"I know what it means to freeze to death, to lose a little life with every breath.
To say goodbye to life on earth and come around again,
Lord have mercy on the frozen man."
-James Taylor, "The Frozen Man"
"Severusss... Come forward."
The Dark Lord's hiss cut through the Cruciatus haze in Severus's mind. Severus set his jaw and stepped forward, kneeling. The coldness of the marble floor under his knee gave him something on which to focus, drawing his consciousness away from the lingering aches in his arms and legs.
"Yes, My Lord?"
"I'd like you and Lucius to stay behind for a moment. The rest of you are dismissed."
The hall echoed with sharp cracks as the hooded and masked Death Eaters departed one by one. For a long minute, silence fell, and Severus resisted the feeling that the heavy tapestries on the walls were closing in.
"Lucius has been working on a new spell as of late. Has he mentioned that?"
Voldemort sounded almost conversational, and Severus's stomach clenched. A chatty Dark Lord was never a good sign.
"I didn't know, My Lord. I hope it serves you well."
"Don't pretend to fawn, Severus. It doesn't fit you. I'd like Lucius to put on a little demonstration for us. You'll be the first to witness it, I've heard. Consider this a reward for... Loyalty."
"Thank you, My Lord."
Voldemort chuckled, a gravelly sound that set Severus's vertebrae on edge, and withdrew slightly as Lucius stepped forward. Severus met the Malfoy patriarch's gaze, and the steely eyes glinting behind the silver mask seemed to be laughing. Severus made to get to his feet, and Lucius waved his hand.
"Don't get up."
Fuck. The word reverberated through Severus's mind like a chant. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
"It's funny. When I first scraped you off of the dungeon floor as a sniveling whelp, you looked at me like I was your savior. I brought you to the Dark Lord, to power, prestige, a place to belong. A place where the talents of a man of your... disposition would be appreciated. How fitting it is for it to be me to return you to a useless wretch on the ground."
"My Lord, I don't understand."
Voldemort remained in his position off to the side, unmoved and unmoving. As Snape watched, he lifted his claw of a hand and began to inspect the nearly translucent talons for dirt.
"You're far too clever of a man to pretend to be an idiot, Severus. I've suspected you for a while, and I had Lucius keep a close eye on you. You've put on quite a performance in the last few months. You've caused poor Lucius to come to me with nothing to report for far longer than I'd like. Speaking of which, Crucio!"
Lucius gasped and staggered, taken aback. He bent double and grunted, tangling his fingers in his silvery hair until Voldemort lowered his wand. Heaving ragged breaths, he straightened his spine and staggered slightly, his normally glossy mane disheveled and sweat dripping from underneath his mask. His icy, aristocratic demeanor slipped slightly, and Severus saw raw rage slipping through the cracks.
Severus couldn't resist quirking a mocking eyebrow at Lucius. He was a dead man anyway-might as well find a way to spit in his murderer's eye on the way down. Lucius snarled and lunged.
"Patience, Lucius."
Lucius stepped back, straightening his robes and panting.
"As I was saying, you're quite the slippery one, Severus, and your skills were far too valuable to me to throw you away without due cause. I had to be completely sure. Until tonight."
Voldemort stepped forward and stood over Severus, all pretenses of pretend boredom dropped. He grabbed the front of Severus's robes and dragged him up.
"Did you think that you got away with pretending to kill that mudblood brat today?" Voldemort bellowed, drops of his spittle stinging Severus's cheek. "Do you take me for a fool?"
Voldemort flung Severus, sending him sprawling hard onto his elbow and tailbone on the stone floor.
"Lucius, deal with him."
"Certainly, my Lord. What did the muggle-loving old bastard offer you to make you turn? You're too damned cold to turn traitor for any noble reasons." Lucius scoffed. "In any event, you made the wrong choice."
Lucius raised his wand and jerked it in a tight, complicated pattern.
"Constringitur sanguinis!"
A jet of blue-white light hit Severus in the chest, and he shivered. He looked down at his body. Two arms, two legs, ten fingers, no noticeable injuries. Severus shivered again, and he could feel goosebumps all over his skin.
"Was that it?" He faked a barking laugh as his brain translated the Latin and recorded the wand movements. "You've made me catch a chill? Will I get a sniffle?"
"Oh, you'll see. Now run along to your true master like a good little lapdog. I'm sure he won't want to miss watching you die."
Lucius's manic laughter echoed in his ears as Severus Apparated away.
Hermione stood in the kitchen of Number 12, Grimmauld Place, shifting from foot to foot. Her fuzzy socks slipped on the flagstone, and she stilled, grabbing for the edge of the work surface to steady herself. She leaned forward, letting her forehead touch the rough finish of the cabinet, and she forced herself to breathe out slowly through her nose. He'd be fine, she told herself, before she set her jaw and stood up straight. With enough force of willpower, she could just about convince herself that the gnawing feeling in her stomach that had brought her downstairs to the kitchen was the urge for a midnight snack.
Five minutes later, with a magically steaming mug of milky hot chocolate and a massive slab of Mrs. Weasley's homemade bread slathered with enough butter to give a hippogriff a heart attack laid out in front of her, Hermione felt a tiny bit better. She ripped off chunk after chunk of the fluffy bread, plunging them into the frothy mug and fishing them out with a spoon, each bite dissolving on her tongue. After all her time and effort studying healing potions in school, her mother's remedy still managed to help more than anything else.
Hermione allowed herself a selfish moment to wish that she was still back in her parents' home, remembering how much nicer it had been just the previous evening, curled up with Crookshanks in her parents' sitting room, listening to her father's chortles at Are You Being Served? reruns in between the click-click-click of her mother's knitting needles. But when a letter from Professor Dumbledore arrived at your window, you didn't say no. Hermione had dutifully packed an overnight bag and Apparated to Headquarters.
As much as the petulant part of her mind whined "Why me," Hermione was glad that she was the one free to watch for Professor Snape's return. Mr. Weasley had matched of three of the five numbers on his Wizarding Lottery ticket, and with the 500 Galleon prize, Harry and the rest of the family were away in Cornwall on the first holiday the Weasley clan had been able to take in a very long time. Hermione chuckled as she remembered Mrs. Weasley's spluttering reaction to the suggestion of buggering off to the seaside in the middle of a war, but Professor Dumbledore himself had insisted, offering his own Fidelius-ed vacation cottage for their use and Order members on shifts to watch over them around the clock-funnily enough, there had been no shortage of volunteers for this beachside duty! The Weasleys had been in the thick of the war effort in the past few years, and a few weeks to recharge would be just the ticket to mend nerves and hold the family together.
They had invited Hermione, of course, but after mulling it over, she turned it down. She knew the summer before the start of her final year at Hogwarts would be the last time she would have to spend with her parents before she officially entered adulthood. With all of the tumult and atrocities she witnessed over the past six years, she relished this small morsel of time to reprise the role of just a being a normal daughter in the muggle world.
An unintended bright side of this, of course, was that Hermione was the only Order member currently idle enough for Dumbledore to call on for this favor while he himself was out of the country. Hermione grimaced, imagining how Harry or Ron would have reacted if Dumbledore's owl brought this letter through their bedroom window, asking them to come to Headquarters to wait up for Professor Snape. Hell, Hermione couldn't even picture what would happen if Professor Snape came home from who knows what horrible goings-on at the Death Eater meeting to find the Boy Who Lived to Be Hated by Snape to greet him. They'd be scraping bits of lighting bolt scar off of the walls for weeks.
Then again, how was he going to react to Hogwarts' resident know-it-all? Needless to say, Hermione wasn't exactly confident that she wouldn't end up shredded to bits by his sarcasm either. But she was fairly sure that beneath the sneer and condescention, there wasn't actual hatred toward her in Professor Snape's mind like there was for Harry... She hoped, anyway. Professor Dumbledore's letter led her to believe that it wouldn't be so bad. This was a routine meeting tonight, as far as any Death Eater activity could be considered routine. There were no known targets at the moment, and both Snape and Dumbledore concluded that tonight's gathering would simply be for Voldemort to take reports from each Death Eater, strategize, and debrief. Professor Snape would probably just Apparate in, share a few cutting remarks, and glug down the bottle of anti-tremor potion Hermione had ready on the rough-hewn kitchen table before going to sleep off the Cruciatus. Hermione would then have to simply spend the night in the house, check that Professor Snape was awake and functioning the next morning, and she was free to go on her merry way.
The unmistakable crack of Apparition made Hermione jump, her last spoonful of bread halfway to her mouth, and the sodden bite of toast plopped onto the table with a splat. She scooped it up and popped it in her mouth anyway, trusting in Mrs. Weasley's meticulous cleaning and the five second rule, and swallowed just as the kitchen door slammed open.
"Of course it's you... Bloody hell, this is just what I need."
Hermione sat up, spine ramrod straight, and she gripped her mug like a lifeline.
"Hello, Professor Snape. Here's your-"
Before she could even get the words out, Snape strode to the table and downed the potion in one gulp.
"Are you alright? Is there anything else you need?"
"No. Goodnight, Miss Granger"
"Goodnight, Professor."
The last thing Hermione heard as she watched the Professor's back retreating from the room was his voice, muttering, "Why is this damned house so bloody freezing?"
Hermione sat very still for a moment, processing what had just happened. He had been curt with her, for sure, and didn't seem at all thrilled to see her, but he hadn't been rude or cutting in the way he normally was in class or in the halls of Hogwarts. If anything, he had reacted as would anyone who was exhausted and sore after a long, difficult evening's work. Hermione shook her head and got up to wash up her dishes and make her way up to bed herself. If she ever told Ron and Harry that Professor Snape had been civil enough to wish her goodnight, they'd faint.
The next morning, Severus groaned, still mostly asleep, and pulled the ends of his pillow up to cover his ears. What the hell was that insufferable noise? What was the Granger girl doing? It sounded like a woodpecker from hell trying to drill into his very skull. He didn't need this, especially not now when he had to compose himself enough to find a way to tell Albus he was no longer useful to the Order. Severus knew he should have summoned the Headmaster as soon as he got back last night, but he just couldn't bring himself to tell the Granger girl, who looked so damned earnest and helpful when he walked in that it made him feel ill.
Severus jolted all the way to wakefulness when he noticed something that did not make the slightest bit of sense. His teeth were chattering. Violently. In late June.
He took stock of the rest of himself, and he shivered, wrapped up in the duvet up to his nose like a cocoon. Normally, after a night spent with the anti-tremor potion in his belly, he'd wake up naked and sticking to the bed, having discarded all clothes or coverings in his sleep. Excessive sweating was a side effect of the potion as it warmed the muscles to soothe the damaged nerves and tissue.
"What the hell?" he managed to swear, although his clacking molars made his words almost indistinguishable to his own ears.
He coaxed his body to sit up, and he poked his feet out of the duvet to search for his shoes. His toes were icy, and he could barely feel them inch along the floor. This was not good, not good at all.
Hermione, on the other hand, had been awake for more than an hour, cooking a fry-up so glorious that all other breakfasts would slink home in shame. When Dumbledore had written for her to stay to check on Snape in the morning, he couldn't have guessed that Hermione would take even that small order and run with it, using this as an opportunity to try yet again to impress the un-impressable Potions professor.
The smell of hot food, and more importantly, hot coffee, reached Severus's nose as he slowly made his way down the stairs. His stomach growled, and he nearly drooled. All the shivering was wearing him out, and his body desperately needed a refueling. He would have to Obliviate the Granger girl for sure after she saw him, though. He had tried to extricate himself from the duvet, but he was just too unbearably cold to do so, so he cast a warming charm onto the goose down monstrosity, threw it over himself like a cape, and consigned himself to the inevitable ridicule. Potter and Weasley would hear about this for sure, and his classes would be absolutely uncontrollable once the news spread from there.
"Professor?" Hermione's startled shriek sliced into Severus's eardrums as she dropped the frying pan onto the burner and rushed over. "What's happened? What's wrong?"
"Don't burn the food, you silly girl. I need to eat."
Hermione piled his plate high with five rashers of bacon, three fried eggs, two massive planks of toast, and a mountain of beans. She had barely set it down in front of Snape when he began shovelling it into his mouth with an air of desperation.
"Coffee," he rasped around a heaping mouthful.
Hermione fetched the stoneware pint tankard that Hagrid used for his tea when he called at Headquarters, and she filled it to the brim from the cafetiere. She knew from countless breakfasts in the Great Hall that he didn't take milk but would surreptitiously add a single sugar cube to the strong black brew when he thought nobody was looking. She plunked one in before she stirred and placed the mug into his extended hands.
He sipped it down immediately, not bothering to let it cool even for a moment.
Hermione sat, slowly eating a piece of toast more to have something to do with her hands while he ate than any hunger of her own. She had hoped the breakfast would meet with his satisfaction, but nothing like this! And to have him come down basically wearing his bed-what was going on?
"Don't just sit there nibbling like a hamster. Take the Floo to my storeroom and get the strongest warming potion I have. Don't bother with that Pepperup piss. Get me the Draught of Fireflower. Last cabinet on the left, bottom shelf, all the way to the back. The password is 'Alihotsy,' as there isn't time for you to break the wards... again. Then owl Albus and tell him to get here as soon as possible."
Hermione blanched. So he knew about her theft years ago? She scurried toward the fireplace. No time to worry about that! Draught of Fireflower was intense and rarely used, only safe to give to patients with the worst cases of severe hypothermia. If it wasn't given to a patient extremely diluted, it could literally burn them from the inside out. For Professor Snape to be asking for that... She didn't even want to think about the implications.