A Matter of Honor
by Amy McWilliams (McAmy)

Book 3: Love and Honor

Chapter 16: Allies

"There you are!" Remus greeted Hermione as she arrived in the Hall for breakfast. "I wondered when you were getting back."

Hermione had, with some foresight, not told him when to expect her. Maybe he didn't suspect that she'd spent the previous day with Severus…. Then again, something in his smile told her that he probably did. Of course, Severus had headed directly for the dungeons, bypassing breakfast in public. At least Remus was the last one remaining at the table.

"Hi, Remus," she said, slipping into the seat next to him. "It's good to see you."

They fell into friendly chatter about the holidays (he knew enough to ask about her friends, rather than her family), and were soon joined by Madame Hooch.

"Good to see I'm not the only one that likes a late breakfast over the holidays," she quipped, loading her plate with bacon and scones. "All the others already gone, I take it. Where's Snape?"

She looked straight at Hermione, who raised her eyebrows at the suddenness of the question. "I would guess that he's working already," Hermione began, and with a flash of sudden inspiration added, "we've got to get started on the Wolfsbane before school starts, and my being away didn't help matters any."

Hooch snorted, turning to her breakfast. "Didn't help his mood any, either."

In stark contrast to her friend Poppy, Madame Hooch was completely matter-of-fact, indulging in no suppositions, no innuendo, and no tittering, half-whispered gossip. Hermione was grateful, and amused, that the flying instructor had apparently made up her mind on the matter--and seemed to approve.

"Hmm," Hermione said, non-committal, and poured another cup of tea.

"Of course, he's never happy when his birthday rolls around," Hooch added to herself, and Hermione had to lunge to grab the sugar bowl she'd almost knocked over in her shock.

After breakfast, Hermione had arranged an afternoon meeting with Remus and headed to the dungeons. She had not, however, asked Severus about his birthday; Hooch hadn't mentioned the date, and Hermione was dying to ask him when it was and if she had missed it. But she'd just have to wait for an opening.

Most of their work today consisted of going over notes and formulas, books and articles, and past records of Lupin's biological changes over the months and years. They worked straight through lunch, and then continued their discussion as they began to brew the testing serums they would need for their meeting with Lupin.

By the time Remus arrived at the classroom door, Hermione and Snape were concentrating on their work so carefully that not even the thought of birthdays could distract them. While the potion making was routine, it was slightly complicated, and they had settled into the comfortable working rhythm that so often surrounded them.

Remus stood in the doorway and watched for a minute or two. Wordlessly, the pair worked as one, with Snape stirring the mixture and adding the ingredients Hermione prepared and handed to him. Remus had never seen them work together, and the synchronicity they shared was striking enough to send a twinge of jealousy through his heart. The potion almost complete, Hermione handed Snape the last of the ingredients and then stood quietly at his side, watching the cauldron.

Satisfied, Snape extinguished the flame and turned to Hermione, putting a hand on her shoulder and noting, "That should do it," as he moved to retrieve some vials from a cabinet at the side of the room.

Hermione smiled and said, "I'll get the notes…Remus!" She finally noticed him as she moved towards the office. "You should have said something; I didn't realize that we were keeping you waiting."

"I didn't want to interrupt," he replied, feeling more awkward than he would have liked to admit.

"Lupin." Snape's greeting was cold but polite. "We should let this cool; would you like to begin in my office?"

Remus nodded, and followed Hermione into the Potion Master's office. Snape took the seat behind his desk, while the other two sat by the hearth.

"Would you like me to start a fire?" Hermione asked. "We don't usually keep one going during the day, because the cauldrons generate so much heat. Or would you like some tea?"

Early on in their relationship, Hermione had realized that Snape's hair wasn't greasy; it was extremely fine and silky, and with the humidity from the cauldrons, it lay perpetually limp against his head. Meanwhile, Hermione's own curls grew increasingly fuzzy the more time she spent at her work, and even she couldn't stand the prospect of charming it into submission repeatedly. Typically, she just pulled it back and up and out of her face, causing Severus to laugh at some of the contortions she wound up with in her haste and distraction. She brushed a length back behind her ear self-consciously now.

"No, I'm fine," Remus answered, and tried to ignore Snape's almost imperceptible bristling at the delay. "Let's hear what you've got in store for me."

Snape began before Hermione had a chance. "I'll let Hermione tell you about the preliminary work we've done in a minute," he said (Remus wasn't sure he'd ever heard Snape use her first name). "She has had several excellent ideas to add to my previous work, and we may yet make some progress by following those paths. However…" Snape paused, and Remus noticed that Hermione was intent on his words, as if she didn't know what he was going to say. Snape took a breath, and his gaze moved to Hermione for a moment, before returning to Lupin. "I have not told either of you the primary reason I had stopped working on this potion. It wasn't only because the work on Cruciatus was so promising, and it wasn't necessarily because I'd hit a wall in my experiments. The truth is…" here he looked at Hermione, watching for her reaction, "that I was convinced I would not find the answer without resorting to…extreme measures."

Before he could continue, Hermione interjected, "Wait…do you mean…you think that we can't find a cure without the Dark Arts?"

"Precisely," said Severus, and his face remained unreadable.

Hermione sunk back in her chair. "But…we've had promising results over the past few weeks, and there are two or three hypotheses that we wanted to test--that we were going to go over with Remus today. What…you never said anything to me about this." Her brow was furrowed, and Remus thought that she looked as though her anger was quickly overtaking her surprise.

"No, I didn't," Snape responded, without irritation. "I wanted to speak to you both about this, together. I didn't want either of you to feel as though I had enlisted the support of the other in order to pressure you into an agreement. I wanted to measure both of your responses at the same time. And…I had hoped…that our work these past weeks would show me some prospect of success without the use of my darker skills." Hermione didn't look convinced, and he gently added, "I knew that it was quite possible--probable, in fact--that you would see something that I had not. I hoped that it would be enough."

Remus didn't think he'd ever heard Snape speak in just that tone, and as he turned back to Hermione he saw her face soften.

"But…ok. So apparently it wasn't enough?" Her voice told both men that she was setting aside her irritation for the time being, and her tone changed with her question to something akin to pleading.

"No, not enough," Severus shook his head gently. Turning to Remus, he continued. "So, I believe that we should continue our work as planned, but I did not want to begin my reading on alternative methods before I had an agreement with both of you. If you do not wish to involve the Dark Arts at this time, either of you, I will respect your wishes."

Remus needed no time for deliberation. With a glance at Hermione, he answered Snape. "I have complete trust in both of you," he began, choosing to ignore the way Snape's eyes went wide at the declaration, "and I will take whatever course you recommend. I agree with your assessment, Severus. I would like to continue the experiments as they are, but I have no objection to finding out how the Dark Arts can help us--can help me. Perhaps that's selfish of me, but the promise of a cure means that I would do just about anything."

Snape nodded, and the two men turned their gazes on Hermione. She shifted in her seat, and then said--to Remus--"If Remus agrees, I certainly won't stand in the way of our using any means necessary to cure him." Now she looked at Snape. "I have some questions, and, as I'm sure you expected, some reservations. But I trust that you will set my mind at ease when we have a chance to talk about this later?"

It was more a demand than a question, but Snape nodded his assurance.

"Then I suggest we get started with the tests for today, and while they simmer, I'll explain to Remus the things we'd already decided on. Shall we?"

She stood, and the men stood with her. Remus preceded her out of the office; Snape followed. She hadn't exploded, which Snape thought was a good sign. And he could put her mind at ease. Once she'd finished yelling at him for not sharing his thoughts on the matter earlier.

Hermione left with Lupin. He was headed to Hogsmeade to have dinner with Sirius; she was joining McGonagall for a private supper to talk about the Ancient Runes course and catch up in general.

Lupin had shaken Snape's hand before leaving, and Snape knew that the promise of further progress--even if they could never fully cure his condition--was more than the man had dared to hope was possible. He was sure that Lupin had believed he had given up when the experiments had lapsed.

Hermione, meanwhile, had given him a shy smile as she left, and he thought again that he didn't know what she would say to him, exactly, when they met later. He suspected that it wasn't the use of the Dark Arts that she was angry about, but rather the perceived lack of trust on his part--the thought that he either didn't believe that she (they) could find a solution without resorting to such measures, or that he didn't trust that she would understand his recommendation. It would be an interesting evening; that much was certain.

Tempting as it always was to hypothesize about the workings of her mind, Severus retrieved a few volumes from his office shelves and went to read in his rooms until it was time for dinner in the Great Hall.

Severus was interrupted, after dinner, by Mordred's arrival. The owl swept gently into the room, rustling to a stop on the arm of the club chair Snape had inhabited for the last hour.

He eyed the bird, then passed his hand along Mordred's feathered head. "Tell me you've brought good news, for once, at least?" The owl's reaction did nothing to reassure him.

Scanning the note quickly, Snape's brow furrowed, and his mouth drew close into a tight line across his face. After reading it again more slowly, one hand dropped with the note to his lap as the other pressed against the bridge of his nose.

He sat that way for several minutes before the next interruption: his name coming out of the fireplace. "Come," he muttered, and Hermione stepped through.

He only looked up at her when she said, "Please tell me that I'm not the only cause of this mood." She was teasing, he saw, but also worried.

"As certain as I am that you have many things to say to me tonight, most of them distinctly unpleasant, you are not the cause of this…mood." He hated that word.

She sunk into the sofa opposite. "Well that's good to hear, at least." She pointedly did not ask about the note in his lap, and Severus mentally reminded himself to thank her later for her forbearance.

After a moment of silence, he said, a bit testily, "Well?"

Hermione only sighed. He raised an eyebrow; he hadn't known her to hesitate before taking him to task over something in the past.

She looked at him then for a moment, and then said, "This may indeed be 'distinctly unpleasant,' but I don't think it will be for the reasons you expect." The other eyebrow joined the first, and she resigned herself. "Yes, I was angry at you for not telling me what was on your mind. I was angry because you had let me think our work was more promising than it was. Because you didn't believe that I could figure this one out. And also because you were deciding on an extreme measure and you hadn't let me in on the debate."

She paused, and Severus said, with just a touch of his professorial tone, "Had it not crossed your mind? Did you think our work was so promising that my recommendation was precipitous? Unnecessary?"

Hermione flinched, a movement born out of irritation, rather than embarrassment or anger. "It had crossed my mind. And I had dismissed it out of hand as a bad choice."

"Because it was dangerous? Wrong?"

"Both. And…. And because it was…the easy way out."

Severus had no response to that.

"I know that sounds ridiculous. But what I mean is…using the Dark Arts was like giving up on my own research methods. I had thought, at some point, that I couldn't solve the Cruciatus potion--told myself that maybe it couldn't be solved without using the sort of magic that created it in the first place. And that was a cop-out, for me. And with your help, and a lot more work, we did solve it. So when I had the same thought about this…"

She trailed off, and Severus nodded, understanding slightly better that shy smile she'd given him as she left that afternoon. This was certainly not what he had anticipated.

Hermione continued. "When you said that the only way we would perfect a cure was to use the Dark Arts, several things ran through my mind. The anger I already told you about," she shot him a look and his lip curled up in amused acknowledgement, "and the thought that I'd been flat wrong--too proud of my own work to think that there was something I couldn't do. The irritating truth that, yet again, I couldn't solve this one without your help, even if I tried--not that I'd want to." Another shy smile. "But…"

Here she stood and moved to the hearth, unable to meet his eye.

Still unsure of where this was going, Severus tried to reassure her. "I did not mean to suggest that you were too proud or not skilled enough to solve the problem. You may yet do it--certainly the Ministry would prefer a cleaner answer than mine. But in the meantime, we are at a dead end, and…"

"No. It's not to do with that."

"But you said…"

She glanced at him, and then looked back at the flames. "Yes, all of those things are a part of it. But by the time I left for dinner, I…I realized what was really bothering me."

"And…?"

A huge sigh. Hermione turned to face him, bracing herself, and Severus forced himself to remain seated.

"What bothers me most about your recommendation is that…now that Remus and I have agreed…I'm not sure that you're going to let me help you."

It took him a minute to register what she had said. When he did, he stood, and his face was hard, his eyes cold. Hermione hadn't seen him look at her in that way for ages. It wasn't what she had expected; it wasn't yelling and pacing--that she could have dealt with much more easily. Instead, he stood, unmoving, and uttered one word, devoid of all emotion: "No."

Hermione wanted to throw a fit, wanted to yell, wanted to try to drive him to some sort of emotion. At the same time, she wanted to explain, to plead, to reassure him. Finally, she wanted to tell him in no uncertain terms how angry this made her--and how scared.

Instead, she answered with a calm, quiet, word of her own: "Why?"

Severus took two steps towards her, stopping to brace one hand on the mantelpiece. "I will not teach you the Dark Arts."

"I'm not asking you to. And you didn't answer my question."

The mask cracked, and his lips pursed in annoyance. "I should think that would be obvious."

"It's not."

Now he began to pace. Despite herself, Hermione had to hide a smile.

"You don't want me to teach you the Dark Arts?"

"No."

"Then what are you asking me to let you do?"

She paused, choosing her words carefully. "I'm asking you to show me just enough of what you're working on so that I can understand the process. So that I can still help with our work, and not be left behind, taking blood samples from Lupin. I'm asking you to assure me that you're not going to shut me out." She let her irritation show just a little, and her insecurity.

Severus ran a hand through his hair. "I don't like it."

"I didn't expect that you would."

He huffed out a sigh. "I should refuse you absolutely."

"But you won't."

A look of supreme irritation. "No, I won't."

She gave him a tentative smile. "Thank you."

Severus grunted a response, and returned to his chair, pressing his fingertips to the bridge of his nose again.

After a few minutes, Hermione crossed to him, bent down, and kissed him softly on the forehead. His lips twitched, an annoyed look crossed his face, but he didn't protest.

"In exchange," she said softly, "I'm not going to ask you about your letter."

He gave no response, and she left silently through the fireplace. She knew he'd need some time alone to sort out this new development. Besides, she'd pushed him enough for one day--and she had to admit he'd done better than she'd expected.

Hermione was finally drifting off to sleep when Severus knocked softly at her bedroom door. Smiling to herself, she answered, "Come in."

He came to the foot of the bed and asked, quietly, "Do you mind?"

The smart remark faded on her lips when she lifted her head and saw his face. "Of course not."

He draped his dressing gown over the end of bed, lifted the covers, being careful not to let in the chill, and crawled in behind her. Hermione didn't move, and after several minutes, she thought he'd gone to sleep.

Softly then, in the darkness, he murmured, "I still don't like it."

"I know."

His arm came around her waist then, and she pulled him close.

On to Chapter 17