Ch 10

I Broke Me

Snape looked around, instantly recognizing the Gryffindor common room. The golden trio was sprawled on the floor by the grate. The two boys were engrossed in a game of wizard's chess. The boys lay on their stomachs side by side the board in front of them, rather than between the two. Hermione was wedged between the boys. He could not place her age, but he suspected fourth or fifth year, before the world began to crumble.

A book of some sort was open in her lap, but she paid it no mind. Her real attention was on her companions. They were chattering happily, occasionally addressing her, but the conversation seemed to be centered on food at the moment and Hermione looked uninterested. Snape noticed that Hermione had managed to get her head propped up on Weasley's shoulder and her legs thrown over Potter's back.

She was smiling softly, listening with half an ear to the talk, commenting once in awhile. He wondered, as he watched the three interact who she really would have chosen… had she been given the chance. He couldn't imagine her choosing one over the other. He was trapped here, in the web of her emotions. However, that was unnecessary; the easy camaraderie would have been obvious to a blind man. It was clear that this was a familiar thing for the three and neither male seemed to find it at all odd that their friend was using them as head and foot rests. It was strange. With the way she stuck up for Weasley and Potter he had always assumed she was romantically involved with one or the other, but her warm, fierce protectiveness of her friends now seemed better categorized as something close to maternal. It was contentment, and pride, and a kind of patient goodwill. They were her boys and she loved them, the both of them, always.

Walking further into the room he settled into one of the large armchairs watching the girl. Unsurprisingly, Weasley won the game. Snape smirked as he watched the boys coerce Hermione into a game with Harry. He watched her play to a protracted loss and laughed at the warm surge of satisfaction she felt watching Weasley congratulate a stunned, but pleased Potter.

As the memory came to a close he decided he had intruded into her 'good' memories far enough and once he had returned to her memory room simply removed the shrouds. In respect to her he did not view these. It was slow work, some shrouds were heavier than others, some resisted his influence, others were simply hard to find. The room was large and shadowed, veiled memories were nigh invisible in the inky blackness. Passing one cluster of veiled objects he passed ghost fingers over them revealing several objects, meaningless to him. One caught his eye a frame had been destroyed, ink poured over the image, the frame gouged and scratched…as if some spell had wiped it from her mind.

Yet another anomaly…one was too many, not a coincidence… he began to comb through her memory room, several defaced memories, equally well disguised were discovered. Satisfied, of the pattern he finished banishing the last of the Dementor induced shrouds.

Then he turned his attention to the few 'defaced memories.'

He could tell some sort of spell had obscured them from her mind, but felt no foreign magic. In a far corner of her room he found a bent and battered shackle. It was barely recognizable as a manacle at all except for a few misshapen links that could still be made out in the pile of crushed metal. He was hesitant to touch it. Of anything in this room, it looked the most likely to trigger another atrocious memory in her cell. However it was the most recently erased memory. He picked it up.

There was no reaction. Turning it in his mentally constructed hands he probed it with magic. Snape studied the object, it had been destroyed…but at one time it had been whole. The manner it had been obscured was crude… not the working of someone bent on truly erasing it from her mind. Just concealing it, beyond the point of recall both willing and forced.

In passing, he wondered if it was wise to perform magic while entrenched in her mind, but uttered the spell before he could further consider the consequences, "Catena Reparo."

The shackle, which he now recognized had been obliviated reshaped itself to the traditional shape and proceeded to pull him into the memory.

He was in the cell. Mentally, he cursed, looking unwillingly toward the spot where he knew Hermione would stand, no doubt in agony. To his vast relief she was alone. It was the most recent memory he had viewed… but still from her first year with Bellatrix. She was not yet fully riveted to the wall, though her arms had been immobilized through attachment to the ends of a long iron bar. Her neck and ankles were attached to the wall by shackles and he doubted she could move more than a half meter in all directions. He could see the evidence of wounds old and new healing. The familiar gag was in place and she sat against the wall, staring blankly forward. He stared at the girl, unable to comprehend what this memory might be. Slowly he approached studying her. She sat utterly still only the fingers of her right hand twitching periodically.

Her emotions were running rampant, pain, sadness, but most strongly a kind of grim triumph. Reaching out he pressed ghostly fingers to her temples. He needed to see her thoughts. The memory was not enough to understand.

Through her mind passed a dozen scenes, each passing too quickly for him to process their import. One by one, she Obliviated them, eradicating the memories from her mind. She was crying, yet he did not know why, and delving deeper into the memory he realized she herself no longer knew either… the memory was gone.

Snape was transfixed, a single memory played before her mind's eye just long enough for him to view. It had occurred here in this cell. She was calmly and methodically manipulating her mind. It was a kind of mental trigger. She had irrevocably linked feelings of pain and despair with a burning desire to survive. Sealed the bond in blood and magic. He watched as this too was Obliviated. Tears fell faster and her hand convulsed one more time as she Obliviated current her action. He retreated from her thoughts watching as she came out of her trance. She was confused. She did not understand what had happened. It was unspeakably sad to watch her wipe blankly at her tears with stiff fingers, staring around herself in confusion.

'Why am I crying?'

'What was I just doing?'

'Did I pass out?'

'Did I have a nightmare?'

Her beffuddled thoughts echoed in his mind even though the memory was fading out. The pressure of her mind against him was increasing and he realized he had been wandering her mind for longer than was advisable. He was tempted to stay, to restore her Obliviated memories, but the pressure in her mind was building. She wanted him out now.

He tried to resist her wanting to at least try to repair some of her Obliviated memories. As traumatic as this experience was proving he seriously doubted Hermione would ever willingly let him into her mind again. He was losing the battle, in part because he was not entrenched in a memory, and in part because she had ousted him once and now understood what was necessary. He almost reached out and latched onto a memory to hold himself in her mind. He came within a hair's breadth of grabbing what appeared to be a hammer, but was saved from that harrowing experience by sheer luck when she set a kind of mental hook into him and expelled him from her mind.

Again he flew back, his neck snapping painfully with the force he struck his chair. She too had been thrown away from him and lay on her side trembling and clutching her temples, tears leaking occasionally down cheeks, too pale.

Her short, sharp huffs were a staccato counterpart to his ragged, panting gasps.

Neither moved to speak though Snape did reach into his robes removing a light purple vial. She did not want to take it, but he forced limp fingers to close around the vial and she choked it down not even bothering to investigate what he prescribed. Almost immediately the splitting headache abated and she sighed, tears flowing faster as her mind cleared of the pained haze and she recalled what had happened clearly.

She did not know if despair or joy triggered the waterworks, but the tears did not subside, even when both of their breathing rates returned to more normal levels. It was too much, too quickly, she was overwhelmed, overloaded, and numbed.

"Hermione?" Snape ventured in a tone betraying more uncertainty than she had ever considered him capable of expressing.

She was shaking harder and shook her head in negation of the inane question he did not give voice to, "No, no I'm not alright. You fucked around in my head," She had not chosen the words to wound but when he flinched at her phrasing her eyes flashed a bitter triumph, "I'm more messed up now than before, little bits of…of…of…" tears of frustration and pain came faster, her mind unable to cope, "bits, bits of it are in my head. Why? Why in hell did I—"

A full blown fit of hysteria was brewing and Snape could see it coming like a tidal wave. Reaching out he caught the hands which scrabbled at her face as if she wanted to physically claw the thoughts out of her skull and pulled them away from her cheeks.

"Hermione!" he barked.

She instantly ceased.

"Stop," he continued in a lower, gentler voice, "Just stop, it's not all back yet. You won't find it like this. Come, visit a good memory, they are there for you now," he almost crooned.

His words triggered something and she cried harder her knees curling up to her body as she tugged weakly on her wrists, trying to free them from his grip.

"They're dead," she gritted out woodenly. Her voice was steady despite the saline drops making shiny tracts down her cheeks.

Her solemn proclamation explained her tears perfectly. Snape let her wrists slip from his grip. They were dead, and could offer her little comfort or peace. He watched her curl in on herself, as if by that simple act she might hold everything together. He saw the agony on her face for a moment before she cowered back, hiding from his searching gaze.

"How can I help you?" he finally uttered, he had seen too much of her pain, he could witness no more tonight.

"My mind is ripping apart at the seams…" she trailed off, then in a small voice whispered, "It hurts."

Snape reached out and gathered the woman into his arms. At first, she stiffened, but he held her tightly to him, preventing her first violent thrash from doing more than bruising his sternum. She refused to acknowledge the futility of it and twisted ineffectually in his iron grip.

"Tell me to release you," he murmured softly. She jerked, twisting in his arms catching him once in the gut with her elbow before he caught both wrists pinning them to her chest. When she said no word of protest, he leaned back into his chair cradling the woman in arms so unused to the task. It was not a soft embrace, but at the least she didn't have to keep giving herself that despairing self-hug. She struggled against him and he paid her little mind. It was absurdly simple to shift her in his arms trapping her so she could barely move to tremble. His left arm wrapped around slender shoulders keeping her wrists pinned to her chest, almost a prayerful attitude except for the white fisted hands. Her hip jabbed him sharply just below his ribs but he did not let up the pressure of his right arm about her midsection. She arched her body trying to buck out of his grip. He had her caged. Her lower extremities pinned between one muscled thigh and his strong chest. Their breath mingled, but her honeyed curls and the dark curtain of his hair concealed and gave privacy to faces made fleetingly open by shock and pain, compassion and regret.

Gradually, her tears slowed, and she ceased trembling. She was lying very still in his hold. Her taunt muscles began to relax and in return he loosened his firm grip on her hands, but did not release her fully. He removed the arm trapping her midsection and lowered his right foot back to the ground. When this shift did not trigger further struggle from her, he let her slide down into his lap. One hand freed he reached down resting his hand gently in her hair she shuddered at this somehow painfully intimate gesture and then relaxed accepting it. He pressed her face to his shoulder, stroking her hair gently, his roughened fingers catching in her silky, wild curls.

Neither spoke, he did not ask pardon for what he had seen. She did not curse him for knowing. It was done. No words of comfort or self condemnation passed their lips, he did not know them and she was too tired. His iron strength caging her so effectively, an embrace that spoke of strength and not softness. Instead it spoke of action and brought more comfort than any words. Finally released, she had no desire to leave his forced sanctuary. She had not really wanted to win free of his hold in the first place. It was fitting that by helping her he caused her pain and that his embrace was as hard and unyielding as it was warm. Were it otherwise, it would not be real.

The girl was beyond exhausted and eventually succumbed to fitful rest. Snape did not dare to remove her from his lap for fear of disturbing her well deserved escape from reality. A glance at a clock told him he had walked her memories for over five hours, he cringed internally to think of the pain he had caused spending so long in her mind. She was strong to be able to repel him despite such a prolonged session. It concerned him that his work was not yet done…

He ran a hundred scenarios, linking what he knew of her and his memories of that final year, trying to divine what she might have been so desperate to erase from her mind. It spoke of a nigh unbreakable strength of spirit to knowingly remove from her mind her reasons for survival. She must have truly feared Bellatrix would bring her before Voldemort… perhaps she had, Bellatrix knew bare enough Legilimency to get at surface thoughts, she could delve into an unprotected mind, but most any relatively capable Occlumens could repel her.

Hermione would have needed great confidence in her own ability to manipulate her mind. One wrong move or memory Obliviated out of sequence… at best she forgot her purpose and left memories that needed to be removed, at worst she wiped her memories fully, beyond hope of retrieval. He knew by how…relatively simple it had been for him to restore the memories she had always intended for retrieval to be possible. He doubted an intruder she was fighting off would have ever found the carefully obscured objects. Only because he had been given free rein to walk her mind had he noticed the defaced memories. Had she truly wanted to remove the memories, she would have completely destroyed even the traces of them.

Gently, he brushed the wild curls that had fallen across her face aside. Slowly, he tipped her chin, tucked protectively, defensively, in against her chest, up, supporting her head and neck more comfortably. Her cheeks still bore the tracts of tears, which he wiped away, studying her pale, still features. When he moved to cradle the curve of her delicate jaw and throat in his hand, feeling her pulse flutter against his palm, he froze.

What was he doing?

In all likelihood, he would kill or maim this strong, trusting, brilliant woman-child. And when he did she would look at him with those eyes. He had seen his victims look on him with hate, disgust, fear and finally emptiness... For the first time he feared that if he became much more involved he would not be able to endure the final message her eyes, honey gold to deep, deep brown, would hold for him.

Would it hurt as much to see that fragile, tentative trust, become cold, implacable hate in her eyes, after when they grew hazed and desperate...and blank, as it had when green, green eyes had suffered a similar transformation so long ago?

He let her rest till mid-afternoon when her dreams turned from restless to dark and her face spoke of shuttered agony and fear and his left leg was numb from mid thigh down. He saw now why he had not discovered it before this. She had trained her body to deal with pain by relaxing into it, and her body obeyed her dictates even in sleep. The only sign of her distress was in eyes that flicked erratically behind closed lids and a clenched jaw. But attuned to her pain as he was, having watched it seize her face and form demons behind her eyes both in memory and reality he recognized her unnatural stillness for what it was, the terrors of that cell and not deeper rest.

Reaching down he gently squeezed her shoulder. He was not completely surprised when she whimpered the action triggering ghost pain to seize her body, but it startled her, shook her from the rhythm of the dream. Her eyes flashed open and seized upon him, shadowed, but sharp, alert instantly to her position and, he saw in her dark eyes, how his position put her in danger. He retracted his hand quickly, watching her orient herself around his appendage too near her face, but no fear, simply awareness.

No fear… before he would have called it foolishness, empty, stupid, Gryffindor brashness. Now it seemed natural, where some allowed torture to make them terribly fragile, she had moved beyond that stage. She knew what there was to fear, and what was no longer worth fearing. He almost found the fact that he was not worth the effort of terror worthy of a smirk.

When he made no further moves Hermione sat up slowly, watching, always watching. Snape helped her ease herself out of his lap to stand. He looked only a short ways up to meet her eyes.

He began to speak but ceased when she made a short motion with her hand, "I know, it's not finished, but not now…" her voice caught slightly, sleep or stress it was hard to tell, "I can't."

Then she reached out her cool fingers touching his shoulder briefly before falling away, "Thank you," she breathed.

He inclined his head, accepting her inability to face another invasion of her mind. Rising he held her gaze, if she would give him no fear, he would return the honor. No pity shone in ebon dark, none fell from lips unaccustomed to such things.

"Come, eat, it will do you good."

"I'm not hungry," she said, not sure her stomach would take food, nausea stirred by the migraine increasing at the thought.

Severus smiled a strange smile, not so strange, as gentle, and she had never seen him do other than smirk, his eyes were far away and when his eyes turned back down to her they seemed almost warm.

"Yes, you are," he murmured in a similarly strange voice, "You haven't eaten since breakfast."

Confused by his attitude she nodded and allowed him to shadow her steps, ready to catch her at the first hint of faltering. It came soon enough, and she did not argue when he calmly carried her the rest of the way.

I hope you all enjoy a slightly softer side of Snape… poor dear he's getting sucked in… and he still thinks he can avoid it… well maybe he can, we'll see ^_^

Much love to my reviewers.