Chapter 5: The Newness of Feeling

Hermione opened her eyes slowly, mostly due to the fact that her head felt as though it were splitting in two. Her vision swum in front of her and she blinked several times to try and clear her head. Someone was snoring and Hermione couldn't help but feel annoyed at how the sound was doing nothing for her horrid headache.

She couldn't recall what she'd been doing before falling asleep, but whatever it had been, it had obviously taken a lot out of her. And why was she so bloody warm?!

"Oof!" Something heavy and furry pressed against her belly and Hermione's eyes went wide as she turned her head and stared into the furry leonine face of a sleeping manticore.

'No. not just a manticore. Professor Snape's in there somewhere,' she thought, clamping her mouth shut.

Her memory began to come back to her in fits and spurts. She was almost certain that he'd bitten her. Why, then, was she still alive? For a moment, Hermione felt almost disappointed. She should be dead, and yet here she was, in the land of the living. It almost seemed unfair.

There was very little light shining through the tall, high windows above what appeared to be a very cozy, manticore-shaped nest. The walls were draped with sashes that had been twisted and moved around in a rather haphazard fashion. From the generous number of teeth marks in the fabric, Hermione could tell that Snape had done so while in manticore form. The smaller, rounded walls of the room itself made Hermione think of a tower, which made a lot of sense since she'd already surmised that she was inside of a castle.

All manner of pillows and mattresses and textiles from tablecloths to bedsheets had been strewn about on the floor by paws and teeth and hooves until the entire room resembled a huge, messy bed. Which, Hermione supposed, it was.

A quick glance toward the gaping hole in the door eaten away by caustic saliva and sheer brute strength made her heart leap with momentary hope of escape, but then she realized she still had to deal with the hundred or so pounds of manticore paw that was pinning her down into the soft layers below her.

She looked around for something to pry it off of her and then attempted to wiggle down into the pile of bedclothes with little success. Just as she was about to give up trying for stealth and simply yank his mane until he awoke, a strange hissing noise cut through the silence.

Hermione watched with shock as the body of the Manticore blurred and slowly receded into the air, leaving a very thin and very naked sleeping Snape with an arm around Hermione. When she looked up, though, she nearly gasped. Greenish-black smoke shaped like the Dark Mark hovered over them, a smoky snake curling out of an equally smoky skull. After a short time, it seemed to lose its shape and began to sink at an alarming speed, much of it blasting into Hermione's face. She gagged and tried to cover her eyes, but the smoke found its way inside her ears and nose as well like a living thing. She could feel it pouring down her throat and filling her belly until she felt like she would burst.

Her body throbbed with a strange, almost ticklish sensation for a few moments before dissipating again.

Hermione looked down at her body, her breathing erratic with dread. Would she become a monster too? Would the unknown substance kill her? As the minutes ticked on and Hermione found herself still very much alive, she found herself staring at Snape's emaciated body. He would never be muscular despite the bulk he gained while transformed, that much was evident. His wiry frame and many silvery scars accentuated this fact, and Hermione realized that much of the paunch she'd perceived earlier had been more due to his ill-fitting clothing and the proximity to his transformation than anything else. He was still very thin and looked rather underfed by the pinched look to his cheeks and the dark rings under his eyes. Though she'd never be a Molly Weasley, she found herself wanting to provide him with a personal feast worth of food

Still, she wondered how he'd found himself with such an "illness." She'd watch Nagini tear out his throat and the silvery scar under his prominent Adam's Apple was proof that it had been as dire as it had seemed. Though the scar had lightened over time, Hermione could still see where the frayed edges of flesh had hung, shredded and imbued with deadly venom. It was not a beautiful mark, but somehow it made Hermione feel an intimate sense of empathy and she wondered how he'd survived against all odds. With that thought, though, a sense of guilt filled her as she remembered just how grateful she'd been to leave the Shack without checking on him. She'd taken Harry at his word, and though she knew now that Snape had survived, the thought that she had failed to do something...anything...was nearly too much to bear.

Hermione was so focused on these morbid thoughts, that she nearly quite forgot that she was being semi-snuggled by a naked man until he began to stir against her.

"Mhmmmmmmm?" Hermione felt Snape's thin arms pull her closer to him and he smiled in his sleep. "Showwwwarm," he slurred, and Hermione was so surprised to see the grin that spread across his face that she didn't pull away. A strange sensation filled her belly, but it had been such a long time since last she'd experienced it that she dismissed the butterflies in her stomach as a lingering side effect of the smoke that had filled her body earlier.

"Wake up, er, please...sir?" Hermione asked, shaking his shoulder gently.

Snape yawned wide, giving Hermione a face full of morning breath with a hint of manticore, and opened his eyes slowly.

"Hrm?" He said foggily, his eyes suddenly going wide and his body tensing as he seemed to realize that the very disheveled Hermione in his arms was real. His eyebrows hit his hairline with surprise, and he froze, staring at her bug-eyed. Then he looked down at the uncovered bits of him that were pressing into Hermione's thigh and let out a scream that shook the room. He scrambled backwards as though he'd been burned by Hermione's skin and hastily grasped a pillow to put in front of his bits.

"Uh...hi?" Hermione said awkwardly. Though she understood his shock to some extent, she was a bit irritated at his extreme reaction to finding himself in close proximity to her. She crossed her arms and smirked, finding the image of an uncharacteristically panicked Snape rather amusing. "And here I was, thinking that I was the one who was supposed to be the one screaming at waking up next to a naked man."

"You...but...wha...how?!" Snape gestured wildly and then froze, covering his face with one hand for a long moment. He slid his hand down his face slowly, looking up at her with an unamused expression. "I was a manticore again, wasn't I?" he asked, deadpan.

"Yeah," Hermione replied, because she didn't really know what else to say to that.

"And...I apparently brought you here...as a manticore…" Snape's face was scarlet with embarrassment.

"You bit me, too," Hermione said, pointing at her shoulder. The fabric was torn, but not completely shredded. Oddly enough, as she ran her fingers against the damaged fabric, she couldn't feel the telltale wetness of blood soaking into the fabric or accompanying pain associated with a bite wound from a deadly monster.

"If that's true, you should be dead!" Snape exclaimed, his expression growing suspicious.

"I got better, apparently," Hermione replied with a shrug. After being chased and nearly mauled by a manticore, Snape's fierce demeanor wasn't the least bit intimidating.

"Wait...did you…" Snape had stomped over, the pillow still held in place over his nudity as he examined her shoulder with his free hand. "Did you see me transform?"

"Which time?" Hermione asked, unimpressed. "The time where you transformed and chased me out from under my sickbed or when I woke up to find I was being used as a stuffed animal for a giant, napping, murderous beast only to be choked by what I can only imagine is some sort of Death Eater gas?"

Snape suddenly had a strange, panicked look on his face, as he pulled back the fabric of her nightshirt, tearing it in his haste.

"Hey! What was that f-?!" Hermione froze, looking at her shoulder. Her eyes widened as she saw what he was pointing at. Her veins glowed green under her skin; the same color as the smoke that had poured down her throat.

"There's not much time to explain...I only get a short time in my...normal form, and there's only so much I've been able to figure out so far," Snape was checking his own arm, now, but Hermione couldn't see anything different about it. "Once your veins start to glow green, the change has already begun."

"What?!" Hermione's eyes widened with dawning horror. "You mean that I'm going to turn into...one of those things?!"

"It's not like I asked to be sick or for you to somehow catch it!" Snape hissed back, still looking at himself for signs of the change. "You can thank Nagini for that, may her soul burn in hell! The Malfoys' doctor said I healed so quickly after they brought me to him. I should have known it was too good to be true!"

"You mean you've been researching how to fix it? How were you able to buy this place to begin with if you're constantly turning into a monster?" Hermione thought back to Mimi and Charlotte. Were they helping Snape?

"The change has been getting worse. I'm spending more and more time...as a monster." Snape growled.

She looked down at the back of her hand and could see a nearly perfect outline of her veins lighting up under her skin.

"N...no, I…." Hermione shook her hands, as though this would stop it from snaking through her veins.

She froze as she felt a strange tickling sensation on her neck and she turned her head to find that Snape was sniffing her neck, his expression intense.

"What are you doing?"

Snape jumped back with a growl that sounded a bit less than human.

"Why do you smell so good?" he hissed back, his fingers digging into the pillow as though trying to keep it in his hand. "It's not as potent as it was a week ago but your scent is maddening."

Hermione stared at his almost-feral expression, her eyes traveling down to see the scars of varying sizes that wove the length of his naked body. Oddly enough, he didn't seem to mind her continued gaze as he had before, meeting her eyes with the steady darkness of his own. She could not say what drew her to him, but she could also not deny the truth of the strange throb that grew in her chest. She'd been so empty for so long.

So numb.

Hermione let out a soft noise almost like a sigh as his fingers nearly brushed against her skin. Her arm prickled, raising goosebumps, and she shivered. She practically hummed with the desire to feel it He was so close to her, suddenly, and though neither of them spoke, it was obvious that there was silent sense of urgency and an unexplained need filling the room. The beast struggled under her skin, wanting nothing more than to break free. It was alarming to see a light layer of fur growing on the back of her hand and down the length of her arm, but what was most alarming was the fact that she didn't mind it one bit.

It wasn't the cold, numb way she was used to things not mattering, that was for sure.

She sniffed the air cautiously. Snape,who seemed strangely unconcerned about his lack of clothing as she approached, stood unearthly still, his eyes locked on hers. At first she thought she was imagining it, but as she turned her head, she could smell a strange, earthy scent that made her momentarily feel as though she wanted to roll around on the ground like a dog. Actually, as she thought about it, she'd prefer to roll on him, if she was being honest. Snape was sniffing her neck again, his expression helpless, as though he was drawn to do it especially now that she was so close to him.

Hermione could feel the shift coming before it hit her, but she still wasn't ready for it when it finally came. She fell against Snape with a sharp cry of pain. In return, Snape let out a guttural moan in the back of his throat as his lips brushed against her neck due to her sudden movement. His arms shot out to steady her as she began to feel the monster awaken in her veins.

"Please," she whispered, before screaming at the sensation of her body abruptly rearranging and enlarging to an unnatural shape all at once.

As her mind went blank with the change and her clothing tore to pieces around her new body, she could hear him whispering "I'm so sorry...so sorry…" over and over again into her ear, his touch never leaving her.