Disclaimer:This is all for fun, I do not claim ownership of the characters or anything recognized from the work of J.K. Rowling. I am only borrowing them.
[A/N] This was originally posted 9.17.15 and was updated 9.21.15, I clarified the moment mentioning Buckbeak.
Playlist: All Time Low – Outlines | Blue Foundation – Eyes on Fire | Blake Lewis - Surrender
Orange was an unquestionably obnoxious color. It wasn't innocuous like grey, or brown or black. Orange took over the palette it shared and drew attention to itself shamelessly.
For that exact reason, Hermione wondered why it took her so long to notice the single orange hair that was threaded in the sleeve of her Potions professor's robes. She supposed she couldn't blame herself. All the commotion of the upcoming arrival of Durmstrang and Beauxbatons had set the school into a frenzy that rivaled the atmosphere before a Quidditch game.
And she abhorred Quidditch.
The fourth years had Potions twice each week, once on Monday mornings and secondly on Thursday afternoons. Typically the Monday mornings were filled with lecture and possible brewing where Thursday was spent brewing the same potion again in order to get it as close to an Acceptable that anyone would earn in his class. That Monday morning had been a particularly cold one, a harbinger for what was to come in the winter months. Her parents had sent a new pair of mittens, a scarf and a hat along with her birthday present that year, claiming the almanacs were foretelling a colder than typical fall. No sooner had she had unwrapped the gifts in her dorm on her four poster had Crookshanks leapt up to the bed to investigate the cashmere-like knit items.
"You may paw them but please do not knead them to shreds. I'd like to be able to wear them at least once over Christmas break."
The tomcat simply purred deeper in response, giving her a few head butts on the knee for good measure.
Down in the dungeons she longed for those warmly knit gloves that were surely heated delightfully below her familiar's belly. It was lecture day so they wouldn't be lighting the cauldrons unless they made it through whatever lines and rudimentary theory Professor Snape tasked them to that morning.
Hermione's mind never wandered in Potions class, and rarely did her gaze, but a flash of bright orange on Professor Snape's forearm caught her attention almost as soon as his first sharp gesticulation at the chalkboard at the front of the room. The movement was fluid and graceful and for a fleeting moment she imagined her professor in a full body black leotard (what else) gliding equally gracefully across a shiny linoleum dance floor. It was such a ludicrous image that she stared down at her notes in shame for even thinking it.
The room around her was silent, which was normal, but the quiet was more oppressive than usual. She could feel a few eyes on her even as she hid beneath her hair.
Sweet Merlin did he know what she had just been thinking about him? Dare she look up?
"No one?" drawled a contemptuous voice standing quite near her.
The flash of bright orange was right there so close she could touch it, and nearly automatically did as she so often had to do with her own clothes when…
Realization made her head snap up to attention, her hand automatically rising with it. Hitting Professor Snape in the jaw with her stiff fingers was a near miss but he did not flinch. The sneer on his lips deepened imperceptibly. She wouldn't have noticed that if he and his sleeve with the orange tomcat hair weren't still right there.
"Miss Granger," was the reluctant statement. Not even a question in his voice any longer; she was always the one who had the answer. His tone indicated that he…expected it.
"The crushed roots of mandrake need to sear for at least ten minutes per ounce, sir," her brain rattling off the information she was certain her ears had not taken in. Thank Merlin for reading ahead of the class. The sound of blood rushing through her head at the pointless embarrassment she still felt muffled the sound of her Professor's irritated sigh. The embarrassment was pointless because there was no way her luck was poor enough on her birthday to have garnered the impossible task of Professor Snape reading her mind at just that moment.
A small huff escaped his lips as he continued walking by her. "Correct. The length of time necessary to sear the mandrake root is also affected by the age of the plant. Those of you who are not oblivious to the world around you will recall the incidents of two years ago…"
Relief coursed through her as her hand began highlighting and marking notes once more on the parchment filled potions journal on the table before her. Not a moment's more information was absorbed as her gaze continued to be distracted by the occasional flash of traitorous orange between folds of black.
The magically enhanced sound of the bell from the clock tower two levels above their heads signaled the end of morning potions and the beginning of the lunch hour. Ron and Harry had predictably been the first two to leave the room, not even pausing in their bid to escape the Potions classroom for Hermione. Without even a cursory glance the two boys were up the first flight of stairs from the dungeons before Hermione had even finished the final note from the lecture. It had been a blessedly calm class, devoid of any barbs thrown by the Slytherins or Gryffindor outbursts and not even a large amount of points lost or gained for either House.
With a frustrated huff, Hermione ripped the elastic from her wrist and secured her hair back into a ponytail. For a few moments each curl would be restrained, so she relished it. She didn't mind in the slightest that the boys had gone ahead of her this time; her mind was too distracted.
The sneer from the desk at the front of the room could almost be heard.
Moving of their own accord, her eyes moved to the desk a final time before leaving the Potions classroom, the final student to do so. They did not meet the eyes of her formidable professor but caught a glance at the long ginger hair still resolutely perched on the left forearm of Professor Snape's thick woolen sleeve. Pale and thin fingers distracted her stare that could have lasted a second or could have lasted hours for all she knew. Those fingers grasped the hair that had surely come from Crookshanks' bottlebrush tail. Hermione knew the color, texture and length of all the spots of hair around her familiar's body as well as she knew the next thing to come from between the professor's lips was going to be a scathing remark.
But none came.
He simply plucked the hair from his sleeve and Vanished it within his palm silently.
Hermione forced herself to not meet his gaze as she tore from the classroom and put her trainers to good use as she jogged to catch up with Harry and Ron.
For the entire previous year Crookshanks had lived within the castle and the Gryffindor dormitories with nary a shed hair on Ronald Weasley, Lavender Brown, Parvati Patil or any of the others. She would have surely heard derisive comments on the quality of her familiar's grooming if that were the case. It was easy to tell the difference between Weasley-red and Crookshanks-ginger to someone who cared to notice such things.
Harry occasionally had to have a hair or two plucked from his jumper or robes.
Hermione was very nearly continuously plucking a hair from somewhere on her person.
Hagrid always had a hair or two stuck in his beard when she visited him. Even Buckbeak had had one or two mixed within his feathers, which she had always presumed was due to close contact with Hagrid and her person during third year. But she had seen Crookshanks napping with the hippogriff on occasion before the incident in third year with Professor Lupin, Sirius Black, and Peter Pettigrew. She had always assumed the hairs came from close contact with her person but now…
Now she wasn't so sure.
The hair incident during Potions was quickly pushed aside in all of the commotion of the arrival of Beauxbatons and Durmstrang, and the subsequent tournament and tasks ,and generally keeping Harry alive. She was always trying to keep Harry alive. If she thought about it, she never recalled pulling a single cat hair from Viktor Krum's robes and they had spent so much time together in the library that year.
The Dark Mark was an ugly, ghastly thing. Like a blister, sore and red against pale skin; it burned into the pale arm of her Potions professor as he proffered the terrible sight to all in the hospital wing that night. A surge of anger swelled within her breast. That night she had interpreted it as anger at him, which she used to lash out against that awful Rita Skeeter. That anger encouraged more than just one night trapped in a jar for the reporter, but was not enough to fuel the captivity much past Platform 9 ¾.
Later, she would realize her righteous anger was from understanding how much pain that Mark put him in. How much he suffered and how little he received.
Three ginger hairs were on his robes that night as he swept out to meet the Dark Lord and whatever fate awaited him.
