Written for the 2010 round of sshg_exchange at LJ.
Original Prompt: Post DH/AU/EWE. Snape and his Dark Mark. He and Hermione are working together to remove it. You decide why. He tells here in detail what it felt like to get it. Did it hurt/tickle/get him aroused? What did being called by Voldemort feel like? Icy pain/searing agony/dull ache/slow start to high levels? What's it like now that Voldemort's dead? Still visible/hurts/faded? How is/was it different from a normal Wizard's tattoo? Give me your take on the ins and outs of the Dark Mark, as well as Snape's thoughts about it.
Thanks: to Parcae for helping me get this story started, finding the title, and generally being a super awesome beta. Without him, I could not have completed this fic.
The note was waiting for her on her desk when she entered her office that morning. One of the house-elves must have brought it; there was no one else with the password save Minerva, and she - oh, certainly not! - it must have been a house-elf, yes.
The note was still sitting on her desk. She unfolded it again, to see if the words might have disappeared or rearranged themselves since she'd hastily set it down this morning. No. She felt the blush suffusing her cheeks and closed her eyes, as if it might yet disappear.
Someone picked that moment to knock timidly at the door. "Professor Granger?" Of course. Melora Longbottom. She'd almost forgotten.
"Come in," Hermione said, shoving the note into a pocket. "Have you brought your essay with you?"
She decided, right then and there, that the note had officially never happened.
It had been a trying day. One of the Hufflepuffs had set her partner's robe on fire, the eldest of the new crop of Weasleys had managed to coat half the classroom with a spray of iridescent goo that was proving surprisingly resistant to the usual solvents, and, of course, there was Hermione. Professor Granger.
Hermione had taken nearly fifteen years to return to Hogwarts, by which time he'd mellowed somewhat toward Potter and his cohort, with the aid of sufficient time and distance. Surely, he'd thought before the arrived to take the up the Arithmancy post, she was not as annoying as he remembered, as self-righteous, as insufferable. They were both adults. She might even have become a good conversationalist. An acceptable colleague.
This, Severus quickly discovered, was far from the case.
She took away points from his students for minor infractions, and had the nerve to complain when he did the same. Her excessive favoritism toward the Gryffindors was beyond the pale. She stole all of the most interesting academic journals from the library and returned them limp and dog-eared, the margins cluttered with notes in her neat hand. The disappearance of The Practical Alchemist for the third time this quarter - before he'd even had the chance to page through it - had proven the last straw.
He was almost looking forward to her response. It promised to be pleasantly inflammatory.
"Hermione," Snape greeted her courteously as she came out of the library. No It wasn't courteous, it was some very canny version of leering, she was certain.
"Severus," she said, her voice clipped. "Good day." She moved to pass him (did not exist did not happen not happening not ever stop thinking of this stop thinking RIGHT NOW), but he stopped her with a word.
"Did you receive my note?"
Hermione inhaled sharply and closed her eyes. She could still see it before her, a ghost image burned into her retinas, impossible to erase. "I have no idea what you are talking about."
When she opened them, he was scowling at her. The familiarity of the scowl gave her a fleeting moment of comfort before he spoke again. "I cannot imagine your reason for refusing to accommodate my entirely reasonable request."
In her shock, she neglected to slap him. "Reasonable? Reasonable?"
"Forgive me. I must remember it is unsuccessful to appeal to your sense of common decency or logic. Must I proceed to blackmail? Subterfuge? Some other unseemly means of assuring your compliance?" Snape lowered his voice. "Please tell me, Hermione. Professor Granger. I await your answer."
"Never," she hissed. "That's your answer. And I'm going to Minerva. This is disgusting. I have never- in my life-"
Just then, she made the mistake of looking desperately toward the library for help, and discovered that they'd attracted a crowd.
"What seems to be the problem?" Minerva was gazing at them serenely, which meant that she'd had at least one tumbler of the Firewhisky she kept in the office before they'd come in. He hated it when she called him into the office; he generally felt like a recalcitrant schoolboy, waiting for her to rap his knuckles. Or curse them. He imagined Minerva might like cursing knuckles.
"Severus has been saying - things! Inappropriate- unprofessional-" Hermione sputtered. Her hair had started to come loose from the braid she usually wore, and had arrayed itself in a frizzy halo around her face. "You must intervene. I cannot-"
"I have no idea what Hermione is talking about," he interrupted. "On the other hand, she has been taking most of the academic journals from the staff room, which, I think you'll agree, is quite unprofessional. I would like them back promptly. Not written in. Not folded. Not abused. Is this too much to ask?"
Minerva was still staring at him calmly. Hermione, on the other hand, was looking at him like he was deranged. "That is not-" She pointed a finger. "The note you sent me- don't pretend this has anything to do with that!"
Severus returned her stare. "I fail to understand your lack of comprehension. I think I was quite clear as to which journals I would like you to return. Surely you're not suggesting that I blame Poppy for the mysterious disapparition of all of the back issues of Artes Gloriae?"
Hermione had been fumbling around in the folds of her robes, and finally pulled out a crumpled piece of paper, which she thrust at him "Read this aloud. Read it. And then you can tell Minerva exactly what Glorious Arts you're talking about."
The paper was balled up so tightly that it took him a moment to tease out into a regular shape. It took a moment for the words to register before he was pushing it away himself. "I- I would never- I've never seen this before."
"It's in your handwriting," she spat out.
Minerva was already getting out the Firewhisky.
"I believe some demonic force may have taken control of my hand," he was saying. Hermione glared at him. Demonic forces. Like she'd believe that.
But Minerva was nodding. "Your Dark Mark appears to be breaking down, Severus. There have been reports coming from Azkaban for quite some time now, and I had hoped the situation was not universal, for your sake, but..."
Hermione could see Snape out of the corner of her eye. He did seem somewhat alarmed, if not suitably chastened. "You don't honestly think the Dark Mark could be responsible for this-" she gestured at the note. "I mean, I don't think Voldemort is sending missives about my 'nubile young body' from the grave."
"Let me see that," Minerva said, and Hermione obliged. The Headmistress scanned the note, raising her eyebrows a few times, before lifting her head to look at Snape. He seemed to be dodging her gaze. "It seems that the Mark is tapping into your innermost desires, Severus-"
"You are entirely wrong, Minerva. And now I find myself with some very urgent grading to be done, and also a classroom which remains largely contaminated with some sort of ectoplasm. I find this state of affairs to be untenable. Excuse me."
After Snape had left, nearly tripping over his chair in haste, Hermione found herself the object of Minerva's scrutiny. Somehow, the Headmistress still had the power to make her feel like a recalcitrant schoolgirl, even at the fairly adult age of thirty-one. "What exactly do you want me to do about this?" she asked, exasperated, already knowing the battle was lost.
"I want you to help Severus isolate and remove the Dark Mark, of course." Minerva screwed the cap back on the bottle of the Firewhisky. "Preferably before he goes entirely mad and murders us horribly. Just joking, my dear," she concluded, not entirely reassuringly.
"I am rather busy and would prefer not to be disturbed," he greeted her when she stopped by his office the following afternoon. Hermione ignored him, brushing past to sat down on the corner of his desk, where she affixed him with a stubborn look. He knew that look. It usually presaged a drastic loss of Gryffindor house points.
"Minerva has asked me to assist you in removing the Dark Mark. I have some reason to believe that we might be able to accomplish that, based off some of the research Blassorgsky is doing in Moscow."
"I seem to recall an abstract. For some reason, that issue of The Practical Alchemist seems never to have reached Hogwarts," Severus issued between gritted teeth. "I can't imagine why."
"I brought it with me," Hermione said, blithely. "You may have the rest upon completion of this project and the cessation of inappropriate letters addressed to my person."
"One letter," he corrected her. "Not letters, plural."
She smiled beatifically at him, and pulled a folded square of paper from a pocket. "Perhaps you would like to explain what I found on my desk this morning."
He waved it away. "I concede your point, Miss Granger. Hermione. Forgive me. As you can imagine, I find this development somewhat unsettling."
"You can't mean to say that you haven't noticed anything else out of the ordinary?" When he didn't respond, she pressed on. "Have you asked Hagrid if he's received any unusual erotic petitions in the last few weeks?"
"Enough!" Severus sighed and rubbed at his temples. "I seem to be going through unusual quantities of bubble bath. That is all I've noticed."
"Bubble bath?"
"May I remind you of the task at hand? The one which you brought to me so urgently?"
She handed him a list (six Thestral hooves? Kneazle dung?), and got to her feet. "I'll see you in my office at nine sharp on Saturday, Severus. Until then, please try not to murder us horribly. Minerva expressed some concern."
For once, he found himself speechless.
"I've prepared a list of questions," she said. Snape feigned a yawn. "No, really, you must answer these."
"I will do my best."
Hermione sat down behind her desk, and started at the top of her notes. "What did it feel like to get the Mark?"
Snape frowned at her. "I fail to see how this is relevant to your aims."
"Just answer the question."
He was very still for a little while. "It burned. It was like sticking my arm into a fire, but cold fire. When he called, it was the same."
"Does it still hurt?"
"Not of late. It itches at night, sometimes."
"May I see it?"
Until this moment, she'd expected Snape to protest, maybe even refuse. But, wordlessly, he began to roll his sleeve up from his arm, exposing a pale forearm. The mark was there, halfway up; it was faded, now, but still distinct against ivory skin. She reached out her hand, as if to touch it, but drew back at the last moment.
"Does it still call to you?" Hermione said, at last.
"The Dark Mark? Dark magic?" He smiled wryly. "You're the one who's been stealing all of Artes Glorias. You tell me."
She did touch it, then. It felt no different from the surrounding skin: surprisingly supple, and warm against the cool air.
They met again on Monday night, this time in his office after the Harris twins had finished their detention. Hermione came down armed with a thick stack of notes and journals (he resolved not to let her leave the dungeons with them), and quickly spread them in riotous disarray over every flat surface in the room. "Arimov suggests that the sort of fire you felt is a sort of magical snake bite - it's venomous, I mean."
"Are you suggesting we work toward some kind of antidote? Believe me, I've thought of that. I tried - back when I came to work for Dumbledore, I tried all sorts of things." At the time, he'd contemplated fatal solutions. "There's a lot of ground that's already been tread here."
Hermione was thumbing through one of the journals, biting her lip. She looked strangely young and vulnerable; Severus had a disconcerting memory of her here, in this office, so many years ago. He tried to shake the dual vision off. "It's here - I'll let you read the Blassorgsky article tonight. I agree, an antidote won't work. You have to suck the venom out. Magically, I mean." She blushed prettily. "Do you want to look over my notes? You can have the journal over the week. And you can keep it when we're done."
"All right," he agreed, finding himself surprisingly conciliatory.
"Good." She fished another folded piece of paper out from her bag, and his heart sank. "This arrived this morning. I though I'd return it to you."
He found the floor suddenly engrossing.
She didn't know why she kept reading the notes. After the first week, they arrived with breakfast as regularly as the Daily Prophet, and she opened them. Sometimes they weren't even particularly explicit, and merely squandered long paragraphs on the virtues of her form. One was entirely composed in metered verse. (That, she kept.) The notes were strangely charming, probably because she was so easily able to separate them from the Snape she knew - as a teacher, imposing; as a colleague, mostly acerbic and ill-tempered.
She was horrified, however, to find her feelings toward him softening in the face of his rogue she shouldn't have been so surprised. After all, Snape was the only other person who'd notice or cared about the absence of The Practical Alchemist, let alone Artes Gloriae. (Somehow, he hadn't noticed her theft of Modern Witchcraft, but she wasn't about to come clean on that score.) He was rather pleasant to argue with, she had to admit. Sometimes he was startlingly not awful.
These were bad thoughts. She had to stop thinking them.
Then she looked at this morning's note, and sighed.
Classes went poorly that day. She was short with Tad Binx and Melora Longbottom, who looked close to tears by the end of the hour. By the time dinner came, Hermione was about ready to hex anyone who looked at her crosswise.
"How are you, my dear?" Minerva asked kindly. Hermione sometimes suspected that Minerva thought of herself as a kind of stern fairy godmother. She resisted the urge to scream.
"Fine," she muttered into her pumpkin juice.
"Helping Severus isn't proving too much for you, is it? I am certain we could seek outside assistance, if the situation is getting out of hand or proves too complex."
"It's fine," she repeated, and stabbed the pudding on her plate with a fork. "Really, Minerva. I assure you."
After dinner, she went over Snape's notes on Blassorgsky with him in her office, and continued to be spectacularly bad-tempered. "I think we know what to do now. It seems fairly simple."
Snape frowned, shook his head. "I'd like to check this against some of Pascal's research into magical brands before we attempt anything. If I may."
"Fine." Hermione smiled thinly. "Fine."
He didn't know why he was stalling.
That was a lie. He knew exactly why he was stalling.
He just didn't want to admit it.
She rose early the next morning. Another day, another letter.
She stared it, lying on her desk, on last night's notes on Blassorgsky. Something occurred to her.
"What do you want?" Snape asked, when she'd knocked firmly on the door to his quarters for the third time.
"An explanation!"
"Explain yourself," he growled, through the door.
Hermione glanced around the (currently) empty hallway, and hissed, "Not out here."
Snape opened the door, clutching his bathrobe closed at the throat, and she was briefly taken aback (Snape has ankles?). She collected herself enough to follow him into the sitting room, where he sat primly on the edge of an armchair.
"You have ankles," she said. "I mean, um. I mean, you sent me another note."
"This does seem to be the usual pattern." She really didn't understand how he managed to be so even-tempered, given the situation, namely the part where he was sending colleagues nearly pornographic solicitations (well, just her) and probably slowly descending into madness. "You still have not explained your presence here at this hour of the morning."
"Do you remember writing these notes?" she asked.
He sniffed. "No. And I have no knowledge of what's in them. Nor do I want to."
"One of them was entirely in verse. In the style of Swinburne."
"Unusual, surely."
"Quite inventive. Very florid descriptions of my, er." She cleared her throat. "Blassorgsky has never been published in The Practical Alchemist. The article's from Modern Witchcraft."
Snape looked at her impassively.
"When were you going to tell me that you've removed it?"
He sighed, and looked down. "When I got tired of writing them, I suppose."
"Were you having fun?" At his silence, she added, "The poetry was kind of a tip-off."
"One must have some vices."
"Indeed." Hermione reached into her pocket, fumbled around, found the note. A motion that by now seemed second nature. "Here."
He took it from her, and opened it. A strange expression moved across his face. "This is not my note."
"Yes, it is," she said. "It's for you."
Headmistress,
I am happy to announce that I have successfully removed the Dark Mark, so you may sleep soundly without fear that I will murder you horribly in your bed, which Professor Granger has informed me was a concern. However, Professor Granger has suggested I take a brief leave of absence to recuperate from the effects of the Dark Mark, and has offered to supervise my recovery, lest any homicidal urges return unchecked. I feel such supervision may be advisable, and hope you will conclude the same.
Please direct all correspondence to Professor Granger, as she has recommended I not be removed from her quarters until the stability of my condition has been established.
Regards,
Severus Snape