Hermione has come to the end of her work. She's spent far too much time on the McGonagall entry, and she'll have to rush to finish editing the forty-three new entries that have come in from the other writers by the deadline. She also has to review the older entries and decide which need updating.
Her entry on Minerva is written, but it feels unfinished. She cannot help being disappointed at not having found out what became of Minerva, although she's insisted rather adamantly to all who would listen that it wasn't important, that the life Minerva McGonagall lived up through February 1999 was quite interesting enough to merit careful examination.
She lies to Neville, telling him she needs to confirm some minor genealogical facts, and asks him to ask Hannah if she would arrange a meeting between Hermione and Perdita Abbott, Hannah's cousin's widow and Minerva's great-niece.
Several days later, Hermione receives an owl inviting her for tea at Madam Abbott's in Godric's Hollow. It is the first time Hermione has been there since the fateful trip with Harry at the end of what the wizarding history books call the Great War, which has always irked her.
The town has changed since then. Where once there were well-kept half-timbered houses and small lanes, there is now a run-down high street with shops and restaurants that are mostly shuttered.
The Abbot cottage is also run down. The paint is peeling, and the garden is overgrown with weeds. The Perdita who greets her at the door is more than a decade younger than Hermione, but her hair is shot-through with grey, and when Hermione remarks on the changes in Godric's Hollow, she says, "Oh, yes. After the war—not the last one, of course, but the Great War—it got to be quite the tourist destination, back after that book came out and they did that film. Everyone wanted to see where that snake— Oh, I'm sorry. I'm afraid I forgot that it really happened to you."
Hermione is quite used to her life story being treated like a page from a historical novel.
"It's all right," she says.
"Anyway, the property values went way up, and more wizards moved in. Then, when the economy went tits up, they moved out again, mostly, and they haven't come back."
Despite the evidence of the Abbott family's falling fortunes, their tea is served by a house-elf, the first Hermione's seen in years. When the elf has deposited the tea things and disappeared, Perdita says, almost apologetically, "She wanted to stay. The rest of her family was killed in the reprisals just before Emancipation. I tried to get her to go to Hogwarts with the others, but she wouldn't. I pay her now, of course."
Hermione gives what she hopes is a genuine-looking smile, and says, "Thank you for inviting me."
"It's my pleasure. Though I'm not sure I can tell you any more than what's in the genealogy my father did, and it's all online."
"Yes, I saw it, he was very thorough. Actually, I was wondering if you know anything about Minerva's house? Some of her papers refer to a place in Islay."
"It came to me after she was declared dead." Perdita fusses nervously with the tea cosy. "I sold it three months ago."
"Were there any papers, any diaries?"
"There were some papers, but I'm afraid I disposed of them."
At Hermione's look, she adds, "I'm sorry, but they didn't look like anything—mostly receipts, some old tax forms. She was rarely there in the last years, so I thought everything important would be at Hogwarts."
"I see."
Hermione tries to hide her frustration, but it is apparently written across her face.
"I've done something terrible, haven't I?" Perdita asks.
"No, not at all. You did what anyone would do."
"We did keep some of the furniture. The kids took most of it, but there's a writing desk in my office, if you'd like to see it."
The desk is one of those with a hundred tiny cubbies for the obsessive organiser to fill. There's a holoscreen and a hard copy of E-Auctions for Imbeciles sitting on it. For a moment, Hermione holds out a hope that she'll find some note, some crucial clue, hidden in the desk, but when she performs several Revealing spells—with Perdita's permission—nothing happens.
"There were quite a lot of books," Perdita says from behind her. "I got rid of most of them, but I kept the ones that looked like they might be valuable. They're on that shelf there."
She points to bookcase behind the desk, and Hermione steps around to have a look. There's a leather-bound Complete Works of Shakespeare, several of Dickens's more famous works, and, she smiles to see, a copy of Hogwarts: A History that looks like the edition Hermione first read when she got her Hogwarts letter.
Hermione says, "May I?"
"Be my guest."
She takes the book out and opens it to random page, which details settling of the first Mer-colony in the Black Lake. There is no marginalia, no underlined passages, as she flips through. Not that she expected there to be. Hermione would never mark a book, and she suspects that she and Minerva are—were—alike in that.
When she puts it back on the shelf, she notices The Time Machine next to it. It is very old, this copy, and the faded red cloth of the spine is cracked with wear. Something compels her to pull it out, and when she opens it, her heart begins to thud insistently in her chest. There is a piece of parchment folded between the pages. It almost slides out, but Hermione anchors it with a quick finger.
Closing the book, she says without thinking, "Can I buy these from you?"
Perdita is not expecting the question, and she hesitates before answering.
"I guess so. I don't have any emotional attachment to them, but why would you want them?"
"I collect old books, and it would mean a lot to me to have Minerva's."
The first part of the statement is a lie, but the second is not.
"I should have them appraised, I suppose," said Perdita.
"I'll give you two thousand Galleons."
Perdita bites her lip, and Hermione realises that she's come on too strong, so she softens her tone.
"I'm not trying to cheat you, honestly. I just really want the books. Tell you what: if you'll sell them to me tonight, I'll have an appraiser come look at them as soon as possible. You can choose the appraiser, and I'll pay for it. If he or she thinks I've underpaid, I'll give you the difference. If I've paid too much, you can keep it. I'll take a Wand Oath."
When Hermione gets home with her Shrunken treasure, Ron is, thankfully, out. She doesn't know how she's going to explain the sudden depletion of their Gringotts account. They can afford it, but it will mean cutting back elsewhere. Probably they'll have to skip their planned holiday in Spain.
She opens the book with trembling hands and takes out the parchment hidden in its pages. It is a letter, unsigned and undated.
If you are reading this, I am dead.
I can only hope that, when the charm on this parchment activates, the Dark Lord is dead and Potter victorious, but I must allow for the possibility that the Dark Lord has prevailed, in which case I do not wish to contemplate the circumstances under which you might be reading this.
As I write, however, I am, regrettably, still living, here, in this dimension, and I find it strangely intolerable to think that you should take a single thing I have said or done to you in the past year forward to your new life, or your death.
You suspected my true allegiance; I could see it in your face. I had to crush that hope—and this was no sudden pang of concern for your safety; it was mine with which I was concerned. I have an assignment, and I mean to complete it. Your meddling was a hindrance and a danger, and I have nipped it in the bud, have I not? Am I not Dumbledore's cleverest pupil?
And yet, that night in your quarters was the worst thing I have ever done. Or perhaps it was the best; I do not know anymore, and the terms best and worst seem to have ceased to mean anything.
What I do know is that you are the only good I have known of the world for some time, and I've never told you. Unhappy as I am, I cannot heave my heart into my mouth, as that hack you are so fond of once wrote, but in this case he is apt. In any event, I am not entirely sure I have a heart. If I do, I am certain it is black as night and you are better off for being rid of me.
Forgive me.
Her eyes are wet as she reaches the end, and she reads it again, and then again.
She has occasionally thought about what those left at Hogwarts that final year of the war had to face, and she realises that, despite Ginny's descriptions, despite all the histories she's read, she has no bloody idea. She suspects that her own hardships paled in comparison. She does not want to think about what Minerva's life was like then.
She wipes her running nose on her sleeve.
Foolish girl.
It's his voice she hears in her head, and it makes her laugh aloud.
Her eagerness to look through the other books has faded, and she decides to leave them for tomorrow. She has to reconfigure yet another Minerva in her mind. She has to conceive a new Snape, one who would care about forgiveness, who would write such a note. One who might have loved Minerva.
Was it Minerva's image he carried to his grave, even as he gave Harry memories of Lily Potter?
Did Minerva know? Or was this note his declaration?
She betrayed nothing when Harry brought Snape's body back to the makeshift morgue that the Great Hall had become. And at the hurried funeral, one of too many in the weeks that followed the end of the war, her words were professional, the expression of sorrow for a colleague, not a lover. Then again, this was Minerva. Tears and the rending of garments would not have been her way.
There are too many unanswered questions, and Hermione feels too many things.
She folds the parchment and puts it back in the book.
When Ron gets home, she's curled up on the sofa, seventy-three pages into The Time Machine.
He kisses her quickly and goes to put his broom in the shed. After he's showered and changed, he comes back downstairs and makes tea. Handing her a cup, he sits down next to her and asks, nodding at the old book, "What's this?"
She closes the book and says, "I'm afraid I've done something stupid."
~oOo~
"What the hell?" Ron asks, dropping his fork to his plate with a clatter.
The noise that has interrupted their dinner turns out to be an owl at the window. It's a large one and makes a great deal of noise. Hermione takes the parcel and looks at Ron helplessly. Owl post is so unusual these days that they don't even keep any owl treats handy. Ron cuts a bit off his lamb chop and gives it to the bird, who hoots its thanks and flutters off, leaving a mess of feathers on the windowsill.
The parcel is the size of a deck of cards, and it bears a stamp saying: Shrunk by #212. Hermione Enlarges the parcel and opens it.
Inside is a folder with a note from Perdita attached:
Dear Hermione,
My daughter found some more of Minerva's papers in a bedside cabinet. They look like old Muggle forms, but I thought I'd send them on in case you want them. If not, feel free to bin them.
Best,
Perdita
She reads it to Ron, who says, "Least she could do."
They've been tiptoeing around the subject of Hermione's recent purchase. Ron didn't say much when she told him about it—he's made a few impulse purchases over the years of their marriage, but none so large as this. But he balked when they discovered that the books were only worth about six hundred Galleons. He isn't parsimonious, but he doesn't like to feel cheated, and Hermione knows he thinks her upper-middle-class upbringing made her too cavalier about money. It was a source of minor friction early in their marriage. They've worked it out, mostly, but it's still like a tiny stone in his shoe, waiting to cause new irritation.
She takes the folder to her office and opens it.
The first paper is thin and light-pink, and Hermione immediately recognises it as a printout from an old-fashioned computer. It's been decades since she's seen one, and it makes her think of her parents. The study in their last home in England was full of these kinds of forms; her mother was an indifferent file-keeper, and her father left the business end of their dental practice largely to his wife and partner.
Royal London Hospital
Whitechapel Road
London
E1 1BB
20 3428 9650
PATIENT NAME: Smith, Stuart Thomas
NHS No.: 943-476-5919
DATE: 10/10/98
DISCHARGE INSTRUCTIONS
1. Keep wound clean and dry. Patient may bathe. A plastic bag may be placed over the dressing to prevent accidental saturation.
2. Change the dressing daily using sterile supplies.
3. A district nurse will visit every other day to change drains as necessary. The first visit is scheduled for:
12 October .
The second sheet notes that Smith, Stuart Thomas has been prescribed Tramacet and Cefixime, which Hermione recognises as a pain-killer and an antibiotic, and instructs the patient to return to the Harrow Road clinic in ten days.
There are several other papers—notes in what looks like Minerva's hand—about medications, food intake, urine output ... the kind of things with which Hermione is all too familiar.
She activates the holoscreen and runs the name "Stuart Thomas Smith" through it. Google Magic returns no entries, even when she expands the search parameters beyond 1990–2020, so she boots out of Sphinx and into Linux to access the Muggle Internet. Regular Google comes back with a list that that at first seems daunting until Hermione realises that there are only three entries for his full name.
The first two are genealogy sites that list two Stuart Thomas Smiths who lived in England, deceased in 1904 and 1889, respectively. The third leads to the personal site of an actor who invites visitors to use his avatar in films, webvision shows, interactive comics, and other projects ("No pornography!") for the bargain price of 25 Gooros per content exabyte and a two percent royalty for every Gooro of net profit. But the actor is too young to be the Stuart Smith she's looking for.
Next, she tries "Stuart T. Smith," and gets thirty-three hits. She scans the list quickly, using her wand to save each promising entry to her iSieve for later examination, when one catches her attention.
It's a scientific paper, "Safety and immunogenicity of a Menispermum-adjuvanted monovalent influenza vaccine in adults".
Menispermum is a term Hermione will never forget, as it was the subject of the most vicious of Snape's responses to one of her Potions essays. Although she'd received an "Acceptable" mark on the assignment, Snape's acid commentary in the margins said that, although she had clearly digested every bit of text on the subject of Moonseed in the Hogwarts library, she had no true understanding of its immunogenic properties. At the bottom of the paper, he had slashed, Cleverness is the refuge of an intellect terrified by its own mediocrity, reducing her to tears.
"Purchase," she says, and the holoscreen immediately spits back a request for her universal banking code. She gives it, and lets the retinal scanner confirm her identity. The Muggle account she keeps for books and other minor purchases is depleted by 200 Gooros.
A second later, the paper appears on the holoscreen.
She isn't accustomed to reading hard science, but as she looks at this paper, it dawns on her that it is about the vaccine that halted the so-called "Mystery Flu" pandemic after it had killed 35 million people, mostly Muggles and wizards with near-Muggle ancestry. It was a mystery because the H12N6 influenza virus had come from none of the usual avian or porcine reservoirs. Ron told her that the Aurors suspected an act of magical biological terrorism against Muggles and Muggle-borns, but they never traced the source. The Muggle authorities somehow managed to contain it a year after it had burned its way across the globe.
Hermione tries not to remember, but the past pushes in like an inexorable tide and fills her until there is no room for anything else.
She is back in that fucking house where she and the children had spent six weeks in quarantine. Hugo is pressed hard to her chest; she doesn't want him to see, but she forces herself to watch Rose take her last breaths, Hermione's witness and her hand the only things she can offer her sweet daughter as she slips away, out of their shared existence. Hermione's magic had been impotent as the anti-virals the Muggle doctors had pumped into her father's collapsed veins.
It is a few minutes before the past relents and she wrests herself back into the present. It is another hour before she can bring herself to look at the paper again.