AN: Thanks for reading! Thanks for being out there! We're getting to the part of this story that makes me excited to work on it again. Hope you like it!


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Hermione stood at the foot of the bed just a meter or so from her own, the bed where Ginny had slept years ago and which had, since that time, remained empty and charmed against the dust. The new occupant lay there now, tucked in to his armpits and heavily spelled for health, comfort, and sanitary purposes. His eyes tripped about the ceiling, tireless as ever.

It had taken some time to get him settled and all the proper magic in order. Now, it had grown late and Hermione was perilously close to ignoring the loud rumbles of her belly and just jumping right in.

The sound of footsteps rapidly coming up the stairs, accompanied by Ron's calls, effectively eliminated the need to make a decision. Hermione darted to the door just in time to sweep it shut at her back.

Ron was already at the top steps, beaming at her. "Hermione! I've been looking for you since yesterday! Where've you been?"

"Here, mostly." She wrenched her hand off the doorknob and stepped toward him. "Ron, what-?"

He swept in and kissed her. It was tender, kind. Everything the best of them had ever been. Then, watching her with earnest, gleaming eyes, he presented her with a bouquet of roses. "'Mione, I love you. I want you to know that. I don't care if you're always busy and distracted right now, because I know you're going to succeed. And when you do, I'll still be here. Because I know my best shot at happiness is with you."

Speechless, Hermione gaped up at him for a long moment. For so long, she had pined for Ron. She had craved just this sort of profession of his undying devotion. She had wanted it when things had been at their worst, when that cursed locket had driven him to storm off from the tent, and she had been searching for it, any sign of it, since the second he came back.

Now she was finally receiving the promise she had waited so long for, and all she could think was how poor his choice of words had been.

"Your 'best shot at happiness'?" she asked, letting out a shuddering breath. She stepped back. He didn't close the gap again, but smiled back at her hopefully. Hermione let out a breath and looked down at the flowers he still held out to her. They had been charmed not to wilt before going in water, but the magic seemed to have faded. Some of the blossoms bobbed their split-open heads like weary old men. He really had been looking for her. It made her chest ache. "Oh, Ron. What about your exam?"

He blinked at her, then scoffed. "Oh. Yeah. Well, I failed that, didn't I? Had a bit more important stuff to deal with."

"Ronald! How could you be so irresponsible!"

His face turned pink, and his high spirits drained away. "I'm here pouring my heart out to you and you're worried about my grades," he said wonderingly, bitterly. It snapped Hermione's last nerve.

"You're throwing away your education to chase after something you've imagined! Your 'best shot at happiness,' Ron! Not real happiness, but a chance for it! Someday!"

He watched her, his hurt writ large on his face. "That's not what I meant!"

"No. It's what you said." It was agony to do this again, to watch his face color that way again. Hermione shook her head. "Maybe you should just go."

But Ron didn't move. His eyes shifted past her, to the door she had shut so quickly behind her. He looked back at her. "Is there someone else here?"

"No!" Her voice betrayed her, pitching high.

Fury crept into Ron's pain-stricken face. He reached around her for the latch. Hermione pushed him away, so he came back harder, shoving her aside. But she couldn't let him see. If he told Harry, everything could fall apart. She had to stop him. Her wand was in her hand. He was shouting. "Oi! You in there! You bloody coward, I'm gonna-"

"Supercilius tritura!"

Ron screamed as his eyebrows elongated and began beating at his face like the wings on a panicked bird. He staggered back toward the stairs and Hermione countered the curse before he could fall down them. As he blinked around and patted gingerly at his face, she settled between him and the door.

"Bloody hell, Hermione! What was that?"

"You need to leave."

He glared at her, more betrayed than ever. "I just want to know who the tosser is."

"Get out!"

Ron's eyes bulged and only then did Hermione realize she was pointing her wand at him again. But she didn't hold back. She chased him down the stairs with hexes that crackled in the air behind him and didn't stop until she heard the pop of Apparation, followed by the familiar pinch of the silent, empty house.

On the floor at the top of the stairs, the roses lay in a smashed heap.

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All memory of hunger forgotten, Hermione returned to her room, locked and warded the door, and sat on the edge of Snape's bed. It had to be now. If she didn't go now, Ron might come back with Harry, and she could lose her chance entirely.

She tried not to think about the torn-open hole she felt in her heart, but it wouldn't be ignored. There was a way to deal with that, though.

Hermione drew a few calming breaths, then took hold of Snape's wrist and shut her eyes. She slipped beneath the surface of her own mind with ease, sinking into the metaphysical Inner Realm she had been visiting and constructing obsessively all week. When she opened her eyes, it was all as it was supposed to be.

Her mind stood before her, all the nuances and particularities that made Hermione Granger herself arranged and locked into an orderly form, a tidy metaphor in the flesh. It was a house, not so dissimilar to the house she had grown up in, cozy and brick with clean white trim. The door opened for her, and Hermione stepped inside.

It was waiting for her there in the foyer. A bouquet of crushed and wilting roses dumped on the floor, by all appearances harmless. Hermione, by now, knew better. From her pocket, produced by her own will, she pulled a pair of dragon hide gloves. With them, she picked up the bouquet and carried it at arm's length up to the attic, where she packed it in a cardboard box, penned DANGER on the side in large letters, and tucked it into a towering stack of memories like it.

The moment her gloved hands released it, she felt a knot of anxiety and sorrow release from her stomach.

Fortress of the Mind suggested that the repression of memories was often necessary for mental health, but that extreme caution should be used with the sort of stockpiling Hermione was currently practicing. The consequences could be quite devastating, should something go awry.

But that was neither here nor there, being as nothing was going to go awry. Besides, she felt more level-headed with some key memories tucked away, permanently prevented from jumping to the forefront of her thoughts.

Hermione marched back out of the house and took in the small yard. A laid-stone walkway cut through the bristling garden to an iron gate set into the hip-high stone wall. All of that was exactly as she had built it, and exactly as she had seen it in every practice session she had run up to now.

The world outside her mind was the same, as well. Beyond the wall stood the forest, dark and endless. Overhead, there was no sun; instead, a pale and unchanging sky cast everything in the same clear daylight. That sky was always gray, but it never rained.

The only difference from her previous visits was the trail that had appeared on the other side of the gate. It wound off into the shadows of the forest. Hermione had researched thoroughly, and knew what to expect, but she was still surprised by the certainty she felt. Through her physical body's contact, she felt herself tethered to another mind, off in the distance. This path, she knew, would lead her to Severus Snape.

No sense delaying. Hermione opened the iron gate and shut it behind her. From her pocket, she drew a matching iron key, which clicked into the lock and snapped the bolt in place with a deceptively soft click.

Then, she hurried down the path through the dark forest.

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All manner of creatures dwelled in the Inner Realm. Some just visited. Kneazles were known to do that, leaving metaphysical equivalents of fur and dead things on their keepers' mental doorsteps. Crookshanks had not done it that Hermione knew. In fact, she was beginning to think he had not inherited the ability to travel the Inner Realm at all. She couldn't find it in herself to be too sorry about that. It was bad enough he liked eviscerating small animals; it turned her stomach to think he might leave the memory of a good hunt for her to enjoy.

But walking through the deep shadows of the forest, Hermione rather wished he could have come with her. Things whispered in that darkness, offered her riches and vengeance to sate her heart's desires. She knew better than to step off the path - even without having read a hundred different warnings, she possessed that much common sense - but the danger remained, pressed close in the still air.

The Hermione that was walking a path through a forest was not her physical body. It was her Self, the idea of Hermione that all her experiences had subconsciously compiled to create. Hermione's Self had the same great bushy hair and neglected cuticles and worn Muggle jeans as her physical body, but it was only a projection of who she thought she was. The Self was not a physical thing, but it could certainly be damaged or destroyed.

Or devoured. There were creatures in this forest that would entangle a stray Self in psychic traps and feed on its life force until nothing remained of the victim's soul. The result was much like a Dementor's Kiss, only without the inconvenience of leaving one's home.

Hermione stayed quite firmly on the path.

The journey was not long, but the forest had a way of seeming to stretch on forever. Even when she reached her destination, the feel of it clung to her robes like a heavy fog. By then, though, Hermione hardly noticed.

If Snape had read Fortress of the Mind, then he had taken the title entirely to heart. Before her, looming high over the treetops, jutted the jagged spires of a castle. It bore a great many similarities to Hogwarts, the more she looked at it, but Hermione did not linger on the design.

The place was devastated. Walls caved in, entire towers brought down to ruins, deep furrows carved into solid stone. The outer gates were blasted off their hinges. The bridge that had spanned the canyon of a moat was reduced to a few stones clinging to either side of the gorge.

Hermione stared at the shattered remnants of a once great mind, horror washing through her. She had never imagined it could be so bad. No one could have survived an assault like this. It was simply impossible.

From the wreckage, a terrible roar resounded, like a hundred double-deckers being twisted into a little ball. Hermione's horror deepened, petrified her to the spot.

The attack was still going. Whatever had done this to Snape's mind, whatever form the magical neurotoxin had taken, it was still here, and it was still trying to obliterate what remained.

Which meant that, somehow, Snape was still here, too.

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Hermione considered running away for all of ten seconds.

This was not exactly what she had prepared for, but she supposed she should be able to adapt some of the techniques she had been studying to this new purpose. Of course, any interference on her part could potentially draw the dragon-

She stopped herself and asserted firmly, once again, that it was not a dragon. It was a poison, the magical component of the neurotoxin. She kept thinking the word "dragon" because the roar had sounded rather a lot like a dragon, but that was not what it was. Accepting in her mind that it was a dragon would only lend it the power of a dragon, and that would not do anyone any good at all. So it was a poison, a poison, and that was that.

Hermione was a bit concerned that, the moment she made her presence known, the poison might travel the link back to her own mind. She was not certain whether a magical neurotoxin could attack a mind when it had not been injected into the accompanying body, but she did not want to be the person to make that discovery. The poison would have to be eliminated before it got any ideas.

With careful concentration, she rebuilt the bridge.

There were no wands in the Inner Realm. Rather, things were accomplished by force of will. Just as she had decided the poison was not a dragon, Hermione decided the bridge ought to be whole. Under her waiting eye, the fallen stones climbed by themselves back up from the bottom of the moat and reassemble into their proper form. It gave her a sense of satisfaction, that order, and once it was complete, it seemed to snap into place, a permanent fixture once more. The stone was whole.

The second it was finished, that terrible roar came again, followed by mighty crashing. Hermione steeled herself. The dragon- The poison had sensed an interloper. It was coming. She stood in the middle of the rebuilt bridge and waited.

It climbed like a gargantuan lizard up one of the unbroken towers and launched itself on massive leathery wings. It looped wide in the distance to build up speed, but it was already watching Hermione with its huge yellow eyes. It squared off toward her and beat its wings harder, screaming that blood-chilling roar.

Hermione could see the gleam of claws and scales. She could see its teeth, each one long as her forearm. She could see every barb down its spine.

It did look quite a lot like a dragon. But it wasn't a dragon. It was a poison.

The poison surged closer, its serpentine body knifing through the air. It reached its forelegs out, spreading the massive grasping talons to snatch her.

Hermione narrowed her eyes. It was a poison - an old, played out poison. It had done its damage, and now it was little more than dust.

Dust.

The change was instantaneous. The dragon dissolved in midair into a cloud of noxious particles. Dust. Dust that still soaring unmistakably, malevolently toward Hermione.

She reached into her pocket and withdrew a plastic bottle. In three quick twists of her wrist, she had unscrewed the cap and withdrawn the little plastic wand. She sucked in a deep breath and, long and gentle, blew.

The bubble grew enormous, a shimmering iridescent shape bigger than a car that wobbled as it released from the wand. Hermione knew what it was going to do, she envisioned it perfectly in her head. Under her waiting eye, it doubled over itself around the cloud of dust, sweeping every particle into an inner bubble that was swiftly trapped inside the large outer bubble. The poison was contained.

Hermione reached up and caught the bubble in both hands and, with the lightest pressure, shrank it down to the size of a marble. The bubble was no longer soap, but glass, and Hermione easily plucked up a broken bit of stone, sank the marble containing the poison into the center of the rock, and tossed it off the bridge. The stone soared down into the moat and there vanished from sight.

Hermione brushed her hands together, satisfied with a job well done. Then she looked up at the decimated castle, and she realized just how much work lay ahead of her. Slowly, carefully, she walked through the open gates and took in the courtyard.

The great double doors hung crooked and ajar. Mixed amongst the bits of stone and wood and glass heaped all around, there were memories. A can of tuna. A letter ripped in half. A pressed and dried flower. A blood-colored bowling ball in a worn bag with a busted latch. A peppermint sweet.

Figuring this last was probably safe, Hermione reached down with her bare hand, and touched it.

In a dim, close room, a long-faced woman - Mother - glances at the doorway from which a low chatter of staticky television emits, then places a candy into his small hand. Unsmiling, she holds a finger to her lips. Then she walks through the door into the flickering light, and is gone. With tiny fingers that are already deft and quiet, he pulls the cellophane wrapper apart. His heart is in his throat as he places the sweet carefully in his mouth. It is Christmas Eve, and Severus Snape is not yet four years old.

Hermione staggered back, not from any pain or fear, but from the burning shame and sadness associated with the memory. It faded quickly, but the impression remained. He had been pleased to receive a sweet at the time, but the taste of peppermint was forever tainted.

Hermione peered around her, newly horrified. Everywhere she looked, a lifetime of memories lay tumbled together with the wreckage of an identity. How many of them were as intimately miserable as this one? How many were worse?

It would be positively ghoulish to go thumbing through them all. And yet, how else could one begin righting this mess?

Well, that part would just have to fall to Snape. Hermione would simply have to find his Self before she could proceed. That had been her plan from the beginning, but seeing the vastness of the castle had made the task doubly daunting. Furthermore, in a mind so thoroughly shattered, what kind of shape would the Self even be in?

The grim theories spinning through her head were more unnerving than helpful. Hermione drew a fortifying breath, then slipped through the gap in the crooked doors and into the shadowy ruins of Snape's mind.

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It quickly became evident that the likeness to Hogwarts was not merely superficial. More than a year since the final battle, and Hermione found herself walking again through her school in the wake of disaster. It was as if nothing had changed, as if the restoration she had faithfully followed in The Daily Prophet had never taken place at all and all the pieces had just been abandoned where they fell. Except, thankfully, there were no bodies.

Still, it was an arresting sight, and Hermione stopped over and over, very nearly forgetting her true task. She could not help herself. Here and there, she tidied up. Fallen columns righted themselves. Blocks clunked back into place in their old walls. Doors popped up in a shower of debris and wiggled onto their hinges. Sconces scrabbled back up the walls and flared their torches back to life. Soon, Hermione walked steadily through a storm of restoration, frowning in intense focus.

The memories she left as they lay. Scattered or in heaps, she stepped carefully over them and continued on.

She walked the halls for hours, searching, but it was all the same. Empty. Every door hung open. Every room lay in chaos. Gryffindor Tower was simply gone. The corridor to the Headmaster's office was packed with twisted metal that Hermione eventually recognized as the workings of the Astronomy Tower.

Doors blasted across hallways. Doors smashed to kindling. Not a single one stood whole. All at once, Hermione understood why.

"Occlumency," she murmured, staring down a hall lined in gaping doorways. "Every door is a barrier he could shut to conceal information. That's how he was able to resist the magical effects of the poison for so long."

The doorways yawned silently back at her, and when she willed the doors back onto their hinges, their latches refused to hold. The force that had erected those barriers and held them firm against the greatest Legilimens in the world was no longer here.

As his defenses failed, Snape would have hidden his Self behind as many barriers as possible. He would be locked away deep… in the dungeons. Hermione hastened to the nearest stairwell, and scurried down from the upper floors. On the ground floor landing, peering into the darkness below, she hesitated.

It was a natural inclination to conceal one's basest urges in the lower reaches of the mind. Standing on the brink of the most private place in this mind, Hermione debated. It was true she meant well, but this was no less an invasion for that, and this method was ever so much more… intimate than Legilimency. Whatever Snape kept in this part of his mind, he was unlikely to forgive her for snooping here.

But she wasn't just a wayward student poking her nose into her Professor's business out of curiosity. She was on a quest for the good of Wizarding Britain, and somewhere in this mess, there was information she needed which only Snape would be able to find. Besides, there was a chance he needed help. And wasn't it better to apologize later than to leave him to work it out on his own?

Hermione plunged down into the darkness.

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She was beginning to think she had been mistaken, that Snape's Self had been destroyed after all. He was nowhere to be found. The Potions classroom was in shambles and the Slytherin dormitories lay bizarrely exposed, just like every other corner of the lower level. Snape's office had been so crammed with tumbled debris and memories that she hadn't dared do more than poke her head through the open door.

But then, abruptly, she realized that Snape probably slept somewhere down here. As a Head of House, he would live not terribly far from the Slytherin common room. Likely, the entrance would be concealed by a statue or painting. She peered around the bare, bleak walls, frowning. Perhaps this was why the dragon had been making such a fuss. This was terribly frustrating.

Surely, there was a simpler way.

"Hello?" she called. Silence was her answer. It seemed colder, more oppressive than it had been before. Hermione raised her voice to be louder. "Hello? Professor Snape? Anyone?"

She walked the dungeons slowly, calling over and over and feeling increasingly hopeless. But then, suddenly cutting through the silence, a thin whisper reached her.

"Do I know you?"

Hermione spun around, but there was no one there. Only the office door, sprawled open against a tide of tumbled-out memories. "Yes," she said hastily, taking a cautious step closer to the door. "Hermione Granger, sir. I'm here to help you."

There was a pause, and Hermione held her breath. Finally, the whisper came again.

"How do I know you're not lying?"

It was coming from inside the office. Carefully, quietly, Hermione approached the door. "Well, I did get rid of the dragon. Poison. Whichever." There didn't appear to be anyone inside the room. The silence stretched. She frowned. There was something very peculiar about that voice; it didn't quite sound like Snape. It didn't quite sound like anyone. "Don't you remember me, sir?"

No answer came. Hermione willed the crumbled stone and glass on the floor to form a path into the room. She took one step inside.

"If you'll let me, I'd like to help you with all this."

"You can have all that," he said softly. "I'm afraid I don't want any of it."

The voice was not coming from a secret passage or a hidden room. It was coming from a large cabinet, standing firmly shut in the corner behind the desk. Though she had visited Snape's office before, she could not remember ever having seen that cabinet.

"I thought perhaps this was Hell," the voice said from the drawer at the bottom. "Because it never stopped. I felt every single crushing blow. And now it's stopped and you say you've gotten rid of… that thing, and I suppose I believe you, but…"

Hermione made her way to the cabinet and very gently tugged the brass handles on the bottom drawer. It opened without any resistance at all.

The thing inside was no longer human. It wasn't even flesh. It was twisted and wispy, as if someone had wrung a ghost down to its essence. It lay curled around the memory it clutched in a skeletal hand; a spelled leaf-butterfly that slowly beat its leaf-wings.

Butterflies. Like the invisible ones Snape's eyes followed about the room. He had spent all this time escaping the pain of his crumbling mind in the only way he could; through a single good memory.

But now, his faded black eyes turned up to her. Hermione clicked her teeth shut.

"I think I would like to truly die now," Snape said.