After McGonagall left, Snape sneaked back into the room, and began eating his breakfast, his eyes straying to the "Golden Trio" as some had begun to call them. He snorted. Arrogant, disobeying, non studying Trio, he thought. Granger it seemed had finally noticed that Weasley was upset about something. He could see her trying to pry it out of him, while Potter kept his head down, poking at his food. After a few minutes, Weasley stood up angrily, throwing an angry look towards Potter, who finally looked up, attempting to explain himself.

Granger looked slightly worried now. As Potter also stood up, she leaned forward, attempting to interject something. Finally, Weasley's voice rose to a level that Snape could hear. "She was mine!" he shouted at Harry, the tears welling in his eyes visible from Severus's seat. Snape sat forward, the argument finally interesting him.

Hermione Granger looked grief stricken. She looked anxiously between the two boys, not knowing which side to take. Potter leaned forward, trying to say something consoling, and she gone around the table, and grasped his arm. But Weasley would hear none of it. He angrily pulled his arm from Granger's, and strode out of the hall, knocking over his plate in his hurry.

The clattering of the plate was the only sound that could be heard as Granger and Potter stared across the table at each other, a mutual look of shock and sorrow reflected in their eyes.

That afternoon, Snape sat at his desk, grading papers when he heard his door slam. Glancing up, he smiled. She stood in his dark dungeons, looking strangely out of place. Her tartan robes met perfectly her long hair, which she still wore in the tight bun. A few strands had escaped, and they trailed her neckline in a most seductive way.

She squirmed under his scrutiny. "Let's get this over with, shall we?"

"Of course, my dear."

"Don't call me that. Professor McGonagall will be fine."

He sneered. "Fantastic. Reminds me of my school days."

She bumped into the desk she had been walking towards. Looking briefly up at him, she straightened it, and sat behind it.

"So Albus tells me that simply brewing up the exact same potion will not remedy our situation?"

He shook his head. "Afraid not." Grabbing a book off of his shelf, he brought it over to the table, flipping it open to a page full of all sorts of vile looking potions. "Think of the mixture that Professor Sprout and I made as a sort of..poison." She flipped through a couple of pages, reading through all the various poisons listed. "Now, if someone takes a poison, you cannot simply give them more of the poison to make them better."

"You must find an antidote." She stated.

As she continued reading through the listed potions, Snape added. "Dumbledore thinks that with my strengths in the art of Potion making, and your exceptional powers of Transfiguration, we could come up with an antidote easily enough."

She nodded her head. "I agree. Now, I've brought along several books. It will be rather difficult, because really you and Sprout didn't just "transfigure" us, you youthened us. So I was thinking, that if we looked at some of the aging spells, something rather similar to the spell the two Weasley twins used before the Triwizard Tournament," at his sneer she hastened quickly to mention, "but much stronger, of course.."

He nodded. "I'll get the ingredients."

Several days passed between them as they looked for an antidote to the youthening potion. What would normally have been a mundane process, was peaked by the hidden touches between them, although consciously, he never touched her. As much as Minerva would like to ignore it, her body was on fire. The toe of his booted foot would slide past her cloth clad one, or she would place her hand on the table where his own hand had moments before rested, feeling the warmth of his body heat. She was having a terrible time concentrating on the task at hand, especially because he seemed to have no idea what he was doing to her.

The following Friday, they sat across from each other at one of the long desks. In between them sat a row of four potions. McGonagall picked up one, reading the label.

"Allright, so refresh my memory."

"Okay, well," looking at the bottle in her hand, he reached up and snatched it away. "Not that one." He placed it back on the table.

"We will test the four antidotes. We will alternate, two each, in order to give our bodies sufficient time to recover." He took the potion which was first in the row and handed it to her. "Ready?"

She nodded, raised the vile to her lips, and drank. Swallowing, she looked back at him, and blinked. "Severus, I don't think anything happ---"

POOF!