The case turned out to be exclusively concerned with cats. While this was a welcome development (previous field excursions had mainly concerned the gruesome after-effects of curses), it did not make for a very interesting problem.

Hermione listened to Severus' description of the peculiar behaviour of the cats at Trinity College in Dublin city centre, and promptly arranged a return Portkey home.

When she returned, Severus groaned (he seemed to be doing that a lot lately). “This is the invaluable contributor to our investigation you were speaking about?”

“I believe you have met many times, so I will not introduce you,” Hermione said brightly. “Crookshanks, I know it's not ideal, but you will have to travel in my bag on the bus. Once we get there, Severus and I will pretend to be tourists and you can reconnoitre.”

Severus still seemed to struggle with the basics of the operation. “A cat is going undercover for us?”

“To find out why the cats are conducting a parade across Ireland's oldest university every day at dusk? Yes – do you have a problem with that?” She raised both her eyebrows, hoping the expression of scorn on her face would make up for the lack of single eyebrow action.

---

Crookshanks duly delivered his debriefing, and it didn't take Severus and Hermione long to come up with a plan. In an ideal world, it would not have involved either stilts or an impromptu rat hunt, but beggars couldn't be choosers.

“I cannot believe you made me go on the stilts!” Severus wiped the white paint off his face as soon as they had escaped down an alleyway. “I'm over sixty!”

“That's hardly any age for a wizard! Besides, I had to carry the rats – I didn't hear you clamouring for that job.”

Crookshanks meowed.

“Yes, yes, you did execute your mission satisfactorily,” Severus said.

“Exemplary, I would say. Trinity has a new King of Cats –“

Crookshanks meowed again.

“ – I'm sorry, Queen of Cats, and tourists and students will no longer be distracted by cats behaving like guardians of an ancient secret.”

Severus voiced her one remaining niggle with the case. “I still think we ought to have been told what the secret is, though.”

“Then it wouldn't be a secret anymore, would it?” Hermione asked, just to get a rise out of him; Crookshanks had been adamant, so she knew they never would find out what the cats of Dublin were guarding so zealously it required a monarch.

“I put us on stand-by for a Portkey in two hours.” Severus had already started rounding up the few possessions he had left in their room at the B&B.

Hermione blushed when she recognised the jumper from that morning. “Great. You need a Pensieve and I have an idea.”

Severus raised his eyebrow.

“Wait and see. One of us can keep a secret, at least.” That bit of deliberate effrontery got her a prize-winning glower, and Hermione felt a bit more cheerful. Teasing Severus was one of her favourite parts of their partnership.

---

Severus had stalked off on his mission to peruse his memories – Hermione didn't waste her breath asking which – while she devoted herself to research.

She was weighing up the relative advantages of tracking charms versus Peruvian Darkness Powder when Severus reappeared. “Find one?”

“No. I need to go to Hogwarts.”

Hermione dropped her book. “No, you bloody well don't! That'll take a day, at least!”

“This is important.” There was something unusual about him, now that the case had been closed; he was on tenterhooks, like Ron before a Quidditch match.

Skittish, if ever that word could be used about Severus Snape. He had already sat down and stood up again twice since coming into her office.

“Is it more important than finding out where the mystery letters are coming from?” Hermione glared at him, but she was willing to accept his assessment. Merlin knew Severus Snape didn't faff around about doing his duty.

”Yes. No. It's... personal.”

Hermione reminded herself that he had been very clear he did not have a partner, so there was no need to feel like she had been stabbed in the back. “Fine. So it's less important, then?”

“Yes,” Severus admitted, although he had to force it out.

“Let's get to work, then.”

Hermione had considered involving their superiors, for all of five minutes. The Department of Mysteries was not a hierarchical organisation – as long as they steered cleared of breaking the time-space continuum or exceeded their budget, no one particularly cared what they did, as long as it tangentially advanced the body of magical knowledge.

---

It took the next letter two days to arrive. Severus looked positively mutinous by the time it did, having been shot down every time he suggested there was time for a short jaunt to Scotland.

Hermione felt vindicated as she plotted the letter's approach through the cloud of Peruvian Darkness Powder around her office. She had reasoned that, since the first letter had appeared at work, there may well be some connection to the Ministry.

The tracking charms pointing deep into the heart of the Department of Mysteries bore her out.

“Yes, yes, you were right all along. I bow to your superior knowledge.”

“Nice try, Severus. I'm still not saying that the next time you're right about something.” Squinting along her wand, she dissolved the darkness surrounding them, leaving her holding a quivering letter anxious to return where it had come from.

She noticed Severus had pulled his wand out as they advanced down the corridor.

Hermione had been tempted to do the same early in her tenure, but by now this was just a workplace. Just like Hogwarts was a school rather than a former battlefield – an unexpected advantage of returning for her final year.

The trip down memory lane was short-circuited by their arrival at the door to the Love Chamber.

They had both been inside before, but only on a tour of the department. The research team inside did not welcome visitors, and in any case most of the Unspeakables kept to their own offices, reserving collegial chit-chat for the canteen.

They gossiped like teenagers, too, which had surprised Hermione until Severus had informed her the Hogwarts staff had been much worse.

Today, there was little collegiality visible on Spencer's face. Admittedly, it might be because she had only opened the door two inches.

“What do you want? We're busy!”

“So am I, but I keep getting those mysterious letters. Do you know anything about them?'

“We research love, darling, not letters – now push off.” Spencer tried to close the door, but fortunately Severus had inserted his foot in a strategic position, preventing her.

“Considering that the letters originate from within this room, we may be forgiven for doubting your assertion.”

“What?” Spencer forgot to push for a second, and Severus took the opportunity to open the door a full foot. The golden thread of the tracing charm was visible all the way into the room and into a huge urn propped up on a plinth.

Hermione tried not to sound smug. “I believe the provenance of the letter is no longer a mystery. Now, will you please let us in, Madam Spencer?”

---

The occupiers of the Love Room insisted on tea first.

Severus and Hermione did not object; waiting for the kettle to boil gave them plenty of time to inspect the room, mainly the scuffed urn in the corner.

It didn't look very remarkable, but then few powerful objects did. Unless they had been created by a megalomaniac, of course.

“So,” the elderly wizard who had introduced himself as McIlroy began.

“We are all ears,” Severus assured him.

“We've been working on a little softening of borders recently, exploring the Trousers of Time, that sort of thing...” He shrugged, as if to indicate every wizard ended up taking an interest in alternative universes in the fullness of time.

“That's just a metaphor,” Hermione felt compelled to point out.

“For being a metaphor, it's pretty insistent it's real. That letter you're holding in your hand, for example – do you think that's a metaphor, too?” He nodded to the by now somewhat creased envelope.

“I'm waiting for you to tell me what it is,” she replied with what she felt was remarkable restraint.

“It is a letter from Unspeakable Snape to you. All of them are. The interesting thing about them is which Severus Snape wrote to which Hermione Granger.”

Hermione felt quite lucky she was sitting down. She clutched the nearest thing for support, only to find it was Severus' arm.

Fortunately, he was too absorbed in McIlroy's explanation to notice. “The letters are written in an alternate reality? One in which Miss Granger returns my affections?”

“Several of them, in fact. It's extraordinary how many occurrences there are of your particular coupling – that was what interested us in the first place. The main exception appears to be where you died, of course. That accounts for quite a lot of them.”

“I died?” He seemed oddly surprised for someone who had lived through two wars.

“The Shrieking Shack seems to be the most popular place.” McIlroy noticed Severus' face turning even whiter than usual, and kindly provided more details. “At the Battle of Hogwarts, you know. We're not sure, but many iterations of Ms Granger seem to have been unable to obtain Anti-venom. I'm sure that's no reflection on your resourcefulness, my dear.”

McIlroy reached for her hand where it was resting on Severus' sleeve, but Hermione snatched it away before he could pat it.

“You established all this, and then you somehow rerouted our – the correspondence of our other selves to us. May I enquire what your intended objective was?” For once in his life, Severus looked thoroughly discombobulated, but he was beginning to look more irate than bewildered.

Good choice; Hermione was feeling rather aggrieved herself.

McIlroy and Spencer did not seem to have picked up on that, however.

“Well, obviously several avenues of research opened themselves once we managed to direct solid objects through the gateway,” Spencer explained as if she were delivering a lecture.

“The urn, you mean?” Hermione asked, feeling she ought to make a contribution.

“Indeed. It is something of a breakthrough, to be able to direct physical objects –“

“Fantastic. You will win the annual intra-departmental award, for sure. Did it ever, at any point, occur to you that your colleagues are not to be used as objects for your experiments?” Severus could have been eviscerating a hapless student mauling leeches. His tone finally brought it home to Spencer that recent events perhaps looked somewhat different when seen from Severus' and Hermione's point of view.

“Naturally we did not mean to cause any offence - “

“Rather the opposite!” There was no other word for it: McIlroy was cackling. “Maybe you just needed a little help to catch up with your alter egos!”

Severus turned his back to McIlroy. His wand made a very brief appearance outside his robes, before returning to the relative safety of his sleeve.

A crackling sound in slow motion, accompanied by dripping, alerted the rest of the room that he had not lost his marbles completely.

“What was that?” Spencer, whom Hermione was forced to nominate as the sane one, asked suspiciously.

“That was the sound of your opal cauldron breaking. An expensive sort of noise, wouldn't you agree? Madam Cartwright will not be pleased,” Severus said, every syllable loaded with malicious pleasure.

“You broke it!” Spencer screeched.

McIlroy was slower on the update; he was still wearing an inane smile.

There was nothing inane about Severus' smile – it could have swallowed a tiger whole. “Of course I didn't. If I did, you would have to explain to the Select Committee why you violated fundamental research ethics. It is a ministry-wide committee, incidentally – they are unlikely to be impressed by a thirst for knowledge, like our own dear colleagues.”

As soon as they were finished, Hermione was going to find a Pensieve and decant this memory to be preserved for posteriority. No matter what happened next, the sight of Spencer gaping impotently, trying and failing to come up with a rebuttal, was worth savouring for decades to come.

“I believe this is where we take our leave,” Severus told Hermione, who for once did not object to his attempts to direct proceedings.

“We have been played, as Draco would put it.” Severus stalked out of the room so quickly Hermione had to half-run to keep up.

In one corner of her mind, she was surprised that Spencer and McIlroy had dared; an enraged Severus was hardly someone you wanted to go up against. Then again, a fundamental lack of common sense had never held anyone back in the Department of Mysteries.

The rest of her, however, had her priorities straight: “I don't care if we're being played like a bloody Stradivarius – our interfering colleagues is not what I wish to discuss at the moment!”

Severus stopped so suddenly she barrelled into him.

With unexpected courtesy, he steadied her before she stumbled backwards. They ended up in such close proximity she had to look up to see into his dark, stormy eyes.

“Then what would you like to discuss?” he asked with that voice, the one that had been completely wasted on generations of Hogwarts students and a small array of Unspeakables.

“Maybe discussion was the wrong word,” Hermione said, standing on her tiptoes to reach her object.

She took care to move very slowly, telegraphing her intentions to make sure they both were expecting the same thing, despite her heart beating a rapid tattoo urging her on to take what she had wanted for so long.

Kissing Severus Snape was just as good as she had imagined, but it stopped all too soon.

Severus looked half-demented: his cheeks were red and his hands had latched on to her shoulders, refusing to let go, even as he was trying to tear himself away. “I have to find that Pensieve!”

“Maybe I can help.” Hermione had spent at least some of the time waiting for a new letter to arrive thinking. “I have feelings for you, was that it? I don't think I quite admitted to being in love with you. I am, of course.”

Even for someone who had spent the better part of the day in a state of confusion, Severus displayed a startling similarity to a deer in headlights.

“It's fine,” Hermione reassured him. “I just figured out you – what was it? – return my affections, too. I hope you intend to be a little less Victorian expressing yourself in other areas.”

“I –“ Severus began. “You –“

“You'll get there,” Hermione reassured him. “Perhaps not in a corridor at the Department, though.”

Apparently, he was capable of kissing her like his life depended on it, however incapable of speech he may be for the moment. Maybe it would take less time than she expected.

Before they stumbled to her office and then into the Floo, Hermione could have sworn she heard someone shouting “Brava!” from a distance.

She preferred to believe it was myriad other Hermiones in other presents rather than the insufferably smug McIlroy.

THE END