Author's Note: There is a reasonable chance that I will cease to update this story, or anything, on FFN. "Guest", you are seemingly desperate for a shout-out, well, here it is. To reiterate what I have long maintained: I appreciate and enjoy constructive criticism. And I do thank all of you who choose to spend some time reading, and who leave me with some of your thoughts.

Part XXI

If a shower accomplishes nothing else, at least it rids her of the rank stench of ethanol clinging in her pores, washes away the shame of vomit. She's hiding in here, now. The hot water charm is paying dividends, because it's been at least half an hour, and the water temperature hasn't changed a bit. It was a tricky bit of magic to do; most charms end when the caster stops maintaining them. She'd built a time delay into this one, the way you do with a ward. She's proud of it, even if she's not proud of herself.

She wishes she could convince herself that the steam is some purifying ritual, that she will emerge from here whole, competent, capable. But her mind is not flexible enough to accept that elaborate of a fantasy.

Snape is gone, but not far. He's told her he would wait for her outside. She does, and does not, want to see him. Does, and does not, want to know why he has come. What was it he had said, that he'd been told off at great length and considerable volume? If he has come solely at the behest of Maddie and Cathy, he has surely done his duty. Why stay, why wait? He made his opinion of her clear. Unless Maddie's right, and he is gay. But no, Harry had told her about every single memory. She grits her teeth. Bloody Harry. Harry, who is so self-centered that he can't see when other people are in pain, can't even imagine that they might be.

Well, this is not quite fair. He'd dragged her out of her bed. But she isn't going to forgive him for failing to tell her what Ronald has been up to. It's not important, he'd said. And she isn't going to forgive him for subjecting her to literal hours of discourse on the subject of Severus Snape and Lily Evans. So what if none of the Weasleys were available, too locked in their own grief to coddle him? So what if he didn't have anyone else to talk to? She hadn't needed to hear it, hadn't need to be subjected to countless renditions of Lily's demeanour, unending queries as to whether she thought anything was truly serious between the pair. What does he mean, serious? She knows what he's asking: d'you think my perfect mum slept with greasy Snape? It doesn't even matter, does it? He died for her. That in itself means so much more than the possibilities that keep Harry up at night, and she doesn't understand how he could be ignorant of it, why he chooses to ignore it. Except, of course, that Snape as a person is completely incidental to him.

She works some more conditioner into her hair. She's been here long enough that it's all washed out.

Perhaps Snape as a person is completely incidental to her, too. He exists in her mind as a possibility, no more. If he is mouldering in an unmarked grave, she is free to make a dream lover of him. If he is locked up tight with Lily, or Maddie, then he is something safe for angry, jealous daydreams. But if he is here?

He is here. And she is hiding in her shower.

Her sober self is humiliated by more than his dismissal of her advance. She is humiliated at having pulled the stunt in the first place. He has never, ever given her any indication that he sees her as anything more than a student. It is only in her own warped brain that anything else has ever occurred. Looked at from that angle, last night makes perfect sense. He'd said friends. And she'd heard – what?

She should apologize to him.

She needs to get a grip on reality and stop living in fantasies, because she's starting to confuse the two. Penance is called for. It's as good a starting point as any, in this quest to reunite her skewed perceptions with objective facts. And this gives her a reason to get out of the shower.

There is a steaming cup of tea waiting for her, on the narrow countertop beside her stove. By the scent, it's more of his hangover remedy. But she's been in the bath for ages so – hmm. She extends a hand over it, and concentrates hard. "Finite incantatem." It actually works: the steam ceases to spiral immediately. She really has to make an effort to learn some of these things, because she hadn't known you could do heating spells wandlessly, either. Or, no. No. What she has to do, is find her wand.

After she finishes this tea. And after she apologizes to Professor Snape.

"Feeling more human?" He is waiting for her, leaned up against the boot of an automobile parked on the street outside her building. He folds up his newspaper, and looks at her expectantly.

"Quite a lot better, yes. Thanks for bringing that tea 'round. Is it hibiscus, the floral notes?"

"No, that's more of a cranberry taste, a bit tart. I tossed a few in, but the floral, perfumed taste comes from lavender, which is also good for GI upsets."

"It's your own formula, then?"

"Recipe, rather. Nothing so precise and scientific as a formula. But I find it works better than pepto and paracetamol. Hasn't got a touch on Hangover Relief, though. Someone should find a way to extend the shelf-life on that. There's your next project, give those of us who lack foresight a helping hand."

"Well, you had enough foresight to lay in three bottles."

"Oh, that's not foresight, that's masochism. But! I did have the foresight to grab a Tube map for you. So maybe there's hope I'm developing the capacity." He beckons her over, and yes, he's got a map of the Underground spread across the car's boot. He's circled parts of it with a fine-tipped felt pen.

"Victoria Line to King's Cross St Pancras, and then the Northern to Angel. That gets you close to Grimmauld Place. If that's where you intended to apparate last night, it's a reasonable place to start looking."

"That was my thought. Thanks, can I hang on to this?"

"No, of course not, I went to the trouble of bringing it just to taunt you." He even rolls his eyes.

"It's very thoughtful of you."

He gives her a narrow-eyed glare. "I'll thank you to keep that kind of slander to yourself. Are you up to fish and chips?"

She's not sure she wants to put anything at all past her tongue, let alone "Your idea of a healthy breakfast?"

"Of course not. And it's after two in the afternoon. It's hardly my fault you've slept right through breakfast. Oh, no, actually, I suppose it is. My fault."

"No, it isn't. I'm the one who poured the wine down my gullet. Sorry for being a shite drinking mate."

"We'll stick to beer, next time."

He anticipates a next time? She swallows hard. "Umn, about last night."

"Least said, soonest mended." He nods sharply.

"I just wanted to apologize. I was wholly out of line."

"You weren't the only one. But if you insist on offering an apology, you can do so by helping me find a chippy around here. It may have escaped your attention, but people actually do need to consume things resembling food, on occasion. And yes, before you ask, I rifled your pantry. I was going to fix you eggs and toast, but you'll have to settle for greasy potatoes and dubious battered fish of presumably marine origin."

The notion of Professor Snape rummaging her cupboards should be disconcerting in the extreme, but his air of peevishness sets her laughing. "Well, when you put it like that, I can hardly wait."

"Maybe we can even find a bench down by the Thames, get the proper atmosphere for it."

"What, like over a drainage pipe?"

"That would be nearly ideal; the finest of British cuisine, al fresco – it demands a certain sense of style."

Of course, there aren't much in the way of benches along her neighbourhood's stretch of the river – there's a reason she apparates farther east for her walks - but they settle with their takeaway in a public green. "It's got a fountain, at least," she says philosophically, although with the pump off for the winter it's become a catchment for stray cigarette butts.

"Might be a bit too sophisticated," he opines, "We've only got paper serviettes."

Once she begins picking at her meal, she realises she's hungry. And it is good, sinfully so. "Is this your secret vice?" she asks around a mouthful.

"I suppose. Cheap drink and bad novels being well-known vices, these days. And just casually buying a meal like this, that is a vice. You probably saw where I grew up."

"Cokeworth?"

"Mmhmm. Awful hole of a place; only having magic kept it livable. Magic doesn't put food on the table, though, and you can't trade it in for takeaway, more's the pity. It might actually be good for something, otherwise."

"Magic's good for plenty of things, but I take your point. Don't you miss being on the Wizarding side, though, even a bit?"

He regards a chip with an air of deep contemplation. "Sometimes. No, not really. On the balance, my having been there did neither me nor the wizarding world any good whatsoever."

"You were integral in winning the war."

"Because I told Potter how the game was stacked? Anyone could've done. Dumbledore could have done. Should have, really."

Well. There is justice in this. "I don't know why he didn't."

"Albus felt Potter needed coddling. Ever so much better to receive news that you need to die from the person you hate most, instead of from a surrogate parent-figure."

"Which made no sense, really," she puts in, "To imagine that Harry would trust you. I'm astonished he did, that he took your memories at face value."

"So am I, if we're being honest. Even with the memories I gave him. Though, it may have improved verisimilitude to have looked rather dead at the time. Still, it was a shite plan, and I told Albus so. Repeatedly. My plan was much better."

"Go on." Because she can see he's keen to. His eyes are glinting.

"I was going to tell you."

This admission catches her in mid-bite. She blinks, then remembers that she was chewing. Finishing this gives her the moment she needs. "Was that… was that why you commented on my work, why you kept writing to me?" It is such a horribly possible possibility, and certainly he is the sort who would lay a plan that deep. When had she begun working solely on polyjuice? Sixth Year.

"No. That was… not premeditated, on my part. And no part of it was a good idea, either. It was a risk, and I should never have risked Albus' plans in so self-centered a fashion. But later, after… after the Astronomy Tower, I thought that, well, at least… If I ever got the opportunity to approach you, you'd have some small reason not to hex me outright. So, I thought, maybe it hadn't really been a bad thing. Or not too bad." There are points of colour on his cheekbones. He is looking away, as if he is admitting some terrible crime. There is nothing terrible, that she can see, in his wishing that someone, anyone – even a silly Gryffindor girl – might not think the worst of him.

And so when she speaks, it's to this certainty. "I meant it. What I said. That I never truly believed you were really on Voldemort's side. I'd have listened, if… Well, if I'd had the chance."

"I was, though. On his side."

"In the first war."

"Yes. You would do well not to forget that."

"I—I don't think I am. But I know you. Or, I know… I know enough. I know enough to know that you are fundamentally someone who makes the right choices. Perhaps not the best choices, but ones that are right in one degree or another. And it's our choices that define us. Harry's always telling everyone that, apparently it's a Dumbledore quote."

"Wouldn't surprise me, it sounds the sort. Personally, I never found a single bit of Dumbledore's supposedly-sage advice that ever worked as well in practise as in theory. Often quite the opposite."

"You don't think we're defined by our choices?"

"I think it's an incomplete picture. Motive, motivation, and our intentions matter. Not just the outward effects of our having chosen something. Oh, and circumstance, the context – sometimes the only choice you can make is a bad one."

She nods. "I know that too. Or I appreciate it, at least. I have made… some bad choices, you could say. And yet, I don't know… I don't think I'm a bad person. Or I don't want to be, anyway. It's complicated. Reality complicates things."

"That accounts for why some people choose not to live there, I expect."

"In reality?"

"Mmm."

"Do you? Live there."

He levels a sideways look at her, and a corner of his mouth twitches up, in what she thinks might be sly appreciation. She hadn't really meant it as a barb. She is simply curious, because perhaps she is not alone in this affliction.

"Debateable, really. Sometimes." His expression turns wistful, and he looks away over the park, "You can always tell when you are, or not, because those are the bits that hurt."

"What are the parts that particularly hurt for you?" She is risking a lot, asking something this personal.

"Oh, lots of things. I could be facetious and say 'waking up.'"

"Days like today, I could agree with you." She is going to have to give him something in kind, if she wants a real answer. She's not sure she does. She chews meditatively at her cod. "It hurts for me when I look up from what I'm doing. When I stop working on an idea, and look around, and realise I haven't got anyone to share it with."

"Why haven't you forged professional networks? People speak well of your work, I'm told."

She swallows. The chip seems to lodge in her throat. Or is that regret? "Ronald wouldn't have… I didn't want to make things tense. He… he was excluded from my work; I think he felt like an outsider."

"So because he was a virtual outsider, you took it upon yourself to remain a literal one?"

"N-nooo, not exactly. I… It's just that, it was a decision I'd made. To marry him. And I felt like, well, it was up to me to make some concessions. If I wanted concessions from him."

"Very high-minded of you, indeed. And what concessions did the magnanimous Mr. Weasley grant you? I suppose he offered his unwavering support of your pursuit of …anything?"

She huffs a breath of laughter and pulls a sarcastic smile. "Not really, no. 'Though, he did eventually stop giving me grief about scarpering off to the attic to work. And he let me keep the books. Your books, I mean." She's not about to tell him about the other thing that Ronald stopped giving her grief over. Because he never really did, even if he did take 'no thanks, not tonight' for an answer.

Snape is shaking his head, his mouth twisted in a disbelieving sneer. "It's incomprehensible to me."

"Er, what is?"

"Whatever animal magnetism it is that draws such profoundly incompatible people together."

"Maybe… maybe people just look incompatible from the outside, maybe we don't see the whole of who they are together."

"Weasley and yourself?"

"Oh, no, that's fairly incomprehensible." She pokes a chip into her mushy peas.

"So what was it, then? Indulge my curiosity. It can't have been his quidditch fame."

"Oh, but didn't you know? I'm the definition of a quidditch groupie. I very nearly snogged Viktor Krum, once."

"Careful, I'm rapidly losing all respect for you."

"Honestly? It's embarrassing. No, strike that, it's mortifying and humiliating, and I can't believe I'm actually going to tell you. I married him because he got me up the duff."

"Oh. I – I'm sorry, I hadn't realized. Are you, d'you have, erm, visitation rights, at least?"

It takes her a bit to understand what he's asking. "Oh, no. I… I miscarried. I… really, in retrospect it's all for the best."

"Retrospect. That's a bitter pill, at times, isn't it?" She assumes this question is rhetorical, and watches him chew another of his chips. She can't recall ever seeing him eat, before. She supposes she'd never looked. Why on earth does this interest her now?

"You know, of course, that the frontal lobes of your brain aren't fully mature until about age 25? We make fairly terrible decisions in our adolescent years. Although, evidence suggests your thirties aren't all that much better."

"Is that last to my direction as well?"

"Er, no. I was thinking of my own life, actually. Though, now that you mention, I have to confess it's still sometimes a bit odd, thinking of you as an adult. What are you now, thirty-six?"

It's sometimes a bit odd for her, too. "It's impolite to ask a woman her age, didn't you know?" She isn't yet, but it is quite an adult age, isn't it? And yet, she doesn't feel like an adult. He'd already been corresponding with her via marginalia, when he was only a little older than she is now. Does this put something in perspective?

He makes a brushing motion with his fingertips. "Me? Impolite? Perish the notion."

"When does a person really finally grow up? When do you finally stop making daft decisions?"

"When is it safe to finally rely on your sense of judgment, you mean? I'd direct you to that inimitable fount of wisdom, Albus Dumbledore, only he asked someone to murder him, which was clearly a daft decision, so perhaps your answer is 'never'."

"Oh good." She picks at a chip of her own.

"On the positive side, consider the law of averages – everyone else is apt to be making stupid decisions too, so they probably won't notice yours, as long as you're within the average and not an egregious outlier."

That is a bleakly optimistic way of looking at things. Still, she thinks she'd like to change the topic, if he'll let her. Perhaps there's a more painful subject they can discuss than her personal failures. "What was it, with Dumbledore?"

"What do you mean? It was a fairly standard killing curse, you would have learned about them in fourth year."

"I mean, was he your friend? Was it hard?"

He busies himself with wiping the salt and vinegar from his fingertips before answering her. This is fine, she'd need more time than he takes, to compose herself to answer a question like that. "It was… shattering. You take every bit of pain, every ounce of anger you can summon. You pour that out, and in that moment, you must truly desire to cause harm."

It must be the breeze that is making her feel cold and shivery. His words are so calm, so matter-of-fact.

"It has taken me many years to feel that I had any right to that anger. It horrifies me still that I found it, after so long a time. It depresses me that he knew I still encompassed it. And that he never truly forgave it, always held that in abeyance. Couldn't ever admit culpability, admit that my anger was rational."

She swallows hard. Something doesn't make sense, in what he's telling her. If only she can find the right question to ask… She wants to ask, why was he angry with Dumbledore? But she knows the answer – Dumbledore had promised to safeguard his childhood love, and had failed.

"He was not… not omniscient, and never perfect," she reminds him.

"He was not."

"Perhaps… perhaps in asking you to do that… perhaps that was an admission? That he understood, accepted your anger."

"Hunh. That… Thank you, Miss Granger. That is… I had not considered that. It's probably a whitewash; I know too well how he despised me. But on a cosmic level, perhaps it holds. There is some little comfort in that, I imagine." He has leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees, eyes cast at the brick pavers.

She watches as a passerby startles the nearby flock of pigeons into flight. She doesn't know what else to say, doesn't know how hard she can pry. Although, if she offends him badly enough, he will surely put an end to this, and that might be for the best. All things considered. Anyway, she's thought of something that might be the right question. At the very least, it's a question that she doesn't really know the answer to. "You said, earlier: adolescence is a poor time to make decisions. What were yours? Why did you join them, the Death Eaters?"

"Are you asking me if I harbour any of their sentiments?" His voice is suddenly very empty, and his eyes, meeting hers, are dead-flat.

"No. I know you don't."

"What if I told you that I did?"

"I'd call you a liar," she says evenly.

His eyes release hers. He's looking down at his fingers, which are crushing the cardboard of his takeaway box. He chews at the inside of his lip. She wonders if it's a nervous tic, or just something he does when he's thinking. She doesn't recall that he ever did it at school, although those performances were surely just that, and little more.

"I wanted power," he says after a long while. "I thought they could give it to me. Your expression - no, not real power. Not the kind of power that would do me any good whatsoever in life. What I wanted was the power to destroy. My dearest desire, back then…"

Was what? Lily. The power to destroy James? Does she want to believe this of him, that he could be so possessive and calculating, could be so viciously self-absorbed as to believe that Lily would have anything to do with him, if he'd been responsible for destroying the life she'd chosen—

"My sole motivation, from the time I left school, was nothing more than the complete and utter destruction of the Ministry of Magic, and of the Wizengamot. Especially them. I wanted to pull the place down, to crucify the bastards. Nothing would have pleased me more than to douse Albus Dumbledore in petrol. Not a simple killing curse. Fire. Fire and agony. How galling, to crawl back to him, to have to depend upon him as my saviour from Azkaban."

It is somehow even more terrible that he says all of this in the lightest of tones, as if he is commenting upon the weather. Saliva keeps flooding her mouth.

"You look horrified. You should be. I am, myself. You asked, earlier, if I considered Dumbledore a friend. I did. He was. The last I had, really."

"Are you… are you quite sure you know the definition of that word?" She is a bit shocked at her own audacity.

He smirks. "What, you've never wanted to set your friends on fire?"

She really, truly, should not find this funny.

"I never did torch anyone," he continues, more soberly, "But through my actions, people nonetheless perished. Good people. And if some weren't good, well, their crimes were not so heinous that they deserved to die."

"Do you mean…" She trails off. Her footing has become so uncertain. She thought she'd understood his past, but does she know anything true?

"Potter the Rotter. His wife."

"Why you turned back to Dumbledore." She needs to clarify this point.

"I suppose. Some of it was coming to my senses and realizing quite what a mess I had gotten myself into."

"But you cared for her."

He nods. "She was my friend." He seems to think she will understand this simple statement implicitly. When she doesn't immediately respond, he expands: "Not then. Not for a few years, by then. But she had been. She was a last link with the past. I… I valued that. Without her, there was… just emptiness, there. Nothing true, anymore. A friend is… for me, rare. Someone who knows you, knows the truth of you. Because who are you, when everything is a pretense, everything built on lies and posturing?"

"I don't know." And she doesn't. Her own adult life has been built of too many – if not lies, then certain omissions of truth. "The memories you gave Harry. At the end."

He gives her a long, steady look. "Who are you, when everything is a pretense?"

"You were willing to die for her. Harry believed—"

"Exactly what Dumbledore needed him to. In the beginning, I was, maybe. Willing to die. Or at least, death seemed very welcoming. Death is easy. Living is hard. And yet here I am."

"So what are you living for?"

"Because I'm a coward, maybe?"

"There's a gap in that logic," she feels compelled to point out, "A coward would die, if living is hard."

"Then maybe… Maybe I live in hope. Except that sounds trite and stupid, particularly as I am doing nothing towards anything I might hope for."

"Nothing?"

He shrugs. "I can't be. Because there is nothing that I hope for. Or rather, the things I want are impossible things."

She wants to ask him what they are, but she cannot. This is too raw, this gaping wound where her understanding of the world once resided. She also very much does not want to ask him what these impossible things might be. Because she knows that she is not one of them.

Masochism rules the day, if only as a whisper: "Why didn't you kiss me back?"

He snorts, and his lip curls in disgust. "Tell me. Truthfully. Now that you're sober, and now that you know these things – would you really have wanted me to?"

She has to look away from the bitter challenge in his dark eyes. She looks at her hands, instead. Does she owe him better than this, ought she to meet his eyes when she answers? He has given her truth. But she can't. Can't even answer, not properly. "I don't know. I think, I think yes. But I don't know."

By rights he'll stomp her now, now that she's exposed this vulnerability. But he doesn't. Instead, he's now looking at his own hands. His fingernails are pressing little half-moons into the flesh of his palm. It has to hurt, but his face is tense and stony. The slightest edge of his lower lip is clamped between his teeth, whitened from pressure.

"So last night was, what, a pre-emptive rejection?" she asks. She's desperate for him to say something, anything. If he would even move, ease this unbearable pressure. He's going to draw blood soon, she thinks.

Enough. She reaches over and wrenches his hands apart. "Stop it." With the pads of her thumbs she scrubs at the red crescents in his palm.

"Not a rejection, no." He's looking at her again, and this time she chances meeting his eyes. He looks bewildered, and some more parts of her world – not the very foundations or walls, just a buttress or two, but important parts nonetheless – collapse in this instant. He can never be Professor Snape again. Because now she reads terror and confusion, hope and hurt in every tensed line of his visage. Only Severus could be this lost, Severus this broken by disclosing truth.

"If you mean that, not a rejection, then do it. Kiss me now." And she leans forward, closes her eyes in anticipation of him turning away. She doesn't want to see it, not again.

But he doesn't.

She nearly startles, to feel the soft heat of his breath on her face. His lips are dry, and his angle awkward. It's clumsy, there's no other word. She tilts her head, and they fit together a little better. Not well, though; there is too much space between their bodies. Before she can resolve this, he has broken off, pulled away.

He pulls back entirely, his spine ramrod straight. Again, he's not looking at her, he's staring straight ahead. A muscle twitches below his jaw.

But he kissed her.

She told him to, and he did.

That means something, doesn't it? She throws caution to the wind, shuffles down along the bench until their thighs are touching. Grasps his chin, and demands that he look at her, insists upon his attention. And she has it. His eyes are wide like something wild, and she gentles her grip, extends her fingers along his jawline, his sharp cheekbones, to softly cradle his face in the frame of her hands. She leans in, so close that they are inhaling the same air. Slowly, not breaking his gaze, she presses forward, touches her forehead against his for a long moment. "Severus," she whispers.

She begins at the corner of his mouth, where that mocking little smile so often lurks. His lips open, she feels him draw a sharp breath. So she slants her mouth over his, and gives him hers.