Disclaimer: Nothing belongs to me. All rights to Rowling and Gato Azul.
18. The Floating Rose
"Why, Professor Snape?"
"Why what, Miss Granger?"
The brunette softly dragged her eyes over his face.
"Why did you help Harry? Why did you betray Voldemort? Wouldn't have been better for you to stay on his side?"
"Do you think so?"
The girl left her tea on the table and gazed back to the sullen afternoon.
"Being a double spy is to be at a complete disadvantage."
The man had pursed his lips slightly. He was watching her from the corner of his eyes, chin half-raised; he seemed interested in the question.
"If you had to speculate, what would you say?"
Hermione knew that situation had only two possible solutions: either know the half-blood's motives or end up covered in insults.
"Harry mentioned once that his father had saved you. Maybe you did it to settle the score?"
The Master Potions frowned like a bad omen.
"I don't owe anything to that moronic James Potter; of course, the glorious, surviving boy didn't tell you the whole story."
Hermione avoided that sharp gaze, taking refuge in her cup of tea.
"Another bright idea, know-it-all?"
The girl almost drowned in the sweet liquid as she shrugged. Then her eyes met the man, studious and attentive, but didn't seem able to find what she was looking for.
"I don't get it, professor Snape. I'm missing a piece."
To her irremediable disconcert, Snape showed one of his sardonic, sinister smiles. She felt as if the traitor was putting her in the middle of a game she didn't want to be in.
"Exactly, you're missing a piece and you'll keep missing it. Can't you find it by yourself? I'm disappointed, Granger."
The girl stood up, picking up the dirty plates. She knew the best strategy was to ignore the ill-intended comments, but Snape had something challenging and provocative in him. She couldn't manage to leave his storms of sarcasm and mocks unscathed.
"Harry said you lost something; I think Voldemort took it away from you. I think it's strongly related to precisely Harry, maybe he took away the same thing from both of you and somehow you—"
She hadn't been watching him, but when she put the plates on the sink and turned to him, her voice stuck in her throat. Snape hadn't ever looked at her like that before, as if he was looking at someone else, or more like, as if he had been looking at her for the first time, truly looking at her. As if he was removing veils or cloaks. She knew she had touched him, that she had reached a distant part of him. The wizard's nostrils were dilated with fury.
"What's wrong, Granger, the cat took your tongue? Your mental power left you? I thought you were going to explain my life to me."
"No, I was just—"
"Draw conclusions about your own business."
"But you—"
The dark, sombre frame suddenly stood up. Hermione walked backwards when the man got close to her darkly, until he stood in front of her.
"You know nothing."
Then, the shadow over her head disappeared as the Potion Master left the room.
Granger had been intolerably close. So much that Lily's name had throbbed in his temples as he heard her talk; if he let the conversation stretch, she would find out the truth, with the easy, perfect, final piece of the puzzle.
So dangerously close, so tantalizing close. What would Granger think of him if she knew the truth?
What would she think if he let her see and feel the nights of interrogatories, of mud, shivers and fear? All of that for Lily, who would never give him what he was looking for. What would Granger do?
He fell asleep on the sofa, after ruminating for a long time.
Granger was waiting for him in the depths of his mind. There she knelt, weightless and absolute. She kissed his hands, touched his hair, the same one everyone accused of being greasy. Him, the awful, weird Snape kid, the Slytherin's skinny viper, the evil snitch that had revolted Dumbledore.
He wanted to laugh at them, all those haughty faces he remembered. Worthy Granger dampened his hands with her kisses; Potter and the rest of them could burn. He let her caress him, gloated with it. The worthy, inestimable witch of Gryffindor…
He opened his eyes, stunned by his vileness. To dream about a young lady, about her in particular, was absurd and abhorrent. The worst thing of all was the fact that his chest was on fire, that on the back of his hands he could almost feel the vexing, pleasant brush of those fake kisses, and that he would have wanted to go back to sleep.
Things are changing, Harry. I interrupted Snape before because of an uncontrollable impulse. Just after I finished talking I regretted doing it, because I knew what was coming, because I knew his touches of sarcasm and humiliations. With the years I stopped fearing him little by little, but now few of my fears remain; I'm getting used to Snape, to his long lectures so similar to mine, to his taste for hot, bitter coffee, to his company, that's turning more ordinary with time. Snape can yell and become enraged, and then what, Harry? Then nothing. When I think about that, I remember Dumbledore, the careless tone he used with him that maybe Snape had ended up accepting with a familiarity it doesn't concern any of us. I'm not Dumbledore, that's true, but maybe we could reach a tranquil point, friendly, in our chats.
At least I want to try.
Hermione told the Potion Master most of the big adventure of the first year they spent at Hogwarts. She even told him what she'd thought when she first saw him. Snape repeated over and over again those words in his mind.
You seemed so tall, and your voice was the deepest I've ever heard. I thought you were a really intelligent professor; I was dying for you to see how smart I could be. But you never recognized anything good in me, and you will never do it, right?
The girl had asked him with a slight smile of resignation.
Some things never change.
But Snape wanted more; he wanted more compliments, more unilateral chatter, more of her and her voice.
Sometimes, in his mental dusks, in his sullen thoughts, he wanted to tell her everything and memorize every morphing second in her expression, her wet eyes, her trembling lips, her weak voice.
Professor Snape, you did all of that? How could you?
To bathe in her full respect and admiration, only addressed to him. Granger's kindness was truthful and carried a fraternal intention. But it wasn't enough, it left him even more thirsty and rabid, it forced him to drink tons of frustration.
In many occasions, when reading Granger's handwritten letters to that redhead Weasley, he was filled with the urge of strangling the boy.
Hermione went upstairs to write, in the cosiness of her room, every one of the advices about Potions she had learnt that afternoon. She turned her head for a second as one of her feet went to the next step.
Down there Snape was watching her, his fiery eyes setting up a fire inside her, sinking in, tearing her apart in an unprecedented way. Her arms trembled slightly, and without thinking about it, she kept on walking, running away recklessly. She didn't know what that meant, but suddenly to think about the fact that she was alone with that man made her uneasy. There was something in the half-blood that hadn't been there before, something like a revelation in his eyes, a spark; vague, brief lighting.
She sensed with fear that something had changed between them, that the air had been filled with a dense, unknown substance. And it was because of Snape. He was the vortex from where those strange fumes came from.
Severus, dear Severus, even if you can't believe me (and I don't blame you), I have to ask you to forgive me. I didn't know what I was doing, I didn't know who was behind your impenetrable face, I didn't know who was I attacking before and I ask you, I beg you, please look at me, look at me inside your mind and tell me if you really think I'd have hurt you, even knowing the truth. I wouldn't have done it. I raised my wand against the man that sold us out and murdered Dumbledore, not against my undercover pupil. Not against you, but against what you pretended (very convincingly) to be. I can't express the depth of my regret and my sleepless remorse. I just hope, with all the agony I'm capable of, that you may listen to me. You know I'm not a woman of many words, the only thing that I can give you is:
Forgive me, please forgive me, I am so sorry. If I could change what you have lived, what I have told you, if I could burn my own phrases and my insults, I would gladly do it. But I can't, I shouldn't
Forgive me for not trusting you, for accepting you as my enemy, forgive me for being unable to recognize the true man you're hiding.
I am sorry about what I have said and done. Dear Severus, please forgive me.
Once your professor, proud of having been so, and ashamed of having failed you,
Minerva McGonagall
Let me get the boy.
Hermione opened her eyes; in her dreams, Snape was asking the Dark Lord to let him go after Harry. She remembered clearly the clean, horrible scream she heard. In her brain, the image of the dark body falling to his death repeated over and over again.
When she saw him laying over his own blood, to think he had died, she didn't feel any kind of sorrow. She was relieved to know that he wouldn't exist anymore, that he wouldn't be there to set them up again. She was even a bit satisfied; to hear him begging for an opportunity to get Harry had ended up destroying any kind of piety she might have for him.
Severus Snape was extinct, and while she wasn't celebrating it, she could consider it a lucky, acceptable fact.
She went downstairs like a robot, watching the inside of the Shrieking Shack, instead of the small hallway she was entering. Snape was standing next to the table that was in the living room; his grieving, skinny frame made her remember the past. How weird was life, and how compassionate was on some occasions too. The fact that he was there, just a few meters from her, was an undeniable miracle.
"How are you, Professor Snape?" she asked him; the memory of the dying Master Potion on the floor numbed the air in her lungs.
And to think they were willing to abandon his body in the middle of the dark, with the blood still warm in his body. And to think he could be underground instead of a few steps away.
"How are you?"
She touched his shoulder to see if he was alive, that they hadn't lost him that night. She touched his shoulder to calm the guilt and make peace with him.
Prince, very slowly, turned his head, clumsily; he seemed drunk, or hurt.
"Are you okay?" Granger's face showed worry.
"I took a potion to eliminate the tr—tr…"
Traces of poison from my system. It's normal, they always had this effect, but it's temporal and harmless.
"You don't look so good."
The man smiled darkly, joyless.
"Do you think I normally look good?"
Granger seemed surprised by the question; she didn't pay him much attention and took him by the arm to the couch so he could lay down.
"I meant you seem deteriorated."
Everything will be better once the poison is gone.
The black eyes missed when they tried to focus on her; they were covered by a wet cloak, shrunken, weak.
"I'm going to bring you something to drink, you really don't look good," she took his shoes off, alarmed to see he didn't fight her off or insult her.
"Are you my mother, Granger, or you just suddenly want to be a nurse?"
The half-blood's head descended until it rested on a cushion; the man's body seemed to relax on the couch, he went pallid and still. Granger came back running, a cup of coffee in hand.
"Everything will be better, when the poison…" he muttered between sips, eyes dull.
"What's wrong? What did you take?"
"Don't be ridiculous, it's drowsiness, it's natural. Don't be dramatic."
The cup was slipping from his fingers; Granger was afraid.
"Where did you get that potion?"
"Poppy sent it to me, it came with Minerva's package."
"You aren't lying to me?"
Snape smiled, half-mocking and half-fainting. He let go the cup completely; Granger caught it and put it on the carpet. Her arms rose to meet the man half-saggy, supported him and put him back on the cushions. The black eyes were barely open.
"Gran—ger."
He seemed delusional. Hermione touched his forehead of dry plains. The black eyes were astonished, darkly fixed, ablaze. She pulled her hand back, afraid of having done something wrong.
"Fever means the potion's working."
"I'm going to bring you some quilts. It's not wise for you to try and climb the stairs. I'll stay here with you in case you need anything."
"I'm not dying, saint Granger, protector of the sick."
"Make fun of me all you want."
Hermione rushed upstairs and took every blanket and pillow she could find to spend the night. When she got back Snape was almost asleep; he raised a hand when she covered him and put a pillow under his nape.
His confused eyes searched her between the haze; his hand was still raised, as if waiting for something.
"Do you need anything, professor?"
"Come on, Granger, it's so bloody cold. Weren't you going to bring a blanket?"
The girl put another blanket on him, sensing he wasn't completely aware of what was happening. His blue lips traced her name.
"Gran—ger. It's so cold, don't go, saint Granger…"
Hermione didn't dare take the hand he had raised; she carefully forced him to lower his arm.
"Don't talk anymore, your hallucinating."
Snape had closed his eyes; then she could openly contemplate his ugliness, his crooked teeth and huge nose, his harsh, dirty hair, the yellow tinge of his skin. Irregular teeth could be seen between the half-opened lips. She felt compassion for him and, when she overcame the initial disgust, she caressed his feverish forehead. The man shifted, suddenly startled when as he felt someone touching him.
"It's me, don't worry."
Snape muttered nonsense quietly.
"Saint Granger, protector of the sick, prodigy of the lions…"
Hermione was a bit annoyed at being mocked by a man not even completely aware of what he was saying.
"Invaluable Gryffindor, sweet Gran—ger."
Hermione flinched, kneeling on the carpet. The half-blood wasn't saying anything anymore, his exhausted lids had gone down. He shivered and he was wet, because of the fever. He didn't know what he was saying, maybe a part of some muggle prayers had come to his tongue, or some poem; he couldn't know what he was saying. Maybe that sarcasm hadn't gone as he intended. Hearing that had disturbed her, to the point it was difficult for her to fall asleep.
He didn't think necessary to drink that detox potion; many of the symptoms caused by the poison had left time ago. And yet he drank it rapidly; he knew what it was going to cause, he knew about the dizziness and the body pain. He didn't actually do it to clean his body.
He also knew she would be there if something happened to him. He drank every drip; soon his muscles loosened, and his gaze turned blurry. She was behind him and was calling for him, she sounded anguished. She took him to the couch and removed his shoes, as if he was a child. So dumb, so naïve. He didn't want to prevent anything, he let her be, with his judgment clouded by his fever and his body shivers.
Granger had given him a cup, her small hands took his, then, when he was about to fall, she grabbed his body and put him back on the couch. Snape knew what he was doing as wrong, and he didn't care; he'd drink as many potions as he could just to feel again those hands on him, that kindness. She said some things and he answered, surprised to retain his rationality. He was dizzy, she was gone, he couldn't stop trembling, his teeth smashed against each other, shivering. He closed his pained eyes for a moment, but it wasn't just a moment; by the time he woke up she'd already come back. Her hands were pulling his hair backwards, caressing his frown and forehead, his hair roots.
"It's me, don't worry."
He didn't worry; to the contrary, he'd have laughed. The feeling of the feminine fingers on his face numbed him, left him agitated and euphoric. How many years had passed since someone touched him like that? He couldn't move anymore, his body had gone completely numb and yet, he couldn't be in a more pleasant state.
Wonderful Granger, sweet Granger of the flaming prodigies.
He let his head fall backwards, knowing himself protected by the woman looking at him, beyond the velvety darkness of his closed lids.
Floating rose, pious, Granger… when could he strive for such fortune? Never, never. He'd walk over the same cyclic destiny that he thought had ended in him. He would kept on living like a predatory wolf, avid and greedy.
Being eaten on the inside by envy each time he read every single one of the letters she wrote for Weasley.
N.T: Did I mention this was going to be a slow burn? Because it definitely will.