A/N: This is my extremely, extremely late gift for silver-nightstorm in the GGE 2013. Sorry it's almost a year late, I hope you'll still like it!

Maybe it was because he spent dinner at Grimmauld Place twice a week.

Maybe it was because she saw with her own eyes the work he did for the Order.

Maybe it was because he might seem biased, but when you listened more closely, what he said usually made sense.

Maybe it was because he was more studious and educated than he let them believe.

Maybe it was because she could talk with him about complicated spellwork without him sneering at her for being a know-it-all.

Maybe it was because their eyes would occassionally connect across the table.

Or maybe it was because of all of the aforementioned.

Fact was, over the past weeks, Hermione had started to realise that she liked Severus Snape.

Actually liked him.

Not loathed him for making her feel inferior, like he used to do at Hogwarts.

Not hated him because he always found something to critise about her.

Not despised him for treating her like something he found under his shoe.

No, she liked him. Liked him in the schoolgirlish kind of way that she swore would never be a part of her.

When he talked to her, her brain went fuzzy.

When he looked at her, her stomach made somersaults.

When he accidentially bumped into her in the hallway, her legs became gooey.

Even Victor had not made her feel like this.

She didn't want to act on it. He was twice her age, to start with.

And he was her Professor.

Not to mention Ron and Harry and Fred and George and Ginny all hated his guts.

But in the depths of her mind, there was always him.

When she laid in her bed at night, his image popped up in her dreams.

He was the one she fantasised about, however embarrassed that made her feel.

At times, she thought he knew.

He would look at her with this piercing obsidian eyes and she felt as though he looked straight into her soul, as though he peeled off layers of stubbornness off the wall she had built around herself.

When she found out he knew Legilimency, she knew that that was exactly what he did.

It made the blush creep further up her cheeks whenever she encountered him.

She tried to avoid him, as much as she could. It wasn't too difficult: she would spend time with Harry and Ron or Ginny, and they all avoided him like the plague.

Yet is was more difficult than she imagined.

After all, he was still a member of the Order, and he still visited Grimmauld Place twice a week.

She tried to put him out of her mind, she really did.

Okay, maybe she didn't really try that hard. How could she, really, when his intense eyes were all she could think about?

Maybe it was his silky black hair - greasy, Harry and Ron used to call it.

Maybe it were his immaculate robes, billowing behind him as he walked, now stilled as he lay on the floor.

Maybe it was his voice, creaked and broken, choking out his dying words.

Maybe it were his eyes, still obsidian, but the life in them slowly fading away.

Maybe it was the fact that he begged for forgiveness without speaking.

Fact was, that when Harry, Ron and Hermione found Severus' body in the boathouse, her heart broke at the sight of him.

He had been one of the bad guys, working for Voldemort himself, yet here she was, wishing he wasn't on the point of dying.

He presented Harry with his tears, and it was quite possibly the most beautiful, most touching and most tragic sight she ever saw.

Ron left to regroup with Seamus and the others and she promised him she'd follow soon.

Now it was just the two of them.

She sank down on her knees beside him.

There was just so much blood. There was no way he could survive an attack like that.

After a moment's hesitation, she took his hand in hers.

Harry and Ron thought he was dead. She still felt a faint hint of a pulse, but she knew that he maybe only seconds left, not even minutes.

She whispered to him to not give in, to not go towards the light.

His lips slightly parted and she leaned in closer, to hear his definite final words.

"Li...lily..."

And then she understood. She had never stood a chance.

She closed his eyes and stood up.

She had a martyr to avenge. She had to stop a psychopath from making any more victims.

She glanced one last time over her shoulder at his lifeless body.

In that moment, she made a promise.

I'll make it matter.