It was subtle at first. Initially Hermione didn't really think much of it.
Really, it was primarily because he had such elegant hands. That was the first thing that she'd noticed when she was tired, and her head hurt too much to read. She'd sit watching him brew potions, and his hands would remind her of a musician's. He had a sort of melodic fluidity in the way he moved.
His fingers were beautifully long.
It wasn't as though she actually—
It was just a passing fancy.
Although it wasn't that implausible an attraction. She'd always thought Harry had been unreasonably rude in the ways he'd described Snape. Snape really wasn't at all bad to look at. His features were—distinguished. His appearance a mixture of striking and enigmatic.
Pale, yes. And thin. But those were hardly things Harry had any business criticising. Snape could hardly help it if his hair and skin tended to be damp from potion steam.
He was a Potions master. It was literally his job to brew potions.
However, that was all entirely beside the point.
It was silly crush. Not anything that would ever go anywhere. Just something to amuse herself with in the evenings when she was too drained to do anything but sit at the worktop making her arm available for his examination for hours each evening.
She indulged herself in the idea because it was something to feel besides anxiously worrying that she was going to die and dreading the next treatment, which remained her only means of not dying.
The sheer absurdity of the premise made it diverting. Something silly to let her mind run away with.
Severus Snape is trying to save you because he actually cares about you. The curse is more than just an interesting puzzle to solve. He would actually grieve a little if you died. Maybe you're the first person he's let himself care about in decades.
The corners of her mouth would twitch at her own ridiculousness, and she'd carefully avoid his probing gaze.
Then the joke began to get away from her. Her breath would catch, and her heart rate would jump when he'd touch her in order to examine her arm or take a new blood sample for analysis. When he was casting several analytic spells on her arm, she realised she could feel him breathing, and it sent a shiver through her gut. Her skin prickled whenever she felt him standing behind her.
It was almost terrifying how rapidly it evolved from a diversion to an actual, intense physical attraction.
She'd catch herself staring at his pale hands and long slender fingers, wondering what they would feel like if he touched in a manner that was entirely non-clinical. Probably incredible. He was so precise and exacting. If he wanted to do something pleasurable to someone, he would probably make a point of making it mind-blowing.
Thinking about it would make her entire body tingle and sometimes, when he'd look at her, a thrilled shiver would slide through her.
She found herself obsessively imagining what it would be like to sleep with him. Just sex. It wasn't as though she had any girlish delusions about it being anything romantic.
Professor Snape simply had many traits of a sort of Byronic hero, which was an archetype that had appealed to Hermione as a thirteen year old recovering from her profound disillusionment with Lockhart.
He wasn't classically handsome, but he was striking, with a strange sort of magnetism. Not particularly good or heroic—or nice—but compelling and tragically complicated. His enduring love for Lily Potter rather typified him into the role.
Hermione, of course, was not a heroine; not to Snape, or to anyone now. Although her declining health was appropriate to the rather gothic mood that Snape seemed to inspire. Maybe she should buy a négligée—but on second thought, Hogwarts was a stone castle in Scotland, and she would probably get chillblains, which were unattractive, and Snape would—
Well. She didn't like to think about Snape's response.
When he picked her up as she was leaning across the worktop crying after a treatment, she wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her face in his robes, desperate for a sense of comfort. He instantly stiffened as he carried her to her room, pulled her arms off firmly, and then left without even checking the diagnostics or rebandaging her arm.
You're being pathetic and idiotic because you're lonely, she told herself, her face burning in the darkness as she lay in bed. He's your professor. He's almost old enough to be your father. He's probably noticed now and feels revulsed by you. He won't feel comfortable helping you anymore, and then you'll die because you're a stupid schoolgirl who can't control her imagination.
She stifled the train of thought as aggressively as she could, trying to backtrack. It was a much more difficult door to close than it had been to open.
She couldn't make her heart stop pounding or repress how keenly aware of him she'd become.
She needed a boyfriend.
She immediately dismissed the idea. As if anyone would want to get emotionally invested with a cursed girl. As if she'd let them, knowing how it could potentially end.
No. There would be no boyfriends in her future until there was a cure.
She just needed friends that she wasn't preoccupied with being angry at and who didn't coddle her constantly. Unfortunately those two categories encompassed almost everyone.
Discounting all that, she hardly had the time. Keeping up with school, grading potions essays, and feeling herself slowly fade away in a fourteen day countdown loop ate the entirety of her physical, mental, and emotional resources.
What on earth was she supposed to do, tell Snape "Sorry, I can't help you with your class workload anymore, I'm in desperate need of new company in order to stop fantasizing about your hands"?
He was nearly forty. He assuredly had better options available to him than the cursed student under his care.
He'd been in love with Lily Potter for thirty years.
He was still in love with her.
Lily Potter had been pretty with striking eyes. Popular. More Ginny Weasley than Hermione Granger.
The only thing Hermione had in common with Lily Potter was being Muggle-born. Which was a parallel quite literally written onto her arm, in case Snape ever happened to forget that detail.
They had both been called bright students in their year. However, Hermione's brightness had always been one of the things Snape found particularly detestable.
There was really no point in even thinking about it. Putting aside her current condition and the fact that he was her professor, there was really no chance of it. Ever.
Hermione carefully avoided his gaze and guiltily hunkered down on the far end of the worktop during the progressive evenings, careful not to do anything to annoy him.
She stopped initiating the very little conversation that she had and didn't even permit herself to look at him, or his hands, unless he addressed her.
But—sometimes she felt almost convinced that he lingered longer than necessary when he was examining her arm or taking her pulse. That he had begun to touch her more often than he needed to. Considerably more than he had at the beginning.
It was just because they'd gotten more comfortable with each other. She was certain that was all it was.
She fell asleep on the sofa while he was casting spells on her to inspect her physical deterioration.
She woke with her head resting against his shoulder, and his head resting on hers.
It was nothing. She was lonely, and he just happened to be the only person around who didn't treat her like some sad little pet to indulge with house-points and compliments as she wandered around the castle, cursed and fading.
He'd gotten used to her. She wasn't going to ruin the little bit of conviviality they'd achieved by doing anything idiotic like thinking it meant something.
She was well-aware that her condition was merely a diversion from the tedium of two decades teaching at Hogwarts.
She pressed her lips together as she curled her feet up on the couch, pressing her palm against her bandaged arm where the incisions were throbbing, and resting her head carefully against his shoulder.
His patronus was a doe.
He would never care about anyone but Lily Potter.
She had enough sense to know that.
She came back to their quarters after Transfiguration and found Snape standing in an immaculate kitchen. The worktop was entirely cleared. The scrolls which had papered the walls were gone. The cauldrons were all freshly scoured and hanging from the hooks overhead. There wasn't so much as an ingredient bottle out of place.
Snape was staring at the kitchen as though it had offended him in some way.
Some of the now-empty cauldrons had been brewing potions for months. There were no neat rows of freshly bottled potions arranged on any of the shelves.
Snape been increasingly taciturn during the last several days. Cold. The icy resentfulness he habitually directed towards her had begun resurfacing during their recent interactions.
As she stood beside him, studying the empty surfaces, she knew what it all meant.
Nothing had worked out.
He'd run out of ideas.
There was a hollow, sinking sensation throughout her chest and stomach as she absorbed it.
After a minute, he seemed to notice her beside him. He turned to look at her. His expression was closed, and his onyx eyes betrayed nothing.
"I believe a fresh start may be necessary," he said.
She forced a tight-lipped smile and nodded.
"I have some reading I need to finish." She shifted her shoulder to indicate her satchel before turning and walking quickly to her room.
Once the door was closed, she dropped her bookbag on the desk and stood dazedly in her room.
What are you supposed to do when you're going to die?
She should make a to-do list.
She'd want to be cremated. No expensive caskets or memorial services necessary. Harry and Ron could have any of her possessions that they wanted. Not that they'd want much. The rest could go to a charity.
They could bury her ashes in the Forest of Dean.
Were you allowed to send people letters informing them of your impending death? Or was it mandatory that you tell them in person?
She didn't even want to imagine the conversation with Harry and Ron, much less anyone else. Was there a criteria for closeness? Could she delegate it?
If she seemed very busy, perhaps it wouldn't seem quite so rude if she didn't want to deal with telling everyone in person. She'd make a bucket list.
She gave a quiet, choking laugh and dropped onto the edge of her bed, rocking slightly. Her sense of shock was fading away, and her heart began to race as though she were panicking. Her arm started throbbing in rhythm.
A bucket list. A list of things to do before she kicked the bucket.
Croaked.
Passed.
That term made her feel like a kidney stone. Perhaps it was apt. Horrible and painful for everyone involved and when it was finally over, everyone would just be relieved.
She gave another tight little laugh under her breath and gripped her left arm tighter as the room spun.
She needed to focus on her bucket list. She inhaled slowly and tried to begin one.
Could she include graduation? Would it count? She couldn't see why not. Then, after she'd graduated, she'd—
She'd—
She couldn't think of anything she wanted to do after that.
Everything sounded tiring.
If she felt like that now, when she had possibly another year or two to deteriorate to death, how would she feel six months? A year? She'd barely be functional. It would be unimaginably painful.
Eventually her nerves would stop recovering from the firecrab treatment.
Then she wouldn't feel sensations anymore. The light caress someone's hands. Wind on her face. Flavour. Colour and sight would gradually fade away. She wouldn't be able to read. Her hearing would go. The sensation of an arm wrapped around her shoulders.
It would all disappear.
Or she'd stop treatment, and die within the year.
She wondered if Snape would continue being the one to care for her once he ran out of ideas.
Probably not. There isn't anything interesting about an unsolvable curse.
Trying to cure her was one thing. Acting as hospice care for her when she couldn't be cured would be an entirely different matter. She'd graduate soon anyway.
She licked her lips and pressed them together. She'd graduate and then there wouldn't be anything to do but keep saying goodbye to everyone until she died...
There was a sharp rap on the door.
"Come in," she said.
The door opened, and Snape stood staring at her in a manner that was depressingly paternal.
Hermione's throat tightened, and she looked away.
Of all the stupid things she'd ever done, indulging herself in fancying him was possibly the most idiotic of all.
She heard him inhale as he entered her room and stopped in front of her.
"I'm not giving up."
Hermione nodded without looking at him.
Everyone kept lying to her as though it would make her feel better. As if being cursed meant she was stupid enough to believe whatever anyone said to her.
She got so many compliments now. So many things no one had ever bothered to say to her before. She was prettier, braver, smarter, and more beloved than she'd ever been in her entire life.
Snape knelt down, and his fingers rested against her jaw, tilting up her chin until his dark, exacting eyes met hers.
She felt him slip into her mind like a shadow.
She turned her head quickly away in order to break the connection.
"Don't!" she said in a tight voice. "I barely have any privacy as it is. I would like my mind at least to be mine alone."
He froze. "I apologise," he said after a moment, his hand dropping down to rest on her shoulder. "You've seemed depressed."
Hermione stared at him for a heartbeat and smiled caustically, her eyebrows arching up. "I'm dying. I get to be depressed about it sometimes, Professor."
His gaze sharpened. "Starting over is not giving up."
She looked at him a moment longer.
"Right…" she whispered in a voice so forced it shook.
There was a pause, and Snape cleared his throat, withdrawing his hand. "There's a healer in New York, specialised in curse reversal, who has offered to accept you into his private clinic. It may be an advisable next step for you, either immediately or following graduation if you intend to remain at Hogwarts until then."
Hermione sat in silence.
She'd gotten used to his bluntness. He didn't try to break things to her gently. He'd told she was dying without preamble. He'd said treatment would hurt, and it did.
Now he was being indirect. Because he considered her fragile? Possibly unstable—if he'd been standing outside the door listening to her laughter.
Perhaps he didn't want to admit any failure on his part. If he were 'magnanimous' and allowed another clinic and wizard to have a chance at trying to save her, then her death wouldn't be on him either.
This way, he could pass the failure on preemptively.
Her throat tightened. She looked down at her hands. "That's—that's what you think I should do?"
"It's what I would advise."
She nodded slowly. "Thank you, Professor," she said in a mechanical tone. "I'll consider it."
Never.
She didn't want to go die alone in America. She didn't want to die in Hogwarts. Or St Mungo's. Or at the Burrow.
She didn't want to die at all, and she was too drained to muster the rage she wanted to feel over the fact that she was, in spite of all her desire, effort, and sacrifices.
She didn't want to go to the Burrow and field the Weasleys' and Harry's guilt and grief. She still didn't know how to handle all the resentment she felt.
She was supposed to have a life. People always said she was clever. She was supposed to do things.
She started shaking.
Snape was studying her silently. When she started trembling, his hands rested on each of her shoulders. "What do you want to do?"
She stared at him.
He used to have such a beautifully smooth baritone. He'd utilised it to remarkable effect; his lectures had been spellbinding to her since her first potions class. The casual menace and terrified respect he could invoke with his slow drawl.
It was gone now.
His voice was always strained and rasping on the ear, as though he were fighting not to cough. He couldn't speak smoothly. There was no silken quality in his tone. It wavered unsteadily, especially after long days of teaching.
They were both of them tragic reflections of their pre-war selves. Broken, and defined now by the cracks.
She didn't want to be tragic. She didn't want to be defined by the worst day of her life.
Her chest jerked as she drew a sharp hiccoughing breath.
"I don't want to die." Her voice was forceful.
He didn't look away; he just gave the barest nod of acknowledgement.
She looked down at her knees.
She wanted to have a home—her home, not the Weasleys'. To have parents who remembered her. To have friends who weren't constantly overwhelmed by their own emotions to the point that she was comforting and reassuring them over the fact she was cursed.
She wanted to do all the things she'd told herself she'd do someday.
She wanted to feel alive, rather than like she was dying all the time, a little quicker with every passing moment.
She wanted to do something that felt like being alive.
Anything.
She looked up suddenly. Snape's face was only inches away from hers, his eyes fastened on her, studying her pensively.
Impulsively, without pausing for a moment to consider, she leaned forward and kissed him.
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