The next morning finds us both back in the lab, cracking early, and downing more coffee with enthusiasm. Well, I'm enthused.

"What's next?" Granger inquires, eyes still half-closed.

"Well, ignoring that you must have Suz haunting the door to this room for when I show up, the next bit is adding Snape's potion." I yawn and this really does feel like last night.

First, though, I go ahead and begin the simmer on our third cauldron and start another timer. That done, I grab two of Snape's vials and measure out 40ml of each and place them by cauldrons one and two.

"They have to be heated to exactly two degrees above boiling point. No more," I tell her, fiddling with the temperature settings.

"How'd you figure that one?" she asks, eyebrows raised, hands clasped around her coffee mug.

"I exploded one cauldron. There used to be six in here." I wave a hand behind me, generally towards the back wall. "Almost took my arm off, but don't worry yourself. I'm fine."

"Seem fine," Granger mutters, not worried in the slightest, and I wonder if she needs more sleep.

"Anyway," I emphasise, moving well enough along, "the same way I figured out the glamour's inclusion time was the ninety-third minute of the simmer. Not at a boil, mind you, not the ninety-first minute. All trial and error, the best part of inventive potion-making."

I'm glad to find the sarcasm isn't lost on my sleep-deprived potions buddy.

It doesn't take long to reach 102° but it does take some more prodding to keep it there in stasis before these cauldrons also risk exploding. "Now," I grab for the first measured vial, "drizzle it into the cauldron in a triangle shape, beginning at the right side and moving down, then up and over. Three-o-clock."

I gesture at her to do hers and she actually looks put upon.

"Tut tut, Granger," I admonish and get a truly malevolent look in return. I almost say 'I don't recall you being this abysmal of a morning person,' and stop myself just in time. There's being honest with Granger and there's being a prick, bringing up things she must already remember. I can differentiate when mercilessly heckling her, if I focus.

"I'll do it. Go on, off with you." I shoo her to a chair and she almost objects.

Having administered both potions to the boiling concoctions, I recite the next requirements for Granger's reluctant edification. "Keep at the perfect 102° boil for four minutes. Any longer and it starts to burn it off."

"Evaporation," she defines in a grumble, like a primo swot and I charitably decide not to engage. Let her wake up first.

"Quite," I say, ever the agreeable, mature one, and she eyes me with suspicion. "Alright, that's it for now. I'll just bottle it up when it cools and thickens -" I wait for any sort of reaction but don't get one, "- and I can manage the third one on my own. Go back to sleep for a bit, you grouch. You've got probably at least an hour before Severus wanders through the Floo."

Granger sighs and fondles her coffee some more, but doesn't move.

"What's wrong? Didn't sleep well?" I'm suddenly concerned.

She looks a bit shifty. "Well, no. Not exactly."

I'm about to dive deeper when she goes on before I have a chance. "I'm trying to prepare what I want to ask Snape about."

Ah. Perfectly reasonable. I should have considered it, really, and I feel like an arsehole. "Sorry, Granger, I -"

"Don't do that," she says sharply. "It isn't you. It's -"

But she stops and I might die of stress. "... If not, is it something I can help with, then?"

Please.

Granger sighs heavily, staring into her coffee mug, and I suddenly feel afraid. Still willing, but afraid.

"You told me you loved me."

I stop breathing entirely and wonder how long I can do that before I suffocate.

"How do you know?" she asked, querulous, still fixed on her coffee and turning slightly pink.

This is… related to Snape's arrival here? Apparently. I shove that aside, wall it off as fast as I can, and hope it's good enough. I need to answer her, not think about why she's asking.

She gives me a moment, thankfully, and I try to get organised. "It… was a number of things, all completely ridiculous and nothing I should ever admit to," I say, trying to inject a bit of light-heartedness into this, but she only looks at me.

I pull a chair over and sit down, watching her watch me.

"Of the varying people who have confronted me about it, one was that I hadn't thought about shagging you at all. All I thought about was - was quarrelling with you, sparring, fiery conversation. The debates, the fun. Just spending time with you, the topic wasn't important. Half the time I invented something to wind you up."

I realise this is probably worth apologising about as well, but too late now. And I know she remembers it, or shadows of it; she told my mother about it.

Granger takes this in stride. After all, didn't we spend two hours doing just that last night?

But I'm realising belatedly that I probably shouldn't go into detail about why Blaise decided I loved her. I go to the next in the chronological order: Luna.

"Lovegood said she could tell by the way I looked at you."

Her eyes tighten just a little, around the edges, and go back to normal. I try not to read anything into it, but instead, I wait too long to keep going.

"What else?"

I can't deny her anything, anymore. But how can I say it? I try again for a spot of levity. Sometimes it works.

"Well," and I almost include Blaise as a reflex before deciding that's probably unnecessary detail that he would rather I not share with Ginny's best friend, and leave myself out alone on a limb instead, "I've probably shagged my way through a third of London. But I didn't care that you and I hadn't - that we weren't -"

I'm a chickenshit again, or maybe I'm just allowing us both a little bit of dignity, privacy, I don't know. Either way, I know she understands what I'm saying; I'm not dodging because it's a lie, I'm just not shoving it in both our faces.

"Zabini said it must be love. Guy stuff, it's stupid, don't -"

Granger inhales slowly and I give her time. This is the excruciating conversation I was looking for last night, right? Right?

I work on my coffee and jolt the mug when Jasper taps on the doorframe. "Master Draco, Mister Snape is here."

She jumps as if startled and sets down her coffee mug. She starts to move towards the door, then turns back and grabs it.

"I'll bring you more, Miss," says Jasper.

Granger stammers a thanks, disappearing from view, as I whisper, "It didn't matter to me. I'd wait forever."

I set the timer for the third cauldron to follow me around as soon as I've vialled up the first two. It made quite a lot and I tuck a dozen vials into my robes to give to Severus whenever he emerges. The rest will go to testing of the newest ingredient.

The timer bobs along beside me, bumping into my shoulder, and I wave it back another metre or so.

There's no way they'd be done speaking so soon, so I make my way to the conservatory. My mother should be there, I believe, tending her orchids and she'll know if the post has come yet. I've got an eye out for the Campanula rapunculus, even though it's only been a few days, but the last samples came quite fast.

I wasn't home when they arrived, but my timing is perfect for this delivery. I've only just stepped into the conservatory to greet my mother when a massive peregrine falcon swoops at top speed towards us both, bombing through a vented skylight in the ceiling.

My mother, caught off guard, lets out a tremendously undignified shriek and ducks to cover her head with her hands, sprinkling gardening detritus from her gloves into her platinum hair. It stands out.

The falcon drops me a medium-sized package and zooms back out. I could barely tell you what colour it was.

"Was that -" my mother gasps, trying to recover her sensibilities with her hands pressed to her throat. "What was that?"

I rack my scant avian knowledge. "Morocco is known for peregrine falcons. Fastest bird on the planet." I tear open the parcel, setting aside the bloomed petals and flowers to find the seeds. "Can I plant these?"

Still breathing hard, Narcissa takes a brief look. "Yes, darling, of course. I have some starter pods over there." She points towards the left ceiling over her shoulder and I suppress a smile.

She leaves me alone while I moderate out the handful of seeds the Moroccan botanist provided me. To my mild surprise, I find the steady repetition of planting soothing and wonder if this is why my mother loves her conservatory so much.

"I saw that Severus arrived," she says delicately, repotting an orchid in fresh bark, sufficiently recovered at last.

I feel inherently I can trust my mother in a way my father does not invite. "He's here to see Granger, obviously. He's not with me, so you must have figured."

She gives a small nod of acknowledgement but doesn't interrupt.

"She wants to parse out what was real and what might not have been. When things happened, why they happened. I don't know; she hasn't told me why she wants to see him, but those seem the most likely guesses," I sigh. "I think it'll be good for her."

My mother considers this as she presses down the bark gently around her latest orchid. "Would you let him speak to her if you thought it wouldn't be?"

Thrown by the unexpected depth of this question, I stop. "Once… probably not. I would have wanted to protect her from it. Or protect me from her knowing something bad about me. But not anymore. She has to know and she has to make decisions for herself."

I finish this quietly, wondering just how much my mother sees.

"Thank you for taking tea with her, and everything else you've done. Showing her the library, letting her take and do what she likes. I think it's made a big difference to her," I say, watching my mother's reactions to this.

"She's a lovely girl," Narcissa confirms. "I quite enjoy her company. But I don't think I'm what makes the difference."

She looks at me coyly and I shake my head. "Don't do that. It's not fair to me to do that. Granger doesn't want to be here; if she had a choice, she'd rather be anywhere else. It'll be worse for me when she leaves, if I think -"

My mother gives me a knowing look but desists, moving to the next orchid in the row to examine for potential repotting. "I think your father rather enjoys her as well. He certainly didn't expect to, but she keeps him engaged, I think."

In a different family, that could have sexual undertones, but not here. My father adores my mother. My earlier fear was wildly unfounded, my jealousy entwining with my paranoia, my misery of having lost Granger. If anything, this is absurd for a different reason.

"He might like testing her moral boundaries, debating house elves and the like, but he's keeping her for the Dark Lord. I know it, and you know it. Anything before that is just passing the time with a mandated house guest."

Instead of responding, my mother gently lifts another orchid from its pot and prepares a handful of bark to settle around it in its new housing. I have deafening memories of repotting Mandrakes in Herbology and am relieved that orchids don't violently scream their dislike of the situation.

The timer near my shoulder is under twelve minutes now, and I move to leave. "Well, thank you anyway, Mother. You're making her time here more bearable. I appreciate it."

I return to the lab, perform the glamour spell on the final cauldron, and prepare to add Snape's potion to it - the final step. When that's done, Snape is still with Granger and I wonder if I have time for a nap.

Deciding I do, I tell Jasper to wake me when they've emerged and I crash back into my bed.

But Jasper doesn't wake me. I wake up of my own accord, blinking blearily and looking around. They must still be talking. I've never known Severus to speak this long with anyone about anything, ever. Is that… good? Probably good, right? I take a shower to wake up, thinking a little wryly that Granger was a half-asleep mess this morning, and now I am.

After trying to settle my hair back into a presentable position, I make my way to the next room, back to my lab, to vial up the third cauldron-full of scar lotion. Now I have my Campanula rapunculus samples. I need to focus.

I've filled four more vials with it when Jasper cracks into the room the same time Snape knocks on the doorframe.

"Master Draco!" the elf gasps. "Mister Snape is -"

"Here," Snape and I both say, and I finish with, "Thank you, Jasper."

"If you're here, where's Granger?" I ask, a little waspishly.

"Talking to Butterworth for a while," he replies, and I stop and stare at him. "I brought him with me. Didn't the elf say?"

Ah, no. But okay. Good. "I didn't think about asking for her Healer, but he can tell her more things, can't he?"

Snape nods. "Weasley's healer - Ron's - and Lovegood's also went to join up with the Resistance. Their skills will be helpful, I'm sure, physically and mentally, perhaps."

Indeed. Well, yes. Good. That's something I can't provide Granger and I'm grateful Severus thought to tote him along.

"How are you making out here?" Severus asks, coming closer to inspect my cauldrons with professional fascination.

"No changes from the lotion you've already seen," I confirm to him. "Starting testing on the next ingredient today. But I have more vials of the one you're used to, if you need to pass them along."

I set the handful of vials from my pocket on the table in between us. "Granger wanted to ask you about your own invention. Did she -"

"She did," he replies calmly. "We discussed it."

Okay, then. "Any other news from the war?" I breathe the last words.

Severus looks uncomfortable for the first time, looking over his shoulder. "Potter will be moved tonight, I hope. I've sent word to Zabini."

Saturday night. Earlier than Blaise expected. I hope he's had time to do - whatever he wanted or needed to do before he made the swap. But the sooner the better, if we can wrangle it. I nod.

"Nice job on his hair, by the way," Snape smirks. "I evened it up for him."

"Kind of you."

And now, we wait. For the swap to occur, for the war to end, for Butterworth to finish with Granger, for everything else. While we do, Snape wanders over to Granger's two cauldrons and peers in.

"Have you a spare one?" he asks after a few moments, almost impatiently, and I try to catch up.

"Another cauldron? I blew up my sixth one, but -"

"Went too high over the boiling point too fast, did you?" Snape states dismissively, not waiting for an answer. He conjures a fresh one with his wand and sets to work over it, summoning or conjuring ingredients, adjusting brew temperatures, and I lean back against the table to watch him. He's amazingly swift, fluid in his movements, long fingers dancing over the task at hand.

"What are you doing?"

"We seem to have some time to kill. I'm putting together something else for her to figure out. Keep her busy. It's nice and complex; she'll like it."

"Mm. Alright then. Thanks."

"Not doing it for you," Snape huffs, then grudgingly says, "She always was an insufferable student to teach."

I bet she was. I smile.

"Do you know he called me 'insufferable'?" Granger sniffs when she finally joins me.

"No potions, yet. Lunch first," I turn us around and walk down towards the solarium. "We won't risk eating in the lab."

Glancing at her from the corner of my eye, there's a small smile tugging at her mouth. "We can eat there," she offers generously. "I'll behave myself with the food."

"No, no," I insist. "I don't want you to change a thing. Eat anything you like however you like," and I stop before this becomes tinged with sexual undertones. More of them, anyway.

"Did you hear me, though?" Granger persists as we walk. "He called me 'insufferable.'"

I can't pass up this opportunity. If she swings a door wide open, I've got to walk through it. "Yes, he said the same thing to me about you."

Her jaw drops and she stops dead in the middle of the hallway. "He didn't."

Suz meets us at the intersection leading to the solarium, and I ask if we can have lunch there. She squeaks in excitement and vanishes immediately.

"Don't take it to heart, Granger. I'm sure he meant to say 'somewhat insufferable.'"

"Which means, by default, I am somewhat sufferable," she sighs, grieving the loss of her presumed sufferability. "That would be something, anyway."

"Why do you care so much about Snape's assessment of you?" I'm truly curious. Even after finishing their visit by talking to Butterworth, this is still on her mind, still insulting her.

Granger huffs, annoyed. "I always thought professors preferred students who were invested in their subjects, rather than dozing off in class or carving rude things into the desks." She side-eyes me.

"I did neither of those things, I'll have you know. Any carvings I may or may not have done into the furniture were exclusively in the Slytherin dungeons for future generations of wizards to enjoy."

She rolls her eyes and we've arrived in the solarium. Suz did too good a job with the table. It looks - well, almost date-like. I try to pass it off as regular decor for the Manor, casually ignoring the details.

Then I ruin this nonchalant attitude by saying, "By the way, I find you entirely sufferable," and Granger scoffs. "No, really, you're my most-preferred company."

"Including Zabini?" she inquires doubtfully, eyebrows high.

"Blaise has his own particular set of qualities, no doubt. The most important thing of late has been the fact that he's the only other person I could talk to honestly. But I gravitated towards Blaise after school in general because he wasn't a Death Eater. I wanted a friend who wasn't so enmeshed in the Dark movement. Blaise is - a lot of fun," I finish rather lamely.

Granger looks like she'll withhold judgement on Zabini's tendency towards 'fun.'

"But either way, I still prefer you," I say like an idiot, doubling down on it. I've ended up abandoning my strident efforts not to remind her that we used to snog gratuitously and at length, and that I would also still like to do that, even though she'd probably be willing about the time hell freezes over.

Unsurprisingly, she does look awkward and I backpedal. "Sorry. I don't want to…"

Salad arrives, interrupting my humiliation and I wonder if Suz did it on purpose.

"My mother also thinks you're lovely, by the way," I offer as a change of subject.

Ordinarily, this wouldn't be a change of subject at all. This would be an enmeshing of a new relationship, a big step forward of meeting my parents and having them enjoy my girlfriend's company. But nothing about this is normal and she's not my girlfriend.

She's not even my ex-girlfriend, I'm just residually in love with her, and I wonder if Suz can beat me over the head with a saucepan when she delivers the next course.

But this redirect has the desired result. Granger, looking pleased with the salad offering, responds around her first bite of it. Of course she does.

"She's wonderful, your mother," she chews. "She's gotten me all sorts of clothes and robes in my size, and we've been taking tea together every morning in the library. I missed it today, of course."

She looks genuinely disappointed about it.

"My mother would be perfectly happy to have tea this afternoon instead, I'm sure."

"No, I want to work on the lotion. We have all day; well, half a day, now. But all day tomorrow," Granger clarifies, and that sounds brilliant to me.

Salad is soon replaced by soup and I am not hit about the head with a saucepan. Oh well. I will try to carry on as sensibly as I can without it. Speaking of the lotion, I reach into my robe pocket and take out one of the vials that Severus didn't take with him.

Looking at the vial on the table between us, tantalisingly placed between the two matching bowls of lobster bisque, Granger's studying it with rather more intensity than it deserves.

"Nothing new about that one," I tell her. "I've been waiting for you to start the new testing."

She gives me an appreciative glance before returning her scrutiny to the vial on the table. Reaching to lift it, she pops the stopper off with her thumb. It shoots across the room and she coughs.

"Looks a bit… well, I hadn't really noticed properly before, but it looks a bit like - like a type of bodily fluid, wouldn't you say?"

She's growing bright red as she sets it back on the table. Her hand wobbles slightly and it tips on its side, the… lotion slowly working its way to the tablecloth. My eyes bulge. "Granger, are you saying this looks like -"

"Are you saying it doesn't?" she prompts, covering her mouth with her napkin, and I can't. "Basically the same colour and consistency, I'd say," she proclaims, like the know-it-all she is.

I gawp at her. "Granger, what the hell has gotten into you?"

"Looks like a sample from a fertility clinic," she manages through giggles, and I don't know what a 'fertility clinic' is but I know what 'fertility' is and 'clinic' is like 'hospital,' and 'sample' is self-evident and I'm abjectly horrified.

She's laughing too hard to continue and I shake my head in mock disappointed dismay. "Well, then, maybe we should try specialis revelio on it again. Turn it blue. Why not?"

Sniffling a little, Granger picks the vial back upright. Most of the not-bodily fluid stays put. I take out my wand and cast the spell.

"Well, I thought it could only improve things, but -" I eye the specimen warily.

"That - that is decidedly unhealthy bodily fluid. Go straight to hospital," she cackles.

Indeed, it does seem much more concentrated in a smaller sample than the whole cauldron. It's nearly black.

"Not to the fertility clinic, then?" I inquire innocently and she clutches her napkin against her chest, heaving with laughter. "Well, alright. Perhaps it was better off before."

I plunk a second vial of nearly white, mostly-viscous fluid onto the table between our thick, cream-coloured bisques and Granger's nearly in tears now. This is just too good to stop. I can't do it.

"Potter is going to be spreading it all across his face, you know," I tell her seriously, and she's now doubled over in her chair, her soup bowl seriously at risk.

"Stop that," she wheezes pathetically. "You're awful. Don't say it like that, it's terrible."

"His forehead, anyway," I clarify, nudging her soup bowl toward the centre of the table like a proper gentleman. "Got to stay disguised, and all that."

"No, don't -" she manages, barely. "Stop. I can't. No more. I'm sure we're the only ones who would look at that and think -"

"'We', Granger? You brought it up. This is all your fault. Now I can't unsee it." I scoop up a spoonful of bisque and slurp it, positively obnoxiously and not a little suggestive - I think.

"I do need to name it," I announce as Granger attempts to stop crying at the lunch table. "That could get us back on the respectable Potioneer track. What say you?"

This allows Granger a modicum of control, something swotty to consider. She manually sorts herself out, straightening her napkin and smoothing her hair. Looking quite dignified, if extremely red in the face, she looks at me intently.

"How's your Latin, Granger?"

"'Respectable,' some would say," she allows, tipping her drink at me and I hope I can get her to spit out a mouthful.

"Ah, excellent. I did hope so. How about… Unguentum eiaculatus?"

Her lips press together firmly, turning white as her face turns more red. She's trying so hard to hold it in and I can't help myself. "Conglutinosus sperma?"

She snorts and chokes out, "Don't you think sperma is a little on-the-nose -"

"- Well, for one - not on purpose, no, I don't think anyone aims for the nose -" a small crostini comes flying at my nose for that one, proving me wrong in one sense, "and two, eiaculatus isn't?"

She ignores me. "How about viscosus lentus?"

"Not bad, Granger, not bad, but both adjectives. We should mix and match."

But she's already shaking her head, ready with a better offering. "Shut up, I know about the adjectives. You've got me all off-kilter."

I hope so.

"Lentus crepito," she throws out with a superior look.

"'Sticky cream?'" I weigh it out. "It's certainly the easiest to say, but is it sticky, do you think? I hadn't meant for it to be sticky."

I don't think it's sticky at all, myself; it rubs in just fine whenever I've tested it on my chest - good gods, the innuendo just won't stop springing to mind, the gift that keeps on giving - and Granger actually dips into the vial to scoop up some and feel it, rubbing it between two fingers.

"Not at the lunch table, Granger," I say disapprovingly and she flicks some at me.

It lands in my bisque.

We both stare at it gravely.

"Right, well, that's lunch sorted," I declare, throwing my napkin onto the table and pushing back my chair. "Shall we? I promise not to tell Suz how you desecrated her best soup."

Granger punches me on the shoulder. "That was your fault."

"Was not. You didn't behave around the food in the slightest, and you promised. We'll have to keep having meals outside the lab for now, I suppose."

More meals would be delightful. I can't believe I have the whole rest of today and all day tomorrow working with this brilliant witch next to me.

"And for the record, Zabini's Latin is rubbish."

Back in the lab, it's time for business. Playtime has ended - for now, anyway. Granger's wrangling her hair out of her way and I'm clearing off the workstation to get organised.

"What's this?" she points to the sixth cauldron, the one Snape left for her.

I shrug. "Severus didn't say, just that it would be something you might enjoy deconstructing. He said, and I quote, 'she was always an insufferable student to teach.'"

I can't help reminding her of it. Quite funny.

Granger looks newly insulted but can't hide her fascination with the cauldron. "He didn't offer it to you?"

"I guess he figures I've got enough to be going on with for the time being, or that you can multitask better than I can." Both are probably true. She eyes it once more and turns aside, setting it away for later.

We set to preparing the Campanula rapunculus, chopping some, crushing some, and setting some petals aside whole. I tell Granger I've got some seeds planted to grow in the conservatory, even though that'll take a goodish while to produce anything useful. More helpful was the delivery method of choice for my Moroccan botanist being a peregrine falcon that scared the bloody hell out of Narcissa on arrival. So we can - and should - order more at any time.

"A peregrine falcon? I don't think I've ever seen one," Granger muses thoughtfully.

"I barely did today."

"What did it look like?"

"No idea."

I assemble the vials of scar lotion to use and set aside half a dozen to keep away from the testing, including the one that looks like randy corpse sperma.

Uncorking the first one we will be testing on, I shake it violently into the cauldron with a satisfying 'splat' at the bottom and Granger coughs out a laugh.

"None of that nonsense, please," she insists demurely, a little pink again as I splat one into her cauldron, too.

I badly want to get right back into where we were over lunch, but this is important. She's quite right, and I'll take all the help I can get to stay focussed.

"It was a lot of work to get these three cauldrons worth," Granger observes. "Why on earth did you let me ruin five full ones with my tinkering the other night?"

I make an awkward little half-shrug. "I don't know, it seemed like the right thing to do at the time. I was just thrilled you were here, to be honest. If it kept you in the lab and happy about it, I was more than willing to sacrifice them for the cause."

"You could have given me one," she says stubbornly.

"Well, that's not much for thorough testing, is it? Can't tell which bit affected which bit, and all that, when you're piling all the experiments into the same cauldron."

"So you did it in the name of thorough testing?" Granger's crossing her arms and scrutinising me.

"No," I reiterate patiently. "I did it for you. So you could thoroughly test, yes, but even so. If Zabini had asked, for instance, I'd have probably told him to jump in the lake. It was a lot of work, you know."

I'm aiming for light-hearted and I think I'm sort of managing. But Granger is teetering on the edge of something more serious, I can tell, and I wait for her to decide which way to take things.

She takes them nowhere, for a while. We work in parallel silence, me over the crushed-petal cauldron and her with the chopped petals, diligently testing each possible variable with one small vial of lotion at a time.

My grid of successes and failures - all failures so far, no surprise there - is slowly filling in as the time begins to pass.

We're both testing each small concoction we make on ourselves. That's probably reckless, but I can't think of a better way. I'd rather do all of it, but she wouldn't let me and this does keep the possible cross-sample contamination lower. Or maybe she's just trying to avoid my chest. Fair enough.

Her arm and my chest are ending up a patchwork of blue ink notes pointing to what we tested where. "Chopped + boil + 15 min" and so on, across what could be endless permutations.

Finally, Granger is ready. "Can we talk about the park?" she says so fast, I almost don't catch it.

Thank Merlin she waited until my hands were empty or I'd have dropped something. "Er, yes. Of course. You don't need to ask, though."

"I do," she says firmly, "because I want to preface it. I don't want you to answer with your usual dancing about, mitigating the worst bits for my benefit. I have a better idea now of what was going on."

I'm sure she does, after today.

"I don't want you to skip over your parts in things. What did you know and when?" comes first, and that is so broad I almost become stuck on it.

I decide to just start talking and let her correct me or refine my direction as I go.

"That you were starting to remember? It ebbed and flowed, but it was right when I started coming back to the park about eight months ago. I wasn't certain at first. You'd seem to recall specific details from a prior visit but not others. Then things seemed to accelerate."

"Why me?" comes next as Granger turns back to her cauldron.

"I liked spending time with you, like I told you earlier. All of that was true. I didn't know how to interact with you, though, not like this. We'd never spent any actual time together. So starting a row was what I had to work with at the beginning."

"And later?" She glances over. "Please work and talk at the same time. Don't watch me. This is going to get uncomfortable enough."

Alright, then. Probably easier for me, too. "You were remembering a detail from a previous row, for instance. You'd fixate on it in a way that concerned me. So I'd try to get you onto something else. So our time spent wasn't arguing constantly, anymore. I felt like I was - getting to know you in small ways."

"And then?" Granger prompts, swallowing forcibly and I know where she's going.

I gather a rough timeline of engagement. "By then, I knew I fancied you. I wanted to see you, and I wanted to make sure you were alright. I didn't think I could do much about it except reduce -" now I swallow hard, "- reduce the time you were being used. So I did that. I did it more and more, as we could get away with it and Dolohov didn't get suspicious."

"By paying for the time yourself," she says flatly.

Snape must have told her. No sense trying to dodge it. "Yes."

"Keep going."

"Eventually, I was paying for all of it and you saw no one outside of me. But by then, it seemed like you… like you fancied me, too. And I - it made me so happy. Being with you, I just lost my head." I'm grateful she doesn't want me looking at her. I can't.

"Did I always remember everything?" She's pale, fixated on her cauldron, not even absently stirring it now.

"I don't know for sure, but I think so. The first time we snogged, you seemed to remember it the next time. And from then forward, your memory was only getting clearer every day. I'm so -"

Granger snaps, "Don't apologise again. I want facts, not for you to try and soften it up."

I nod my head but I don't know if she sees.

"What did you know about the Resistance, and when?"

I believe my father is still gone, but I silence the room anyway. "Nothing at first. I was coming to see you. As Severus began to trust me, he told me a little at a time. First just that the captives we were reportedly 'selling' were actually being brokered to freedom by Krum. So we began to move more and more people out, especially as the simulation development improved."

"What made Snape start to trust you?"

What, indeed? "From our earliest interactions, I never hurt you. You'd return to the dorm unharmed, which was unusual for most guest-captive engagements. He noticed. And later on, I brought your memory issues up to him. I was concerned and looking for ways to help. I suppose it grew from there."

"Snape said you - you were paying for Ginny, too," she whispers.

"For a while, until Blaise realised and took it over himself."

"And Luna?"

"Yes, Lovegood, too. Well, not so much Lovegood," I clarify. "I'd had her simulation rolled out first, though, to pull her out entirely and be replaced. I offered to pay for her 'sale,' but I wasn't needed."

"Snape said you paid for Ron, though."

I can barely hear Granger's voice now, and there are tears on her cheeks. Gods, why did Snape tell her that?

"...I did. His family was short of the necessary money after having just paid for Ginny's release. They were the third- and fourth-most expensive captives."

She sniffles a time or two, soaking this in. "Thank you."

I don't reply to that one. I'm just glad she hasn't asked how much money was actually changing hands. Should I bring it up? No. I'm torn, feeling that I'm lying by omission but not wanting to sound like I'm - what - bragging about it? What purpose would it serve? None to her; only to me. That settles that. I won't bring it up.

Recovering nicely, she bounces back. "When did you find out about the Resistance itself, then?"

"As Snape trusted us more, he told us. Longbottom killing Nagini was massive, of course. I knew the implications of it. They were clearly going to continue their fight; we just didn't know how. Or when. But that time is drawing near, and that's why we're getting Potter out."

"When will that be?"

"Snape thinks it'll be tonight they make the swap. Blaise will go in, impersonating Potter. Potter will leave, shaved head and masked scar, with some extended Polyjuice to boot, I'm sure. From there, we don't know how long it'll take. But we've talked about that part. Hopefully you'll only be here no more than another couple of weeks."

Granger nods silently, not pressing on. I wonder if I'm supposed to.

Maybe not, but I can't help emphasising one wretched point. "I didn't go back into the park to help the Resistance, Granger. I went back in for you. I'm no hero."

"Yes, I know that," she snaps at me. "Thank you."

That seems good enough for now.