Severus Snape- 17 years old.

Lily leans into me, she's cold. Her arm is snaked around my waist, her breath pillowing out of her as she exhales. She seems to steal all my heat from me. Her lids are hooded as she peers up to me. I see green and purity and a haunting innocence. I want to corrupt her. My heart pounds in my chest and she licks her lips with that wet, pink tongue. Just a little closer and I could taste her. Just lean in a few inches… But I'm petrified. I'm no Gryfindor, not that I'd want to be. I reach up to cup her cheek, soft yet freezing. I think I'm shaking- am I? Yes. Very much so. Time stops.

Lily clears her throat jarring me, she sits back up effectively closing my window of opportunity… again. "I uh… have transfiguration, but I'll see you tomorrow morning." I nod stiffly and watch as she walks away with her arms wrapped around herself. She's lying.

I want to scream or gouge out marks into the trees of the forbidden forest. Just to prove how frustrated I am. To prove how much I want her. I want to curse myself but instead I slump on the tree behind me and try to reign in my anger. It only takes a few seconds- occlumency will do that to a man. A man. Hardly. I can't even kiss the girl I've been pining after for seven years. She was right there, so close. And I failed.

What's the point of even trying? The honest truth is she is completely out of my league. Even if I did get to kiss her...

I bark out a laugh. She'd be disgusted. When my lips touch hers, if ever, she'll realize there's no spark for her and just like that I'll be irrelevant.

She doesn't really want me. I love her more than anything; she loves me like a friend. But that doesn't mean I can't see her pity and shame every time Potter comes around. Or when I sit in solitude to eat or read or do anything really. As if I couldn't possibly just want to be alone. Well, I guess we are just different people. If I had any sense I'd listen to Lucius and stop pining over her. But when have I ever taken anyone's advice? It's still becoming too hard to pretend we are still best friends.

That is the catalyst. She spends her nights with the Marauders and I spend my night brewing draughts. She follows Potter around like a giggling twit and hardly spares me a glance lest she miss the moment he takes another breath. And I wait for her, and I hope for her- because I love her more than anything. She haunts me while she's still alive. I think of her hair when I see dragon's blood. I smell her when I brew Amortentia. I compare her skin to the creamy color of bone paste. She'll haunt me forever. I cannot or maybe, do not want to escape. What do I have waiting for me outside this obsession?

I'm not favored for my dashing personality. My peers come to me when they need their homework done, or an illegal potion, or some type of job to be done that only a man like me could do. Someone with nothing to lose and no old wizarding name to disgrace. I am no one's friend but Lily's and it has never extended past that. It is ignorant of me to hope or fantasize about her professing her undying love. It is ignorant to hope that if I HAD kissed her she wouldn't have automatically retched in disgust. But it is also ignorant to ever let her go.

I watch all my classmates attack each other's faces like hormonal rabbits. Even now after dinner in the great hall I walk around these corridors and it seems that every hundred feet there's another blasted couple to remind me that I'm alone. Alone while my best friend Lily Evans falls for Potter. Alone while they're snogging atop Gryfindor tower. I sneer in disgust.

It's loveless, as pathetic as I am to admit it, to be me. So I brew another potion, this one more difficult than the last. I revise the instructions and add a new ingredient. The fumes make my mind hazy because I can't be bothered with a mask. This is my life. Loveless. I enjoy it for the most part. I blame my need for human touch on puberty. I blame my need for Lily on stupidity.

I've had a few quick fucks with a pair of Hufflepuff twins. They took my virginity. It's fun while it lasts and they're nice enough chits. They're beautiful too, but no matter how many times we come back to each other I still think of Lily. Those two ask me to stay the night in the Room of Requirement with them each time. I have once or twice and being covered with two naked blondes is, I realize, something almost every male student has fantasized about.

Sleeping like that is comforting, but the sex no matter how explosive has always been empty. The emotions are never there for me. It all just seems unnecessary and oddly draining. But I never deny them, they are, in my defense, hard to resist. So it isn't sex that I want, or passion. I long to be loved so deeply that it resembles a softer sort of worship. But alas, no one wants to love me. Not even sweet Lily Evans.

)O(

Hermione Granger- 17 years old.

My legs are cramping by the time I get back down into the trail to the shrieking shack. I sprinted all the way to the whomping willow and now in this tight space I crawl my way through panting and panicking at the lack of oxygen, the lack of everything. When it finally opens up to the house I scramble back to Snape's body. I curse shaking my head and take deep breathes like the muggle psychology books say to do in hopes of calming my body. Focus. I press three fingers to the side of his marred neck and a hand on his chest. I close my eyes and wait. I focus on touch and try to drown out the sound of my blood whooshing past my eardrums. A wave of desperation threatens to overtake me just before I feel a tiny pulse.

A sob of relief rips through my throat as I grab the essence of dittany and a bezoar from my beaded bag. With a swish of my wand the pool of blood is gone and leaves a burgundy river of fresh liquid pulsing slowly out of Professor Snape.

"All this time, it was Snape."

"Harry what are you saying?"

"He was protecting us this whole time 'Mione… Oi! Where are you going?!"

Focus. Focus. Focus. I chant to myself as I dab the dittany on the wound. It should start to weave together now… A tear streams down my face. It's not working. Another deep breath and I wipe my eyes smearing blood everywhere. I grab a blood replenishing potion and force that down his throat. As I rub his marred flesh it gushes blood and it seeps between my fingers. I have to look away for a moment and calm the wretch in my throat. How much pain am I causing him? Focus. Focus Hermione. Then I shove a bezoar and another potion at one minute intervals down his throat. I pray desperately to Hecate and grab the dittany again.

I'm washed over with relief as the wounds begin to purge a deep, spiky green puss and start to heal. I place a rag soaked with dittany on Snape's neck and try to coax another blood replenishing potion into him. I can hear his breathing get stronger but also labored and short. I nearly smack myself with realization that he's most likely in tremendous pain.

"Hold on professor." I uncork a bright red pain potion and touch it to his lips. I lower my hand to his neck but stop and watch as he swallows by himself. It's at this time that I realize he has been stabilized. I take out a basin and conjure water. When a sponge is soaked I flick my wand and banish the pools of sticky blood and begin to clean him up.

The water turns pink, his pale skin is smeared with flecks of dried blood I can't quite make budge. He shivers and I panic. "I'm sorry hold on." My voice is thick with emotion as I cast warming spells in the shack, to the blood laced water, and onto the floor beneath us along with a cushioning charm. I'm vibrating with guilt. I've left them in the middle of the battle. But I couldn't leave him. To die, after everything. I was nearly convinced he might be our enemy but it only took one sentence from Harry saying otherwise for me to abandon the thought.

Anger wells up in me. I let out a frustrated growl and cover my face with my hands as if to block everything out. "I told them. Always. I have always defended him… They never wanted to accept it. They never wanted to belie-" I sob over Professor Snape, unable to keep mumbling to myself. WHY could they have not just trusted Dumbledore, if not Snape then Dumbledore? I let sobs wrack my body. I tug at my curls and rock back and forth above the seemingly calm figure below me.

Water soaks through my clothes, my hands have a death grip on the once engorged sponge. My sobs alternate with pants and whimpers. I can't see anything. The low lights of the shack provide no assistance. Snot runs down my chin. My lungs feel constricted. I think I'm having a heart attack. I claw at my chest and gasp for breath as if breathing has become foreign to me. The edges are all blurry and I can't… I can't…

I can't breathe here…

)O(

Severus Snape- Present.

Such bright lights for death…

…..Must be Hell….

…..Hast to be the ninth circle….

So cold… It's painful….. It's BURNING….. IT'S…

I gasp as my body jerks upward only to be thwarted by leather straps across my ankles and wrists. "Headmaster please" came the gruff voice hovering outside my limited vision, "I'm very glad to see you're awake. But I have to change these bandages. Lay still." Pomfrey worked swiftly to release my restraints and sit me up with fresh bandages on my neck. Surely marred beyond repair. Yet another embellishment to my garish appearance. Ah well, I'll always be an intellect. She dimmed the lights and opened a curtain to reveal a soft moonlight. The witch then left, clearly plagued with many in her wards... Merlin's dick!

From wall to wall and floor to ceiling were various types of flowers. Vines curled up and around pots. What fresh hell is this? Jasmine perfumed the air. Maybe I didn't survive. Maybe this is all an elaborate supernatural torturing of the soul. Of course I know it isn't true. One could hope. Before I could contemplate my own existence any further a soft, impatient knock came from the door.

My head snapped to the location but I moved too quickly and in result the burn flared again. "Come." I croaked. Fantastic, the one good physical attribute. A soft figure with a halo of curls edged into the room. As she turned I blanched.

The angel… Granger! In my final moments I was pulled from my pain to see a beautiful creature smeared with my blood and dusted with dry mud. She'd had leaves in her curls... must have showered… How long have I been unconscious?

"I've been waiting for you to wake." How long? How long has she been waiting? "I wanted to be the one to tell you." Ah, there it is. A motive. My stomach spasms treacherously, all the same. "I've been by your side since the end anyway. So I thought… I would tell you." Since the end, how long ago was the end?! I refuse to make the mistake of speaking again so I settled for a suspicious glare.

She steps into the moonlight and smiles a tired, pathetic type of smile. The kind of smile I would take as a challenge. If I were the man responsible for her happiness. Which I'm not. Thank Merlin for small mercies. I've only just rid myself of the Potters. Even if her happiness was strained, she still looks… If I can admit it only to myself… soul crushingly beautiful. Her lips are cherry red and chapped. From biting them no doubt. The curls fall down her shoulders with a slight, signature frizz. She looks too pale and has purple and yellow bruises peppering her shoulders. But she is… beautiful just the same.

"You're a war hero Severus." She used my first name… I sneer as if to say- yes I know Miss Granger. I had hoped not to survive, but I had also made sure that everyone would wallow in their own misjudging stupidity whether or not I happened to perish. She gives a soft, relieved- to my own confusion- smile as a silent reply... And then she bites her lip and seems to vibrate before pouncing forward.

I jerk backward into my bed as her warm arms gently wrap around my waist. She's hugging me… Right then and there I go through an internal war. To wrap my arms around her or to stay stock still and pray she never lets go. Because she is warm and I am freezing. She is soft, so soft she's bruised all over like past ripe fruit. And now she has her head buried on my chest… and I can hear her soft cries. And she is a woman, acting as if I am her oxygen. And when was the last time I was hugged? When had I ever been shown such emotion? Somehow I know she isn't sad, this is her relief spilling out onto me.

My heart wrenches and my face contorts in pain and after what seems like an eternity my arms are around her. Holding her steadfast. "I always believed in you." Her voice breaks. "I promise I always trusted you. Dumbledore trusted you and so I trusted you. You are such a good man… I'm so… so sorry… All these years…" She curls her fingers into my hospital robes and trembles. I rest my head against my pillow and sigh…

I fell asleep with my ex-student. I fell asleep with Hermione Granger. And I felt a feeling in the moments before unconsciousness that I had not felt in so long that it took me a moment to realize… I felt free.

"I believe you, Miss Granger." It came as a whisper and I'd only a soft sigh in reply.

AN: I think I'd fancy this as quite beautiful. I'm contemplating building a whole story off of this but for now it's just a one- shot. Let me know what you guys think. R&R

Some facts:

Ninth Circle of Hell is for the treacherous. Sinners are encased in ice, which is why I chose that.