Warning: chapter contains recollections of canon-typical violence.

"Look … at … me." No more than a whisper between lips blanched almost white by blood-loss.

Blood-Replenishing Potion — essence of dittany — a bezoar — Hermione knows she has all three in her bag, she can save Severus Snape's life, if she can only —

Her fingers scrabble uselessly against the carpet as she strains for it, but with Bellatrix Lestrange kneeling on her arm, the bag and the life-saving measures it contains might as well be miles away, not mere inches. "Please … please …"

"The mudblood has some manners," Bellatrix sneers.

And the knife, flashing silver in the dim light, and searing pain, and her blood thundering in her ears saying mudblood, mudblood, mudblood … deep inside, she's afraid it's true, because she isn't strong enough to get free, she might be clever but there's more to magic than memorisation, there's sheer raw strength of talent, and she doesn't have it, mudblood, mudblood, mudblood …

Snape's hand falls lifeless to the floor.

"No!" Hermione howled, and found herself bolt upright in her bed, throat aching as if she'd screamed aloud and not just in her dream. Crucio! and the smell of blood and she's lost control of her bladder and Bellatrix sneers down at her. Filthy little mudblood … and the knife, and the pain —

Hermione flung back the covers and scrambled out of bed, as if she could put physical distance between herself and the memory. Her pyjamas were soaked with sweat, cold against her skin. She yanked them off and, stumbling a little, hurried into the bathroom where she turned the shower to hot.

A dream. A memory. Not real, not now, not true, she chanted silently, standing under the warm spray. It had not happened, not like that. She hadn't failed Severus Snape because she was too weak, but only because he had seemed so dead. She had not had what she would have needed to make a difference, not in the world outside her head.

Her arm ached, and she turned it so the water ran directly over the scar. Not real, not now, not true.

She scrubbed until she felt clean, and then stood under the water for another few minutes before she could bring herself to turn it off and step out. A glance at her watch showed her that it was just after three in the morning, but the thought of going back to bed and risking sleep made her stomach turn. Instead she pulled on jeans, a T-shirt and her favourite jumper, gave her hair a quick blast of Hot-Air Charm so it wasn't actually dripping, and headed for her office.

If there's one good thing about marking, it's that you always have something to do.

She was half-way through an essay that she couldn't decide was worth an E or only an A when the door opened, and then closed again. The bolt shot home.

"What happened to knocking?" she asked.

Severus Snape appeared, folding Harry's cloak over his arm. "Mrs Norris," he said sourly. "Prowling the corridor."

Hermione couldn't suppress a smile at the distaste in his voice. "I've always wondered about that cat," she said. "I mean, she seems to be able to make Filch understand when she spots a student misbehaving, but he's a Squib, so I don't see how."

"She is …" Snape took a seat across from her without waiting to be asked with a flick of the skirts of his coat. He crossed his long legs. "Undoubtedly the brains of the operation."

Hermione raised her eyebrows. "Kneazle?"

"Demon," Snape said, voice as dry as the Sahara, and Hermione surprised herself with a genuine chuckle. "Only the darkest magic is sufficient to explain that animal. Granger, if you are marking at this hour again …"

Hermione looked down at the essays in front of her. "I am," she admitted, "but not because I had to. I couldn't sleep." She looked up again, expecting some dismissive remark, but Snape's expression was … on someone else, I'd call that sympathy.

"I can brew you a Potion of Dreamless Sleep," Snape said. "It wouldn't help tonight, of course, but it would be ready by tomorrow evening."

Hermione shook her head. "I can brew it myself," she said. "Or ask Poppy Pomfrey." She gave a wry smile. "I find I don't enjoy the way I feel when I wake up."

Snape nodded slowly. "Still. There are limits to human endurance — even that of Gryffindors."

Hermione rubbed her scratchy eyes with the hand not holding her quill. "It's not every night. Not even most nights. Just sometimes."

"How is your arm?"

The question was soft and swift, the words carrying the rapid cadence of a spell, every syllable clear and crisp. Off-balance, Hermione felt her scar twinge at the unexpected reminder it existed, and rubbed it hard with the heel of her hand. "Fine. Except when you insist on reminding me of it."

"What made you so reluctant to let Potter see it?" Snape asked, just as quiet, just as quick. "Does he not know?"

"That I have 'mudblood' carved on my arm?" Hermione snapped. "He knows."

"And yet you hide it from him." Snape frowned slightly. "May I see?"

"You've seen it," Hermione reminded him.

"And prescribed a potion, the efficacy of which I wish to assess." Snape looked at her, eyes dark and unreadable, face impassive, a harshly angular figure, black as night in the lamplight. "Please show me your arm, Professor Granger."

Hermione nodded, and began to push up her sleeve. The old jumper she'd thrown on, however, didn't have the broad sleeves she favoured now, and the cuff wouldn't go up high enough.

Before she could lose her nerve, she dragged her jumper off over her head.

And of course it caught in her tangled mane of hair, leaving her standing with her inside-out jumper over her arms and head, struggling and tugging.

"Granger, hold still." Deft fingers yanked her jumper back down around her neck and Hermione had the sudden sight of Professor Snape disconcertingly close to her before he gathered her hair at the base of her neck and drew her jumper off in one smooth movement. "Ah, Muggle clothes," he sneered, tossing it on her desk. "So much more practical and convenient."

Hermione bit back a retort about the relative conveniences of pull-overs and coats with approximately three-hundred-and-eighteen buttons, since he'd just rescued her from the former. Under the jumper, she was wearing a T-shirt, and so simply held her arm out to him.

Snape took her wrist and turned her arm a little towards the light from the lamp. His expression was intent as he leaned closer to study the scar. It made Hermione's stomach twist with discomfort, but that was nothing to the wave of uneasiness that swept over her when he ran the fingers of his other hand over the silver letters carved into her skin.

She jerked away from him. "Don't!"

Snape released her wrist instantly and Hermione hugged her arm to her chest.

"Why are you ashamed, Professor Granger?" he asked quietly.

"I'm not," Hermione said tightly. "I've got nothing to be ashamed of."

His dark eyes were steady on her face. "Is it me that you're lying to, or yourself?"

Crucio! and the pain, the pain and she wants to be brave but there is no way she can stop herself screaming, stop herself begging —

"Filthy little mudblood!"

"I'm not lying!"

"You are," Snape said flatly. "Granger, you have always been proud of your intellect. Exert it now. You feel shame. You are soaking in it, and yet, as you say, you have nothing to be ashamed of. So why, then?"

She looked up at him and then, an awful suspicion beginning to dawn, fixed her gaze on the top of her desk. "Are you using Legilimency against me?"

"No." He was accomplished at deceit, she knew — he was only alive because of how accomplished — but Hermione thought there was a ring of truth in his voice. As if I'd know, she chided herself, but still, she believed him. "Apply your mind, Granger. What did Bellatrix do to you, that you wear her scar still?"

"Crucio," she said. The carpet is thick with dust and crusted with old blood stains — pools, streaks, wide arterial sprays. Hermione wonders if the house elves are in hiding or if it's just that Bellatrix Lestrange's lust for victims exceeds their capacity to clean up after her.

And then wonders nothing at all as the Cruciatus curse tears through her body, knotting every nerve in fiery agony.

"Please, please, I'm sorry, I'm sorry …" The words tumble from her lips between the sobs she can't control.

"Filthy. Little. Mudblood!" Bellatrix is on top of her, now, and a new pain, focused, searing —

"Granger. Hermione." Snape had her by both shoulders.

As true as it'd been when she'd said fine, now Hermione's arm ached and burned as if Bellatrix was carving into it at that very second — she was cutting into Hermione's skin, now, then, forever —

"Sit." There was a strong hand beneath her elbow and then something at the back of her knees. Hermione sank down and found herself sitting in Snape's black armchair. He said something else, but she couldn't understand it. She clutched her throbbing arm to her chest and curled around it, shrill cackling echoing in her ears —

A flask was at her lips. "Drink," Snape said. It was the same potion he'd prepared for her, thick and bitter. She turned her face away after the first sip, but the flask followed. "Drink. All of it. If I have to hold your nose, Granger, I will."

Hermione swallowed, swallowed again, and gritted her teeth as the disgusting stuff threatened to come straight back up again.

"And this." Porcelain against her lips this time, and the taste of tea — bitter and black. It cleared the after-taste of the potion and cleared her head as well.

She opened her eyes to see Snape kneeling by her chair, and behind him, Tilney wringing her hands.

"Is Miss alright?" the house elf asked anxiously.

"I'm fine, Tilney," Hermione assured her.

Tilney lingered until Snape gave her a nod, and then vanished.

"So this," Snape said, soft and dangerous, "is what you term 'ever so much better'."

Hermione shook her head. "No. That hasn't — that hasn't happened for ages. I meant—" She looked down at her arm and then looked away. "The scarring. It's much less. And it hardly ever hurts, and then not much."

Snape stood up, looking very tall and black against the firelight. "And it occurred to none of the geniuses at St Mungo's, or the Ministry, to whose hands you recommend I trust my life, that after this much time it ought not to hurt you at all?" He scowled down at her. "Merlin's breath, Granger. You expect me to believe you capable of breaking my curse when you're not even able to recognise your own?"

Hermione gaped up at him, and then looked back at her arm. "Curse? It isn't — I mean, she used a knife." Silver, sharp, shining … "Not a spell."

"This is a curse," Snape said with utter certainty. "You must remember which one."

Hermione shook her head. "I can't remember. I mean, I really can't remember her saying anything, any spell."

"On some level, you do. Even if she cast it voicelessly, it would be recognisable, to one who knows what to look for."

"But I didn't," Hermione pointed out. "I knew — I know — only a few curses. Harry might know now, and he might even have known then, but he was downstairs."

Snape paused. If he'd been someone else, Hermione might have thought he hesitated, but when he spoke his voice was implacable. "Then you must let me see."

Hermione swallowed hard. A voice inside her was screaming No, no, no, keep him out, don't let him see it, don't let him know — a wave of nausea made her skin prickle and her mouth flood with sour saliva at the idea of Severus Snape, there, Severus Snape, seeing her beg and cry and —

A small, clear part of her baulked. I did nothing wrong. I have nothing to be ashamed of.

And with that, the realisation: This is not my shame.

It comes from outside me. It's being done to me.

She nodded, not trusting her voice.

Snape drew out his wand. Hermione had seen him produce it so quickly it simply appeared in his hand between one breath and the next, but now he moved with slow deliberation, as if she might bolt at a sudden movement. Just as slowly, he raised it, pointing at her.

No, no, no —

"Go ahead," she said thickly.

"Legilimens!"

Faster than blinking, she was gone from the room, whirling through memories that swirled around her like autumn leaves in a gale. There was someone there with her, and instinctively she turned and fled from them. Memories crowded around her and she seized them and flung them behind her to delay her pursuer — Her mother, cooking dinner — the British Library, on the secret floor that no Muggle sees — Crookshanks, gazing from the window of her tower room —

"Granger." Snape stalked behind her, down the long corridor of all her past.

Hermione ran faster. A week in Berlin, a treat to herself for graduating — last Christmas, sneaking off to the Burrow on Boxing Day and wondering if she should hate herself for feeling that she was coming home — a kite — a cat — a car —

Snape batted them away, not even slowing, closer and closer behind her now. "As entertaining as your exercise of Occlumency is, Granger, my time is not unlimited."

On a plane, wondering what she'll do if they question her wand at Australian Customs, wondering how great a breach of the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy it would be to discretely give her economy-class seat another inch of leg room —

That was a mistake, and Hermione realised it at the same instant as Snape grasped it instead of casting it aside. The plane landing, Hermione surreptitiously gripping her wand in case of a crash. She looks up and sees the incongruous figure of Professor Severus Snape, standing in the aisle.

"This way, I think," he says, and the plane whirls away and they are both on a city street. It is hotter than Hermione has ever been in her life, a heavy humid heat that has sweat rolling down her sides and back in seconds. The long-sleeved summer top she'd thought would be appropriate is smothering her. For just an instant, she starts to roll up the sleeves —

Sitting in the spare room of the people who, once again, know they are her parents, casting glamour after glamour on her arm, watching the word mudblood emerge clear as ever after a second or two each time. Hermione looks up to see Snape standing in the doorway.

"I should have realised something was wrong, then."

He shakes his head, just slightly. "I suspect the curse was designed to prevent you." The corners of his mouth turn down and his thin face settles into lines of profound disapproval. "That is, of course, no excuse for those who call themselves both Aurors and your friends." He holds out his hand. "Come."

Hermione takes a deep breath, takes a firm grim on her ebbing courage, and puts her hand in his.

Long, clever fingers close around hers, and dark eyes meet hers. "It will be difficult, but I will be with you."

Hermione nods, and —

"Filthy little mudblood!"

"No, please, no!" Hermione screams, and then just screams, the echoing pain of the Cruciatus curse blurring with the sharp agony in her arm and the horror of Bellatrix Lestrange's mad face pushed close to hers, a single unendurable nightmare. She screams and screams, struggles with everything she has, but she is too weak, too weak, she is —

"Granger, concentrate," Severus Snape says, exactly as if she were wool-gathering in the classroom — as if she ever had. She turns her head away from Bellatrix's mad grin and sees him standing at the far end of the room, arms folded. "This is a memory. Concentrate. Separate yourself from the experience."

"I can't, I can't!" It hurts too much, Bellatrix's silver knife feels like it's scoring the foul word directly onto her bones —

"This is your memory." Snape crosses the room in four long strides and kneels on the filthy, bloodstained carpet by Hermione. "This is your mind. There is nothing you cannot do, here. You must let me see what she did, or this is for nothing."

Bellatrix is sitting back now, licking Hermione's blood from the blade of her knife. Whatever she did, it's over, it's too late.

Hermione grits her teeth and goes back to the beginning.

"Crucio!"

She writhes in blind agony and when it releases her Bellatrix Lestrange is straddling her, face an inch from Hermione's own. Hermione turns her face away in terror and disgust —

Turns her attention back.

"Filthy little mudblood!" Bellatrix croons, knife in her hand. Hermione sees for the first time that her wand is in the other. She cackles, leaning across Hermione, pinning Hermione's arm with her knee. The knife comes up, comes down —

A flare of magic, sickly yellow, at the tip of Bellatrix's wand.

"That's enough," Snape said, and Hermione was sitting in her own office, Snape kneeling in front of her. His dark eyes glittered strangely, and there was a sheen of perspiration on his forehead.

Hermione herself was drenched with sweat, her T-shirt sticking to her as if she'd gone swimming in it. She felt as if she'd been turned inside out, twisted into an impossible pretzel, and then dropped from a great height. She wanted to ask Snape if he was alright, if he'd taxed his limited strength too much, but she was too tired to do more than lie limply in the chair and stare at him dumbly.

Snape put his hand by hers on the arm of the chair, and levered himself to his feet. "Rest," he said, his voice rougher than usual. Moving slowly and stiffly, like a man much older, he went to the tall cabinet where Potions Professors past, present, and no doubt future, kept finished brews. Hermione could hear the faint clink of glass-against-glass as he searched for something, as if his customary dexterity had temporarily deserted him.

After a moment he came back, moving more easily, a small vial in his hand. "This will help," he said, and held it to Hermione's lips.

The potion was sour and peppery, but not as disgusting as the one he'd made her drink earlier, and Hermione was far to tired to protest, let alone resist. She swallowed the few drops obediently. They burned down her throat but after a moment the heat subsided to a comforting warmth that spread slowly throughout her body, bringing returned energy with it.

"What is that?" she asked.

Snape glanced at the vial in his hand. "This, I never named. I based it on the Draught of Peace, with some innovations." His dark gaze flicked back to hers, and then away. "I found some decades ago that I had a need for a remedy to the after-effects of strenuous Legilimency."

"You could call it Antidote to Voldemort," Hermione suggested, and for just an instant, she was sure she saw Snape smile.

Then the expression was gone as if it had never been. "Or I could call it Antidote to Insufferably Stubborn Gryffindors Who Don't Know What's Good For Them." He set the vial carefully on her desk. "The silver knife, the one she always carried with her. Her very favourite weapon. What became of it?"

"I'm … I'm not sure. Why?"

"It will be far easier to draw the malice from your scar if I have access to it."

"Hold on," Hermione said. Looking up at him was giving her a crook in her neck, not to mention that he was looming rather intimidatingly, so she stood up as well, relieved her legs held her. "You 're saying that you're sure now that there's curse on my scar, all this time, but don't worry about it, you can break it?"

Snape's lip curled. "Of course I can break it," he sneered. "With the knife, it would be a simple matter to coax the residue of ill-will the blade left in your flesh to rejoin its … parent, one might say. Without the knife …" He shrugged slightly. "Still possible, but more difficult."

"Harry might know where it is, the knife," Hermione said. "I know it came with us to Shell Cottage, because …" Here Lies Dobby, a Free Elf. "It came through with us."

"Then I suggest you ask Potter to locate it. In the meantime …" He frowned. "If you were being honest when you said that the pain, and the other effects, have grown less over time —"

"I was," Hermione said.

Snape inclined his head slightly in acknowledgement. "Then there is some reason the curse has become much more active in recent weeks. It may simply be that it is designed to resist discovery. Your reaction to Potter's inquiry suggests that may be the case. Otherwise …"

Perhaps it was just that Severus Snape was capable of making Hello sound like a thinly-veiled death threat, but his otherwise sounded distinctly ominous. Hermione shivered a little, and picked up her jumper. "Otherwise?"

"Otherwise, you should consider the possibility that there is something in your current environment or your current activities that is exacerbating your vulnerability to the effects of the curse."

Hermione looked at him, leaning against her desk, the only person in the world who can lean without looking in the least bit casual. His arms were folded, providing a double concealment of the withered flesh his sleeve hid, and there was no expression she could read on his narrow face.

Look … at … me …

She cleared her throat. "I'll consider it."

"Do so."

It was a dismissal, for all that this was now her office, and Hermione turned to go. Her hand was on the bolt on the door when Snape spoke again.

"Tell Potter I agree to his plan," he said.