I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face.
by Maggie B.
Characters belong to JK Rowling, Idea belongs to George Bernard Shaw. Little things belong to musicians - Lerner and Loewe, My Fair Lady the Musical, Pygmalion, and Henry Higgins. Thanks to all these wonderful things I have brought a one shot to life involving these two lovely characters. Snape and Hermione shipper! Thank you for reading and please write me - I love messages and reviews!
Damn! Damn! Damn! Damn!
I slammed the door behind me! She was insufferable - completely and absolutely insufferable. She knew just how to fray my nerves. She's an expert in all matters of annoyance and irritability and yet I often find myself thinking - perhaps she isn't so annoying and irritating.
I first met her when she was gangly awkward schoolgirl. Ironically, she annoyed me much less then. Enduring her presence for an hour or two a few days a week… I didn't know how good I had it. Now, she waltzes into my office every morning and stubbornly refuses to leave until late into the evening. Yes, she is my apprentice and it is her duty to stay that long - but I shall still bitterly complain.
I don't know how it happened but it did. her idiocy hasn't swayed me to hate her… No - what deplorable idea. She is arrogant, haughty and everything a man should detest - and yet I cant. Something about her calls to something in me… Ive grown accustomed to her tantrums and her smile and all that makes her who she is. I've grown accustomed to her face.
It had started off like in other morning. I had begrudgingly gotten out of bed to shower, dress and down a pre-breakfast coffee while waiting for my apprentice to come down from her tower. It had become a tradition of ours. It was never spoken of or decided on it was just an understood notion that at 7:20 every morning she would waltz in, wearing her respectable apprentice robes, smiling and whistling ready to start a new day and we would walk to the dining hall together. Sometimes, due to my curmudgeon attitude, we would say nothing to each other. Other times we would walk companionably - we would remark on her work as an apprentice or some article one of us had read in an academics journal. So there I was, feeling not so curmudgeon-y, sipping my coffee and waiting, somewhat anxiously, for her. But she never walked in. Finally at 7:45 I huffed in annoyance. Fine, I will walk to breakfast on my own - I had decided. If she wishes to sleep and miss out on breakfast that was her affair. I walked to the door my hand was on the knob when something stopped me. It was very quiet. Her quarters were adjoined to mine. A spiral staircase led from our - when did it become our - living room up to something akin to a muggle apartment. Sometimes I could here her moving about up there and sometimes it would comfort me.
It was quiet - my keen senses felt no movement in the air. So against my judgement and my growling stomach I turned from the door and toward her staircase. I cautiously climbed - trying to sense any sound that she may be awake… I'd never intrude on her privacy. When I made it upstairs I found the apartment surprisingly empty. In her almost a year of apprenticeship she had never been absent, late or simply gone. There was no trace of her. Everything in her apartment looked to have been untouched. I walked back down to the living room and stood in the middle of it dumbstruck. Why should this bother me? She has a life, she is not beholden to be my escort to breakfast. As long as she appears for work at 8:30 on the dot - then I have no use of her.
But I knew that wasn't true. I had grown accustomed to seeing her every morning. To see her bounce off the final two steps of that spiral staircase and into our living room. She would smile and greet me, Good Morning, Professor, in that sing song perfect voice. She had never grown quite comfortable calling me master so we stuck to our familiar titles of Professor Snape and Miss Granger. I admittedly was happy about this, for some odd reason I felt that sticking to our former titles implied a history…. Oh I wont get into that. We have no history. She was my student and is now my apprentice. Damn!
After she had graduated Hogwarts and the Final Battle was fought and the fallen buried everything returned to normal. There were no children running after danger in the dead of night to worry about. There were no monsters lurking around every corner! Things were certainly looking grand at Hogwarts. My days were spent teaching and grading papers. I no longer worried about the presence of the Dark Lord, I no longer answered to anyone but myself, and I was no longer loathed - just heavily disliked for my teaching style. Yes, things were serene and for the first time in a long time I felt independent and content.
But all good things come to an end. Four years after her Hogwarts graduation I was saddled with her for an apprenticeship. Its a long drawn out story of letter correspondence, blackmail - on her part - whining - again on her part - and threats from the current headmistress. But I did accept her and now here I am… standing in the middle of this room - a helpless fool.
I gather myself together, grab my cape and head to the dining hall to grab another quick coffee and light breakfast. My classes weren't for another couple of hours. These mornings usually consisted of a leisurely breakfast, paper grading and apprentice work. But alas, I had no apprentice. Oh, shut up old man! She doesn't have to join you until 8:30! She has a life. Don't be so dependent!
8:30 comes and goes and still no apprentice enters my office. The clock continues to tick. Where is that witch? The door opens and she smilingly walks in with that sing songs voice she bids me good morning.
Where have you been? Tardiness will not be tolerated, Granger. I bite at her. She has the gall to look taken aback and responds haughtily. It is only 2 minutes passed and I have never been late before. I come early and stay late. I think I am allowed a moment of leniency, Snape.
Where were you? I asked her without thinking. I had no right to know… I had every right to be angry about her tardiness and that is all.
Not thats its any of your affair but I was with Ron.
I scoff without thinking.
Go ahead and laugh but I would thank you very much not to ruin my relationship with him with your biting remarks when he visits - like with the others.
It was my turn to look flabbergasted…. She was in a relationship with that weasel of a boy?
What a silly witch. To waste her time on that infantile, brainless excuse of a wizard. She'll regret it. I give it two months, 3 at the most. She will realize her worth and his… she'll realize…. what…. that he is young and admired and good….
No matter how good and handsome people may think he is - he is severely lacking as a man. He has no manners, I was unfortunate enough to witness this at many occasions before and after the war, he has no decency towards woman and furthermore he is a boy who can only offer her dalliances when I could offer…. What? What could I offer? Damn Damn Damn.
Ronald Weasley… HA! I can see her now. Leaving her apprenticeship early to marry that brute. She will have a beautiful wedding surrounded by ginger hair and gnomes. Then 9 months to the day she will produce two perfect twin replicas of any given Weasley. That will be just the beginning. Ronald will grow tired of her dwindled figure and will never catch up with her mind and ultimately he will seek companionship elsewhere. She will remain home with the brats that she's birthed and realized that her life is gone and now she's no better than a housemaid. HA! She'll regret it. How humiliating. To win an Order of Merlin First Class, graduate head of her class at both Hogwarts and University and to have thrown away a promising career as a Potions Master all to have a handsome face and 10 spawn running around her swollen bare feet. She'll regret it!
Or perhaps she'll be dirt poor caring for her wayward and loaf of a husband! She'll try to teach potions and send articles into Potions quarterly to be published. Thoughts and Ideas that she could only have had because of my teaching! But alas, she will have no success and will eventually fall into selling Love Potions to teenage girls and lecherous men from her basement. HA! Yes… this is her future! She will eventually lose that sing song voice I've come to adore. Her hair will lose its curls and just become a mass of frizz. Everything that speaks of her blossom and beauty will wither and die in the poor, cramped and humid basement! She will lose everything that made her…her. Poor Hermione. How humiliating… How delightful… Maybe she will stand then… in the middle of the room feeling a helpless fool.
Then she will come scrambling to my door, in her horrible rags, begging for my forgiveness - begging me to see the error of her ways. Will I take her in? Im a forgiving man. I try to see the good. I am a changed man thanks to the war. I am no longer prejudice or belittling of any creature. Will I take her in? Of course not! I will throw this ragged wench out of my life by slamming the heavy wooden door in her face! I will listen to he wails behind the door with glee. No silencing charm will be put up - I want to hear her regret!
Ronald Weasley - what a joke! What an absurd and utter insane notion. I fear I may have to put my poor apprentice in the asylum ward at St. Mungos… for surely she has, for lack of better words, lost it!
All these thoughts come to me as she begins work on her latest and greatest creation. She hunches over the cauldron, most likely checking its vitals. She is so concentrated on her work. It wondrous to behold the sight of her concentration and brilliance. Ive grown accustomed to this companionship she has given me. I have never known someone like I know her.
I have seen her at her happiest and I have seen her at her worst. Thats the occupational hazard of being master and apprentice. We see each other every morning, all day and every night. I know her thoughts and actions almost before she does. Everything about her is second nature to me now. She is almost like breathing. Its essential to living but I hardly know I need it. It is effortless and yet so complex.
I must say Im very glad she is a women because it allows for there to be boundaries. We cannot speak openly on so many things, we cannot relate on certain matters and ultimately we will never understand one another. Therefore she will be very easy to forget once her apprenticeship is over or she runs off with the weasel… one or the other.
Yet, I must admit there is something about her. Something I have discovered is quite essential. I've grown accustomed to her - everything about her and everything she has added to my life. I've grown accustomed to her face.
The End.
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