A/N: I'm trying really hard to post every week or two. Thanks to those who reviewed. I am so sorry to have kept you waiting fro so long, but all of the voices in my head stopped talking to me for a while, and I had to wait until they resumed their chatter. They're back with a vengeance now, so have no fear.

A/NII: Of course I don't own it

He jumped to his feet, wand at the ready, all vestiges of the sleep he had been enjoying already erased from his memory. There was someone outside.

The time had come. His mind leaped from caution, to mild fear, to the burning ache of betrayal. She had told. He had trusted her as his Secret Keeper, and now the time had come to see whether that trust had been well founded. It was time to see if she could bear the burden he had given her to carry. He breathed deeply, trying to keep the quickening of his heartbeat from leading him to certain disaster. No matter what she had done, it must be dealt with now.

Quietly, he slipped towards the entrance to the cabin he had been inhabiting for the past few months. The rapping at the front door grew louder seeming to match the tempo of the pounding in his head. He stepped closer, peering through the peephole, wondering if his doom or his destiny would be staring him in the face.

It was Ron Weasley.

Quickly, he pulled open the door and ushered his former student in, The boy looked sullen and murderous, prompting Severus to keep his hand securely attached to his wand.

"So," the younger man said, "This is where you've come to hide out. Nice place. Much too good for you, considering the mess you've left behind."

Snape felt a fire rising inside, and pushed himself to suppress it. "It suits my purpose," he said neutrally, not knowing how much the boy knew. His eyes met Ron's coolly.

"Which purpose? Ruining lives or saving your own sorry arse?"

Snape adopted his silkiest teaching voice. "I am going to pretend I heard none of that, Mr. Weasley. I assure you that I am here at the request of my wife, regardless of what other sinister scenarios you may have dreamt up in that wretchedly feeble mind you have always been cursed with." He watched the boy blanche visibly and his lips curled back slightly. "Now, what are you doing here?"

Ron seemed to have lost all of his fighting spirit for the moment, and reverted back to being a thickheaded schoolboy. "I, uh, Hermione sent me."

"Did she now?" Snape asked, hands clasped behind his back. It was time to see how much she had told him. "Why?"

"She wanted me to give you a message." Ron's face was now as red as his hair. He pulled a slip of parchment from inside of his too-short robes after fumbling through each of his pockets for a short time. Snape snatched it away from him, trying not to cringe at the pieces of lint dangling from the edges.

The scroll was still magically sealed. The older man turned his back on the younger and began to read, confident that only he and Hermione were aware of the contents. As he scanned over the page, he felt eyes boring into the back of his skull. Snapping around, he hastily pushed the parchment behind him and found himself standing toe-to-toe with Ron, who gulped mightily.

"What does it say?" Ron looked at his former professor as though he actually expected him to answer. So, he knew nothing. He wondered if that was going to make matters easier.

Snape smiled in that cruel, thin-lipped way he had. "The parchment was addressed to me, Mr. Weasley. I am fully confident that if Hermione had wanted to divulge the contents to you, she would have taken care to do so." Working his fingers out of the red-head's sight, Snape re-rolled the message and stuck it inside the back pocket of his pants. He always slept fully clothed in what he thought to be muggle regalia now, waiting to be discovered and forced to flee from his hideout.

Ron glared at him menacingly, but said nothing further, instead moving towards the ragged sofa and flopping down upon it as though the cottage were his own. "What are you doing, Weasley?" Snape asked sharply.

"Staying the night. It's late and bloody cold outside." He looked at the dank, chilly area disapprovingly and added, "Not that it's much better in here."

"I only have one room," Snape glowered, backing towards the cot as though to claim it for his own.

Ron shrugged. "I just want to get some sleep. The couch, it that's what this is, is fine." He sank further down in the worn cushions, trying to knead a lumpy pillow into a more comfortable shape.

Snape hovered near his cot uncomfortably. He despised visitors, but could hardly kick the boy out after he had delivered Hermione's message. Perhaps he needed to stay. Perhaps this was all part of the Prophecy. The just of it was clear, but the details were somewhat murky. "Fine, stay," he snarled at last, "but don't complain as though I invited you if things aren't to your liking." He started to rearrange his bed and prepare to drift back to sleep when Ron's angry commentary halted him in his tracks.

"Trust me, Snape, if I had a quarrel with you it wouldn't be over how comfortable your couch is." There was poison in the young man's voice.

"Oh," Snape said neutrally, raising one eyebrow slightly, "and if you were to engage in this hypothetical quarrel, what, per say, would be the subject matter?"

Ron looked at him as though his fondest wish were for the sallow man to die. "I think you know," he said in a voice that was little more than a cold whisper.

"Try me," Snape said dryly. He had learned long ago not to sink further than was necessary by revealing too much too soon.

"Hermione," Ron said simply, his voice a curious mixture of pity and loathing.

To Snape, Ron's pity for his wife was worse than the young man's loathing of him. "What about Hermione?" Snape challenged him. He was used to this kind of reaction to his marriage with the girl, and had long since become bored with the circular, futile arguments surrounding it.

Ron looked at him much as he would vermin. "You ruined her life, you great selfish bat. How you brainwashed her into marrying you, I don't know. Whatever you did, it's sick!"

"There was no "brainwashing" involved," Snape replied smoothly, "unless the simple statement of a shared destiny and her acknowledgement of the same construes what you so ineloquently deem brainwashing."

"If this has something to do with that stupid Prophecy again, I think you've both gone nutters." Ron's eyes were large again, and he shook his head. "Muggles might believe in Trewlawney's rubbish, but after five years of sitting in her classroom the only thing I can believe is that you must be touched in the head."

Snape shook his head slightly. So, he knew of the Prophecy's existence, but obviously was unaware of the contents. If he knew, Snape was certain there would have been at least a mild note of alarm in his voice, even if he didn't really believe. "That's where you're wrong, Mr. Weasley," he replied sleekly, not missing a beat. "Perhaps if you possessed the subtlety and had been blessed with a competent Divination instructor for any length of time you would not find all aspects of the subject so trivial."

Ron snorted. "Even so, Hermione dropped out of Trewlawney's class because she thought it was useless. Why would she suddenly start believing?"

"Because," Snape said with a self-important smirk curling his pale lips, "I showed her the true power of Divination." All traces of his callous humor melted away as he continued. "Perhaps the one area of magic in which many muggles have excelled is a form of Divination. They may, in general denounce psychic visions, things known as tarot readings, and a sort of celestial calendar they have developed known as the Zodiac as items for entertainment not to be taken seriously, which they largely are. However, most muggles believe in a concept they have termed fate with a ferocity wizard-kind can only dimly understand.

"Many muggles believe that their lives, at least in part, are pre-ordained. They are born, they try to find their place or their purpose, they make their way as best they can without magic, and they die. Along the way as things happen to them they note that "it was destiny", "we were meant to be together", "everything happens for a reason", and that "it's God's will"."

Ron waved him off impatiently. "I don't see what this has to do with Hermione, or with Divination, for that matter."

"Patience has never been one of your few virtues, Weasley," Snape said smoothly, and then continued as though the young man had not spoken. "Because of the muggle fascination with a higher power running their otherwise mundane lives, they have little need of the Prophecies, and tend to follow their own instincts for direction. Wizards, however, take a little more convincing. That is the purpose of the Prophecies."

Ron looked thoroughly bewildered. "I've always suspected you were touched in the head. Now I know."

Snape ignored him. "Wizards, in general, believe that the understanding of magic gives them more control over their own lives than muggles could ever hope to achieve. As a lot, we need convincing. The purpose of the Prophecies is to convince us to turn down another path in order to fulfill the destiny intended for us, as well as to help us take our part in the ultimate design of Wizard-kind.

"Prophecies are delivered to Seers and then recorded in the memories of those they are told to. When news of the event reaches the Ministry or any knowledgeable, qualified wizard in some way, the Prophecy is relegated to a storage container, labeled, and, as you witnessed three years ago, stored in the Ministry's Department of Mysteries. At some appropriate point, the person to whom the Prophecy pertains is shown the memory and they can do with it as they choose."

"Assuming I believe you," Ron said, still looking thoroughly incredulous, "what happens if the Prophecy goes unfulfilled?"

Snape shrugged. "Many wizards choose to ignore the destiny designed for them. Sometimes the consequences are dire, sometimes they are non-existent. Many wizards do believe and many do not. By the same token, many muggles do not believe in the concept of destiny. I have my own reasons to accept it."

"And you're saying Hermione does believe in all of this?"

"Very strongly," Snape said firmly. "I gave her reason to, explained the process to her logically, and provided examples. When I showed her the Prophecy pertaining to our union, she accepted it. Unfortunately for you, she understood."

"What was in the letter, Hermione?" Ron apperated beside her the morning after he had delivered the scrap of parchment to Snape with a soft pop. She was smiling, though it didn't quite reach her eyes.

"Did you give it to him?" She asked him anxiously, looking up and meeting his eyes.

"Of course I did. You asked me to." He sounded as though he were begging for her praise. She turned away, nodding slightly, and resumed eating a bowl of lumpy oatmeal, a slight frown of worry casting darkness across her face.

Sighing, Ron sat down in the empty chair beside her. "Where's Harry?"

"Quidditch practice. They have a match next weekend."

"Will he be back?"

"This afternoon." Ron had found communicating with her difficult since she had come out of her torpor. She said little and offered nothing. He remembered the way her speech used to captivate him. Now he was sickened by the emptiness between them.

"Hermione, I have to know what the Prophecy is." He didn't really expect her to answer. He had already asked so many times.

"Why?" She looked straight into his eyes for the second time that morning, her gaze full of pity. He wondered why she should pity him.

He sighed, running a hand through his scraggily red hair. "I know it concerns me."

Suddenly, she jerked back as though bitten. "H-how…how do you know that?" She sounded both defensive and mortified, her face as pale as the full moon.

"Snape told me, in a round about way." He shrugged. "I just want to know. I think I have some right to, now."

"You don't want to know." There was a distinct finality to her voice that almost stopped his probing.

"None of this makes any sense, Hermione," he said, pushing onward, his voice growing stronger as he spoke. "I've done everything you asked me to, and you still won't give me anything in return."

She sat on the edge of the stool, grasping her bushy hair in her hands and tugging on it as she gently rocked back and forth, her face hidden from his view. "Tell me," he said, suddenly feeling no pity for her and not understanding why.

"No," she said softly, "I can't."
He looked away from her, strolling over to the window and gazing across the yard. "You have to, Hermione."

She said nothing. Angry, he slammed his fist down on the counter, banging his wrist severely. He rounded on her, eyes flashing fire, his skin seeming to crawl with the pain inside of him , a pain he felt would never heal. He was destructing, and his temper was reacting. The walls of his mind were closing in from the emotional pressure, and he couldn't seem to find himself again. He wanted to grab her, shake her, anything that would bring forth the answer, anything that would make sense of the scenario he had unwittingly stumbled into. "You have to tell me the truth. Now." He shivered at the cold in his voice.

She looked up at him, her eyes large and intrigued. "You really want to know?"

"That's what I said, wasn't it?" Poison dripped from his voice.

She sighed, looking as though she would like nothing better than to run away and never say goodbye. "Then you had better sit down."

He yanked a chair away from the table rather harder than he meant to and fell into it, his eyes never leaving her for fear that she would disappear if he looked away. "Well," he snapped a moment later when she had done nothing but gawk at him strangely.

She sighed and leaned forward. Her voice sounded sad, as though she were sending him to his doom. Her eyes were haunted, a flicker of the girl he once knew looking out at him, trapped within the woman before him who he didn't even know. "I suggest," she said in a voice that was little more than a whisper, "that you open up your mind."

"Detention again?" Ron asked incredulously, his red eyebrows arched condescendingly as he peered down his freckled nose at her. "What was it this time? I forget, there've been so many lately."

"I was helping Neville correct his potion," she said primly, gathering some books, quills, and parchment as she rose from the squashy maroon couch before the common room fire.

"Neville," Ron scoffed, almost laughing. "How he ever got into NEWT Potions, I don't even know. His Grandmother must have paid his way in."

She scowled at him. "Neville passed his OWL for Potions with a much higher score than you. All he needed was a kind examiner who showed some confidence in him to work for instead of Snape."

"Whatever," Ron mumbled. "You still have to help him so he can pass. That has to mean something."

"I have to help you so you can pass every class you have," she said nastily, fuming as she stormed her way to the portrait hole.

Minutes later, she knocked on the heavy oak door that led into Snape's dungeon. "Come in," came the silky voice she had come to anticipate more than dread.

He looked up as she entered. His face was neutral, but he no longer scowled at the sight of her. She smiled wanly, wending her way to a torturous looking chair he had pulled to the opposite side of his gothic style desk.

"Much work tonight?" he asked her, looking up from the essays he was grading just long enough to make momentary eyes contact with her.

"A little. I finished everything but Transfiguration, and I have six inches left to complete the essay you assigned for next week." She opened her Transfiguration book, unrolled a clean parchment, and inked her quill. She scribbled quietly for a few moments before asking, "Can you do human transfiguration?"

"I never cared to," he replied curtly, not looking up at her.

"If you did, though, what kind of anamagi would you be?" she pressed.

"I don't know. Something creepy, I suspect," he said dryly.

She giggled quietly. "I wonder what I'll be transfiguring into."

Snape looked up blandly. "I didn't know Professor McGonagle taught human transfiguration."

"She normally just teaches the basics. You know, incomplete forms, like just the head and maybe the limbs for practical purposes. Most of it's theory and only the written work appears on the end-of-year exam. As I studied the theory and considered all of the practical applications I became interested in learning about more than partial transfiguration. I approached Professor McGonagle about learning the complete process and she was amenable to the idea, so long as I was memorizing all of the written theory as well. Now 'm doing it as sort of an independent study."

"Mm," Snape replied, marking in red on an essay and tossing it in a pile on the side.

"Did you listen to anything I said?" she asked, exasperated.

He looked at her again, but said nothing. She sighed and went back to her work, ignoring him and wondering why she tried again and again to be civil when he made it so impossible.

"Finished yet?" he asked her nearly an hour later.

"I was waiting for you," she said, a trace of the earlier acid still alive on her tongue. He shrugged, pushing the essays into boxes, one for each of his classes. She stowed her materials beneath the desk in a small, neat pile.

"So," she said steeping her fingers on the varnished wood, "why am I here tonight?" This way their ritual now. She came under the pretext of detention, did homework as he graded, and then they talked.

He had approached her earlier in the year, building her trust and confidence in him. All of their meetings had started on the pretext of detention. At first, she had been resentful of the way he had continually singled her out for punishment in lieu of other, far more worthy, candidates. She wondered how it must look for the Hogwarts Head Girl to be in detention for the highest NEWT level Potions class on disciplinary infractions almost nightly.

The detentions had had an unusual quality of informality about them from the very beginning. Instead of forcing some gruesome task upon her, Snape had always permitted her to complete any unfinished homework. At times, he even offered her needed assistance with the more difficult material.

One night late in October, he had directed her to a chair on the other side of his own desk. She had sat uncomfortably at first, wondering what it was he wanted from her. He had worked on his essays as usual, and she had taken that as a cue to continue her routine as well. Glancing up often, she had quickly scribbled out two rolls of Charms parchment waiting for him to speak. At last he had laid his work aside and asked her to do the same.

"I would like to speak to you in regard to a very important matter." He had paused, looking at her as though he were critically evaluating the composition of a potion some student had presented him for grading. She had felt like a display case and had shown her displeasure at such goings on by glaring at him. He had continued staring until she had spoken at last.

"Were you waiting for me to say something?"

Snape's eyes had met hers, his concentration momentarily shaken by her barbed tongue. "I want to speak with you about the future."

Stunned, she had fallen back against the seat, not knowing what to say. Unlike many of the other students, she was not averse to advice from her Professors. She would have never expected it from this particular professor, however. "What about it?" she had replied, to bewildered to come up with a more clever interrogation.

Snape had spent the next fifteen minutes sharing his views on muggle fortune telling with her before dismissing her for the evening. Puzzled but relieved, she had not said anything to him in regard to his strange behavior that evening, nor did she on several subsequent visits when the same sort of exchange taken place.

She had failed to notice the way in which she had taken to occupying the chair across from Snape, which had always come to be waiting for her. Over time and so subtly that it had almost gone unrecognized, her vies on Divination and the future had begun to change as well.

During their talks, Snape had shown her that Wizards had ways of predicting the future that were far more reliable that anything Trewlawny had ever presented in the few classes she had attended. Their ritual had continued until now, midwinter, and she had come to believe in the Prophecies with nearly as much devotion as she did the exactness of potions making or the reliability of correctly cast charms.

"I wanted to share and actual Prophecy with you," Snape said rolling back his sleeves and flicking his wand to summon a shiny obsidian basin. Harry had told her about a similar device, only of granite gray, called a pensive in which he had encountered the memories of both Dumbledore and Snape. She assumed the latter had at last gotten his own.

"Sir, I thought you said that all Prophecies were stored in only two places: the Department of Mysteries and the memories of those to whom they were told." She swallowed self-consciously, not quite meeting his eyes. "I assume that this is the latter."

"No," said Snape.

"But the pensive, Professor," she trailed off as he put his thick wand to his ear and pulled out a string of silvery material. She wondered with a slight shudder how greasy his wand was now.

"I told you that there were only two ways in which the Prophecies were accessible, and, in general, that rule holds fast." He stopped speaking for a moment and looked up at her, his gaze steady though neutral. "Your deduction of my intended use of the pensive would undoubtedly be accurate in almost any imaginable scenario. In this case, however, you are inaccurate."

"How so?" she asked, her mind clicking over to the scientific machine of logic an analysis it so often operated as.

Snape thinned his lips slightly, looking as though he were trying not to smile. "You were unfairly given inadequate information as to the Prophecy in question, I'm afraid. You see, I am the subject. Dumbledore knew of it and took me to the Ministry so that I could listen."

She frowned, biting down slightly on her lower lip. "So, what you said about only those to whom the Prophecy is told and those to whom it pertains being able to hear it wasn't totally accurate" She cocked an eyebrow up, teasing.

"I never said that the information couldn't be passed along through word of mouth," he retorted, a touch of vinegar on his tongue. She blushed slightly and he continued. "At any rate, even that fact is moot in this case."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that this little display is not an invasion of my privacy. Were I to take you to the room in the Department of Mysteries which you visited with Mr. Potter at the end of your fifth year, you too could listen to the recording."

"It concerns me?" she concluded somewhat thickly.

Snape merely shook his head as though dismayed and beckoned her forward with one of his white spidery fingers. She leaned in towards him and he directed her top place her face upon the mist rising from the bowl. Suddenly, she felt his cold hand clasp around hers and she jerked back, startled. "It's alright, Hermione," he said softly, uncharacteristic warmth in both his eyes and his voice. "You must trust me." His hand never left hers.

She nodded and leaned forward, taking a deep breath as her face passed below the mist.

She saw Snape coming into focus beside Professor Dumbledore. She waved, but was ignored. Remembering the way in which Harry had described his trips into the pensive she stepped in close to them, knowing she could see and hear everything without any risk of discovery. She was merely an observer of the memory.

"It should be just down this aisle, Severus," Dumbledore said, ushering the greasy looking professor along through the stacked rows of Prophecies that lined every available shelf in the room.

Snape spoke in a hushed voice, looking as though he had swallowed a lemon. "Tell me again how you know about this, Sir."

"Our Centaur friend, Firenze," the Headmaster replied in that benign way of his.

They walked further down the aisle in silence, Dumbledore offering no further explanation and Snape failing to beg for one. She could feel herself growing nervous.

"Ah," Dumbledore said at last, stopping before one of the shelving units and looking skyward. "If Firenze is correct, we have arrived. He reached up just above his head, pointing a gnarled finger at one of the countless shiny globes. "Well, Severus," he said, "that should be the one." He watched as Snape reached up and pulled the object down and then walked off, affording the man a bit of privacy while at the same time forcing him to deal with the Prophecy's contents alone.

Snape sighed slightly, and then coiled one of his hands around the spherical top of the Prophecy. He tapped it with his wand, whispering, "Reveal your secrets." For a moment, nothing happened, the Snape jumped as though he had been burned, nearly dropping the globe to the floor.

From everywhere at once, a voice reverberated, clear and resonant. She stepped in close, simultaneously eager and terrified.

"She is young; he is not.

The one who betrayed the Light then turned traitor to the Dark will soon be betrayed by his past.

Only the vows of marriage, taken with the muggle-born friend of the one he hates most can allay the fate assigned to him.

Only the one she loves can be sacrificed to save them both.

Only their union has the power to stave off mass destruction."

She needed only to look into the memory Snape's face for all that she had heard to click. "Merlin's beard," she whispered as she saw, as she understood.

She pitched forward felling nauseous, weak and alone. She was certain she would have fainted had she not crashed into the bottom of the basin, smacking her forehead severely and forcing her to jerk away and back into her own reality; a reality that now seemed strange and unfamiliar.

"I am young and you are not," she said softly, the words of the Prophecy already forever etched upon her memory.

Snape picked up the next line. Their hands were still joined, but she suddenly found that she did not care. "It was I who betrayed the Light and turned traitor to the Dark. It appears my demons will soon come home to roost." He stroked the back of her hand softly and squeezed as though offering her strength and comfort then continued. "Only the vows of marriage with the muggle-born friend of Harry Potter can change my fate."

She was frightened as much by the tender way he was treating her as she was by the words she knew she must speak. She could live with talking, with homework help, even with a strange sort of friendship, but not with intimacy and not without Ron. "Only Ron Weasley can be sacrificed to save us both." She left her hand in his to show the assent in her next words. "Only our union has the power to stave off mass destruction."

She finished relaying the memory to him and he stared, awed not only by the words she had spoken, but by the audacity she had shown in keeping such a monstrous declaration from him all of this time. He had been the one she had loved. Moreover, he was about to be sacrificed because of it. He didn't know what to say. He couldn't even look at her.

"Ron," she whispered softly as though afraid that her speech would set off a ticking bomb. He said nothing, just stared into the tabletop, trying to find the answers in the scrubbed wood grain.

Slowly, he began to shake his head. He had always said he would give anything for her to love him. He wondered if he would have felt that way if he had known that her love would cost him the ultimate price.

"Why?" He said simply. Why hadn't she told him? Why had she allowed herself to believe? Why, if she had to love him, couldn't he have been a part of her life? HE felt himself drowning in despair, rose from the table, and poured himself a spot of vodka, rather more than he usually allowed. Without adding anything, he drank it down and poured another. He wished to fade into oblivion. He wished to die.

"I don't know," she replied, her voice shaky and quiet, like a breeze giving way to the chill of a spring rain shower. He wondered which of his questions she had been answering. All of them, he decided.

Rage began to take the place of the numbness that had earlier chilled his veins, throbbing through his being like fire melting away ice. He spun towards her, looking at her face for the first time. She looked pitiful and weak. He felt his anger rising at her vulnerability. For a moment, he hated her. "What do you mean you don't know," he spat, slamming the glass down on the wooden surface. It broke, and the shards left deep lacerations on his hands. He watched the blood pouring from him, trails of crimson rage, sorrow, and hopelessness fusing with the clear puddles on the table.

She cast a little spell with a wave of her wand, cleaning the mess and healing his hand. He didn't thank her. The damage she had done couldn't be repaired so easily. She had wounded him so deeply; he felt the scars upon his heart could never heal. The pain inside him was hot, throbbing, and more real than anything he had ever experienced. He felt sick.

She moved her hand towards his as though to offer him comfort with her touch. He pulled away, jumping back as though bitten. "Don't touch me," he said, his voice calm and dangerous. "You haven't any right."

He turned away from her open-mouthed look of horror and stomped up the stairs, locking himself in his room. His profound love for her had died and been replaced with a hate stronger than anything he had ever known.

He wanted to be alone.

He wanted to mourn his love for her.

He wanted, more than anything, to die.