Title: Heal
Author: ianthe_waiting
Rating: T+
Disclaimer: The Harry Potter books and their characters are the property of JK Rowling. This is a work of fan-fiction. No infringement is intended, and no money is being made from this story. I am just borrowing the puppets, but this is my stage.
Genre: Drabble
Warnings: None
Summary: #97 – Heal. With her, he could begin to heal.
Word Count: 994 words.
Author's Notes: Drabble: a slice of fic in less than 1500 words. FEH universe. Suggested by juju84






Prompt 97 – Heal






It was hard for him to reconcile the girl with the woman. Every time he looked at her young face, Severus Snape could only see tiny indications of the woman she would become, and it annoyed him.

The girl had nearly died following Potter into the Department of Mysteries, and Severus stood over her hospital cot watching her sleep a dreamless and painless sleep. Severus was angry—angry with himself for not doing more to stop Potter from acting the fool and walking into a trap, and angry that the girl, Hermione Granger, would be so grievously injured in the process.

Severus shook his head; he was getting ahead of himself. First, Potter would save the world, then Granger. All the same, Severus knew if the Department of Mysteries were any indication, that Granger would need assistance if the future were to remain free of any more complications due to Potter’s existence.

Minerva made a sound from near the ward’s door, and Severus stiffened, his black eyes casting about the screened in portion of space around Granger’s bed. Minerva was trying to tell Severus to hurry, Poppy would be back at any moment, and if they were caught… Severus frowned, drawing his oak wand from his sleeve.

Severus felt like a teenager doing something that he should not, he was sure that Minerva felt the same.

Plots within plots, conspiracies within conspiracies, Severus felt a bit of satisfaction that he was doing something without the bidding of a master. He had the girl to thank for that feeling.

With a deep breath, Severus began weaving his spell.

He pictured Hermione Granger, the girl pale and near death below his wand’s movement, and, in his mind’s eye, remembered Hermione Granger, the woman.

She had been like a vision, that was, until she touched him.

It had been in his chambers, the pain of his Dark Mark thumping through his body. She and Draco Malfoy revealed themselves to him in a manner that seemed almost otherworldly, claiming that they desperately needed his help to stop Harry Potter from destroying their world. Severus had not believed, not fully, until afterwards, until the Dark Lord had left Little Hangleton and several events Granger and Draco described played out.

Severus began incanting silently as streams of visible magic; blue in colour began drifting down to encapsulate the girl’s body.

When she had touched him, it was like touching a warm current of electricity, a humming that stirred something deep inside his soul that he had believed had died long ago.
Desire.

So full of vitality and determination, the woman’s eyes glowed when they looked upon him. Severus wondered what she saw when she looked at him.

In her eyes, he saw himself reflected back in copies of darkness. In her voice, he heard tenderness, respect, and affection, all of which he wondered what he could have done to deserve. In her touch, he felt love, forgiveness, and power. He knew he was not deluding himself when he felt her love, Severus stopped deluding himself the day Lily Evans left his world to marry James Potter.

The spell was beginning to pain him, as he knew it would, but he set his jaw and continued, ignoring the blaze of pain that seared through his head. His pain was healing the girl’s wounds, and Severus knew that with every intricate movement of his wand, he was giving a piece of his life, his soul, to her.

Surely, that night almost a year earlier, the woman had been carrying a piece of him inside her, a piece that had kept her alive to meet him in that moment. The woman would not have been able to tell him that the reason he could not peer into her mind was because all he would see was himself, staring back at him. Surely, she could not tell him the things he had deduced in the time he left her in the graveyard at Little Hangleton to that moment.

Severus knew that he would live to see the Dark Lord’s demise. It had been little things, body language, gestures that had clued him into that fact. Draco Malfoy had been particularly stiff and wooden while the woman had been exuding warmth. He knew he had not survived to see their future.

It did not matter. Severus was used to playing the martyr although he hated it, and wished every other minute of everyday he could simply run away. In his darkest fantasies, he would find a woman much like Hermione Granger, and live his life. The Fates, however, had a different path in mind for him, and the spell that was beginning to pain him worse than the Torture Curse, had much to do with that path.

Sweat trickled from his temple, as did blood from his nose, but he continued.

He had fallen in love with the woman who the girl would become, and for her, as he wished he had done for Lily, he would sacrifice anything for a brighter day. Severus would heal the wrongs, or try to, by giving a slice of himself to the girl who would teach him what it was to hope and love again.

When the spell was over and the girl’s body glowed blue once more, Severus fell to his knees at her bed side, his forehead resting on the edge of the cot, his stiff hands touching her forehead and her hip.

Lily had been a fool—that was what Severus saw and heard in Hermione Granger’s eyes and voice. Severus could put Lily’s memory where it belonged, in the ground next to her dead lover. Severus had hope again with the girl under his hands.

He had to heal the wounds inside, and hope, that when the time came, that at his death, his soul would live on to care for Hermione Granger, seeing the world through her eyes and love through her heart.