Anti-Litigation Charm: It all belongs to JKR; I play for non-profit amusement.

Author's Notes: Neither HBP nor DH compliant.

Conversation in Italics signifies MindSpeech.

It seems strangely fated this year that no matter which bonus date I pick (based on a wide variety of factors that have nothing to do with the day of the week), they almost always seem to be in rather close proximity to a Thursday. Not sure why that is. But on with the regularly-scheduled show. :D

Reviews make me smile. Continuing thanks to those who have reviewed. Your feedback is very much appreciated. ^_^


The Problem with Purity

Chapter Forty-Nine: The Claims

Severus smirked at Hermione, arms linked behind his head as he watched complacently from the bed.

"I don't know what you are talking about, Hermione."

Sneaky bastard.

She donned her clothing, truthfully hardly upset by the fact that he liked to watch her get dressed but making a show of looking mildly put-out anyway. It wouldn't do for him to think himself too clever.

"You'd better watch yourself," she said archly, "or you'll find that I've gone and hidden your clothes the next time you're looking to get dressed."

She caught a fleeting expression on his face that she couldn't quite decipher, but after a moment's consideration, she put it together with the fact that he tended almost never to get dressed at the same time she did. Instead, he stayed in bed and waited for her to leave. The only time she'd seen him naked out of bed, in fact, was when he'd had to leap up so quickly to prevent her from leaving on Wednesday. He probably hadn't even realized what he was doing.

Stalking over to the bed, she leaned in and kissed him for all he was worth. The hesitation at the beginning of the kiss was soon overcome, and he responded with ardour. Once she was certain that she'd banished his doubts and had his full attention, she gentled the kiss and pulled back.

Regarding him seriously, she found that his eyes had the slightly hazy look that she was very flattered she could put there. She reached up and ran a gentle finger over that large scar on his shoulder which had brought her so much trouble the first morning they had woken up together.

"You're one of the most intelligent men I've ever met, Severus, so how it can have escaped your notice that I take every enjoyment out of looking at you, I don't have the slightest idea."

He appeared immediately uncomfortable, face losing its mobility as he went to that expressionless mask that told her that she'd gotten it exactly right. He tried to shrug out of her grasp.

"Look at me," she said sternly.

His eyes rose to her face, annoyed. She leaned closer to press a gentle kiss to his lips and then she lowered her mental barriers enough to flood his mind with images of just how much she liked looking at, feeling, and touching his body—all the way from their very first sexual encounter to this most recent one. They'd be here forever if she showed him every instance of her staring at him.

He was breathing heavily by the time she lessened the onslaught and withdrew her mind from his. As she re-established all her mental barriers, she reflected that there had probably been a more appropriate way of doing that which hadn't involved her shoving the images into his head, but at least he already knew that she was skilled with MindMagic. Hopefully he wouldn't be completely offended.

He was staring at her with something akin to shock. She swallowed and waited for a verdict to be passed.

"Could you make tea?"

She blinked, this having not been the first comment that she expected out of his mouth. Still, he hadn't started yelling yet.

"Of course," she answered, sliding off the bed and moving into the sitting room.

Tea. She was certainly capable of making tea, although it was hard not to notice that it got her out of the bedroom in order for Severus to dress without her being there. She sighed. Making him more self-conscious had been rather the opposite of her intention.

She set the kettle to boil and stood staring for a great deal longer than necessary at all the tea Severus had. All were labelled by him. He had always struck her as the sort of man who preferred to do it himself rather than let exuberant house-elves into his domain.

Hopefully, this meant that he wouldn't want a house-elf when he finally left Hogwarts—and as long as he did want her, she rolled her eyes at herself, then she'd be all set. The truth of the matter was that she'd likely even consent to a house-elf if it gave her Severus, so long as the house-elf in question was being paid or saved from a worse situation; Winky, Kreacher, and Dobby had given her a more tolerant viewpoint when it came to how rights for house-elves could be established. The three of them were evidently so much happier when they were assisting Harry, and Harry somehow always seemed to be in need of assistance; the arrangement benefited everyone.

At least Dobby was getting paid, and maybe one day she'd be able to win the other two over to the idea of being servants rather than slaves…. Not, she knew, that Harry would ever treat them as slaves, and she could well imagine the sort of reaction the Gryffindor would have if Draco ever made any sort of attempt to be high-handed in that regard. She had noticed that there seemed to be an unspoken agreement between them to have Dobby and Draco cross paths as little as possible, and she wondered what was going to happen in the future.

The kettle coming to a boil reminded her of her task, and she hastily grabbed the first tea that came to hand. This, unsurprisingly, was Earl Grey, as that was the tea which Severus drank most frequently from what she had been able to observe. She scooped the loose leaves into the strainer, admiring the curls of bergamot amongst the dark tea, set the strainer in the teapot, and poured the boiling water over top.

As soon as she had finished, she reflected that maybe she oughtn't to have made a teapot. She'd been working on automatic, so she'd made tea for both of them, but Severus hadn't invited her to have tea, he had just asked her to make some. He had, in fact, told her to go, and she was the one who'd dragged the conversation out longer and made him uncomfortable.

Really, there was no need for her to outstay her welcome completely, and if she started over, he would never know. She Vanished the water from the teapot, put one of the mugs back in the cupboard, and set the kettle to boil again with a more sensible amount of water.

Arms slipped around her waist.

"I hadn't thought there was a particular shortage of water that would necessitate our sharing one cup," Severus said into her ear.

She sagged against him.

"You asked for tea," she explained, resisting the urge to fidget. "So I'm making you tea."

"You're overanalyzing. There was nothing wrong with the tea that you Vanished."

She turned around to face him, annoyed that he hadn't said anything before she'd Vanished the tea if he'd been watching her behave foolishly for so long, and—

Her annoyance disappeared as though it had never been because Severus was not, in fact, dressed. He was wearing a dressing gown that didn't come even close to covering him from head to foot; several of his scars were visible in the gap in the material before it was cinched at his waist.

She smiled brilliantly at him but did her very best not to make a big deal out of what he'd done.

"Luckily, as you say, there isn't a shortage of water." She turned back to the kettle and wordlessly adjusted the amount of water inside it as she took in the next nearest tea that was in front of her. "I'll make a pot. You don't mind English Breakfast, do you?"

As if she'd suddenly decided that she didn't want Earl Grey and that was a perfectly logical reason to have Vanished it and started over.

She could hear the amusement in his voice. "Not at all."

They drank their tea, managed an innocuous conversation, and didn't refer even once to what had happened in the bedroom. But Severus was sitting here in a dressing gown, so she knew that her message had been received and that he appeared to be trying to change the habits of a lifetime.

He gave her a very lingering goodnight kiss when she finally finished her tea and was about to actually depart for the evening.

She smiled at him. "I'll see you tomorrow?"

His expression was only slightly mocking given the daftness of this statement.

She winced faintly. "I'll just go now, shall I?"

His lips tipped up, and it was with the memory of that almost-smiling, barely clad Severus that she left the room. Since it was now nearly ten, she figured she might as well retrieve Pansy for their rounds. The Slytherin girl had had the good sense to get out of the final Hogsmeade visit rounds back at the beginning of the school year but that left her doing these rounds tonight. Hermione still wasn't sure how she had ended up doing both, and she hoped it had more to do with her being Head Girl than with her being a stupid Gryffindor.

The truce between the Slytherins and the Gryffindors was still in effect, which made it easier for Draco and Pansy to find time to talk together, although Hermione imagined that the blonde girl lied about the topics of conversation with regularity when she was questioned by her housemates.

This meant, however, that it was less necessary for them to have the excuse of rounds to spend time together, and since Harry and Draco were so happily a team, this left Pansy and Hermione as the odd two out. Since they got on rather better than most people suspected, this wasn't a hardship for either of them.

Pansy was retrieved in short order from the Slytherin common room, and the two of them headed up to the top of the castle and started down. Students seemed to be in the woodwork, and Hermione reflected that it was going to be a long night. Perhaps she should have insisted that Harry and Draco come with them after all.

She inquired after Pansy's health and what she'd been doing while the rest of them were stuck in Hogsmeade. By the faint pinkness on her cheeks and the satisfied smile that graced her face, Hermione could easily guess and waved aside any explanation from the other girl. She had noticed that Viktor was absent from the visit to town, and now she knew why. She didn't imagine that Pansy had gotten much studying done, but Hermione had recently begun to enjoy the benefits of a happy relationship herself, and she thought Pansy had the right of it.

"I'm glad the two of you are getting the chance to get to know one another so well," Hermione said.

Pansy's gaze was sharp, but as she saw that Hermione had meant this earnestly, she relaxed. Hermione realized that her phraseology could have been better; all she'd meant to indicate was that Viktor wasn't going to be here much longer.

"If you don't mind my asking, have the two of you discussed any future plans?"

Pansy cleared her throat, admitting with uncharacteristic shyness, "He's asked me back to Bulgaria with him."

Hermione grinned. "That's brilliant."

The Slytherin seemed to have to check Hermione's face for her sincerity once more, but as soon as she saw it, she started to natter on about all their plans during all the quiet moments of the rounds. Hermione was delighted that Pansy was so happy and amused that so many students were still stupid enough to think that because it was nearly the end of term the rounds would suddenly stop. They were similarly shocked that a visit to Hogsmeade still didn't mean that they had official dispensation to misbehave and come up with the stupidest stunts to try to pull in the evening. Hermione, for all that she loved being Head Girl, knew that there were some aspects of the job that she wasn't going to miss in the slightest.

She and her friends had done some dumb things throughout their years at Hogwarts, but honestly, they had done very few of them just for the hell of it, and she could have sworn that they weren't quite this stupid. She did wonder, though, about the lack of any sort of patrols while the Golden Trio was in its early years at Hogwarts.

At the time, she would have sworn that they were wandering around the school virtually on their own, whereas from her position in seventh year, she knew that wasn't the case at all. She and Harry and three years' worth of Prefects were making sure that the younger students didn't get into too much trouble. She couldn't be certain if they had had the most phenomenal luck imaginable, if it was Albus's interference again as he "trained" Harry, or if the procedures really had been tightened as Voldemort's interference became more pronounced and the threats to students out after-hours became more life-threatening.

It was good, she reminded herself, that the students were resilient and not completely shattered by the fact that they were in the midst of a war, but the fact remained that they were in the midst of one. When she and Pansy had to send an entire gaggle of completely insane Ravenclaws back to their dorm after deducting ten points apiece after the idiots had tried in all earnestness to convince the two of them that Filius had told them to sneak into the Restricted Section at eleven on a Saturday night, Hermione wished that they were all cowering in their dorms so that she had a peaceful castle that she didn't have to patrol quite so frequently.

She didn't really feel that way, of course, and would be quite concerned if the morale approached what it had in her second year, when everyone was terrified of Harry, or in fifth, when they were all having the life squashed out of them by Umbridge. But when she and Pansy discovered the six second-year Gryffindors who were trying to find the secret passage to Hogsmeade without the slightest notion of where it was, Hermione banished them back to the dorms with point loss and detention and prayed that they'd be inspired with a little more fear. Of her, if that's what it took to get them to behave.

Really, they should be concerned if the students were truly getting exponentially stupider each year. She shared this thought with Pansy, who laughed and told her that was just what happened the closer one got to graduating.

"You're getting older, Hermione; they're not getting younger or stupider. It'll be over in a few weeks, and then these little idiots will be someone else's problem. I'm sure if you ask the professors, they could regale you with harrowing tales of what the three of you got up to when you were younger."

Hermione sighed. There was no point getting into that old argument with Pansy, since she suspected that her professors thought the Slytherin was perfectly right; explaining about needing to save the world when they were twelve was a whole other issue, really. Minerva and Severus in particular, she imagined, still couldn't quite fathom some of the stunts that they'd pulled in their years here. Albus, at least, probably understood and had orchestrated half of what they'd gone through, but she doubted that would save her from a sound tongue-lashing if she ever brought the topic up in front of Severus or her head of house. Better to leave the past in obscurity on that one.

It took her and Pansy until past midnight to get through the entire school, and Hermione was left suspecting that this would not be the end of trouble for the night. Still, having taken off as many points and assigned as many detentions as they had, she and Pansy could hardly be accused of not doing their jobs.

She dropped the Slytherin back off at the common room and wondered if Severus had gotten his grading done and if he intended to do his own set of rounds in an hour or two. She was very tempted to go see him again but couldn't come up with a particularly good excuse as to why. Wanting to spend time with him and not being averse to more sex were reasons in and of themselves, of course, but Severus did have other responsibilities.

Besides, if she went back now, she'd probably wind up staying the night, and Harry would worry about her. It wouldn't be the best way for him to find out that she and Severus were now involved in an ongoing intimate relationship.

Reluctantly, she therefore returned to her common room. Crossing the threshold, she was stunned by the level of noise in the room. It took a moment for the yelling voices to resolve themselves into recognizable words, by which point her eyes had taken in the sight, across the room, of Draco and Ron screaming at one another—while Harry was sitting sideways on the couch with his legs stretched out across the cushions, not even looking at the two of them.

Apparently, Draco and Ron had given up on the superciliousness and stilted politeness that they had been using all day, and they had not settled their differences.

Making no attempt to go after the two who had invaded one another's personal space, she joined Harry, who tucked up his legs so that she could sit down next to him.

"What's going on?" she asked.

"I've no idea," he answered wearily, lines of strain evident around his mouth. "We were talking about the holidays—after graduation, I mean—and what I was going to do. I mentioned I had plans, and the next thing I knew, the two of them were going at it. They've not noticed yet that I'm not actually taking part in the conversation."

She looked over at the two red-faced, gesticulating boys and could have sworn she saw spittle flying.

"I'm not sure I'd call it a conversation," she said wryly.

Harry shrugged, lips tipping up. "Yeah."

She listened in for a moment and heard Draco call Ron a "dirt-poor Weasel". Ron retaliated with a "pointy-chinned ferret-face".

"This has been brewing for a while, I think," she observed.

Harry nodded. "Honestly, it seems like they seized the first excuse they could find today, although I'm still not entirely certain what excuse it was that they went with."

Although she'd thought that they were about as loud as they could possibly be when she entered, she found that their volume had somehow increased, the argument intruding on her and Harry's quiet conversation.

"Harry is my best friend!" Ron screamed.

"Harry is my lover!" Draco yelled back.

"Only because he's stuck in a school that obviously doesn't have enough gay blokes. He'll find someone loads better once he has more options!"

"I think you've gotten a little confused, no surprise there, and are thinking about why he's friends with you," Draco snarled. "That would be because, unfortunately for him, you were the first kid from the wizarding world whom he met, and now he's just too nice to put you out of your misery."

"Just because you're supposedly good in bed doesn't mean it's going to be a lasting relationship! What does Harry know, anyway, given how much experience he's had?" Ron demanded with an ugly sneer.

"Hermione's more of a friend to Harry than you've ever been, and she learns everything out of a bloody textbook!"

"We could curse them together," Hermione proposed calmly from the couch.

"They probably have no idea what they're saying," Harry said with a tight smile.

"Probably not," she agreed. Her smile was a little dark as she offered, "We can still curse them."

Harry's lips curled. "I confess it's becoming more tempting the longer they go on."

The two of them didn't actually make any move to stop it, however, listening as Ron and Draco both took digs at why Harry would possibly want to travel with the other after graduation.

"Think it'll occur to them at any point that you weren't talking about either of them?"

Harry shook his head. "I'm tempted to tell them that we're running off together, but I don't suppose Snape would much like that."

She laughed. "Probably not, but we could do it anyway. It'd serve them right given how ridiculous they're being. I thought they'd grown up a little."

"I don't think they bring out the best in one another," Harry said with a sigh. "We're just lucky Ron didn't decide to do it in the corridor for everyone to hear."

"Did he start it?"

"Honestly?" Harry shrugged. "I've no idea. One minute we were speaking, and the next, the two of them were on their feet, screaming for all they were worth. I was still on the couch, and they were halfway across the room before I'd even worked out what had happened. I refuse to wade in there and break it up when they're both being so asinine."

"I'm with you on that one," she said, impressed with his vocabulary. "If they both hurt each other, it might do them some good."

This proved to be more and more likely as the argument progressed because wands were soon drawn and spells actually bounced around the room. Since the two of them were arguing in the protected area, Hermione and Harry remained unscathed on the couch.

Although Harry was still seated casually with her, she could tell that he was getting more and more upset. She contemplated stopping the fight for him, but she was pretty sure that the only way to get this one sorted was to let Draco and Ron come to the complete end of their argument on their own. They weren't going to be able to function if they didn't get these feelings out in the open, and Harry was going to be unhappy for a long time if Draco and Ron couldn't get along at all.

As the argument stretched to twenty minutes in Hermione's presence, she had to wonder just how long they could go on like this. They didn't actually have that many years of grievances, but it seemed as though they'd both decided that now was the time to bring each and every one of those incidents up. Hermione winced as soon as Ron brought up Draco's Death Eater father, and Harry did the same once Draco brought up Arthur's "embarrassingly dead-end miserable excuse for a job". This led to Ron's bringing up the Department of Mysteries, and they both had plenty to say about that one.

Hermione started to wonder if Draco was actually taking frustrations he had with Harry out on Ron, but before she could properly finish the thought, the two boys' argument was going back to the long history of the Malfoy and the Weasley line; it truly seemed to be a fight between them and their families.

It was like an auto accident that she and Harry couldn't quite look away from even though they were trying to pay the increasingly colourful insults and spells no mind.

"Did you know that weasels and ferrets are actually both part of the Mustelidae—weasel—family?" Hermione said conversationally.

Harry looked at her blankly, processed what she'd said, and then dissolved into laughter. She grinned at how successful this distraction had been, listening happily to Harry's bright peels of laughter as he giggled madly at her side.

It also had the fortunate side effect of finally breaking up the fight, as both Ron and Draco were reminded that there was someone else in the room.

"What are you laughing at?" Ron demanded belligerently.

Harry paid them absolutely no mind, collapsed against her and still chuckling, and she patted his back and smirked as she took in the two boys as they came round the couch and into proper view.

Draco had tentacles for hair and was limping. Ron was cradling his arm and had pink hair that clashed horribly with his skin, although that looked rather scaly and abnormal at the moment. There was bruising high up on Draco's cheekbone, and Ron had a fat lip. She hadn't realized they'd had the opportunity to have a go at one another physically. There was a tiny trickle of blood from Draco's ear, and Ron had a smear of it across his neck.

"What is so funny?"

The effectiveness of Draco's imperious tone was rather lessened by his current appearance and by the fact that Harry was completely pissed off with him as well as with Ron. The green-eyed Gryffindor sat up and glared.

"I don't see why it's any of your business," he said flatly. "Hermione and I have business elsewhere. The two of you can go right ahead and continue ignoring me completely and injuring one another; I don't have the slightest intention of spending any more time with either one of you."

He rose, and Hermione obediently followed despite having no idea where their supposed business was. Harry led her out of the common room into the corridor, and they waited until the gargoyle reformed behind them.

"Are you sure that we should have left the two of them in there alone?" she asked laughingly. "We might not have a room to go back to later."

"We likely wouldn't have done anyway if I'd stayed in there a moment longer. They were starting to get on my nerves."

She snorted. "They were on my last nerve about ten minutes ago. Let's go have tea."

Harry acquiesced, looking as though any sort of distraction was welcome, which was perhaps why he didn't notice where they were going until she'd already knocked.

"What—" was as far as he'd gotten when the door was opened.

"Hermione," Severus said before his eyes lit on the figure who'd hunched in on himself behind her. "Mr Potter. What a pleasant surprise. Why are you here?"

She rolled her eyes, as the greeting she received when she was on her own tended to be a great deal more cordial than this one had been.

"I've come to visit," she answered, amused.

Despite the fact that it was nearing one in the morning, he'd clearly been awake.

"And you've brought a little friend with you," he sneered. "How thoughtful."

"You are going to let me in, aren't you?" she said pointedly.

He looked as though he wanted to refuse, but he opened the door wide enough to permit their entrance and stepped back. She entered, Harry trailing after her with obvious reluctance.

"Tea," she said before Severus could start in with something ruder.

He looked highly annoyed, but he acquiesced. Harry was staring between the two of them as though he knew that he'd missed something but was not entirely sure that he wanted to know what that something was. She supposed that she had rather ruined all that discretion she'd been aiming for in not letting Draco and Harry know how things stood between her and Severus. Still, friends enough to have tea with was not the same as sweaty and naked in the bedroom, and Harry didn't need to know about the latter.

They were soon seated in front of the fire, Harry looking as though he were waiting for everything to fall apart and for Severus to start sneering at him again. Which, admittedly, was entirely likely to happen in the near future.

"To what do I owe the honour?" Severus asked finally.

"Beyond my obvious desire for two of the most important men in my life to spend some quality time together?" she deadpanned.

The two of them couldn't have looked more horrified than if she'd told them she wanted them to get married and run off together.

She laughed. "Honestly, the two of you are behaving like small children, and I've just come from enough of that, thank you. We needed to get out of our common room for a little while, Severus, and you're the first person I thought of visiting."

"To my great delight," Severus said dryly. "Why the rapid egress from your place of residence?"

"Ron and Draco decided to air their grievances."

"Ah." Severus nodded. "Although it pains me greatly to say it, the two of you are welcome to spend the night in my sitting room."

Harry had just taken a sip of tea and managed to spray it all over himself. Severus smirked merrily, and Hermione grinned as she waved away the hot liquid.

"Thank you, Severus. Last we saw them, Draco had tentacles and Ron had scales."

"And they'd made it all the way back to their great grandparents as far as slurs and insults went," Harry added. "Or maybe it was the great greats. It was hard to keep all their names straight."

Severus was still smirking. "I can imagine."

"Harry's essentially told them both to bugger off, so we're hoping they'll sort their behaviour out in the next, oh, month or so."

Harry laughed. "It's a good thing I'm spending the summer with you, that's all."

They grinned at one another until they noticed the expression on Severus's face.

"Bugger," Harry swore. "Told you he wouldn't be happy."

She laughed. "Don't be silly, Severus. We'll be working with the Weresbane, and I'm hoping you'll be working with us."

Severus's thunderous expression faded somewhat. "Because more time with Mr Potter is what I desire above all else."

"There we are, then," she said with a smile. "The perfect solution for all of us."

"So long as you're always there to mediate," Harry stage-whispered.

She shook her head. "Maybe I'm planning to lock you in a room and see how long it takes you to self-destruct like Ron and Draco."

The two of them eyed one another doubtfully.

"You're both going to admit to being as uncontrolled as Ron and Draco?" she asked with amusement.

"We can certainly control ourselves," Harry said immediately.

Given that both of them had had remarkable explosions of temper in her presence, she found this claim rather optimistic, but it would be nice if they at least tried.

"And if we couldn't control ourselves," Severus pointed out, "you'd be looking for unconscious bodies not tentacles."

That, at least, was the honest truth, and she wondered when it would occur to Ron and Draco that they were using kids' spells to attack one another when they probably both knew at least a handful of ways to kill one another slowly and painfully.

"Of course," she added, "you'd both be permanently scaled and tentacled once I found you and saw what you'd done to one another."

"Duly noted," Harry said with a grimace.

Severus looked as though he wanted to challenge that statement, making her wonder if he had ever heard the entire story of Marietta Edgecombe and the DA. Hermione considered idly whether Cho Chang was more convinced than ever that Hermione and Harry were together or if the Ravenclaw was off somewhere rejoicing that Harry had apparently thrown Hermione over for Draco.

Harry, of course, knew all about Marietta, and he changed the subject with alacrity. "How is your Potions research coming, sir?"

Both Hermione and Severus stared at Harry incredulously. The Gryffindor cleared his throat self-consciously.

"Hermione mentioned that you were doing some research, time-permitting, and I thought I'd just see how it was going?"

The statement had turned into a question by the end as Severus continued to look completely flabbergasted by this attempt at casual conversation.

"I can't think of the last time I mentioned my research," the Slytherin said, looking over at her in question.

"Not terribly recently," she replied with amusement. "And I believe I mentioned it to Harry around the beginning of sixth year. Maybe as late as Christmas."

They both looked to Harry.

"There didn't seem to be a good time to bring it up before now," Harry said defensively.

Hermione smiled and even Severus's lips twitched.

"I have not had a great deal of time recently," Severus answered.

"We've got a lot to be worrying about at the moment," Hermione pointed out.

"Of course," Harry said hurriedly.

There was another reason that was not war-related as to why Severus might not have as much time to do research as he could have, and she was pretty sure that Harry was trying really hard not to think about that possibility.

Severus finally seemed to recover, for he offered his own social question. "How are your preparations for the Potions N.E.W.T. coming along, Mr Potter?"

It was Harry's turn to look surprised and on the spot. "Oh, uh, fine, sir, thank you."

Severus smirked at the obvious discomfort in the answer. Harry looked to her, as though to reassure himself that she was still there and would buffer when necessary, and then he offered a small smile.

"Actually, it's going loads better than I would have anticipated at the beginning of the year. Living with Hermione makes sure that I keep at least a little bit on track, although I always feel way behind compared to where she's at." He shot her a grin. "And ever since Draco and I got together, I've been spending loads more time dealing with Potions than I ever thought I would. When he isn't being a complete prat, he's very useful to have around."

The last was said with quite a bit of affection, and Hermione knew that no matter how annoyed Harry was with Draco at the moment, he was going to forgive him. Ron, too, no doubt, once the two of them had healed and sworn to Harry that they'd be civil to one another forever after.

"You'll be able to threaten to blackmail them for years to come," Hermione said with a grin as the pleasing thought occurred to her. They had made a truly absurd picture with all their injuries. "I'm sure Draco will be especially embarrassed once he realizes how childish he appeared and how unflattering those curses were."

Harry laughed. "That's so true. I'll put the memory in the Pensieve?"

"Of course," she said cordially. "We'll threaten to get it out at parties."

Severus was looking at them with a faint showing of surprise.

"What?"

"That's almost Slytherin of you."

She shook her head pityingly. "Severus, I thought you realized by now that we're good at keeping secrets. We're living in the dungeons and spending half our time with Slytherins. What are you surprised about?"

He frowned faintly. "You appear like such quintessential Gryffindors in public."

"Slytherin subterfuge," Harry answered immediately. "Keeps everyone from looking for any depth."

Hermione was impressed that Severus didn't even take a shot at Harry saying he had depth.

"Are they still fighting?" the Gryffindor asked.

She accessed the wards, closing her eyes so that she could filter the information more quickly. "They're not in the common room anymore. Ron is…." She searched for his magical signature. "He's making his way to the Infirmary. Draco's found Pansy, and they're in one of the unused classrooms in the dungeons."

She opened her eyes to see Severus rising to his feet.

"Where are you going?"

"I'm going to make sure Poppy is aware of the situation. I can hardly allow her to heal a seventh-year student who's disobeyed the rules, now can I?"

She answered his smirk with a slight upturn of the lips, and he reached for the Floo powder to make his call. Hermione wouldn't have dared given the lateness of the hour, but Severus didn't tend to let those sorts of niceties bother him. In this case, it simply meant that there was no way that Poppy would heal Ron even if he showed up at a decent hour tomorrow.

"What about Draco?" Harry asked quietly. "It's hardly fair if he's healed while Ron's stuck with no treatment."

"I doubt that Pansy will be as sympathetic as Draco is hoping." Hermione shrugged. "Besides, it isn't as though Ron doesn't have plenty of friends in Gryffindor. He has as much of a chance, if not more so, of getting healed by one of them."

Harry shrugged, conceding the truth of this.

"Hopefully Colin is standing around with his camera before then, of course," Hermione added with a smirk, "but they'll probably both be fine for class on Monday. Doesn't hurt if they have to suffer for a little while, though."

"Serves them right," Harry agreed immediately. "If they'd had the slightest bit of sense, they would have waited until our next training session and then they could have had a legitimate reason to have a go at one another."

Hermione smiled. "I'm sure Draco will be further embarrassed when you point that out to him."

Harry responded with a grin, though he added, "He'll blame Ron is what he'll do."

Her smile deepened. "Of course he will. And Ron will blame Draco, and you and I are learning we shouldn't expect anything more from either of them."

Severus pulled his head out of the fire as his conversation ended, wordlessly Vanishing the ash from his clothing.

"Poppy won't be treating Mr Weasley—or Mr Malfoy—" he added, as though he'd heard Harry even though his ears had been out of the room with the rest of his head, "should either of them seek her assistance."

"Then I believe we've done our disciplinary duty for the evening," Hermione said cheerfully. "Thank you for letting us monopolize your time, Severus."

"It was not … quite as unpleasant as I expected," he answered, causing her to snort with laughter.

"I agree," Harry said immediately. "Thought it would be much worse."

If they wanted to bond over a shared less horrible than they'd anticipated meeting, who was she to complain?

"It's so nice to know you both think so highly of my company," she said dryly just so she could watch with amusement as they both spluttered identically.

She rose to her feet, grinning at the two of them. "Right, then, off we go."

Harry stood, and Severus did the same an instant later. Since he could have assured himself from his chair that they actually left, she trusted that his gesture was a courtesy.

"Hermione," he said at the door. "Mr Potter."

Harry, she admonished gently, halfway between a plea and a demand, are you really going to make him call you Mr Potter forever?

Make him? Harry said indignantly. He takes a great deal of pleasure in sneering my surname, I assure you.

If you don't invite him to call you by your first name, you're not giving him much of a choice, are you? she said pointedly.

He looked at her mutinously, so much so that he looked it externally, as well, causing Severus to stare at him, eyes narrowed.

Pretty please? she asked, giving him her very best mental pout. With a cherry on top?

His lip curled into an expression that was remarkably similar to how she imagined Severus would look if she tried it with him. She watched Harry close his eyes, draw a deep breath, and let it out slowly through his nose. Opening his eyes, he directed his stare at Severus.

"Please call me Harry, sir."

Severus's eyebrows rose. "I hardly think—"

"Severus," she said warningly.

The Potions master let out a short breath. "You may do the same." He pinned her best friend with a fierce gaze. "In private and politely, mind."

Harry looked as though he might take affront to this suggestion that he didn't have the slightest discretion, so she interceded.

"I don't see how it will serve him to call you 'Harry', Severus. It's bound to get confusing."

They both stared at her blankly, and she could see the exact moment that they took her meaning. Harry's eyes widened, and he looked as though he was furiously biting his tongue in an attempt not to burst into laughter. Severus's lips twitched, however, and that was the end of it as Harry let out an explosive giggle.

"Hermione," he gasped, "you're completely outrageous."

"And now you have a second thing in common," she said cordially. "You're both thinking the same uncharitable thoughts about me. Weren't we going?"

Harry struggled to get control of himself. "Yes, we were." He cleared his throat loudly. "Thank you, for having us over for tea, Severus." He managed very nearly not to stutter over the name.

"It was my pleasure, M—Harry," Severus answered, looking as though the words pained him only mildly. "Hermione. Goodnight."

As soon as the door closed behind them, Harry opened his mouth, but he seemed to think better of speaking in the corridor, for he seized her arm and fairly dragged her back to their common room where he pushed her down onto the couch and took a seat next to her.

"Hermione," he said. "I … I'm not entirely certain what just happened."

She smiled encouragingly at him. "You just had tea with Severus, dear, and survived it quite beautifully."

"Right. I hadn't thought…. It really didn't go that bad."

"No," she agreed. "When both of you make a modicum of effort, I'm convinced that it needn't go badly terribly often at all."

Since she'd put the onus upon both of them, he didn't seem inclined to argue, but he did have more questions.

"I thought the two of you were arguing."

"Not currently," she said politely but with enough repression that it had to be clear to him that she didn't really want to talk about it. For a moment, Harry looked as though he wouldn't let it go, but perhaps he recalled the fact that he was currently arguing with his boyfriend. "Time for bed, I think," she added quietly.

He sighed and rose. "Yes."

He made it all the way to his bedroom door before he paused, squared his shoulders, and looked back at her. She raised an eyebrow in query.

"Will you ward my door?"

She blinked at him. "I can assure you that I'm not going to leap upon you in the middle of the night."

He laughed, but it wasn't an entirely happy sound. "Not that door."

Ah. That had been particularly stupid of her.

"Of course," she said gently and reached out to the wards to tweak them appropriately. "No one will be getting in from the other side."

He looked faintly surprised that it had been done in such short order but gave her a somewhat forced smile before he disappeared into his bedroom.

It looked as though Draco was really going to have to work for this one, and she sincerely hoped the blond didn't do anything as daft as blame Harry for what had occurred between the Slytherin and one of Harry's best friends.

Surely she and Harry weren't doomed to have only one of them happy at a time?

Given the lateness of the hour, she made no attempt to go to bed once she parted from Harry. It was past two o'clock in the morning now, and she needed to start working on the potion at a quarter to four, so she passed the time with a little revision in the lab. Once three forty five rolled around, she efficiently added the Weresbane leaves with the required intricacy and then turning the heat down to just barely warm. Now the potion was in its penultimate stage, needing to be watched for any changes in texture and consistency. Since her ingredients were pure and her methodology precise, she generally had to contend only with the potion's interaction with the air.

She'd been experimenting with wards as her control over them grew, and she seemed finally to have successfully developed ones which were sensitive enough to pick up those changes to the potion which required her attention so that she could easily attend other tasks while monitoring the Weresbane. This would allow her to clean up and then study. She was still working out which textbooks she wanted to pull for revision when she heard what sounded like muffled yelling coming from Harry's room.

Silencing charms had become a permanent feature of the room since Draco had installed himself there, and Hermione had never considered meddling with them under the circumstances. A light examination of the wards told her that it was not, as she'd half-hoped, a confrontation between the Slytherin and the Gryffindor. Harry was alone in the room, the silencing charm had fallen, and he was quite evidently in distress.

She knew without even looking exactly what the problem was, and she imagined that he'd be the first person to tell her that the Weresbane was more important than his untroubled sleep. He might even be right if one simply weighed one night of nightmares against eighteen werewolves having to wait another month before they could possibly be cured of a horrible affliction.

Hermione had cured lycanthropy, however, by not letting anyone tell her that something was impossible, and she therefore didn't let a little thing like needing to be in two places at once stop her now.

Her wards, after all, would alert her if there was a problem, and while she had never been away from the potion during this stage for as potentially long as she would be with Harry, she reposed a full measure of trust in her own warding abilities.

For good measure, she purified the air and set up a protective ward around the cauldrons that would allow only air to pass through without any additional contaminants. She made sure that the alarm would alert her without waking Harry, and then she retraced her step to the common room. Opening Harry's door, she found that the sounds grew immediately louder, and as she stepped over the threshold, she realized that she was doing precisely what she had told Harry she wouldn't a few hours ago; she was barging into his room while he slept.

Sighing at the trials of her best friend, Hermione climbed into the bed and pulled the trembling boy to her, murmuring all the nonsense soothing words that she had been wont to use earlier in the year when this happened so much more frequently. He clutched at her fearfully, as though she were going to disappear from him, and she stroked his hair and continued to mutter that everything would be fine.

She didn't believe that Voldemort could still breach Harry's mind, but it wasn't as though anyone had done a proper study on the interaction between the two of them. Given the uniqueness of the connection, there was no saying but that Harry got some bleed over from the other man's twisted mind, and what Harry could block out when he was in prime physical and psychological condition was not necessarily the same when he was feeling vulnerable or really unhappy. This was the first time in a long time that Harry had slept on his own, and especially given that he was quarrelling with Draco, it was really no surprise that old demons had risen up to haunt him.

Settling herself more fully into the wards, she found to her surprise that Draco wasn't far away at all; rather than staying away in a snit, he appeared to have fallen asleep propped up against the door that connected his rooms to Harry's. She found this really rather touching but wondered how bad a mood he would be in later when he woke up in such an awkward position. It was really rather … Gryffindor of him, almost Hufflepuff, actually, and she was pleased to learn that he cared so much about her best friend even when they were cross with one another.

Although still unconscious, Harry had finally begun to accept that she was firmly there at his side, for his uneasiness lessened, and he wrapped his arms round her and held on tightly before finally drifting off into a deeper and more contented sleep.

Her wards alerted her to changes in the Weresbane four times in the three hours she was in Harry's bed, and she used the same technique that she had the time Severus had found her there, thinking a muscle-relaxing charm at Harry so that she could get out of his arms easily. She made her way quickly to her lab, adjusted the potion and re-established the protections around it, and then headed back to Harry's bed.

It was nearing eight in the morning when Harry began to stir, and the first notice of this that she had was when he pushed against her thigh with a body part that she had really rather not know so intimately. The movement was repeated with a murmur of sleepy pleasure, and Hermione was hard-pressed between choosing laughter and recoiling. Gods, Severus and Draco were going to kill her.

She resorted to clearing her throat and saying with as even a voice as she could manage, "You may want to stop doing that."

Harry froze. There was a very long moment where he might well have been Petrified and then one eye opened ever so slowly to behold her.

He went red as a beet faster than any spell could have managed the transformation.

"Hermione!" His voice was two octaves higher than normal.

"Good morning, Harry," she said with what she thought was a continuing praiseworthy attempt at a straight face and matter-of-fact voice. "How are you?"

He pulled away from her and sat up, regarding her ruefully.

"Embarrassed beyond belief. I thought you were Draco."

"So I gathered," she said, giving into her amusement and laughing softly. "It would be really quite inconvenient at this point if you decided you fancied me after all."

He made a face. "I'm going to die."

She grinned. "I hardly think that's likely. I've heard that if you take these sorts of matters in hand, especially in the shower, you'll be perfectly fine."

He blushed even redder, which she hadn't thought possible. "Hermione!" He sounded scandalized.

She laughed. "Sorry, I couldn't resist. You are feeling better?"

He gave this question some thought and nodded. "I had a nightmare, I take it?"

She nodded.

He huffed an embarrassed breath. "Guess I don't do so well on my own."

"You have a lot on your mind," she said soothingly. "And you know that I'm happy to be here for you."

He grimaced again. "Are you so certain that Sn—" He saw her look, and corrected himself with a bigger grimace. "Are you sure that Severus would be pleased to hear that?"

Her answer was very firm. "Severus knows how important you are to me. But I confess that I'm trusting you won't be fighting with Draco forever."

"No," he answered with alacrity. "But I would like an apology from him before I let him crawl back into bed with me, so I rather imagine I'll be waiting a long time."

She smiled at this assessment of Draco's likely behaviour.

"We'll manage," she promised. "You had a lot on your mind last night; it doesn't mean that every night will be like this."

He nodded, although he didn't look convinced. Since it was less than a month until the Final Battle, she could see his point, but she thought optimism would stand a better chance of beating those nightmares. He had a lot of magic and a very strong mind, so if he put them to good use, she was sure they could aid him.

He nodded again. "I have been sleeping for years on my own and not had nightmares all the time."

"Exactly," she said cheerfully, rising from the bed as she realized that Harry didn't have the slightest intention of getting out while she was still there and might see further evidence of how happy he'd been to see her this morning. She tried not to giggle.

"I've got to check on the Weresbane, but if you need company for breakfast, it'll have to be a very quick meal in, say, fifteen minutes?"

He nodded close to fervently, clearly anxious to see her on the other side of the door. She let herself giggle once that door was closed and tried to imagine just how Severus would react to that scene. It wasn't really fair, of course, because she'd hardly be pleased to know he was in bed with anyone else, but this had all been remarkably absurd.

The wards were still working perfectly with the Weresbane, but she felt better for having physically kept an eye on it for a few minutes. She changed into fresh clothing and met a still slightly red-faced Harry in the common room.

Breakfast was a very strange affair. Harry insisted on going up without waiting for Draco. The blond arrived a few minutes after them, slowing a bit as he approached the table, eyeing the spot next to Harry.

I wouldn't recommend it, she said gently for his mind alone.

He looked at her sharply and then moved to sit down next to her. She was reminded that she was supposed to be frustrated with him, too, but that seemed like a lot of effort at the moment.

Although the tentacles were gone, his hair didn't seem quite right, though she had no idea when she'd become so sensitive to the nuances of Draco Malfoy's hair. He'd scrounged bruise salve from somewhere or managed a minor healing charm because he didn't look physically injured, although his movements had been ever so slightly ginger, owing, she supposed, either to Ron or to the way he had slept last night.

"Good morning," he said quietly.

"Morning," she replied.

Harry didn't speak.

Fortunately for her peace of mind, Ginny arrived before her brother and readily understood the signals Hermione was sending her, for she settled in at the vacant seat next to Harry, a spot which she would under normal circumstances have left for her brother.

"Morning, Harry, Hermione, Draco," the redhead said politely, just as though she hadn't noticed the tension that was rife in the air.

She got polite, monosyllabic greetings from all of them, and Hermione realized it was going to be a long day. Suppressing a sigh, she started up as inconsequential a flow of chatter as she could with Ginny, unsurprised when no one else joined in.

It was shortly after this that Hermione noticed that while Harry had been avoiding looking at basically everyone at the Gryffindor table, there was one person whom he couldn't seem to avoid. He kept casting would-be covert glances at Severus and looked so damn guilty as he was doing it.

Casting her own glance in that direction, she saw that Severus had noticed and was looking rather suspicious, as well he might. She would have been cross if the cause didn't still make her want to giggle. Harry could be such an idiot.

Ron was one of the last to arrive. Hermione was nearly done her meal by the time the redhead sat down next to his sister. He didn't greet any of them, although it was hard to tell if this was due to particular pique on his part or simply a result of his normal love of food, which he piled upon his plate forthwith.

The moment she had finished, rather than waiting on the others as she would usually do, she rose to her feet, naming the Weresbane as her excuse. The silence between the three boys was thick, and Hermione wasn't surprised when Ginny rose as well, evidently not fancying being the sole peacekeeper at the table.

Back in her lab, Hermione shook her head over the behaviour she had witnessed. They were three of the most stubborn people she knew with a fair bit of pride thrown in. If they were all waiting for one another to make the first move or apologize, there was no saying if they'd ever speak to one another again.

She happened to be of the opinion that Harry was very correct in his anger on this particular occasion, but it didn't mean that the situation was going to be easily resolved.

At least her lab was quiet, and the Weresbane did not appear to have suffered in the least for her longer-than-normal absences. This would be useful knowledge for future batches, and she thought she'd see about the filtration charms and wards all the time.

As a quarter to ten arrived, she dropped the very last ingredient into the potion and was pleased to see it turn the exact shade of blue that it was supposed to. She happily decanted and bottled her newest batch of Weresbane.

An instant later, she had Apparated to the safe house. She could, she supposed, have Apparated directly downstairs, but she liked to have a few tricks up her sleeve for emergencies.

Slipping down to the dungeons, she found that they were empty. It was barely ten in the morning, and the drink window didn't begin until half seven that evening. The wards informed her that many of the inhabitants were, in fact, having a lie-in.

Hermione carefully warded the potion and turned back for the stairs. Remus was coming down.

"Hallo, Hermione," he greeted her cordially. "Dropping off the potion?"

She nodded.

"You'll be back in the evening?"

She nodded once more. "And everyone will be along tomorrow for the actual transformation."

"Everyone all right at Hogwarts?"

She regarded him bemusedly, wondering if perhaps he was on the outs with Tonks, and Hermione simply hadn't heard. "Anyone you're inquiring about in particular, or did you actually want me to list off the hundreds of people who live there?"

His lips tipped up. "I'm not so good at this, I suppose. Is Severus doing all right?"

She regarded him through narrowed eyes, asking suspiciously, "Is there a particular reason you think he wouldn't be?"

He sighed. "I was attempting to show that I was trying to be more accepting and less stupid about the whole thing. 'Dora recommended it."

Her face relaxed as she snorted. "Good job. Very subtle."

He smiled at her. "I thought so."

"Severus is doing fine," she answered his original question, "and I appreciate that you're making the effort. He might not be an easy man, but he's always going to be my choice."

"So I gather," Remus said. "I can't really argue with that."

He had done at length, as a matter of fact, but if he was coming round now, she was willing to let that creative rewriting of the past slide.

She therefore smiled at him and asked after everyone's progress. He assured her that all eighteen werewolves had been working hard since the last time she'd asked, and the two of them climbed back up the stairs together where he saw her off in the entry-way.

She Apparated back to her lab and decided that she'd much rather deal with Severus than Harry, Draco, and Ron, so she checked the wards for the former's location and then headed to his private lab, relieved that neither Harry nor the two combatants were anywhere in the vicinity.

Severus let her in with an unreadable expression on his face and turned back to what he was doing without a word. She suppressed a sigh.

She watched him quietly, noting that the potion he was brewing (a restorative draught) didn't require nearly as much attention as he was currently giving to it. It was mildly insulting that he didn't think she'd notice or didn't care if she did, but this was his private lab, and he should therefore be allowed to brew without interruption, especially as she didn't have anything crucial to say to him.

It was as he was adding the corydaline to the potion, the last ingredient before it had to boil for some minutes, that he spoke.

"Draco and Mr Weasley seemed none the worse for wear this morning."

He wasn't normally one for small talk, but at least he was speaking.

"Mostly. There's something wrong with Draco's hair. I've not worked out what, but it doesn't look like normal."

Severus actually turned to look at her after this comment, one eyebrow arched.

"It's true," she protested. "I sat next to him all through breakfast. I couldn't help but notice."

He made a noncommittal noise. "I did notice you sitting next to him, yes."

She waited to see if this would segue into whom else she had been sitting next to and his erratic behaviour at the meal. There was silence, and she rolled her eyes.

"I confess that sometimes I'm a bit amazed that Harry's our one bright hope."

This brought a twitch to Severus's lips. "There are moments where he seems to possess no guile whatsoever."

"He was remarkably unsubtle," she agreed, "which is particularly sad given that he's so worried about your finding out."

"Finding out what, precisely?" His voice was very carefully devoid of emotion, but the question was asked very carefully.

"As you are aware, he and Draco are fighting, which means that Harry was alone in bed last night."

He grimaced. "I do not want to know."

She rolled her eyes again. "Harry and Draco having sex is not Earth-shattering news, Severus. But last night was the first night in some time that Harry's been alone; he had a protracted nightmare."

Severus was frowning at her. "I can see why Mr—Harry didn't particularly wish me to be aware of that fact, but he displayed more concern this morning than such news warrants."

"Do you think so?" she said. "Don't you remember what happens when Harry has nightmares?"

He continued to regard her solemnly for a moment, and then she saw the flash of understanding in his eyes. To her pleasure, his lips twitched marginally before he got them under control.

"You mean to tell me that he is greatly concerned because you spent the night in his bed, and he thinks that I will have something to say about the matter?"

She smiled at him. "That's about what he's thinking, yes."

Severus had finished with the potion and stepped towards her now so that he was looming over her.

"And are you not concerned?"

"I've thought about it," she answered honestly, meeting his eyes evenly, "and I realize that I'd hardly be pleased if you spent time in another woman's bed. But mitigating circumstances are mitigating circumstances; I'm going to continue to help Harry in every way that I can. I'm not in love with him, and all I did was hold him to stop his nightmare. He'd much rather it had been Draco, and I'd much rather have been in bed with you, but neither of those were options last night."

He was continuing to stare at her, and just as she'd begun to wonder if she was being judged wanting, he leaned down and pressed a chaste kiss to her lips.

Pulling back, he inquired, "Would you have said if he hadn't given it away?"

She considered this. "Probably. I would hate for you to find out later and think that I'd been hiding something from you. But it really was innocuous."

He eyed her. "I do get to amuse myself, I trust?"

Her lips quirked. "For a little while, if you really can't help yourself." Her expression sobered. "But you're not to mock him about his nightmares."

His eyes were very dark, and he agreed with equal solemnity, "No."

There was much that could have been said to that, but she had the sense to let it go.

"Have you finished with your potion?"

She could see that it only had a few more minutes to boil.

"Very nearly. You intend to monopolize my time again today, do you?"

She shrugged. "For a little while, at least. I'd just as soon stay out of my own rooms, and I could stand some tea. I've taken the Weresbane over to the safe house, so I don't have to worry about it again until the dosing tonight."

"It shall only be a few minutes, then, as I've said."

There was something in his tone again that had disappeared for a little while when she had explained about Harry. She had no idea what she could possibly have said to cause it but decided that quizzing him on it while he was finishing the potion would not be a prudent action.

"Can I help?" she asked instead, for there were always vials to be cleaned and ingredients to be put away.

"You may make tea," he answered rather curtly. "Go ahead."

She suppressed a sigh and went as instructed, wondering if her wish for a week of happiness between her and Severus was just about to be ruined.


The next chapter, in which a tardy invitation is extended, will be posted next Thursday.