redemption - SOULBOUND I̲̅I̲̅ || SS/HG

Previously on "Enchantement"

A/N: I selected a few passages of the last chapters of the first instalment to summarize what happened at the end.

Hope you'll enjoy this sequel.

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Fighting the pertinent voice in his mind that bellowed him to poise menacingly, frighten her into revealing the truth - although his mind was now at his mercy. "Who are you Seraphina? What do you have to do with Hermione's presence in this timeline?"

Pupils dilated and still figure, she answered plainly, "my name is Seraphina Ravensun, I'm a witch and freed from the venom of vampirism. [...] I have searched countless ways to reverse the curse that had tainted my pureblood until I found..."

Convulsing before him, her alabaster skin losing its natural healthy glow, Severus frowned at the sight of her body's losing its radiance, the usual roseate hue of her lips slowly faded into a sickly mauve tint. "It hurts..." she repeated, her hand scratching once more the exposed forearm. [...] The skin on her fingers darkened, shades of sombre blue replacing the usually well preserved female hands.

It was Gaunt's ring.

"Snape!" Screamed Harry as his feet rushed him inside the living room, "it's Hemione, we were on the seventh floor with Malfoy and then she lost consciousness..."he trailed off, not daring to meet his hawk eyes.

"Then?" He snapped, "then what Potter? Speak!"

"She's at the infirmary," he finally looked up, crying, "she's dying professor, Pomfrey says she has at the best one day left to live."

Frozen on the spot, the world around him spinning uncontrollably, Severus tried to stand up yet failed miserably, toppling forward his hand securing on the edge of the nearest sofa, preventing his body from hitting the ground. [...] With the last scrap of strength, grasping he needed to make it to his lover in record time, Snape crawled on the floor, - his cloak following behind him - as he led his body towards the fireplace, the pressure in his chest soon becoming unbearable as he needed to stand up and grab a fist full of powder to floo to her.

Not far from where he stood he could see her, seemingly unconscious draped in a long white robe [...] "Hermione," he breathed as he sat on the petite space near her waist and laid his hand on her cheek, stroking his thumb against it.

Sighing, Hermione moved her arm from under the blanket and grabbed the hand that was caressing her cheek and moved his fingers to her lips, kissing each one of them slowly, battling the tears that threatened to escape her orbs. "Dumbledore has been obliviated Severus, his eyes were completely glazed, it must have happened in the hour I found him. We lost all hope my love, he doesn't even remember who I am, that I time travelled, forgive me."

Noticing the way he was evading her gaze Hermione place a hand on his cheek, "do you want to hear a secret?" she asked, smiling at him, her eyes twinkling like a million stars had nestled inside her amber orbs.

Nodding back at her, not trusting his voice, Severus looked up and covered his hand with hers, slowly leaning into it, marvelling at the warmth it still sheltered.

"I managed to make a Prince fall in love with me," the giggles that erupted from her made him realize that from this very instant, there was no other woman on this earth he will ever love as much as he loved Hermione.

Leaning forward to kiss her lips, lingering a little longer at the sweet taste of her touch, Severus susurrate, "I love you my queen."

"I'll always love you Severus, in this life or in another. Merlin made me for you, and only for you my love. Remember what I told you once? Even when you can't see me I'm always there with you, I'm not going anywhere, I'm right here," she place a quivering hand on his chest were, at the contact of her now cold fingers his heart drummed frantically.

Caressing her shoulder with his swollen lips, Severus could feel her temperature dropping under his attentive touch, worrying him.

Bolting upwards his obsidian eyes met her amber orbs, her lashes flickering at the sight of her soulmate, the pain and fright in his expression rending her soul in two.

"I love you," he chose to say instead, kissing her knuckles, "always."

"Always."

When her hand grew heavy, falling limply onto the mattress, Severus grasped her wrist, pressing his trembling fingers onto her vein. Unable to find a pulse he moved his desperate search onto her neck, under her nose, yet she was gone.

No one dared to speak, solitude growing like ivy around their heart, suffocating it as the woman in their life perished.

Ron's alarmed leap from the bed caught Snape and Harry's attention. Gasping in shock, Snape's gaze rolled down to Hermione's chest and was meet with the most stunning rising and falling he had ever seen in his life, her breast reaching for the sky before retracting.

Severus couldn't believe his eyes, she was alive, breathing. "My love!" Kissing her lips, the warmth from her touch like the most intoxicating of drugs, "can you hear me? I'm right here honey."

A light groan erupted from her lips before, like a mirage, her body morphed, a spell rearing away into the air leaving before their astonished eyes a radically transformed Hermione.

As her eyes languidly opened, amber meeting obsidian once more, Severus knew it was an enchantement.

"Professor Snape?" Hermione asked, raising a disconcerted eyebrow at the crying men sitting by her side.

To be continued...