Chapter Eight by amsev

Disclaimer: I *AM* JKR. ~snort!~ Not!

This is a continuation of the mischief some of the admins of the Poetess get up to when the queue isn't overwhelming. A round robin, brought to you by Southern_Witch_69, Soul Bound, amsev, and ladyinthecloak. I think I can speak for everyone when I say I hope you enjoy reading this as much as we've enjoyed writing it.

Grateful thanks go to Robisonrocket for beta'ing. Thank you so much for your gracious help! Thank you to Southern_Witch_69, as well, for holding my hand on this one!

Chapter Eight by amsev

Stepping back into the corridor as the door to the garden closed silently behind them, Severus felt dazed at what he had seen. He shook his head, trying to clear the sights from his mind, the smells from his nostrils. He took a deep breath, and as his head cleared, he began to feel mortified. Struck by the irony of stepping out of the garden, he felt the warmth of embarrassment rising in his face. He glanced at Hermione, who still appeared to be dazed, and looked quickly away, suddenly finding the damp on his boots from the grass fascinating.

Hermione drew in deep breaths of the fresh, cool air of the corridor, missing the scents of the garden, and wondering what had just happened. 'Oh, Goddess,' she thought and glanced over at Severus to find him studying his boots, quite red in the face.

Feeling her eyes upon him, he glanced up. "Not one word, Miss Granger," he muttered. "Not one word." He held her eyes for a moment and looked away.

Bridges be damned. This wasn't some Garden of Eden to lose themselves in; this was real. He was a soul-blackened scoundrel and so curmudgeonly and ugly as to repulse the most stouthearted female. He thought of the last woman he had been with, many months ago, a prostitute. She could barely hide her disgust at servicing this most loathsome of Death Eaters, the murderer of Albus Dumbledore.

The women had been purchased by Lucius Malfoy for the enjoyment of the Death Eaters, particularly one Severus Snape, who had been forced to hide out in Voldemort's lair, having become too notorious to show his face freely in the world. Snape had chosen a comely wench with lovely, though obviously artificial, auburn hair. He had seen her eyes widen a bit with fear as he approached her before her professional sang-froid had taken over her face.

He had tried to pleasure her, drawing pleasure both from the sensations of his body and watching those of the woman. But she would not be pleasured. She had been acting to the utmost of her abilities. He had murmured Legilimens under his breath and entered her mind to back out almost immediately as her loathing of him had been so extreme. Albus Dumbledore had been a near-saint in her eyes, and now she was forced to copulate with his killer, an ugly, loathsome git of a man. He had felt her incipient nausea, his own stomach had lurched, and he had finished quickly with her after that, leaving her presence to go brood.

So that was what the world thought of him. There was no sugarcoating it. All he had done for the side of the Light during the war simply wasn't enough. Nothing could clean his soul of the stain of having killed his friend and mentor. 'But he was dying anyway,' a quiet voice in his mind counseled. 'If I had time, and I would have had time, were it not for Voldemort's plotting, I would have been able to save him.' he answered back in his mind. And he grieved once again for the loss of the man who had somehow been able to see some good in him, had somehow forgiven him for what he had done when he joined the Death Eaters. 'Even though Dumbledore desired his death, that will not wash this sin from my necrosed soul.'

A small hand touched his forearm, drawing him out of his dark thoughts.

"Severus," Hermione whispered.

He drew back from her touch abruptly, a sneer forming on his face. "What do you want, Miss Granger, that you cannot leave me alone to think for a moment?" His voice was icy and contemptuous.

Hermione looked at him, alarmed at this change and sighed. It appeared the Greasy Git, in all his glory, was back.

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On his way back to his Bridge game, Albus peered into the corridor and sighed. He could venture an accurate guess as to what was going through Severus' mind as he jerked back from Hermione. He sighed again. One step forward, then two steps back in this dance apparently. He returned to his card game with a somber expression on his face.

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Minerva exhaled angrily at the sight of the empty picture frame. Damn the man. Even in death he had a way with infuriating and exasperating her. She sat down in the high-backed chair behind her desk and pondered the frame. Her mouth tightened in to a firm line. Two could play at the infuriation and exasperation game, and while she wasn't entirely sure that portraits really felt the full gamut of emotion the living do, she would find a way to make Albus Dumbledore just as frustrated as she was at the moment.

Transforming into her tabby Animagus form, she left the office to see what she could sniff out with her cat senses. She had been all over the castle in the last day in her human form, but perhaps she had missed some vital clue.

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Hermione was mildly alarmed at the professor's reaction to her touch. And now he was glaring at her as if she were a piece of ancient chewing gum that had been stuck to the sole of his boot. She frowned at him, and his sneer and glare reached new heights of animosity.

"Severus, what on earth...?" she began.

"I'll thank you not to begin with your usual copious interrogation, Miss Granger," he barked back.

She made a frustrated noise and gave him glare for glare. Finally, in the face of his mounting anger, she was forced to look away. Tapping her foot, feeling her anger rising to meet his, she turned back.

"So what on earth is the matter with you? You haven't called me Miss Granger in that tone for quite some time now."

"There's nothing the matter with me, Miss Granger." His clipped response sent a shiver of apprehension down her spine.

"Then why are you acting like you just smelled dog shite and the odor is apparently coming off me?"

He sneered and turned away and began to walk to the next door.

Incensed, Hermione darted after him. She grabbed his arm and forced him to turn around and face her.

He showed his teeth as he yanked his arm out of her grasp. "Do not touch me."

"You were such a nice companion on this little adventure up until now. What the hell is wrong with you?" she demanded.

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Minerva padded softly down the staff corridor, attempting to separate out all the confusing scents. She hadn't the nose of a bloodhound in her cat form, but her sense of smell was strong. She could tell the difference between the smells of those who had passed recently through the corridor and the lingering smells of older footsteps. She focussed herself on the recent smells. Her whiskers twitched, and she sneezed as her nose found a hint of Potions herbs.

There. That had to be Severus' track. She sniffed again, idly wondering which child he had frightened into dropping feverfew and lemon grass on the floor of the classroom. She hoped none of the other teachers had happened upon that particular mess and trod through it as Severus obviously had.

Moving slowly and cautiously so as not to lose the trail, she dropped her mouth open a bit to more deeply take in the smell of the herbs. She hoped that none of the teachers would happen across her and wonder at the odd behavior of a cat that wasn't Mrs. Norris.

Not looking ahead, keeping her nose to the stones, presently she bumped it against the first tread of a staircase. She looked up and sniffed the tread. The scent continued. She jumped up on the tread and sniffed the next tread. Proceeding up the stairs in this manner, she reached the top, which was swung to... Damn. The staircase was swung out over nothing, not attached anywhere. Changing back into her human form, she sat on the top stair and peered at the unreachable walls and floors.

Suddenly, the stairs moved and swung again. She gripped the top tread as she and they moved out over... Nothing. She was looking at a blank wall.

It shimmered. Rubbing her eyes, she focussed more intently on the wall. It shimmered again, this time revealing a corridor. To her delight, she could see Severus and Hermione a ways down the corridor.

"Severus," she shouted. "Hermione!"

They appeared to be arguing or at least glaring at each other and did not respond to her summons.

"Sonorus," Minerva murmured pointing the wand at her throat. "Hermione! Severus!" she called out again, her amplified voice echoing around the deserted stairways. No response. She saw Severus turn and walk away from Hermione, and Hermione catch up with him. She saw him shake off her hand on his arm and glare at her. Minerva started. She hadn't seen that much malevolence in his face since Voldemort. What on earth was going on in that corridor? "Quietus," she muttered to cancel the spell.

They couldn't hear her. She could see them, but apparently couldn't hear them either. She stood up and waved her arms frantically to try to catch one or the other's eye. She grasped her wand and shot red sparks in the direction of the corridor. To her surprise, the sparks bounced off an invisible barrier where the wall had been just moments before.

She swayed and almost fell as the staircase moved again. This time it aligned with the spot where the wall had disappeared. Minerva cautiously reached out towards the corridor and encountered... the rough, cold surface of stone beneath her fingers. She couldn't see it at the moment, but apparently, the wall was still there.

Stymied, she sat down on the top tread. They couldn't see her, even though she could see them clearly. What on earth had Albus and/or the castle gotten her two friends into this time?

She gasped as Hermione slapped Severus hard enough to make him stumble. She then stormed off, throwing open a door and walking through, shutting the door behind her. Severus stood there for a moment glaring after her and rubbing his reddening cheek. He grasped the handle of the door and strode through it. Now both of them were out of sight, the corridor empty.

Minerva stood and cast her Patronus to summon Harry and Neville, as well as Filius Flitwick. Surely he would know what obscure charm this illusory corridor was based on. And if he knew, he could crack it.

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"I am no one's 'nice companion,'" Severus ground out between gritted teeth.

"You mean to tell me that you... " Hermione stopped her rising tirade to study the pale man in front of her. "Wait a second. You are embarrassed. You are embarrassed by what you saw in the garden. Well, I'll have you know that it was surprising and a bit embarrassing for me as well."

"Embarrassed to be seen so intimately with me?" he sneered.

"Of– of course not, Severus, I was just surprised. In fact, I thought it was rather... sexy."

"Rather sexy to see yourself as the Snape whore?"

She gaped at him, her face previously a bit rosy from the delicacy of the topic now paled to the color of parchment in anger. She took one step closer to him and slapped him as hard as she could, forcing him to stagger back a step or two to remain upright. She turned and found that a new door had materialized, grabbed the door handle, swung open the door and stepped through, slamming it behind her.

And found herself in the midst of what looked like the Gobi Desert. She turned around and found the door had vanished. "Shit," she swore under her breath. "Shit, shit, shit." Now what?

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Severus touched his burning cheek and stared at the closed door with a mixture of emotions battling for supremacy within him. After journeying through astonished anger, disgust at both of them and some serious bewilderment, he found he had settled on dismay. Dismay and... fear. She had entered and gone to who knew where without him.

In one long stride, he was close enough to the door to wrench it open and walk into the next room. He stepped through and was confronted by what was obviously a desert. A steady wind blew grit through the air and caused the surfaces of the dunes to slowly, hypnotically shift.

Suddenly, he felt the door handle jerk out of his hand. He whirled around as the door slammed shut again and faded from sight. And found himself confronted by yet more desert. Sand everywhere, for miles. And no sign of Hermione.

He thought for a moment. Which way would she have gone, and was the wind blowing hard enough to have already covered her tracks? He turned back to face the direction he had been initially facing when he had come through the door. Not so far from him was a dune that was rather taller than the others.

What appeared to be the late afternoon sun blazed down on him as he slowly climbed up the side of the taller dune. It was hard going with the sand constantly shifting beneath his feet.

He looked over his shoulder. His footprints at the base of the dune were already being obscured by sand-carrying wind. Surely Hermione's footprints would still at least be slightly visible. He tried walking faster up the slope, lost his footing and fell forward onto the sand, winning a mouthful of it for his troubles. Severus sputtered and spat the sand out of his mouth and was mildly alarmed at how quickly his mouth was drying out in the heat. Brushing sand off the front of his robes and frock coat, he slowly continued his ascent, finally reaching the top of the dune.

At the crest, he looked around. In the distance, he wasn't sure how far, he could see a fluttering of what looked like robes. It had to be her. "Hermione!" he bellowed. The unforgiving wind whipped his voice away so thoroughly that he might as well have not even tried shouting her name. He focussed on where he could see the fluttering and attempted to Apparate there. Nothing happened. Damn it, he would just have to try and follow her, counting on his longer stride to eventually overtake her. Striding down the other side of the dune, he went in pursuit of her.

After climbing over what seemed like countless dunes, he finally caught up to her as she steadily plodded forward. Grabbing her arm to stop her, he wasn't surprised when she shook him off abruptly and whirled, her wand out.

"Hermione."

"What, Snape? Not afraid to be seen with your whore?" she snapped.

He flinched and looked down at the sand. Finding his tongue quickly as she appeared to be turning away to continue walking, he blurted out, "I'm sorry!"

She paused, her back still to him.

He thought he heard a small snort over the rush of the wind. "Miss Granger, it is very unbecoming for a young lady to snort."

Hermione whirled back, her wand still at ready in her hand. "Well, Professor, in your worldview the fact that I'm a lady apparently isn't true, so what do you care if I snort or not?" she said icily.

He drew a breath and tried again, meeting her eyes. "I'm sorry. What I said was completely out of line. I was angry. I didn't mean to hurt you with my words." He held out his hand coaxingly towards her.

"But you did, Snape, you did."

His hand fell back to his side and he gazed at the ground. "You see now why this would never work? Some days, most days, all I would have to do is open my mouth to hurt you. I– I know that I would eventually drive you away just as surely as I did this afternoon." His voice was as bleak as their surroundings. "And every time you would go, you might come back, but every time when you go, our hearts would..." His words faltered and he stopped speaking.

Gentle fingers brought his chin up from his chest, and he found Hermione looking deeply into his eyes.

"Severus. At least we could try? Don't you think? Our future may not be as sad as you paint it." She took her hand away, and his head dropped as he gazed at the sand again.

Hermione mentally shook herself. This clearly was going nowhere. Attempting a brisk tone, she said, "In any case, the night seems to be approaching, and if what I remember about deserts is true, we should find some shelter and try to conjure some heat. It's going to get pretty cold over night."

He looked up at her. "I'm not sure that that will work. I attempted Apparating to catch up with you, and nothing happened. Our magic may not work in this other realm."

"Hmmm." She muttered a spell to conjure a glass. She looked up at him and grinned when one appeared in her hand. "Aguamenti. You look like you could use a drink." She smiled ruefully at him, taking in his dusty appearance. "Looks like you got up close and personal with one of these dunes."

He didn't say anything, just attempted a smile in return. And taking the glass of cool water from her hand, he drank.

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Harry had returned to his apartment. Sitting on the sofa, he pondered Neville's dilemma for a long while. Somewhere in that pondering, a warm body had insinuated itself next to him, drawing his arm around her shoulders. "What ees eet, 'arry?" Gabrielle asked.

He was just starting to tell the story, or stories as Fate would have it, of Neville's dilemma and the missing Hermione and Snape, when Minerva's Patronus came through the wall.