A/N: Not mine, no money. Especially the quoted poem, which is the elegant ee cummings "somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond". Sigh. I love good poetry, don't you?
Chapter 11 - Scars
Lia woke the next morning, feeling as warm and safe as she had ever felt in her life. She had just woken from a wonderful dream, though this one did not make her cry, nor could she remember what it was exactly about.
She curled into the warm body against her back, put her arm over the arm wrapped around her waist, and smiled as she tried to chase sleep back into that wonderful dream. The heavy arm pulled her in closer, the large hand cupping her bosom. She sighed and felt herself start to doze again until the hand started to squeeze gently.
What the hell?
Her eyes snapped open, confusion energizing her mind until she was fully wake. She examined the arm and hand that were firmly affixed to her body. They were pale as alabaster, sprinkled with coarse black hair. The hand had long, thin fingers that were peppered with scars from little nicks and cuts from years of preparing ingredients for potions.
Severus is going to be so embarrassed when he wakes up.
Lia tried to work out in her mind how to go about either moving his arm or moving away. He must have been a very light sleeper, otherwise he wouldn't have woken up when she woke up crying last night – she had tried very hard not to be loud and even cast a Muffliato charm on the door for good measure.
Lia had to stifle a groan as the hand deftly slid into her camisole, and sought out the large nipple that had peaked to attention. His warm body pressed in against her back, arm pulling her against his lower body against something hot and heavy in his groin.
"Severus, get your paws off me. You're dreaming," she said, lugging the surprising heavy arm off her and rolling over to the far side of the bed, making sure she was facing him.
His eyes snapped open as soon as she had turned back to look at him. He looked around the room, and rolled onto his back. She had to fight a giggle down her throat when she saw the expression on his face when he realized that he had a morning erection.
"Excuse me for a few moments, Lia," he said as he quickly walked out the door bedroom door. She heard her bathroom door slam shut.
Lia got out of bed and stretched. She walked over to her dresser and looked in the mirror. Just the slightest yellowing was present on her face where last night the bruises had been almost black. There was a pot of Bruise Healing Paste on her dresser, top slightly ajar. She opened it and applied the paste to her skin. The scent brought back memories of sad, black eyes looking at her face as it was caressed with cool fingers.
She smirked when she saw his handwriting on the pot of paste. After she'd intentionally made mistake on some of her essays around Easter, she'd finally seen his handwriting, which confirmed that the little gifts of potions and ointments she received from time to time had been from him. His thoughtfulness touched her.
Severus had taken such care with her. He had convinced Hermione to leave, and stayed with her to heal her wounds. And his, she thought, the sight of his bruised knuckles flashing across her mind.
She glanced at the scars on her wrists. They were much less noticeable thanks to a ScarMend Ointment that Poppy had given her – but still ever present, as they would be since they were fixed by Muggles and not Healers. She wondered if he noticed, and what he must have thought. She pulled on her dressing gown and walked into her sitting room.
He was sitting on her couch, now, flipping through a book on royal scandals that she had picked up in Piccadilly Circus earlier in the summer after term had ended. Lia had never seen him this early in the morning. The Severus she knew was always immaculately dressed and completely concealed. Seeing him in his shirtsleeves, rolled up to the elbow, buttons undone halfway down his chest – it was a little unsettling. It was a reminder than underneath all the armor he put on to face each day, he was still a vulnerable man underneath. One with pale skin like ivory, marred with the occasional scar and a grey Dark Mark on his forearm. She looked curiously at the gold bracelet he wore on his left arm before she moved on. The start of a beard prickled his jaw, whiskers growing in as black as pitch, even though the hair on his head was shot through with strands of silver. Her eyes followed the start of the beard down to his neck, and she frowned when she saw two very large scars that looked like his skin had been hastily put back together after it was brutally ripped apart, along with one that traversed his neck like a gruesome smile.
"Good morning," she said as she shut the door behind her.
He shut the book and stood up abruptly, pulling on his coat and starting to button his shirt. She'd been caught looking, she thought and started to chide herself, until her curiosity won out.
"Is it too personal for me to ask you if you want any help with treating the scars on your neck?"
His shoulders slumped and he sighed. But, he stopped buttoning his shirt.
"No. But … I'd rather ask you … exactly … what I may or may not have done this morning while I was 'dreaming', Lia," he said, embarrassment in his voice.
"You did nothing untoward, Severus. No need to worry."
He gave her a very odd, appraising look. Then his face relaxed and he nodded. "That is a welcome relief. It's been –," he sighed before starting again, "I have never shared a bed with a woman where the only thing that occurred was sleep."
She flushed and walked to the fireplace. "Incendio," she said. The spell created a nice crackling fire and lit the sconces around the room.
"Is your hand okay?" she asked. She walked over to him and examined it herself when he didn't answer.
He watched her turn his hand over and back. His bruising was gone, just a glimmer of unabsorbed paste in between his fingers.
"As you can see, it's mended well," he said. He grazed her cheek with his free hand, and felt the new smear of the paste. "You?"
"I'll live," she said, trying to smile. The pain in her smile was not physical. "I hate to admit this, Severus, but I'm relieved. The last couple of months have been stressful. I'm sure you saw that, even if I didn't talk about it."
He caught her eyes with his, ebony black eyes boring into ones the color of the sea. "You wouldn't do anything … rash. Would you?" he asked quietly.
He had seen them. She sighed and sat down in the rocking chair next to the fireplace. "I take it, then, that you saw my scars."
"I did when I was undressing – when I put you to bed." He looked a little embarrassed.
"I guess I should have mentioned them before. I try not to think about them if I can help it," she explained. She pulled her thoughts together, into the tidy package in her brain with her husband's name on it.
"I was in a very bad way after my husband's death. As a result, I made desperate choice," she swallowed past the forming lump in her throat and bit her lip. "It didn't solve anything, and it won't happen again. There's too much left to do here. Too much life to live. Losing him taught me that, after the worst finally passed."
"Would you tell me or Hermione if things ever got in a 'bad way', again?" Severus asked her, very intently.
She closed her eyes and nodded.
"Good," he replied with relief in his voice. He walked to her and grabbed her hands in hand. She felt him turn her them over in his and trace each scar with the tips of his fingers. His sharply inhaled breath made her look up. He was staring at her hands in his, flattening her right hand against his, as though he were comparing how his long, slender fingers almost doubled over her hand. The tips of her longest fingers barely reached the first knuckle of his.
"Nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands," he quoted as he looked at their entwined fingers.
She looked at him, confused until she connected the vaguely familiar lines to their source. "Muggle poetry?" she asked him. "I didn't take you for a fan."
He looked up and shook his head as though coming out of a fog. "It's just something I read once."
"Can't reach on octave on the piano," she said with a smirk. "Drove my music teacher starkers."
Severus's face contorted with mirth.
"What?"
"Unless your music teacher was naked, I doubt that what you meant."
"Dammit," she said, standing up to find the list of unfamiliar words and phrases that she kept at her desk. She grabbed a quill and marked out what she had been told the meaning of phrase was, and added the correct meaning.
Severus scanned the list. "Most of the things on this list are a little vulgar, aren't they, Lia?"
"Try being the first adult female that the girls in Slytherin ever felt comfortable talking to besides their mothers – who they wouldn't talk to about half of what they tell me. Vulgar doesn't cover it."
"Gods, I'm glad you are here."
"Me too," she said with a sigh.
She felt him lingering next to her. A cool hand touched her shoulder.
"You're not leaving?" he asked.
"No, I'm staying right here," she said firmly, putting down her quill.
"Will you talk to me or Hermione if something is bothering you? You don't have to carry all your burdens alone. "
She sighed and nodded. "I will try to talk more when I'm facing a problem. I'm sure I'll get the same request from Hermione." Her stomach growled. She glanced at the clock on her mantle and realized they had missed breakfast by an hour.
"Do you want me to order something for you?"
"No, I should go. I need to shave and change clothes, and I've some potions that I need to check on."
She nodded, and placed her hand over the one still resting on her shoulder.
"Thank you for staying with me, taking care of me like you did. Words can't express the gratitude I feel."
He stared at her for a minute before her squeezed her shoulder and left the rooms.
Lia sat down on the sofa when he left, but then remembered the poem he'd quoted and searched her bookshelf for the old anthology of poems she thought it was printed in. The well-used paperback tome was among some of the nursing textbooks she brought with her. A quick scan of the index of titles brought her to the page she sought, though she hadn't needed to check. There was a piece of lavender in that page, dried and crisp with time, along with a tree leaf that she didn't recognize. She shook her head, trying to remember when she might have placed it there, then read the words again, as though it was the first time:
"somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose
or if your wish be to close me,i and
my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing
(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands"
The unabashed romanticism of this poem had always warmed her heart. She remembered the first time she read it in school, sitting in a literature class in college – not expecting anything outside of her nursing courses to excite any real interest in her. It pleased her that it was something Severus shared with her, though she had a nagging thought in the back of her head that she was missing something.
She wrapped herself in her favorite blanket, a gift from Minerva that was a rich green and blue plaid. Her own familiar scent of lavender was mixed with Severus's comforting scent of sandalwood. Enjoying the way they complimented each other, she snuggled into the already rumpled cushions, and had almost fallen asleep when she remembered he never answered her question about the scars on his neck.
That's what I was missing, she thought as she drifted to sleep.
It was midafternoon before Lia appeared in Gryffindor Tower. Hermione flew out to her when their portrait swung open.
"Are you okay?" Hermione asked as ushering her into her sitting room.
"Hermione, sit down. I'm fine, I promise. Severus mended me, and bless him, he stayed in my rooms with me all night." She sat down next to the pregnant witch, and put her hand on her slight belly. "How did she fair through it? I was so worried that you might make yourself sick, it's the only reason I warded my bedroom against you."
Hermione giggled. "Little miss is just fine. She's fluttering around a little more today from me keeping her up last night, but she'll be just fine. And, before you ask, I went by Poppy's this morning for a scheduled check-in, and she agrees. Rose and I are quite healthy."
Lia blew out a breath she hadn't realized she had been holding, "Well, thank Merlin for that," she said, clearing her throat slightly. "How did you know what was going on?"
Hermione smirked, "Mostly because Ron can't keep a secret to save his life. Oliver told him his plans for last night, so I knew it was coming." She cut her eyes to Lia. "And, this may sound weird, but I kept thinking about you, and something felt wrong. I just felt compelled to check on you."
"I'm glad you did. Thank goodness Severus has that horrible insomnia – you were both in the right place at the right time."
"I'm betting Oliver isn't so glad," Hermione said, slyly. "Ron and Neville were looking for me when he came storming through to pack up his things. Apparently Severus broke his jaw and all of his front teeth."
Lia gasped, and before she knew is she started to cry.
"Stop it. After what he did, he deserves none of your tears," said Hermione sternly.
"I still can't believe Severus did that to him. No wonder his hand was a mess last night."
"Ron and Neville both said they would have done the same thing if they had been there."
"I can't really imagine Neville getting that upset with anyone," Lia snorted.
"You didn't see the look on his face when he killed Nagini."
They sat in silence for a while, nibbling on the spread that the Weasley's house-elf Winky has gratefully brought them. Hermione was still very proactive in the advancement of elf-ish welfare, but she had not had an easy start to her pregnancy and had temporarily (and with great reluctance) amended her views of having a personal elf assigned to her.
Hermione put a hand to her stomach. "I think Miss Rose has decided she does not like cucumbers. Just give me a minute," she put a hand to her mouth and ran out of the room. Lia heard her retch, and felt a considerable amount of sympathy.
She heard the portrait open and saw Ron bound through.
"Blimey, Lia. I didn't expect to see you at all today. You okay?"
"I think so," she said, putting her hand to her face before she remembered the bruises would all be gone now. "Severus would have made a right good Healer in another life."
Ron laughed. "It sounds very odd to hear your southern American voice try out our phrases. Remind me to give you a script when I need a good laugh." She giggled. "You do look better than I expected, though."
"I heard you saw Oliver last night before he left," she said, looking intently into her tea.
"Uh, yeah … I had that privilege," he said, grabbing a cup of his own. "He'll have to find a Healer before he can report to Puddlemere, unless he wants to explain why his face is smashed in."
"That bad?"
"I guess he should be glad that Snape used his fists instead of his wand. He should also be glad Snape kicked him out when he did, because when the old git told Minerva what happened she was ready to give Wood the sack and nut him herself."
"Will Severus be reprimanded?"
"No. I think Minerva is proud of him. She's got a soft spot for Severus, even if Wood was her golden boy while he was here. It won't make it to the Board of Governor's unless someone makes a complaint, which I doubt you or Oliver will do, will you?"
"Not bloody likely," she said, watching Ron's grin reappear. "No, I won't. It's too embarrassing as it is."
Hermione walked in and sat back down between the two, still looking green.
"You okay, love?" Ron asked her sweetly, rubbing her back.
"I just added cucumber to the list of bad foods," she said, leaning into him.
"Noted," he said, flicking his wand to a list on the wall by his desk.
Lia stood. "I'll let you rest. See you at dinner?"
"I hope so," Hermione said and whimpered.
"See you at dinner, Lia," Ron said with a wink as he tended to his wife.
