Both the Worlds

A/N: Once again, JK Rowling is the creator and owner of these characters and this lovely world that the rest of us play in just for the fun of it, and Emily Brontë is the author of the poetry. Once again, as well, I owe incredible debts of gratitude to the incomparable sshg316, the best beta in the Potterverse. She rocks my world. Anything still wonky is my not listening to her.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

"Both the Worlds"

The day had barely begun as Riley watched Winsome heading in toward his dock. This was not the regular delivery boat, and this island was not a destination for a casual visit. Maybe the boatmen were lost. That seemed the most plausible explanation.

He remained where he stood as the grizzled fisherman at the rudder reached the dock and stood to tie his tiny boat to a pier. His bright yellow slicker gleamed incongruously in the brilliant early morning sunlight.

The other man still sitting in the boat was the oddity. He must be the reason for this interruption of solitude. Riley looked at him carefully.

Winsome's passenger wore a dark fedora pulled low over his face, shading his eyes; they glittered from the shadows. His long coat was sufficient protection from the wind but looked out of place. It had been made a long way away from here. The man's face was almost luminous, a long, drawn out stretch of pallid skin over sharp bone. His hands were thin but powerful.

The man rose from the little boat and grabbed hold of the side of dock. He hauled himself up onto it with a single pull of one arm and stood, looking slowly around him.

Riley remained motionless, watching the man survey his surroundings. Then he shivered suddenly. This man was dangerous. This man traveled with death.

Nor could his arrival be a coincidence. This man was here because of who had come before. Riley could not remember how long ago the troubled, dark chess master had come. It must have been a good number of seasons by now. The chess master suited Riley. It was good to have him here.

And Riley had known as soon as he had seen her that the woman had come to find the dark man. His instincts told him she came to help. He did not know if she could, but he would watch. So far, it had gone well--or at least it had not gone badly.

But this man, this new arrival, brought grief and danger and death. And Riley, who was not a man who was easily frightened, shivered in the bright morning sun.

~~~~~~~~~~

Hermione was up early. She had made a decision in the middle of the night, and now she felt a strange urgency to carry it out at once. She had dressed hurriedly, pulling on a pair of dark jeans, a long-sleeved cotton shirt, warm socks, and her sturdy shoes. She had scrubbed her face quickly in a basin and then rushed from the cottage, banging the door carelessly behind her, moving quickly before she could change her mind.

As she drew near to Snape's cave, she slowed, suddenly hesitant. She stopped, staring ahead. The place was well hidden, but she had already found it twice, once in the dead of night and once while Snape was distracted at chess. Yet he had ordered her to stay away, and he had been deeply furious with her when he had left the cottage the night before. She summoned her courage and moved forward again.

"The dock is on the other side of the island," said a silky voice, almost whispering in her ear, instantly halting her movement.

She whirled, staring up into his face all at once. She struggled to master the rush of adrenalin caused by his sudden appearance and the warmth of his breath on her ear.

He looked back down at her, only inches from her face, his expression inscrutable, his figure immobile.

The intense early morning light illuminated the delicate lines around his eyes, the cruel slant of his mouth, the sharp arch of his nose, and the fine down on his cheeks. This close, she could suddenly see the barest difference between the inky black pupils and the coal black irises of his eyes.

Her breath was suddenly ragged. Her lips parted slightly as she tried to steady her breathing. Her hand shaking slightly, she reached into her pocket, her eyes still locked on his, unable to look away. She removed the flask of memories and held it against her breast. She could feel her heart beating wildly beneath her hand.

In the barest whisper, the only sound she could get out, she said, "You are a good man, and you deserve to have your life back."

She held out the flask of swirling, silvery blue memories, unable to look away from him and unable to say more.

His expression was still unreadable, but, this close, she saw an almost imperceptible tremor pass across his face. His hand moved slowly, agonizingly slowly, and caught hers at last, wrapping his fingers around hers and caressing the flask with incredible gentleness. His touch was warm.

Still staring down at her, he said, in a whispered breath that might have been all he could manage, "Mr. Weasley was right, I think," and took the flask from her hand.

She gasped and blinked.

And suddenly he was gone, moving away from her swiftly, striding down to the sea.

~~~~~~~~~~

The stranger with the pale face had found Riley amazingly easy to read. A single plunge into his mind had told him where to find his prey. It had also confirmed that Severus Snape was, indeed, very much alive, that Hermione Granger had found him, and that the two were both on this remote little piece of land, far away from help of any kind. The two people he hated most in the whole world were right here within reach. Alone.

He looked down at his handiwork, and he smiled. It was not a pleasant sight.

~~~~~~~~~~

Hermione sank to the ground where she was standing and hugged her knees to her chin. She was trembling.

Ron had accused her of falling in love with Severus Snape, but that had been with the idea of the man. All the details she had uncovered about his life had made her, at first, merely sympathetic to his plight and understanding of his mistakes. They had also illuminated his courage, his sense of honor, his unfailing dedication to doing what was right, to paying for his terrible mistakes, to righting the wrongs he had committed. On paper, he was an attractive man, and it become easy to forget what she had thought of him before she had learned his history.

Faced once again with the man himself, those memories had come rushing back. In classes, he had seemed a petty tyrant, unfair and demanding, but he had also taught her more than she realized until she had left his classroom. The constant pressure of his insistence on detail and perfection had bred in her a kind of watchful vigilance in all her studies.

Outside of classes, he had seemed cruel and haughty. Yet almost everything she had witnessed then had been tempered by Harry's extreme reactions to the man. She had tried to keep her own counsel, to draw her own conclusions, but Harry was her friend, and Snape had seemed to be their enemy.

Then she had learned to look at him from an entirely new perspective, and all her assumptions had been shaken to their core.

Faced once again with the man himself, she saw now the doubts and self-recriminations that must have always been there. She saw the price he had paid for mistakes he obviously felt could never be redeemed. She saw the way he was haunted by the gaps in his memory, the things he no longer understood about himself.

She saw incredible intelligence and a deep vein of humor, and she saw, clearly, the decency of the man.

And Ron was absolutely right.

~~~~~~~~~~

The man with the long, pale face wondered if he could risk a bit of magic to make himself less immediately visible. There were few trees to disguise his movement across the landscape. If he headed for the cottage, and they were looking, they would see him coming from quite a long way off. If he waited here for Snape to appear at the dock, he would need to be out in the open with room to maneuver.

But if they were able to detect the shimmer of magic, especially in a place where apparently none had ever intruded before, they might sense him coming. He did not know that the one who might have noticed his magic coming was thinking about other things at the moment, and the one who might have seen him coming without magic was not looking in his direction at all.

He decided to risk magic. He needed the element of surprise. He cast a Dislliusionment Charm and contemplated his next move.

~~~~~~~~~~

Snape reached the water's edge and turned north, slowing his pace as the lapping waves soothed his roiling emotions. He still clutched the flask in one hand, thrust into a pocket, the smooth crystal surface warming to his touch.

He had recognized her intelligence almost from the start. Though he had ridiculed her incessantly waving hand in class, he had been secretly delighted that one student at least cared enough about learning to want to know the answers. He had eventually cured her of her obsessive need to display her knowledge, but he had nevertheless looked forward to reading her essays and grading her work in class. She had validated him as a teacher. Few others had.

She had solved his logic puzzle in the first year, apparently quite easily. None of his colleagues had been able to figure it out. He had tried it on them all before putting it into place to protect Flammel's stone. He suspected that her Muggle heritage might have helped her work through the logic involved. He did not consider that heritage to be a deficiency. Why would he? He knew first-hand the value and power of drawing on the wisdom of two different worlds.

He had continued to notice her throughout her years at Hogwarts, though only as a student and principally as the best friend of the boy he hated but had pledged to protect with his life. More than once, he had been reminded of the danger of underestimating Hermione Granger. The first time, she had set him on fire. He had learned from that experience.

By the time she had left Hogwarts, he had glimpsed the woman that she would become. He had approved. Yet he didn't think about her, hadn't obsessed over her, hadn't even known what had happened to her after the defeat of Voldemort. He'd had other things to focus on, and Hermione Granger was definitely not one of them.

But he had not been surprised when he realized who had finally found him. The tenacity when solving a puzzle, the unwillingness to accept things at face value, the courage to trek out to one of the most desolate places on earth, the sense of being right and needing to prove it--these were all traits that had distinguished the Miss Granger he had once known.

He was gratified to discover that she had turned out as he expected. Better, perhaps. She had a fire and a brightness to her that lit up a room. She seemed to know a great deal about him now, but she did not need to flaunt her knowledge anymore. She had obviously learned how to rein in her temper, as well. He hadn't succeeded in baiting her the way he once would have.

And there was more. He shivered. She seemed to understand him, not just the facts about him but also the facts of him. It couldn't be possible, but when she looked at him, she seemed able to touch his soul. It wasn't Legilimency. It was a human connection. He had never experienced that before. It frightened him.

It fascinated him, too.

He stared out across the water, fingering the flask in his pocket. What did it contain? What had been missing from his mind all this time? Was she right, and should he put it back?

If he restored his memory, how might that change his world?

He sighed deeply. Perhaps a game of chess would clear his mind. He began walking toward the dock.