"It's you. Severus, you're cursing yourself."

Snape stared at her, his hand still locked around her wrist. "If this is some game, Granger …" he said, low and dangerous.

"It isn't," she cried. Was it a mistake to tell him? But what if it happens again, and there's no-one here? The thought of Snape alone, shut up in his rooms, thoughts travelling down the same road of self-flagellation until the pain racked him beyond bearing made her eyes sting. "I promise. It's your curse, that's why Harry recognised it, he had your old potions book, remember? Your old spells?"

"I would know," he said coldly. "If it were the case, I would know."

"Would you, though?" Hermione asked. "If it was like those outbursts of magic that happen when people aren't trained? I never really had trouble with them, but I know Harry had a lot, and —"

"I am not an untutored child, Granger," he spat. "And if you had a firmer grasp on the principles of magic, you would know that those occurrences happen in response to a child's strong wishes and desires. Have I given you any indication that dying slowly and in great pain is one of mine?"

"You told me yourself you deserve this," Hermione said.

"A slip of the —"

"You? Speak incautiously?" She shook her head. "Have you ever uttered an accidental word?"

He finally released her wrist, thrusting her away from him. "I assure you, if I wished for death, painful or painless, I have a cornucopia of potions available that would more than serve the purpose. And I would not be so unutterably foolish as to allow you or any of your meddling friends within a mile of my person."

"Severus —" He glared at her, and Hermione paused. "Professor. Look at the evidence. Harry recognises the curse as one that resembles the spells you devised as a student —"

"That only proves his incompetence," Snape sneered.

"Harry is more than competent at his job and you know he is," she said firmly. "The curse is stronger or weaker depending on —"

"The access of the caster to —"

She had to raise her voice to speak over him. "Your emotional state. You went to see Patience Monkshod, and it got much worse. You spent time —" with me "— thinking and talking about teaching, and students, and things that had nothing to do with the War, and it got better, much better."

"Correlation is not causation."

"Today, did your arm start to hurt before you started ranting about what a terrible person you are, or after?" Hermione demanded.

"Before," Snape said coldly, but his gaze slid from hers.

"After, wasn't it?" Hermione said. "And what stopped it? When you used Occlumency to keep me out of your thoughts, and Professor, I might not be the most skilled Legilimens in magical Britain, but I can certainly recognise the trick you used. Clear your mind. Control your emotions. As clear as air, as still as ice."

"If you recall, I was writhing in agony at the time you chose to assault me. I defy you to do as well, in similar circumstances."

Hermione snorted. "I wouldn't, as you very well know. I was counting on you not being able to summon a more sophisticated defence. The only thing I could think of to stop you torturing yourself was —"

"Granger, this is becoming tedious." Despite his words, Snape sounded anything but bored: he sounded utterly furious. "As many and varied as my flaws are, sentimentality has never been one of them. And as you yourself observed, I have a well-developed sense of self-preservation. This preposterous theory of yours supposes the opposite."

"I don't think you're suicidal, if that's what you mean," Hermione said. "But there's a part of you that feels —"

"If you say 'guilty' I will forget every rule of collegiality and hex you black and blue," Snape warned, eyes glittering with anger.

"Remorse. Regret. Is that better?"

"No."

"If I'm wrong, prove it to me," Hermione said. "It doesn't hurt right now, your arm, does it? So tell me more about the War. Tell me the things you did. If I'm wrong, it'll make no difference. If I'm right, it'll stir up the curse — and you'll be able to stop it with simple Occlumency."

He pursed his lips, but, as she'd expected, he was unable to resist the temptation to show her she was wrong. "I hexed George Weasley's ear off."

Hermione shook her head. "Trying to save his life. Do better."

"I killed Albus Dumbledore."

"Because he made you do it."

"I betrayed information about the Order of the Phoenix." He gave her a sour look. "No pain, Granger."

"Because you were under orders to do that, as well. Come on, Professor. You can't prove anything if you're not really trying."

He glared at her. "Might it occur to you that there are things I don't want you to know? That I might desire some privacy about the worst moments of my life?"

She chose the next word carefully, coldly, remembering something Harry had told her. "Coward."

Snape erupted out of the chair. "Don't you dare call me a coward!" he hissed, advancing on her. "You have no idea, Granger, no idea what I did, what I faced — do you know what the Dark Lord would have done to me, if he'd discovered my betrayal? Believe me, it would have made the death he tried to give me merciful."

Harry was right about how he feels about that word. She didn't back away from him, although it took an effort of will. If I back away from him, if I let him see how much he frightens me when he's like this, it'll be over. He would see it, inevitably, as a retreat from who he was, rather than a very sensible back-down in the face of his towering fury. "You faced Voldemort, yes, but you won't face yourself."

"Face myself?" he sneered. "Is that from your Muggle friends? What do you, what do they, know about facing someone like me? What's the worst thing you've done, Granger, taken the last piece of shortbread from the plate? Pretended to be busy to avoid a long conversation with someone tedious? Indulged in a moment of self-doubt in the midst of saving the Wizarding world?" Snape was right in front of her now, close enough for her to feel his breath warm on her cheek as he stooped to snarl the words directly in her face. "I conspired at the murder of children, Granger, infants. I pledged myself to a monster on the promise of power for myself. I watched torture and thought nothing more than how it was relevant to my survival. I —" He stopped with a gasp, clutching his forearm, and then went on through gritted teeth. "I allowed people to die because it was inconvenient to save them. I —"

"Stop." Hermione put her hands on his shoulders, and then took his face between her hands. "Stop, Severus. As clear as air, as still as ice. Look at me. As clear as air, as still as ice." His gaze, glazed with pain and memory, found hers. "As clear as air," she repeated.

"Still as a frozen pond," he whispered, and she saw his face clear, the lines of pain easing. "Blank as a blackboard, still as a frozen pond."

She released him. "Sit down. Before you fall." It was a mark of how thoroughly undone he was that Snape had no savagely cutting rebuke to that, only stumbled a few steps backwards and sank down into the armchair again. Hermione knelt beside him. "Are you alright?"

No withering reply to that, either, only a nod. He looked stunned, and Hermione realised it was the first time she'd ever seen Severus Snape at a loss. I really didn't think this through. She wasn't a therapist, she wasn't in any way qualified to deal with a man cracked open by traumatic memories and shaken to his core. I hardly even know him. In Muggle movies, this was the point at which he'd cry, and she'd hold his hand, and after a time-lapse montage he'd be smiling and laughing and clearly on the road to recovery.

Hermione had shed too many miserable tears on Harry or Ron's shoulders to have the illusion that there was anything particularly healing in simply shedding them. And if Severus starts weeping, he's less likely to let me hold his hand than he is to reach for his wand for a quick Confundus followed by an Obliviate.

She cleared her throat. "I might have Tilney bring us some tea?"

He blinked at her. "You hardly need my permission, Granger."

There was no bite to his voice, but the words were enough like Severus Snape at his most Snape-like for Hermione to breathe a sigh of relief. She summoned the house elf, and within moments there was a heaping tea-tray on the coffee table. Remembering that he took three sugars, she poured Snape a cup and offered it to him.

There was a fine tremor to the hand he extended to take it, but he sipped the tea without spilling it. "This is the point at which you gloat," he said acidly. "In case you were in doubt."

If I were a good enough Legilimens, I bet I'd be able to watch him reassembling himself. She knew the principles of the advanced Occlumency which must be second nature to Snape, even if her own grasp of the practice was shaky. Chose your thoughts, do not be chosen by them. Behind those dark eyes, Severus Snape was setting aside whatever shock or distress he felt, limiting his contemplation of what had just happened to purely intellectual consideration. Using his considerable magical abilities to close himself down.

Hermione poured her own tea. "I'm not. If you think that seeing you in pain is something I'd gloat over …"

"Being right, however, is, unless I'm very much mistaken." He paused, gazing past her.

"I went about it the wrong way," she said. "I should have stopped, and thought it through. I was —"

Snape's gaze flicked back to her. His eyebrow arched. "Gryffindor?"

"Frightened," Hermione said simply.

He looked away, and said stiffly, "I should not have spoken to you in that manner."

"Frightened for you, not of you. Well, as well as of you. You can be bloody terrifying when you put your mind to it, you know."

Snape was recovered enough to give a small smirk of satisfaction. "I do know, thank you."

"Not a compliment," she muttered. "Look. Can we agree, at least, that the curse is reacting to you, rather than you reacting to the curse?" He gave the slightest nod. "And that it would be a good idea to minimise that reaction, if it's possible to do so?"

"I will keep my guard up," Snape said. "Perhaps I have been less careful, in recent years, to maintain appropriate mental discipline. If you are correct, Granger, then the simple remedy is to control my thoughts and emotions."

"In the Muggle world, they call that avoidance. Or repression. And neither are particularly good for you."

"This is not the Muggle world."

Hermione sighed. "How many times do I have to be right before you listen to me?"

"And there's the gloating, a little late."

She ground her teeth together. "I am trying to save your life, you —" infuriating, stubborn, stiff-necked "— insufferable know-it-all."

That got the slightest flicker of a smile from him. "Boiled in my own cauldron," he said dryly.

"You agreed to try it my way," she reminded him.

The hint of a smile vanished as if it had never been. "Brighton," he said, as another man might have said eating slugs.

"Brighton," Hermione said. "Next Saturday."