Chapter Text
The first time he blinked awake, there was a voice, vaguely familiar, and something cold on his scorching face.
Then he passed out again.
The second time he woke up, there was no voice and nothing cold, not even light, only the memory of trepidation, of failing, of uselessness …
… and pain.
So much pain …
It choked him until he escaped back into darkness.
His third waking up wasn’t as fleeting as the others and he wasn’t sure if he liked it.
There was light hurting his eyes, pain flooding back, and …
Something cold on his scorching face.
“Professor?”
He carefully moved his tongue against the roof of his mouth. It felt … furry? And it tasted as if something had died on it.
Ugh …
But his movements didn’t go unnoticed.
“Here, take a sip.”
A straw was guided to his lips and he tore them open, sticky as they were. Then, there was something cold in his mouth as well, and oh! He’d never felt and tasted something more divine than that!
If only he wouldn’t have to swallow the water down.
He gasped when the sharp, burning pain shot through his throat, and with the pain came another memory: Nagini.
The next gasp was from a sudden rush of panic and he nearly choked on the water.
“Please, sir, easy! You’re safe! But you’ll damage the stitches, please!”
He blinked rapidly until his vision somewhat cleared and the light didn’t hurt as much anymore, then he looked around for the source of that vaguely familiar voice while he tried to calm his thundering heart.
Why was he even alive?
Wasn’t he meant to die?
Who had …
Granger.
Her face swam into his field of vision and …
Hadn’t she been there as well?
The Shrieking Shack, he … he’d seen her there, hadn’t he?
What was she doing here now? Why was she … caring for him?
He tried to articulate just a single one of this myriad of questions but all he managed was a pathetic gurgle.
“It’s all right,” Granger said and tried to smile, “it will take you some more days before you’ll be able to speak again. But you will be! Able to speak again, I mean. And you … we did it. Voldemort is dead, Harry lives, you live, it’s …” She sniffled. “It’s fine. Go back to sleep, you need to rest.”
The Dark Lord was dead.
And Potter lived? How was that even possible?
But Granger's words worked like a charm and his eyes closed on their own accord, dragging him back down.
When he woke up the next time, it was night and he could open his eyes without being stabbed into his brain.
Unfortunately, he still couldn’t see much.
What silhouettes he was able to distinguish, hinted at him being at St Mungo’s. Clinical walls with a bland landscape painting (or was it a still life?), a generic wardrobe, and – most unmistakable – side rails on his bed. They were cold underneath his fumbling fingertips.
Had Granger really been here? Or had he been hallucinating? Maybe it'd been just a mediwitch and he'd …
Maybe he'd only imagined her because … because she'd been there. In the Shrieking Shack. When he'd … died.
Or not died, apparently.
Yeah, that … that sounded about right. Why should she be here after all? That was ridiculous.
When he carefully turned his head to the right, he saw another bed, another side rail, and a heap that his muddled brain slowly interpreted as the silhouette of another patient.
Marvellous …
He puffed and tried to swallow before he remembered that his throat was in shreds.
Ouch.
Holding his breath for long enough to cause his lungs to hurt, he counted through the pain and eventually exhaled slowly. Then he closed his eyes and tried to fall back asleep but to no avail. He might still be excruciatingly exhausted but rested enough for his brain to start spinning.
Plus he realised how wretched he was feeling.
His back hurt from lying for too long, his skin hurt, probably from the fever he had, his face and his whole body still felt like it was on fire, and his head was pounding because it always did. He couldn’t remember the last day he’d spent without a headache.
Gods, I wish I'd died …
But it didn’t seem as if he had a choice.
He slowly disentangled his hand from the blanket and felt the bandages covering his throat. They were thick and yet it hurt touching them.
Fuck.
Doesn’t this blasted hospital have a bloody pain-relief potion?!
He turned his head to glance at his bedside table but there was only a glass of water and something longish that he needed shockingly long to recognise as his wand. He reached for it, almost brushed it from the table, wincing from twisting his sore back, and eventually got a hold of it. “Lumos!” he whispered but nothing happened.
Well … so much for that.
He kept it in his hand still, if only because he probably wouldn’t be able to put it back and he didn’t want to wake his roommate trying.
Panting, he lay back and closed his eyes against the pain pulsing in his whole body. Merlin, he would kill for a cold shower. But when he peeled his blanket aside he began shivering within minutes. Bloody hell …
Keeping one leg under the blanket, the other above it, he waited for the night to fade, and after satisfying his insomnia for an hour or two, he even fell back asleep.
It was a landscape painting and it was bland as he found the next day when he focussed his entire attention on it while a mediwitch cleaned him, his bed, and the wounds on his neck.
“It’s good you’re awake, Professor Snape, but you’ll need some more days to … recover. Healer Sanders will come in later and talk about your prognosis.”
Prognosis?
He glared at the young woman who he’d taught some years ago but just as back then she was proficient in avoiding his eyes. Before she left, she brushed back the curtain she’d closed before he’d woken up to grant him some privacy.
And when she was gone and Severus peered to the other bed, he took a sharp breath.
Granger?!
She was his roommate?!
“Hello, sir,” she said meekly and smiled awkwardly.
Well, that was worse than hallucinations!
“What … you … here?!” he managed to hiss, regretting it instantly, though.
But really! Didn’t this blasted hospital have enough bloody rooms to accommodate him away from his former students?! What was next? Potter and Weasley visiting her only to see him like this?!
His surging rage spiralled him higher and higher up a spluttering, hissing fit that cost him so much energy that the room began to spin and he felt like passing out.
“Oh, no, no, no, no! Please, sir! You have to calm down!”
He shied away from Granger who was suddenly standing by his side again, her hands raised as if she wanted to touch him but didn’t dare to.
Well, she’d better not!
But she grimaced being faced with his rage and inability to articulate it the way he usually did. “I know, this is … somewhat less than perfect.”
Oh, is it?!
“But it’s … Well, the hospital is in chaos. It’s been five days since the battle at Hogwarts and … There are still so many wounded … And we are …” She shut her mouth, glancing down at her white hospital gown.
What? What are we?
But he needed to snap his fingers before she met his eyes again. “Well … I don’t know that much about your status, sir, but I am …” Her chin trembled. “They don’t know how to help me and that’s why they parked me here. Here I’m in nobody’s way and …” She brushed a tear from her face. “And I guess they don’t have to … Dunno.” She sniffled again. “I guess that’s why you’re here as well. They cannot do anything for you anymore at the moment. Your wounds have to heal, you have to rest, and … Well, it’s quiet here, I guess. But I asked them to give you another room! I really did! But there’s … just no other vacant room. Maybe they’ll have one in a day or two and until then … I could close the curtain if you want?”
Her words flew by his ears, so shocked was he by the way she looked and behaved. Had he seen Hermione Granger that visibly broken ever before? Her face was pale and gaunt, her eyes red-rimmed, the hospital gown hung on her thin frame and the seam was trembling from shivers she tried to hide.
And her voice …
Her voice sounded as frail as a sheet of parchment while she tried too hard not to break into tears because …
Well … Because of what?
“Why are you here?” he breathed.
She gulped. “Um … Curses, they think.”
Curses? Plural?!
She grimaced again, probably guessing his thoughts. “I was hit by … at least two, but they think it’s more likely three curses at the same time. They mingled and … nobody knows how to cancel them. They don’t even know what curses they were, they are only positive that one of them was … Cruciatus.” She gulped again. “I get bouts of … pain and … they last for some hours before they subside and …” She shrugged. “Nobody knows how to stop that so they parked me here and … I’m sorry, sir.” She lost her battle against her tears and hurried into her bed, turning her back to him.
Severus exhaled slowly and closed his eyes. Curse damage … There was hardly anything the magical world had as hard a time to cure as that. Especially if Cruciatus was part of the mix. And if they hadn’t been able to discern more than that after five days …
He cast her a glance, wondering if her shoulders were twitching from suppressed sobs or because she was cold.
It was only a couple of minutes later when the other things Granger had said were seeping into his mind. They cannot do anything for you anymore at the moment. He swallowed tentatively, slowly getting used to the pain his torn throat was causing him.
Bloody hell …
But why was he even surprised? It figured. If his injuries had been curable with an antidote and some vials of Murtlap Essence he would have already been discharged. That he was still here, that he was still in so much pain and had so high a fever … That didn’t bode well.
They just should have let me die …
He pinched his eyes closed against that thought.
And against a bout of panic that rose up his sore throat.
If only he could tell what was causing that panic, not wanting to die or not wanting to live like this …
The following night Granger returned to his side after his agonised gasp had woken her. “Are you in pain?” she asked.
Yes …
“Wait, I’ll get you a potion.”
And off she was.
He couldn’t tell how long she needed to get back, a vial clasped in her hand, maybe a minute, maybe an hour, but she got back and she helped him ingest a few sips of the potion and it took the sting out of the agony Nagini’s venom was causing him.
That was what Healer Sanders had told him. Traces of Nagini’s venom were still in his system and there was no way to get them out.
Oh, they’d tried!
They’d tried different antivenoms, different dialyses charms, literally every single means they knew – but Nagini had not been a normal snake and her venom had ceased being a normal venom since the Dark Lord had turned her into a bloody Horkrux and all they could do now was hope. Hope that his body would be able to get rid of it by itself.
Well, so far his body was failing.
He slumped back down panting, his eyes closed -
- and winced when something cold was pressed onto his scorching forehead again. A flannel, when he wasn’t totally mistaken.
He blinked blearily and noticed a tiny smile on Granger’s face. “Go back to sleep, sir.”
And so he did.
When he woke back up, it was the next day – and Granger was in pain.
Pain pain.
She was lying curled up in her bed, breathing in and out labouredly, her hands looped around her side rail, her gaze focussed on a spot on the floor.
When he snapped his fingers, her eyes twitched up and met his and Severus grimaced from the agony written into the hazel brown of her irises.
“I-I’m … I’m … fine, I’ll be … fine,” she mumbled, ending in a hissing sound when a brutal shiver rippled through her body. “Bli-imey …” she whispered, pulling her legs up higher.
“Potion?” Severus croaked, twisting his face from the pain it caused him.
“D-Don’t work,” she breathed, “but it-it’s fine, I’ll … be … fine …” Then she sunk back into her haze, into surviving what those curses were doing to her, and Severus was reduced to watching. It was the only way of not leaving her alone he could offer.
She slumbered away the whole day after the pain had subsided, totally spent and frighteningly pale. But the mediwitch coming to look after them every couple of hours didn’t seem concerned, only crestfallen. She brushed some sweaty strands of hair from Granger’s face before she carefully cleaned her with a quick spell and tucked her back up.
“And how are you, sir?” she then came over to him.
“Better,” he lied, his voice a harsh whisper.
“I see.” She checked his fever (still too high) and his wounds (still not closed) and helped him to another dose of pain-relief potion.
“Why does she get no visitors?” he croaked when the mediwitch was about to leave them alone again.
She glanced at Granger. “She … doesn’t want them.”
What? “Why?”
There was an edge on her face when she met his eyes again. “Because she shares a room with you and wants to spare you the humiliation of being seen.” Then she was gone and left him alone with what suspiciously felt like a guilty conscience.