When Hermione wasn't working at the apothecary or waiting around her flat for Professor Snape to arrive broken and bleeding (though he'd yet to do that), she was in the office space she kept downtown. In the beginning, she'd rented the space for a reason to leave the flat; now there simply wasn't enough room for all the papers and research spread over every surface anywhere but the office.
It was a three-room suite. The door opened on a smallish room meant to be a waiting room, and there was a door directly opposite that led to the main office space, a larger room with a narrow widnow in the middle of the back wall. Off the office was a tiny pocket of a bathroom.
The office room had a big desk, book shelves, and a few filing cabinets. The waiting room had a low couch on one wall (which she'd spent the night on more times that she cared to admit), a sturdy work table against the wall by the door, chalkboards on every wall, and a low table that had a tendency to accumulate scraps of paper.
These rooms were a haven. Different from her flat; she didn't live here. She worked here. This was her work, the culmination of all the damn research and scars. The first thing she'd done, after she'd realized Horcrux research was pointless, was put together a folio for Professor Snape when the time was right. Theory for him to reference when Dumbledore was cursed, most of it based in actual results that hadn't happened yet. When that was finished, or as finished as it would ever be (she was forever pulling it out again to add footnotes and amendments), she developed an arithmantic algorithm to estimate how decisions and actions would affect the future as she knew it would play out, how her time travel would influence things. It was fascinating from the angle of theory and academic discussion, and she desperately hoped that one day, once she caught up to her own time stream, she'd be able to publish.
The chalkboards were covered in equations, some of it from the algorithm some of it from other quandaries.
Hermione sighed and shuffled her papers around on her desk. She couldn't focus. Worse, she couldn't figure out why she couldn't focus, which made it even more difficult to focus.
She sighed again and went into the other room, cradling her tumbler to her chest. She drank too much, she knew, but it was the one vice she allowed herself. And she'd cut back a lot since the Order had reconvened.
Dumbledore had sent her to kill somebody else last night. Edward Barr, of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Searching his mind before slitting his throat had revealed a plot to murder Fudge, though it was a horrible plan. She had a feeling Barr had been set up, given the task of planning to kill the Minister so that, if a different Death Eater plot failed, he could be thrown into the mix.
That she was constantly sent after toadies and useless non-Death Eaters was frustrating. She couldn't tell if Dumbledore was trying to eliminate them before they became larger problems, or if he was having her act on bad information to prove Professor Snape's loyalty. Either way, it ate at her.
Forcing her thoughts away from the constant guilt of the killing, that gnawing remorse that had lived in her guts since she'd brought down that first bruised giant of a man in the Muggle Fights, Hermione flicked her wand at the nearest chalkboard, calling up her latest numbers. She was in the middle of inputting every single detail she could think of, working in equation upon equation into one enormous matrix. She had the war broken down into individual players, the individuals grouped together and connected by as many streams of loyalty as she knew existed, and the groups connected to other groups similarly. It was a mess, and a headache.
\\
There was another meeting that afternoon. A smaller gathering, considering it was the middle of the work day. Mrs. Weasley was there, but not Mr. Weasley. Mad-Eye, but not Kingsley or Tonks. Black, but not Lupin. Dumbledore, but nobody else from Hogwarts.
Hermione took a seat at the table, thanking Mrs. Weasley for the tea that appeared in front of her. She sipped it, hating what Dumbledore made her do.
What she'd told Professor Snape was true: She didn't have to like Dumbledore, she just had to do as he said, and she'd decided on the day she'd given him the schedule book that she would do what he told her to do.
Pushing the ever-present ruminations aside, Hermione unfolded the bit of parchment Dumbledore had given her the moment she'd walked into the kitchen. She hadn't decided yet if he'd made her his assassin as a punishment or if it was simply a matter of convenience. She'd learned to live with the guilt, after all. (Mostly.)
Walden McNair, the parchment said, Dumbledore's loopy script well familiar by now. His address was written beneath his name, a flat not far from Godric's Hollow.
She put the parchment in her pocket, and looked up to see Professor Snape taking the seat directly opposite her. His eyes flicked up from where they'd been focused on her hand and the parchment, and he raised an eyebrow. She raised an eyebrow back, had a sip of tea (wishing it had something stronger mixed in), and looked away from him at Dumbledore.
"I beg your pardon!" Professor Snape snapped, and Hermione realized that she'd let her attention drift from the meeting. She glanced up and down the table, mildly surprised to see Mad-Eye and Black looking a bit sick. "Headmaster, some of us have more pressing tasks than—"
"This is important, my boy," Dumbledore said benignly, waving his hands. There was a joviality in him that made Hermione distinctly uncomfortable, especially considering the name on the parchment in her pocket. "We are recruiting."
"Who." It wasn't a question, it was a mocking sneer of a word.
"Horace, of course."
Hermione's heart plummeted, and she rehashed her mental count-down for when she would have to speak to Dumbledore about Horcruxes. If he was making plans to recruit Horace Slughorn, he was thinking that the retired (for now) professor might know something. He'd thought so her sixth year; he'd had Harry ingratiating himself with the infuriating "collector" of movers and shakers, as her father called them.
Perhaps this is how he retrieved the altered memory Harry mentioned.
Of course, she hadn't been paying attention and it took a bit of creative listening (and perhaps a bit of Legilimency) to learn that Dumbledore had managed an open invitation to Slughorn's annual Christmas party.
\\
At dusk, she changed her clothes. No Muggle clothes, and not her usual comfortable robes. Dragonhide boots, spelled leather pants, her belt with its many pouches of useful things, a plain cotton tanktop beneath and dragonhide vest. Hands and wrists wrapped in leather stips, her hair pulled back and pinned down ruthlessly. She left when dusk morphed into nightfall.
McNair was a low-ranking flunky with the Department for Control and Regulation of Magical Creatures. He was the one who had been sent to kill Buckbeak. She hadn't known he was a Death Eater then, but it didn't surprise her now. Apparantly, he was fairly close friends with Dolores Umbridge, too.
He had rudimentary wards on his flat. The sort that told her that he didn't think there was serious threat to his person, him either being too good to need the protection of wards or too important to be attacked. He was the worst sort of thug—the sort that didn't realize he was only a thug.
His wards spun out in front of her, an invisible nimbus of spells and runes. He hadn't placed them himself, to his detriment. It was easier to dismantle them, easier to patch her own spells in and rewrite sections of his. When she was finished, the flat recognized her as if she lived there; the wards wouldn't alert him to her presence since her presence wasn't remarkable.
McNair arrived drunk two hours later. The sour feeling that rose to her gullet at the sight of his inebriated stumbling was easy enough to push down, though she knew it would revisit her later. She Occluded, watched him.
Taller than her but not as tall as Snape—when had he become the one she measured height against?—and not as broad as Snape, either. His life since the death of the Potters had been easy, and he was soft around the middle the way over-muscled men tend to go once they hit middle age or stop lifting weights.
The executioner went down too quickly for her to feel good about herself, though she never felt good about herself no matter how many hits it took. A boot to the family jewels, bringing his face closer to her level where it was easier to punch. She smashed his nose with her right fist, then brought the knuckles of her left fist to his temple. He fell, moaned, rolled over, tried to rise, puked instead.
She bound him, then looked into his eyes. "Legilmens."
The waitress from some bar down Knockturn Alley. Sitting at a long table in a dimly-lit room, chatting to a nervous-looking Terence Higgs while they waited for something. The breasts of the waitress from the Knockturn Alley bar. An office at the Ministry dominated by a large axe, which McNair sharpened with smooth, practiced strokes of a whetstone.
He didn't know anything worthwhile. He was a thug in all aspects of his life; only his family name had led to his inclusion as a Marked Death Eater.
She used her cheese wire, still with her from Spain (at first to remind herself that she was free and away, that she had triumphed and lived, and now because it was useful and familiar, grounding in the messy horror that Dumbledore set her to more and more regularly), putting a knee in the small of his back and jerking his head back to her with the wire. It sunk through his flesh quickly, easier than cutting through a hard cheddar block, and then caught on his spine. If she forced it, really yanked, sawed back and forth a bit, she could get the wire through the bone, but she didn't need to do that. Instead, she stepped away and rolled him over.
McNair weakly struggled, hands fluttering about. He knew he was dying, but his body didn't know it was dead. She ignored the terror in his eyes, the surprise, the panic when he realized he couldn't breathe. Instead she fought with the wire, jerking it out of the flesh. It was messy.
When the wire was free, wrapped up again and put back on her belt to be cleaned later, she did a quick but thorough tour of his flat. There was always the chance that he had something he didn't know he had. But he didn't; no luck this time.
She burned the flat, gutted it with Fiendfyre. It was a tricky thing to do, to remove just his flat and leave the rest of the building structurally sound, but she'd had plenty of practice.
Severus didn't know what to say to her the next time he saw her. Luckily, he'd been late (as usual), and he hadn't had to think of anything for before the meeting. He'd sat across from her, watched her glare at a bit of parchment, wondered what that was all about—and then the stupid Christmas party. As if they were all part of the Slug Club of old.
Fucking goddamn it all to Perdition.
He'd spent much of the time between their last conversation and the meeting thinking about her story—picking it apart to no end, eventually focusing on the overriding fact that things must truly go from bad to worse in the next year for Dumbledore to put Hermione Granger (Gryffindor golden girl, the brightest witch of her age, somebody so close and important to Harry sodding Potter) through that hell. And then that stupid Christmas party.
He'd been part of the Slug Club his seventh year at Hogwarts. Lucius had, of course, been part of the Club since his fourth year. Lily had joined their fifth year. Severus had resented being asked to join by the time he'd been invited, but the fact that James Potter hadn't received an invitation had soothed his pride. (Of course, Lily brought him along as her date whenever she could, so it wasn't quite as nice as he'd imagined.)
His Head of House had been awful when it came to playing favorites, and the worst part about it was that he picked his favorites from any House. The scrawny, ugly boy with a Muggle surname didn't merit much attention at all, even if it was his duty as Head of House to look after him. No, that had fallen to Poppy Pomfrey for years. He'd been in trouble too often for Slughorn to realize he was also clever. His ambitions had never quite lined up with the sort that Slughorn looked for in those he "collected."
Still stewing about the upcoming party—any instance where he'd see Horace Slughorn was a cause for dread—he grumped his way through the week's staff meeting.
\\
It was late evening on a Tuesday. Minerva had left the caslte before dinner, claiming an appointment with a dear old friend for dinner, and he'd left shortly after dinner without giving much of an explanation at all. The toad would not suspect they shared a destination.
Looking for Minerva, he came upon Granger in the library. He shouldn't have been surprised—when was Hermione Granger not in a library, given the opportunity?—but he was. She wore full robes and looked comfortable in them, which was somehow odd. A deep orange-red dress, loose and flowing, beneath a rich brown over-robe belted at the waist by a wide blue-beaded band. Her hair was the usual riot of messy curls, a bit braided beneath her left ear and hung with a silver crescent moon, colored beads at the back of her head, a shiny black feather caught at the back of her collar. The colors suited her, as did the cut of the robes, and she looked very much like herself and very, very different.
"You are staring, Professor," she said, snapping him out of his observation. She didn't look up at him, didn't move. She sat in the threadbare wingback armchair, its upholstery once Slytherin green, like a queen, legs crossed at the knees. She looked like autumn personified.
"Rodrigez is hardly worth reading," he informed her instead of responding to her accusation.
"Yes," she agreed, surprising him. In his experience, Miss Granger took any printed word as law. "But it is difficult to properly refute his inadequacy without first taking an inventory of it."
Still she didn't look up from her book, which was a good thing because she would have caught him smiling.
"You are wasting your time."
"Luckily time is one thing I have in abundance."
He conceded the point by not saying anything else. He walked to the nearest shelf and chose a book at random, then sat in the wingback across from hers and made himself as comfortable as it was possible to be on the lumpy thing.
They passed the hour leading up to the meeting in companionable silence. Twice, Granger snorted and read lines from her book—one of the standards of advanced arithmantic theory—so that they could share in mocking the author.
They were so distracted by the fool—Rodrigez had never once thought to apply his theories before publishing them—that they were almost late to the gathering in the kitchen. They ended up standing next to the fireplace. They weren't standing together, but they were quite obviously apart from the rest of the Order.
\\
Severus was late to the next meeting, just three days later. He'd been Summoned before dinner, had left the school without giving word (because he really didn't give a shit, when it came down to it). The Dark Lord wanted information about the Hall of Prophesy and all the Order was doing to guard it. Lucius had already given him the details of the Ministry's measures.
Severus hadn't known anything. As such, his hands trembled, just slightly, from the Cruciatus Curse. The Dark Lord had cast it on him for only a few seconds—he'd counted. Just long enough to knock him flat, remind him who was the master, and give him the slightest tremor to show his other master.
He stepped into the kitchen at Grimmauld Place and strengthened his Occlumency shields when everybody at the table went quiet. It was a smaller gathering than usual—the headmaster, Minerva, Black, Lupin, Moody, Shacklebolt, Granger. They sat at the near end of the table, a tea tray as their centerpiece.
"Severus," Dumbledore said, raising a hand in a half-wave of welcome, gesturing to the seat next to Lupin, across from Granger. The beads and feather were gone today in favor of a loose ponytail, curls escaping to dangle around her ears. She wore a simpler robe this time, flat slate gray linen over a white Muggle button-up shirt and dark purple jumper; he couldn't see the rest of her but he'd guess she wore blue jeans. She looked him over with a Healer's eye, and brushed his shields with her mind. He tried to ignore her. "Join us."
Severus nodded, deliberately not apologizing for his tardiness.
"Everything alright?" Lupin asked diplomatically. Granger pulled a long vial out of a vest pocket it shouldn't have fit in and put a splash of its wickedly green contents in a cup of tea, which she passed to him. He scowled but took a sip; the muscle relaxant would help with the tremors, though the only thing that would really stop them was sleep. The Cruciatus Curse fucked with the nervous system, and one of the side effects was twitching and mis-firing nerves; the muscle relaxant merely made the twitches and spasms smaller and less noticeable.
"Nothing has changed," Severus said, addressing the headmaster instead of Lupin. The werewolf had always been the most tolerable of the Marauders. He could feel some sympathy for the natural outsider, but not much when it came down to it. The man had chosen his friends, and his friends were assholes. Also there was the issue of his trying to kill Severus when they were at Hogwarts, no matter that he hadn't been in his right mind at the time. They would never be friends.
"Do you know of any changes on the part of the Ministry where the Department of Mysteries is concerned, Severus?" Dumbledore asked. His eyes weren't twinkling; he didn't look like a benevolent grandfather. This was his war room and they were his council.
"I do not."
Granger made a note, and he almost smiled when he saw that she was using a Muggle ink pen on parchment. She wasn't taking the minutes for the meeting, though; nobody did that (too risky should the minutes ever leave headquarters). The parchment was covered in runes and equations; she was playing probabilities against each other, if he wasn't mistaken.
They talked in circles for awhile. The Ministry continued to deny the return of the Dark Lord, and therefore would not increase the protection on the all-important prophesy. The Dark Lord was desperate to know the missing bits, to know everything he could about his adversary (as if a teenaged boy could truly be so complex), and the Order was doing its level best to keep the information from him. Guard schedules outside the Department of Mysteries, most of the Order on the rotation, and everybody with their ears to the ground for news of the Dark Lord's latest plan to gain information.
It had been such since the Dark Lord's return. The Dark Lord was rebuilding his forces, sending emissaries far and wide. Meanwhile, his Death Eaters at home were laying low, prodding at the Department of Mysteries with varying levels of success. There would be an attack every now and again, a revel even less frequently.
Severus was contemplating the uselessness of these meetings when the storm that had been threatening when he arrived finally broke. Thunder filled the air, rattled the windows, and then the hard patter of the rain.
"That will be all for tonight, I think," Dumbledore said, recalling himself after a moment staring at the rain against the window. "Samantha, would you be so kind as to help Severus finish off the list down in the cellar?"
"Of course, Headmaster."
And then they were alone together in the cellar laboratory. It was too bright for a basement room, as far as he was concerned. The whitewashed walls seemed to bounce the light back and around, refusing to allow shadows to form the way they should.
"Are you hurt?" she asked the moment the door was closed behind them. He raised an eyebrow at her and turned his back, glancing down the list—just more of the usual potions for the Order—and selecting a small silver cauldron from the shelf.
They brewed in silence. Companionable silence, like when they'd read together in the library.
As he crushed beetle carapace in the stone mortar, he contemplated the witch he watched out of the corner of his eye. She was indeed wearing Muggle blue jeans, as he'd expected. And the dragonhide boots he'd seen before. She was deft in her brewing, her motions practiced and unhurried. As his student she was—had been?—twitchy, always checking the recipe, double-checking the amount for each ingredient. In this cellar lab, she was confident and her potions always came out well. She'd never be a Potions Mistress; she didn't take to the cauldron naturally by any means. She was a dab hand at following instructions, though.
He finished his potions before she did. It had been hours, and the house above them was quiet. For the longest time, the only noise had been the bubbling of their cauldrons and the soft flow of liquid when one of them stirred a potion. He couldn't remember the last time he'd felt so relaxed in the presence of another person.
At long last, he turned to look at her. She'd removed her robe at some point. He'd done the same; it was hot in the cellar with so many cauldrons going. She wore her gloves for the last stages of her potion, keeping the toxic juices she was handling from coming into contact with her skin.
Unthinking, he stepped up behind her and adjusted her hair. She'd stuck it full of pins when they'd started brewing, holding the loose tendrils out of her way. One side of it was threatening to slip out of place, though, and it would likely flop over the cauldron and drop stray hairs, ruining the lot.
"Thank you," she said, turning her head a bit so that he could fix the pin back in place more easily. He did so and stepped away, wondering just what the hell he had been thinking. Yes, it was a wise action, but why had he just put his hands in her hair? Why hadn't he just used a spell?
Her hair was soft. A bit dry in its wispiness, but soft nonetheless.
"These are expensive ingredients," he said to cover for his… what? Gaff? Yes, it had been a gaff. "It wouldn't do to go ruining a perfectly adequate potion by getting hair in it at this stage."
"You know," she said a moment later, turning around to look at him properly once she'd extinguished the flame under her cauldron—standard pewter size four—to let the mixture cool, "I think that might be the first time I've ever heard you praise one of my potions."
He raised an eyebrow at her again. "I drink the potions you brew, Granger." Did she have any idea what that meant? He was a Potions Master; he hadn't consumed a potion brewed by anybody other than himself (and, once, Dumbledore) since he was twenty years old.
"It's still nice to hear it." She looked sheepish, and he noted that the pin he'd adjusted had ended up in the wrong spot, leaving the curls closer on the left side of her head than on the right side. It was a surprisingly charming look on her.
"You were—and are, as it were—the best in your year. Easily," he told her, folding his arms across his chest and looking down at her. It was a small room and the arrangement of the shelving and the tables meant that they were standing quite close. She came up to his chin, barely. That put her at just barely average height for a woman. "I could hardly say so with Draco Malfoy in the room, now could I?"
"I didn't say I didn't understand why you never said anything," she said, mimicking his posture and staring right back at him. He noted that she'd undone the top few buttons on her shirt in the heat of the room, as far as the scooped neck of the purple jumper would allow, and that crossing her arms under her breasts as she had made the shirt gap open just enough to reveal a tantalizing bit of cleavage. "I just said it was a novel experience, hearing it."
Severus sighed, rubbing a hand over his eyes to force himself to stop looking down her shirt.
"I—"
"Most of the recipes here have been modified, haven't they?"
"What?" Then, before she could repeat the question, "Yes."
"I thought so. I swear, I spent hours comparing these cards with the instructions from my old textbooks. You're a genius, you know that? Here, tell me about this." Eagerly, she flipped through the index and pulled out his Calming Draught formula. "Did you use the Erikson-Willis Formulation? Why do you put the chamomile in whole instead of chopped? And how the hell did you come up with the idea to use cool ceramics?"
"Language, Granger," he said, not sure which question he wanted to answer first. The simple fact that she knew to ask about the Erikson-Willis Formulation was reason enough to answer the questions; she'd be able to grasp the answers.
She smirked at him, nudging his elbow with hers, and waited for his answers.
\\
Granger had shared her Time Turner with him. Their conversation had carried them from the cellar lab to the Black family library, and had only ended when the first light of dawn had flooded through a window.
"Let's cheat, then," she'd said, pulling the Time Turner on its long chain from somewhere in the depths of her shirt. "We'll get a good night's rest despite our assignments."
And the library had blurred, and he'd felt the world tilt alarmingly on its axis for the space of a few breaths, and then it was still and quiet again. Granger removed the chain from his neck, her delicate fingers brushing against his nape as she did so. Her hand was warm. Then the Time Turner was away and she grinned cheekily at him. For the space of a moment, she was the picture of her younger self, eyes light, hair a nest from the hours over a cauldron, small and smiling.
They listened as the meeting broke up downstairs. Somebody, probably Black, trudged up to the top floors. The front door opened and closed several times. Then it was quiet.
"I'll see you next time, then," Granger said. The youthful look was gone, replaced by the slumped shoulders of an adult who should have known better than to pull an all-nighter, but there was still some invigoration in her eyes that made him uncomfortable. Their discussion had left him... invigorated too.
"Good night, Miss Granger."
"Oh, please," she said, looking both amused and annoyed. "You sound like you're about to give me detention."
He raised an eyebrow, not sure how else to respond.
"Call me Hermione, or Granger, or Barnes, or Sam. Preferably not Barnes or Sam, though."
Thoroughly wrong-footed without really knowing why, Severus turned on his heel and left the library, silently descending to the main level and marching out the door. He Disapparated to the gates of Hogwarts, where he made a slow walk of it across the grounds.
It was strange to walk past Hagrid's hut without smoke piping out the chimney, without the benign half-giant raising a hand in hello.
Good Lord, I can't do this, he thought, jerking his shoulders back as he came within sight of the castle. He walked with purpose, though all he wanted to do was meander and hunch his shoulders.
He found Dumbledore in the entrance hall, laughing at some parting joke from the Fat Friar as the Hufflepuff ghost drifted cheerily off through the wall. The portrait he passed through grimaced, though it surely couldn't feel the cold.
"Severus! You're back earlier than I expected."
"Well. Two sets of hands, you know. We put time to good use."
Dumbledore smirked knowingly.
"I wonder if I could speak to you a moment, Headmaster."
"Of course. Walk with me."
They walked in silence. Severus slowed his pace to match the headmaster's and watched the portraits as they walked. The portraits looked silently, sometimes sullenly, back. The faces were all familiar, though he didn't know the names of many of them.
Finally, they reached the headmaster's office. Instead of sitting at his desk, Dumbledore continued through the arch behind it and took a seat on the couch in a small sitting room cum observatory—there was the couch and a few chairs, several tall and narrow bookcases, and the outer wall entirely windows with an excellent view of the grounds.
"What would you like to talk about?" Dumbledore asked, only the lack of a twinkle in his eye suggesting he knew the conversation wasn't going to be about the latest purchase order forms from the apothecary concerning ingredients for the Potions curriculum.
"Hermione Granger."
You can't bloody do this to her. She's the brightest witch of her age and you sent her back and back and back, and you've turned her into something entirely different.
"Ah. I see."
Severus raised an eyebrow. "Do you?"
"You are concerned about her."
The second eyebrow joined the first. Just where do you think my concerns lie, old man?
"She… isn't right for this, Headmaster," Severus said.
"What makes you say that? I think she had performed admirably. She is a competent brewer. And she is a more than competent Healer, which is what matters."
I've seen her three times and already consider her a friend. She is a student.
"I feel it would be less suspect if I were to go to Poppy, as I was. I am a teacher and she is the school Healer; it is what is appropriate."
The headmaster appraised him, calculating, and Severus held himself carefully neutral.
"Poppy Pomfrey is a wonderful Healer, but she is not a member of the Order."
"Neither is Hermione Granger."
"Samantha Barnes is, though."
"Samantha Barnes does not exist."
"Why the sudden concern? I realize you are more familiar with Poppy, but surely you can see why Miss Granger is the better choice?"
More familiar with Poppy, Severus mocked in his head, only just keeping himself from rolling his eyes. Perhaps on more familiar terms, yet I just spent six hours talking to Granger without noting a single hour's passage.
"It came to mind tonight while we were brewing," he said, only half evasive. "You're right, she's a competent brewer. And she is a dab hand with the arithmancy. I think she'd be better put to use in those fields for the Order, especially considering Poppy is at hand."
"It is not safe for you to return to the school, battered and bleeding, as often as you were before Miss Granger was available."
It isn't healthy for me to be battered and bleeding as often as I am, Severus thought petulantly. But he knew the argument, if it could be called such, was over.
"I wish this was over, Headmaster," he said instead of pressing his point. He rubbed a tired hand over gritty eyes, fully aware that he'd been awake for the last thirty hours.
"I know, my boy," Dumbledore said more gently than he'd said anything in the last few years. It almost hurt, because Severus wanted it to be comforting. It was a manipulation, though. "Not so much longer, I don't think. A year at least. Maybe a few months more."
Lately, I just hope I survive the night.
He nodded and departed the office, trying to not think the second half of the thought: But most nights end with Hermione, so they are more tolerable than most in the past decade.
AN: Just to clarify a few things on Dumbledore that have come up in the reviews—Dumbledore set Snape up to realize "Sam Barnes" was Hermione because he figured Snape hated her because she was a student/Gryffindor/Harry-supporter. He put a wedge(or aimed to) between Snape and Poppy because he saw them growing closer, and he needed Snape to feel alienated: A Snape on his own is more vicious and a more effective spy than a Snape with somebody to talk to about his woes and possibly come to terms with some of the hatefulness and resentment he constantly has to evoke and harbor and overplay as a Death Eater. So he throws Hermione at him assuming she'll set him off, which she does, but she's changed so much from the student Snape hated that he actually ends up liking her. (Dumbledore doesn't see that different Hermione, of course; he has a very solid picture of her in his mind from what he learned about her when he taught her Occlumency, and she kept back the most traumatizing of her experiences while Turning because she resented him for them happening.)
… This all isn't going to be explained in-text, because it's all coming about from our characters not realizing what they're withholding from each other, and they can't see Dumbledore's angle well enough to more than guess at his motivations. (Hell, there's a bit in the next chapter in which Hermione completely lands off the mark on Dumbledore's motives.) But since it came up in the reviews, I thought I'd explain it. I spent too much time thinking about it when I wrote all this out to let it not come into play, after all.
Also, thank you so much for the reviews! They kind of make my day, seeing people responding to a story that's been in my head constantly. I smile every time I open up my email and see them waiting for me.
Cheers!
— M