This chapter has been cut short by a handful of bad facts, so anyone who wanted lemonade with this chapter will have to bring their own lemons. Sorry.

Also, about Bist Du Bei Mir – it's a song traditionally credited to Bach that is something of a dark dirge but, because of the interesting pledge of its lyrics, it is performed at both weddings and funerals. The voice that is required is either a lyric soprano/tenor or a spectral voice that is kept in blackest despair – hence, Snape. Still, I hope the explanation you see below is less unsatisfactory than this, Julian, as I suspect this may be a matter of opinion. I agree with you that he will never be caught dead singing If You're Snarky and You Know It, but I have always maintained that you will never expect where the most majestic sound comes from – ask Stormy.

Touch the Air Softly

by Jessa L'Rynn

Disclaimer: I do not own these characters. J.K. Rowling created them and writes them with a genius that has never been equaled. Warner Bros. owns the right to do dumb things with them and doubtlessly will once Jo's finished with them, unless she kills them all. I try to fight the urge to put words into other people's visions. But every once in awhile, something yummy like this comes along and I find myself committing what I have been told is both crime and honor. With all due respect to Jo Rowling and her marvelous world, here is my attempt to "steal from the best".

Chapter 16: Earth is Ablaze

The moment her eyes opened on Sunday, Hermione was desperate to reach the new books in her father's library. She was planning to spend as much of the day as she possibly could holed up alone with the books, pretending that the world outside the house wasn't ablaze and the world inside it didn't include the mad man she was recklessly in love with.

So, she did not receive his presence in her haven with great grace. However, he refused to even acknowledge her existence when she entered the room, but rather sat in a dark recliner in the darkest corner of the room and read from a very old and very dark looking book on his lap. The whole image bothered her, but she couldn't think why for a few minutes.

She had turned the corner and moved three shelves away before it dawned on her what was wrong. Growing up with Ron and Harry, she had gradually grown able to tell just by looking at them when they were trying to get her to believe something. It bothered her for one thing that Snape was now doing the same thing and for another that she was beginning to know him well enough to realize this. It wasn't an easy talent with her - Harry and Ron had lied to her with impunity until they were sixteen and she'd finally realized they were doing it. "Your book's upside down, Professor," she called.

"Thank you, Miss Granger," came the dust dry reply, "I'd wondered what was wrong with it."

She bit back the cheery "You're welcome," before it could leave her lips.

Ten minutes later, Snape came around the corner and found Hermione lounging in the floor on a large cushion, reading from one book and surrounded by various others. "I'd wondered why you had become so quiet," he said, "but I see this section of the library has exploded on you."

Hermione smiled and held up the text she was reading. He glanced over it quickly and snorted. "If that man was plotting, he was more a fool at it than Peter Pettigrew."

"He's never been called a fool," she replied, amused. "Perhaps he had great plans but ran out of time. More a Fudge than a Pettigrew?" She turned the page calmly.

Snape snorted again and looked at the picture taking up the right hand side of this book. "Now his successor - there was a man for a Dark Lord to envy."

"Twisted?" she asked.

"Completely bent," Snape said. "Here, I'll show you." And, sitting down next to her, he pulled out another history from that same time frame and flipped rapidly through the pages.

"I never would have picked you for a singer," she informed him while he looked.

"No one ever does," he assured her. "But if it annoyed my father, my mother was all for it." He dropped the book on the cushion before her, and pointed out a passage to serve as his example. "Bent. Like a corkscrew."

They spent the morning lost in old England. By the end of an hour, they were interrupting each other to make points and by the end of five, they were arguing heatedly in the middle of the floor over the complexities of matching magical government to muggle.

Hermione's mother came in and picked up the sandwich tray from lunch and shook her head at them both. "Libraries are traditionally quiet," she said, as though merely stating a fact. "Hermione, he'll know a bit more about it than you, simply from having lived it. Professor, you'll find that her fresh perspective will be of great benefit to those who'll accept it. And both of you have an hour to change for dinner. I suggest you call the game - or at least a recess." She turned and left, closing the door firmly behind her.

Hermione blinked at the professor and took a few deep breaths. He held up his hands in a gesture that could be misinterpreted as surrender by someone who did not know him well.

"I can't think what came over me..." she started.

"Miss Granger, do shut up," he interrupted. Then hesmiled at her. "It was positively invigorating. I'll escort you to dinner in an hour." Then, he turned and left her standing there gaping.

Much later in the evening, Hermione cornered him with the question she had forgotten. He had abandoned the dinner and conversation as soon as he seemed to feel he could, but Hermione had watched him go through several glasses of wine and, when he hadn't reappeared, she decided to bring the bottle and get some answers.

She found him in the lounge with the old portrait of her family. Gertrude was a haunting figure in the fire light in these pictures, the only ones of her that would ever exist. Snape was looking at her in a way that seemed both sad and angry and Hermione was desperate to know what was on his mind. She poured him another glass of wine and one for herself, and walked over to him where he watched the portrait.

He accepted the glass and sipped at it for some moments before he finally said, "You were a charming child, Miss Granger, whatever happened?"

She laughed. "You did," she said, then quickly, "I mean you as in magical... I mean..."

"For a woman who reads everything she can lay hands to, you have trouble with words sometimes, Miss Granger." He smiled. "I was thinking how long it had been since the last time I imbibed anything alcoholic."

"End of my fourth year? That's the last time I slept peacefully."

He nodded. "I didn't plan on drinking anything tonight, but it's a very fine vintage, it seemed a shame..." he sighed. "Never mind."

She smiled. "Professor, why were you reading upside down this morning?"

"Oh, that," he said. He paused, looking up at the portrait again, taking a long drink of the wine. "I have made you a promise about this. I do not have to like it."

Hermione quickly swallowed the wine in her mouth, lest she choke. "Professor, anything you can tell me..."

"I know. I just want you to understand that this is old information. There is nothing that can be changed with it now."

She nodded and, with exaggerated care, sipped at her glass. Snape frowned and, finally escorted her over to the chair at her father's desk and made her sit down.

"Your sister obviously died from the killing curse. What you must understand is that the person who killed her is mad and mad people leave their traces. This particular person leaves an inadvertent signature, which I will not be specific about. Nevertheless, it was very clearly present, indeed was mentioned in the article here."

"But who did it, Professor? I have to know!"

"I don't think she suffered," he said hesitantly. Hermione would never have believed it of him if she hadn't actually heard it.

"Who killed her?" she demanded again.

"Bellatrix LeStrange."

Hermione gaped at him. Bellatrix LeStrange. Her brain shorted out briefly and she was standing in the closed ward at St. Mungo's with Neville and watching the painfully ill Alice Longbottom wander distractedly toward them, offering a candy wrapper in good humor as she didn't know anything else. "Didn't suffer?"

Before she knew what had happened, she had taken off at a dead run.

How much time had passed, she didn't know, but she did know that she'd grown cold enough to conjure a blanket and her cloak from her room in one of her briefly lucid moments. She had been crying and shaking almost non-stop since she heard the horrible words from Professor Snape. How was it possible that he could believe that a woman who tortured people into madness for fun had somehow simply killed her sister?

"I wish I could kill her," whispered Hermione. She thought she was alone, and she didn't realize she had spoken aloud. But there were more shocks than just hearing the sound of a voice like burning velvet speaking to her from the shadows. What was blinding and staggering was what he said - and that he of all people said it.

"It won't help."

Hermione looked over across the garden at the shadows of the house, and could just make out his alabaster face against the blackness of his clothes and the darkness. "Excuse me?" she said, to avoid the acid comment that she was tempted to fling at him.

"It won't help." He held up a hand and succeeded in stemming her impending flood of crackling vituperation, but only just. "Several of your classmates share your sentiment, Miss Granger, and doubtlessly, one of you will succeed. But it will not help."

That did it. "Who are you to tell me that vengeance is unacceptable?" He, who probably held a wizarding world record in a life wasted for the sake of revenge, looked her unflinching in the eye and, astonishingly, smiled.

"I do not say that your feeling is misplaced, Miss Granger. But it will not help you in the end to take her life from her, or to watch others take it. Merlin knows Bellatrix LeStrange is long past due - hers is a life upon which every gift has been bestowed, and wasted, too, and what she takes from others surely has already over-balanced her accounts to justifiably send her tipping into any death or hell in which she may find herself. But her death will not take away your sorrow for your sister, nor will it sate your desire to live the life that could have been instead of the one that is."

"You sound like Dumbledore," she said, calm because she felt that every ounce of the pain had been wrung out of her. "How wise." Her body ached with screaming numbness.

"Wisdom comes hard to some of us, but it comes eventually."

She smiled, more at the thoughts this evoked than at him. "I'm the one who set your cloak on fire in first year." She didn't know where that had come from - it was as if some one else was speaking the words, merely borrowing her to get them out.

"I had ascertained as much. That bluebell flame was a particular specialty of yours. Well, I can't say your taste in pets has greatly improved, but your kneazle seems somewhat less dangerous."

She shook her head. Of course he knew, how could she have been so foolish. "I stole from you in second year."

"As did Mr. Fawcett, Miss Dawlish, the Weasley Twins, and Mr. Malfoy. At the time I thought it was Potter. I wanted it to be Potter. But as long as someone did it, it was not unwelcome."

"Did what?" she asked. Was he saying what she thought...

"Used the Polyjuice Potion in an attempt to locate the Heir of Slytherin. Do you think I routinely mention Restricted Section materials to second-year lessons? I mentioned it to every class. Only your trio and the Weasley boys successfully took the bait. Well, and Malfoy might have done, but he'd never confess it."

"How very Slytherin of you," she said, genuinely admiring him.

"And so Gryffindor to admit it, even if it took you years. Your potion went wrong with the additive, not the potion itself - I presume now to state that you brewed it?"

"Yes, well, with Ron's help in the stirring instructions, of course."

"Of course." There was a sound of movement. She would guess he had decided to sit in one of the patio chairs. "Ten points to Gryffindor."

She shook her head. "I really can't think of... oh yes, I suppose I should apologize for stunning you in third year."

"No, you shouldn't," he replied. He was silent for some moments. "That brings me back to where this conversation started," he finally added, the words sounding almost as though they had been dragged out of him.

"Where?"

"Revenge." His pronunciation managed to make the word into something filthy, not to be used in polite company, and certainly not to a young woman.

She stood up and shook out her blanket, then laid it down on the ground, gesturing toward it once she had seated herself. She heard him rise and move toward her, but he was still watching her from the darkness. She was almost afraid for him to come out, as though the darkness was all that held the spell of these last two days in place and that, were he to come and sit with her, he would return to the angry Potions professor with the bad attitude and the worse mouth.

"If you children hadn't stunned me, I would have willingly committed a terrible wrong, purely in the name of revenge."

"I thought you hated him."

"I did. I didn't always, but by then, I did. But that night, I would have killed all of you simply to insure I got him, and that is when vengeance is well beyond madness."

"What do you mean you didn't always?"

Now, he began to pace. She could make out the shape of his cloak, billowing behind him, and wondered if he took comfort in melodramatic gestures. "We grew up together, Potter and the Blacks and I. Well, that's what the old Pureblood families do. They make their children 'friends' at young ages and teach the lot that no one but these children is acceptable to be with. Well, the Blacks and my parents did. The Potters were not like that, but none of the Pureblood parents realized it until the year we were all to go off to Hogwarts. Then, Black and I were not allowed to speak to Potter anymore.

"When we got on the Hogwarts Express, it had been a year since either of us had seen Potter, but Black went off with him as if nothing had ever happened, as if Potter wasn't from a shameful, blood-traitor house, as if nothing our parents had told us both meant anything to him. At the feast that night, he got himself sorted into Gryffindor, and then so did Potter." He paused, then sat down. "I've never told anyone this story," he confessed slowly, and tried to sort himself into a comfortable position. "The Sorting Hat offered me a place in Gryffindor, but I was too furious with my former 'friends' to even consider it. I wanted to be as far from them as possible. Plus, I wanted to have a home to go to, and getting into Gryffindor wouldn't be conducive to that.

"There were times when we almost made up, over the years. They would prank me, I would prank them, we'd end up in detention together, and we'd almost make it back to treating each other like human beings."

"But what happened, then?" she dared. "Because I saw you that night, sir. You'd have cheerfully ripped his throat out."

"With my teeth," he agreed grimly. "This may as well be the night for confessions." He meticulously adjusted his cloak and placed his hands carefully on one knee, as though choosing his confession pose very carefully. "Fifth year went very badly. We did things to each other that I wouldn't wish on my enemies, now, things that we shouldn't have gotten away with, things that were hurtful, and cruel, and permanent, or at least permanently life-changing. I can't tell you what they were - but the last one they pulled on me that year sent me to see people I shouldn't have done, and earned me an ill-behaved tattoo and the perpetual enmity of a nice young woman who had never done me any harm. I have never since that day used that expression if there was anything else I could say instead."

Hermione frowned. "I'm sorry, sir. I didn't know you'd gotten involved so young."

"What, Potter didn't tell you about this?"

She shook her head. "Harry's not like that, sir. I assume he found out in Occlumency?"

"You could say that," Snape agreed. She could see the expression on his face, filled with anger and self-loathing.

"How did you come to Dumbledore, sir? If you don't mind my asking?"

He looked off into the distance, his expression still one of disgust, but it was a distant disgust, for the actions of a boy long gone. "Revenge, again," he said, bitterly. "Some fools never learn." He frowned. "This is a very hard tale, I have no idea why I am telling you any of this - the wine, I suppose." He held up the bottle and a pair of glasses.

"Probably," she agreed and, accepting the bottle, poured for both of them.

He took it and sipped at it then, in a night soft voice filled with recrimination, he began to speak. "I had no desire to wear the Dark Mark, nor did I want to spend my life beholden to anyone who treated the people around him so poorly. All I wanted was to kill those two and get back to my life. Unfortunately, there was no going back. We realized that quite early, and most of us had the sense not to try it. This was my sixth year at Hogwarts and I had already decided that I had completely destroyed whatever potential my life might have held."

"There's no need to open old wounds," she said quietly.

"They're not old when you keep them open all the time. This is what such desperation can do to you."

Before she even realized what she was doing, she put her golden hand on his pale one to comfort him. He was cold, and didn't seem to need her touch, but he didn't flinch away from her and therefore, she didn't care. "I'm so sorry," she said.

He turned toward her on the blanket, but did not release her hand. "I was hoping, somehow, that every single horror that happened would die with him, but it didn't. Everything that happens there is recorded and I thought – I hoped...I watched the footage to see the end of it, and I hoped against hope that all the pain would be carried away with him, but he slipped behind that Veil completely at peace, and left me with every single drop of anger and hatred I had ever had for him, for all of them." He frowned. "My so-called revenge will always be denied me, Miss Granger, and you would do well not to get caught up in such a life. It is bitter and it will age you before your time. You will never know a moment's peace and, in the end, the final catharsis will be forever beyond your personal reach."

She sighed and, against her better judgment, squeezed his hand. "There are other forms of peace," she said.

They sat out there until the guests left the house and, when the grass was damp around them, rose to go indoors. "Professor," she said quietly and stopped him under the porch light, "can we be friends?"

His expression was open and impish and at the same time somewhat frightened. "Your companions won't approve."

"That's their problem, isn't it?" She felt her face curl into a somewhat mischievous smile of her own.

"After this day, Miss Granger, I suspect we rather are."

"Hermione," she corrected.

"Hermione," he repeated.

Please review, and look for Chapter 17 tomorrow.