Cook's Journal

After a few moments, in which the confusion gave way to hurt, and the hurt was ruthlessly slapped down by a need to continue to function, she did as Snape had suggested:  She went to the kitchen to collect Crookshanks, and then she was never coming back again.  Being humiliated and rejected twice in one day was more than enough for her.

And of course, the gods of humiliation were not yet done with her:  House was in the kitchen,  holding a tin of cat food, quizzing Crookshanks about his preferences in feline cuisine.  "Hope you don't mind Tesco's Meaty Chicken, buddy, 'cuz that's what you're going to get," he told the ginger monstrosity that looked at him with such knowing eyes.

"You needn't put yourself out, doctor," Hermione said in a flat, toneless voice.  "We won't be staying."

Both cat and doctor swiveled their heads to look at her.  "He ordered you out?"

Hermione was too exhausted to even bother with putting up a facade.  "Yes.  And I won't be bothering you or him again; I won't stay where I'm not --" she hesitated a brief moment to keep from dissolving into yet another puddle of tears "-- wanted."

"Don't be stupid, Granger.  He wants you, all right."

Hermione's lips twisted in what House saw, but Hermione didn't realize herself, was a sneer that was a softer version of the one that so often sat on Severus Snape's face.  House realized that the sneers shared the same origin:  Agony, usually mental.  "He, as you said, just ordered me to leave.  That's rather odd behavior for someone who wants me."

She steeled herself for the biting, vivisecting riposte from House.  Instead, she received a simple question:

"How old are you, Granger?"

The incongruity shocked her into something resembling a normal state.  "I'll be nineteen on September 19."

"Your golden birthday.  How nice."   House deposited the contents of the cat food tin onto a small dish.   "Tell me, Ms. Granger, have you ever baby-sat anyone?  Not Weasley and Potter; I'm talking about persons who are less mature than you physically as well as mentally."

"Yes, yes I have."

"What would you have done," House continued, as he stooped down to present the dish to Crookshanks, "if one of them had done with you what you did just now with Snape?"

Hermione flinched as though evading a backhand across her face.  

"Would you have hated that person?  Would you have given in to temptation?  Or," asked House as he turned the full force of his unnervingly Dumbledore-like blue eyes on her, "would you care enough about that person not to want to violate what you see as a sacred trust to protect them, not to use them?"

Hermione's face went blank.  Of all the possibilities she'd catalogued, that wasn't one of them.  And yet it would of course be the uppermost in an ethical teacher's mind.  House knew he'd hit the spot, and smiled.

"I'm an idiot," she said.

"No, just young."  He paused to let his words sink in.  "You didn't even think of that as an option, did you?"

"No," she said.  "I hadn't."

"Because you were too busy assuming that Ron fucking somebody besides you automatically meant no one else would want to fuck you, much less love you.  Trust me, Granger--" here he moved so his face was so close to hers she could feel his breath " -- he wants you.  He wants you as he wants nothing else on this green earth.  But he's all too painfully aware that you, up until a year ago, were one of his students.  And even though you're no longer his student, he still feels responsible for you."  He grinned.  "If it's any consolation, it's ripping him apart right now."

It was and it wasn't.  Still, the thought of it was enough to coax a small smile from Hermione.

"Be glad he pulled himself back from the brink just now. If he hadn't, that would mean he only saw you as an inflatable love doll.  His refusing to take advantage of your grief is, believe it or not, a good thing -- especially considering the attractiveness of the package being offered to him."  He gave her a goofy smile, and was rewarded with a chuckle from her.  "If I still didn't have some fragments of a moral compass, I'd take advantage of the situation and go for you myself.  But he's right about one thing."

Hermione gave him a surprised look.  "He is?"

"Right now, you need to visit your parents and drop off Orange Godzilla here with them, and then cry out your heart to them about what a cad and bounder that vile Ron Weasley is.   But don't be a stranger, okay?" He gave her a grin that had more than its share of ironic sentiment in it.  "I wasn't joking when I said that two wands were better than one."

Hermione's face clouded.  "I don't think he'll agree with that."

"He will, eventually.  He has no choice." House leaned against the kitchen wall.  "He needs your help to set a trap for my lovely relatives, and you're the only person he can trust.  But you'll need to let me get him drunk again first."

----------------

The object of their conversation was upstairs in his bedroom, lying prone on the bed with his face in the pillow.  He had wanted to rip the pillow apart over and over again, using Reparo to fix it up so he could keep destroying it, but remembered just in time that he didn't want to tip off Slade to the presence of another wizard.

She's simply upset over Weasley's betrayal, that's all it is, he kept telling himself.  All that emotional upheaval, combined with kind words and a comforting shoulder, and she suddenly thought she wanted me.  It happens all the time.  She never would have done it otherwise...

But she knew I was alive.  She managed to find me. She cared enough to try to find me...

Oh, stop it.  She would have done as much for anyone, even a house-elf.  It's not because she loves you, no matter what that grinning bastard House says.  And she is your student, laughing boy.  You can't go around molesting them...

But she molested me first.....

He barely noticed that the cats had curled up alongside him.

Eventually, and only after he wore himself down with self-recriminations, he found himself drifting off into what would be a nervous and agitated sleep.   

Just before he crossed over the border and into unconsciousness, he found himself for some odd reason reciting the beginnings of an old poem -- or was it a spell? -- in his head:  "Black, brown, and blue/ the force is true/It will prevail/Beyond the veil..."  

What the hell was that all about, he thought, and then he started snoring.

-----------------

Andrew Scythemore, who was the chief consultant to the Acute Assessment Unit for Misercordia Hospital in London and a friend to one Gregory House, M.D., looked at the woman in front of him with a practiced eye and a certain amount of professional armor.  But even he could still be shocked.

"She hasn't had much in the way of nourishment, has she, Mr. Slade?", he said to the man at his side, as he studied the pupils of her unseeing eyes with a small flashlight.

"The lot holding her captive weren't apparently interested in much more than keeping her alive for their own fun," Johnny Slade replied, looking every inch the concerned and outraged husband.  He of course had given that lot his full permission and approval to do what they had done, but he did want her alive.  She was necessary to fulfil some plans of his.  "They held her so long, did so much to her, she doesn't know who held her, doesn't know down from up any more."

"Her yellowish colour -- that's got to be jaundice, but I can't be sure until I run some tests."  He turned to look at Mr. Slade.  "I have a friend, a visiting American doctor, who specialises in diseases like this.  His name's Gregory House.  Do you mind if I ask him to have a look at your wife?"

Slade had started at the mention of the American doctor's name.  Then, he smiled.  

"Why not?" he replied.  "If you think it will help."