The experiment always comes first.
It's something he says to her the very first day she enters the house on Spinner's End. The excuse he offers when he barges in on her in the bathtub. The mantra he repeats every time they're in the lab together.
It's taxing, but it's also exhilarating. In a way Hermione has always dreamed of being entrusted with something so important. So she doesn't mind leaving the bath, the book, the bed. The few times something happens on Snape's watch and he comes to get her—it almost feels like a way of saying I can't do this without you, Hermione. I need your help.
But, as the burns begin to heal, she wonders—is there such a thing as giving too much?
Recovery is painful. The burns across Hermione's body range in depth and severity, scabby red patches and blisters that shine. Because the fire was cursed the marks are slower to heal, moving at an almost-Muggle pace despite Snape's ministrations. She knows she's lucky to be living with one of the best potion masters on the continent—perhaps the world, who knows—but there is still the matter of allowing her body the time and space to recover, which she despises. Much sitting around idly and letting the potions do their work; Snape hardly allows her to move for fear of disturbing the process.
His disrespect for her privacy returns in full force; he is perpetually pulling back bedsheets and bandages, sometimes berating her body if it is not healing at the speed he thinks it should. She imagines her veins and cells working harder upon hearing his voice—as if every molecule of her body literally lives and dies by the weight of his praise or criticism.
He brings her every meal: nutrient-heavy soups and fruit that trickles juice down her chin and hands in sticky streams, soiling his white sheets. Hermione misses cooking, misses working, misses movement. She feels guilty about her inactivity, yet also—secretly—comforted by his care.
Snape's bed is more comfortable than her own—the pillows downier, the quilt softer, the mattress firmer. She isn't sure where he sleeps since the fire, or if he does at all. At night she occasionally wakes to find him sitting in the chair beside the bed, mixing a new curative salve or reading one of his many books. More often than not, though, the chair is empty. He is downstairs, beginning to restore the lab.
Hermione tries not to dwell on the fact of Snape's care. He becomes close with her physical body, her skin and limbs; he treats her with a methodical, clinical distance, changing bandages and administering cures. Every day he asks her to rate her pain on a scale of one to ten, though it's never made sense to her—the attempt to apply number to sensation—but here she is fumbling for integers to communicate the stinging, the aching, the agony. She reminds herself that she is a project for him and she shouldn't read anything more into it. He certainly doesn't linger to chat, and any updates on their assignment have all but ceased for the time being. But he continues to bring her food, potions to drink, and a new book once she's finished the last.
One evening he finally allows her back into the lab. It's the first time she's returned since the fire, and admittedly she's been afraid to see the space again. She's spent many idle, guilty hours in bed picturing a room piled with white ash, like snow—all her fault. But luckily it's not as she'd imagined.
Snape has cleaned the room, which is more or less returned to its original state save the great black scorch marks, likely permanent. He tells her that the day after the fire he took stock of the ingredients they were now missing—almost everything, he says. The Ministry made an emergency delivery just yesterday—she hadn't even heard anything in the bedroom—and now he is cataloging as usual.
Hermione imagines there was a good deal of cleanup that had to be done by hand. It's strange to think of Snape down on his hands and knees, sleeves pushed up to his elbows, exposing pale forearms, scrubbing the floor with soap and a coarse brush. His cheeks are unusually flushed; it's night now, and he's been down here working for most of the day.
She searches for some flicker of fear or sorrow as he summarizes the extent of the damage in a monotone. Nothing. If it were her, Hermione thinks, she would have been inconsolable. She can only be grateful the fire had not spread up to the books. Unbidden she pictures the green flames licking up whole shelves of the tomes she's come to love, the spines she's memorized these last few months, the small room filling quickly and indiscriminately with smoke.
She shudders.
"Granger, are you listening?"
"Wh—yes, of course." Hermione bobs her head vigorously. Snape refused to let her stand, insisting she sit on one of the two stools, which she'd rarely ever used before the fire. She's so used to being on her feet that this new fatigue and slower range of motion constantly surprise her, leaving her in a state of indignance with the new restraints of her body. She unthinkingly keeps trying to stand up only to be met with a stern, admonishing gaze. After a brief pause, he continues.
"So I'll recommence what you began prior to the fire, but with the precautions I've just outlined. And you—" he gestures to a far, empty corner of the room —"will be over there."
Hermione follows his motion with her eyes, confused.
"But there isn't anything there."
"Yes, that's right." He smirks. "I'd like you to begin practicing your spellwork with Wingardium Leviosa."
"You'd rather I waste my time with elementary charms than help you catch up on the work we lost?" Hermione grits her teeth. "We'll never get back to where we were."
"Your resistance to magic is foolish. I won't have you put it off any longer."
Oh, how she glares. But Snape, of course, only seems to draw power from her frustration. Hermione vaguely recalls that from years past.
"I told you that night," he says tonelessly. "The deeper we get into it, the more careful we have to be. We're playing with magic that can fight back. I need you at your best."
Humiliatingly, he slides a Standard Book of Spells textbook across the table to her. Grade 1. Which does, in fact, contain Wingardium Leviosa. She remembers.
"Are you a witch or aren't you, Granger?"
"It's a waste of time!" Hermione exclaims, albeit weakly—unable to speak as loud as she used to. She shoves the book away in frustration. "Let me prepare the ingredients instead, we need to get back—"
He stalks over to her. Very quiet, very quick. It frightens her sometimes—the speed and silence of his movements. She tries her best to stare into his eyes defiantly, but his warm breath against her face unnerves her. Her gaze falters. She has a feeling that this is exactly what he intended.
"It is imperative for you to understand that I don't blame you for what happened," he says in a low, earnest voice. "You couldn't have predicted it. I know that. But if you don't learn from the catastrophic—well, that's on you, isn't it?"
He's hit the nail on the head—her seething fear of guilt hitting right up against the surface, so close to spilling out. Fear of failure, fear of disappointment, her unquenchable and irritating desire for praise. She can see he's been aware of it for some time now. Perhaps he had her sorted from the moment she set foot in his classroom sixteen years ago.
Hermione hates being so easily legible—like one of his damn books, she thinks, glaring at his back as he turns to work without her.
But she still has a few secrets left. Snape doesn't know everything yet.
For one thing, Hermione has begun dreaming again.
She doesn't know why. After all, she's taking everything Snape gives her—including her regular nightly dose of the Dreamless Sleep potion. It's bizarre returning to the dream world after having gone so long without. The first night she dreams of Harry, rising from his grave on a moonlit night in Godric's Hollow. He claws his way up out of the dirt and dark, his limbs pale and skeletal, the round glasses she remembers cracked and caked with dirt. Many other people arise after him in the same way, their bodies encrusted with mud, insects crawling across their skin. They fill the graveyard, an army of them, all following Harry.
Hermione awakes not with a feeling of victory—after all, isn't this their goal, bringing him back?—but rather a sensation of nauseating, inescapable dread.
As the dreams become a nightly occurrence she finds herself floating more and more into a mental space far away from Spinner's End. The dreams hollow her out, turning her sad and melancholic, and the subsequent days flit by in streams of inadequacy as she continues to work her way through the elementary spellbook.
Returning to magic after a decade is not at all like—as her parents would have said—riding a bicycle. The wandwork does not come naturally anymore, so she must relearn the wrist movements. Quick swishes, light flicks. It's like starting from scratch—year one all over again—and it doesn't help that she regularly senses Snape's gaze, judging her progress. His tests are constant, though he claims it's all intended to prepare her, to keep her from being hurt again. He develops a habit of bursting into the bedroom and demanding that she perform a spell very suddenly. But surprise was never Hermione Granger's strong suit, and she always finds herself disappointed.
It would make sense, then, for her body to want to escape that. The sleepwalking begins soon after.
Hermione wakes with a start one night in the kitchen.
She is standing before the stove with her arms outstretched, as if she were preparing to turn it on. She glances around, blinking rapidly. The analog clock over the kitchen cabinets tells her it's after three in the morning. She wiggles her fingers and feet to remind them she's still in control, and begins to get her bearings.
There are no lamps on anywhere in the flat. Makes sense, as a sleepwalker has no need of light. The hidden bookshelf door to the basement is open, suggesting Snape's presence downstairs. Hermione stands before the entrance nervously, trying to decide whether she should descend those stairs and tell him what has happened—though she barely understands it herself.
Her bare toes are freezing cold. A stinging sensation suddenly alights across her body in all the places where the fire touched her. She winces in pain, and looks longingly down the hall to the bedroom, the open door, suddenly feeling exhausted.
Best not to say anything. He'd probably be angry and full of questions, and right now she has no patience for either.
She wakes up in bed the next morning, right where she fell asleep, and doesn't say a word about the incident.
If the sleepwalking happens again in the next few days, Hermione isn't aware of it. She doesn't wake up. But just because she doesn't wake doesn't mean it isn't happening, and so she begins to worry about what she might do without realizing. She wakes unrested every morning, afraid of what her body might be doing as well as the inescapable, unspoken question: what if this has to do with the cursed fire?
Then one night: cold.
Hermione can't remember ever being so cold. She turns, tries to move away from it, burrow deeper under the blankets, toward safety and warmth that can only be found in bed—
But there are no blankets.
Where have the warm, soft blankets gone?
It's been ages since she's felt such a chill, curled up inside day after day, never very far away from a fire.
No—this is brutal, otherworldly. A raw cold so deep she can feel it inside her teeth.
There's no sensation in her feet, she realizes.
Also, she isn't lying down. She's standing.
A rush of sudden, icy air hits her—wind, how?—and something wet from above. A small moan escapes her and her eyes slam open and she realizes—
She's outside.
Outside for the first time in more than four months.
Her surroundings are completely unfamiliar—tall, dark houses, a street she's never seen before—and it's snowing.
She spins around on feet she can't feel anymore, terrified as snow drifts gently down onto her head and shoulders, melting on her bare skin, wetting the thin, oversized shirt she wears to sleep—
Where the hell is she? What happened? How did she get—
"Goddammit, Granger!"
Snape appears before her out of nowhere, clutching her against his chest, all fast breath and heat, eyes wide.
His hair is dark and wet, clinging to his face and neck, as if he has been outside in the snow for a while now. She realizes her hair is dripping as well, sticking to her nape and running cold water in a rivulet down her spine. She is shaking.
Hermione.
Snape pulls back quickly, unfastens his cloak from around his neck and pulls it tight around her chest and shoulders, then pushes her body back into his, grasps her tightly by her upper arms and disapparates.
Hermione feels like her lungs are being flattened, her body shoved through a very small tube, then just as quickly all pressure releases in a great rush.
She doubles over, gasping for air. They are standing just inside his front door, dripping melted snow and mud all over the wood floor. Snape's fingers on her arm beneath the cloak bring her back to herself, a warmth that slices through the numb skin on her bicep.
"You'd best explain yourself," he hisses.
Hermione shivers, disoriented, pulling the cloak tighter.
"I've been looking for you for more than an hour, Granger. It's almost December. Was it your intent to freeze to death? Certainly there are better ways…" But he looks closer into her face, her eyes. His expression changes.
Hermione is mute, still trying to get a sense of what happened. Sleepwalking, again, it must have been—but how far?
"If someone saw you…" he continues, in a different voice.
"No one saw me," she protests automatically. She reaches up to feel her face—numb cheeks, nose, chin. It's strange to find yourself somewhere without remembering how you arrived, but at the same time Hermione cannot deny an almost erotic reaction to feeling the wind, the cold, the fresh air. She looks longingly at the shuttered windows across the room. When will she feel that again?
Snape follows her gaze, seems to realize something.
"You developed a tolerance, didn't you?" he murmurs. "Goddammit Granger. Why didn't you tell me?"
She can't think of a good reason, so she stays silent. Snape shakes his head.
"A side effect of extended use of the Dreamless Sleep potion. Your body begins enacting the dreams you would otherwise be having." He pauses. "You should have told me."
The shivering is becoming violent. She needs a bath and then sleep, real sleep, none of this nonsense where her eyes are closed but her body is still moving around. Now that she's beginning to thaw she can pinpoint the location of every burn on her body as it begins to reassert itself, stinging and aching. She pulls loose Snape's cloak, allowing it to pool on the floor, and moves to adjourn, but he holds up a finger. He murmurs a spell and the doorknob glows gold, like a lightbulb.
"Go ahead, try it," he says.
Hermione looks at him suspiciously.
"But you did something to it. I just saw you."
He smirks.
"Angry, are you? Discovered an injustice, Granger?"
It's true that there'd been a rule about not leaving, one she had obeyed these last four months, understanding it was for their shared safety. But there was something to the fact that the door had been unlocked. That even if she'd never taken it, she had the option of leaving.
And now it's locked, unilaterally, by one of the two of them.
He's up to something, egging her on. She's too tired to deal with this, deal with him. Too tired and too damn cold.
"Deserve the right to sleepwalk, is that it? Deserve the right to leave whenever you want, lead the Death Eaters right to us in your sleep, is that it? Want me dead, Granger? Is that what's finally coming out in your sleep? Dreaming of killing me? Dreaming of watching me die?"
"Sometimes," she spits. And she realizes it's true even as she says it. That she wishes ill on him in one moment and misses his presence the next.
"Go ahead, then, Granger. If you deserve your freedom, open the damn door. I've been doing everything for you these last few weeks, but I won't do this. Laughable, isn't it? They told me I needed you. Said you would help me. Now you've gone and injured yourself and then, when I'm merely trying to prevent you from wounding yourself further, you choose to rebel for the pure sake of it—"
Her temper flares. Whatever he's doing, it's working.
"I never asked you—"
He's smiling, actually smiling—
"I've done quite a lot for you already, Granger; I think an ordinary door is nothing by comparison. Though perhaps you find it too difficult, too challenging, to open—"
"Why are you doing this—stop it, stop it, Snape—"
He's walking away from her now, toward the basement steps, a full grin on his face, which she would love nothing more than to ruin, to extinguish—
"Another day, perhaps, once you've had some more training… a few more weeks with the Grade 1 textbook… perhaps then we shall see—"
Pure anger and frustration and rebellion against the idea of being trapped plume within Hermione and—finally—explode.
The door bangs open as she screams in frustration, flying back on its hinges and bouncing off the wall with a bang.
And again, a flash of something in Severus Snape's eyes that looks oddly close to pride.
"Wandless magic, Granger? Not bad at all." He glances at the quivering door, clicking his tongue softly.
"Alohomora. Look at that."
And just like that he turns abruptly and begins to descend the stairs, calling back to her over his shoulder—
"Let's get you back to work. I need your help downstairs."