December 12th

Hiding in the noise. Hiding from the noise, the glare, the glitter. How much longer would he have to stay? A swift glance towards Dumbledore suggested that reprieve would be a while in coming; the Headmaster played his guilt trips as though they were music and he a musician. Voldemort was dead, life had continued, and still he was caught by obligation and honour.

Frivolity, a seemingly endless whirl of celebrations and parties and meaningless chatter, now emptier even than before - at least before the fall of Voldemort such things were tinged with the desperation of knowing too well the possibilities of the future, with a sense of trying to live and not knowing when you would die. Not that he had ever really participated, despite a keener sense of impending doom than most; he had faced it at each meeting. Perhaps that was less stressful than awaiting a final battle. It was hard to tell and, in any case, it almost certainly would depend upon the individual.

But this, now - Halloween balls, New Year balls, graduation balls, Quidditch dinners, Valentine dinners, Summer balls, Autumn dances, Christmas parties and too many people and more ... and more ... each day, each week, some new reason, some new excuse, and someone new called everyone else together again. He was tired, and it was tiring and ...

... and he was being unreasonable. The parties were no more numerous now than they had ever been - Dumbledore was simply more sociable than anyone had a right to be, thought Snape sourly. This Quidditch match was a case in point - if it could even be said to have a point. He certainly hadn't seen one, unless Dumbledore was suddenly providing parties for Hermione to drool all over that fool, Queroz.

That particular train of thought derailed abruptly. He sounded jealous, even to himself, and that would never do. Why should he be jealous? Just because he had sat next to her yesterday - had ensured, by pulling on a scowl and frozen expression even more voluminous than his cloak, that the only free space was that beside him. And then she had spent the entire match following the idiot's moves on a broom. Whilst he spent the entire match watching her.

Damn it, this was intolerable. Not the noise, the chatter of students and High Table - although that was bad enough - but the incessant churn of his thoughts. It felt almost like an obsession, watching her, wondering when he would next speak to her, thinking up reasons to speak to her. Then forcing himself not to speak, not to watch, and not to accidentally stray across her path in the castle. Analysing everything she did, everything she said, just to see whether ...

He didn't even know where it had come from, this - well, obsession really was the only word for it. It had sprung, fully grown, from a meeting in London and a handful of letters in the last ten years; developed overnight on her appearance at Hogwarts. It had - he wanted to think - come from nowhere. But, in this case, nowhere would have to be given a name: Longbottom.

They never had found the mystery potion that the Gryffindor incompetent had produced, despite the experiments at the time - and since, in his spare time.

It had been a time out of time, for him; full of horrors and yet free from the single horror that was his life then. More than anything, it had been an unusual connection, a long moment of mutual understanding unparalleled before or since. Little wonder now that he felt so called to Hermione.

Wonder was, however, irrelevant. And frankly bloody useless at this point and after so much time. So he had pulled on the mantle of the 'greasy git' with fervour, deliberately opening up a gap, a chasm, between them. Anything else would risk her knowing about this compulsion; if things were awkward now, it was nothing as to what would happen if she were to know. At worst she would pity him, and that would be intolerable. At best she would never speak to him again. And that was also not an option.

He had, perhaps, overdone the persona - and certainly done it too late. She had deservedly called him on it yesterday afternoon and, to be fair, he couldn't fault her anger although he could most definitely use it. All the same, perhaps he could come down the lab more often, no matter how much the chatter in his mind screamed danger to him.

Snape looked around the table again, trying to blank out the monologue that paraded through his mind in turns and twists like a mobius strip of insistent consciousness. Old boys, old girls and staff, all gossiping and switching from one person to another, one topic to another. Snatches of conversation drifted above the verbal melée from time to time, repeating moments of yesterday's - and history's - Quidditch matches, catching up on personal histories or continuing a friendship in miscellaneous words.

Queroz was leaning towards Hermione, eyes bright with attention and attraction. Snape watched for a moment as Hermione responded to the interest with flattered amusement, and then shook his head. Jealousy was a waste of energy. If that was what she wanted, well, it was being offered to her. He would do better to simply get her out of his mind.

Dumbledore caught his eye and winked; please let the old man not be able to read minds. Probably a forlorn hope but heartfelt nonetheless. The last thing he needed was a geriatric Cupid playing on his behalf.

The plates changed in a moment, distracting the chatter for an even shorter moment as everyone took in the change of courses; then the level rose again, the conversation now on food for a short time, debating the merits of the various desserts in front of them, recalling other desserts and still, of course, discussing the Quidditch match.

Patil was gazing at her husband in almost as adoring a fashion as Queroz at Hermione; and for the same reasons? Perhaps, although she had won him. Maybe it was a defence mechanism to protect her position; Quidditch had its fair share of unscrupulous female followers, he understood. Here, it made an interesting counterpoint to the brittle pink ego that had demanded his time and his energy - albeit it indirectly - and was, no doubt, thinking up ways to demand more.

Men's toiletries ... He shook his head again, avoiding the eyes of those few who took notice. Hermione would love that; a decade late, but no doubt revenge for his usual routine was about to be visited upon him.

And back again; no more than six degrees of separation that ensured that his mind would never stray too far from that topic. Snape closed his eyes; a benefit of a personality cultivated over decades was the ability to do that which others would be criticised for, and still be ignored. This was ... it had to be unhealthy. He wasn't even interested in the girl - the woman - for heavens' sake. Too easy to call this love, and too wrong. It was safe, certainly. Most likely the sign of a mind bored by an easy life, for all the superficial danger of Potions lessons. Something to pick at, like the scab of a scar, with no danger of being called upon to actually do anything about it. A stab of pain, to remind him that he was alive. A mental slash, with metaphysical wounds. A distraction, decorating the edges of lunacy. Maybe that was it; a delayed effect of Crucio and other assorted hexes and Unforgivables. It would make for an interesting research topic - the long term mental health implications of being a spy in the Death Eater movement.

Hermione was still talking to Queroz, a conversation too low for even a word to escape, with the odd comment to others around her when the conversation flowed in her direction. She seemed, perhaps, just a little reserved, uncomfortable. That almost certainly his imagination, or simply wishful thinking.

"Severus, are you coming to join us?"

He almost jumped, startled by the voice behind him, then realised that the meal was over and the party was moving on. Dumbledore was looking at him over the tiny half-moon glasses that he wore when he chose - more fashion than necessity, since he rarely if ever actually looked through them. The rest of the staff and guests were starting to leave the table, still talking, still chattering.

"I don't think so, Headmaster. If you'll excuse me."

He didn't wait for a response, rising from his seat and sweeping through the small door at the back of the Hall. He had had quite enough of company today; unfortunately, it was his own company. Always his own company.

December 13th

Hermione found herself staring into the mirror and looking forward to the end of term with an intensity that would have been totally foreign to the eager pupil she had once been. Several days of entertainments were intruding on the ever-shortening time left before Parvati would arrive to claim her perfumed and bottled pound of flesh. Add to that the effort of handling a student body over-excited by the presence of several celebrities and the suspension of normal classes, and a sour-tempered Snape - made even more so, presumably, for the same reasons - and she was beginning to feel more than a little strung out.

Tonight was event number three in the current Season; the Yule Ball. She dragged a brush unenthusiastically through her hair and wondered whether she should wear it up or down.

It wasn't that she didn't appreciate and support Dumbledore's enthusiasm for parties, but there ought, she mused, to be a limit somewhere.

Snape had been avoiding her since the Quidditch match; at least he hadn't appeared in the lab - although a neatly labelled rack of prototypes for the men's range had disappeared from the workbench, so she assumed that he had been in, or Dobby had developed a new interest in personal grooming - and he had always managed to be several people away from her whenever they were both constrained to appear in the same public place. He had certainly not made any attempt to even acknowledge her at the meal the previous evening; he had appeared more intent on glowering alternately at his food and at the world in general and then vanishing at the first opportunity that had presented itself. Not that she had been too much later leaving herself, of course, but it was the principle of the thing. Only the conversation with Queroz prevented the evening from being unaccountably dismal.

And, if he hadn't offered to escort to the Ball, she would probably have been without a companion for tonight as well.

XXXXXXXXXX

After some more thought, she had decided to wear her hair up. It was elegant and a couple of charms secured it firmly. It also perfectly complemented her outfit; a pencil straight skirt, worn with a high-necked fitted jacket, both in black velvet, with the collar and front fastening delicately embroidered with twining gold threads and sparkling jewels. Since her last year at school she had had a taste for understated elegance, and there was no question that this was both.

Queroz's eyes sparkled when she opened the door to his knock. He took her hand and bowed low, brushing his lips softly against the back of it.

"You look magnificent, my dear," he murmured. "Simply exquisite."

Hermione smiled in response, feeling a gratifying mixture of flattery and satisfaction. The compliments sounded well coming from an attractive man; they were certainly not terms she would ever expect to hear from Snape.

Queroz swept her through the castle and into the Great Hall and a warm wash of welcome and compliments. They made their way through the crowd and up to the top table, passing Snape as they took their places. He simply scowled at them and looked away. Hermione sighed more loudly than she had intended to, and Queroz tightened his grip on her arm.

"Don't let that bad-tempered fool upset you, my dear," he said softly.

A spark of anger lit within her. She wasn't about to let Snape's sulking ruin yet another evening.

"Don't worry," she replied, "I have every intention of having an excellent time."

Queroz laughed, a gentle musical sound.

"I'm glad to hear it," he said, holding the chair away from the table so that she could sit down.

Once the feast was over and the tables moved back, the main purpose of the evening could get underway; the dancing. Queroz was, naturally, the first to lead her out onto the floor. Hermione was hardly a regular party-goer but a working life at Oxford involved fairly frequent formal occasions and ensured that her dancing skills were not allowed to get completely rusty. Whilst she knew that she wasn't an expert, she thought that she gave a reasonable account of herself on the dance floor. Queroz was an easy partner, graceful and sure on his feet. She had little difficulty in following his steps and was very soon beginning to enjoy herself, forgetting Snape and his impossible moods.

"You dance beautifully, my dear," said Queroz over the music. "Where did you learn?"

So much for forgetting.

"I learnt in my last year at school," she said, a little evasively. "It seemed like a good idea at the time."

"It was a good idea," he confirmed. "There are few things more delightful than sweet music and a beautiful woman."

His hand between her shoulder blades pulled her infinitesimally closer, and then the song finished, the dancers separated and everybody clapped. Before Queroz could say or do anything else, another voice interjected.

"My dance, I think."

Queroz gracefully moved back, the band started up again and Hermione was pulled into the embrace of Harry Potter.

She smiled in genuine pleasure.

"Harry, how lovely. I was beginning to wonder if I would get any chance to talk to you at all whilst you were here."

Harry Potter, still small and wiry, as befitted a Seeker, but now with the marks of an adult in his face and bearing, laughed wryly.

"So was I. Albus has had us doing Quidditch clinics the last couple of days. I'm exhausted. I don't know how Hooch has the energy to do it every day."

"Well, Hooch isn't 'a celebrity'." She gave the words a familiar twist.

Harry pulled a face.

"He's still as cheerful as ever, isn't he?"

Snape again.

"You've been talking to Snape?"

"Mmm." Harry paused as they changed direction to avoid colliding with another couple. "Ron and I were running the Slytherin clinics today. They have some promising players, if they can just overcome their urge to kill the opposing team."

"Isn't that what Quidditch is about?" she teased, feeling an odd reluctance to discuss Snape with Harry.

"Not officially," he returned with a grin. "Anyway, Snape was supervising the clinics - presumably he thought we were going to poison his team or something. He didn't say very much, just glared a lot. It was quite comforting in a way. I don't think I could have handled it if he'd come over and given me a manly hug or something."

Hermione choked and missed her step at the vision. Fortunately for the rest of the dance floor it was the end of the dance and impulsively, she pulled Harry into a hug.

"I've missed you," she said. "We should get together more often."

A hand on her shoulder made her jump.

"Unhand that woman, Potter. There are other, more deserving, partners in line."

Ron Weasley pulled her away from Harry and onto the floor for the next dance. After that, she barely had the chance to sit down. Ron, Harry, Dumbledore, Queroz, Zacharias Smith and Roger Davies all danced with her. Even Oliver Wood partnered her once, although she could have sworn that he kept nervously glancing in Parvati's direction.

The thought of Parvati brought her back to the subject that had been hanging around on the edge of her consciousness all evening: Snape. Hanging around was the word, she thought. She had been expecting him to evaporate as soon he was able, true to form, but instead he had stayed, prowling the edge of the Hall, scattering students as he went, never participating but always floating on the edge of her vision, a black speck like the beginnings of a migraine.

Eventually, the combination of the heat and early warnings of sore feet made her move away from the main crowd, intending to make a quiet exit. She was almost there when a voice made her stop.

"Leaving so soon, Miss Granger?"

Snape had come up behind her. She stopped and turned.

"I think so," she said. "The Ball seems to be winding down."

This wasn't strictly true; the younger pupil contingent had mostly left, but the older pupils and the adults were still going strong.

Snape stood there, just looking at her. He was wearing his dress robes, almost indistinguishable from his normal attire.

"Did you want something in particular?" she asked eventually.

"I wondered if you would care to dance, but you appear to be leaving."

The request, if it was one, was delivered so flatly that she wasn't quite sure of her ground. Firmly, she tried to ignore the fact that her heart hed leapt, just a very tiny amount, at the thought.

"Are you asking me for a dance?" she said cautiously.

He shrugged.

"I suppose so," he said indifferently.

Typical Snape finesse, she thought.

"I would be happy to dance with you, Severus," she said, stressing his name just a little.

"Very well then," he said, turning and moving back towards the centre of the Hall, waiting for her to join him.

She stepped up close to him and he took her in the classical ballroom dance hold, holding her right hand, his own right hand just above the small of her back, in between her shoulder blades.

And her body remembered. Remembered the lessons, the steps, the way he controlled their movement, the way the slightest pressure from his hand moved her body now one way, now the other, all synchronised with the pulse of the music. All her partners that evening had been competent - a pleasure to dance with - but with none of them had she felt this physical response that almost by-passed the conscious direction of her mind. Her left hand was on his upper arm; if she moved it to his shoulder and along to his neck she knew what she would find there, how it would feel. Her body remembered.

Her right hand was held in his left, palm to palm, his hand strong and confident, his skin warm.

She wondered if she could pick up a faint woodsy smell from him - cedarwood or maybe cypress - but it was hard to tell. Virtually every person in the room had applied some form of scent that evening and the increasing body heat meant that the air was full of volatiles; it was hard to identify anyone in particular.

Snape said nothing as they danced, just looked past her to a point in the middle distance, but it didn't matter. Her body remembered what her mind was busy denying.

When the dance finished, he released her and walked away, leaving her standing there, momentarily disorientated, aware that her heart was beating faster than normal; certainly faster than was justified by the mild exertion on the dance floor.

Damn, she thought slightly incoherently. Just when she'd managed to get herself into a nice routine of being irritated by the man, one innocuous social encounter left her gaping like some stupid adolescent. So what if she was still attracted to Snape; it was hardly going to improve their working relationship to resurrect the memory of a ridiculous crush brought on by totally exceptional circumstances. Not when she'd gone out of her way to make sure that her letters were all polite and professional and, above all, adult.

Adult, yes that was it. Whatever she might feel herself, their relationship needed to be adult and professional. There was nothing else that he needed to know.

The band was still playing. She shook herself. It was definitely time to leave before Ron or Harry or Queroz spotted her standing here like an idiot and wanted to know what was wrong. This was not something that she needed to share with any of them.

It was already quite complicated enough.

December 14th

The clock struck 13; one of Dumbledore's conceits, signalling the end of the day, although Snape was sure no-one else noticed. Too subtle to notice, unless you were expecting it - generally, the melée only spotted it when a dance was held on the 30th. Rather hard to overlook a clock striking 30.

Midnight. Perhaps now he could go to bed, get some sleep, try not to think about how Hermione had felt in his arms as they danced. Try not to think of the memories that had re-surfaced, oddly skewed by the shift in perspective. Try not to think about the fact that she had spent so much of the evening with that buffoon, Queroz.

Snape took scant pleasure in noticing that Hermione had slipped away from the dance alone, immediately after they had danced. She had, after all, been on the verge of leaving when he had approached her to dance. Few others had left, so far, ebbing and flowing in a congested mass of bodies in the room before him.

"How goes it, Severus?"

The voice came from his left and Snape resisted, barely, the urge to close his eyes and grimace. A banal question and he had no recollection of ever inviting the speaker to use his first name. He settled for an abrupt exhalation before he turned to the speaker.

"A ballroom full of teenage hormones, Queroz. How else would it go but badly?"

The acid required no effort to conjure. The man standing beside him was sufficient inspiration; tall, dark and handsome would no doubt be the usual description with, again no doubt, some comment about his personality. Affable, perhaps. Charming, of course.

Pain in the bloody neck, definitely. But Snape thought he might be alone in that particular description.

"Not an admirer of young love?"

Good grief, the man could ask the most asinine of questions. What was he doing here, anyway? Snape had expected that he had killed the tendency to small talk last year; Queroz had largely left him alone after attempting some initial forays into conversation when he had originally arrived.

"If any students were indeed in love, perhaps it could be admired. Although, speaking personally, I find nothing admirable in an emotion which is chiefly manifest in profoundly stupid actions and inevitably results in one person irritating another. That aside, what is undoubtedly taking place on the floor in front of us owes rather more to lust than any so-called finer emotion. All it will do is distract them - whether it goes well or badly - and consequently make my next few lessons even more of a trial as I try to prevent some love-sick idiot from blowing the castle and all of us from this world to the next. So, no, Queroz, I am not an admirer of young love."

The DADA teacher simply laughed, and Snape could feel his teeth grinding painfully. He wondered whether the stressed enamel could be heard by others, or whether it was a cacophony for his ears alone.

"Surely they're not all idiots, Severus? The young woman you danced with just now, Miss Granger, for example ..." the question trailed off.

Finally, thought Snape. There had to be some reason for Queroz to have sought him out; he rather thought it had just been unveiled.

"Miss Granger? She is no longer a student but I am certain that she is just as capable of making an idiot of herself over a man as any another woman," he drawled. At Queroz's look of pleasure, Snape winced inwardly. He was tired, slipping, or he would have realised that Queroz would interpret that comment to his advantage.

"You think so? I suppose you know her well, as she's working in the dungeons with you."

What was the man after? A written invitation from Snape to pursue Hermione? He seemed to be doing well enough without one. It was past time for this conversation to end.

"Miss Granger has been provided with laboratory space in the dungeons of this school. I neither know nor care what she does with that space. I would suggest that you direct your questions to Professor McGonagall. Miss Granger was, after all, Gryffindor." Snape punctuated the statement with a low glower before turning and stalking out of the Hall. Supervision duties be damned, and he rather thought that they had ended at midnight anyway.

He stalked through the corridors of the school with characteristic stealth and malevolence, torn between a desire to find someone - something, anything - to punish and an equal desire to encounter no-one. Pity it was too late in the year for the roses to be blooming.

He snorted, startling the picture that he was passing at the time. The young girl in the portrait whirled around, gasping silently and then subsided as she saw the tall figure in black scowl and mutter to himself. "A perfect metaphor, all told." She watched him retreat down the corridor, all precise movements and frustrated energy, and wondered just what it was that he was upset about now. He rarely seemed to be anything other than unhappy but this was unusual, even for him, these days. She slipped from the frame in search of other news, other rumours.

The corridors were silent, students all either in the Hall or in bed. Snape chose not to speculate as to whether they were in the right beds. Much as he would have liked it to be different, when he reached the dungeons no House had fewer points than they had started with at midnight. The echo of silence picked up as the ceilings grew lower with each passing step, the soft rustle of his cloak and dull step of his boots on the stone floor amplified by temper and self-disgusted awareness.

Snape found himself in Hermione's lab at last. She was no doubt asleep, elsewhere; the room was empty of her physical presence for all that she was evident everywhere. Notes in a careful handwriting familiar from her letters were stacked on the desk, ingredients ordered in a characteristic fashion - identical to his own, a point that brought back memories faster than anything else about the lab when he realised it.

Suddenly Snape looked down at his hands, half-checking to make sure that they still were his hands, that they hadn't suddenly metamorphosed in a pair rather less masculine. The sense of the past, history unspoken, permeated the stone walls and careful order in experimentation set out in front of him. Months of experimentation, more desperate, more futile than this exercise in consumerism were written in the chill damp air and no less present for the passage of years.

Why now? Why notice it now? He had been working in here for the past few nights, checking and refining Hermione's work - not that she had apparently noticed. Churlish of him to find it annoying that she hadn't, as he had been careful to remove all evidence of that work - apart from his self-tests, although even those apparently weren't in evidence, for all the reaction he had had from her; he wasn't inclined to think that the testing had made all that much of a difference to his appearance but, in the end, it didn't really matter. Much of this was smoke and mirrors in any case, and more than half of those who tried out the promises either didn't need them or wouldn't use the potions for as long as necessary to have the desired effect. Charms were so much quicker, if completely ineffective below the glamour and surface. He was half-surprised that Ms Patil hadn't chosen to package charms for her magazine - instant superficial results seemed more likely to appeal to her. But then, the success of charms depended on the caster; no amount of packaging and explanation would make them work for those without talent. Potions were more egalitarian in that aspect; as long as the potion maker knew what they were doing, the abilities - and more likely lack of abilities - of the user were irrelevant.

This potion maker knew what she was doing; always had done. The neat annotations to the recipes were unnecessary proof of that, but Snape scanned them again, concentrating on the ideas and experiments, trying to put out of his mind the recollections that the dance had pulled to the fore. No success; the handwriting simply drew the memories further into the night around him, images circling him.

Snape sagged into a nearby chair, staring blindly into the silvered moonlight that filtered through the dusty windows in the room and its shades of chill grey and memories. Forgotten sounds and sensations drifted, fled and flickered into being in his imagination. A dance of a different nature, but the memories pulled at him just as they had done in the Hall earlier. Quiet gasps, skin against skin, sensation on sensation; half-remembered in spite of a desperate attempt to forget. More potent still, the memory of a mind, regardless of body.