Chapter Text
Standing on the auction block, she sees him in the crowd. Greasy black hair falling in his face doesn’t hide the prominent nose; Severus Snape has come to view her debasement and demise.
Under the influence of the imperius curse, Hermione has nothing left to lose except her remaining sense of self-worth. All her secrets have been torn from her; veritaserum saw them out.
Not that she had many secrets before. Everyone she loves is dead. Harry, at the Battle; Ron, soon thereafter; her parents, while she and Harry were on the run. It’s been years of hiding amongst muggles, not really living, only surviving. She’d snapped Bellatrix’s wand the day after the Battle and no longer uses magic much at all; the wand she took off another nameless Death Eater barely works for her, on good days. There are odd hollows and caverns in her memory, places where she senses an emptiness, something missing. She doesn’t know what happened to the rest of the Order of the Phoenix, or to the Hogwarts faculty, or Crookshanks. It’s probably better this way.
The past few years have been spent in solitude, more tedious than anything. She’d lived in Edinburgh for a time under the name Mia Tillman, renting a small flat and working in a muggle breakfast cafe as a server, then fled to Carlisle in Cambria, finding work as a night porter in a small hotel. After two years undercover, she’d grown cocky and considered taking her A-levels, enrolling in university. But the bounty on her head was high, and she’d been recognised on one of the rare occasions she left home without a glamour. At least her capture had been headline-worthy: ‘Hermione Granger, Mudblood Friend of Harry Potter, Caught at Last.’
Her number comes up, and the imperius curse is lifted, allowing her to cry freely as the fear overtakes her. Perhaps she does have something to lose after all: her body, her autonomy.
Rough hands push her to the front of the stage. Even wearing witch’s robes, she feels exposed. She sees faces she wishes she didn’t recognize: Corban Yaxley, who chairs the Muggleborn Registration Commission; Walden McNair, the executioner who’d nearly killed Buckbeak; Draco and Lucius Malfoy, who appear oddly sickened by the proceedings; Rabastan Lestrange, who she’d fought at the Department of Mysteries; and Antonin Dolohov, responsible for the curse mark that runs along the bottom of her rib cage.
“Lot number 35. Hermione Granger, best friend to Harry Potter, virgin mudblood. Bidding starts at 8,000 Galleons. Please note that the Dark Lord has stipulated that only his most loyal Death Eaters may bid on this particular prize.”
The bids begin. First, 8,300 Galleons from Yaxley; then 9,000 Galleons from McNair. Then, to Hermione’s astonishment, Snape chimes in, with a bid of 15,000 Galleons.
“Snape wants that ripe pussy for himself,” jeers a man in the crowd. Hermione doesn’t recognise him.
“Do you think witches willingly crawl into his bed?” asks McNair.
“Does the Dark Lord really trust his former spy so much?” Yet another unfamiliar face.
“You’d understand if you knew what he’s done,” says Yaxley, scowling.
The bidding continues, but less eagerly. Snape continues to outbid the rest by larger and large increments: 8,000 Galleons, then 10,000 Galleons, then 20,000 Galleons.
“Can you really afford her, Severus?” It’s one of the Death Eaters who had nearly caught her on Tottenham Court Road. What was his name? Roman? Rosier? Rowle?
Snape scowls but does not answer.
Then the auctioneer calls, “105,000 Galleons going once, going twice… Sold! To Bidder number 94, the estimable Headmaster of Hogwarts Severus Snape.”
“What are your plans for your prize?” shouts Dolohov. “Can I borrow her when you’re through?”
Snape does not answer. Instead, he casts a silent ‘imperius,’ and Hermione’s mind becomes quiet again as they depart the auction house.
Even through her mental fog, Hermione half-expects to be dragged kicking and screaming into a dark dungeon. Instead, Snape apparates her side-along to a rural property featuring a crisp white Edwardian-style country house. Based on the view of Hogwarts in the distance, it’s about a mile outside Hogsmeade.
Though she’s still under the imperius curse, he guides her into and around the house, speaking softly, pointing out each room, ignoring the bowing house elves. It looks nothing like the darkened gothic bat-cave she’d expected. Finally, they reach the room Snape calls ‘hers.’ It’s better than expected: a soft four-poster bed, dark blue walls, large windows with privacy curtains she can draw if needed, a wardrobe, a private bathroom.
The tour finished, he directs her towards a dark laboratory in the cellar.
“Why did you buy me?” she demands, once the imperius curse is lifted, once they’re alone.
“To assist me,” he says with a cruel twist of his lips. “I think you’ll find that I have many uses for you, Granger.”
When he snaps an aluminum cuff on her ankle, she can feel the pressure of its magic, and she knows it won’t easily come off. Once it’s on, it transforms into a small silver anklet, but she can feel the runes buzzing against her skin.
“I thought you were a disinherited half-blood,” she says angrily. “How can you afford this home? How can you afford to spend 100,000 Galleons on a mudblood bed slave?”
Snape raises an eyebrow, cool as a winter lake. “I see your intelligence is out of date. I am the heir to the Prince estate, now. And the Dark Lord allowed me to receive what was willed to me by Dumbledore. He thought it terribly ironic that I should inherit Dumbledore’s favourite home,” he says, gesturing around with a small smirk.
This was Dumbledore’s home? Could it… She feels a crevasse in her mind, something missing.
Snape snaps, scowling, “Don’t get any funny ideas, Granger. I dismantled all of the old Headmaster’s enchantments and replaced them with my own. There are no portraits on these walls. The wards are impenetrable. Even my fellow Death Eaters cannot enter easily.”
Hermione narrows her eyes at him. “Why does the Dark Lord trust you so much?”
“Many reasons,” he answers softly.
“Such as?”
“Be careful about exercising that curiosity, Granger, or I’ll have to silence you.”
“Then do it,” Hermione snaps.
Snape smooths his robes, flicks his fingers, before a cruel smile twists his lips.
“Perhaps I’ll sate that curiosity of yours a little, as a treat. I murdered the remaining leaders of the Order of the Phoenix: Minerva McGonagall and Kingsley Shacklebolt,” he informs her, as indifferent as though he’d just reported the weather.
Hermione gasps and shudders. She’d hoped the rest of the Order had survived—but McGonagall, dead? A hollow in Hermione’s memory tells her this is everything, the end of all her hopes. And hadn’t McGonagall and Snape been friendly, once? Who is this man? If he’d kill McGonagall, what else might he be willing to do?
“Tilly,” he snaps, causing a house elf to appear. “Bring Granger some dinner. Something plain, perhaps porridge or a baked potato. After the day she’s had, I expect she won’t be able to keep much down.”
He turns to her, his eyes gleaming like black ice in the moonlight.
“Granger, I want you to understand my intentions. As long as you remain with me, you will not be physically tortured, starved, or subjected to the cruciatus curse. You will enjoy modern facilities and a private room for sleeping. Though it is true that I have intended … uses for you, I do not intend to harm you … much. However, defy me, or attempt to escape, and all that will change.”
Their arrangement is not as Hermione expected. The first day after her arrival, Snape sends Tilly and another house elf, named Waldrick, to feed her healing potions and tend her various cuts and bruises. Tilly also delivers an odd and old-fashioned assortment of clothes for her: wrap dresses, trousers, blouses, and various undergarments—no wizard’s robes, and no modern muggle clothes.
The second day, she awaits and dreads a summons to his bedroom, a terrible knot forming in the pit of her stomach. Instead, Snape sends her to work in the gardens.
The gardens offer a kind of gentle solace, even as she dreads the day he’ll call her to his rooms. There are flowers everywhere outside: delphiniums pipe up from the ground, little snail-shell flowers in shades of periwinkle and violet; foxgloves, in tea rose pink and white; sweet peas on trellises; and scrumptious crimson peonies reach out to bathe in sun. In the herb garden, medicinal and culinary plants thrive: lavender, thyme, rosemary, stargrass, fluxweed, mint, nightshade, wormwood. In the small wild orchard, a cluster of crab-apple trees hosts mistletoe. In the greenhouse, she tends to aloe, dittany, tomatoes, orchids, and chilli peppers—an odd mixture, to be sure. She is always watched: either by Snape himself or a house elf.
When she thinks no one is watching, she tests her anklet. It flares hot at the edge of the property, and her body moves like molasses; she’d be easily recaptured if she tried an escape. The gardens keep her occupied during the day, but at night, she’s alone with her dark memories. She screams in her sleep, images of Harry’s death appearing each night. Then distorted memories of her questioning and torture by the snatchers who had found her the second time, the Ministry’s new Aurors, in tenebrous chambers below the Atrium. These days, the statues in what once had been the Fountain of Magical Brethren have been replaced with statues of Salazar Slytherin and Voldemort himself, snakes coiling at their feet.
But Snape never answers Hermione’s screams with his presence; perhaps her room is silenced. Though she is always watched, always followed, she is grateful for the small dignities he allows her: time each day to dress and bathe alone. Despite his supposed duties at Hogwarts, he appears via the floo each day to check in on his prize. She experiments with possible avenues of escape. Her anklet flares hot if she even looks at the container of floo powder the wrong way, if she even thinks about the artificial tight feeling of apparition. On one occasion when she attempts to pick up Snape’s wand, her anklet gives her a searing burn that makes her yelp in pain, causing Snape to appear. He eyes the burn with a pitiless expression and raises an eyebrow at her as if to say, ‘what did you expect?’
After three weeks have passed without any attempt at escape, Snape summons her to his lab to prepare potions ingredients. She dries billywig stings, strains and pickles murtlap tentacles, grinds unicorn horns. He orders her to peel, slice, and dice gurdyroot and to squeeze bubotuber puss. They work together in silence, but Hermione watches Snape, tries to observe and understand. What does he want with her? Why is she here? It’s a pretty cage he’s constructed for her.
After five weeks in his home, he leaves her an ominous white and blood red bouquet with edelweiss, poppy, and zinnia. She fears it’s a sign of her imminent deflowering.
Still, Snape makes no move to touch her, and rarely even meets her eyes. The house elves refuse to speak to her, leaving Snape as her only conversation partner. She’s so frightened and lonely that she almost wishes he would touch her—just a touch of the hand—or talk to her, even about the garden or the weather.
Eight weeks into her captivity in his home, he begins to assign her brewing for the Hogwarts hospital wing. With Snape’s own handwritten recipes and occasional muttered words of instruction, Hermione brews Pepper-Up, Blood-Replenishing Potion, Calming Draught, Skele-Grow. If she hadn’t already known he was the Half-Blood Prince, the Hogwarts student who’d made notations in Harry’s copy of Advanced Potions Making , she’d know now. Each recipe is slightly altered from the one she’d brewed as a student, small improvements here and there.
Nine weeks as his servant, his captive, and he begins to place books and articles in front of her. An article from Potions Monthly on the uses of stewed and dried mandrake, a book on magical uses for common flowers.
With work to occupy her, Hermione begins to relax. Perhaps Snape had acquired her to protect her. Maybe her situation isn’t so terrible after all. She’d be far worse off with Yaxley or Dolohov.
On the tenth week in Snape’s home, everything changes.
She’s sitting on a stool in his laboratory, reading an edition of Potions Monthly, when he walks up to her and casts, ‘legilimens.’
Memories flash before her. She’s sitting between her parents, Professor McGonagall transforming into a cat in front of them; she’s on the Hogwarts train, helping Neville search for his lost toad; she’s in the bathroom, sobbing as the shadow of a troll appears against the tiled wall.
Snape’s presence is a brutal invasion. He thrusts through her mind, into darker memories, riding time like a current until he finds his target.
… Hermione sits next to Harry on his bunk, rain beating against the tent walls, Slytherin’s locket held in her outstretched hand; she’s writhing in pain, screaming as Bellaxtrix cuts into her flesh with a silver knife, the letters M-U-D-B spelling the obscenity; Hagrid carrying Harry’s limp form across the Hogwarts grounds.
Snape hones in on one memory in particular. She’s in the Shrieking Shack, hidden under the invisibility cloak with Harry and Ron. She listens as Voldemort thanks Amycus Carrow for his service, the giant snake coiling before it lunges for his throat.
Snape withdraws bearing a vicious expression and orders her to the greenhouse as though nothing noteworthy has happened. Hermione is left feeling depleted, with a terrible migraine.
The next day, as she’s drinking her morning tea, she recognises the distinct fog of veritaserum coming over her. Snape eyes her with undisguised loathing as he asks her a series of questions: ‘What did she eat for breakfast yesterday?’ ‘Does she know the locations of any Order members?’ ‘What are her parents’ names?’ Unable to help herself, she answers each truthfully, the heavy blankness bearing down like an iron harness.
When the potion wears off and she leaves her state of stupor, she lets a tear fall into what remains of her breakfast. Snape watches her with a cool expression.
Later that afternoon, as she destems lavender, innerly seething, Snape turns from his workstation to cast, “ Imperius .”
Not again, she thinks, before collapsing into the fog. She obeys mindlessly as Snape tells her to remove her dress and don only an apron over her knickers and bra, and continue working on potions. Her inner voice screams with fear. What will he do next?
But though he watches her intently, he doesn’t touch her.
When he removes the imperius curse several hours and multiple batches of potions later, she breaks into sobs and curls into a small ball.
“Granger, these tears will accomplish nothing,” he snarls.
“Why?” she pleads. “You promised not to harm me.”
“I did not. I promised that I wouldn’t subject you to physical torture. I also told you I had uses for you. This is one of them.” His words are like ice.
“If you cannot calm yourself, at least go to your room where I do not have to hear you.”
She sleeps little. Instead, like a silent film, terrible images scurry through her mind. What pleasure does he take from this? What else will he try?
The trepasses of her mind and free will continue. On a near-daily basis, Snape subjects her to some form of mental intrusion. Every beverage a house elf places in front of her could contain veritaserum, and as she works in the greenhouse or the lab, Snape often appears out of the shadows with no warning.
Inside Hermione, hatred builds alongside fear.
On the thirteenth week in Snape’s home, he appears in the fireplace, eyes blazing with fury.
“Come, Granger. We have been summoned.”
“Summoned?”
“The Dark Lord wishes to know why I haven’t presented you to him. There was a revel last night and he was displeased by your absence. Imperius.”
The blankness takes her, the fog. It’s almost a relief, to not have to fight, to surrender to his will in this way.
He transfigures her simple dress into a satin slip, vanishes her undergarments, and pulls her through the green flames, shouting, “Malfoy Manor.”
Once she’s in the manor, the place where Bellatrix tortured her, where Dobby had died, she retreats deeper into the fog. The Death Eaters’ roving eyes, Lucius Malfoy’s triumphant laugh, Bellatrix pleading with Voldemort to let her play with the mudblood—Hermione pushes all of these sensations into the mist. Even the Dark Lord’s red eyes and slitted nose fade into the background.
But she can’t help but notice the waves of fury emanating from her captor. Snape curses Dolohov when the big man tries to lay a hand on her arse. “I won her, My Lord. I am your loyal servant. You may do anything you wish with her. But she is mine,” he spits. “I will not share her with the rest.”
Voldemort strokes his chin with a near-skeletal finger. “Very well, Severus. I value your service and it is right that you should jealously guard your little mudblood. She is your exclusive prize, after all. Why don’t you show me what you get up to with your little toy, and I will allow you to return her to her cage.”
The two lock eyes, and when Snape finally looks away, Voldemort wears a smug smile.
“I see why you treasure her so. You have my leave to return her.”
With relief, Hermione retreats into the fog again.
When she and Snape return to the country house, he releases her and stalks into his study, his black robes billowing behind him. She hears the smashing of glass, the clanging of metal, and an inhuman roar of pure rage. Then Snape reappears, disappearing into the fire again.
The next day, the intrusions into her mind resume. Snape digs through her thoughts and memories with a relentless ferocity she’s never seen before. The veritaserum appears in her drinks at least once a day.
“Granger, such a mediocre mind you have, completely defenseless,” he sneers after one particularly harsh session. He’d forced her to relive the memory of Harry’s death again and again.
“Why are you so cruel?” she demands.
“The world is cruel, Granger. I do what I must to survive in a cruel world, and when I can, I do what suits me. This cruelty suits me.” His eyes bore into her, and he adds softly, “One reason I bought you, Granger, is because I believed your mind would offer an interesting challenge, at least. I was sorely mistaken. You are nothing but easy prey. Perhaps I should offer you to one of my comrades after all.”
Hermione weeps silently as he casts the imperius curse yet again.
That night, when he leaves her, Hermione sneaks into his study, looking for something, anything to help her.
She’s in luck. Snape has an entire shelf full of books on occlumency. She pulls a book titled, Occlumency: A Defense of the Mind by Llewellyn Umfraville, and begins to read.
Over the next few weeks, the days pass with a painful slowness, and the nights when Snape has left her alone move far too fast. She sneaks into his study every evening now, poring over books on occlumency and other defenses against the dark arts. Though Hermione is careful to replace the books precisely where she found them, to leave no traces of herself in Snape’s study, she is somewhat surprised not to be caught. Many items in Snape’s office make her anklet flare if she draws too close: a filing cabinet, a lockbox, a safe hidden behind a painting on the wall. She wonders what secrets he keeps.
Perhaps he knows she’s spending time in his study, is devouring his library, and simply enjoys toying with her. She doesn’t attempt to defend herself when he assails her mind, but when he is absent, she practices occlumency constantly. She builds a mind palace out of her faint memory of Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria; she’d visited once with her parents as a child. She imagines new rooms, secret staircases, hidden passages, and begins the painstaking process of filing her memories away. She practices clearing her mind, subduing her emotions, pushing them below an image of the Black Lake.
Every morning and evening she meditates: in the shower, sitting on her bed, during meals she eats alone.
She still doesn’t fight Snape. The interrogations continue unabated, and he still makes her perform various chores under the imperius curse.
A month after the visit to Malfoy Manor, Snape entertains guests in his home—Lucius Malfoy, Rabastan Lestrange, Thorfinn Rowle. Before their arrival, he casts the imperius curse and forces Hermione to dress in the same style of satin slip dress as before, then orders her to serve tea and bring out finger foods prepared by the house elves. Though Hermione cannot hear their conversation behind Snape’s muffliato, the three men watch her as they speak with Snape. Rabastan in particular undresses her with his eyes, and it makes her feel filthy. But under Snape’s attentive eye, no one touches her.
On the 25th week of her captivity in Snape’s home, he casts ‘imperius' and orders her to brew Pepper-Up Potion.
Today, Hermione is ready. The fog of Snape’s will forces its way into her mind, and she contains it, allowing the pressure to build. Then, as though her mind is generating a whirlwind of radiant light, she drives Snape away and out.
It’s like the first ragged breath after diving underwater, a gasp of freedom, air filling her lungs. For the first time since the snatchers caught her, she feels strong.
She revels in her victory, knowing it may not last. Hermione looks over at Snape, preparing herself for the worst.
Instead, she catches a flicker in his eye, a small twist of his lip, before he smooths his expression into indifference.
“Am I supposed to be impressed?” he sneers. “Continue brewing, Granger.”
That was not the reaction she expected. Mind racing, she returns to peeling mandrake root, full of a strange unease and unanswered questions.
That night, as she lies in bed, she begins to understand.
During the year after Dumbledore’s death, Hermione had held firm to the belief that Severus Snape was faithful to the order, that he was following some plan laid out by the old Headmaster. Then, when Harry had died during the Battle of Hogwarts, when the remains of the Order of the Phoenix had gone into hiding, she’d allowed herself to lose faith.
With her new comprehension in hand, she begins to recognise other small details of her captivity for what they are. Her spelled anklet hasn’t suppressed her magic, only limited her movements and prevented her from claiming Snape’s wand; Snape’s house elves are happy, whistling and smiling as they work; and a closer examination of the house from without reveals rooms she’s never seen or been in.
Six months after being bought by Severus Snape at auction, Snape casts ‘legilimens’ and Hermione reacts instantly, throwing him out of her mind.
Snape says nothing, but pulls her by the arm into his lab. There, he pushes her into a chair and doses her with veritaserum, asking her the same questions he always asks: her parents’ names, the locations of other Order members, and what she had for breakfast. Shielded behind a fortress of occlumency, she blatantly lies.
“A ricotta and blueberry crepe and a cappuccino,” she says with a sly smile. She’d eaten porridge, like always.
And with that lie, Severus Snape’s pale face breaks out into the first true smile she’s ever seen on him. It completely changes his face, makes his sallow skin warmer, his dark eyes brighter. The smile leaves him as quickly as it appeared, and Hermione finds she mourns its absence and wishes earnestly for its return.
Snape extends a hand to help her out of the chair, and when she takes it, she realises it’s the first time he’s really touched her in months. His hand is warm and calloused, with elegant long fingers, the clever hands of a potioneer.
“You’ve been loyal to the Order this whole time?” she asks.
“A dangerous question,” he says, but his mouth still quirks at one corner. “Would you believe me if I said yes?”
“I would, actually. Did you kill McGonagall and Shacklebolt?”
“No, I did not.”
“Then where …?”
“I’ll tell you their whereabouts in time,” he says, and hope fills her for the first time in a year. “Before I divulge that level of information, I must ensure that your success with legilimency was not a one-time fluke. However, I now believe you are ready to assist me with my real work.”
“Your real work?” Her heart soars.
“I said I had uses for you, Hermione Granger,” he says with a small twist of his lips. This time, however, there is warmth behind those black eyes.
By the end of the afternoon, she’s thrown him out of her mind three times, lied to him under veritserum, and fought off the imperius curse twice. Despite the building headache, the mental fatigue, she’s radiantly happy, and Snape has graced her with more of those true smiles.
“We’ll have to work on your ability to lie convincingly,” he says, tapping his chin. “But I think you’re ready. I have something for you.”
He beckons her into his study, flicks his wand at her anklet, and opens the wall safe she’d wondered about all those weeks ago, withdrawing a thin wooden box and placing it on the desk. When Hermione opens it, what she sees causes joyous lightning to course through her body.
It’s her original vinewood wand.
“I know I owe you an apology,” he begins, “for everything I have put you through these past six months. But I couldn’t think of another way to protect you. I—”
Hermione turns, slamming into Snape, wrapping her arms around him. He stands stiff for a moment before awkwardly patting her on the back.
When was the last time someone hugged him?
“I forgive you thrice over,” she mutters into his chest.
Gently, he shifts, and she senses his discomfort and pulls away.
“I have one more item to return to you, Hermione. You left it in the care of Minerva McGonagall, and she gave it to me before she left England.” From the same wall safe, he removes a vial of misty memory.
“Whose memory is that?”
“I believe it’s yours.”