Chapter 3

A/N: All the characters you recognise are JKR's and not mine! Again thanks and hugs to the wonderful beaweasley2 for her alpha reading and to lyn_f for her beta work and her patience! Thank you also to my lovely reviewers; I really appreciate your time and effort.

Thank you to beaweasley2 and Jay for the wonderful banner!

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Chapter 3

"Did you not offer her anything to eat or drink, Pertus? Fetch some food."

Hermione could hear Snape's (Snape's!) voice. He sounded in equal parts exasperated and concerned. Cool hands pressed themselves to her face and the base of her throat. Her eyes fluttered open. There was more light in the room this time when she looked up at him. It was morning, and the sun slanted in through the open door. His skin was sallow and his nose jutted towards her. Black eyes glittered, his thick brows were angled downwards, and his lips were stretched tightly. It was not quite a sneer, but not far off. Severus Snape is staring at me, she thought, in a kind of surreal daze.

"Am I dead too?" she asked softly.

His eyebrows raised, and his lips quirked for a moment in amusement. "I think not, Miss Granger. There is altogether too much vomit on my best tunic for this to be the afterlife." He turned to the table beside her bed and picked up a small clear glass phial.

"But... we buried you," she said stupidly. "I found you after the battle, in the Shack. You were dead. Nagini's bite killed you. I saw you die... with Harry. We took your memories..."

"Yes, yes. So you say, Miss Granger." Snape's voice was clipped and emotionless. "And yet, here we are. Drink this; it will help to revive you and settle your stomach." He cupped one hand behind her neck, lifting her head slightly from the mattress, and tipped the contents of the phial into her mouth. She swallowed, still in shock. The effect of the potion was immediate. She felt her head clear and her stomach unclench.

"Can you sit?" he asked her and shifted his hand to her back to help her upright.

Again, she felt an absurd wrench in her stomach at the physical contact between them, and she reflexively clutched her arms around him as she sat up. He stiffened immediately; his body was very warm against hers, and she became painfully aware once again of the fine cloth that covered her. Immediately she felt her face flush hot with embarrassment and pushed herself away from him.

"Right," she began, determined to reassert herself in this bizarre situation. After all, she was a grown woman and a scientist for Merlin's sake! "I have questions," she said.

His face broke into a trademark sneer. "Really, Miss Granger," he mocked, "you do surprise me. It is, after all, common practice for young women of my past... acquaintance... to fall out of portraits in my house and into my arms."

"Okay," she began again, although the bravado in her voice sounded brittle in her ears. "First things first. What did you do? How did you bring me here? I found a mosaic in a house I was excavating in Pompeii, and it was a portrait of you, and Ginny told me that your Headmaster's portrait at Hogwarts had the same message on it as well, and neither image moved, so that must mean that your soul has not moved on, but we buried you. Buried you. I saw your body – I felt it – there was nothing left and I saw you die – and what are we doing in Pompeii in 79AD, and why did your portrait have that writing on it? How did you think I could possibly find you? Why were you asking me to find you? – And where are my clothes...?"

"Miss Granger," Snape cut across her babbling, "if you would be quiet for a moment, I will attempt to answer as many of your questions as I can." He spoke quietly, but the effect of his voice was just as it had been years ago when she had been his student. She stilled immediately. How does he do that? she wondered, almost blushing.

"In answer to your first question – I have no idea how you got here." His face was set in a strange expression, and she thought fleetingly that he was trying to evade her.

"I was reading in the peristyle," he said as he indicated the covered courtyard outside her bedroom with a wave of his hand, "beneath a new painting that I have had commissioned. There was a gods-awful noise, and suddenly you appeared out of nowhere and fell on top of me. I am sorry to say that I was rather startled. I dropped you."

Hermione indicated her forehead. "Hence the face?"

"Hence the face, the concussion, and the vomit," Snape confirmed drily.

Before she could say anything further, he held up his hand. "In answer to your next question, I have no idea at all why we are both here in Pompeii. I have no memory of how I came to be here and no explanation for how I survived Nagini's bite. My memory has become... distorted." His eyes were hooded. "I woke to find myself in this city. To my astonishment I realized that I was alive. My neck was... painful... but I could function." His face twisted into a rueful grimace. "I have recovered from the attentions of the Dark Lord on previous occasions. I had not gone to the Shrieking Shack unprepared." There was a pause during which he seemed to be considering something.

"These healed remarkably quickly in fact," he added softly, pulling his tunic away from his neck to reveal the scars of the snake's bite on his pale skin. He wore a thin, bright chain of gold around his neck. It looked incongruously delicate against the ravaged skin. Her breath caught, and without thinking, she lifted a hand to stroke the raised flesh at the base of his throat. She was surprised at how cool his skin felt under her fingers, yet she could feel his warmth emanating from him on the palm of her hand. Snape stared at her, frozen stiffly for a brief moment, his dark eyes riveted upon her face, his breath caught in his chest. Then he pulled away from her touch as if stung. He glowered at her and pulled his tunic back over the base of his throat.

"I soon realized that I had no means of return," he continued after a moment. "It was obvious that I had travelled in both time and space – something that, as I am sure you are aware from your exhaustive reading, breaks several of Waffling's Fundamental Laws." His lips twisted into a wry smile. "So, Miss Granger, I had to begin again and so I have. I do, after all, have... certain skills. As time passed, I garnered a reputation for healing. There are many potion ingredients to be found here or may be gained through trade. I have built a successful reputation through my patron and other... business interests, and now I can live quite comfortably." He gestured to the house around them.

"In fact, I had put much of my past life behind me. It has receded into memory, becoming more and more of an intangible thing – almost like a dream. My new reality, this life here in Roman Italy, is in so many ways much more... satisfying than my life in your time. Here I am safe and protected. I am no longer the plaything of others. There is nothing further that I could want other than to be left alone to live out the rest of my life." His voice had turned bitter, and Hermione, who had seen the memories that Snape had gifted to Harry as he lay dying on the filthy floor, suddenly understood what a new start would mean to him, after what he had gone through for Lily's sake.

"So," Snape's voice suddenly took on a rough and aggressive timbre, "given my evident contentment with my new life here, you can imagine how delighted I am to see you on my property. I suppose that you have come to rescue me and return me to my past life of fulfillment and happiness under the Dark Lord."

The injustice of this last statement, and the sharpness of its tone, caused Hermione to remember that she was no longer a schoolgirl in one of his classes. She rallied, sitting up and tilting her chin in what she hoped was a suitably defiant manner.

"Tom Riddle is dead," she said baldly, "and I am not Miss Granger any more. I have a combined doctorate in Arithmancy and Archaeology. It is a very long time since I was your student, and I am most certainly not here to rescue you, Professor – far from it. I can assure you that I have no desire to stay in this place for a moment longer. Please return my clothes to me and my wand, and I shall leave."

Her bravado did not seem to have the intended effect; after regarding her for a few seconds, Snape snorted, and then he threw his head back and roared with laughter.

"Oh, Miss Granger," he purred, "I'd like to see you try."

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He had refused to return her clothes, sarcastically pointing out the idiocy of walking in the streets of a first century Roman city wearing a Muggle T-shirt and jeans. Instead, he had returned her wand and furnished her with a midnight blue stola, the long, loose tunic worn by women of Ancient Rome, with a lovely, voluminous white palla to drape around her body as a mantle, and soft leather sandals. He had waved her out of his house with a sardonic grin and raised eyebrow. Unwilling to allow him to see her nervous uncertainty, and still incensed by his supercilious attitude, Hermione squared her shoulders and stepped out onto the streets of Roman Pompeii.

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Of course, he could not leave her to blunder around the city on her own. Since her extraordinary arrival the day before, Snape had been reeling from the implications of her presence in his refuge. His last memory of her had been of her terrified face, slack jawed with dismay and revulsion, which had shifted into a grimace of pain as he had lost consciousness. She had looked so vulnerable through the grime, blood and sweat that had marred her features. Barely out of childhood, he reminded himself with a stab of guilt. She had been too young to see so much horror. He knew that she would be safe while she was here because he followed her, keeping carefully out of sight with the aid of a Disillusionment Charm. It had only taken moments to move swiftly out of the rear entrance of his house and circle around behind her. A lifetime of fading into the background, of avoidance and evasion, had taught him many tricks. Who needs Potter's – bloody – cloak? He marked the determination of her stride and the set of her jaw and smiled despite his emotional turmoil, remembering how she had stood up to Malfoy all those years ago.

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Hermione wandered the streets in a state of shock. The city bustled around her, shops and stores open on the street, raucous voices raised in dispute over prices. She found that she could understand the street tradesmen easily enough; Snape's translation spell clearly had long-lasting effects. The archaeologist in her wondered at the dual story buildings (all the remains of the city in her time were chopped off at the ground floor) and also at the colours around her; the bright graffiti on the walls of the houses and buildings along the streets, the fluttering banners and materials in the stalls and hanging from the windows above her. The smells were almost as overpowering as the visual and auditory bombardment. This was a living city which pissed and sweated and stank. It was almost intoxicating.

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He noticed with some appreciation that she had changed over the years since he had last seen her – but not by much. Of course, his memories of her were dominated by the image of the insufferable student, desperate for attention and approval. Time had leant her confidence and maturity. He admired the energy of her movements and the assurance with which she strode along the raised pavement. She had said that she was an archaeologist, hadn't she? This experience must be unlike anything that she had ever expected as she read her books in the library. He smiled nastily as she swung past a fuller's shop and practically gagged on the stench from the stale urine-filled bowls close to the street edge.

Carefully, he skipped from the high pavement to the crossing posts and on to the opposite side of the street. He noted that she was about to walk past the main brothel in that area of the city. It was certainly not an area where respectable women should walk unaccompanied. Despite the fact that she was dressed as a Roman matron, there was something provocative about the manner in which she walked. Her gait was unselfconscious and open, her attitude was athletic and confident. As Hermione marched on, he silently prevented a would-be customer from approaching her with a flick of his hand and another from getting near to her by a quickly muttered Glisseo Charm, which pitched the man into a pile of ox manure in the centre of the street. She did not notice the commotion around her, as she gazed up and about her in wonderment at the street ahead, drinking in the sights of the ancient city. Snape rolled his eyes. Stop being a bloody tourist! You're asking for trouble, stupid woman!

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She took a side road abruptly, heading for the eastern gate of the city. Her sense of direction was quite impressive, given the lack of lines of sight and the confused nature of the street pattern here. She turned left, past one of the city's public bathhouses. Raucous singing could be heard from within. A right turn at the next intersection, and she emerged into the forum, the commercial heart of the city.

Hermione stopped for a moment, taking in the extraordinary sight before her. The forum was a large open space, roughly 40 metres by 120 metres in size, and rectangular in form with buildings on each side. People flooded the space. They were there to conduct business, visit the temples, attend the law courts, buy and sell goods, or just to be out meeting one another. Children ran about chasing dogs or each other. Shouting and laughter filled the air. The impression was of a vibrant city square filled with the bustle of everyday commerce and life. Hermione had entered the forum by an eastern entrance, alongside what she knew as the Building of Eumachia. Her colleagues at Macquarie University disputed the purpose to which this building was used. Some insisted that the huge building was some sort of guildhall for the cloth industry while others maintained that it functioned as a slave market. The building was so named because archaeologists had discovered the name of the woman who had paid for it to be built in the early years of the first century AD, and Hermione realised with another jolt that she could probably lay to rest this academic debate there and then by simply asking someone. The thought was at once absurd and exhilarating. In front of her, its white marble collonade almost completely obscured by temporary market stalls and street vendors' carts, was the Basilica, a cross between law court and stock exchange.

Hermione walked forwards, into the centre of the forum's open space, and slowly revolved around. Her eyes took in the Temple of Apollo next to the Basilica, a huge building faced with white marble. She noted the people gathered on the steps of the temple at the altar. Her eyes moved onwards to the Temple of Jupiter, Juno and Minerva. This temple was a much smaller building than the first temple, but it was located in a more propitious position set directly to the north at the head of the forum. To the right of this temple sat the macellum, the meat market, conveniently located for the purchase of sacrificial victims. Before these buildings, running along the edges of the open space in the centre of the forum, was a vast series of columns. These columns were interspersed with statues of famous and wealthy men. Hermione walked towards one, a giant equestrian statue of the Emperor Vespasian. His thick neck and bullish features were clearly recognisable to her. She remembered with a start as she stood there that Vespasian had only recently died and had been replaced by his son, Titus. As she studied the dead Emperor's face, her eyes were drawn even further upwards and beyond his statue, towards the huge bulk of the black mountain that was now visible to her beyond the city, towering above the city's skyline. This was, she knew, Vesuvius itself.

The volcano looked quiet and innocuous, framed against a Mediterranean sky of deep azure blue. As she looked more closely, she saw that its shape was different to what she remembered from her time. Vesuvius in 79AD was a perfect conical shape, its slopes rising with perfect symmetry to its tip. The side of the mountain were crosshatched with vineyards, she knew. The grapes took advantage of the rich volcanic soil and thrived there. Farming was a profitable business, and vast estates called Latifundia had grown up outside the city walls, growing food for sale and consumption in the city. As she stared at the mountain, a wisp of cirrus cloud drifted across the peak of the volcano. The effect was not unlike a lazy drift of smoke, and suddenly, as the memory of the eruption of 79AD returned to the forefront of her mind once again, Hermione was jolted back into reality. She had to get out of this place and quickly! Looking around and remembering her knowledge of Pompeian geography, she knew the quickest way out of the city was to head east out of the forum and towards the docks beyond the Marine Gate. Pushing her way through the crowds around the Basilica, she left the forum and made for the sea. Silently, and with interest, Snape followed.

She knew something was wrong as soon as she approached the gate. As she drew closer to the city walls, she could smell the sea air and heard the yammer of the sea birds circling the harbour. Here was escape. She could catch a boat, and... well... after that she was sure that some solution to her situation would present itself. The key was to keep moving. Just so long as she was away from the volcano, she could stay safe. The closer she got to the exit from the city, however, the worse she began to feel. As she approached the huge gates that were swung open to admit the traders and shippers with their goods, she became increasingly aware of the presence of magic. She could feel it thrumming through her chest and abdomen, creating a sickening sensation in her gut. Determined, she pressed on, but as she approached the customs legionary, standing at his station at the opening in the walls, she felt a hard kick in the stomach, a twist in her perception, a blurring of awareness like she was close to fainting, and she found herself suddenly facing another brightly coloured building in a different street entirely.

She stumbled on the rough cobbles, her shoulder slamming into the wall of a cheerfully decorated shop front. Her head swam. I should be getting used to that here by now, she thought to herself wryly and looked around again. She did not recognise where she was for a moment until her eyes alighted on a familiar mosaic on the pavement across the street from where she was standing. It was of a large black dog, snarling and straining at the leash. The friendly greeting "Beware of the Dog!" arranged in irregular mosaic tiles around the dog's front paws. She recognised it as the entrance to the House of the Tragic Poet, and she knew that she had been thrown back into the western region of the city, just north of the forum. The gate had been warded with powerful protection. Would it be the same of the other gates? Snape had not mentioned anything about this when they had spoken. Although, in fairness, she reminded herself ruefully, they had not had much of a conversation at all. She had snapped at him for his attitude and panicked at the situation and insisted on leaving. Now, as she found herself in an altogether more sinister set of circumstances, she was beginning to regret her high-handed insistence on walking out.

Desperately, she fought down her rising panic. Since the end of the war, she could not bear the thought of being trapped. The year she spent with Harry and Ron evading capture, starving, cold and fearful, had undoubtedly left its mark. She knew that it was a psychological problem. Muggles called it Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Giving it a name had not reduced its effects, however. A wave of nausea struck her, and she pressed her hand against her chest in an action that usually went some way towards calming and soothing the symptoms of her panic. "Deep breaths, Hermione," she muttered to herself, "calm down!" Replacing fear with anger and a sense of injustice had sometimes worked before when the anxiety attacks came on, so she told herself that she was damned if she would return to his house without trying every means of escape. She needed to work out if all the gates were warded in the same way, and if so, where the source of the magic was coming from.

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Still Disillusioned, Snape watched her stop in the street and press her hand to her chest. Concerned, he had nearly approached her, only to see that she straightened again, squared her shoulders and continued onwards. He shook his head in disbelief. She really is remarkable, he thought grudgingly. As he knew they would, the city wards had thrown him back into the city and to the same location as Hermione. The wards were at least predictable. He wondered how long it would take before she exhausted herself trying to test them. Then he wondered if she would return to his house. The thought was unsettling. He was just about recovering from the shock of having her fall out of time and on top of him yesterday afternoon. He had meant what he had told her about the peace he had found in this city in this time. His memories of his past life were fading fast. Some were mere ghosts. His last memories of the Dark Lord and his near fatal encounter with the snake were still clear and vibrant, but before that it was almost as if there were echoes and impressions. He knew that he had given Potter the knowledge that he must sacrifice himself to defeat the Dark Lord, but he was often tormented by the loss of the other memories that he had also lost to him as he lay bleeding out on that bloody floor. Seeing her face again so close to his own as he wiped away the blood from her grazed forehead, watching her eyes flicker open and widen as she recognised whom she had found, caused him to think again about the action he had taken in the Shrieking Shack in order to secure his survival eleven years ago. He felt a stab of remorse at the memory and then angrily pushed it away. He had a right to live, dammit! After years spent atoning for Lily's death, he felt that he had paid his dues. He had done his duty, done everything to protect her arrogant brat and his friends. He would use any means to enable his survival.

She was approaching the Herculaneum Gate.... Ahh, there it is... A twist in the gut and a shift of perception, a rush of sensation in his mind... and they were both walking along a different street, heading in another direction. Snape's introspection ceased as he concentrated on keeping her in sight and safe from harm.

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It took her a while to re-orientate herself before she could resume her exploration. The Herculaneum Gate's wards had deposited her in a small side street close to the Via Stabina, an area that had yet to be excavated in her time. These wards had thrown her further and in a different direction than the ones protecting the Marine Gate. She remembered an old Muggle TV show called The Prisoner, which her parents had been fond of, and found the comparison to be uncomfortably appropriate. So, she thought, I can't get out through the western gates. I wonder if they are all warded to this extent? She turned about, setting off with determination for the east of the city. As she walked, using the setting sun and her own knowledge of the street alignment as her guides, she thought furiously about the source of the warding magic. She also found herself thinking again of Snape... alive and... clearly... himself, after years of thinking him dead and buried.

He had looked pretty good, actually, she admitted. His hair was still lank and unkempt, framing his familiar features, but the Mediterranean climate had given him a light tan and his slim figure had filled out slightly. She remembered the peculiar sensation of holding on to his chest as he had helped her upright from the bed. Her fingers remembered the feel of his back, smooth and muscled under the thin fabric of his tunica. She was sure that she had felt his heart rate increase in the few seconds she had held on to him, and it occurred to her that he was as surprised as she had been at her sudden appearance. The contrast between his appearance and manner now and her last memories of him, frantic and desperate on the floor in that dingy room, was jarring. She had replayed his final moments in her mind's eye thousands of times, both knowingly and in her dreams. Aside from her lessons with him and the few moments in which they had met at Grimmauld Place, her interactions with him had been few. The antipathy between him and Harry had marked much of her experience. She had thought him spiteful and needlessly severe in lessons, and his bullying of Neville had been unnecessary and cruel. She had joined in the laughter in Lupin's class that day when she had seen him humiliated as a Boggart in her third year. He had crowed with delight after he captured Sirius without listening to their protestations of his innocence, and he had seemed pitifully disappointed when he lost his chance for an Order of Merlin following Sirius' escape.

She sighed. As a child, then, she had thought of him a not much more than a bitter and vindictive teacher, using his position to bully and intimidate the children in his care. Later, Dumbledore's insistence that he was worthy of their trust seemed to have been nothing more than the misguided faith of a duped old man, a misjudgement that the Headmaster paid for with his life that night on the Astronomy Tower. A year later however, as she had worked frantically to heal him in the Shrieking Shack, scrabbling for anything that would prevent his death, she had felt a connection to him that she had never felt before, or since. Apart from a few fumbling snogs with Viktor and one unexpected kiss with Ron, she had never been so close to a man before. Admittedly, the situation had been anything but romantic – but the raw nature of the link between the two of them had been tangible, disturbing, thrilling... and utterly unforgettable.

She took a moment to dwell on the odd sensation in her stomach that she had experienced when she touched him this morning.

Her foot slipped suddenly on one of the uneven paving slabs, and her ankle twisted sharply. The jagged pain brought her back abruptly to the present. These streets were precarious if you lost concentration! Pushing her thoughts about Snape to one side, she focused once more on where she was going.

She threaded her way through the narrow thoroughfares, dodging people, carts, donkeys, oxen, stray dogs and all manner of goods and other detritus that the city had collected. If her reckoning was right, she should be headed for the far eastern corner of the city, towards the amphitheatre.

As she got closer to her destination, she began to notice increasing number of scrawled graffiti adverts for the games. She smiled as she recognised one that had survived the eruption to the present day. It was beautifully scribed directly on the wall in front of her, advertising a five-day spectacle of beast hunts and gladiatorial combat. At the end of the advert, there was a final sentence: "Aemilius Celer wrote this all alone by the light of the moon". The sign writer was obviously touting for future business. Idly, Hermione wondered if he had been successful. She walked past the palaestra, an open space for exercise close to the amphitheatre, which she found to be deserted at this time of the afternoon. A hundred feet later, and she was standing in front of the most imposing building in Pompeii. The need for escape forgotten, Hermione stopped dead and simply marvelled.

The amphitheatre's marble-faced walls shone golden red in the glow of the fading sunlight. Built comparatively recently, it was of a size similar to the smaller football stadiums in England. Hermione knew that it was still very large by small town standards, only half the size of the mighty Colosseum in Rome, which was supposed to serve a city of one million. No one was sure how many people lived in Roman Pompeii, but estimates placed it between 6,400 to 30,000 people. The amphitheatre towered over the nearby buildings, more than one hundred feet tall. It was silent, as there was no show on today, but Hermione could imagine the screams, shouts and roars of the animals, fighters and spectators all too easily as she stared up at the beautiful and forbidding edifice. A sudden hot breeze blew across the amphitheatre's square, kicking up a small dust devil in the dirt in front of her and bringing with it the sharp scent of pine trees and lavender. Hermione turned instinctively leftwards towards the direction of the breeze and saw the Sarno Gate in the near distance. Picking her way by the side of a vineyard, she approached the gate, steeling herself for the physical onslaught of the wards once again. This time, rather than getting close enough to activate them, she turned aside as the thrum of magic and attendant feeling of nausea began to fill her chest and moved northwards to check the Nola Gate.

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Dusk began to give way to darkness. Snape, still following, wondered how soon it would be before she got into more trouble. Roman cities could be hostile environments at night, and she was still walking with the air of a sightseer. She was wandering back towards the centre of the city from the theatre district. There were some people in the streets, but the shopkeepers had closed an hour ago, and the bars and brothels were just warming up for the night. Most citizens were probably at home, eating. True enough, as she continued her progress, two shadows detached from a wall as she walked past them. The men, both burly and yet light footed (clearly professionals, Snape noted), stealthily moved to either side of the walking woman and shared a look full of meaning. Snape's smile deepened and became wolfish in anticipation. He withdrew his wand from its leather holster on the inside of his left forearm. The would-be muggers inclined their bodies towards her in a pincer movement – and fell to the ground silently as Snape's non-verbal Jelly Legs and Langlock curses struck. The men writhed in pain in the street. Hermione walked on, oblivious of his protection, which made him smirk with satisfaction. He continued to watch over her, amused by her increasingly furious attempts to figure out the wards on the city until she turned into his own street again. Seeing that she was nearly home, he hurriedly dived down the alleyway to the rear of his house, slipping through the rear entrance and sliding into his seat on the couch in front of the ornamental pond in the centre of the courtyard.

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It was late in the evening when Hermione conceded defeat, and she returned to Snape's house. The wards on the gateways and walls of the city had been so strong that after her determined attempts to escape she felt completely drained of energy and magical resources. The unpleasant sensation in the pit of her stomach that occurred whenever she approached the boundaries of the city walls had left her feeling nauseated and unwell. Apparition was impossible; she doubted her ability to picture her destination effectively enough and feared that she would fatally splinch herself. It would have been highly unlikely to succeed anyway.

It was obvious that those wards had been set by a powerful magical source, but she had been unable to determine from where the source had originated.

The darkened streets were making her feel uneasy, even though she had her wand handy. As she walked along the uneven street, taking care on the slippery slabs of pavement alongside the houses, she realised with some relief that she was close again to the district of the Faun. Turning into a side street, she saw the fuller's shop that had caused her to gag earlier in the day and then the beginning of the external walls of Snape's house.

She did not have to knock; Pertus opened the door to admit her immediately. How did he know she was there? she wondered, but she was grateful to be admitted into the sanctuary of the high walled insula. She was shown through the interior to its central courtyard, lit by a series of finely wrought metal lanterns. She found Snape relaxing on a low upholstered bench, a goblet of spiced wine in his hand. He appeared to have been sitting there for some time, although she noticed that his chest was rising and falling a little more rapidly than was usual, and there was perspiration on his forehead.

"Why Doctor Granger, did you enjoy your walk?" he asked, amused. His voice was even and controlled, although he was clearly recovering from some exertion.

Face set in a scowl, Hermione flopped down beside him on the cushioned seating. Despite her annoyance at his supercilious attitude, she had to admit that she was glad to be safe again in his company. She would also admit to feeling a curious sense of peace now that she was with him; the anxiety that she had felt earlier, and the feeling of queasiness that the wards had inflicted, had dissipated.

Silently, he passed her some wine.

She took it, drained the cup and handed it back to him.

He replaced it on the low table beside him.

"Don't say anything," she warned, shooting him a filthy look from under her brows.

His eyebrows lifted, a slight smirk visible on his otherwise austere expression. "Well, Doctor Granger," he said, managing to infuse the word with an infinite degree of disdain and sarcasm, "I see you have discovered the slight flaw in my idyllic existence here."