Work Text:
Sometimes all a person needs is a hand to hold and a heart to understand.
Severus Snape put down the greeting card and made a show of rolling his eyes. The nurse took the card from him and slipped it back into the envelope. Then she set it on the nightstand beside his bed “just in case.” His head throbbing, Snape rolled onto his side, avoiding even looking at it. What had Hermione been thinking, sending this to him?
Their letters back and forth had changed significantly over the past year. At first, they had been innocent letters from a former student to a brilliant former professor, asking about rare ingredients or potion combinations. Little bits of their lives bled through. Hermione might mention her inability to find fresh frog hearts, and the resulting frustration. Snape would write that the potion he’d brewed the day before was possibly his best accomplishment ever and he had considered submitting it to a journal. Hermione attempted to convince him to write his own potions book. Snape confessed he had always wanted to do so. Suddenly, it seemed easy to write anything in a letter to her.
And then Hermione would tell him her secret desire to have a family, not just a successful career. Snape would reassure her that she still had plenty of time for such things. Hermione said likewise about him. Snape laughed, assuming that was a joke. He’d been a murderer and a death eater. He’d been hung up on the same woman for a third of a century. He’d switched sides so many times sometimes even he wasn’t sure where he stood. No one could possibly want him.
When his entirely non-magical appendix burst, he’d thought that was the worst of all ironies. All his misdoings, all the times he’d been knee-deep in the dark arts, all the curses and even a snake attack he’d survived and it was a sharp pain in his abdomen that was his undoing. This was his punishment—a punishment well-deserved. As he lay on the streets of muggle London, listening to the traffic and far-away sirens, he was sure he would die. Then, when they put him under so that they could savagely cut him open, he was sure he would die.
Only he didn’t. When he wound up being moved from a muggle hospital to St. Mungo’s, he hadn’t expected anyone to take notice. He hadn’t expected visitors; he hadn’t received any. He hadn’t expected flowers; he hadn’t received any. He certainly hadn’t expected a sappy ‘get well soon’ card; yet, that’s what Hermione had sent.
Snape turned back over, eyeing the envelope as if he suspected it might have been dipped in a potion. Maybe some cheesy love potion from Weasley Wizard Wheezes, the chain of shops George and Lee ran. Or perhaps some euphoria-inducing potion created from the advice he’d given her in previous correspondence. Because no matter how he tried, he couldn’t take his eyes off it.
Just in case turned into an inevitability far faster than he would have liked. He reached out, picked it up, pulled the card free, and studied her message again.
“Severus?”
Snape was afraid to look up. His hand shook just a little as the words inexplicably blurred in front of his eyes.
Hermione placed a warm hand upon his. And, slowly, he dropped the card, flipped his hand over, and took hers in his.