Seven

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

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His body remained otherwise immobile, but Hermione was petrified by the sight of his eyes. They were wide and bloodshot, black depths blazing. Her mouth opened and closed ineffectively, and she realized in a sudden moment of revelatory embarrassment that she'd never truly prepared for this moment.

What was she to call him? Professor? Sir? Mr. Snape?

"Professor," she gasped, reaching out a hand and then pulling it back hastily. "Can you see me?"

The eyes narrowed malevolently. There was something distinctly alarming about the sight of a paralyzed being glaring directly, following her every move with angry, disembodied eyes. Steeling herself against the overt fury in his look, she reached frantically for the bowl of water at her feet.

"I'll be right back," she promised, dashing off to the kitchen. Once she'd deposited the bowl and wash rag in the sink, she hurried into her bathroom and threw open the medicine cabinet. She began coming through vitamins, Muggle painkillers...the many "necessities" her parents had insisted she outfit her bathroom with upon moving in.

Snatching a small bottle of Muggle eye drops, she returned to the bedroom and took a seat beside him. She was positive that if he'd been capable of moving any other portion of his face, his lips would have been curled into a grimace and he would have been growling at her. As it was, his ineffectual straining only served to make his dry, irritated eyes bulge even further out of his papery face.

"I'm going to give you some eye drops to soothe your eyes," she said in calm, measured tones. "It's just saline solution. It will take away the stinging and the shock, okay? Look directly upward and try not to flinch."

Shockingly, Snape did as he was told. He focused the deep black irises on the ceiling, and she carefully administered the eye drops, watching in relief as each eye blinked and reopened slowly, the color returning to normal, moist whiteness. Up close, his eyes were an extremely dark, cool brown, barely distinguishable from the pupils.

"There. Is that better?"

He glowered again, and she fought back a reflexive giggle. She knew it had to be absolute hell for Severus Snape to be incapable of expressing derision. He would probably have intensely preferred death.

"Okay, I assume that you would be moving any other part of your body if you could?"

She'd meant it as a question, but the eyes flickered away and focused on the opposite wall as if to say, Your idiocy pains me.

"Fine. From now on, blink once for yes and two times for no. Got it?"

One rapid blink followed, and she beamed at him. "This is wonderful progress. I'm going to up the amount of nutritive potion I'm giving you now that I'm certain it's having such great effects."

She bent over him slowly, somehow unable to tear her gaze away from his eyes. His blank, expressionless body had become a constant part of her normal routine, but he'd always registered primarily in her thoughts as a patient, a duty. The man before her was now unmistakably Severus Snape. Despite the nondescript gray clothing and shorter, shorn hair, he could have passed for no one other than himself. His eyes were amazingly expressive.

"Now." She placed a comforting hand on his left shoulder, and his eyes followed her intently, almost suspiciously. "Is there anything else you want? Do you want me to read to you?"

For nearly ten seconds he didn't respond. Finally he gave a slow blink of assent, and she smiled. "You can tell me no, you know. I won't keep reading to you if it bothers you. I just wanted to find a way to help you pass the time once I realized that you were probably conscious in there..."

Though she couldn't have verbalized any explanation aloud, Hermione swore that the eyes were deliberating, indecisive. They flickered back and forth slightly before losing focus and staring at the ceiling.

"So, for a second time: Do you want me to read to you?"

He blinked twice rapidly and then averted his eyes. Their expression had hardened.

Hermione felt inexplicably chastened. Finding that she was suddenly nervous, she wrung her hands slightly. She had no idea how to communicate to him the fact that she had nothing else to do that evening, and she certainly didn't want to leave him after such a momentous breakthrough.

"All right," she said slowly, endeavoring not to allow too much disappointment to seep into her tone. "Do you want me to play you some music?"

He affirmed that he did want music, and they spent a few minutes choosing the composer her preferred for the evening. Hermione left him then, wandering aimlessly into her living room and falling into a sort of stupor on the couch.

She'd spent hours hoping for his recovery, but a portion of her, much like McGonagall, had remained skeptical: the odds of a full recovery were infinitesimal, and she hadn't dared to entertain the thought that he would one day be sitting up in bed, speaking to her in his usual condescending manner as if no time had passed at all. An enormous amount of time had passed...the Wizarding community had been changed irrevocably...and she'd thought that if he did reawaken, she would be spending her time telling him of all that had passed. She'd anticipated running errands for him, entertaining him, helping him slowly regain a state of tolerable existence.

If she was truthful with herself, she'd simply wanted to talk to him. The fact that she would be responsible for turning him over to the proper authorities if he ever regained consciousness had weighed heavily upon her; but until she, as a Healer, deemed him fit to attend trial, he would remain in an extended limbo of partial recovery during which she would be free to converse with him and hear his side of the story. She burned to know the full details of what had happened to him three years ago, what had transpired after he fled Hogwarts and how he'd been forced to ingest a potion resulting in such bizarre malignancies.

Instead he seemed determined to avoid her at all costs. She supposed it was foolish of her to fancy that he'd enjoyed hearing her read these months...she was, after all, hardly an entertainer or an actress. She'd merely done her best to alleviate his pain and boredom, and while she knew it was understandable that he would want some time to himself to consider his progress, she felt stung.

Possessed by an odd desire, Hermione returned to her bedroom and opened the top drawer of her bed table. Within she'd placed the mysterious photograph of Narcissa Malfoy. She'd known at the time that it was a terrible trespass of his privacy to keep it separate from his other belongings, but she hadn't been able to restrain herself from examining it on a daily basis. She longed to ask him how he'd come into possession of a photograph that obviously had belonged to Lucius Malfoy...and one so intimate, at that.

She could no longer enumerate the times she'd sat cross-legged upon her bed, staring balefully at that photograph. Trained to diagnose and treat illnesses of the physical body, Hermione was incapable of truly examining emotions, and especially her own state of mind, with anything approaching impartiality. After months of careful self-examination, she remained unable to explain to herself why the photograph irked her so greatly. The logical portion of her brain repeatedly assured the emotional portion that Snape had simply run across the photograph at the Malfoys' manor and chosen to keep it for some reason.

Did it bother her that he'd chosen to keep it? Well, yes, it did, she admitted, biting her lip. What she couldn't understand was why. Her feelings had long ago been rent by the opposing viewpoints of Snape's character. On the one hand, he'd murdered Albus Dumbledore in cold blood; the fact that Dumbledore's memories clearly exonerated his actions failed to alter the harsh truth of the matter. He was a man thoroughly capable of murder, and the thought alarmed Hermione.

On the other hand, he'd genuinely served the Order, and he'd suffered tremendously for his loyalties. The three years he'd spent imprisoned in his own body were merely the tip of the ice berg. He'd undoubtedly suffered countless bouts of interrogation and torture at Lord Voldemort's wand over the years, and his activities as a spy had been paramount in turning the course of the war on more than one occasion. She shuddered to imagine the type of world in which she would have found herself had Snape not willingly sacrificed his safety and sanity.

So why should it bother her that he might perhaps have carried a torch for Narcissa Malfoy? Somehow the thought left a bitter taste in her mouth. Narcissa Malfoy was precisely the type of woman Hermione despised. She'd devoted her life to blindly following a husband to whom she'd submitted all control. She was yet another mindless beauty who emerged from her polished shell only to inflict cruelty on those she considered her inferiors...which, in her case, comprised more or less everyone. Hermione suspected that providing Lucius Malfoy with Draco's pathetic, simpering presence had been her one true devotion in life. It would have amazed her to discover that the woman had expressed even the most fleeting hint of an original thought in her life. She privately thought that Narcissa Malfoy had made her bed, and she could damn well lie in it.

Hermione supposed that she'd harbored all along a preconceived idea of who Snape would be attracted to, and Narcissa Malfoy decidedly did not fit the bill. He was an abrasive teacher and a wholly unpleasant man, but he was brilliant; she'd been aware of that from practically the first moment she'd set foot in his classroom. Seven years of his tutelage had made eminently clear the fact that he would never openly display approval or favor of her, and part of her despised and resented what she'd originally seen as his cowardice and inability to stand up to House prejudices.

As she 'd grown older, though, she'd grudgingly admitted that Snape had offered her his respect in his own way. It was a subtle approach, at times backhanded and always purely, consummately Slytherin, but he had nevertheless treated her with a certain silent acceptance he'd never afforded her classmates. She in turn offered him her deference, even when his actions burned so deeply that she spent hours crouched on the floor of the shower, the rapid spray of water masking the wracking sobs.

She poked ineffectually at the photograph, willing it to disappear. Snape had made her cry more times than she could count, but he'd also made her glow. He'd made her realize time and again that the desire and acquisition of knowledge was both his ultimate goal and hers, and she idolized him for it. The thought that he would have squandered even a moment of his formidable brainpower on a tramp like Narcissa Malfoy aggravated her to no foreseeable end.

Hermione abandoned her musings and returned to the kitchen, idly fixing herself a cup of tea. Even without the photograph directly in front of her, she could mentally trace the silhouette of Narcissa's body, all long, lithe curves and shimmering flaxen hair. After meeting Fleur Delacour she'd told herself that it was useless to envy other women. It was her accomplishments and her career by which she ought to judge herself and compare herself to others, not her looks, but it was difficult to stand by that pronouncement when women like Narcissa existed. It was almost more painful to think that Snape might have fancied her purely for her looks than to imagine him seeing any indication of kindred spirit in her.

Returning to her room, Hermione caught a glance of herself in the full-length mirror fastened to the back of her bedroom door. She was tall for a girl, there was no denying that; but she was not particularly graceful or lissom, and her coloring left something to be desired. She didn't have Narcissa's delicate contrast of bright blue eyes and icy hair, and she didn't possess the porcelain complexion wizards seemed to favor so greatly in witches. Her own complexion was a nondescript, medium shade, faint hints of olive belying her mother's Spanish heritage.

She stowed the photograph of Narcissa Malfoy in her bed table drawer once again, resolutely ignoring it as she chose a book to entertain herself for the evening. If Snape wanted to be left alone with his thoughts of a woman who didn't deserve his consideration, she would damn well let him.