Chapter Text
That night, Hermione was too daring.
Since the memory had left her in peace all day (apart from the fuzzy feeling in her head) and because she’d been able to sleep at Severus’s without any problems, she decided to forgo the Dreamless Sleep Potion. She couldn't keep using it forever anyway, was reluctant to rely on it any longer than necessary.
And for the first hour or two, she actually slept reasonably peacefully.
Then the first nightmares began to haunt her.
She was at St Mungo's and entered a treatment room where a patient was waiting for her. The patient was Ron, who pushed the door shut behind her. Suddenly, she was tied up, and he unpacked a Muggle surgical kit.
She was in the forest with Severus to collect potion ingredients. It was bright and warm, scattered rays of sunlight filtering through the foliage to the ground. Then it got dark. Hermione stopped and looked up to the treetops. She turned to Severus in surprise, and his hand hit her directly in the face. She fell backwards to the ground, and by the time she’d blinked away the tears that had welled up in her eyes, he was upon her. His black hair was red, and he murmured, “I thought you liked me!”
At that point, Hermione came close to waking up; close enough to feel the panic, the thundering of her heart.
And the weight on her chest.
But she didn't quite manage to escape the nightmares.
She was in a pitch-black room. Ron's fake laughter echoed from the walls. She pressed her hands over her ears, but it didn't help. The laughter was in her head. She screamed.
Hermione was at the Ministry of Magic, defending their proposed law. She couldn't see the Ministry officials' faces because two large lights were pointed directly at her; everything around her was engulfed in darkness. She was just beginning to read out her speech when she heard a voice from the darkness beyond the light. “Crucio!” The curse hit her straight in the forehead.
She was tied to the tree, Ron standing in front of her with a knife. But instead of Voldemort, her mother was standing behind him. The white nightgown reached down to the forest floor. “You weren't worth suffering any longer,” she said and then turned to Ron. “Be creative!” And he was.
“No!” Hermione screamed, and apparently not just in her dream, because she heard herself, and that was what finally woke her up.
She fumbled for the light switch and threw two books, her wand and a glass of water on the floor until she finally found it. The light hurt her eyes, and she rubbed her forehead.
Breathe!
Several minutes passed until her heartbeat slowly calmed down. Then there was a loud knock on her front door.
Hermione flinched, staring at her bedroom door as if it’d just grown ears. She struggled out of the tangled duvet. Her feet immediately went cold as she walked across the dark corridor. She opened the door a little. A young man of perhaps twenty-five stood in front of it, wearing only a T-shirt and boxer shorts, the laces of his trainers hanging open at the sides. “Is everything okay? I heard you scream several times.”
Heat rose to her face. “Yes, I'm sorry. I was just having a bad dream, I'm fine.”
“Okay …” he said slowly, not convinced.
“Thanks for asking, but everything is okay, really.” She tried to smile, and it felt like she'd never done it before, like her muscles didn't know how to do it anymore.
Then he suddenly leapt forward, pushed her into the flat along with her door and pulled a knife out of his shorts, holding it right in front of her face.
With a strangled scream on her lips, Hermione bolted upright in her bed. It was dark, pitch-black even, and silent. She switched on the light. Her heart was racing as if she had just finished a sprint, a layer of cold sweat on her forehead. She leant against the headboard, her legs bent, and ran both hands over her face. It was two o'clock in the morning.
Around half past two in the afternoon, Hermione got into the shower. After that nightmare rollercoaster in the early hours of the morning, she’d taken the Dreamless-Sleep after all, a large dose of it, and had slept until two o'clock. The fuzzy feeling in her head had disappeared, her memory was calm thanks to the after-effects of the potion. She had about two and a half hours ahead of her during which she could almost pretend like nothing had changed.
When she knocked on Severus's door just before six, that brief period of catching her breath had already passed, though. The vehemence of the memory fighting its way back into her consciousness had lessened, but she still had to be careful.
“You look better,” Severus noted after they’d sat down.
“I took your advice to heart and got plenty of sleep.” She lowered her voice before adding, “Right after I stumbled through several nightmares.”
Severus just raised an eyebrow.
“But I'm clear-headed again, so it could be worse.”
“How strong is the memory?” he asked.
“It's manageable. I'd like to look at it again here.”
“Would you like to talk first?”
She thought for a moment, then she shook her head. “No, I'd rather talk afterwards.”
Severus nodded curtly.
Hermione took a deep breath. “See you in a bit then.” And dropped her resistance.
Again, looking at her memory this time was different from before. Again, something else took centre stage. This time it was something that she hadn't previously realised was part of the experience: anger.
The fear, the pain, the helplessness, the hopelessness—everything faded beside the raging anger. When Voldemort pushed her into Ron's arms, she wanted to throw herself at him and claw his eyes out. When Ron tied her to the tree, she wanted to scream at him until her voice broke. When he came at her with the knife, she wanted to rip it out of his hand with the power of her mind alone and ram it straight into his stomach.
She felt like a balloon about to burst. Like a raging wolf, she struggled against the magical restraints and if she hadn't been in her memory, where everything had already happened and the course of events was set, she would probably have done it until her wrists broke and she would still have found the strength to blow a crater in the ground.
Hermione had never felt such unbridled rage before. Again, she began to seriously doubt Severus's statement that she wasn't feeling anything new here, just remembering it. If she’d really been so angry back then, everything would have been different.
Or would it?
She awoke from the memory with a grunt so full of frustration and disgust that she was frightened of herself. But not enough to make the feeling go away. She jumped up and paced the living room, panting.
“You don't look panicked,” Severus observed. He stood up as well and leaned against the back of his armchair, his arms crossed.
“No, I'm angry!” Hermione replied with a growl. She didn't know she was even capable of such a tone.
“Oh?”
She ran her fingers through her hair. Her body was so full of energy that it seemed to be humming. She wanted to smash something or hit something or punch something—anything!
“I'm angry at Ron,” she elaborated instead, not looking at Severus. “How could he do that? Why didn't he put up more of a fight? Why did he just give up and do those things?” Her voice had grown louder and louder. “WHY?”
Severus snorted. “You don't just fight back against an Imperius from the Dark Lord.”
Hermione whirled around and glared at him. “Yes, Severus, you do! Harry shook it off when he was fourteen! You fight it even if it's the last thing you do!” Then she continued pacing.
“Potter was able to fight it because there was a part of Voldemort's soul in him. You can't put an Imperius on yourself, a part of him has always remained clear.”
“He also shook off the Imperius from Barty Crouch Junior,” Hermione insisted.
“Voldemort doesn't like to be controlled, no matter whose body he's in. And Barty Crouch Junior was not Voldemort,” Severus objected, but his voice sounded softer than before, as if he was no longer seriously trying to reach her.
And indeed, his words passed her by almost unheard. “I could scream, I'm so furious!” She literally spat out the words. “I'd love to tie Ron to that bloody tree and wave that bloody knife in front of his face and cut swear words into his skin and torture him with the Cruciatus, over and over, until he cannot breathe! I'd beat him until he didn't know which way was up and which way was down! I'd …” She gasped and pressed her hands to her head as if that could compress the rage that seemed to be splitting her skull. “I'd kill him! And …”
“Please, Hermione … stop!”
The sound of Severus's voice was so strange that it actually got through to her. She halted and looked round at him. He was still leaning against the armchair, but he had his hands pressed against his head, just as she had seconds before, and was leaning forward as if he were in pain. He groaned softly.
“Severus!” Her anger vanished, just dissipated as if it had never existed. “What's wrong?” She was at him in three long strides and touched his shoulder.
He jerked both arms up, pushing her away. His eyes met hers, but he didn't seem to see her. It was as if he were looking into a parallel world.
“Can you hear me?”
He nodded, his face contorted. “Don't touch me!” he muttered, running his fingers through his hair. She could see his vein throb violently.
“I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to trigger you!” murmured Hermione, gnawing on her lower lip.
Severus left the sitting room, staggering a little, his arms outstretched in front of him. She heard him turn on the water in the kitchen.
Bugger.
It was several long minutes before he returned, but when he looked at her then, he actually saw her and not a brutal past.
Hermione had just been standing there the whole time. Trembling. Her heart was pounding hard, and a weight on her shoulders seemed to push her to the floor. “Are…are you okay?” she finally asked in a trembling voice.
Severus nodded. He looked exhausted, breathing heavily like a runner after a sprint. “Can we sit down?”
“Of course.” It was only when she walked around her armchair that she realised how wobbly her legs felt. “I'm so sorry!”
“I know.” Severus took a few sips of water.
“Why didn't you say anything?”
He snorted. “I did.”
“Yes, when it was already too late!”
“It happened very suddenly. The potion stopped working.”
“The potion stopped …” echoed Hermione incredulously, then she realised. “You’re taking your potion all the time when I'm here?”
He rubbed his face. “Of course I do. How did you think I could support you with this otherwise?”
Her eyes widened, something hot swelled inside of her. “You said you could handle the memory!”
“That doesn't mean it doesn't bother me.” He took another sip of his water. His hand trembled slightly as he put the glass down again.
“You should have told me that!”
He looked at her sharply. “And then what?”
“Then I would have asked someone else to help me!”
“Who would you have asked? Who would you have told?” he taunted.
Hermione pressed her lips together, closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths. “Anyone but you,” she said curtly.
“Don't fool yourself,” he said bitterly, “You don't have anyone else to tell.”
Hermione's breath caught for a moment. When she could breathe again, she crossed her arms in front of her chest.
“Neither have I,” Severus added, “This is between you and me.” He looked at her, his gaze causing the fine hairs on her arms to stand on end. “Besides that, it wasn't a problem until the potion stopped working.”
Hermione cleared her throat. “How did that happen? Did you dose it wrong?”
“I don't dose potions wrong!” Severus wrinkled his nose.
“Then what happened?”
His jaw muscles bulged. He looked at her moodily, but Hermione only raised her eyebrows. “I'm having a hard time drinking enough of it.”
She frowned, trying to understand that statement. The amount of potion Severus had given her for an entire shift at St Mungo's would fit in a shot glass.
And then she remembered what he’d said the night he’d given her the potion for the first time. You can't take it too often or you'll develop a resistance to it. “How much exactly do you have to take for it to work?” she asked slowly.
Severus slowly tilted his head left and right. “About one glass for an hour,” he said quietly, glancing at his water glass.
Hermione gasped. “That stops now!” she decided. “My memory is weak enough, I can manage on my own. It's your turn again.”
He laughed bitterly. “And how will you continue to support me?” he asked sharply.
“Just like you did. Unlike you, I only have to take a shot glass of your potion to get by for a few hours.”
“At the moment,” he rumbled.
“You've hardly developed that resistance in the last four days.”
He growled softly.
“How long, Severus?”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “About a year.”
She nodded. “We should get this over and done with before.”
He was silent for a moment, visibly unhappy with her decision, a muscle underneath his eye twitching repeatedly. “Fine!” he rumbled at last. “And what are you going to do about that party on Saturday?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “I don't see what's wrong with taking your potion there, too.”
“You shouldn't overdo it. The memory and its effects can't be switched off forever.”
“Are you speaking from experience?”
“Naturally.”
“What happened?”
Severus took a deep breath but let it escape mostly unused before he said, “When I found out the right composition of the potion and realised that it actually worked the way I had imagined, I took it for almost two weeks straight. I started hallucinating and went through hell for three days.”
“Charming,” Hermione replied flatly, “But I don't intend to take it for that long. I'm on night shift for the next few days, maybe I'll be lucky and it'll be quiet. In any case, I'll take it as rarely as possible.”
He nodded. After a few seconds of silence, he said, “What I said before …” He twisted his face. “I meant that. Weasley didn't stand a chance against the Imperius of the Dark Lord. You can’t compare Potter to him. The only other person who could have stood up to him was Albus. And Minerva would probably have made it difficult for him out of sheer stubbornness.”
Hermione smiled briefly, but it faded quickly. “You couldn’t oppose him either,” she remembered.
“No.”
She thought about his assessment. It had never occurred to her that the Horcrux part of Harry could have prevented Voldemort from controlling him completely. But it hadn't occurred to her that she could harbour so much anger towards Ron until just now either. Perhaps Ron really hadn't stood a chance. But her anger didn't care much about that at the moment. It burned inside her like alcohol on an open wound.
Severus huffed sharply. Only then did she realise that he was watching her and that her thoughts had probably been at least partially reflected on her face. “How did you get on with Weasley back then if you resent him that much for what he did?”
“Do you really want to talk about that?”
“As long as you don't start plotting his torture again, I'll be fine.”
“Okay,” she said softly. “I'm feeling this anger for the first time today.” She brushed her forehead. “I didn't realise it was in me.”
“It must have been hard for you, though.”
“Yes, very much so. Ron had a hard time accepting that I suddenly didn't want to be with him anymore. He wanted to know why.” She furrowed her eyebrows, wrinkling her nose.
“What did you tell him?”
“Nothing.” She lifted her shoulders, dropped them again. “What was I supposed to say? I wasn't going to lie to him.”
Severus raised an eyebrow.
“For me, there's a difference between not telling someone and lying to them.”
“Touché,” Severus murmured. “Since you're still friends, I assume he gave up at some point?”
“Yes, at some point …” She lowered her gaze to her hands. “After you gave me the potion that silenced my memory, I thought maybe I could be with him after all. I thought I could forget it eventually.” She laughed mirthlessly. “It was a really bad idea. Ron realised it himself. He said it was like I wasn't really there when we were together. He ended it then and finally stopped asking what had changed.”
“That’s surprisingly sensible,” Severus said.
“He's become frighteningly sensible, especially since he had children. But he had his moments back then, too,” Hermione replied with a smile. She looked at Severus, second after second passing by in silence. There had been a time when she hadn't managed to hold his gaze for five seconds; today, she wouldn't even have noticed if it had been fifty. “I should leave,” she finally said.
Severus nodded and stood up. “I'll get you a vial of my potion. I calculated seven drops per hour for you. Now that your memory has lost its power, you can try five or six.”
“Okay. When would you like to continue with your next memory?”
“Next week,” he said, “I need a break.”
Hermione nodded. “That's a good idea. I'll send you an owl when I know when I'm off.”
Severus went down to the lab and returned a little later with a glass vial in his hand. He still didn't seem to be happy that she would be the one handling the potion now. But he still gave it to her. “You can still come here,” he said quietly. “I'm not … incapable of listening to you.”
“I know that, Severus.” She touched his hand as she took the vial from him, giving him a smile.
If such a thing as fate existed, it was merciful to Hermione over the next few days. The night shifts she worked at St Mungo's were largely quiet. She did a lot of paperwork and checked the stocks when there were no patients to treat. The only thing she had trouble with was staying awake; her days were exhausting, she didn't get much restful sleep, and so she slumbered off several times, hunched over the records. Fortunately, a part of her never seemed to forget that she was at work because before she could sink too deeply into her nightmares, she woke up again—her heart pounding and her hands clammy, but at least without parts of the memory haunting her.
She only had to resort to Severus's potion once. Pauline's knock snapped her out of a state of absent-mindedness. “We need you, Hermione! I've never seen anything like that, cuts everywhere. He says it was a plant, but he won't tell us which one. Probably something illegally grown …”
Hermione brushed her hair from her face. “I'll be right there,” she said.
“Hurry up, he's losing a lot of blood!”
“I said I was coming!” Hermione snapped. Pauline's horrified look made her cringe. She brushed her forehead. “I'm sorry. Give him a Blood-Replenishing Potion, I'll be right there.” Pauline nodded silently, and after closing the door, Hermione pulled Severus's potion out of her pocket and counted five drops directly into her mouth. She had a pretty good grip on her memory by now, but not good enough to face a patient with numerous cuts without this potion.
When she finished her last night shift on Friday morning, she handed over the ward to Patrick. They hadn't seen each other since he’d sent her home early. “Are you feeling better?” he asked.
Hermione smiled tiredly at him. “Yes, I do.”
This time, he seemed to believe her. But perhaps only because no one looked particularly well after working three night shifts in a row. Of course, she didn't tell him that she spent long hours during the day being tormented by nightmares that dragged her back into the forest before she reluctantly reached for some Dreamless-Sleep.
She didn't tell him she might even be developing an actual fear of sleeping, either. It was her goal to go without the potion as soon as possible since sleeping with it was different; she was no less physically refreshed afterwards, but mentally it was stressful. The human mind needed dreams. Switching them off for longer periods of time made her feel mentally sluggish, as if too much paperwork had piled up on a desk—it took her a long time to find what she was looking for, and notes kept getting lost.
But each of her attempts ended with her shivering and sobbing in the bathroom, running cold water over her wrists to get rid of the feeling of being tied up. Or throwing her crockery against the wall in a fit of rage until she couldn't find anything more to throw—which only doubled her anger. Without the Imperturbable Charm she’d put on her flat, she would probably long be in trouble with her neighbours or reported to the police. Yesterday, her attempt ended in the bathroom, retching some bile into the toilet because the pain of long-cancelled Cruciatus curses had overwhelmed her to the point of nausea. Without the potion, it wasn't just her head that was suffering, but her body too.
“How are you getting on with the first draft?” Patrick asked then, snapping her out of her thoughts.
What was he talking about? First draft … Oh, right. The law. “Pretty well,” she replied as she hung her healer's cloak in the wardrobe. In the last few days, she’d actually used the time she hadn't spent working, sleeping or immersed in her memory to formulate a draft from the key points of their last meeting. “I'm off on Thursday, maybe we can meet then?”
He squinted one eye as he thought about that. “Mornings would work, but the kids are at home and my wife has to work.”
“That’s fine by me. What time?”
“Around ten?”
“All right. Will I see you before then?”
He laughed briefly, then looked at her with a furrowed brow. “Yes. Tomorrow at your party, Hermione.”
She slapped a hand to her forehead. “Right.” She’d only skimmed the guest list and then put it aside. “See you tomorrow then!”
With her last few days of work before the party gone, her anxiety about seeing Ron again skyrocketed. After sleeping for a few hours, she returned to her memory. By now, it was getting harder to let herself fall into it as if she were reliving it. Sounds from her flat became more and more audible, and the hooting of an owl at her window jolted her out of it completely. That had never happened before. Apparently, her mind now preferred to terrorise her with unwanted repetitions in her sleep.
And then it was suddenly time for her to get ready for the party. She counted Severus's potion into a small glass, drop by drop. To be on the safe side, she’d decided to take six drops per hour. The party started at six, and because the Weasleys all liked to party, she calculated eight hours. She emptied the glass in one go and put it in the sink, then thought about whether she had forgotten anything else, took a deep breath and left.