Hermione surveyed her first year class, the Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws who had so far given her more trouble than most other classes combined. "You won't need your cauldrons today. Take out your text books and turn to page thirty five — Mr Aitkins, where's Miss Wilkins?"

"She forgot her books," he said, with a guileless stare that made Hermione instantly suspicious. "She had to go back for them."

Hermione was tempted to take five points from Hufflepuff for lying, and another five for lying badly. And if I was any good as a Legilimens I'd be tempted to prove my suspicions right. "Well, you can catch her up when she gets here. As I was saying, this class is about the theory behind a common potion, the Solution to Hiccoughs — not to be confusion with Hiccoughing Solution, which causes hiccoughs rather than curing them." She paused to let them write that down. "Now, in your books is one recipe, and here on the board —" She rapped it with her wand and the blank blackboard was suddenly filled with writing. "You'll see a slightly different recipe. Your task for today is —"

A scream split the air, high, terrified — a child's scream, somewhere close.

"Stay here!" Hermione ordered, her wand slipping into her hand without conscious thought as she ran for the door. "Shut the door behind me, and stay here!"

Another wail of fear, from the left — Hermione ran that way, spared a glance behind her as she rounded the corner and saw the Potions classroom door open, a dozen wide-eyed students peering around the jamb. A wave of her wand slammed it in their faces and Hermione pelted onward.

There. Maisie Wilkins, her bag forgotten by her feet, staring up at the billowing, smoky shape of the Morsmordre hanging in the corridor before her, the snake coiling sinuously through the skull.

Hermione's blood ran cold. But they're all in Azkaban. Harry was so sure …

Which means he's wrong about Snape's curse …

There wasn't time to think about it. She darted forward and seized Maisie by the arm, hauling the girl behind her and then backing them both to the wall. First rule of fighting Death Eaters. Don't let them get behind you.

"Did you see who?" she asked, sparing one glance away from the Dark Mark to look down at Masie.

Maisie was white to the lips, her eyes huge. She shook her head silently.

"You're safe now," Hermione said, trying to sound like Molly Weasley, like Dumbledore, like any of the adults who had given her the illusion of security when she'd needed it most, at Maisie's age. "I'm here."

She looked up again —

The Morsmordre was gone. It was gone, and instead, Severus Snape lay sprawled on the stone flags. He was dressed as for teaching, all in black, his flowing robe a huddle of cloth around his motionless form. In all that black, his face was corpse-white. Above the linen at his neck, Hermione could see the grey of the killing curse, escaped from its confinement, creeping upwards.

He opened his eyes, jet black in a thin face gone carved ivory with pain. One hand moved slightly, as if he wanted to reach out but couldn't summon the strength. "Look … at … me …"

"No!" The scream was torn from her, not a sound of her own making but a force rising within her that she was powerless to resist, a desperate, useless denial of the evidence of her own eyes. It climbed inexorably from her chest to her throat and poured from her in an agonised wail that seemed to have no end.

A familiar form leapt in front of her, his back to her and his arms flung wide.

"Here!" Severus Snape shouted, the voice that could silence a classroom at little more than a murmur raised in a baritone boom that seemed to set the stones of the dungeon walls vibrating. He wore only shirt and trousers, his feet bare, and he seemed completely unaware that the unbuttoned cuffs of his shirt left the grey flesh on his left forearm completely visible.

The dead Snape on the floor began to shift and twist.

It's a Boggart, it's a Boggart, it's a Boggart … Hermione managed to regain enough control over her body to turn and pull Maisie Wilkins into her arms, holding her tightly, as if to shield her from the Boggart but in fact so that she would be unable to see anything but the black robe her face was pressed to.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw the Boggart finish changing, saw a woman's foot sprawled on the flagstones. It moved slightly, and there was a choking whimper, a sound of desperate pain. Of course. His Boggart must be Lily Potter. Dying Lily Potter.

"Riddikulus," Snape said, almost lazily, and the foot was no longer flesh-and-blood but the foot of a floppy rag doll. "Granger?"

"Alright," she said tightly, although she was a million miles from alright. Her hands and feet seemed to be a very long way away from the rest of her and only minimally answerable to her instructions, and heat and chill chased each other through her nerves. "You'd better go —" Footsteps were pounding towards them, the nearest members of staff responding to the alarm.

He touched her shoulder for just an instant, so lightly she couldn't swear it was more than her imagination, and then was gone, his bare feet soundless on the stone floor.

"Who was that?" Maisie asked, muffled by a mouthful of Hermione's teaching robe. Hermione realised she was holding the girl's shoulders in a death-grip and forced herself to loosen her fingers a little.

"My — teaching assistant. The one who marks your essays, sometimes."

Harry hurtled out of the stairway, hair even more every-which-way than usual, wand at the ready, Professor Flitwick a few steps behind him.

"Boggart," Hermione said. She risked a glance around, and saw nothing. "Gone, but I don't think banished."

Harry's eyebrows went up. "Right in the middle of the corridor?"

Hermione nodded. Her throat felt hot and sore, and she was horribly aware that if she let go of Maisie's shoulders her hands would start trembling uncontrollably.

Harry gave her one of his uncomfortably keen stares. "Take care of Miss Wilkins. Filius and I will sort the buggering Boggart."

Students being what they were, a teacher swearing got a snorting giggle from Maisie Wilkins. "Professor Potter!"

Exactly why he did it, of course. Just as laughter was the way to banish a Boggart, laughter was the best cure for the bone-chilling dread they could induce.

"Back to class," Hermione said to Maisie, wondering if her voice sounded as strange to the others as it did in her own ears, far away and oddly distorted as if she was hearing herself from underwater. She pushed an unresisting Maisie along the corridor and opened the classroom door manually, not trusting her wand control. "It was a Boggart," she told her staring students. "Frightening, but harmless. Ask Professors Potter and Weasley what they are in your Defence Against the Dark Arts. Back to work, now."

They stared at her, unmoving, as she made her way to the front of the class room and sank into her chair.

"Professor …" someone said. "Are you …?"

"If you expect to see the instructions for this lesson written on my forehead, Miss Simpkins, you will be sadly disappointed!" Hermione snapped.

Gazes snapped back to books. Released from the scrutiny, Hermione concentrated on breathing deeply until the tremor in her hands subsided and her limbs began to feel rather more as if they belonged to her.

I should have realised straight away it was a Boggart. But then, she knew what her Boggart was, or she'd thought she did: the fear of failure. It should have been the Headmistress sacking her for being the worst teacher of Potions in the history of Hogwarts. Of course, you idiot. You should have realised that Severus Snape dying of the curse is what represents failure to you right now, not marks or academic achievement.

She tried not to think about the fact that Snape had undoubtedly seen the form her Boggart had taken, and that he unquestionably had a keen enough intellect to understand what it had meant.

The classroom door opened and every head in the room turned. Harry stood framed in the doorway. "Just wanted to let you all know, the Boggart's gone," he said cheerfully. "It got impossibly confused between turning into a spider for Professor Weasley and turning into an out-of-tune soprano for Professor Flitwick and ended up as a sort of arachnid opera singer, which finished it off." He looked around the room. "You alright there, Wilkins?"

"Yes, sir," Maisie said, exactly as if she hadn't been screaming her heart out in the corridor half-an-hour earlier.

"That's the spirit! We'll be doing Boggarts in this week's D.A.D.A class, so you can all save your questions until then."

With one more keen look at Hermione, he was gone.

Somehow, Hermione got through the rest of the day. She knew, intellectually, that the cold lump that had taken up residence in the pit of her stomach was the aftereffect of the Boggart, but try as she might, she couldn't come up with any funny variation on the mental image of Severus Snape, dying at her feet.

Dying at her feet, again.

Look … at … me …

This is ridiculous! You faced Voldemort! How can you get yourself in such a state over a Boggart, for Circe's sweet sake!

She dismissed her final class fifteen minutes early, told the three students with detentions that they could go, and locked herself in her office. Something funny … think of something funny …

She'd had trouble with Boggarts as a student, had outright failed dealing with one in her D.A.D.A. exam in their third year, but that had been nine years ago. She was an adult now, she'd fought Death Eaters, she couldn't be in such a state over a silly Boggart, for the love of Merlin! Think of something funny, that was the trick, turn the mental image into —

A knock on her office door interrupted the train of thought circling uselessly around her head. With a flick of her wand she shot back the bolt and opened the door.

There was no-one there, which meant Hermione was unsurprised when the door closed and bolted itself of its own accord. "Professor Snape," she said.

He removed the Invisibility Cloak. Beneath it, he was once dressed formally in unrelieved black, buttoned up to the chin.

"Thank you for your assistance, earlier," Hermione said. "I don't think that Maisie saw you well enough to recognise you."

He leaned against the door, studying her. The corners of his mouth turned down, as if he didn't like what he saw. "What did you tell her?"

"That you were my teaching assistant, the one who occasionally marks essays."

"And when they ask why they never see me in the classroom?"

Hermione threw up her hands. "I don't know! I had to say something, didn't I? Or should I have said I had no idea, but not to worry, strange wizards wandering the school corridors is a perfectly normal occurrence and nothing to be alarmed at?" Hearing her own voice sharp and shrill, she blew out a breath and rubbed her hands over her face. "I'm sorry. I'm still —"

Snape inclined his head a little. "The Boggart."

She nodded. "I've always had trouble with them. Even as a student, everyone else got the hang of Riddikulus in no time, but not me." She bit her lip. "This time … I've always feared failure. At school my Boggart was McGonagall telling me I'd failed every subject. I ran screaming, even though I knew it was a Boggart because it was part of the exam. So that's why …" Look … at … me … She shivered at the memory.

"I suppose it was too much to ask to expect you to do the sensible thing, and take yourself off to Potter and Weasley," Snape said sourly. "Although given your Boggart is failure, it was, perhaps, inevitable that you wouldn't."

Hermione blinked at him. "What?"

He stalked towards her. "Wouldn't admit to your friends that you were overcome by a creature most teenagers can banish." With a quick, neat movement he produced a flask from somewhere within his coat. "Instead you shut yourself away and risk creating another."

Hermione frowned. "What's that?"

"Gigglewater," Snape said.

Hermione shook her head. "It won't work. Artificial mirth doesn't have the same —"

Snape, his face set in his best about-to-eviscerate-a-student expression, cut her off. "It's for me."

As she gaped at him, he tossed it back. "Is this a secret vice?" Hermione asked, finding her voice. "Because I have to say, you don't seem the —"

A deep, rich chuckle cut her off. Severus Snape, the man whose smile usually meant that something unpleasant was about to happen to somebody else, was laughing. Not, as Hermione would have imagined if the idea had ever crossed her mind, a sinister cackle straight out of the evil mastermind handbook, but the warm sound of a man who'd just heard a truly amusing joke. It changed his whole face, the lines of strain and angular planes rearranged by good humour, his dark eyes lit with merriment.

It was both the most preposterous and the most glorious thing Hermione had ever seen, and she found herself smiling, and then laughing with him — half at the absurdity of Professor Snape on a Gigglewater high and half out of the sheer joy of seeing the sourest, gloomiest teacher in Hogwarts looking, for once, as if 'happiness' was more than an entry in a dictionary.

"Thank Merlin," Snape said, at his absolute driest, as the Gigglewater wore off. "If I'd had to take a second shot I would have found the temptation to Obliviate you afterwards well nigh irresistible."

The mental image of Severus Snape downing shot after shot of Gigglewater was impossible, and Hermione began to laugh in earnest. "I'm sorry," she gasped, trying to get a grip on herself. She took a deep breath and managed to regain some composure. "I'm sorry, that's just —"

"So glad you find me amusing, Professor Granger," Snape said with exaggerated menace, and reduced her to giggles once more. Just when it seemed she might be able to pull herself together, Snape raised one eyebrow and she was gone again.

By the time he'd stopped provoking her to further hilarity, her sides hurt and her cheeks ached. She leaned back in her chair, feeling rather like a limp rag.

"Better?" Snape asked quietly, no trace of mockery in his tone.

Hermione nodded. "Much. Thank you."

He turned aside her gratitude with the slightest of shrugs. "Boggarts are among the weakest amortals but they are still creatures of the dark, and not to be underestimated."

"Why do I have such trouble with them?" She waited, and when he didn't speak, sat up a little. "Not rhetorical, Professor Snape. You taught Defence Against the Dark Arts. What would your answer be, if I asked you as a student?"

Snape gave a minute shake of his head. "You are not my student."

"As a colleague, then."

He was silent so long that Hermione began to think he didn't mean to answer at all. "The exaggerated terrors of childhood are easy to turn to absurdity." His voice was no more than a murmur. "For those of us whose fears are rooted in reality, the task is somewhat harder."

Hermione leaned forward, propping her elbow on her desk and her chin on her hand. "The way Harry was much more affected by the Dementors than anyone else, when they were looking for Sirius?"

Snape nodded slightly. "Similar."

"So how were you able to send it away?" He raised an eyebrow, and Hermione smiled. "You said 'those of us'."

"A well disciplined mind," Snape said. He rose from his chair, twitching the skirts of his coat into perfect order. "A resource you would be advised to cultivate, Professor Granger, and not just to improve your Occlumency."

He was clearly preparing to take his leave, and Hermione found she didn't want him to go, not yet. "How is your arm today?"

He touched the place the curse had struck. "No worse."

"That's good, isn't it?" Hermione said. "That means it's not strictly progressive, more remitting-relapsing."

Snape frowned, but Hermione had the feeling it was a frown of concentration and not irritation. "That would be unusual."

"So what does that tell us about the witch or wizard casting it?"

"Perhaps that their power has ebbs and peaks."

"Is that possible?"

"Very rare."

"Or he or she renewed the curse, over the last few days," Hermione said. "Which means they still have access to someone with the Dark Mark."

"Why now?" Snape said thoughtfully. "He or she must have known almost immediately that the curse had, at least for the moment, failed. Why wait nearly three months to strengthen it? And why no further efforts, today?"

"Lack of access," Hermione said promptly. "They were on vacation, perhaps. Or … there's some variation in the guard rosters at Azkaban that means they can't get regular access to whichever Death Eater they've chosen to use." She pulled a parchment toward her and began to make notes. "That will help Harry."

"Is he …" Snape paused. In another man, it might have been a hesitation. "Any further forward?"

"I don't know," Hermione said. "I haven't had the chance to ask him today." She finished writing and looked up at him. "He's probably up in the Room of Requirement right now, working on it. You could go and ask ... "

Snape's lip curled. "I have other business to attend to." With a deft flick, he settled the Invisibility Cloak around himself and disappeared from view.

Oh, sure. 'Other business', when the number of people who know you're alive can be counted on two hands. Snape just didn't want to admit he needed help, let alone help from Harry Potter.

Or else he had so little faith in her abilities that he was replicating the task he'd set her, to analyse the alchemical effects of her changes to the potion.

"Suit yourself," Hermione said to the apparently-empty air, and pulled her notes towards her. Just let him try and find something wrong with my work.

She'd quite enjoy forcing him to admit he was wrong.

.

.

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Author's Note: The Solution to Hiccoughs is my own invention, not canon, as is the idea that Boggarts leave a lingering effect.