I apologize for the wait, a bunch of school work and SAT prep has caught up with me.

I do not own the characters.

Thanks to Severus' Malfoy Maiden for her beta'ing skills!

Last Time

Hermione sat, staring into the deep abyss of the lake as Ginny walked back into the distance, little did she know that staying outside wouldn't postpone the confrontation between Snape. That would seek her out regardless of where she was, because at that exact moment, Snape was searching for her.

Hermione's stare-fest was interrupted by the feeling of someone's eyes on her. She turned and was met with the intense, obsidian gaze of the Potions Master.

Hermione simply returned his stare, still not feeling enough goodwill towards him for an acknowledgement.

"Miss Granger, I came to tell you that my evening is free and I can help you with your Occlumency. That is, if you don't have any other plans?"

Hermione's initial thought was to completely ignore the fact that he was a professor and curse him to the next century. When she made eye contact, however, all these thoughts dissipated when she could, for the first time in all her school years, clearly see emotion in the depths of his eyes. She could see remorse and guilt there and recognized the offer of another lesson for what it truly was: an apology.

"I guess that would be more productive than staring at the lake all night."

"Indeed"

She slowly rose to her feet, pretending she didn't notice the way his hand flicked forward and then retreated, as if he was debating whether or not he would help her up.

They walked silently towards the castle. The whole time, Hermione tried to overcome her anger. Yes, she'd seen the remorse in his eyes, but that didn't erase the fact that he had publicly insulted her. She understood that he'd probably misconstrued her list of his positive attributes to the effect that she'd meant to humiliate him. That still didn't eradicate her embarrassment at having her pride wounded from a man she highly respected, however, her ever-working mind led her to become more curious about his feelings on what'd transpired. She was anxious to return as Suplina and hopefully listen to his side of the story.

Their arrival at the door of Snape's office interrupted her musings and she walked in, trying to ignore the squirming items contained in the bottles gracing his counters.

"Miss Granger, are you ready?"

"Yes, sir," she tried to clear her mind; she steeled herself for his intrusion and heard his whisper, "Legilimens".

The scene from dinner flashed in her mind, her sincerity when reading her list, her humiliation and shame when listening to Snape's poem, and finally, her escape.

She kept trying to push against his presence in her mind, but found it increasingly difficult with the flashes of recent events. When he reached the point where Hermione was sitting by the lake crying, she bristled, she didn't want him to see how much he'd hurt her. She pushed with all her might against his intrusion until she felt that her mind was wonderfully free of company.

She opened her eyes to find herself kneeling on the stone floor, wand pointed at Snape, who was rubbing his hand.

"Did you mean to send a burning jinx at me?"

"No sir, I wasn't aware I cursed you, I thought I just pushed you out of my mind."

"Regardless, it seems to have worked, take a moment then we'll try again," Hermione noticed his eyes were averted, as if he were ashamed about something.

They began again and Hermione felt him going into her memories about the incident in Potions that day. It started with Hermione's consuming feeling of rebelliousness, but eventually he started getting closer to where she remembered her uncle's abuse. She really didn't want him seeing that, so focusing all her strength and magical power, she vaguely heard herself shout "Protego!" and found herself zooming through unfamiliar images, obviously Snape's memories.

She saw a drunken man towering over a small boy. As she watched, the man wrenched the arm of the cowering boy. She heard his screams as the man forced his head up and grunted Legilimens. The scene changed to the Great Hall when Hermione read "attractive". She sensed his disappointment, humiliation, and anger as laughter broke out. She felt the switch in his mind as he crumpled the old poem and made up the new one on the spot. She briefly saw him glance at her tear-filled eyes and felt his pang of regret just as she felt his mind wrenched from her grasp.

"Did Mr. Potter give you the insight as to the usefulness of the Shield Charm?" Snape's voice had quieted into its lethal, dangerous tone.

"No sir, it just sort of blurted out."

"I see," while he made no comment about the memories she'd seen, the slight twinge of pink on his cheeks gave Hermione the impression that he might be a little embarrassed.

'Serves him right for probing through my mind every lesson' Hermione thought haughtily.

They started again and Snape seemed a bit obsessed with finding out what had prompted Hermione's reaction in class that day. To his chagrin and her relief, Hermione's mind proved adept at repelling him every time.

"Adequate Miss Granger, you may go."

Hermione walked toward the door, as she reached it however, she turned to see Snape wearily gazing at the papers on his desk.

"Goodnight Professor," she whispered. He made no acknowledgement of having heard her, but out of the corner of her eye as she turned to leave the room, she thought she might've seen him nod his head briefly.

She entered the Gryffindor Common room a few moments later to find Harry, Ron, and Ginny all deep in discussion.

"Hey guys, what's going on?"

They all jumped at the sound of the voice, "Blimey, Hermione, don't scare us like that!" Ron had gone a bit red around the ears.

"Because I was being completely surreptitious when I oh-so-sneakily walked casually into the room and said hi," Hermione recounted sarcastically.

"Right, well anyway, Hermione, we need your help. My scar's starting to hurt again, which is weird because Dumbledore was sure that Voldemort would be practicing Occlumency against me."

"Are you Occluding your mind too?"

"It's not as if I'm perfect at it."

"Just try emptying your mind, I've been practicing too."

"I don't know, this just feels… different. I'm not exactly feeling his emotions anymore. It's more as if I sense his presence, like our connection's growing stronger."

"Have you talked to Dumbledore about it?"

"Not yet… I will, don't worry," he added upon seeing Hermione's scolding face. She relaxed, "well, okay, but just keep a watch on it, and make sure you do tell Dumbledore. He always seems to know what's going on."

"Ya, he's kind of strange that way, isn't he?" Ginny noted. Hermione saw Harry's quick flinch at hearing Ginny's voice and she realized she needed to talk to him.

"Harry, do you want to walk with me to my rooms, they're really close to Dumbledore's office, so you could drop in and see if he's free to talk?"

"Sure, okay."

They climbed out of the portrait hole together and headed toward Hermione's rooms.

"So, am I right in suspecting that you're just pretending to be okay for Ginny's sake?"

"I don't know what you mean," Harry mumbled.

"Harry, it's perfectly normal to feel sad that Ginny doesn't think you two won't work romantically. I know when I ended things with Viktor, he was really upset. I felt bad that I was hurting him, but the fact that he could express his emotions made me respect him even more. None of us, including Ginny, would fault you for needing some time to recover."

"But Ginny's become part of the group, I can't exactly ask her to give me some space."

"I think if you just tell her honestly that you need some time, we could all work something out. I'm Ginny's friend, Harry, but I'm yours too. I don't want you to suffer by pretending everything's all right when it's not. I tried to walk that line our third year and it sucked. I'm here for you no matter what, all right?"

"Thanks 'Mione, I'm not sure that I really want to talk about my, you know, feelings or anything right now, but I'll let you know."

"Good. Now get over here and give me a hug."

Harry, who had grown quite a bit in the past few years, enfolded Hermione in his arms. She leaned her head by his heart and pretended to be oblivious to the soft sniffles coming from the head resting against her hair.

"Ten points from Gryffindor for inappropriate conduct," a silky voice drawled from the end of the corridor. Obviously still mad about the events at dinner, Harry kept a comforting arm around Hermione's shoulders as he turned to glare at Snape.

"What's inappropriate about a hug, sir?"

Snape, to his credit, quickly masked his surprise at seeing the, in his mind, arrogant Potter with tear-stained cheeks, and responded, "as you are both older students, especially with Miss Granger as Head Girl, you should set an example of proper conduct, which romantic embraces in the corridors most certainly are not."

Harry spluttered indignantly while Hermione squeaked, "romantic? Me and Harry? No, no ,no, no. I think you have the wrong impression sir."

She noticed Snape's frown reside a bit, "either way, Miss Granger, you should consider how your conduct appears to the young, impressionable students."

"Yes sir."

Once Snape was out of sight, Hermione gave Harry another hug, "just to spite him," she whispered. Harry laughed, "Wow, you're becoming quite the rule-breaker, aren't you? I was wondering when Ron and I would finally rub off on you."

Hermione giggled, "You can now sleep at night, knowing your life-long goal of making me a recusant has succeeded, right?"

"Oh no, not even close, this is just the beginning, my dear," he smiled as she poked him in the stomach.

"All right, go on up to Dumbledore. Drop by my room, after; I want to hear what he thinks."

"Okay."

She walked the rest of the way to her room alone. She did her homework on the couch in front of the fire and eventually dozed off. She awoke with a start to a knock on the door, it took her a minute to regain her senses and remember that Harry was going to drop by. He entered, looking pale.

"Did everything go alright?"

"Technically, yes. I'm just not too psyched about Dumbledore's theory."

"What'd he think?"

"Would you mind calling Ron and Ginny in? I'd rather not repeat this a bunch of times."

"Sure."

She went over to her "Gryffindor door" and peeked into the Common Room, "Ron, Ginny, come over here."

They all listened as Harry repeated what he'd told Dumbledore.

"He looked closely at me before telling me that he thought it was crucial I began working with him on Occlumency again. Meanwhile, no one's supposed to tell me any critical information about the workings of the Order unless I'm completely positive I'm using Occlumency. He thinks Voldemort's using me to spy on us."

Everyone looked at him, shocked.

"But-but, I thought he couldn't stand your capability to feel, I thought it hurt him too much?" Ron stuttered, obviously frightened, but prepared to stand by his friend even as he eyed him skeptically, as if wondering if Voldemort was peering out from behind his eyes.

"I thought so too, Ron, but Dumbledore thinks he probably found a way to get around that. Remember how I said I couldn't sense Voldemort's emotions? Well, we think he's still Occluding me partially, so he can't feel my emotions, he just gets the play-by-play of what's happening in my life."

"Creepy," Ginny obviously wasn't comfortable with the thought that Voldemort had seen most of what had transpired in Harry's life in the past few weeks. Hermione had a feeling she knew just what Ginny was thinking he must've seen.

"Well, there's no other way around it Harry, you'll have to perfect your Occlumency. You know I've been learning it with… I mean, I've been teaching myself," Hermione quickly thought back to all the times she had mentioned learning Occlumency, she hoped she'd never actually said to Harry's face that Snape was teaching her, that would most definitely make Snape's spy job infinitely harder than it already was, "so, we'll practice together to clear our minds. You can do it Harry, you just didn't do well last time because you and Snape don't get along, plus we've all had our suspicions about where his loyalties truly lay, who knows, maybe he was weakening your mind for Voldemort."

She ignored the incredulous looks she was getting from everyone else and felt relieved when she saw them all process what she was doing. She figured she should protect Snape as much as possible. Thinking of Snape, she realized it was getting late and she needed to get down to the dungeons soon.

"Alright guys, I'm tired and I have to patrol before bed, so as much as I hate kicking you out, I would like to get some sleep tonight."

They all said good night and went back to the common room. Hermione got everything together for the morning, put extra wards so Ginny couldn't break in again, and left. After patrolling for a few minutes, she morphed into Suplina and jogged down to the dungeons.

She entered Snape's room only to find him at his desk, asleep over a pile of third years' essays. She jumped up next to his face and rubbed his cheek with her fur. He woke up with a start and had his wand trained on her face in a matter of seconds.

"Good reactions Master"

"Oh, Suplina, it's you."

"Sorry to wake you, I thought you might be more comfortable in bed?"

"Yes, yes." He got up, and holding her, stumbled over to his bed where he started to fall asleep again. Hermione was disappointed he wasn't awake enough to talk about everything that had happened, but when she thought about it, an inordinate amount of things had occurred, and she was actually rather tired from it all as well. She started to fall asleep on his shoulder when she suddenly heard his gasp of pain and he jumped out of bed.

"What's wrong?" Hermione was frantic, was he injured? She wasn't sure what to do in this situation. If she transformed, she'd blow her cover, but it'd be worth it if he needed help.

"I have to go to the Dark Lord, Suplina. Do you know who that is?"

"Of course, I'm coming with you."

"No, you're not. It's too dangerous, you could get hurt."

"So could you, I'd rather have someone who could report to Dumbledore should anything go wrong."

"How would you possibly be able to get back and talk to Dumbledore?"

"I have my ways, in case you haven't noticed Master, I'm very resourceful."

"Fine, I don't have time to argue, get in my pocket, but stay there and be quiet, I don't want to draw unneeded attention to you."

"Understood."

Hermione felt fear grip her, yes, she wanted to stay with Snape and make sure he was all right, but she also knew how dangerous this was. Her heart pounded in time with his footsteps as he first strode then, once outside Hogwarts walls, sprinted to Hogsmeade. She felt the squishing feeling of Apparition until, finally; she felt them enter an eerie outside area. She peeked out of Snape's pocket and saw the evilest man on Earth staring at them.

"Severus," he hissed.

"My Lord," Hermione felt Snape bow down.

"Look me in the eye, tell me what you know."

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