AN: Onwards!

It took them well over an hour to find it. They could have done so quicker had they felt comfortable using detection spells, but the people who had stayed behind were still lurking about somewhere. If they had left, they'd done so silently.

The entrance was little more than a split in the rock face. The carvings that had once adorned the exterior had been etched away by time until they looked like little more than an accident of nature. Snape had squeezed himself through the crack first, and when his voice finally called to her, it was echoing.

Inside, Snape had cancelled his Disillusionment Charm, and she could see the open curiosity on his face. His Lumos showed an antechamber carved into the limestone, with crude depictions of women, mostly breasts, bellies, and thighs that made Hermione feel rather good about herself. There were benches carved into the sides along with the remains of small animals and long-abandoned nests. He nodded his head to the back of the cave, and she saw a squared-off tunnel leading deeper into the mountainside.

He canceled the Disillusionment Charm he'd placed on her, and she lit her own wand and followed him through. The tunnel sloped down and eventually turned into a winding stair, the center of each step smoothed by the thousands of feet that had come this way before. Here and there a trickle of water seeped down the walls and made the path treacherously slick.

As they descended, the air grew thick and damp. It wasn't long before she was having trouble breathing.

"Hold on to me," he said putting his arm around her shoulders and pulling her close. She wrapped both of hers around his waist, and he leaned against the damp wall, planting his feet. Taking her cue from him, she did the same, locking her hands together behind his back.

"Mundarecaeli!" he shouted before he threw his other arm around her and held her tight. The spell began with a low moan and quickly built up into a howl. Hermione pressed her face against his neck as the wind swirled with a near-lethal violence around them. The small opening to the cave turned the howl of the wind into a roaring scream. She could smell the fresh air from the outside as it blasted by, as well as the fetid air from below as it surged up. The wind tore at her hair and she felt Snape twist his face into her cheek to avoid it. The muscles in his back turned to steel cords as he fought to keep them from being ripped away from the wall in the onslaught. The howl dropped back to a low moan and then quieted, as the wind fell from a gale to a playful zephyr and then dissipated completely.

She looked back up the way they had come, wondering if their adversaries were already on their way. "I supposed it's too late to suggest a Bubble-head Charm?"

He snorted. "One needs a readily available supply of oxygen for that to work, Granger. We were running out if it. Obviously, you failed to notice that the air was turning into a mixture of carbon monoxide and methane."

She shook her head. "No. I didn't notice. I'm sorry I doubted you. I'm just worried. That made a hell of a noise."

He sighed, loosening his arms. "That was far louder than I had anticipated," he said, pulling away. "Unfortunately, the only alternative was to asphyxiate before we reached our goal." He gestured and she saw the desiccated corpse of what looked to have been a fox lying further down the steps.

He flicked his wand several times at the tunnel behind them, setting up Sentry Charms, and a few more that she didn't recognize. "That will give us some warning. Let's not waste any more time." He relit his wand, turned, and headed further down the passage.

With a last, worried look over her shoulder, she started off after him.

Ten minutes later, the tunnel flattened out and emptied into an enormous, dome-shaped chamber. Hermione frowned and looked around. In the center, there was an altar, several low, stone benches, and three long, stone couches. Dominating one wall was a large, white, marble statue of a woman—perhaps twelve feet high. Hermione decided it was a later addition and signified Gaia, rather than Cybele. There were divots in the floor and holes bored into the altar, but there wasn't any clue as to what their significance was. She assumed they'd once held braziers or sconces that had been looted or carted off to a museum ages ago. The walls were dark and splotchy, and closer inspection revealed they were covered in a thick layer of fungus.

Snape pulled a vial out of his pocket, and expanded it with a charm before he scraped some of the fungus into it with a pocket knife. Then he stepped back and aimed his wand at the wall.

"Careful," she whispered. He nodded and began a low chant. In an area about six inches by eight, the fungus began to smoke and then turned to powder before sifting down to the floor. Hermione came up behind him and looked over his shoulder, raising her wand to better see. The wedge-shaped lines carved into the stone formed crude pictograms that were unmistakable. "Cuneiform," she whispered.

"Can you read it?" he asked in a soft voice.

She wrinkled her nose in frustration and shook her head. "Even my brain has its limits."

"More?" he asked.

She gestured to another area. "Try here."

Again he raised his wand and eradicated the fungus obscuring the wall. Again, crude carvings were revealed. These ones were more fluid in design, and appeared to be far older, based on the weathering.

"I don't know these. Try again."

He swung his spell in a wider arc, removing the fungus in a three foot by one foot arc. This time, what was revealed elicited a gasp from both of them. Several different sets of carvings were revealed, randomly etched into the surface in no particular direction. The result looked like ancient graffiti. She didn't recognize the majority of them, only the section to the right, which was clearly French. Modern French. The words looked as old and worn as the cuneiform, but they could easily translate the part they could see. "Bless us …"

Snape swiped at the wall again, and the fungus fell away to reveal, "Mother Cybele."

Hermione clapped her hands together. "This is it!" She darted over to one of the stone couches and dumped her bag down, reaching in and pulling out parchment, ink, charcoal, and the rubbings she'd taken from the tablets they'd pulled from the slate box. She came back over and handed him a sheet as he sent globes of light drifting about the room. "What spell are you using?"

"Agaricum Interfectus"

"Show me."

He showed her the spell, and in a few moments they set about singeing the fungus from the walls. They fell into a pattern of clearing several square feet at a time before they would stop and consult their sheets, looking for a match. They found examples of writing from every corner of the globe. Pictograms from Asia were crammed up next to hieroglyphics from South America or sandwiched between Nordic runes. Frequently, they found the same alphabet used, but written in different ways, even the characters for Cybele seemed to change. It was a linguistic treasure trove, and even Snape seemed swept up in the excitement. He would frequently stop and gesture to a new language, asking her opinion as to its root.

They had cleared just under a third of the walls before there was a ping in the air by Snape's head. He reacted instantly, shoving the sheet he'd been holding at her as the tunnel echoed with screams.

"What the hell was that?" she said, staring up the stairs in shock. It had been a silly question really; she knew what the answer was. Snape hadn't only set Sentry Charms.

He Disillusioned himself, and she felt the rush of air as he passed her. "Keep going," he said. "Find it!"

She saw the ripple of light in the puddle by the tunnel entrance as he silently splashed through it.

Swallowing down the worry and terror that threatened to overwhelm her, she went back to her task. The globes of light floating through the air would tell her if he came to harm. Such spells ended when their casters lost consciousness…

…or died.

She set her jaw and swiped her wand at the wall. It only took five minutes before the tunnel filled with more screams. She worked at a frantic pace, slashing her wand at the wall with increasing desperation. The sounds of conflict echoing through the chamber pushed her close to tears.

In her panic, she almost missed what she was looking for. There, on the wall, were the familiar characters, close to Phoenician, but not quite, with the distinctive slanted lines between some of the characters, separating the words in an unfamiliar way. She hurried back over to the couch and snatched up a thin sheet of parchment and the charcoal. Slapping it against the wall, she began to take a rubbing. She cursed as a loud explosion startled her and felt the walls quiver under her hand. Despite all the harrowing shouts and shrills screams, she was reassured. The lights never wavered, and none of the screams had the deep, rich baritone of Severus's voice. That didn't mean much, he could have been silenced, but she took it for a good sign. As she scrubbed at the sheet with the charcoal, lifting the image of the characters from the wall, her eyes continuously darted to the floating globes of light. "Please don't die," she whispered. "I won't make it without you either." There was a last, deafening blast, and the following silence was only broken by the ringing of her ears.

She turned toward the tunnel with her mouth open and her eyes blurred from tears. It seemed like forever before she heard the tread of boots on the stairs. She was still standing there, uselessly holding the parchment sheet in one hand, and the stick of charcoal in the other when he came into view covered in white dust. The blood on his cheek was splattered in a way that made it obvious it wasn't his. She let out a shuddering sigh and dropped her arms down to her sides. She stared down at the floor where the tears rolling from her lashes splashed at her feet.

He pulled the sheet from her smudged fingers. "Is this it?" he asked. She nodded and swiped at her face. He winced and chuckled, and she assumed she'd just managed to smear her face with black.

"Don't laugh at me," she whispered. "Please, don't laugh at me." With that, she began to sob.

He frowned and set the parchment on a bench before he pulled out his wand and cleaned her face. "I'm not laughing at you," he said quietly.

She really lost it then. "I can't keep doing this," she wailed. "It's like there's something wrong with me! Every time I get sucked in deeper, someone gets hurt. Every time I start actually finding it fascinating, someone dies! I was so afraid! I was so afraid for you!"

He scrubbed a hand through his hair in an unfamiliar gesture of agitation. "Hermione, everyone involved understands the risks…"

"No!" She stepped closer and stared into his eyes. The dust made him look older than he was, the way it creased around his eyes. The open confusion on his face spoke clearly to just how far out of his depth he was. He could defend her from faceless villains, but he didn't really know how to handle her tears. She shook her head. "Don't you see? I don't want the risks! I don't want people to accept that they might die! I can't lose you! I don't want to ever lose you! I love—"

The escalating look of horror on his face and the way he threw his hand up to ward off the words spilling from her made her catch herself. "I love life too much to see it thrown away," she finished lamely, feeling her heart begin to bleed. Why was this so complicated? Why was it so easy for him to make her feel cherished one minute and like an utter fool for caring about him the next?

His manner grew stiff and unyielding as he turned away and picked up her rubbing to inspect. "We don't always get what we want, Granger. I would have thought you'd know that after watching Potter throw one tantrum after another because he thought life wasn't fair. Sniveling won't save the bloody world. Doing what one must, despite what they might wish for, is the only way to attain one's goals. You would do well to remember that." He held up the sheet of parchment. "Have we finished here?"

She stared at him, trying to understand his change in behavior while feeling her injured heart begin to calcify. She found herself stanching her emotional wound with anger. "Yes," she said in a flat voice. "I believe we're finished."

Snape's head jerked up at that last statement, but she only turned away and began packing up her things.

They left together, both of them on his broom. He flew them up through the tunnel with its winding steps, and she closed her eyes and pressed her face into his back when the stark, white walls showed splashes of red in her wandlight.

Once outside, she sat on a rock and waited while he created a Portkey out of a water bottle. Her head was spinning with all the thoughts it was trying to contain and process. The only thing she was sure of was that as tempting as Severus Snape was, there was an element about him that was too damaged. The fact that she cared deeply for him made her far too vulnerable to injury whenever he threw up his walls.

However, his words, painful as is had been to hear them, were true. Sniveling wouldn't save the world. Worrying about who did or didn't love her, or would or wouldn't die, would only weaken her resolve.

When he approached her with the water bottle, she settled her bag on her shoulder and reached out for it without comment or even a glance. His crisp, "Portus," set her world spinning even more.

:

Hermione stood in the middle of what had been her sitting room, clutching her beaded bad with her arms wrapped tightly around her shoulders. She'd been standing like that ever since she'd arrived home. She registered Harry and Ron and Quint nearby—a part of her was even aware of Keitch and his team off in her bedroom—but none of it really seemed to pierce the numbness.

"I'm really sorry," Ron said quietly. "I'm sure a good bit of it can be repaired."

She looked around at the wreckage of her home. "They're just things," she replied in a flat voice. "They're not important."

She turned her face away from the wreckage and let Ron Apparate her to Grimmauld.

:

Aww. Bad day.