On the third day of confinement, Snape was even more anxious than he was on the first two. Things back at the castle's grounds simply were not changing for them one bit. Furthermore, he was beginning to feel the fever that he'd been running since being hit in the battle.
"Perhaps you could improve my game of chess?" Hermione requested.
"Can you play in your head, Hermione?"
"Not really, but I can create a makeshift chessboard and pieces out of some of the rubbish that is here," she commented. "Can you play in your head?"
"Of course," he tried to sound casual. "Then again, I have been playing for as many years or more than you have been alive."
"Yes, but twenty Wizarding years is a drop in the bucket," she teased back, eliciting a smile that flickered across his face.
"Then I shall teach you how to keep the game going in your head," Snape told her, leaning in her direction. "That way you can keep up."
No smirk followed. His voice was not tinged in the slightest by disdain. Hermione thought he sounded genuine. Maybe she could be a friend to this most unusual taciturn man.
"It's a deal!" she joyfully pronounced.
That night after their reconnoitering found persons on the grounds again, they retired on opposite edges of the bed, Hermione found herself crying.
Unable to sleep for the movement, Snape gave a long sigh, "Miss Granger," he caught himself, "Hermione, you are shaking the bed."
She replied with a snuffle.
He rolled over to face her, "What is it?"
"I don't know, Professor. I'm tired of this ordeal. I don't know what comes next. And I'm scared," she turned toward him and wiped her eyes.
"I understand. Pity you are so young, Hermione. Sometimes age makes it less frightening," he commented without his usual bite.
"Are you telling me you're not afraid?" she asked innocently.
"No. I am afraid, very much afraid. I'm not only deeply concerned that the Dark Lord won, but I am also blind as the proverbial bat. It's not a good position to be in, Hermione," he began. "It's just that life experiences teach us how to deal with the fear. The last thing you want to show to the Dark Lord is naked fear. He is feral, rather like a wild boar of an animal. If he senses fear, he will devour you shortly after playing with you to increase your fear and his pleasure."
"That's sick," she was repulsed.
"It is. But it is also the truth," Snape finished.
He rolled onto his back, "Come here. You can never tell anybody that the 'greasy git of the dungeons' offered you his shoulder to cry on, you know. It would destroy my reputation, and I can't have that."
A vague hint of a genuine smile played at the corners of his lips. She scooted closer, felt the extraordinary warmth of his body, and tentatively put her head on his chest. He tucked his arm under her then wrapped his other arm around her. Her ragged breathing began to smooth out somewhat as she listen to the regular beating of his heart. Finally, she drifted off into a light sleep. She found consolation in his presence and he in hers. Later, when each returned to his or her own bed, they would both discover that they missed the other's warmth and solace.
The fourth day was spent in the same way as the previous ones. That night's run to the Whomping Willow yielded the same frustrating results. However, this night instead of Hermione shaking the bed, it was Snape. He was shivering and could do little to control it. Hermione found that he had spooled all the covers around himself and continued to shake. She did not know if it would be wise to awaken him – perhaps it was only a nightmare. Surely, after all he'd seen, he would suffer nightmares. Then again, perhaps it was an aftereffect of the curse that had robbed him of his sight. He grunted and moaned in his fitful sleep. After watching him for some time, she decided to awaken him and see what was the matter.
"Professor," she whispered.
He groaned again.
"Professor Snape," she said more loudly.
He jerked awake, "I'm freezing," he announced.
"I figured as much. You stole the whole blanket an hour ago," she replied.
She touched his face, "You're burning up, sir! Here…"
She began to unroll him from the knot of blankets. His back was both covered in sweat and infection from the thorns that had lacerated him in the briar thicket days before.
"Where does it hurt, sir?"
"I have had a screaming headache – for days now. Everything else now aches as well."
"I think these injuries from the thicket are infected," she noted. "We need to get your fever down and the infection under control."
"It's not as if we are in the Hospital Wing at Hogwarts," he grunted. "I shall simply have to suffer it through. It won't be the first time. It does explain the persistent headache ever since the battle."
"But you never said anything, sir… Okay, so we are not at Hogwarts yet, but I can brew you some willow bark tea to ease the fever and the headache," she spoke so softly.
He convulsed in a shiver. His head was throbbing and muscles too weak to put up much of a fight. All he could do was grunt and moan softly.
"I'll be back," she threw his coat around him and tucked him back in, kissing his forehead, as a mother would do.
"Please be careful, Hermione," he whispered after she left. "I can't lose you now."
He could not sleep; he could only shiver. His breathing was becoming increasingly laboured as the infection tore through every fibre of his body and mind. He felt as if he was losing control of his mind as well as his body. The briars must have been full of magical poisons. He had done well to protect Hermione from their tearing into her flesh as he pulled them out of the thicket. She had fallen through from the top where fewer briars were and had escaped the infection. However, her fall had driven the thorns deeply into his flesh.
She slipped out to the Whomping Willow and peeled some bark off its roots, placing it carefully in a rucksack she'd found earlier in the Shack. She looked about carefully, and slipped to the greenhouse nearest the tree. There was no one on the grounds at three in the morning. She pulled some more medicinal herbs from there, stuffing them into a large knapsack. She scurried back to Snape. Her round trip took a little under two hours.
Once Hermione returned, she found Snape almost incoherent and nearly unconscious. The poison-induced fever was moving too quickly now. She gingerly removed his shirt and applied a paste of herbs to draw out the infection as the tea brewed. He quietly acquiesced as the fever wracked his body. His own hands shook too violently to hold the cup. Hermione held it and forced him to sip the tea every half hour. She tended him the rest of the night and into the next morning when she finally fell asleep next to him. Only her head rested on the bed; her arms dangled by her sides.
The next day she carefully spooned some sustenance into Snape. She would hold him close when his suffering seemed the worst. After a week of her makeshift treatments, the worst of it seemed to be over. Each day upon awakening, Hermione had cleansed the wounds and applied more of the poultice. She had refused to try for the castle since he was far too weak to make the journey, and she would never leave him behind. Snape began to recover a bit; his fever had broken for the moment; the wounds were only now beginning to drain of their poisons.