Fade to Black

Summary: Hermione returns, Mrs. Black gives advice, and another name appears.

A/N: Thanks as always to Luna305 and Anastasia.

Entranced by the feel of her breath on his neck, Severus slept.

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Hermione awoke mid-morning in the Gryffindor girls' dormitory to find Hedwig hooting softly at her. Rubbing her eyes, she reached for the note tied to the owl's leg.

"Hermione,

Glad you found it. (We promise not to tease you about S.P.E.W. any more.) And – thanks.

Professor McGonagall said you're staying at the old Headquarters and doing research. We'll see you when you've solved everything. Don't take too long?

Harry

P.S. Mum and Dad say thanks. Us too. Mum won't stop hugging everyone. It's a bit annoying. – Ron

P.P.S. Remember to eat sometimes! – Ron, again"

She smiled, but in the next moment she had crumpled the parchment in her hand. The boys would never understand. She wasn't sure she did. She ran her hand through her hair and dressed quickly, pocketing her wand and mirror.

A few minutes later she was outside the gates. Crabbe's body was gone. Surreal... She Apparated back to Grimmauld Place.

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Damn and blast. Severus was on his feet and Disapparating before the phoenix tear brand on his chest had stopped flaming.

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Hermione was already moving reflexively to the left as soon as she appeared in the kitchen, but, this time, the room was empty. The hand on her throat, the voice in her ear, the pressure – absent. She glanced at the ceiling, and saw the holes made by the forks.

She released a breath she hadn't known she was holding. It happened. Then she glanced at the fine scratches on her arms, rubbing her hands over them, one hand coming to rest over the mark on her chest. All of it.

By the force of habit so long ingrained that it was almost instinct, Hermione headed for the library.

A voice stopped her in the hall. "Good morning, Mudblood filth."

"Good morning, Mrs. Black."

"Walking a bit stiffly this morning, are we?" The portrait cackled.

Hermione gaped at her in shock, then muttered something about "polite conversation."

"A word of advice from an old witch?"

Hermione looked suspiciously at the portrait. "Yes?"

Mrs. Black glanced toward the upper corner of her frame, then back at Hermione, "Coffee."

Hermione nodded in understanding. "Not a morning person, is he?"

Mrs. Black's eyes crinkled in amusement.

As Hermione turned back toward the kitchen, Mrs. Black continued, "And next time? Use a Silencing Charm..."

Hermione fled.

Both hands on the kitchen table, she tried to ease her breathing. Damn. That bloody portrait had the biggest mouth in the wizarding world, and with the Order likely to appear at any time... there was no telling when Mrs. Black might decide to herald the details of what Hermione had been doing. And with whom. Damn! She dropped her head and screwed up her eyes. She didn't know how she felt about what had happened, really – she'd hardly had a moment to think, and yet she suspected thinking was not going to help, really... Breathe... breathe... - but that made her think of - She slammed her hands down on the table and yelled, "Damn!"

Pop.

Severus' cloaked presence filled the kitchen door. He leaned against the frame, arms crossed, hands hidden, only his face relieving his studied darkness.

Hermione wheeled, furious.

His response to the impending tempest was to cock an eyebrow.

Her eyes narrowed. "Make your own bloody coffee." Sweeping past him and past the still-cackling portrait, she stormed into the library. Picking up her quill, she muttered "Voldemort's 4th Horcrux," and started writing.

"FAILURE TO PROTECT" – big letters, across the page. Underlined so heavily she nearly tore the parchment.

"Failure to protect Lily." Another crack in his damned soul. Fine. Her thoughts were like ice. "Cup. Hufflepuff. Accepted all. Nurturing. Protecting."

Still breathing quickly, she stopped writing. Her eyes glittered with undirected anger. Who did Voldemort kill for this one? She tossed her quill aside and stormed back to the kitchen.

Severus was sitting at the table casually sipping his coffee when Hermione appeared in the doorway like an avenging angel.

"And who did he kill for that one? A mother? A child? A baby? People in love, people with hope, people with everything to look forward to? Who? Who was it?!" she demanded.

Severus had the unsettling feeling that he had missed half of the conversation.

"Tell me!" Her cry hung shrilly in the air.

He sipped his coffee slowly and set the mug down with a dull thud that seemed to absorb the echo of Hermione's outburst, replacing it with a leaden silence. "A family," he said.

"A... family." Hermione struggled to bring herself back from the ledge of her anger. "A family."

Severus nodded.

"Oh... oh gods." She leaned weakly on the door frame.

"There was one specific target, of course, but yes."

"Who was the target?" Her voice was deathly quiet.

"Marlene McKinnon."

Hermione shook her head and looked at him. She had no idea who he was talking about.

"Marlene McGonagall McKinnon."

Professor McGonagall had had a daughter... ? Failure to protect a family... Hermione closed her eyes. She knew whose name she'd find next. She nodded sharply and left the kitchen without a word.

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An hour later, Severus ventured into the library, to find Hermione glowering at another completed formula. Her face reflected its malignant red glow. "The predictable bastard," she breathed, and looked up at Severus, an unholy fire in her eyes.

The fear he had struck in hundreds of students was nothing compared to the stab of ice he felt in his heart at her look.

He circled to stand behind her. Reading over her shoulder, he saw the words

Minerva McGonagall.

One hand on her shoulder, his grip painfully tight.

She turned in her chair and buried her face against the dark wool. "I'm going to kill him, Severus. I'm going to kill him. You can't stop me. Not you, not Harry. Not the whole bloody Order."

Without taking his eyes from the parchment, he grasped her roughly by the shoulders and drew her out of her chair, away from the table, wrapping both of them in his cloak.

They stood that way for a long time, his cloak absorbing the malevolent red glow that was reflected in his eyes.

Pressing her cheek firmly to his chest, his face dispassionate, he was reeling. Did it get easier with time? No. Easier not to show it, yes. Practice made one better at everything, after all, and his life had depended on maintaining an illegible façade more times than he cared to remember. The vacuum of his response ensured that people, most people, would project whatever they wanted or needed to onto him. He had employed such deception against both Potter and the Dark Lord, with equal success.

He moved his thumb on her cheek, just a fraction of an inch. He had had nearly twenty years to perfect the indifference that was his outward response to extreme emotion, light or dark; she had had fewer than twenty hours. Neither his arms nor his cloak would ultimately protect her, any more than the fire of her passion would save him, but it was something, for the moment. The breath and blood and sinew he would sacrifice might buy her, them, the world, a moment. It would be the work of a moment, a moment he'd been stalking for longer than the woman he held had been alive.

Severus Snape knew, intimately, both the worth and the price of a moment. In this one, he held Hermione, her weight warm and tight against him, and he did not move.

Finally, she spoke, her voice muffled and shaking, "You said that you know where they all are?"

He looked down. "I do, Hermione. The cup is at Hogwarts."

She looked up at him. "Hogwarts?!"

He nodded, half-expecting another logical leap.

She sighed and leaned into him. "Just tell me, please."

He said nothing.

She waited. "Or not... okay, then. Hidden in plain sight, probably." She snorted. "Of course. The Trophy Room."

"Of course," he echoed, his voice tinged with a sarcastic edge.

Had Hermione stopped to register it, she would have recognized that edge as a compliment, but she was still thinking. "Either his Medal for Magical Merit, or his Award for Special Services to the School."

"One or the other. I strongly suspect the latter."

"Yes, that sort of crude irony would appeal to - " She paused. "Oh, poor Ron. He spent hours polishing Voldemort's soul."

Severus tensed. He had known about Hermione and Ron – all of the teachers had. The youngest Mr. Weasley's affection had been painfully obvious.

Hermione interrupted his train of thought. "Predictable bastard."

"The Dark Lord?"

"Of course. Who did you suppose I meant?" She looked at him questioningly.

He searched her eyes, which were guileless. Not hiding anything about Weasley, then. So, that innocence remains, at any rate. "No one." He bowed his head to rest his cheek on her hair again.

Unlike Hermione's open gaze, his action was hiding in the shadows as he made a conscious effort to resist admitting, even to himself, that he had been – for an instant - Surely not. ...jealous.

"When?" Hermione asked suddenly.

"Just now."

"Excuse me?" She looked at him again in utter confusion.

Brilliant, Snape. "You were asking when the Dark Lord make the switch?"

"Yes."

To cover his brief loss of composure at the slip he'd just made, he drawled, "Really, Hermione."

"Oh, fine. It would have been when he returned to the school supposedly to ask for a job. When he cursed the Defense Against the... oh." She stopped herself, remembering what that curse had meant for Severus, for Dumbledore, for all of them. They'd used it, of course, brilliantly, but were still reckoning the cost. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean... oh."

He had leaned in closer and was kissing her hair, his hands drawing her face up to his.

"And what is it that you don't mean," his voice dropped dangerously low.

"I don't intend to remind you of... "

The pressure of his hands on her jaw increased slightly, but sharply. Her breath came with a slight hitch. "It is impossible to remind me of something I cannot forget, Hermione."

She wanted to look down, but his hands held her firmly. She glanced away.

Leaning his face in a fraction, he breathed, "Look at me, Hermione."

She hesitated, but obeyed.

His eyes drew her in, empty and soulless as a snake's. "I cannot forget, Hermione." He pressed a thumb over her heart, insistently, not quite hard enough to bruise, but with enough force to remind her that he could. "And you bear the burden of my reckoning. Does that frighten you?" he breathed.

"Of course it does," she whispered.

"Good."

"Why is that good?"

"More questions."

He felt her try to move her chin, and saw the challenge in her eyes. "Always."

His soul – broken, shattered, but imminent – filled his eyes again, and his touch turned strangely gentle. .

Regret... The word came unbidden into Hermione's mind.

"Because I am a man, Hermione. We would both be wiser not to forget that."

"There's no need to remind me of something I cannot forget, Severus." Bringing her hand to his face, she brought her lips to his, and breathed, "Believe me."

He closed the distance between them and, for a time, neither of them remembered anything.

In her frame in the hallway, Mrs. Black sighed and rolled her eyes. Gathering her heavy skirts, she eased herself out of her portrait. She disliked visiting Phineas Nigellus – really, the absence of furniture in his frame was too uncivilized – but it was preferable to.... She sighed again. A moment later, her frame was empty.