Harry Potter and all of its settings and characters belong to JK Rowling.

XXX

It was hard to shake a man like Severus Snape but that soft exclamation did a fine job of it. After spending days searching to no avail he'd shoved down all the maddening feelings of something hovering just out of reach. That small phrase had them all flooding back. He found himself floundering for words, something he never did, and when he didn't answer she went back to staring into the vicinity of his heart at whatever seemed to be fascinating her.

"The darkness can't get close," she muttered, "It's like it's afraid."

He found his voice when she seemed to be about to reach out and touch him.

"Miss Granger," he pushed every ounce of his disquiet into an icy tone and she snapped to attention, "Have you taken leave of your senses?"

Her eyes widened and she now looked as unsettled as he felt.

"I'm sorry, sir, I needed to brew an Enlightening Elixir and the castle let me in but then I saw-"

She broke off as if unable or unwilling to put into words exactly what it was she'd seen. He ignored the fact that she'd just appeared through a solid wall and had implicated the castle in enabling her propensity for the theft of his ingredients.

"You saw what?" He needed this answer, somehow he knew it would lead him to the source of his disquiet.

"I saw your soul."

He wasn't quite sure what to do with that.

She opened her mouth to continue but froze and turned her head as if she'd heard something. When her eyes hit the back wall of the store room she let out a soft, "Oh!" and reached out her hand.

He watched in startled fascination as the wall suddenly became a door that she pushed open to reveal a concerned looking Albus and a slightly frantic looking Draco standing in what looked to be a large common room.

Hermione walked straight to Draco who's eyes lit up with relief at the sight of her. He pulled her into his arms and she tucked herself in against him, as if knowing he needed the comfort of the contact.

"You screamed and then the bloody door disappeared." Draco said into her hair and Snape felt a familiar pang in his chest.

Hermione curled in tighter. "I'm sorry. Seeing Professor Snape startled me and I didn't notice the door."

Snape knew from experience that unless pulled from the dark space Draco was currently swimming in it would linger.

"Miss Granger, if you are going to go about spying on my soul and pilfering my ingredients I believe you should call me Severus."

XXX

Hermione felt the tightness in Draco's chest ease and she sent a small smile of gratitude in Snape's direction as she pulled away. "Then in fairness I believe you should call me Hermione."

Snape nodded in acknowledgement and Draco's lips tiled into a smile.

"So what does Severus's soul look like?"

"It's-" she stopped her self from saying 'beautiful' as she didn't think he'd appreciate it, and went with, "silver."

"Dumbledore's?"

"Sky blue." Dumbledore looked delighted by the information.

"And mine?"

"Scarlet," her smile grew wide as he scrunched up his face, "with a dusting of gold."

"Oh now that's just insulting," he feigned outrage, "a Gryffindor colored soul? What color is yours?"

"Yours and mine are identical."

Both his eyebrows shot up at that and she could tell he was trying to disguise how much that pleased him. "Well, I guess that's all right then."

She laughed at that and then it was her turn to scrunch up her face as she remembered something else she'd forgotten about. "I guess now might be a good time to tell you that Luna knows our secret."

His eyes went wide. "You told her?"

"Of course not! She knew before we did. Honestly she's probably known since her first year. The reason I even know the spell at all is because after she walked up and announced how glad she was that we finally found each other and I almost had a heart attack, she explained how she noticed that our souls were the same because she did the spell every morning before breakfast so she could look at all the colors." She turned to Snape, "She says yours is her favorite, by the way."

Snape's lips twitched. "You mean to tell me that all the times I've caught that daft girl staring at me she's actually been staring at my soul?"

"Just so. And having seen it myself now I can see why."

"Yes, I think you were about to explain that to me."

Hermione chose her words carefully as she had a feeling the implications of what she'd seen were deeply personal. "Well, your soul by itself is quite noteworthy but what's really interesting is that there's something blocking the magic that's coming out of your dark mark. It keeps trying to push its way in but it can't get past your shoulder."

"You see, Severus?" Dumbledore was beaming, "I told you, didn't I?"

"He told you what?"

"Albus seems to think he knows what has been protecting me from the usual effects of my mark. Most Death Eaters can be taken over like puppets when Voldemort has a mind to be particularly vicious but he's never been able to control me. He wrote it off as an innate talent and luckily for me he saw it as an asset to have a follower that could not be controlled instead of a threat. He reasoned that if he was unable to do it then at least no one else could either."

"What does Professor Dumbledore think it is?" It seemed more appropriate to aim that question at Snape as it was his soul and he should be the one to decide if he wanted to share it. From Dumbledore's silence it seemed he agreed.

"I was in love once," Snape finally answered and she found herself holding her breath to see if he would elaborate, "A long time ago. Voldemort murdered her. Albus thinks that my love for her is what keeps him from getting in."

She felt compelled to set them straight but if she'd been careful with her words before, now she was downright fastidious. He had revealed something achingly personal about himself for the purpose of furthering their information and his tone strongly implied that emotional responses would not be tolerated. She could not let him see anything of the sorrow she felt for him or he would shut down so fast her head would spin so instead she stuck to the point at hand.

"That is a logical theory considering what happened to Harry at the ministry, it's just not correct in this case."

Dumbledore quirked his head at her in question. "How do you know?"

This is where it would get dicey. "Because it's not his magic that's protecting him."

XXX

Snape went perfectly still at that as again he was struck with the absolute certainty that this was somehow what he had wanted to know all along.

"If it was his magic it would be the same color as his soul, because that's where our magic comes from. That's why the sparks that shoot from my hair are red and the fireballs Draco throws are the same. I suspect when you do that spell your fire looks like liquid mercury?" At his nod she continued, "That's what your soul looks like. The magic blocking the darkness is a completely different color."

His brain scrambled to find the words for what he wanted to ask without giving anything away but Albus seemed to know exactly what he needed.

"Is it like the way Harry's mother's magic is protecting him?"

"No, this is different. Lily's magic is everywhere, running through Harry's veins. It's a sort of sparkling champagne color and it's very faint." She turned to face him, "What's protecting you is bright, extremely so, and it's all concentrated in the one spot where Voldemort's magic is trying to break through. It's like whoever cast it knew exactly what you would need protection from."

Facts were assembling themselves in his brain like pieces of a distorted jigsaw puzzle. Not enough to form a picture but enough to at least give him better questions than 'What am I missing?'.

"What color is it?" He already knew it wasn't Lily, but for the sake of all these years of doubts and feelings that didn't add up he needed her to say it.

"Lavender. The way a field of it looks in the sun."

XXX

Three hours and seven shots of firewhisky later Snape sat staring into his fireplace contemplating what he knew. Someone was protecting him. Someone who knew his secret at a time when he had told no one. Someone who cared enough about him to put an enormous amount of power into his protection.

Someone he had absolutely no knowledge of at all.

That seemed so unlikely as to be laughable. The only explanation for it was that he, he himself, the greatest practitioner of mind magic in existence, had been obliviated.

And if his theory held there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it.

Most people did not know that there was more than one method of obliviation. This was due to the fact that he did not tell them. The commonly known and used method involved obscuring the selected memory and, if you were skilled enough, altering it so as to avoid suspicion. This was the method he had used on Miss Granger. The second method was a bit more extreme. It removed the memory completely so that even if the victim somehow did suspect they had been obliviated and tried the memory restoration spell there wasn't anything there to be recovered. The only way to get them back was for the person who took them to return them. Assuming they hadn't destroyed them.

Someone who had known him well enough to know he was planning to infiltrate the Dark Lord's ranks would surely know that he had invented this method.

And it would seem they had used it against him.

This person who was even now keeping him from being overrun with dark magic.

This person who, he grew more sure with each shot, had been the love of his life.

Being in love with Lily had always confused him. Why would he suddenly fall in love with a girl who he'd looked on as a sister and who hadn't spoken to him in years? It hadn't made any sense but there was no denying the love he felt and who else was there?

Who else was there? That was always the argument he used on his imagination when it reminded him that he never dreamed of Lily or on his jealousy when it reminded him he didn't feel at all inclined to dismember Potter for touching her.

Now it was the question of the night. Who else was there?

XXX