A/N Written for the Winter round SSHG Exchange 2008 for Ianthe_Waiting, so big thanks to the mods and all participants.
Post-DH and epilogue compliant to a certain extent.
BY ANY OTHER NAME
Variations of A Theme
"For mercy has a human heart,
Pity a human face"
- The Divine Image, William Blake
PROLOGUE
Hermione was overwhelmed by the cloying scent of roses.
She looked at the ground to see that she had unknowingly crushed one under her foot. Stooping down, she picked it up and examined it in the noonday sun. The smell was powerful, reeking from the wilted flower and clinging to her hair and clothes. She'd never come across a rose with such a powerful fragrance. She delicately put it to her nose before quickly taking it away again. The scent was strong enough to be spicy and tickle her throat.
She looked around at her surroundings, the west bank of the schoolyard closest to Hogwarts castle, and then finally heavenward. The school had no gardens close to the castle, those were closer to Hagrid's and the Forbidden Forest, and she knew the groundskeeper wasn't fond of flowers (dangerous cabbages and pumpkins, maybe). The only answer, then, was up. She looked towards the sky and saw nothing. No thestral or owl that might have dropped a romantic package. Nothing.
The only answer was the school then. But again, there was nothing there. Only a lone window that overlooked the tree she was standing beside during her lunch break. And Minerva had assured her it was one of those abandoned classrooms that were currently filled with retired suits of armour and knick-knacks. Perhaps the students had taken it upon themselves to turn it into a secret trysting spot. She'd be sure to let the house ghosts know to chase their students away from there.
Hermione looked at her rose, its origins still a mystery, and tucked it into her sleeve. The smell of its petals would come to stay on her fingers for many years.
PART 1
Hermione was dreaming.
The room was dark. She turned to her right and then to her left, but still couldn't make out exactly what she was seeing. Wood paneling? Dust. Lots of dust. And it was night.
She heard a horrible gurgling and tried to make her way to the sound. It was like wading underwater, all movement and time seemed to slow down.
"Oh Merlin… "
Hermione turned a corner.
"Oh Merlin… "
Hermione had turned a corner.
There was a dark form on the floor. It was black and indistinct. There was a figure hunched over it, dark liquid dripping down from its face.
"Oh Merlin… "
Hermione had turned a corner.
The figure lifted its white face. Its mouth was open like a horrid, jagged scar. There was dark red liquid dripping from its mouth and it made a horrible gurgling noise and lurched towards her.
That face.
Hermione took a step back.
"Professor?"
Hermione's eyes snapped open.
"Professor? Are you all right?"
Hermione looked down to see little Al Potter staring back up at her. He blinked owlishly at her through his thick lenses.
"It's just… you've been in here an awful long time now… "
Hermione looked around and accidentally bumped her head against a wooden shelf. She was inside the cramped little storage room of her Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom. She had the first years this afternoon and had gone to look for dried samples of ashwinders and doxies.
"Goodness. I'm sorry, Al, go sit down. I'll be out there shortly."
Al blinked once more at her before walking back to his seat. Hermione could see through the gap in the door that most of her class had come in and sat down at their desks. She must have dozed off for a good ten minutes. Rubbing balefully at her eyes she plucked a few jars off her shelves and smoothed the front of her robes. She glanced nervously at the rose she had tied to her equipment rack. She had put the rose in her storage room in the hopes of spreading its perfume through the dust-choked closet. Looking at it now she was thinking that she had better remove it.
"Maybe you need a sick week. Take a break from everything," Ron said as he pushed a mug of tea towards her. "Biscuit?"
"No. No, thank you. I don't feel like I'm sickening for some time off. And it's only the beginning of the year."
Ron smirked as he finally sat down beside her, having cleared the kitchen top to the standard his mother had taught him. He bit into one of the biscuits he had made; he had become quite the self-sufficient bachelor, and mused on Hermione's predicament.
"But you never think you need a rest. You run yourself ragged. Minerva should have sent you packing your bags for a nice break in your parent's summer home in France."
Hermione snorted somewhat bitterly. "Minerva doesn't notice anything anymore. She's… she's gotten very old."
Ron grew quiet when he saw the uneasy expression on her face. It was hard to come to terms with their indomitable former professor's fast approaching shortcomings. It was too easy to think that she would always hold as firm as she had when they were students.
"Then throw it away."
"What?"
Ron shrugged his shoulders, his half-eaten biscuit waved nonchalantly through the air. "Throw the rose away. It's giving you bad dreams. Bin it."
Hermione laughed. "It's just a dead flower, it can't do anything."
"True, but then there would also be no harm in tossing it in the rubbish. Who knows? It might work."
"Maybe you're right."
Ron grinned and leaned over to give her a friendly kiss on the cheek. "I'm always right. Unless it comes to the contents of Hogwarts: A History."
Hermione smiled wryly and quickly drained the rest of her tea. "I have to dash now. I'm on corridor patrol tonight."
"Alrighty. By the way, who gets first turn with the kids this Christmas?"
"They were at my parents for the first couple weeks last year, so I think Molly will want to see them first this time around," Hermione said as she tied a thin scarf around her neck. Ron nodded, thinking, as he took her empty cup and placed it in the sink.
"But Harry's bringing his brood over the last couple weeks of holidays. Wouldn't it be better if we get Hugo and Rose to come over to the Burrow during then? They'd have their mates to play with."
"You're right, that sounds a better plan. Send me an owl; we have plenty of time to work it out."
"Yes, Professor," Ron said with a smirk on his face. Hermione gave him her best impression of a stern librarian before drawing her wand out from her robes' sleeve.
"Doing something special with Davina tonight?"
Ron grinned. "Dinner and dancing."
Hermione chuckled, rolling her eyes. "Ever the romantic one. I don't know where you find the energy."
"It's a lesson you'll have to pick up from me, prof. No exciting dates on your horizon?"
"Too old. Too tired. Too busy."
"And too full of excuses."
Hermione let out an affected sigh, crossing her arms against her chest. Ron merely grinned and waved goodbye as she Apparated out of his flat and to the edge of the Hogwarts grounds.
Hermione strolled down the corridor that went from Gryffindor tower to the Great Hall. It had finally hit the peaceful hours of the night, when most of the students had retired to bed and Peeves felt no one was around for it to warrant any effort on his part to cause mischief. She liked this part of patrol night best, when she could walk through the empty hallways with moonlight streaming in through the high windows of the castle. She had developed a clever little charm that was an adaptation of Muffliato, where she could hear any book of her choice recited in one of her ears. She had thought of the idea when her mother had gotten her audiobook CD's for her birthday.
She was currently listening to the biography of Morgana Le Fay. It read more like a horrid medieval romance than anything, and she chuckled inwardly to herself. Ron and Harry would tease her mercilessly if they knew her choice of light reading was yet another supposed educational tome.
Hermione turned a corner and was overwhelmed by the scent of roses.
"Oh Merlin… "
She suddenly felt as if she had slammed into a solid wall. Her ears began ringing and she felt as if her heart had done a somersault. Legs shaky, she groped about her in the dim light to fall against a pillar for support and waited for her sudden wave of vertigo to disperse.
"…oh Merlin, you will pay for these transgressions against me… "
Realizing her audio charm was still playing, Hermione irritably tapped her wand to her ear and silenced the spoken text. She had regained her composure and her dizzy spell had almost completely faded away. She looked at her surroundings in confusion. What had just happened?
There it was, the smell of roses. Hermione looked curiously at the few wooden doors dotting the stretch of hallway. They didn't lead to any classrooms, not to her knowledge. They were just closets and abandoned rooms Filch used for storage. So where was the smell coming from?
Hermione looked down at her hands and then gingerly pressed her fingertips to her nose. Her skin wept the strange, spicy scent as if she had doused then in bowls of perfume oil. Perturbed, she found she couldn't tear her hands away, her nose still searching along their familiar contours for the foreign scent.
After that one bizarre counter in the hallway, to her utmost surprise, the rose had been quiet. She thought of it as "quiet" for lack of a better word. It hung benignly in her wardrobe without ever giving her anymore strange dreams, and its scent had even dwindled to just a lingering hint of spice on her robes and in her hair. She hadn't the heart to throw it away.
Her fingertips brushed against the dry petals as she reached for a scarf. It released some of its musky bouquet into the air and she inhaled appreciatively before striding out of her chambers. She had a meeting with Minerva about what Hogwarts was going to do for the Christmas holidays. They had a larger number of students staying at the castle this year, which meant the need for more staff. Normally she wouldn't have minded, but this year she had hoped for a week off to spend with Rose and Hugo at her parents'.
And, of course, Minerva had forgotten that Hermione had been reminding her of this planned holiday since the beginning of September, and had booked her to be on duty for the entire break. Well… she'd just have to see about that, wouldn't she?
Hermione knocked on the door to the Headmistress's office. There was a muffled argument occurring on the other side of the door, and Hermione stood there puzzled. Minerva almost never got worked up about anything these days.
"Come in."
Hermione opened the door cautiously. That was an incredibly terse tone of voice from her Headmistress. She poked her head in to see Minerva scribbling away at her desk, patches of colour still warming her cheeks. A quick glance around saw an equally sour expression on the face of Dumbledore's portrait. Ahh… so they had just been in a tiff of sorts. Odd.
"Hermione, do sit down. Now, what was it you wanted to discuss with me?"
"The Winter holidays. Minerva, I had requested the Christmas week off a month ago. I was hoping you could accommodate me, I did discuss it with you previ—"
Hermione paused. Minerva was staring at her with an unfathomable expression on her face.
"Minerva?"
Minerva continued to stare, and for the first time Hermione felt uncomfortable and slightly afraid in the presence of her former mentor and beloved colleague.
"Is everything all right, Minerva?"
"What kind of perfume are you wearing?"
Hermione blinked, nonplussed. "Excuse me?"
"You have a smell of perfume on you. What is it?"
Hermione self-consciously looked down at her robes, gingerly sniffing her fingers. Was the smell really that strong?
"It's just rosewater."
"It's… " Minerva suddenly trailed off and then went redder in the face. She had just realized how strangely she had been coming off and coughed embarrassedly.
"It's lovely."
"Would you like me to come back another time? I have to do a quick patrol of Gryffindor tower anyway."
"No. Yes. I'm so sorry, Hermione, please excuse me." Minerva got up from behind her desk to retreat to one of the more private chambers within her spacious office. Hermione glanced at her concernedly, but then got up and left. Whatever that had been all about, this was not the time to press the matter.
Although, she fancied Albus' portrait had craned closer to the edge of his frame as she walked by, as if to try and smell the roses on her.
Hermione was dreaming.
She was in a dark hallway with moonlight streaming in from the high windows. There were candlesticks smoking slightly at her side, they had just been blown out.
She was wearing a gown of crushed red velvet.
"Closer… "
Hermione turned her head to see a figure at the end of the hallway. It was sprawled on the ground, only its back propped up against the wall. It was bleeding.
It was bleeding rose petals.
"Come closer… "
Unwilling, Hermione found herself drifting down the hallway. She could see moonlight, she could smell the spicy roses, she could hear the faint whistle of the figure's breathing.
Oh Merlin.
That face.
"Please… closer… "
I can't.
The crushed velvet of her gown caressed her skin and sent an unexpected chill rattling through her spine. She felt the electric tingles shoot across the expanse of her chest and back and her nipples grew taut under the material.
"Come… "
Oh Merlin.
She was in a dark hallway.
That face.
That face.
She was moving even closer to it. The moonlight was only just illuminating a part of it. She was going to move close enough to see it fully now.
That face.
The smell of roses became overwhelming and Hermione woke up.
"Mum!"
Hermione looked down and grinned, playfully slinging an arm around Hugo's shoulders and shaking him gently.
"You have to call me Professor here, Hugo. Or at least, Miss."
He wrinkled his nose. "But it sounds funny."
"Oh go on, what is it?"
"Are we going to nan's for Christmas? Only, Al was saying how he and Lily and James were going to be at the Burrow for some of the holidays—"
Hermione sighed gustily, playfully swinging his arm to and fro. "Still working on that, but don't worry. I'll make sure you get to see them, I'm just not sure when yet."
Hugo, the one out of her small brood who was unabashedly affectionate and unaffected by embarrassment (whereas Rose would go screaming in the other direction if Hermione so much as tried to speak to her in school), buried his face into the sleeve of her robes.
"Get on with you, don't you have Herbology right now?"
Hugo inhaled deeply, his warm breath stirring the material of her robes. "Mmm, mummy, you smell good."
Hermione lifted her sleeve and sniffed, suddenly overwhelmed with the scent of roses.
Hermione was wearing a beautiful dress made of crushed red velvet.
Wait… she'd been here before.
Hermione turned her head to see the end of the dark hallway. There was moonlight streaming in from the windows. The candles at her sides had just been blown out. The smoke rose from them in feathery plumes.
The figure at the end of the corridor was hunched into itself, refusing to look up. She moved slowly towards it. It felt as if she were underwater.
The figure turned its face, the movement looking as if the shadows themselves had shifted. It made no move to beckon to her. She came regardless.
It was bleeding roses.
It clutched its stomach and from out between its fingertips slipped rose petals. Liquid rose petals. Splattering onto the ground.
Hermione found herself kneeling and then winding herself into the figure's lap, arms embracing it. It kept its face hidden in the shadow, looking at her accusingly through the darkness. Her hands crept around it until she was holding on more tightly.
It opened its mouth and out fell roses.
Hermione felt an unexpected chill rattle through her spine. The shiver sent electric sparks shooting across the expanse of her skin and she arched into it.
Oh Merlin.
She gasped, shivering against it and breathing a silent prayer. The smell of roses was overwhelming, the spice causing her head to spin.
She whispered, "I'm here," and then woke with an embarrassed slickness between her thighs.
TBC