Hermione sighed as she placed a pile of books on her regular table in the library. The common room was unusually noisy that day – or did it only seem that way to her? – and she'd fled to the peace and quiet of the library.

Sinking into what she'd come to think of as her chair, the bushy-haired girl realized there was a book already lying on the table and picked it up curiously. Her eyebrows rose at the title, "P.S.: I Love You", and she opened it to one of the marked pages.

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do," she read quietly to herself. "So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."

"Utter idiocy," a voice muttered poisonously from behind her, and she stiffened in her seat. "Twenty years on, the things you did will haunt you, choices you had no choice but to make following you everywhere you go. Stay in your safe harbor for as long as you can, Miss Granger, for after that, nothing will be the same again."

The rustle of fabric and the sound of sharp footsteps, and Hermione didn't have to turn around to know who had spoken to her.

That was the beginning of a strange exchange of quotes. Hermione would prepare a quote to leave at the end of each Potions essay, and when she got the essay back a retort would be scrawled sharply in red underneath it. She wasn't sure why, but she took a perverse sort of pleasure from quoting the most foolishly optimistic and up-beat things and receiving darkly scorning quotes back. It was fascinating to see what her professor would return fire with, and she found herself memorizing every single quote.

"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe."
- Albert Einstein

"No doubt exists that all women are crazy; it's only a question of degree."
- W. C. Fields

"Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain - and most fools do."
- Benjamin Franklin

His very first quote had almost deterred her – "It is better to remain silent at the risk of being thought a fool, than to talk and remove all doubt of it." - Maurice Switzer – but for some reason (foolish Gryffindor brashness, she was sure her professor would call it) she continued adding quotes to the end of her essays, and he played along.

Before she knew it, she was asking questions with her quotes – and receiving answers.

"It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not."
- André Gide

Sometimes, his quotes gave her the feeling they were, in some ways, very similar.

"The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug."
- Mark Twain

Much later, her teacher's quotes sometimes reflected things she doubted he'd ever say aloud, and those were the times she agonized most over which quote to respond with.

"Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings - always darker, emptier and simpler."
- Friedrich Nietzsche

This continued on for months, her quotes eventually being added to the end of DADA essays instead of Potions ones; sometimes it took her longer to find a suitable quote than to write the essay that preceded it. Harry and Ron never did figure out the reason why she'd sometimes make last-minute dashes to the library moaning that the conclusion to her essay wasn't perfect.

"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on."
- Robert Frost

Then the man killed Dumbledore, and Hermione found herself thrown headfirst into the war, running from Snatchers and driving herself half-crazy trying to figure out where Voldemort's Horcruxes could be. She tried to keep her thoughts away from the man with whom she had exchanged quotes.

"I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it," the double spy coughed blood as he lay dying in the Shrieking Shack, eyes closed as his body shook under the effects of poison and blood loss. Hermione whimpered and fell to her knees, rummaging violently around in her bag.

"You go ahead," she said tightly to the two young men with her, Harry looking down at her with a lost expression with a vial of Snape's memories clutched in his fist. "Go!" Hermione repeated, a tone of steel in her voice. "I'll follow once he's stabilized."

"It is said that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die," the once-smooth voice whispered hoarsely, and Hermione growled.

"You're not going to die, professor," she bit out, finally finding and pulling out her stash of potions, much depleted after their time on the run. "I won't let you."

After the end of the war she went back to complete her last year at Hogwarts, each week finding a suitable quote for the Potions professor who now wore a soft kerchief around his neck, the stark red fabric almost completely hidden under his regular black robes.

On her graduation day she, the Head Girl and Valedictorian, finished her speech by catching the dark-haired man's eye, smiling mischievously, and quoting, "You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You're on your own. And you know what you know. And you are the one who'll decide where to go." Something within her thrilled at the answering curve of his lips, a hint of dark amusement briefly lighting his face before it was smoothed away into his regular dour expression.

She went into the Ministry, then, but continued sending him a quote every week. No letter – just a quote on a slip of parchment, one owl each week. His return owl always reached her two days later.

One time they passed each other in Hogsmeade, and the small quirk of the lips he gave her in reply to her cheerful greeting had her nearly floating for the rest of the day. Few people's approval had ever mattered to her as much as his.

When he was brought to the Ministry on trumped-up charges about endangering his students, Hermione caught wind of it through the grapevine and ran the entire way to the courtroom. They probably only let her defend him in court because they hadn't thought she would defend him so thoroughly.

Afterwards, he looked at her for a long moment before bowing.

"The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him." Her voice was a whisper, unheard by anyone but him, and his gaze was deep on her. "G. K. Chesterton."

Their interactions changed slightly, then. The exchanged quotes seemed to take on an undertone, something intangible that Hermione desperately hoped she wasn't just imagining. She had memorized the G. K. Chesterton quote long before, thinking she would use it in the context of the war, but it had slipped out of her in that courtroom, and she found that she didn't regret the more intimate subtext it had acquired in that situation.

It was only when a confrontation between her and a former classmate made the newspaper that Hermione was sure she wasn't reading things into her former professor's quotes. She kept the note he sent her following that article taped to her mirror at home.

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and it may be necessary from time to time to give a stupid or misinformed beholder a black eye."
- Jim Henson

One day the expected note didn't come, and Hermione fretted all day – not that she let anyone notice. She had gotten quite good at hiding worry, during the war. But when she got home, there was a bouquet of flowers and a note in front of the door to her apartment.

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."
- H. Jackson Brown Jr.

P.S.: I Love You

Hermione turned around to find Severus Snape standing a few steps away, uncertainty hidden in his gaze, and threw herself at him with a beaming smile. Their unconventional conversation had come full circle, and as she felt her former professor's arms come up around her she silently thanked whomever had left that book on her library table all those years ago. She certainly had never expected a simple quote to change her life.