FIFTEEN: Forgiveness

The first week without Crookshanks was difficult for Hermione. It was lonely in her quarters without him curled up on the hearth, stretching and purring and occasionally joining her at her armchair or desk. Too frequently, she glanced up, expecting him to be complaining for food by this late hour, only to remember that he would never complain at her for food again. It was unaccountably miserable.

"Maybe you ought to get another cat," Neville suggested one lunch when Severus wasn't present; there had been a mess in of his earlier Defence classes, and he was busy sorting out his classroom, which was now inexplicably swamp-like.

"It's too soon," she sighed, pushing her food around her plate with her fork. "Maybe in a few months, but right now...it would just be odd. I don't think I'd be entirely fair to a new cat."

She wasn't allowed to feel too lonely, though. When she glanced up looking for Crookshanks and didn't find him, she usually found Severus instead.

It started early in the week, after the meal she missed on Tuesday, exhausted from the strain of merely getting through the day's classes without allowing her grief to affect her teaching; she couldn't bear the thought of facing the Great Hall, the sympathetic looks of her fellow professors, the fussing and attention. It had been five-thirty when someone knocked on her door, and when her lethargy proved too deep to allow her to rise and answer it, Severus had dismantled her wards and invited himself in. He brought with him a tray of food, enough for the two of them.

"You aren't going to starve just because your cat is dead," he said matter-of-factly, and they ate in companionable, peaceful quiet. He spent the rest of the evening in her quarters, each marking papers, complaining occasionally about students who were particularly inept, and less frequently cross-examining a student who showed aptitude in one of their subjects.

He was as irascible as ever over breakfast, and hardly better over lunch, but Severus's presence at Hermione's elbow still soothed her more often than not. Patrolling for long hours of the night in his company was enjoyable; on off nights, their discussions were long, intelligent, and complex, distracting her from her lingering melancholy. Their silences, too, were comfortable. She wouldn't have guessed that Severus could be a balm for grief, but she had underestimated him; surely he knew all about grief.

That Saturday evening, at seven o'clock, he met her knock at the door of his office and didn't invite her inside. "We won't be attempting an Occlumency lesson tonight," he told her, warding and locking his quarters. "A duel would do you more good."

"I don't really think I stand much of a chance, Severus."

His black eyes swept over her, critically appraising, and she felt the heat rush to her face. She looked away from his gaze.

"You would be surprised," he said, gesturing her forward. "Grief is a powerful thing."

They strode in silence up the many staircases of the castle, ending at last outside the Room of Requirement. It took only a moment to gain access, and then Severus held the door wide for her as she slipped inside.

It looked much the same as it had the last time they had been here: the slight bounce of a Cushioning Charm on the floor, the place bursting with books, and what appeared to be a medical station in one corner. Perhaps she hadn't noticed that the last time, or perhaps it had just appeared now. Frowning, she turned to Severus to ask if he planned on mortally wounded her, and lost her train of thought as she caught sight of him again.

If her grief had allowed her to forget, then the way they stood in this room forced her to remember: she was still assuredly, nonsensically attracted to him. She was mesmerized by the intent look on his face as he rolled up his shirtsleeves, the faded tattoo momentarily coming into view on his forearm, the shape of him—all angles.

Before he could catch her looking—for his gaze was on the upswing—her eyes fell to her own shirtsleeves and she hurriedly rolled them up, baring the scar on her forearm. It would give her greater mobility, and she no longer had any secrets from him, anyway.

Well. Except this one, which—didn't concern him, after all. She wasn't planning to do anything about it.

When she looked up again, hoping her blush was under control, he was poised, at the ready. His dark eyes watched her, lingered on the way she held herself, and though she knew that he was watching for her first move—the twist of muscles that would give her away—she fancied that he was admiring the curve of her shoulder to her neck or the gentle swell of her breast instead.

"Remember," he told her as she lifted her wand, "instinct. You truly don't stand a chance otherwise." The curl at the corner of his lip was more of a smirk than a sneer, a Slytherin attempt to tease rather than injure.

Her heart thudded against her ribcage, fast and hard, and it had nothing to do with the wand he was pointing at her.

She cast her first curse and took off running when he returned the volley, leaving her troublesome thoughts behind her.

He had been right. The power of her grief had shut down the constant thought processes which put her at such a disadvantage to him in battle; she acted purely on instinct, one moment to the next, and it was an elegant dance, a game of dodging and firing, one that she was a participant in and understood fully.

After a few moments, she was sweating, and she could see the glisten of perspiration on his forehead as well; he'd been forced to abandon his standstill tactics in the living fury of her attacks, and he was on the move, still maintaining the shield around his person. It cost him effort to move with it, she realized; it was a heavy thing to maintain, and if she could just shatter it—

She popped up from behind one of the natural barriers she'd conjured—a large overturned statue of some sort—and threw the full force of her magic into the next curse, intentionally aiming low, hoping that he wouldn't move fast enough to block it—

A horrible, dull crunch resounded through the room as the spider-web of magic—his previously invisible shield—flickered with green light and then shattered to the floor. Taking advantage of the moment, she fired a Reductor Curse at the mantle, thoroughly blowing it apart and showering Severus with the debris. She heard him curse, but in the next instant—an instant in which she was distracted by her glee at her progress—the debris of the fireplace exploded, leaving a battered Severus at the epicentre. She ducked, and then the fury of his magic was on her, and she was running again.

The next time she paused long enough to take cover and subsequently popped up from behind one of her barriers, his Stunner hit her with full force in the chest, and she had a dim instant to appreciate the Cushioning Charm before she fainted.

As she fell, Severus cursed—just the once, ripped from his throat with some kind of violent appreciation. She had done remarkably better in this battle than she had the last, and he'd been impressed at her ability to shatter his shield. He was bleeding, the trickle of it warm and wet on his cheek, his shirt torn at the shoulder, a tender spot on the back of his head. With a wave of his wand, he repaired the fireplace—a clever idea of hers, if only she'd taken the opportunity to strike rather than getting caught up in her glee.

It wasn't a wonder that she had survived the Department of Mysteries and the Battle of Hogwarts and all the Death Eaters she had encountered in between. He hadn't guessed at the depth of her magic since her return to the castle, but he suspected it ran even deeper than this. It hadn't manifested in true capacity, not in their first accidental duel or in their planned second, but perhaps...perhaps she was beginning to heal, and her control of her power was beginning to solidify again.

He crossed the room to where she lay, unconscious, felled by a lucky Stunner. He wondered where this swell of admiration and affection came from as he gazed down at her—wondered when it had all become so much more complicated than he'd meant it to be.

He'd seen her suffering—fine. Seen a bit of himself in it, thought she hadn't deserved that, intended to pull her up from the darkness she'd lost herself in. Now that they'd met with some small measure of success, though, now that they forged forward together, he thought it was stupid of him not to have foreseen this…this closeness developing. This friendship. It was highly personal work they were doing, intimate, and the quiet fondness it aroused was foreign to him, not quite like anything he'd felt before.

He was…inexperienced…with women, at least with courting them, for what woman would ever look at his face and see beauty there? It was a dance that he had never taken part in, not even once the war had ended and entreaties from enthralled women poured in from all over the countryside, all over the world. They would have overlooked his surliness and ugliness for a while, he believed, but then they'd have tired of him and moved on—and if he was to be alone forever, then starting now seemed prudent, lest he become used to comforts that would one day be wrested from him. He'd been certain then that he would go on alone, not even his obsession with Lily to accompany him.

But now, there was Hermione.

He shook himself from his reverie, lifted his wand, and murmured, "Rennervate."

Her eyes fluttered open; when she focused at last on his face, she smiled.

He could hear his pulse, feel it; he hadn't noticed it at all during the duel. No one had ever looked at him quite that way before. With admiration, respect, fear—but never the way she looked at him, as if she was happy to see him, even after he'd knocked her out.

"I was better that time, wasn't I, unless you were holding back?" she asked, accepting his offered hand. "And I know, I was so distracted by my own triumph that I didn't press my advantage—oh, Severus, you're bleeding."

He swiped the blood from his face; in the grip of his thoughts, he'd quite forgotten about his injuries.

"Yes," he said dryly. "Making the fireplace explode was a rather clever diversion."

She moved his torn shirt about, trying to get a clear look at the wound, and for a moment, he remembered that first accidental duel, how appalled he had been at her touch, how disgusted he had felt with her eyes on the faded Dark Mark. He had been so certain in that moment that she pitied him and feared him, so sure that her kindness in healing him had been that blanket Gryffindor sense of doing right no matter how unappealing, that she had to grit her teeth to handle him, a charity case, tainted, dangerous.

She lifted her wand, but he stopped her. "Don't—you must feel how much you expended to destroy my shield. No magic for the next hour." He gestured to the corner of the room. "I had the presence of mind to request some basic health supplies this time; they ought to suffice."

She followed him, but when he reached for a bowl and the tap himself, she stopped him, hand on his arm. "It'll be easier if you let me," she said, pushing him down into one of the chairs there. She pulled up her own, filled a shallow bowl with water, picked up a cloth, and sat down across from him, so close that her knees brushed his.

She was gentle. Fierce in battle, but nothing but soft and tender when it came to cleaning the wound on his face. Having her so close was disconcerting—her eyes not quite meeting his, focused on the scratch instead. When she dipped the rag back into the bowl to rinse it, her eyes strayed to his bared forearm.

"Is it permanent?" she asked.

He was silent for a moment, considering how to answer her.

"If it bothers you, you needn't tell me," she added quickly. "I was only—"

"Curious," he finished for her, and her lips twitched in a smile of relief when his voice betrayed no anger. "Yes, it's permanent. It's the sort of spot that doesn't come off."

She rolled her eyes, leaned in to dab at the scrape again. "That isn't true."

He raised an eyebrow at her. "You're speaking in metaphors."

"So are you. And I think you're wrong." Her fingers brushed a salve over the clean wound. "You've done too much good—"

"Rest assured that it was not for the right reasons," he interrupted. "You know the story. It wasn't my conscience that drove me to act as a double agent. It was my obsession with a dead woman, a girl who hadn't even spoken to me since we were sixteen. It was atonement, not for the wrongs that I did to others; those wrongs didn't matter. The only things I atoned for were the wrongs I did to her."

"And in the process, you saved lives," she said sharply. "Tell me truly that you didn't care who lived or died, and I will believe that it's the sort of spot that doesn't come off."

He had no argument for that, so he was silent as she finished applying the salve. "The Dark Arts never let you go," he said finally.

She glanced up. "What does that mean?"

"It means that there is a reason that the Dark Lord was as powerful as he was. Have you ever heard of a particularly powerful wizard who hadn't journeyed beyond the boundaries of sound magic?"

Her mouth opened to argue, to contradict him, but it just as quickly closed. "Even Dumbledore," she said quietly.

"Even Dumbledore," he agreed. "It's why he never allowed himself to be appointed Minister; the Dark Arts warp you forever. One brush, and there's a taint in your blood, a siren's song in your ears, and you will never forget the pull of that power. It is all too easy to fall back into bad habits—if you were just less squeamish, a little less scrupulous, you could make this change or that, and no one would have to know..."

She considered this for a moment, frowning thoughtfully, and then shifted forward to the edge of her seat. Her knees were now between his; the closeness made him uneasy, and yet, he didn't want her to put distance between them. With nimble fingers, she slipped the first few buttons of his shirt out of their holes, and then folded the fabric back over his shoulder, baring the wound that a corner of the mantle had cut open.

He looked away from her—her closeness, her touch, her scent, like warm vanilla and baking apples, was too much to endure all at once—and her fingers reached out and brushed Nagini's scars, feather-light.

"It doesn't hurt, does it?" she asked in a low voice. "I was never sure if..."

"You did the thing right," he said. Her eyes darted to his face and then away again; she started to clean the blood away from his shoulder. "I knew you were lying," he continued, attempting to brook a more pleasant tone.

"When?"

"When I woke, you said that you only saved me for the information I might have."

She snorted. "Well, I didn't fancy being a sharpening post for your bad mood, or I'd have told you I acted on instinct. I knew you would never forgive me, anyway, so one little lie to spare my feelings didn't seem so wrong."

She dipped the cloth back in the bowl and wrung it out again.

"I have," he said, his mouth dry.

She went very still. "You've what?" she said, her voice stiff.

"Forgiven you."

Her knuckles had gone white on the rag.

"I hated you, that first year," he said. He didn't know why he was telling her, only that he thought she ought to know, and wasn't that the most sentimental nonsense he'd ever indulged in? "I hated you until one day I didn't. I hadn't realized how many simple things I missed, being…what I was. My life has not been very meaningful since the war, but it has been quiet. Peaceful. There is much I would never have discovered if you had let me die."

She pressed the rag back to his shoulder. "Good. I…" She cleared her throat, gave him a positively radiant smile. "Good."

It seemed superfluous to talk after that, so they patched one another up in silence, and he kept one eye on the curve of her mouth, savouring it.