(A/N: Thanks for the reviews, and keep `em coming!

Disclaimer: Don't own it. Sorry.)

Chapter Seven

As Hermione added the billyweed to the potion, and watched it turn pale blue, she smiled in satisfaction. The potion must now simmer for two and a half hours. A break! She turned around to see Severus sitting at one end of his desk, meticulously setting up a beautiful chessboard. He looked up at her, and the corners of his mouth turned up slightly. "Would you like to play?" he asked, gesturing at the chessboard. "We do have some time to kill."

Hermione, never having been much of a chess player, was on the brink of refusing, but stopped herself suddenly. "All right," she heard herself saying, "But let's add a little twist to traditional chess, shall we? For every piece of yours I capture, I will ask a question, which you must answer, and vice versa."

Severus looked at her with an inscrutable expression on his face. Then he nodded, and summoned a chair from the other side of the room. Hermione sat down. She was playing as white; he as black; so she moved first. Then he moved. And Hermione moved again. Foolishly, Severus thought, because he was able to capture her knight. Severus's piece annihilated the knight, and Hermione looked up at him ruefully. "Ask away," she invited, with a sigh.

He looked at her, his head cocked, thinking. "Why aren't you sleeping at night?"

She stiffened; whatever Hermione had expected him to ask, this was certainly not one of the possibilities. "How did you know I wasn't sleeping?" she asked, her mouth dry.

Severus smiled wickedly. "I don't believe that you have answered my question, madam," he taunted her maliciously.

"Because whenever I sleep, I cannot escape dreams of Harry and Ron. They are always about to tell me something, but I always wake up before they can finish."

Severus pursed his lips as Hermione moved her pawn, and captured his pawn. He hadn't seen that one coming. He folded his hands, and waited for the inevitable question.

"Why were you so mean to Harry, Ron, and me at school? Did you really hate James Potter so much?"

Severus leaned back in his chair. "James Potter and I were not unlike Malfoy and Potter during your own school days. Think of how Potter would have felt, during school, mind you, if Malfoy had saved his life. Probably would have killed himself. I thought about killing myself after Potter Sr. saved my life. I suppose we can thank Salazar and Godric for the hatred that exists between our respective houses. Without that, Potter and I would probably have just hated each other silently."

"You really haven't answered the first question."

Severus raised an eyebrow at her. "I would have thought that someone of your intelligence could have figured that out years ago."

"I'm not sure though. Tell me."

"How could I return to Voldemort, which I knew that I must, if reports got back to him that I had treated the Potter boy with any kind of consideration? I'd be dead, and no use to Albus at all. My own Slytherin students would tell their parents, who in turn, would tell Voldemort when he rose again, about my reprehensible conduct." Severus moved another piece, his bishop. Hermione thought for a moment, then moved her rook, who was promptly captured by the black bishop.

"What happened with Viktor Krum?"

Hermione sighed, and cracked a smile. "We were on-again, off-again, for almost all of Hogwarts. He asked me to marry him after I graduated, and I accepted. We were engaged and living together, when...it was broken off. Mutual thing."

Severus gave her a look that said he didn't quite believe her, but did not press the issue. Instead, he watched her move the remaining white knight, and in a move worthy of Ron Weasley, capture his rook, which he had had protecting his bishop. She thought for a moment, and asked: "Why did you really stop supporting You-Know-Who?"

"So we're getting personal here, are we?"

"Asking about Viktor was rather personal, so it's only fair."

Severus was silent for a moment, and then began to speak. "I would like to think that it was out of nobility, out of an ability to see that what I was doing was evil. However, I'm cynical enough to know that I was simply tired. My idea of a reward was not Crucio, or being allowed to rape and then kill female Aurors. Sevolod's death was just the last straw for me, I suppose." He sighed deeply, and captured one of her pawns.

"Why were you friends with Potter and Weasley? Their intelligence levels were nothing compared to yours, yet you hung around with them for seven years."

Hermione bit her lip. "I knew that some of the time they were just using me for my intelligence, because I could help their cause. I guess it was nice to be needed, wanted. But as we grew older, we became close friends. I did often regret not having many girlfriends when I was a teenager, but they were good friends." She swallowed, and let out her breath slowly.

Severus checked his watch, and then observed while Hermione moved a piece. He moved, and soon they were moving pieces, and not simply capturing. Both were trying to win. But soon, Hermione's rook took Severus' bishop out of commission.

"Who were your friends at Hogwarts, and what were you like?"

"Lucius Malfoy, James Avery, Crabbe, Nott, Goyle. I was, rather like you, the brains behind many of our operations. I did well, in all of my classes, except Divination. I walked out of that class after three weeks of it." He smiled, remembering. "I didn't have Sybil Trelawney, who would have protested that she had seen it in the stars along, and was fate, I had a woman named Professor Larylot. She didn't think it was fate, oh no. She failed me. That was the only class I ever failed."

He moved a piece, and Hermione surprised him once again by capturing another pawn. He smiled wryly, and waited for her question.

"What really happened the night James Potter saved your life?"

Severus' face immediately hardened, but to his credit, he answered the question. "Black came over to me after double Potions one day, and handed me a note. It said that if I wanted to find out where Lupin went every month, all I had to do was go to the Whomping Willow, touch the knot on the trunk, and go into the passageway. Like a fool, I did it. Before I could go in, however, I felt someone's hand on my shoulder. It was James Potter, and without any explanation whatsoever, he pulled me away, and led me back to the castle and to Dumbledore's office. He explained everything to me. Black received detention, but nothing more. I was outraged. From then on, I hated them all with even more of a passion than before."

Severus then skillfully took her queen out of commission, and asked: "What did the Sorting Hat say to you when you were being sorted? Checkmate."

Hermione laughed. "Good game. It had a hard time trying to decide between Gryffindor and Ravenclaw."

Severus nodded slightly. "I think we should check on our potion, don't you?"

They walked over to their respective cauldrons, and compared the contents. They looked identical. Severus nodded in approval. "All right, now we can test them."

Hermione looked blankly at the Potions master. "What do you mean? How?"

Severus laughed bitterly. "Do you think that I would really attempt to destroy Voldemort without an almost certain conviction that it would work? I'd be killed on the spot, and there would be no one to spy. Here's what we are going to do. I will drink this potion" he held up a small vial which contained an emerald green liquid with silver swirls "and then you will give the potion we have made to me."

"What does the emerald potion do?" Hermione wanted to know.

"It will strengthen my powers to an extremely high level. Not quite on a par with Voldemort's, however, it will do." He downed the liquid, and coughed. He then pointed his wand at the window, and muttered, "Lumos." Suddenly, it was completely light outside in the small area around the window. There was a small bird hovering outside the window, and Severus, muttering a spell, drew the creature through the glass of the windowpane. Hermione gasped, and handed him the pale blue potion. He drank it, and immediately sank to the floor, weak. He pointed his wand at the cold, dark fireplace, muttering, "Incendio." Nothing happened. Hermione's whole face lit up. She looked over at Severus, who had a satisfied look on his face. He drank some of the potion they had just brewed. Immediately he stood up, and tried to light the fire again. This time he succeeded in lighting blaze.

"I am now back to the way I was before I took either potion," he explained.

Hermione grinned at him. "We did it!"

"We did, indeed. Shall we go to see Albus?"

She nodded emphatically; he gestured for her to precede him out of the room. She did so, and Severus, after taking a last look at his dungeon, closed the door and followed her towards the Headmaster's office.

*~*

"The potion was a success, Albus," reported Severus. "It will weaken him so that he cannot use magic. We still have the problem of killing him, however."

Albus smiled broadly at them both. "Severus, Hermione, I am so proud. I knew that you two, the best potions brewers Hogwarts has seen, could solve this problem."

Hermione smiled at the Headmaster's praise, but Severus simply looked down into his lap. Hermione got the feeling that he didn't much like praise or compliments. In actuality, Severus just didn't think he ever deserved credit, so he never acknowledged it.

"As for the problem of killing him," Albus continued, "I think that we can solve it. If four very powerful witches and wizards get together to cast Avada Kedavra, it may work."

Severus spoke up. "That is extremely risky, Albus. If it doesn't work, we will have a very angry Voldemort on our hands, who will probably order his followers to kill the four."

"The coven," breathed Hermione. "Of course...it will work, it's old magic."

Albus nodded at her. "Two witches, two wizards. Coven. Remember Severus?"

Severus nodded. He did remember, now that she had brought it up. Very old magic, Irish in origin, he believed. "Who are the lucky ones to make up this coven?"

"I will do it, Minerva, Hermione, and you."

Severus raised an eyebrow. "Me?"

"Yes, you. I will brook no opposition, Severus."

Severus sighed. "I want it known that I do not think this is a good idea, Headmaster."

Albus inclined his head. "Duly noted. Hermione do you accept?"

Hermione nodded seriously. "I will do my best."

Albus smiled at her. "I'm sure you will. You have never done less. I will send an owl to Minerva."

Sensing that the interview was over, Hermione and Severus pushed back their chairs, and exited the room. They paused outside the office.

Hermione smiled tiredly at him. "Do you have any dreamless sleep potion?" She did not meet his eyes.

He nodded, and did not comment on her request. "Come to my rooms, I have plenty there."

Hermione followed Severus down through the dungeons. He paused in front of a portrait, and whispered a password: Parselmouth. He led her through the portrait hole, stopping in front of a dark mahogany wood door. He unlocked it with his personal locking charm, and led her inside. "Wait here," he told her. Hermione stood in his living room, looking around the beautiful and meticulously neat room with interest. After a moment, he returned in a flurry of robes; he carried a vial filled with pale pink liquid. He held it out to her, and she took it gratefully. "If this doesn't work, I can give you something stronger."

She nodded. "Thank you. Good night, Severus."

"Good night, Hermione."