Discovering

Thank you to karelia for her awesome betas skills!

Hermione gave a quick knock and then pushed open the door to Snape's room. "Surprise! I'm back early! I missed your feet and couldn't stay away. And I brought you croissants to go with your tea so you could better pretend you're happy to see me."

Snape's eyes danced, and he gave her an eyehug before showing off his newest trick, a small smile.

"You can smile! I never knew that! It's a good thing I only was gone for two days, or who knows what other miracles I'd have missed out on."

He scowled, adding a sneer, and she laughed.

"What have you got there?"

Snape had managed to get his clipboard off the peg and was crudely scribbling on the back of it. It looked about like what one would expect if one put a quill between their toes. Since the ink stayed wet on the metal clipboard, it smeared easily. She couldn't read what he'd been writing.

"Well, look at you! Smiling, sneering and defacing hospital equipment."

He gave her a smug look as she placed the tea tray on his table and pushed it closer. She set the bag of fresh croissants next to his hip.

"This is really fantastic. In fact, I'll be right back. I'll get you some parchment." She heard him snort behind her as she hurried toward the door.

She came back five minutes later with parchment, a new clipboard, and a self-inking quill. She'd charmed them all larger, giving him more room to make his crude letters, and a fatter quill to make it easier to control.

She placed them in his lap and stepped back.

He gave her an eyehug and picked up the quill in his right hand. His control was dreadful, but it had been only a few days since he'd started moving his arm at all, so she was rather impressed. His left arm was apparently still immobile, and he'd taken to hiding it under the covers. He could move the hand well, but it seemed the rest of the arm wasn't coming back as quickly, and he was self-conscious about it.

She watched as patiently as possible as he formed his letters. When he reached the forth one, she interrupted.

"Oh, don't say, thank you! This is the first thing you'll say aside from yes or no since you were hurt! It's a momentous occasion. You should write something important. Profound, even. Thank you goes without saying, as does you're most welcome."

He scowled at her, his lips flattening out in annoyance. He'd certainly regained control of his mouth.

"Sorry. Go ahead and write what you want." She went and sat down in the chair next to the bed and bounced her knees up and down, waiting to hear one of his thoughts for the first time in ages.

When he had finished, he sighed heavily and pushed the clipboard away.

"Hand cramp?" she asked.

He blinked a yes.

She stood up and picked up the clipboard, taking a moment to decipher what he'd written. When she understood, she blushed to the roots of her hair.

It said, 'Why do you always cry at night?'

She sighed and set the clipboard against the rail by his other hip. "I guess the puffy eyes in the mornings gave it away?"

He blinked and then pulled a scrap of crudely torn newspaper from under his pillow. It was a photo of her sitting on the bench in Knockturn Alley. She was dropping her face in her hands over and over.

She sighed. "Surely you had enough teen-aged angst when you were a teacher. You don't need to hear my drama."

He held her gaze and frowned.

Watching his mouth move fascinated her. She'd been amazed at the range of thought he could convey with his eyes, but he more than doubled his skill at nuance with the slightest twitch of the lips.

He licked his lips and mouthed, "Tell me."

His voice came in the quietest of whispers, just air through his mouth with no vocal cords to give it timbre or tone. He was still so weak, he couldn't force enough air through to give it any volume.

Her eyes watered as she beamed at him. This was far better than crude letters on parchment.

"You're just full of surprises," she said softly. "Fine. Eat your treat, and I'll tell you."

She helped him as he opened the bag and spread jam on his croissant with one hand. He had a far bigger range of movement than he'd had when she'd seen him last, but it seemed moving the other arm or his head and neck wasn't in the cards yet.

He took a bite and looked at her expectantly.

She sat down on the bed by his knee. "I've been staying at the Burrow since the final battle. It's been hard on everyone. Fred's death shattered the Weasleys. Harry feels each and every death is his fault; Molly and Arthur are like ghosts. Ginny is made of glass, and Ron..."

She shook her head. "I don't know at what point Ron started to become more to me than just my irritating friend. That last year on the road was terrible for all of us. What you didn't read in the papers is that Ron left us. The Horcrux fed on all of our darkest feelings, and it hit him worse than Harry and I because he still had family. He said some terrible things and abandoned us. As soon as he was clear of the Horcrux's influence, he tried to come back, but we'd moved, and it took him a while to find us.

"He came back the night you brought Harry the sword.

"Anyway, our feeling became really twisted up and complicated and in the crazy grief and euphoria after the battle, we... slept together."

She stared down at her lap and began furiously smoothing wrinkles out of her pinstriped robes. "It was a terrible idea in hindsight.

"Ron wasn't ready for more than just sex, and I... I just wanted to be wanted. I need to belong to someone, you know? Oh, not because I'm weak, or because it's my place. I just..." She dashed at her tears and took a quick breath.

"Anyway, the Weasleys took me in with no question, but in the weeks since, it's grown very awkward between Ron and I, and I just need to get out.

"The problem is there's nowhere for me to go. I spent the day looking at flats I could afford, and not all the charms in the world will hide the fact that the best I can do is a cesspit with mould problems and broken windows."

She sniffed and darted a quick glance at him. The sadness in his eyes made her ashamed. "I know. I'm being selfish, aren't I? There are people out there with real problems..." She twisted the bit if fabric in her hands. "It's just that I spent a year being in charge of my life with no voice of experience to help. I made the mistake of thinking this made me a grown up." She gave a bitter laugh. "The fact is, the brightest witch of her age isn't very bright about basic finances. I had no idea flats were so expensive. I'm a bit trapped." She shrugged and looked away. "I don't know how it's possible to feel so old and so young at the same time."

He reached for the clipboard. Setting it in his lap, he scrawled a message and pushed it toward her. It read, 'Where is your family?'

Her lip wobbled out of control, and she pressed her hands to her mouth. Her shoulders heaved from her silent sobs.

She dragged in a loud breath and blurted, "I got rid of them!" She grabbed at a handful of tissues and furiously scrubbed at her face, mortified by her sudden loss of composure. "So many Muggles were being attacked and killed, and I was going to go on the run with Harry. I couldn't be there to protect them, so I Obliviated them! They're living in Australia now, with no memory of ever having had a child."

She broke down again, struggling to keep some semblance of control to no effect.

"When the battle was over, it hit me all over again. All my reasons and justifications were gone...vanquished...but my parents still were too. I'd orphaned myself. It's so stupid, really. Fred Weasley's dead. My parents are just... fishing. I tried not to mope about it. They all had enough on their minds. It seems so minor in the face of what they went through, you know? My parents are alive and happy and doing something they always wanted to do."

She blew her nose. "Now I'm just stuck. I've ruined things with Ron because I was too needy, and now we're trapped living in the same house. Harry offered to let me stay at Grimmauld Place, but that's now become a Burrow annex. He'll be moving back there in a couple of weeks and George is moving in with him. I need to find somewhere else to go. I think I'll take Lavender up on her offer and move in with her and her parents if it's still a possibility. I just didn't want to watch any more families that I don't belong to, you know?" She twisted the tissues into rope. "My Gringotts account was seized to pay for the damages to the bank. I did empty my Muggle savings and had Molly convert it for me. There's just not much there, not enough to pay rent for more than three months at best. I don't even have a job. I'd have to quit volunteering, or at least seriously cut down on the time I spend here, but I like it here. It makes me feel useful." She swiped angrily at her eyes as the tears came again. "And I'd miss you," she added softly.

He pushed aside his table and tugged on her sleeve. She turned to him, but he didn't meet her eyes, just kept tugging at her sleeve. When she realized what he was doing, she started to cry again and slowly tilted over onto the bed next to him, as he wrapped his one good arm around her.

She ended up with her back pressed against his side, and her shoulder tucked into his armpit. She laid her head on his shoulder and bawled as he held her. His hand caressed her elbow in soothing circles until she had cried herself out.

When the sounds of the hospital filtered back into her consciousness, she pushed back up. Grabbing a fresh handful of tissues, she did the best she could in cleaning herself back up.

"Thank you," she whispered. "I really needed that."

He stroked a knuckle down the side of her arm and then patted her on the wrist.

She turned to him, and he cleared his throat. He started to speak, but she couldn't read his lips with so many words, and he was too quiet to hear.

"Hang on." She put up a Silencing Spell to cut out the background noise of the hospital and then leaned down and tilted her head to the side. "Say it again."

He sighed, his warm breath gusting over her neck. His voice was a mere phantom of words.

"Severus Snape lives at Spinner's End, Manchester."

Hermione's eyes flew wide, as she realized he had just given her the location of his Secret-Kept home. She popped her head up and looked at him. "Are you saying what I think you're saying? Because this would be a very bad moment for me to misunderstand."

He smirked and blinked at her carefully.

"I could move into your home?"

Yes, he blinked again.

"You would do that for me?"

He blinked one more time.

"Why?"

He gave her an incredulous look before flailing his arm at the gizmo overhead and the parchment at his hip.

"You don't need to feel obligated. I did those things because I wanted to. You helped me as much as I helped you, you know."

He rolled his eyes.

"But as long as you're offering, I'll take it. Just until I get a job and can get on my feet."

She shook her head, stunned. "You realize this means we're really friends now. There's no way to get around that fact. I'm even going to start calling you Severus."

He bent his arm and aimed his thumb at his shoulder, still wet with tears and what looked suspiciously like snot. "Oh, yes, I guess that would have meant we were friends as well," she said with a blush, cleaning him up with her wand.

He just rolled his eyes again and flicked his fingers in the gesture that had come to mean, 'Go away.'

She stood up and leaned down, kissing him on the top of his head. "You're marvelous," she said, laughing softly when he scowled.

"Now that I know where you live, is there anything you would like me to bring you from your home?"

Yes.

She leaned back down, placing her ear by his lips.

"Some fucking clothes."

She bolted up and blushed. "Oh, heavens! I'm so sorry! I'm so used to looking at you in nothing but a sheet that it just started to seem normal. I never even thought to get you a hospital gown! I'll go get you some tonight after work. In fact, why don't you spend the day writing a list of anything else you can think of. And perhaps some house rules, as well. You know, 'Don't go in the basement after dark,' or 'ignore the sound of scratching in the locked cupboard,' or anything else you think I might should know."

He smirked and blinked at her once, then closed his eyes and flicked his hand again. She kissed the top of his head again and then set off to see to the rest of her patients with a heart that felt at least a stone lighter.

Hermione landed near some bushes in what looked like a fairly run-down part of Manchester. She could see crumbling factory chimneys rising above the old, Georgian row houses down the lane. As she moved closer, the houses seemed to ripple, revealing another door and set of windows on the end. A quick look around, and then she was darting over to the door. Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out a wand, longer and stouter than her own. It was ebony, with an elaborately carved handle.

She still felt a little awed that he had so casually offered it to her so she could get past his wards and reset her own.

She held the wand to the door and waited for the click before reaching down and turning the knob. She slipped inside quickly and quietly closed the door after herself, using her own wand for the Lumos. She held it up and looked around.

For some reason, she had expected the place to be as creepy and dreary as Grimmauld had been the first time she'd been there. Spinner's End wasn't nearly as forbidding. It just looked neglected and felt more than a bit lonely.

The sitting room was a monument to bibliomania. Books were everywhere; on shelves from floor to ceiling, stacked in heaps on the floor. The cushions of the old sofa were piled high with journals, and the end tables looked like they wanted to complain. There was only one usable seat in the entire room, and it made Hermione smile.

It was worn and tattered and had the tell-tale pulls and tears of a cat, now long gone. It was the type of chair her grandfather had loved. One that was so comfortable and beloved that one didn't see how wretchedly ugly it had become.

She flicked her wand at the candle lamp hanging from the ceiling, and the room lit with a soft, golden glow. She tiptoed across the room and sat in the chair. It had obviously been moulded to a different form.

As if sitting in the chair had flipped a switch, she grew cold. She looked around and pulled out the parchment he had given her. Rule number one was, 'Beware of the books. This is not an idle warning.' Now that she was here, she understood. Fully half of them were Dark Magic. She could feel them, wintry and malevolent, but unaware. If felt as if the act of sitting had made them stir, but she wasn't the one they were looking for. She was beneath their notice and staunchly preferred it that way. She shuddered at the memory of certain tomes kept chained up at Hogwarts and could only wonder at what she was sitting with here.

She stood up and headed into the kitchen. The furnishings were a mishmash of eras. The cabinetry was the old metal style popular in the fifties, and the worktop was scorched Formica with a pattern that was no longer recognizable. The pantry was original to the house and covered with so many layers of enameled paint it looked like shiny wax. The floor was linoleum, newer than the cupboards, but predating Hermione, for sure. It sloped toward a backdoor hung with faded curtains.

Rule number two was, 'Don't use the cooker.' One look at the way it leaned precariously, and she could see why. Surely, it would burn the house down if she switched it on. There was a hotplate and an electric kettle next to the chipped enamel sink.

She headed back into the sitting room and found the hidden door to the stairs. They creaked ominously as she climbed them. Upstairs she found only two rooms. A bath...complete with claw-foot tub and shower adapter...and an ancient toilet and sink. Rule number three was, 'Turn the water on before you get in.' He'd underlined 'before' twice. She leaned over and switched on the tap, and it gurgled and belched a clot of rust before it ran clear. She switched it off, shaking her head.

She peeked in the cupboard and found a toothbrush, toothpaste, several vials of potions, all out of date, and a bottle of cologne. She popped it open and smelled it... and suddenly her Professor was there, stalking the aisles between tables in the classroom. She hadn't even realized he wore cologne, but her subconscious would have recognized that smell anywhere. She smiled, placing it back, and closed the mirrored door.

She headed toward the other room and stopped. There was something deliciously wicked about scurrying around in his house, but there was something forbidding about being in his bedroom.

Professor Snape had become something ambiguously special to her in the last months, but there was still a wall there. One made from great blocks of age and experience and mortared with the fact that she'd been his student. Nevertheless, the mortar was crumbling.

Letting her nose drain all over his shoulder will do that.

As she stood in the doorway of this very private space, there was a sense of being on the cusp of a moment. He had invited her into his life in a way that she never would have foreseen. He'd offered her his home as refuge. Now that she had seen it, she realized he had offered her his own bed. There was no other, and the sofa downstairs was far too small for him to have intended her to use that. She stared at the bed...large, four-postered, and taking up nearly the whole room.

She knew he was being generous because of the things she had done for him. But nothing in his history, or even the memories that Harry had shown her, would lead her to believe he was a man given to such gestures casually.

She couldn't help the feeling that he intended something other than what she understood.

Was offering her his bed akin to inviting her to share it?

She thought over their interactions in the past weeks and shook her head. They had certainly developed an intimacy, but she didn't think they had crossed any lines. The man blushed too easily to have hidden an interest, and was far too indignant when she'd had to manhandle him to do her job.

She stepped into the room and it was like piercing a veil. She walked over and sat down on the bed, smiling and flopping back when she discovered one of his secret pleasures. Despite the neglected manner of the rest of the house, Professor Snape had decadent taste in mattresses. Sleeping might just become her new hobby.

She sat up and looked at the bedside table and the smile dropped off her face. There, lying on top of yet another book, was the torn picture of Harry's mother. It called to her, demanding that she understand something of vital importance. She looked around at the room again, and realization started to prick at her mind insistently.

He hadn't offered her his bed. He certainly hadn't invited her to share his bed.

He'd given it to her.

She thought back again and replayed certain conversations, reexamined the various looks in his eyes, and it all made her blood run cold.

Snape offered her his home almost casually. He'd pointed her to the drawer in his bedside table with his wand in it as if lending it to her was of no matter. His attempt to relearn how to write, on a day he'd been able to control his mouth enough to actually speak, was odd. Most damning was the way he consistently kept his left arm under the sheet. She'd assumed he'd only regained control of his right, but now that she was looking for suspicious behavior, she saw it. He always regained control of the right side first, but the left had always followed closely behind.

Her heart slammed in her chest.

Basilisk, she thought. The last time she had made such a crazy leap of logic had been when she'd realized the monster in the Chamber of Secrets had been a basilisk. She'd wasted time looking for proof and had ended up a victim.

She knew in her gut she was right this time as well, and she was already wasting time.

Her heart started to thump in her chest. She pulled open the drawstring of her beaded bag and dropped it on the bed. She ran over to his chest of drawers and began pillaging it. Socks, pants, pajama bottoms, trousers, and a belt went into the bag. She snatched open his wardrobe and pulled out his robes, some shirts and, when she spied them folded in a corner, two pairs of faded jeans. She grabbed up a pair of boots, knowing it was overkill, but unable to control her sudden mania. He already had a pair of his dragon-hide boots sitting in a drawer next to his bed. On impulse, she swept her hand under his pillows and was rewarded with a nightshirt.

She shoved them all into the bag and then ran off and grabbed his toothbrush, toothpaste, floss and even his damned bottle of cologne.

Pulling the bag shut, she raced back down to the sitting room and reset the wards with an angry swish of her wand. Grabbing up a bit of Floo powder from the bowl on top, she cried, "St. Mungo's!"

She swirled away in a flash of green flame, knowing she would have to do some fast explaining for using their emergency Floo.

:

She blew into Snape's room in a gale of anger.

His eyes popped open, and he looked at her with concern.

She stomped over to his bed, looked around for the most likely hiding place, and realized there could only be one. She dropped her bag on the table and shoved her hand under his pillow.

She found it on the second swipe. She snatched the piece of parchment out from under him, ignoring his furious glare and his clumsy attempt to stop her.

She danced back a step and read, 'I, Severus Snape, being of sound mind, do hereby...' That was as far as he had gone. She threw it down on the bed next to him, and he glared daggers at her. She glared right back.

"Why?" she demanded.

He slid his eyes away from her and looked at the ceiling. His face was blotching with red even as she watched. He was furious, and helpless. A terrible combination.

Well, she was too. She stomped around the bed and grabbed at his left arm. As she'd suspected, he snatched it away with surprising speed. She grabbed at the blanket and pulled it away, revealing a good portion of his pale torso and his arm.

He hissed in anger as she stared in horror.

"Oh, fuck, Snape. When did this start?"

Her eyes filled with tears at the sight of his forearm. The Dark Mark had lost its definition, but had spread. The inside of his arm had turned black from his elbow to halfway down his palm. It pulsed and writhed like a live thing under the skin.

If she hadn't arranged to have him bathed by house-elves, someone would have noticed it sooner.

She looked to him for an answer, but he gave none. He just stared at her with anger, shame, and... profound sadness.

"You knew."

He blinked.

"You always knew. As soon as I told you Voldemort was dead..."

Yes.

"This is why the Malfoys have been admitted," she said more to herself.

He winced, using his all the muscles in his face to do it. How could he be getting better and dying at the same time?

"Lucius and Draco have been here for a while now." She fixed his sheet, covering his pale chest. "It's the venom, isn't it? The venom that was trying to kill you, was somehow also holding your Dark Mark in check, wasn't it?"

Yes.

"As we lower the amount of venom in your body, we release the... whatever it is?"

Yes.

"Professor, is there a way to stop it?"

He gave her a look of such pain and sadness that she reached out and grabbed at his blackening hand. He clutched hers back before closing his eyes and whispering, "No."

She started to cry, and when she saw a tear finally escape from his lashes, she crawled up onto the bed...careful not to disturb the drain in his neck...and wrapped herself around him. He clumsily pulled her against him and together they cried over how cruel the world could be.

That night, Healer Thriven rushed into the hospital and straight up to the Isolation rooms on the sixth floor. There, he found Madam Ashtonley and Healer Parks staring at Narcissa Malfoy dead on the floor. Her white-blonde hair was fanned out around a face that was strangely less cold than it had been in life.

A pentagram had been scrawled in blood on the floor under her body.

"How did she get in here?" he demanded.

"No one knows," the nurse replied.

"Have you checked on her son?"

"He's sleeping peacefully, unlike the father."

Lucius Malfoy thrashed in his bed. His body was emaciated and blackened as it if had been burned to char. His limbs had curled in on themselves in a grotesque parody of a newborn. He seemed to be having an attack of some kind, but after running several tests, Thriven came to the same conclusion that the other two had. Despite his coma, he somehow knew his wife was dead. He was mourning.