Disguised Affections

A/N: I am not JK Rowling. Everything that you see here and recognize is her property. This is a work of fanfiction, and as such, I am making no money from this.

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Chapter Twenty-Two

Severus made sure Draco, Ron, and Harry were stable before running to the Library and Hermione. His heart jumped into the back of his mouth when he saw her naked and bloodied body hanging limply in the cuffs of Malfoy’s rack.

“Hermione,” he crooned gently, not wanting to startle her. “Hermione, sweetheart, wake up.” He stroked her face.

She lurched back at his touch, her eyes wild and rolling, teeth bared. Breath hissed out of her mouth, and it was clear she was screaming at him, but no sound emerged. Severus took his wand from his sleeve and cast a Finite Incatatum. The noise that eventually clawed out of her throat like a living creature was ragged and poorly-used. She lunged forward as far as the manacles would allow and hissed.

“Let me get you out of this… contraption,” he choked. “Please hold still so I can cut your cuffs. I don’t want to hurt you any more than you already are. Can you do that? Can you hear me, Hermione?”

Slowly, he saw reason begin to reappear as the girl climbed out of whatever mental fortress she had constructed to protect herself. Her lips parted. He saw that her teeth were covered in blood. No noise emerged from her mouth. She licked her lips and tried again. “C-Constantine?”

“Yes, it’s me. I came for you as fast as I could, Hermione. I am so sorry that he hurt you. So sorry, my dear.”

“Constantine?” She started to cry, fat drops pooling down her face.

Severus cleared his throat, and swallowed against the tears that wanted to spill down his face. “Can you hold still for me while I cut you out of the rack?”

Her brows drew together like bloody question marks, and her face took on a pleading expression. “You’re going to cut me?” Her voice was small, even smaller than it was before, and it seemed to fold back in on itself as she shrank away from him.

The tears finally spilled down Severus’s face. “No, no, my dear. Listen – I am going to cut the metal manacles that are binding you to this horrible device. But I am concerned that if you move while I am using the spell, you will get cut. So all I am asking is for you to hold still.”

She cocked her head, her hair bloodied and matted to her skin. “You are trying not to cut me?”

He nodded, and she gave him a small smile and pushed her abused wrists to the very front of the cuffs and became perfectly still. Severus winced when he saw the state of her forearms. There didn’t appear to be much flesh remaining.

“Diffindo,” he murmured, slowly, carefully removing his love from the rack. When she was finally free, he stepped forward and picked her up, cradling her limp form against his chest.

“I knew you’d come. I didn’t know if you would make it in time, but I knew you were doing your best to come and get me,” she said as he laid her out on the couch like a lover. “Oh gods!” she cried. “Did you kill him? I hope you killed him. I hope that he’s dead and can never touch me again. Is he, Con?”

“Yes, Hermione. He’s dead.”

The girl sobbed and wrapped her arms around his neck. “You came. You came for me. I love you so much.” Severus cradled her, and felt his throat tighten with a deep ache that choked off whatever he would have said to her. He nuzzled the side of her neck, hoping that the action said enough.

She sighed and closed her eyes in relief. They didn’t open again, but her chest rose and fell in a steady rhythm.

Severus released his hold, and sat down on the coffee table and tried to think. Everyone was hurt or dying except for him, and he was so bloody exhausted he couldn’t do much for them. He needed to get help. On the southern wall of the Library, there was an enormous fireplace. He stumbled over to it and was relieved to see a bowl of green floo powder on the mantel. Nearly weeping in relief, he grabbed a handful and stated as clearly as he could, “Dumbledore’s Office.”

There was no flash of light.

Severus snorted. Of course Malfoy would have disconnected the floo. He couldn’t have someone trying to floo call him while he was in the middle of his impromptu torture session. It would have been a bit hard to explain why there was a naked and bloody woman in the Malfoy family Library.

He needed aurors. With aurors came medics. He needed medics for Hermione. Oh yes, and Draco, Ron, and Harry. Stumbling back towards the girl collapsed on the couch, he once again resumed his seat across from her on the coffee table.

Well, he was on the verge of passing out from magical depletion. He could only think of one way to get them here, so that is what he would do. They could sort out the consequences later.

Pointing his wand at the ceiling, he drew a sharp line and started the spell. After describing the pattern in the air with the length of ebony wood, he opened his mouth to say the words. They were prickly and burned in his throat like a teeming mass of wasps, causing blood to flow into his mouth. They were dark words that hated being said in the light of day.

“Morsmordre,” he whispered through a mouthful of coppery liquid tang.

The Dark Mark, as it hung in the sky like a pestilent moon, was blood red.

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Severus woke two days later at St. Mungos.

Albus Dumbledore was sitting at his bed side.

“My dear boy,” he murmured. “How are you feeling?”

The Potions master raised his hand sharply and struggled to sit up. He had appeared weak in front of the Headmaster too many times to count, but that was done now. Never again would he show this man his soft underbelly.

“You’ve used me poorly, old man.”

Dumbledore cocked his head. “That is true.”

Severus looked away. “Why’d you do it?”

“Ahhh. Malfoy,” the Headmaster whispered and spread his hands as if no further explanation was necessary. “He was a cancer that had to be excised. You were a convenient and very, very sharp tool.”

“His personal predilections were as horrific as they were illegal. Surely you could have simply involved the law. If it came to light, the Ministry of Magic would have distanced themselves from him so quickly, he’d have been left naked in the cold.” Severus’s voice was sharp.

“Ah, I see. Just as they did the first time Ms. Granger got on the stand to tell of her terrible ordeal at Malfoy’s hands? Lucius was out of Azkaban and back on the board of governors within six months, my boy. No, we had to take him out of politics permanently. As distasteful as his sexual deviation was, it was his activities in the legislature that prompted me to take such… drastic action. Did you know – he was very nearly successful in having muggleborns tagged with tracking charms by the Ministry? It would have been an abomination! It signaled a return to Grindewaldian policies, and I just couldn’t let that happen.”

“So you dangled us in front of him like a sacrifice? Surely you knew that would drive him as crazy as a shark in bloodied waters.” He shook his head. “Tagging muggleborns is an abomination, but what you did to us was no better.”

“I’m ready to make it right, Severus. Grant you your life again.” The Headmaster made a gesture towards the copper cuff. “You can rejoin the Hogwarts staff, and you no longer have to worry about Death Eaters targeting you for revenge. You can walk down the streets of Hogsmeade without fear of reprisal for your role in the Second Vold War.”

“I have no desire to rejoin the teaching staff, Albus, and no wish to walk down the streets of Hogsmeade with my head held high.” Severus turned his face to gaze out the window. It was a dismal, sooty December day in London. “You’ve given me… different dreams now.”

“My dear boy, I know what you want.” Dumbledore’s voice was compassionate, and his Potions master turned to look at him. “You must know it’s impossible. She doesn’t even know who you are!”

“And whose fault is that?” the black-haired man snarled.

“This…friendship with Ms. Granger has served its purpose, Severus. It’s time to let it go. I know it will be difficult, but…”

Severus lost his temper. He fisted his hands in his bed sheets so that he didn’t wrap them around Dumbledore’s frail neck. “You sodding bastard. You set us up! You practically gave her to me, hoping that I would care about her. You bloody well made sure of it. And then you let him take her away from me, knowing that I’d dismantle heaven and earth to get back to her, to protect her. That’s unthinkable. That’s horrific. You’ve got to know that.”

Dumbledore pursed his lips. “Of course I didn’t want to hurt either one of you. I didn’t think it would get so far where - ”

“I’ve been fucking her for a month, you old fool.” Severus was white-lipped with fury. “Every chance I got. Everywhere I could.” He nodded when he saw the Headmaster’s appalled expression. “Because you knew, and you didn’t tell me. You had to make sure I was in the right position to take out Lucius Malfoy when the explosion finally happened and my memories returned. So you waited and allowed me to continue my relationship with her.

“You took away my dignity as a teacher. I was already a murderer, an arsonist, a brewer of the darkest of potions, and a follower of the most evil dark wizard of the century. My morals as a teacher were one of the few things I had left of which I could be proud… the one spot on my soul that wasn’t rotten and warped and riddled with holes, and you took that from me.”

Dumbledore blanched when he saw the dark-haired man’s face fill with hatred. Severus nodded, his mouth a hard line.

“Even that I could forgive you. Hell, I’m used to it by now. I’ve already been through every sort of degradation that is possible for one man to go through and still survive.” His voice hardened. “But I shall never forgive you the harm that this has done to Hermione. Can you imagine how she’ll feel if she discovers she was sleeping with me, and not Constantine Prince, a seventh-year Gryffindor? And if that wasn’t enough, you put her in terrible danger.” His voice broke and he held up his hands, fingers spread in a accusation of culpability. “She got hurt because of her relationship with me. Hermione was so frightened when I found her, she didn’t recognize me at first. She was drenched in her own blood – a horrific sacrifice on the altar of your ego… your need to manipulate.”

The man’s eyes burned as he stared at the elderly wizard. His voice dropped an octave, and took on an icy chill. “No, that… that I shall never forgive you.”

Dumbledore sighed and readjusted his half-moon spectacles. “I know. I know that what I’ve done will always hang between us, sick and red.” He was silent for a moment. “It’s time to end this farce. Let me call the three remaining Order members who wear a copy of that cuff so we can turn you back into Severus Snape, Potions master of Hogwarts.”

The man in the hospital bed jerked his left wrist behind his back. “She needs me right now. Just while she heals, and then – and then I’ll come back to you of my own free will, and we’ll take the cuff off.” Severus could see the hesitation on the Headmaster’s face. “You owe me this favor. I will not allow it to end like this, Albus.”

“Very well. You may stay Constantine Prince until Ms. Granger is back at Hogwarts in her own rooms. But then you must go back to your own age. The Order members who are carrying your additional years are suffering for it. It ages them, slows their reflexes, drains their magic. Think of Alastor Moody, Severus.”

The Headmaster stood up and walked to the door of Severus’s hospital room. “My boy, I am so sorry for the pain and torment I’ve caused to both you and Ms. Granger. I know it is more than most could bear, and it hurt me to do it as well for I love you as I’d love my own flesh and blood. However, you must know that I would do it again in a heartbeat.”

The Potions master nodded as he lay back in his bed. “I know, Albus. And that is another reason I shall not forgive you.”

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He sat at her bedside for two days straight. Potter and Draco had been long-since discharged, and Weasley was beginning his rehabilitation to strengthen the newly rebuilt muscles that crossed his chest. But still she didn’t wake.

Hermione had nightmares much of the time, and Severus felt helpless to calm her. Initially, he tried talking to her, crooning out nonsense words of comfort and affection. She had reacted very negatively to that, thrashing in the bed until her legs and arms had become tangled and restrained in the hospital sheets. She’d cry tight, choking sobs as she struggled.

Gods, I am truly an idiot, he thought, suddenly remembering the way Lucius had liked to speak to his victims like a lover. “I fancy myself rather in love with you,” he remembered Malfoy crooning to Dorcas Meadows as he sliced her skin and offered her up for gang rape.

And so, Severus dropped his voice into his normal, acidic tones like lowering a bucket down a poisoned well. “Hermione, I just want you to know that I am here for you. I’ve already fought Weasley off twice today quite valiantly. He brought a box of his mother’s gods-awful taffy, swearing it was one of your favorites. The idiot was going to shove it down your throat! I calmly explained to him that you weren’t awake to chew it and – and… oh bloody hell, I’m lying through my teeth. I picked him up by the scruff of his neck and threw him out of the room.” He smirked. “And I called him a nightmarish crossbreed of stupidity and ugliness, wrapped up in a ball of ginger fur. Not one of my better insults to be certain. But I have other things on my mind.” He picked up her hand, noticing that she had relaxed and curled up onto her side in her normal sleep position. She breathed in and out regularly, and Severus wiped tears from his face. “You have to be okay, Hermione. I’m waiting here for you.”

Slowly, carefully, he climbed up behind her and fitted his front to her back, allowing his arm to drape over her stomach. He was concerned that she would feel restrained by his hold and would panic – so his arms were as gentle as blades of grass bending beneath the wind. Severus hadn’t slept well in days for worrying about her, and when she snuggled back against him, his eyes drooped and he drifted off to sleep.

He was content to be curled around her once more, a parenthesis on the end of her thought.

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When Hermione awoke, she felt completely at peace.

She blinked. That was unexpected. She probed at her memories, and bit her lip as the stink of her fear and blood and the fetid odor of Malfoy’s breath came back with as much terror as ever. However, she was able to hold them at bay like a beast with her hand on its throat because right now, she knew she was perfectly safe.

It was the scent of juniper and bayberry, you see.

Home, it made her think. Severus. Yes, he was here with her, holding her loosely in his arms. She felt safe. His chest rose and fell with a steady rhythm against her back, and his warm breath tickled the fine hairs at her neck. Hermione smiled (smiled!) at the familiarity of it.

Trying her best not to wake him, she slid away from his warm embrace in tiny, scooching movements so as not to rock the bed. She sat up with exquisite slowness and winced as the bed creaked beneath her shifting weight. With her legs hanging off the edge, she took stock of her body.

She had clearly been given Dermi-Grow Potion by the nursing staff at St. Mungos. The skin on her forearms was now smooth and unblemished except for faint white lines that ran around both of her wrists and just underneath both elbows. Ah, yes. That was where Lucius had tried to flay her. Not so bad. She had walked away from that one with some remembered pain and some tiny scars that looked like they would fade within a few years.

The skin over her sternum was unblemished, leaving her no physical reminder of that first terrible cut that had left Malfoy so excited. She bit her lip.

There was a thick white bandage wrapped around her upper right thigh where he had cut a big, meaty chunk from her, but bouncing her fist on it, she felt no pain. It seemed that too, was going to heal easily. She crossed her arms over her chest and felt uneasy.

Hermione was almost relieved when she found the brand of the Dark Mark on her hip bone. He’d held it against her skin until she was sure that he’d charred her down to the bone, and it appeared that St. Mungos had not been able to heal this one without leaving a scar. She traced it carefully with the tip of her finger, running the digit over the shiny, pink skin of the skull and snake. The rest of the marks he had placed upon her hide had been magicked away, leaving her feeling restless and unsettled; as if it might never have happened except in her head. It made her feel… unbalanced.

But the brand grounded her. It was a guidepost in the desert.

That ugly Dark Mark, the sign of everything evil in the Wizarding World for the last twenty years, made her feel as if somehow she could get through this. Hermione felt that seeing a physical manifestation of her torture was equivalent to airing out the musty corners of her brain. She wanted to hide this experience deep down in the clammy dungeons of her subconscious and deny that it ever happened. However, it was impossible to do with the Morsmordre sitting in plain sight. She was Hermione Granger, and she was a survivor. She’d been there, done that, and had the scars to prove it.

Exhausted, she laid back down and turned to face her lover. Hermione jumped when she saw his black eyes looking at her.

“How long have you been awake?” she asked, a fond irritation in her voice.

He gave a relieved smile when he heard her playful tone. “Long enough.” His hand slipped under the hem of her shirt and touched the brand. “Makes it real, doesn’t it?”

Hermione smiled a true smile. He understands. “It does. I haven’t decided yet if that’s a positive or a negative.” She reached out and stroked his cheek with gentle fingers. Severus’s eyes fluttered shut and a tear slipped from under his eyelid.

“I was so afraid that I wasn’t going to make it in time, my dear.”

“But you did, and I am so very grateful.”

Severus looked at her, and his eyes were filled with pain. He pursed his lips, and breathed in deeply through his nose. “Hermione…”

She made a noise of inquiry as she buried her nose in his neck, inhaling his scent. Gods, but he smelled good. Brushing his hair back from his face, she enjoyed his presence, steadfast and comforting. She felt so safe with him here.

When he didn’t say anything, she looked up and was surprised to see him struggling with words. His eyes were raised to the ceiling, and his brows were furrowed. “What is it, Constantine?”

“Did Lucius… did he… What I’m trying to say is that Lucius had you for several hours, and I want to know if he hurt you… in ways that are not immediately apparent. It’s something we should tell the Healer, if he did. I need to make sure you are all right, Hermione.”

She smiled at him, the faintest curving of her lips. “I’m not going to lie to you and tell you that I am all right. However, I know that I will be all right with a little time.” Hermione ran her hand through her curly hair and sighed. “Malfoy didn’t… He didn’t get that far. I think he was waiting for you, to make you watch. I was cut and burned and beaten and frightened nearly out of my wits, but I’m healing and I’ve got you beside me. It will all come out right. You’ll see. I promise you.”

The man lying in her bed bit his lip. His face was a study in love and torment, but he only nodded and held his arms out to her. As she laid her head on his chest, his hands clenched in her hair as tightly as a dying man seeking salvation.

Hermione knew she had to tell him that she knew who he was, but she was so tired and she needed him so badly she couldn’t do it yet. She promised herself that she would tell him just as soon as she was back in her Head Girl’s rooms at Hogwarts. Propping herself up on an elbow, she brushed her lips over his.

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A/N: Like it, love it, hate it, review it!!