All Wounds Heal In Time

~Day Seven - Part Two~


Severus fought to control his thundering heartbeat, his chest was heaving as he sucked in ragged breaths, his face twisted with effort as he pushed himself up as much as he could with his good hand to watch as she fled from the room. Around him the machines were beeping wildly but he lay back down and took more deep breaths and, one by one, the bleeps returned to an acceptable level. He stared up at the familiar tiles above him, his eyes raking across the rough surface of the ceiling, but he did not count them or rearrange them. His mind was taken up with other matters.

His body still rose and fell as he took deep breaths, but erratic ones. He swallowed once and then brought his hand up to his face, where he felt the smooth skin of his jaw for the first time in five years. He was surprised at how close a shave it was. Another thing the infuriating young witch had copious amounts of talent for, no doubt. He swallowed again, and ran his hand through his hair. She’d not cut it, so far as he could tell. He let his hand fall to his side once more, since it was singing with the ache of exertion. It felt like his whole body was on fire, he had no idea where he had found the energy for the powerful magic he had just performed. His chest continued to rise and fall. His mind wandered.

He had fallen into a very deep sleep after his ‘exercise’ that morning. He must have, because he had no idea she was even in the room until he felt the strange sensation of warm water on his head and hair. He knew that it was her, he could smell her sweet perfume for one thing. The feeling of her washing him and shaving his face had been… singular. Strange and a bit surreal. Since he had had his eyes closed, he was never sure of where she would be next, and he was aware of her hesitation to touch him.

He had been tense the whole time, like a bird of prey, aware that the opportune moment for his strike might be imminent, but it was only when he felt her gentle fingers sweep up his neck that he knew precisely where her hand was. Then he was able to reach out and clasp it, staring into her eyes and into her mind.

It had surprised him. Very little did surprise him, but the sheer power he felt surround him as he stepped into her thoughts had been overwhelming. Magic had crackled in every corner, all around him. Few minds he had seen could match the awesome presence he had found himself immersed in, and he hadn’t known how to react at first.

Yes, he was astounded by her mind. It was only now he had seen it clearly, now he had experienced her power first hand, that he fully comprehended the magnificent talent she had wielded with such sense and feeling during her teenage years. His hand made a fist as he felt a wave of guilt lick his heart.

He had hurt her. He had been viciously mean, and he was angry at himself for being so. He had constantly belittled her during her school career, using the familiar tool of hatred to stoke the fires of her ability. Had he known the true power nestling behind her narrowed eyes he would have treated Miss Granger very differently indeed. He certainly wouldn’t have goaded her. It was all too easy to tip a powerful mind like hers over into insanity.

Venturing into Hermione Granger’s mind had been an experience unlike any other he had ever had, aside from the raw power she possessed. It had been so *organised*. It had a feeling of absolute clarity, as flawless as a diamond. It was not unusual to come across minds with a greater sense of cohesion than others, and even then he still found that everyone had far more information than they were aware of stowed away in the corners of their mind. Granger’s mind was on an entirely different plane, however. He shook his head from side to side at his memories of the place. The girl could sift through her past like a catalogue.

He recalled the images she had shown him of the Great Hall, and of the hellish room he had nearly died in. They had been so real, he had smelt his own blood. She must be in possession of some sort of photographic memory, he thought. Not absolutely, but her obvious skill at mental retention could not be denied. It explained her extremely varied and vivid memories, and probably accounted somewhat for her academic excellence also.

But then, he thought, perhaps she was simply the kind of person who pays very close attention.

He shook his head again and brought his hand up, dragging it across his face as he had done in her mind. He hadn’t meant to spend so long there, his energy was entirely depleted now, he could feel a weariness settle over him, even over the parts in which he had no real feeling. His arm still screamed with the ache of its use. It would have been simple enough to draw the required memory forward the moment they had begun, it was even plausible that his merely whispering the answer with his long-abandoned voice would have sufficed with far less effort than he had fed into the mental connection with the young witch.

But there had been several questions he knew he had wanted to concentrate on, he had with his usual lack of care chosen to conduct the interview in the most convenient of mediums, a place in which he could focus clearly on the very precise answers he desperately sought. But her mind had been so powerful, such a beautifully clear temple to mental capacity, that he had not wanted to leave once he had seen it. He had remained, for a longer while than was sensible, exploring the capabilities of her astounding mind.

She had made him taller automatically, that had not escaped him, and the awkwardly intimate moment she had shared with him unintentionally had surprised and amused him a little. It was obviously the fading memories of a mere dream, but the fact that she had perceived him as being gentle in any way was flattering, especially considering his treatment towards her in the past and his remorse for those actions. Her obvious embarrassment had been acute however – it evidently showed nothing more than the remains of a shadow of the feelings created by her stressful attempts at recovering him. But he was still glad he had seen it.

There had been times in his life when Severus felt that everything had changed in only a few short moments, and he thought now that he could feel the creeping suspicion of such a change having happened again. Her mind had affected him. She had affected him.

He had used ‘the tone’.

His hand fisted again in his frustration, he felt guilt writhe inside again and resented the feeling, but his resentment did nothing but stoke his anger at himself for being weak. Even while he had been immersed in her intense thoughts he had resorted to sarcasm and insults. He had been cruel, harsh.

Rude.

He shook his head again, trying to dislodge his guilty thoughts, but they remained tenaciously persistent.

Her presence had surprised him, her mind had surprised him, and then she had shown him the real passion she had invested into his well-being and – quite simply – it had scared him. Scared and surprised and delighted him.

He remembered the images of her tireless research, of her angry demands for the same answers he himself had demanded, and he remembered the feeling of hopelessness that had run through them both as she recalled her bitter failings. He had felt her despair as if it were his own. She had seen him looking. Did she know that his smile was an attempt to be reassuring? She could not have known that it had been borne from the feeling he had got from knowing that, for the past week, she had not given up on him. He had wondered, during the days in which she hadn’t visited, if it had been because of other things occupying her time. But no. A far as he could tell, for the past week, she had mostly been thinking of him.

And he has used ‘the tone’.

He rubbed at his eyes with his hand, pinching at the bridge of his nose. He always fell back on ‘the tone’ when he did not know how to react, and what could he have said to reassure her otherwise? He gave a wry bark of a laugh as he imagined how Miss Granger might have acted had he been honest and kind and thanked her warmly for her tireless efforts. She would probably have begun to doubt that any of their conversation was even real.

He swallowed. He thought about her memories of his teaching. He had been trying to forget the blasted school, the position he thought he would never want to return to, but watching himself through the eyes of an attentive student was an experience he didn’t think he could so easily dismiss.

She had remembered everything he had told her. He was humbled by the attention she had given him, both then and now, five years later. The wonder he felt at seeing her mind so engaged by his lessons had wrapped round his heart like ice, making him break the connection between them, and – shamefully – making him cry.

How would she react if she knew the truth about that?

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Hermione rubbed at her knee through her jeans as she half-ran along the sterile, endless corridors of the hospital. The bump had given her a slight limp, but she hardly felt any pain as she made her way through the maze of echoing hallways, her mind reeling.

A bezoar! A damn bezoar!

Her teeth were gritted as she strode with a wobble, out of the large glass doors of the entrance hall and over the pelican crossing, into the park area on the other side of the road. She kicked out at the trunk of one of the tall pine trees that surrounded her before she apparated back to Grimmauld Place.

“He wasn’t *in* a coma,” she muttered bitterly as she twisted into the dark space behind the garages at the end of the cul-de-sac. She had her arms wrapped around herself as she continued to stride along the street and mutter to herself.

“Of course it would’ve been *obvious*,” she said quietly, her tone whiney and sarcastic. “If I’d have known the real situation. If he hadn’t *tricked* me,” she added, a little unfairly.

When she reached the rough stone stairs of Number Twelve she saw the grey tabby-cat sitting very upright on the top step, her long tail curled around her paws.

“Inside,” Hermione said quickly, hardly glancing at the cat as she hurried up the stairs and turned her key in the door.

The cat streaked into the dining room and a moment later McGonagall emerged, her eyebrows raised in a question as her former student hurried into the kitchen. Hermione was stopped short for a moment by the sight of George’s father, sitting opposite him at the kitchen table. George was staring directly at the old man while Mr. Weasley looked distractedly around the room, seemingly focusing on everything but his son’s steady gaze. Both of them turned to her with the same expression when she entered, however, and she remembered her urgency again.

“I need a bezoar,” she said bluntly, “and I don’t have one. There’ll be one at the ministry won’t there?” she asked Mr. Weasley, who looked blankly at her for a second. “Or at Hogwarts, certainly,” she said as she turned to the Headmistress.

“It’s easily found,” the old woman reassured her, “but why do you need a bezoar?”

“It’s the thing that’ll cure Snape,” she said. “It’s ‘elementary’!” she repeated the man’s cruel words, banging her fist on the table.

“What’s all this Hermione?” George asked seriously. “You know how to cure him?” His face was almost as blank as his father’s, he looked up at her with a sort of detached disbelief.

“How do you know for certain?” Minerva asked as she pulled out another chair, gesturing at her to sit down.

Hermione’s knee was beginning to throb a little now and she suddenly felt as if she had run all the way back from the hospital. She flopped down into the chair and leant down on the table, covering her head with her hands.

“Because he told me himself,” she said.

“You spoke to him?” Mr. Weasley asked quickly, peering at her through his thin spectacles. “You managed to wake him?”

“He never even needed ‘waking’,” Hermione told them, shaking her head and shrugging a little in her annoyance. “He’s been – pretending, or something,” she said, not really knowing how to explain.

“All this time I’ve been searching for ways to reanimate him somehow, to cure this so-called coma I thought him to be in, but in fact he’s been compos mentis the entire time as far as I can tell. He just couldn’t move much, at all maybe, I think. Probably bodily paralysis caused by the venom of the snake bite,” she said more to herself than anything, gritting her teeth again at how blindingly obvious it all seemed now that she knew the answer. “The venom would have been the reason why no spells worked on him either,” she explained, still with bitter anger swirling in her stomach. “Some venom from magical snakes render the body so immobile that it can no longer generate magic through it, like a corpse,” she explained to the Weasleys while McGonagall nodded beside her.

“In which case a bezoar should most certainly work,” the professor said, and Hermione nodded also. “But why has he not tried to contact us before now, if he has been awake for the past five years. Why didn’t he send a message to us?” Minerva added, wondering aloud the questions Hermione had pondered also.

“He wouldn’t say,” she answered, sighing at her own frustration. “I asked him but he didn’t tell me. He was too busy admonishing me for my obvious lack of insight,” she added, the muscles at her jaw grinding again.

“He was well enough to engage in conversation?” the headmistress asked in surprise, taking a seat as well so that all four edges of the table were occupied. Hermione shook her head.

“No. I think he performed legilimency on me,” she said. “I’ve never experienced it before so I can’t be certain, but he said we were ‘in my mind’, and he scoffed at my lack of occlumency skills,” she added as she narrowed her eyes and picked at her nails. “He made my memories play around us like a film,” she said, not knowing what else to compare the rushing images to.

“Was he touching you?” McGonagall asked quickly and Hermione noticed the hint of a smile curving on George’s face.

“Yes.” She said as she stared evenly at George, who blushed when he noticed and lowered his eyes. “He grabbed my hand,” she added, trying the dismiss the memory of his thin fingers gripping hers as she weaved them together the second time.

“It sounds like full legilimency for sure,” Minerva said as she sat back in her chair. “Its not really surprising he would resort to that, since he would be more certain to get the answers he wanted.”

“He certainly got those.” Hermione muttered quietly again, remembering her painful feeling of failure and the smug smile on his greasy face. The memory of her dream bubbled to the surface of her mind once more, she felt her cheeks beginning to burn, the harshness of her own embarrassment and remorse stinging at her for being so transparent as to show it to *him*. She stood suddenly, the chair flying backwards and nearly tipping over behind her.

“I don’t want him in here again,” she said fervently, jabbing at her temple with her index finger. “We’ll get the bezoar tonight and then tomorrow we’ll go and administer it to him. Then it will be done. I don’t see any reason to delay any further.”

“Now, Hermione, you know we can’t do it quite like that,” Arthur said then, looking up at her kindly.

“Why not?” She asked tersely, but it was hard to keep her determination stoked while he looked at her with such care.

“There’s complexities to consider,” he said quietly, reaching for a rather battered briefcase which had been resting unobtrusively on the tiled floor at his feet. He laid it down on the table and ran his hands over the flat surface of the scuffed leather top, smiling up at her with an obvious pride at the accessory, and she couldn’t help but smile back at him. She sat down again and waited to see what he had to say.

“You can’t just go into the hostipal and have him walk back out with you. What would the medics say? You might get a reputation like that Jesus fellow,” Mr Weasley added, and Hermione smiled again at his mispronunciation and strange example.

Although she very much doubted that she would be hailed as the new messiah, the old man was right on some level. She couldn’t go in and instantly heal a man who was thought to be in a coma for the last five years without raising some very awkward questions. Some of the nurses there had been treating the potions professor for years, far too long to safely obliterate all of the relevant memories attached to him anyway. They would have to go about it in a different way, but quite how she had no idea. Luckily Arthur Weasley had the answer for her.

“The Muggle Relations team have been working hard trying to figure out how we might have been able to move him since we discovered his situation,” he began, and he fumbled a bit with the catches on the briefcase before it sprang open. “We think we have everything necessary now in order to relocate him without causing any unwanted attention. Once he is somewhere secure like Hogwarts, then we can administer the bezoar.”

Hermione found herself to be nodding gently. Although she still wanted to cure the professor as quickly as possible, she could not deny that proper measures would need to be taken, and he had already been waiting for five years. Another day wouldn’t matter in the long run if it meant significantly less hassle.

Arthur took several different documents from the briefcase and laid them out in front of her on the rough wooden surface of the kitchen table. She eyed them over and was relieved to see that ‘hospital’ was spelled correctly at least. In fact she was astounded as she usually was at the detail the M.R. team had put into the muggle paperwork, even managing to produce the pink and yellow transfer sheets attached beneath each one.

“As far as we can tell you’ll need three different forms, this being the form to officially release him from the hostipal ward,” he said, gesturing to the relevant paper. “This one certifies his being moved and released to another place where adequate care will be provided,” he continued with another point gesture. “And these are the forms required in order for the am – bulence service, is it?” he looked up at her with raised eyebrows and she nodded at him. “To bring him to us. It seems a shame to waste one of those fabulous healing cars,” he added, “but we have to do things as they would,” he finished, referring to the muggles.

Hermione looked over the papers again.

“Where will we say we’re moving him to?” She asked, looking back to the old man.

“Well – that is a bit problem,” he said, his eyes avoiding hers and catching the headmistress’ for a moment.

“We can’t have them move him to Hogwarts? Hermione asked. “Is it too far?”

“It’s not that,” Arthur said. “The fact is it would be very hard to arrange thing so that the muggles moving him for us would even be able to *find* Hogwarts.”

“Oh I see,” said Hermione, remembering the numerous chapters on the anti-muggle security surrounding the school in Hogwarts: A History. They were far too complex to just ‘take down’ for half an hour. Even Grimmauld Place would be difficult to reveal to the muggle eye.

“We were wondering,” said Professor McGonagall, “whether we might be able to use your parent’s home? They are still away?”

Hermione jolted in surprise at the question, it having caught her off guard, and she looked across at George who seemed as surprised as she was. He caught her eye and offered a small smile as she nodded hesitantly.

“Yes,” she said, trying to get her voice to work. “They’re still away.”

“He won’t stay there any amount of time,” Minerva continued, reassuring her. “It is likely that, even after we administer the bezoar, he will need further medical attention before he is fully recovered. Moving him somewhere where help is readily available seems the best course of action in any case. We can floo him directly to Hogwarts from your parent’s home, if we establish it on the network now, in advance. That’s actually why I asked Mr Weasley to join us. It would be so much easier if you would allow us to use their house? If so, then we can disguise it as some sort of medical facility available to you as a student, perhaps, or something similar.

“Of course you can use the house,” Hermione told them, but her mind was spinning again.

“Thank you my dear,” Arthur said, leaning across and patting her hand. “I’ll have Mac and the team finish up on the paperwork and tell you all the technical words and things. I’m no so good at those myself!” He said and she smiled again. “I don’t quite remember, but your parents house is on the apparation network isn’t it?” She nodded. “Then setting up the floo will be a piece of pie,” he said cheerfully, making her smile once more.

They all stood and started on the tasks that lay ahead. There was still much to be done before the morning. Hermione could not help but feel anxious at the idea of returning to the farmhouse that had once belonged to her parents, however, even after George pulled her aside for a quick but reassuring hug.

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