A/N: Please note the changing tense as we return to the present.

I'm blown away by everyone's responses. How wonderful. I'm so glad you've all enjoyed the story. I almost wish I could go on and on… if only I had twenty fingers to type with instead.

As before, the concept of this story was given to me in a prompt by the wonderful DutchGirl01. Send her Severus dreams, please and thank you.

There is an epilogue. I will post it today, so make sure you don't miss it. I know I'm not alone in thinking that canon Severus, if he had to die, deserved a much better, more detailed, death than he got. So, no cliffhangers as I'll add the epilogue as soon as I can, but I think he deserved a chapter to himself. And, by the way - bugger the canon.

Hour Follows Hour

Part Two

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

e.e. cummings

.

As soon as I step inside the doors of the Shrieking Shack, I know. There is no doubt in it; it spreads throughout my veins, as sure as the killing curse that awaits me. Or will it be by the Cruciatus? Fire covering nerves until it consumes; first with madness, then with death.

Perhaps my own curse? A slash of light to strike my limbs, my chest? Hermione didn't tell me this… she told me of dark days, horrible days, but never this. I know now that she didn't have a clue what would happen, that the Trio were flying blind. They still are; they are somewhere in the castle, in that great big castle.

I must give her time.

There is a certain elegance in my gift, after all; I have given her fifteen years of emotions that have run from love to hate to all consuming need. It seems fitting that my ending should give her a beginning.

For the first time in years, the weight of my steps is heavy. Dragon hide boots covered my stride for endless nights of patrols, of walks to her, but on this night the floor creaks under my feet.

It is chilling.

She will be here somewhere. Gods, I do not want her to be. I can almost feel her… I am inside now, and Riddle is talking, but all I can do is arrange my face and hope to fucking Merlin that it doesn't show that I can smell the scent of her, my beautiful Hermione; peaches and roses and something that is uniquely her.

He speaks of the Elder wand and there is a little intake of breath somewhere behind him; the arrogant fool does not hear anyone but himself, and so he does not notice, but I do. I notice – I know that small, tiny gasp; that short rising of the chest.

I have heard it so many times; I know it as well as the way her mouth curves around the syllables of my name. Not in a snake-like butchering that makes my skin crawl – Ssseveruss – but in a caress, a brush of affection. Severus. Sometimes, 'please Severus, yes, Severus'. And in her long ago state of bliss: 'my Severus'.

To think that I should die now, with my sweet witch crouched behind the old, musty windows… to think that I should die, and know that I belong to her finally. That this is the first time she has seen me since returning yet it will also be the last… Ironic, is it not?

The fifteen years without her were almost laughable in their awfulness. I held onto her solidly for three years; I cast a fucking stasis charm on the pillow she used the last night she was with me, when our bodies were fused together in the cool air that pervades the dungeons. It was not cool that night; no, our skin was bathed in sweat, in lapping tongues and searching fingers. For three years I was a man in love.

I was patient.

My descent into madness and frustration was slow; I wonder now, as Riddle looks at the beast of a snake beside him, whether I began to go mad when she left. Maybe before.

Regardless, I was a lovesick bastard. The Occlumens she'd known became me, and I used my newfound skills for hours each day to stop the ever present longing. I used it to trick my mind into believing that a smooth skinned woman was Hermione as I slammed into her body from behind; eventually, other cries of pleasure that came from mouths that were not as sweet became hers, too.

I was lost. I still am.

She was two women to me; the child that walked through the doors in 1991 with terrible hair and meticulously clean albeit huge front teeth. That night, my stomach emptied itself over and over again – I was a sick, lecherous sod for the excitement that spread through my veins, thinking 'finally, finally, just seven years to go!' when all the while she was prepubescent. That woman set fire to my robes – insufferable chit! She stunned me, she stole from me. I knew all of this in advance, of course.

I bought every single one of the S.P.E.W. badges in the staff room (with the full stops between letters, please and fucking thank you).

I wore my oldest robes and sprinkled whiskey on the bottom corners (before spelling the smell away) so her fire could set them aflame that much quicker.

And when I insulted her teeth (because she told me I couldn't not) and she disappeared to cry, I sent my pay for that month to some charity that she'd left the pamphlet for on a desk in the library. It didn't make it any easier.

But I was far from perfect. I blasted a rosebush behind the spot where she'd told me Krum had kissed her during the Yule Ball. When they scampered out and she stammered a mortified apology, I hated myself for ruining her little teenage dream. And so I let McLaggen kiss her, not even understanding that she didn't want it because I couldn't even look at them. I gave him detention, giving the excuse of his stupidity, when in reality I was furious at my possessive anger.

The second woman was the one that loved me. For I still let her voice run through my mind on occasion: 'know that you are loved.'

Merlin… Everything I had wanted, she gave. And yet she was just a dream; the more she grew older, the more the dream left me. I knew she would travel and come to me eventually, to love me and then rip herself away, but the bitterness she inspired permeated everything. I could not look at her without being covered in hate and fear and revulsion, mixed with a sickening hope.

We listened to her, in the end. For that is how I filled my days after she left, with Albus, holed up in my chambers so as not to draw attention to my always heading in and out of his office. Our plan was foolproof. I hated it. He was a ruthless bastard, Albus, in those days, and even more so later. I had no choice – if I disagreed too much, he would quietly suggest that maybe Hermione shouldn't come back to me, that maybe he shouldn't tell that house elf to use his magic and let her come to me.

I'd never had much faith in Albus, but if I had any left, it was gone the first time such a threat issued from his mouth.

His tenacity was frightening. He knew that Hermione's memories were the key to ending everything; he knew that what we saw in her mind was the only way to succeed. And we didn't even know that we would succeed! He seemed to think we would. I would be Judas, of course.

He did what he did best. He manipulated every fucking thing that met us. It was like manipulating to me, anyway, living within it. In reality, he was merely echoing everything that Hermione had shown us. I'd seen it all before in her mind, but that hadn't stopped me from half hoping that it would be changed because how could anyone accept to treat children in such a way?

Potter? Left for Petunia sodding Evans (or whatever she went by in those days) to apply her own form of torture to the child. That hurt more than knowing that Albus was truly callous (in my own adolescence, I'd thought of him that way, but thinking is different to knowing). Lily's child, with Lily's eyes.

Fuck Albus.

The ring? He put it on himself, with full knowledge of what would happen – all for the sodding 'Greater Good'. His bleeding heart knew no bounds, or so he wanted me to believe; as if it was more than convenient that he could use Draco as an excuse, when in reality he was running a tight ship like a warlord. He ticked off the boxes on Hermione's list obsessively.

And Hermione! Beautiful Hermione. Intelligent, witty, snarky, snooty Hermione. I could've killed him with my bare hands when he suggested I go to a book release on the night she was Petrified; he knew I'd spent my time wrapped up in her rather than painstakingly copying down everything she'd told us, and so he was well aware that I didn't remember every bloody date. I should have been there. I wasn't. Because of him.

I'd always been terrible at the curse; could never bring myself to mean it enough. In the first war I was a lackey, a fool, because I couldn't even Avada someone. When I turned coat, I was even worse.

But that was before this nightmare. This twisted, terrible nightmare. When he told me to kill him, I thought that my life was over. And with good reason: how could Hermione ever continue to love a man that had murdered at wand point? Her memories only lasted to a point where I was the anti-christ. Until the night on the Astronomy Tower, I'd still kept up dreaming like an adolescent that Albus would come and say: "All right, we don't have to change anything else boy, but let's change this – because you have the right to exist in this world, just as much as anyone else."

Yes – it's all quite embarrassing to admit now, while staring at the monster that will kill me. Bloody hell. What a cock-up.

But I will have the last laugh. I will.

I'd expected this: my death. And not just my death, but I'd had niggling thoughts of how Albus would let loose with his senility the way he did before his end.

I had my boxes to be ticked, too. And when he planned, I plotted. Not for the Horcruxes, not for the 'Greater Good'. No – I plotted for the future. For Hermione. To be able to leave with her when it was all over, and not to be sent to Azkaban. Quite selfish, but I think I've earned the right to make my own choices, yes? And failing that, that I would die with a cleared name, so that if she wanted to take a stand publicly, declare her love for me, she wouldn't be carted off to the prison on the rock without me to watch over her.

Poppy became the woman of the hour, of the age. She had known my Hermione, after all. And who would suspect a school nurse of having Occlumency skills that kept out Dumbledore? Exactly - which is why I taught her. She was a natural. One entered her mind and found recitations of lectures she'd attended instead of nights when we got so blindingly pissed that we cried at the hell our lives would become.

Never underestimate a school nurse.

Poppy told who she wanted – I had faith in her, I still do. Anyone she told was worthy of knowing what I had been assigned to do for 'The Plan'. In the end (which is technically now, I suppose), I had a stone wall of supportive women. Fitting, really, when it was men that had made my life a heap of shite.

The outside world believed I was the anti-christ while Headmaster. Well – as Hooch so eloquently put it one evening – the outside world could fuck themselves off of a cliff.

I've always liked Hooch.

And Trelawney. I know. I fucking know. Godric's bollocks - I still don't understand it, yet the mad old bat sought me out one night and gave me one long, owlish look. I nodded and she sighed with… well, relief. Not long after, it came to light that she'd begun to stroll around the castle late at night, uncannily finding hiding spots of students running from the Carrows. Each one was taken back to their quarters disillusioned with cups of tea that held a generous splash of sherry. I pretended not to notice either facts, because she shared her sherry with me, too.

The Trio still went on their desperate search for Horcruxes. There was no other option in the end. I tried – oh, how I tried, to fight Albus on it. I should've fought harder.

Why didn't I fight harder?

By the time I realised how truly terrible it would be for Hermione in that tent, though, Albus was already dead by my hand and that was the end of that.

I can recall now, as I stare at Riddle's red eyes, one night where I myself conjured a full bathroom adjacent to their tents. Sometimes I would leave bags of tinned food by the borders of her wards. I indulged myself one night when I came across her crying and curled over on the ground; I brushed against the wards just twice – enough to have her sit up and then feel something comforting, something almost like home. She stopped crying at the same time that I started.

Snivellus. It always was rather accurate.

I stayed hidden in the darkness; Hermione had always been a terrible liar, and would have given away that it was me. That was the worst part: knowing that she was so close to leaving and encountering me in my past, and not being able to comfort her, to ease her into it and out of it. The Trio were being tracked every second of the day; I had no chance at all. And so Potter, Hermione and fucking Weasley (I never did learn to like Ronald) were on their own – for the most part.

I fell in love with her more when I knew she'd returned from me. There was a note sent to Poppy (the above reproach nurse) in neat cursive writing. Just one tiny sentence:

'Know that you are loved.'

That I should find her again so close to my ending…

Bittersweet, indeed.

My sweet, sweet girl.

What an unexpected gift she is now, at the end. When I pondered this on the walk to the Shack, I thought that I did not want her to see me as I am now, frightened and facing my fucking death, probably about to piss in my trousers.

Now I just want her.

I want you, Hermione.

Where are you?

Riddle is droning on and on, questioning my loyalty (the bloody idiot), making insinuations. I do my best, though it is not my best, not really, because if I have to die then I'll die for her and she will damn well know it. I'll give Potter what he needs to be the sacrificial lamb – what a bleeding waste – but it was all for her.

And then it comes. From out of nowhere, from right in front of me.

That snake. I should have known that it would be the snake.

I hate snakes.

Fuck-

Once, twice.

Again.

Fuck!

It hurts, it hurts, no words, I can't- just –

Oh gods. How-

Why-

Potter is the first one I see.

I can see Hermione's shoes. They're caked in dried mud – poor sweet girl, sod off Weasley-

I give it a try: being honest. I bring it all up; Lily, Hermione, my guilt, my attempt at atonement. Potter – Harry – is worth it. Isn't that a charitable thought?

Take the memories, Potter. Good.

Will I see him? Wherever it is that I will go – will I see him? Probably not. Hell will be without Hermione, so surely I will be in hell.

"Look at me!"

He does. So does she. I can hear her little trembling breaths. Beautiful girl. It's all for you, don't you see? Wait, wait, let me see you-

I should try, I will try, just let me move my head – move a little – fuck, hurts, gods – Hermione-

Where?

There, behind Potter, fucking move Potter, "Her…"

"What's he saying, what's he saying?"

"I don't know!" she cries but she does, she does, because suddenly Potter tumbles to the side and she is here, with terrible hair to ensnare me and that jumper, that jumper she was in when she landed in the Hospital wing and reached out her arms for me to save her, gods all I want is to escape with her, fuck it hurts-

"Severus?"

I can't see her friends gaping at her, hissing questions at taking the liberty with my name, fuck-

There is a bubbling in my stomach, a feeling of overflowing, of something rich and choking and shite it tastes like blood – that I should die with the taste of blood in my mouth and not of her –

"H…"

"Severus! No no no no no, enough, enough Severus, not like this, not now- Severus!"

There is a tired groan coming from somewhere and instinctively I know that it is me, I am making this noise, this gurgling, gasping sound, fucking pitiless and pointless, gods-

I want to tell her. I will tell her. There is only one thing she should know before I leave her, because I will leave her – there is one thing I want to say before she knows about the memories, I want her to hear it from my lips and not have her have to see it in the pensieve because I didn't reply to her bloody letter, I couldn't, there was no way to reply. Just a short, tiny sentence, she has said it to me before but fuck I need to say it, I want to say it, gods it hurts and I can't even-

I wheeze and –

"He's not breathing, he's not breathing!"

"Hermione – leave it! Leave him! He doesn't deserve it!"

"Piss off, Ron! Oh god, oh god oh god oh god-"

She wails and strikes her own chest like a Mediterranean grandmother in mourning, her fingers digging into Severus' coat, before they move to dive into her beaded bag –

I can't breathe, I can't breathe, I can't breathe –

"Severus!"

She pushes at Harry, shoving him back down the small corridor. Ron follows. Of course he did; always a fucking follower, except when he wasn't, except when he left and scampered off like Scabbers.

"Oh god, sweetheart, love, Severus, my Severus, where are your potions, I told you, keep them with you all the time!"

Did she?

I can't remember.

I can't remember anything.

There's… nothing.

It's almost peaceful, if the woman I wanted to have my children and be my wife wasn't inadvertently letting her tears fall into my open mouth.

I might just…

I might just stay here.

It's-

It's not so terrible, not when she has time,

Oh, but I love you, Hermione.

I love –

tbc.