Dusk and Her Embrace

All characters are trademark of JK Rowling, she created the character and the series, and I just wrote a story about them

*all characters are of age*

Here\'s Chapter Three... I\'m going away this weekend to Saranac Lake supposedly, if my friend Cat ever calls me back to confirm our plans, so I wanted to make sure I got another chapter in before I went away. Hope you enjoy it

Please R/R
Thanks :-)

Chapter Three: Hurt and Virtue

Severus had trouble sleeping that night… He tossed and turned in his bed in the hospital wing, haunted by a myriad of graven images… First he was reliving the attack on him by the death eaters, then he turned into Hermione, and he found himself watching the death eaters attack her, but he found himself frozen, unable to do anything to help her, it was torture… And then he saw himself shrouded in black at a funeral as they laid Hermione’s body to rest, and the faces of Potter and Weasley gaped at him from afar, frozen in portraits of disgust and horror raising their wands as they prepared to attack him… He tossed and turned, he shivered, he woke up in cold sweats… Finally he couldn’t take it anymore. He threw the thin blankets off of himself onto the floor and got out of bed.
He wandered over to the window and found himself staring outside. The sky was veiled in darkness; the only light that snuck into the window was from a yellowed waning crescent moon. Severus found himself being led to Hermione’s bed, it was an unconscious decision, it was sort of like he was being drawn to her, like invisible waves of magnetism were pulling him closer and closer to the sleeping girl. His stomach was twisted in knots, his heart was beating so furiously that he could feel all the blood being pumped throughout his body… and then he was there…
Her palled face was glowing in the silver moonlight. Her eyes were twitching in all sorts of directions… she must be dreaming, Severus thought to himself, yet she looked as though she was in pain. “ Poor Hermione,” he whispered. He took her hand in his. It was frozen, it stung to touch her skin because she was just so… so cold… “ Oh Hermione… I can’t imagine what’s going in your head right now… Maybe you’re dreaming… Maybe you’re reliving what happened to you over and over again… I’m so sorry… I wish… I wish there was something I could do to take away all the pain you must be experiencing…” He heard a rustle and jumped up a little wondering if Potter and his Weasley were hanging around the hospital wing in their trust invisibility cloak… Those two had quite the affinity for rule breaking. Nervously Severus felt around. He even made a few laps around Hermione’s bed hoping if they were there he could catch the intruders in action… He felt nothing though, so he thought for now at least he was safe, and all he had heard was the wind or something like it… He made his way back to the chair next to Hermione’s bed.
“ Sorry Hermione,” he apologized, “ I thought those two friends of yours might have been hanging around… Potter and Weasley were never one to follow the rules… I can’t believe the headmaster made Weasley a prefect… He isn’t even that magically inclined… Sorry, I know they’re your friends, and I can tell they do care for you a lot, so I’ll stop talking about them out of respect for you….” He took a deep breath. “ I still don’t know why you did what you did, Hermione. How can you treat me like a person when I’ve treated you like anything but a person? All the insults I threw at you… Like that time in class when your teeth kept on expanding and I claimed I didn’t notice the difference… Or all those numerous times when I’ve called you an egotistical know-it-all…. Why would you want to save someone like that, Hermione?”
“ It was my fault you all ended up in that duel with Voldemort and his death-eaters during your fifth year… I was supposed to tutor Potter in occulemency… but I got infuriated because he saw into my memory and saw all the hell that his father and his father’s friends put me through in my day, and it angered me, and after that I didn’t want to help Potter anymore… Why would I want to help the spawn of someone who had made me so miserable growing up?”
Severus took a deep breath. “ So I left Potter alone and those visions of The Department of Mysteries keep on appearing to him… and then that vision of Sirius being tortured appeared to him…with that Potter and his army had gone over there hoping to protect Sirius… and Sirius died… Do you realize it’s my fault Potter’s precious godfather died! Now tell me again, Hermione, why would you want to save someone like that? Someone who put your life and the lives of all your friends in danger…”
“ I wonder if you can even hear me…” He sighed. “ Here I am confessing to someone, and I don’t even know if they can hear me… Do you want to know the real reason I joined up with the death eaters, Hermione? I’ll tell you. I just wanted to feel like I belonged in a group and I had this incurable desire for power. I thought if I became a death eater I’d have almost all the power and the world, and with power I could find ways to distill revenge on all those who had ridiculed me growing up. I… I wanted to feel like I was a part of something, a part of something powerful, that’s why I joined the death eaters.”
“ But the death eaters was nothing like I pictured it to be… We were nothing better then Voldemort’s slaves… We would rape mudbloods, kill muggles, bewitch people, torture people…. Yes Hermione, I raped mudbloods, I killed people, I bewitched people, I tortured people…. But it left me feeling unfulfilled and I just wanted out… That’s why I turned to the other side… I had a long talk with Dumbledore… I showed him the dark mark I had and begged him to try to help me find a way out of it. He said he had no power though, the dark mark was the mark of a lifelong connection between whoever bears it and Voldemort, and with that mark you will be Voldemort’s servant for life or die… That’s when I started being Dumbledore’s spy. He urged me to keep going to the meetings and to share the information I received with The Order of the Phoenix to help them in their fight… and I did…. I was ashamed I had ever become a part of Voldemort’s inner circle, and Dumbledore helped me out, he even instilled a charm of protection on me so I couldn’t be harmed… He’s a great man, that Dumbledore…”
“ I suppose your wondering why I hate Potter so much…. I don’t hate him personally; I just hate everything he represents… He’s a mirror image of his father, and when I see him, I see James Potter and all the horrible things that James and his friends did to me… But the worst is he has Lily’s eyes… I have a confession to make, Hermione, I was in love with Lily Evans… She was the only person who ever treated me like I was a human being. If her friends were making fun of me, she’d tell them to stop and leave me alone… Her and I had Charms together… This was around when we were studying for out NEWTS. James preferred transfiguration, which I’m sure you can tell since him and all his friends managed to master becoming an animagus by their fifth year. Lupin, Black, and James… They really were talented wizards; I supposed I was jealous of their natural talent… But Lily… Lily Evans was always nice to me, I had a crush on her, but I was always afraid to tell her my true feelings because I was ‘snivellus’… And now when I see Potter, I don’t only see James, I see Lily, my Lily, my Lily who I loved… Harry has Lily’s eyes and that’s a constant reminder of what I couldn’t ever have to myself… That’s why I hate Potter, Hermione.”
Snape glanced towards the window… The sky was becoming lighter, streaked with shades of amber and flame… “ It’s almost morning, Hermione, the sky’s so beautiful, I wish you could see it… I wish I had someone to share it with. There was always something about sunrises I loved… maybe because they just seem so pure and innocent, I don’t know… But I should get back to my bed before morning calls. I don’t need Potter and Weasley running in and seeing me sitting by your bedside talking to you… They’ll just scream at me… but I suppose I deserve it. Thanks to me, you’re lying lifelessly in your bed, and I would do anything I could to take it back, Hermione, to see you sitting in my potions class raising your hand every five seconds… whispering Longbottom instructions… I never thought that would be something that I ever thought that I would miss, but it is…”
He looked at her… He felt so overwhelmed by emotions… He felt like screaming and crying… Finally he couldn’t tale it anymore… He bent down and kissed her frozen lips, and jumped back up feeling like he had just sipped poision… “ I’m… I’m sorry, Hermione,” he whispered, “ I don’t know what came hold of me… I’m sorry…” He backed away and looked once more at the girl and blurted out “ Thanks for listening to me, Hermione….” And then he ran over to his bed, wrapped himself in the blankets, and tried to pretend like nothing ever happened….