The air was bitter cold, and Hermione Granger wrapped her cloak as tight as she could around her. She felt lonelier than she ever had in her life. It was New Year’s Eve of her seventh year at Hogwarts. After the funeral of the headmaster, Professor Dumbledore, she hadn’t been sure she would return to the school at all, and now all she wanted to do was get away from it. Ron had chosen to spend the holidays with his family, and Hermione thought the Weasleys needed a private Christmas. Harry had taken this opportunity to visit Godric’s Hollow and the graves of his parents, and she knew this too was a journey that needed to be completed alone. And so she remained at Hogwarts, but for some reason, tonight she needed away from it all.
She had thought Hogsmeade would be a good destination. Perhaps the Three Broomsticks would have a cheery crowd. Problem was, agreeing to stay at the school during this time of war also meant promising to not leave the grounds. Hermione was never one to break the rules, but the loneliness was so great, and she knew no one would find out. It was in her third year that they had discovered the secret underground passageways leading out of Hogwarts. The particular one she had chosen would lead her to an abandoned building in Hogsmeade, from which she could slide unnoticed into the tavern.
She was so consumed by her own thoughts that she didn’t even notice that the air seemed to warm as she neared the exit of the passageway. It wasn’t until she was right at the opening that she realized a fire was cackling in the building, and as she curiously pushed the entry open, saw a cloaked figure kneeling before the fire.
As she stepped forward, the floorboard creaked beneath her, and the cloaked figure jumped and spun to face her. She was startled herself, especially when she found herself staring into a pair of hateful black eyes.
“YOU!” she screamed.
At the exact same moment, Severus Snape snarled at her, “What do you think you’re doing here?”
They both stared at each other for a moment, Snape’s eyes filled with their usual cold fury; Hermione’s filled with a contemptuous rage. This man had been the one who killed the headmaster, the one who double-crossed the Order, the one who was considered to be one of the Dark Lord’s favorites.
“What are you doing here, Severus?” she nearly hissed at him.
“Are we on a first name basis now, Miss Granger?” Snape snarled back at her.
“Professor is a word I use to show respect, and you can be sure I no longer have any of that for you.” The words came pouring out of her and even if she had wanted to stop them she didn’t think she could. “The only thing I feel toward you is hatred! How could you have done it? How could you stand there and murder a man who was so well loved? Our leader? How could you support Voldemort? How could you spend all that time close to the Order and turn against us all? You killed him! He trusted you! None of the rest of us did, but he said you were on our side. He swore you were on the side of good! And yet, you reported to Voldemort! You made an Unbreakable Vow to Narcissa Malfoy! You stood atop that tower and you ““
“Did exactly as he told me to do,” Snape interrupted, his voice barely more than a whisper, yet it chilled her to the bone. “I owe you no explanation, Miss Granger, but I will tell you this. Albus Dumbledore knew I would kill him that night.”
Hermione stood transfixed. She moved her mouth to speak, but the words would no longer come.
Before she could find her voice, Snape continued. “I had more faith in Dumbledore than anyone. Do you think I took pleasure in killing him? No. I hated myself. It was repulsive, but it came to this. You are correct, Dumbledore did indeed trust me. He knew exactly where my loyalties lie, and in sixteen years, they never wavered.”
Her mouth finally began to work properly again, but she still stumbled over the words, “But what are you doing here?”
His mouth curled into its characteristic sneer. “Where did you think I would go, Miss Granger? Back to the Order’s headquarters? I doubt they would welcome me with open arms. As you said, none of them ever trusted me. Perhaps you think I should have returned to the Dark Lord’s side? You should know I did. However, the Dark Lord is the most accomplished Legimilens of all time, do you not think he noticed my repulsion? My hatred of myself? At that moment, he knew.”
With that, Snape sank to the floor. He stared into the fire. “I remembered this place from our encounter here a few years ago. I knew no one would come here.” He sounded more human than Hermione had ever heard him. There was almost a trace of sadness in his voice. He continued, “I didn’t want to do it.”
Hermione’s instinct took his words as an invitation to sit in front of the fire as well. She looked at him, with a trace of pity in her own eyes.
Snape recognized it. “Don’t feel sorry for me. I don’t need your pity.”
Hermione tensed up again. “You don’t have it,” she said briskly.
“Narcissa came to me over a year ago. She was desperate. The Dark Lord had charged Draco with a task so heinous… She asked me to make the Vow. I had no idea what the task was at that time. The moment I found out, I was devastated. I went to Dumbledore at once. We discussed everything at length. He told me to do it. If one of us had to die, he preferred it to be him. At least I could still get close to the Dark Lord and continue to help the Order. Not that it would matter now,” he spat bitterly. “None of them would listen to me anyway.”
The two of them sat in silence for a moment as Hermione let his words sink into her mind. One thought kept pressing the forefront of her mind. “He trusted you,” she whispered.
“Yes. He did. I did something so terrible. He knew what I had done. He knew how much I regretted it. How much I regret it still today.”
“The prophecy,” Hermione said. It was a statement, not a question.
Snape glared at her sharply. “How do you know about the prophecy?”
“Does it really matter how I know?” Hermione shot back. “What matters is that for some reason none of us can understand, you regretted telling Voldemort what you overheard. You have never shown one bit of compassion for James Potter! You hated him. Why would anyone believe you regretted it when he was the one Voldemort went after? You KNEW he would be killed!”
“But I didn’t know she would be!” Snape cried passionately. Suddenly, in that moment, Snape was reduced from a monster to a man. His usually cold eyes were filled with something else, pain. Hermione did not have to ask. In that moment, she understood. She wondered why it had never crossed her mind sooner. Snape had always been very quick to degrade James Potter, but never once had he uttered an unkind word against his wife.
“You were in love with Lily,” she stated simply.
Snape bowed his head. Hermione didn’t need confirmation. She knew she was correct.
The two sat for a moment with only the popping sound of the flames between them. Finally, Snape spoke again. “You remind me of her, you know.”
Hermione jerked her head toward him in surprise. “Excuse me?”
“You are very much like her. You were both born into Muggle families. You’re both bloody brilliant. Both of you are kind hearted. You always excelled at potions, but I could never say that. I was afraid if I told you how much you were like her, every memory I ever had of loving Lily Evans would come back.” Snape finally glanced at Hermione. “I’m sorry.”
Hermione shook her head. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. After several seconds, her curiosity got the better of her. She had to ask, “Did she know?”
He made a noise that was a mix of a short bitter laugh and a sigh. “Of course she knew,” he said. “Everyone was in love with her. She was so intelligent. She spent a lot of time in the library “ another reason you remind me of her “ and it was there, in our fourth year, that we became very good friends. She was so kind. She didn’t care what type of boy I was. She valued me because I could challenge her intellectually. We talked about world events, interesting things we had read, and everything in between. During that summer, we wrote each other often, and I realized my feelings for her were more than as just a friend. We came back to school during fifth year, and during one of our long discussions in the library, I couldn’t help myself. I kissed her.”
Hermione looked shocked. She tried to imagine this hateful man in front of her kissing the vivacious woman she had seen photographs of in Harry’s album. Had the situation been different, she would have burst out laughing. Before she could stop herself, she spoke, “What happened?”
His eyes had a faraway look in them. “She kissed me too. Then was this little silence, and then she giggled and gave me this beautiful smile. She told me she had wanted me to. But we were never able to take it beyond that. Before we could, I did the second most awful thing I regret. I called her a Mudblood in front of half the school.” He hit his hand off the brick fireplace. “I never meant to do that! It was an awful situation I was in, and I was humiliated. I never liked James Potter before that, but after that moment, I hated him. It was his taunting and actions that led me to hurt her. I tried to apologize, but she would have none of it. She said that obviously she didn’t know me as well as she thought she had. She didn’t want anything to do with me after that. But I could never get over her. She was so incredible. No one else could ever hold a candle to Lily.”
Hermione actually felt her eyes getting misty. She couldn’t believe she was feeling sorry for Snape. There had been moments in the past six months where she swore if this man ever crossed her path, she would kill him herself. And now, here she was, sitting alone with him, listening to him pour his heart out!
“After that,” Snape continued, “I became more and more involved in the Dark Arts. After Lily’s rejection, nothing else mattered. I succumbed to the Dark Lord’s power. Since I had nothing to live for, I didn’t care if I died. I was in that mind frame when I overheard Sybil’s prophecy. I had immense fear of the Dark Lord. I thought perhaps telling him something this vital would ease some of that fear. And so I did. It was shortly thereafter I saw the announcement of Harry’s birth in the paper. I felt it rush over me like ice. I knew Potter and Lily were working with the Order. I knew the Dark Lord hated them more than many others. I knew at once this was the child the Dark Lord would seek to destroy. It was the worst moment of my life.
“I had no options. I did the only thing I could think of. I went straight to Dumbledore at once. I told him everything. I told him how much I had been in love with Lily. I told him how I hurt her, and then I told him my fear that I had put her life at risk. We spoke for over four hours. I confessed everything I had ever done with the Death Eaters, and I begged him to help. Not help me, mind you, but help her. You see, even though she gave up on me, I never once stopped loving her. It was during this conversation he decided to send Lily and her family into hiding. It was also then I volunteered to keep Dumbledore abreast of the Dark Lord’s movements. I told him to use the information to help the Order. I pledged my loyalty to the Order and I never wavered.”
Snape paused for a moment, attempting to collect his thoughts and feelings. He failed. “As soon as Dumbledore heard, he came to find me. I collapsed. I wanted to end my own life. I begged Dumbledore to tell me it was all a mistake. The only woman I had ever loved! The only woman who ever cared about me! I killed her! I did it! If it weren’t for what I had done, she would have lived!” The emotion seemed beyond his control. As Hermione watched, stunned, she saw a single tear slide down Snape’s cheek. She was even more surprised to realize tears were streaming down her own face. She didn’t know what to say to him. Snape stood abruptly.
“Do you understand why I am so indifferent toward Harry? Just look at him! He looks just like his father and I am reminded every time I look at him of my error which drove Lily away. And then, even worse, I see her eyes staring out at me, and I can barely live with myself. Every time I see those eyes, I remember that if it weren’t for me, she would still be here. She was so gifted and she had so much left to give.”
Hermione raised herself up and continued to watch Snape carefully. “Do you realize,” she asked slowly, “that it was Lily’s death that saved Harry? That the gift of her love to her son is what kept him alive? Her protection is what made the curse rebound and hit Voldemort instead. It was the curse striking, yet not killing, Voldemort that led Dumbledore to begin to suspect the involvement of a very powerful Dark Art, Horcruxes.”
Snape looked at Hermione sharply. “What in the world are you talking about?”
“The Horcruxes are what kept Voldemort alive, even without a body. If the curse had not rebounded, Voldemort would have been that much more powerful. We may have never been involved in this final battle if it were not for her. We would have never destroyed the horcruxes. Don’t you see? Voldemort is a mortal man now. He is capable of being killed! For good this time! All because of what Lily did. How much more could she give than that Professor?” Hermione shouted, with so much passion she shocked herself. She fell silent then and waited for Snape to react.
He stared at her for a long moment. “It was because of Lily Voldemort vanished all those years ago?”
Hermione nodded.
"Because of Lily, he can be killed again?"
"Yes."
Snape suddenly fell to his knees and buried his head in his arms. His whole body began to convulse, as if he were suffering a seizure. Hermione stood rooted to the spot. Ever since the night of Dumbledore’s death, she had pictured what would happen if she ever was in a room alone with Severus Snape. She was certain that in none of her visions had the man been sobbing on the floor before her. Well, only in one, but then he had been begging for his life...
After moments that passed like hours, Snape’s body fell still. More time passed, and finally he raised his head off the floor. The usual look of fury had gone from his eyes; he seemed at this minute to finally accept the fact that he could not change what he had done so many years ago. He also seemed to understand Lily had made a greater contribution to the war than he had ever dreamed.
“It is because of Lily that we are going to defeat him, Professor,” Hermione whispered. “You know where he is. Come and help us. Return to the Order.”
Snape sneered. “As if they wouldn’t kill me the moment I tried to walk through the door.”
“I won’t let them,” Hermione said firmly. “I believe you, and I trust you. Come with me.”
With that, Hermione closed her eyes and took a step forward into compression. When she opened her eyes again, she stood in front of number twelve, Grimmauld Place. A second later, she heard a popping noise beside her. She didn’t have to look. She knew who had Apparated right next to her. She could see the lights on in the house. She wondered how many members of the Order were inside. She glanced back at Snape.
“Are you ready, Professor?” she asked him softly.
He nodded without a word, and together, as the clock inside chimed midnight, they crossed the threshold of Grimmauld Place.