AN: Everyone who is enjoying this, repeat after me: Thank you Hebe GB, Dressagegrrrl and Whitehound! Yup, anyone who's gotten one of my PM's knows this is so much better because of their efforts.

Not mine. No money.

Severus Snape stood on the edge of the parapet and watched as dusk settled over the Forbidden Forest. His hands pressed, palm down, on the merlons and his foot rested, knee slightly bent, in the opening of the corbel. When Ron finally found him after stomping through the rest of the castle in righteous anger, his first thought was that it looked like the man was going to jump. Then he realized Snape was standing exactly where Harry had told him Dumbledore fell. It occurred to Ron that it might make things easier if the bastard did jump. He was somewhat taken aback by his own sudden urge to push him.

"Oi, Snape! Just what the hell did you think you were doing last night?" he yelled. "And don't try to play coy, I already know the truth. I just want to hear your bloody explanation."

Snape closed his eyes briefly, but then straightened his shoulders and turned to face his accuser. He raised one elegant brow tauntingly.

"I got a Patronus from Seamus last night. He said you almost killed him!"

A blink was the only reaction at first, but then a cruel smile played across Snape's features, giving Ron pause.

"No, you almost killed him, Weasley. I tried to warn you. I tried to council you. You decided your petty needs superseded common sense and common decency and ran off anyway." He left the edge of the parapet and stalked closer to him, causing Ron to back up. "How successful did you think I could possibly be pretending to be you? I can think of at least a dozen incidences where, despite the compulsion to try to do my best, people looked at me strangely or wondered why I didn't seem to be myself. Tell me, Weasley, have you heard from anyone else? Have you spoken with your wife?"

Ron was confused by what seemed like a sudden shift in topic.

"No, why should I speak with her? I haven't even seen her. She's locked herself in her office again."

"Ahh. So you, what? Dumped your things in your room and came running to defend the honor of your best mate? Is that it? Well, let me explain a few things you seem to be ignorant about then. Firstly, our clever little Seamus Finnegan, so proud was he of his cunning plan for you to enslave me--"

Ron flinched and opened his mouth to defend himself.

"Don't! What else would you call not having a choice but to serve?" Snape hissed in his face before getting control of his anger. He circled Ron, speaking in a low voice, both reasonable and threatening at the same time.

"Your friend was so proud of his plan that, once he was in his cups, he decided to brag about it, first to his little whore of a date and then in front of your employer, thus leaving me three options. I could have let him and died, or I could have killed him and let your secret stay nice and safe. He took the third option and fucked off. He knows that if he comes back he will end his days as ingredients in the student cupboard with none the wiser but you and I."

"You wouldn't have died," Ron said defensively. "The life debt only urges you to do me a favor. You're making that up."

"Am I? Tell me Weasley, did you research life debts at all?"

"Yeah, I researched it."

"Really? Then tell me, Professor Weasley, what are the consequences for coming under a life debt twice? Hmm? What happens when you are plucked from the very brink of the veil itself? Didn't read that far? Let's just say the consequences are…exponential. Fate has issues with someone unable to keep himself alive. She tends to become a bit cruel." Snape's face infused with disgust and venom. "Gods! Am I so damned that my life rests in the hands of such an fool? There is an entire school behind you, Weasley. Use it. Or better yet, ask your wife to research it. Isn't that what you used to do? Perhaps she would think it was a charming gesture, something you might do to crawl back into her good graces."

"Why would I want to do that? What's my wife got to do with this?"

Snape graced him with a look of exaggerated disappointment.

"To go through life so profoundly stupid must be a blessing.

"She has everything to do with it, you imbecilic fuckwit. She's the reason you've been sneaking out of the castle, is she not? She's the one we've been hiding from all these weeks brewing your illicit, restricted potions so you could take wing and fly away from your responsibilities, yes? She's the one you would have gotten your friend killed over rather than sit next to her at a work-related function, no? Wrong woman? She's the one that told your sister yesterday afternoon, during their shopping expedition, that you were having an affair."

Ron felt the blood drain from his face.

"You told her," he gasped out.

Snape rolled his eyes.

"Oh do just try to stop and think. I know it's uncomfortable for you. Would I have gone through weeks of hell watching your pathetic attempts at brewing if I could have simply told your wife? Endured the pain of destroying my voice? Willingly spent hours looking like a freckled freak? Slept on that gods-be-damned bed? Must you really be that stupid? Doesn't it get tiresome at all? Is it just too much for your malformed brain to conceive, that you might have been a little…fucking…obvious?"

"Now see here--"

"No! You see here--" Snape's words choked off as he grabbed his chest suddenly. He looked ferociously determined, as he spat out his next words, despite his obvious agony. "This…charade…is…" Ron looked on horrified as the man's pain drove him to his knees. "…over." Snape panted softly as he hugged his chest tightly, as his color slowly came back. His lips had actually turned blue. Ron stood there gaping at him in utter shock, realizing only now the price the man might have paid and wishing he could take it back. Snape's next words came easier, but he said them to the stone flooring. "I realize I am in your debt until the price of my life has been worked off. Obviously, supervising your blundering attempts at brewing and being forced to participate in your ludicrous masquerade is not enough." He tapped his chest. "I can feel that. However I can sense other things as well. There is no compulsion on me to help you brew anymore. This tells me you know enough to do it yourself." He looked back up at Ron from where he rested on his knees. "If you think it's even remotely plausible that I choke down rasping nettles and play the git in front of the entire school again, you'd better think harder, Sonny Jim. Because it would be more enjoyable to let my heart explode than put up with your sister looking daggers at me for my supposed betrayal again. It would be more convenient for me to keel over dead than put up with Potter's suspicions and self-righteous threats to kick my arse if I don't straighten up. I would much rather miss out on a replay of the sage advice to try to make a go of it with my wife, or at least have the decency to fade off into the sunset. And rest assured, I would much rather die than suffer again through the petty drama of having your wife telling me it's over, and she never loved me." Snape took a deep breath and scrubbed his hand down his face. Ron stood there, his stomach churning, and his limbs shaking beyond his control. Snape pushed himself to his feet and gave him a pitying stare.

"I have struggled to try and serve you, Ronald, and you went and gave the game away, needlessly jeopardizing lives. I will keep your secrets. I have no choice. Don't ask any more of me, if you have any shred of decency left. Don't ask any more." Snape fell silent at last and turned his back on the man. "Go deal with the life you have, Weasley, and don't bother trying to lead a double one. One only suffers more in the end when they try."

Weasley watched Snape staring off into the dying light for a long moment before tearing himself away and blundering down the stairs.

Ron walked the halls for a long time trying to figure out how his life had come so completely undone. He tried to spot the turning point that made everything spiral down into the complete mess that it was.

His life was a disaster. Even his weekend had been a disaster. At first, he had been swept up in the excitement and wonder of being in such a beautiful place with the gorgeous Estelle on his arm, but that soon paled as he started to get nervous at the amount of money she was running through. By the time she had ordered caviar and champagne for breakfast this morning, he'd had to have a few words with her. First of all, what kind of a meal was that? Didn't she understand that breakfast was the most important meal of the day? And secondly, she had run through his entire month's endorsement check, and he'd had to dip into his and Hermione's joint account to pay for lunch. By the time they were ready to portkey back to Britain, he was done with the crazy bint. She had started whinging and complaining, and when he'd told her to leave off, she'd gotten downright childish, saying he was cheap and had no class at all.

He'd dumped her at her flat with profound relief that he had never given her his true identity. He hadn't been able to wait to get back home. Home had started to seem like the answer to all of his problems. He'd figured he would confront Snape for getting out of line, and then he could have a nice soak in the prefects' bath and relax and get some peace for the rest of the night before getting back to the daily grind tomorrow.

But now everything had turned to ashes. As much as he still felt an antipathy for the git, he had to give Snape his due for finally making him see what the stakes had actually been, as well as what a mess he had made of everything. He'd been running around making a fool of himself like he was having some pathetic midlife crisis, and he wasn't anywhere near seventy yet. Snape was right. He hadn't researched life debts properly. Just thumbed a few references and then gone into action. He should have known Seamus would have done something foolish. He always did. He should have known it was a stupid idea. He should have seen all the ways things could have possibly gone wrong. That had always been his strength before. It felt like who he was, who he remembered himself being, was disintegrating. This wasn't how his life was supposed to have turned out. Why had everything gone wrong, and why did this disintegration seem to be accelerating? Things had never been great between him and his wife, but it seemed like everything had started to come apart in the last year and a half. His irrational behavior almost felt like he was under some kind of compulsion of his own to get away, but his own detection spells had failed to turn up any trace of a curse or imposed compulsion on him. Nothing made any sense.

He found himself outside of the unused office he'd appropriated to brew his bad idea and realized that the only way to set things back on track was to come clean with the truth. He needed his freedom. He couldn't go on like this. The only things he feared were how much Mione would hate him, and how much it would hurt his children. The rest of the world could go hang.

Hermione was at her desk going over her notes for the final test of her targeted tissue-replacement potion. With school ending soon, she would be able to commit more time to her research if she could get Sinistra to agree to allow her to stay at the school for a week or so over the break.

Healer Planq, the cardiac specialist at St Mungo's, was already pressuring her to start. She had been slated to run the test just before she had decimated her Potion stores, but it was impossible to start the test before the end of term now. There were too many delicate steps that needed long term supervision to risk it.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the door. She looked up, startled, and heard Phineas make his usual snort whenever he was disturbed from his sleep. A noise that, he was convinced, was too undignified for the likes of him.

"Shall I see who that is?" he offered.

Hermione nodded.

"If you would be so kind."

As she watched him lean out of his frame to stick his head into the landscape painting beside her office door, she wondered who would disturb her at this hour of the night. Her heart started to beat faster when she thought of who she wanted it to be. She hadn't seen hide nor hair of Severus since yesterday morning before she had gone shopping with Ginny. It had been hard to get him out of her thoughts since her humiliating realization during her bout of drunken sex with Ron.

"It's the flying instructor," drawled Phineas as he sat back down in his frame and closed his eyes again.

"Oh, damn," she said.

She flicked a wand at the door, and it popped open.

"Come in," she said brusquely, shuffling her notes together.

Ron entered her office with that guilty, hangdog look she loathed, and her heart sank. 'Oh, Merlin. We're going to have the talk', she thought to herself.

*

"Hello, Mi," Ron said before taking the seat she gestured to. "Look, we need to talk." He took a deep lungful of air to set his thoughts in order and began. "About this weekend--"

"Stop," she said, putting an impatient hand up. "I really don't think we need to rehash this weekend. It will just make everything uncomfortable for both of us. Let's just cut to the heart of the matter. You've been seeing another woman. There, it's out. Moving on, we have the fact that I can't forgive you. I thought I could, but I just can't. It's not that I don't understand how trapped and miserable you are. I am, too. But if there was ever a chance to fix this mess we made and come to an understanding, it's dead in the water now. Whereas I deeply appreciated your efforts to be attentive when we were in public together last night, and well, the rest of it, it wasn't enough.

"The question is: where do we go from here? Yes, we can split up. Go our separate ways. Cut and run. However you want to put it. But you and I both fear how that will affect the children. On top of that, we would both lose our jobs. You could probably fall back into the world of Quidditch, but I assure you the scandal would destroy my career. No other school would want to hire a teacher with a scandal behind her, especially not one that's already famous, if not infamous to some people.

"I'm very close to the finish line on Minerva's potion, Ron. I need this job. I need the school's facilities, and I need its reputation to continue the backing of my research grants. If we split up now, I lose both. That leaves me unemployed, huddled in my parent's basement, trying to work on a delicate potion that could save the lives of countless people suffering from the effects of damage similar to Minerva's."

"You would have the Burrow," Ron interjected.

"No, Ron. You would have the Burrow. Rose and Hugo would have the Burrow. I would have my ex-husband's parents' house." She sighed and rubbed at her temples as Ron fell back against the chair and closed his eyes.

"I wouldn't have the Burrow either. If we split up, my family would stop speaking to me. Harry and Ginny--"

"That I do apologize for," she said quickly. "I don't know what possessed me to tell Ginny anything when we've both put such an effort into not letting anyone know. I should have had the decency to speak to you personally about things before I took it to anyone else." She closed her eyes and dropped her head. "It was especially painful because you had put such effort into being pleasant. I enjoyed seeing your display of manners, and yes, I enjoyed the dances and not having you run off with all your mates, leaving me sitting by myself all night again. To have you get ambushed by Harry and taken to account on my behalf, well, it had a painful irony to it."

Ron was more than a little uncomfortable with the fact that Snape had been a better husband. He felt the tell-tale anger he now associated with his more irrational decisions and struggled with it. These thoughts always led to more problems. He couldn't help the suspicion that flew crookedly across his brain like a drunken Snitch. However, he remembered the look of utter disgust on the man's face when he had related how distasteful it had been to have been a part of their drama and immediately put the ludicrous thought out of his mind. Surely the life debt would have forbidden such a thing anyway.

"Well, the timing was not the best, that's for sure," she continued. "But I will say that perhaps one thing did come out of it. Ginny did point out that we might be acting a little too overprotective of the children. She seemed to think that they might be able to weather the crisis better than we fear since they have such a large circle of family and friends."

He digested this last bit. They both had held on to a deep fear of what the consequences for their children would be. As bad as thing always seemed to get between the two of them, they never differed on their opinion of what was best for Hugo and Rose.

"So, it is really up to you. If you want to split up, then I won't fight you. You obviously feel that you need to take extreme measures to find some comfort. We'll lose our jobs one way or another. If you keep going the way you are, then the scandal will be that much greater. However, I ask you to consider the impact it would have on my work."

Ron closed his eyes and took a moment to think his decision through.

"How much longer will it take to finish your work on Minerva's potion?" he asked finally.

Hermione visibly sagged with relief.

"I need a week or so to wrap up the final lab tests and then probably the rest of the summer to get the paper written, and then there will be several months of clinical trials by Planq's team at St. Mungo's. I think that should be done by late November at the latest."

Ron nodded his head.

"And your success with this potion would seal your reputation and move you out from under Slughorn's thumb?"

"Yes, it is absolutely outside his realm, and I also avoided consulting with him at any point. If this is a success, and I think it will be, then it will be mine and mine alone. It will cement my position in the Potions community. No one will be able to write me off as a one-off who got lucky building on her mentor's notes this time."

Ron leaned in and looked her in the eye.

"Your mentor was never particularly vocal about refuting that claim either.

"Alright, Hermione. Let's do this. Finish your work. Your potion is more important than our crumbling marriage. Let's go one more school year, all the way through until next June. By then, you should have received offers from other places interested in helping your research, and we can both quietly leave here in the summer without any fuss. That will leave us plenty of time to figure out how to tell the children and prepare them. Alright?"

Hermione started to cry. Ron felt his chest tighten at the sight.

"Thank you, Ronald."

Ron looked at her with a mixture of emotions bouncing around his brain. On the one hand, he had come here to spill the truth, and he had completely chickened out. However they only had to limp through one more year, and then he would be free. If he told the truth now, she might do something rash that would cost them not only their jobs, but her own future in the process.

He stood up, awkward and uncomfortable. It didn't seem like the time to give her a hug or a pat on the back, and shaking hands just seemed stupid. How did one end a conversation like this?

"S'alright, Mi. I'll, um, let you get back to your notes."

She nodded, and he practically stumbled out the door.

*

"That could have gone a lot worse," said the portrait above the desk gently.

"Yes. Yes, it could have been much worse. It looks like this way we'll be able to retain our dignity at least."

"And your research."

"Hmm? Oh. Yes, there's always that."

He came upon her on the fourth floor at midnight. He was aware of her presence before he saw her and understood now that he had been led here to find her in her distress. He stood in the shadows and watched her as had been his wont in past times, but he found it impossible to watch the tears tracking down her face, glittering in the moonlight, and do nothing. Knowing what he now knew, the truth that had been impossible to escape, since the evidence had rushed up at him the night before, only added to his pain. He could see no way for this to play out in any way except as a great tragedy. He ghosted over to her.

"Why do you cry?" he asked, making her jump.

She scrubbed hurriedly at her face with a sodden tissue before turning around and facing him. They stared at each other for a long moment, and he watched a million thoughts chase across her features. Finally they settled into an expression of such sadness and loss that he had to close his eyes against it.

"Why does anyone cry, Mr. Snape?"

He opened his eyes again and saw she had stepped away. He stared at the distance she had put between them.

"Because the world is cruel, Professor."

She nodded as if in complete agreement and turned away, taking a few steps, before looking back.

"I wore a pretty dress last night. You should have seen it," she said. He understood the seeming non-sequitor. It wasn't a flirtatious comment, but a statement of how twisted everything had become.

"I did," he replied. Willing her to understand more than he was allowed to explain.

She studied him for a moment more before she left.

Hugo went to his father's office just before lunch the next day when he knew his father had a free period. The door was open, and he saw his dad sitting at his desk staring out the window with the same sad look on his face that he'd had when Hugo saw him at breakfast. He knocked on the door frame to get his attention.

"Hey Hugo," his dad said, suddenly jovial. "How's my boy? What kinds of books have you been getting into lately?"

"I'm still reading Borage."

"Who's Borage?" his father asked him. "Tell me about him while we walk to lunch."

"It's the book on potions."

"Oh, yeah? What kind of potions? You're going to take after your mum then, you think? I wouldn't be surprised. You're both smarter than anyone else around, eh?" His dad clapped an arm around his shoulders, and together they walked out of the room. "She could brew some pretty advanced potions by her second year. She was amazing. So you going to brew anything in there? Something in the book strike your fancy?"

"Well, there's some pretty interesting stuff in here. Like this one--" the boy stopped and opened the book up to a page and showed it to his father.

"The Draught of Living Death." his father read out loud. "Ah, yes. Well, unless you're having trouble falling asleep, that one's just useless. It sounds pretty dramatic but it's just a really strong sleeping potion. Are you having trouble sleeping?"

"No, I'm fine." he said, looking at his father strangely.

"What other things do you want to brew?"

"Well, I was thinking that maybe Polyjuice Potion would be interesting. I think it would be fun to pretend to be someone else for a bit you know?"

He watched as his father's face clouded over for a moment.

"I think you should just be yourself, Hugo. Trying to be other people can get pretty complicated and make your life really confusing. Maybe you should stay away from that one."

"Alright, Dad." They had reached the Great Hall, and the students rushed by to get their meals. "Oh, and Dad?"

"Hmm?"

"I just wanted to say thanks again."

"For what?"

"You know, the tree?"

"What tree?"

Hugo looked at his Dad and then shook his head as if to clear it.

"Never mind, someone gave me a note about where to find a particular tree I was looking for. I thought it was you, must have been James."

"Well, I'm always here to help look for trees. Just let me know next time. Sounds like fun."

His father patted him on the back and steered him to his seat.

"Right, there you go. Eat up, now." He scrubbed his hand through Hugo's hair and left to find his own meal.

Hugo sat down to his meal, but never took his eyes off his father unless it was to look over at his mother, sitting stiffly to the side, picking at her meal.

"I find this highly irregular, Professor."

"In what way, Headmistress? You've never denied my request before. Surely the tradition of summer research at Hogwarts is of tremendous benefit to the school. Think of the publicity that my breakthrough would generate. Had this potion been available five years ago, Minerva would still be here." Hermione saw her mistake too late as the Headmistress's frosty demeanor became positively frigid. "That is to say, she would still be alive. I know she already had plans to retire early, so there's no doubt she wouldn't be here," she lied, risking an apologetic glance at McGonagall's portrait and getting a wink in return.

Sinistra stared at her with an expression that bordered on open dislike.

"I know all about how important research is, Professor. My issue is the impropriety."

"If I may ask, Headmistress, what impropriety?"

"Having you and your husband living away from each other and swapping the children on alternating weekends. It's as if you were divorced. It sounds like some sordid custody arrangement. I fear any positive publicity your little potions project might produce for those who take notice of such things would be utterly drowned out by the gossip."

"Well, Harry has plans to take all the tribe to Malta, for a holiday. Perhaps I can write the paper at home."

"The tribe?"

"The children--All the cousins, and some of their friends--It's what we call them."

"Yes, well. That doesn't change the fact that you and your husband are taking separate holidays. People are bound to notice."

"Oh, please, you must see--" Hermione's words were cut off by a wave of the Headmistress' hand.

"I will think about it and give you my answer at the end of the week."

"But that's the last day of school. I will need to know what arrangements need to be made before then."

"I have said my piece, Professor. Unless you would prefer I make a decision now?"

Hermione stared at the woman and was glad the Headmistress wasn't skilled at mind-reading like a few of the previous ones, for surely the woman would have seen the myriad ways the Potions Professor was killing her and doing away with the evidence in her mind.

"I…thank you for your consideration, Headmistress. Good day."

Hermione stormed down the stairs and contained herself until she was free of the gargoyle. At that point, she let go with a string of offensive words that clearly called into doubt the legitimacy of the Headmistress' birth, intelligence, ancestry, and physical attributes. When she was done, she found herself face-to-face with a rather amused school caretaker.

"Isn't it a little risky to be shouting in the halls during school hours, Professor? Should I find a member of the staff to take points?" Hermione scowled at him and made to go around him but he stepped into her path again. "May I ask what has you so upset this afternoon?"

She huffed and planted her hands on her hips; thinking now was as good a time as any to cut all this unspoken and unacknowledged shite out.

"No. No, you may not. It has to do with Potions, a subject you avoid like the plague, and I wouldn't want to bruise your delicate sensibilities and have you disappear for weeks at a time. Oh, wait, you already did disappear. How unfortunate you chose this moment to pop back up. Bugger off, Snape." She tossed her hair for emphasis, a gesture slightly lacking when one wore a bun, and danced around him before continuing down the hall.

*

Rose and Hugo had been walking down the hall, having just finished lunch, when they heard their mother's angry voice. They picked up their pace and hurried towards the sound, arriving in time to see her stomp away. They both stopped in their tracks when they saw the caretaker. The children knew enough to scramble for cover whenever their mother's voice reached that pitch. They had seen their father take to the hills before she even got to that tone. So they were both rather stunned when they saw Mr. Snape actually smile. It wasn't a normal smile, by any means, but it was clear the man was extremely amused. They saw him take off after their mother and exchanged worried glances. Hugo tugged on Rose's arm but she was already moving. They followed at a safe distance.

*

Hermione made it about twenty feet down the hall before she was grabbed by the sleeve and hauled sharply to the right.

"Now that you've had your little tantrum, Granger, why don't we try this again." He opened the door to an empty classroom and dragged her inside. Pulling her over to a student desk, he shoved her down into it before backing up and leaning against the teacher's desk. He managed to look elegant in his standard uniform of white work shirt, open, dark tweed waistcoat, and his black dungarees. She swallowed and pulled her thoughts into order when she realized that elegant wasn't quite the correct word.

"What happened in Sinistra's office, Granger?"

"That bitch is going to deny my staying here for an extra week or so to work on my research."

"What research?"

She gave him an openly questioning look, and he scowled and waved a hand at her to continue.

"I've developed a potion to repair damaged heart tissue."

His eyebrows lifted in surprise.

"Heart tissue doesn't regenerate," he said.

"That's what everyone has thought for ages, but recently Muggle scientists have conclusively shown that it can. I've combined their research, along with my previous work utilizing their theory of stem cell research, to create a targeted healing potion that regenerates cardiac muscle cells."

"Back up. Give me the short version of the stem cell research. Embryonic or Progenitor?"

"Do you understand the theory behind stimulating pluripotent cells to replace damaged, mature cells?"

"Yes, but it was a long way off when I was--They hadn't come close yet."

"They still haven't. They're not where they want to be. They keep running off in strange directions. Well, the theory is sound if one doesn't contemplate the ethics."

"Where do you fall on the ethics?"

"Well, that's irrelevant since I am only using the theory, not the facts. I'm not using embryonic stem cells. Muggles have managed to make pluripotent stem cells from adult epithelial cells that can then be programmed to become other types of cells."

"If we only found out recently that cardiac muscle does regenerate, then I'm assuming the process is rather slow."

Hermione's eyes lit up as she saw he had grasped where she was going.

"Exactly. I targeted the vectors that cause epithelial cells to devolve down to pluripotent cells as well as the trigger for the extremely slow process of cardiac tissue regeneration and found a catalyst. My potion will trigger a partial devolving of the cardiac tissue towards a pluripotent state but then switch to a unipotent state, therefore regenerating the cardiac tissue all at once since there is already a proven tendency towards regeneration!"

"What's the catalyst?" he asked, rubbing his finger along his top lip.

"Magic!" she replied with a peal of laughter.

He narrowed his eyes and crossed his arms over his chest.

"If you're done being cheeky, Granger? I do have paint to scrape."

She giggled some more at his affected tone.

"No, I'm not, Professor Snape. You tell me: What did I find to stimulate sudden, rapid, cellular change?"

His mouth dropped open.

"Boomslang skin."

Her eyes lit up, and she looked like a pixie.

"Yes!" she shouted, kicking both legs up like a gleeful little girl and slapping her hands down repeatedly on the desktop before jumping up and dancing in a circle. "I must have used tons of it in the last three years. I was going through so much, I couldn't even afford to buy myself new clothes! I wouldn't have even had a clue about the amounts I was using if you hadn't been keeping up that inventory. For which I am in your debt, by the way."

Snape looked like he had swallowed his tongue. It took him a few moments to say anything.

"So," he cleared his throat and tried again. "So, what exactly did our esteemed Headmistress do to thwart this breakthrough?"

It was like a light went out inside of her. Her face clouded over, and her shoulders slumped, and she flopped back into her chair.

"My sudden decision to destroy my Potions storeroom set me back a good bit on my timetable." She gave him a penetrating stare, and he pursed his lips and stared at his shoes as he re-crossed his legs before looking back up at her. She let it go. "I couldn't start the final tests over Easter like I had hoped. The first stages are very delicate, and one can't use a stasis charm. I asked Madam Sinister if I could stay over a bit during the summer to work on the final tests--Planq over at St Mungo's is breathing down my neck. He's their Cardio Specialist." Hermione looked down at the top of the desk and traced some carved initials. "She seemed to think it would not be in the best interests of the school, that it would be 'unseemly' if I was to publicly leave my husband for the duration. The gossip, don't you know."

"Has she no idea what that kind of breakthrough by a staff member would do for the school's prestige?"

"Don't be ridiculous. Prestige is gained by Celebrity Quidditch Matches. Lord, even Ron understands how important my research is in the grand scheme of things. Sinistra has lost her sense of direction. Whatever she used to be, and I remember her as a great teacher, all she sees now are stars of a different magnitude."

"Nonsense. She was always a celebrity whore. She was the first one here to get that ponce, Lockhart, into bed. And the Tri-Wizard Tournament was almost a publicity disaster when she managed to get and then spread a rather virulent case of spotted clap. I assure you her moral code is as fabricated as her biography in Hogwarts: A History."

Hermione slapped a hand over her mouth and goggled at this sudden influx of too much information. Her brain seized the first thing that had stuck.

"The 'first one' to get Lockhart?"

Snape gave her an amused look and then tilted his head to the side.

"Sprout, Vector and…Dumbledore."

"No!!!"

"Oh, yes."

"Eewww! Wrinkly sex!" She slapped her hands over her ears. "I don't want to hear anymore!"

"Oh, come now, Granger. Surely you've realized by now that Hogwarts has always been a veritable cauldron of angst and melodrama?" Her humor died as she realized where that particular line of thinking would go. She saw his head straighten up as the thought occurred to him as well.

"Has she said no to your research yet?"

"No, she said she would give me an answer on Friday."

"And if I may be so intrusive, why can't your husband stay with you here while you work?"

She looked him in the eye for a long moment before dropping her gaze back to the desk top.

"Ron and I--"

"My apologies for interrupting you, Professor, but I will have to cut this conversation short." he said, startling her. She looked up to see him gliding towards the door, rubbing his chest. She stood and followed him.

"Are you alright, Severus?" she asked him with concern.

"I'm fine, just a touch of indigestion. But it appears you have people waiting to speak with you, and I really shouldn't take up any more of your time."

She looked out the classroom door to see Hugo and Rose with their backs pressed up against the wall and felt her hair stand up as she realized what she had almost revealed with her children in earshot. She looked at Severus, but he only returned a blank indifference.

"If you will excuse me, Professor," he said. "I thank you for an enjoyable conversation, and good luck with your research."

He stepped out the door, but stopped and turned to Hugo.

"A Slytherin would have at least been on the other side, behind the door, and would not have allowed their partner to eat something noisy."

With that ambiguous statement, he stalked off down the hall.

"Wow, I didn't know Mr. Snape was so smart. He sure remembers a lot about potions," said Rose, around a mouth full of crisps, trying to deflect her mother's mounting anger at their eavesdropping. "And what did he mean by that last bit, Hugo? Why would we care what a Slytherin would do?"

Hugo didn't answer. He just stared off after the caretaker.

"You two are to explain yourselves right this minute," hissed their mother. Rose scrunched up her face, knowing there was no explanation that would get them out of whatever restriction her mother already had brewing in her head.

*

*

*practices her dance steps* Did you see how neatly I dodged both of those massive confrontations you were hoping for? Do I have moves or what? I slay me.

Do do that voodoo that you do with reviews. Okay, that was bad.