Hermione kept her attention on Jeremy, face composed in an expression of serious interest, even though she'd heard this particular story five or six times before.

After all, she'd told the same — highly edited, extremely disguised — account of watching Hagrid carry Harry's 'dead body' into the Hogwarts courtyard on every single one of the first eight meetings she'd been to, and Jeremy had listened with sympathy and, more importantly, with empathy, each time.

"The thing I don't understand is, nothing happened," Jeremy said. "He missed. Or she missed. I saw the plume, I called it in in more than enough time. It wasn't even a close call, for God's sake. But I think about it, the way I never think about —" He raised his artificial hand. "Getting blown up, actually blown up."

Snape cleared his throat, and Hermione felt her whole body draw inward in dread. If he offers to Obliviate him … "May I ask the circumstances under which you were, as you say, 'actually blown up'?"

"We don't ask people to share more than they're willing to, Sebastian," Mark said, mind rebuke in his tone.

Snape inclined his head. "Then I retract my question."

Nimue's naked nipples, what have I done? It had seemed like such a brilliant idea when it had first occurred to Hermione: coax, cajole, coerce or outright trick Severus Snape into taking part of in the very activity that had helped her.

She could still remember the first time she'd blurted out her edited truth, I couldn't get away … there was a man there, I knew he'd hurt me if they gave me to him … I would have told them anything, to make it stop, if it had gone on ten seconds longer, and no-one knows that, everyone thinks I was brave … She'd tried to tell Harry and Ron, a few times, and received comforting hugs and assurances that You'd never have done that, Hermione, you were an absolute hero.

Here, in this room, Walsh, calm and matter-of-fact, I held out for three hours. Everybody breaks in the end, even though you always think you'd be the one to hold out.

Absolution, somewhere she'd never expected to find it. Understanding, from people she could never tell the truth.

But Severus Snape … she braced herself for whatever he might say next, Snape in a room full of Muggles who didn't know who he was and didn't know they should be wary of his razor-sharp tongue. Don't hurt them. Please don't hurt them.

"I was riding in an A.P.C. that hit an I.E.D," Jeremy said.

Snape frowned slightly, and Hermione hoped she was the only person who could see that he was struggling to parse that. "A passenger, in a vehicle?" Jeremy nodded, and Snape shrugged. Not the full Snape shrug, Hermione was relieved to see, that involved hands and arms and a contemptuous twist to the lips, but just a normal shrug. "You had no responsibility. There was nothing you could have done."

There was a pause. "Yes, well, Sebastian, that's one way to look at it," Mark said. "But I think what Jeremy is saying is —"

"That he doesn't understand why he's more concerned with an incident where a mistake he didn't make would have caused harm to others than one where another's mistake caused harm to him, yes, I understand what Jeremy is saying," Snape said. "I admit, however, I'm confused as to the reason for his lack of understanding. He seems, if not exactly a genius, not entirely unintelligent."

"Se-Sebastian," Hermione said.

"Well, Helen," Snape said smoothly, "it's hardly complicated. As I'm sure you know, given how assiduously you always applied yourself to the assigned texts, the mind is not a book, to be read in order. The mind is a complex and many-layered thing. It—"

Mark cleared his throat. "Sebastian, in this group, we share our experiences in order to—"

"No, let him go on," Jeremy said unexpectedly. "I want to hear what he was going to say."

Snape smirked. "As I said, not entirely unintelligent." He held out one long-fingered hand. "You faced a moment of decision, and in that moment, your mind encompassed the potential consequences of your action or inaction." He tilted his hand as he spoke. "If I had done this … it might not have happened. If I had done that … the worst might have occurred." He folded his arms again. "It is a common error to believe that what happens in the mind is not as real as what happens outside it. You may have only failed in your duty in your imagination, but your inability to discipline your mind and control the errant thought has made the memory of that imagination real."

Mark made an attempt to wrench back control, although Hermione could have told him it was a wasted effort. "Would you like to share your own experience of that?"

Snape's gaze flicked to him. "I thought such questions weren't allowed?"

"You don't seem to be someone who follows the rules," Mark said calmly.

"And you seem to be someone who follows them only as suits him," Snape snapped.

"Let's go around the room," Hermione said, brightly and desperately. "Let's each nominate one thing we did right, that might have gone badly if we didn't — like Jeremy, seeing that rocket launch."

"It was a S.A.M, not a rocket," Jeremy said.

"S.A.M! Seeing that S.A.M. launch. I'll go first." Hermione struggled to think. "Um, when my team was behind enemy lines, we had a very close call. We were nearly caught, but I, um —"

"Disapparated," Snape said, under his breath.

"Managed to get us away," Hermione said loudly. "It was very close, and we could easily have been caught, and we could just as easily have been killed, but I took the risk, and we got away. Now. Next?"

"I called off a fire-strike on a vehicle because it didn't feel right," Claudia said. "It was a farmer and his sons on the way to market. If I'd been wrong, if the truck had been full of explosives …" She shook her head and fell silent.

"You know mine," Jeremy said.

Evan shook his head. "I haven't got one." Heads turned around the room. "I don't!"

"What about that woman you talk about, sometimes?" Anne asked.

"She was carrying ten kilogrammes of C4!"

"If she hadn't been?"

Evan took a breath, blew it out. "I shot a woman in the head who was on her way to blow up a dozen of our men. If I'd been wrong …"

"I counted down the time they'd need to get our people clear before I talked," Walsh said. "If I'd been wrong …" He shrugged. "At least I would have had company."

"I changed sides," Hassan said flatly, and Hermione saw Snape's gaze flick to him.

There was a small silence. Anne broke it. "I saw the wire before my boy stepped on it. I'm sorry, I know that's not something I did right, but that's my only — what did you call it, Seb?"

"Moment of decision," Snape drawled.

"Moment of decision. I'd been in country three weeks." She paused. "And you, Seb? What's yours?"

Snape was silent a long moment, and Hermione closed her eyes. He'll tell them to get stuffed, and then this will be over, and I'll have to find some other way — he'll take this as proof that nothing I suggest can ever work —

"I was told the only way to succeed was to send someone to die," Snape said, his voice as cold as a winter wind. "I acquiesced."

Claudia nodded, lips pursed. "I never had to do that. I knew it was something I might have to — I never knew if I'd be able to, though."

"The job," Anne said. "The bit of the job you they can't train you for, and you hope you'll never need to do. The job."

"Only benefit to being a squaddie," Evan said, and people laughed.

Hermione didn't, attention fixed on Snape. He was very still, arms folded, legs crossed, eyes hooded.

"And do you think, the way I do, about what would have happened if you didn't, if you hadn't?" Jeremy asked.

"No," Snape said flatly. He gave Jeremy a flat stare. "I have a disciplined mind."

"Then why are you here, if you're so perfect?" Ann asked, smiling, but with an edge to her voice.

Snape turned the stare on her. "I confess myself as confused as you."

"I don't think anyone's ever called you 'perfect'," Hermione said under her breath.

Snape heard her, she could tell by the way his gaze flicked to her and then away. He rose to his feet in one graceful movement. "Far be it from me to intrude where I'm not welcome."

"No-one's saying you're unwelcome," Mark said quickly, but Snape was already stalking out the door.

"Sorry," Hermione said, and followed him.

She caught up with him on the stairs. "This is not what trying it my way looks like!"

He didn't break stride. "Those … people have no comprehension of the mind or the way it functions."

"I don't think you do, either," Hermione snapped. They reached the corridor and Snape reached inside his coat. She grabbed his wrist. "Don't you dare just put on the Cloak and Disapparate!"

He freed himself with a twist of his arm, but he didn't take out the Invisibility Cloak. "I am among the most skilled Occlumens in the world, Granger, which as you know — or should know — means precisely that I have an both an exquisite understanding of the mind and its operation and superb control of my own."

Says the man subconsciously hexing himself to death. Hermione took a deep breath. "Just because you have the self-discipline to dismiss some thoughts when you have them, Severus, doesn't mean they don't exist. You might think you're smarter than Jeremy, but at least he knows that pretending nothing's wrong doesn't make anything any better, any more than the Giant Squid being under the water means it's left the lake."

Snape narrowed his eyes. "Granger, those Muggles are grappling with the consequences of being exposed to experiences they were ill-equipped to face. I, on the other hand —"

"Were also exposed to experiences you were ill-equipped to face, because Merlin's pants, nobody could have been adequately prepared to spy on Voldemort!"

"Excuse me," Mark said behind her.

Hermione sighed, and then glared at Snape as he smirked at her. She turned, drawing her wand as she did so. "Sorry about this," she said to Mark. "Confundo! You couldn't find us, because we'd already left. Go back downstairs." Looking puzzled and a little dazed, he did exactly that. Hermione sighed again, and put her wand away. "I haven't had to do that a single time in all the years I've been coming here."

"If Confounding a Muggle causes you a moral pang, Granger, then I suggest you spend less time shouting about the Dark Lord in the hallway," Snape said acidly.

She scowled at him, but, irritating as it was, he was right. "Come on, then," she said. "We'll have this out somewhere we won't be overheard." Snape reached for the Cloak again, and Hermione shook her head. "Not Hogwarts. The beach."

His eyebrows climbed to Threat Level Five. "It's November, and I am in hiding."

"Then do you want to cast the Disguising Charm, or shall I?"

Snape eyed her wand with distaste. "You would probably turn me into Longbottom's grandmother or something similarly inappropriate for your amusement," he said coldly. He knows very well that's not how it works. He just doesn't want to be at the other end of anyone'swand.

Snape didn't bother to take out his own wand, nor did his lips move, but in an instant Hermione found herself looking at someone who was vaguely familiar, but not in a way she could place. She concentrated, and saw Snape again. "Nicely done," she said. "You might want to ask yourself why you don't do it more often, instead of locking yourself away in the dungeons with only a house elf for company."

Snape was silent as Hermione led the way to the beach. She didn't offer to cast a warming charm for him, only gave herself a little protection from the biting wind and trudged across the sand until it was impossible to imagine anyone could overhear them, even if they started shouting. Which we probably will, or at least, which I probably will. She turned to face Snape.

"Right," she said. "Now listen. You can sneer and sulk all you like, but you will come back, and you will behave yourself and give this a chance." Snape opened his mouth. "Not finished! You're basically faced with a choice between this, Obliviation, and a painful death, and that much Obliviating would be killing the person you are just as much as stepping off the Astronomy Tower would be." He raised an eyebrow, and Hermione remembered he could fly without a broom. "Bad analogy, but you know what I mean. I've watched you die once, Severus Snape, and I refuse to do it again, so you can make up your mind to accept that this is what's going to happen: you're going to come with me, every week. You're going to stop sulking and sniping and snarling and snarking and any other generally Snape-ishly unpleasant things you might think of, and you're going to listen, and you're going to talk. You're going to pretend, if only for a couple of hours a week, that you might have something to learn from someone —"

"Are you finished?" he said in tones of flat boredom.

Hermione put her hands on her hips. "Given you interrupted me mid-sentence, what do you think?"

The wind swirling around them blew Snape's hair across his face and he brushed it out of his eyes with an impatient flick of his hand. "Granger, I agreed to attend this farce, but it's beyond absurd to pretend I should take ill-informed Muggle wittering seriously, any more than you would have taken seriously a suggestion to have your curse removed at some Muggle hospital."

"How do you know it's ill-informed if you don't listen to it?"

Snape raised an eyebrow. "Obviously it's ill-informed, formulated with no knowledge of us or our world."

"Just as your own ideas are formulated with no knowledge of their world," Hermione shot back. "Now who's ill-informed?"

That gave him pause, even if only for a moment. "The difference is that you and I, Granger, are like them, but with greater abilities and talents they lack."

"Then let's see you play a violin concerto, or paint the Mona Lisa. Every single person alive is like us, but with varying abilities and talents. I can't fly without a broom. You can't keep a civil tongue in your head. There are Muggles who can do things neither of us can." Snape pursed his lips, but had no answer to that, and Hermione pressed her advantage. "Witches and wizards are a kind of person, not necessarily a better kind of person."

The slightest inclination of his head was the only indication of his concession, but Hermione had learnt enough about Severus Snape in the last few months to read it accurately, and to know to quit while she was ahead.

He turned, and looked out at the wild winter waves. Hermione moved closer, and stood beside him, the wind whipping loose tendrils of her hair into her face. "That Muggle … Hassan. Who said he 'switched sides'…"

"In pretty much the same way you did," Hermione said.

Snape was still, staring at the sea. A blast of wind swept his hair back and made his narrow, angular face as stark and bleak as a statue on a Norman tomb. "We should return to Hogwarts," he said after another long moment's silence. "You will be late for dinner in the Great Hall."

Hermione smiled. "We can always have fish and chips."

He sniffed. "Here?"

"Of course. The best chippy in Brighton is just over there, after all."

Snape looked down at her. "Your ideas of fine dining could use some expansion."

"Does that mean yes?"

He sighed. "Very well, Granger. I'll humour this fancy."

"Excellent," Hermione said cheerfully, and turned to trudge back across the beach to the promenade. Behind her, beneath the crash of the waves and the shrill whine of the wind, she could just hear Snape's footsteps crunching on the sand as he followed her.