Ginny plonked herself onto Hermione's bunk, deaf to the girl's squeal as she was sat upon, her lips swollen and a dopey smile on her face. Hermione rolled her eyes at her love-drunk friend, enviously rather than in annoyance. "Isn't Harry great?"

Hermione sat up and scratched her head. "I wouldn't know Gin, I haven't seen you two apart since he returned. I'm starting to wonder where he ends and you begin." She joked. 

A dangerous look flashed across the face of the younger of the two, one that was reminiscent of her rascal twin brothers. "Well if you really wanna know-"

"No I most certainly do not!" Hermione flinched. "You and Harry are my best friends, I do not want to think about all of the horrible horrible things to do to one another when i'm not there. Somethings are best left to the imagination, thank you very much!"

Ginny clutched her stomach as she laughed. Hermione felt her cheeks go beet red. Ginny was her only real girl friend. She was the one she had confided in about Viktor, and later Ron. She had pushed Hermione to make a move, and had been there as a shoulder to cry on when it went wrong. Hermione felt like she had always been far less sympathetic with Ginny's love life. Sometimes, her choice in men was questionable. Hermione would admit that she was kind of rooting that things would work out between Ginny and Neville Longbottom, but there was simply no chemistry. She had wondered whether this was purely out of sympathy for Neville, though.

Most of the students were in classes and so The Room of Requirement was quiet. In her free period, Ginny had managed to get Hermione some books from the library, before sneaking off to entertain Harry. Hermione had been lay on her bed reading before she was interrupted from the love-struck witch.

"Judging by the interaction that you two had the other day, I'm guessing that nothing happened between you and Ron while you were away?" Ginny asked. 

"No offence, but Ron isn't for me. He wants to settle down and have loads of kids. I want to-" She paused. The truth was, Hermione didn't know what she was going to do once the war finished. If the war finished, she mentally corrected herself. Perhaps law? Healing? potions? "I want to have a successful career." 

"None taken. I know that he had his heart set on you. I'm not trying to send you on a massive guilt trip or anything here, but he did have it all planned out like you said. I think part of it is mum's influence though. Ron is very impressionable, and mum knows how to butter him up. She wants him to stay close by and have plenty of grandchildren so that she can look after them. I think it all boils down to her fear of being lonely. Its understandable, she does have 7 kids and the last one is about to leave the nest. Its a shame about you and Ron. It'll hit him hard, but he'll get over it." 

"What about you and Draco?" Ginny asked. 

"Pardon!?" Hermione gasped.

Ginny laughed. "You heard! You two seem close all of a sudden."

Not believing her ears, Hermione retorted. "Draco is - for want of a better word - an ally. I wouldn't even call him a friend just yet. So no, I don't fancy him! After 6 years of him bullying me, I think I would be crazy to love him."

"You have a fair point."

"Besides, I kind of get gay vibes." Hermione revealed. Ginny just snorted. "What? I do! I mean, look at his obsession with Harry."

"He best stay away from Harry, or he'll have me to deal with." Ginny squared her shoulders and cracked her knuckles causing Hermione to laugh like she hadn't in ages. The kind of laugh that makes you wonder whether you'll ever stop. "So, I guess we'll have no Gryffindor/Slytherin couples in the near future, then." 

Hermione bit her lip and her best friend gasped. "Hermione Jean Granger! You bad witch!" She fought to hide her blush, a grip forming on her face.

"You CAN'T tell anyone, not even Harry." Ginny had a giant smile on her face.

"Why? I tell Harry everything!" She teased.

"Ginny! Please promise me-"

"Fine! I promise." Ginny held out her pinky to Hermione, a muggle tradition that she had introduced to her friend at the start of their friendship, when Ginny first revealed her crush on Harry. 

Taking a deep breath, Hermione prepared herself to drop a bombshell. "So yeah. I kind of have a thing for Snape." 

"Come on, Hermione! Anyone with half a brain could tell you have a thing for Snape" Hermione smacked a hand over Ginny's mouth and shushed her. Luckily, the Room of Requirement was empty enough that few heard the Witch's outburst. Hermione was immediately regretting her decision. 

"Sweet Merlin, keep it down will you?" She lifted her hand off of Ginny's face and wiped it on her blanket. "Severus has been much much kinder to me whilst I've been living with him. You wouldn't believe that he's the same man. He is the perfect gentleman." 

Ginny was bursting to shout it from the rooftops, Hermione knew. "Wait, so you're on a first name basis with him. That's a bit forward isn't it?" 

Shrugging, Hermione triple checked that no one was in earshot. "I don't think so. I'm hardly going to call him 'Professor' when we're around the house, am I? 

Ginny smirked. "What do you even see in him, Mione'? Isn't this just a classic case of Stockholm syndrome?"

"It would only be Stockholm syndrome is he was holding me captive against my will." Hermione quipped. "You wouldn't understand, you've never known him to be anything other than your Professor. His mind is brilliant. We used to talk for hours about books and theories and articles, over tea."

She tried not to sound desperate but to no avail. Who was she kidding? She was desperate. Hermione wanted him to take her into his arms and never leave them again. She wanted to be able to pick his brains whenever she wanted. 

Ginny looked downright smug, as her eyes raked over her best friend's expression. "You are so screwed, Hermione."

"What's that supposed to mean?" 

"Look at you!" Ginny exclaimed. "You're practically planning your wedding and he has no idea how you feel. Don't you think you ought to tell him?" 

"I can't. We didn't part on the best of terms."

Hermione looked sheepish as Ginny stared at her, like she had just grown two extra heads. "I don't wanna hear it! You need to grow a pair of quaffles, walk up there and tell him how you feel. Or even better, walk up there and kiss him."

"Ginny!"

"Hermione. The way i see it, the pair of you could be dead tomorrow. And you'll be lay there, bleeding out, and thinking about how you never managed to tell Snape how you feel." Ginny looked shockingly like her mother. it was uncanny. "You'll never have known what its like to be pounded by his big slytherin-"

"NOPE. I can't just waltz up there, or I will be killed!" She shrieked.  

Ginny rolled up her sleeves. "That's where I come in."

_______

Hermione lay on her back, her eyes tracing the patterns on the ceiling for the millionth time that day. She felt gross, like she needed to shower. Her hair was in the same messy bun it had been 9 hours ago, and it was practically holding itself up with all of the grease that had accumulated. 

"Lets review." Ginny said sternly, sounding very much like a teacher. Harry and Ron had their heads together on the other side of the room. Hermione was trying to ignore their presence. She could still feel Ron's anger. 

It was clear that he was angry because he couldn't have her. Maybe he had an idea in his head, about the whole school romance story. Perhaps he thought that they would be each other's firsts. It was almost pathetic that he thought that life was that easy. 

Hermione had been like that herself. She had believed in fairy tales, of happy ever afters and big weddings. She believed that she would have her very own Romeo, or Mister Darcy. As it turned out, she was more into the more outlandish characters like Heathcliff. Maybe that was how it was meant to be. 

"Number one, you sweet talk Harry into borrowing his cloak and his map. Presumably with more sweet and a lot less talking than initially implied." Hermione monotonously rattled off. 

"Number two, you use the cloak and the map to navigate the castle without being seen or running into someone." Ginny followed. 

"Number three, I sneak into the Headmaster's office and pray to whatever deity is up there that he doesn't kill me before I get a word out." Hermione felt anxious. Her stomach was unsettled and her mouth tasted funny. 

"Number four, Snape kisses you senseless and leads you to his chambers." The red head waggled her eye brows. 

Hermione sat up and played with a loose thread on her blanket. "What if I don't want to go to his chambers with him?"

"What you want to do it on the floor?!" Ginny cried. Hermione had a hard time fighting laughter this time. Her best friend may be a year younger, but she was more experienced than Hermione in most things regarding boys. 

Hermione went silent and left the last couple of words hang in the air like floating pieces of paper. "No. I don't want... I'm not ready." 

"Oh Merlin Hermione, I'm so sorry I forgot." Ginny held her head in her hands and groaned loudly.

"Its fine." She grinned. "besides, I didn't say no to kissing him senseless." Hermione tried to make Ginny feel better.

She didn't want her friends to surround her in a bubble of not talking about it. She didn't want sex to become the forbidden topic, when it was all teenagers wanted to talk about. But it hurt how happy Ginny looked when she talked about spending time with Harry like that. Why did Hermione's life have to be so complicated? why was everything a struggle? Why couldn't she have a nice boy take her virginity like most girls her age did? The fates were almost decidedly against her.

Hermione had decided that this was the one thing that she didn't want the fates to decide for her. Today she was going to be the master of her own future. She had waited for it to happen for long enough. Today she was not going to throw away her shot, and talk to Severus about how she felt. 

"Gin, what am I to wear?" It suddenly hit Hermione that she had traveled with very little. Among her meager possessions, she had a terrible shortage of clothes which would be suitable for the occasion. By "a terrible shortage" Hermione meant that she had none. 

"I've got that covered." Ginny's eyes brightened and the edges of her lips turned up. 

_____

"Ginny I look like a prostitute." 

"You're right, maybe we could try a different shade of lipstick."

"No. I don't think its the lipstick. Let me try on that shirt." Hermione was beginning to get fed up with the constant changing of clothes and the re-arranging of her hair. Dresses and skirts were pretty, but they were very Hermione. She was one of the boys. 

In the end the pair settled on blue denim jeans, which a white t shirt. Hermione left her hair as it was, wet and curling as it dried down her back. Despite Ginny's pleading, she saw no reason to dress up for Snape. It this point, when he had lived with her for the past few weeks, he had seen her in every state of dress imaginable. If he didn't like her at her worst, then he did not deserve her at her best. 

"i'm ready." Hermione smiled as Ginny held out the map and the cloak. It was oddly familiar to feel like the silky cloak slip over her head. It bare touched her ankles and it made Hermione feel nostalgic. 

With the map unfurled, Hermione set off into the castle. Her stomach, which had been fluttering with faeries before, was now being torn apart by a tornado. Her knees shook, and not because of the cold. Hermione had always found that her body was a traitor. She could hardly compress any emotion. She was an open book, ironically. Sometimes, it worked in her favor, and other it did not. Tonight it was not going to work with her.

Her footsteps were heavy on the flagged stone of the castle floor. It was strange seeing the school so dark. Literally and figuratively. The lamps were out, and the portraits were mostly empty, only the brave stayed. The corridors that once brought so much warmth and spread happiness, was infected with fear. The castle groaned in the wind, as though it was in pain. 

Still, the witch continued. She told herself that she was not afraid. But that wasn't true. Even if she did manage to reach Severus untouched, she would have to face him. Having not spoken to him for several days, it was worrying her what his reaction may be. Snape was definitely the kind of guy who held grudges. But it still remained in question whether he would hold a grudge against her. 

How foolish she was to think herself special. No, Hermione Granger had known Professor Snape long enough to know his demeanor around the castle, and how quickly his temper could do a flying change. 

It was understandable, of course. The pressure that he was under was immense. It concerned Hermione to think of the pressures that he had been dealing with alone. He had always been alone. Except when Hermione lived with him. 

That was why she considered herself special, in his eyes. Call her foolish, but she was an optimist. 

She ran into no one during her wanderings around the castle. There had been a couple of times when she had seen someone heading in her direction on the map and made a swift detour. The stone statue was just ahead of her now. The sick feeling that was in her stomach was beginning to rise up her throat. Her hands shook as they clung to the elemental cloak.

Draco had been supportive enough of Hermione to give her the password to Snape's office, making it 10 times easier for her to access it. But Severus was clever. He would have wards. Would he know it was her? Could he just decline her entry if he didn't want to see her? What if someone was in there with him? There were the unknown variable of the plan. The journey to the front door was simple compared to the unknown disasters that could lay inside of the office. 

She paused before the door and considered her life choices. Fuck it. She opened it, only to find the room on the other side of the door empty. 

Hermione slipped off the invisibility cloak, which turned out to be a big mistake.

"Granger." Snape growled, making the witch jump half a foot into the air.

She turned around to find Snape stood behind her, her cheeks red and her eyes wide with anxiety. "Sir!" She squeaked in alarm.

"Tell me. Are you sat waiting for the Carrows to find you or are you naive enough to believe that you are immune to their torture?" Snape growled, seething.

For once Hermione was stunned into silence. everything she had rehearsed and planned to say had migrated from her head.

Snape rose an eyebrow. "Merlin Granger. Come with me." With that, the man took the Witch by her elbow and apparated them both into his... chambers? Yes, Hermione looked around in awe. She had practically slept in the man's bed, but seeing the chambers of a Hogwarts professor felt different. Forbidden, so to speak.

Hermione, as usual, felt queasy from apparition and crumpled into a mess on the floor. Next to her, Severus's knees buckled as he fell to the floor himself, his breathing was heavy. "You stupid girl. If someone would have seen you..." He panted.

Severus found his arms acted of their own accord, and by the time he realized he had his arms around her, it was far too late.  Hermione, let out a cry of shock and tensed.

He was... holding her? While it wasn't an unpleasant feeling, it was definitely unusual. Despite her better judgement, Hermione relaxed and buried her face into her Professor's neck. Snape only held the witch tighter. 

"I'm sorry." Hermione felt emotion clog up her throat and her nose, and tears fill up her eyes. She tried desperately to to not let them fall.

"There's no need-

Hermione sat up properly and looked at her Professor. "Please. Just listen. I was wrong about you. I've been wrong about you for the last bloody 7 years. You've helped me out in ways I've never known. In ways I've never come to realize until now. In first year, you got bitten by that hound and tried to save Harry from being thrown off his broom and killed. We thanked you by setting your cloak on fire and blaming you for stealing the Philosophers stone."

"In my second year, I stole from your Potions cupboard-"

Severus interrupted with an angry growl. "You did what, Granger?!"

"To get the ingredients to make polyjuice and then you made the mandrake drought to cure me from petrification. And you tried to tell us the Remus was a werewolf and we didn't listen. In fourth year, you worked really hard to watch Karkaroff and you knew someone was stealing from your stores, and look how that turned out. THEN you gave Umbridge dodgy veritaserum and warned The Order about us going to the Ministry."

Snape took the girl by her shoulders and shook her, finally stopping her incessant babbling. "Witch. Take a breath for Merlin's sake."

"All I'm trying to say is that events have repeated themselves. Something goes wrong and I blame you, only to find out that you were actually trying to help. All the while I've been rude, dismissive, annoying, naive and a whole load of other things that has allowed me to become no better than Dumbledore himself."

Tears began to fall and Hermione hid her shame by rested her face against Snape's shoulder once more.

Severus allowed his arms to wrap around the small Witch again and pressed their bodies together. Severus could feel Hermione's sobs that she was trying to fight with no relief. "Hermione, its okay."

"I was raped, for Merlin's sake! and-" Fat tears rolled down her cheeks and Hermione released the frustrations of the last couple of days. She found herself cut off by a giant involuntary sob. 

Snape stroked Hermione's hair. "Calm yourself. You need not beg for forgiveness. You have done nothing wrong in my eyes."

Hermione struggled to believe that. Severus lay his head on hers and listened as she unleashed her tears. There was a sick feeling in his stomach that flooded through his entire body. Guilt? repentance? 

Mentally, Severus tried to reassure himself that it was normal to feel bad when another was so upset, especially when he held person was held in such esteem.  But he wasn't sure that he should be feeling this awful. He would do anything for Hermione to stop crying. He never wanted to see her this distraught again. It was like she was dealing him a blow to the chest everything she sobbed. 

After a short while of them both, sat on the floor in an inconsolable heap, each of them reliving the past. Severus was first one to break. He sighed and stood up, shaking off Hermione as he did so.