Switch

Impact

by Verity

"Once you get a taste of impact - You're always hungry for the crash." - Sound of the Bell, Veruca Salt

[Sequel to

Switch, Ask, and Harm. NOTE: This fic is rated R for sexual content, language, adult situations, and the author's judicious screwing of the characters' minds. You've been warned.]

01:

She sits neatly on the bed. Her hair is damp from the shower and her eyes are open, tired and faded and not gazing at any one thing in particular.

She has been sitting on his bed for four days now, getting up at occasional intervals to shower and eating only enough to hold herself back from starvation. There was a terse discussion with Dumbledore, when the elder wizard found out whom he has brought here, but he persevered, and won.

It is the first time he has not capitulated to Dumbledore's desires in many years, and he wonders what this means for him.

He does not try to discuss this with her; indeed, he does not try to do anything beyond the occasional look over to his bed. The rug has made a decent place of rest these past few days. The summer holidays are upon them, and there are not, as yet, any demands that must be met, beyond the brewing of next year's supply of potions for Madam Pomfrey. But already he has begun to feel unease about the situation - though, of course, unease and irrationality on his part are nothing new when it comes to her.

On the fourth day she speaks.

"So, you win. You've destroyed what you wanted to all along."

"I never wanted to - destroy you!" he says, surprised at his own conviction.

"What did you want then?" she asks him. "You took and you took and in taking myself back I lost more than what had already been stolen. It was never supposed to be about you. I trusted you."

"I didn't mean-"

"Good teachers don't fuck their students, Professor." Her eyes are as cold as onyx. "Congratulations. You win."

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

:02

She longs only for this to come to an end. Only.

He sat for four days reading Hogwarts: A History, the unabridged version, and waited. She envies such patience.

She passed the time by slipping into herself, and watching the time stretch by. Seeing other times pass before her eyes, times when she was dark, wild, lovely, above all terribly carefree.

After a while, he asks her if she needs any bandages for her back.

"No," she says quietly.

He comes over to her, makes a gesture that includes her back and her bare wrists with the pink scar tissue that crosses them. "Those can be made to go away."

"You didn't throw away your scars, did you? I wouldn't. They're a reminder."

"Of mistakes?"

"Yes." She watches him thoughtfully; his features are carefully arranged into impassivity. "Next time, I'll win."

"Does there have to be a next time?"

"You don't even know me," she whispers. "You don't know me at all. Why did you bring me here? They all hate me. Dumbledore hates me. I'm not even real anymore. What do you want from me?"

His face is still the same, sharp and pale and harsh, but she sees something fleeting pass over it, the ghost of something she vaguely remembers in ways that pierce her heart like the jagged shards of a broken mirror.

"So that's how it is," she says, and turns away.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

:03

They wait. They are good at waiting.

He is struck by how vulnerable she looks - she has been possessed of an unholy power in his eyes for so long that her lack of divinity seems strange and vaguely inappropriate, like catching a lady of privilege in her boudoir. Her bare feet are tucked partially beneath her, and as he glances at them, white, slender and ladylike, he feels the voyeur to some private vignette.

Her eyes do not meet his; in her head she is surely far, far away.

That night he lies down on the rug at the foot of the bed, wrapped in a spare blanket, listening to her soft breathing. He is almost asleep before he hears the ragged quickening of breath, the half-choked sobs.

"Miss Granger?" No response. "Hermione?" he tries.

"Don't-" she says, but he ignores her, because he remembers other times when she ached without comfort, and where they led to. He goes over to where she rests, lays a hand on her shoulder. She protests no longer, not even when he slides his arms around her to cradle her against his chest. It feels so wonderful to him to hold her, after all this time; even if he can feel all her bones beneath her thin flesh; even if she is weeping, her entire body wracked with the weight of her sobs.

He holds her until her weeping ceases; then she pulls back from him. Her eyes are red and there is a strange look in them that he cannot read in the dim twilight.

"Always you," she murmurs, or something like it - he isn't sure.

"Hermione?"

"No," she says, and kisses him.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

:04

"Always you," she says, and means it.

Always you followed me. Always I dragged you down into the depths with me. And when you fall - I follow.

Well, she'll let him have this for his pains. If nothing else, she is capable of small mercies.

She eases apart his lips and melds her body to his, the familiar motions coming easily to her, but this time she allows him free reign. He pushes her down to the bed, deepening the kiss, pulling the t-shirt she's been using as a nightdress over her head. His kisses are less hungry than frantic, and some part of her aches as she takes in the tenderness of this poor misguided man.

"Always you," she murmurs, and this seems to reassure him. Though in her mind, she finishes the sentence; what are they to each other now? Not lovers, surely; nor friends; nor even casual acquaintances. Always I dragged you down into the depths with me. But that couldn't be helped, now could it?

All this as he runs his hands over her body, a vessel so long lost to him that she thinks it must seem full of wonder again. No matter how she's tried to shatter it. She traces his jaw line with the tip of her tongue, then nibbles on his ear for emphasis.

They play the kiss chase for a while before she lets him slide into her, closing her eyes as she spirals into oblivion.

And when he's fast asleep, his arms across her chest to bind her to him, she slips from that embrace to walk across the chill stones of the floor. She shivers, shivers as she walks naked into the moonlight, to the other side of the room where she can see his wand.

And as she erases her past, she thinks, I am free. At last.

She sets the wand down, and walks away, unblemished.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

:05

When he wakes up, she is gone, and questioning of Dumbledore and the house-elves reveals nothing. Two weeks later, a body of a young brunette girl is discover in a pond ten miles east of Hogsmeade; but there are no missing students, and the body is never identified.

Ten months later, as spring begins to slip upon then, Dumbledore falls asleep over a nightcap and does not wake up. He is the one to find the body that evening, when he goes to report on the activities of the Death Eaters that remained enthusiastic and unrestrained; he is the one to rouse the castle from their sleep and begin the week that the students of Hogwarts present will later refer to as "the Black Week." The Week of Mourning.

At Dumbledore's funeral, he sees Harry and Harry's young wife. Virginia is already heavily pregnant with their first child. Harry refuses to look at him. He drops a black rose onto Dumbledore's grave. The iron-gray clouds on the winter sky unleash a flood of teardrops then, and all the funeral attendees desert the honored old wizard in his final hour.

Except for one. He remains, soaking wet, at Dumbledore's graveside until the moon has risen in the sky.

The next morning, Severus Snape finds the first gray hair amongst his otherwise-black hair, and feels, not for the first time, abysmally old.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

EPILOGUE:

eleven years later

He leans back into his chair at the staff table and takes a sip of pumpkin juice, as the Sorting Ceremony proceeds.

"Pendragon, Rupert!"

"HUFFLEPUFF!"

"Potter, Geneva!"

The Sorting Hat barely touches the girl's red hair before it shouts "GRYFFINDOR!"

"Ormond, Lilith!"

"RAVENCLAW!"

"Restarick, David!"

"RAVENCLAW!"

"Riddle, Julia!"

There is a pause, a sort of collectively intaken breath, as the girl walks forward. Her wavy brown hair is pulled back from her face, tamed into a neat French braid, and her head is held high. She does not appear at all nervous.

The Hat sits on her head for several long seconds before shouting "SLYTHERIN!"

She turns to look up at the staff table for a second before taking a seat at her own house's; and he can see the silent appraisal in her piercing dark eyes.