Chapter 1

July 17, 1999

"Ooh," Ronald Weasley groaned as he sat back in his chair in the kitchen of Number 12 Grimmauld Place. "I'm stuffed. Couldn't down another pea..."

"What a pity," tutted his portly red-haired mother. "There's pecan pie."

Ron's slack face snapped into a bright expression and he straightened suddenly. "I've suddenly found room," he declared.

Hermione rolled her eyes and shook her bushy-haired head. "Honestly Ron, you'll make yourself sick."

The redhead looked up, eyes sparkling, from the slice of pie his mother had just plopped onto his plate. "But I'll be happy."

She sighed and politely declined the slice offered to her by Mrs. Weasley.

"Any for you, Harry?"

"Yes please," he replied, holding out his plate.

Harry Potter had done a great deal of growing up since the downfall of the Dark Lord Voldemort. His dark hair had reached new heights of untidiness that would horrify his Aunt Petunia. After his, Ron's, and Hermione's months searching for horcruxes and running on minimal nutrition, his year exposed to Hogwarts cooking had triggered a growth spurt that left him inches above most of the faces around him. But the changes weren't all physical. Come September, he and Ron would both be accepting positions training as aurors. Life would be moving on for all of them. He secretly worried for their little trio. With them each going in separate directions, there was no guarantee that they would be able to stay as close as they had always been.

Hermione watched her two best friends ungracefully shoveling pie into their mouths and secretly worried the same thing. She had applied for a healing internship at St. Mungo's. As expected, her NEWT scores had come back perfect. An O in every subject. Without the trouble that they had all come to expect yearly at the school, she had been able to devote what she felt was a more proper amount of her time to her studies. She had known going into the year what she was aiming for in a career. Her experiences in the final battle, seeing the horror of the wounded all around her and being unable to do anything to help them had determined her to learn the art of healing. Never again would she have to look at row upon row of wounded and be completely powerless to stop their pain. But no matter how worthy the cause, she couldn't help but regret that it would have to draw her away from Ron and Harry.

"Ron, slow down," Ginny said, watching with an expression of disgusted fascination as her brother inhaled his pie. "You're making me sick just watching you devour that. Mum did not give birth to a Blast-ended Skrewt."

"Shuh uh, 'inhy," he replied through a mouth full of pie.

"That's articulate," Ginny returned sarcastically.

"That is quite enough," Mrs. Weasley cut in sharply. She set a loaded plate of food on the table. "Someone please take this up to the third landing, second door. Professor Snape, I'm sure, is hungry."

Harry immediately sat up straighter. "Why's he here?"

His old grudge against the man had disappeared, but there was just something about knowing that his professor had been in love with his mother that unnerved him. Especially since the man had given him those memories expecting to die. When Snape had woken up in the hospital wing, he had been in a mood to rival all others. Harry could understand, of course. The man's most closely guarded secret had been revealed to some of his least favorite people on Earth.

Mrs. Weasley gave him a disapproving glance. "His stay is only temporary, I assure you. He is stopping here to rest for the night before continuing on to Hogwarts in the morning. I hope I do not need to instruct you all to treat him with the utmost respect while he is here." She fixed each of them in turn with a stern gaze before marching to the sink and beginning on the dishes.

Ginny glanced at her companions, scraped the remainder of her half-eaten pecan pie onto Ron's plate, and silently took her plate to the sink. Her mother flashed her a smile as she took up a sponge and started scrubbing dishes.

Harry ducked his head and renewed eating with new found vigor. Ron glanced surreptitiously at Hermione across the table.

Hermione rolled her eyes and huffed, "Hand it over to me. Honestly, Ronald, he won't hurt you."

"You think," he muttered in reply as he shoved the plate toward her.

She glared, grabbed the dinner, and stood from the table. "I'll be back in a few minutes. In one piece, I assure you."

The steps creaked under her Muggle tennis shoes as she ascended the stairway to the third landing. That was the thing about Hogwarts. Old buildings such as Number 12 Grimmauld Place tended to creak and moan in the night. It creeped her out, to be honest. But Hogwarts's stone hallways were always silent, save for the miscreant feet of students out of bed.

Arriving at the third floor, Hermione approached the second door. She raised her arm and her fist connected solidly with the hard wood as she knocked firmly. She waited a few moments, listening. There was no response from within the room. Glancing between the doorknob and the plate of food in her hand, she knocked again. The door remained closed. There was no sound of any movement.

Unsure how to proceed, she looked back in the direction of the stairs. She could return to the kitchen and say there wasn't any response... But surely if he had been traveling he would be hungry. Perhaps he had just fallen asleep?

She reached hesitantly for the doorknob. He would be angry at her for entering without permission, yes. But with any luck, he would be glad enough of the food to forgive her trespass. She turned the knob...and was perversely grateful when it was stopped halfway through its rotation, proving to be locked.

After another moment's deliberation, she retraced her steps to the staircase. A muffled thump sounded behind her, and she stopped cold, one foot partially descended toward the first stair. Silence pervaded the third floor. But she was certain she'd heard the noise. It had sounded as though someone had thrown something, or as though they themselves had fallen to the floor.

Hermione's Gryffindor spontaneity kicked in automatically. Without thought, she returned to standing outside the door. She pulled her wand from her pocket, and with a muttered "Alohomora," the lock clicked open. She turned the knob and stepped into the room. As the door shut behind her, she was immersed in near total darkness.

Dark shades were pulled across the large window on the opposite wall, obstructing all but the most stubborn of the moon's rays. A small dollop of light trickled into the room from the two-centimeter gap beneath the door. But no more light pervaded the gloom. Hermione remained with her back to the door, one hand on the knob, as her eyes struggled to adjust to the drastic contrast to the hall just beyond the door at her back.

"Professor?" she called into the darkness.

The air was stifling. Stale, almost moldy. It felt as though no living thing had resided in these chambers for a hundred years. Hermione was nearly inclined to believe it, except that Mrs. Weasley had told her that he was here. And the noise. She had heard that distinctly.

She took a hesitant step forward, keeping her free hand out in front of her. She could vaguely make out the dim shapes furniture around her. To her right was a large outline that she assumed was the bed. She carefully made her way to it. The white comforter stood out in stark contrast to the darkness. Against its brightness, no lumps or bulges stood out; the bed was empty.

Growing weary of stumbling about in the dark, she slid the dinner plate onto the bed. She retracted her wand from the pocket of her Muggle jeans, a whispered "Lumos," falling from her lips. The sudden flare of light from the tip of the wand momentarily blinded her as effectively as the thick blanket of darkness had only a few moments before.

As her pupils constricted to accommodate the most recent level of lighting, Hermione took a quick inventory of her surroundings. She stood beside a large, queen-sized bed, as she had already discovered. Across the bed from her, a wardrobe stood against the wall. Beside it, a door which led to the lavatory, judging by the glimpse she caught of a sink, stood ajar. Directly across from her, a small wooden cabinet sat beside a larger wooden desk.

In front of the desk in a gray Muggle rolling chair sat Professor Snape. He was slumped forward with his arms crossed on the wood, his head resting on them as he stared at a crystal vial centimeters from his overlarge beak of a nose. His usual pitch black robes hung loosely around him, at odd angles from the position in which he was hunched.

Hermione took a step toward him, then instantly recoiled with a small yelp as her foot touched something solid on the ground. Glancing down for the first time, she was amazed to discover that her former professor's room was a total wreck. Books were strewn across the floor in complete disarray. Near the door to the toilet, a small pile of rubble bore witness to the untimely demise of a clay vase. Within the lavatory, the sink proved to be full of empty potion vials.

"Professor?" she called out to him, wrenching her eyes away from the mess to focus on him once again. The man didn't so much as flinch.

Carefully weaving her way through the debris on the floor, she crossed the length of the room to stand beside his chair. She placed a hand gingerly on his shoulder.

"Professor Snape, I-"

The rolling chair moaned as it jerked around. Snape's hand snaked out to grab hold of a stunned Hermione's wrist in an iron grip as he glared up at her. "What do you think you are doing in my rooms, Miss Granger?" he demanded, voice dangerously soft.

Her eyes widened to glowing brown orbs in the dim light shining in through the slits between the curtains. "Please let go of me, Professor," she requested, her voice quiet.

Snape released her wrist as suddenly as he had taken hold of it. "Are you afraid of me, Granger?" he sneered.

"Not usually," she replied, retracting her hand from his shoulder and massaging the sore wrist.

The man stood, towering over her. "How about now?"

Hermione fought the urge to cringe away from him. "Mrs. Weasley sent me up with dinner for you." She gestured toward the plate on the bed.

His eyes swept over it, then returned to the girl standing before him. He lowered himself back into the rolling chair and turned his gaze to again rest on the vial sitting on his desk.

"Sir," Hermione asked timidly, "what is that potion?"

He ignored her, lost in the realms of his own mind. She doubted he had even heard her question, riveted as he was by the crystal vial.

She took this as a dismissal and crossed to the door. Pausing with a hand on the knob, she turned for one final glance at the man who had taught her for eight years. Many of the lessons he'd taught had been neither in the classroom, nor even intentional. he had taught her potions to the best of his considerable ability, yes. But he had also taught her the ultimate power of love. He had taught her the true value of undying loyalty. Things that could never be taught in a classroom, but only by example, she had learned from Severus Snape.

"Professor Snape..." she called out. "Severus?" He made no indication of having heard her, but she continued anyway. "Sir, take care of yourself. You were not saved from that snake only so that you could poison or starve yourself. You survived for a reason..."

If she hadn't thought before that he was listening, she knew now how very wrong she was. He turned a toxic glare on her and stood slowly from his chair. As he advanced on her, she wanted to bolt, to just turn the doorknob and flee down the staircase, but she was frozen to the spot, rooted in place by the heat of his gaze.

He closed the distance between them, his face hanging just centimeters from hers. As she stared, wide-eyed, up at him, the tips of his lank black hair trailed across her face.

"What I do with myself is no concern of yours, Granger," he hissed. "Perhaps it would have been better to let me die, as I recall showing absolutely no inclination to be, as you so heroically put it, saved." His words dripped venom as deadly to the soul as the venom of the basilisk of the Chamber of Secrets had been to the body.

Hermione felt herself recoil from him, pressing herself as far into the door as possible.

"Get out," he said in a low growl. He turned his back on her and took a few steps toward the desk.

She stared at his back as she slowly turned the doorknob.

"I said, get out, Granger!" he roared, whipping back around.

A yelp escaped her and she wrenched open the door. Before it shut behind her, she caught one last glimpse of his livid expression. It was enough to send her hurriedly down the stairs.