.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE FALL


Hermione, daughter of dentists, had brushed her teeth for eleven minutes; her gums still throbbed, and her tongue felt like carpet, pinkish. She'd gone to her room and transferred all her new purchases out of her bag and into drawers, then remembering herself, moved everything back into her satchel again. She had prepped all the potions she needed, lowered some into the bag before going to Diagon Alley, and left others in her bedside drawer—it never hurt to be prepared, and she remembered every bit of her addled note.

Straightaway: ALL remaining Mag. Maln.
22:30pm: 3 Vig. V. & 2 Anti-vom:–
IN BAG 30FTs & Wafer – 2hrs recoup
33FTs – Wafer & Vig. V. –
LISTEN – 1T
We'll be fine no matter what.

10.30, she told herself, she had until 10.30 this evening, and then she would be plunged back into the past, to live this vile time of her life again.

Professor Snape milled about the house, muttering cleansing charms on anything and everything in sight, and then left to buy them a kebab from the local takeaway since they were, 'celebrating.' What, she was far from sure, nor had he answered her query.

Given that the rain had returned and decided to blow through Spinner's End with the velocity of a small hurricane, they tucked into the food in front of the unlit hearth in the library, both sitting in front of one another, knees close enough to knock. Snape still wore his full suit and boots, and Hermione had left on that "Death Eater dress" but had hung up the cloak, toed off her boots and was now barefoot.

Hermione had bought several dresses in a similar design to this one: all business in the front and parties in the back; a couple were in her bag, and a few more were on order. Madam Shafiq had declared them befitting of her gravitas, apparently. Like her mother, Hermione was drawn to simple cotton and linens in muted colours—lilacs, cornflower blues, earthy tones—, but actually, they may look "mousey" and "out of place" on a witch of her stature. It was the first time Hermione was even aware she was in possession of "gravitas", that she had "stature". She thought these words made her sound like one of those megalomaniac mobsters in the movies her father had shown her one summer in an effort to bond; given how Snape had likened her to a Death Eater, she thought she wasn't too far off the mark. 'The mark,' she thought, 'being a genocidal megalomaniac.'

"To blend in with the muggles" she also bought and ordered a few pairs of jeans, trousers, jackets, blouses, and a dozen jumpers in whatever patterns and cuts the seamstresses fancied. Malkin's didn't deign to display such affronts to wizarding fashion, keeping them in the back, but Madam Shafiq, though ready to belittle and cuss muggles wholesale in the middle of her shop, did not mind it if her customers wanted to dress up like them; so long as they had the Galleons, of course. Naturally, as the moments passed in that shop—that shop that she had read all about, that shop with all its intimidating history—it became increasingly difficult to maintain her mask, to command the authority she felt she possessed as she walked in. 'I'm nobody,' she thought. 'I'm nobody but a mudblood playing dress-up.'

In the end, with the seemingly bottomless pouch of Galleons from Professor Dumbledore, Hermione was swayed to indulge in Malkin's silks, satins, cashmere and velvet. She was talked into buying garments with traditional and respectable cuts that would "make people sit up and take notice". To be sure, it was the opposite of what she'd really wanted, (and the opposite of what Professor Dumbledore had probably intended for her to do with the money), but it was hardly like she'd be seen wearing the wizarding robes at Hogwarts. All she'd insisted upon was the fingerless opera glove detail she'd seen on all of the many Founders portraits and the Snape-like buttons; the former a red-herring for the purebloods and the latter because even the thought of it aroused her. It did enough for the women at Malkin's to understand the sort of wardrobe they were putting together. So, Hermione—possible DADA professor—now owned lingerie and stockings that were utterly unfit for this century let alone another's eyes, but they interested her, and she could wear them and draw confidence from their risqué nature: her lacy black bra under this dress gave her fantasies a senseless bent, but simply the knowledge that she wore something so . . . sexy in Severus Snape's presence was enough of a thrill.

When she dressed up in her new finery, walked the cobblestones of Diagon Alley and the crowd parted before her, when the honourable goblins of Gringotts stumbled over their words, when she cut a conspicuous figure in the Leaky, there was some part of her heart that exulted in it. Little Hermione Granger, the dentists' daughter, had retreated so far into her brain that to summon her once again felt like submitting herself to a significant disadvantage. After all, hadn't the hands of the handsome older man working the till at Schuler's Shoe Shop shook? Yes, indeed, and not just because he'd drawn up a bill for over fifty Galleons – close to £1,000; dragonhide was expensive, naturally, but she'd also ensured she'd never need to buy a single shoe for at least the next decade.

Nevertheless, it quickly became clear that Hermione hated shopping: far more walking than it was worth. She couldn't help but wonder how much this was down to her appearance and how much because of her new status as a mature witch. God knows she looked like one now. Every time she caught sight of her body in the clean panes of glass all along the Alley, something dreadful twisted in her stomach. Every time she navigated the crowd, brushing too close to a stranger, she remembered Samantha Crawford who had pulled a tape measure across the swell of Hermione's breasts and then around her ribcage, noting the several inches in differences, muttering, 'Merlin.' Only, Hermione felt like a doll, only now she couldn't twist the limbs out of their sockets to get on a tiny dress properly.

Of course, it was an entirely facetious sort of celebration Hermione and Professor Snape now engaged in and, she thought, an excuse for the man to enjoy more alcohol. He'd chinked his dark bottle of beer with her can of Coke and he'd said, 'To Vigour Vials' and she'd laughed, said, 'To Time-Turners,' and they'd not spoken since. The mirror had cracked, the train run out of steam, the baby had begun to cry on the bus.

Stoically, Snape spread the bright-red pieces of grilled and marinated chicken between them and tucked into it with naan wet with chilli sauce. Of course, Hermione did not want to say anything to further disturb him, not least after their emotionally tumultuous afternoon. Why would she draw attention to the fact that had her schoolmates seen herself and the Professor sparring over charred bits of chicken, bent forehead to forehead over the Leaky's sticky tables, they would likely have a conniption? It was a sort of self-consciousness that tended to creep into these odd moments with the man. So, of course, after holding her nerve for as long as she was able, Hermione just could not help herself.

'A question?'

'Shocking.'

'Another time then.'

He sighed. 'Miss Granger.'

'Is that permission?'

'Do you not want your dinner?'

She smiled. 'Where does the sunlight in the bathroom come from? That's not even an exterior wall.'

'A spell.'

'Hilarious.'

At once, she was on the other end of Snape's wand. 'Pick a curse, any curse.'

She grabbed the end of it in her fist and the move visibly dumbfounded him, his eyes wide and nostrils flared. 'This'll be my first Defence lesson, I think.'

'Grabbing the end of a wizard's wand?'

'Hahahaha!'

'For Merlin's sake girl!'

And she wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand, managing to focus on her food for a few moments while Snape muttered under his breath.

'Aside from your library,' she said when sober enough, 'why do you think Professor Dumbledore assigned me to you, specifically, and not, say, Professor Vector? Her home was already under a Fidelius. She must have access to her own substantive library. You say the Headmaster trusts no one. I assume that includes you, sir . . . ?'

Snape stared at her for a moment then dipped his head, whipped his wand away and tucked it into his sleeve. He paused for a moment, and then took a pinch of the wilting salad up to his mouth and then thought better of it, wiped his hands and lips with a paper serviette. He sat a little straighter. She'd never seen anyone dither so elegantly.

'Is that all you wonder about?' he asked.

'I've got a follow-up.'

'Obviously.'

'Obviously.'

'And you understand,' he said, 'that anything I say to you is to be held in the utmost of confidence.'

'Yes.'

He nodded and took a sip of his drink. 'You are correct. The Headmaster does not trust me.'

Hermione scoffed and wiped at her lips with a napkin. 'I suppose he thinks this is some great trial for you,' she muttered, forming another bite of the kebab, 'minding the unbearable Gryffindor.'

Snape's lips twisted into a scowl. 'Egotism. Vanity. Why did I expect anything more?'

That smarted: the verbal smack across the face. 'Professor, I—!'

'There is one perpetual trial with Albus: what we can abide for the greater good. Nothing more. Nothing.'

'But his vision of the greater good is just that! His,' she insisted.

'Miss Granger,' he sneered, 'are we simply delighting in hypocrisy now?'

'Excuse me?'

'The answer to your question is very simple. What business does a supposed Third Year girl have spending the summer boarding with the malcontent Snape? And, indeed, why stay with me instead of Septima? You are far more suited to her art than mine. Merlin knows you've not picked up a single potion's text since you've been here! And I already know the truth of it, so it remains for you to reach your own conclusion. Tell me, Miss Granger. Tell me why he sent me to you. The truth.'

If asked by the Headmaster, Hermione would lie about the ease with which she admitted the truth to Snape. Because, in truth, the words spilt from her lips like the easiest sigh, 'To kill Peter Pettigrew.'


The problem with Albus Dumbledore, Hermione realised over mouthfuls of the takeaway, was that he already knew the players in the game too well. So, the moves were pre-empted and the outcomes accounted for. Sure, they were allowed leeway, some general freedom of choices, an accounting for happenstance, but the conclusions were all foregone. Because to disappoint the Headmaster once he'd anointed you and declared you worthy of a task no matter how trivial, was to render you unworthy of any future opportunity, any chance of further valour or honour.

When the Headmaster had told Hermione she was to keep her top-secret murder conspiracy just that—top-secret—he had already accounted for any loose lips, had already considered the consequence of the information reaching Professor Snape and proceeded anyway. That much was clear at the unimpressed expression greeting her revelation. It only occurred to her now that the Headmaster would have Secret Kept knowledge of her task had it been so imperative to keep schtum.

'And that,' the Potions Master said, 'is precisely why you lodge with me, Miss Granger, rather than Septima. That is what makes your hypocrisy so unpalatable. You've agreed to kill a man? Even if you cannot bear to perform it any longer, at the very least, remember why you agreed to such a thing.'

'For the greater good.'

'Indeed.'

So, she shut up and continued eating her dinner, but she was who she was and before another morsel had touched her lips said, 'How long have you known?'

'Known?'

'What I must do.'

He sniffed. 'I never have. Like I said, the Headmaster does not trust me, but I believe to be his closest confidant; when he refused to tell me about the nature of your stay, there were only but a handful of conclusions I could draw.'

'Do you think I can do it?'

'All are capable of murder.'

'That's not an answer.'

'Hermione.'

So, she conceded the point, but put on her best Gryffindor face and tried to find another, riskier, in with him: 'Do you think we should consider the inappropriateness between us and course-correct? Or, at this point, do we lean into it?'

'Why?' he asked, reaching for his dark glass bottle of beer on the hearthstone and taking a sip. 'Are you planning on calling the coppers? You know no muggle prison can successfully contain us.'

'You won't go to prison for—'

'Giving a fourteen-year-old board without the knowledge or permission of her parents? Quite likely. It is child abduction.'

'But I'm not a child.'

'Debatable.'

'I'm staying here with Dumbledore's permission, in loco parentis.'

'Yes,' he said, nodding, taking another small sip, the corner of his mouth twitching, 'the 113-year-old headmaster of a school that exists on no known map, a school of witchcraft and wizardry. Come on.'

'Would you like me to call the police?'

'Yes. I'd imagine them looking for number seventy-two would make for three minutes of entertainment if nothing else.'

Hermione set down her can of Coke, she then began tearing at the naan. 'I was just thinking about Harry and Ron,' she said, and he scoffed in obvious contempt, 'and how they would react if they ever knew we were, y'know?' She gestured at the food between them with a wave of her hand, spread out over thin bits of paper, their nails stained with Kashmiri chilli and garam masala.

'Sharing a kebab?'

'No.'

Now his eyes, over the narrow neck of his beer, were unreadable. 'Then?'

'They'd be shocked that you've been absolutely and tenaciously . . . amicable.'

Snape rolled his eyes, and resumed eating, mumbling, 'Bootlicker.'

She shrugged. 'Just something that's been on my mind, not least since I remember you seemed to want to eliminate even the friendliest of instances between us, yet here we are sharing a kebab from your local. It's just'—she brought the food in question to her mouth—'odd.'—and then she began to chew, heart racing. 'Surreal, even.'

'Odd, yes, surreal, possibly, but inappropriate? A leap,' he said, head tilted to one side.

'No. The inappropriate things I'm thinking of are . . . the inappropriate things you've done, Professor.'

'Now she defames . . . ! Would you care to substantiate that with examples, Miss Granger?'

Something flipped in the pit of her stomach as if some organ had turned in sleep during the day and was switching sides. Hermione took a deep breath before the quick plunge. 'Perhaps stripping me of my clothes? Keeping me that way for weeks? Not sacrificing a single one of your many, many shirts or trousers for the cause?'

Snape cleared his throat and Hermione thought she caught a hint of pinkness in his cheeks, but it could very well be the spice. 'I do wonder,' he said in his signature unimpressed drawl, 'whether by September I'll have purged you of these ugly Gryffindorish sensibilities.'

Hermione swiped at her leaking nose with a napkin and looked up. 'Is it only Gryffindors that have straightforward dialogue?' she said, smiling, knowing her cheeks were plenty ruddy. 'Do you not think I'd make a good little Snake?'

He held her gaze. 'Whether something is inappropriate or not depends upon your principles,' he said, 'your breeding, your morality, several dozen other such factors that are too tedious to get into. The example you give is . . . contentious at best. Best to let this Cerberus sleep, Hermione, let us eat in peace.'

She dropped her head and got back to her food, her cheeks on fire. 'I'd imagine that Pansy and Draco would find even this inappropriate,' she said.

'Fuck's sake,' Snape groaned, giving her a little fright. 'What? Their Head of House dining on the floor? Eating with his hands? Sipping the offie's best whisky in unchaperoned company? Why on earth does any of it matter to you? Must you dictate all your choices on what the purebloods of Slytherin think?' Snape reached in-between them and stole the bit of chicken she'd been worrying and enveloped it in some bread.

She frowned, watching his jaw flex as he chewed quickly. 'You haven't really answered my question.'

He frowned back at her, mocking her expression, and swallowed. 'I don't think you'd really like the answer.'

'Why not?' she asked, irate.

Snape took a long sip of his drink, swallowed, and sighed. 'Because I refuse to give you your textbook reply, as there is no such thing in answer to what you've inquired. For one, if we began cataloguing all the possible instances of inappropriateness between us, we would get nothing done, since your list of inappropriateness is far longer than mine, Miss Muffliato!'

Oh no. No. No. No. No.

He waved her off. 'Oh, I hardly care! We're not fungi. We are little more advanced than animals.'

'You know what I—?!' she screeched, and then felt herself blushing at the "we" of his placement. Had Professor Snape just admitted to doing the same? My God.

He rolled his eyes. 'Do you not recall when I told you I'd placed wards on this room to monitor your condition?'

'No!'

'This is getting tedious.'

'You—. You kn—. How could you not—?'

'What? That every time that my wards alert me of your accelerated heart rate, I weigh up whether you're fearing for your life or getting yourself off?'

Hermione wanted to scream and run away. This was atrocious. She could hardly think. 'Well, can you remove that particular ward, please? It's a gross infringement on my privacy.'

Snape took out his wand and waved it around in silence, a smile playing around his lips, but a dark glint in his narrowed eyes. 'Had you asked, I would have simply put you back on the hormone regulator, but it seems as if you had the matter in—'

'Don't!'

'—hand.'

'God, this is so inappropriate!'

He sighed. 'Do stop your shrieking . . . It is not conducive to any environment—nor our peace, for Merlin's sake!—to analyse our behaviour that way. Everything we do is inappropriate to someone. We are not in a classroom, nor any established institution of learning; we are in my Secret-Kept home in Oldham, and if any handbook of decorum exists on how we must conduct ourselves in that niche environment, I've yet to discover it.' After a moment of hesitation, he picked up his wand from beside him and transfigured a utilitarian-looking tumbler out of a small cold coal in the fireplace and poured a few inches of the amber beer into it. 'Drink,' he commanded, vanishing the ash from his fingers.

Hermione stared down at it, suddenly almost too afraid to pick it up. It would be far from her first sip of alcohol, sure—Hermione had grown up around overzealous adults who treated her like an adult, and she behaved like a sloppy teen when they weren't around. The first time she'd drank her father's whisky, it had repeated on her twice. Now she brought the glass's rim up to her nose and sniffed. The spicy, piquant smell reminded her of the Great Hall at Christmas time when the teachers were all a bit freer in the evenings, and the whole Hall smelled of honey mead and Firewhisky.

Snape goaded, 'It's perfectly legal in Britain's homes, muggle and magical.'

'I know, I know,' she mumbled, taking a sip and swallowing quickly and clearing her throat a little from the burn, doing well to hide the more violent aspects of her reaction: she wanted to throw the glass across the room, but at least she wasn't thinking, 'Snape knows I masturbate,' over and over again as she had been doing for the past couple of minutes. 'That is awful, far too sweet . . . and malty?' she said, struggling to recall the right sort of terminology for these things; everything she did know, she knew from watching dinnertime conversation and daytime television.

'Terrible,' he said, nodding, 'as most muggle alcohol is. It's meant to be this astringent if you can believe it. You'll get used to it.'

'What is legal and what is appropriate are two different things.' Hermione took another sip, mostly to show him she could. He raised a brow. 'We were digressing,' she supplied.

'You are a dog at a bone,' he said.

'Woof.'

'No, I didn't think anything here was particularly inappropriate. I did the moment you asked.'

'Fascinating. Why?'

He smirked a little and darted his eyes up at the tapestry over the mantle and back at her.

'The crux of all humanity's woes . . . To utilise an infuriating reoccurrence, I am Eve, the question the fruit, and you, are very much the Serpent, Granger.' Hermione fought back her smile and tried to remain just as serious. 'Or,' he said, quirking a brow, 'you, Eve—sinful, sinful witch—having already taken the fruit, presented it to me, Adam, and I—blameless, innocent, pure—devoured it without much thought. The latter works better.'

'And now,' she said, feeling feverish, 'having heard the Inquiry of Knowledge, what have you discovered?' She reached between them, batting his pale hand away, and popped a bit of tender chicken into her mouth. 'Are we leaning in?'

He stared with some determination at the floor and began picking out fat sweetcorn and sliced black olives from the salad, eating them with great concentration. 'I will regret this conversation,' he mumbled to himself, and his eyes flashed to her as if to gauge whether she'd heard; she had, of course. 'In this home, we are nothing to one another. I accepted the task of being a childminder for the summer, but as soon as you bled, everything changed. Had I informed the Headmaster, certainly, alternative arrangements would have been made.'

'Why?'

Her professor rolled his eyes in answer.

'Because of his trust issues?'

'Correct.'

'It's foul that Professor Dumbledore could think that of you, sir. If you were going to—.' She huffed out of frustration, feeling so outraged on his behalf that she could barely speak it. Hermione said, 'Anyway, that's not what I asked.'

Snape inclined his head and conceded in moving the conversation along from their mutual ire. 'You're a witch I teach, Hermione, one of hundreds that have sat in my classroom. The standards I must hold myself to are rigorous, though the rules are anything but. And while I'—he paused for a moment, staring at something way above her head —'value somewhat your high regard of me . . . There is good reason why any Head of Hogwarts would not wholly trust their professors in situations like this: since time immemorial, there have been . . . relations between students and their mentors at the School; platonic, of course, but also ones of an intimate nature.'

A heat rose in her cheeks and 'Dear God,' she thought, 'that most remarkable point had been missed out of Hogwarts: A History.' She made a mental note to check the student's handbook. Though her mind went straight to the ancient Greeks and pederasty: relationships between teenagers and their older mentors, usually men. Perhaps knowledge of these relations was so commonplace, so assumed and embedded in their world that it wasn't even worth mentioning? Another thing on that long laundry list of her failings?

'The Founders of Hogwarts and their staff—realistic, practical witches and wizards—stipulated three things: such relations be legitimate, loving, and legal. Now, do you know Britain's Age of Consent, Miss Granger?'

'Sixteen.'

'Wizarding Britain.'

'Sixteen,' she repeated, doing a poor job of replicating the surety with which she said it the first time.

'Eleven.'

'Eleven?'

It was impossible, Hermione thought, it had to be. This was a con; plain and simple. Her professor was having her on. And yet the more she thought on it, the more her readings began to make a little more sense; the more the range and availability of texts accessible to the First Year Hermione made sense. Hogwarts was sentient and it governed alongside the Headmaster—that much any reader of Hogwarts: A History understood from the first page—yet there was nothing at all in terms of knowledge off-limits to students, so long as they had the appropriate permission slips. Sure, texts on the Darker magics were very closely guarded, and very, very high up the shelves, barely available in the School at all, but that's what the Inter-Library Loan System was for. Then she mentally rolled her eyes at herself: trust Hermione Granger to be told such a truth and relate it immediately to her reading habits! She was hopeless.

And as years of her life were slowly slotting into place—the innuendos in texts, yes, but also the gall of the upperclassmen, the miseries and triumphs of magical history; she saw Professor Snape's lips twitch into something of a smile. 'Can you guess why it's eleven, Miss Granger?'

Hermione racked her brain. 'I—. Because we . . . own wands. So, theoretically, we could know enough magic to —I don't know—defend ourselves . . . ?'

'Passable logic.'

'But that's preposterous! I—'

'So says the witch who helped two dunderheads defeat a mountain troll, a Cerberus, and Devil Snare's clutch all in her First Year.'

'That can't be true, though!'

'Your conjecture? It's not.'

'So?'

'You mentioned it earlier. Loco parentis.'

Staring at the man, Hermione knew then and there why muggleborn like herself were kept in the dark about these things; had her parents known, they would have never sent her to Hogwarts. She understood that the School was something of an institution not just in Wizarding Britain but in the whole world, and that awarded, maybe, some leeway or flexibility to its interpretation of the laws. Each Headmaster, she knew from her readings, would decode and elucidate the rulebooks in their own way—a little like arithmancers with their understanding of magic—, yet at their core would be an irrefutable truth, some line etched in stone which they could not contest. Hermione was certain that loco parentis was applied the same way. She could not imagine the Headmaster giving the go-ahead to a First Year to—. She could barely fathom the thought. It turned her stomach. No.

'How has Professor Dumbledore . . . ?'

Snape looked almost relieved that she did not launch into a five-minute denial of his words, and said, 'He keeps to the muggle laws, tries for equity. More so in these past two centuries or so, muggle morality has seeped into our lives and slowly corrupted the magical idyl—'

'Or den of iniquity,' she muttered.

Snape's mouth twisted, and he all but spat, 'That so-called den of iniquity is the society from which you so badly seek acceptance.'

Hermione conceded the point: 'Of course. I'm thinking muggle again, aren't I?'

You pathetic little mudblood.

Snape popped a sliver of chicken into his mouth and chewed quickly. 'And illustrating my next point. We cannot lean into anything, Miss Granger, because despite your penchant for arithmancy, despite Time, despite your appearance, your appearances, and even though you may almost be seventeen, those additional years were spent in a haunted bathroom with your nose buried in a book. You may have transformed and aged, but you did in the company of fourteen-year-old children and dead writers, and the dead of the very Darkest sor—. Don't! You and your friends were sneaking into the Restricted Section mere weeks after stepping foot in that school . . . I—Merlin.' He looked up at the tapestry for an endless moment.

'Sir?'

'What on earth is this conversation, Miss Granger? Aside from barely passable intellectual debate,' he murmured, 'know there is extraordinarily little I can offer you. I cannot fathom any—. I cannot even bring myself to speak such a thing.' And now he necked two long sips of his drink one after the other with a grimace. 'The liquor has loosened my lips,' he said between them, 'never mind my morals.'

'How many rungs on the ladder had I climbed now?' she wondered to herself, remembering that old arithmetic, her stomach twisting and shifting to sit Indian style, her thighs squeezing. 'Am I at the top?' she thought, wondering how much further she could poke him today before he bit her hand, 'You are right in that I have only had books and Dark authors to keep me company recently, but they're not without their wisdom and you know I'm no sieve. But . . . I realise you may even consider it juvenile to argue the case, but . . .'

'Spit it out.'

'I have been entrusted with a task,' she said. 'I would not have been asked had I not been able to handle it, nor if Professor Dumbledore considered me as . . . immature as you're making out. He trusts me to use Time to my advantage, bend it to my will. The ends, to his eyes, obviously justify the means—whatever means I deem necessary. I think I am right in saying that I'm also trusted by you to act and think independently.'

His look was impenetrable. 'I may live to change my mind.'

She smiled a little at him, trying not to allow his words to stun her into complete silence; his expression remained unchanged. 'So, I don't see why we cannot continue this way. You've been more of a friend to me than Ronald and Harry have been this past school year.'

Hermione winced as soon as she'd voiced that fact aloud. Her friendship with the two boys had been non-existent between last Christmas and Easter. First, it was because she'd reported Harry receiving that Firebolt to Professor McGonagall, and when it appeared that Harry may have forgiven her for acting in his best interest, Scabbers—AKA Peter bloody Pettigrew—had gone missing, and Ronald blamed her innocent Crookshanks. As was the fashion, to lose one of the boys, was to lose the other. For the two of them, it had only been three months or so, but for Hermione? To think on that time now, to peer through that slow-moving slurry of time, was to try and remember a dream from several years ago. Naturally, their betrayal, their doubting of her integrity, her honour, her intellect, also happened over an age. She had run herself into the ground and saw no sympathy, found no solace from her housemates, and yet she still agreed to sully her soul and murder someone just to keep them all safe.

Hermione tried to get her mind on track, focused her eyes and saw that Professor Snape was staring at her intently.

'Then you should adjust your expectations of your friends wholesale.'

'Because they're so much younger than me?' she asked.

'That,' he said, 'and because they will not compare.'

'To you and I, s—?' she spluttered, mortification unbound, but only just stopping herself from adding the honorific; she'd been trying her best to form his name and could only do it when it was his whole name, otherwise failing and failing. 'What's wrong with me?' she thought.

'Hermione,' he admonished, having no such problem, and then pointed at her with a flaccid bit of iceberg between his fingers, which was a new move, 'that is a very . . . inappropriate turn of phrase. You and I. Far too familiar.'

'As was calling me by my name once,' she pointed out, drinking the last drop of her drink, relying upon its awfulness to stop her from lingering too long on her madness, and holding the empty out before her. 'You change your mind so often.'

He looked away quickly. 'Touché,' he said, fishing another bottle of beer from a brown bag, pouring her another half-glass, eyes averted still. 'I shall stop. You are well, after all. Didn't I say I'd stop once you were well?'

'Don't,' she said. 'Really, if this is friendship, then it's not too bad, don't you think? I mean, I think I can tolerate this, this taking in circles, avoiding questions, stomaching your ire. It's all very exhilarating.'

He pointed a sliver of chicken at her now. 'You do not need any more exhilarating friendships.'

'Maybe not,' she conceded, her heart suddenly aching for Harry, 'though I need a cerebral one, let's say.'

He smirked. 'Compelling.'

'So, since I don't hear you objecting to being friends, I see no reason why you cannot tell me this inappropriate thought, the one I've tempted into existence.'

Snape sighed, 'Why you intolerable chit, it is just what I discovered one morning! Nothing more.'

'Oh?'

'That you'd be much closer to my age soon enough.'

'Oh! That!' And that conversation felt like it happened three years ago, let alone three weeks; she was startled that it was so easily brought to the forefront of his mind.

'Yes,' he said, pushing the last bit of the kebab towards her, and not looking her way at all. 'That.'

'And why is that inappropriate?' she asked, finishing the food off.

His head snapped up and he levelled her with his best glare and it almost had her shrinking into her skin. 'In the interests of an honest . . . friendship . . . I must remind you that I am only a man,' he gritted out, and then, so quietly she hardly caught it: 'Teaching at Hogwarts . . . Let's just say there's no one waiting for their Potions Professor behind tapestries and in alcoves, and, despite the rare proposition, there's seldom any bint worth the staff room embarrassment.'

Hermione snorted into her glass, despite herself. 'Those brave bints.' And she washed down the kebab.

'Misled . . . And as it's been a while since I've been subjugated by the sustained company of a witch, when you said that you'd be closer to my age it did not take long for a vague impression of you—older, wiser—to . . . cooperate with those more base desires. I am, as I say, only a man.'

'Oh.'

'Yes, I thought it was unacceptable to remain in your company and have those thoughts, that is why I left and tried to stay away. Fate, famously, runs counter to all my wishes. Cue your First Blood. Cue a meeting with the elder Granger. Cue two weeks of inseparability. Cue—'

'Did you leave to fulfil those urges?' she asked. 'Bold,' she thought, 'too fucking bold.'

'No!' he hissed, shifting. 'You impertinent girl, I went for my errands! How was I to know that you'd be . . . like this soon enough?'

She looked down at herself and then back at him. 'Well, I can't apologise for this.'

He groaned and she swore to commit the sound to memory. 'Does it ever cross your mind that I find you intolerable?' he asked. 'I say it often enough. I expect Dumbledore to nominate me for an Order of Merlin. I don't know how I'll endure you for so long.'

'You are starved—'

'Shut—'

'—of female company.'

'—up! What have I told you about flirting with me, Hermione?'

'Would you rather I go slow, Severus? Ease us in.'

He vanished the mess between them with a wave of his wand, even the drinks. 'I'd like us to remain just this lucid,' he provided at her enquiring eyes.

'And what about what I want?'

'Haven't you got what you want?'

Hermione saw the tremor in his jaw and his hands, how the whisps of his hair that had escaped the tie shook and shook. She could feel his magic in her nose, in her lungs. It was powerful and peppery, a flavour very distinct from the alcohol and it had her squeezing every muscle tight. Thinking back over their conversation, she tried to distinguish the consequences of his words. Did Snape really mean to say that she needn't worry about these things? About boundaries of propriety? Could she ask what she liked, behave how she wished—like this? worse?—so long as it was within his home and did not spill into the rest of their lives, if all he was to her here was a friend twice her age with considerable magnetism and a library of note? And, more importantly, was he telling her that he fantasised about . . . her? Had he told her that he found her physically attractive? She felt dizzy at the thought.

'As I was saying, that thought was all but fleeting, and I have dismissed it. It is just the sort of distraction that will cost us our lives.'

How can a hope so new, so fleeting, once crushed still feel you'd been pushed off the Astronomy Tower?

'Instead, I have spent some time thinking about how there's every likelihood of a much older you in the world at this very moment, and it's . . . I've deduced it isn't her, the sick one departed. So, is another biding her time—for what? Just to replace herself in Time? To fool Wizarding Britain? Dumbledore? And all this life you must live in a very short space of my linear time—for what? Just look at how Magic itself is working upon you—for what? Where is the sense in your suffering? What is the point of this summer together? This work and research? What is the point of this conversation? What guides us beyond our gut and mind? Is it you?' he accused. 'Are we dancing to your song? These are the pertinent questions, Miss Granger. This should be our focus; not whether or not you wore knickers while I fought to keep you alive.'

'So,' she said, 'you're a mean drunk.'

He blinked once, his lips parting, blinking fast.

Snape's heated inquiries she considered rhetorical, though they provoked her temper: 'Actually, the point of this summer, and my whole focus going forward, will be to kill Pettigrew,' she said, trying not to let her temper get the best of her. 'I gave Professor Dumbledore my word. And, if you really do care about saving Harry, I am not the puppeteer we should be worrying about.'

'Yes, I am capable of entertaining many thoughts at a time. Dumbledore,' Snape spat, 'has plainly reneged on every promise made to the Light by harbouring his little secret about the Dark Lord's soul. Yet, of course, he is the lesser of two evils. We must do his bidding, nonetheless. I will speak to him about it all soon enough.'

Wrapping her arms around herself, Hermione looked down at her lap, unsure what her eyes would disclose if she kept her gaze up. 'For the greater good,' she said, all her ire evaporating at his words. 'It's all for the greater good,' she whispered, shivering again, 'and he's a school of child soldiers ready to sacrifice in its name.'

'But you are no child.'

Her stomach flipped and she stretched out her legs with a moan, her weak knees cracking, and drew them back in, crossing them, and rearranging her dress. She saw how he regarded the move, how he wet his lips with a sweep of his tongue, the whites of his eyes glistening.

'Hermione?'

'Yes?'

'Get up.' And, suddenly, he was on the move, and holding out his hand to help her rise. When Hermione did, her head swam so much that she stumbled. 'That is why I stopped, and why I think we should get downstairs before we're too far gone and cannot navigate the stairs,' he said, and they—equally as carefully as one another, she noted—made their way down the staircase. 'Get dressed for bed,' he said, ahead of her. 'I'll be with you in a moment.'

Hermione continued on while he ducked into his own room, closing it shut behind him. And when Hermione opened her own bedroom door, her heart leapt into her mouth: because there she was, stood facing a window in the light of the setting sun, running a brush through her wildly curly hair that glowed, dressed in a black satin nightdress so high on the back of her fat thighs that Severus would take exception to it on sight; 'god,' she thought, for the umpteenth time in her life, 'is that what I look like from the back?'.

Shutting the door behind her, Hermione cast, 'Muffliato,' wand in hand, and said to herself, 'He will realise.' And the Other Hermione harrumphed, shook her head. 'You cunt!' said Hermione, suddenly furious at the dismissal, 'you cunt, Hermione! You will ruin everything!'

'I don't know why I hoped you'd be able to handle this. You're drunk on half a beer, for God's sake!'

'Not drunk enough to—'

'Pick up the bag and get out.'

'You will ruin everything!'

'You don't have the time! He will be coming in two minutes!'

Hermione walked over and picked up the satchel from near the unlit fireplace, slinging it over her shoulder, and when their shadows crossed, she thought about traversing the few steps and touching herself—slapping, really—but wondered if the laws of magic and physics would even allow such a thing; she wasn't brave enough to test it, Gryffindor or not, not tonight.

'If you spoil this,' she said, eyes full of tears, 'I will find a way to hurt you.'

And then the Other Hermione turned around, her eyes blazing, just as wet. It wasn't like looking into a mirror. It wasn't even like looking into a pond. She couldn't even describe the feeling of . . . setting eyes on this lady who appeared to be hell-bent on damaging all she'd worked so hard for today. Professor Snape would hate her; he would never trust her again.

'If it's any consolation,' the Other whispered, 'I don't plan on lying to him.' She raised her arm, and pointed at the door, her wrist shaking. 'Leave. Now. Before I make you.' But Hermione could not move, because there on the arm of herself, black as the night, was the Dark Mark. 'Imperio.'


Author's Note: [Slowly backing away from the keyboard] Speak soon?