LOOK at this beauty. Click on the picture to get to arruku’s gallery.
I read this quite a while ago and loved it. I’m currently reading it again and still love it. Even if you’re not a Snape/Hermione fan, read this. Shit, even if you’re not a Harry Potter fan, read this.
Hermione discovers a decline in wizarding genetics and what the Ministry of magic plans to do about it. The mystery she uncovers, and subsequently drags Snape into, is worse than they could ever have dreamed. Lots of government secrecy, plus several questionable (read: horrific) experiments. It’s a response to the WIKTT Marriage Law Challenge, but it’s completely off from everything you’ve ever read.
It’s not really a romance at all. It’s more of an adventure/mystery, and it’s ridiculously well-done. If you took the fanfiction/Harry Potter aspect away, this could very easily be a book sold in stores. It was written during the invasion of Iraq when America—hell, the world—was in a state of turmoil, and is, as the author puts it, “chock full of political frustration.”
It’s simply one of the best stories I’ve ever read, period, even
Playing in a Garden.
Summary: Hermione gets more than she bargained for during her routine lunch break.
Rating: M
Disclaimer: I don’t own anything here, though I desperately wish I had a Snape locked up as my personal sex mach—er, butler. Personal butler.
AN: This is a response to hpfanfictionprompts 108, in which Hermione spends her lunch break on a park bench in Central London. Of course I’ve twisted it a bit. :D Also, there is an Easter egg hidden here among three things. Brownies to those who get it.
~~~
Chicken salad on a croissant. Hermione Granger had the exact same thing for lunch every single day, Monday through Friday. The only things that varied were the chips and drinks. She took her meal in Muggle London at Kensington Gardens, preferring to get away from the Wizarding world for a few moments.
Snape/Hermione, Snape/Lily; one image, six short poems
scarlet lily: “high-souled aspirations”
Pages turn in his hands like leaves tossed by wind.
The answer’s not here. He scratches, crabbed writing
In the wide columns that frame the void.
An apt metaphor for his yearning, for her,
a puzzle unsolved, abiding, for that sure
and steadfast unfolding.
white clover: “I promise”
He mixes wormwood and asphodel garnished
With the forsaken innocence of white clover.
Beyond dreams, the only peace left to him.
For the child, he’ll temper this, knowing
Tomorrow’s dawn will rise, even when this night
Seems set to eternal haunting.
chestnut: “do me justice”
Pages turn in his hands like leaves tossed by wind.
One scroll unspools into another, and his scarlet pools
In the margins like her waving red hair.
There is no fight and yet he pushes on, for her,
Not penance or for the promised light. He marks and brews
and marks the days with chestnut and vetiver.
eglantine rose: “a wound to heal”
He’s hardest on the ones who yearn, the ones
Who follow questions like blinded horses up a path
To drink from inquiry’s bitter cup.
An unwelcome flag, her hand waves daily,
and her hair teems like sweet briar, stubborn
as her eager brow, her hungry mouth.
ivy: “dependence, endurance”
Time climbs like ivy on this unloved house,
Where nothing grows and little changes, and yet
He returns, doesn’t he, time and time again.
In the sitting room he paces, waiting, for her,
His last tie to the Order, bearer of news,
Loyal and certain as the surging tide.
gorse: “love in all seasons”
To a girl like a lily he pledged his sorry life
And paltry service, buried them in cool earth,
Expecting nothing to flower.
She blossoms in the sun, grows in dry places,
Withstands heat and fire like the rock beneath her,
And something of her blooms in all seasons.notes: I made this Snape/Hermione manip following this awesome Art Nouveau tutorial by CassiopeiaArt at DA, just because it seemed like something that might make a neat image. Then I wrote six accompanying verses based on the flowers I chose to use in the image, because that seemed like a great idea at the time. Gorse didn’t actually make it into the image, but whatever, THEMES. (Apologies for the lack of image credits - I stalled on this months ago and have lost the URLs. Hermione is portrayed by the fabulous Julia Sawalha here.)
thanks: to rebeccation for all her help.
That was the answer, really. Home was where he was. It wasn’t a place; it was a state of being. She was only at home now when she was with him, and she feared that it would always be that way, regardless of what choices were forced upon them in the future.
“
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