A/N: This was what resulted from what has been an awfully sad, terrible day, not just in the Harry Potter-verse but in many other corners of the world...

I can't explain why it came to me like this, except that I discovered my love of writing four years ago because of actor and artist Alan Rickman, who's unforgettable performance as my favorite literary wizard inspired me to find my own creative calling. The first novel-length fic I wrote on this site was a story called Unquestionable Love, about a certain tormented professor, the swotty woman he worships, love and loss, and the power of family.

It seems fitting to return to those aspects to pay homage to him and Severus Snape, if only in a different form. Thank you, Mr Rickman, for inadvertently helping me to discover what I love: writing. You will be missed - truly, madly, deeply.

Disclaimer: Harry Potter is copyrighted and belongs to JK Rowling. I'm just playing in her sandbox. No money, just fun. Artwork is credited to SempraSeverus on DeviantArt.

The Most Beautiful Ones

By CRMediaGal

"It's the emptiest and yet the fullest of all human messages: 'Good-bye.'"

— Kurt Vonnegut

"Mummy?"

Hermione peered down at the fetching, young tot who trotted alongside her, holding rather flimsily to her guiding hand. The fading winter sunlight caught a few glints of the girl's floppy, ginger curls in its path as mother and daughter walked casually together, ignoring the brittle cold that had settled upon the air. Warming charms made for suitable companions on such meaningful strolls as this one.

"Yes, Rose?"

"Where did Mr Snape go?"

Hermione's soft smile waned. A pained expression covered her face that her five-year old didn't take note of, for she was too distracted by the covered white grounds that surrounded them. "He went to heaven, sweetie," she whispered, forcing down the lump forming at the back of her throat. Sometimes it subsided but, generally, it was always present when the grief-stricken topic of Severus Snape was raised.

"What's heaven like?" Rose asked as her wondrous eyes gazed onward, taking in the various crippling, tipping gravestones of old and remembrance tokens meant to commemorate the dead.

"It's a place we all go to when we die..."

Rose's freckled face brightened at that idea. "Like Hogwarts?"

"Yes," Hermione quickly settled on a simple answer that the girl could grasp, "like Hogwarts. Heaven can be whatever you'd like it to be, sweetie."

"Then I think that's where Mr Snape went: to a better Hogwarts in heaven!"

"I... I'd like to believe that, too, Rose."

Rose ceased walking to peer up into her mother's face, this time observing the tears that had welled up in her woeful, brown eyes. Ever since they had received the terrible news of Mr Snape's passing four days before, her mother had gone into mourning, sobbing often and breaking down at unexpected moments. There were constant signs of her tearful distress, even if Rose wasn't always present to bear witness: a flushed nose, red rims around the eyes, wet stains dripping down the cheeks...

It was far worse at night after the observant little witch was tucked into bed and thought by her mother to be sound asleep. Rose would frequently overhear the gutted cries that echoed from Hermione's bedroom; or from their warm sitting area adjacent to hers. Sometimes, Rose crept out of bed and approached her, offering Hermione a consoling hug and a kiss in the hopes that that might cheer her up. Other times, she let her mother have her cry, sensing that she didn't want to be disturbed; that the sobs were necessary.

It was a strange, new balance Rose's shrewd, five-year old senses were adapting to, and, besides, the little witch was also wrestling with her own deep sadness over Mr Snape's sudden departure from this life. She didn't know people could suddenly disappear like that; that one's heart could actually stop beating, especially his.

The strong, seemingly resilient Potions professor she had grown to love like a father figure hadn't appeared well in recent weeks, but Rose hadn't thought his more haggard appearance of late anything life-threatening. He had been paler than usual, a bit thinner and frailer, but he hadn't lost that delightful glimmer in those dark, colourless eyes, an underlying mischievousness Rose was proud to have coaxed out of the supposedly 'un-fun' wizard.

'Cancer,' her mother had gloomily sat her down and informed her when the news broke, spreading across the Wizarding world with unapologetic steam. Rose heard more peculiar words, too, such as 'incurable' and 'aggressive' tossed around after the fact, but she had made a mental point of blocking them out. She didn't know much about cancer, only that whatever it was, it had taken Mr Snape away from her and her mother, and that was horribly, grossly unfair.

Rose was now glad to be leaving the cemetery where Mr Snape's memorial service had taken place. It was quite a hike to the opposite side of the Black Lake, where, on the outskirts of the Forbidden Forest, an overgrown graveyard that was mostly covered in brush and high grass held the crypts of professors, headmasters, and headmistresses of old. Mr Snape was buried amongst them on this wintry, snow-falling day, under a tomb of stunning, though simple, white marble that Rose and her mother had chosen for him. It was fitting for their world's most unsung hero of the Wizarding Wars, who preferred the private, contented company of a swotty, bushy-haired woman and her spunky, Weasley offspring to anything more grandiose that had come his way.

"He chose us, sweetie," Hermione had told Rose several months ago, prompting her small chest to swell with pride...and love. "He adores you, you know that?"

Rose didn't require the reminder of Mr Snape's sentiments, but it was nice knowing them all the same. It sickened her now to ponder how much Mr Snape might have been suffering without her knowledge. She sensed that her mother knew more of what was happening and purposely kept this cancer stuff from her, too, and she didn't appreciate that either.

"Mummy?"

"Yes, Rose?"

"Did... Did Mr Snape tell you he was dying?"

Hermione stiffened and blinked, the severity of that question having clearly caught her off guard. "I... No, sweetie... I didn't know until... Until close to the end."

Rose turned to Hermione and released a cumbersome, lamented sigh. "I wish he would have told us sooner, Mummy."

Stricken by her daughter's words, Hermione bent down, roped her arm around Rose's shoulder and hugged her close. "I know, love; I know," she whispered gently into Rose's sweetly scented hair. "I wish he had told me sooner, too..." She tried to dodge the sore subject by adding, "But remember the last time we were all together? That was wonderful, wasn't it?"

Rose glanced away and stared off into the distance, thinking, remembering. She loved that last memory of the three of them—of her, her mother, and Mr Snape—sharing a delicious meal in their cramped kitchen at Hogwarts where, not even a week prior, their get-together had been all pleasantries, smiles, and good conversation. She recalled how Mr Snape had laughed so contentedly at her mother's antics and teasing, for she and Mr Snape used to spar with their words but, more recently, had honed their grumblings into goodhearted fun at each other's expense, and how he had smiled with such warmth and adoration whenever she or Hermione spoke. Rose had noted this particular time how Mr. Snape smiled more so with his mouth than with his eyes, and that was a rarity she hadn't often seen. He had chuckled in that quiet, restrained manner of his, sounding and looking both genuine and almost...rueful, as if he knew this tender, warmhearted exchange might be their very last as a newly-formed family.

"Yes..." came Rose's slow reply; she felt her eyes suddenly brimming with tears and turned to her mother, with a quivering lower lip. "He smiled that day, Mummy, remember? Not with his eyes, though; he actually smiled." Rose's voice drifted off as she despaired, "He had such a nice smile..."

Hermione silently concurred. She was incapable of much else, except for bringing her daughter into her fold and holding her tightly to her chest again. "He did have a wonderful smile," she choked out after a thoughtful pause, rubbing her hand up and down Rose's arm in comfort. "I'll miss that smile so very much."

"Me, too, Mummy."

Rose detested the obvious hurt and suffering she detected in her mother's trembling voice. She had really loved Mr Snape and he had made it apparent, in his own subtle, quiet way, that he loved them as well. In recent months, Rose had become convinced that she was finally going to have the family unit she had been desperately wanting since her parents' divorce.

Mr Snape had been the perfect candidate to fill the gaping hole in Rose's and Hermione's lives and, in the year the two witches had spent getting to know the stern, black-haired and black-clad professor, he had proven himself worthy. Rose felt a certain pain moulding in her chest as she reflected on how Mr Snape had so unexpectedly come into their lives, and changed her and her mother for the better.

She would never forget the kindness he had bestowed on her in those early days. He was approachable, if not a touch awkward; but, with time, the wizard's prickly sensibilities thawed, bending to Rose's and Hermione's charms. That glowering that usually accompanied the professor's presence switched to fleeting sparks of devious smirks and twinkling eyes. He tolerated them well, taking Rose on patrols with him at times—or, rather, permitting her to tag along despite his gripes and many protests—and accompanied them on frequent trips to Hogsmeade to indulge in sweet treats, a hearty dinner, or window shopping.

"I'm going to miss seeing him at the school, Mummy," Rose blurted out as they began their steady amble around the Black Lake, keeping their distance from the Giant Squid's residence. "We saw him everyday... It will be strange with him not being there anymore, won't it?"

From beside her, Hermione murmured a pained, resounding, "Yes, love, it will be strange. I'd like to think he'll come around sometimes..."

Rose's ears perked up at that, turning hopeful in a flash. "What, like Sir Headless Nick or Peeves?"

"No, sweetie..." Hermione's tone was far away. "More of a wishful feeling of his presence, I suppose."

"Oh..." Somehow, Rose felt she understood precisely what her mother meant by that, and, in silence, she wistfully yearned for it as well.

Mother and daughter fell silent for a time after that, each snivelling on occasion but otherwise allowing the hushed serenity of Hogwarts' grounds to speak for what measly words couldn't provide: relief from the gut-wrenching ache and emptiness that Severus Snape's death had engrossed on their heavy hearts.

As they reached the top of the hill that led to the school's side entrance, another hard-hitting question came to Rose; one she needed an answer to. "Mummy?" she piped up, and Hermione gave the tot her full attention.

"Yes, Rose?"

"Why do the best people, like Mr Snape, have to die?"

Hermione felt the chill in the air suck the very breath from her lungs. In an instant, she dropped to her knees, not caring how the frigid, wet snow stung, and stared longingly into her daughter's downtrodden face. Tears were leaking down the girl's rose-tinted cheeks, and Hermione wasn't aware that she had begun crying, too. She thought hard on that question, for it was an excruciating one that repeated itself over and over every moment of every single hour of the past four wretched days, and settled on another.

"When you're in a garden, sweetie, what flowers do you pick first?"

Rose contemplated her mother's subsequent question for a long, drawn out moment before answering, with sudden agonising realisation, "The most beautiful ones, Mummy."

Hermione inclined her forehead to Rose's and uttered in a shattered voice, "Exactly, my love. Exactly."

Not all that long ago, Hermione had been naive enough to think she might be fortunate enough to have her Severus for another fifty years; but his short time on earth spent with her and her daughter, which he declared the 'best part of his miserable existence', had been a blessing the three of them would have always. Always. Time wouldn't rob them of the precious memories, the sacred feelings, or the love they had spread and given to one another. Hermione was grateful that her daughter was apparently coming to the same painful, yet rewarding, conclusion.

"Mr Snape is gone," Rose spoke softly, lovingly, as she reached out to clutch Hermione's hands, "but he was the most beautiful, wasn't he, Mummy?"

To others, it would most certainly have sounded like a paradox regarding the highly unconventional physicality that had been Severus Snape; but, to Hermione and Rose, the young witch's soulful remark was perfectly suitable...and true. "Yes, Rose," Hermione ardently agreed and placed a light kiss on one of her dampened cheeks, "Mr Snape was the most beautiful of all."

A/N #2: The title and bit about flowers at the end were a play on a tribute I came across on Tumblr. It's so painful, but it's true.

God speed, Mr Rickman, and thank you for reading. Reviews are always greatly appreciated.