Twelve

Disclaimer: They’re not mine.

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Hermione awoke the following morning to the rumbling of her own stomach and the slightly scratchy feeling of someone’s hair on her face.

Mumbling, she tried to sit up and smacked her forehead against Ginny, who was crouched over her with a pillow, poised to strike. The redhead swore and flew back abruptly. “What is wrong with you?” she screeched, clutching at her head.

“What’s wrong with you?” Hermione fired back, dizzy from sitting up too quickly. “What were you going to do, attack me?”

“I’ve been trying to wake you up!” Ginny bellowed, tossing the pillow aside. “Hermione, you were scaring me, literally scaring me. We agreed to be up almost an hour ago to go walking, and you slept through your alarm, through me yelling and shaking you—all of it!”

“Oh.” Hermione winced. “I’m sorry, Gin. I took some Dreamless Sleep, perhaps a bit more than I should have. I guess it really laid me flat.”

“No kidding.” Swearing under her breath, Ginny stood gingerly and tottered from Hermione’s bed in the direction of the door. “I’m going to go shower. I’ll meet you downstairs in half an hour to go walking. But we have to be done by noon; Harry’s taking me to lunch in Hogsmeade.”

“Sure.” Hermione rose as well, feeling as though a minor earthquake had taken place in the front of her skull. Not at all desirous of the chance to be alone with her thoughts, she hastened to pick out a pair of clothes, simple jeans and a warm jumper, and hurried after Ginny to the girls’ showers. The hot water and rough spray revived her somewhat, but she couldn’t seem to stop dwelling on the pain in her forehead and the headache with which she’d returned to her bedroom the previous evening, of a very different type but equally painful.

She wanted to respect Snape’s desire for privacy, but the child in her railed at the injustice of his refusal to trust her. She knew she couldn’t expect him to handle Madam Pomfrey’s open declaration of such a sensitive and personal problem with any greater equanimity than he’d shown. After all, who could? Still, it didn’t stop her from wanting to scream and beat her fists against the nearest wall, for of course she couldn’t very well have beat them against his chest. He’d have sunk like a leaf.

He needed help. She knew it, and he had to know that she knew it. No one deserved even a fraction of the lingering physical and mental pain he carried on his shoulders each day, but she didn’t know if she had the courage to return to his chambers and tell him that. She feared for her own emotional state, for her potential apprenticeship, and for her Potions grade. Despite her tremendous respect and admiration for him as a person, Hermione had no idea what measures he would take to ensure that she kept his secrets just that, and with graduation only a few months away, she dreaded the thought of finding out.

Forcefully pushing aside her thoughts of Snape, she dressed alongside Ginny in their room, relieved when Ginny filled what would otherwise have been an overbearing silence with enthusiastic chatter about her lunch with Harry. “I think he’s going to tell me his Valentine’s Day plans,” she finished, nearly bouncing where she stood. “I’m so excited. I heard him talking to Ron over the holidays about getting time off, and I’m really hoping he’s planning to take me away somewhere. Italy!” she gasped, her eyes lighting up. “Or maybe Spain. Somewhere warm.”

“For Valentine’s?” Hermione asked skeptically. “Harry? I’m happy for you and all, but that takes an awful lot of forethought for… well, Harry.”

“Want to talk about forethought? I think he’s going to ask me to marry him soon.”

Hermione’s brush ground to an almost audible halt in her unmanageable hair. “Gin! Are you certain?”

“Well, no.” The other girl was blushing prettily as she applied a light layer of tint to her lips. “Of course I can’t be one hundred percent sure. I haven’t stumbled across the ring or anything like that.” Capping her small cosmetic pot, she shrank it, tucked it in the pocket of her coat, and gave herself a cursory once-over in the mirror. “It’s just a feeling I get. He keeps making references to the future and married stuff. The other day he started asking me whether I thought he should make some renovations to Grimmauld Place or sell it and buy a place somewhere quieter.”

Hermione felt stunned, but not unpleasantly so. Harry and Ginny, for all their natural spats, were close enough and devoted enough to one another that she could envision them happily married. She rather regretted, for Ginny’s sake, that they might undertake the commitment so soon, but it wasn’t her place to say as much.

Instead, she mildly inquired, “Will you want a longer engagement?”

Ginny frowned at her reflection and turned toward Hermione. “I don’t know. I thought about it yesterday, but then I figured I was getting ahead of myself. What do you think?”

Having finished battling her hair, Hermione followed Ginny out of their room and out of the castle into the surprisingly mild winter day. Turning to take their usual route around the perimeter of the grounds, she hedged, “I think you should at least wait until you’ve started Auror training, if that’s what you really want to do.”

“I do. I’ve already applied, actually.” Ginny grinned and drew her Gryffindor scarf more snugly against her slim neck.

“Congratulations!” Hermione gasped. “When did you apply?”

Ginny shrugged. “About a month ago. I didn’t want to tell you because you were so busy with the planning for your project, and then this Snape situation began, and you were really involved…”

“Gin, I’m so sorry.” Hermione felt terrible. The cold began to sting at her watering eyes. “I should have asked you how you were doing and kept up with you. I’ve been awfully self-centered this year.”

“That’s all right. It’s hardly a big event—yet, anyway. But if the results do turn out positively, I’m going to have to insist that you come with me to break the news to my mum. She’s going to have a few things to say about it, I’m sure.”

Hermione barked a laugh. “Yes, she may be the most difficult one to convince. But you’ve got the grades, the skills and the power for it, so I’m sure she’ll come around.”

“Speaking of Snape,” Ginny said as they kicked up snow under their boots, “did something happen last night? Something that made you need Dreamless Sleep?”

Hermione pursed her lips. She wasn’t sure she could describe her frustration without turning her explanation into a unilateral denunciation of Snape. “I had what you might call an enormous setback,” she began.

Ginny frowned. “I figured as much. You were already asleep when I got back to the room, but you hadn’t bothered to put on your pajamas, and you looked very tense in your sleep.”

Hermione allowed herself a loud sigh. “Do you remember that I mentioned to you he was sexually assaulted?”

Ginny cringed delicately. “Yes.”

“Well, as a result of years of physical and sexual abuse, he has erectile dysfunction.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I’m sorry; I keep forgetting that it’s largely a Muggle medical term. He’s impotent.”

“Ohhhhhh.” Ginny’s eyes widened. “Well, Merlin, that explains a lot.”

Hermione’s brows knitted together. “Such as?”

“Such as his constant foul mood and tension, the fact that we’ve never once seen him with a woman in an attempt to get over Harry’s mum…”

“Maybe he doesn’t want to get over her. Maybe he views it as some sort of punishment that he should remain faithful to her.”

“Hermione, I love you dearly, but I think you’ll have to sleep with a man before you understand fully what I mean when I say that that simply isn’t possible. I’m sure he’ll continue to pine for her—he’s done it for nearly twenty years now, so why shouldn’t he continue?—but I would be willing to bet all the Galleons to my name that if he were physically capable, he’d have moved past her by now.”

“Slept with someone else, you mean?”

“Slept with many other women, I mean.”

Hermione didn’t want to consider this possibility. She knew it was immature, but her chest grew hot and tight at the thought of him lusting after and pursuing any other woman. “I thought you were convinced he’d already done that. You told me before I went to collect the unicorn blood that he probably had plenty of experience—”

“He probably has plenty, but it may have been years ago. I don’t know. How detailed were his medical records?”

Hermione shivered involuntarily, recalling the gruesome detail with which Poppy Pomfrey had chronicled his many tortures. “Very detailed, though when it comes down to it, there’s not much more to be stated as the diagnosis than the fact that he’s now impotent. The trouble is, I didn’t include that in my equations for the past three potions because I didn’t think it was among the higher priorities. Foremost in my mind was relieving the pain and muscle spasms and helping him to be able to walk and breathe normally…”

Ginny had never been fond of Snape, but even her eyes crinkled in sympathy. “I had no idea he’s doing so poorly.”

“It’s a wonder he can make it through the day,” Hermione murmured. “Madam Pomfrey rapidly ran out of treatment options. She said she’s not certain of it, but there’s a chance that his body is quickly desensitized after administration of potions and charms. I was desperate to get my new equations to work last night, but Professor Flitwick just couldn’t get the potion to respond. And then Madam Pomfrey came in and announced to the whole room that I shouldn’t have neglected to incorporate the fact that he’s impotent.”

Ginny’s eyes widened. “The whole room being who, exactly?”

“Well, Professor Flitwick had left by then, but I was there to hear it, and so was Dumbledore—in his portrait, that is.”

“Dumbledore has a portrait?” Ginny cried delightedly. “Is it a fairly recent one?”

“Yes.” Hermione frowned. “Only a couple of days prior to his death, if I recall correctly.”

“That’s fantastic! Oh, I really want to see him! Do you think you could convince him to come visit the common room sometime?”

Hermione laughed. “A bit of begging wouldn’t hurt. I don’t know that the Fat Lady would appreciate it, though. She might get suspicious that we’re trying to threaten her celebrity.”

Ginny waved off this statement with a dismissive hand. “Never mind her. She’s a snotty old hag anyhow. I’m dying to see Dumbledore. But tell me the rest. How did Snape react?”

Hermione paused, trying to find the words to articulate the soft, stoic fury with which he’d dismissed Madam Pomfrey and herself. “About as well as anyone could be expected to react in his situation, I suppose. He got very quiet, very still.”

“Ugh. That’s when he’s scariest.”

Hermione nodded vigorously. “Yes,” she concurred, “and he told Madam Pomfrey to leave the laboratory straightaway. I didn’t think about it much at the time, but he told her that she’d ‘have her resolution’ by the following day. I figured he meant that we—or he—would revise the equations; I had no idea he intended to retract his involvement altogether.”

“He withdrew from the study?” Ginny cried, her hand over her mouth. “Oh, no! Well, not that you can’t find another subject, I suppose. Or if you can’t, surely Vector won’t deny you the chance at an apprenticeship over his stubbornness?”

“No, I don’t think she would. But it’s not so much stubbornness as embarrassment, I think. And who can blame him? He was mortified to have a student hear about his problems. I’ve no doubt he knew that I’d read about it—he had to sign the release of his medical records over to me, after all—but I doubt he thought he’d ever have to face discussing it in front of me.”

Ginny seemed to have latched on to the bitterness in Hermione’s voice. “I’m sure it has nothing to do with the fact that you’re a student,” she said consolingly. “I can understand why you’re a little too fixated on that, given your crush on him, but I mean… I’m sure it’s just that he felt humiliated in general. What would it have mattered to him if it was you or Professor McGonagall or any of his other colleagues?”

Hermione conceded the point. “I’m sure you’re right. I’m being too self-conscious about it because I spend most of my time obsessing over how he views me. It’s disgusting, really, how egocentric I’ve been when he’s in such tremendous pain. And now I don’t know how to go about convincing him that I can be trusted to keep his private information safe. He made no secret of the fact that he figured I’d blab to Harry and Ron.”

Ginny made a slight grimace. “I love Harry dearly, but I can’t promise he wouldn’t say something. He doesn’t want Snape to suffer, I’m sure, but men get oddly competitive where sex is concerned, and Snape doesn’t need to feel like Harry’s got anything to lord over him. And Ron!” She snorted.

“He has no discretion,” Hermione supplied with an exasperated nod. “I know. I would never have revealed it to anyone but you. He’ll never believe me when I tell him that, though.”

Ginny stopped to glance at her watch. “Half an hour,” she crowed. “I barely even noticed. What do you want to do today? An hour? Hour and a half?”

“Hour and a half,” Hermione said gratefully. “I could use the distraction.”

Ginny nodded. “Let’s start heading to the lake. So what are you going to do?”

Shrugging, Hermione regarded the lake in the distance. She hadn’t been ice skating since she’d been eleven years old, and she found herself suddenly longing for the isolation of cold air in her face and the crisp sound of blades beneath her feet.

“I’m going to revise the equations,” she said firmly. “I’ll include the fact that he’s impotent. I think I might do some research on potions ingredients that stimulate sexual health; Madam Pomfrey mentioned it, but I’d forgotten about it entirely. I was so focused on being angry with him for backing out.”

“You should ask Professor Sprout,” Ginny suggested. “Find a way to camouflage it so she doesn’t know who the ingredients are actually for.”

Hermione considered this proposition. “Make it up, you mean?”

“Sure. Tell her you’re trying to put your new boyfriend in the mood, and he’s being a bit resistant.”

Hermione chuckled. “I suppose. Maybe I could tell her I’ve been struck with an entrepreneurial spirit and want to market my own line of aphrodisiacs.”

Ginny’s eyes lit up. “Now that is a conversation I’d like to hear.”

“I don’t think so!”

In the end, though she’d spent plenty of time contriving scenarios to present to Professor Sprout, Hermione simply found herself in the library. Her senses tingled upon first walking in as she recalled the last time she’d ventured in after hours and been joined by the mysterious guest who’d indicated for her the book on unicorns. It was thoroughly empty, however, and gradually her heart rate returned to normal. She spent a few minutes in the Potions and Herbology sections gathering up every tome whose title appeared relevant and then tottered to the nearest comfortable chair with her findings.

Hours passed. She yawned her way through one text after another, jotting down on a spare piece of parchment the ingredients that might be worthwhile. She’d originally intended to dispatch to Madam Pomfrey a note asking about the one or two most promising ingredients, but given the plethora of plants and herbs purported to stimulate the sex drive and relieve sexual dysfunction, she was beginning to sincerely doubt her expertise. Perhaps it would be best to bring the entire list to the mediwitch in person so they could discuss it.

Over tea, she thought dully, rubbing at her fatigued eyes. Tea and biscuits. It was approaching two o’clock in the morning, and as she’d been so absorbed in her task, she hadn’t eaten anything since seven o’clock. It was simultaneously very relieving and very exhausting to feel the pangs of true hunger. Frustrated though she was, Hermione could see the virtue in keeping herself so thoroughly busy with school work: it forced her to turn her focus to academics and away from the kitchens.

At the moment, however, she was incapable of doing so. Her stomach was becoming positively raucous, and she admitted to herself that she was incapable of doing any more reading. Rising stiffly to a standing position, she pocketed the parchment—now covered on both sides with her small cursive—and began to reshelve the many books she’d pored over.

Again her heart fluttered as she approached the Potions section, daring herself not to want him, not to imagine him lurking in the shadows to observe her. He wouldn’t observe much, she admitted wryly as she began to put the books away. She’d begun to find it easier of late to accept her own limitations; she was never going to be as glamorous as most of the other girls and women in residence at Hogwarts, though she didn’t think femininity and glamour were necessarily the same. But she had no way of knowing what he would have liked, if he even noticed women at all, and she rather doubted that his—or any man’s—tastes ran toward the dusty, ink-splattered, bookworm end of the spectrum.

It was a mark of her naïveté, she decided, that she’d ever thought it possible to predict his tastes. After all, she’d been as surprised as the rest of the Wizarding community by the fact that he’d once lusted after and worshiped Lily Evans. And as she knew perfectly well, she was no Lily Evans.

Exiting the library, Hermione turned her steps toward the kitchen, her yawns growing fewer and far between. The air in the lower floors of the castle grew considerably cooler, drawing out gooseflesh on her arms and legs and rendering her more alert. Somehow the shadows and dankness of the subterranean floors never failed to spark in her the conviction that she was being watched, but it was a sensation entirely different from the frisson of sexual thrill that had run through her in the library. It was a wariness that naturally erupted from her proximity to Slytherin House, and it always seemed to convince her that she was dogged by footsteps.

She shook her head, hair flying. There was no sense in indulging her imagination. No one was following her.

Another muted scuffle emerged from behind her. Fully startled, Hermione turned in her tracks but saw nothing. She’d just begun to get her breathing under control when he emerged from the shadows, faintly outlined in his dark cloak but imperious as ever.

“Miss Granger. Out wandering the halls after hours, I see,” he purred. Hermione stifled a gasp and placed her hand reflexively over the pocket of her robes, which held the parchment on which she’d scribbled potions ingredients. “Would you care to explain to me what you’re doing walking past my quarters at two o’clock in the morning?”

Hermione blinked, baffled. She hadn’t even realized that in her maudlin Snape-musings she’d wandered past his rooms. She opened her mouth to respond when she noticed his sharp eyes alight on her hand, which still lay, flat and clammy, against her robes.

“Or perhaps you’d prefer to first explain what you’re so eager to conceal?” he murmured. “Turn out your pockets. Now.”

Her throat tightened reflexively. “I’m not concealing anything, sir. I was just heading to the kitchens for a cup of cocoa.” Her face flamed. She wished she could see his eyes more clearly, to know if they were tracing their way along her figure, thinking disparaging thoughts. Of course she would be too plump in his eyes. Her lack of resemblance to Lily Evans didn’t stop with the wild, ratty hair, unfashionable clothes, and flushed skin.

She wished desperately for any other excuse, but, caught in front of his rooms utterly unawares, she could think of nothing else to say.

“Indeed? Then you’ve nothing to hide, I’m sure. Turn out your pockets nonetheless.”

He drew nearer, and Hermione instinctively sought to back away. Somehow, in the confusion of rotating to take in her surroundings, she’d managed to place herself at an angle; her back hit the cold stone wall, and she swallowed hard. He took a step forward, menacing but not inappropriate, and she cursed herself for her lack of control. Her palm had dipped into her pocket and was very nearly smearing the parchment with perspiration, but all she could think about was the shape of his shoulders as he stood over her and what his skin would feel like if she drew apart the buttons of his frock coat.

“I will not give you another warning, Miss Granger. You will turn out your pockets or spend the next week in detention.”

Sighing audibly, Hermione drew out the parchment and held it up. She waved it back and forth for good measure. Then she drew her wand out of her other pocket and performed the same movement. “I’m not concealing any kind of contraband, Professor. I just want to go to the kitchens. That’s all.”

Snape said nothing, but his thin lips drew together in a sneer as he snatched the parchment out of her hand and unfolded it with a soft rustle. She saw his gaze dart back and forth across the page several times before the significance of what he’d read fully integrated.

“You appear to have done quite a bit of research, Miss Granger.” There was no hint of condescension in his tone, simply pure loathing. “To what end, exactly?”

“You know to what end, Professor. I’m just trying to help you—”

“I believe I’ve spoken my final word on the matter. You will serve three evenings’ detention with me for your blatant defiance of curfew and return to your room at once.”

“Fine. Sir. I’ll leave.” She paused, holding out her hand. Snape stared at her, unmoving.

“May I have my parchment back, sir?”

“I hardly see why you should need it, Miss Granger.”

“Well, you see, sir,” she said icily, beginning to lose her composure, “I’m engaged in some very interesting research at the moment, and I’m hoping that one of those ingredients, or a combination thereof, may improve the efficacy of a certain potion.”

“Do not mock me, Miss Granger.” She let out a strangled cry as he stepped forward and pinned her against the wall with one arm. “I have withdrawn my participation in your little study, and I am in no mood to be toyed with.”

“You needn’t be involved, sir. I intend to finish the study with or without your participation. Though I would prefer to help you, if I can,” she finished, the words catching in her throat.

Something in Snape seemed to draw to its breaking tension and then soften, as though the elastic of his anger had released and recoiled. He drew away, brows knitted, looking almost shocked to find how closely he’d approached a student. She watched as he flexed his fingers stiffly and returned his hand to his side, glowering at her.

“I believe I made my reasoning clear last night. I will not repeat myself.”

“I’m not trying to mock you, sir.” She stared longingly at the parchment, willing herself not to stare at his body instead. “Truly, I want to help you. I admit that I became involved for my own selfish reasons and that I hope to profit from any success we might have, but I want to work with you. If these ingredients can help us modify the potion to gain even the slightest improvement, isn’t that worth it? Isn’t it worthwhile to lessen your pain?”

She feared she’d gone too far in openly addressing his physical state, but Snape said nothing. Wordlessly, he handed back the parchment, his nostrils flaring in barely restrained anger. He turned on his heel and began to walk away.

Hermione stifled a moan of frustration. “Sir, please.” He didn’t turn around, but he stopped in his tracks, silent and untouchable. “Would you… Would you like to come to the kitchens with me? I know I’ve been handed detention, and I promise I’ll serve all three nights and even more in addition if that’s what you order, but I thought… Maybe we could have some hot cocoa, and I could explain to you what I thought might be the next step in Charming the potion…”

Snape pivoted slowly and stared at her. Hermione hadn’t realized until then the true effect of his shorter hair: his cheekbones and brows were more prominent, and his jaw as well, making it clear to her just how much weight he’d lost. She wondered suddenly if he’d been forced to cut his hair rather than have it fall out from malnourishment, and her heart ached.

She was almost too caught up in her speculations to catch the low rumble of his voice. “Lead the way, Miss Granger.”

Too stunned to speak, Hermione resumed walking.