Five

A/N: With thanks to my beta, JunoMagic.

Judging by the golden glow streaming in through her window, it was well into the afternoon when Hermione awoke from her second slumber. Prying open her eyes with what felt like entirely too much effort, she shivered. Her skin felt like it had been pulled tight; it was dry and almost tingly. Rising from her bed to heed the call of nature, she was halfway across her room, completely adrift with no bedposts to hold onto, when her head suddenly swam, and her vision went black.

Abruptly half-sitting down, half-falling onto on the floor as she waited for the dizziness to pass, Hermione was most surprised to hear quick steps into her room. Turning towards her door, she felt more than saw Severus start to pick her up off the ground.

'I'm fine,' she croaked, glaring up at him. Who had told him that she needed help? She was a qualified Healer, and completely in control, thank you very much.

He snorted in answer, putting a supporting arm around her to escort her to the bathroom. As he brought her all the way in and deposited her on the loo, she even began to wonder if he planned to wipe up after her too when he asked condescendingly, 'I trust that you are conscious enough to use the lavatory unaided?'

In what she would later claim was a fever-fuelled haze of fury, Hermione stood and pulled her pants down, looking him in the eye the whole time she did so, daring him to goad her further.

She was impressed by his balls.

Figuratively.

Through the sort of swimmy, woozy feeling in her mind, Hermione admitted to herself that if bathing and changing him over the last few days was any indication, she actually didn't mind what she had seen there physically either. He held her gaze squarely, eyebrow raised, until she sat back down, and the first tinkling noises were heard hitting the porcelain. At that time, he abruptly seemed to recover himself, exiting the bathroom far more quickly than Hermione would have believed possible. She was not even mid-stream when the door slammed shut.

Giggling hysterically, Hermione didn't care that her walls were paper-thin, and even the neighbours could likely hear her.

Were those pink stains on his cheeks a blush?

Since she had every intention of returning to bed as soon as she had checked on her 'patient', Hermione made absolutely no effort to tidy her appearance before dragging herself from the bathroom to the living room. For a moment, she was sure that she had walked through a magical door into another person's house.

But... but all her things were still there...

It took Hermione a few minutes to sort through her mental fog and realise that her room had been tidied. Obviously, to within an inch of its life. Old, yellowing newspapers were sitting in piles near the door, all her books were sitting in the correct places on the shelves, and pots and knives were washing themselves in the kitchen sink. However, what shocked and bothered her most was her table. Her multi-purpose desk, dining table, and bench top had been raised several inches and converted into a work table, complete with unidentifiable ingredient stains on the surface and a steaming cauldron.

He's been brewing?

Hermione tried to calm the rising panic and hysteria she felt at the sudden rearrangement of her things. There had been important research and other as-yet-unanswered personal correspondence among the dross. She hoped that he hadn't thrown anything out.

Deep breaths. Potions masters brew. It's just what they do. I could hardly expect him to sit around all day and twiddle this thumbs...

Turning towards the man himself, Hermione decided that she didn't even know whether she wanted to rip into him for moving all her things without permission, or kiss him for doing what she had put off for years. What eventually came out of her mouth was something different again.

'How is your pain now?'

'Irrelevant, in light of the fact that I have a Healer who couldn't help me even if she wanted to,' Severus replied in a maddeningly calm voice, seeming to be totally absorbed in inspecting his cauldron of whatever.

Stung by his harsh rebuke, Hermione looked down, blinking back hot, feverish tears. She was failing him as a medical professional. He would have been better off left with a total novice.

When a cool hand took her wrist gently and wrapped her fingers around a mug handle, Hermione still didn't look up to face him, but focused on her cup instead.

Smoking, black liquid swirled within the confines of the mug as if trying to sneak up out of the mouth and escape. It was as flexible and potent as the viruses it sought to kill.

Hermione felt more tears come to her eyes as she stared dumbly at the freshly made Pepperup Potion. He had cleaned her flat and made her medicine. Her mother had never even done that. Well, given that her mother wasn't magical, Hermione knew that this was an unfair comparison, but it was nevertheless true.

'That potion should be ingested while it is still warm,' he prompted her shortly, once more putting his hand on hers and guiding the mug to her lips as if she were three years old.

Totally floored by his kindness, Hermione swallowed her tears with the peppery mixture, downing it in a few large gulps. As she felt her body warm up and steam start to gently rise from her ears, Hermione finally found the courage to look at Severus and smile her gratitude.

'I only meant that you were incapacitated, not that you are inherently incapable,' he stated bluntly, as if in reply to an earlier query.

When she raised an eyebrow at him in question, he shifted uncomfortably and began to pack away his potions kit as he continued, 'And I didn't mean to invade your privacy earlier.'

That one seemed to refer to the bathroom.

Now that her head had cleared a little, Hermione was embarrassed enough at her own audacity without needing the reminder.

'Let's not speak of it.'

His single nod of acquiescence seemed very emphatic.

'You should return to bed unless you would like some chicken broth?'

Mother of Merlin, he even cooked?

A moment's consultation with her stomach quickly decided Hermione's course of action. She was already feeling much better, but thought it might be pushing it to ingest anything else just at the present moment. It would be better to just let the Pepperup do its job uninterrupted.

As she walked to the sink, taking care to rinse out her mug before filling it with tap water, she said, 'No thanks, I'll just have some water and go back to sleep, I think.'

For some reason, watching her brought a frown to his face, but he offered no objection as he continued to pack away his things.

'Until the morning, then.'

It wasn't until Hermione was lying in bed, right about to drift back off to sleep that she remembered that there was only one bed in her flat and almost no space in the living room for any sort of bed or sofa.

I suppose he'll Transfigure the table...

Still a little sick, miserable and desperate for comfort, she felt like such a fool for even daring to entertain the slightest hope that he would join her later.

Cursing his own weakness, Severus wondered what had possessed him when he gave her not only an explanation for his misinterpreted words but also an apology of sorts for helping her. All in some sort of pointless attempt to make her feel better.

Hermione's tears had not escaped the notice of her former teacher, and he was surprised by just how protective, and responsible, her vulnerability caused him to feel. Illness had certainly dulled her mind. She had been as easy to read as a book when she had thanked him for the small kindness. What had struck him was the extent of that gratitude.

You would think that she was starved as a child and forced to eat Flobberworms...

Gods, and it wasn't only her vulnerability that threw him off balance. In his opinion, young women should not have the right to waltz (or stumble, as the case may be) around their flats with nothing on but skimpy Muggle clothing and no foundation garments. He had been so shocked when she started taking them off in his presence that it had taken every single bit of his self-control not to look down at what she had so readily revealed.

He was only human.

Most disturbing of all was that the mere thought of Hermione Granger, with the delicate hands and nice legs, disrobing in front of him, made his already painful erection just that tiny bit more painful.

With a grunt of general irritation, Severus decided that despite the lack of beds, and the presumption that since he had woken up there, he could return, he couldn't possibly survive the night in close proximity with young, innocent Hermione Granger.

Thoroughly disgusted with himself, he looked dubiously at the table and wished that he had Minerva's skill at Transfiguration.

It was going to be a hard night.