A/N: Not mine, never will be. Just an updated re-edited chapter. Added in a bit at the beginning.

He trudged through the dungeons; there was really no other word for what he was doing at the moment. Normally he prided himself upon swooping, skulking, or creeping. He wasn't trying to sneak as the abundance of student's wouldn't be there until next week.

It'd been a fortnight since they'd retrieved Miss. Granger, and the girl was truly an enigma. When he had been sent to her house it had been to tell her about the outcome and subsequent ending of an anti-climactic battle. When he'd arrived however… plans swiftly changed.

At first, when he'd walked into the room he'd assumed that a stupid girl was making a stupid mistake, but then he saw a receding hairline, and aged skin. For a split second he was surprised that someone as young as she would take on someone that old. When he saw tears slipping down his students' face he took a second look at who was above her. He recognized the man. He'd searched the darkest corners of his mind to place a name with this face. When he had, he shook with rage; he'd grabbed onto the older male and yanked. His wand was had been in his hand before he'd had time to think. He'd barely been able to stop himself from casting an unforgivable; he did however cast a stupefying spell, then one to close the man's trousers. He'd looked at the brightest student of Hogwarts and saw an empty shell. After she refused to talk to him he'd done the first thing he thought of and summoned the headmaster.

They'd left after the auror's came for Mr. Granger and he heard Potter telling her the news of Voldemort in meek tones. Neither knew exactly what had happened, just that she'd been attacked. The headmaster had taken her aside and told her about what was going to happen to her father.

She was finally free, but she didn't even acknowledge the fact, and she went on exactly as she had since they'd left her house: Barely living. Two weeks and still no change in her demeanor.

Snape was the only one who noticed the faraway look in her eyes, but even he could not understand why she began smiling when that little dimple appeared in her brow. That particular appearance was telling that she was reliving a world full of pain; a world Snape resigned himself to in the lonely embrace of the moon. She only truly allowed herself to feel when she thought no one was looking, and composed herself a brief time after. She was always keeping the masochistic smirk on her face, like a child clinging to a security blanket.

However, the absolute kicker for her was mealtimes. She would come to the meals with a longing look on her face, then she would only eat a few bites before she deemed herself full. She enjoyed the pain that twisted her stomach, he could see that, but she was making herself sick. Even Poppy had given up treatment of her, had finally listened to the girl´s screamed protests. Though, Snape decided, that in this case Hermione's eating patterns were the cause for the countless arguments from the chit, they would show up on the scans.

Dumbledore, the meddling fool that he was, had ordered him, of all people, to keep an eye on the girl. Why? She only speaks when spoken to, even to the other two thirds of the save-the-wizarding-world trio. If she was going to open up, she wouldn't do it to him. After three weeks no progress had been made by anyone who'd made the unfortunate attempt.

A ward announced the breaking of his potion stores and he left for the brief walk towards the offensive sound. Not realizing exactly what was taken, he did an inventory check.

Six obvious ingredients were missing:

1.) Mandrake Saliva

2.) Doxy Venom

3.) Flatworm Coagulant

4.) Newt Eyes

5.) Phoenix Tears

6.) Male Unicorn Horn Powder

Slipping through the list of potions that required these ingredients, he quickly realized there were only two combinations this could produce that he knew of, the first an abortifactant, and the second a poison.

He quickly looked through his stores and found an anti-emetic was missing as well. He checked his wards, and the name of the intruder hit him like a ton of bricks: Hermione J. Granger. The chit was trying to kill herself? He swirled and started to walk, not turning when the stiff material of his robes knocked over vials. He was going faster every step he took, and it barely took him five minutes to arrive at her dorm. He used the universal password the headmaster had given all of the teachers, and was confounded with the scene that met him.

Hermione was basking in the moonlight on a transfigured window seat. The small raw iron diamond patterns shadowing parts of her. A pained smile rested on her face as tears accompanied it, and she was wearing a twilight blue negligee. It draped across her lean frame and had a slit showing an unhealthy portion of her milky thigh. Black lace accents touched her throat, arms, and legs, highlighting most of all, her collar bones.

What stopped him cold was that it was almost a duplicate image to his last of his late mother. Even the song she had been playing in the background. It was the hopeless music that was favored by the unequivocally depressed.

She even looked up just the same as his mother had, with a blank expression that bore right through him. He, however, was not the same. He'd be damned if history repeated itself on a seventeen year old girl. He stalked forward, and whereas his mother had remained passive, recognition and defiance bloomed on her face just before he grabbed her by the shoulders.

He forced her to her feet, and kept his blazing eyes on her face. "What have you done?" he growled.

She cowered, "What are you talking about?" It came out as a breathy whisper.

"I know you've stolen from me. I ask again, what have you done?"

"I've done nothing you wouldn't do in the same situation." she said, her tone thick with righteous indignation .

"You stupid child." Snape said, before clamping his hand on her shoulder and forcing her to hastily walk towards the dungeons. He knew there was really no one to see them in the halls, and having it still be summer seemed in his favor tonight. He could admit to himself that she was a woman. A naive woman, who would've been a child before the adult body sprouted and adult problems piled on, but a women none-the-less.

He forced her into his private rooms, then quickly routed through his personal stores. He finally located what he was searching for. Then quickly thrust the small vial at Hermione. "You will take this." he said in a voice that left no room for deviance.

She glared at him as she raised the vial to her lips. After she swallowed the clear liquid, she felt small pinpricks in her abdomen, and for a moment she thought he understood. Until, he thrust a bucket at her. Soon her stomach twisted and wrenched, she doubled over and expelled a mixture of bile and chime. The contents of the bucket were colored teal due to the potion she had taken with the aforementioned stolen ingredients.

"Miss Granger, correct me if I am wrong. However, was it not your first year that I mentioned to never make use of a potion that is not the correct color? Even Longbottom takes heed to that warning."

"Sir," she responded, anger wound like a tight coil apparent in her tone "you are mistaken in the potion I brewed."

"The ingredients you've so impertinently taken along with the anti-emetic. No, I don't believe I mistook the Venenum potion."

She looked at him for a moment with a puzzled expression on her face, and then laughed bitterly. "You think I would steal from you to poison myself? You think I would risk a trip to Azkaban in the event of this such a possibility, for something as inconsequential as my death? You think I would procure ingredients that I'm barely allowed to look at, none the less touch, for a poison? No, sir. I am going to take advantage of your intelligence for a moment; I have successfully brewed and subsequently taken the Exigo Vegrandis Letum potion."

Her father had gotten her pregnant? Everything dropped into place: not eating at mealtimes, the ragged appearance, and the unwillingness to let go of the pain. She hadn't begun to heal because this was the point that had broken the last straw. The professor's sharp intake of breath was all that could be heard throughout the rooms. "Miss Granger, are you aware that this particular potion would've either been a most assuredly painful way to die or siphon your magic before you fully recorded the consequences."

"I did my research. If I was meant to survive, then I would've." she stated, but he knew there was something she wasn't saying. It didn't take a genius to place the pieces together.

"However, I suspect you were not planning on it." he said.

"Not planning on what?" Hermione stated reverting to monotone

"Surviving, Miss. Granger. You were simply not planning on surviving."

She raised her chin, but uttered no words of defiance. Snape walked across his foyer, and gently touched the spines of his books as he spoke again. "People look up to you Miss Granger, whether it be a student or a teacher. If everyone that does indeed hold you in that esteemed honor decided to follow in your footsteps… To give up when something gets hard, where would the world be? Mr. Potter would surely be dead, along with Mr. Weasley. Muggle born students would be gone. Longbottom, gone. Hmm... Maybe I should've let you go ahead. Let me out of my job." He pretended to sustain a disinterested flip through a book here and there, but he was waiting for a response from the stoic student. He continued when he realized that she was still in control. "You are not the first or last person this will happen to. Yours was not the worst. I have no idea why you keep acting like you are in an alternate reality where you're alone. It's not as if anyone forced you to..."

Finally anger blazed in her eyes as she registered the full weight of his words. "You do not understand. You will never understand, no one will. Why? Why should I give a damn? Someone should've noticed. SOMEONE! I left clues! I prayed to anyone who'd listen. I prayed for even you, you of all people, to come and save me. No one, no one came to rescue me. Dumbledore forced me to go home this summer, said I'd be happier and safer there. He refused my stay here with that damnable twinkle in his eyes. Maybe this world would be better without as many blind sighted people in it. Who am I to trust, please tell me, when the only constant in my life is myself, and I'm set on ignoring that at the moment. Everyone else turned a blind eye to me, so why should I care about anything including myself?"

When it was noted he didn't plan on rebutting, she added: "The most uncaring person on this earth thinks me self- serving, that's rich!"

"Miss Granger, I'm aware what you've been through..." he said in a gentler, if a little awkward, tone.

"No! No, no, no. DO NOT pity me." When she looked up, she saw his expression and the bulbous tears spilled down her cheeks. She rushed over to the surly man and piteously beating his frock coat with her clenched fist, before her resolve wavered and she crumbled against him with a gut wrenching sob. "No, no, no." she repeated voice thick with tears.

"You need to eat." he stated. If only to give her a reason to pull back. This only served for her to dig further into the stiff material, and murmur something incoherent.

He took a step back only to have her step with him. "Miss Granger..." when she did pull back and looked up at the foreboding man, the broken look she gave was enough to even break him. "Come... Let us eat." he paused, unsure which words would cause the girl to run. He repeated like a mantra in his head I'm just following orders. He knew, however, that this situation resembled... he refused to think of what exactly it mirrored. He had been wrong earlier, she wasn't his mother, she resembled someone to the't' and his jaw ached at seeing the defeated look on the girls face.

He led her through a hidden door in the sitting room, to his private kitchen. No one had ever been allowed to enter that particular branch of his quarters before, but he wasn't cold enough, had no need to be cold enough now, to tell her to wait for him. He also was not feeling confident enough to leave her in a room, alone, with so many poisonous ingredients, after the girls' earlier loathing of life.

He gestured for her to take the only seat in his kitchen, at his small dining table, and made her a bowl of krupnik soup. Having already prepared the separate parts of the soup the night before, it had only taken ten minutes. He set the bowl in front of her and commanded her to eat. Then stood in front of her, arms crossed, while she slowly drained the bowl. Lips pursed, he brought the pot over and ladled the rest of the soup in her bowl, then watched her flare in defiance before she resigned herself eat. When she was finished, he took the bowl and washed it. He normally sent the dishes to be washed, but he was pulling all the stops out in delaying while he figured out what exactly should come next. She was now staring at the picture he had painted almost twenty years ago of his aunt and uncle embracing. The truth was, he really regretted bringing her into his sanctuary and wanted her out, but how to do it?

Then something clicked. "Miss Granger, I do believe it is time to alert the headmaster."