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MetroVampire & Rhosymedre

Part 32 - Put Aside Childish Games

Snape looked at Hermione for a moment, silent as he held back the endless tumble of warnings and cautions and near-panic that chimed through his thoughts. Then he reached forward and gently adjusted the hood of the cloak, pulling it further forwards to better conceal her face. Then he stepped away from her.

"I'll be here when you get back."

A moment later he was alone; Hermione had disappeared into the disguise of a Death Eater and then disappeared altogether. Snape became aware of the freezing rain stinging his face and soaking his clothes. He shivered once in the sleet and then found he couldn't stop shivering; nothing, though, would induce him to leave and seek the warmth of the castle. Sense would have remembered to bring a coat when heading outside in late January; sensibility had thought of nothing but Hermione and what she would have to face.

Panic overtook him for a moment; age and training could offer little resistance to the teenage hormones that his subconscious insisted on stirring. Adrenaline spiked in the primeval fight or flight and he stood frozen, caught between both impulses and able to obey neither - his promise to Hermione overrode all other considerations.

The blank fear and fright was over almost as soon as it had begun; Snape shook himself out of physical, unplanned, response and began to pace. He told himself that he needed to keep moving, to stay warm - the shivering refused to go away, no matter how he held himself. A small circuit on the frozen ground took him between trees; this part of the school boundaries was far enough from the Forbidden Forest to be relatively safe, but far enough from the Quidditch grounds and other more populated areas that he took little risk of discovery. Assuming he wasn't out here too long.

Five minutes - it had only been five minutes and he was already counting the seconds, wondering how soon it would be before she would return. As though Voldemort had ever released his Death Eaters that quickly at a meeting - a five minute meeting would generate more gossip and panic than almost anything else he could imagine.

Snape's pacing slowed as his shivering increased; the castle windows in the far distance glowed orange and warm with candlelight and fires in this late evening. The last of dusk stole through the trees around him, blanketing slowly as the final vestiges of sunlight faded over the far horizon, stealing through the clouds of still-falling sleet. As Snape watched, another window in the school flared into light and, just as suddenly, he cursed his own stupidity. Distraction could have killed him - or at least given him hypothermia; neither option would have made him much use to Hermione. Self-castigation accompanied a short, terse, word as he dragged his wand from his sleeve and pointed it at a dead branch lying on the ground a little distance away.

"Incendio!"

Flames leapt and licked at the wood; a flash of copper-green shot skywards then settled to the characteristic incandescence of fierce yellow and orange. Snape allowed the observation to distract him from worry and fear; interesting that his own signature showed through even Hermione's body - the initial copper-green flame of fire was something he had never quite understood; his own twist on Incendio, something he had never entirely overcome. It had startled Flitwick in his Charms lessons - a rather younger Flitwick, but little different otherwise. It had enlivened the class, the first time he had tried the spell, and Flitwick had been - still was, truth be told - intrigued. No reason, no correction, had been forthcoming and - as the spell otherwise functioned perfectly well - it was put down to Snapish idiosyncracy.

It was just as well that he had never had to light a fire in front of others as Hermione; it would have been something of a giveaway. Or ... had he ... Snape tried to remember. Nothing came to mind, and he was shivering again even as he held his hands to the fire and felt the heat flare against his legs. His sweater wasn't enough, wouldn't be enough, to keep him warm until Hermione returned. At least, not in its current state.

Transfiguration lessons had their uses, after all, he found. Moments and a spell later, his sweater was a thick coat, falling to his ankles and buttoning to his throat; modelled after a military coat he vaguely remembered seeing somewhere, it was wool and heavy. He shivered still, even after the coat had had time to warm him. It was getting harder to blame the reaction on the weather.

Eight minutes.

Eight minutes. She would have met Voldemort now, he thought. Irresistibly, his memories recreated the scene; the very last thing he wanted to think about, and the only thing that he could think about. Had she remembered how to approach Voldemort? Or was she now writhing on the floor, paying the penalty for lack of respect? Had he told her everything? Would she remember to ...?

Snape flinched in pain; his palms were bleeding, small crescent-shaped cuts reddening and leaching where he had clenched his fists as the whirl of panicked thought swept through him. There was nothing he could do for Hermione now, and it was pointless to try and calculate whether he had done enough during the evenings they had spent together. She had clearly not anticipated this turn of events - or had successfully blocked the possibility from her mind. Experience had not permitted him to do the same, and he had used their evenings of potions experiments to try to infuse some protection into her subconscious; ideas and thoughts, possibilities. Nothing specific and, until tonight, nothing definitively intended to protect from Voldemort; a patchwork of attitude and stance that could might provide some help.

Could he have done more? Snape couldn't escape the thought so escaped instead into memories of their evenings of work; the shivering eased as he sank into the warmth that he had unexpectedly found in the company of Hermione. He had been - still was - continually surprised by her; the lack of artifice, the subtle amusement at the follies of her peers and her elders, the biting intelligence and curiosity. The intelligence he had anticipated; he would have had to have been dead not to have anticipated it, but she still surprised him - it was more than an eidetic memory, more than the word-perfect bookworm that he had thought her to be.

Eleven minutes. She would be in the circle now; had she made her report? Would she had embellished ... no, he thought not. Hermione wasn't prone to exaggeration.

Tired, cold, still shivering, Snape wanted nothing more than to curl up and block all thought from his mind. His mind was ... wherever Hermione was. He was scared, he admitted to himself at last. Absolutely bloody petrified. For once, the fear wasn't for himself; no matter that her discovery would ensure his death, sooner or later, what mattered more was that her discovery would mean her death. Sooner, rather than later. It was an intolerable thought; he would rather lose himself than lose her.

Frozen in front of a fire, shivering in half a hundredweight of black wool at the edge of a forest in near-full Scottish night, Snape admitted at last to himself that he would not know what to do without Hermione. Somewhere in the conversations and wry asides that had constituted their relationship for the past few months had grown a deep emotion; more than mere understanding although, beyond doubt, they knew each other now better than anyone else would ever know them.

Twenty minutes. Where was she? Where would he even begin to look if she didn't return - she had to return. Nothing else was possible. His shivering increased until he was almost shuddering; breathing the sharp air, he forced himself to relax. The kiss they had greeted each other with in the New Year crept into his mind; it had never been very far from his thoughts in the past couple of weeks. It had been chaste enough, a touch of cheeks and lips and nothing more. He called himself several kinds of fool for believing it could have been anything else and yet ... and yet ... the intent had been there, for his part at least.

Thirty minutes. A long meeting. The fire spluttered and crackled in front of him as the spell overcame a particularly damp patch in the wood that it consumed. What was Voldemort doing?

The school was entirely lost in the night now as Snape looked up; only the windows glowed in the darkness, pinpricks of light randomly scattered before him. The fire provided the only light, the moon hidden behind the clouds. It had stopped raining at some point, but the air was still damp and cold.

Snape forced his mind to blankness, reciting potions ingredients to himself and trying not to think of Hermione; all his mind could conjure now was the sight of her lying in the midst of a circle of Death Eaters, wracked in pain and worse. He had been there too many times to dismiss the possibility and yet the thought now hurt more than any pain he could recall from the curses themselves; he saw her as Hermione in his mind, a young woman, and not as the man he knew she would still present to the circle - the length of hair falling into his face, curling as the sleet had soaked it, confirmed that.

Wolfsbane. Beazor. Sulphur. Aconite. Mercury. Basilisk scales. Gillyweed. Mistletoe. Lacewings. Pyrite.

Forty minutes. Where was she? The thought now echoed through his mind like a scream and Snape gave up any pretence of calm. He paced around the fire, shivering and hugging himself in the coat in mingled fear and frozen frustration, until a sharp crack had him whirling around, wand out.

A tall figure, black cloak swirling around a silver mask, faced him silently and Snape braced himself for the cursing that would follow. It had all taken too long; she had been found out and now he would have to deal with the inevitable consequences. They had almost got away with it. Had she ... he forced his mind to the present; time enough to mourn her later, if he survived. If he survived; he didn't want to survive.

Nonetheless, something held him back from taking the initiative in the fight he anticipated; perhaps the death-wish, possibly a sense of something else. Whatever it was, the figure crumpled in front of him without even a token attempt to curse, to duel. Snape hurried over, wand still ready in case of ambush, and lifted the mask to face his attacker.

He found himself looking at his own face; Hermione had survived. The rush of relief sent a shudder through him that chased out the shivering that had been his companion since she had left.

Fervent relief was followed by a hard dose of practicality; Hermione was unconscious and, in the heavy robes, it was almost impossible to tell how badly she'd been hurt. There were no obvious injuries but, other than the face, it would have been hard to spot injuries in the black of night. Getting her to the castle was the first order of priority, then. If nothing else, he would need light to treat her.

Mobilicorpus worked as well as it ever had; the path was difficult to follow, even with a lighted wand to act as a torch, and Snape stumbled several times as he tripped over roots and stones. Things might have gone more smoothly if he could have brought himself to take his gaze from Hermione's face, waiting and watching as he walked, hoping and fearing she would wake. He wanted to see her eyes, hear her speak, understand that she had survived - but if she should prove badly injured, he would rather she stayed unconscious until they were somewhere that he could treat her.

The Infirmary was out, just for now; it would be too difficult to explain to Madam Pomfrey just what it was that he had been doing out on the grounds, even if she would understand all too well what Snape had been doing there. It was also too risky - he had no idea what state Hermione would wake up in and, if she hadn't been discovered, he wasn't prepared to have her announce the situation to all and sundry in delirium. Far better to make the first assessment himself; a fierce feeling of protectiveness had nothing to do with it.

Passwords and more passwords, corridors and doors, brought them through the depths of the castle from the cliff entrance; there was no-one around to see them in that place and that late in the evening. His rooms were in a backwater of the castle, little disturbed by any but the occasional house-elf, and an agonising fifteen minutes later Snape opened the doors into the welcoming warmth. The fireplace belched out heat that stung in the contrast to the cold night and chilly corridors.

Hermione still hadn't come to when Snape settled her on the bed. He hesitated for a moment, then started to remove her clothes. He rationalised it carefully - it was, after all, his body and they were his clothes that he was removing. Nothing there that he hadn't seen before.

He had undressed her to underwear before he realised. There were no injuries - none visible, anyway. A rapid scan with the wand indicated that she hadn't been hexed or cursed; she was simply unconscious. What had she seen this evening to produce this reaction? Snape sat by the edge of the bed, full of questions that there was no point in asking.

Half an hour passed in near-silence, a background of the rustling fire and their breathing doing little to dispel the close night weaving around them, before Hermione finally woke. Snape looked round, smothering a start of surprise when her breathing changed abruptly with a gasp.

"Oh god!"

Hermione flinched and sat up, clearly bewildered and distressed; with consciousness she started to shiver, taking over where Snape had stopped when she had reappeared. He stood slowly, drawing her attention to him.

"It's alright; you're safe. You're safe." He kept his voice low and quiet, reassuring and soothing. Hermione looked slightly less distressed but still rather confused - perhaps not surprisingly; he wasn't renowned for comfort, after all.

"I ... oh. These are my rooms ... yes, of course they are. Sorry, I shouldn't state the obvious." Hermione was losing the confusion rapidly, coming fully into the moment. "Oh god ..." she shuddered again. Snape put a hand to her shoulder, absently noting the warmth there.

"Memories?" he asked carefully. She nodded and ducked her head; he thought he heard a sob, but she seemed more composed when she looked back up at him. "Do you want to tell me what happened, or shall we go to Dumbledore? I usually report to him after these ... events."

"I'd rather tell you, I think," she replied. He rubbed his thumb over her collarbone, hoping to reassure, and nodded.

"Something to drink, first?"

Hermione nodded again, then seemed to realise just where she was. "And some clothes, I think," she said wryly.

Snape felt himself blush, cursing inwardly. "You - I thought you might have been hurt, and I needed to check. It seemed expedient." Hermione seemed to accept the explanation and he turned away to deal with tea. He heard her leave the bed and open the wardrobe, then the sound of fabric against skin. The blush was still there; he wasn't entirely sure what prompted it ... yes, actually, he knew very well what prompted it. This was ridiculous; he had accepted reality in the frozen evening outside, waiting for her. That reality hadn't changed and no sophistry or pretence would deny it. He wasn't about to confess to Hermione just how important she was to him but it seemed ludicrous now to deny it to himself.

He had thought that what he felt earlier was relief; it was nothing compared to this. A solid rush of pleasure, relief, light-headedness; all at the simple acceptance of an equally simple fact. Potentially leading to a fiendishly complicated situation - which was not something he wanted to think about now. The future could - and would - take care of itself.

Snape settled into one of the sofas in the main room; Hermione followed a moment later. She had picked his Muggle clothes to wear, probably in an attempt to distance herself completely from the robes and actions of the evening - she wasn't to know that he did exactly the same thing when he could. He was startled when she sat next to him, reaching for the mug of coffee that he had placed on the table, closer to one of the chairs.

He watched her curl her hands around the mug, long fingers encircling the stoneware, and bring the mug up to her chest as though inhaling the scent. She looked bone-tired, white and pallid, skin stark against the black hair that fell forwards and almost obscured her face. She sipped the coffee at last, then placed it back on the table and leaned back against the sofa, staring up at the ceiling.

"I saw a man die this evening; just stood and watched and did absolutely nothing. I thought it would be me - he told us that he knew there was a traitor in the circle." She had no need to name Voldemort; no-one else could be 'he'. "When he told the traitor to step forward, I was already moving when he called Rudd's name. I almost gave you away. I'm sorry." Her voice had become tight and blank, particularly when she confessed to the slip. "I was so scared." The last words were a whisper which Snape barely caught.

Before he could think of something to say, Snape found himself beside Hermione on the sofa, arms around her and a desperate desire to comfort, to ease the blank pain of the whisper. Not for the first time, he regretted that he was now so much smaller than she was - all he could do was embrace and hope she returned it; then he felt her arms settle around him, and her face tucked against his head.

"Thank you." Another whisper, some minutes later, with more colour and less pain. Snape eased his head up to look at her; deep black eyes looked back at him, her lower lip caught uncertainly in her teeth - a habit that looked rather less incongruous in her own body.

"I couldn't stop it. I couldn't do anything."

Snape shook his head at her words. "You can't. There's nothing that you could have done that would not have guaranteed more people to die."

"How do you stand it?"

"What makes you think I can stand it? I concentrate on what I can achieve, then I take the anger and fear out on passing students. And glasses. And bottles. And anything else that gets in my way. Reparo is probably one of my most-used spells." The note of irony in his voice brought out a near-smile; a hopeful sign, but this would take a long time for her to deal with.

He didn't want to drag her back into memories but he had questions that needed to be asked. "You mentioned Rudd, was that right?" She nodded. "Damn. That's another one gone, then."

"So he was a spy?"

"He thought he was; he wasn't close enough to Voldemort to be particularly useful, but there was no point in discouraging him when he decided he wanted to turn sides. I'll tell Dumbledore, he'll notify the necessary people."

"Okay." The pain was back, but the blankness seemed to have gone. Hermione suddenly seemed to realise exactly where they were - wrapped around each other, Snape tucked into her side. "Um ..."

"Do you want me to move?" Snape wondered where the words had come from; he had intended to move as soon as she seemed uncomfortable, not give her a choice and invite rejection.

"No." That, at least, was decisive; as was the tightening of her arms around him. "I ... need you, just for a moment longer."