To Give You Strength
The next week passed in a quiet that reminded him of long gone, more peaceful times. For five days, he didn´t leave his chambers and only accepted the visits of Albus and Minerva.
And Hermione´s, of course. She would spend hours with him, creating codes they could use in letters and in public situations, developing a wide range of gestures that held hidden meanings to them, and work on her plan in greater detail. She couldn´t know when the time would be right for it, and she had to have it ready for the Dark Lord whenever that time came.
And as she had promised, she had found a way of keeping Draco safe while allowing him to participate in their work again, a rather ingenious combination of the Imperio Curse with a triggered Obliviate that would activate on certain keywords and wipe Draco´s mind clean of everything that could possibly be a danger to him or them. It only needed some testing to be done, but Severus hoped that it could be useful for Order members in general, though it would officially have to come from him. No student could be believed to have developed a charm that complicated, and Hermione wasn´t interested in getting any attention.
Hermione still wouldn´t open up completely to him, but her mistrust and nervousness slowly faded to a point when she almost seemed to feel comfortable in his presence. Not comfortable enough to trust in him or let him touch her in any way, but she would now read in his company or do her private research work, and sometimes he would look up and find her completely lost in a heavy volume or her own, meticulously organized notes.
As they worked together in quiet efficiency, Severus wondered when the resting period would end and war turn on them once more. And as if some mischievous god had listened to his thoughts, he didn´t have to wait very long.
It happened during a rather late staff meeting on Friday evening.
They were discussing quarrels between Slytherin and the other houses that had gone beyond the usual bickering and swearing and were slowly turning into a full scale war inside the school, when suddenly Severus felt something burning into his left arm and thigh. For one, terrible moment he believed that the Dark Mark had returned and that Voldemort was using their old connection to torture him now.
Then, he reached into his pocket and felt a coin, hot to the touch, then suddenly cold. Hot, then cold.
„I have to go", he said, his voice sounding unnaturally loud in the subdued atmosphere of the staff room, „I´m sorry, but I remembered an urgent obligation."
Flitwick, whom he had interrupted in mid-sentence, gazed at him in astonishment, a feeling mirrored by most of the present teachers. Only Remus´ face showed no surprise, as if he believed Severus capable of any impolite action anyway. He felt Minerva´s and Albus´ worried eyes on him and nodded slightly, a tiny wink of the head that nevertheless answered their question and deepened their worries.
His chair scraped back with a loud, screeching sound, but he didn´t care.
Only outside the staffroom did he withdraw the coin from its hiding place. It was the trick galleon he had charmed nearly a month ago, the counterpart of which he had given to Hermione.
Hermione! This had to be her. Some sort of emergency must have occurred, and she was calling for help.
With long, hasty steps, the hem of his robes billowing behind him like the upturned wings of a raven, Severus left the castle in direction of the Forbidden forest. He had no idea where to find her, just a vague hope that she had managed the apparation and was on her way back to Hogwarts. The coin had no location spell, and if she wasn´t here…
He only saw her when he had already nearly passed her. She was leaning against a tree, only her head and shoulders visible under the cloak he had given to her.
She beckoned to him, and he crossed the distance between them in a near run.
"What happened?", he asked, worry clouding his voice, "Are you hurt or…"
"Not badly", she interrupted him, letting the invisibility cloak slip to the ground. He could see now that her right leg was twisted in a wrong way, broken and bruised, "But that wasn´t the reason I called to you. The Death Eaters… damn, we haven´t got time for this", her eyebrows were drawn together in concentration and pain, "Do you have a handkerchief?"
"Here", he removed one from his breast pocket and offered it to her.
"Don´t give it to me. Transfigure it into a bowl… a metal bowl."
He didn´t understand a word she was saying, but he had promised to trust her, and this seemed to be the moment of testing. Wordlessly, he transfigured his white linen handkerchief in a bowl, small enough to fit into the folded together palms of his hands.
"Big enough?", he asked, and she nodded impatiently.
Drawing her wand, she aimed it at her temple and muttered an incantation. When she withdrew it, a drop of some silvery substance hung from its tip.
"Voldemort is planning the attack on three auror families", she explained hastily while placing the materialized thought into the bowl, "The exact location of their houses and their names are in here. You must hurry! I was… kept from returning immediately. I hope it´s not too late."
He nodded.
"Do you need help to return to the castle?", he asked, his mind already working on the rescue mission.
"No. If I take my own time, I will manage. I´ll wait for you in your chambers. If I´m not there, I´m somewhere on my way there. Now hurry up!"
"Take care", he ordered and rushed back to the castle, even faster than before.
It took some minutes to drive the teachers from the staff room, but Severus could be very convincing if he had to. Once only Albus and Minerva were left, he informed them of Hermione´s words and watched the ghostly figure of the Dark Lord giving the coordinates of the fated aurors´ homes to his Death Eaters.
It took less time to assemble a rescue team, but when Albus asked him to accompany it, Severus declined.
"I have other obligations", he explained, and Minerva´s warm smile accompanied him out of the staff room.
He found Hermione in the secret tunnel. She had cut a straight branch from a tree and was leaning heavily on it. Her movements were slow and of fading strength, but she only let him help her after he had informed her of the measures Albus had taken.
Then, she placed one arm around his neck and discarded the branch. He had to bow his head so that she could reach him, and it had to remain bowed during their tiresome walk or rather limp back to his chambers. But he knew she would refuse if he offered to carry her, and would fall back on her stick.
„May I help you?", he asked hesitatingly when they had reached his rooms, „You shouldn´t try the staircase with your leg. I could leave the library of course, but I´m much more adept at leg injuries than you are, and you don´t look particularly energetic."
„Nice way of putting it", she grumbled, but her eyes searched his face nervously. She didn´t like being touched by him, and there was still mistrust in her.
"I need your help anyway", she admitted after a moment of silence, "The leg I could have healed myself, but they have tested a new spell on it. It prevents the use of healing magic on the bone. Try it and the break gets worse. As does the pain. I have no idea what to do against it, and honestly, I´m not in the shape to concentrate."
She accepted his help, but only because she had to. Was that a good or a bad sign, he wondered for a moment before he brushed that thought aside.
"Let´s get you over to a chair first", he proposed and she nodded an assent. A hiss escaped her tightly clenched jaw when he settled her down on the sofa and lifted her legs onto it.
Next, he started a series of diagnosis spells.
"This might take some time", he explained, "I´ll make tea meanwhile. You sit tight and relax."
"As if I had a choice", she commented dryly, but her voice had lost some of the pressed quality that told him she was in pain and under emotional stress.
He left the kitchen door open and set the water to boil.
"Good move to think of the coin", he called over to her, "Why did you still have it?"
He heard her shift nervously on the sofa, her clothes rustling when they came into contact with the pillows he had placed behind her back so that she could sit upright.
"I tied it into my shoe lace. The house elves brought it to my chambers after the withdrawal, probably thought it was mine. I kept it, and tonight I suddenly thought of it again", she called back, "It´s one of those things girls do, you know? Decorating their shoes with all sorts of useless stuff. There´s another coin in the lace of my left shoe, but that´s just a normal one. They didn´t even notice it. Men."
He laughed silently at the dry humour in her last words and prepared the tea.
When he returned to the library, her cheeks had lost some of their unnatural paleness and the diagnosis spells were finished.
"That looks rather nasty", he said after studying the results for a moment. She nodded silently, obviously understanding the colour codes of the spells as well as he did.
"They cursed the whole bone of the lower leg", he explained nevertheless, if only because talking aloud helped him to think, "We can´t cure it this way, and developing a counter curse would take some time."
"Could we remove it?", she asked, and his head snapped up to meet her eyes, dark with pain and fatigue.
"That could work", he answered slowly, "Remove the whole bone and then use skele-grow to let it grow back. It would mean a night of pain though."
She looked at him, clearly not knowing if he was trying to make a very bad joke or if his concern was genuine.
"I should survive it", she finally said, "Don´t you think so?"
He grinned, "I´m nearly sure of it. But you should sleep here, down in the library. Just in case there are problems."
He saw her hesitation in the way her hands stroked the cloth of the sofa, and her brows drew slightly together. Then she nodded, just a short, sharp movement of her head, but suddenly he knew that this whole evening was a good sign, not a bad one. They were progressing, slowly but steadily.
"Sandwiches?", he asked.
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He had vanished the bones before they ate their late dinner. It was a strange feeling to see her leg go all wobbly, but the pain vanished together with the bone. Skele-grow she would take later, when "she had relaxed sufficiently", as her self appointed nurse in black robes had pointed out.
Not that she could relax while the Order was still out there, trying to prevent the massacre of three auror families. All of them had wives, and children.
„While we are waiting, you might care to enlighten me on something", he finally said, partly from the wish to divert her from her dark thoughts.
„What do you mean?", she asked cautiously. As it had so often been the case over the last weeks, sudden distrust turned her face cool and distant. She didn´t like it when he asked her about personal matters, and once, when he had only hinted at his ongoing interest in her reasons for spying, she had turned on her heels and left the room.
„Where did you learn Occlumency?", he asked, not betraying the deep, burning interest that lay behind this question, „Who taught you?"
He had expected her to refuse an answer, at the very least give him one of her Ice Queen stares, but to his utter surprise, she just smiled.
„Actually, it was you", she answered, but continued quickly when she noticed his startlement, „or rather a memory of you."
For a moment, Severus just stared at her. Then, he understood and a wry grin spread on his face.
„The Potter brat´s Occlumency sessions", he whispered and saw her nod, „Where did you find a pensieve?"
„I made one", she answered simply. Creating pensieves was difficult, they both knew that, but somehow Severus wasn´t surprised about this new prove of Hermione´s abilities. He knew her too well by now to be surprised by anything.
„So you convinced him of sharing his memories with you", he murmured. Did this mean that she knew...
She nodded again, „Except the memories he himself saw in your pensieve. He was too ashamed of himself to share them with anyone. I told him that I was interested in lessons myself, but didn´t dare ask you. He wasn´t surprised, and when I witnessed your... charming style of teaching, I was glad I hadn´t asked."
„Not that you would have asked anyway. You didn´t want any of the teachers to know." She smiled her agreement to that assessment.
„But surely those few lessons weren´t enough to master Occlumency", he said, not satisfied with her explanation, „Your grasp of the matter is beyond anything I taught Potter."
She grinned, „Well thank you, Severus! A compliment! And this time you aren´t even angry with me!"
He grunted at that, but was too curious to let it go, „Who taught you?"
„After I had practised with your memories and a book I found in the library, I started to slip out of Hogwarts every night. I disguised myself and found some guy in Diagon Alley who taught me a bit more. After that, I used Dumbledore."
„Used Dumbledore?", he echoed.
She blushed slightly, seemingly embarrassed of this part of the story.
„Everyone of us knows that Dumbledore uses Legilimence all the time: it´s what gave him that aura of knowing everything, after all. So I started behaving a bit strangely in his presence and then looked him right in the eyes. His reactions usually showed me whether I had managed to get false images across. And after that..."
Severus reached for his tea and took a deep gulp to mask his slight dizziness. If Albus knew that he had served as training dummy for a student! He felt like laughing, and wondered if he would ever find the courage to tell his Headmaster about this. Probably not.
„After that?"
„I used a boggart", she said without expression, „I remembered Harry´s episode with the dementors in third year. It wasn´t that difficult to convince myself that Voldemort breaking into my mind was my worst fear. So I found myself a boggart, hid him and used him to train. It took me three months to reach this level."
Three hellish months, probably, he thought, examining her expressionless face.
Though boggart activity didn´t have the same devastating effects as their real counterparts, they appeared to the victim as painful and terrifying as the original experience. He imagined being confronted by Voldemort again and again for three painful months and shuddered.
And again, the question nearly slipped from his tongue: Why? Why do all this, Hermione? But he stopped himself. She wouldn´t talk about this, her forbidding stare told him so clearly enough.
"Inventive", he drawled, and suppressed the bubble of unasked questions firmly.
"Not really", she disagreed, "Harry trained his Patronus this way, back in third year with Professor Lupin. I got the idea from them. Now, is there any more tea?"
She sat up on the sofa and groaned as the tight muscles of her back protested painfully.
Severus walked over until he stood behind her, his clean, male smell embracing her like a cloud of calm. "You are terribly tense", he told her when tried to massage her shoulders with one hand, "Here, let me…"
Softly, he placed his long, slender hands on her shoulders and started to massage the pain away. The moment Hermione felt his touch on her skin, the warmth of his hands, she went rigid. It was as if all humanity had fled her body and left a cold, unresponding stone instead.
Severus felt her muscles stiffen under his hands and stepped back immediately, removing all contact between them.
Too fast, he thought, angry with himself, You can´t expect her to trust so easily. Last time you touched her, you did so to rape her mind. But still, though he never would have admitted it to anybody, he felt a sting of pain, and a sudden cold, as if some tiny flame of light had gone out.
"I´m sorry, Hermione. I was thoughtless", he said, trying to hide his disappointment, "I should have known…"
"No, no Severus", she answered hastily, her eyes growing wide when she sensed his dismay, "This has nothing to do with you!"
"You don´t have to explain anything", he said, no emotion surfacing in his words, "Though I can assure you that my massaging skills are excellent."
"That´s not the point", Hermione protested quietly.
No, of course it isn´t, he thought, it´s that you don´t trust me.
As if she had heard his words, her eyes darkened with guilt. She hesitated, but then reached out and touched his hand that was resting on the back of the sofa.
"It´s just so long ago since another human being touched me without… wanting something else", she tried to explain, insecurity written clearly in her face, "I´m not used to it. I´m all tight and screwed up and on constant alarm modus inside. Half of the time this body doesn´t feel as if it belonged to me anymore!"
She took a deep, shuddering breath and squeezed his hand once, tightly, before letting go, "At the moment, every touch is poison to me."
And in a flash, he remembered. How the touch of warm flesh had made him shudder and withdraw for years. How he had willed his body to become cold, lifeless and without need, wrapped in layers and layers of black cloth, to protect it and hide from view. He had turned his flesh into a weapon, something made of steel and lightning, unbreakable and untouchable.
Touch was not for him, the consolation of another human body was for weaker, purer beings, beings that had not tasted pain and mortification beyond measure.
And he remembered the longing for all that was human, the desperate need that clawed at him in the middle of the night, waking him in horror and haunting him through the dark, deserted corridors of Hogwarts.
"A weakness you can´t allow yourself", he whispered, still half buried in his memories while for a moment they seemed to become one in their pain, the girl and the man, "For you believe you don´t deserve it."
She stared at him, and in her eyes he found the mirror of his own feelings. Bright they were, brimming with pain and the desire for human touch, and fear.
He had to lower his eyes first, unable to bear this intensity any longer.
"Ill make us some more tea", he managed to croak, and fled the room.
´
Standing at the kitchen fire, the kettle already in his hand, he realized that his heart beat wildly and his breath came fast, in ragged thrusts.
Damn. How could this have happened?
How could this chit of a girl, a student half his age, touch him so deeply when he had believed himself untouchable for years? He was a grown man, for goodness sake, a master spy! He needed no one, not Albus, not Minerva. He had survived on his own for years, never seeking counsel or support from anybody! She was nothing to him!
Why then do you feel so close to her? Why do you see yourself in her eyes?
Muttering swear words under his breath, Severus Snape prepared the tea.
The long known ritual helped to calm him and it didn´t take him long to steady his breath and hands. No muscle in his face betrayed his inner turmoil when he returned to the library.
Hermione was watching the inky blackness of the night outside when he re-entered the room, carrying a steaming pot of tea. He filled her mug again and handed it over. Both took care that their fingers didn´t touch.
"I think it is time for the skele-grow", he finally said into the silence, if only to keep it from growing too large.
She nodded, still not speaking a word.
He fetched the bottled and poured her a glass of the awful smelling liquid. She downed it without batting an eyelid, but the muscles of her legs twitched visibly.
"Thank you", she said, taking another sip of tea to drive away the foul taste of the potion, "Have you never considered improving this vile taste?"
"Never thought it necessary. Even at this hellhouse of a school, skele-grow isn´t used that often. But if you plan on making it a regular source of food, I will of course set to sweeten it immediately. Should it be peppermint or peach?"
He was glad to see the ghost of a grin on her face.
"Strawberry", she answered, "I love strawberries", and suddenly, the room seemed warm and cosy again.
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A/N: Yes…I know…I promised she would end in his arms, but it just wouldn´t develop that way… But don´t worry, we´ll have enough embraces waiting along the way!