Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.

A/N: I never thought that I would get around to writing this, but I have. Here it is, at long last: the companion piece to 'A Letter from Azkaban'.

Hermione looked at the wasted man in the cell, and felt a knot form in her stomach. He sat there on the cot, desperately maintaining a defiant glare, holding his back ramrod straight. Faded rags hung limply on a once slender, but now merely emaciated, frame. Severus Snape had been one of the little tin gods of her childhood, placed on a pedestal, with every word out of his mouth treated like the uttering of an oracle. And it had all come down to this; an office job for her and a slow, tortuous death for him.

Oh, they said that his sentence was life in Azkaban, but cold and malnutrition and simple despair would cut the thread of his life far shorter than it ought to have been. He still wore the remains of the high collared black robes he'd worn at his mockery of a trial five years ago, the robes he'd been captured in. He'd been caught eighteen months after his crime, sitting calmly in the book-lined front room of his house at Spinner's End. Tonks and Kingsley had been the ones to get him, and the way Tonks told it, he'd just looked up at them and asked, "What took you so long?"

Hermione had to admire the panache, the absolute nerve, it must have taken to say something like that. She knew all too well that he'd regretted it quickly, when Harry, the victorious hero to whom nothing could be denied, had asked for a few minutes alone with him. She'd stood outside the door, and forced herself to listen, as her best friend beat and tortured a man who was chained to a wall. That was the day she had, at long last, lost her idealism. She had looked in the mirror and flinched away, knowing that despite all she said and did, she was still too much of a coward to do the right thing.

Since then, she'd been wandering through her life in a trance, focused inwards, examining her own failings and wondering if there was anything she could have done to prevent them. Her thoughts always turned to Snape, painfully and inescapably. Despite what he'd done, or was accused of doing, she felt pity for him, and revulsion at herself for doing so. Not because he didn't deserve pity, but because pitying someone so much stronger than she felt horribly wrong.

He'd seemed so unreachable, so untouchable, an impression that had lasted only a few weeks, but even now lingered in her subconscious. The way he'd eyed her after Dumbledore had told him just who, exactly, had deciphered his puzzle, a mixture of respect and anger, was burned into her mind. It had been an exultation, a realization, that yes, she was capable of having an effect on her professor.

The next year, she'd had even more proof. He'd stared at her in awed resentment, even as he tried to create an antidote for botched Polyjuice. They had actually had a brief but civil conversation, terminated only by her declaration that Ron and Harry's doses of the potion had worked perfectly. His face had frozen then, returning to its usual hostile mask, and she knew she'd made a mistake she had no chance of undoing. She had never stopped regretting that, and it galled her to confess, even to herself, that it was not from some noble motive, but curiosity, pure and simple.

After that, she had only had occasional glimpses into the depths of the man who had begun to intrigue her. The way he had tormented Neville, the way he needled Harry, the way he would look at her when she made a mistake, as if to say, "You can do better than that." Above all, she remembered, oh so vividly, the single, disappointed look Snape had given her after she'd become Ron's girlfriend. That had hurt, knowing that she had in some obscure way let this enigmatic man down.

She had, somewhere along the way, allowed impressing Snape to become one of her most deeply held ambitions. It was not only the sheer difficulty, if not impossibility, of doing so that appealed to her. No, it was the idea that he was a double agent, a dashing and romantic figure, that had influenced her. She had longed to be the one in whom he confided, the one to whom he told the gory details of she was convinced was horrific torture. She had even, in her more foolish and fantastic moments, dreamed that he would sweep her off her feet to some manor house and make her Lady Snape.

The one after the other revelations of the end of her sixth year had smashed her world, and replaced it with a new and darker one. Snape was not their man in the enemy's camp; he was the enemy, and something to destroy at all costs. Still she could not suppress her admiration of the sheer sang-froid he must have possessed. She knew that if she had been the one to locate Snape she would have let him go free, and the knowledge rankled. She knew that she had had morals and ideals once, she could remember having them, but they were nowhere in evidence.

Instead, searching deep within her soul, all she could find was a tired pragmatism and a determination to finish the job and have her well-deserved, in her own opinion, rest. She looked ahead, and the years stretched to infinity, endless years of sitting at her desk and filling out forms, without a trace of glamour, glory or being proven right ahead. She would do it, to prove to herself that she could, but her heart and soul would never be in it. There would never be another back-handed compliment or look laden with grudging approval from her judge of choice; she had only her own yardstick to lay herself against now, and only her own praise to give herself.

Snape coughed, hacking and gasping for breath, and Hermione snapped from her reverie, wincing. He had the sound of one not long for this world, of lungs ruined by damp, and she felt the impending loss keenly. She cleared her own throat in sympathy, and he looked up at her, startled. His hair hung in rats' nests around his face, and his eyes were sunken, but they still held recognition. He nodded slightly. "Miss Granger." He cocked his head. "Or is it Mrs. Weasley now?"

She shook her, her mouth twisted in a bitter smile. "No, not Mrs. Weasley. Never Mrs. Weasley. It will always be Miss Granger."

He gave her an approving look, and she tried to memorize the every contour of his face, aware that this was likely the last time she would ever see it. A corner of his mouth twitched upwards. "You would have been wasted as a wife and mother. The world deserves far more of you than that."

She snorted. "And what, precisely, does it deserve of me? My despair? My foolish idealism? My moral cowardice?"

He stood, gripping the bars and leaning as close to her as he could. "Never say that, Miss Granger, never." he hissed. "You have more moral courage than I ever did. You have never renounced, denounced your friends to save yourself, and the girl I knew would never even consider it. You would never let yourself be coerced into doing the unthinkable." He looked her up and down coldly, almost clinically. "I'm sure the idealism is still in there somewhere as well, Miss Granger. It is for you to find it."

She gave him a skeptical look. "And what do I do with it once I've found it?" she challenged him.

"You got out, and you right all the world's wrongs. As I recall, that used to be a hobby if yours." he sneered, and for a moment, it was as if they were back at Hogwarts. Then his face settled back into its tired, strained lines. "May I suggest reforming the justice system, or perhaps the prisons?" She shrugged, not wanting to deny him. "Is there a reason you're here, Miss Granger?"

She froze. If she told him that she'd just wanted to see him, he'd laugh at her, as far as anyone could laugh in Azkaban. Desperate to save face, she fumbled in her bag, and withdrew a spare scroll and her ever-inking quill. "I wanted you to have these." She thrust them through the bars of the cell, and he grasped them with a look of wonder on his face.

"I am... most grateful, Miss Granger." he said, and if she didn't know him better, she would say he was choked up. "Most grateful."

She nodded and turned, unable to bear the sight of her fallen idol any longer. "Goodbye, Professor Snape."

"Farewell, Miss Granger."