"I don't think it will work," Harry said. "I mean, no question Hermione's good enough at Obliviating to make sure she won't remember enough to tip off any accomplices, but I'm nowhere near the kind of Legilimens I'd need to be so as to be absolutely certain I'll understand what I see."

"I could brew some Veritaserum, but it will take a month," Hermione said. "And we can't know whether she'd be resistant, either."

"Harry, you're not thinking properly," Luna said patiently. "It doesn't matter whether you can use Legilimency at all, does it, because Professor Snape certainly can."

"If we got her address, we could Floo somewhere nearby," Harry said slowly. "Once I find a good Apparition spot, I could come back and take Professor Snape side-along."

Luna nodded. "He's got your cloak, after all. He can just walk to the gate."

"I don't know if he can use Legilimency without taking it off, though, when we get there," Harry said. "I shouldn't think so."

"I don't think he'd mind, would he? Since the whole point is that Patience Monkshod already knows he's alive," Luna said. "And it's not like she'll remember it, after."

Harry took out his map. "I solemnly swear I am up to no good," he said, and studied it. "Professor Snape is in his rooms. Awake, by the looks of it. I can ask him now. If he agrees, I'll hold off Flooing Kingsley until we try and get a name from Patience Monkshod."

"And if he doesn't?" Hermione asked.

"You know that I'll have to tell Kingsley everything," Harry said gently. "I'll ask him to keep it to himself, and I think he will if he can, but he might not be able to."

Hermione bit her lip. "Let me talk to him," she said.

Harry shook his head. "It should be me. After all, I'm going to be the one who's going to shop him to Kingsley if it comes to that."

Neville grinned at them both. "If you'd told me twelve years ago that one day the two of you would be arguing over the privilege of talking to Professor Snape, I would have said you were barking."

"We could both go," Hermione said. "It's just … he talks to me about my teaching, most days. He's almost civil. I think I'd have more chance of persuading him."

"Than the man who looks like James Potter?" Harry nodded. "Come on, then. It won't get easier if we put it off.

As they made their way down to the dungeons Harry glanced occasionally at the map to check whether or not Snape had left his quarters. Hermione was uncomfortably aware that he spent more time studying her, a slight frown wrinkling his forehead.

"What?" she snapped at last, as they passed the ground floor and kept on down the stairs.

"You're not making S— someone one of your causes, are you, Hermione?"

"That's a bit rich, since it looks like we all have, haven't we?"

"We all know what we owe him, and we all want to help him, but, Hermione, it's not like you to jump down my throat like that, or have a go at Ron the way you did."

"I'm sorry about that," Hermione said. "I'm just — not sleeping well." She made herself smile. "Too much marking."

"Is that all?" Harry's green eyes were bright with concern. "It's not … coming back here, or anything? Stirring things up?"

"I was here for a full year after you and Ron went to the Ministry," Hermione pointed out.

"Not a good year, though, was it?" Harry said.

Hermione shivered, although the corridor wasn't all that cold. She'd made more than a few Floo calls from the Gryffindor common room at three in the morning, chased from sleep by dreams of Look at me … Neither Harry nor Ron had ever commented, except a casual Can't you sleep either? but Hermione knew she would have found that first year after the war utterly unbearable without them to talk to. "I don't think it was Hogwarts itself that made it bad," she said. "I think it was bad for a lot of us, wherever we were."

"And now?" Harry asked.

Hermione rubbed her arm, feeling her scar tingle. "Now it's like, we have a second chance, a chance to fix something that went wrong. I know you keep saying that there wasn't anything we could do to help him, back then, but there is now, isn't there?"

"And we are."

"Not in the way he'd want, not if you go to Kingsley. He'll hate it." He'll hate me. Why it should matter to her so much, Severus Snape's opinion of her, Hermione wasn't sure. He gave every impression of hating me for six years of schooling, after all, and I didn't let it bother me.

"I won't, unless he forces me," Harry said. They were at the door to the old Potion Master's Quarters. He took out his wand and cast a quick Homenum Revelio. "Nobody nearby."

Her stomach twisting with something that was almost dread, Hermione knocked on Snape's door.

After a moment, the door opened, apparently by itself. Hermione exchanged a glance with Harry, and then, remembering the Invisibility Cloak, took a cautious step forward, hands a little outstretched in case Snape was in fact standing right there in concealment.

Her fingers met only empty air and she moved further along a short corridor. Harry followed, closing the door behind them.

"Professor Snape?" Hermione called, but quietly. A few more steps took her to another door. "It's me, Hermione. And Harry."

That door swung open soundlessly, spilling a dazzle of lamp-and-firelight across the threshold.

"I am not so far into my dotage as to be unable to identify who is at my door," Snape said from somewhere unseen in the room.

Hermione swallowed hard and stepped inside.

As her eyes adjusted to the light, she could see that the room was very similar to the one he'd inhabited during his sojourn in the Room of Requirement. Thick rugs covered the stone flags of the dungeon floor, and every possible space around the walls held a bookcase — there were even shelves crammed with books and scrolls above the doors. A fire crackled merrily on the hearth, and before it, Snape sat in the room's single armchair, long legs stretched out towards the flames.

"To what do I owe the pleasure?" Snape gave the last word a sarcastic twist.

"We, ah, that is —" Hermione stopped, and Harry elbowed her in the side. "We think we know why, and how, you're being, well. Cursed."

Snape didn't move, but something changed in his face, a sharpening of attention. "Oh? You've succeeded where the Ministry failed? Found the Death Eater they missed?"

Hermione shook her head. "Not exactly. It's pretty clear that there isn't one. That the curse must be being cast through the Dark Mark of someone we already know about."

The corners of his mouth turned down. "I told you, it isn't the Malfoys."

"And I believe you." Merlin's pants, I wish there were more chairs. It was absolutely typical of Snape, of course, that he wouldn't have bothered with furnishings for the guests he no doubt never had, but it left Hermione standing in front of him with her hands clasped, feeling far more like a schoolgirl addressing her Professor than she was comfortable with.

As if he'd read her mind, Harry said cheerfully, "Mind if I add a couple of chairs, sir? This is probably going to take more than a few minutes."

Snape inclined his head slightly. "Since I doubt I could stop you if I was so inclined, go ahead, Potter. As you always do."

"Thanks." Harry produced his wand and a moment later he and Hermione were sitting in chairs similar to Snape's own. "The thing is, if it isn't the Malfoys and it isn't someone unknown, it has to be one of the Death Eaters in Azkaban. None of them could cast the curse, not without help, but if someone with access to them was using them …"

One eyebrow lifted. "Are you telling me that one of the Ministry's Aurors is less than a paragon of virtue? I'm shocked, Potter, truly shocked."

"Well, I'm shocked," Harry said frankly. "And appalled, at the implications. The kind of feelings you'd need to wallow in, to do that —" A wave of his hand in the general direction of Snape's left arm. "That's pretty dangerous. And to be doing that, surrounded by Death Eaters, even if their magic is bound …"

"Do tell me more about the Dark Arts," Snape said silkily. "I prepare myself to be amazed by the breadth and depth of your no-doubt extensive knowledge."

Hermione winced. It was a bad idea to let Harry come at all. "Professor Snape —"

"Don't do that," Harry said, speaking over her to Snape. "I don't mind it, but you're upsetting Hermione."

Snape's dark gaze flicked to Hermione, and then away again. "Say what you've come to say, then," he told the flames in the fireplace. "Although I suspect Professor Granger's skin is thicker than you think." The slight emphasis he put on skin made Hermione instinctively put her hand over her scar.

"The point is, we think we have a good guess as to why someone from the Ministry might have started trying to do something like this," Harry said. "Professor Charity Burbage."

Snape went very still, his gaze still on the fire. For a moment he didn't speak, didn't move, didn't even seem to breathe. Finally, he looked back at Harry. "Is. Dead."

Hermione nodded. "I know. We know. But she had a sister, you see, and a nephew, and the nephew started at Hogwarts last year —"

"Matthew Monkshod, Slytherin House," Snape said evenly.

Hermione blinked "You knew?" she asked, and then, at Snape's slight nod, "Did you speak to him, too?"

"And why would I be so foolish?" Snape sneered at her.

"Because you and his aunt were friends," Hermione said. "Weren't you? You might have wanted —"

In a single sharp movement, Snape was on his feet and turning away from both of them to poke the fire. "Sentimentality has never been one of my vices."

Says the man who loved a dead woman for twenty years. "We think he found out about you, somehow. Perhaps he saw you in the dungeons, if he was out after hours, or something. And told his mother. And she —"

The fire was blazing, but Snape prodded it again with the poker. "Blames me for her sister's death. As she should."

"I've read the accounts by all three of the Malfoys about that night," Harry said. "There really wasn't anything you could have done."

"It explains why the curse started in July," Hermione said. "If it's about Professor Burbage. She died in —"

"I'm aware of when Charity Burbage died." Snape's voice was almost a growl.

"The thing is, if one of the Azkaban guards is doing it for her —" Harry feels he needs to tell the Ministry. No. That was cowardly. Un-Gryffindor. "Then the Ministry needs to know."

Snape swung around, looking down at them. His fingers flexed on the poker. "So much," he said, very low, "for Gryffindor promises."

"I didn't promise you anything," Harry said. "And it's my decision, if we can't find out who it is any other way."

With great deliberation, Snape placed the poker back in the rack. "You have uncovered me, against my wishes. You have pried and spied into my life, without my permission. And now you propose to expose me to the world and the tender mercies of the Ministry. Is it your ambition to make me bitterly regret each and every occasion on which I saved your life?"

"There's one other thing we could do," Hermione said. "But we can't do it without you. We could go and see Patience Monkshod, Professor Burbage's sister, and ask her —"

"No," Snape said.

"But you see, with Legilimency you could —"

"No!" It was close to a shout, and Hermione couldn't help drawing back a little as Snape leaned down towards her. "If Patience wants her revenge on me, she deserves to have it! The last thing she deserves is to have her privacy destroyed, her thoughts searched. I won't do it. Do you understand me? I — will — not."

"If you can think of a different way to find out if she's conspiring with an Auror, sir, I'm all ears," Harry said. "But at the moment, that's the only plan I've got that doesn't involve the Ministry. And you must know that if there's an Auror involved, I can't just leave it." He paused. "Even if I was going to let you die, which I'm not, not if I can help it."

"You may be the famous Harry Potter," Snape said bitterly, "but I think you'll find that neither death, nor I, are compelled by your command."

Harry stood up. "Look. I'll leave you to think it over. Twenty-four hours, and then, unless you'll help us get answers from Patience Monkshod, I'm Flooing Kingsley."

Hermione got to her feet as well. "I'm sorry, Professor," she said. "I know that — I understand how you feel."

"I doubt it," he said sourly, without looking at her.

She sighed, and turned to follow Harry back down the short corridor to the door that led to the main dungeon corridor. She was almost at the door when Snape spoke again.

"How is your arm?"

"It's fine." Hermione rubbed her scar automatically.

Snape frowned. "You're taking the potion?"

"Hermione?" Harry called from the corridor.

"Sec, Harry," Hermione called back, and to Snape, "Yes, I'm taking it, and it's helping."

"Show me."

Behind her, Hermione heard Harry coming back up the corridor. "Hermione?"

Hermione put her hand on her sleeve, holding it in place rather than pushing it up. "It's just my scar," she told Harry. "Professor Snape brewed a potion for it."

Harry frowned. "Your scar from —?"

Crucio! Hermione flinched, and nodded.

Harry's frown deepened. "I thought that was gone ages ago."

"It's — just — a — scar," Hermione said between gritted teeth. Harry reached for her sleeve and she jerked her arm away. "Leave it, Harry!"

"I think perhaps you should respect Professor Granger's wishes," Snape said. He and Harry exchanged a glance that Hermione couldn't read. "So long as she continues to take the potion, the matter is … not urgent."

"Good," Hermione snapped. "Thanks."

She turned on her heel, pushed past Harry, and stomped down the corridor.