Atonement

"Black," Severus said at the end of an Order meeting. "Can we talk?"

"Certainly," he said, sitting back down in his chair. "What is it, Snape?" He apparently had enough sense to know when not to push his longtime rival-a fact which revealed itself in the absence of insult in his response.

Snape paced back and forth in front of the fire. "You inherited the Grimmauld Place Black house, correct?"

"Yes."

"And Dumbledore is planning to use it as a meetinghouse?"

"Yes. Snape, what is it?"

"I have a girl in my orphanage," he said, choosing his words carefully. "She recently suffered a psychotic break. Bringing her back to a place where her brother lived before he died will do her more harm than good. Would it be possible for her to stay with you?"

"Me? Snape, I don't know anything about kids-"

"She's fifteen, Black. She mostly keeps to herself. You are the best person I can think of to bring her out of her shell-to get her to open up when she's not asked a direct question."

"What?"

"She'll answer any question honestly. She won't contribute to a conversation, though, and she has a very dry sense of humor that is almost nonexistent. Please, Black."

"Since you said please," he teased the younger man. "What's her name?"

"Hermione Granger."

"Hermione? Seriously? I know her-she was in the cell next to me! She's only fifteen? That would have made her twelve when she was in Azaban . . . that bastard is worse than I thought, putting a child in a maximum-security cell-"

"You're not making sense, Black."

"Sorry." He explained his and Hermione's odd relationship, created and forged unbreakably strong in prison.

***

Two hours later, I had another session with the airhead psychologist. As we drew to a close (having talked about the people I felt I had as good as killed-Cedric, Tommy, Thrasy, Haylee, Emilynn, and Rebakah, to name a few-she commented, "Hermione, what you've been doing since you were a little girl has to stop." Seeing my confusion, she explained," You continuously put yourself in situations where you are almost guaranteed to fail to remind yourself that you couldn't do anything."

"I do not!"

"You went into two Houses. You take so many classes you need a Time-Turner to do them all. You went into the Triwizard Tournament knowing you had a snowball's chance in Hell of winning. You need to stop this before you kill yourself."

"I'm not suicidal-"

"I never said you were," she said quickly. "But has it ever occurred to you that, by doing all this, you're not trying to overcome your inferiority complex? Has it occurred to you that you might be looking for something else?"

"Like what? What could I possibly have yet to find?"

"Other than a family you trust?"

"Well, yes," I admitted, embarrassed.

"How about atonement for things outside your control?"

The word echoed in my mind:

Atonement. Atonement. Atonement.

Atonement.