Some fans of Severus might not like the revelation in this chapter, BUT I would like you to bear in mind that this does not carry over to other stories, but it simply works for this one. Also, I get annoyed at how often the aspect of genuine friendship in the young Lily-Severus dynamic is basically dismissed (regardless of his asserted sexual orientation/preference/identity by whatever writer or critic) for the sake of deciding he was 'obsessed' with her.

Chapter Eleven

Secret of the Half-Blood Prince

"Wait . . . Hermione did what?"

Remus sighed, his shoulders drooping. Thank Merlin he'd taken steps to handle his hangover or he'd never be able to deal with this. He'd explained perfectly clearly, yet there Harry stood behaving as though he'd just spoken ancient Greek. "I said she was exploring the shops of—"

"No," Harry interrupted with a thoughtless shake of his head as he raced through the Burrow's wonderfully cramped and thread-bare living room to stand before the werewolf. "No, I meant why was she with Snape?"

Refraining from rolling his eyes—he always felt so old, so matured by his life experiences, until he was around Harry, the younger Weasleys, Hermione, even, then he was sharply reminded that he was only a man in his 30s and not at all as aged as he often thought of himself—Remus pointed to the same fact that Severus had back at Grimmauld Place. "They ran into one another and his choices were let her wander off on her own or go with her, because she was going to go regardless of his decision."

Harry raked his fingers through his hair. "Of course she was. I swear, that woman is like a cat. We should put a bell 'round her neck that sounds through all of Wizarding Britain when she wanders off."

Remus' brows pinched upward, his mouth puckering as he considered the notion. "Have to get her to hold still long enough so we could put it on her."

"Yeah, that would never happen. All right, let's go."

Looking deeper into the house and then returning his attention to Harry, Remus asked, "Don't you want to bring Ron or Ginny?"

Shrugging, Harry ushered the other wizard out the door and pulled it closed behind them. "Oh, no. Ron is with George, I'd rather not interrupt them. And Gin is still in bed." Harry's cheeks immediately pinked. It wasn't the words he'd used, they were innocent enough on the surface, it was the off-handed way in which he'd said them. "Uh, what . . . what I meant to say was—"

"What did you mean to say there, Harry?" Remus could not help a smirk curving his mouth as he looked at the younger man.

This was not a side of Remus Lupin Harry expected. He supposed the reintroduction of a best friend believed lost and . . . whatever was going on in his heart as far as Hermione was concerned, must've lifted a weight from the werewolf's shoulders.

His features pinched, Harry let out a scoffing laugh as he said, "Oh, shut up." With that he drew his wand and Disapparated, a snickering Remus Lupin following close behind.

James did not like this. While what he knew of Hermione Granger already indicated that if anyone could end up stuck in a booby-trapped, extension-charmed cauldron, it would be her, he could not be completely sure this wasn't some trick on Severus' part.

As they crossed the threshold of the broken down shop, he halted. Severus paused behind him, refusing to be stopped short by bumping into James.

"What?" the lanky man demanded.

Scowling, James pivoted on his heel to face him. He merely held Severus' gaze in a displeased look for an uncomfortably long moment.

Severus rolled his eyes, his bony shoulders drooping as he shook his head. "What?" he asked again, but his tone was far more exhausted this time, almost petulant sounding.

"How do I know this isn't a prank?"

Shouldering past him, Severus continued on toward the bespelled cauldron. "Oh, for fuck's sake, Potter."

"That's not an answer."

"Well, it was a stupid question," the former potions professor spat back, his tone acidic. "Stupid questions do not deserve answers."

"You and I both know you're clever enough to argue me into a spiral with non-answers so I forget what my question was; I'm not falling for that. Answer. The. Question."

For a few heartbeats, Severus didn't know whether to be insulted that Potter assumed he would go to such a length simply to prank him, or impressed that despite their . . . contentious past, James Potter had just complimented him. "No," he at last said, firm and final on the matter as he turned to pin the other wizard with a glare. "This is not a prank."

After another second, however, his severe brows pinched together and he shook his head, expression mystified. "And why the bloody hell would you think I'd bother after all this time?" Severus held back an uncomfortable shiver over the way his own words echoed Dumbledore's question to him upon seeing the form of his Patronus.

After all this time? Of course. "Lily." He nodded, sighing. "You think I'd do something like that because of Lily?"

"Why shouldn't I?" James frowned, shrugging. Severus seemed to be calming down, but James' temper was spiking. They'd never been close, never been anywhere near friends, never had an honest conversation about this—about her. So he supposed with them around one another without her, it was bound to bubble to the surface. "You and I already hated each other, but you hated even more that she became my friend, that she liked being around me. And then we fell in love and you despised me, didn't you?"

Severus choked out a scoffing sound that nearly sounded amused. "Oh, you bet I did. I despised everything about you. Your easy life, how people were drawn to you, your goddamn smarmy grin when you got an answer correct in class. I despised it all!" After a beat, he reeled himself back, drawing a deep breath and exhaling slow through his nostrils. "But what happened with her . . . that was different."

This strangely piqued James' curiosity. "Different how?"

Severus looked dazed. He'd thought for certain . . . . "You really don't know, do you? She never told you?"

Yet another thing James did not like today, he thought, squaring his shoulders and bracing to hear something terrible. "Never told me what?"

"Just like everyone else, you thought I was in love with her."

His head tipping to one side, James' face scrunched. "Oh, no, no. No. Don't lie! You loved her, I know you loved her. Anyone who watched you together could see it in your face! It was in everything you said to her, everything you did for her! It was in how you hurt her!"

"I know. I said it! I said Mudblood because I was in pain and angry over her choosing you and your stupid little friends and I thought I could put her behind me if I embraced what my so-called friends said, how they behaved! I hate that word, I never breathed it again in twenty years since the moment I let it fall from my lips that one time!"

"Exactly! You were in pain. You were angry because she chose me—she chose us—over you. How can you dare to stand there and tell me you weren't in love with her?"

"Because I've never been in love with anyone!" Severus Snape's dark eyes were wide and angry with his admission. Even as James' face clouded over with his attempt to understand what the other man meant, Severus tried again to calm himself as he went on. "I loved her; I love her, still. Absolutely. Always. She was my best . . . ." He dropped his gaze, swallowing hard. "She was my only true friend and you took her away from me. So yes, I despised you for that, but perhaps no more than I despised myself for giving her reason to leave our friendship behind."

James watched Severus' profile in the silence of the broken down shop for a long, silent handful of seconds. "You seriously mean to tell me you've never . . . ?" He seemed dumbfounded by the other man's revelation.

Severus exhaled a long, low breath, his wiry frame sagging. "My heart simply doesn't work that way. It never bothered me. I just don't feel that way toward anyone and I never have."

"Oh," James drew out that single syllable and nodded. "And Lily knew?"

Severus nodded back. "Of course she did. Best friend and all that."

"And all this time, you thought she told me?"

Shrugging, Severus turned a distant gaze on the wall over James' shoulder. "I did. I guess it's true what you all said . . . she was too good for me. I didn't deserve her friendship, not if I thought she would do that. I believed that after she heard me say that—that word, she'd want to wound me. And this was something she knew about me that she was fully aware I wanted kept secret."

"Why?"

At the genuine bewilderment from Potter, Severus' brows shot up in equally genuine surprise. "Because no one understood. No one would understand—that was made perfectly clear to me by my family whenever I reached certain milestones and continued to treat the notion of romantic relationships with disinterest. I was warned anyone in either world I'd been born into would believe I was . . . broken."

James felt a weight settle on his shoulders. "But Lily didn't."

"Lily didn't," Severus echoed, his voice solemn. "I always envied her a little. Right from the moment we met. She was so . . . free and caring. And so loved. She never treated me as though I was wrong, somehow, for not being like other people. I sometimes thought if I had been raised like her, perhaps I would have been taught it wasn't some sort of failing—that it wasn't a thing of which to be ashamed."

Now . . . when James had picked this particular fight—because he most certainly had, even aware this was not the time, some habits were hard to break, he supposed—he hadn't expected it would turn into a soul-bearing session. "For what it's worth?" he said in a quiet voice, "Your family are shits for making you feel that way."

That was not what Severus had expected to hear—especially considering the source. "So, you don't think there's something wrong with me?"

His brows lifting, James tossed up his hands. "Oh, no. There's loads of things wrong with you. Just turns out that isn't one of them."

Severus snorted a chuckle in spite of himself. This was an oddly pleasant moment—albeit one with markedly poor timing. How very unsettling.

It seemed apparent by the sudden shift in his expression that James had the same realization. "Oh, God. Does this make us . . . friends now?"

For his part, Severus looked absolutely aghast. "Dear Lord, I certainly hope not."

Sucking his teeth—they had a witch to rescue, and here they were chatting!—James nodded and pivoted to face the cauldrons. "Well, now, which of these bad boys managed to swallow up our girl?"

She blinked hard a few times and then slowly lifted her head. What the bloody hell had just happened? Looking around, she saw a wide, blank chamber of stark grey brick around her, tunnels branching off in several directions. . . . Hermione last recalled losing her balance and tumbling into the mouth of a cauldron that had no business being as large as it was.

This was clearly constructed as some sort of hideout, she realized. There was no other purpose for something like this. The way out—or up, as it were—had to be down one of those tunnels. Looking up, she thought she could make out a slightly warped circle of daylight way overhead.

"Oh, dear." How had she fallen so far and only been disoriented?

A nip at her elbow seemed to answer her unvoiced question. She turned to see Bat hovering just a little in the air over her arm. It was quite disconcerting to see her . . . him? This was not the time. To see the creature flying, to feel the faint rush of air against her skin from its wings, when those wings were not currently visible, thanks to Professor Snape's spell.

She sat up, illuminating her wand as the light from above was just barely enough by which to see Bat and make out her surroundings. "Did you break my fall?" she asked Bat in a whisper, hoping that much like a familiar it could understand human language.

Unexpectedly, the little cat-beastie glided through the air to nuzzle its head against her chin for a brief second.

Her. Heart. Melted. "Oh, thank you! You're really a very kind little creature, aren't you?" Climbing to her feet, she dusted off her bum with her free hand. "You can fly. You didn't have to follow me down here, you know. You don't have to stay."

Again Bat floated forward to headbutt her chin.

Hermione was relieved, actually, and not simply because Bat had stopped her fall. She didn't want to be down here alone. "C'mon, back on the shoulder."

Once Bat had reclaimed its perch, she tried to Disapparate—it seemed the simplest way to get back out—but the magic rebounded, resulting in a mere fizzling in the air around them. "Well, there goes that idea. I suppose we should find which of these tunnels might lead—"

"Hermione?"

She looked up toward the light at the familiar voice echoing off the walls higher up. A voice which did not belong to the wizard she'd asked Professor Snape to fetch.

"James?" she shouted back, her tone questioning.

"Thank God! Are you—"

"What the bloody hell are you doing here?" she demanded, suddenly cross with everyone in the world. She was hoping now that the funerals were done with, she would have plenty of time to not be around him—time to sort of . . . detox from the presence of James Potter and its effect on her.

"Is that really important right now?"

"It's very important!" She would ignore that she thought if she listened just close enough, she could hear a quiet chuckle rumbling out of Severus Snape. The bastard.

"Well, I'm going to guess from your current demeanor that you're unharmed, which is what I was trying to ask. Severus was looking for Harry and instead found Remus and me. I came straight here, Remus went to fetch Harry."

The witch groaned, her entire body sagging in place a moment. "Remus, too?" Honestly. This was all too embarrassing. She'd fallen into a charmed cauldron, she had wanted as few people involved in any sort of rescue attempt as possible. God, she wanted to crawl under a rock . . . once she was out of this cauldron. "Sure, why not? Did you send someone to fetch the entire Weasley clan while you were at it?"

"Can we perhaps argue later and for now focus on getting you out of there?"

God, she hated it when people were reasonable during times that she wanted to be difficult and short-tempered. "I think I see a staircase that leads back up, but I have to find where it starts." She paused, once more looking around her immediate environment. "I'm in some sort of main chamber, I think? And there's . . . seven passageways down here—"

"Merlin's beard, that's a complicated charm on this thing!"

She couldn't help but snort a giggle at James' abrupt observation, despite her current annoyance with his very existence. "I know, right? And it won't let me leave via magical travel, either. But clearly one of these openings leads to that staircase, so it'll take me a bit, but I'm pretty sure I can get out on my own."

"All right," James shouted back, though he hated the idea of just . . . sitting up here on his hands and doing nothing while she was down there alone. "You shout up if anything happens. Anything at all!"

"Oh, I am not some helpless little thing, you know!"

"Of that I am very aware!"

"Do you two always bicker like this?" Severus could not mask the amusement in his drawling voice.

James remained stationary, his fingers gripped tight around the edge of the cauldron's mouth, his body leaned forward slightly as he tried to see into its depths. "No, as a matter of fact, we don't. She's just . . . a little edgy with me right now, is all." The last she'd known, he was upset because of a slip up on her part, and he had done nothing to make her feel otherwise. He'd treated everyone abysmally for the last several weeks and she probably internalized the blame for that, too, when all he would've had to do was tell her that his foul mood was not her fault.

"Ah," Severus said, nodding. "So . . . you two have gotten close, have you?"

Scowling, James kept his gaze concentrated on the swath of darkness below. "In a way, I suppose."

Once more Severus nodded, this time touching his fingers to his chin in thought. "Huh."

"Huh?" James echoed the sound.

"Sorry." Clearing his throat, the dark-eyed wizard elaborated. "That sound translates rather distinctly to: Does your son know you're shagging his best friend?"

In shock, James finally relinquished his hold on the cauldron's lip and turned to face Severus, his face drained of color. "What?! " All right, so if not for the revelation about who each of them were to Harry, they actually might've been, well, there, but they weren't, dammit! "She and I are not—"

"There you are! Where's Hermione? Is she okay?" The questions poured out of Harry's mouth at the same time as he and Remus burst through the door.

James and Severus both gave a start as they turned to face the shouting from the shop entrance. James lost his footing on the uneven floor before the cauldron and stumbled backward.

"Dad!"

Harry and Remus both shot forward, reaching the cauldron just as a very surprised James vanished into the darkness below.

Severus' dark eyes were wide with disbelief as he looked from the depths of the cauldron to the pair who'd just entered the scene. "That is precisely what happened to Miss Granger."