A/N: Wow thank you guys a lot! I decided to publish the second chapter a little early. You're all so lovely.
When Snape next saw Hermione in class, she was wearing a small charm bracelet and looked as he fully expected- young, pristine, and ready to learn. If not for her shy smile as she entered the classroom, he would have thought he had dreamed the odd events of the days previous. He slipped a note in with her returned homework, and to her credit she did not give any indication of the secret message. It was only when the class was over and she was nearly out the door that she met his eye and barely nodded- she would see him later that evening.
Hermione was quite giddy, herself. It felt entirely freeing to know that she would be allowed a small chance to be open and honest after what had been years to her. She would not mention a few things, for the sake of propriety as well as her own want for privacy, but for someone to know her as Hermione the eighteen year old, the young adult and fighter in a war was heady. She entered the potions classroom after curfew, and found the same beetles set up from her deflected detention.
Snape was waiting by the desk, looking slightly awkward but still a full figure of authority. Hermione approached the desk and sat down her bag, then tapped her watch to remove the glamour charm. A look of relief washed over her, and she put her wand away and grabbed the box of beetles.
"Shall I begin, sir?" she asked, and he nodded.
"Yes. As you work, I'll ask you questions. Take care to not get too distracted from the beetles- I will deduct points if any are too damaged to be useful," he warned, and to his annoyance she just quirked her lips in amusement.
"Yes, sir," she said with a smile to her voice, and he glowered at her. She pulled one beetle from the box and deftly began to harvest the ingredients, not even flinching at the bug guts getting under her short nails.
"Very well. When did you first realize that the case of Black was not as it seemed?" he asked, and she looked up a moment, brows furrowed in thought.
"It was after I knew about Professor Lupin's condition. Harry had overheard a discussion between professors that Sirius was his godfather. I wanted to look into why he would betray the Potters- any amount of noted disputes, of pressure to rat them out, anything like that. But even the papers admitted it seemed out of the blue but typical of a Black. Sirius isn't a typical Black, though- he was never in Slytherin, openly defied his family and ran away from home to live with Harry's dad before he finished school. They were brothers, essentially.
"But when I was looking through old yearbooks, I did notice something a little odd. The Mauraders were in a lot of photos together, but Pettigrew always looked, well, distant. I don't think he ever felt like he really belonged with them. You were in their year, weren't you? What was your opinion of them?" she asked.
Snape snarled out of habit and turned away from watching her hands eviscerate the beetles.
"The four of them were all foul mouthed brutes who neither deserved the attention they got or truly appreciated the opportunities they had," he said with halting words, clearly trying not to grind his teeth. While Hermione knew that Snape hated the Mauraders, she hadn't expected such a vitrolistic answer. She did not respond, instead watching his back as he took a few deep breaths.
"It is… difficult for me to think of them beyond their arrogance and cruelty. However… thinking back on it, I find it difficult to recall many instances of Pettigrew acting on his own. He was the first to run and typically a lookout over anything. Perhaps he was a coward even then," he finally mused.
"If they were so cruel, sir, why do they still seem to be so loved?" she asked with genuine confusion. Snape wanted to yell at her for her density, but she was not questioning his judgement. Instead he gave her a look that she was being stupid.
"Surely, Miss Granger, you are smart enough to figure that one out. They were brilliant golden children. Black broke the mold of his terrible family. Lupin was proof that having a curse did not make you an immediate monster. Potter… he was simply born lucky. They were a shining example of true friendship, or whatever nonsense people liked to tout to justify never allowing them a single punishment," he sneered, bitterness dripping from every word, and he fell quiet.
"I do not wish to speak more on the subject. Tell me what all subjects you have been diving into over your summers," he said instead. He wanted to gauge the level of knowledge she could bring to the table. She immediately began rambling off a list. Essentially, she had a muggle Bachelor Degree in liberal arts, primed to go in any direction she saw fit. And there were many directions. Criminal justice, psychology, biology and chemistry were her main interests at the moment, but she had also been doing extra research into herbology, ancient runes, and charms, with a lot of theory in potions as well. Ravenclaw had truly suffered a loss by her sorting.
"That is… inhumane," he finally said, overwhelmed at the amount of work she had clearly put into her own education. She frowned and shrugged, continuing to work on her beetles.
"It won't hurt to be prepared. With… his return, I want to have every bit of knowledge that might help us win," she defended.
"Are there any areas in which you are not going for a doctorate?" he asked teasingly, and she turned red but bit her lip to avoid lashing out.
"No. I just… I feel very unprepared. But it's here. The war is at our doors, already starting and I'm pretending to be sixteen and naive to it. But Cedric already died for this war. How many died before his return? How many will die now? Or end up in St. Mungo's, trapped in their own minds, battered and broken or insane? I can't let that happen to anyone."
Snape sighed at her actually starting to tear up.
"That is well and truly out of your control. It is… admirable, the lengths to which you are willing to go. However, this is still a war. You will lose friends. You will see them hurt, or worse. It will be through no fault of your own. The sooner you accept that you are not a lone actor in a static field, the better off you'll be in the long run. Your friends may be young now, but… we were young in the last war, too. It cares not for your age, for your friendship or your love. Death Eaters do not care. All you can hope for is to keep yourself alive and do what you can, when you can. To believe any more is foolish," he advised, much gentler than he was comfortable being. Women crying always did make him uncomfortable.
To his relief, she nodded and seemed to take the words to heart. It was not a bunch of nonsense designed to make her feel better. But clearly the girl had been allowing herself to run herself rampant with trying to shove an entire lifetime of knowledge into a few years.
They managed to turn the conversation less personal as she continued working. He asked after her knowledge of the first war, and she told him she knew mentions of the Order of the Phoenix, and he confirmed the continued existence. She knew who some of the key players were, and remarked that it would be better to try to have more Slytherins on their side, at which he scoffed.
"Hogwarts has been trying to keep Slytherin away from anything good since it was founded. No matter who it is, their background, or the reasons the Hat placed them in Slytherin, the rest of the school does not want them to become good people," he sneered. Hermione did not comment- he had a point. The first thing she'd been told on the train was that no good witch went to Slytherin, and as a Muggleborn she'd be killed the first night in there. Not for the first time, she wondered how things might have been different if there was not such a stigma.
"You're right. It's horrid. How would you recommend implementing change?" she asked, and he shrugged it off.
"I do not believe it is possible at this point. There is a reason I am so favorable to my house- no one else would dare be kind to them, so I may… be a little heavy in my protection of them," he admitted, and Hermione quirked a smile. That was quite an understatement, but she understood it a bit more clearly now. A small idea was buzzing in the back of her mind, not yet fully formed, and she put a pin in it for later.
"Well, I still have hope for the future," she commented, and he scoffed but did not comment. She would learn eventually, he was sure, that it was foolish to try. Especially in the current climate.
Before they realized it, hours had passed and Snape dismissed Hermione after they put away the ingredients. He told her he was expecting a flubberworm shipment soon, and would require her help when it arrived. She left feeling freer, but Snape felt more overwhelmed.
He had enough to deal with, he should not have let his curiosity get the better of him and make a deal with the girl. He should not have to be some girl's diary because she chose to alienate herself. And yet, he found himself interested in her opinions. They were far removed from his opinion of what she would typically say, and he realized that he actually did not know much about her at all. He tried to catalogue his knowledge and found it lacking. She had been an arm waving, crazed bookworm just last year, or perhaps she hadn't. His strongest impression of her was her first and second years, but she had dropped off his radar as she had began to put more focus on her studies and her friends. He wondered if the other professors had noticed. It had been so gradual, he doubted it.
Meanwhile, Hermione was starting to have her relief wear off. Now, she just felt weird. Her standoffish and mean professor now knew more important things about her than her best friends did- but the thought of explaining to Harry and Ron and the potential of them isolating her again was too much to bear. It was hellish when they had cut her out of the loop for her reporting his broom, but now, when she already felt so alone… she didn't want to think about it. But at the same time, she knew it was not fair to put it all on Professor Snape, who already had so much on his plate. She resolved not to let it get too personal, steeling her own heart against the pain that her self imposed loneliness would cause. She couldn't drag him down with her- he was down far enough.
