There was a soft tapping noise coming from the door to Snape's chambers. It echoed around the stone dungeon rooms, reverberating through the despondency that filled the air.

Snape sighed, placed down his glass and rose steadily from the chair, setting his hard and impassive mask on, his deception, his wall against the world. He walked quickly but quietly to the door, listening hard for the person that stood at the other side. There was nothing but silence that followed in the wake of the gentle knocks which felt as thought they were knocking on Snape's heart itself.

With a deep breath, he pulled open the door, a silent hope held between his teeth.

It was her.

Soft curls fell about her shoulders, lying in lazy waves that framed her delicate face. Her cheeks were flushed with a youthful energy, so full of excitement, so full of promise.

And her eyes, her eyes. They were the deepest ocean, the most beautiful night. They looked right at him, into him, through him. They stared into his soul and saw past his cold exterior, saw his damaged heart that was broken and shattered, the fragmented remains of a once true love. But they did not judge, they did not pity, they merely looked and saw.

She extended an arm towards him, her small fingers gently brushing at his black robes, a smile forming across her face. It was contagious and Snape felt his own mouth gently lifting from a passive sneer into a half-formed smile.

"Hermione" he breathed, her very name lifting his heart like a helium balloon, pulling him from his misery and self despair. She nodded, twisting a foot on the floor and clasping her hands together. She seemed suddenly shy, and she turned her gaze to the floor. The invisible thread holding the two together snapped and with it Snape felt something contorting in his chest. He could not bare it.

He reached his own hand out, placing two fingers beneath her chin, forcing her to look back up again. Those eyes, seeing him, the real him. It was like coming up for air after drowning in a sea. He needed this. He needed her.

"Come in".


Snape watched her out of the corner of his eye as he brewed himself a cup of tea. She sat on what he now saw as her sofa. Her hands were folded in her lap, and she swung her feet against the brown leather.

He had put the scotch and his lone tear to one side.

"I came looking for you last night Mr Sir", she looked to him through the open door. "But there was no answer. No one came. I was so afraid. So alone. But I waited for you". Hermione let out a large sniff, her voice trembling and her chin shaking.

Snape felt his heart crumble. Forgetting the tea he walked straight towards her, dropping to his knees in front of where she sat. He untwined her hands and took them in his own larger ones.

"I am sorry child, it was not my intention to hurt you" he spoke softly to her. "It will not happen again".

She looked at him, leaning forward ever so slightly. "Promise?" she whispered.

"I promise".

What had this girl done to him? For years and years people had tried to get through the walls he put up. Teachers and students, his fellow Death Eaters, even Voldemort himself.

Snape had just built up the walls higher and stronger.

But now this girl had come along and smashed them down. He should be angry. No, in fact he should be furious. She had forced him to relive his most painful memories. She had wrenched them from the deepest darkest corners of his mind with her vulnerability and silent hope. She had forced down his defences, not just to the outside world, but the defences that he had placed around his emotions, his heart.

He realised that he was gripping her fingers much too hard, and quickly loosened his grasp.

He could not be weak like this. It would be his downfall. His death.

He had to fix her to fix himself.


Snape watched as Hermione's eyelids slowly closed and opened again, battling against sleep. She walked and studied in the day as Granger, and came to him at night as the Hermione whom he had grown to care for. The girl must be exhausted, he mused to himself.

But then he did not truly care for Granger; so what if she was tired during lessons? It was not his problem. He cared for the girl that sat in front of him, the one whose eyes drooped with the weight of fatigue.

It made him tired, to think of this same person as two different people. Of course he knew that his mind games were ludicrous. The girl was the same girl who he had taught for the last seven years. Hermione Granger. But for some reason his mind refused to treat them as the same. If he were to help Hermione to rid herself of this affliction, he would help Granger. But Hermione, the one he cared for, would not recognise his efforts, they would not benefit her, she would not know. They would benefit Granger, know-it-all Gryffindor, and why would he want to help her?

Severus mentally scolded himself. He prided himself on his impeccable logic, and the thoughts that were now running through his brain were highly illogical to say the least. Begrudgingly he would also admit that no matter how much he wished it wasn't the case, she was his student and he owed her a duty of care.

"Goddamn it" he said under his breath, picking up his glass and throwing the remainder of the scotch down his throat.

He would help her: Hermione Granger.


Snape walked to his lab to prepare the same potion that he had brewed for her two nights earlier: Ad Idem Compos Mentis. It should have been enough to cancel the potion from her system, eradicating the bonds that drew the compound together. If one can split the bonds of a potion, it becomes merely a mixture of separate ingredients. The use of powdered moonstone served then to cause her blood to revert back to its original state.

The moonstone should have been enough, he thought to himself. This was only a school boy prank. Rudimentary potions simply affect the blood. Only powerful elixirs alter the chemistry of the brain itself.

It had to be something to do with the essential ingredient. In normal potions this was either root of Asphodel, Rosethorn or Sal Ammoniac. Powdered moonstone is the supreme of such ingredients, an overriding element.

It should have worked

Snape rummaged around his private potions lab, running his fingers down the worn out labels on the front of numerous glass vials. The writing was faded on the majority, on some, non-existent, but Snape did not need them, he knew them off by heart. These potions were his friends.

Finding the vial he wanted, he brought it down and opened it. Crushed hippogriff talon. This, he thought, combined with the moonstone, should form a powerful segregation serum to dissolve the bonds in the potion which Hermione had been tricked into taking.

Snape frowned. Even without the moonstone in his original anti-potion, after three days it should have broken down by itself. Needless to say he was worried. The potion was much more powerful that he originally thought. But what worried him even more was that he knew of know one capable in any of his classes of brewing such a strong potion.

Well, there was one, but she was sitting in the room next door.

The note had said M, C, G. There was no one else it could be but Malfoy and his cronies. But Malfoy was average at best, and Crab and Goylle - it was a wonder they even found the classroom most of the time.

He took a pinch of the Talon and sprinkled it into the mixture, stirring it clockwise with a bronze spoon three times, before changing direction. He repeated this four times, before checking the heat on the burner and leaving the contents of the cauldron to simmer.

Wiping his hands on an old rag, he walked out to see Hermione running a finger down the spine of his books, just the same as he had been doing to his precious vials.

She seemed content, so he let her be. Normally, he would not let anyone near those bookshelves, but even in a five year old state, Snape was sure that Hermione would treat his books as if they were children themselves, as she did in his classroom. He laughed thinking back to when she had hit the Weasley boy around the back of his head for folding a page of her textbook. The look on his face had been comical.

Why was he thinking now about Granger? He shook himself. She was still the same annoying know-it-all she had always been, and he still had absolutely no time for the annoying chit. Still though, perhaps, just maybe, he could respect their mutual courtesy of the written word.


He wished he could give her a vial of dreamless sleep, but he was worried about its effects counteracting with the anti-potion. Instead he sat, a cup of tea which had gone cold in his hand, listening to the girl talk about her friends, her pets, her stuffed animals.

Snape sighed. The girl changed him. When she was around, something clicked, fell into place, and he felt content. But even still, this had not changed him into some sort of patient saint. What was it that muggles said? A leopard never changes his spots?

His fingers gripped tightly to his mug, causing hard imprints from the handle to imprint his flesh. He enjoyed her company, but the constant stream of babble that spewed from her lovely mouth was getting impossible to take. Why couldn't she just sleep like the previous nights?

"...and we went riding on a horse once, his name was Puffin..."

What a stupid name for an animal

"...they said something must have spooked him, because he neighed and then rose up on two front legs and I fell off the back of him and broke my arm and..."

Broke her arm? He felt a pang on concern. He had never seen a scar before. But there it was, a thin white line just across her elbow.

"...and my daddy said..."

Her Father? What was he like? Did he buy her nice toys? Did he give her a goodnight kiss? Who did she get her curly hair from? Was he intelligent too?


Severus sat at the kitchen table, his legs drawn up underneath him. There was a 'clack, clack', he he moved his metal soldiers across the table, making them joust with one another.

His mother stood beside him, cooking pasta on the stove. She looked over her shoulder and smiled at her son, his black hair swinging about his shoulders, his normally pale face slightly flushed in the heat of his mock battle.

Suddenly the door swung open with such force that it cracked the plaster where the handle of the door hit. The noise made both Severus and his mother jump, making the boy knock over his knights and horses so that they lay defeated against the cold wood of the kitchen table.

The heavy set man moved slowly in to the room, reeking of pungent alcohol fumes and sweat. He swayed unsteadily on his feet, fixing his penetrating black gaze at the small woman before him.

"What have I told you about having my dinner ready for me when I get in woman?" he hissed menacingly at her. She pressed her back against the worktop as he advanced towards her.

"You incompetent bitch", he yelled at her, raising a dirty hand before bringing it down sharply.

She stumbled backwards, a bright red hand mark stinging against the flesh of her cheek. The sound it made still resonated through the air, and the bubbles in the pan popped and sloshed against the sides.

He leered at her, grabbing the front of her shirt and pulling her to her feet.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry", she mumbled, trying to pull away from the man, but he had her too strongly in his grasp.

He punched her, hard. A torrent of blood gushed from her nose, streaking down her face. She fell to the floor and the man started to kick her. Everywhere.

The boy at the kitchen table screamed,

"Stop it! Stop it!", he yelled, tears flowing down his face. But the man kept up his stream of abuse.

Severus launched himself from his chair, his thin arms around the man's waist, trying desperately to pull him away, to do anything to stop the woman from being hurt.

The man turned quickly to him, shoving him to the ground next to his mother. Cold black eyes stared down at him, a mouth turned in to a vicious sneer. He felt something warm and wet on his face. The man had spat at him.

A large brown boot was brought down violently on his head, stomping away his thoughts, his joy, his childhood.

The world went black.


A small tugging on his arm brought him back. Hermione was looking at him, her eyes wide and worried.

"Mr Sir, are you alright?", she asked preciously.

He slowly turned his head to look at her. He nodded.

How could someone hurt something as precious as this? A child.

"Call me Severus", he said to her gently, feeling slightly sick as the memory resurfaced.

"Sevvy", she twisted the words in her mouth, rolling it on her tongue to get the feel.

He was about to correct her when he realised that he actually didn't mind what she called him. If anything, it was endearing.

"Sevvy", she said again, a smile spreading across her face as she looked up at him, grinning.

"Hermione".


She had finally fallen asleep, her head now resting in his lap. He stroked her hair lazily. It was soft and smelled of strawberries.

He felt his eyes closing and he fought to stay awake. But it was a loosing battle. His eyelids fluttered, and then closed.


Snape awoke with a start. He was trapped, held down by something. Had they found him out, found he was a traitor?

He couldn't move his legs.

They had cut his legs off as a punishment.

Oh Lord.

Suddenly his mind came to, and he looked around. He was still in his chambers, and the fire still flickered and popped.

Hermione had somehow moved herself so that her nearly her whole body was snuggled into his lap. Both of his arms were around her, supporting her head in the crook of his arm.

He looked down at her. He wished they could stay this way forever. But what a futile wish.

Was it really only less than forty eight hours ago he had been musing to himself that he was tremendously glad for never having children? Watching the girl in his lap his heart ached for the family that he had never had. It wasn't that he had never wanted children, it was only that he had only ever wanted her children.

But Potter had taken that away, and left his son in place to walk up these corridors, sit in his classroom. Even in death James Potter still taunted him.

Snape knew that he was silly to hope that maybe Hermione could be his, that she could continue to make him feel such peaceful bliss. This isn't her, this is a spell. The child was not his. He had to learn to live with the fact that he would be forever alone.

Bringing his head down, so that his hair brushed lightly on her cheek, he planted a delicate kiss on her forehead, shifting her body next to him so that he could stand.

His muscles ached and he stretched, his muscles extending in only the most pleasurable way that a morning stretch can. Trying to ignore the dull weight in his chest he pulled on a robe and cast a disillusionment spell over himself and Hermione, picking her up and heading for the Gryffindor common room.

Upon reaching the portrait he whispered the teacher override password to the fat lady, who swung the portrait open on its hinges silently.

Snape rolled his eyes as soon as he set foot in the room, which was decorated from head to toe in gold and yellow. Streamers still hung from every surface from the victory party the night before, as did bits of gold and yellow striped tie, although Snape could not for the life of him work out why.

He sat Hermione down on the sofa, not wanting to risk taking her all the way to the girls dormitory. Besides, that would feel just too personal and break the image in his mind that this was not Granger, just someone else who happened to look like her.

He withdrew a small crystal vial from the folds of his robe. The purple liquid lay flat and reflective and he looked at it intently.

This liquid would bring back Granger and vanquish Hermione. His Hermione. His little girl.

He shook his head. This had to be done.

Placing a hand underneath her head, he lifted it and turned it to the side slightly, unstoppering the vial and pouring the liquid down her throat. She coughed and spluttered, but did not wake, before relaxing back down to the pillows that surrounded her.

Snape knew this was the last time he would ever see her. Like this anyway.

He ran a long finger down her cheek, along the soft line of her jaw.

"I will always be here for you. I promise", he whispered.

He moved silently out of the room, leaving no trace that he had ever been there.