Of Days and Ends

Chapter 5—Confrontations

Hermione had every intention of returning to Snape’s house as soon as she could, but everyone seemed determined to keep her busy. She kept a list of everything and tediously completed each task with her renowned attention to detail, putting off even her own readings until the last three hours of the night.

Bill and Fleur’s wedding was just a few days away, so Fleur came by Grimmauld Place more and more often. “I want zis wedding to be just pearfect!” she would often remind everyone. Ginny would grumble and Mrs. Weasley silently helped Fleur. Though the young half-veela annoyed her immensely, Mrs. Weasley tolerated the woman who loved her scarred son. Hermione was not among Fleur’s bridesmaids, but Fleur respected her talent and allowed her free reign over design.

Moody was also becoming more and more intense with his lessons and the trio found themselves hexed daily. Moody had given them a crash coarse on defensive and offensive attacks for a week before they were faced with another test. This time, Hermione was the first stupefied and Ron managed to hit Moody with a jelly-legs hex that made it more difficult for him to attack, but he still won. The time was spent learning a barrage of speed drills for faster duelling. Harry excelled particularly well until Ginny was allowed to skip the last day of Fleur’s wedding practice events and beat his speed.

The potions lab was finally completed with a viewing area for safe observation, seven hearths, 14 cauldrons of varying sizes, 7 worktables, and a vast storage closet. Hermione was sent with a list and Order of the Phoenix funds to go get supplies with Harry and Ron. After they had purchased the necessary supplies, they slipped under Harry’s cloak to pilfer the dark potions ingredients they would need from Knockturn Alley. Actually, they left the proper amount of money on the counter in exchange, but the clerks did not know they had taken their product.

Also, after days of arguments and an Order of the Phoenix vote, Mrs. Weasley, Headmistress McGonagall, and Ms. Figg were tied against Mr. Weasley, Kingsley, and Moody in their bid to keep the trio out of the Order of the Phoenix . Another decision was made to include the absentee members and a vote was taken by patronus. Tonks and Lupin’s wolves gave their votes in the affirmative with Fred and George’s monkeys. Just as McGonagall was about to close the vote, a raven patronus flew in through the window and gave its vote in the affirmative. The entire assembly went silent until Kingsley cleared his throat, and made the first motion for the end of voting. Ron asked whose patronus it was, and Hermione whispered, “It must be Snape’s.” The next vote was unanimous that they would not be asked to go on any missions, but they could not be kept from meetings.

The next day they were trained by the headmistress in the use of their patronuses as messengers and by the next evening, Hermione had been visited by the message carrying patonuses nearly eight times, though only one time was for another meeting. It seemed that Harry and Ron truly enjoyed this new method of communication immensely, and Ron had sent it to say sappy things and invite her for moonlit walks in the cul-de-sac in front of the house.

By the time the day of Fleur’s wedding came and Hermione found herself watching from the front of the assembly as she was guided down the aisle by her father, Hermione felt as though the day was being experienced in a dream. Fleur glided to Bill’s arm, and the ceremony began. Emotional and awe-inspiring though the service was, Fleur had allowed for the Weasley’s to provide the reception entertainment, and Fred and George had obviously taken a great deal of control of the party.

Everyone enjoyed themselves immensely, and Mrs. Weasley even let it go when she caught Harry and Ginny kissing behind the shed. Ron had waited until just before dinner to ask Hermione to accompany him for a walk around the lake. She accepted and grabbed a cup off of the table before following him away from the gathering.

He led her to a more secluded spot amongst the reeds where he pulled a kerchief from his pocket, enlarged it to the size of a blanket, and made it impervious to water before setting it on the moist bank. Stepping on it and making herself comfortable, she complimented Ron on his handiwork, “This is an outstanding idea, Ron.”
“Thank you.” He responded, “I just though it would be nice to get away from it all for a while.”

She smiled softly and lay back on the blanket crossing her legs at the ankle and staring up at the crystal- clear, blue sky. Ron propped himself on an elbow and watched her in her contentment until she spoke softly, “They seemed so happy.”

“Bill’s been talking about this for months, but he was almost entirely silent this morning. When dad shook him, he said, ‘Shh, dad. I don’t want to ruin it. By the time the day ends, I’ll be a husband to Fleur Delacour, the most beautiful woman in the world.’ And I couldn’t help but realize how wrong he was.” Hermione looked at him with a questioning gaze, so he continued, “You know, I hated you at the Midwinter ball in our fourth year. You were so beautiful, and I hated you for the way you made me feel. Then today, you look… like a goddess.”

Hermione was taken aback and stroked his cheek, “Oh, Ron! Thank you!”

Ron smiled and leaned his head down for a kiss, running his hand over her waist and up to her chest. She gasped and pulled away a bit, but his hand paused long enough for her to get accustomed to the feel and allow him to continue to kiss her neck. When she returned her lips to his, he ran his hand down her leg and swiftly under her dress to her stomach. Hermione gasped and reluctantly let him continue with a bit of coaxing words and kisses across her face, when she opened up to him again, he slid his hand up and under her bra, teasing briefly at the nipples before dragging his hand flat against the planes of her belly and under the elastic of her knickers.

This time, he didn’t seem to notice when she stopped kissing him and tensed beneath him, and continued his slow perusal of her body. When his fingers brushed against her clit she shivered from the delightful sensation and sighed with exasperation as he continued on past it to her warm wet pussy lips. That is when she froze completely, only gaining some sense of action when his index finger bumped against the taut barrier of her hymen.

She scrambled away and he jumped up with surprise, “What’s wrong?”

“N-no, I just can’t—that is, I—I mean I—I—we—”

“Oh, I’m sorry, Hermione. We can go a lot slower” he pleaded, kneeling again and gesturing for her to lay back down, “Come on, let’s try again.”

“No, not now, Ron. I’m so sorry if I gave you the wrong idea today, but I can’t do that yet, I’m so sorry.”

He had tried to convince her, over and over. She had refused and refused, but in the end, Ron realized he wouldn’t win and reluctantly moved away from the lake. Hermione walked silently in his wake all the way back to the Burrow.

Ron didn’t pester her for sex anymore, though it was obvious that he was still in the midst of being angry with her. Harry appeared to be grieving over Ginny leaving for school, and didn’t notice the tiff between Ron and Hermione as he sadly watched other eligible bachelors cutting in on each other to dance with her.

The boys’ distraction left Hermione with many hours by herself now that Mrs. Weasley had moved back into the Burrow full-time and the order came predictably once or twice a week. Eventually, Hermione was able to find time to go back to Snape’s library, and made it there most nights from midnight to 5 o’clock in the morning for a month. They were growing used to practicing the Occlumency, and with Snape’s extra tips and practice in defence; she was sometimes managing to outdo Harry and Ron in speed and unpredictability of curses. Moody had to employ new tactics to prevent her from disabling him.

Hermione found also that she was growing used to Snape’s company while they read together. The others seemed incapable of reading in silence, preferring to talk about useless noisy things. She also enjoyed their practices, despite the fact that they were much harder than Moody’s.

Snape was getting used to being touched now, having failed to notice when he was her teacher how touchy-feely she was with her friends. She would touch his shoulder if he called her to his side to read a passage, she would slap him playfully if he knocked her down and sneered, she would shake his hand before leaving, and most odd of all, she had hugged him apologetically when she knocked him down during a practice session. He would belittle her for the touching most days, but preferred to let it go without contest on other days.

On a pretty typical Monday in the middle of September, Hermione noticed a chance to get away without the boys noticing. They were headed out in disguise to watch a Quidditch game and she knew they were expecting to spend a night at the Burrow before going out again in the morning. Hermione wove her lie early, saying she was going to spend the night with her aunt in Scotland , snatched up her satchel after breakfast, and apparated out.

When Hermione reached Snape’s library and found it empty, she couldn’t pretend that she wasn’t disappointed. The walls of books called to her though and she turned and began on her task.

Snape had been sleeping in the massive bedroom tucked away in the opposite wing of the house when the tingling of his hairs standing up warned him that Hermione had breeched the ward in the library. He sat up and gathered his wits before grabbing his wand from the bedside table and striding out. When he reached the library, and opened the door, the luscious sight that met his eyes surprised him.

She was beautiful. He noticed that as she stretched up to grab a book, her long, thin, muscular, white legs showed nearly all the way to her buttocks. Apparently, she was avoiding using the magical step, and when the book fell off of the shelf, she bent quickly to pick it up. Then Snape did get a flash of the supple flesh and blue panties she was wearing under the short outfit. He moved forward, silently in the massive room as she gave up avoiding the step and grabbed the handle proffered to her. What she didn’t realize is that the shelf’s upper levels didn’t leave the steps behind her, so when she stepped back from twelve feet in the air and began to fall, she screamed as she lost her footing halfway up and fell back towards the ground.

Snape moved quickly and tried to catch her, but ended up just breaking her fall. When he rolled over, and saw her unconscious, he pried himself up off of the floor and reached for his wand.

Hermione’s eyes remained closed and Snape did a few more spells to ascertain how much damage was done. When he was sure that she hadn’t injured anything but her head, he picked her up in his arms and apparated her to his room. Laying her down on the soft, downy bed sheets, he noticed that her dress had rode up when he was carrying her and pulled it back down into place like a gentleman.

Now that she was unconscious, Snape was able to really look her over and conjured a bag of ice. Applying it to her delicate left brow, he took notice for the first time that she did not wear makeup. He followed a path with his eyes that dropped to her chest and settled on the smooth mounds there. When he followed the path back up across her neck and to her face to find her watching him, he mentally reminded himself to be professional.

She just looked him in the eyes. No questions. No comments. No wavering gaze. He saved her life, she realized. He was worried after about ten seconds of silence. “Hermione, are you okay?”

In response, Hermione smiled gently and caressed his face. Her gentle touch made him shudder and close his eyes, but he didn’t resist it. She watched the raw emotion pass over his face before closing her eyes and gliding her hand through his hair. She had always thought it was rather greasy looking, but relished the feel of shiny, silky, black hair.

When her hand left his scalp at the nape of his neck, Snape looked down through heavy lids at her closed eyes. When she did look up at him, she looked scared and he read an apology in her eyes as well as guilt. He narrowed his eyes and Hermione tried to look away, but he held her face in place by her chin. She made her mind blank immediately, and he drew his wand from his pocket, and she reached for hers as well.

He gave her no warning before hitting her with a blindness curse. In the confusion of realizing she couldn’t see, Hermione’s thoughts were laid wide open for Snape. He quickly saw that she was feeling guilty for being that personal with someone other than Ron and conflicted about her feelings for him. She was afraid that what she was feeling was only apart of the crush she had felt since she first met him. Part of her was also amused by the desire to be with the “bad boy” she saw in him. Snape was immediately amused and assured of her feelings and undid the blindness curse to look at her. He was interrupted by his burning, darkening mark, and disapparated away. Hermione didn’t really know what to make of his sudden, unexplained disappearance.

She went to the mirror to see if she would have to conceal a mark or knot from the fall, and spent five minutes in his bathroom fixing the rising bump. She went to the bed, and waited for nearly a quarter of an hour, figuring that it would be impolite to leave without warning.

When she was ready to disapparate out, Lucius Malfoy walked in and they each froze, like deer caught in the headlights. Each thought the other was a Polyjuiced Snape and neither made a move. Lucius’ blond tresses cascaded down his back with a more dingy colour than she remembered, and Lucius noticed how tall she had grown when it became obvious to them both that neither were Severus Snape. Snape apparated back just in time to see Hermione and Lucius Malfoy draw their wands and throw two immediate curses. Snape hit the floor between them and the green and red beams struck each other in the centre, sending 3 pulsing shockwaves around the room as the incompatible wand cores met. Hermione was blown into the wall with astonishing force and dropped her wand. Lucius had ducked behind the door and avoided the blast by a split second, but years of training as a Death Eater made him able to spin around the wall immediately and point his wand directly at the defenceless Hermione.

Lucius was focused so fiercely on her slim trembling figure that as he raised his wand he almost didn’t realize that Snape was on his feet near him with his wand drawn against him. Lucius let his eyes flick briefly to Snape before focusing on Hermione and saying, “Severus…”

“Drop your wand, Lucius…” Snape’s voice took an eerie, deep pitch as he became lethally serious with his closest friend, “…brother—”

Lucius growled and Hermione became the centre of his attention again as she eased her hand closer to her wand, “Oh no you don’t!” Lucius cast a spell at Hermione and Snape tried to block it, but silvery ribbons flew from his wand, through the shield, and bound Hermione immediately. He continued to make the silken bindings tighter and tighter. Hermione let loose a strangled scream and thrashed as her skin became pale. Snape aimed his wand at Lucius, but Lucius sneered, “Move an inch and I’ll break her pretty little neck.”

Snape cast an anti-apparation charm around the room and watched her lips turn blue. Lucius scrutinized Snape’s calm and carefully controlled face and laughed, “You are so very pathetic Snape.” Lucius could see right through his careless gaze as Snape turned his eyes back to Lucius. “You and her?” Tightening the bonds around Hermione’s neck and drawing Snape’s eyes to her slumping body, Lucius laughed triumphantly and looked at his quarry. Luckily for Hermione, that was all the opportunity Snape needed to make a move against Lucius.

Snape threw a spell immediately, hitting Lucius square in the chest. Lucius fell to the ground, and the lengths of ribbon binding Hermione fell loosely around her and she slumped limply against the wall. Crossing the room in his typical brusque manner, Snape secured the stunned body of Lucius Malfoy to the foot of the bed before striding to Hermione. She had fainted, but she had begun breathing on her own.

“Miss Granger?” She didn’t respond, so he lifted her from the ground once again and carried her to the bed. She stirred a bit with a soft feminine moan that made his mind wander, and opened her eyes as though the room were over-bright.

“Severus,” she whispered his name and he was drawn in as it rolled off of her tongue, “you’ve done it again.”

“So I have.” His voice rolled over her in waves of sensuality, but the pounding of her own headache kept her mind from drifting too much. She opened her mouth to demand an explanation, but Snape pre-empted her, “Lucius was the only other person who was given the secret to the place, but being as he was in Azkaban, I didn’t think it was important to worry you with that.”

“He could have killed me!”

“I know, I know, but if I had told you, would you have ever come back?” His eyes searched hers for an answer and he was finding it much too easy to break into her mind. “Are you trying to block me?”

“Yes.”

He sighed, “You won’t be able to apparate for at least 2 hours. Your brain was oxygen deprived.”

“Good, that’s plenty of time for you to explain yourself.”

“I can’t, Miss Granger.”

“You will, or I will floo out and never come back!”

He contemplated her for a bit before turning to his bedside table and drawing out two bottles. . When she was reluctant to take it he explained, “So that you can listen fully. The first is a pepper-up potion and the other, a headache reliever.” He explained as she gulped it down. He stood, thinking for a moment, before striding to the foot of the bed and beginning his lecture.

“Lucius and I have always been good friends. At Hogwarts, it was a mutual hate for James Potter that brought us together in our fourth year. I hated James as much as Lucius did and I became his minion and he was my ticket out of the loner position. When we graduated,” Snape began to roll up his left sleeve, “I learned a lot from Lucius and followed him to join The Dark Lord’s ranks as a Death Eater.” He revealed his Dark Mark and Hermione refrained from gasping at the gruesome symbol.

“As such, I rose up the ranks quickly, faster than Lucius due to my lack of a family. The Dark Lord set me on a very important mission about 3 years before you were born, and I took the task as a real promotion. After all, I was his servant and I loved his cause, but I hated his presence. This was likely to get me more independence from the Dark Lord. Independence with the Dark Lord is power. So I went to Hogwarts to teach and play spy for the Death Eaters.

“Somewhere near the time of your birth, I found myself becoming more willing to listen to Albus than I should have, and he took the time to mentor me. He slyly talked me out of my beliefs until, within a year or two, I was giving information to Albus and asking to atone for my lifestyle. Albus believed in me and protected me and taught me how to protect my mind, so that The Dark Lord would not see how much I was betraying him. I lived that very double life until last spring, when I killed Albus Dumbledore.” While he spoke he conjured a tray, a bottle of wine, and a couple of glasses, offering a glass to Hermione.

Hermione narrowed her eyes. “Why?”

“Be silent and I’ll finish!” He was silent for a moment, challenging her to say anything, and when she didn’t, he continued. “I had warned Albus that I had made an unbreakable oath to help Draco with his task to kill him even if I had to do it myself. I was worried that Draco was getting close to a finish, but Albus still left that night, saying that something the Dark Lord was hiding was more important to find while his hand still worked. He warned me that if he found what he expected, then he might be dying when he returned and would need a Bezoar Stone.

“When Albus returned, and Draco had him unarmed in the Astronomy tower, but couldn’t make a move, I had to do it. My heart was beginning to falter every time I considered ways to disarm everyone in the room, the unbreakable oath would kill me if I stopped the attack. He was dying from the poison anyway, and I didn’t have a Bezoar Stone in my pocket, so he would have died before I could have gotten it to him even if I did risk my life to stop the attack. That is when I raised my wand and killed Albus Dumbledore.”

A heavy silence fell on the room before Lucius Malfoy’s voice brought Hermione out of her thoughts, “Oh, wonderful story Severus, really great, but you forgot the part where you fell for a Mudblood whore and betrayed the brother who gave you everything.”

Snape squatted in front of Malfoy, inches from his face and snarled, “I haven’t finished the story yet. I planned to tell her how I was going to kill you.”

“No! You can’t!”

Snape looked up at her as she tried to stand, but sat back again as she still felt wobbly. Lucius craned his head around too. “We can’t leave him alive.”

“You can’t kill him though!”

“I can,” he drew his wand and pointed it at Lucius, “watch me.”

“Please!”

“What would you like me to do, Miss Granger?”

“We can create a cell for him.”

Snape scoffed and took aim at his heart, “Avada—”

“No!” she screamed, horrified at the idea of watching him die.

Snape looked up at Hermione to tell her to shut up when he got an idea. “We do have that old dungeon in the basement.”

“And he could prove valuable!” she encouraged.

“Wishful thinking.” Responded Snape under his breath.

He moved back around the bed and helped Hermione stand. Her legs gave out at first and she collapsed into Snape’s arms. His hands helped support her lower back and she could feel his eyes on her though she dared not look up. Clearing her throat she continued bravely on, ignoring the traitorous wet arousal her body was feeling. “You could get information out of him.”

Snape scoffed and turned to move the bound Lucius Malfoy toward the door. “Not likely. Look, Hermione, this is not like locking a big dog up and feeding it until it becomes tame. He is not a pet.”

“I’m not stupid!”

“Actually...” Lucius chimed in.

“I’ll likely kill him when you aren’t around.” Hermione stopped Snape with a touch of her delicate hand on his arm, but he held up the other hand to quell her protests.

They walked the rest of the way to dungeon, and Snape told her about the raid on The Burrow Voldemort had just sent him to finish. At first Hermione shrieked and demanded all the details, but when he shushed her and explained that everyone was okay and had escaped, she hugged him thankfully. He stumbled a bit, trying to support her, and didn’t push her away.

The rest of the way, Hermione smiled and allowed Severus to have the silence she knew he treasured so much. Lucius levitated in front of them the entire way to the dungeon. Hermione had expected the dungeon to be dark and dank like the one at Hogwarts, but was surprised to see a simple tiled walkway that led to several artificially lit cells. Snape locked Malfoy in one of the special cells and shackled him to the wall before following Hermione back up to the first floor.

Her hips swayed in front of him as she climbed the stairs and he allowed himself to admire her slim figure as the afternoon light from the dungeon window shone through her skirt. When they reached the door, both of them tried to open it and his fingers twined with hers as he leaned very near her to grab the thin metal handle. “Please, allow me.” He offered and she stepped back into him as he pulled the heavy wooden door open for her.

She walked quickly through and smiled up at him with a small, “Thank you,” and began climbing the stairs while he set the wards to the dungeon when an idea made her slowly turn around and gape at his back. “I think I know how to find The Book of Days and Ends.”

Snape turned slowly around, his robes sweeping across the floor, and cocked his head. “What do you propose?”

Hermione pulled out her wand immediately and waved it in the pattern she had developed over the summer for finding lost things and recited the spell she developed, and as though drawn by an invisible string, she began walking where her wand tugged.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m not sure yet, but this is the wing the library is in.”

“Where did you get that spell from?”

“I made it up at the end of fifth year and just never got a chance to fix its problems and test it until this summer.”

He felt a distinct need to avoid talking lest he sound too proud of her. Instead, he chose to very unenthusiastically say, “It is an interesting invention.”

Hermione smiled to herself as she realized that that was as close to a compliment as she was going to get from Snape. Leading the way, it soon became obvious that they were in fact heading to the library. The heavy oak doors opened at Snape’s direction and she followed the pull from her wand as it led her to the mantle of the fireplace and stopped at the front of a worn wooden box that was not ostentatiously decorated like the rest of the room and its objects. Instead, it was plain, rectangular, and unpolished with a single yellow jewel set in the centre of the lid.

Snape said, “That was… anticlimactic.”

Hermione tried the spell again and the wand pointed fixedly at the box. “I don’t understand…” she said.

“Your spell doesn’t work for the book, that’s all.”

“Stop it. It will. I just have to find the proper Latin phrasing.” Hermione worked for nearly two hours on the spell, making note pages that covered the mantle and being led repeatedly to the box. Severus merely tried to forget she was there and engrossed himself in the task of searching the shelves, stopping here and there for a book that caught his interest.

Eventually, as he returned to the large desk with a large tome called, Exotic Potion Ingredients: in the Forest , Mountains, and Your Body he was surprised to find Hermione standing in front of the desk with the box on the top. “What are you doing?”

“What’s in this box?”

“I don’t know. Do not open it.”

“But it could have a clue.” She was very near it with her face and Snape watched her curiosity warily.

“Or it could hold Pandora’s Demons.”

“Or it could have the Book of Days and Ends in there.” She said, raising her wand over it.

“No!” Snape shouted and grabbed her arm, causing the tip of her wand to touch the top of the box. The box immediately popped open, and Snape sent a quick glare her way before looking down into the box for an incredible shock.

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A/N: Is this what would be considered a cliffhanger... ooh! I think so. lol .