Part One

Part One

Five Months Later

The thin-faced gentleman scowled at the display case, squinting a little as he sketched out the design on the miniature portrait. Hand-copying the tiny swirls and scribbles was tedious...and more than tedious...but the magic embedded in the picture of the Fifth Marquess of Candlebury was such that a camera, either Muggle or magical, would be unable to capture the information he required. The weak-chinned ninny had been fool enough to store information about a purifying potion within the details of the portraits of himself and his siblings...all eight of them. And after their declining fortunes...and magic...had taken their toll, the miniatures had been scattered to the four winds. Severus had so far located six in places as varied as a minor bedroom in Cardiff Castle, a pub in the Orkneys, and here, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. He'd been able to purchase the one in the pub and the one in the little junk shop in Dover, but he'd spent far too much time staring at the other overfed, self-satisfied faces and committing the travesty of once more producing their likenesses. He had already begun to have nightmares of being chased by large, shrill women with little, yapping dogs and teaching potions to their equally bloated, buffle-brained brothers. How on earth could such a dolt have discovered such a potentially powerful potion, and how could he have then been allowed to essentially lose it?

If he didn't need those portraits and their secrets, he'd burn the lot. And then he would find Candlebury House and burn it for good measure.

His pocket watch, a guilt gift from Minerva, trilled a series of crystalline chimes that stopped only when he pulled it out and drew an arcane symbol on its face. Three o' clock. Tea time. Severus rose, packed his materials, and followed his feet down the stairs and around to the museum's tea rooms. It was a weekday during the bleak winter months, so after fetching a pot and his preferred pastries, Severus was able to tuck himself into 'his' corner of one of the overly ornate Victorian rooms without having to even lift an eyebrow to remove an inconvenient body from his path. With a smile that his erstwhile students would have described as 'horrifying,' Severus set himself to preparing his scones precisely as he liked them (a thin layer of jam, then slathered with an appalling amount of clotted cream that required several additional filched packets) while he mentally calculated the time it would take for his tea to be brewed within a millisecond of bitterness.

With a resigned sigh, he dug into his satchel for the reason he was required to take a tea break: the inhibiting potion that retarded the movement of residual venom further into his bloodstream. Several factors, including the time it had taken before someone realised he was still alive, had pushed his systems beyond the capabilities of the antivenin that had been the salvation of Arthur Weasley. While the antivenin had, in fact, saved his life, it could not purge his body entirely, and Severus was now forced to take the inhibitor three times a day to make sure that the venom that remained did not reach his heart. Which, he often reflected sourly, was a situation rife with black humour, if he could only appreciate it. Another sigh and he downed the contents of the small vial with the smoothness of a barfly imbibing his third shot.

Snape stiffened, not from the potion, but from the glimpse he'd had as his head swung forward again, a glimpse of a very familiar head of hair. Damn it, was the girl looking for him? Had she found him? What did she want?

A mental slap and he calmed. He couldn't even be certain that it was Granger he had seen in that split second of the woman's passage across the room's entrance. And if it had been her, what of it? It wasn't unthinkable for that know-it-all to visit a museum, of all places, purely for her own pleasure. And if she was looking for him? She wasn't one of those who would be baying for his blood, and whatever her purpose, she'd disclose it in short order.

He was no longer a spy. He was no longer at war.

He returned his attention to his tea.

He was just a man having his tea in the company of a favourite novel.

•••••

Snape often chose, now, to travel by more mundane means. The pleasure he had taken in flight had soured with the events of the night he did not care to think about. The Floo, of course, only worked between specific points, and Apparition often made him physically ill since it somehow meddled with the delicate balance between his system and the venom that threatened it. Instead, he discovered that he actually enjoyed walking; after a month of near paralysis, he very much appreciated the ability to move his body freely. And there was, oddly, a certain pleasure even in being jostled about by the mobs of people trying to funnel into a single Tube station; it was extraordinary for him to be surrounded by them and know that not a single one of them hated him and/or wanted to kill him. Their complete indifference...acceptance, in a way...was practically soothing.

As he strode down the dingy tunnel, swept along by the human currents, his ear picked out the music of a busker in her tiny allotment of space: If I were the West Wind, I'd blow my way homeward... Appropriate, he thought casually, and well played. A practiced guitarist and more than passable singer. The music faded with distance and was overwhelmed by the ambient noise of innumerable conversations, and Severus thought no more about it, except to remember his own instrument sitting idle in its case. Long fingers lightly pressed the scarf wound around his neck. Perhaps he could now. Perhaps he should.

•••••

"I'm home." Hermione put up her guitar in its corner and banished her various accoutrements to their precise places. Crookshanks, lolling about in front of the fire, merely turned his head and gave a yawning sort of mmrow.

"In the lab, Mione!" came the call from behind a closed door, and the young woman nodded to herself before unwarding and opening the door to her own room. It was nearing time for projects to be due and exams were right after, so it was no wonder Adelheid had barricaded herself in her laboratory; Hermione herself was reading Runes, Arithmancy, and Creatures and had quite a bit of work to finish.

Or rather, since this is Hermione we are speaking of, most of it was finished and merely required those final revisions to be certain they included everything she wanted to include in them.

Did her tutors know how frustrating it was to have limits to the size of her projects?

Hermione supposed she should be grateful on some level; those limits essentially forced her to have free time, and free time allowed her to play. She flexed fingers that were rather cold and definitely tired from hours of playing for London Muggles. Today's haul had been reasonable, though it wasn't nearly what she had earned during the short trial she'd made in July, when the tourists had tossed in the majority of the coins in her case. November was too cold and grey for all but the die-hard tourists...not that she blamed them...and it was a little too early for Christmas shopping traffic.

Hermione filled the small kettle that hung from its iron hook and swung the old-fashioned contraption closer to the fire to boil. Some good tea would be lovely right now, and Hermione was sure Addie would appreciate it, too; it helped pry the other girl from her work in time to get some decent sleep. And now that she thought about it, Addie'd be sure to have some of those lovely buttery biscuits in her cupboard, which would go nicely with the jasmine tea Hermione was planning on using.

Once the tea was made, it was fairly easy to pop Addie out of her cauldron-composed shell and persuade her to break out the biscuits. The Swiss girl hadn't had a proper dinner and was more than ready to take a break.

"I know it's only our first year," she sighed in perfect English with the heavy accent that was a hallmark of the translation spell she used, "and we've been warned to take it easy, but..."

"But it's our first year," Hermione concluded. "I know what you mean."

The girl mock-glared, thick black brows beetling over incredible blue eyes. "And you, English witch, you spend half your time playing in the streets and still do better than I. You, I despise with every fibre of my being."

Hermione shrugged uneasily at the banter, and her fingers played unconsciously over her forearm. "War puts things in perspective," she murmured. "Changes priorities."

"Just as well," Adelheid said robustly...and with more perspicacity than she was often given credit for. "If you were still by the book, you would still be at Hogwarts this year, pretending you didn't know more than everyone there, and I would have a roommate who would leave their lace underthings on a line in front of the fire, pester me to grow my hair, and throw out the experiments I have in the bathroom.

"As it is, here we both are at Oxford, free to pursue our own fields, and getting along rather well, I think." Adelheid paused and grinned. "Even your cat likes me." Hermione chuckled, as she was meant to, while Crooks grumbled in the back of his throat at uppity young witches. "Anyway, if you must know why I work so hard now, it is because of the rumour."

"Rumour?" Hermione, in fact, didn't spend much time in Oxford proper; she didn't see the attraction of 'student life' and preferred to either visit with her friends or play her guitar when she had free time. Besides, the majority of her seniors had spent the war years tucked safely away in the arms of academia, and Hermione had very little patience for them and their points of view.

And so it surprised Adelheid only a little that her friend hadn't heard. "There is a rumour that your Professor Snape intends on taking an apprentice. Maybe two."

Hermione's jaw dropped. "Professor Snape is taking an apprentice? Here? " she squeaked. "But he doesn't teach anymore! He doesn't need to teach! He can barely stand the human race as it is!"

"It's only a rumour," Adelheid temporized, "but he's been seen talking to the deans of both Terranmore and Avalon. And so the whole lot of us are all trying to outdo the others to put us in the running. Just in case it turns out to be true."

"I just can't..." Hermione slumped back in her chair, still trying to process the idea. "I honestly can't see why he would take an apprentice," she said finally. "He might go into business, I guess...though he's got more than enough money by all accounts...but he wouldn't start off needing an apprentice. And it'd be a big deal for him to trust anyone with even chopping the lettuce for a sandwich!"

Addie shrugged. "Whatever the truth may be, I should very much like to impress him if I can. Do you have any advice for me, Hermione? I have never even met him, let alone taken one of his classes like the rest of my department has."

Hermione laughed. "Consider yourself lucky," she chuckled. "He was an absolute beast in class, though of course, he is brilliant at potions." The young woman paused, turning thoughtful, allowing herself to remember. "Professor Snape has always been a... a hard man. Hard to know, hard to please. Prickly as a hedgehog with steel-tipped spines and justifiably so." Which was as much as she would say about the knowledge she'd acquired of his past. "From what I've seen of him, I think he's... relaxed a bit since the war, but I wouldn't think he'd relax his standards any. I guess if I were you, Addie, I'd make sure all of my basic skills were perfect: chopping, stirring, timing, and so on. You have the flair already, and if he's looking for someone, he'll want someone to whom he doesn't have to teach remedial skills...in his estimation, anyway."

Tilting her head to one side, Addie watched her roommate shrewdly. "Will you be doing the same, in spite of your chosen fields?"

Hermione grinned. "Oh, I'd love to show him up one day, I really would. But I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be able to earn that apprenticeship even if I wanted to. I'm good at potions, and I could polish those skills enough to satisfy him, but I don't have the feel for it that you do, or the passion, either. To use a parallel example, I make a good home cook, but he's a master chef, and you're on the way to that. My strengths lie elsewhere."

"Well, then, I shall rest easy and not plot to kill you in your sleep," Addie laughed. "I'll start practicing; perhaps Ludwald's spectrum of pain potions would do. They're not demanding, but greater precision can enhance their potency ten times or more. It makes the brewer's skill very obvious. And then I can try applying Antonio the Fat's scale of alterations..."

Hermione threw a biscuit at the girl. "Oh, just go to bed, Addie. Don't sit here and bore me to sleep with your potions twaddle."

The two bantered a bit longer and shared some more of the day's gossip before Adelheid went to sleep. Hermione remained at the fire, brooding a bit about Professor Snape and wondering what he'd been up to since she had last seen him in hospital. He'd had all of those spines out and the temper of a wounded boar besides...which hadn't improved when she'd confessed how much she now knew about him. She'd felt he deserved to know. She'd offered to give him her memories as an evener, which had left him aghast. He'd told her just to promise him never to speak of them again to anyone and to get out. She'd done both, a little bemused that he would take her word without requiring a wand oath or something similar. (After which, she'd gone and researched all the forms of magical oaths she could find and then been rather appalled at their sinister nature. Apparently, no one expected a witch or wizard to have any sort of integrity at all.)

Professor Snape had recuperated, as it happened, much faster than anyone would have imagined, given the condition he had been in to begin with, and had reappeared at Hogwarts with his metaphorical sleeves rolled up, insisting on being allowed to do much of the repair work himself. As Hermione had been helping Professor Flitwick with certain charms, she'd had the opportunity to witness astonishing displays of magical power as he pieced together the damage both physical and magical; she had never truly appreciated how powerful a wizard he actually was beyond the specialties he had displayed, and this power had been bolstered, Flitwick had informed her, by the unique relationship between the headmaster and the school. Hermione had been a little sorry to hear that once Hogwarts was back in order, Professor Snape had tendered his resignation. For the best, perhaps, but what a team he and the school would have made! Hermione had a sneaking suspicion that he would have been even more formidable than Professor Dumbledore.

She'd seen little of him thereafter, being busy herself with taking her NEWTs as an equivalency for her final missed year and preparing for Oxford, while he... while he did whatever it was he was doing. There had been a great deal of interest, but very little gossip to be credited. All she could say was that he had looked well enough at the formal ceremony investing all of them with the medals and honours the Ministry had deemed appropriate.

Well, she'd finished off the contents of the teapot. It was time to read a little and go to bed. There was a lecture on Runes tomorrow, followed by an Arithmancy exam. She'd have to be at her best.

•••••

Severus placed the last of his clothing in the wardrobe with a sigh, grateful that the task was done and he could begin to familiarise himself with his new accommodations. The first order of business was, of course, the thrice-bedamned pain potion he had to apply to his neck and the nerve potion he had to soak his feet in; both his neck and his toes had ached abominably for the last two hours, but he had been too damn stubborn for his own good and determined on waiting until he had finished unpacking. Now, however, he could admit that he needed them badly. Sinking into his faithful old armchair, Severus summoned the silver cauldron and the bottle and the vial, pouring the one into the cauldron where he placed his feet and smearing the other over his neck. Another sigh, this one of relief, and he burrowed in further, relishing the familiar smell of wood, plaster, old leather and books.

The offer from the deans of Oxford's two magical colleges had been a welcome one. Though immersed in the Candlebury project, Snape had otherwise found himself at liberty for the first time in decades...if ever...and at a loss as to what to do. There were some choices that were obvious: he'd tied up the loose ends at Hogwarts, spent a minimum amount of time coercing Potter into reasonable secrecy, and sold the Spinner's End house to a company that planned to demolish the entire area. (What they did with it afterwards was something he only cared enough about to wish that they would turn it into a nuclear power plant or industrial waste dump.) But after that? He'd felt little attraction to any of the possibilities that presented themselves until old Ferride...the cantankerous old bastard someone had been idiot enough to make dean of old Terranmore College...had offered him a post that involved a little lecturing, less remuneration, adequate lab space, and rooms in the newest College tower. Ferride had even had the balls to present it as some sort of grand favour even though they both knew how valuable Snape's notoriety would be to the Colleges, especially as they had been losing students to the equally prestigious...and until recently, much safer...colleges at the Sorbonne, Heidelberg, and Vatican City. Snape hadn't quibbled over the terms, as they included what he considered important, but in the course of negotiations, he'd made it very clear in a Slytherin sort of way that Ferride and Morwich, his Avalon counterpart, owed him some pretty big favours. It was a sign of Ferride's desperation, Snape knew, that he hadn't quibbled too hard over those terms, either.

And so here he was, ensconced...for near future, anyway...in Brummel Tower with a pleasingly large set of rooms, a house elf assigned to his personal use, and the prospect of work that would be minimal and involve minimal interaction with those creatures known as students, most of whom he'd known and loathed but a few years earlier. He didn't imagine that time would have improved them any.

When his toes had stopped feeling as though they'd been wrapped in electric eels, Severus removed his feet from the cauldron and rose, moving to the corner of his library that he'd reserved for his music. A beautiful wooden stand held his music, the score for Saint-Saëns's 'Danse Macabre' currently atop. After some consideration, he decided to start off with something a little lighter. Severus lifted his violin to his shoulder and began to play 'Une Nimphe Jolie.'

•••••

Skirting around the edges of Terranmore's campus after one of the Runes teacher's more tedious lectures, Hermione paused to hear music drifting down from above. Not one she recognised, but it sounded pretty and light. With a smile of pleasure, she continued on her way back to Avalon's Arithmancy labs.

•••••

It was the week before Christmas, and all hell was breaking loose as lazy students of magic hurried, scurried, and worried to make up for lost time and learn in the course of a day or two things they should have learned over the past several months. The teachers were on high alert, trying in their turn to make sure that none of the cramming led to... accidents either visible or fatal. It was a tiresome hazard, Snape noted as he observed the hullabaloo, to have a Muggle university built cheek by jowl with the magical one. Somebody, somewhere along the line, had bungled rather badly on that score. But that wasn't really a problem he had to deal with (not in his contract) and so he ignored the annoying creature called a 'student body' and, seeing as his lecture series wouldn't begin until the following term, pursued his own ends.

...which took him back into Town. By an extraordinary stroke of good fortune (so extraordinary that Snape was inclined to view it with a suspicion usually reserved for his former Death Eater colleagues), yet another of that brain-dead Puffskein's family portraits was also held by the V&A; it was displayed in one of the rooms that was tricked out as a period bedroom or drawing room or whatever. He didn't care what it was, he only wanted to get in and out as quickly as was wizardly possible. To that end, he had set up a Floo inside a disused, formerly useful, something-to-do-with-maintenance chamber that contained an accommodating furnace within South Kensington Station and slipped out to join the masses currently involved in shuttling themselves from one place to another. As he walked the lengths of platforms and tunnels, he underwent a barrage of holiday carols played in any number of styles by wildly varying talents. Gritting his teeth, Snape tried to pretend he was deaf while being assaulted with some sort of atrocious noise produced by a young man in a loud combination of red, yellow, and green knitwear, and he devoutly wished he could still hex Muggles without courting official displeasure and that little, niggling voice of conscience. Damned if he knew why...and where...he'd developed such an annoying trait.

Though the museum had begun accumulating the holiday crowds, the comparative silence was heavenly. Once again, Snape settled in with pencil and sketch board (and glasses) and began to copy yet another damned portrait.

•••••

Closing time forced Severus back out amidst the teeming hordes, and scowling, he made his way through the crowd. A song that wasn't a carol caught his ear as he passed: a sweet voice bidding her family a bittersweet farewell, then jaunting into a boy bemoaning the loss of his girl to a man who was 'chronologically gifted and bony.' An apt description of himself, Severus thought wryly, but an unlikely situation. Some minutes later, with the ease of practice, Snape slipped out of the stream of people and into his chosen maintenance room, and he was about to Floo when the door flung itself open and a human cannonball hurtled into him. An involuntary grunt of pain escaped him; some sort of hard object had made a beeline for his solar plexus. Instinctively, he clutched at the person, trying his best to immobilize him or her, and wandless magic clanged the door shut once again. Her, his mind sorted out after a moment's analysis, and a fraction of a second later, it sorted out the scents of India ink, tea tree and rosemary shampoo, and parchment along with the hair that was rampantly apparent even in the minimal light leaking through the cracks around the poorly fitted door. "Granger," he hissed, "what the hell are you doing here?"

She stopped struggling immediately. "Professor Snape?" The shock relaxed him slightly and he loosed her; she hadn't had the least idea he was around, so nothing about her presence directly involved him. She giggled, and he scowled. He'd never thought of her as a giggly sort of female. "I'm hiding," she confided in a stage-whisper. Immediately...almost subconsciously...his wand slipped into his hand.

She saw or sensed it, and hissed in turn, "Put it away; it's not that kind of problem! I'm only trying to avoid the Muggle police."

"Oh, for... Granger, what in the name of all that's holy have you done now?" Snape caught himself somewhere between a scowl and a smirk, which would have made for a terribly odd expression if she could see it. "And why, precisely, would the Angel of Gryffindor be on the run from the police? Would there be a reward if I turned you in?"

Hermione bristled. "What have I done now? What do you mean, what have I done now? I never..."

Snape interrupted her incipient tirade with the simulation of an angry cat's mrow. "Ring any bells, Miss Puss?" he asked dryly.

An aggravated groan escaped her as her face retreated behind her hand. "I was just a kid, and I got the wrong hair! And it's not as if I did it for fun. And before you bring up anything else, Headmaster Snape, I'd like to remind you that I never did any of it for fun."

He scowled at the reminder, not of her deeds, but of the appalling mess that constituted his time as Headmaster. While he'd had no ambitions to the job in the general way...Merlin knew he hated children...he knew he'd go down in the history books as one of the worst wizards to ever hold the position, never mind that he'd been trying desperately to keep the metaphorical sand castle from dissolving under the onslaught of the tide. Severus wanted to be able to point to his tenure with pride...rather than with the feeling of everything slipping uselessly through his fingers. Something very like jealously washed through his thoughts; no one would ever write up her war record with feelings of loathing or implications of ambivalence.

The silence had grown large enough to be uncomfortable, and he didn't see any need to hang about and listen to it...or to her when she finally broke it. He broke it himself, instead, with the crackling and whoosh of Floo flames.

Her annoyance gone and feeling rather deflated, Hermione Apparated.

•••••

Addie upbraided her roundly when Hermione told her of the exchange, chastising her roommate for neglecting to pump the Potions Master for information of what...or even if...he was looking for in a potions assistant. "You didn't even find out what he was doing there!"

"For your information, I was just a little preoccupied at the time..." and here Hermione was brought up short. "That's right; what the hell was he doing there? Why would Severus Snape be in a maintenance closet in the South Kensington Tube station?"

At this, Adelheid threw up her hands and made several exclamations that her spell failed...or refused...to translate.

•••••

The question plagued Hermione for the next several days, all the more since she had already finished all of her term papers and projects and exams and was free to return to her busking pitch at will. She found herself searching the faces of commuters, and her mind wandered while she played. It didn't help that she hadn't explained herself properly, nor that when she rewound the exchange in her mind, she realised that he could have interpreted her words as an implicit reproach. And given what she knew of him, he probably had, though she had intended no such slur. But he would probably never believe that she had too much respect for him to ever imply that he was anything less than what he was...indeed, that she probably thought him far better than he truly was.

With a sigh, Hermione cast a wordless stinging hex at a grubby teenager who was trying to dip his fingers into her guitar case and decided she'd pack it in for an hour or two at least. It was the Friday just before Christmas, and she'd had enough of the Christmas spirit, which seemed to consist of equal parts of generosity and bastardry. For every person who stopped and smiled and dropped a coin in her case, there seemed to be another who wanted to steal it or make obscene suggestions or disparage her ability at the top of their lungs. Sometimes it was enough to make her thoroughly understand why Professor Snape loathed people from the very core of his being.

After a moment's thought, Hermione decided on going up to the museum for a bit of tea and cake. They were open late on Fridays, and there was nothing like being surrounded by a concentration of knowledge and culture. Besides, people in a museum were a little less mad than they were anywhere else in the city. Or at least she could pretend they were.

Wait, was that...? No. Hermione shook her head to try to clear the thoughts that were obviously becoming a trifle obsessive. Professor Snape had been somewhat near her pitch once. She had to stop thinking she saw him every time a man dressed in black crossed her path. She should start thinking instead about how she was going to spend the holiday. And about what kind of tea she wanted today. And whether she wanted carrot cake or a scone or something decadently chocolate.

•••••

His hands spasmed shut, his fingernails bit deeply into his palm, and Snape wondered distantly if they'd draw blood this time. He was almost grateful for the pain, for it was a mild distraction against the needle-laden fire that seared through his neck, down his arms, and across his collarbone. Under his clothes, the venom blackened his veins, showing through his thin skin in dark, ugly rivulets. He tried to block the memories of the sight, and of the first time he'd seen it. Snape's upper body contracted both in pain and in self-loathing; he pressed his fists hard against the bony ridges of his cheeks. Damn him for forgetting to take that bloody potion on time. Damn the fact that he needed it. Damn...

"Professor Snape, are you all right?"

Of course I'm not all right, you stupid bint.

"Is there anything I can do to help?"

Not unless you can stop the fucking universe from fucking me over every time I fucking blink.

"Please, sir, at least let me know you can hear me!"

No. Now, just stop pretending you give a rat's ass.

"Professor?" There was an undertone of hysteria in her voice...not that he could hear it, but a smallish set of hands was pulling his fists away from his face. What his face looked like, he didn't know, nor did he particularly care, though it was undoubtedly unpleasant. Two more eternal seconds and the inhibitor finally kicked in, forcing the venom back into the concentrated nodule it occupied when it wasn't actively capable of killing him. Something must have changed in his face or posture, for she relaxed slightly. "Are you all right?" she repeated.

Untrusting of his voice, Snape reached up to pluck out the quill he knew she would have in her hair before she could shy away and pulled over a paper napkin. Well enough, he wrote, and added, knowing she wouldn't leave it alone, I was late taking a potion. He could see the comprehension and compassion flow over her face and detested it. I do not require an aspiring Florence Nightingale. Leave. He expected her to protest...she'd always been absurdly sensitive as a child...and was surprised when she smiled impishly at him.

"I haven't had my tea yet," she informed him, "and I'm not about to wander out into the wilderness that is London in the Christmas season without it. I'll leave you alone if you like, but I'm not leaving." Snape scowled horribly, but the girl simply gave his left hand a squeeze...he hadn't realised she was still holding it...and rose, slipping through the tables as she went after her own sustenance.

•••••

Facing away from him, Hermione felt safe in allowing her worry to speak plainly in her expression. Professor Snape had been...possibly still was...in pain, and she could think of no hex, jinx, poison, or otherwise that would require regular potion doses. But face it, Hermione, even your knowledge is not encyclopaedic. There's a reason you carried Manus's Handy Handbook of Magical Damage and Repair while you were traipsing around the forest. And all of the years he'd spent being bullied, being Dark, being a spy... He'd probably been subject to more nasty magic than a mouse in a witch's kitchen; it wasn't unthinkable that he suffered from something she couldn't even conceive of. And it sounded like he had it under control, or at least as much as it could be under control. Hermione could imagine Professor Snape refusing to go to St. Mungo's for help, but she couldn't see him not finding out as much as he needed to know to keep himself alive and as able as possible.

He was too damn stubborn and ornery to be suicidal, or even to sink gracefully into the grave. He'd stay alive even if it was just to give the rest of the world the two-fingered salute.

Still... she didn't like the thought of him in pain. He didn't deserve it.

Absently, Hermione ordered Russian Caravan and chocolate cake...the gods knew she needed bracing...and tray in hand, debated on where she should sit. To sit in the same room as he would probably be taken as an intrusion, and she didn't want to intrude. On the other hand, to sit in the larger room with its columns and windows would prevent her from keeping an eye on him. And the halls with their grey stools were just... out. Perhaps she could sneak into a seat just inside...

"Granger, stop maundering and get your bloody arse over here and sit down." The command was given in a sharp, gritty voice, and Hermione found herself following it before she could think better of the idea. Old habits died hard. "Presuming you haven't changed, I am aware of your obligation," he sneered the word, "to mother hen anything that looks to be in the remotest amount of distress. As I cannot obliviate you into forgetting all about this, I should rather you stare at me openly than be forced to endure your puerile attempts at surveillance."

Hermione sat, and apologised awkwardly. Equally awkward was pouring her tea under his gimlet eye and beginning to eat her cake. She didn't say anything; she couldn't think of anything other than questions, and she was mortally certain he wouldn't answer them.

"You did not answer my question."

"What?" Hermione stared; had she been wool-gathering to the extent that she hadn't heard him ask? She thought she'd been too self-conscious to be oblivious.

"The last time we... met," he said, steepling his fingers, "you said you were avoiding the Muggle police. I asked you why. You never answered."

To her surprise and annoyance, Hermione could feel herself blush. "Oh. Well. It's nothing much," she prevaricated, suddenly feeling very sensitive. He'd make fun, she knew he would, and while she enjoyed it, she was not so confident in her musical skill that she cared to have it mocked.

He sighed. "Spit it out, Miss Granger. If I must have company, I would prefer it to be uncomfortably verbal than uncomfortably silent."

"I busk," she blurted out. "In the tunnel between stations. It's not precisely legal."

He blinked, the only sign of any surprise. "You busk," he repeated. "You are one of those grubby students who cluster in the Underground and whine out music. And it's 'not precisely legal.'"

"I do not whine," Hermione bristled. "And I'm not grubby. And a lot of people enjoy it, and bugger the legalities."

Then came a sound that could only be described as a hoot of laughter, as rusty-throated as it might be. "Cheers, little cat," Professor Snape said, lifting his teacup in a salute, "you've grown a claw or two."

She glared at him narrowly until her brain kicked in. "You're trying to distract me," she accused him. "To keep me from asking the questions you don't want me to ask."

An eyebrow lifted, visible above his teacup.

"I wasn't going to ask anyway," she informed him tartly. "I wanted to, but I wasn't going to. It was fairly obvious you didn't want to talk about it."

"Indeed." Snape set his cup down. "But you were still prepared to spy on me."

"Keep an eye on you," she corrected. "Just 'til I was certain you were all right."

"You only wanted me off your conscience."

"Is there something wrong with that?"

"I'm not a charity case. And you wouldn't have a clue on how to help if something went pear-shaped."

"You're not a charity case; it'd take a hell of a lot more than charity to deal with you. And at least someone would be here who had some idea of what the hell might be wrong with you."

Snape snorted. "Bollocks," he said rudely. "You can't tell me you didn't run through everything that might possibly be wrong with me, nor can you tell me you came up with anything near the correct answer."

"And you can't tell me that there's anybody else who can. When it comes down to it, I'm probably one of the only two people on this planet who has a fair idea of what you've been through." His face turned a mottled red, and the small part of Hermione that was neither ashamed nor alarmed found herself fascinated by the sheer size of his flared nostrils. (How did anyone end up with a nose that size??) But shame soon superseded any other emotion. "I'm sorry, sir," she said in a small voice. "I shouldn't have brought it up, even obliquely."

He stared, then sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Just go, Miss Granger."

She shook her head stubbornly. "No. Not until I see you safely back to Oxford."

That snapped his focus back to her. "How do you know..."

"...where you live?" she finished. "Sir, my roommate is reading Potions. The whole department is obsessed with speculation on your role in the upcoming term. They're convinced you'll want an apprentice." An incredulous sound escaped him. "They're going mad trying to anticipate what you'll want; you can't deny that having you for a Master would be a feather in any student's cap." This time it was derisive amusement. "If they survived the experience, that is," Hermione added.

"And are you considering nominating yourself for the position, Miss Granger?"

She shook her head. "I've enough to do already, and I'd like to get through university without accumulating any more scars, thank you. If there is a position, my roommate wanted me to mention her name to you, for what good it will do. But you're leading me away from the topic at hand again, Professor Snape. You're not well, and while I won't pry, I'm not leaving you here where there's no help to be had if something happens again."

"Miss Granger..."

"No. You can rant at me, you can insult me, you can... well, you can probably hex me out of your way, but otherwise, I'm not leaving you alone."

"For fuck's sake, Granger..."

"Bad language won't drive me off, either."

He glared at her. "Has anyone ever compared you to an anaconda, Granger?" he asked sourly.

"Not yet, but since it's coming from a Slytherin, I'll take it as a compliment."

•••••

For the next half-hour, Snape sniped and snarked and jibed, but he could not shake the girl off. Indeed, she held her own, though she was far too nice to give as good as she got. In between pot shots, he discovered that she played the guitar and sang, and he had a sneaking suspicion (which he certainly did not mention) that hers was the voice he had noticed on his previous sojourns. It was disconcerting to entertain the notion that this witch, of all people, had managed to touch him on any level of his psyche.

"Why not find a proper job," he asked, "if you're in such dire need of funds? Surely your ego would encourage you to apply for an apprenticeship with one of the Colleges' teachers. You don't have to keep fleeing the long arm of the law, unless you've simply gotten into the habit of it."

"I enjoy it. It makes me happy. I make other people happy. It's simple and straightforward and I don't have to think of anything except how I feel and the song I can use to express that. Haven't you ever enjoyed not thinking?"

"Certainly," he replied. " I call it 'Dreamless Sleep.'"

She gave him a glare.

•••••

They fetched her guitar and both their cloaks from the cloakroom. He paused to shrink his drawing case into a size that could slip into an inner pocket; apparently, that wasn't an option with her instrument. He'd never considered it before, but she informed him that shrinking spells had a deleterious effect upon the resonance of the wood. Something about the rearranging of the 'molly cools' and their bonds. (His father had given him a bone-deep distaste for most things Muggle, including chemistry, never mind the similarities to his own field. In fact, one reason he'd taken up Potions was to thumb his nose at dear old Dad, who'd cherished dreams of Sonny Boy becoming a research chemist for one of those big pharmaceutical companies and bringing in the money to support him in comfort as a reward, apparently, for treating the boy like shite during his formative years. If he didn't have such a passionate instinct for Potions, the choice would, in retrospect, have been rather pathetic in allowing his hatred for his father to dictate his entire life's work. And the same could be said for his violin, which his father had sneered at with all the fervour of his workingman's soul.)

She left him, finally, in Terranmore's quadrangle, professing an ignorance of the precise location of his rooms, for which he thanked whatever gods were listening. The current situation was bad enough without her haunting his doorstep. Snape vanished into one of the many doorways that did not lead directly to his tower, knowing full well how to navigate the labyrinth of corridors to Brummel and his set of rooms.

He did not see her circle around the exterior of the campus, and never realised that her timing would place her under his windows at the moment he began to play. Nor did he know that she closed her eyes and leaned against the tower blocks to listen to his rendition of 'Mordred's Lullaby' and 'The Mist-Covered Mountains.'

I love the V&A. (Seriously, I once spent an entire day there, only leaving because I wanted to buy teas before I had to fly home the next day. And, you know, eat dinner.) While my favourite is the tapestry room, I've stuck Snape in the small, dimly lit miniatures room this time around. And the tea rooms, which include the original Victorian effusions as well as plainer, more modern sections.

Busking: I had to research this a bit, and based it on what I remember of earlier trips to the V&A and South Kensington. This was some years ago, but I recall more people than there are now, particularly in the tunnel that connects the station to various museums, etc. Apparently, this is due to a law change; buskers now have specific pitches for which they apply to London transit whereas earlier it was universally frowned on but popular anyway.

Brummel Tower is named after Beau Brummel, basically because I could.

Music credits:

"If I Were the West Wind" (Raven)

Saint-Saëns - "Danse Macabre" (Royal Stockholm)

Jehan Planson - "Une Nimphe Jolie" (Baltimore Consort)

Raven - "Chronologically Gifted and Bony"

Heather Dale - "Mordred's Lullaby"

"Chi Mi Na Morbheanna" (MacTalla Mór)

I'm making up a playlist on youtube of the versions I listen to, if they're available, here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgBL0tjCoLKSdWRBIuPxSHdyYwWnHtMBF