A/N 1: Bolded words indicate lines borrowed from canon.
Chapter 41
Hermione made her way up to the seventh floor alongside her painted escort. The previous headmasters and headmistresses formed a sort of relay, overlapping their transfers of Hermione, and reporting back along the line to ensure that the way was clear. They did have to reroute her on the fifth floor, where Filch was cleaning up a mountain of cat litter Peeves had procured from somewhere. At the sixth floor, Phineas took over from Dilys for the final stretch.
"So?" he demanded as soon as they were alone in the corridor.
Hermione glanced sideways at him, and was mildly annoyed to see that he'd stopped walking and now regarded her beadily from a still life painting. She raised her eyebrows and approached the little man.
"Yes, Professor Black?"
"How is he?"
Hermione frowned.
"Why don't you ask Severus that yourself?"
Phineas's dark eyes sharpened at once, and he came forward eagerly into the painting's foreground to peer at her.
"And since when do you call our distinguished Headmaster by his forename?"
Hermione sighed, her patience – always a little thin with Phineas – wearing through.
"What are you really asking me?"
The snide little man grinned smugly.
"Oh, nothing you'll actually answer, to be sure."
"On that farcical note, can we please get on with it?"
"Naturally. Far be it from me to expect you to spare a moment for my farcical concerns, what with all of the aid I've offered you and your cause this year."
Hermione raised her eyebrows at him, feeling the corners of her mouth twitching as she suppressed a smile.
"You have been incredibly helpful, Professor Black, and I'll never, ever be able to truly thank you for everything you've done. You are absolutely the best ally we could ever have hoped for and I cannot even begin to –"
"Ugh, that will do!" The sharp little man turned away pointedly in disgust and resumed walking through the next painting. "I'll bring you to Headquarters. Anything to stop such a revoltingly Gryffindor-ish attempt at flattery and evasion. 'I'll never be able to truly thank you,'" he mimicked in a high-pitched voice, as they approached the Room of Requirement, "honestly. I'd have better luck and a sight less nausea if I applied directly to Severus himself."
"You do that," Hermione answered as the door to the Room materialised before them, "let me know when you get back from Grimmauld Place, won't you? I'll miss you when Severus banishes you from Hogwarts for intrusiveness and insolence."
"Oh, please," Phineas answered, raising his chin in supreme disdain, "our adroit Headmaster would never dream of it."
"Of course," she replied and, smiling at the little man's determined look of insouciance, Hermione stepped into the Room, where Neville and the fourth years awaited her.
The lesson took more energy than Hermione had anticipated, and she ushered the fourth years out of Headquarters with ill-concealed relief. When the last of them were paired off and on their way, she turned to Neville, who looked a little worse for wear.
"That went well," she offered, smiling.
"Yes, they're quite the energetic bunch, aren't they?" He stifled a yawn before fixing her with a frank stare. "How was your meeting with Snape?"
Hermione had squashed her surprise away before she realized: Of course, they were tracking me on the Map.
"There have been some interesting developments." She relayed the information on the Caterwauling Charm in Hogsmeade. "So we'll have a nice window every morning and evening when one of the Carrows is away from the castle. We should use it to our advantage."
"Absolutely!" Neville cried. "We'll be able to access their offices daily now that the Slytherins are giving us the passwords, which means that we can roll out the next phase of Carrow Neutralization."
Hermione couldn't help laughing at his enthusiasm.
"Exactly. Just remember – build up slowly with the Confusing Concoctions. A few drops in their teapots and cups to start with."
"Yup! And when they cotton on to that – it'll take at least a few weeks, mind – we'll move on to enchanting their sheets to cause insomnia. By that time we'll hopefully have the House-elves on board to put laxatives in their food again. Oh, Hermione, this is going to be fun."
"It will be. But, again, subtlety is key." She felt her smile sliding away. "Speaking of subtlety, I talked to Malfoy. He's not pleased at the change, but I think he'll come round. Just…" she took a deep breath, "try to give him the benefit of the doubt. He's made a real turnaround, especially with his reporting to me about Harry and Ron's capture. And now the Slytherins are providing us with a lot of our best intelligence."
"Of course," Neville said at once. "Honestly, Hermione, I think it will be good for me to meet with him one-on-one. I don't like the git, but it's not like we don't have some things in common." He shrugged. "Distant relatives, for example. You'd be surprised at how much that means to old wizarding families."
"Yes!" Hermione couldn't believe she'd overlooked something so obvious. "I forgot that you're both Pure-bloods."
"It's not something I usually put any pressure on," Neville answered, "but I have a feeling I'll be able to set Malfoy at his ease at least a bit."
"I agree – he's so used to that mindset that it will be comfortable for him."
"And," Neville hesitated, "what about Snape? Will I take over liaising with him, too?"
Hermione gave it a long moment of thought before she answered.
"I doubt you'll cross paths with him, Neville. He's away nearly all the time now."
"I'll be giving him the benefit of the doubt too, in any case."
Hermione felt her smile right down to her toes, and she gave Neville a hug and a kiss on the cheek before retiring to her room for the night.
It was over an hour later, and Hermione was still wide awake in her bed, staring at the ceiling, her mind in overdrive. She replayed her time with Snape that evening on a loop, and she came back to the same conclusion again and again: it had been unacceptably, horribly abbreviated. After all of those Friday evenings together, all of those hours spent head-to-head (and mind-to-mind)… seeing him for less than an hour after so much time apart was intolerable.
She glanced at the Muggle alarm clock beside her bed – just before midnight. She had only slept in his room that one time, but it had been the best rest she'd gotten over the past weeks. Besides, it had been like being with him. As her mind dwelled on the dark man, Hermione couldn't help but wonder if he had, indeed, been summoned back to Voldemort's side already.
She sat up quickly, throwing off the blankets and swinging her legs out of bed. She hesitated before the Mahogany door, thinking of the Map, where it was tacked up in the brain chain. Ideally, she would check it to see if Severus were still there, but she would have to cross Headquarters, which was now crowded with a dozen or so hammocks and their attendant sleeping students. At least the brain chain is locked down at night, she thought to herself, wondering how in the world she would explain away her presence in Snape's rooms this late at night.
Taking a deep breath and bracing herself for disappointment – surely he's been summoned again by now – Hermione opened the door to Severus's rooms… and almost walked into the man himself. His face broke into a small, surprised smile, which she returned.
"You're still here!"
"Obviously."
"I was about to come check."
"And I was about to knock."
Hermione felt almost giddy to see him again so soon – here, with his white shirt untucked, his hair pulled back, and pale bare feet poking out from beneath what turned out to be a pair of black Muggle track pants. She felt her smile falter when her excitement caught up with what he'd said.
"You were about to knock – is everything all right?"
"As all right as it ever is. I needed to ask you a question."
She disregarded the immediate curiosity this raised.
"I thought you would be summoned any second."
"I will be, but for the time being the Dark Lord seems content without his newest lieutenant." He reached into the pocket of his track pants and drew out several strands of light brown, crinkly hair. "I found these in my bed just now. Do you have any idea of what presumptuous creature might have left them there?"
Not even her powerful Occlumency could stop the furious blush that flooded Hermione's cheeks when she recognised her own hair. The dark man chuckled softly, and she felt the blush recede at the warmth in his voice, matched by the heat kindling in his eyes.
"I couldn't sleep one night last week," she said quietly, "and… I missed you. So I came in here, and I just meant to sit down for a minute, but it was so comfortable and… I just kind of drifted off." She cut herself off, giving him an apologetic smile. "Sorry for breaking into your rooms again."
"Hermione," he stepped forward onto the threshold, tilting his head downwards to hold her eyes with his, "you are welcome in my rooms anytime."
"Am I really? Right, then," she stepped smartly around Snape and into his sitting room. She heard him chuckling again behind her as he closed the mahogany door. Hermione sat herself down on the comfortable, squashy sofa. "Just try to get rid of me now."
"I have great need of you just now, in fact," Severus said, approaching her slowly, looking more serious. "After everything we have been through this school year, you and I…" he trailed off, looking uncharacteristically uncertain. He took a deep breath before continuing, "In the end, you have given me precisely the knowledge I was disallowed." He sat down next to her, making the couch sag a little. "I wish to return your generosity, Hermione." He tried to run a hand through his hair, but stopped quickly when he realised it was tied back. "More than that, I want you to know…" he trailed off once more, peering at her sideways in a reserved, almost shy way that had Hermione reaching out to him.
"Only if you want, Severus," she said, running her hand tentatively up his arm. "We're past the point where I need continual reassurances, or where I want to break into your mind."
"Which is why…" he hesitated for a moment before he shook her hand off gently. Withdrawing his wand from his sleeve, he placed it on the low coffee table in front of the couch. "Which is why I wish to invite you in."
He looked at her deliberately, shifting closer. Hermione watched as his eyes, blank a moment before, shone.
"But you could still be summoned, at any second! And…" she was unsure of why she was hesitating.
"And even so. I will delay, if need be, for this."
Still she hesitated, watching the dark man, who watched her deliberately in return. Finally, he rolled his eyes heavenward, a familiar expression of exasperation animating his features.
"Really, Granger, if you're going to be so squeamish about it." He let the memory of the first time he'd said those words echo back through time. His regard became challenging. "You know the incantation." He reached forward, his warm fingers wrapping around her hand. His voice lowered to a whisper, "I trust you, Hermione."
She had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep tears from springing to her eyes.
Shaking herself slightly, Hermione released Severus's hand, and drew her own wand. She pointed it and then hesitated once more until he gave her a small smile. Intrigued but frightened by what she was about to see, she muttered the spell.
Severus had clearly prepared for this moment. His Mind's Eye materialised around her quickly, the usual mist guiding her in a straight line over the damp grass towards a cluster of memory-pools. Hermione hesitated for a moment, sighing in contentment at simply being within his mind after such a long absence. She turned in a slow circle, enjoying the depth of the thought pools around her, the coolness of the space, the inevitable tinge of impatience that stained the air as she dallied. After disregarding that impatience for a long, perfect moment, Hermione obediently followed the mist to the first pool, and, taking a deep breath, plunged in.
It took her a second to orient herself within the memory. She was somewhere warm, sunny, and desolate: a deserted, run-down playground surrounded by greying, ramshackle houses. Recognition sparked within Hermione as she looked around: Cokeworth. A shrieking voice caught her attention –
"Lily, don't do it!"
Lily.
Hermione stepped towards the two figures on the swings. As she approached, the smaller of the two let out a triumphant laugh and sailed out of the swing and into the air, flying before landing near where Hermione had stopped to watch. The girl was unfamiliar, except for something around the eyes. Hermione's stomach clenched. Lily… Harry's mother.
The two girls bickered for a moment before Lily walked to a bush, picked a flower, and showed it to her sister. Hermione gasped when she saw how the petals opened and closed in a gentle rhythm she recognised.
It's the same spell I used on the flowers at Christmas. No wonder it surprised him.
The girls began bickering again, but this time they were interrupted by an ill-dressed, dirty-haired boy Hermione recognised instantly as Severus. She could feel strong echoes of the young boy's feelings for the girl as the scene unfolded: his desire to befriend her, his longing to be near her, and a spark of something even deeper.
The next memory was similar, but with Severus and Lily on their own. Hermione listened as he regaled the young, unsure witch about Hogwarts and the wizarding world. The more they spoke, the more she realised that they knew one another, well enough for Lily to ask pointedly after Snape's family. They grew up together, she realised, and the knowledge would have sent her mind into overdrive, had the scene not re-formed once more, diverting her attention.
Hermione watched Snape and Lily settle in for their first journey on the Hogwarts Express. They met an aggressive boy with messy black hair – Harry's father! – and argued over houses. She watched as the two friends were sorted into separate houses, felt the young Severus's despair at losing his friend to Gryffindor, and to James. She watched their star-crossed friendship unfold, following all the while as Severus's feelings redoubled, as the spark Hermione had sensed earlier ignited and rose into a blaze that suffused each scene. Jealousy tainted the memories as Lily and Severus grew older, as their attachment became more complicated, as his hatred for Harry's father deepened.
The last scenes of Severus's time with Lily were almost more than she could bear; to see the horrific bullying he suffered at the hands of James and Sirius, to witness the dissolution of his friendship with Lily, and to feel Severus's pain throughout...
Thankfully, the series of memories seemed to pause at that point, the scene dissolving for longer than usual, giving Hermione a moment of respite within Snape's Mind's Eye. Taking a deep, bracing breath, she followed the mist once again, and dove into the next pool.
This time, Snape was older, his feelings more urgent, and his desperation so strong that Hermione could taste it, ashes in her mouth, as she watched him bargaining for Lily's life. She felt his all-encompassing, almost physical pain after Lily died, when Severus was brought into Dumbledore's service in the protection of Harry Potter. She felt his pain transmute into hatred when Harry appeared in the memory sequence, a boy of eleven, the spitting image of his father. She watched as her own years at Hogwarts unfolded from Snape's perspective, and felt the depth of his feelings at every turn of the story: his foreboding at Voldemort's return and Karkaroff's disappearance; his despair at being capable only of stoppering rather than reversing Dumbledore's deadly injury; his panicky disbelief at Dumbledore's subsequent demand that Snape himself kill him; his doubt, frustration, and rage at Dumbledore's absolute refusal to confide in him about the Horcruxes; his ongoing, painful love for Lily; his incandescent fury and disappointment at Dumbledore when the latter revealed that Harry would have to die – a sacrifice – in order to rid the world of Voldemort.
The memory sequence dissolved once more, and Hermione again took a long moment to breathe. Those last scenes had been especially difficult to endure, particularly the memories involving Harry, where Dumbledore had only half-confided in Severus. It was the other half of a puzzle Hermione had been utterly unaware of, but the old wizard's words concerning Harry and Voldemort's souls echoed within her now.
"In the case of Harry and Lord Voldemort, to speak of one is to speak of the other."
Her mind raced to put the puzzle together, and the resultant image was one that sent horror spiralling through her.
Harry is a Horcrux… HE must be the final Horcrux to die, not the snake… Oh God, oh no, no, nonono…
A sudden warmth on her cheek from without, from where her body still sat calmly on the squashy couch in Snape's sitting room. Severus used gentle fingers to wipe away tears she hadn't realised she'd been crying. The touch, as it always had, brought his dusky magic within her reach, and Hermione embraced it just as their psychic connection deepened exponentially. They sat together for a moment, his hands cupping her cheeks, before Severus led her to another pool of memories.
She shook her head.
I CAN'T – I can't do this anymore! Harry, and Lily, and… It's too much.
She pulled back abruptly, reeling as she withdrew from Severus's mind.
"Not Harry," she whispered in horror. "God, Severus… not Harry…" she peered at him in the dim sitting room. He watched her carefully, concern etched in the lines between his eyes and around his mouth. "How could Dumbledore…?"
"I've told you before, Hermione," the dark man murmured. "Action does not reflect allegiance…though Harry Potter's actions will, in the end."
"But that's unacceptable!" she said hotly, batting his hands away from her face. "You, of anyone, should have refused to move forward after finding out –"
"I agree with you completely," Severus said, speaking over her, and shocking her into silence. He regarded her for a moment, silently confirming that she would allow him to speak his part before he went on, "And I, you will have noticed, have not moved forward as Dumbledore wished. Not since the day he told me his intention was to sacrifice Potter." He swept a hand at her. "Hence your presence here."
Hermione flinched as her Mind's Eye surged over the information, wringing every possible meaning out of Severus's words.
"Careful," he said, drawing close and cupping her cheek once more in his long-fingered hand. She felt his magic flooding her, filling her with dark, invigorating energy. "You're using Occlumency to rapidly process complex, difficult feelings." His lips curved up into a minute smile. "Always a dangerous endeavour."
"You do it all the time," Hermione retorted.
"Therefore I know the cost."
His hand moved, his fingers running through her hair. Hermione leaned into his touch, quiet for a long moment, trying to calm herself.
"There has to be…" she couldn't let it go, "there must be some way to keep Harry from having to… to… I don't accept this! This can't be the end game of Dumbledore's plan!"
Severus drew back again, taking a deep breath before speaking.
"Hermione," he said slowly, carefully, "you and I were never intended to share the same information. We were never meant to know of the plan beyond our specific roles within it. I agree with you. This cannot be the entire plan as it flies in the face of everything the old man stood for. Now that we have exchanged information, I believe that we might use what we know to extract the last piece of the puzzle from the one remnant of Dumbledore I have not sought to destroy during my numerous demolitions of his office."
Hope bloomed in her chest, and Hermione was relieved to see the emotion mirrored in Severus's eyes.
"From his portrait?"
"Yes. I think that you are better equipped than I to deal with him, especially now."
"And you think there's something he might have concealed from both of us, something that might save Harry?"
The dark man's face broke into such a genuine smile that Hermione could abruptly see the young, earnest Severus whom Lily had known shining through.
"I am almost certain of it. I will leave you to deal with the old man in due course, and to confirm that Harry Potter will not be sacrificed – this is a certainty I have come to thanks to the information you gave me this evening. You will confirm it for us both." Severus shifted so that he was close to her once more. "For now, however," he took each of her hands in his own, and met her eyes firmly, "I have more memories to show you."
Hermione looked into his eyes, dread and curiosity filling her in equal measure.
"I don't think I can, Severus. I… you've given me so much to process already, and I…"
The dark man leaned forward and surprised her by pressing his mouth to hers in a firm but gentle kiss. She took comfort from it – from the warm hands that buried themselves in her hair, from the way his hooked nose pressed into her cheek, from the scent of woodsmoke that surrounded her. When he pulled back, Hermione leaned forward, seeking more, letting out a murmur of frustration when Severus moved a careful distance away from her on the couch.
"There can be more of that," he said, eyes a-glimmer, "after you've seen the rest of the memories I have prepared."
"I'll hold you to that," she answered, raising her wand once more.
"Here," he took one of her hands in his, "this will help, I think."
Hermione took a deep breath, squeezing his hand and centering herself carefully for a moment before saying the incantation.
Within Severus's cool Mind's Eye once again, Hermione followed another stream of mist and, after a long moment's hesitation, dived into the memory. The scene coalesced around her darkly as she spun in a slow circle. Now that she and Severus had deepened the psychic link through touch, her presence within his memory felt entirely corporeal, and the emotions he'd felt at the time became fully her own. She felt just one thing, which totally overwhelmed her: guilt.
Hermione stood next to memory-Severus in front of her own home. As she watched, almost choking on the guilt consuming the outwardly calm Snape, he raised his wand and muttered, "Homenum revelio." The spell went through the locked door, and Hermione knew that his magic flew up the stairs and into her own bedroom to wake her with the odd feeling of something swooping over her.
Hermione watched the scene unfold from Severus's perspective, feeling the nearly overwhelming remorse he'd experienced the entire time he'd made his first proposal to her. The feeling persisted through the next several memories, which Severus presented to her rapidly as the story of their relationship coalesced, as the remorse receded slightly to be succeeded first by curiosity, then by grudging respect, and, ever-so-slowly, by attachment.
The next memory he had her watch in full was the one where she hugged him before he'd taken her to be with her parents over Christmas. Hermione gasped as the singular emotion permeating the scene hit her: sudden, intense, and utterly surprising ardour. The scene reformed, and Hermione watched herself give the dark man a flower, which opened and closed within his palm, and precisely the same overwhelming, complex feeling arose from Severus once more. That emotion coloured the next several memories, while memory-Snape attempted and failed to re-establish the previous neutrality he'd espoused toward her. At last, as his undeniable feelings for her deepened, as he became less and less capable of containing his longing, there came a breaking point, which Severus showed Hermione in full.
Memory-Hermione was lying prone on the transfigured couch in the Headmaster's office, a number of potion vials dotting the floor around her, dark circles beneath her eyes, her body occasionally still shuddering from the after-effects of the Cruciatus Curse. Severus knelt at her side, holding one of her hands, head bowed, shoulders shaking.
"Severus…" a familiar voice said, "ah, my boy…"
Memory-Snape looked up at the portrait that had spoken, his face utterly open, perfectly reflecting the desperation that saturated the scene. Snape rose after a moment and walked unsteadily to where the portrait of Dumbledore regarded him with benign concern.
"Don't you see, Dumbledore?" the dark man snarled. "Don't you see what your plans have cost us?"
"I knew there would be costs, of course, but it was not I who brought Miss Granger back to Hogwarts."
"And if I hadn't brought her here, what then? What would she be facing without me to protect her?"
"I do not know, Severus, but we must face the decisions we have both made calmly and rationally."
"I cannot abide this. It is too much. It is…" Severus trailed off, choking on a noxious, rising tide of regret.
"I know, my boy," Dumbledore answered gently, "I know."
"Perhaps we need to keep a closer watch on the girl," Phineas Nigellus, who had been watching the exchange with some concern, put in. "Monitoring her movements in the halls is clearly not enough if she's to be attacked in class."
Severus rounded on the little man.
"And how precisely would I intervene even if I knew when to do so?"
"You would not intervene," Dumbledore asserted. "It is imperative that you keep your head, Severus, now more than ever."
Snape seized a bottle from his desk and threw it – hard – against a wall, where it exploded in a spray of black ink. He snatched up a golden paperweight and sent it flying with a resounding crash before sweeping his arm across the desk. Quills and books and ink bottles crashed to the floor.
"You'll wake the girl," the portrait of a woman advised him quietly, "if you carry on throwing things, young man. Calm yourself."
"Would you be calm in such a situation, Dilys?" Snape snarled. "Would you be capable of standing by while… while…" his voice broke, and he had to take a breath before he could continue, "It's like her all over again…"
"Severus!" Hermione had never heard Dumbledore sound so cold. "You cannot mean that your feelings for Lily Evans – the very foundation of your motivations for decades – can be superseded by whatever it is you might feel for Miss Granger!"
Defiance now, defiance reinforced by an absolute refusal to accept what the elder wizard was prescribing. It rose up alongside a burst of outright, ineffable joy.
"Can I not?" Snape gritted out. The joy crested, his fingers trembled on his wand, and he roared the incantation: "Expecto Patronum!"
From the tip of his wand burst a silver otter, which twisted and gambolled playfully around the office for a long moment before flickering out. When Dumbledore turned once more to Severus, tears flowed down his cheeks into his silver beard.
The scene shifted, and Hermione was tugged once more through a rapid-fire series of recollections, culminating in that first pivotal kiss she initiated, and which she now knew ignited an absolute firestorm of passion and guilt within the dark man. He let her linger there for a moment before guiding her forward into more recent memories, and their attendant complex emotions. Overall, as Severus wound the memory sequence down, a sense of gentle apology wove through the visions, which Hermione knew came from the man himself, who still held onto her with now-trembling hands.
When the memories ended at last, Hermione pulled away from his Mind's Eye and sat with her eyes closed, breathing slowly, holding everything Severus had just given her deep within herself. The overall message, the nature of the confession, underscored in tragedy though it was, was one entirely undeniable feeling.
"I love y – " she started to whisper.
The dark man cut her off with a kiss, his hands shaking erratically as he pulled her close, almost onto his lap. His mouth covered her own, his tongue tracing the seam of her lips, and Hermione opened to him so that Severus could deepen the kiss. She wanted to lose herself in the kiss, in him, but she broke away only a moment later, a suspicion running through her. Gripping his shaking left hand, she pulled up his white sleeve to reveal his forearm. The Dark Mark had blackened angrily against his pale skin, lines of dark, vein-like tendrils pulsing around it. Judging from his shaking, it was causing him a great deal of pain.
"Severus!" she gasped. "How long has it been like that?"
He was much paler than usual, but his eyes were warmer than she'd ever seen them and... she gasped for a completely different reason. He was giving her a wide, delighted smile that transformed him utterly.
"It was worth it," he asserted, reaching for her again.
"You have to go." She tried to push him away, and failed when he grabbed her around the waist and attacked her neck with hot, nibbling kisses. Her voice grew breathless. "It will only get worse…" Severus ran his teeth along the pulse point on her neck. She pushed weakly at his shoulders. "And – oh, God – and he'll be livid if you delay much longer!"
"In for a penny," Severus muttered, his eyes flashing almost dangerously as he simultaneously dragged her onto his lap and silenced her with another plundering kiss. He was successful at distracting her for a long minute, but Hermione soon felt his entire body shake with his efforts to disobey the summons. She pulled back resolutely, planting her hands on his shoulders. She glared at the dark man, whose hands were now clasped firmly around her bottom, holding her in place on his lap.
"You have to go," she told him yet again.
He leaned in smoothly, eyes intent on her mouth. Hermione dodged the kiss – he'd succeeded far too long in diverting her. Sliding her hand down from his shoulder, she squeezed his left forearm. Severus gasped in pain, and she took advantage of his momentary distraction to slip off his lap before he could restrain her further. She took several long strides away.
"Come back here," Severus growled, clasping his forearm in pain, but getting to his feet nonetheless. "I'm not finished with you."
"Where are your things?" she asked, trying to ignore the delicious shivers his words sent down her back.
She turned away from him without waiting for an answer and flicked her wand experimentally towards his bedroom. She was pleased when a black frock coat and robes flew out, trailed by a pair of dragonhide boots.
"Here," she flicked her wand again so that the items flew quickly at Snape, who had no choice but to snatch them out of the air, or else be bludgeoned by his own boots.
"Insupportable, impertinent woman," he muttered mutinously, but he shrugged obediently into the coat and robes, hampered slightly by his shaking hands. "Irksome, imperious, and incorrigibly insufferable."
Hermione couldn't help but smile. Another flick of her wand, and she caught his Death Eater mask, which she handed to him.
"Trust you to alliterate at a time like this, Severus."
He snatched the mask from her and tucked it into an inner pocket before waving his wand to Transfigure the comfortable track pants into his usual plain black slacks.
"Well?" he demanded, holding his arms out and regarding her haughtily. "Do I pass muster?"
"No," she answered, grinning at his sudden scowl, "you look far too happy."
"I could be even happier…" his voice grew silken. He stepped towards her, his eyes wandering heatedly down her body.
"You could," she agreed, stepping back. "But that will have to wait."
Severus sighed, and Hermione watched as he visibly gathered himself, as his shoulders squared, his eyes grew cold, and his shaking stilled. He drew himself up and glared at her: Hermione beheld her Death Eater, and nodded her approval.
"To be continued," he intoned coolly, sweeping past her without another word.
A/N 2: I'm gonna level with you all. I will not be able to post every week or two until the end as I'd hoped. You know me, my dears. I'm a horrifically irksome, perfectionistic pain in the patella when it comes to posting before I'm ready. In other words, the editing of the final chapters has turned into rampant rewriting because I just cannot help myself. The rewrites are coming slowly as I'm also writing a lot of original fiction right now. Reviews might help me to get the rewrites out faster, however... :)
A/N 3: Thank you all so much for your continued support. These are very strange, difficult times, and I think of you lovely people often when checking in with my family overseas. Hugs to you all.