Haunted

His face still haunted her mind.

She remembered watching him lie on the ground, writhing in pain as the venom poured through his system. She remembered hating him, wanting nothing more than for that man to die for what he'd done to Dumbledore, to them all. She wanted him to suffer. She had refused to do anything to help him. Sure, she could have halted the venom enough so Madam Pomfrey could save him, but why would she want to? He was a murderer.

When Harry had later told her about the memories Snape had passed on to him, her heart had dropped, sorrow clutching at her stomach as she realized that she had become a murderer too. She could have done something. She could have tried to save him, but no. She let Severus Snape, a courageous, innocent man, die.

At least, that's what Hermione had thought until his body had been removed from the Shrieking Shack, a body that still had a pulse... She had shuddered to herself, thanking Merlin that Snape had possessed the foresight to realize that his pseudo-master would undoubtably betray him. She was relived to know that Snape had worked for months to create a coma-inducing spell, one that would allow his body to be almost petrified until the wizarding world could cure him.

On the one hand, a great weight had been lifted off of the young witch's shoulders. He was alive. He was in rehabilitation, and he would be for many months, but he was alive. She hadn't killed him.

But she had meant to. She had been glad that an evil presence was being taken out of this world, glad that he would get what he deserved. He would have died because of her.

And so, his face haunted her mind.

So I decided to combine two different challenges over on the HPFCF. I used pieces from the 100 Drabbles/Oneshots Challenge and the 100 Prompts. The reason I combined them was because it felt really redundant to do, more or less, the same challenge twice. I'm not just doing snippets for this; I'm going to be telling an overall story. Because of this, I needed for the prompts to fit the direction in which I wanted it to go. And so I combined the two challenges.

Something important: Severus is still alive, and the pairing says he will be with Hermione, so obviously this is not completely canon. Except for this change, I've stuck as well to canon as possible with one exception: Fred is alive as well. The hundred chapters will take place over a thirty year time span.

Anyway, I hope that you like this. The next chapter will be slightly longer and should be up fairly soon. So please, do me a favor and RER: Read it, Enjoy it, Review it... I Love it!

Lurve,

-Selene