4 – At the Close

This story has, as ever, gone out in the open only thanks to the wonderful help of Whitehound, who has made it possible that it could be read without misunderstandings by giving a precious help, and not only with the language.

Many thanks to her, and also to the faithful friends that have followed and encouraged it step by step.

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With the feeling that, finally, life was beginning more to resemble the happy endings of ancient tales, Hermione had succeeded in bringing back her parents, and they had been very understanding, as they had always been since her first steps into magic. They had been relieved to know that the perils of the war had ended, and even if during her account of the events they had shivered and cried many times, at the end, hearing of the many deaths among wizards and witches but also among persons like them - Muggles, they said - they had had to admit that their time out of England had been no more than another of the good ideas of their bright, clever daughter.

After the required formalities and travelling the family, reunited, was again settled in their old house, as if the preceding period had never occurred.

The young witch, in accordance with that success, should have been happy and, finally, relaxed. She knew that every hour spent with her parents since their coming back was overly due, and her conscience told her that everything was well.

But it wasn’t, and the letters from Ginny, that told her good news from Harry and Ronald, too, evoked the world to which she belonged, and to which she needed to return. Her mother, knowing the symptoms of old, prepared her clothes, gifted her daughter with a new suitcase – “You can’t possibly always go on using that bag” – and prepared herself and her husband for a new farewell.

Then, one day, during breakfast, an owl deposited a parchment on their table. Hermione, more excited than they had seen her in ages, was accompanied by her greatly-relieved parents to an Apparition point not too far from their town, and there they kissed her goodbye.

At the count of three she vanished, and after an instant found herself at the gates of Hogwarts.

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Almost two months had passed since his full recovery, and Severus Snape had to admit that his days weren’t so bad as he had anticipated after his revival. It being summer, the school was closed, and even if Minerva was still pressing him about his future position there, which she tended to take for granted, he felt that time would help him to reach a decision, and, after all, he hadn’t to face either students or colleagues on a daily basis at present.

The strange feeling of forgiveness, the less heavy burden of bitterness and hurt that he had sensed in the first days after his awakening, hadn’t vanished after his regaining of the memories from the Pensieve. He had felt whole again, and his self-consciousness had been vital to his true acceptance of a second chance at existence, but all the grudges, the hopeless devotion and the bitterness sedimented one year after the other, cultivated by the events which he had endured and suffered, no longer mattered so greatly.

Perhaps this new sensation had been acquired due to the temporary absence of those memories, even if it hadn’t lasted for a long time. Or perhaps what had made the difference was seeing that, however belatedly, some true care had been showed to him by a few people.

He didn’t know the reasons, and neither perhaps was he too much absorbed by those thoughts, but it felt almost good, to him, to be again the owner of his old quarters in the dungeons, where he could be left alone as he wished until he would have decided how to go on living. For the first time in his life he hadn’t a purpose, a task to accomplish, and it was almost intoxicating to live, one day after the other, with the sole intention of enjoying it through activities decided moment by moment.

The castle, that in recent months had been a cage to him, was now a safe place, the nearest thing to home, perhaps, that he had ever had. This whole situation was so acceptable that it might be worth the sacrifice of some precious hours of peace that evening to assist - as Minerva had almost ordered him to - in the forthcoming ceremony of the Special Graduation.

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Like their first night at Hogwarts, where the solemnly proclaimed list of names called by the Sorting Hat had decided their fate, the long list of the seventh years who had both conquered and learnt maturity on the battlefield was held proudly by the Deputy Headmistress. The settlement of the staff of the school hadn’t yet been decided, but to the Board of Governors and to the Ministry, immediately reinstalled in their seats after the downfall of Voldemort’s cohorts, it had seemed fair and appropriate that the teachers who had taught them until that moment should give to the students the honorary school-leaving certificate that was praise to both.

The young witches and wizards stood in front of the High Table, in the Great Hall, proud and moved. When the last speech had ended - remembering the dead and advising everyone to honour their sacrifice with an upstanding future career, whatever their prospects - there followed some minutes of respectful silence, and then the feast began. Everybody hugged, and kissed, and of course Harry Potter was at the centre of the little, happy crowd. Tables fulfilled themselves in deliciousnesses, and music started.

The feast wasn’t a ball, it was more an excuse to really begin to enjoy the victory, but the sweet tune helped everyone to feel good, Hermione thought, because even if it had been beautiful to see all her old companions and teachers together, a feeling of ending was around, and the recent losses couldn’t yet be forgotten. And when, after dinner, people began to chat, while some of them were almost dancing, moving around, it was also good to see that the professors were no longer distant, but surrounded by their old students, in a mixed, contented group.

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He had felt a renewed sting of exclusion, in the middle of all that celebration. Even now, now that people had learnt to respect him, there was no change in the distance that the majority of people kept from Severus Snape. And to know that their behaviour was prompted by different reasons than those of the past did nothing to improve his mood.

That’s why, when Miss Granger approached him to bid her greetings, he couldn’t resist resuming his acerbic tone: “Already tired of Gryffindors’ pleasantries, Miss Granger?”

“A bit, to be sincere” she answered, surprisingly unaffected, “and since there aren’t so many opportunities to speak to you, I’d like to take this one. If I may.”

“If you must” he conceded, convincing himself that her annoying nosiness wouldn’t be worse than that of the older witches, which he had learnt to endure more often than he was keen to admit.

“I’m proud to have received this parchment, with a certificate that will surely be precious in the future. But I don’t know all the things that I wanted to know, especially about our world, and the way it goes on… I mean: when Voldemort recruited his followers he found very interested people among Pure-bloods, and this is the way it always happens, with the dark lords, they rise because the powerful oblige them… but nobody seems to understand how important it is to explore these matters…”

“And thus you thought to ask to the reformed Death Eater?” he cut in menacingly. Then, lowering his voice: “I’m not a Pure-blood; you should know that, shouldn’t you, impertinent girl?”

She didn’t give up: “What I know is that you were a young Slytherin, eager to be part of this world, and then in the space of a breath, you were among his followers. That’s a good enough place to start, to me.”

“And pray, tell, why would I be the recipient of your nosy idealism?”

“Because I would have been a friend to that young student, and you could have gone on wounding, arguing, calling names, but I wouldn’t have minded,” she answered defiantly.

This last bit hit very close to home, so he kept silent.

“I'm staying at Hogwarts for the next few days to do some research in the Library, Professor. If you’ll want, we could resume this conversation then. I’m happy to have seen you so well recovered, and now I will leave you in peace, as you wish.”

Smiling she turned on her heel, and the vision of her long blue dress, that accompanied her movements with grace, stayed in his eyes for a long time.

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With her head bent over the parchment which was outstretched on one of the large table in the Library, she didn’t see that the elusive Professor Snape was standing not too far from her. Nor did she notice his leaving when, after some moments during which he had looked at her with a strange intensity, he did so. She was immersed in reading of the rules of law in the Magical World, and beginning to know what she really wished to do when she, as they say, would grow up.

After hours, tired and stiff, she went out from the room, and decided to give interviewing her professor one last try before she would leave the castle and begin to pursue her plan. After not too long a walk, she arrived at his door and knocked.

This time he answered: “Enter.”

She found him seated at his desk, writing. He surely wasn’t marking in July, was he? But she kept her curiosity for more important matters. And, when he lifted his gaze to her, she began to describe her wish to change the rules, to become a very influential member of their society to do so, to change things for the better.

He would have mocked her passion, as many had done during her most famous campaign in her fourth year, but the sound of her voice - which for some time he had, strangely, often recalled at unexpected moments - didn’t allow him to do so. Then, when she opened the rolled-up parchment on his desk, showing him the archaisms of some laws, and going on telling him her opinion, and asking for his contribution, he was forced to look at it.

“My mother’s family was of pure blood and she never overcame the rejection she suffered after her wedding with a Muggle…” he found himself saying, and from that moment he knew himself to be lost without even an attempt at a fight - lost to Hermione's project, and lost to Hermione herself.

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Thus they continued, and she was right, and he was glad to help, even when they heartily disagreed, because if he was proud to belong to their world and she was keen to be part of it, they still knew that a great part of its rules were wrong: he had lived on his skin how much.

Once a week she went to his quarters, and he began to await her visits with anticipation. Until, one day, looking together at an ancient tome, she touched his fingers, inadvertently, and he, unaware of his actions, held hers.

Their eyes, then, were locked in an unbreakable contact.

After a time that seemed infinite, she whispered:

“You remember”

and it wasn’t a question.

“I do”

and it was more than an answer.

“Good” she whispered softly, and the fact that neither of them needed to clarify the object of their memory told, more than a thousand words, how much both had treasured the first moments of their true acquaintance.

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When she had ended her studies at the University, where she had decided to go to improve her knowledge, so as to be sure about her competence during the future steps of her plan, she visited Snape at Hogwarts more often: sometimes at his old house at Spinner’s End, too, where he had begun to make many changes and improvements and where, as in the castle, he felt more and more that the burden of the memories linked to the site was lightening.

Slowly they began to recognize the end of friendship and the beginning of something different. As if fearing that to say the words that would seal that discovery could break the spell, both became strangely shy, then. But it couldn’t last long: the closeness they had reached couldn’t allow that, and Severus felt that, finally, the time had come to reap the reward of what had been given to him when the ultimate negation of his life had been delayed thanks to someone else’s actions. It was time to try again, and to do it by himself, with the warming awareness that this time his attempts would be received in a totally different way.

She had come into his office, as usual, bringing in the refreshing cold air of December blended with her scent, that he would have recognized anywhere. And she had seemed determined to overcome the awkward silence of their recent meetings, so, without even bothering to take off her cloak, pacing through the room, she had started talking of the weather, of the forthcoming snow, and of her plans for the holidays, all mingled into a merry speech that, after a first moment of startled attention, Snape cut into:

“Come here!” pointing to the couch. She approached, hesitantly, and sat.

He had always been able to use his words, and his tone of voice, as an instrument or even as a weapon, when needed. And he had given many thoughts to the speech that he would have to make for this special occasion.

Her closeness, though, wiped everything away and he was only able to say the essence of it, those inevitable three words that people always say on occasions like that. They (more than enough, of course, to her) were tenderly welcomed. And, at least, he had managed to be faithful to his House’s cunning with the choice of seating, whose cosiness eased all the following agreements, that they sealed one after the other by kissing each other senseless.

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Eventually they married, and at their wedding reception she was very pleased to know that the brainy, shy yet very beautiful girl who had been her roommate at University, and who had been so impressed by her friends’ visits, was now engaged to Ron. Hermione, slinking away from the party, thought that finally he would be the decision-maker that he wished to be, and envisioned herself as the assiduous aunt to their future children, the son and the daughter which that happy couple was already fantasizing about.

In the following years, always accompanied by the helping advice of her husband, who had gone on researching improvements for potions and counter-curses, no longer bound by the obligations of a stable job but with all the freedom that he had finally won, she went on pursuing her task and finally she worked for Department of Magical Law Enforcement, where she succeeded in putting an end to the most unfair pro-pure-blood laws. As all the official sources reported and as everyone very well knows.

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…109 years later

“I see that you are finally visible to me, Harry Potter” said the cold voice, welcoming the Old Boy Who Lived Twice, “and it was about time.”

The next great adventure had begun for the old hero, and it had been high time, as the welcoming host had declared. He looked around, his glasses still firmly on his nose.

“Yes, Harry Potter, they are approaching to bid you welcome” were Death's last words then, and suddenly Harry saw a little group of smiling people, that he very well knew and had longed to meet again.

His parents and their two friends were, and would be for all eternity, as he had seen them a lifetime ago, when the end of his feat had been forthcoming. But now, the fact that a very young pink-haired witch was holding hands with one of those four he had already seen that unforgettable time, made their appearance an even clearer reminder of how early they had left.

And there was his wife, grey-haired like him but still beautiful: he hadn’t survived by more than a few hours the loss of her on earth.

Two other smiling presences, then, came to join the rest.

“I told you that his Cloak still had the power to preserve from the sight of Death” the first one was whispering.

“It was a well-hidden secret, and, above all, Potter and I agreed that I would not investigate the circumstances of my rescue” answered the taller one, still wearing his customary black robes in a place where the white light seemed to brighten everything.

“Come on Harry, let’s go. The two of them never stop talking” intervened Ginny. But Harry wanted to seal the moment with a last proclamation.

“When I told Dumbledore that I would keep Ignotus’s present, I knew I had done the right thing. And Albus confirmed it. What he and everyone else didn’t know was the fact that I had already used my Invisibility Cloak to hide Snape from Death, until he could reach the hospital.” All his life he had remembered, as if the rescue had happened yesterday, that time when he and Pomfrey had found Snape comatose in his death-throes, held there and kept from crossing over by the influence of the spirits who stood with him now.

“And no one ever knew of it” ended Hermione, without leaving her companion’s arm.

“As it had to be,” Snape concluded, remembering, while saying these words, the fact that the written version of the story hadn't been so merciful to him as the actual events had been. “Because that was the real closure, but it seems that it was too hard for the one who reported the story to pursue the possibility of a further opening being left to me.”

“Luckily, it wasn’t too hard for those who were in your debt, and, later, for those who cared,” whispered Hermione, tightening her clasp, with fondness.

So, this was the way Harry Potter mastered the gifts of Death for a good purpose. And all was well.

A /N: And this is all. Even knowing that it is only a whim, I’ve enjoyed exploring some possible openings for missing moments, or spotting half-spoken areas of canon, where what is known allows for some different outcome, by pursuing those aspects of the story which have not been completely revealed. It has been done many times, since last July, and in many ways, but every time to reach the possibility of saving Snape, of giving him a second - and lighter - life, is a joy greater than the simple act of thinking and writing a fan fiction. This time was less easy than before, to me, and therefore more precious; as I said at the end of the first chapter I hope that to all of you, too, his rescue made sense and that you liked it. Thanks to those who have gone on reading this tale. And, now that it is completed, more than ever reviews are most welcome!