Discovering Hope

By: Fay_Fortchyn

Disclaimer: I don't own anything. :( It all belongs to J.K. Rowling.

Chapter 1 Unconscious Feelings

Hermione looked up from the book she'd been reading, the sentence she'd been unconsciously repeating in her head, her mind too set in the past to realize that her eyes had begun to blur with the tears she had not let fall in the days preceding the funeral. Or atleast, not in public, not like this.

Her gaze shifted to the whispering group who sat at the table not far from the chair she was sitting in. They were exchanging glances with each other, each face holding some form of sadness, despite the light conversation. None of them paid any attention to her, however, and for that Hermione was grateful.

She hastily wiped the tears from her eyes before they could betray her, and tried to listen to the conversation she'd been attempting to block out for the last half hour. Listening to the decidedly simple chatter was at least easier to bear than the thoughts that were harder to not pursue in the confines of her overactive brain.

Harry's voice penetrated the silence that she had not noticed needed to be broken. It was only a few seconds later that she realized that he was speaking to her. Her thoughts had been spiraling away yet again, and only the watchful gaze of three people stopped her incessant mind from traveling down dangerous paths.

"What?" Hermione asked, blinking dazedly for a couple seconds before focusing her gaze on her best friend.

"I asked you if you were alright," Harry said, concern showing on his face. Hermione looked from him to Ron and Ginny, whose faces mirrored his, and sighed.

"I'm fine, Harry, honestly," Hermione replied, knowing he would argue.

"Are you sure? You've been depressed ever since..." he trailed off, his unfinished sentence hanging in the air around them, stifling all thought and motion.

Hermione was the first to move, allowing her head to fall into her hands. "I think we all have been, Harry," she murmured before retreating from the otherwise deserted common room.

Tears streaked down her face, unhindered, as she lay back on her bed in her dormitory. She let them fall, forgetting that at any moment Ginny might come in and force her to talk, this time without the icy silence holding them back.

Her thoughts drifted, once again, down paths that she had been begging them not to travel since the day before, the day of the funeral and even longer, since he had died. Yet this time, she couldn't control her need to know what she didn't want to figure out. How ironic. Harry and Ron had always hated those intermittant ideas that formed in her head when she least expected it.

As it was, she couldn't figure out exactly why she was so upset by the death of Albus Dumbledore. She missed him, of course, he had been her mentor, another intelligent mind wrapped around the concepts of the constant warfare. Yet, others had known him just as well, if not better, than she herself, and they could be found tearlessly, though despairingly, trying to get on with their lives. Why was she so... different?

She knew the answer, of course, the answer that had been the reason she had tried to keep her rampant thoughts from straying too far from the well-worn path they had traveled down so many times before.

Snape.

Severus Snape.

His betrayal had caused more pain than even the death of Dumbledore could elicit in her.

Why?

Was it because she had always stood up for him, even when Harry and Ron had turned their brash anger on him, knowing that he was a Slytherin and supposedly hated them with unmatched fury?

Or was it because, deep inside, it had always been her secret solace to know that he was out there constantly risking his life, if only to ensure the continuation of the lives of the 'stubborn Gryffindors', as he so acidly put it, that infuriated him beyond meaning.

Hermione sighed, audibly battling the feeling of remorse that swept over her.

She couldn't make sense of it. Every time she zeroed in on a reasonable explanation for the way she felt, her thoughts strayed to the dark, silent form of Severus Snape as his scornful gaze swept over her in that way that always made her feel insignificant.

More importantly, why did she even care?

Who was he, a murderer and traitor, to rule over her mind day and night, encompassing her thoughts with feelings of compassion and hatred, all brought together into one tangled knot?

Hermione closed her eyes, relinquishing herself to the darkness. Even that gesture turned her thoughts to her previous Potions master, as she recalled the dark, stifling classroom in which he took residence. She let out a long breath, willing herself to forget the man who had inflicted so much sadness on those she loved.

Yet, how could she?

She had always been intrigued by him. Terrified, sure, but also intrigued, in a strange way that she had never been able to put her finger on. Somehow he seemed...alluring, almost. Each snide comment he made, each flicker of emotion that was easily hidden, each point he docked, she felt her heart reach out to him, knowing that it was her outlook he was deteriorating, yet also knowing that he did it only out of thought to his position as 'Death Eater'.

She felt sick each time she realized that he really had chosen to be Voldemort's servant, rather than the courageous man she had always assumed was hidden just beyond the surface.

How stupid could she be?

And reflecting hopefully on that was, if possible, even more stupid.

What is wrong with you, Hermione?