Six

Disclaimer: All characters are the property of J.K. Rowling. I intend no infringement and am making no profit.

***

"Hermione?"

Startled, Hermione stumbled on the rungs of the ladder on which she'd been perched, nearly tumbling backward. She muttered a hasty curse and set aside the spray bottle she had been holding, wiping her hands on her jeans, already dirtied beyond even the most miraculous of magical repair.

She could hear the visitor...it had sounded distinctly like Ron...pacing on the faded wooden floor of the living room below. Tossing aside the cloth with which she'd been scrubbing at spider webs and grime coating the walls, Hermione tramped down the narrow staircase, pushing against the door at the dark bottom.

It was indeed Ron. He turned and stared in amazement as she pushed open the door, seemingly emerging from the wall of books, identical to each of the other three in the room.

"Depressing place, isn't it?" he remarked with an air of pity, glancing around at the spare, ancient furnishings.

She said nothing, merely crossing her arms and awaiting his continued response. After the fight they'd had two evenings prior, she was frankly not in the mood to be at all forthcoming with him. It was he who had lost his temper and tossed her from The Burrow, only to show up at her apartment moments later intent on instigating a true shouting match.

Sensing the anger seething in her stance, Ron hung his head momentarily, defeated. "Look," he said with a long-suffering sigh, "I came here to tell you that I'm sorry about what I said. I shouldn't have... Well, I shouldn't have accused you of anything. You were right."

"How did you know I was here?" Hermione unpinned the handkerchief with which she had restrained her hair while cleaning and gasped at the thick coating of dust and grime it had already amassed. Everything in Snape's house reeked of age and neglect.

"I ran into Susan at your flat. She was stopping by to drop off some food or something." A small smile quirked at his lips. "She's worried about you, you know. She thought you might go off the edge when they forced you to take today off."

Hermione pocketed the handkerchief and sank into a profoundly uncomfortable armchair. "I didn't think you'd want to talk to me again," she admitted quietly.

Ron followed suit, collapsing into an equally hard chair, rubbing the pads of his fingers across fatigued eyelids. She suspected that neither of them had had the benefit of much sleep the past few days. She'd gone to The Burrow with the intention of being open and honest with him, confessing that while it had been juvenile and insensitive of her to lead him on in such a manner, she simply did not believe that she possessed the sort of feelings for him that would result in a successful and mutually satisfying marriage.

Hermione had seen in his eyes the understanding...the relief, even...but something, perhaps the desire to punish her for the enormous discourtesy she'd dealt him, had compelled Ron to be an intractable prat. He'd followed her home, refusing to listen to her explanation, brushing it off as nerves. He had claimed utter ignorance when she pointed out that the two of them had not lately...and had not ever, really...enjoyed one another's company outside Harry's presence. They were completely different people for whom unusual circumstances during their formative years had created confusion, and Hermione, for one, refused to labor day after day under the condemnation of her better judgment.

Ron yawned, shaking her from her reverie. He leaned forward and faced her with open, conceding palms. "You were right," he said simply, and the tension within her melted completely. "I've known for awhile that this wasn't going to work, but... You always said it was St. Mungo's that was causing you to behave differently. I honestly thought you still wanted it."

"Were you going to tell me?" She knew she had no right to feel indignant, since she'd given him the same disservice; primarily she felt a deep-seated tiredness, resignation with surprisingly little reluctance.

"I don't know." His jaw tightened; he was probably wondering whether or not she would lash out. "I think I would have lost my nerve before we actually married. I just... I thought you still wanted it. Why didn't you tell me earlier?" he finished on a plaintive note, making her cringe and berate herself yet again.

"I'm sorry, Ron. I am. I thought you still wanted it, and I was waiting for that... Whatever we had at Hogwarts, I wanted it back. I thought maybe..."

"You just needed time?"

She nodded miserably and fought back tears. Ron rose swiftly to his feet and crossed the distance between them, sitting beside her and offering her a hug. She buried her face in his shoulder, crying softly.

He patted her back. "I'm sorry, Hermione. I really am. I didn't want things to turn out this way, but you're right... We're just too different. We've got Harry in common, and our history with him, but that's about it."

She'd told him as much the other night, asserting that they were fundamentally very different individuals. In hindsight, she couldn't have been more right, she thought, pressing her face deeply into the curve of his shoulder. Ron was a wonderful friend, and he never failed to make her laugh, but the relentless need to pander to one another's differences would have destroyed them both.

Ron drew back and winced when he noted her red, puffy eyes. She blinked, mumbling an apology.

"It's okay," he assured her, wiping away a few tears with the sleeve of his shirt. "I'm the one who should be sorry. Everything you said was exactly how I've been feeling, but I was too afraid to back out after we announced everything in front of my family."

She sniffled loudly, hating the pitiful sound that emerged. "I was too. But we can't do it, Ron. It isn't right. Like I said the other night, what happened at Hogwarts only made sense there. We were the right age, we were curious, we both found one another attractive..."

"We both wanted sex," he added with a sly smile. She chuckled.

"That too. You wanted girls and I wanted boys, and after seeing Harry and Ginny together, it only seemed to make sense. I was the only girl you'd spent any time with who wasn't your sister..."

"And unlike Harry, I didn't let you boss me around like a younger brother," he pointed out defiantly. She rolled her eyes.

"I do think of Harry in a very brotherly way," she conceded. "But everything we went through was always on his behalf. With you it was different. We were together for his sake, but it was a different kind of friendship. And it's not the basis of a marriage," she insisted, realizing that her tone had become unnecessarily vehement.

"I know, I know." He met her eyes, and his gaze held the warmth and mirth she'd appreciated so much during their years at Hogwarts. She hadn't glimpsed this Ron in months, having herself buried him beneath the weight of her own indecision.

"I'm not arguing with you," he reiterated. "Really, I'm not. You were the only girl I was around all that much who wasn't Ginny, and I was comfortable around you. Not like Lavender."

She snorted. "Won-Won," she mocked, and he laughed, a wonderfully unrestrained sound that brought tears to her eyes again. "Have you told your parents?" she asked, and he gave a short nod.

"I think Mum's still in denial, to be honest, but she'll recover. Dad didn't seem surprised, really. He looked like he kind of expected it."

Hermione held Arthur Weasley in great esteem and was, in turn, equally unsurprised. "Your dad always seemed like a very perceptive person. Your mom is, too...she's probably just disappointed."

"No doubt she was looking forward to having three hundred other people to harass," he muttered, and she smiled at him.

"Seriously, Ron... Is everything okay now? We understand one another?"

He rose to his feet and offered her his arm, which she accepted gratefully. Crying always deeply drained her energy physically; she came to her feet still feeling oddly off-balance.

"We're fine. And I'm sorry about... what I said the other night."

She shook her head firmly, recalling his cutting accusation that she was probably entertaining the attentions of a man at work. It was his crude suggestion that they'd been having their illicit rendezvous in her office...so she wouldn't have to leave her work, as it was, he'd claimed, more important to her than the feelings of any human being...that had offended and destroyed her more than anything. When he'd finally left her flat, she had collapsed at Snape's bedside, his usual evening bath forgotten as she sobbed for hours, mumbling incoherently every misery that rose to the surface.

"There's no need to apologize." She led him toward the dingy front door, genuinely afraid that her tears would resume if she continued to dwell on the utter mortification she'd felt when the flow had been stemmed and she'd been sitting beside Snape, who had heard everything. "I really need to get back to cleaning," she told him, hoping her tone was not suddenly too forceful.

They parted on exceptionally good terms. He bade her enjoy the remainder of her long weekend, pointing out that despite how she loathed leaving work unfinished, Susan and Healer Vickers had been right...she required, and fully deserved, a few days to gather her thoughts and regain some perspective. The sudden loss of not only a relationship, but of a fiancé, was significant enough to impair even her consummately professional abilities.

Hermione closed the door behind him and stood in Snape's living room, once again taking in the haunted, almost claustrophobic feeling that pervaded the atmosphere. She was sincerely glad that he'd had the option of spending the majority of the year at Hogwarts. Even a straw bed in the corner of Moaning Myrtle's toilet would have been preferable to the darkly oppressive dwelling in which he'd grown up; it could hardly be termed a home.

She had been wrangling all morning with the suspicion that using his kitchen to prepare herself a beverage or a meal would be an unforgivable trespass of his privacy. She was there to clean and maintain the house until he awoke, but combing through his drawers and outfitting his cabinet with food solely for her benefit would be crossing the line.

Deciding to settle for a glass of cold water, she hesitantly opened the cabinets, all of which were streaked with dust. She hadn't yet tackled the kitchen, preferring instead to start from the top and work her way down. Thus she'd turned her attention immediately to the two tiny bedrooms and minuscule bathroom upstairs.

Hermione found a glass and hastily muttered, "Scourgify," unwilling to make even the lightest contact with her fingers until it had been thoroughly cleaned. Having done so, she filled it with water and leaned against the sink, sipping at it gratefully.

McGonagall had insisted that as Snape's legal custodian, she was under obligation to oversee the maintenance of his body alone; his home, her former Head of House had averred, was not her responsibility. Furthermore, it would be highly unorthodox for her to enter the house unless it became a matter of strict necessity. Hermione had stared at the yellowed, creased deed in her fingers, realizing instantly that regardless what society deemed as the logical boundary of her responsibilities for the man in question, she could not, in good conscience, ignore the maintenance of his only remaining asset. The thought of his home abandoned and falling into disrepair when she alone held the power to preserve it was unthinkable. Guilt would have eaten her alive.

And so, carrying the sparse few legal documents McGonagall had kept after cleaning out his Hogwarts quarters years prior, Hermione had penciled into her schedule, Cleaning at Spinner's End. An enforced mental-health break had arisen when Susan spoke to Healer Vickers on her behalf, and it seemed the logical time to complete the errand.

Now that she had finished with approximately half the necessary cleaning and repairs, Hermione wasn't entirely certain how to proceed in the forthcoming months. It would be relatively easy to pop by once or twice a month and cast the perfunctory cleaning charms, thereby ensuring that the house remained in good condition, but she wasn't sure it would assuage her conscience to simply maintain it. She felt she ought to put forth a bit more effort than that for his sake, though she couldn't understand why the thought of his home falling into dilapidation didn't just bother her. It elicited in her stomach an almost panicky feeling. It was all he had...she was all he had.

Telling herself she might as well get on with it, she washed her glass, returned it to the dusty cupboard, and pressed on.

***

She returned that evening in surprisingly high spirits. Severus had fully expected her to spend at least a week moping around her home, especially given her ill nature when she'd been sent away from her job. He'd received an earful that evening, a tirade almost equal in passion to the sobbing precipitated by Weasley's idiocy.

However, she seemed to be oddly happy. His hearing was especially acute that evening, astonishingly so. He could hear her humming from the kitchen, the soft contralto punctuated by what sounded like the gentle clanging of pots and pans being transferred and utilized. He'd known she tended to prepare her own meals...she was certainly too punctilious with her finances to waste money eating out every evening...but in the time he'd been in residence, he'd never heard such exhaustive effort put into her evening meal.

Her humming progressed to outright singing. He resisted the urge to cringe mentally. He couldn't very well begrudge her the opportunity to express her good mood, flummoxed though he was by its sudden appearance. He'd obviously been grossly mistaken in assuming that while she harbored no lingering feelings of a sexual nature for the Weasley boy, she would be devastated by the shouting match. If the delighted feminine lilting from the other room was any indication, she'd overcome her disappointment.

"Good evening," she said, her voice suddenly much louder. She'd entered his room, and he could hear the sloshing of his bathwater. He felt slightly relieved by the imminent prospect of their nightly ritual. Though few would have believed it, he cared greatly about his hygiene. He generally didn't care to entertain for long thoughts of what three years spent bedridden had done to the condition of his skin.

"Your hair is looking much better," Granger remarked. Though he couldn't feel the action, he knew instinctively that she was running her fingers through it, carefully gauging its health. "It's finally catching up with your skin and muscles.

"You're improving so much," she continued, launching into a description of what she'd been doing that day. He was flabbergasted...she'd been cleaning his house?

"I wasn't sure what to do about the bedrooms," she trailed on. For once the sound of water running across his own skin didn't distract Severus; he was fuming. "I put all the boxes in the closets...I figured you could take care of that once you've recovered...and I stored some of the other stuff in the attic."

The impudent girl had been going through his belongings...no, not going through: disposing of. Never mind the fact that she'd stowed them in the attic rather than throwing them out...she still had no right to be going through his house. Minerva may have turned over the deed, but Granger been absolutely wrong in her assumption that there was any need to enter the house. It was his property, and she'd just spent an entire day violating his privacy. Any witch with a handful of brain cells could have deduced as much.

Severus was positively livid. He could feel the heat beginning to suffuse his face, a thrilling sensation of revitalization coursing through him. Nerves that had lain dormant for years sprang to life, connecting and reveling in the emotion. He felt his eyelid twitch.

"Perhaps I should bring some of your things back here." Granger wrung out the washcloth, drops pattering back into the bowl. "I thought about returning your clothes to the house, but you'll need them when you first wake up. And I doubt you'll be in any condition to move back immediately."

Severus did his utmost to feel his fists. He wanted to clench them and rail out. If he'd been able, he would have given the girl a tongue-lashing she would truly never forget. Weasley's juvenile accusations would seem the fond memories of lover's caresses in comparison. The idiotic girl. The stupid fucking child.

"Maybe I'll bring a few more of your books back here." She was still nattering on; he could hear the light rasp of the friction between her fingers and his skin as she examined his body with a familiarity he loathed. He hated the thought of her perusing his books; dipping her nosy fingers into his boxes; pawing at his most private belongings. Spinner's End had been his only true refuge since his parents' deaths; there were objects in that house that could thoroughly compromise even his paltry existence. His other eyelid twitched.

He heard the shifting of her clothing as Granger turned, placing the washbowl on the ground beside his bed. When she turned back, black eyes met brown, and she screamed.