Eleven: Tidings
She stood shaking in her boots on the front stoop, afraid to simply punch the little button next to the doorway. Her insides must have transformed, because she truly did feel as though she were made of jelly, with the tremors that shook her wholly, from her feet to the very tips of her fingers. Her hands were shaking most.
It was quite a strange sensation to be shaking all over, but it wasn�t what she dwelled upon at the current moment. Her index finger hovered above the little circle of white that would summon Ron from whatever he was doing at this ungodly hour of the night, which hopefully was sleeping.
This is so fucking stupid, �Mione. He doesn�t want to be woken up in the middle of the night.
She shook her head, inclined to agree, and lowered her hand a little. Then, it moved up again as another voice reassured her that he would understand. But still, she couldn�t do this, she couldn�t, not with how awful she�d treated him. Waking him up in the middle of the night to listen to her sobbed apology wasn�t quite the correct way to say she was sorry, not that there was any correct way to say that she was sorry.
Harry�s words of wisdom today �er �yesterday, though, had given her courage anew. It was slipping away, now, but she was fighting to hold on to it. She had to do this.
Hermione had awoken at about midnight and remembered Ron�s anguish so vividly that it had gotten her into a pair of jeans, a pyjama top and a coat just to come here and say she was sorry. Now, she was having second thoughts. But she couldn�t very well stay out here on the street all night, even if it didn�t look like anyone �not even a cat �was out tonight. To stay here on the steps was sheer folly, to say the very least, especially looking the mess that she did.
Okay, then, push the button.
The buzz was especially loud in her ears, and she furtively glanced up and down the street, wondering if she�d actually woken anyone up that she shouldn�t have. She waited for a second, tapping her fingers against her thigh nervously. Then she lifted her hand and was about to ring again, when the door opened a crack revealing a very cranky redhead.
"What is �?" He paused, and the harshness in his voice disappeared. "Hermione?"
"Hullo, Ron," Hermione said, smiling nervously.
Ron opened the door all the way, standing bare-chested in long pyjama bottoms in front of her. He rubbed his eyes, and sighed. "What is it, Hermione?" he asked, saying her name more gently than Hermione would have preferred him to.
"I came to apologise," Hermione said quietly. Ron looked up at her, blinking.
"You did already," he said, slightly irritable it seemed.
"No," said Hermione. "I didn�t properly apologise, and I�d really like to make sure that things are all right between us."
Ron was silent for, and Hermione didn�t say much of anything, either. There was the sort of sound in the background that was inevitable with night, the sort of white noise that came from something somewhere else that no one could ever really identify or place. Besides that night-noise, though, Hermione�s ears were ringing with Ron�s silence.
"Humour me?" she pleaded after a moment. Ron nodded wearily.
"All right," he said.
They went inside, and Ron closed the door, shutting out the winter that wailed to be let in. Hermione felt cold as ice even with her jacket on, but didn�t complain because this was definitely not the time for that. They sat in his living room, and Hermione, who had suddenly found it drowsily warm, decided to sit in one of the more uncomfortable chairs to stay awake. Vaguely she realised why the chairs in Snape�s office had been so uncomfortable.
No, don�t think about him.
She regarded Ron as he flopped down on his couch and then looked expectantly at her. When she was sure that he was listening, she spoke.
"All right," she said. Now, for some spur-of-the-moment poeticism. "Ron Weasley, I owe you the deepest apology imaginable. I never should have kept you in the dark about my true feelings, and definitely not about the fact that I kissed another man.
"I should have told you at the beginning that I didn�t feel like you did, and though I know that it still would have hurt you, at least I would have been honest. And I didn�t want to hurt you. Really, I didn�t. You�re one of my closest friends, and to know you were in pain would make me hurt, as well. Ron, I understand if you never forgive me, but I just had to say that I�m sorry."
"Hermione, I already forgave you," said Ron.
Hermione hated him right then, and wished he would just be angry with her, yell an incoherent sort of lecture at her, and tell her to let herself out, then leave the room and never speak to her again. She, for some reason, felt like people should be mad at her, Ron most of all. But Ron didn�t get it. Briefly, Hermione wondered if being heartbroken made people smarter than they might previously have been. Ron certainly seemed different.
"When?" asked Hermione, feeling as stupid as ever she did when someone said something unexpected to one of her emotion-bearing rants.
"I realised, not long after I�d blown up in your face like that, for which I�ve to say I�m sorry, too, that I was being really too harsh on you. I mean, I was still angry, and, to tell you the truth, I still am. But I shouldn�t have yelled at you like I did," said Ron. He opened his mouth to say something more, but Hermione stopped him.
"Don�t you dare apologise to me, Ron Weasley," she said firmly. Ron shut his mouth. "You shouldn�t have to apologise. It�s not your fault."
"I know that," said Ron. "I�m not stupid or anything. But� I don�t know. I must have done something wrong, and that�s what made you not love me," he repeated, looking away shamefully. Hermione�s heart wrenched in her chest, and an ache remained like that of a pulled muscle, only magnified at least fifty times.
"No, no, no," she said, leaping out of her seat and crossing the room to him. She knelt before him and took his hands. He looked down into her eyes, probably thinking that she was completely insane, but she didn�t currently care what he thought about her sanity. She cared how he felt; she didn�t want him to hurt anymore. He was her friend.
"It was never you," Hermione said after a moment. "Never you. It was always me. You were always loving and supportive, and dare I say one of the sweetest boys in the school. You protected me from the git that Malfoy was then, and from God knows what else. And in sixth year, I may have even loved you in the smallest measure �" she paused then, and watched his surprised and somewhat hopeful reaction.
"But," she continued, with another calculated pause, "I believe quite firmly that it was something sisterly, rather than what you feel. I don�t think that I�ve ever loved you in quite the way you love me. And God knows I�m sorry. I can�t change it, though, I can only apologise, and now that I�ve done that in extremity, I just wish that you would forget me and move on. Besides, someone like me doesn�t deserve such adoration."
"Bollocks," said Ron, with the tiniest hint of a smile. "You deserve to be worshipped like a goddess."
"Yeah, right," Hermione said, rolling her eyes.
"No, really, Hermione. Some other women wouldn�t have been so intent on making me feel better," said Ron, holding her hands in his. "And I thank you." Hermione gave him a particularly lopsided sort of smile, reminding herself a little of the muggle actor, Harrison Ford.
"Well, I suppose. And you aren�t angry that I woke you up in the middle of the night?" she asked.
"Well, I was, but I think I�m willing to forgive you of that, as well," Ron replied. "Now, I suggest that you go to bed," he added as Hermione yawned widely.
"So do I," Hermione said through the tail end of the yawn, her words muffled slightly. "Goodnight." She pecked him on the cheek. "And promise me, Ron, you�ll stop beating yourself up over me." Her eyes held utter seriousness, now. Ron nodded.
"All right," he said softly. "Be good."
Hermione simply smiled, and with a final hug for her friend, she apparated. For the first time in weeks, she felt much, much better about herself.
That feeling of things finally being right in the world lasted a while longer, but under the façade of being perfectly all right, Hermione knew that the absence of and lack of contact with Severus ate at her like a particularly potent acid. She tried her best not to think of what could have happened had she simply said something, had she declared whatever feeling that that had been after they had bedded together.
She had felt an unquenchable desire to simply feel his arms around him and to huddle close to his body, not in any lascivious way, but just to be with him. In all honesty, she may very well have been feeling the beginnings of love. Damned indecision was all that had held her back, and she had let it. She had let it take away her chance.
Still, "It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live," and so she had pushed her insignificant feelings to the back of her mind. They would go away in time, she knew, or hoped, rather. If she simply ignored them then she would begin to feel better. The strategy of ignoring problems, though she had not often used it in the past, had always worked when she had decided to use it.
So, life went on at least somewhat more happily, until, one evening she glanced at the calendar and felt a proverbial slap in the face as she remembered one tiny but ever so crucial detail. She had skipped her monthly cycle.
Her first reaction was panic. She had always been sure to keep track of her periods� comings and goings. Monitoring that sort of thing was a habit that her mother had told her would come in handy in case anything was going wrong with her� womanly matters, Hermione believed was the eloquent term that mum had used.
Still, she wished so hard that she hadn�t organised everything to do with it so well, now. She wanted something like a poor memory to blame her suspicions on, to be able to say that she had just forgotten the precise date that this month�s cycle should have started. But she kept the schedule far too impeccably, and she knew that to pin anything on a bad memory now would simply be lying to herself.
Oh, God, what if I�m�?
No. She couldn�t even think about it. She didn�t want to think about it. Thoughts like that only tied a greater knot of anxiety in her abdomen, and made slimy chills creep down her arms. But she knew that if she were to handle this responsibly, she would have to at some point sort this out. First of all, she would have to make sure that it wasn�t just a false alarm. An appointment with the doctor was definitely in order. What if the tests came out positive, though? Should she owl Severus?
Well, I�ll cross that bridge when I come to it. For now, though, I�ll just have to wait.
Hermione, however, knew what choice she would have to make if she did come to that bridge. She was simply afraid of it.
Snape, instead of trying to distract himself from his problems, had, as he was wont to do, chosen to brood and debate with himself over whether he should contact Hermione. If not greatly distracted by the dunderheads he was teaching, sleeping, or eating, he would customarily attempt restlessly to read a book or, giving up on those failed attempts, stare into the flames and wish that he wasn�t so unsure of what to do when it came to emotional entanglements.
He had half a mind to write her an owl or at least something, but there was always a little voice at the back of his head that said, "You don�t want to invite more pain, and that�s all that a letter would do." Still, it was hardly proper to have this life-altering sex with such a perfect woman and then leave her cold and lonely. Of course, he, being the nonconformist that he often was, felt quite reluctant to ever interact with her again after what had happened.
Their affair, if it even had the substantiality to be called that, had been short-lived, if one did not count the years of each burying hidden and unwanted emotions for the other. They had, in a strange, non-verbal sort of way, admitted their feelings, but the subsequent chase had not been too extensive before they finally joined. And then, it was over, or at least that is what the factual mind would have concluded. But whatever this relationship was, it did not feel over.
It felt like something so much more deep and penetrating than what it seemed like it was on the surface. It felt too wonderful, despite the obvious pain of being apart, to be over, and God knew that Severus wanted to see Hermione again, to profess whatever it was he was feeling to her.
However, there was always the constant, nagging fear of rejection. He hated himself for it, and he knew that it was baseless, and he only wished he could get away from it. Nevertheless, that cursed fear blocked the only road to redemption, a formless, looming, shadowy form that he could only be rid of if he confronted it.
Several times he had tried, and several times he had failed. Not once yet had he actually sent her a note, though the amount of crumpled attempts was growing in the wastebasket that rested next to his desk.
He simply could not put the words on paper. He had to see her again, face-to-face, to tell her how he felt, but he could not put the words to ask her to meet him down any more than he could start handing out sweets in class. To actually ask something of her felt like submission, and that was not something that was necessarily in his character.
But, as Lysander had said, the course of true love never did run smooth.
Not that this was true love, mind.
Well, whatever it was, the fact that he sometimes lay awake at night thinking about it had obviously not helped his appearance much. Insomnia was a destructive companion, it seemed, as it had not done much for his health, either.
In fact, on this particularly lovely morning, he had already received two inquiries �one from Minerva, and one from Albus, the two most likely of suspects �about his well-being. He had politely denied any unhealthiness, as the last thing he needed was people being worried about him, and had taken his seat at the High Table with his usual indifference.
Mid-meal, an owl swooped low overhead with a screech and dropped a letter promptly into his lap before landing gracefully on the arm of his chair. Severus looked at the letter for a moment, and then at the owl, seeming to wonder whether that had just happened or not. He then picked up the envelope and opened it in a crisp, business-like manner, and drew out the letter. The letter was awfully short, Severus noted at first glance. His subconscious alluded shortness to insignificance, but his conscious ignored it.
As he skimmed the contents of this short letter, having recognised the small, neat print of Hermione�s writing, the colour visibly drained from his face. His subconscious, which had thought this letter insignificant, had never been more incorrect. Severus nearly dropped the letter into his porridge, he was so surprised by the letter�s message. His eyes flitted up from the letter, resting determinedly on the door.
Well, he had wanted a good reason to go see her.