[see Prologue for my apathetic disclaimer]

Chapter 1

We agreed, after an hour of convalescence and chilly, scared silences, to write down in dot-point form everything we knew about ourselves, each other, and the events of the last week.

There was nothing that was at all surprising to any of us. That in itself was frustrating. The presence of the box hinted that the ring, and the events surrounding it, were central to the problem. A backfired spell, or something of the sort. We were all missing snatches of time, small things that we could verify. Harry receiving some more post from the Ministry, or Ron having answered a Floo call. Very mundane and useless memory lapses. I would have no idea how much I myself had lost, how much of my own memories and self I had lost, until I tried to think of something specifically and found that blankness. Not knowing whether I would be able to recall how to counteract a curse, or which book to turn to. Who was I, if I wasn't able to access my own knowledge?

I felt vulnerable, as if I had been hobbled on an intellectual level, unable to move about in my own head. It ached.

After the emergency corroboration of minor facts, and the conclusion that we knew next to nothing about what had happened, Ron had visibly crumpled. He didn't respond to anything anyone said, and as soon as Harry had ushered Ginny up the stairs to have a hot bath and a rest, he stormed moodily out of the dining room. Several seconds later, his bedroom door slammed shut.

I realised that he had possibly invested a lot more in our silent, disconnected relationship than I had. That he was pissed off, and feeling dumped and superseded. Which was, in my mind, just fine. It was wonderful, in a bile-in-my-throat, shaking knees, sort of way. If he'd thought that that had been a relationship, then I was desperately glad of Snape's ring on my finger.

We'd looked at it, and it was his. His mother's. It had her family name, Prince, engraved on the inside. It felt odd, something niggled at the back of my mind when I read it, but it was undoubtedly associated with Snape. More importantly, it had saved me from a relationship I hadn't known I was suffering.

Snape was sitting at the kitchen table, as we finished our tea. I fiddled with the ring, and found myself unable to imagine myself with him. "Severus" seemed such a strange name, one that I had hardly ever used. My tongue was reluctant to try pronouncing it, so for the moment he remained as "Snape". It felt like when I was younger, when suddenly changing from the age of four to five threw me completely. When words could feel alien and awkward and new.

I tried not to stare, wondering if I had ever found Snape attractive, but had forgotten. No. He was old, and drawn, and bitter. His features weren't beautiful, and neither was his way of holding himself. Old and tired and crumpled.

I hated what had happened. We'd been muddling along, in the wake of the final battle, surviving despite having no income, no housing, no qualifications. We'd found somewhere, found money for food, and enough time to just exist and regroup.

Then this had come, smashing through our brains, and upsetting our bodily functions. I must have been the epicentre, because the pressure set off that magnificently damnable bloody nose. But Ginny was still reeling, her centre of balance disturbed. If the boys were affected, they weren't letting it show. I was almost certain they were as sore as she and I were, of course.

I squinted at Snape again, who was cradling his cup and staring very deliberately at a crack in the wall to his left. Maybe it had affected my hormones? My thyroid? Maybe I really was attracted to Snape, but my flustered biology was stymied and so, without memories, it was as if everything had been erased.

No, that didn't even really make sense. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and reminded myself that I wasn't a doctor, I wasn't an Auror, and self-diagnosing at this point would only torture my already distressed nerves. I needed something to do, because I doubted I'd be able to sleep at all that night.

I poured more tea, and spent four minutes trying to recall a very comforting book from my past that was trying to come to mind, but couldn't. I could simply recall that having one's brains smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped around a gold brick was...

Fuck. Another headache was coming on. I tried to relax my neck, my shoulders, and let as much tension free as I could. I wanted to avoid using any painkilling potions or spells if I could, and I was fucked if I was going to spend all night with a migraine.

As I tried to relax, Snape's voice cut through my thoughts.

"May I?"

He sounded subdued and tentative and nothing at all like the Snape I remembered. I opened my eyes, and regarded him. What on earth was he asking permission for?

May I kick you in the shin?

May I get you some biscuits to go with the tea?

May I suggest we retire early?

May I take you hard, from behind, since we're engaged and all?!

Oh, fuck. He was talking, still.

"... not if it's too, er, well. I mean, I just wanted to have a look. Not that I'd be keeping it, I don't want it back, I just... shit."

Oh. Alright then. I slipped the ring off of my finger, and passed it over. I wondered what he was curious about. My silence must have made him feel even more off-centre, because he dropped the ring as he took it from me.

"I don't like it. That it was my mother's."

Or perhaps not. I wondered why it had shaken him so much. He frowned, and turned it in his hand.

"My father beat her, I hated him."

He shut his mouth, his eyes, his entire face became closed and withdrawn. Then, slowly, he breathed deeply and opened up again.

"The ring was from the Prince family, but even so, she wore it for him – she hated it, and he liked it. I just can't imagine why..."

He drank some of his tea, and looked into my eyes with a very raw and confused expression. I felt a twinge of something inside my heart, and wondered if it was an echo of a memory of a feeling returning to me.

He cleared his throat, and stared at me, very seriously.

"Are things like that important, to you? Family jewellery, inheritance, all that?"

The question took a while to register, because I've never been one for necklaces or shiny things. Give me a good, rare book over a bracelet any day. I couldn't imagine why he'd entertain the thought that I'd want something like that. Especially if we were in a relationship, and I knew about his mother.

He sighed, and shook his head.

"Of course you didn't ask me to use it. And I got rid of it, when they had both died. I put it back in its box, and sent it to Reg-"

I leant forward, tea forgotten. "Regulus Black? So you sent it here! But that still doesn't resolve why I'm wearing it."

He snorted, and raised a very amused eyebrow at me. It was reassuring, and comforting, and warm, to be making sense of something. Maybe it had been cursed by the Blacks? I felt calmer now that there was something to think about. Something I knew.

"Oh, I can imagine..."

I blinked.

"Imagine what?"

He laughed softly, which was such an unusual and unexpected sound, coming from his mouth. Smiling suited him, being comfortable and easy and almost-but-not-quite happy. It wiped away most of the bitterness, and I felt warmer inside for seeing it. Perhaps things were returning to me. I wanted to know whether it would be emotions, or actual memories. Whether this was really us, here, now, interacting, or whether we were just leaking old lost feelings into our current dialogue.

I wondered if he ever grinned, or if he just smiled that wry half-cocked smile, when he was ecstatic. I wondered what he would look like in love, or – if he ever had been – at ease. What he looked like when he read his favourite novel.

"I can imagine myself saying that marriage wouldn't suit us. I can imagine fighting with you about it, and how stubbornly you might have found the ring, and jammed it on your finger just to show me. Not to show me anything in particular, just to stand there being inherently right at me."

I could imagine it, but only of the teenager that had protested about split infinitives in the textbook, the girl who hadn't spent hours helping to collect the gore, the fear, the corpses up into neat packages for the memorial burials. I couldn't honestly say myself how I would act. I steepled my fingers and rested my chin on them.

"That assumes that we'd already gotten to the point of being very firmly attached to each other. In love. You're quite scary when you want to be; I wouldn't do that unless I loved you, thought I could get away with it, you see. But..."

"But?"

His voice cooled, and his smile retreated into his face. As if it had closed against me. Exhaustion and bitter sufferance overtook again. I tried not to flinch, and felt my mind blank inside. I had words, had had words, not ten seconds ago.

"But we're still in separate bedrooms, after all." I finished, lamely. The pause had been far too long. I regretted my words nearly instantly.

He muttered a very quiet, very distant "Goodnight, Miss Granger", and made his way from the kitchen to his room with heavy, leaden footsteps. They rang out along the wooden floors, and I stared into my half-drunk cup of tea.

I sat with cold tea for a small eternity, and went to bed myself. It was cold, and dark, and silent. I felt encapsulated within the wooden walls. Isolated. I wondered whether I'd upset him by implying that I'd want to have sex with a boyfriend, or by implying that I thought I wasn't having sex with him. Maybe it had just been my flustering, barely-thought-out delivery?

I wondered why it seemed important, to be sharing a room with Snape, when I had never wanted to spend the night with Ron. I felt confused and awful. Guilty in a way that only that one misspelt word in an exam essay could make me feel. I should have known better. I should have noticed what Ron was feeling earlier, and I shouldn't have let my conversation with Snape end that way.

I'd been rude to him, somehow. I felt cruel and insensitive and sleepless. I spun the conversation back through my mind, and every time I turned myself into a more awful person. I could imagine his face, freezing still. His eyes losing their happy crinkle and turning blank and distant. His mouth twisting in barely concealed pain.

In the silent dark of the night, I made myself into a caricature of a hideous monster. Snape became a poor, injured, innocent victim. The confusion and bumbling muted discussion became a series of evidences against the darkness and hideous bitterness that made me into a social poison.

I had poisoned Ron, and he had left the room in bitter pain as well. I felt leaden and heavy, unable to move from the mattress. My throat felt parched, and I needed to piss. I was battered, stupid, and wallowing in guilt.

Somehow, at some point, I fell asleep. I dreamt of things that I couldn't remember, but was completely exhausted and sore when I woke up. I showered before doing anything else. Drank a glass of water, brushed my hair, and sat on the cold toilet lid.

I was very relieved that I'd spent the last night feeling depressed and angry at myself, because those emotions washed away the despair and feelings of helplessness that had returned with the sunlight. I was glad that I could have scathing self-hate as a bedfellow rather than bewildering confusion.

I still had no idea, and no memory. I didn't like having porridge for breakfast two days in a row, but I couldn't remember what I had eaten yesterday. I caught my shirt on the ring when I dressed. When had I put it back on? I spun it around to feel it slide and rub against my skin, a very different sensation than I'd thought it would be, and headed downstairs.

Breakfast was quiet, and I slid in later than everyone else. Kreacher had served my plate with two pieces of toast that were getting cold, and I groaned inwardly. I was slipping, becoming less and less able to remember basic simple things. Had I forgotten about toast and porridge during or after the whole mess?

Maybe it wasn't over yet. Maybe I was losing my mind. Melting away even as I squinted at the marmalade and wondered whether or not the squishy chunky texture was worth the sweetness.

Harry smiled at me across the table, and Ron glowered. Snape tapped his fingers on the table, and Ginny said good morning brightly.

"So," Harry began, "I'm pretty certain that the ring is central to everything."

Ron sulked, and Snape snorted.

"Oh really, Potter? Why on earth would you think that?"

I stifled a laugh, and Harry honestly began to answer before I waved a hand at him to be quiet. I felt a very strange and unheralded camaraderie between myself and Snape. Though I had spent all night worrying and working myself up into a level of angst and self-pity that seemed stupid in the morning light of the kitchen window, and though he had stalked off upset and insulted, there was a growing warmth between us.

Or, at least, I felt there was. It was hard to think about, given everything, so I didn't try too hard. I just enjoyed the warmth of the moment, ate my breakfast, and then asked when we were supposed to be meeting Madam Pomfrey.

"How did you know that we'd called her?"

I was trying very hard to remember whether Harry had always been this dim, or if this might be another side-effect. I wanted to turn to Snape and ask him, in a low quiet voice, just so that I could hear him try to stifle his amusement. I wanted to see that strange, bittersweet and comforting smile again.

I wondered if this was how it had started, if a month of breakfasts like this hadn't gotten us to this point. I had to stare down at my plate, and remind myself that there was a chance that we weren't engaged. That there was a different reason I was wearing his mother's ring, a more plausible one.

I was caught up in feeling, and confusion. I baulked at the thought of loving him, and I felt bile rise into my throat at the thought of being somewhere without him. Seeing Ron filled me with wistfulness for what I'd never had with him, and at the same time for what I might never have with Snape.

I was in the middle of telling myself, over and over again, to focus. To remember that, most likely, I would be alone and unwanted and not needing to worry about anything but the crisis. The Incident. I should be getting the facts straight for Madam Pomfrey, and getting my mind together enough to fix this.

The longer it took, the longer things were so uncertain and strange, the worse I felt. As if my mind was made of tightly held threads. Knit into my brain over years. As if my past had snipped, cut, in utterly random places, and when I tried to tug and pull, to collect the fallen threads, I just came apart even more.

When Madam Pomfrey arrived. I felt ragged around the edges. I was losing my grip on things.

She took Harry first, into the sitting room, for a checkup. I swallowed, throat dry, and followed Snape down the hall. He'd said something to Ron and Ginny about "research", and "call us when it's our turn". My head felt fuggy again, heavy and sweet and rancid. My feet fell loudly on the floor, and echoed in my mind. I wondered why nobody had mentioned how loud my feet sounded.

I realised that I might be in my own mind, hearing this. Slowly being locked away from everything, anything. Drowning in this absence of thought. A dizzy wave blurred over my vision. Brownish greenish darkish wriggling static. Was that my eyes? Losing the neural connection to my eyes might mean very dire things. In my gut, in an instant, without any active thought, I knew it was over for me. I had never felt so certain of my own death before. Blanketed in an awareness that was as biological and real as hunger, or the need to breathe.

I felt a hand on my elbow. Warm. He led me into a room with books in it, and sat me down. I could smell the old pages and glue, the dust. It grounded me a little. He rubbed my arms and made noises that faded into the cotton wool air around my ears until other things started soaking back in. When my vision cleared a few moments later, his face looked worn and panicked.

"Fine," I said, tasting the words.

The world was fading back in, in increments. Madam Pomfrey was bustling towards the room, and Snape was pressing a hand to my forehead.

"I said, I'm fine."

Then I felt pressure build behind my skull again, and it was dark. I could taste blood against the back of my throat.

When I woke up, again, I was thoroughly sick of falling asleep and waking up again. The repetition and tedium were wearing thin. Snape was sitting beside me. I could hear the sounds of people living and moving throughout the house, and realised I was back in my bed. The sheets were crisper than I was used to, more tense. Somebody had tucked the edges in, strapping me down against the mattress. I tugged on them, to get a bit more slack, as he spoke. I was glad to discover that words were making sense again.

"Failed Memory Charm."

I blinked, and paused in my struggle with the sheets.

"My father," he spat out, "wasn't the nicest of people." He drew in a deep, shaky breath. After a few long moments, he continued.

"But my mother's parents, the Princes, were worse. When he asked for their daughter's hand in marriage, they offered to let him use a 'family heirloom' as an engagement ring..."

I sat still, letting the information sink in. I could guess the rest of this story. His tight jaw and defensive posture confirmed it. I imagined that he was feeling far worse than I had the night before, in bed, but I couldn't feel sympathy for him. I was empty and clear inside.

"You knew this, didn't you?" I asked in a hollow voice. "You fucking well knew it from the moment you saw that ring on my hand!"

He hung his head, and stared at his fingers, lying limply in his lap.

"I don't know."

I fumed, felt a burning fiery fury building in my chest,filling my emptiness.

"You don't know?! How can you not know! Surely you did, or you didn't, and it's as simple as that."

He shook his head, lamely, and I slumped back against the pillows.

"So, her parents wanted her to forget? To reject him? What?"

I stared at him, and swore.

"Fuck. I don't care. So it was taken off, or she never wore it, or whatever. And it got onto my finger, somehow, triggering an out-of-date or botched memory spell, and... and..."

I couldn't speak, just couldn't speak. Because he'd been holding the felted old jewelery box in his hand, when we all regained consciousness. Either he'd deliberately done that to me, which was little better than rape, or... what?

He didn't meet my eyes, and I felt cold as the strange equanimity that had grown between us seemed to leech away. I felt too tired, and frustrated, and adrift to put up with his apparent guilt or helplessness. I felt sick of fainting and forgetting and faltering.

"Forget it," I snapped. His head jerked up, eyes wide and confused.

"I can," I explained in a sharp and grump tone, "demand payback or apologies when we've fixed this. When we know exactly how and why you fucked me over. Get out, tell the others about it, take the ring."

I wriggled it off of my hand and threw it on the duvet with what I felt was entirely warranted anger.

"I'm sick of being sick. We'll fix this, and then we'll talk."

He nodded silently, and stood. He was unreadable, his face partly hidden by his hair. I wondered what on earth he was thinking, and why he had chosen that exact moment to tell me.

Maybe, like my mind, his was muddled. He didn't know what he knew until he deliberately sought it out. Maybe he'd only just now thought of it, while I'd been out.

As he reached the door, I called out after him, "You know, I don't hate you."

I regretted it instantly. He turned a little, so I felt pressed to explain.

"I mean, I like you. If this was all some twisted attempt at a proposal, in the end, you should know. I'll be giving you a well deserved punch. You could've just asked me."

He frowned, and entered the room again, slowly and deliberately.

"What? What on earth do you?"

"I mean," I said, much more calmly than I felt inside, "That you're possibly the only person in the world that I'd consider marrying. Not, of course, that I've considered marriage, as such. But, if I did – and we've spent enough time in this place for me to know – you'd be at the top of my list."

I swallowed, and appended, "Not that there's much of a list, really."

He stood, speechless, and I felt like a bigger dork than I had ever felt before in my life. I wished that another fainting spell would come, or even just Ginny with some chattering nonsense. Anything to interrupt the moment.

"Right. Well, then." He spoke in very clipped words, as if it was taking all his effort to hold his tongue against other words. He shuffled a little.

"I'll see you later. Then. I'll take this downstairs." He waved the ring absently in the air, far too nonchalantly to be anything other than a visible misdirection from himself.

"Weasley should be here by now. Curse breaker."

I nodded, trying to fight the blush that was boiling beneath my skin. Bit my tongue and tried to sink further down into my pillows. He turned again, with jerkier movements, and clopped down the hallway and stairs in his heavy shoes. I closed my eyes, and wished the world away again.

***

Being sleepless during the day, when you are not really supposed to be asleep, and you can hear everyone else in a house making tea, being rowdy, and using the bathroom is far more difficult than being sleepless at night.

I don't think I'd ever realised that before. Lying in the afternoon sunlight, with a letter of caution from Madam Pomfrey on my bedside table, I was bored. My feet itched to walk somewhere, suddenly. I missed trees and the air. I didn't need to eat, or use the bathroom, and hearing everyone else moving, living, consuming, using, was inexhaustibly irritating. I wasn't allowed to participate in the research on the ring, and Snape had devoutly avoided my sickbed. I wanted him to come and talk to me. I was so mortified that I never wanted to see him again.

There was no way that Snape would have ever given me the ring, not knowingly. I tried to put the pieces together in my mind, fighting against the ragged edges of my foggy brain. The botched memory charm. My own, lovely, stupid curse. Obviously, his mother hadn't put it on, because she'd married Snape's father. So it had sat, with a bunch of other magical paraphernalia, somewhere in their house.

Until it had ended up amongst the bits of the Black household, sent to Regulus Black. Hidden with all the other cursed junk in the cupboards. Snape wouldn't have sought it out, he had no reason to. He'd gotten rid of it. So only Harry, Ginny, or Ron could have possibly...

Oh cunting flipping hell. Ron, you stupid arsehole. I knew it the second that I tried to think it through. I was immensely upset with myself; Occam's Razor certainly should have been applied to this situation much earlier. I swore loudly at the ceiling until Ginny came in, looking concerned.

"H-Hermione?"

I frowned at her.

"Are you alright?"

I grit my teeth, and forced a smile. "Fine. Just a bit upset. I..."

I trailed off, thinking. Ginny sat on the bed beside me, and chattered about how Bill was here, now, and was looking at the ring. Figuring out how to lift the charm without ruining any of our minds in the process.

I listened, and thanked her. She brought me tea. I told her quietly and succinctly over ginger biscuits to tell her brother, Ron, that if I ever heard from him again I would take legal action against him. Said that if he was confused, he'd remember why when the charm was lifted.

I would have refused to talk to anybody for the rest of the afternoon, if they hadn't all been busy elsewhere anyway. As it was, I lay in bed and hated Pomfrey for trapping me there. Hated Ron for possibly ruining my mind. Hated Snape for being the most inoffensive and useful person in the house.

I spent half an hour daydreaming about violent pain, and death. I was a Kindly One, if only in thought alone. I imagined what Ron would say when I told them all that I was moving out. I would silence his protestations with a curse for eternally ingrown toe-nails, or confusing and inconstant rashes. I would pick up a hot poker from the fireplace and drive it through his eyes. Mop up the viscera with his Order of Merlin.

Or, maybe, Snape would be a gentleman. I daydreamed that Snape would raise a hand, calmly take the poker away from me, and punch Ron in the gut. Walk me off to find an affordable flat with space for bookshelves.

I fell asleep proud with justice, and woke up embarrassed. My daydreams had been silly and childish, and I felt in much better mental control of myself than I had in memorable history.

I could remember. If I focused, I could remember Ron kneeling on the kitchen floor before me, his hand reaching for mine. I hadn't paid too much attention to him, because Snape had been lifting something from the kitchen table with a look of incredulous disgust. I had been interested, because Snape usually saved that awful face for Harry, Neville's potions, and any jokes about Death Eaters.

The ring had been cold when it slid onto my finger. Presumably, as I could recall it all clearly, everything had been resolved. Charlie had lifted the curse, and if I wandered downstairs I would run into whoever was still here. I didn't like the thought of that, so I found my wand, locked the door, and read a book until people had stopped making food in the kitchen. Until well after the last hands had knocked at my door.

The hallway was dark. I fingered my shrunk luggage in my pockets, and tiptoed as quietly as I could down the stairs. When I reached the door, I realised that somebody was standing in the shadows. Snape.

"You're late." He said. I shrugged, and leant against the wall. If he wanted to talk to me, he'd have something to say.

"I thought you might like to have this," He suggested, holding out the ring. "You have, of all of us, earnt it. I myself want to be rid of it as soon as I can. But I thought you might want it, as a badge of proof, or something like that..."

He trailed off, seeming awkward. I casually took the ring from his hand and slipped it into my pocket.

"A warning, more like it." I joked, "To not let idiots get too close."

He laughed, once, softly, and moved to let me make my way through the door.

"Take my old room, the bed will be comfier," I suggested. Then, with as much strength as I could muster, I squared my shoulders and stepped out into Grimmauld Place.

I strode to the end of the street before apparating to a phone box. With every step I felt emptier, and bereft, though I couldn't really say what I had been hoping or waiting for. The entire episode felt final. I was finished with Ron, and any misconception I had had about my relationship with Snape had been clarified with the ease of a lifted spell. I was complete, sane, and off to find somewhere safe and new to sleep.