He found his way down to the common room, only making his finger glow once he was out of the third-year boys' room. As expected, no one was there, and the fire had burned down to smoldering ashes. He took his normal seat, facing the embers, and hoped that Harry, Ron, or Hermione would be the first to arrive that morning. As he impatiently waited, he decided Hermione was the preferred 'sibling' for this discussion.

After only a few moments, he grew restless, and made his way his way up the the fifth-year girls' dorm. He held his fist in front of the door, then lowered it. He was halfway back down the stairs before he turned back, went right to the door and opened it without knocking. His mother would kill him if she ever found out about this, but, as she was dead, that wasn't going to happen.

All of the girls were, understandably, asleep. The first pillow he approached supported a head with very dark hair that was divided into two messy braids. Definitely not Hermione. The second bed held the familiar tangled brown hair, and he shook her arm, whispering quietly, "Hermione, wake up."

She mumbled something unintelligible - a rarety for her - and opened one bleary eye. "Matty?" she asked, clearly not a hundred percent sure of her identification at her current level of awareness.

"Yeah. I had a bad dream."

She sighed and rolled onto her back, closing her eyes. "What time is it?" she complained. Severus vaguely recalled he had gotten a similiar reaction out of his mother the last time he'd woken her up for the same reason. His father had then threatened bodily harm if he ever again stepped inside their bedchamber before the sun rose, and Severus had been very careful to observe this rule thereafter, since the man had obviously meant every word of it.

"Four o'clock," he answered, in the matter-of-fact tone she tended to favor.

She groaned. "Let's go downstairs then."

Severus waited for her to roll out of bed and pull on some slippers before they left the girls room, and returned to the couch in front of the fire. Hermione took his normal spot, so he took Harry's. Assuming his usual pose of staring into the fire - well, embers now - he tried to gather his thoughts and organize his dream into understandable form.

"I assume since you woke me up and dragged me down here, that you want to talk about it." Her logic still worked even at this hour. Though her tact was somewhat lacking. Severus didn't mind.

"Yeah. It. . . It wasn't a dream, not really. It was, I was just . . . I think it was a memory."

Hermione looked at him sharply, all traces of sleep gone. "A memory. What was it about?"

"Well, there wasn't really much plot, just . . . scenes. Like, I wrote a big fat F on the top of a potions essay - Harry's, actually, and I felt very pleased with myself for doing that. Then, I was walking around Hogwarts after curfew, only it looked different. I found out why a few moments later, when I turned a corner and came upon Fred and George Weasley pulling up a floor tile. They were littler than they are now, too, maybe my age, twelve or thirteen. And I was really, really tall. I towered over them. I gave them a week of detentions and took away fifty points from Gryffindor. Each."

Hermione nodded. "Sounds like Professor Snape," she confirmed his suspicions.

"The last one was the one that really scared me," Severus continued, staring into the dying embers. "I was standing in a fairly dark bedroom, lit only by the street lamps outside. It wasn't mine. Lucius - Draco's father - was with me. It wasn't his either. There was a man and a woman in the bed, and a muggle clock glowed red on the bedstand next to the man. It was 2:30 in the morning. That moment seemed to last forever. I was feeling . . . excited, like the night before Christmas when you know your parents are downstairs with Santa, wrapping your presents right that moment, while you try to sleep."

Severus stole a glance at Hermione. She was watching and listening intently in that way only Hermione could do. He turned back to the barely burning ashes. "Then everything started moving again. I hit the muggle switch and the lights came on, waking up the man and woman. Lucius pointed his wand at the woman, and cast a body bind on her. I did the same on the man. Then we both cast . . . we both . . . Professor Snape and Lucius cast the crutacious on them, while they were petrified. They couldn't scream. They couldn't twist and thrash. They couldn't move. But they wanted to, you could see that they wanted to, so bad." He shuddered. "Then Snape and Lucius ended their curses, but not their binds. Snape changed his so that the man could move his head and face. He screamed. He screamed awfully. He looked at me with such terror and loathing.

"Snape just looked back, feeling nothing but superiority and distain. That's when the little boy ran in. Snape hit him with the crutacius, too. The kid howled, and Snape just kept it on him, and he threw himself on the ground and flopped around, screaming and screaming. And Lucius and Snape just watched. The man on the bed was crying and begging them to leave the kid alone, but he was still petrified from the neck down and couldn't save his own son. And the boy died. They didn't even need to cast the killing curse, the pain was too much for him. He wasn't any older than five.

"Lucius let the woman out of her bind then. She started screaming and crying at the same time. Lucius helped her sit up, to see the dead child. She cried harder, and Lucius sat beside her, and let her cry on his shoulder. It wasn't friendly, though. He put his arm around her, possessively like. Like how Voldemort touched me. Like he was claiming her." His calm broke then, and he started shaking.

"Voldemort touched you?" Hermione asked, sounding worried and concerned and horrified. She put a hand on his upper arm, sympathetically and comfortingly. It was how he'd imagine his mother would react if she thought he was being forced to follow dark wizards against his will. And that thought brought the realization that his mother would never be there to hold him again. She wouldn't ever kiss him goodnight again, and she wouldn't ever yell at him again for not saying 'please' or 'excuse me'. He bit his lip, trying not to cry. Not now, not in front of Hermione.

But the fifth-year girl pulled him into a hug, and whispered, "Oh, Severus," almost on the verge of tears herself. It reminded him of his mother's hugs. Drusella Snape would not hug anyone ever again. Severus began to cry softly, just leaking tears at first, then his breath began to hitch. Soon, he was truly sobbing into Hermione's nightgown.

She rubbed his back and spoke softly in words he heard only as sounds without meaning.

Hermione looked down at Severus as he slept, using her lap as a pillow. His cry had lasted only a few minutes before he had succumbed to sleep. For the first time, she saw his brown locks and freckled face and did not see a happy-go-lucky Gryffindor who only claimed to be Severus Snape. Until this morning, she had viewed him as 'Matty' in her mind. That image clashed grotesquely with the quiet, factual accounting of the most terrifying nightmare she could imagine, and even that did not seem to fit with the scared boy who had just cried himself to sleep in her embrace.

Which was Severus truly? All of them? None of them? She brushed back a lock of brown hair that had fallen over his face. He looked peaceful now, what she could see of him, from her vantage point. She wondered how much sleep he had been getting lately, and another wave of pity and sorrow filled her.

They sat like that for what seemed a very long time. Hermione was fairly certain her leg was asleep and would refuse to support her weight when she next stood up. The first Gryffindors to emerge from their dorms in the early morning light paid them little heed. Only when Fred and George arrived on the scene, did anyone approach them.

"Hey, Gred," Fred called to his twin, though they were standing only a short distance apart.

"Hey, what, Forge?"

"Did you know Hermione had a new boyfriend?"

George didn't have a chance to answer. Hermione shot them both her worst glares, and said in her best you-are-an-idiot voice, "Matty had a bad dream. Be quiet or you'll wake him."

But Severus was already pulling himself away from her. He blinked blearily at the twins, rubbed his eyes, and blinked again. "Need glasses, I'm seeing double."

The twins grinned widely. "Nah," George shrugged, his eyes twinkling, "You just think that. But you're right. You do need glasses - you should be seeing triple."

Fred nodded sagedly. "Fred, George, and Eugene, the Weasley Triplets, at your service." The twins gave syncronized bows.

"Eugene?" Hermione asked, raising her eyebrows.

"Hey! Don't knock our brother's name!" George jumped to 'Eugene's' defence.

"I'm not," Severus told them, sounding very serious. "It's much better than Matty Groves." He smiled at a piece of air off of Fred's right. "Hello, Eugene."

"Oh, we like him," George said, apparently to nobody.

Fred nodded vigorously, then grinned wickedly, "Don't worry, we won't tell a soul about the bad dreams and sleeping with Hermione thing."

Hermione scowled at him, then switched it to George as he picked up the conversation, "Just Ron, and maybe Harry, oh, and we'd better send a letter to Victor Krum, and Ginny would love to hear about it -"

Fred elbowed his twin in the side, and George swayed with it, more playing along than because it had any force behind it. "Hey! Matty's our friend and we said we'd keep it quiet. Won't we, Eugene?"

Both twins and Severus looked at the previously designated 'Eugene spot'. As one, the three started nodding. Hermione rolled her eyes and sighed. Boys.

"See, Eugene agrees," Fred concluded. "The Weasley Triplets' lips are sealed." He nodded with finality.

"Unless, of course, you want us to start spreading rumours," George added, winking and nudging Fred.

Hermione narrowed her eyes, and pressed her lips together. Severus just looked baffled.

"Oi, Gred, 'Mione's got that I'm-about-to-hex-you-to-next-Thursday look on her face again."

George glanced at her. "Well, Eugene wasn't feeling so well this morning, so we'll just bring him on down to the Hospital Wing now." The twins beat a hasty retreat. Severus began laughing.

"What?" she asked him, not really thinking the Weasleys had done anything particularly amusing.

It took a few moments for Severus to be stifle the chuckles enough to speak. "It's just Harry said he'd put me on the Hermione-list when it came to jokes, and I was just wondering what you did to them when they fed you a Canary Cream."

"I'll leave that to your imagination, then," she told him, not about to burst his no-doubt-amusing illusions with the boring truth. They fell into a companionable silence. She eventually broke it with, "Are you feeling better now?"

He nodded, "Yeah. It helps to talk about it, sometimes." He hesitated, then asked, "I'm not going to be like him, am I? That's the worst part, really. Knowing that, in an alternate life, that was me."

"I don't think you'll ever be the Professor Snape or Death Eater Snape you saw in your dreams again," she told him honestly, after a long moment of consideration. "You've been through too much, now. That chapter is closed, and, as far as you are concerned, never happened."

Severus shook his head. "It happened. That's why I'm twelve now."

Hermione smiled sadly at him, not arguing his logic.

He justified himself anyway, "Because if it hadn't, I wouldn't've spied, and if I hadn't spied, I wouldn't have been forced to take that potion, and I hadn't taken the potion, I'd be thirty-nine and teaching. Or, probably not teaching, not as a professor. I might tutor Slytherins over the summer, though, that's a noble Snape tradition," he added, almost bitterly.

It took Hermione somewhat by surprise that Severus had a family. Logically, she reprimanded herself, it was obvious that he must, but the Professor did not invite speculation into his private life and Matty had only occassionally mentioned his parents, and never for more than a passing remark his naming or some other such triviality. She had passed them off as inside jokes about his true identity, and hadn't really considered Mr. and Mrs. Snape at all.

"Your parents tutor?"

For a long moment, Hermione thought he wouldn't answer. "Father did. During the summer. Charms, he told the Ministry. Curses, really. Mum," he bit his lip briefly, then continued with an effort, "Mum teaches ettiquette. To pre-Hogwarts kids. Just ettiquette. Manners, and table-setting, and politeness, and all that cultured stuff." He sounded like he was trying to convince her of something, or, perhaps, trying to convince himself. "She's nice and a good person."

"She sounds very nice," Hermione agreed, because this seemed to be what he wanted to hear. Though, she did wonder why he felt the need to point it out.

"The Aurors were wrong," he added quietly, barely loud enough for Hermione to hear. Her heart flopped. No. But Severus continued in that too-quiet voice, "She couldn't have been Dark. She was too Light."

"What happened?" Hermione asked, almost not wanting to know.

Severus stared straight ahead, into the dead ashes of the fireplace. "They killed her. My fourth year, the Headmaster said."

How awful, Hermione lamented, though she tried not to show it. Severus was doing a very good job of not-crying, and she didn't want to jeopardize it, not when they'd need to go down to breakfast soon.

They were saved by the arrival of Ron and Harry. "Hey, Matty," Ron called out happily as they trampled down the last few stairs, "Ready to get Snape?"

Severus smiled at him, though Hermione could tell it was rather forced. "Just a minute, need to get my books!" He bounded to his feet with all the enthusiasm of a twelve year old, and darted up the stairs, once again Gryffindor's favorite third year transfer student. He stopped on the third step and turned back, "Oh, Hermione! Will you help me with Arithmancy later? I missed the first few weeks, and I'm completely lost."

She nodded and smiled, glad to see that she wasn't the only Gryffindor who cared about their schoolwork, "Sure." Then Matty turned and was gone.

"Hey, 'Mione, why are you still in your nightgown?" Ron asked abruptly. Hermione looked down at her attire, shrieked, and followed Matty's example, running up the stairs to her own dorm room.