Dirt and not copper makes a color darker. It makes the shape so heavy and the melody no harder. –Gertrude Stein.
10 November 1998. St. Mungo's.
"Hello. Severus Snape."
A strange shape, a strange rhythm to the words, a fey look in her eyes.
He doesn't reply. He is incapable. Actually incapable.
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The Healers force him outdoors every day. He is told fresh air will do just as much to heal a man as any potion or spell. He scoffs, derision written plainly in every line on his face— have they forgotten so easily just how many potions he brewed for them during the war? Hundreds of Skele-Gros, Blood Replenishers, Restorative Draughts, Dreamless Sleeps, Wound-Cleaners, and Burn-Healing Pastes, not to mention Arthur Weasley's life; and still, this drivel.
Nonetheless. He has had his whole life to get used to feeling unappreciated, and used to it he has gotten. Severus Snape has never suffered fools, least of all himself.
Though when he is outside, parked in one of St. Mungo's many exuberantly flowering courtyards (inane, he thinks, since it is clearly November, and glaring at tulips makes him feel mildly delusional at best), he at least receives no visitors. When he is in his room, he is all the time beset by all manner of wizards and witches.
None of them, he concludes after yet another tear-stained apology makes its way to his bedside, are here to see him. They're here to absolve themselves of their apparent and perceived sins, to assure themselves of the goodness of their intentions. Even if he were dead, it would be the same psychological process. They think he is some sort of New Age priest, his room a liminal confessional. He is no such thing.
A satisfaction of other's desires he will be no longer.
The only person he lets through with any constancy is Minerva, who expects nothing of him, as he does of her.
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"What're you in for?" she asks him, deadpan.
Before he can glare her into oblivion along with those spring-be-damned tulips, she says, liltingly, "Hermione says that was rude. Well. I guess it's obvious enough. No offence." She squints at him, a shark-like smile preying on her lips. "Hermione's here because she's crazy. The funniest thing is that she is. Crazy, I mean."
The Healer shadowing her from a few feet away has his hand loosely tucked around his wand and does not disagree.
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Minerva is what they call an incorrigible gossip, indiscriminate of the saintly and the sordid. In less charitable moments, he'll think it's because she's Scottish and talking is all the Scottish are good for. Still— the post-war trials and tribulations of a world spinning on without him and his sorry arse are vaguely reassuring, in a world where wiping said arse is also a matter of some complexity.
But it isn't until well after that first conversation with Granger that he realises what felt so off-kilter by it. Granger, the insufferable know-it-all, hasn't featured in Minerva's tales since August ("Miss Granger elected to return to Hogwarts for her final year, and I expect she'll be one of the only ones to..."), a few scant days after he was rudely roused from his comatose state with a well-placed Igne Renovetur spell. He'd assumed she was too busy making up for lost time to inspire any Minerva-worthy hearsay (he shudders to remember the atrocity that she was in her OWL year, and can't imagine NEWTS would be any better), but evidently— he was wrong.
Because Hermione Granger is touched in the head.
It takes him two tries and nearly as many minutes to complete the wand work for a Praescribere Charm, his traitorous hands trembling like a flag on a windy day the whole way. In his defence, it's a spell he only ever cast once— Charms NEWT, 1978— and now, twice.
Still, in opaque, glowing gold, the desired words appear before him— What of Granger?
Minerva is visibly taken aback, and hesitates. Shakes her head. "Miss Granger," she says slowly, brows furrowing, "is unwell." She looks over at him, almost guiltily; he arches an eyebrow, one of the few movements where his once-consummate control remains intact, and her next words are hurried. "You've met with her, then?"
A run-in, yes.
"She— we brought her to St. Mungo's a month ago," Minerva says softly. Her lips are pursed; she looks like she doesn't believe it. "For psychiatric care. I don't know if—"
She cuts herself off then, mouth fluttering open and closed like a fish out of water. "I can't say more," she says finally. "Hermione is a student as well as a patient, and you, unfortunately, are neither teacher nor healer."
She refers to herself in the third-person, Minerva.
The Headmistress doesn't respond right away, and a closer inspection reveals higher levels of stress than usual. He sees it in the translucency of her eyes and the white in her hair, the grooves around her mouth and the set of her shoulders, visible even through her heavy cloak. The years haven't been kind to either of them.
Sometimes he forgets that Minerva has spent the entirety of her adult life fighting in one war or another, and come out of it short a husband and a son. Sometimes he forgets that Minerva talks so much and says so little.
He swallows, and the bitterness he has gotten so accustomed to sours in his throat, dry and sticky at the same time. Minerva is going to die at Hogwarts. It bothers him, that it should be so. Where does it come from, this preternatural ability to take care of without being taken care of, and where does it end? Is it duty, or is it love? Does she not get tired? What is it about this school, he wonders, that subsumes so much? That turns its employees into servants, that commands so much from them, their lives and even their deaths?
"She is receiving treatment," says Minerva, firmly, breaking his reverie, "and I have every faith in her abilities to pull through this." She looks at him again, the devastation in her eyes warring against her words. "But Severus, I think we..." Her voice wavers, stills. He looks away, unable. "I think we have done Hermione a great disservice. A great disservice. Truly—"
The thought comes to him unbidden, so strong that it escapes Minerva's mind like water through fingers.
I can't lose any more.
"—I have failed her."
When she leans into his bony shoulder, chest heaving with quiet gasps, he closes his eyes, and pats her back with a surprisingly steady arm.
Not if I have anything to do with it, he vows.
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It turns out that Hermione Granger is a resident of Ward 49; the Janus Thickey Ward, because of course. When he arrives at the reception, face distorted under a shoddy Glamour Charm (because who is he trying to fool, the bandages around his neck might as well be a billboard for Victim of Nagini, Severus T. Snape), he is crisply informed by a tall, stringy beanpole of a witch that, "Patient Granger has been moved to Ward 50. Her room number is— ah. 201. You'll need written authorisation from either Healer Ashdown or Healer Orphelin if you're to be visiting her. D'you have it?"
Dumbly, he shakes his head. Authorisation? What is she, bound for Azkaban?
The witch frowns. "Then I'm afraid I can't admit you, sir. Good day. Next!"
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I taught you and your sister for seven bloody years. Seven bloody long years. You were awful, by the way. Your sister, even worse. This is what I get as thanks?
Venetia Orphelin, Healer-in-Charge of the Janus Thickey Ward, regards him with amused, assessing eyes. "Sorry, professor," she says from behind her desk, not sounding sorry at all. Give her hell, he thinks mutinously at the little mountains of paperwork crowding her desk, sneering. "Protocol is protocol. Come back in five days."
He stares at her crossly. He'd Confund her if he thought he could get away with it.
Why was she moved to Ward 50? he spells, hoping to get something out of this dreadful woman. Ward 50 is the only private ward on the fourth floor.
Orphelin shrugs, utterly relaxed. "Patient privacy," she says diffidently. "Five days, and you'll be able to see her yourself."
Why was she admitted? he presses.
The Healer pauses, eyes narrowing. "Might I ask why the curiosity?" she asks in a sharper voice. "Hoping to get a look at what's become of Hermione Granger, certified war heroine? I don't think so. We have quite enough of those, I assure you."
He sighs. Gryffindor sensibilities, honestly. Positively delicate.
The Headmistress is worried. I am concerned for her, and would like to check in where she is unable.
The young woman's face softens instantly. He resists the urge to roll his eyes and snicker like a boy, and instead arches a disdainful eyebrow.
"Five days, professor. You'll understand then."
He shoves her door closed with a resounding thunk and ignores the call of, "It was good to see you! You're looking well!" that trails behind him. Orphelin, as much as he hates to admit it, isn't a Healer-in-Charge at twenty-eight or thereabouts for nothing.
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His eyes widen in minute horror as he follows Eliot Ashdown into room 201.
—John Dawlish, noted Auror and distinguished Ministry lackey, is standing in the corner of the room closest to the door, head inclined in silent greeting.
Severus fails to reciprocate. Dawlish is a travesty he can deal with later. He's too shocked by the sight of his former student, reclined against her folding bed with hands settled neatly in her lap, but clearly trapped in a Partial Body-Bind curse— one applied from the shoulders down, if the way her neck swivels to track him as he draws close to her bedside is any indication.
It's an ugly sight, made even uglier by the Ministry's clear involvement in Granger's case.
Granger is as wide-eyed as he is, but a smile stretches slow and sweet across her face as he regards her carefully. On her, smiling is deformed; it is all thin lips pulling back over white teeth and pale gums and eyes that never lose their feral, manic glaze. Her skin is littered with the spots of broken blood vessels, a characteristic sign of intense, accidental magic. He frowns. What has she done?
"They made me like you," she whispers hoarsely— and for a moment, he is reminded of curly-haired and smooth-faced Sybil Trelawney almost twenty years ago at the Hog's Head, speaking aloud words that would haunt him through the next two decades. He doesn't like it; not Trelawney then, blissfully ignorant, and not Granger now, reduced to this metaphysic, this mishmash caricature of a young woman.
He casts the Praescribere Charm with practised ease.
And why did they do so?
Her smile collapses into something devious; secretive, even, if there weren't an Auror and Healer standing on the other side of her bed, both boring holes in Granger with cold, flinty eyes.
"Hermione is a witch," she— not Hermione, then? he thinks it unlikely, but if it is possible to have sanity in insanity then he supposes Granger isn't the worst candidate for it— says quietly. "And, you see, when witches get angry, terrible things happen. Magical things."
She jerks her chin towards Ashdown, mouth tilting down into a moue of faux disappointment. "He can tell you all about it, I presume."
He doesn't look at Ashdown, and his next words materialise slowly.
If Hermione is a witch, then what are you?
Expression unchanged, she repeats, "He can tell you all about it, I presume."
Severus angles his shoulders towards Ashdown, fixing him with a stare as dry as bone.
Pray, do tell.
The Healer pauses for one moment, reconsiders appropriately, and recites: "Patient Granger suffers from an identity disorder, and what we believe to be post-traumatic stress disorder. When dissociative, Patient Granger is unable to control her magic. There have been several outbursts of uncontained... accidental magic." And then, less perfunctorily, "She had quite the episode in Ward 49 last week. Broke as many bones as she did beds, she did." His words are capped off by— is that disappointment? Severus doubles down on his initial assessment of Ashdown as 'Unqualified Ponce, First Degree', and doesn't bother resisting a silent chuckle.
Though what Severus considers mirth, others tend to misconstrue as condescension.
"Nesta Godart died from the brain bleeding that resulted from her fall," snaps Ashdown. "You may want to reconsider your amusement."
And are you Nesta Godart's Healer, or Hermione Granger's? Severus snaps right back, immediately incensed. Where were your Cushioning Charms, you incompetent imbecile? I suppose I ought to be grateful for never having had the displeasure of teaching you; or that my own Healers are marginally less inept.
Simply disgraceful.
He is escorted out of the room to the soundtrack of Granger's barking laughter.
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"The protocol is for your safety," Orphelin repeats at him tiredly, and he wonders how many times she has said this to how many people. "Miss Granger has proven to be highly unpredictable— violent, even, of which I'm sure you are aware. Your life isn't a trade-off we're willing to risk making for a patient's whim or satisfaction."
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Minerva pleads with him to understand.
"Severus— she set off an explosion in a classroom, although I suppose we have your excellent teaching to thank for that. Double inverted infusions— I know you only learned those for your Mastery. Well. Regardless. She said Ginevra Weasley and Luna Lovegood were laughing too loudly. We were lucky that no one died, Severus; Miss Weasley spent two weeks in the infirmary for a crushed femur, and Draco Malfoy broke both of his arms. There's something— there's something wrong with her, and— I don't know if anyone knows how to fix it; St. Mungo's is proving difficult. We tried to contact her parents, but she said they'd been Obliviated!"
He doesn't understand.
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Severus Snape is a Slytherin.
What he wants, he gets. Or dies trying.
Severus Snape, like many Slytherins, keeps secrets.
One of them is—
He likes broken things.
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Severus, having no intention of spending the remainder of his thirty-eighth winter in the bowels of St. Mungo's, is discharged four days before Christmas. The adrenaline of being a free man sends him, ironically, straight to Malfoy Manor. An elf named Seeley takes him to the smaller northeast drawing room, where Narcissa Malfoy, dressed casually (for the Malfoys) in a stiff black dress and damask cape, eyes him beadily from a yellow cream chaise lounge. Tactfully, she makes no mention of his newly-acquired inability to walk or speak as he transfers from his chair to a sea foam green couch with tiny tasseled pillows. He's fairly certain that he's seen this couch, in identical condition and with identical pillows, in a photo of the Manor one and a half centuries ago. All of the furniture in the Manor is at least a hundred years old, which Severus thought was absurd until he realised that all the pure-bloods were the same, at least in their tastes for interior decorating.
"How are you faring, Severus?" she queries, cradling in her left hand a glass of red wine so viscous the crystal is stained translucent. He smirks at this. Lucius, for all of his posturing, was never much of a drinker and firmly preferred white wines and champagne to other spirits. Now that Azkaban is hosting him for the next forty-seven years, his wife has clearly returned to her roots as a Black. The Blacks were famous for being able to drink like horses with no ill effect, and he has no doubt that were this dinner, Narcissa would be nursing at a tumbler instead.
Well enough. I've no immediate plans; I'm quite incapacitated.
He flashes Narcissa a savage smile.
How is Draco?
He doesn't miss how her eyes harden as the rest of her face relaxes. He hasn't missed how Draco is nowhere to be seen either, in spite of it being two days into the Christmas holiday at Hogwarts. According to Minerva, Draco hasn't spoken to his family since the war ended in May. "He's reflecting, I should think," she had said to him after she broke the news of Lucius's sentencing to him. "The Malfoys may have done what they could to spare Potter at the end, but it was a hole they dug for themselves. I don't fault the boy for questioning what his family was doing for the twenty years before that."
"Well enough," Narcissa parrots back at him, "He is currently at Hogwarts. Draco is, well. Exploring his options;"— a long, involuntary sigh, chased down with a decidedly ignoble gulp of wine— "a new world we live in, as you know."
I do know, as a matter of fact.
Narcissa sets down her wine glass and stares at him with ill-concealed suspicion.
"You've come to collect," she says after a short moment, flatly, "although I should say the Ministry got here before you. I suppose I should've known when you refused dinner. I don't know why; you're skeletal. What can I do for you, Severus?"
He sinks into the upholstered couch in mock offence. I'm not a tax collector or a member of the Reparations Council, Narcissa. Could I not have come as a friend, perhaps?
She chuckles lightly, bitterly.
"I won't be played for a fool, Severus," she warns him, sobering. "Dinner, or out."
He glances down at his mangled body; his weak, uncooperative legs. The dregs of two decades spent in service to one master or another. Four months of rehabilitation— and he still chokes on his food with alarming regularity, his throat the most uncooperative limb of all. He has no intention of revealing this fact to Narcissa, however, so there will be no dinner, friends or not. (Not, he thinks is more likely; any affection he recouped in the fulfilment of his Vow was lost in the revelation of his betrayal of the Dark Lord. The Malfoys are fond of loyalty, loyal only to themselves though they are.)
Don't be crass, he spells smoothly. I want only the best for you. Now. Surely the Ministry didn't get to the Fidelius on your second-floor broom closet?
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"What does it do?"
You don't know what it is? He's almost taken aback. I expected better of you.
She smiles, strangely and fondly, and words from Albus ring with sudden clarity in his ears. "War makes monsters of us all," was the off-hand comment made after Severus had returned from murdering Gatlin Gibbs in late 1996— he'd been a Ministry employee suspected of aiding and funding Snatchers— and Obliviating his son. He'd made a point of never finding out what happened to the child.
There's a reason why the Memory Charm is placed in the same spell class as the Entrail-Expelling Curse and Blasting Curse; when used on children below the age of eleven.
Granger's tuneless humming knocks him out of the memory.
"Hermione, perhaps," she agrees, turning the Foe-Glass over in her hands but keeping her eyes well away from it.
At the time, Severus had thought badly of Albus and Albus's advice. He'd thought it trite. The Dark Mark settling into his flesh like a half-dead insect— his body bent in silent genuflection— he'd made a monster of himself then. He wouldn't let a war, a game of luck or a game of chance, take the credit from him.
She gives him a blank look and turns over the Foe-Glass one more time, neatly.
"But I'm a different breed, unfortunately"— she tugs at her sleeves, clearing her throat, and it is a gesture so anathema to her words that he can scarcely breathe with its incompleteness— "and goblin glass and a Dark enchantment does not a Foe-Glass make, Severus. The opposite, actually."
He is inclined to think otherwise now. War; war...
He coughs, politely.
"So… what does it do?"
...makes monsters of us all...
He looks her in the eye and offers a smile of his own.
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"Miss Granger! Miss Granger, where have you been? We've been looking for you for ages! Mr Potter is in the visiting ward and— oh, hello, Mr Snape. Good afternoon. Miss Granger, would you like me to come with you to the visiting ward?"
He watches her carefully.
She fixes the quailing nurse with a stone-cold stare.
He watches her fingers, drumming against her thigh with no discernible beat. He watches her tongue flick across her lips. Then for a single second, she is singularly still, poised—
"Potter is of no concern to me," she says softly, gaze sliding off into the distance. "Miss Granger, as you say, is, at the moment, unavailable."
Her eyes flare with pleasure.
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Why, specifically, Malfoy Manor? he tries, again, but receives only a dry hack of vaguely amused laughter as response, again.
Granger is adamant that the Manor be their first stop on her grand escape from St. Mungo's.
He doesn't blame her— that scar is a filthy reminder of the true cause of the war, no matter what anyone says about 'our customs' or 'that megalomaniac' or 'but, the economy'— but he would like to know in advance if anything, or anyone, is going to be blown up. He has no intention of becoming a fugitive alongside a wand-less nineteen year-old loony bin. Severus is reformed now, which means no more very bad life decisions.
"An eye for an eye," says Granger, her expression an odd mix of childishly forlorn and artfully covetous. "A secret no one has ever known, please."
He can at least be assured that with a Muggleborn in tow, there will be no dinner invitations forthcoming from Narcissa. After all, her husband is in prison. Her son 'needs time', and her sisters are dead or disowned. Her parents are just dead. Even her properties— her precious, prized, preened-over properties— have been sold; she rents the Manor now, when he's fairly certain that before this year, Narcissa had never heard of the word 'rent' as used in a housing context.
Severus doesn't pity her. The blood and the money of the Malfoys and the Blacks are fertilising a rich new soil.
He sighs.
My favourite food is, and always has been, mushy peas.
"Delightful. Mine is— I've been lying all this time. And I have a soft spot for Baroque architecture. Also delightful. When do we leave?"
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The Foe-Glass allows the user to see their enemies.
Goblin glass reverses the action. The Foe-Glass does not allow the user to see their enemies.
An old weaver's spell reverses the subject. The Foe-Glass does not allow enemies to see the user.
It's an ingenious, impractical piece of magic; impervious to Homenum Revelio and other common detection spells, which gives it an advantage over a simple Disillusionment Charm, but the user must be looking into the glass at all times, lest they risk a sudden uncloaking. Neither can the Foe-Glass itself be Disillusioned or otherwise concealed, lest the user risk another sudden uncloaking. Severus isn't sure if anyone wouldn't notice a magical artefact slowly floating itself out of a hospital, but nonetheless.
These are trivial problems.
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"There's no such thing as Hermione Granger anymore," she says, matter-of-fact. They're standing to the side of the south drawing room; the main drawing room. There's a thick layer of dust to everything in the room that irks him. That a place like this should be stagnant, unchanging—
"I've been lying this whole time. Hermione is dead," she continues urgently. "She's been dead for almost a year now." She looks at Severus, who is looking back at her oddly, a small frown perched on his lips. Then she points to the Persian carpet at the centre of the room.
"That's where she died."
She closes her eyes. Her face loses some of its tension. A memory of a smile on her mouth, slack.
He sucks in a rattling breath.
"I haven't seen her since."
Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings. —Anaïs Nin