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Quartet	By : OracleObscured Category: Harry Potter > Threesomes/Moresomes Views: 128263 -:- Recommendations : 5 -:- Currently Reading : 11
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
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A/N: Okay, I can’t work on this chapter any longer; I’m going cuckoo-crazy. Hopefully it’s acceptable as is (if not, maybe I’ll come back and edit it sometime in the future when I can look at it with my eyes bursting into flames).
69—Bruscamente
“Bleeding, I'm bleeding; my cold little heart. Oh I, I can't stand myself. And I know in my heart, in this cold heart, I can live or I can die. I believe if I just try—you believe in you and I.”—Michael Kiwanuka
(Severus) 
Severus felt her hand on his head, her touch cautious and light, but he refused to look up. He couldn’t bear to see the concern in her face. Just feeling her gentle touch cut him like a knife.
And, contradictorily, soothed him like a song.
He wanted to bat her away, bark at her, send her off before he contaminated her further. Yet some small part of him longed for her to remain. Stay or go . . . love or leave . . . heal or hurt—when all the choices sounded equally excruciating, how did one choose?
The throbbing ache of his hand flared to life, and Snape’s mind went blank, too absorbed in the pain to debate the matter further. The bittersweet shock of physical trauma was a blessing few appreciated, but Severus flexed his fingers, reveling in the agony, seeking out its searing deliverance.
His hand felt as if it had been broken, the tendons severed. Would that be enough to appease the gods of guilt? Or would they demand more? If the loss of his dueling arm was required, he would give it gladly—hell, he’d saw off his own legs and live as a lame beggar in the streets if it earned him Lily’s favor.
But did she want anything so easy? No. She wanted the impossible. She wanted him to forget thirty-seven years of hatred.
And Severus didn’t know how to do that. The spite had been grafted onto his DNA; it defined him. Who would he be without the cold burn of fury and rage? Would he even exist?
Despite his raging incredulity, he knew deep down it wasn’t really Lily’s request that had him so twisted up inside.
It was him. The him he thought had died in that shack a decade earlier.
But he’d seen the truth as soon as he looked into his own eyes, his reflection showing him everything he didn’t want to see: that man hadn’t gone anywhere. Severus hadn’t changed. And he never would. He was irreparably and eternally broken. Underneath all the hard-won knowledge and battle scars, beneath the grime of survival, wrapped in layers of ill-fitting robes and baggy second-hand clothes, was a small, sallow, unwanted boy who yearned to be loved—and had learned to never show it. When other boys had been scraping their knees and roughhousing with their mates, Severus had been patching up his mother’s swollen face, solemnly vowing to protect a woman who had only given birth to him because she couldn’t afford a decent contraceptive potion. Although she never spoke of it, he suspected his father had forced himself on her after a night of drinking, probably beating her severely before he raped her. The old man communicated in violence rather than words, and Severus had grown up on a steady diet of vengeance and fear, propelled down a path of destruction before he could even walk.
And Lily knew. She knew he’d been protecting himself by remaining alone and miserable. She knew he kept Hermione at a slight distance, fearful she might make him feel too much. But worst of all, Lily knew he’d saved her son—an act that appeared honorable on the surface, but in reality was nothing more than selfishness concealed in a presentable package. Even when he did something noble, it wasn’t . . . good. He hadn’t helped Potter out of the kindness of his heart, but out of self-righteous devotion to a woman he didn’t know how to quit.
Was that evil? It sounded a bit convoluted but . . . not necessarily wrong. While he felt no pride about what he’d done, he had given his life to ensure the boy’s success—but apparently that wasn’t enough. She’d have him throw his arms around the whelp and beg for forgiveness. Christ! How could she expect him to lavish even an iota of compassion on a boy who’d grown into the spitting image of his most hated rival?
And that hurt too. Not the admonishment, but the reminder. The never-ending reminder. Of everything that had happened. Of the choices he’d made. All the mistakes.
The shame.
It was his fault Lily wound up with Potter . . . his fault she was dead. 
If he hadn’t pushed Lily away. If he hadn’t responded to her concern with derision. If he hadn’t retreated into himself. If he hadn’t called her a Mudblood. If he hadn’t eavesdropped on Trelawny’s interview. If he hadn’t been so eager for power. If he hadn’t needed to reinforce his own fragile ego.
If. If. If. 
And it killed him that she saw all that, that she saw how weak he was. How afraid. The woman who had shown him what love was supposed to look like had seen through to the core of his empty soul and had turned away in revulsion.
Once a disappointment, always a disappointment.
He’d disappointed his mother. His bastard father. Lily. Albus. Hermione. But mostly he’d disappointed himself. He wasn’t the great wizard he thought he’d be at the ripe age of forty-seven; he’d yet to make a single significant advancement in the field of potion-making, and most days he felt, at best, like a boil on the arse of wizardkind. If he died the next day, he’d be remembered as that git of a teacher who scared the piss out of everyone and played martyr in the war.
What did that get him? Nothing.
Worse than nothing, it brought him doubt. Doubt about his purpose, his ability to love, his humanity.
Am I really as monstrous as they say? Did Potter not survive? Did good not triumph? What more could I have possibly done? The goal was to save the boy not take him in like a long-lost son.
Severus heard the heartlessness of that statement, and it made him cringe, but he had too much riding on his anger, and he couldn’t make himself take it back. Harry had always been a ghost from the past haunting his present, a specter that appeared in James’s body and judged him with Lily’s eyes. Potter’s presence in his classroom had scratched at Snape’s conscience like demonic fingernails on the chalkboard of his soul. For seven years Severus had repented, reliving his mistakes day in and day out, but he’d been granted no absolution.
After the final battle, he thought he’d finally escaped the clutches of that daily nightmare, but the devil had returned. There would be no eluding the sins of his past.
And that filled him with the most agonizing sorrow—not for himself, but for Hermione, Draco, and Lucius. His past would undoubtedly infect them, and Severus would then carry the burden of being the man who destroyed the Quartet. 
The wizard who broke the magic. What a legacy.
A large part of him wanted to disappear and avoid the inevitable upheaval. He didn’t want to be the cause of any more carnage. But he couldn’t bring himself to leave. With the knowledge of the Quartet had come a sense of solace he’d never known could exist. Being a part of them made him feel strangely safe.
And that was a new feeling. One he cherished.
It felt right—he couldn’t ever remember feeling right in his entire life. Existence had always been a struggle, a fight. But with the four of them, everything seemed to flow, as if they were one. One heart. One mind. One body.
One spirit.
Snape lifted his head, a spark of inspiration stopping him cold. Hermione’s spirit and fire imbued them all, and if her energy grew from absorbing their energy, they were essentially building their own self-sustaining power source.
Did that mean everyone would benefit mentally as Severus’s magic expanded? Would there be physical gifts from Lucius’s growth? And what about Draco? Did he make their love multiply? Was he the reservoir for their closeness and understanding? Would Severus find forgiveness in Draco’s evolving compassion? Or perhaps Hermione’s fire would purge him of his misdeeds and Lucius would lay his rage to rest in a quiet grave.
Snape’s mind raced, searching for a way out of the hell he’d created for himself. He’d been so consumed by Hermione’s psychic phenomena, he hadn’t given much thought to what their combined aspects might mean for them on a more personal level. Did the integration of the Quartet as a whole translate into the integration of each individual part? Were they the key to the others’ freedom? For the first time in a long time, redemption felt like a real possibility.
Sensing the shift in his energy, Hermione took a chance and drew his mangled hand into her lap. 
Severus didn’t resist. 
Using his wand, she sucked away the blood and glass, carefully cleaning every cut, seeing to each raw sliver of skin. Severus watched her from a detached distance, not totally in his body. Her diagnostic charms revealed that he had indeed fractured his metatarsals, but he didn’t even feel it when she cast the Episky. After double-checking that there was no tendon or nerve damage, Hermione slowed his bleeding with a healing chant, and the wound began to loosely knit itself together. It would split open if he so much as made a fist, but he didn’t have it in him to undo all her hard work. 
Muttering a quiet “Accio,” she summoned a roll of bandages and a jar of Murtlap Balm he’d made for first-aid. With the gentleness of a baby bunny, she dabbed the salve on his lacerated flesh, but Severus didn't flinch. 
He just sat there. Staring. 
He didn’t think Hermione had had medical training, yet she tended to him with greater care than any Mediwitch he’d ever known. His hand still hurt like hell, but her soft touch immunized him to the worst of it. He’d never realized how healing love could actually be—at least in a physical sense.
Hermione coated one side of a flat gauze pad in balm and delicately placed it over his knuckles. Unrolling a stretchy bandage, she wound its length around his hand and wrist, not too tightly, and then sealed it with a whispered incantation. 
And a kiss. 
Their eyes met—his dull, hers full of life—and Hermione flashed him a hesitant smile. When he didn’t react, she slowly reached out and brushed the tips of her fingers along the side of his face. Then his lips. She came closer, her breath warm on his chin, and placed another careful kiss on his mouth.
That time Snape flinched.
Hermione pretended not to notice. Instead, she busied herself with packing up the medical accouterments and sending them back to the cabinet.
Room satisfactorily tidied, she set his wand beside him on the floor and patted his knee as if to thank him for letting her borrow it. Truth be told, he was flabbergasted she’d been able to wield it so effortlessly; his wand didn’t like being handled by anyone but him, and it had a tendency to retaliate against uninvited guests. Minerva had gotten a nasty shock once when she’d simply bumped into him in the halls, her arm coming into contact with the exposed wood. Which seemed to indicate that Hermione’s magical signature and his own had already become more integrated than he’d realized. In light of his earlier theories, the implications gave him pause.
Hermione rose to her feet and, turning to him, extended her hand, cutting his wand musing short.
He froze. Every cell in his body willed him to reach out to her, but the doubt in his head kept him paralyzed.
Hermione rippled her fingers in a friendly wiggle, as if he might have misread the gesture. When he glanced at her face, she beamed at him; and he saw that she knew the truth too, a different truth, one he’d been determined not to see. That truth spoke of a reality where peace and acceptance reigned, and his fears lost all recognizable form—not a perfect world, just one where love outranked all other experience.
But he knew better than to give that wish any credence. History had taught him well. Don’t hope.
A philosophy Hermione seemed to understand. Or at least tolerate. Nodding once, she acknowledged his stance—but continued to beckon him back into her life. And he could tell by the stubborn set of her shoulders she wasn’t going anywhere, not until he acknowledged that she loved him despite his many faults.
Severus didn’t know if he could get on board with that. Denial and self-reproach were old friends, and he couldn’t just abandon them at the drop of a hat.
But at the same time, he couldn’t leave her standing there, essentially ignoring her love. That would be too cruel. She wasn’t asking him for anything outlandish . . . like letting go of a forty-year-old grudge. 
She simply wanted his hand.
Taking a deep breath, Severus raised his good arm and placed his fingers against hers, but he kept his touch heavy so she couldn’t pull him up.
Hermione ran her thumb over his fingers, and a soft sigh of concession puffed from her nose. He thought for sure she’d reached the end of her rope, and would finally break out the saccharine speech of encouragement she’d been composing in her mind, but surprisingly, she didn’t say a thing. She just bent down and kissed the top of his head.
As the warmth of her lips spread across his skin, Severus closed his eyes and blew the air from his lungs in a pursed stream. Darkness seeped from him like billowing smoke, and when he drew his next breath, the sooty burn of it made his eyes water.
Hermione combed her fingers over his scalp, and he clenched his jaw to keep from cracking under her tender touch. It was all too much. Severus took a deep breath and locked it in tight to tamp down the rising chaos. If he didn’t breathe, the tears wouldn’t break loose, and he wouldn’t fall apart. 
All he had to do was never exhale again.
But then, in the greatest act of mercy he could imagine, Hermione removed her hand from his head—and turned and left. No cajoling or questions, just the padding of toes over tile and then the door closing with a muffled snick. 
Quiet descended over the room like a shroud. Such stillness. With no one there to witness the underlying ruin, his stoic facade crumbled, and Severus felt the first crack split apart his inner armor. But he made no attempt to hold it together or buttress the break. 
They both knew why she had gone.
Curling into his knees, he watched as his mind slipped through the cracks in his shield and sat down next to the curious inmate he kept holed away in his heart. Remember how we used to hide under the table just like this, cowering from the old man’s fist? Well he’s gone. Dead and buried. You can come out if you like.
‘What about the other one?’ asked a small voice. ‘And his snake?’
Destroyed. It's safe now. We’re safe.
‘Where’d that girl go? Is she coming back?”
Snape’s throat bulged, and a rush of pressure pounded at his eyes. Do you want her to come back?
‘She loves us, doesn't she?’
He clutched his heart. Yes.
Even though we’re crying on the floor?
Severus touched his cheek and was surprised to find it wet. Had his denial become so great that he blocked out the sensation altogether? Perhaps he was a monster. I have a feeling she loves us because we're crying on the floor.
‘Well I love her too.’
His face crumpled, and Severus covered his eyes, nodding into the soundless sob that caught hold of his chest. So do I. Gasping, he looked up at the ceiling and finally felt the hot trails of tears streaming down his face. He'd never noticed how they tickled as much as they burned. 
‘Is she coming back soon?’ the boy asked.
Severus breathed out a shaky laugh. I hope not. Do you want her to see us like this?
‘I thought you said she loves us like this.’
She does.
‘Then who are we hiding from?’
Severus looked down at his hands and balled the good one into a loose fist. It looked just like his father’s. Stretching his palm flat, he made his hand his own again. The same person I've been hiding from for the past forty-seven years. “Myself.”
Bruscamente—Musical direction to play brusquely.
“Cold Little Heart” by Michael Kiwanuka. Written by Kiwanuka and Inflo and released in 2016 on the album Love & Hate. I seriously think I could listen to this song on a constant loop for a week straight and never get tired of it.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nOubjLM9Cbc
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