AN: I swear I'm not *just* working on this story. I'm working on King's Pet, too, very slowly. It's been a depressiony few weeks. Thanks for reading and reviewing! You know it brightens my days!

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Hermione stared in horror at the wasted remains of Severus Snape's Self, too taken aback for a moment to speak at all. His countenance was blank and desolate, fixed on her with the gentlest beseeching. So little of him remained, and the long torment he had endured was not a thing he would shake off easily. In such a state, perhaps it would be kinder to just let him die.

Hermione was repelled by the very thought. Despair was not an emotion she made time for, as she did not see how it ever did anyone any good.

"But you've fought for so long! The worst of it is over, Professor. All you have to do now is heal."

She set her thoughts to the puzzle with relentless force. A Self was a construction based on the contents and order of one's memories. In a mind this demolished, of course the Self was withered. But the Self was a reactive and ever-changing thing. It could be rebuilt, as the mind could be rebuilt. The task merely required the will to try. So Hermione would have to inspire him to try. She would have to give him something to live for.

"The war is over," she said gently. "Voldemort is dead. You can live the rest of your life a free man."

"I was in a war?" he murmured, wonderingly.

Hermione gaped at him, then nodded in immediate comprehension. Of course he didn't remember. Not her, not the war, probably nothing beyond that memory still waving its wings in his hand. That was going to make her task much more difficult. How to pique the interest of someone so devoid of interests?

"You were. The entire Wizarding World knows you made our victory possible. Everyone knows you're a hero."

His eyes, for the first time, flashed. "Does Lily know?"

Hermione hesitated, but only for an instant. She would choose cruelty long before she would leave someone to this tragic end. She would gladly lie to him, if that was what it was going to take.

"Yes. Lily knows." She bit just the edge of her bottom lip. "She'd like to see you, when all this is put back."

It was wrong, and she knew it. He was clearly talking about Harry's mother, with whom he'd had some sort of history, but without access to his memories, he had no way of knowing she had died. Hermione knew with some certainty that this decision was going to come back to haunt her at some point. For now, though, the results were dramatic.

Snape blinked and, gingerly, sat up in the drawer. His eyes cast warily about the heaps of memories. "I don't want to remember most of these yet. But I think… maybe that one over there…"

He was pointing at a Wizard's Chess rook that sat on the top of a pile.

"Would you get it for me?"

"Of course." In a snap, Hermione pulled out her dragon hide gloves and retrieved the little black castle between two thickly padded fingers. Snape reached out a spindly arm, but drew back without touching it. Instead he only stared, and his form seemed to shiver.

"Would you look at it first? I- I'm afraid it will hurt me."

She hesitated, recalling the oppressive feel of the last memory she had touched. But she had offered to help, and if this was how he wanted her to help, then she could not very well decline. Hermione took off one glove and touched the carved crenellation.

The Dark Lord stares into his eyes like a cobra hypnotizing its prey. The intrusion into Severus's mind is like an ice pick, striking again and again, forcing its way deeper.

But unlike all those years ago, Severus is ready now. He feeds his Lord images of his loyalty, his enduring disgust for Muggles, his subtle elevation of the right Slytherins. He shows him hints of Lucius at his best, glimpses of Dumbledore weakening. He shows him, with genuine satisfaction, his disproportionate punishments of Harry Potter.

And all the while he hides so much more far out of reach. His mind is a vault. A series of nested vaults. The Dark Lord withdraws at last, and Severus collapses to his hands and knees, strained but victorious.

Hermione blinked out of the memory with an exultant grin on her face and a lancing headache, but quickly shook Snape's feelings away. She gazed at the spectral, featureless face that looked nothing like him, and bit her lip. He was so frail. Starting out on an emotional, complicated memory like the one she held now could easily dishearten him again. She set the rook aside.

"Maybe wait a bit on this one. There will probably be something a bit less… brutal around here somewhere."

And with that, she set about the memories in the office, searching for the right one to begin with.

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The silver head snapped off a cane: Lucius grips his shoulder and smiles a brittle, anxious smile. He won't stop thanking him for this secret audience and it makes Severus ill because he had always believed Lucius was above begging, above cowering - frankly, above him. To see him this way now, stripped of dignity and grandeur, makes him feel perversely strong and yet cheated, as if he had always been the superior man, but he was only realizing it now that the knowledge did him no good.

"It is my greatest fear," Lucius whispers, "that Narcissa means to attempt an escape the moment she has Draco-"

"Surely you know better by now than to speak such a thing aloud."

A teacup with a stain at the bottom: He sits in the Headmaster's chair in the Great Hall, and McGonagall refuses to sit next to him. She refuses to look at him. She is under inquiry and working on probation until the Carrows find a plausible excuse to kill her. She does not know that he has been subtly impeding their progress. She does not know a lot of things, and Severus wishes for a moment that he could tell her, because for all that she is an insufferable blowhard, she is a respectable witch and he is a loathsome murdering imposter sitting in her chair.

A bit of a brass Goblin lock mechanism: He meets a particular Gringotts employee in a particular alley at a pre-determined hour. The Goblin holds a sword that looks very much like the Sword of Gryffindor, but is not. For a long moment, neither speak while the Goblin watches him with glittering eyes. "Ironic, I guess. If I didn't respect him so much, I'd disregard his instructions and tear your head off. But then, wouldn't feel so anxious to kill you if I didn't respect him so much. So. Real pickle for me."

"An absolute quandary," Severus sneers. He snatches the sword and Disapparates.

An ice-crusted bit of leaves: He sends his Patronus with the real sword using a bit of magic he and the old man had designed together for just this purpose. As he speaks the incantation, he is thinking of that moment under the tree, that one perfect moment when he realized what it was to have a friend, before things became so shameful and complicated.

Hermione snapped out of the memory as a wave of melancholy crashed over her. It took a moment for her head to clear, and she rubbed her eyes as she waited. The Patronus that had led Harry to the Sword of Gryffindor? That had been Snape? It was so disorienting, experiencing all these moments, these impressions that shifted her perceptions of the man in subtle, uncomfortable ways. With each one, she felt more assured of the righteousness of her decision to help him. Someone should have done so long before now. The man had made sacrifices. His work had been lonely and thankless. He had suffered so long before Voldemort had killed him.

"You see, now," Snape's Self whispered behind her. "They are all terrible, sad memories. They taint the very air in this room…"

"No, that's not right." She straightened, frowning around the chaos. There was a pattern here, if she could just work it out. "I mean, yes. They're quite sad. But they're important. These are moments when you were very brave."

Abruptly, it clicked into place.

"These are the memories you absolutely had to keep hidden from Voldemort. That's why they're here, in the most remote, difficult-to-reach place." Hermione looked back at Snape, and smiled. "We just need to look somewhere else for a little lighter fare. Can you come with me?"

"I suppose."

Hermione watched him scrabble out of the drawer and onto the path of debris she had made. He seemed at once insubstantial and unbearably heavy, what remained of his shoulders sagging and the ghostly shapes of his feet shuffling along.

She could not carry him, much as she wished to ease his way. Touching another person's Self was strongly discouraged in Walking the Inner Ways, because it could result in unpredictable and often lingering effects. One wizard had unthinkingly petted his Kneazle in the Inner Realm only to wake up later with a deep hunger for rodent flesh.

So Hermione led Snape back to the hallway, and then up to the ground floor, where she began searching again for a memory that could serve. There was less rubble here - thanks to her own previous efforts - and in the Entrance Hall, she came upon something promising. The Sorting Hat, laying flattened and dusty on the floor. She bent down and touched it.

His name is called and he sits on the stool. When the hat descends on his head, he is already at war in himself. Lily went to Gryffindor! He told her over and over that Slytherin is the best house, but those tossers on the train had won her over with their stupid good looks and easy charm. They ruined everything, and he is going to pay them back if it's the last thing he-

"Alright, alright, so you are, you're SLYTHERIN!"

The hat lifts away and Severus goes to sit at his new house table, where a young Lucius welcomes him with a pat on the back. Despite his lingering upset over Lily, he's filled with a warmth he has rarely felt. He's part of something now. He belongs.

"This one," she said at once. She picked up the Sorting Hat and held it out for him. "Try this one."

Snape hesitated, rolling the stem of the leaf-butterfly between his fingers. Finally, he reached out and touched just the frayed edge of the brim.

Before Hermione's eyes, his form changed, became more solid. His eyes regained a measure of their cunning, and he grew into the rough estimate of an eleven-year-old in Hogwarts robes, complete with Slytherin tie. His face still did not look quite like Snape, but it was closer than it had been. He peered up at Hermione with narrowed eyes, and abruptly plucked the memory out of her hand.

"Do I know you?"

"You mean to say you've already forgotten me?" she asked, stunned. But of course he had forgotten. Without any order in his current memories, how was he supposed to form and access new ones? Still clutching the hat and the leaf-butterfly, he stared at her warily and took a step back. Hermione held up a hand to stop him and shook her head. "Sorry, Professor. I just didn't realize how quickly the change would happen."

"What change? I'm not a professor."

"Nevermind that. I'm helping you find… some things." She waved loosely around the objects scattered through the Entrance Hall and smiled. Perhaps this would turn out to make the situation easier. Maybe he would simply forget she had seen him in such a vulnerable state. Maybe he would forget that she had lied. "I'll pick out a few more to help you get started."

He regarded her for a moment longer, then nodded. Hermione, with a final reassuring smile, dove right in.

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An old bag of gobstones: His mother says she used to play, and she will teach him sometime, but she never does. Severus loses interest in them and settles for reading the books she keeps hidden away in the same corner of her closet. He reads them over and over, because there are only a few of them and nothing much else to do in the desolate house. And besides, they make him think that maybe even a skinny little boy could stop a monster in its tracks. One of the books is titled Shades of Grey, Volume I; Cruel Curses. In the front, the name Eileen Prince is inscribed.

A tatty stuffed bear: He is hiding under his bed while his father's enormous footsteps thunder through the house. His mother's voice, caught between a wail and a roar. He keeps a few toys in a tin cracker box under the bed so he can have something to do with his hands until its over.

A smashed bit of birthday cake: Lily's thirteenth birthday party. Petunia is there, being a real Muggle. Severus uses a jinx his new friend Avery taught him to make her voice come out as a bird song. Lily wants to be mad about it, but he can tell she's relieved she doesn't have to listen to Petunia for a while.

A bottle of cold butterbeer: Avery and Mulciber invite him along to the Shrieking Shack during the first Hogsmead visit of fifth year. They see that stuck-up Ravenclaw Angela Praetor holding hands with Dustin Dumas on the path and, since Dustin ratted the two of them out for cheating on their Transfiguration homework last week, they decide to make it a really special date. They make Angela watch as Avery hits him with curses until his face is scrunched up and whiskery and a tail bursts through the back of his pants. Severus tells her he'll undo the curses if she kisses Dustin's hideous snitching rat mouth. She cries as she does it, and its hard to tell with his face like that, but it looks like Dustin cries, too. It's pathetic, so Severus shrugs and says he's forgotten the counter-curse, which he hasn't. They snivel and bolt back to town. It's hilarious.

Hermione jerked out of the memory full of vicious gratification, and immediately felt sick. What a horrid thing to do! She spun around to glare at Snape where he was trying to carry an armload of memories all at once. He looked more and more real, despite still being a boy. His face was once more dominated by that huge hooked nose and a sullen frown. He still wouldn't pick up new memories on his own, but he took what she handed him - usually with a suspicious look on his face.

It was grueling, this work. It was hard to watch his father roll through his childhood like a storm and feel his terror and then hand that memory to a little kid to add to his collection. And this, this act of early cruelty…

Snape glanced at the cold butterbeer and then looked up at her. He held out his hand.

"Maybe wait on this one, too," she sighed, and tossed the butterbeer across the Entrance Hall. Snape's eyes followed the bottle, then turned back up to her. Hermione felt unaccountably tired. It occurred to her that her physical body was still sitting on Snape's bedside at some probably-obscene hour in the morning. "How would you like to take a break?"

"You can if you want," he said sourly. "I feel…"

He tipped his head to one side and abruptly walked through the wide double doors into the Great Hall. Hermione stood in the doorway and watched him walk the long aisles between the tables, placing the items from his hands in specific places. The floor was scattered with a thousand forks and plates and bowls. And food. Curious, she touched a loose spoon with a dab of red on it.

Tomato soup, the third day of a week-long liquids-only diet Severus had to endure following an especially devious hex from Black that had made all his teeth fall out. His teeth were regrowing, but any disruption would make them come in crookeder than before.

Hermione straightened and watched Snape shuffle around. He hesitantly picked up a plate and, after a long pause, crossed the entire room to put it where it belonged. This room was enormous, and full of scattered memories. It would take him forever to go through. Perhaps she could go back to her own mind and rest for a few hours.

Suddenly, a thread tugged hard against her, strumming from some far off point.

Hermione, it called. Please come out and talk to me.

Instinctively, she let the thread detach her from where she stood. It reeled her in like a tape measure, whipping her out of the castle, over the bridge, down the path, and through the gate into her own mind with a snap.

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The impact of returning to herself sent Hermione to the floor in a heap. Her head spun wildly as she struggled to get her bearings.

"Hermione, please?" Harry's voice came muffled through the door. It sounded like his forehead was against the wood. "Please don't ignore me."

"Mm-not," she slurred. It took a moment to recall how her mouth worked. "I'm not ignoring you, Harry. I was asleep."

There was a long pause, followed by Harry awkwardly clearing his throat. "Right. Busy night for you, I guess. Meet me downstairs?"

Abruptly, Hermione realized that full daylight was pouring through the windows. Her head was pounding and her stomach twisted savagely. She had spent the entire night in Snape's mind without any food or proper sleep.

"Right! Coming," she said, too brightly.

Harry grumbled something and went down. As soon as he was on the lower level, Hermione scrambled to her feet, swayed dizzily on her way to the door, and clumsily unlocked her wards.

She found Harry setting out tea and toast on the table. He shot her an assessing glance, taking in her jeans and jumper from the night before and the tired lines on her face.

"Blimey, Hermione. What'd he do to you?"

"Who?"

"Whatever tosspot you've got warded in your room like an Unspeakable."

It took her a long moment to access the memory of what had happened last night - with Ron and the roses. Clearly, he'd reported back to Harry. Awkwardly gripping the doorframe with one hand, she rubbed her aching head with the other.

She very nearly reassured him. It wasn't what he and Ron were thinking; this was just a part of her work, a major breakthrough actually, and there was no reason to worry further about it.

Only, without more details, Harry would worry further about it. It was a pattern with him. He would develop suspicions. Then he would investigate and brood about it for a long time before finally, very probably at the worst possible time, a grand epiphany would sweep him up - and her along with him - into some wildly unpredictable scene.

Or, she could simply not correct him.

"Honestly, Harry," she said, peering down at her trainers, "you don't want to know."

"You're right. I don't. I'm just trying to understand why you're doing this to Ron."

"Why I-! I am not doing anything to Ron! We split up. He's the one who decided to show up here unannounced."

"Yeah. To tell you how much he loves you. Only he comes in to find you shacked up with some other bloke."

Hermione felt sick all over again, as bad as she had felt last night. Worse. It made her squirm inside, made her dig her fingers deep in her hair. Her heart beat a tattoo in her throat. "I can't do this! I can't spend my entire life thinking about how Ron feels! He's had years to tell me how much he loves me, and he only decided to do it when I finally told him I needed space!"

"So that's it, is it?" Harry asked in a suddenly quiet voice. "You can't be bothered with your friends' feelings? Fine." He grabbed his cloak off the back of a chair and headed for the Floo. Inside the kitchen he stopped and looked back at her. "Maybe it's time you started looking for a new place to live, Hermione. I think this house is rubbing off on you."

With a burst of green flames, Harry was gone. Hermione stared down at the tea and toast. Once again, she felt too miserable to eat.

But she needed her strength, now more than ever. She had to get Snape restored as quickly as possible, especially with the impending eviction now hanging over her head. She was also probably going to have to find a new job. Yesterday she had taken a sick day. Today, she had simply failed to show up.

The worries and fears and anxieties echoed off each other and grew into more daunting forms. Hurriedly, Hermione sat down at the table and shut her eyes. She sank easily into the Inner Realm and packed these latest memories into boxes, and packed those boxes into the darkest corner of her mental attic.

When she opened her eyes again, she felt steady enough to eat a spot of breakfast.