OUT OF TUNE

Disclaimer: This is a non-profit tribute to the works of JK Rowling who created and, together with her publishers and licensees, owns the characters and settings elaborated herein.

A/N: Spoilers to OotP, not HBP-compatible. This chapter was previewed in the dim, distant past. Thanks to anyone who made comments at the time. I know that includes Bellegeste and Cecelle.

Professor Dumbledore's eyes rested on his colleague. After that single nod of admission, Professor Snape seemed to have no further comment on the imminent prospect of his death.

Hermione collapsed, wide-eyed, into a chair. The room was hot and her head was buzzing. There was a sick weight in her gut as if a piano had landed there and was jangling loudly out of tune.

"Oh my –" she breathed. "You knew? You knew and you tried to stop me saying."

Still he said nothing.

"Do you – do you want to die?" Her cheeks were wet. This wasn't right. Snape was hard and invulnerable as rock. He got angry; he didn't go quiet.

Dumbledore flinched. After a moment, Snape shrugged, hiding his thoughts behind half-closed lids. His voice was soft.

"Not particularly."

"Then why didn't you say something?" she shrilled.

The thin shoulders straightened and he was towering over her in an instant, eyes glittering.

"Your concern is unnecessary, Miss Granger. This is the risk I took. Be patient. The dreams will die when I do. Meanwhile, you're quite safe to use Dreamless Sleep Potion every night; you won't need it long enough to become addicted."

Her eyes prickled and her throat burned with sudden unexpected anger. She wanted to shake some sense of self-preservation into him.

"How dare you pretend the only thing that matters is whether I can sleep? You're going to die!" Her voice was almost too thick to squeeze out of her throat. Judging by the battered state of his dream-corpse, it wouldn't be an easy death.

"I could hardly fail to be aware of that, after twenty-one nights of you snivelling over my grave. Don't let it bother you."

"How can it not? You're always risking your life to keep us safe!"

"Let me assure you that your personal safety never enters into my considerations. You owe me nothing," he said.

She glared at his bleak, blank face. Liar! He'd been protecting her for six years. He'd been protecting her kind for sixteen.

"I can't spend the rest of my life knowing you died because I wouldn't save you!"

"That's easily solved. Get the headmaster to Obliviate you. No one would blame you, even if they knew, and there's no reason they ever should." His lips tightened. "You can't save everyone, you know."

Hermione was staring at her teacher as if she'd never seen him before. She'd made no plans beyond the telling, eager to shift responsibility from her own shoulders and confident they'd think of a solution that didn't involve her. But it was real now. A glance at the headmaster's ashen face confirmed the dreadful truth that it was her or nothing. This – man in front of her was preparing to go quietly away to death by torture. She could save him or she could watch him go.

She couldn't watch him go.

She clenched her teeth. Her stomach was turning over and she hoped desperately that she wouldn't be sick. Piano bits all over the floor.

"I'm – I'm offering."

"Are you that desperate for my approval, you'd even marry me to get it?"

Trust him to make everything even harder.

"No, I – Of course not – It isn't that!"

"Ah, I see," he drawled with vicious precision. "An attack of noble self-sacrifice. How very Gryffindor of you."

"I'm not the one going off to get murdered! Who's the Gryffindor now?"

A twitch of his little finger, visible only because he was standing and she was not, was the only sign she'd struck home. It was enough. For the first time, she was disputing him on an equal basis. At this moment, they were not teacher and student but male and female, person and person. And she could say what she thought, without fearing his punishment. She gloried in her power, ignoring a flicker of guilt. It served him right for all the times he'd hurt her feelings, all the times in the future he'd hurt her again. If he had a future.

"You will speak to me with proper respect, Miss Granger," he hissed. "I can still give you detention with Filch all year, even if I don't live long enough to see it. Perhaps I'm saying it because it's true."

"Or perhaps you're as blind to your own worth as you are to everyone else's!" she flung back. "Don't you think you're worth saving?"

"What I think is that you're making a fool of yourself. The whole idea is ridiculous. Why would you even think of such a thing?"

Her brow creased at his incomprehension.

"Why wouldn't I? It's the only right thing to do."

"On the contrary, it could hardly be more wrong!"

She shot him a sideways look through narrowed eyes.

"What's wrong about it?"

"I'm your teacher," he said. "My students are the closest to offspring I ever expected to have."

Her jaw dropped and her eyes widened.

"You think of us as your children?" she squeaked. "Then all I can say is you're a horrid father!"

Another twitch of his little finger. His Adam's apple bobbed up and down and then he was snarling through clenched teeth, "The more reason not to marry me!"

She hung her head and chewed on her lip. That was twice she'd pricked him, twice within minutes. She hadn't even known she could. He was always making her feel like a fool. How could she not have known? Only someone unsure of his power flaunted it the way he did.

"I'm sorry. That was a foul thing for me to say." She glanced up and then away again. "When you've always looked after our welfare, even though you don't like us."

"Why would I need to like you to do what's best for you?"

Her brow wrinkled. He didn't need to, did he? She remembered how he'd bared his branded arm to prove Voldemort's return to the Minister of Magic two years ago, careless of the watching eyes of his least favourite students. He never counted the cost to himself if he thought something needed doing. He just did it, then stalked off and licked his wounds in private.

He'd returned to active spying immediately after, but she hadn't noticed until this moment how gaunt and worn he'd become. Suddenly, she understood the resigned fatalism that had infuriated her moments earlier. For two years, he'd been expecting discovery, torture and death at every turn. The dreams hadn't changed anything for him, not even removing the uncertainty of when. A surge of fierce protectiveness rushed through her. It was time someone protected him for a change.

"I trust you. You've always done what you thought was best for me. You always will."

He glowered at her.

"Then trust me to know what's best for you. You've obviously given this no thought whatsoever. Look at me, girl, and remember you'll be looking at me for the rest of your life! Think about everything you know of me; my age, my looks, my temper, my history. Do you really want to spend the next 150 years, if we both survive, with me or no one in your bed?"

She gave an involuntary shiver as he spat out the last word and was immediately ashamed as he blinked and his face set into stiff, careful lines that reminded her how gingerly she'd moved after that Death Eater hex had sliced her stomach open a year ago. Third time then. Why was she so inept?

"Do you even know what you're offering? How much experience do you have?" he demanded.

Even her toes turned crimson with mortification.

"My experience is none of your business!"

"It will be, if you go through with this," he told her grimly. "But you can have none, of course, or you wouldn't be so silly as to romanticize this predicament. Ridiculous child! How can you even think of marrying someone you actively dislike?"

That was a good question. They were all good questions. She wasn't sure of the answers. Age first. There were twenty years between them, almost a generation, and, though she'd been told she was mature for her years, he was aged well beyond his. Yet thirty-seven wasn't old in wizard terms.

"I don't dislike you – not all the time." She hurried on before he could say what was probably, by the glint in his eye, something even nastier. "The age difference will matter less as we grow older."

"The rest will only worsen."

She studied his lank greasy hair, crooked yellow teeth, too-large nose and too-thin lips. No disputing his ugliness, yet there was something exciting about his panther-prowl, his deep, dark eyes, even the dignity of his billowing robes. Last year, she'd found herself watching him under her eyelids, watching and wondering what he'd look like with a smile. But that was the problem, wasn't it? He was too impatient and ill tempered to smile, too carping and critical to endear himself. Yet she couldn't help admiring him, his resolute courage, his focused, logical mind, his unswerving, unstoppable loyalty. On balance, perhaps the rewards would outweigh the difficulties. Perhaps.

She wasn't going to tell him that, he'd only sneer again. She reviewed and discarded everything it occurred to her to say; there wasn't anything he wouldn't sneer at. On the other hand, her mother had always told her that actions speak louder than words. She'd need all her Gryffindor courage. She took a deep breath and forced herself to stand and walk towards him. He watched with raised eyebrows. Then she reached out and curled her fingers around his hand, tugging it up for her inspection.

He stood rigid as she bent over it, tracing up and down his long competent fingers, lingering on the calluses from cutting and stirring. His hand was cool and dry, with a certain masculine roughness that caught on her fingertips. The veins on the back shone blue through the translucent skin. She took a deep breath.

"You have rather nice hands," she murmured, not daring to look up. "If we're going to do this, it would be helpful to concentrate on each other's good points. Try," to overcome the habits of a lifetime, "to think of something you admire about me."