Extensive author's notes at the end of this chapter.

- - -

CHAPTER EIGHT

Wilt Thou forgive that sin where I begun,

Which was my sin, though it were done before?

Wilt Thou forgive that sin, through which I run,

And do run still, though still I do deplore?

When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done,

For I have more.

--John Donne

- - -

The next few weeks were like a dream. Snape moved through the days as though in a fog, in a surreal fantasy at once bizarre and colored with an old sweetness, like old sepia photographs and slow music.

After a considerable exertion of effort on Hermione's part, he was allowed to move to the school infirmary mere days after his first waking. For some time however he did have her all to himself. In those first sweet days in the hospital he drifted in and out of sleep as he recovered, and grew used to waking up, with a start, to the sight of her with head pillowed on folded arms resting on his mattress.

As she dozed there on the side of the bed, she was so near that he could have reached out and, taking in hand a stray curl, kissed it. He spared a thought for the poor state of her schooling and the probably worse state of her back, but all the same he allowed himself to feel a sort of selfishness in keeping her near. Nobody had ever done anything remotely like this for him, before.

Sometimes he watched her until she woke up and stretched slowly, like a kitten, before sparing him a bleary smile. Other times, he woke and saw her, and allowed himself to fall back into sleep. Nearly forty years had passed since he had felt loved in any measure, and with the security of a small child he slept on, warmed by the soft fire that burned in the corner of the room and by her closeness. Despite the lingering pain of his injuries he lay in the cocoon of warm dreams, happy. Safe.

- - -

When he was finally moved to the school infirmary, the Deputy Headmistress wouldn't hear of Hermione's missing more classes. While he recovered his strength, his wife slipped him the journals and books he favored. Like Snape's copy of The Innocence of Father Brown, these were stuffed hurriedly beneath the stiff infirmary mattress whenever McGonagall's or Pomfrey's footsteps neared the enclosure wherein lay his bed.

Hermione herself spent what seemed to be every spare moment in the infirmary. He wondered if she even had the time to talk to her friends or to do anything with them. It gave him an embarrassing start to see her back in her uniform the first time, and her answering smile—which was almost mischievous—made him uneasy.

She brought her homework with her and, shoes abandoned, crossed her stockinged legs beneath her on the arm chair; with the quill he had given her held in one hand, she read her essays to him out loud, so he could poke fun at their length and at the dangling modifiers that sometimes found their way into the paragraphs. Without his knowledge she spoke to the house-elves and instructed them to bring her dinner to the infirmary, so she could eat with him in a curious parody of the stilted dinners they had once shared.

She spoke to him gently, and—with a generosity he had never before seen—brushed away his acrid comments and bursts of annoyance with nothing more than an exasperated sigh and a renewed smile. Even when the pain behind his head was the worst—for that was when he said the most terrible things—she merely continued reading from Potions Monthly with nary a grumble or a wince or a grimace.

"You insufferable child!" he found himself hissing one time. The painkillers were wearing off and Poppy was nowhere to be found.

"You contradict yourself," she said, reaching out to a bowl of newly-harvested strawberries from Pomona's special-conditions greenhouse.

"What can you possibly mean?" he had growled.

"You say I'm insufferable," she said. Then she looked at him directly, and smiled. "And yet here you are," she added softly. "Suffering me."

- - -

It gave him a start to realize that these days were beginning to resemble that short time after their marriage, when they had been in Italy. He wondered how long it would be before the bubble burst.

Daily he wondered at her devotion. He wished that he could forget It, but behind every smile and every sweet word lay the shadow of that memory that he could not banish, and while he sometimes returned her smiles and allowed himself to relax with her, he thought of it always. It kept his feet on the ground—it kept him from hoping too much, and it kept his tongue sharp when he dealt with her. He wondered if she could be as happy as she was pretending to be. More than ever his failure to perfect his plan pressed upon him, and he felt as though he had been cheated. Two wars, innumerable attempts on his life, one marriage and one suicide attempt later, he was still here, a terror to his students, an annoyance to many, and a trial to his wife.

- - -

He had never spent so much time asleep. There had always been a war to fight, classes to teach, a master to serve, a potion to make. Now there was peacetime (or what passed for it while renegade Death-Eaters were rampant), a substitute teacher, a wife who for the moment demanded nothing, and a laboratory that his wife had sealed and swore she wouldn't unlock for the next two months. Kingsley Shacklebolt occasionally stopped by, perhaps out of some sense of obligation, to tell Snape about the progress being made in clearing the streets of the Death-Eaters, who were presumably led by Malfoy Senior.

During those times he (Snape) feared for Hermione. He was afraid that she would never be safe—would always need protection. Even the hospital room at St Mungo's had been heavily warded, and guarded by two house-elves. Sleep allowed him to keep his uneasiness at bay.

He dreamed more vividly than he had before his Attempt (as Hermione called it.). Perhaps it was because he was no longer exhausted. He felt like he was making up for the missed sleep of forty years. His dreams were filled with memories of a life before Voldemort, and occasionally with fantasies.

Their wedding had been a short affair. Her parents had been present, and they and the Headmaster were the only two witnesses in a small ceremony held in a nondescript parish near the Grangers' dental practice. She looked like she had been crying the night before. He couldn't blame her. Despite the fact that he could have done very much worse than marry an intelligent, reasonably attractive, engaging girl, he felt his life again spinning out of control. Where he had once been bound to Voldemort and then to Albus Dumbledore, he was now indentured in service and fidelity to a wife half his age and for whose happiness and security he would be responsible.

She wore a white dress. He thought she looked very pretty. He wore a suit that made him resemble an undertaker, and they stood, two mismatched figures before the altar. He could easily imagine that it would bear little resemblance to what her fantasies of a wedding must have been, and there was so little that he could do to fix that except buy her the best engagement and wedding rings he could find. He remembered putting her wedding band on her finger—feeling her hand limp in his as he put his ring there, promising her more than he had ever promised anyone else, even including the two wizards he had given the power to dictate his life.

Afterwards they drove home to the Granger household in a car resembling a hearse, with Dr Granger at the wheel and Dr (Mrs) Granger up front, dabbing at the tears that flowed steadily from the brown eyes that her daughter had inherited. Dumbledore sat placidly at the window, and Snape was crushed between the Headmaster and the new Madame Granger, long legs folded to fit in the car and wishing that he could find a beach, somewhere, and bury himself in the sand and never come out. Hermione herself had the other window seat. She was watching the scenery whip by the window, and as he gazed out over her shoulder to see the pastel-painted houses, picket fences and the little children tripping over their feet in the garden, he wondered what she saw.

He came back to that image often, in his mind—Hermione in a wedding dress, looking more miserable than he had ever seen her. In his dreams he crafted a fantasy from those vague memories.

In this, one of his favorite dreams—also one of the most bizarre—he was still looking at her looking out the window. But the windows were open and it was warm outside, and he was in the driver's seat and she beside him, like the Drs Granger had been.

Perhaps, looking out as she had at the normal Muggle streets of people living normal Muggle lives, she had found herself wishing that she could forget magic. Sometimes he wished the same thing.

In the dream he drove—though in real life he wouldn't have had the first idea how—on some unknown country side, in sunny weather and yellow soil. He stole looks at her, his lovely wife. She was wearing her Muggle clothes and everything was perfectly natural. No marriage laws. No magic except the sweetness between them. Occasionally she touched his knee. Once in a while he let one hand fall from the steering wheel, and he would—for in his dreams he was very brave—take her hand in his. There was soft music from the car radio. It was her music—the kind that was usually abrasive to his ears, full of guitars and cryptic words. But how could he care about something like that? Not when she was with him, not with her hand cradled in his.

Dreaming, after all, was free.

- - -

Eventually he was moved to his rooms. Time for Snape had blurred into sleep and dreams and fantasies and Hermione's visits, which were what filled his day. His body, recovering from a magical operation, was sapped of all energy and once she left his presence he allowed himself to go back to sleep, with no strength (and no motivation) to remain awake when she was gone. He did not know what day it was when Pomfrey helped him out of the hospital bed, into the floo and into his sitting room, and then his bed chamber. Where he might once have felt uncomfortable at having Poppy see where he slept, he was not even a little bothered.

He woke up to the sound of humming—endearingly off-key—and the sight of his wife sitting in a chair and bending over to reach her feet so she could remove her shoes. It was odd to see her against the dark woods and blue wallpaper of his room. She wasn't aware of his waking. When she straightened and met his eye she gave a start, and blushed a brilliant crimson.

"Sorry I woke you up," she said. It was so good to see her, even if it was in the lonely light of a solitary burning lamp.

"No need to be sorry," he said thickly. His throat was often dry.

As if in an attempt to regain her composure Hermione smoothed her skirt before him and managed to fit a petulant look on her pink face. "They didn't even tell me they would move you today," she said, sounding extremely put out. "I got to the infirmary and you weren't there. They might have thought to spare me the horror of imagining that something had… happened… to you."

The dinner bell rang and she stayed where she was. He waited for her to abandon her chair but when for two minutes she remained unmoving, he found the courage to ask, "Aren't you going to have dinner upstairs?"

She looked surprised. "No," she said slowly. "I was planning to have it here." An uncomfortably pregnant pause. "I'd hoped you wouldn't mind," she added, speaking quickly, after a few moments.

His heart was heavy. She had once called herself a burden to him but now the tables had been turned; for the moment he was an invalid and she was the wife who felt compelled to nurse him, because she knew that if she didn't, no one would. He wondered if it was a sense of compassion that pushed her to spend her afternoons and evenings beside him in the infirmary and now in his rooms, or if it was that dirty thing, guilt—guilt over her sin, a shared guilt over his. In his attempt to spare her any obligation to him, he had instead bound her further, trespassing on her time and patience.

He felt the pain in the back of his head throbbing silently, but he couldn't let her see because she would fuss and worry.

"You don't really have to do this anymore, you know," he said stiffly and gruffly—although he hadn't meant to sound that way—from his position among the piled pillows.

"I know that," she said. "I want to."

His head throbbed, throbbed, throbbed. Why did she have to make things so difficult? Why couldn't she just understand what he was trying to say and leave?

"Don't be ridiculous." Inexorably the words exited his mouth, and with each one he saw her face getting whiter. "Why are you even pretending? Where is your honesty? You do not want to be here. You don't want to be in these cold dungeons when you could be outside. You don't want to sit here trying half-heartedly to entertain me with your contrived stories and with articles you don't half-understand—neglecting your studies and alienating your peers when you could be elsewhere. You must be looking forward to having some time with your little… friends."

It needed to be said. He needed to let her know she wasn't tied to him.

He imagined—a large part of him hoped—that she would brush aside his comment and whip out a book from somewhere on her person and begin to read, huffing, all the while, about how he wasn't all right and how she wasn't about to allow her husband to recuperate on his own. She was very stubborn. But--

"Oh," she said. She sounded hurt, and the corners of her mouth turned downward. She felt, seemingly blindly, for her shoes and slipped them on hurriedly. "Oh. All right, then."

- - -

He found that sleep took care of a lot of things. In the silence that followed her swift departure from his room he felt the ache of regret. Could she still doubt him? Could she possibly believe that in telling her that she was free, he meant to say that her company was not welcome? Had it been his tone, his manner of speaking? Had she thought that he was referring to what happened between her and the Potter boy? More than ever he was arrested by regret—regret for the way he was, regret for the way he behaved toward her before they were married, regret for his seeming inability to change his horrific personality despite his desperate desire to do so. His own words rang in his ears and he experienced a regurgitation of misery.

He was so sick of the tangle that his emotions—once so easy to ignore—had become after his marrying. It was sometimes startling to discover that there was someone, a person, who could get hurt by the things that he said, and that there was someone who had the same power over him as well. He was also startled by the fact that he could love her and at the same time want to shake her for her stupidity.

He was most startled by the fact that, as brave as he had been before—as brave as he had been in fighting off Dementors and waging war against the Dark Lord and against the various assaults he had suffered for years—that he couldn't find the courage to tell his wife—anything.

What was he afraid of? Her rejection? He had had that. Her condemnation? He had resigned himself to that—not only that his act of cowardice might impel her to be repulsed by the pathetic quality of his sorrow, but also that in sinning the way he had, he might cultivate more of her disgust. Her pity? He had that, and he knew it. Even though she herself was not a shining beacon of perfection, she was in the perfect position to pity him in the way people couldn't help feeling sorry for a suicides in the news.

Turning to the wall and touching once again the stone divider, he decided not to face his demons, and slept.

He was woken by the sound of her sobbing, so different from the happy, tuneless humming of earlier. When they were newly married he had heard the same sound once or twice, and he had done nothing then.

Now he drew himself out of bed, ignoring the reminders that rang in his ears—don't attempt to leave your bed except for the bath, conserve your strength, move slowly. Feeling the strength slowly drain from him as he did so, he Summoned his cane from the side of the chair on which she had seated herself. He hobbled to the door, painfully, pathetically. He could hear her crying the whole time.

It was a small eternity before he could finally fling open the door to her room. She was sitting up, the covers in disarray around her and the fire in the hearth dead, leaving the room in almost total darkness. He could see the outline of her, knees drawn up to her chest and face hidden in the tangle of her arms and disheveled hair. She didn't lift her head when he came staggering in, leaning nearly all his weight on the cane. He was wheezing for breath while she sobbed without restraint. He fell gracelessly in front of her on the bed, taking her bare arms in his hands and asking her, "What is the matter? What is the matter?"

She shook her head violently, her curls flung wildly in every direction. "A nightmare," she gasped between sobs. "I had a nightmare."

He touched her knee uncertainly, and as though galvanized into motion she leapt into the circle of his arms, knocking the wind out of him.

"It's over now," he said, gasping, because that was the only thing he could think to say. It was the only thing he managed to tell himself when he woke from his own nightmares, shaking and drenched in cold sweat. She was so young. She shouldn't have had to go through nightmares alone and comfortless, and he sought to offer what he could, ignoring the pounding of his heart and the strong dull ache of his head injury. "It's over," he repeated. His arms were around her, and she was so warm beneath her clothes.

"I'm so sorry," she said, her voice muffled. She kissed his neck moistly, and he was warm all over. He felt her breath on his skin, and the wetness of her tears there. "You do know that I'm sorry? You do believe me?"

"Of course," he said over the noise of her violent sobbing, even though he wasn't entirely certain what she was talking about. He was frantically rubbing her back, wishing her shoulders would stop shaking.

"I was sure it was my fault," she whispered. "I was responsible. How could I have known I would make you do that? I'm sorry!"

His blood ran cold.

His heart pounded, and it had nothing to do with the exertion of coming to her room. He felt an agonizing wave of self-disgust wash over him. He gathered her closer. He spoke in broken sentences—"Not your fault," "Just a nightmare," "Back to sleep," "Stay with me."

If he had had the strength he would have carried her back to his bed but as it was they made their way to his room, supporting each other, both shaking—she still with tears and a half-remembered nightmare that he would never know, he with the exertion. His cane clattered noisily to the floor as they fell into bed together and she curled up immediately, facing him, still crying. With all his strength he drew her nearer to the headboard so she could rest her head on a pillow, and he watched her—keeping space between them—as she hiccupped and cried her way to a restless sleep.

He had made her responsible for his happiness, and he saw that in her eyes—given what had happened, what he had attempted to do—she was responsible for his life as well. He knew well the excruciating crush of guilt, and her faithlessness had made her guilty; he had never thought that he would be adding to that guilt by attempting to take his own life. The sin that he had thought was solely his gripped her as well. He saw now how horrified she must have been, and what an unbearable burden it must have been for her, a young girl not even out of school, to know that she had been responsible for a man's life—that she had been responsible for his trying to take it. He wished that he could spare her the guilt, but most of all—most fervently of all—he wished, futilely, that guilt would not color everything that happened between them.

Eventually he fell into sleep as well, and when he woke up in the morning, she was not there.

- - -

(end of chapter)

I post this chapter with a special dedication to Whitehound and duj, the first two reviewers of the previous chapter. That theirs were sensible reviews that weren't foaming at the mouth—and that the reviews came from authors I long admired—went some way toward helping me get over my nervousness over posting chapter 7. Of course all reviews are equally important and are received with equal gratitude, so sincere thanks for remaining faithful readers and reviewers, to those who have made it this far; you have made writing "Poison" so rewarding, despite my hesitations and despite the fact that it's the hardest story I've ever had to finish.

I've been thinking of the number of misunderstandings that these two—Mr and Mrs Snape—seem to get into. The only thing I can offer in explanation is that art imitates life. And that crippling self-doubt accounts for a lot.

This chapter owes credit to the video for Norah Jones' "Come Away with Me." Also, when choosing quotations for a chapter, I'm usually extremely careful in looking for something appropriate. The poem quoted above was so fitting that I actually built the latter part of this chapter around it.

"While it was immature of her to think that putting on the locket would fix everything, Snape didn't realize that, to her, it was a proclimation of their future, together, that, for Hermione, she would dedicate herself to their marriage, no matter how unhappy or happy it would be." This is from one of my reviewers (T). Spot on (except that there was no locket and only a chain), and congratulations for putting so well what took me two chapters to convey. Fifty points to the house of your choice.

And finally: as predicted, I got a few foaming-at-the-mouth reviewers for the last chapter. Shrug Sorry, I'm not changing a word. I'd like to please my readers, but not to the point that I'm going to change something that… well, it's not exactly integral to the story, but it is something that makes it a little richer for me. So for the sake of my integrity—I am not after all a writer of made-to-order stories, as one reviewer implied that I should be—I'm going to risk a few bad reviews and keep things as they are, thanks very much. To those who found chapter seven repugnant: you are very free to escort yourselves to the "back" button and to other HP stories, or to pretend that chapter 7 and the subsequent chapters never existed and enjoy chapters one to six in all their dubious (and religionless) glory. To those who are sticking around: thank you very much :D