Chapter 8

A/N: All the characters you recognise are JKR's and not mine! Again, thanks and hugs to the incomparable beaweasley2 for all her help on this chapter. Clairvoyant has graciously lent me her beta skills (for which I am deeply grateful!). Thanks also to those of you who take the time to review – I'm sorry that this one has taken so long to appear....

Thank you to beaweasley2 and Jay for the wonderful banner!

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Chapter 8

"You know the date," Hermione repeated slowly. Her mind still seemed to be frozen, but she slowly felt her hand relax on the handle of her wand.

Snape said nothing and looked at her patiently as if waiting for her to work something out. It was irritatingly like being in his classroom. Her mind flicked to the lesson in her third year when he had tried to let every student in her class know that a werewolf was teaching them. He had behaved like an arse on that day, and he was being an arse now. She watched as his eyebrows rose and his lips quirked slightly.

Enlightenment dawned.

"You're going to use Vesuvius to stop Sabazios," she breathed. "Oh, that is so clever."

Snape inclined his head. "Why, thank you, Miss Granger." His voice was mocking, but he also appeared to be rather pleased by her response.

"Why don't you just run?"

"Run?"

"Run. Leave. Fly."

"I can't," Snape said shortly, but she was starting to find him easier to read. He did not want to leave, she was sure of that. He shifted uncomfortably, darting a look at her. "The wards," he stated by way of explanation. "Sabazios does not trust me to stay and brew for him, so he established the wards on the city gates. They prevent all those with magical abilities from passing through them."

"You could break them, I'm sure."

"I ... probably could try," he conceded with a slight shake of his head and a small wry smile.

She thought, arse or no arse, he's quite attractive when he smiles like that.

"But you're not going to."

"No."

"But if you left, there would be no potion. You would not be risking your life. Sabazios would not get his army. Well, not straight away...," her voice died away. She looked at him and thought how easily her confidence in him could be re-established because she wanted to trust him so much. "You're going to try to stop them all before they can get out of Pompeii."

"If I leave, then Sabazios may realise that something is wrong and leave the city, and he will grow even more powerful." Snape's voice now seemed to swell with suppressed emotion. She thought that she heard pride mixed with dignity and underpinned by a sense of duty and obligation. "I was too young to stop the first Dark Lord that I knew from rising to power. It seems that I have the opportunity here and now to stop the last Dark Lord I will know from rising. I need to keep Sabazios here and keep him thinking that I am working to aid his ambitions until I can bury him under boiling rock."

His words rang out challengingly in the warm summer air.

Hermione watched as a mote of dust twirled and swam in the air in front of her. "That's very brave," she said neutrally.

Snape's expression turned guarded. "I will not shirk this responsibility," he said. "I am not a coward."

She looked at him again. He was sitting very still, but there was a slight hunch to his shoulders. A wary and defensive energy seemed to be radiating from him again. It was odd, but she fancied that she could feel a sympathetic ache in her own chest. He had been alone, dealing with a desperate situation. Hermione knew that he was a powerful and intelligent wizard; perhaps only Dumbledore and Voldemort had been stronger, but like everyone, he had weaknesses.

"You keep saying 'I' a lot," she replied. "What am I doing while the mountain explodes? Holding your coat and cheering you on?"

"What?" Snape seemed nonplussed.

"I assume that I can do more than watch. Fiducius certainly seemed to think so. I think, from what he was saying, that you will need my help to make more of the potion, and now that the Aedile has seen me, he will expect me to be actively supporting you and his 'Master' in their plans."

She was staring frankly at him. His eyes had a watchful quality, she noted, as if he was still weighing up something in his mind. She wondered how open he was prepared to be with her after all.

"How are we going to escape?" Hermione continued. "Presumably, the wards will shatter as soon as we defeat Sabazios and his acolytes? It seems like a rather tall order to walk out of the city in the middle of a volcanic eruption... even if we have just vanquished the new Dark Lord. How were you thinking of getting away?"

"I did not expect to get away, Miss Granger," Snape replied after a pause.

Hermione regarded him steadily. Ahhh, so there it is, she thought to herself. Good. Now she could contribute something. "But that was before I arrived," she pointed out, "and if it's alright with you, I would rather not be entombed with some sort of power-crazed Voldemort-Mark-Two and his bunch of magically-enhanced goons. I think we can do better than an act of supreme self-sacrifice in the pursuit of redemption."

"Miss Granger," Snape said with a sigh. "I will..."

"Doctor Granger," she corrected him absently, getting to her feet and standing over him.

"What?" he asked, confused.

"Doctor Granger, Severus," she repeated. "Or Hermione, if you prefer. I would prefer it actually. You keep slipping into 'Hogwarts mode'. Where is that portrait?" She looked around the peristyle expectantly. Snape looked up at her. He appeared to have expected his self-declared intention to sacrifice himself for the greater good to have had more impact.

"Portrait?" he asked.

"Yes, Severus, the portrait that I came through. Where is it? I need to study it. We need a way home."

*********************

In her office, high in one of the castle's towers, Vector brushed her long fingers over the runic scripture once again. The pattern of the numerals was familiar, and yet there was something jarring about the manner in which they were arranged. It was as if someone was trying to create a hybrid runic structure between two very different systems of predictive signifiers. The effect was so jarring that it was almost upsetting. The magic in the runes was fighting itself.

Her initial instinct had been that the runes signified a lifeline, a predictable pattern of cause and effect that could determine a person's life choices and, therefore, predict their life's length. In many ways, the arrangement of the numerals was similar to a standard wizarding life span, but then again, it wasn't. Vector frowned. Too many gaps, like breaks in DNA sequencing. Complexity was one thing – but this was plain confusing, and Septima Vector did not do confusing.

She sighed and took another drink from her glass of Gillywater. How Minerva had gotten her into drinking this stuff, she wasn't quite sure, but it was the nearest thing to a Midori cocktail that she had found locally, and her personal supply of Muggle gin had run out two weeks ago. She had developed a taste for Midori while on vacation back home some years ago. The sweet and fragrant taste of the drink danced across her tongue, and she savoured the tang of the Gillyweed. It was sour and sweet with an underlying warmth beneath it....

Vector looked again at the central repeated motif. She had definitely seen that mathematical juxtaposition before... but where? Something early... She screwed up her eyes in concentration and tried to allow her mind to float to a quiet place so that the memory would surface. She took another sip of the Gillywater, allowing the liquid to swirl gently around her mouth before slipping down her throat.

Her eyes narrowed... Egypt! She had taken an additional elective at Salem in the History of Magic, and her Professor had been obsessed by ancient Egyptian attitudes to the afterlife. She was sure she could remember something about the system of Arithmancy from that time... Sitting back in her chair, she picked up her wand and gestured towards her bookshelves on the other side of her chambers.

"Accio my notes on the Book of Thoth," she called, wondering if she had been able to pronounce the last few words clearly enough. She was relieved to see what she hoped was the relevant scroll of parchment levitating out of her overcrowded bookshelves and hurtling towards her outstretched hand in a cloud of dust and fragments. Coughing, and shaking the parchment to dislodge any further grime from its long storage, she made a mental note to talk firmly to her house-elf in the morning. Then she peeled the scroll open and scanned her notes. Slowly, her face broke into a smile of recognition as she saw the now familiar rune motif from Snape's portrait appearing before her in hieratic script with a Latin translation below.

She carefully copied the translation reference out and sent the parchment scroll flying back to the bookshelves. She needed to follow up the reference in the library tomorrow, but for now, she could afford to relax. Satisfied, she picked up her drink and drained its contents. The faint, bitter aftertaste of the drink caught in her throat this time, and she thought, with an inward sigh, that Gillywater was, despite Minerva's insistence, an inadequate substitute for Muggle liqueur.

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Snape led Hermione up a set of steps in the northern corner of the peristyle to the triclinium – the summer dining room. It was a lovely room, open to the elements on one side from waist high, with a colonnade rather than windows on the southern wall, which gave a fine view of the peristyle garden below. The northern wall of the room was decorated with a series of frescos. One of them was a small portrait of a young woman.

Hermione approached it eagerly, trying to take in all the details of the picture as she did so. This had been her way into his world: from his portrait on the dusty mosaic floor back in 2009 to this fresco in his triclinium in 79 AD. The woman in the painting looked outwards with a confident and steady regard. She held a writing tablet and pen in her hand, the tip of the pen tipped against her lips. Her riotous, curly hair was confined in the current Roman fashion under a golden hairnet. Her face was open and kind, her eyes large, and her irises limpid and dark amber in colour. She looked as if she was about to ask a question. There was something strangely familiar and oddly compelling about her.

"It's lovely," Hermione said.

"Yes," he said and cleared his throat.

"And Fiducius thinks this is me?" She did not want to think who the woman in the image really was. He did not answer, so she didn't pursue it, although she was being drawn closer towards the painting to study the image.

Something about the picture was familiar, but she could not quite remember what. She remembered an old trick. Don't get caught up in the details, she told herself, remembering her first archaeology professor fondly. What is your general impression of the site? She half-closed her eyelids, deliberately allowing her vision to blur and become unfocused. It was then, as her vision danced and blurred, that she noticed the runes around the edge of the fresco. The numerals and determinate functions seemed to move slightly as she squinted at them. Her eyes widened in surprise as she recalled the runes surrounding Snape's mosaic image at her dig and the effect of twisting and spinning that she had experienced before she fell through that portrait in her time. She felt her heart rate increase and a surge of excitement.

She raised her hand to touch the portrait, her mind already seething with ideas. Could it be some sort of portal? She remembered Draco's use of the Vanishing Cabinets in her sixth year. Could the portraits work like that? If so, how to avoid the temporal instability? What forms the connection? But hang on, she berated herself crossly, that isn't logical. How were they created in the first place and by whom? Those signifiers are located around one point, not forming a bridge between two points. This isn't forming a link; it's describing a linear relationship. Bugger, I wish I had my notes from the dig... and my reference books... and a calculator....

She became dimly aware that Snape had just asked her a question.

"Mmmm?" She turned to him and saw that he was watching her as if waiting for an answer. As she looked at him, his left eyebrow slowly raised.

"I said, Miss...," he paused, "Hermione, do you require any further assistance? I have new supplies to brew for my customers." Anticipating her response, he was already backing away from her towards the door. He seemed off balance, embarrassed even. Briefly, she wondered why, but the challenge of the portrait rapidly overwhelmed her again.

She flashed him a quick smile but shook her head. "I think I just need some time to study it and take some notes. Thanks, Severus. There's something very familiar about it somehow... What is it, now...?" She returned to her study of the portrait, utterly absorbed. She did not hear him as he left.

Absently, as was her habit, she fished out from underneath her dress the old glass pendant about her neck and rolled it between her fingers, bringing it up to her nose to smell the comforting rose and lavender scent as she did so. Her eyes closed inadvertently as she inhaled the smell from the old perfume bottle. As the lovely old scent filled her senses, her mind was suddenly diverted from the image before her and transported once again to that horrible time at the end of the fighting at the castle after she, Ron, Harry and Dumbledore's portrait had spoken quietly about the end of things in the Headmaster's study.

She had suddenly felt a desperate compulsion to be clean again. Leaving the boys once more to join the grieving Weasley clan downstairs in the Hall, she had gone back to the girls' bathroom on the second floor. She knew, as depressing and ill-kempt as it was, that it had escaped virtually unscathed from Voldemort's attack. As she walked into the bathroom, she deliberately averted her eyes from the sink with the charmed faucet – the secret entrance to the Chamber of Secrets that she and Ron had opened – and turned to the left towards the showers at the far end of the bathroom.

She knew it had been important to him because it had been given strong protection charms. She took to wearing it on a long silver chain between her breasts, its scent remaining as strong as it had been when she had first taken it in her hand, and despite near constant wear over eleven years it had never cracked, scuffed or, god forbid, shattered. She wondered whom it had belonged to and why he had possessed it. Was it Lily's, perhaps, or his mother's? On many occasions, she thought to ask someone that question, but she always pulled back at the last moment. The vial was precious and secret, her possession of it was important, and she would not give it up.

She rolled it again now, but while the act was typically soothing still, she realised with a guilty start that she should actually offer to return it, as the pendant was not technically hers. The thought was painful. For a very long time, the little bottle had been a constant balm, and its soothing presence had protected her through many painful episodes: the death of Crookshanks... her breakup with Ron. She could not bear to part with it.

But it really isn't yours, she reminded herself sternly; it was his, and she knew that it had been important to him, and now he was with her, it must be returned. Reluctantly, she turned to do so but then realised that she was alone in the narrow room. He must have left when she had become absorbed in the painting. An absurd sense of relief flooded through her, chased immediately away by a guilty sense of obligation. Although it was a painful prospect, she would have to find him later to return it. For now, her attention turned to the painting again, and she became lost in her study of the runes.

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It was late afternoon by the time Harry and Gabrielle reached the Albergo Maliardo, a wizard hotel in one of the back streets of Naples. Once beyond the unobtrusive front entrance guarded by stone griffins on either side of the dark double doors, the interior opened up to impressive dimensions. The design of the foyer was modern, spacious, bright and not at all what Harry had been expecting, given the traditional exterior of the hotel. He looked about him, noting the fine, pale leather chairs and couches, the low oak coffee tables and the fine hangings on the walls. As he watched more closely, he could see trays of coffee, tea and other beverages gently levitating towards the magical folk who were sitting in the reception area.

The reception desk was 'manned' (Harry wondered with a guilty start if that was the correct word) by a dwarf who was wearing a decorative set of robes in pale blue and was sitting perched on a tall stool behind the counter. He had thick, wild red hair pulled backwards into an elaborate knot on top of his head and was bearded, as was the fashion with dwarves, although his bright red beard was neatly clipped close to his chin. The dwarf wore a set of magical glasses, which revolved like Mad-Eye Moody's eye had done. Harry stared at the little creature, wondering why he needed the revolving spectacles. The effect of the oscillating lenses was mildly nauseating.

On his first sight of Gabrielle, the dwarf, predictably, broke into an enormous and slightly glassy smile. Harry watched his friend's returning smile flicker slightly in disappointment at the creature's response, but she squared her shoulders subtly and walked forward gracefully to greet him. As the Italian ebbed and flowed between the two, Harry's attention was again drawn to the dwarf's glasses.

The exchange between dwarf and Veela paused for a moment, and Harry saw Gabrielle sigh and roll her eyes before shrugging and continuing the process of checking in. All seemed to be in order. Harry obediently surrendered his wand to Gabrielle to finalise the process. The dwarf barely paused as his quill wrote 'Sig. Harry Potter' underneath Gabrielle's name in the hotel register.

Smiling glassily once again at Gabrielle and Harry, the dwarf held his hand up to them, looked under his counter and spoke rapidly to something in Italian. Harry started in surprise as a torrent of high-pitched and aggressive language erupted from underneath the counter in response. After a pause, the dwarf clearly repeated his request and tapped his counter sharply. Harry thought he heard the word 'Potter' among the dwarf's last directions to the pixie. Another, only slightly less vituperative, stream of grumbling ensued, but then a small blue uniformed pixie emerged from underneath the counter. He stared at Harry, a cross expression on his face.

There was a further stroppy exchange of words between the receptionist and the pixie as the little creature flew up to the rack of keys behind the counter, snagged two from their hooks and slammed them down on the counter in front of the dwarf, his expression sullen.

Harry looked at Gabrielle in confusion. "Problem?" he asked.

Gabrielle's eyes danced in amusement. "It appears that the pixie is our bell-hop. He was on his break and does not wish to help his... colleague fetch our keys." Gabrielle's smile indicated that hers was not exactly an accurate translation of their heated exchange.

With a final stroppy flick of his hand at the receptionist, the little blue creature flew around the end of the reception counter and bowed elaborately to Harry and Gabrielle, indicating that they should follow him to their rooms.

"The liaison officer won't be here until tomorrow morning," she explained ruefully as they began to climb the hotel's staircase towards their rooms. Harry could not keep the disappointment from his face, and Gabrielle laughed. "This is Italy, Harry!" Gabrielle's voice was rich with amusement. "It's later than we thought, and the dig will be closing up in a couple of hours anyway. Alberto will meet us here tomorrow morning. Don't worry; we can use our time to have some fun together. Do you fancy a ride?"

Harry groaned inwardly, fighting a blush as it stole across his features. She leaned towards him in an intimate and conspiratorial fashion, and as she did so, he felt his heart rate speed up. Guiltily, he remembered Ginny's dire warnings about close contact with the young Veela. He screwed up his resolve; he would have to let her down carefully. "Look, Gabrielle," he began cautiously.

"I have brooms, and we can Disillusion ourselves to take a look around the whole area?" she continued, blithely unaware of his inner torment.

Harry immediately relaxed and felt stupid at the same time. Oh, gods! Why did everything she said seem to be a double entendre? How was he going to survive this experience?

*********************

"If daisy roots are not shredded at a precise angle, and within a certain period of time, they will not release their liquor in the correct manner, and the potion will be spoiled." How many times had he said those words to third-year idiots in his classroom? He could not remember... too many times.... There was something soothing in the precision needed to prepare certain ingredients, and Severus was taking refuge in his meticulous preparations. While he focused on this task, he did not need to think about the wider undertaking ahead. He did not need to think about Sabazios, about Fiducius, about the troubling presence of Miss Granger, or about the horrors that he knew were to come in a few days' time.

The image of Miss Granger rose again in his mind, unbidden. She danced in front of him, vital, confident and determined. He thought of her utter belief that there was an escape route from the cataclysm to come for them both. It was a ridiculous hope, but sitting in his garden in the morning sunshine of another beautiful day, he had found himself swept up in her belief that she could to find a solution. Her buoyancy had been infectious and strangely stirring; her determination and self-belief had strengthened him. As he had watched her standing in front of him, her back straight and her chin raised, he had felt a great wave of relief pulse through his body. It had been so wonderful, even for a moment, to be able to cede responsibility for this horrible situation to another, and he had always had a soft spot for bossy women.

Back in his lab, however, the reality of their situation had rapidly reasserted itself, and once more, he had been plunged into an irritated misery. The Metamorphagus Potion, protected by its stasis charm, was a deadly reminder of the peril they faced. He darted a quick look at the liquid silver contents of the cauldron as he carefully organised the daisy roots for shredding. The stasis charm prevented the fumes from the potion escaping and slowed the chemical reactions, but he could see the liquid in the cauldron writhing and coiling in on itself as the ingredients fought each other. The stabilisation would only last a day or so longer, and then he would have to brew a new batch... and that meant revisiting the source of the principle ingredient. He flexed his left arm experimentally and winced as his newly mending ribs protested still. He wondered, with grim amusement, how he might survive the next encounter in order to extract what he needed. Perhaps Doctor Granger... Hermione... he thought with another grimace, will have an answer to that little problem also.

He thought again, with hot embarrassment, about his pitiable behaviour towards her portrait a few days before she had suddenly and inexplicably emerged into his arms. To have weakened like that was unforgivable, regardless of the situation he had found himself in. Thank Merlin she had not sought to push him further on how her portrait had come to be in his house. He did not think he could bear the embarrassment of such an explanation – far better for his own sanity that she should think it was some sort of coincidence, or a lie that he had told Fiducius.... He felt his face flame hot at the thought of her seeing him so pathetically needy and cleared his throat, shaking his head abruptly to try to dispel the image of him yearning for her like that.

He needed to re-establish his Occlumency shields by clearing his mind.

Taking a deep and deliberate breath, he closed his eyes and then reopened them, purposefully clearing his mind of emotion and focusing his attention on the task at hand. His chopping board was clean and well oiled. The roots had been washed carefully and arranged into an ordered bunch in his left hand. All was prepared. Snape carefully gripped his knife, took another deep and steadying breath and began to slice.

His sharp silver blade slid through the fibrous stems in an easy rhythm, the plant's sap beginning to seep out onto the blade as he sliced. All his attention was focused on this activity. He accepted the discipline of this task. He would not allow any other thoughts to intrude. Twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six, he counted in his head steadily, his knife rising and falling in a satisfying and predictable cadence, twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty, thirty-one...

"Severus!" Hermione's excited shout, accompanied by the clatter of her descending footsteps on the steps to his laboratory, caused him to slip in his delicate shredding. He cursed once, loudly, and sucked the new cut on his forefinger as he turned to scowl at her when she skidded into his lab.

Her eyes were bright, her chest rising and falling with eagerness as she approached him. In a moment, he was frozen, staring at her flushed countenance and open grin. Something twisted hard inside him, and he felt that odd jolt of connection, that peculiar feeling of distress and attraction that he felt between them whenever she was close to him. He felt his face grow warm again, and feeling at once helpless and foolish, he took refuge in disdain. He drew himself up to his full height and mustered a sneer.

"Severus!" she repeated, oblivious to his attempt at haughtiness, "look at this! This is fascinating." She was waving something at him – a palm-sized black device which was emitting its own light in the dimness of the laboratory entrance. His confusion – and scowl – deepened as she thrust this modern Muggle item under his nose.

He found himself looking at a photograph of the portrait upstairs. The device is some sort of a camera, then.

"'Fascinating'...?" he echoed, lacing every syllable with condescension.

She emitted a snort and began to flick her fingers across the face of the little device, and he saw the pictures move and change before him. She flicked through a series of images before the picture stabilised on a new bright image of a large mosaic portrait of a man. Snape's expression cleared in surprise, and he gave a startled grunt.

"I know, I know," she said hurriedly, dismissing his first reaction to his own likeness in the picture. "But do you see?" Her eyes flashed to his as he stared in bafflement at the surly image on the thing in her hand. In exasperation, she flicked the images again quickly, back to the fresco picture upstairs and then back again to the ancient, dirty mosaic.

"I didn't see it for a while, but I knew there was something going on here. Can you see it yet? The chains of iteration are not quite the same, but the sequence of functions is, and so is the differential variable. Do you see?" She was still waving the bloody pictures in front of his nose. It was becoming easier to be genuinely annoyed by her behaviour.

"Keep it still for a moment, woman, will you?" He knew that he was being churlish, but she was standing so close to him now, her breasts heaving with each excited breath under her stola. Even the scent of her perfume was intoxicating – both familiar and distracting. He levelled a glare at her, hoping to quench some of her exuberance and to get her to calm down a bit so he could re-establish his equilibrium once more. "What is that?" he asked, indicating the device and trying to buy more time so he could remember his NEWT Arithmancy curriculum.

"Oh, this? It's an iPhone," as if he should know what she was gabbling about, "erm... it's a mobile phone. It's got a camera in it, and I'd almost forgotten that I had it with me, but I suddenly remembered that it was in the pocket of my jeans, and I knew that I had some old photos on it from my dig, and thank heavens, they survived the journey here. So, I have a comparative point of reference, and when I looked through the photos and compared them, I saw the similarity...and haven't you got it yet?"

She was practically bobbing up and down in her enthusiasm in front of him. It really was intensely annoying. He used the old scowl he'd used countless of times to subdue overly excited teenage girls.

"Miss Granger," he said icily, "this 'working together' business is not going to end well between us if you insist on speaking in irritating riddles all the time. Now, perhaps you can tell me what is so bloody significant about the two portraits you are waving in my face rather than have me play guessing games all afternoon. My daisy roots are spoiling."

Immediately, her face coloured. "Oh, I'm sorry!" she said. "I was just so excited about what I found and couldn't wait to show you... to get your opinion... It's not the central image, but the decoration around the edges. Have you not noticed the runes around the edges of the image? I imagine that they were not there when the painting was first created. Look, they describe a journey – that must be me when I came through and... and, erm, landed on you."

That image, of her lying atop him, was enough to stir any latent feelings into lingering thoughts....

She pulled a quick embarrassed face at his changed expression. "Sorry about that, again, but then the painting also describes the same pathway that you can see around the edges of the mosaic." She flicked the images backwards to his sullen portrait. "See? There must be a connection between the two – the portraits do not link, but they do share the same Arithmantic root. If I can just figure out what the convergence ratio and the activating factors are, then I might be able to work out how to get us home... home, Severus." The yearning in her voice was affecting.

There was a brief, charged pause between them, and Snape felt his irritation dissipating in the face of her earnest reasoning. However, at the same time, Severus could feel a headache coming on, and daisy roots were not always easy to acquire.

"So, we have linked portraits that are not linked and the promise of some escape once you have worked out, firstly, how the portraits are connected – which they are not, by your own admission – and secondly, how to activate the connection between them that doesn't exist," he reiterated, his face twisting into a gently sardonic smirk. "Brilliant, Miss Granger. I don't know how I survived without you. Now, if you will excuse me, I have to prepare the last batch of Shrinking Solution here and finish decanting two further"...Snape seemed to hesitate fractionally..."preparations for this evening."

"This evening?" Hermione raised her own eyebrow, mimicking his, and stood her ground. He could tell that she had been rather deflated by his scornful response to her findings, but he was quite impressed that she was not discouraged by his mockery. Her belief that there was something in those runes that could help them to get back home was a small flame of hope in a heretofore otherwise bleak and dangerous future.

Snape turned back to his daisy roots and resumed carefully shredding them. His previous engagement... The evening will be dull, a long, drawn-out dinner and inane conversation...

"Tonight, I am attending a gathering at the Vettii brothers' house," he said, his tone clipped and careful. "It is a party of sorts." He shredded the last of the roots and transferred them into the bubbling cauldron to his side, stirring with a silver rod as he did so.

He cleared his throat and, still not looking at her, added, "I suppose that you would be welcomed as my guest, if you wished to accompany me."