Hermione stepped away as Severus swung his legs over the side of the couch and tried to stand.
He placed one hand on either side of his sitting body and tried to push himself up. He gingerly stood, making sure he had his balance before taking a tentative step forward, but the time he took for his balance was a waste. As soon as he moved his right foot his weight shifted and, for the first time since he was a child, Severus Snape began to fall.
But Hermione was standing right before him.
She wrapped her arms around his waist and found herself holding him for the second time in less than that many hours. She shifted a bit so that she was grabbing her own wrists behind his back, her arms pulling the skin there together.
"Miss Granger, AHHH," Snape began, using his normal voice despite the fact that his face was right to the side of hers, making their cheeks touch and his lips rest against her ear. He had every intention to thank her for catching him, but his words ended in a sharp gasp.
"What? What's wrong?" Hermione asked her worry evident in her voice. "Oh," she exclaimed as realization dawned on her. "I'm so foolish! Your cuts! I'm so sorry Sir. I didn't mean to put you in more pain!" she rambled on as she righted him, helping him to regain his balance, unthinkingly placing her hands on his hips.
His mouth was still against her ear as he gasped again at her touch, but in pleasure instead of pain. "Miss Granger," he began again, "would you be as kind to tend to the gash on my back as you have the ones on my chest?" he asked her, desperate for anything that would get her from directly in front of him.
His silky voice reached her ears causing her to give an involuntary shudder that they both felt.
Hermione gladly obliged his request, not meeting his eyes as she removed her hands and walked around to see what else she would be cleaning. But as soon as she took her hands away, he began to sway once more.
Hermione quickly grabbed his arm to steady him again, but let go as soon as he could stand on his own.
She quickly walked over, around the couch, and took the lamp and vase off of the high table that stood behind it. She pulled on the one end of the three-and-a-half-foot tall table, dragging it around to where Snape stood, his arms out to keep his balance. She placed the table before him and gestured for him to lean onto it by putting his hands before him on the table, saving him from falling once more.
"Thank you," he muttered, adjusting his footing so that he lent over the wooden table and gave her a clear view of his wound on his back.
Hermione pulled out her wand, conjuring two bowls and a rag once more, having gotten rid of the ones she had used before. She placed her supplies on the table and turned to get her first look at what she was going to work on. She gasped in surprise at what met her gaze.
The cut was long and deep, reaching from just below his right shoulder and down to his lower left back. It cut through all of his major back muscles. If she did not clean this wound perfectly he would lose all use of his arms, the muscles to lift them residing in his upper back, and now torn to shreds.
Hermione took in a deep breath and let it out slowly, very slowly. She was amazed that he could have laid there on his back while she cleaned the cuts on his stomach. Sure he was unconscious, but still. This thing was oozing pus and had small threads of his discarded cloak that he had been laying on trapped with in it. She had to be extremely careful.
An hour and many painful yelps later the entire thing was clean.
"I'm sorry that hurt so much," Hermione told her old potions teacher. "But I wanted to make sure I got everything out of there." She conjured a long length of cloth to wrap around and to bind his cuts so they wouldn't bleed more than they already had.
"Thank you for doing this for me," Snape told her as she pulled him gently away from the table so that she could wrap his stomach and back and not have to do it around the table.
She looked up at him from her wrapping, surprised, met his eyes for the first time since he had awoken.
"I'm not so heartless as to not thank those who do me a great service," he told her, his voice silky and low in her ears.
"I don't think you're heartless at all," she replied, her gaze still on his face but her hands working nimbly, taking the cloth around and around his torso.
It was his turn to be surprised. He had been nothing but cruel to her for the ten years that he had known her and yet she still believed he was worthy of emotions?
"After all," she continued, not noticing his confusion because she had looked back down to her work, mainly so he couldn't see the blush that was creeping back onto her face. "You did work as a spy for the Order all those years. If you didn't have a heart you would have stayed on Voldemort's side and not have come to join the Order in the first place. And that you risked you life so many times for so many people that you never have and never will meet, shows you care for something, doesn't it?" she said, asking the last part as she moved around behind him so that she could wrap the top half of the cut there.
Her sudden movement brought Snape to his senses. All of them.
He could see her move around him, her hips swaying with every step, her breasts bouncing ever so slightly at the same time. He could smell her freshly washed hair, the cinnamon and apples in her shampoo taking him back to the orchard that his grandparents had had on their estate when he was a child. He could hear her every breath and every movement, the whisper of her baggy pants as her legs move forwards and back. He could feel her fingers running over his skin sending electric shocks all through his un-wanting body.
And he could taste her. He could taste what he imagined her kisses to be like. He could taste her skin and he could taste desire; whether it was hers or his own, he did not know.
"There, they're all wrapped now," she told him, once again brining him back to himself as she spoke aloud. "Just allow me to put a charm on these so they won't fall off or anything. Vincio Umaquam."
"Thank you again," he told her as he tried to take a step towards the door but promptly began to fall again. And again, Hermione was there to catch him.
"Sir, where are you going?" she asked. "Surely you're not leaving already. I've just bandaged your cuts and you need your rest. I know I didn't do the best job and that you'll have to see Madam Pomfrey back at Hogwarts, but you can't leave just yet-"
"Miss Granger," Snape interrupted her. "I have no plans on leaving anytime soon, I merely have to use the restroom. If you would be so kind as to assist me to the lavatory on this floor seeing as I cannot walk on my own…?"
"Oh, I'm sorry for jumping to conclusions, Sir. I just thought that-" she answered, her cheeks turning the shade of pink they used to when she was in his class and he had just caught talking to Potter and Weasely.
"Miss Granger I am quite aware of what you thought, as you voiced it not a moment ago. But please, may we move on…"
This time she only nodded.
A few minutes later the two reached the main floor restroom that was off of the same hall as the room they had been in, only further down. The house did not look like much to the few wizards who could see it from the outside, but in; in it was much bigger.
When they finally reached it, Hermione hesitated, wondering if she should take him in there and then go back outside or if she should just let him go in there on his own. But her answer was decided for here when Snape let go of her arm that he had been using for balance and moved it to the bathroom counter that was just inside the door.
"Thank you Miss Granger, I believe I can take it from here."
"Yes Sir. Will you need my help back? Shall I wait for you?"
"Yes Miss Granger, as much as it pains me to say it I believe I will need your help back into the parlor. So yes, I would be grateful if you were to wait for me here." He told her, ignoring the pain he saw in her eyes that shone even in the dark when he told her that he wished that he did not need her help.
She gave a small nod and walked over to the opposite wall, leaning her back against it.
Hermione rested her head against the wall, letting it fall as it saw fit, as she went over the conversation she had just had with her former potions Master.
Word by word, she replayed it in her mind, the idiotic things she had said making her wince in embarrassment. It had been awful.
She had said that she didn't see him as heartless for god's sake!
Could she have made a more stupid comment? Of course the man wasn't heartless. He knew it, she knew it, but there was no reason that she needed to tell him that she knew.
She sighed in annoyance, resting one hand across her stomach, feeling the movement of it as she concentrated on her breathing. She pulled her hand away and went to take it to her eyes, to wipe them of the sleep that was beginning to cloud her vision, when she saw that the hand was dark, wet, covered in something. Even in the minimal light available Hermione could tell that something coated her palm and fingers.
She looked down to her stomach and gulped audibly.
Her shirt had absorbed Snape's blood as she had tended to him. When she rested her hand on her stomach, it had been on top of her shirt, which was so saturated that it had given her hand something to take back with it: a thick coating of the red liquid.
"Shit," Hermione muttered under her breath. "This is never going to come out." While mourning the loss of her form fitting shirt, she came to the conclusion that it needed to be seen to right away.
She sighed as she pulled the tank-top over her head, careful to avoid contact between the blood-soaked fabric and her face or any other areas of her skin, leaving her in the black bra she had been wearing beneath it.
She held the shirt out in front of her, debating whether or not it was worth the energy that it would cost to cast the cleaning spell. So lost in thought was she that she did not hear the door to the bathroom open once more; nor did she see her former Potions Professor's eyes widen at the sight of her in the dimly lit hall.
Severus closed the door forcefully behind him, muttering incoherent things about not liking to be helped beneath his breath.
He leaned hard on the white marble counter top that was laced with black lines throughout, thinking of how he had offended the woman who had been kind enough to help him.
The small flash of pain in her eyes when he had said that he resented the need of her help had sent a large pang of guilt to his heart, but not before it passed through the rest of his body first. The result left him shaking in regret.
Why do I feel thus? Snape asked himself when the tremors stopped. What is it about this girl that has me captured so? However much I am grateful to her for the work she did to keep me alive, it should not result in these overwhelming emotions that plague me.
The girl is barely more than a child; I cannot allow myself to feel for her in this way. I have spent the decade I have known her using her as if she was a stone to sharpen the blade of my tongue. All those years I insulted her before her peers, before her enemies, before her friends. I felt no remorse then. She did not seem effected then.
So why is it now, that when I just state the fact that I abhor the need of anyone's help, she takes it personally? And why is it now that I wish I could take the pain from her eyes.
Snape shook his head, trying to clear it of the thoughts that kept streaming through. He took care of what he had walked into the lavatory for in the first place with only some small difficulties. Once he was finished he took a hand full of water and splashed it over his face, cleansing his haggard appearance somewhat.
Sighing once again he prepared himself to face Hermione anew, his thoughts still confused but in a better order than they had been when she had been standing so near. Thoughts of ignoring the sprouting feelings for the girl were immediately pushed into the very far reaches of his mind when he opened the door.
She stood before him, wearing nothing above her hips but a lacy black bra that exposed more than it covered.
Shock gripped him at the sight of her, leaving him paralyzed, unable to move from the door frame. As the effects of the shock slowly wore off, Severus realized that she had not noticed that he was there at all. He took that un-knowingly granted time to study what the girl, now woman, had hid beneath her robes for all of those years. He imagined himself to be the first to ever see what the top half of her body truly looked like.
Her abdomen was flat, as was his, but where his was from the genes of his ancient family, it was obvious that hers came from many sit-ups and crunches; the lines that separated each of her muscles from the others told that tale.
And her breasts, which he had noted before as having filled out, were shown to him; tantalizing him with the sight of the tops of their globes, their gently sloping curves. He longed to touch them, to cup one of them in his palm, knowing that it would rest perfectly there, fitting like the missing piece of a puzzle.
His eyes traveled ever upward, admiring her long and graceful neck before coming to rest on her face, her beautifully angelic face. She truly seemed to be other worldly. The way her hair fell down her back in it's dark brown ringlets made it look like a silken waterfall, even in the dark of the corridor where little light flickered upon the walls. Her eyes shone brightly here in the dark too, giving off a light of their own as looked forward beneath a knit brow, studying a problem from all angles as he had seen her do many times both as his student and as his equal in the war.
How he wished to hold her then and there, to feel every curve of her body, seen and unseen, pressed against his own.
The image in his mind was too much; the thought of that particular sensation was too much. Once again he shook his head in an attempt to clear it, but only succeeded in jumbling his thoughts some more.
Severus closed his eyes and took a deep breath, willing himself into a state of calmness before he opened them once more to find her still standing there without a shirt. Well that wasn't true, now that he studied the entirety of the picture she made. The look of deep concentration he had seen in her eyes was fixed upon her shirt, which she held out at arms length, seeing it but seeing though it.
He looked at it as well and soon saw the problem she did: the small piece of white fabric looked as if it had been seeped in blood, his blood. The realization of how much blood he had lost made Severus stagger, causing him to grasp onto the door frame for support.
Hermione was at his side in an instant, her shirt still in her hand, but now dangling at her side in stead of straight out before her as it had been. Her other arm was quickly wrapped around his waist, holding him up as she had done so many other times that night.
"Sir, are you alright?" she asked, concern evident in her gentle voice. The voice that made him think of a soft breeze rustling the leaves of the orchard she smelled like.
Yes, I'm perfectly fine Snape thought to himself. If we could stay like this forever, that would be marvelous.
"Yes Miss Granger, I believe I will be fine, but only if you put your shirt back on."
"Oh, I'm sorry. I had forgotten."
This simple statement made Severus want to weep. If she was that comfortable with her body as to not be embarrassed when found half naked by a former teacher… he was not the first to see her such. Any woman with that much comfort and confidence in herself gained it only by the recognition she received from others who had seen her. Their approval would have made her at home with in herself.
Anger boiled with in him at the thought of her showing herself to either Potter or Weasley. They did not have the right to such a beautiful creature. They could not hope to match her intelligence and did not deserve to even be near her. She was one unto herself, a matched equal to all but equaled by none.
That means you have no claim to her soul either, the analytical side of his mind sneered at him.
"Here, I will help you back to the parlor and then get another shirt to cover myself with since it makes you uncomfortable. Come on," she told him as she gently led him forward, step by step.
She was going to recover herself because she was making him uncomfortable, not because she was herself. At that he saw her in a new light, one with radical differences than what he had watched her in before.
Three minutes later they reached the parlor, Severus feeling weaker than a new born kitten from his exhaustion of the muscles that had been injured in his fight against the Death Eaters' children.
Hermione gently placed him down on the couch, removing his arm from around her shoulders as she eased him onto the sofa.
"Now hold a moment Professor, and I'll be back shortly," she told him as she made to leave him in order to find herself a new shirt.
"Miss Granger, I only suggested that you replace your shirt because I was under the impression that it would be embarrassing for you to be seen in nothing but you're undergarments by a man more than twice your age who could also be your father. If you choose not to do so, then so be it," he told her, grabbing her wrist as she made to leave, an effort not without its consequences. The muscles in his back screamed in agony, but he made the gesture anyway.
She gave him a small smile as she turned back to him, going back to her task of seeing to her patient's comfort.
Hermione made him lay back down onto the cushions and made him gasp when she leaned over him to place the blanket she had conjured over his shoulders, presenting him with an amazing view of her breasts that he so admired.
"Try and get some rest Sir," she told him, standing back up and beginning to cross the room. "Tomorrow I will take you to see Madame Pomfrey myself, but until then, you need your sleep."
"And will you be staying the night with me?"
He had not intended on asking her that aloud. He quickly dropped his gaze and looked down at the green and silver blanket she had place over him.
"Yes, I had planned on it, in case you had a fit or some other type of need of medical assistance. Unless of course you object Sir." She told him, settling herself into a hard, straight backed wooden chair, holding herself rigidly.
"I do not object to you staying Miss Granger, but I do object to you staying in that chair. You need your rest as well as I do, more so since I was asleep while you tended to me."
"Then what do you suppose we do Sir? That couch is not large enough for the both of us."
He chuckled in spite of himself. The only way that the couch would hold the two of them was if she had lain on his chest which was a) not probable and b) never going to happen because of the cuts she had cleaned from that very chest.
"No Miss Granger, the couch will not hold us both, but a bed would. Why not put to use your Transfiguration skills, eh?" he asked, raising an eye brow at her as he did so.
She gave him a small smile as she brandished her wand and waved it in a quick, complex pattern as she muttered the spell beneath her breath.
The result was a simple, yet extremely comfortable bed, with white silk sheets beneath a dark green comforter. Severus was on the couch as it changed, causing him to feel a few strange sensations through the spell, but in the end it left him laying on the pillows that rested against the simple oak head board of the king sized bed.
"Well done Miss Granger. Now if I may add something of my own?" he asked her, reaching for his wand which now laid on a table that had once been on one end of the couch. He quickly cast a barrier spell that split the bed in half, shimmering like a mist down the center of the mist before fading form sight.
"What was that?" Hermione asked him as she sat on her side of the large bed.
"The Gift of the Elves charm. It is a barrier that allows no one to cross but those who love one another. Since we harbor no such feelings for each other, I thought it to be the best spell for this case, so we do not bump into each other through out the night."
LIAR, his mind screamed. You may not have those feelings yet, but you're extremely close to them. And you do not know what she feels, though it is doubtful that she feels the same.
Hermione nodded in interest as she slipped between the covers and settled her head onto her pillows, he back facing her former teacher as she puzzled how he knew of a Charm she had not learned of in her training.
Her thoughts lead her into sleep and then back out, guiding her complete awareness. Completely aware of the strong pair of arms wrapped around her waist.