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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
- 15
- 16
- 17
A/N: Severus1Snape – you are very kind. It’s a real buzz to know that people appreciate my writing.
FieryPhoenix – sorry I missed you last chapter. I love your prognostications. Keep them coming!
OracleObscured – I wonder how much I owe you for your brilliant mentorship. It has helped me immeasurably. I have written everything by ‘feel’ most of the time without particularly understanding the decisions that I make. The fact that you can put words to these processes is so helpful.
About being fucked up. Most of the creative people I know are – there is a reason I like to get in the heads of anguished characters. I find it therapeutic most of the time. But you are right about there needing to be breaks in the storm, as well as hope.
The last chapter was all about honesty for me. Hermione needed to hit a new low (although this chapter isn’t all roses either), in order to rebuild with Severus’ support. I look forward to your reviews every time I post but understand at this time of the year that is going to be difficult (and with you posting your Christmas chapters too). As always, your insights were a joy to read. Weird and slightly creepy admission is that I’m hearing your ‘written’ voice as I write. Please don’t freak out! Merry Christmas.
Chapter 16
Hermione cinched her robes around her neck as an icy wind snaked through Knockturn Alley. Severus’ contact was late. Ignoring the lascivious leers from the endless procession of phantoms that stalked past, she busied herself with casting a warming charm and thinking about how much poison it was going to take to kill her Potions Professor.
They had settled upon Postleshade as the best option. It was quick and effective. But, she wondered now, would it be too quick and effective. She needed to take him to the brink, not push him over it. And if he did survive. How would he recover? Would the side-effects be severe enough for him to wish that she had actually escorted him over the threshold?
“I say. Sev must be doing alright to ‘ave pretty young ladies doin’ his biddin’.” A robed figure sidled up beside her.
Hermione ignored the insinuation. “Do you have it?”
“Course I ‘ave it.” The figure dropped his hood and Hermione immediately wished he hadn’t. A face more dead than alive ogled her with one bloodshot eye and one milky blind.
“My question is. How much do you wan’ it?”
His grin showed a muddy graveyard of teeth and his breath was so putrid that she immediately buried her nose beneath her robes.
“How much?” she said.
“Well!” his cockeyed grin broadened. “I don’ normally mix this business with that business. But for you darlin’—twenty five knuts and I’ll do you right ‘ere. An extra twenty five and I’ll do you up the arse too.”
He cackled with laughter but she could tell he wasn’t joking.
“Just think about touching me and I’ll hex your knuts . . . right . . . off.”
Her voice was low and even as she thrust her wand at his groin.
“Alrigh’, alrigh’. Keep yer hair on.” His bloodshot eye bulged. “Three galleons.”
It was more than Severus had paid for the previous bottle but she didn’t want to negotiate with the slimy worm or smell his rancid breath for a second longer.
She hurriedly rattled through her purse before holding the coins out to him. He handed her a small soiled sack and clutched at her hand, pulling the coins from her fingers.
“Pleasure doin’ business with yer love.” He yanked her hand up, pressing it against his blistered lips.
She snatched it away with a growl of fury, wiping it on her cloak, before turning on her heel and apparating back to Hogwarts.
***
“You might have warned me!” She stormed into Severus’ room, throwing off her robe in an explosion of hair and curses.
“So you met the charming Mr Wiggins?” Severus chuckled as she strode into the bathroom and turned the taps on full.
“Charming?!” He heard her exclaim, before her voice was lost in a torrent of muttering, splashing and further curses.
She finally returned, hands red from scrubbing.
“Did he deliver?” Severus’ smile faded to a grim line.
Reaching into her purse, Hermione pulled out the sack and yanked the neck of it to reveal a small bottle, identical to the one she had smashed the night she had saved Severus’ life.
They stared at the bottle, sharing expressions of apprehension. When it came down to it. He was trusting her to poison him to death—or as close to it as he could get. Severus comforted himself with the thought that if she didn’t succeed, at least he wouldn’t know about it—he’d be dead. Hermione could take no comfort from her thoughts—it went against every instinct to make a healthy man deathly ill for his own good.
Severus took in her pale face and the tremble in her fingers. She was never going to be able to ask him to do it. He would have to do the asking.
“I guess there’s no time like the present,” he said quietly, looking into her brown eyes. “How much is the first dose?”
“Five millilitres,” she said. They had carefully planned the dosing regime, with the hope that they could attempt to exorcise the curse at around midnight.
Provided all goes well. Thought Hermione bitterly.
“Can you please give me five millilitres of the poison, Hermione,” he said, his face carefully masking the surge of fear that had captured his vital organs.
It was important for her to be left with no uncertainty that she was following his instructions. If things went wrong, and there was a high likelihood that they would, he didn’t want her blaming herself—thinking she had forced him into it.
Sighing heavily, Hermione picked up the graduated dropper that she had collected from the glassware shelf in Severus’ store room earlier in the day. It would allow her to make the doses as accurate as possible, while she monitored his vital signs to map his deterioration. With shaking fingers, she removed the stopper from the bottle and used the dropper to draw up five millilitres of the yellowish liquid.
When she held it ready, she suddenly shook her head. “It feels so wrong to be giving you poison like this.”
“You haven’t always had trouble putting things in my mouth,” he said, a mischievous spark dancing in his dark eyes.
Hermione pursed her lips as she flushed scarlet, propping an indignant hand on her hip.
“So you’re asking for the whole bottle are you?”
A low chuckle rumbled deep in his chest as his broad shoulders bounced gently against the pillow.
She tried to smile but her face contorted in pain as she realised just how sexy he looked with his boyish grin and mussed up hair.
“See you on the other side, Severus,” she whispered, agony shooting through her core.
He gave a slow nod, which held all the gallantry of a bow. “Indeed.”
She wondered if that word would be his last.
***
Hermione counted her stockpile of healing and blood cleansing potions for the thousandth time. She had worked out a meticulous administration regime to maximise his chances of a successful recovery and wanted to be sure that everything was ready. Madam Pomfrey had agreed to administer the regime if something happened to her, and now there was nothing left to do but watch him die.
After the first administration, he had rapidly developed a fever, a sheen of perspiration coating his body. She had unbuttoned his clinging pyjamas to provide a little relief but then the muscle spasms had begun and his galloping pulse could be seen fluttering at his throat.
As difficult as it was, she continued administering the poison by inserting the dropper into the corner of his mouth. She couldn’t back out now. Not after he had been brave enough to commit to the plan. Tears prickled her eyes as a thread of saliva trickled down his chin and his breathing became more and more laboured.
She suddenly buried her face in her hands, unable to watch him in such distress. What had she done? Surely he could have lived on with the Galvanismus? Maybe they could have developed a management plan instead. She knew that the effects of the curse seemed to abate after he came. Could that have been the solution? Constant sex? She could have helped with that. If he didn’t already have someone else in mind that is.
But she knew that Professor McGonagall would never allow him to stay at Hogwarts if the curse remained and that he would be at its mercy for the rest of his life. Neither option was good for him.
Brushing away the tears that were falling down her cheeks, she checked her watch—11pm. He was getting close. His spasms had turned into convulsions and they ravaged his body mercilessly. She grabbed his shackled hand and held it tightly as his face contorted and his lips shook free droplets of bloody saliva.
She remained clutching his hand as the minutes ticked away and his breathing turned raspy. His body was shutting down. Rubbing her thumb back and forth across his knuckles, she stood mesmerised by his chest—the beautiful curvature of his muscles, belying the failing organs beneath. Like watching waves surging and receding on a beach, his breathing became slower and slower. As if the whole world was grinding to a halt.
Suddenly a gasp exploded from him. She’d taken him too far!
But it wasn’t his final breath. It was his final attempt to cling on to life. His eyes opened and she could see him trying to focus on her as the blue sparks of the curse leapt about in their depths.
“Herm . . . ione? . . . “ His voice dropped like a falling breeze.
“I’m here, Severus.” She squeezed his hand.
“Hermione,” he ground out as a trickle of blood breached his lips. “Tell . . . me. Do . . . we . . . have . . . a . . . have . . . a . . . future . . . together.”
She clapped a hand over her mouth to stop the sob escaping. This was all that was stopping him from willingly going to his death. The chance that they might be together. If he was going to oust the curse, he couldn’t harbour any such hopes. And so her heart broke.
“No Severus,” she said, rivers of tears coursing down her cheeks. “We won’t be together. Ever.”
His eyes slipped closed and he gave the faintest of nods. He was ready to leave. With no reason to stay, his body seemed to lighten, taking on an ethereal quality as if he were already gone.
Hermione released his hand and ran. She sprinted out the door into a second isolation room where she tore the stopper off her final extracorporeal projection potion and gulped it down. The projection left her immediately and she hastened it back to his room, zooming in close to his face where she used it to stroke his sunken cheek.
“Open your eyes Severus,” she murmured urgently, pacing the room.
She had worked out that, since the retina was the only visible part of the nervous system, the only way the curse could escape him was through his eyes. If he didn’t open his eyes, there would be no portal of exit.
“Severus . . . you have to open your eyes.” Her voice grew tight, as she realised the fatal flaw in their plan.
“Oh fuck no, Severus!” she cried, rubbing his cheek harder. “Let it out, Severus. You have to let it out!”
But he didn’t respond. He was as good as dead.
“Severus!” she choked, holding his face in her hands.
Then she lowered her mouth to his and captured his lips with hers. As she pressed her soft warmth to him she saw, through the milky haze, his eyelids ease open. His dark orbs were no longer visible, criss-crossed, instead, by a violent mass of electric blue bolts. As she held his gaze, she saw the curse surge like lightning out of him, exploding in her brain.
She was unconscious before she hit the floor.
- 15
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The Quickening