Hermione was trying to grasp everything that Luna was saying to her, to file it away into neat categories that could be studied and looked over, but there was no such luck there.

"I would say that... you have two years left to get him to love you again... or to elect for me to remove them."

The third, unwanted option hung high in the air like a threat. Luna could never, but Hermione felt like her breath was constricted nonetheless. Make Ron fall back into love with her in the next two years, get the flowers and all of her capability to love removed, or just... let herself expire and become compost to the ugly tiger lilies in her chest.

Merlin she had flowers growing in her bloody lungs.

"Luna-" Hermione choked on the words that were to come, and she had thin arms around her again.

"I know, it's an impossible choice."

"Ron isn't going to love me again!" She cried, knowing it was true. "And to not love?"

Sobs clutched at her lungs now, attempting to throttle the life inside of them, but not even that would work.

"I am so sorry, Hermione. I wish there was more I could do for you."

Attempting to compose herself, she let go of Luna and wiped at her eyes, wrapping her arms about herself, eyes shut to center the knowledge she'd gained. What a cursed time to want to know it all.

"Why haven't I heard of this curse before?"

"Oh," Luna said with mild intrigue, though she attempted not to look it. "It was outlawed in China over two-thousand years ago when a wizard used it on a muggle causing it to become folklore. It never even reached the west coast of the continent before it was buried deep in the archives. I only know about it because I speak Chinese and spent some time studying there while becoming a healer."

Hermione really hadn't talked to Luna in a while, but that was not what she was mos concerned over right now.

"Did they have any way to thwart it other than removing the flowers?" She wondered hopefully.

"Not that anyone knows of. What I think you should worry about for now, Hermione, is deciding whether or not you can live without love for the rest of your life and who did this to you. The spell has to be cast, but I can't imagine how the person got past the Ministry's strict laws against it's casting. Things like this have your wand shredded into splinters, let alone snapped in two."

She did not feel any better knowing that, or even thinking about finding someone who had bloody cursed her to die. Giving her a mission didn't distract her from the idea that she was now dying at a much more accelerated rate than before.

"Thank you, Luna," Hermione said to her friend on the brink of tears.

The other woman nodded, looking sad, but understanding that this was something Hermione would need to handle on her own from here on out.

"I'll owl you with follow-up information."

And Hermione was alone to contemplate her thoughts.

It was a few days later when she had finally saddled back up and became herself again after owling in sick to work a few days in a row. To be fair, news like that was devastating to nearly anyone who might have gotten it, but considering the brave face she would need to put on just to go to work or spend time with her all-knowing friends... she'd pulled it together faster than most.

The decision to not tell her friends had been a hard one, but Harry already knew too much and had actually died already, he needn't know that she was headed in the same direction. And Ron... well, Ron was a part of this whole thing much to Hermione's horror.

Besides, she was too determined to find a cure to the Hanahaki curse and too determined to live just to spite Voldemort that she couldn't even think of dying. While it might be inevitable for now, what the future held was beyond that.

There were few options she trusted, but if anything was going to heal a bloody garden in her body, it was a potion. Hermione only knew one man she trusted enough to build a potion from scratch built especially for this condition, but the problem with asking of him anything was the fact that she had not spoken to him in many years.

Damn all the other options, Hermione was going straight for a cure in hopes to keep her life and her ability to love. She'd asked Luna how long she had to make the decision on whether or not she wanted them removed in one of their letters and had been sadly informed that once she began to cough up two petals it was no longer viable. This meant Hermione had about a month to decide.

Severus Snape wasn't exactly a man just anyone talked to. In fact, few people spoke to him at all with any regularity, the few including Harry, his partner, and Minerva of all people. He preferred it that way, apparently, having moved on with his now master-free life and taking his stash of savings to go live out the rest of his days on some coast of the North Sea.

Hermione envied the peace.

It wasn't hard to find, apparation and a muggle taxi later, she was there, but she couldn't seem to push over the threshold of the gates. The place was grand, and to come to him to ask a favor after all these years... Anxiety gripped her. She didn't belong here, coming up to his wards, practically touching them and screaming to be let in so he would help her live.

Hermione wondered what she even had to live for considering Ron had dumped her out on her arse, and she couldn't exactly make Minister within the next two years, now could she? Luna told her to live for the time she had, to tell her friends and let them know, but Hermione hadn't told a single soul. She was going to live life her best life if she just shut up about it and secretly tried to figure it out on her own.

But she couldn't do that unless Severus helped her with a cure, and Hermione couldn't demand Severus Snape help her when she didn't even know him.

Well, maybe if they became friends... still, he would read her mind in an instant, pry into her intentions and find out how shallow their friendship was. Hermione felt like utter shite, her plan falling to bits and pieces right before her eyes.

With a heavy breath of the fresh sea air, Hermione decided to leave the Potions Master alone.

Of course, her decision was moot when the wards fell and she saw Severus Snape standing right before her, dressed in casual black pants and a black button-down... not exactly sea-side attire.

His eyebrows were raised in an imperialistic way that she did not care for, but she supposed that she had to explain her presence there now. Of course, that would not be easy considering she would have to lie to someone who had literally made lying his career. That, and she had no good will with this man for him to even believe her truths, let alone her lies.

"Would you care to explain your presence at my home over tea?"

Hermione snorted, surprised at the invitation considering she basically stalked him.

Having only one life left to live that consisted of only a few handfuls of months, Hermione's answer was different than if she'd come otherwise. "Sure."

"Brilliant," he agreed, opening the gate and gesturing towards the admittedly lovely cottage.

"Thank you." Her voice shook as she went forward, making up a million lies and several shields about her mind, hoping that he didn't see through either.

They were sat for tea, and the tempered wind off the coast was positively decadent on her skin. It made her lungs feel better, too, which was surprising enough. Hermione's strangeness in her chest was only occasionally, so the bliss she was feeling might just be serendipitous with the beautiful view and smell of salt-water.

The house was not the dungeon she expected either. It was open and flowed, and almost everything was a cool grey, not black. The wood was all stained a beautiful shade of grey as well, and the curtains and furniture all had a wonderful darker tint to them.

"Miss Granger?"

"Sorry, Sir," she bit out, looking back to him instead of their surroundings.

"Explain your intrusion."

Always blunt, as usual. Not that she had a casual acquaintance with him, but Harry did, and he said that he was always speaking exactly what seemed to come to mind.

"Well, originally I had come to ask for help," a half-truth- "But then I decided against it."

"What did you need help with?" Of course it would be his first question, not why she turned away or anything. And of course he could sip his bloody tea right from the scalding pot, hers was still on it's saucer steaming even in the heat.

"We are working on werewolf legislature in the ministry, attempting to loosen it once again," another truth, just not the reason she was there, "And I wanted to ask for your help on determining Wolfsbane's impact on those who chose to take it."

"I see." Severus was contrite, but seemingly pleasant other than his need to be completely transparent. "So why cower at the gate?"

"Cower?" She retorted, feeling as though her actions had been judged just a bit too harshly. "I was not cowering, I just didn't want to impose. You look like you live a very happy life alone, and me bombarding you for help was not of necessity. Besides... I could simply ask Draco."

Hermione decided that would get her out of him accepting her un-offered cry of help, and also kept her just enough in the truth realm to sound like she wasn't lying.

She was so deep in her thoughts and concerns that she almost didn't hear Severus chuckle. It was an unearthly sound, and it was so natural that she was taken. Suddenly, Hermione wanted something else from him entirely. There were a million things to learn about this man, his interest suddenly valid now that he was not the enemy or a sour professor. He was probably one of the most brilliant minds alive.

"Would you care to be friends, Professor?"

What did she have to lose? Hermione was a grown woman with a time-limit, might as well make a shite-ton worth of friends and have her funeral packed in a couple of years. Bad humor, she scolded herself, but it helped her feel better in the moment about her presence at Snape's home.

"Call me Severus," he put his tea down and stuck out a hand, surprising her once again.

Maybe the world would be full of surprises to come now that her lifespan had been shrunk so drastically and her resolution to live or find a cure completely gone.

"Call me Hermione."

They shook hands, and now that Hermione was one friend heavier, she felt a little better about life... and about maybe one day asking for his help, as long as it didn't take two years for them to be good friends. But she doubted it from what she'd gleamed of him off Harry.

And though to be able to live her life and get to know him beyond her two years, she didn't want to not be able to love. While it sounded like the favorable option, not loving anyone included the bonds of friendship with Harry she held so dearly, as well as those with her family, despite them not knowing who she was at all. It was a life Hermione couldn't consider, but two years with as much love as possible... and who knows? Maybe Ron would come back around eventually.

Or maybe she'd pluck up the courage one day to ask the man shrouded in black across from her for help, hosting her so eloquently at his beach-side cottage.