She'd been sitting on the couch for hours, patiently sitting, and only the sharp twitches that overpowered her when he turned a page betrayed the enormous battle waging inside of her. There was a litany in her head that she tried to subdue, but it was sapping her energy and it was only a matter of time before she exhausted her self-control. You want him. He doesn't want you. He hates you. You love him. Touch him, show him, he is a man and you have ways of making him want you, want you, Hermione he could want to touch you if you touch him, he could smile at you if you touch him, he could care. Touch him. Kiss him. He wants you, you could make him happy if you reach out and touch him. You want him. It filled her and swept through her mind and body like fire, and she knew that if he made any sudden movements, she would jump at him again. She hated that part of herself, because she knew it upset him. He did not want to be touched by her, he pitied her, he was disgusted by her. He did not love her. She trembled and the chorus started up again.

"Please!" The word burst from her and for a moment she was so startled she was unsure as to what she'd been pleading for, but Snape's head had snapped up and he was waiting expectantly. She had surprised herself. Neither one of them had ever interrupted the other while they were reading. Even when Hermione desperately wanted to ask him a question about a potion featured in her research, or comment on an error she found in an ingredients list, she kept silent. There had always existed a wall between them, but it had crumbled to dust. "Severus please, have you found anything that can help?"

"Very little. There are obvious cures for amortentia and other less severe love potions, but I'm afraid of the consequences that might arise if I try to give you an antidote to a potion you have not consumed. This isn't amortentia, it is amortentia magna or some other latin rubbish name, and it needs the specific antidote to combat the specific ingredients working in combination inside of you."

"Alright. What cures do we know? Let's lay out what we know, and work from there. You are a potions master, Severus my love, I am certain you will be able to think of something." Hermione found it interesting that while she could outwardly appear calm and logical, her brain was screaming the words working inside of you over and over like some sick electrocution regimen searing through her body.

"I would like it if you called me Professor Snape." He knew he shouldn't do this, that it was his fault entirely and he couldn't punish her for it, but her stupid trust and cloying words were sickening. She shrunk back a little, and he barked out information in a Snape-like manner. "We know this is not amortentia. We know there is an antidote to amortentia, an antidote which I have several gallons of in my stores. We also know that an affective antidote to love potions in general is hate potions, but since we know this is not amortentia and we have no idea what might happen if we use any potion to counteract its effects—"

"You must have some idea! You're Professor Snape—"

"I AM NOT A GOD!"

"I KNOW that, you fool, but you're a bloody brilliant potions maker, and you had to have known that the sum of your ingredients would give you a certain type of result. What were the ingredients?"

"I don't—" he faltered, "Hermione I don't remember all of them, I told you I was in a drunken rage, I'd had a strong dose of amortentia myself so I was bitter and blurry, and the only thing I can remember is the goddamn peppermint!"

"You don't remember the measurements, the ingredients, what you wanted the potion to do? None of it?" The panic in her voice was reaching hysterics, and he thought it was a good sign that she might be able to hate him enough to stop wanting him.

"I wanted it to cause Voldemort emotional and psychological agony, and to extract my final revenge on all of them. I was going to make him fall in love with all of them, all of the Death Eaters at once, if I could."

"This potion has the power to do that?"

"That was its intent, so I suppose."

"You're brilliant. You really are. You're so… so powerful and I'm …" she gasped and turned away from him, "I'm completely at your mercy. Oh god S…Severus I don't think I can hold on much longer … Tell me what we know, we have to decide now, please tell me."He rose from his seat slowly, she followed him with her eyes, boring into his with burning ferocity. He found himself afraid of what she could do to him. In order to have him, she might consume him.

"We know this is not amortentia…"

"The hate potion Severus, give me the hate potion."

"We don't know what it would do—"

"I DON'T CARE what it would do to me, I'm afraid of what I'm about to do to you, so PLEASE my beautiful light, will you either let me hate you, let me love you, or kill me now because I can't … Oh." She craned her neck back into the sofa, her hands gripped the cushion and she moaned. She was moaning for him. He almost fell back into the hallway and ran madly down the cellar stairs; he would grab the hate potion or the antidote, whichever he saw first. But he didn't make it.

"Severus. Severus stop, please." He heard her, but he'd reached the bottom of the stairs and waived his wand to let the first ward down, hoping she would wait at the top for him. Then he couldn't move, and he wondered how he'd let it come to this.

"Hermione don't. We're using too much magic at once, they'll track us …" And then he couldn't speak. What had he done? Why had he let her keep her wand, how did he not accurately assess the danger she posed? She muttered a spell and he was lifted inches off the ground, and drifted slowly back up the stairs to her.