Chapter Two

The characters and canon situations in the following story belong solely to J.K. Rowling, Scholastic, and WB. I am not making any money from the publishing or writing of this story.

In the quiet that follows, where he again neither sees nor hears her, Severus finds he can make it through his days more easily if he tells himself that he was mistaken, that he does not care for her. It does not matter if he is lying to himself. He will do what he must to get through this betrayal of his heart. When she has gone from the school, as she will most assuredly leave, then he will go about living his life as he always has. Broken and alone.

He is lying to himself, he knows, but it isn't until he next encounters her that he realises exactly how much more powerful this denial has made his feelings.

He is on his way to the Great Hall for breakfast one morning when her voice stretches from around the corner and hits him in the gut. He cannot deny her power over him, cannot deny the veracity of his feelings when, at the first sound of her voice, his feet stop, his heart begins to pound in his chest, and his hand flies to touch the lodestone bracelet that, even now, rests hidden beneath his cuff.

The shrill tone of her voice is echoing off the halls in the early morning sunlight, piercing straight into his heart as broken glass into skin. She is berating someone, and as unfamiliar emotions flood him and his face pales...a seemingly impossible feat...he ducks into a nearby alcove and waits for her and her classmate to pass. If he listens with interest, it is only because there is nothing else for him to do while he calms himself and tries to gain control of the emotion she stirs within him.

"How can you be so thick, Ronald?" he hears her shriek. A muffled thump follows...he assumes it is the sound of her foot stamping on the ground...and then someone is sputtering. He is not surprised in the least when, in typical Weasley fashion, the boy's voice fills the hall with angry bellows.

"What do you mean? You think I'm thick just because I want you to be careful around him? He's a greasy git, and you need protection, Hermione."

"I do not," she cries, and he can tell she is exasperated beyond tolerance. "Just because I can't remember what I had for breakfast yesterday does not mean that I cannot function, Ronald Weasley. I fought in a war; I can certainly take care of myself in the halls of Hogwarts."

"But..."

"No. You listen to me. I will not stand by and listen to you bad mouth him, especially after everything that has happened. After all the times he has saved us... It is unthinkable that he would ever be a danger to me. And the fact that you truly believe this idiocy... It reminds me how dim and shallow you are. Don't you ever..."

He listens closely, ears straining as her voice suddenly stops, and the sound of fast-approaching steps fills the passageway. Then, the voice of Harry Potter is added to the mix.

"What is going on here?" he hears Harry Potter bark. The tone of his words immediately causes Severus' hackles to rise; they only fall when he realises that Potter's words are not directed at her. "Ron, have I not made it clear that you are to leave her alone? You know it upsets Hermione to be around you."

"Harry...," she pleads quietly as his mind and heart mock him for hiding like a coward in the shadows. He does not even register the movement of his fingers as they seek out to touch the lodestones that rest beneath his sleeve, so often has he done so in the past days. It is a constant reminder to him of what she could be, of what they could be; though he has no desire to admit it. Still, the stones comfort him, even if he is unable to bring himself to come to her aid. The weight and intensity of what he feels is simply too foreign, too strong, too new, too confusing. Not to mention that he sincerely doubts she would welcome his interference anyway.

"No, Hermione," Harry snaps in a growl that surprises him. He has heard tales of Potter's ferocity, has heard countless times of his defeat of Voldemort, but until this moment he has always believed them exaggerated.

"He just riles you, and if you had read your journal like you are supposed to do, instead of leaving it in the common room where I found it, you would know this."

"Not to mention, Ron, that you should know better than to rile her. What was the argument over this time: your lack of relationship or Snape? Because those seem to be the only two subjects that you seem capable of bringing up with her."

"I don't see what she thinks is so wonderful about Snape," he hears Ronald Weasley roar as shock and confusion mingle with the myriad of emotions that are currently crippling him.

They are arguing about me?

"And I don't get why I can't talk to her, Harry."

"That is exactly why you can't! If you can't respect the fact that the world is very confusing at times for Hermione, then you cannot talk to her. Now, leave."

Severus listens as the Weasley brat picks up his bag and storms past his hiding place, all the while puzzling over the students' exchange. In those deep shadows of the hidden alcove, he cannot fathom why Hermione Granger would champion him, why he would be so suddenly and thoroughly affected by her. He should be nothing to her, as she should be to him. It does not matter that they were once comrades in arms, that he was once her professor.

But he cannot deny that the difference is there. She does indeed matter to him, and it appears that he, too, is of some import to her ... even if it is only to a small degree. He shouldn't matter to her, he knows. The fact that she somehow manages to care even through her lack of short-term memory only encourages him to hope, against his better judgement. It has not escaped his notice that her defence of him is not something new, and though he cannot fathom why she does so, it gives him some semblance of peace.

The sound of her soft crying suddenly filters through his distracted mind, and he quickly sobers. Whatever comfort he has found in these last few moments drains away, lost to the realisation that she is hurting. Would that he could go to her now, but he cannot, will not.

"You okay, Hermione?" he hears Potter ask. The contrast in the boy's voice is striking. Where only moments before he had been fierce, he is now calm and soothing.

"I'm fine," she whispers. "I just wish he wouldn't be so difficult. I mean, sure, I don't remember what happened last week, but that doesn't mean my feelings aren't just as valid as anyone else's, even if you or Ron don't understand them. I acknowledge that they are odd and not everyone shares them with me, but I know when I'm right about someone, Harry, and I'm..."

"Yes, you are right, Hermione," Harry snipes, cutting her off. "Just try to steer clear of Ron. Okay? He will only upset you. And read your journal, for goodness sake! How are you supposed to know what is going on if you don't read your own notes?"

"Sorry about that. I did try, but Ron came and interrupted me. I must have left it behind when I stormed off. I won't do it again."

A snort comes from the boy, and he hears Potter quip quietly, "I wouldn't count on it, Hermione."

"Oh! Right..." Her voice falls flat, veritably smacking into the cold stone of the floor beneath her feet, and he can follow the train of her thought as clearly as if she had spoken it aloud. It wasn't as if she could remember not to leave the journal lying around. After all, she couldn't remember anything from one day to the next anyway.

"It's not so bad, you know. Yes, sometimes it gets to you, and yes, at times the world is confusing, but in the end, most days you seem happy."

"That just it, Harry. I don't want to seem happy. I want to be happy."

Severus nods in agreement and approval. He has never understood the point of appearing happy when one is actually not. After all, it has been the hallmark of his life that he is not a happy man, and the people he has encountered know it well. Even now, after the war, he has found it difficult to be truly happy. It is simply something he does not know how to do. He does wonder occasionally if he is even capable of happiness any longer, if his soul isn't too damaged and worn to possess even the merest scrap of it. Would he even recognise happiness if it were to find him?

"You are getting better," he hears Harry reassure her lamely. "In the last month you have been able to recall some reoccurring events in your life, and you aren't so easily confused by everyday happenings as you were before."

She sighs and then asks, her voice uncharacteristically weak and hopeless, "Harry, is there any hope that they will fix it? Fix me? Who is even working on it? Is anyone anymore, after all these months?" There is a despair that breaks through as she finishes, and Severus can hear her unspoken worry. What kind of life will she have if she is not released from the hex? Has she been forgotten? He knows instantly that this is her deepest fear, that she will never reach her potential, never be herself again. That she has already been forgotten in favour of more favourable and profitable pursuits. A fear, he guesses, that she discovers each day anew.

"They have the best curse breakers looking into it," Harry reassures her, but even as he does so Severus can tell there is something off in his voice. Without being able to see his face Severus knows he cannot be sure, but it almost sounds to him as if the boy is lying. Whatever the case, it is obvious to him that Harry Potter is holding something back, and that, in and of itself, is unacceptable.

As the pair of friends walk down the hall, away from his hiding place, he hears her ask brightly, as if a light has been turned on and she is no longer sad, "Have you seen Ginny?" The extreme spin of her mood surprises him for a moment, jarring him in such a way that he knows instantly it is a result of the hex. Before her friend can answer, she continues. "You and Ginny are still together, right?"

Harry chuckles softly, apparently used to the sudden shifts and turns of her hex-addled thought process. "You always ask me that. Yes, Gin and I are still together." Harry pauses for a moment and then continues speaking in a tone full of wry relief. "And just in case you were wondering, or were thinking of asking me again: No, I didn't eat your last dark Chocolate Frog. That was Ron, but that was so long ago that I doubt he remembers. Yes, Professor McGonagall is Headmistress, and yes, she has invited the both of us to call her by her first name in private. So don't get in a snit about it. What else? Oh! NEWTs are in seven months, and you are being allowed to take them because you already know all the material, memory loss or no. However, you negotiated the proviso that, should you ever fully regain your memory, you will be allowed time to study and re-sit them, should you feel the desire."

Severus chuckles as their voices grow more distant, shaking from him the unsettled emotions and concern. There is nothing he can do about them at this point in time, and the unspoken questions that Potter has just answered are so quintessentially Granger, he cannot help but find himself amused. From that point, it only takes a few moments before he feels the facade of professorial dignity falling over him. As he steps from the alcove and starts to make his way back toward his rooms, he does not even recall that he has completely forgotten to attend breakfast.

The sound of his boots echo loudly in the corridors leading down to his dungeon chambers; his robes billowing around him and his snarling glare firmly in place. As the few students he encounters along the way jump from his path, in order to avoid the harsh tongue lashing and extreme point deduction for which he is so well known, not one of them suspects that Severus Snape is filled with such determination that he will do whatever he must to cure Miss Hermione Granger, neither do they know that his fingers have once again sought out the cold surface of the magical stones encircling his wrist.