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I sauntered into the potions lab and set my glass on the bench, singing an off-key rendition of Auld Lang Syne. Professor Snape glanced in my direction before turning back to his cauldron. It was New Years, the school was celebrating, and I felt quite cheerful, as three members of the opposite sex had already commented on my shimmery dress and my dancing skill (made even more enthusiastic by the addition of a number of Singapore Slings).

Only Snape was missing from the fete.

We never spoke much. Sometimes I hummed along with my radio when we worked together. I could tell that he found it amusing, though his frosty expression never really changed. It was just a subtle shift of his eyebrows, one that I'd just started to pick up on in the month I'd worked with him nearly non-stop.

"Are you just going to serenade me all day, or are you here for a reason?"

"And here I thought you might like a little song and dance to cheer you up." I grinned, feeling cheeky. "I actually just came down here to ask why you aren't at the New Year celebration."

He sneered in response.

"I don't go to parties, Miss Granger."

"Will you lighten up? Lucius Malfoy's just been thrown in Azkaban for a second time, Rodolphus Lestrange is dead, and our dear Minister of Magic has finally sent out Aurors to track down Voldemort."

"Do not speak his name!" Professor Snape paused. "Forgive me if I do not revel in the downfall of those I once considered friends."

He continued methodically stirring, his face a cold mask. I honestly had never thought about what it must be like - I knew he had once believed in dark magic enough to take the Mark, but I'd forgotten just what changing sides entailed. It meant betraying your friends and family, and everyone knew he had few friends in the Order to make up for it. I tiptoed to his side and gently placed my hand on his arm. I would regret being so collegial in the morning, I was sure, but liquid courage still ran through my veins.

"What about friends here?" I asked.

He glanced back at me, a flicker of sadness crossing his face before he returned to his usual sour countenance and moved away from my grip.

"Forgive me if I do not share your penchant for holiday cheer , but I'm afraid that any who consider me 'a friend' are long dead."

"You're wrong," I replied, feeling braver after four rather strong drinks.

I licked my lips, tried to steady myself against the potions bench. He paused, ladle held inches above the potion, as if he'd been petrified, and that stone-cold expression seemed to soften just a bit.

"Miss Granger, return to your friends," he said. "Enjoy your youth before the final battle. Don't waste your... my time."

I sighed deeply. He was right, and I shouldn't have bothered him, but for some reason after my bout of illness at Order headquarters, I'd formed a strange affection for the cranky professor.

"I hope, at the final battle, that I have even a fraction of your bravery." My eyes widened, and I nodded. "You know you're a hero, don't you?"

His eyebrow arched just a tad, and he seemed to stare right through me. He stepped backward from the counter, stepped toward me, then changed his mind and turned back to his cauldron.

"Go back to the party and leave me in peace," he muttered tiredly.

"All right. I'm sorry I bothered you," I replied, lifting the dregs of my cocktail to my lips. "Happy New Year, Sir."

Though I shut the door quickly behind me, I caught his very quiet reply.

"Happy New Year, Miss Granger."

And, though he said he had no patience for parties, he was up and skulking about when two a.m. rolled along and the half-drunk revelers dragged themselves back to bed. He scared Ron and I out of the window seat we'd found to snog within. After shooing Ron away, Professor Snape gave me a long lecture on propriety which I promptly forgot through my alcohol haze, and after glaring a storm at me, led me back to the Head Girl's room portrait hole (he seemed rather put off by my password, 'root canal'), so I could gracelessly pass out on my bed.

Happy New Year indeed.

---

Loki leads me through winding corridors where, just the day before, there were impossibly complex wards to bar my way. He says nothing; I don't really expect him to.

We pass by Professor Snape's potions lab, the scene of my theft two days earlier. I have no idea what's beyond this point, and as we step through, the corridor becomes progressively less Slytherin and progressively more comfortable. Chairs upholstered in blue velvet sit against one wall. The carvings, while still rife with serpents, now portray the creatures coiled around roses and ivy.

The portraits, thankfully, are covered in white sheets, and say nothing but, "Who's there? Severus, is that you?" as I pass them.

"Where are we going?" I ask.

Loki doesn't answer, so I stay quiet. At the very end of a winding hallway, he stops in front of a large black door, looks up at me with a smirk, and disapparates. I just hope he hasn't left me to try and make my way back to my room; these corridors are like a maze.

I knock on the door sharply, and I hear Professor Snape's familiar voice call to me from inside.

"Come in, Miss Granger."

He's sitting there with a cup of black tea and a stout, old-fashioned English breakfast, fried eggs and fried bacon and fried button mushrooms, his neck craned over the plate to look over a heavy leather book that's seen too many reparo charms.

"Sit."

I sit. The small office seems familiar to me somehow, and after a minute I realize that it's a copy of his dungeon office at Hogwarts. He's charmed the small windows to look like they're under the lake, colouring the sunlight pale green, as if shining through a wine bottle. The desk is gargantuan, carved from black wood. The papers, quills and books scattered across it are the only messy area in the entire room. There's also an almost-empty bottle of liquor sitting on the corner.

The reason I didn't recognize it immediately was because, back at Hogwarts, the shelves lining the walls were stacked with jars of pickled aphibians and desiccated insects; here, there are books on every subject imaginable, from glossy-covered muggle novels to ancient magic books with old-fashioned lettering on the spine.

He stares at me with that flat gaze that reflects nothing of what he's thinking. I wonder absently if this is how he managed to survive as a spy over the past twenty-odd years. After an uncomfortable five-minute silence, I finally speak up.

"Have you decided what you're going to do for punishment?" I ask meekly.

He raises one black eyebrow, "After your suicide attempt last night, I'm afraid any punishment I could conceive would prove anticlimactic." He looks pointedly at me. "Though I have always loathed teenage histrionics, I must admit, I am curious as to why, exactly."

"It was not just teenaged histrionics," I reply, my voice sounding rushed. "Or maybe it was, I'm still not sure... that house-elf, forgetting about feeding me, and when I annoyed it, it was always slipping things into my meals. Then my wand went missing, I had nothing to read, and I couldn't go anywhere, and I didn't know what was happening, and nobody to talk to... I was so terribly lonely. I wondered if I was starting to go mad..."

I flush hotly, knowing that a suicidal woman is usually considered quite mad, and Snape won't hesitate to point it out. I wait in uncomfortable silence; he's settled back into that glassy stare, and I wonder if there's not something wrong with him.

My stomach grumbles, and that breaks the silence.

"Haven't you eaten?"

"No."

His lip curls. What have I done to irritate him this time?

Lucky for me it's not my grumbling stomach that's annoyed him. He summons Loki again, berates him for five straight minutes for not feeding me, and a few minutes later, there's a stack of brown toast and black tea, both clotted thick with honey, set before me. I place the plate in my lap rather than risk spreading crumbs over his desk.

"Eat." His mouth forms a hard line. "You look like a skeleton, it's disgusting."

I might've flinched at that once, but now I don't. Instead, I chew slowly and methodically through a slice. With just one piece, my stomach feels stretched and bloated. When I push away the plate, Snape nods and taps the end of his quill against his chin.

I ask the question I've been dying to ask, just confirmation of what I assume - he's a professor, he wouldn't forcibly keep me here.

Would he?

"I can't stand it here, Professor," I whisper softly, "Can I leave?"

He looks straight at me. His expression flickers with rage, only to be replaced by the faintest smirk flitting at the corners of his mouth.

"No."

"Why? Why not? You can't just force me to stay here." I feel a thread of anger, disbelief, the only thing I've felt except sadness for weeks.

"You're wrong," he says. "I can and I will."

"What are you now, my jailer?" I snap.

He stares at me, black eyes pinning me down like a hawk's upon a sparrow.

"Do you even understand what you are? Do you have any idea , Miss Granger?"

I stare at him, half-comprehending, half-in-denial, waiting his inevitable enviscerization. He smirks widely now.

"I'll tell you, since for the first time in your life it appears you're left speechless." He waits a moment, for effect. "You are a Mudblood. You are my property, an object, like this book, or desk, or bottle of brandy, to use as I please. The Dark Lord gave you to me, just as he gave me this house and these robes, for my loyal service."

"Don't be silly." I tuck my hair behind my ear, a nervous habit. "You're not really one of Voldemort..."

"Do not speak his name, you foolish girl!"

"He-Who-Should-Not-Be-Named, then. You're not really one of his servants, you spy for the Order, even I know that."

A smile, cruel and hard and mocking, dances on his face. He steeples his fingers like some comic book villain. The arms of his robes droop to his elbows, and I can see the Dark Mark burning blackly against his ivory skin. He no longer moves to cover it as he did when I was in school.

"Really now, Miss Granger. You know it. You know everything, don't you? You're a moronic little know-it-all who knows nothing ." His tone is icy. "You're a fool. Do you know why I'm only after Bellatrix and Lucius in the inner circle? Do you have any idea, my little Mudblood?"

My stomach flips. This is not the acid-witted, socially-inept but basically decent professor I thought I'd come to know during my eight-month tenure as Potions assistant. His voice is laced with a vitriol I've never heard from anyone before, not even from Lucius Malfoy.

I recognize the emotion. Pure, unadulterated hatred. How did he manage to conceal it earlier?

"I'll tell you how I gained my coveted position, so you will never even consider bothering me with your childish dramatics again. Do you remember that final battle where you were captured by Crabbe and Goyle?"

How could I forget two overweight morons trying to capture me as I collected holly leaves for a detention Snape himself had assigned? They'd managed to eventually subdue me, but not until I'd given one a broken nose and black eye, and the other had all his reproductive organs severed with a rather obscure hex I'd picked up when I visited the library at Beauxbatons.

They hadn't hit me, hadn't kicked me. I still don't know why; eventually one managed to petrify me, and sailed me past the other girls.. and boys... that were getting beaten and raped. Then they'd handed me over to Bellatrix Lestrange, who'd then given me to Snape.

I'd thought it a blessing at the time. I thought we were almost friends.

"While you were castrating Mister Crabbe, I was lowering the wards to Albus Dumbledore's office and allowing in half a dozen Death Eaters." He gave me a bitter half-smile. "Once I convinced Albus to let us through, it was an easy enough matter to administer the killing curse. Of course, the Dark Lord required proof of his death, so it was up to me to bring his head to my master. My true master, you know ."

I feel nauseated. My hand flutters to my clutching stomach.

"You're a traitor," I whisper.

He continues to smirk at me.

"So everything you ever said to me was a lie."

It's a comment, not a question, and he doesn't deny it, just stares, smirks. I'm an idiot.

"And for it," Snape eventually adds, "The Dark Lord promoted me within his ranks, and rewarded me handsomely by offering me the property once owned by my ancestors, and gifting me with a highly-sought-after Mudblood whore." He plays with the quill delicately. "You know, Lucius was quite interested in you. Lucky for me Draco insisted on that Weasley imbecile instead."

I'm frozen to the spot, my mind is numb, taking in what he's saying. My mind seems to be stuck on the image of Snape dispensing with Hogwarts' beloved Headmaster taking his head back to Voldemort like a knickknack.

The war is over. We lost. Snape's a traitor. We lost the war because of him, because fools like me trusted him. His face is locked in that glassy stare, watching me silently as I realize what he's just admitted to.

"Go," he snaps, "Get back to your room. You will leave it when I say so."

I wouldn't dare argue with him now, wouldn't dare say anything. He's a murderer. He used me, used the whole Order, and now... I don't even want to think what he plans to do with me.

Somehow I maintain enough dignity to walk with my head high and shut his office door behind me. Once it's closed, I bolt for my room, somehow finding my way, and knowing that I won't be able to hold down my breakfast for much longer. After retching the remains of my supper in the toilet, I drink glass after glass of water, until my stomach feels ready to burst with it. I begin to pace, repeating mindless information to myself to keep other thoughts at bay. The twenty five properties of dried rowan. Subspecies of pixie found in Britain and Ireland.

I don't know how long I do this for, but eventually my mind goes blank, I slide down the wall in the corner of the room, and fall into a dark-dreamed sleep.

---

When I wake, I'm in bed under the blankets, my shoes removed and neatly set beneath the night table, the clip from my hair removed and set aside. There's a tray of soup and bread on the table under a warming charm. I flinch - chicken soup - and there's chocolate with it as well, something I would've treasured like platinum a week ago. I don't touch it, a passive gesture of defiance.

I stand and reach for the door handle. It's firmly warded, and when I examine it only to be rewarded by a sharp jolt, I realize the wards are dark magic. The threads of beads and glass ornaments left by a previous inhabitant have been removed, and it's only after a moment's thought I realize that he's removed anything which could be used in a suicide attempt. Even the blankets have charms on them so I can't remove them from the bed, and when I experiment with trying to pick a thread from my pink sweater, my nail chips against the yarn.

Curiouser and curiouser. Snape's done an unexpectedly efficient job in imprisoning me, but from what he said earlier, he probably knows more than almost anyone about murder. I wonder, idly, how many ways he's seen people killed.

He'd mentioned a Weasley imbecile. That can mean only one person, my poor Ginny, has become Malfoy family chattel.

I begin to cry, partly in self-pity, partly for Ginny and the friends I'll never know what happened to. Not knowing what's become of her is worse than knowing; my mind comes up with a thousand horrible tortures they could've inflicted upon her.

She's become an object, like a book or a desk or a bottle of brandy.

Snape doesn't like noise, and I don't want an excuse to see him, so I turn my face into my pillow, and let it muffle my tears so that only I can hear it.

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