A/N: Thank you for your overwhelming response to the last chapter. Your support of this story lights a candle of inspiration within me, and the writing flows as a result. For the next few weeks, as a reward for your good behaviour, I believe we'll be having a mid-week update as well as a Sunday update. See? Even the Professor rewards students who go above and beyond …


For the Potions Master's Amusement

Chapter 68: Limbo

Searing … blinding … consuming …

She stumbled out the door of Roissy House, into the cold, dark night. The lights of Grosvenor Square made no impression upon her as she hurried down the walk, her fists shoved in her robes, her head down. The agony screamed through her body, a physical pain, as if she had taken up an axe and severed a limb to free herself from a trap, as if her life's blood was now streaming ceaselessly from her body.

She staggered and leaned against a wall, feeling the rough brick against her skin, forcing herself to think past the billowing, engulfing torment. If she had something to think about—something upon which to focus her attention—she could close the door on the interminable anguish. She would come back to it—sort it out—when she had cauterised the wound with work … when she had numbed herself sufficiently to endure the agony.

Kell … she needed to be with Kell.

She set a small goal and moved from one to the next: Find the hospital. Find the lift. Find the floor. Find the room …


Hermione arrived at St Mungo's and sought out the Spell Damage ward.

Once there, she immersed herself in caring for her friend.

Kell had lost a great deal of blood, and her body required time to heal. She took a good many potions and slept a lot. Reggie returned to Roissy House at night to shower and sleep, but Hermione stayed behind, sleeping on a cot against the wall. It was bittersweet for her watching Reg and Kell together, simultaneously gratifying and heartrending to hear them planning their lives together—gratifying because Hermione had played a part in bringing them together and heartrending for reasons she could not even bear to formulate in her mind.

Reg and Kell were aware of the change in Hermione's circumstances—undoubtedly, someone at Roissy House had filled Reg in on the details—but they were kind enough not to mention it or ask her for details, and for that, she could only be grateful.

The worst moment of that period was the late night when, while Kell was sleeping, the door to the hospital room opened, and Rafe Lestrange entered.

'Oh, no,' Hermione breathed, shrinking back against her chair and shaking her head. Why had he come? Had he been … sent? Was he an emissary of some sort? No, no! She couldn't bear it!

He held his hands up as if placating a wild creature. 'It's all right,' he promised, halting in his tracks. 'I'm not here to disturb or upset you.'

Her lips trembled, and she bit down hard to stop it. She had kept such a tight lid on her feelings, but just seeing Rafe brought back images of...

'Please,' she whispered. 'Don't.'

He looked genuinely distressed. 'We just want to be sure that you're safe and well,' he said. 'And t and I want you to know that we're your friends—no matter what.'

She stood now, backing away from him, shaking her head from side to side. Panic was rising in her chest. Any discussion with this man would go down a path Hermione could not afford—could not bear—to tread. She just wanted not to see Rafe and not to think about the memories and feelings his presence evoked.

'We'll never betray your confidence,' he said. 'I promise on my honour … as a Dominant.'

Hermione nodded to signify her understanding, fighting the urge to clap her hands over her ears and sing la-la-la-la until he went away.

'Hermione,' he said, coming one step closer, 'we know how unsettling the world can be for a submissive without a Dominant. You will always have my protection. You can come to t and me at any time or call on me as if I were your brother. Do you understand?'

Tears spilled over onto her cheeks as she was flooded with desolation—without! alone!—and Rafe's face filled with compassion.

'Don't forget we want you to be godmother to the baby,' he said, stepping over to the small table beside her cot and placing a handkerchief there. 'And I know you're busy now, with Kelly, but I'm taking t home tomorrow, to our house in Odd Down. You must come to stay—t will heartbroken if you don't.'

Hermione wanted to ask about t and the baby, but her voice wouldn't cooperate. She had not been to see t, even though she'd been staying with Kell in hospital just one floor away. She felt badly about it, but she couldn't bring herself to see someone who might ask what had happened, or even worse, how she felt about it. So instead of speaking, she nodded.

Rafe removed a handsome black leather card case from his pocket and riffled through the cards there to the back of the pile. The one he extracted was pale pink, and he placed it on top of the handkerchief. 'One of t's calling cards,' he explained. 'It has our direction, when you're ready to visit. And your owl can always find us at Odd Cottage in Somerset.'

He slipped the card case into his cloak and studied her, a frown on his brow, as if he were making up his mind about something. Apparently, he made a decision, for he moistened his lips and took a deep breath.

'Hermione,' he said, taking a step toward her, 'Se—'

But whatever he meant to tell her, Hermione did not hear it. With a total loss of self-control, she whirled away from him, facing the wall, and clapped her hands over her ears like a little girl playing a game. She remained there, her forehead pressed to the wall, until she had counted to one hundred. When she turned again, Rafe had gone.


Finally, Kell was released from hospital, and Reg and Vi came to gather her things before taking her home to Roissy House to recuperate. Hermione helped, packing a rucksack with all the magazines and books Kell had collected during her hospital stay. At last, everything was organised, and Reg helped Kell into her cloak.

'Are you sure?' Vi asked quietly, taking Hermione aside, her lovely face drawn with concern. 'There's … no one there you wouldn't want to see, and all of your things can be moved to a different room.'

Hermione's stomach lurched at these words, as all the emotions she had bottled up inside stirred beneath the barrier she kept in place, between them and her consciousness. 'I'm sure,' she said. 'I haven't been home since summer—I need to see my family.' She managed a smile. 'But thank you.'

Vi pressed a kiss to her cheek. 'Hadrian and Elinore asked me to tell you that you will always be welcome at Roissy House.'

Hermione nodded and turned deliberately away, unable to continue that line of discussion.


Day by day, life went on.

She knew it was a pathetic, ridiculous cliché, but one day at a time, she survived, so she didn't condemn herself for it. Anything that helped her get through the formless, grey days was, by definition, all right.

At home, she found herself comforted by the familiarity of her parents and her own room, none of which had been contaminated by the events of the last several months. And living with her parents, it was possible for her friends to find her, so she was able to catch up with Harry and Ron.

'What, no more dog collars?' Ron asked, indicating her bare throat.

'That's right,' she answered lightly. 'Now, tell me everything! How did you do it?'

Hogwarts opened again after Easter break for the summer term, but Hermione did not return. She had revised to the point that she could sit her NEWTs now, if she wished, and besides, she was no longer a schoolgirl. She simply could not see herself participating in the school routine again.

She did not permit herself to think more deeply about it than that.

It was at night, in her dreams, that her self-imposed emotional freeze was put to naught. Her dreams were full of him, of his voice and his hands and his lips and his whipcord thin body, dominating hers. At first, the dreams had been devastating for her, and she had woken from them time after time in a paroxysm of anguished tears. As time went on, though, she learned to harden herself against the dreams, beginning to see his presence there as yet another invasion.

The one tolerable thing that came from the dreams was the orgasms. Never had she thought it would be possible to orgasm in her sleep, but she did, and with alarming frequency. Since she had no desire to seek sexual relief in her waking hours, she could only be glad of the release she found in her sleep; undoubtedly, it improved her disposition.

Because there was no question: Hermione Jane Granger had changed. Her parents had noticed, and her mum had even tried to talk with her about what was troubling her, but Hermione couldn't begin to say. How could she possibly tell her mother what had happened?

'I had an affair with my teacher, Mum, but don't worry! Yes, he spanked and whipped and flogged me and covered me in hot candle wax and fucked me every possible way—but it's all over now.'

No, she couldn't confide in her mother—not the details. She compromised with a partial truth. 'I fell in love with someone, but it didn't work out. I'm … not over it, yet.'

And with that, her parents had to be content.

Still, when Hermione looked in the mirror, she could see the changes in her appearance, even if the hole where her soul once had been was not visible to her.

Her hair, always impossible, had become worse than ever, dry and straw-like; her cheeks appeared hollow, and there were purplish shadows about her eyes. It was as if she were suffering from an illness which deprived her of restful sleep and prevented her body from absorbing sufficient nourishment.

She wasn't pining for him. She wasn't. It was just that she had to re-educate her mind, body and spirit to … do without. It was only an illusion that the world had become darker, that colours were more dreary, and that food tasted of ashes. It was a mere trick of the mind that made her unable to bear music, unable to read anything but the driest textbooks, unable to watch the telly or go to the movies with her parents, that made any glimpse of affectionate behaviour between two people fill her with an agony of longing—and loss.

She didn't regret what she had done—it was right, she was sure of it. But knowing with her mind and feeling with her heart were two very different things.


The boys had returned to Hogwarts, and it was from an inadvertent slip in one of Harry's letters that she learned the Potions master had returned to his post there. It was only a tiny piece of information, but it was the first she had received. She was scrupulously careful in her correspondence with t, Kell, and Vi to make it clear that she had no desire to receive reports of her former Master's activities, and they all seemed to understand. Although she had not expressly told the boys of her preference, their infrequent letters were too brief to demand much information from her; they were too busy imparting their own.

She received an owl from Professor Dumbledore, inviting her to sit her NEWTs with her classmates, but Hermione was not tempted to accept. Instead, she arranged to sit her examinations at the Ministry two weeks before they were administered at the school, and she walked away feeling confident that she had done very well.

In July, she travelled to the Burrow to celebrate Harry's eighteenth birthday, and she stayed on into August, thankful for the change of scenery and the ease with which she fell back into her old roles of friend and confidante with Harry, Ron, and Ginny.

Away from her parents, immersed in Weasleys, watching them together, Hermione's fear of seeing other humans interacting with one another slowly faded. And the frequency with which she saw Harry and Ginny stealing a snog in the orchard, or Bill and Fleur occupying the same armchair as if there were a scarcity of furniture in the house, or one of Ron's twin brothers chatting up the shop girls in the village, began to thaw the deep freeze under which she had guarded her emotions for so many weeks. She could see a man embrace a woman without her breath stopping in her lungs—without feeling as if she had lost a part of her humanity which she could never, ever reclaim.

One night, sitting on a rock by the frog pond behind the Burrow, she was surprised to have Ron sit down beside her.

'So,' he said, hugging his knees to his chest, 'what will you do now?'

Hermione tilted her head back to look up into the star strewn sky. 'What do you mean?'

'Now that we've left school,' Ron elaborated.

Hermione reached up to brush hair from her face. 'I haven't decided yet,' she admitted. 'But at least I feel like I can decide, now.'

'You mean,' Ron said carefully, 'since … Snape, and all?'

Hermione turned her head and looked into her friend's blue eyes. 'Yes,' she answered. 'Since Snape.'

And with that, she spoke his name for the first time since the fall of Voldemort and suffered it to be spoken in her presence without violence or tears.

She was healing.