Title: Bright Lights
Author: Jinni (druscilla@cox.net)
Rated: Pg13
Pairing: HG/SS
Disclaimer: All things HP belong to JK Rowling, et al. The song ‘Bright Lights’ is by Matchbox 20.
Distribution: The normal places.
Author’s Notes: Saw MB20 last night and was blown away. They’re such a wonderful band that I was inspired many times over by the depth and quality of the music.
Summary: Some things you can’t see until it gets too late. . .

~*~
// Some things in this world you just can’t change
Some things you can’t see until it gets too late //
~*~

He looked over at the desk where he’d watched her study for those last months of her seventh year. The ones during which they were together. He could remember the way she would nibble on the end of her quill between writing, the way her brow would furrow when she was thinking too hard.

He could remember the way she just –looked-, as she sat there soaking up all there was to know. Studying for all that her heart would allow.

And now that she was gone, had left with his blessings; he realized just how much that time, simply spent in her company, had meant to him.

~*~*~

Their relationship had been. . .nothing. . .when they first met. As Potions Master, and Head of Slytherin House, a First Year Gryffindor was nothing to him outside of an annoyance. Her fierce determination to be better than everyone else had only served to provide him even more excuse to grow vexed at her mere presence. That . . .and her friendship with Potter.

Severus sneered, but it faded as once again he found himself staring at the chair. Funny that it be the chair, at the desk, that remind him most of her. Not the bed, nor the bath, places they had also shared in those last months as their unexpected relationship reached its peak. It wasn’t the classroom where their first stolen kiss, over her Seventh Year Project, happened; where she blushed so prettily and he all but growled for her to get out, in fear of what she made him feel.

It had spiraled from there. Out of control, as if neither of them could or would stop it. To the point that the Headmaster had noticed and warned of discretion. Not for them to stop, just to be discreet. She was of age and could make her own decisions.

And decisions had been made. He had even helped. Sent her off to seek the fortune of knowledge out the world.

“Do not latch yourself onto an old man, Hermione,” he could remember the words all too clear. “Enjoy what life has to offer outside of these walls. Go to Academy and learn.”

Live, he’d told her. Live without him.

Live without everything they had shared.

Find someone new, he might as well have said. Don’t choose a former Death Eater out of all the wizards in the world. Find someone else.

Whether or not she heard those words, laced carefully into the speeches he gave her about making a niche for herself, she had nonetheless gone. She had taken his dismissal as just that – a dismissal.

~*~
// Baby, baby, baby
When all your love is gone
Who will save me from all I'm up against out in this world
And maybe, maybe, maybe
You'll find something that's enough to keep you
But if the bright lights don't receive you
Then you should turn yourself around and come on home //
~*~

Two long years had passed since that day when she’d walked out of his life, at his insistence. Two long years since he’d seen her smiling face, though owls were frequent. He had no one to blame but himself – as the Headmaster reminded him no less than once a month. He could have been . . .less harsh. He could have offered her reassurances that, yes, he wanted to be with her. It wouldn’t have been a lie.

But he didn’t want to chain her down. Not then and not now. She deserved to find someone outside of this school, someone that could share her love of life in ways he had grown too jaded to do.

His eyes again found that chair, where she’d last sat, nearly two years to this day, saying her tearful goodbyes. And he had nodded. No smiles. No jeers. Nothing to give her any hint one-way or the other how he felt. It was all very clinical, very detached. If emotions could be sterilized down to a mask of nothingness, that’s what he had managed.

Her latest letter sat on the desk, mocking him in its placement.

“Severus,” he whispered to himself, intoning the brief words softly. “I’m so happy. I think I’ve finally figured out what I’ve been missing . . . It’s all so clear now.”

She’d found someone new, of course. No names were named and she never came right out and said it. But he knew. He could tell. Just as he knew that slowly his heart was surely being torn asunder. There had always been the hope that she would someday find her way back to him.

And now. . .

He sighed, turning his head aside. It was almost time to sleep, though there were no classes in the morning. No, tomorrow the students would leave for the summer and he’d be free to just rest.

Sleep just seemed appropriate right now.

Perhaps he wouldn’t even dream of her tonight. Her face and limbs, so soft yet cruel, taunting him for what might have been.

~*~
// I've got a hole in me now
Yeah, I've got a scar I can talk about
She keeps a picture of me
In her apartment, in the city
Some things in this world, man, they don't make sense
Some things you don't need until they leave you
Then they're things that you miss //
~*~

He sneered at the students on the platform, watching them board the train to go back to their happy little lives. Some forever, their Seventh Year being well and done.

Just like she had done. Hermione had boarded the train, not even waving. She had gotten on and never come back, and it was all his own bloody fault.

Not that it mattered now, he supposed. She was happy – and that was all he’d wanted for her. Happiness. He’d once heard that if you loved someone you set them free, in hopes that they’d return.

Well, he’d set her free.

And now she wasn’t returning.

He watched the train pull off until it vanished into the horizon, blinking the sun from his eyes with a frown. Age and melancholy was certainly getting to him, standing about wasting time like this. There were potions to be mixed, ingredients to be catalogued. Things to do rather than wile away the time thinking about someone that he’d pushed away.

~*~
// Let that city take you in
Come on home
Let that city spit you out
Come on home
Let that city take you down, yeah
For God sakes, turn around //
~*~

“I’m not interested in talking about it,” Severus snapped, back turned to his door. The same as every year, the old man was down here to harass him about the mistakes he’d made over the years. To chide him ever so gently about how he’d let a ‘good witch’ get away because he was ‘too stubborn’.

“I didn’t come to talk.”

The knife slipped from his fingers, clattering heavily to his workbench. Bits of thinly chopped star ivy blew to the ground as he laid his hands firmly on the edges of the desk for support, scattering them in the slight wind his motions created.

“Severus? The door was unlocked. . .I’m sorry if I’m interrupting.”

Severus. His name on her tongue had always sounded like the song of an angel. And now here she was, standing rather close if he was any guess of it. And just when he’d been thinking –

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have come. . .”

He turned, glaring at her sharply. Merlin, had she changed. Even in her Seventh Year she looked nothing like the bushy haired First Year he’d so detested. And now she was even more grown. Her hair was long and straight, falling past her backside in a curtain of brown, with highlights of gold woven through it. The same chocolate brown eyes, with long, thick lashes. Her face had thinned, as had her body. But it wasn’t the thinness of ill health. This was just a maturation. She had aged only two years in the time she’d been gone, but the difference was far more than notable.

“Hermione –“

“I realized something yesterday morning,” she cut him off hurriedly, hands clasped in front of her. “I was thinking about that day that you threw me out of your life. I was thinking about everything you said and all the things you –didn’t- say. And you know what I realized? You never told me you didn’t love me. You never said that I wasn’t welcome here. Not once did you say you didn’t want to be with me.”

He drew in a breath to say something to negate the truths that she was speaking, but there was nothing. He wouldn’t deny it after this long.

“You love me.” She continued on, still in that rushed little voice that was gaining confidence as she went. “And you just wanted me to go out –there- and live. Well – damn you! It wasn’t your choice.”

He raised his eyebrows, the corner of his mouth twitching. “I’m sorry?”

“No you’re not. You never are.”

But he was, and he couldn’t tell her how much so. Or how many nights he’d wanted her to realize just what she’d only just now discovered.

“I’m moving back in,” she frowned. “And we will pick up where we left off, unless you have any more smart ‘plans’ up your sleeve?”

He shook his head, fighting back the temptation to laugh. She’d grown feisty, too, it seemed.

“Welcome home,” he said simply, opening his arms. Perhaps the saying was true, then, he pondered as she stepped into his embrace. If you love someone enough to let them go, they’ll come back to you if it was ever truly love.

~*~
// And maybe, maybe, maybe
You'll find something that's enough to keep you
But if the bright lights don't receive you
Then you should turn yourself around and come on home //

~*~The End – No Sequel – No Prequel~*~