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Chapter Eleven

Hermione yawned and covered her mouth with her hand. "I'm sorry, I didn't get much sleep last night."

"Any particular reason?" Dr Larch asked.

Hermione hesitated. The truth was, she had been up all night worrying about Snape. Although he'd been released from St Mungo's – with a half dozen new potions to take daily – she worried something would happen. Who knew what damage that bloody cuff had done. Only the threat of his ire stopped her from sleeping outside his door.

"Hermione?"

When Hermione blinked, she realised she was crying. She reached for the box of tissues and wiped her face. "The last few days have been really stressful." Taking a deep breath, she told Dr Larch of finding Snape unconscious; sending a panicked Patronus to St Mungo's and sitting with him until the emergency Healers arrived. She had barely left his bedside the four days he'd been unconscious, going so far as to use her status as his Minder – and in one instance her connection to Harry – to allow her to stay past the usual visiting hours. The moment he woke up she had felt like laughing and crying all at once.

"It was really scary," she said, bunching up the used tissue in her hand.

"I can imagine. From what you've told me, you seem quite close."

Hermione's cheeks flushed. "I wouldn't say that. But we're friends, I suppose?"

"My understanding of Snape is that he's lived a very lonely existence, and true friendships have been rare."

Though Hermione would never claim to fully know or understand Snape, of that she was certain. She remembered Sirius' taunts about him being Lucius Malfoy's lapdog, though she was wary of the truth behind that statement.

"They have," she finally said.

"How are you feeling now that Snape is back from the hospital? Relieved?"

Hermione nodded. "I am, but I feel like I can't relax; I keep thinking that something else will happen, and I won't get help in time."

"Why do you think that is?"

She shrugged, averting her eyes. "My crippling control issues?"

Dr Larch chuckled. "Your issues with control, yes. It's been one of the bigger things we've worked on since you first started to see me and you have made great progress. What do you say to changing our sessions to monthly ones? How would that feel?"

Hermione nodded. "I could do that, I think."

Dr Larch smiled. "The goal isn't to be in therapy once a week for the rest of your life, and you know you can always contact me, should you need to."

Those words echoed through Hermione's mind as she walked towards Grimmauld Place. Her first time meeting Dr Larch, she had cried for the entire session. Since then she had seen Dr Larch once a week without fail, and every session had taught her something new. It was scary, but she felt ready to stand more on her own two feet.

London was dull and grey, and the warmth of Grimmauld Place was very welcome. She saw Kreacher disappear upstairs as she hung up her coat, and Harry had tea ready for her down in the kitchen.

"How are you?" Harry said as he poured them tea. "I heard from Kingsley what happened yesterday."

"I'm fine, Harry." Hermione smiled slightly. "Snape is at home, and doing better."

Harry gave her a look she couldn't decipher – it was the same look he used to get when she bothered him about doing his homework. "Are you sure that removing that cuff was such a good idea?"

She almost choked on her tea. "You can't be serious. He almost died!"

"Well, obviously that was bad," Harry said, sounding frustrated. "But he is a convicted felon, and being without his magic is part of his punishment."

"And dying isn't!" Hermione was aware her voice was shrill, but couldn't find it in her to care. "His sentence was house-arrest, not the death penalty. If they hadn't taken that cuff off he would have slowly died."

"I know, I know. I'm sorry." Harry sighed. "I just worry."

She frowned. "About me? Why?"

Harry looked embarrassed, and she quickly caught on.

"You think Snape would do something? I'm not sure which is more insulting: you implying Snape would harm me or that I couldn't defend myself should he try."

He ran a hand through his hair. "Forget I said anything. But you'll let me know if anything happens?"

She rolled her eyes. "Nothing is going to happen."

Harry sighed, then smiled. "All right then. Did I say I was thinking of redoing the upstairs bath?"

When Hermione returned to Kingston Vale later that day, her stomach was in knots. She found Snape in the sitting room, reading. She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye as she went to hang up her coat and hat. He seemed fine.

"I can fix dinner," she called out, stepping into the kitchen.

She heard the book hit the coffee table, then footsteps.

Snape entered the kitchen looking both pale and annoyed. "I am not an invalid," he sneered, "and I won't have any of your mollycoddling."

Hermione flushed. "I wouldn't dream of it. Why don't you peel the potatoes?"

She pretended not to notice that whilst he was doing it with magic, it took a lot longer than she knew he was capable of. It was understandable that he was still feeling drained and weak from that cuff, as well as his injuries.

After dinner, he took his daily cocktail of potions, then excused himself upstairs. When she went to bed hours later, she stopped outside his door. No sounds came from within, and she realised he must have cast Muffliato.

Trying to calm her anxiety – he was a grown man fully capable of calling for help should he need it – she went to bed.

She only woke up three times during the night to listen outside his door.

–

Severus was taking the metaphorical bull by its horns – or more like, the beetle by its wings – and finally reading Skeeter's book about him (though he used the term book loosely). As he was fixing his tea, he realised he hadn't brought the book downstairs with him. A wordless spell, and the book smacked into his hand.

This gave him a deep sense of satisfaction. He was only now, after a full week of having his magic back, getting used to it. How strange that after a lifetime of using magic, only a few months without it could change him in such a way. That he had no wand was of little consequence; he was confident in his skills in wandless and wordless magic, and there was little he required a wand for. He had tried his Occlumency shields and was pleased that they were as strong as ever. Funnily enough, he felt no need to have them up. He still remembered how detached they used to make him feel; like he was separated from the rest of the world by a sheet of very thin plastic. It wasn't pleasant, but he had got used to it. The past years since the Dark Lord's return, his shields had been up constantly. It was difficult for him to deduce if he felt different because his shields were down or because he had his magic back. Most likely it was a bit of both.

Tea and tray of biscuits (ginger newts and jammie dodgers, a new obsession) floating behind him, he went to the sitting room. Granger wasn't due back from Hogwarts for at least a couple of hours, so he had plenty of time for the book. Holding the book, he scowled at the cover (and the cover scowled back). He knew he was ugly, but that was just rubbing it in. Taking a deep breath – and a calming sip of tea – he cracked open the cover.

He was halfway through the book – and on his second serving of tea – when the Floo turned green.

Granger glanced at the book as she stepped into the room. "What's the verdict? Do I need to hex her?"

The corner of his mouth twitched. "No. So far she has painted a picture that isn't too far from the truth. I wonder how many Muggles she interviewed in Cokeworth to dig up dirt about my parents."

She sat, pushing a curly strand of hair behind her ear and plucking a ginger newt from the plate. "What does she say about them?"

He closed the book with a sigh. "That my pure-blood mother's family disowned her when she got pregnant with me, and my father was a violent drunk who enjoyed gambling and couldn't hold down a job. That my childhood was filled with abuse and neglect, and it was no wonder I couldn't stop myself from giving in to the darkness within."

"Is that true?" Her voice was soft, hesitant.

He tilted his head. "Does that surprise you?"

"Yes, and no." She looked pensive. "Is that why you don't drink? Because your father was an alcoholic?"

Severus nodded slowly. His body still bore the scars from some of Tobias' more violent outbursts, and he had promised himself he would never be like his father.

"I'm sorry."

He snorted. "He's been dead since before you were born, don't waste your breath on him. Merlin knows he would have hated you. When I was growing up, he hated two things; politics and magic."

Granger nibbled on a biscuit. "Why do you think he hated magic?"

The question surprised him. He hadn't thought of Tobias for years, and he had certainly never tried to dissect what made him the bastard he was. "I'm not sure," he admitted. "Maybe he hated it because it scared him; it was something he couldn't understand so he decided to hate it instead. Or he thought it undeserved."

Her brow furrowed slightly. "That we're born with our magic?"

He nodded. "When I was little, back when he still had a job, Tobias always valued hard work. I suppose magic would seem lazy in his eyes – there's a spell for everything, which to him made almost any task seem like minimal effort."

"My parents thought so too," Granger said slowly. "They were very supportive," she was quick to add, "but I could tell they didn't understand our world. It felt almost patronising, the way they would react to me telling them things I'd done at school or explain how something was done with magic." After the fight at the Department of Mysteries, she had stopped telling them things altogether.

"It's difficult for most Muggles to understand, even those who give birth to a magical child. I've seen my fair share of Muggle-borns being shunned for being magical, much like Squibs are shunned for being non-magical."

She brushed away a few biscuit crumbs from her lap. "I wonder if that's why they use the suppression bracelets at Azkaban. Not only to quench the magic for safety reasons, but as a punishment? Because they think that you are less if you don't have your magic."

"I've no doubt that's the case. Don't look so surprised," he added, because her eyebrows had risen. "You forget I've lived and seen a lot more than you have. Do you think the Dark Lord lured people in during the first war with talk of killing Muggles?" Severus chuckled dryly. "No, that didn't come until much later. The magical society has always been deeply flawed and supremacist."

Granger's eyed widened. "I thought I was the only one who thought so."

Severus snorted, arching a brow. "Why, because of your ill-attempted cause for the House-elves?" The corner of his mouth quirked up. "Your SPEW project was the talk of the staff room for weeks."

She looked embarrassed. "It wasn't my proudest moment, I'll admit."

He shrugged. "Your heart was in the right place, but it was doomed to fail."

"I know." She leant back, resting her face on her hand. "Do you think things will ever change? Will people ever stop thinking that blood status is important, or that creatures such as House-elves or Goblins are less than humans? "

Severus contemplated this as he sipped his tea. "It may seem pessimistic, but I don't think so. Man, Muggle or Wizard, have always thought themselves the wisest and most complete. I don't see that changing anytime soon."

"That's depressing," Granger said. "You'd think with the war, people would be a bit more open-minded."

He snorted. "Would you have been, if the other side had won? Would you have bought into the ideology of blood purity?"

He could practically hear her brain working – it was quite amusing actually – and finally she sighed.

"No, I wouldn't. I kept thinking, 'but they're wrong', then I realised that they don't think they're wrong."

"Finally you're actually using all that brain power you have to do some critical thinking."

Granger rolled her eyes. "I do that quite a lot, thank you."

"So you say. Now piss off and let me finish this book. I can't wait to read about all the reasons I joined the Dark Lord."

She chuckled but stood. "All right, I'll leave you to it. Let me know if she needs hexing when you're finished."

Granger left, and it took Severus a few minutes to find the focus to delve back into the garbage that was Rita Skeeter's writing.

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