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A/N: Yawn! I just checked again. No. I'm still not JK; sorry.
I am merely me; a flawed, frail, human being. If you find any mistakes herein, please try to remember that.
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CHAPTER 14: or; HEALING HERMIONE: Part One;
With a sharp 'clap' of Apparation echoing throughout the room, Severus Snape and Hermione Granger were instantly inside of an elegantly simple small walnut-panelled library within the South Wing of Malfoy Manor.
The floor-to-ceiling shelves surrounding the perimeter of the room were filled to running over with books and manuscripts of all types. A small fire burned cheerily in the hearth of a petite, carved marble, fireplace; all in all a room, that under different circumstances, Hermione should have loved to be inside of.
Severus immediately let go of the young witch who'd begun to suddenly and desperately struggle within his arms like a rather smelly slippery fish.
He walked over to a nearby cabinet, reached for a beautiful crystal decanter setting on top of it, and calmly poured himself a drink.
"Professor Snape?" Hermione softly whispered, swallowing hard. Her lips still burned with his unexpected kiss.
A kiss that had sent more electricity surging through her body than any brief snog she'd ever shared with anyone before; even the earthshaking kiss that had been the last one that she'd ever share with Ron.
Her heart thumped in a painful stacatto as it attempted to escape her chest. The Professor's kiss hadn't been merely earthshaking; it had been earthshattering. It had been a revelation.
It left her mind whirling in a hazy fog that she now mentally stumbled through.
Hermione was still processing all of the data that she'd gleaned from her recent evaluation before the Dark Lord; as she understood the general gist of it, she must now be in the unconscionable position of a slave.
Her former Professor's slave to be exact.
Those bottomless black eyes swivelled back in surprise to meet her honey-brown eyes at her form of respectful address. "Yes, Miss Granger?" he softly querried.
"Please sir," she hopefully began. "Let me go. I'll leave the country. I . . . I'll portkey to Australia or Canada. I'll never use magic again. I'll disappear back into the Muggle world somewhere far away. You can tell Voldemort that I bored or annoyed you and that you killed me . . . ," Hermione let her voice fade away into silence as his black eyebrow continued to rise higher in amused disbelief at each word that had tumbled so quickly from her mouth.
"The Master would expect to view the corpse, Miss Granger. Then, there is the distinct probability that he'd take exception to my so cavalierly disposing of his carefully chosen personal gift to me," his words, spoken so calmly, as if discussing the weather instead of her fate only added to the surrealism of the scene for Hermione.
Her teacher of the past seven years allowed his unfathomable obsidian eyes to slowly roam over her face; they took in every detail. Hermione thought she could feel him counting the individual grains of dirt and grime clinging to it.
The Potions Master walked over to a black leather wingback chair and made a show of taking a seat. He still hadn't offered her a seat, and she was unsure of what would happen next.
"Sir?" she tried again.
At his focusing on her hopeful amber eyes, she let her fierce desperation shine out of them in a blinding glow, "Please sir! Then really do it. Kill me. You know my temperment and personality; you've given me detention often enough for it. I'll never 'know' or be able to 'keep' to my place in Voldemort's world. As you told him yourself, 'all Mudblood witches are alike in the dark'. You could easily replace me and I could escape years of torture and servitude."
Those black bottomless eyes staring at her widened in shocked amazement.
'She'd actually prefer death to my touch? After all that I've done for HER? After all I've done for the side of Light? All I've suffered? My loneliness to remain unassuaged? I'll be DAMNED!'
"Miss Granger. What makes you think that you are immune to the same fate as every other young witch of your heritage? Are you truly that special?" his raised hand halted the words that had rushed up to hover on her lips.
"The answer to my question is 'Yes' Miss Granger. To me you are indeed that special. Every form of refuge has its price, you foolish, silly, little girl! I'm offering you refuge with me; you will never be a "Mudblood" in my eyes, Miss Granger. In my eyes you will always be the brightest Muggleborn witch of your age, at least within the privacy of my home," he said with all sincerity.
Hermione swallowed hard when he'd paused for a moment to allow his words to sink in. That hadn't sounded so bad to her; then he spoiled it all by continuing on.
"But to kill you? Never! You belong to me now," those glittering black eyes burned into her surprised eyes as he emphasized the final coup de gras of his monologue, "and I never accept less than full value from all of my possessions."
Hermione drew in a sharp breath, even though it pained her side terribly.
'Dear gods! What's he going to do to me?' she frantically thought, staring with wide amber eyes at her former Professor, as he sat comfortably esconced in an armchair only three feet in front of her.
He swirled his brandy in it's very expensive crystal snifter, and slowly perused her with those unfathomable black eyes of his.
Hermione shifted nervously from foot-to-foot, and longed to sit down. She honestly didn't know if her legs were going to continue to support her much longer; she felt faint from hunger, pain, and thirst.
After three days of imprisonment in the cramped holding cages both witnessing and experiencing first hand how Death Eaters treated, and failed to treat their prisoners, Hermione had few illusions left as to what her future life would most likely be.
Professor Severus Snape hadn't been working for the Order and the Side of Light after all; he was just another twisted perverted Death Eater, just like the rest of Voldemort's mongrel horde.
He would still be playing the tune and she'd still have to dance to it, just as she'd already been doing for seven years as his student; nothing was different about that.
Well, Hermione realistically accepted that one thing would be vastly different in their arrangement.
She belonged to Professor Snape now just as he'd already spoken of it once to the Dark Lord.
He'd called her a Mudblood right there to her face in Voldemort's audience chamber, in front of all of those assembled Death Eaters; she was now a commodity, a present, an object to be given away or to be taken.
She'd now be shagging her former Professor whenever he desired her; or doing anything else that he bloody-well commanded her to do.
But he'd have to order her. She'd never volunteer to willingly be abased or abused.
Hermione Granger was now a slave; but she was still grateful that out of the many sociopaths and psychopaths that could have claimed her as such, that she belonged soley to Snape. Her fate could have been worse.
Sweet Merlin! It could definitely have been worse.
Luna Lovegood had let her in on an undercover sting operation that her father had going on at the Quibbler.
It was set to be an expose into Death Eater mores.
Luna had to make her Gryffindor best friend swear a wizarding oath of secrecy, because Hermione had wanted to call in the Aurors right then and there upon learning the details of it.
It concerned pedophiles and sex crimes against children; Crabbe Senior had featured prominently within it.
He'd given her such a look as she'd been paraded past him by Rabastan LeStrange that her blood had frozen to ice in her veins.
She was startled out of her reverie by the Professor's meliflourous baritone softly washing over her fragile nerves, "Strip off your clothes, Miss Granger."
Her shocked brown eyes flew back to meet those bottomless black wells once more.
'Surely he doesn't want me NOW, like this; covered in blood and dirt and stench?
Merlin! It wasn't as if I were simply gone away on a spring holiday; baths weren't allowed--or healing either for that matter.
Oh dear gods! What if he's a sadist, like Bellatrix LeStrange and Anton Dolohov?
What . . . if . . . what if . . . Oh . . . gods! Oh gods . . . , ohgods, ohgodsohgodsohgodsohgods . . .
Hermione reddened from her toes to her hair-roots; she dropped her embarrassed gaze to her pink-painted toenails, slowly lifted her hands, and caught hold of the hem of her filthy, ripped, jumper.
She winced and sharply sucked in her breath as the dull ache of the broken, but unset, ribs within her ribcage (caused by Voldemort's 'Crucio' several days ago now) seared brightly alive again with white-hot pain caused by her movements.
The many untreated, festering, blood-crusted cuts and gashes on her upper arms, throat, and formerly satiny smooth abdomen bled afresh as she slowly pulled the dried thick scabs of days away from them along with the stained article of clothing.
Hermione dropped the filthy jumper onto the smooth dark parquet of his private library floor, and wanted to sink through it herself.
That wasn't happening for Hermione today; her miracles were all used up.
Hot tears of shame and pain ran freely down her cheeks and dripped down off of her chin as her fingers sought the snap and zip of her low-slung jeans. She fumbled in the heavy denim fabric with fingers made clumsy by her nervousness.
It seemed to Hermione that it took her an hour to just manage to get them down.
They, too, were crusted with dried blood (and gods only knew what else) and were also stuck hard to several deep gouges and cuts. Then there was one painfully deep burn on her left thigh; it was the size of one of Hagrid's handprints.
The denim tore away from her jeans there, where she was burnt. It remained behind, embedded into the charred flesh of her thigh, and her grime-crusted face turned deathly white in her agony.
Hermione wavered on her feet, panting small ragged painful gasps of air, as the room spun and went darkly grey around her.
She bravely managed to retain consciousness, although silently dry-heaving from the excruciating pain.
Hermione now stood bruised, bloodied, broken, dirty, and stinking to high-heaven in her plain white cotton bra, seviceable knickers, and nothing else; quivering with shock and chill before an immaculately groomed and completely dressed Professor Severus Snape.
The reality of her situation was nothing like the simple schoolgirl fantasies that she'd had from time to time concerning her darkly handsome (at least to her way of thinking), mysterious, and charismatically demanding, Potions teacher.
Hermione had actually developed a brief crush on the tragically dark Potions Master in her Fifth Year.
The Professor been magnificent in her eyes, standing unmoved and dignified, under that bitch of a witch Delores Umbridge's needling inquisition of him in his classroom before his students; instead of being done privately in her office as his tenure and position rightfully deserved.
That was also the year when she'd first learned that Professor Snape been acting for years as a spy against Voldemort for the Order of the Phoenix.
Hermione had begun to have foolishly idealist little schoolgirl wetdreams about the intelligent, gifted, powerful spy and Potions Master as her budding feminine sex-drive had begun to truly come alive that year.
She'd been far more attracted to the Professor than she'd ever been to poor Viktor the year before; really, could she ever have had an intelligent conversation with the goodhearted, but rather dense, Bulgarian Quidditch star?
But oh what interesting conversations, all spoken to her in that chocolate-rich voice, before a cozy fire that she'd dreamed of sharing with Professor Snape. Never even in her wildest fantasy had it ever went further than wondering what his kiss would feel and taste like.
That had all just been a girlish fantasy.
Now she knew exactly what his kiss was like; and it would go much further than a kiss this time.
This time it would be for real.
She'd heard that "it" hurt. She already hurt; what would one more pain be now?
The brandy snifter suddenly appeared in her blurred line of vision just below her chin.
Hermione hadn't even heard or noticed him moving. She'd been staring at her naked toes.
"Drink, Miss Granger," came the soft command.
Hermione had rarely heard Professor Snape speaking in such a kindly tone to anyone. She shook her head. His authoritative and irritated reply cut back, "Drink at least one healthy swallow. That's an order, slave."
His pale long-fingered hand pressed the glass into her hand. She dully raised it to her lips and choked a tiny swallow down.
After her coughing fit had subsided, Hermione dared to meet Snape's black eyes once more.
She caught a look of distress and honest caring on his sauternine face (for just a split-second before he swiftly hid it again). He examined her injuries as carefully and as thoroughly as any medi-witch would have.
Severus went over every inch of her, checking and re-checking his diagnosis, but never actually touching her body in any way.
He removed his black robe and covered Hermione with it, saying as he did so, "Lie down on the sofa. You need healing. I will heal you."
Hermione clutched the profferred robe against her like a shield and choked back a grateful sob. Words were beyond her at the gentleness of his tone.
"Miss Granger?" he softly asked.
Hermione's glistening amber eyes darted up to meet his inscrutable onyx gaze. "Yes, sir?" she whispered.
"What is your favourite flavor of hard candy?" He'd used his 'teaching voice' and she instinctively blurted out the first answer that had popped into her head, "Wild cherry."
"Of course it would be," he smirked, with a small grin and an amused upwards quirk of his inky right eyebrow.
Hermione did as he'd ordered her to do; she painfully limped over and laid down on his sofa, pulling the softest cashmere of his black Death Eater's robe around her like a cocoon of an embrace.
She didn't know what else to do.
Severus stood silently watching her for a few more moments.
Her exhausted amber eyes slowly drifted shut; her breathing slowed to a steady, even, push of in-and-out, in-and-out, as sleep finally caught up with his wounded young lioness.
Severus turned sharply on his heel and pressed the second book to his left on the fourth shelf down; that section of the bookcase silently swung outward.
He stepped inside the secret passageway and then onto the first rung of the iron fretwork spiral staircase that led down to the Malfoy cellars, and his personal brewing laboratory.
Ever so quietly, he left Hermione to her fitful slumber.
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The cauldron was just beginning to simmer; Severus quickly added the first three ingredients and stirred it the required number of counter-clockwise turns with the willow ladle.
He moved over to take several pinches of this and that herb that hung in bunches drying from the rafter above his workbench. The faint 'pop' of a house elf's Apparition heralded the entrance of his personal house elf, Gristle.
Gristle had been his naming day present from his Uncle Ethan; the only member of his mother's immediate family that had ever even acknowledged his existence.
Gristle had served as a sort of "nursery elf" to nine generations of the Prince family; his uncle and mother included. She was rarely called on anymore, and his uncle hadn't thought that she'd even be missed amongst so many others waiting to serve.
He'd been right; the house elf had never been missed. But to the young Severus, Gristle had been a god-send.
By secret elfin magicks, she'd managed to find a way to secure bread, cheese, bits of meat, and occasionally milk, each night for the undernourished and mistreated young boy. Her gentle hands had healed many stripes and bruises and small broken bones.
It was her lullaby that he heard echoing throughout his earliest memories.
Gristle was as damned-near to being his mother as his real mother, Eileen, had been. Severus loved Gristle for it.
"Yes, Gristle?" he exasperatedly sighed. She stood with her arms belligerantly crossed across her ample elfin chest, fuzzy head tilted sideways, frowning at her Master.
Severus moved around her to add the required herbs; the blue smoke turned a lovely shade of lavender as he slowly stirred it ten times clockwise. Essentially the nutrition potion was complete; he could have stopped right there.
Instead he shifted through two shelves of extracts and essences and essential oils before he finally found what he'd been searching for; a small brown vial.
He poured a hefty, Hagrid-sized, spoonful of it into the brew; the lavender smoke mellowed into a rich purple.
Without a word to her Master, Gristle silently began ladling the potion into the proper sterile bottles.
She'd been helping her Master with his brewing since his very first childhood attempts at potions that had ended up more soup than potion. She was accustomed to every aspect of where to help and where to simply leave it for him alone to tend to.
"Go ahead, Gristle," Severus said as he left the boring, but necessary, work to her. "You may speak freely."
He was already moving from shelf to shelf, pulling down a bottle here, a pot of unguent there, adding to his rapidly filling black leather travelling-potion's case.
"I'se sees that the Master has him's a witch now," the disgruntled house elf sniffed.
"Poor Master. First He-who-must-not-be-named saddles my Master with the dunderhead of the long bottoms; now it's burdened with Miss Fuzzy-haired Know-It-All's that he is."
Severus snorted at how she'd put it, and quickly turned it into a cough; but it had been the touchstone that he'd needed to restore his humor in a situation which right now was sadly lacking that very ingredient.
As Severus carefully selected the few surgical implements that he'd need to cut away the burnt flesh of her thigh to prevent infection he softly spoke half to Gristle, half to himself, "I've only recently begun to believe that the witch might possibly be quite acceptable to me. Whether I'm acceptable to her or not remains yet to be seen."
At this vulnerable statement, it was Gristle's turn to snort her amazed disbelief.
She smartly answered her Master back with the bluntness of extended time's acquaintance and much love, "Then the missy is not so very Know-It-All's after all. House elf's always know exactly what is needed. Master is needing Missy Know-It-All, yes; but even more than him is Missy Know-It-All needing of the Master."
Severus' black eyes widened in shock, but the magickal truth of the elf's statement struck a chord deep within his Eildarvitch blood.
As impossible as it currently seemed to be, somehow they'd always been destined to be paired together.
It had only taken Voldemort's victory to finally make it happen.
How bizarre.
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A/A/N: I could have "rushed" it; left out much "back-drop" and much "background". Spit out only the barest pertinent details and given it all to you in one quickly slurped-up bite to be just as quickly forgotten.
But where's the fun in that for you, or for me?
The enjoyment should be in the journey of the story; not the destination in and of it's self. (if you just want the destination, I refer you back to the Prologue; there it is)
Hard at work on Part Two even as you're reading this. --snickers--
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