Disclaimer: not mine.

Perceiving Pigment

Chapter 3

Obtuse Orpiment

"Receive thy new Possessor: One who brings
A mind not to be chang'd by Place or Time.
The mind is its own place, and in it self
Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n."

-John Milton's Paradise Lost, Book I, 252-255

"I don't recall you much liked flying," he said, trying to find a bearable sitting position. The seat was too small, the headrest too short, and his knees settled up against the back of the seat in front of him. She had offered him the window seat, and he had taken it. Now he understood the perks of being closer to the aisle. She could get up whenever, whereas he would have to climb over her legs.

"Not on a broom. But here, you don't even have to see the open sky if you don't want to. We're enclosed, protected." There was not much to see besides the pervading darkness, but she seemed to avoid looking out the window just the same.

"By muggle magic," he murmured at the clouds.

"Science," she stated, with the slightest huff.

"I know," he said. He blinked as the sun caught the clouds. "It is second nature for me to refer to muggle things as if I don't know anything about them."

There was a pause. He felt her squirm just the slightest bit.

"Oh, of course," she said. She drew in a breath, but the awaited interrogation did not emerge.

He was surprised that she did not pry, because he had said more than he had intended to say. Perhaps the war had changed her more than thought. Of course, it changed everyone.

He attempted to stretch his leg upward a bit, but it bumped against hers. His heartbeat seemed to jolt or skip, in some manner of irregularity that did not suit him, no, this would not due at all, if he couldn't keep his mind in line-

"You were the one who insisted we couldn't use magical means to travel."

He stopped again, wondering what he had said out loud. Then he realized he had been muttering about space and muggle's sense of architecture.

Of course, he wanted to say, he couldn't very well stride into the ministry and request an international portkey without being waylaid until next week. Neither could she for that matter. Then he caught the look of mirth in her eyes and simply sighed.

It was all very tiring to be saying one thing and thinking another and not trusting your mind to do the right one which way.

He looked out the window, trying to discern the clouds until the sky turned umber and glowed with the dawn and still he could not close his weary eyes.

At some point, the warning for seatbelts and impending landing blinked red all along the darkened plane. He blinked and tried to swallow despite the cotton in his mouth. The lack of water made his mouth feel skeletal.

It took far too long to get off the plane. He could feel the strain the tight enclosed space had put on his back, the alignment of his spine. It even somehow crept along that wound he was always so painfully conscious of.

Hermione sped through the muggle rituals of long-distance transportation with a grace he had trouble keeping up with. First the florescent lights had blinded him; what caused muggles this insatiable need to see every single detail in the world around them? Hardly any of said information was worth noticing. As a result too much information flooded his senses and it was difficult to discern what was important and what he should discard immediately. He determined that muggles relied far too heavily on their sense of sight. If they turned down their lights and allowed themselves to experience the world as nature intended, they might find out a lot more about said world.

He thoroughly despised the mass of muggles moving much too swiftly in different directions, jostling him. They caught him off guard so often that he wished to hold onto her hand.

Just so that he would not lose her, of course. Instead, he kept sight of her hair and did lose himself in a strange land. She hailed a taxi and they were soon out in the yellow deserts of Australia.

The landscape blinded him. Sunlight burst through even the covered shade of the taxi. The driver left the windows open to the cool air. It was early spring on this side of the world.

The taxi stopped in front of a modest house with a few acres of bare land spread around it. It looked simple against the bright sky. The type of house a child might draw. He followed her down the dirt path, to the wooden porch, and the doorway she must walk through. Through the screen door they saw the sitting room. A room beyond was lighted with the type of warm clear light that dissipated quickly when it met the shadows. On her knock, a woman came out from the light, walked across the creaky floor and pulled her face close to the screen. He could see the darkened hollows of her eyes, the thin plane of her cheeks, the drawn lips.

On this horridly bright day, even the sandpaper in his lungs and the thorns crawling along his spine could not quell his newfound thirst for life. For, he had found something in common with her strife in the desolate garden of a foreign land looking into her beloved mothers' eyes and seeing nothing. There was no return of care or love in her blank face; just curious apprehension and wariness. It sucked his breath from him, he knew well the feeling.

She faltered.

He had hoped she was stronger than this – he had no intention of getting roped into helping her. It was her task and she should find her strength to follow through with it. Nevertheless, his arm moved out and lightly touched the small of her back, steadying her. Perhaps he imagined the surge of energy that seemed to flow through her, grounding her feet and lifting her chin to meet her mother's eyes.

"I am the daughter you've always wished you had."

Keyed to her voice and magic; clever girl.

He opened the screen door, hoping to solidify her connection.

Mrs. Granger's eyes widened, then fluttered, her brain processing vast amounts of information. And when her mind was too busy to maintain her center of gravity, Severus swooped in and caught her falling figure in his shirted arms.


She had always kept journals. They were not, however, filled with fancies of boys and petty schoolgirl drama. That is not to say they weren't filled with emotions and served as an outpouring of her soul. Hermione's journals were filled with lines, lines that went across to start a new start a new thought, lines that went down to separate columns in charts and graphs, lines of numbers that became thoughts and symbols. She had developed her own code and she felt it safe to say that no one would bother decoding it; even she herself was not sure always what she had meant by a particular marking. It was imprecise, the only convoluted thing Hermione allowed in her life, because she could always write more to clarify to herself.

How intriguing to figure out, soon after she started Hogwarts, that there was a whole realm of study devoted to the magical properties of numbers and constructs such as the ones she herself had devised, albeit as an amateur.

Over this past year when she was stuck in the tent, she had taken out the journals which featured her parents prominently. She liked remembering the trips they had taken, the things they had given or denied her, even what flavor ice cream they had all chosen. There was a portion of her parent's essences expressed by her, embedded in her memories, spread out across the pages in lines and numbers and words that were elusive and multidimensional, just like they were. Hermione knew that a name written on a piece of paper did not adequately express that person, but was a reference to a reference, a shadow of the signified. She still read them, especially when the horcrux necklace was heavy around her neck.

She used those memories, and her memories of longing for those moments, and opened up the parts of her mother's mind she had sealed away.

Remember when… her voice echoed in some other place, or some place here too small to reach those outside of it. The memories kept flowing, one leading to the next, even those memories she was none too fond of. It would be easy to stop herself, to block off the arguments they had engaged in, most of which were about magic. However, she felt it was the right thing to do to restore all of the memories, no matter what harm may come to her for it.

It felt like an eternity. When she came to her body, she almost didn't want to return to it, especially the pain, the lingering traces of the Cruciatus. It felt sharper, returning to it after being so free and bodiless for a short while.

Her vision swarmed black, then returned in a cloudy haze.

Severus was holding her mother's body. The screen door was held slightly open at her backside. A couch behind Severus and her mother partially hid the other figure in the room. There loomed her father, something long and sliver gleamed in the sunlight-

"No!" she yelled, jumping up, pain shooting through her legs, but still she moved forward, even as he saw his eyes widen further in fear of her.

The loud bang went off.

Glass shattered, more light poured in and reflected against the flying fragments. Everything else seemed frozen.

The blasted curtain settled down, then ruffled lightly in the breeze from the now glassless window.

"You nearly shot our daughter!" her mother screamed, whacking her father with her kitchen rag.

"What?! We don't have- Miriam what are you going on about?" His face looked so terribly old, like this summer had taken years of their lives, even as she had tried to save them. His hair was whiter, thrown up in a flurry, his arms thinner, his skin cast in yellow by the light.

She moved toward him, stumbling on her limp legs, even as he sucked in his breath and curled away from her. Her stomach convulsed.

"I am the daughter you've always wished you had," she whispered.

It started all over again. She fell into his mind, and opened the dam. It was easier this time, perhaps she was getting better at it, or perhaps recent events had created a crack that she merely had to nudge to break it forth.

When she returned once her to her tired ones and containing flesh, she was on the verge of collapse.

The warm yellow of the light on the carpet filled her vision, and then it was dark again.


He inwardly cursed when she didn't move from the floor. She shouldn't have over-exerted herself like that. She was the brightest witch of her age, but to undo such spellwork, the work of the mind, was often much more difficult than casting it.

She had forgotten herself. She gave herself over to the magic, her will directed it, but still, she had very nearly completely abandoned her body. Her nerves twitched the muscles all along her legs and arms.

He could see it now, and he wished he had confronted her again about dark magic before they had taken this trip. He didn't like to think that he missed things; there had been plenty of clues, but then, he wasn't quite right in the head either.

Something he was supposed to remember about that place where he had been dead threatened to break forth from his mind, but he quashed it by taking charge and attending to the girl.

He knelt beside her in the bed they had allowed him to carry her to. All the while they snapped questions, wondering what he had done to their daughter, to them.

"She did this to save your lives. I'm sure she saw no other way. I'm sure she will explain it adequately once she has had some rest. In peace and quiet," he stated pointedly, looking at the door. They left him finally.

The room was quiet now, at least. The furniture was sparse and crafted of bare wood. He moved to the tall windows and pulled the curtains across them. The dark (though hardly dimmed with all the blasted light in this country) comforted him. He let go of the coarse linen draperies and turned about.

She laid there on top of the bed, a troubled look on her sweaty face. Her shoulders twitched. He sat down in a chair beside her.

As his breaths evened out, he felt his anger vanish, the adrenaline slowing down as his need for it dissipated. They really hadn't rested enough before beginning this, and then he thought, when had he, Severus Snape, spy of two masters, ever had a break?

Perhaps a Prince deserved a break once in a while.

It didn't seem so wrong to wipe the sweat from her face. It was only professional to check her pulse with his fingers, to count the beats as they grew stronger and more even. However, something stopped him from staying there, from staring at her pale face. The fact that he had to peel himself away from her side sent warning bells off in his head.

Damn spells and their side-effects.


She woke in the dark. Someone had opened the door and the light blinded all but a silhouette of the figure in the doorway.

"I thought… you might need some soup." She recognized her mother's voice, but it was scratchy and hesitant.

She set a tray on the bedside table, and stood up fully. She took a step backwards.

"Wait," Hermione said. She tried to sit a bit, though her muscles protested loudly. "Won't you stay, mum?"

She searched her mind fervently, but everything was so fuzzy. She felt sick all through her body, simply weak. Her mother had always stayed with her when she was sick with the Flu or a cold.

"Won't you stay and hum to me?" Hermione asked, having finally found that warm memory.

"Oh," she said, bringing her palm to the side of her head. Something pained her and then her body straitened. "You must leave as soon as you are able," she commanded.

"Mum?"

"I can't. Oh, I don't know what is in my head anymore. How do I know these memories…and then you were gone, and we were so empty. How could you kill us like that for so long?"

Of course, they were sad and hurt and felt abandoned.

"I can make it better. I can make you forget you ever lost me even for a bit."

"No. We can't. You can't tamper with people's minds, Hermione! It's one thing to make things float and shrink, it's entirely another to change everything in my head. I wasn't even myself, it felt like now. You have all this power, and I know you think you're doing great things, but please, don't make the mistake of thinking you know everything."

Hermione felt the cool breeze from the window. The curtains rustled and thought she glimpsed the moon outside.

"I think you should leave," her mother said again.

"Aren't you going back to London?" she asked.

"My husband and I will decide what to do on our own."

There it was; the exclusion of their only daughter from the family.

Hermione clenched her stomach, trying to breathe evenly. Her lungs moved in spasms, in great gasps she expelled the air from her lungs and fell back onto the pillow. It was hard; this world she had left them in was hard. It was dark and it was hard and she wished for the comfort of her mother's humming.

The moon is falling through the sky

The birds flock to quell the demise

The stars whisper their goodbyes

And the sun finds its time to rise

She whispered the words like she had always imagined the stars whispered them to the moon, and her white pillow was the moon and she was falling with it into the damp sea of her tears.

"You didn't tell me of your prolonged exposure to the Cruciatus curse," he accused. He loomed over her bed like a dark angel. "I have a few things I can try, but I cannot brew here."

She groaned. The room was still dark, and she yawned. The motion sent her mind millions of tiny pain signals from her body.

"No, you thought you would shoulder all the pain and go on like a brave little soldier. A perfect little Order member." He let the door close mostly behind him, swallowing the light until it was one long golden strip. She somehow made the connection that he preferred to stay in a darkened room as well.

"In that case, you're more perfect than I am," she finally managed to spit out. She tested her limbs, wiggling her toes first.

"If you have the audacity to be making jokes, then I suppose the pain isn't so bad that we cannot continue homeward as planned?"

"Oh, my parents-" Her arms twitched. She looked at the closed door. She attempted to sit up, pulling herself up with her weak arms. Then he was beside her, pushing her back up. She hoped he had better night vision than she, as it was she was afraid to get too close to him. She shook her head, then regretted the movement.

"You wish to stay with them for a few days," his voice was low. She imagined she felt the breath of it moving like subtle magic across the short space between them. It tingled in her cheeks.

She looked at him. Her vision was sorting out the blacks and grays of the room, and she could now distinguish the angular planes of his face. She wanted to tell him that she knew the bond might have effects on proximity; that he needed her. But to say that would cross a line, they would be…something. Weren't they family now? Perhaps he didn't know how those worked. At any rate, it seemed like he was her only family now.

"They need time to get used to the memories. They need time to settle back into their life in England," she said instead, letting her head fall back into the headboard. "They need time to forgive me."

Her mother had not changed her mind. When Hermione emerged from the bedroom, she attempted to get closer to her parents. They shrank from her like bowing sunflowers. She could now see the terrible toll the loss of their daughter had taken upon them, even though they had never known it. Well, now they knew it, or thought they did, or didn't know what to think and now the heavy weight of the repercussions of Hermione's actions pushed her out of her parent's house and family.

She wanted to stay and talk and she wanted to leave, to never feel this bad again.

She theorized that perhaps part of them had still known it, known that they had a loved one, a piece of their flesh and blood, out there in the world, perhaps in danger. Blood was powerful, she thought as her own scars tingled. Even as most of her grieved with her parent's suffering, part of her wished to analyze this as a study. To take it away from her heart might save her from some of the pain and guilt.

And so she and Severus had taken a bus back into the city, and they went to the busy airport, the sky still dark around them. She might miss the blatant openness of the sky, as if there was no limit to it. It seemed vaster and more vibrant than her sky back home.

During the plane ride, while Severus Prince finally slept, cheek flush against the window; she pulled down the table from the seat in front of her and wrote in her journal.

She hated feeling so weak. She knew that if her body and magic had not been still healing from the Cruciatus curse, she would not have drained herself quite so thoroughly. As it was, getting on the plane left her body exhausted. Her mind, however, had another task to undertake.

She assembled her arithmathical equations for the ritual she had conducted, so many months -but what seemed like so few days- ago. There was much missing, she didn't have any research material available, but she made do with all of the details she could remember. She recalled her deliberate wording of the spell, the ingredients, and the final plea. She traced the scar that ran along her forearm and felt a shiver tingle. It has started with the ring.

Back to the equations, she added the ring, the blood, her magical signature, into the matrix. The result – the possible result- stilled her pen. She let go and it rolled across the small table. With her freed hand, she ventured a touch of the gleaming gem on her finger.

She had become accustomed to magical residuals and traces of energy. It was a side effect from becoming closer to the dark arts. But this was no residual magic of their familial connection. It was strong; it was in the blood coursing through her body from her head to the tips of her toes and back again through-

It an attempt to jerk away from the offending ring, that same hand flashed to her other side and accidentally knocked against something soft and hard at the same time.

He stirred with a slight growl.

"So sorry if I woke you," she muttered. "We're almost-" Home, she had wanted to say "there."

The sky had lightened once more, and she realized that this trip had taken them two full days. She had spent the last three days with her former-professor, former-enemy-spy-slash-order-martyr, and she still did not know him. She turned the ring about her finger.

"Why must it always be another day?" he asked the window.

She had no answer and assumed he needed none.