DISCLAIMER: All characters seen here are the exclusive property of JK Rowling. She's the genius, I'm the fangirl who can't resist playing with her creations.

Chapter 4

"I need not say that my task does not end there. It would be comparatively easy if it did. There is much more before me."
-Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

When Hermione awoke, Severus was gone.

She had a momentary panic, until she realized that she could still hear him nearby, breathing. He wasn't gone, then, but had merely moved away from her while she slept.

That surprised her. Never before had she gone to sleep in his arms and waked to find herself alone. Even if he was awake, he'd always made a point of remaining with her until she moved away. She hadn't spent much time analyzing the reasons for this, but was vaguely aware that it had something to do with her horror of being alone, and his knowledge of it. She considered it as the single kindest thing he'd done since her capture and the beginning of their incarceration together.

She put her hand out, reaching for him, but he was out of arm's reach. Inching in the direction of his breathing, she finally reached him and listened. He was snoring very softly. She frowned. He'd let her go to sleep and moved away in order to sleep by himself. He'd left her on purpose.

The same strangely bittersweet sense of finality that she'd felt before going to sleep returned to her full-force. It really had been the last time. Soon enough (although neither of them, of course, could be sure how soon), the mysterious Death Eater would return, presumably alone, and they would attempt to make their escape. Of course they had to change things again. Hermione wasn't a fool, and neither was Severus. They both knew that they would either reach the outside world again, or they would die in the attempt; and, if they didn't die, their liaison had to be over. She loved Ron, dead or alive--and Severus certainly didn't love her. The very idea was unthinkable.

In spite of the thoughts of Ron she'd allowed herself last night, Hermione hadn't forgotten what the Death Eaters told her. Months in the darkness made it easy to believe terrible things, and she'd done her best to give up on convincing herself that he was still alive. It was easier, less painful in a way, to assume that he really was dead. At least if she assumed the worst, there was the potential for happy surprises. She had learned to maintain a strange balance between hope and cynicism.

In the end, it didn't even really matter if Ron was dead or alive. Even if he was gone, the Weasleys would still take her in. There were always her parents, too, of course, but as much as she loved them, she'd rather stay within the Wizarding world--at least until the war was resolved, one way or another. So, she would live with the Weasleys, and continue to fight the war--what was left of it to be fought. It seemed like a losing battle now, but she was a Gryffindor. She wouldn't walk away just because things were going badly for her side.

She wondered how many of them were still alive. If Harry was dead, it was suddenly easy to fear that everyone else was dead as well. Somehow, the possibility of Harry's death now changed something. After Voldemort's death, they'd all come to think of Harry as being somehow safer, if not invincible.

She listened to Severus's snores, thinking of the map that she'd tried to memorize in the few short moments while they'd had some light. She wondered if she would be able to Apparate. She wondered if he'd be able to Apparate. She'd begun to suspect that he was eating even less than she, and he had grown pathetically thin, a bony caricature even of the skinny man he'd always been.

The snoring stopped.

"Hermione?"

"I'm here," she said, somewhat relieved to be pulled from her thoughts.

"I am glad you are awake."

For a moment, she thought he merely meant he was happy for her company, and she opened her mouth to respond in kind. Pleasantries of this sort were rare between them--imprisonment didn't make him much more inclined to truly vapid small talk--but he continued before she could get the words out.

"There are things we must discuss before our purported benefactor returns." He coughed briefly; she heard him swipe his hand across his mouth, and caught a faint whiff of his sour breath. "If it is indeed the case that Malfoy has been appointed Minister and that Potter is dead, we may find it difficult to return to Hogwarts." He paused. "I assume that you do wish to return to Hogwarts?"

"Well, yes," said Hermione, somewhat surprised. "Where else would I go? Well, I'd thought of The Burrow first, but Hogwarts also."

"Your long-term plans are of no consequence to me, per se, beyond the knowledge that you do eventually wish to return to our world. What is of consequence, however, is the fact that we will be entirely dependent on the goodwill of a man we know to be a Death Eater, and who I very much doubt intends to offer us aid once we have escaped the confines of this building. To do so would certainly not be in his best interests, and we have nothing to offer him in return, at the moment."

Hermione prodded with her tongue at a tooth that was hurting. She must have a cavity. She frowned. In all of her life before, she'd never had a cavity. She prodded again, and the pain grew sharper. "What are you saying?"

"I believe we must plan for the eventuality that we will, at least for a time, be obliged to live as Muggles. Neither of us are possessed of our wands. Mine, I know, was destroyed. Yours most likely was subjected to the same fate."

She stopped tonguing the sore spot for a moment. "How do you know it was destroyed?"

"They incinerated it before my eyes."

"Oh." There didn't seem to be an adequate response for that. The thought of her wand being incinerated made her feel rather sick. A second wand gone. She sighed. "I should have known, I guess."

"You are intelligent enough to realize, I think, that an immediate return to the magical world, weak and unarmed as we are, would be so foolhardy as to be suicidal. I need hardly add that we will have no useful information, no idea whether Malfoy has begun using Snatchers again, or what methods they might employ to locate us. All we do know is that if we mingle with magical beings, we will make ourselves vulnerable."

She slipped one finger into her mouth, rubbing the edge of her tooth with her fingertip. She could feel the rough spot where it was decalcifying. "You're right, of course," she said, wiping her finger dry on the torn and dirt-crusted edge of her sleeve. "We'll--we'll be able to go back eventually, won't we?"

"It is possible that there will be nothing to go back to."

"Surely the Order will eventually--"

"Not necessarily. However, I am thinking merely of the short term. A few months will be necessary, at a minimum, before you will be physically strong enough to risk returning to Wizarding London or even Hogwarts, if things have once again become as ... hostile ... as they were before the fall of the Dark Lord."

"You'll need to get your strength back too," she said, rather stung by being singled out.

"Yes," he said simply. "A simple Apparition will be difficult enough. To do more, without proper recovery beforehand, and without magical aid, is unwise."

"You think Hogwarts won't be safe either, then?"

She heard him scratch his beard. "I doubt very much that it will be, if Death Eaters have regained control of the Ministry. In the months before the fall of the Dark Lord, Hogwarts was the last place I would advise an escaped prisoner of war to go."

"What about The Burrow, or Grimmauld Place?"

"I would sooner risk those, but to travel to Ottery St. Catchpole or to London will still require a certain amount of prior planning, especially if we face the prospect of protecting ourselves without wands. We simply do not know, and have no way to know, what places will be safe anymore, and I refuse to go marching into unknown and quite probably deadly situations without preparation."

"We could--" Hermione hesitated, biting her lip uncertainly. "We could stay with my parents." She'd kept so much hidden from them over the years, and they'd only just got back from Australia a few months ago--that argument was still ringing in her ears. Trying to explain to them why she and one of her ex professors were in hiding from Death Eaters and couldn't use magic without risking their lives didn't strike her as something she really wanted to do.

On the other hand, they were out of other options.

"Brilliant," he said dryly, "we shall go and stay with your parents. Malfoy will never think of looking for us there."

"Even if he thought of it, he wouldn't be able to find them. The house is secret-kept, and I'm the Secret-Keeper. I--they went to live in Australia for a while after I left school. They changed their names, and they kept the new names when they came back to Britain. Malfoy might know about two dentists called Doctor Granger, but not two dentists called Doctor Wilkins."

"Your parents are dentists?"

"Surely you know that," said Hermione disbelievingly.

"I did not. Such details are the purview of the Head of House."

They both paused, made a little uncomfortable by the reminder that Severus and Hermione had once been Professor Snape and Miss Granger.

"They live in Abingdon," said Hermione, to break the silence. "I grew up in Kent, but when they came back, they said they'd prefer to start afresh somewhere, and Mum went to Oxford, you see."

"I see," he said. She could hear the way that his frown changed his voice. "Do you have a secure way to contact them once we are ... outside?"

"Well, I doubt Malfoy's going to be listening to the telephones, is he?"

"Malfoy might be a pureblood, but he is not entirely out of touch, and there are Ministry employees whose sole purpose is to do things like listening to telephones."

"Only the house is secret-kept and they've changed their names."

"I presume that they, too, are Secret-Keepers."

"Of course. It would make entertaining and things rather inconvenient if they could never tell anyone how to find the house. Although, they don't entertain much. They're--they're rather like me, you see. Not many friends." She winced as soon as she'd said it. Severus didn't need or want to know these details.

"Very well," he said, ignoring her disclosure. "Given the lack of a better plan, we shall make immediately for a telephone-box, and thence to Oxfordshire." He paused. She heard a faint clicking sound as he prised unseen dirt from beneath his fingernails. "I presume," he said softly, "that you are on sufficiently good terms with your parents to be quite sure that they will ... take us in."

"Of course I am," she said, surprised at the idea that she might not be. "They weren't terribly happy with me when they found I'd--well, I didn't really let them know how dangerous things were. But I'm their daughter, after all."

"Quite," he said.

The atmosphere around them suddenly felt rather chilled, and Hermione wondered if she hadn't been rather tactless without realizing it. She knew next to nothing about the history of the man who sat beside her. In her mind, he was merely Severus; and when she thought about Snape, she was no more enlightened. Her former professor and she had never been close. Harry knew some things about him, but he'd been quite close-mouthed about it. She sighed, wondering how to apologize without making things worse.

She never had the opportunity to try.

They both held their breath. A voice was speaking, lowering the wards. Hermione felt the subtle change in the magic energy around them as the wards fell. Beside her, she heard Severus stand, and then felt his hand as he felt for her and helped her get to her feet.

Her throat began to burn, and she realized that she was still holding her breath. She exhaled.

The door opened, but there was no daylight to flood the room this time. Instead, the Death Eater stood there, holding a single candle. His hood fell low over his face and in his long black robes, he reminded Hermione of the Grim Reaper. She drew closer to Snape, doing everything she could to keep herself from viewing that mental image as a portent.

"Quickly," said the Death Eater, raising his head. His mask was off, Hermione realized, and she started.

Draco Malfoy.

If Snape was surprised, it didn't show outwardly. He simply gripped her arm and dragged her forward.

"Uncle Severus," said Draco, sounding urgent now and pressing a package into Severus's hands. "Here's some food. I couldn't get a wand for you, I'm sorry. There are some blankets in there too." His eyes moved briefly to Hermione's face, but he didn't address her. "You'll need to hide out. Everybody's going to look for you. You saw the map?"

"Draco," said Severus, narrowing his eyes. "Is it true that Potter is dead and your father appointed Minister?"

But Draco had pulled a watch from his pocket, and he blanched. "You need to go. Now. They'll be here any second."

Severus had not relinquished his hold on Hermione's arm. It grew tighter now, and he yanked her body to his own. "Hermione," he said, his voice harsh and urgent, "we do not have the strength to do this individually. You remember the map?"

She nodded.

"Good. If we combine our power, we should be able to--"

"Combine it how?"

He made an impatient noise. "Like Side-Along-Apparition, except that we shall carry each other mutually instead of one bearing the load for both. It is more technically difficult, because it must be done in unison, but it requires less energy."

"You need to go," said Draco sharply. "They're coming."

"Your father, is he--" said Severus quickly.

Draco had covered his face with the hood once more, and was fastening on his mask. "He'll be looking for you," he said, before Severus could finish the question. "You'll need to hide."

"I am going to count to three, Hermione," said Severus, wrapping his arm around her waist. "On three, Disapparate. Draco, you have our gratitude. One, two, three.Now."

Hermione had half-expected him to roar that last word, so intense was her emotion. Instead, he'd whispered it and, moving as one, they both turned in place. Hermione slid her arm around his waist, focused intently on their destination, and watched as the walls that had confined them for so long disappeared.

It seemed to take forever. Matter condensed around them until she was sure she would suffocate or burst from the pressure. She could feel Severus holding her, and his body pressed into hers until her bones began to ache.

0 0 0

When his feet touched the ground again, Severus's muscles gave out. He let go of Hermione and collapsed. Beside him, she stumbled and fell, landing with a squelch in the mud.

So they were somewhere muddy. That was something. Wherever it was, though, it was also cold, bitter cold. There were shards of ice in the mud, rain was falling hard, and a bone-numbing wind howled above their heads. His teeth had already begun to chatter.

It was dark, late at night. Still, the outdoor darkness was not so profound as that of their prison, and he could make her out dimly. He made an effort to lift his head, but he couldn't do it. Apparition had taxed him even more than he'd expected. Judging by Hermione's pathetic attempts to rise, she, too, had lost nearly all of her strength.

"Don't," he said, clenching his jaw to stop the chattering of his teeth, which was so violent as to be almost painful. "Rest. Here." He managed a feeble gesture at the package Draco had given them. There were blankets in there. Blankets, and food. A short rest to regain enough strength to crawl, if not to walk, and then they would press on.

She was less than a foot away, and the package lay between them. It took her nearly a minute to get it untied--judging by the whispered profanity that he thought he heard, her hands must be shaking from cold and weakness nearly as badly as his were--and then she got it open. He could just barely see her as she dug through its contents.

"Blanket," he said, his face aching.

"We need shelter, Severus."

"We need rest."

"No," she said. "Not here. It's not safe. Open your mouth and have some bread. I'm going to--I'm going to go look for shelter."

The bread that she placed in his mouth was soft and fresh and sweet. He could have wept over it. Instead, he chewed and swallowed far more quickly than he would have liked. "No," he said, crumbs still sticking between his teeth and cheeks. "Not by yourself. It isn't safe."

"Can you move?" Her voice was skeptical, and he didn't blame her.

He tried to sit up again, and managed, this time, to get himself up onto his elbows before exhaustion forced him to halt. "I don't suppose," he said dryly--as dryly as he could through chattering teeth and above the whistling wind--"that my benighted godson happened to endow us with his Hand of Glory."

"What a disgusting idea," she said, in a voice so prim that she might have been Minerva McGonagall herself. "And you're going to have to do better than sitting up. We're going to freeze if we stay here, Severus."

"Not an entirely unpleasant prospect." He wished he had the energy to sneer. She was a woman on a mission now, and in that role he suddenly found her utterly insufferable. "At least if I froze to death, I'd get a few minutes to rest."

"That isn't funny. If you can't walk, rest all you like and I'll go find someplace for us to spend the night."

In the end, he managed (with her help) to get to his feet. The bread had refreshed him, and, when he was wrapped in one of the blankets Draco had given them, he was able to slip and stumble through the mud with her and keep his legs from giving out. The blanket had been placed under an Impervius Charm, keeping Severus protected from the rain and wind and, as a result, rather warmer. It seemed that it was later even than Severus had thought--so late that the light of dawn was beginning to turn the horizon gray by the time they located a place to rest, in a gap beneath a very thick and long-neglected hedgerow.

Severus crept in first. In spite of his emaciated condition--and, now that he had leisure to look at himself, he was even more wasted than he'd realized--and although he was not a particularly tall man, it was still a close fit, and he was forced to fold his body in on itself to get in. Once he was settled and comfortable, there was just enough room for Hermione to fit herself in beside him. He was forced to put his arm around her, and she could only fit by nestling her head up into the crook of his chin.

Still, the hedge was thick enough to keep out the rain and most of the wind, and when they had carefully bent some of the branches and covered themselves up with one of Draco's blankets, they would not immediately be seen, caked in mud as they and all they possessed now were.

Their clothes were sodden and Hermione had so much mud in her hair that when it dried, it would easily serve her as a helmet, but they were both too tired to care. Severus told himself that he ought to stay and keep watch, but as the warmth from Hermione's body and from Draco's blanket began finally to seep into his body, he was unable to stay awake any longer. Holding Hermione close and breathing the air of freedom, he fell asleep.

0 0 0

Hermione's first impression on waking up was that a Hawthorn hedge was not at all a comfortable place to sleep, and she didn't see what on earth could possibly attract fairies to it so. Her next thought was that there was daylight filtering in through the branches, and that she was cold. Severus was snoring softly; the only other sound she could hear was dripping water. Her entire body was stiff and sore. She was more than used to sleeping in uncomfortable positions, and so she had to presume it had more to do with the damp and with the exertion it had taken to Apparate.

Very carefully, she extricated herself from Severus and crawled out from beneath the hedge. The sun was shining weakly through a break in the clouds, and the air smelled fresh and wet and cold. It was gorgeous, although the light hurt her eyes. Shading them with one hand, she took stock of where they were.

There weren't any landmarks that she recognized, which didn't surprise her. A narrow, sodden road ran alongside the hedgerow. Across the road, she could see the field they'd appeared in the night before. It was nothing but an expanse of dirt--mud, really. There wasn't any sign of human life, aside from Hermione herself.

She looked down, and winced. Her clothes were caked with mud, and below that she was sure that there was just more dirt. Her fingernails were cracked and filthy, and she was quite thin. The bones in her wrists jutted out sharply. She'd never really looked at herself during her imprisonment more than she could help, in spite of the hours sitting in silence in that lighted room full of Death Eaters. Her hands looked strangely bony and knobbly. Her fingers, always long in relation to her hands, looked longer than ever, and reminded her a little bit of the spindly, sharp hands of a Bowtruckle.

A rustling in the hedge behind her made her spin around, feeling immediately for her wand in her sleeve. A moment later, Severus emerged from the hedge just as Hermione remembered that her wand was gone.

He looked just as bad as she did. His hair was longer than she'd ever seen it, and he had a thick beard, which was plastered flat with half-dried mud. Above it, she could see his cheekbones, sharp and jutting. His eyes were sunken, and he was almost frighteningly pale. Hermione didn't think she'd ever seen a person whose skin was so devoid of color. His clothes were torn. His lips were cracked and bloody.

Still, she was almost relieved. As long as he looked like this, perhaps he could still be Severus. The longer she could go without thinking about the fact that her companion was really Professor Snape, the better.

He was holding the package Draco had given them. Judging by its size, he'd already folded up the blanket and bundled it back in with the rest.

"Time to eat," he said brusquely, squinting in the dim sunlight.

He fished about in the bundle and pulled out a meat pie. Hermione's mouth flooded with saliva as she looked at it, and she hurried forward. He wiped one grimy hand on his robes, which didn't really clean it off even a little bit, and then dug into the pie, using his fingers to carve out a small serving. This, he put in her hand.

She looked at it, her appetite suddenly lessened.

"Eat it," he said, digging another small helping out for himself and immediately taking a bite. "My hands are no filthier than they have been for months, and you were not unwilling to eat from them before."

"I couldn't see them before."

He snorted and took another bite. "I beg your pardon. You are, of course, correct. They were under an enchantment and did not become dirty until the moment that sunlight touched them."

Hermione blushed, embarrassed. The pie did smell awfully good, although the serving size was tiny.

He appeared to notice the look she gave it, for he raised one of his eyebrows, looking at her as if he thought she was an idiot. "You can eat no more than that without making yourself seriously ill, after the diet we have endured."

"I know that," she said defensively. Holding it cupped in one hand, she brought it to her lips and took a bite. She almost moaned aloud, it was so delicious. She didn't chew at first; she merely held it in her mouth and enjoyed the flavors. Then her stomach growled, and she decided that she could savor it later. She ate the rest in two bites.

0 0 0

It was slow going, at first. Neither of them had the least idea where they were, or where the nearest village or town might be. Still, either direction would get them somewhere eventually, so they set off going South in the cold sunlight.

They were exhausted and weak, and had to stop and take many rests. Neither of them particularly liked to be walking down an open road without any sort of concealment, and by unspoken agreement, they stayed in the shade of the hedgerow, off the side of the road itself.

It was during one of their frequent rests that the car went by. It was rather large, particularly for that road, and slowed to a halt when its driver saw them. The window rolled down, and a man stuck his head out, squinting at them curiously.

"Lost?" He was American. Severus stifled a groan. He loathed Americans. Always asking obvious questions and talking too loud. Gryffindors, the lot of them.

"Yes," he said, as sarcastically as he could.

"You look bloody awful," said the American.

Severus shuddered. It wasn't just a regular American, bad as that would have been. It was an American who fancied himself as having gone native.

"We got caught in the storm," ventured Hermione, offering a weak smile.

"That was pretty obvious," said the American. "No car?"

Severus looked at Hermione, who was attempting to swipe some of the mud off her face, and only succeeding in smearing it even more than it already was. "We're backpackers," she said brightly. "No car."

"Right," said the American. "Never thought much of backpacking, myself."

"You couldn't tell us where the next village is, could you? Our--our map got rather wet, you see, and the ink ran."

The American pointed in the direction he'd been driving. "Up this way about twenty minutes' drive," he said. "Need a ride?"

"That would be most helpful," said Severus smoothly, taking Hermione's hand and pulling her toward the car. One thing he could say for Americans was that their absolute inability to keep themselves from poking into one's private affairs did occasionally prove useful.

It took closer to thirty minutes to reach the village. The American, a rather stout man with a strong accent and a beard, didn't stop talking the entire time. Severus wasn't entirely sure that the man had even breathed. He certainly had managed to fit his entire life's story into twenty-nine minutes, using the last sixty seconds of the trip to explain to them where the public telephone was, and what time the bus would be in.

Hermione politely declined the use of the American's mobile, smiled at him, and nudged Severus in the ribs until he joined her in a half-hearted wave at the retreating form of the American's car.

"That was horrendous," he muttered, when she let him stop waving.

"It got us here, didn't it?" she said, frowning. "I thought you were a Slytherin. Any means to an end, isn't it? Anyway, I'm going to call my mum and dad. Try and see if you can get us bus ticke--we don't have any money, do we?" She sighed. "Well, I'll just have to ask mum and dad to wire some. Go and see what two tickets to Oxfordshire will be."

He raised his eyebrows. "If you think I intend to leave you alone at any point, you are sadly mistaken."

In the twenty minutes it took them to walk to a public toilet, wash their faces, find the bus station, ascertain the ticket prices, and walk back, she seemed to become nearly paralyzed with anxiety.

"One-hundred and twenty pounds," she said, without preamble, looking at the telephone box when they returned to it. "I've never asked them for that much all in one go before."

"I imagine they shall understand, if they love you so very much," he said coldly.

She screwed up her face, her nose and forehead wrinkling. "Right," she said. "Now, if you please, I'm going to call my mum and dad, who I haven't spoken to in months, and I'd like a bit of privacy."

"Make your call, then. I shall stand outside, exactly where I am now. I still refuse to leave you alone, and you will be unable to see anything, standing in that thing. I shall keep watch."

She looked like she would protest, but she bit her lip and went into the box. The door stuck and wouldn't close completely. He allowed himself to listen.

He heard her dial the number and reverse the charges. There was a slight pause, during which he carefully scanned the street for suspicious characters. It seemed terribly foolhardy to linger like this in such a public place. They might not be recognized by just any passing wizard, but those who had seen them in their imprisonment...

His hands twitched, and he glanced at Hermione, listening again as he heard her voice.

"Mum?" she said, "it's Hermione. Yes, it really is. I'm--I'm doing all right, mum. How are you?" There was a pause. "That's lovely ... well, yes, I know I haven't called in a while. There's ... yes, mum. I'm trying to tell you. Well, I--I need a hundred and twenty pounds for the train." Another pause, and he saw her rest her head on the glass. "It's for a train ticket. I've got in a bit of trouble ... Well, only it's not just for me, that's why it's so much ... yes, there's someone else. A--a friend. It's an emergency. We've got to hide." She sighed very loudly. "From the--yes, from them, mum." She gave her mother the name of the town and the bank where she could wire the money. "I'll be there soon, mum," she said. "Give my love to dad ... yes ... yes, mum, as soon as I can be. I love you. Thanks."

It took her a full minute to emerge after she'd hung up, and when she did, he politely ignored the tracks of tears on her still somewhat grimy face.

"Well," she said, trying to steady her breathing, "we really ought to see if we can find some fresh clothes. These won't do at all. Anybody other than that daft American who's rude enough to ask is going to want to know why we've been backpacking in robes."

Author's Notes: So much for Sunday. I have good reasons. There have been medical issues going on both for my beta and for myself. Real life come first, I'm afraid, but rest assured, I will keep going, and will definitely keep shooting for regular Sunday updates.

If I do happen to miss a Sunday posting again, you can check for status reports over at zeegrindylows DOT livejournal DOT com