Secrets Best Kept

Part Two

The next day, Hermione had a bit of trouble concentrating. More accurately, she was a complete wreck, mostly due to having been kept up all night, a victim of her own thoughts. She fumbled through teaching her first classes, making a right fool of herself; at once point a third year corrected her on an obvious mistake and then she went on to make it again in the same fashion.

She skipped dinner in the main hall and by the time she got back to her room, everything was still turning around in her head and it wouldn't stop.

He must have guessed, by now. He couldn't see those images and not realize what they probably meant, could he? But perhaps she could play it off... convince him that the reason he was so prominent in her mind was that she was frightened of him. Or something.

As embarrassing as that would be, it couldn't possibly be any worse than the truth. And the truth was... she had spent a lot of time thinking about Severus Snape, and it had nothing to do with fear.

It was times like these that she really did wish she had a penseive. Because now she was sitting in her room and this was the last thing she wanted to think about, and the only thing she couldn't get out of her head.

It was during winter break in her last year of school that it seemed to start. She, Harry, and Ron were staying at Grimmauld Place because that was where the Weasleys were. It was still their base of operations even after Sirius' death nearly two years before. Almost everyone was gathered there, because tensions were high. Harry was about to graduate and it seemed like the Ultimate Showdown would be any time, and death eater activity was at an unusual high.

It was several days before Christmas and Harry and Ron were asleep in their room and Ginny also, in the bed beside her. She remembered the fit that Ron had thrown when he'd told his parents that they should share a room... "Not under my roof!" Mrs. Weasley had shrieked, and Hermione had been mortified, assuring Ron that it was okay, but he'd been sullen and moody the rest of the day anyway.

Hermione though, couldn't sleep. She had gotten out of bed and padded downstairs in hopes of finding something to read. But as soon as she reached the bottom of the stairs she heard voices. She slipped behind the banister, hiding in hopes of hearing what was going on.

Remus and Molly were walking around looking distressed; Molly muttered something like "He should have been back by now" and suddenly there was the quiet *POP* of apparition.

After a few moments, Hermione realized that what she thought was just a pile of black robes was actually a person, crumbled on the floor in the living room. Molly cried out and they both dropped to their knees, Remus pulling up the person's head and checking for a pulse.

Hermione gasped, and then quickly clamped her hand over her mouth to avoid making any further noise, when she realized that it was Professor Snape.

"He's alive," Remus said. "Here, help me lift him onto the couch." Molly grabbed his feet and they hefted, landing the body on the couch. Snape let out a groan.

"What have they done to him?" Molly said, her voice full of concern. "It doesn't look like any sort of spell, he's just been..."

"Beaten," Remus finished. "Within an inch of his life, it appears, but not with the intention of death." He pulled out his wand, murmured a few words, then continued, "Voldemort would know that broken bones and internal bleeding are easy enough for us to heal. He just wanted to hurt him."

Snape groaned again, and then opened parched lips and said, his voice dry and cracking, "Thought it was funny."

"What?" Remus asked sharply.

"Voldemort... he... was trying to make some sort of example. The potion he had me brew didn't work. I'd sabotaged it but he didn't know that, just thought I was incompetent. Said if I can't even do magic properly no point in putting me under Cruciatus, so he took my wand, and set some of the death eaters on me." The pain in his voice wasn't merely physical, and Hermione could imagine how difficult it must be to have to admit this to Remus. It was no great secret that they fairly despised each other.

"They... beat you?" Molly asked, horrified. "How did you escape?"

"Wasn't trying to kill me. After they were... finished, tossed back my wand and I apparated here." He groaned again, shifted on the couch. "It's so hot. Why is it so hot?"

"He may have a concussion," Molly said. "I think he's delirious. Maybe we should get him to St. Mungos."

Remus shook his head. "Too many questions... if Snape were a real death eater he wouldn't risk it." He surveyed Snape again. "And I think I've done enough. There's nothing life threatening, he'll just be in pain."

"Is there anything we can do for him?" Molly asked, putting a hand to his forehead.

"There's a simple potion I can brew that should take the edge off his pain," Remus told her. "You get to bed, I'll take care of it."

"Are you sure?" She looked worried.

"Yes, I'm sure. He'll be fine, I promise."

Molly nodded, cast a concerned glance towards the heap on the couch, and made her way towards the stairs. Hermione ducked farther into the shadows to avoid being seen.

"I'm sorry, Severus," Remus was saying. "I guess none of us really know all that you have to go through." He left him there and went into the door that led to the basement, Hermione assumed to make the potion.

She stood there for a moment, transfixed by the sight of Snape on the couch, moaning softly in pain. He suddenly seemed so... real. Remus wasn't the only one who hadn't realized what he had to go through. Imagine the strength he must have to keep it up. Not like Peter Pettigrew, who had given in so easily... She remembered all of the bad things Harry had always said about him, remembered all the times they mistrusted him, thought that he was in league with Voldemort. She felt guilty.

She edged forward, about to make her way back up the stairs unseen. But the step made a loud creak on the floorboard and Snape shifted again on the couch.

"Molly?" he said, his voice still cracking. "Molly, is that you?"

She didn't know what to do... she could get in trouble for listening in, but then again, what if he needed something? She walked over to the couch, knelt down beside him.

"Professor Snape?" she said quietly, "Can I get something for you?"

He turned his head towards her, and she could see that he had a black eye and a cut on his lip. He didn't seem to register who she was, just simply asked, "Some water... please..."

She stood and hurried to the kitchen, grabbed a glass of water and came back, kneeling again and handing it to him.

He drank, and a drop of blood from the cut on his lip sank into the water.

"Oh!" Hermione breathed, and without thinking she lifted up her hand and used the sleeve of her nightgown to wipe the blood from his face. She started to stand and leave then, but he grabbed her wrist, gently.

"Thank you, my dear," he said quietly, his voice still scratching.

She still wasn't sure if he realized who she was; she could tell by the erratic movement in his eyes that he probably half delirious. "I think," she whispered, as she stood, "I think you're very brave." And with that, she fled from the room, went quickly up the stairs just as she heard the door to the basement opening and Remus coming back into the living room.

She assumed that Remus' potion worked, because the next day Snape just wasn't around and when she inquired about him (Ron gave her a funny look for that one), Molly told her that he'd been out late on Order business and was sleeping there through the day. Later, she cracked open the door to the guest room and saw that he was indeed in there, sound asleep.

And then the next day, everything was completely back to normal. In the morning he had a row with Mr. Weasley about something stupid, and made an insulting remark to Remus when he was reminded to brew up a new batch of wolfsbane. When she passed him in the hallway later, there was nothing different in the way he looked at her, no embarrassment or recognition. It wasn't surprising though; she hadn't expected him to remember their encounter.

She never told Ron or Harry about what she saw, but after that she suddenly found herself looking at Snape differently. She noticed the rare moments when there was warmth in his eyes, paid attention to news of his work in the Order, started to appreciate his intelligence and wit, even if it was often aimed as an insult against her friends. Ron was often hacked off at her when she started defending him so she learned to keep her mouth shut.

When she left Hogwarts, she thought that perhaps she and Snape could be friends. But every attempt she made he repelled, not in a mean-spirited manner, but just in the same way that he kept everyone away from him. Yet somehow the more guarded he was the more intrigued she became, and she started thinking about him more and more.

Over the course of five years, her failed relationship with Ron, and beginnings of several others, she began to realize that her feelings for Snape had changed. When she would see him at Order meetings, she found that she was no longer thinking of him as a student thinks of a teacher, but as a woman thinks of a man.

She certainly wasn't in love with him or anything as dramatic as all that, at least she didn't think so... she could never get close enough to him to find out. Of course, it didn't feel like a schoolgirl crush either. And it also wasn't that she thought of him in a sexual way - though the more she found herself thinking about him the more his appearance and mannerisms seemed attractive. No, it was something entirely different. Yet through it all, their relationship remained exactly the same. He treated her as little more than an annoyance, and finally she started to think about it less and less...

That is, until last night. It was exactly as she feared, that he would go into her mind and find those feelings that she'd had in her memories. And now she had to go back tonight, and she had no idea what she would say to him.

Part Three

It took her several minutes of standing outside Snape's office to actually muster the will to knock.

"Come," came a gruff, muffled reply from within.

She pushed the door open, saw him standing on the other side of the room. He had his back to her as he stacked an armful of books, one by one, on a shelf beside his desk. His voice then, towards the shelf, but just loud enough so that she got the full force of it: "If you're going to stand in the doorway all night, Miss Granger," he said sharply, "You're wasting my time. Now get in here before I get to any of the many better things I could be doing with my time."

The words stung her, just a bit, but did not come as a surprise. "Professor Snape -" she began, taking half a step forward and the lurching to a stop when the sharp voice interrupted her.

"If you are about to make silly excuses regarding the last session of our lesson yesterday, you would do well to save your breath." He turned, his eyes boring into hers and she found herself rooted to the spot. "You're positively spewing anxiety, Miss Granger, which I can tell you will have no positive effect on our lesson tonight."

"Professor, I..."

"Not finished," he snapped. "Now, I mean to tell you that there is no point to your excuses. What you may not know or understand about legilimancy is that there is often no pattern to the images it extracts. Whereas it is commonly the case that it finds those most prominent, or linked to the strongest emotions, that is not always so. It is just as likely that they become stream of consciousness, latching onto a lesser memory and following connections to related ones. So whatever misconceptions you may be so anxious that I have formed, I can guarantee you that I have not."

Hermione's reaction to his speech was not what she would have predicted. Rather, she felt her cheeks redden not from embarrassment but from anger. What right did he have to insult her intelligence, belittle her feelings, and be so nastily pedantic to her when she had always shown him nothing but respect? "I assure you, Professor Snape," she snapped, "that any anxiety that I may feel has nothing to do with misconceptions, as I care very little for what you think. Rather, I may be a bit vexed to be spending my evenings with such a hateful, condescending prat." As soon as the words left her mouth, she couldn't believe what she'd just said, but wasn't altogether sure that she would take them back, given the chance.

There, in his eyes. A glimmer of shock. And there was at least half a second where she was sure she had rendered him speechless.

He then took several steps forward, landing himself quite close to her, and he spoke in the quiet, venomous voice that she knew meant he was holding back his temper. "I am going to ignore that little outburst," he hissed, "and write it off as a reaction to the stress of your change in environment and situation. However, should you ever deem it appropriate to speak to me in such a manner again, I will put an end to these lessons and you will be left to fend for yourself when the Dark Lord comes looking for your precious Harry. Is that understood?"

"Yes," she said, her eyes locked with his. "Perfectly."

"Now," he began, pulling his wand out of the sleeve of his robes, "I am going to cast legilimens on you and you are going to try to block me this time. And I suggest that you put away your temper or this is a pointless endeavor."

She took a breath, trying to clear her mind. The night before she had concentrated on pushing back into the recesses of her mind, the incident at Grimmauld Place. Especially at this point, that was the last thing she wanted him to see. But right now, it was so difficult to push back her emotions when she was so angry...

"Legilimens!"

Snape and his wand faded to black and she began to swim in the images inside her head again. Seeing Harry crying in a corner of Gryffindor Tower when he thought no one was looking. Then, making love to Ron, her head thrown back as a scream died on her lips, opening her eyes to see a mirror behind him showing the sweat dripping from her hair. Ron, standing at the door to the flat they once shared, saying, "I don't guess I ever really loved you. You were just... there." Gasping as a Death Eater casts the Crutiatus spell on her. And then...

"Out," she heard herself whisper, and the room came back into focus. Her hands were shaking; she could barely hold onto her wand. She could feel tears start to form in the backs of her eyes and she willed them back.

Snape stood in front of her, and this time she was sure that the expression on his face was one of shock. She looked down at his wand and thought she saw his hand shaking as well, but then he grabbed it with his other hand and the expression on his face went blank once again.

"You didn't use your wand that time," he said. "You pushed me out with only your mind. That is better, but you still let me get in... too far. Much too far."

No fucking kidding, she thought bitterly, clenching her hands to stop the shaking and trying to maintain an ounce of dignity.

"Miss Granger?" His voice sounded far away, and for a moment she looked up at him and thought she saw that glimmer of warmth that she used to seek out, cling to.

I mustn't let him see me cry. "I'm fine," she said, surprised to hear a harshness in her tone. "A bit put out about your seeing me naked, is all." Had she just said that out loud?

And then, there it was. On his pale skin, a trace of warmth. A flush to his cheeks, and Hermione realized that she had just embarrassed Severus Snape.

A flash of something, and then it was gone, his face hardened again.

He started to say something, but it was she that cut him off this time. "I want to try again."

He took a breath. "Very well. But I cannot be responsible for..."

"I want to try again."

He nodded, held up his wand, and she tried very hard to remember something that Harry had told her once, long ago...

"Legilimens!"

The room flushed into darkness and she could suddenly see the shadows behind the stairs in Grimmauld Place...

But she could still see Snape's face, a haze against the darkness, and she flashed her wand into the abyss. "Protego!"

Suddenly the picture changed, and Hermione could feel the invasion of memories that were not her own. Snape crying out in pain as the dark mark burns his skin unexpectedly. Bracing his arms above his head to lessen the impact of the fists of men sheathed in dark robes that came pounding towards his body. Laying on a couch in a dark room, Hermione's face bathed in moonlight above him. The same dark room, the sound of footsteps retreating up a flight of stairs, and a name falling softly from his lips: "Hermione..."

And then she was suddenly lurched backwards, falling to the floor as the images faded and she heard whispered in a raspy voice above her, "That is quite enough."