A/N: You know I love you guys when I'm uploading this chapter at 5:50am from the airport. Thanks for your continued support. And special thanks to my beta AdelaideArcher.

Chapter 20: Live or Let Die

Add one scoop minced bloodwort.

I sprinkled a spoonful of finely chopped plant stems into the cauldron, the rust- and emerald-coloured bits slowly sinking into the thick purple liquid. Then I glanced down at Severus's instructions, which were scrawled onto a piece of parchment next to my bubbling cauldron.

Stir five times clockwise then once anticlockwise. Repeat four times.

I carefully counted each turn of the rod, pleased when the potion turned a shade of camel brown on my last stroke.

Add eight crushed mistletoe berries. Stir once each direction.

I added the berries and stirred, and the brew turned the desired shade of soft pink.

Add four drops salamander blood.

As the last drop of ruby liquid plopped into the cauldron, there was a quiet hiss, and then the potion turned a sickly shade of green and began belching a thick grey smoke.

"Bloody fucking piece of shit arse cocksucker!" I hissed, slamming my stirring rod on the table with a bang. I grabbed my wand and vanished the contents of the cauldron for the fourth time that day, feeling enraged.

It's okay, I thought, trying to calm myself down. Just because it didn't work this time, doesn't mean it won't. Try again.

I was bawling into my smoking cauldron when Severus entered the room that evening. I didn't even turn to face him, my hands gripping the edge of the work table in an attempt to keep myself from sliding onto the floor in a puddle of despair.

Severus walked over and vanished the smoking solution in front of me, his dark form blurred by my tears, though I could feel his presence next to me. He waited several moments, most likely trying to decide what to do with the blubbering witch in front of him, while I continued to sob.

"Hermione," he said quietly, as if I might lash out at him at any second.

"I've tried it six times, Severus. Six times! It's not working! I can't…" Unable to finish my sentence, I burst into wracking sobs. I felt defeated, useless. We'd been working on the potion for over two months and I had been sure this would work.

I barely noticed when Severus peeled my hands from the table and took me into his arms.

"If it's not working, we adjust, Hermione," he said in a soothing tone.

"B-but w-we've tried everything, Severus!" I choked. "What else is there to adjust?"

"There is always something to adjust," he said smoothly. "Try again."

I rose up, feeling somewhat ashamed for my outburst, and scrubbed at my face before turning to the cauldron and taking a settling breath. Severus stood quietly by my side as I filled the cauldron with water and began chopping, slicing, and crushing ingredients.

I performed the first half of the potion without needing to read the instructions. My heart began to race as I got to adding the bloodwort, knowing failure was imminent. I forced myself to concentrate as I stirred: One, two, three, four, five. Change directions. One. Change directions…

I nervously picked up the crushed white berries from the bench and tossed them in, then stirred once.

My hand shook as I moved to pick up the bottle of salamander blood, and I nearly dropped it when Severus said, "Wait."

I looked sideways at him, my hand hovering over the bench with the vial.

"Don't put that in yet. Stir once more each way," he said, looking critically at the potion. It was the same soft pink it had always been.

However, not one to argue with Severus when it came to brewing potions, I placed the salamander blood down on the table and picked up the rod, stirring the potion once more in each direction. The colour change was barely perceptible, moving from a pale pink to a light rosé.

"Now add the blood," said Severus, his eyes not moving from the brew.

I picked up the bottle again, and shook four drops into the cauldron. This time, there was no hissing noise and it not change colour.

"It always went green and smoky before," I said in an awed whisper.

Did it really just take two more stirs?

"Stir eight times clockwise," said Severus, pushing me to continue.

I nodded dumbly and picked up the rod once more, moving it in fluid circles through the thick liquid as it darkened from pink to a deep burgundy.

"Now we wait," said Severus, flicking off the burner with his wand.

"Do you think it worked?" I asked.

"We will see in four hours," he said. "Can I count on you to stop yourself from breaking down in tears until then?"

"Yes," I squeaked, my cheeks flushing the same pink as the brew before the two extra stirs.

Severus nodded and went to the couch, pulling off his outer robe and throwing it over the back before taking a seat. He rubbed at his temples with his long fingers, as if massaging out negative thoughts.

I took a seat beside him, curling my legs beneath me, and lay my head on his shoulder. He lifted his hands so they floated in the air next to his head and looked at me from beneath his thick brows.

"I'm sorry for crying," I said quietly. "I was frustrated. I've been trying to fix it all day."

"If I had more time—"

"But you don't," I interrupted him, knowing what he was about to say. "It's okay. I just wish we were progressing faster, that's all. Less than two months to go…"

"The potion appears stable," he said, dropping his hands and glancing over his shoulder to the silent brew in the corner. "If it remains so as it matures, we may not have a need for further progress."

"Except we still don't have a way to get you the Draught of Living Death without You-Know-Who or Harry noticing," I said with a frown.

"Aren't Gryffindors supposed to be unfalteringly optimistic?" asked Severus, sounding slightly amused though he continued to glower at me.

"The Sorting Hat nearly put me in Ravenclaw, you know," I said in weak defence.

"But it didn't," he said. "So please return to your sunny disposition. You sound as miserable as I do after being forced to teach dunderheads all day."

"The only dunderhead here is me, I'm afraid," I said.

"You, Hermione Granger, are not a dunderhead," said Severus smoothly. "An irritating know-it-all, to be sure, but not a dunderhead."

"I suppose it could be worse," I said with a long, mocking sigh and snuggled closer to his side, "I could have been put in Slytherin."

Four hours later, Severus and I stood on either side of the potions bench peering into the silver cauldron, where the thick potion had matured into a deep crimson, its surface smooth and free from blemishes, bubbles, or smoke.

"It looks stable," I said hopefully.

Severus summoned a ladle wordlessly to his outstretched fingers, then dipped the scoop into the liquid. He brought it to his nose, sniffing the contents with flared nostrils as if it told him everything he needed to know.

"Vial," he said, apparently satisfied, and I conjured one and placed it into his hand.

"How do we know if it will work?" I asked as I continued to conjure vials so none of the potion would be wasted—I didn't know how much we'd need.

"It will work," said Severus.

"Are you sure? I can bleed into a bucket all day tomorrow if it will help," I offered gamely.

"You will do no such thing!" Severus roared, snatching the vial I had conjured from my hand protectively.

"Okay, I won't! It was a joke," I said. That was a lie: I'd bleed out for a week if it helped. But on the matter of potions, I decided to trust Severus once more.

Severus was glaring at me contemptuously.

"I won't, Severus. I promise," I said, conjuring another vial and placing it on the table.

He schooled his features and began filling each of the vials while I moved on to conjuring labels, which wrapped themselves automatically around the little crystal tubes of red liquid.

I looked at him curiously as he paused before capping the last bottle, then gave a small shrug of his shoulders and downed the contents in a swift motion.

"It tastes horrible," he said.

"What was that for?" I asked.

"To ensure no ill effects," he said.

"But you said it would work!"

"And it will," he said. "But we have very little knowledge of what all the extra blood will do to me in the meantime."

"I should have tested it!"

"Nonsense," said Severus, as if he meant to end the conversation. I huffed angrily, but my irritation quickly slipped into worry.

"Do you feel okay?" I asked.

"I'm fine, Hermione. At worst I will need to add a liver tonic," he said, waving at me dismissively as he began to clean up the workstation.

"Should have been me," I muttered under my breath. "Stubborn git."

"What was that?" Severus asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Nothing!" I said with artificial cheer.

This time it was Severus who blew out an annoyed breath, but then his scowl turned into a small grin.

"Hermione, we now have a solution to the blood loss."

"Oh my God!" I shrieked, suddenly realizing what the success of this potion meant. I flew around the table and launched myself into his arms, bursting into tears once more.

"I thought you weren't going to cry anymore tonight?" he asked, his voice a mixture of mirth and irritation.

"Happy tears," I said through a smile. "And I only promised not to cry until the potion was done."

Severus wrapped his arms around me and we held each other close for several minutes.

"It seems I might make it through this after all," he said, as if he hadn't dared to believe it before now.

"Don't even say that. Of course you're going to live!" I yelped, rearing backwards to look at him. "If you're at all unsure I will get out the damn bucket and bleed myself right now."

"Don't you dare," Severus growled.

"Then don't you dare give up on me," I said fiercely. "You're going to live."

Severus took my hand and led me to the bedroom. I followed him curiously, not sure if he meant for us to sleep or make love.

Both of us pulled off our clothes and then slipped under the covers. Severus wrapped his arms around me and pulled me to his chest. I could feel his long nose pressed against the top of my head as he breathed deeply, and I felt myself sinking into relaxation.

Apparently the stern man just wanted a cuddle. Endless surprises… and a life to learn the rest of them, I thought with a smile before allowing myself to drift off to sleep.

Two weeks later, I lay on the couch turning over options for the Draught of Living Death in my mind for likely the thousandth time. Whatever we used, it needed to be discreet, it needed to allow the potion to be taken orally, and it needed to work 100 per cent of the time.

Which left us with pretty much nothing.

Vials wouldn't work. Injections wouldn't work. Somehow spelling the potion into his mouth wouldn't work. Taking the potion early wouldn't work. Altering the potion wouldn't work.

I sighed, staring up at Hufflepuff's badger on the ceiling, and found myself wondering about my parents.

As far as I knew, they survived the war and were still hidden in Australia as I lay on the couch in Severus's rooms. I wondered how similar they were to the parents I remembered: if my mother still enjoyed baking chocolate chip biscuits on the weekends and humming to herself as she washed the dishes; if my father still drank a cup of tea standing in front of the back window every day after work and forced my mother to watch James Bond movies.

I smiled thinking of Severus playing James Bond, the consummate, handsome, charismatic spy. Consummate he was. Handsome, at least in my mind, he was. But while he was clever and articulate, calling him charismatic was a stretch. It was a delicious image, however, to think of him wearing one of Bond's dark suits and sitting at a bar drinking a Vesper.

I imagined his pockets full of spy gadgets, his boots fitted with retractable daggers, trading his wand for a Walther PPK 7.65 millimetre handgun. I wondered if like Bond he would toss his agency-issued cyanide pill away.

Cyanide pill.

I blinked.

Cyanide pill.

The words stuttered through my mind like a skipping record.

Cyanide pill.

Could it work?

Cyanide pill.

Would enough potion fit in a capsule that Severus could hold it in his mouth and crush it at the opportune moment?

Cyanide pill.

Draught of Living Death pill.

"Severus, I have an idea!" I squealed in excitement the instant I heard the door to his chambers open that evening.

"Can it wait until I've sat down?"

I bounced on my heels, chewing my lip. "Fine, fine, sit down. But hurry!"

Severus raised an eyebrow, crossing the room with long strides and placing himself elegantly on the couch.

"No time for tea," I said, perching myself on the edge of the cushion next to him. "Do you know who James Bond is?"

That was clearly not the question Severus was expecting, as he blinked once and cocked an eyebrow in confusion.

"Yes," he replied after several seconds.

"Have you seen any of the movies?" I asked, vibrating in anticipation, wanting desperately to know if he thought my idea would work.

"I have not."

"Okay, well, my dad loves James Bond. He used to force my mum and I to watch one of the movies at least once a month. He used to call my mum Moneypenny, actually," I said, getting lost in memories.

"The point, Hermione," drawled Severus with a roll of his eyes.

"Oh! Right, well, for example in Licence to Kill Bond gets taken by these Hong Kong agents. But then the real bad guy attacks them all. So one of the Hong Kong agents uses a cyanide pill to kill himself so he can't get taken!"

"I thought I told you to get to the point," said Severus tersely.

"Cyanide is a deadly poison, Severus. They put it in a glass capsule, and the spy or agent or whoever keeps it under their tongue so that if they are at risk of getting captured, all they have to do is bite it and it kills them."

I was so excited my words were flowing out of me like speeding cars on a freeway.

"So, we make a capsule—I'm sure I can transfigure one—and then when it's time for you to die in the Shrieking Shack, you bite it, and then you die just like in the movie! Except instead of containing cyanide we use Draught of Living Death. You said the draught is fast acting, right? How much would you need to take for it to be effective? Do you think it will work?"

"If only your brain ran as fast as your mouth," said Severus smoothly, and I smacked him playfully in the gut, to which he gave a small grimace.

"What do you think of my idea, Severus?" I asked again. Severus brought his thumb to his Adam's apple, stroking it back and forth in thought as his face became serious.

Please say it'll work.

Say it'll work.

Come on. Come on. Come on!

"Stop bouncing, Hermione," he snapped, and I forced myself to sit still.

Several agonisingly long minutes passed before he finally said, "I think you may have discovered a solution."

I squealed in glee and jumped into Severus's lap, wrapping my arms around his neck.

"You're very excitable, did you know that?" asked Severus with an amused smirk, his hands come up to rest on my biceps.

I gave him a toothy grin. "It's not every day I get to figure out a way to save you, Severus. You should be more excited."

"We still have to test it," said Severus.

"Okay, let's get started then! I have both potions, and I can transfigure the capsule from the vial. If I put the draught in the vial and then transfigure it, it should hold the potion like we want. What amount should I put in? Did you want to test it out or should I? Maybe I should be the first one, in case something goes wrong? You'll be better at antidotes than me."

Severus rubbed between his eyes with his long fingers, and I suddenly realized he looked very tired.

"Just sit, Severus. Have a cup of tea. I'll get everything ready," I said, and launched myself from the couch to the potions cabinet. I took a vial of the draught I'd brewed a month previously, along with the antidote, and brought them both back to the couch.

"Do we need to use all of this?" I asked, bringing the bottle of Living Death in front of Severus as he sat drinking his tea.

"Half should suffice for our purposes," he said.

I conjured another vial and then carefully split the potion between it and the original. I'd already figured out earlier how to transfigure a capsule out of the vial, and concentrated hard so that the potion would stay untouched and in the centre while the vial shifted around it into a cylinder.

"How's this look?" I asked, holding up the first capsule.

"Adequate," he said.

I smiled and looked at it for a moment, then popped it into my mouth, sliding it between my teeth and my tongue.

"It feels odd, but it appears it's small enough that I can talk," I said with relief. Severus was staring at me, no longer paying attention to the tea in his hands.

"Well, here goes nothing," I said with a smile.

"Hermione!" said Severus, but I had already flicked the pill between my teeth with my tongue, and bitten down with a muffled crunch.

In a few moments I felt an immense tiredness wash over me and my vision began to blur and fade to blackness.

I awoke lying on the couch, Severus perched over me, my lips tingling as though he'd just kissed me, though not remembering him doing it.

"It worked?" I asked groggily, blinking several times as I felt the tiredness slowly ebb from my limbs and my mind.

"I appears that way," said Severus, his inky black eyes searching my face.

"I feel fine. Though my mouth feels gritty and—Ow!" I shrieked, feeling something stabbing my tongue and tasting blood.

"Your mouth is full of glass," said Severus with a frown. "Open up."

I obligingly opened my mouth as if a doctor was checking my throat.

"Do not, under any circumstances, close your mouth until I say to do so," said Severus, drawing his wand. "Accio glass shards!"

I felt pieces fly out of my mouth and up my throat, some of them slicing my tongue and cheeks along the way. I scrunched my eyes up in an effort not to close my mouth, and within seconds Severus had gathered all the shards into his outstretched hand.

He tossed them onto the floor, and then began to sing his beautiful healing spell, and I felt the pain recede from my throat and mouth.

He turned towards me with an angry scowl, and I bit my tongue to stop myself from speaking.

"If you'd bothered to wait before charging forward like a bloody Gryffindor, I was going to tell you we need to add a Vanishing Charm," he said icily.

"I—I'm sorry," I squeaked.

Severus squeezed his eyes shut, leaning backwards and rubbing at his temples.

"As long as you are all right," he said, letting his hand fall forward in front of his face.

I pushed myself upright. "I'm fine, Severus," I said.

Ignoring Severus for a moment, I reached for the other vial of Living Death and transfigured it into a capsule. This time, I added a Vanishing Charm that would activate once it was crushed.

"I fixed it," I said. "Would you like to try now?"

Severus peered up at me from beneath his furrowed brows. He looked tired and worried, not at all how I thought he should feel. Based on my test alone, it was clear to me this was the solution we had been searching for.

I smiled at him and placed the pill in front of him in the palm of an outstretched hand, and he took it with shaking fingers. Sitting back on the couch, he slipped it into his mouth, and I barely heard the soft crunch as he bit it with his teeth.

It was going to work, I could feel it, and my heart started thrumming as his eyes slipped closed and his breathing stopped. It was easy enough to wake him with the antidote.

"It worked," he said with a nervous smile upon awakening.

"It worked," I confirmed with a huge grin. I pulled myself into his lap and gave him a kiss. "We did it, Severus. We did it!"

"You did it, goddess," he rumbled, reaching up and brushing the hair from my shoulders.

"Smile, Severus! There's nothing else to worry about except timing," I said brightly, and Severus gave me a toothy grin. I could tell he was exhausted, and wondered what he'd done today.

"All I am worried about right now is sleep," he said wearily. "As should you."

"I'm too excited to sleep," I chirped. "But I'll come to bed with you."

"Will you be able to contain your enthusiasm in the bedroom?"

I pursed my lips, blowing out a breath from my nose. "I'll be good," I confirmed.

Severus chuckled, something he did far too little. "You better be," he said silkily, lifting me from his lap, and then striding into the bedroom.

Undressed, we crawled into bed together. Too excited to sleep, I lay with my head on his shoulder, one hand making lazy circles over his skin. I let my fingers trail downwards and brush over his penis, which stirred at my touch.

"I thought you said you'd contain yourself?" he asked, though he didn't sound too upset about it.

"I changed my mind," I said with a sly grin, and enveloped his half-hard cock in my hand. It didn't take much before it was firm in my grasp, and Severus sucked in breath as I gave it a few firm strokes.

"A discovery of this magnitude deserves a celebration, don't you think?" I said, and rolled over on top of him, slipping his penis slowly inside me until we were pressed pelvis to pelvis.

Severus chuckled again. "You are going to be the death of me, goddess."

"No, Severus, I'm going to be the life of you," I said, and began rocking my hips.