Five

July, 1998

"When can I go home?" Hermione demanded impatiently, folding her arms across her chest.

Her mother looked at Dr Gupta.

"Hermione, this is the difficult thing," Dr Gupta said slowly, his dark brow furrowed. "You may feel completely normal, but we still do not know what exactly is causing these states and until we know for certain that you are not in any danger, we cannot run the risk of letting you..."

"Out of this place?" Hermione finished for him.

"Midvale is the safest place for you right now," Dr Gupta explained patiently. "At least until you can choose to put aside the fantasies which you have created and join us again."

"Fantasies?" Hermione demanded indignantly, shifting on the bed. "They're as real as I am! Where do you think I got this scar?" she yanked on the hospital robe to show them the top of the scar that zigzagged its way across her sternum – a souvenir of the Department of Mysteries and Dolohov.

Dolohov – he cursed me before I came here. During the battle...

"What scar, Hermione?" inquired Dr Gupta kindly.

"This scar! Right here." Hermione looked down at the smooth, unblemished flesh. "But, it was there! I got it two years ago!"

"This is the sort of thing I mean," Dr Gupta explained. "The line between your fantasy world and reality is very blurry for you. Until you find a way to cope with reality and abandon the fantasy, it's safer for you here."

"Hermione, this isn't the first time we've argued about this. And, well, you haven't always been so... compliant," Jocasta said, rising from her chair to sit carefully on her daughter's bed. She smoothed her khaki trousers, and Hermione saw the glint of her solitaire diamond.

"What do you mean?"

Jocasta did not reply, but glanced at the far side of the bed, where a set of restraints was folded neatly on the floor.

"We haven't had to use them recently," she said. "Not since March."

March? What happened in March?

"March?" she asked.

"You ... you were violent when we tried to feed you. You screamed and began to hit when we tried to feed you. And then the seizures began ..." Jocasta trailed off and bit her lower lip, twisting her hands, knuckles white.

March. Malfoy Manor. Oh, God, Bellatrix.

"It's ... it's okay, Mum." Hermione reached out tentatively to her mother.

Jocasta flinched and recovered. "I'm sorry, darling," she said. "It's been difficult, but we ... we want the best for you. You know that, don't you?"

"I know, Mum. I know."

Maybe it wasn't real – maybe I have been here all this time. Maybe...

"Hermione?" Her mother's concerned voice cut across her thoughts.

"It's okay, Mum. I'm still here. I was just thinking. I want ... I want to be with you and Dad and Atalanta, but it's not easy – it all felt so real."

"I know, darling. And we need you to fight that, to rejoin us. Don't you want that?"

Hermione smiled wanly. Did she? Was that what she truly wanted?

"I want to go home, Mum," she finally said. "And to do that, I guess that I need to... to start my recovery."

"Oh, my darling girl," Jocasta cried, throwing her arms around her daughter.

Hermione hugged her mother back, suppressing the feeling that her mother – her calm, sensible, professional mother – wasn't this emotional woman, but instead, Monica Wilkins, currently (presumably) shivering in a wintry Australia.

But perhaps this was her mum.

Dr Gupta cleared his throat and fiddled with his clipboard.

"I think, Mrs Granger, Hermione, that we can start talking about treatment."

"What did you have in mind?" Hermione asked as her mother sat back and smoothed the bedclothes.

"We're still not entirely certain what happened to you, but we think that your fantasy world began to manifest itself quite normally."

Hermione narrowed her eyes, and her mother stiffened.

"What do you mean, 'normally?'"

"I use 'normally' in the sense that all children have, to a certain extent, an active fantasy life. Do you remember your eleventh birthday?" Dr Gupta asked.

Hermione nodded.

"We had cake," she said, "and Atalanta made the icing."

Jocasta relaxed and smiled.

"Do you remember what you received as presents?" Dr Gupta asked gently.

"Yes. Books and a microscope."

"You were so happy to receive the microscope," Jocasta said, reaching out to smooth Hermione's hair from her face. Hermione twitched her head away impatiently.

"Of course I remember," she said. "And Auntie Muriel was there and Uncle Brian."

There was a silence.

"Uncle Brian?" asked Dr Gupta. Jocasta rose suddenly from the bed and moved to the corner of the room.

"Yes," Hermione said, "Uncle Brian from Scotland. He's Gran's cousin's brother-in-law. Mum and Dad met him when they were on honeymoon and he visited occasionally. He was very happy that he could make my eleventh birthday, said it was an important day because I didn't turn eleven every day."

"Hermione," began Dr Gupta and Jocasta choked on what sounded like a sob. "Hermione, you don't have an Uncle Brian."

Hermione laughed.

"Of course I do!" she insisted. "He's old, older than even Gran, and he always has lemon sherbets with him."

"Oh, God."

"Mum? What's wrong?"

Dr Gupta sat on Hermione's bed – the first time she remembered him ever doing so.

"Your mum might have a hard time with some of this," he explained gently. "Sometimes what you think happened and what really happened are, well, disturbing to her."

"So... I don't have an Uncle Brian?" Hermione furrowed her brow in thought. He had been a jolly old man – almost like Father Christmas, only slender. He'd worn purple that day: velvet trousers and a white shirt and a sport coat with shiny, silvery lining. And he'd seemed to twinkle.

She remembered one summer day after her birthday when he'd come to tea, and he had been wearing what he called a "Hawaiian shirt" that was a brilliant shade of mango. Atalanta had giggled when he'd hugged her hello and told him that he smelled of sherbet.

"No. Hermione, there is no Uncle Brian," Dr Gupta explained again.

"But he seems so real to me!" she protested, realizing she sounded petulant, like Atalanta.

"I know, darling, but he's not," interrupted Jocasta. "In fact, he was the first indication that something might be amiss. You started talking to him at your party – but we didn't know who he was - and then it was as if he was visiting us for a few days – and you'd talk to him a lot."

"And then?"

"And then you said he'd given you a book about a castle and about wizards and witches."

"Oh?" Oh.

"And then, well, then the next summer, you said that you received a letter from Uncle Brian inviting you to go to that castle for your... your schooling."

"I remember – he was wearing a bright pink shirt."

"In your fantasy he was, but not ... not in reality."

Hermione did not reply – the room was beginning to fade.

Schooling... Castle... Hogwarts... Uncle... Brian?

"Hermione?"

"Hermione?"

Bill Weasley's concerned voice penetrated the fogginess that was her consciousness.

"Anything?"

Professor Snape. Bill Weasley.

"I've never seen a curse exactly like this, but there are some trace elements in the scarring and her state that are very similar to some of the nastier Russian hexes that they've been known to use."

"I suppose."

Hermione struggled upwards through the fog.

"Is she... is she responding to Legilimency at all?"

"We tried it yesterday. She slipped into this state almost the moment that I entered her mind. I would like to try it again, but not until I know for certain that it won't send her back into that state."

"I see."

Silence. Then, the slow tap, tap, tap of a cane.

The room began to swim into focus. She was sitting, curled in a chair in a long room with beds and cubicles. Bill Weasley was kneeling beside her, a concerned frown on his scarred features.

"Welcome back," he said softly, brushing the hair from her face.

"How long ..."

"About seven hours. This, according to Severus, is the longest episode yet."

"Severus?"

"Professor Snape," said the dark man who was standing stiffly at the window with his back to the pair, hand wrapped around a black cane so tightly the knuckles were white and the veins stood out in stark relief. Hermione noticed that his hair was growing long. He needed a haircut.

A good shampooing wouldn't hurt either, I suppose.

Snape turned and glared at her.

"Of course, Professor Snape. Sorry, sir." Hermione blushed.

One thing she hadn't told Dr Gupta the next time she was awake was that she'd been dreaming a great deal about Professor Snape lately. He had to be the dark-haired man with the cane who read to her when he thought she wasn't listening.

Or am I awake now? Why is it so hard to tell the difference?

"Well, it seems you've decided to join the land of the living again," Snape snarled.

Hermione blinked in surprise and turned back to Bill. Bill was safer to talk to – nicer, at that.

"Seven hours?" she asked. "And while I was ... out, what happened?"

"Severus Floo'd me. You had slipped into your 'state' the moment that he attempted Legilimency. He wanted to ask my opinion on the curse and what it seems to be doing to you."

"Oh."

"What do you remember about where you were?"

Snape turned from his window to listen to her answer. The cane scraped across the stone floor.

"I was..." Hermione thought for a moment. "I was in London. At the Muggle psychiatric home. And Mum and Dr Gupta were there, but not Dad or Atalanta. And we talked about my eleventh birthday."

Snape froze.

"Why that birthday?" Bill asked, casting concerned look at Snape.

"I think it was because that was the birthday that Uncle Brian came to."

"Uncle Brian?" Snape asked intently.

"Who is Uncle Brian?" asked Bill.

"He's my Gran's... some relation of my Grandmother," explained Hermione, staring at her hands, trying to grip the elusive memory that was fast fading. "He came to my eleventh birthday and that was the year that I also set the candles alight by myself – after I'd blown them out. It was the first time I'd manifested my magic before..." Hermione trailed off, frowning.

"What is it, Hermione?"

"I don't remember," she said, turning her stricken face to the two men. "It was there a moment ago, but now it's gone!"

"Do you remember anything about your eleventh birthday?" Dr Gupta was saying.

"Yes, there was cake. And Atalanta had made the icing," Hermione replied dutifully. "And I received books and a microscope."

"And who was there?" Jocasta asked intently. Dr Gupta quickly frowned at her and turned back to Hermione.

"You, Dad, Atalanta, and Auntie Muriel," Hermione replied.

"Nobody else?"

"Jocasta..."

"No. Nobody else. You bought me a book on birds, I remember."

Jocasta relaxed back into her chair.

Dr Gupta smiled.

"I think we've made real progress here," he said.

Hermione smiled.

"So, when can I go home?" she demanded.

Dr Gupta chuckled.

"Soon, my impatient one, very soon."

"Weasley! What did you do to her?"

"Severus! I did nothing – she was here one moment, talking about her birthday and then, well, you can see as well as I what happened."

Snape moved to the other side of the chair.

"Can you help her?" he asked the scarred redhead intently, gripping his cane as if it was a weapon to attack the younger wizard.

Bill rose from his knees and winced.

"Not as young as I was," he noted wryly.

Snape snorted and glared at him.

"Can you help her?" he asked again, dark eyes boring into blue.

Bill sighed and adjusted his t-shirt.

"I think so," he said, "but it will take time. I'll do some research and Floo you."

"We do not have much time, Weasley. Her condition worsens every day."

Bill nodded and frowned, running a hand through his newly shorn hair, sending the fang earring swinging. Outside, the meadowlark trilled again.

Hermione sat between them, unseeing and silent.

"I know, Severus, I know."

AN: still don't own or make a profit from this venture. Many thanks to Subversa and Savine_Snape for beta and Brit-picking!