11.
She had been noticing, throughout their brief acquaintance, that Snape might still be as darkly moody and viciously sarcastic as the old professor she had known, but he wasn't nearly as miserably hate-filled. Now maybe some of that had been the role he played at school, either for some mysterious Spy Reasons or simply because he hated children and that was the only way he could deal with it.
But some of that misery had been impossible to fake. The teacher, then, she surmised, had been wracked with guilt. Perhaps he felt he'd paid it off; after all, he'd given his life and kept on working for Good. So maybe his debt was gone.
Or maybe vampires were simply above things like guilt. Or beyond. Whatever. Something in his newfound genetic makeup simply wasn't conducive to such misery.
Either way, nasty he might still be, but she was definitely not going to complain if he had definitely traded that wretched, hateful cruelty for a hearty dose of mysterious sex-appeal.
That is, until they reached the gates of Hogwarts.
It all came sliding back. She could see it in his posture, in his face, the way the muscles of his neck tensed and his jaw hardened. She could tell, even beneath that careful, masked expression that he was fighting against some urge to leave this place of miserable memories. She looked at his hands, curled into fists so tight the nails cut the palms (the cuts would be healed within ten minutes.) Leave Hogwarts, or burn it.
"Albus Dumbledore, open the gates," he said out loud, and after a few moments, the doors opened silently.
The halls were dead quiet, the lights dimmed, the paintings sleeping in their frames. It ought to be intensely nostalgic, walking those halls again, but all Hermione was aware of was some deep struggle going on within the man walking beside her, so silent that she had to glance at him every now and then to make sure he was still there.
Don't talk, she told herself firmly. He looks about ready to start ripping throats out. Or talk, maybe; find out why he looks ready to break down. What happened to him, anyway?
No. Have the good sense not to poke the dragon.
The entry to Dumbledore's office was already open, and Snape paused at it, as if willing it not to exist. As if he could wish hard enough, and this whole place, this whole once-life would just vanish in a puff of smoke and leave nothing but a great peaceful black emptiness.
And maybe the girl beside him, who was obviously burning to ask him what was going on (and since when was he that easy to read, anyway?) But who didn't. She simply stood there, waiting for him to make the first move, feeling rather mysteriously like moral support.
So he walked up the stairs.
Dumbledore was waiting behind his desk, looking unsurprised at their presence, which irritated them both. Who was he to play omnipotent at a time like this?
Hermione met his eyes, and he nodded at her, but turned his gaze to Snape, who met the blue stare for a long time.
Nobody spoke. Eventually, Snape, with deliberate carelessness, lit a cigarette.
He'd been through a pack already, and honestly, Hermione thought, he was starting to stink of them. But now she wanted to grin. You go, Snape. Show him who's on top of things.
We are.
And finally, letting a long stream of blue smoke curl into the air, Snape spoke: "History has repeated itself, Dumbledore. And you've gone and used up all your trumps, haven't you?"
"Then the Deatheaters really are on the rise again."
"And nursing their leader back to health as we speak. Really, you ought to keep up better."
Inwardly, she smiled again. Snape was masking his betrayal well, retreating behind nastiness, and doing it with skill.
Dumbledore said, quietly. "Something must be done."
"Do you think?"
At this she really did smile, which drew the Headmaster's attention. "I admit, I am surprised to see you here, Miss Granger."
He'd been a rock for her, once, as well. She didn't feel the betrayal that Snape did, certainly, but Dumbledore was getting irritating.
"I was surprised to find Draco had been killing off my Aurors."
Dumbledore looked taken aback--either at the news, or Hermione's callousness.
"We thought--or rather, Miss Granger did," Snape said calmly. "That you would have some sort of answer for us. But I rather suspect you don't."
"No, I'm afraid. Hope must be pinned on someone else this time. You two, amazed as I am too see you, are-"
"NO," Snape growled, voice loud and hate-filled. "I won't. You've no right to ask anything of me. I was some misguided archangel to your God-" venom spilled from his black eyes into his black voice "for far too long, all the while feeling as if I could never repent enough. As if you held some sort of magic I could use to purge myself of all the wrongs I ever did. As if it mattered. But no matter how much faith the world has in you, you can't work miracles."
"You're right," Dumbledore said. "I can't. I never claimed to."
"Every gesture you make, every expression on your face makes that claim," Snape said heavily. "I was once far too willing to follow. Far too faithful."
"Faith, Severus, is not a bad thing."
Severus sneered, and what had once been a beacon of light in a dark world was just an old man, who claimed no holiness but did not dispute it when attributed to him, so painfully good that he couldn't see the darkness when it rose against him. 'Gambled with other people's money,' Snape had said, or something like that, and she saw the truth in that.
Snape left. Simply picked up his bag and flicked his cigarette to the floor and walked out. Hermione sat, for a moment, watching the Headmaster stare after him with regret on his face.
"I should not ask you to work with him," he finally said to her. "He's dangerous, like that. I should have saved him, before this...sometimes sacrifices must be made. I will ask you to be careful."
Another sacrifice, she thought bitterly. "I don't think," she said calmly. "You should ask anything. Of either of us."
"One last trump to play," he said wearily. "Gods grant that it be enough."
And she shared, just for a moment, that bitter hatred that Snape did for this old man. "No." She stood up and left, slinging her bag over her shoulder. "I may be misguided enough still to believe in the black and white, good and evil, but Snape is nobody's trump."
Gamble with your own money. Play your own hand.
She saw Snape's face, still twisted, still fighting for calm as they walked back, as they crossed the grounds to the edge of the forest where he could Apparate.
Hermione paused. "You don't," she said calmly. "Have to tell me what happened..."
"I have no intention of it," he said shortly.
He radiated power, tangible and dark, and it frightened her. But she also was aware of a terrible sorrow, of a man with too little joy in his life and too little faith and too much blood and betrayal.
But the miscalculation on her part turned nervousness into absolute terror when he reacted to a gentle hand placed on his shoulder by snatching the wrist in a vise grip, snarling and twisting around, bringing them body to body, nose-to-chin; she would have felt the heat radiate off him had there been any heat to do so, and as it was, all she felt was power.
"You -don't- know what I am," he hissed. "You don't, and you don't want to. You don't have the right to ask me, to ask this of me, any more than -he- does."
"Severus..."
"Or maybe you do want to know," he continued. "and maybe if I weren't going to go with you to save that damnable little girl--I have no idea why--I would show you. Maybe I still will." And he traced a finger down her throat, across her jaw, down the side of her neck...sending shivers in its wake and heat straight to her groin. "Is that what you want?"
"No."
"You seemed to, back at my house," his voice was low and purring now, his fury not quite abated, but diffused. "Don't you want to finish what you started? Or are you finally starting to realize what I am?"
His hand was still trailing up and down the side of her neck, sending electric currents on its course. He bent down to kiss her jaw, and she -wanted- him too, terribly. Wanted him to touch her, take her, body and blood, because if he didn't, it might kill her.
She let him back her against a tree, let him kiss her as thoroughly as anyone had ever been kissed, and wanted him more than anything, more than air, more than life, and certainly more than saving Ginny. Her body was full of those little fear/sex chills and her brain was getting warm and pink and cloudy.
In the bookstore, he had told her to go away, and she had -wanted- to, more than anything, and it had felt, aside from the rising heat in her, exactly like this.
Warm pink clouds of mindlessness and desire.
She shoved him away, and slapped him, although miserably aware of just how little that would do.
"Don't you DARE," she hissed violently. "do that to me."
Hermione was seething in hatred and frustration, and her blow had done nothing to him, although judging by the sting in her hand, it was the hardest she had ever hit someone.
He smirked, and took a step back, as if to admire her from a distance, and she sank down to sit unsteadily at the roots of the tree.
It was cruel beyond cruel, like Imperious, only worse; under the Unforgivable the worst you could do was, well, DO something. Snape could make you WANT it.
Her breath heaved, her body protested, and she stared at him, chill with terror.
And he smiled. "No? No titillating expeditions into the unknown shadows of lust for the brave Miss Granger today?"
"Don't touch me."
He snickered again. "If I really wanted to, do you think you could stop me?"
Crueler than cruel. She shuddered and blinked back tears. "I don't know what Dumbledore did to you," she said quietly. "But don't take it out on me. I don't think this is you, Severus."
"And why, pray tell, is that, Miss Granger?"
"You apologized, for hitting me, a while back."
"Perhaps I am simply very skilled at manipulating people."
"I know you are."
He grinned, leering. "Perhaps you're more tempting than you think."
She snorted. "I doubt it."
He laughed, and sat down beside her. "And if I apologized for this?"
"I don't think it would make a difference. Snape, if we're going to be...working together, I have to trust you. You...can't..." She gestured vaguely.
"No," he said idly. "You need me. Trust has nothing to do with it."
She just looked sorrowful. *Teach me to have a thing for dangerous types,* she thought. *Hell.*
Cliché as it was, playing with fire got you burned.
Playing with shadows got you consumed by them. Snape had learned that a long time ago.
He regretted it instantly, not that he was going to tell her that. The moment she'd somehow tipped the scales to semi-evil--too much pity in a day could do that to a man. And his vampire nature had been angling for something like this since she'd stumbled across him in that stupid bookstore, only he hadn't been meant to allow her to push him away.
An image presented itself to him, the girl, all sweet blood and sweeter surrender, and he almost shuddered.
No chance of that now, at least not willingly. And no hope of pulling those Obi Wan tricks out, either. She had to trust him, for the sake of all that he was still, for whatever reason, willing to protect. So play it cool and back off and pretend he was just trying to prove a point and let her get her nerve back and then...ugh...go save the world again.
Maybe afterwards, his conscience would see fit to give him another break...
Hells. Who was he fooling, anyway? It hadn't worked in the bookstore and it hadn't worked just now. She was too strong for him. Maybe that was why she was so appealing. His mind control had only held out as long as it had because he'd been giving her something she wanted, if a little darker and more twisted than Hermione had imagined.
Not like she was going to make that mistake again.
No, he told himself, she's gone. Find another brilliant, beautiful witch who doesn't despise you despite the fact that you've been both unutterably cruel to her in the past and turned into a vampire...
("Do you know if you put a little hat on a snowball, it can last quite a long time in hell?")
He laughed, inwardly, miserable and despairing. Fucking Hogwarts. Brought out the worst in him, always had.
But time was of the essence, and Granger looked like she could use a little distraction. "Do you know exactly where Miss Weasley lives?" he asked.
"Nooo..." she said slowly. "New York, I'm sure, but I don't know any better than that."
"Oh. Good."
"Good? How is the fact that we haven't got a specific location good?"
"It isn't. But I've at least been to New York before. Apparating overseas is difficult enough without going somewhere one has never been before. And I don't have energy to waste right now."
"Oh."
"So we had best get going."
"Yes."
He held out a hand, to help her up, and she ignored it, climbing awkwardly to her feet as if aching, and only then, reluctantly, placed her fingers in his so that he could transport them both.
The slight pull that had taken them to Scotland felt as if it was going to tear her stomach out zipping to America. Hermione knew that most wizards balked at such a far trip. She herself had never done it. Yet she had not questioned Snape's intentions.
She was ashen when they landed--tumbled, really, and the minute they did, she'd jerked her hand violently out of his grip--in some back alley in Chinatown, and Snape was not looking well himself, although he could probably go no paler. He did not rise from his knees for a long time, and even then, it was to lean against the rough brick of one of the buildings they had landed between.
She stood, too, and imitated him. "Are...are you alright?"
"Fine, Miss Granger," he said shortly and parted reluctantly from the wall to straighten up. *I'd kill for a drink,* he thought with dark humor, and tried to remember where they were as he headed out of the alley.
The old Chinese herbalist's he'd been so fond of was gone now, replaced by some trendy tea house. Hermione, citing the fact that she'd had about two meals in three days, popped into it for a minute and emerged with a couple of odd-looking sesame buns and a large plastic cup of cloudy liquid which appeared, on closer inspection, to be full of caviar.
She drank some. "Oh," she said. "Eew."
"What -is- that stuff?"
"It's called 'bubble tea.' It sounded happy. It's absolutely vile." She made a face, kept drinking.
"Well, Miss Granger," he drawled. "I've gotten us here. Take over. Where to now?"
She threw the half-full cup of unappealing liquid into a trash can, and spun around. "Not sure exactly," she said. "But I'd wager uptown. Ginny's got some unplottable spells going, but she's not very good at them, and if we're in the right area, we should be able to locate her."
"If the Big Bad hasn't gotten to her first," he added mock-cheerfully.
"Yes, that."
She had been noticing, throughout their brief acquaintance, that Snape might still be as darkly moody and viciously sarcastic as the old professor she had known, but he wasn't nearly as miserably hate-filled. Now maybe some of that had been the role he played at school, either for some mysterious Spy Reasons or simply because he hated children and that was the only way he could deal with it.
But some of that misery had been impossible to fake. The teacher, then, she surmised, had been wracked with guilt. Perhaps he felt he'd paid it off; after all, he'd given his life and kept on working for Good. So maybe his debt was gone.
Or maybe vampires were simply above things like guilt. Or beyond. Whatever. Something in his newfound genetic makeup simply wasn't conducive to such misery.
Either way, nasty he might still be, but she was definitely not going to complain if he had definitely traded that wretched, hateful cruelty for a hearty dose of mysterious sex-appeal.
That is, until they reached the gates of Hogwarts.
It all came sliding back. She could see it in his posture, in his face, the way the muscles of his neck tensed and his jaw hardened. She could tell, even beneath that careful, masked expression that he was fighting against some urge to leave this place of miserable memories. She looked at his hands, curled into fists so tight the nails cut the palms (the cuts would be healed within ten minutes.) Leave Hogwarts, or burn it.
"Albus Dumbledore, open the gates," he said out loud, and after a few moments, the doors opened silently.
The halls were dead quiet, the lights dimmed, the paintings sleeping in their frames. It ought to be intensely nostalgic, walking those halls again, but all Hermione was aware of was some deep struggle going on within the man walking beside her, so silent that she had to glance at him every now and then to make sure he was still there.
Don't talk, she told herself firmly. He looks about ready to start ripping throats out. Or talk, maybe; find out why he looks ready to break down. What happened to him, anyway?
No. Have the good sense not to poke the dragon.
The entry to Dumbledore's office was already open, and Snape paused at it, as if willing it not to exist. As if he could wish hard enough, and this whole place, this whole once-life would just vanish in a puff of smoke and leave nothing but a great peaceful black emptiness.
And maybe the girl beside him, who was obviously burning to ask him what was going on (and since when was he that easy to read, anyway?) But who didn't. She simply stood there, waiting for him to make the first move, feeling rather mysteriously like moral support.
So he walked up the stairs.
Dumbledore was waiting behind his desk, looking unsurprised at their presence, which irritated them both. Who was he to play omnipotent at a time like this?
Hermione met his eyes, and he nodded at her, but turned his gaze to Snape, who met the blue stare for a long time.
Nobody spoke. Eventually, Snape, with deliberate carelessness, lit a cigarette.
He'd been through a pack already, and honestly, Hermione thought, he was starting to stink of them. But now she wanted to grin. You go, Snape. Show him who's on top of things.
We are.
And finally, letting a long stream of blue smoke curl into the air, Snape spoke: "History has repeated itself, Dumbledore. And you've gone and used up all your trumps, haven't you?"
"Then the Deatheaters really are on the rise again."
"And nursing their leader back to health as we speak. Really, you ought to keep up better."
Inwardly, she smiled again. Snape was masking his betrayal well, retreating behind nastiness, and doing it with skill.
Dumbledore said, quietly. "Something must be done."
"Do you think?"
At this she really did smile, which drew the Headmaster's attention. "I admit, I am surprised to see you here, Miss Granger."
He'd been a rock for her, once, as well. She didn't feel the betrayal that Snape did, certainly, but Dumbledore was getting irritating.
"I was surprised to find Draco had been killing off my Aurors."
Dumbledore looked taken aback--either at the news, or Hermione's callousness.
"We thought--or rather, Miss Granger did," Snape said calmly. "That you would have some sort of answer for us. But I rather suspect you don't."
"No, I'm afraid. Hope must be pinned on someone else this time. You two, amazed as I am too see you, are-"
"NO," Snape growled, voice loud and hate-filled. "I won't. You've no right to ask anything of me. I was some misguided archangel to your God-" venom spilled from his black eyes into his black voice "for far too long, all the while feeling as if I could never repent enough. As if you held some sort of magic I could use to purge myself of all the wrongs I ever did. As if it mattered. But no matter how much faith the world has in you, you can't work miracles."
"You're right," Dumbledore said. "I can't. I never claimed to."
"Every gesture you make, every expression on your face makes that claim," Snape said heavily. "I was once far too willing to follow. Far too faithful."
"Faith, Severus, is not a bad thing."
Severus sneered, and what had once been a beacon of light in a dark world was just an old man, who claimed no holiness but did not dispute it when attributed to him, so painfully good that he couldn't see the darkness when it rose against him. 'Gambled with other people's money,' Snape had said, or something like that, and she saw the truth in that.
Snape left. Simply picked up his bag and flicked his cigarette to the floor and walked out. Hermione sat, for a moment, watching the Headmaster stare after him with regret on his face.
"I should not ask you to work with him," he finally said to her. "He's dangerous, like that. I should have saved him, before this...sometimes sacrifices must be made. I will ask you to be careful."
Another sacrifice, she thought bitterly. "I don't think," she said calmly. "You should ask anything. Of either of us."
"One last trump to play," he said wearily. "Gods grant that it be enough."
And she shared, just for a moment, that bitter hatred that Snape did for this old man. "No." She stood up and left, slinging her bag over her shoulder. "I may be misguided enough still to believe in the black and white, good and evil, but Snape is nobody's trump."
Gamble with your own money. Play your own hand.
She saw Snape's face, still twisted, still fighting for calm as they walked back, as they crossed the grounds to the edge of the forest where he could Apparate.
Hermione paused. "You don't," she said calmly. "Have to tell me what happened..."
"I have no intention of it," he said shortly.
He radiated power, tangible and dark, and it frightened her. But she also was aware of a terrible sorrow, of a man with too little joy in his life and too little faith and too much blood and betrayal.
But the miscalculation on her part turned nervousness into absolute terror when he reacted to a gentle hand placed on his shoulder by snatching the wrist in a vise grip, snarling and twisting around, bringing them body to body, nose-to-chin; she would have felt the heat radiate off him had there been any heat to do so, and as it was, all she felt was power.
"You -don't- know what I am," he hissed. "You don't, and you don't want to. You don't have the right to ask me, to ask this of me, any more than -he- does."
"Severus..."
"Or maybe you do want to know," he continued. "and maybe if I weren't going to go with you to save that damnable little girl--I have no idea why--I would show you. Maybe I still will." And he traced a finger down her throat, across her jaw, down the side of her neck...sending shivers in its wake and heat straight to her groin. "Is that what you want?"
"No."
"You seemed to, back at my house," his voice was low and purring now, his fury not quite abated, but diffused. "Don't you want to finish what you started? Or are you finally starting to realize what I am?"
His hand was still trailing up and down the side of her neck, sending electric currents on its course. He bent down to kiss her jaw, and she -wanted- him too, terribly. Wanted him to touch her, take her, body and blood, because if he didn't, it might kill her.
She let him back her against a tree, let him kiss her as thoroughly as anyone had ever been kissed, and wanted him more than anything, more than air, more than life, and certainly more than saving Ginny. Her body was full of those little fear/sex chills and her brain was getting warm and pink and cloudy.
In the bookstore, he had told her to go away, and she had -wanted- to, more than anything, and it had felt, aside from the rising heat in her, exactly like this.
Warm pink clouds of mindlessness and desire.
She shoved him away, and slapped him, although miserably aware of just how little that would do.
"Don't you DARE," she hissed violently. "do that to me."
Hermione was seething in hatred and frustration, and her blow had done nothing to him, although judging by the sting in her hand, it was the hardest she had ever hit someone.
He smirked, and took a step back, as if to admire her from a distance, and she sank down to sit unsteadily at the roots of the tree.
It was cruel beyond cruel, like Imperious, only worse; under the Unforgivable the worst you could do was, well, DO something. Snape could make you WANT it.
Her breath heaved, her body protested, and she stared at him, chill with terror.
And he smiled. "No? No titillating expeditions into the unknown shadows of lust for the brave Miss Granger today?"
"Don't touch me."
He snickered again. "If I really wanted to, do you think you could stop me?"
Crueler than cruel. She shuddered and blinked back tears. "I don't know what Dumbledore did to you," she said quietly. "But don't take it out on me. I don't think this is you, Severus."
"And why, pray tell, is that, Miss Granger?"
"You apologized, for hitting me, a while back."
"Perhaps I am simply very skilled at manipulating people."
"I know you are."
He grinned, leering. "Perhaps you're more tempting than you think."
She snorted. "I doubt it."
He laughed, and sat down beside her. "And if I apologized for this?"
"I don't think it would make a difference. Snape, if we're going to be...working together, I have to trust you. You...can't..." She gestured vaguely.
"No," he said idly. "You need me. Trust has nothing to do with it."
She just looked sorrowful. *Teach me to have a thing for dangerous types,* she thought. *Hell.*
Cliché as it was, playing with fire got you burned.
Playing with shadows got you consumed by them. Snape had learned that a long time ago.
He regretted it instantly, not that he was going to tell her that. The moment she'd somehow tipped the scales to semi-evil--too much pity in a day could do that to a man. And his vampire nature had been angling for something like this since she'd stumbled across him in that stupid bookstore, only he hadn't been meant to allow her to push him away.
An image presented itself to him, the girl, all sweet blood and sweeter surrender, and he almost shuddered.
No chance of that now, at least not willingly. And no hope of pulling those Obi Wan tricks out, either. She had to trust him, for the sake of all that he was still, for whatever reason, willing to protect. So play it cool and back off and pretend he was just trying to prove a point and let her get her nerve back and then...ugh...go save the world again.
Maybe afterwards, his conscience would see fit to give him another break...
Hells. Who was he fooling, anyway? It hadn't worked in the bookstore and it hadn't worked just now. She was too strong for him. Maybe that was why she was so appealing. His mind control had only held out as long as it had because he'd been giving her something she wanted, if a little darker and more twisted than Hermione had imagined.
Not like she was going to make that mistake again.
No, he told himself, she's gone. Find another brilliant, beautiful witch who doesn't despise you despite the fact that you've been both unutterably cruel to her in the past and turned into a vampire...
("Do you know if you put a little hat on a snowball, it can last quite a long time in hell?")
He laughed, inwardly, miserable and despairing. Fucking Hogwarts. Brought out the worst in him, always had.
But time was of the essence, and Granger looked like she could use a little distraction. "Do you know exactly where Miss Weasley lives?" he asked.
"Nooo..." she said slowly. "New York, I'm sure, but I don't know any better than that."
"Oh. Good."
"Good? How is the fact that we haven't got a specific location good?"
"It isn't. But I've at least been to New York before. Apparating overseas is difficult enough without going somewhere one has never been before. And I don't have energy to waste right now."
"Oh."
"So we had best get going."
"Yes."
He held out a hand, to help her up, and she ignored it, climbing awkwardly to her feet as if aching, and only then, reluctantly, placed her fingers in his so that he could transport them both.
The slight pull that had taken them to Scotland felt as if it was going to tear her stomach out zipping to America. Hermione knew that most wizards balked at such a far trip. She herself had never done it. Yet she had not questioned Snape's intentions.
She was ashen when they landed--tumbled, really, and the minute they did, she'd jerked her hand violently out of his grip--in some back alley in Chinatown, and Snape was not looking well himself, although he could probably go no paler. He did not rise from his knees for a long time, and even then, it was to lean against the rough brick of one of the buildings they had landed between.
She stood, too, and imitated him. "Are...are you alright?"
"Fine, Miss Granger," he said shortly and parted reluctantly from the wall to straighten up. *I'd kill for a drink,* he thought with dark humor, and tried to remember where they were as he headed out of the alley.
The old Chinese herbalist's he'd been so fond of was gone now, replaced by some trendy tea house. Hermione, citing the fact that she'd had about two meals in three days, popped into it for a minute and emerged with a couple of odd-looking sesame buns and a large plastic cup of cloudy liquid which appeared, on closer inspection, to be full of caviar.
She drank some. "Oh," she said. "Eew."
"What -is- that stuff?"
"It's called 'bubble tea.' It sounded happy. It's absolutely vile." She made a face, kept drinking.
"Well, Miss Granger," he drawled. "I've gotten us here. Take over. Where to now?"
She threw the half-full cup of unappealing liquid into a trash can, and spun around. "Not sure exactly," she said. "But I'd wager uptown. Ginny's got some unplottable spells going, but she's not very good at them, and if we're in the right area, we should be able to locate her."
"If the Big Bad hasn't gotten to her first," he added mock-cheerfully.
"Yes, that."