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The Quickening	By : Desert_Sea Category: Harry Potter > Het - Male/Female > Snape/Hermione Views: 32428 -:- Recommendations : 4 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or any other characters/things/places created by J.K. Rowling. I make no money from my fan-fiction.

Chapter List
- 14
- 15
- 16
A/N: So I’m wondering how people are feeling about the story so far. I try to incorporate your comments, thoughts and suggestions into the storyline as it evolves so please let me know what you are thinking.
Oracle Obscured: I have pored over your reviews obsessively. It helps me to focus on the good bits. I liked your comments about establishing and reinforcing the emotional connection with the reader and have made that a focus for this chapter. I was inspired by your last one in ‘Getting Personal’. Looking forward to the next!
Chapter 15
Hermione didn’t stop running, even when she heard Ginny’s voice call out urgently behind her. She kept on until she reached the alcove near the library where Snape had attacked her. Diving into the shadowy recess, she hurriedly cast silence and concealment. Then she really let go. Curling against the unforgiving wall, she allowed it to suck the heat from her trembling body as she wailed. Great heaving sobs wracked her small frame as she clutched her arms to her chest. She wasn’t sure why she had decided to purge herself surrounded by the painful memories of Snape’s attack. There didn’t seem to be any logic to it. But then again, she’d been trying to deal with her deep emotional wounds rationally for years now and look how well that had worked.
Hermione cried because she couldn’t make amends. No matter what she did or how hard she tried, she would never be good enough. She would never be loved unconditionally by her greatest critic in the world. Herself. She could never forgive herself for not being perfect. The cracks in her ‘golden girl’ façade were cavernous. And the perfect storm of this past week had torn away great sheets of her glittering armour, revealing a seamy, sordid interior that terrified her.
She wasn’t perfect, she wasn’t even good. She was seriously flawed and if people knew, they would inevitably turn against her, as her own heart had. She was unlovable. Pure and simple. Even Ginny must be on the verge of giving up on her. She hadn’t spent time with Ron and Harry in months. No doubt, they were making preparations for life beyond Hogwarts which didn’t include being weighed down by her and her carelessly packed baggage.
And what about Severus Snape? The man who had mirrored her actions, tit for tat, this past week and uncovered it all—a dirty and chaotic excavation, an exhumation of all that was buried and rotting.
His words returned from her dream.
“Your secrets won’t remain hidden with me. I’ll find them. And expose them.”
Well he’d certainly done that. Or maybe she’d done it all herself. It had just been far easier to blame him—the former Death-Eater, the spy, the snake.
Worse was the fact that his own actions had been influenced, perhaps wholly, by the Galvanismus curse. What was her excuse? There wasn’t one apart from being totally fucked in the head and even that didn’t quite capture it. She was totally fucked in the heart too.
She hugged her knees to her chest and lay her thudding head upon them.
“And when I do, I have the power to make them alright. Only then you will feel . . . complete.”
His words. Again. From the dream. But they weren’t his words were they? They were hers. Reaching up from her subconscious.
What did it mean? That he could somehow accept her. Flawed Hermione. Broken Hermione. Warts and all?
He was her Professor. Her teacher. He was there to impart knowledge—a thin sliver of influence within an enormous tide of encounters, experiences, education and growth.
But had he been more than that? When she looked back upon her years at Hogwarts, she realised that he was front and centre in almost everything. She wondered why she hadn’t seen it before. His impact upon her had been substantial and, despite his volatility, she had relied upon his stoic dependability to anchor her, in fact all of them, throughout the many stormy years.
And now, as everything was falling apart, he was there again, shackled and vulnerable and only days beyond attempting to take his own life. Maybe her subconscious knew more than her conscious mind did. But she wasn’t ready to pin all her hopes to a dream just yet.
Drawing in a shuddering breath, she rubbed her face with her hands and stared with new eyes at the gloomy surroundings. She now understood that she had come here to tap into her depths of her pain—to take solace in facing and, perhaps even, accepting it. At least she knew that it wasn’t going to drag her under. Monsters hide in the dark. When the light had been turned on, they had been ugly, but at least she could now see them.
Balancing on unsteady legs, she cast a glamour on her face to cover the red puffiness. It was unlikely she would be disturbed behind her fortress of books in the corner of the library but she needed, more than ever before, to clear her head. It was time to wholly dedicate herself to the monumental task of saving Severus Snape.
* * *
He wasn’t smiling the next morning. In fact, the dark hollows around his eyes, told her that he hadn’t slept much either. She knew she didn’t look any better, her hair in disarray and her face pale and drawn from pulling an all-nighter.
“Hermione, I think we need to talk.”
His penetrating voice and stare hit her simultaneously, knocking the air from her lungs. He had never called her Hermione before. It wasn’t his pronunciation that was the problem. For some ridiculous reason she hadn’t consider that he actually knew her first name. And when he said it, it seemed too personal, too intimate. Which was equally ridiculous after she had had his cock in her mouth only the day before.
“Professor?” Her bottom lip subconsciously slipped between her teeth as she approached his bed.
He sighed. “I think we’ve moved beyond titles, don’t you?” he said. “It’s probably time that you started calling me Severus.”
She continued to look at him apprehensively.
“Pull up a seat,” he said gently, nodding at a nearby chair.
Hermione followed his instruction and found herself sitting with her chin a few inches above the bed rail, almost at eye height with him.
Unlike his normal habit of locking eyes with her, his shiny black orbs now edged across her features as if searching for hidden answers. The back of his hand rested against the rail, his thumb and ring fingers rubbing together—a digital extension of his thinking process.
He suddenly drew in a deep breath, as if resigning himself to a difficult course of conversation.
“I meant what I said yesterday.”
He paused. Allowing his words to sink in.
“You can’t keep blaming yourself for everything. You can’t make guilt your default response. It’s not healthy.”
Hermione’s breathing had become more laboured. She didn’t trust herself to speak.
“I should have tried harder to stop you yesterday,” he continued. “I didn’t because I . . . well clearly I enjoyed . . . “ He took another deep breath “. . . what was happening. Who wouldn’t want a beautiful girl . . .” He shook his head. “Anyway, I regret what happened and I want you to know that you don’t need to undertake any more of my personal care. I have made alternative arrangements.”
She blinked, trying to process his very un-Snape-like ramblings.
“Professor . . . Severus.” She leant her arms against the bar and propped her forehead on her fingers. She closed her eyes and proceeded to massage her temples, trying to assimilate the thoughts that were bubbling too far below the surface of her exhausted brain.
“You’re right,” she finally ground out. “I do blame myself. I do feel guilty. I don’t like myself very much. I’m not coping very well.” She continued speaking as her voice tightened and the tears started to fall. “I’m not the person I thought I was—hoped I was. I’ve done many things I regret. I worry that I’m beyond help. That . . . I’m beyond . . . forgiveness.” She wiped her nose quickly on her wrist. “I thought I could do things. Important things. Things that mattered. But, instead, I’ve become a fuck-up. And I’m only eighteen or nineteen or something.” She shook her head irritably. “And I know it’s wrong but I really enjoyed pulling your hair and coming on your face and I worry that I might be evil.”
Snape stared in shock at the sobbing mess before him. Her hair was a tumbleweed, her nose dripped like a faucet and yet she was the most beautiful thing he could imagine. She was so exposed. So raw. But, he couldn’t help it. Claiming to be evil for enjoying cunninglingus was more than he could take, especially after a sleepless night. And so he laughed. It started as a deep rumble in his chest and then erupted from him. His eyes were closed and his head tilted back into his pillow. It was as if he had been waiting for years to laugh and it came like a tidal wave.
Hermione was taken aback, mouth hanging open in surprise. She might have stormed out at his response, if he hadn’t suddenly grasped her hand in his and held it as tightly as he did. He was asking her to stay with him. He had no capacity to stop and holding her was the only apology he could give for his, no doubt, offensive behaviour.
As she watched him, Hermione found her own lips twisting up into a watery smile and, before she knew it, she had joined him. Laughing uncontrollably, even more tears rolling down her face. Together they laughed—raucous, uninhibited, cathartic—two voices at opposite ends of the spectrum but joyfully harmonic.
They laughed until they were spent—shuddering wrung-out vessels. Their breathing turned deep and calm, and they remained joined at the palms.
He smiled at her and shook his head. “I’m sorry.”
She returned the smile. “So you should be.”
He raised his eyebrows in acknowledgment.
After a few more deep breaths, his smile faded and his gaze deepened.
“When you came to my rooms. When you projected there. And you told me you forgave me. Did you mean it?”
She answered without hesitation. “Yes. It hurt. Still hurts. But, yes, I forgave you for what you did.”
He nodded solemnly. Then squeezed her hand.
“You need to forgive yourself now,” he said. “I can give you my forgiveness. And I will. I forgive you, Hermione. Any wrongs you feel you might have committed against me. I forgive. All of them. But now you need to forgive yourself.”
She stared down at the bar, blinking back the tears that threatened to fall again.
He shook her hand gently. “No one is perfect. Everyone is both good and bad. But we are far more than that. You, for example, are courageous, independent, defiant, caring, sweet, funny, infuriating, brilliant, hypercritical, sexy . . .” he caught himself and glanced away. “What I’m trying to say is that each supposed negative trait doesn’t negate a positive one. This isn’t a balancing act where good outweighs bad or vice versa. We are multi-faceted. We have many faces.”
“I know what multi-faceted means,” she murmured.
He snorted appreciatively.
“Like a diamond,” he said, shrugging at the sentimentality. “Many facets, all contributing to the whole.”
Hermione sighed, surprised at how much better she felt. “I feel more like a lump of coal but . . . I’m willing to consider it.”
That sat in companionable silence for a few moments longer.
Then her face suddenly grew solemn.
“There’s actually something else we need to talk about.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“I think I might have come up with something . . . for the curse,” she spoke haltingly, as if unsure of how to phrase her thoughts. “I’ve read a lot. Both wizarding and Muggle books. I discovered early on that parasitic curses operate a lot like viruses. Some can have immediate effects but then reside dormant in the body tissues until re-activated. I have a hunch that the Galvanismus is similar to Varicella Zoster, the virus that causes Chickenpox and Shingles. Not in its action but in that there is a connection with the nervous system, possibly the sensory nerves.”
He was frowning deeply, concentrating on her every word.
“Anyway. That only helps a little in understanding its action. From the wizarding books it’s clear that the curse can only be passed on at the time of a willing death. If the death is unwilling, the curse will do everything to keep the body alive. As you know.” She took in a deep breath. “We only have a few more days to cure it and the process I have in mind is likely to take that long.”
She stopped and he nodded at her to continue.
“Severus, you are going to have to be taken to the brink of death to eliminate it.” Her forehead was creased with pain. “And you’re going to have to go there willingly.”
“And who will it be passed on to?” he said.
She stared at him. He was more concerned about who would be burdened with the curse than the fact that there was a high likelihood that he might die trying to get rid of it.
“Me,” she said. “My extracorporeal projection.”
He looked at her for a long time before giving a singular nod.
He trusted her completely. If she had had any tears left, they would have sprung from her eyes. Instead she lowered her forehead onto the bar.
His hand left hers and delved into her hair. Stroking it gently. He tenderly rubbed and massaged her scalp until her head rolled to the side. She was asleep. He watched as she breathed soft trails of fog across the metal of the bar and wondered at the cruelty of having to willingly give up his life, just when he had found a reason to live.
A/N: Please Review! I’d love to hear your thoughts.
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The Quickening