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The Massage	By : CryingCinderella Category: Harry Potter > Het - Male/Female > Snape/Hermione Views: 52203 -:- Recommendations : 3 -:- Currently Reading : 5
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter nor do I make any money from writing these stories.

Chapter List
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A/N: Thanks for baring with me! I hate when I write myself into a corner. But I think I managed. It gets a little hectic this chapter, so please hang on!

The potion, as she had suspected, had not taken long. But she sat in the Mediwitch office for a while, pouring over the notes in his file. Those that Poppy Pomphrey had made and those that she had added since he’d come into her care. She sighed. It all seemed so surreal. How on earth had she ended with him on her couch, recounting via the pensieve his most mortifying vulnerable memories? Hermione shook her head. It was just meant to be massage therapy. There would have been no way of telling that the treatment hadn’t been working all along. With the patient being so personal and closed off of course he never would have told Pomphrey that the treatment simply wasn’t working, and that he was just suffering through the time in-between sessions.

            She flipped through the notes again as if expecting to glean something new, something that she had missed between the scrawled lines. Sex did seem to help him and she knew it was the magical release that coupled with the physical notion but she couldn’t simply prescribe that he find a woman to shag like mad multiple times a day. That was simply absurd. She rolled her eyes when her rather libidinous mind offered herself up as the prescription. With a heavy sigh she flipped through the notes of his file for a third time. There had to be something she was missing.

            But after several more glances and then thoroughly reading each notation carefully, she determined that she knew everything she was going to know and that administering the potion to see if it would help reverse the psychological mix-up in his nerves was the only way to proceed.

            Hermione entered her chambers quietly in case he was resting, but she found him seated on the couch exactly as she had left him. He turned his head slightly to gaze at her when she entered and he nodded, as if to accept her return. It was perhaps the most polite gesture that she’d been acknowledged with since beginning his treatment. She paused a moment, finding it unusual but not entirely unwelcome. She was cautious as she approached the couch, not wanting to spoil the rather normal moment that was resting between them in that moment. Slowly she sat down on its squishy cushions and held the vial out to him.

            “This is it,” he said.

            She nodded. “You’ll just need to drink it, and then we’ll— well, we’ll wait and see.” She said.

            Truer to his nature than she’d seen him be in days, she smiled just the tiniest bit when he rolled his eyes. “Indeed,” he said and then took the vial from her hands. He studied it for a moment before uncorking it and bringing the mixture to his nose, inhaling slightly. Odorless as far as she had been able to tell and he seemed to think the same making no indication one way or the other with his face. And after just a moment’s pause he tipped the contents back over his lips and swallowed the potion.

            It was a simple matter of waiting then. She folded her hands neatly in her lap and then sat there silently gazing at him.

            Severus narrowed his eyes. “Surely you do not intend to sit here with me for the full twenty-four hours just— watching me as if I might spontaneously combust, do you?” he asked tersely.

            Hermione shrugged her shoulders slightly. “We could talk, I suppose, we don’t have to sit here in silence.”

            Again he rolled his eyes. “Yes, just what I’ve wanted more than anything in the world, to be trapped in a room with the incessant chatter of a know-it-all book worm, starved for conversation…” he shook his head. “Don’t you have other duties to attend to? Patients? Something you could be doing that doesn’t involve you sitting here gawking at me silently pretending that you’re not gawking?”

            She worried the petal of her lower lip once more between her teeth. “Actually, no…” she said. “I won’t make my rounds in the hospital wing for another hour, and there aren’t any new admissions at the moment- the three students that are there are really not in need of anything more than rest, but knowing they won’t get it properly in their common rooms I’ve elected to keep them here, though I suppose I could discharge them so that I wouldn’t have to—”

            “This is exactly what I’m talking about,” he snapped. “The incessant chatter. You must learn to condense your words. There is no need to be so verbose. We both know you have an extensive vocabulary there is no need to flaunt it, you’ve nothing to prove to me.”

            A warm shade of pink tinged her cheeks and she glanced down at her lap trying to fight the blush of embarrassment at his statement. Though as she considered it she supposed it was more than a statement. It was the closest thing to a compliment that she had ever received from Severus Snape. There was another moment of pause while she struggled against her body’s more recent responses to him, trying not to let the impurities stirring in the back of her mind come to light as she raised her eyes to met his gaze. “I can just go check on them now if you’d prefer.”

            Severus shook his head. “I suppose it doesn’t matter when you check on them, does it? You’re only going to come back here once you return…so leaving now verses later just means that I will see less of you now as opposed to seeing less of you later.”

            Standing she turned her back to him and moved quickly and silently from her sitting room. At the best of times he was trying. And her nerves were beyond frazzled in the current situation. There were still so many external factors that had little to nothing to do with the situation, not to mention all of the sex that had happened, though she supposed when she looked at it— it had only been the two instances. Both times he had seemed out of sorts, out of his mind practically. And both times it had been incredible; though she couldn’t dwell on that. Of course it was deeper than that, she’d touched him, tasted him right from the off; and that was something she just wasn’t ready to evaluate.

            Hermione made her rounds through the hospital wing quicker than usual, those thoughts weighing heavily on her mind. Things were a jumble; he’d gone from being this strange patient with whom she’d been inappropriate, and then somehow there had been sex, which she supposed logically she could deduce that she had somehow provoked, and it all had just gone downhill from there. With a heavy sigh she found herself sinking into the rather uncomfortable chair in the Mediwitch office. There was no pressing need to return to his company as sitting there watching him like a hawk was going to do little to improve his mood and he had been clear that he would not welcome her conversation.

            She buried her head in a book, the book of Tantric healing that Poppy Pomphrey had suggested initially. “Some bloody good this was,” she muttered, though it had been the strange session of acupuncture that had brought her to the conclusion on psycho-sexual trauma. The book, however, did not provide a suitable distraction for she found that the further she read its pages the more her mind was wandering to inappropriate things; like the way he had ravished her neck when he’d slammed her against the wall of his shower. Or the way she had come with him that time as opposed to how he’d left her desperately wanting after he’d slammed her against the wall in his chambers. And how he seemed to have a thing for slamming her against the wall.

            These thoughts mingled with what she had seen in the pensieve and it was a tangle of emotions that was not a good mixture. The sultry seductive thoughts of how powerful he was when fucking her mingling with how helpless he had been with Lucius’s hand tugging mercilessly at that same mighty cock. How he hadn’t been strong enough to propel himself away from those bullies that had attacked him first in the alley and then on the hill, but had been strong enough to throw her against the wall. She wasn’t large by any means but she was a human being, a weighted woman as it were, not overweight but proportionately curved. The way his mouth had looked pained and tight wrapped around James Potter’s cock yet the way it had moved so freely against her lips, claiming her mouth; she shuddered unable to tear the images of either event from her mind.

            It was then she heard the keening sound. At first she hadn’t realized that the trans-way charm between her chambers and the office was still on from when she had left him in the adjoining room, and so she stepped out into the infirmary to investigate which of her three charges had suddenly found themselves in pain. But finding the hospital wing to be silent she hurried back to her chambers.

            He was doubled over himself, clutching at his right shoulder. Hermione swooped to his side, hovering just above him, not touching him. The terrible sound he made, indicating he was clearly in pain, made her guts wrench and her heart race. She hated seeing patients in pain, knowing that it was often excruciating. She hated it even more when the pain was from an unknown source and she couldn’t stop it immediately. And she hated it worst of all that it was he who was in such agony.

            “Severus,” she said firmly, a stern but calm tone reigning over her voice. “I need you to sit up so I can examine your shoulder,” she said placing a hand on the side of his knee. His body was trembling and he was rocking slightly as if he could turn his body over atop his shoulder to squeeze it in his arms and stop the quaking. “I know it hurts, you need to sit up.”

            His breathing was labored, the trembling radiating from his shoulder down the length of his arm as she helped ease him back up to a sitting position. He hissed as she touched his arm. “Don’t!” he snapped.

            “Does it hurt?” she asked.

            “Yes, you idiot!”

            “No— urgh,” she groaned. “I mean how— what kind of hurt— a throbbing, a stabbing, burning— can you tell me what sort of pain?”

            Severus grunted, his right shoulder shaking hard enough to dislodge it from its cuff. Hermione was kneeling before him, pushing one hand firmly on his chest to hold him up against the back of the couch. With her other hand she drew her wand, tapping it lightly against the bottom of his shirt. The garment quickly dissolved. It was far easier than having to struggle to removed it manually and she really didn’t like cutting clothing off of patients.

            Her eyes grew wide as she gazed at his arm. All across his shoulder, moving down into his collar region, shooting down his arm to just before his wrists spindly black ink moved beneath his skin. It looked as if someone had unleashed a hundred string-thin black serpents each on its own path squirming through his body, unrelenting in their movement. He had pitched his head back, eyes closed, panting and gasping for breath.

            “I need you to try and draw slow deep breaths, Severus. I know that seems impossible, but you need to— breathe with me, in…out…in…out…” she began to draw over exaggerated slow deep breaths, and it took her several more before he lifted his head and through bleary eyes gazed at her. “Come on, in….out…in…out…” she continued to breath, watching as he struggled to mimic her gesture. But after a moment he was calming his breaths from the pants and gasps to the slow inhales and exhales that she had demonstrated. “Ok…in…out…keep breathing…in…out…I’m going to extend your arm…it’s going to hurt…in…out…come on, Severus, in…out…” she said noting that when she’d said it would hurt he began his labored breathing once more.

            In the back of her mind she’d thought of a few patients in labor who had done a better job with the breathing technique than he currently was, but it was hardly an appropriate sentiment for the moment. “Ok…in…out…that’s right, good, good,” she said and continued to breathe with him as she slowly moved to the side of the couch, standing up. “Ok, in…out…in…out…” both hands hovered over his shoulder. She laid them quickly, one upon the top of his shoulder the other beneath his elbow and with a rough but fast twist of his arm she pulled his arm out to the side, taut and straight.

            “Aaargh!” he growled, his breathing losing the synch of the slow rhythm.

            “No no, I know, I know it hurts—”

            “Like bloody fucking hell you do!” he snapped.

            “Ok— ok, just— Severus, I need you to keep breathing like I showed your or you’re going to arrest your heart with all the stress!” she snapped back, and then began once more drawing the deep breaths with him, trying to keep him calm. The last thing she needed was his heart arresting and his lungs collapsing because of the strain on his oxygen intake. The thought of incapacitating him occurred for a brief moment but she dismissed it. She did not want to have to put him out unless absolutely necessary. The myth that patients did not feel the pain when unconscious was simply not true; they were just sedated in such a manner that they were unable to express it through verbal or physical mannerisms.

            With his arm extended she could see all of the inky markings that were swirling around, almost multiplying, beneath the surface of his skin. Having no hair on his body made them all the more visible. With a wave of her wand over the length of his arm she watched the blue light shooting from her wand tip. “Neurotoxins,” she said watching as the black squiggles shifted, shaking his arm, making it stiffen. “Your body is releasing neurotoxins in response to the potion, I think,” she said. She’d heard of such things, a buildup of toxins in the bloodstream, mingling with a witch or wizard’s magic to create a physical manifestation but she’d never seen it, and certainly not this intense.

            Hermione’s mind was racing. If left in the blood too long a buildup of neurotoxins could cause septic shock among other problems. And if that didn’t get him she worried that it would cause paralyzing damage to the surrounding muscles, and she was not about to have him lose complete use of his right arm from shoulder to wrist. With a harsh flick of her wand she summoned a medical kit from her office.

            “I need you to keep breathing, and I need you not to stop breathing, I don’t care how much pain you’re in— shout, yell, grip the sofa, grip my leg if you have to— but I need you to keep breathing,” she said sternly eyeing him with a forceful gaze. Severus who was still forcing the slow inhales and exhales just gazed at her, unable to do little more.

            She had seen it done in her medical training. A full arm fasciotomy; to relieve tension and swelling to save a man’s arm once; he had been infected with a dark curse that was causing his muscles to swell and die beneath his skin, inflating his arm like a balloon. She remembered that when they had sliced his arm open the green oozing magic of the spell had spilled out with his blood, and after several hours of magical repair they were able to restore most of the man’s arm function. And she prayed that technique would work here.

            She quickly covered the surface of her couch on which his arm was extended with a containment spell; a thin almost invisible sheet spread out beneath his appendage, ready to catch whatever might run out from the rather large wound she was about to inflict upon him. Her hand pressed an open vial to his lips. “Just drink it, I promise it’s not poison,” she said, tipping the vial back, sighing with relief as he drank its contents unquestioned. She really hadn’t wanted to explain why she was pre-feeding him a blood replenishing potion.

            Hermione tapped the tip of her wand against his wrist and against his neck, just above where the black swirls were, to maintain blood flow without having to use a tourniquet. She desperately longed to bite her lower lip, it was a calming gesture at the best of times for her, but she knew it often made her look uncertain and the last thing she wanted to appear in front of him as she was about to slice his arm wide open was uncertain.

            His coloration was pale, more so than usual, or perhaps the blackness that was swimming beneath his skin just made him look extra white. Either way she didn’t like it. Tipping another potion vial to his lips she waited until he drank it— an overall wellness potion— before setting down her wand. “Don’t look at your arm,” she said and then reached her hand up to tilt his head away. “Please trust me,” she whispered, hoping he would not choose then to rile up his defiant streak and insist on watching her every move.

            With a deep breath, Hermione picked up a fine pointed potion dipped scalpel. It was coated in what was essentially a less-deadly more bodily friendly cauterizing fluid. Instead of scorching the flesh closed, it would merely stabilize the open wound to prevent the skin from bleeding too profusely. She closed her eyes and uttered a silent prayer to whatever deities were listening.

            She tried to be quick, but there was nothing speedy about pressing a sharp blade into live tissue at the top of a man’s shoulder and dragging it slowly and deeply down the length of his arm to his wrist. His cry was brutal; a harrowing sound mixed between a feral animal drawing its last breath of pain and a man so mortally wounded that you wanted to shoot him to put him out of his misery. “I’ m sorry, I’m sorry,” she whispered, pulling the scalpel back and setting it down. Immediately blood and black inky liquid began to flow like a river out of his arm.

            Hermione took up the magical sponges, pressing them all along the open wound, watching as each one turned from its bright glimmering white to a dull oily black. Each sponge was designed to capture the toxin, removing it like a suction tube might. She worked quickly, running sponge after sponge over his muscles, watching as the blackness slowly ebbed from within him. “Almost done,” she said, trying to see if there was much muscular damage. She could easily see the white adhesions, those that would have formed from the initial damage, not nearly as extensive as she’d expected them to be, but thankfully she did not see any new signs of damage caused by deterioration or the neurotoxins.

            She used all 100 of the sponges in the kit just to be sure she had ever last bit of the neurotoxin from within his arm and noting that his face was indeed looking gray she picked up another blood-replenishing potion and tipped it back against his lips, noting that a little bit dribbled down the side of his mouth. “Come on, Severus, stay with me,” she said. Hermione carefully took up a white cloth, an enchanted swalle, and ran it over the length of the wide incision she’d made in his arm. Orange and red lights appeared to dart back and forth as the edges of his skin pulled back together and within mere seconds the only sign that she had cut him open at all that remained was thin sheet beneath his arm covered in blood and black tar.

            Hermione lifted his arm away from the sheet, which dispelled itself immediately to the medical waste bucket at her side, where all 100 used sponges rested. With that same white swalle she wiped under his arm to clear any blood and tar of the drying toxins that might have settled there. With several more waves of her wand she cleared away the medical supplies, and summoned a sling to wrap his arm in. Carefully she maneuvered it over his head, tucking it into his shoulder, bringing his arm across his chest. “There,” she said, moving his body over just slightly so that she was sitting on the couch beside him.

            “For now,” she said “I think you’re going to be alright.” Hermione squeaked but cupped her hand over her mouth as he slumped forward against her body, effectively pinning her to the couch. She reached her hand around and placed the back of it against his forehead; no fever. His breathing was slow and even, and she assumed he’d just about passed out from the pain. With a sigh she adjusted him as best she could and then she drew her wand, levitating him just slightly so that he was laying across her lap, his head resting up against the arm of the couch with a pillow under his neck. She sighed, gazing down at him, looking at how exhausted he looked, even with his eyes closed. “It’s going to be alright,” she whispered, and then slowly began to stroke his hair.

            She’d left his trousers on and although the way his arm was slung across his chest she could still see most of his bare torso. It made her sigh as she gazed down upon him; in that moment he looked very fragile, his arm in a sling, his pale skin glowing in the room’s soft light, the way his chest, hairless from her ministrations, rose slowly up and down, rhythmically steady. Wanting to believe she’d done it because she thought he might be cold, she summoned a blanket with her wand and draped it over his body. But she really hadn’t been able to stare at his naked torso, between the arm in the sling and his hairless skin, it made her feel levels of guilt and pity that weren’t going to do anyone any good. Covered with the blanket he looked almost natural.

            Hermione continued to gently stroke his hair, letting her hand run over his cheek, up the side of his head by his temple, all the while just resting with him across her lap. She sighed as she leaned her head back, closing her eyes for just a moment, her hand still moving idly in his hair.

~*~

            The darkness that met his eyes was drawn back quickly by a slow rising warmth that was somehow on the side and beneath his body. His neck was slightly stiff but not so sore as his arm. Severus slowly opened his eyes and for a moment couldn’t understand what he was seeing. And as he blinked the picture slowly came into focus. She was above him, but not above him, just her head, and her torso. The soft movements in his hair that had felt so nice stilled in that moment and he frowned, realizing he was laying in her lap and that it had most likely been her hand stroking his hair. “How long have I—”

            “A few hours,” she whispered. “It’s alright, you were in a great deal of pain.”

            Severus said nothing. There was an awkward silence in the room then, broken only by the soft crackling sounds of the fireplace that was somewhere off to the side of the couch. “Forgive me,” he said slowly attempting to sit up from her lap. He found this difficult, but did not struggle for long as her hand came to touch his good shoulder and his back, helping him up until he had brought his legs around to the edge of the couch and onto the floor. He nodded to her, unwilling to vocalize the thank you, already feeling slightly humiliated.

            “Ooh,” Hermione groaned softly, stretching her legs out before her. This noise caught his attention and she laughed nervously, a blush filling her cheek. “My leg’s been asleep since you laid down on it,” she admitted.

            “You should have levitated me to a bed,” he said, looking around for his shirt, feeling strangely vulnerable with his arm slung against his chest and little else. “Where is my shirt?”

            “Oh,” she said. “I had to get it off you, I’ll send for another one,” she said and then drew up her wand, waving it around. “And really, it’s fine, you were— I didn’t want to move you— you looked—” again she blushed, turning her face away from him. “It’s no trouble really.” A soft white cotton button down shirt came floating to her hands. “It’s going to be a little difficult to get on, we shouldn’t really move your arm, actually.” She said and then laid the shirt on the side of the couch. “I can move you to a bed and we can get you a shoulderless gown, or just a few more blankets,” she said thoughtfully.

            Severus shook his head after a moment. It wasn’t something he was going to readily admit, but he had found it comforting to wake there with her watching over him. Surely that was as insane a notion as everything else involving her care of him to that point. “I should return to my chambers,” he said, but made no effort to rise from the sofa, not entirely sure that he could even if he had truly wanted to.

            “Oh, oh no,” she said. “You can’t be left alone, not like this— if the potion causes another seize up, you had deadly neurotoxins releasing into your bloodstream, that’s highly dangerous in magical people,” she explained. “I’ll need to keep you for observation, just so I can be sure that it doesn’t happen again, or other unpleasant things that might occur— if you like I can put you back in the bed in the adjoining room— I’d offer to let you stay here but the sofa isn’t terribly comfortable—”

            Severus raised his hand to silence her. Hermione blushed. “I don’t think I can handle any more of your chatter, Hermione, please,” he said.

            It always seemed to set her off-balance whenever he used her given name. And saying it just now proved to be no exception. “Sorry,” she muttered. Drawing in a deep breath she composed herself and looked at him, turning her head to the side. “Take your pick, here or the adjoining room or the hospital wing, but I cannot release you, not tonight,” she said.

            Severus studied her face for a few moments, taking in the soft lines of her jaw, the way her hair framed her face, the way her eyes were set just in the center, divided by her nose. He closed his eyes and then opened them once more. It was hard to imagine that he had so savagely had her. She seemed so pristine in that moment; despite all that had happened, all that she had done to him, put him through, shared with her, despite everything that had happened. He slowly nodded his head. “That room is dreadfully drafty,” he admitted.

            Hermione quirked her lips into the slightest hint of a smile. “You should stay in a bed, Severus,” she said. “Merlin knows your back won’t get any rest on this couch,” she said.

            Whatever his instincts might have told him, whatever impulses he might have felt then, he squashed them immediately. “You are a skilled at Transfiguration, are you not?” he asked.

            Hermione sighed, but smiled very brightly. “Just when I think you’ve somehow cracked and become human, you remind me that you are simply you,” she said and then stood from the sofa. “Stand up, I can’t be skillfully transfiguring this sofa into a bed with you still on it,” she said.

            Severus paused a moment, gathering his strength, slowly standing. But between what he’d been through and his body being sapped of most its energy he immediately began to pitch forward, off balance. Hermione, acting out of instinct rather than logic, as brandishing the wand that was in her hand to catch him would have been much more effective, lunged forward and managed to grab him around the waist; which only succeeded in toppling them both backward onto the couch, he atop her in a strange and awkward position.

            Hermione flushed, and rolled her eyes. “You’ve got to stop pinning me to things,” she said trying to sound funny, attempting to tease him. He gazed down into her eyes, his body splayed awkwardly over hers, and without warning, he pressed his lips forward and captured hers with a kiss.

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The Massage