This story is the expanded and revised version of what I wrote for the 2014 SSHG LJ Giftfest as a present to Irishredlass; my prompt was 'I would love to see a fic where Hermione has to be Snape's voice because his is gone from Nagini. He is not receptive and they have to learn to work together leading to more,' and 'I am an angst girl'.

The always-lovely Muggle Jane beta'd the initial version of this, and delphismith also provided a much needed second check. I want to extend my thanks to the mods and all of the participants of the Giftfest- I had a blast and can't wait to take part again.

But for the final edits, and the addition of a chapter (or two, we'll see...) this story is complete, and I'll be posting the updates as soon as I can comfortably get them up.

This story was not just inspired by the works of J.K. Rowling, but also Garth Nix's wonderful Old Kingdom series- no copyright infringement intended, and alas, no money is being made. Comments and constructive criticisms are always accepted, however :P

Finally, the style of this was a bit of departure for me. There are two distinct timelines, so make sure that you are reading the datelines or matters will be more than a little confusing.

Chapter 1

11 June, 2009

Professor Snape stood silently in her bright office, a black-robed figure constituting a life-sized Rorschach test.

What would she see in his vulpine form?

Would it be the so-called greasy dungeon bat of her childhood? A brilliant professor, to be sure, and in his uniquely sadistic way, an excellent teacher. As a Hogwarts institution, impossible to please no matter how much effort was exerted. A prejudicial promoter of all things Slytherin with an avowed disdain for her leonine pride.

Or perhaps among the onyx she would spy the constantly-doubted double-agent; someone heinously, horribly used by friends and enemies alike. The villainous murderer of Saint Dumbledore, the Brutus to Voldemort's Caesar. A hated, hateful man, yet in the end motivated by love and acting in atonement.

Maybe she would sight the man who had almost bled out in front of her on a wooden floor. His battered and emaciated body had lain comatose in St. Mungo's for six long weeks, as the politicians and public fought over his fate. Some days, he was a saviour. On others, an albatross.

What she was afraid of seeing, however, was not the teacher, or spy, but what came after. The man. A distillation who was both more dangerous and more vulnerable; an unstable combination that quite nearly proved to be her undoing. Her unwilling lab partner. A man who had belittled and berated her for months, and then when she had finally decided to leave, had cornered her and snogged her senseless.

Hermione stepped into her office, and prepared to do battle.

28 May, 1998

He was free.

There had been no great white light or advancing tunnel; his life had not flashed past before his eyes.

Instead, things had literally ended with a whimper. And now? Now he was swimming in a swirling, liminal darkness, his neck throbbing in fiery time with a waning heartbeat. Vaguely, he could feel the worn and splintered wood floor under him, covered with a cloying, sticky layer of his slowly coagulating blood. A final benediction, if you will.

But he was free; gloriously, wonderfully free, and had been cut loose from his chains of debt and atonement the moment he'd given Potter his memories. For the first time since he was sixteen, no life debt weighed on his soul, and he could make choices based on what he wanted, not on what was owed.

And he wanted... what? There was a part of him- the pitiful remains of a poor northern boy forced to listen to far too many sermons on fire and brimstone - that still feared what might happen after. His closet, after all, held so many skeletons that it was standing room only. He very much doubted that any pearly gates would ever open for him.

But he also did not believe that any divinely created hell could rival the one of his own making, so there was that.

He had just settled on dying when he was oh-so-rudely drawn back to waking by a feminine form leaning over him, her healing magic ghosting between them like the last flickers of an Aurora Borealis. The burning blood in his eyes made it impossible to focus his gaze, and fleetingly, he wondered who she was. She had a corona of messy brown curls, and what he could see of her bruised and battered face was somehow both familiar and unwanted.

"Professor?" the woman - or rather, girl - asked tremulously. "It'll be alright now. I've summoned the medics, and Professor McGonagall. I won't let anything happen to you, I promise. Just hang in there a little longer."

Her magic, lambent and warm, slipped under his skin and sunk deep into his bones. For a moment, the connection taking root felt like a welcome embrace as it wrapped securely around his body. But slowly, insidiously, the tendrils tightened, thickened, and he felt the beginning of dread begin to awaken within him. He wasn't being helped, he was being bound by a life debt... again.

Foolish, stupid, interfering girl, he thought as he slid back into the abyss. It was angry resentment, not gratitude that chased him down.

13 November, 1998

Six months later, that resentment had transformed into a burning and volatile rancour. It had also gotten him kicked out of St. Mungo's. Never mind that Snape could do little more than linger about in bed about like a festering carbuncle; he had worn out his welcome and was being dispatched back to Hogwarts post-haste.

Returning to the Castle would have been a bitter pill to swallow, assuming of course, that he could have swallowed. But even that little luxury was out of the question. He was alive, but it was a stretch to call his current condition living.

He could walk enough to get out of bed and get to the lav, and he could once again dress himself if given enough time. That was the sum total of his recovery. Nagini's venom had done a thorough job of destroying his fine motor skills, and the bite itself had nearly destroyed the nerves and general structures of his neck. Eating and drinking were completely out of the question; so was speaking, although that did not prohibit him from communicating. Snape was rather proud of how much nuance he could convey with his two-fingered salute- but his voice, his one vanity, was gone, perhaps forever.

Those were minor quibbles, however, as compared to muscle spasms that regularly wracked his body throughout the day. Whilst the pain was a shadow compared to the Cruciatus curse, it was still bad enough that he blacked out several times a week, and he almost never was able to sleep through the night without being woken up by the creeping onset of agony.

The Healers posited that his continued illness was due to the fact that they had yet to neutralize the remnants of Nagini's venom that lingered in muscles and joints. But as the snake was dead, it was impossible to brew any further antivenin... and short of creating said synthetic antivenin, he was stuck in a twilight of endless pain and resentment.

It had taken him several months to find out who his erstwhile saviour had been; his memories of the day were hazy at best. Minerva had inadvertently let it slip that Hermione Granger had been the one to go back to the Shrieking Shack and drag his not-quite-dead corpse to St. Mungo's, and he cursed the blasted girl every time he felt a spasm coming on. He did not think anyone else - including the bushy-haired wonder herself - realized that she had created a life debt that night, and he intended to keep it that way. And now, he thought snidely, your prodigal self gets to return to the scene of the crime. Assuming, of course, that Minerva ever gets here...

With nothing else to do, he did what he had been doing for last several months; he sat, and he raged over his impotent existence. At half-past nine, Minerva finally bustled into the room in a red-hot flurry of Scottish indignation and tartan. A hospital matron and a Ministry lackey were hot on her heels, and he almost pitied them for her reaction if they did not immediately bend to her will.

"Severus, are you ready?" she asked shortly. He gave her a terse nod in return.

"Madam, I'm afraid you don't understand the gravity of the situation..." the Ministry man began, before Minerva silenced him with a steely glare long practised on generations of Hogwarts' pupils.

"You will address me by my proper title of Headmistress, Mr. Harbaugh, not madam. Is that understood?" The man shut his mouth with an audible click, and Minerva continued. "Now, unless you have a written order from Kingsley remanding Professor Snape into Ministry custody, he will be returning with me to Hogwarts. I do not give a fig that his judicial status has yet to be resolved; that is your problem, not mine. As the Wizengamot has not seen fit to either charge or convict him on any counts, there is no reason for him to be in any sort of government custody."

"But Headmistress... the man is a murderer," Harbaugh stuttered. "The public..."

"The public can go hang for all I care. As for the rest," she said, voice gone heavy with anger, "...I would have killed Albus Dumbledore myself had I known what he was planning. You will hardly find me a sympathetic audience to any claims of murder." The man gaped at this blasphemy, and even the matron appeared taken aback at the heated statement.

As Harbaugh took a half-hearted, shuffling step towards Snape, Minerva unceremoniously drew her wand. Severus found himself smirking for the first time in months. There were advantages to allowing hot-headed Gryffindors to lead the charge; that Minerva was exerting this much effort on his behalf was only a bonus.

"Take one step closer, Mr. Harbaugh, and I shall permanently transfigure you into something truly unfortunate."

The man said nothing to the challenge, rendered absolutely dumbfounded. Minerva, taking advantage of the silence, stuck her hand out to the duty matron, who wordlessly gave over Severus' discharge papers.

"Shall we?" Minerva asked, extending her other arm to him. As gracefully as he could manage, he rose from the chair and took her arm. The tightening of her hand on his was the only warning that he received before she Apparated the two of them to the gates of Hogwarts.

16 November, 1998

Three days later, it was he who was the recipient of her considerable ire.

Over his vociferous objections, Minerva had forbidden him access to his lab with the rationale that he would only hurt himself; he had promptly disregarded her edict, reasoning instead that he would not get well without coming up with a synthetic substitute for the antivenin.

Naturally, he'd been wrong.

One minute, he had been in his lab, trying to light a cauldron... and the next he'd found himself sprawled about on the stone floor, having very nearly cracked open his skull on the flagstones after a particularly fierce spasm.

But unbeknownst to him, Minerva had sicced the house elves on him, and one of the ruddy creatures had sounded the alarm after his tumble. When he had finally come to, it was to find one worried face - that of Poppy Pomfrey - and one furious face – Minerva - hovering over him.

"Severus, I understand that you are frustrated, truly, I do... but you must be reasonable about this." Poppy's calm tones cut through Minerva's ongoing, shrill, diatribe. "Pushing yourself will only result in further injury... patience is the key..."

The frustrations and fears of the previous months finally boiled over. Struggling into a sitting position on the bed, Snape cut the Healer and Headmistress off with a rude gesture.

NO! he mentally shouted at the both of them. It didn't matter that neither woman was an Occlumens, or even remotely telepathic; he put enough force into the thought that they heard him. NO, I WON'T. I WON'T SIT HERE ANY LONGER. I WON'T LIVE LIKE THIS ANYMORE.

Vaguely, he became aware that he had started crying, rather messily, and that only made him more furious. I CAN'T EAT. I CAN'T SLEEP. I CAN'T DO ANYTHING. I CAN'T EVEN PROTECT MYSELF. I AM UTTERLY USELESS. IF THIS IS WHAT THE REST OF MY LIFE IS GOING TO BE LIKE, THEN I DON'T WANT IT!

"Severus..." Minerva began, the ire in her continuance transforming into something like pity.

NO, he repeated. I WON'T. I'D RATHER DIE THAN LIVE LIKE THIS ANYMORE. EITHER YOU LET ME TRY TO FIX MYSELF, OR YOU LET ME END IT.

Both of the women flinched at the helpless rage in implicit his mental tone, and he found himself falling back onto the pillows, breathing hard from the small effort of sitting up. Then the long muscles of back and legs seized the opportunity to cramp, and then it was all he could do not to scream in silent agony as the contractions rippled through him.

When the spell finally ended, he found himself covered in a clammy sweat, shaking, as Poppy and Minerva each massaged a leg. Mutely, he gazed up at Minerva, daring her to say anything containing the words "positive" or "patience".

"You can't," she choked out, and he would have gladly throttled the woman if he could have gotten his hands around her neck.

"You can't do it on your own, that much is clear," she continued, and hesitated briefly. "You need to work with someone, and even then I'm not sure..." She and Poppy gazed at each other over the width of his bed, unspoken knowledge travelling back and forth between their gazes.

It was Poppy that finally broke the silence. "I'm not a researcher, nor am I much of a brewer... Severus, I know you aren't fond of the girl... but Hermione is the only one in this Castle with the skills to help you."

Like hell I will work with her, he thought savagely. Snagging the end of the bed sheet from where it dangled from the mattress, he began to twist it as the two women looked on in mounting confusion. His madness gave him the adrenaline boost needed to complete the task; with a spectre of his old dexterity, he tied the final knot and presented it to his companions with a flourish.

It was a noose.

Given the high thread count of the sheets, he rather thought that the crudely fashioned object might actually function as more than a rhetorical device. For the first time in days, he felt a measure of satisfaction. One way or another, his days of lying about in a bed were numbered.