TWELVE: The Pensieve
Hermione was in stitches. She could barely gasp for breath through her laughter. Every time she thought she might be winding down, she remembered a particular turn of phrase—interfering bastard or chop her into bits—and she was off again, tears of mirth squeezing from her eyes. She had never in a thousand years thought that Severus could be so funny. Brave, certainly—witty, absolutely—but funny. The absurdity of it.
"You'll give yourself an aneurysm," he called to her from his sitting room; his footsteps drew closer.
By the time he opened the door, she had managed to pull herself upright against the claw-footed bathtub, but she was still doubled over, clutching her stomach.
"Can't help it," she choked out through giggles. "I wish I could have seen the look on her face!" She managed to straighten up, though the cramp in her stomach was now of incredible magnitude.
"It was...displeased," he replied, "though rather more so when I mentioned chopping you to bits."
The laughter started again, and his smirk grew larger than she'd ever seen it; the corners of his eyes even crinkled. He looked so warm like that, with real feeling in the curve of his mouth, the dark of his eyes. She wondered when she'd last felt so terribly, wonderfully happy.
"It's no less than she deserved," she finally rasped out, wiping her eyes. "A Masquerade Ball. I'd forgotten all about it. What in Godric's wild moor is she thinking?"
"Dumbledore's portrait is doing some whispering in her ear," he said. She followed him back out to the sitting room. "He always did want to try that. I always talked him out of it."
"No event that brings students together in an opportunity to get pissed off of whatever a sneaky seventh-year Slytherin spiked the punch with is a good thing," Hermione scoffed.
He snorted. "You're not fond of events such as these, then."
"No," she said, more sharply than she'd intended. "I was put off the institution very quickly during my fourth year."
He moved to the Pensieve and probed the silvery substance inside it with his wand. "Did this incident have anything to do with it?"
She joined him at the table. The scene brewing in the surface of the Pensieve—much resembling a Muggle television, now—was familiar; the viewer moved steadily closer to the conversation taking place at a table in the Great Hall. Couples were dancing out on the floor, but she recognized herself, walking to where Harry and Ron sat. It was a near thing, though; she had never truly thought on how much her features had changed in the last decade. She looked very much a teenager.
"Can we go inside?" she asked. "I've never experienced a Pensieve before. I was always jealous of Harry, but they're rather hard to come by, and..."
Without a word of complaint, his hand came to rest on her elbow. "Bend forward until your face touches the surface; you'll fall through. There's more you should see."
A small pit formed in the centre of her stomach at the dire implications of his tone. She pushed back the dread, focusing instead on the delight of replaying an old memory like a film. She leaned forward until the cool liquid touched her nose. Immediately, she fell, Severus bumping along at her side. They landed lightly, as though their bodies had ceased to weigh a thing.
"You're there," she said wonderingly: ten years younger, Severus lurked in a shadowy corner near the table where Harry and Ron sat. Taking a glance back at the present Severus, however, she concluded that he looked decidedly younger now. His past visage was sallow, haggard, and she had not imagined the greasy build-up in his hair during her younger days. "God," she whispered, taking in his hollowed eyes and automatically drifting closer. "Severus...you look terrible."
His bark of a laugh startled her; it lacked any humour at all and chilled her to the bone.
"The Dark Mark burned deeper and darker every day," he said. "Dumbledore sought to prevent the impossible, but I knew that he would fail. And I knew that soon, the Dark Lord would rise again, and I would be a puppet for not just one man, but two—if I survived the summoning. I was contemplating many...regrets...on this night. But look." He nodded toward the table. "You'll miss the show."
"Hi," Harry Potter's voice piped from nearby, and she turned automatically toward her friend.
"It's hot, isn't it?" the Hermione in the periwinkle dress robes asked the other two, and for a moment, she flushed with pleasure at the memory of the first half of that dance: the looks of shock on every face, the victory in being on the arm of Viktor Krum, the way she had felt like just any other girl, having a good time at a dance with a date...
"Viktor's just gone to get some drinks."
"Cue typical Weasley jealousy," she muttered under her breath.
Ron was glaring at her. "Viktor?" he demanded. "Hasn't he asked you to call him Vicky yet?"
Hermione-of-the-good-mood didn't take the bait. "What's up with you?" she asked, obviously unconcerned.
But the surliness around Ron was bound to reach out and ensnare her soon. The scene turned ugly quickly, and Hermione fidgeted while her teenage self blurted out, "If you really want to know, he—he said he'd been coming up to the library every day to try and talk to me, but he hadn't been able to pluck up the courage!"
"Yeah, well—that's his story," Ron sneered.
"There," Severus murmured, and the room around them paused, the look of hurt on her face frozen, the snarl on Ron's lips captured.
"I didn't believe it myself, you know," she told him sadly as they walked toward the table. "I reckon that's why what Ron said hurt so much. Viktor Krum, International Quidditch Sensation, wanted to take me to the Yule Ball." She chuckled. "I was sure Malfoy had put him up to it, but he was quite sincere."
She turned to look at the Severus standing in the shadows, and saw the strangest thing on his face. Pity. Sympathy, even.
She turned back to stare incredulously at present-day Severus. "You...felt sorry...for me?"
His bony shoulders lifted in a shrug. "Much as I hated it, you were the cleverest witch of your age. It seemed a pity that you were surrounded by fools who could scarcely hold a candle to your brilliance, who only impressed upon you how different you were from them, and you, however subconsciously, grew to take different to mean wrong..."
She continued to stare at him, barely registering the compliment. "You...you miserable...You identified with me, and all you could do was make my life more miserable?"
"It was unfair," he agreed. "But you appreciate my situation." He gestured to his past self. "By the time I had managed to look past the reek of Potter around you, it was too late. My behaviour could not change. Any sympathy would have made it back to the Dark Lord's ears, and Dumbledore very much needed me alive long after he returned."
Her stomach twisted. She moved closer to the Severus—Snape—in the shadows, staring up into the face of the man she had once loathed.
"You look so tired," she whispered. She looked back to him. "You look rather younger now, if you don't mind my saying so. And much healthier. The dungeons were truly terrible to you."
He grimaced. "Not nearly as terrible as I was to myself."
His discomfort was palpable as he watched her look at the Snape of the memory. He flicked his wand, and the scene dissolved and changed, reforming. Hermione recognized her first Potions class; her hand was in the air as Snape berated Harry. She frowned, loathe to be reminded of the humiliation.
"As you once were. Terribly eager to prove yourself. Very knowledgeable, if not particularly creative." She shot him a look, but his tone was musing rather than scathing. "There is little difference between this..." He waved his wand again, and the scene contorted around them. "...and this."
She was a third-year, and she had spoken out of turn while he substituted for Professor Lupin. She was staring at the ground, her eyes full of tears as he insulted her.
"Or this," he continued.
She was a sixth-year, and she had just mastered a non-verbal spell. She looked around, beaming, expecting praise or house points, and Severus merely swept by with a scowl.
"But then," he said, his voice quiet, "we have a change."
She sat in his N.E.W.T. level Defence class, head down, scribbling notes. When he questioned the room, she didn't put her hand up. She sat amongst a sea of other faces, not drawing attention to herself. He hadn't baited her at all during that year; he had scarcely even looked at her.
"And I don't believe you needed so much time in the library," he added.
Her heart hammered. She remembered this. It had been the first time Severus had said so much as a word to her since she had saved his life.
It was past curfew, and Hermione sat at a table near the window, her head down on the book that she had been reading an hour before. Parchment, quills, ink, and various other tomes were scattered around her. She flinched to look at herself; her hair was tangled and bushy, standing nearly on end, and she looked unusually pale.
Severus entered the library, no doubt patrolling for wrongdoers, and noticed her lamp immediately. Scowling, he swept toward her table, a thunderous look on his face. She followed him, drawing closer to the scene.
She was muttering in her sleep; there were tears on her cheeks, trickling down toward the book her head rested on. "No," her voice croaked suddenly, and Severus paused. "Please, Professor...I'll get you to the castle...almost there...don't die...please, don't die..."
Hermione flinched. The broken desperation in her voice reminded her of that terrible night. He could hardly have been in doubt about whom or what she was dreaming, and it seemed to give him pause. She moved closer, the better to see his face and the emotions there. Present-day Severus did not move to stop her.
Pain. Anger. Pity. Annoyance. Regret. His eyes stared at the sleeping girl before him, and he both hated her and felt for her, but he roused himself from his contemplations and the cold mask swept back into place on his features. She shivered. His eyes were a flat, cold black, a winter night without stars.
"Miss Granger," he said sharply.
Immediately, Hermione jerked awake. Her hand flew to her wand, already levelling it at his chest, a curse on her lips, but he was faster.
"Expelliarmus!"
Her wand soared out of her hand and into his, and he stood scowling as she scrambled to her feet, breathing hard and fast.
"Professor," she said shakily, rubbing the cuff of her robes over her cheek. "I—I'm so sorry—"
"It is past curfew and you nearly just attacked a teacher," he hissed. "I suggest that you return to your common room before any other unfortunate events occur. Fifty points from Gryffindor."
He set her wand down on the table much harder than necessary and glared at her. Hermione stood stock-still, lips trembling, and then, tears beginning to course down her cheeks anew, started to gather her things. She didn't protest the loss of so many points, she didn't try to defend herself; she merely cried, silently, while he watched her stuff her reading material, parchment and quills back into her bag. As soon as she could, she hurried from the room, head bowed, one last book clutched to her chest. A muffled sob echoed back to them from the corridor.
She got one last glance at Severus's face—something like regret lingering in those cold, dark eyes—before the man at her side tugged on her elbow, and they came out of the Pensieve.
Hermione stared at the Pensieve, unmoving, her lips pressed so tightly together that most of the pink had gone out of them. Severus sensed that she was doing absolutely all that she could not to crumble in front of him again; the last memory had surely touched a nerve.
"I should have suspected then, but furious as I was at your misguided success in saving my life, I did not." He tried to gentle his voice, to make it evident that this, too, was an apology. "I did not wish to give a single errant thought to you. For that, I apologise. Were it not for my behaviour, something could have been done sooner."
He saw the movement of her throat as she swallowed. "What exactly can be done?"
His eyes fixed on hers; she looked almost afraid, as if he would bring her this far and then tell her that nothing at all could be done.
"Your options are limited," he said. "In the Muggle world, you would see a psychologist or psychiatrist. I regret to say that there is no such thing in our world, and you would be hard-pressed to find a Muggle therapist who understood what you have been through."
She stared at him beseechingly, waiting for an answer, but he waited in turn, knowing that she would catch up quickly enough.
"Occlumency," she said finally, the slightest note of desperation in her voice. "You said that Occlumency would be important."
He nodded once, a sharp jerk of his chin.
"But it will be more involved than that, won't it."
"You have buried your memories of the war, of what you experienced, and they have only grown more powerful with time." He held up a hand as she began to protest. "I am not blaming you. It is a natural response. But you must see that it cannot continue. Mental health aside, it has clearly begun to eat into your physical health. I've seen you struggle to eat; it's obvious that you are sleeping very poorly—"
"Stop," she muttered. "Don't look at me like that."
She edged around him and went back to her armchair, perching on the edge. Her armchair—for it seemed, even though she had entered his chambers only twice, she had made it hers. She stared at the ground, at the fire, at the bookshelves—determined, it seemed, not to meet his gaze, or to see the expression outlined on his face.
"How will it help?" she asked. "Occlumency, I mean."
"Your mind is as sharp as ever. You know the answer."
For a handful of heartbeats, she hesitated. "You taught Harry Occlumency so that he could stop those dreams."
"Not that it ever took," he muttered. "Some people simply haven't the skill."
She ignored this. "But they weren't ordinary dreams. They were things Vol—the Dark Lord—put there. I see how Occlumency helps, in that situation. But in mine?"
"Who is the enemy, if you consider your situation?" he asked, taking a few steps closer to her, toward his own armchair.
She paused only for a moment. "Myself," she murmured.
"Correct. It is not as simple, it is not as easy, but it can be done. You can learn to wall off portions of your own mind, to make it safe for you to rest."
"But...isn't that what I've been doing?" she protested. "You said I've buried—"
"Yes, buried them during daylight, so that they may torture you when you sleep. You have allowed your determination not to think of them to fill you, so that it is the centre of your focus. It leaves little room for anything else. Someday, you will not have to build walls. Someday, you will make peace with your memories. Until then, it is important that you re-learn how to sleep."
He lifted his wand. She immediately scrambled to her feet.
"Your walls will be less useful, for the time being," he said. "For now, concentrate on nothing."
She very nearly gaped at him. "How, exactly, am I to do that?"
"With practice," he answered, and cast the spell, sweeping into her jumbled and anxious mind; eyes wide with horror and panic, she stared at him. "The longer you flounder," he warned, "the more I have access to."
He followed her into her own head, trailing her at a distance as she receded deeper and deeper. Panic flooded her, tainting his own rigid calm with the flickers of memory she wished not to think of. As she darted out of the way of them, more appeared; he heard a faint, endless scream for a long few seconds before it was cut off, saw a younger Hermione sobbing under the steam of a shower, caught a glimpse of the milky pale of her forearm dripping with red. His stomach turned, but he brought himself under control.
Clear your mind, he told her. There is nothing you can show me that I have not already seen.
Her thoughts echoed back at him, jumbled, panicked, and he worked to decipher them. They were on him now; he saw flashes of newspapers, reading she had done about Death Eaters and Dark Revels in stained texts, the image of him at Death's door on the floor of the Shrieking Shack, and the curious but fearful question: what had he done—what had he experienced—throughout the course of two wars, and wouldn't it so clearly eclipse her own suffering?
He flinched at his own memories on the subject, but brought himself to heel again, suffusing his mind with calm so that she might follow his example. Her heartbeat hammered desperately through them both as she focused on it rather than anything else. He heard her begin to count the beats. Tha-thump. Tha-thump. Tha-thump.
Sharp outlines of memory made reappearances, but he watched her dissolve them as quickly as possible, returning to the study of her pulse. For long moments, she swayed in the delicate peace she had created in her own mind. Her fear was tangible; she trembled visibly before him, afraid that the peace would collapse as soon as an errant thought struck her.
Soon, however, it began to envelope her. The flickers of memory became more and more infrequent as the warm dark of nothing closed in, pulling his own conscious with it. He removed himself from her mind, resisting the temptation of sleep, soon enough to close the distance between them as she dropped, unconscious, toward the floor.
It was the success he hadn't dared hope for. It had only taken an uncomfortable twenty minutes, and she was asleep, breathing steadily and evenly, the lines that had formed permanently on her forehead suddenly smooth again. He carried her the few steps to his couch and gently laid her there. She immediately curled up, turning closer towards the back of the couch, seeking warmth. He summoned a blanket, letting it settle lightly over her before sliding a pillow beneath her head. There was a little sigh of contentment, and then she was still.
He watched her carefully for the first few moments, standing just a step away, his dark eyes tracing the features of her thin face. Her eyelids didn't twitch; she wasn't dreaming. He took a few paces back and settled in his armchair to wait, reaching for a nearby book to pass the time. She had a sleep deficit that stretched back seven years; he thought it unlikely that the exercise would keep her calm enough to sleep for long, but sheer exhaustion might do the trick.
More often than not, he found himself distracted from the words on the page, gazing instead at the sleeping woman on his sofa. One of the visions from her head revisited him, and despite all that he had seen throughout two ugly wars, his stomach turned. The brightest witch of her age, slicing open her own flesh, capable of making herself bleed...surely someone ought to have noticed? The dunderheads who called themselves her best friends ought to have thought something off about her behaviour. He hadn't even known her, one short month ago, and he had noticed.
But they hadn't returned to Hogwarts with her. No, for the entirety of her late seventh year, she had been without them except on the rare occasion of Hogsmeade weekends. It would have been all too easy for her to hide her misery in the hopes of keeping it secret, so as not to worry them.
He snorted and turned back to his book. They could do with worrying a bit more.
An hour passed as he half-heartedly contemplated late-nineteenth-century Potions work and, alternatively, watched his charge. The fire had begun to burn low when she stirred, a yawn shaping her lips and crinkling up her nose. A little hum formed in her throat. He wryly thought that she was rather like a cat.
Then tension seized her, and her eyes snapped open, searching her surroundings. He immediately got up and moved to her side, bringing with him the cup of tea he had prepared only moments before.
"What happened?" she asked, her voice hoarse.
"You fell asleep," he answered, holding out the cup of tea to her.
She blinked at him and slowly sat up. The blanket fell from her shoulders, and he caught the befuddled look in her eyes as she considered it.
"For how long?" She reached out to take the tea and immediately took a sip, the hint of a smile curling up the corner of her mouth at the taste.
For a moment, he didn't answer, watching the easy comfort in her features and on those pink lips, and feeling thoroughly disconcerted by it. Only when she looked at him, puzzled, did he answer.
"About an hour. You didn't talk. Did you dream?"
She shook her head slowly. "No. No, I...I didn't."
"It will not always be so, but if you can maintain that mindset as you fall asleep, the effects will become stronger over time." He observed her closely as she sipped her tea. "It's not a permanent solution."
She looked up at him. "Is there one?" she asked, her voice small.
"It will require a great deal more bravery than you have been asked to show in the past," he answered.
She waited, staring at him over her tea.
"Facing your memories is the only way to make peace with them."
She immediately understood what he was implying; her eyes widened in horror. "I'd hardly call that therapeutic," she whispered.
"It won't be easy. You've given them power which they don't have." His eyes strayed to her forearm, and she self-consciously tugged at her sleeve, making sure the scars were concealed. "But it must be done. Unless..."
"Unless what?"
"Unless you would be content to suffer forever." His tone was purposely ominous. "Understand that you would not be the only one. It will consume you until your friends, thick as they may be, will not be able to help but notice. It will twist you until you are unrecognisable to them. And then, you will be truly alone."
He got to his feet and turned to stoke the fire.
"Is that what happened to you?" her voice reached out and whispered to him.
He felt his back stiffen immediately in defence; his tone was unnecessarily curt as he responded. "I had no friends, save one. You know the story."
"I...I don't." Her voice was hesitant, almost breathless. "I know the gist, of course, but Harry wouldn't...details failed him. I suspect some of it may have shown his father in an unflattering light, and he so hates...talking about that..." He listened to her, dreading the next fifteen minutes, when he was certain he would have to tell a story he had long hated repeating even to himself. "I know you loved her, that's all," she finished gently. "That everything you did for Harry, for us, was for her."
He turned to regard her, still tense, but curious about some of the information she had revealed. "Potter told you nothing more?"
"No," she said. "I'm not sure why. I only know that from that point forward, his gratitude toward you has been overwhelming. Obviously unwanted, yes," she clarified at his scowl, "but quite the turnaround from how he felt about you before."
He rubbed a thumb into his temple; a headache was starting, pulsing just there. "Just ask, if you're so infernally curious." His voice was rough, resigned, his tone harsher with her than it ought to be; his reluctance to share this particular life story was strong. He could not, however, expect her to trust him—and her trust in him was essential, if she was ever to be well again—if he did not trust her with this. It was the most basic test of any friendship that secrets must be told, and he supposed that he was now privy to too many of hers to continue concealing all of his own.
But fuck all; he desired nothing less than to be asked to speak her name while in Hermione's presence, to talk of her while he looked at the woman he was trying to help. It would change the way Hermione thought of him, considered him, even looked at him...but why does it matter? he interrupted himself. Why do I care what she thinks?
It was a feeble defence. He just cared. To want her trust at all, he had to care. To be at all interested in helping her, he had to care.
"I didn't want to annoy you," she ventured. "I just...it's always interested me, that's all. If it could change Harry's mind about you..." She shrugged and leaned back, hands curling around her tea. "Then again, my mind hardly needed changing, so it wasn't that important. Just curious."
He resigned himself to the task, sweeping his interest in her feelings from his mind.
"My mother was a witch, my father a Muggle. But then, you worked that out, when Potter got his hands on that old Potions book of mine. He didn't know until after they had married and she was pregnant. He snapped her wand the instant he knew to do it. She was a Pure-blood, knew nothing of the Muggle world, had no way to escape his hold. He had been...charming, but then...magic frightened him. I frightened him. He was furious...furious that his offspring would be just like her, that the family name would be tarnished by magic.
"When I could move about on my own, I didn't linger if I could help it. I took long walks, far away from Spinner's End, and that was when I first saw Lily Evans." The name gave him pause for a second; how long since he had spoken it aloud? It didn't have the same power it had once had—to turn him end over end with guilt and regret. "She fascinated me. With that sister of hers, she had to be Muggle-born, but it became obvious that she was brimming with magic. I watched her. I was too afraid to speak to her yet. Afraid that she would mock me for being the poor boy from Spinner's End. The poor, weird boy. I had already found my mother's tomes on the Dark Arts...I was already practising magic whenever I was alone. The Muggles thought I was a freak." Hermione's brown eyes had softened with sympathy; he turned away from it. "They weren't far off. I looked the part.
"But I finally did confront her. I told her what she was. And after some initial disbelief, she believed me. It was more than I could have ever hoped for...she was well-cared for, pretty, friendly, and she clung to me because I was her one tie to the Wizarding world. We arrived at Hogwarts and I knew that she could never, in a hundred thousand years, be sorted into Slytherin, but I still hoped, because otherwise, I would no longer be her lifeline—and I surely couldn't remain important to her for long. She would have new, better friends...
"She wasn't, of course. She was sorted into Gryffindor, and I into Slytherin, and I thought it was the end of our friendship, but she still sought me out. We stayed friends—best friends—until our fifth year." He turned to stoke the fire again, momentarily caught in the shame of the memory. "I'm surprised she turned a blind eye to what I had become for so long. I hung around with soon-to-be Death Eaters, took part in tormenting and bullying others. But as long as I treated her the same as I always had, she did her best not to notice.
"Then James Potter publicly humiliated me, used one of my own spells against me—Levicorpus, you'll remember it—and as she tried to come to my defence, I called her a Mudblood." Hermione flinched automatically at the slur. "You can imagine the repercussions. No matter how I apologized, she wouldn't hear it. She had, as she said, been making excuses for me for years, and this, finally, was inexcusable. She wouldn't tolerate the insult to her person, and she had only tolerated my treatment of others for so long because...well."
"Because you were her friend," Hermione said. "That's what friends do."
He snorted. "From that point forward, I had 'friends', but we knew one another as much as one Death Eater knows and likes another. The instant I left Hogwarts, I took the Dark Mark. You know of the prophecy made, about the Dark Lord and Potter? I listened at the door as Trelawney recited it for the first time to Dumbledore, but I only heard the second half of the prophecy, and when I passed it on to the Dark Lord, I learned that I would have done better to never speak of it." His lips twisted. "I asked him to spare her, but he didn't make a habit of mercy. So I put my trust in Dumbledore, promised him that I would do anything if he would only keep her, and yes, her family, safe..."
He fell silent, looked at her. She didn't cry—there was no wet sheen in her eyes, no tears threatening to fall—but the terrible heartache on her face was almost worse.
"So I promised that I would protect her son, the boy she had died to save. For her. Expecting to be left in peace at the end of it all. Of course," he said finally, "things do not always go as planned."
"I can kill you now, if you'd like," she volunteered without a grain of conviction. "To rectify my...interference."
"No," he replied. "I would gladly have faced death then. I have no interest in it now."
They didn't speak for a long moment.
"Do you still love her?" she asked, so quietly that he nearly missed it.
He considered the question, thought of how few the nights were now that he conjured the silver doe, thought of the rare appearances she made in his dreams. "I miss her," he said. "My...obsession...has long since waned. It is hard to love the dead. I cherish the memory of her—I regret, deeply, the part I played in not only her death but the unhappiness I caused her—but I love her only as one loves a long-lost friend, without any expectations."
That much was true, he thought. There were times when he still ached for her, so deeply that it wrenched him with guilt and despair, but they were infrequent. Time, he thought, with unease at his waning loyalty and relief for his own health, cures many things.
Her voice was small when she spoke again; she had perceived, correctly, that he wished to say no more on the subject.
"When?" she asked. "When and how will I face my memories?"
He regarded her. "We will start small. Next week...we will use the Pensieve. It will be the most effective method."
"How many are there, like me?" Her voice trembled. "Are there other people, suffering, who have no idea..."
"Perhaps many," he answered. "If those charms Potter keeps sending out are any indication...in the aftermath of any war, there are consequences. Wizards pride themselves on being all but immune to most Muggle diseases and have long ignored diseases of the mind as a result."
"It's...we have to do something. I have to do something." She got to her feet and began to pace. "Perhaps I could make leaflets..."
"House-elves all over again, then?" Despite his exasperation for her tendency to leap to concern for unknown others, he felt a brief tenderness for the strength of her heart—the unwavering love she so easily expressed for the weak and downtrodden, even while she was so weak and downtrodden herself.
"It's terrible!" she exclaimed, wringing her hands. "If other people feel like this, if...if there's something that can be done to help them...this is a horrible way to...not to live, but to exist. Just...existing."
"I know," he said, watching her pace.
Her feet were beginning to wear a path in the floor. "You do, don't you?" she asked desperately. "That's how you knew about me. Because you must have...you've been through much worse than me. For much longer."
He nodded.
"Are you..." She trailed off, but he guessed the gist of her question.
"I'd hardly say I'm the picture of mental health," he replied, exasperated. "But I never was. There is a fine line between 'mood disorder' and 'personality'. I have bad days, bad weeks, bad months...but there has been...improvement...since the end of the war. You stand a much better chance of recovery than I."
"Don't say that," she protested.
"It's true." When she attempted to protest again, he cut across her. "I was a double agent for the better part of twenty years. Even while the Dark Lord was gone, it was hell. I was made to do things under the Dark Lord's tenure which would haunt any man—not to mention the things I did of my own volition. It will take at least the time it did to do the damage to heal it, if it's at all possible. I operate in primarily guesswork now, struggling to form magical solutions to a problem that has never been considered. It is not easy. But your case, though I do not belittle your suffering, is much simpler than mine. Fewer ambiguities, fewer traumatic memories. You will recover," he added, his voice brooking no room for argument, "and until then, you'll shelve the desire to help anyone else. Myself included."
She looked unhappy about these terms, but she still nodded, agreeing.
"Now, I suggest you return to your rooms and practice what we attempted tonight. Hopefully, you'll experience a night of relatively dreamless sleep. Though I must insist...if they reach their original magnitude at any time, you have access to the potion. Use it. Every now and again will not harm you."
She nodded again, still half-hearted. Her fear of dependency was clearly great.
"And do try not to be late in the morning. If I'm to supervise the brats, I require at least a modicum of intelligent company," he added, voice wry.
She smiled at him as he showed her out. "Coming from you, that's a glowing recommendation," she said, a trace of happiness in her eyes again. "Good night, Severus."
Late that night, pouring over her memories and his notes, cross-referencing magical and Muggle texts, he thought of that smile—full of gratitude, warmth, respect, trust. The sound of her voice saying his name played itself over and over again in his mind, analysing the nuances, considering her expression. He wondered if he was becoming obsessed with the healing of her, or maybe just with her, but could not summon the will to curb his interest.
