Refuge Has Its Price

CHAPTER 15: HEALING HERMIONE; Part Two:









Hermione was rudely startled awake as a warm, wet flannel was suddenly applied quite vigorously to her wounded, bloodied face, causing her to shriek and instantly jerk away from it.





She found herself literally nose-to-nose with an unknown house elf, a rather disapproving frown creasing its wizened crinkled face.





"The missy is waked now, Master," it called out to someone over its shoulder.





"Thank you, Gristle," replied a deep, rich voice that Hermione knew all too well. Movement, passing swiftly in front of the hearth, caused the glow of the firelight briefly to darken to the same deep timbre as the voice.





Severus Snape stepped into the young witch\'s line of vision. He held out a steaming cup to her, a peace offering for what she\'d just endured, and calmly ordered, "Drink, Miss Granger."





"What is it?" Ever the \'want-to-know-it-all\', Hermione blurted out the first question that had popped into her throbbing head, even as her slender right hand obediently reached up and took the cup from him.





"Poison," he sarcastically drawled, a brief wry grin softening the brusque comeback, before his face settled into its normally sour expression. "Now drink up, so I can begin your healing." He reached his right hand into an inner breast pocket of his black frock coat, only to withdraw and dangle a small purple vial before her anguished amber eyes.





From both her studies and brief stays in the infirmary, when she\'d been injured while traipsing after Harry and Ron, Hermione instantly recognized that particular shape and colour of vial, as well as the only type of potion it would contain . . . immediate blissful removal of her pain!





Bugger it! Even if it were some kind of poison, she\'d gladly drink his cup of brew in exchange for a single dose of that pain potion right now. At least she\'d be comfortable while she died!





She stared down into the fragile china cup at what appeared to be a most noxiously unpalatable, steaming cross between roughly pureed seaweed and gloppy, congealing, brown gravy.





\'What in the world?\' Hermione thought, as she pondered the contents of the cup, and idly wondered if, perhaps, the Professor really hadn\'t been making a pun about poisoning her.





Hermione slowly lifted the cup to her lips, and successfully managed to avoid its aroma as she swallowed her first tentative sip of the strange brew. It slid thickly down her throat with an unpleasant, slimy texture somewhere between that of boiled eels crossed with soured borscht.





But, oh, sweet merciful Merlin! The flavor of the concoction in the cup was simply heavenly! Thickly sweet, with the cloying after-taste of ripe, wild cherries.





She cast the Potion\'s Master a brief, grateful, grin and greedily slurped down the remainder of whatever this lovely potion was.





If it wouldn\'t have been considered the height of ill manners, she\'d have ran her finger around the bottom of the cup and licked off every last dreg from the digit. Hermione wished there had been more of it, and quite unconsciously licked her wounded lip clean as she passed the now empty cup back into the Professor\'s outstretched hand.





"Good?" he softly queried, with an actual smile, instead of that hateful smirk of a grin that he normally used to show his amusement.





Two huge amber eyes curiously met inscrutably observant black eyes for a long moment, both wizard and witch cautiously wondering what the other would do next.





"Very," Hermione whispered, her throat still scream-raw from her earlier ordeal, as she continued to stare, in thorough confusion, at Professor Snape. What game was the vile, cruel bastard playing at now? Only a few hours ago he had sat comfortably by, and ordered her suffering!





Mercy most likely wasn\'t in the dark devil\'s vocabulary, much less in his repertoire . . . or was it?





At any rate, he must have decided to be charitable by providing her with these potions, and she\'d been raised to be polite. Besides, she still needed healing and was currently a wandless witch in a Death Eaters world. She could wait a while to get a bit of her own back; after all, as the saying went, \'payback is a bitch\'!





Hermione struggled for a moment or two, barely hiding her bitterness and rage by staring at her hands, and finally managed a wan grin of sorts as she raised her carefully bland face to meet those enigmatic black eyes once more. She quietly said, "Thank you, sir."





The cup rattled in the Professor\'s hand at her bleakly grateful look. For just an instant, his black eyes had widened until Hermione could have sworn that she\'d seen a pale golden halo briefly encircling those obsidian depths.





A wealth of honest concern, and something amazingly similar to caring, burned brightly within those jet-black eyes, as if he was trying once more to communicate . . . something . . . without using any words.





Whatever \'it\' was, that the Professor wanted Hermione to realize, she hadn\'t a clue! It seemed to be currently hovering just beyond her grasp. It simply eluded her, unsurprising, considering her present condition, and Hermione was simply too exhausted to care anymore about \'it\', although, a slow warming sensation began to crawl through her veins, as her body responded to the Professor\'s brew.





Strange, how quickly that cup of potion had worked!





Hermione was suddenly no longer hungry or thirsty. In a matter of seconds, she felt stronger, healthier; yes, she was still wounded . . . still in pain . . . but she was feeling infinitely stronger!





The Potions Master dropped the promised vial of pain potion into Hermione\'s outstretched eager hand and took two steps backward. He patiently waited, to give the potions time to do their work.





She pulled the stopper from the small purple vial with trembling, anxious fingers, tilted it up and quickly knocked back the bitter contents. Before she could even re-stopper it, blessed relief from her pain radiated throughout her entire aching body, and Hermione was finally able to deeply sigh.





\'Merlin! The Professor\'s skill at potions is truly amazing . . . I wonder . . . perhaps . . . no. No. He\'d never apprentice me, the insufferable Know-It-All. I\'m just supposed to be his . . . his . . . bed warmer.\' She sighed once more, not in relief from her excruciating pain, but in regret at no longer being the Professor\'s student.





Severus fiercely tightened his grip on the delicate cup at witnessing the depth of melancholy in the young witch\'s dark amber eyes; it was a miracle the frail porcelain didn\'t shatter in his grasp.





The revulsion that Severus felt towards himself, for putting the young witch "to the test", warred within his conscience. The knowledge of what she\'d suffered, what he had forced her to suffer, simply to test her mettle and strength made his gut churn nauseously.





It was his earnest desire to have her think well of him, to understand that he\'d only wanted to reassure himself that yes, she could withstand extraordinary degrees of pain without breaking. He moved the short distance to the liquor cabinet and set the fragile cup down with a sharp \'clink\'.





Severus needed to put a bit of physical space, as well as mental distance, between himself and his emotions; his powerful reactions to this witch, so that he could do what he must in order to heal her. If only he could explain his behaviour, if only she were receptive to believing!





Severus, himself, had endured decades of painful punishment at the Dark Lord\'s hand and command. Now, as his personal possession, she might have to go through much the same pain and torture as he had, should the Dark Lord desire to punish him for some minor offense or other in the future.





It was one of the Dark Lord\'s favorite tortures that one of his offending servants wouldn\'t be physically touched in any way, but instead be forced to watch and, in some cases, even participate in the agony of a treasured slave or loved one





Gristle hovered in the background, silently observing the interaction between her beloved Master and his new witch. Now, she looked down on the girl reclined against the back of the sofa, and said, "Yes, yes. Missy feeling is much more better now, Master," as she wisely nodded her fuzzy head at Hermione, with the comfortable ease of long acquaintance with the Professor.





The house elf dipped the flannel back into the basin of warm water, wrung it out, and determinedly attempted to clean Hermione\'s face again.





Now feeling much stronger, and pain-free, since she\'d swallowed those two potions the Professor had provided, Hermione struggled just as determinedly for control and possession of the flannel. She desperately wanted to maintain at least minimal control over what happened to her, even as she bitterly understood the concept that her life and person were no longer her sole possession.





"I\'m perfectly capable of washing my own face. Please let go of the flannel. Just let it go. Let it go, NOW!" she attempted to firmly order the house elf to desist; to Severus\' ears it simply reeked of childish bickering.





The young witch might be currently legal in both worlds; however, to the jaded, world-weary Potions Master, Hermione Granger was still very much a child in many respects. \'Ah well. Her own aging will \'even\' that up . . . eventually, as she grows up,\' Severus grimly thought to himself.





\'After all, the Dark Lord wants it this way now, just as it used to be in his time; all young and powerful witches placed under the firm control of an older, more experienced wizard.\' Only this time, it was specifically for breeding up a new generation of loyal Death Eaters, and not just for the witches "protection".





It was far too late to gracefully back out of it anyway.





He\'d already bound himself to the insufferable Gryffindor brat when he\'d accepted her as his own . . . bondswoman . . . with that sealing kiss in the Great Hall. The Binding Kiss of Servitude wasn\'t an ordinary kiss; it was a magical contract, the same as an Unbreakable Promise or a Wizard Oath.





Severus Snape wouldn\'t allow himself to abase someone that he\'d desired for so long by thinking of her as a \'slave\'. Although there were many things that Severus could list as the chit\'s failings, there was nothing even remotely \'slave-like\' about Miss Hermione Granger . . . at least not to him.





Where others had seen \'shy bookishness\', Severus had always seen enthusiastic studiousness.





Where others had seen the bushy haired, bucktoothed, awkwardly gangly child, he\'d seen the brilliance of a witch\'s mind to equal his own.





He\'d forced himself to ignore or demerit her wherever possible, lest word somehow get back to the Dark Lord that he favoured yet another young Gryffindor Mudblood witch . . . especially one so closely tied, yet again, to Harry-Bloody-Potter!





Severus hadn\'t meant for it to be cruel when he\'d said that he saw no difference in her looks when his godson had hit the young witch\'s front teeth with that nasty hex; it\'d merely been the truth.





He\'d never really \'looked\' at the girl\'s childish physical form with his eyes; he certainly had never lusted for her sexually. Severus Snape wasn\'t a pedophile, like Crabbe.





Instead, he\'d always looked at the girl\'s already mature mind with his own, and waited for her to grow up, to awaken. In his mind\'s eye, Severus Snape had always seen the woman that Hermione Granger would one day be: beautiful, strong, brave, powerful . . . and blazingly intelligent.





Now he could add extremely passionate to the growing list of attractions that this witch embodied within her lithe young frame.





Severus Snape would bet his last sickle that, given his sexual experience and prowess, he could bed this witch in four notes or less . . . at least he thought that he could, once all of her wounds healed.





Nothing about their shared Kiss had been even remotely virginal!





It had seared its way deep into his soul with its raw, untutored, passion.





It had been an earth shattering revelation to him, suddenly discovering the fiery woman that lay deeply buried inside the obnoxious child. The witch just needed careful awakening by a mature, seasoned wizard, instead of fumbling with mere schoolboys and learning nothing of true passion\'s skills.





Oh, sweet Merlin! Severus wanted badly to awaken her to those pleasurable skills right now, simply remembering that kiss again. But now was not the time for seduction, it was time for healing.





So instead, he roared, "ENOUGH!” instantly frightening both his witch and his house elf out of their ridiculously petty argument and into stunned silence.





Severus took a couple of deep calming breaths, and counted to ten (twice) to suppress both his ire at himself (for his explosion) and his annoyance with his two females for winding him up.





The Professor sighed, and then continued in a purposely calmer tone, "Miss Granger, you will kindly lie still, be silent, and accept the fact that Gristle will be sponging you off. After you\'re physically better, you may bathe yourself in privacy; however, right now it will be better for all parties concerned for you to simply lie back and shut the fu . . . uh . . . well, aahmmph." He cleared his throat, a slight blush staining his cheekbones at his frustrated near-slip of foul language, "Just control your tongue, witch, and let Gristle be about her business."





The house elf, who Hermione now assumed to be named "Gristle", smirked down into her face with an \'I\'ve won the battle\' look curling up her lips and merrily crinkling her blue eyes up at the corners.





Gristle reapplied the now chilly flannel even more vigorously to the injured face of her Master\'s new witch.





"Ow! Careful, that hurt," Hermione whispered to it as it firmly scrubbed over her blackened eye. The house elf paused, and then began to wipe the grime away more slowly and carefully.





Hermione had to admit that there was something . . . comforting . . . about Gristle\'s ministrations. She\'d been a child of seven the last time her Mum had actually washed her face for her, and she\'d been feverish at the time with some childhood ailment or other.





A single tear slowly trickled down her cheek, at the memory of a mother that she\'d never know again. Gristle began to softly hum a simple unknown tune, and her touch with the flannel became infinitely more gentle.





"Ssshh, young missy," Gristle whispered under her breath, so that only the girl could hear. "T\'will all be for the best, yes, yes. You will see. Gristle knows. Missy will see."





Gristle nodded in agreement with herself at the odd statement, as if the future was already a \'done-deal\' from the house elf\'s perspective.





And perhaps it was; after all, elfin magic worked on a very different plane than regular magic did for wizards and witches.





She\'d learnt that from Dobby, poor, goodhearted, dead, Dobby.





A fresh tear of loss slowly slid down her cheek to join the first one.





Gristle began to softly hum again, and gently applied the suddenly re-warmed flannel to Hermione\'s shoulder as what seemed to be an ocean of silent tears came and went like the tide on a beach.





"Grievings must always come first, then will come the healings now," Gristle whispered so softly that Hermione missed hearing it, as she was overwhelmed with sobs of loss and grief.





Now Hermione Granger\'s healing could begin in earnest.





Unbeknownst to the wounded young witch, Gristle calmly proceeded to magically rub away some of the young missy\'s lifetime of heartache, along with her encrusted dirt of days.





All house elves had some special, unique ability along with their regular elfin magic. Soothing children and taking their childhood pains away, that was Gristle\'s gift.





By the time this young witch\'s body healed, so would her heart; she\'d be ready for the Master then.





Gristle smiled knowingly to herself, as she continued to hum and bathe the now compliant, silently weeping girl with her love.







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Severus set the teacup down on the cabinet with a firm \'clink\' ringing from the fragile china, and strode over to his desk after his irritated outburst at his two females.





He began quietly clearing the smooth mahogany surface of his personal desk, by hand. It gave him a useful occupation for his hands, and tense body, as he calmed and centered himself for the bloody task to come.





Parchments and scrolls that had been spilling from their place on the corner of the desk, onto the floor, were tidied and carefully stored away in the proper drawers. Various inkpots and quills, along with his signature blood-red wax and personal seal, were also neatly tucked away.





From across the room he could hear Gristle\'s faint hum of a lullaby; the one that he remembered so well from his very earliest childhood memories.





The first time that Gristle had sung this lullaby to him had been late in the night, after the first time his father had ever beaten him for an uncontrolled burst of wild childhood magic. It had happened when his mother was being beaten in her face, by his father, and then choked nearly unconscious in the midst of his drunken rage; Eileen Prince\'s four-year-old son had attempted to come to her aid.





When Tobias Snape had finally picked himself up off the floor, from where the small boy\'s panicked outburst had thrown him across the room, he came up pulling his wide, thick, leather belt from the belt-loops of his filthy work pants.





The beating that Severus received had left great wide burgundy welts across his small-for-his-age, bony, little back that rapidly turned into long, five centimeter wide, purple bruises.





Very late in the night, long after Severus had painfully sobbed himself to sleep on his lonely little pallet, in the corner of the tiny room that he\'d been allotted, Gristle had come to him.





There had been a cup of warm fresh milk, heavily laced with lavender and sweetened with wild comb-honey, along with a still-fresh whole croissant filled with thinly shaved ham for him to eat and drink.





After he\'d filled his little growling stomach (that\'d had nothing except water inside of it all day) into drowsy fullness, Gristle had sponged his wounded back and hummed her soft lullaby.





Severus had finally drifted off into a wonderfully pleasant dream, completely free from pain. The details weren\'t ever clear to him, even then, but he\'d awakened the next morning with a smile on his face and no bruising at all on his pale little back.





Even now, as a full-grown wizard and official Death Eater, just catching the faintest hint of that tune still had the power to bring a small respite of quiet and peace to Severus\' deeply bruised soul.





His desktop finally cleared, Severus cast an Engorgement Charm on it until it was the correct size and height of a surgical table. He proceeded to set up his instruments, potions, unguents, and bandages on a hastily conjured up steel tray that he levitated to hang in mid-air near where his right hand would be reaching as he worked on the girl.





The last addition, added almost as an after-thought for her comfort, was a thin mattress covered in sterile white cotton sheeting. It stretched across the hard surface of his desk that had now become a makeshift surgical suite.





He wouldn\'t entrust HIS Miss Granger to the \'tender mercies\' of the squad of Death Eaters now in charge of St. Mungo\'s.





Severus Snape had the necessary skills to perform all of her required surgeries, never mind how he\'d acquired them. He would do it himself.





Miss Granger had drifted off to sleep while being bathed off by Gristle; he\'d expected that. The Potions Master bent and lifted the girl up in his strong arms and her eyes popped open in startled awareness.





"What are you doing?!?" she squeaked out in her alarm.





"I\'m going to re-break your ribs to properly set them, then cut the damaged flesh from your body and re-grow fresh, new tissue in its place. You\'ll be as good as new when I\'m done, Miss Granger," came the honest reply.





At the terrified gasp she sucked in, Severus suddenly remembered what Bella and Anton had done to the girl, right here, inside of Malfoy Manor. Fresh loathing at himself, for his earlier treatment of the witch, caused bile to rise up the back of his throat. His witch probably now thought him to be no better than them. What could he possibly say to allay her quite justifiable fears?





Severus cleared his throat, searching for the right words to say that would reassure her. Comfort her.





When none would come, he ended up simply explaining what he intended to do to her more thoroughly, "I\'ll take the greatest care of you, Miss Granger. You\'ll be given many pain potions, and a Dreamless Sleep Draught, before I begin. I must do these things to you in order to properly heal you, but you have my solemn word that you shall feel no pain."





He\'d only stated the simple truth. She needed healing. He was going to heal her, as carefully and painlessly as possible, or so it seemed.





Hermione swallowed a thick lump in her throat as she stared into those bottomless black eyes, and thought she read compassion and honesty in them. She slowly nodded her hopelessly tangled, bushy-haired head . . . she didn\'t have any reason at this point to believe him, except that she wanted to trust what seemed to be truth burning in those obsidian depths.





Hermione recalled Harry once telling her about Professor Snape healing Draco in their Sixth year, so she forced herself to relax within his strong, tense arms, blinked several times to fight back her relieved tears, and softly whispered, "Thank you, Professor."





Severus carefully laid her down on the prepared surgical bed and moved away from her to recheck all of his implements one last time. He definitely didn\'t want to be in mid-debridement on the girl, and then suddenly realize that he needed an unavailable tool.





Turning away from the wounded girl, Severus briefly allowed a quickly hidden smile to curl up the corners of his lips.





"You\'re quite welcome, Miss Granger," he softly said, almost under his breath, to the girl staring at his broad back.





It seemed that Miss Granger must still trust him, at least on some unconscious level.





He could build on that.







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Gristle poured warm water from the kettle she held over her master\'s hands; thick pus, and bloody, nearly black, slivers of burnt human tissue sloughed off of his sticky red hands as he briskly rubbed them under the clear water.





What ran off his bloody hands into the empty copper collection basin was almost the exact same colour and consistency of his bright-red correction ink.





The dark Potions Master was all quiet, precise, concentration. Even an exploding cauldron wouldn\'t have disturbed or swayed him right now, as he efficiently worked on his witch.





Severus\' attention next turned to magically cleansing the deep, wide, exposed patch of bare, bloody, pulsing muscle of her sliced open thigh. He filled the gaping wound with his own version of Tissue Re-growth unguent, packing it full to capacity with the healant.





The intricate workings of the human body never ceased to amaze him. It was a fascinatingly complex machine.





As he watched closely, Severus saw the little fibers of the severed and missing musculature of her thigh begin renewing, re-growing its self. The now neatly trimmed edges of the gaping wound were knitting quickly, covering, twisting, to join-up with the slower regeneration of nice, smooth, new muscle from what had formerly been deeply amputated nerves and mid-muscle tissue.





He poured a healthy dollop of Skin Repairing Solution over a wide patch of gauze and covered the wound with it, bandaging it tightly down, securely in position.





Severus had already finished his most meticulous healing repairs on the young witch\'s face, and was satisfied that it would close and seal perfectly, leaving no trace of a scar to show it\'d ever been there.





However, there were still many other bleeding wounds left to be treated; some were merely scratches, some were rather deep and, having been left unattended to for so long, were now beginning to become infected themselves.





Severus didn\'t pause to congratulate himself on what would eventually be proven to be a superior healing of her burnt thigh and split-open left cheek; he didn\'t have the time to spare.





There were still her injured ribs to be re-broken, and properly set, as well as a bruised lung left to be healed beneath them. The Potions Master-cum-healer had less than two hours left before the dose of Dreamless Sleep wore off the thankfully unconscious girl.





He bent back to his painstakingly minute work, with renewed effort, as he shrugged his own exhaustion off.





Severus Snape was determined that, if it were at all within his power, his young witch would not bear even a single scar.









END OF CHAPTER 15







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A/N: Well, well. Severus certainly had his work "cut out" for him, didn\'t he? hmmm?



Just a thought: If you were expecting a \'fluffy\' Severus Snape, then I\'m very sorry but you\'ve hit upon the wrong story.



Try to have a bit of trust in the Potions Master, as well as the author. The journey will come right in the end for our dark hero and his witch, as indicated in the Prologue. *snickers*



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