Chapter Text
Life was nothing like a fairytale.
If it were, his mother wouldn't have been marred by harsh bruises, and constantly weeping when she thought he wouldn't hear. He always did, his heart sinking beneath the worn floorboards.
If it were, his father wouldn't keep the world away so none would see him ranting and raving when he was deep in his cups, and how he was cruel to those closest to him, namely his wife and his son. There was no one that came to visit, there was no one that cared about any of them.
(Your father is sick," his mother whispered, as she slipped him bits of her biscuit. "He wasn't always like this –" and Severus couldn't help but think if his father were sick, when would they find a cure? Only his father wouldn't let them cast magic, and they never had enough galleons to ring the doctor.)
If it were, his nose wouldn't be long and hooked at the end, as if he were a troll.
Severus scowled at the thought and rested his temple against the cold windowpane. He heard the muffled sounds of his parents below as his father ranted and his mother begged for him to behave.
Nothing would ever change -
Until his eyes met gold.
There against the opposite side of the glass pane was a creature - no, a little girl, a sweet Fae who was hardly bigger than his hand.
Severus's breath hitched as she fluttered against the winter wind, her golden wings prettier than anything he had ever seen. They glowed in the dim light, translucent enough for him to see their tiny dips and folds.
She paused for a moment, her warm gaze meeting his. He pressed closer to the window, taking care for his feet not to touch the floorboard that creaked.
Words rose to the tip of his tongue, words that he kept still.
Are you here?
Are you real?
He held the words back as if they would send the Fae scattering away. For at that moment Severus knew that he didn't want her to leave, not as his parents' voices grew louder from down below.
Slowly Severus moved to open the window, mindful of the girl on the other side of it. She watched him intently, her dark curls framing her young face. She didn’t look much older than him, though Severus knew the Fae were never as they seemed.
‘Never tell them your name, or they can steal you away, my heart,' his mother often warned when he was younger and able to steal away into the gardens. He loved the sun and the gentle breeze and never felt as free as when he dallied in the gardens and crept to the edge of the forest.
There he would listen to the birds as they called to one another and watched as the squirrels leaped from branch to branch, and garter snakes slithered through the high grass. There were times when he dreamed that he was the same as any fox scampering through the forest or a salamander that made its home beneath fallen brush. There, he was free, more so than in the whole of his life.
He was happy.
His father had brought an end to his joy, barring the doors to the outer world.
"You may come in, if you'd like," Severus whispered, pulling the latch free. There was a gap between the pane and the glass then, one that the Fae slowly slipped through.
She was smaller than he'd first thought, Severus realized as she leaned against his hand. She was small enough for a squirrel to carry away or a bird to catch, and he felt his stomach roll at the thought of her vanishing with the harsh wind.
"Are you alright?" Severus whispered, not expecting an answer. It seemed that she understood him, though what creature wouldn't take shelter from the cold winter?
Snowflakes clung to the tip of her nose, and she sneezed making her blush. Severus started in surprise, his cheeks turning the same shade of pink as hers.
"Ah...you can use my sleeve," he suggested, and he found that he wanted to laugh when she shook her head.
(Did she think it was rude?)
She moved to climb on top of his hand, holding on to his thumb for support. It seemed she was weaker on her feet than when she flew, her wings fluttering far slower than before.
She covered her mouth as she yawned, before looking up at him with sleepy eyes. They were pools of warm, glittering honey; the kind that dripped from his spoon when he stirred it into his tea.
'Thank you,' he heard a tendril of warm magic curling around his own. 'I was caught in the storm and had nowhere to go...I was trying to find some silk string for my familiar to play with, you see, and wandered too far.'
"It's alright," Severus assured her, his magic far calmer than he had ever felt before. It was a ball of tightly wound chaos, one that often felt as if it wanted to press him into the ground. "I don't mind - at all."
At her knitted brow, Severus felt he wanted her to understand. "I'm alone here," he confessed, feeling all of his fifteen years, "Tobias - my father - he never allows anyone into the Manor. He doesn't trust any witch or wizard, or the hares in the garden. He doesn't trust anyone."
The Fae's expression turned solemn then, and Severus was still as she hugged the top of his thumb.
'I'm here.'
He felt his heart skip inside of his chest as if it were a light and silly thing.
"You are," Severus agreed, his tone far softer than it had ever been before. "Do you live in the forest?" he asked, inclining his head toward the window.
The forest had surrounded the manor for as long as the Prince family could remember. It was a mass of tangled brush and whispering leaves, and creatures that scattered throughout every acre.
'I can't tell you,' the words were tinged with regret as the Fae held on to his finger. Her words rang clear through his thoughts, carried there by their entwining magic. 'You would look for me then, Severus,' her look knowing then as she studied him. 'The court would never allow that.'
He knew that she could only mean the Fae court, one that was the subject of countless, fantastic legends. Every witch or wizard knew to fear the Fae, as the creatures delighted in wordplay and tricks, and were known to steal children away in the night, leaving a changeling in their stead.
Yet Severus found he wasn’t afraid of the Fae before him.
His magic sang with hers, a harmonious tune as they entwined together. No, Severus had little reason to fear the girl near him, as if he knew deep down, they were kindred spirits. It was a thought his father would have mocked him for, yet Severus found he cared not.
His father wouldn’t dare to laugh at them there, as afraid of magic as he was.
"You know my name," Severus murmured, his response a statement and not a question. "And my nature, it seems. Isn't it fair that I know yours?"
She seemed to agree as she flew up toward him. Hovering in front of his nose, she tapped the tip of it; the feeling the same as a feather brushing against his skin. 'My name is Hermione -'
Your truest friend.
For as Hermione confessed years later when she lay in his arms and had set aside her Fae nature for love, she had interfered as much as she could in his life. At the time, she hadn’t dared to reveal herself to him; knowing the court would never agree.
“I broke more than one law for you,” Hermione told him, her lips curving into a smile, and Severus found himself amused in turn.
She had watched from the forest as he suffered, and his mother cried and had wanted to do something for him while the others of her kind laughed. She had never quite found her place among the Fae, with their sharp tongues and narrow minds.
The boy in the window never looked foolish to her – he looked like a solemn boy, a sad boy, and Hermione found herself drawn to him. Severus (how the name danced on her tongue after she heard his mother's call!) was her most dear secret, one that she was careful not to share with the others. There was no telling what they might do, even dear Luna, who once cured her familiar's twisted ankle, and his singed whiskers.
Hermione had no family of her own, her parents a blurred memory. She was a child of the Fae court, a child with little place in the Fae world. She knew that she would never lure a child into a mushroom circle and make them dance to her will, nor could she face the idea of serving the court with blind loyalty. She knew how to be brave – oh yes, she faced toads and grasshoppers without flinching – but she faltered when it came to lost men and crying children and creatures that needed help.
Her help, no matter what others of her kind whispered, and assumed.
Closer and closer she drew to Severus, the call of his misery like nothing she had ever known before. She wanted to help him however she could, though she knew that she had little place in his world. He could easily squish her underfoot, the same as he could tear her wings from her back; an atrocity that more than one wizard had committed against the Fae.
Only Hermione thought that Severus was different, no, she knew that he was different, as she watched him tend to a bird with a broken wing, gently setting it with a spell. Severus was different from other humans that she saw, ones that had lashed out with their fists and their words, the memories of which she wanted to forget. It was the opposite with Severus, as she found she wanted to remember everything about him, from the way that he cradled his wand near, to the tune he sometimes hummed after his father was particularly cruel.
His father –
Her skin always crawled when the man came into sight (and the sheer memory of him still made it so). He was a twisted man, a cruel man, the kind that her kind would have tortured with their tricks. They wouldn’t see any value in him, as he seemed to revel in cruelty. It was beyond her comprehension, the same as when one of her peers had covered snails with buckets of salt and laughed himself sick as they twisted and burned.
(‘Sick,’ Hermione thought, ‘it was sick and wrong, the same as Tobias was.’)
The sickness repelled her the same as iron, and she wept for the poor creatures in its wake. There was more that she wanted to know, more of the world that she wanted to see, and she knew that she had chances that others never did.
Hermione knew that she could never change his father's nature nor make time reverse, but there were other things that she could do. Hermione had sent mice from the forest to scurry throughout the manor, carrying his father's galleons away to hide in places where his mother would find them, and save for their escape. Nor did she allow the meager food in their cupboards to rot, or for their milk to spoil as she cast charms that kept the flies away, and decay.
She was more than a kitchen witch too, as she whispered charms into the soil, and flowers bloomed outside the manor’s locked doors. When the breeze was gentle and the sun was bright, Hermione would sway in the wind; her wings fluttering as she waltzed outside his window, oftentimes with a hummingbird or cooing dove. It was a sight that Severus adored far more than he would ever admit to as he found himself wishing that he would be the one to ‘dance’ with her.
And as Severus began to brew potions with his mother’s old cauldron, Hermione often zipped through the forest, collecting ingredients for his potions. She knew the forests the same as she knew her name, and often returned with a bag stuffed full of ingredients. (The bag was miniature in size until she unlocked it, and it would expand to human size, with ingredients spilling from it.)
She drove herself to exhaustion and Severus found her asleep on his pillow more than once, with drool running down her chin. He would always wipe it away, before settling next to her; his hand curled near her small frame.
"I wept the first time I saw your father hurt you," Hermione whispered, when he held her against him, never wanting to let go, "I wanted to help you in any way that I could, even though it wasn't -"
She hesitated, the words faltering on her tongue. The language of man was one that she had carefully learned, and Severus helped her practice throughout the years as if she were a child.
And at the beginning, she was, as she struggled with the strange vowels and curved words.
"It was enough," Severus interrupted, trailing kisses down her jaw. She shivered at the feeling, pink emerging on her cheeks. She was a girl no longer, the same as Severus wasn’t an abused, and sorrowful little boy. "It was more than enough, Hermione."
She had done more than anyone ever had for him.
More than his mother, certainly more than his father, and the ghosts that haunted the halls of the manor. She was there, and she was his light, the only one that had never been snuffed out. For she had never left his side the night they met, always appearing when he needed her the most.
And when she needed him, his arms, and his heart opening to her in turn.
“There will never be anyone like you,” Severus whispered, nipping at her pulse. He would leave a bruise that she would cherish, a mark that made her his own. “I love you – “
I always will.