The Redemption of Severus Snape

Part 11

"I can't believe you get along with Filch," said Harry. He was sitting at a picnic table that Hagrid had set up outside of his hut. Ron sat next to him, Lindsay sat across from him, and Hermione was seated next to Lindsay. Everyone had their cups of tea. Huge rock cakes and some dainty tea biscuits were set out on an impressively large tray. They were waiting for Hagrid to emerge from his hut and join them.

"He's not so bad once you get to know him."

"Who would want to?" snorted Ron.

"I just like to get along with everyone," said Lindsay. "My mom called me a people-pleaser. Anyway, Filch is a sweetheart compared to Mr. Roberts. Did I mention him before?"

"No, you haven't," said Hermione, without lifting her head from an impressively thick Arithmancy textbook.

"He was the elderly uncle of one of my medical school classmates. He was quite ill. He had terminal cancer and needed looking after. Becca was too busy to look after him herself, so she asked me to help. We took turns checking in on him. He was a nasty piece of work. He hit people with his cane, threw things, and I'm told he even bit a few people. It took some effort, but we eventually became good friends. It's like what Hagrid says about animals, 'you have to find what calms them'. People are the same; you have to find their triggers. Mr. Roberts' trigger was literature. He had a vast knowledge of literary works. Personally, I never had much of an interest in literature, beyond what I had to read for school assignments. I was always more of hard cold facts sort of person."

"You can relate to that, can't you, Hermione?" said Harry with a wicked grin.

Lindsay blew on her hot tea a few times before continuing. "It was my night to look in on him. He was living in his library by this point. He couldn't make it up the stairs anymore..."

"That's so sad," said Hermione. Harry was politely listening. Ron looked bored.

"...I gave him his dinner, which he threw at me. I moved and it hit the pockets doors behind me and splattered onto some of his books. He became very upset and asked--well, pleaded really--that I clean them. I did, and then I gave them to him for inspection. We started talking about them, and that opened the door. I spent a lot of time with him after that. He taught me so much. I never thought that talking about books would teach me so much about people."

"I'm not sure I follow," said Hermione.

"There's a first."

"Shut up, Ron," snapped Hermione.

"When you read a book everything seems so obvious. The ink is black, the pages are white, and the words are all there in front of you. Mr. Roberts showed me that the real meaning is rarely the obvious one. There are secret meanings between the lines. Many times the writer isn't even aware of them. They're parts of the writer's subconscious that manage to escape onto the page for others to find. So books...well not so much books in general, but creative works are very much like people. The real person isn't usually the one we see, but someone deeper, someone hidden."

"You've totally lost me," said Ron.

"Why am I not surprised?" said Hermione.

"Then again, there are those people who don't hide much of anything--right, Ron?" said Lindsay with a grin, her cup of tea hovering about her lips. She took a sip and began again. "He was a living skeleton toward the end. He became so weak that he needed help with the smallest things. I remember the first time I helped him wash. He bore the indignity stoically, but I cried like hell--after I went home, of course. He was in tremendous pain, but he never complained, not once. I begged him to let me stay with him. I kept telling him how worried I was, but he just said in that very haughty way of his, 'Don't be silly, I'm going to live forever.' I checked on him one morning, on my way to class, and he was gone. He looked so peaceful; all the pain in his face was gone. I really miss him...I'm not talking too much, am I?"