Chapter Eleven

"They rewarded me evil for good to the spoiling of my soul."

Psalm 35:12

Snape found the next day very long. Hermione had recovered with the speed of the young from her hang over and was still not talking to him. He was starting to find this childishness rather tedious but he was glad she hadn't demanded an explanation of his behaviour the other night at the party. If she had, he had no idea what he would have said. He barely understood his own behaviour. Why, after telling her that he couldn't touch her because he was her guardian, did he turn around the very next night and kiss her thoroughly? Not only kiss her thoroughly but do so in front of a large audience of very curious ex-students of his? It was absurd. It was crazy. It made no sense at all. Snape was not used to doing things that made no sense. He felt totally off-balance and as though he had suddenly turned into somebody else.

Meanwhile, Hermione was telling herself she didn't care why Snape had kissed her the way he had at the party after seeming to reject her only the night before. The important thing was, that he had and she was quite satisfied with that. It seemed like the perfect revenge to her. To make the man who had pushed her away only the night before, kiss her passionately in front of other people. The mere thought made her smirk with satisfaction. She was not talking to him only because he had subsequently been so cold and it miffed her. Let him be like that, she thought with a mental shrug. She could still feel complacent about the fact he hadn't been so cold when he'd kissed her, not either time.

The day dragged and Snape spent a lot of it either outside in the garden, raking early Autumn leaves or reading Muggle books in his downstairs sitting room. He had discovered Edgar Allen Poe and Bram Stoker which were much to his taste. He had tried to read Jane Austen but had given up as nothing ever seemed to happen in them but conversations and tea parties. Those are witches' books, Snape decided after getting halfway through 'Emma'. He had already read the children's novels as they contained lots of Muggle ideas of magic that were sometimes quite accurate and sometimes quite ridiculous. He thought C S Lewis and Madeleine L'Engle were the most accurate.

His lunch was plonked down in front of him unceremoniously and he was studiously ignored throughout the meal. After lunch, she went to sleep some more and he didn't see her for the rest of the day.

When Hermione woke up late in the afternoon, she felt dangerously restless. She wanted to run but not like a human could. She wanted to feel soft earth and dead leaves under her feet and breathe cold night air. She wanted a star studded sky overhead and the smell of ancient trees. She knew deep within herself what was happening and quickly she took some floo powder to the fireplace. "The Three Broomsticks," she said.

As soon as she got there, Hermione pushed her way through the crowd to the door and out onto the cobbled streets. As twilight fell, she made her way to the Dark Forest. Once again, she felt like she could burst out of her skin. As soon as she reached the perimeter, she began running. It wasn't long before ebony hooves were sparking against the flint stones on the forest floor. She could never quite pick that moment of transformation.

* * * In Snape's rooms downstairs, a black owl tapped at one of the windows. Snape let it in and untied the message. It was from Rosmerta. She had seen Hermione arrive and rapidly depart, heading directly for the Dark Forest. Snape started swearing viciously.

Still swearing, he took a pinch of floo to follow her. Once there, he acknowledged Rosmerta's concerned look with a nod and ducked outside into an alley. Quickly he transformed into his own animagus raven form and flew out into the Dark Forest.

* * *

Hermione ran until she was exhausted. After resting for a short time, she'd run again. The landscape blurred around her, the scents subtle and refreshing. She never felt so calm or so alive as in her animagus form. She was queen of this place as a black unicorn. The other creatures kept a respectful distance even as they watched her curiously. She was completely unmolested in this place, it was her domain and she had nothing to prove here.

While resting by a stream in the early hours of the morning, she didn't notice a shiny black bird alight nearby. Swiftly and silently Snape transformed. He stood very still, watching the mesmerising beast. He knew it was Hermione and yet it was something so completely 'other' too. A raven was innocuous. A black unicorn dominated whatever environment it was in by its sheer extraordinary rarity. It provoked fascination.

Suddenly, one molten red and gold eye was fixed on him. The unicorn whinnied and bucked. I guess that means she's still not talking to me, Snape thought wryly. He was pinned by a look of red-eyed anger from the beast that totally paralysed him and as he stood frozen, the unicorn took off again with supernatural speed.

He made a mental note of the fact that black unicorns could paralyse with a glance when provoked. Reluctantly, he transformed back into a raven to try and track her again but he doubted he would find her a second time that night. It had taken hours to find her the first time.

* * *

As dawn began to break Snape flew back to the Three Broomsticks and transformed back just in time to use the pub's fireplace to get back to Hermione's home before it shut.

"She came back through a few hours ago," Rosmerta told Snape, as he dragged his tired body through the door. He merely nodded.

When he got back to her home, he found her fast asleep in her bed. She didn't stir for the entire day.

* * *

It was getting on towards dinner time when the first searing, burning pain hit. He grasped his forearm in a reflex action and fell out of his chair in agony, his mouth open in a silent scream. The pain was unbelievable. It was not usually this bad. He looked at the Dark Mark on his arm. It was burning red. The pain died down slightly and he dragged himself back into the chair. This could go on all night, he knew. Especially if he did not answer which he couldn't while he was here with Hermione. He swore under his breath.

Another blast of pain hit, worse than the first. He moaned under his breath and sweat stood out on his forehead. He had no idea how he would endure the pain if it continued as badly as this. Voldemort was either very angry or the meeting was very urgent or both. Maybe he should go, he considered? He dismissed the idea. Dumbledore had told him not to and he respected Dumbledore enough to follow orders. A third explosion of pain hit and Snape passed out, sliding out of the chair as he lost consciousness.

Not long after, Hermione called down the stairs to say dinner was ready. She had gotten up only an hour before. When she got no response at all, she ventured down stairs to find him. Sometimes he was still out in the garden after dark, tidying up or taking a walk. She found him in the sitting room almost immediately and drew her breath in sharply. Deliberately keeping a cool head, she carefully examined him and noticed the sweat on his forehead but, she noted, he had no fever. She bit her lip. She couldn't see any injury and he was still breathing. She pushed up his sleeve to take his pulse and that was when she saw the Dark Mark burning a bright, vicious red against his skin. She could feel the heat coming off it. She shook her head in anger when she saw the brutal methods of the Death Eaters against their own. Quickly she got up and went to her parents' old room. They had a small safe full of strong medications there that they had not wanted kept on their work premises overnight. She had been given the combination by her parents' solicitor, and quickly and efficiently she took out a disposable needle and a bottle of morphine.

As she went back downstairs she thought about how grateful she was that watching her parents over the years had unconsciously taught her so much about pain management and pain killers. They were dangerous drugs but she knew exactly how much she could administer without causing damage. She also knew how to give an injection correctly.

After closing all the curtains, she used a levitating spell to get Snape to his bed. It was tiring but as it was only a short distance, she could manage it. Carefully she prepared the morphine shot and administered it correctly. Less than 15 minutes later, Snape opened his eyes groggily. He was no longer in pain but he felt very muddled. He squinted at her in the half light. "Hermione?"

"Yes, it's alright. I gave you some morphine to kill the pain. You'll need to sleep it off and hopefully when you wake up the bastards will have left you alone again," she said with blunt anger.

He nodded and as he closed his eyes, he saw her settle back in a chair beside the bed with a book. Obviously, she wasn't going anywhere for a while. He found the thought oddly comforting although usually he would hate someone watching him sleep.

Hermione stayed with him throughout the night, dropping off herself now and then. He wasn't used to the drug so he slept soundly throughout the night. He woke up around 7am and the Dark Mark had turned black once more and was no longer burning. When he woke up, Hermione gave him lots of water and waited while he drank it. When he'd finished, she asked "How often does this happen?"

Snape shrugged. "It's unpredictable. Sometimes more than once a week, sometimes we'll go for months without a meeting."

"Does it usually hurt so much that you pass out?" She asked with an angry frown.

"No but it's generally bad enough. I actually half-considered going tonight because it was abnormally bad. I suspect that the meeting was on an urgent topic or that Voldemort was angry about something. He gets spiteful when he's angry," Snape explained.

"I bet," Hermione said sarcastically with a sneer. "What do you do at these meetings?" She added curiously.

Snape didn't reply immediately and his eyes become hooded as one restless hand picked at the bedspread. "Voldemort usually talks at us for awhile - just propaganda. Pretty much the same things I grew up hearing about mudbloods. Then he goes on about various strategies the Death Eaters are using against them and after that we all report on our particular assignments. People who have been successful are rewarded, those who have failed are punished. By that time, it's usually early morning and we need to leave."

Hermione nodded. It was pretty much what she would have expected. "Is there still an inner circle?" She asked.

"Yes but it's much smaller now, of course." Snape replied, still not looking at her.

"Are you part of it?" She asked directly.

He glanced at her with guarded eyes. "No. Voldemort no longer trusts me after my first defection. I don't go to all the meetings, just the general ones with all the Death Eaters."

"So you don't have access to his most important plans. The long term ones," Hermione mused aloud.

"No. Not yet. I'm working on that at the moment," Snape said restlessly.

"These rewards and punishments," Hermione began. Snape winced. "What are they?" She asked forthrightly. Snape shrugged. "The rewards depend on who wants them. They usually involve the mudblood prisoners. Some of the Death Eaters want prisoners for sexual purposes. Some want them to run experiments on. Some want slaves. Other rewards are financial or to be given some secret knowledge like a rare charm or spell or potion recipe. Sometimes, it's promotion to the inner circle but that's rare," Snape responded in a flat, depressed tone.

"And the punishments?" Hermione persisted gently.

"Nothing very original. Usually it's the cruciatus curse or being given a particularly distasteful or humiliating assignment. Sometimes it's very crude, just a beating by some of the other Death Eaters." Snape sounded resigned, almost bored.

Hermione nodded but said nothing. She wondered how many times he'd suffered the cruciatus curse at Voldemort's hands and how many times he had been beaten by other Death Eaters. As she knew he was unlikely to deliver 'mudbloods' into Voldemort's hands or pass on information truly useful to the Death Eaters' cause anymore, it was likely he was punished frequently for 'failure'.

"Well, if it really was an important meeting then I'm sure you'll hear something about it soon." Hermione observed.

"Without doubt," Snape said heavily. Just at that moment, they heard tapping on the bedroom window. Hermione pulled aside the curtain and saw a magnificent black owl outside. She let it in and it dropped a letter sealed with the Dark Mark beside Snape. He looked at it distastefully and then did a surprising thing. He picked up his wand that had been on his bedside table and said a charm to protect against harm directed at both himself and her. Then he opened the envelope.

"What do they do with those letters that means you need protection to open them?" Hermione demanded indignantly.

"They sometimes put poison in with them or hex them if they want to get rid of one of the ranks," Snape said casually, frowning distractedly at the contents of the letter.

Hermione rolled her eyes and shook her head. "Oh yeah, I can see why people would be rushing to join this little club," she muttered sarcastically.

He sat up suddenly and his frown grew deeper as he read on. "I will have to go to the next meeting," Snape said to himself decisively. Hermione gazed at him silently. "Something big is happening. I need to find out what it is," he added, glancing at her. Hermione nodded. She hoped whenever the next meeting was that he didn't get punished for not going to the last one.

"I'm going to make some breakfast and I think you should eat something. You didn't get dinner last night," she said with mild bossiness.

"Neither did you," Snape observed.

"No and I'm hungry," she said, getting up from the chair and yawning.

"And tired. You'd better get some sleep today," he ordered.

"Yes, I will." She agreed and left to make breakfast. Snape's shuttered black eyes followed her as she left the room. Having her in his bedroom made him nervous. Not of her but of himself. It was perhaps fortunate that the morphine had knocked his system around so much, otherwise his body's response to the intimacy of having her in his room may have given him away - again.

He glanced down at the letter and crumpled it. It disappeared in a small flash of green light. It was the disciplinary letter he had expected for not going to the meeting last night but it contained a curious urgency. Something was afoot.