A/N: I will be updating this, though it will be sporadic. The Five Winters is still my priority. However, once that is complete, updates to this story will become more regular.
I'm currently writing the final chapter and epilogue of The Five Winters. It is nerve-wracking work. Jen saved the day by sending this chapter in, which is now ready to be posted. All hail the amazing beta. ;) I hope you enjoy this chapter.
Please review!
Hermione was visited the very same day she'd received her letter from Harry by Lucius Malfoy. She was startled by a knock at the door, one that was sharper and more formal than the demanding, insistent knocks of her lover.
"Who is it?" she'd called, hurrying to make herself presentable.
"It is I, Lucius Malfoy," came the familiar voice from the other side of the door. "I come with a request from Lord Snape."
"Just a moment," Hermione said, pulling her tokuemon close together and retying the sash before sliding the door open just enough to slip out and shut it neatly behind her. She looked up at the blond man, whose cold grey eyes were staring down at her with a kind of paradoxical frantic impassivity. "What can I do for you, Sir?"
Lucius brought a hand to rub his tired face, creased slightly with frown lines he hadn't bothered to magick away. "Severus was injured thirteen days ago in a confrontation of sorts. He has been torturing the healers assigned to him and asking for you since he awoke. I have agreed to bring you to him."
"Of course," Hermione said, hurriedly opening the door. "Just give me a moment to get my things together."
"Can't I—?"
"No man but Severus is allowed in here," Hermione said firmly as she shut the door behind her.
Injured. Harry had insinuated that it was an eye wound. If Snape was giving the healers a hard time, perhaps she should bring something with her—he might very well be giving them difficulty on the grounds that he thought them incompetent, in which case she would be the obvious choice…
Stalking over to her new cabinet, which she'd bought with some of the money Snape had given her from the Wereguard Potion, she conjured herself a small bag and began pulling out several corked phials.
~o~O~o~
The Lord's Manor was well-known throughout the Wizarding World. Hidden and protected by more spells than were ever possibly placed on Number Twelve Grimmauld Place, with Fidelius Charm to boot, the only reason anyone knew of its existence was because Snape's Officers were allowed limited access to it. The West side of the house was free for them to roam, but the East side was hidden by a secondary Fidelius. If you looked for the kitchen on the East side while still on the West and had not been made privy to it, you would never find the door.
It looked as though it had been based off of Malfoy Manor and twisted into its more gothic, foreboding counterpart. There were no white peacocks, but if you were lucky—or unlucky, come to think of it—you might find a black thestral or two grazing near the front gates, blank eyes staring out at you from the darkness.
Lucius had checked her bags and her person for anything potentially harmful to his lord, blindfolded her, magically sealed her eyes shut should she care to see through the fabric, and had brought her through the Fidelius charm on the West Half. She stumbled down the halls, trying very hard not to bump into the man guiding her at arms length across the halls, and her hip bumped painfully into the corner of a sharp glass-topped table at some point.
When Lucius finally stopped her, allowing her to take the blindfold off and removing the Sealing Spell on her sight, she realized she was in a room with no doors.
No. That wasn't right. There were doors, but she could not see them. Lucius had done something to make her privy only to the room in which he had taken her. She could not leave until he designated to lead her out the same way he had brought her in.
The second thing she registered was that they must be in a dining room. The wooden table in the centre of the room was long, and there were several chairs.
And at the head of the table sat the most irritable man in existence, though his back was turned to her. He was leaning back in his chair, which had been pushed out from the table, and three healers stood alternatively on either side of him. He looked well, dressed in his usual black trousers and white shirt, and Hermione would have thought there was nothing wrong if it were not for the bandage circling his head.
"Sir—" One man began, holding his hands up placatingly. "If you don't let us near you, we can't help—"
"I don't want your help, you pathetically incompetent dimwit." Somehow, Snape's temper seemed to retain its full capacity for rage, though his voice was noticeably made hoarser than usual from pain.
"We need—"
"What I need," Snape snarled, causing the healer to cower in the face of his rage, "is for you three useless imbeciles to get out—now."
"But Sir—"
"Lucius," Snape snapped, turning around awkwardly in his chair.
Before Lucius could say anything, Hermione had stepped forward, moving quietly behind him and placing her hand on the left side of his face, allowing her fingertips to brush against the black bangs that swung free of the bandage wrapped around his head—
He startled, his head jerking to the other side as though he'd been struck—and he actually moaned at the sudden movement, which had no doubt caused him untold dizziness and pain in his current condition—but when the tip of Hermione's fingers came into the corner of his sight of his still-operating eye, he slowly relaxed into her grip. He said not a word, but for a moment it seemed as though he had forgotten that there were other people in the room as he openly leaned into Hermione's gentle touch, pressing his cheek against her cool fingers. His other eye fluttered close, though whether in a mix of dizziness, pain, or relief, Hermione was not certain.
Hermione's gaze travelled over the three healers critically, observing the traces of blue along one man's jaw, the bags under their eyes, and a yellowish-purple bruise that was peeking out the collar of the second man's robes. It looked as though today hadn't been the first time Snape had lost his temper with them, and she felt a bit of pity for them, being forced to attempt to treat a man who wanted nothing more than to have them figuratively thrown off the Astronomy Tower. She had little doubt that they'd been pulled from St. Mungo's and brought here with little knowledge as to what they were being asked to do beforehand. It was something she could distinctly see Snape and Malfoy doing in this situation.
Hermione pulled her bag off her shoulder and set it on the table, pulling her hand away from Snape's face to empty the contents out onto the table. She heard him growl in aggravation at the loss of contact.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Lucius smirking at the display.
"Sakura." Snape's voice, which had been loud enough to send the healer cowering, had softened into a tone of near-endearment. His head leaned forwards, his visible eye shut tightly as though fighting off pain. "I have the most painful headache I've experienced in nearly half a decade. What are you doing here?"
"Lucius sent for me," Hermione said, gesturing at the blond man still standing behind her. Snape's neck turned painfully in the direction of his friend. "I brought some things that might help."
"You're certain to make more progress than the dunderheads we have here," Snape said, sneering disdainfully at the three healers who had retreated to the far end of the room and were standing there fearfully.
"I need to take the bandage off," Hermione told him, her hands already working on the blood-caked linen. Why hadn't the healers bothered to use a Cleaning Charm on it? "Hold still."
Snape winced, but only pulled away slightly as her fingers gently loosened the cloth from his skin before she pulled out her wand and removed them entirely. It disappeared without a sound, and Hermione was faced with the result of Harry's work.
It was undoubtedly Sectumsempra. No other spell she knew of—or that Harry knew of, for that matter—could be the cause. His eye had been sliced up in the corner, causing an oozing red welt to run from temple to jaw. Blood and tears seemed to leak out simultaneously from the juncture where his eye met the cut, and it fluttered and twitched in obvious pain as it was exposed to the open air. Harry had gotten a direct hit onto his face with the same spell that had incapacitated his eye the first time around.
"Forgive me for asking," Hermione said, as she ran a finger lightly over the blood oozing out of the wound, "but how has Potter managed to get through your defence twice now? You're a very skilled wizard—"
"The first time was the same dumb luck Potter has had with him since he stepped into Hogwarts," Snape snarled. "The second time—this time around—he ambushed me on my blind side."
"Disillusionment Charm?" Hermione asked casually as she pulled out a small bottle containing the Essence of Dittany.
"No." He winced as Hermione applied the dittany to the cut running vertically along his face. Hermione had never known him to be so expressive or vulnerable in the face of adversity, and she suspected it was a combination of the pain and the fact that Lucius would later be Obliviating the three healers present that allowed him to be open with her. "Potter has an invisibility cloak that he keeps with him at all times."
"Where were you?" Hermione watched as the dittany began to take effect, slowly smoothing out the worst edges of the wound. The transparent, yellow discharge mixed in with the blood that Hermione had been clearing away with a conjured towel slowly ceased. Deciding that Harry would likely answer that question for her, she instead added sharply, "Nevermind that." Applying more dittany, she continued, "If we're lucky, the dittany may keep the scarring—"
"Minimal, I know."
"Why didn't you use dittany the moment you got back?"
Snape paused, and then answered sourly, "Lucius had to drag my unconscious body back here." He glanced at his friend, who was determinedly studying his fingernails. "Good friend though he is, he is not as well versed in the healing properties of certain plants as I am—something that might have been easily remedied had he ever bothered to actually read his copy of One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi when he was a student at Hogwarts." Hermione couldn't help giggle at that, despite the situation. "He gave me healing potions, but as you can probably guess, they were ineffectual."
"So then you called them in here?" Hermione asked, addressing her question to Lucius while she gestured at the three healers in question.
"It was the best I could do under the circumstances," Lucius said, glancing up momentarily from his fingers to look at her with impassive, cold grey eyes. "When he awoke, we all thought he was delirious when he started asking for you—had I known otherwise, I would have brought you in sooner."
Hermione nodded and continued to apply copious amounts of dittany while simultaneously wiping away the still-present gunk oozing out of the wound. Heal it, but keep it clean. That was a lesson she'd learned while hunting down Horcruxes with Harry and Ron. And what a valuable lesson it was now.
She motioned one of the healers forward, who approached cautiously, and stared down at Snape warily once he was within range of being bodily threatened by a man who should otherwise have been incapacitated. She felt Snape tense, but he merely sneered discouragingly at the man.
"Can you tell me if you think this is going to scar permanently?" Hermione asked him conversationally as she continued to work.
The man took a step back as a cautionary measure, wringing his hands together in a pitiful manner that reminded her almost of Dobby, back when he had been a Malfoy elf. "I can't say for certain—"
"Your best guess is all I'm asking for," Hermione told him.
He continued to wring his hands, his gaze darting between Hermione, Snape, and then Lucius. "I—if we had thought to apply dittany earlier, we might have prevented any scarring altogether. The wound refused to close on its own, which means that using dittany now will probably heal it better than if we had found another means of—of sealing it. But I can almost guarantee that there will be scarring, and he could very well become permanently blind in his left eye."
Hermione nodded. "And bandages? Should I replace them?"
The healer glanced back miserably at his two companions before responding. "I would keep them on at night, but take them off during the day provided—provided he doesn't go outside or expose the cut to unsterilized environments."
"And how long will it take for him to fully recover?"
"Well—with magic, of course, the natural—the natural healing time will be shortened considerably—"
"Just spit it out," Snape snapped, loosing patience.
"A week, Sir." That said, the man quickly backed away, retreating to the wall to join his companions.
"Lucius," Snape said, "it would appear I may very well end up missing your party."
"Doubtful."
Snape sneered. "Well, Sakura?"
"It shouldn't take more than half an hour to heal the cut," Hermione said, observing the line that marked his face growing thinner and less prominent. "But he's right when he said it would take about a week to fully recover—I expect this is the cause of what I assume to be a splitting headache."
"I just want to sleep," Snape muttered, his head leaning back against the chair.
"We could put you back to bed," Lucius suggested.
"No." Snape's eyes closed. "I want Sakura to take me back to her room at the Magic Eye."
"But it's unguarded!" Lucius said, and Hermione watched genuine concern cross his face. She winced as she watched the beginning of a brewing argument. "It has no protection at all—"
"I am probably more vulnerable here than anywhere else!" Snape snarled at him. "My officers are well aware of my weakness—even if they can not turn on me, they may very well find a loophole to take advantage of. Sakura has decent wards on her rooms designed to keep other people out—no one will think to look there."
"You're not thinking clearly," Lucius replied stoutly. "As long as you don't leave the West Half, no one else can get here."
"Lucius—" Snape sneered.
Hermione interrupted. "He's right," she admitted. "My wards are nothing like yours. You'd be better off staying here."
"I'd be better off staying here if I was being looked after by someone even remotely competent."
Hermione looked at Lucius helplessly, who grasped her support gratefully and intervened;
"Sakura can stay here." His face suddenly took on a playful, almost Slytherinesque smirk of mischief. "In the same room, if you like."
Snape was obstinate. "No."
Hermione crossed her arms firmly. "I'm not going to drag you back to the Magic Eye."
"And if I order you to?"
"I'll ignore it on the grounds that you're injured, delirious, and also possibly quite feverish—" she ticked off her points on her fingers as Lucius began rummaging through the contents of her bag.
"You can't disobey a direct order," Snape hedged.
Hermione glared at him squarely in the eye. "If you order me to take you to the Magic Eye, I will refuse. If that's grounds for dismissal, then so be it. But I won't be responsible for putting you in a more vulnerable position than you already are." Lucius offered her a bottle of purple potion with a distinctly milk-like consistency, to which she responded by summoning a black mug and pouring out a dose of the potion into. She handed it to Snape, who glared down at it, as though it were poison.
"Take your medicine," Hermione snapped as she continued applying the dittany.
Snape brought the potion to his lips and took several sips, frowning at the taste. "What did you give me?"
"I thought you'd be able to recognize it," Hermione said, placing a hand on the bottom of the mug and tilting it up just a bit more, causing the potion within to pour into his mouth. He licked his lips contemplatively as she took the mug and set it back down on the table.
"It must be the headache, but I can't think of it—" Snape's eyes closed and he leaned his head back, grimacing. "It hurts to think."
"That doesn't stop you from arguing."
"It doesn't require much thinking."
"Clearly," Hermione said, sharing a grin of amusement with Lucius. "I suppose you'll figure it out soon enough."
His eye—his uninjured one—suddenly snapped open in rage, but almost instantly closed half-way as the potion began to take effect.
"Sleeping Draught," he slurred.
Hermione shook her head as she watched his eyes close completely.
"Dreamless Sleep," she said, handing the bottle back to Lucius, who placed it back in her bag. "It is, and I quote, 'a potion used induce dreamless sleep in the drinker and aid recuperation by speeding up the process.'" She and Lucius exchanged identical grins of relative goodwill. "If you can't even recognize a simple potion, then there's no way we're letting you give the orders around here."
"Very Slytherin of you, my dear," Lucius said as he pressed a hand to his friend's neck, to check that his pulse was still strong. Snape was out cold, head lolling slightly to the side against the back of his chair.
"It was your idea, Sir."
"Thank you for going along with it."
"He's going to be furious when he wakes up, I expect," Hermione said as she brushed a lock of stray hair out of Snape's face.
"If you're done with them," Lucius said, pointing at the three cowering mice in the corner with his cane-disguised wand, "I can properly Obliviate them and send them back to St. Mungo's."
"I think we're done with them for now," Hermione said, turning to look at them. "I don't think we'll need them after this."
Lucius nodded, and then his expression grew into a wide, near-malicious smile.
"Shall I show you to his room?"
~o~O~o~
When Snape awoke, groggy and tired, he pressed his face against the pillow, hoping to fall back asleep. His headache had dissipated, probably the work of a Pain-Relief Potion, for which he was largely thankful. His left eye weighed heavily, as though it had been glued shut, and he felt a stab of misery and rage course through him at the fact that he could very well end up being blinded in his left eye for life.
He adjusted his arm where it was draped around something lumpy, sleepily identifying it as a pillow before he pressed his face back into the sheets once more. The bandages around his eye thankfully had repelling charms on them that prevented them from being mashed into the mattress while he slept, something he would have to thank Sakura for later.
Sakura. She had disobeyed a direct order from him. What was he to do with her now?
The pillow under him suddenly shifted, letting out a muffled noise of surprise, and he realized a bit too late that it wasn't a pillow. He tightened his grip around it, his arms pinning the woman beneath him with the help of his weight. She continued to struggle, and he thought he heard a muted "Let go, Severus!" but he merely growled in response, holding her in place until she ceased moving.
"You shouldn't have disobeyed me, Sakura," he said, burying his face in the crook of her neck. It was warm, soft, and comfortable. She wasn't wearing anything except, perhaps, some underwear. She never slept with a bra. Why couldn't his pillow be half as useful as she was?
"You weren't even coherent enough to identify a simple Dreamless Sleep Potion," was Sakura's muffled reply, as her face was pressed into the mattress. "What makes you think I would have been so careless as to drag you, half-delirious, to a place that would only make you more open to attack?"
"You still disobeyed me." His arms had finally wormed their way around her belly and he tightened his grip, severely constricting her movements. He thought he detected a note of panic in her heartbeat, but it very well could have been something else. Arousal, perhaps, or excitement. This wasn't the first time he'd done something similar to this. But still, he was certain there was an underlying note of panic about her as she realized that she couldn't escape. Lighter than most men though he was, he was still physically stronger than she could ever hope to be.
"I had a brain," she said, moving her face to the side so that she could look at him. "Yours had apparently gone on sabbatical." Choosing her words carefully, it seemed, she continued, "Mr. Malfoy agreed with me that taking you to the Magic Eye was about the worse thing we could do for you. Or anywhere else, for that matter." Attempting to inject humour into the situation, she added, "Except, perhaps, Australia. I hear the seaside is quite nice."
"I still don't know what to do with you." Damn it, his head was starting to hurt again.
"Releasing me, I expect, would be the intelligent thing to do."
"Why?" he countered.
"Because it's obvious to me that you need another Pain-Relief Potion," she answered, twisting her head around the other way. "And I need to check your bandages."
He grunted at this, but relented, loosening his hold on her. She wriggled out from underneath him and held her hand to his face, checking him for any increase in temperature, before sliding off the bed and leaving to retrieve his potions.
He began picking at the bandages wrapped tightly around his head, wanting them off as soon as possible. They were tight—too tight, in his opinion—and he was certain that if he kept them on for much longer, they would strangle his skull. It certainly felt that way.
Sakura returned a moment later, setting the potion down and gripping his wrist forcefully to stop him from continuing his assault on the bandages.
"Idiot." She handed him the Pain-Relief Potion, uncorking it first. "Couldn't you have simply waited for me?"
"Don't call me an idiot," he snapped, downing the potion in six measured gulps. He tossed the bottle aside, where it clattered messily on the nightstand.
Sakura drew herself up in a way that reminded him disturbingly of Poppy Pomfrey—or perhaps Hermione Granger, on those few instances he'd caught her berating Potter and Weasley. "You may be the Lord of Britain, Severus, but you are a man and therefore still an idiot."
"I am not following your logic."
"I wouldn't expect you to." She began picking at the bandages herself, loosening them with a tap of her wand before pulling them off gently.
"I do not appreciate being mocked," he growled, a feeling of frustration and rage infusing him. How dare she act so flippant—she was never this impetuous when he was healthy! Not even after sex, which, he had to admit, was when he was most inclined to let her get away with things he would normally never tolerate. "Don't forget who and where you are, Sakura."
With the view his one working eye afforded him, it seemed to him that Sakura was looking at him contemplatively for a moment. Then the spark that had lit her eyes—something he had quantified as being spirited and not quite tamed, a quality he secretly appreciated in her—died like a candle flame smothered.
"My apologies." He suspected she had been about to tack "sir" at the end, but knew better than to be deliberately provocative when he was in this sort of snit. She silently reapplied his bandages, cleaned up the bottle he had tossed aside, setting it upright, and moved to stand next to the doorway. She didn't utter another word until she had finished.
"Am I dismissed?" she asked stiffly, one hand on the doorknob.
Severus's eyes glittered angrily, and he felt rage boiling from some deep, embittered part of his chest.
"Yes." He leaned back into the bed. "Go talk to Lucius on your way out."
~o~O~o~
"I wouldn't be too worried," Lucius told her, lazily blasting the roses in the garden of the mansion. Every time a rosebud fell to the ground, another immediately grew in its place. Hermione suspected Snape had put those plants there as a stress-relief outlet. She recalled seeing him blasting rosebushes out of the way during the Yule Ball in her fourth year. "He's quite intolerable when injured. As soon as he recovers, he'll no doubt visit you at the Magic Eye, expecting to start whatever research project he's pulled out of our backlogged schedule."
"I don't understand how Potter got the upper hand on him," Hermione said, inflecting her voice with a tone of worry. "He's such a powerful wizard."
"Potter got lucky, as Potter does," Lucius responded, his expression sneeringly disdainful. "And as you've probably guessed, or been informed, Severus has a blind spot to his left."
Hermione bit her lower lip, looking worried.
Lucius hesitated, and then placed a hand on her shoulder.
"Potter used Sectumsempra on him," he told her. "Under any other circumstances, he would have been scarred permanently. As it is, it'll only take him a week to recover. You did better than I would have given you credit for."
Hermione gave a short bow of acknowledgement. "Thank you, sir."
"In the meantime, you're welcome to stay," Lucius said, blasting another rosebush out of his way. The stump shuddered, and then the plant sprouted back anew. "Or you could leave and return to the teahouse."
Hermione gazed thoughtfully into the distance. "I have to take care of my cat."
"The teahouse it is," Lucius said, lazily flicking his wand in the direction of the house. "Go on inside—I shall join you shortly."
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~Anubis