A/N: Thanks as always to Luna305 for beta and narrative logic assistance, and Anastasia for logistical advice. ;)


Innocence

A corner of Lily's book pressed into her face. It rubbed her cheek consolingly, exactly as if it were saying "I understand."

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Severus dropped his wand arm and breathed heavily, as wisps of smoke rose from the bits of stuffing that were still drifting on the floor.

Still clutching the book protectively, Hermione rolled over, and, keeping the couch between her and Severus, drew out her wand. She stood, pointing it at him.

"I'm-" he started.

"No."

"But-"

In a glacial voice, she announced, "Enough. Get out." With a furious flick of her wand, she reassembled the loveseat. It looked slightly lumpier than before. She heard Severus stalk away.

She turned to the book. "What happened?" she demanded, then sighed. "No, I don't suppose you can tell me."

The book rubbed against her hand, but its cover stayed shut, and no pages rippled open to answer her.

She snorted. "Something else I get to drag out of Tall, Dark, and Brooding." Holding the book rather more gently than her tone would seem to indicate, she ran her free hand through her hair, muttering, "Lovely."

She heard a crash from the kitchen.

"Just lovely." She had been strangled, had her mind invaded, found - or at least been given - the next Horcrux, and performed a feat of Arithmancy complex enough to earn her a master's position at any wizarding school in the world, and nearly had the daylights hexed out of her. Twice.

And she still had questions.

From the sounds of things, the answer to them was violently rearranging the kitchen.

She snorted, and then lay down on the couch, the book on her chest. She was not going in there.

He'd destroyed the sideboard first – ceramic, pottery and silverware flew clanging into the walls, against the ceiling, smashing, clattering, clanging to the floor. The stove caught his eye next, and he drew himself to full height and held a slow-release curse on it, building the pressure on its metal seams, refusing to let them fail completely until he allowed it. Beads of sweat appeared on his brow as the metal groaned and started to buckle. Now. The stove exploded with shriek like a Banshee's.

In the library, Hermione looked up and frowned.

Then he spotted the flour barrel. A moment later, a cloud hung in the air, fine powder settling onto everything.

He stood alone in the kitchen, panting.

There were several forks impaled on the ceiling. One gave way and hit his shoulder before falling to the floor. In one fluid motion he had wheeled, pinpointed its location, and released a finely-honed, perfectly proportioned hex at it. It melted.

Eventually, his breathing slowed.

In the library, Hermione was wrestling with a new problem. She had kissed Severus Snape, and he had clearly loved Harry's mother.

Lily, her mind insisted. Think of her as Lily. The other way lies madness.

Fine. Severus had probably kissed Lily too.

She didn't know how she felt about that.

She suspected that was all that had happened.

The book nudged against her hand.

"Cut that out," she snapped at it. Then, "Oh. I'm sorry." Not its fault. She peered at it for a moment, then shook her head. Not really its fault at all.

The potion in the drawing – Amortentia, obviously. Too dangerous for inclusion in the general curriculum. Brewed in secret, then – she well knew how possible that was – possibly with Professor Slughorn's tacit knowledge; he was like that – probably just to see if they could. They were playing with fire…

In the kitchen, Severus slowly gathered his wits.

Hermione's musing continued. What had they learned, standing by that cauldron, younger than she was now? That what they truly desired most in the world was each other?

Surely not. Then, Get real, Granger. It's not impossible. Lily was a woman, not a saint, and you know how you respond to him.

Shared attraction, certainly. On his side, given his history, probably more. On hers?

The book nestled into her hands. She petted it absentmindedly. It seemed to feel that it was in good hands.

Severus, meanwhile, was repairing the kitchen with the ease of long years spent teaching students who were forever careless with volatile ingredients. A few efficient sweeps of his wand, and he was done. He crossed his arms, nostrils still flaring. He had warned her, at the last second. A rationalization, Snape! His lip curled in self-derision. Fool.

Something glinted by the hearth. The fork had melted into a perfect circle. He picked it up and turned it over, slowly, in his hands. Simplicity, elegance, perfection. Transformed by violence – his violence, his guilt, his anger – and an immaturity he had not realized he still possessed. Dangerous. Too dangerous. An image of her holding his book, unharmed, even as she held him at wand-point. She protected it. It must have been instinctive; he'd given her no time to think. He gave himself over briefly to the memory of her touch, their fleeting kiss… over so quickly. So little time. He turned the disc over and over, smoothing his hands over it, and the key of his tension changed. Or, perhaps, just enough...

If she didn't kill him.

Odd that she hadn't sought him out. Or not. His eyes tightened at all he'd done to her – with and without reason. The first time is the hardest, yes, but it's almost over. Then his stomach growled. Hm. He pocketed the metal disc.

Hermione was still thinking. She didn't want to know how the details the Severus-Lily-James triangle had played out. Having endured years of Lavender and Parvati's melodramatic accounts of whatever constituted the latest chapter in Hogwarts: The Hormones, she imagined that the earlier triangle had probably appeared rather unremarkable, especially with the war against Voldemort at its height. Certainly, at least from the outside, not the stuff of which tragedies are made.

So what had happened? A secret tenderness, a stolen moment on that long ago Saturday. Something "shameless."

She didn't want to know. She really didn't want to know.

Then she realized she didn't need to. If the specifics of what Lily and Severus had done mattered in the grand scheme of things, it would have been among the memories she'd received.

Oh… Oh, good. She swallowed. Good.

Whatever it had been between them, for the young Severus, what had mattered was her smile, and her gift.

Still… "Shameless"?

He had kept the book for…

He had kept it even after…

She sat up suddenly. She loved him too. His first kiss. His only kiss? Oh, dear gods. Her thoughts flew to what she'd done to him in the hallway. How she had manipulated him, used him… He enjoyed it, Granger, her logic insisted, but her conscience asked, How could you?

For a young Severus Snape, who'd been denied kindness, denied compassion, denied touch unless it brought physical pain, a single kiss could easily have made an impression that had lasted a lifetime. And she, she had replaced that kiss with…

Still holding the book, she flew toward the kitchen.

But in the hallway, she paused. Bound by blood and by something at once complex and very, very simple, to an inscrutable, unpredictable man, some new part of her checked the impulse to burst into the kitchen with a girlish apology.

No, that would not do at all. She took a deep breath, held it, and exhaled. Better.

As Hermione reached for the door, she heard Mrs. Black's portrait mutter, "Do try to keep him from destroying anything else."

Startled, Hermione turned and looked at the portrait. "Wish me luck."

"Good luck," the portrait said, then added, as an obligatory afterthought, "Mudblood filth."

Not even Mrs. Black's portrait would survive Hermione Granger's fury once and risk it again.

The only one in the who seemed willing to do so looked up at her as she entered the kitchen, and said, "You're late."

Startled, she stepped back automatically, instinctively hiding the book behind her back. Then, feeling foolish, she laughed. "You sound like you're going to deduct House points."

A raised eyebrow. "If it will make you happy, I am willing to indulge you." His tone was light, but she could hear a hesitancy behind it.

She smirked at him, but something in her eyes changed. Really... Hm...

"Five points from Gryffindor for… disconcerting facial expressions. 15 for lateness, and a detention. And… yes?"

She was biting the inside of her cheeks, trying not to laugh. If she looked at him, she knew that all of her tension would result in a terribly undignified fit of giggles. Gods, no. She looked up.

"… and another 20 for not looking at me when I am speaking to you."

"Oh, forgive me, Professor. I was just wondering if those holes in the ceiling were, by any chance, made by forks?" Her eyes sparkled.

They looked at each other.

He continued, softly, "I'm not finished, Hermione."

She nodded.

"For the greatest Arithmantic feat the wizarding world has known since the days of Nicholas Flamel…" he paused.

She wondered if he would give her one point or one hundred. Her brain automatically started figuring the odds.

He reached out and smoothed a strand of hair off of her forehead, his hand coming to rest lightly on her cheek. "… my gratitude."

Her world tilted on its axis. Without taking her eyes from his, she set the book down on the table. With a hint of triumph, she smiled.

Then his eyes did something she'd never seen before. She was dumbfounded. Severus Snape's eyes do not twinkle. They don't. That's just impossible.

The corner of his mouth twitched.

"Given appropriate circumstances and ample motivation, Hermione, who can deny that more may be possible than not?"

"You sound almost like..."

A shadow crossed his face, but he did not move his hand. "He was my professor, too."

She brought her hand up to his – a swift caress.

The stood unmoving for a moment. As they held each other's eyes, what had passed between them that night shifted from the edge of uncertainty to the stability of knowledge.

Understanding would come later, but in this moment, knowledge was enough.

He leaned closer, and murmured, "There is more… much more. Are you ready, Hermione?"

Scarcely daring to breathe, much less speak, she nodded. She laced her hand in his hair Smooth... and pressed her palm to his neck, feeling his skin, warm underneath.

He trailed his hand to his chest, where it lingered at the next button. He watched her, and waited.

Slowly, she reached up and released the button.

And watched, fascinated, as he undid the third on his own.

Lily's book scuttled quietly out of sight.

At that moment, his stomach rumbled. He sighed. Inconvenient. But necessary… So little time… "Are you hungry?"

"I - What?" She swallowed hard, giving her head a small shake. He cooks? Of course he cooks. "If I sit, do you promise not to hex my chair out from under me?"

He nodded again and held a chair out for her, the lines around his mouth deepening.

She stared at him. Is that a smile? No... it can't be...

It was.