In Dreams

Chapter Three: In Dreams

A/N: Thanks to Jade for betaing. Hope this chapter is enjoyable. Sorry for the delay.

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They were on the front page of The Daily Prophet the next day.

Snape discovered this almost immediately upon entering the Great Hall for breakfast the next morning. Several students and all of the staff had already received their morning paper and it would have been impossible for them not to see the picture plastered on the front page: Hermione seeming to restrain him as he held a wand at the neck of the man who had been bothering them.

The silence when he entered the Great Hall had been deafening, followed almost immediately by the irritating buzzing of several hundred voices whispering to each other. Snape, having not seen the paper yet, had no idea what was going on.

Glaring at the students nearest to him, he quickly made his way to the head table and took his customary seat next to Albus, who was twinkling at him like he was the world's biggest lemon drop.

"Ah, Severus, my dear boy," the older wizard smiled; "I would have thought you would be in better spirits this morning, all things considered."

"What in Hades is going on now?" Snape muttered back.

"You've made The Daily Prophet," Minerva inserted from Dumbledore's other side. "You and Hermione both."

"What?" Snape snatched the paper McGonagall offered him and frowned in consternation at it. The front page read:

'Can Beauty Tame the Beast?'

Will Ministry Aurors be investigating this sudden relationship to ensure Miss Granger isn't being charmed against her will? Turn to page eleven to find out!

Snape glared at the article in disbelief. Who had taken that damnable picture without either he or Hermione noticing it? How in the world could any rational person think that Hermione had a romantic interest in him?

His eyes were drawn back to the picture, watching the sepia form of Hermione reaching out to him over and over, drawing his hand away from the worthless Higglesmith's neck. His collar suddenly felt rather tight.

The gossiping voices of the students stilled again, as they had when he had first entered the Great Hall and he glanced up with a sneer as the woman in question glided towards the head table and took her seat next to him.

"Good morning, Severus!" she smiled at him. "I trust you slept well?"

He didn't reply, instead he slapped the paper down in front of her and scowled at her.

Hermione barely glanced down. "Yes, yes. I've seen it already. What a load of rubbish! You really should look at suing them for defamation of character."

"You understand now why I didn't want to go out last night, Miss Granger?" he gritted out angrily. "I told you being seen with me would be hazardous to your reputation, let alone the fact that I absolutely abhor contributing to such blatant gossip!"

"You said you'd call me Hermione and I don't give a fig about what they say – any one who knows me would realize immediately what a load of claptrap that is! As if you would ever need to drug me with potions to get me to spend more time with you. It's just silly."

"Silly?" he hissed at her. He could feel his left temple start to pulse, "Silly?"

"Silly," the irritating girl confirmed as she buttered her toast. "For one thing, I believe it was I who threatened to hex Higglesmith, not you. I've already sent a letter to The Prophet to clarify that. And the last time I looked, I was still an adult and therefore perfectly capable of deciding whom I want to spend my time with. Besides, you are the only Potions Master in all of Wizarding Britain and it's my right to learn from the very best, isn't it? Shall I pour you a tea?"

During their little exchange, Snape had almost entirely forgotten they were sitting at a table for of his colleagues. Before he could think of a suitably sarcastic reply to Hermione's offer of tea, Flitwick spoke up.

"I shouldn't take anything that paper prints too seriously, Severus," the little wizard squeaked from Hermione's other side. "Everyone knows what a rag it is. I think it's perfectly lovely you finally left the castle for a change, especially with such pleasant company. You should get out more, I say!"

Snape pinched the bridge of his nose in irritation but didn't reply. Instead, he took the tea Hermione offered him silently as he glared at Flitwick.

That night was the first time he dreamed of her. He had been thinking about her all day, irritated that she didn't seem more concerned with the article in the paper and their spurious accusations of coupledom. As if Hermione would ever be interested.

Still, the feel of her hand on his last night could not be forgotten, nor could the warm press of her body against his side as the walked back to Hogwarts together. He found himself searching out a copy of The Daily Prophet after dinner in order to look at the picture again. She certainly was a beautiful girl. He wondered when that had happened, because he recalled a time – not so long ago – when he had thought of her solely as a bushy-haired harridan.

Working in his private lab later that evening, he found himself distracted by her graceful movements and the subtle scent of her hair. He was preparing ingredients for the fifth years' next potions class and she was marking the third year essays, humming to herself as she grimaced at the pages in front of her.

She had pulled her hair back from her face, tying it low at the nape of her neck with a little bit of leather, but some tiny curls had sprung free. Every once in a while, she would raise the hand that wasn't holding the quill and brush at them absently. He had never really noticed before last night how slim her wrists were, but now he couldn't seem to stop noticing.

Sometimes she would glance up at him and he would quickly shutter his gaze and try to pretend he was engrossed in peeling the membrane from the inside of the Chimera eggs. When she finished the papers, she came to stand beside him and - still humming – started carefully slicing the membrane he had managed to remove already.

"You're awfully quiet tonight." The humming stopped.

"You're always saying I talk too much."

He continued peeling the membranes and didn't reply. Hermione moved the sliced membranes carefully into a clean jar, "Do you want me to talk?"

Snape shrugged. "Suit yourself." He had a sudden strange feeling she was grinning at him, but he didn't look up from his task to see if she was.

"Can I ask you a question?"

"Can I stop you?" he retorted.

"Probably not." Silence.

"Well?" he demanded.

Hermione sighed. "I was wondering...last night, at The Three Broomsticks – you didn't bother trying to defend yourself against what every one was saying. Why?"

He didn't respond for the longest time. "Why should I?" he eventually replied. "It won't make a difference."

"It might," she disagreed.

"It wouldn't," he argued. "I was a Death Eater, Hermione. It's public record. And as a Death Eater I participated in some truly horrifying things – don't think that I didn't."

"You didn't have a choice."

"There's always a choice." His voice was curt but it didn't seem to phase her. She leaned forward and steadied the last egg as he carefully skinned it.

"If you hadn't, you would have been killed."

He cocked an eyebrow at her, "That wouldn't have been a bad thing, Hermione. That was one of my choices. I could have told Albus I wouldn't go to any more meetings."

"But your Dark Mark..."

"Would have burned until I went insane, yes I know."

"How's that a valid choice then?"

"I'm sure death and insanity would have been preferable to some of the things...I'm...suffice it to say, I chose to save myself rather than save others. People have it right when they say I should be in Azkaban, at the very least. Malfoy..."

"You are not Lucius Malfoy," Hermione hissed at him, suddenly angry. "Lucius was a complete and utter bastard and deserved far worse than death in Azkaban. He murdered innocent people, Severus, just because he didn't think they were good enough!"

"As did I." His voice was soft and grim. "Why should I be able to walk around freely, to continue working at this school, when I chose to join Voldemort in the first place? The things I did are no less worse than the things Malfoy did, in the end. People are right to detest me. I've never been punished for what I did."

"Over twenty years as a spy isn't punishment enough for you?" Hermione retorted. "You risked your life, every time you answered a summons. You brought Albus and the Order back information that was invaluable to our efforts to defeat Voldemort. You cut yourself off completely from society in order to save it and spent more than half your life living in the dungeons here and protecting a group of snot-nosed brats – and I include myself in that group – who not only failed to recognize your genius but actively disliked you....isn't that enough?"

"I helped, in part, put Voldemort into a position of power in the first place. I created potions for him, I went on raids for him....I killed because he told me to. Do a few useful pieces of information cancel out everything else I did?" His voice had risen as he spoke, until he was glaring at the girl beside him, hands clenched futilely in rage. "I should be locked up with the rest of them."

"Severus -"

He cut her off: "It's true, Hermione. What people are saying - it's all true."

"That's just silly," she replied; "without you, we wouldn't have won. The insider knowledge you provided us with was invaluable. It's easy for people to point fingers when they did nothing for either side during the war. If you had played your hand too early, you would have been dead and the Order would have been working blind! You were like our very own Enigma machine!"

He cocked an eyebrow at her and she had shrugged, "Muggle history, WWI...it's a long story."

"Regardless..."

Hermione cut him off. "How does locking yourself in the dungeons solve anything?"

"I'm not 'locking myself in the dungeons'," his voice was sharp. "Has it occurred to you I prefer my solitude? I like being alone, Hermione."

"Bullshit." Her reply was succinct. He noticed they had given up all pretense of preparing ingredients. The chimera egg membranes lay forgotten in a small pile.

"Pardon me?"

"You don't prefer being alone, you just tell yourself you do." When he tried to protest, she held up her hand to silence him. "I'm not saying you aren't a solitary figure, because you are, and there's nothing wrong with that per se. However, I think you cut yourself off from everyone else because you think it's better that way – you think you deserve it, or perhaps it's better if you turn away first. It's always easier to reject someone before they reject you, after all."

"Are you finished?" Snape gritted out. "I didn't realize you had been reading books on Muggle psychology."

Hermione shrugged, "I don't need to read books to figure you out. I've had nine years to study you and I'm pretty sure I understand your motivations."

He sneered at her, "So you're here to what? Save me from myself?"

"If I must," she retorted. "Some people might view what you're doing – hiding in your dungeons here – as either an admission of guilt or cowardice. Now, I know you're not a coward..."she said this quickly, before he could bellow at her... "but I do think you feel guilty and you shouldn't. Besides, didn't you enjoy yourself last night, despite the fact we were surrounded by a bunch of vapid, gossiping, narrow-minded idiots? I know I did - when you actually start talking, you're a stimulating conversationalist."

"You're getting terribly cheeky, Hermione." He was scowling at her, unsure whether he should be angry at her analysis of his motives, or horrified she seemed to be able to read him so well. On top of that, the little minx was teasing him now. He wasn't sure how to react. Hermione smiled at him and picked up a fragile membrane from the pile, gently stretching it out until the skin was so thin it was transparent, running her fingers over the tears and carefully piecing the edges back together again.

"If refusing to let you lock yourself in the dungeons and wallow in guilt and self-pity is cheeky, I guess I am," she agreed.

"I don't wallow, girl."

"Good." Hermione smiled at him again, before putting a solidifying charm on the membrane she had stretched out and handing it to him. It was still thin and very fragile looking, but where the tears had been he could barely make out small scars. He knew he would never be able to break it. The chit was exceedingly good at charms.

"What's this for?" he asked her irritably, even as he felt an electric shiver pass through his palm when her fingertips skimmed it.

"It represents your new beginning," she answered. They finished the rest of their work that evening in silence, and when she finally left his lab, he gently picked the membrane up and took it back to his quarters with him, placing it on his desk beside the picture he had removed from The Prophet.

Later that evening, he thought of that thin skin, transparent and fragile-looking, yet repaired with nary a mark to show where it had been torn. He wondered if that's what she was doing to him, too: trying to repair him and charm his pieces into something unbreakable, and wondered why she would even bother.

He fell asleep, dreaming of her and her soft voice, and in his dreams he realized he was happy.

TBC...

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Ghost In You – Psychedelic Furs

She don't fade......