Streaking her way along the third floor one night, Hermione was just congratulating herself on making it down to the dungeons unnoticed when Sir Nicholas' head popped out of the wall in the corridor before her.
"There you are, Miss Hermione," he announced in his booming voice, causing Hermione to close her eyes briefly and stifle a comment her mother would never have approved of. Tucking a folded piece of parchment up the sleeve of her robe, she turned and greeted the older ghost.
"Good evening, Sir Nicholas," she said politely, though her words were lost as the cavalier tucked her arm through his and began to tell her, with a great deal of enthusiasm, what a wonderful time they were going to have at the Headless Polo match that night. The visiting team was from Mongolia, apparently, and were particularly known for making brilliant maneuvers with their severed heads. Nick went on to describe some of the intricacies of swapping heads while in mid-play, leaving Hermione thankful she no longer had a stomach to become upset.
Casting about desperately for a change of subject, she saw the telltale flicker of Myrtle disappearing down the side corridor and called out to her. "Myrtle! Come here, Nick was just telling me the most fascinating tale!" she lied brightly.
One of the biggest surprises this school year had been the growing popularity of Myrtle's bathroom. The confrontation with her childhood bete noir had had a startling effect on Myrtle's confidence, and like Dumbledore's phoenix she was slowly becoming the Agony Aunt of Hogwarts. Distraught young girls found Myrtle always happy to listen to their problems – the more miserable the better – and they poured their hearts out to her in droves. What little advice Myrtle gave them was often frivolous, but her sympathy and commiseration was sincere and they usually left feeling much better.
The Myrtle who drifted towards Nick and Hermione down the hall, therefore, was a slightly different ghost than the miserable non-entity of the last half century. She blushed becomingly as Nick greeted her, and her breathless response was shy but accompanied by a giggle that made Hermione wince ever so slightly.
"Nick was just telling me about the Mongolian Maulers," she told Myrtle with desperate enthusiasm. "Weren't you, Nick? Do tell Myrtle what you just said to me."
"Of course," Nick replied, his chest puffing ever so slightly as Myrtle peered up at him through her thick black glasses. Hermione gave every appearance of listening just as raptly to his story, all the while gently edging back from the other two. To her delight, neither Myrtle nor Nick seemed to notice Hermione's silence as Nick laid out, in detail, the nuances of the game. In fact, Hermione had the feeling she could have stood on her head for all the attention they paid her.
"Oh, that sounds simply brilliant," Myrtle gushed, before ducking her head coyly. "I've never understood the game so well before, Sir Nicholas. I do wish I'd had someone as knowledgeable as you to teach me!" She went off in a peal of her high-pitched giggles, but rather than finding them irritating, Nick seemed quite chuffed by the attention.
"I've just had a brilliant idea," Hermione interjected, sensing a change in the wind. "Nick, why don't you take Myrtle to the game tonight instead of me?" While Myrtle blushed silver again, Nick managed a few half-hearted protests about a gentleman's word, which Hermione quashed by claiming she needed to discuss an article in the new Potions Quarterly with Professor Snape. Eventually, Nick was convinced. He tipped his head to Hermione in parting, hoping she was not too crushed at missing out on such an exciting game, while Myrtle squealed with excitement and turned nearly pure silver as she took Nick's arm.
Hermione was fairly sure she could bear the disappointment. In fact, she could not quite stifle her sigh of relief as the ghostly pair faded into the distance, discussing Hermione's odd habit of interacting quite so much with the 'live ones' of Hogwarts. She wasn't sure if interacting with the live inhabitants of the castle was as strange as watching a group of dead men squabble over a severed head, but if so, she was willing to live with it. Or not live with it. Whatever.
Shrugging off that conundrum, she drifted down through the castle towards the dungeon. While she really did have an issue to discuss with the Potions Master, she was in no hurry to find him before she had completed her current errand. Past experience had taught her that holding a conversation with Snape was a good deal like trying to pet a half-tamed Kneazle. You never knew when he was going to snarl at you.
Strangely, her relationships with Harry and Ron were likewise developing similar, unexpected twists to them. The letter she had written earlier this evening, carefully held in the sleeve of her robe, was in reply to the correspondence Harry had sent earlier in the week. He was deep in the training program to become an Auror for the Ministry and seldom had the time to write to her.
The distance between them, not to mention the fact that she was no longer living, had brought a certain sense of reserve into their correspondence. Harry remained as reticent as ever about revealing the hardships in his life, she knew him well enough to glean those small clues and get some idea of how hard he was working. She had no idea about his personal life, if he even had one, as he refused to put anything on parchment that might be used against himself or the Order. Even the questions he sent asking her for details on obscure potions and a fresh view on the charms and incantations, while light-hearted, were meticulous and exact while remaining entirely vague on the circumstances of their use.
Ron, on the other had, was drifting away, and Hermione treasured each note he sent, since she was unsure how many more she would receive. No longer were his letters frank and punctuated with his crossed-out profanities; instead they were friendly and vague, rather like a dutiful periodic letter to a spinster aunt who used to send you clothes that were both out of style and too small to wear. Hermione's letters to him were likewise becoming bland, with little news to impart and nothing of any substance to discuss. She wondered sometimes if they would eventually stop corresponding altogether, and finally decided to stop agonizing over their eventual estrangement. It was only natural, she supposed, that they had lost their closeness once separated after school. It would likely have happened regardless of her death, but she mourned the loss of their friendship even as he had once mourned her.
It was with those somewhat unsettled feelings that Hermione arrived in the dungeons, only to find them completely empty. Snape's classroom was dim and quiet, as was his office. She went so far as to check his locked storeroom, but Snape was not in attendance.
In accordance with their barely-spoken agreement, Hermione left the letter on the corner of his desk. As expected, he had been predictably annoyed at her presumption for borrowing his raven for a post-owl that morning several months ago. Explaining the situation to him, that the owls all seemed to dislike her now, had brought her little sympathy, but eventually Hermione had managed to talk him into a compromise of sorts. She would leave her finished letters on the edge of his desk and if he had no other correspondence, he would allow Edgar to deliver it.
"Edgar?" she'd choked out in surprise. "You named your raven Edgar?"
"No, I didn't – he came with the name, and I never bothered to change it. And yes, Miss Granger, I am sufficiently aware of Muggle literature to understand the source."
Errand completed and mercifully free of social obligations, Hermione drifted around the potions classroom and Snape's office, looking at the specimens in the jars. When she'd been a student she had often wondered where he'd obtained most of them, but a chance comment of his to the Headmaster led her to believe they were a legacy from his predecessor. She couldn't imagine anyone deliberately acquiring dead things in jars, but it was at least as reasonable as collecting Chocolate frog's wizard cards.
The complete blackness of the dungeons was no impediment to Hermione's sight as she peered in the myriad containers. Some were obvious examples of pickled doxies or billywigs, long past their shelf life. Other specimens were a complete mystery, but amusing enough to speculate what they might have been before meeting their ignominious final resting place.
In the midst of her perusal, Hermione noticed a glimmer of light along the edge of the blank wall to one side of Snape's office. Human eyes might not have seen it, but a ghost was not limited to the normal spectrum and Hermione's eyes, or whatever her senses presented as visual, saw the crack that was not the result of the castle's age.
Barely remembering to turn invisible, Hermione peeked through the wall and discovered a short passage behind the false door. It quickly joined another narrow passage, one which lead off in two different directions. With a brief thought on how much Ron and Harry would have enjoyed finding another secret passage in the castle, Hermione followed the worn trail until it led to a narrow gap in the massive stone. The opening was covered from the outside by a heavy tapestry, and the sound of student voices on the other side was confirmed by a quick peek through the fabric; she'd found the Slytherin common room. This late at night the room was mostly deserted save for three older students discussing their holiday plans in sleepy, nearly ready for bed voices.
Backtracking, Hermione followed the passage past the junction to the Snape's office and very shortly found another opening, this time into a larger room. This was almost immediately recognizable as a private workroom, not only for the professional quality cauldrons neatly arranged on racks against one wall, but also by the table littered with books, scrolls, quills, and other flotsam the compulsively private professor would never have left out for a student to find.
Weighing respect for privacy against her own curiosity, and justifying herself with the thought of hours spent keeping her dungeon haunt clean by scrubbing cauldrons and removing the evidence of botched potions from the ceiling beams, Hermione swooped closer to the table. In the center of the mess lay a heavy wooden bookstand, over which was draped a soft towel. Cushioned on that towel was not one but two sheets of glass, sandwiching a tattered piece of parchment between them. Hermione recognized the text after a moment of thought; it was the scroll Snape had taken from an ancient, tarnished box one night as she observed him invisibly from above.
Beside the stand lay a sheaf of notes in Snape's familiar scrawl, the ink changing shades several times as he'd annotated his own translation. Without realizing it, Hermione settled into the chair and began reading the notes, fascinated by the unfolding mystery before her.
The original text was coded, but it was a Latin code Hermione knew she had no chance of solving despite her more than passable language skills. Fortunately, Snape's papers included both the decoded Latin and the English translation. Hours passed, unnoticed, while she pored over the work, grinning occasionally at the changes in handwriting that betrayed her professor's irritation and impatience with the disorganized writing.
When she had at last finished reading, Hermione was both baffled and intrigued. The author, who never once identified himself, had spent a great deal of time and ink encoding what was quite possibly the most boring life's story she'd ever had the misfortune to endure. Interspaced with the drivel, however, were occasional fantastic references to potions he had either seen or created. Most of these were patently absurd, including the one that, according to the author, redirected all sexual energy of a cleric who drank it and instead channeled that energy into a fervor for doing good deeds and leading a sober, chaste life of prayer. Since no mention was made of the ingredients, Hermione could only assume it was wishful thinking.
One potion mentioned, however, did include ingredients. Tantalizingly few and far between, lacking all mention of quantity or preparation, the promise of something Snape had translated as Tears of Phoenix potion was laced between comments on foot blisters and the proper way to cook a stringy chicken.
Reading through the margins once more, Hermione saw that Snape had of course noticed this promise of a miracle potion, and had already done a considerable amount of work on the subject. The edges of the parchment sheets were filled with notes on what was or was not a likely ingredient. Even the passage on the chicken had a question mark in the margin, and Hermione could just imagine Snape's disdainful eyebrow raising at that one.
Thinking of Snape at that moment made Hermione wonder once more where the man had gotten to, and at the same moment realize just how many hours had passed. In a panic at the thought of his displeasure over her inquisitiveness she carefully put the papers back in approximately the right place and rose up, ready to flee if he should suddenly storm in and began to rant at her.
He did not, however, and Hermione's apprehension over getting caught was quickly replaced by puzzlement. She had not seen the professor patrolling the halls earlier in the evening, and she knew from sharing his dungeon with him these many months that he did not simply disappear.
Unless he'd been summoned to Lord Voldemort.
Despite her lack of corporeal body, the thought of Snape being summoned was enough to make a shiver of unease go up her spine. Though he could be thoroughly unpleasant, Snape was still a member of the Order of the Phoenix and, ultimately, an ally in the war against Voldemort. His efforts as a spy were highly valuable, but highly dangerous, and she knew each time he answered Voldemort's call to his Death Eaters it might very well mean his death if his double-dealings were discovered.
Anxiety mounting, Hermione left the secret workroom and, on a hunch, plunged through the wall opposite the entrance. As she expected, the space on the other side of the thick wall was someone's quarters. The heavy, masculine furniture and sparse decorations weren't conclusive, but the long black scholar's robe flung over a chair was proof enough that these were Snape's rooms.
Otherwise immaculate, the spartan rooms included a sitting area, a small kitchen barely adequate to boil either eggs or a tea kettle, and a bedroom. A doorway opposite was presumably the bath. A few scattered personal effects betrayed the fact that anyone lived here on a permanent basis, but those knick-knacks on the wall or shelves revealed almost nothing about their owner.
The only thing out of place in the entire suite was a small cabinet door left ajar below a bookshelf in the bedroom. When she peeked inside, Hermione found a plain wooden box lying open, its lid pushed back as though the contents had been removed in a hurry. The inside of the box had been covered in velvet once, but the nap was crushed and worn, little more than a furze of green over the sad base fabric and the lumpy oval shape on the bottom. She puzzled over it for a moment until the lumps resolved themselves into a genderless face, and she realized the convex surface would be exactly the thing one would place a silver mask over for safekeeping.
Deciding she'd meddled enough for one night and thankful that she had not made herself corporeal enough to physically disturb anything in the room, Hermione rose like smoke up through the ceiling of the dungeons until she emerged in the Great Hall. The large clock in the hall was striking the hour as she came through the flagstone floor, telling her that it was nearly dawn.
One thing about being a ghost is it gave one a great deal of time for thought and reflection, and Hermione had had plenty of time to consider her fellow denizen of the dungeon. While Severus Snape was undeniably unpleasant, she could not dismiss the dangers he endured, and even grudgingly admire his ability to carry on both his teaching duties while playing a deadly game of cat and mouse.
Torn between worry for the man and anxiety for what he would say should he catch her worrying, she chose a more discretionary course and sailed nonchalantly through the corridors in the general direction of the Headmaster's office. If anything were amiss, the activity around Dumbledore's office would be a dead giveaway.
She felt perfectly justified in her concern when the gargoyle guarding the stairs to the Headmaster's domain began to rumble and rotate, indicating someone was either going up or coming down. When the last step appeared, however, Hermione felt almost let down and just a bit foolish as Snape himself stepped off the stairs. He looked tired but perfectly intact, though somewhat worse for wear, his hair in lank strings over his sallow cheeks and his robes falling in heavy creases.
He gave her a sharp look, and Hermione wondered if she had betrayed herself in any way. "Good morning, Professor," she managed.
A curt nod was the only response she received from Snape before he turned away and walked down the hall. Noting that he was headed the opposite direction of his dungeons, and since she was technically headed that way as well, Hermione floated along behind him. He had likely been up all night, she reminded herself, noticing the lack of his normal whipcord energy, and then promptly chided herself for fretting about someone perfectly capable of taking care of himself. Rather than wait for Snape to accuse her of following him, Hermione ducked around loose-jointed stride that appeared to have no destination and sped down the corridor ahead.
Leaving the dark man behind, Hermione followed the darkened length of the corridor, punctuated only by the occasional torch, until the stone walls gave way to arched windows along one side. Slowly she drifted to halt beside one of the large openings, mentally shaking her head. Despite the fact they shared the dungeons, she was a fooling herself to think that Professor Snape would ever accept, let alone welcome, her concern over his well-being. It was absolutely futile to fret over him, she thought ruefully as she looked out over the grounds.
Deep in her phantom bones, Hermione could feel the sun about to rise and turned her attention to view beyond the diamond panes of glass before her.
Below, the lake lay still and dark against the mass of trees that marked the beginning of the Forbidden Forest. With the approach of the Winter Solstice the sun had been rising later and later each day, making the nights last longer and giving the ghosts more time to roam the halls and indulge in their activities. Some of the spirits within the castle avoided the sunlight completely, but Hermione did not let the unsettling exposure keep her from enjoying the play of colors as night gave way to day. She had enjoyed watching sunsets when she living, and since her death had mentally labeled her new penchant for sunrises as the opposite.
To her surprise, the sound of footsteps came from the corridor she'd left behind, and after a moment a dark head came into sight. Professor Snape emerged from the hall and came towards her. He seemed just as surprised to see her floating in front of the window and stopped short.
"Did you want something, Miss Granger?" he asked, his voice gone gravelly with fatigue and lacking any real acid.
"No, Professor," she replied, flustered. "Actually, this is one of my favorite places to watch the sun rise."
Over her shoulder, Hermione could see the first rays of light growing stronger at the eastern horizon. Wordlessly, Snape walked towards the windowsill and leaned heavily on the stone mullion, and they both watched as the sun begin to creep over the water and the distant forest.
Unsure how to bring the subject up, Hermione scrutinized the deep lines on his face from the corner of her eye. Before she could stop it, she found herself asking "Have you had any sleep at all tonight, Professor?"
Too tired to make a sharp retort, Snape settled for shaking his head wearily.
"Not to sound like a know-it-all, professor, but anyone who keeps the hours you do and then stays up to watch the sunrise is not getting enough sleep."
"That doesn't take a genius to figure out, Miss Granger, and no, I have not yet been to bed this night," he replied, his voice lacking his normal acerbic quality. "And you sound more like a nanny," he added when she made a tsking noise of reproof.
Hermione smiled gently, both from the daytime lassitude that grew with the rising sun and from relief at Snape's approachable manner. "Well, then, young man. You need to get some sleep."
"I cannot sleep," he muttered. "I simply needed to see the sunrise this morning."
"No offence, Professor Snape, but I've never really thought of you as a sunrise type of person."
A long moment passed before he answered her. "It is the only constant in my life. The one thing I can count on, absolutely."
Hermione chuckled. "And here I was sure you were a pessimist." He shot her a look that said, plainly, 'don't be stupid,' and she hastened to clarify her statement. "I've heard it said that the ultimate pessimist does not believe the sun will come up every morning, just because it has, every day, for the last ten million years or so."
To her surprise, his mouth twisted in a grimace of appreciation for her comment. "Not even I would be so cynical as that."
An almost comfortable silence fell between them as the sun continued to peek over the hills, burning first pink and then gold as it slowly revealed itself. Hermione glanced over at the man standing so still beside her, his face raised to the painfully bright rays of the new-risen sun. His sharp profile was harsh in the unrelenting light, softened only by the dark sweep of his eyelashes and the careworn lines in his face.
Even as she watched, Snape took a deep breath and, feeling her gaze, turned to raise a single eyebrow at her.
"So Professor Snape is not a creature of darkness after all," she teased. "Who would have known?"
Like a cloak thrown over him, his normal half-scowl returned, and any trace of the quiet man who had been there before vanished without a trace. "I am always in darkness," he told her wearily, and without another word left her behind, his wrinkled robes flaring behind him.
&&&&&
As Hermione gently set her latest set of borrowed books on the circulation desk, yet another disapproving sniff came from Madame Pince's direction. The prim librarian had finally stopped protesting the ghost's use of the library, but still voiced her opinion of the situation with frequent tsks, sighs, and other wordless complaints as Hermione checked out books. In return, Hermione did her best to serenely ignore the woman. If she was occasionally guilty of being a bit smug as she emerged from the stacks, it might reasonably be attributed to her triumph over finding a certain rare book and not because she was secretly enjoying at the librarian's seething frustration.
"Pardon me, Miss Granger," came a timid voice from behind her. Turning obediently out of the way, Hermione found a second-year Gryffindor. The girl also had a stack of books in her arms, one that looked much too heavy for her. Hermione smiled and moved out of the way, and was pleasantly surprised to see the child shyly smile back.
The newer students were slowly warming to Hermione's frequent presence in the library, especially after one memorable evening when she had helped two students with their Potions homework. The word had spread that the ghostly Miss Granger knew quite a bit about charms as well, and almost before she knew it Hermione had become the best kept secret among the younger students who needed help keeping up with their assignments.
Taking a shortcut through the wall, Hermione drifted out of the confines of the wing containing the library, heading towards the Great Hall and the dungeons below. She had nearly crossed the open courtyard when she came to a gentle halt. All around her, the ground was white, and she blinked in surprise as she looked up to see additional snow falling in waves. Surely the students had just returned to the school last week?
Turning around, Hermione took in the somber, quiet beauty of the snow drifting against the cold stone walls. No prints were left behind as she walked further out, but her upturned face could just barely feel the whisper-soft caress of the falling snow. The fat flakes fell through her rather than settling on her curls as they used to do, and in one blinding moment, Hermione remembered being with Harry and Ron, standing in the falling snow as they tossed snowballs around, laughing with each other and hearing the stone walls echo their laughter back to them. The still silence was all the more profound as she felt the snow falling down, and she was not sure which was more painful, remembering her friends or having forgotten their time together.
By the time Hermione shook off her reverie and returned to the interior of the school, the lights had died and all the students had gone to their dormitories. The same quiet pervaded the dungeons as the snowy outdoors, somehow peaceful and melancholy rather than eerie. It reminded her of the quiet moment she'd spent with the Potions Master before a sunrise sometime earlier in the year, and she once again found herself concerned over the man.
No matter how often she tried to wrench her mind off him, concern for Severus Snape seemed to creep into her thoughts. Perhaps it was because she spent so many hours with him, not necessarily in conversation but at least present in the same dungeon. She'd seen his hands shaking as he graded papers, the miasma of fatigue that seemed to be as much a part of him as his black robes.
Hermione had even gone so far as to broach the subject with the Headmaster one evening, during one of Snape's all too frequent absences, but Albus Dumbledore had given her only blithe reassurances. "Severus is fine, Hermione," he told her. "Not having your friend Harry to teach, or any of the army of Weasleys, has done him wonders, as has your continued help. He should have taken an assistant long ago!"
The old wizard had toddled off, chuckling at his own joke, leaving Hermione to make her own conclusions. Either Dumbledore was completely unobservant, or he knew Snape's dislike for any intrusion on his private life and would welcome it as much as he would a surprise birthday party. Which left Hermione exactly where she was, floating invisibly above the dungeon classroom and wondering if brooding were a contagious disease.
She was still reflecting when the door of the classroom crashed open. Careening in through the doorway, Snape let loose a string of obscenity and slammed the door behind him. Icy clumps clung to his hair and cloak and he looked like a man who had trudged through snowy woods for far too long.
"Bloody fuckwits, standing around in the weather for hours," he snarled to no one in particular as he made his way unsteadily towards the demonstration worktable at the front of the classroom. "You'd think a man who was half reptile would be more interested in keeping his backside warm. No, of course not, he wants to lecture us and hear everyone boasting about their contributions to the cause. We would have all frozen to death if it weren't for the hot air."
The wet cloak dropped into a sodden pile on the floor, followed soon by the frock coat, although the latter had had several buttons torn from it where his fingers were too clumsy to fiddle the holes. One long arm snagged a nearby cauldron from his cabinet as he went around the back of the table, and it landed with a clank on the support ring. Brushing wet hair aside, Snape bent over far enough to aim his wand at the burner, and after several irritated pokes it lit with a whoosh.
His wand was unceremoniously dropped to one side of the cauldron stand as he held his hands out to be warmed by the meager flame, and he did not even flinch as Hermione materialized at his elbow.
"Are you all right?" she asked, concerned. The glare she received in return rivaled a basilisk.
"Do I look all right?"
"No. You look wet, cold," she paused and gave him another look, "not to mention half-drunk."
"Thank you for reminding me," he snarled, but his voice lacked conviction, perhaps because he was chilled past the point of even letting his teeth chatter.
"Why don't you get into a hot bath?" Hermione scolded. "You'll never get warm in here."
"Thank you, Nanny Granger," he replied, woodenly pulling out a flask of distilled water out of the cabinet and pouring it into the cauldron. "Why don't you make yourself useful and get me the armadillo bile?"
Mystified but obedient, Hermione fetched the fat bottle from the supply room and plunked it down on the workbench.
"Since when do you put armadillo bile in a sobering potion?" she asked. "Shouldn't you use something a little easier on the stomach?"
"It neutralizes toxins," he answered shortly, pouring a generous amount into the water, which was beginning to steam. Several other things went in as well, including some yellow dock and a handful of St. Mary's thistle. The ingredients were not so unusual, but the preparation was sloppier than anything Hermione had seen outside of Snape's First Year classes.
Any thought of questioning him on this went out of her head, though, when Snape grabbed his side as if in terrible pain. There was no sign of blood on his white shirt, however, and he straightened a moment later and continued his haphazard work as though nothing had happened.
Less than a minute later, however, he let out a groan and pressed his hand into his side once more. He stumbled sideways, fetching up hard against the table, and his free hand grabbed the edge in a white-knuckled grip to keep himself from falling to the floor.
A retching sound forced its way past Snape's clenched teeth, and Hermione was just able to snatch a discarded cauldron from beneath one of the student tables and get it into place before his knees gave way and he was violently ill.
Unsure of what else to do, Hermione held the cauldron while Snape emptied his stomach, vomiting again and again in painful spasms. She presumed he was finished when he pushed it away and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. His hands were shaking.
"It's not necessary for you to be here," he said curtly, his dignity in tatters.
Well," she reflected, "I am here, and it's likely a good thing, too."
"You always did have a good sense of timing with a cauldron," he admitted. "Not that Miss Bettencourt will appreciate what you've done with hers."
"What's in there now is better than anything Miss Bettencourt had ever put in," Hermione retorted, cautiously appraising his mood. "This seems a lot worse than just too much to drink. Were you cursed?"
"Only by my so-called friends and their vicious sense of humor."
"Someone poisoned you?" she asked, appalled.
Snape growled impatiently and unsteadily regained his feet, leaning heavily on the workbench. A rack of essential oils atop it fell over with a crash, and several vials began rolling towards the edge.
With a deft hand for someone incorporeal, Hermione rescued the narrow bottles and returned them to the center of the table. Snape was fumbling the lid off one, his hands shaking so badly she was sure he'd spill it all before he got it into the cauldron. Unable to endure it any longer, she lifted the vial from his clumsy fingers.
"Sit down, you stupid, idiotic man, and let me help you. You're going to slop it all over the table. How much?"
With a visible effort, Severus Snape let his outrage die like a guttering flame and slumped onto the nearby stool. It was a moment before he took a deep breath, and told her the required number of drops. For the next few minutes he did nothing but direct Hermione's actions in a resigned voice, as though waiting for her to take advantage of his weakened state.
It was not until the last ingredient was added and Hermione had stirred the proper number of times that she spoke again.
"Did you eat anything before you started drinking?"
Despite himself, Severus found the corner of his mouth twitching. "Yes, Nanny Granger. I did eat."
"Obviously not enough to counter all the brandy you drank," she retorted. Glancing over when he did not answer, she was startled to see a fine dew of sweat beading on his forehead. His eyes were closed, lines of pain etched everywhere on his face as another spasm racked his body.
"Professor?" she called, and when he did not stir she became even more concerned. "Professor Snape!"
To her relief his eyes opened slowly, the black pupils eventually focussing on her translucent face.
"Shouldn't you go see Madame Pomfrey?" she asked nervously.
"No," Snape answered, his voice barely audible. "There's nothing she can do for this, other than what I'm doing now."
"Are you sure?"
"Do stop blathering, Miss Granger. I know what's wrong and so does Poppy." His gaze slid over to the cauldron, which was emitting puffs of violet smoke and had turned a strange shade of orange. With more strength than Hermione would have thought possible, Snape struggled to his feet and over to the table.
"It looks fine. Give it here."
It's awfully hot," she warned, but ladled a portion into a clean beaker. Snape downed more than half of it before pausing and gagging again, but keeping the potion down through sheer stubborn determination.
Finally, Hermione abandoned tact for bluntness. "What's wrong with you?"
"That's rather an open ended question, Miss Granger, not to mention highly impertinent."
"Take it up with the Baron. Why are you drinking a concoction of systemic stimulants?" She took in his hand, still pressed to his side. Her gaze fell on the litter of ingredients spread across the table. "Wait a moment… turmeric root, dandelion, skullcap, gallium aperine…" She ticked the ingredients off on her fingers, adding the evidence up in her mind. "Kidney failure?"
"Liver, actually," he said in an offhand manner, even as he upended the vial and forced down the last of the potion in the flask. "Wizards call it Braxdice Syndrome. I believe Muggles call it hepatitis."
"There's more than one kind of hepatitis."
"Just as there's more than one variety of Braxdice. Mine happens to be the incurable variety. While its symptoms are all endearing, it has the added benefit of amusing Lucius Malfoy to no end, especially when he insists I drink the turpentine he passes off as firewhiskey. It would not surprise me if he obtained this particularly vile distillation just for his fellow Death Eaters."
Armed with this new information, Hermione inspected Severus Snape once more and could not help but notice how sallow his complexion was, his skin pulled tightly over the bones of his face. The yellow tinge was not from his lack of exposure to the sun, but from a malfunctioning liver. That would account for his general air of bad health, and a steady diet of stimulants would explain his relentless energy and legendary insomnia.
It was no stretch to imagine Lucius Malfoy's sadistic pleasure in pressing a poor quality drink on Snape – he was exactly the sort to classify poisoning a Potions Master as a practical joke.
"Will that potion take away the pain?" she asked.
"No," he answered simply. "But it will keep my liver from turning itself inside out, and will neutralize the alcohol still in my system. I'll take the rest of that," and he indicated the cauldron with a nod of his head, "in regular doses." His voice cut off as another wave of agony paralyzed him.
"Go to bed," Hermione ordered when it had passed. "I'll put this in something and bring it to your rooms. Unless you need help?"
His response was unintelligible, but he made it upright and across the floor on unsteady feet. Once the secret passageway had closed behind him, Hermione fetched several large vials and a strainer. Snape had drunk the first dose bits and all, but she rather imagined it wasn't necessary to leave them in.
By the time she finished and carried the six-pack of vials through the secret passageways to Snape's suite (nervously reminding herself to open the doors rather than sail through them, which would have disastrous results for the glass vials in her hand), the man himself had crawled under the covers of his bed and fallen asleep. Setting the rack of potion doses on his bedside table and looked around, Hermione felt the urge to do more than simply play delivery ghost. A glance at the empty fire grate prompted her to summon a house elf, who was happy to light a strong fire and, after promising to do so discretely, apply a drying charm to the still-damp hair that clung to Severus Snape's drawn face.
The elf was also delighted to tidy up the discarded clothing that had been exchanged for the thick nightshirt Snape wore, buttoned up tightly of course. Hermione hoped he'd had the sense to put on a thick pair of socks but opted not to have the elf do that as well.
Asking the elf to follow her, Hermione faded through the walls once more to the potions classroom, the elf bouncing along and effortlessly Apparating through the doors. Here, she directed her helper to take Snape's cloak and other discarded clothing away while she cleared the worktable of all accoutrements, knowing full well the elves were forbidden to clean anything in the Potion Master's domain.
When all the ingredients were back on their shelves, the cauldron in the sink, and all the rubbish disposed of, Hermione was left looking at Snape's wand, lying forgotten on the table. It was beyond imagining that he had forgotten his wand, and Mad Eye Moody would have laughed himself sick at a man nearly as paranoid as himself losing his wand, but then again Moody wasn't known for being sympathetic.
Deciding she ought not leave the thing lying about and intending to put it next to his potions on his bedside table, Hermione picked up the wand only to drop it with a gasp as an excruciating hot pain went through her fingertips. Momentarily stymied, she stuck her burnt fingers in her mouth and observed the wand with some suspicion even as her brain began ticking along with questions and observations and possibilities all milling through her thoughts.
She settled for finding a pair of wooden tongs and lifting the wand up carefully, like a freshly molded spike of steel, through the classroom and into Snape's office. The top drawer was full of quills and sweets and other nonsense confiscated from students over the past few months, and was as likely a hiding place as any other to stash the wand until its owner recovered enough to retrieve it.