty years your junior, you have to keep up. Also, she told me that my skin looked sallow when I wore black.”

He walked over to the mirror over the dresser and started examining himself. “Look at that, a receding gum line. He certainly doesn’t take good care of himself.”

“And you do?”

“Try not to when your wife tells you it’s like kissing a dead rat—“

Hermione tried hard no lao laugh.

“I was at Milton’s office so early he hadn’t even had his coffee yet.”

“My father…” Hermione went pale.

“What’s wrong Hermione? Please, don’t be upset. Really, I’m fond of both my in-laws-- good people for Muggles.” He watched as the girl tried to hold back her tears. On instinct he took her in his arms.

She tried to push him away. “I’m sorry,” she gasped, “It was a heart attack. He went so suddenly.” The tears came and he held her tighter.

“Hush, he’s as strong as an ox where I come from.”

“He’s alive?”

“That’s the way it is. It makes the Dept. of Transconveyance a very popular place. People popping off visiting other realms to see loved ones.”

“You can do that?”

“I just said it.” He handed her a fresh handkerchief from his dresser and she wiped at her eyes.

She looked at herself in the mirror and realized that she still looked like hell. It hadn’t been all that long since the funeral and she was still on leave of absence helping her mother reorganize her life.

He took out a leather strip from the dresser and started tying his hair back. “I would cut it, but Hermione likes it long.”

Hermione wondered at his vanity. More likely, she thought to herself, she just didn’t want to tell him that his ears stuck out with his hair short. She smiled. Gods, imagine being married to such a fussy peacock, thought Hermione.

“You’re smiling, now,” he said, watching her in the mirror.

“You still didn’t tell me about how my counterpart and you got together.”

He walked back out to the living room and picked up his brandy. “Can I fix you something?”

“No.” Hermione sat in an armchair and lit the fire.

“Thank you. I hate it here. It’s damp and smells bad unless you put spells on the place, or bribe the house elves to use something extra special on it. I don’t know what Salazar Slytherin was thinking of sticking us all down in the dungeons.

“You don’t live here anymore, I take it.”

“Hermione and I found a little place in Hogsmeade. It was practically falling in, but it was perfect-- our dream house. We worked hard on fixing up that little place and even wwe wwe were able to afford something three times it’s size, we stayed.” His eyes took on a faraway look and his voice was sad and filled with longing. “Sarah will be wanting her bedtime y soy soon.”

Hermione saw that he was becoming maudlin, after just one brandy, and again asked how he and the other Hermione had gotten together.

“Well, it was your sixth year and I gave you, I’m sorry, gave Hermione detention—“

“You never gave me detention in sixth year.”

“Really?” he drawled, “I supposed that was the reason then that we never got together in this realm.” He refilled the snifter, swirled it around and took a sip.

‘What did I do to merit detention?”

“Passing notes in class, you naughty, naughty girl,” he smiled into the drink, and then looking at Hermione, realized that he’d again forgot who she was, “I, oh, you were trying to help Longbottom, even though I had moved you two to separate ends of the room.”

“Longbottom was never in Sixth year Potions. You forbid him.”

“How wise of me. Of course, he didn’t belong there. He’d barely squeaked by his O.W.L.s even though a certain Gryffindor, who shall remain nameless, probably spent hours upon end helping him. The only reason Mr. Longbottom was in my class was because I had been ambushed and ganged up upon by his grandmother, his head of house and the Headmaster of the school. They probably had Fudge waiting in the wings just in case I baulked.” He took another sip. “Not a bad brandy. I think I shall get stinking drunk tonight.”

“So I was in detention—“

“And madder than a wet hen about it. One would imagine that you’d get cute when you’re angry, but only if you think a Norwegian Razorback with hemorrhoids is cute. Don’t laugh, one of the Weasley children once owled me from Bulgarian or some such place needing a lotion for dragon piles, of all things.” He smiled and took a gulp of the drink.

Hermione very carefully took the glass from his hand, “Not one more sip until you tell me.”

“Unfair, totally unfair, which you are. Met my match when I met… her.” He reached for the glass and Hermione held it away from him shaking her head and scowling in a most Norwegian Razorback way.

“She was glaring and snorting as she did the work I’d assigned her, and finally I told her to work quietly or I’d have her back for more detention. So she fastens her big, brown eyes on me and says, ‘Why do you have to hate us so much?’ She was all self-righteous indignation, full up on her self and knowing all the answers, of course. So I told her in no uncertain terms that that was privileged information. And she starts sniveling! Well, that really pissed me off, so I started telling her all the reasons that I couldn’t stand her and her nasty little crowd of good for nothing Gryffindors. And when I was done, she wiped her snotty little nose on her sleeve and said, ‘You know, sir, you’re right.’

“Fuck all, how was I to deal with that? You know, sir, you’re right. Well, of course I was right. So I sent her off. And that’s how it all started.

“I don’t understand.”

“It’s like this,” he grabbed her, kissed her and took back the snifter. “Do you understand now?” he said smugly pointing to the drink.

“No, you are making no sense at all,” she felt she should leave, that something beyond her understanding was indeed going on. But she was finding herself drawn more and more into his little world.

“The wretched little girl just had to be the first person, the first damned person to agree with me in decades. Decades! Oh, yes, there’d be the occasional, ‘well done Snape’, from the Headmaster, but not one whit of understanding or sympathy any anyone else on this planet.

“After that I couldn’t get her out of my mind. I’d spent years hating myself, hating life, hating being a damned Potions Master, hating teaching other people’s little darlings, and she comes and tells me I’m right. I couldn’t let it go. It was like some Chinese puzzle, and I felt obsessed by it, her, her frizzy hair and her stupid friends. So I began to find reasons for us to be alone together. Little things that Potter and Weasley wouldn’t notice or complain about. Got their practice schedule and used it to hunt her down while their backs were turned.

“Of course, I had to be careful. Had to go slowly, or she’d complain and I’m be out in the cold with neither Dumbledore nor the Dark Lord’s protection. Eventually, she enjoyed talking to me. I did it by pretending that I wanted to know more about Muggles. Oh, that made her happy! So my Muggle Studies education began. And as boring and tedious as it all was, it made her want to be around me!”

Hermione leaned forward, “You deliberated seduced me, um, I mean her. You used—“

“I exploited her weaknesses and used her own muddleheaded nobility against her. Yes. I was the poor misunderstood Potions Master. Oh, I was risking my life for the cause, putting my life on the line to help make this world a better place. Saving Potter’s ungrateful scrawny neck. And Black’s nasty practical joke and James Potter’s bullying had traumatized me. I used every trick I could think of to put myself in the best light possible. I fashioned myself as the classic Byronic Hero… all… to make her love me.” He finished his brandy in one large gulp.

“And she believed me. And then, looking into her eyes and seeing myself reflected therein, I believed me, too.”

Hermione moved next to him and removed the glass from his hand before it could fall and shatter. He looked at her with mildly unfocussed eyes. “I moved slowly, very slowly. I never kissed her nor touched her. Did nothing at all to alarm my prey. I was all kindness and sympathy in private, even as I snarled at all the students and her in public. She understood that I only wanted the best for them. It wasn’t that I hated them, oh no.”

He hed hed a little to himself and Hermione understood that perhaps having all that brandy in a weakened state might have been a bit irresponsible of her to allow. He was weaving a bit on the couch and she put her hand on his shoulder to steady him.

“That summer when her parents went to Europe on holiday she stayed at home, telling them that she’d be at The Burrow and then Grimmauld Place. Instead she came to a safe house to spend time with me. Even then, I never kissed or touched her. I bided my time, never looking for the short term, oh no, I was in it for keeps. Eventually, she wanted me.” He was slurring his words a bit now. “She wanted me so badly.” He gave a sharp little laugh. “But I insisted that I’d only take a virgin bride.” His eyes closed a bit. “So she agreed to marriage and we found a small parish near the border of Scotland and we were wed.” He reach down and took her hand. “You didn’t mind, did you, Hermione? A selfish old man who wanted something nice for himself, just once in his life? Of course, we had to keep it secret. But you were a clever girl, so very clever, and we made no mistakes.”

He leaned over and brought his mouth over Hermione’s ear, just brushing it with his lips. “I love my clever girl. Clever girrrrl.” And he fell asleep with his head on her shoulder.


A/N: Big, big thanks to my reviewers: Little Bird, WendyNat and NegativeNine.