Round Midnight

[Usual disclaimers apply - the characters aren't mine, the story is]

"Man and woman, who in natural fashion incarnate the two poles of the alchemical work - sulphur and quicksilver - can by their mutual love, when this is spiritually heightened and interiorized, develop that cosmic power, or power of the soul, which operates the alchemical dissolution and coagulation." Buckhardt

Chapter 2

Lead

Lead - or Saturn - is the beginning of the lunar, ascending process of the 'lesser work', preparing the soul for the 'greater work'. This ascent is the blacking, or mortification, and is represented in physical form by ashes from the 'calcinatio' of the base metal (lead). This stage is represented by a raven, or a skull, and in spiritual terms involves a rebirth through 'death to the world'. This is a nox profunda, as the inner light has not yet developed. The 'lesser work', in spiritual terms, is the transmutation of time-dominated thought into a motionless and timeless consciousness.

The conversation with Dumbledore had taken longer than Snape had anticipated; the retelling of the Death Eaters' attack had been detailed, with the Headmaster asking questions whose point even Snape did not understand. His plans to recreate the Philosopher's Stone with Miss Granger took relatively little time to discuss; Snape and the Headmaster had already spent several hours over the previous weeks dissecting the reports of Voldemort's behaviour, and Dumbledore saw no alternative to Snape's plans. The approval for him to work in Hogwarts was freely given, with nothing more than a mild comment that he was sure Snape would have a set of rooms somewhere in the dungeons where he could hide away in peace and quiet. Snape almost smiled at the subtleness of the Headmaster's reminder of the need for absolute secrecy.

Of course, the Headmaster's point had a double meaning; Dumbledore had, after all, been close to Nicolas Flamel - the last alchemist to successfully create a Philosopher's Stone. Dumbledore undoubtedly knew rather more than most wizards what would be involved in the planned work.

Sleep came slowly that night; the conversations and the coffee had taken their toll, no doubt, thought Snape as he sat in an armchair before the fire in his rooms. He had a book in his lap, Fulcanelli's Le mystere des cathedrales; if he couldn't sleep, he could at least do some useful work. At the moment, neither sleep nor work was forthcoming; Snape found himself staring at the flames of the fire, licking along the logs in the grate and spiralling upwards with the currents of air drawn from the room, twisting into nothingness before they reached the chimney. The sight was almost hypnotic, driving thought from his mind; all bar one thought which concerned him more than any other. Who had revived the Death Eaters?

Voldemort had been defeated - to the extent that he could be defeated - seven years earlier, and with that defeat had come the destruction of the Death Eater movement; Azakaban had been filled nearly to capacity with the Dark Lord's followers and those who sympathised with them. Some had escaped - Lucius Malfoy in particular - but nothing had been heard from them and Snape did not consider them likely to resurrect the movement; without a figurehead such as Voldemort any such revival would be certain to fail. Malfoy and others undoubtedly mourned the passing of an era in which the Dark Arts could be practised with, if not quite impunity, only moderate secrecy.

Names tumbled through his mind, each examined and discarded. In the end, as the fire sank slowly in the grate, the embers a dull red in the grey ashes of the wood, Snape had no more idea who could be responsible; all he had to show for the early morning thoughts was a sudden tiredness as sleep caught up with him. Dawn had not quite yet risen, but the sky was lightening softly in the east when Snape finally went to bed.

Sleep was short, as usual even now when his thoughts on sleeping and waking need not include the unspoken fear of a call from Voldemort. The Dark Mark remained on his arm; an embedded curse such as that would never be erased, but it was at least quiescent. There were full days now, seven years after the end, when Snape did not think of the Mark or the past; it had taken most of those seven years to begin to undo the fifteen years of living in the long shadow of his own mistakes.

Snape awoke as usual, when the sun rose high enough to stream across his face, and lay still for a few minutes, thinking through the tasks he would set himself for the day; he preferred to live with the rhythm of the days when possible - this far north, only the summer allowed enough time to live that way. In winter, as now, only the holidays gave him such a luxury; termtime was a misery of dark mornings that only several cups of coffee made bearable and, even so, he never felt truly awake until the sun had actually risen. It amused him that students whispered - even now - theories that he was a vampire.

So many potions succeeded or failed by the time of day or the position of the sun that all Potions Masters lived by circadian rhythms; what little he had read in the early hours of the morning suggested that creating the Philosopher's Stone required particularly close attention to the sidereal and circadian cycles.

That stray thought of the Stone was all it took to pull him from the warm comfort of the bed into the freezing morning. Winter was cold at Hogwarts, and the stone walls embraced that cold more easily than the heat of the fires. One of the house-elves had set the fire in the stove in the corner of the room sometime while he slept; probably Dobby again, thought Snape idly. Ever since the independent elf had discovered that Snape had worked for Dumbledore in more than one capacity, Snape had been bestowed the title of Master and - at least to Dobby - could do no wrong. A year of snapping comments, snide asides about the Potter boy, and disgusted looks had not succeeded in dissuading the elf from his determination to ensure that Snape had every comfort he required and, in the end, Snape had found it simpler to come to an agreement with the elf over what he did - and most emphatically did not - require in terms of assistance.

Snape shivered rapidly through morning ablutions, pulling on his habitual robes and finally pausing for a moment in front of the stove to warm his hands before he settled at his desk to write the letters he had promised Miss Granger that he would send this morning.

The same letter went to each of the more reliable of his former contacts, asking whether they had heard anything unusual, taking pains to point out that he had heard only a rumour of a rogue Death Eater, that no-one had suggested that Voldemort was active again. He could be reasonably certain that they would not over-react; the Ministry, far more likely to panic, would be dealt with by Dumbledore. Snape certainly did not envy the Headmaster his inevitable involvement in politics.

His last letter was to Miss Granger; sometime before falling asleep last night he had decided to ask her to come to Hogwarts to discuss the processes they would be following and to advise him on equipment. He thought it would be a better use of their time, rather than owling to and fro. He suspected Dumbledore's influence in his reasoning but could not remember the Headmaster specifically suggesting such a thing last night and - regardless of the old man's machinations - it would be more efficient. He chose his words with unusual care, needing her co-operation; it would not do to alienate her at this point.

Half an hour later he was back in his rooms, having made the trip to and from the Owlery as fast as possible. For the owls' convenience, the area was in one of the high towers that rose above the school - almost as far away from the dungeon and his rooms as it was possible to get.

The winter sun was higher now, giving the room a surprisingly ethereal look as the pale light picked its way across the wooden bookcases that lined the walls to a height well above his head, filled with all manner of books, and warmed the comfortably upholstered chairs that surrounded the stove in here; Dobby had lit that as well, and the room was a welcome relief to the chill of the school corridors. In the holidays, without the bodies of several hundred students giving off heat, the thick walls of the school resisted even magical attempts to warm the place.

Snape retreated to his desk again, pulling out both the Fulcanelli and his ancient, battered, copy of Flamel's alchemical hieroglyphs. He flipped through the page, idly admiring the etchings of allegorical symbols that hid within them the secrets of the Stone. Flamel, together with his wife Perrenelle, had made at least one Philosopher's Stone; that one had been destroyed 14 years ago, at the end of Miss Granger's first year in the school, he recalled. Flamel himself - and his wife - had died a few years later. The Headmaster had said that they were rather relieved to relinquish their hold on life; they had existed to only protect the Stone from unscrupulous use, having made the Muggles believe them dead six hundred years earlier.

Snape added a note to the list of questions he was keeping; how had Flamel destroyed the Stone? If Dumbledore knew, that might add some information to Hermione's research. To destroy something like that would take more than casual effort.

The immediate tasks dealt with, Snape filled an Italian coffee maker with water and ground coffee and placed it on the stove; the fire had been burning long enough for the top to be blisteringly hot. He looked at the bookcase absently whilst he waited for the characteristic chatter of the last of the steam that would signal that the coffee was ready; he had found the Fulcanelli last night, but he was sure he had some other texts that might help. He had, however, done little work or research on the Philosopher's Stone since he was at college - lack of time, too many other things to take his attention - and he could not remember where he would have stored them.

Eventually the coffee sang through the room and he filled a mug, placing the pot on the flagstones beside the fire. The remaining coffee would keep warm there for some time; returning to his desk, Snape picked up the Fulcanelli and curled into one of the armchairs in front of the fire, balancing his coffee mug on the arm. He found his place and then took a sip from the mug, the smooth glaze against his mouth in contrast to the rough stoneware around which his fingers curled.

He had finished the pot and most of the book when a letter shot from the stove; the doors were left slightly open for exactly that reason. Snape picked up the letter from the floor, slitting it open by running his thumbnail through the wax seal that held it closed. The letter was from Miss Granger; he had picked one of the school's faster owls, and it had clearly lived up to its reputation. Snape was mildly curious as to how Hermione had managed to send a letter by Floo when her own fireplace was unconnected, but that curiosity was forgotten as he opened the letter. The response was short and to the point.

"No problem; apparating to Hogsmeade and expect to arrive mid-afternoon. - HG"

****

Hermione lowered the lid of the laptop on her desk; the fan that cooled the DVD drive slowed and the noise faded away into the silence of the flat. She looked blankly out of the window, not really seeing the grey landscape of London in winter; the same thoughts ran through her mind that had occupied her during the night. She had brought to light the means to create a weapon - and the only thing that could possibly save her was that she seemed to have also found the only possible way to counter it. But it would be a question of time - would they have enough time to create it, to defeat Voldemort. In her less anxious moments, Hermione remembered that Voldemort had also found the means to the weapon; it didn't provide all that much comfort to realise that she had a similar thought process to one of the most dark wizards ever known.

Turning from the window, Hermione sighed. It was probably time to leave; she had told Snape she would be at Hogwarts this afternoon and it was - she checked her watch - half past two already. The morning had been taken up at her laboratory in Oxford, beginning preparations and checking she had both adequate ingredients and the necessary equipment. The Hogwarts owl had found her there, probably startling several students on the way as he found his way through the corridors. Hermione picked up the letter from the bench where it had dropped and had looked blankly at the owl, surprised to hear from Snape so quickly and wondering when he had sent the letter. She was answered when she told the owl that he need not wait for a reply; it circled the room and headed for the fireplace where it disappeared into the suddenly green flames.

Hermione frowned, trying to remember having been told that owls could use the Floo network; she had no recollection of ever having seen one do that. But then, she had never had a letter with this particular code for urgent on it; perhaps there was something in the code that ensured the owl would arrive more quickly than through regular flight. The question was dismissed as she opened the letter.

Snape's handwriting had not changed since she had been at school; it was distinctive, slashing black strokes in a surprisingly elegant - although barely readable - calligraphy. The message was short and she replied in kind, sending the message back via the network. She took swift pleasure in imagining the confusion on Snape's face - he knew her flat wasn't attached to the network, and would hardly be prepared for the letter to arrive that way.

Her preparation work done, she had returned home. Whilst she had the basic process of creating the Stone understood, there were some points where the instructions were confusing; she wanted to continue the research she had done into the area, to try to eliminate some of the confusion. The difficulty was not so much in the method required of the alchemist but in the description of some of the reactions - and, since the timing was critical, the better she understood what she should be looking for, the more likely they were to be successful.

Hermione stood, pushing her chair back from her desk and turning away from the window. She wondered whether she should pack anything but, in the end, decided all she really needed was her wand. If she found she needed to stay overnight at Hogwarts, she could always transfigure the things she needed.

A sudden burst of hunger reminded her that she had not eaten since last night; the memory of Snape cooking came to mind unexpectedly, and she smiled at the empty flat. There had been something oddly appropriate about watching him working in the kitchen; the same care and attention that he paid to potions-making was, unsurprisingly, applied when it came to cooking.

Hermione took a cereal bar from one of the kitchen cupboards on her way out of the flat, collected her coat from the back of the door and apparated from the dark corner near her front door.

A blink later she was standing at the gates to Hogwarts, shivering. She wrapped herself more fully in her coat, annoyed at forgetting that Hogwarts' winters were very much more severe than those in London. Munching the energy bar, she picked her way carefully through the snow - the path had frozen over during the night and Hagrid appeared not to have had time to clear it so far today. Or perhaps he had not remembered - they were out of term time at the moment, she thought, and perhaps there was less need for such work.

The walk up to the school was both familiar and strange; it felt as though she was viewing something through the wrong end of a telescope. Memories, seven years old, were now filtered through another seven years of experiences. The past is another country; they do things differently there. The quotation came easily to mind, although Hermione could not remember where she had read it, or even who had written it. It was, nonetheless, very apt now; walking through the snow to her past - and to her future.

Hermione wondered idly what had changed - if anything. Snape seemed to have changed; certainly the man she had dinner with last night was not the same man she had faced in a classroom for several hours a week over seven years. Or perhaps he was. The thought had her almost stumble in her tracks, sliding on the packed snow; there was no reason at all for Snape to behave in private as he did in public. It was the arrogance of childhood that painted all teachers with the veneer they wore in the classroom. Snape himself had admitted yesterday that his attitude to students was calculated to produce results - through fear, rather than adoration, although Hermione rather thought that most of the Slytherins had adored him. They had also feared him; the two were not mutually exclusive.

All the same, thought Hermione, it seemed as though Snape was different; seven years of peace time - and a peace time with Voldemort accounted for - undoubtedly would make some difference. The earlier so-called peace before Voldemort's revival in her first year had probably not made much impact - Voldemort had disappeared, and Snape was certainly pessimistic enough to assume that he would therefore return. Without certainty she was sure he would not relax.

Wondering now what her other teachers were like, away from their role as pedagogues, Hermione followed the path up towards the main door and had almost reached the steps when she heard her name called from somewhere over on the left. She looked around, searching for the person calling her - her name had echoed against the walls, and it wasn't immediately clear whose voice it was calling her.

A short way off, she spotted a silhouette in a gash of light in the wall; Snape was standing at an open door in the cliff-face that formed the foundations of the school. He waved her over and she realised that there was a track, barely visible, branching off from the main path, that would lead her in his direction.

Hermione was warmer by the time she reached Snape; the effort of keeping her feet in the snow and ice, in boots more designed for London than Scotland, had ensured she was breathing fast when he held the door open for her, and she slipped into the castle.

Standing now in a low, dark, corridor - not as cold as the weather outside but cold enough that she could still see her breath crystallise in the air - Hermione looked back as Snape closed the door; he was in robes, a more familiar figure than the man in Muggle black that had appeared at her flat last night. His face, though, was recognisable from last night and not from her school days. With the thoughts that had kept her company on the way from the gates still fresh in her mind, Hermione looked at him a little more critically than she had done the day before. She thought he looked ... less tired than she remembered; the lines in his face were less pronounced.

The voice was still as ascerbic though, she thought, as he lifted an eyebrow and spoke drily.

"Miss Granger, I did not invite you here to freeze in a corridor; I'm sure that whatever you're looking at is fascinating," he drawled, "should I go and fetch my cloak so that we may examine it together without any danger of my needing a frostbite remedy?" Hermione knew she was looking slightly embarrassed; staring at him was hardly something she wanted to have been caught doing. She had thought herself beyond such distraction now, but apparently not. Being back at school had her rather off-balance.

She realised Snape was actually waiting for some response, so she shook her head. She thought he snorted, amused, at her confusion and looked heavenwards as though for guidance as he swept past her and led off down the corridor. Looking heavenwards in the dungeons was not, thought Hermione, a particularly edifying experience. More rock and little else. The weight of school was on her head - almost literally and certainly metaphorically.

She blinked, hurrying to keep up with Snape's rather longer legs, and realised she'd missed him starting to speak.

"... use that door when you need to come and go from the laboratories; it will save you from trailing through the hordes of students in termtime. It's spelled - the passwords are Scylla and Charybdis. And no, Miss Granger, I did not choose them."

Hermione grinned behind his back; she wondered whether they had, though, been chosen with him in mind, since the corridor apparently led to his rooms. Between a rock and a hard place - or, more accurately, a six-headed dog; she suddenly remembered Fluffy and was hard-pressed not to giggle.

The corridor widened as they rounded a bend; the door behind was long since lost in the dark which overpowered the glowing lichen that lit the way. As they rounded a bend, Hermione felt a shiver of air and looked back to see a wall. The corridor was hidden from view by a charm that showed, instead, a dead end. Looking ahead, Hermione realised she knew the place; Harry and Ron had been insistent that there had to be a corridor somewhere here, in the days when they had tried to outdo the Marauders and the Weasley twins in their knowledge of the school secrets. They had never found it, yet it was veiled only with illusion - or, thought Hermione suddenly, it was keyed to specific individuals. She glanced back at the wall.

Snape must have noticed her interest because, without breaking stride, he spoke over his shoulder. "The charm is keyed to age, Miss Granger. You and your colleagues would not have been able to find it whilst you were at school; it will not permit access to anyone under the age of twenty. The door is similarly charmed; you need to be old enough and standing within six feet of the door for it to be visible to you."

Hermione did laugh then; a simple enough enhancement to the charm, but it had been enough to frustrate them. An additional wry comment reached her. "If it is any consolation, Miss Granger, the Weasley twins could never uncover this corridor either."

Snape's rooms were not far off, and Hermione was soon standing in front of the stove, rubbing her hands and trying to warm herself. She stared at the flames that leapt and played behind the doors of the stove, then almost jumped as she realised Snape was standing behind her.

"You will warm up faster - and more effectively - if you remove your coat, Miss Granger." How odd, to hear her mother's sentiments from him, of all people. Hermione nodded. Snape held out a hand and she shrugged out of her coat and handed it to him, then watched as he walked back to the door and hung the coat on an old tarnished hook fixed to the back of the door; he hung up his academic robes as well and, losing the patina of a teacher, became more the man she had met yesterday.

That renewed familiarity, and pleasure at his courtesy, made her smile. "I thought I asked you to call me Hermione," she said.

"As I recall, it was more in the nature of a command than a request," he replied, apparently smothering mild amusement. "I will ... endeavour to use your given name. It may take some time to overcome the habit of using a more formal title ... Hermione." Snape didn't seem particularly discomfited by the idea, to Hermione's relief. She had wondered whether he wanted to maintain the formality but it seemed to be nothing more than habit, as he had said. Time would tell.

She wrapped her arms around herself and turned back to the fire. "Thank you," she said, acknowledging his willingness to indulge her in this. Hermione couldn't quite say why it was important to her, only that it was. Perhaps it had something to do with their equality in this project - and, particularly in this setting, she would rather be treated as the person she was and not the child she had been. She pushed away the analysis and turned her attention back to her reason for being her. "Shall we begin to sort out what we need to do and where we need to do it?" she added.

Behind her, Snape was doing something with the papers on his desk - she could see his reflection in the mirror over the fireplace. He looked up. "I have an outline plan here; we should complete that this afternoon. Would you like some tea?"

Hermione nodded. "Would you like me to make it while you sort out ... whatever it is you're doing there?"

She was sure she saw Snape wince at the idea of her making tea, but he simply turned around and said smoothly, "No, no, that's quite alright. I am more familiar with the stove, after all." Hermione admired the way in which he had removed all trace of panic from his voice; she hadn't met anyone yet who hadn't flinched when she suggested making tea - not after she had made tea for them once, at least.

Finally warm, she turned and looked at the rest of the room; it was large and airy - not entirely a typical dungeon. Large windows, presumably set into the cliffs on which the school was built, let in a hazy winter sunlight that drenched almost everything. The furniture was solid - dark wood, probably chestnut, she thought - with clean lines. Two sofas faced each other in front of the fireplace, upholstered in black damask that had faded with time and use; a dark red blanket was thrown over the arm of one of the sofas as though Snape was in the habit of falling asleep in this room. Bookcases took up most of the space on the walls not otherwise occupied with windows, doors and the fireplace. It looked ... comfortable; she had expected something rather spartan and, whilst the room would never be described as over-filled, the overall feeling of the room was of elegant comfort.

Hermione was vaguely aware of Snape beginning to make tea as she wandered over to the bookshelves; the books were crammed onto the shelves, some pushed into the spaces between the top of books and the shelf above. The sheer range of the subjects covered was breathtaking; Hermione thought herself to be eclectic in her reading tastes, but this was beyond anything she had achieved. Although, she thought, given the additional years she would perhaps approach this by the time she was Snape's age - whatever that actually was; she thought him to be about twenty years older than she was, but it was never easy to accurately guess the age of a wizard. Their natural lifespan was rather longer than that of Muggles, and aging was correspondingly slowed once past adolescence. Random thoughts spilled through Hermione's mind as she browsed the shelves, inspired by the books she saw.

She was concentrating on finding a particular book she needed as a source for some research, and which she had been unable to find anywhere, when a cup of tea appeared in front of her, attached to a long arm.

"Your tea, Hermione; are you looking for anything in particular?" asked Snape, nursing his own cup of tea in his hands once she had taken hers.

"I've been trying to find a copy of the original Rosarium Philosophorum," replied Hermione. "I've got several translations and post-mediaevel prints of it, and they're all subtly different. I've heard rumours that the original version was still in existence. You've no more reason to have it than anyone else, I suppose, but you have enough books of that age here," she gestured to the quantity of books with ancient leather bindings, the titles barely visible in faded and scratched gilding, "that I thought I'd look anyway."

She looked at Snape as she finished speaking and saw him staring into the tea cup as though looking for inspiration or guidance; memories of Divination class came uneasily to mind, although he hadn't drunk enough of the tea for any leaves to be readable. Snape looked up after a moment.

"Do you need the book for this project we're planning?" he asked.

"It might be useful later," replied Hermione. "There are some things in the later stage which I think I have worked out from cross-referencing the various editions, but the source material would mean it wasn't an educated guess."

Snape nodded slowly.

"Then, Miss - Hermione, we had better factor a trip to Santiago into our plans."

"Chile or Spain?" asked Hermione.

"I'm surprised you need to ask," said Snape drily. "Latin American wizardry relies rather less on the science of alchemy, and Santiago is - after all - the patron saint of alchemists. Although it has always rather startled me that the Catholic Church provided a patron saint for those whom they persecuted with quite such vigour."

"I've found no references to a copy of the Rosarium there," said Hermione, curiosity piqued. "How do you know about it?"

"I studied in Santiago for a short while," said Snape. "The library stacks there have books which no-one has looked at for centuries. I was curious." His tone was such that Hermione decided not to pursue her own curiosity; she had plenty of time to find out why he had kept the knowledge of such a find to himself.

"Now," he said, turned away from the bookcases and striding back over to the desk, "I would suggest that we make a start on that planning. You are here to discuss those plans, after all, not simply to stand and chatter idly."

Hermione quenched the desire to snap a reply and took a seat beside him; his earlier paper-rustling appeared to have been done to clear a space where the two of them could sit and work. The desk - by no means small - was covered in relatively tidy piles of paper and a few bottles with varying levels of potions in even more varied colours.

****

The planning went relatively quickly; Hermione clearly had done some work of her own in sorting out what needed to be done and when. Once the steps had been set out, scratched onto two pieces of parchment in his angular calligraphy and her more rounded scrawl, they had left Snape's rooms and headed for the laboratory. Snape watched Hermione now as she deftly removed a series of vessels from the store-cupboard at the back of his personal laboratory.

"This one ... this one ... and this one. Those should do for the initial stages of the calcination, then of course you will need to decant the material into the egg and seal it." She pulled out the last glass vessel, large and egg-shaped. A Philosopher's Egg, to give the formal title. The egg was sealed when an experiment started; it was primarily used for experiments that required the gases they produced into order to self-heat and strengthen the mixture, It was also used for experiments which were profoundly poisonous, containing the gases and products until they could be safely handled.

Snape was always astonished that the alchemists - not all of them wizards by any means - had used such an object. There was no particular reason a wizard should not use it; a simple spell would seal the egg. For Muggles to use it, to have to struggle to seal it without the use of spells, was more surprising. He wondered how many had been poisoned over the centuries as they worked against time and a rising poison, blowing molten glass and prayers from their mouths.

"Right, that's it." Hermione's brisk tones cut through his thoughts. "You're set up; you've got all the ingredients?" Snape nodded. They had been through this once already, and he had confirmed he had everything she had listed.

"Then all we need to do is follow the instructions; once the material is prepared, the rest of it is just timing and patience. What do you plan to do once we have the Stones, to disable Voldemort?" she added, abruptly.

"Kill him." The answer came without thinking, flat and unequivocal. Hermione seemed taken aback. Snape supposed she would demand to know why, and was surprised by her answer.

"You're doing this for personal revenge, aren't you? Payback for however many years he abused your trust, and then simply abused you when he no longer had your trust, when you were working for Dumbledore. There's nothing particularly noble about this quest ..." Hermione's voice trailed off, thinking over the implications. Snape went cold, then remembered that he had the instructions now. Even if she backed out, he could continue - it would be more difficult without her help at some stages, but he could do it.

"My personal motives are not the issue. Voldemort is capable of more damage than you think possible, Miss Granger," the formal title was deliberate, distancing himself, "and without his death, no claim to have defeated him can ever be absolute."

Hermione was still, her face impassive as she spoke. "You forget, Professor, I wrote the book on what Voldemort can do. Not directly, true, but don't believe that I have a lesser idea of what he is capable of than you do; if he succeeds, we will never know what he is capable of - there won't be time to find out before we are wiped out. Not just killed, but entirely removed from existence." Her eyes were bleak, drawn and pained. He wondered how much sleep she had managed last night, frightened by the consequences of Voldemort's actions and her own discoveries.

They were silent for a few minutes, each lost in thought, and then Hermione visibly pulled herself back together, to the project at hand.

"Ignore my ramblings," she said. "We need to get started if my rather apocalyptic nightmares last night are going to be stopped."

The effort at lightness fell slightly flat, but Snape acknowledged the effort to move on; she had grown up, he thought. The usual Gryffindor bravery, but at least she seemed to have more direction than most of the products of her house.

****

Hermione winced, stretching as she straightened up from the lab bench. The egg was sealed, gas starting to well from the darkened material inside, and the fire below was set and spelled to the correct temperature. She was rather grateful that they need not rely on the original method of maintaining the appropriate heat - a horse manure pack would not have helped the atmosphere in the room. There was little wonder that the mediaeval alchemists had been shunned by society for being noxious individuals, given the combination of their heating materials and such ingredients as sulphur. And baths were not exactly commonplace.

She was drawn into dreams of a long hot bath; she was musing between cinnamon bath oil and a vanilla scented foam when Snape's voice disturbed the fantasy and she was drawn back to the dungeon laboratory, with its dust and assorted scents of student misery and mingled potions.

"We should head for Oxford now, before it gets too late."

Hermione reluctantly agreed; the bath fantasy had involved her old bathroom here at school. The school baths were enormous, with surrounds of various types which all had room for a stack of books and a mug of hot chocolate - and usually room for a curious cat to sit and stare as well. Hermione abruptly missed Crookshanks deeply as she remembered the way he would sit and simply watch her bathing, as though completely unable to comprehend why she would voluntarily immerse herself in water. He had died five years ago; he had been old when she had bought him and even half-Kneazle cats could not live forever. He had been clearly failing and, one day, had simply not woken up in the morning. Hermione had been heartbroken, even though she had steeled herself for it. She was, perhaps, grateful that he had lived long enough for her to settle at college, but she missed him intensely - she had been used to pouring out all the frustrations of the day into his fur, and to working with the soothing accompaniment of purring as he lay in sunshine.

The walk back through the snow was brisk; night had fallen - this far north, the dark came with late afternoon - and the snow was freezing into ice and crunching under their feet. There was no conversation; Hermione disliked small talk and she had no trouble believing that Snape shared that particular dislike. Only once did he speak, giving some indication of the direction of his thoughts as they walked.

"Do you have any expectation of how we shall use the Stone once it has been produced?"

Hermione thought for a moment.

"Probably something like Zen - an absolute sense of being in the moment; a universal moment. You just are and everything else also is," she said.

Snape nodded. "Like the archer, becoming one with the target so that the arrow hits the centre because it already is in the centre in that moment?"

Hermione blinked, but the moment of surprise had passed. Of course Snape would have read Zen literature - there was little indications in his bookshelves that there was anything he hadn't read.

"Exactly," she said.

They reached the gates, which swung slowly open as they approached. As they stood on the Hogsmeade side of the school walls, Hermione drew her coat more closely around her.

"Take my hand," she said. "There's a small alleyway which I use to apparate to and from; the shadows are persistent even at midday in the height of summer and it's easy to stroll in and out of without drawing attention."

"The cobbles near Oriel?" asked Snape. Hermione looked at him quizzically.

"You know the alleyway?"

"I've used it on occasion," was all that Snape replied, but he took her hand nonetheless. "It's been a while since I've had reason to be there, though."

****

Ten minutes later Snape and Hermione were working in the lab, testing the alembics that Hermione planned to use for the calcination process. Hermione had explained, as they made their way through college corridors, that the laboratory actually formed part of the Oriel grounds; it was loaned to Amergin for her use at present.

The work was underway, the material being processed for use, when they were joined by a tall man, about Hermione's age and almost red-headed enough to pass for a Weasley. Snape noticed Hermione wince and become apparently entirely absorbed in her work. An old boyfriend, he wondered?

The arrival had clearly been looking for her as he loped over, weaving between the dark wooden benches and neatly avoiding the equipment scattered about.

"Hermes! Prof told me I'd find you here. Just popped over for a visit, y'know, thought I'd come and have dinner at the old alma mater. Can't say I'm surprised to see you still here, of course," he said, with a joviality that set Snape's teeth on edge.

He looked at Hermione and said quietly, with a raised eyebrow, "Hermes?" Hermione shook her head quickly and looked despairingly as the newcomer seemed to notice Snape for the first time.

"Of course; we all thought it was terribly funny - she was always so interested in alchemy, of all things. Probably wanted to become rich, didn't you Hermes? So, Hermione and the Art of Hermes, don't you know? Hermione and Hermes," he explained carefully, as though to a child. Snape almost lost his temper, reining it in with some difficulty as the man continued talking.

"Don't believe we've met, by the way. I'm Carl, I had the delightful task of partnering Hermes here in the lab when we were at college. Jolly good fun it was too, wasn't it Hermes? Once we got you sorted out, of course."

"Sorted out?" Snape couldn't help the question, loathe though he was to encourage the young puppy. If he said "of course" one more time, Snape was unsure he could be held answerable for the consequences. He was hard-pressed, though, to think what could have needed sorting out - Hermione had been, as far as he recalled, more than capable of the work.

"Oh yes, little Hermes here turned out fine though, didn't you?" Another rhetorical question, and he turned back to Snape. "Got rid of all that uptight obsession with learning - most offputting for the rest of us. Not at all the thing of course," Snape ground his teeth together and kept silent only by extreme effort, "treating the place like school and having all the answers. This is Oxford, after all."

Snape nodded slowly, his patience - never substantial - long since gone. He thought he now understood the change in Hermione's personality since she had left school.

"Don't think it took more than a couple of months, did it?" the red-head continued. "Of course not - you were a sensible chap, Hermes. Thought you were going to cry in the tute once, y'know. Of course that must have been my imagination. Got to go, it's been excellent to see you again, Hermes - talk to you soon. Bye, old chap." The last was said to Snape as Hermione's former colleague disappeared back through the door.

Snape watched him go, several choice hexes running through his mind, with a mixture of fury and awe - the latter purely for the boy's ability to apparently talk without pausing for breath, the astonishing arrogance and his total failure to notice that Hermione had not said a single word.

He turned now to look at Hermione; she was biting her lip, staring down at the bench, but he thought she looked suspiciously damp-eyed. He wasn't prepared to deal with tears if he could possibly avoid it.

"Charming young man," he drawled acidly. "I assume he commentated at Quidditch matches; I am certain I haven't heard anyone talk so fast and with so little purpose since Mr Jordan's last extravaganza of commentary."

The dry words had the intended effect; Hermione almost choked on a laugh and looked rather more composed. "Carl was never exactly subtle," she said. "Still, he was right, he and the others achieved in a couple of months what you couldn't do in seven years - shut me up in class," she added with more than a touch of acid.

Snape felt compelled to defend himself, contrary to the habits of a lifetime. Perhaps it was the pain still glittering in her eyes, or the growing realisation that she had grown more like him than he was prepared to wish on anyone.

"I believe, Miss Granger, that such comments will always be crueller coming from your peers than from a teacher."

"Oh, they're painful enough from a teacher. No, no, not you," Hermione waved away his interruption, "you at least were rarely particularly personal in your attacks, and I wasn't the only one in class to be subjected to them."

Snape heard the words and the soft despair. What had she been subjected to at college? He couldn't remember precisely but he thought that she had been the only student from her year in Hogwarts to come to Amergin. Most went straight to work in one form or another; university education was generally for those genuinely interested in research and further learning, which made the boy's comments all the more confusing.

Snape said as much to Hermione, who shook her head. "Carl's not a wizard, he's a Muggle - I didn't have any problems with Amergin. Apart from anything else, I was the only person reading alchemy in my year. No, Carl was one of the physics students at Oriel."

Snape must have looked as uncomprehending as he felt, because Hermione went on to explain, putting down the retort stand she had been fiddling with. "I took a double degree - alchemy and physics. Only, Amergin doesn't offer the Muggle courses so I had to take it as an Oriel student. Amergin and Oriel have some connection going back centuries - it's why we share tutorial rooms, for example. The Muggle students don't have quite the same respect of learning - at least, not outwardly - as the Amergin undergraduates."

Snape nodded, then decided to change the subject by drawing Hermione's attention back to the preparations they had been working on when her former colleague had interrupted. He thought there was nothing he could say that would improve the situation.

****

Hermione suppressed a sigh of relief at Snape's unusual tact in dropping the conversation. Unfortunately she could not divert her memories so easily.

Carl had, in fact, been one of the less obnoxious members of the group of physicists at Oriel in her year; he was easily led and simply followed the crowd. They had all been wide-eyed and eager to learn at first but, within a week, a clique within the group had adapted forcefully to life at Oxford and had started to impose that adaptation on the others.

Hermione had not suffered more than the others, just for longer. She had remembered her first year at Hogwarts, half of it spent in tears from overheard comments until she had found Harry and Ron's friendship. Oriel seemed much the same, until she realised that nineteen year old undergraduates had more refined and crueller natures than children not yet at puberty; and this time it was made clear to her that there would be no-one to count as a friend.

In retrospect, Hermione realised that she had no need to rely on the physicists for friendship but the habits of school took longer to shake off than was comfortable; she was used to looking to those immediately around her for company and understanding. Those around her at Oriel mimicked her mercilessly, in and out of tutorials; bluntly told her to shut up or leave. The latter had been the most difficult to deal with - it had been her tutor who had, in no uncertain terms, told her that he did not appreciate her assistance in tutorials. He did not want - and would not accept - her input unless it was specifically requested; and he would not be requesting it so she may as well not bother. All this, in front of a group of her peers in a tutorial.

Hermione had seriously considered giving up the physics degree at that point; not even Snape had attacked her so personally, not singled her out for attention beyond that meted out to other students. Only the thought that she had never given up on anything - except Divination and that could never be counted - had kept her on the course.

She had learnt silence and to dissemble, to hide her reaction to comments and mimicry. Eventually that had earned her peace; she was largely ignored. She offered no comment unless specifically requested and, even there, learnt not to elaborate upon an answer. Alchemy kept her sane - in those tutorials she was free to be who she was; no need to hide both feelings and magic. Her tutors at Amergin encouraged discussion and exploration; she had tutorials alone, with no other students to whisper and later talk loudly at the other end of the table at dinner in Hall about her. She ate as little as possible at Oriel; just enough to stop the college offices from wondering what she did for food.

A double degree kept her largely in the library and the laboratory; her initial forays into Oxford's nightlife met with the same derision from her Oriel peers - despite summer holidays at home, she was hopelessly unfamiliar with the detail of Muggle popular culture.

Now, with more maturity and the clarity of hindsight, she could see that her peers had been as scared and lost as she - and had hidden it by attacks on those they perceived as weaker; she had been different, no matter how hard she tried to fit in, and that was enough to be seen as a weakness. Typical evolutionary behaviour, but no less difficult to endure for all that. They had learnt to blend in more quickly than she had, and followed the self-appointed leaders and arbiters of the acceptable. Her brand of individuality was not deemed appropriate, and eventually - when she had learnt to protect herself - she had been relegated to the ranks of the geeks and the nerds and finally ignored.

Hermione pulled herself from the morbidly depressing thoughts that Carl had brought to mind, and found Snape watching her curiously. She shrugged and turned her attention back to the equipment that they were setting up. After a moment she felt, rather than saw, Snape do the same. She relaxed, just slightly.

****

Snape stood, slowly, aware that his back was protesting his misuse of it; although he was accustomed to spending hours working with potions - either experimenting or maintaining the Infirmary stock - today had been more concentrated than usual and he had pushed himself further than usual; one preparation of the materials would have been demanding as it was, let alone two. The laboratory was dark, away from the lights than pooled across the benches where they had been working, and the windows were black with night.

He looked across to Hermione just as she tapped the Philosophers' Egg, in which they had made the preparation, with her wand. The glass sealed over perfectly, just as lazy tendrils of smoke began to ease from the lead mixture in the bottom of the vessel. Hermione heaved a sigh - presumably of relief - and Snape suddenly realised that she had to be tired; it had been a long day, and they had neither of them eaten since at least lunchtime. He had lost track of the time, but the idiot boy who had interrupted them had mentioned something about being there for dinner - and that had been some time ago.

He was about to suggest that they go and find somewhere to eat when Hermione looked up from the experiment at last.

"Shall we go and get something to eat?"

Snape nodded, and suggested a couple of places that he knew would be open here in Oxford, regardless of the time. Hermione shook her head.

"I'm too tired to go out; I have rooms in Amergin, and there are house elves who will be ecstatic if I actually allow them to do something more than make my bed."

"Still campaigning for S.P.E.W.?" asked Snape, remembering the campaign Miss Granger had started in her ... he'd forgotten what year, but it had been in her first few years of school. The staffroom had been highly amused - about once a decade, one of the Muggleborn students would start something similar, only for the protests to fade once they realised that the elves were intensely offended by the efforts to supposedly emancipate them. Miss Granger's campaign had lasted longer than most - he wondered whether she still held the views she had done at school.

Hermione laughed; the sound was rather tired, but nonetheless a laugh. "I'd forgotten about that - it all faded out before I left school. It's unrewarding work to try to liberate beings that flatly refuse to be liberated. No, I'm just not in college on a permanent basis, so I don't need the elves much - I have the rooms largely because I'm tutor to a couple of undergraduates and I need somewhere to hold the tutorials. Once a week I have to appear at dinner - it's expected than everyone takes their turn at High Table - and sometimes I'll stay over if the conversation has gone on for a long time. It's not difficult to get back to London, but it's less effort still to just go back to the rooms. They're not far from here; Amergin overlaps Oriel rather extensively - it's an interesting piece of manipulation."

Snape followed Hermione out of the laboratory; they locked and warded it securely as they left. The contents of the Egg were better kept away from the curious.

Amergin was hidden in plain sight, rather like the Leaky Cauldron in London. If one knew where to look - and had the sight to see - the buildings were obvious. To the Muggle students, though, they were simply not there. Overlooked, ignored - and that was a pity. Amergin was one of the oldest colleges in Oxford, built in the vernacular of golden sandstone that made the centre of the city glow in sunlight. The neat grass quadrangles echoed to the sound of running feet and quiet birdsong - except when the hour was struck, and every bell in Oxford rang in a cacophony out of time that echoed for endless minutes.

Hermione's rooms were - as she had promised - a few paces from the laboratory, through an ancient wooden door and up a stone staircase worn to a high shine and an alarming concavity by a thousand years of students' feet.

Her rooms themselves were, thought Snape, rather bland - it was clear she spent little time in here. Not spartan enough to be interesting - simply standard furniture, few books - but she did have a functioning fireplace and a house-elf appeared almost as soon as they had opened the door. Hermione's prediction of the reaction to a request for a meal was quite accurate; the elf left with their order, practically dancing with glee at the opportunity to do something for 'Professor Hermione'.

"They have never quite grasped the difference between graduate students and faculty," commented Hermione as the door swung closed. The comment was clearly nothing more than small talk, and Snape simply nodded as he picked one of the books from the shelf and opened it. Hermione had tucked herself into an armchair and sat, apparently watching him, as he skimmed through the contents.

Snape closed the book up sharply; not even the snap that sounded in the room as the pages slammed together jolted Miss Granger, he thought. She was more tired than she looked; but at that point, Hermione shook her head as though to clear it.

"Sorry," she said, "I was distracted by something - but it's not a problem after all."

Snape frowned faintly, wondering what she was talking about.

"I just thought something was odd about the preparation this time in Amergin, but then I remembered that the text I was thinking about was a bit ambiguous - the reaction was one of the alternatives described, so I think it's alright."

Snape nodded slowly, watching her now. The girl - young woman, really - in front of him was curled up in her seat, knees drawn up and her arms hugging them as if for warmth. She really needed to remember what the purpose of fires was, he thought. This was the second evening that she seemed to have felt the cold, and not bothered to light the fire available.

He gave a rapid, efficient, flick of his own wand and the fireplace lit; flames leapt from the kindling and logs in the grate and warmth flared into the room. Hermione smiled - and now he really knew she was tired, the smile simply a ghost of those she'd shared earlier.

For a long while they watched the fire, Hermione in her armchair and Snape standing in front of it. Abruptly, Snape spoke - the thoughts that had stolen through his mind found voice unexpected.

"I believed you had created the Stone already," he said. Hermione looked startled. "No, not now," he added, 'I don't believe it now. It seemed the only way to account for the change in your personality, Hermione." She looked puzzled, so he elaborated. "You are very different from the child I taught. Whilst I expect some change as students grow up, yours has been a rather more extreme change than most. I will admit that my knowledge of your personality was primarily confined to those aspects you chose to display in my classroom but, on the whole, I have found that to be a reasonably accurate depiction of a student."

Hermione grinned at that, the tiredness leaving her expression for a moment. Snape wondered who she was thinking of; his thoughts must have shown in his face, because Hermione began to speak and add her own comments to his.

"You're probably right. Malfoy was a smug sneak at the best of times - and still is, no matter that he didn't follow Voldemort in the end. Harry just took the abuse," that was said with a sly look sideways to see his reaction. Snape kept his face impassive, "until pushed too far. Ron was hot-headed and too quick to react. And I was the know-it-all who just had to tell everyone. Don't deny it," she added, before Snape could say anything, "it was a love of learning but, now, I begin to appreciate that it may not have been the most comfortable experience, teaching me. I tutor a couple of undergraduate students and one of them does ... well, she reminds me of what I was. Very eager to learning, but awfully wearing after a while."

Hermione laughed, and Snape allowed a reluctant smile to be drawn from him.

"So," asked Hermione, "why don't you think I've created a Stone now?"

"Your charming and so-subtle former colleague," replied Snape sarcastically. "I believe he and his so-called friends probably had rather more to do with it than any amount of prayer and meditation." He hurried on, glossing over the point before it brought back more memories. He wasn't sure he wanted to have to deal with Hermione tired and in tears. "You haven't mentioned the meditation rituals - what reading I have done in this area indicates that there should be some form of meditation involved in the process of creating the Stone."

Snape wasn't anxious to begin meditation - he had never found introspection particularly helpful, although he could rarely avoid it. The thought of seeking it out had him steeling himself for the pain that would undoubtedly follow.

However, Hermione shook her head. "We shouldn't need any; the prayer and meditation that the mediaeval alchemists talked about seems to have been the equivalent of the focussing techniques that we were taught at school - they were designed to concentrate and focus any magical power of the alchemist on the process. It should be instinctual for us - and any decent Potions creator now. Things have changed since Flamel's day," she reminded Snape gently, "and nothing much has been written on the Philosopher's Stone since then. It's a pity, there are a lot of elements to the process that would be worth studying from a historical aspect. It's still taboo though - presumably because of the Elixir of Life."

Snape nodded, as she continued. "It would hardly be the conversion of lead to gold that wizards sought - any third year at Hogwarts could manage that transfiguration well enough to fool any Muggle. Although that's another thing that has changed since Flamel's day - transfiguration is a lot more sophisticated. We already play with matter at the quantum level, in transformations and potions such as polyjuice."

Snape thought over what she had said; none of was new to him, he had reached the same conclusions long ago. It did, however, add a highlight to his concern. It was that focus that the alchemists sought which Voldemort now also sought for himself; not to aid the creation of the Stone but to bring about the state of mind that the Stone itself created.

He was about to say as much to Hermione, when the door opened again and three house-elves entered the room.

Dinner was served.