Note: The characters here represented are the property of JK Rowling. Absolutely no profits have been derived from this work, and no copyright infringement is intended.

December 8, 1996

The burrow glows in the distance.

A hand sewn quilt – stars in a blue black sky and a happy, fat moon – bears the warmed imprint of a napping cat.

Shoes piled just inside the kitchen door; it creaks.

The last of nine golden hands comes to rest…. 'home'.

The smell of nutmeg.

The pattern of Mum's apron; the green satin lining of Dad's hat.

A bolt of pain; a thrill of terror; and then numbness thuds to the floor softly solid, like a heavy velvet curtain.

Distant shrieks – basilisk and phoenix and boy – warp and flicker….low and slow and muffled – in reverse, underwater; then shrill – ripping raw like fabric.

The sticky coldness of wet rock, the weight of stones above, the awareness of blood and venom.

Tom Riddle.

His smile is the edge of madness, and of nirvana.

The eyes go wide. The face is shocked. The fang is poised. The page is prone.

And then Harry stabs it, and it is also him, and he is also her, and she is also it;

and they are all screaming.

Ginny's eyes rolled back in her head and the shriek died on her lips. Hermione lunged forward and caught her shoulders, then steadily rolled her back against the couch that the Room of Requirement had provided them.

Hermione slid into the space next to her and brushed Ginny's hair out of her lashes, still fluttering in the nightmare. She then settled herself against the opposite end, and waited.

Hermione wondered what the reaction might be this time. Would she be furious? Delirious? Stricken? Betrayed? She hoped not that last, but only because it was the one she most deserved. Guilt prickled and she swatted it away like a gnat. Wake she commanded silently. Wake and look me in the eye once more, like the trusting fool you've always been, and always will be.

(...I hope)

After several minutes Ginny stirred. Hermione braced herself.

"Hermione," she whispered, bending forward. "What did you do?"

"I'm sorry," Hermione lied. "I didn't want you to suffer." It was the truth.

"Why did you do it?" Ginny asked into her lap, beginning to shake and to cry. Hermione fingered her wand behind the couch, out of view.

"I had to."

Ginny sat up straight, and turned her tear streaked face towards her oldest friend.

"What do you…."

"Obliviate."

Ginny's eyes went wide and blank. A fluffy white cloth appeared on a small table beside a pitcher of cool water infused with aloe. Hermione wetted the material and gently took Ginny's face in her hands, wiping away the tears.

"We've studied for hours haven't we?" Hermione asked her; her voice soft and kind – maternal.

"Mm," replied Ginny, dreamily.

"And you got a headache like you always do when you work too hard."

Ginny sighed and blinked slowly. Hermione immersed the cloth completely and rung it out.

"Lean back for me now, Ginny."

Ginny did so obediently; as malleable as a sleepy child. Hermione draped the wet cloth over Ginny's eyes and reached for a newly appeared blanket. She unfolded it and placed it over her friend carefully, stopping to squeeze Ginny's feet gently.

"You're just resting your eyes, until you feel like you can work again."

"Yes," mumbled Ginny, already asleep.

Hermione moved to the armchair nearby, arranged books and papers in a convincing pattern of disarray, then settled herself comfortably in the scene of the crime, and waited for dawn.

OOOOOO

Ginny woke at sunrise. The room had sprouted an impossibly tall, stained glass cathedral window just as the lazy winter sun began to creep over the mountains in the distance beyond the lake, flooding the room with the harsh light of a cold and cloudless December morning.

Hermione caught moments of sleep throughout the night, but had been far too agitated to drift fully into unconsciousness. She had obtained the final piece of the puzzle – the memory that Ginny had never offered her before, and that she needed more than any other – the images of Tom Riddle's possession of her.

Hermione had become an excellent Occlumens in her weeks of practice. Snape had been steadily more and more violent in his intrusions, and she had kept pace with him – her defenses growing not only stronger, but more cunning; her lies ever more authentic. But the task of building a repertoire, as it were, of Ginny's thoughts and memories had been far more tedious.

Her skill in Legilimency had remained in the absence of relentless exercise, intermediate at best. She could perform the spell, enter her victim's mind, and interpret what she found, but she lacked the mental agility of an accomplished Legilimens. And thus, Hermione simply rode the waves of Ginny's thoughts, hoping that she would drift ashore of something useful. She'd seen memories of home, moments from childhood, bolts of adolescent passion – all important. But visions of Tom Riddle, never; until now. And the instant she achieved this knowledge, after the thrill of victory had dissipated, she was filled with a profound dread.

The first chapter of her journey had come to a close, and, she realized with a lurch of terror, she was now a significant step closer to the Dark Lord, the Dark Mark, and possibly to failure and death. Snape's first lesson would this very day come to a close, and she did not know what came next.

Ginny sat up suddenly, startled by her unfamiliar surroundings, and looked to Hermione feigning sleep convincingly in the red leather armchair, her feet propped up on the table between them.

"Shit," she said.

"Mmmf," answered Hermione.

Ginny laughed then, and stood to gather their books and papers.

"I can't believe we did this again," she muttered, almost to herself.

"Oh god. Have we?" asked Hermione, her eyes sleepy.

The two girls made their way back to the tower, brushing off the disapproving tuts of the Fat Lady as they entered the common room, and made quick progress up the stairs to the dormitory. Ginny kicked off her shoes fluidly as she flung her curtains aside and flopped comically onto her comfortable bed, falling asleep in seconds.

It was one of the more enviable Weasely traits – thought Hermione, moving instead towards the showers – to fall asleep with such ridiculous ease; useful in so many cases, but not today. As much as Hermione would have liked, (and in all probably very much needed) to crawl into bed for eight hours of uninterrupted sleep, it had been Snape's instruction to her that the moment she came across the possession memory, she should come to him. She sighed, adjusted the temperature, shed her robes, and stepped into the hot stream.

Thirty minutes later Hermione arrived at the door to the potions classroom. The Disillusionment charm she'd used proved almost entirely unnecessary – no one save a few studious Ravenclaws were stirring before 10 am on a frozen Sunday morning the second to last weekend before finals. She rapped three times on the door, the sound echoing down the empty corridor, and then entered.

Hermione felt a film like silk pass over her face and hair and down her back – a ward to alert Snape that someone had entered. She stood in the deserted classroom and listened to water drip softly from some unknown source onto some unidentifiable surface. She didn't mind the dark and cold of the dungeons, but she did dislike the dampness. Shivering slightly, she ignited the torches, as if the appearance of light might equal the feeling of warmth.

A sound from the office beyond told her that Snape was in, and a moment later he emerged, throwing the door open to glare at whoever disturbed him on a Sunday morning.

"I got it," she said in response to his inquiring brow. "The memory, I got it."

"Ward the door," he said, and stepped back through the iron-clad portal from which he had partially emerged.

Hermione obeyed, and then quickly followed in his wake.

The potions office had changed somewhat since Professor Slughorn resumed the post, and though she had spent at least six of the term's N.E.W.T. level potions classes in this room – observing a particularly delicate potion, procuring an especially exotic and dear ingredient, borrowing one of the rarer potions reference books kept there – Hermione had never taken the time to study the subtle differences. With Snape occupied somewhere in the distance of the opposite end of the room, she allowed herself a brief appraisal.

The ingredients lining the South and East walls were arranged differently from what she recalled rather vividly of her terrifying second year break-in. Snape's collection had grown steadily since then, and Slughorn, it appeared, had employed a very different style of organizing it. From what she could glean by looking quickly, ingredients had been reorganized by their common names, and in sub groupings according to common use. Snape's arrangement had been by the Latin, and divided by biological taxonomy.

The tool collection along the Eastern wall had also been altered. Hermione remembered having been pleased by the logic of the previous layout – a neat cross referencing of volatile and contradicting ingredients with method of preparation (i.e. scraping, mincing, crushing, etc.) Slughorn, by contrast, had simply arranged the majority of the tools by size, separating those used with dangerous substances from the rest entirely. It was safer, perhaps, but less elegant.

Of the four square worktables dominating the largest part of the long rectangular space, two were laden with a total of seven, no, eight steaming cauldrons. Six of these, with their intense eucalyptus bite and assertively piping steam, were undoubtedly Pepperup Potion – in high demand this time of year – but the remaining two she couldn't identify. She did her best to peer over the lips of the small, golden cauldrons, and tried to breathe in their scents deeply as she passed. But the odorless and tranquil black pools gave no clue as to their ingredients or purpose.

The work was all Snape's. She could tell by the rigidity evident in every detail from the even spacing of the cauldrons to the aggressively neat arrangement of their next ingredients – in tight and uniform slices, minced piles, and powders, already in their measuring vessels, each lined up to the right of their respective fires; no exceptions.

Hermione looked to her left as the second row of worktables, bereft of cauldrons, came into view, and skimmed as best she could the small potions library located against the west wall. Here at least, there appeared to be no change whatsoever, and that gave her an odd sense of satisfaction.

The muted tinkling sound of tiny glass bottles brought her hurrying forward to the round table located before the room's only window. The portal had been carved into the solid rock of the steepest part of the castle wall, overlooking the lake, and was formed by more than one hundred hand poured circular panes; each unique, and imperfect. Hermione stood before it, unsure of whether to sit or stand, and surveyed Snape as he rummaged through a tall, thin cabinet, pushed flush against the window's wall.

Having never before seen him without them, Hermione would have guessed that, bereft of the imposing volume of his teaching robes, Snape would have been rendered slightly less frightening. The reality, she observed as she watched him extract one bottle, and then two more, was quite different.

In his frock coat and cuffs – fashioned, like so much of the clothing of the wizarding world, in a Victorian spirit, complete with oppressively high collar and draconian buttons – he seemed lighter; quicker. His angular shoulders appeared sharper, his spidery limbs longer, his height more pronounced, without the dispersing and softening effect of layers upon layers of flowing fabric. Seen in this slightly less formal, less guarded way, he struck her as not just magically dangerous, but physically menacing as well. She remembered the dagger suddenly, and found herself taking her seat in one of the mahogany chairs after all.

Snape shut the cabinet doors softly and approached the round table, handing her one vial and pocketing the other two.

"What's this?" she asked, her nerves having taken control of her tongue, and overridden her ability to hold it.

"You're no use to me exhausted," he said by way of explanation.

She understood and drank, then handed him the empty vessel. He replaced the cork, and set it on the table between them.

Hermione felt the Invigoration Draught beginning to take effect in stages. Her face flushed and her lips tingled. Her pulse quickened, creating a sudden demand on her lungs to keep up; forcing her to take several deep breaths. Snape stood before her, his wand in hand, waiting patiently, and seemed to know the exact moment when the effects would peak and plateau.

"Stand," he commanded, when that moment came, and Hermione did.

She was prepared for him to cast Legilimens, she was even prepared for him to do so while she stood, having practiced this twice before.

She was not prepared for him to lunge forward, grip her by the back of her neck, his thumb wrapping possessively around her jaw, and cast the spell into her startled face.

The last detail of the earthly world of which she was aware was the feeling of his wool frock coat curled tightly in her fingers.