This Subdued Fire

For Croft: Hermione\'s gone about as low as she can, now it\'s the climb back up. To my other lovely readers, thanks SO much for all your positive feedback. To JKR: without these characters I might *actually* have to be totally original! To Jen, Jen, Paril and Mon as always. Anti-Litigation Charm: Don\'t sue me, I don\'t own them, I wish I did, but I don\'t. I delight in torturing them because they respond so well....don\'t you, my pretties? *heh heh heh*
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Severus stood in front of the headmaster explaining the recent events. Various figures from the portraits had already cra the themselves into the frames containing the past headmasters and headmistresses of Hogwarts.

Albus steepled his fingers and sighed heavily. \"Severus...I had no idea that she would prove so fragile.\"

\"With all due respect,us, us, I think she\'s proved to be fantastically resilient. With all the things she\'s been dosing herself with...for her to have managed to stay alive for this long shows remarkable tenacity. Our problem now is to convince her to stay on this mortal plane. At least long enough for...\" Snape trailed off.

Albus looked at Severus from behind those half-moon spectacles. \"Do what you think is best. I give you carte blanche.\"

Snape was taken off guard. He had no idea of how to deal with a distraught female. \"Sir, I really don\'t think that I - \"

\"Severus.\" Albus gave Snape a stern look. \"You are the one that found her and treated her. As far as she is concerned you and young Mr. Weasley are the only ones who know about her lapse. You *must* do this. If only as a favor to me.\"

Snape gave Dumbledore a gimlet stare. \"You really are a master manipulator.\"

Dumbledore smiled, his eyes twinkling predictably. He pushed a crystal candy dish over to Snape. \"Have an M&M, Severus. The chocolate shall do you good.\"
************

Hermione, exhausted from her ordeal and the dressing down from Ron, slept through the rest of the night and into the day. She awoke during the time of the sun\'s zenith. She was jittery and relatively energized. Rising from the narrow bed, her mild fevered state drove her to raid Madam Pomfrey\'s stores.

The stones of the floor were uncomfortably cold on the soles of her feet but she didn\'t care. Hermione located the phial of Dreamless Sleep. But this was the traditional potion. She rummaged around the closet further and came up with a small supply of laudanum, labelled in the absent medi-witch\'s neat copperplate script.

Hermione eased out of the closet, containers in hand. She nudged the door closed with her foot. A deep, amused voice spoke.

\"Reduced to stealing from the hospital stores? We *are* desperate, Granger.\" Snape smirked disdainfully.

Hermione jumped, dropping the beakers and watche morosely as they shattered and the contents seeped into the stones of the floor. She turned to Snape adressing him snappishly. \"Why did you do that?\"

\"Because I abhor thievery. *Evanesco*\" The broken glass and wasted potion vanished. \"And you, my dear Miss Granger, have proved yourself no better than a common little thief.\"

\"Pfft. Sell meanness somewhere else, Snape. We\'re all stocked up here.\" She brushed past him as if he were an insignificant speck.

\"That\'s Professor Snape to you, Granger.\" He gave her a baleful expression as she flounced onto the bed and curled up, chin to knees, back against the headboard.

\"And that\'s *Miss* Granger to you.\" She gave him a sneer that rivaled his best. \"So, what are you doing here? Trying to convince me that I\'m wanted and needed and blah blah blah? Forget it. I\'m a mess and I know it.\"

\"Far be it from me top top your little pity party. I just thought that you would like to know that lunch is being served. And afterwards, I, and some of the other professors have things for you to do. No idleness here, as you remember.\" Snape swept from the room, robes billowing impressively.

(I wonder how in the hell he does that! It must be some sort of charm.) Hermione thought crossly. The smells from the Great Hall teased her nostrils and the first stirrings of hunger that she\'d felt in a very long while rumbled her stomach. (But,) she looked down at herself. (I can\'t very well go in there looking like this.)

She sniffed her armpits. (Ew. Gross. A shower\'s the first on the list Granger, old gel.) The sweatpants and loose oxford shirt were none too respectable either. She looked around the room and on the bed across from hers she saw a fresh set of clothing laid out. Crawling to the foot of the bed she looked down. A pair of brown loafers. (They don\'t match. Probably Snape\'s doing.)

Hermione got up to inspect the outfit he\'d picked out. She grimaced. There was an old t-shirt which read \"Don\'t Mess With Psychiatrists, They\'ll Shrink You!\" and a pair of blue jeans. The old boy really was out of his element when it came to women\'s clothing. Accompanying the garments were underwear and toiletries. Snape had even found her strawberry scented shampoo and conditioner.

She gathered up the various bottles and went into the hospital wing\'s en suite bathroom. Turning up the taps of the shower as hot as she could stand them, she stripped off her clothes and got in. Hermione gave her skin and hair a ruthless scrubbing. When she was rosy red and nearly raw, she got out, wrapping a towel around herself. Hermione rubbed the steam from the mirror above the small sink and turned the faucet on and gave her teeth and gums a good brushing. When she thought about how neglected they\'d been over the past two days, Hermione was disgusted with herself. As the child of dentists, good dental habits had been drummed into her. But that had all fallen by the wayside in her pursuit of artificial pleasures. She made a face at herself and left the bathroom.

Applying a drying charm to her hair, Hermione dressed, noticing for the first time that the jeans were literally falling off of her body and that she was swimming in the shirt. She ran back into the bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror. Her cheekbones were horrendously sharp and pointed in her overly thin face. Her eyes were huge and shadowed. (I look like a death\'s head.)

Hermione raised a hand to examine it as well. The tendons were corded beneath the skin and her bones stuck out prominently. (I\'m a stick...what did I do to myself?) She thought in horror. She pushed the thoughts back down and hurried into the Great Hall. There were a couple of Ravenclaw fourth years there, four Hufflepuff fifth years, no Gryffindors and no Slytherins.

The head table was equally as deserted. Dumbledore sat at his place in the middle, Professor McGonagall was absent, as was Mesdames Pomfrey and Hooch. Professor Sinistra was gone, Hagrid waso oso on holiday. Professors Sprout and Flitwick were enjoying their lunch and discussing something animatedly, from the looks on their faces. Snape was there and next to him was Professor Vector. They weren\'t engaging in any public displays of affection, but whenever Snape looked at her, his eyes were softer than Hermione had ever seen them. Jennifer Vector seemed to return Severus\' affection. The thirty-something witch looked around the hall and then surreptitiously dropped her hand from the tabletop to somewhere underneath the tablecloth.

Hermione recalled the night she\'d unintentionally intruded on Snape and Vector in the Astronomy tower. The look Snape shot her invisible self rose up to haunt her and she had to swallow down something akin to nausea but wasn\'t. She sat at the vast, empty Gryffindor table and a house-elf, Pooky or something, came up bearing a plate of all her favorite things. The elf set it in front of her with a flourish and conjured up a Never-Empty goblet of chilled juice. Hermione dug in and ate until she felt she was about to burst.

She got up and went to the library. The smell of old books, lit torches and polished wood comforted Hermione as nothing else could\'ve. She hurried in and pulled a familiar volume from the shelves. The crackle of the yelllowed pages brought up a welter of memories as Hermione perused Sonnet 116. In the silence of the room, she began to read aloud:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth\'s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love\'s not Time\'s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle\'s compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

(Such false words a man has never written before or since. Shakespeare really knew how to play the ladies. That bastard.) Hermione slammed the book shut and put it back into its place on the shelf. Instead of making her angry, she was melancholic. She and her father were avid Shakespeare fans. They\'d gone to plays at The Globe and seen a lot of thvivavivalist plays. When she was eleven he\'d introduced her to Shakespeare\'s sonnets. To her young and idealistic brain most of them were all terribly romantic and she\'d nearly swooned at the prose and poetry.

Now her brain immediately flashed on the sorry inconsistencies of men when she read the Bard. Hermione curled up in one of the alcove chairs and looked out at the steel gray day. The sun had made a brief appearance when she\'d awoken but had since retreated into its hiding place of clouds. (Fitting, that the new year should start like this) she thought.

She was just getting into the brooding when she heard her name being called. It sounded like Professor Sprout. The plump witch came into the library and located the girl. Plumeria stuck her grizzled gray head around the corner of the nook in which Hermione had secreted herself.

\"Ah, dear, there you are! Come along. I need a hand repotting some plants. You\'re the most familiar with my greenhouses, besides Neville, so I know you know just what to do.\"

Hermione uncurled her bony frame, somewhat uncomfortably, from the chair to follow Sprout back to the greenhouse. \"What needs to be repotted?\"

\"I seem to have a bumper crop of both mandrakes and *Audreita*. They\'ve been growing like weeds lately and they\'ve all become too large for their pots. In danger of becoming root-bound, you know.\"

Hermione made a face as Sprout prattled on cheerily about the fatal-to-all-humankind flora. She couldn\'t see how anyone could get excited about plants that screeched you to death or sucked your blood. They arrived at the greenhouse. Hermione could see the familiar foliage of the mandrakes poking up above the dark and slightly dry peat and soil. Going over to the pots, she could see the top of one mandrake baby\'s head squirming around. Hermione felt slightly ill - mandrakes were not her favourite plant.

\"Here you go, Hermione.\" Plumeria handed her a pair of ear muffs. \"Remember to keep them on tight.\"

Hermione and Sprout clapped the muffs over their ears and set to work. The babies set up a howl to beat all howls each time they were pulled from their bed of dirt. Although the sound was muffled greatly, Hermione could still make out the faintest bit of screechiness. It was most nauseating. By the time it was the dinner hour, the two women had all the plants potted and put away. They unmuffled their ears and gave identical shudders. Dealing with mandrakes, even infant ones, was not a pleasant business.

\"Well. We\'ll have a spot of dinner and then come back and finish the other plants. What say you to that?\" Sprout asked her young charge.

Hermione pulled a face. \"I don\'t have much of a choice. Professor Snape informed me in no uncertain terms that I am supposed to work while I am here.\"

Plumeria chuckled. \"Yes...I believe he did. Come along then. I have plenty to keep you occupied.\" Professor Sprout exited the greenhouse, Hermione trailing in her wake.

Plumeria took her place at the high table next to Professor Flitwick and Hermione sat at the vast empty Gryffindor table. Hermione found to her surprise that she was starving. The hard work of the past hours had given her a mighty appetite. Plates of food appeared in front of her and she dug in, stuffing herself. She leaned back in her chair and gave an indelicate belch, which echoed in the mostly empty hall. Blushing slightly as many pairs of eyes turned towards her, she murmured a hasty \"excuse me.\"

Hermione noticed that Dumbledore, in particular, looked particularly amused by her breach of manners. She looked at him, twinkling like mad. Forgetting all about her vow to not use wandless magic, she conjured up a bottle of eye drops, a quill and a piece of parchment. With a cheeky grin, Hermione wrote a short note and levitated it and the eye drops over to Dumbledore. Albus opened the note and scanned it.

*Dear Headmaster.

I notice that your eyes twinkle a bit much. I don\'t know whether this is due to old age or some other condition. But I\'ve taken the liberty of sending you a bottle of Clear Eyes eye drops. They should take care of, or at least help, the constant twinkle in your eye.

Sincerely,

Hermione V. Granger.*

Albus laughed, there was no help for it. He raised his half-moon spectacles and gave his eyes a liberal wash of the drops. Hermione could see that his eyes twinkled even more than usual. He gave her a wink and went back to eating and conversing. The old man could really put away an excellent dinner.

Hermione merely shook her head, amused. Settling back in her chair, she scanned the rest of the inhabitants of the high table. She noticed that Snape and Vector were missing from their places. Funny that - Hermione had come to expect to see Snape sitting there, like a huge forbidding bat, ready to swoop in and stick his giant nose in where it wasn\'t needed or wanted. Shrugging to herself, she got up and went back to the greenhouse to finish repotting the *Audreitas*.

It had been thirty minutes or so and Hermione was getting tired. Sprout still hadn\'t come in to assist her or at least check up on her progress. There were twenty plants to be repotted and Hermione had taken care of five. She brushed by a particularly aggressive *Audreita* and found herself bitten for her trouble.

\"YEOW!\" The bite was on her arm, right below the edge of her t-shirt sleeve. There were rows and rows of teeth marks and each one was bleeding quite a lot. Each little tooth mark was bleeding copiously (having for some strange reason refused to close). The othe plants, smelling the blood, stretched their long necks out and began biting every exposed surface.

Hermione was becoming woozy from the blood loss. It didn\'t feel so bad and so she found her self sinking into the feeling. The last thing she heard before falling to the floor were shouts and the pounding of many footsteps.
*****************

When Hermione awoke it was fully dark outside. The only light was from the few torches illuminating the hospital ward. She sat up gingerly, the deep muscle aches from the puncture wounds preventing any real pressure from being exerted. The sleeves of her singlet had been removed and from shoulder to wrist the skin was bandaged. Hermione swore softly.

\"Damn. I hate those little blood suckers.\"

A low voice came from the corner where its owner was rummaging around in the storage closet. \"I quite agree with you. I\'ve never liked that particular genus of flytrap. Now I know why.\" Snape poked his head around the opened door. \"It\'s lucky for you that Plumeria decided to come back to the greenhouse when she did.\"

\"Ah, yes. Lucky me.\"

Snape closed the door of the supply closet with his foot and walked back over to Hermione\'s bedside. He thought she was lucky, indeed. If he had had as many people watching over him as she did, himself included, he would count himself a very lucky man. She was being a spoilt brat, in his estimation.

\"Look, I\'m feeling much better now. I\'m sure you wouldn\'t mind if I went back to my own room in Gryffindor.\"

\"Oh, but I do - mind, that is. You see, Miss Ger, er, we are going to have a little chat. You are going to tell me why you let those little bloodsuckers all but exsanguinate you. You are going to tell me what all you were dosing yourself with and what you really expected to happen.\"

\"Oh, so now I\'m supposed act like you\'re my Father Confessor, am I? Forget that. I\'m not telling you anything.\" Hermione\'s eyes burned defiantly at the Potions Master.

\"Look, I find the notion as distasteful as you do,\" Snape drawled. \"But I agreed to do it and I\'m going to fulfill my end of the bargain.\"

\"I see. The devil made you do it?\" Hermione smirked.

\"If by the devil you mean our illustrious Headmaster, then yes.\" Snape rejoined.

\"Well I wouldn\'t want to disappoint the old man.\" Hermione gestured over to a nearby armchair. \"Have a seat, Professor. This is going to take quite awhile.\"

Severus sat and listened as Hermione recounted the events between the day of the funeral until now. He didn\'t judge (aloud, that is). He didn\'t interrupt. He sat there as she talked and talked. Snape was horrified and fascinated all at once. He was sympathetic and repulsed at the same time. He found it to be a horrible weakness on her part, yet he knew exactly how she felt. How many obscene things had he done to himself and others in the days after he\'d left the Death Eaters but before he finally went to Dumbledore? Too many to count. It was not his place to sit in judgment of this girl. (Besides, how many nights have you sat drowning your sorrows in scotch, Severus?) he thought to himself.

At the end of her outpouring, Hermione sat as dry eyed and defiant as when she\'d begun. \"And here we are,\" she finished.

\" \'The end of the game is the beginning of the game.\' \" Severus quoted.

\"Who are you quoting?\" Hermione asked.

\"I don\'t know. It\'s just something I picked up.\"

\"I see.\" And she did.

They sn con companionable silence for there was nothing more to say.
**************

Draco stood in a corner of the ballroom of his parents\' house watching the colourfully garbed magical folk whirl about the floor in an old-fashioned waltz. His high collared black dress robes were constricting his throat and he wished that he were any place but there. Blaise\'s older sister, Blythe came sashaying over. At nineteen, she\'d been in Voldemort\'s service for two years. Unlike her younger sister, Blythe had not graced the Dark Lord\'s bed. Blythe shared the glossy black hair and refined features of her younger sibling. But in a departure, her eyes were not blue but a warm hazelnut brown. Funny that her eyes should be warm, being that she was a Death Eater.

(But then, it sometimes happens to the best of us) Draco thought with a grimace, thinking of the livid brand on his arm.

Blythe, tinier than her sister and Hermione and even Pansy, nearly as tiny as Ginny, commandeered Draco to dance. He took her into his embrace and swept the little woman into the pattern of the waltz. She twinkled and sparkled up at him, flirting shamelessly. Her laugh floated on the air like a tinkling bell. He remained unaffected by her copious charms.

He moved woodenly, though expertly through the figures on the floor. Blythe caught a glimpse of her younger sister glowering at her and Draco as they danced. The older sister deliberately moved closer to the tall man. Draco, thrown a bit off his balance, compensated by taking Blythe firmly into his arms. She fluttered her lashes at him artfully and Draco thought \"why not?\" and swept the woman out of the ballroom and into the enchanted garden.

The grounds were heated especially for the occasion, so that the guests might have the freedom of roaming the lovely rose bushes and topiary of the formal garden. At the center of the lot there was a labyrinth and Draco drew Blythe inside. Neither of them said anything. Once they were in the center, Draco fell upon the diminutive witch hungrily. She welcomed his rough advances with a fervor that matched his own. In ten minutes he had her upon the bench which sat by the pond at the center of the maze.

A swiftly murmured *\"Divestio!\"* and the pair was naked in the winter moonlight. Blythe opened her herself to Draco and he slid between her smooth pureblood thighs, just barely making out the centers of her brown eyes. As he entered her, Blythe closed her thighs around his slender hips and Draco was thrown back to his memories of Hermione. The way her long legs managed to wrap entirely around him, how he could feel the muscles working in her thighs...for a moment he opened his eyes and saw Hermione\'s face swimming in front of her and he ca her her name. He didn\'t even notice Blythe going utterly still as she heard her paramour calling another woman\'s name. Draco pounded away at the tiny woman until she began to scream with pain and the remnants of pleasure. Blythe began raking her nails down his smooth back but he wasn\'t finished with her. Draco closed his eyes again and ran his hand down Blythe\'s body to tweak at the nub hidden in her dark curls. He pinched her once, twice, and she came shuddering in his arms. The woman was angry, yet saddened that she was a substitute for a filthy Mudblooded wench.

Blythe pushed Draco off of her onto the grass and sat up on the bench. \"You utter bastard. My sister was right about you.\"

Draco smirked at her and began to dress. \"Anything any girl ever has to say about me is right. Didn\'t you know that? Or were you too busy clawing my back up to care?\"

Blythe, having dressed fully rose to her diminutive height of five-feet-three-inches and slapped Draco as hard as she could. \"Go fuck yourself, Draco Malfoy.\"

He slapped her back, not caring when the force of his much larger hand knocked her to the ground. \"Why should I when I\'ve just done an admirable job of fucking you?\" With that, Draco turned on his heel and stalked out of the maze, leaving the sobbing girl lost in the center.

His robes flew out behind him as he stalked through the concentric circles of the labyrinth. He was angry with Blythe, he was angry with Blaise, he was angry at Hermione and most of all he was angry with himself for if it had not been for him they wouldn\'t be in this mess in the first place. Draco raked his fingers through his hair. He\'d regrown it and slicked it back into its customary style. The blond exited the maze and vaguely realized that he\'d left Blythe in the center. She had no way of knowing how to get out. Draco shrugged to himself. If she had as much brains as her sister did (shagging Voldemort notwithstanding) she\'d Apparate out of there and back into the garden proper.

Gaining the sparsely populated portico that joined onto the ballroom, he went through the opened french doors and grabbed up a glass of Perrier Jouet and downed it in one smooth motion. Draco immediately felt the effect of the bubbly. He never did have much of a head for wine. He took another flute from a passing house-elf and sipped at it slowly. Gods, he could smell the stink of that creature in his pores and it made him want to run upstairs and scrub her out. The object of his thoughts came sailing through the french doors and went right up to her sister, who was standing sipping a glass of champers herself.

From the darkening look on Blaise\'s face, Draco assumed that Blythe had gone running to her sister with Draco\'s exploits. He saw the two women disappear from the room and he had a fair idea of where they had gone. Draco set his glass on a nearby table and followed them. They were headed down an empty corridor that led to Lucius\'s study. He Disapparated from behind them to stand in front of them.

\"Going somewhere, girls?\" Draco gave them an oily smile.

\"You don\'t intimidate me, Draco Malfoy!\" Blaise spoke as the bolder of the two sisters.

\"I should, darling Blaise.\"

\"Please. Blythe told me how you called for that wretched little mudblood. Mage or not, she\'s still a fucking mudblood and *you* need to learn your place.\"

\"As do you. It\'s far from *your* place to try to teach me mine.\" Draco grinned wolfishly.

\"Well someone needs to school you. Our kind doesn\'t mix with the filthy buggers, Draco! You of all people should know that. Now out of my way.\" Blaise and Blythe tried to muscle their way past Draco.

He shoved them back with more force than he normally would have. They went stumbling down to the floorI caI cannot have you telling tales.\" Draco did not carry his wand. He snapped his fingers at the girls. *\"Obliviate!\"*

\"...However did we end up down here, Draco?\" Blythe queried.

\"You took a wrong turn heading to the ladies. Allow me to escort you.\" He looped an arm around both girls and led them to the nearest bathroom. \"I trust you can find your way back?\"

\"Oh yes, Draco.\" Blythe simpered up at him. Blaise said nothing, still in bit of a daze. He wondered if perhaps he hit her a little too hard it with the Memory Charm.

\"Very good. I shall see you two a bit later then.\" He left them there, puzzling over whether or not they had to use the toilet or not.

Draco breathed a sigh of relief. He normally wasn\'t so careless but he\'d been twisted up in knots over the difficult situation for months now. His mind had been caught up in Granger, missing her more than he\'d care to admit. It seemed that they were right as they usually were: absence really does make the heart grow fonder. But there was no chance that she\'d ever take him back, even if he explained things to her. And that was as it should be. If he were in her place he certainly wouldn\'t forgive himself.

Feeling completely done with the party, he tipped upstairs to his own suite and sat in the darkness of the chamber, looking out of the glass doors. Draco unbuttoned the suddenly tight collar of his robe. He wondered, as he did many nights, how Hermione was faring and if she were thinking of him, too...
***********

The next day Hermione awoke. The bandages were off and she was tucked into the narrow hospital bed. Taking a deep breath and a stretch under the covers, she thought about the house. She needed to go back there and get her things and reassure her grandmother that she hadn\'t been abducted or anything of that nature. Lydia had been nervous enough about letting Hermione stay there alone.

Hermione got up from the bed and went to the bathroom, tending to necessary things before giving hlf alf a quick Cleaning Charm. She went upstairs to Gryffindor and did not pause to look about the empty common room. Upon opening the door, Crookshanks ambled over and began mewing like mad, twining himself about her ankles. Hermione smiled and heaved his bulk into her arms. He purred like a cement mixer and the sound was one of the sweetest she\'d ever heard.

She dropped him on the bed and lit the torches and the fireplace. The cold beginning to fade, she stripped down and went rummaging in the armoire. She came up with a black sweater and black jeans. Both items were too big and she needed to cinch the jeans on the last hole in her belt. Hermione looked at herself in the mirror. \"I look like a giant skinny crow.\"

\"Yes, you do. Why not try something more festive?\" The mirror responded.

\"I\'m in mourning...my parents, you know.\" It felt yet strangely relieving to say the word out loud.

\"Oh yes. My condolences,\" the looking-glass offered.

\"Thanks.\" Hermione pulled on a pair of socks and black ankle boots. She scraped her hair into a low tail and pronounced herself fit to venture into the Great Hall. Walking in, there was a flurry of activity as most of the professors arose from their places to hug her and cluck their tongues over the incident in the greenhouse. Even Dumbledore hugged her.

\"So what are your plans for today?\" the Headmaster asked.

\"I thought I should go back home and get my things...I need to let my grandmother know that I\'m back at school.\"

\"Ah. I wrote your grandmother myself when Mr. Weasley dropped you off. I must say, she expressed a considerable amount of relief that you weren\'t in that house by yourself anymore.\" Dumbledore\'s eyes twinkled at bit when he saw Hermione\'s sigh of relief. \"However, you do have to go back to the house. There\'s a great many things that need to be taken care of. Lydia had written that you\'d arranged for the movers to come and take the furniture away. But I cannot let you go alone. Therefore, I asked Severus to accompany you.\"

Hermione\'s eyebrows rose. \"Professor Snape? Why him?\" She could see Severus\' look of amusement at her words. \"No offense, sir.\"

Snape smirked. \"None taken, Miss Granger,\" he replied silkily. \"As it happens, I have nothing better to do today. It should fairly...educational...seeing how a Muggle lives.\"

The insult wasn\'t lost on Hermione, who felt her cheeks burn with indignation. Dumbledore muttered \"Severus!\" in a warning tone.

\"It\'s fine, Headmaster. I can see where our illustrious professor might be a bit...ignorant of the world around him. Well, let\'s not dally. *Accio cloak*.\" Hermione flicked her hand absently in the direction of Gryffindor tower and a few seconds later the enveloping garment came whizzing through the Great Hall and into her hand. \"We can go. I wouldn\'t want to delay your education, Professor Snape.\" With the bearing of a queen, Hermione swept the cloak around her shoulders with a flourish and sailed from the room.

Dumbledore, Sprout and Flitwick chuckled at the interplay between teacher and student. Flitwick spoke in his high piping voice. \"It seems she\'s taken a leaf from yourk, ok, old boy!\"

\"Stuff it, Filius.\" Snape growled and left the pack of giggling schoolteachers behind.

The pair walked to the gates and Apparated directly inside the house. Severus was struck by the smell of the place. The lingering smells of death, hell and decay flayed his nostrils. (No wonder she nearly went mad staying here.)

\"Stay here.\" Severus ordered. \"I want to have a look around first.\"

\"There\'s no one here, trust me. Not even a boggart would want to use this place as a hidey hole.\"

A half formed grin flitted across Snape\'s thin face. \"Nevertheless, I\'m going to check around. Stay put.\" He swept off, managing to make his robes flow out behind him in the stillness of the room.

(Yes, definitely a charm. There\'s no way he could get those things to billow so impressively in here without one.) Hermione grinned, thinking about how artificially terrifying Snape was.

\"All sorted.\" Snape came from upstairs. \"What time are the, er, \'movers\' going to arrive?\"

\"Two. There\'s plenty of time. I just need to clean up a bit.\" Hermione went into the kitchen, Snape dogging her heels. \"Have a seat.\" She gestured to the barstools that lined the island separating the food prep area from the seating and cabinets.

Snape perched on one, looking like a great confused bat who\'s been thrust from his cave out into the sunlight. He shifted a bit. Hermione let a small giggle slip and set to work on the few dishes in the sink, mostly coffee mugs. She passed her hand over the dishes and uttered *\"Scourgify!\"*

They were clean in the wink of an eye. \"There are some empty boxes on the sun porch behind you, would you bring them in, please?\" She asked Severus.

\"I am not a house elf, Miss Granger. Do it yourself.\" He snapped, irritated.

\"As long as you\'re here, you may as well make yourself useful,\" she rejoined logically.

Snape flicked his wand to the closed door of the porch. It swung open. *\"Accio boxes.\"* They came sailing into the kitchen and into his outstretched hand.

Hermione\'s mouth thinned as Snape sneered at her. \"Did you forget that you were a witch?\"

\"No. Magic isn\'t always the answer, as I thought *you* would know.\" She fixed him with a baleful glare, knowing that he was recalling her first year when she\'d broken his logic puzzle. Giving Severus a tiny smirk, she began wrapping the cups and glasses in newspaper and settling them in the boxes. \"Here.\" She waved a stack of newsprint over to him. \"Please, do something other than sit there being pretentious.\"

\"Ten points from Gryffindor for impertinence, Miss Granger.\"

\"Fifteen points from Slytherin for being a git.\" Hermione turned away and continued wrapping.

\"You\'re impossible, you know that?\" She glanced at Snape\'s pronouncement.

\"So I\'ve been told nearly every day of my life.\" Hermione gave Snape a genuine grin and continued on.

They wrapped dishes until the kitchen was cleared. Hermione conjured up a sharpie and began marking the boxes as fragile. Snape watched the economy of movement that only the female of the species posesses and found himself appreciating it. She seemed to run out of steam, realizing that everything else was packed up except the living room and the study. Snape watched Hermione square her shoulders and march ithe the living room. He followed her at length and stood in a corner of the room. She bent and picked up her wand from where it lay, forgotten, amidst the wreckage of the room.

A swift flick of the wood and the suitcase opened. A quick *\"Scourgify!\"*. The room was spotless, if still messy. She waved her wand over the scattered garments and they rose into the air and began sorting and folding themselves into neat piles that settled into the suitcase. Boots got a Cleaning charm and were laid on top of the clothes. The suitcase zipped itself and uprighted itself to sit on its wheels. Severus was secretly impressed with her fluency of magic, yet he knew it was no less than what should be expected of her.

Hermione turned to face the Potions Master, suddenly glad of his silent presence. She gave him a determined smile and headed off to the study. Snape stayed put in the living room. Hermione needed to deal with it by herself. Nothing had changed since that night. The television was still onayinaying inanely. The window was open, letting in the frigid January air. Hermione closed it and shut off the television. For some reason, she couldn\'t bring herself to Vanish the wreckage. She knelt down in the space between the coffee table and the sofa.

She reached up to brush the paraphernalia into the trash can that lay by the side of the table. But her hand stilled and dropped back into her lap. Seeing a glint in the crack between the sofa bottom and the floor she rooted around until her hand closed around it. It was the lion locket. She opened it and saw the disapproving faces of her parents and Ron and Harry. The magically enhanced portraits had been witness to all of it and Hermione was ashamed. She shut the locket and slipped it around her neck.

Severus, out in the living room, suddenly felt a wave of sadness overcome him. There were emotions stirring in him that he\'d never felt before, emotions that he thought were long buried swimming in the crevasse where his heart should\'ve been. Something wet slipped down his face. He raised a hand to his face and discovered it was a tear. He thought he was long past the time of tears, but allowed them to flow freely and unashamedly.
******************

Ron, Harry and Ginny were in the living room of the Burrow when a chill passed over all of their souls and they were melancholy when just moments ago they had been laughing. The three could hear sobbing coming from another room. Molly was crying, inexplicably, feeling so sad, sadder than when her mother had died. Arthur, down at the Ministry, also burst into tears. He left the small closet that was his office and ran into more crying colleagues. Even Lucius Malfoy, who was on one of his meddling trips to the Ministry felt a single icy tear slip down his antarctic visage.

Meanwhile at Hogwarts, all the inhabitants were bowled over by a wave of grief so strong that the interior of the castle wept openly. Even the people in the portraits were crying linseed oil tears. Dumbledore was making a call to Minerva who was gallivanting around during her holiday when all at once they stopped laughing and began weeping. Minerva stepped fully out of the fire and wrapped her arms around her old friend, mentor confidant and would-be lover. They sat huddled together, pouring out tsunamis of sadness. Fawkes sang a hauntingly lovely sad song as fat silvery tears flowed down his face.

The Hogwarts house elves were going about their daily duties, cleaning, preparing food and whatever else it is that house elves do, when all of them, down to the last knobbly head began crying. The tea towels became soaked with salty, slightly green elven tears and the food had a slightly melancholic flavor. The whomping willow became an actual weeping willow, shedding amber tears down its violent leaves. The centaurs in the forest, as did many of the wood\'s inhabitants, stood still and wondered at where this outpouring of emotion originated.

Across the Channel and through the barren fields of grapevines, a small chateau perched on an island. And within the chateau an old man, tasting a new winter vintage stopped the glass from reaching his lips. He did not cry. He keened loud enough for the canines which rested in the kitchens to set up howls. Antoine tossed the wine goblet across the room where it shattered and tinkled to the stones below. His children and their children and even their children\'s children were crying madly, feeling the sadness even from across the expanse of water.

Lydia was in her living room, knitting a sweater. The click-clacking of her needles slowed then stopped. The cry broke through her stiff upper lip and was so loud it scared the winter birds from their perch in the tree outside. She tossed the sweater down, the stupid meaningless sweater that no one would wear anyway. Lydia buried her face in her hands and wept from her soul.

Draco was in the bath, lounging the day away, thinking of last night\'s debacle with Blaise and Blythe. He squeezed his rubber duck absently when his eyes burned and his heart became heavier than granite within his chest. Two quick shuddering breaths and he was sobbing uncontrollably. His tears fell with such a force that they created ripples in the tub when they fell. The great choking feelings twisted and tied him up. He couldn\'t breathe and kept gulping in air, trying to throw off the feeling - but it locked around his heart like a vise. In that moment he knew, just *knew* that it had something to do with *her*. The woman he\'d betrayed in a moment of weakness. And on the heels of that thought, his own remorse and regret flew to the fore and he cried for both Hermione and himself.

Outside in the general populace, no one could\'ve said what it was but people were weeping openly in the streets. Newscasters had tears running down their faces as they did their midday reports. People watching the newscasters watched them through the blur over their own eyes. Even Big Ben chimed the noon hour in a mournful tone. Random strangers clung to one another, crying their eyes out. Dogs howled and whimpered, cats mewed pathetically. One cat in particular, a large orange ball of fur with glowing yellow eyes curled up on his mistress\' bed pillows and sobbed his kitty eyes out for no good reason, only knowing that it was all connected to her just as he was.

And so it was.

Snape left his spot in the living room and went into the study. He was greeted by the sight of Hermione kneeling on the floor, arms wrapped around herself, silently sobbing. Her nose was red. The girl\'s eyes were huge, deep pools of the darkest chocolate he\'d ever seen. They held so much pain that Severus was knocked for a loop. He sat down on the couch beside her kneeling form. Hermione rocked back and forth, just letting the tears spilling out.

She gave the sobs voice. Great gulping sounds that Severus couldn\'t ignore. Gryffindor or not, bitchy know-it-all or not, he wasn\'t so hard hearted that he could ignore the honest and open grief of a girl who\'d been knocked to the ground and now needed to stand up again. He put his hand on her shoulder tentatively. She flinched but did not move away. Something broke through Severus\' wall of reserve. He eased down beside Hermione and held her loosely, allowing her to pour out all the grief she\'d been sublimating. She reached her arms around the hated Potions Master, crying for her parents, for herself, for Simon, for the wretched situation and most of all for Draco, whom she missed like mad. She cried because she hated him and she hated that she hated him. She cried because she didn\'t want to hate him but did. She cried because, still and yet, she loved Draco. Perhaps if she\'d given voice to her feelings, he wouldn\'t have betrayed her. Remorse and regret overcame her. She cried because he\'d betrayed her and cost her nearly everything. She cried because she let herself sink lower than the dirt on her shoe. Hermione couldn\'t stop. The maelstrom had to be released after being bottled for so long.

The two black clad figures huddled on the floor amidst the wreckage of Hermione\'s broken heart.