Bound to Happen Again

---

Face pale, Hermione threw the camera back into Dennis’ hands and demanded, “Develop it now!”

“I don’t—if you’re that worried, forget about it. I’ll destroy it.”

“Just develop it and give it to me!”

Dennis flinched back slightly.

“NOW!”

As soon as the photograph appeared, Hermione snatched it out of his hand and stuffed it into her sack. She was about to walk away before she realized how horrid she was acting.

“I… I’m sorry, Dennis. I took this photo completely by accident.” Coming up to stand beside him, Hermione reached up to squeeze his shoulder in apology. “As I said before, I want nothing to do with your camera. So any evidence concerning me is terrifying.”

He smiled softly. Glancing at her sack, he asked, “Aren’t you even going to look at it?”

“Of course not!” she replied a bit too quickly.

Dennis frowned. But due to the total havoc that had erupted in the Great Hall, all thoughts of the photo were soon forgotten.

The intimate group of friends were practically running back to their common room. As soon as the mild hysteria had shown no signs of tapering, and directly after Professor Snape had stormed out of the Great Hall, McGonagall demanded all the students to turn in for the night.

Only a handful of the students had read that horrid article. Of course, this meant that the rumors were already extreme, with every student begging Hermione and company for details.

None of them felt like elaborating. Especially since everyone could just read it for themselves tomorrow morning regardless.

Matching her brisk pace, Harry quickly caught up to Hermione. “It just couldn’t be that easy, could it?” he snorted.

Hermione turned to look at him expectantly.

“Life after Voldemort,” he clarified.

“I never expected it to be, quite honestly.”

Not very long after the Gryffindor students reached their common room, the Floo erupted in green flames. Headmistress McGonagall’s face appeared and immediately called for Harry.

“What now?” he responded abruptly, entirely unconcerned for niceties.

“We’re having a meeting in my office this instant. I need you to gather--for heaven’s sake, Severus! If you scream at me one more time, I swear to Merlin I’ll—”

“Gather whom?” Harry demanded loudly.

“Whom do you think?” she barked back. “If you can’t manage it, have Hermione remind you how to use the coins.”

As soon as the green flames vanished, Hermione sighed in defeat. “I’m on it.”

Retrieving a coin from her pocket, Hermione notified all of the student Order members that they were to meet in the Headmistress’ office immediately.

Standing beside the portrait hole, Dennis had grown wary while he’d observed Hermione, Harry, Ron, Ginny, and Neville huddled together, intentionally speaking under their breath and only to each other.

“Where are you going?” he demanded.

Impatiently yanking the strap of her book sack off her shoulder, Hermione replied, “To speak with the Headmistress. Don’t look at me like that, you know you can’t come. She specifically requested us.”

Hermione caught Dennis shiftily eye her sack on the floor. A corner of the photo she had taken was sticking out of the pocket. She wasn’t the least bit eager to look at it, but all the same she couldn't bear the idea of anyone else seeing it either.

Snatching the photo, Hermione carelessly shoved it into her pocket and followed her friends out of the common room.

---

“There were only vague rumors!” McGonagall shrieked before catching herself and continuing with forced discipline. “How many more times am I to repeat myself?”

“You should have warned us,” Professor Snape repeated as well, voice ringing with thinly controlled anger.

The arguments continued like this for nearly an hour, both in excessive volume and irrationality, and solely between the veteran Order members. After longer than they were willing to admit, the shouting had finally died down once they all realized that the younger adults—the students under 21—had remained dazedly silent since entering the office.

As if snapping out of some trance, the students finally returned the expectant stares sent at them with fiercely uncomfortable expressions of their own. Defeated and tired, each one of them secretly hoped that at any moment someone would say that everything was going to be all right—that what they had read in The Quibbler had been a mistake.

“Is it really as bad as before, Minerva?” Hermione asked quietly.

“Before?”

Minerva turned towards Harry, gently answering his question and elaborating on Hermione’s comment. “Such laws have been passed every few hundred years or so at times of population declines or civil unrest.”

“So that’s it then?” Ron challenged, the first of the students to display any measure of anger. “We’re all on a time limit to get married? And what’s this rubbish about blood-mixing?”

“In the hopes of preventing the number of Squib—”

“You cannot tell me that people still believe such outdated tripe?”

The Headmistress glared in response to the young woman’s interruption. “I did not make the law, Hermione, so mind your tone!”

Hermione casually glanced at Professor Snape standing against the wall and stressed a comment he had made earlier. “You could have warned us.”

“And what purpose would that have served? It wouldn’t have changed any of our circumstances.”

“You mean our circumstances,” Hermione hissed, her face flushing at the uncharacteristic display of aggression to an authority figure, “seeing as how this won’t affect you.”

The office silenced for a few awkward seconds. Hermione refused to divert her glare until Minerva glanced away in obvious discomfort.

“What?”

Hermione quickly turned in the direction of Professor Snape’s impatient voice. Overwhelmed by his unwavering and penetrating eye contact, she glanced at the floor. “Identical to the laws of years past, this… Marriage Enhancement Act… won’t apply to Minerva or any other witch over seventy years-old. Same goes for men over a hundred. After all, the whole point of these forced marriages is to increase reproductive rates…”

Professor Snape pinched the bridge between his brow and groaned at the same time Minerva yelled, “Thank you for the history lesson, Hermione. We can always count on you to give answers to questions no one has asked!”

“Do not scream at her,” an eerily cold, silent voice commanded.

Stunned, Hermione turned to Professor Snape again and muttered, “T-thank you, Professor—”

He eyed her callously and interrupted, “And I don’t believe I was speaking to you, Miss Granger.”

“Enough!”

Once Headmistress McGonagall had finally managed to return order to the meeting, she suggested everyone to retire for the evening. It was decided that they’d continue this discussion once the news publicly broke to the wizarding world tomorrow morning in the papers.

Hermione had stayed rooted in her seat until a specific wizard had exited the office before her.

Swallowing repeatedly, Hermione nervously descended the spiral staircase, working up her courage.

“Professor?” Her cautious voice echoed across the corridor.

Professor Snape froze mid-stride, his back straightening with ominous precision. Turning around very slowly, he pierced Hermione with a silent glare before ultimately cocking one brow. When she’d failed to speak straight away, he closed the few steps needed to loom over her.

“What do you want?” he asked with exaggerated patience.

Hermione snapped to attention. She hadn’t meant to stare, but after everything she had witnessed in the Shrieking Shack, she couldn‘t help taking advantage of their close proximity to compare his current appearance to before the incident. His greasy hair hung lifelessly on both sides of his face, hiding the majority of his features. Tall, thin, and terrifying, he looked almost exactly the same.

Hermione struggled to return to her previous train of thought before she'd called out to him. “Want? Oh! I just wanted to tell you… well…”

“What?”

Hermione jerked at his bark. Frowning to herself and dismayed at her unexplainable melancholy, she finally muttered, “Welcome back, sir.”

His eyes narrowed sharply.

Similar to a situation they had shared a few years back, when it seemed Professor Snape was about to open his mouth, Hermione turned on her heel and fled, not wanting to risk the chance of his words containing more venom.

---

Hermione sighed as she slowly began to undress.

Lavender and Parvati’s four posters were noiseless, bed-curtains completely drawn. Charmed into impregnable silence, Hermione gathered she’d do the same as well. It was the only privacy one could attain in sharing a room.

Shaking out her cloak, she froze when the photo flew out of her pocket and landed on her bed face down.

She dreaded, hoped, and feared the idea of finding out who was in the picture. Hermione had a terribly anxious hunch…

Encased in her own bubble of privacy, Hermione settled herself beneath the bedclothes and took two deep breaths before placing both hands on the picture.

She didn’t exactly know why she was so nervous to find out what it revealed. Perhaps, a very rational part of her brain acknowledged, that not only had it been illegal to take and keep such a picture, but it also might contain the image of the last wizard in the world who’d want his emotions revealed to a mere acquaintance.

Hermione knew the right thing to do would be to destroy it this instant… but she couldn’t.

Taking a few more calming breaths, she flipped the photo over and brought it up to her nose.

Her heart plummeted.

There Professor Snape was, seated at the Head Table and dead center in the photograph. He gazed back at Hermione, his expression saturated in infuriated horror. He maintained that expression for a few seconds, as if he were challenging Hermione to look away. Finally, his face altered. Teeth bared, eyes clenched, Snape looked away in defeated disappointment.

Hermione dropped the photo when it began all over again.

Like every other experience, emotion, and thought she had suffered due to this wizard, Hermione was left with the familiar feeling that no matter how much she learned of Professor Snape, sense and logic continued to hover just outside her grasp.

---

Author's Notes: Not what many of you expected, I dare say. We are dealing with Professor Snape here, and nothing concerning this man has ever been convenient.

-Thank you to madbrilliant for the beta!

-You guys have no idea how much I love to hear your detailed and enthusiastic reviews! Thank you LadyxEmpire, Insolence,
Killer Kadoogan, mag7ical, Hermione_Malfoy, yanafava and Anon!

Next up: The new law is revealed to all and an unexpected student returns to Hogwarts. Plus a bit of Professor Snape-catches-Hermione-out-past-curfew.