Where the wizards bite back

Vanity Shattered

Chapter 3: What’s Done…

Suddenly, before Hermione could even process the various movements, Severus had leapt from the bed and was standing in front of her in one of the same-old, same-old St Mungo’s gowns that suddenly seemed so bizarre on him now that he wasn’t lying down, incapacitated, but was clearly very conscious and alive. Or not-alive. The words suddenly sprang up in her head, and she had to swallow down a bubble of hysterical laughter. What had she done, not just to him, but to herself?

His grip, if possible, had tightened on her wrist. In fact, it had not just tightened, it was tightening slowly but surely. “Sev—”

“No!” he growled.

“Prof—” she attempted again, but this time she broke herself off. That was no longer his title. She struggled for a way to address him, but the vice-like grip on her wrist distracted her, and she grimaced as she started up at him fearfully.

“Let me go!” she pleaded, finding a sentence that needed no address. He looked down at their juncture and, with a confused look at the squeezed-white flesh of her arm, released her.

“What—” he began to demand again, but this time she broke him off.

“We don’t have much time. The Healers will be here to check up on me soon, I’m sure—”

“Don’t you mean me?” he snapped back.

“No, me. They know nothing’s happening with you, but they don’t trust me.”

“With good reason, apparently… Miss Granger, I am still waiting for an explanation!”

The explanation—which, really, should only take her a few words—suddenly stuck in her throat.

“Miss Granger,” he growled with both exasperation and urgency.

“You were never going to wake up. The Blood-Replenishing Potion was killing you, and they couldn’t have cared less. I gave you… I… Blood. Vampire—”

The door of the private room suddenly swinging open, allowing Healer Bantam into the room, cut off her final word. She almost dropped the vials of liquid nourishment she was carrying when she raised her head to see Severus standing before her.

“Mr. Snape! You’re… I… Please, get back into the bed,” she suddenly pleading, laying the vials down haphazardly on the seat of the chair and almost lurching toward him to try and force him back into the bed.

“Do not touch me!” he almost yelled, leaping back from her. Hermione didn’t know if it was because she had just violated his privacy so and he didn’t trust this new woman or because he had understood what she had clumsily told him and knew that the Healers must not under any circumstances examine him. “Where are my clothes?” he demanded. “I must leave this instant!”

“Mr. Snape! Please, calm down. I don’t…” She paused now, her brain kicking into gear. “I’m not sure what’s going on here,” she said with a suspicious, glowering glance at Hermione, “but we need to get you lying down and checked out, Mr. Snape. There’s no possibility of you going anywhere just yet. You were on death’s door—”

“And now I am patently not,” he replied with a snide look that glancingly took in both the Healer and Hermione, who both squirmed a little under his gaze, although for different reasons. “Get me my clothes,” he insisted.

While Healer Bantam was momentarily lost for words, Hermione stepped toward him hesitantly and said, “Do you remember what happened to you?”

“Of course!” he scoffed.

“Well, then… you’ll understand why there are no clothes here for you. But,” she added hastily as he opened his mouth, presumably to attack her again, “I can Transfigure something for you… if you’ll just…” She had been about to say ‘give me that gown’, but then she had realised just how inappropriate a thing that was to say.

“I’ll get you another gown,” Healer Bantam suddenly piped up in a falsely-cheerful tone, like that you might hear used to dangerous insane people, and when she sprang towards the door, Hermione knew that she had gone not for another gown but for another Healer—or ten—to help her manhandle Snape into bed. Neither of them could afford to let that happen.

“I will not take it off. Do you have the skill to Transfigure it while I wear it?” he demanded imperiously. She had only allowed the slightest of pauses before he snapped, “Obviously, you have no skill at anything—Healing especially, apparently. Give me your wand! I will do it myself!”

“No!” Hermione replied, suddenly fearful as he reached toward her. “I can do it.” She took a deep breath, tried to clear her mind of the sound of her pounding heart, and then swished her wand while muttering the spell. A moment later, Snape was dressed in robes that, although made of thin fabric, were suitable for outdoor wear at this time of year. Not that he would be going outside…

“If you do not have my clothes, where is my wand?” he demanded, not even bothering to thank her or to comment scathingly on the robes.

“Aren’t you going to… say anything about…”

“Where is my wand, Miss Granger?” he quizzed in a voice that was growing increasingly like a panicked yell, a look of disgust, revulsion and almost… fear twisted on his face.

“It’s… I have it. It’s back at my flat.”

“Then we will go there. Immediately,” he hissed, almost grabbing her by the upper arm and then moving his hand away suddenly. “Let’s go, Miss Granger,” he continued when she did nothing but look up at him in bemusement. He yanked open the door and held it open for her, gesturing tersely for her to exit the room.

“Mr. Snape!” Healer Bantam was suddenly in the corridor in front of them as Hermione lead him from the room, and her voice was so sharp that Hermione almost flinched. “Please, get back into your room.”

“I will not. I am leaving this place full of incompetent dunderheads immediately. When this little chit,” he remarked snidely, gesturing to Hermione, “can cure what you cannot, it is most certainly time to leave!”

“Miss Granger!” Healer Bantam almost yelled in a scandalous voice. “What did you give him? What have you done to him?” she hissed, leaning toward the younger woman.

Now, Hermione positively bristled with anger. “You wouldn’t tell me what you were doing, so I have no intention of telling you. As you can see, Mr. Snape—” she finally picked up the correct form of address from the Healer “—is leaving the hospital under his own steam. He is fully himself—I can assure you of that,” she said with her own snideness now, glaring at Snape. “He has no further need of your assistance.”

Healer Bantam looked from one to the other in alarm for a moment. Then, she decided to take the solicitous, rather than bullying, route. “We need to check what she has given you, Mr. Snape. There’s no telling what it’ll do. It might kill you!” she added in a touch of high-pitched—and false—alarm.

Snape gave her a twisted smile then and replied, “I doubt that. Miss Granger will show me out.”

V---V

In the sixty seconds it took to make it to the fireplaces and then to Hermione’s flat via Floo, neither of them said a word. When Snape stepped into the middle of the room—which was lit only with the few sconce lights that came on automatically so that it wouldn’t be dark when she got home at night—and gave it a harshly appraising look, however, Hermione snapped.

“I’m sorry! It was the only way, I’m sure of it. There was no other way to save you!”

“Save me?” He spun to face her now and gave her a withering, patronising glare. “Save me? You haven’t saved me, Miss Granger. Please, get me my wand. I wish to leave.”

“I… I do have it, and I’ll happily give it to you, but I’m not sure… This is only a temporary measure. We can find a cure!”

Snape’s harsh, cruel laugh filled her tiny flat with ease. “Cure vampirism, Granger? Don’t you think they’ve tried that already?”

“Well, we’ll try again!”

“We?” he snorted.

“Yes! I work at the Charms Research Centre, and I have colleagues—well, a colleague—who I know is eager to help. And you yourself—”

“Miss Granger, my wand,” he snapped back. “Give it to me now or I will tear this place apart looking for it. But do not think you can force me to stay here!”

“I… uh, I lied. It’s not here. It’s at Gringotts.”

“Well—” he had been about to demand that she take him there, but then he had stopped himself. Although he hadn’t seen the sky, he knew instinctively that it was late… or at least too late for Gringotts to be open. “Was this a ploy, Miss Granger? To get me here? To keep me here? In this tiny little apartment with your one little bed?” he sneered, glaring at her. “Now that you’ve ‘sired’ me, you think I am your toy? Your exotic pet?” He advanced towards her now, much taller than her, much stronger than her, and with a malicious look on his face that made Hermione want to flee.

“Of course not,” she insisted, bravely standing her ground. “I wanted to help. I intend to help! And I’m sorry. I have no idea what it must be like for you right now… I have no idea how it must feel.... if you want to talk—”

“Shut up!” he sneered, turning from her abruptly. Then, crossing the room, he casually strode to the bed and lay down neatly upon it, crossing his ankles and placing his hands behind his head. “I will take the bed tonight. I will leave tomorrow evening when you have brought me my wand.”

“Where will I… Where will you… Oh!” Hermione suddenly let out as a frustrated yell and slumped into the chair.

There was no response to her outburst for a long while, and then suddenly, in a mockingly calm, moderated voice, he began to speak. “Pain has an element of blank… it cannot recollect… when it began, or if there was… a time when it was not…. It has no future but itself… its infinite realms contain… its past, enlightened to perceive… new periods of pain. Infinite, futureless realms of pain? That might be an apt way to describe the gracious gift you have given me, Miss Granger.”

Hermione’s retort—one full of surprise, curiosity, and defensive anger—was prevented by a sudden knock at the door. Reluctantly, almost wondering if it might be one of the Healers, she rose to her feet, safe in the knowledge that Snape wouldn’t be answering the door.

“You shouldn’t do it. It would be… dangerous. Unethical. Wrong. Find another cure, Hermione, I beg of you.” Dec was on her doorstep. She had just opened the door, and there had been no ‘hi’, no ‘I’m just heading home and thought I’d pop by’. He’d launched right into an invective she really didn’t need to hear, and a bitter anger toward him sprang up inside her. “I know, I know, I know. This might seem inconsistent of me,” he continued, apparently responding to her dumbfounded silence. “On paper, as an experiment, yes, this might be fantastic, fascinating, even. But Hermione… that blood,” he said emphatically, eyes wide, a meaningful expression on his face, as if he wanted her to agree that yes, she knew exactly what he meant, there had been something slightly off… “Hermione, it scared me. It was so tantalising, and it was only when you left that I realised that it was calling to me and… it’s just not a good idea.”

“Just what I would have said if I’d been consulted,” a low growl came from inside the shadowy room, and suddenly Dec realised that he wasn’t alone with Hermione. Staring over her shoulder, a shadow darker than all the rest was seemingly floating atop the bed.

“You’d… uh… better come in,” Hermione stammered out.

As he stepped over the threshold, Dec seemed to catch Hermione’s jitters, as he said, “I… I… didn’t mean… didn’t—”

“Shut up,” the man before him snapped disinterestedly, only staring up at the ceiling from the bed as Hermione closed the door behind her friend.

“Hermione?” Dec hissed to her. “What happened? I thought you were going to—”

“You must be the colleague from the CRC?” Snape interrupted him. He was still rudely reclining, and Hermione almost had the urge to snap at him as she once would have at Ron or Harry.

“I… am…” Dec replied reluctantly.

“Your services will not be required,” Snape said sharply.

“What—?” Dec spluttered, looking to Hermione for answers.

“He means about the… cure.” Saying the word suddenly made her feel ridiculously silly. Who had she been kidding?

Dec gave her a sharp look now, and then turning to Snape he said, “You know what, you mind at least sitting up while I talk to you? I like to look a guy in the eye when I’m telling him to fuck off.”

With a chuckle, Snape not only sat up, but stood. “Here we are…”

“Dec. Now, Snape, fuck off. Grow up. Get a grip. Hermione’s only doing her best for you!”

“Her best?” Snape snorted, but he had a wry, half-smirk on his face now as he stared at the other man, who was only an inch or so shorter than him.

“Yes. And if it’s not an ideal situation, then neither was letting you wither and die in St Mungo’s.” Dec’s voice was cool and clear now, and the two men were regarding each other surprisingly as equals. To Hermione, the air of trepidation that hung in the room only moments ago seemed to have vanished without a trace, replaced with an air of competition.

What happened next happened so quickly, she barely even saw the motion, only the end result: Dec pinned up against the wall, Snape’s teeth—suddenly, terrifyingly long, pointed teeth, bringing back memories of Greyback with a shudder—bared as he growled, “Now, you, Dec, fuck off. Get out. Before I do something Hermione will regret!” he threatened, and Dec’s calmness had vanished along with seemingly all the blood in his face.

“Snape! Let him go!” Hermione shrieked, rushing to the man’s side when she had recovered from the shock of his lightning fast movement. With a rough chuckle, Snape stepped back and let Dec almost slump to the floor. “Dec, are you—” Hermione asked, rushing to him and gripping his arm.

“I’m fine. Get off me, Hermione,” he said, suddenly shaking her off and stepping away from her, his hand on the door. “I’ll be going, then… I’ll see you tomorrow at work. Nine a.m., alright?” he said, but the question was not addressed at her. He was glowering at Snape as if that were a threat: ‘I know when she’s supposed to come to work. If you do anything to her, if she’s not there…’

“Goodnight, Dec,” Snape called after him, the mocking tone of his voice almost laughing.

“How could you?” Hermione began to shout as Dec slammed the front door behind him. She glared at Snape furiously, shoving her hand in her pocket to retrieve her wand. Instead, it alighted on the vial that she knew, instinctively knew, had held the vampire blood, although she had no conscious memory of placing it back in her pocket. She withdrew her hand from the pocket sharply and looked at Snape defiantly.

He shrugged nonchalantly. “I’m getting hungry,” he said in a low, teasingly threatening voice. Hermione blanched and unconsciously bunched her hand up into a fist and therefore into her sleeve, wanting to hide the cut with which she had fed him at St Mungo’s.

“I… uh…”

“Didn’t think of that?” he retorted knowingly.

“Well… this wasn’t as planned, you know? You got so much worse so suddenly, and—oh, damn and blast it! What do you want me to do? Why can’t you just… you know…” She gestured to the door, and he laughed at her coldly.

“You’ve created a monster that you now wish to inflict upon the world, Miss Granger? How very unlike you. Don’t you have a cat or something?” he asked blandly, making a play of looking around the room.

Hermione glared at him and clamped down on the urge to hit him or hex him or just shout and swear at him. “You are an infuriating man,” she ground out eventually.

“You are an irritating and frankly stupid woman. Anyway, before I have to feed off you—perish the thought!—do you have a Potions kit here? Dragon’s blood, perhaps?”

“You would want to drink that?” she let out thoughtlessly, a little moue of disgust arising on her lips.

Snape snorted. “You think that the blood of a human would be more fulfilling than that of such a strong and noble creature? Perhaps you think your blood would satisfy me more? Perhaps that’s why you were so eager to turn me into this monster. Is this a fantasy of yours, Miss Granger?”

“What!” she shrieked in small, high voice. “No!” she snorted in a lower, more disdainful, masterful voice, but she knew that she was blushing a little, and there was no way that this man would have missed that even before blood had become of such importance to him. She could see in his eyes and bitter, twisting smile that he had noticed, but how could she explain to him that it wasn’t a fantasy that made her blush, but the simple fact that she had already fed him some of her own blood, and she knew, just knew, that he would misconstrue that, too. His eyes were narrowing as he watched her, and she almost feared that he was inside her thoughts, reading every thought from the top of her head, when she burst out with, “Look, it was just necessary, okay? But you’re not having any more! You can… well, I don’t know… I hadn’t thought…”

“Oh, isn’t that just perfect? The little brave Gryffindor gives her blood to save the poor Slytherin’s life,” Snape snapped. “And she doesn’t have a plan for what to do afterwards. Well, your Gryffindor stupidity may have cost you your life, Miss Granger,” he threatened, now pacing toward her, pressing her up against the door where he had only minutes before pinned Dec.

“Snape, leave me alone! Just give me a minute to think!” she pleaded in a voice that almost, but not quite, sounded authoritative. He snorted in disgust, the air he expelled brushing over her face in a sharp breeze, and stepped back.

“Yes. Think. A little late, Miss Granger. Was it not enough that your saintly Dumbledore had me grovelling on the floor at Voldemort’s feet? Is it now necessary for me to continue my penance for eternity attacking, sucking dry innocent people? Is this my punishment?” he demanded, glaring at her darkly, all of the words spat between tight lips that he wouldn’t, just wouldn’t, let rear up and show the sharpened, elongated teeth that he felt against his tongue, against the soft interior of his bottom lip when he spoke.

Hermione looked at him in horror. “No! Not at all. This is not a… a punishment! How could you think that of me?” she demanded. “Please, just let me think a moment. I’ll work something out. There’ll be a perfectly logical way—”

“You know, your blood sings out to me to take it,” he interrupted her. His low voice seemed to shake her bones as his eyes, darker than ever before, bored into hers. “Does this, this vampire blood that you’ve given me”—he thrust his forearms out, as if to expose his veins to her, although his sleeves were completely covering them—“does it call to you?” He smirked and drew closer a second time. “It does, doesn’t it. That’s what that colleague of yours—”

“Dec,” she interrupted just so that she could prove that she could still speak, still respond, still be in control of herself if she wanted to be. What was happening? How could things have become such a mess so quickly? Why was it all so difficult? Why hadn’t she just stopped and thought for one second? Had it been the blood? Had it influenced her? The very idea caused bile to rise a little in her throat as she remembered the scent of it, the colour of it, the dark, opaque sheen.

“That’s what he meant, isn’t it? That it calls to you. To you both… I wonder why, Miss Granger?”

“It’s… it’s very old. Very powerful,” she stammered out, trying to respond rationally. “I do… I do have dragon blood. Will that be enough for tonight? Will that be… sufficient to… to what? Quench? Slake? Appease?”

“The thirst?” he growled deeply.

“Mmm,” Hermione said with a little quiver in her throat.

“How would I know?” he snapped back. “How much of—”

“Not much,” she hurried to say, not wanting to hear the words out loud. She was watching him in horror now, watching his hands clenching and unclenching into fists as if he were restraining himself from attacking her this very instant. “I’ll get it...” Giving up on speech, she flew to the drawer of the desk that she had dedicated to ingredients. Tugging it open, she was greeted by the clanking of glass against glass as the containers within shook. She riffled through them for a second and then lifted up a half-full vial of dark liquid.

Without another word, Snape was upon her, snatching it from her, and storming out of the room, into the kitchen, slamming the door behind him.

Hermione sucked in a deep, shuddering breath and bit back tears as she slumped against the desk. All of the tension in the room, all of the tension that had been holding her together during the past fifteen minutes, had swept out of the room with him, and she sagged a little as she tried to collect herself. She would have to go and find some way of obtaining a larger, more regular, less expensive source of blood for him. Why hadn’t she thought of that? She didn’t even really know how much he would need…

She sighed to herself and raised a hand to swipe at some of the tears that were still growing in her eyes.

“Self-pity is an ugly emotion, Miss Granger,” Snape’s low voice rumbled from behind her, and she suddenly realised that he had returned, looking as proper and severe as before, without her even noticing it.

Ignoring him, she said, “I’m tired. I think I’d like to sleep now, but…”

“You may have the bed.”

“No, no, that wasn’t what I meant. I can pad the desk, I can…” she babbled, and then she got a grip on herself and returned to her topic. “I’m going to need a way to guarantee that you will… stay here. And that you won’t…”

“Hurt you?” he sneered.

“Or steal my wand,” she added with a shrug. Why bother to dissemble? He was only going to be a bastard, no matter how nicely she tried to couch her words.

“Well, I am glad that you are at least now aware of the monster you have created.”

“You’re not a monster, you’re just a fucking arse,” she snapped back. “I’m going to need your word… well, I’m… actually…” she hesitated on the words, but again he seemed to divine her thoughts.

“You will not restrain me while you sleep, Miss Granger! I have never heard anything so ridiculous—!” he began to rant, but then he brought himself up short. “You will have the bed. I am, after all, a night person,” his lip curled with this phrase, “so I will spend my night checking through your research, which I assume is what is cluttering the desk you were intending to sleep on, and then, in the morning, I will be able to tell you just where you went wrong.”

Hermione glared at him. “That still doesn’t solve the problem of—”

“You have my wand, Miss Granger. That should be sufficient collateral.”

“You could steal mine.”

“So hide it. Stick it up your arse for all I would care. Do whatever it is you like to do with it,” he added with something of a more taunting, lascivious tone. Hermione looked a little scandalised and turned away from him, looking toward the bed.

“I’ll set up some wards…” she began to say, but then she felt suddenly stupid. What a horrible idea. He might hate her right now, but he wouldn’t harm her. He had had sufficient blood to slake him until tomorrow. And she did have his wand. How embarrassing her self-conscious mistrust of him was.

“You do that,” was his only retort as he walked toward her and, waving her aside, slid into her chair. He picked up the topmost parchment, and that apparently signalled the end of the conversation. Hermione chewed her bottom lip for a few seconds and then turned away quickly, her body suddenly covered in goosebumps from being next to him. He was horrible, a bastard, more than ever before, but he radiated… something. Maybe he was right. Maybe Dec was right. Maybe blood really did sing…

Hermione shook away the thoughts and busied herself with a single ward—on the door, her usual one. All the while, Snape completely ignored her. When she was done, she looked at him nervously, chewing her lip once again. He had begun attacking a notebook with a quill he had picked up from the desk, and he looked entirely engrossed in the task. She didn’t want to disturb him. She didn’t want to subject herself to his attitude again, to his biting tongue and dangerous presence.

That night, Hermione slept in her clothes.

~*~
Chapter four