The Contraindications of the Draught of Peace

Late at night

things I thought I put behind me

haunt my mind.

I just know there's no escape now

once it sets its eyes on you.

~ Within Temptation, Stand My Ground

"Can you remain seated? Eh, Miss Granger?" asked Snape.

"I believe so," murmured Hermione with the same monotone.

Snape disappeared and came back a few minutes later, holding a glass of water.

"Drink it," he ordered.

Hermione took the glass and sipped obediently.

Will it ever go away? Will I be stuck with these horrible, horrible fixed images forever?

Before her still floated the disgusting image of the dead snake found by Małgorzata, superimposed on the face of Severus Snape. It had been too much. The unbearable memory of Nagini had resurfaced again while she was looking at Snape right in his eyes, and she hadn't been able to suppress her terror. She had been tormented so much by similar sights after the war that she couldn't believe they could still take over with such a hellish violence.

She could still see the image, but the peak of terror was surely passed. Slowly – oh, too slowly – it was waning, and she could sense again the reassuring furniture of the library around her, behind the ghostly memory. The bookshelves, the wooden ceiling, the tables were going back to their places.

"Miss Granger, how are you feeling? Do you want to be taken to a hospital?"

Snape. She couldn't look him in the face, not yet, or else the image would regain strength. She shook her head, keeping her eyes down.

"Has this happened to you before?"

Hermione nodded.

"Do you want me to call someone for you? Do you know anyone in York?"

She shook her head again, her eyes still low. She had lived in York for twenty days now, and apart from her colleagues and her landlady, she didn't know anyone. She hadn't been much of a socialite, lately.

I want to go back to my mum, she thought. I want to be cuddled again, as she did after the Battle of Hogwarts, and cry out my fears. I want to hold Crookshanks in my arms and let him soothe me. I could Apparate back home. She closed her eyes. Fleeing will only reinforce my fears. I can face the situation by myself.

"Miss Granger, can you stand up?" inquired the blackish figure of the man in front of her.

No, this won't work, she decided. You know only too well. Avoiding looking at Snape will only make things worse in the future. If you start avoiding now, you will continue avoiding tomorrow, and that won't do. Be strong. Be a Gryffindor.

Hermione lifted her head and looked briefly at Snape. "I think so, Professor," she said with a small voice.

He helped Hermione to her feet. She grabbed her bag and rubbed a hand on her forehead, as if trying to dispel the remnants of her frightening memory. Snape was observing her intently, a deep line between his eyebrows. "May I call you a taxi? I strongly," he added before she could reply, "discourage you from Apparating."

Can he still perform Legilimency? she wondered.

"I live a couple of minutes from here, just on the other bank of the Foss. I usually come here walking," she muttered.

"Good. Would you let me escort you home, then?"

She sighed. He doesn't leave me many options, does he? Judging from his concerned look, he would not let her go alone. What would be worse? To have Snape at my side, always reminding me of something I don't want to remember, or to be alone with the image of a snake floating before my eyes? It's definitely worse to go with Snape, she thought.

"Nightmares come and pass, Miss Granger. A crash against a lamppost, or worse, doesn't."

So much for my avoidance plans. Hermione let him open the door of the reading room for her and followed him up to the front door. Actually, if I walk slightly ahead of him or right at his side, I may be able to avoid looking at him, she considered with relief.

They walked silently under a still-light sky until they reached Hermione's address. The street, where two lines of modern two-floor flats faced each other, was empty. Hermione stopped in front of the house she lived in and sighed.

Behind her, Snape said, "I suppose you have arrived, Miss Granger. Is there anything else you wish me to do?"

Yes, she thought. Go away and leave me alone. She turned and shook her head.

"No, thanks," she said uncomfortably.

"Are you still seeing... that image?"

In truth, the sudden, horrifying image of Nagini had almost evaporated, replaced by a self-complaining litany. "I must be too tired for it," she replied. "Now, if you let me, good night."

"Good night," said Snape, taking a couple of steps backward.

Turning to face the door, Hermione let her bag slip from her shoulder to the floor and started wrestling with the keyhole and a key that wouldn't fit. Snape moved forward, bent down, and after a quick search he pulled something out of her bag.

"There," he said, handing Hermione her wand, "this will probably allow me to leave sooner."

With a strained look on her face, Hermione took the wand and mumbled, "Alohomora." The door sprang open, revealing a dark entrance.

"I wonder, Miss Granger," mused Snape with a very low voice, as if talking to himself, "what on earth is a young witch doing in York, without her friends, and prone to scream in other people's faces at the recurrence of an unpleasant memory?"

"I will tell you someday," said Hermione, exhausted, as she stepped in.

"Very well," commented Snape. "Don't think too much about it."

Don't think too much about what? The unpleasant memory or telling you about it?

"I will try not to, Professor," she replied bitterly.

Snape snorted, almost gently. "Have a good night, Miss Granger. If they come back, let them pass," he concluded, then he turned back and walked away without hurrying.

For a moment, Hermione had the impression of robes billowing behind him, even if he was wearing trousers.

In the end, I must have finally gone crazy, she thought. I must go to bed.

Nagini's fangs emerging from the ragged shell of Bathilda Bagshot. Bellatrix torturing her. Blood gushing out of Ron's shoulders, of George's ear, of Snape's neck. The lifeless bodies of Lupin and Tonks. Bellatrix Lestrange Crucio-ing her. The little, frail body of Dobby, pierced to death by Bellatrix's knife. Harry, apparently dead, brought by Hagrid inside the entrance hall. Fred, still, motionless.

Blood. Blood. More blood.

Those images, frozen before her eyes, had tormented her for years after the Battle of Hogwarts. Unbearable images were with her while she took her showers, while she studied, while she tried to sleep, while – most unbearable of all – she was with Ron. This curtain of horrors had interposed between herself and the rest of the world – always there, sometimes weaker, sometimes stronger, for three long years after the war. They had started to fade only when Hermione decided to take one more step away from the wizarding world and had broken up with Ron.

She used to be so strong. She had hoped the end of the war would bring only peace, happiness, safety. Instead, she had felt much more helpless when peace had come than she had while they were looking for the Horcruxes, isolated and without clues, in the woods. Peace had meant only to remember the war in fear. When peace had actually come, the war was still going on – this time, inside her head.

For the first six months after the Battle of Hogwarts, she had done nothing but cry.

Hermione cried in the morning, when she woke up. She cried during meals, her tears watering the soup she was eating. She sobbed endlessly in the evenings. She had rejoined her parents in their lovely, cosy house in Salisbury. For the whole summer after the final battle, her mother had held her until she slept, while she cried her eyes out. At least the frozen deaths did not follow her in her sleep. Luckily, she never dreamt what had happened during the war. When she finally fell asleep, nights were a dreamless blessing.

Even that night, after the flash of Nagini had clouded her eyes again for a while, Hermione was able to sleep without dreaming.

The next day was a Saturday. Hermione woke up very late, at eleven. She munched some biscuits on her bed, indifferent to the crumbs scattered on the bedspread. The image of Nagini came and went away intermittently. She did not care; it did not frighten her as much as it did the night before. Much of the fear depended on the unpredictability of it. No, what she felt was, above all the rest, sadness. She was sad because she would be locked forever in that bleak pit with them, because the memories always repeated, because she wasn't able to chase those images away from her mind, because there was no escape. The wounds would bleed forever; forever would she have to cope with the unruliness of her mind.

Yes, many people had suffered in the war. They had nightmares. They had wounds that would never heal. Everyone saw how much the Weasleys' lives had changed after Fred had died right before their very eyes. But she had never heard of people plagued with fixed images, placed as macabre postcards between her eyes and reality. The more she tried to eject them, the more she tried to forbid herself thinking about them again, the more they persisted.

She was sick and tired of them. Those images no longer represented anything; they had taken on a life of their own, as if they were, literally, a veil hanging over her head. What she felt was not only fear, not only sadness: it was irritation, against them, against herself.

How she had enjoyed her last years at university, after breaking up with Ron, when the images had, inexplicably, left her alone for a long while! How happy she had been for twenty days, when images didn't come back even after meeting Professor Snape again! Why on earth had Małgorzata brought that damned snake into the library? Couldn't she just avoid every object capable of reminding her of the war?

I wish I was blind, she said to herself. It wasn't the first time that she wondered if being blind would prevent the layering of fixed images on her mind. Study had already weakened her sight so much she had to wear glasses now – couldn't she just pretend she was blind when those images appeared in her mind?

Eventually, she crawled out of her bed. She had to buy something for lunch; her stores were empty. She had planned to do her shopping on Saturday morning, in any case. However, she hadn't planned on feeling so nauseated.

When she came downstairs, her landlady, Mrs. Kathryn Neill, was rehearsing a concert for kettledrums in the kitchen, judging from the metal clangs she produced.

"Oi, Hermione," said Mrs. Kathryn, popping out of the kitchen with a flour smear on her nose. "A man brought a packet for you. It's on the chest."

"Ah, thank you, Mrs. Neill," replied Hermione. She had already noticed a packet wrapped in green paper on the chest in the entrance. She took it and unwrapped it.

Inside the paper there was a note and a vial, rolled inside plastic bubble wrap. The note, written in a spiky and cramped handwriting, said:

This is the Draught of Peace. As you will know, thirty drops dripped under the tongue would suffice for allowing you a couple of days of rest. You should already know the contraindications.

S. S.

For a while, Hermione kept turning the vial in her fingers. The Draught of Peace. Yes, she knew the contraindications very well. An increasing sense of addiction while you were taking it; no solution at all for the problem once you stopped taking it. The Draught of Peace was only an illusion. Yet, a tempting illusion. Would she succumb again to its lure? The last time she had taken the Draught of Peace was many years ago, and she had promised herself she wouldn't take it again.

Only for today, she thought. Only to stop this pain for a couple of hours. Only for the weekend, when I feel more alone.

She unscrewed the cap of the vial and dripped twenty drops of the potion – oh, this smell – under her tongue, less than the dose recommended by Snape. She grabbed her light cardigan and left to go to the supermarket.

Less than half an hour later, Hermione started recognizing the familiar effects of the Draught of Peace. A pleasing dullness fell upon her. She wandered slowly among the aisles of the supermarket, taking a lot of time to pick the products she wanted. While her body relaxed, her mind began to empty and the thoughts, albeit more sparse, assumed a fuzzy connotation, like when you have a temperature.

How strange. Snape actually acted kindly toward me, she found herself thinking.

How could he know my address? Ah, yes, he accompanied me home yesterday evening.

And... by the way, how does he have potions now? Does he still brew them? Without magic? How can it be possible? Or does he buy them, maybe?

She regretted that her nauseating fixed memories of Nagini had to taint her mental image of Snape, all things considered. Before he killed Dumbledore, Hermione had spent years trying to convince Harry and Ron that he wasn't as bad as he seemed. And after discovering he had performed that heinous act in compliance with Dumbledore's wishes, she would have liked to acknowledge his merits as a faithful spy to the Order of the Phoenix. But the memory of what had happened in the Shrieking Shack prevented her thinking of Snape as anything else but a defenceless pawn at Voldemort's mercy. Fangs. Blood.

Snape had not simply slipped out of her mind, as many other people and facts had through the years. Hermione had put all her efforts in keeping Snape – and Bellatrix, and Lupin, and Fred – out of her mind, because thinking of him would only mean to remember horrible scenes she would have preferred to forget altogether.

Why do fixed images have to ruin everything? Why must fixed images only be terrible? Couldn't have I fixed images of something pleasing? she wondered while she paid and left the supermarket.

I could have a fixed image of Crookshanks purring in my lap, she thought, and her lips stretched in a sad smile. I could have a fixed image of Alan Rickman in Sense and Sensibility.

Pleasing images never stayed fixed in front of Hermione's eyes. While she dated Ron, she never had images of him haunting her. In fact, when she liked someone, she had difficulty bringing his appearance to her mind's eye. She would remember him in bits or as an overall blurred figure, but she seemed unable to remember the faces of her loved ones in details shortly after seeing them, without resorting to their photos.

See? she told herself. Here is the solution. I have to push myself to like Snape, so that I won't have memories of him anymore. For the first time of the day, she giggled.

Ah, the wonderful contraindications of the Draught of Peace, she thought with a smile. Absurd reasoning occurs all the time, and you aren't responsible for it.

Hermione kept her promise. She didn't take any more potion for the rest of the weekend. For precaution, she placed the vial in the lowest drawer of her wardrobe, close to the spare sheets.

Contraindications of stopping taking the potion: depression, physical weakness, apathy. And images could come back at any time.

Not even Brother Lucretius could cheer Hermione that Monday. She threaded the needle mechanically, lost in a long lamentation over her misfortunes that went on with the same tone of the ones she used to tell herself years before.

Leaving the archive for the reading room only worsened her mood. At least in the archive she could conceal her gloomy expression from other people. In the reading room she had to welcome the new visitors politely, and all the better if she could smile at them, too. She had to wear the mask of the obliging librarian, always helpful and easygoing. How lucky that the Emily Brontë library welcomed only a few visitors a day during summer afternoons.

The reading room presented also another disadvantage, and that was worse than all the rest. In the reading room there was Snape.

Thankfully, he was buried in his manuscript as always, with his back to the help desk. He was copying the ancient text on his notebook, apparently pausing only to take mental considerations now and then.

While she tried to study some more pages from Advanced Methods of Cataloguing, Hermione couldn't help lifting her eyes to check Snape's back. She feared the moment she would face him again. Watching his back was pretty safe, but what about seeing his face? I have at least to thank him for the Draught of Peace, she reminded herself. Yes, but what if his image remains in my brain?

Having fixed images of dead people was one thing. Having fixed image of someone you had to see every day was a totally different matter. Hermione was at loss about how she had to behave with Snape. She had already made a terrible mistake in telling him that she had imagined Nagini biting his neck. She should have kept her mouth shut. She didn't like to have other people know what was going on in her mind, unless it was something brilliant and useful. It was better if the scum stayed secret.

In general, nobody understood her problem. When she tried to explain what fixed images were, she met only gawky faces, gaping at her as if she was mad. And surely Ron hadn't helped her in that department. Of course, he would hug her and tell her that everything was okay, and that he would love her no matter what. But he wouldn't understand exactly what she was going through, and his hugs wouldn't make her feel better, or dispel her shadows. Ron's ghosts took other shapes, it seemed. Hermione knew that he alternated nightmares with dreams about Fred. And the last ones were equal to nightmares.

Eight o' clock p.m. The last visitor apart from Snape had just left. And now they start the two most difficult hours of the day, thought Hermione. Just me and Snape. And my images between us.

I have to thank him for the potion, she reminded herself for the hundredth time. Now I stand up and go to his table and I thank him.

No, I will wait until he leaves the library, she reconsidered. When he comes to collect his card, I will thank him politely, and hopefully this matter will be over.

"Miss Granger." Snape's low voice echoed in the almost empty room.

Oh, geez, thought Hermione. He got there before me.

She glanced at Snape, ready to look away as soon as possible.

"Yes, sir," she said.

Snape turned right forty-five degrees and leaned his elbow against the back of his chair. Hermione could sense Snape inspecting her under his intense, black gaze, as if he wasn't more than seven metres away but right in front of her.

"You don't look like you have abused my potion, do you," he snorted.

"I took only twenty drops of it," admitted Hermione.

"Humph. You did know of the contraindications, after all, Miss Granger," Snape said.

"I know only too well," she blurted out. With his tone of omniscience, Snape was making her feel uneasy. "By the way, thank you for giving me the Draught of Peace, Professor," she added hurriedly.

He snorted again. "My duty, Miss Granger," he said, and he rose to his feet.

"How did you come to possess vials of potions, Professor?"

"That's none of your business, Granger."

I deserved that rebuke, she thought. My damned tongue. Why can't I keep my mouth shut?

"Then, why do you care about me now? For twenty days, you barely spoke to me, and now you inquire about my health condition," she continued despite herself. Bah. It seems that it's impossible for me to stay silent.

"There's no use in scratching a scab that doesn't itch, Miss Granger. Draco dormiens numquam titillandus."

Strange. That was what I had thought.

"You didn't seem eager to speak with me, either," Snape went on. "But since an incident apparently brought on an unfortunate episode from the past that involved me as well, I feel obliged to put you, as a former student of mine, under observation, and to offer you health care, if that be the case. I also happen to be the only person to understand the need of a distressed witch around here."

He had reached the help desk by now and was staring her closely, black eyes under black eyebrows. Hermione found herself unable to look away from his inspection. She frowned.

"How could you understand me? You don't know anything about me now."

"Ah, Miss Granger. Trust me, I know everything about obsessions."

A/N: The quest for a second beta has been a long one. My deep gratitude to RobisonRocket and growley464 for their help.