Author's Note: After a few years of absence on the writing end of things, I am back and I VOW to finish both this story and Non Sequitur. I also have just posted a new story, A Second Chance that is mostly AU but does give a new (i think it's new anyways) insight into an HG/SS pairing.

Chapter 3

His mouth hung open in a cry for her to come back that never quite escaped his lips. He clenched his face tightly and made his hands into fists and alternated this position with stretching them out as he paced in front of the door.

"I have to follow her!" He mumbled to himself and as he made to grasp the door knob a thought flickered in the back of his mind, 'you don't even know where she's gone to.'

Severus sat back in his armchair, defeated. Once again he had been hurt and humiliated but it was just as much his fault this time around. He lost the woman he loved because of his arrogance and pride and now he had no way of getting her back. She had said she'd wait for him, not that she'd come back. Snape groaned loudly and rose from the chair to continue pacing all the while racking his brain for ideas.

It then occurred to him that both of her parents were dead. She would not be returning home, but the closest thing to home now, especially since said pseudo-home still housed her best girl-friend. She would be at The Burrow.

At that moment Severus realized he could have jumped up and clicked his heels if he wanted to, not that he did, but it was just the acknowledgment of such an act that made him seem more human to himself. He was that much more comfortable in his skin, at the thought of Hermione and finding her.

Severus grabbed a pinch of floo powder and called out "Minerva McGonagall's Office!" and with a 'woosh' of green flames his thin face appeared in the fireplace of Headmistress McGonagall. She turned and started when she saw him floating there.

"Severus! To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?" She smiled at him.

"Minerva I am leaving. I have important business to attend to and I do not know when I will be back."

"What's wrong Severus? What is going on?" McGonagall began in a panic-stricken voice.

"Nothing is wrong." He sighed and continued, "I just need to go away for awhile and re-evaluate some things. It is entirely personal and my motivations are completely and utterly selfish but I need to go."

"Well, do you have a replacement for your classes?"

"No, I do not. Nor do I have time to find one. I understand the very unprofessional manner in which I have descended upon you, but you must understand that what business I must attend to is of upmost importance."

McGonagall pursed her lips into a thin line and narrowed her eyes slightly at Snape.

"She left you didn't she?"

"What! What are you talking about?" It came out as a poorly rehearsed lie instead of a genuine question. "I really, must be going now. Headmistress." Severus gave a curt nod and took a step back into his rooms.

Now that McGonagall knew he would be gone, he needed a game plan. A mode of action for when he saw Hermione again.

Snape began pacing again, slowly wearing a trench in the floorboards, as Hermione always used to tease him. He missed the genuine smiles she would get on her face. The true happiness that seemed to always radiate from her skin. She had an almost glow about her whenever they were together. Perhaps it was him imagining because he loved her so much, but the few who accepted their relationship did because of that glow, Severus was convinced.

He ran into his room and grabbed a couple pairs of pants and some shirts and one spare robe. Shoving them all into an overnight bag, he grabbed another pinch of floo powder and this time stepped wholly into the fireplace as he shouted "The Burrow!"

A 'woosh' followed by a dull thud was all the warning Molly Weasley had that she would need yet another setting at the dinner table. She rolled her eyes to the ceiling and pulled another plate out of the cabinet.

In fact she had scarcely turned around when she noticed the looming shadow behind her. This did give her a start and she turned quickly, clenching a long, menacing knife her hands.

"Dear Lord Severus! You gave me quite a fright. I swear you can be so much like a child sometimes, even if you don't realize it! Fred and George spent their entire 17th year appearting behind me and scaring me half to death and now it appears you have come to scare the other half into the grave."

"Molly I have come to do nothing of the kind. I'm here about Hermione." He whispered quietly, like a child being put in his place.

"Why?" Molly asked with a hand on her hip.

"We had a row this morning and I would give anything to take it back, but she left and I was hoping she might have come here."

"Well she did, Severus. She was here for about 20 minutes and then she and Ginny both left."

"Do you know where they've gone to?" Severus asked, barely concealing the excitement in his voice.

"As a matter of fact I do, but I am not telling you. If Hermione needs some time to herself I am going to make sure she gets it. I will not have you swooping in behind her in the middle of a massage or something."

"You don't understand, she wanted us to take a trip together! I want to surprise her." Severus pleaded with Molly, but she would not budge.

"It seems that if she wanted you both to go together you would already know where she's going. Of course, by that same token, you'd already be there, wouldn't you?" She snarled, showing her teeth.

"Point taken. May I stay here then? I want to be here when she returns as she probably won't be coming back to our home."

"And just why is that?"

"I don't wish to discuss it with you or anyone other than Hermione. It is our personal business and something that we need to address before we cannot turn around and change our minds. This is why I need to see her. You have got to let me stay here if you will not tell me where she has gone." Whether is was the ever weakening tone of his voice or the love that shown in his eyes, Molly Weasley agreed to let Severus stay until Hermione and Ginny saw fit to return to the burrow.

She patted his cheek and went upstairs to fix a room up for him. Severus sank into a kitchen chair and for the first time in years, he cried into his hands. For everyone and everything he lost and the most important person in the world, who he was about to lose. He cried for it all.