New Perspective 2
TAKEN ON TRUST
By Bellegeste
Disclaimer: Characters etc are the property of JKR and her publishers…
A/N: Thanks everybody for the reviews and comments – please keep 'em coming. Special thanks to Duj and Cecelle for looking this over first.
This is quite a long chapter, but it answers a lot of questions (I hope). It carries on directly from the previous one.
Chapter 14:UNSPOKEN TRUTHS
Hermione stared at Snape wildly.
"Then what the hell have you been doing?" she cried. "I know you've been dealing with werewolves – and not friendly ones, either." Or dragons? No, gut feeling told her it wasn't dragons. "Even you couldn't fight a full grown werewolf and not get bitten. Or is it something you Death Eaters do for fun – for sport?" That was a childish comment, and she knew it, but she was just so furiously relieved: she wanted to lash out, to insult him, to hug him for being safe. Was Voldemort like some deranged Emperor Nero, pitting his strongest and best against magical beasts in barbaric gladiatorial combat? It was only one stage further on from duelling, after all. "Well? Aren't you going to say anything?"
"I am under no obligation to explain myself to you. The less -"
"The less I know, the better? You can't have it both ways, Sir. Just now you were telling me to check my facts."
Facts which, up until a moment ago, had seemed to make sense, but which she was now having to scramble and rearrange into newly eloquent sequences, like magnetic fridge poetry - repositioning the random letters to create the mot juste. It wasn't logical: if a werewolf had come close enough to inflict the scratches, how had Snape avoided being bitten? If he had used a stunning spell, why had he waited until they were within striking distance? And why were there no marks on his face – surely a werewolf would normally aim for the throat?
"It's got something to do with that revolting Fenrir person, hasn't it?" she stabbed, dragging in the name of the only werewolf she knew apart from Remus. "Oh, no it couldn't have. He took a Petrificus that night on the Tower, didn't he?" Her face fell. Another theory in shreds. She glared at Snape, her eyes narrowing. He was suspiciously non-committal. "But Tonks never said anything about him being arrested… It was him! And he's… Oh no. Ohmigod, he's…" She looked Snape up and down, from head to foot, assessing him, measuring his height against a second shocking hypothesis. "It wasn't a full grown werewolf at all, was it, Sir? It was small – a child! I'm right, aren't I? It wasn't… Oh, heck, it wasn't Malfoy?"
Much as she had disliked and, latterly, despised her Slytherin classmate, she would not have wished this fate upon him.
"You are correct." The words chilled her with their icy precision. "It was not Draco. He would not thank you for calling him a child."
Hermione sensed she had driven him to the point of leaving. Intuitively interpreting his body language – the imperceptible tensioning of the calves, the slight shift of weight forwards in preparation for a push up to standing – Hermione caught at Snape's hand to stop him from going, withdrawing immediately as he flinched at the contact.
"Oh, I'm sorry. But you can't go, Sir – we haven't gone through the Counter Curses for one thing, and… Sir, isn't it better that you tell me what's going on, rather than leave me to make incorrect assumptions?" She took a breath and endeavoured to sound more rational. "I appreciate that your 'work' is something you want to keep separate… But I was really worried – I was imagining all sorts of awful things. The truth can't be any worse."
Snape was sitting down again – that had to be a good sign. He was not, however, about to be coerced into confession. If anything, Hermione's concern strengthened his reserve. He should have known she would not let the matter drop.
"Besides," she pursued her argument, "once 'he' gets wind of the fact that I know about the Horcruxes, do you suppose he's going to care one way or the other whether or not I suspect Greyback of being some kind of wolfy paedophile?"
Her bluntness was rewarded: Snape's lips twitched in disapproval, an acknowledgement that he had at least listened. But his gaze was concentrated inward, weighing the risks of ignorance and misunderstanding, information and privity. His thumb traced lightly across the scars, massaging the hand that Hermione had grabbed. She hadn't meant to hurt him.
"So Greyback did escape then?" Surely Snape wouldn't have helped him. Harry hadn't said anything about him stopping to cast a 'Finite'. "Who un-spelled him – you? Alecto?"
"Is it relevant?" Snape parried.
"OK, how's this for a scenario," Hermione went on, determined not to be cowed into silence. "Fenrir Greyback bites a child and -"
"Children," Snape corrected, quietly admitting her into his confidence. The condemnation in his shadowed eyes was no longer directed at her.
"Oh, God. How many?" she whispered.
Snape resorted to her eyes now, needing that reassurance before committing himself any further. He spoke gravely.
"Did you read about an accident about three weeks ago in which a mini-bus of primary age schoolchildren crashed into the River Severn?"
Hermione nodded, appalled at the implication.
"Yes, Sir. They were all drowned. The bodies were never found. They blamed it on the undertow from tidal currents."
"Conveniently so." He seemed to think this sufficient explanation, but Hermione couldn't rest without further clarification. The facts were too horrible to leave to conjecture. A host of questions sprang to her lips; Snape forestalled her with a frown.
"There is little doubt that Greyback orchestrated the crash. In any event, he kidnapped the children. There are nine of them. They are… young." Unfamiliar with children any younger than eleven, he glossed over their ages. "…and troublesome," he added, shaking his head.
They'd be distraught, Hermione reasoned, terrified, lost, in pain, uncomprehending, pining for their families.
"And Greyback's bitten them? All of them? What is this? Does Vol- does he know about this? Or is it some sort of horrible hobby that beast's got going on the side? If Greyback bit them, why isn't he dealing with them? Why keep them? Why hasn't he taken them to live in his feral wolf pack – or whatever it is that Remus is supposed to be infiltrating? What's it got to do with you?"
Impatience and distaste flashed across Snape's face; he was not temperamentally attuned to small children, let alone hysterical ones.
"The brats are uncontrollable. Short of keeping them Stupefied, Fenrir cannot manage so many. And at full moon, obviously, he is in no position to -"
"But those kids are Muggles! What does he want them for anyway? He can't train them up to be Death Eaters – or can he?" Hermione was less than clear as to whether becoming a werewolf in some way superseded Muggledom and became a qualification for entering Voldemort's entourage. Snape answered dispassionately.
"Being Muggles they are expendable… No doubt Fenrir has some purpose in mind, but not until they have adjusted to their condition. First they have to be broken."
"Broken? They're not mustangs!"
"And you can get off that moral high horse," he snapped, as highly-strung as a stallion himself. "I haven't exactly been goading them with a whip and a chair. They are being dosed with Wolfsbane initially to ease the transition. It has been necessary to modify the potion to take into account their infancy. Minors can react unpredictably to the ingredients until they have developed a tolerance. I have brewed numerous batches."
Even as he said it, the weariness – mental and physical - was rolling off him in waves. Hermione understood how many gruelling hours' work, demanding pin-sharp concentration, total accuracy and undeviating attention to every drop, stir and bubble, was required to produce a single dose of Wolfsbane. And Snape had been concocting nine times that quantity, experimenting with new formulations, working in a makeshift laboratory without the benefit of his normal equipment. No wonder he was exhausted; no wonder he had been otherwise engaged over Full Moon.
"Last weekend must have been hell," she said. Cautious commiseration.
"The first Transformation is always the worst. Even with the potion, they required constant supervision and some, ah, restraint."
Snarling, screaming, thrashing, kicking, biting, scratching… They were like a pack of wild dogs, rabid dogs, circling me, clawing at me, angling for a bite, spitting out the potion. I couldn't take my eyes off them for a second. Vicious little tykes.
"Those poor kids. Their parents think they're dead," Hermione murmured.
"Better they were." He took an unsentimental view, jaundiced by his involvement over the past week. "Don't waste your sympathy. Consider it a bonus that the families have been spared the truth."
"But couldn't you have done something?" In her heart, Hermione knew that lycanthropy itself was incurable, but she clutched at hope and her faith in Snape. He was a potions expert, wasn't he? Might he not have brewed up something to save them? A new, improved Wolfsbane Plus?
"Like what? What could I do?" he demanded angrily, a sting of hurt in his voice. "Release them out into the Muggle world to be hunted down like animals or locked up as freaks? Bring them to Hogwarts? Or here? Who would want them? Would you? No. Blow my cover for the sake of a handful of Muggle brats who are as good as dead already? I think not. Poison them and put them out of their misery? Oh, it was tempting, I can tell you."
He was shaking. Hermione hadn't seen him quite so upset since Sirius's escape, when he had lost his chance of getting the Order of Merlin.
"I'm sorry, Sir. I only meant -"
"Don't you think I would have helped them if I could?" His voice was jagged with bitterness and impotence.
Hermione wasn't sure for whom she felt sorrier – for the man or the children. The children, she decided – as if being bitten wasn't bad enough, they had to endure being looked after by Snape. That can't have been a barrel of laughs either. He probably detested small kids almost as much as he hated werewolves. And a combination of the two… Oh boy! Yet, he would never abandon them to their fate. Hermione couldn't think of any circumstance in which Snape would knowingly allow a child to be hurt.
She looked again at the man sitting at her table. Fingers interlocked, his hands were clamped tightly together. He had, Hermione realised, pulled his sleeves down, hiding the scratches. He'd told her they'd been made by owls. And she had believed him. Escaping from the cuff, the raw ridge of a single welt reached as far as his knuckle. For one insane, unguarded instant Hermione wanted to lean across and kiss it better.
"But, Sir, are they… are you… infected?" She had to know.
A muscle in his throat tightened - the very idea was enough to trigger a gag reflex.
"It'd take more than a gang of brats… No, Miss Granger, I am not," he said, adding in a grim undertone, "Not yet."
xxx
How many times had Hermione imagined the scene in which Snape would finally trust her enough to take her into his confidence? And now that he had, she wished he hadn't. The reality wasn't exciting or dramatic, it was vile. And had sharing this knowledge reduced Snape's burden? It didn't look like it. Back-pedalling, she tried to return to less emotive ground.
"I've often wondered what it was you did all day. But how were you expected to cope with so many children all by yourself?" The idea could have been comical, but humour now, at Snape's expense, was not an option. Dignity was fragile, easily damaged. Recognising a safer cue, Snape raised his head.
"It fell to me to monitor the potion for adverse side effects over the critical forty-eight hour period. At other times…" He cleared his throat, pausing on the wisdom of revealing any more details.
"Yes?" Hermione was hanging on his every word.
"Work it out for yourself. Do you think I'm required for my Divination skills?" Sarcasm returned, with a twist of contempt.
"You said before that brewing formed a large part of your duties?"
Snape rubbed his eyes, drawing his hands back across his face so that, briefly, his skin was stretched even more taut over the cheekbones. He spoke with some reluctance.
"The Dark Lord is demanding a faster turnover in the production of Veritaserum. A month is too long. I have been looking into the process. The measures required to accelerate the brewing are labour intensive and time-consuming, the results volatile at best."
"Veritaserum? Is he bored with Crucios?" They were drifting away from the subject of the were-children, but perhaps that was just as well. Besides, Hermione couldn't bring herself to abandon this rare insight into Snape's life with Voldemort.
"Why mix business with pleasure?" he said, his eyes glittering. For a moment Hermione couldn't tell if he were being serious. "Information extracted under torture can become garbled. Using Veritaserum gives us access to the facts while the victim is still lucid. It's rare that we get a wizard of sufficient calibre to withstand the serum. Or, if we do, there are ways of softening him up. The torture then becomes an end in itself, an exercise in the infliction of pain, unsullied by sordid confession."
Disgust soured Hermione's sympathy. He sounded as though he approved. How could he stand by and allow that to happen? It was cruel, evil.
"Paradoxically, it is more humane," Snape growled, reading her revulsion. "The Dark Lord tends to be over-enthusiastic. Unchecked, his excesses can result in death in a mere matter of minutes. Whereas, if it is necessary for the victim to remain conscious… if a person resists… Without the serum it can involve hours of unnecessary pain to get to the truth. Ollivander, for example, was stubborn – and in the end he knew nothing of value. He need not have suffered so long."
The thickening clouds outside had cast the kitchen into a premature dusk, but Hermione was loath to turn on the light. The gloom blurred the edges of Snape's complicity; if she couldn't see the guilt in his face, he seemed somehow less culpable. Truth could be too ugly to tackle head on. Suddenly, savaged six-year olds were, after all, a less traumatic topic.
"So, you've had to act as guardian?" she asked, returning warily to the were-children. The word 'baby-sit' had been on the tip of her tongue, but she wasn't that foolhardy. "Couldn't they find anybody else?"
"They had to. I lack the requisite experience," he admitted.
Now the first moody drops of rain were slouching down the window pane. Hermione stopped her questions and peered out at the saturated sky, relieved to have arrived home before the deluge. She glanced shyly at Snape. He too had lapsed into mute reverie and was watching the weather. It was, as Neville had said, as if he were content just to sit for a while, just to be there. Respecting that need, Hermione allowed him his moments of peace. He didn't get many. She marvelled to be sharing a silence with Professor Snape which was anything other than hostile.
Should she get up and make a cup of tea? Although thirsty, she was unwilling to shatter the twilight tranquillity, to disturb his reprieve. He took so little time out. Smiling softly, she remembered the first time he had sat here in this kitchen; the way he had jumped at the click of the kettle. They had - she recalled their conversation clearly – been talking about Ron and the Weasleys. And Snape had said…
A jolt of suspicion twanged through her nerves like sciatica. Back then she had described Molly Weasley as 'the archetypal mum' and what had Snape replied? He'd said: 'She possesses the requisite experience'. The requisite experience which he himself lacked. An exemplary mother, accustomed to caring for a large family, even with some experience of werewolves… No, it wasn't possible. It couldn't be. It was a verbal coincidence. She refused to believe it of him. Of a Death Eater who had stood by and spectated while that creepy but harmless, old Mr Ollivander was slowly interrogated? Get real, Hermione. He's a Slytherin. He's here because you're useful, not because he values your friendship or enjoys your company. Don't kid yourself that you are anything more to Snape than a convenience.
Suspicion was clamouring for credence, shrieking in the voices of nine mutilated children, howling for their mothers…
Uneasily Hermione edged round on her chair and stood up, backing away across the kitchen. She couldn't bear to be sitting anywhere near Snape any more, not with doubt baying the moon. He looked up, the knot of tension that had slackened for that brief respite now gathering again in his brow. Hermione's mind felt fogged and fuzzy, as though she had acquired one of Luna's brain-boggling Wrackspurts. Right now she would have traded her soul for a Time-Turner to lose the last few minutes and return to that momentary lull she had mistaken for companionship. She saw it was merely the eye of the storm.
"How could you?" She glared at him with sudden loathing, borne of disappointment. "How low can you get? It's bad enough doing that to a stranger, but… Mrs Weasley, of all people!"
A hitch of heavy eyebrows, a pursing of already thinned lips: her acuity had taken him by surprise.
"Aren't you going to deny it?" she demanded.
"To what purpose? You already have me tried and convicted."
"So you admit that you kidnapped Ron's mum to look after a bunch of baby werewolves?" Please tell me I'm wrong, that the idea is far-fetched, fatuous, farcical, flawed, faulty, featherbrained… Use as many F words as you like.
"Who did you think was taking care of them – Bellatrix? Narcissa? Draco?" So it was true. Snape had been involved in Mrs Weasley's disappearance, and had lied about it.
"Other Death Eaters have wives, don't they? Why not rope in one of them? Or wouldn't they soil their precious Pureblood hands by associating with Muggles?" Hermione was pacing in agitation, not that the design of the kitchen allowed much room to manoeuvre, her socked feet slipping on the tiles.
"It is hardly a position to attract volunteers." He was unperturbed, as if he were discussing an unpopular, routine chore, or allocating the duty roster at Quidditch camp – not talking about the abduction and enslavement of an innocent housewife, who also just happened to be her boyfriend's mother.
"So whose sick idea was this – yours? Did you suggest her? You've never liked Ron." Her knuckles, gripping the back of the chair, were white as she accused him.
"I rather think the nomination came from another quarter."
Malfoy?
"But all the same – Molly Weasley! Did it have to be one of us?"
"You would have preferred it to be someone else's mother? Whose? Brocklehurst's? Finnegan's? Patil's? Boot's? Brown's? Finch-Fletchley's? Turpin's? Bell's?" He was capable of reeling off the entire Hogwarts register.
"All right!" The relentless listing ceased. "And what about Mrs Bobbin – Melinda's mother? Have you taken her too? What experience has she got? Melinda is an only child. Got that one wrong, didn't you?" Anger and outrage had unleashed the girl's tongue.
"Their circumstances are completely different," Snape retorted. "The daughter would have done equally well -"
"Oh that's disgusting!" Hermione turned away, sickened.
"- as a hostage." Snape finished the sentence with acid emphasis. "The father owns a string of Apothecaries.(1) He has been more than generous in furnishing me with some of the rarer potions ingredients."
"Under duress."
"Would you rather I stole them?" Snape asked.
"Yes. No. Oh, what's the difference?" Arguing with Snape dragged her through an ethical looking glass where 'conscience' and 'scruple' had no meaning.
"But you let us go on believing she was dead. You knew how devastated the Weasleys were – how could you be so cruel?"
"Cruel? I as good as told you the woman was alive, if you had bothered to listen. 'Where there's life there's hope'? To whom did you think I referred?"
Hermione spooled back through their earlier conversation, wondering whether she had misunderstood, or whether he was now tampering with her memories too. She shrugged in exasperation, feeling that she was letting the argument slip away from her.
"To yourself. Or maybe to Ron. When you spoke about hope, I thought you were talking about the Borometz. Besides, when you said that, I didn't even know Mrs Weasley was missing."
Snape's spine straightened, and a characteristic supercilious slant angled his voice. Hermione had not appreciated before that it might be employed defensively.
"I had assumed that with your perspicacity and your penchant for problem-solving, you would have made the obvious connection."
Obvious? How dare he imply that she was the one who had been remiss?
"But, Sir, I asked you about her. I specifically asked if you knew if she was all right – and you didn't say a word."
Had they been in a classroom, Snape would have retreated by now into his marking, forcing Hermione to wait while he regrouped his arguments under the banner of that relentless, merciless red quill. Here he had no such prop.
"The Weasley woman is fine. She has not been exposed to any real danger. I told you, I was there to monitor the potion consumption during the critical period. She has performed her duties more than adequately."
Snape was forced to concede Molly's superiority in childcare. Quickly gaining the children's confidence, she had assisted with bandages and dressings. Despite limited resources she had soon distracted them with singing and stories, drawing, word games and simple party games. Some party. She had been a sound choice.
"And what about when she is no longer needed for those duties?" Hermione railed. "What then? What's 'he' going to do? Send her home with a slice of cake and a party bag?" She echoed Snape's thoughts with uncanny accuracy.
"I'll handle that when the time comes." Brusqueness compensated for uncertainty. He didn't yet know how he would extricate the woman.
Hermione saw, and anxiety spilled back into her stomach. His reassurances had partially appeased her, but if he hadn't even worked out an escape plan…
"So what do I tell Ron and Ginny?" she demanded.
"Nothing. You tell them nothing." Snape was emphatic. "Any hint of 'Welcome home, Mother' celebrations and my position is compromised. Yours, too. Why do you think I did not tell you before?"
Hermione folded her arms, hugging her annoyance to her chest, and fixed Snape with a sulky stare.
"You're sure Mrs Weasley's not hurt?" she asked sullenly.
"I have said so."
"Yes, but what haven't you said? What else have you been keeping quiet about? That's what I want to know. You've been using us – all of us."
Snape's eyes flashed several detentions' worth of irritation. Pulling the parchment across the table, he unrolled it and flattened it out in front of him.
"We shall review the Counter Curses before I leave," he informed her in a cold monotone. Grudgingly, Hermione moved to where she could see, while hearing the clipped, impersonal phrases: incantation, intonation, repetition, intent, wand direction, concentration… Somewhere in the left hand side of her brain the bald facts registered. They reached the bottom of the second page and Snape stood up.
"Anything else?" Hermione hadn't forgiven him. Neither had she forgiven herself for being so malleable, too willing, too eager for approval.
Snape had seen no reason to delay his departure. He was already at the back door, fastening his cloak tightly right up to the throat, against the rain which was now tumbling from the sky like sprats from a trawler's net.
"You might advise Potter to focus his energies onto finding the locket." He drew his hood up over his head and opened the door. On the threshold he paused, like Crookshanks, checking for danger before the plunge into the unknown. Rain battered the step, bouncing back and splattering the drip mat inside.
"Wait!" Hermione was across the kitchen in a bound, slamming the door closed before him. "What did you say? Look for the locket? What about Ravenclaw's Pen? Pen, Quill, whatever you want to call it. Harry's spent ages searching for it. What's he supposed to do about that? Forget it?"
"As he wishes."
"As he wishes? Are you saying the Pen isn't worth bothering with? That it isn't a Horcrux after all? What are you saying?" Something wasn't quite right here.
Snape gave her one of those deeply inscrutable looks.
"I am saying that he would do better to concentrate on a known Horcrux, now that he is equipped to cope with it. Now, if you don't mind -" Hunching his shoulders he prepared to meet the sluicing water.
Hermione barred his way. He was being evasive and obstructive, and she had no intention of letting him leave until she had got to the bottom of it.
"You didn't seem too bothered at the prospect of him tracking down the Pen before," she pointed out. "It's almost as if you knew he'd never find it, as if it didn't exist. Or, if it does, as if you knew it wasn't a Horcrux in the first place…"
Snape didn't respond. Hooded, his face in shadow, it was even more difficult than usual to gauge his reaction. Hermione's mind raced – Luna's Wrackspurt had been ousted by one of her giant hebe moths fluttering and flapping in panic against her stomach walls.
"It isn't a Horcrux at all, is it?" It was an accusation, not a question. "You knew that all along. Take off that hood and look at me! Is Ravenclaw's Pen a Horcrux?"
"I have no reason to believe so."
Incredulous, she gaped at him, then uttered a snort of fey laughter.
"Great! That's just marvellous. So it was all a hoax. What about Ultio in scripto? 'The phrase you heard the Dark Lord quote on more than one occasion'? Hey? Did you make that up too? Why? Why? What do you stand to gain from tricking us? Don't you want Harry to find the Horcruxes?"
She searched his face for any trace of shame or regret or repentance, but she couldn't see past the self-righteous complacency.
"On the contrary," he said, infuriatingly calm. "It is imperative that he finds and destroys them. But I could not run the risk of his discovering the genuine article before he was adequately prepared. There is too much at stake."
"You had Harry jumping through hoops – and me!" Hermione exclaimed heatedly. "There was I thinking I was so clever, looking up a few references… All that time I spent reading up about Flamel and Bruno and Della Porta… when all the time it was another red herring."
"Red herring or sensible precaution? With your track history, who knows what you might have discovered? And your research was not without result. The background information you unearthed was valid." Damning with faint praise.
"Big deal." It wasn't so much the waste of time she resented, but the humiliation: being patronised, lied to, manipulated. She felt such a fool. "I hope we've given you a good laugh – gullible Gryffindors, eh? We walked right into that one."
Snape looked straight at her. It was disconcerting.
"Miss Granger, without you I would not have gained access to the spell books. Your assistance has been invaluable."
"Oh, fine. And that makes it all right? Sir, why couldn't you just have told me? You could have told me about Mrs Weasley; you could have told me to stall Harry on the Horcruxes. I thought you trusted me."
That was what hurt most – the betrayal.
At last he had the decency to look uncomfortable.
"The funny thing is, Sir, that I trusted you. Despite what everybody says – in spite of my own judgement too, half the time – I thought I knew better, and I trusted you. How silly does that make me? I really wanted to help you, Sir. To think I went to McGonagall to stick up for you. I thought I could make a difference. I believed I was doing something important, doing what was right. And guess what?" A choked, bitter chuckle caught in her throat. "I actually deluded myself into thinking you appreciated it. That you respected me for it."
"Miss Granger -"
Hermione twisted away. What now – more lies? Persuasive platitudes? Steadying herself against the sink unit, her back to Snape, she braced for impending tears. Her world dissolved and reformed as she fought for control. She refused to give him the satisfaction of seeing her cry. If only he would leave now. Leave or apologise – one or the other. Yet how could she believe anything he said? It would take much more than words to convince her he was sincere. But he was here, wasn't he? That in itself spoke volumes.
"Do you know," she gulped, "I stupidly thought that this might be one place – maybe the only place – where you didn't have to lie. Where you could leave that behind, along with the brutality and the sycophancy and all the other things that make your life so hateful. I thought… I thought you could come here and have a break from all that – you could be yourself, even for just a little while. And there were times when I even thought that was what you wanted too. But you can't do it, can you? You're so steeped in secrecy, you don't know who you are any more."
Oh God, had she really said all that? The next sound she'd hear would be the door shutting and that would be that. He'd go and never come back. She'd blown it. She had only herself to blame. Snape's very existence depended on duplicity – could he, for her sake, be expected to change the habits of a lifetime? She didn't condemn Crookshanks for chasing voles; how then could she criticise Snape for his very nature? So he had abused her trust – was it that which upset her, or the fact that he was so rudely resistant to being helped? That he had not succumbed to her sympathy? Seriously, had she ever hoped for anything more than recognition? If he had felt anything more than gratitude, would that have been what she really wanted? Or would the knowledge have been enough – the knowledge that she had the power to reach him?
Hesitant footsteps across the kitchen were drowned by the drumming of the rain. A sixth sense thrilled to the awareness that Snape was standing behind her, as close as he had been that first night in the garden. Close enough to hold her… Tonight he was not invisible.
But it was injured pride which held her, rooted to the spot, as firm and unyielding as Neville's replanted tooth. Expecting retaliation, or slippery, smooth-tongued self-justification, she was surprised: his voice was as gentle as she'd ever heard it. The scales had tipped the other way – now that she'd almost stopped counting.
"If I had told you the truth, you would have been forced into ever deeper deception," he said. "Could you have lied to your friends - to Potter and Weasley? It was difficult enough sending that owl, wasn't it?"
Dumbly, she nodded.
"That was one small subterfuge. Could you cope with living a lie – where every thought and action is dictated by deceit? You would find the strain intolerable. If you had been acting a part, you would not have been half as convincing. Your emotions are far too transparent."
"Transparent?" she sniffed.
"As Veritaserum."
"Well, at least one of us knows how to be honest."
Unspoken truths charged the air with impossibility.
"Hermione, I…"
The blast from the open door and the disarming spell hit them both simultaneously.
"Expelliarmus!"
End of chapter. Apologies for the cliffie… Just couldn't resist. Things get very bad for Snape in the next chapter. Don't miss it!
1 Cf. HBP ch 11.