Ripped and Torn

"That was an interesting experience," the spirit of Severus Snape reflected.

Nothing that one would want to repeat on a regular basis, of course, but apparently the underlying theory was sound enough, and the process had worked.

That left the minor inconvenience of being adrift without a body.

It was an odd sensation to say the least, ripped and torn from his normal fleshy abode. He was left with some vague perception of the world around him, but he lacked the ability to do anything about it. The universe was suddenly monochromatic and he drifted in it like a jellyfish in a tepid sea. He was also dimly aware that his late body was lying bloody, mangled and motionless on the floor of the Shrieking Shack.

"Too bad," he mused. "It wasn't much, but I was used to it."

He remembered the Dark Lord's killing command and the sudden lunge of the great snake, but succeeding events seemed rather hazy and distant at the moment.

With a mental shrug he searched his memory for the next step in the process.

Ah yes. Possession, that was the ticket. He needed to find some sort of corporeal entity that he could possess while he made plans for the future.

He drifted, ghostlike, toward the location that he knew the best, his home away from home. Actually, when you got right down to it, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry was more of a home than the house he owned at Spinners End. He had certainly spent a lot more of his time there, he reflected grimly.

Snape felt himself moving toward a concentration of life force in the castle. His disembodied spirit was drawn to it, and one particular entity in the conglomeration seemed almost magnetic to him in his current condition. It was oddly familiar and attracted him in a way that he couldn't quite define.

He had the strange sensation of trying to fit a metaphysical square peg into a round hole, but by dint of a sort of squeezing, his spirit slid awkwardly into its new home and slotted firmly into place.

The body's eyes were closed, and its rightful owner seemed to be out for the count. No problem. As long as the body was alive--it was, because he could feel the respiration and heartbeat--and in reasonable condition he could cope.

About then, the eyelids lifted and a soft moan came out of the lips. The body blinked and looked around.

Snape saw the Hogwarts Great Hall through eyes that were not his and it was not a pretty sight. Dust and smoky fumes still drifted through the room, there was debris on the floor, and it was obvious that hostilities had not long been over. There were Death Eaters, Ministry employees, students and Order members strewn across the flagstones. Some were struggling to their feet, others were twitching, and some--he particularly noted Remus Lupin--were obviously never going to move again.

"The last of the Marauders," he thought, and was almost sad. "A good enemy is a lot more dependable than most friends. Not that I've ever had many of the latter, come to think of it."

The body in which he was ensconced stiffened.

"Who said that? Who's there? I can feel you in my mind. Ohmigod, not Voldemort!"

"No," Snape wearily assured the suddenly tense Miss Hermione Granger, "merely a traitorous minion and half-blood Prince."

"SEVERUS SNAPE?" she said, aghast, as she suddenly sat up on the hard pallet where she had been dozing.

"The very same."

"You're dead!" she blurted out. "I saw Nagini kill you. You're dead!"

"Not entirely dead. Just sort of dead."

"What do you mean, sort of dead?" She felt a tentative tug at her vocal cords, as if someone was assessing control possibilities. "Don't even think about it!" she snarled in a low voice, causing a couple of Hufflepuffs afflicted with green-tentacled warts to glance around at her.

"There is this little thing called a Horcrux," Snape said delicately, abandoning attempts to control her voice.

"I don't care about Horcruxes! I have had enough of Horcruxes to last me a lifetime! What are you doing in my mind?"

"Slumming," he said snidely.

"Well, get out! Go possess Neville's toad or something. Just get out of my head!"

"Unfortunately, that is not an option at the moment."

"Wait a minute! You have to murder someone to create a Horcrux!"

"Ten points from Gryffindor for stating the obvious," her body's cohabitant said, with as much sarcasm as he could muster sans vocal cords. He wondered idly if the hourglass in the entry hall would register the points.

"It was Dumbledore!" she yelped with sudden insight, as she staggered to her feet from the pallet where she had been catching a few moments rest. "You actually made a Horcrux when you killed Dumbledore! You horrible... despicable... rotten... "

"It seemed a shame to waste an event like that," Snape said, and Hermione could almost see him shrug.

"Oh! That's ... that's..."

"You've already used rotten, horrible, and despicable," Snape said helpfully. "And I suggest that you lower your voice. You are attracting attention."

Hermione grimaced, nodded to the nearby survivors who were looking at her with frightened curiosity, and made her way rather shakily to the small antechamber off of the Great Hall.

"How could you!" she said, slamming the door behind her and pacing angrily back and forth across the room as she swatted the palm of her left hand with her wand.

"Rather easily, actually. It was Albus who suggested it. Waste not, want not, he said."

"What did you use for a Horcrux?" she asked suddenly.

"Oh no, Miss Granger. I have no intention of telling you that. The knowledge would undoubtedly provoke you to a search, followed by the destruction of my last link with this world and my subsequent annihilation."

"I don't care about your annihilation! Just go away and leave me alone!"

"First of all, I can't. Second, I have no place to go even if I did manage to find a way out of this mess that you call your mind. I assure you, Miss Granger, if I had a choice of bodies to possess, it would not be yours."

He realized that he was lying about that, and paused to wonder what it was about Miss Granger that had enticed his wandering spirit.

"And just what is wrong with my body?" Hermione demanded, coming to a halt in the middle of the room and glowering around as if looking for someone to hex.

"In the first place, it is female, with the usual female accouterments. I am not accustomed to having jiggly bits on my chest."

"Jiggly! That's rich, coming from the Great Black Bat of the dungeons! I'll have you know..."

Fortunately, what was rapidly descending into a schoolyard slanging match was interrupted by the door opening and a very relieved male voice saying, "Hermione! I've been worried sick!"

"Ron, you're alive!"

"Oh, well spotted, Miss Granger," the voice in her head said.

Ron Weasley moved to take her in his arms.

"Eeeyow! NO! Get away from me, you redheaded pervert!"

Despite her best intentions, Hermione shrank back from Ron's embrace.

"What's the matter?" he asked, slightly offended.

"Nothing! I mean, I'm sorry but I guess I'm having a nervous reaction or something."

Ron sighed deeply. "Yeah, I understand that. This has been one hell of a day." He put a companionable arm around her shoulders and steered her out of the antechamber and back toward the turmoil in the Great Hall again. "Come on, what you need is a sedative potion from Madam Pomfrey."

"Humph," Snape said. "Since when has that idiot boy been any kind of expert on healing or potions? He's been copying your notes for six years!"

"Oh shut up!" Hermione thought snappishly. "I'm going to take a double dose of Dreamless Sleep and you'd damn well better be gone when I wake up!"

"Not a chance," Snape said sourly. "Here I am, and here I stay. At least until I can get another body of my own."

Hermione sighed, causing Ron to tighten his arm around her shoulders and mutter soothing things in her ear.

Snape's response to that was lurid and profane.

* * *

They didn't have to go to the hospital wing for Hermione's potion. Madam Pomfrey had set up a triage ward in the Great Hall itself and was processing patients on an assembly line basis. She had apparently sent a hurry-up call to St. Mungo's, because green-robed Healers were starting to Apparate into the Hall with sharp cracks!

"But you can't Apparate in Hogwarts or its grounds," Hermione said, perplexed.

"Stupid girl!" Snape said.

"Don't call ME stupid! I'm not the one who's discorporate and mooching space in someone else's body!"

"Point taken, Miss Granger. Very well. I meant to explain that the Dark Lord broke the wards and the protective spells around the castle."

"Oh right. He would have done that."

"Who would have done what?" Ron asked, looking at her with concern.

"Voldemort."

"Oh, him. Yeah, whatever. Uh, maybe you ought to have Madam Pomfrey check you for concussion while we're at it."

"Tell that moron that you are all right and send him on his way!" Snape demanded.

Hermione did her best to ignore her ex-teacher. On top of everything else, he was giving her a headache.

The matron barely had time to run a diagnostic wand over Hermione, give her a generous phial of Dreamless Sleep, and shove a small jar of healing salve at her for the miscellaneous burns, bruises, and contusions before turning back to the scores of seriously-hexed patients.

"There's one thing to be said for hex battles," Hermione remarked, glancing at a Ravenclaw fifth-year who had sprouted a wreath of bright yellow tentacles on top of her head, "they're not particularly bloody. I mean, you're either dead or you're not, right?"

"May I remind you, Miss Granger, that my body is presently stretched out in a puddle of gore in that travesty of a habitation that you call the Shrieking Shack?"

"Not anymore it isn't," Hermione muttered, nodding toward Harry and Seamus, who were walking in from the Entrance Hall lugging a limp black-clad body between them. Snape's wand slipped out of the deceased wizard's robes and rolled across the floor. Hermione bent to pick it up, looking at the sallow-skinned, greasy-haired, blood-drenched and undeniably moribund wizard with distaste.

"Could you try for blond and well-groomed next time?" she asked, slipping the black wand into her sleeve.

"Like that imbecile Lockhart, I suppose?"

"Hermione, you're not well!" Ron said. "Let's go up to the common room; you can stretch out on a couch and get some rest."

"Go to my office. The Headmaster's office!" Snape demanded. "I need to talk to Dumbledore."

"Dumbledore is dead," Hermione mumbled aloud.

"Ah, right," Ron said, helping her over the vanishing step in the middle of the staircase. "He's been dead for quite a few months now. Are you SURE that your head is okay?"

"His portrait, you blithering... ! I need to talk to his portrait. Albus is the one who got me into this situation. He must know some way to get me out of it."

The Fat Lady was away from her picture--presumably watching the downstairs scenes from a better vantage point--but in the confusion she had left the portrait door ajar and the two weary Gryffindors staggered into the silent and empty common room with relief.

"Ron, I've got something to tell you," Hermione said, dropping down into a squishy armchair.

"And I've got something to tell you!" he said, sinking to his knees in front of her. "You were fantastic! Magnificent!" He stretched out his arms to embrace her.

"GHHHHHH!!! Keep your frigging hands to yourself!"

"Oh bloody hell!" Hermione yelled, cowering back in the chair.

Ron stared at her, his hands still groping in the empty air.

"Did you get hexed and haven't told me about it?"

"No. Well, yes. Sort of."

"What do you mean?"

"It's Snape," she quavered. "He's possessing me. His spirit, I mean."

"Snape? I thought he was dead."

"He's mostly dead," she replied, remembered the line from a movie her parents had rented several years past.

"You mean he's here? In your MIND?"

She nodded.

Ron dropped his arms and frowned at her. "Well, tell the bastard to get the hell out!"

"I did! He won't go. He said he doesn't have any other place to go."

Ron ran a hand through his hair, leaving spikes standing up in all directions.

"He looks like a drunken grindylow in a ginger wig," Snape commented.

"Shut up!" Hermione thought firmly.

"So, what do we do now?" Ron asked. "Look for an exorcist?"

"I don't know!" Hermione twisted her hands together. "All I do know is that this is going to put one hell of a crimp in my sex life and I haven't even got one started yet!"

"Right. I think I'll go get Harry." He nodded, scrambled to his feet, and hurried out through the portrait hole.

"Now, Miss Granger," Snape purred in her mind. "Shall we go to see Albus Dumbledore?"

* * *

The gargoyle in front of the magic escalator to the Headmaster's office was out of its customary position and looked decidedly the worse for wear. It didn't wait for a password, merely squinted at Hermione as she stepped across it with an automatic, "Excuse me."

The spiral escalator was still in working order, and the door at the top of the landing was open. She could hear a spirited conversation going on among a throng of people. It sounded like a cocktail party after the third round of drinks.

"... hit her right in the heart. I couldn't have done better myself!"

"Unfortunate lot of smoke damage, though."

"...so I went directly to St. Mungo's!"

"If we had a vantage point in the Great Hall..."

"... and then I saw Headmaster's body brought in."

The voices stopped abruptly as Hermione stepped into the room, but the portraits of past Headmasters and Headmistresses were apparently too excited over recent events to bother with pretending to be asleep. They gazed at her with bright-eyed interest.

Dumbledore beamed down at her from his gold-framed canvas behind the Headmaster's desk.

"Miss Granger! How are things going downstairs?"

"Aside from the hex damage, the fifty-some dead people, and the fact that half of the castle is ruined, about as well as you'd expect."

"Unfortunate, very unfortunate. As Everard just commented, there aren't any pictures in the Great Hall, so none of us have been able to get a first-hand account of the recovery operations. I think we really must arrange for a nice large landscape painting to hang behind the High Table, something with trees, flowers and a lawn for a picnic." He cleared his throat. "However, that is for later. Now that Voldemort is dead, the worst is over and the healing process can begin!"

"Yes, but there is one little problem."

"And what might that be?"

"I've got Professor Snape in my head."

Dumbledore looked nonplussed for a moment, then smiled broadly and said, "Severus! My dear boy! When no portrait of you appeared up here I knew that you must have survived. So it worked, did it?"

"You may tell him it worked just as we expected," Snape said, and added with irritation, "since you're too proprietary to allow me the use of your voice."

"He says," Hermione said, "to tell you that everything worked just as the two of you expected."

"Splendid! Severus is too valuable a person for me to simply allow him to die, and this way my death did serve a noble purpose."

"Fine," Hermione said. "I appreciate the sentiment, but I really would like him out of my mind."

"Oh my," Dumbledore said, looking over the tops of his half-moon-shaped glasses at her. "Really? Severus is quite a brilliant man and I would think that you, with your scholarly attainments, might enjoy the experience."

"Well, I don't! I want him evicted! Banished! There is only room for one person in this head and that person is me!"

"Calm down, Miss Granger, you're hyperventilating. If it's any consolation, I would just as soon be on my way too. I have never been the social--or even gregarious--sort of man and these quarters are rather cramped for two."

"Ummm. Yes, I can see where it would be a trifle inconvenient for both of you," Dumbledore said, stroking his long white beard. "There is a spell that reconstructs a wizard's body. It's a very old spell and from what Harry told me, it's the one that Peter Pettigrew used to restore Voldemort's body."

"Bones, blood and flesh," Hermione said, nodding. "Harry told me about that. But doesn't Professor Snape have to be alone in some kind of body of his own first, if the spell is going to work?"

"I'm not precisely certain of that," Dumbledore said. "I remember reading the directions somewhere, but memory declines after a century or so, unfortunately. The specifics of the potion ingredients might localize the spell. On the other hand, you may need to incarnate Severus in some other body first, which I believe is what Pettigrew did with Lord Voldemort before he brought him back from Albania. I'll have to refresh my mind on transference spells. I believe betony is required. Or is it dittany? In the meantime, I'm sure that the two of you can co-exist pleasantly enough until we get it straightened out!" He beamed at her.

She nodded glumly and turned to go.

"Oh, by the way, Severus! Minerva was up here and looked at your memories in the Pensieve. The poor woman was quite overcome. She'll be delighted to have you back as Headmaster. Which reminds me; don't forget about the Wizarding Education Symposium in Harrogate next Tuesday. And do see about that landscape painting for the Great Hall."

"Marvelous. Four hours dead, and he's still trying to run my life. Onward, Miss Granger!"

Behind them, the portraits continued their spirited discussion of the Great Battle of Hogwarts.

"Frankly, I don't think Dumbledore has a clue about how to solve this problem," Hermione muttered, as they headed back down the stone escalator.

"Old twinkle-eyes strikes again," Snape said in agreement. "Potions never was his strong point."

"If you ask me, he popped one too many sherbet lemons. I guess we'd better start collecting ingredients for the rejuvenation potion though, so we'll have them ready. At least blood of an enemy won't be a problem. You've got nearly two decades of Potions students to draw from."

"Funny, Miss Granger. Very funny. I'm not sure I want a replica of my old body anyway."

"Oh no you don't! If you think you're going to stay in my mind for the foreseeable future, you can just think again. And why wouldn't you want your body back? You were certainly uncomplimentary enough about mine a little while ago!"

Snape did a credible imitation of snorting; which was no small feat without a nose or a pair of lungs. "I am not looking forward to being recognizable, and open to attack by every wizard on the street, for killing beloved old Albus!"

"Not a problem," Hermione said dismissively.

"I beg your pardon? Not a problem for you, I suppose."

"Remember when the Daily Prophet printed all of those articles about Harry being a liar, and Dumbledore being half-crazy?"

"Yes, Miss Granger. I have lost my body, not my memory."

"Do you ever remember reading a retraction?"

There was silence in her head for a long moment.

"No, actually I don't," Snape said finally.

"Right. Which means that the average wizard on the street probably still believes that Dumbledore was a balmy old sod and deserved what he got. And I'm beginning to think they're right," she added in an undertone.

"Good point."

"So, what's the first step in getting your body back? Or, some kind of body back? Are we going to have to create one of those wizened little horrors like Pettigrew brought back from Albania?"

"I would rather forgo that step, if at all possible."

"It does sound sort of yucky. But I'm pretty sure that you need some kind of body to dump in the cauldron with the other ingredients or it doesn't work. And before you get any bright ideas," she added, "no, I am not going to sit in an over-sized stew pot with a bunch of Dark Magic gunk while someone chants incantations over me."

"That's not very altruistic of you, Miss Granger. You were the one leading the fight for liberation of the house-elves, were you not?"

"I was," she conceded, "but the way that I understand it, whoever or whatever gets dumped into the pot comes out as a reincarnation of the directing spirit. I am not interested in coming out looking like you. I have trouble enough with my own hair."

"Humph."
* * *

Harry and Ron pounced on her as soon as she went in through the portrait hole.

"Hermione!" Harry gasped. "Seamus and I carried Snape's body back to the castle from the Shrieking Shack, but now Ron says that he isn't dead!"

"Not completely dead, at any rate," Hermione said, sounding very tired. "When Snape killed Dumbledore he made a Horcrux."

They gasped.

She waved her hand impatiently. "Dumbledore told him to. That's what's keeping him aware, if not technically alive. Unfortunately, he decided to take up residence in my mind."

"Such as it is," Snape said.

They saw her to a chair and Harry chaffed her hands anxiously. "Have you had any blackouts, like Ginny did when Voldemort took her over? Do you know what you've been doing? Are you missing any time?"

"Harry, it's only been a little over four hours since Professor Snape was killed and I assure you that I remember every damned minute of them. Well, except for a bit of a lie-down in the Great Hall when I had to rest. I only closed my eyes for a little while."

"Aha!" Harry said.

"A typical in-depth comment," Snape said. "How you have been able to put up with these two imbeciles for six years is beyond me."

"I think it's a damned imposition!" Ron blurted out. "After all, you're MY girl!"

"Yes, Ron, but Professor Snape doesn't have anywhere else to go at the moment," Hermione said, leaning back in the chair and suddenly feeling every ache and pain that she'd acquired in the battle.

"I don't care!" Ron said "He's a killer and a traitor and he has no business possessing my girlfriend!"

Harry looked a little embarrassed. "Uh, Ron, I took a look at some Pensieve memories that Snape gave me just before he died in the Shrieking Shack, and it turns out that we were wrong all along. Snape was a nasty, bad-tempered, greasy-haired git ..."

"Thank you so much, Mister Potter!"

"... but he was loyal to Dumbledore and the Order all along."

"And just look where it got me!" Snape said. "I can't even pour myself a shot of Ogden's, and if he'd been through what I'd been through he'd know that I definitely need one!"

Tossing back his black hair, Harry looked Hermione square in the eyes and said, "Professor Snape, I hope you will accept my apology for doubting you. And I'm really, REALLY sorry that I ever called you a coward."

There was dead silence.

"Well?" Ron said, looking back and forth between his two friends.

"I'm smirking inside," Snape said.

"He says that he accepts your apology, and to think nothing more of it," Hermione translated, as she got wearily to her feet. "Now, if you don't mind, I'd like to get some sleep."

She trudged across the floor, toward the doorway to the girls' dorm. Behind her, Harry and Ron were plotting ways to evict Snape. The latter was not surprised that none of their ideas were even remotely feasible.

* * *

Getting ready for bed had its own elements of interest, what with Snape being present in mind if not in body as Hermione stripped, washed off the worst of the battle dust, and stumbled toward her bed.

Snape couldn't claim that he was an unwilling observer. Hermione's seventeen-year-old body was certainly delectable, with lush creamy thighs, high firm breasts, and a curly thatch of cinnamon-colored pubic hair that was just calling for someone like him to comb through it with his fingers.

Snape had never been attractive to the average witch, and the events of the last decade had kept him from forming any real relationships. Admittedly, there were a few interludes with Bellatrix and Narcissa which he remembered with satisfaction. In fact, he thought that he'd acquitted himself pretty damned well. The ladies had been appreciative and Voldemort had approved. The Dark Lord expected Snape to behave like a sensual cad, and he'd done his best to oblige -- all in the interests of staying in character, of course!

The sight of Hermione's naked body reminded him of numerous interesting things that would probably be very pleasurable to do with her, and he began making a mental checklist. If he ever got out of this situation and back into a body of his own, he intended to further his acquaintance with the buxom little witch. The war was over, Voldemort was dead--not only merely dead, but most sincerely dead--and even Dumbledore had been cured, permanently, of messing up Snape's life. Things were on the upswing for a change, even if he was dead.

Hermione was so groggy with fatigue by then that she didn't waste any time agonizing over there being an observer. She pulled on a cotton nightgown and was producing gentle lady-like snores practically as soon as she hit the pillow--leaving her cohabitant awake, aware, and plotting what to do next.
* * *

By the time morning dawned, the situation in the castle had been fairly well sorted out. The sick and injured were either in the hospital wing, in St. Mungo's, or nursing their aches and pains at home with their families. The staff members were checking out the damage to the castle, making repairs, and setting house-elves to cleaning up the mess. Grieving relatives collected the dead and made plans for funerals.

McGonagall reassembled Dumbledore's nice white tomb by the lake, remarking as she did so that he looked surprisingly good for someone who had been dead for six months.

Harry insisted that Snape's body rest in state as a hero of the wizarding nation, which presented a problem because no one was exactly sure just where that ought to take place, Hogwarts lacking a rotunda or even a chapel. They finally settled on the Room of Requirement.

"But it got burned out, didn't it?" Hermione asked at breakfast.

She, Ron, and Harry were among about thirty students scattered among the house tables, plus the faculty members, who still remained at the castle. The tables were loaded with food enough for ten times that number. Apparently the house-elves were too upset to bother scaling down, and were working out their post-traumatic distress with Monte Cristo sandwiches, Belgium waffles, crepes Suzette, and fancy omelettes.

"Nope, only the stuff in the Room of Requirement got incinerated," Harry said, pouring himself a glass of pumpkin juice. "I guess that's part of the magic of the place. Anyway the walls are stone underneath, and stone doesn't burn. I went up there with Professor Flitwick early this morning, and we asked for a proper sort of memorial room. It's really nice, with a white marble floor and columns, stained glass pictures of dead wizards I never heard of, lilies in baskets, and everything. It smells a bit of charred wood and singed drapery, but there's plenty of room for Snape, Tonks and... and Remus." His voice broke a bit on the last name.

"He wants to put my body next to the werewolf and that multi-hued clueless shape-changer? No! I won't have it!" Snape declared.

"Shut up," Hermione thought, munching a piece of toast. "You're not in a position to object to anything."

"So, how long are you going to leave them there?" Ron asked, shoveling cheese omelet into his mouth.

"At least until Tuesday," Harry said. "Andromeda Tonks is making arrangements for Tonks and Remus. It's Snape that's the problem. No one's quite sure what to do with him." He glanced at Hermione. "Sorry, Professor, but that's the way that it is."

"You can't leave any of them up there for too long," Ron said practically, as he reached for a jelly doughnut. "The weather being as warm as it is."

"That boy is an unfeeling clod," Snape said with some surprise. "I knew he was an incompetent moron, but I expected a little sensibility."

"Stasis charms," Harry said indistinctly, through his porridge.

"Wonderful. I can stay there forever and be one of the marvels of the castle for incoming first-years to gawk at."

"Can't you just shove him in with Dumbledore?" Ron asked, taking the last rashers off of the bacon dish. "It would be a tight squeeze, but neither of them would notice, right?"

"Ron!" Hermione said.

"I am entitled to my own resting place in the ancient mausoleum of the Prince family!" Snape said, radiating outrage.

"What about the Prince family?" Hermione asked, "or the Snapes. Professor Snape must have some relatives."

"We're working on it."

Hermione got to her feet. "I'm going to the library. Professor Snape and I have to look up some spells."

* * *

Hermione shut the cover on Magick Moste Foule and sneezed. "I guess that's it," she said. "We've got the list of basic ingredients for the rejuvenation solution."

"Which does not include betony OR dittany."

She smiled slightly. "We still need to get the personalized items, though, starting with blood of the enemy."

"There's always Potter."

"I don't think that will work," she said. "Harry used to be your enemy, but now that he's found out you were true-blue, loyal, and Dumbledore's man all the time, he's gone kind of soppy and remorseful. So, we've got to look elsewhere for the blood, even if we have to wring it out of a dead man's veins."

"My, my, Miss Granger. You have become quite ruthless over the past half year."

"I have learned from a master, Professor Snape." She left the library and started up the stairs to the seventh floor.

The Room of Requirement seemed to have entered into the spirit of things. The doorway was standing open, with stately marble columns on either side. Gold-filled engraving between them declared this to be the Hall of Memories, and sad slow music was playing softly from some invisible pipe organ. The light within was muted and golden.

Hermione had no doubt that everything would vanish and the door would slam shut again once the Bodies of the Honored Dead had been removed. A faint aroma of charred furnishings emanated from the open doorway, along with the scent of other crisped items which she did not try to identify, remembering one Slytherin who had literally gone down in flames.

She went inside, her footsteps echoing on the marble floor, and stared sadly at the three bodies on their marble biers. Tonk's hair had reverted to a mousy brown, and the lines etched in Remus's careworn face had smoothed out, making him look almost like a young boy again.

"A very good idea," Snape said. "Remus and I were enemies for most of our lives. Actually, it seems rather pointless now."

"That enemy business was all on your part. He told Harry that he neither liked nor disliked you." Hermione blinked back tears and turned her attention to the body of the almost-dead Headmaster, looking serene and marble-white in his stark black robes. She stepped up close to the marble plinth, tapping her wand on the palm of her hand.

"Miss Granger..."

"Call me Hermione. After all, we're in this together," she said, pointing her wand and concentrating.

"Well yes, but why are you pointing your wand at me. I hadn't counted on body snatching, even if it's my own body. Just what are you doing?"

"Professor... "

"Severus," he offered.

"Severus, anyone who ever knew you could honestly say that you were your own worst enemy. I think a quick Diffindo ... "

"Not the nose, not the nose!"

* * *

"I found that very distasteful," Snap said later, as Hermione slipped the phial containing his blood into the drawer of her bedside table.

"Tough," Hermione said heartlessly. "We need it for the spell and it's not as if you were going to need those few drops again. And since you were reluctant to let me take it, that reinforces the spell. Next, we've got to tackle that flesh of the servant part."

"There's always the Hogwarts house-elves," Severus said slyly. "They're everybody's servants."

"Absolutely not!"

"Oh come on," Snape said, needling her. "Make one of them feel guilty about too much salt in the soup and he'll probably cut off an ear for us."

"You're awful!"

"I never pretended to be otherwise. However, I do have an idea."

"Which is?"

"I wonder if anyone bothered to bury Wormtail."

"Pettigrew? He wasn't your servant, was he?"

"Yes, unfortunately. The Dark Lord foisted him off on me and I had him whining around my house for a couple of months. Totally useless and a rotten cook besides. He even burned the bubble and squeak."

"But he's been dead for days," Hermione said, wrinkling her nose in distaste.

"So? I don't recall that the spell specifies fresh ingredients."

"Ugh. But he's dead; he's not going to give anything to you willingly, not in that condition."

"He may not be precisely willing to offer up a bit of flesh, but on the other hand he's not unwilling either. The letter of the law will suffice in this case, I think."

"You're the Potions Master--or were," she said with a shrug. "Maybe you can get his other hand. Where do we go?"

"Back to Malfoy Manor, of course."

"I don't know how to get there."

"But I do. Just relax, Hermione. This won't hurt a bit. On the count of three..."

They Apparated into a lush garden, where the afternoon light glinted off of heavy-headed lily blossoms and the air was filled with sweet spicy scents. A white peacock sauntered across the flagstone path in front of them, dragging its lacy tail behind it.

"Straight ahead, through the conservatory door."

"Aren't there protection spells to worry about? House-elves?"

"The spells were lifted when everyone left the Manor for Hogwarts. As for the elves... there were three, and Nagini ate them."

"That's horrible!"

"Nagini didn't think so."

They found the body of Peter Pettigrew lying on the cellar floor, with his silver hand still clutched tightly around his throat.

"Ugh," Hermione said, with a heartfelt shudder. "Suicide by silver. But he looks like he just died. Shouldn't he be... well, sort of rotting or something?"

"He would be if he were anywhere else, but there are charms on these cellars to keep stored food fresh. Once he died, I suppose the charms extended to him as well."

"Thank you, I'll have nightmares about that, the squishy-icky kind!"

"Don't be squeamish."

"All right, if you say so. What do you want? Light meat or dark?"

* * *

Hermione added the unpleasant bits of Worntail-- now covered by a separate stasis charm--to her table drawer along with the phial of Snape's blood, and dusted off her hands. "Well, that's that. We've got to deal with the bone of the father next. I suppose your father is buried in a Muggle graveyard, and they probably have watchmen and groundskeepers and all. We'll have to do it in the middle of the night. I hope we don't get caught. My parents would be really upset if I wound up in jail for grave robbing. Well, no they wouldn't. At the moment my parents are in Australia and don't even know that they have a daughter."

"Miss Granger, you are blathering. I have no idea where my father is buried. I don't even know if the old sod is dead yet."

Hermione felt a sudden twinge of compassion for the disembodied wizard. "Was he... abusive?"

"No, actually," Severus said grudgingly. "The only time I can remember him or my mother yelling was when I was eight years old, opened the pigeon coop, and let his prize racers loose. I still remember that scene very clearly. Not pleasant."

"Then why... ?"

"Because," his voice said with forced patience, "I went to Muggle school and when I was eight years old I had a crush on my teacher. The bastard left us and ran off with her."

"Leaving you and your mother destitute?"

"Well, not quite. We eventually had to move in with my grandfather Prince, though, and he didn't like grubby little kids running around the place."

"Is she dead?"

"My mother? No, she's going strong in Hexham; hanging out in the local pub and picking up magical long-haul operators."

"Oh."

Hermione picked up the piece of parchment that contained her notes on the rejuvenation potion, and some jottings about possible ways to get Severus Snape out of her head and into a temporary body of his own.

She was still studying it when the dorm room door opened.

Ron Weasley stood in the doorway, grinning at her.

"Ron! How did you get up here?" she asked, putting the parchment away in the bedside table. "Boys shouldn't be able to get into the girls' dorms."

"Voldemort again," he said, coming across the room to her bed. "When he broke the main protection spells on the castle, the minor spells went with them. The Great Hall ceiling doesn't show the sky anymore, and there's no restriction spell on the dorms. How about that!"

"I don't think you should be here."

"He definitely shouldn't be here! Fifty points from Gryffindor!"

"Well, I AM here!" Ron said, sounding pleased with himself.

"What if someone walks in?"

"'No one is going to walk in. People have other things on their minds."

"And I don't like what he has on HIS mind."

"'Mione, you're too tense. All of this, " he waved his hand in an all-encompassing gesture, "has been too much of a strain on you." He pulled a full bottle of Ogden's Old Firewhiskey out of a pocket in his robes. "What you need is a little muscle relaxant."

"I don't know, Ron," she said, a tinge of doubt in her voice. "I've never been much of a drinker. Butterbeer is about as far as I ever go."

"Then it's time you started on something stronger. After a few drinks, you'll forget about that greasy git in your head."

"I don't like the sound of this, Miss Granger."

"Ron, I don't think... "

"That's the best way," the redhead said with a grin, conjuring two glasses and sloshing Firewhisky into both of them. "Come on, bottoms up!"

Hermione sipped tentatively at her glass of liquor, grimacing at the hot sensation in her mouth and throat. When she'd finished a second glass, and Ron wrapped his arms around her, she leaned into his embrace. The boy's hands moved to undo the fastenings on her robes.

"Miss Granger! Surely you are not going to... No! Absolutely not! I forbid you to let him touch me! I mean you, us! HERMIONE!"

"Sod off," Hermione sub-vocalized, opening her lips to Ron's probing tongue.

By the time she and Ron were free of their clothes, and their naked bodies were locked together on her bed, Snape had been reduced to incoherent mumbling, interspersed with sarcastic comments about Ron's technique--or lack thereof.

Hermione, engulfed by alcohol-fueled desire, responded to Ron's body with her own impassioned caresses.

"Oh, Severus!" she murmured.

The action came to a sudden and abrupt halt. Ron lifted himself on his arms, hands on either side of the pillow, and glared.

"WHAT did you say?"

"Err... what did I say?"

"You called me Severus!"

"Oh! Sorry, I guess I was thinking..."

"You're supposed to be thinking about me!"

"I am! I mean I do!"

"No, you don't! You've got that greasy git on your mind, and I don't like having sex with another man in the bed! Even when Lavender and Parvati and I ..."

"WHAT!"

"Oh ho!" Snape said.

"Never mind!"

Ron flung himself off of the bed, grabbed his clothes, and stalked away, the perfect picture of male outrage. He turned back at the door, and Hermione opened her lips to apologize, but all he did was grab the half-empty bottle of Ogden's off of the bedside table and glare at her before leaving and slamming the door behind him.

Behind him, a very distressed witch spoke to the empty air.

"Aren't you going to say something?"

"Nothing seems entirely appropriate."

"No, I suppose not," she said, winking back tears, and suppressing a lady-like hiccup as she reached for her robes. "Severus, if you ever get your body back... well, I mean... "

"Let's consider that when the time comes, shall we?"

* * *

"The first step is to find out if your father is still alive," Hermione said, the next morning, making a face over the vile-tasting hangover potion that she had just swallowed.

"How do you propose that we do that? None of my family have had any contact with the bastard since he ran off with Miss Loose Knickers in 1967."

"Do you know where he went?"

"Oh yes, that was no secret. He moved in with Miss Hot Pants on the other side of town and we used to see them staggering out of the local on weekends."

"Fine. Then what we need first is a Muggle telephone directory. That's a list of people who have phones. It's a kind of ... "

"I know what a phone is. I am not totally ignorant about Muggle civilization, you know. I lived in the Muggle world until I was eleven, and pretty damned awful it was, too."

"Then Apparate us to somewhere with a local phone book."

"If I must. Have you ever been to the East Riding before?"

"No."

"You haven't missed anything. On three, then."

A couple of people on the street half-turned around to look at the young woman in robes whom they didn't remember passing, but she smiled engagingly and--assuming that she was about to hit them up for a few quid for a worthy cause--they went on about their business.

She was standing in front of a city library. Hermione hurried inside, located the shelf of telephone directories, and pulled down the local-area one.

"Snape, Snape, Snape," she murmured, running her finger down a column of names.

"Do you mind not doing that? It reminds me of the way they called out my name for infractions when I was in school."

"There's no Tobias Snape listed," Hermione said, ignoring his grousing. "What was his girlfriend's name?"

"Gladys. Remind me never to name any daughter of mine Gladys."

"It's a deal," she said absentmindedly. "It's not one of my favorite names either."

A faint wave of pleasure rolled through Snape's being.

"Gladys Snape, 21 Banger Terrace!" she said, closing the phone book. "Let's go have a look, shall we?"

* * *

The plump woman who peered out at them through the narrow opening of the front door shook her head. "No, poor Toby's been gone these seven years or more. I lost him just before Easter of the year that the truck smashed into the front of Bridget's Irish Tea Room."

She was neatly dressed in a mauve blouse and brown tweed skirt with a cameo pin at her throat. Her gray hair was tightly curled, and she smelled of eau de cologne. She peered at her visitor through gold-rimmed spectacles that were perched on the end of her snub nose.

"Cliodna's crimson cunny! What happened to the woman? She can't be more than sixty or seventy years old, and just LOOK at her!"

"Where was he buried?" Hermione asked, and then added hastily, "It's for his son, you know. He'd like to pay his last respects to his father... "

"HAH!"

"... and since I was going to be in the neighborhood I told him I'd ask."

"Oh! I see. Well, poor dear Toby wasn't buried, precisely. His ashes were scattered across the football pitch during half-time. He did love the footie, you know!"

Inside Hermione's head, Snape was slowly counting to ten.

Gladys Snape bent a little closer. "I wouldn't say it to poor little Severus -- and why anyone would settle a sweet little lad with a name like that I do not know -- but his mother was a bit of a strange one. She wore the oddest clothes and she talked to herself. Acted as if she expected the household chores to do themselves. Between you and me, I suspect she drank."

* * *

"So now what?" Hermione asked, sitting at a table in Bridget's Irish Tea Room, sipping a cup of weak tea and nibbling at a cinnamon-flavored pastry with lurid green icing. "After seven years, I don't think there's much of poor dear Toby left on the pitch."

"We'll have to pilfer the family vault."

"The Prince family's, you mean?"

"Yes. Internments there go back for over three hundred years."

"But none of them is your father," she pointed out.

"They are my forefathers, and my grandfather acted in loco parentis after my mother and I moved in with him. That is to say, he grumbled, doled out a miserly allowance, yelled at me not to track mud over the floor, and complained about the stench of my potions experiments in the basement."

"I still think that's stretching things a bit."

"When it comes to potions that require an incantation, it's the spirit that counts."

"All right," Hermione said wearily as she got up, tossed some Muggle money on the table, and headed for the door. "Lead on."

She ducked into an alley near the tea shop and they Apparated.

* * *

The Prince family home was an ancient stone keep on a headland over the ocean.

"It's charmed to look like a heap of rubble to curious Muggles," Severus said, "and the repelling charms make it totally uninteresting."

"Who lives here now?" Hermione asked.

"My grandfather."

"What? I thought we were coming here to get his bones."

"No, we're going to get my great-grandfather's bones, which technically belong to my grandfather--being from his family and on his property--and we're going to take them away without him being aware of it. Thus they will be unknowingly given."

"Severus... "

"I know how magic works."

"Maybe so, but this all sounds pretty damned dodgy to me -- especially coming from someone who used to make me re-chop my mugwort stalks if they weren't exactly one-sixteenth of an inch thick."

"After you know the right way to do things, you can learn when to take liberties."

"You're telling me that everything you forced into us in five years of Potions class was unimportant!"

"Not precisely unimportant, merely overly-exacting. The vault is around to the left and down the slope."

A quick Alohomora! opened the ancient oak door of the family vault, which was one of the traditional sort and made of black marble to look like a miniature castle. Hermione stood back to let the stale air escape from it.

"Phew! I don't like this one little bit."

"Relax. The last person buried in here was Great Uncle Agrippa, and that was twenty years ago."

"Who am I looking for?"

"Domitius Ahenobarbus Prince. Try that ebony coffin to the left."

Grimacing in distaste, Hermione eased up the heavy wooden lid. "Eeeuu, he's gone all to bones and bits, and his skull is grinning at me."

"Maybe that means he's happy to see you. Take whatever's loose."

"Honestly, Severus!"

* * *

"I hope I never have to do anything like that again," Hermione said, dropping the yellowed finger bone into her drawer. She made a face and began brushing the cobwebs off of her hair.

"I doubt that the occasion will arise," Snape said.

"Is that everything?"

"Everything on the list," Snape conceded. "All I need now is a temporary body."

"I know where to get that," Hermione said, wiping the vault dust off of her face. "One more stop and we're done."

"Where are we going?"

"St. Mungo's, to see an old acquaintance."

Hermione Apparated into a London alley, made her way to Purge and Dowse, the permanently-closed department store that masked the wizarding hospital, and announced to the dummy in the window that she was, "Lavender Brown to see Gilderoy Lockhart."

"When I said that you were ruthless, that was an understatement," Snape said with admiration.

"I'm hardly going to do this under my own name," Hermione muttered as she stepped through the department store window, "and if there's anybody I'd like to see get into trouble, it's her. Three in a bed, was it!"

She made her way up the narrow stairs to the Janus Thickey ward and walked through the doors as if she had every right to be there.

The healer on duty, who wore a name tag that said Strout, looked up as the ward door opened and smiled at her. "My, my, we have a visitor. You look familiar, dear. You've been here before, haven't you?"

"Oh yes," Hermione said, in her best chirpy manner. "I came to see Gilderoy Lockhart once and I simply had to come back again. I admire him so much!"

"Isn't that lovely! You just come right on in, the poor lamb will be delighted to see you. He hardly ever has visitors, and he's such a sweety! He's right over here."

One Stupefy and a Side-Along-Apparition later, and Hermione had Lockhart right where she and Snape wanted him. That is to say, locked up safely in one of the Hogwarts dungeon store rooms, with enough Cockroach clusters and Hiccup Sweets to keep him occupied for a while.

"We'll need a great big cauldron," Hermione said. "Big enough for him to sit down inside it."

"Surely your Charms lessons included the Engorgement spell?"

"Oh, right! No problem there, then. Now the only things left to do are to prepare the basic rejuvenation potion and to get you into Gilderoy Lockhart's body."

"A truly disgusting idea. I think the man wears perfume."

"Probably sent to him by one of his deluded admirers."

"Of which you were one, were you not?"

"That was a long time ago!"

"Ah. As it happens, I do know the transfer spell that Wormtail used. The Dark Lord taught it to him and he was bragging about it one time while he was skulking around my house. It depends on the willingness of the subject, and I assure you that I am more than willing. You will have to cast it, of course."

"It's dark magic, I suppose?"

"Of course it's dark magic! When have you ever heard of anything in connection with the Dark Lord that wasn't dark magic? Although, come to think of it, he did know a rather nice charm for turning Toad in the Hole into Beef Wellington."

"Where are we going to do this?"

"Somewhere where we shall not be disturbed."

"Moaning Myrtle's bathroom then."

"That is a revolting location for my resurrection!"

"I am NOT going to lug all of that stuff out to the Forbidden Forest, no matter how much it may appeal to your Slytherin instincts. And if you're thinking about Myrtle, don't. She got so spooked by the battle that she's been hiding in Hagrid's rain barrel."

"Oh, very well. If I have to come back to myself while listening to gurgling plumbing and looking at ribbons of unfurled bog rolls, so be it. Let's fetch Lockhart and get on with it."

* * *

Hermione lowered her wand and looked nervously at the tall dark-haired wizard rising slowly out of the immense cauldron.

"Severus?"

He stepped out of the great pot, running long-fingered white hands along his wet and naked sides. He lifted his head and glared at her.

"Wave set! That self-centered prat actually used wave set on his hair!"

"Severus!" she exclaimed with relief, and flung herself into his arms.

Snape was both gratified and touched. His arms closed around her and he rested his chin on top of her bushy curls, breathing in the soft scent of her hair and feeling the warmth of her body against his. It was very nice to have real sensations again.

He pulled back a bit and tilted her chin up so that he could look into her eyes. "Maybe we should have stopped half-way. I could have had Lockhart's body, you know. I believe you expressed an interest in blond and well-groomed at one time. He was undeniably attractive."

"To some women," she said softly. "But my priorities have changed. I've grown up a bit in the past few years you know."

"Yes, I've noticed," he said with a smirk, moving a hand to cup the smooth rounded curve of her breast.

"Wait! You have to get ready for a symposium!"

"Sod the symposium," Severus Snape said, and kissed her.


-- end--