Disclaimer: Anything you recognize belongs to JK Rowling. I'm not making any money from this.
Thanks to my beta Piper Kirby for her nit- and Brit-picking, and overall support.
"Coming!" Hermione called as she made her way to the front door. The knock had been a quick, sharp rapping, a style Hermione always associated with visits from Ministry officials. She attempted to tame her hair and smooth the wrinkles from her shirt before throwing open the door. "How can I help--" she began, then stopped dead when she saw who was on the other side.
Severus Snape stood on Hermione's front porch, looking annoyed. Hermione was at a loss for words for a few moments. Whaton earthis he doing here? How awkward, she thought as she shifted from one foot to the other. Snape, however, stood stock-still. His arms were crossed, and he was glaring at her. As if it was her fault he was standing there on her porch, wildly uncomfortable.
"Are you going to invite me in, Miss Granger, or are we to stand here staring at one another all day?" Severus sneered. Hermione bristled a bit at his tone. He had come to her home; she had not asked him here. On the other hand, however, his cool disdain was familiar and helped Hermione shake off the shock of seeing him here in the first place. She stepped aside and gestured for him to enter.
"Forgive me. Where are my manners? Come in, Severus." Hermione took a little more pleasure than she should have at the irritated look that flitted across Snape's face with her use of his first name. Snape brushed past her into the house, but halted in the foyer and waited for her to show him in further. Hermione closed the door and led Severus into the kitchen, where she began preparing a pot of tea. "Have a seat at the table, there, Severus. Make yourself comfortable." Snape did not look amused.
"I can assure you, Miss Granger, that there is no way that I shall be able to make myself comfortable. I am here at Dumbledore's request, so you may cease your attempts to treat this as a social call." Hermione paused in her tea preparations for a moment, then resumed what she was doing. It may not be a social call, but having him here was nerve-wracking, and it helped to keep her hands busy. Keeping her back to him, she spoke conversationally.
"Dumbledore's request, you said? Is he ill? I can't think of any reason for Dumbledore to send you as a messenger unless he thinks that his message won't be well received. No offence to you, of course." Hermione remarked coolly, placing the teapot on the stove. She took a moment to collect herself, then turned to face him. His face was impassive, but Hermione thought she might have seen a glimmer of amusement in his eyes.
"None taken. Dumbledore seems to think that you are more likely to do as he asks if I am the one to actually make the request. Apparently he is under the impression that I would imply that you are incapable in some way, which would in turn motivate you to grant a request that you otherwise would not even consider." Snape seemed supremely unimpressed with this logic. Hermione would have chuckled, had she not been so suspicious of this uncharacteristic frankness.
"So how are you supposed to convince me now that you've revealed the trick?" Snape, who had begun to look less tense, froze.
"I do not intend to convince you to do anything, Miss Granger," he snapped, perhaps a bit too quickly. Hermione was torn between laughing and wishing the floor would swallow her.
Hermione had been alone with Severus Snape only once, and that was seven years ago. It was her last day at Hogwarts, after the Leaving Feast. She had decided earlier in the day to seek him out. This would be her last chance, after all. She had built up her courage, steeled herself, and gone to his classroom. Not knowing where else to look for him, she had hoped he would be there. He was.
"Professor Snape?" Hermione said quietly, her nerve quickly dissolving. Snape had looked up from straightening the stacks of papers on his desk. He did not seem as surprised to see her as he probably should have.
"Your final grades will be owled to you, Miss Granger, the same as everyone else. The fact that the term is over does not give you permission to be out of bounds after curfew. You should return to your dormitory." Professor Snape had not looked at her beyond the first glance. Her courage was slipping away more quickly now, and she almost wished that she had partaken of the fire whiskey Dean and Seamus had been offering around instead of confiscating and disposing of it. She decided to ignore his admonition.
"I need to speak to you, sir," she began, but did not know how to proceed. How, exactly, does one go about propositioning one's potions master?
"I cannot imagine why. I am not your friend, Miss Granger, nor shall I ever be. There is absolutely no reason for you to have intruded upon my end-of-term planning. Unless, perhaps..." Here he smirked. "Have you come to offer your tender young flesh to a lecherous old man?" Hermione stopped looking around the room and stared at Snape. Surely she wasn't that transparent. "You are not the first graduate to have such a thought, Miss Granger, and I daresay you will not be the last. Unfortunately." Snape stopped straightening his desk and met Hermione's eyes. He looked tired. "Go back to your dormitory, Miss Granger. I do not have what you are looking for."
But she had not gone back to her dormitory. She had stayed, and she had seen her mission through. It had not been unpleasant. On the contrary, Severus seemed to have made it a point to bring her off as many times as physically possible. There were no endearments, no sweet nothings, but Hermione had expected none. It had been enjoyable, if emotionally empty. When it was over, she had gotten dressed in silence and returned to her room. He had not spoken either. The next day she left on the Hogwarts Express with the others. She had not seen or spoken to him since.
"I didn't mean to imply that you would attempt persuasion," Hermione managed after swallowing the lump in her throat. Behind her on the stove, the teapot began to whistle. As she turned to tend it, she heard the sound of bare feet thundering down the stairs. No, no, no! This just keeps getting worse! She turned around just in time to see a black-haired little girl - her little girl - bounce into the kitchen.
"Is it time for tea, Mum? I want honey in mine," announced the child as she went to pull out a chair at the table. Hermione took two teacups down from the cupboard and filled them with tea. It was then that the little girl noticed Severus. "Hey, you look like Thomas!"
Severus knew of Thomas. It was not difficult to glean useful information from idle chatter in the staff room, especially when the subject of conversation was the darling of most of the teachers therein. Severus gathered that Miss Granger had moved in with a Muggle boy named Thomas straight out of school, and gotten a thankless job as a Muggle Liaison with the Ministry of Magic. Minerva had gone to Miss Granger's home in disguise to get a peek. She came back to the school with a description of the boy: tall, lean, black-haired, with blue eyes and a pleasant laugh. Apparently, he had been a friend of Hermione's from before she came to Hogwarts. Several months later it became very obvious that Miss Granger was with child, which caused another uproar altogether. Albus had been pleased, but he seemed to be the only one. For months, Minerva had been unable to speak the boy's name without becoming cross. Even Flitwick had been testy, deducting more House points in a few weeks than he usually did in an entire semester. They seemed to see Miss Granger's situation as a colossal waste of potential. Snape was the only teacher who was wholly unaffected.
"Not 'daddy,'" Snape observed, "but 'Thomas.' What an odd little girl. I don't believe I've ever come across a child who called its father by his first name."
"I have a name, you know." The little girl stated in a familiar know-it-all tone, climbing into one of the chairs at the table. Severus gave her a curious look, which she took as encouragement. "My name is Malice, and I don't call Thomas 'daddy' because he's--" she broke off, glancing at Hermione. Hermione gave her a little smile and a nod, and Malice looked back at Severus. "I don't call him 'daddy' because he isn't my daddy at all." Hermione added honey and cream to one teacup, then set it on the table in front of her little girl. The child brushed her bushy black hair out of her face, and sat up very straight in her chair.
"Malice?" Snape asked Hermione incredulously. "What an absolutely ridiculous name for a child."
"Oh, and you're one to talk, Severus." Hermione commented, adding sugar and cream to her own tea. Severus let out a small, disgruntled humph.
"That is irrelevant. She has no father, then?" Snape sneered. Hermione was offended, but before she could whip herself into a righteous anger, she was beaten to the punch. Malice jumped down from her chair and levelled a fierce look at Snape. Her bushy black hair framed her face, and her nostrils flared. She had Hermione's nose. Her eyes, however, were her father's through and through. They must have been; they were nothing at all like Hermione's.
"I do have a daddy! My daddy is brilliant and brave, and he's a hero! He helped win the war! He's still helping, that's why he can't know about me. Mummy says if he knew about me he'd feel ob-li-ga-ted to take care of me, and his job is too important for him to get distracted." The little girl looked very proud that she had used her mummy's exact words. Snape raised an eyebrow and glanced at Hermione. Harry Potter, perhaps? He was an Auror now, assisting in the round up of the few remaining Death Eaters.
"He doesn't even know you exist? Because if he did, he would feel obligated to care for you. How very noble. So your mummy is merely saving him from his own good intentions by hiding you from him? That sounds like mummy is being dishonest." Snape would not normally bother antagonising such a young child, but he was very curious to see if he could goad Miss Granger into flying to her daughter's defence. Malice shot him a sour look.
"You don't know anything," she scowled, then turned on her heel and stalked out of the room. Hermione couldn't hide a smile as she heard footsteps stomping back up the stairs. She studied Snape. He looked pensive for a moment, then schooled his features into an impassive mask.
"Does she even know who he is?" Snape asked quietly. Hermione mused that although it had not started that way, this visit had definitely turned into a social call. There was no other explanation for why Severus Snape was sitting in her kitchen, enquiring about the paternity of her child. Hermione sat down at the table and sipped her tea.
"No," Hermione replied, "I haven't told her. The risks outweighed the benefits; the danger to him is greater than the benefit to her. What's she going to do with a name? She's six."
"A valid point. But honestly, what kind of name is Malice?" Severus prodded.
"It reminds me of her father," Hermione said simply. Severus scoffed.
"You never struck me as the type to submit yourself to a malicious man." She didn't come across as a masochist, at any rate. And for all her deference to teachers and other authority figures, she was simply not capable of allowing injustice or cruelty.
"He wasn't really malicious, not all the time. Overall, I would say he was more...severe." She took a sip of her tea and let him digest that. Snape looked as if he had swallowed a lemon.
"Your insinuations do not amuse me, Miss Granger." Hermione could not shake the similarities between the face Snape was making and the face Ron made once when he got a pickle-flavoured Every Flavour Bean.
"I insinuate nothing, Severus. If you cannot look at that child and tell who her father is, then you are not as clever as everyone gives you credit for." She took another sip of tea. "Now, what was the reason for your visit? I believe you mentioned something about Dumbledore wanting you to use reverse psychology to get me to do him a favour?" Severus scowled.
"Yes. Professor Rowling has informed Dumbledore that she will be taking a sabbatical next year, something about needing to write a very important book. As such, the Muggle Studies post is vacant. Dumbledore believes you to be the best person for the job. He assumes, of course, that you have kept up your magic skills and that you would rather work at Hogwarts than the Ministry." Snape surveyed the kitchen. It certainly didn't look like she had kept up her magic; this place could be set to rights with just a few waves of a wand.
"So, he is asking me to quit my steady job with the Ministry to take a temporary position at Hogwarts," Hermione questioned, seeking clarification, "where I will most likely take a pay cut and be placed on equal footing with the same teachers who strongly disapprove of the way I've lived my post-Hogwarts life up to this point. Does that cover the high points?" It was Hermione's turn to wear a sardonic look. Severus considered her words for a moment, then gave a slight nod.
"Yes, I believe you grasp the basics. You see now why Dumbledore felt he would do well to utilise a bit of Slytherin cunning to get you to agree. A temporary position at a lower salary, surrounded by dunderheads and disapproving peers...it isn't very appealing. However, I am compelled to mention that if you take the Muggle Studies post, Dumbledore is willing to grant you an apprenticeship when Professor Rowling returns."
"Under whom would I be apprenticing?" Hermione asked cautiously. Any apprenticeship would be fine, but she didn't think she could stand to apprentice under Professor Binns. She wanted to get a definitive answer from Snape so she wouldn't be hit with a nasty surprise later. Snape raised an eyebrow.
"Dumbledore is willing to allow you to choose, but I daresay Minerva and Flitwick are your best options," he stated rather dismissively. Reassured in that, Hermione made a split-second decision to tease Snape a bit.
"So, if I were to take the Muggle Studies post, once Professor Rowling comes back I could apprentice under any teacher I'd like?" Snape gave a small, slightly annoyed nod. Hermione began to grin. "You know, I like Transfiguration and Charms, but I'd really love to expand my knowledge of Potions." Snape snapped to attention and fixed her with one of his most intimidating glares.
"I would not allow it," he replied in a quiet, dangerous tone. Hermione couldn't help herself.
"You will explain to Dumbledore that I refused the Muggle Studies post because you do not want me as an apprentice? Or at all, for that matter," she said before she could stop herself. The words just slipped out of their own accord. "I am well aware of how you feel about me, Severus, which is the reason that I did not tell you about Malice. You didn't want me. Do you remember? You tried to send me away. Then when it was over, you sat there in silence like you were just waiting for me to leave. I figured that if you didn't want me, you certainly wouldn't want a baby I had borne. After all, wouldn't it just ruin your reputation as an inhuman, heartless bastard if anyone knew that there's a real person with real needs and desires and passions under all that snark and ice--" Her impromptu tirade was interrupted when Snape abruptly stood up, stalked to her side of the table and hauled her up by the arm.
"You presume too much. Did it ever occur to you, Miss Granger, that I tried to send you away to keep you from making a mistake that you would later regret? That, perhaps, I sat in silence because I felt guilty for having taken something that should never have been mine? If I had not wanted you, Miss Granger, I would have cast you out. But instead, I allowed you to stay, allowed you into my private quarters, and attempted to give you as much pleasure as possible. And in return, you left Hogwarts bearing my child and did not contact me for seven years. Despite how you thought I felt about you, I had a right to know about her. So pack your things, I will inform the Headmaster that you would be delighted to fill in for Professor Rowling." Snape all but hissed, releasing Hermione's arm as he commanded her to pack. She wanted to discuss their encounter further, but instead picked up his last sentence.
"But what about Malice? I can't leave her with Thomas, and my parents refuse to acknowledge her existence." Hermione questioned. Snape made a dismissive sound.
"You will bring her with you, of course." He strode from the kitchen into the sitting room, where there was a jar of Floo powder sitting on the mantle over a large fireplace. Hermione followed him.
"So we'll be staying in Professor Rowling's rooms?" She asked as she rubbed her arm, which was sore from where he had gripped it too tightly. It was definitely going to bruise; five finger-shaped welts had already appeared.
"Professor Rowling does not have quarters at Hogwarts, she prefers to keep an apartment in Hogsmeade. You will be staying in the rooms adjacent to my own." Snape reached into the jar and grabbed a pinch of the green powder. Hermione placed her hand on his arm to stop him.
"Why? I didn't even know there were rooms next to yours." Her damnable curiosity showed through. Snape sneered.
"There aren't. Not yet, anyway. There will be, however, as soon as I ask Dumbledore to install them." Hermione gave him a suspicious look, and he pinned her with a glare that brooked no argument. "I have missed six years of her life already, Miss Granger; I do not intend to miss any more." With that, he cast the powder into the fire, stepped in, announced "Hogwarts, Headmaster's Office, Password Dippin Dots," and whirled away in a flurry of black robes and green flames.