Disclaimer: I do NOT own these characters or the world they live in. I make no money from this story.
a/n: Please accept this as the first chapter of ten that will complete this no-longer abandoned story. I left them standing in that kitchen far too long. Well, they're out of the kitchen. Nine more chapters to follow as I get them edited. I do not have a beta reader so if you notice any typos or inconsistencies, please let me know. Enjoy.
Chapter 12
What Snape at first mistook for shadow was a patch of orange skin that covered almost the entire right side of her face. It was quite a distinctive shade of orange at that. She resembled a clown-like Phantom of the Opera.
Hermione's hand prodded dully at her cheek. "What? Why?" she stammered, her voice thick.
The girl acted like she might be in shock. Overhearing Lucius' conversation has perhaps made her hysterical. And that explanation for her erratic behavior would have made sense to Snape yesterday, before he had witnessed her dogged determination during three hours of uninterrupted Occlumency lessons. No, the simpler explanation made the most sense. She was exhausted. Although exhaustion did nothing to decode the mystery of her discolored skin.
"Miss Granger, are you alright?" He kept his voice firm but calm in case she bordered on panic.
"I...you know...I don't know..." She paused, her breathing growing shallow. Then her eyes widened and her face went completely bloodless. "And I think I'm going to be sick."
Occlumency Sickness, he realized too late. Grabbing her shoulders, he ushered her toward the sofa, all but carrying her along the way.
"Head between your knees," he instructed as he deposited her in the seat. That accounted for the nausea and her near-catatonia, he thought. That did nothing to explain why half her face looked like a drunkenly-applied tanning spell.
Her head obediently between her knees, Hermione stared at the floor and took no time to entertain her feelings of embarrassment or shame as nausea rolled through her belly and a clammy sweat broke out across her body.
"Be still. Breathe deep," Snape instructed as his footsteps retreated toward the kitchen. He returned a moment later with a glass of water and-oh dear-a bucket he slid into her line of sight.
The reality of possibly being sick into the bucket only made her feel worse so she closed her eyes and tried to focus. She attempted to clear her mind the way Snape had instructed before.
Inhale. Exhale. Her heart still hammered. Blood still whooshed in her ears with each frantic beat. She envisioned the void of nothingness, from the dreamless sleep. Sensory deprivation. Nothing to hear or see. No one gets queasy in a black hole, she told herself. Inhale. Hold. Exhale slowly.
After a long few minutes of repeating this impromptu mantra the rush of blood pumping in her ears relented, along with the dizziness. Her heart slowed. No longer fearing she might vomit everywhere, now feeling only uncomfortably sweaty all over, she sat back up and opened her eyes a crack.
"Better?" Snape asked. He sounded mildly interested.
She nodded, her jaw still clenched should the swells of nausea return. She squinted against the blinding lamplight that now filled the sitting room. That little lamp had gotten very bright all of a sudden.
Snape stood over her, appraising, staring. Without his robe on, in just his white button down shirt tucked neatly into his black slacks, he resembled a funeral director. She wondered if that was intentional.
"When did the episode begin?" he inquired, his brow drawn. "During the lesson? After?"
"After. A moment ago in the kitchen everything sort of went..." She swallowed deliberately as she searched for the best word. "...went wonky."
He chuckled very softly, unsurprised. "Everything felt too real," he prompted. "Too bright. Too fast."
"Too slow!" she pronounced, but too loud. The noise was too loud.
He nodded and sat beside her, leaning in a little closer than she felt entirely comfortable about again. He seemed to be studying her face. Maybe he was checking for symptoms. She willed her body to become heavier and sink further into the sofa cushions.
"Occlumency Sickness," he said. "Some practitioners are prone to it. Those who suffer from it find it especially unavoidable when they are physically or mentally weak during their practice."
Immediately defensive, Hermione began to protest but quickly realized that her mind was far too muddled to support an argument at the moment. Her protestation came out sounding like a half-drunk whimper. How lovely. He would think she was crying again. He would think her weak.
Wait! He knows the answer, she thought, so she fixated on him. He knew what was wrong. She concentrated on him as hard as she could given how quickly her thoughts seemed to unravel on her.
Snape sighed, rose to his feet, and retrieved his robe from the edge of the couch. His eyes on the fastening of the million buttons, he said, "No need to feel discouraged, Miss Granger. This is not unlike motion sickness. Some individuals are more susceptible than others." Then he paced to the bookcases and scanned the shelves. "Over the last several days, you have suffered a probable skull fracture, have had little sleep, not to mention the other emotional and physical traumas you have endured. You cannot continue Occlumency training in this state." He pulled several volumes from the shelves and carried them back with him. "You must sleep before we resume lessons." He produced a pocket watch from somewhere. "Six o'clock. That leaves us roughly twelve hours, several of which you must now use to recuperate."
The delay weighed on her. This was her fault. She was desperate for sleep and she was desperate to stay awake to learn what he needed her to learn. What she needed to learn. What she needed to stay alive.
"Can't I just take a rejuvenating potion?" she asked, her voice grating to her own ears. She sounded like a petulant child.
"Absolutely," he muttered, the one word weighed down by a layer of sarcasm she could visualize. "Provided of course you would like to experience a psychotic break. Once you reach a certain point, there really is no substitute for sleep. I have sought out a suitable replacement for a decade and I can assure you that one does not exist. Not one without consequences. That said, I believe I can help you get to sleep and improve the restfulness of the sleep you get without doing further harm." He patted his stack of pet books under his arm.
Her sleepiness had begun to feel very much like drunkenness and she did not find it altogether unpleasant. "Say sleep one more time," she quipped and let her head fall back on the sofa.
He raised a brow and waited, no doubt expecting her to elaborate. When she didn't, he narrowed his eyes and said, "Sleep?"
She smiled and laughed quietly to herself. "We have a new drinking game."
"Pity," he said. "You have already slipped into psychosis." Snape sighed and shook his head. "Now lie down. I believe I can intensify a potion I have on hand." He patted the stack of books once more. "First I must confirm the theory. I should be no more than half an hour."
His trusty stack of books at his side, Snape strode toward the kitchen. She let her eyes slide shut and listened to the small noises. The muted thud as the books landed on the counter. The crisp dry leaf rustle as he turned each page.
Glass vials clinked together. A cabinet door creaked, then thumped. A drawer whispered open, then shut. The nocturne of mundane sounds lulled her to sleep in a matter of minutes.
Once in the kitchen, Snape deposited the books on the counter and opened Resmarelda's Guide to Healing at Home to the table of contents. He paused to peek under his shirt collar. No, there was no tell-tale discoloration there. Strange. He had thought for sure he'd put the puzzle together during their conversation. He unbuttoned the bottom of his robe enough to pull down his waistband. Yes, his hip was as orange as her face. Curious, indeed.
Her condition and now his own made sense if her healing spells had backfired. He vaguely remembered reading a passage about backfires of this nature long ago. He flipped through the section about the phenomenon until he found the paragraph he remembered.
"When wielded by a novice, a healing spell may backfire, which can result in a number of different and sometimes spectacular side effects. The most common side effects are mild and/or temporary."
Snape skimmed the list of backfires that were, per usual, not in any particular order.
Loss of Hearing...Sudden Onset Super Hearing...X-Ray Vision. Snape chuckled at the note. "Serious, but not dangerous to the person with the x-ray vision. Condition is transitory and should taper off quickly in 6-7 years."
Skin Discolorations. Finally, there it was.
"Discoloration backfires can range from mild to severe. This unintended consequence is usually a result of double healing, i.e., when one spell is used to heal an already magically healed condition. While there is a time and place for team-casting, multi-layered applications, or combination treatments, rudimentary spells simply cannot support the power of two magical influences, therefore backfire-related discolorations are most common when two different spellcasters attempt to heal the same wound using different basic incantations."
Ah, yes. It had been decades since Snape had referenced the material. He had completely forgotten the possibility of a backfire when using basic healing spells. He continued reading to find out if the effects were reversible.
"All discolorations caused by a backfire should recede within a day. Mild to moderate discoloration-skin that returns to natural color when pressure is applied-is harmless and, depending upon the shade, only a mild inconvenience. Severe discoloration should be tended to by a Wizarding Medical Professional as soon as possible as this level of spell conflict may become permanent. If you are experiencing any skin discoloration that is not a result of a double spell casting, see page 529-Warts, Boils, Puss, Rashes, and Other Skin Ailments."
Snape pulled down his waistband again and this time pressed his thumb to the affected area. His skin showed briefly pink, then white, then returned to an unnaturally uniform orange. Well, that was a relief. He had to hope that the girl's face would fare as well.
Remembering the potion, he grabbed several vials from his store then assembled what he would need for a distillation apparatus from various cabinets. The entire set up took no more than ten minutes but Snape thoroughly enjoyed them. He couldn't remember the last time he'd put together this set of tubes or when he'd concerned himself with something so mundane. Just looking upon the coiled reflux condenser made him almost smile. Almost.
After a quick perusal of several texts to confirm the soundness of his theory, he poured two vials of dreamless sleep potion into the boiling flask and lit the bunsen burner. In twenty minutes, he would have a shot of sleep potion so potent that it would put Miss Granger to sleep for an hour, and that hour of sleep would equate to roughly two hours of rest. It would not be a cure all, but he hoped that the potion would be a balm for her troubled mind and body.
He chanced a glance into the sitting room to check on the girl's condition and found her fast asleep and snoring softly. Exhaustion was indeed the best sleep potion. Unless she awoke, he would just take the potion himself.
As soon as the distillation finished, he revisited the girl as she slept on the sofa. She was in the exact position he'd left her, her head resting on the back of the sofa, her hands relaxed at her sides.
He bent down to inspect the spell damage to her skin. Out of curiosity and opportunity, he reached his right hand toward her cheek to confirm that she too suffered only a mild case. As his hand neared her face she turned her head and nestled her cheek into the palm of his hand. His hand felt unbearably cold against her warm skin.
Snape froze. His first impulse was to withdraw his hand at once. But impulse quickly gave way to practicality. He must not wake her. Their lives depended upon it. Well, hers more so than his.
He gently pressed his thumb to her cheek. It blushed a natural pink for a brief second. Good, he thought, with luck the color would recede within hours and she would look normal for her interview with Voldemort.
She nuzzled his palm again, her breath hot on his wrist. Snape stood stock still and waited for an opportunity to free himself and end this impropriety. What would Potter or Albus think if they were to walk in now?
Why Albus thought these children could stand against the Dark Lord, Snape never understood.
The girl was vulnerable, fragile, inexperienced. The discolored mask would soon vanish but the bruised circles beneath her eyes would not. Her trauma would not.
Nevertheless, she was a strong witch. And she was no longer a child, as she often reminded him. Although he might phrase it as barely an adult. The fact remained that she would do everything in her power to learn what he asked of her. Their marathon lesson had proven that. So he would do whatever he could to prepare her.
Snape had not lied when he'd said he would protect her with his life. She would not become another death, or yet another example of squandered potential wasting away in fear or in servitude or in spell-induced purgatory.
Half a day would never be enough, he knew. He would focus on the foundations of Variable Memory, hope she possessed some innate ability, and pray he caught a lucky break that he could leverage into some kind of success.
Suddenly the urge to flee weighed heavy, as it sometimes did when his responsibilities felt too much to bear. He could run, conceal her somewhere. He could preserve one more life. Perhaps that would be enough to balance the scales.
Why was he still standing over her? His fingers on her neck. Her pulse beating against his fingertips. Her warm cheek in his very cold hand. Suddenly her eyes moved beneath the lids and she made a soft keening sound as though afraid. He brushed his thumb across her cheek, a motion as automatic as breathing. She quieted and slowly turned her face to the other side.
Freed, Snape stepped back. He balled his hand into a fist and found it still warm from her skin. Staring, he sank into the chair across from her. He willed himself not to scrutinize the moment that had just passed. He was unsuccessful.
Why had he allowed it? It was such a simple, stupid thing to revel in. He hadn't resumed his strict mental clarity when they had finished their lessons. He had left a door ajar to the dark place where he'd confined his emotions for so long. For a very brief moment, he'd remembered what it felt like not to be alone.
Exhausted and in no frame of mind to consider any of his thoughts trustworthy, he cleared them. Better to slam the door and bar it shut now than get further involved.
He summoned a piece of paper and pen which he used to compose a brief note that he affixed to the back of the bookcase facing the stairwell. Job done, he returned to the armchair, drank the shot of distilled sleep potion, and let his head fall back against the headrest. As he closed his eyes, he smiled at the note he knew would greet the boy in an hour or so.
"POTTER. BE QUIET. If you wake either of us, I will kill you."