"Miss Weasley, perhaps you would care to tell me where in the instructions on the board it says that you should crush your sopophorous bean?" Severus glowered down at the girl, whose parentage was as obvious to him as Harry Potter's had been. Her stature or lack thereof, her bone structure and the texture of her hair all screamed Granger, but her auburn tresses and sullen ice-blue eyes obviously came from the Weasley side of the family. It also seemed that the child was no more averse to copying the work of others than her father had been.

"It isn't in the instructions on the board."

Severus pinned her with a look. He'd already gone through this lesson earlier.

"Sir," the girl added, making it plain that the honorific was an afterthought.

Severus's lips narrowed but he passed no further comment on the lack of respect. "If it is not in the instructions on the board, then perhaps you would care to tell me why you were doing it that way."

"Because, Sir, the instructions on the board are inefficient."

"The instructions on the board are designed to test pupils' abilities. We are at N. - E. - W. - T. level now, Miss Weasley. Perhaps there are other methods of brewing a similar but different potion which make it possible for any moronic dunderhead to appear more talented than they deserve, but you were told to use the instructions on the board. Followed correctly, they produce a Ministry-approved standardised-strength potion. By diverging from those instructions, you risk producing a potion which will endanger the life of the patient it is supposed to save. Evanesco!" Snape swirled his wand, and the redhead's cauldron emptied.

"Your uncle may have managed to cheat his way through this class when Professor Slughorn was teaching it, but my predecessor is currently in St. Mungo's, and, for my sins, I am in charge of this class until he is once more fit for duty. You will follow the same instructions as the rest of the class from now on, Weasley. For today, you will take a seat at the table nearest my desk, and you will begin an essay, explaining the importance of each of the ingredients in the legitimate version of the Potion and the reasons we prepare them, in the way the book tells us to. I will expect a full roll of parchment by Saturday morning, when you will report to my office at ten a.m. for detention."

"But—" The boys who sat on either side of the girl shot to their feet. "We're playing Hufflepuff on Saturday, Sir," Warrington protested.

"And this should concern me why?" Snape softly demanded.

"Well, aren't you her acting Head of House, as well?" Wolesley asked.

"She's our Seeker."

Severus's eyes narrowed. He had discovered on entering the room that the class had been seated according to alphabetical order, rather than according to the pupil's whim, part of Minerva's endeavours to force interaction between the houses. Other than allowing himself a slight smile at the fact this placed Granger, The Next Generation, between two Slytherins, he had not been particularly concerned. It was only now that he noticed the child wore a green and silver tie.

"We'll get creamed without her," another boy protested from the front row. The Hufflepuff beside him grinned.

"Silence!" Severus hissed, and the room promptly stilled. "Miss Weasley, front and centre, and bring your textbook with you."

---

"Come in, Fred," Hermione answered the insistent knock on her door in a resigned tone. "What have you done, now?"

The boy hesitated just long enough to make Hermione certain that at some point soon one of Weasley's latest Wheezes would be test marketed. Then he launched in with his true purpose. "Snape's evil, Aunt H. Downright evil."

"Professor Snape," Hermione corrected automatically. "And he's not evil. He's just... a little bit cranky."

Fred snorted and gave a toss of his head that made his long dreadlocks spill around his shoulders. "Tell that to Dad, only make sure you're next to his good ear!" he muttered.

"I'm sure you're not here to complain on your father's behalf."

"The git's given Pipsqueak detention—"

Hermione gave a loud sigh. "Fred, whatever my daughter has done, she hasn't seen fit to come and complain—"

"On Saturday!"

"What?" In one fluid motion Hermione rose to her feet and pushed her chair back.

---

"You evil old misanthrope!" Hermione spat as she barged her way past Severus Snape and into his private quarters. "You twisted miserable old git! Was I really such an insufferable know-it-all that you have to take it out on my daughter twenty-five years later?"

"Professor Weasley..." Severus paused and shook his head as if putting those two words in combination had made his mouth feel dirty. Whatever he'd been about to follow up with was lost as Hermione plunged on.

"You sat there at breakfast and listened to me telling Minerva that Molly and Arthur and all her uncles were coming to the match, and that they were bringing Oliver Wood to see her play. It's her seventeenth birthday, and you're so damned caught up in the fact that Harry's mother chose James over you, that you're still punishing anyone who had the remotest connection to her. Move the hell on, you dour old bat!"

"Madam," Severus interjected, "if you knew me better you would know that I don't listen to anything before I've had my third coffee. Certainly not the over-excited cooings of a doting mother. I had no idea about either the Quidditch match or her birthday when I gave her detention, merely that the girl was an insolent cheat."

Hermione's palm flew toward Severus's face, but his reactions were even faster, and he grabbed her wrist before she could make contact.

"You want to watch that temper, Professor Weasley," he announced calmly as he forced her arm down. "A display like that with a pupil could get you fired."

"The pupils don't say things like that about my daughter. She has never cheated in her life."

Severus raised a disdainful eyebrow. "Really? Then perhaps you can explain why she prepared her ingredients for The Potion of Living Death in the manner described in my personal potion book, rather than using the instructions set out by Libatius Borage? Surely after what Potter did to Draco you should have known how dangerous it was to allow her access to that book? Or have you never grown out of your silly tricks and games?"

"Is that what this is about?" Hermione demanded, stepping closer in her fury. "Some misguided attempt to minimise the harm you did with those awful spells? That book was destroyed years ago. If you hadn't stolen away like a thief in the night after the battle, you would have known that. Vincent Crabbe tried to attack Ron, Harry and I with Fiendfyre, something he learned quite legitimately during your term as headmaster. He not only killed himself, but destroyed everything in that version of the Room of Requirement, so don't you dare talk to me about children having access to spells they shouldn't have."

"The book itself may have gone, but one of you must have kept copies of the instructions."

"You gave copies of the medicinal potion instructions to Poppy Pomfrey. Professor Slughorn has been ill for some time. The only thing that quieted him enough during the fits to let him sleep was the Draught of Living Death. I've been brewing it twice a month for him for most of the last year. My daughter often helps me. She knows the professor's flaws, but she has a fondness for him just the same, and they both share an interest in Potions. That is why she knows your improvements. I'm sure it never occurred to her that by not following the textbook, she was placing others at a disadvantage."

Severus scowled. "Even were I to accept that, I will not be seen to change the child's punishment just because she went crying to her mummy."

"You really don't know my daughter, Professor. She has a stubborn streak a mile wide. She would never come running to me. Minerva wanted her to stay in my private quarters for a couple of weeks after her father died. Even then, she was having none of it. If you want to know, it was her cousin who told me about it. He wants to have clear bragging rights when Gryffindor win the Quidditch cup this weekend."

"And is it so certain that they'll win?" Snape asked.

"Unless Slytherin beat Hufflepuff by two hundred and ten points or more," Hermione explained.

"I'm curious, Professor, as to how any child of yours and Weasley's came to be sorted into Slytherin in the first place," Severus remarked.

Hermione actually laughed, the animated expression causing Severus to remember the night of the Yule Ball, when the one-time ugly duckling had shown her true feathers. Only this was no fifteen-year-old charge, this was a beautiful woman, old enough to have a teenaged daughter, but young enough to almost pass for her older sister.

Severus loosened his grip on her wrist, but he didn't let go, and Hermione made no effort to pull free.

"Pip told Harry that he had taken the coward's way out. She said that everyone complains about Slytherin being creeps, but the only way that would ever change was if decent people chose to get sorted in there. She said Slytherin needed a kick up the bum, but you couldn't do that from outside or it would just turn into a house war. And, of course, she probably didn't want to have me as Head of House."

"So she takes after her mother when it comes to hopeless causes?" Severus suggested, allowing himself the ghost of a smile.

"You won't change your mind?" Hermione asked in a husky whisper.

"You know I cannot." There was a hint of regret in his voice. "Even setting aside the matter of the potion, the child was sullen and rude from the minute I introduced myself. No doubt, she'd heard so many stories about the greasy git, she thought respect was optional."

Hermione's gaze dropped to her feet. "I'm sorry, Professor—"

"Severus. However temporarily, we are colleagues now, and equals. When not in the presence of pupils you may call me Severus."

"Severus, I assure you, I have done my best to ensure that what she knew of you reflected the truth of your situation rather than its appearance. She knows that Harry and Ginny admired you sufficiently to name their son after you—"

"They did what?"

"Albus Severus," Hermione pointed out, and plunged straight on without giving Severus a chance to get over his obvious shock. "Her father might have told her a few horror stories, but in jest, not in an attempt to bias her against you. Nevertheless, the Weasleys are a close-knit family, and you maimed one of her favourite uncles. It's hard for her to put that aside, even if she knows it was an accident." Hermione smiled softly. "Severus, you've obviously been a bit out of the loop. Would you mind if I ask you where you've been for the last quarter of a century?"

Snape sighed. "The Falkland Islands. They speak English. The climate is not dissimilar to the one here, and it was far enough away to be left in peace... at least until Minerva managed to find a school owl with enough brains and stamina to make the trip."

Hermione gave a rueful smile. "If it makes you feel better, Minerva's been trying to track you down for years. When Slughorn was hospitalised, she sent out a dozen owls in the hope that one of them would find you. I'll keep Pip back at the end of class tomorrow morning and have a word with her about her attitude," she conceded.

"Pip wasn't the name on the register," Snape remarked.

"Compared with her cousins she was always this tiny little thing and..." Hermione gave a self-conscious smile. "...she could get quite shrill when she was excited or upset. Her dad used to call her Pipsqueak, and it sort of stuck."

Severus gave a slow nod. "If her essay is of a suitable standard, I may allow her to go once I have marked it. If it is, and she must not find out before. It is part of her punishment that she should think she will miss the game."

"Thank you, Severus."

"Is she really that good?" Severus asked. "On a broom, I mean."

Hermione's face was bathed in something Severus was forced to admit was the light of love. "She's her father's daughter." She nodded her goodbye and slipped from the room.

---

"Severus?"

Minerva's distinctive tones stopped him in his tracks, and he turned and waited for her to catch up.

"I don't believe I gave you patrol duty tonight?"

Severus gave a self-deprecating smile that shocked his companion in its gentleness. "Old habits die hard," he suggested. "I was fifteen when I last slept easily within these walls. I thought I might go up to the astronomy tower. Perhaps you'd care to accompany me?"

For a second Minerva found herself trying to work out what benefit was in this arrangement for Snape, but then she told herself to let it go. Her map of this man's character had never been accurate, and even if it had been, it seemed it was long out of date. "Why not? So long as you're planning to walk rather than taking a dive out of one of the windows."

Severus smirked as he resumed his former path, and held out his elbow toward Minerva in an old-fashioned gesture of courtesy. "That is a mode of transportation best saved for emergencies, and I am somewhat out of practice these days, I must admit."

"I hear you're already giving out detentions," Minerva remarked dryly.

"Only where they are deserved," Severus insisted. "Minerva, why did you send for me? There must be a dozen other qualified candidates for the post nearer to hand."

"I didn't want a candidate who was merely qualified. I wanted the best," Minerva replied. "Besides, I want to know that the school will be in safe hands when I retire. Hermione could probably do the job, but she's only been teaching for seven years, and it'll be another three years before her boy leaves. Albus had great faith in you, you know. You already took on the position once, when circumstances made it nearly impossible. I'd like to see how you fare when you don't have a hidden agenda to hamper you."

"That's very flattering, but I only agreed to fill in until Slughorn was up on his feet again," Severus pointed out.

"Slughorn's condition is degenerative; even if he gains some temporary respite, he'll need to retire sooner rather than later. If I must, I will use the summer holidays to find a replacement, and I probably have another year or two in me, but I'd ask you to consider it, Severus."

Severus freed his arm from her grip and opened the trapdoor to the battlements before stepping back to let Minerva through first.

"I believe, and Albus agrees with me, that between you, you and Hermione would make a fine team."

Severus sniffed and let his attention wander to the heavens for several seconds before he remarked, "She's changed."

Minerva smiled softly. "She grew up. It tends to happen to most people."

"She said she was widowed. Death Eaters?" Severus asked.

"Heavens no, boy!" Minerva remarked, as Severus rolled his eyes. Only Minerva would dare call him boy. Only Minerva would get away with it. "Well, you know that he took a job in Scotland just after they started seeing each other?"

"Minerva, I moved to the bloody Falklands precisely to avoid knowing what Potter and the Wonderbrats were doing!" Severus remarked tersely.

"And I just thought you had an unnatural fondness for flightless waterfowl," Minerva replied in kind before she continued the tale. "He was out with a trainee, flying practice, and a storm came in. The girl was hit by lightning and lost her broom. He managed to catch her before she fell, but a crosswind drove them into a cliff face. He shielded her with his body and got a cracked skull for his troubles. He got them both back to their base. By the time he Apparated back to Hogsmeade and flew back here, he seemed fine, other than a headache, but he went to sleep that night and never woke up."

Severus thought again of how Hermione had glowed when she thought of her dead husband, trying to quash down the part of him that wished a woman would ever look at him like that. That was a Portkey that had long since vanished. He turned his attention back to the sky, trying to resurrect memories of long ago astronomy lessons to put names to constellations he hadn't seen in over twenty years. He didn't notice when Minerva slipped away and went back to her patrol.

An hour passed unnoticed before he stretched and made to return to his quarters. With a flourish of his wand and a non-verbal incantation of, "Cyclamen hederifolium album!" he produced a bouquet of white blooms, which he placed against the battlements before he left.

---

Hermione was already settled into her place at Minerva's right hand when Severus arrived for breakfast the next morning. He noted with as much amusement as he could muster so early in the morning that she Summoned up three cups of blackest Java next to his plate and waited patiently until he had finished all of them before she greeted him.

"Good morning, Severus," she said with an almost sly smile as she slid a heavy parchment envelope in his direction.

"Please tell me that this is not what is meant to make it good?"

"You mean it isn't enough that you have both my son and his cousin Fred first two periods?" Hermione asked.

"Not if either one of the two takes after their fathers," Severus remarked.

"Look at it this way, Severus. You've only got five Weasleys to contend with. You already missed out on Victoire, Dominique, Louis, Molly, James, Al—"

"Enough!" Severus protested as he slit open the envelope. "Merely the thought of that many Weasleys is giving me a migraine."

Hermione placed her hand over Severus's. "I'm not sure you want to open that then."

"If it were a howler from Molly, the envelope would be red," Severus remarked.

"It's an invitation to the birthday party, with every one of those Weasleys," she warned. "I would understand if you didn't want to, but I'd like you to come. Minerva and Filius and Hagrid and Neville are all coming as my guests."

"And the birthday girl?" Severus nodded toward the Slytherin table. "I suspect I'm not on her most wanted list."

"I'm asking. Severus... the... we." She looked down at where her hand rested over Severus's elegant fingers. "Don't make me explain here. For now, let's just say I want you to come."

Severus's eyes searched hers, seeking the smallest hint of mockery, and finding none. Instead, he found himself swathed in shreds of Hermione's memories. They were merest snippets, but they made it clear that while others had held him in disdain, the young Miss Granger had respected him and forgiven him his partiality for his own house, even when his cruelty was focused on her. She had seen beneath the facade and admired him for those times he tried to protect those in his care. She had been as deeply hurt by his perceived betrayal as by Dumbledore's death, because she had always believed he would try to do the right thing, even if, as in the case of Sirius Black, she disagreed about what the right thing might be. And her world had been set to rights when he had been vindicated, though it had left her feeling hollow and disloyal to have ever doubted. He had fooled the world, up to and including the Dark Lord, but even as a mere chit of a girl, this woman had been disappointed in herself for not believing in him.

He closed his eyes and blinked away the images. His wand was still in its sheath. He had performed no conscious act of Legilimency. He knew of only one explanation.

He gracefully bowed his head in acknowledgement of her invitation. "If you wish it, I will attend. I make no promises about the length of my stay, however."

She gently patted his hand with hers before she lifted it away entirely. "Thank you, Severus."

He had just taken a bite of his toast with lime marmalade when Hermione added. "Oh, and you might want to watch out for Fred. I don't know what he's up to, but I get the impression something's brewing."

Severus raised his eyes to the ceiling of the Great Hall as if to ask for the gift of patience. "I merely took a break from teaching. I didn't have a frontal lobotomy. I remember how to control a class."

"One more favour?" Hermione asked.

Severus lifted an eyebrow and waited silently for her request.

"If you have to give them detention..."

"Any day other than Saturday?" Severus suggested and was rewarded with a dazzling smile.

---

"Weasley, a word, please," Hermione requested as her daughter's class packed their bags and made to leave.

Hermione closed the door behind the last of the sixth-years and then put away her wand.

"Wha-at, Mum?" her daughter demanded as soon as they were alone.

"Pip, you know what. You know I taught you to respect your teachers," Hermione started.

"He didn't respect me," the girl argued. "He hated me the minute he looked at me."

"Professor Snape doesn't always come across well. Give him a chance," Hermione insisted.

"What is it between you and him?" the redhead asked.

Hermione sighed. "There's nothing between us. Professor Snape is a good man, who made some bad choices when he wasn't much older than you are now. Your father used to say something whenever I found a new cause. 'All it takes for evil to prevail is for good people to do nothing.' Maybe the professor wouldn't have made those choices if there had been more good people willing to give him an even break from the start because it was the right thing to do, rather than waiting until they could make use of the situation he got himself into. Either way, he's paid for those choices a million times over. Everyone talks about your Uncle Harry, or about the three of us and what we did. Not one bit of that would have mattered if it hadn't been for Severus Snape."

"Mum? Do you like him?"

"I don't know, Pipsqueak." Hermione ruffled her daughter's hair. "He's not the sort of teacher who tries to be liked, and I haven't known him long enough in any other capacity to come to an opinion. I respect him. I admire him. I think he's the bravest man I've ever known. I want to like him, but I don't know whether he'll let me get to know him well enough for that." Only that wasn't necessarily true. She'd caught a glimpse that morning of the man behind those normally unreadable eyes, and it scared her. It scared her because she'd always thought that when and if she became interested in another man, it would be someone much like her late husband. Severus had a much darker, more solitary personality, but she found herself drawn to him.

"It's been three years. If you like him it isn't a crime. Dad wouldn't expect you to stay in mourning forever."

"Just give him the same respect you give the other teachers, okay?" Hermione suggested. "That's all I'm asking."

"Yes, Mum. Can I go now, or do you want me to miss break entirely?" the girl asked with a cheeky grin that almost broke Hermione's heart with its likeness to her father.

"Get your arse out of here," Hermione responded good-naturedly. "And tell Warrington I know him too well not to Imperturb the door."

---

Severus used his wand to point at the board. "Today, you will be making a Strengthening Solution. The instructions are on the board. If any of you produce a Potion which is graded below Acceptable, your next lesson will consist of a written exam. Be aware that I will be marking according to OWL standard, which may be somewhat stricter than the standard to which you have become accustomed. Let us hope you perform better than this morning's group of Ravenclaws and Gryffindors. You have an hour and twenty-five minutes. You may begin."

As the class stowed bags under desks, set up cauldrons and began to prepare ingredients, Severus opened the tome he had retrieved from the school library during break, flicking through the pages until he found the half-remembered section.

'Involuntary Legilimency is a relatively rare phenomenon, occurring only between practitioners of the Art. However, this is not the reason for its rarity. Although a skilled Legilimens can "force" memories from an unwilling subject by dint of effort, this is not the case where the phenomenon occurs unbidden. Involuntary or perhaps more accurately subconscious Legilimency occurs only where on some level both subjects wish for the exchange of thoughts and memories. It requires a high degree of openness between the participants, and though it occasionally occurs between siblings, it is most common between lovers. For this reason, the practice is also known as soul-gazing.'

Severus gave a groan as he closed the book, his worst suspicions confirmed. Somewhere, some part of him not only wanted a woman to look at him as Hermione Weasley had done when she thought of her late husband. He wanted that woman to look at him in that way.

His utter humiliation was complete.

It shocked him, and yet it didn't. He couldn't claim to be unaware that the intelligent and promising girl had reminded him of Lily. Observing her growth to adulthood with Potter and Weasley had been like watching his first love taken from him all over again. Of course, he'd thought she would end up with Potter, but in a way it was worse to think that she'd given her heart to Weasley. Weasley, so callow a youth that he'd abandoned her and the Potter brat. According to Phineas Nigellus, the girl had cried herself to sleep for weeks before Weasley miraculously tracked them down.

Weasley, who'd been no more of a flyer than Severus was himself, but who the girl saw as a sporting legend. He wanted to believe that it had been blind adulation, a brief lapse in judgment by a woman who might learn to appreciate the finer qualities of a mature, intelligent partner, but it had to have been something deeper and more profound.

And what hope did he have with a woman who could love Ronald Weasley?

What had she seen? How much of himself had he betrayed? And why had it happened at all?

When it came, the metaphorical 'Lumos!' stunned him with his brilliance. The openness, the subconscious desire to share of oneself had to be mutual.

---

Hermione liked to think that when occasion called for it, she could be patient. This was not one of those occasions. They had parted at breakfast with extreme civility. She had hoped to see him in the staff room at morning break, but he had not appeared, nor at lunch and now not at dinner. The only explanation she could think of was that he was deliberately avoiding her. And how in Merlin's name was she supposed to work out what on Gaia's green earth was going on if he did that?

She tossed her hair, which was held at either side by a silver clip before it spilled almost to her waist, back over her shoulder and stabbed her treacle tart with her spoon.

"Something wrong?" Minerva asked.

"Nothing," Hermione answered with false lightness of tone as she stabbed the dessert again. "Nothing at all."

Neville moved from his seat on Minerva's left to take up Severus's empty chair. "It's not that bad, you know." He patted her hand gently.

"What's not that bad?" Hermione demanded.

"The make-up, the hair," Neville answered with an eloquent shrug. "Hannah went through the same phase when Alice turned seventeen. Having a grown-up daughter doesn't make you any less attractive. You'll probably be a beautiful woman into your eighties."

Hermione bristled at first as she realised where his words were going, but, by the time he finished, she couldn't help but respond to his sincerity. She gave him a rueful smile. "Thanks, Neville, It's nice of you to say so, but I'm not sure I'll really believe it until I hear it from a man who isn't happily married to someone else."

Minerva rested her hand on top of Hermione's. "My dear, I wouldn't be surprised if you occupy the fantasies of half the boys in seventh year, but if you ever doubt yourself you only need to look at any one of those photographs you have on your walls. You were loved, and a love like that doesn't just stop because he's passed on. It stays in your heart for the rest of your life."

Hermione let her spoon fall into her plate and pushed her chair away from the table. Perhaps Minerva was right. Maybe she expected too much when she hoped for a second chance at romance, but her mother had always told her that those who love deeply once, have it in them to love deeply again. She almost snorted aloud at the association of Severus Snape with the word romance, but that didn't mean that she was going to let the anti-social old ba...t avoid her like this. What had happened this morning meant something, and she was determined not to let another sun set before she found out what that something was.

---

Her first knock was carefully judged to sound calm and casual. When there was no reply, her second knock was peremptory. When that wasn't answered either, she began to beat the door in an unending tattoo. "Severus Snape, answer this door!" She aimed a kick at the door's baseboard with her stylish, yet comfortable high-heel, leaving a scuffmark on both waxed wood and leather. "Come out, you uptight old thing! A gentleman wouldn't do what we did this morning with a woman and then avoid her!" She hammered some more on the door and then used the most formidable weapon in her arsenal.

"You're nothing but a damned coward!" she shouted as she gave the door one last shoe-denting kick, but the door to Severus's office remained shut.

A few feet down the corridor, the door to an unused classroom opened on hinges that had been recently and carefully oiled. All five Weasleys currently attending Hogwarts peeked out as Hermione stormed off in the direction of her office. "I told you she liked him," Pip remarked, once her mother was out of earshot.

"I just want to know what the pair of them were up to this morning!" Fred added, with a wicked grin. "Uncle Harry is going to go ballistic when he hears about this!"

Fred's younger sister, Roxanne, tossed her long braided hair scornfully, making a few hundred little scarlet and gold beads clatter gently. She was almost a carbon copy of her mother, Angelina, at fourteen, except her skin was the colour of coffee almost drowned in cream. "It's not Uncle Harry she's got to worry about."

Lucy, a tall and willowy strawberry blonde with a svelte jaw-length bob, stepped out into the corridor. At eighteen, the eldest and, in her own mind, the most responsible of the group, she pushed her rectangular wire-framed glasses up her nose in a nervous gesture she had picked up from her father, Percy, and straightened her blue on blue tie. "Does it matter if he makes her happy?"

"Time will tell. Right now," the last Weasley remarked, "all he's making her is pissed off. I don't think I've seen anyone who wasn't us get under her skin like that since—" His voice faltered, and it was his sister who finished his thought for him.

"Since Dad died."

---

Severus wore a Muggle overcoat over his customary long jacket and trousers. He should have been far too hot, but even in summer the sun never seemed to penetrate between the houses of these narrow and desolate streets. The tall shadow of the mill chimney had gone, and whatever remained of Spinner's End and the streets parallel to it had all been sealed off behind plywood fences. Signs advertised the industrial estate due to open in a year's time.

Severus didn't follow any planned route, but his steps led him through an old playground, along a tow path and on toward the more prosperous area of town. It was decades since he had called this sad bequest of the long-gone industrial revolution his home, but tonight he walked the streets, some ravaged by neglect, others decorated with the bright scars of new and unfamiliar buildings and landmarks. He knew that he was truly outcast.

Fifty years ago the large Victorian houses where Lily Evans had lived had been home to bank managers and higher-ranking civil servants, to social-climbers and the downwardly mobile of the upper classes. Now, most of the shops carried signs in Urdu, Hindi or some other language of the Indian subcontinent as well as English. Lily no more belonged in this altered landscape than he did, and so he found an empty alleyway and Apparated to where he had known he would ultimately go.

---

Hermione fumed as she pulled open her desk drawer and extracted her own version of The Marauders' Map. Harry's had passed down through the family. Now that the next generation of Potters had left the school, it was, she suspected, in the hands of Fred and Roxanne, whose father had given it to Harry in the first place. However, anything a group of teenaged boys could do, Hermione could do better. Her version included the Room of Requirement, and unless those using it specifically stated they should be undetectable, it also showed its occupants. It showed the teachers' classrooms, offices and store rooms, though not their private quarters. She had had no wish to know what her fellow teachers did behind closed doors, until now. It showed house-elves and pets. It showed all of the Forbidden Forest, the centaurs and unicorns, acromantulae and bowtruckles, and instead of the little moving dots on Harry's map, hers showed little sets of footprints.

She pored over the map, from highest tower to lowest dungeon. She wasn't overly surprised to find all five Weasleys together and probably heading in the direction of the Room of Requirement. The cousins were closer than many brothers and sisters, and with two of them in Ravenclaw, one in Slytherin and two in Gryffindor, there were a limited number of places where they could all congregate. However, she found no sign of Severus Snape, proving to her satisfaction that he must, in fact, be in his private quarters ignoring her summons.

She stormed through to the small pantry where she kept a few personal supplies. On one of the shelves there was a small wine rack, just large enough for six bottles. She pulled a bottle halfway out of the rack, considering the cheap Lambrusco she had taken to drinking over the past three years because its alcohol content was so low that she could drink a bottle on her own and remain relatively unimpaired. Then, she pushed it back in, removing a dusty bottle of Chablis instead. From another cupboard she took a bottle of Sober-Up Potion and set it on her coffee table, where she could grab it easily if a pupil came to her door. On further consideration she went back to her pantry and pulled out a packet of Jaffa Cakes to go with the wine. She fetched her heavy, long towelling 'teacher' robe and draped it over the end of her sofa, where it, too, was readily available if she were summoned in her capacity as head of house, and then she padded into her bedroom where she stripped away the layers she had added for him.

From an eight by ten photo frame resting on her bedside cabinet, a redhead gave her a wry smile and blew her a kiss, and Hermione turned away before he could see the tears start to fall, wishing with all her heart that life was simple again and that she could have his calming arms around her while they shared the wine between them, instead of making do with a lonely bubble bath.

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N.B. According to my research into 'The Meaning of Flowers', cyclamen is generally taken to symbolise resignation and goodbye.