Hermione gasped and sat upright, her hand flying to her chest, panting. It took several moments for her breathing to slow and her eyes to focus but she eventually became aware of a presence, stock still and shrouded in darkness, in front of her. She started again, momentarily, but realized after a beat that it was merely Professor Snape. Glancing around the room, she realized she was in a part of the castle she'd never seen before. She lay on a leather sofa and its matching leather armchair stood before her. A fire roared in the hearth behind Snape, illuminating an emerald. threadbare rug at their feet. The Slytherin scarf slung on the coatrack gave it away.

Snape's quarters.

She and Violet had waited outside the other night—was that just yesterday?—to allow him to retrieve his things but she hadn't seen the inside. She was mildly surprised at how inviting the room was; she shrugged deeper into the thick knit blanket that had made its way around her shoulders. Now that her breathing had regulated, she rubbed at her eyes with the backs of her hands.

"What…" She trailed off, unsure exactly what she was trying to say. "Where is everyone?"

Snape cautiously pushed himself off of the wall that appeared to be holding him upright and deposited himself into the armchair opposite her. Still, there was a stiffness in his body that seemed unnatural, even for him. "I convinced them all to sod off once I'd given you a calming draught. Mrs. Potter has Violet at dinner now." He considered her. "How much do you remember?"

Hermione weighed this question around in her mind. "Everything." She kept his gaze. "He used Legilimens, then?"

Snape nodded once. "He did."

"He can sift through my memories to find ones to hurt me with?"

Snape visibly swallowed. "More or less." He seemed to consider his words a moment too long. "I want to ask if you're all right but I imagine the answer is no."

She brushed a few stray hairs away from her eyes and sighed. "The answer is…kind of. I mean, that—that sucked—but it was also just a memory, right?" It didn't feel like just a memory. She could almost feel Lucius's hands on her hips, his hair whipping her face. A glance at Snape made her feel like he, too, could read her mind. She shifted. "Was Harry there at all?"

Snape seemed to consider this. "For the briefest of moments, I believe he was. It was a mistake to bring Mr. Weasley. It was likely a mistake for me to join, as well, but we couldn't send you in there alone."

"Why not?"

He blinked at her. "I beg your pardon—"

"Not right now," she said quickly, the notion scaring even her. "Not…like this. But if I trained up a little, got a wand. The purpose of this whole charade is to shock Harry with the evidence that I'm alive, right?" She took his silence as agreement. "Then I feel like having company is merely a distraction."

Snape rubbed a hand along his jawline and looked bloody exhausted. "Hermione, there's a lot you don't know about the Horcruxes."

Hermione bit her tongue and urged herself to remain silent.

Snape addressed the ceiling as he explained. "I'm not supposed to tell you this," he said frankly. "The Headmaster feels it is detrimental to share with too many of the Order lest it get back to Potter's wife." He considered her carefully. "What do you understand about the Horcruxes?"

Hermione sat up a little straighter, confused. He was the one to bloody explain them in the first place. Shouldn't he know what she knew? "That You-Know-Who made some—"

"He made seven."

"—seven, then. He made seven, and Dumbledore has been successful in eliminating a few."

"He's destroyed 4 of them," Snape murmured rather quietly. "I've destroyed 3."

Hermione blinked at him. "You—wait, what? So they've all been destroyed?"

Snape toyed with a button at his sleeve as he spoke next. "We'd thought so. To destroy a Horcrux is a dangerous endeavor, and it did not come without sacrifice." And for the first time since he'd stepped back into her life, she noticed the spidery fingers of what looked like a scar peeking out from his sleeve.

Hermione felt a flash of irritation at the guarded nature of his words. "You're saying there's another Horcrux."

He met her gaze at last. "An unintentional Horcrux, the Headmaster believes. One the Dark Lord does not know about."

The cogs in Hermione's mind were grinding too fast and she knew what he was saying before she could get herself to say it. "Are you saying…you're saying Harry…" She couldn't finish.

He helped her. "I'm saying that when the Dark Lord tried to kill Potter all those years ago, it seems a piece of his soul latched on to the boy and has yielded a connection between them that still exists today." He visibly swallows. "I'm saying that Potter himself is a Horcrux. It's the reason the Dark Lord has access to his mind. But even he does not know it."

Hermione was standing before she realized what she was doing and found she'd stood too quickly when the room around her swayed. Snape was by her side in an instant but she shook him off gently, needing air, needing space. She crossed the room to the hearth and drew close enough to it that the proximity burned her face, dried the tears that streamed down. She felt betrayed.

"You're saying Harry has to die." His silence infuriated her and she rounded on him. "Are you saying Harry has to die? Are you saying you have to kill him in order to kill You-Know-Who?"

She expected him to snarl at her tone, expected him to tell her to watch her tone or some other rot but blessedly, he didn't. He held her gaze evenly, his jaw set, his hands firmly clamped in front of him. "We aren't certain. We know that to have a prayer in defeating the Dark Lord, we must try to kill Potter. But the Headmaster believes there is a way to destroy the Horcrux without destroying the boy himself."

"How?"

Snape said nothing.

"How will he destroy the Horcrux without destroying Harry?"

Snape sighed heavily, sounding old suddenly. "It's not a perfect science, Hermione. He doesn't exactly know. The best he has come up with is to poison the vessel—Potter—and to try to revive him when he has effectively died."

Hermione closed the distance between them and glared into his eyes. "How dare you not tell me?" She surprised herself by pushing her hands against his chest. He did not stagger, but did step backwards at her force. "Were you going to up and kill him today, is that it? Is that why I can't go alone?"

"Hermione, please sit down," he said firmly. "Please. I will explain."

Doing so felt like an even deeper betrayal of Harry but she was desperate to hear what he had to say. There must be a way to save him. She was here now. Brightest witch in her year and all that, right? She could find a way.

Snape breathed deeply before speaking. "The Headmaster realized Potter was a Horcrux when the Dark Lord first took possession. He informed me of this development only after I'd retrieved you from the States, or I assure you things would have gone differently. I promise you that." He cracked a knuckle, which, despite the situation, seemed to Hermione an odd tic for him to have. "It's very complicated with possession. Yes, we must try to kill Potter. But to be successful, he must be Potter at that time. If he is, in that moment, possessed by the Dark Lord, history tells us we would be unsuccessful as a Horcrux would still remain."

"Even if it's the vessel itself he is possessing?"

"Apparently," he murmured.

Hermione bit her cheek, trying to stem her flow of tears. "So you needed me to bring Harry back," she whispered, "so you could kill him as him."

"So we could explain the situation to him," he corrected quickly. "You have no reason to believe me, but I assure you we would never have made a move to hurt Mr. Potter without his…well, his consent."

"So Harry is expected to agree to being killed?" Even as she asked it, she knew this was silly. She knew exactly what he would say if they explained the only way to defeat You-Know-Who was through him. And her heart broke a little, in that moment, for Ginny and her cursed naivety. "Ron knows, then?"

"No, actually," Snape said. "Well, he knows about the rest of the Horcruxes, the whole Order does. He was to inform Potter they had been destroyed. I was there to…well, to explain the rest."

Hermione felt drained of tears and of emotion. Her lips tasted salty and felt cracked. "Do you think he could survive it?"

"The Headmaster—"

"I'm not asking the Headmaster," she snapped. "I want to know if you think he could survive that."

Snape took a very long time to respond, indeed. He was still, statuesque, in his chair, and she was thinking to herself that he rather looked like a painting of himself rather than the genuine thing when he spoke at last. "I think there is a chance, Hermione. A chance. But then he would be a man who would have twice defeated death and that, I do not think, is likely."

The tears she thought she'd drained herself of bubbled to the surface anew and she found herself outright sobbing. After a moment, she felt the sofa seat next to her depress and a vial of something was pressed into her hand.

"A calming draught," he said simply.

She downed it in one and felt its effects momentarily. As her heaving subsided, she leaned back into the sofa and felt the heat of something behind her that certainly wasn't leather. She felt Snape stiffen and move to withdraw his arm, effusive with apology, but she stopped him. "Don't, please," she said. "Could you—could you leave it?" She turned her eyes up to meet his surprised face but he stopped his retreat and she didn't explain further.

They sat there for a long time, his arm wrapped around her back, her head coming to rest at the apex of his shoulder.

"Hermione, I apologize if you feel we were—I was—misleading today. I wasn't as convinced as the Headmaster was that your presence would shock Potter out of his reverie, and I swayed myself into thinking that if it didn't work, we would never have to tell you and you'd be none the wiser."

"You're different."

Snape blinked at her rapidly, looking down his long nose to meet her eyes. "I beg your pardon?"

She shrugged, wishing for a cup of tea to warm her hands. "You're different. Now. You used to be—sorry—but a right crass bat when we were in school. You hated me. But right now, you're being kind. You have been, actually, since I came back."

Snape's cheeks reddened in apparent embarrassment but his brow furrowed. "I've been called worse," he muttered, "but I can assure you I never hated you. I wouldn't call myself a pleasant man but I had a role to play, too."

She considered him a moment, her eyes roving over his face and he felt the gesture oddly intimate. "What happens now, Professor?"

It occurred to Snape that this could have a few different meanings. His skin felt flushed but he cleared his throat, ignoring it. "I'm thinking Occlumency lessons are in order," he said at last. "But first, I daresay you need a wand."