AN: Thank you to anyone who may be reading, and a special thanks to my first reviewer. Please do leave any responses or feedback you'd like to share. I'm always appreciative of reviews. It's great to know people are out there reading! :) This is my first foray into the SSHG, so while I realize I may be taking some liberty with our MCs, I hope you'll find the story enjoyable still.

Chapter 2: In Principio

Severus Snape stared at the flames long after they returned to their typical red and orange hues. Were it not for the absence of his handkerchief in his pocket and the lingering scent of something floral, he could almost believe that an emotional Gryffindor girl had not just been in his sitting room.

Not just emotional. Terrified.

Severus had had to repress a shudder as she'd said the word, because he felt exactly the same way on and off all year, and then especially potently for the last few hours. Kneeling before the Dark Lord in the flesh, Severus had been more terrified than at any other moment in the last thirteen years. Maybe any other moment in all his life. How had he returned? Yet, he had shoved the feeling deep down into a locked box in his mind and thrown the key as far away as possible, lest the Dark Lord discover the emotion as he tore through Severus's mind. Now, alone in the safety of his rooms, Severus allowed the emotion to seep out of the open box, and he fell to his knees.

Years. Years of tenuous freedom, though always feeling as if he were balancing on a tightrope and waiting for the push to come. Come it had, in the form of Potter landing on the ground, one hand on the Triwizard Cup, one on the lifeless body of Cedric Diggory. In the form of Dumbledore asking him to return to his old master. In the form of said master standing before him, red eyes gleaming in his cold, pale face and mouth pronouncing the Cruciatus curse with a caress.

The stone of the hearth cut sharply and almost pleasantly into his knees, and he let the pain draw him up out of the bone-shaking misery that threatened to overwhelm him.

"I must do what is asked of me," he had told Granger, and he opened his eyes.

Of all things he would have expected upon his arrival back at the castle, she was not one of them. He'd had to suppress the aftershocks from wracking his frame as she half carried him to his rooms, had questioned his sanity when he allowed her to enter them, and had surprised even himself upon entering conversation with her after attending to his injuries.

This whole day is madness, he thought. For what else could explain his actions other than madness?

And it wasn't over yet.

Steeling himself, he stood, reached for the floo powder a second time this night, and threw it into the flames.

"Headmaster's office."

And with a roar of flames, a second body spun out of his fireplace that night.

He stepped out of the fireplace to find Dumbledore alert and writing at his desk.

"You're late," Dumbledore said, not raising his eyes from his parchment. He scribbled out a few more words, then set his quill down by his ink pot before fixing his pale blue eyes up at Severus.

Severus blinked, then began his report.

"Your suspicions about the giants are correct," he said tonelessly. "Macnair has been tasked to gather a team together and begin their journeys early next week. Reference was made to another team recruiting within the ministry, but names were not mentioned. And I–" Severus cleared his throat. "The Dark Lord continues to express his…dissatisfaction…with my lack of new intelligence."

Dumbledore's white brows rose faintly. "It's been two days."

Severus wanted to roll his eyes and refrained…barely.

"You act as if we speak of someone who behaves rationally," he said, sarcasm heavy in his tone.

Dumbledore hummed and settled his hands on his desk.

"Anything about Harry?"

Severus shook his head.

"Other than a lingering irritation which expresses itself in overzealous use of the Cruciatus, no."

Dumbledore eyed him critically. "Severus, if–"

"I'm fine," he said shortly.

Dumbledore's lips pressed together and he nodded faintly. He raised his head again.

"Your tardiness?" he prompted.

Severus hesitated. While he didn't think he had done anything wrong, per se, in his conversation with Miss Granger, he was still unsettled about the whole event. Yet, although he had sent the girl back to her rooms through the fireplace to avoid detection from person or portrait, he knew such a meeting could be found out by Dumbledore somehow. There was a reason he was the only wizard Voldemort ever feared…

Severus seated himself in one of the chairs in front of Albus's desk.

"Before I got back to my rooms," he said. I collapsed, his brain added. No, best to leave that out. "I found Miss Granger wandering the dungeons."

"Hermione Granger?"

"How many other Miss Grangers attend this school?" Severus said before he could stop himself.

Dumbledore didn't look angry, however. Instead, the corners of his lips twitched, and he gestured for Severus to continue.

"She was…concerned."

"About?"

"A fair number of things, I expect," he snapped.

For Harry, he'd felt more than read the words in her mind as if skimming his hand across the surface of a pond. For the world. For me. For… And with the last word she'd barely given a full thought to, she'd looked into his eyes, cheeks faintly pink, and shed a solitary glistening tear. For…

He blinked. Dumbledore was sighing and looking at his desk.

"Aren't we all?" he murmured, more to himself than to Severus.

"Sir?" he said, after they'd sat in silence for more than two minutes.

Dumbledore looked up.

"Don't you think we should do something?" he asked.

"About what, my boy?"

Severus stared. "About Miss Granger." When he was greeted with only silence, he pressed on. "She was…emotional." Dumbledore still said nothing. "Logical, clear-headed Granger was crying."

Into my handkerchief, his brain helpfully added.

"One of her best friends recently returned from an evil wizard who resurrected himself with a dead classmate in tow," Dumbledore said in a light tone. "I daresay she has every reason to be emotional."

"Yes," Severus allowed. "But this is Granger we're talking about. When she lets emotion and instinct to take over all reason, she chats with werewolves on the night of a full moon. She starts campaigning for elf rights. She brews illicit Polyjuice and gets herself turned into a cat!"

Dumbledore smiled. "Ah, I wondered whether you'd put two and two together."

"I am a potions Master," Snape ground out. "Not an imbecile."

"I'm sure things will sort themselves out," Dumbledore said.

"But–"

"You and I both have had rather a long night," Dumbledore said, standing. "I believe it's more than past time for us to retire."

Severus stared, but stood after Dumbledore gestured to the fireplace. It wasn't until he was spinning away in the fireplace that he realized he'd been dismissed by Dumbledore in much the same way he himself had dismissed Miss Granger.

"Hermione, wake up. You'll be late for breakfast."

Hermione's eyes flew open to find Parvati hovering over her, hand still on her shoulder. Seeing she was finally alert, Parvati smiled thinly, then followed Lavender out of the dormitory. Hermione blinked up at her curtains, then she closed her eyes with a wince.

The events of last night flooded back to her, and her face burned as the memories replayed themselves. Snape leaning on her shoulder. Her crying in front of him. Gods, what was she thinking.

Moving quickly, as if that alone could banish the thoughts from her mind, Hermione changed into her uniform, packed her last few books, and coaxed Crookshanks into his carrier.

"It's only for a little while," she said, stowing her wand up her sleeve. "I'll let you out on the train."

She arrived at the Great Hall ten minutes later, ducking her head and looking only at her feet as she approached the Gryffindor table. She squeezed into a spot next to Harry and across from Ron, then finally, slowly, lifted her eyes to the staff table.

He wasn't there.

She sighed in relief and slumped in her seat.

"Alright?"

She looked up at Ron, who had stopped sponging up egg yolk with his crusts.

"Yeah," she said, reaching for the teapot. "Just had a late start."

As she buttered some toast for herself, she looked sideways at Harry. He was dragging his spoon listlessly through a half eaten bowl of porridge. She looked sharply at Ron, but he raised his brows and shrugged his shoulders at her.

"Harry," she began.

"All students report to the entrance hall!" Professor McGonagall called, descending from the head table. "The carriages will depart for Hogsmeade Station in ten minutes."

Oh well, Hermione thought, downing the rest of her tea and wrapping her toast in a napkin. What can I say anyway?

Only minutes after stepping into the entrance hall, however, a tall figure with angular shoulders and a hooked nose approached her. She blushed, thinking of the previous evening, and then her face darkened even more when she realized who it really was.

"Could I have a vord?" Viktor asked.

She followed him through the crowd until they were at the edge of the students milling about. She turned to look back but couldn't see Harry or Ron anywhere.

"I vos wondering," Viktor said, drawing her attention back to him. But then he stopped and looked at his feet.

"Yes?" Hermione prompted, peering up at him and ducking her face closer to catch his eye. He looked up from his feet and settled his eyes so intently upon her that she blinked in surprise.

"If you vould like to visit me over the Summer."

"Oh," Hermione said, brows raised. "I–"

"Or at least," Krum said quickly. "Correspond." He raised his hand and gestured between the two of them. "I vould like to write to you."

Feeling pleased, if still a little startled, Hermione smiled. "I would like that."

Viktor smiled back.

"Good."

The rest of the morning and early afternoon continued to be eventful. After revealing Rita the beetle, hexing the Slytherins, and playing cards with the Weasley twins, Hermione found herself feeling much more lighthearted upon arriving in London than she would have expected. Still, as they began packing and she shoved the Daily Prophet into her bag, she bit her lip. The absence of Cedric's death in its report of the Triwizard results unsettled her, and she eyed Harry as they exited onto the platform. Surely she wasn't the only one whose stomach twisted into knots every couple of hours.

A surge of concern for her friend made her heart feel as if it were being stabbed, and she pressed a kiss to Harry's cheek as she said goodbye, as if that could keep him safe from Voldemort over the Summer.

Taking a deep breath and forcing the tension to fall from her face, she stepped through the barrier to find her parents.

Hermione had hoped that a few days at home would help her find a sense of normalcy again. That breakfasts cooked with her father, or afternoons working in the garden with her mother, or even mindlessly listening to the television as she played cards with her parents at night would lull her into a sense of cozy, homely security. But if anything, it only made her feel more anxious.

She'd continued to receive the Prophet, which she always read upstairs in her room for fear of any details about Voldemort's return being splayed across the front page and being seen by her parents. But she needn't have worried. The Prophet seemed to report on everything except the return of the darkest wizard of all time, from Quidditch scores to bewitched muggle artifacts to cauldron bottom thickness (Percy would be pleased). Worse than that, though, was the anti-Harry messaging sprinkled throughout multiple articles per week. She'd come across the first mention of "unhinged, as if he was going to start saying he'd defeated Dark Lords as an infant" in reference to an old man who'd been shooting off sparklers from Stonehenge one rainy night and had dropped the paper back into her lap with a soft gasp. Since then, she'd scowled every time she scoured the paper and counted up seven references to Harry and the return of Voldemort by the end of the week.

Long after she'd retire to her room, she'd stay up reading, giving at least an hour of attention each night to her defensive magic texts. While she couldn't practice casting the spells, she could at least go over the theory and practice her wrist movements. Afraid she might accidentally cast something if she actually held her wand in her hand, she kept it strapped to her arm by two lengths of leather cord, not feeling quite comfortable without it close at hand. Just in case.

Nearly two weeks after her return home, she came down the stairs one morning to find breakfast already finished and on the table.

"Hi, dad," she said, watching as he poured tea into a thermos. "I'm not up late, am I?"

Richard Granger looked up and smiled.

"No, honey. Your mum and I are just heading in early today. Didn't want to wake you. You're supposed to be on holiday, you know."

Hermione pulled out a chair from the table and sat as he filled a cup for her and pressed it into her hands.

"I know. I just like spending time with you."

The fine lines around her father's eyes softened and he seated himself next to her.

"I've been meaning to talk to you," he said.

"Oh?" Hermione asked, taking a sip.

"You've seemed…different since you got home from school."

Hermione swallowed carefully, then cleared her throat.

"Different?" she asked, stalling for time.

Richard looked unblinkingly into her eyes with his matching brown ones and nodded. "You seem on edge," he said. "I dropped the tongs yesterday morning and you jumped a foot in the air."

"I…"

"And you've been falling asleep reading."

Hermione blinked. "How did you–?"

Richard smiled. "Do you think parents don't still check in on their children, even when they're–" He shuddered in mock horror. "Almost adults?"

Hermione gave him a strained smile.

"You're not having trouble at school, are you? I thought Summer was time to take a break from all that work?"

"Well," Hermione said, seizing on the excuse that presented itself. "Upcoming year is O.W.L. year, and that's really important. Depending on how I do on the exams determines what I'll be studying for the next two years, what kind of job I can get after Hogwarts."

"Sweetheart," Richard said, and he lay a hand on top of her own and squeezed it. "You've got a year until those exams. Take a break first. Yeah?"

Hermione allowed herself to smile as he accepted her reasoning.

"Okay, dad."

"You can start today."

They both looked up as Helen Granger entered the room, pulling a cardigan over her shoulders and looking every bit as if she'd heard every word that passed between the two of them.

"Morning, mum," Hermione said.

Helen crossed the kitchen, kissing first her husband then her daughter on the cheek.

"I mean it," Helen said, grabbing a stack of toast and eyeing her daughter. "Rest. Maybe get out of the house. Get some fresh air. Lord knows I'd love a break."

She stared out the window for a moment, then came back to herself.

"We'll have to get going if we want to be on time," she said to Richard. She turned to Hermione. "Fresh air, darling."

"Yes, mum."

And so she found herself a couple hours later walking to the nearest park. Though it was barely midmorning, the sun already shone brightly in the sky. She was thankful for the sunglasses she'd grabbed at the last second, both for blocking the sun and for allowing her to scan the streets more discreetly as she walked. She was less grateful for the sweatshirt she also had donned over her tank top.

She arrived at the park in minutes and settled into a swing. Across the way, two teams of four- and five-year olds were engaged in a match of football. Loosely, anyway. Hermione chuckled under her breath as the aim and skills of the game were largely lost on the children, who kept looking back and forth between the ball, their teammates, and the parents calling out encouraging things from the sidelines. Munching an apple as she watched, she shook her head and snorted every now and then, outright laughing when one child switched direction at the last moment and started kicking the ball toward his own goal.

"Enjoying ourselves, are we?"

Hermione bit down on the shriek as it burst from her throat so that only a strangled sort of yelp escaped her mouth. As she stood and spun around, she dropped her apple on the ground and reached into her pocket before remembering that her wand was still strapped to her arm. But she paused in her attempt to retrieve it so that she made a strange, mangled gesture in the air.

Because it wasn't a Death Eater who had just seated himself in the swing next to her. It was Snape.

Well, it is a Death Eater, she scolded herself. And then she stopped, for even in her head, she didn't know how to untangle everything.

As if he knew exactly what she was thinking, a smirk pulled at his mouth. Hermione opened her mouth, but snapped it shut upon taking in more of his appearance. Rather than his usual dark robes, buttons, and frock coat, he was wearing Muggle clothes.

Jeans, her brain stressed to her, as if this was of particular importance.

From the round sunglasses perched on his nose to the ratty t shirt emblazoned with a Muggle rock band name to the shoes on his feet, he was still attired in the signature Snape black. His dark hair gleamed in the sun and his skin seemed to glow white by contrast. Her mouth dropped open and she lowered herself slowly onto her own swing.

"If you're done ogling me, Miss Granger…" he said sardonically.

"I…I wasn't…" she said, face flaming. "Sorry, sir."

His mouth twitched, and then the smirk broadened on his face, almost as if he was allowing himself to give in to the joke. His lips smoothed out into a straight line and he murmured, "Tergeo" as her apple raised itself in the air and hovered above her hand, completely clean.

"Thanks," she murmured, and quickly took it out of the air and bit into it before anyone could notice the amazing, gravity-defying fruit. Somewhere in the back of her head–behind the surprise that lingered upon seeing Snape so…un-Snape-like–she laughed.

"Um, not to be rude or anything," she said quietly, and Snape turned his head slowly toward her as if daring her to do just that. "But it's going to look just as weird to the Muggles for a man to be hanging out in a park with children as it is for him to clean and levitate apples."

Snape scowled. "I cast a Notice-Me-Not when I sat down several minutes ago. You were a little too enraptured by dunderheads to notice."

Hermione's cheeks reddened. Several minutes ago?

"They're cute."

"If you say so," he said, turning his head to the field.

She was sure he was rolling his eyes behind his sunglasses. If Snape rolled his eyes. She blinked and scanned him again. And that's when she noticed. The t shirt had short sleeves, which meant his arms were laid open to view. His right arm held onto the chain of the swing, its forearm facing away from her. But left arm lay across his lap, and the Dark Mark tattooed on his skin stood out starkly against his pale skin.

"Completes the look, doesn't it?"

Her eyes snapped up to Snape's face, but he was looking down at the tattoo, a snarl twisting his lips.

"Yes," Hermione said. "It does."

He raised his head.

"What do you mean by that, girl?" he growled.

"Just that," Hermione said, feeling her defenses rise with his sudden change of tone. "Of a certain kind of person. With that shirt and...and everything." She gestured vaguely at his chest.

He looked down at the emblem, and then his scowl softened somewhat.

"I suppose you're right."

Hermione's brows rose, but he didn't see them. He stared down at his arm, as if lost in thought, and she broke the silence only minutes later.

"You didn't come here just to show me your Muggle clothes, sir," she said.

Snape finally tore his gaze away from the Mark.

"I did not," he said. "I came to collect you."