Dark Corners

Disclaimer: This will come as news to no one, but JKR owns all recognisable Potterverse characters, plot points, story arcs, situations, inventions, locations, and mojo.

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Late December 1996

The Severus Snape who billowed into Horace Slughorn's crowded sitting room was, to Horace's eye, thinner, paler, and more sour looking than ever.

Horace was not altogether pleased to see his colleague...he'd been frankly afraid of Snape's temper since the Furnunculus incident...but he did his best to welcome him warmly.

'Ah, Severus! Delighted you could make it, delighted, delighted,' he boomed, touching Snape's elbow and then leaning in and adding, sotto voce, 'You're looking very... erm... fit. Marvellous. So pleased...'

Severus gazed down coldly at Horace's hand on his sleeve. Horace whipped it away and stepped back. He plastered a smile on his face and continued in a louder voice, 'It's wonderful to have you back at Hogwarts. I trust your family business went as you'd wish? Good, good.

'Well.' He turned and gestured at the room, which was clotted with students and teachers and awash in fairy light. 'Happy Christmas, Severus. The drinks table is in the corner, just there.

'Oh ho, Mr McLaggen; Miss Granger!' He beamed at the couple who had just entered the room. 'Smashing! You see we have Professor Snape here; we are only lacking your friend Mr Potter, Miss Granger, to make our little soiree complete, eh? Smashing, smashing.'

Slughorn sidled off in the direction of the drinks table, leaving an irritable Snape, a pale and trembling Hermione, and an oblivious, smirking McLaggen clustered together to the right of the door.

To faint or not to faint? It was touch and go for a moment for Hermione.

When she'd stepped through the door, McLaggen's hand on her shoulder, the very first thing she'd seen was an expanse of midnight black wool that she instantly associated with Snape. It took her brain a beat or two to catch up and realise that it was really him, standing like a great storm crow just inside the room.

Somehow her knees got the message that they should buckle. She clutched at McLaggen for support. Her mind, too, was in a whiteout, incapable of the most basic functioning. The only part of her body that seemed to be working was her heart, which was pounding very hard indeed.

She hadn't seen Snape since the day she'd lent him the M-Clip in the hospital wing, and she'd certainly never expected to see him here tonight.

Shocked as she was, she couldn't not stare, gorging herself on the sight of the real thing at last.

He looked thin, pale, and annoyed. He stood straight and still, a spare, dark column of contained mental, physical, magical power... Oh gods, he looked like himself.

In three silent seconds that seemed like hours, she watched his eyes narrow and his lip curl as he surveyed her and McLaggen. Her heart sank under the realisation that, however thrilling it was for her to see him, he was unlikely to be half so pleased to see her.

'Happy Christmas, Professor Snape,' drawled McLaggen. 'Nice to see you back, sir.

'Ow, Hermione, love! No need to wrinkle up the old dress robes, hmmm? Let's put that arm right here, shall we?' McLaggen detached Hermione's fingers from his arm and wrapped her arm around his waist, where he held it fast with his own hand.

Ugh, the, the... git was positively leering down at her. She wrenched her arm away and stepped to the side. 'Thank you, Cormac,' she said, flustered. 'I'm fine over here.

'Sir,' she said determinedly. 'It really is wonderful to have you back at, at Hogwarts. You have been missed.'

'Mmmm. Quite,' was the icy reply. 'Excuse me.' And Snape stalked off towards the other side of the room.

'Pouring it on a bit thick, weren't you,' chortled McLaggen, recapturing her hand and beginning to tow her in the direction of the drinks table. 'Hard to think of exactly who would miss him. In fact, he should go away more often...boost his popularity no end. Hallo, Zabini! Looking sharp as always, my man.'

McLaggen handed her a glass of elf-made wine, which she gulped like water. She looked around and couldn't see Professor Snape anywhere. She also couldn't see Harry and Luna, so she allowed herself to be pulled into the conversational circle around McLaggen and Zabini.

Fairly soon she felt almost calm.

* * *

Where the hell was Draco? He needed to talk to the boy.

An hour ago, Severus had left his rooms for the first time in over a week. He'd hoped to catch Draco in the depopulated Slytherin common room, but when he got there, a fourth year had told him he thought Draco had gone to 'the party.' Horace's party. The idiotically named Slug Club party.

Bloody marvellous.

He'd climbed the stairs to Slughorn's quarters, unwilling to retreat to his own rooms without gaining his object. He'd waited as long as possible to emerge and seek Draco out, but today had been the last day of instruction; Draco would be back at Malfoy Manor within twenty-four hours.

Horace's huge sitting room was decked out like a Veela-run bordello (not that Severus would know about that...). Great sheets of thin, glimmering silk in gold, pink, and pale green covered the walls and formed a series of tentlike canopies below the room's high stone ceiling. Fairy lights clustered and drifted around the room, and garlands of holly and...Merlin's balls, was that mistletoe?...punctuated the draperies.

The cretin was actually encouraging children to snog one another in his sitting room. Right. Severus would find Draco as quickly as possible and take him outside for a private talk.

But here was HMS Slughorn bearing down on him. 'Ah, Severus! Delighted you could make it, delighted, delighted.' Horace grasped at his sleeve and murmured some inanities. Severus looked down pointedly at the man's sausage-like, age-spotted paw, and it promptly departed his person.

Severus was just about to cut into Horace's babble to enquire about Malfoy when the door opened behind him and a pair of students walked in.

It was odd; he recognised Hermione Granger's scent before he realised who she was. But in a second or two the swirl of bronze silk and creamy skin resolved into the form of his so-called teaching assistant.

She was tucked under the arm of a tall, ruddy boy...Cormac McLaggen. Severus hadn't taught him since his fifth year, but he remembered him well and without fondness as a preening, braying lackwit.

So that was Hermione Granger's type. Why did these oafs always end up with girls they could never appreciate or deserve?

Horace was prattling merrily, but suddenly he heaved himself off in the direction of the drinks table. Wonderful, thought Severus. I shall have to find Draco on my own.

'Happy Christmas, Professor Snape. Nice to see you back, sir,' McLaggen said.

And that's a threadbare piece of insincerity, you little prat.

Granger was staring at him wide-eyed, a transparent mixture of confusion and delight suffusing her face.

She was making him uncomfortable.

'Ow, Hermione, love! No need to wrinkle up the old dress robes, hmmm? Let's put that arm right here, shall we?' McLaggen pulled Granger in to his side and looked down at her indulgently...possessively.

Great hulking git.

The girl broke free from her escort and addressed him. 'Sir, it really is wonderful to have you back at, at Hogwarts.' She smiled tentatively. 'You have been missed.'

More false sincerity. Gods, how he loathed small talk. 'Mmm. Quite,' Severus murmured, then moved out into the room, scanning for a white-blond head among the crowd.

Fifteen minutes later, having made the circuit of the room several times without success, Severus stopped by Horace, who was hovering next to the drinks table.

'I cannot seem to find Malfoy, Horace. Has he not arrived yet?'

'Who?' Horace looked blank for a moment. 'Oh, young Mr Malfoy. Draco, isn't it? Well, now, he's not a Slug Club member, don't you know. It's rather an exclusive gathering, what?' Slughorn surveyed the room contentedly. 'The best and the brightest and all that.'

Severus took note of a couple of students locked in a sloppy looking clinch under one of the mistletoe garlands. The girl was nearly engulfed in the boy's robes, and he looked like he was feeding wetly on her face.

'Quite,' he growled for the second time that evening.

Horace followed his gaze. 'Oh ho,' he chuckled, shaking his head. 'Teenagers. Swooning. Pining. Mauling one another in dark corners. Jolly good thing those days are past, eh, Severus?'

Severus was about to remark that this particular mauling was happening in the middle of a well-lit room when the girl pushed the boy away and Severus could see who she was: Hermione Granger, looking much less composed than she had when she walked into the room.

She held McLaggen at bay with both arms and spoke to him with great emphasis while he laughed and attempted to reenvelop her. She hurried off through the knots of people.

It seemed she was not entirely comfortable snogging in the middle of a crowded room.

Perhaps she's more of a dark-corner girl.

Severus shook his head to clear it. He must be more tired than he thought; after so long in quiet and solitude his strength was easily sapped by all this... humanity.

'Mead?' Horace was thrusting a glass into his hand. 'Marvellous tipple, this...mind you, I have a bottle of the really good stuff, but I'm saving that for... well, for later, anyway.' The bloody man winked at him, then turned aside and began conversing with someone Severus couldn't see.

He sipped gloomily at his mead, wishing it were firewhisky, and tried to think where he might go next to look for Draco. Did he have a girlfriend in another house? Unlikely. Library? Not a chance.

Suddenly he had Horace Slughorn's cloth-of-gold covered arm wrapped round his shoulders and was pulled around to face... Potter. And Trelawney. And Lovegood. Lovely. Just fucking perfect.

He'd waited too long to make good his exit, and now he was trapped listening to a half-drunk Horace hold forth about Potter's prowess in Potions.

Apparently the boy wanted to be an Auror. Typical. He probably thought it would be glamorous: chasing down Dark wizards; fighting eternally on the side of the Light. Wait until he got a good taste of the paperwork and of Ministry politics... Severus sneered ever so slightly.

He was turning to leave when a disturbance rippled through the crowd around them. It was Filch, holding an angry looking Draco Malfoy by the ear and making a beeline for Slughorn.

Severus schooled his features, though his heart skipped a beat when he heard where Draco'd been caught: an upstairs corridor. And Draco was lying about his intention to gatecrash the party. He was positively radiating guilt, defiance, and frustration.

He needed to talk some sense into the damned foolish boy. Now.

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It was just not in Hermione's power to stay at the party trying to act normal. And there was no way she'd consent to being groped again by that slimy, hulking git McLaggen.

Ugh.

She had to get out.

Unwilling to brave the Gryffindor common room...where she'd probably be stopped by Ron or Lavender or both, asking questions she didn't want to either answer or evade...she slipped out of Slughorn's rooms and made her way to one of her favourite solitary thinking spots.

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Well, that all went well.

Draco was clearly eating his own guts out with fear, and he'd die rather than admit it.

He'll probably die anyway.

Dumbledore had received Severus's report of the evening's events in his typical fashion...quietly imperious. His parting words: "You must keep trying, Severus... He needs you... Stay close."

Oh, really? Now there's something I'd not thought of.

The end game was not far off. Severus needed to be prepared for myriad possible scenarios. He needed information.

He bloody well needed to find out what the bloody boy thought he was planning next. The attempt with the necklace had been dangerous and stupid. If another such clumsy effort were in the offing... then that would introduce unwanted variables. To say the least.

An owl was now winging its way to Malfoy Manor. Severus had invited himself to Christmas dinner with the Malfoys. He'd cadge an invite for the goddamned miserable New Year's party, too. Draco would not be allowed to disappear from his sight over the holiday; Narcissa would see to that.

I'd much rather be locked back up in my rooms...

Severus really wanted to kick something, but he was surrounded by the hard bones of the castle: stone, iron, and wood. Torches guttered in the brackets lining the seventh floor corridor along which he walked.

He allowed himself one moment of longing for the warm fug of his rooms...for the burrow filled with the intellectual and bodily comforts he'd allowed himself in the last few days.

That interlude was over now. The moment he had closed the door behind him earlier this evening, he had returned to the game. Tomikawa, et al., were back on his shelves, and there they would stay until... Well. There they'd stay.

And ever since he'd emerged, his old companion headache had begun lazily to wind its tentacles around the contents of his skull.

He eased open the heavy door at the head of the back stairway and began his noiseless descent in darkness.

As he passed the fourth floor, where a spill of moonlight illuminated the landing, he smelt it. Lemon verbena, volatilised, no doubt, by her personal warming spell.

His alcove was occupied.

'Miss Granger. Curfew is long past. Might I suggest you go someplace you're permitted to be?'

She turned her head to face him, mouth agape, eyes wide as saucers. Her right hand reached out and touched his shoulder; she jerked it back instantly and flinched away from him.

'S-s-sir!' she stammered. 'It's... you. You're, you're, you're real.'

He regarded her narrowly for a moment. She wasn't crying, but perhaps she had been. She looked drawn and downcast, huddled in the corner of the window ledge...a far cry from the flushed and touselled version of herself he'd last seen pushing her way through the crowd at Horace's party.

'Quite real, Miss Granger.' He reached up to massage the bridge of his nose. 'And in no mood to counsel the lovelorn,' he added...rather adroitly, he thought. Surely he shouldn't have to resort to threats to dislodge her.

Her blush was noticeable even in the flat silver light. 'The love...uhhnhh...I, er, what? I'm not l-lovelorn. I, just, I... no, sir, not... uh...'

He scowled. 'Well argued, Miss Granger. You'll forgive me if I don't award you any house points for that remarkable piece of rhetoric. Go. Now.'

But instead of hopping off the ledge and scurrying away, she did something surprising. She laughed. Not a loud or a merry laugh, but a sort of huffing sound accompanied by a wry smile that she quickly covered with her fingers. She cut her gaze up to his and... wrinkled her nose, as though she were complicit in his critique of her.

'Sorry, sir. I'll just be off to my dormitory now.' She slid down from her seat and paused to smooth her skirts and wrap her robes more snugly around herself before walking to the landing door.

'Miss Granger.'

She turned in the doorway and looked back at him. Torchlight from the corridor beyond flared around her, illuminating half her face and making the bronze of her robes gleam dully.

He cleared his throat. 'Miss Granger. Thank you for all your... help. It was...I... thank you,' he finished lamely. Now who's winning the rhetorical prize?

'Professor Snape. It was a privilege to help you in whatever ways I could. If I may say it, I'd be honoured to continue the work as long as you find it useful.'

She smiled then: not a great, sunny beaming smile like he remembered seeing once, but a small, brief, warm smile. She closed the door behind her, leaving him in the cold, pale moonlight.

He hoisted himself up onto the ledge and leaned his head against the stone wall, as he'd done a hundred times before.

So this was Hermione Granger's secret spot, too. He found the idea did not irritate him at all.

At least not until he turned his gaze to the window and saw that she had drawn little hearts in the rime on the glass. There were about a dozen of them, each now marred by tiny rivulets of meltwater.

He twisted his mouth into a grimace. Not lovelorn. Oh, no, clearly not.

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A/N: XO to greenstuff and lifeasanamazon.