A/N 1: Happy Halloween! Please see A/N 2 for apologies, explanations, and shameless grovelling and promises regarding my preposterously long absence. Thank you all for staying with me for so long. Onwards.

Chapter 33

Snape stared down at where Hermione held one of his hands between her palms. His nostrils flared, but his face betrayed little else of his emotions.

She tried to catch his eye, but he refused to look at her.

"You shouldn't trust me, Granger," he said at last, voice strained, carefully contained.

"You said the same about my being kind to you," she answered, trying to make her own voice sound light. It came out pithy. "See how that turned out?"

She stroked his knuckles softly with her fingertips.

"Why are you really here?"

His eyes glinted in the candlelight and suddenly everything seemed too bright – the planes of his face, the linen of his shirt, the pale hand between both of hers – and Hermione had to fight to keep breathing.

"I…" why had she come here? To confess her trust? To demand answers after what he'd done in the Great Hall? To just… see him? To draw comfort from him, from his touch, which even now made her fingertips tingle as she felt the shadow of his dusky magic sweep up her arms. To see him somewhere other than that beautiful, pristine dead man's office where they continually broke into one another's minds?

He stood abruptly, his hand falling from hers. Without so much as looking at Hermione, Snape made his way across the room and back to his lab. She hesitated for a minute before heaving a sigh and getting up to follow him.

He didn't exactly tell me to leave, so I might as well get that tour…

The private lab was a surprise to Hermione in many ways. It was a smaller room than she had thought at first glance, but so crowded with equipment that she marvelled at how he'd managed the space. A tall table stood in its centre, cauldrons of every size nestled beneath alongside glass and crystal phials, and all manner of potions apparatus. All four walls were lined with floating shelves where dozens – no – hundreds of ingredients perched, and Hermione was certain that, should she wish to, she could have spent hours exploring.

The scent hit her immediately after she stepped over the threshold – apples, pine, and… berries? She watched Snape where he stood at the table, peering into a small pewter cauldron.

"Mistletoe?" she asked tentatively.

"Correct," he answered after a moment. She held her breath, on the point of leaving after all, when his crisp voice demanded, "Which makes this what type of potion?"

She smiled gently to herself, and inched forward to peer into the cauldron. The potion had a viscous sheen, but was completely clear otherwise, and Hermione watched as Snape stirred in a precise configuration. The table gave no hint of other ingredients; the Potions master kept his work surfaces immaculate. She watched as his clever fingers manipulated the crystal stirring rod, and tried to recall what she knew of mistletoe as a potions ingredient. She doubted Snape would need a Forgetfulness Potion, and so it could only be… "An antidote."

When he turned his head, she realised that she stood almost on top of him. He raised an eyebrow pointedly, and she took a step back.

"A facile answer." His voice was positively rife with disdain. "Really, Granger, I've been led to expect better from you."

"Fine," she snapped, nettled by his tone. "Mistletoe features prominently in the Antidote to Common Poisons, but I see no indication of any of the other ingredients of that potion here. There is no shimmer to indicate the presence of ground unicorn horn, and I doubt the addition of Bezoar, no matter how well crushed, would allow for a clear liquid like this." She gave the potion a sniff. "There is a subtle sour or citrus fragrance. Lemon balm? It's almost unnoticeable, but it indicates healing properties, and I think you must have used dragon blood because of that distinctive viscous texture, although I have no idea what you would have done to get it that colour…" she trailed off, staring at the potion and thinking hard. "It's an antidote," she said at last, "and a very specific one, I think."

She stepped back further and watched as Snape reached beneath the table for a box of delicate glass vials. He began to decant the clear liquid. He took his time, labelling each one with a diamond stylus, dark eyes intent on his work.

"A fair assessment, if verbose," he answered slowly as he etched a series of numbers on a vial. "But you mistook something crucial that should have made the nature of this antidote obvious."

He met her eyes at last; Hermione saw dread there, and felt an echo of the emotion deep in her gut.

"And that crucial something is…?"

"Not lemon balm. Extract of tamarind."

She felt the bottom drop out of her stomach.

"Antivenin."

"Correct," he said again.

"To a very specific type of venom… one that resists healing."

He nodded, and looked down at the little box full of antivenin, seeming to consider, before he snatched up one of the vials, and handed it to her.

"I…" Hermione began, but stopped when she saw his eyes, which held hers with the dark, magnetic force she'd noticed so many times before.

"You know what this is for?"

It was a question, yet it wasn't.

"I do," she answered, slipping the antivenin into a hastily conjured hidden pocket up her sleeve.

He nodded once, picked up the clinking box, and walked away to stow it in a hidden cupboard behind one of the shelves. Hermione watched as he waved his wand, sending the cauldron and stirring rod to a copper sink across the room.

"I trust you can find your dormitory on your own," the dark man stated.

"No, actually. I haven't finished what I needed to do here," Hermione countered. "Plus, I don't have the Map with me, and the Room of Requirement didn't see fit to leave me a way back."

He glared at her, but Hermione felt herself giving him a gentle smile in return. She bravely took a step closer.

"Meaning you did not wish to return, I take it," he said, and she saw how his gaze flickered as, for the first time it seemed, he realised that she stood before him in only a cotton nightgown and bare feet.

"No, I wanted to come here, and…" she took another step, and dared to place her hand on the white linen over his heart.

Snape took a long step back, but not before she'd felt how his heart raced and pounded beneath her palm, a beast caught and held within the cage of his ribs, within the confines of what this man would and would not allow himself.

"I told you once before, Granger," he said, walking away from her resolutely, and swinging the door of the lab open, "you had best leave now, or…"

He left the rest unsaid, but Hermione remembered. She remember the curl of his lips, swollen from a passionate, breath-stealing kiss, his hand settling seductively around her throat, threatening to… never let her go.

She walked forward as if to exit the lab, but stopped abruptly in front of him again, and peered up to catch his glittering eyes.

"I wanted to show you why I trust you now," she said gently, taking his hand once more, "and why I won't keep putting your loyalty into question, even after what you did in the Great Hall this evening."

The dark man stared down at their intertwined fingers, and Hermione noticed that his breathing had changed.

"Look at me, Severus."

He wouldn't. Instead, he pulled his hand from hers, and looked to the side, staring at nothing. Hermione stood empty-handed before him, the certainty she'd felt earlier bleeding away. She hadn't expected this reaction from him. She'd expected… what?

He does this every time, she thought as she watched him deliberately slow his breathing, just when I've settled into my position, he shifts and the whole world shifts with him.

She could feel that shifting now, in the low flickering light of Snape's private laboratory, even though she planted her feet and attempted to stand tall. He was here, presence radiating from him in waves that threatened to sweep her up, and yet his gaze was distant and –

"Leave now," the dark man said, interrupting her roundabout thoughts.

"I don't want to," Hermione answered, her voice small and utterly honest, "I want to be with you." She cleared her throat. "And I want to show you that I trust you."

She summoned the thought sequence she'd put together, bringing it carefully to the forefront of her Mind's Eye. It would be tinged, she knew, with the emotions she had felt before, and the ones she felt now. Especially that one overriding surge that rose up within her chest as she watched Snape's shoulders slump, his face fall into lines of despair.

"Severus," she murmured, trying not to let the depth of her feelings colour her voice. "Severus, don't –"

He tilted his head forward slightly in a gesture Hermione recognised; normally, his black hair would have fallen into his face to obscure his eyes. Instead, the dark man stood in his stark white shirt, his hair pulled back from his unreservedly expressive countenance. Emotions flashed across his face in rapid succession: misery and agony, yearning and ardour. She reached out to him, unable to stop herself, desiring only to touch that which he finally – finally – showed her. His face was warm, and his eyes closed at her touch, and Hermione felt herself rise onto her toes to kiss his eyelids.

"Granger –" he murmured, "you can't… you mustn't trust me."

"I do," she replied, pressing her lips to the hollow of his cheek before brushing his mouth ever-so-gently with her own. She spoke the next words over his closed lips, "Severus, open your eyes, and look at me. Please."

His eyes opened, and Hermione was entirely enraptured by what she saw there: the black expanse was deeper than she'd ever seen. Had she wished to, at that moment that she could have dived into his mind and into everything this complex man kept secret, hidden, and safe. Instead of pushing her prepared thought sequence forward, Hermione gazed back, allowing her own emotions – the breadth and width and truth of them – to well up from her chest, to crest over the surface of her Mind's Eye.

Severus and Hermione stood, inches apart, open to one another, without Occlumency or Legilimency to bridge the space between, and yet they stood intimately connected, one, for that moment until –

Snape tore his eyes from Hermione's and turned away once more, staggering back into his sitting room without any vestige of his usual grace. He stood hunched over, bracing himself against the back of the brown sofa. She watched as his back rose and fell rapidly, as the dark man attempted to steady himself. Hermione remained where she stood, between the lab and the sitting room, fixed to the spot.

So close… she couldn't help thinking to herself, I was so close to… everything.

She gave the man another moment, turning their conversation over in her mind, and deciding that she had to press on with what she had come to tell him, after all. If I don't say it now… and so Hermione discarded her carefully prepared thought sequence, and spoke the explanation instead.

"I figured it out, you see," she addressed the silent man. "You didn't send me out of the Great Hall with Malfoy to keep me from interfering tonight. Not entirely, anyway. You had one Occlumens take another out of the Great Hall so that neither of us would recognize what everyone else couldn't." Snape's head remained bowed, and she watched the knuckles of his hands go white where they gripped the corduroy. She took a deep breath before continuing, "You showed a memory of someone trying to capture Neville's gran." His eyes closed. "And the last part of the memory was a fabrication… wasn't it, Severus?"

"Get out," he hissed from between clenched teeth. "Get out, Granger."

"No," she said, stepping forward and slamming the lab door shut behind her. "Not when you've finally…" she let herself trail off.

They both knew that he had just opened up to her for the first time, and somehow Hermione understood that if she gave voice to his vulnerability, if she framed it within the larger space of their mercurial, impossible relationship, she would find herself in an even worse situation. She rallied and forced herself to recall the reason she'd come in the first place.

"Like I said earlier, Severus, we need to discuss what happened, and what comes next."

A sneer rose to his lips, and he stood up straight and glared across the room at her. Hermione felt the loss of his openness like a blow. He flicked his wand, and caught the items that came sailing towards him from his bedroom. He then rolled down his white sleeves, deft fingers brusque, and donned his usual frock coat, before freeing his lank hair. He was fully Professor Snape once more when he stalked past Hermione to wrench the door to the corridor open. He held it for her, making an impatient wave of dismissal at the same time as he turned away.

"Why?" she demanded as she approached him.

She grasped one of his slim, solid shoulders and tried to spin him around. The dark man refused to be moved; instead he looked over his shoulder at her, and Hermione beheld what she had dreaded to find in the contours of his face once more. A Death Eater glared down at her.

"Why?" she asked again, her voice a whisper, her heart a stone.

A/N 2

Apologies: I'm sorry it has taken this long to come back to you, and to this story; I have missed it, and you.

Explanations: Real life, original fiction, and complex health concerns have all taken my attention away from this project. Things are better now, and I'm reclaiming a lot of free time as my own.

Grovelling: I've read every single one of the reviews posted during my absence. Every. Single. One. At least a dozen times. I thank you for them, especially in light of this long hiatus. You are the best kind of people to offer me encouragement when I've not kept up with this story, nor with review responses. I will respond to every new (signed) review from now on. Thank you for the continued patience, kindness, and encouragement.

Promises: I will post chapter 34 sometime next week, and I'll keep you updated on my progress as we go. I'm writing the final chapters now (gasp! sigh...). The story continues, and will be completed.