you're too young & eager to love

Who needs plot when you have magic? That was my initial clever thought, except as I kept writing a plot developed, and the porn went southward. Ah, well.

I’m placing this under a cut, because my muse takes me to dark places. It’s also a touch on the long side.

Written on a whim, while eating cookies. Snape/Hermione. Set during the middle of the 7th book. A little, or well, hell, a lot of implied AU. I also made Bellatrix do a lot of various types of torturing to our poor girl Hermione, which is again mostly in implications, but just so … you know … Warnings all about!








“What have they tried?” His voice, that drawling snarl, makes Hermione’s throat as dry as oatmeal. Not him, she wants to say, but her mouth won’t cooperate – her tongue is heavy. Don’t they understand? He can’t be trusted, should have never been trusted.

She gropes blindly through fog and murk, reaching for Ron or Harry, and does not realize that her hand is already being held. When she turns, she thinks she tastes more than sees the green. She can't explain how that's possible, how the spell seeps into her mouth, her nose, without harming her, but then, something is wrong, and she can't explain that either. Hermione has seen the Cruciatus Curse in affect, she has watched others writhe under its power, and she thinks now is her time to suffer. Screaming hurts nearly as much as the pain causing it, and it won’t stop, won’t stop, won’t stop –

Muffled voices, and the taste of cold water on her lips. She drinks like a woman parched, and it is clean and so good that she almost cries when the glass is removed.

“Don’t move.” Harry says, sad eyes and blood on his clothes. “Your ribs are broken.”

And so much more.




“A Splintering Curse.”

“Is it – is it serious?”

Snape scowls, his ill and drawn features sharpening like a blade. “Your powers of presumption are astounding, Potter.” Harry bites his tongue, hard, barely able to stop himself from hurtling words at the Potions master. “It mutated – we don’t know why. The most logical reason would be that the caster was inexperienced. Her head will hurt.”

“That’s all?”

“No.” His voice, though characteristically low, takes on the match strike tone of annoyance. “We would be celebrating if that were all. The part of her mind that channels the magic, brings it to a focused point, is where the damage is located. She will not be able to use magic, not reliably.”

Harry’s fingers twist around the arm of his chair, and he darts a gaze to the girl asleep on the hospital bed. She looks pained, and he doubts she is dreaming. He tries to imagine what this will mean for her – for them, the lot of them in this war – and glares at Snape distrustfully. The cleverest witch of his generation, reduced to a time bomb. He runs his hands through his disheveled hair and groans.

“Best take that look off your face. It won’t do Miss Granger any help in recovering. And, Potter, you should be the one to tell her.”




He does, two days later, after she’s slept enough to be coherent. Brave, or too shocked to let the tears reach her eyes, Hermione stifles a sigh. “And … my wand?”

Harry lifts his shoulders helplessly. “Lost during the fight. I looked for it, I tried. Ron and I even – “

“It’s fine. It’s … It can be replaced.” She tries to squeeze his hand, but the pain in her mind won’t subside. It makes the tiniest noise feel like an earthquake is occurring between her temples. This is what she thinks Harry must feel like, his scar burning on his forehead daily, shattering his concentration. It is so hard for her to think, to just gather her wits about her, because maybe then she could help – research dutifully or remember some key ingredient that would work as a remedy.

“We’ll make it better.” He tells her, urging the words onto her like a promise, pressing his face against hers.

Because he's there, and safe, and as whole as any of them are ever going to be from here on out and she really, truly wants to believe, Hermione says, "All right."




The damage is extensive. The next day, exhausted and hurting, Hermione explodes the glass of water beside her bed without meaning to.

Snape returns once the nurses have finished removing the shards from her skin. They felt like shrapnel. He takes a seat beside her bed, not very close at all, and his robes somehow seem darker in the bright light of Mungo’s. She regards him wearily, her mouth twisted up with a look of distaste, like he’s sour. Snape stares down the bridge of his nose at her, smirking. But his voice is soft when he speaks – not kind, just a notch lower in decibels, mindful of the constant lightning pain in her head. “I need to know what they’ve tried, Miss Granger.”

She would laugh, if it were funny, if it wouldn’t hurt. There’s a file or a record with all of that information, but he’s bothering her for it instead. Hermione wonders if it’s a test but even the wondering starts to make her nauseous. “They had me on a series of ground-murtlap based potions, then a cocktail combination with elements of billywig stings, four different magic suppressants, each from the Collinian school of brewing, and a concentrate of willow bark."

“And you’re certain?”

“You are the one who taught us to deduce these things, Professor.”

“Mind your ego,” Snape chides her, but in a whisper that is almost brimming with pride.

“The pain – it’s sharp.” She pauses, gripping the sheets between curled fingers and looking up to the highest window. “I can’t help anymore, can I?”

“It wasn’t you who asked a favor of me, Granger.” He says it pointedly, so she bites the inside of her lip.

“Ron brought me orchids.” She blurts it out like a confession, even though they stand proud and lovely on the table beside her, easily apparent to anyone within ten feet. Snape raises an eyebrow and stares levelly at her until a feeling of uncertainty, like a cloak, starts to creep up her spine and down her shoulders.

“Yes, well, Mr. Weasley is full of oddities, isn’t he?”

“You would find politeness to be odd.”

Snape stands to leave, pushing the chair back with a tangling screech that causes the bile to rise in Hermione’s throat. She chokes it down, her hot eyes glaring at him, but before she can say anything he’s already removed his wand and taps it gently on her temple. A flood of relief, of instant, blessed, silence washes through her, and she gets a chalky taste on her tongue. It’s a soft numbness that makes her eyes heavy and, before drifting into sleep, she thinks of legilimency.




She startles from a dream that was black, black and something else, something she can't remember, the sibilant whisper of mudblood.

Ron is beside her, eager and, as always, a little awkward. “Hi.”

Hermione smiles, her long hair curling about her face, and she turns her cheek on the pillow towards him. He sits close, closer than Harry and definitely closer than Professor Snape. He holds her hand, gently, his fingers warm and soft against the inside of her palm. It’s funny – the symmetry that occurs between them – she had sat beside him once in a hospital ward, trying to bring him back to consciousness by sheer force of will. “Guess I owe you a life debt now, don’t I?”

He doesn’t know much about life debts, but he grins good-heartedly and rubs the back of his neck as though stricken with shyness. “Thing is – it was actually more the Professor that got you out of there. Snape was the one who knew about the bonding structure. The whole thing was absolutely bonkers, really.”

“Bonkers.” She echoes, managing another grin despite the uneasiness that settles against her chest.




The next time Snape visits he brings a bottle, already uncorked, and smelling medicinal. She wrinkles her nose at it, frowning, and the dark-haired man rolls his eyes impatiently. “Powdered manticore hair?”

“Drink it, you obnoxious know-it-all.”

She does, and then there is nothing that can keep her awake.




By the fifth potion, he is obviously frustrated by his lack of success. He’s almost grinding his teeth.

“I would like to be awake, you know, for more than three hours a day. If it’s possible. Pain or not. Now I’m ridiculously useless sleeping all the time.”

“I can’t imagine how a pubescent child could be helpful in a fight that already possesses a legion of the most talented and skilled Wizards, Healers, and Sayers.”

Hermione wrinkles her brow but meets his indignant gaze easily. “You should have asked Dumbledore. He liked me.”

They’re both shocked when he laughs. It isn’t a full out bray of glee, but it’s certainly more than a chuckle. “Good day, Miss Granger.”




They do more tests. Quantities and qualities and some of them make her retch; some of them make her feel as though her insides are splitting. Snape’s face is impassive throughout. As a curtsey, to her or the other patients on her wing, Hermione is granted a private room. It has many windows, and she keeps the curtains open to allow in as much sunlight as possible.

Waking at night, she moves to the door and opens it, expects to find Ron half asleep against the wall like a guard dog. Instead, she sees Snape – more disheveled than usual. She watches and finally he tells her, an admission he seems to have been battling with, “I took you from Bellatrix.”

Hermione doesn’t tell him that she’s aware of this fact. She means to say thank you but instead she says, “Only parts,” and closes the door quickly.




Hermione starts walking. Takes slow strolls around the hospital, even though all the noises make her feel faint. She can’t stand to just spend the hours in that bed though, no matter how many times a spell is done to keep the sheets freshly warmed. There isn’t a smell of sickness about her; she isn’t missing any limbs. For all noticeable purposes, she is still the same girl, the same heroine. Except she feels neutered – the one time she did try a charm, a simple levitation trick, the book she was attempting to lift burst into flames. She had been using a borrowed wand, naturally, but her considerable amount of talent would never have allowed such a charm to go that wrong. And then of course she had almost blacked out from the pain.

She can feel her magic, crawling and prickling beneath her skin, but she can’t contort it anymore. It’s a heartbreaking and lonely condition.

Hermione has always, always, trusted words. She turns to them and can’t find a note of helpfulness. She does, however, find a piece of parchment next to her bed when returning from a short walk on a gloomy afternoon. "The powdered blistercalf hooves helped. The fanged geranium sap worked."

When he appears the next day, she thinks about touching him – a gesture of gratitude, that is – but she doesn’t.




It is not quite like being cornered. She is aware that the hour is late, that he is brewing enough supply of a potion reduced from the sap to last four more doses – the seemingly appropriate prescription. Already her mind feels better, the pain subsiding to a throb, and she thinks nothing of the moon in the sky and the darkened stars. Nothing of the closed door or the way she sits on the bed, knees drawn close, flipping halfheartedly through a photo album of all the previous years – Ron had been kind enough to drop it off earlier.

For a man who needs to speak, Snape is conspicuously silent. Finally he drones out words that hit the air with a slithering pace. "If I brought back only parts, you were the one who willingly left the others behind."

Her copper eyes look up at him, wide, and she frowns at the implication. With a glance inside his cauldron, Snape steps away from it, toward her. He comes particularly close to where he can reach her if he stretches his arm out. And he does. He brings up a hand, spread wide, and keeps it within view of her eyes, touching the pointer and middle finger ever-so-lightly to her cheek. Hermione tries to think of all the breathing exercises, all the mental tricks that she’s ever heard, tries to see if they will work on blind panic, but it's hard to think with his skin pressed against hers, no matter how light the touch.

He asks, "Was it like this?" which is good and not good. It forces her to focus, to measure and determine the words. It is not a question she wants to think about.

“No.”

“Bellatrix can like to play.” Snape doesn’t sound solemn, but he speaks with a slow smile, a movement of his mouth that suggests a sharp sort of melancholy. “But she isn’t gentle.”

“I don’t – “ Hermione is stark still, her lips open, the album forgotten on the bed. Her knees are down, no longer brought up against her as a buffer. “I don’t inspire that in people, it would seem.” It’s a clever response, she thinks, given the foreignness of the situation.

His fingers remain where they are, not an ounce more of pressure exerted. "Me neither."

She dips her eyes down, watches his fingers. She has avoided his hands up until now because despite their masculinity, they are elegant. Hermione remembers all sorts of things about Bellatrix's attack. Mostly, though. she remembers long fingers digging into her skin, pressing at tender areas, pulling at her hair, twisting at broken pieces. She has avoided his hands because they control his wand, his brewing, all of the things he does with such expertise and they seem infinitely dangerous. She has avoided his hands because they are his agents of touch, and these days she has trouble with that.

She has trouble with many things, now.

“Bellatrix … could be clever with her hands.” He tells her this carefully, a hint of relinquishment in his voice. His voice that doesn’t seem to change, that keeps the slow hiss no matter the occasion, like a serpentine metronome.

“The insane ones tend to have that skill.” In an act of bravery that has nothing to do with curiosity or affinity or anything other than simple need, she squeezes his hand before pushing it away.




A week later, when she fumbles angrily at the top button of his robes, he looks down at her in what might be valid surprise. “Hermione.” And it’s the first time she’s ever heard him say her name – neither kindly nor cruelly – and she tries to counter with his, but it tastes awkward and uncertain, so she settles for saying nothing. His lips twist slightly in the wake of her silence. “Experimentation is always necessary.”

“Yes,” She says with a nod, and it sounds like a hiss – it sounds like his tone. A wave of self-disgust hits her back, rolls her shoulders forward. She runs her small hands from his robes to his throat, and he looks down at her, unsurprised, unthreatened. Each movement is a blister in her stomach. He touches her cheek, and Hermione shakes her head. “No.” So he moves his hand and presses it over the one she has at his neck. She is breathing hard, the instinct to flee rising heavily inside of her, but she shakes her head again. “No.”

The Professor moves his hand to her throat then, his fingers easily spanning its entire length, wrapping over a bit. She keeps her eyes on him and hopes that they don't look wild. It’s her move, so she slides her hands around, settles them - one wrapped over the forearm that doesn't bear another man's mark and one spread wide just below the hollow of his chest.

He presses himself into her fingers, just a bit. “Testing me, Miss Granger?”

She holds steady, still a lioness at heart. “No. But maybe myself.”

Snape hears this as approval, his hands travel upward, and his thumbs brush along her spine. He learns her, the way he must have learned recipes for potions years ago – steadily, unhurried, but with a natural talent. His palms skim to the front of her, cupping at her breasts. He swipes his tongue along hers and her body responds with a soft oh. His right hand steals to her back again, pressing insistently forward, and she slides so that she rests over him. Earlier, much earlier, with Viktor, and in more than a few of her fantasies, Hermione has thought about what sex is, what sex would be. This was not it. Not this press of cotton and wool, not this nearly-chaste chasing of a man's tongue against hers. Not she having to be the one to press back, before he surges up against her, further into her mouth, further into her legs.

She rocks then, against him, and heat burns up into her stomach, more sweet than painful, more electric than hot.

Hermione bites his mouth and untangles herself. “Gryffindors. We aren’t traitors.” She sounds like she’s repeating the definition of a word, newly remembered.

Snape, infinitely unflustered, raises an eyebrow. “Unless your name is Peter Pettigrew.”

“No.” She shakes her head, stands, and she hates the way her hands are shaking while he remains as still as alabaster.

He makes a noise from his throat, a condescension but bristling with understanding. He is not the type to take without asking, no matter the prize.

He learned patience, years ago, with another clever witch, equally full of muddled blood and hair as red as sunsets.