You are here...

A/N: My thanks to Ana, Annie, and Karelia, for alpha-reading; special thanks to Annie for beta-ing this chapter.

This one's been waiting in the wings for a long time. Enjoy... ~ Ari

17: You Are Here...

"... and neither will I."

After a moment, Hermione nodded, her face flushed with something Severus remembered all too well – the excitement of the scholar with a theory to test.

He remembered his dream and swallowed. "Your superior is quite daft."

"Well, I'm not sure he is, really... from our perspective, perhaps..."

"His logic was most irregular."

"Really?" Hermione stretched her legs before her on the carpet and leaned back, thinking. "His political situation was... difficult, and the assassination attempts were extreme; they set the library ablaze. No, I don't wonder he elected to choose the moment of his death."

"What had he done?"

"He doesn't remember, entirely; whatever it was, he did something that made his motives seem worse. I believe it was all a terrible misreading, but it destroyed his career, and... well, regardless, it's all rather a muddle."

"Imagine my surprise," he said drily.

She glared toward his voice and then continued. "He died. After that, it was all straightforward."

Severus snorted. "Straightforward?"

"Seriously – think about it. Did the coin stay with me? Yes. Can I hold it? Yes. Then, of course, he quailed a bit – really, it's amazing to me he hadn't before – but then he dreamed, and chose to remain a ghost, and tossed the coin, and..." She opened her hands. "It worked."

"There were no guarantees. What if he hadn't been able to hold the coin?"

Hermione smiled vaguely. "I agree; the risks were enormous – but one can only push calculations so far; events take over, and one has to improvise. I don't imagine he knew they would go so far as to destroy the library. He'd have removed far more of the collection, if he'd known."

"Really," Severus drawled. "Tell me... how extensive are the Classics holdings of the current collection?"

"Oh, unsurpassed." She paused. "Well, of course he did."

Her announcement was met with silence.

"Professor Snape?"

He tapped his toe. Once.

She rolled her eyes. "He did say he got lucky."

"Daft."

"He's brilliant." Hermione shrugged, her eyes sparkling.

"Really, Miss Granger. A mill-wheel?"

She nodded, eyes gleaming ever-more brightly. "The structure of the archive is an ongoing creation – reshelving sometimes results in spontaneous objects."

"Dare I ask?"

"We put the Visigoths next to the Barbary Coast."

Severus rumbled. It wasn't quite laughter. "And whose idea was this?"

"Well, it wasn't an idea, really... Demetrios dropped them, and..."

"Hermione, who created the archive's structure?"

If she registered that he'd addressed her by name, it didn't show. "Demetrios, of course."

"My point stands."

"As does mine, Professor. He is brilliant. And very, very kind," she said, softly emphasizing his title as she stood up.

So it had registered after all. He closed his eyes.

"If you're trying to convince me you're not nervous, sir, you should perhaps pick an argument more worth having than this one, or a tactic less obvious than using my name. Shall we try a test run, then?"

Tactic? Ah. Severus glowered, saying nothing.

Hermione smiled, her eyes glinting with excitement. "I wonder where I shall end up."

"As do I, Miss Granger."

Severus stepped away to give her space to toss the coin. As he moved, she gasped. "Professor, wait. Stop moving for a moment?"

He did.

Hermione looked intently toward the window. "Move again? Just a little?"

Severus turned to face her.

Her face lit with wonder. "Oh..." she breathed.

"What?"

"That's so beautiful."

"Miss Granger, what are you –"

"Please, sir, move again?"

He took a pointed step sideways.

"No... the other way – stand in front of the window again?"

"I am not your toy, Miss Granger."

"I saw something. Please... just do it."

His nostrils flared, but he took a few steps, placing himself between her and the window.

Hermione's face nearly glowed. "Astonishing..."

"Do you plan to share?"

She smiled. "There's just the faintest outline – almost invisible – nearly transparent. That must be what Demetrios saw – except in the flames, of course. I can't see it at all when you're in front of the wall, but against the darkness outside? It's..." She sought an apt description. "It's almost like liquid. It's almost not there at all. But it definitely is. I wonder what's causing it." Her eyes went slightly out of focus, and she tapped the coin against her lip.

Severus pursed his lips disapprovingly. She and that mad librarian were proving a dangerous pair. "You're both daft."

"Demetrios?" She laughed. "Hardly."

"Killing himself for a theory?"

Her eyes softened and her smile faded but didn't disappear entirely. "Didn't you?"

A low grumble. "Point."

"His was at least a theory of joy. That had to make it easier."

"That the theory was his own played something of a part."

She nodded, then extended the hand with the coin. "Well... shall I?"

His outline nodded.

She balanced the coin on her thumb and inclined her head toward his outline.

She tossed the coin.

"Bon voy-"

---

"You are here to learn the subtle science and exact art..."

The sound of his voice echoed off the stone walls, and she opened her eyes to find herself raptly taking notes as his newly familiar voice wove a hypnotic spell of power and command over the class. She listened as his introduction to class continued, his long-ago phrases entwining in her mind as she found herself anticipating each one.

She bent over her notes, not quite daring to look up lest she catch his eyes.

"I don't expect you will really understand the beauty..."

No. No, we won't. Her throat tightened. Not in time... most of us, never. She blinked rapidly, her younger hand rubbing the corner of her eye with the back of her hand.

I can't look at him without crying. I can't. She kept writing.

"... creep through human veins..."

A rush of awareness under her skin as his living voice warred with her memory of how he'd died. "Look at me." She shook her head and forced herself to focus.

"Bewitching the mind..."

Her younger self thrilled powerfully to that phrase, and, inwardly, her awareness seemed to relax, to smile in fondness for the girl she had been ...

"... ensnaring the senses..."

She finally looked up to find him over by the Slytherins, his back to her, his face in profile.

He's so young. Conscious thought trailed away, and she watched him move in front of the class, his cloak swirling with restrained grace as he seemed to stalk them all.

It was...

She closed her eyes. Oh. Oh, my.

... primal.

Her hand kept writing as his voice coiled around her.

"I can teach you..."

She swallowed hard then remembered, He's seen me starkers. Her younger hand was somehow still writing. Stop it, Granger - this instant!

Her eyes fell on the page where the ink was blotting under her still unfamiliar quill. This is completely inappropriate. You're eleven, and he's dead! But her logic, however flawless, quailed before, Did he look at me at all? I don't remember.

His footsteps drew him closer to where she sat with the rest of the Gryffindors, and she was suddenly aware of her own heartbeat in a way that eleven-year-old Hermione could never have been.

Merlin help me.

"... bottle fame..."

He was coming closer.

She didn't realize she'd stopped writing. Dimly aware that her younger self was awed, she knew that was nothing, nothing at all, compared to the heavy steps, the smooth gestures, the way the air parted way before a body that was very much here, very much alive.

He stopped in front of the Gryffindors.

Close enough to touch.

Her eyes rose involuntarily to his face.

"... even stopper death."

And he looked straight at her, his gaze a sword thrust to the gut, and her heart dropped to her knees, and she felt herself blush even as her eyes filled with tears.

His eyes snapped with impatience and barely restrained disgust as his gaze flicked over her face and came to rest on Harry.

She blinked, and she was back in her living room.

"-age, Miss Granger."

His voice placed him over by the window.

It flowed insistently up her spine to curl gently under her hair, sending flickers of awareness dancing along her skin.

She closed her eyes.

She was so screwed.

---

"Well?"

"A moment, please, Professor... it's a bit... disorienting. I've two memories of a single experience now, and until they sort out, it's rather dizzy-making."

Two sets of memories. How many times had he sternly separated his façade from his spying? "I quite understand."

He waited for a moment. "Well?"

Still not looking at him, her voice strangely full, she asked, "Do you have any memory of our first Potions class?"

"Given the information Potter shared with the world, you need to ask?"

"Do you..." She hesitated. "Do you have any memory of me at all from that day?"

"None." But... Wait. "Unless..." Blast it, Snape, think before you speak. He frowned. There was something... but it was fleeting, a brush of a wing in the darkness, no more. "No."

"You're not certain." She still wouldn't look his way.

"Not entirely, no," he said clinically, shrugging.

After a long moment, she said, "I could find out for sure. I wouldn't ask that of you, of course."

"Legilimancy?" His tone was soft with warning.

"Only rudimentary. I was curious."

"And who provided your laboratory?"

"Harry, of course. After what he endured from you, we figured my clumsy efforts wouldn't cause him too much discomfort." She shrugged. "They didn't."

"Ah."

She straightened and pushed her hair away from her face. Her eyes were slightly red, her lashes damp, and a second memory leapt to his mind.

A new one.

"Miss Granger," he murmured, "although I was no stranger to sniveling, my only memory of your crying in my class involved your teeth. I catalog weakness; all Slytherins do – perhaps I more than most. Tell me... in our first class, did I make you cry?"

"No. I had no reason to cry fifteen years ago – that I knew of, anyway. But tonight? Can you really call it 'weakness'?"

He turned her answer through his memories and realized that he had some small, new awareness of the existence of Hermione Granger from slightly before his oldest previous memory of her. "Interesting."

"What is?"

"Tell me... was your behavior any different this time than it was fifteen years ago?"

She glanced at the floor. "Mmm, a bit."

"How so?"

She exhaled and looked back up. "It is difficult to see it all through the lens of what happened later and not be affected by it."

"If you cried, just bloody well say so. I don't bite."

A mirthless laugh, tinged with disbelief. "If you don't, it's by choice, not character."

Shocked silence.

"Anyway, I tried not to tear up. I couldn't help it."

Fluffy chit. "Anything else?"

She winced. "I might have blushed."

"Might have?"

"Professor, I'm twenty six. My reactions to you at... what were you then... in your thirties? My reactions to you – well, then – are bound to be somewhat different than those of a First Year."

She couldn't mean... no. The air around him took on a quality of consternation. "I don't follow."

She put her hands on top of her head and grimaced. "It's probably just the romance of it all, because really? We've almost a perfect gothic situation here; honestly, if Poe had thought of it... Oh, for Merlin's sake, sir, don't be an idiot."

"I am not an idiot."

More laughter.

Daft. The both of them. Nutters.

"Blast it, Professor Snape. I'm female, I'm alive, and you've seen me absolutely starkers and been a perfect gentleman about it – well, except for the whole revenge thing. That aside, your voice is..." She laughed. "Quite. And now, in retrospect, I know firsthand that you've always used your physical presence to maximum effect – it was a weapon, along with your intelligence, your perception, and your wicked sarcasm. The outcome of the war probably hung on your charisma more times than even you know. A ruddy snake charmer, you were, now that I've seen it – you must have known it."

He felt a sudden urge to Apparate through the window. Where was Mimi? "What in blazes are you on about?"

"I'm saying, Professor, that when you were alive, you were dead sexy."

Utter silence, broken by her laughter. "Goodnight, Professor Snape."

She turned and headed for the hallway.

Two strides and he was behind her, gripping her wrist and pulling her to him with a force that knocked her off balance.

Her hand flew to his chest, her eyes wide, dark...

Deep. Too deep. He was over his head, but what was drowning to a dead man?

Let go. Let her go, Snape. His hand wouldn't obey. Rather than releasing her arm, he drew it firmly to his chest and held it there, his other hand firm at the small of her back, drawing her closer to hold her body tightly, so tightly, against him.

Her lips parted; she didn't move away.

He could feel her heart beating against him, and he closed his eyes and leaned his head back as if he could encompass her simply by breathing.

"Professor," she said, her breath warm on his neck as, unthinking, she moistened her lips.

His eyes an invisible revel in the disorder of her hair. "Yes, Miss Granger?"

At the sound of his voice, her hand leapt, aware, on his chest.

He chuckled, and she seemed to melt into him. "Professor, I – I can see through your head. It's a little disconcerting."

"Then I suggest you close your eyes."

She nodded.

His gloved finger tilting her chin, and his eyes closing, and his lips brushing hers...

Soft... gentle...

Warm.

He drew slightly away. "I'm not making you cold, am I?"

Her hands found his skin, and she ran her fingers up his neck, through his hair, urging him closer. "No..." she murmured again his lips. "Quite the opposite, sir."

Her "sir" coiled at the base of his spine, and he growled low in his throat.

"You have twenty seconds to leave this room, Miss Granger."

Her eyes darkened in response to his challenge even as her fingers – soft, in lightest gentle tracery of the contours of his face.

A fingertip at the corner of his eye, a curious thumb along his jaw, a finger along his lip and he had to taste it, it was there, and he caught it in his teeth and touched it with his tongue and her eyes fluttered closed and her face smoothed into a knowing smile and not releasing her finger he asked, "Mmmm?"

"So I was right... you only bite by choice."

Releasing her finger, he chuckled darkly. "Such is my character." He ran his knuckle along her lower lip and heard her breath catch.

He moved forward, pressing her to the wall, holding her there. "Your twenty seconds have expired."

"Mmm... damn..."

As he ran a finger down her neck, she smiled. "Gloves?"

"Yes..." he drew his finger away, a thought away from her skin.

She wrapped her arms around his back, arching her neck toward his finger. "I thought I smelled leather," she murmured, her skin begging for another touch.

He obliged, then... Oh, hell... ... ran his fingers through her hair and bent his head to hers, holding her head in his hand as he rested his lips on her forehead.

Leather.

Leather and silver and sealing wax and... loss.

It was him.

Her Amortentia pointed to him.

And it had been him all along.

His world exploded outward and he cradled her against him with unthinkable tenderness, the benighted spirit of a haunted murderer surging powerfully within the glorious wonder of her thoroughly impossible heart.