Pawn to Queen
another version of Chapter 31

It didn't feel any different.

That was Hermione's first conscious thought on waking, somewhat disoriented, to find herself asleep next to... Severus.

Severus. Not Professor Snape. She thought of him as Severus now, and it was hard on the heels of that realization that she understood that what she had hoped had not come to pass.

It didn't feel any different.

*****

Snape woke to find Hermione sitting up next to him, her knees tucked to her chin and her arms around them. She was not--- at the moment--- crying, but he suspected she might have done earlier.

His stomach knotted horribly, and he cursed himself.

What was I thinking--- to take a child, a vulnerable, hurt child, and---

He pushed the guilt out of his mind. If there was one thing he'd learned from his experience with Claudia, it was that too much guilt could be as dangerous as too little. He pushed himself up beside her. "Hermione---"

She looked up at him, meeting his eyes without--- thank Merlin! --- any trace of shame or fear. "It doesn't feel... any different."

He forced back the sigh of relief; that he had not, apparently, caused her harm did not mean that harm had not been done, nor that he was not responsible for her. "What do you mean, sweet?" Carefully, he kept his hands from her, from brushing back the soft tangle of hair that covered her face.

"I thought---" she swallowed hard, looking down, then back up--- "I thought if one night could change everything, then maybe another night could change it back."

Now he did sigh, though not precisely with relief--- but that was a sensation he could understand only too well. "Oh, sweet---" This time he did reach out a tentative hand, relaxed a little himself when she leaned into the carefully platonic touch and let him smooth out her hair. "Hermione---"

"It was stupid, wasn't it?" He understood her well enough to know that was the worst condemnation in her vocabulary. "To think everything could... go back to the way it was?"

"No," he said gently, carefully untangling the knotted curls eve as he tried to untangle the knot in her mind. "It was... reasonable. Just not---" he allowed himself a slight smile--- "accurate."

She looked up at him unhappily. "Oh, Severus--- will... will this---" she broke off, biting her lip--- "will I ever be whole again?"

He drew back from her, carefully; this was not the time for easy answers. "You'll never be the same," he told her finally, a bitter truth he'd learned himself at scarcely older than she was. "But what you become--- that's up to you."

He was certain--- as certain as he'd been of anything in life--- that she would not become what he had; but beyond that he did not know.

But his words, at least, seemed to do her some good; she straightened her back, then, and brushed her hair back with her own hand. "You're right." Then a softer look, at him. "And what about you, Severus?"

The question took him aback; the last time anyone had asked him what he felt was... gods, that long ago? "What--- what about me?"

"Are you... all right?" Hesitant question, reminding him, as it was easy to forget with her sometimes, that she was still very young. And a Gryffindor to boot--- more innocent, for want of a better word, by nature, than most Slytherins were in their cradles. "Did I---"

"You didn't hurt me." Automatic response; even if she'd cut him open, she didn't deserve to have that on her conscience if he could avoid it.

She raised an eyebrow. "Are you sure?"

Gods, she knew him too well. He paused then, to take stock as he had not since waking--- his first thoughts had been for her as they needed to be, but now.... "I..." He turned away from her, hiding his own face now behind the curtain of his hair--- strange, how they had that same defense mechanism.... "You have taught me things," he said finally, "that I did not even know existed. You have touched me more deeply than anyone has done in more years than I care to think about."

"And?" Soft query.

"Hermione, this isn't about me." The words startled him as much as her, and not least that he could say them so gently. "It is... entirely irrelevant what I feel at this moment."

"Not to me." He looked up at her, too surprised to hide.

She reached out and pushed his hair back, same gesture he'd used on her. "I need to know... what effect I had on you."

Slytherin manipulation and Gryffindor honesty, all in one short sentence. He nearly laughed. "I've told you that much." He forced himself to turn to face her, took her face in his hands. "Can we leave it at that for the moment, Hermione? Can you?"

She met his eyes thoughtfully, and he could almost see the realization from her that perhaps talking about it now would hurt him more than anything. "All right."

Then, quite to his surprise, she leaned in against him and rested her head on his shoulder, her arms coming gently round him. He started, suppressed what she could only take as rejection, and managed to put his arms around her in turn, loosely, not prisoning, simply... he hoped... sheltering.

After a peaceful moment, though, she pulled back. "D'you mind if I use your bath?"

He almost laughed at the absurdity of that quotidian statement, coming on top of the not-quite-conversation they'd just had. "Of course."

She disentangled herself from his arms. "Thanks." And got up and crossed the room, unselfconscious about her nakedness.

Well, that at least was something.

******

Hermione couldn't look at the big bathtub without remembering the first night she'd come in here. The night she'd found him almost dying.

The memory was almost enough to make her turn tail; common sense, however, held her still. After all, she could hardly reappear in Gryffindor Tower looking like she'd just spent a night....

Just spent a night in the carnal embrace of the Potions Master, how's that for starters? The statement, blunt without being crude--- and her mental image of how, say, Parvati and Lavender, not to mention Ron and Harry, would react to it--- made her smile wryly.

It was also the first time she'd allowed herself to put into words what she'd done. And the first time she'd let herself think about it in terms of the larger context.

"Oh, we attacked a teacher---" The words she'd said in third year suddenly came back into her mind, the shock/horror of that moment presenting itself to her again.

That, too, had been Snape. It had also been necessary.

With a shaking hand, she set herself to filling the bath with water as hot as she could stand; she located the soap--- harsh stuff, but more than servicable--- and slipped into the half-full bath.

At first she attempted to perform her ablutions in some haste--- after all, Severus would want his bath back, she was certain--- but her mind kept wandering. Finally she set the soap aside and thought.

Or tried to. Her mind kept dancing around images of Severus... the way he treated Harry contrasting sharply with the way he'd treated her since she'd become his assistant, the night in the Shrieking Shack juxtaposed with the night in Malfoy's dungeon....

And it came to her, in one of the intuitive bursts for which she was known, exactly what the problem was.

"Everything's out of joint." She hadn't realized she'd spoken aloud until the words reverberated off the dank walls. But that was exactly the problem.

The role of student to teacher was one with which she'd always been comfortable--- perhaps more comfortable than in any other sort of relationship. In that bond, her love of learning found an outlet in human interaction, as it seldom did in any other relationship.

But Severus... had never been an ordinary teacher. Had never played that relationship by the rules she'd always learned. He'd used his power--- she had to admit that--- to revenge himself on James Potter through his son, nursing an old grudge and venting his wrath on someone who had not--- at the beginning, anyway--- done anything to deserve it.

And he'd always, always played favorites; everyone in the school knew that. Slytherins could do no wrong in his eyes--- even if some of that, as she now believed, had to do with his Death Eater pose, it could not be denied that it was a... perversion... of the way she'd always understood the relationship between students and teachers.

And he wasn't the only pervert--- if his former comrades were using whatever influence they had on him to make their children's lives easier, then they were as much at fault as he. Hermione, the child of parents who would never have dreamed of trying to shield her from the consequences of her own actions, who'd taught to her respect the institution and the purpose of school if not necessarily the individuals within it, found that almost as shocking as... what else she'd learned of Severus.

What else, indeed. But put in that perspective the night in Malfoy's dungeon assumed another character entirely. It was not the sudden perversion--- why did she keep coming back to that word--- of the simple intellectual bond between a teacher and a star pupil... because that bond had never been simple. Hadn't been what she thought it was. Because Severus had never been merely, or even primarily, a teacher. He was Dumbledore's spy, and a man with a past to atone for, someone capable in the same heartbeat of ruthlessness and remorse. Teaching was something he did, not someone he was.

She sat there shivering the tub, trying to take it in. Nothing was what it should be, as she understood that kind of should. The simple superior/inferior relationship between teacher and student wasn't where she'd thought it was.

And--- oh, Merlin!--- it was just barely possible that in Severus' mind she had the same kind of power over him as Draco Malfoy....

No, not Malfoy. But Blaise--- daughter of his favorite cousin, and someone who was part of a tradition he all but worshiped (she remembered the look in his eyes as he spoke of Lily Evans)--- Blaise was a closer comparison.

She started to shake then, because it meant that the framework she'd relied upon didn't exist, that Severus wasn't the powerful protector she'd believed him to be... that she had as much power over him as he over her.

The thought brought a dry laugh to her lips. Wasn't that what she'd wanted? To even the score? To balance thing out? She'd gotten it.

Another laugh: maybe something had changed after all.

Soft knock at the door. "Hermione, are you--- all right?"

"Wha---" she'd lost track of time; hurriedly, she rinsed off and clambered out of the bath. "Oh--- I'm sorry---"

"There's nothing to apologize for." Soft voice, even through the door, and she bit her lip in self-reproach.

"I'll be out in a moment." She wrapped herself in one of the large towels against the wall and glanced around for a comb.

One sat on the long counter around the sink; she picked it up, consciously not looking for the... implement... he'd have used the last time she'd been in here, and took towel, comb, and self out to the bedroom.

Severus regarded her in some concern. "You didn't need to rush."

"It's all right--- a good guest doesn't overstay her welcome." She'd meant to reassure him, bit her lip in chagrin when she saw him blanch and realized she'd had the opposite effect.

Nothing she said was working out like she'd meant it to; it struck her that the best thing to do was to be silent. She sat down on the bed, amidst the ruckus of covers and sheets, and began the process of unknotting her hair.

Soft rustle behind her, and a feeling of warmth at her back that said he was close, then the bed shifted and he was sitting behind her. "May I?"

"What--- oh." Gentle hand on hers over the comb. "You don't have to---"

"Of course not." Soft, careful hint of amusement in his voice. "But I would... like to, unless you'd rather I didn't."

Careful qualifier, so careful; they had to handle each other like spun glass, when she'd meant for last night to make them safe around each other. Oh, how had it all gone so wrong?

"I'd like that." She released the comb to his hand, sitting still and patient.

After a moment, the comb began to slide through her hair, working from the bottom up, barely an inch at a time, untangling the curly mass with a patient gentleness she never showed herself in the process. His body was warm at her back, something she was grateful for in the chill of the dungeons... and once more, he'd found exactly the right path to lead them out of the wilderness: this simple, gentle touching, innocent as possible under the circumstances and yet wholly intimate.

"I'm sorry," she said finally, her conscience pricking at her not to take this moment for granted as she had everything else he'd done for her. "About last night--- I didn't think---"

"There's nothing to apologize for, Hermione." His voice was the soft warm tone she thought of as almost a blanket, wrapping her in its depths. "You gave me---" his voice caught--- "something very beautiful, something very precious." His hands tensed in her hand, then resumed their smooth motion. "I can only hope that I have nothing to apologize for, myself."

"No, nothing!" She wanted to laugh at the thought. "Nothing at all."

"Good." There was something bleak in his tone, that recalled to her the first night she'd spent here, and she felt a guilty sort of hope rising in her heart. Perhaps this had been the expiation he needed, as well--- for all the times when he had had something for which to reproach himself the next morning.

For another little time, then, they sat in silence, as he slowly, methodically, untangled her hair; she thought, half-drifting, that there was nothing about his touch that was ever anything but careful or knowing, at least not with her. He kept at it for a time, when she was sure that for once her mop of curls was actually entirely free of tangles--- prolonging the peaceful moment, and that, too, was like him.

She had a sense, vague and uncertain, that there were things they should say to one another, things that needed to be discussed, decided; but she had no idea how or where to begin, and she was loath to disturb the peace of the moment. So, it seemed, was he.

After a time, though, and as if reading her mind as he sometimes could, he set the comb aside. "Hermione." Soft, wistful tone. "As much as I would like to spend what remains of the morning in silent companionship with you---"

"I'd better go, hadn't I?" she turned back to him, half-hoping for a reprieve from the unknown, half-afraid of offending him.

It was to his credit, she decided reluctantly, when he didn't let what was likely something of a blow put him off. "Soon," he acknowledged, taking her hand, gently, in his, as he'd hold spun glass. "But first, I think we need to talk."