Summary:

The war is over, and rebuilding Hogwarts is a heavy burden. Severus Snape lies immobile in the Hospital Wing, tended to by the unlikely partnership of Hermione Granger and Blaise Zabini. Father figure to Blaise and secret love of Hermione's, Severus Snape wakes up to a strange new world. Hermione muddles through her NEWT classes without the rest of the Golden Trio, finds an ally in house-elf Neefa, and an unexpected apprenticeship.

Beta read thanks to Tanguera!

The din was excruciating. The lights were blinding. He wanted to bellow at them to shut up, but the searing pain in his throat pulsed in time with his breathing.

Suddenly, it all ceased. The voices muted and the lights dimmed. A singular voice murmured a spell to lubricate his eyelids open and Severus Snape found himself gazing at the haggard face of Hermione Granger, know-it-all extraordinaire. She smiled hesitantly at him. He blinked and furrowed his eyebrows.

"Hello Professor. Voldemort is dead. Harry is alive. Your throat was severely damaged by Nagini, and you have extensive internal organ damage from the venom. The final battle ended a little over two months ago. You are healing and safe." He blinked again and hooked a finger over her hand in thanks before falling back into a potion-induced fog.

The next time he awoke, it was to the agony of a potion gap. Some idiot had mistimed his medication. The lack of drugs allowed him enough clarity to force an irritated thought with Legilimency into Hannah Abbott's mind. The two mediwitches, Abbott and Pomfrey, had been bustling from bed to bed just short of jogging. Snape wondered how many patients were from the school or runoff from St. Mungo's. Abbott gasped as she registered his thought and her face warred between a smile and anxiety over the amount of pain she had just experienced.

"Professor Snape! I'm so sorry." She deftly dosed out a pain killer. "Now, we are starting to wean you off of certain potions, to prevent dependency. Well, that and all potion stores are running low. There's just more demand than supply, and St. Mungo's has priority with all the suppliers. Not to fret, your best students have been brewing constantly since November." Snape winced at the potential damage his laboratory sustained before the feuding houses settled to work. "I must go, but I'm sure your usual visitors will arrive soon." Visitors? Who in blazes would visit a Death Eater? Why wasn't he in Azkaban? But Abbott had scurried off before he could muster the effort to push thoughts at her. Merlin, he was tired.

Snape started from his light doze at the sound of two murmuring voices. He slit his eyes open to find his two best students fiddling with what looked like a typewriter keyboard. At the feminine gasp he met Hermione Granger's eyes, and blinked at Blaise Zabini placing the keyboard by his right hand.

"Sir, we know that your mobility and ability is limited. Zabini and I have charmed this to help with your communication." Snape raised an eyebrow. Zabini working with anything muggle? As if to read his mind, Blaise grimaced and volunteered, "Despite blood, there's not many at the school able to design spells at the moment. It's crude but it would help, sir." Snape was taken aback. The Zabini arrogance he had expected must have suffered a great blow from the war. Severus thought back to the typewriter his father had kept and slowly typed out AZKABAN . The letters lit up like an old marquee sign, guaranteed to grab attention.

Blaise nodded, "Enough evidence and character witnesses privy to your spy status have absolved most of your crimes. Harry Potter spoke in your defense. They're still arguing about the Second Class Order of Merlin, but at least it's not a Dementor Kiss"

Hermione chimed in, "You will be serving a year of community service sentence by potion brewing, once you're up to it. The entire Wizarding World has been scrambling for anything of quality; Blaise and I are part of a ten person brewing team." Snape typed SCHOOL . "We are starting up as usual this year. The repairs have started on the wings with significant damage, and the castle is slowly patching itself here and there."

"Less than half the usual numbers are returning. Most of the young ones escaped relatively unscathed. Only a handful per house for seventh year." Blaise softly reported with shuttered eyes. "Sir –" A trill interrupted him. Blaise checked the time with his wand and sighed. "The sixth batch is ready." There was a pop of knees when the Slytherin squeezed Hermione's shoulder and hoisted himself up with the air of an arthritic. Hermione nodded and patted his hand before he left. Snape just raised an eyebrow.

"We've been brewing almost non-stop in shifts, Sir. It's too much effort to maintain animosity. Exhaustion has succeeded to unite the houses." The smile on her face was tinged bitter before she straightened. "Now, Sir, we have the back issues of potions journals that the house-elves said you were too busy to read as Headmaster." Snape felt a practised cleansing charm flutter through his hair and over his face, before the Muggleborn witch reached over and plumped up his pillow gently with a habitual air. Hermione looked up and blushed at the stark shock on Snape's face. "Oh. I'm sorry Sir, Blaise and I have done that for so long while you were unconscious. I – I didn't mean to – That is to say – Oh bother, we just wanted you comfortable." Snape blinked at the witch with amazement. He had tormented her for their entire association and yet she had obviously visited him regularly for… he squinted DATE. "January 22nd, Sir." Almost nine months. As she started reading, he realized that the sound of her voice was familiar, it had laced through his hazy dreaming. As his eyes drifted shut, Severus Snape internally snorted. This was the most realistic, psychedelic potions reaction he'd experienced yet.

Hermione looked up when she heard his breathing deepen. She gently set the journal aside and extracted the bottle of marjoram and chamomile sitting just under the bed by the cot's leg. She gently dabbed a finger to the potion master's upper lip just under the septum. Blaise had now left this task to her, after noticing their professor frowned with him and didn't with her. Hermione stopped herself from stroking his forehead and hair when he had been heavily drugged. While the man was without bite now that the war was done, she doubted he would understand. Already, he was so confused by her ablution routine that he merely blinked at her.

At first, it had been helping Madam Pomfrey and Hannah manage the staggering workload. Three of their brewing team were assigned the Hospital Wing to lend their efforts to in between brewing shifts. Despite the efficiency of house-elves, there was no shortage of tasks to accomplish in rebuilding the school, and the rest of their team was on clean-up or repair duty. Zabini had been horrified of the state his Head of House was in, the lack of respect from the lack of time available to the personnel. So they had spent their breaks reading to him, waiting for any semblance of cognizance. Both of them had known what horrors Snape had kept at bay as headmaster. When the rationing of potions started, their brewing skills and comfort was all they could offer. With the flurry of rebuilding, they continued to be Severus Snape's sole visitors. Zabini out of respect for his only stable father figure. Hermione out of growing affection for a man based on his deeds rather than cutting remarks. Their spell-linked self-indexing expanding planners were filled with thousands of notes, yet everyday they allotted time to Snape.

Ironically, they were the first to start performing badly needed hygiene spells, so often that it was second nature and wandless. Zabini was adept with the spells from bad experiences with his mother and various husbands, and Hermione with mutters about potion contamination and infection. Cleaning was a foreign but necessary task, now that the house elf population had been reduced and greatly focused on castle construction. Cross the hospital threshold, clean, cross the potions laboratory threshold, clean. In the same fashion of necessity, Zabini and Hermione started prioritizing potions based on medication schedules, coordinated briefing and progress reports, assigning routine tasks to the younger students trying to help. A grudging respect for each other developed while keeping upright on caffeine and muddling through the tasks that McGonagall delegated. After two months, the house-elves and students started deferring to them for direction. Blaise grudgingly approved of Hermione's colour coding and contingency planning. Hermione approved of Blaise's matter of fact assessments towards goals and the big picture.

Blaise had quickly twigged on Hermione's attraction to the potions master, before she had even realized it herself. He watched her stroke back Snape's hair and freshen the pillow linen. Her face took in the new lines brought by illness and stress of war, as if committing them to memory. His hushed tone gentle as he asked, "How long have you loved him?" She stared at Blaise as she slowly sank back into her chair. "I've seen thousands of men look at my mother that way, and two men she returned it to. I'm well versed at spotting what others rarely do." Hermione fiddled with the hem of the blanket.

"I'm not entirely sure when. I actually didn't realize it myself until you mentioned it." She sighed and dabbed the marjoram oil blend absently onto her fingers, spreading it to her pulse points at her wrists. The magically amplified aromatherapy oils a crude but effective stop-gap measure to buy more time for potion brewing. "I've spent so long trying to impress him, then working with him in the Order, then against him, to find out how much he had sacrificed for us. It's been a never-ending battle, Snape was always… there and now…" Blaise took the oil in turn and elegantly mirrored her actions.

"He was always resilient, a presence. We always took strength from that, however annoying it sometimes was. I hate seeing this flicker. Even more, the coffin they kept by his bed the first week." The trills from their wands beckoned their return to the laboratory. They both stretched and started back. "You know that the age difference is miniscule relative to wizarding aging? And technically, he's not an active professor." Hermione picked up their steaming mugs of coffee from the tray Winky held, handing Blaise his preferred giant mug. The house-elf had been patiently waiting in the hallway en route to the dungeons. She watched him over the porcelain rim.

"If I didn't know otherwise Zabini, I would think you actually approve of the idea."

The Slytherin shrugged. "The war has killed all blood and allegiances alike, and we're dealing with those that may very well die after the fact. We should grab at anything that makes life worth living."

Hermione set her finished mug on the tray outside the laboratory door. "So, Nott?" Blaise smirked. "Mmm, he's just so… capable, isn't he?" Blaise took her by the elbow before she could open the door.

"I know another Slytherin more capable than my dear Theo. I wasn't just being philosophical Granger, take what you can. The worst is being paralyzed by fear, and I know that's beneath you. At least I think so, wouldn't want to prove me wrong now."

Hermione blushed and cleared her thoughts to focus on the giant cauldron of Blood-Replenishing Potion. She couldn't very well confess love to a man more concerned with gaining the ability to speak or move his limbs.