Lullabies

Greetings! This is a first fic, so please be kind and review so I know whether I ought to continue this or not. This story contains themes of an adult nature and all the good and bad things contained within the bounds of maturity, as in yes, there will be violence and nookie. If this bothers you, please feel free to hit the back button on your browser…now. Much thanks to my favorite roomie and beta, Lady Tuesday for inspiration, addiction, and listening to me rant. And, as always, they’re not mine, I just like to borrow them on occasion.

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She lay there, virtually motionless as he came in and closed the door. "You're not real."

He sat down in the chair next to her bedside. "I most certainly am."

"You're just a dream from all the drugs they gave me."

"No, I'm not-"

"Yes you are. That's the only place you ever are. My dreams and now this morphine-induced hallucination."

"I assure you, Miss Granger-"

"Stop that this minute-this is MY dream, and you will call me by my name, which is not Miss Granger, it's Hermione dammit."

"Alright, 'Hermione dammit'. This is, after all, your dream."

"There's no need to be snarky. You're not allowed to anyways, which you always seem to forget."

"I beg your pardon, I'm under a good deal of stress these days."

"Not as much as you used to be-I always wanted to massage the strain out of your shoulders, but I knew you'd never let me. Stopped loving you a long time ago, no time to be a foolish girl and do all that 'foolish wand waving' any more." He seemed taken aback and she giggled. "Didn't know that, did you? Sometimes you do and sometimes you don't, but you never really remember. Never will forgive myself for that."

"What on earth are you talking about, you silly girl?" This was getting more and more confusing by the minute.

"I suppose it doesn't matter anymore, since this is a dream I won't be having much longer," she sighed, looking exceptionally resigned and sad in her pale green hospital gown. She wasn't at all aware of it though, as she made a few gestures with her hand and said, "Menosymene repara" in a tired voice.

He blinked a few times as something clicked in his mind, but it was impossible to tell what it was. It seemed like she had tried to cast a memory charm, but it hadn't worked. "What on earth are you trying to do, woman?"

"Oh, would you knock it off, you snarky git?" She growled weakly. He wasn't supposed to act like that, he was supposed to just leave like he had before, insulting her all the way and pushing her aside like the silly girl she was so that she could...she shook her head. He was supposed to know what he'd done, and to be sorry. "Oh well, I suppose it doesn't matter whether you do remember or not. I'll only remember for a little bit longer anyway."

"Hermione, what are you babbling about?" This was most certainly not know-it-all, former-Head-Girl behavior, but then again, was sobbing at the sight of him and then running out of a pub into traffic normal behavior for anyone? Surely he wasn't that repulsive, and they had managed to form a reasonable working relationship after she'd graduated and before the downfall of Voldemort.

She laughed, a low, thick sound that seemed as if it was coming from underwater. "Just thought I'd try to make things right, I guess, and I seem to have screwed that up, just like everything else in my life. Ah well, I might not have a wand anymore, Professor Severus Snape, b can can certainly do a bit of wandless magic when need be. In a few hours, they'll come back and check on me, to give me another dose, and, thankfully, I won't be here to see it. Just a matter of time now, I think, " she added, closing her eyes and curling up on her side in an almost fetal position. "Much better, now the ribs won't hurt so much. It's better this way-I've failed at everything else, the least I can do is get this right."

He stared blankly. "You've poisoned yourself. Or, rather, you let them overdose you with morphine." He began rifling through his pockets, though she didn't open her eyes to see what he was doing-this was most definitely not normal, and he needed to find something to counteract the drugs. Thankfully, even now he carried a selection of single dose vials in a deep pocket of his coat and one of them counteracted Muggle narcotics, since it had been the favorite of a few Deatheaters for use in controlling prisoners. He just had to find it...

"Observant, aren't you?" She asked quietly. It was getting nice and fuzzy in here, and she was so warm and comfy, almost like floating or flying.... she hated flying, it was a miserable experience altogether, but this floating was rather nice. "Really, it's alright-it's better this way, really, I mean it."

"I'm going to have to disagree with you on this one, Miss...Hermione," he corrected himself, not wanting to alert her to what he was actually doing, which was..."Petrificus totalus," he whispered hoarsely, rendering her completely immobile. She whimpered a moment, and then was silent as he lifted her into a sitting position, managing to figure out the mechanics of the muggle hospital bed in which she was currently ensconced so that she could sit up without his support. He very carefully opened her mouth and poured a silvery liquid into her mouth, massaging her throat to make sure she swallowed it all.

Just at that moment, a rather nondescript nurse in blue and white scrubs that he'd seen earlier opened the door to the private room and let in two very worried-looking young men and quickly closed the door behind them, not entering the room at alOne One was a tall, muscular redhead ("Weasley," Severus' brain noted, "and not far behind...) and the other a rail-thin man with glasses and mussed black hair who, unlike his companion, did not seem at all surprised at Severus' presence. "She tried again, did she?"

”I beg your pardon?” Severus snapped, liking neither the way Weasley was glaring at him, nor the way Potter was looking on in sympathy and gratitude-the former he was used to, since he’d seen it thousands of times, but Potter’s was something new. He looked down at the girl-no, woman now-in his arms and began to wonder, not for the first time, just exactly what the hell was going on.

Harry sighed. He hated to see her like this, but it was high time someone else got involved, particularly someone who might have a chance at fixing the problem. "This is the third time, though I know walking out into the street like that was an accident-she went into shock at seeing you," he nodded at Severus, "and we couldn't stop her running. That was the first time we'd gotten her into the Leaky Cauldron since she snapped her wand just after the last battle." He glanced at Snape to see his reaction. Good, the man seemed horrified. "Yeah, that's about what I said, until she told me why. I understood a little better then, and even better now, but this isn't the place. What'd she try this time?"

Snape disentangled himself from the now peacefully sleeping woman in his arms and massaged his shoulder. "Wandless magic-I think it was probably unconscious effort on her part; she got the nurse, who I gathered she knowom wom working here, to give her a lethal dose of whatever narcotic they were giving her for the pain."

By this point, Ron was leaning against the windowsill and watching Hermione sleep. "Yeah, not surprised. That's why we followed so quickly after they took the two of you in the amber-lance thingy, it being this time of year and all. She gets right depressed and we usually try and keep her happy and occupied, running here and there with holiday shopping and the like, but it gets harder and harder. It's been five years, you'd think she'd have gotten over it by now."

Harry glared at him. "She had a rough time of it, leave off." He walked to the opposite side of the bed and took her hand. "We're here for you, hon, and no more of this, do you hear me?"

"Potter, just what, exactly, is going on here? She seems to think she did something to me years ago, and before I got the antidote down her throat, she tried a memory restore spell which really didn't do a blasted thing since she was about three inches from dying of overdose-why, by all that's holy, would she do something as ridiculous as that? As any of this?" Snape sat back down in the chair, hard enough to make it bang against the wall, frustration evident in his posture, though he managed to keep an impassive look on his face.

Ron started to say something, but Harry cut him off. "Alright, we'll explain it to you, or rather I will since Ron won't be able to be objective about it since this is our little sister we're talking about." At Snape's continued puzzled look, he added "After the last battle, the three of us went through the Fraternus ritual, which bonded us as family forever and made it so that if we ever needed the others, they would know instantly, which is how we found her the first two times."

“That’s an absolutely lovely sentiment,” he snarled sarcastically, “but that doesn’t tell me a damned thing about what in blazes is going on here.” He managed to shoot the both of them his best “I am the teacher, so you’d better spill” look, but it seemed to have no effect as the both of them seemed as distraught as he was.

"I don't think this is the place for this," Ron finally managed to get out. "She needs to rest, and she's not going to get that with any of us here. There's a Muggle nurse here who has a witch for a mother, that's who we got to keep an eye on her last time, I'll go ask for her again. She's extremely magic-resistant, and even though Hermione doesn't have her wand, she's more than proved she can do things without it." He crossed the room and exited, exchanging a significant glance with Harry, as if to say "make sure he doesn't do anything funny," and received a nod in response.

"Where, then, Mr. Potter, is the place for this?" Snape asked quietly. It was slowly beginning to dawn on him that this mess was somehow his fault, or at least that someone blamed him for something, and he certainly did not care for that feeling.

"First off, my name is Harry, and secondly, we'll adjourn to her flat, it's just across the street and we can walk. To get back to Ron's and my house, we'd have to apparate outside the city, and I'd much rather be closer in case something happens. We're listed as her next of kin, of course, but we can get here faster and more unobtrusively if we use her place for this. She won't mind, and we have a key."

Severus looked up at the sleeping witch-no, woman, in front of him and realized that it somehow looked familiar to him, as if he'd seen her in repose before. Without thinking, he reached across the gap between his chair and the bed and brushed her hair back from her face, feeling its silk against his skin. "There is something," he said quietly, almost to himself.

"I rather thought so," Harry said quietly. It seemed like Snape was starting to remember, even though the charm she'd cast had failed. "Contact with her would make the charm start to fade," he mused, "and the stress of the initial contact and her being hurt so soon after might have jogged your brain a bit."

"Comforting as that is, Potter, I dislike others knowing more about me than I do myself. Do you even know what she did in the first place?"

"First of all, it's Harry, and secondly, yes, I do know exactly what she did, and how to undo it since she won’t be able to unless she returns to our world." At Snape's sharp look, he grimaced and continued. "But, I insist that you hear me out first. The both of you deserve that much. I know all of it since she came to me rather than to Ron, and this was before he and I...well, anyways, she came to me and told me what had enedened."

"Very well, so long as this does not take forever. I have an engagement to deal with this evening, and much as I would thoroughly enjoy the pleasure of the company of two former students, I want my memory restored so that I can move on with my life," He replied with as much sarcasm as he could muster. He sat back in the chair, lost in thought, and said no more as Potter talked quietly to Hermione, managing to be quiet enough so that Snape didn’t have to hear any more of his inane voice. He briefly considered attempting legilimency on the girl, but he rather thought it might not do any good with her in such a high emotional state as well as recovering from the overdose and the rather harsh antidote he’d had to give her.

About twenty minutes later, after much difficulty in locating the correct nurse (Ron had no idea what she looked like, just her last name and that she was blond, and there were at least three women in the hospital that responded to those specifications), they managed to cross the street and enter the mammoth apartment building in which, Severus was assured, housed the flat of Miss Granger. It had turned colder, and it had begun to snow, though this deep into the city of London, it looked grey from fog and exhaust instead of the pure white he was used to at Hogwarts. It took some time for the two younger men to decide whether to take the stairs or the elevator, but around the time that Snape's patience ran out, it finally arrived and they all piled on, Ron jabbing a finger at the button for floor 23 and standing in one corner with Harry opposite from the one that Snape automatically took.

The ride was a silent one, punctuated by soft beeps as the elevator passed each floor, but it was mercifully short, and they exited into a bleak, empty hallway lined with white doors bearing tarnished silver numbers. Ron and Harry immediately veered to the right in front of Snape, and he had to stop abruptly to avoid running into them, but he decided to say nothing until he'd heard them out-he owed the young woman in the hospital bed that much, at least, for all the help she had been to him before Potter had performed his heroics. She'd been the best assistant he'd ever had, and he'd even for a few insane moments considered asking Dumbledore to offer her an assistantship so he could quit teaching the first and second-years, but tshe'she'd disappeared until, well, lunchtime today. As he followed them down the hall and around a corner, he fished in his pocket for his pocket watch, an antique silver one with the Slytherin crest on one side, and his family crest, a salamander with a banner on its chest and the inscription "Purete' par feu," and flipped it open. Nearly 4:00 already, and he had to be back by 7:00 so that he could discuss his new duties with Minerva

Finally, Harry stopped at a door labeled 2325 in the same tarnished letters and, pulling a key-ring from his pocket, he chose one and unlocked the door, motioning for them to follow. Ron took the appearance of the apartment in stride, but it gave Severus pause to see how very, well, muggle-ish the place seemed. The walls were a bland cream color, at least from what he could see, just the four rooms leading off the corridor behind the entryway, two to the left, one te rie right, and one at the end of the hall, whose door was the only one closed. He followed them down the hall, but after a short whispered conference with his partner in crime, Harry led him off into the room on the right, which appeared to be a sitting room of some sort, with plush-looking couches and chairs in a burgundy that put the blandness of the walls and the carpet, which were also the ubiquitous cream, to shame. Ron had apparently gone off to one of the other rooms, as he did not follow them into the room. He motioned for Severus to be seated, and said "I'll be right back, Ron's miserable at making tea and I know I could use a cup."

"That is perhaps the most sense you've made all day, Potter," Snape said as he left, and then began taking stock of his surroundings. Loveseat, large comfy chair, couch big enough for even that giant of a Weasley to sleep on and still have room left-she seemed to be doing quite alright from the feel of them, he thought as he touched the supple velvet fabric. His interest moved on to the large television set at the far end of the room-he wasn't quite sure what it was, but he rather thought it might involve the Muggle version of wizarding photographs, which they apparently called "movies." Minerva and Filius Flitwick had dragged him every December for the previous three years to watch one, involving a rather fantastical tale spun by a muggle who'd obviously had contact with wizards at some point or another because he depicted them quite well, and he rather thought that Gandalf reminded him of Albus Dumbledore on occasion, particularly since when Minerva had seen the character in white robes for the first time, she'd broken down into tears and had to be taken out of the theatre and given what she referred to as "a restoring slurpee."

He was, however, quite sure that she'd snuck something alcoholic in there, because she was teary throughout the rest of the movie. Hell, he was teary at the end, though he'd be damned if he'd admit it as Flitwick was bawling like a baby and his robes were sopping by the time they'd left. Minerva missed Albus quite a bit though, and for that matter, so did everyone else-the world was not the same without Albus Dumbledore in it. Ffawkes had actually taken up residence in Snape's private rooms where, for some reason, he seemed most comfortable. Minerva was rather upset by this too, he remembered, and moved to the shelves next to the television and began reading the film titles.

Ah, she did havose ose movies, they were available to purchase copies of-he would have to remember to let Filius know, as he was in the process of attempting to charm a television set and something called a disc-player to work at Hogwarts. With Arthur Weasley as Minister of Magic, such things were much less frowned upon, and he certainly turned a blind eye to things like that happening at Hogwarts. More and more muggle-born students were arriving by the year, with the old pureblood families dying out, and the more comfortable they could be made, the better, in Arthur's opinion, and Snape was, strangely, inclined to agree-happy students make less trouble, after all.

There was, strangely, no fireplace in this room. Strange, not to be hooked up to the floo network, at least in his opinion. He wondered how she managed to keep in contact with Weasley and Potter, although he wondered no longer after he saw the small phone hooked up to a wall charger. 'Why didn't she have that with her?" he pondered, pacing over to another shelf unit in dark wood, matching the rest of her woodwork, this one filled with what looked like textbooks, all with labels like What to Expect When You’re Expecting and bits about child psychology and physiology. The top shelf, the smallest since the textbooks on the lower shelves were so large, was filled with novels, four of which, he noted, looked almost exactly alike, and three of them bore the same names as the films Minerva had dragged him to-he would have to see if he could find them for her, perhaps they had more details than the film.
He was also willing to bet that this was not the only bookshelf and, knowing Hermione, there would be a bookshelf in each room, possibly even the bathroom. He was just about to exit the room to investigate this theory, but as he reached the door he met Potter and Weasley coming in with a tea tray and a plate of small sandwiches that looked reasonably edible to his discerning eye.

The sandwiches caused him to look at Weasley, who had the tray, rather quizzically. “Food? Now?”

Ron shrugged as he sat the tray down. “We didn’t finish lunch, and she’d just gone shopping. She won’t mind, we’ll replace whatever we use, just like we do when we visit.” He sat down and made himself comfortable with a sandwich and a cup of tea, heavily sweetened.

Harry did the same after pouring Snape a cup and handing it to him carefully, although he did not sweeten his. “So tell me, what exactly do you remember about the day after the celebration ball?”

Severus almost snorted tea out of his nose, having taken his first sip at the words ‘celebration ball.’ “And what, in Merlin’s name, does that hideous experience have to do with anything?”

“Well, everything actually-that is where she finally maneuvered you into asking her to dance, after all,” Harry replied with a small smile. Things were going exactly the waywantwanted them to.