Bearing Witness

Banner by Savine Snape

With respect and gratitude to JK Rowling, as always.

63. BEARING WITNESS

Frantic, she shrank deeper into her oversized, over thick Weasley jumper as she paced in front of the fireplace. The little Slytherin snake's tongue quivered, and its eyes seemed to follow her, sharing her distress.

Pieces of her. Missing. Not just missing, but being seen by others, examined, seen.

They were memories she never wanted to see again, and she had in fact felt relief when the silvery strands slipped from her mind. But now, now she wanted them back where she could keep them hidden and safe. They were pieces of her, and they were missing, and she wanted them back.

She twisted her hands in front of her. When would he return to her? She wrapped her arms around herself and squeezed, seeking warmth, seeking safety.

Crack!

She heard the words, "Dobby has teacakes for Madam Snape!" almost before the sound of his Apparition. His black eye patch jauntily askew, Dobby presented a rose-spangled plate. "Winky used the recipe you gave her."

"They smell perfect," Hermione said, whisking them out of his hand to place on the carefully laid table by the bed. She knew from long years' experience that the pile consisted of a perfect dozen. She turned, feeling all too distressed but unable to control it. "Didn't you eat any?"

Dobby's ears flattened down the sides of his head and his one good eye trained on the floor.

"It's all right, Dobby. I wanted you to!"

"Madam Snape did?" Now he looked even more forlorn.

"But I told Winky—when I gave her my grandmother's recipe, I told her we only needed six and the rest were for the two of you."

Dobby shook his head slowly.

She pulled several off the top of the pile and handed them back to him. "For you and Winky, and from now, of course you get your share. She's baking them and you're delivering them, after all!"

Clutching teacakes to his chest, Dobby began bowing deeply, over and over. "Thank you, and Winky thanks you, too!" And then he stood, alert, still staring at the floor.

"What is it? What's wrong?"

Dobby took a deep breath. "Nothing is wrong. But, house-elves want to ask Missy Snape a favour. We—" He turned his one huge eye up to her, pleading. "We want you to write our stories."

"Your—your stories? I don't understand."

"Missy Snape is a writer girl, we always see that, but we didn't know you wrote stories for Hogwarts: A History until… well, until Professor Snape brought you back and he wasn't very tidy, and I saw them, and I told Winky, and she told the others and—"

"You saw what I wrote?" Hermione gasped, horrified.

Dobby nodded firmly. "We want our stories from the Battle of Godric's Hollow to be in Hogwarts: A History, too. So wizards will know. Wizards will remember that house-elves is brave and house-elves is loyal and true."

"You saw what I wrote, and you—you trust me to tell your stories?" The tight hard pain that lived somewhere on top of her abdomen, frozen and jagged, broke loose, and with it came tears. A writer girl.

Dobby flung the teacakes in the air and collapsed to the floor where he began banging his head against the cold stone.

"No!" she cried, awkwardly bending over her growing belly to grab him by the middle and pull him up. "Don't do that!"

"Dobby made you cry!"

"Dobby made me—you made me happy!" she insisted, falling onto her backside in a heap, bringing him with her. Startled, she released him and he scrambled to his feet.

"You is not happy."

"I'm happy, damn it," she sniffled. "Please, hand me a hanky."

He grabbed a clean one from the pile by the bed and thrust it at her, his expression alarmed.

"You—you really trust me to tell your stories?"

Dobby narrowed his eye. "Missy Snape is two-edged dagger, and some house-elves is nervous. You cares for us enough to tell our stories. We knows that. But they also knows you think caring for them means giving clothes. You'd have to promise—"

"No clothes, I promise!"

"Or socks."

"Or socks." Her mind racing, she looked up at the study schedules hanging at the foot of their bed. "I'll have to work you into my timetables… oh, dear, there's just not a lot of time between now and June, but I can do it. I need a list of everyone's names, and schedules and—" She stopped and stared. "Dobby! You're not going to eat those teacakes now that they've been on the floor!"

He picked up the last one. "Dobby can clean them like fresh." He began his bobbing again. "Thank you, Missy Snape. Thank you. You will get lists and lists; you'll be very happy!"

And with another crack, he was gone.

Leaving her in a pile on the floor with tea to be made, sniffling into a hanky, unsure whether it was from misery or sheer joy.

XX

He approached the doorway, his heart pounding.

He had left Albus with all their business unfinished because once he saw, he actually saw what she'd suffered, he could barely contain his reaction. She'd been so vulnerable when he left her, her features drawn, her hands twisting in her lap.

And now, with what he had to ask of her…

He braced himself for what he'd find.

And when the opening revealed itself and the interior of their quarters, he found her bent over the table, tea things shoved aside, her horrid hair bouncing with each movement as she scribbled furiously across a scroll.

"I saved you some teacakes," she said without even lifting her head. But as she scratched the last few words, she was already rising, and with a final flourish tossed the quill aside and rushed toward him, her face alight with an almost dangerous energy.

He caught her in his arms and surrendered to their connection as she first buried her face in his neck and then claimed his lips with hers. The force of it all staggered him, and he drank it in.

"The most amazing thing." She was chattering as she pulled away and waved distractedly at her timetable chart. Purple? Merlin, what had she found to squeeze into her already impossible days that required purple?

"Winky and Dobby and the others—they want me to write their stories. I've been making an outline, attempting to work out how to structure it, whether to go chronologically and mesh them all together or take each one individually, and I'm sure it will all be easier to decide once I've actually interviewed some of them, but a good journalist has an idea for the story going into it, even knowing that it may get discarded if the material presents a better—"

"Merlin's ghost, woman, slow down," he finally managed.

She blinked up at him, her cheeks flushed. Too often of late her energy had been almost frantic, and the last thing she needed was a new project, a new pressure.

Not that he could ever be the one to tell her that.

"Come," he finally said, pulling her with him onto her chintz seat. She burrowed into his arms, and it was with a sense of great relief that he slid his hands under her appalling jumper to stroke the bare skin of her back. "Hermione," he said softly, guilt eating at him, "give me your eyes…."

"No." She nuzzled closer against his neck, her breath sending shudders of comfort and desire through him. "You don't need to see more. You have enough nightmares of your own."

"But—"

"You've seen enough to know. You've seen enough to use in their trials."

And now he felt her tension, not tension of desire but of trepidation.

"I know what you're not telling me," she said. "I know what you're going to ask me to do."

Of course she did, his clever witch. Of course she did. He squeezed his eyes shut and held her closer, wishing he could deny it.

"My memories aren't enough. Albus wants me to testify in the Malfoys' trial."

Her hands clutched his shoulders and he waited for the rest.

The rest that didn't come.

He fought for words, for the request that he had to make. Was she not as clever as he'd thought or was he more despicable than she'd dreamed?

"What?" She sat up abruptly, her eyes wide and startled. "There's more?"

Remain silent, and she'd get there on her own. He wouldn't have to say it at all.

The coward's way.

"Yes, there's more," he said, his voice harsher than he'd intended, his throat tight. "We—and it is we, not just Albus—need you to—"

"No."

"—testify on Narcissa's and Lucius's behalf."

If a body warm with flesh and blood could turn to ice, hers did. He reached for her, but she jerked to her feet and backed away from him, everything about her from her eyes to her hands to her hair crackling with fury. "What is he holding over your head to make you do this?"

"Hermione, it's not Albus. It's me. I had to convince him."

And now the frantic energy snapped into rage as she picked up the teapot—her grandmother's teapot—and flung it at him.

Instinct ripped through him. He stopped its trajectory in midair, for to let it hit would be to let it shatter and he couldn't do that to her, couldn't allow her to destroy what she held in such loving reverence.

But the contents—obviously kept hot by a Warming Charm—exploded over him in all her scalding wrath.

His face, his eyelids, his neck—

He was on fire.

And Hermione, his Hermione, wheeled away from him, putting even more distance between them.

He grabbed a serviette from the table and, resorting to a charm, cooled and dampened it before pressing it to his face, then Summoned an unguent from the potions cabinet. By the time he opened his eyes to look at her again, she was pacing and only glanced up to hiss, "And tell me, Severus Snape, exactly what you saw in my memories that made you think it would be appropriate for me to testify to free Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy?"

"What do you think I saw?" he asked, wiping excess unguent from his skin, watching her warily.

Her hands fisted at her sides, she tossed her wretched mane and glared at him. "That he once again found a way to walk the edge so carefully, there would be an excuse for the Wizengamot to let him go?"

"Do you despise him for being a particularly skilled Slytherin?" He tossed the cloth aside.

"Well, I couldn't very well despise him on that count, could I? I'd have to despise my own husband, in that case."

"Indeed."

"I despise him for being evil. You were never evil," she said, her frustration evident in the way she twisted her jumper in her hands. "And now you want me to help him get away with it!"

He ripped his left sleeve up his arm and thrust his forearm at her. "I was never evil?" he demanded. "Cast aside those rose-coloured glasses you're wearing, Miss Granger, and deal with reality!"

"You were eighteen years old and you quickly realised you were wrong. You didn't dedicate your entire life to perpetuating your mistake," she said crisply, but the way she shrank into her sweater made his heart ache. Her lips twisted bitterly. "Just tell me what you saw."

"You know what I saw! I saw my fucking failure to protect you!"

"Not that," she said with a dismissive toss of her head. "What you saw that should make me willing to protect them!"

"I saw a superlative expression of cunning that traced that razor's edge with delicacy and skill. I saw a wizard who thought he'd escaped the net once before only to get dragged back in when the Dark Lord rose again. I saw a wizard who flung himself fully into the Dark Lord's work, who, as you might say, embraced the evil with a whole heart as it was the only way to protect himself and his family." He fixed his stare on her and dared her to look away. "I saw a man not so very different from me."

"You didn't—"

"Yes, I fucking did, and you know it. I did the same, and worse, and would do it again to save you. But you're asking the wrong questions. This isn't about what I saw. This is about what I need."

"You need—you need the Malfoys?" she asked in disbelief.

"Lucius Malfoy in Azkaban will be more dangerous than Lucius Malfoy at Malfoy Manor."

"Because…" She grew very still. "Because he's the only Death Eater who didn't make the vow to you. Because he'll owe you a life debt, which could be just as strong if not stronger, if you get him freed."

"Yes, he is the only Death Eater who didn't make the vow. Yes, I need to strengthen the loyalty he showed me when he saved your life. Because it's you who owe him a life debt, Hermione."

She drew in a sharp gasp.

"For you to testify on his behalf is to demonstrate that you have honour, honour that he doesn't expect, and thus, honour all the more profound."

"He would dare doubt my honour?"

He felt hollow inside. He forced himself to raise his left forearm again. "I have the power of the Dark Lord. As long as I wield this power, I must be ruthless in its protection. And that means asking the unforgivable of you, and yet I must."

She closed the distance between them.

He watched without moving as she lifted his right hand and opened the pot of unguent and slowly smeared the greasy substance over a blister he had missed.

He watched without moving as her cold fingertips trembled on the back of his hand.

He watched without moving as a teardrop fell and formed small balls of fluid on his greased knuckle.

With a choked sob, he pulled her to him and felt her sink gratefully into his arms.

"I—I thought you'd deflect it all."

"I was—distracted."

She sniffed and then blew her nose on her handkerchief. "As well you should have been, considering what you were going to ask me to do." She turned her tear-stained face to him, her eyes still swimming. "I never intended to hurt you. Not like that."

"I know." He suddenly found her eyes impossible to meet. "Your reaction made it easier for me to hold my position. This," he said, gesturing at her situation in his lap, "does not. Say no, and I'll—I'll find another way. Between Albus and me, we can save them from the worst of it."

"But if I appear with you, pregnant with your child, and tell them how Lucius made Draco swear he would protect me until you came…"

"I wasn't going to ask you to do this pregnant."

"The more pregnant the better, I'd say. And the fact that he healed my wound—well, the odds are very good for the House of Malfoy, aren't they, if even I am willing to forgive them?"

"You won't bear the brunt of the testimony, because as you said, Lucius is practiced at leaving a trail of breadcrumbs that will help him find his way back out of the forest with witnesses to prove that he was never there at all. You won't be the whole of his defence, but you will be the heart of it."

Her eyes locked with his and she pulled the jumper over her head, baring her torso to him as she hadn't done other than in darkness and baths since before her wounding. She touched her breastbone, just above where her bra would be had she been wearing one. "And if my robes expose this much of my skin, the Wizengamot will get a glimpse of exactly what healing had to be done."

He covered that portion of her scar with his hand. "You don't have to do that."

"I owe him a life debt. My honour demands it."

"My warrior bride…" he breathed, his heart aching at the determination in her rigid body.

She pulled her jumper to her then, holding it in front of her as if no longer able to bare herself to his eyes.

"I've failed you in so many ways, not the least that even now, you don't understand how little that scar means to me."

She gave him a sad smile. "It's not about the scar. It's about—about everything. I don't recognise myself. This isn't my body anymore."

"I recognise you, you foolish woman. I recognise you, whether you're a seventeen-year-old virgin in boys' knickers or a nymph dancing around my quarters in nothing but my white shirt, and I most especially—" He leaned forward and placed a kiss on the sharp bone at the juncture of neck and shoulder and felt her arch into him with a cat's pleasure. "I most especially recognise you now."

"Then tell me the truth," she said. "The rest of the truth, that is. The truth about how you want to save Lucius because he's your friend." Her voice was even and her body still in his arms; for once, he couldn't read her inclination.

"I am… relieved. I'm relieved that I have good reason to save them, because they are my friends, just as he was relieved to have the opportunity to save you, because I am his. I'm relieved that I have important reasons to repay him the gift of your life, just as I'm relieved to have valid and important reasons to repay Albus, my friend, for saving us."

She stared at him, her eyes accusing. "You still call those men your friends, after everything they did."

"It has been a complicated life," he replied.

"Well, it's not any more," she said intensely, turning in his lap until she straddled him. She grabbed his face and held it between her hands as she glared down at him. "It's not complicated anymore. You have no more masters. You have me."

That place behind his heart twisted in response as—the gentle swell of her belly between them—she kissed him with a slow, deliberate kiss that wiped all thoughts of everyone else away.