Hello Lovely Readers!
I'm sorry I took so long. Real life has this lovely habbit of ganging up on me at inopportune moments. It's taken me a good four months to sort it and with the hours that I'm working the weekends are really the only time I have to write anymore so I'm sorry but it's going to take a while for the next chapter to be up as well. Tiredness = bad for inspiration.
But until that time I hope this chapter will suffice.
As always, R&R and Happy reading!
~VTM
Chapter Thirteen: Apologies and Mistakes
She made her way down to the dungeons after her…encounter with the Dark Lord, with great difficulty. It didn't escape young Severus that she was late, nor did he turn a blind eye to the fact that the potions stools seemed far more uncomfortable for her than usual. Being the smart boy he was however, he said nothing about it. When she came and sat next to him he simply raised an eyebrow at her, just enough to let her know he knew something was amiss, but not enough to tick her off and start an argument between the two of them.
"So where is this concoction of yours?" She asked him, shifting a little on her stool again.
He pulled out a tiny blue vial from his pocket.
"It worked perfectly," he told her, "When Slughorn gets here I'll place it in my cauldron first and that way he won't notice a thing."
"I still say there's another way around this," she told him with a scowl on her face, "You know the rules, we can't use anything illegal."
"Some rules are made to be broken," he told her plainly. She shook her head at him but with what happened only half an hour beforehand in her rooms, she wasn't exactly in a position to judge. They sat there and waited for several minutes before Slughorn and Eileen finally arrived, along with two extras that they had not planned on. Cygnus walked in, hand in hand with Eileen and Severus "Leopold" joined them not long after.
"As you can see we have a few extra observers today," Slughorn smiled.
"Professor Evans was curious with your progress," Eileen told them, "And Mr Black is still here visiting me for the moment so he thought he would come along."
"I've heard good things about you in particular, Severus," Cygnus stepped up, "Especially from Professor Slughorn and Professor Evans. Perhaps after the brewing today you and I should talk about what you'll do after Hogwarts?"
Severus for his part, looked a little bit stunned at Cygnus' suggestion but seemed to take it as his mother pulling strings and simply nodded in ascent after sending her a sharp look. If he had known the Black patriarch as well as either his mother or his potions partner then he would not have been so shocked to know that the man's offer was indeed genuine. Leopold looked sharply between the young man and the older and then at Hermione for good measure, but said nothing. Apparently he hadn't gotten over the events of the night before and wouldn't any time soon. For some reason it stirred anger inside her gut. She felt like he blamed her for the changes to his past, present and future, even though the blame was misplaced.
"Well," Slughorn cut in, "Why don't we get started then, hm? For this first brewing, seeing as this is still the experimentation stage, you are allowed any kind of assistance you require. If there are techniques that you are not strong with, you may ask us to help you with it, or if you have questions then you are free to ask at any point during the period. For the second brewing, which will take place after the holidays, you will only be allowed to ask questions and for the third and final brewing you will have no assistance at all so I suggest you take advantage of this. You have twenty minutes to gather and prepare your ingredients and for the rest of the period you will continue on with your potions. Good luck, your time starts now!"
The two of them raced off to the storage cupboard to grab what they needed, each filing out a little slower when they had gone in. Hermione had decidedly more supplies than Severus but his ingredients were far more complex and harder to maintain during the brewing process. She couldn't help but stare at the little blue vial inside his robe as he went past her to go and grab a pint of dragon's blood that he had forgotten.
During her twenty minutes of preparation time she pulled out a few of the library books she had borrowed to see what she needed to do to a few of the more complex ingredients that she had attained. At one point she got stuck and asked Eileen to help her but Leopold asked if he could step in instead. The young Severus looked at her sideways for a moment, as if asking her if he should step in, but she gave no sign of protest and the older version sat by her side.
"Where are you stuck?" he asked her tersely.
"The Sopophorous beans," she said to him, "No matter how hard I try, I can't get it to release the amount of juice I want."
Leopold stared down at the shriveled up prunes for a short while before reaching over and taking young Severus' silver knife.
"Use this," he told her, "Crush them, don't slice them. Otherwise the desk will get the juice and you'll be left with rain drops instead of the river you require."
She gave him a quick nod and did as he had said, first expecting him to go away and rejoin the group but he stayed by her side until she had crushed them all, making sure she had done it correctly and then he said something that she did not expect.
"I apologise," he said quietly enough so that only she could hear, "Cygnus told me everything, after Eileen explained who I was. I should not have acted so…rashly."
She sat there, stunned for a few moments before she realized that the others were watching them and continued on with her work.
"He doesn't know what we know," he continued on, "About the fate of his daughter and I suggest we keep it that way or else a certain Slytherin might not be born. Can you agree to that?"
It went against every fibre of her being but she gave him a brief nod and allowed him to walk back to his mother's side. She continued to attempt to keep her mind on her potion but occasionally it would wander to her troubles with, not only Tom, but with all those who were present in the room. She wanted to warn Cygnus so badly but knew that she couldn't. She wanted to take Eileen away from the castle and hide her somewhere safe but she knew it wasn't possible. She wanted to tell her older Severus everything that had been going on but she knew it would only make things worse. As she poured powders, juices and diced plants into her cauldron it became increasingly clear that, even though she was surrounded by those who cared for her, she was alone. Tom had effectively isolated her. Whether it had been his intention, she was unsure of, but she knew he had to do something about it.
Halfway through the brewing, her potion was beginning to turn a nice lilac colour and things seemed to be going her way. She glanced over at young Severus for a few moments and saw that his had turned the same bright blue as his vial had been only an hour beforehand. The concentrated scowl on his face was an indicator that he hadn't expected this to happen but it wasn't something that had thrown him off course. He had pulled out a few more of his books at this point, as it simmered away on a low heat, and was skimming through them to see where he may have gone wrong and if he could reverse it. Hermione began stirring hers every ten minutes to maintain the consistency and upon the third stir Eileen came over to take a look at how she was going.
"Ideally with a potion that is meant to heal you would want it to be pink during this stage of brewing and a potion that is made with the intention to be used on certain types of metals you would want it to be a bright blue," she informed her, taking a sniff as well, "So it seems you have those two aspects under control. I'm not quite sure about everything else though. You see the rings the smoke is making? That's associated with the corrosive elements in salamander blood. You might want to get that under control before you attempt to test it."
Hermione gave her a nod and then watched as she moved over to her son. She seemed to frown down at it for a few moments before looking back up at him.
"What was the exact function you were hoping to get with this?" She asked him.
"It's hard to explain," he told her, "The way I imagine it, is that when you take it you experience a sort of…hallucinogenic epiphany. It's a way of figuring out a problem or making a decision without going to anyone else for help. The hallucination itself takes after real life. For example, if I wanted to choose my career path, I would take this and then I would hallucinate talking to Professor Slughorn about the logic of the decision and maybe then I would talk to you about what I really want to do and then someone else about what I probably should do but don't want to…the list goes on. The bigger the decision, the longer the hallucination."
Eileen looked down at the potion again with a slight scowl on her face before looking back at Severus.
"And I thought Miss Evan's potion was a stretch," she muttered.
"You've raised a more ambitious version of you, Eileen," Cygnus smirked
She smiled back at him and then looked down at the potion once more.
"The only advice I can really give to you is to personalise it," she said, "It seems you've thrown a lot of thought into what is supposed to happen and you have it clear inside your head how it will work. The only problem is that it has to adapt to every person you give it to. I suggest you take some blood from the person you test it on and put it into the potion once it's done. Give it a bit of time to settle so that it can adapt and become accustomed to the person ingesting it."
Severus seemed deep in thought for a moment but then he nodded. That was when Hermione came up with a question of her own.
"How are we testing the potions?" She asked.
"Well, Hermione, yours is relatively straight forward," Eileen told her, "We have several broken objects around the classroom that need repairing so you can use those to test out each aspect of your potion individually. Severus however, is a little more difficult."
"Yes, I'm afraid we haven't really thought this out right," Slughorn stepped up, "Severus' potion requires a human test subject and because of this there is no way to really control the test and make it safe beyond measure. We can't ask anyone to take an untested potion that hasn't been approved by the Alchemist and Potioneers Association."
At this Severus scowled down at the vibrant blue liquid inside his cauldron. Hermione couldn't help but feel sorry for him. He had worked so hard and risked a lot to make sure that it was right and now he wouldn't know if his creation even worked. She offered him a glance of sympathy to which he simply shrugged and they got on with their final minutes of brewing. Within half an hour both had managed to finish what they had started and Hermione was almost vibrating with excitement. She kept it hidden as much as she could though, for Severus' sake. He stood there by his potion, quietly brooding and looking anywhere but in her direction and she could just feel the resentment rolling off of him. As Slughorn, Eileen, Cygnus and Leopold crowded around her potion and were distracted by grading and observing, she slinked over to him and gave him a nudge.
"Do you still have the vial?" She whispered. He looked at her strangely for a moment.
"What vial?" He asked her.
"The one your illegal substance concoction was in," she muttered back. His brow creased but he pulled out the empty vial none the less. Hermione then swooped it out of his grasp, and while the others were still distracted, she filled it with Severus' potion, right up to the brim. She then handed it back to him and he looked at her in shock.
"Meet me in the Room of Requirement later tonight," she told him with a slight smile.
"Are you mad?" he whispered harshly.
"You're the one who said that some rules are made to be broken," she shot back at him, "And you went to so much trouble to get the right ingredients and perfect the recipe. I want to see how it turns out."
Before he could object any further, the potions laboratory door was opened to reveal a rather irate looking Sirius Black. Everyone looked at him and it seemed to irritate him further as he strode into the room and handed Professor Slughorn a note. Slughorn's eyes scanned over it quickly before he turned to look at Hermione.
"Miss Evans, you have a visitor upstairs," he told her with a quizzical look, "Mr Black has been asked to escort you."
She suddenly felt the heat of all the eyes in the room radiating off of her skin. Eileen and Cygnus looked just as confused as Slughorn where as both versions of Severus looked suspicious. Black, however, was just downright livid. He strode forward, grabbed a hold of her wrist and made to walk out of the classroom but he was stopped when young Severus grabbed a hold of him by the shoulder. They each glared at one another, their grips unrelenting and Hermione couldn't help but feel a wave of warmth toward her dark haired defender. As she looked around she realised that Eileen was smiling.
"I think what my son is trying to say is that, that is no way to treat a lady," she said. She was clearly proud of him in that moment, proud that her son was willing to defend someone he cared for, even if it was entirely out of character.
Black looked uneasy for a few moments as he realised now that he was in a room full of people that cared for both Severus and Hermione. He had to choose very wisely what he did next and it was for that reason that he let go of her wrist.
"Perhaps it would be best if Snape escorted her," Cygnus suggested quietly to his nephew, wrapping an arm around his shoulders, "Come, you and I haven't caught up in a while."
Cygnus walked him out the door and Severus took a hold of Hermione's hand. The two couples left in opposite directions, one quietly slinking off upstairs to see a surprise visitor and the other protesting loudly. As they made their way to the Entrance Hall, Severus and Hermione picked up their conversation where they had been forced to leave it.
"How are we going to test it?" He asked her, "There's no way we can do it safely, you heard Slughorn-"
Hermione suddenly stopped walking and turned to face him, taking both of his hands in her own.
"Severus, do you trust me?" She asked him quietly. Not to her surprise, he seemed to think about it for a few moments. It was hard to guess what was running through his mind as they stood there. Only fleeting glances of expressions ran over his palled features, but in the end calm resignation won out.
"Yes," he finally told her, "Against my better judgement, I do."
"Then don't ask any more questions, stop worrying and just meet me at the Room of Requirement at eight o'clock," she told him firmly, "Have a little faith."
He didn't like the idea of putting faith in anyone but himself, she could tell. For so long he had survived alone, relying upon no one and not letting anyone give him a break. Only his mother really knew what was inside his heart and even then it was a shallow vision of the boy she had raised. The very notion that someone else could gain even a glimpse of him was frightening.
Her grip upon his hands tightened for a few moments before she stepped forward and wrapped her arms around his waist, resting her head against his chest. Then she uttered a few simple words that had been said to her earlier that day.
"You can trust me Severus," she told him, "Unlike the fools on the other side of this wall, I have no intention of breaking your heart."
It took a few moments, but not too long, for him to relax into her embrace and even reciprocate. In the few months that she had spent in this time, Hermione had never felt as safe as she did then. She was with someone who truly cared for her, not for her forbidden knowledge or untapped power. She had meant what she said to him that morning, he was the only one she trusted. They stayed like that for a while before Severus pulled back and took her hand and led her up to the Entrance Hall as they had first intended. When they arrived to see Hermione's surprise visitor however, it turned out to be someone that neither of them expected to see. At the sight of him, Hermione immediately turned towards Severus and ushered him back down the stairs.
"What are you doing?" He asked her irately, trying to swat her hands out the way.
"Go back to the classroom," she told him, "Tell the others that it was…I don't know, just tell them someone. I'll be back soon."
"Why can't I tell them that it's-"
"Because you can't!" she snapped and instantly regretted it, "Look, I'll explain later, but I need to see him alone. Ok?"
Severus eyed her with suspicion for the longest time, but with the promise that she would tell him later, he did as she asked. She stayed at the top of the stairs for a while to make sure that he had indeed gone before turning back to her guest. She walked over to him and shook his hand before any words were exchanged and lead him to the currently empty Great Hall. They took seats at the end of the Gryffindor table and it was then that he produced a silver pouch.
"Did you manage to fix it, Ollivander?" She asked him as she stared down at the pouch.
"The outer wand was easily repairable," he told her, "It took a little time but it is done."
She frowned at his words and opened the bag. It looked almost as though it had been made from fresh. The scratches and finger marks were gone and there was no sign that it had ever seen a battle. But as she picked it up she realised it was lighter and when she tapped it lightly against the edge of the table it became quite obvious that it was hollow.
"The core could not be saved," he told her gravely.
A wave of panic began to wash over her but she quickly swallowed it and forced her brain to work. She couldn't afford to freak out now, she couldn't afford to give in to her fears and just sit there helplessly. She needed a solution, she needed answers, but seeing as she didn't have them she decided to ask questions.
"It was too damaged?" She asked him.
He nodded.
"The magical essence of the feather had been destroyed," he told her, "I could have placed it back inside the wand but it would have made it as useless as scales on a hippogriff."
"So the wand itself could still be usable?" She asked.
He nodded again.
"It won't be able to function with another type of core," he explained, "However, if you were to retrieve another phoenix feather…"
She sat there and thought about it for a while. There was only one phoenix that she would be capable of getting a feather from and it would require a lot of secrecy and sneakiness on her part. She would have to get past one of the greatest wizards of all time and somehow persuade the bird to give it up. However, there was the bonus that the Fawkes was the same phoenix the original feathers had come from. If she managed to pull this off then she would have a definite chance of making sure things turned out as they were supposed to when Harry met Voldemort at the graveyard and again at the Ministry. For that reason alone, she had to at least try…
~O~
Many hours later, Severus Snape sat within the Room of Requirement, awaiting the return of his one and only companion. The room itself had rematerialized into the same room they had slept in the night before, the bed still unmade, the furniture in disarray and he could have sworn he spotted his missing sock beneath the coffee table in the centre. The clock at the back of the room showed that he had been waiting for at least an hour for her to show and he had to wonder what was keeping her. She had never been a tardy person, nor forgetful, and so whatever was keeping her had to be important.
He took a seat upon the bed they had shared and stared down at its rumpled covers. Despite the outward image he projected, and that the Marauders had forced upon him, he wasn't nearly the virgin oddball that he appeared to be. Yes, he was in love with another, but that didn't stop him from indulging in the occasional tryst when the opportunity presented itself. He was a Slytherin after all. But no night had ever been as peaceful as it had been with Hermione. Although the roles had been reversed and she was the one who had needed him more than anything else, he still couldn't help but draw comfort and warmth from her presence. Aside from his mother and…he dared not think her name, Hermione had been the only woman he had ever been allowed to simply hold and talk to until the sun came up.
It was for that reason he continued to wait for another two hours before she finally turned up. He was more than surprised by her rumpled hair, black eye and burn marks upon her fingers and hands and he knew better to ask about it but he just couldn't help himself. He raised a raven eyebrow in her direction and fixed her with one of his patented icy gazes.
"You're late." He said.
She took one look at the clock on the wall and then gazed back at him with tired eyes. Yet somehow she managed a smile. She actually seemed quite happy despite her bumps and bruises as she walked up to him and gave him a hug.
"Sorry, Severus," she told him, "I lost track of time. Have you got the vial with you?"
"Why are you so pleased with yourself?" He asked her, "You look like you've been in the middle of a hippogriff stampede and you're smiling like you've won the House Cup."
Her smile simply widened as she stepped back from him and sat on the bed, gesturing for him to join her, which he did without hesitation.
"I've just had a very good afternoon, that's all," she told him.
His eyes narrowed upon her.
"Who is he?" He asked
"Excuse me?"
"The only time I ever see a girl in as good of a mood as you are is when she has a new boyfriend or she's just dumped the old one. So who is he?"
To his utter shock she burst out laughing. Something he said threw her into an absolute fit of giggles and mayhem and he couldn't figure out for the life of him what it was. She certainly was acting strange that night and yet he couldn't help but be gladder for it. She was laughing and smiling more than he had ever seen her before. He never thought someone else's joy could make him happy and yet somehow she managed it.
When she finally calmed down she looked at him with a certain glee in her eye that made him want to smile along with her. Somehow he managed to contain it and force his lips to stay in his usual thin line.
"Are you forgetting Severus, that half the castle thinks that you and I are actually together?" She asked him, still giggling slightly.
That made him smirk. She then wrapped her arms around him once more and pressed her nose to his, still smiling like a mad woman.
"If I were to take up with someone else, I would certainly inform you that I was leaving you first. I'm not the cheating type," she laughed.
"And just who would you leave me for Miss Evans?" He asked her, still smirking, "You don't have much to choose from."
She giggled again.
"I could always go for that Ravenclaw girl that asked me to Slughorn's party," she told him, "I'm sure she wouldn't mind taking me on."
"I can just imagine the gossip," he quipped.
Hermione burst into laughter again. This time Severus permitted himself a tiny chuckle along with her. All thoughts of explanations and bruises had flown out of his mind for the time being and he was more than content to laugh with her for the rest of the night.
Unfortunately, his companion had other things on her mind. As she finished her last bout of giggles she turned to him and repeated her earlier question.
"Do you have the vial with you?"
He pulled it out of his pocket this time without hesitation and handed it over to her. Her delicate fingers uncorked it and she turned back to him once more, holding her hand out to him.
"Mind doing it for me?" She asked.
He hesitated.
"I don't think you should take it," he told her, "I'm the only one who knows how it's supposed to turn out, how it's supposed to work-"
"And what am I supposed to do if it goes wrong?" She asked him, "I don't know what ingredients you used, I don't know what methods you looked at or what research you did. At least if it doesn't turn out right on me you'll have the knowledge there to pull me out."
He thought about it for a few moments too long for her liking and she waved her hand in his face again.
"Come on Severus, you know I'm right and seeing as I was late, we don't have all night anymore," she told him, "Slice me open already."
With a sigh he pulled out his wand and aimed it at one of her fingers. Silently, he cast a small slicing hex and small droplets of blood rushed to the surface. She moved it quickly over the vial and watched as the potion went from bright blue to a pale grey the second her blood mixed with its contents. Her eyes remained fixed upon it and Severus too seemed mesmerised by it.
"Well," she said, smiling up at him once more, "Here goes nothing."
She swallowed it all in one go and Severus expected her to simply doze off into sleep. He had made the potion perfectly after all, gone through everything thoroughly and made sure nothing could go wrong. But when he saw the smile slip off her face he knew something was wrong. She dropped the vial and it shattered on the floor before she followed it, the broken glass piercing the palm of the hand it had once resided in.
The last thing she saw was Severus' black hair clinging to his anguished face and hearing him scream her name before she finally gave in and slipped into unconsciousness….