Chapter 4: Out of His Mind

The Uninvited

by Subversa and SubHub

Chapter 4: Out of His Mind

Annoyed, Hermione paced around the clearing. Time was running out on her; she had already stayed longer than she ought, and she was aware of the weakening of her physical body, as it sat in a chair by the professor's bedside at St Mungo's. She was losing strength both magically and physically, but she could not bring herself to withdraw. What had begun as a duty had now become personal. She had seen Severus Snape at the worst points of his life, and she had discovered something she had never truly known about him before: He was a man, a very human man, with strengths and weaknesses, with standards and ethics, with a painful childhood and a brutal youth – he was a man who had overcome a dreadful beginning in life to become a respected professional. He was also a man capable of forming a lasting allegiance to one woman, a man who would commit himself to a course of action and see it through, no matter what the consequences were for himself. Yes, he had been party to abominable acts, but she did not need to hear him say how remorseful he was for that part of his life. Every choice he had made in the ensuing years spoke quite loudly enough for Hermione to hear and understand him.

No, she was no longer in it because they had been soldiers fighting against the same enemy, striving towards the same goal. Now, she was in it because she wanted a chance to know the man – because she wanted the opportunity to show him there were people in the world who could appreciate him precisely the way he was, with all his good and his bad traits – that there were women who looked beyond appearance and wealth when choosing men with whom to spend time.

She desperately wanted a chance to show him she was different.

He paced the ramparts of the Astronomy Tower, his brow furrowed, his naturally pale face almost bloodless in grief. A stiff northerly wind was blowing on this cold morning, the first of November, 1981, but the professor did not wear a cloak over his robes. He had obviously come here directly from the Headmaster's office – directly after hearing the news – and had been pacing all night, for Hermione could clearly see the faintest pinking of the horizon, indicating that although this man's heart was broken, the world would yet go on.

He looked up sharply when she appeared, startled for a moment. He altered his route, pulling his wand from his robes with a vicious flourish and advancing upon her as if he would like to kill her. When he was close enough to see her face, he halted, and his lips pulled back from his crooked yellow teeth in a horrible snarl.

'Is it your pleasure to show up unerringly on the worst days of my life?' he shouted at her.

'I'm so sorry about Lily,' she said steadily, clasping her hands tightly together to prevent them from trembling at his reckless, threatening behaviour.

His face crumpled at the mention of the name. 'Gone!' he keened, his voice whipped away by the wild wind.

'It's not your fault,' Hermione said, clearly and firmly.

'YOU DON'T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT IT!' he roared at her, happy to have a focus for his grief-driven aggression.

'The Secret Keeper betrayed the Potters,' she said carefully, mindful of what facts were available to him at this point in time.

'I ought to have taken her away – forced her to go with me – kept her safe!' he shouted.

'She would not have chosen to go with you, Severus,' Hermione replied. 'You know she would not have left her husband, even if you had been willing to take her son, as well.'

He was silenced by the truth of this statement, and he stared into her face, utterly bereft.

'It was not your fault,' Hermione said again, hoping he could hear and understand her. 'Dumbledore accepted the challenge of keeping the Potters safe, but in the end, they chose the wrong Secret Keeper. No one could have predicted their deaths would have come about this way.'

'I should have protected her,' he whispered, his eyes closing against the steadily lightening sky of a new day in which he had no wish to exist. 'No one did.'

Hermione wrapped her hands about his forearms, her touch startling him into opening his eyes to stare at her. 'Please believe me,' she said. 'There is nothing you could have done to prevent Lily's death.'

Desolate black eyes stared into her face, unseeing. 'And now, there is the child – he made me promise – but I don't know if I can ....'

The Astronomy Tower door clattered against stone. 'Severus Snape!' Poppy Pomfrey came out onto the tower-top. 'The Headmaster told me you have been out here all night. Come in at once! It's Pepperup for you, young man!'

The irritated command in her voice pulled the twenty-one-year old man in her direction mechanically. Hermione stood watching him move after the school matron with lagging steps, her mind already on which memories she wished to visit next. She whirled away to her next destination. She had to be there at his next great betrayal.

The Astronomy Tower again, but this time there was no pacing. When she joined him in the cold, crisp air, he stood with his hands on the crenellated parapet, unmoving. He was properly attired for a Scottish winter night, wearing a heavy black cloak with slim leather gloves upon his hands. He turned to her slowly, and the light of the bright moon showed her the changes sixteen years had wrought in him. His face was heavily scored with lines on his forehead and about his mouth from practiced scowling. His shoulders had broadened and his form had filled out; there was greater mass to his body at thirty-seven than there had been at twenty-one. Her heart quickened in her chest at the sight of him as she had known him – as she did know him – in light of what she had come to admit to herself about him.

He quickly broke her mood with his biting words. 'Well, well, well,' he sneered. 'Look who's here – the harbinger of pestilence and calamity.' He came forward, halting just in front of her and looking her up and down with deliberate insolence. 'It must be as bad as I think it is, if you're here,' he added sotto voce, as if speaking to himself. He walked all around her, halting only when he had come full circle. 'I haven't even thought about you in years, and now, here you are – and you're bloody Granger!'

Inwardly, Hermione quailed under the scorn in his voice, but she lifted her chin, nevertheless, and kept silent.

He held her gaze, then turned from her and crossed again to the parapet, staring out across the grounds towards the Forbidden Forest. After a moment, his voice came to her.

'All right – tell me why you're here,' he said wearily.

'Why do you want to hear it?' she asked curiously, advancing to stand by his side, her gaze fixed as unblinkingly on his face as his were fixed on the distance.

'Because you have usually been ...'

For one insane moment, Hermione thought he was about say she had been right.

'...reasonably astute,' he finished. He glanced down at her. 'What do you have to say about this? About your best friend being prepared like a lamb for the slaughter?'

'That's not important,' she answered, willing him to believe her.

He studied her. 'All these years, I thought I was doing the very best thing I could do for Lily – to protect her child, to keep him safe until he could fulfil the prophecy.'

When his eyes filled with horror, Hermione knew he was not truly seeing her.

'But all the time,' he whispered, 'all that time, Dumbledore meant for the boy to die – he knew it, and he never told me.' He turned from her again, his gloved hands clenched into fists. 'All my life, he has used me – manipulated my entire existence to his purposes.' His fists rose and fell on the stone wall, and Hermione was touched to see from his next words that even through his pain, his first thoughts were for Harry. 'Why could Dumbledore not trust me? If I had known, perhaps we could have worked together – found a way to save the boy ....'

Hermione felt a dull pain in her chest as she watched his suffering; she would not tell him Harry had lived – in this moment, it was too irrelevant. But she ached to comfort him in his perceived defeat. 'It's not your fault that Harry has to die,' she told him compellingly, infusing all her care into her voice. 'There is nothing you can do to change what must be, Severus.'

He turned to her sharply at her use of his name, and Hermione's breath caught in her chest. Was he upset by her use of his name? Or moved by her attempt to reach him?

'Dumbledore ought to have told you,' she continued, 'but he can't help keeping secrets – it is just as much a part of his nature as is his delight in sweets.' She reached out and placed one hand over the leather sheathed fist nearest to her. 'He didn't tell anyone everything he knew – he told you some things, and he told Harry other things – and I'm sure the other members of the Order only know parts of the whole, as well.'

He removed his fists from the parapet, gently dislodging her hand, and shoved them into the pockets of his cloak. 'What he wants me to do next ...' He broke off precipitately. 'There's nothing you can do here,' he told her, his black eyes like endless, empty black tunnels. Hermione reached out to him again, but he turned from her and strode away.

Hermione's hands were trembling uncontrollably now, but she had to see him at one more point – try, one last time to do what was necessary to bring Professor Snape back from the toxic self-recriminations in which he was trapped.

She moved on.

She was not sure where they were when next she joined him. He sat at a rough wooden table in a dirty little kitchen in a disreputable-looking cottage. A half-empty bottle of Firewhisky sat on the table before him. His filthy hair was matted to his skull. Undoubtedly, his exertions of this night had taxed him to the point of sweat-soaked exhaustion, as the odour from his unwashed body attested. In the next room, several lumps slept, some snoring, beneath ratty blankets. She surmised that Draco Malfoy, Yaxley, and the Carrows were amongst their number.

'So, this is a Death Eater safe house?' she inquired, moving to sit across from him.

He reached with one long mud-streaked finger and touched her hair. 'Perhaps you never were my angel,' he murmured drunkenly. 'Perhaps you have always been my daemon, coming at the worst of times to taunt me with my failures.'

'Stop it!' she said firmly, moving his hand away. 'I told you the first time: I am not an angel – nor am I a daemon – I am simply a friend.'

The mud-streaked hand flew out, sending the bottle of Firewhisky slamming into the wall, shattering upon impact. 'Friend?' he cried. 'I only had one friend, and I killed him tonight.' He covered his face with his hands and began to rock himself in the wooden straight chair.

'You did what he ordered you to do,' she replied inexorably.

'He betrayed me – he used me – but he was the only friend I had.' He dropped his hands and looked imploringly into Hermione's face. 'How could I have done it?'

'You did it because you had to do it,' she reiterated. 'What would have happened if you had not? Would the Carrows have tortured him? Would Greyback have ripped him to shreds?'

Snape shuddered, shaking his head back and forth, back and forth. 'No,' he whispered. 'No!'

'Exactly!' Hermione replied bracingly. 'You couldn't permit something like that to happen to him, could you? You had no other choice, Severus.'

'There's always another choice!' he cried, agitated. 'I should have told him "no" the first time he asked me.'

Hermione stood and walked around to his side of the table, crouching down and taking his grimy hands in hers. 'He trusted you to do it,' she reminded him softly. 'He depended on you to do what needed to be done at the proper time – he relied on you, and you never let him down.'

He did not answer her, but her words seemed to calm him a bit. Very soon, his hands became slack within hers, and his head sagged forward, coming to rest upon his chest as he fell into alcohol-induced slumber. Hermione hauled herself back to her feet with some effort; her legs were trembling now – she had to act quickly. With one last look at the memory half-blood Prince, she returned to her starting place.

He was in the clearing when she arrived, his arms crossed belligerently over his chest, his lips pressed in a thin line. She knew without either of them speaking that her hope had compelled him to come forward. A part of her wished she had realised earlier that she could force his presence by just believing he would be there, but deep down, she knew she would not have had the tools necessary to convince him, had she not first seen so much of the inner man. Now, if only she could put her knowledge to good use before her strength failed her!

She collapsed into a chair and waited for him to break the silence.

'What was the point of all that?' he said, glaring at her, his voice taut with emotion. 'You know you cannot permanently change memories by entering them through Legilimency! Once you're gone, it will be as if you had never been here.'

Hermione's body, sitting in the chair beside the professor's bed at St Mungo's, was beginning to have an adverse reaction to her long foray into his mind; her limbs were trembling, and she could feel strength steadily seeping out of her. Her spirit, however, had achieved a new calm, born of her absolute certainty of what she wanted. She met his angry glare with a sweet smile. 'I was showing you how it could have been – making a different perspective available to you than the one in which you were trapped,' she answered simply.

'To what purpose?' he sneered. 'I let you go about on your own, remember?'

'Oh, Professor,' she chided gently, 'do you honestly expect me to believe that a spy with all your years of experience would not be completely aware of what was going on in his own mind? You heard every word.'

It was a true pleasure for her to watch him slowly comprehend her cunning. Although she had not been able to compel him to speak directly to her, she had known very well that he would not permit her free access to his memories without monitoring her activities. If she could not speak with him, she would speak to him, giving the shades of his memory-self the words she longed for him to hear – words which he would never permit her to speak.

He advanced upon her until he stood towering over her, attempting to use his superior height and bulk to intimidate, as he had done all the years she had known him. Hermione watched his approach with unimpaired calm and looked serenely up into his face.

'Are you proud of yourself?' he hissed.

'Yes,' she admitted, realising that she was.

'Why you manipulative little –'

'Student?' she supplied helpfully, when he stopped short, inarticulate in his fury.

'Bugger!' he shouted, and he turned to stomp away from her.

'No, Severus, you will not go,' she said, gentle but implacable.

It was no surprise to her when her words halted him in his tracks; after all, she had begun to comprehend some part of her power here, even if it was very nearly too late for her to use it.

He turned, some degree of the anger now gone from his face.

'It's time for you to come back,' she told him. 'Lord Voldemort was defeated – he is dead and cannot return – and Lily's son is alive. In fact, at this moment, he is bedevilling the St Mungo's Head Administrator, demanding that something be done to make you well.'

So much time passed before he answered that she thought he was not going to speak. 'I am glad Potter survived,' he said finally, 'but I cannot return – there is nothing left for me.' His calm broke, and he began to pace. 'I thought I had died! Why could the Healers not leave well enough alone?'

Hermione did not think it was an opportune moment to inform him who was responsible for his survival; that was material for a shouting match on another day, altogether. 'You are a hero, sir,' she said, desperately. 'Harry told everyone you had been working on the side of the Light, all along.'

He managed a creditable sneer. 'Unlike your little friends, Miss Granger, I have no desire for fame.'

'But you have always wanted an Order of Merlin,' she reminded him. 'I remember how pleased you were when Fudge said you would receive the award for capturing Sirius Black – and you will receive an Order of Merlin, First Class, for your part in the fight against Voldemort, Professor. Imagine!'

He stared at her very hard, as if to discern whether she was telling him the truth; it appeared that he had decided she was, for he turned aside from her with an almost regretful sigh. 'I can't do it – it's not safe. If I come back, he will come back with me – and I am too tired to continue holding him in check. I would rather die and take him with me, than go back to a world that offers him so much opportunity for villainy.'

'Who do you mean?' Hermione asked. 'Who do you have to hold in check?'

Professor Snape glanced nervously over his shoulder, as if expecting to see someone standing behind him. 'You saw him – he tried to feed you poisoned tea – he took you around and showed you my years as a Death Eater and ... other private memories, trying to drive you out.'

Hermione knew they were arriving at the crux of the matter; she was about to learn why Severus Snape was languishing with inexplicable amnesia. She wished with all her heart she was not so weak, but she could feel her strength flowing from her now, rather than seeping. She was losing ground very quickly, but she was determined not to give up; she would not leave without him.

'That's a part of yourself, Professor,' she explained gently. 'We all have dark parts of our psyches. I'll help you – we'll all help you. You can defeat that part of you without dying – I promise you can.'

His expression transformed at that announcement, and Hermione took the opportunity to stand and move on unsteady legs to stand before him, her hand outstretched. 'You won't be alone,' she said. 'I'll be there – I'll help you. We will make a very clever team, sir.'

Hermione's heart leapt when he clasped her fingers, a faint glimmer of hope lighting his eyes. He stared at her hand for a long moment, as if it were an alien thing, unlike any object he had ever held. 'As long as you know who is captain of the team, Miss Granger, it is possible that...'

'Don't be such a fool, Snivellus!' a voice shouted across the clearing.

Hermione was a bit surprised when the professor shoved her behind him as he turned to face his nemesis. Couldn't he recognize his own voice?

'Don't listen to her,' the counterpart said. 'You are alone. You have always been alone. You will always be alone. All you have is me. Your parents never cared about you – Lily abandoned you – Dumbledore betrayed you – there's no one out there for you. If we go back, they will punish us for the rest of our lives for what I did! Don't be misled by the grand illusion this child paints for you – do you really believe they want you? Admire you? You're nothing but a figment of her imagination!'

Hermione broke free of the hands holding her behind him and moved between them – the good and the bad, the Light and the Dark - and she looked into the eyes of the bravest man she had ever known and spoke with all the passion in her heart.

'Don't listen to him!' she implored. 'Look at me! Listen to me! You pre-existed my arrival here, Severus – I didn't create you! Everything he says is a lie! You want to know who your daemon is? It's him! Tell him to go away, and he will have to go!'

Hermione did not know precisely what had happened, but she heard a roar of rage, and at the same instant, she was propelled off her feet, as if she had been struck by an invisible force, flying through the air and landing hard, behind the doppelganger's back. She was aware of Professor Snape calling her name – how it warmed her to hear him cry, Hermione! – but it was the doppelganger who spoke to her.

'You stupid little girl!' he cried. 'Do you think you are the only one who can use the power of the mind to accomplish what you want in this place?' He moved to stand over her, somehow holding Professor Snape at bay by the force of his will. 'You've been in here too long, haven't you?' he whispered malevolently. 'Too bad – your body will sicken unto death, and your mind will never make it back to your body – you should have left when you had the chance!' He bent over her until his face was inches from hers. 'Die, you meddling bitch.'

Hermione turned her face away from the hatefully smirking doppelganger. He was right; she was too weak to fight him, now, and he had somehow drained what energy she had left. She could do nothing but watch what would happen next.

Behind his alter ego, Professor Snape struggled mightily against his invisible bonds, looking like a mime pushing against the walls of an imaginary box. As she looked at him, thinking it would be the last time she would be conscious of who she was and of what he had come to mean to her, his eyes caught hers, and with a great concussion of sound, he blew through the barrier, grabbing his doppelganger from behind and shaking him like a terrier with a rat.

'That is the last innocent person you will kill!' he screamed, and his hands closed around the throat of his double.

'If ... you ... kill ... me,' the doppelganger sputtered, pulling fruitlessly at the fingers crushing his windpipe, 'we both die.'

'That's what I had in mind!' the professor hissed, tightening his hold even more.

Hermione watched without breathing as the false Snape gave up on prying the hands from his throat and launched an attack of his own, squeezing the life out of Professor Snape. The two identical men held on with perfectly matched strength, driving one another inexorably to their knees. With her last conscious thought, she breathed, 'I want you in my life,' and fell into the boundless dark.