The Power of Pain

Chapter 23

Severus paced his room. His mind caught inside her whirlwind. He felt such distress inside his soul. He bared his teeth and growled low spinning on his heel. He took hold of the lone book on his bedside table and hurled it at the wall. It hit with such force that the binding completely tore away leaving its pages to flutter down slowly. He could feel his magic crackling at his finger tips, threatening to tear him asunder.

oOo

The sound of glass exploding from a frame raised both heads from downstairs and Minerva pursed her lips. Hermione let out a more choked sob as she felt him. Felt his anger, his hatred for himself. For everything that he was. It was so deeply ingrained that Hermione felt the pressure in her own chest. She could feel how trapped he felt, how caged in his own life he was. The desperate thirst for freedom. For redemption. It wound itself around her soul as she struggled to breathe.

His power was suffocating. The thread between them glowed brightly in her inner eye as it grew taunt threatening to tear. She felt her body shake with another deep sob, unable to keep herself up right, she leaned over her legs, her arms curling tightly around her stomach. Her heart hurt, it hurt so much. She felt Minerva move next to her.

She could sense her hesitation as the elder woman's hands gingerly wrapped around her shoulders. She said nothing as she very carefully pulled her sideways into her lap. She didn't resist the offer of comfort, letting out another heart-wrenching noise and hid her face into the woman's lap; her tears falling like rain against the aged linen. She could feel her soul weakening, crackling like ice under the sun as it bent to the pressure in her chest.

Minerva's own heart ached as she watched the girl unravel in her lap. She gently ran her fingers through her disheveled hair letting her cry herself out. She could hear the man upstairs having had gone still as well. She sighed softly. What was she to do with either of them?

oOo

Severus felt marginally better as he stared at his destroyed window. He let out a cleansing, shuddering breath slowly turning his eyes away. The voices that condemned him grew loud in his mind and he narrowed his eyes as he tried to force them back. He felt so exhausted, not just physically but emotionally as well. What was the girl doing to him? Why did he feel like a teenager again? Suddenly unable to control even an ounce of his emotions. Was it her he was feeling in those moments? Was it she who pushed him near the edge?

oOo

Minerva had moved her soft fingers to gently brush Hermione's eyes closed. She was still trembling against her as the energy left her. The elder witch took her own calming breath keeping her close to her, her other hand having moved to gently cradle her head while her fingers worked their magic.

"I'm going to tell you something that too few in this world have come to know..." Minerva's voice was gentle and soft as she continued, gently encouraging the girl to relax into her embrace. "That man...upstairs...Has lost every person who had come to care for him...the way you are trying to care for him..." Hermione's brows furrowed with sorrow as another tear rolled down over her cheek.

"He doesn't know...that those people chose to die for him...because they loved him so much..." Minerva felt a tear coming to her own eyes, "Everyone whom he has ever let in...has fallen before his eyes...or at his own hand..." She took a slow breath, "He has been forced to watch over and over, trapped in responsibility that never should have fallen to him...as one after the other having had left him behind..." The tear rolled down her cheek as she closed her eyes, "He has been left to suffer, to carry on...all on his own, too many times..." She licked her lips slowly leaving a small cleansing silence for her words to take hold of the girl in her lap.