Chapter Forty-Three

A/N: Sorry for the delay, my dear readers. Real life has had it out for me these last two weeks. All the usual things apply: anything you recognize belongs to JKR; I make no money. Thank you to RedOrchid, Shellsnapeluver, and OpalJade for their support, honesty, and excellent betaing skills.

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The offices on Level Two were little more than cubicles, the desks improbably close together as if they had all been fitted into the space by means of an Extension Charm. Kingsley had ordered the Aurors from the office, which now had an abandoned, cluttered feel. The walls bore moving pictures of faces she knew intimately--her own, of course, and Harry's, Ron's. Lupin's face and Kingsley's. But hastily stuck over them were the most recent targets of the Ministry: all three Malfoys, the Lestranges, Dolohov, Yaxley and Travers, Avery and Goyle. What surprised her most was the number of women's faces: Maia Selwynn, read one tag; Delphine Rosier, another. Marigold Parkinson. Peregrine Lestrange. She had rarely seen the female Death Eaters unmasked. It unnerved her, though she could not say why.

Snape's face was noticeably absent, but she drew no comfort from that. He was supposed to be dead.

Kingsley had been inside the Pensieve for nearly a quarter of an hour. Hermione waited, using her wand to poke at several pieces of parchment that sat beside the Pensieve. Detention requests. What had they thought they would find? Voldemort's secret battle plans?

When Kingsley raised his face from the stone bowl, Hermione's eyes darted immediately to his. He did not return her gaze for a long moment; instead he looked at the floor without speaking.

Finally, he whispered, "Shit."

"Pardon?"

"Shit, Hermione. Shit. The last time I saw Snape, we were leaving the Dursley's. Watching that--it was like telling me not to trust myself, not to believe even what I saw with my own eyes. You were married then."

A tiny flame of hope ignited in the back of her mind. "Yes."

"How did you live through that? Knowing you might hit him yourself that night?"

"I didn't start firing in earnest until I knew where he was. But he never knew which Harry was me. He didn't want to know. I can't imagine what it must have been like for him."

Kingsley shook his head and raised a hand to his face, shielding his eyes. "Shit," he said again, quietly.

She stood in silence. To prod him seemed dangerous.

"Your parents," he said. "I'll send Aurors right away."

Hermione felt as if he had just neatly scooped away a piece of her heart. She had trained herself so carefully never to think of her parents, never to long for them, and as much as she wanted them now, she could not imagine explaining what was happening to them, explaining what she had become. "Thank you."

"And Dumbledore... Merlin, Dumbledore put you up to this?"

She fought to keep her expression neutral. "Dumbledore put Severus up to a great number of things. Some of which turned out to be better ideas than others."

"Explain to me about the wand. Voldemort seemed quite sure he had taken Dumbledore's wand from Snape. Did Dumbledore entrust it to Snape?"

Hermione felt that she was on very uncertain ground. Keeping the truth from Kingsley had not worked to her favor thus far, but now that she had tentatively regained his trust, she was afraid to lose it again by questioning Dumbledore's plans.

"Dumbledore... had a very powerful wand. Lord Voldemort believed it to be unbeatable."

"Yes, I got that much."

"He intended Severus to gain the power of the wand by killing him. And he meant Severus to pass the wand to Harry."

"I'm sorry; I'm not following."

"Dumbledore intended Harry to take the wand from Severus. But the plan went awry. Draco Malfoy disarmed Dumbledore before Severus killed him, and he gained the wand's allegiance by accident."

Kingsley sighed. "This is quite a tale."

"I'm sure if you wait long enough, Dumbledore will turn up in one of his portraits to confirm it."

"I'm not calling you a liar, Hermione."

She nodded stiffly.

"But Harry ended up with the wand nonetheless? And that is why he survived the Killing Curse a second time?"

"Severus and I learned of the wand at roughly the same time. And at that point, it had become clear that Draco had taken--"

"Wait, you're saying that neither of you knew about the wand?"

Hermione looked at him steadily. "Harry would have had to kill Severus to take the wand. Obviously, this was something that Dumbledore was a bit reticent to tell us."

"Shit," Kingsley said again.

"Yes. That was why we went to Malfoy Manor. If Harry had not overpowered Malfoy--"

"Yes, I see."

"Anyway, as I said, at that point we thought it best to start comparing notes, and we realized that Harry would have to defeat Draco."

"I apologize for interrupting you again, Hermione, but are you implying that until that point you and Snape were still ignorant of one another's plans?"

"Mostly. Severus figured out what we were doing just before Christmas. Dumbledore thought it would be safer if our knowledge were limited... in case either of us were captured."

"So you just had to trust him?" Kingsley said incredulously.

"Do you feel I made the wrong decision?"

"No... of course not. It's just..."

Hermione raised her chin, and her eyes went hard. "He has never failed me."

Kingsley sank heavily into a desk chair and motioned Hermione into one so close that their knees nearly touched.

"So you and Snape conspired to get the power of Dumbledore's wand for Harry."

"Yes."

"And that worked." It was almost a question.

"Yes, thank God."

"And Snape? You said you saved his life?"

"I had Vita Secundus."

"You had Vita Secundus?" Kingsley all but shouted. "And dare I ask where you acquired such a thing? I suppose you are going to tell me that Dumbledore buried it in the woods in Wales and left you a map in his will that--"

Hermione snorted. "I see you've spoken with Harry."

"I Flooed him just after the paper arrived, Hermione. You could hardly expect me to--"

"And our stories match, don't they?"

"Hermione..."

"I could not have made up such a preposterous thing if I tried. But I'm curious now. You didn't know it was Vita Secundus?"

"Harry could not remember the name of the potion," Kingsley said sheepishly. "I thought it might have been some kind of antivenin."

"Severus began brewing the Vita during my third year at school. I carried it with me night and day for over a year."

"He expected you to save him?"

"Of course not. He's furious with me for saving him. He expected me to save Harry."

Kingsley swiveled his chair, turning away from her. He leaned his head against the back of the chair and shut his eyes.

"How will I spin this?" he murmured, almost to himself. "How in Merlin's name am I going to spin this?"

"I'm sorry?"

"Oh, it's not just that Snape was a loyal Order member," Kingsley said wearily, "or that he is alive, though those two things will be difficult enough. But now you want me to tell the world that Dumbledore planned for Harry Potter to kill Snape, that he--"

"I'm not asking you to tell the world anything," Hermione said. "Let us be, Kingsley. Announce that he's innocent and let us be."

"I can't do that, and you know it, Hermione. I have to put him on trial."

"Why?"

"Because no one will ever believe in me if my first act is to begin freeing members of the other side. They'll assume I've been corrupted somehow or Imperiused. They'll say that Snape bought me off, or that I was a traitor to the Light."

"So you're willing to put your job above Severus's life?"

"Do not deliberately misunderstand me. Of course this is about more than my job. It's Snape's life! Don't you hear what you're saying? How long do you think he'll last out there if people don't hear the truth? I'd have killed him myself during the final battle. And I'd have sent him to Azkaban if I'd caught him afterward. And now this article..."

A harsh silence filled the room.

"Thank you for your honesty," Hermione said in a chillingly soft voice.

Kingsley sighed again. "I'm saying that you need allies, and you need them now. Who else knew? Is there anyone who can verify your story?"

Hermione thought. Dumbledore had trapped them so neatly in their loyalty to him. She had kept her silence and so had Severus. Who would come forward now? "Professor McGonagall," she said at last. "Luna Lovegood. And I think that Mr Ollivander may have known more than he let on. Dobby knew, but he..."

Kingsley turned his head and looked at her sadly. Though he did not say it, Hermione could read the look on his face as clearly as if he had. An old woman, a strange child, and a dead house elf.

"It will take me two weeks to get him in front of the Wizengamot. I want to personally see every witch or wizard that may support you. I want statements before they are contacted by the press. Though it may be too late for that."

"All right."

Kingsley rose suddenly. "Let's go."

"Where are we going?"

He drew the parchment from the inner pocket of his robes and peered at it for a moment. "To... Spinner's End."

It was a strange kind of victory. Nothing had changed.

***

The sight of Shacklebolt in Spinner's End would have been almost amusing in its wrongness if Snape had not felt such utter dread at his appearance. He was simply too large, too colourful, for the cramped and dingy surroundings, and everything about him seemed suddenly ludicrous, exaggerated. His voice was too loud; his movements too sudden. Mother, the Minister has come to call, Snape thought with bitter amusement. Shacklebolt, to his credit, seemed to sense how unwelcome he was, how the house itself seemed to reject him, and he fumbled slightly as he pulled the heavy gray bracelet from his robes.

Snape did not speak when the wizard clamped the circlet over his thin, pale wrist. There was no pain, no telltale burning as his magic left him. It felt like nothing. And yet suddenly he felt weighted in way that was unfamiliar, as if he were now sharing his body with something dead and cumbersome. He flexed his fingers silently.

"I'd like your wand," Shacklebolt said.

"You said he didn't have to give up his wand," Hermione interjected, and instantly, Snape felt sickened by the pleading in her tone. When would she learn never to show them weakness? "You said the bracelet would render the wand useless."

"Priori Incantatem," Shacklebolt said solemnly. "I can set a team of Aurors to documenting your spell casting. It might help."

The set of Snape's mouth did not change, but he raised both eyebrows as he handed over the long, thin wand. It was like giving away his own hand.

"Severus, you don't have to--" Hermione began, but he turned from her and shrugged, walking to the window.

"What does it matter? It's useless to me."

He saw her slump from the corner of his eye. Truly, it would be better not to have to look at it, not to forget for a moment and pick it up, to cast a Lumos that would bring no light. No one spoke for a long minute.

"I will send the Minister's owl with the details of the trial," Shacklebolt said. "You may feel free to send it on your own errands before you return it to me."

Snape said nothing for so long that Hermione was forced to reply. "Thank you," she said.

Shacklebolt turned toward the door, and she followed him. Snape looked on with a kind of strange detachment.

"Hermione, I don't mean to sound critical," Shacklebolt said, "but think about what I said about appearances." He gave her a look that seemed to take in her filthy robes and skin and then he glanced pointedly at Snape.

She nodded curtly.

"And do not forget, when you leave here, that the press will be watching you."

"Yes, sir," she said, and he looked vaguely stung, as surely Hermione had meant him to feel.

"I'll be in touch."

Snape watched through the window as Shacklebolt hastened from the house and Apparated from the top step. He heard the snick of the door closing and her footsteps as she entered the room. He knew what she required; he could feel it in the way her eyes seemed to burn into the back of his neck, but he could think of no words with which to reassure her. She had done well, it was true. She had done, probably, the best that could have been done, but she had a wand and he did not, and he simply felt too tired to comfort her.

"Severus, they know," she said, startling him.

"I beg your pardon?"

"There was an article in the Daily Prophet. Our... our marriage has been leaked."

Slowly, slowly he turned toward her. "Which one of them was it? That couldn't keep his mouth shut?"

"It was Headmaster Black, actually," she said archly.

Fucking Phineas Nigellus Black. Snape wondered vaguely if it would be possible to cock things up worse than they were. Strangely, he felt little emotion at her declaration. Everything felt like a smooth and open road in his mind. A long, flat path leading nowhere. She looked at him intensely, openly, and he felt the oddest urge to thwart her.

"Your room is up the stairs on the left," he muttered.

She blinked twice and then turned and ascended the steps. But he heard her listening. He knew the creak of those steps so completely that he knew when she paused on the fifth stair, waiting for some sound or motion from him, and he would not give it to her.

***

The room was tiny, tinier even than the kitchen below, and spare. A slim cot covered in a thin blue blanket stood against the back wall, accompanied by an end table and a small chest of drawers. There was a chair in the corner, slightly smaller than was standard, and that was when she knew. She was in Severus's childhood bedroom. He had sent her here like a guest, like a guest in some portion of his life that she could never touch.

She set her bag on the chair and began to pull things out of it, partly to fill this room with her self, to make some indelible mark upon the blankness, and partly because she had held her tongue until she thought that she might bite right through it, and there was someone she wanted to see.

Items were crammed into the bag at random. She pulled out Harry's spare denims, two Transfiguration books, a copper cooking pot. She hefted a large, tattered box from the bag and set it atop the dresser, knowing what she would find next and feeling both desperate and afraid to remove it. She pulled the bag's mouth wide and yanked from it Phineas Black's portrait.

"Headmaster Black," she barked.

The canvas remained steadfastly black.

"Headmaster Black, I know that you can hear me."

For a moment it seemed that the paint rippled, but no pale and pointed wizard appeared.

"Coward," she hissed and propped the portrait against the wall. "You'll talk to that Skeeter bitch, but not to me? I thought you'd relish the chance to speak your mind without interruption."

Suddenly, she saw Black backing into his portrait, hands held out in front of him. "Enough! Woman! Put that wand away! I am a Headmaster of this school, and I will not be treated with dis--"

"Miss Granger?" called a crisp and unmistakable voice.

"Professor McGonagall!" Hermione cried.

"Stop, for Merlin's sake! If I don't leave my shoe in, you won't be able to hear her!"

"Oh, do be quiet, Phineas, I'm hardly hurting you. Miss Granger, where are you? I've been combing the countryside for you, and no one seems able to tell me where you are. Potter and Weasley said that you were with Severus, which makes no sense, of course, but they wouldn't say more--"

"Professor, I can't tell you where--"

"Surely, you weren't expecting a straight answer from Miss Granger. She is notoriously--" Black began.

Dumbledore began to speak. His voice was distant but clear, and it cut through the bickering of McGonagall and Black. "She has retreated, of course. The war has taken its toll on all of us. But those who live need you, Hermione. Your friends need you. I am sorry about Severus. I know that the two of you--"

"Don't," Hermione said quietly. "I want to speak to Professor McGonagall."

"You've grown more like him," Dumbledore said, the twinkle evident in his voice, as if he meant to imply that he had given her a gift, a piece of Snape she could carry with her always. "He rarely allowed me to speak of you at all; in fact, he--"

"Stop."

"Miss Granger," Black said, his voice a warning.

"My dear," Dumbledore began.

"You sent him to die. You knew that the moment Voldemort learned of the wand that he would be as good as dead."

"Miss Granger, I know you are in pain; You've lost an ally, a friend. These are the crushing, inevitable costs of war. Severus knew that when he turned spy for our side; he knew the risks--"

"An ally?" she hissed. "A friend?" A small part of her mind begged her to stop, begged her to remember that she was alienating the one man whose testimony might clear Snape's name, but she could not stop. All her fear and helpless rage had found a target, and she took aim. "You disgust me. You pretended to care for him, but he was your pawn, same as he was Voldemort's, and you--"

"Miss Granger, I beg you to listen to me."

"But you failed."

Silence seemed to radiate from the canvas.

"Your precious plan failed. Severus ensured that Harry would take the mastery of the Elder Wand. He protected us in Malfoy Manor, helped Harry defeat Draco, and got us out alive. He risked everything to do what you would not--to make sure Harry lived."

"You cannot imagine that anyone wanted to see Harry live more than I did, Miss--"

"And then I saved his life." There was cacophony on the other end of the portrait. She distinctly heard Professor McGonagall gasp, and a chair being pushed away from a desk. Phineas Nigellus loudly cleared his throat, and Dumbledore's rumbling voice began once more.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Your potion--your Vita Secundus! The potion you had him brew to make sure that Harry would live long enough to die at the right moment--"

"Miss Granger--Hermione!" Dumbledore shouted, but she plunged ahead, undeterred.

"It doesn't work on the Killing Curse. But it works on snake bites."

"Severus lives?" Dumbledore said incredulously. "Severus lives? Miss Granger, I wonder if you have any idea of the danger that he is in if he is alive. Where is he? Steps must be taken immediately--"

"A fact you might have known if you had been willing to grace us with your presence yesterday! And I am taking steps, thank you. I am--"

"Albus, you will leave your portrait or stop talking now," Professor McGonagall said. "You're just making a mess of things. Hermione, calm down. Now, I understand that Severus is alive. Where are you? Are you hurt?"

"Neither of us is badly hurt. We are safe. It's just that... the Ministry is aware that Severus is alive. There will be a trial. Kingsley said he thought two weeks."

"Are you in Azkaban?" McGonagall asked sharply.

"No. No, not Azkaban. Not yet. But Severus has no magic. It was a condition of being allowed to remain where we are, and I need money, but I can't go to Gringotts--"

"Slow down. I can take care of Gringotts. Now, explain to me from the beginning. What did Kingsley say?"

***

It was perpetually cold in Spinner's End. Partly, it was that the house was draughty and poorly sealed, and the chilly spring air seemed to settle and deepen in the few small rooms, permeating her skin and making Hermione feel that her very bones were cold. But partly it was simply the atmosphere of the house, a symptom of the impasse between herself and Snape that held her in its grip and made her cautious and wary.

Snape roamed through the house or sat at the window all hours of the day, watching, watching, though she knew not for what. Occasionally, when she ventured into the living room, he turned and watched her just as silently, watched as she pulled on a second jumper, watched as she hunted in the galley kitchen for a knife, watched her. He never asked her to cast a Warming Charm or to prepare a meal, and for some reason, she found his silence a challenge and vowed that she would do no magic unless he asked her specifically to do so. It was not just that she did not want to offend him, that she did not want to remind him of what had been taken from him, but that she did not want to coddle him, nor force her care upon him against his will. Enough was forced on him.

And let him be cold if that was how he was going to behave. Let him be hungry. Let him feel the silence that swirled through the rooms like a sharp, biting wind, and let it make him as frightened and uncomfortable as it made her.

She felt her ears had been tuned to some strange, relentless frequency that had her starting at the sound of bedspring or a swish of fabric on the stairs. She was aware, painfully aware, of his every motion through the house, though he said as little as was humanly possible and rarely stayed in the same room with her for more than a few moments.

For Hermione, the days that passed between the end of the war and the trial were a strange mirror of the year that had come before--hours and hours of charged, fearful tedium, punctuated by sudden trips into the outside world that left her frightened and reeling.

She had met with Professor McGonagall. Mindful of Kingsley's warning, she had showered and braided her hair, used her wand to tailor a set of her school robes into something passing for fashionable, and Apparated into Diagon Alley. McGonagall had met her in front of the ice cream parlor that had once belonged to Florean Fortescue. When she had arrived, the elder witch had held out her hands, seizing Hermione's, and had kissed her quickly on the cheek. She led Hermione to a table outside the shop and sat down, pretending not to notice the people on the street who gaped openly at them, or the photographer who snapped his pictures from the cover of a nearby bush.

"How is he?" Professor McGonagall had asked.

"The same."

McGonagall clucked disapprovingly and slid a small velvet pouch across the table to Hermione. "I brought you this. It isn't much, but it should be enough to hold you until you can access--"

"Thank you," Hermione said, looking down. "I'm very sorry to have to ask this of you--"

"Nonsense," Professor McGonagall said in her brisk way. "We'll sort it out when this business is finished. By the way, I have heard from both Luna Lovegood and Woodward Ollivander. They received your owls and have made arrangements to meet with the Minister. Have you heard from Kingsley?"

Hermione had been about to reply when a bald, pudgy wizard in heavy gray robes approached the table.

"Miss Granger?"

She looked up sharply and narrowed her eyes.

"Yes?"

"I am Dempster Wiggleswade. I write for the Daily Prophet. Can you confirm the recent rumours that you--"

"Mr. Wiggleswade, this is not a good time."

"A simple yes or no, Miss Granger. Were you married to Severus Snape, former Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and--"

"It's Madam Snape," she said, lifting an eyebrow.

"I'm sorry?"

"It's not Miss Granger, it's Madam Snape, and if you will excuse me, I am having lunch with a friend."

Wiggleswade took two large steps backward, grinning hugely and scribbling in his notebook. "Indeed, Madam Snape. Very sorry to have interrupted. You ladies have a lovely day."

Hermione turned back to Professor McGonagall, who nodded approvingly.

"I don't know what made me do that. It was probably a dreadful idea."

"On the contrary. You have nothing to be ashamed of, Hermione. I think it's best that you not seem to be hiding from it. I chose this spot particularly for its visibility."

Hermione pressed her fingers to her temples for a moment. "Has Dumbledore... has he agreed to testify?"

"Yes, and Phineas asks that you bring your portrait of him as well." Oddly, Professor McGonagall seemed to be trying not to smile. "Rarely have I seen a wizard more conflicted. I rather think he wants to apologize to you, but cannot bring himself to do it. He keeps insisting that he only meant to bring honor to the house of Slytherin."

Hermione gave a tired huff, and the corners of her lips turned up sadly.

"Do you know Severus's tailor?" McGonagall said, apropos of nothing.

"His tailor? No. Why?"

"Because I think it would be appropriate for him to have some new robes for the trial."

"New robes?"

McGonagall sighed. "I think it would be best if he did not look like your professor."

"Oh. Well, yes."

"Yes. And try to impress on him that appearances--"

"Kingsley has already gone over that."

"Very well. Will you contact me if you need anything?"

"Of course. And thank you so much, Professor. You've been more than--"

"Minerva. And think nothing of it."

Professor McGonagall had squeezed her hand quickly before rising. "Tell him I said... Well, tell him I said that I'll have to make rather a spectacle of him."

Hermione had looked at her quizzically, but she was already walking away, wiping her eye on her tartan sleeve.

***

She came and went. She fixed a sandwich and left it on the drain board. She yelled behind her closed bedroom door, and still Snape lay on his bed in the darkness or sat in the living room with a book in his lap, his long, pale index finger marking a page he had not read and did not intend to read.

Each time she left, she approached him and stood silently until he raised his eyes to her, and each time she said exactly the same thing.

"I am coming back."

He never responded, never even blinked to indicate that he had heard her.

I am coming back.

It was a gift, like the robes she had laid at the end of his bed, black woolen robes in exactly the cut of the ones he had worn to Narcissa Malfoy's victory ball. Like the sandwich that he left until it drew flies and finally ate when his hunger outweighed the urge to simply rot in place.

It was a gift, like her presence here, and when he thought of it, the blackness that sat inside him like a stone rose up until it choked him.

He wanted to pick it up and hurl it back at her, to bury it at the bottom of his closet like he had the robes, to hide it, somehow, from the weak and cowering part of himself that needed her to say it, the part that, without it, would sit impish and chattering in the corner of his mind that she was gone now, up and left, and that he would be alone until he died of starvation or began to eat his own flesh.

But what did she want from him? Hermione and her wide, heart shaped face, looking at him all the time, listening for him. What was she coming back for?

She said she wanted to cut his hair.

She said, "Please, Severus, they'll be able to see more of your face if I do, and I think it would be good if they could see your face."

She said, "I made eggs," and then left them cooling on a plate and nearly ran from the room in case he might be more apt to eat if she weren't watching.

She said, "I brought the Daily Prophet. There's an article about Polyjuice," and left him to read a paper whose cover blazed with the words, Potter calls Snape a Hero.

Hermione Granger: That's Madam Snape, to you.

Is Snape Alive?

Who was this Snape they wrote about?

She said, "I am coming back," and left him again for a world that would not let her be. The paper was filled with pictures. Hermione looking over her shoulder as she entered Madam Malkin's. Hermione with Minerva in front of Florean Fortescue's. Hermione with her arms full of books outside Flourish and Blotts. Hermione at the Ministry, in the street, buying a newspaper, grocery shopping, looking at owls in the window of Eeylops, surrounded always by people staring, people sneering, people asking--and he sent her out there again and again, and she went, never saying anything more than, "I am coming back."

Never saying, "Please don't make me."

But he could see it. He knew her face so well: the way her left eye twitched when she gathered up her bag; the set of her jaw; the way she squared her shoulders and drew herself up so tall before she opened the door, as if she were walking into battle every time.

She went, and he was helpless to stop her. As helpless as he was to protect her from it.

But thinking these thoughts was pointless, as pointless as breathing, and so, mostly he thought of nothing. He saw leaves breaking out on the trees by the side of the road. He swept dust from the bookshelves with his fingertips. He lay in bed and traced the shapes that the water stains made on the ceiling with his eyes. He thought of nothing.

He washed, finally, on the sixth day, the day that she had gone to meet with Potter to finalize her plans for the trial--plans, it seemed, that had nothing to do with him. She consulted him, of course. She sometimes went on at great length about what she wanted to say, about who had agreed to testify, about how she wanted to enter the courtroom, but he had nothing to add. The end of the trial would be completely outside his control, and so he saw no need to trouble himself with trying to control the beginning of it.

He washed, not to please her, but because the putrefying scent of the battle and his own sweat had begun to invade his not-thinking, and he wished to be rid of it so that he might be left alone with his own mind once more. His robes he cast into a cracked wicker hamper in the bathroom, knowing that he would never touch them again. He scrubbed his white shirt with a bar of soap in the sink and hung it on the towel rack to dry. From his parents' closet, he unearthed a dingy pair of his father's old denims, and he thought spitefully that he would rather wear his bastard father's trousers than the fine woolen ones that Hermione had bought him to impress a courtroom.

He found that he quite liked the shower. The stinging points of water filled the bathroom with constant sound and sensation that drove out everything else, until he felt that he was nothing but a bead of water himself, banging, banging against the porcelain. Finally, the water grew cold, and as he could do nothing to warm it, he got out.

Clean and soothed, he padded to the bedroom and lay down once more.

Hours passed. Hermione was a long time in returning.

Finally, he heard the sound that he had not realized that he'd been listening for as the door opened and shut. He heard her lay her bag down on the sofa and shed her shoes. He heard the pad, pad, pad of her feet on the steps. He listened as she paused outside his door--listened to her listening--and pad, pad, padded back to her room.

He knew, from his own fevered awareness, that sleep had not been visiting this house. Hermione tossed on the flimsy cot in his room, sometimes wandering the house, sometimes running the tap in the bathroom and then returning to her room. He heard pages turning and scribble of her quill on parchment. He did not know why he could not sleep, only that perhaps his waking life was so much like it that his body felt no need for the real thing. It did not seem to matter much.

Just before dawn, he heard her rise and begin to pace the corridor. What thoughts did she think so late at night? What kept her from sleep when her days were so filled with motion?

A sliver of light appeared at the edge of the room and widened as his door opened. He saw her, small and thin in the light of the hallway, clad in a large t-shirt that reached her knees. Her hair was free and wild around her head.

"Are you awake?" she whispered.

He said nothing.

She shut the door, and although the change from light to darkness had blinded him, he could feel her inside the room. She tiptoed to the bed and climbed in, careful to stay on her own side. He heard her set her wand on the table beside the bed.

"Goodnight, Severus," she said. It seemed loud in the darkness.

"Goodnight," he said formally and rolled away from her to face the wall.

He felt her shift and settle, wiggling down into the mattress. She turned onto her right side until she faced the door and shoved her arm up underneath the pillow. She sighed a long, deep sigh that seemed to come all the way from her toes, and he felt the weight go out of her, seemed to physically feel the change as she fell into sleep. Her breathing was deep and heavy, and he matched his to hers for something to do to keep his mind quiet.

Breathe in.... breathe out.

Back to back, they lay, with her wand within arm's reach, pointed at the door.

That night, he slept like the dead.