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 6
"I ceased to be lord over myself. I was no longer the captain of my soul, and did not know it."
-Oscar Wilde, De Profundis
The first thing that Severus did when he woke up was to take a shower. The water was blessedly hot and for a long while, all he did was linger beneath it, relishing the sensation of months of accumulated grime being washed away.
When he'd had enough of standing in the water to make him feel adequately reacquainted with the happy concept of washing, he began to look about himself. The shower was well-equipped, with a variety of soaps, and three bottles of shampoo. Each of these was neatly labeled with an initial, in permanent ink: W, M, and H.
He sniffed the contents of each bottle in turn, studied their ingredients, and then helped himself to Wendell's, lathering his hair liberally and rubbing it into his scalp for a long time. The water ran brown down the drain when he rinsed it clean.
He stayed in the shower until long after the water had gone cold, scrubbing himself thoroughly and taking careful stock of his body as he did. He was disturbingly thin, and still covered in ugly bruises. His body was entirely piebald, covered with mottled purples, greens, and yellows.
That explained the soreness, then.
He spent almost as long drying himself as he'd spent washing. It hurt to move in any way that required even remote flexibility. When he was finished and dressed, he even went so far as to clean his teeth. It didn't make a visible difference, but it added still more to his pleasant sense of having been scoured utterly clean.
Wendell had left a safety razor and a can of shaving cream on the bathroom counter, along with a small note indicating that it was for Severus's use. It wasn't as convenient as a Charm, but Severus was adept with a razor, and made short work of his beard. When he was done, he was almost shocked by the gauntness of his face. The beard had somehow prevented him from realizing that he looked just as starved as Granger did, if not more so.
"All tidied up, I see," said Wendell brightly, when Severus found his way into the immaculate, old-fashioned kitchen. "Hungry?"
"Famished," he said, surprised at his own candor.
"Monica's out buying supplies. We don't stock a great deal of food when it's just the two of us. We use our new names even at home," he added. "Saves confusion. We'd be in all sorts of mix-ups if we didn't."
"I ... apologize for the inconvenience that my arrival--" said Severus awkwardly.
"Not at all, not at all. You get used to unusual things when you have a daughter like Hermione. Granted," he added thoughtfully, "we don't generally get the opportunity to help her when she's in the middle of something. She's quite good at keeping things quiet; prefers to ask for forgiveness rather than for permission, you might say. Really, it's sort of fun to be involved, for once. Tea?"
"Thank you," said Severus. "All the same, while you must be pleased to have your daughter here, I am unknown to you, and--"
"Not exactly unknown. We're well acquainted with you by reputation, you know. Hermione is quite an admirer of yours."
This information was so completely unexpected that Severus found himself at a loss for words, and so he kept silent.
"She's not awake yet," said Wendell, after a short pause. "Will you have a bit of toast with your tea?"
"I would appreciate it, yes."
Wendell set two liberally buttered slices of toast and a cup of strong tea in front of him and sat down.
"I'm surprised that she is still asleep," said Severus, striking about uncertainly for a subject of conversation. "I found her to be a rather fitful sleeper."
Wendell's expression didn't exactly change, except for something about the look in his eyes. Then, he twisted his face as if he were trying to get a fragment of something out of his teeth. "Exactly what is your experience with Hermione's sleeping habits?"
Severus took a moment to mentally castigate himself for making such a basic error. Sleeping with Granger and holding her while she slept had become so routine that he'd slipped and forgotten that it was completely abnormal in any situation other than their being imprisoned together--to say nothing of the other things they had done.
"We were held in the same room," he said cautiously. That was safe enough. Her parents didn't need to know what sharing a room had led to. Severus was not overeager for it to be discovered that he'd been intimate with a former student, and he would sooner die than inform that student's parents of it, no matter what the circumstances.
His own feelings on it, besides that, were still too muddled. He had grown very accustomed to her. She was, in her way, pleasant to be around--or so he thought she would be, if one could divorce the thought of her from the thought of base captivity. The last woman he'd got on as peaceably with was Lily Evans, and that had only been peaceable to a point, although he had seen enough at Hogwarts and Grimmauld Place over the years to believe that Hermione Granger could hold her own in the ranks of shrewish women, given half a mind.
The problem, of course, was that Granger wasn't a free woman. He was perceptive enough to realize that. Her heart was Weasley's, and Severus wasn't about to go chasing after a woman already in love with someone else--not again. Better for both his heart and his conscience if he remembered at the outset that what had occurred between them had been a matter of pure survival, a quick and easy way to assuage their mutual need for human contact. He wasn't enough of a sentimental fool to equate sex with love, no matter how little he got of the former or how many years he had pined for the loss of the latter.
"I trust that you were gentleman enough to turn your back when she needed privacy?" Wendell's voice broke into his thoughts.
Severus carefully tore one piece of toast into two halves, taking a bite of the smaller and, from force of habit, setting the larger aside. "It was dark."
Wendell's eyebrows went up slightly. "Surely not all the time."
He shrugged. "There were one or two occasions when the room was lit, yes."
"You're telling me that you were living in total darkness for--what, three months?"
"I am."
"With my daughter?"
Severus leaned back in the chair, fixing Wendell with his eyes. "Be thankful that I was there. She arrived after I did. It is far worse to be in such a situation alone, I assure you. Their goal was to come as close as they could to creating an environment of total sensory deprivation. They worked against themselves by keeping us together."
Wendell's expression remained carefully guarded, but he stood up abruptly, his chair making a loud noise as it scraped across the floor. "Excuse me, please," he said, and abruptly left the room.
His appetite sated by the few bites of food that he'd taken, Severus put his dishes carefully into the sink and went back up the stairs, planning to return to his bedroom. He stopped in the hallway instead when he saw Granger's father standing before him.
Wendell had opened the door to Granger's bedroom and stood in the doorway, gazing in at her. "It's difficult," he said softly, without moving, "having a daughter like her. Brilliant girl, friends with a war hero, all that sort of thing. Dumbledore wrote to us occasionally about things--there was an incident with a troll in her first year. But then, you most likely knew about that."
Severus had moved close enough that he could see over Wendell's shoulder. Granger's curtains were drawn tightly closed, shutting out the morning light. She lay on the floor, her head pillowed on her arms, fast asleep. "I knew about the troll, yes," he said uncomfortably.
"We didn't realize how unusual that was. We'd only just found out our daughter was a witch, after all. Who was to say what might be normal for her? We didn't know a thing about that lifestyle--your lifestyle--back then."
Severus held his peace.
"What's one supposed to do, as a parent?" Wendell's voice caught slightly. "How do you protect your daughter from dangers that you thought couldn't possibly exist? I'm a dentist, for God's sake. Trolls and dragons and evil wizards are supposed to be fairy tales." He leaned on the door frame wearily, staring at Granger. "Do you have children?"
Severus blinked, caught off-guard. "I should say not."
"You'll understand, Severus, when you do. You'll understand what it's like for a father."
He was unsure how to respond, and so again kept silent. Granger slept quietly, as she always did. Severus was struck by how feminine she looked, her face flushed with sleep. "I daresay I will," he finally said.
"Did you sleep on the floor also?"
He looked back at Wendell and reached up to touch his chin, where his beard had so very recently been. The smoothness of his skin felt a little strange after he'd finally got used to having facial hair. "Last night? No, I did not." His eyes moved back towards Granger. After waking multiple times, twice from nightmares and three times from sheer discomfort, he had considered it. The bed was far too soft.
In the end, he'd decided just not to sleep at all.
0 0 0
Hermione woke with a start when she heard the sound of footsteps outside of the room. Darkness loomed around her, as always.
"Severus?" she whispered, feeling about on the cold wooden floor for him. He wasn't anywhere within her reach. Fighting a sudden feeling of panic, she spoke louder. "Severus? Severus?"
She heard more footsteps, faster than before. She shuddered, her body tensing with fear. They'd heard her, and Severus wasn't there. She was alone. She had to face them alone. How could he have left her without her knowledge?
The door opened, flooding the room with light. When she opened her aching eyes, she saw a thin, clean-shaven man staring in at her, a somewhat surprised expression on his face. "You called me," he said. It was not exactly a question, though he quirked one eyebrow up curiously.
"Sever--Professor," she said, looking around the room in confusion. She was in a bedroom filled with her own old, familiar things, a bedroom she'd slept in before, after she'd helped place the protective enchantments on her mother and father's new house. She was home, then, and it was a freshly-shaved, tidy-looking doppelganger of Professor Snape who was standing in her bedroom door. The disconnect between where she was and where she thought she'd been was so strong that she could have believed she'd hallucinated the whole thing, except that Snape was in her house and wearing her father's second-favorite jumper.
"It is I," he said dryly. "Did you require something of me?"
"I--it was dark."
"You closed the curtains."
The cold terror that had gripped her began to slowly recede. "I thought I'd been dreaming." She waved helplessly around. "About this. About here."
"Ah," he said. "Shall I fetch one of your parents?"
She rubbed her eyes again, looking around the room--her room. "No, thanks. Er--what time is it?"
He raised his eyebrows. "Just past five o'clock in the evening."
"I slept that long?"
He shrugged, his eyes sweeping over her bedroom with a look too expressionless to be called interest. "Evidently."
"Oh." She looked at him. He seemed distinctly uncomfortable about being there. "I'm--er--I'm just going to have a shower. Is there any dinner?"
"I have been informed that there is a chicken roasting in the oven." He lingered for another awkward moment and then walked away from the still-open door, leaving her alone again.
The scent of the chicken began to waft into the room, making her stomach growl. When she got up, her body ached terribly. Her muscles were as sore as if she'd run a marathon the day before. Was she really so out of shape that she couldn't even walk around a village and travel by train without rendering herself nearly incapacitated from stiffness and pain?
She fairly hobbled to the bathroom, holding on to the wall for support. Locking herself in, she turned the water on as hot as it would go. There weren't words to express how good it felt to be clean, and she scrubbed herself vigorously, her muscles gradually loosening and relaxing under the spray.
When she had washed as thoroughly as she possibly could, had cleaned her teeth, and run a comb through her short, spiky hair, she returned to her bedroom. It took a long time to choose clothes. She was cold, but half of her jumpers had been made by Mrs. Weasley, and she didn't want to think of that family more than she could possibly help.
In the end, she chose a warm green shirt that her mother had bought for her nearly five years prior and that she'd avoided wearing because she simply hadn't felt like arguing with Ron and Harry over whether it was an acceptable color for a loyal Gryffindor to ever wear. Before she left the room, she pushed the Weasley jumpers as far into the back of her closet as she could and hid them behind several rather frilly dresses that she wouldn't be caught dead wearing.
When she ventured downstairs, her mother hurried to greet her. "Hermione!"
She found herself enveloped in a tight hug, and returned it a little awkwardly. Her parents were affectionate, but it was strangely embarrassing to be hugged like that in front of Severus--or, rather, in front of Snape.
"You're just in time. Come and sit down. The chicken's only just come out of the oven. Sit down, Hermione. You must be famished."
Her father didn't say anything, but once she'd sat down, he reached across the table and gave her hand a squeeze. She squeezed back, blinking away unexpected tears. For the first time, she fully realized how completely she had come to believe that she would never see them again.
Nobody spoke of that, however. Dinner was a bubbly, shallow affair, her mother's small talk punctuated by occasional requests for more food or drink. Whether she was Monica Wilkins or Elizabeth Granger, Hermione's mother was a woman who could be counted on to keep a dinner conversation going. Her parents, like all dentists, were experts in the art of asking polite but vague questions, and Hermione found herself increasingly thankful that at least Snape didn't have a drill crammed into his mouth, although he could hardly have looked more uncomfortable or answered any more tersely if he had.
He kept his responses primarily to monosyllables, but he did manage to ask a few polite questions of his own and offer a sincere, if ungracious, compliment on the cooking. The day that she'd slept appeared to have been enough to acquaint her parents with his brusque manner, and her mother smiled brilliantly and accepted the praise with as much enthusiasm as if he'd stood and composed an ode to the potatoes on the spot.
0 0 0
"Miss Granger," said Severus a few days later, when her parents had gone to work and left them alone, "I wish to have a word with you."
She was sitting in an armchair, watching the fire, but when he spoke, she looked up at him questioningly. Their eyes met briefly, and then he looked away. In all those years, he'd never looked at her eyes before, and now he regretted having done so. It made her real to him in an entirely new way--one that he didn't like.
"It would be best if we established--that is to say--there are things we must discuss."
"Sir?"
He did his best not to wince. Every time she spoke, he heard the voice of an erstwhile lover coming from the mouth of a student who he had made no effort to like. The cognitive dissonance was almost dizzying. Miss Granger sat before him, but to conjure Hermione he merely needed to close his eyes and listen.
But, he reminded himself, Hermione no longer existed--at least not for him. "I assume," he said, with what he hoped was delicacy, "that we are in mutual agreement that there are certain things which transpired in the past months that it would be better not to discuss."
Her cheeks flooded with color, but she met his eyes again quite frankly. "You--I--you needn't fear that I'll try and get you in trouble," she said, faltering slightly over the words.
He looked at her in silence, unsure how to understand her. It had seemed so easy to comprehend her at times in the darkness, when there was only the subtle nuance of her voice to contend with, and not the myriad of expressions that traveled across her face when he looked at her. He suddenly found himself tempted to use Legilimency on her, to know what she was thinking as clearly as she knew it herself. Could she think so little of him as to believe that his concern was the distant possibility of blackmail?
He allowed his lip to curl slightly. "Rest assured, Miss Granger," he said, the tense, chilled feeling in his chest making itself heard in his voice, "I trust you to be a paragon of Gryffindor honor. I merely wished to discuss what--"
Her expression changed to another one that he could not read. "Oh," she said quickly, "I see. I only--you--we can--we ought to just forget about it. We can forget it happened, it's--it's all right."
He had the self-control not to flinch at her ham-handedness and restricted his response to a sharp nod. That was one hurdle jumped. "Then we have an understanding," he said, not entirely truthfully. "I would not like to be responsible for giving rise to false ... impressions."
She finally looked away from him, releasing him from her gaze. "No," she said quietly. "I--er--I meant to ask you, sir, what we ought to do next."
He raised his eyebrows in surprise that she'd felt a need to ask. "We have discussed this already, M--" he started to address her as he had when she was a student, but found himself unable to form the words, and settled for not using a name at all. "I do not feel it is wise to immediately attempt a journey unarmed and unassisted, and to contact the Weasleys puts everybody involved at risk of exposure."
"I thought it might be best if we got in touch with them as soon as possible. I don't want to just sit about and wait, if things are really as bad as they--"
"Don't be absurd," he snapped, irritated. "What help do you suppose you could offer, in your present state?" Surely she could not be so self-deceived as to be unaware of her appearance, of her weakness. She was almost unrecognizable.
"You prefer to hide indefinitely in Oxfordshire, I suppose?" she said, narrowing her eyes. "How very Slyth--"
"How clever, Miss Granger," he said, anger suddenly making him equal to facing the distance that the name created between them when he said it. "Cast aspersions on my House in order to deflect a logical argument."
"It is rather clever, isn't it? I learned it from one of my professors."
"We have no objective knowledge of what awaits us outside of this house. If Lucius Malfoy has truly staged the coup they say he has, our situation is bleak. Perhaps you remember what it was like to spend months hiding from Seekers and attempting to get from one place to the next undetected? Do you think you will find it easier in the dead of winter, without magic, after weeks of malnutrition and idleness?"
"We didn't have any money then. My mum and dad could help us, we made it all the way here by train, and--"
"And were nearly caught, or did you not understand what it meant that we were located by owl? If an owl can find us, there are others who can do the same, should we venture outside of these wards. How do you propose to protect yourself from our enemies, should they locate us, as they surely would? Perhaps we can throw money at them." He sneered mockingly at her, taking a twisted sort of triumph in the color that suddenly suffused her face.
"If it's really as hopeless as all that, what good will it do to wait?" Her voice caught in an odd way, one that he had learned to identify immediately, and he looked away before he could see her tears.
"What is hopeless now may be less hopeless in the future, Miss Granger," he said, forcing himself to soften his tone a fraction. "They will not always be looking for us so vigilantly. We escaped less than forty-eight hours ago, and their pride has been wounded. Given time, they will become distracted by other matters."
"How do you know?" she muttered, her voice quavering.
"Stop acting like an irrational child and use your much-vaunted brains to some effect. If you question my logic, I shall point out that they are at least vestigially human, and will therefore lose interest in most things that are not immediately profitable to them. If you question my authority, I will remind you that I am, of the two of us, far more qualified to pontificate on the nature of Death Eaters and their hangers-on."
For several moments, silence reigned. Severus crossed his arms and studied the floor, willing his mind to clear itself. He could hear Hermione breathing, could hear the effort she was making to calm herself.
"What if it all turns out to have been lies? What if everything is completely fine?" she finally asked, her voice carefully controlled.
"Then," he said, with just a hint of impatience, "we have lost nothing by delaying, except to have put off our ... joyful reunions a little while longer."
"It's just been so long already, and I can't go on without knowing if--whether Ron--"
He scowled, more irritated by the mention of Ronald Weasley than anything that had gone before. "I beg to differ, Miss Granger. You can go on, and you will. Don't be melodramatic. It's highly unbecoming in an adult."
"Fine," she said shortly, standing up. "Since you've got it all settled, I suppose we'll stay."
"Don't even begin to imagine that you'll get away with some half-baked Gryffindor scheme to sneak out of here on your own and return heroically to Weasley's side--or to his grave, which is equally likely."
She stared at him, hurt and betrayal written so plainly on her face that even louts like Potter or Weasley could have identified them. Then she turned and walked out of the room, leaving him to attempt to convince himself that cruelty had been the only possible way to convince her to stay where she would be safe.
It seemed to him that the argument was beginning to grow stale, after so many years of use.
0 0 0
Had they been at Hogwarts, or even at Grimmauld Place, Hermione would simply have put her head down and avoided Snape with all possible assiduity. In her parents' small, snug little home, however, such a course of action was impossible. She would have to speak to him, at some point, or her parents would notice that something was wrong, and there was no possible way to explain to them what the matter was.
This was partially due to the fact that Hermione herself didn't know. In the endless dark, it was easy to believe that they'd never make it out alive, or that things would return to normal somehow if they did. History, it seemed, really was doomed to repeat itself. She, and the vast majority of the Wizarding world, had believed the same thing about defeating Voldemort. If it had been true, there would have been no Death Eaters left to capture her. Now, of course, the foolishness of that idea was more than evident.
To live with him in such a strange, domestic way after all that had passed felt like an impossibility, and to go still longer without knowing the truth about Ron was a terrible prospect.
But he was right. There was nothing for it. And, as strange and uncomfortable as things were, he was her last connection to what she fully considered to be her true home, and although he was as cut off from it as she, it was better to be cut off together than to be cut off alone.
"Miss Granger," said Snape, breaking the silence that had stretched between them for nearly two days and startling her out of her thoughts, "I wonder if I might inspect the magical books you have on hand. Your father informs me that you have a relatively sizable collection of ... extracurricular reading materials."
"Oh," she said, taken aback, "er."
"I'm sure she'd be delighted," said her father, giving her a meaningful look. "I've been telling him all about your books, Hermione. He was quite interested, and it would help him pass the time."
Hermione sighed. "I'd be delighted, Professor Snape."
Snape nodded, and her father gave her hand an approving pat. "Don't entertain much at school, I suppose," he said to her, evidently making an effort to tactfully inform her that she'd committed a faux pas. "Seems silly to keep calling each other by such formal terms, after everything that's passed. Makes me feel a little too much like I'm back at school myself. What's wrong with your given names? School's finished, after all. You've got your exams done."
If Snape was distressed by the idea of returning to the use of her first name, he hid it well. He bowed slightly in her direction. "Hermione," he said, enunciating her name crisply, "I would be obliged to you if you would allow me the pleasure of perusing your private library."
"Let me just show you up to my room, then," she said. The only thing worse than letting him into her bedroom was the idea of letting him in there alone.
It seemed to her that he lingered unreasonably long over his choice, tilting his head to one side and reading each individual title, his eyes moving over each neatly shelved book with an almost insolent deliberation. Finally, he took two volumes of Einhard's Complete History of Magic, thumbed through them briefly, and tucked them under his arm, apparently satisfied. Hermione waited silently for him to leave, but he simply remained standing there, looking first at her bookshelf and then rather awkwardly around her bedroom.
"I believe it is possible that I owe you an apology," he said stiffly, when the awkward silence had grown so intense that Hermione was prepared to say something if only to end it. "While I maintain and will continue to maintain that the strength of my feelings about our future plans is entirely correct and appropriate, and that the strategy I put forth is the only appropriate one to pursue, I concede that perhaps I did not put things as--I wish you to understand that I intended no malice, per se."
Hermione frowned. "Per se?"
"My intention in initiating the conversation was not to ... criticize."
"I see." She looked down at her hands, which were folded in her lap. "Apology accepted, then."
"I wish to be certain that you understand the logic of my argument. I continue to feel responsible for your safety to some degree, as well as for my own. I assure you, if I felt it was feasible to venture forth immediately back to our own world without meeting almost certain death, I would do so at once."
Her hair felt strangely unfamiliar when she ran her fingers through it. "I understand."
There was another pause. Still, he didn't make a move to leave. Finally, he cleared his throat. "If Lucius Malfoy has indeed overcome the Order, it is possible that we will have to remain in hiding indefinitely."
"You mean not go back at all?" She looked at him incredulously, horrified and angry at the idea.
"One or both of us might perhaps attempt to make contact with Order sympathizers in France or elsewhere, but it would be most unwise to risk discovery here without reinforcements."
"We'd try and get in touch with people first, wouldn't we?"
He snorted. "I do not enjoy traveling. I would prefer to avoid having to endure it."
She didn't speak for a moment, considering that. "Fine," she said. "Is that all?"
Something in his face changed, but she hadn't the first idea how to understand what it meant. His face was a blank mask to her, as much as it ever had been during school. When she looked at him, she could see only the immobile, inscrutable scowl of the Potions master. He didn't shrug, but it seemed to her that, had it been Harry or Ron, he might have. "Very well. I thank you for the loan of the books."
It was many long minutes after he closed the door before she finally started to cry, and longer still before she could force herself to stop.
Author's Notes: I'm sure most of you were beginning to think this was abandoned. It certainly hasn't followed the update rate of Treasure, but real life will intrude now and again, and real life intruded with a vengeance.
I have chapter 7 more than halfway finished, so the next update should come sooner than the last. Keep an eye on my blog for more information, zeegrindylows dot livejournal dot com.