A/N: *scurries in under cover of darkness*
*giggles as she slips the chapter into your dress pocket*
*moves some of your knick-knacks around to see if you notice*
*melts away into the night*
xx-Kitten.
Relligo Spiritus
By Kittenshift17
Chapter Eight
For three days, they only emerged from the cocoon in the bedroom for potty breaks and to feed themselves and their pair of obnoxious felines when they grew too insistent demanding sustenance. They barely spoke to one another during that time, beyond Hermione asking for directions to the loo, and grunting at each other to move over, or get off, or to ask if they wanted a certain condiment when they scrounged together something passably edible.
Hermione ached all over, her body a myriad of agonies in the aftermath of the torture, and for the second time in her life she thought it heinously unfair that after enduring and surviving the vicious and unparalleled agony of the Cruciatus curse, she also had to endure the aftermath. Much like any victim of a car crash or other terrible accident, the abused muscles and bones in her body that had locked and spasmed and cramped throughout the torture made known their woes at being called upon to protect her most vital organs. Sometimes she wondered after incidents like this if the reason people suffered was because the nervous system chose to punish the body for daring to put itself in such danger, forcing sufferance for days afterward as a means of being taught a lesson.
On the fourth day when Hermione woke to the trill of some brave bird that hadn't flown south for the winter, snow blanketed the windowsill and the garden beyond it.
"Too bright," an increasingly familiar voice grumbled at her back where he laid spooning her and Hermione hummed in agreement, squinting at the window and vaguely recalling going to it and opening the curtain when she'd gotten up to wee during the night.
"It's snowing," Hermione replied quietly, her body less sore today that it had been since the attack, her mind clearer. The sense of wading through fog every time she awoke had faded, and she felt surprisingly energized at the sight of the softly falling snow drifting past the window.
"What?" Snape growled, lifting his head from where he'd burrowed his face into her thick curls, his nose pressed to the back of her neck. "Snowing?"
"Mmm," Hermione hummed affirmatively.
"Ah, shit!" Snape cursed, rolling away quickly and sitting up.
"What is it?" Hermione asked, peering over her shoulder as he winced his way to his feet and began turning in circles, looking for trousers and a jumper.
"The greenhouse needs warming charms," he said. "Or I'll lose my hot-house herbs and plants for brewing."
He charged out of the room on unsteady feet, his lank hair a bird's-nest of three-days' bedhead.
"Do you need help?" Hermione called after him, already hearing his feet on the stairs.
"No!" he hollered back, and Hermione shook her head when the chorus of yowling complaints started as he entered the kitchen below.
The sound of a door opening and then slamming followed by muffled cursing from outside the window made Hermione laugh until the grumpy felines realised that she was still abed.
"Oh, don't start," Hermione complained as Crookshanks and Erebus charged into the room, bounding up onto the bed and both meowing loudly at her, wanting attention and food.
Evidence of their fierce skirmishes littered both felines, with bitten ears, scratched noses, and patchy fur showing off the fact that they hadn't learned to tolerate each other, aside from when they temporarily set aside their enmity to gang-up on their exhausted humans, demanding food in a joint effort that fell apart again just as soon as the sustenance was delivered. Ignoring her directive, Crookshanks pounced on her feet under the covers, biting her through the duvet without mercy. Erebus yowled again, winding his way up Snape's side of the bed and meowing all the while. Finding it empty of his master, Erebus proceeded to climb Hermione, moving until he could sit on the middle of her chest where he loomed over her in all his large and fluffy glory, glaring down his nose at her like she was utterly useless in such a close imitation of Snape as her professor, that Hermione couldn't help but laugh. The cat growled when she tried to reach for him, thinking to scratch his ears and Hermione giggled, shaking her head.
"Alright, alright, you pair of gits," she sighed, shaking her head and shuffling her legs, trying to prevent Crookshanks from biting her anymore. "Get off me and I'll feed you."
Erebus continued glaring at her before moving to Snape's pillow, eyeing her dangerously to ensure she kept her word and Crookshanks bounced off the bed toward the door, yowling loudly the entire way.
"The pair of you are spoiled brats," Hermione told them as she rose to her feet and shoved her feet into the slippers she'd retrieved from her trunk after her first trip to the loo days ago when she'd come back to bed freezing and been snarled at by Snape when she put her cold soles against his bare shins to warm them up.
Ferreting one of Snape's jumpers from a chair in the corner, she pulled a soft woollen one on and stretched languidly, wincing at the protests from abused muscles, but feeling a lot better today than she had yesterday.
"Alrighty, c'mon," Hermione yawned, watching both cats bound down the stairs in front of her, the two of them tiffing and fighting as they went, clawing at each other and hissing as they raced into the kitchen where their food bowls waited – licked clean, naturally.
"Oh, gross," Hermione sighed, noting that the cat flap had obviously been well used by the pair of them and a collection of half-eaten mice, voles, and a bird were strewn across the floor. "If you're going to bring them in, at least eat them entirely, you wretched beasts."
The cats ignored her grousing as she vanished the mess with her wand, the pair of them winding themselves about her ankles as she fetched the food from the cupboard where Snape had shoved Crooks' food alongside Erebus's. Once both monsters had been fed – diving face first into their meals as though there weren't routinely fed three times a day, the greedy beasts – Hermione peered around the dingy kitchen, supposing some breakfast was in order. Vanishing the mess had already taxed her magic and she sighed, supposing it would be better for their combined health if she made something the muggle way.
Raiding the fridge, Hermione sighed again, frowning at the meagre contents before opening the pantry. It was similarly sparse of anything worthwhile to make a decent meal, and they'd finished all the bread for sandwiches. Her eyes danced over the kitchen before coming to rest on her trunk, and with a dawning sense of horror, Hermione realised she'd forgotten to unpack it.
"Oh, no!" she groaned, hurrying over and wrenching up the lid.
The smell hit her nose first, and Hermione winced. They'd forgotten to unshrink the fridge and plug it in to power somewhere.
"Bugger!" she grumbled, looking around and spying empty space through the kitchen in the small laundry where she expected a muggle dual-tub washing machine had once sat before Snape had bought the cottage, but been ripped out by the wizard calling this place home.
There was a plug she could use there, and so she fished out the appliance and carried it over to the space before enlarging it once more and plugging it in.
"Oh, gross," she exhaled when doing so revealed that the contents hadn't appreciated being shrunken and forgotten. Sour milk spilled out the bottom, among other things, and Hermione put her face in her hands, sighing in annoyance.
"What is that?" Snape rasped, disgust evident in his tone as he let himself in the laundry door from the backyard, sniffing loudly as he stomped the snow from his boots.
"We forgot about the fridge from my place," Hermione said, her voice muffled by her hands.
"Delightful," Snape grumbled sarcastically, and Hermione looked up when he started vanishing away the mess and tidying up without another word.
"Did your plants survive?" Hermione asked, moving up next to him and peering into the fridge, helping discern what – if anything – might've survived a few days without refrigeration.
"Not all of them," he said tiredly, raiding the shelves and locating a number of jars of jams and relishes. "These might survive?"
"They're old anyway," Hermione said. "I need to learn to buy smaller jars when I just want to try a new one."
"There are nine flavours of marmalade here," he agreed, sounding surprisingly tolerant, maybe even amused by her habit.
"And I only liked two of them," Hermione said.
"I can see that," he nodded, noting that the bush-lemon and bitter-orange marmalades had been all but emptied while the jars of lime, grapefruit, and tangelo had all been barely touched. "You have the same problem with jam."
He fished out an additional eleven jars of jam.
"I prefer the jam," she admitted. "Some of them, anyway."
"Do want to keep them?" he asked, setting aside the tangelo one even though she'd only tried it once on toast and decided it wasn't for her. Maybe he liked tangelo.
"Not unless you think you'll eat them," she confessed. "They've been taking up space in there for months. I think the lime marmalade has been there since I first moved into my flat."
Snape shook his head, but Hermione would swear his lips were twitching with amusement and she wondered what had gotten into him that he seemed amicable, rather than grouchy, as he had done since her arrival.
"How many plants did you lose?" she asked conversationally, wondering how long this good mood might last.
"About a dozen," he answered, ferreting some vegetables from the crisper that looked a little battered, but otherwise unharmed by their shrinkage, and stint of neglect.
"Anything terribly difficult to replace?" she asked.
"One or two were quite rare," he shrugged, holding up the collection of wrapped cheeses in the fridge and raising an eyebrow at her.
"Harry," she said by way of explanation. "Rather than wine, when he stops by to visit for dinner or brunch, he brings a cheese platter or one of those little hampers with cheese and crackers and tea and such. You know the ones? The kind you pick up to take to an aunt's place for the weekend? From Tesco's. I've no idea why he always brings them, but he does."
"Raised by Petunia, wasn't he?" Snape confirmed, frowning at the cheese thoughtfully.
"He was," Hermione nodded. "Not very nicely, though."
"Probably explains it," Snape answered. "The way she was raised, those hampers sometimes were the only thing that got us through."
"Us?" Hermione asked.
Snape raised an eyebrow at her again.
"Didn't Potter show you my memories?" he frowned at her.
"I… he did," she allowed honestly. "Why?"
"I knew his mother because we were raised around the corner from one another," he said, waving a hand toward the backdoor as though it was nearby.
"Wait… you were raised here?" she frowned at him. "I thought your home was burned down after the war? Didn't I read that the loyalists set it alright?"
"It was. They did," he nodded. "This place is much further North than Cokeworth, where I was raised."
"Oh," Hermione said. "But you were raised close to Lily and Petunia?"
Snape nodded. "Just 'round the corner from them. It…wasn't a nice neighbourhood."
"No?" she asked, wondering how much he might divulge, surprised at his conversational cooperation to have gotten this much out of him.
They'd barely spoken since she'd arrived and it was unusual to imagine her stoic and stern and utterly acerbic Potions Master from school deigning to converse with her like they were both mature adults, rather than that he thought her to be a raging imbecile.
"Wine was discouraged as a gift if calling on others," he said quietly. "Wine won't feed a family, but it'll result either in another mouth to feed, or a raging row where someone walks away battered and broken."
"Oh," Hermione frowned. "That kind of neighbourhood."
Snape nodded and Hermione recalled reading in a post-humous article about Snape that his mother had been a pureblood witch cast out of her family after getting pregnant by and subsequently marrying a muggle. She'd read that Snape had been poor, and ugly, and beaten. Madam Pomfrey had tearfully confessed at Snape's memorial that while she was sad to lose him, after the lifetime of pain and horror he'd endured, he had more than earned a rest in peace.
"Much more acceptable, if bringing a gift at all, to bring a hamper that provided a little of everything anyone might need. Cheese. Biscuits. Tea. Chocolate. All the things none of us could afford for ourselves on a regular basis. Perhaps the practice stuck with Petunia and she passed it on to Potter."
"I remember Harry telling me that his Aunt and Uncle were reasonably well off," she frowned. "Very concerned with what the neighbours might think. Wouldn't wine be the more acceptable gift in such middle-class occasions?"
"Some habits die hard, Miss Granger," he said quietly. "Do you wish to keep the cheeses?"
"They're probably bad after three days of neglect," she sighed. "And to tell you the truth, Harry doesn't have the best eye for choosing those hampers. Some are filled with goodies, and others look like the cast-offs no one wanted from the deli that get tossed in a hamper to be sold-on rather than binned."
Snape chuckled.
"Not a blue-cheese fan, then?" he asked.
"I'm afraid not," she shook her head. "I prefer brie, camembert and those cracked-pepper infused cheddars."
Snape nodded, vanishing the cheeses with a wave of his wand and continuing to empty the fridge of other things past their expiry, or gone bad in their neglect.
"What about you?" she asked. "Do you have a favourite?"
"Cheese?" he asked.
Hermione shrugged. "Or marmalade or jam?"
Snape shrugged his shoulders, holding up a jar of pickles and raising an eyebrow at her to ask if she wanted to keep them. She shook her head.
"Blackberry jam is nice," he admitted. "Feta cheese. Or those apricot cream-cheese things. Tangelo, or a tri-fruit marmalade."
"Those apricot cheeses sneak up on you," she nodded. "I hated them for years whenever Mum would buy those little wine-accompaniment packs, but I tried it recently at Harry's place and loved it!"
"Maturity finally catching up with you?" he smirked, finally closing the fridge. "Wait until you realise mushrooms and truffles are also delicious, even though they tasted like old shoes when you were a child."
"They still taste like old shoes," she told him. "I still pick mushrooms out of carbonara before I'll eat it whenever someone is foolish enough to add them."
He shook his head while Hermione returned to her trunk and began digging out the items from her pantry that had been shrunken, putting them away in Snape's pantry instead without a second thought.
"Well," he said eventually after moving over to boil the kettle and fixing them both a cup of tea – something Hermione paused in her unpacking of tinned soup and dry pasta packets to watch him make because he seemed to have a special process that meant the tea he gave her was the nicest she'd had in her life.
"Well?" she asked, when she closed the pantry after the last can of spam was shelved.
"Doesn't look like there's much worth eating after all that," he commented, leaning against the kitchen counter and sipping his tea thoughtfully, his eyes on the window to the backyard where the snow continued to fall.
"Not really," she agreed, not really thinking about it before she carried the teacup he'd filled for her over to where he stood, leaning against the counter beside him, close enough that her hip rested against his and their elbows brushed.
He glanced sideways at her, meeting her eyes for a long moment, and Hermione noted that he didn't bother commenting on the sense of energy and calmness that settled over her to be touching him again.
"Still sore?" he asked quietly.
"Mmmm," Hermione nodded. "Not as much, but yes."
"You probably will be for a long time," he said. "The effects of the Cruciatus in volumes like that tend to endure for a long time. Sometimes months."
"I know," Hermione admitted quietly. "It took almost six months before the random tremors and spasms stopped after what Bellatrix did to me at Malfoy Manor."
Snape nodded.
"Do you still endure the effects, too?" she asked.
"It's been more than a year since I was tortured," he said.
"That wasn't an answer," Hermione pointed out softly.
Snape's eyes returned to the window.
"It wasn't," he agreed.
Hermione wondered if she should leave the topic alone. Recalling the agony and the feeling of terror and helplessness and anger she'd endured when she'd been tortured, she didn't imagine he'd be any more interested in remembering or speaking on such topics than she was.
"The Dark Lord was even more ruthless than Bellatrix and Dolohov," he said quietly after a long stretch of silence grew between them. "Much more vicious; much more controlled. Finesse, he'd have called it. Bella and Dolohov were both a little mad. They operated largely on anger and hate; both fine fuel for such a curse, but not as cruel as cold detachment and a true sadism to simply watch a victim writhe. The Dark Lord… well… when he deigned to torture a man, they usually lost their minds from the targeted and immense agony. He could focus it on a singular body part if it suited him, rather than the all-over torture."
Hermione gulped audibly at the very idea.
"Did you… that is… how often did he…"
"Often," Snape said quietly before sipping his tea. "I was an Order spy in his midst. There were times I was deliberately kept out of Order planning to have plausible deniability and thus keep the Dark Lord from learning our movements. Dumbledore imagined it would protect me. I couldn't be punished for not being privy to something, he thought."
"He was wrong?" Hermione guessed.
"I was punished for not being an effective enough spy to be trusted with such information if I had the deniability, and punished for the execution of those plans, even if I was able to provide forewarning to the Death Eaters."
"That's barbaric," Hermione said, aghast at the depths of such cruelty.
"They were evil people, Miss Granger," he reminded her. "Truly evil."
"Do you still experience side effects?" she asked.
Snape looked at her sideways for a long moment before slowly peeling a hand from around his teacup and offering it to her, palm-up. Surprised, Hermione set down her own cup and placed her hand in his, having grown used to touching him in the three days they'd spent barely alive in bed, but prone to snuggling for the soothing effect it had on the bond between them. Snape seemed shocked that she would so readily do so, but he didn't comment before twisting her hand down to rest it against the outer curve of his left thigh. He pressed her palm flat to the fabric of his trousers there and Hermione held her breath, unsure what he was doing.
After a moment, she felt it. The muscle in his thigh spasmed and twitched, tensing and cramping, ticking and jumping under her hand. He gave no outward indication that it hurt, though from the feel of the tightened, twitching flesh, it surely must ache, and Hermione held her hand there until after several long minutes, the muscle laid still once more.
"Doesn't it hurt?" she asked, noting that he hadn't even stopped drinking his tea.
"Of course," he said, frowning at her as though the question was idiotic; as though, having experienced such side-effects herself which tended to leave her cursing and whimpering pathetically, she shouldn't need to ask.
"You don't show it," she said, taking her hand away when he released the back of it.
"That particular spasm has been a constant companion since I was nineteen," he shrugged his shoulders.
"And it still gives you grief?" she asked, horrified.
"The muscle died under the Dark Lord's wand," Snape told her quietly. "Complete cell death. It'd have hurt less to lop the wretched thing off with a chainsaw, I think. Poppy managed to revive it, but it's never been the same. The cold weather makes it worse."
"How did you manage the stairs at Hogwarts for all those years if it did that every winter?" she said, noting now that she was looking that the muscle was ticking again. She confirmed it when she touched him again, feeling it spasming all over again.
"With difficulty, some days," Snape shrugged. "There was a reason I lived in the dungeons, beyond being closer to the Slytherin Common Room. Straining it makes it ache worse than the cold, even if it was dank and cold down there, too."
"Do any of the others do that?" she asked, her thumb idly worked at the cramp sitting tight in his thigh without really thinking about it.
"Yes," he said. "The Dark Lord always took pains to target my lower body, lest such spasms impede my ability to brew the potions he required of me."
Hermione winced in sympathy. "I'm sorry you had to go through all that, sir," she said quietly. "And that you still suffer for it."
He finished his tea without saying anything and Hermione followed suit, sipping slowly and wondering how much he'd been through and what he'd survived that he could seem so calm about it. Even now, she could see and feel that muscle spasming, but he showed no outward signs of his suffering. She wondered suddenly if this was the reason he was always so unkind to everyone at school. Idiotic teenagers bent on causing disruptions in class and goofing off must've been terribly tiresome when faced with the doubtless agony of such a side-effect, bought with a curse to protect the self-same dunderheads from darkness for just a little while longer.
"I had looked forward to oblivion, Miss Granger," he confessed quietly, addressing the elephant in the room after a long stretch of silence.
Hermione bit her lip, pulling her hand away from his leg and pushing away from the bench. She crossed to the window and peered out over his back garden, noting that it was large and extensive, filled with greenhouses and thick borders of plants useful in potion making and cooking, rather than any kind of aesthetic plants.
"I didn't intend to rob you of it, Professor," she said quietly without looking at him.
"And yet, you did," he answered.
"It was instinct," she shrugged. "I'd been practicing a litany of spells in my head and in wrist movement for months while we were on the run. I feared Harry or Ron would fall to the Death Eaters. I was willing to do whatever it took to keep them from departing this world too soon. After so much practice, I expect it was simply muscle memory taking over when you were suffering."
"You confess, then, that you did cause this bond between us?" he confirmed.
"I don't see how there could be any other explanation, sir," she admitted, turning back to look at him guiltily. "I had been practicing it, and you weren't in any shape and wouldn't have instigated such a tether, yourself, I don't think?"
"Not likely," he shook his head, his eyes narrowed as though he was still angry about it.
"And so unless we were linked before then – which would surely have come with side-effects we'd have noticed before now given the numerous times we were both endangered before and during the war, it stands to reason that I did tether our souls," Hermione sighed. "I didn't mean to... though after having you come to my rescue so recently, I can't entirely say I regret it."
He curled his lip at her and Hermione wondered if his anger with her from a year ago would resurface. She wondered how things were supposed to look between them for the rest of their lives – for the rest of eternity. She had, essentially, tied their souls together as one for the rest of time. As long as the world kept circling the sun and the planet was inhabitable, they would be tied together forevermore, destined to find one another again and again until the universe imploded and they were all nothing but atoms, once more.
Hermione eyed him, armed with that knowledge, wondering what on earth they were supposed to do and how things could ever return to some semblance of the normality they'd known before this. Was it possible? Did she even want that?
"Are you still tired?" he asked after what felt like a lifetime of staring each other down, daring the other to speak first; to say something – anything – to hint at where they were supposed to go from here.
"Yes," Hermione admitted. "Though not as much as yesterday."
He nodded.
"And you?" she asked.
His mouth twisted unpleasantly like he didn't want to admit to anything.
"That vanishing was tiresome," he confessed eventually.
Hermione nodded.
"There's no food, either," she pointed out. "At least, nothing appealing."
He sighed.
"There's a collection of take-away menus in that drawer behind you," he said quietly.
Hermione raised her eyebrows, turning and digging inside it. He wasn't wrong. Pizza. Pasta. Chinese. Thai. The pub down the way. They all had delivery options.
"None of them are open for breakfast," Hermione pointed out, sighing as she looked over their opening hours. "What time is it, anyway?"
Snape glanced at a miniature grandfather clock mounted on the wall above the sink.
"Only half-ten," he said. "Nothing will be open for hours for table service or delivery from the village."
"Is there a grocery store nearby?" she suggested.
"We're in no fit state to apparate," he pointed out. "And I've never bothered with a car."
"Neither have I," she confessed.
Snape folded his arms over his chest, eyeing the pantry, and then the clock once more.
"There's a muggle Tesco's four blocks away," he said.
"We could walk there," Hermione said, smiling.
"Could we?" he frowned at her, looking like he didn't think they actually could make it that far. "It's mostly downhill into the village, but the walk back will probably kill us. Literally."
"They probably have a taxi service," Hermione pointed out. "Most muggle places do, these days and even if they don't, we can always just call one."
Snape raised his eyebrows, evidently unaware of that. She supposed that he'd always apparated and might not have bothered to learn that fact.
"Very well," he sighed.
Hermione grinned. "I'll make a list of what we need," she said, ferreting around in her trunk for some parchment and a quill.
"I need to wash up if I'm to be seen in public, I suppose," Snape confessed, running a hand through his lank hair and looking a little disgusted with himself for the state of it when his hand came away a little oily.
"That's alright," Hermione shrugged. "I'll find something in my trunk to wear to the shops and change, and I'll make a shopping list while you bathe. It might be worth stripping the bed, too… we've barely left it in three days."
Snape's brow furrowed for a moment – she supposed at the casual reference to their sharing a bed – before he nodded.
"I have fresh flannels in here if you don't mind them?" she suggested, coming across the packed linens and fishing them out to show him.
"They're pink," he frowned at her.
"So what?" Hermione frowned right back. "They're warmer than those threadbare things currently on that mattress."
Snape narrowed his eyes at her before flicking his wand at the sheets she clutched and changing the threads to black.
"Really?" she asked dryly, shaking her head at him.
He sighed, snatching them from her and turning to stomp out of the room.
"Only way to avoid staining them," he muttered on his way out of the room.
"Hang on," she called after him, fishing out some clothes to wear to the shops and thinking she might have to make some time to go through the other belongings all crammed in the trunk shortly. "I'll give you a hand."
He was already in the bedroom and manually stripping the bed when she hurried up the stairs after him. Lightheaded and a little out of breath, Hermione leaned in the doorway for a moment.
"You said it's all downhill to Tesco's, right?" she confirmed.
He looked over his shoulder at her, looking wearier than he had downstairs too and Hermione realised that despite feeling better this morning, neither of them were anywhere near replete.
"I thought you said contact would help heal us both faster," he grumbled. "The Cruciatus never took this much out of me in the past…"
"I think it's because you've been unwell and recovering for so long," Hermione told him. "I expect that taxed both of us a lot more then we realised, and to throw this incident on top… the human body can only take so much."
"You said you had nowhere to be until the end of Christmas break?" he confirmed as Hermione moved into the room and began helping him make the bed with the new mattress protector and sheets. She'd found some blankets and brought those up too, rather thinking the duvet could use a wash too.
"I suppose I'll be invited 'round the Burrow for Christmas dinner, but other than that, I've nowhere to be." Hermione shrugged. "You could come along, if you fancy it?"
"No," he answered shortly.
"What?" she asked. "Why not? You can't spend Christmas alone, sir. That's not healthy. Come on, it'll be great, and Molly always makes entirely too much food. There'll be plenty to go around…"
"No one else knows I'm alive, Miss Granger," he reminded her quietly when they managed to wrestle the sheets onto the bed and began spreading out the blankets she'd brought up when Snape took a look at the ones they'd been using and noted they had started to smell after such frequent use over the past few days.
"But…" Hermione stopped. "Literally no one?"
"Well, I expect Greyback won't be forgetting in a hurry," he offered dryly.
"But what about all the people who helped you recover?" she asked. "You needed more medical care than I gave you in that Shack."
"Their memories have been modified," he said.
"Whatever for?" Hermione frowned at him.
"I was a Death Eater, Miss Granger," he reminded her. "I murdered Albus Dumbledore."
"Rubbish," Hermione said, folding her arms. "I've seen the memories, sir. I know you acted on Professor Dumbledore's order. I know he begged you to put him out of his misery before his pain and his horrible condition could get any worse."
"Nevertheless," he said.
"Everyone else knows it, too. You might've still been recovering somewhere while it took place, but a post-humous trial was held for you, sir. You were cleared of all charges, and you've been awarded an Order of Merlin, First Class for your services and sacrifices protecting the wizarding world from darkness. I'm sure I have a copy of the trial notes somewhere, or the articles they've written praising you. I'll get them…"
"Miss Granger," he interrupted quietly.
Hermione stopped on her way to the door, looking back to find him sitting on the end of the freshly made bed.
"Sir?" she asked when she noted how he'd hung his head.
"No trial of the Wizengamot can clear my conscience," he said quietly. "And if I've learned anything throughout the past three decades, it's that there is nothing quite like an untimely death to allow the weeding out of personal flaws from a body's memory. People will do a very great deal to avoid speaking ill of the dead, you know?"
"What are you saying?" she asked.
"In death, many among the Order may have found it within themselves to begrudgingly forgive my trespasses, Miss Granger. But to learn I still draw breath after all that has been done in honour of me? That will stir up a lot of hurt feelings and rip open old wounds I'd just as soon let scar once and for all."
"You want to simply let sleeping dogs lie," she said quietly. "But… why? Aren't you lonely in this tired old house all by yourself, sir?"
She looked around the room quietly, noting the tiredness of the wallpaper, and the weariness of the cupboard doors sagging on their hinges and the thin old carpet, long since faded and worn, practically threadbare.
"I enjoy my solitude, Miss Granger," he said quietly, lifting his head to meet her eyes. She wondered if the I'd very much like to get back to it was meant to be quite so loud when left unsaid.
"Do you want me to go?" she asked quietly, frowning. "I'm strong enough. I can… I can think of something. Stay at the Burrow if I have to. Harry might let me crash with him until something can be found…"
"You said yourself that doing so would draw unnecessary attention to your random uprooting, and thus your attack and subsequent survival," he pointed out, and Hermione couldn't tell if he was trying to keep her there, or simply keep their secrets. Hers for the attack. His for the murders. Theirs for the soul bond.
"Yes, but I don't want to put you out, sir," she said. "After two decades teaching whiny and ungrateful children, and even longer at war with yourself and under the direction of two incredibly powerful and rather unforgiving wizards, I can understand that you might enjoy simply keeping your own schedule and not having to bother about anybody else. I have already inconvenienced you quite enough by forcing your survival when you did not wish it, and by binding our souls when neither of us intended it. I won't rob you of whatever additional peace you might find, Severus."
He blinked, though at the softly spoken words or her use of his first name, she didn't entirely know. His dark eyes searched her face for a long time, and she suspected he took some measure of comfort from the sincerity of her statements.
"We've only just made the bed," he pointed out, obviously not wanting to strip it and hunt down whatever he had on hand in the event that she should leave and take her belongings with her.
She wondered if it was an excuse.
She wondered if he was proving more forthcoming than she'd ever dared dream because no matter what he said about enjoying his solitude, maybe he was lonely and did take some measure of comfort from having her there. Maybe he didn't want to be alone for the holidays, no matter what he said.
"We have," she agreed. "And it does help to be in close contact. I don't want to be too weak to climb the stairs for months, you know?"
She rubbed her hands on her thighs, realising suddenly that she still wore only his borrowed nightshirt and his borrowed jumper and a pair of slippers, her legs bare.
"Alright then," she said, glancing down at herself and trying not to blush when she realised that not only were her legs on display, they were also rather hairy after days of neglect. "Well, I'll change, and we'll head to the shops. Stock up for the rest of the holiday season. We'd better get some cat food, too. Those monsters dragged in five little beasties they'd slaughtered in evidence of our poor hunting skills."
Snape watched her for a moment as she retrieved the clothes she'd brought up, awkwardly shuffling her feet and waiting for him to go so she could change.
"I'll bathe," he said, rising to his feet.
Hermione nodded, watching him collect some things from the cupboard before he headed for the door.
"Professor?" she called after him before he could close it behind him.
He stopped, his back still turned, evidently listening.
"You really would be very welcome at the Burrow for Christmas, you know?" she said softly. "I know Harry, in particular, would very much like to speak with you."
Snape didn't say anything before he quietly pulled the door closed behind him, letting it shut on the idea and the conversation with a soft click.