Thank you for your patience! Work has been nuts and I couldn't wait to get back to posting. And thank you for the reviews, you are all so kind! This is my published fic and it's so nice to see that you are enjoying it.

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Severus awoke hours before his presence was required in the Great Hall for breakfast, bare torso sliding on smooth cotton sheets. As he rolled to his stomach, his erection pressed into the mattress, and he remembered. He'd been having such a nice dream. Why had he woken so soon?

He turned onto his back and wrapped his hand around himself, stroking once, twice.

There had been a woman laughing with him. He could see her mouth, but not the rest of her. White teeth biting down on a plump lower lip. An impish smile invited him closer. When he kissed her, she'd pulled him downward on top of her. He remembered falling into a pillow of soft brown curls…

No. Severus stood up from the bed, adjusting himself. No. Not this.

He got up and stretched his arms above his head, flexing and forcing blood into parts of his body other than the one he was ignoring at the moment. He pulled his pajama pants on and walked through the sitting room to his pull-up bar.

He didn't count his pull-ups, and he only stopped when he physically couldn't perform anymore. It was meditative, an outlet for his testosterone. As he strained himself, his mind went to Granger, as it nearly always did.

He felt disgusting. There he was, full of his self-righteous fury towards Rowland for hovering around Professor Granger, a woman much too young for him when he himself dreamed about her.

But it was just a dream. I would never act on those feelings. He rationalized to himself, clenching his back and abs to propel himself above the bar. Rowland certainly intends to, even if Hermione can't see it.

He saw his hypocrisy for what it was. He was brought back to awful feelings of jealousy that he hadn't experienced since his school days. And worse, those jealous feelings were for someone he should be protecting, mentoring even.

After he had worn out his triceps, he went right into pushups and then sit-ups to hit his arms, back, and abs. He repeated this, round and round until his body shook and his torso was sleeked with sweat.

He never could have imagined that he would have inappropriate feelings for a student, even a former student. It could go nowhere. What did a 21-year-old know about anything? What could they possibly have in common?

Not that there needed to be anything in common, in theory, to enjoy each other. But Severus had never dallied with women as other men did; he had needed to keep his true self hidden.

It became clear to him early on that, among Death Eaters and Order members alike, those who ended up dead usually did so due to their personal connections. For a spy, relationships were a liability, a weakness that the Dark Lord could exploit. One-night stands had been out of the question; there had been no way that Severus could trust a stranger at his most vulnerable.

The truth was, Severus had not had sex since he was 18. With Lily. Once. She had been about to marry Potter. She hadn't invited him to the wedding, not that he would have gone. The night prior, he had resigned to sit in his home and drink himself into oblivion. Before he had gotten very far into his pity party, Lily had shown up at his door, soaking wet and crying.

She said very little, only that she needed to speak with him. When he closed the door behind her, she crashed her lips into his, pressing him back against the door. He pulled his head back, giving her a confused look, but she reached for him again. He wrapped his arms around her back and held her neck in his hands, his fingers burying gently into her red-orange locks. He guided her back towards the couch, crawling on top of her as she ran her fingers in his hair, bringing him closer.

He had always known Lily's feelings for him weren't completely platonic, but he had not been ready for the chemistry between them that night. The air around them seemed to crackle with magic as they fumbled for each others' belts and buttons, ripping away the barriers between them. His teenage heart had pounded in his chest as he kissed her in all the ways he had dreamed, with his bare chest against hers, his hand wrapped up in her beautiful hair. Green eyes met his own and they exchanged small whispers. She nodded for him to continue, urging him on as he explored between her thighs. He had balked when she told him not to stop.

He'd naively thought that her presence, her lips on his, his tongue on her skin, meant that she was staying. That the joining of their bodies meant the joining of much more. He had been wrong. Lily was gone before Severus woke the next morning and she was married to James Potter by the afternoon.

Her kiss, the heavenly press of her skin, her small whispers, they hadn't been a declaration of anything - she had merely gotten him out of her system. Lily had shown up with the knowledge that he would never deny her. That if she were to step into his arms for comfort, that he would hold her - that he would do much more if she only asked. When he'd seen the announcement in the Prophet, he understood that for her, the best night of his life had only been an experiment, a last-minute fling, before she started a family with James Potter.

He told himself that he hated Lily for using him, but that wasn't true. He hated that she didn't choose him. He hated that the one night they had together was the only one they would ever have. He hated not that he'd finally gotten a taste of his dream, but that it had been ripped away hours later.

For the next three years, he told himself that Lily Potter didn't exist; she was dead to him. He'd sunk into his pain and allowed the poison to take over, turning himself into a venomous thing. He focused his hatred towards her into his devotion to the Dark Lord, someone who did choose him. He took his mark without a second thought.

He'd been so sure of himself back then that he had finally found a family who valued him. Severus cringed as he thought back on his own hubris - in the end, the Death Eaters had been no family.

If he had been honest with himself, he would have acknowledged that he didn't regret that night, even if the memory broke his heart. He'd had her to himself for one night. That night was the source of his Patronus, his happiest memory.

The day she died, the day he realized it had been his fault, he forgave her for anything and everything. He could not bring himself to hate a ghost. Instead, Severus had turned his hatred towards himself like a dagger.

When Severus looked at the clock, it had been nearly an hour. He heaved air into his burning lungs, catching his breath as his shaking muscles rested. Sweat poured into his eyes. He grabbed a towel and turned on the shower, he was sure he stunk like a hippogriff. He scrubbed quickly and washed his hair.

Wrapping a towel around himself, Severus raised his hand to clean the condensation off the mirror but then thought better of it. He didn't want to look at himself. He sighed, pulling out his hairbrush. Shame had settled back over him.

Perhaps it was time to retire from teaching. To call it quits and spend the rest of his days brewing potions on commission in Spinner's End. The thought of not running into Professor Granger in the corridors or chatting with her over meals made him deflate further. There was no winning.

Severus hadn't expected any of this. He'd barely thought of her since the Manor. Back then, Granger had been in a weak position but somehow remained strong. She had been completely vulnerable, yet unbreakable. She had stood tall and earned his respect in a way that few grown wizards ever had.

He had known that there was almost no chance she would leave that cell alive, what with her being so malnourished. With Dumbledore gone, he had no contacts within the Order to plan an extraction. No Order member would ever trust him. He had no way to protect his former student, for if he stepped in to help her, they would both be dead. And he'd had a job to do.

Severus knew what Dumbledore would have said - that sacrifice was required, that Severus must keep the mission in mind at all times, but Dumbledore hadn't seen her. Granger had looked so small and pathetic then, a dirty child in an unfamiliar place. His instincts to protect her raged against his duty, his mission. It had been one of the lowest points of his life, harming someone so defenseless, someone who was meant to be under his care. A chink in my armour, indeed.

When she had been brought in, Severus was monitoring the thoughts of every witch and wizard in the room. He had steeled himself against the abhorrence of her suffering, willing himself into indifference, but that line of thinking lasted about as long as it took to see the carnal desire in Yaxleys' face as he beheld her bare legs. Yaxley was unimaginative, the girls' screams of pleasure morphing into screams of pain as he grinned broadly, raking his eyes over the girl's chest.

He wished he'd thought twice before entering Fenrir's private thoughts. Images of the wolf's fantasies flashed before Snape's mind - jagged nails slicing valleys of blood into her bare back, tearing through her clothes, licking blood from her wounds as he violated her - Severus had nearly vomited.

When Severus came across her in the library a few weeks ago, Hermione had indeed looked much older than she had in captivity. Through the flickering candlelight, he noticed that her face was significantly less round. He had also been glad to note that she wasn't as deathly thin as she had been.

Then he'd seen her in the full light of day during the Staff Meeting. She had taken his breath away, quite literally, when she'd turned his way, her face lighting up...for him? Odd, that she seemed happy to see him. He took in her warm brown eyes, lashes painted black, and the light powder on her lids. His gaze followed a trail of shiny hair down to the curve in her waist, and his lizard brain clocked her full hips and shapely calves.

And he had been angry at her, most unfairly, for making him feel that way. As if she'd done it on purpose. As if she thought of him at all.

Absurd.

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Severus sat stone-faced in the Great Hall, staring out onto the sea of students, watching for misbehavior. His mind was stormy. A familiar numbness overtook him, drowning out the lingering shame. The chair to his left was empty, and no one else approached it.

The doors opened from outside and he heard a bouncy Welsh accent echo off the stone. He and Professor Granger came in smiling, their cheeks red from the wind. Something in him deflated as he saw them laugh together at some shared joke. He had seen them leave her rooms the other morning, now he was watching them walk to breakfast together. Had they been spending the night? Was Rowland weaseling his way into her trust, her confidence? Her bed?

Severus swallowed thickly. The man had to be nearly Severus' age. What was he doing sniffing around a woman so young and inexperienced, if not taking advantage?

You don't know that she's inexperienced. A voice in his head seemed to goad him. He shook off the thought, focusing on his disgust for Rowland, the smug prick.

His attention was pulled away by the excited chatter of the other teachers, who stared up towards the lofty ceilings of the Great Hall. Beyond the candles that floated meters above their heads, the bewitched ceiling reflected a sky brewing with energy, as though a storm would start soon. Low dark clouds moved quickly, a small scattering of rain could be seen falling from above, although no one felt any moisture.

That couldn't be right, Severus considered. Professors Granger and Rowland had not been wet when they had come in just a moment before. As Severus turned back to look out the window behind him, a clear September morning winked back at him from outside. He even saw birds flitting about in the sunshine. He looked back up to the ominous storm clouds rolling in.

Professors Sprout and Flitwick were huddled, making observations and pointing upwards.

"Very odd," Flitwick squeaked, mumbling something about "the castle's nervous system".

As Rowland and Granger approached the staff table, the former stopped to join in the conversation, and the latter began to make her way toward him, passing up several empty chairs to claim her usual seat next to Severus.

He promptly stood and excused himself to the Headmistress, not bothering to give a reason for his sudden departure.

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As Severus sat in his office, grading essays that afternoon, he heard a small knock on the door. He sighed, knowing already who it was.

"Enter." He kept the inflection out of his voice. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched her step in quietly, a small stack of books held to her chest like a shield.

Returning books, of course.

"You can set them there," he indicated with his pen, not looking up from his parchment.

Hermione didn't move right away, "Thank you again. I loved the one on tropical healing plants. Now I'm wondering if it's safe for me to keep a fire seed bush in my rooms. I never use my fireplace, so I figure-"

"Did you need anything else, Professor?" Severus cut in. He had paused his writing, only tilting his head slightly in her direction, still not meeting her eyes.

He felt her wince at his dismissal. "May I…borrow another?"

Severus sighed, he had indeed told her to let him know if she wanted more. He kept to his word, standing swiftly. "What are you looking for in particular?"

Hermione brushed past his cold demeanor. "Growing and caring for Puffapods. I think they might be a good place to start, as they are so commonly used in poison antidotes." She hesitated, "Unless you have any other recommendations?"

He handed her a brown, tape-bound reprint he'd gotten at a used bookstore. "This should do." He sat back down and picked up his quill again. Severus scribbled out a line of one essay a bit too forcefully, as the tip of his quill scratched deeply into the paper, causing a small rip.

"Are...you alright, Professor?" She asked, tilting her head.

"Why wouldn't I be alright?" He noticed out of the corner of his eyes that she had her hair tied back in a long ponytail; it suited her, as did the cobalt blue robes she wore.

She folded her arms, tone sharpening. "Well, you seem to be kicking me out. And here I thought we might have become friends." Her voice lilted at the end, like a question.

"We are colleagues, Miss Granger. Do grow up." He knew he may have gone a bit too far; he never called her 'Miss Granger' anymore. That was what he had exclusively called her when she was a student. It was a clear demotion in his esteem, but what had she ever done? He couldn't find an answer.

"'Grow up'? So now having friends is childish? I hate to break it to you, but my nan had friends when she died at 96, so you're going to have to try a bit harder than that."

He finally looked up at her, his eyes nearly black. She didn't care that he was staring daggers, she rounded on him. "How old are you? Fourty-one? Fourty-two? You're not dead yet." She held her palms out in front of her, driving her point home. "You can have friends."

"You are too bold, Miss Granger." He hissed, tossing his parchment back on the desk. "Do not presume that you know me. I assure you, you do not."

She was facing him squarely, her eye contact and body language conveying that she wasn't daunted by his anger. "That can change if you like."

He drew up a sneer from his seemingly endless supply. He didn't like calling on his Spymaster persona, the one that excelled at keeping people away. It hurt, truly, to treat her like everyone else, but it was for the best. Keeping her at arm's length was better than Professor Granger seeing how pathetic he truly was.

"I am quite busy. I do not have time for this." Perhaps Professor Rowland can offer the support you're looking for, he finished in his head.

Hermione's eyes shot open wide. "Is that what you're so angry about?"

"What are you on about now?" Severus asked irritably.

"You're upset that I've been spending time with Rowland?"

Severus flushed. How could she know that? Had she guessed? He tried again to redirect his anger. "Excuse me Miss Granger, but I have too much going on at the moment to keep a detailed account on who you spend time with."

"Will you stop calling me 'Miss Granger'?" She snapped.

"And why should I not?" He snapped back, standing. He leaned forward over his desk, knuckles on the wood. It was the same stance he used to intimidate students.

She took a deep breath, her voice came out much calmer than his own. "Because you only do it when you're angry. You use it like a weapon, and I have no idea why."

He blinked. She had given him a truly honest answer when he had expected her to sink to his level. She waited for his reply, amber eyes round and apprehensive.

His shame doubled, she had punctured the momentum that had been building inside of him, aching for a shouting match. Perhaps he wanted her to rail at him, to punish him; perhaps he would feel better about his impulses if she were to slap him.

"I'd like you to leave, Professor Granger." He said in a low voice. His anger had dissipated, leaving only guilt behind.

"My pleasure." She slapped the brown book back onto his desk and marched from the room. As soon as the oak door shut behind her, Severus dropped his head into his arms.