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 7

"It is a wound that bleeds when any hand but that of love touches it, and even then must bleed again"

-Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

Winter dragged on. It seemed ages before Hermione could sleep through the night on her own bed. She didn't ask Snape if he was having similar problems. In spite of the justifications she'd given herself at the time, sleeping with him seemed, in the light of day, to have been a singularly bad idea. She could hardly bring herself to look him in the face when she thought about it.

And yet, in the bleakness of the night, when she lay sleepless and terrified on her too-soft bed, she longed for Severus—not for Snape—with a palpable sense of loss.

0 0 0

"Mezzanine," said Wendell triumphantly, laying the last of the small wooden tiles on the Scrabble board. "And that's on a triple."

Monica and Hermione threw their hands up in disgust. Severus merely raised his eyebrows and carefully tallied up the score, scratching the numbers into the proper column.

"That brings me up to an even three hundred, I think," said Wendell jocularly.

"This is why we only play with you at Christmas," retorted his wife, with contrived bitterness.

Severus found himself fighting a smile. As much as he hated the loss of magic in his life, there was a part of him that had to admit that this forced domesticity was pleasant. Wendell and Monica were intelligent and convivial enough, and Hermione—well, they tolerated each other with as much success as they ever had, he supposed.

He allowed himself to steal a glance at her out of the corner of his eye. She was staring at her tiles, chewing on the edge of her thumb, her brows knitted in concentration. At the sight of her, he felt a sudden, if subtle, pang. He had not anticipated how keenly he would regret the loss of the Hermione he had come to know in his imprisonment.

It had been easy at the time. He rearranged his tiles into another sequence. She had simply been a woman, any woman, and a companion. When he couldn't see her, he could forget her true identity and begin afresh. More importantly, perhaps, he could forget his own identity. Hindsight made him feel that it had been almost a pleasure, in spite of their captivity, to shed his professorial persona and simply share himself with a woman.

A particularly shrill note from the children's choir on the radio interrupted his thoughts. "That," he said dourly, jerking his head toward the radio, "is a crime against music."

Wendell made a snorting noise that Severus had learned to identify as an attempt to get away with laughing at something he feared Monica might find less than amusing. He thought he saw one corner of Hermione's mouth twitch into a smile, but the expression vanished as soon as it appeared, and a moment later he found himself thinking that it must have been mere wishful thinking.

"Hermione used to sing in a choir, you know," volunteered Monica. "More cocoa, Severus?"

He passed his mug across the table to be refilled. "I was not aware that you were musical." He refrained, as always, from addressing her by name, merely casting his eyes in her direction.

"I'm not," said Hermione, a bit wryly. Severus didn't wait for elaboration. She never elaborated, at least not when she spoke with him.

"You weren't as bad as all that," said Wendell fairly. "No worse than any of the other five year olds, in any case."

"Adze," said Hermione, rather regretfully, ignoring her father as she set her tiles down. "Only thirteen points."

"Well played, darling," said Monica kindly. Monica seemed to have decided that Hermione was fragile, and needed encouragement at all times. Severus wasn't entirely sure he disagreed, although he found her attitude to be off-puttingly cloying at times.

Wendell rattled the Scrabble tiles in their bag before he drew seven new ones. "I've said it before, but even if the circumstances are bad, it's a pleasure having you home for Christmas. I can hardly remember the last time we did, you know." He passed the bag to Hermione and gave her hand a quick squeeze.

"And it's lovely having Severus, as well," Monica added.

Severus and Hermione held their peace.

Late that night, Severus was wakened by a creaking of the floorboards in the hallway. Instantly wide awake, he slipped out of bed and crossed his bedroom, navigating with no trouble in the dark. He opened the door just in time to see Hermione creeping down the stairs.

He prevaricated for a moment or two before making up his mind. Whatever their past, whatever their future, he had accepted some measure of responsibility for her, and until they were safely back home and out of hiding—he couldn't bring himself to consider a Muggle house in Oxford as fitting either of those criteria—that responsibility remained. It wasn't healthy for her to prowl around the house in the middle of the night, especially not in December, in her bare feet.

Pausing to pull on a pair of socks and a jumper, and to fetch similar articles to bring down to Hermione, he followed her.

He had no clear plan in his mind when he did it, only a knowledge that the house was freezing and that she, still painfully thin, would probably catch cold if he let her wander around the house in the middle of the night in nothing but cotton pajama pants and a t-shirt. These protective impulses always came at night, in the dark. Had he chosen to analyze the reason why, it would have made a fair amount of sense, he supposed. A glimpse of her in the dimness of the hallway, lit only from the nightlight in the bathroom, made her seem much more like his Hermione than the Hermione with whom he now lived.

Had he chosen to analyze the fact that he thought of her in any way as his Hermione, he probably would not have followed her down the stairs.

Follow her he did, however, and he found her quickly, curled up on the floor in the darkened living room and shivering as she stared into the last dying embers of the fire. Something in his chest (perhaps his heart?) ached to hold and comfort her. He could hear the soft, telltale gasps that meant she was about to begin to cry in earnest. He loathed the sound for the way it rent his heart.

He cleared his throat, unsure of what to say, and she started.

"I ... was awakened by your passing in the hallway," he said awkwardly, when she turned to look at him. Looking her in the eyes, he could no longer fool himself that this girl belonged to him in any way. She was the same too-young, too-girlish, too-Gryffindor student that she had always been. He felt like swearing.

"I had a nightmare," she said, with unwonted candor.

He sat down beside her on the floor, placing the folded jumper and socks in her lap. "I thought you might be cold." Nightmares were something he had ample experience of, both his own and those of his students.

She picked up one sock and twisted it in her hands, but made no move to put it on. "Thanks," she whispered, her voice so soft that he had to bend his head toward hers to hear it.

They sat in silence, time seeming to drag just as much as it ever had during their imprisonment. There was a crack and a shower of sparks on the hearth as the last smoldering log on the fire collapsed completely.

"I wonder what they're doing right now," she murmured.

He didn't feel a need to ask who she meant. The question seemed to encompass everybody in their world, good and evil alike. Somehow, in the close and quiet darkness of Christmas night, the war from which they were in hiding seemed so far away that both of its opposing sides seemed more akin to one another than to the sheltered, mundane little household that had been their home for the last month.

The antique clock on the mantel struck three in the morning.

"Sleeping, I expect," he said dryly, when the tinny ringing of the last chime had finally died away.

She answered with a single, wry laugh. "Probably," she agreed. She chuckled, and then suddenly—and not entirely to Severus's surprise—she began to cry.

He was torn. He longed to seize her in his arms and hold her tightly. And yet, he had made it clear to both of them that he had no reason or desire to continue their liaisons. He did not wish to be accused of hypocrisy or lies; he'd had enough of those accusations to last him a lifetime, and he had no wish to hear them from her in addition to the rest.

Still, her tears grated on his soul. He flexed the mostly-atrophied muscles in his shoulders and neck in order to keep himself from writhing under the discomfort of it. And she continued to cry, bitterly, if softly.

He touched her shoulder, feeling like an awkward youth and hating himself for it. "We will return home, Hermione," he murmured, in the same determinedly reassuring voice he used to use on his young Slytherins when nightmares or homesickness made them cry out in the night. It was a more overtly optimistic statement than he had yet allowed himself to make, but she was so thin and frail and miserable, so desperately in need of comfort that he found himself murmuring in the dark what he had refused to say when the light was there to dispel the illusion that the girl he longed for was real.

She began to sob in earnest then, her whole body shaking with the force of her tears. And somehow, whether he had gathered her there or she had nestled in against him, he found that she was in his arms again, that her face was hidden in his chest. He could feel the heat of her breath through his jumper. He held her, closing his eyes. There on the cold floor, in the dark, with a weeping Hermione in his arms, he could imagine himself back in that dank prison. With physical torture a fading memory, he could almost wish himself back there, if it meant another few hours or days of pretending that she belonged to him, that he had any right to touch her body, to know her soul or her mind.

The memory of their first coupling returned to him vividly. Hadn't it begun just like this? His fingers trembled as he touched the back of her head, stroking and smoothing her hair as he attempted to comfort her. She was clean and fresh now as she had never been when he'd held her before, and yet when he inclined his head toward hers, he could still catch some scent that was quintessentially Hermione, some pheromone whose aroma never quite deserted her, no matter how clean she was. His hands itched to touch her breasts. His lips, unbidden, moved down until they almost rested atop her head.

He froze there, unable to quite kiss her. Unspoken or not, there had been an understanding between them. What was acceptable in the blindness of captivity was unthinkable now. He would not subject himself to her ridicule. Slowly, with all the self-control he could muster, he exhaled, feeling his own breath move across his face as it rebounded from her hair.

She froze, abruptly going silent.

"Severus," she whispered. He could feel her fingertips digging almost painfully into his arms.

His mouth went dry. Except when prompted (usually at length) by her parents, she had not used his name since the day they had arrived in Oxford. He waited, anxious to know what she would say next.

But she said nothing, merely sat there, half in his lap and half on the floor, her fingers clutching at him and her face half-hidden in his jumper. She didn't move, and Severus felt as if he'd been hit by petrificus totalus, frozen in place even when his muscles began to ache from the force of their stillness. Some old adage of his mother's came back to him as he sat there in the semidarkness. Wasn't it terribly dangerous to let someone know your real name? It gave them power over you.

He had foolishly given her permission to use his name, and she had ensnared him with it. His mind swam with memory and imagination—her arched back, curving beneath his palms; her eyelashes tickling the side of his neck; her voice, doing more than merely whispering his name.

The spell was so powerful that he'd almost resolved to give up, to let himself look like a fool and confess that she was not as easy to walk away from as he'd attempted to lead them both to believe. Suddenly, though, she was no longer there, but standing up hastily, clumsily, clutching the still-folded jumper to her chest as if it were a shield. Dashing the tears from her eyes with the back of her hand, she stared at him for a moment, mumbled something incoherent and apologetic, and fled from the room. The ornaments on the mantel rattled slightly as she ran up the stairs.

Severus buried his head in his hands and cursed himself for a fool.

0 0 0

After a panicked hour lying awake in her bedroom, Hermione pointedly refused to think about whatever it was that had happened—or, more accurately, not happened—on Christmas night. It was Christmas. She was overwrought. He was probably also overwrought, to be fair. They were still under a great deal of stress. They were still recovering from a horrible trauma. As homesick as she was for Hogwarts and for magic in general, she had to imagine that Snape, who had spent far more many years away from Muggles than she, was feeling it even more keenly.

But her heart was Ron's. She was resolute on that. And if Ron turned out to be dead—well, once she had confirmation from a source more reliable than a sadistic Death Eater, she'd consider moving on. But not until then.

For his part, Snape was his regular taciturn self on Boxing Day, nodding gravely to her over the breakfast table when she entered the kitchen and then immediately ignoring her once again in favor of his daily morning crossword puzzle. It was reassuring. He probably felt just as embarrassed about the whole silly affair as she did. Well, one good thing you could say for Snape, he was a mature adult. Ron probably would have sulked and fretted with such blinding obviousness that the whole of Oxfordshire could hardly help but miss it, secrecy charms or not.

The thought of Ron brought back the familiar, lonely heartache that had plagued her for months, and she sighed, perhaps a little more pathetically than she intended to. Snape's head snapped up at the noise, his eyes fixing on her face, studying her intently and without disguise. He caught Hermione's eye and she stared at him. Nobody had ever looked at her with such intensity before. There was such concern, such desire, such a pathetic, hopeless questioning in that look that Hermione was surprised to realize, when he looked down at his crossword again a moment later, that the whole thing had occurred in complete silence and he hadn't said a word. She wondered briefly if he'd attempted to use Legilimency on her, except that it didn't feel a bit like the descriptions of Legilimency that many library books had offered.

She felt like she ought to say something, but hadn't the faintest idea of what she ought to say. It wasn't fair. He had no right to look at her like that. It had been a survival mechanism, a purely physical entanglement that ended as soon as they had escaped and no longer needed it to help preserve their sanity. She loved Ron. Snape was her former professor, her tutor, old enough to be her father.

Unbidden, a memory rose to her mind of the tangy, slightly acrid flavor of his unwashed teeth when she kissed him.

She really ought to say something.

She was saved the trouble of inventing something to say, however, by a knock at the door. The sound made her blood run cold and seemed to sap her of all her powers of action. She wanted to flee. She had to flee. They had found her. But, as if it were some horrible nightmare, she was rooted where she stood. No matter how many times her brain screamed at her to run, she couldn't move.

Snape, on the other hand, was out of his chair before the knocker, whoever it was, had finished rapping on the door. He paused in the kitchen doorway and glanced over his shoulder. When he saw that she wasn't following, he returned and seized her by the hand, dragging her toward the stairs.

With his help, she was able to move again. They ran upstairs together, nearly colliding with her parents in the hallway.

"We heard a knock," said her father, looking far less disturbed by the sound than Hermione felt and Snape seemed.

"I'm sure it's nobody," her mother said, taking Hermione by the arm and beckoning Snape to follow, "but let's put you in the study with the door locked, just in case. I know it won't do much," she said quickly, noticing the doubtful look on Hermione's face, "but it might make you feel better. Wendell, be a dear and answer the door. I'll be down directly."

She led them into the smallest upstairs room, where a desk and bookshelves took up nearly the entire floor, and pulled a small key from her pocket. "Short of magic, this is the only key that will unlock the door into this room from the outside. Keep it with you. I know it won't really stop anybody bent on—well, at any rate, I'm sure it's just a friend. I'll be back soon. Lock the door behind me."

She left them there, closing the door with a soft click. Hermione stared at it for a moment, and then locked it, gripping the key tightly in her fist.

"Staying here will do us no good if we have been discovered," said Snape hoarsely.

"Mum wants us here." Hermione squeezed the key a little harder. It dug painfully into her hand.

"I would prefer to know what is transpiring downstairs. A locked door will not protect us if there is any danger about."

"I—" Hermione steeled herself. He was right. And no Gryffindor was going to cower in the back study if a Slytherin wanted to face danger head on—or, at any rate, to spy from the top of the stairs.

She unlocked the door.

It took what seemed an agonizingly long time to open the door, so careful were they to keep the hinges from squeaking. When it was finally open wide enough to allow them to pass, Snape motioned that they ought to stay close to the wall. For a moment, she wondered wildly what protecting her back would matter when she had no wand with which to defend herself from a frontal attack. Then she realized that all he'd meant was that hugging the wall would minimize the chances of making the floor creak as they walked. She felt like a fool.

They crept silently to the top of the stairs. Hermione could hear muffled voices in the living room, but couldn't make out the words over the noise of her own breathing. She held her breath, but it was still nearly impossible to hear.

Snape, however, seemed not to be having the same problem. His eyes were closed, and he gripped the railing of the stairs until even the faintest vestiges of color were gone from his knuckles. He, too, held his breath.

Hermione frowned. If she were going to risk her life in order to hear what was going on, she might as well actually hear it. As carefully and as slowly as she could, she maneuvered her way around Snape and began inching down the stairs. He opened his eyes and glared at her, but didn't dare to speak. She ignored him.

When she was halfway down, she finally found herself able to distinguish the flow of the conversation.

"—or coffee? We've got some left over stollen from my cousin in Dresden, let me just see about putting a little platter together." That was her mother. At least whoever it was at the door hadn't come in with wands blazing, killing her parents straight off. Granted, someone who was going to rush in like that wouldn't have knocked on the door to begin with. Hermione heard the kitchen door open and close.

"Do have a seat." That was her father's voice, far frostier than her mother's. Hermione knew somehow that whoever it was down there with her parents, it wasn't just one of the few neighbors who had been let in on the secret of the house's existence.

Someone spoke, but the voice was indistinct, and Hermione didn't dare to creep any closer.

"Better wait for Monica," her father said.

As if on cue, the kitchen door opened and closed again, and Hermione heard the clinking of dishes as a tray was set down.

Hermione felt a sudden irrational terror that her parents were about to intentionally betray them to the Death Eaters. Perhaps it wasn't her actual parents at all. Perhaps it had been an elaborate trap all along. Her heart began to beat faster. Had she asked a question that only her parents could have answered, something that would determine beyond the shadow of a doubt that it was really her mother and father down there in that living room, talking to Merlin only knew whom? She found herself racking her brain for anything her parents had said that a Death Eater couldn't have reasonably guessed at or got by torture.

"It's so lovely to see you," her mother—or was it her mother?—was saying. "Wendell, isn't it lovely?"

Whatever her father—if it really was her father—said, it was indistinct. Hermione moved one step lower on the staircase, trying desperately to hear more. Snape made a hissing noise through his teeth, but didn't stop her.

One of the unknown guests was talking, but so softly that Hermione was still unable to understand it in spite of having moved even closer. Her ears were beginning to feel strange from all the attention she was paying to them as she attempted to channel all of her will into hearing just a little better.

"Let me be sure I've understood you properly," said her father, his voice loud and angry. "You're here, on the day after Christmas, to inform me that my daughter is dead?"

Hermione glanced up at Snape, feeling as if her heart had tripped up and got off-beat. He moved his eyes in the direction of the living room and shook his head, raising his finger to his lips, as if afraid Hermione would cry out or run into the room without waiting to find out who was there. She frowned and nodded, a little insulted by the implication.

"And how are we to know—" her father's voice was even louder now "—that you actually are who you claim to be? We aren't completely ignorant of magic, you know. We know there are still Death Eaters about. You could have taken that—that potion that changes your appearance."

"Polyjuice," breathed Hermione, though they couldn't hear her. She felt oddly proud of her father for even remembering that such a thing existed when he'd had no personal experience of it.

"My dear Wendell," said a strangely familiar voice, sounding both irritated and oddly defeated, "the house is secret-kept. Even had Death Eaters captured and impersonated us, we would have been categorically unable to divulge the secret of your location."

Hermione, exhausted from her sleepless night, pressed her fingers into her forehead, thinking desperately. She knew she ought to recognize the voice of the speaker. It was so familiar, and yet the face that accompanied it seemed to escape her.

"I want proof," said her mother in a tremulous voice. "If our daughter is dead, I want proof. Where is her—her body?"

Hermione wondered if her parents were having the same terrible thought about herself and Snape that she had harbored about them just a few minutes before.

"Her body has not been found," said the unidentified but familiar voice, "but we—they sent us her wand."

"Only her wand?"

She could hear the relief in her father's voice, and she understood it. A body, her body, would mean that the Hermione ostensibly hiding in their study might be someone else altogether. She felt an odd sense of relief as well. Someone had got her wand. Perhaps they even had it at the house. She closed her fist around an imaginary wand handle as she thought about it.

Someone was speaking, too low to hear, and then—

"It's broken," said her mother, flatly. Hermione's heart sank.

"Broken?" That was her father again. "That's not even in big enough pieces to be sure it's hers."

The stranger spoke again. "Ollivander made a positive identification, based on the volume and type of wood, and the remnants of the core. Wendell, Monica, I'm so sorry. I know this is a terrible time, being Christmas and all."

"How long have you known?" asked her father, his voice flat. It seemed he was a surprisingly good actor, when he chose to be.

One of the visitors mumbled something.

"Months?" Hermione's mother's indignation was almost palpable. "This is exactly the problem with you wizarding types, ever since Hermione was a little girl. What makes you think we can't handle hearing the truth about our daughter? First trolls and duels and tournaments and then raging megalomaniacal madmen, and then fighting in a war, and not even twenty yet, and you couldn't even have the decency to tell us when you've got word from someone that she's dead?"

"Monica," said Wendell, but Hermione's mother was not to be stopped. She was most definitely not play-acting. Hermione suspected that she'd merely been waiting for an opportunity to vent her own anger and fear over everything that had happened, at a moment when Hermione wasn't there to hear, and a suitable scapegoat was.

"You can take your so-called understanding of Muggle culture and shove it up your spotty behind. All of your protecting and lying and avoiding is just as insulting and condescending and frankly offensive as the worst of those Death Eaters, Arthur Weasley."

"Monica!" exclaimed the visitor whose familiar-but-unplaceable voice sounded most aggrieved. Now, though, she recognized it immediately, and felt rather ashamed of herself for having let fear and fatigue keep her from recognizing it before. The Weasleys were almost family. It was a insult to them that she would not immediately recognize Arthur Weasley's voice. After all, he was practically her father-in-law.

And suddenly she realized that, if Arthur were down there in the living room with her parents, Molly and others might be there as well. It had certainly sounded like her parents had been entertaining (if that was the proper word) more than one guest. And of course, they would know, both about Ron and about Harry. They would be able to tell her for sure, and she knew they wouldn't be able to keep the truth from her, even if they tried.

"Hermione," said Snape urgently and softly, as if anticipating her thoughts.

But she hardly heard him. She stood up and ran down the few remaining stairs as fast as she could, bursting breathlessly into the living room and nearly losing her balance as she stopped short and looked to see who was there.

Her parents and Arthur Weasley stood in the center of the room, all looking rather white. And there was Molly, seated on the couch, clutching what Hermione could only suppose were the remnants of her wand—a useless pile of splinters that Hermione feared not even the Elder Wand would be able to repair.

And, standing in one corner, his back to the others, studying the titles on the bookshelf, was a tall, gangly young man with bright ginger hair and freckles liberally scattered over his ears and the back of his neck. He turned as Hermione ran in, and their eyes met.

"Hermione?" he said, his voice cracking as he spoke.

Hardly realizing she was doing it, Hermione began to run again, throwing herself into Ron's arms and burying her face in his dear, freckled neck. "Ron," she whispered, so overwhelmed by her emotions that she could barely form the words. "I knew you couldn't be dead. I knew they had to be lying. I knew it, I knew it. Oh, Ron."

"But—I don't understand," said Arthur, slowly, looking from Hermione to her parents. "How—?"

"A question for the ages," said Snape from the doorway. Hermione had been too preoccupied with Ron—convincing herself that he was real, and alive, and real—to notice when Snape followed her in, but he leaned against the door frame with his arms crossed, looking every inch the angry potions master in spite of the fact that he was clad in slightly frayed blue jeans and a green Christmas jumper rather than his customary robes.

"But they sent us your body," said Arthur, staring at Snape with even more disbelief than he had at Hermione.

Snape lifted his chin and sniffed contemptuously. "I highly doubt that, as my body is currently residing here and in far better working order than anything I imagine them sending to you. Polyjuice or transfiguration of another body explains it well enough. I assure you, I am quite alive, and I am quite myself."

His eyes moved over the room, and Hermione felt a vague, momentary sense of guilt as his peremptory glance fell on Ron and herself. "I see that we were unfortunately misled as to Weasley's status," he said, his tone as acerbic as it ever had been. "What about Malfoy and Potter?"

"Draco and Harry?" said Ron, frowning.

Snape scowled. "I am as aware as I currently wish to be of the younger Malfoy's standing. I referred to his father. We were told that he is currently Minister for Magic—" the Weasleys exchanged glances "—and that Potter is dead."

Hermione, nestling closer into Ron's arms, suddenly noticed that none of the Weasleys would quite meet her eyes.