Changes

[Liberty Martin]

Character: Severus Snape
Location: Forbidden Forest
Guidelines: 4+ paragraphs would be great

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Ch-ch-changes
Just gonna have to be a different man
Time may change me
But I cant trace time

So much had happened in his life. More had happened in his life, in actual fact, than most people could ever imagine happening to them. Severus Snape sighed, running a hand through his hair. Most people wouldn't have wanted to do that; Severus was well aware of the fact that his hair was far greasier than a lot of other people's, but he blamed that on his mother. Eileen Snape had always had greasy hair, Severus remembered, and, rather like the 'Snape nose', it was something that ran in the family. Yes, Severus was well aware of the fact that, even as a teenager, he had never been God's gift to women. He'd had some rude comments in his time, not only when he was a student at Hogwarts himself, usually from the same group of people (namely James Potter, Sirius Black and the rest of their gang), but also when he'd been teaching there.

Severus had never thought he'd see the day when he'd be a professor at Hogwarts. After he'd left school, he'd managed to get himself involved with the same people he'd been friends with at school, and they'd all been Death Eaters, so his fate was inevitable, really. However much he called them his friends, through all seven years of life at Hogwarts, Severus only felt like he'd had one true friend, and he'd lost her the day that he'd called her a mudblood. He hadn't meant to do it - no-one means to say hurtful things to the one person that they can call a friend - but he'd felt so cornered by Potter. It hadn't been a nice thing to do, to levitate him, and he'd been mortified. The last thing Severus had wanted was for Lily to pity him.

Trapped, he had lashed out at her simply because she was there, and he hadn't had a choice. It had been James Potter's fault, really, and the day Severus realised he would be teaching James' son had been a hard one. It had taken a lot of trust in him for Dumbledore to give him a position on the teaching staff in the first place, and now...now he had to remember the one thing he didn't want to remember above all others. The one thing he wished he'd not done. The one thing that had sealed his fate. The moment he realised what he'd done to the Potters - in particular, to Lily - Severus' faith in the Dark Lord had vanished. He'd loved Lily, he'd always loved Lily, and essentially, in one sentence, he had condemned her to death. The moment he'd lost her in their fifth year had been hard enough, but he'd built himself back up. He'd not spoken to her since then, not since she'd gone off with James, but he still felt like he'd done something terribly wrong, something that he couldn't live with.

Now here he was, thirty-seven years of age, and already he'd condemned two people to death, killed another one, with God knew how many others in line before he managed to get away from it all. This violence wasn't him - he was the scrawny boy who say beneath the trees at Hogwarts, reading books about Potions and the Dark Arts - yet he had no choice any more. Nobody really had any choice. He'd been a double agent for so long that he hardly knew which side he was fighting on anymore, and he'd convinced so many people that he was on their side, though his path was clear. No-one else knew where he was going, but he was doing it for Lily, and in a sense, Lily's son. He didn't like Harry Potter; he had too much of James in him, and the only part of him that was like Lily were his eyes...not that he'd spent any times looking in Potter's eyes. But it had taken Severus a long time to figure out which side was the right side, and he was going to disappoint a lot of people when they found out...if they found out. Severus was perfectly willing to die in this war, if it meant that the people he wanted to win, would win. He could see Lily again, then.

Lily had always been his best friend, and the day he had learned of her death, he had been devastated. Severus had never been a sociable person, and had far preferred spending hours outside with his nose in a book than making friends. Lily had been the one person he'd shared everything - well, almost everything - with, and then she'd just...gone. It wasn't right. It had placed doubt in him, not only about himself, but about the Dark Lord. He'd always said that he was faithful to the Dark Side, but then, he'd always said that he was faithful to the Order, too. Occlumency was a useful tool to have there. No-one save himself knew which side he was on. It had its complications, though, Severus wasn't denying that. He knew that half of the students at school disliked him; that Narcissa and Bellatrix still trusted him, people on both sides were doubting his loyalty to them. Of course, one side was going to be correct in that respect. Perhaps wimpishly, Severus just hoped it wouldn't get to the point where he had to say which side he was rooting for, and get himself killed, because were he to get that far, it was inevitable that there would be someone how wanted to kill him. He knew too much. Far too much.

What, then, was Severus Snape, fugitive from...well, from everyone, after what he'd done to Dumbledore, doing in the Forbidden Forest, back at Hogwarts? It was dangerous for him to be here, because of all the detectors that had been placed outside the school, and the fact that there was bound to be someone who spotted him. Maybe it was that he wanted to pay his respects to Dumbledore in a way that he hadn't been able to do previously, since it was him who, for all his sins, had killed the man. Maybe it was just that he felt something for the school that no-one had known about. Severus was a man of mystery now. Hardly anyone knew the true him, the boy who had been so lonely at Hogwarts, the man who had had conflicting loyalties, the man who had killed another for a reason other than pure cold-heartedness. He kept that from people, because he'd changed a lot over the years, and not all those changes had been for the better. Skulking through the trees was hardly the ideal situation for him, but he was on Hogwarts grounds. So unsafe, yet he'd spent so many years of his life here. It was more his home than anywhere else. Just so long as someone didn't catch him here.

[Lavender Brown]

Character: Hermione Granger
Note: I haven't played her in ages, so I apologize if I'm way off.

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When Hermione was just a little girl everything was perfect and good. Her parents treated her like a princess and gave her nearly anything that a responsible young girl could want. She never acted out or broke the rules more out of respect for her mother and father than fear of them. The Grangers, as it were, did not believe in truly punishing their daughter and even when she did do something they did not necessarily approve of, the family was more likely to sit down and talk it out than resort to yelling or violence.

Perhaps that was why Hermione had never thought to cause trouble when she first arrived at Hogwarts. She had wanted things to go as smoothly and beautifully as they had when she was a child. She had spent so much time preparing for her lessons and burying her nose in so many books that she had not realized the sheer amount of resentment that was directed toward her. She thought the world was wonderful still until that fateful day that she decided that it may be in everyone's best interest for her to defy a rule every now and again.

It had been those thoughts that plagued her mind when she had decided to take this little trip. There was truly no benefit to entering the Forbidden Forest save for the hope that perhaps some of the other creatures in its depths could be persuaded into joining the Order and its cause. So many had gone to the Death Eaters and she hoped that perhaps it was not too late to add to their force as well. It would be a short and bloody battle without the help that they so desperately needed. The order was not nearly as strong as it had been the first time around, especially not since the loss of Dumbledore and the betrayal of Professor Snape.

That particular subject was still a sore one with Hermione. As a professor, she had trusted Snape despite all of Harry's misgivings. It appeared that she had been tragically wrong about the man, however, and it hurt her to think about it. Hermione had always felt very strongly about her judgment of people and the idea that she had been so tragically wrong was too much for her to bear at times. Though she may not have been particularly fond of Professor Snape, she had in the very least, respected the man a great deal for the work that he did at the school.

The death of Professor Dumbledore was still too fresh in her mind. Hermione deftly raised a hand to wipe away the hot tears that had silently began to trickle there across her cheeks. She would not break down to the point that she had at the funeral, but there was little she could do to hold her emotions back as fully as she desired. In a very strange way, it made her a bit grateful. Mastering the ability to be so outwardly cold was nothing that interested the young brunette, even if it would likely be useful in the battles ahead.

So very lost in thought was Hermione that she did not realize she was falling until she hit the ground. Her hands took the brunt of the impact, but it certainly hurt enough to jar her from her thoughts. With a soft groan, Hermione pushed herself to her knees as her eyes flickered to the root that had been her downfall. Her palms were sore and dirty, but she appeared to be otherwise unharmed physically. As her eyes trailed across the path ahead, however, Hermione began to doubt that she would be that lucky for much longer. Of all the people in all the world, the last man she ever expected to see again was standing just meters before her.

"Professor Snape?" Hermione asked, her voice just a whisper. She hoped that she was wrong, but doubted it was so. After all, she was the brightest witch in her year and those types were very rarely wrong about anything at all.

[Liberty Martin]

This wasn't what Severus had wanted to do with his life. Who would wish to spend their time snooping around for both sides of the war, having to be careful what you told to people in the fear that they would somehow use it to work out that you weren't rooting for them at all, but were in fact a double agent, helping the right side by pretending to be on the wrong side? His life was one where he had to watch his every move; be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and it could spell disaster for him. That wasn't what he wanted - who would want that? Severus was glad to be doing his bit for the cause he knew was right, but the deception, the lies, the constant watching his back was something that he could do without. Anyone could do without that, because it wasn't pleasant. Most people just chose one side and stuck with it. Why couldn't he have done that? It would have made his life so much easier. It would have stopped him being a fugitive, and being able to seek company only in those who really knew. This life wasn't for him, but there was no way out. He'd swum in far too deep.

Severus would have been perfectly content to settle down, and spend the rest of his life passively cheering on one side or the other while spending his time reading. Reading...he'd spent so much of his youth with his nose in a book that it was hard to believe that there was anything left that he hadn't yet read, but had he the time, or the security, Severus would easily have bought the whole stock from Flourish and Blotts, and sat down reading everything from cover to cover. The money his job as a teacher in school had given him had, at long last, meant he had the freedom to buy what he wanted - starting with new, unworn robes.

But it had taken a long time to get to that point. Years at school of being teased by everyone except one about the state of his worn robes - the one person he wished he could still talk to, and missed dreadfully every day - because he'd never been able to afford new ones, the proceeding years, where he'd met up again with those older students he'd been friends with at Hogwarts, like the Lestranges, the Malfoys, Crabbe and Goyle (who were, incidentally, just as stupid as their sons, whom he'd had the dubious pleasure of trying to teach for five years), and been almost press-ganged into becoming a Death Eater.

It had been rewarding at first, Severus reminded himself, pulling back the sleeve of his robe to look down at the mark etched into his skin with a mixed feeling of revulsion and pleasure. He'd liked having some guidance at last, something to do with his life, and he'd never questioned that life, until the day Lily and James Potter were killed...especially Lily. The night he'd found out about that had been the worst one in living memory for Severus. It was that that had made him doubt everything, and seek Dumbledore out...Dumbledore, the man he'd killed. The headmaster had been the only person who hadn't questioned Severus' decision to change sides, the one who had got him out of an Azkaban sentence, the one who had fixed him up with a teaching position in school. Severus had a lot to thank Dumbledore for, but had the old man offered his trust up in vain? Only time would tell on that one.

A rustle in the trees caused Severus to realise that he was no longer alone in the Forest. Of course he wasn't alone; the Forest was home to hundreds of creatures, all of whom considered it rude of the humans to venture in, and yet were willing to offer their support somewhat to one side or another. The giants, for instance. The Dark Lord had spent ages convincing them to come over to his side, though the Dementors had needed no convincing. They were Dark, evil things, and they still made Severus' blood run cold, though he'd never been unfortunate enough to land a spell in Azkaban. However, this noise sounded far more human. Frowning, Severus guessed that it was probably a student; nasty, meddling children, who didn't realise that this world was no longer safe, and the Forbidden Forest, of all these places, was one of the least safe. There were so many places to hide, so many traps that could be set. But a lot of the students at school didn't realise this, and thought it was an adventure to go sneaking in the Fobidden Forest. This one was a Gryffindor, most likely. It was just typical Gryffindor to defy the rules.

Damn. Damn, damn, damn. It was Granger, Harry Potter's little friend. She was an astute girl, and in a way she reminded Severus of Lily; aside from the hair colour, and the fact that Lily had been about a hundred times prettier, both had been muggleborns (as Severus had reminded Lily one horrible day in their fifth year that had ruined their friendship from then on) and both were very clever. "Miss Granger," he replied with a sigh. Of course, she wasn't going to like him. Aside the fact that she was a Gryffindor, she would blame him for Dumbledore's death. Just like everyone else. It hadn't been his fault though, not really. "The forest is a very dangerous place. I wouldn't be lurking around here if I were you."

[Lavender Brown]

It had not been the wisest decision going into the forest at night. Unfortunately, there were classes to attend to and so many other things that could only be done in the light of day that Hermione really had no choice. If they had any chance of winning this war that was rushing upon them so quickly, they had to join forces with the creatures of the forest who had not declared allegiance to Voldemort.

The biggest problem that Hermione had not foreseen, however, was that she was not entirely sure which ones had not given in. So many magical creatures and beings were fearful of the general wizarding population. It was difficult for them not to be, after all, with the way that the Ministry of Magic regulated their breeding and where they could reside. Truthfully, she could understand their viewpoint completely. If someone was trying to rule her life in such strict order, Hermione doubted that she would be all too interested in keeping their world afloat when it all began to come crashing down. It was unfortunate, however, that good witches and wizards who did not support the Ministry's actions would be forced to die because of the lack of fellows in this battle.

Hermione wished that she had not decided to enter the forest alone. Ron and Harry had just been so busy and she had not taken the time to say goodbye and tell them where she was off to. If she died now, they would never truly know anything at all. Ron would never know that she really did love him despite all his stupid tendencies and Harry would not realize that she knew he really was an amazing and strong person. Now, seeing Professor Snape in front of her, Hermione wondered if perhaps it really was time. She wanted to cry, really, but could not bring herself to allow such emotions to escape her. She had almost broken down once already since entering this place and she refused to let herself show Professor Snape just how fearful she really was.

"One could say the same thing about you," Hermione said, her voice a bit shakier than she had hoped it would be. She was not sure how much time she had left, but she would not go down without a fight. Her hand was clasped around the wand she carried in her jacket pocket and she was incredibly thankful it had not broken in the fall. She would not brandish it just yet, not until the man's intentions were known. Though he had murdered Professor Dumbledore, Hermione had a very time moving past the fact that he was no longer a professor. A little piece of her deep inside said that she still needed to treat the man with respect, no matter how warped that particular idea may be. "Why would you return here?" Hermione asked, though she thought she knew the likely answer. He was most certainly an emissary from Voldemort, trying to do exactly what she herself had set out to do on this chilly, dark October night.

[Liberty Martin]

Hermione Granger was probably the last person on earth Severus wanted to see. No, that was a lie. Harry Potter was probably the last person on earth he wanted to see, with Granger and the Weasley boy coming in a close second. Either way, he was in the company of someone who would probably take great pleasure in killing him. However, he doubted that Granger, for all her know-it-all personality, really had what it took to kill someone. She was good at charms, but she was not vicious...brave...stupid...? Severus wasn't quite sure which was the right word to describe someone who had it in them to kill another human being, take away another life. Someone like him, now. He'd killed someone else. A man who had showed him forgiveness and trust.

He'd not been able to not do it though, Severus knew that. He'd been under strict orders, and to violate those would probably have led to his own demise. He had always been the sort of person who does what he is told; he'd fled from the room as a young boy when his father had come home in a drunken rage because his mother had told him to, hardly aware that it meant she would bear the brunt of his anger; he'd never broken a rule at school, except the unwritten one about the socialising of Gryffindors and Slytherins, which he had kept a secret until it no longer mattered; and he'd obeyed orders from whomever his loyalty fell to. This loyalty had changed over time, but in the end, he had been loyal, and done what he'd been ordered to. He'd always been loyal.

Severus slipped his hand inside his robe, ready to draw his wand if Granger decided that he was such an evil person, she wanted to fight him. It wouldn't be wise, for Severus' knowledge of curses far surpassed even Hermione Granger's; the only books he had read from the time he was eight or nine until well after he'd left school were books about the Dark Arts. Not defense against the Dark Arts, but the actual 'bad' magic itself. It had always intruiged him, and the moment he had found an old book of curses in the attic of their small house, he had wanted to know more curses than anyone at school, despite the fact that he was too young to be a student himself. He'd done it, too. By the time he got sorted, he knew more curses than even people like Bellatrix Lestrange.

Bella...she had never wavered from her loyalty, not like Severus. She thought she knew which side he was on...so did a lot of people. A good number of them were wrong, though, very wrong, and when - if - they ever found out that he'd been lying to them for this long, the consequences were not things Severus wanted to face. Occlumency was useful to him in that respect, but not even he could block out some of the greatest Legilimens around, not if they really wanted to get into his mind. He would just have to be careful about what he said, and more specifically to whom. Of course, Granger would tell Potter about him being here, and the boy would want to come and fight him himself. Silly boy. So much like his father; arrogant, full of himself, and willing to take on Severus Snape. Once he'd got rid of Granger, he couldn't stay here. It wouldn't be safe, and the last thing he wanted to do was get himself killed. Not now.

"I have my reasons," Severus replied coldly, "none of which I am going to share with a girl who thinks it's safe to wander the Forbidden Forest - alone - at night." He looked down at her distainfully. She was a clever girl, there was no denying that, but coming to the forest had been a bit shortsighted on her part. Not even he had done that during his school days, except once or twice in broad daylight. There was no light to read down here, after all. "You can never tell what, or who, may be in the Forest, Granger."