Snape

Chapter Ten: SNAPE

Snape would have been amused at the look of shock on Poppy Pomfrey's face when he stepped through the floo into the infirmary if it hadn't been directed at him. Actually, it wasn't the shock that bothered him so much as the latent suspicion behind it. It wasn't as if he had never arrived at the infirmary before (though granted, not usually by green flames) cradling a student in his arms – Dennis Creevey immediately came to mind.

'Severus...is that – is that Hermione Granger?' she finally managed to stutter out.

'I see your powers of observation are as astute as ever,' Snape replied sarcastically. 'And before you ask, no, I did not kidnap her.'

Poppy had the grace to flush, and smoothed the smock of her uniform nervously with the palms of her hands. 'What is she doing here?'

Snape ignored her for a moment, gently placing Hermione on an empty bed before turning back to face the older woman. 'She's coming back to Hogwarts. Albus and your sister are just finalizing the details now.' His hand reached behind him of his own accord, touching Hermione's arm almost as if to reassure himself she was still there, 'She's trapped in her mind, Poppy.'

The medi-witch started at this, stepping closer to the bed to look down at the overly-thin girl lying so silently on it. 'That's impossible. Albus tried....'

'I know what Albus tried,' Snape interrupted. 'But she is there. I've spoken with her.'

'And she's been...aware...this entire time?' Poppy inquired shakily. 'What a nightmare.'

'Indeed,' the potions master turned his back on her to look at the girl, 'I need to go and arrange for a suite of rooms to be set up for her and your sister. Can you stay with her, Poppy, please? I don't want her to think she's been abandoned again.'

His voice was soft as he said this, a tone of remorse to it that Poppy had never heard before.

'Abandoned... again?'

Snape crossed his arms, his posture straight and stuff under the white shirt he was wearing. 'She thought I had forgotten about her when I stopped visiting after the Creevey accident,' he replied, the gentle tones of before replaced with his normal coolness. His pale jaw clenched as if to elaborate on that fact, but the moment passed in silence, and he turned back to the medi-witch with a familiar glare. 'She can see you if you stay within her line of vision, and she can hear everything you say to her. If you need to leave before I get back, please let her know.'

'Of course, Severus,' Poppy stuttered, allowing a little of the surprise she felt to show on her face.

Snape didn't smile at her, but he did nod his head in a far more courteous manner than Poppy had ever seen from him. 'Thank you.'

Turning once again to face the young woman on the bed, he leaned over until he was looking directly into her eyes and allowed himself to fall through into her mind.

He found himself back in the potion's lab. Miraculously, the scenery was much changed from he last remembered seeing. All traces of dust and crumbling mortar were gone. The stone floor was clean, and tall windows with crimson curtains were thrown back to let in the generous sunlight. He noted the addition of the windows with a smirk and turned his attention to the woman hunched over a very familiar, large oak desk.

She had managed to replicate the desk in his office almost perfectly, down to the detailed molding and tarnished knobs on the drawers. He felt himself at once touched that she would choose to create something of his in her mind, and at the same time stunned by her ability to do such a thing. Her quill made a final pass across the piece of parchment in front of her before her eyed lifted to his, a warm smile on her face that made him suck in his breath.

'Hermione.'

'I have to leave you here for a bit. I promise I'll be back.'

Hermione's smile widened at that, 'I have ears, you know. I heard what you said to Poppy.'

'Still, I didn't want to just leave you again without letting you know.' He stepped closer to her side to look down at the strewn arrangement of parchment. 'What are you doing?'

Hermione motioned him forward until he was bent over her shoulder, and showed him the page she had been writing on when he arrived, 'I thought I'd start making an account of everything I remember about the curse. I'd done it before, but... I can't find the scroll. I think I might have destroyed it when you said you weren't coming back.'

Snape flinched, 'Hermione, I'm - '

The young witch cut him off, 'You didn't know. How could you? The important thing is... you're here now.'

Severus found he couldn't respond to that. Instead, he breathed in her scent, allowing it to wash over his senses, watching with interest as she leaned back slightly and tipped her face up towards his, before he pulled away quickly. He could feel the heat of her permeating through him and marveled that this girl – this woman – seemed to revel in his presence. No one had ever done so before.

'I'll be back soon,' he murmured, disengaging from her mind with regret. He hated leaving her.

~~~~~~~

It was a simple matter to see to organizing the suite of rooms Albus had indicated could be used for Hermione and Nettie. He did nothing, really, other than relay the instructions to the house elves and supervise their normally efficient work as they bustled about making the rooms habitable. Hermione would only be two doors down from his own suite, which pleased Severus rather more than he thought it should.

He still had a hard time believing Hermione was actually alive inside her mind. He had expected, when he had rushed to St. Mungo's in a panic, he would find nothing except her empty body. It had been a shock when he had actually found her.

He could still remember the feel of her, collapsing in his arms and crying when he had found her amidst the destruction of her mind, sitting in a reasonable – if rotted – facsimile of his potions classroom.

He had never seen a more beautiful woman. The depth of feelings which had rushed to the fore in that encounter had taken him aback. He had known, of course, after much drunken rumination and many nights spent dreaming of her, that he had come to care for the girl. How it had happened, he could not explain – it was not as if he knew her, not really. She had always been just a student to him prior to the curse – a bushy-haired, know-it-all girl who irritated him with her persistence and insatiable curiosity and her unexplainable friendship with Weasley and the Boy-Who-Lived-to-Drive-Him-Insane.

After she had been hit by Malfoy's curse, things had changed. Why they had, or even how they could, considering she was in a coma, was beyond his understanding. By all rights, the memories he had of her should have remained those of the irritating little girl. Instead, the images most prominent in his mind had been the brave girl battling to his side to protect him even as he helped her friend; the brilliant girl who had thrown herself into his arms and taken a curse meant for him; the frail beauty who's hair had grown under his fingers, clinging to them like a thousand silken kisses on his first visit to St. Mungo's. It was as if he had only begun to see her for the first time during that fateful final battle.

In turn, those memories had been surpassed by his dreams of her smiling at him with that impudent mouth of hers, sitting on the arm of his chair and leaning over him as he tried to read, running her fingers through his hair and massaging his scalp after a hard day of classes. It was those dreams – the visions of the little things that could make a relationship – that had made him fall in love with her.

They were visions and images of a life he had never thought would ever be his and had long denied he even desired.

Seeing Hermione so close to death had finally forced him to admit that he did, indeed, love her. He had known at that precise moment that all his denials were for nothing; without her he could never be whole. She might have been hit by a curse meant for him, but his life – stretching empty and lonely without her in it – was a curse in and of itself. And even if it meant staying by her motionless side until the day he died, then so be it – they would be alone, together, for all eternity. A fitting fate for a man like him.

He remembered her voice after he found her, 'gods...I feel your hand on my hair...', and the way his hands had gripped her shoulders, caressing the soft skin of her neck before traveling up to cup her face.

She told him that she needed him – him – Severus Snape. In her delirious state she'd stated simply and explicitly that she wanted his touch, wanted his kisses, and he had been hard pressed not to comply, even though she hadn't believed at the time he was really there. He wondered, now that she knew his forays into her mind were real, if those feelings would change out of shame.

When Potter had yanked him away from her and punched him in the face, Severus had wanted to kill the younger man. He had been so engrossed in Hermione that the sudden feeling of his consciousness spinning out of her mind had been disorienting. She had finally started to believe him and Potter was determined to destroy what few fragile truths he had managed to build. He had been afraid that his scant progress would be undone by his sudden disappearance – she would never trust him again.

But, she had. Somehow, when he had been allowed to reenter her mind he had felt her reach out and grab him, yanking him to her. She had been waiting for him just behind those eyes of hers, in the foyer he had found himself in the first time he had been there. However, the cobwebs and dust had been removed and the darkness had been replaced by a radiant light which seemed to be emanating from Hermione herself. The only other item in the foyer was a black board, covered in her tiny round writing and a large, overstuffed armchair in a hideous red velour which she immediately pushed him into.

Before he could recover himself, she conjured a bucket of icy water and a clean linen cloth and began to gently clean his face. He didn't realize until then that his nose was bleeding.

'Harry is a great bloody prat,' she'd muttered, as she held the cool cloth under his nose. 'If he ever does that to you again, you have my permission to hex his balls off!'

'I didn't realize I needed your permission,' Snape had responded, but his voice had taken on a teasing tone to it. He almost didn't recognize it as his own.

'I can't believe he punched you, the idiot.'

'He was just trying to protect you,' Snape replied, 'I would have done the same thing, had our situation been reversed.'

Hermione had gaped at him. 'Are you defending him?' her voice was incredulous. 'Any one with eyes could see you weren't hurting me. Tell him if he can't control his temper to get the hell out of my room.'

Snape grunted. She continued to fuss over him a few moments more, and he was oddly content to let her do so. Every so often, he could feel her hair slide over his hand or his shoulder as she mended his nose, or the gentle brush of her arms against his chest. He had never felt so content.

When she was done she'd gently run her index and forefinger down either side of the bridge, 'At least he didn't break it.'

'How could you tell?' Snape had drolled, and had a hard time not smiling at her when she started to laugh.

When she finally stopped, she had thrown her arms around his neck. 'I'm so glad you're here.'

He'd allowed himself to lean into her, savoring the feel of her arms around him and her body pressed against his. But as propriety began to rear its ugly head once again, he'd pulled away from her. 'I can't stay here much longer – Albus and Potter are waiting for me to prove you exist.'

'Yes Horton,' she'd grinned at his confusion. 'Well, Albus offered me several lemon drops. I would love to have taken one, as much as I detest them, just to be able to see the look on his face, but I couldn't make him hear me.'

'How original of him,' Snape had muttered, burying his disappointment.

'I've also been wondering,' Hermione continued, 'why it is you can enter my mind and Professor Dumbledore can't. I'd written down a lot of my memories and did a fair amount of research with my limited resources before, well – before. I remember that Malfoy's curse hit me in the back, but I could see some of it slid around me to touch you as well. I didn't think anything of it when I recalled that because you obviously weren't affected, but maybe that's why you can come here now. Something about the curse touched you too.'

Severus had felt a swell of admiration for her intuitive thinking, even though she'd spent probably the last two weeks on the edge of insanity. Her turnaround and ability to think objectively regardless of emotional stress had been enough to make him want to smile. However, that likely would have lead to either more hysterics or more hugging, neither of which he'd felt very comfortable with at the time, so instead he'd merely lifted an eyebrow.

'Anything else?'

She nodded, and assessed him quietly, 'He said he hoped I was really here, for your sake. He seems to think you may... care, about me, and he didn't think you would handle it very well at all if it was determined you were just making me up, or if I died.'

Snape hadn't said anything to that, just looked at her intently as she colored slightly and bit her lip.

'Well, do you?' she'd finally asked.

'Do I what?' he prevaricated.

'Do you care for me?'

He had sighed, 'That depends on whether you want me to or not, Hermione.'

She'd frowned at that, 'If you have feelings for me, they'd be there no matter what I said.'

'I would not burden you with my – feelings – if I felt you didn't share them.' He had winced as he said this, realizing how distant he sounded, but she had just smiled at him.

'Did you know that I always thought your best visits were the ones where you told me things about your day and stroked my hair?' Her eyes softened as she spoke and she leaned into him. 'I remember, one time you actually traced my cheek with your fingers. It made me feel so alive and so – I don't know – but for hours after you left, I could still feel the heat of your hand.'

As she spoke, her own hand had lifted up to lightly cupped the side of his face. She allowed her thumb to run softly from the edge of his nose and trace across his eye socket. He could hear the slight rasp of his stubble against the smooth skin of her palm even as he tipped his head into it, yearning for more. Snape felt the sizzle to his toes.

Her eyes had been glowing. 'Do you feel it, Severus? Do you feel the magic when I touch you? That's what you do to me. No one else has ever touched me like this. No one else ever will.'

Snape had shuddered and lifted his own hand to grip her wrist. The skin around it was soft and he had felt her blood coursing through the pulse point, a poignant reminder that she was alive despite everything. He'd held her hand steady, open against his cheek and turned his face into it, kissing the skin of her palm before opening his mouth slightly and biting the fleshy mound.

He was acting purely on instinct, with a gentleness he had never known he could feel. Each sweet exhalation from Hermione's mouth, each succulent hitch of her breath as he nuzzled her palm, made his blood heat, running through him like molten lava.

'You're magic, Hermione.' His voice had been heavy, rasping with emotion and a thick, rich chocolate desire. 'I will never leave you.'

'I will never let you,' she'd replied, but her words had burned like a vow, seeming to glow in the air around them. 'Now that I know....you've saved me, Severus.'

'Not yet I haven't, but I will,' he'd let go of her hand and pulled regretfully away from her.

'I have to go. Albus and Harry... I promise I'll be back soon.'

He'd looked at her for a moment more, burning the image of her standing before him, face slightly flushed and hand hanging in mid-air as if still caressing his face, before allowing himself the slightest of smiles and vanishing.

~~~~~~~

'Professor Snapes, we'se done sir,' the high-pitched voice of one of the house elves broke through his reverie. Shaking the mental fog that had encompassed him, Snape looked around the large suite, inspecting the bedrooms and the main sitting area.

'This will do,' he agreed.

The elf smiled at him timidly, twisting its ear – Snape could never tell their gender at first glance – before it asked in a frightened whisper, 'It true Missuz Hermione is backs, sir? She won't try to makes us wear clothes, will she?'

'Not right away, at least,' Snape muttered, watching as the little elf disappeared with a frightened pop, crying, 'Noddy doesn't likes socks, no he doesn't.'

Smirking, he grabbed a pinch of floo powder and threw it into the fireplace, muttering 'infirmary' as he followed it. He wasn't surprised to see Dumbledore and Nettie had finally arrived, Potter in tow.

'Severus – is Hermione and Nettie's suite ready?' Albus greeted, eyes twinkling as the younger man fastidiously flicked at the ash on his shoulders.

'Just finished, Albus,' Severus replied, barely noticing any of the people in the room as he looked at Hermione. She was almost restored to her full physical health, and the change was breathtaking. He reluctantly tore his gaze away when he heard Potter's petulant tone.

'I still don't see why she needs to be in the dungeons.'

'Because it will keep her from becoming a curiosity,' Albus replied. 'She won't be bothered down there by students wanting a look at the famous Hermione Granger. And it is more convenient for Severus. He'll be with her a lot, trying to find a way to cure her.'

Potter scowled at this, his green eyes blazing as he looked at Snape, 'Don't think I won't be watching you.'

Severus sneered, 'I don't plan on hurting her, Potter. I only want to set her free. Now, if you don't mind, I think we should get Hermione and Madame Pomfrey settled. It's been a trying day, and I promised Hermione I would return as soon as possible.'

He swept forward, and for the second time that day picked Hermione up, cradling her gently in his arms. 'I'm taking you to your rooms, now, Hermione. Madame Pomfrey,' he nodded at Nettie, 'If you would be so kind to follow me.'

The last thing he heard as he disappeared in the floo was Potter calling after him, 'I don't trust you, Snape.'

'But Hermione does,' Severus muttered under his breath, stepping into the new rooms. And she's the only one that matters.

____________________________________________

Diamond Rio – I Believe

Every now and then soft as breath upon my skin

. . . and I believe