A/N: This tale is almost fully written and looks to be 11 chapters, give or take. M rated for situations and language but not very explicit. I've made some changes to canon but they should be fairly obvious. Hope you enjoy!

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October 1998

Hogwarts, Scotland

At first it had been a relief to come back to Hogwarts, but the feeling soon turned into complete and utter boredom. Now, nearly two months into the autumn term, Hermione Granger wasn't sure she'd be able to cope. The restrictions were stifling, the students — those in Ginny's year since she'd returned for her seventh year — were stupid, immature and annoying, the classes were boring for the most part and she'd read basically everything worth reading in the library already. At least she'd been given a bit of leeway by the Headmistress. The Head Girl post had gone to a Hufflepuff girl in Ginny's year, Alanna Waincroft, a popular and bubbly girl who seemed to be friends with everyone. Hermione had accepted the newly created post of Deputy Head Girl since, in the Headmistress' words, Hermione would of course have been Head Girl if her last school year had been anything resembling normal. That meant she had her own rooms in the same corridor as the Head Boy and Girl, with a small sitting room with a fireplace, a table and a couch, and a bedroom with a private bathroom attached.

A few others from her year were back to finish their education, either due to failing or missing the exams that were postponed a month to the end of July, or due to not having attended the last year. Most of her old classmates had left, however, but she still had Ginny and Luna around. Dean Thomas and Justin Finch-Fletchley had returned along with Belinda Copper, a Ravenclaw girl Hermione hadn't really talked to much.

She still had trouble sleeping, with nightmares and insomnia plaguing her ever since the end of the war last May. Sometimes she woke herself up screaming when Bellatrix came at her again with the knife, or when Fenrir Greyback made good of his promise to rape and maim her. Crookshanks… No, she wouldn't think of him. It felt wrong, unsettling and outrageously unfair that the world still wasn't safe after Voldemort's fall, that some of his mad followers still remained.

Sometimes she woke up crying, after reliving the battle at Hogwarts and the awful event in the Shrieking Shack when she almost came eye-to-eye with Voldemort himself and when the snake had done its best to kill Professor Snape. In her dreams she saw him die, the light in his eyes winking out and blood pouring out of his mouth and nose, while in reality she managed to save him with Dittany and a vial of antivenin she'd found in his inner robe pocket along with some Blood Replenishers. She hadn't known it worked until afterwards, however, when she brought Professor McGonagall and Mr Weasley along to the Shack to bring him back to the Castle.

She hadn't talked to him outside of class. She'd thought about it but it was too hard to face him. Instead she settled for watching him, studying his habits and interactions with others, in the Great Hall, in the classroom or whenever their paths happened to cross.

~o~o~x~o~o~

Harry had understood her drive to go back and finish school but Ron had complained that it meant they would not see each other much since Harry and Ron had taken the offer of honorary NEWTs and started Auror training.

She'd spent most of the summer with Harry at Grimmauld Place since her parents were still lost to her. Their summer had been busy. Hermione and Harry had worked with Kingsley on collecting evidence for various Death Eater trials, and also on clearing Professor Snape's name after viewing the memories he'd given Harry. Ron was busy at the Burrow, helping his parents rebuild it and also grieving for Percy who had died during the battle at Hogwarts, in the last moment pushing Fred aside just before a huge boulder fell on him.

"I get it," Harry had said when they talked one late evening in the dining room over a cup of tea. "You don't have anything else right now that binds you. Ron has his family, I'm fine with becoming an Auror and I have Ginny, but you need the stability of something that hasn't changed."

Hermione had nodded and tried to blink away the tears. Harry was right, she didn't have anything that bound her; for some reason Ron never made the cut in that calculation. She'd tried to reverse the Obliviation of her parents but it hadn't worked even with the help of Bill Weasley.

They'd made plans to meet up in Hogsmeade during term but so far it had been difficult to schedule something between the hectic Auror training schedule and the Hogsmeade days. Hermione wasn't sure if she was upset or relieved about it. Mostly, she still didn't feel much, going through her days on autopilot watching other peoples' lives pass by as if through a glass window. How could the other students take their own petty squabbles, crushes and intrigues seriously? None of that mattered, not anymore, not after last year.

~o~o~x~o~o~

Hermione sighed again and made her way down to the dungeons for her last class of the day, double Potions. At least with Professor Snape back, Potions was interesting and challenging again. He wasn't as high strung as before the war and even took points from Slytherin occasionally. Still, she thought there was something missing also in his class. Not so much for the contents of the class but something else, in her Professor. The fire was gone from his eyes, the passion.

~o~o~x~o~o~

October 1998

Hogwarts, Scotland

Severus Snape sat at his desk in the Potions classroom and stared blankly ahead at nothing. His first-years had left the classroom some time ago, quietly placing their atrocious samples on his desk, properly cowed already a few weeks into term. He had an empty period until his next class and should probably be grading something.

He'd never thought he'd survive the war, let alone that he'd be anywhere but in Azkaban if that were the case. Somehow, when he woke up after a month in the Hogwarts Infirmary, he found that Potter Junior and Miss Granger had managed to clear his name together with Kingsley and a few select others. He'd even been given an Order of Merlin for his troubles. First Class. Now that he had the medal, he found he couldn't care less about it. Where was the Ministry when things were tough and the Wizarding world was overrun by evil? Hiding, or worse yet, helping it along. At least the medal came with a stipend which was some consolation, not that he needed the money when working at Hogwarts.

Minerva had shown up as soon as he was awake, and after a tear-filled (on her end) explanation (his) and apology (hers) she'd asked if he wanted his old job back, teaching Potions. He'd accepted since he didn't really have any other options at the moment, and he needed time to figure out what he actually wanted to do with his life now that he was free from the mess that was serving under two masters demanding all of his spare time.

Still, when September first came around again, he was sure he'd made a big mistake in agreeing to return. Students. Students everywhere. And everyone looked at him with apprehension when Minerva announced he would be back to teach Potions. The other teachers had been equally difficult to face when he showed up at the preparatory staff meeting a week before term started. Most of them still eyed him with suspicion, clearly not over his role in Albus' death and the subsequent year with him as Headmaster.

Life quickly settled into routine, however. Classes came and went, and students with them. For all but the first years he had to do a fair bit of damage control after two years with Slughorn. He had been able to control who came into his sixth-year NEWT class, accepting only the ones with Outstanding OWLs as he usually did, but there was no way to cull those that shouldn't be in his seventh-year NEWT class, unfortunately, so the class was larger than usual and had several students that he never would have accepted.

Sometimes he wondered what the point of it all was. Everything seemed meaningless to him. He was isolated, in some ways even more so than during the horrible year as Headmaster. None of his colleagues talked to him much other than asking him to pass the salt. He moved back into his old quarters, grateful for the familiarity of the dark chambers, the shabby furniture and his books, but he didn't have any drive to start anything. His private lab was untouched and his evenings were mostly spent nursing a Firewhisky or two, or more, the piles of essays to be corrected growing ever higher.

With a sigh he he straightened the piles of parchment on his desk and wiped the board before he flicked the door open again, to let in the next batch of dunderheads, although technically speaking these should be the least afflicted of his classes as it was the seventh-year NEWT students.

The students started filing in. That class contained someone he'd at first been surprised to see return but he quickly realised that she was back for more or less the same reasons as he was, clinging to something familiar like a lifeline in a time of upheaval.

Miss Granger settled in her usual spot with merely a glance at him. She was seated with one of the more hopeless cases of the class, a Hufflepuff by the name of Mr Montfort who had a bad case of being a teenaged male and an utter dunderhead at that. At least she didn't bother correcting his work as she had Longbottom's, it seemed she had matured a bit over her extended camping trip, at least sufficiently to realise the futility of such an action.

It happened just over halfway into class. He had been walking around the room, checking the students' progress and offered some quiet suggestions where required, when he heard a noise that shouldn't be there. An unstable cauldron, about to explode. He saw Miss Granger reacting a split second before he did, since she was closer.

"No!" someone shouted. It might even have been him. With a speed he didn't know he had, he pushed her aside and started casting a shield around the cauldron.

The cauldron blew. He felt the blast, the hot potion hitting him in the face and all over his robes, and then suddenly his world shrank before it all turned black.

~o~o~x~o~o~

May 1998

Somewhere shabby

Rabastan Lestrange woke with a massive headache, as if he had pulled an all-nighter the evening before, but he was reasonably sure that wasn't the case.

He sat up gingerly and looked around. A small dirty cottage which he didn't recognise. He lay on a grimy bed with a squeaky metal frame and a scratchy woollen throw, one of those Muggle electrical lamps was hanging from the low ceiling and the small window was covered in spider webs and dirt. The room was tiny, only just large enough for the bed and a formerly powder blue dresser next to the window.

He rose on unsteady feet and lurched to the doorpost, looking out over a small combined sitting room and kitchen. The furniture was in that stage beyond well-worn, where the next step was complete disintegration if someone looked at it wrongly. A tiny couch stood next to the old wood stove, opposite what passed for the kitchen area.

"Hey." Antonin Dolohov looked up from the rickety wooden kitchen table where he was spearing slices of sausage on his knife before eating them.

"What…?"

"We're not far from Inverness. Shit's fucked, man. Snakeface is dead. I pulled you here just before an Auror was about to bash your head in. You've been asleep for three days."

"Gods…" Everything was spinning and he slumped back against the doorpost. "We lost? What is this place?"

Antonin handed him a glass of water and Rabastan gratefully drank it down.

"Just told you, didn' I?" Antonin turned back to his food.

Rabastan managed to walk over to the kitchen table and took the other chair. Antonin pulled out another plate and dumped half a can of beans on it before adding some slices of sausage. He dug around in the kitchen cupboards and pulled out a fork which he put on the plate.

"Muggle place?" He took the fork gingerly and prodded a bean. "No elves?"

"Don't get all fancy now," Antonin snapped. "No elves, no magic, don't even try. Was my great-gran's place, this, but it hasn't been used for ages and if we start doing magic here we'll get caught."

"Shite," Rabastan muttered and tried the beans. Cold, bland and slimy, just as they looked. "So what should we do, Antonin?"

"I dunno, you got any bright ideas? An' I told you before to call me Tony."

Rabastan shrugged and focused on finishing the beans. The future could wait, just a little. Being unexpectedly alive had to take precedence.