Round Midnight

Usual disclaimers apply - the characters aren't mine, the story is - my imagination wouldn't let this one go, so here's the pre-story to go with the thoughts of the Prologue.

"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 6

Iron

Iron - or Mars - is the lowest point of the process, the active descent of the spirit to the lowest levels of human consciousness so that the body itself is penetrated completely by sulphur. This is the outermost coagulation - the spirit appears entirely submerged within the body.

A rolling chorus of bells announced the start of morning services all over Oxford; a pleasant cacophony that rang for almost ten minutes and confirmed the haphazard attitude towards timekeeping that sometimes seemed to be a defining characteristic of the University.

Hermione was working in the laboratory at Oriel again; Dumbledore had enforced her wards with his own, to give her time to work there. Snape had had to return to teach now that term had started again, and could no longer work with her each day. Despite the time that had passed since they had begun this second stage of the work, little progress seemed to have been made. A stack of books was piled on her desk, testament to the seemingly endless research that she had buried herself in to try to find what was missing - what step they needed to take to ensure that the work went forward.

It was frustrating; she knew that they were close to the end of the process, that little more was needed to transform the unprepossessing material lying apparently inertly in the glass vessel beside her. Her notes had catalogued a perfect series of transformations since she had steeped the brilliant white material in mercury; from the first deep violet on contact with the mercury, through a cerulean blue and now its present orange red. More mercury made no difference; the fire was set. All that she needed now was for the material to become pure red - to achieve the lacque of the Philosopher's Stone.

She stared at it, almost willing it to transform. She had found nothing - no clue, no suggestion - to indicate what was needed. In fact, all she had found merely confirmed her earlier research. They had done everything, fulfilled each of the steps demanded by the mediaevel alchemists who had gone before then.

And still the Stone refused to emerge.

Hermione was beginning to take it personally, despite all her attempts to rein in her temper. A knock on the door was almost enough to nudge her into anger; it was undoubtedly the idiot porter again, demanding to know what she was doing in the room. The college had taken on a new head porter recently, an Army retiree in the worst tradition of that breed - a busybody who appeared to take his appointment as a free licence to investigate everyone and everything in the college. He saw Hermione's refusal to allow him into the room as an affront to his authority, inflated though it was by his own opinion. Her insistence that he did not have clearance to view the room did not mollify him particularly; he seemed to be of the opinion that she was referring to security clearance and kept making unsubtle attempts to convince her that he had been part of military intelligence in his time in the army.

Hermione had been hard-pressed not to laugh at his claims, and kept the door firmly closed against his endeavours to look in. The windows were charmed to reflect anyone peering through - the effect was the same as that of a Muggle film applied to glass, so no-one thought it strange that they saw only themselves in their curiosity.

The man reminded her, in the end, of Filch. All he lacked was a cat of dubious origin and the cavalier attitude towards personal hygiene. She was convinced that he was waiting to pounce on her and haul her before the Dean on some charge or another. He had not taken news of her doctorate well - she had taken a rather sadistic pleasure in correcting him when he had called her 'Miss Granger' for the first time after her viva. His response had been a muffled grunt, and a grudging reference to her as 'Doctor Granger' thereafter. Fortunately, unlike Filch, the man kept to strict working hours and Hermione generally managed to time her visits to college to avoid him.

The knock came again, more impatiently. Not the porter then, thought Hermione. A memory of Pinale flashed across her mind, but she rather thought that knocking was not quite his style. She wasn't expecting visitors and, on a Sunday morning, was not inclined to open the door to anyone she wasn't expecting. She ignored the knocking, tuning out the muffled thud of knuckle on wood and turned again to her books and the translation of the Rosarium that she had painstakingly written out in the depths of the library stacks at Santiago.

Lost in thought - recalling the translation, the dust and the sunlit cafe that had been her reward - she was startled by a quiet voice in her ear; it made her shiver inwardly, a sarcastic velvet purr.

"Do you ever plan to answer the door, Doctor Granger?"

Hermione looked wildly round the room, searching for Snape - it was undoubtedly his voice. There was no-one there, and she shook her head. Conjuring up his voice was pleasant, certainly - but surely her imagination could have come up with something more ... no, she thought. Better not follow that idea through.

"Hermione," the voice came again, sharply. "Open the damned door!"

This time Hermione laughed; she had been far too lost in books if she had forgotten the possibilities of a projection charm. Just to be certain, she flicked a spell from her wand to the door - the door faded to a ghostly image, allowing her to see the person waiting on the other side.

He was definitely impatient, arms folded as he stared at the door. Hermione's smile widened as he scowled and spoke again, almost snarling.

"I know you are in there - just looking at me through the door is not going to be much help to you. Although it is to be commended, since it seems you have learnt your lesson."

Hermione crossed the room, unlocking the wards as she went. The physical lock on the door was last, opened with a key that she took from the mantelpiece.

"At last, Doctor Granger. How kind of you," was the greeting she received. "Now, close up again. You're coming with me, there is something that needs our attention and I refuse to deal with it before I've had some breakfast."

Hermione found herself following the order automatically, and checked herself halfway through re-warding the room.

"Where are we going?" she demanded. "And how did you know I was checking through the door?"

"I didn't," admitted Snape, completing the re-warding for her. "It seemed a reasonable supposition - you are not entirely stupid. And we are going somewhere that does a better breakfast than the cold toast and anaemic coffee that is all that Oxford colleges seem able to provide."

Hermione laughed again, pulled out of her earlier internal fury at their lack of progress. It simmered still, in the background, but for now she was content to enjoy an early autumn quiet Sunday in Oxford. Her companion merely added to her enjoyment. He had clearly planned to take her out, dressed in the Muggle clothes that she had counselled him to buy some weeks ago when they had been discussing the difficulties of passing for a Muggle. Black jeans, a black turtleneck sweater - it looked to be cashmere, and Hermione longed to bury her face in it. Cashmere had always been a weakness of hers; and cashmere on Snape was ... no, she wasn't going to follow that thought. Not now, anyway.

"Was the tea as indistinguishable from the coffee in your day, then?" she asked as they headed across the High Street and onto the cobbles around the Radcliffe Camera. Snape had checked his stride as they rounded the corner of the University Church, apparently becoming aware that Hermione was having some difficulty keeping up with his longer legs.

He made a noise that could have been laughter or disgust - and his reply made it no clearer which he had intended. "The only discernable difference was that tea apparently had a bag floating in it; the house-elves had picked up that atrocious Muggle habit from somewhere. The inevitable disadvantage of maintaining an establishment in the middle of a town; I assume from your comments that they have not improved in the meantime?"

Hermione shook her head. "No, it's still the same. Mystery drinks and bendy cold toast; I've never understood what they do to the toast to make it bend like that." That did provoke laughter, although it was short-lived. Snape seemed to have something on his mind, distracting him now from the conversation. Hermione noticed that he was carrying something; it looked like a copy of the Daily Prophet. Her copy would no doubt have arrived at home after she had left this morning.

They emerged from the shadows of the Bodleian into Broad Street, crossing the wide road to pass by Trinity and Balliol as the colleges stood silent in the Sunday morning sunshine. It was too early in the day for the students to be about, and too late in the year for many tourists to stand, blocking the pavements, and gawp at the sun-drenched sandstone, shimmering gold in the autumn light.

Hermione followed Snape, wondering where he was going but perversely refusing to ask - it would undoubtedly generate nothing more than a sarcastic comment about impatience. Once past another church, the road widened out into the vast expanse of St Giles. Dodging a couple of taxis, they crossed over. As they passed the Oxfam bookshop, Hermione craned her head round to see what was on display in the window, but caught nothing more than a flash of colours before almost colliding with Snape, who had stopped abruptly in front of a small shopfront. She caught herself just in time, automatically looking up to see where they were.

The St Giles' Cafe.

Hermione frowned as she looked into through the windows. "Is this a wizarding place, like the Leaky Cauldron? I don't think I've seen it before."

Snape shook his head as he opened the door; a bell chimed inside the cafe. "No, it's as Muggle as they come; it's just not very visible. It does, however, do the best breakfast in Oxford."

The cafe was busy, but there was a table vacant by the window. Snape gestured towards it, and told Hermione to take a seat whilst he ordered. He asked her whether she would prefer tea or coffee, but refused to let her look at the menu.

"You'll pick something like toast, which would make a mockery of this place. I'll deal with the order." There was something of a smirk on his face and in his tone, and Hermione was sorely tempted to either slap him or kiss him. Neither would have been a particularly good move.

The smirk disappeared when Snape seemed to suddenly realise he had been carrying the newspaper with him. He dropped it on the table as he turned to go to the counter to place the order.

"Read this," he said over his shoulder as he went. His voice was grim.

Hermione picked up the paper; at first glance, it appeared to be the business section of the Observer. She smiled - her father had always bought the Observer on a Sunday, and it brought back memories of her childhood. She was, though, curious as to why Snape was carrying around that particular paper. She looked again, though, and realised that the appearance was nothing more than a charm. When she studied the paper more carefully, she saw the Daily Prophet, and the usual garish headlines screaming of incompetence and mishandling at the Ministry - nothing new there, and certainly nothing to make Snape sound like that. She flipped through the pages and then, several pages into the paper, suddenly found the article he must have been referring to.

"Voldemort: losing grip on reality?" was the headline, and the article was tucked into a corner of the page.

"The aurors guarding Voldemort have reported that the captive's behaviour has changed surprisingly of late. Followers of this newspaper will remember that Voldemort appeared to be reacting to his imprisonment by lapsing into coma," Hermione snorted at that exaggeration and misunderstaning, "but now it would appear that he has finally understood the implications of the prison which he is kept. He appears frustrated and has become increasingly violent once more - although, of course, he cannot cast spell or curses in the wards in which he is kept - and has attempted to harm both himself and his warders. He has been unsuccessful, but it is perhaps only a matter of time. Voldemort has no wand, but we should not underestimate him." Well, that was true, certainly. The rest of the article consisted of rent-a-quotes from the psychiatric expert at St Mungos, pontificating about the effects of imprisonment and magic deprivation, claiming that he had predicted all along that this would be Voldemort's reaction to imprisonment. Hermione, however, distinctly remembered an article some months ago, reporting Voldemort's "coma", in which the same expert (and she thought the term was used rather loosely) had stated that he had predicted that Voldemort would be unable to cope with imprisonment, taking the coma as proof that his prediction had come true.

A white cup, balanced on a saucer, appeared in front of her; Snape slid into the seat opposite her and placed his own cup on the table, tucking a slip of paper between the salt and pepper bottles. It had a number scrawled on it, presumably that of their breakfast order.

Hermione looked up from the paper. "Well," she said, "it looks as though the lack of progress we're making isn't a problem after all. We may as well scrap the work - annoying, but there's no point in continuing. Voldemort's clearly not getting anywhere, or he wouldn't be taking it out on the warders."

Snape stared at her, then shook his head. "I take it back. You are stupid, Doctor Granger. It is imperative we complete the work - I assume you are no further forward in your research?"

Hermione felt herself flush red, then white with anger at his cavalier dismissal of her. "How dare you?" she hissed. "Don't tell me you think Voldemort suspects you know what's planning? How arrogant can you get? I doubt the ... creature ... even knows you still exist and certainly doesn't care if he does. I certainly don't plan to do any further research until I have concrete proof that it is needed."

Her reply was all hot air and fury - Hermione had no intention of stopping work on the Stone; having got this far, she wanted to see it through to the end despite her suggestion that they scrap it. She was too much the academic, too curious, to stop now and had been simply saying what she thought Snape wanted to hear. But his casual attack on her intelligence had brought back the fury that had been bubbling through her before he knocked on the laboratory door.

"You're talking about murder," she said heatedly, cutting across Snape's attempts to speak. "This is revenge, nothing more. You want to repay him for everything you feel you suffered because of your mistakes when you were too young to know better."

They fell silent just as a number was called from the counter at the back of the cafe. Snape grimaced and got up to fetch two plates; he put them down none too gently on the table when he returned.

"Thanks," muttered Hermione, staring at the plate and wondering whether he had ever paid any attention to her on the occasions they had eaten together. The quantity of food that faced her suggested not; a full English breakfast. Sausages, bacon, eggs, toast, baked beans and chips. If she hadn't already been feeling nauseous from the harsh exchange of words, this food would have been enough to do it.

Snape sat back on the bench and looked fixedly out of the cafe windows, watching the few pedestrians hurrying by, each on their way to an appointment with church, or a friend, or the pub.

He ignored the plate in front of him; the hunger that had been insistent only minutes earlier had now vanished. The bench was jostled as someone got out of the seat behind him, and Snape became aware that Hermione was staring fixedly at her plate. The contrast to their last trip to a cafe together, only a few weeks ago, could not have been more marked.

Snape drew in a deep breath; his face twisted into a bitter scowl, directed at himself. He had no right to take out his frustrations on Hermione - it insulted both of them for him to accuse her of stupidity, and the only excuse he could offer was habit. It wasn't sufficient. She wasn't his student, to be cowed into obedience. She deserved better - better than he could provide.

Still, none of that meant that he could ignore what he had said. An apology would not mean an acceptance of her own heated accusations; he would defend himself against the charge of murder for as long as necessary. To do otherwise was to underestimate Voldemort, and Snape was absolutely certain that the Ministry was underestimating him quite enough. The article did, as Hermione had noticed, suggest that the creature that was Voldemort was not being as successful as he would wish - but that wasn't the same as not being successful at all. Without completing the Stone, they would never know.

Snape decided to try something new: he suggested a compromise. Whilst he could continue the work of creating the Stone, it would be slower and less certain than Hermione's involvement would make it. He reached across the table and put his hand slowly onto Hermione's, calling her attention to him and desperately needing to touch her. He was fairly sure his touch would not be welcome - and he had no illusions that she would ever want him to touch her - but he needed that connection just at this moment, the reassurance that she hadn't completely shut him out.

Hermione looked up, a startled glance at him swiftly covered by an impassive face. She did not, though, pull her hand from under his. Snape was distracted by that for a moment, by the warmth of her hand, the softness of her skin, under his fingers and palm. The impassivity gave way to a quizzical look as Snape struggled to compose his thoughts again; it took a short while, but he forced his thoughts back to the immediate problem between them.

"I'm sorry," he said quietly, "that comment was uncalled for; it was also grossly untrue. I ..." he paused, phrasing his next sentences carefully.

"I do not believe that what I contemplate is murder; I believe that Voldemort has been set back but it is not in the nature of the ... person ... that I knew for him to give up. Please would you consider continuing with the process. I would suggest that, once we have the Stone, we use the power of the Stone to check his progress - if I have read your notes correctly, we should know that at least. We can make the decision to go ahead, or not, with the plan once we have that information."

Snape spoke quietly and with intensity, struggling to make sure that Hermione understood what was driving him. Once he had finished, he waited, still resting his hand on hers, for her to respond. She looked at him for a long time, chewing her lower lip and rubbing her thumb against the table, under his hand. Around them, the hubbub of the cafe continued - people came and went through the door. Someone else sat on the bench behind him, and Snape was jostled once more. Through all this, his eyes were caught and held in Hermione's gaze. He barely breathed, waiting for her reply.

Eventually she nodded.

"Very well. We'll check - but we will not kill him unless it is truly self-defence; it may be pre-emptive, but it has to be self-defence."

Snape breathed a sigh of relief and nodded slowly.

"Understood."

The tension between them had peaked and snapped in that short exchange now; Snape was aware of Hermione still, but it was a more comfortable and familiar awareness - the one he had lived with for some time now, not the uncomfortable fight that had bound them and forced them apart just now. He lifted his hand from hers, feeling the cold on his palm and fingers where the warmth of her hand had been.

Looking back down at the plate, the hunger that had vanished at Hermione's fury returned. The friendship had not been irreparably harmed; he had not, by merest luck, managed to destroy a relationship that was ultimately more important to him than any other had been, no matter how it played out between them in the years to come. She was precious to him, a centre that encircled him.

Hermione seemed equally to breathe more easily, and she picked up a fork and poked experimentally at the plate in front of her; at that cue, courtesy allowed him to eat and Snape set about doing justice to the cafe breakfast.

The meal passed largely in silence; Hermione flipped her way through the other articles in the Daily Prophet and Snape amused himself by listening to the chatter of the other patrons of the cafe - most were graduate students, in Oxford permanently but no more adult than they had been as undergraduates. The conversations polarised - half were discussions of the exact level of drunkenness achieved (and in some cases still maintained) the night before. The other half were attempts to impress - either a girlfriend or a contemporary - with half-understood ideas and repeated commentary cribbed from the Ôculture' pages of a newspaper. It had been exactly the same when he was at college: the need to talk, to communicate, to validate one's existence by the words uttered. That, more than anything else, he valued in Hermione - that they could be silent together.

Eventually the newspaper was put away, and Hermione's plate was pushed away with more food left than eaten. Snape suddenly remembered how little she normally ate, and almost apologised again for having bought her too much food - but two apologies in half an hour was unnatural. The last thing he wanted was for Hermione to suspect how he felt about her. Her pity would be unbearable; at least now he still had some dignity preserved.

They left the cafe, relinquishing their seats to a collection of students who had been hovering hopefully. Still in silence, they crunched through the leaves that were beginning to fall already - autumn had come early. They had crossed back over St Giles and were walking past the ancient, heavy, doors of St Johns College when Hermione finally spoke.

"I'm sorry," she said quietly.

Snape frowned.

"You have nothing to apologise for."

"Yes I do. I had no reason to accuse you of murder; I may not know everything about you but I think the past few months - if nothing else - have given me some idea of the way you think. You have too much honour to murder." Her cheeks were red, although Snape could not tell whether this was from embarrassment or the cold.

"You credit me with more morals than I would. Nonetheless, apology accepted." Snape shook his head. "If we had not returned from Santiago just a few weeks ago, I would have said that we needed a break from all this - but perhaps we do, regardless of how little time as elapsed since then. This last piece of work has been more difficult than all the rest. The lack of any result - even the wrong result - is wearing; the effect is even more tiresome than Mr Longbottom was. At least I knew to expect something from him."

Hermione laughed at the mention of the inept student; precisely the aim that Snape had hoped to achieve. "Term has just started - you must have a student somewhere in the school that rivals Neville?"

Snape shook his head. "Nobody rivals Mr Longbottom - not even Mr Longbottom himself these days, I understand. I believe that he redefined the term late-bloomer." Hermione laughed again, and Snape relaxed a little more at the sound.

They crossed the streets, drawing deeper into the centre of Oxford, with traffic lights winking red and amber and green as they passed. Cyclists flashed past, dicing with the few cars that dared to brave the rigours (and cost) of Oxford parking. Buses rumbled by, squeezing through narrow roads, some sharing with all and sundry the fiction of the bored guides who spent their days shouting through microphone and answering all questions, from the educated to the inane.

Swallowed up by the streets behind the Covered Market, Snape was suddenly surprised by a shout. Hermione turned round, startled. Half-running towards them was the idiotic young man who had interrupted them in the laboratory several months ago.

"Hermione!"

They stopped and he caught up, panting.

"Just saw you ... having lunch with the others ... come and join us!" His conversation was staccato with the effort of recovering himself. Hermione looked indecisive; Snape wondered why she would even choose to go, given her experiences in college. When she agreed, nodding, the only thought that came to his mind was that she must want to show them how little they had actually achieved in her - intellectual bullying had tamed only her show of knowledge, not her knowledge itself.

"Good, good - come on then, Hermes," said the young man. He suddenly seemed to realise that Snape was there and halted abruptly. "Oh. I am sorry. Uhh - would you care to join us as well?"

That second invitation was rather less enthusiastic than the first, and Snape stifled the urge to shudder at the idea of lunching with several people all the same as this ... this ... he couldn't remember the boy's name. Even if he was not already full from a late breakfast, he was fairly certain he would have been unable to contemplate lunch in such surroundings.

"No, that's quite alright. Hermione, are you sure?" The last comment was said in an undertone to Hermione. She nodded, and replied.

"I'll be find, don't worry - it's just lunch and I'll be back at the lab in an hour. I'm only going for a drink, breakfast was quite enough food for one day."

"Excellent - you'll know everyone there. Let's go."

Hermione walked off with the boy - Carl, remembered Snape suddenly. His name was Carl. They headed off ahead, vanished off in the general direction of Brasenose. Snape felt slightly uneasy as he watched them pull away from him, walking faster than his rather idle stroll. He turned over thoughts in his mind, watching his step on the uneven road and trying to isolate what it was that was making him uneasy. He thought it was something to do with Carl - not his invitation, nor even his appearance, but something to do with the boy himself.

Snape walked on, watching but not seeing the grey cobbles beneath his feet until he suddenly realised what it was that made him uneasy. He broke into a run at the realisation; his concern might be completely misplaced but he preferred, in this situation, to look a fool rather than allow Hermione to be attacked. It was Carl's voice and phrasing. He had not once said "of course" - and he had had at least as much opportunity as he had created in his monologue, which had been punctuated liberally with the phrase, when they first met. It was a tiny detail, but enough to convince him that Hermione was in trouble.

Mentally cursing himself for not going with them, Snape reached a crossroads between colleges and a row of small stores - looking wildly around, he saw no sign of Hermione until a cry and a sound like a sharp crack reached him. Someone had been cursed, not very far away. Fear for Hermione heightened senses that years of making potions had already honed well, and Snape took off running again in the direction of the sound.

Dodging through a heavy set of college gates and past a number of startled students, Snape caught himself just before he dashed headlong into a small courtyard outlined by three ancient buildings and a small garden beyond. He sidled through the entrance, keeping himself tucked behind the pillars of the encircling colonnade as far as possible.

There were three people in the courtyard; Hermione, Carl and a tall figure in black flowing robes. Carl stood apart, staring blankly at the scene before him.

"Imperio," muttered Snape to himself. Obvious, but effective - Pinale must have been controlling the boy from a vantage point, waiting for them to come past. Like trusting fools, they had allowed themselves to be caught, although Snape wondered how long Pinale had been watching them, waiting for this opportunity.

Snape was aware that he was trying to dissociate himself from the view of the furthest corner of the flagstone-covered courtyard. A view he needed to push to the back of his mind if he was to have any hope of defeating Pinale. Hermione lay in a corner, shivering and shuddering in an all-too-familiar spasming. Over her stood Pinale, his wand pointing down at her.

"Hermione, Hermione ... why do you insist on making this so difficult? You know that I know all about it - just surrender to the inevitable. It will make things so much easier, you know."

Pinale had a cruelly soft voice - honed for a subtle threat in the edge of each unremarkable word. Snape edged around the pillar, working silently to get a clear aim at the madman. The soft sandstone scraped against his hands as he steadied himself against it.

"Ignitus Nervus"

Snape's voice carried clearly across the still space, bounded by three windowless walls and open to the colonnades that surrounded it, a garden beyond the low wall that formed the fourth boundary, and the sky above. Pinale twisted around, shock giving way to pain in his expression as the fire of the hex spread through him from the point on his back where it had hit. Snape knew from experience that it would be enough to slow him down - it was the only advantage he was likely to get.

"Snape," he bit out angrily. "You never knew when to stop meddling. Expelliarmus!" He shouted the last word, but Snape had prepared for it and blocked the pull easily.

"Did you learn nothing in your duelling practices, Pinale?" he drawled, attempting to taunt the older wizard into a mistake. As Pinale's face darkened red, Snape took advantage of his moment's distraction and shot another hex toward him.

"Everto"

Another quiet but effective curse; Pinale twisted away from the white light that arced across the space between them, but it caught his leg with a sharp wrenching effect and mangled it effectively. Pinale spat a series of curses at Snape, almost incandescent with rage at the sudden reversal in power. Hermione was forgotten as he concentrated on aiming at Snape.

Snape carefully dodged between the pillars, leading Pinale away from Hermione; he aimed a final curse at Pinale, steeling himself for the words and the inevitable inquisition that would follow.

"Avada K-"

He was interrupted by a howl of rage from Pinale, who fired a final hex - Snape didn't know what - at Hermione and released Carl in the same breath as he ran for the garden beyond the courtyard. Snape was only a matter of yards behind him, with a longer stride.

Hermione watched, horrified, as Snape took off after Pinale, vaulting the low wall into the garden and stumbling as he hit the ground. He was injured, she realised suddenly. Pinale had to be incapacitated - why else would he run rather than apparate - but he still had his wand and his last hex still burnt through her painfully as a reminder that he was more than able to use it.

That pain was nothing compared to this, though; Pinale reminded her of a wounded animal, profoundly more dangerous and vicious than one freely able to defend itself. He had already demonstrated that he was well able to use the killing curse, and Hermione found herself numb with fear for Snape.

A whimper caught her attention; Carl was standing in the middle of the courtyard, clearly terrified by what had been done to him. She wasn't surprised; Imperio was hard to deal with when you were used to it; to a Muggle it must have been even harder to understand. She cast obliviate discreetly and he wandered away, heading back into college with an air of distraction. Hermione breathed a sigh of relief. He had been useful - she had realised rapidly that he was being controlled, because he had just not sounded like Carl - although she had miscalculated his actual value to her. Tired of the chase, of being prey to Pinale's hunt, she had stepped into the trap with an over-confidence that she had not believed herself still to be capable of. Ill-founded confidence, obviously. Pinale had cursed her before she had any time to attack him, and she had subsided into a pained and aching mass of abused nerves to lie before his quiet litany of insanity. All she had done was to give Snape the perfect opportunity to make snide remarks about Gryffindor bravado. Snape ... she allowed herself to think again, to realise that he had gone after Pinale alone and, wounded, Pinale had little to lose. She had everything to lose.

Hermione realised she was shaking badly, and about to fall over. She struggled into the garden, to ease onto a bench, the slats hard beneath her legs. She was aching badly but only dimly aware of it. She stared blankly at the point where Snape had disappeared from sight, trying to sort the impulse to run after him - not knowing where he, or Pinale, had run to. The minutes dragged past like hours until a hoarse scream and the unmistakable green flash of a curse echoed together from one of the college quadrangles to her left. Hermione tried to stand and fell back to the bench; burying her face in her hands, shaking with tears and an un-named terror until she felt emotions flee her. No fear, no pain, just an overwhelming sense of loss and despair.

She didn't know how long she sat there, staring at the ground and waiting for Pinale to find her now. Part of her knew she should try to run but she found herself completely unable to move until a pair of black boots stepped into her line of sight.

Hermione caught her breath, convinced for a moment that she was hallucinating. She looked up, following the long legs encased in black denim and gave a hiccup - half laughter and half sob - at the memory of persuading him to buy the jeans so many weeks earlier.

A black turtleneck, equally familiar, and a hand reaching out to her. His face, concerned, clearly uncomfortable; whatever had happened, something had hit him, but it was infinitely perfect to her even with a scowl of pain warring with what she thought was concern.

Hermione stood unsteadily, shocked at the anger that suddenly flooded through her. The fury in her voice as she spoke startled her and Snape, who took a half step back.

"Don't you ever leave me behind like that again. Who did you think would protect you against that ... that madman? Don't try and tell me you could take him on alone - he's insane and there's no way you could know what he was capable of!"

As she whispered harshly, she drew her hand back to hit Snape, to drive her point through literally, wanting to hurt her as badly as he had hurt when he had run after Pinale.

Her hand never made contact with his face. Somewhere in the eternity between one moment and the next, between two emotions, she had reached up and pulled him into a kiss so deep that she forgot to breathe. Her senses were filled with him, and only him - his taste, of coffee and something both darker and sweeter; the scent of him, a subtle tang that surrounded her now; the harsh rise and fall of his chest under one hand and the soft brush of his hair against her fingers as her other hand held him to her at his nape.

Snape had frozen when she reached for him and Hermione was about to pull back, mortified, when he relaxed suddenly and deepened the kiss, his arms going round her to draw her more closely against him, enfolding her to his warmth as though he would never let go. His thumb traced small circles along her spine as he lazily explored her mouth, tasting her as she tasted him. Hermione shivered with a fierce pleasure.

Tired and aching, exhausted by the effort of defending himself and dodging Pinale's curses until the older wizard had stumbled and fallen, Snape had dodged behind a pillar of the colonnade in which they fought before Pinale could find him again. There was silence as Snape listened, straining to hear from where he would again be attacked and swearing at the pain and weakness in his left knee where one of Pinale's earlier curses had hit him.

He was drawn out in the end by screams from the area below the colonnade - he had chased Pinale up a flight of stairs to reach this area above one of the many college gardens in the area. Snape had thought that Pinale had merely stumbled to the floor, or perhaps dropped the few feet to the gardens below in order to circle round behind him. He looked cautiously down into the gardens, searching for the source of the screams - he thought perhaps Pinale had taken a hostage to force him to show himself.

A moment's search showed the reason for the screams, and confirmed that Pinale would no longer be a danger - to Hermione or anyone else. The garden was edged by spiked railings, and Pinale had failed to dodge these as he fell. It was a curiously anticlimactic ending to a life filled with petty hate and self-aggrandizement.

Snape left the area quickly and silently, anxious both to return to Hermione and to avoid having to deal with explanations and investigations. He retraced his steps to the garden where he had left Hermione, finding her sitting on a bench with a look of utter devastation on her face.

As he stood in front of her, about to touch her shoulder to alert her to his return, she looked up and an array of emotions twisted across her face before she settled for anger and spat an incoherent stream of agony at him. Snape took an involuntary step back at the expected attack but held there at when he saw that there were tears in her eyes; she had been afraid for him.

He had no time for that realisation to sink in before he found himself caught and held by a hand that he had been sure would hit him; Hermione's mouth met his. Disbelief froze him for long moments filled with her touch and taste. Only when she stiffened and began to pull away did he find himself able to move again; he swiftly pulled her to him in a tight embrace, revelling in her now in his arms, and tentatively kissing her back. He was uncertain whether she had been pulling back because of his initial lack of response or because she had realised what she was doing and wanted no more of it.

Snape almost sagged to the bench with relief when he felt Hermione nestle against him, fitting herself to him and opening her mouth to his exploration. She had been chewing a mint earlier, he thought as he tasted the characteristic tang.

Hermione pressed closer still and he splayed his hands across her back to hold her in place. The gardens, the traffic and the people passing by had all faded into an awareness of Hermione - and only Hermione. His thumb found the dip in her spine that caught his attention whenever she stretched and rubbed at her back when they had worked too long. He rubbed gently there, easing some of the tension he still left in her. Hermione shuddered and grew more tense; Snape almost laughed when he realised he had misunderstood the reason for that tension.

The impulse to laugh was lost in the wash of sensations: relief and arousal and pleasure and the taste of scent of her. She was returning his exploration now, her tongue darting into his mouth then lingering softly as though learning his taste.

The kisses grew slower and they eased themselves back to an awareness of their surroundings. Snape became conscious of a heaviness settling and pulsing against the denim he wore; he would need a moment or two before - he exhaled shakily as Hermione chose then to wriggle against him with a soft laugh. She was obviously as aware of his condition as he was.

"I had in mind somewhere rather more private," he admitted, as he tried to put some distance - not too much - between them. Hermione looked up at him with delight dancing in her eyes.

"That sounds ... pleasant," she said.

"Mmm," was his incoherent response before he cleared his throat. "I would suggest, then, that you might prefer to allow some distance. Or it will be some time before I am in any - ah - condition to go anywhere." Hermione quirked an eyebrow at him - when had she picked up that mannerism? - but stepped back, wincing as she did so. Snape cursed himself for forgetting that she had been caught by more than one of Pinale's hexes and curses.

"Are you alright?" he asked urgently. Hermione looked startled, then seemed to realise why he was asking.

"Yes, fine. A bit sore but that'll pass soon enough - what about you? I saw the curse ..." she broke off momentarily, her voice hoarse, then continued. "He didn't get you, did he?"

Snape shook his head, stifling the automatic retort that she was stating the obvious. Instead, he drew her back to the bench; they both sat down, he rather gingerly as he took care not to add any pressure to that slowly subsiding between his legs.

He saw Hermione cast a quick glance at the source of that discomfort, her lip caught in her teeth. He noticed that her mouth was reddened and slightly swollen. Between her glance and her mouth, Snape shifted uncomfortably as he reminded himself to exchange the jeans for something looser as soon as he could.

To distract himself - and draw Hermione's attention away from his probably all-too-obvious erection, arousing though that attention was - he took off his jacket and settled it in his lap. Hermione smiled knowingly, and he glared at her; his glare had lost any ability to affect her sometime ago, though, and she only smiled more widely. He gave up and smiled ruefully.

Hermione took the hint, though, and turned their attention to something else. "So, where's Pinale?"

Snape took a deep breath, giving himself time to order his thoughts; they were still jumbled from the bursts of adrenaline, from the fight and Hermione's reaction to his reappearance. Finally he began to tell her what had happened after he had run after her attacker.

The later afternoon sun had turned the Oxford sandstone to a molten gold by the time they had finished talking over Pinale's death and its implications. Snape thought the few acolytes that Pinale had gathered would be easily rounded up; Hermione tended to agree, although it would take a while for her to lose the tendency to startle whenever approached by someone she didn't know.

Hermione was relaxed by sunlight and the lifting of the tension of the last few weeks - both in respect of Pinale and Snape. His leg was pressed against hers as they sat on the bench and talked; she had been aware of the flexing of his thigh when he spoke, as though the fight with Pinale still twitched through him. Her leg was warm where it touched his and, as their conversation wound down, Hermione became increasingly aware of Snape again. His earlier reaction to their kiss have been intensely arousing - and satisfying, answering almost all her questions over how he thought of her - and she wanted more. First, though, they needed to find somewhere else; this garden was secluded but not quite enough for the discussion - and more - than they needed.

Hermione wasn't aware of moving but, when Snape suddenly stood up, supposed she must have tensed or shifted somehow. He folded his jacket over his arm and held out his other hand to her.

"Let's go," he said abruptly and she let him pull her up from the bench; she was surprised when he kept hold of her hand as they walked down the High towards the cobbled alleyway in which they usually apparated to and from the university. Snape stopped just as they ducked into the shadows there and kissed her quickly, a brush of his mouth against hers.

"There's something I need to do," he said. "Go on, I'll be with you in a few minutes."

Hermione looked at him; Snape seemed to be anticipating something, as though he had a secret he was about to share with her. He looked suddenly young and rather adorable, and she reluctantly nodded. Another swift kiss, then she watched him as he strode back down the High. As he vanished into the crowds of tourists she turned slowly and moved further into the shadows where she, literally, vanished.

Five minutes later she heard his knock at the door of her flat; the room was warm, as she'd kept her mind occupied by lighting a fire and setting the kettle to boil. Snape was staring at the floor when she checked the security lens out of habit.

She opened the door, curiosity surging again. Snape entered, a hand behind his back. Hermione looked at him quizzically, determined not to give in and ask him what he had done in Oxford. He smiled, obviously aware of that determination. She pursed her mouth and waited impatiently; she was rewarded with his rare laughter.

"Miss Granger, you have no patience at all, do you?"

Hermione dissolved into laughter herself; his was infectious, all the more so for it so seldom being allowed to surface, and his mock reproof was all it took to release the tension she had tried not to allow to build.

"No, I don't, and well you know it. That ... blasted Stone doesn't help build patience either," she muttered, still laughing.

"I refuse to think about the Stone tonight," replied Snape. "We've spent entirely too long picking over texts and scraps of information, and we'll continue to do so, but not now." He drew his hand from behind his back at last, and Hermione grinned.

"I'll switch the kettle off, then, shall I?" she asked.

"That depends on whether you would rather have tea or this," replied Snape, placing the bottle of champagne on the worksurface.

"Mmm ... tough choice," said Hermione, pretending to think it over. Judging from Snape's amusement, her pretence wasn't particularly effective. "Celebrate the end of Pinale's interference in my life with tea or champagne ... well ... since you twisted my arm, I'll go with the champagne."

Snape had quietened as she spoke. "I had hoped ..." he stopped and started again. "I had hoped that we would celebrate more than just Pinale's defeat." He drew a breath. "Or have I mis-read your reaction to my - ah - reappearance afterwards?" Hermione shook her head, taking the two steps needed to reach him even before he'd finished speaking.

"No; no, no, no, you've misread nothing," she insisted, reaching to kiss him just as she had done earlier in the garden. "Nothing ... nothing ... nothing ..." Each word was punctuated with another kiss until he relaxed against her; he rested his forehead against hers.

"I think I've understood now, Hermione," he said wryly. "Don't worry - my ego is not quite as fragile as all that," he added, "I just prefer that there is no misunderstanding between us just now - you do know," he hesitated, "you do know that I am rather set in my ways; no-one could ever accuse me of being pleasant or easy to live with. I get foul moods, I can forget days in research, I hate dealing with company. If we go on with this now, there will be no way back." The room was still when he finished speaking; Hermione thought they both held their breath as she did him the justice of weighing the truth of what he had said against her own feelings and inclinations. There was nothing in his speech that she had not considered before, though, and in the end she simply kissed him and let the fusion of her mouth and his answer for her.