Needfire

Chapter 27 – A Study in Contrasts: Red and Black and White


We have slaughtered
In the garden of beauty
Digging graves instead of planting
Mercy for the crucified
A bitter justice
Begging eternity for love

We\'re nothing
We\'re everything

I am nothing
Yet I am everybody

We\'re nothing
And yet we are

Wisdom lights up life\'s road

I know you

-- Movement I: Mercy. Alanis Morissette.


Authors\' Note: This chapter contains descriptions of self-mutilation and suicide. If you are disturbed by such things, please skip the later portions of this chapter.


The following two months were relatively peaceful. A blizzard that erupted in mid-February – two weeks after they had celebrated the Imbolc – forced the two of them to stay indoors for several days, making Hermione grateful for her wisdom in planning ahead and keeping a stock of canned goods. They spent it in slow, thorough love-making on the plaited rug in front of the fireplace; attempting to save Angharad\'s renovated garden from the blasting storm; concocting experimental potions made with the little storage of plants and chemicals they could extract from the materials they had in the cottage. In a moment of creativity, Hermione had even tried to convince Snape to do some Yoga.

\"We are in the middle of a blizzard,\" Snape hissed once she dragged him, growling and grumbling, to the small storage room she had emptied weeks ago so she could use it for her training. \"No mediwizard in sight in case I get stuck looking like a bagel,\" he added. \"What in great Merlin\'s beard are you trying to do to me, woman?\"

\"I\'m trying to introduce you to one of the healthiest, most consolidating forms of exercise,\" she informed him. \"Yoga is known to relieve stress, tension, insomnia and physical pain. It brings greater clarity of mind, greater concentration and clearer awareness of being.\"

Desperate now, Snape lowered himself to the thin mattress she conjured for him, eyes turned to the heavens as if praying for rescue. Crookshanks, awoken from his long drowse in front of the burning fire, was drawn to the room by the noises of conversation. Standing in the doorway, the half-Kneazle watched the two of them with a pair of big, yellowish eyes.

Snape glared at her. \"Your feline, too, thinks you are out of your mind.\"

She rolled her eyes. \"You\'re pathetic. Beside, Crook is a better Yogi than I. Come here, pug-face-\" Hermione turned to the cat, making silly cooing noises. \"Come show evil Potions Master Snape how flexible you are.\"

Crook merely yawned, and crouching, turned to clean his rear end.

\"To show you what he really thinks of you and your idiotic propositions,\" Snape, sprawled on the mattress at her side, translated.

She beamed at him. \"I told you you two are going to be best friends. Now stop arguing and start doing as you\'re told.\"

In the end, after more nasty comments followed by logical (and less logical, though of a more physical nature) arguments, Hermione discovered her lover wasn\'t molded out of the most flexible material. It appeared, then, that her plans for making love by the book (she intended to purchase the Kama Sutra the moment the blizzard abated) were permanently put off. On the other hand, what he lacked in flexibility, Snape usually compensated for in skill and competence.

Lying in his arms a few hours later, with the wind hurling snowflakes against the cottage\'s stonewalls, he chuckled, and asked her whether she was disappointed.

She shook her head. \"Hardly.\"

Being locked together brought out other, negative emotions as well, as they were both scathing individuals; both striving towards their own ends, and so, bound, in a sense, to hurt each other. An unbiased observer would have said she ought to be the more considerate of the two, because she was younger, sweeter, and most importantly, a Gryffindor. Amusing, she thought, as it was most definitely a mistake, though in a way, they would be right: one of her Gryffindor qualities was her frequent bluntness.

Harry was sweet and delicate, and so, she treated him gently. With Harry she was careful, even though forthrightly-blank – sometimes forthrightly-cruel– might have suited her more. Snape, however, was someone she could poke her fingers into his ribs: he was un-fragile, un-frail, if only because she needed him to be. His strength meant she could afford herself some weakness; whether the kind demonstrated by mere pettiness, whether by sinking boneless, rib-less into his arms – funny, wasn\'t it? That a woman should lack her rib. But then, it seems like ever since the days of Genesis men have been working to fix that, assuring our sex\'s dependency.

It was utterly selfish on her part, and did often torment her, but Snape seemed to tolerate her nastiness, as well as her contemporary breakdowns, and if he was ever hurt, he hardly ever let it show.

The blizzard was also something she could utilize. Being confined to the house, he was unable to run from her if he didn\'t like the turn of their conversations. Hermione had indeed put it into use by finally cornering him, asking about the one thing he never told her about. Haunted by the knowledge ever since they left Malfoy Manor, she was determined to confront Snape with what Lucius Malfoy had inadvertently revealed to her.

\"What was Lily Evans to you?\" she inquired one day as they were sitting in front of the fireplace.

Snape had been sitting in his mentor\'s old armchair, with Crookshanks – whom he had formed a tentative treaty – curled in his lap. Hermione, at his feet, was pretending to read a book, sometimes reaching her hand to pet Crookshanks.

The stretchy, domestic silence; scented of logs burning in the hearth and feline hairs on worn-out fabric, had shrunk, crystallized and fractured, the moment she uttered the words.

\"Snape,\" she said, the single word seeming to echo in the narrow room.

Above her, his face turned blank. Not a classroom\'s glare, she noted, but a hollow, empty expression. \"I don\'t want to talk about it.\"

\"I do.\"

\"You want many things.\"

She nodded. \"So you would say. Why won\'t you talk about her?\"

Jaw tightening, he leaned to pick up the Herbology essay was formerly reading. \"She\'s dead. She\'s unimportant.\"

\"If she was unimportant,\" Hermione reasoned, \"you wouldn\'t mind talking about her. I\'d risk sounding like Professor Dumbledore, but it appears to me those are the important things we don\'t talk about. You never mentioned her.\" Hermione frowned, forcing down a lump of irrational fear. \"She must be grievously important. I am almost afraid of a dead woman. I certainly am jealous of her.\"

\"Stupid girl.\"

\"I should really hex you for calling me that,\" she murmured. \"But I\'m too curious and alert by now. I suppose I\'d simply have to let you live until you told me about her.\"

\"Well,\" he said coldly. \"It seems like I\'m destined to live a long life.\" At that, he put the Herbology book aside, removed an aggravated Crookshanks from his lap, and stalked into the bedroom.

Dinner was a gloomy affair. Snape perceived their latest state of controversy as a permission to revert to his diet of fruits and porridges, and since there were no fruits and no porridges, sat in front of her and ate nothing at all.

\"You are being absurd,\" she told him. \"This omelet is palatable. And the salad will be good for you, too. I used our last fresh vegetables to make it. It\'s rich in vitamins.\"

The man across the table looked grim as ever. \"The omelet has onions in it,\" he stated. \"I don\'t like onions.\"

She glared at him. \"And the salad?\"

\"Tomatoes. I hate tomatoes.\"

\"Oh, let me guess,\" she rebutted angrily. \"They are too... red? Too much like the Gryffindor red, perhaps?\"

\"Yes.\" And flicking his wand, he sent his empty plate back to the cupboard together with the cutlery, leaving her alone to finish her dinner. Crying out in frustration, she threw her full glass of orange juice at his retreating form, some of her anger slaked as the cup hit the wall, shattering into pieces. Cleaning it later, she forsook her wand, and using a wet towel, gathered the small splinters of broken glass. A tiny fragment bruised the pad of her thumb, making her flinch, and she brought the sore thumb into her mouth. A frown on her face, she sucked away the scant amount of blood oozing from the wound. Sour-sweet, familiar and comforting.

Sleeping with her back to him that night, Hermione dreamed strange dreams about a girl with her hair the colour of wildfire: the girl was tall, about twelve or thirteen inches taller than Hermione, with a somewhat long, lovely face. Her eyes – deep, green and tantalizing – were big and serious, accompanied by long, aristocratic nose and a country girl\'s mouth. A mouth that told secrets of stolen kisses, and snogging in the dark.

Most of all, Hermione was fascinated with the girl\'s arms. Long, creamy and pale, her arms were lean, and yet bearing a hint of baby fat under their silky length. Her skin, which was soft and almost glowing with moisture, had the faintest, most delectable creamy hue: a colour one can see where an oyster\'s slightly pouted lips spread, to allow a better look into its velvety interior.

Hermione had never seen a picture of Lily Evans Potter: she knew Harry kept an album with his parents\' photographs in it someplace, but in truth, was never really interested in his mother\'s appearance – up till now. Even so, once the girl with her locks the colour of wildfire appeared in her dream, Hermione had doubtlessly recognized her for Lily Evans.

The first dream was rather banal: young Lily and young Snape studying in Hogwarts library; raven and reddish heads bent over an Arithmancy text, until the ever-present presence, wallflower-hook of a librarian shooed them out. The light which was assembling behind them – gathering back inside the closing doors of the Hogwarts\' library – had been dimming the fires that seemed to be always burning in Lily\'s hair. The boy, who had grown to be Hermione Granger\'s lover, was fascinated with that hair, in the same way Hermione was fascinated with Lily\'s arms, and with the man\'s hands.

All of a sudden, boy-Snape cornered girl-Lily in a darkened nook. \"Let me kiss you, Lily,\" he asked her.

His companion seemed amused, yet her eyes were alight. Can you see her craving for you? I wonder if you can.

\"Why?\" teased girl-Lily.

\"Why not?\" the boy cocked his head.

Hermione was unsure when, exactly, this dream melted into the next, but was positive that even though the following dream began relatively at the same point – with her two brain-puppets standing in a darkened hallway – this was another dream altogether, one or two R.E.M\'s away from the first. This hallway, for example, was different, and Hermione had instantly recognized the marble satyr and the velvet curtain behind which the two youths where hiding.

Planted in the shadows, she moved a little closer, frustrated to have her view of the scene narrowed and delimited by an empirical body. Foggily aware of the fact she was dreaming and this scene, she tried to extend her peripheral sight, and failed. Follow the path of the white rabbit, then, she mused.

Attentive, she tried to capture any particular noises, unsurprised in the least to hear the hoarsened breath and the wet, slobbery sounds of snogging. On a whim, she lifted her arm, checking on the garment she wore, her eyes widening to see she was wearing Snape\'s black school robe which hung past the ends of her hands in a ridiculous manner. To remind me I am a child, spying on her elders, who happened to do whatever they did more then twenty years ago, or merely because I am put in his place?

Aggravated, she followed the noises, over the satyr, behind the red, velvet draperies, where a long limbed boy was snugged between a redheaded girl\'s thighs, his lips locked with her open mouth, and her arms; her unblemished, graceful, impeccable arms, curled around his neck. Burying her hands in Snape\'s hair, Lily Evans undulated under his body. Legs wound around his pelvis, she pressed her center to his, gasping as a wave of pleasure shot through her body, and arched so that her nipples too, would be rubbed against his torso. Then, with sharp pleasure undoing her, she opened her eyes, to meet the stare of the short, bushy haired girl who watched her venomously from the other side of the hallway.

Lily Evans didn\'t say a thing. For a moment, her eyes – which seemed to be a replication of Harry\'s fixed in a feminine face – merely wavered sorrowfully: huge, soulful and dead, at the girl who envied her after so long. Then she was an alive, reckless and possessive fifteen-year-old Gryffindor, and recognized full well the challenge in the other girl\'s eyes. Not cunning, Hermione concluded, but sharpness. Not sweet, but mellow; but soft. Not compelling, but bewitching. A woman to be worshiped and not a pliant, elastic girl. Not me, but her.

The words, whispered in the privacy of her head, were somehow tugging the rims of her peripheral sight, pulling and reshaping it. The air around her became pungent and cold, though she had no longer a substantial mouth by which to taste it, or skin, for the wind to caress frostily. The two figures were still holding onto each other, but Lily\'s eyes were now closed and her face was no longer the face of a fifteen-years-old girl, but the face of a young woman. One who was glowing with Snape\'s touch. Her expression was that of anguish and splendor: a martyr Lily crucified on a New Testament cross, God rising within her when Snape\'s hands moved on her skin. Then he moved away: briefly, harshly, as his hand found the curve of her pregnant belly, rounded with James Potter\'s child.

\"Severus, I-\" she stammered, her eyes filled with tears, but he wouldn\'t listen. Ah, Lily Potter, Hermione thought bitterly. Did you not know there is no surrendering to Severus Snape, and no unbending him? Did you not know it is always about Severus Snape and his petty egocentric self? Apparently, she did, as Lily did not waste her time convincing the man both of them loved to listen to her. All she did was choose the sharpest knife, aiming it perfectly to cause the gravest pain, and twisting.

He left, to tend to his own severe injuries. Hermione felt the familiar pressure in her lower abdomen. I do not blame you, Snape, but I do wonder if you ever knew that she bled even worse.

This thought caused the lucid dream-images to alter. Like slides in a home projector; shifting with a small click so that an entirely different picture could pour into the formerly white screen. Snape was standing in front of her, twenty-five years old or so, ankles sunken in a deep, distorting fog. His long, black hair was waving in an unseen wind; ends immersing in the mist. Somehow, the sharpened contrasts of his skin against his hair, the contrast of his entity against any other beings seemed faint; feeble and glassy in this other actuality. Lifting her hand to remove a stray lock of hair from her face, she found the hair to be red and bright – wildfire-red – and the hand to be coated with creamy, shell-white skin.

He called her Lily, and there was such longing, such desperation in his voice that this body, which was Lily Potter\'s, almost collapsed under the weight of its two occupants combined sorrow: Hermione\'s clenching its womb, while Lily\'s kindled the soft tissues draping its throat and the cavity of its heart, turning it all to ashes.

\"Hello, Severus,\" she could hear herself saying in a voice that was not her own. \"Why would you wish to hurt me so? Please go away and let me be.\"

Snape\'s eyes turned black with sorrow, and while Lily was pained, Hermione was fascinated with the nakedness of expression.

\"I never wished to hurt you, Lily-\" they heard him deny, and out of Lily\'s bowels, she could feel laughter rising: bitter, galling, defiant. For all along, he did nothing but hurt her. Even now that she was strolling in the ever green meadows of Tir Nan Og, he would come here to break her heart. And Hermione, staring at him out of Lily\'s emerald eyes, knew that even in her death, Severus Snape missed Lily Evans, who was no longer his, no longer alive, no longer to be had by anyone.

She felt drained and sore after waking up, as if a backlog of lactic acid was being wrenched from her joints; slightly dizzy and downright annoyed that her body was uncooperative. She tried to meditate, but her concentration was constantly broken, the comfortable quiescence of the house disrupted by Snape who prowled the cottage like a caged animal.

Slamming doors and shifting pieces of furniture; tossing obscure items as he went through the contents of a dresser and cursing under his breath when he was displeased with his findings; the man was making a pest of himself. Running out of patience, she rolled her mattress and exited her training room with the intention of facing him. As she anticipated, the damn man was flipping through some of his potions texts, not even pretending to read it as he scowled at Crookshanks.

Leaning forward, Hermione seized the book, putting it back on the shelf where it belonged

Sticking her hands in the pockets of her jeans, she turned to look at Snape. \"All right. This nonsense has been going far enough for me. Lily Evans Potter is not even a ghost. Why is it, then, she lives with us in this house?\"

She expected Snape to rise from his chair and stalk out of the room. She expected him to glare and yell at her or for his face to turn blank. She did not, however, expect him to sink, beaten, into the armchair. He looked distanced- anticipating, perhaps, the next blow from a father who no longer lived. A man engulfed in his ghosts, she realized: a man who surrounded himself with his ghosts, unable to either let go, or to dispose of them.

\"Do you love her more than you love me?\" she asked at last.

Snape angled an eyebrow. \"Lily is dead. I loved her.\"

Hermione shrugged her shoulders, tired and defeated. \"How dead can she be for you if you can\'t even talk about her?\"

\"I am now, aren’t I?\"

Exhausted, she sank to the carpet at his feet, resting her head on his knee. Lean and sinewy, she could feel the bony structure of his knee-cap under her ear. The worn-out cloth of his jeans pressed its softened texture onto the side of her face. \"I… I don\'t mind it so much,\" she said at last. \"Not anymore. Don’t talk about her if it pains you so. I don\'t know, perhaps some wounds are better left sealed, septic as they may be. Puncturing them we would achieve nothing but moving the infection into our circulation and be much worse…\"

His hand reached to stroke her bird\'s-nest mane, fingers interlacing in between wild honey locks. Touching his fingertips to her scalp in a slow, absentminded massage, she felt their heat permeating through her skin. Heat that – reaching a certain part of her soul – converted into molecules of complacency: small enough to stream in her blood and thus, reach every spot in her body.

He sighed. \"I\'m not sure of it. Perhaps I don\'t talk simply because I don\'t remember how. Or because I have never learned. This is not to say I am better off not talking. Just that I never did. And you are the same.\"

She nodded. \"Then would you tell me about her?\"

\"What do you want to know about Lily?\"

Her finger trailed slow, lazy circles over his left knee. \"Not her…\" she said at last, \"but you. I want to know what she was to you. Why did you fall in love with her, and why are you still in love with her memory… I want to know was she better than I in the sack, and did you love her more than you love me. I heard the rumors, so I won\'t ask you whether she was prettier- I suppose she was…\" Hermione\'s voice dissolved against his knee.

\"Is that all you want to know?\" he asked her, somewhat amusedly.

\"Now you\'re mocking me.\"

She heard his tongue clicking against his palate. \"Affectionately so.\"

\"Would you answer me then?\"

Snape sighed. \"Yes, I will answer you.\" He was silent a while, and she waited for him to speak again.

\"You want to know about me,\" he said at last, \"and not Lily, but to tell you about me I must tell you about Lily. And I must tell you about you, as well.\"

Rising a little, she attempted to look at him, but Snape only shook his head and gently stroking her hair, used his fingertips to hold her in place. Rested against his lap, she couldn\'t meet his eyes. So, she thought. It cannot be pleasant if you won\'t look at me.

She was grateful to notice his hand was still gentle on her head, and not tense. Tucking her hands around his legs, she managed to slide them beneath his thighs, between the cotton of the jeans and the fabric of the armchair, where there was warmth.

\"Lily was, like you, not entirely Gryffindor,\" he began. \"There was an edge of Ravenclaw to her, as there is to you. Some... sharpness, some bitterness, brilliance.\" There was a slight chuckle from him. \"And before you ask, since I can hear you drawing breath for a question, Hermione – yes, I may call you stupid girl, for such you are, but you are a brilliant girl as well. There, now – your ego has been suitably inflated. Lily was never the girl that you are. Lily was a woman, always. That is what I did not understand until it was too late. Women... women need men to have emotions. Need to share them. And I- because... because of my- upbringing, I believed it was not safe to have emotions. It was certainly not safe to share them, not safe to show them.\"

Now his hand did tense on her head. \"It\'s still not safe,\" he murmured. \"Look where it got us, for me to admit my feelings for you- to act on them. No job for me, no education for you: our –friends left behind in ruins. Little Gryffindor that you are, I would not expect you to be able to hide your feelings more than I would ever expect you to be able to betray a friend to save your own life, but I- I could have done that, I should have done that. I should never have touched you.\"

Cold with the quiet resolve in his voice, she struggled free of his restraining hand and stared up at him. His pupils were huge; that thin rim of wild grey hardly even a memory in his eyes. \"I wanted you to touch me,\" she whispered.

\"I knew that,\" Snape told her. His head fell back against the armchair, leaving his white throat exposed. \"And the lesson of Lily – the lesson I learned too late – was that to touch is to wound, but not to speak of love. To love and remain silent- is to kill.\" He met her eyes again. \"Do you see? Is it enough?\" He opened his arms. \"Come into my lap, Hermione. What follows is worse.\"

\"How could it be worse?\" She asked, creeping into his gaunt, sinewy arms and settling with her head in the angle of his neck and shoulder. \"You never told her you loved her...but you told me. You told me so that I could have that knowledge, and not be destroyed by its lack.\" Her lips, seemingly hot and feverish, found the cool porcelain that was his throat, and began nuzzling his hair aside.

\"I did.\" His hand was idly playing with her hair now. \"Because I was silent, she had to hurt me – both of us, perhaps – in order to free herself. And so -- she went -- to... Potter.\" He stopped, taking a sharp breath. \"She had Potter\'s son. Had I been braver, it would have been my son she bore, my life she made complete. She chose Potter, not for love, but for hatred. Because she knew I hated him the most.\" His other hand clenched for a moment on her hips and ribs. And now, she thought, I know why you hate Harry so, and yet why you have saved his life, why you cannot help caring. For her sake.

Snape gave a faint chuckle. \"Are you better than Lily in the sack? I will say you are different, and of a certainty I know your body better.\" He turned her mouth to his and kissed it deeply before continuing. \"Foolish girl. To have given up so much for your vile Potions Master. I am not the youth I was then, so there is no comparison to be made between you and Lily. Where you are different though- in you there is a determination, an unwillingness to compromise. You drove me to drink, you drove me to fuck you, you drove me to confess my feelings, in a way Lily never did.\" Then his eyes narrowed, and he reached his hand to cup her face.

\"Lily was realistic,\" Snape added with a note of hollow, pristine sorrow to his voice. \"You, however, are a true Gryffindor in your unrealism. You would burn yourself first, then everyone else, in order to change the world. To get what you want. Sometimes you would tell yourself the world would be a better place if you got what you want- that your wish and the world\'s becoming a better place goes hand in hand. That\'s why you\'re more dangerous than any ambitious Slytherin. Because we would never fool ourselves to think so. Yet this is hardly my point. You have me, and Lily hasn\'t, because she wouldn\'t pay the price of dealing with the half autistic youth I was. She wouldn\'t burn herself. I do believe that- as an adult, I am easier to reach- but look at the price you paid to get us here; I do not regret it-\" he said, seeing the angry flash in her eyes, \"but Lily wouldn\'t. Lily would have waited. Lily would not have let herself be consumed- by love or by any other emotion. She would take care of herself. This is the difference between you two, Hermione: I wish you would have taken care of yourself as well.\"

* * *

Both of them were calmer once the blizzard had quieted. As for Hermione- she felt that perhaps, something of the ever-white mirage stretching for miles and miles over the Cotswold Hills might seep into her soul, granting her with some of its tranquility.

Putting on her Muggle cardigan, she told Snape she would be taking a walk, taking his grunt as a yes. He was busy in the kitchen at the time, bent over several pots where he attempted to breed a few exotic plants in the moderated heat of their home.

With her wand in her hand, she defrosted parts of the road where the snow hadn\'t yet melted into a passable depth, happy to note some of the more used paths were already cleared by the Muggle authorities. She had been strolling idly for a while, drinking in the cold frozen air, her cheeks flushed from the cold. Miles of moving air and open land surrounded her body from each direction instead of confining walls, and the knowledge made her calm; excited; dizzy.

Unintentionally, she found herself roaming to the spot Snape referred to as Angharad\'s circle. While in her eyes the cottage was theirs, Hermione had still thought of the Oxfordshire\'s Stonehenge as Snape\'s mentor\'s circle, just as the Stones at Hogwarts belonged to him. She had often wondered about the woman: not the way Lily Evans haunted her, but in a placid, more pensive manner. I ask myself – if not for her, would he have been able to reach for me, and had he met her earlier, wouldn\'t he reach for Lily? Hermione frowned. I can hear you chuckle, old woman. What is it that you know, and I don’t?

Sprawling on the clear snow in the middle of the circle, Hermione looked at the greyish stones that encircled her in an ancient, motionless dance. Lucid, almost bluish wintry sunrays played over her face, and she enjoyed their light warmth on her skin. Sometimes I am amazed at us, women, that we would so easily play pawns for a man, she thought at the memory of the old lady. Not you, you were probably stronger than that, an accidental pawn, I\'d say. Probably had more in your life than being Severus Snape\'s pawn- just a phase for you, didn\'t even guess you were- though… you were clever – you ought to have known how important you were to him. But me, and Lily Evans…

Snape was wrong, she decided. Didn\'t Lily give up her life for him? Because of him? Marrying a man who was good for her indeed, but whom she didn\'t love: a man who wasn\'t the love of her life – just to pain him? Wasn\'t she just… Hermione screwed up her face in concentration, wasn\'t she just resuming her position as a pawn by doing that? Manipulating him, yes, but more than that, living her life according to his whims-, if not directly, then indirectly? What is it about love; about women- what is it about this man, which makes us throw our lives away? You have no answers for me, do you, Angharad? Is it because you were stronger? No, you\'re just like him, wanting me to find my own answers.

Yes, she thought, shifting into a sitting position. I know your kind, always speaking in riddles. Noting the Stones\' shadows on the snow, Hermione realized that the hour was growing late. Snape would be worried.

Regretting to leave the circle, she moved to her feet, dusting snow from her jeans and cardigan. She would be back there with Snape, to hear more about the Druids and their rites, to practice, chant and learn: she would be back there on her own, to feel the sun kissing her eyelids. The thought was somewhat reassuring. With that in mind, she began making her way back towards the cottage.

The sun warmer now, that it was almost noon; some of the snow melting into slushy puddles under her booted feet. She would take off the boots the moment she was home and cast a cleansing charm on the pair, she thought venomously. Using her magic to dispose of mud was one of the things she was unable to do at her parents\' house, and it was a relief to be able to do it here.

Nearing the cottage, she thought she saw some strange addition to the slated, snow-covered roof. A thick mess of what seemed to be prickly shrubs and woody plants bearing sharp edges, were arranged into what seemed to be a nest. The said nest was located not far away from the chimney.

Stepping closer, Hermione narrowed her eyes. Inside the nest sat a thin, mournful looking bird, bearing a slight resemblance to a vulture. Horrified, she gave a sharp, startled cry. The noise brought Snape out at once.

Storming out of the door, he caught her standing in front of the house, and had immediately followed her gaze. \"All that fuss about that damnable Augurey!\" he roared once he realized what she was staring at. \"The idiot bird has been here ever since the storm abated and now you decide you wish to screech like Trelawney!\"

She turned to him, startled and aggravated at his sudden appearance. \"Do you have a bat\'s ears?\" she asked angrily. \"And why wouldn\'t I be worried? Have you ever known an Augurey to nest on a roof? Or build a nest so deeply into winter??\"

Snape gave her his notorious classroom scowl. \"First of all, Miss Granger, you should keep in mind we are not just any people, but wizards and this is not any bird, but a magical bird. Secondly, I would remind you of the storm, which probably drove this ridiculous bird away from its nest and threw its life into chaos. It was looking for warmth and protection, and found it here, in this well guarded house. Thirdly, and most importantly,\" he said in his scathing, lecturing tone, \"you would be better to remember that the Augurey\'s distinctive cry is not, as it was once believed, a death omen. Nevertheless, its cry does foretell rain. Now, after I told you nothing you didn\'t already know, or couldn\'t think of yourself-\" he sighed, \"I would like you to come over here so I can see everything is all right with you.\"

She nodded tiredly, tumbling into his arms, feeling ridiculous to be so alarmed over one ugly bird. Pawns, yes- they might be pawns to his king, but it was a rather feudalistic system if it was to be so. Guards and protection for their fiefdom.

* * *

February rolled slowly into March, snow melting to expose patches of fresh, savory grass. Rain had been watering the ground, and soaked their Druid garments as they made their way to Angharad\'s circle. Now, that March was in, with the Imbolc celebrations behind them, they prepared for the Alban Eiler: the Vernal Equinox.

There, strolling the winding paths of Oxfordshire County with Snape at her side, his clear, beautiful voice simmering around and inside her like glowing heat from a fireplace, she thought that perhaps she had finally captured something of that elusive quality that was exultation. With him, her mind as well as her body was free to rise, free to explore, and roam and marvel. Donna\'s slightly nasal, preaching voice was only a dim echo in her head, and her father, even though she had sometimes terribly missed him, was something she refused to think about. With her condition apparently improved, Snape, too, was willing – even though reluctantly – to drop the subject. Some boils, she knew, were better left septic and untouched.

Snape was still summoned by Voldemort every once in a while: those Death Eaters gatherings were probably the only thing that touched her little bubble of bliss. Snape and she had their disputes, which one of them would end at last. She by tempting him with sex: he by confounding her over a verbal fencing. Then they would talk it out, or they wouldn\'t. She was right, once; by saying they were cut to fit each other\'s measures. Flawed perfectly to suit each other. Both brilliant and immature and mature and excessively stupid in their hearts\' affairs. On those nights when he\'d answer Voldemort\'s summons, though, she would lie cold and lonely in their bed, planning to strangle Malfoy\'s bird the next time it breached the intimacy of their lives carrying its Job\'s message. Above all, she would wonder what it was about her, that she couldn\'t grab whatever happiness life had offered her and cling to it, accepting the good with the bad, without being thrown off her footing wherever the delicate balance had been somehow violated.

What was it, really, which made her so different from other people, sharpening and amplifying emotions until they were sometimes unbearable- what was it she lacked – perhaps – the tools that were supposed to help her cope with the burden of knowing he was away, and at risk. The needle to stitch this great void, before she would succumb to the nothingness. What was it about her, which made her incapable of living properly? Was there a right method to living? Sometimes she thought it to be a shame that no book could teach you how to do it; things would be much easier.

* * *

It had been a cozy evening. Snape was once again tending to his pots, with an observant Crookshanks recumbent on the kitchen table where the pots were placed – probably expecting to be tended to as well. Hermione was cooking dinner (it appeared that Snape knew how to cook only the things he liked to eat. The rest he burnt. She suspected he did it spitefully).

All the three of them were disturbed when a dim knock was heard at the frost-coated windowpane. She cursed inwardly as Snape rose, letting in Malfoy\'s falcon and gently releasing the parchment attached to the bird\'s claw. It flew away just as it came, never delaying to check whether a treat might be offered for its service. Snape closed the window behind it.

\"Can we at least dine together?\" she asked him coldly, hearing him sigh.

\"Hermione, don\'t.\"

Her lips tightened. \"I can\'t help it, Snape. I don\'t like it when you go there.\" The same familiar emptiness settled in her abdomen, making her light, making her movements swift and accurate.

\"You know I must go there.\"

\"No,\" she shook her head. \"I know you choose to go there.\"

\"Is that what aggravates you?\" he asked furiously. \"That I favour the common welfare of the Wizarding World over protecting you from a few hours of distress?\"

\"That was uncalled for and doesn\'t merit a response,\" she answered him, although deep in her heart, his words stung. Those are not a few hours of distress that you\'d be preventing me, she thought, but few hours of sheer hell. I meant it when I said I don\'t ever want to be there again.

Snape uttered a loud sigh, levitating the pots off the kitchen table. \"What is it, then?\"

\"Nothing,\" she murmured. \"It\'s nothing.\"

\"Fine!\" He sprang to his feet. \"I won\'t coax you into speaking. This method; intentionally avoiding a subject so that I would coo you into a conversation, is foolish and immature, and I\'ve had enough of your childishness for one night. Have a charming evening, Hermione. I have some prior business to take care of as you surely know. Goodbye.\" And with that, he Accio-d his cloak and stormed out of the cottage.

\"Fuck you!\" Crying, she groped for the nearest dish, which happened to be an empty china bowl, and flung it at the closing door. It smashed into small slivers on the floor, causing a surge of energy to climb up her body as the power invested in hurling the dish rushed back at her. She was slightly heady.

The sound of the china crushing against the flagstones kept ringing in her ears, mixing with the vile scent of cooking food diffusing from the pots on the stove. Raising her wand, she extinguished the fire, then, with an additional flick, dispatched of the pots\' contents. Her appetite was all gone. Nevertheless, the smell… the contagious, heavy, tacky smell: permeating her clothes, into her hair and skin. One by one, she opened the kitchen\'s windows, then the living room\'s windows. Done airing the house, she hurried to the bathroom, locking herself inside.

A moment later she was inside the bathtub, where – after washing herself with the newly installed shower head – she scraped her hands. Ruthless, she worked the soap into her skin; soaping her hair, and then repeating the process, until every inch of her body was clean from the scent of food. Sick, Granger. You are permanently, and un-blissfully sick. With that thought in mind, she limped out of the bathroom, shivering at the sudden chill. But at least it smelled of rain and grass and not of food and Snape.

Wrapping her hands around her body – scraping; sore as it hadn\'t felt for months – she stumbled into the bedroom, where it still smelled of him. The thought made the metaphorical incision open and bleed again. She wanted to cry. She wanted her skin to stop hurting. She wanted to be able to give her feelings a corporeal shape- one that would be recognized by normal human beings- people who knew how to live, and not only their shadows: she and Harry and the likes of them, who couldn\'t even summon tears when they needed them, who couldn\'t find their way out of the cupboard unless there was someone to guide them into the light. Yes, she reflected bitterly. This is the difference between me and Lily Evans. That Lily was capable, and I am unfit. This is the REAL different between us, Snape.

Why go on? She thought tiredly. She was never going to make it. Something would always come and topple her; something would always cause her to stumble. Even Snape, who was her umbilical cord to normalcy, had sometimes hurt her beyond every possible measure. She was twisting things, yes; it was surely not his fault that she was consistently overreacting, but that was how she was made, now wasn\'t she? Programmed to react disproportionately. Programmed to suffer. Why not end it here and now?

Approaching the night-table at his side of the double bed, Hermione sank to her knees on the cold floor, opening one drawer after another until she found what she was seeking. The scalpel she chose was thin, lengthy and dangerously sharp; much sharper than anything she used on herself before. She supposed it would fit her current purposes, though.

Looking at the clock, she saw it was almost 23:00. It seemed that she had been dawdling for a while. Hopefully, tonight\'s would be a long meeting.

Crawling inside the covers, she spelled her wand to hover above, giving her light. Naked; she noted there was no sleeve to roll up, slightly amused to be noticing such a thing. The light from the wand flickered upon the blade as she lifted the scalpel, emphasizing its lethal sharpness. Pressing it to her left wrist, she located the blade over the point where two bluish lines crossed each other, creating a junction of a sort, reminding her of another, long forgotten junctions. Behind the two distant hills of Cair Paraval, perhaps a literary reflection of the little prince\'s two mounts, the words slipped off the parchment: St Exupery\'s pilot flew into the darkness and there was only oblivion. Sweet, milky oblivion.

Such oblivion, though, might not be easy to reach. Her former cuts were always shallow, and even when she pressed the dislocated razor blades she usually used for this purpose into her skin, slashing a vein with a blunt blade was a very difficult job. Nevertheless, she suspected that using a Potions Master\'s scalpel was going to be different.

Taking one deep breath of Snape\'s fragrance before the scent of blood would fill her nostrils, Hermione adjusted the scalpel\'s handle in her hand, and pressed the blade into her skin. There was no pain at first, only the sharp, familiar sting of metal cutting into flesh. Fascinated, she watched this knife, this blade, sink deeper into her wrist, almost as if she was cutting through warmed butter.

The whole process didn\'t take more then few, brief seconds. Flicking out the blade, she watched – not tiny drops of blood oozing from a shallow wound – but wild, beautiful gushes, streaming down her wrist; trickling along the reddened skin of her forearm; falling in big, fleshy drops on the white linen. As if her wrists were crying, or spurting thick, red semen into a gasping lovers\' bed. Lovely, she thought as the pain – finer and stronger than any she had felt upon cutting herself before – hit her, pulsating straight from the wound in her arm into every spot in her body. Absolutely beautiful. And with the pain came the tears and she was no longer arid and dusty, but damp, saline and soluble. And with that, she turned to take care of her second wrist.