Chapter Forty-Seven

A/N: You know the drill: none of it is mine. Special thanks to my betas, RedOrchid, Shellsnapeluver and OpalJade. As we get nearer to the end, it gets harder, and they come through every time. I love you, ladies. Thank you.

Hermione stood in the kitchen of Spinner's End, staring into the open drawer before her. Neat nests of forks and spoons greeted her eyes, a pile of knives, and yet she had no idea why she had opened this drawer, now or any of the three times before that she had pulled it open, feeling it stick slightly, listening to the protest of the silverware within. It's very Muggle, she thought, silverware in a drawer. Which was senseless, of course, as wizards used flatware, same as anyone else. And yet, she could not remember ever having seen it stored in quite this way except at home--a plastic caddy holding everything in its own little compartment. She shut the drawer again.

She had not slept the night before, not really. She had listened to the sound of Severus breathing; she had felt the firm pressure of his chest, slightly damp where her cheek pressed against it, rising and falling. He had not slept either, she knew, for she had never felt him sink into the mattress, nor felt his breath grow deep and slow. But it had been enough like rest that the night had seemed to pass quickly and thoughtlessly, only to dump her mercilessly out into the predawn, assaulted once more by the quickening of her heartbeat and the knowledge that they would hear the verdict today.

She opened the drawer. There was something in here that she wanted, but she could not think what it was.

She could hear Severus approaching, the slap of his bare feet against the treads of the stairs, and she pictured his long and slender feet, the blunt edges of his toenails, the sparse black hair contrasting against the palest of pale skin. She could feel him looking at her, but she could not meet his gaze.

He reached in front of her and shut the drawer. "Eat," he said, and she noticed that there was a slice of toast on the counter, which presumably accounted for the drawer. She had intended to slice it.

She picked it up whole and bit into it in order to have something to do. Crumbs fell onto the countertop.

He picked up the piece of charred bread that remained and looked at it dubiously. "You couldn't have finished the job and burnt the whole house down?" he said, amused.

"I--I'm sorry. I don't--"

"I did not marry your for your skills at housewifery," he said, with the ghost of a smile, as he picked up his mug of tea (almost certainly cold now), turned, and headed back toward the stairs.

No. No, surely not, she thought ruefully. And yet, though he had not intended it, underneath she heard the reason that he had married her. She was supposed to get him out of this. She had promised. She had promised, and she couldn't even make breakfast.

***

Kingsley's face was unreadable. He knew. She knew he knew, she was certain of it, and yet there was nothing, no hint in the set of his mouth or color of his eyes, that told her what she needed to know. He shook her hand with the same warm pressure as he always had, and she sensed neither eagerness nor reluctance in the way he grasped Snape's arm to Apparate him into the Ministry.

Hermione's perception seemed suddenly to have an unnatural crispness: the stones of the hallway walls were each uniquely pitted and somehow indelibly printed upon her eyes. The worn carpet runner that covered the floor was also deserving of her attention--the way the red faded to a kind of fibrous pink in the center, where countless wizards had tread upon it. And yet, at the same time that she saw everything, she saw nothing, and she jumped slightly in her seat, surprised to find Kingsley already calling the room to order.

The courtroom was packed to the gills. More than twice the number of witches and wizards were present today than had been here at their last gathering, and the press swarmed around the exit, snapping photographs of those who were entering. Hermione saw the collected staff of Hogwarts, Molly Weasley corralling the entire Weasley clan, Neville Longbottom and his gran, Andromeda Tonks with baby Teddy on her hip. She could not shake the nagging feeling that these people had all come to watch her fail, that they had come to take pleasure in Snape's defeat.

As the crowd settled into the stands, Kingsley's voice rolled once more through the courtroom.

"The first of August, nineteen hundred and ninety-eight. The Ministry of Magic vs. Severus Snape. I wish to thank the court once more for its careful consideration of the facts of this complicated case and all those who gave the court their time and testimony. The Wizengamot has reached its decision."

The last of the whispers died away. Hermione looked at the faces of the plum-clad witches and wizards of the Wizengamot, seeking some sign of what was to come, but their faces were careful and blank, and their eyes stared ahead at the stone wall at the far end of the courtroom.

"To the charge of Membership in a Terrorist Organization, the court finds the defendant not guilty.

"To the charge of High Treason, the court finds the defendant not guilty.

"To the charge of Accessory to Kidnapping, the court finds the defendant not guilty."

The charges seemed to whir past, and Hermione was breathing in great hitching gulps. Harry held her left hand so tightly in his own that she dimly wondered if her bones would crack, and yet the pain did nothing to keep her focused.

"To the charge of Espionage... of Aiding and Abetting the Use of Unforgivable Curses... of Use of Magic in the Presence of Muggles... of Conspiracy to Commit Murder, the court finds the defendant not guilty."

Conspiracy to Commit Murder, Conspiracy to Commit Murder. She tried to grasp the words as they floated through her mind. But that must mean--

"To the charge of Murder by Unforgivable Curse, the court finds the defendant not guilty."

Harry was shaking her violently; the courtroom was alive with whispers; she could hear the press jostling one another for floor space. Hermione's eyes had not left Kingsley's face. They weren't done yet.

"To the charges of Willful Destruction of Property and Unauthorized Use of Memory Charms, the court finds the defendant guilty."

The air rushed out of her, and she sat back suddenly in her seat. Harry had not given up his joyous tugging on her hand. "It's just Destruction of Property, Hermione, and Memory Charms--it's nothing! They're not going to send him to Azkaban over Memory Charms, for Merlin's sake! You won!"

So she had. She had won where it counted, and yet, Severus had been right after all. They would not allow him to walk out of this courtroom without their mark on him. It seemed they would not say unequivocally that he had been right. Destruction of Property and Memory Charms--they would exonerate him of a murder, but not a few Memory Charms?

"I want silence in this courtroom! I will not hesitate to eject anyone who cannot comply--even members of the court itself," Kingsley roared, glaring over his shoulder at the Wizengamot.

When a tentative quiet had descended, he said, "The court sentences Severus Snape to nine hundred hours of compulsory unpaid work to be served brewing potions for St Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries. This court is adjourned."

Her eyes darted to the portrait, but Dumbledore was already gone.

Kingsley began to descend from the podium, and the crowd seemed to rise like one enormous body, but Hermione sat frozen to the bench until Harry pulled her to her feet. He grasped her in a one-armed hug and tried to steer her toward the Weasleys, who were congregating toward the rear of the courtroom, but she shook him off, transfixed by what was happening in the center of the room.

Witches and wizards swarmed throughout the cavernous room, and yet they left a wide circle around Snape and the Minister, as if now that the show had drawn to a close, they preferred not to consort with the players.

Kingsley reached Snape at last and released the chains on the chair. Hermione watched, her mouth slightly agape, as he touched his wand to the bracelet on Snape's wrist and caught it deftly as it fell away. She flexed her own fingers unconsciously in response. Snape stood slowly and took the hand that Kingsley extended to him, and she could almost feel it in her own. Through the din, she heard their words as if they were whispered in her ear.

"...just to complete the paperwork. Potions are to be delivered directly to St Mungo's. They will be expecting a shipment once a week. I have list of their requests. Nothing too complicated, of course, not that you'd..." Kingsley trailed off. "Do you have adequate brewing facilities where you are? Or do you intend to move somewhere--"

"No, my family home will suffice."

"Very well. I assume you'll want to remain under the protection of the charm for the time being?"

"Indeed."

"Well, then, I suppose that's all. If you would be so kind as to stop by my office before you go. Oh! Merlin, I nearly forgot. Your wand," Kingsley said, drawing it from his pocket.

She began to move the moment Snape's fingers grasped his wand. There was a brief golden glow there--it seemed almost a magical release on the parts of both wand and hand at their reunion.

"Thank you," Snape said, and she did not know whether he was thanking Kingsley for the return of the wand or something else, but Kingsley seemed to take no notice and cast a Shield Charm on Snape as he retreated.

Snape turned to look at her as she stepped onto the courtroom floor, and she struggled to keep her face perfectly blank. She would let him tell her how to react to this. She would rage if rage was what he needed, or she would bear her failure with quiet grace. Bitterness, anger, acceptance, calm--whatever he asked of her.

He raised his wand, and she hesitated for a fraction of a second, but then he swept it down over his body, and she heard him say, "Protego Horribilis." Her own words came back to her across nearly two year's time. So I can touch you because I mean you no harm?

He had admitted her inside the charm.

As she approached him, she fought her face, which was crumpling against her will. She turned away slightly to hide her tears, but he caught her by the shoulder, and suddenly she was in his arms, her hands clutching the back of his robes, listening to the snuffling of his breath through her hair. She could feel the magic pounding through him, boiling through his blood, and he felt, beneath her hands, as if he were physically growing larger. She clung to him, partly in some feeble attempt to contain what was happening, and partly because she feared her knees would not hold her if she let go. Beneath her horror, beneath her anger, there was something fierce and bright threatening her heart. It had not died. He felt her, and she felt him.

Flashbulbs exploded around them.

***

August was the hardest month.

Snape returned to Spinner's End with an almost crazed need to get on with things. It had seemed clear to him in Shacklebolt's office as he signed the papers, as he listened to the Minister's simpering apologies that no, they had not found the Grangers, and no, Snape could not leave the country until his sentence had expired, that the only way forward was through.

It did not occur to him until the second week of brewing Anti-Allergy Potion and Acne Cream--boxes of ridiculous potions that he could have made as a second year--that Shacklebolt had done him a favor.

His gloved hands moved easily over the bubotubers, using the flat of his knife to juice them and collecting the thick white pus into phials with his wand. Pierce, squeeze, siphon. It was work. He had been given work, something to do to remind him who he might have been if all of this had not happened, something to do to keep his mind from what had. And too, Snape thought, it would make his potions safe. Hospitals would use them. When this was over, there was a better chance that he might work again.

He closed his eyes and tried to absorb the horrible idea that he might truly owe Shacklebolt.

He could hear Hermione moving upstairs. He had not liked the look in her eyes of late. Before the trial, when she had stared at him, it had been a watchful, careful kind of staring. Had he eaten, would he come to bed, would he balk if she suggested the gray waistcoat? That kind of staring. Now she looked at him as if she were waiting for something, waiting for some message he did not know how to deliver. At night, she lay quietly in his arms, but she did not sleep. He had thought that after, once it was over, that she would rest, that she would put down the burden of him and begin to heal, but he sometimes thought that she looked worse than she had a month ago. Thinner, tighter. More desperate. She was foundering.

He knew. He remembered the feeling intimately, his first weeks at Hogwarts after the Dark Lord had fallen the first time. Dumbledore had wanted him near, had wanted him within the boundaries of the school, but there were no children yet, no duties, and all he had ever had were duties. Assignments. He had felt as if someone had unstrung him, and he had paced his chambers like something caged until the first staff meeting, where the rest of them had looked at him like a very dangerous child.

A very dangerous child. He supposed that was what other people saw when she went out. But in was no better than out, because in there was nothing to do, nothing to occupy that restless mind. He knew, and yet he had no idea how to help her find what she needed to go forward, how to help her decide who she would be, if not a student, if not a Muggle, if not a warrior.

The days ran into one another, piling up into something that began to resemble a routine. If he brewed for at least seven hours a day, it would only take nineteen weeks to complete the mandatory labor. January. He could travel by January. Each morning, he woke, showered, availed himself of the now-magical toaster, and proceeded to the basement, where he would remove his Stasis Charms and light the cauldrons. He worked until mid-morning, when he paused for tea and looked about the house for Hermione. He would make tea, and they would drink it, sitting quietly at the kitchen table. It was the best part of his day, though he felt small and meager admitting that to himself. Afterward, he would work until he was famished, or until the boxes bearing the potion of the week looked full enough to be considered embarrassing.

Because it didn't matter if he was grateful for the work. He would embarrass them anyway.

***

September was moderately better. She went out sometimes, to the Burrow, she said, or to visit Potter who had taken up residence at Grimmauld Place. Sometimes she took tea with Minerva. Once, she had very shyly brought the Lovegood girl to Spinner's End, but they had stayed less than a half an hour before Hermione looked near tears, and they Apparated away again. He had wanted to tell her that it was all right, that he did not want to keep her here as if it were a prison, but she had been quiet and skittish for a week afterward.

He had repaired the squeaking boards of the stairs because he enjoyed knowing when she was coming without them. It was a strange pleasure, because it burned almost like pain in his heart, and each time that he looked up, expecting to see her, and actually found her there, he felt staggered with something that he could only think of as gratitude. He had not learned to stop the panicked feeling he had when she left, even though he told himself sharply each time that he was being ridiculous. If she had wanted to leave, she would have accepted Shacklebolt's generous offer to annul their marriage.

He enjoyed the work, he admitted to himself, and not just because he was doing something magical again, firmly seating himself inside the life he had chosen. It had been years since he'd been asked to brew, and he enjoyed the precision of a knife through ingredients, the thrill of being exceptional at something again, even if it was something as mediocre as hospital potions. He had worked his way through the A's--through anesthetics and Anti-Fungal Paste for the Quidditch players and, somewhat ruefully, through antivenins--filling box after box, until they were sometimes stacked precariously to the ceiling before they could be delivered to St Mungo's. He could have Transfigured them, but he enjoyed seeing the results of his work, enjoyed particularly picturing the Healer who would receive his shipment on Monday, the ring of keys suddenly transforming into huge, bulging boxes of potions.

He had been grinding porcupine quills against a stone for a Boil Curing Potion when he became suddenly aware that she was standing in the doorway, watching him. He did not acknowledge her immediately, but finished powdering the quills and carefully scraped the powder into the middle cauldron.

"If you are going to stand there gawking at me all afternoon, you may as well make yourself useful," he said and pushed the grinding stone across his worktable toward her.

She hesitated for a moment before casting a Cleansing Charm on her hands and coming to the table. "How many?" she asked.

"Do them all. They're no use whole, and the powder will keep," he said. He looked at her carefully, trying to gauge her mood. "And I intend to make more Boil Cure Potion than St Mungo's can hold. Nine hundred hours for this list? I could stock all of Britain."

She smiled a quick, tight smile and took up a quill, grating it in long strokes over the stone. "That explains the boxes," she said, and he thought there was something... something alive in her eyes.

He stepped behind her and closed his right hand over hers. "Observe," he said and ground the quill against the stone in a quick, circular pattern. The powder rained down under their hands.

"Much faster," she said.

"Indeed."

He stood behind her for a moment longer, enjoying her proximity and the scent of her hair, before he released her and set about dicing an obscene number of horned slugs. The work was soothing, and he hoped it would soothe her too, that she might find some peace in the repetition, or in the simple creation of something.

He watched her working with a pleasure that he had never had as her teacher and never allowed himself when he was her husband and her teacher both. A deep line appeared between her brows, and yet the corners of her lips turned up, and she flushed with the effort of doing a thing perfectly. She was a rare person, he decided. She worked as hard at grinding porcupine quills as she had at saving the world. He wondered if it was wrong to love her when she was in so much pain.

"Enough," he said finally, when her side of the table was buried in white powder. "Come and help me with these slugs."

He handed her a thin silver knife, and they established a routine in which she would bisect the slug and pass it to him to be diced. At first they worked slowly, feeling out a rhythm, and then it became like a game, in which she tried to create a pile, and he diced as quickly as he was able to stay ahead of her. They worked until the pattern began to break down, and their hands bumped more and more frequently. Finally, he caught her wrist and pressed it lightly between his fingers for a moment.

"Now, you stir," he said.

She picked up his stirring rod and began to turn the first mixture counterclockwise. When the potion had turned a pale, buttery yellow, she withdrew the rod quickly and dried it with a spell. He decanted the middle potion into phials, labeled them, and set them in a box with the others. He could give her this, he thought. He could share this with her if she needed it. Briefly he wondered if this was what marriage was, just saving each other over and over again.

"The rest can wait," he said, casting a Stasis Charm over the other two cauldrons. "Do you wish--that is, are you hungry?"

"Hungry?" she said, looking startled, as if she were coming out of a dream. "I suppose."

***

By the time he had made his way down the list to the Invigoration Draught, Hermione was meeting him in the basement in the mornings, her sleeves rolled up and her hair twisted into a thick braid down her back. She never began without him, but waited for him to instruct her, and that morning, he gave her the ginger roots to peel and slice and the pomegranates to juice, and he took the beetle eyes, as he remembered from class that she had always grimaced as she'd counted them out.

She worked quietly, as she always did, carefully slicing the ginger paper-thin and translucent. He counted and separated, counted and separated, using the flat of his knife to scrape the wet black eyes across the table. Suddenly, he was possessed with an odd notion. He looked at her, considering. And then he flicked an eye at her.

She shrieked and wiped it from the side of her face, leaping, and swinging her hand in the air as if it had been contaminated, but she was smiling at him, and just as quickly as he had decided to do it, she seemed to arrive at a decision of her own. She picked up a pomegranate and chucked it at him clumsily. It hit the table with a mushy thwack, and juice flew into the cauldrons and onto his shirt. The cauldrons immediately began to belch a sweet pink smoke, but he ignored it. The potions were ruined, but the smoke was not harmful. He reached behind him and snatched up a handful of moonstones and began to toss them at her, one by one. She danced and dodged, her laugh ringing through the close basement, and she caught him in the face with a hunk of ginger.

"Severus! Severus! That's not fair! No more eyes!" she cried, ducking below the table for a moment. Beneath it, she must have come upon the tank of flobberworms, because suddenly two of them came flying through the air, and her face was twisted with disgust as she emerged from below the table, though her eyes glowed triumphantly.

She laughed hysterically as he peeled one of the creatures from his shoulder and returned it to the tank.

"I would have thought you above using live animals," he said stiffly, but he could not keep the smile from his eyes, and she clutched the corner of the table, doubled over with laughter.

"Oh, god. Oh, god, Severus, you should have seen the look in your eyes when that--" She could go no further, wheezing with her attempts to breathe. Finally, after many minutes, she stood upright again. "We wrecked the potion," she said gravely, the smile still lingering around her mouth.

"I beg your pardon," Snape said, smirking. "I believe you wrecked the potion."

"What? And I suppose I flicked that beetle eye at myself?" she said.

"It fell," he said. "I bear no responsibility for this mess. Although I dare say St Mungo's can live with one less crate of Invigoration Draught."

"It's cruel what you're doing, you know. Those poor people in intake," she said, her eyes crinkling.

"I have no idea what you are going on about. St Mungo's requested potions. I am merely providing them."

"I don't think there's anything merely about what you're doing," she said, but there was no reproach in her tone, and she took his hand and led him up the stairs for tea. As they emerged into the kitchen, he allowed himself to hope that she was coming back to him, that what he was giving her might be enough.

***

One morning in November, the day that they were due to begin the Memory Potion, they sat side by side on the couch in the sitting room. It was past time to begin their brewing, but it was Saturday, and why that should matter when every day consisted of the same activities, he did not know, but for some reason, he felt it was acceptable for them to linger over breakfast on the weekends. They could always put in the extra hours after dinner.

He had his feet up on the coffee table and a cup of tea balanced on the arm of the couch, and he was idly looking at the pages of his book without really reading them. He was content to sit there with her, listening to her turning the pages of the Daily Prophet, from which they were mercifully absent. Hermione had talked him into allowing home delivery, as even if someone had the tenacity to determine which owl bore their delivery and tracked it to Manchester, they would still be unable to find the house once they arrived, and it made her happy for some reason, so he had acquiesced. Now she was pestering him about connecting them to the Floo Network, which he felt was another matter entirely, but she kept insisting that it was dangerous to continue sending their owl with ever larger rings of keys to St Mungo's.

"What if they were to Transfigure in the air?" she said every time. "Barney could be killed!"

He rolled his eyes. Why he had allowed her to name that ridiculous bird Barney, he would never know. The only good thing about connecting to the Floo Network, that he could see, was that she would no longer have to pick up his supplies from the apothecary. It amused him that St Mungo's continued to approve the vast amounts of ingredients he ordered, and yet he disliked sending Hermione out almost daily to pick them up.

"What are you rolling your eyes about now?" she asked, smiling. "I haven't done anything exasperating yet today."

"Ah, but the day is young," he said, leaning his head back against the couch and turning toward her.

She nudged him with her foot. "About that," she said. "I was thinking. Let's skive off today. Let's... I don't know. Let's go to Flourish and Blotts."

He stiffened slightly. "Hermione, this house is full of books, and it is not as though either of us has a salary right now."

"We don't have to buy anything. We could just look. Or we could just go to a park--a Muggle one, Severus, not a wizard one--we could just walk around, get out of the house a bit."

"It is November, if you hadn't noticed. It is cold outside."

"Well, then, we could go to Grimmauld Place. It's still under the charm. Harry would be glad to see you; people would be glad to see you, Severus. We could owl Minerva; she could meet us--"

"Hermione," he said, a faint edge of warning creeping into his tone.

She looked at him for a long time and then stood up and carried her cup to the kitchen. "It was just a thought," she said, turning and climbing the stairs.

He sighed. He knew what she wanted; he knew that she longed to be normal again, and he did not know how to tell her that this was the only time in his life that he had ever felt normal. It was not that he had a terrible objection to leaving the house. Not entirely. It was just that here, sometimes, some days, when they had been working so easily together, when dusk fell soft and heavy in the sitting room, and the fire crackled, and she laughed... sometimes he could forget how people looked at him outside, forget what it had felt like to sit chained to a chair with hundreds of eyes on him. Here, in the house, he had known the tentative stirrings of happiness, and he was afraid to push the boundaries of anything, for fear that he would upset some precarious balance and find it all destroyed.

But much more than that there was the matter of January. During the long, silent horror of August, he had sworn to himself that he would work every single day, that he would bear no distractions. He had promised her silently that he would complete those nine hundred hours as fast as he was able. He could not give her back most of what had been taken from her, but he would give her what he could, and that meant that he had to work.

He laid his book down on the coffee table and headed for the basement.