Chapter 38

I accidentally posted chapter 39 as 38. I apologize to those who read 39 first. We needed to get through the diary chapter first before the last memory bead.

Hermione smiled up at him. "Let's take a shower and have some breakfast first."

Severus nodded and said, "You go first."

Hermione smiled at him. "You could join me. It wouldn't be the first time."

"It would be for me. I'm not ready right now to further our relationship. Please, understand I want to be free of all this, Hermione. If we are to have a life, I want it to be both of our lives. I want to remember falling in love with you the first time."

"First time?" she asked. Her heart skipped a beat as she caught his meaning.

He reached out to cup her face in his hands. "You know I love you. It's ingrained in my heart. I've fought it long enough. It bubbles out of me each time you come into the room. But they are still not my feelings; I wish they were, but they belong to the man named Raven. I want to know his feelings and have us be one complete person who is no longer fragmented. You're right: It is time for me to read the diary in its entirety and view the memories." He paled, let go, and stepped back. "You have no idea how much I dread looking into my mother's mind and seeing our life through her eyes."

Hermione listened to his words, but she knew differently. Severus, you do love me. You just aren't ready to admit you can love. I see it in your eyes and feel it in your touch. You are so different from the first time we had sex. I can wait until you realize it yourself. She said aloud, "I know, Severus. Some of the memories were hard for Raven, even though he did not remember her. But I'm going to be with you each and every moment. You do not need to be afraid of expressing whatever feelings these memories invoke in you. I can handle it. Raven and I did not see all the memories your mother left. I detected a couple more magical beads amongst the strand. So there will be new things for me to see there, as well. You go shower, Severus. I'll go down to the other bathroom and bathe there." She gave him another soft kiss.

Severus watched her leave before going to the closet to find some clothes. He had an overwhelming desire to flee. Severus Snape, spy for Dumbledore and Voldemort, was afraid of feelings from his past...feelings so foreign to him that he'd rather cut off his hand than face them. He stood in the shower a long time, letting the hot water scald his skin before he finally dried off and dressed. He found Hermione working on a breakfast of pancakes, bacon, and coffee. He sat and ate with her in silence. Both of them were deep in their own thoughts.

After the breakfast items were put away, Severus wandered into the living room and stood holding the diary. When Hermione joined him, he sat on the couch with her and opened the diary and began to read it aloud. It took several hours to finish, and then he got up and walked to the old fireplace and stood there for a bit.

"His words are powerful. Yet, I do not remember them. They are from a man I cannot see, a man who exists only as feelings I do not understand. Hermione, it's still not real. Nothing I do seems to bring back that time with you!" He pounded his fist against the stone of the fireplace.

She came to him and held him close. Although he held his body stiffly at first, he finally relaxed against her.

"Severus, you have never had to face your feelings. For years Grendel has taken your pain away. He was a godsend for you at a time when you needed him desperately. But now it's time to face your feelings. We will do all we can to bring back your memories. You know our story now, and you must watch the memories that we took out for you. Maybe they will trigger the desired memories in your own head. Do you have a Pensieve here? I don't remember seeing one when we were here before."

Severus nodded and went across the room to the bookshelf, where he drew a book out and a cabinet opened. Severus picked up the heavy Pensieve and placed it on a small table so they could stand on either side.

Hermione chose the first memory of Raven waking in the alley alone. She poured it into the Pensieve, and the soft silver memory floated over the surface until it was almost a mirror reflecting them back. "Do you want me to go with you?" she asked.

Severus nodded, not taking his eyes off the silver memory.

He took her hand, and they plunged their faces into the memory. Hermione gasped at the sights and sounds of the city she had lived in all those months ago. The stench in the alley was horrible, and she supposed she had become numb to it before.

Snape lay on the ground before them. He groaned and pulled himself into a sitting position. "Where am I?" he asked the silence of the filthy alley. He struggled to his feet, grimacing as his neck pained him. As he reached around, his fingers found the ragged injury. "What the hell," he wondered aloud. His fingers came away with blood on them. He looked around and then down at himself. He pulled open his cloak and tore the hem of his shirt off and wrapped his neck. He fumbled in his pockets and found his wand and two small, empty bottles. "A stick and bottles? What are they for?" But he didn't toss any of them; he replaced them in his robes.

A noise distracted him, and he turned to find a group of young men bearing down on him.

Hermione glanced at Severus and saw his lips set in a straight, unemotional line. His hand was clenched at his side.

They watched as the men surrounded the memory Severus. "What have we here? Look, this guy's just an old drunk. Those are pretty nice threads for an old drunk. Give those here, old man. You have no need of finery in this ally." Severus tried to rise, but they knocked him down again and pulled off his robes, his inner jacket, and his fine shoes. They checked the pockets and found the stick and the empty bottles and tossed them onto the ground. Severus tried to fight, but he was only knocked down again and again.

Hermione had her fist stuck in her mouth, trying not to let Severus hear her cry. She had never seen this memory; she'd only helped Raven remove it.

The last man kicked Severus in the ribs and said, "Thanks, old man." They left him hurt far worse than before and with little clothing to protect him from the cold night.

He lay in a heap for some time and then struggled to his feet. He picked up the bottles and the polished stick, holding onto his side as he made his way through the alley. He came upon a woman digging through trash.

She wore layers of old clothing, all mismatched and dirty. Her hair was long, ragged, and grey, and her face was lined from years of hard living. She looked at him, glanced at his hand holding the polished stick, and gave him a toothless smile. "Hello, deary, what happened to you? Come let Mary see you in the light." There was an old alley lamp hanging out of the building nearby. "I've never seen you around. What's your name, man? It looks like the hoodlums got to you and stole your clothes, didn't they?"

Severus nodded, leaning on to the building for support. His mind was so confused that, when she'd asked him who he was, he had no answer. "I don't know my name," he admitted.

"Deary, you're hurt. Come back to the place I sleep. There's an empty box in the back; its owner vacated last week, if you know what I mean." She continued to jabber on and on. "You say you don't know your name. You got hit on the head." She thought for a long moment and then said, "Raven, I'll call you Raven. With that black hair and beak you have, it fits. Come, you need sleep. Maybe Stumpie's shoes will fit you. He had one arm, you see. That's why we called him Stumpie."

Severus followed the old woman down the alley.

The scene faded, and Severus turned away. "Merlin," he said, "I see it, but it's not me. It's like watching a movie. I was in such trouble and had no way to help myself. That woman saved me. We must find her when all this is over. I can help her now."

Hermione was touched by his words and took him in her arms and held him close. "Do you hear yourself, Severus? You have changed so much. You have sympathy for a mere bag lady. You are already becoming one with Raven."

"Or perhaps the man you knew as Severus Snape was always an actor. I did have a heart, Hermione. I just didn't allow anyone to see it," he said in his own defense.

She said, "You're right, and I have realized that recently. You would not have sacrificed your life for Harry...a child you claim to have hated...if you had not cared. Why didn't you want him to know how much you cared? Why was it such a secret? Don't you realize how good a friend you could have been? Perhaps you could have been the father he needed so desperately."

"It was as it had to be." He pushed her away. "Let's see the next one."

They watched as Hermione found Raven and took him back to her shack. They had read the details already. Severus had now seen her point of view and Raven's, and yet it made no difference. He could not remember. The memories of the first time they made love made him angry with jealousy, and he pulled out after a few minutes of watching it. "Put it back in your head. I do not want to see it. If I am to have that memory, I want it to be from my own head. It's like watching a twin, someone else besides me doing these things with you. What's the last memory?" he asked gruffly.

"It's our first kiss. Raven gave it up because that was when he felt he loved me for the first time. I think it meant as much to him as our first time together. What if we put your memories back in your head? They would be your memories again, Severus, it could trigger everything."

Severus realized the idea terrified him. It would be like letting someone else's memories be installed inside his mind. Intellectually he knew it was ridiculous, but he could not shake the idea.

Hermione was hurt that he did not want the memory back, but she tried hard to look at it from his point of view. Maybe there is something in his mother's memories that would help trigger his own. The woman had to have had a reason for leaving them. Maybe there is an explanation in the memories yet unseen.

They agreed to try a few of the ones that Hermione had already seen. They watched the one of Severus as a baby; it brought him to the same angry tears that Raven had, and the one in the barn made him furious, though he remembered that one first hand. His indignation wasn't as bad as Raven's had been because he also remembered the day in the forest when she had apologized for asking him to kill his father. His anger was gone when he left that one. The idea that she had actually loved him seemed to mollify him a bit. Knowing that she had felt this was important for him to remember, he watched it again with fresh eyes. The parting at King's Cross left him in tears. He clung to Hermione. That parting had been one of the hardest things he'd ever done in his life.

Then came a new one in which they watched him kill his father. He was devastated, and the memory had left tears streaming down his face. Severus looked like a young man near NEWT age. Hermione watched in horror, and Severus stood stony and white, his face nearly drained of blood. It was obviously self-defense; they had been fighting, but this time, Tobias had attacked Severus with a knife. Severus had pulled out the knife his father had embedded in his shoulder and turned to his dad just as Tobias had lunged forward, and the knife plunged into his father's heart. The Bobbies came and ruled the incident as self-defense and carted his father's body away.

Severus was sitting on the floor staring at the bloodstain when Eileen had come at him, screaming, hitting him with her fists, and telling him to go and never come back. She was yelling horrible, nasty, hard words because he had killed his father. But the memory didn't end there.

After he had run from the house, Eileen fell to the floor screaming in pain and rage, "Tobias, you're a bastard! Severus is a wonderful young man, and you did nothing but cripple him emotionally and beat him into the ground. He has such wonderful power and intelligence. You cannot possibly imagine the things your son is destined for, and I am just as much to blame. I should have cursed you to hell years ago when you hit me and Severus saw us fight. I tried to make excuses for your hatred of your own son. I nearly begged the boy to kill you, and I damaged him further. We are both to blame." She was speaking to the bloodstain as if it still was a flesh and blood, hearing body. The air was now thick with the smell of spilt blood. "He's better than both of us together. Without us, he can live a better life and make something of himself. Maybe he'll even find a wife, find love. I will never talk to him again; it is for his own good. He must distance himself from me and this Muggle life I allowed myself to get trapped in. He must make his own life. I am damaged beyond hope, and he needs to be free. I love him so much I must let him go..." She collapsed into the puddle of blood, and the memory faded.

Severus slipped to the floor and cried as Hermione held him tightly against her. Her tears mingled with his.

I want to thank all the people who have helped me read and correct this chapter. I could not do it with out you, Beaweasley2, Becky and Lisa, my beta. Thank you all so much.