Dusk and Her Embrace

all characters are trademark of JK Rowling, I just play around with them...

*everyone is of age*

Anyways, here\'s chapter five... sorry it\'s a little shorter then my other chapters, but I promise you that it\'s all for a good reason ;-) Anyways thanks to everyone who reads this and reviews it, please keep the reviews coming, and I hope you enjoy chapter 5 ;-) I shall have chapter 6 up in a few days.

Now onward we go:

Chapter Five: Of Mist and Midnight Skies

“ Now Severus, when I said I wanted you to try to help Miss Granger break out of her coma, this wasn’t exactly what I had in mind…”
“ Headmaster… I…. I…. I don’t know what came over me…” Severus felt his face burning…. “ I’m… I’m sorry…” he stuttered…
“ We have a strict policy about staff members fraternizing with students, Severus, you know this.” The headmaster’s blue eyes were stern and downtrodden, yet there was some sort of mischievous twinkle gleaming behind the sparkling blue iris.
Severus was speechless. He found himself flitting away from the headmaster’s glance, staring down at the cold marble floor of the hospital wing, and at the copper bedposts of Hermione’s bed that seemed to gleam in the moonlight. “ I trust you will use your judgment in the future” With that the headmaster was off, and Severus once more found himself alone with the girl.

“ I… I can’t see you anymore, Hermione,” Severus told her cold form. “ I’m afraid of what I might do if I’m left alone with you, Hermione… It’d be one thing if you were awake and conscience, but you’re not… and I’ve already took advantage of you enough. I can’t risk being caught again, by someone other then Professor Dumbledore… I’m surprised that the headmaster was so forgiving, but then again Dumbledore is a great man. But somebody else might not be too forgiving, and… and I don’t want to hurt with either, Hermione. Don’t think that I’m not going to miss you because I will… I feel like a holes been burned in my already blackened heart, and the hole gets bigger and deeper when I’m not around you… but perhaps things are better off this way… I’m just going to give you one more kiss goodnight… and I hope you find a way out of this darkness soon… I…. I…. I find myself in love with you, Hermione…” he bent down and kissed her unconscious form, his warm lips melting on her frozen ones… Once more he thought he felt a slight stirring and perhaps he even had heard a light moan, but he brushed it off thinking it was just his wishful thinking… “ Goodnight sweet Hermione,” he whispered, and then he wrapped himself in his long black velvet cloak and disappeared.


The next morning was Saturday morning, and there was Gryffindor verse Slytherin quidditch match that Severus found himself watching… He found himself barely paying attention as Ginny Weasley scored over a hundred points, and Potter caught the snitch at his quickest time yet… Malfoy, Slytherin’s seeker unfortunately really didn’t have anything on Potter, he could fly decently, but not as well as Potter who unfortunately seemed to take after his egotistical father by having quite a large assortment of talent on the quidditch field, of course he also took after his father with his huge disregard for the rules and regulations that all students were meant to follow… Also Slytherin’s team was built of students roughly the size of sasquatches, and most of them were too big to fly decently…
After the match, Severus found himself wandering along the shore of the lake… The giant squid was sitting on the surface making large splashed with his tentacles… Severus got a brief flashback of that humiliating day when Potter’s father and his comrade Sirius Black had raised him upside down and showed his underpants to everyone, right in front of the beautiful Lily Evans… He clenched his fists, how he hated those two. And now that he thought of it, Black deserved to die that night in the Department of Mysteries… He was the one who disobeyed the headmaster’s orders to stay put… But then again Black had always been irrational and rash in his actions. He had also thought he was too good for everyone else.
Severus sat himself under the tree. It was late fall. The leaves were turning a pretty mix of maroon, red, orange, gold, and brown. It wasn’t extremely cold out, yet… Halloween would be in a few weeks… he began to wonder if Hermione would be awake in time for the Halloween Banquet… He hoped she would… He started to remember another time from when he was a student at Hogwarts… Besides being rather gifted at the dark arts, he had always been gifted at potions, and he remember illegally brewing a love potion that he had wanted to give to Lily Evans…. But when it came right down to it, he just couldn’t do it… When she had been watched James Potter throw the snitch and catch it with his quick reflexes over and over again, all he had to do was pour a few drops of it into her pumpkin juice…. And she would’ve been his… but he couldn’t do it, he loved her too much, so much that he couldn’t bring himself to force her into loving him back…
He felt the same way about Hermione… He loved her so much, but he didn’t want to force her into loving him… in a way he wished, she had never pushed him out of the way and taken those blasts from the curses for him… he wished she would have let him die, being dead was better then being tortured by unrequited feelings of love and compassion… He wondered if anyone would ever love him… Hell how could anyone love him? His heart was blackened and gray, and he had never spoken a kind word or done something generous to or for anyone….
Severus gazed into the horizon at the lemon yellow sun, and the pale blue sky… that was the last thing he remembered… next thing he knew, he was sitting in the same place, only it was night time… stars twinkled in a jet black sky, a moon the color of cracked porcelain dimly shone through a blanket of ashen gray clouds. He was a small boy… His greasy black hair clung to the side of his yellowish blue gray skin, and he was surrounded by figures… On his left were James Potter and Sirius Black. James’s handsome face broken out into a huge smile…. One his right were Harry and Ron Weasley, their faces baring the same sort of grin that Harry’s father and godfather had… “ Snivellus, Snivellus, smelly stupid Snivellus” they sang over and over again in a deranged nursery rhyme like tune… Beyond them sitting high on a regal throne was Hermione… and she looked beautiful… Her curly brown hair was framing her face in perfect ringlets, her brown eyes alert… Her face radiant in the palling moonlight…
“ You think I would ever go for someone like you, Snivellus?” Her voice boomed, her beautiful faces contorted in disarray. “ You make me sick! I would never go for someone like you… You greasy two faced pig….” No… no….. Little Severus though to himself…. Leave me alone…. Just leave me alone….”

“ No I will not leave you alone…” Severus snapped back into consciousness. He was sprawled out on the grassy bank of the lake in a fetal like position. He found himself staring into the bewitching blue eyes of the headmaster. “ An interesting place to take a nap, Severus…”
“ I was just sitting here… and I fell asleep… I don’t know what came over me…”
“ I come bearing some news, Severus… Miss Granger is awake, and she’s asking to see you…” the news was like a jolt to him. His body filled up with a warm feeling, a feeling he wasn’t all too familiar with, but then he thought back to his dream, and felt himself freeze up….
“I don’t want to see her, headmaster.” Severus heard himself saying as much as he regretted those words… “ I’m very glad she has recovered, but I don’t want to see her at all.”
“ Are you sure, Severus?”
“ Very sure, Headmaster… I do not want to see her….”
“ Very well then, Severus,” the headmaster said. Severus could detect a hint of dire disappointment in his voice, but deep down inside Severus knew that this was what he had to do…. He watched the headmaster walk off, his purple robes glimmering in the dying and fading sunset….
Severus turned towards the sky, which was streaked with clouds of amber, orchid, and rose, slowly being blanketed by a dark blue black sky…. “ I’m so sorry, Hermione,” he whispered, as the wind blew his words away.