"I'm in an abusive relationship."

He lifted his eyebrow and took a sip of tea.

"And why did you feel the need to enlighten me with this?" he inquired sardonically, glancing up at her perturbingly calm, expressionless face.

"Actually, I just wanted someone to pat me on the back and tell me what a fine job I've done this time," she replied in a very level tone. He was probably the only person she knew that could appreciate her meaning.

"I see you've developed quite the bite to go with that mane of yours," he remarked, setting his cup and saucer down the table, unraveling his long, elegant fingers from around the handle so his hands could settle arrogantly on high-backed Victorian chair he occupied.

"You learn what you must," she sighed. "I suppose you know that better than I do. And learned it, perhaps, just as hard."

He watched her silently for a few seconds, as she lowered her head to stare, unblinking, at her hands, clasped together in her lap, resting on the navy blue skirt she wore. She barely breathed; it was like looking at a statue.

He half feared that was all she was anymore.

"As much as I really do appreciate the uninvited company of a former student, I do have work to do. If you have any other earth-shattering, life-changing announcements to declare, you can send me a letter." He had never felt guilty for turning away someone in need, and he wasn't about to start now.

She got herself into this bloody mess; she could very well find a way out of it. She did not solve his hardest puzzles at the tender age of eleven to fail in the matters of love.

"Then you wouldn't mind supplying me a potion before you went back to your very interesting work." She looked up at him and caught his dark eyes with her own clear brown set, and held him there. She did not blink, and neither did he.

Yet he could feel his stomach coiling up into a tight ball somewhere around his ankles. He was not the most accomplished interrogator at Dumbledore's service to miss what was screamed by the defeated, yet defiant pose of her shoulders.

He did himself proud by registering none of the horror he felt on his face.

"What kind of potion do I have in my possession that your brilliance could not possibly brew on its own?" The irritation in his voice was completely false, and he was sure she somehow knew it.

She frowned slightly. "I can brew it perfectly fine, sir. It is the ingredients that I do not have at my disposal, if you please," she snapped at him, but none of it appeared on those lovely, porcelain features of her.

She really didn't care if he had it or not. This was just her way of letting someone know why it had happened, he realized. A very Slytherin method, one he reluctantly admired.

He turned his nose up at her. "I find it hard to believe that, with your circle of notorious friends, that anything is beyond your grasping reach."

There was a silence and she looked away, finding a place on the floor near his bookcase that was simply fascinating.

"He's having an affair," she told him very quietly, her eyes following the shadow of the bookcase to the corner of the room. The dusk cast shadows over the room and her face, throwing an eerie note into her voice he wasn't sure was there before.

"That is utterly enthralling, Miss Granger. I assure you, I could not have lived the rest of my life without knowing that." Yet he found himself compelled to lean forward to catch what she said next.

Her face closed down completely. "I don't have anyone to tell me not to." It was barely loud enough to be a whisper, but he caught it and stared at her closely.

"I'm sure Dumbledore could talk you out of it if you wanted." He dropped the game into her lap and reached out, taking her chin in his hand and turning her face until she was looking into those harsh black eyes of his. "I don't think you want to be talked out of it. I think you want someone who will not do exactly that. Which of course--"

"--is exactly why I came to you. Why should you care if I die?" The sun was setting quickly, the room was almost dark, but he could make out something there-- a tear, falling, making a shining trail from eye to jaw.

He was silent, and finally, it was he who looked away.

"I am sure that I would regret your passing in some small way, Miss Granger."

She snorted. "That's your way of saying you would come to my funeral out of respect for the only person that could ever match you for marks, sir." She would have spat the words at him if she could.

She ripped herself out of his grasp and stood, walking to the other side of the room. The sound of her heels on the wood of his floor was obscenely loud in the dead air as the last of the light fled from the room.

In the dim starlight, he could see her shoulders start to shake as she faced his desk. Had he possessed Lupin's hearing, he could probably hear the sounds of her tears splashing onto the ebony wood of his desktop, one by one. The sound of her composure leaking out of her, drop by damned drop.

He sighed. Was his dignity worth the life of the woman that had saved his life? He shut his eyes as the magic of the life bond they shared tugged at him. A life for a life, he could not walk away.

Magic was really irritating sometimes.

"I think my attending your funeral would possibly be better attributed to my loosing the only woman I have ever loved, Miss Granger."

Oh. He hadn't meant to say that.

He looked out the window at the quarter moon in the sky as he heard her sharp intake of air.

"If I had wanted to be mocked, I would've gone to Ron," she hissed at him.

He scowled, even though she could not see it. "I assure you, Miss Granger, when I mock you, you will know it."

Silence again, and then a cold, dry laugh that had no business coming from her throat. "This is a fine time for declarations of love, Severus."

"It wasn't a declaration I ever had the intention to make." He responded.

He listened as she made her way back, crouching down in front of him. "Why not?" she demanded. When he didn't look at her or reply, her anger grew. "Why the hell not, Severus Snape?"

His face didn't change as he said, "As disposed as I am towards romantic statements, I don't think anyone could have watched you as you changed into the woman you are now without falling in love with you, Miss Granger.

At her silence, he looked at her to find that she was still crying.

"I hardly find myself that repulsive, Miss Granger."

Her hand flashed out to slap him, but years of training had his reflexes honed quite nicely. He caught her wrist and stared at her, even though her face was completely hidden by shadow.

"Stop hating yourself." She said softly. "Because I don't."

"Don't hate yourself?"

"I don't hate you."

He didn't know what to say to that, because no one had ever told him that before.

"Are you still in need of that potion, Miss Granger?"

She turned her head a little. "That depends."

"On what, pray tell?"

"Are you going to kiss me or not?"