A/N: This one is for Story-Please, who wrote a depressing story about Snape getting his first real and only hug from Albus Dumbledore and it being the only one he got before his death. I couldn't stand it. ARRRRRRRRR! BOOTERANG! (Kudos to those of you who remember/know that reference.)

Beta Love: My beta is AWOL. *teardrop* so Story Please had to beta her own gift-story... What?!

Random Acts of Forgiveness

Hermione hated Divination. Maybe it was because of the crystal gazing, tea leaves, or the fact that she ended up drinking the tea leaves before she could get them to settle in the bottom of the cup. Perhaps it was that her parents taught her from the early age of five how to brew a proper cup of tea that didn't leave leaves at the bottom. Maybe it was just the fact that no matter how much time she spent staring at the stars, throwing sticks, staring into mirrors, fires, blood, aquariums, or cracking open eggs and observing where they fell she was never able to figure out what any of it meant, which left her feeling utterly stupid.

Hermione sighed with irritation while Lavender and Parvati giggled as they stared into their newly received crystal ball. They had ordered it from the rather popular magazine, Divination and You. Maybe it was the fact that two people she had very little respect for to begin with absolutely loved it. Hermione really wasn't sure. Even now, in her sixth year, after having completely shunned all things related to that odious Professor Trelawney, she hated that there was one class she couldn't get good marks in no matter how hard she tried—even it if was because it was a horrible subject.

Arithmancy, however, she got. Numbers made sense. They were complex, evolving, chock-full of meaning, if only you had the key to figure it out. Numerology and cyphering, or what Percy liked to call math-wrangling, just made more sense than staring into fire, crystals, and teacups. The number seven did not change its meaning because the sunset was purple that day. It did not transform into the face of a Grim on one day as opposed to the next. Numbers were significant and logical. Why was it that most everyone else looked at it like it was a freakish thing to enjoy in comparison to Divination? Was it because it required work?

Bollocks. Percy Weasley loved Arithmancy, even though he was currently at odds with his family. Bill was good at it as well and had even given her pointers at the last Burrow Christmas. Why then, did Ron, Harry, and just about everyone in her year think she was nutters for liking Arithmancy?

Pavarti and Lavender were giggling even more loudly than before. They stared at her for a while and then giggled again, gazing back into the crystal like it held some great answer to the universe. Hermione had enough. She stood up, put her books away, tucked her finished essays away, and left the dormitory in a huff.

She was alone, but it was preferable to the alternatives at the moment. Harry was being secretive jerk when he wasn't dancing around dating Ginny, and then there was the infuriating fact that he had suddenly transformed into Merlin's gift to their Potions class. Ron was being a serious prat and had decided to shun her because he found out she had kissed Viktor Krum a number of times, and now it seemed that everywhere she looked she either saw Lavender and Pavarti staring at her and giggling or was faced with the horrible vision of Ron and Lavender lip-locking like they were each other's oxygen. It was enough to make anyone hurl.

Hermione frowned. Walk one way, and she might run into Slytherin folks. No thank you. Walk the other way, she might run into Ron. No thanks. Walk another way, and she could walk into Gryffindors wanting help with homework and, to be honest, she really wasn't in the mood. Walking out on the green it was, then.

Arithmancy always made her feel better. Maybe it was because the numbers were calming. She summoned the equations around her head with her wand, barely aware of them swirling around her head as she walked. She built the matrix web that would allow her note fluctuations in probability, and reinforced the derivatives that strengthen the speed of calculation. Her thoughts went to Ron, and her matrix wavered, the calculations parsing into a jumble and then solidifying into an indecipherable mess. Hermione changed her thoughts, trying to clear her mind of distraction.

Despite her attraction to Ron, the numbers seemed to hate the very idea of him being mixed with her matrices, and it expressed it with an almost violent jarble of equations that led to square root of negative one… the imaginary number. Mind you, when she thought of Harry, it was only marginally better, expressing itself with real numbers, but it was not the kind of result that pointed towards compatibility as anything but friends. Perhaps it was because Hermione knew that Harry was infatuated with Ginny. The numbers however, didn't care about such things. The numbers were terribly truthful—almost painfully so. Some things the numbers did not like, and there wasn't anything Hermione could really do to rationalise them away. The numbers couldn't lie, not really, they just gave percentages of probability. Sure there was that 0.00000000052% chance something could not happen, but your odds were pretty horrible. Maybe if she had concentrated on her chances with Gilderoy Lockhart using Arithmancy, she wouldn't have been so infatuated with him, either. Then again, back then she hadn't even had her first class in Arithmancy. Perhaps many things would have changed had that been otherwise.

Hermione found her way to the isolated copse of trees that had become her semi-secret thinking place. Well, technically, Harry knew where it was, so it wasn't completely secret, but he didn't blab, and no one else ever bothered her while she was there. Hermione often retreated to the trees to think, cry over stupid things she felt she shouldn't be crying over, and organise her thoughts.

She leaned back against a tree and closed her eyes, waving her wand to bring all the equations together into forming the matrices she desired. For once, she wanted a glimpse of the truth. She wanted to know what was real. She needed to know the truth, not the rationalizations of her stupidly Ron-obsessed mind. It was going to take a while to order the numbers in just the right places. Then, when it was done, she could think of one thing and get a clear view of the truth. Truth was what she needed. Then, whatever it was, she would have take it for what it was.

Hours later, Hermione was still standing in the same place, her equations swirling around her. She felt the answer solidifying around her, waiting for the one clear thought that would trigger the solution and reveal her ultimate truth.

"Miss Granger, I hope you realise that curfew begins in five minutes," Snape's low rumble reminded from behind her. "I'm sure your Gryffindor compatriots would appreciate not losing the last remaining points your house currently has."

Hermione's eyes burst open, equations whirling around her head and slamming into her mind, bowling her over so hard she fell against the trunk of the nearby tree. Her breathing came in gasps as the glowing equations danced across her eyes like golden sand. Tears came pouring out of her eyes, and she trembled like a leaf in the wind. She stared up towards the Headmaster's office, her eyes swimming with tears. She then looked at Snape, her eyes golden with Arithmancy.

Snape scowled at her, but as the tears poured down her cheeks, he seemed unsure what to do. For once, he had not been the one to put them there. She had done nothing, yet, that was even a slight infraction of the school rules, so there was nothing that he could focus his ire upon.

Suddenly, with a sob, Hermione threw her arms around Snape's waist and grasped him in an abrupt hug.

Snape stiffened, completely taken off guard and unable to process the sensation that was going through him. Anger, indignation, and affrontation simply fell by the wayside as the young witch clung to his skinny frame as though she was drowning, and he was a life preserver. No one, not his mother, his father before he'd become a drunkard, or Lily had ever given him something so simple without some sort of reservation attached. Yet, this young, bushy-haired witch was giving something so pure and without reserve.

"M...iss Granger," he rasped, his hands curved into half-claws, frozen in his surprise.

"I forgive you," she whispered into his teaching robes. "You think no one will for what you have to do, but I will. He asks too much of you—of everyone, and you do his will asking only that no one else knows the bravery in your heart. The numbers," she breathed into his robes, "they do not lie. They do not mislead."

Hermione clung to his robes, her tears staining his black robes with dark moisture.

Slowly, with a ragged intake of breath, Snape's pale hand alighted on Hermione's head, his face twisted in a grimace of pain. He closed his eyes slowly, frozen in place.

How long they stood there, neither of them could say, but as Hermione slowly pulled away and awkwardly tried to restore the status quo for each of them, her eyes were still swirling with Arithmancy magic. "I'm sorry for doubting you, Professor." She placed something in his hands as she flushed with the rising awkwardness of the entire situation and hurried up the path back to Hogwarts Castle.

Snape flushed, and, regaining his customary sense of indignance, snapped, "Five points from Gryffindor for being out after curfew, Miss Granger."

He saw her flinch and there was hesitation in her step, but she continued up the path with a respectful, "Yes, Professor Snape. I'm sorry, Professor."

Snape stared down at the object in his hands, and his expression softened. Pure white flower petals expanded from bright orange saffron stamens. It was a spring crocus, frozen in time with an exceptionally strong stasis spell. It was a glistening, almost ethereal white even in the dimness of dusk. White, he knew, was the colour of forgiveness. He counted the petals and found nine. Six was the normal for the crocus, and suddenly he realised why Hermione had found this particular specimen special. White was the colour of forgiveness, but nine was the number for it. This one flower, a mutant perhaps, had nine petals—symbolizing true forgiveness in both colour and number. How long she had held onto it or why he did not know, but she had obviously considered it special to keep it on her person in order to have it at just the right moment.

"Fifteen points to Gryffindor, Miss Granger," Snape whispered to the white crocus in his hand. His finger gently stroked the soft petals. "For forgiveness to one who has never shown you kindness."

Fin.

A/N: Take THAT, Story-Please! ARRRGH!