These are not my characters, I'm not making any money here.
A/N: This is my first fanfic I've actually had the guts to post and anyone who wants to offer constructive input -well, it's welcome. If you like, you can email at ***redd7@bigfoot.com*** (minus the ***s!) If you archive it elsewhere please list credit and email and give me a holler so I can bask.
"You're insane!"
Severus Snape merely raised an eyebrow at his rather put-out potions apprentice. Apparently his lack of satisfying reaction left her feeling that she had to reiterate the point, "Absolutely, bloody, plumb INSANE!"
"Finished ranting? Are we free to plan our little foray, or does our esteemed Miss Granger have more of her 'professional' opinion of my state of mind to offer up?" She actually sputtered! Rather gratifying really. Hermione usually put up more of a fight in their routine battles of wit, but he had so floored her this time that all of her intelligence which he secretly oh-so admired seemed to have jumped out the window and found itself otherwise occupied floundering around in the moat below. Five points to Slytherin!
"I certainly do!" she finally managed to spit out. "And I don't need to have a 'professional' opinion to see that you've really lost it this time! You...you've been sniffing too many potions! We'll both be fired! My career will be ruined. -You're career will be ruined! We'll be stuck brewing love drafts and contraceptives out of one of those nasty 24 hour shops in Knockturn Alley!"
Professor Snape allowed himself a sarcastic chuckle at the descriptive turn her hysterics had wrought. Love drafts...yes, that was a good one. And more prophetic than he wanted to consider if his proposed plan went wrong in any way.
"Don't you laugh, you...you bloody bat! Oh...." She seemed to deflate finally onto a metal stool in their -ahem! HIS...potion lab. "Why me?" she plaintively asked no one in particular.
He chose to answer, however. "Because desperate times call for desperate measures, silly girl," though there wasn't much sting in his insult. Just enough to make her bottom lip jut out adorably. Er..stubbornly. She continued to glare at the flagstone floor. "I certainly can't ask any student to do this -they're all ninnys anyways. And I can't ask any of the other staff members, either. They're just too...biased. They don't have the logic to think of Dumbledore in objective terms. I just can't trust any of them enough. Not even enough to speak of this to them." He noticed that her glance had drifted upwards towards him though her head still hung. Well, he had a reputation to maintain.. "And they're all ninnys too."
Despite her determination to pout, a smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. "And I'm not?"
"Hrmph! Don't go fishing for compliments, girl. You may not find what you catch to your liking!" he growled.
As he hoped, she found this reassuring rather than threatening. If he was confident enough to be good old caustic, evil Snape then there should be nothing to worry about. Right? "I understand your point..." she began. He raised a cynical eyebrow. This time her chin came up defiantly, "well I do! I didn't get to be your first apprentice ever because I was muddle-headed ninny. I DO understand the problem. About the students and other teachers and all. And..." She paused to bite her lip pensively. "Dumbledore has not...been normal lately."
She corrected herself at the same moment he gave a rude snort, "even less normal than usual, alright?" This was an understatement. Even the students were beginning to notice. The Headmaster had been skipping meals on a regular basis. Indeed, he seemed to be missing altogether more than not these days. Hermione had attempted to maintain order in her world view and chalked it up to some secret goings-on the faculty was engaged in for the good of the students and the magical world and so on and so forth and of course, she, a lowly apprentice would not be called in to act on whatever plan they were hatching... And Severus Snape had just burst the thin walls of her little bubble of naivety quite soundly. The teachers didn't have clue either. There was no top secret project. At least not one that included anyone but Dunbledore -and -the possibility filled her with dread -and unknown outside forces.
"It's just that...as you are quite fond of pointing out -Gryffindors aren't exactly the models of subtleness, are we? I'm just not... good at this sort of thing."
"Bicorn horn and boomslang skin, Miss Granger? Or should I call you...Tigger?"
The expressions that warred across her face really were priceless and all she could manage was to articulate soundlessly for a moment.
Finally she growled at him, "The fact that you KNOW that just proves my point."
"It proves that you were careless with a potion. A flaw that I certainly hope we have worked out of your repertoire by now. You, however will not need to trouble yourself with potions this time around. You just need to distract the old codger long enough for me to search his office and quarters."
Hermione chose to ignore his unflattering description of the adored headmaster. He was just trying to rile her. "Can't you just go in while he's at lunch or something?"
"I need to KNOW he's not going to walk in on me. He's been so unpredictable lately, that's no guarantee -who's to say he won't just get up in the middle of his meal and leave?"
He had a good point there and he knew it. Albus had done just that very thing at several meals in the past couple of weeks. He decided now was the time to drive the point home. He was right on the verge of awakening her Gryffindor urge to stick her nose in and mungle into the middle of things. "You know as well as I do that his confusion lately-"
She gave him a pointed look.
"-His INCREASED confusion lately, the odd -ODDER -things he's been saying and doing lately, the faulty memory -are the signs of someone resisting the Imperio curse. It may be nothing, but if there's even the slightest chance that the Headmaster of Hogwarts has fallen under the control of the forces of darkness, we must establish that fact as soon as possible and act accordingly."
Hermione didn't fancy dwelling on what "act accordingly" entailed. One thing at a time. "Isn't there anyone-"
"I think you'd agree with me, if you gave it some thought, that it's probably best that we keep this within the walls of Hogwarts for now." In the present political atmosphere, there was no guarantee that outside "help" didn't increase the chances of information reaching the ears of Voldemort.
"Harry? Lupin? The Weasleys?..."
"Personal biases aside -before you even bring it up -shouldn't we make every effort to quickly find out what's going on first, before we call in the calvary? It may be nothing, after all."
"You're starting to sound like Harry and Ron." Snape looked absolutely horror-struck at the comparison. "No, you deserved that. Just because I'm probably going to go along with your hare-brained scheme doesn't mean I'm not fully aware of your attempts to manipulate me these last few minutes."
Snape was clearly exasperated. "If you were going to do it from the beginning, why the argument?"
Herimone smiled down at the cauldron that she was carefully adding dropperfuls of bee venom to, "Well, I had to make you scramble for it a bit, didn't I?"
The potions master couldn't decide whether he should be taking away or giving points to Gryffindor.