As The Seasons Decay

He turned back to the young witch whom he'd left for just a few moments. Yet those moments seemed to have made all the difference.

Severus Snape rushed towards the chair with horror in every lineament of his being. He knew well the unnatural slump of her body and could hear even from across the room the totally irregular pattern of her breathing. He knew too that this was not the type of reaction that a Muggle might get from an overdose of alcohol. A witch, especially a trying-to-mature one, was particularly susceptible to the dangers of alcohol poisoning. Aside from the obvious side-affect of death, there could be madness, partial or total loss of memory, and even the complete stripping of one's power. He cursed every God he knew of for Granger's stupidity and set about preparing the complex spells and counters that must fight this off, working as fast as he could, feeling each moment pass by like the future might for what should be one of Hogwart's most brilliant and successful students.

Three hours later, he sat back on his heels and wiped some perspiration from his brow. He had done enough to stabalize her, enough so that she would not likely face any really serious repercussions from her thoughtlessness. Enough that she could be safely moved to the Infirmary. He sighed and, keeping his eye on her form the entire time, got up and reached for the small silver bowl on his mantelpiece.

"Albus Dumbledore," he called into the flames as the pinch of Floo powder he threw in changed their color.

"Hello Severus. Is anything wrong? Not that I don't enjoy your company...." Severus never asked for company unless there was something of vital importance.

"You know that I went in search of Miss Granger, correct?" Dumbledore nodded. "Well, I found her extremely inebriated, so I took her back to my rooms to sober her up with an Anti-inebrio potion- I know that the Infirmary has none as I haven't found time to make any for Poppy. I turned away to get the dose for her, and she had slipped into an alcohol-poisoning state. I have finally stablilized her, so if you could call Poppy and have her get Granger out of my rooms and into where she would be better taken care of, that would be wonderful," Snape concluded.

Dumbledore's face held a lot of concern over his Head Girl's state, but he knew that she was in capable hands with Severus. He agreed and summoned Poppy Pomfrey, who Flooed into the Head of Slytherin's chambers in such a state of concerned excitability that Snape was reduced to lurking in the corner as she ascertained that everything had been done correctly. As she finally had the girl ready and was about to go through the fireplace with her, she remembered that she owed Severus a thank-you for a job so well done. She raised her head to give her commendation, but he was no where to be seen. She shrugged and with a muttered "Infirmary" and a careful grip on the girl, went to complete the task that he had begun.

Severus Snape, one of the best potion masters in the world, was sulking. Although to be accurate, he would have bitten the head off of anyone who dared to suggest such a preposterous thing. He considered himself to be brooding, mind you the difference. What would cause someone as bright as he allowed himself to admit the Granger girl was (Gryffindor and all) to risk the destruction of herself in such a rash manner? He was sunk into the depths of the green plush wingback chair in the small living room of his quarters. The very chair which had held the nearly lifeless body of the very subject he was musing over less than two hours ago. He was not nearly so stupid as to believe that her emphatic insistence over its not being about that git Potter was true, but he couldn't help but think that there had to be something else to bring the girl so low.

Why was he spending so much time thinking about the situation? Because, Severus, he told himself wryly, the girl nearly died in this exact spot. Of course you should spend a little time thinking about it. It was simply that he had not had much occasion to think about anyone other than himself in a long time. In fact, he could not remember the last time that he had thought about someone in any way but to wish them dead. The last included himself. Snape rubbed his left forearm as he always did when he thought about the stupid decisions he had made in his life. Perhaps that was why he had been so upset when he'd seen Granger in the bar, drunk out of her mind. He didn't want her to do something stupid that she would regret all the rest of her days like he had.

He could not, however, claim inebriation as the reason he had committed the act that forever damned him, if not the world's eyes, then his own. Forever. He had been 18, fresh out of Hogwarts and eager for a new experience. He had more money than Malfoy, and probably quadruple the brains, but his family had not the connections of Lucius. Nor had Snape the characteristics which made others so eager to accept Malfoy. Severus was harsh, arrogant, possessing of superior intelligence and always ready to make others aware of it. Not to mention he did not have even a modicum of Lucius Malyfoy's Slytherin Golden Boy looks, with a perfectly sculpted face and physique. Too studious to bother with anything else, he had shrouded himself in voluminous black robes, forgotten to bother with brushing his hair, and simply neglected himself. He turned around one day and realized that he didn't have a single friend in the world. And the disturbing part was that he smiled.

Without anyone, he was free. He was sure that as soon as he graduated, there would a multitude of options for some one with his brilliance, and if there was not, he could study anywhere he wished. At the time, Slytherin Common Room chat centered around the most prominent up-and-coming wizard of the day, a wizard who seemed to have appeared out of nowhere and styled himself 'Lord Voldemort.' Secretly, Severus wanted more than anything to be employed by this man who was more than a man and told his followers that they would be too. A man whose wish for knowledge led him to the ends of the Earth. Snape found it easy to dismiss the rumors of torture and killing and purification of wizard blood in favor of the ideals that he sought after. Perhaps a few muggles would have to be killed in order to get powerful snobs like the Malfoys and Parkinsons into Lord Voldemort's grasp, but Severus knew that that was just a front for what he really wanted to do. He meant to be right there with the Dark Lord as the experimentation began.

He had been unsurprised but happy when he was approached by a short, nondescript man with the Dark Mark on his arm. They had apparated to the current quarters of the Lord, and Severus had undergone the Tests of Loyalty to Lord Voldemort. The Tests were designed to weigh the balance of Light and Dark in a person's soul, and they were cruel, and they were difficult- and Severus passed them with flying colors. Voldemort had rejoiced, for here was a brilliant young man who embodied almost all that he could want. He was sure that given time, his curious distaste for the Dark Revels and the entrapment and torture of Aurors would disappear. But it never did, and Severus looked around one day, just as he had at school, and had another damning revelation. It had all been a lie. The knowledge had never come, the killings had never stopped. And he had been right there with them the entire way. He may not have relished the death and merciless torture as Nott and Avery had, but he had no less participated with alacrity. Unlike his first realization, it had not come when he was alone in a dark room listening to the chatter and gossip of the students below. It had emerged in front of a Dark Altar, while he was (WHILE) raping a virgin girl for some Dark Ritual. He did not have to search his memory very far to see her face, her pain, and her terror. In fact, he didn't have to search very far for any of them, as numerous as they had been. They were all there on the surface of his mind every day and every time he looked in the mirror and wondered why he was still alive.

At least that was a question he knew the answer to. He... A buzzing at the fireplace alerted to him to the fact that someone wished to speak to him. Dumbledore, of course. No one else, not even Mcgonagall openly sought his company.

As Severus's study and visage came into focus, Dumbledore frowned. He knew the look on Severus's face. The man, still pretty young by wizarding standards, had been thinking about his past. As the Head of Slytherin slashed an irritated glance at his fireplace, he rubbed his left forearm, confirming Dumbledore's guess.

"What is it you wanted, Headmaster?" Snape shot at the Floo Connection.

"Merely wanted to inform you that Madame Pomfrey has said that Miss Granger will make a complete recovery without any ill side effects. And that you had done an incredible job with the beginning of a complicated medical procedure." Albus waited for a sign that the man had heard what was high praise indeed coming from the persnickety nurse, but he should have known better. He sighed and continued. "Where was it that you found Miss Granger in such a condition, Severus?"

"She was in the basement room of The Three Broomsticks. How she found out it was there I don't think I could hazard a guess. I was searching for her in order to ask her about what we discussed earlier today. I suppose the stupid girl has gone and put herself in such a way that she can not now be of any use." He snorted, letting nothing through to show that he was in any way relieved that there was nothing wrong with the finest student of Hogwarts since...himself. Albus wondered if Severus would ever get over himself. One mistake, and the man was going to act like the muggle's Grinch for the rest of his life. Or perhaps the wizard's Ebeneezer Scrooge.

"No, in fact she will be right as rain in a day or so. Harry and Ron have been told that she caught a cold out by the lake, and no one but the teachers know anything different."

"Protecting your little Gryfindors as always, Albus," Snape sneered, although he knew as well as the Headmaster did that he harbored no especial hatred of the House, nor any particular love for his own. It was all a vicious little game that Severus had been playing since that fateful day when he'd look at his hands covered in blood, entwined in the girl's thick brown hair. When he'd realized that he simply had to die.

He had not gone to Dumbledore for redemption, had not believed that there was any such thing, and still did not believe it. He had not gone because he couldn't trust himself to put an end to his own life. Of the many things that could be said about Severus Snape, coward was not one of them. He had gone because there was to be an attack on the Potter's the next day, and as Voldemort's right hand man, he knew about it. He simply hadn't known who the Dark Lord's agent had been in the operation, believing like the rest of the world that it had been Sirius Black. Until three years ago, that is. He had gone to save a few lives as he was ending his, but as soon as he got to the gates of Hogwarts and met the Headmaster, he knew that it was no good. That he wasn't going to do anything to himself while he still might be useful to this man. So he had accepted a job at Hogwarts, and begun his wait for the return of Voldemort, which he knew would but take time.

Realizing that Severus was lost in his thoughts, as he had been so many times in their acquaintanceship, Dumbledore faded the Connection. And he thought long and hard. And after he had thought long and hard, he opened the third drawer on the left-hand side of his desk, and took out a lemon drop. He stuck it in his mouth and sucked on it pensively. At last, he came to the same conclusion he had when he was sitting there at 10 in the morning. Severus and Hermione Granger needed to work on this project, or the fate of the wizarding world... But then, Albus disliked the whole "world is coming to an end soon' dithering." So he finished the lemon drop and decided that this was a job that must be done in person.

"No. I tried once, and that's enough."

"No, you will try again."

"Will not."

"Will to."

"Will not."

"Will to."

"Will not."

"Will not."

"Will to." A pause, and then an irritated throat clearing. "Albus, you are so childish."

"You're just mad, Severus, because I always beat you to it. You wait too long. That's always the problem. Luckily, as Miss Granger is lying in a hospital bed, it will be simple enough to track her down and ask her for her help on this project."

"But I don't need it."

"But you will ask her and accept her input as an equal." The Headmaster fixed a stern gaze on his employee, the one that made Severus think he could see right into the tattered remnants of his blackened soul.

"But I will ask her. And perhaps accept her input if she promises not to be such an insufferable know-it-all."

Dumbledore rolled his eyes, nodded agreement, and beckoned the Potions Master to follow him.

"What? Why need we go right now? Its not like she's leaving anytime soon, you said that yourself, Albus," the Professor spoke in what could only be classified as a whine. If a very dignified whine, at that.

"Because the sooner anything is begun, the faster can it's conclusion be. Severus, quit whining, don't sulk, and lets go to the Infirmary." Dumbledore swept down the corridors of the dungeons, nodding greetings to the summary somber paintings that adorned the slick stone walls, and left Severus no choice but to rush after him like an overgrown bat.

Hermione would no doubt have been shocked to discover that her line of thoughts ran parallel to the dreaded Potion Master's, so it was lucky that she was never to know. She was wondering what had made her do it. Yes, she had been upset about her best friend's betrayal after seven years and she was not such a fool as to say that that wasn't horrible, but had it truly been enough to do something that came so close to destroying her life? The truth was that as many times as she racked her brains to find an answer, she never would. It was one of the foolish, horrible things that no one ever really considers when they are about to do something stupid because it can never happen to them. Well she was lucky-to-be-living proof that even the smartest (though she was not arrogant enough to call herself such) person had to face the harsh realities of life.

Hermione's thoughts got bored with their path and made a sudden break for a different topic. Harry. The shy young boy she had first met on the train to Hogwarts, that she had eventually befriended in the heat of battle with a Mountain Troll, who had looked at her with such admiration in his eyes the first time he saw her at the 5^th year Yule Ball. The one who turned hard over the years after Voldemort's re-ascension. He didn't think that anyone else realized it, but she did. She knew that every time he saw another casual act of cruelty it added a layer to his shell. Every time Voldemort cast the Crucio, Harry's soul felt the dark power that burned away at it madly. While Hermione would have sought refuge in books and knowledge; the building blocks with which the Dark Lord would be defeated, Harry wanted to go out and fight. He wanted to be on the front line, casting the Light magic that would overpower the Dark and fill in the burnt holes in his soul that Voldemort made. But he couldn't: he was too young, too inexperienced, too anything someone in authority could think of. So Harry became harder and harder and less and less that shy young boy with the charming black hair that liked to flop onto his face. Now he was a powerful young man with the world at his fingertips who didn't need to explain himself to anybody, not even his girlfriend. Hermione felt tears pricking at her eyes and her mind lurched as if to say 'Stop. What are you doing? Crying over a boy who cheated on you for two weeks, who played nasty tricks on you and all the while called himself your best friend? You'd be better off with...with SNAPE, for mercy's sake!' Hermione felt a cold, bony hand on her shoulder and shivered in response, opening her eyes to find herself staring into the blackened irises of Severus Snape.