Say You Love Me

{2}

Besides, she was too determined to find a cure to the Hanahaki curse and too determined to live just to spite Voldemort that she couldn't even think of dying. While it might be inevitable for now, what the future held was beyond that.

There were few options she trusted, but if anything was going to heal a bloody garden in her body, it was a potion. Hermione only knew one man she trusted enough to build a potion from scratch built especially for this condition, but the problem with asking of him anything was the fact that she had not spoken to him in many years.

Damn all the other options, Hermione was going straight for a cure in hopes to keep her life and her ability to love. She'd asked Luna how long she had to make the decision on whether or not she wanted them removed in one of their letters and had been sadly informed that once she began to cough up two petals it was no longer viable. This meant Hermione had about a month to decide.

Severus Snape wasn't exactly a man just anyone talked to. In fact, few people spoke to him at all with any regularity, the few including Harry, his partner, and Minerva of all people. He preferred it that way, apparently, having moved on with his now master-free life and taking his stash of savings to go live out the rest of his days on some coast of the North Sea.

Hermione envied the peace.

It wasn't hard to find, apparation and a muggle taxi later, she was there, but she couldn't seem to push over the threshold of the gates. The place was grand, and to come to him to ask a favor after all these years... Anxiety gripped her. She didn't belong here, coming up to his wards, practically touching them and screaming to be let in so he would help her live.

Hermione wondered what she even had to live for considering Ron had dumped her out on her arse, and she couldn't exactly make Minister within the next two years, now could she? Luna told her to live for the time she had, to tell her friends and let them know, but Hermione hadn't told a single soul. She was going to live life her best life if she just shut up about it and secretly tried to figure it out on her own.

But she couldn't do that unless Severus helped her with a cure, and Hermione couldn't demand Severus Snape help her when she didn't even know him.

Well, maybe if they became friends... still, he would read her mind in an instant, pry into her intentions and find out how shallow their friendship was. Hermione felt like utter shite, her plan falling to bits and pieces right before her eyes.

With a heavy breath of the fresh sea air, Hermione decided to leave the Potions Master alone.

Of course, her decision was moot when the wards fell and she saw Severus Snape standing right before her, dressed in casual black pants and a black button-down... not exactly sea-side attire.

His eyebrows were raised in an imperialistic way that she did not care for, but she supposed that she had to explain her presence there now. Of course, that would not be easy considering she would have to lie to someone who had literally made lying his career. That, and she had no good will with this man for him to even believe her truths, let alone her lies.

"Would you care to explain your presence at my home over tea?"

Hermione snorted, surprised at the invitation considering she basically stalked him.

Having only one life left to live that consisted of only a few handfuls of months, Hermione's answer was different than if she'd come otherwise. "Sure."

"Brilliant," he agreed, opening the gate and gesturing towards the admittedly lovely cottage.

"Thank you." Her voice shook as she went forward, making up a million lies and several shields about her mind, hoping that he didn't see through either.

They were sat for tea, and the tempered wind off the coast was positively decadent on her skin. It made her lungs feel better, too, which was surprising enough. Hermione's strangeness in her chest was only occasionally, so the bliss she was feeling might just be serendipitous with the beautiful view and smell of salt-water.

The house was not the dungeon she expected either. It was open and flowed, and almost everything was a cool grey, not black. The wood was all stained a beautiful shade of grey as well, and the curtains and furniture all had a wonderful darker tint to them.

"Miss Granger?"

"Sorry, Sir," she bit out, looking back to him instead of their surroundings.

"Explain your intrusion."

Always blunt, as usual. Not that she had a casual acquaintance with him, but Harry did, and he said that he was always speaking exactly what seemed to come to mind.

"Well, originally I had come to ask for help," a half-truth- "But then I decided against it."

"What did you need help with?" Of course it would be his first question, not why she turned away or anything. And of course he could sip his bloody tea right from the scalding pot, hers was still on it's saucer steaming even in the heat.

"We are working on werewolf legislature in the ministry, attempting to loosen it once again," another truth, just not the reason she was there, "And I wanted to ask for your help on determining Wolfsbane's impact on those who chose to take it."

"I see." Severus was contrite, but seemingly pleasant other than his need to be completely transparent. "So why cower at the gate?"

"Cower?" She retorted, feeling as though her actions had been judged just a bit too harshly. "I was not cowering, I just didn't want to impose. You look like you live a very happy life alone, and me bombarding you for help was not of necessity. Besides... I could simply ask Draco."

Hermione decided that would get her out of him accepting her un-offered cry of help, and also kept her just enough in the truth realm to sound like she wasn't lying.

She was so deep in her thoughts and concerns that she almost didn't hear Severus chuckle. It was an unearthly sound, and it was so natural that she was taken. Suddenly, Hermione wanted something else from him entirely. There were a million things to learn about this man, his interest suddenly valid now that he was not the enemy or a sour professor. He was probably one of the most brilliant minds alive.

"Would you care to be friends, Professor?"

What did she have to lose? Hermione was a grown woman with a time-limit, might as well make a shite-ton worth of friends and have her funeral packed in a couple of years. Bad humor, she scolded herself, but it helped her feel better in the moment about her presence at Snape's home.

"Call me Severus," he put his tea down and stuck out a hand, surprising her once again.

Maybe the world would be full of surprises to come now that her lifespan had been shrunk so drastically and her resolution to live or find a cure completely gone.

"Call me Hermione."

They shook hands, and now that Hermione was one friend heavier, she felt a little better about life... and about maybe one day asking for his help, as long as it didn't take two years for them to be good friends. But she doubted it from what she'd gleamed of him off Harry.

And though to be able to live her life and get to know him beyond her two years, she didn't want to not be able to love. While it sounded like the favorable option, not loving anyone included the bonds of friendship with Harry she held so dearly, as well as those with her family, despite them not knowing who she was at all. It was a life Hermione couldn't consider, but two years with as much love as possible... and who knows? Maybe Ron would come back around eventually.

Or maybe she'd pluck up the courage one day to ask the man shrouded in black across from her for help, hosting her so eloquently at his beach-side cottage.