Chapters 31-40

A Dark and Stormy Night

At the beginning of November a moonless night filled the Forbidden Forest with near impenetrable gloom. Gusts of a stormy North-Eastern were shaking the branches of the Whomping Willow and rushing through the treetops, driving icy showers across over the castle and grounds of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Hagrid, Keeper of the Keys and Grounds, trusted his monsters’ good sense to stay cooped up in their caves and lairs in a night like this and had cut his late night rounds short. Now he sprawled on his huge bed and was snoring with great gusto, making the shutters of his hut vibrate on their hinges.

But there were predators that not even the foulest weather kept from prowling. Around three o’clock in the morning the agonized death-screams of nine young jarveys carried over the howling of the storm and the creaking of the wind-swept trees.

In Hagrid’s hut old Fang groaned softly in his sleep. For a moment his rheumy eyes opened. But when no other sound reached his wrinkled ears, he rolled closer to the fading warmth of the fireplace and slept on.

oooOooo

Inside the castle, another sound woke Hermione Granger from a restless slumber that had been haunted by familiar nightmares. She sat up in her bed, her heart racing, her nightshirt drenched in sweat. For a moment she wondered why she had woken. A strange sense of urgency filled her, of need, as if she’d been called.

But everything was silent now. Waiting for her frantic heartbeat to slow down, she listened to the darkness. For once she was alone in her chamber, her cat Crookshanks hadn’t returned from his nightly prowls yet.

There. Again.

A groan. As if someone was trying not to scream with pain.

Snape!

She reached for her wand and jumped out of her bed. Only when she found herself standing in front of her master’s bedroom, she hesitated. Snape hadn’t needed to tell her that she was never to enter his bedroom—that had gone without saying.

Another agonized moan.

He hadn’t told her not to enter his bedroom without his permission. He’d never mentioned his bedroom at all.

Taking a deep breath, Hermione reached for the door.

oooOooo

Inside, the first thing she noticed was the smell of blood. Then her eyes adjusted to the dim light, and a scream caught in her throat.

Professor Snape was lying on the floor, his wand next to him. He was clutching his left arm and a pool of blood spreading below him.

‘Sir! No! No! What have you been doing?’

She slid down on the floor beside him. He groaned again and tried to push her away.

‘It’s not what it looks like,’ Snape rasped. Then another convulsion of pain seized him. Hermione’s left arm went around him, pulling him into her embrace and the weight of his body off the injured limb. When the spasm had passed, she turned his arm into the light.

She swallowed dryly. The skin at the inside of his left arm looked very much like a skinning spell gone very wrong.

His left arm.

Hermione almost sighed with relief, as sudden understanding flowed through her. He had told her the truth. It really wasn’t what it looked like at first glance. He hadn’t tried to kill himself. He had merely attempted to remove the Dark Mark.

Following her gaze, Snape ground his teeth. ‘Not. One. Word.’

‘Of course not, sir. But please let me help you.’

After a moment he gave a curt nod, then minutely relaxed in her arms.

Knowing better than to use magic on an injury resulting from an unknown spell, Hermione clapped her hands and summoned the house-elf. ‘Nag, I need clean towels, bandages, a bowl with water.—Sir, do you have some antiseptic potion here?’

Snape shuddered, but nodded again, his teeth clenched, sweat forming on his forehead.

‘Accio Antiseptica,’ Hermione flicked her wand and held out her hand. A moment later she winced at the impact of a big brown bottle. Then a soft CRACK! made her whip up her head in panic, but it was only the thin, wrinkly house-elf who had appeared at her side, the items she had requested in his arms.

‘Thank you, Nag.’

The house-elf bowed to her, threw a scared look at his master and disappeared again.

Hermione used one of the towels to wipe off the blood while keeping a steady pressure above the wound to staunch the blood flow. The towel was drenched in seconds. Awkwardly Hermione poured a little of the antiseptic potion on another towel. She didn’t dare to release his arm. There was so much blood. As if she’d walked in on a scene from one of her worst nightmares.

Bunching up the soaked towel, she carefully cleaned the outline of the wound. He jerked weakly in her arms at the sting of the potion. Cleaned, his arm was a mess of raw flesh and raised black lines. He had managed to completely skin his forearm—except for the parts of his skin that were covered by the black lines of the Mark.

Hermione’s stomach clenched.

And he was still bleeding heavily. She couldn’t keep the blood flow staunched. She had no idea how to treat a spell damage wound that obviously resulted from the use of Dark Magic.

‘Sir? Sir?’

He was deathly white, his eyes shut tightly. Low moans escaped his lips, when another convulsion shivered over his body. It felt as if she were holding someone in the throes of the Cruciatus curse.

‘Sir, I cannot staunch the bleeding. I need to call for help. You might bleed to death if I don’t get help.’

‘Wouldn’t be all that bad,’ he mumbled. But he cracked open his eyes and regarded her for a long moment.

‘Sir,’ Hermione whispered urgently, as unheedful of her tears and his blood as she had been once before, many months ago. ‘Please.’

‘Very well,’ he sighed wearily at last. ‘Get Poppy.’