Chapter Eight

For the first time in recent memory, Mrs. Bulstrode was sitting at her desk when Severus walked in. "Good morning, sir." She stood and produced a white envelope. "This just come for you...by private house-elf."

No wonder she was waiting around, thought Severus. In-bound mail at the Ministry was normally handled by the Floo Room; owls disliked being enclosed in the underground building and made unreliable postal carriers within its walls. She must be bursting with curiosity to discover who had the means...and the need for discretion...to send a house-elf to do a fireplace's job.

When he turned the envelope over and saw the seal for St. Mungo's, his heart stuttered in his chest. Without a word, he turned and strode into the inner office, catching a glimpse of Mrs. Bulstrode's frown of disappointment.

At the door, he tore the envelope open and swiftly read the contents. Healer Blyte's close, cramped handwriting was difficult to read, but the words "Weasley" and "suicide" were clear enough.

He found himself sitting in his desk chair with no memory of having crossed the room. Methodically, he crumpled the condolence letter in his long fingers, staring into the fire, his heart beating heavily in his chest. Another Weasley gone. That made...how many now? Why did the question sound so bleak and callous?

Severus' mother's family had been distantly related to both Arthur's and Molly's familiesl; Severus had never bothered to unravel the complex and often tongue-twisting branches that all Pureblood Wizarding family trees sported. But he had known of them almost all his life; the two of them had been several years ahead of him in school...both Gryffindors, of course, and both Purebloods of the type that their Slytherin counterparts had considered weak and ineffective.

Severus stared, unseeing, across the miles of his memories. He saw a red-headed young woman, her plump face alight with happiness, bravely invading his personal space to hold up a tiny, squalling baby, red-faced and red-haired. The first girl child born to the Weasley family in generations, she had declared with a girlish laugh. Even you have to admit she's a beauty, Severus! He saw her husband standing behind her, his misty smile of pride saying more than words. Severus remembered wondering how this soft-looking, sentimental man could be the same wizard capable of the lethal feats of magic he had heard tell from Albus Dumbledore.

He saw their children, too, lithe and laughing, each as ginger-headed as their parents, in a parade that spanned the years of his own life: the eldest son, calm and competent; the twins, always first to offer pranks, Sickles or solutions to any problem; the lonely Ministry boy, his cravings kept tightly buttoned down; the dragon tamer, blunt-featured and deadly with a hex; the girl, whose beautiful red hair in the torchlit Potions classroom reminded him in unguarded moments of his painful past. And Ronald, the faithful friend, cut down in his prime before he could emerge from the shadow of The Chosen One to find his true place in this world.

Gone now. Almost all of them dead and gone.

Severus could remember arguing with every single one of them in their turn, but on this day he would not deny the truth. This morning, wizards would go about their business as if nothing was amiss, congratulating themselves on their lives of privilege and the purity of their blood, unaware of the passing of a tribe of fierce, loving people whose blood had been better than all of theirs. This day, the morning sun would warm the faces of the cruel and the unjust, while another member of a fine family lay cold and alone, having died in pain and obscurity...

Lugubrious cleared his throat politely. "Severus, the Minister for Magic would like to have a..."

Severus jumped up without a word and strode out of his office. He had nowhere to go, but the last place he wanted to be was here, listening to Lucius Malfoy brag about the Ministry's latest diplomatic triumphs.

A minute later, Lucius picked up a wadded parchment on the floor of his Foreign Minister's office and uncrumpled the forgotten letter. As he read, his grey eyes glittered maliciously.

Hermione sat at her desk after Lucius left and stared straight ahead, unseeing. Ron had killed himself. She held herself still, and within, she tried to reach out and touch his gentle, damaged spirit. She could feel nothing but her heart beating, like the hollow drum of a death march. She thought that perhaps he and Harry were at that lovely picnic she called Heaven, eating chocolate frogs and wizarding junk food, drinking butterbeer and flying with Ginny and the twins at a quick Quidditch pick-up match. She envied them.

Ron had been her first love, her first lover. They had fought and argued, laughed and dreamed together. He had held her and wept with her the night she lost her baby. "When this war is over," he told her, rocking her back and forth, "we'll start our own family, and no one will ever hurt you again. I won't let them."

He never judged her about her affair with Snape. He had weighed his wounded pride against her heartbreak, and had chosen her.

Silent tears streamed down her face. First Harry, then Neville, then Arthur, then...Oh, Ron. I just found you. And now I've lost you forever. She thought of his sorrowful eyes the last time she had seen him. "I'm never going to get better, am I?" Was she ever going to get better?

Hermione looked bleakly around her tiny, impersonal office, surrounded by paperwork and reports no one read or seemed to care about. And Ron had moved on, whole and happy, to feast at a lovely picnic, surrounded by warm sunshine and soft breezes and the ones he loved most. Sitting alone, sobbing for her lost friends, Hermione wanted to be at that picnic so badly she could almost taste it.

Severus walked blindly through the bustling Ministry halls, but the noise of brainless, meaningless activity drove him to seek out a less populated area. At last, he spied a transom stuck in the middle of the wall near Accounts Irretrievable and closed in on it.

"Barbican," he whispered. When the door appeared, he ripped it open and strode down the peripheral hallway. But unfortunately, it was not empty.

"Snape!"

Severus stopped and glanced over his shoulder. Hermione Granger bore down on him, almost racing the last fifty feet. He turned to face her.

"You were there, weren't you?" she demanded. "You were the last person to see him alive! Lucius said so."

Lucius. The name made him practically see red. He crossed his arms imperiously. "Are you implying that because I was the last person to speak with Mr. Weasley, I somehow influenced his actions?"

"So you don't deny it?" When he remained silent, she reached for him, her wand in one hand. "What did you say to him, Snape?" she hissed. "What did you tell Ron that night?"

He looked at her, feeling a heated mixture of contempt and disappointment. "Why am I not surprised you sought me out just to accuse me? Your willingness to assume the worst of me is old news, Granger."

"You haven't exactly given me reason to think well of you," she shot back. "You know something? I could always tell you were lying, Snape. Your lips moved."

"And you haven't exactly been a paragon of virtue either, since the day the Minister magnanimously released you from Azkaban. From what I've heard, you've managed to provide more than ample thanks for services rendered." His eyes gleamed with derision.

She flinched but didn't move away. "According to you, I wasn't all that. Perhaps Lucius isn't as choosy as you were."

He stared at her, ugly thoughts chasing through his brain. "You don't even deny it, do you? The Hermione Granger I knew would never have used her body to get what she wanted."

"No, that was more your style, as I recall," she spat.

It was his turn to flinch. Finally, he sneered. "At least your arrangement has provided some pleasure for someone."

"And why shouldn't I sleep with Lucius?" she asked with a toss of her head. "I learned from the best. You were the one who fucked me for information. You were the one who walked away when the well ran dry. I waited for hours in that squalid little dosshouse, hoping you'd come back. What a naive fool I was to believe in you."

He opened his mouth to retort; stinging, unforgivable words lay on the tip of his tongue. She was watching him with uncompromising, angry eyes. The flashing spirit in those eyes was achingly familiar, yet she was such a stranger to him now. Why was he fighting a stranger? Why did being misunderstood by her feel like the worst of betrayals? Why did he believe she owed him any sympathy at all?

Suddenly his towering, righteous anger seemed to topple over like children's blocks, and all he wanted to do was stop: stop talking, stop fighting, stop everything for a change.

This was the witch who had stolen his self-discipline but gifted him with sweet madness in the midst of the hell of war. She had possessed him like no other could, until he had been ready to throw away every burden he carried, every vow he'd ever taken, just to lie by her side. And then she had carried a child...his child...and lost it while under torture, and mourned its loss.

A crushing sadness overwhelmed him. They were both so hurt, for so many of the same reasons. Why was it so easy to throw insults and insinuations at one another, instead of offering some comfort?

"Hermione," he began, "I'm so sorry for the loss of your friend..."

"Liar!" she screamed. "You always hated him. You made no bones about that. So why did you visit him? What did you hope to gain, you fucking Slytherin? Did you want him dead?" She lunged for Severus like a wild thing and she hit him squarely in the chest, throwing him back against the wall, where his head snapped back against the hard surface with a heavy thud. "Answer me! Did you want him dead?" She hauled back and clocked him in the eye with a right hook, the wand in her hand grazing his cheek and leaving a burn. Dazed and numb, beyond the ability to react, Severus reached up to touch his cheek, his eyes resting on her.

She pushed him again, continuing her tirade. "You were the enemy. You still are! Maybe you only visited Ron to suss out if he knew any Order members still alive. As if Ron could have told you anything! His mind was gone, but that didn't stop you from tormenting him to the point of killing himself."

"Stop! Stop this." His voice sounded weak to his own ears. "I didn't torture him. I never asked him a single thing, not one thing." He could not think where to begin to explain his reasons for ever visiting Weasley; to even hope to be redeemed now seemed the height of folly.

For a long moment they faced one another, panting. Hermione's eyes, nakedly bleak, looked directly into his, as if she could perform Legilimency on him. Gods help him, he wished she could.

He swallowed hard and leaned forward, his face inches from hers. "I walked into that wretched shack at the end of the war, ready to die. It's not my fault I lived. And it's not my fault you ended up in Azkaban." Her open hand flashed upward again, but he was ready this time. His arm blocked the slap. With lightning speed, he latched onto her wrist, pulling her hard against his body. "If you had come to me," he hissed, "I would have hidden you away so that you would have never been found." He pulled her gently to him, unable to stop himself, and leaned his cheek against her head. "Hermione ..."

She drew in a deep breath and, to his amazement, her body relaxed fractionally. "It was too late by then, Severus. Nothing mattered."

"I know," he whispered. "Hermione... I know about the baby." She gasped. He kept hold of her wrist but his thumb traced reassuring circles on the soft flesh. "I know what happened at Malfoy Manor, how you lost it after you were tortured."

She never moved from the circle of his body, but one hand inched up his chest to his shoulder and clung there. "When...when did you find out?"

"Weasley told me. It was like he suddenly woke up, thought I was Potter, and told me. I didn't know before now. Hermione, I swear. He told me the night before he...he died."

She was still for a long while, and then her low voice spoke haltingly into his chest. "Harry and Ron rescued me from...from there, took me to Shell Cottage. There was so much blood, Severus...pain...Fleur, crying...Ron, too...so much pain." She gulped. "But even then, I couldn't accept I'd lost it at first. Not even afterward. Not for days. All I'd gone through that night...the very worst thing was that I'd lost the best of us."

His other hand stole around her waist; unconsciously, he ducked his head, moved in, but she stiffened and pulled away, dashing her hand across her eyes. "But that's all in the past now. All that matters today is that y-you were the last to see Ron alive. That makes you prime suspect."

He drew himself to full height again and forced his mind to regain some control. "Hermione, if one of us is guilty of killing Weasley, I would look to the one who made him take an Unbreakable Vow...and didn't release him from that Vow after he landed in St. Mungo's."

Hermione gasped, turning pale. He pressed his point. "He was relieved to tell someone, do you know that? He was lucid enough to tell me what you made him do." His voice seethed with anger. "I don't know what pisses me off more, that you made him do it, or why you made him do it. It was always about Harry fucking Potter, wasn't it? Potter had to be protected, no matter the cost. It was your burden Weasley shouldered all these years, Granger." He laughed mirthlessly. "An Unbreakable Vow? That's tantamount to a ticking time bomb in a mental patient." She staggered back as if he'd struck her. "Unbreakables can be rescinded, but you didn't release him, even after you saw him."

"There was no Vow by the time I saw him again," she protested, but he could see the growing doubt in her eyes. "After Harry died, the Vow released Ronald on its own. The magic knows, Severus. That's the nature of the Vow. I-I didn't..." There was a pleading note to her voice now.

"The magic knows, but he didn't. He still felt guilty for telling someone he thought was Harry, Vow or no Vow. If you want to know who caused Ron Weasley to decide to carve up his arms, Hermione, you have only to look in the mirror."

She gave him one last, stricken look, then turned and fled, sobbing. He watched her go with bleak eyes.

An hour later, he threw together a trunk and Apparated the hell out of London.

In the days that followed, Hermione's schedule of appearances stepped up to a grueling pace. She knew it was Lucius' doing; he was trying to keep her isolated through activity.

The morning Lucius had informed her with hateful joviality of the death of Ron Weasley, he questioned her closely why she thought the Foreign Minister had been informed personally by St. Mungo's. He insinuated she and Severus were having an affair. Though she roundly denied it, he did not seem convinced and pressed her further. But he was clearly less concerned about sexual politics as collusion; above all things, he worried that his subordinates might be conspiring against him. The Minister was beginning to share an important trait with his reclusive Dark Lord...paranoia. It was not the first time Hermione had noticed.

Ron's funeral was a sparsely-attended affair...mainly St. Mungo's employees and a lone member of the press. Draco had accompanied her, but no friends or family came, not even Percy. Severus hadn't shown up; she would have been surprised to see him.

It wasn't until a few days later that she had a block of time at home alone to sit and examine the box Draco won for her.

She fixed herself a cup of tea before sitting down at her little coffee table with Mad-Eye's box. She pressed her thumb to the brass catch and whispered the word that would open it. The catch gave with a familiar little click, and she opened the box with trembling fingers.

There were only a few items inside. She found a few old lists of addresses, a picture of a grinning, blue-haired toddler waving to the camera, a street map or two...and one folded piece of parchment that caused her to slop tea down her front.

"What is it? What did you find?" asked Phineas impatiently from his place on the floor, propped against the living room wall. "Turn around this way so I can read it."

She moved to sit down on the floor beside him, and they studied the parchment together. But she could not fathom the contents at first because the handwriting was achingly familiar...it was Severus'.

The parchment looked to be the last page of a letter. It gave no signature and very few specifics. It began by listing a meeting time and date, and a place...Rathlin Island. There were notations indicating the tide. The letter ended with a declaration that Severus would stay behind and help cover everyone's trail after they were away. But as to the identity of "everyone," there was no clue.

Phineas summed it up succinctly. "Obviously, the Headmaster had a hand in helping someone escape...someone from the Order, because he or she had access to this mailbox. He met two or more people on Rathlin Island in Northern Ireland and helped them leave the coast by water. He stayed behind to cover their tracks."

"So there are more members of the Order out there," Hermione murmured. Somehow, she had known Pansy had lied to her. "But why would Snape help them?" Hermione frowned, turning around to look at Black. Her head felt swaddled in cotton wool.

"We've had this conversation before," replied Phineas almost angrily. "Headmaster Snape worked for the Order; Dumbledore trusted him. Yet you continue to think the worst of him. Why do you doubt him?"

"I have my reasons," she replied stubbornly.

"Are you saying your reasons trump those of Dumbledore, McGonagall...Kingsley Shacklebolt?"

"Headmaster..." she paused, and then admitted the truth. "I had a...a personal relationship with Snape. I know him as someone who only gets close in order to secure information for the Dark Lord."

He looked at her with new understanding but no sympathy. "It's time to re-examine your reasons, my girl. You're supposed to be a bright witch, but don't let your prejudice get in the way of the truth."

She didn't answer. It was on the tip of her tongue to say Azkaban had shown her the folly of expecting men to reform, but...what if she had been blinded by his rejection of her, and he had always been on the side of the Order?

Phineas continued. "We've gotten nowhere in the search for the last two pieces. Time is working against you...your task could be discovered any day. You could use some help locating Everard at the Ministry. Can you afford to dismiss Severus Snape as a resource?"

Hermione regarded the portrait thoughtfully. She recalled the day Harry had rushed them all off to the Ministry to stop a break-in at the Department of Mysteries. He'd missed the chance to confide in Severus that day. If he had, so much tragedy might have been averted. Timing was everything; Harry's godfather, Sirius Black, might even have lived. She didn't want to repeat the mistake.

But the memory of their last encounter in the peripheral hallway made her inwardly cringe. She had felt so self-righteous, convinced Severus had done something, said something to cause her oldest friend to take his own life. But Severus' words forced her to acknowledge her own culpability. She had known the Unbreakable Vow she made Ron take had been nullified by the death of Harry Potter, but she had not taken seriously the idea that Ron might still feel beholden to the Vow by virtue of his mental illness. Perhaps he would not have comprehended if she had released him verbally, but she hadn't even tried.

But Severus understood Ron's sense of integrity better than she herself. Severus had been Ron's most constant visitor when even his own brother Percy had abandoned him. Didn't that mean he should be given a second chance?

Suddenly, Hermione was seized with a blinding desire to see him, look him in the eye again and take a measure of his character. Severus had worked at the Ministry for years; surely he would know if there was a portrait of a former Headmaster in the building. She could ask him about Everard without compromising the task Dumbledore and McGonagall had given her.

More importantly, she was starting to believe she owed Severus an apology. How he reacted to it might tell her all she needed to know.

She went through the contents again, but could find nothing she could link back to the letter. Finally, at Phineas' suggestion, she burned everything that had been in the box. It would not do to stash evidence in a parolee's flat, even tucked within an artifact as well-charmed as this one.

She looked around, and her eyes picked out the two distinctive black-and-brass pieces sitting in plain sight amidst the clutter of tag sale finds she had deliberately amassed to disguise her true mission. She was already treading on thin ice as it was.

Rumors among the support staff at the Ministry turned out to be true: the secretary at the Foreign Minister's office was an odious troll. She had taken one look at Hermione and informed her that His Excellency was not accepting visitors today. All half-formed explanations about consulting with him on future speeches to foreign dignitaries were totally ignored. Hermione left in a huff while the woman calmly went back to her copy of Witch Weekly.

Of course, Hermione knew a sure-fire way into Severus' inner office, but she had wanted to save it as a last resort, considering the danger of discovery. However, desperation finally led her to the Minister for Magic's suite, where she had had free access since she first started.

Relieved to find the inner office empty and Lucius gone for the evening, Hermione activated his Floo and determinedly stepped into the Foreign Minister's office in a flash of green flame.

"Hello," said a querulous voice behind her. "Beg pardon, but who are you?"

She instantly whirled and sent a Stunner in the direction of the voice...or she would have, if her wand had been up to it. The hex flew, but what hit the portrait squarely in the chest...for it was a portrait...looked like green slime. He looked down with a mixture of surprise and hurt.

"I say," he remarked, "that was uncalled for."

"Sorry," she mumbled, aiming a quick Tergeo. At least the wand was capable of getting something right, even if it was just a cleaning spell. Her handiwork revealed a thin, spindly man in a bowler hat. He smoothed the front of his formal robes with immense dignity and fixed her with a gimlet eye.

"I feel compelled to warn you, the Foreign Minister would not be pleased at you poking around his office without express permission."

Hermione pointedly refused to answer and began to prowl the luxuriously-appointed office, stopping at the desk and restlessly rooting through parchments. "Where is the Foreign Minister?" she asked distractedly. "I had hoped to talk with him." She snatched up a piece of parchment and noted the writing did indeed match the sample from the Order's mailbox.

"His Excellency is away on state business. It doesn't concern you. Please come back here," he called as she continued to wander around. "I would rather not involve Security."

Something about the way he said it puzzled her. "Why haven't you called Security already?"

"Because the Foreign Minister would be even less pleased if you got in trouble with the law again, Hermione Granger." She narrowed her eyes and came forward, standing under the portrait. "Yes," he added, "you are well known to me."

"And why is that, Foreign Minister ..." she paused to read the placard mounted to his frame. "Lugubrious?"

He ignored the question. "What brings you here?"

"I've come to ask him ..." A great excitement seized her. Severus was away, but here was a portrait who might direct her. "Well, perhaps you could help me," she amended, assuming her most earnest expression. "I'm looking for someone...someone in a portrait. Back before...well, back in the old days, this portrait used to hang here in the Ministry. Now I've lost track of him, and I'd like to renew our acquaintance."

The portrait looked at her shrewdly. "Oh, yes. The young are so very fond of us moldy old portraits. I can see your enforced separation weighs heavily on you. And just who is this long-lost friend?"

Hermione huffed and crossed her arms. If he didn't believe her lie, she would have to think up another, but she knew better than to just cobble one together on the spur of the moment. Why was she pants at lying to portraits? So much for being a Slytherin at heart. "His name is Aloysius Everard. He was once a headmaster at Hogwarts. I don't even know if he still exists, or if he has been sold off at one of the Ministry auctions. If you know anything..."

"Ah. I know Aloysius quite well." Lugubrious smiled and leaned forward in his frame. "He does indeed still reside here, but after the regime change, he was placed in storage along with most of the other portraits. It demoralized him; he used to continue to visit a body on occasion, but now he mainly sleeps." He brooded. "Portraits have fallen out of favor here at the Ministry. Times change, Miss Granger. Fashions change. And paranoid people dislike eavesdroppers. That's the way of it now."

"If fashions change, then why were you spared?" she asked.

"The Foreign Minister sees fit to maintain the old-fashioned tradition of keeping his predecessor at hand for counsel and for company. It's one of his many quirks, if I may say."

Hermione studied the portrait for a moment. "And are you familiar with his...quirks?"

"I know them all." he said simply. "Now, why are you searching for Everard?"

Hermione bit her lip. "I'm sorry, sir. I can't confide everything to you if you offer counsel to Snape."

His eyes widened. "I'm surprised you feel that way," he remarked. "Severus Snape is a very honourable man, you know." At her stony silence, he pressed, "If one of his friends asked, he would do whatever he could to help, even if he doesn't acknowledge his commitment, even to himself." He regarded her steadily. "Yes, I'm quite surprised with your opinion of him, given what I know of his feelings for you. He would work tirelessly for you, if you asked him. Helping people is the only thing that truly occupies his time and energy any more."

To test the waters, she decided to play Devil's advocate. "I can't believe Death Eaters need all that much help these days," she remarked.

"Death Eaters?" Lugubrious tsked at her. "Severus Snape is no friend to the Death Eaters. He has no friends left at all, except those he worked alongside and protected from the Dark Lord before the war. Though they lost, he still takes great pains to see that they have a fighting chance to survive. I know he helped a few to escape by boat from Ireland a few months ago. A family of three named Lupin...a couple and a little boy."

Hermione sagged down into a chair. Now she knew which Order members were referred to in the letter...Remus and his wife and son, Tonks and Teddy. They were alive, and they had escaped with Severus' help.

The whole story came together. Severus must have taken them to Ireland, or met them there, to see that they got away safely and to cover their tracks. He happened to see the RCMC ranger, Tankersley, release the owl that carried a warning about an unauthorized boat launch. Severus probably used Legilimency on him, and certainly an Obliviate, then hastened to the Ministry to get hold of the report before it could be read. And in consummate Severus Snape fashion, he altered the report slightly rather than destroy it, in case it would be missed.

"Why did they travel by boat?" she asked at last. "That seems so dangerous. Why not create a Portkey?"

"Any means would have been dangerous, but it was for their security. Severus Snape was the only one capable of creating a Portkey, but he would have to have keyed it to a destination, and he didn't want the Lupins to tell him where they were heading. Not yet. Not until he was free to leave Great Britain himself and join them."

"That's another thing. He went to such great lengths to help the Lupins," she mused, "yet he chose to remain behind. Why didn't he go with them?"

"Can you not think why?" he asked gently. When she shook her head, he regarded her with a mixture of exasperation and sympathy. "I should think it obvious. He stayed because of you."

"Me?" Her heart seemed to stammer in her chest. When she spoke, her voice was barely a whisper. "What...why?"

"Because you were still in prison, Miss Granger. Ever since your trial, Severus Snape has been petitioning to have you released from Azkaban. You and your friends, Arthur Weasley and Neville Longbottom."

"I don't believe it," she told him flatly.

"Do you not know him at all?" he replied. Hermione was forcibly reminded of Phineas Black uttering nearly the same words to her. "I have shared this office with him for two years, Miss Granger," continued Lugubrious. "I know everything he has done since the war. The Dark Lord has no interest in diplomacy; assigning Severus to the Foreign Ministry was merely a device to keep him under the Minister's command. Severus has had no heart for his ostensible job. He put his whole heart into your safety. When he learned you were paroled by the Minister, and he got word his other two friends had moved beyond the Veil, he burned all his petitions here at this fire..."

Hermione felt herself near tears. "I knew someone had been petitioning on my behalf, but I was never told who."

"He was never successful, but at least he managed to transfer the Lestrange brothers so they could no longer molest you."

It felt as though a lock she placed on her heart the day she was taken to Azkaban had finally broken. All the emotions she had so carefully squirrelled away to protect herself came spilling out. A Pandora's box of feelings: loss and regret and shame and guilt, fear and acceptance and hope and desire...all fluttered out so quickly that she could not rein them in. She wanted to believe in Severus, wanted, needed to believe that he was good, and that he had truly cared for her. Tears threatened as her heart beat its insistent tattoo: believe, believe, believe...

Lugubrious' voice was gentle, almost fatherly. "For two years, I've watched him live on little more than the hope that he could pull any string, call in any favour, to get you released from Azkaban. He cares so deeply for you, my dear. More than you know; more than he could ever articulate," said Lugubrious kindly. "He loves you, Hermione."

His gentle declaration destroyed the last of her uncertainty, and she burst into tears. The portrait pretended to be keenly interested in the office chandelier while Hermione sat and sobbed helplessly. She fumbled for a handkerchief but came up empty, finally resorting to dabbing her face with paper napkins she found inside a sideboard.

Finally, with a sigh, she straightened and looked up again. "Better?" he asked, his smile kind and understanding. "Good, now, I believe we were looking for old Everard, now, weren't we?"

"Yes, sir," she said, sniffing.

"Fine, fine," he answered airily. "Now blow your nose and pay attention, dear." He gave her directions to a storage cupboard near the Floo Room. "All the old portraits were relocated there shortly after the Dark Lord's victory and subsequent restructuring of the Ministry."

Hermione smiled at his carefully-worded phrasing. A politician right down to his pigments.

"Thank you, Your Excellency," Hermione said, liking the portrait. She considered all of her conversations with Phineas. The thought that Severus, like her, wasn't completely alone, was a comfort.

As Hermione turned toward the fireplace to leave, Lugubrious added, "When you manage to wake up Everard, please convey my compliments and ask him to visit soon. I miss the old codger," he added wistfully.

"I'll remember." She managed a watery smile. "But won't Severus be furious with you for breaking his confidence?"

Lugubrious shrugged. "He won't if he never hears of it."

She gave a shaky laugh. "You must have been in Slytherin."

"Ravenclaw, actually." He favored her with a thin little smile. "We have a certain romantic streak that comes out at times like these."

Hermione smiled and waved one last time. She activated the Floo and walked into the Minister's office...straight into the arms of Lucius Malfoy.