A/N- Thank you all for reading, and I would apologize for the last cliffy, but I can't find it in me to do it- it was far too fun to do. LOL. Well anyway, I would like to thank my new beta Jean Lamb- You're awesome, thank you, thank you!

Disclaimer- I am only borrowing them to corrupt the current stories that J.K.Rowling has wonderfully provided us. -Takes characters and puts Snape's head on Hermione's body and vice versa. The author goes to return them. Snape turns to the author and glares.- "You are honestly beginning to annoy me, woman."

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Chapter 11- As Rotten as Ever

He stared at the mediwitch for a moment, dumfounded. "Pardon?"

"Severus, she is dead."

"You lie." He went over to where the girl lay and knelt down, pressing his ear to her neck, listening. No sound of a pulse, but she was still warm. The life had passed out of her not long ago… There was still a chance to save her. He was NOT about to allow Albus to blame him for this, especially when it was the little chit's fault to begin with. He turned to Poppy, angry at the new development. "Do you have a blood restorative potion?" When she nodded he hissed, "Then get it."

He grimaced a moment before he did the next thing that he knew he had to do; breathe for her. Damn it, like he ever wanted to touch his lips to… THAT. He sighed, took a deep breathe, bent over her and pressed his lips to hers, breathing the air into her. It really would do no good to get her pulse going again if her lungs collapsed, really. But then… He pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose; the restorative potion would not work fast enough to give her enough blood in time to get her pulse started again. SHIT.

Why couldn't this have happened a year or two later? He could have just let the girl die without worrying about the setbacks. But no, she chose less than a whole bloody month into the apprenticeship to die. Even in the eyes of the ministry, it was too soon for such a thing to happen. He would be found guilty of murder and he would be sent to Azkaban.

He did not spend all that time working as a double agent to be sent to that hellhole so soon after the war was finally over. She would live, no matter what he needed to do. "Poppy." She turned to him. "Would you by chance happen to have a transfusion set?"

She looked at him with an odd expression on her face. "I do, but that is for extreme cases."

He glared at her. "If this is not extreme, do tell me what is, Poppy; I am at a loss."

"It is too late… This is not your fault…" She looked at him with an emotion that he loathed.

Pity. He clenched his jaw, fighting back his agitation with the woman. "Get the damned needles."

"But-"

"NOW!"

She scrambled away from him, opened a drawer on a nearby cart and retrieved the needles.

"Accio needles." He held out his hand as they flew across the room to him. "Get over here, and do as I tell you to, when I tell you to do it." She nodded, and came to him. "Good. Hang on to this end, and make sure that the blood is to the end before you put it into her vein, it would do no good to have an inconsistency in her blood stop her heart after I get it started again." He knelt down, positioning the needle where he knew it needed to go, and noticed Poppy giving him a horrified expression.

"Are you mad? Taking it from there will kill you!"

"Shut up and do as I say. I don't believe I should need to remind you what I am descended from, do I? I have three minutes left before she will be lost, so I would suggest complete compliance on your part, that is, unless you wish her dead." When she went pale he continued, "The moment the transfusion is set, get to fixing that arm of hers."

He brushed his hair out of the way, once again positioning the needle where it needed to be, and pressed down quickly. He hissed as it found the thick vein within his neck, and watched morbidly as his blood filled the tube. The next few moments went like clockwork. The blood reached the end and Poppy put it into Hermione's uninjured wrist and moved to fix her arm. Severus waited a moment, breathed again for her and placed his hand over her heart. "Viscus Insipio." A flash of light surrounded his hand and then was gone. He suddenly remembered another charm, and cursed himself for not thinking of it any sooner. He pointed at her mouth. "Invidus Spiritus."

As he noticed her chest began to rise and fall, he continued on. "Viscus Insipio." Nothing happened for a whole minute of this, when suddenly…

She fought to draw in her own breath and he immediately uttered a "Finite incantatum." She arched her back as her body came back to life. He felt a small smile fall on his lips. She was alive. He was safe.

He pulled the transfusion needles out of both of them and stood, suddenly feeling very faint. He stumbled as a familiar whistling started in his head. Bloody hell…Soon his vision went black and he noticed that he was falling before all he could feel was numb.

………………………………………………………………………He was standing in front of a large, two story house. It was blue with a white picket fence- the usual dream home of muggles. It looked perfect; but everything was not always as it seemed. Suddenly, repugnant clouds formed overhead to hide the sun, and lightning bolted sharply in contrast against the sky. The moment that all light seemed to leave the vicinity, he noticed that before him stood Hermione Granger, looking as she did when she had first arrived at Hogwarts. She looked at him blankly with hooded eyes; eyes that were usually so very expressive, even when she was in her darker moods. "Miss Granger?"

Slowly she raised her eyes to his, and he was forced to take a step back. Her eyes were so dilated that he could not see her iris and the rest of her eyes were so bloodshot that they looked entirely red. "It is your fault. You killed me."

"Pardon? You were rather well alive last I saw you, Miss Granger; stop playing games." When she stepped towards him, he took another step back. His mind in complete confusion; he hadn't killed her, she was still alive… Wasn't she?

"Are you so sure, Professor? Are you sure that your mind was not playing tricks on you; are you sure that what you saw was really true?" She took another step, and as she moved her feet, they made a very liquid-like sound.

He had never been this ill at ease since the first time he had seen Lupin after the wolf had tried to eat him alive. He looked at the girl warily as she took yet another step closer to him, wanting nothing more other than to simply bolt from her. "I am positive, Miss Granger, that you were still alive the last time that I saw you."

She stopped where she was and tilted her head back up to him, her face still devoid of any emotion. "It is your fault, Professor," She continued even as he looked away from her, "you killed us. You have betrayed us, we were right about you."

"Right about what precisely? That I do not care?" He refused to look up at her, even when he heard a soft movement of cloth coming from her direction. He would not look; he would not look at her…

He heard her move towards him, and suddenly felt a small, cold hand touch his face. An unnaturally cold hand; he held back the shudder that wanted to take over his body at the realization. "Look at me, Professor Snape, look at what you have done to me."

He felt her hand move his face towards her. He needed to close his eyes, he needed to move away; he needed to do something so that he would not have to see what she wanted him to see. Unfortunately his morbid curiosity won over his instincts, and he instantly regretted it. He stared at her in silent horror, seeing an all too familiar sight before him. She was nude to show off the horrifying image that she had become. Starting from either side of her neck, all the way down to her pelvis were two single line incisions, both surrounded in grotesque bruises, blood still seeping out of the atrocious wounds. Her flesh was barely hanging on at the top of her neck, and it seemed as if the entirety of her mid-section moved in contrast with the rest of her body as she took another step forward. The liquid sound had been blood, he noted ruefully. He looked away from her again, a large lump starting to form in his throat. This was not real… It was not REAL… "Go away."

"Why should I Professor? You are the one who has done this to me; you are the one who could have saved me. It is your fault, Professor, and nothing that you say will ever change it. We trusted you,"

Suddenly the voice changed, "and yet you killed us. Why? You swore that you would protect us, Severus; why did you betray us like this?"

His eyes wandered back to where the Granger girl had been, and in her stead was instead the image of Lily Potter. He cringed.

"You were not meant to die."

"I did, and I am not the only one who had died for your mistakes, Severus. Must have I been so wrong in protecting you? I cared for you, Severus, once…"

"I could not stop it… I was not your secret keeper…"

"You could have warned someone. You could have saved me. But you didn't did you… I am not the only one you have killed. There are others, others that you cared about and others that you did not. You kill everyone that you care for, everyone that cared for you, your family... You even killed Sirius. How could you?"

"Can you honestly blame me for not interrupting the death of someone that I loathe?" He stared into her intensely green eyes; eyes that he had come to hate over the years.

She whispered, "Yes…"

………………………………………………………………………He woke with a start; bolting upright within the bed, sweat pouring off of his body. Noticing that he was within the infirmary, he forced himself to appear calmer before someone took note of his condition. He looked across the room and noticed that Granger was still in bed. He quietly got up and went to her, checking briefly whether or not she was breathing. She was. She was still alive.

He sighed audibly, went back to the bed that he had just been occupying and fell back on it. He pinched the bridge of his nose. It had been that dream again, but Granger had never been in it before. Bloody hell…As if he needed another reminder of the events in his life. He honestly didn't need the stupid girl plaguing his dreams every night as well as all the others.

Suddenly he heard movement and he sat up again in time to see Poppy coming towards him with a goblet of some sort of liquid. He eyed it suspiciously as she handed it to him. "What is this?"

"Something that I thought would help, considering how much blood you lost last night…" She trailed off and he narrowed his eyes at her.

He smelled the liquid and nearly gagged, realizing what it was that she was trying to give him. In a sudden fit of anger he threw it across the room, leaving it to shatter against the far wall of the infirmary. "What in the bloody hell are you thinking? I have never once touched that damnable substance for those reasons in my entire life, what in the name of Merlin makes you think that I would be starting now?"

She stared at him blankly; opening and closing her mouth in a futile attempt to find the words she wished to say.

"Believe it or not, speech is actually made with something called sound, perhaps you should attempt to use it while speaking."

Finally she found her voice. "I only wanted to help, you did after all save Miss Granger last night…"

Suddenly his dream came back to him and before he could stop it he shuddered. He spoke softly, "Did I?" Before she could answer him, he continued. "When Miss Granger is well enough to move about, send her to my library, I will be waiting for her there." He then turned away from her and was gone.

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It had taken Hermione a mere two days to recover from her brush with death, though she had not been told how close she had literally been to meeting her parents once again. She felt odd, as if every one of her veins had begun to 'hum' inside of her body, as if there was some new awareness within her mind that had not been there before. Something had definitely happened to her while she had been unconscious, but what? She had obviously reached the infirmary before she passed out, even though she could not remember arriving. Poppy had told her that she had only given her one dosage of blood restorative potion, so she must not have lost that much blood. Maybe she couldn't remember because she was in shock.

Poppy had healed her hand before she had woken, but there were large scars over where she had been cut. Why hadn't she noticed how serious the wound was when she had received it? She then remembered the riddle. Oh yes, blame it on her curiosity.

She sighed as she reached the doorway to the library and took out her wand. Well, it was then or never… She recited the incantation and the bricks moved away. Well, at least he hadn't changed the password… She entered the all-too-familiar library and made sure that the entrance had once again closed. "It is about time, Miss Granger." She jumped slightly and turned to see Snape hovering nearby the door, glaring at her.

"Sir."

"You are two days late, Miss Granger; would you care to explain why this is?"

"Well sir, it would seem that I was unconscious and-"

"Exactly who's fault was that, Miss Granger? It was not my choice to mess with a frame that was never meant to be touched, it was not my choice to run to the infirmary when logic should have told you to do otherwise, Miss Granger; so whose fault was it, precisely?"

"Mine, sir."

"Exactly, Miss Granger. I am glad that your overly large brain is finally beginning to work again."

She spoke quietly, so low that he almost didn't hear her; but he did. "But it would have never happened had I not been locked in here. Don't you care that I almost died…"

He froze, and whipped around and moved in so fast that she did not have time to really process it. Her back was suddenly pressed against the hard surface of the wall behind her and he loomed over her like vulture stalking its prey. "Let me inform you, Miss Granger, that I do not care in the least whether or not you could have died two nights ago. It was your own stupidity that led you into that situation, so do not think that I would praise you for it." Her gaze fell and he sneered, noting the aggrieved look on the girl's face. "What did you think? That I would see you walk in here and that I would be so elated that you were alive that I would simply 'jump for joy' as the phrase goes? Do not be so mistaken, Miss Granger; if you were to simply drop dead at this very moment, I would only be so discontented with the fact that there was a dead body in my library."

She looked at him, obviously stricken by his horrid words. "But… But why… I thought this would be different, that you would be different…" She was starting to feel exhausted and defeated. Was it always going to be like this?

He moved away from her. "You wanted this, now you have it. What, did you actually think; that I was some kind of tortured soul that you could coax into eating from your hand? Stupid girl…" He narrowed his eyes. "As if someone like you could ever possibly change me…" He stared at her in silence a moment before he continued. "I have left your new assignment on the desk in the corner I showed you before. Read it carefully, read the books you need to, and then seek me out after you think that you may be ready. I expect you to contact me by dinner tomorrow night. I do not care how tired you may be from your… incident; I expect this to be done. Is this understood?" She quickly nodded and he smirked. "Good. Just remember that you brought this upon yourself. See you tomorrow."

She stared after him as he left the library, her eyes wide. Finally she sighed, her anger once again forming in the pit of her stomach. Bastard.

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A/N- Just so you know Viscus Insipio means 'begin heart' and Invidus Spiritus means 'unwilling breath'. As always, I hope that you enjoyed this chapter, and please review!