Author's note: I PROMISE I will get us out of the hospital after this chapter. I'm sick of being there. There's another flashback here (I'm planning on there being one about every other chapter); it's a little bit of humor to break up the drama. Also, the Weasleys arrive. -Serena-


In no time at all, Arthur, Molly, and Ginny came rushing down the hall towards Hermione's room. Molly was near hysterics; she looked on Hermione almost as one of her own children. Arthur was entirely calm, but his face was drawn in dire concern. Ginny was visibly distressed – her eyes were red and she shifted her weight constantly – but silent. Harry went to her immediately.

"What's happened?" she asked him quietly.

"Yes, Severus," Molly breathed, "tell us at once. What's happened to Hermione?"

"She will live," Severus informed her first, hoping to calm her enough to ensure that she would absorb everything he said. "She will be fine. She has suffered some head trauma and is in a mild coma."

"Oh!" Molly gasped, reaching for her husband's hand and grasping it tightly.

"She will be fine," he repeated. "The healer has every confidence that she will wake; he is just not certain when."

"But what happened?" Molly shrilly demanded, and Arthur gently squeezed her shoulder, urging her to be calm.

"I found her in an alley in Muggle London about two hours ago," he replied. "She was unconscious and bleeding from the back of her head. Her face was bruised, and the healer also found broken ribs and bent fingernails." He paused, unready to relate the last and most devastating detail. "I believe that she was attacked by one of the Death Eaters."

Molly's eyes took on a piercing quality, though they remained large and round in her sadness. "There's something else," she mumbled, studying Severus' face. "There's something you're not telling us, Severus," she said again, this time with unmistakable accusation. "What is it?"

Before he could even attempt to speak, George and Ron rounded the corner and joined them. "We came as quickly as we could," George announced apologetically. "Had to kick everyone out of the shop."

"Harry, what's going on?" Ron asked him, completely ignoring Severus, as was his habit.

Harry then turned to Severus, and they exchanged a long stare, laden with meaning. "I think I should speak to Ron alone," he quietly said.

Severus nodded, and Harry gave Ginny a tight hug and a kiss before leading Ron back towards the front door.

Molly then said to George, "Hermione's been attacked, likely by a Death Eater. She's in a mild coma." She then turned back to Severus. "Where is the healer? Are we allowed to see her?"

"The healer's name is Theodore McCrary; he and his assistant, Gwen, are in the room with her now. You are all allowed to see her; in fact, I think it would be best if there were at least two people with her at all times." When they began migrating past him, he held up a hand to stop them and met Molly's eyes. "You were right, Molly. There is something I haven't told you."

"Well, what is it?" she asked impatiently.

Suddenly, a series of shouts, bangs and crashes met their ears – Ron was screaming incoherently, and likely hitting and kicking everything in sight. They could barely make out Harry's voice over the din, trying to calm him; then all was quiet, save for the sound of Ron crying.

Molly's eyes, already filled with tears, slowly returned to Severus, along with Arthur's, George's and Ginny's. "What is it, Severus?" she asked again, this time in hardly more than a whisper.

He honestly had no idea how he was going to manage saying it out loud. He felt sure that the words would tear him apart from the inside, ripping his throat, his tongue, and his lips on the way out. He was certain that forming the syllables would cause him to bleed inwardly. He opened his mouth, took a breath, but it caught in his throat. He tried to think of it as though he were reading the words off a page, in reference to someone else, someone he didn't know. He tried to think of it as a story, or as a lie. Finally, he closed his eyes and somehow succeeded, though it was in a hoarse, grating whisper. "She was raped."

There was a palpable sensation in the air of the spirits of everyone in the hall hitting bottom. Ginny made an odd noise – half gasp, half sob – as her hand covered her mouth and tears began streaming ceaselessly down her cheeks. George's face was pale and it was clear that he had no idea how to react to such news, apart from wrapping a comforting arm around his sister. Molly wept silently, still looking at Severus. Arthur cast his eyes to the floor, a grimace of pain corrupting his features, and his knuckles were white on his wife's shoulder.

Ron reentered the hall then, but had no attention to spare for anyone there; he shouldered past them without a word and barged into Hermione's room. Harry followed more slowly in his wake, looking very tired and a little aged, and stopped next to Ginny, who stepped out of her brother's arms in favor of her husband's. He rocked her gently and smoothed her hair down her back as she gently cried into his chest.

Arthur and Molly walked towards her door hand-in-hand and quietly entered her room; George fell in step behind them, his hands in his pockets, still looking like he had not the slightest idea how to handle the situation; Harry led Ginny in the same direction with an arm around her waist, and she leaned on him heavily, looking as though she was too distressed to support her own weight.

"Don't make yourself ill over this," he softly murmured, resting a hand on his wife's still-flat belly. She placed her hand over his, nodded in understanding and, with a deep yet quivering breath, bore herself up.

Severus remained where he was, wanting to allow them a few minutes of privacy with her, and needing the same few minutes to gather his strength. He was unwilling to allow anyone to witness the way he would surely look at Hermione at that moment. It was perhaps fortunate that he had so many years of experience in disguise and deceit; after this devastating blow, he honestly did not think he could bear it if someone looked into his eyes and saw what was in his heart.


Weeks later, sometime around two in the morning, Severus found himself lying in bed in his room at Grimmauld Place, every light extinguished, and not even marginally capable of sleep. It wasn't precisely unusual, simply annoying. Several times he closed his eyes, only to realize some minutes later that he had opened them again, and he had no memory of doing so.

He and Miss Granger had called it a night nearly five hours before, leaving the books exactly as they were so that they could easily resume their work in the morning. She had somehow convinced him (though he hadn't even the feeblest recollection of how) to eat with her and the boys in the dining room, and almost immediately he had regretted that decision. Things between him and Mr. Potter were no longer hostile, but about one hundred times more awkward now that the young man knew that his mother had been the one and only love of Severus' life; Mr. Weasley, however, had suddenly and inexplicably developed a brand-new fashion of antagonism for him. They had never held an actual conversation, but it had now been nearly a month since they had exchanged even a single word, and animosity simply radiated from the boy. Severus could have performed "legilimens" to find out why, but the fact that Mr. Weasley refused to make eye contact with him would have made it much more difficult, and Severus suspected that the younger man's thoughts were probably not worth the extra effort.

Miss Granger, in her good-hearted way, had tried her best to lighten the mood and to engage everyone in conversation, but in vain. Severus had eaten about half of what was on his plate, excused himself, and made a beeline for his room, where he now had no hope of sleeping.

Resigning himself to that conclusion, he pushed the covers off, swung his legs over the edge of the bed, and reached for his tattered blue bathrobe, which he pulled on and tied as he made his way to the door.

The house was dead silent at this time of night, and not even the squeaking of a floorboard beneath his feet disrupted it. Moonlight streamed through the windows and provided just enough illumination to render the lighting of his wand unnecessary. He climbed down the two staircases separating the third floor (where his room could be found) from the ground level, padded across the carpet in the front hall, and stepped into the kitchen, across which the door to the basement was located. He had almost reached his destination when –

"Professor?"

In the very next instant, he was facing the opposite direction and pointing his wand at the owner of the voice that had startled him. He couldn't remember thinking the word "lumos," but he must have done, because a bed-headed and pajama-clad Hermione Granger was standing in a beam of light emanating from his wand.

He took in her short cotton nightgown (which exposed a great deal more of her thighs than Severus found strictly necessary) in less than a second, and immediately afterwards he steadfastly resolved to keep his eyes above her shoulders no matter what. Relaxing his stance, he let out his breath and said, somewhat irritably, "Miss Granger, what on earth are you doing down here?"

"Getting a glass of water," she answered, holding up the glass in her hand as evidence. "I couldn't sleep. You?"

"I couldn't sleep, either, obviously. I thought I might as well work."

"Oh," she replied, nodding. A beat passed, and when he failed to lower his wand she withdrew her own and cast a beam of light back at him. Giving him a quick once-over, she observed, "That's a good color on you."

"Don't be ridiculous," he quickly returned, feeling all the more self-conscious that someone was looking at him in his bathrobe, which had never, ever happened before.

"Very well, I won't pay you a compliment, if it makes you that uncomfortable." Her tone was entirely calm and unaffected, as though she was not at all bothered by seeing her former professor in a state of semi-undress, or even by the fact that he was seeing her in a similar condition. In truth, she was considerably less dressed than he – not that he ever would have admitted to noticing. "Would you like me to help you work?"

"I don't need you to help me every single time I crack open a book," he snapped, still cross from being caught off-guard, and by everything that had followed.

Unperturbed, she simply shrugged and began walking in his direction. "Suit yourself," she said as she passed him on her way out of the kitchen.

She had stepped into the front hall by the time Severus decided to call after her. "You can help me if you want to; I don't care." As soon as the words had left his mouth, he cringed at how clumsy and inelegant they sounded.

She quietly returned into the kitchen. "Is that as close to a request as I'm going to get?"

Sheer annoyance flared up in him. "Yes!" he shot back at her in a heated tone, the word landing somewhere between a growl and a hiss.

"Fine." She headed down to the basement without another word, and – because he was at a loss for anything else to do – he followed.