Disclaimer: Harry Potter, Albus Dumbledore, Severus Snape, Minerva McGonagall, Hermione Granger, Ron Weasley, Draco Malfoy, and all these other people are characters belonging to J.K. Rowling. I claim no rights to them, their surroundings, or their situations. Much to my sorrow.

--- 25 Hermione: Until the World Is Changed

..."I am going to bury them."

"Bury them?" Hermione repeated. Blinking several times, she walked over to the Potions Master and looked up at him quizzically, and with some concern, wondering if he was thinking quite clearly after such a nightmarish twenty-four hours. "But...aren't there legalities to consider, people to notify--"

Snape made a dismissive gesture. "Other than Draco, who is in no condition to deal with the matter, their closest living relatives who would not hex any of us on sight are Nymphadora Tonks and Sirius Black. Black would let them lie and rot, and Tonks would no doubt bury herself by accident."

She looked from one unmoving form to the other. "The Ministry?" she suggested timidly, expecting that idea would not go over well.

She was correct, though Snape's answer was far less ascerbic than she would normally expect. He looked too exhausted to work up a good sneer, his shoulders slumping in a way that she knew he never would have permitted in Potions class. "The Ministry would bury them as criminals," he said softly. Hermione thought he was speaking more to himself than to her. "Which they were, to be sure. But I called these people friends once...and for Draco's sake, if for no other reason, I should see them properly interred beside their ancestors."

One other possibility did occur to her, but she dismissed it out of hand. Even if there had been a way to arrange it, she did not want to think what sort of treatment the bodies would receive at the hands of the Death Eaters. She doubted Voldemort would deal charitably with the remains of those who had failed him. But that raised another question.

"Professor, the other Death Eater who was here--who was he? Won't he have gone straight to You-Know-Who?"

Snape frowned uneasily. "I've never seen the man before in my life...therefore, I can't say for certain what he might do. However, I strongly suspect that this entire episode was a personal project of Lucius'. Our mysterious friend won't be so eager to go before the Dark Lord and report such a disaster. And if he does, I should have forewarning of any response that is organised against us."

She started to ask how, but remembered in time that he still bore the Dark Mark. Of course, if Voldemort called his Death Eaters together, Snape would know.

Just then he did something so unexpected, and yet so simple and almost ludicrously mundane, that it caught her completely off-guard. He stuck his hands in his pockets. This drew her attention to the conservative black suit he wore.

Apart from the nefarious open-backed hospital gown--the thought of which still made her face burn--it was the first time she'd ever seen Snape sans the 'overgrown bat' ensemble, and she decided it was a pity he was always hiding behind all that billowy black fabric. He was really rather nicely proportioned; a bit lanky perhaps, but broad enough in the shoulders to wear his height well...she added that to her private list of Things to Like About Snape, astonished at how long that list had grown in such a brief span of time.

And a moment after that, she was looking away in chagrin as he turned suddenly and caught her staring at him.

Luckily, her expression had apparently not betrayed the direction her thoughts were taking. With a slight frown, he tilted his head toward the enormous fireplace at the end of the room. "Go on now...off with the lot of you."

Despite her own bone-deep weariness, Hermione hesitated fractionally, reluctant to leave him alone in such a dreadful place. And she did have one other question. "Sorry, Professor, but--what do you want us to do about Crabbe and Goyle and--the other Crabbe?"

"I'll deal with them," he said dully, going back to staring at Lucius' body. "Just get Draco out of here."

She nodded and walked back slowly to the boys. Harry had coaxed Draco to his feet, and Ron was watching her with a very strange expression on his face, almost as though he were about to be sick. "Are you all right, Ron? D'you not feel well?" she asked, worried he might have suffered a delayed-action curse without realizing it.

"Nah, I'm fine. Ready to go then?" he asked, reaching out to take her arm again. On an obscure impulse, she shifted it slightly out of his reach, pretending she hadn't noticed.

"Weasley--my broomstick," Draco said abruptly. Ron looked around and spotted the Nimbus 2005 lying where he had dropped it. "Oh, yeah. I promised I'd put it away--just hang on a mo', I'll take 'em both back--"

"Bring it with. Just the one," said the Slytherin tersely. Ron glanced at her, then Harry, and shrugged, retrieving the broom without comment. This struck her as strange; but perhaps even Ron felt obliged to humour the Slytherin just now, given the magnitude of the loss he had just suffered.

But Draco had now turned to Hermione. She repressed a shudder; he had the most terrible look on his face, almost entirely devoid of expression--as though some fundamental part of his personality had been extinguished. She found herself thinking his usual derisive smirk would be far preferable; his features weren't made to be so still.

He regarded her solemnly for a long moment with those empty grey eyes, as Harry kept an uneasy watch on them both. Then he said quietly, "I'm sorry, Hermione. I'm sorry I called you a mudblood."

Thrown completely out of her reckoning, she glanced at Harry helplessly--no help there; he looked just as shocked as she was. She stammered for a moment as a dozen possible answered rattled their way through her head. "I--You--That..."

Then, rubbing her forehead distractedly, she heaved a deep sigh and tried resolutely to sort herself out. All right, so he's deeply traumatised and a bit out of his head. Just get him away from this place, and we'll work it out afterward. "Thanks...but honestly, can we do this later? This isn't really the time or place..."

Draco's gaze swept the broken and blasted walls of his home impassively, as though it were all the same to him. "Yeah, all right. That's all I wanted to say anyway." Then he did a curious thing. He turned and looked at Harry, and fell silent, standing quietly as though waiting for instructions.

Harry also noticed this peculiar behavior, casting an apprehensive look her way; but she, in turn, had no help to offer him. "Right. Off we go, then." Hesitating momentarily, he reached out and steered Draco toward the fireplace when the latter didn't move. The Slytherin youth went along unprotesting, mechanically digging a handful of Floo power out of the large cracked jar Harry found nearby and offered to him.

"Still two Bludgers running loose," Ron noted with a slight frown, then shrugged. "Oh well, Snape says go, I won't argue...ladies first." He gestured grandly toward the fireplace and the Floo powder as Draco, then Harry took their turns through the fire.

Hermione went to the jar and started to reach in. But a nagging concern compelled her to turn and look back at Snape.

He hadn't moved an inch since she'd walked away from him, presenting nearly as forlorn a figure as Draco--perhaps moreso, even, left to deal with the aftermath all alone. The same intuitive sense that had taken her to St. Mungo's, and compelled her to hold his hand all night, whispered now that she ought not to turn her back just because he was awake and playing the Potions Master from Hell again.

"You go on," she said to Ron in an undertone. "The fight may be over, but this place isn't secure. I want to make certain Crabbe, Crabbe and Goyle are really out of commission before I go."

Ron groaned under his breath. "Hermione, the Professor told us to leave...he's gonna flip his lid if we don't. And you're done in, don't try to tell me you're not!"

She smiled at him, patting his cheek gently. This turned him bright crimson--Ron could be a perfect sweetheart, she thought affectionately, but he was so clueless at times. "He told us not to follow him, too," she observed. "I'm not as bad as I look," which was a lie, "and anyway we aren't going to stay, I am. Harry will need you to back him up when the Order gets wind of what we've done."

Ron gave her a deeply resentful look, and she realised with a sinking feeling that she had just hurt him--though for the life of her, she couldn't imagine how.

"You remember back in first year, when I said you were a nightmare, and you overheard and cried about it all day in the bathroom?" he asked in a surly tone. "Well, sorry about the troll and all, but--it was true."

Shaking his head, he turned and trudged to the fireplace, grabbing a handful of powder and Flooing away with a roar of violent green flame.

"I..." She stared after him sadly, keenly aware that something had changed between them, but at a loss to explain what or why.

Footsteps sounded behind her, and she turned, half-expecting to be pitched into the fireplace without further discussion. But Snape wasn't headed in her direction, or even looking that way; it seemed he had decided to deal with Vincent Crabbe first, after all.

Including the one who got away, she reflected. She watched as Snape crouched next to Crabbe, surveying the big anaconda and exchanging quiet words with his former student (who was now surrounded by a herd of slugs of varying sizes.) Amazing that a conjured snake had lasted long enough to consume and begin digesting a seventeen-year-old human male...of course a real anaconda would have been hours at it, if not days.

But her gaze was soon pulled irresistibly back to the still and silent forms of the Malfoys beneath their makeshift shrouds. So he's going to bury them...well, all right, what does that entail? Hermione swallowed hard. She'd never spent any length of time in the presence of a dead body, let alone tried to prepare one for internment, but she did have a vague idea what steps were involved in the process.

No, she wasn't going to leave Snape to take care of that macabre task by himself, especially if there could be more Death Eaters coming. At the very least, she could save him a bit of time by taking care of some of the simpler chores involved. Scooping up a handful of Floo powder, she tossed it into the fireplace, stepped in, and said firmly, "Master Bedroom, Malfoy Manor."

With a brilliant flash of green and a puff of ash, she was standing in a slightly smaller fireplace, looking out on the most beautiful room she had ever seen in her life.

As lavishly appointed as the rest of the Manor she'd seen, the Malfoys' bedroom was furnished all in beautiful cream-coloured silk and rich, elaborately carved honey-coloured hardwood. The plush, spotless carpet looked thick enough to sink and get lost in. She removed her shoes before stepping onto it. Whatever they'd done out of necessity to the rooms downstairs, this was Draco's home, and she did not intend to damage it any further.

Besides, there were undoubtedly still a few House Elves bound to the place, and they'd have a dreary enough task just trying to repair the drawing room and entry hall...

Finding a bone china ewer and basin on the corner of Lady Malfoy's exquisite dressing table, and already feeling very much an intruder--strange, considering she and the others had just invaded the place without a second thought--she carefully washed her hands before handling any of the deceased couple's belongings.

She began with the two large wardrobes that stood up against one wall. Opening the first with caution--though she couldn't really imagine even the Malfoys being paranoid enough to set wards on their clothing, one could never be too careful--she found it full of impeccably tailored men's clothes of the highest (and most expensive) quality. This was just what she had expected.

What she hadn't anticipated was the smell that permeated the wardrobe--primarily cedar, but with a faint lingering trace of eau de cologne; rather pleasant, and not at all something she would have associated with Lucius Malfoy. Underneath all that was a much less noticeable, but distinctly male scent. It brought home uncomfortably the fact that these were not just anonymous garments, hanging as though in a clothing shop, but had been owned and worn by the man she had seen killed by his own son less than half an hour before.

Sorting through them quickly--and hastily shoving aside the set of Death Eaters' robes she came across in her search--she selected a properly somber black outfit and laid it out carefully on the enormous four-poster bed. Then she shut the wardrobe, and tried the other one, assuming it would contain Narcissa's things.

It did, but choosing something here was going to be much more complicated, she saw--this wardrobe was three times as large inside as out, and positively crammed with the most exquisite and fashionable of ladies' clothing of every kind, colour, cut and length one could imagine. Hermione herself was not in the least fashionable, and couldn't begin to guess which outfit Lady Narcissa would have preferred for the occasion.

The ridiculousness of that thought made her laugh humourlessly at herself. The woman was dead. She could be buried in a burlap sack and it wouldn't make the slightest difference to her, or to her husband for that matter. But Snape seemed to care, and Draco undoubtedly would, once he'd got over his shock; so she did her best to pick out something fitting, finally settling on a simple but lovely black floor-length silk dress.

A closet across the room yielded shoes to match both ensembles, and from Narcissa's enormous jewelry box (which was trapped, but Hermione was able to disenchant it with a few moments' careful work) she chose a tasteful platinum chain with a black diamond pendant and matching earrings, placing them on the bed with the dress. After a moment's thought, she added a hairbrush to the collection. There was another large carven box on the dressing table, filled with cosmetics of every kind, but that was a bit more than she felt able to deal with; a damp washcloth to remove any battle stains would simply have to suffice.

"Miss? What you is doing in Master's room?" a high-pitched tremulous voice squeaked from somewhere behind her, and she whirled around with a small yelp of surprise, to find herself staring down at the tiniest House Elf she had ever seen.

No more than twenty-four inches high, the little thing was thin as a rake and incredibly gangly, all arms and legs and knobby joints. He (Hermione felt certain it was a male) blinked up at the young witch with eyes slightly smaller than the average House Elf's, but still disproportionately large in his pinched little face. His ears were the usual large floppy affairs, but placed a bit oddly on his head, giving him a slightly cockeyed look. He was dressed in what appeared to be a small window curtain panel with a hole cut in the middle, belted with a matching tieback.

Strips of cloth were wound around the little fellow's hands--which had no doubt been ironed as punishment sometime recently, Hermione thought indignantly.

She got down on one knee to talk to the little elf. "Hello. My name's Hermione. I'm here because--" she hesitated. "You...do know what's been happening downstairs?"

The House Elf nodded solemnly. "Master and Mistress is dead," he whispered. "Young Master has let Miss stay, so Nockly knows it is all right for her to be here. But what is Miss doing?"

She glanced at the collection of items on the bed, and wondered how she could possibly explain the custom of dressing the dead in funerary finery to a creature who was mortified by the idea of wearing clothing at all. "Well...when a witch or a wizard dies, it's customary for their family or friends to dress their bodies up in nice clothes before they're buried."

The little elf--she wondered whether he was just smaller than most of his kind, or perhaps an adolescent--cocked his head to one side, creating a very whimsical effect, as his ears were tilted the opposite way. "Oh, yes. Nockly knows all about that. Is Miss a friend of the Master and Mistress?"

"Er...no. Not exactly. I'm...a friend of Draco's," she said weakly, glad that neither Ron nor Harry were around to hear her say that. "Professor Snape--you know who he is?" The elf nodded, his eyes widening a bit further. "He's going to bury Mr. and Mrs. Malfoy, and I thought I would save him some work by picking out nice clothes for them."

"Oh." This seemed to satisfy Nockly's curiosity, and he trotted over to take a look at the outfits she had chosen.

After a moment's perusal, he smiled slightly and bobbed his head at Hermione in what she thought was meant to be a complimentary way. "Very nice clothes...Nockly thinks Master and Mistress would be pleased."

Hermione smiled back. Though she had finally abandoned the idea of S.P.E.W., due to the House Elves' utter lack of interest in their own liberation, she was still fond of the small creatures. At least the elves of the Malfoy household would see some benefit from today's terrible events. "Thank you, Nockly, I'm glad to know that."

"May Nockly help Miss with anything?" he inquired, coming back to her with his ears perked up attentively.

She thought about it for a moment. "I'm not sure...oh! Actually, yes. Are there any clean linen sheets in the house?"

"Indeed yes. The linens have not been used for a very long time. Master and Mistress preferred satin...but Nockly and Birble keep the linens clean and ready, just in case."

"Well. I'm afraid they're going to be used now," Hermione sighed. "Will you show me where they are?"

"Certainly, Miss. This way." The tiny elf beckoned her toward the door--which he had to jump up and hang from the knob to open--and a few hallways over to a large linen closet. Stacked on one of the upper shelves, out of the way but still accessible and spotlessly clean, were several colours of fine linen sheets and pillowcases. Hermione frowned up at them, and sighed as she took her wand out; even a simple levitation would be a drain on her dwindling energy reserves. But Nockly came to her rescue, inquiring what colour Miss wanted and courteously floating down several pure white sets for her.

"Is Birble one of the other House-Elves?" she asked as they made their way back toward the master bedroom.

"Nockly and Birble is the only House-Elves who remains here, since Dobby is being freed, Miss," Nockly said rather sadly.

"Were there very many of you at one time?" she asked, curious, and glad for a momentary distraction. The uses to which the lovely clothes and the sheets were to be put didn't bear thinking of, until it was absolutely necessary.

"Oh, yes, Miss. Long ago, many was being bound to Master's family. To serve in the House of Malfoy was being a great honour."

"Before You-Know-Who?" she guessed, and Nockly nodded, sniffing and wiping at his long nose. "So what's happened to all the others? Surely they haven't all been freed?"

"A few were, Miss, because they displeased Master or Mistress. Some died of age. House-Elves do, after many many years. But most--" Nockly stopped suddenly, and rubbed absent-mindedly at his bandaged hands. "Nockly may not speak of it, Miss." His voice dropped to a whisper. "But the Black Wizard knows."

"The Black Wizard?...oh, you mean Professor--SNAPE!"

Pure reflex was all that saved her from the sickly yellowish-green bolt of energy that would have turned her into something extremely icky; dropping flat to the floor, still clutching the armload of linen, she landed hard on both elbows and gasped at the jolt of pain that ran up either arm, her eyes stinging and watering. Pathetic, Granger--you've survived the Cruciatus, only to be reduced to tears by a blow to the funny bones!

"Granger!" Snape's furious voice echoed her thought strangely as he stepped fully out from the doorway of the master bedroom, lowering his wand. "What in the name of sanity are you doing here, you insufferable little fool!" Eyes glittering dangerously, he reached down, grabbed her by the upper arms, and unceremoniously hauled her upright, only to shake her--and none too gently. "I could have turned you into a newt!" he hissed.

"I--I--th-th-thought you might need these," she squeaked, keeping a death grip on the pile of linens. Oh, that's it, now I've gone and done it. Pushed him right 'round the bend. Glad I brought the extra sheets...

"And I suppose you laid out the clothes as well?" He released her, shoving her back a step or two; and turned away, then back, running a hand through his long stringy hair in a gesture of pure exasperation.

"Do you have the slightest idea how dangerous it is to go nosing through the personal possessions of a Death Eater--let alone two of the Inner Circle?" he snapped. "Losing a hand would have been the least serious consequence if you had set anything off!"

"Well, I didn't," she said, raising her chin obstinately, though unable to suppress a slight tremor. Both her arms ached and tingled uncomfortably, and she noticed that little Nockly had vanished without a trace--no doubt as terrified by the Black Wizard in a rage as any Hogwarts student. "And I wasn't nosing. I only touched what I had to--"

"You shouldn't have been here at all!" He gesticulated sharply, lacking adequate words to express his pique, it seemed. Though he was certainly giving it his best shot. "Merlin's blood and bollocks, child! Have the gods appointed you the incarnation of my atonement for past sins? Why do you insist on following me around?"

"Why do you insist on pushing everyone away from you?" she retorted angrily, as it dawned on her that this was precisely his intent. This revelation only served to irritate her further. It might not have been her most brilliant idea, staying on against his orders; but she'd meant well, and hardly felt such a scathing reprimand was deserved.

"In case it has somehow eluded you for six years, I am not an agreeable man! Most people are properly grateful for the favor!" He snatched the sheets out of her hands and turned on his heel, stalking toward the stairs; and if the usual sweeping effect was somewhat lacking without the billowy robes, the patented Snape attitude glared through all too clearly.

Fuming at the man's ingratitude, she recklessly followed, catching him up a few yards shy of the first step. "Well, I'm not most people!"

"Correct, Miss Granger!" He halted and spun to face her, his already tenuous pretense of control disintegrating. "You are unquestionably unique among wizardkind, and I do not mean that as a compliment! You are without a doubt the most persistent, most exasperating, most infuriating little intellectual prima donna it has ever been my misfortune to instruct!"

"Oh I am, am I?" she shouted, digging her nails into her palms. She'd be damned if she would cry in front of him again, no matter how deeply he might wound her with his words. "Well--well you, sir, are the most hateful, cold-blooded--temperamental--a-and discriminatory teacher ever to darken the halls of Hogwarts!"

He threw down the sheets. "FIFTY POINTS FROM GRYFFINDOR!"

"SOD THE FUCKING POINTS!" She picked them up, just to spite him.

"KNOW-IT-ALL!" - "OVERGROWN BAT!" - "THIEF!" - "BULLY!"

They were now screaming at one another point-blank, the pent-up strain of their mutually horrible day boiling over to sear and scorch the closest available targets; later on, Hermione would conclude that they might very well have come to physical blows--if they hadn't both chosen the same precise moment to commence hitting below the belt.

Hermione clapped her hands to her mouth, her eyes huge, not knowing whether to be more horrified at her own insult or Snape's; and he, gone white as chalk, turned away abruptly to pace a small agitated circle, head clutched in his hands.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry," Hermione breathed after an endless, excruciating moment. "I didn't mean that, truly--I know you aren't--"

"Neither did I," he interrupted, sounding just as wretched as she felt. "That was unpardonable of me, Hermione, you must know I don't hold with such reprehensible ideas anymore..."

"No, of course you don't." She shook her head, her anger draining away. Ridiculous, two adults shouting epithets at each other over a minor disagreement, a few scant hours after saving one anothers' lives!

As he went on pacing, and it became clear that he would not be so quick to recover his equilibrium, she took a hesitant step toward him, one hand tentatively outstretched. "Professor? Please forgive me...don't send me away."

He stilled at her touch, for a moment, but refused to meet her gaze. "Answer my question," he said roughly. "What has possessed you to--to attach yourself to me this way?" An almost desperate note crept into his voice, and he lurched back into motion, his arms crossed close to his chest, as though missing the concealment of his customary ensemble. "What passed between us at the hospital, Hermione? I don't remember a thing after arguing with Potter, until your scream woke me."

She bit her lip. Such edginess was extremely uncharacteristic of Hogwarts' Potions Master, and she wished they could have gone into this at a less emotionally charged moment. But she couldn't very well refuse to answer. "I'll tell you, what little there is, if you'll promise not to shout at me."

He shot her a dubious, even entreating look that seemed to suggest this was a bit much to ask. "I'll promise to try, will that suffice?"

"I suppose it will have to..." She sighed. "Must we talk about it standing here in the hall?"

"It's that, or discuss it while preparing the bodies." He stopped his pacing and turned a measuring gaze upon her, some of his habitual sarcasm flickering through his ill-disguised anxiety. The silky voice dropped nearly an octave. "Or perhaps your resolve to interfere in my affairs does not extend so far as to assist in the dressing of the dead?"

Beetle-black, that was how Harry had so often described Professor Snape's uncommonly dark eyes, so unnerving in their glittering intensity. But the word that came to Hermione now, transfixed by that intimidating gaze, was obsidian. Razor-sharp, forged in unspeakable infernos--and possessed of a brittle beauty that could never otherwise have come to be.

And, at the moment, presenting a challenge that (macabre as it might be) no Gryffindor worthy of the name would refuse. She swallowed hard, her mouth gone suddenly very dry, and said with a certitude she did not at all feel, "I don't know the procedure, but if you show me how it's done, I'll do my best."

Was that a glimmer of approval? The impression passed so quickly she couldn't be sure if she had imagined it. "Very well, then. Half a moment." He disappeared into the bedroom and returned in short order, levitating the fine garments along with him. She Accio'd her shoes and followed him.

"I hope I chose appropriately," Hermione dared to say as they started down the stairs. "They had such a lot of clothes..."

Snape gave the outfits an indifferent once-over. "I am hardly the one to ask, Miss Granger, but I wouldn't concern yourself. Narcissa was known for her impeccable sense of fashion, and Lucius couldn't have cared less what he wore, as long as it cost more than anyone around him earned in a year. In any case, I doubt that either one will complain."

Hermione nodded meekly, all out of her reckoning and rather glad that Snape had taken control of the situation again. The balance of power between them seemed to have been see-sawing crazily all day, and though admittedly exhilarating (in a bizarre way) it was becoming a bit more than her nerves could take.

Re-entering the devastated drawing room, she noted that the two remaining Bludgers were nowhere to be seen, and observed with grim curiosity that Vincent Crabbe lay stretched out on his back, snoring blissfully a few yards from where the giant snake lay peacefully digesting his friend Gregory Goyle.

At her inquisitive look, Snape shrugged. "I'll turn him over to the Aurors with the others when we're finished here. He isn't much of a threat without his wand or someone to direct him, but I thought it best that he not be conscious to see what's left behind when the snake evaporates..."

"Bloody decent of you," she muttered, shivering. "I'm surprised it hasn't gone already."

"I have a particular affinity for that spell. It may last another hour or more, ambient conditions permitting."

Silence fell by unspoken agreement as they approached the bodies of Lucius and Narcissa. Hermione had never been so close to a dead body before, let alone contemplated touching one, and for a moment her courage almost failed her.

Better get used to it, she told herself. This probably won't be the last time you'll have to do this. We're at war...be glad that it isn't one of your friends.

Clutching the linens close to her, she stopped a few feet from the remains of Lady Malfoy, looking to Snape for directions.

He also paused for a moment, surveying the scene with a thoughtful frown, and turned to regard her searchingly. "Don't take this the wrong way, Granger," he said slowly, eyes narrowed, "but have you ever seen a man naked?"

Thunderstruck, she could only stammer incoherently, blushing from her hairline right down to her navel.

"I'll take that as a no," he mused, smirking humourlessly. "It would be easier for the sake of instruction to work in tandem, one corpse at a time, but I suspect that would overwhelm your delicate sensibilities. Therefore, I will deal with Lucius, and leave Narcissa to you."

He came a few steps closer, all trace of levity fading. "I hardly think I need point out that these were, until very recently, two human beings," he said softly. "Whatever their sins, however we may have felt about them in life--they are to be treated with the same respect and dignity that you or I would wish shown to our own remains, when the time comes."

She nodded solemnly. "I understand, sir."

"No," he said, more quietly still, "you don't. But you will, unfortunately."

With that, he left her and went to Lucius' body, crouching beside it and glancing up at her with an unreadable expression.

"G-go ahead," she said faintly, bracing herself.

Snape drew back the velvet curtain, and Hermione blanched, involuntarily making a small sound. Already all colour had drained from the man's face, leaving it whiter than the sheets she held; his mouth hung slightly open, and his half-lidded grey eyes had gone cloudy, staring fixedly at nothing.

Seemingly unmoved, Snape regarded the dead man silently for a few moments. Then he passed his hand over Malfoy's eyes, mercifully shutting them. "We should begin immediately. Rigor mortis has already begun to set in, and once it has fully taken hold it will make our task much more difficult," he noted. He was trying for his cool, businesslike "classroom" voice, she suspected; but a slight unevenness of tone betrayed that he was not so unaffected by the situation as he would have her believe.

A sense of unreality settled over her as she walked to the side of Narcissa Malfoy, and knelt beside her, putting her back to Snape and the body in his charge. Pulling Harry's Gryffindor robe back from the lovely pallid face, she hesitated a long moment before she could bring herself to reach out and touch the cooling skin, gently pushing closed the delicate eyelids with their fringe of long, elegant lashes.

It was not, all in all, a very complicated process. The Professor talked her through it step by step as he attended to Lucius, but she knew that she could have figured it out for herself. None of which was to say that it was easy; on the contrary, it was among the hardest things she'd ever done.

It was one thing to know, intellectually, what the term "rigor mortis" meant; something else entirely to witness the effect firsthand. And though she had thought at times that both the Muggle and wizarding worlds seemed to have an unhealthy preoccupation with death, there were certain aspects of the reality that were rarely, if ever, mentioned--first and foremost being the soiling of the body caused by the complete loss of muscle tone.

Snape did warn her, but to her shame, she was forced to stop and walk away to be quietly sick when the smell first hit her. Cleansing her mouth with a simple charm, she returned to the task immediately and scourgified the body several times, grateful that the Potions Master chose not to comment on her lapse in fortitude.

The ruined clothing was easily dismissed with a simple Evanesco, but getting fresh garments onto the stiffening limbs was much more of a chore. Hermione was fervently grateful that she had magic to assist in the task; she couldn't imagine trying to get through all of this without it. Despite knowing that Narcissa was beyond awareness of what was happening to her body, she couldn't shake a sense that she was violating the woman's privacy unforgivably, and found herself repressing an urge to say "Sorry" whenever she inadvertently yanked or bumped something in a way that would have hurt a living person.

Sometime during the course of this task, she remembered suddenly that she'd promised Snape an account of his stay in the hospital, and recounted the story as briefly and matter-of-factly as she could, from his collapse and seeming panic attack at the Safe House to her battle with Malfoy in his room at St. Mungo's. She left nothing out, but did her best to keep the report strictly factual, allowing him to do the speculating as to what his own behavior might have meant.

Strangely, pairing the two very daunting tasks somehow made both of them a little easier...dressing the dead woman kept her hands and eyes occupied as she spoke, and the telling of the story provided a distraction from the unpleasant job that might otherwise have been too much to stomach.

When finally the gown was properly in place, the jewelry and the lovely silken gold hair attended to, she levitated the body and wound it snugly in fresh sheets, and turned to Snape with a sense of profound relief that the worst was now over.

The Professor was sitting on the floor beside Lucius' neatly wrapped body, hunched slightly, one hand covering his eyes. Her heart lurched oddly in her chest at the utter dejection his posture conveyed, and she left Narcissa hanging in the air for a moment to go to him, stopping at arms' length.

"Professor?" she said softly. Her hands started to reach out for him of their own accord, but she caught them in time and put them firmly behind her back, inwardly scolding them for their waywardness. "I've finished...I'm sorry to have taken so long."

He startled a bit, and looked around at her in dull surprise. She noted, without meaning to, that he needed a shave. A some-time-past-five-o'clock-shadow looked distinctly odd on him, but not necessarily in a bad way...oh for the love of Merlin. Stop ogling your teacher and get these people decently buried, idiot.

"Finished? Oh. Yes...I was just...resting my eyes." He heaved a deep sigh that turned into a brief coughing fit, and got to his feet, going over to inspect her work.

"Satisfactory," he pronounced after a moment. He sounds so tired, she thought, I hope after this is all over he gets a chance for a lie-down. And something to eat--good heavens, he hasn't eaten since yesterday morning, has he? At this rate he'll be back in hospital by nightfall.

"The family graveyard lies in the eastern corner of the manor grounds," he continued heavily. "Come on..."

"Hold on a moment," she said, frowning down at Lucius' shroud. The spotless white was marred here and there by faint brownish-pink stains. Handprints, she realised, and spun around on a sudden impulse, reaching out to catch hold of Snape's right wrist. Ignoring his cautionary growl, she forcibly turned his hand palm-up--something she suspected she could not have managed, under normal circumstances, as he was far too strong--to reveal oozing, angrily inflamed lacerations and multiple broken blisters. The skin of his palm, already fragile from its previous injury, had been cruelly torn in the course of the battle.

"Right. Are you going to let me fix this now," she said levelly, the balance shifting palpably once again, "or do I Floo back to the Safe House at once, and bring Madame Pomfrey and Professor McGonagall back here with me to see to it?"

Locking his gaze unflinchingly, she meant every word, and she knew that he knew it. Pride, practicality, and profound annoyance played a three-way tug-of-war in his eyes for a moment.

"Oh, very well. Get on with it then," he snapped at last. "Or I suppose I'll never hear the end of it..."

The charm to close up the wounds took perhaps ten seconds to cast; another to reduce the painful inflammation, ten more. "Now the other," she said tersely, and he presented it without further argument, only an impatient sigh.

"There, was that so difficult? Take a bit of care for a few days, let the skin toughen up a bit and it should be fine," she said coolly, returning her attention to the macabre business they had yet to finish.

"You ought to consider a career as a mediwitch, Granger," Snape remarked, but stole any possible gratification that comment might have yielded by adding, "...you certainly have the overbearing temperament for the job."

"You're welcome," she said with a deliberately saccharine smile. "Which way to the graveyard?"

He guided her silently through the echoing halls of the magnificent manor house, the two corpses floating eerily along behind, to a servants' entrance at the back of the building, pausing only to conjure each of them a heavy cloak before going out into the icy wind. It was perhaps a ten-minute walk from there, across an impressive expanse of lawn lightly covered with fluffy snow, to the Malfoy family plot--a collection of massive headstones, statues, obelisks, and several looming mausoleums, enclosed by an elaborate wrought-iron fence.

Neither of them spoke throughout the duration of the walk. There seemed very little to say; and, Hermione supposed, the two of them constituted a funeral procession of sorts, so respectful silence was only fitting.

To her surprise, as they came up to the cemetery gates, little Nockly and another House-Elf (presumably Birble)--a shriveled old female with huge bright eyes, her torso wound round and round with an old green bedskirt--were waiting for them. Bowing deeply, they opened the gates without a word, and fell in behind as the strange little procession wound among the monuments toward whatever destination Snape had in mind.

Some of the great marble memorials were very, very old, Hermione noted in passing. Some bore elaborate inscriptions, others only simple names and dates; the names archaic and long out of fashion, and the dates going back many hundreds of years. Unlike the Muggle cemeteries she had visited, this one contained no carvings of angels or Virgins, no images of crosses or hands folded in prayer; none of the inscriptions included psalms or verses of a spiritual nature. Though Hermione wasn't particularly religious herself, the absence of these familiar features made the place seem cold and sterile...a mere storage facility for the deceased, rather than a hallowed resting place.

Bringing them at last to almost the exact centre of the enclosure, Snape stopped beside a pair of huge, intricately carved stone sarcophagi. Despite the solemn atmosphere, Hermione was forced to roll her eyes; the way the two tombs were placed, raised on a large stepped platform, and the magnificence of their construction, guaranteed that they would overshadow every other grave in the place. Even in death, Lucius Malfoy's ego would allow for no competition.

Snape paused for another bout of coughing, longer and harsher this time. The cold air wasn't doing him much good, Hermione thought worriedly; but there was nothing for it but to see this business through to its conclusion and get him back inside, and from there, away to the Safe House and Madame Pomfrey's care as quickly as possible.

"Wingardium Leviosa." Snape floated the heavy slab from the top of the tomb on the right, which bore Lucius' name and the year of his birth. Hermione followed suit with Narcissa's, and they floated the bodies into their resting places with as much ceremony as they could muster, given that they were both freezing and ready to drop from fatigue.

They returned the lids to their proper places, and Snape gestured for Hermione to step down off the platform. She did so, and he bowed his head, gathering himself for one last casting.

Speaking arcane words she did not understand--and for once, did not want to--the Potions Master then swept his wand through a series of elaborate gestures, murmuring under his breath as he did so. A faint golden glow shone forth from the lids of both sarcophagi, bathing the Professor in its soft radiance as he completed the incantation.

He spoke the final words, and slumped wearily against Lucius' tomb as the light dwindled and faded to nothing. The stone had fused, making one piece of coffin and lid, sealing the occupants away from those they'd left behind for all time.

Hermione found her eyes leaking senselessly as she climbed the steps to assure herself that her Potions instructor was not about to join them. Glancing down at the lid upon which he was leaning, she saw that the inscription had been altered. It now read:

Narcissa's, too, had been embellished--at greater length:

Hermione sniffled a bit as she read this, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. "That's lovely," she murmured. "Tolkien, isn't it?"

Snape nodded, his gaze lingering on the inscriptions. "And Shakespeare. Lucius was familiar with both. He admitted to me, years ago, that Muggles do occasionally produce a turn of phrase worth remembering. I believe he would approve."

He straightened up slowly, his bearing that of a much older man. Sometimes Hermione found it hard to remember that he was less than forty years old; pushing middle-age by Muggle standards, but still quite young in the reckoning of wizards.

"They were my friends, once," he said again, as though forgetting that he had already told her.

"I know." Her throat closed up for a moment, at the thought that she might one day--perhaps soon--have to perform these same bleak services for Harry, or Ron, or others...

Somehow without her conscious volition, her hand found its way into Snape's. For a moment, she thought he hadn't even noticed; then his fingers curled around hers and held tight, their contact forming a tiny oasis of warmth in the frigid January air.

"Tell me something, Miss Granger..."

"Hm? What's that?" She glanced up at him a bit shyly, willing for that singular moment to tell him almost anything...within reason. He wasn't looking at her; his gaze strayed contemplatively over the collection of memorials, but not, she thought, really seeing them either. His mind's eye was focused somewhere else entirely.

"You're usually so full of questions...gods, you've nearly driven me to employ a deafness charm in class, just for a reprieve." The jibe held no malice; coming from anyone else, she would have said it was a joke. "But we've spent the entire day in one another's company, and you've not asked me once about--what I said. Even when given a perfect opportunity. I must confess to being intrigued at this...omission."

"Well..." She hesitated, framing her answer with extreme care. "I suppose...I didn't feel I had a right to pry."

He snorted inelegantly, and turned to her with a bemused expression that stopped just short of a scowl. "Peculiar. I daresay you've never let that stop you before. In fact, you've spent the past twenty-four hours doing nothing but meddling in my business."

He had a point, and she flushed slightly, dropping her eyes. "I suppose that's true. All right. I didn't ask because it had no real relevance to the situation at hand..."

"And?" he prompted, far too shrewd to accept that as her sole reason. Damn him.

She licked her lips nervously, still keeping her eyes down. "H-harry told me how angry you were--the day he saw your memories in the pensieve." She dared say no more; Harry was not supposed to have told anyone what he had seen.

There was a long, brittle silence. "And you didn't wish a repeat of that incident," Snape deduced, his tones as smooth as ever, but so low she had to strain to hear. "Or was it that you thought you already understood, based on Potter's account of what he saw?"

Damn, damn, damn. I might as well have given him a signed confession. I'm sorry, Harry. She swallowed, wondering what it felt like to be Transfigured into a newt. "Ah...well. Mostly the former, but...perhaps...a little of both."

"You presume a great deal, child."

"I know that! Why d'you think I didn't say anything?" she snapped, tiring of this stroll through an eggshell-strewn minefield. "I must say, Professor, the last thing I ever expected from you was to be reprimanded for keeping my mouth shut!"

"I'll give you full marks for that, actually. If it hadn't been so out of character for you, I doubt I would ever have noticed."

Throughout all of this, incongruously, their hands remained firmly clasped together. Hermione rather thought this was the reason the conversation had not escalated into another full-blown argument, and had no intention of breaking the connection, at least until the air had been thoroughly cleared.

"Well, now that you've called me out on it, the least you can do is tell me whether I guessed right. Was the 'Lily' whose name you called Harry's mother? Lily Potter?"

"Evans," he corrected instantly, and with an intensity that recalled the terrifying Potions Master a little too clearly. His grip tightened nearly to the point of pain. "Before she married, her name was Evans..."

"You loved her," she said recklessly, ignoring the vise-like pressure, no longer doubting her guess. "But she married James Potter, bore him a child..."

"...and died protecting the child, yes." His mouth had thinned into a line of pure anguish. "You needn't recount the history for me, Hermione. I was there." He swallowed convulsively, wrenching each word out with a savage effort. "We found them there, Lucius and I, in the wreckage of their home, after the Dark Lord had gone--"

"You were there? At Godric's Hollow?" Hermione's eyes widened. "I hadn't realised."

"No one knows, now that Lucius is gone, except Albus and I--and now you. Not that it matters. I was of no use at all, except to compose her body," he said bitterly.

And after what we've just done--it's no wonder he wants to talk about it. Tending to the Malfoys must have brought it all back for him. She wondered that after so long, he could speak so passionately of these things, so painfully--and yet, though his voice thickened noticeably and the words came haltingly, his eyes remained completely dry.

"She protected me--when Potter and his Marauders would come after me, she'd so often step in, tell them off...and I'd rail at her. I'd call her a--a Mudblood, and I'd pretend that I hated her. It would have been that much worse for me if I had ever let on." He shook his head. "God knows I couldn't have blamed her if she'd stood by and laughed with the rest, but she never did..."

Hermione was fascinated by this unprecedented outpouring of emotion from the famously reticent Professor. None of her classmates would believe it, even if she were to tell them. Not that anything short of Veritaserum would drag this story out of her; in sixteen years, he'd chosen to share these things only with her, and she was honoured as well as moved by the confidence.

"It must have been very difficult for you, when she married James," she murmured, mostly just to keep him talking.

This elicited a bark of cynical laughter. "Oh, you have no idea. I could forgive Lily anything, but the day of their wedding, I think I must have broken every piece of crockery within a square mile. Life debt or no life debt, Potter would have been a dead man if he'd shown his face in my vicinity--and I do not mean that metaphorically."

He smiled tightly. "I did not mourn the death of James Potter for an instant, you understand, except inasmuch as he was the only thing standing between Lily and the Dark Lord in the end."

She nodded, having guessed as much. "You blame him for her death, then? For failing to protect her?"

But this time, Snape surprised her. "How could I? He failed her no more miserably than I did." The smile turned self-mocking, then faded away entirely. "All those times she was there to stand up for me, and the one time she needed me to return the favor..." he trailed off, leaving the thought unfinished.

Hermione frowned. "What do you mean? You couldn't have stopped You-Know-Who...no one could, except perhaps Professor Dumbledore. You can't blame yourself for failing to do the impossible."

"That's what Albus has been telling me for sixteen years." Having unburdened himself this far, he seemed determined to lay bare the entire litany of his sins--or perceived sins, she thought, aching to think that he'd been laboring under such a burden of self-condemnation for so long. "And you're both correct, in the sense that I could not have outmatched him in a duel, there at the scene. He would have scattered my atoms from here to the moon. But that isn't what I meant.

"I'd been spying on the Death Eaters from within, but I'd not been gone over to Dumbledore's side for long when the attack at Godric's Hollow was being planned. If I'd come to my senses sooner, and worked my way further into the Dark Lord's confidence, I might have learned of Pettigrew's duplicity in time to warn them." He rubbed irritably at his still-dry eyes. "And for that matter, in a way it was my fault Lily was there to begin with. Her first date with James was the bargaining chip she used to get me out of the Marauder's clutches one day..."

She shook her head firmly. "You had no control over that. She might have married him anyway. Or become an Auror and a target, without marrying anyone. Follow that kind of guilt-by-omission logic far enough, and you'll have to shoulder the burden for every crime the Dark Lord has committed since."

She wasn't so naive as to think that a few words from her would be enough to erase sixteen years' worth of misplaced guilt. She also had no doubt that the man standing before her with such desolation in his eyes had, at one time, committed the kinds of crimes of which nightmares were made.

But she also had some inkling of the lengths to which he'd gone, trying to atone for those crimes, and it seemed grossly unfair to let him go on suffering so for an imagined failing of which he was truly innocent.

"Anyway, if Lily hadn't married James," she added, "we wouldn't have Harry. And as much as I know you hate him, Professor, if it weren't for Harry--and for Lily sacrificing herself to save Harry--Voldemort would have gone right on killing." She didn't want to say it, but it was true. "If you'd stopped it happening, we probably wouldn't be standing here, having this conversation. The Dark Lord would likely have won."

"Oh, I know," he whispered. "Quite the conundrum, isn't it? No matter what choices I'd made, they would have turned out to be wrong. I've spent many a night trying to work out how I could have salvaged that situation, and each time I can only conclude that I was dealt an impossible hand by fate. And that is a very bitter pill to swallow, Hermione."

He glanced down ruefully at their tightly clasped hands, realised with a start that he was cutting off her circulation, and relaxed his grip slightly. "But perhaps now you see why I'm somewhat taken aback that a brave young Gryffindor lady should see fit to appoint herself my guardian, no matter how worthy her intentions might be..."

"I do." She smiled gently. So this was what lay behind the forbidding scowl of Hogwarts' infamous Potions Master--a bitterly lonely man who chose to remain that way, hiding behind a deliberately unsavory reputation, rather than risk losing someone he cared for again. "But history repeats itself only if we fail to learn from it, Professor. Don't you see? I needed you today--and you were there." She squeezed his hand gently for emphasis. "You saved my life--and Draco's, too. You could so easily have been killed, but you didn't hesitate. You protected us..."

He raised his eyes at that, and then froze in place as he realised how close she had moved in to him. She took advantage of the moment and his captive hand to move closer still, stopping scant centimetres away, craning her neck slightly to maintain eye contact.

She sensed now the tension her nearness provoked in him, the involuntary quickening of his breath; and an answering rush drove back her own exhaustion, producing a mild sense of euphoria that came as a very welcome change after a day filled with critical fight-or-flight responses.

Moving slowly, as though in a trance, he freed his hand and raised them both to tenderly cup her face, trembling slightly as she slipped her arms timidly about his waist.

"You Gryffindor women," he murmured huskily, his breath warm against her face, "you'll be the death of me one day..."

She shut her eyes, a small inarticulate sound rising from her throat as he kissed her, her nearly-numb lips warming at once beneath the soft but insistent pressure of his mouth. A fleeting stab of panic at her decidedly untidy state melted away in seconds, as an exquisite ache rose up from the depths of her belly, uncoiling lazily to fill her body with the wonderful tingling warmth she had often read about, but had never before experienced firsthand.

She'd been kissed before, of course. Victor Krum had been the first to do the honours, and a few other young men since had taken sufficient notice of the bushy-haired little know-it-all to be amenable to a little friendly snogging, here and there. But whether because of the man or the circumstances, this was something entirely different. This made her head spin.

He drew her close against him, deepening the kiss; in answer, she shyly opened her mouth to him, and was rewarded with a low growl and a sweet shock of heightened arousal. The intensity of his physical reactions was gratifying in the extreme, but also a little overwhelming--the more so, since her own body echoed his excitement so acutely.

How long they stood there, locked together in a warm breathless haze-- hearts pounding, lips and tongues growing intimately acquainted, hands wandering tentatively--she wasn't sure. In point of fact, she didn't particularly care, despite the fact that she'd lost all feeling in her feet and her stomach was beginning to rumble loudly.

It was little Nockly who finally brought them down to earth--discreetly, bless his heart, if a bit jarringly; he closed one of the wrought-iron gates, which screeched loudly, startling them both out of their pleasantly mindless reverie. The House-Elf bobbed his head to them, smiling cheerfully without comment, before he evaporated into thin air; Birble seemed to have retired to the Manor house some time before.

Snape--the Professor, rather; or, no, Severus, she decided, at least in the privacy of her own thoughts--slowly and reluctantly released her from his embrace. Stepping away from him shakily, she immediately missed the deep sense of security she'd found, wrapped close in his arms--as well as the very practical consideration of his body heat. The temperature had dropped several degrees since they'd come outside; storm clouds gathered overhead, and the wind was picking up. She hugged herself instinctively against it, shivering.

"We'd better get inside, and back to the Safe House. They'll be wondering what's happened to us," she said, still a trifle winded (and blushing furiously, as the bizarre reality of the situation began to sink in.)

He laughed at that--an honest-to-god laugh, for a wonder, untainted by sarcasm or bitter irony--and shook his head. "So am I, Miss Granger. Come on...this cemetery can do without a pair of ice sculptures, I think..."

They hadn't got far before they were stumbling along, each with an arm around the other; not so much out of any romantic notions as because both were extremely unsteady on their feet, and needed the support to make it back to the mansion.

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