Bonds of Duty

Chapter 5: Where Do We Go From Here?


For the second day in a row, Hermione woke to find herself in circumstances not quite like any she\'d experienced before. Unlike the previous day, she didn\'t wake up to find a naked man sleeping on the other side of the bed. This time, the man wasn\'t naked, though he was more or less asleep. That was the extent of the improvements on the situation, however, since the man in question was also most definitely not on the other side of the bed this morning.

They were both lying on their sides, face to face and uncomfortably close in the middle of the narrow bed. Snape\'s head was lying so close beside her own on the pillow that Hermione could see little beyond his nose, and the only sound she could hear was of his breath as he slept. Every time he exhaled, his breath caught a curl at the side of Hermione\'s face, making it brush against her chin.

That repetitive tickle would be enough to rouse anyone, in time. However, as Hermione slowly came awake and to a proper sense of her surroundings, she realised that the small irritation was not what had woken her up. She gradually became aware of two things: firstly, there was a large, warm hand moving up and down her side, tracing the curve of her body from waist to hip in long, easy strokes; secondly, her own hand was wrapped around something long and firm, and was stroking hot, smooth skin in a rhythm that matched that of the hand caressing her hip.

Hermione\'s hand stilled, closing tighter around Snape\'s cock; it jumped against her palm. Snape let out a soft moan and pushed into her hand. She slackened her grip and started to move her hand away, but somehow her fingers trailed along the hard shaft - still so very hot against her skin - and that was enough to make him gasp and shudder as he clutched her hard and pulled her hips up against his.

Hermione\'s hand was wedged between their bodies now. It was more than time to move it away - more than time to get up and right away from the bed and temptation, in fact. But she could feel Snape\'s erection pressing against her still, and his fingers digging into the soft skin near her hip. And his head was still lying on the pillow beside her, lips parted slightly. It would be so easy to reach across and brush her lips against his. So easy. But she wouldn\'t do that. Of course she wouldn\'t. She would get up, and get out of here before something happened that wasn\'t scheduled to happen again for almost a week.

Hermione pulled her arm out from between their bodies, and reached up to pull the covers back, but somehow her hand ended up cupping the side of his face instead. Beneath her fingers, she could feel the prickle of morning stubble along the strong curve of his jaw.

And then she was kissing him and pressing even closer as she curled one leg over his.

She closed her eyes and shut out sight of the world beyond the senses as his lips moved against hers in response.

She closed her mind and shut out thought of consequences as, finally, she let her body do what it wanted and rub against his. She could feel his erection, hard against her naked skin, so close to where she wanted it to be and yet not nearly close enough.

The kiss deepened and she moaned into his mouth as they rocked together, an answering rumble deep in his throat that seemed to get stronger and louder and-

Hard fingers grabbed her wrist and pulled her hand away from Snape\'s face. Then his lips pulled away from hers as well. The rumble in his throat turned into a loud cry as he wrenched himself free of her. A moment later, he was gone from the bed and Hermione was left lying there, confused and bereft.

Her body ached in disappointment, even while her mind did its best to scream at her that she should be relieved that Snape had had the strength of will to break away when he did. She looked over at him, not sure what to say, if there were any words appropriate to such a situation. He was standing with his back to the bed, panting hard, arms moving convulsively as he pulled his nightshirt down until it was lying straight again. His body shook slightly with each harsh breath.

\"You stupid girl,\" he burst out suddenly, still with his back to her. \"Don\'t you know-? Didn\'t you realise-? What could have possessed you to-?\"

He broke off, apparently giving up on conversation - or accusation, anyway - for the moment. His back was still heaving with the effort to control his breathing as he bent down and yanked open his bag, which was lying on top of the unoccupied bed where he\'d left it the night before. Grabbing a few items from inside the bag, he pulled on his dressing-gown and strode over to the far door which led to the bathroom. Hermione winced slightly as the door slammed shut behind him.

She remained lying in the bed exactly as he\'d left her, too stunned to move, though whether she was more shocked at Snape for calling a halt to their encounter before it came to a satisfying conclusion, or at herself for starting the whole thing in the first place, she wasn\'t sure. Perhaps the most shocking thing was simply the fact that she had wanted him. She had wanted Snape. And she wanted him still. If he came back through that door right now and flung himself upon her, she wouldn\'t protest. She wouldn\'t deny him. She would do everything in her power to encourage him.

It was a disturbing thought. It was a whole series of disturbing thoughts.

Just as well she didn\'t really want him. Just as well it was the spell, forcing an attraction where none existed in reality. She hadn\'t fancied Snape before this whole unlikely situation had occurred, and she would go back to not fancying him - not fancying him in the slightest - once it was all over. It was only logical that it would work that way, and Hermione had always been a great believer in logic.

She sat up in bed, greatly relieved to have worked out that logic and reason were on her side. As the sheet fell away, she realised that her nightdress had ridden up - or been pushed up - and that she was quite naked beneath the covers from the waist down. The memory of how Snape\'s body had felt against her bare skin came unbidden to her mind, and her body throbbed in frustration. She wriggled against the sheet, but only so she could pull down her nightdress. The wriggling certainly had nothing to do with thoughts of Snape. Even if it did, it was only because of the spell. It wasn\'t because anything she felt was real.

He couldn\'t blame her for something that wasn\'t real.

Hermione, paused, struck by a sudden thought. Now that she considered the sequence of events properly, she decided that he shouldn\'t have been blaming her even if it had been real. That had been his hand stroking her hip with great deliberateness when she\'d first woken up. She hadn\'t been the one to start it. Or not the only one.

Hermione shot a resentful look at the bathroom door. It remained closed.

Feeling suddenly irritable, Hermione cast around the room for something to do until Snape re-appeared. Her eyes fell on the books Snape had left spread out on the bed next to hers and she found herself wondering exactly which books he had brought up from the dungeons with him. Since she had started on the project, she had kept both Snape and Professor Dumbledore regularly apprised of which sources she was checking in the course of her research, so it was unlikely in the extreme that Snape would waste time going over ground she had already covered. She had been more than a little curious about the books since the moment Snape took them out the night before but there had been little point in asking him about them after his refusal to answer any of her other questions about his previous experience with this sort of magic.

Much easier to wait until he was out of the room and check the books for herself.

Hermione eased herself out of bed, relieved to discover that yesterday\'s dizziness was completely gone. She started with the book Snape had spent the most time taking notes from last night. It was the smallest book, not thick, and bound in worn brown leather. Flipping to the title page, she read out: \"Mad, Bad and Dangerous: the Role of Compulsion Spells in Medieval Magic.\"

Hermione frowned. In her own research she\'d covered - or tried to cover - sex spells and magical power sources, but compulsion spells? Nothing in her own work had even touched on that. Perhaps Snape had been lying when he\'d said - or implied, really, now that she thought about it - that he was doing research into their situation. But no. Hermione discarded the thought almost as soon as she considered it. Snape was many things, but he wasn\'t a liar, so far as she knew. He could make the truth seem like a falsehood, and he was altogether too fond of misleading the unwary, but she couldn\'t remember his ever telling an outright lie before - which meant that whatever he had been looking up in those books of his did have some sort of bearing on Hermione\'s own research.

She picked up another book, which proved to be about magical coercion. The one sitting next to it on the bed proved to be something different: Treatments for Magically Acquired forms of Insanity, by Dilys Derwent, Healer, St Mungo\'s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries. It was a wafer thin volume. Hermione wondered what it could have in common with all the other books. It didn\'t seem to fit. She picked up Mad, Bad and Dangerous again and flipped through until she found a table of contents. The chapters had titles like: \'Banning\', \'Penalties for use\', \'Madness, death and other side-effects\', \'List of known casualties in the last three hundred years\' and \'Remedies: few and far between\'.

Madness and death. Well, it looked as though she\'d found the connection she was looking for. Hermione swallowed hard and put down the book.

She and Snape needed to talk. She needed to know what he knew. He wouldn\'t fob her off again. She wouldn\'t settle for anything less than the complete truth, or at least as much of it as Snape himself knew.

She spent a while longer checking titles and contents of all the other books Snape had brought with him. Every single one of them dealt with compulsive magic or magically-related insanity, or both. Once she was done, she double-checked that she\'d replaced all the books exactly as she\'d found them, and then got back into her own bed to wait for Snape to come back from what must surely be the longest shower of his life. For a man whose personal hygiene had always been regarded as somewhat questionable at best, he seemed to be taking an inordinately long time in the bathroom.

At that moment, the main doors to the ward opened. Steeling herself for looks and questions and possible accusations from Madam Pomfrey as soon as she saw that Snape\'s bed hadn\'t been slept in, Hermione was caught by surprise when Professor Dumbledore entered the room. The Headmaster of Hogwarts had changed little since the very first time Hermione had seen him. The signs of increasing frailty were, fortunately, not visible to anyone who didn\'t know exactly what to look for. Today he looked much as he\'d always looked, except that Hermione had rarely seen a more serious and concerned expression on his face than the one he was currently directing her way. Madam Pomfrey bustled in behind the headmaster, stopping in her tracks when she caught sight of the books laid out all over the coverlet of the obviously unused bed, but Hermione found that she no longer cared about the nurse\'s reaction. That look on the headmaster\'s face was causing her far more concern.

\"Hermione, my dear,\" Dumbledore said as he came up to the side of her bed. \"Poppy tells me that you\'ve suffered something of a setback.\"

Hermione flushed. \"I\'m feeling fine this morning, Professor Dudoredore. I don\'t think it\'s anything to worry about.\"

\"Perhaps,\" said Dumbledore, settling himself down in the chair by the bed, \"But I think it would be wise to take a few small precautions, in any case. Poppy and I have had a long chat this morning,\" -- They had? The sun was hardly high in the sky. Pomfrey must have spent the night camped out on Dumbledore\'s doorstep to have caught ho eao early -- \"and she has provided me with the benefit of her professional opinion.\" Dumbledore\'s eyes twinkled for a moment, but then his face grew serious once more. \"I need to talk with both you and Severus, since you are affected equally by this situation. Where is he?\" The headmaster\'s sharp old eyes held hers until Hermione began to fidget, but she couldn\'t look away.

\"He\'s in the bathroom,\" she said, and then looked down at the bedclothes in relief as Dumbledore turned to address Madam Pomfrey, who was hovering in the background.

\"Poppy, if you would be so kind as to retrieve Severus\' wand from the bathroom? I am sure he will follow it out shortly.\"

\"Of course, headmaster,\" said Madam Pomfrey, sounding cool and professional but biting back the suggestion of a smile as she hurried off to the bathroom.

She emerged a moment later, Snape\'s dark-wooded wand in her hand. \"He was under the shower,\" she reported, \"but I don\'t think he\'ll be all that long.\" She was biting back more than the suggestion of a smile now as she handed Snape\'s wand over to the headmaster. Hermione found that she couldn\'t quite share the nurse\'s amusement.

As Pomfrey had predicted, they didn\'t have to wait very long at all. A minute or so later, the bathroom door opened again, this time with considerably more force than before. Snape paused in the doorway as his gaze swept around the room and fastened on Madam Pomfrey. \"How dare you intrude on me like that!\" he said through clenched teeth as he advanced on her. \"How dare you take my wand! I am not one of your patients. I demand that you return it to me at once.\" He had obviously not stopped to dry himself properly: the thin material of his dressing-gown clung damply to his skin in odd places and his sopping wet hair was plastered to his head, making his features appear at once more severe than usual as well as unexpectedly comical. As he drew closer, Hermione could see that he was also unshaven, the dark shadow of stubble along his jaw lending him an unsavoury air. All in all, Hermione had rarely seen Snape looking less attractive. And yet, the sight of him stirred something within her that was entirely inappropriate for their present company, apart from any other consideration. She shifted uncomfortably in the bed and looked away from him; she couldn\'t trust herself to keep her eyes on his face right now.

Dumbledore held up one hand. \"One moment, Severus, if you please.\"

Snape whirled around to face him. \"Not one moment. Not one more second!\"

\"Now Severus,\" Dumbledore began.

\"I need my wand,\" Snape gritted out. \"But I really shouldn\'t have to explain why I need it. A wizard shouldn\'t have to explain that, should he? Or why it should be given back, or, better yet why it should never have been stolen from him in the first place.\" This last came out in a low, deadly voice very far from the respectful tones in which Snape habitually addressed the headmaster.

\"In normal circumstances, yes,\" Dumbledore replied, sounding quite unperturbed, \"but these are very far from normal circumstances.\"

\"All the more reason why I need my wand at the ready at all times.\" Snape was standing close to Dumbledore now, almost leaning into his face as Dumbledore sat back in his chair.

\"Unfortunately, I can\'t agree with you there.\" Dumbledore sounded apologetic now.

\"Give me my wand back,\" said Snape, a terrible look on his face.

\"No,\" said Dumbledore gently, \"I\'m afraid I can\'t.\"

They shared a long, tense look - tense at least on Snape\'s part. Somehow, despite the advantage or height Snape managed to appear at a distinct disadvantage. Hermione was put in mind of a large wave dashing itself uselessly against a great granite rockface.

Snape was the one to look away. \"Am I allowed to ask why?\" he asked bitterly, taking a step back from the headmaster\'s chair.

\"Of course,\" said Dumbledore. \"And I will give you an answer, though it is unlikely to be the one you wish to hear.\"

\"You know what I wish to hear, and why you won\'t give back my wand isn\'t it.\"

Dumbledore inclined his head. \"Of course. But you know very well why I can\'t let you have your wand for the time being, any more than I can allow Miss Granger the use or possession of her wand.\"

\"My wand?\" Hermione said in alarm, and reached out to retrieve it from the bedside table where she\'d left it the night before. However, her fingers found only the slippery varnished wooden top of the nightstand.

Dumbledore reached into the pocket of his robes, and pulled out Hermione\'s wand. \"I regret, I had to take yours as well, Hermione,\" he said.

\"But you can\'t!\" said Hermione, aghast.

\"Oh, I think you\'ll find that he can,\" Snape put in sourly. He turned back to Dumbledore. \"So, do we get to know why our wands have been confiscated as though we are two errant schoolchildren?\"

\"In just one moment, Severus.\"

\"Professor Dumbledore, I really don\'t-\" Hermione began heatedly.

\"Just one moment, Hermione, and then we may discuss the matter properly,\" said Dumbledore in unruffled calm. He turned to Madam Pomfrey, who had moved over to the other side of the bed, prudently putting herself beyond Snape\'s reach. \"Poppy, if you wouldn\'t mind getting Severus a towel for his hair, and then...?\" He nodded towards the double doors leg oug out of the ward.

\"Of course, Headmaster,\" said Pomfrey.

\"And Poppy?\"

\"Yes, Headmaster?\" Pomfrey paused in the act of walking across the room.

\"You will not mention this matter to anyone.\" It was almost a request. It should have sounded like a request, and yet the note of command was impossible to miss, as was the whiff of magic that accompanied the words.

\"I will not mention it,\" Pomfrey agreed. She summoned a towel from the cupboard in the corner of the room, then levitated it across the room towards Snape. The towel gathered speed as it went, and Snape had to grab it as it flew past his ear. He glowered after Pomfrey as she made her way out of the room.

The serious, troubled look was back on the headmaster\'s face as he returned his attention to Snape, who was savagely towelling his hair dry. \"If there were any other option, Severus, I would not hesitate to take it. But there is too much at stake here, and Miss Granger\'s unfortunate experience of yesterday is a warning sign we ignore at our collective peril.\" He sighed. \"I am afraid I cannot allow either of you to work any magic at all until the need for the Cresco Vis has passed.\"

Snape put the towel down on the arm of his chair and stared at him. \"Are you cr-\" He swallowed hard. \"Do you really consider that necessary? At least for me? I have had no eff effects at all, while Miss Granger-\"

\"Has been performing far more magic applying directly to her person than you have. Yes, I know. However, in time you will start to suffer the same effect, and every expenditure of magical energy, however small, will only hasten the progress of the Cresco Vis.\"

\"This whole ridiculous situation should have been over and done with weeks ago. If it had been, we never would have had to even consider such eventualities,\" Snape muttered, pushing a few strands of damp hair out of his eyes.

\"Very true,\" agreed Dumbledore sympathetically. \"But that is not how things turned out. And so we must take extra measures to ensure our preferred outcome.\"

\"To ensure that we don\'t go mad and die on you before you\'re finished with the spell, you mean.\" Snape was sounding more and more bitter with every word he spoke.

\"Mad?\" Hermione asked, remembering all too clearly just what Snape had been researching the night before.

\"I wouldn\'t have put it like that,\" Dumbledore said, suddenly stern, the rebuke in his voice unmistakable. \"Of course the personal well-being of you both must be of great concern. There is only one thing more important, as well you know, Severus.\"

\"Exactly what are you talking about?\" Hermione demanded. She\'d never spoken to the headmaster in that tone in her life, but then she\'d never have believed until now that Dumbledore would fail to tell her about something that affected her so directly, and with such potentially dire consequences. She\'d known for a long time that Dumbledore had a habit of keeping secrets, but surely not in a situation like this, where she plainly had a real need to know everything there was to know about the spell in question. \"I want to know exactly what is going on here,\" she told him, \"and I want to know now.\"

Dumbledore sighed. \"I quite understand your point of view, Hermione. In your position, I feel sure I would be asking the same. However, you must understand that neither Severus nor I know much more than you about the progression of this spell in this particular instance. Most of what we have to go on is merely guesswork.\"

\"Educated guessworkSnapSnape added dryly.

\"Guesswork is a lot better than complete ignorance,\" Hermione snapped, looking Snape squarely in the face for the first time since he\'d come out of the bathroom. \"I asked you last night what else you knew, and you wouldn\'t answer me. I think now would be a good time for some answers, don\'t you? What do you know? What are you basing your guesses on?\"

\"I had thought you already understood the nature of this spell. It was rather carefully explained to you before you made the decision to take part in this endeavour.\"

Hermione sighed irritably. \"I know that the Cresco Vis belongs to the order of magical energy source spells developed during the Middle Ages. It\'s neither good nor evil in itself, though modern thinking has placed it in the realm of Dark Arts because of the sexual element that is central to it and because of some of the uses it has been put to by Dark wizards in the past hundred years or so. How am I doing so far?\" she asked Snape.

\"If I\'d wanted a word for word regurgitation of the textbook definition, I could have looked it up myself,\" said Snape, sounding bored. \"Haven\'t you considered the spell\'s effects at all?\"

\"I know exactly what its effect is. Nothing less would have induced me to take part in this undertaking,\" Hermione said, looking Snape up and down in a manner than she hoped was as cool as the tone of her voice.

\"I don\'t think that\'s quite what Severus was getting at, my dear,\" Dumbledore interrupted, then turned to Snape. \"If you\'d care to continue, Severus, since you were doing so well already?\"

Snape stared at him expressionlessly for a moment before going on. \"The headmaster is quite correct. I was thinking more of the effects on the participants than about the application of the spell itself.\" He walked around the foot of the bed and sat down in the chair across from the one the headmaster was occupying.

Hermione flushed, feeling both foolish at grasping the wrong meaning and slightly embarrassed at what she had to say next. \"The spell will strengthen over time as it drains magical, sexual and life energy from the participants. It is possible that the participants could experience an increase in... desire over time.\" She could feel the flush deepening in her cheeks. \"But I really don\'t see that that should pose a particular danger. Not in this instance.\"

\"Really?\" Snape favoured her with a look of disgust. \"What exactly do you think is likely to happen if this spell continues to sap our energies?\"

\"That really isn\'t likely to happen, though, is it?\"

\"Why on earth not?\" Snape looked frankly incredulous now.

\"Because I\'m looking for a way to adapt the spell, or to replace it with something less potentially hazardous.\"

\"And you\'ve made a breakthrough in your research since - when was it that you last mentioned you\'d found no proper leads? Last night?\"

\"Well no,\" Hermione admitted. \"But I feel sure that I\'ll find something some time soon. I always do,\" she added defensively.

Snape steepled his fingers beneath his chin and stared at her, saying nothing.

Hermione felt the anger start to rise in her again. Just who did he think he was to treat her like that, like one of his stupider students? \"Why should I keep answering your questions, anyway?\" she asked. \"You were supposed to be answering my questions,en\'en\'t you?\"

Snape still didn\'t say anything.

\"Miss Granger has a point, Severus,\" Dumbledore broke the silence, speaking in the same mild tone he\'d used throughout the conversation.

Snape looked over towards the main doors to the ward, away from Hermione, the look on his face remote and unreadable. He did not say anything for a long moment, so long that Hermione almost jumped in surprise when he finally spoke. \"The Cresco Vis was occasionally used by followers of the Dark Lord. As a symbol of their devotion. They regarded taking part in it as the ultimate sacrifice to the cause.\"

Hermione went cold. \"It killed them? I\'ve seen nothing in the literature to suggest that the practice of this sort of magic is fatal.\"

\"I doubt you\'ve found anything in any of those books about the Cresco Vis itself beyond the basic entries in the major textbooks.\" Snape looked at her then, his eyes as dark and cold as Hermione had ever seen them.

\"Well, no,\" Hermione admitted. \"The information available about any sort of sex magic is very thin on the ground. But surely the general principles the the same for all spells in that class?\"

Snape smiled that mocking smile of his. The one Hermione hated. \"Not every important piece of information is to be found in a book. Sometimes, knowledge can only be acquired through observing and doing.\"

Hermione felt as though she\'d been slapped in the face. \"In case it\'s escaped your notice, I am doing,\" she said, trying hard not to grind her teeth. No matter how hard she\'d studied at school, Snape alof alf all her teachers had never been impressed. All her hard work had never drawn more than grudging acknowledgment from him that there was no part of her work on which he could fault her. Despite the years that had passed, despite their current situation, it appeared that little had changed. \"However,\" she went on, \"it\'s quite difficult to add to the knowledge I\'ve gained through my own experience if I can\'t find the answers I want in any book and if people who know more about the subject than I do refuse to answer my questions.\"

\"So, you want to know, do you?\" The mocking smile on his ltwistwisted slightly, and Hermione got the distinct impression that it was being redirected inward. \"The Dark Lord used the Cresco Vis as the posoursource for some of his most devastating attacks during the last war. He was trying to maximise the magical energy, not prolong it for as long as possible, as we are doing, and so once the participants - or \'sacrifices\' - had begun they were... encouraged to keep going. After a while, the spell grew sufficiently strong that they needed no further encouragement.\" His voice cracked a little on the last word. He swallowed hard. \"They couldn\'t stop, even when they grew steadily weaker as all the magic and all the life was sucked out of them bit by bit. The compulsion to fulfill the spell was still in them even when they could barely move. The inability to do so broke their minds.\"

Hermione listened, struck dumb, as Snape related the horror he had witnessed. Finally, as he came to a stop, she managed to whisper, \"So that\'s why. Last night, your books. That\'s why.\" And then another realisation arrived hard on the heels of the first. \"And this morning. That\'s why you-\" The words stuck in her throat.

\"Madness and death, as I said,\" he confirmed, and let out a mirthless laugh.

Hermione was finding it difficult to assimilate all the ramifications of what she was hearing. However, one thought remained uppermost in her mind. \"Why didn\'t you tell me any of this before? Why did you keep this from me? You knew I was researching the spell, and why. So why didn\'t you say something?\" She turned to Dumbledore. \"Why didn\'t you?\"

The headmaster peered over the top of his half-moon spectacles, looking sombre and sad - and as old as every one of his many years. \"At first there was no need. The spell was only going to be of brief duration. None of these issues would arise in such a short space of time.\"

\"But Voldemort didn\'t cooperate,\" Hermione reminded him. \"He didn\'t take the bait.\"

\"No,\" said Dumbledore heavily, \"he didn\'t. Perhaps I should have told you then.\"

\"Yes. You should,\" Hermione said. There really wasn\'t much else to say.

\"I suppose I must take the blame for that, my dear. A certain foolish hope was at the bottom of it, I fear. A hope that there would still be no good reason for you to know anything more than you already did. A hope to keep you safe, I might venture to call it.\"

Hermione didn\'t trust herself to speak for a moment. It appeared that Dumbledore really believed what he was saying. She stared at him. He still looked much as he\'d always looked, but Hermione felt as though she was seeing him properly for the first time.

\"I hope that in time you will understand, Hermione,\" he said sadly.

\"Pps,\ps,\" she replied. She was starting to understand several things, but she suspected they were very far from what the headmaster had in mind. It was though a door to understanding had started opening in her mind the moment she realised that Dumbledore had taken her wand. Or perhaps the door had opened the first chink when he\'d had Madam Pomfrey take Snape\'s wand.

\"I might understand better if you\'d consider returning our wands,\" she suggested, watching Dumbledore carefully. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Snape shift in his chair.

\"I\'m afraid we can\'t take that risk, Hermione. It\'s not that I don\'t trust you, either of you,\" - something that sounded suspiciously like a snort emanated from Snape\'s direction - \"but you are both too used to resorting to use of your wand for dozens of little tasks every day. We have to make sure that you expend as little magical energy as possible. We don\'t want you falling down in ant ant again.\" He patted her hand. \"Things have a way of working themselves out, my dear. You\'ll see.\"

Hermione managed to stop herself from drawing her hand away.

\"And now I\'m afraid I must take my leave,\" Dumbledore continued, letting go of her hand as he got to his feet. He smiled serenely at them both, and then he was gone, leaving Hermione alone with Snape.

She looked over at him. He was still sitting in his chair, and looked to be about equal parts dampnand and irritation.

He was watching her.

He didn\'t say anything at all, just continued to watch her for a moment. Then he got up, gathered up an armful of his clothes, and disappeared into the bathroom.

Hermione was left with an odd sense of anticlimax.