NINETEEN: Obliviate

"Not so fast, my dear. You've avoided me for long enough. Sit."

Severus glanced down the table, just to see the grimace of irritation on Hermione's face as she was pulled into a chair to the left of the Headmistress. He sipped his coffee and kept his ears pricked. Minerva ought to know better; Hermione was not as foul-tempered as he before breakfast, but she didn't like to be disturbed, either.

"He won't say a word of it," Minerva said, pitching her voice low.

"A word of what?" Hermione asked, reaching for her tea.

There was a shuffle as Minerva leaned closer. "The Masquerade Ball. You danced."

"Merlin, Minerva, you sound like a besotted fifth-year." Hermione's voice was appreciatively scathing. "Friends can dance. We were having a bit of fun."

"Nothing…happened." The doubt in Minerva's voice was quite thick.

Hermione sighed. "We're friends," she said wearily. "We did our rounds after the event and then went our separate ways. As you can imagine, it was an exhausting evening."

Severus glanced down the table in time to see Hermione reach for the porridge and Minerva cast a suspicious look at her, which passed in turn to Severus. He returned it with the barest of smirks and went back to his coffee. She meant well, and he knew it, but he always did enjoy seeing meddlers get their due.

He rose from breakfast a short time later and was only out of the Great Hall for a moment when Hermione caught up to him, glowering.

He raised an eyebrow. "It was your idea."

"I suppose so," she admitted. "But really. It's too early in the morning for her to even hope for a successful interrogation."

They paused in the Entrance Hall at the foot of the grand staircase, where they would part ways: Hermione to the left, to the dungeons, and Severus up the staircase to the first floor. She smiled up at him. "Rounds tonight?" she asked.

"Nine. We'll meet outside your office."

"See you then," she said brightly, the foul mood of a few moments earlier gone, and vanished on the path he had once beaten into the ground, making her way into the dungeons.

He climbed the stairs to the first floor more slowly. His first period was an empty one, and he was free to continue organizing the notes he had been assembling since Tuesday night.

The wealth of information he had accumulated already was vast. Scrolls of parchment simply wouldn't do; the sheaves upon sheaves of organized chronological notes were instead being assembled in bound pages. The initial volume, which covered the scope of his realization of Hermione's illness, her detailed symptoms, and all knowledge he had from his personal memories was already assembled. The memories themselves—their gossamer threads clinging to the insides of crystal phials—were secured within this book as well, each labelled, contained in a compartment in the back cover of the leather-bound volume.

He had not yet begun to assemble the undoubtedly many volumes which would cover her treatment, but he set to doing just that, scanning the pages of notes he had already made and adding annotations where he saw them fit. Slowly, the pages began to compile themselves between new covers.

The week moved slowly. Rain assailed Hogwarts and made their nights of patrol miserable when they were forced to journey outside. "There's simply n-no way students would sn-sneak out in t-this weather, right?" Hermione asked at around midnight on Friday, her teeth chattering so hard that her syllables split and stuttered. She was dressed warmly, in boots, a heavy cloak, and at least two jumpers, but it was well below freezing. The rain occasionally turned to sleet as they made the periphery sweep of the Forbidden Forest, where the worst of the downpour was kept at bay but the cold appeared to be held in by the trees.

"Isn't there a warming charm on your cloak?"

She looked at him reproachfully over the collar of her turtleneck, which was pulled up over her nose. "It wore off over an hour ago. And I'm…" She hesitated, clearly embarrassed.

"Drained," he finished, casting a nonverbal charm on her cloak. She shuddered in relief at the warmth.

"Thank you," she said quietly. "My magic is not what it once was."

He suspected as he brooded on that statement the next day that this week was particularly trying for her. She had made leaps and bounds on the first of November; it had to be having an effect. She looked exhausted, and he felt guilty for his role in her week of emotional highs and lows, but there was nothing to be done. He had made his decision, and the only way to help her now was to pass on a strong dose of Dreamless Sleep and continue their Occlumency lessons that night.

He had never seen her look so radiant as she had the week before—the pleasure of their prank had added to the brilliance she exuded on a day-to-day basis, not to mention the carefully constructed state of her dress—but she was still quietly beautiful, standing on his doorstep, shadows beneath her eyes, the smallest of smiles turning up her lips. Without a word, he stepped aside to let her pass. She didn't speak, either, but went straight through to his sitting room. He raised the many walls of wards behind him as he followed.

Hermione turned when she reached her armchair. "I'm a little tired," she admitted, as though sensing his unasked question.

"You look it," he replied. "How much have you slept?"

She winced. "Not enough. You'll see it anyway, so…it's the project. The fury of it just swept me up and I've been assembling my own notes retroactively, and sometimes I look up and it's four in the morning. On the bright side, I've been so exhausted that when I finally do go to bed, I sleep easily. Deeply. It's done, all the catching up, so I might go back to a regular schedule, now. Or my pathetic attempts at one."

"We have time," he said darkly, sweeping across the room. "Why was it necessary to do it all now?"

"While the memories are still fresh…while I'll leave as little out as possible…and don't tell me you haven't been the same. We're alike in this. Once devoted…" She hesitated and didn't finish the sentence.

He rolled up his shirtsleeves. "We'll be going deeper tonight."

"Is that…wise?" Her eyes had widened; it was obvious that she was frightened by the idea.

"Yes. You're weak. There will be less resistance. You've come far, but remember what I told you: you cannot bury these things forever. They are already reaching tendrils out…beginning to drag you back down. A mere week of stress, and you're already falling back on bad habits. It will be a delicate balance forever, until you face the things that have attempted to destroy you."

She rolled her sleeves back, too. The scar of a word appeared, letter by letter, mangling her skin. A spark of determination had re-entered her eyes as they met his. "Get it over with," she said through gritted teeth.

He met no resistance, though she struggled to restrain herself from building walls. The current of her thoughts was more mangled than usual; it reminded him of their first session, her panic, her fear, but what was she afraid that he would find? Surely there was nothing else, nothing so close to her heart as what he had already seen—what he had already heard.

Familiar scenes reappeared to him, remembrances of new moments: the despair in her heart, wrenching him to the core, as Potter's wife informed Hermione of another's suffering; the grief that still twisted her when she thought of her familiar's death; the time she had spent brooding over him and his hard-headedness; the drift of her mind, casually, almost, toward the moments they had shared on a dance floor, and in his quarters, and in one another's arms. His throat tightened at the memory, and for the space of a heartbeat, he scrambled to refocus, to stand back, to observe rather than absorb.

Perhaps it was just a general fear, he mused as he regained control, scanning the movement of her mental activity. The stress was already wearing her down, and the idea of plunging deeper into her issues would automatically set her on edge; it could be nothing in particular, just the idea, that was causing her dread.

A guilt he hadn't noticed before, however, popped. It tasted of family, and he followed it with no small measure of his own anxiety. If what Potter had said was true, he could guess the content of this newly surfacing shame.

Her terror quickened. No, she thought, automatically scrambling to erect barriers, but he pushed through them with relative ease. No, no, that has nothing to do with—

Everything, he answered grimly, has something to do with it. He let himself into the memory.

She was panicked and not yet eighteen. She scurried to stuff the items on her neatly made bed into a knapsack; it could only have been charmed, with the amount of things she tucked away. A nearby Daily Prophet alerted him to the date: it was summer, 1997, and the Dark Lord was on the verge of a world takeover. She glanced at the moving image on the front page—this must have been just before they infiltrated the Ministry, for the Dark Mark glittered and undulated beneath a headline full of terror—and jumped when a woman called her name. Her mother, Severus realized; these were her final moments in her parents' home.

The memory of Hermione stuck her arms through her knapsack, hesitated a final moment, and drew her wand. Tears glittered in her eyes, but her face was hard. She quietly paced through her bedroom door and down the stairs; Severus followed.

A man and a woman sat in the kitchen, their backs to the entryway, speaking in voices too low to make out. Hermione took a soft breath and raised her wand. "I'll see you soon," she whispered. "Obliviate."

He felt the force of the spell even through the memory, the utter complexity of it; she had done her job well. They would never know. They would be safe.

He withdrew from her mind and she sagged against her armchair, then collapsed into it, holding her head in her hands.

"Did you ever find them?" he asked, though he already knew the answer.

"I found them." Her voice was muffled by her hands. "But I couldn't lift the charm. I still—I don't know why. But they're safe, and happy, and…" She trailed off, as though she couldn't bear to continue.

"And have no idea they have a daughter," he finished.

She laughed with no humour at all. "I'm not sure they'd want to know," she said. "I'm not sure they'd ever forgive me, anyway."

It had been weeks since Hermione had felt quite this crushed, as if stomped on by the heel of the world. The yawning darkness that had once nearly swallowed her whole threatened to suffocate her. It was with an effort that she kept her nails tight on reality, fighting not to slip back into that memory, the memory of her failure. It was a great and horrible failure, but so old that it had become routine—until now.

Sometimes, she wished she could pull a Lockhart and obliviate herself. Seemed like it might solve a few things very quickly.

Severus was silent still, perhaps mulling over her last statement, so she went on. "I might have still been recovering," she said, desperation colouring her tone just slightly. "My magic wasn't at its best."

"You expect me to believe you haven't gone looking for them again?"

She lifted her head to look at him; the strange, subtle empathy in his dark eyes twisted her heart. "My magic isn't at its best," she clarified. "I find them again every year. I went last summer. The longer the charm goes untouched, the stronger it seems to become. They've put down roots, made their new lives realistic. Maybe that's why it's so hard to lift." She turned away again, unable to bear the force of her shame. "Or maybe I messed up," she said. "I might have done something wrong in casting the charm."

"I can't be certain—a memory is no place for surety—but nothing seemed amiss." His clothes rustled as he took a few paces nearer to stand before her. He lifted his hand as if to touch her cheek, but almost as soon as the movement had begun, his hand fell back to his side. She released the breath she had momentarily held. "The more likely scenario," he continued, "is that you are restraining yourself from lifting the charm."

Her head jerked up. He looked quite serious. "That's absurd," she retorted.

"Not absurd; unintentional." She opened her mouth to interrupt, but he warned her with a look. "Your shame and guilt is shackling you. You are afraid that they will never forgive you for wresting their free will from them, and you are terrified to let them know you as you are now. You know that they, of all people, will be able to see through every mask that has fooled everyone else. You don't want them to know that you are suffering." He gazed at her as if waiting for a contradiction, but she had none; she looked away instead.

"It's like they're dead," she whispered. "It's like they've been dead for years. I don't know what I would do, what I would say, what I would tell them, if they were suddenly my parents again. I want them to be, I'm just…" She hesitated on the word.

"Acknowledge it." His voice was gentle but firm.

Hermione swallowed. "I'm afraid."

"Explain."

She stood up, brushing by him to pace in front of the fire. He watched her; though she wasn't looking at him, she could feel his eyes, the full attention of his gaze. Worse, she could feel his presence: she could drive herself insane imagining the hands that had tangled in her hair, the arms that had wrapped around her, the lips that had devoured her. The impact of being in a room with him, of pretending as if the previous week hadn't happened, hit her as if she had run full-force into a brick wall.

She stopped pacing and faced the hearth, her back to him, taking quick, shallow breaths, trying to control herself. Remembering anything is agony, she thought, closing her eyes. The warmth of the fire washed over her. By degrees, she emerged from the turmoil of her mind while he waited, patiently, standing back, giving her space.

If only he could comprehend that the last thing she wanted was space; if only she didn't feel honour-bound by the terms she had agreed to. The desire in her soul felt as if it might consume her. It terrified her. She had thought, once, that she loved Ron; this was something else entirely, a new degree of affection she had never known before.

She struggled to refocus, to trade one suffering for another. The guilt was an unwelcome exchange, the shame even more uninvited. The admission of her wrongdoing and subsequent failure—all centred on her still too-feeble stores of magic—was humiliating to discuss with Severus, and the personal component made it all that much harder to bear. Willingly exposing vulnerabilities before this man still did not come easily.

"It was wrong," she finally said. "But it…it was all I could think of. I knew that they would be a target once I was off looking for Horcruxes with Harry and Ron, and I knew that even if they went into hiding in another country, Death Eaters might have found them, so—so the only way it was safe was if they didn't exist. I knew someone, someone talented enough, could find them and break the memory charm, but I thought that it was still a worthwhile precaution. To do everything I could to keep them safe. But it felt wrong. It still feels wrong. Taking their free will from them…it might have kept them safe, but it violated them so deeply, I know that." She took a deep breath, steadying herself. "And even if I could lift the charm…what if, because of all that, they never wanted to see me again? It would be even worse. At least right now I can hope that, if they ever do come round, they'll forgive me. Once they do, it's one way or the other. That's it. It seems…terrible."

"Is it?" Severus asked, taking a seat in his armchair. "Wouldn't it be better, knowing you'd done what you could to reverse the damage, and having an opportunity to explain that to them fully?"

She hesitated. "It would be better," she acknowledged. "Better from a moral standpoint, even from one of personal turmoil, I suppose…at least I would know. But I haven't been able to lift the charm. And I don't know when I will."

"Your magic is not what it was, that's true," he told her. "And, yes, memory charms tend to strengthen over time. But someday you will have the strength. What will you do then?"

Something in his tone caused her to bristle, put her on her guard. "Rest assured, Severus, I will keep trying until the charm is lifted," she said icily. "I am afraid, but I am not a coward."

He looked at her, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. She was distracted by the secret of it, hiding there at the edge of thin lips that she had kissed so recently.

"What?" she asked finally, when the silence stretched too long.

"Progress," he said simply.