Chapter 7

gonna kill him…

…stop, Ron you'll…

what's wrong with her…

… feel his…

pain…dread…

think I'll die if he does…

In the dream, he was dying, and the girl was screaming. His pain was hers and hers was his, and their lives faded in unison.

Snape lay half-asleep in a haze of mint and jasmine, dim lights, and a clean, antiseptic smell. He was sore all over and covered in bandages. Weasley had a paltry repertoire of offensive spells, but he used them effectively. He groaned and winced. Madam Pomfrey was fluffing his pillow while he groggily protested.

"I'm fine, Poppy. Just let me sleep," Snape said.

"You need adequate neck support or you'll have a crick when you wake up. It is my duty to prevent forestallable medical ails. Now be patient while I adjust you." The matron reached behind his head with a hand on either side and fluffed his pillow.

"Was fine before," Snape complained, pressing his head into the elevated heap. "It's too high."

"Any lower and you'll snore."

"I don't snore."

"Because I've adjusted your pillow."

Snape resumed groaning and let the mediwitch fuss over him, secretly enjoying her attention. It took his mind off his suffering to pretend someone gave a damn about him, though he didn't delude himself enough to believe she'd dare touch him were she not getting paid.

"Excuse me, Poppy." The headmaster poked his head through the curtain around Snape's bed. "May I speak to Severus a moment?"

Snape tensed on seeing Dumbledore and gripped the sheet as the he came closer.

Madam Pomfrey performed her last fluff then brushed a strand of hair from Snape's exhausted face. "Very well, I'll give you five minutes. Don't rouse him too much, Albus. He needs his rest."

"I'll be gentle with him, Poppy. Promise."

Snape turned half-lidded eyes to Dumbledore. "Thanks for the rescue." He attempted a smirk, but it faded to weariness. "What brings you, Headmaster?"

Dumbledore interlocked his fingers. "I came to inform you of Ronald Weasley's fate."

"What for? I know you haven't expelled him, Albus."

Dumbledore nodded. "You are correct. Mr. Weasley will not be expelled, but he has been given a month of detentions. I hope you will be able to tolerate that decision."

Snape chuckled. "S'fine," he slurred. "Don't expect you to break your habit of protecting Gryffindors who try to murder me."

Dumbledore sighed deeply and patted Snape on the arm. "I know that you let yourself be beaten, Severus, and I ask that in the future you not allow yourself to be so gravely injured."

Snape's eyes drifted shut then opened again. "Best to let them…blow off steam…early on."

"Why did you not come to me, Severus?" asked Dumbledore. The old wizard sounded somewhat hurt.

"I didn't want you to know."

"Did you think I would misjudge you?"

Snape sighed his answer.

"Then you misjudge me, Severus. I am aware of Voldemort's penchant for cruelty. That he would cast a curse such as this is not surprising."

"Still…" Snape shook his head. "It's not something I wished you to know. You cannot help anyway. The curse is unbreakable."

"Are you certain?" Dumbledore asked.

"He said so. He said he would make me worse than…than what I despise. I would be despicable. And I am. He's done it. Or I always have been. But I liked your pretending."

"You are far from despicable, Severus."

Snape sighed again and closed his eyes.

Dumbledore shook his shoulder. "Before you nod off, I must inform you that I have organized a meeting of sorts to discuss the circumstances between you and Miss Granger. It should take place tomorrow morning, assuming Poppy lets you out of bed. Is that agreeable to you?"

Snape tried to force his eyes open, but his exhaustion was too great. "What choice do I have?" he said. Then his breathing took on a gentle, even hiss, and he fell asleep.

He felt the same tension as he used to in meetings of Voldemort's inner circle. This time, instead of a snake-faced Dark Lord and his avid supporters meeting in some dark, dank hiding place, it was a wizened school headmaster, his deputy, his school matron, and his Golden Trio gathered in the headmaster's office, the phoenix asleep on its perch taking the place of the Dark Lord's monstrous snake.

Beside Snape on his left sat the matron, fussing about his pallor and grumbling about the meeting's inconsiderate timing. On his right at the head of the table sat the headmaster, stroking his beard and not at all subtly glancing back and forth between him and Granger. The Golden Trio sat across from him with Potter by Dumbledore, Weasley in the middle, and Granger next to McGonagall, who sat opposite the headmaster.

From the looks on their faces, which weren't properly disgusted, McGonagall and Pomfrey didn't yet know what the meeting was about. Aside from that first glance, he kept his head down, not wanting to see the change in their eyes and the dissolution of any respect they might've had for him. The three students, on the other hand, looked properly outraged by his existence. All attendants to the meeting had realized instantly that it was a grave matter when the headmaster for once appeared in tasteful robes, sat in a simple armchair, and made no offers of lemony sweets. That gravity had set the tone. Now, Snape sat biting the inside of his mouth, waiting for the bombs to drop and mentally cursing Dumbledore for insisting this meeting take place.

"Thank you all for coming," said Dumbledore, clasping his hands over the table. "Although it should be a time of celebration, considering all we have witnessed and endured during the dark years past, I'm afraid there is a grave matter to discuss. To cut to the chase, it has recently come to my attention that, before his defeat, Voldemort placed a curse on Professor Snape and Miss Granger whose effects are rather…" He trailed off and started again. "The particulars are of a delicate nature. Suffice it to say, Professor Snape and Miss Granger must follow the curse's demands, lest they perish."

Pomfrey gasped. "What curse? What demands? I've sensed no such thing in my medical scans."

Severus bit his tongue as Dumbledore explained using a number of euphemisms and analogies.

"You're being awfully vague, Headmaster," said McGonagall. "Can you not be more precise?"

Dumbledore turned to Snape. "Severus would you please explain?"

Snape shifted in his seat and felt his newly healed muscles twinge with remnant soreness. He racked his brain for the appropriate words, words that explained but didn't tell more than they must. "Miss Granger and I are magically bound," he said. "The curse Voldemort cast requires our close proximity and repeated interaction. You needn't know more than that."

"What sort of interaction?" asked McGonagall. "We must know what we're up against."

"Not we," he said. "You have no part in this."

She frowned. "But, perhaps we can help. Perhaps Filius—"

"No!" he snapped. "No one else."

At Snape's reaction McGonagall raised a fierce brow. Snape looked sheepishly at his hands.

Madam Pomfrey's eyes widened with alarm. She turned to Snape beside her with too much concern and sympathy. "When did this happen, Severus?" she asked.

"The day Voldemort was killed," said Snape, avoiding her too kind eyes.

"And there is no way to break this curse?"

He shook his head.

"There is no specific countercurse as far as we currently know," said Dumbledore. "However, I have enlisted a cursebreaker to come and see how he might amend the situation. Mr. Weasley is one of the best in his field, not simply because of his ability, but because of his tenacity. He has assured me that he will exhaust all options to break the curse."

"Wait. You mean Bill?" said Weasley. "My brother's coming to Hogwarts?" He leaned back contentedly in his seat. "Well, I guess that makes me feel a bit better. If anyone can do it, he can."

"It can't be done," Snape said testily, unable to bear further silence while this idiocy was spoken so casually. "The curse was created by Voldemort to drive his victims insane. Anyone who thinks it can be broken by a mere cursebreaker with tenacity is already mad."

Weasley scowled at him. "You just don't want it broken."

"What is the curse exactly?" asked McGonagall, piercing Snape with scrutiny.

Snape turned his eyes downward again. "I don't know the name of the curse or the incantation, as I was indisposed during its casting," he said. "I only know the aftermath."

"I'm afraid I still do not understand, Severus," McGonagall said. "You must know something about it to have determined that you are indeed cursed. Neither you nor the headmaster has explained it very clearly at all. What are the specifics of the conditions binding you and Miss Granger? You speak of fulfilling demands, but you haven't said what those demands are. What precisely does fulfilling this curse entail?"

"It is a delicate topic, Minerva," said Dumbledore.

"As Miss Granger's head of house, I am entitled to specifics."

Dumbledore sighed. "As Severus has said, we do not know such details as the name or wording of the curse, but what we have gathered up to this point is that it requires its victims to remain in the same location and, to put it bluntly, it requires intercourse."

McGonagall started. "As in…"

"For fuck's sake, Minerva! Do you need a bloody diagram?" Snape shouted. "What the bloody fuck do you think it means, talking? It was so damned important that you all gather here to grill me about a curse that forces fucking conversations. Use bloody common sense!"

McGonagall fixed him with a look of tightlipped shock, her face wavering between outrage and pity. It settled on pity.

Snape sagged into his seat and bowed his head, covering his face with his hair. "Forgive me," he muttered.

Dumbledore cleared his throat. "As Severus has said, the curse requires its victims to engage in sexual intercourse at its bidding."

The explosion happened as Snape figured, as did the changes in the two women's eyes. He did not look at them again. He kept his eyes down and his hair in front of them as he answered their questions.

The meeting dragged on. For the third time, Snape detailed the sensations brought on by the curse and how he knew he must act to avoid death.

"The signal originates in the upper spine, between the shoulders. It begins as discomfort, then progresses to pain. Eventually, it affects the nerves and voluntary muscle function, at which point action must be taken."

"But can you be sure?" asked Pomfrey.

"I am certain," he said.

"How do you know all this, Professor Snape?" asked McGonagall, a knife's edge in her tone.

Snape scraped chalky gunk off the inside of his mouth with his dried-up tongue. "I-I just…know."

"You have claimed to know so little about this curse, and yet you are certain in this particular instance. Why?"

"Be-Because…" Snape wrung his hands together on his lap. "Because that is what…happened."

Pomfrey gasped beside him. "You mean you have already had relations?"

Thunder cracked. Snape snapped his eyes toward McGonagall. The air around her was dark and thick. Tendrils of magic whipped around her like a deadly aura.

"Severus Snape." Her voice reverberated with promises of pain. "Have you had sexual intercourse with Miss Granger?"

Snape shuddered like a child before his father's belt and gripped his chair arms with pale, twiggy fingers. After a long, tense hesitation with his heart and stomach punching into his ribs, he answered, "Yes."

McGonagall leapt from her seat and whipped her wand at him. He saw a red flash, then Dumbledore's arm shot out and a blocked whatever spell she had cast.

"With a student!" McGonagall yelled and sent another hex flying.

"Minerva, please calm yourself," said Dumbledore.

McGonagall turned vicious eyes to the elder wizard. "Did you not hear what he said, Headmaster?!"

"I did hear him, Professor McGonagall. And I heard as well the other details, including the fact that he was forced to do so by a curse that would have taken both his and Miss Granger's lives had he not."

McGonagall, with great effort, reined in her rage and sat down again.

"Severus." Dumbledore squeezed Snape's shoulder. "Can you not tell us how you know what it is that the curse would have you do?"

Snape's throat was closing. He tugged his collar and tried to inhale, but it seemed like his lungs were in a vice. He could feel everyone staring at him, hear them cursing him in his mind. He wished desperately to disappear. "As I recognize…hunger," he finally managed to say, "I recognize the curse's demands. I can't explain it any better."

"Have you anything to add, Hermione," asked Dumbledore.

The girl said nothing.

"I think it best for all to have openness regarding what you must do with Miss Granger, Severus. Would you please tell us how you have gone about accomplishing the task?"

Snape took another long pause to collect himself before he tried to answer. "There has only been one incident." He forced the words out like stones. "Miss Granger was…made unaware throughout the process."

Weasley made an incredulous sound. "How do we know Snape's not making this all up? This could be some sick plot to get Hermione. Dirty bastard."

"Mr. Weasley—"

"Let him answer, Dumbledore," McGonagall said, her ire still crackling.

Snape's insides were like a sun. All the moisture had dried up in his throat and left a charred crust that he couldn't clear away. "I feel the…urges…" he squeezed out, "as well as a sort of…instinct regarding h-how to…satisfy—"

"You fucking bastard!" Weasley shouted and reached over the table. Potter grabbed him by the shirt and dragged him back down.

"Mr. Weasley," Dumbledore firmly but calmly said, "if you cannot control yourself, we will continue without you."

"Listen to him talking about satisfying himself with Hermione! My girlfriend! Mine! He's the one who should control himself!"

Snape started to imagine a cold glass of firewhiskey sitting in his hand. He had none left in his quarters, but the house elves might have, and he could have some bottles owled to him in a day or two. "I meant that I must satisfy the curse's demands or else we will both be harmed." He crushed the imaginary glass. "I tried to resist," he said. "I-I would've…endured the discomfort, but when I tried to do so, Miss Granger began to have a seizure. The…instinct…urged me to act, or she would die." He swallowed a wad of spit and dared try for eye contact with the girl. "I-I did it to save—"

"Save your breath!" Granger yelled, her first words of the meeting.

Snape shrank back into himself and said no more.

"Won't you tell us your side, Hermione?" McGonagall's motherly tone gave no hint of her recent violence.

Granger cleared her throat then began to tell her version of events. "I was feeling sick all of a sudden," she said. "Pains up my spine and in my stomach. Madam Pomfrey couldn't cure me. Professor Snape came and got me from the hospital wing and said he had a potion that would help, but I had to go to his quarters to take it. I went to his quarters, and he had me look in a pensieve. Then he shoved a potion at me and said that the cure was us shagging and the potion would knock me out so I'd be insensible during the procedure." She sniffled a bit then continued. "I didn't want to, but…I felt so horrible. I let him talk me into it. I took the potion and woke up after he was done. I don't remember anything that happened, but I know it happened."

"Is Miss Granger's account true, Severus?" asked the deputy headmistress.

Snape softly answered, "Yes."

"You lured a student into your quarters and coerced her into sexual intercourse?" McGonagall sounded like a brewing storm.

"I didn't…coerce," said Snape. "I merely explained what had to be done."

"Had to be?"

"It would've killed us. I witnessed its power."

"Miss Granger, were you given freedom to choose how you would proceed?"

"I…he…" She trailed off and the room waited in silence for her answer. "He threatened me."

Snape's eyes bugged out. "What?"

McGonagall blocked him with her hand. "Threatened you how, Miss Granger?"

"He said he'd force me anyway if I didn't take it."

Snape sat up like he might leap across the table. "I never said—"

"You implied it!"

He stared at Granger for a moment then sat back without another word.

"Nothing to say, Professor Snape?" asked McGonagall, not hiding her disgust.

Snape's mouth trembled and his vision liquified. He ducked his face to hide behind his hair. "If Miss Granger believes I forced her, I obviously did a poor job reassuring her of her free will."

"What free will?" Granger said.

Snape didn't answer.

"All right. What's done is done," said Dumbledore. "Let us return to the main issue, which is how to keep you both alive. At present, I see no recourse besides allowing the curse to play out as long as it must."

Snape began to occlude his mind from that point. It was not the type of occlumency that blocked intrusions from other minds, but one that blocked his own thoughts from rising to consciousness. He dove through his thoughts into a pool of endless depth, sinking far from knowing and awareness, and fading from the light. He bit his tongue to gauge how deep he plunged, and when the pain became only a faint pressure, he stopped.

"As we now know the victims of this curse cannot be too far from each other," said Dumbledore, "I grant permission for both to remain at Hogwarts indefinitely. Miss Granger, if you so desire, I will arrange a position for you next term."

"Why did you take such a course of action, Severus?" McGonagall cut in. "Surely you could've consulted Madam Pomfrey or St. Mungo's or found a cursebreaker yourself."

Dumbledore raised a hand to stop her questions. "We are not here to judge, Minerva. Merely to understand the situation so that we can offer support. For both parties."

Snape squeezed his collar around his neck. The only support he wanted was a scaffold. No offer of the other kind was forthcoming anyway.

McGonagall spoke now to Granger. "I can't imagine this being easy for you, Hermione, regardless of your awareness during the ordeal. If you ever need to talk or want or need anything at all, don't hesitate to come to me."

"There is something I want," Granger said.

"What's that, my dear?"

"I want him fired."

Snape went statue still.

"She's right," said Weasley. "Snape's got to be fired. You can't have someone on staff shagging students between classes."

"That is not exactly an accurate description of the circumstances," said Dumbledore.

"What's more accurate then, lures them into his quarters then drugs them and rapes them?"

"This is a peculiar situation, you must realize—"

"Peculiar or not, I'm not taking lessons from a child rapist."

"That is a serious allegation, Mr. Weasley," Dumbledore said sternly. "I must point out that Miss Granger is legally an adult and, unless I am mistaken, has consented to the course of treatment, disagreeable though it undoubtedly is."

"Stop calling it a bloody treatment?" Granger yelled. "He bloody drugged me and ra—"

"I resign!" shouted Snape. "There. It's settled." He hunched forward, almost doubling over in his chair. His hair hung in sweaty ribbons over his pale skin, and he was visibly trembling.

Dumbledore frowned. "Severus…"

Snape shook his head. Pomfrey touched his arm and he jerked away.

"Very well," said the headmaster. "You will no longer be in charge of students. There will be a substitute for Defense, and Horace will be the Head of Slytherin house until further notice. As such, Severus, I would have you resume maintenance of the Hospital Wing's potion stocks."

Snape didn't acknowledge him.

"We should do something to make sure his conduct is appropriate," said Weasley. "Make him swear an oath not to do more than what will fulfil the curse."

Snape mechanically reached for his right arm and rolled up his sleeve.

Dumbledore stopped him before he could speak. "An oath on top of this kind of curse is too risky. It could prove a hindrance to any attempts to undermine it, as he could not vow to only fulfil the curse and then assist the breaking of it. It could put both lives in danger."

They discussed various ways to keep Snape in check and make sure he did not take advantage, but the ideas were either too dangerous or too invasive, and Granger had a fit when McGonagall suggested they be monitored.

"Who makes a spell like this?" Madam Pomfrey said when the talk had settled down again.

"Voldemort was fond of making spectacles of his victims," said Dumbledore. "A curse such as this is not beyond his warped imagination."

"You sure it was him that made it?" said Weasley. "We know how Snape has a knack for making nasty curses."

"What do you mean by this, Mr. Weasley?" asked McGonagall.

"Sectumsempra ring a bell? Bloody curse that killed Colin Creevey. Snape made it. Who's to say he didn't make this one too?"

"Is that true Severus?"

Snape opened his mouth and struggled to get words out.

Dumbledore saved him the trouble. "Regardless of the curse's inventor, Severus assuredly did not cast it on himself."

"No, he just passed it on to Voldemort to curse my girlfriend to fuck him. Is that how your master rewarded you Death Eaters? Is that what you wanted with Harry's mother?"

Potter slammed a hand on the desk. "You're bloody mad bringing my mum into this!"

"He's not denying it," Ron yelled back.

Snape stood up with a mumbled "Excuse me, Headmaster" and headed for the door while the argument raged behind him. Dumbledore called him back, but he didn't turn around. He rushed outside and scrambled down the spiral staircase, shoved past the gargoyle into the hallway, and vomited onto the floor. A nearby portrait shrieked in disgust. He quickly cleaned up the mess and composed himself in two deep breaths. Then scowling deeply, he pointed his wand at the painted witness. "If you ever speak of this, I will carve out your mouth."

The portrait woman covered her mouth with dainty hands and nodded vigorously. Snape tucked his wand back up his sleeve, straightened his clothes, and then headed to his lab.