A/N: A short excerpt from a story that has been in my head, but which I don't have time to write. Don't look for a plot because there isn't one. I understand that we're allowed to post exercises in writing—they don't have to qualify as actual stories—and this is one.

I'm not out to take psychiatry as a specialization—I'm only a wee firstie medical student and it's too early to decide—but sometimes I think it might improve my writing if I were in such a field. While reading about children growing up either being neglected or rejected by their parents, and how they fare in adult relationships, I realized that a relationship with Snape just could never go as smoothly as we writers want it to go.

She found him in the garden.

"Do you love her?" Minerva asked, and she wasn't sure why she dreaded the answer.

Snape was quiet for a very long time. He turned his back to her, and she was afraid that he would walk away from her impertinent question; but he only gestured with his wand to shoo a caterpillar clinging to a leaf on the vine, and remained where he was. In the distance, Minerva could hear, the students packed by the lake were laughing. Absently she wondered if Snape had ever, in his youth, sounded like that—carefree, happy. She was startled when he spoke quite suddenly.

"It's only natural," he murmured, his back to her still. "Yes, why not? Of course I love her. She saved my life, paid me the high compliment of wanting to apprentice under me, and dogged my steps until I agreed, all with the greatest respect and charm on her part. She is beautiful and intelligent, and remains one of the few people who don't doubt my loyalties." Minerva felt a blush travel swiftly to her face at the memory of her own suspicion. "As necessitated by this apprenticeship, I have spent more time with her than with anyone else. It is only natural."

"You admit it then?" Minerva ploughed on mercilessly.

"Quite freely," he replied. "It would be an insult to your intelligence, and to Hermione's charms, to assert otherwise."

"I thought it was 'Miss Granger,' Minerva smirked, not without malice.

"I cannot continue to discuss my apprentice, 'Miss Granger', in these uncomfortably personal terms. 'Hermione' will do." She saw him cut off a dying flower with a pair of pruning scissors; instead of letting it fall to the ground, as she would have expected, he tucked it into the pockets of his robes. He continued to speak, calmly. "I am not ashamed of these feelings, exactly. Not that I would want them splashed across the front page of the Prophet, but they are natural and just. And only to be expected. When you put an attractive young woman in the near-constant company of a recluse, who has few opportunities or little desire to mingle with anyone else, something is bound to happen."

Miinerva felt her hackles rise. "And has it happened? Have you done anything?" she demanded.

Transfiguring a stone into a bench and setting upon it a terracotta pot, Snape snorted. To someone who didn't know him well, it might have sounded like a snort of laughter, but Minerva, who had known him when he had been a boy, knew that the noise was completely without humor. "Trust me when I say that I haven't touched a single hair on her little head, Minerva." He began the process of repotting a Cat-whiskers plant. "The question might be better directed at her."

He turned around at the sound of Minerva spluttering. She knew that her face was red, and that she probably looked like the bludger-sized tomatoes that Pomona grew in Greenhouse 17. "I beg your pardon?" she said in a much higher voice than normal. "What did that girl do? Did she—assault you?"

"Nothing so violent," Snape replied promptly and in a voice entirely too soft for the conversation they were having. "She kissed me." He paused. "Or attempted to."

Snape hid his emotions entirely too well, but for a moment, she was convinced that he was miserable.

"Then?" Minerva whispered. "What then?"

"I ended it, of course," Snape said, with the first sign of impatience he had shown in the course of the conversation. "I never responded, since you must insist on knowing these details." She might have been imagining things, but it seemed to her that Snape stabbed his spade into the soil in the pot with unmerited violence. "I reminded of her of our positions, she acquiesced quietly, and that was the end of it."

"Quietly?" Minerva said, amused despite herself. "Are you sure?"

"Well, not entirely quietly," Snape amended as he handled the Orthosiphon, delicately, by the stem. "She threw an insult here and there. Completely unwarranted."

"And I'm certain a few tears were shed."

"I doubt it. Not in my presence, certainly."

"She must be growing up," Minerva concluded dryly. Snape shot her a sharp look; she continued, more seriously, "Severus, I hope you didn't hurt her feelings when that happened. Is that why she's been keeping to herself and moping in her rooms? Is that why she doesn't eat even the meals that the House-Elves give her?"

"You might allow her at least a bit of the privacy she is entitled to," Snape replied. "Why are you using the elves to spy for a matter of such little importance?"

"Answer the question, Severus."

Snape's eyes turned heavenward; he closed them, and it seemed to Minerva that he was wishing himself away. When he opened his eyes, he was ready with a dry, irritated response. "No, this happened two months ago. I suppose I should have told you. I told Flitwick. As Headmaster, he had to decide whether the apprenticeship program was to be terminated completely, given the incident. He chose instead to inflict upon Miss Granger, and myself, another two months so she could finish it properly. Nothing untoward happened thereafter, I assure you."

"Two months?" Minerva echoed, her mouth opening and closing. She stepped forward and clasped a hand on his shoulder, startling him as he was retrieving another pot from the ground. "My boy," she said softly, "I'm so very sorry. The things we ask you to do."

"What is it now?" Snape queried irritably. The base of his new pot hit the surface of the transfigured bench with a loud thud.

"You've just told me that Flitwick, presumably relying on your intelligence, your self-control, or your instinct for self-preservation, asked you to spend a further two months with a young lady you—care for" —she could not say "love" again—"and who is interested in you. Who kissed you. And all this time, you couldn't say anything." She drew herself up her full height and nodded with a measure of satisfaction. "It's a very good thing that the program ends tomorrow," she said sourly.

"And why would that be?" Snape said.

"Severus, even I have an idea of what those two months must have been like."

"It's actually been a great deal easier than you seem to believe." Laughter, again, in the distance; Minerva resisted the urge to crane her neck to look at the lake, instead keeping her gaze focused on Snape's averted eyes. "Miss Granger has behaved in a very professional manner, that little incident notwithstanding. She has been a good apprentice."

"And she leaves tomorrow," Minerva said, confused over Snape's placid, detached manner.

"Yes, she leaves tomorrow."

"And you won't do anything about it?"

"Minerva, why on earth would I?" he seemed genuinely confused as well; he even looked up from what he was doing to stare at her blankly. "Her program is over and she has earned her certificate. Why should I keep her from receiving what she has spent the last three years working for? To be sure, the first-years will benefit from her continued assistance, but I don't see why she should be refused her diploma."

"You know that's not what I meant," Minerva retorted. "Won't you say anything? About your feelings? Surely you can't want her to walk out of your life—"

"Minerva, don't be a fool." Fang, some few feet away, opened one eye, awakened by the sudden ferocity in Snape's voice. Snape recollected himself, and added, more calmly, "You must know that it is impossible."

"What are you so afraid of?" Minerva said, suddenly tired of is implacable manner and the conviction, the ease, with which he discussed what amounted to his only prospect for happiness. She wanted to slap him—for making Hermione unhappy; for making himself unhappy. "Are you afraid that you're ill-suited for each other?"

"On the contrary." Fang gave a great yawn, nearly drowning out Snape's soft voice. "Our temperaments would work well together, and we are similar enough to have many of the same interests, but different enough that we might still find each other interesting."

"Is it her age? Her friends?"

"Her age? Not in the sense you might believe. Her friends? I don't seriously believe that, however much her friends might dislike me, she would let that interfere with what she wants. What she thinks she wants," he amended. Fang stretched, stood, and made his way toward Snape; Snape spared him a glance, and a quick scratch over one ear.

"Severus, I'm trying to understand. What would keep you from saying yes to your one chance to be happy?"

"Is that what you think this is?" There was nothing in his voice to indicate anger, irritation or sadness.

"You know what I mean, Severus. No one has cared for you quite as much, or quite in this way, as she does. She really does love you. I think that you might be—happy together."

Snape looked up again, briefly, from another repotting procedure. "I've always received the impression that you disapproved of interactions between myself and Miss Granger."

"I do," Minerva replied staunchly. She cleared her throat and prepared for a monologue. "I think that you are going to be an awful influence on her. If you ever decide to poke your head out of your arse and be with her, you're going to be rude to her daily, you'll insult her at every turn, and you'll be secretly glad every time you can show her something, or teach her something, that she doesn't already know, and you'll rub her face in it. You'll be insanely jealous of every man who ever comes near her, and half the time you're going to be convinced that she'll leave you one day, and your pride won't be able to stomach the thought, so you're constantly going to be battling for the upper hand, maybe even going so far as to convince her that you'd survive without her.

"That girl, on the other hand—she'll constantly compare you to her friends and realize—unfairly—that she's leagues ahead of them, and she'll judge them by your standards; that will undoubtedly cause friction among them. She will pick up on your habits, and disdain and sarcasm will be a regular part of her conversation. Because you are so solitary, her circle of friends will become smaller and smaller, and she will grow up in the same tiny world in which she has spent the past seven years, and she won't notice this happening until it's close to too late to change."

Minerva stepped closer, and made so bold as to put a firm hand on Snape's arm; he recoiled, but she did not move away. "But Severus," she said softly, "all of this will be as nothing, if you really loved her."

"How can you say that?" Snape whispered, glaring into the distance, as though it had personally offended him. "You are so quick to imagine visions of a life of the two of us together, and you fail to see that those little things will, in fact, be everything." He picked up his wand, pointed it at a weed a metre or so from Fang, and blasted—all the while with the same composed, if tellingly angry, expression. "As a matter of fact, you seem to have forgot the most important thing."

"What would that be?" What more unreason could he give her?

"She will mold herself to fit me," Snape said. The weed had been blasted into a fine powder, and the slight breeze picked it up and sent it away. Snape watched it closely. "She will change herself to be what she thinks I desires."

"I think you underestimate the girl," Minerva protested. "She is definitely stronger than that."

"You would like to think so, wouldn't you?" Snape looked away from his study of the perished weed and gave her a penetrating stare. Minerva felt herself quail, and opened her mouth to protest further, but was silenced when Snape said softly, "She's not you, Minerva."

A pause.

"I know," was all she could say, suddenly realizing that it was true. "I know."

"You would find it easy to decide to leave a man if you perceived that he wanted more from you than what you already were." Snape looked away again, and Minerva was relieved, even as his words—drawing so painfully on her memories—stung her. "You have already done so. I'm certain that there are parts of you that regret it, but you are convinced, in your staunch Gryffindor way, that you did the right thing and that it wouldn't have been good for you in the long run."

"Sometimes," Minerva whispered, "you go too far." She had gone out here to bully him into submission, and here she was, being eaten alive by fire.

"Do I? I'm sorry," he said, his voice expressionless. He folded his arms across his chest as he studied a pot of something Minerva couldn't identify. The gesture was familiar to her—she had seen it on him even when he had been a boy—but she had never seen the expression on his face before, nor had she ever been moved so much by any speech he had ever made. He spoke carefully, calmly, as though what they were discussing was on the level of his plants or of the specimens that he kept inside the jars in his office, or of the weather.

"Hermione is too—young. I understand that nineteen is considered adult," he said, "and so it may well be. But she looks upon me—in a most misguided way, I am sure you know—as an adult and a superior. She has wanted my approval since she was twelve, and that has not changed, even though the way in which she wants to please me has grown to include other considerations. Now she wants not just a perfect score on her essays or a compliment about her Potions; now she wants my attention, wants me to see her as an adult." Another blast, unexpected; another weed, this time closer to Fang, dead. Fang howled; Snape ignored him. "She dresses with care. She puts on an adult scent. She has stopped with impertinent questions, is quieter, and laughs less." A long, sad silence. "Because she thinks that that is what I want."

"Is she wrong?"

He shrugged. "Perhaps. It does not matter to me what she wears or what her hair looks like." Minerva noticed, suddenly, that his fists were clenched. "How could those things matter to me? They're not what I… they're not the reason that I…"

Minerva felt for him a very great pity. "Don't you think this is natural?" she said. "I seem to remember you washing your hair and trying your best to impress—"

"Lily?" She expected him to round on her in anger; she was overcome with shock when all he did was to offer her another one-shouldered shrug. "That remains completely different. I had wanted, futilely, to be attractive; and that is what is considered natural when you—fall in love with your peers. What is unnatural is entering a relationship with a person under whose power you have been for half of your life; what is unnatural is that she does not know how to distinguish her natural desire for the approval of an elder," he spat the word, "and her wish to be attractive to the man she—loves."

"Why won't you stop playing the martyr, Severus?" Minerva asked, pityingly. "It's most certainly not her fault that she spent seven years in your classroom and three in your laboratory before realizing that you are somebody she can love in that way. Whatever scruples you have, I'm sure that she recognizes them herself and will grow out of them in time; you seem to love her for her mind, and yet you underestimate it so very much."

"I can assure you," Snape said coldly, "that that is not the case. What you tend to do is to overestimate the emotional intelligence of a twenty-year old girl who has only had one serious relationship in her life."

Minerva ignored this barb, tired of Snape's self-pitying excuses. "Why do you persist in denying yourself happiness by convincing yourself that you'll be bad for her?" She stepped closer. "What are you so afraid of?"

"Don't you understand?" he said. "She'll build her whole life around me."

"Severus," she said softly, "would that be so bad?"

He glared at her. "You know the answer to that."

"It would make her happy," she whispered. "It would make you happy, too. Why can't you just see what's in front of you, and recognize it for what it is, and grab it, and be happy?"

"Pot, kettle, black," he spat viciously. "How can you stand there and lecture me on taking happiness where I can find it, when your heart and your dreams have been rotting away in this castle for longer than I've lived here?"

He stowed away his wand and gave her a glare. She was unable to respond, and he said brusquely into the silence, "This conversation grows intolerable. I am unmoved. You will deal with your problems as you see fit, Minerva, and I will deal with mine."

Fang followed him on the way up to the castle doors, leaving Minerva, stunned and stricken, in his wake.

- - -

I might add to this in the future—over this summer.

Cat's whiskers is a common name for Orthosiphon aristatus. To see an image (remove the spaces): http :// www. anbg. gov. au/ images/ photo_cd/ 632030813539/052_2. jpg. I've often found it disturbing that even very intelligent fanfiction authors can't seem to cite scientific names correctly. Here is a simplified guide to writing scientific names (remove spaces): http:// generalhorticulture. /h202/ labs/ lab3/ sciname. html.

To my knowledge (limited and botanical) no tomatoes have been developed that are the size of bludgers, but perhaps Pomona Sprout knows a bit more about genetic engineering than she lets on.