Nineteen Wards
Summary
The night closed around his face, but his features were stark and cradled by the candlelight. It was then he realized that his eyes, adjusted to the twilight of his existence, were learning to tolerate daylight. And it was all because he had first found familiarity in the limelight of her suffering, and her strength had slowly become the sunrise he had needed all his life.
A/N
Hello all! I'm really looking forward to this story and hopefully getting your help and feedback along the way. The plot here is all planned out so I won't write myself into a corner again, and my schedule has changed a lot, so my writing discipline will be supported well. I have the next chapter half written and plan to update every week. I say that in hopes that you'll stick with me and send any thoughts you have about the story my way so I can improve it and give this it's best incarnation. I'm curious what you will think of this one.. Reactions, comments, all welcome. Also, does the summary give too much away about the story?
I really hope you enjoy, I have some very delicious moments planned out, but it won't be happening too fast. A few nuggets dolled out here, though. Well, without further ado...
Chapter 1
It was much too late for her to be in the dungeons.
Hermione's pace was rapid and her hand was unwillingly enclosed in the admittedly weak vice grip of a third year as she dragged him forward.
"Shhh," his voice was frantic with desperate fear. "What if they come back?"
Far from being afraid of any magic that could possibly be produced by the inhabitants of these walls, she heaved a sigh, walking on, undeterred and impatient. "I'm sure I'll be quite capable of defending you, if it comes to it," she said tersely, and not nearly as quiet as the boy would have liked, be cause she felt his pace slow and the desperate whipping of his head through the jerking of his hand in her limp one.
Dragging a scared Slytherin boy through the dungeons after a long patrol and an even longer day was the last thing she would have chosen for her evening. She almost relished impatient footsteps reverberated on the cobblestones, exactly what the boy and implored her to avoid.
A moment later though, she regretted her mindless bravado.
Because she had heard it. She stopped cold.
The screams, she knew those screams. Someone was being tortured.
Flashes came unbidden in her mind — she saw a sinisterly-lit grand polished floor from a great height, view rotating toward towering tudor walls and a grand cathedral ceiling. Then she felt her body seize at the memory of the pain. She nearly collapsed onto the raven-haired Slytherin child.
When he felt her weight, he panicked and tried to run but she clutched him in time, reflexes heightened.
Without much wand movement and no lip movement, she had stunned and disillusioned the boy, shoving him into the shadows. She drew up a quick ward around the classroom she had deposited him into, one she was sure no student could break. But she suddenly doubted whether that would be enough. There was no time to turn back now, feet moving fast and mindlessly against the floor. She couldn't feel them. Her silencing charm on her feet had nothing to do with the lack of sensation, her panic, she noted to herself, had everything to do with it.
The screams were coming again, renewed.
Her breathing was rapid and her vision blurring over with views of the Malfoy Manor ceiling.
Snape's quarters were rapidly approaching. She veered to the left, not quite at the staircase that she knew would lead toward the screams that were emanating from the direction she had traveled earlier that night, away from the dungeons and toward the rest of the castle.
She needed backup.
She pointed her wand at the Potion Master's door, hardly pausing to be conscious of the positive memories she drew up automatically.
A moment later, her otter swam rapidly in midair, through a closed and unlit door.
Wondering how he could sleep through the fresh agony filling the air, she swayed on the spot. Casting a quick wakefulness charm hard in the direction of the door.
Then she heard it, the unmistakable voice of Bellatrix. It couldn't be. She was dead. She was.. dead.
Rapid footsteps on the stairs.
Her heart was pounding.
One hallway between her and the perpetrator.
Her vision was blurring, whole body numb by this point, sounds were sharpened, but panic was quickly swallowing every other sense, and in a bubble of slowed time, she moved for the Potion dungeon, casting every last ward she could think of once the door was shut.
She didn't notice his forbidding form spring from the Potion Master's quarters, not consciously.
But her body knew, that's why it let her pass out.
"Miss. Granger." The voice was harsh.
Her head lulled to the side, uncomfortable surface not giving in the slightest. Wood. Rough, scratched, wood.
Her right hand twitched and she recognized congealed potion.
Memories came flooding back to her and she shot up, ability to see suddenly returning to her and the classroom came into focus as quickly as she leapt behind the desk.
But there was no need.
The figure of Snape was alone in the classroom, the door was open, indicating danger had past. But when she regained her balance, and looked again on his face, his anger caused her to take several steps back.
"Wha- what happened? How long-"
"The situation has been assuaged," he said, voice dangerous silk, face hard and glaring, his presence filling the whole breadth her narrowed conscious eyesight. "Tell me, Miss Granger, why it was necessary to waste a full hour of my time this evening on breaking into my own classroom?"
She felt her face twinge with shame his flashing dark eyes. "I –-"
"Surely you have an explanation for blocking hominem revelio in addition to leveraging half the wards listed in Fortresses of Finesse. I could have decided to let you continue your exercise in paranoia until morning."
"Professor, I - Is the coast clear? Has he been caught."
"No, they have not been identified or caught."
The door was still open. Her eyes glazed over, memories of screams rattling her imagination. Before she was aware of what she was doing, the door had slammed closed and wards were pouring out of her again, the ones she had memorized last year, the ritual, the same order. She saw a clearing, she clutched for her wand on the desk, lowering her hand, searching for her handbag. Why was there a desk in the middle of the clearing?
Then she was falling backwards. Snape standing before her in the clearing one moment, and in the classroom the next.
"Harry!" she shouted, reaching for a tent corner to rattle in desperation, but she was already bound.
She faintly registered the underside of the potion classroom table instead of sky. The circular scar in the wood created by Ron's quill tip over endless years of lessons firmly grounded her to the present. She was here. Nothing was happening, she had to get control of herself. She resisted her immobilization curse, trying to throw it off. Of course, she had no luck.
Strong arms encircled her, and her cheek pressed against the cool, thick fabric of her potion master's dark frock. Her heart seized. She breathed in and was awash in an earthy musk laced with many traces of magical herbs. Her mind told her not to breathe, but her body betrayed her, pulling in another lungful of his scent. Suddenly, she was overwhelmed by the indecency of it all and she felt a strong burning in her chest.
But it was over as quickly as it had started; a moment later, she had found herself deposited again on the hard table that gave no cushion to her lolling head.
"I cannot help you without doing this, we cannot wait a full hour," he said by way of explanation, and then thrust himself into her mind.
She tried to empty her mind of all but the wards, the memory of the scrap of parchment she had finished drawing up at the Burrow two summers ago. But that memory was so closely tied to when Ron had started his campaign of masculine affection that briefly had won her heart. The memory Ron's arm encircling her shoulders came unbidden, as she tried to focus on her parchment of wards.
Her panic was growing again and she relived another flash of the high Malfoy ceiling and her egregious cries.
And then she was dueling at Hogwarts during the final battle. Parrying attacks as she sprinted through the castle, down toward the Chamber of Secrets. A stray curse had grazed her, an overwhelming feeling of panic for a moment that threatened to drive her into madness, but she pushed through, no time to give into the desperate fear nipping at her subconscious, task of destroying the horcrux overriding all else.
He was feeling for terror, for the source of her illness. But at the sight of his own bloodied and mangled body on the floor in the Shrieking Shack resurfaced, he stopped pursuing that chain of inquiry into her mind, abruptly returning to tonight.
It was earlier that evening again. Months later, after all the funerals, after a whole restful summer of hot days and normalcy returned. She saw again the corridor in which she had had come across a frightened and shaking boy on her patrols. He said he had been attacked, but the attacker had ran away when they saw his face. She would escort him to his house and then inform the faculty as was protocol. Her jostling walk was interrupted by a scream, then her mind was flooded again with abject panic and memories started looping to Bellatrix, the battle, Greyback's capture..
She felt his presence leave, but her eyes were still awash with recollection. He shifted and collected himself with an almighty sigh and the force of his reentry into her mind banished all darkness.
She recalled the burrow, a happy July day. And then she could see it again, the parchment with the wards.
He was incanting words she recognized but couldn't fully hear over the golden hum he was affecting in her mind. He had to restart twice due to the fatigue of holding her in the state as she slipped away, parchment glazing over with the fuzziness of Bellatrix's long black waves.
As the door to the dungeon clinked open, she felt a strong cool breeze float in from the corridor, and she screamed. Snape, looking so weary that it seemed he was no longer capable of hostility, gestured in lackluster motion that faded her mind away to warm white light.
".. and then took me half a bloody hour to even get out of the classroom!"
Someone was nearly shouting.
"Severus, lower your voice! Please!"
"Surely the wards of a student could not delay you a full two hours."
"I assure you, they did." Icy tones.
"It must have been accidental, stress-related. Surely she will not be able to produce them again."
"Yes, the most brilliant witch this school has seen in several decades is surely not capable.. You must keep her unconscious —" his harsh whisper was interrupted by a female one matching his intensity.
"I hardly think—"
"— until St. Mungos takes her."
"Severus!" This time the female voice shouted.
"Poppy! Severus!" McGonagall had arrived, "What has happened?"
"Miss Granger needs to be transferred at once." Snape asserted in a low voice.
"No one has been apprehended, Minerva," Madam Pomfrey said, presumably assuming her helpfulness would be along another line of questioning.
Snape's eyes shut in exasperation at her words as he heard the predictably harsh breathing rapidly build into a crescendo as the girl in the bed at the end of the ward, sat bolt upright, chest heaving. Of course she had to have heard that.
"Stupefy!" he shouted erratically, resorting to verbal and wand magic in blind panic at the thought of facing her wards for a third time that night.
Hours or days later, Hermione woke up in St. Mungos.
She had retained her memories of the recent happenings and her present surroundings could hardly mean anything else.
She was suddenly wide awake and tried to shout for someone. She could see people on the other side of her door. Her voice was mute. She looked down at the glowing runic bands around her hands, and realized there was no use trying any magic.
To her immense relief she found a call button next to her bed.
As if prompted, the figures at the door filed in neatly, McGonogall at the forefront of the group.
No one seemed to know what to say, and she mouthed soundlessly, to try to break the silence herself.
A Healer rushed in.
"Miss Granger, you have suffered a severe panic attack this evening, and we are going to keep you here overnight for monitoring," a dark-skinned, older wizard said. Her eyes felt bleary and slightly unfocused, despite her alertness. What had they done to her?
"We are temporarily impeding your magical expression, with those cuffs, and you have been given a mild tranquilizer that should cause drowsiness. Please shake your head if you understand."
She nodded.
"We have several guards and wards in place around this wing of the hospital," he added.
She let her eyes rove amongst her audience. They stood still as statues in staggered formation, spread out from the foot of her bed.
'Hogwarts,' she mouthed, silently.
Everyone continued to stare at her blankly, and she looked concernedly between everyone. 'Go back to Hogwarts?' she mouthed again.
"It seems that she is asking when she will be able to return." It was Snape, he had been the one to read her lips.
"Hopefully in a few days," the healer said kindly. "We will be meeting in the morning."
He turned to leave the room as a nurse was approaching with a draught of dreamless sleep. She watched the familiar adult figures so ingrained in her past yet so unfamiliar to her in relationship file out of her room. Snape billowed brusquely out, but then her eyes caught and lingered on his, with no intrusions this time, he may as well have not been a person for all the awareness she had left in her mind. Just a familiar character in her life, familiar soft eyes in a sea of new surroundings.
There was an expression of unreadable blankness on his tilted face, framed by her closing eyelids and slipping away behind the closing door.