Chapter 4

Disclaimer: I do not own these characters. They belong to JKR. I make no money from this piece of fiction. No copyright infringement is intended.

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Hermione dreamed of him.

She was crouched in shadow, watching as his feet made their way slowly across the floor, watching as her stalker's shadow flickered against the office wall. From her space behind the stack of books, she could see his swirling cloak, the lining snapping back and forth in the wake of some invisible wind. A red lining, the colour of blood: her blood. A shiver shot through her. Her wand felt heavy in her hand, as though it were made of lead rather than wood. It slipped through her sweat-greased fingers and clattered to the floor, rolling out from behind the bookshelf.

The footsteps stopped.

"Run, little love. I know where you hide."

Hermione drew further back into the shadow, her shaking fingers pressed against the cold wall for support. Panic overtook her, the sound of her own breathing drowning out everything else. She dry swallowed, the lump in her throat sticking as a gloved hand reached into her hiding place.

He had her wand. Twirling the wood between his slender fingers, sparks of red flew from either end. They fell onto her skin, burning it. Hermione bit back a scream as she felt the pinpricks of pure heat on her face. Tears coursed down her cheeks, the salty solution making the wounds sting.

"All alone now, my love. And no wand to save you."

She ran. Passed the shadow of a man and hurtled down the corridor, her bare feet slapping painfully against the hardwood floor. In the dim light, she tripped over a bag, stubbing her toes as she fell. Bleeding and sore, she scrambled to her feet, knowing that, should she hesitate, he'd be on her in a second.

But where to go?

The doors were locked. No escape. She tried the end one, grasping hold of the burnished gold handle and pulling with all her might. It didn't move. She tried again, ramming her body fully into the dark wood. Her shoulder jarred with the force of her impact, but still the door would not budge.

Eyes wide with terror, she turned. He was walking towards her, his cloak swirling around his ankles. His hand still held her wand, but it was limp against his side, light issuing from the tip. It illuminated his slender figure, the way his body moved. Cat-like in his grace, he stalked down the corridor. A shadow, a night terror, dressed in black.

Dressed to kill.

"Please," Hermione gasped, falling back against the door.

His cloak brushed the edges of her bare legs as he leant closer. Red lips drew back to reveal white teeth in a grotesque approximation of a smile.

"No, no, my dear. The guilty must be punished."

She came awake in an instant, her heart beating so loudly it ought to have woken Severus. But he was still asleep beside her, his gentle snores filling the otherwise silent house. The room was dark, the luminous fingers of the clock proclaiming it to be four-thirty. She felt as though she couldn't breathe, her chest heavier than normal. Something slithered across her ribs. She stilled her breathing, cautiously picking up the edge of the blanket to peer underneath.

It was Severus' hand. Hermione felt foolish and cursed herself for letting her imagination run away with her. Only a nightmare. Nothing to be afraid of, old girl. You're safe here. But she didn't quite believe it.

She took a deep, calming breath. Not quite willing to get up yet, the aftershocks of her murderous nightmare still strong. She stretched. Satisfying cracks filled the air as her spine re-aligned itself after a night of tossing and turning. The fingers on her torso flexed, and she shivered. But not from fear.

Images from the night before came flooding into her mind. Cheeks flushed at the thought of what she'd done, she stared guiltily at the man beside her. But he was still once more, looking for all the world like a corpse. His painfully pale skin seemed almost luminescent in the moonlight, stretching over a large nose and prominent cheekbones. Dark blotches, bruise-like in appearance, circled his eyes in a testament to the hours he'd spent sleep deprived and alone up in his hospital bed. He was too thin by far, and Hermione had no doubt that, should she lift the covers and look, she'd be able to count his ribs. He wasn't beautiful, not in the least. But there was something definitely arresting about him. The same something that made her uncomfortable.

The fingers flexed again. Hermione's skin tingled where his nails dug into her flesh. It was only a moment's worth of pain, but it seemed like an eternity, the shockwaves resonating through her body, turning into an almost unbearable heat as they progressed deeper. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to block out the sensation. Trying to seek sleep once more. But her mind, buzzing with images of the man beside her, remained woefully uncooperative, refusing to return to off-mode. She sighed with defeat, her body winning the war.

Careful not to wake him, she began to slide from underneath the blanket. As his hand fell away, back onto the bed, she felt cold. There was that feeling of loss again. The one that she couldn't quite shake.

It was still there as she began to dress, as she pulled her work robes over her pyjamas to protect her dignity. She ignored it, tiptoeing out of the bedroom and into the darkened hallway beyond.

Breakfast was a pitiful affair, consisting of the remnants of what appeared to be bread and a tin of baked beans scrounged from the cupboard. It seemed the Ministry had yet to furnish the house with something edible.

She ate in silence, contemplating her next move. The deadline for recall was three weeks away, which, she thought, should give her enough time to at least run through the basics of potion making. There had to be something within that curriculum that would trigger recall; he'd taught first-year Potions for over a decade. Something in there would click. It had to.

Hermione didn't like to think of what the Ministry would do to her should she fail, but here, alone under the fluorescent lights of the kitchen, she couldn't help it. It crept into her mind, banishing the dream and filled it with far more unwholesome thoughts.

First, she'd be bagged. They always were as though the faces of those damned by their own government were somehow offensive. As though the very sight of them would incur the disobedience of others. She could almost feel the scratchy material of the hood pressed over her face until she could barely breathe. The hands would be cuffed too, to stop any unwanted movement. Though a wand would be just as effective, she thought. But the wands came later.

Next, she'd be taken to a Detention Centre. Unlike the Azkaban of old, there would be no Dementors there. No, there would only be steel bars and tiled floors. There would be windowless rooms that stretched for miles and miles, the newest of the inmates hooked to the chains suspended from the wall, and the oldest, the dying, draped across the floors, waiting for the sweet arms of Morpheus. It would be a world of rags and shaved heads where even the smallest of wounds gaped for attention. Eyes would stare listlessly into the beyond, becoming glassy as their owners forgot to blink. There would be no talking, not with their mouths and tongues bound by both magical and physical means, the silence driving the weakest to insanity and the strongest to homicide. Brothers killed brothers in there.

And, though she tried to ignore it, Hermione knew where the bodies for her experiments had come from. The Ministry always took special care of the useful ones.

She wouldn't be kept at the centre for long. She'd be moved to a lab before the starvation set in. Torture was not the word the Ministry used, but she could think of only one other way to describe it. Experimentation. How else did the Ministry test new spells? Test the effectiveness of the new wonder drug? Under the new jurisdiction, set in place after the Dark Lord fell, criminals were no longer classified as human. They were Nothings.

And the Ministry could do what they liked with the Nothings.

Hermione shivered, clutching her lukewarm cup of tasteless coffee tightly. No, she didn't want to become a Nothing. She had to make him remember.

"Hermione?"

She turned. Severus was stood at the doorway, dressed once again in the crumpled blue outfit from the night before. Hermione wondered briefly if they'd given him another set of clothes, or if they were being delivered today. Blue was most assuredly not his colour; it gave his skin a yellowish cast as though he had not seen sunlight in days. Which, thinking about it, he probably hadn't. His robes hung open, revealing the shirt and trousers underneath, both of which were far too large for a man of his build. His hair was obviously unwashed, the lank strands hanging over his forehead in thick, greasy clumps. He moved to push it out of his eyes, his shirt riding up, giving her the briefest glimpse of jutting hipbones. Too thin. He was far too thin.

"Did you sleep well?" she asked, rising from her place at the glass-topped table and making her way over to the kettle. Instant coffee was all they had, so it would have to do. She spooned out the strong-smelling granules, stirring them into a cup of hot water.

"No. It's too quiet in the house. I assume you didn't sleep well either since you seemed to spend most of the night fidgeting." He moved towards her, stopping her hand just as she was about to add the milk. "I take my coffee black, thank you."

Hermione handed him the gently steaming cup. "Sorry. I hope I didn't disturb you."

Severus said nothing. He simply raised the cup to his lips, his dark eyes staring at her accusingly. Hermione tore her gaze away, busying herself with the pan of baked beans that lay simmering on the hob.

"Hungry?" It was more of a rhetorical question than anything else. Hermione had no intention of letting him leave the kitchen without a relatively large, if not decent, meal inside him.

Severus shook his head. "Not for beans." He fingered the handle of his cup absentmindedly, his mind too focused on other things to think about the movements of his hands. "I can wait until lunch."

Hermione ignored him, spooning out a generous helping on to a waiting plate. "I'm not going to have you suffering from malnutrition. You are far too skinny, Severus Snape. Now, eat."

She guided him, somewhat forcefully, down into a chair and set the plate in front of him. He glared at her, but did not protest further, stabbing each bean as though it had done him some awful wrong.

"When is the Ministry arriving?" he asked through a mouthful of the sickly-sweet tomato sauce.

"In about two hours." She regarded him carefully, taking in his dishevelled appearance. "It should give you time for a shower. I'll see what I can do about your clothes. I take it they're the only set?"

"Obviously," he said scornfully, his frown etched yet deeper onto his forehead. "Do you really think I would wear something this dirty unless I had no other option?"

"Well, I don't know that, do I?" she said, her tone a perfect match to his. "Your personal hygiene is your own business. What do I care if you wear the same clothes for days at a time? I'm only trying to help."

"And do what? Wash them for me?" He dropped his fork, the metal hitting the plate with a loud clatter. "As brilliant as you are, Hermione, I very much doubt that you are able to clean and dry my clothes in the time it takes me to shower. And, call me old fashioned if you like, but I don't think that facing the Ministry in just a towel is entirely appropriate," he bit back.

Hermione watched as he rose from his chair and stalked out of the room. There was a faint slam as he shut what she thought was the bathroom door. She drained her cup of now stone cold coffee, grimacing as the bitter taste worked its way down the back of her throat.

Christ, he's cranky in the mornings. I'm sure he never used to be this bad. Dumbledore would never have invited him to breakfast, otherwise.

Placing her empty mug in the sink, she left the kitchen to ready herself for the visit. As she passed the bathroom door, she saw a set of neatly folded blue robes and heard the patter of running water.

It was almost ten o'clock before the Ministry arrived.

Hermione had spent most of the morning washing Severus' clothes, aided by magic, and changing them to a more fitting colour. She thought he'd possibly feel more comfortable in black than in blue, if his past life was anything to go by. As far as she could remember, she'd never seen him in anything other than black whilst she was at school. Well, that wasn't entirely accurate. She had seen him in a dress and a hat with a stuffed vulture on top, but she highly doubted he'd prefer that to the plain robes of the Ministry.

She'd altered the fit, too, making them more like traditional robes than hospital ones. Without exact measurements, she couldn't make them the perfect fit, but she felt they were a reasonably good estimate. Not too tall, but not short either, with slightly longer sleeves than before.

She had left them on the bed, neatly folded, before beginning on that morning's washing up.

Severus had come out of the bathroom looking rather pink and well-scrubbed. Hermione felt slightly guilty as she saw him, his skin almost red raw. It seemed her earlier comment on his personal hygiene had hit a nerve, his effort upon improving it almost becoming an act of self-mutilation rather than cleaning. But his hair was still as greasy as ever, no matter the amount of scrubbing done, the black locks looking just as limp dry as they did when they were wet. He'd tied it back for the meeting, though, looking oddly presentable, if a little rough around the edges.

The equipment had been the first thing to arrive that morning, dot on ten, hulked in through one of the Open Access Ministry Portways by the wizarding equivalent of removal men. Six or seven burly wizards, their long hair and beards plaited, had brought armfuls of clothing, food and equipment, arranging it by use on the floor.

Hermione stood silently in the corner, watching as each piece of potions equipment was ferried through the silvery-edged Portway. It was all old, verging on ancient, with rusting panels and cloudy glass. Long tubes stretched and spiralled across stacks of pots and phials. Cauldrons of all shapes and sizes littered the space, some slightly more worn than others, but all relatively serviceable.

Next came the Officials with their impeccably pressed robes and their blue clipboards. Two of them, flanking the Minister himself, marched through the Portway, looking mildly disgusted as they began to tramp through the piles of stuff. One cursed as he trod on a trifle, the whipped cream and custard bursting from its plastic packaging and coating his robes.

"Doctor Granger," said the Minister, his tone all business. "I trust you had a pleasant night?"

Hermione sniffed, fighting the urge to scratch her nose; it was a gesture born out of nervousness rather than actual need.

"I've had worse, Minister."

"Of that I have no doubt." His grey eyes bored into hers, alight with something unpleasant, but his tone remained conversational, unthreatening. Which made it all the more frightening. "The war was exceptionally hard on some of us, wasn't it?"

Hermione didn't reply. It was an old wound now, though too painful to forget entirely. Like a scab that just longed to be picked at. And it didn't help that the cause was here in the room, right now, staring at her with narrowed eyes.

The Minister knew what he was doing.

"However, I think it would be best to move on. Things to do, places to go, people to see. I can't afford to stand about reminiscing." Time is money. Money is power.

"Quite." Hermione dropped her gaze to the potions equipment meaningfully. "Where is this to go? All the rooms have been occupied."

"My men will transfer the food and clothes to their correct locations. The equipment will be coming with me."

The Minister spun on his heel so that he faced the door. But he wasn't looking towards the exit. He was looking up at the ceiling.