"Go back to sleep," Hermione heard Severus say firmly after she slumped off his body and onto the bed.
"I'm fine," she said, her voice half-muffled in the pillow.
She felt him pull the bedding up over her shoulders.
"Go to sleep," he said again in a tone of finality. "The house-elves will bring breakfast. You have no classes until past-noon; there is no reason for you to get up."
She wanted to argue, but she was tired, even with the potions. She'd probably pushed much too far the day before.
She nodded reluctantly and began drifting off before he'd left her room.
She knew she needed to confront him, to tell him that he wasn't going to change her mind with more potions, but it was easier not to.
It wasn't a fight she wanted to have with him; not while they were living in close quarters, and she was preparing to take her NEWTs. If he was going to be viciously enraged and disappointed in her, she would rather have it happen when she was leaving and wouldn't have to stay and endure it in front of the entire school.
That was the excuse she gave herself every evening when she accepted the potions without a word, and every morning when she woke in his bed.
It was better that way. Once he was done being angry, he'd be glad that they didn't spend her last two weeks at Hogwarts engaged in a cold war.
She didn't tell him that her blood was nearly translucent, or that her heart almost constantly raced and made her feel like she couldn't properly breathe.
She didn't want things to be drawn out once she left Hogwarts.
She'd press her right hand soothingly against her throbbing injury and ignore the cloud of dread growing in her mind.
NEWTs. That was what she needed to focus on.
She'd deal with everything else after the exams.
She only had to keep everything under control for a little longer.
She fainted halfway through exams week, in the middle of the Transfiguration NEWT.
When she woke in the hospital ward, Severus was standing over her, his black robes drawn around him.
His eyes were fastened on her face, and his expression was closed and unreadable.
They stared at each other in silence for a long time until she glanced around to see if there was anyone nearby and smiled tentatively up at him, extending her hand.
He hesitated for a moment before his pale fingers emerged from the billowing sleeves, and he sat on the edge of the bed, taking her hand in both of his.
She sat up, still studying him wordlessly. His expression was very withdrawn, even for him.
"It was my heart, wasn't it?" she finally asked.
He gave a short nod without meeting her eyes.
"How many exams did I miss?"
"...Four."
She'd been unconscious for two days then.
She looked down and gave a light, despairing laugh under her breath. Of course she'd end up missing almost half of the NEWT exams she'd stayed in Hogwarts to take.
That would be what would happen to her.
She slumped forward and rested her forehead on his shoulder, not really caring if anyone happened to witness it.
There was a long silence before she spoke again.
"Will you come see me sometimes, Severus? Once I've graduated?"
After a pause, she felt him give the barest nod.
Her eyes drifted shut, and she swallowed the other things she wanted to say.
Find a new job. Do something you enjoy with the rest of your life. Get a cat; you need companionship.
She didn't say anything else, and neither did he.
She hadn't really expected him to.
He was still withdrawn when she returned to their quarters. He would work for hours stooped over the cauldrons and disappear into his rooms without a word. He wasn't proactively unpleasant; he barely acknowledged Hermione at all.
He simply radiated hurt.
He still left the potions out on the worktop for her, but he didn't look at her, or speak to her. She felt almost invisible at times.
It was a better set of circumstances than she'd hoped but still disheartening as the final days of term drew close and the preparations for the Leaving Feast got underway.
Hermione began her goodbyes, getting inundated with little gifts and enchanted trinkets she had no use for. She had twenty copies of Hogwarts: A History piled on the corner of her desk.
It was emotionally draining. Many of the students and professors would begin crying whenever they spoke to her at all.
She'd heard rumours that McGonagall intended to make a speech about her at the Leaving Feast, and that the prefects were "planning" something, which was enough to make Hermione want to skip the evening altogether.
She didn't take any off the additional potions Severus continued to leave for her. She tucked them all away in a box.
After two days of doing nothing but having people cry over her when they happened to see her, she didn't want to see anyone.
She forced herself to get out of bed and go into the kitchen on the day she was due for her last treatment. Her room and almost all her possessions were packed.
The Leaving Feast would happen the following evening, and the next morning she'd board the Hogwarts Express bound for London.
Severus didn't look at her as she took her usual place along the worktop. The poultice was nowhere to be seen.
She sat in silence for several minutes, waiting for him to either drive her off, or start making it, or do something to acknowledge that she was there.
He continued to ignore her as the clock on the wall steadily ticked out the progressing seconds.
Two more minutes, she decided after eight had passed, then she'd just go back to bed.
The seconds continued to slip by and there were only a few remaining when Severus abruptly turned and pulled out a familiar cauldron and a large, heavily padded stoneware crock emitting small wisps of smoke.
He transferred the firecrab glands into a pestle wandlessly and began crushing them. The air filled with a heavy sulphuric scent. After he'd poured the glands into the cauldron along with an entire sloth brain, he gave a quick flick of his wand and conjured a low, steady flame.
He brewed hunched over the cauldron, his shoulders rolled forwards and his eyes peering down into the contents, still without any acknowledgement that Hermione was in the same room.
There was a heavy sinking sensation distributed throughout her chest and stomach as she sat watching him.
This would be goodbye. One last, wordless treatment; he'd move her back into her room, and that would be the last time she ever saw him alone.
Of course he would make it like that.
Snape had never bothered with seeing graduating students off. He was never going to come to the Burrow to visit her or attend Harry's wedding. She couldn't imagine him inquiring into which hospice she had been sent to once she was nearly dead.
Which was fine.
It was preferable for his last memories of her to be when she still had a bit of life left.
She drew a deep breath and looked up to find him frozen over the cauldron, staring at her. His mouth opened as though he'd started to speak and then stopped himself before any sound had emerged.
"You aren't taking the potions any longer," he finally said.
She nodded in acknowledgment. It had been obvious that she wasn't, so it was clearly not what he'd intended to say.
"I'm saving them. There are a few things I think they'll be useful for. The wedding. And I'm—" she swallowed and forced a smile, blinking, "—they're naming a sub-branch of the Ministry after me. I'm going to cut a ribbon for it."
She made her voice to brighten as though it was funny. "You were right—everyone's going to forget what an insufferable know-it-all I was." Her chest spasmed. "In a few years—I won't be anything but a sanitised little war-heroine."
Her throat felt thick, and she looked determinedly at the wall over his shoulder as tears pricked her eyes. She wouldn't cry. She refused to.
He stood staring at her for a long time without blinking, his stirring rod still held in mid-air.
Hermione looked down, clearing her throat. The sound seemed to startle him from his reverie.
He set the stirring rod down and extinguished the flame under the cauldron before walking around the worktop and stopping only a few inches away from her.
Hermione stared up at him, and he inhaled, nostrils flaring.
Then he abruptly sat down on the stool beside her, picked up her left hand, and held it in both of his, his thumb rubbing across the back of her hand. Hermione looked up at him with a fragile sense of expectancy. Her stomach fluttered when he avoided her eyes and stared down at her arm.
"I did not select and recommend clinics for you without careful consideration," he said at last in an entirely measured and detached voice.
Hermione's heart sank, and she almost pulled her hand away. He seemed to sense it, and his fingers tightened.
"I realise that you hoped I would provide a cure while you remained at Hogwarts, and I have been—unable to do so. However, I do not give professional recommendations lightly. It is my belief that you could survive and recover from the curse if you would consider what I've advised."
Hermione started to open her mouth, but Severus doggedly continued.
"Their morbidity and mortality statistics may not be ideal, but they are the best of the options available, and any choice"—he emphasised the word heavily—"would have a more positive outcome than waiting to die."
Hermione opened her mouth again, but he still didn't appear to notice.
"I have endeavored to be understanding of the emotional and physical toll of your condition"—his mouth was twisted in a strange way that gave the impression that he was enjoying his speech about as much one would enjoy a tooth-extraction—"however, it is short-sighted to resign yourself with death because you chose the undue strain of remaining a full-time graduating student at Hogwarts. I—regret that I did not advise your immediate withdrawal when your condition was discovered. However, this is not and has never been a personal recommendation. I am not advising you on the basis of any personal preference; I strongly believe you could survive and recover if you would consider my professional advice on this matter."
There was a long pause, the speech apparently concluded.
Hermione felt as though there were a stone lodged in her throat as she firmly pulled her hand free from him.
"I don't want to go to America, Severus. I am perfectly aware that my odds of survival are better if I pursue a cure than if I don't," she said, her voice even as she forced herself to mirror his detached tone.
His expression instantly grew black.
"I don't want to go," she said again, her voice shaking slightly. "It doesn't matter how professional your opinion and advice is; I don't have any intention of ever going abroad to try to find a cure."
"Why—" his words were slow, seething and incredulous "—not?"
His expression spoke volumes; he was staring down at her as though she were an idiotic child, too stupid to even comprehend the situation.
Hermione jerked her chin up and met his eyes. She stood up sharply, unable to calmly sit beside him any longer. "Because I don't want to die alone, Severus! That—that's the most likely outcome of all; no matter where I go, I'll probably die there. All the—all the family I've got left is here, and at least—if I stay in England, they'll be there—when I—" her mouth twisted "—when I go."
Her voice nearly failed her as she said the last word. She drew a ragged breath and turned on her heel, rushing out the door.
She walked rapidly down the empty corridor, biting her lip savagely to maintain her composure as she headed towards the library. She made it halfway there before suddenly changing her mind.
She went outside.
There were other students in the courtyard, and Hermione hesitated as she caught sight of them. The adrenaline rush that had prompted her flight was already fading.
She was so tired.
She stood wavering in the doorway before cutting right and descending the narrow steps leading to the harbor where the First Years banked after sailing across the Lake from Hogsmeade Station. The little boats were all pulled up the shore and lay upturned on the pebbly beach.
Hermione peered up at the towering castle behind her. The stone walls were reddish in the light of the summer sunset.
She sat gingerly on the hull of one of the little boats. It seemed so much smaller than she remembered in First Year.
Sitting in the boat as an eleven year old, she'd been sure that Hogwarts was the beginning of everything for her. A place of her own where she'd be accepted, and all her oddness would be regarded as special rather than other.
Not so special though, in the end.
Still "other."
Always a little out of place, no matter which world she chose.
The Black Lake was smooth and clear as glass, and Hermione sat still as a statue, looking at it.
The world would keep turning when she was gone. A new school year. New students ferried across the lake. A new class for Severus to glower at as he said, "You are here to learn the subtle science and exact art of potion-making."
Harry would be married. Maybe someday he'd have a daughter and name her "Hermione."
A second daughter most likely.
He'd be sure to name his first daughter after his mum. Or he'd use Hermione as a middle name.
She was always going to come second to Lily Potter.
She gave a little choke of laughter and then burst into tears.
She buried her face in her hands and sobbed and sobbed until she couldn't breathe, and she felt as though she'd wept out every drop of emotion inside her body.
Except her rage. She never, ever seemed to stop being angry.
Her chest hitched and stuttered as she sat, wiping away her tears and then crying more after she'd thought she was done.
She slipped off the boat onto the pebbled beach and sat with her knees drawn up, resting her head on them as she kept gasping sobs and trying to breathe.
Finally, when she had a headache from it and felt so drained she thought she might faint, she stopped.
Her arm was throbbing; sharp, needle-like searing radiated with every pulse of her heart, and she peeled off the bandages to stare at it.
It was no longer cruel and reddish. The curse had bleached her blood into almost clear liquid. The cuts were pale, barely pinkish white.
Mudblood.
It was an ironic side-effect for Bellatrix to have turned her blood translucent. Not muddy at all.
Or maybe it had been intention. Pure blood to kill her.
She pulled fresh gauze out of her pocket and pressed it against the cuts, resting her hand against them for several minutes, and waiting for the pain to subside before she wrapped fresh bandages around her arm.
As she was tucking the end of the bandages neatly above her elbow, she heard the crunching sound of gravel underfoot and looked to find Severus at the bottom of the stairs, staring across the beach towards her.
She pulled her sleeve down over her arm and sat looking back at him on the dimming shore.
His mouth was pursed, and after a minute he walked across and stopped beside her.
"A privacy charm may be advisable in the future," he said. "This is a visible beach."
Hermione blinked and looked away, staring across the lake. Her eyes were sore from crying, and it was growing colder. She could feel the wet spots her tears had left on her shirt and skirt.
"I'll be gone soon. It will hardly matter."
Severus sighed, and the gravel cracked under his shoes as he shifted his weight. "Your friends wouldn't go with you?"
Hermione licked her lips and continued looking out across the placid, darkening water. "Harry's getting married to Ginny this autumn. Marrying her is everything he's ever wanted. And Ron's—" her voice trailed off, and she was quiet for a moment. "He tends to disappear—when things are too much for him. He doesn't—" she swallowed. "He doesn't always last in a long haul. He's still having a hard time with Fred's death. I think he'd find a reason to leave—if it got difficult."
She drew a quick breath and looked down. "I would probably be difficult."
"You haven't asked any of them," Severus said.
It was an observation, not a question.
"No," she said, her voice calm. "I don't want to ask anyone to upend their life and go with me for some indefinite amount of time in order to potentially just—" her stomach twisted into a painful knot, "—watch me die."
Severus was silent for several seconds.
"I don't recall you having any objection to doing the equivalent for Mr Potter."
Hermione pressed her lips together and looked up, meeting his eyes. "He didn't ask. I offered."
"Ah," was all Severus said as he stared down at her.
Hermione forced a thin smile and nodded. "Yes."
She stood up, straightened her robes, and started towards the steps. She was halfway across the beach when Severus spoke again.
"That is the hill you intend to die on?" His voice was barely more than a whisper, but laced with enough acid to sink into her bones. "Asking. You'd sooner waste away and die in a hospice while your 'family' weeps over you fading corpse than ask anyone to go with you?"
Hermione froze and turned. He was standing beside the boat, glaring at her with a venomous expression on his face.
It seemed his rage had finally returned.
She felt too drained from crying to muster much of a response.
She shrugged a shoulder and looked down. "Dying is my most likely end no matter where I go or who is or isn't with me. I could drag Harry and Ron across the Atlantic with me. They'd go if I asked them to." She looked up and met his eyes. "They would. They'd follow me anywhere I asked them to go—if I asked. They'd sit by me, smiles plastered on their faces, and keep telling me I'm going to survive because I'm a fighter and that they know I'll never give up. And—and they'd keep saying it, and saying it to me until I'm dead."
She released a heavy breath, shaking her head. "That's not how I want to go. I don't want to tell everyone there's a chance again when there really isn't. I don't have the energy to be hopeful anymore." She gave a dry, mirthless laugh. "Maybe I'm just less of a fighter than everyone thinks I am, but I'm done now. I ran out of fight months ago."
Severus' expression didn't soften in the slightest. Her stomach twisted in a guilty knot.
She sighed. "When I—" her words broke off. "When you changed your mind about—" she paused, not sure what she could call their affair, "—about our—"
She didn't want to call it anything.
"When you changed your mind about us, I assumed it was because I was someone who didn't require any kind of commitment on your part, and that was why you changed your mind." She looked down at her shoes, swallowing. "And—and that was fine; because I didn't expect to be here long enough to mind it." She sighed. "I didn't realise that you expected me to survive."
She drew a deep breath. "I know this feels like—I realise now that you—"
She balled her hands into fists until she could feel her nails biting into her palms.
"I'm not—" The words caught in her throat, her tongue curdling in her mouth. "I'm not Lily Potter," she finally said.
A breeze swept across the lake as she said it, cutting through her clothes and whipping her hair across her face.
The rage emanating from Severus suddenly sharpened and grew icy.
"No. You are not." His voice was not soft; it was rasping and deathly cold.
His tone sent a shiver through her gut and her skin prickled, but Hermione squared her shoulders and brushed her hair back from her face as she met his enraged eyes.
"I'm not," she said, her voice steady. "I'm not anything like her, not really. I'm Hermione Granger, and you've never liked me. If I wasn't 'a tragically young and bright Muggle-born witch dying before her time', you'd remember that. You'll realise again someday, I'm not ever going to be the person you lo—"
Severus' expression grew so dangerous that Hermione's voice died in her throat.
"Lost," she said instead.
She inhaled. "No matter what happens, you won't bring back the person you actually want."
There. She'd said it.
He stood frozen for another moment, staring at her. His face was growing steadily pale with rage. When he finally spoke, his lip curled. "Do you think that because Potter was without even the slightest sense of consideration that you now have a right to claim knowledge and understanding of me, or my past?"
He drew herself up like a serpent readying to strike. His rage was explosive. "You're no different than he is. Another self-absorbed, self-righteous Gryffindor. It's a pity I failed to realise it sooner." He sneered, his eyes cruel and burning. "I would never have wasted a moment of my time on you. You certainly weren't worth any of it."
His words struck hard; burrowing into her chest as though each word were a piece of shrapnel.
Her throat closed, and she stared at him wide-eyed as the blood drained from her face.
He glared at her, his face pale and his eyes radiating malice.
He didn't look down or away as if he had any slight or belated sense of regret for saying it to her.
Hermione slowly nodded.
"I'm sorry then." Her voice was barely more than a whisper. "I really am. You're right, I should have withdrawn from the beginning."
There was nothing else to say.
She didn't stay and wait for him to verbally flay her further. She turned, moving slowly across the beach towards the castle, where the burnished stone walls were fading in the dusk.
Her jaw and hands were trembling uncontrollably as she looked up at the winding steps. It was going to be such a long walk up to the courtyard and back to her room. Longer than she thought she could manage.
Perhaps she'd go stay in the hospital ward until departure on Saturday morning. Madam Pomfrey would let her have a bed. No Severus. No Leaving Feast. No speeches.
She moved forward, feeling as though there were a hollow carved in the centre of her chest as she tried to breathe.
At least she wouldn't have to live with this new wound for long.
She'd expected he'd say something awful if they finally fought, but hearing it was worse than she'd imagined. Or maybe she cared more than she'd been willing to admit to herself.
It didn't really matter. Either way, it was all over now.
"Wait."
Severus' voice interrupted her when she was nearing the stone steps.
She ignored him.
He'd made his attempts. He'd tried to manipulate her, to argue with her, and to shame and insult her into cooperation.
Now he was just angry.
She didn't want to hear what else he could say about her. She was sure there were all kinds of cruel things he could think to say now. She didn't want to know what they all were.
"Wait!" His voice was forceful.
She kept walking.
She just needed to reach the hospital.
"Hermione…" his voice was fractured and rasping, "wait. Please."
Hermione stopped mid-stride at the sound of her name and turned before she could stop herself. He was coming quickly across the beach towards her, his face still pale.
There was a raw and desperate ravenousness in his expression that she'd never seen before.
"If... I went with you," he asked, "would you go?"
"No," she said immediately, without letting herself even consider it.
He didn't pause at her answer. He kept coming towards her, his footsteps rapid and his expression growing more intent.
"No," she said again, her voice more controlled. "I don't want you to. I would never ask that."
Severus continued to move towards her, his expression unyielding.
"I'm offering." His voice was quiet but unrelenting.
She backed away, her foot finding the first step as he closed in on her. She backed up the steps and he followed her.
"No. Don't…." she finally managed to say, the words vibrating with hurt. She tried to push him away, her voice growing vicious. "Don't offer! I don't need you to waste more of your time on me."
"Hermione." He caught her by the upper arm, his fingers wrapping firmly around her arms as she tried to pull away. Their faces were almost perfectly level. "Hermione..."
"Don't—" she said again, her voice shaking. "Don't you dare do this now. I can't—"
His gaze was fastened on her, and he drew her forward to the edge of the step.
The rest of the words caught in her throat.
His expression was intent and predatory. He had that hungry look of determination she'd come to recognise. His fingers curled possessively around her shoulders, and he pulled her even closer.
The gesture was unmistakably intimate as they stood halfway up the steps.
Anyone could see them.
She tried to pull away, but his hold tightened, his thumbs caressing her shoulders as he refused to let her go, pulling her back.
"Hermione," he said again. His voice sounded dragged from the depths. "I am offering. I do think you can still survive this curse. I believe that."
His black eyes were bright with intensity as he spoke. He was gripping her in that desperate, covetous way of his, drawing her closer and closer.
Anyone who bothered to look down towards the beach would see Hermione in his arms and the open, starved expression on his face.
He wasn't even trying to be careful.
It was as if he didn't care at all about being fired, about the scandal being seen could cause, about the damage it could do to his reputation.
"No..." She shook her head, trying to draw back. "Severus, I'm not Lil—"
"I know who you are." He pulled her even closer, his eyes wide and anguished, locked on her face.
"Please, Hermione," he said. His voice was low and strained but still forceful with longing. He rested his forehead against hers for a moment as his hands slid up her shoulders and cradled her face. He drew back just enough to study her. "I cannot lose you. Please. Let me go with you. I am offering."
Hermione stared at him, her heart pounding and her arm nearly numb with pain. Her chest felt compressed until she couldn't manage to speak.
She tried to say his name again, but her voice failed. He was gripping possessively, his expression half-mad with desperation.
She inhaled unsteadily and managed to nod.
Severus' face broke with relief.
"Yes," she finally managed to say, her voice shaking. "Yes. I'll go with you."
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