HERMIONE

Chapter Eleven: HERMIONE

Hermione was still going crazy, but it didn't bother her so much anymore. She was back at Hogwarts, Severus was spending countless hours with her discussing her situation and potential cures, and she was exceedingly happy. It didn't make her any less crazy, though.

Not that going crazy was a bad thing – not at all. As a matter of fact, this kind of crazy she could live with, because she knew eventually it would end and she'd get what she wanted. What she wanted was Severus.

And he was driving her mad.

She didn't understand why he couldn't just take her at her word and believe her when she told him she wanted him, that she ached for the slightest of his touches. For every step forward she took, he seemed to take two steps backwards.

She had thought it would be easy – that first day, when he had found her, he had all but admitted to her that he cared for her. Dumbledore himself had entered her mind and told her as much; even though the older man hadn't been entirely convinced she was there.

Even Nettie, as she puttered around their suite at Hogwarts, would twitter to her 'It's so romantic, like beauty and the beast come to life!' and 'He loves you dear. The magic in the air when he looks at you is enough to give an old witch like me heart palpitations!'

Hermione had smiled at that, 'Imagine what it does to me!' Of course, Nettie couldn't hear her, but it didn't really matter. Hermione still had conversations with her.

The problem wasn't that Severus didn't return her feelings – she was pretty sure he did, even if he remained frustratingly closed-mouth about the matter. It was the fact that he didn't seem to be inclined to act upon them that was making her mental. Despite the hours they had spent together since her return to Hogwarts, he had done nothing more since her first day back, when he had kissed the palm of her hand.

It wasn't that he seemed averse to touching her – far from it – but he never instigated anything. She was always the first to reach out and grab his hand, or lean into him for hug. She knew that eventually she would just give in to her physical yearnings and kiss him herself, but she was hoping it wouldn't boil down to that. She wanted him to woo her – was that so much to ask?

She had caught him staring at her once, while they were discussing her memories of the curse, and his gaze had been so hungry and intense it had made her breath hitch in her throat and her heart do an odd little jig within her chest. She had stopped talking, completely ensnared by his gaze, watching in fascination as the tip of his tongue had moistened his bottom lip. She had moistened her own in response and leaned towards him slowly, as though an invisible cord was reeling her in. And just when she had thought that finally – finally – he was going to kiss her, he had broken her gaze and stepped back, shaking his head as if trying to clear it.

'You're sure the curse was cold when it hit you, not hot?' he had inquired politely, and she had wanted to scream her frustration. Severus Snape was a tease and he didn't even realize it.

If she had thought his visits were important to her before, she realized quickly that her world now revolved around them. Each minute that he was away from her – that she was alone in her mind – seemed to last hours. She would try to keep herself busy, making notes or revising ideas they had come up with, but eventually everything came around to remind her of Severus. Times like that her quill would come to rest and her eyes would turn even further inward, reliving the moments they had spent together with uncanny clarity. She often found herself wondering what she had to do to get him to kiss her, and bent more time than she should have plotting on how to get him to do just that.

One evening, on her second day at Hogwarts, she made sure that when Snape came to visit her he arrived while she was on the tail-end of completing exercises similar to the ones she had engaged in during her time before being hit by the curse. Her fifth year summer had introduced her to yoga at the community center, and it had quickly become her favorite mode for relieving stress and keeping nightmares about the Department of Mysteries at bay. When Severus found her she was in her favorite burgundy yoga leotard, stretching.

'Just cooling down,' she had explained to him, smiling to herself as she noticed him twitching uncomfortably and trying not to look at her. 'I lost track of the time.' She had surrounded the room they were in with mirrors and he was turning from wall to wall, trying to escape the sight of her in her form fitting suit. He eventually resorted to looking at his feet, a stiffness to his hunched shoulders that briefly brought a twinge of guilt for her ruse.

'There now, all done.' Realizing she had teased him enough for one visit, she finally approached him, a towel around her neck and her hair piled high in a loose ponytail atop her head. 'I think it's important to stay limber, even if it is only in my mind, don't you?'

She sighed and rolled her head on her neck, pulling the top of her sticky leotard away from her chest and flapping it ineffectually. 'Now all I need is a quick shower. Can you wait a moment?'

She could tell Severus noted the movement with interest because his breathing quickened slightly and his eyes shot to her face, burning her with their intensity. The stubborn man refused to comment though, other than to ask her if he could go over some of their notes in the lab.

'Good idea,' she'd agreed, banishing the mirrors and quickly conjuring a changing screen, which she flung her discarded leotard over the top of. 'Give me a few minutes and I'll be out.'

His quickly retreating footsteps from the room made her want to laugh and snort at the same time. She was going to make him crack, she was determined.

The next day, he came by for an unexpected visit during the lunch hour. 'Hermione,' she had heard him calling her from the stone corridor, 'where are you?'

'In the library,' she hollered back, '20th row, section B – I'm looking for something.'

He found her up a ladder, perched precariously on her toes as she pulled random titles from a dusty shelf. 'Be careful, Hermione! You could fall,' he'd muttered darkly.

She just laughed at him, 'But you'd catch me, wouldn't you? Ah, here it is!' she had found the book she was looking for, pulling it triumphantly from the stacks and quickly descending the ladder until she was at his side. 'I wasn't sure if this was still here.'

Severus smiled slightly at her excitement, 'What is it, a book on counter-curses and spell-breaking?'

'Unfortunately, no.' Hermione replied. 'It's a book of fairy tales.'

He cocked an eyebrow at her, 'Fairy tales? Whatever do you need that for?'

'Nettie mentioned something earlier about Beauty and the Beast,' Hermione smiled shyly, 'and it got me to thinking. People are always getting cursed in fairy tales, right? Snow White and Sleeping Beauty were both cursed with sleeping death...'

'And how does this apply to your situation?' Severus interrupted, 'You know as well as I do that the sleeping death is a potion. Snow White ingested it with the apple and Aurora absorbed it when she pricked her finger on the potion coated spindle. What you've suffered is completely different – the living sleep. There were no potions involved.'

'That's true, but what's the common factor in all these stories? Even the ones that don't involve enchanted sleep?'

Snape stiffened, 'It wouldn't work.'

'How can you be so sure?' she retorted, 'In all these stories, the curse is always lifted with 'love's true kiss'. Even in Beauty and the Beast, the beauty restored the beast to life and his human form when she kissed him, using every ounce of love in her heart.'

She was facing him now, watching the myriad of expressions filter across his face as she spoke, noticing the way a small hope passed through his normally unreadable dark eyes when she mentioned love.

'Sometimes, the beauty doesn't need to kiss the beast to transform his life,' he murmured softly, reaching out and pushing a tendril of her hair behind her ear, skimming the tip of his finger around its shell.

Her heart was pounding, his words making her strangely lightheaded, 'And sometimes the beast isn't a beast at all,' she added shakily, 'just a man who can't seem to trust his heart.'

A wistful smile danced across his features, before he withdrew from her, 'Indeed.'

They stood silently for a few moments, each contemplating the other, before he spoke again, 'I came to see if you'd like to go for a walk in the gardens. It's a beautiful day outside.'

'I'd love to,' she smiled, 'but I won't give up on this, you know.'

He nodded his head in acknowledgment of her determination. 'We shall see.'

The walk through the gardens, like most of her time spent with Severus, had been lovely. She couldn't see him, of course, but he kept up a running dialogue as he pushed her along the slate gray path in a wooden wheel chair he had procured from somewhere. When the stone path had ended, he had lifted her from the chair and continued their walk on foot, taking her to the edge of the lake.

From her position in his arms, head on his shoulder, she could hear the strong beating of his heart against her ear and see his Adam's apple bob with each breath. The line of his chin was sharp and strong, the stubble under the skin thick and dark looking. Every once in a while he would turn his head slightly and look at her, his eyes skimming her face tenderly. She could see herself reflected in his dark gaze and realized, with a start, that she was beautiful.

'You remind me of a dandelion, Hermione,' he murmured once as they walked. 'Your spirit is tenacious, always searching for new ways to grow despite the obvious setbacks. And I must admit, your hair has a tendency to be just as annoying as dandelion seeds.' He said this with a smirk while removing a wayward curl from the edge of his mouth, the strand glinting in the sunlight. 'And, like dandelion wine, you can be quite intoxicating.'

She smiled at that and decided she didn't mind so much him thinking she was a weed.

One of the things that made it more bearable while Severus was away was when Nettie read to her. She had almost finished 'Wuthering Heights' and had admitted to Hermione one afternoon before the reading commenced that she had chosen that particular novel because she was a sucker for tragic romances with brooding leading men – such as the one who took every opportunity to visit her.

Hermione liked the soft drone of Nettie's voice and often found herself imagining Severus, striding over the moors and cursing her ghost with words of love and despair. She said as much to him one day and he had almost smiled at her.

'I trust we will have a more fitting end then either Catherine or Heathcliffe did,' he retorted dryly. 'As I recall, Heathcliffe went mad.'

"'Be with me always - take any form - drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you!'" Hermione quoted softly, before reaching out and grabbing his hand. 'But you're not Heathcliffe and I have no need to haunt you.'

'You do, though,' his reply sent thrills of delight up her spine, 'you do, Hermione.'

A few days later, she brought up her fairy tale theory again. 'I still think you should try it,' she argued when he snorted, 'if only to rule it out as a potential cure.'

'It won't work,' he stated flatly. 'We don't need to rule it out, because we both know it's futile.'

'We don't know it,' she retorted, 'we just think it. But we could be missing something. What if it is the way to break this curse and we never try it? I'll be trapped here forever because you were too scared to kiss me.'

Severus had grabbed her shoulders at this, shaking her slightly. 'You silly girl!' he growled, 'think for a moment. You are in a coma, your body is not responsive to anything and Potter already thinks the worst. You have a chaperone, for Merlin's sake, whose main responsibility outside looking after you is to make sure I don't take advantage of you when you are like this. What do you think would happen if she saw me – kissing you? What would Albus and Potter say?'

'How can you take advantage when it is something I offer freely?' Hermione asked, suddenly angry. 'And Nettie is not here to keep an eye on you. She knows you wouldn't hurt me. And Harry,' she threw her hands up at this, 'can sod off. He's just upset that it's you who found me, and not him. He's too used to being the hero.'

Snape raised an eyebrow at this, 'Potter still doesn't believe you're here. He thinks I'm imagining all this and that I brought you to Hogwarts for my own selfish reasons. And Nettie is here to keep an eye on things – how can you say she's not.'

'Severus, listen to me,' Hermione was suddenly gentle again, reaching out grab his hands, which were cool to the touch, 'she talks to me. She knows you wouldn't take advantage, as you put it. She likes you, quite a bit. She's told me so herself. Just the other day, she said to me, 'Miss Granger, dear, I've never met a man like your Professor. He's all sharp edges on the outside, but I can see his loneliness. I'm so glad he has you.' She would be your friend, if you let her.'

Snape snorted, 'Hermione...'

'No, I'm telling you the truth. Why must you always think the worst?' Her eyes watched him shrewdly, studying his face with an intense tenderness. 'Or, is it that you aren't thinking the worst of other people but thinking the worst of yourself?'

He stiffened and tried to pull his hands away, but she wouldn't let him. 'That's it, isn't it? You can't believe that anyone would want to be friends with you, that no one could care about you. How can you have such a low opinion of yourself?'

'Hermione, I don't...' he sighed wearily, 'I'm not a nice man.'

'No, you're not,' she agreed, 'you're an intense man. You're sarcastic, bitter, sometimes cruel... but you're also intelligent, loyal, and capable of more tenderness than anyone I have ever met. Why can't you see all the wonderful things you are, instead of focusing on all the negatives? I wouldn't even be here if it weren't for you!'

'Don't remind me,' Snape replied darkly, a snarl taking root on his lips.

'That's not what I meant, and you know it! You give me hope, Severus, where before I had none. You give me courage, to keep on fighting. You give me your strength and make me believe in the future... and when I try to give you things in return, you turn me away and try to deny my feelings. I... I love you, Severus. As much as this damn curse has been terrifying, I can't totally regret it. If I wasn't like this – I would never have gotten to know you, would I? You're the best part of this whole mess – you're my silver lining.'

Severus didn't say anything for the longest time, just stood there and looked at her hands clasping his. 'You're a foolish girl,' he finally murmured, 'I'm not anyone's 'silver lining'. More like the black cloud that wrecks an otherwise lovely day.'

Hermione felt her heart clench and tried for a soft tone, 'Maybe if you didn't swoop around in black so much...'

He smirked at her gentle teasing, bringing her hands to his mouth and gently kissing her knuckles, a tender action that nearly made her knees buckle. 'I have never done anything in my life deserving of you.'

'You're a hero. And that's not where I want you to kiss me,' she whispered breathily, leaning into him.

'I...Hermione....' his face was tight with uncertainty and desire, and Hermione sighed. She could feel the very air crackling around them; little electrical impulses that made the tiny hairs on the back of her neck stand up in anticipation. There was a delicious coiling tightness in her belly, spreading languorous heat like liquid honey through her veins. Her heartbeat became slow and heavy, and she licked her bottom lip when she saw him staring at it.

He was going to kiss her. He was going to kiss her and she was going to spontaneously combust right here in his arms. He was going to kiss her and she would finally get to taste him, to learn the feel and flavor of his mouth...oh yes yesyes...

'I apologize for the interruption Professor Snape, Miss Granger,' Nettie's disembodied voice intruded, 'but it's past midnight, and I know you have class tomorrow, sir.'

Hermione clutched her hands reflexively in his, 'No, don't...'

But Severus was already pulling away, a mixture of regret and relief mingling on his face, 'I have to go, Hermione. I have to...'

'Promise me,' she whispered after him, as he faded from her mind, until he was outside of her again looking into her eyes, 'promise me you'll love me too.'

She didn't know if he heard her.

When he returned to her the next day, it was as if the conversation of the night before had never taken place.

'I've been thinking we're going about this curse the wrong way,' he stated in greeting as he strode into the potions room. 'It occurred to me last night that animula somnus is taken from the Latin masculine. I no longer think Malfoy found this curse in some ancient text – I think he created it specifically for me.'

Hermione frowned at him, 'What do you mean?'

'I don't think we'll find an answer in books,' he stated reasonably, 'and I don't know why it took me so long to figure that out. The curse was directed at me – it was never supposed to hit you at all. If it had been meant for a woman, he would have said 'animulae somnusi'.'

'But we've known all along it was directed at you!' Hermione protested, 'How is this news?'

'We've been assuming there was a cure for it, when there may not be now, not if Malfoy designed it. It would appeal to his ludicrous sense of justice to think he had trapped me in a heretofore undocumented, cureless curse of his own design. He always was a right brilliant bastard.'

They had worked the rest of the evening on theories and postulations, writing scrolls of ideas with the new information and scratching them out.

'If it was meant for you, how come it worked on me?' she finally asked in exasperation, after another hypothesis hit a brick wall.

'Maybe because you were touching me when it took full effect,' Snape offered quietly. 'Maybe that's why you feel so – connected – to me. Malfoy's curse recognized its true target and bound you to me...'

Hermione felt a twitch settle on her left cheek, 'I hope that's not what you've been telling yourself all day long. I have not been cursed into caring for you.'

Suddenly, the conversation from yesterday evening loomed before them, causing all the tension from the prior evening to return ten-fold. 'That's why you won't kiss me, isn't it?' she accused, 'You've been telling yourself all along that it's not real, that I can't really love you... That's it, isn't it?'

Severus frowned and looked at her, 'It makes sense, if you think about it. At the very least, you yourself have spoken of your loneliness.'

Hermione snorted, 'Bullocks. I know my own mind.'

'I'm sure you do,' Snape replied, 'I don't question that. However, you must realize Hermione, you are only 20 years old and you have been trapped here – in your mind – for over a year and a half. You have told me yourself that you crave simple human touch, of which I have been one of the few people to provide. However I feel... anything further than that would be taking advantage of this situation you are in. You might think you want me to kiss you...' his voice shook slightly at this, 'but I'm sure, given the opportunity to choose someone else, you would change your mind.'

Hermione shook her head, feeling desperation loosen her tongue, 'I wouldn't. I've told you this before – who else would I want but you? And I know you want me too... I know you care for me. You kissed the palm of my hand. You... you dreamed about me.'

Snape looked uncomfortable at this, 'Yes. Well,' he cleared his throat and pinched the bridge of his nose, 'I cannot deny that I've come to care for you. You saved my life and I feel responsible for this situation you've find yourself in. But I shouldn't have kissed your palm. My only excuse is that I was overwhelmed with the events of the day; of finding you alive and somewhat sane in this – delightful – mind of yours.' He smirked gently at the last of his little speech, a look Hermione found herself quite taken with.

'But you want me.' Hermione hated the pleading sound that had crept into her voice, 'You can't deny it.'

'You are making this very difficult,' Snape replied irritably. 'I am only a man Hermione, and a principled one, despite what others might think. Perhaps, after we've released you from this spell, if you still want me...'

He wasn't looking at her as he said this. Instead, he was smoothing the material of his frock coat, his fingers almost luminescent against the dark fabric. Hermione had noticed he did this often when he wanted to appear as if he wasn't interested in what they were discussing – as if the minutiae of picking lint from his sleeve or erasing imaginary wrinkles was more important than what she might say. It gave her the courage to want to settle this matter completely before he left again.

'I'll still want you,' she stated firmly, but quietly, 'and I'll prove it to you as soon as I'm free. The first thing we need to do is rule out all possible potential cures. Like a kiss.'

'No. I will not listen to this again. I know you don't think it will work, and I happen to agree, but wouldn't it be just like Lucius Malfoy to do something like that, thinking no one would ever kiss you? You have to admit I have a point.'

Severus nodded at this and Hermione let a small smile touch her face. 'Talk to Nettie, Severus. Tell her what you're going to do. I think she'll be more understanding than you might think. She won't run off and tell Albus or Harry that you kissed me.'

'I wouldn't be so sure,' Snape gritted back, 'keep in mind she's related to the biggest gossip at Hogwarts.'

Hermione laughed, her heart swelling, because he hadn't said no. 'Leave Madame Pomfrey out of this. Please, talk to Nettie. I think you'll be surprised.'

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On My Own - from the Les Miserables soundtrack.

And now I'm all alone again

But only on my own.