Severus

Severus

May 1 (cont'd)

Severus strode up the path from the Apparation point to the entrance of the castle, rubbing a bit of lipstick from his mouth with a sigh of distaste.

He didn't expect to have a welcoming party to greet him, but it seemed for all the world as if he did.

"Headmistress," he said as he entered the door, allowing his glance to drag from her to the three men behind her, "and my ex-wife's paramours? To what do I owe such pleasure?"

"We aren't..." Neville protested.

"She would never..." George snapped.

"Charming, as always," Lucius drawled.

But the tension radiating from the three caught his attention as no words could.

"Severus, it seems that the castle has already rearranged itself and has closed off the external entrance from Hermione's quarters to the corridor. We need to access her room through yours."

"I think not," he snapped, and walked past the four of them toward the dank, dungeon stairway. "Whatever she needs, she can collect but I won't have a parade of spectators through my quarters."

"Severus, she is ill. She is in a very bad way, and the Healers..."

He stopped and whisked into a turn to face her again. "What do you mean, ill?"

"She's in the Janus Thickey Ward at St Mungo's," Minerva said, her voice strained.

"Incredible." He stared at them all in disbelief. "I have her for five years without managing to break her, and you lot do it in five hours?"

"The Healers," Minerva began again, "diagnosed her with a severe case of Pensieve poisoning but even after they treated it she still..."

"Are the lunatics in charge of triage, now? Hermione isn't some lust-driven teenaged wizard who..."

"Oh, Merlin's beard, Severus, Pensieve poisoning isn't just the realm of wizards with a stash of memory porn," Minerva replied crisply. "And as your superior, I require you to let me into Hermione's quarters to retrieve the Pensieve..."

"Over my dead body."

"Which could easily be arranged," Lucius purred.

Severus felt a tendril of rage curling deep in his stomach as he headed down the dark stairway, leaving them to follow or, preferably, break their necks in an attempt to match his pace.

He was inside with a tumbler of Firewhisky in his hand before the others caught up, his mind racing. Lucius entered first, possibly because he felt himself immune to Severus' moods, but if such was the case, he was going to find himself humiliatingly wrong.

Minerva followed, then Neville, and George Weasley entered last, his black velvet cloak hanging elegantly from his narrow shoulders.

"They will not get Albus' Pensieve. He left it to me and too many people have used it without reaction for it to be the source of any malady. As for the Pensieve poisoning, that would be a convenient excuse to let all of you off the hook, but it bears no resemblance to the truth," he sneered, then sailed briskly across the room to the door that had separated their worlds for five years. He didn't even slow his pace; it opened when he approached and allowed him entrance...as it always had.

When the others had joined him he gestured at the walls of memories with the tumbler of whisky, and watched their faces as they studied the array of phials, all meticulously labelled and shelved.

"And you dare ask what put her in the Janus Thickey Ward? How about every nightmare each of you so kindly shared with her? Nightmares that she not only viewed, but relived over and over again as she pursued her inept attempt at changing the future by writing her ridiculous book? As if people will ever change. As if the future can ever be different from the past. But you all encouraged her and fed her with the narcotic of your memories, and now you wonder why she's in St Mungo's?"

He tossed back his drink and slammed the tumbler down on the nearest work surface. "Go back and tell the Healer that she doesn't have any malignant reaction from the Pensieve itself. She's simply suffering the guilt and agony of carrying the nightmares of the wizarding world on her shoulders, and if you find a way to cure that, you will have cured Hermione Granger."

"You miserable bastard," George muttered. "Her work is important..."

"And it's destroyed her mind. Quel surprise." Severus sniffed.

"But you can't be right," Neville said. "Tonight she removed her worst memories. Before the party at number twelve...she removed them. She should be happier, not..."

"Insane?" Severus offered helpfully.

Longbottom paled and Severus belatedly remembered his parents.

But Longbottom merely walked across the room to an unmarked phial. He lifted it hesitantly. "These... these might tell them something. These might be a clue."

Severus flew across the room and snatched the phial from his hand. "You will not take her memories for a collection of half-baked quacks to stick their sleazy fingers and minds into!"

"Severus," Minerva said, "Neville is right. They might be significant, and quite frankly after what you've put that poor girl through over the past five years I have no interest in your opinion on the matter!"

"Ah, but it's more than an opinion. These are my quarters. Everything in here...every phial, every scrap of parchment, every quill...was provided by me. The very memories in this phial..." He broke off.

"Most likely include you, and you don't want anyone to see them, even if they save Hermione's sanity," Lucius finished for him. "Quel surprise."

Severus clenched his hand around the narrow neck of the clear decanter and ground his teeth. "Get the hell out of my quarters. I will observe them, and if I find anything that would be even remotely helpful in my ex-wife's treatment I can assure you that I will take care of the matter."

The three men all bristled but Minerva put out a calming hand. "We will be in my office. I expect to see you there in half an hour."

Severus merely sneered in her direction as they all made their exits back through his quarters. Only when the door was closed and warded behind them did he finally turn his attention to the swirling mists....

He walked slowly back into her laboratory and carefully poured the contents into the heavy, old Pensieve. He braced his hands on the edge of the table, his heart pounding. He didn't want to do this, didn't want to see whatever nightmares she'd felt it necessary to unload so she could step forward into her future.

How in fucking hell had she stepped forward and fallen?

He inhaled a shallow breath and leaned forward until the tip of his long nose and finally his face entered the Pensieve's shallow surface...

And landed in St Mungo's.

Not the Janus Thickey Ward, but the Creature-Induced Injury ward, a dark corner with a dingy curtain separating it from the rest of the area. A bed he knew all too well, though never from this vantage point.

It was his own body in the bed.

And beside it, a silent, thin Hermione Granger looking impossibly young and lost, clenching and unclenching her fingers as she chewed her lower lip.

He wanted to vomit. Of course this would be her worst memory...saving his miserable life and in turn, ruining her own. He wanted to wrench himself out of it, to toss the entire contents of the Pensieve into the fire, but he couldn't tear himself away as she stood slowly and crossed the floor slowly, fearfully, and finally reached out and smoothed his hair out of his face. She dragged her fingers softly down the side of his face, and he wished he'd been awake to kick her away. Seeing her fondling him in such a manner was enough to make him roar with anger....

And then she leaned closer and began murmuring into his ear, and he strained closer himself, listening, trying to hear....

"Please, Professor... don't leave. It's over now. It's all over." Plaintively, she pleaded, and then...he couldn't restrain his own gasp...she lifted herself onto the bed beside him and draped herself around him, her tears streaking her cheeks. "Come back to us, sir. Please... come back to..." She placed a hand on his chest...his heart...and finally whispered so softly he almost didn't catch it, "...me."

Softly, she stroked his hair, his cheek, even the long bridge of his nose. She murmured soft words into his ear and tucked one leg over his, whispering soft nothings the like of which he hadn't heard since he was barely more than an infant and his mother still rocked him when he cried.

And then... she slept.

Incredibly, that was it. This impossibly crystalline image...he'd never seen one so sharp and clear...remained unchanging for several minutes. He managed to pull himself out mentally long enough to give his wand a whirl, and the memory sped up, but other than to settle herself more comfortably or...when he himself stirred or even moaned...whisper more gentle, soothing words...there was nothing more but a long night of her body curled protectively against his.

He felt cold. And angry. And sick. Because deep within him was a memory of his own; he'd heard those words, that voice, in disjointed dreams, and sometimes heard them still. And now he knew why.

He gave his wand a sharper whirl and watched the scene change only slightly...when he rolled sideways, and she curled against his body and pulled his arm around her and...he would never have allowed it, never have allowed such a thing had he been aware, but she'd been there and she'd taken this from him when he was too weak to stop her...

And it ended.

And before he could bring himself to stand and withdraw from more, it was night again, another night, another bed.

This time it was Hermione's narrow bed in the adjoining cell that served as her bedroom. The bed where he had joined her once a week for over two years, as long as their relations had been required and monitored by the Ministry. The bed where he had made sure that their "relations" had been fast and clinical, before disappearing to his own wide bed and deep mattress and soft pillows, to rid himself of her smell and sounds by casting a cleansing spell and then drinking a dose of Dreamless Sleep.

Only...oh, yes, wasn't this rich? She couldn't remember all the times he'd kept their interactions clean and neat and quick and instead, she singled out that one night when he'd been drinking, when he'd stumbled into her room because the fucking ring was buzzing, warning that two hours remained before they would be officially on the record as Recalcitrants. So he'd found his way to her bed and...

She opened her arms to him.

He caught his breath. This was not one of the memories he nurtured, not one he allowed himself to revisit, and having been inebriated his own images were not sharp and clear like these. There was no missing the soft, hesitant way she welcomed him, the smile. He was drunk and practically falling onto the bed, and she was smiling at him?

She spread her legs and helped him...guided him in. Her ring must be threatening her, too, of course. But he couldn't tear his eyes away from his own face, from the expression of divine anguish as she fitted him into her and found a pace.

Nor was the expression on her face that of a woman simply doing her duty. It was the expression of a woman who welcomed the long, hard thrust with a gasp of surprised pleasure. Her mouth fell open and her eyes fluttered shut, and she dug her fingers into his buttocks and clenched harder, harder.

And he hated himself, because he felt himself growing hard just watching.

And when, in the memory, he had spent himself, and when he fell heavily across her body, she had carefully worked her way into his embrace and nestled under his arm. She had pulled the sheets and blanket snugly around them and curled against him.

And once again, the remainder of the memory was simply... sleeping. The occasional movement, most often Hermione awakening to touch him, to stroke his shoulder or rub her leg against his as if only to reassure herself that he was really there....

These were the memories she rid herself of, the memories she shed because she could no longer live with them.

How badly he must have hurt her for these to be the memories she wanted to rid herself of forever.

He knew, of course, knew he hurt her; he had done it deliberately and with malice aforethought. Nothing was left to chance; if he was out with another woman, it was because he knew cameras would be near. There wasn't a humiliation or an insult that he hadn't managed to perpetrate with the knowledge that she and world would know.

And now that it had done its job, he felt hollow and cold.

His head was spinning at the thought when the third memory began.

Another hospital room, but this time it was Hermione in the bed looking pale and wasted, shadows like bruises beneath her eyes, her slender fingers clenched tightly in the sheets that covered her thin frame. "I'm sorry..." she whispered, her voice hoarse and weak.

He stood stiffly beside her, staring over her head at the wall. "There is nothing for which you should be sorry," he said, his voice cool and distant. "Some women simply were not made to carry a pregnancy and there's nothing you could have done to change it."

"But next time..." she began.

"No," he said. "The Healers are turning in a medical request to the Ministry that we no longer be forced to carry out this travesty. Three miscarriages in two years are sufficient to remove the enforcement stipulation from our marriage, which I am sure you will agree is a result to be desired."

She choked on her tears and he turned his face away from her. "I'm sure this is difficult, but in time you'll be relieved," he had said firmly, already moving toward the door.

"Severus!"

He stopped, and finally, turned his head slowly to meet her eyes.

"Please... stay."

His eyes shuttered, he had given his head a slight shake. "I don't think that would be wise," he had said, and then continued out the door....

Well. No questioning why she'd want to forget that memory, he thought, his gut clenching even more stridently as he prepared himself to leave these wretched memories, once and for all...

Except something strange was happening. He remembered that night clearly, remembered returning to his quarters to finish off a bottle of Old Ogden's in silent "celebration" that their forced conjugal relations were over.

But in Hermione's memory...his movements were jerky, and...

He returned.

He'd never seen such an odd Pensieve memory, and he'd seen many that had been damaged in storage. But this one was a strange combination of jerky, vague movements and clear images.

He watched the memory, stunned, as he crossed back to the bed and pulled her into his arms, and held her while she wept.

It was as if two images were overlaid, the image of her body, shuddering on the bed, and her body in his arms as he held her tightly, his head bent over hers as she clung to him, sobs wracking through her.

His hands stroked her hair, his lips traced her wet cheeks, and he even conjured up a handkerchief and pressed it into her hand, all the time whispering the same soft nothings into her ears that she'd used on him, the words sounding alien when spoken in his voice, ridiculous and tender words he had never uttered in his life.

And then when he thought it couldn't get worse, he watched himself lay her back down, and then join her, pulling her against him and holding her close, whispering and murmuring into her ear as she lay staring blindly at nothing, and finally, slept....

And this memory that was not a memory ended as the others had, with two bodies coiled together and simply... sleeping.

Sleeping.

Together.

And it hit him hard in the solar plexus, what he was witnessing.

In their entire marriage...their entire acquaintance...they had never shared a bed for an entire night, and he would have sworn to that if asked. But she knew different. She had stayed with him in the hospital when he teetered on the edge of death from snakebite, pleading with him to live. She had held him close when he was drunk, not allowing him to leave her. And then, on this night of what felt suddenly to be his worst betrayal, this night when he had left her alone in her grief and pain...

She had built a detailed fantasy in which he had returned.

Impossible.

He'd never heard of such a thing, a Pensieve memory that wasn't true to the actual events lived.

But... she'd done it. She'd created a fantasy so detailed and revisited it so often, it had superimposed itself over the actual night when she'd lain alone, weeping, in her hospital bed.

A collection of three nights in his arms.

And she had watched them, over and over and over again, until they were diamond-edged in their clarity.

These weren't her worse memories.

They were her best.

He yanked himself free and stood gasping.

He couldn't bring himself to think, to consider what any of this really and truly meant except...

She was in the Janus Thickey Ward drowning in the horrors of everyone's worst memories.

And she no longer had her treasured memories and fantasy to sustain her.

Moments later he was in Minerva's office, not waiting for niceties but snarling, "I will take these to her. I will give them back to her myself. And if any of you try to stop me..."

"But the Healers," Minerva said. "They should examine them first and decide whether..."

"Hermione will not thank you if you let the Healers delve into her memories," Severus said, his voice a low, silky threat.

"He's right," Neville said. "He's right. She wouldn't want that."

"But they won't let you," George said. "You have no right to..."

"Have the early copies of the Daily Prophet arrived?" Lucius cut in. "If not, they can't stop him. They surely can't know about the dissolution. As her husband, he would have the authority."

Severus stepped into the Floo. "St Mungo's."