I want to Snape you like an animal *complete* | By : Desert_Sea Category: Harry Potter > Het - Male/Female > Snape/Hermione Views: 16952 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1 |
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A/N: And another short, but important, one :) DSxx
OO – ‘Or maybe I’m just really really selective about what I do with my time’ – I guess that’s another way of putting it ;) ‘I feel like I’m watching AI but with Boggarts and arguing their humanness’ – hahah, don’t worry those weird thoughts have been going back and forth in my mind this whole time :) ‘Neville’s getting all the punchlines this chapter’ – he is! I’m glad you noticed the shifting dynamic. ‘Side note: that’s the Wank Chat sign off sound’ – hahah, why can’t I get that out of my head now? xx
SnapeLove – ‘this "boggart" is too lively to be just a boggart’ – hmmmm, very interesting!! ‘because such details are of the most important when you are imagining your worst fear’ – LOL! Of course! I would ;) ‘he is mighty handsy for a boggart’ – Nothing better than a handsy Boggart! ‘really, Hermione? All that for Neville? How...noble...of you XD’ – you do sound sceptical! ;) ‘Well is this isn't Snape then it is one lucky boggart indeed’ – I think he knows it :) xx
Chapter 6 – Snape-ing hell!
Hermione gathered her woollen cloak around her shoulders, drawing it close as her breath materialised, a mantle of steam unfurling on the crisp morning air. Through the thinning plume, she saw the Shutterhawk bank and then circle around to continue its restless glide over the barely shifting waters of the Black Lake. She’d noticed it the day before, its graceful silhouette slipping against a fading sky. And then, since she’d woken early and surfaced too far from sleep to return, she’d ventured across the frosty grounds to watch it again, relentlessly searching in the pre-dawn grey.
“Still?”
Hermione was shocked to find him right there, by her shoulder. She’d not even heard his approach but now he was standing, very still, talk and dark, barely more than a shadow in the low light. But she could see that he was also looking out over the lake.
“Still,” she confirmed.
They stood together in silence.
“You have to admire his devotion . . . if nothing else,” she murmured as the Shutterhawk swept around for another pass across the lake.
Snape was quiet for a moment before responding. “For some, it isn’t a choice.”
Hermione ventured a look at him, although she could make out little of his expression, just the lightness of his pale skin, the dark line of his mouth, his eyes rendered black tunnels, unfathomable.
“Do you think she’s dead?”
He sighed gently. “Perhaps.”
Hermione looked back. The sun’s arrival was just starting to bleach the distant horizon, bringing smudges of colour.
“It would be easier if he could just let her go, don’t you think?”
Snape shifted a little beside her. “Unfortunately ‘ease’ is not a tenet of their commitment. Or of any commitment for that matter.” His tone was more thoughtful than admonishing. “He will search for her until he falls from the sky, himself. As I said, this isn’t about choice, it is intrinsic to what they are.”
Hermione’s eyes dropped from the sky’s lone occupant to rest upon the inky water lapping at the lake's edge. It made her sad to consider the Shutterhawk’s desperate, and ultimately futile, plight on behalf of its lost mate.
“Would you care to walk with me?”
She glanced up and found that she could now make out, within the frame of his dark tresses, enough of his features to know that he wasn’t frowning. Unusual. Or perhaps it was usual for this new Snape.
She nodded. And so they set off, following the path around the water’s edge, feet crunching on the icy ground, with the sounds of the world waking up around them.
Hermione was first to speak.
“I was surprised to hear that you’re still suffering from the effects of your envenomation. Has it made your return . . . difficult?”
“No. Not difficult.” He lifted one broad shoulder in a half shrug, more expressive again than the rigid, surly wizard she remembered from her earlier years at Hogwarts. “One must simply make allowances—treat it as one would any other condition. Obviously the alternative is far less preferable.”
“Death?” Hermione peered at him, unsure of how he would respond to such directness.
But he took it with what was becoming a rather welcome air of calm assurance. “Indeed, the venom was intended to kill. And so it would have. And would still, but for a fortuitous intervention.”
Hermione’s eyes widened with interest. “What sort of intervention?”
He glanced at her fleetingly before fixating upon a point in the distance.
“Unfortunately the details continue to elude me.”
It was a surprising admission. Hermione frowned as her gaze swept over the blushing lake, a mirror of the rising sun. “So you don’t actually know how you survived?”
Snape continued his smooth, deliberate strides in silence. After a few moments of contemplation, he answered, “I have reason to believe that someone foresaw my demise and took certain . . . precautions.”
“What precautions?” Hermione blurted out the question before she could stop herself, inwardly berating her hard-wired inquisitiveness.
He turned to scrutinise her then, a slow shifting of his black gaze over her, as though sizing up how much he should disclose. Hermione dropped her head to focus upon the frozen crust of the path beneath their feet, trying not to reveal how overwhelmingly intimidating she still found him.
“I believe that a soul bond may have been performed,” he murmured quietly, his words like sonorous pipes on the breeze. “Such that in the event of my death, the bonded being could ensure that my life force was sustained.”
Hermione felt her chest seize—the air crushing from her. She tried not to betray the intensity of her discomfort. After a few difficult breaths she asked in a small voice, “Who was responsible? Dumbledore?”
Snape withdrew his hands from his pockets and stretched his arms a little in front of himself, as though seeking warmth from the blossoming sun. “No. I am of the belief that it was Remus Lupin who executed the bond.”
“Lupin?” Hermione gasped. “But I thought that you . . . and he . . .”
Snape shook his head. “It was a rather complicated relationship. There was a history. But ultimately we came to realise that we were more similar than we were different.” He looked at her again with a dark intensity. She attempted to swallow but it felt like there was a Snitch lodged in her throat. “Which is why one finds it difficult to reconcile the fact that he failed to take similar measures to save himself. And, indeed, his wife.”
A wave of melancholia swept over Hermione as the shock and sadness of their loss resurfaced. “Perhaps, like the rest of us, he considered that Hogwarts could keep them safe.”
“Perhaps.” Snape’s gaze lifted above the skyline, the word trailing from his lips, all but lost on the breeze.
Hermione saw a wistfulness there and considered leaving him to his own silent reflection, but there was one pressing question that was bubbling away so furiously inside her that she could hold it in no longer.
“To whom are you bonded?” she asked hastily, avoiding looking at him, as though she could somehow distance herself from her words.
After a few moments, Snape sighed. “That has become the enduring problem.” He turned one hand a little in a small gesture of resignation. “Despite my efforts, I have been able to discern neither the man nor creature Lupin has steeped with this burden. There have been . . . fleeting sensations . . . brief perceptions . . . small glimpses into an alternative awareness. And these have . . .” He turned his head to look at her but appeared to decide against it, turning back to the lake. “These have intensified in recent days.”
Hermione caught her breath as she watched the hand that had been swinging casually by his side clench into a tight fist before being thrust forcefully into his pocket. Fucking Hell. What had he felt . . . and seen? She attempted to compose herself but her jaw was still aching, and her throat was still raw from the intensity of the Boggart’s efforts the previous evening.
“So it could be a . . . a non-human bond?” she ventured.
“It is possible.”
Hermione’s bottom lip slipped between her teeth as she considered exactly how to word her next question.
“What about a . . . a non-mortal being like a . . . a Dementor?”
Snape looked down then, frowning thoughtfully. “It would be unusual to attempt to bond a soul to a soulless being. One wonders where it would reside. But it is theoretically possible.”
“And could it happen with a . . . with something like a . . . a Boggart?”
Snape’s head snapped around, and he regarded her with an expression of such excruciating intensity that her eyes flickered briefly to the forest behind him, wondering if she would need to make a break for it.
“No.”
“No?”
“That would have required the presence of a third individual at the point of death—one who desired my survival sufficiently, who feared my loss to the extent that they were able to manifest a creature born of such emotion. There was no one. I had lost my only ally. I was alone.”
Hermione stared at him, at the conviction in his eyes, and suddenly felt her own eyes prickling. But before she could succumb, he suddenly placed a hand on her shoulder and gently turned her to face the glowing skyline.
“It would be remiss of me to allow you to miss this.”
The sun was a dazzling ball of fire, a blazing orange orb, just kissing the horizon. With the soft press of him upon her shoulder, and a similar fire burning within, the painted sky began to shimmer before her eyes. She blinked rapidly, her voice barely a whisper. “You come here for this?”
“Every morning.”
“Why?”
He squeezed her ever so slightly. Or perhaps she simply imagined it.
“When one has been as close to death as I have, one learns not to take such things for granted.”
She swung back around to face him. He looked at her intently, his black eyes aflame with the golden sunrise.
Hermione couldn’t speak. But neither could she tear her eyes away, for what felt like an eternity.
Finally, he broke the silence. “Shall we return?” His voice was husky. It melted into her, and only made her want to stay.
But then he extended his elbow, leaning down a fraction towards her. Gentlemanly. She took it. Slipping her hand into the crook. Warm. Secure.
She sighed softly, knowing that it would only be short lived. It would all come to a calamitous end when he discovered the truth. When he found out exactly where all of those ‘feelings’ had come from.
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