"'Constringitur sanguinis,' you said?"

Albus Dumbledore, having rushed home from his meeting with the Bulgarian Ministry of Magic's foreign secretary, settled into a worn armchair in Number 12's sitting room, his brow furrowed and no sign of a twinkle in his bright blue eyes. An aged clock carved with the leering face of a jarvey tolled noon.

Snape nodded. He was still shivering, but the Fireflower draught coupled with more anti-tremor potion had managed to quell the shaking to a manageable level.

"I'm sorry. I haven't heard of any similar curses with that incantation."

"Damn. It's as I suspected, another one of Lucius's clever little 'inventions.' No wonder the Dark Lord puts up with having his pompous arse around. So my cover is blown, as the muggles would say, and I'm cursed to freeze to death, to boot. Isn't this just wonderful."

"Nobody is freezing to death on my watch, my boy, I can promise you that. We will find a way to fix this."

Rarely had Hermione heard Professor Dumbledore sound so forceful, and she felt herself let out the breath she hadn't realized she was holding. The two Professors seemed to have forgotten she was in the room, perched on a footstool near the door. She hadn't been expressly told to leave when Dumbledore arrived, but she hadn't exactly been involved in the conversation, either. She just couldn't shake the feeling that she had failed Professor Dumbledore, and it was crushing her inside. She had blithely assumed Professor Snape was fine when he came in walking and talking the previous night. She should have done some sort of check or scan or...

"Miss Granger?"

Hermione's head snapped up.

"Y-yes, Professor?"

"I know it's not what you had in mind for your summer, but I believe you could be instrumental in helping fix this."

"Me?" Hermione gasped, not expecting this at all. She figured that Professor Dumbledore had been about to politely ask her to excuse herself from the room.

"Her?" Severus spluttered. "What can a schoolgirl, not more than a child really, do to help this sorry mess? Besides get in the way, of course!"

"Severus!" The sharpness in Albus' voice made even the stony Potions professor startle. "That is hardly fair, and you know it. Miss Granger is a valuable asset to this Order, and her work has been instrumental in making sure we still have a War to fight."

"Making sure we still have a Chosen One to fight it more like," Severus muttered under his breath, and Hermione was surprised to see Dumbledore crack a smile and snort before composing himself.

"In any event, Miss Granger continues to be important to what we're trying to do. I challenge even you, Severus, to manage to argue with that."

Dumbledore paused and stared at Severus, eyebrows raised. Severus maintained a sullen silence, meeting Dumbledore's gaze coolly for a minute before slumping back into the cushions of the couch behind him.

"That's settled, then. Now, Miss Granger, I understand if you want to continue to spend your summer with your family. Family is important-believe me, I know that. However, I would not ask you this if it wasn't of the utmost importance. We need Severus functioning. Would you be willing to spend time helping him find a way to counter this curse and making sure he stays alive long enough to do it? You wouldn't need to spend every waking hour with Severus, of course-I think the Order would be short two members instead of one before long if that were the case-"

He paused and winked at Hermione, who smiled a little in return.

"-but you would need to check on him every few hours, and spend additional time researching and experimenting."

"I don't need a bloody nursemaid, Albus," Severus grumbled, although the body-wracking shiver that punctuated the complaint really didn't do much to solidify his argument. He took another drag of his steaming mug of potion solution and fell silent again.

Hermione allowed herself one fleeting moment to mourn the long, lazy summer days with her family before she snapped back into Responsible Miss Granger mode.

"Of course I'll help, Professor Dumbledore."

"Thank you." Professor Dumbledore nodded, eyes shining. "Now, I do believe we've kept you from your parents long enough for now. Go spend some time at home. Can I expect you at Hogwarts at four?"

Hermione agreed and withdrew from the room, and Severus' shaking increased. It had always been hard for him to hide any pain behind his usual cool indifference with the Headmaster, so after all these years, he didn't even bother trying anymore. Showing weakness in front of the Granger girl, however, was a different story.

"I'm sorry."

"I beg your pardon?"

"I'm sorry, Albus. I'm useless to you now. I ruined everything."

Severus told himself he needed to stop talking, but the words kept pouring out in a quiet, monotone voice that Dumbledore could barely make out over the crackling of the fire and the ticking of that damn clock.

"I couldn't kill her. The Dark Lord hadn't asked me to kill in so long that I just wasn't ready for it. I thought I had him believing me, that I found acts of physical violence distasteful and potions so much more dignified. I should have known better than to think he was fooled. I was his patsy, his mark, his prey that he coaxed into a trap, easy as snaring a stupid rabbit!"

"Severus, hush. You've given us years of intelligence, years. I can't even count how many lives you've saved. And if the thing that stops that is an act of mercy, an act of true humanity, then I have absolutely nothing to complain about. I won't hear another word about this.

"What we do need to discuss, however, is how to proceed from here. I truly believe that with Miss Granger's help, we will have you fighting fit as soon as we can. I don't know how long it'll take to find the solution, though, so you will have to exhibit some patience, as trying as that is for you."

Albus quirked a single eyebrow, and Severus chose to ignore the barb.

"But what about my classes? If I'm still like this come term time, I'm in no shape to teach. I can't even have that scrap of usefulness."

"I'll find someone to cover them. In all of this mess, that seems like the easiest part!"

"Albus, do you even remember how delicate the balance of a Potions class is? I have anywhere from 30 or more teenagers practically dripping hormones and self-centered angst, who don't give a rat's arse that they're sloshing around substances that could melt their face off, if they were lucky. And in the midst of making sure that nobody loses any body parts, I have to do my best to make sure they bloody learn something!"

"Of course, dear boy, of course. I'll take personal charge of your classes until I can drum up a decent substitute."

Severus groaned and rolled his eyes toward the cracked plaster ceiling. No matter how famous Albus was, he and potions did not mix. Severus would treasure the memory of an eyebrowless Albus the time that he tried to help Severus brew a batch of Veritaserum until the end of his days. Although he had a sneaking suspicion that this would end in tears, Severus didn't really have any other choice but to agree.

As unbelievable as she would have thought it to be just a few short days ago, it didn't take Hermione long to fall into a routine caring for Professor Snape. She was surprised to find that his company was not as trying as she suspected it might be. He was never what you could remotely call friendly, but he was mostly civil. She thanked her lucky stars that the curse didn't render him unable to bathe or attend to his bodily needs-she didn't know what she would have done if this were not the case.

She would wake up shortly before six, and as the sun rose, she'd Apparate reluctantly from her cozy childhood bedroom to Hogwarts. Professor Snape's potion had to come first, one drop of the fireflower essence stirred into in half a liter of a near-boiling carrying solution, a shot of the anti-tremor brew that Snape downed like it was Friday night at the bar, and yet another massive fry-up equal to the one she made that first fateful morning. This time, thankfully, she had house elves to do the frying. Although she had attempted to make peace with the elves and reassure them that the activisim of a misguided youth was no more, they still spent as little time around her as they could manage, but they kept Professor Snape stocked with all the food he could ever want.

She would then leave Snape bundled up in his enchanted duvet by a roaring fire, continuing on to the library, where she'd spend the morning buried in research, checking on Snape by Floo every hour and topping up his potion mug when needed. After five solid hours of poring over books and taking copious notes, leaving her ink-splattered and ready to tear her hair out, she'd return to Snape's sitting room to dive into the heaped platters of sandwiches, veritable buckets of soup, and other assorted lunchtime paraphernalia that the elves would pile onto the dark wood of his simple coffee table until she could almost hear it groan. The first day, it was all Snape could do to perform the basic function of chewing, but after he became somewhat accustomed to the ways that the curse's chills affected his muscles, he started initiating discussions. He was almost hungrier to find out what Hermione had been reading than he was for the food, and that was saying something. By the second day, Hermione started bringing him books she thought might be pertinent, and she picked up a Dicto-quill so that he could make legible notes despite his hand shaking.

She would then return home to spend the afternoon with her parents before returning to Hogwarts to have dinner with Snape. At first, over dinner, they would continue the talk from earlier in the day, about which ingredients interact with or nullify each other, each mentioning various obscure Potions theorists from centuries ago they had dug up in their respective dusty tomes. But as the days went on, Hermione felt more and more burnt out talking about warming Potions almost all day, every day.

The first time she haltingly mentioned some new article she read about increasing the longevity of anti-inflammatory solutions in the latest journal, he paused for a moment, observing her with two furrows pulling his eyebrows together over his nose.

"I'm- I'm sorry. I didn't mean to... I'll be off now. Goodnight, Professor."

"It's complete bollocks that they're relying on willow bark as a crutch given its reactivity after bottling."

Hermione paused, her hand inches away from the wrought iron Floo powder reservoir hanging from the black marble of the mantel. She turned, slowly, to see Snape settled back into the winged charcoal armchair, hands steepled, watching her with a challenge in his eyes. Did she have the guts to follow through with a talk with the big, bad "Bat of the Dungeons"?

"Well, actually, if you take into account that..."

And there was no stopping them after that. Once that top layer of ice broke, each evening, the unlikely pair would settle in for a lively discussion, sometimes about research, but equally as often about literature or culture. Snape had genuinely laughed, for the first time in Hermione's earshot, at her look of utter shock at his referencing having seen a Mel Brooks movie. A voice deep inside her head whispered to her that it was a pity he didn't have the chance to do it more often. The years dropped off of his face, and he looked a hell of a lot more human than anyone else took him to be.

On the tenth day after Lucius Rat-arsed Bloody Ponce Malfoy stuck him with that curse, Severus Snape found himself wrapped up in the most intriguing sort of guilt. Now, Severus was no stranger to guilt. Some form or another of the feeling had hung on him like an old coat throughout most of his life. And yet, this was an entirely new vintage to sample.

Frankly, Severus felt bad that he wasn't completely miserable for once.

Sure, he shivered nonstop, and he frequently had to look down and count to make sure his toes still made up their regiment of ten. First thing in the morning was the worst, after seven hours of no potions. He would wake up curled into a tight ball, his knees practically cemented to his chest, and he could feel the chills deep underneath his ribs. But when he mustered the strength to reach for the mug that he always found perched on his bedside table, handle facing him, he loosened up.

For the first time in nearly two decades, Severus no longer had to shield his mind from the Dark Lord's probing attacks, or to wrack his brains for ways to weasel out of Voldemort's latest atrocity, or to be the despised bearer of bad news at every Order meeting. Severus knew that he should be focusing on castigating himself for no longer being able to spy-he knew that he still had plenty of sins of his past for which he needed to atone, but despite himself, day by day, he found himself dwelling on this less and less. It became less of a throbbing baseline to his every action and more of a subtle undercurrent.

"Would you care for a drink, Miss Granger?"

The words fell out of his mouth before he could stop them. He had been thinking about how long it had been since he had sipped a good whisky all through dinner that night, and he intended to ask Miss Granger to pour him a single.

"I'm sorry?"

"Well, I can't very well pour it myself, can I? And contrary to what Bat-Potter and Ginger Robin think, I'm not rude enough to ask you to fetch me a drink without offering to share."

Hermione bit her lip to keep from smiling and made her way over to the small sideboard that she assumed functioned as a bar. It was a tooled mahogany to match the coffee table and the arms of the armchair and small settee, carved with an intricate pattern of vines and curling ivy leaves. Who would have guessed that Professor Snape of all people would have such lovely furniture? She knelt down and traced the wooden stems for a moment, before pulling open the doors.

What happened next could only be described as a purely girlish squeal of delight.

"Miss Granger, are you quite alright?"

Hermione faked a few coughs, composing herself.

"You have, ahem, quite a collection, Professor." Hermione eyed the array of muggle single malt whisky as if she was greeting old friends. "I thought wizards drank Ogden's?"

"I'd rather brush my teeth with that swill."

"I haven't had Jura in ages..." she murmured, running a fingertip down the edge of the bottle.

"Pour it, then. Don't just sit there gawping."

Minutes later, they cradled heavy glass tumblers, Snape's safeguarded with a subtle anti-sloshing charm of course. Hermione held hers up to watch the firelight dance through the wheat-colored liquid.

"I must admit, Miss Granger, I never took you for a Scotch connoisseur."

Was that a note of respect Hermione detected in the Professor's voice? Would the wonders never cease?

"My dad taught me, more years ago than he probably should have. Our family has a tradition where every summer, we drive up to Scotland for a week to road trip and visit distilleries... Well, as many distilleries as my mum puts up with, that is. Heaven help the wine drinker who gets stuck with the whisky snob."

Snape chuckled.

"I first tried it when I was fresh out of Hogwarts, trying to impress Lucius and his ilk. It's easier than you think to pass off being the pauper in a crowd of rich brats as long as you know what you're doing."

Snape chuckled ruefully, and Hermione leaned forward, resting her glass on her knees. She didn't quite know what to say. She never expected Snape to open up even a little bit about his past, let alone to her.

"It's a miracle."

"What?"

"I've rendered the indubitable Miss Granger speechless. I never thought that the way to get you to stop raising that hand and asking questions was to put a whisky glass in it."

There was no sting in Snape's barb, and Hermione screwed up her courage to meet like for like.

"Naturally. I'm surprised you don't give booze to all of your students. Who knows, it might help even Neville settle down a bit!"

Snape groaned theatrically and placed the back of a long-fingered hand to his forehead.

"Let that boy touch a drop, and I might as well write the whole dungeons off into oblivion."

"He's very good at Herbology, though. He's not as useless as you make him out to be."

"You don't think I'm aware of that? I knew that from the start. I never really thought he was stupid at all."

"If you don't think he's stupid, why don't you give him a chance to learn without terrifying him."

"Because, Miss Granger, I have been trying for six years to get that boy to grow a spine. The minute he stands up to me in class is the minute I know that he won't turn into a snivelling lump at the other end of a Death Eater's wand. Which do you think he needs more in the real world: the capacity to brew a perfect swelling solution or the ability to stand up straight and fight when his life and others are on the line?"

Hermione was silent a moment, and tilted her glass back and forth, watching the liquor lap the walls and then settle.

"I suppose nobody really stopped to think that you might have had a good reason," Hermione said quietly.

"I suppose not," Snape answered, and they settled into a companionable silence and sipped.

With a mighty whoosh, any hope of further reflection vanished as the fire flared a brilliant green. A slight figure in Death Eater robes and mask tumbled onto the black hearth rug, and Hermione screamed. Out of instinct she chucked the nearest thing she had at his head, namely the whisky glass. The heavy crystal base collided with the Death Eater's head with a clunk, and he groaned softly.

Professor Snape grabbed his wand as fast as he was able and shakily rose to her feet. Hermione, hearing mocking echoes of Ron's "Are you a witch or not?" in her head, belatedly scrambled for hers as well.

The Death Eater raised a hand and slowly pulled his mask off, revealing a face Hermione had despised for the past six years. Professor Snape lowered his wand slightly, only by an inch or two.

"Draco!"

"You're alive!" the blond gasped.

"Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated."

Hermione watched her rival, his shoulders rising and falling with ragged breaths and his red-rimmed eyes darting to all corners of the room as if something might jump out at him at any minute. He calmed himself enough to speak.

"Please, Godfather, I need your help."