For a brief time, upon entering potions class the next morning, Hermione wondered if she should intentionally make a mistake so that Professor Snape could have an excuse to put her in detention that evening. Then, when he took fifteen points for setting up her equipment too quickly and gave her detention for looking surprised at the loss, she remembered that she was dealing with Professor Snape, who had never let a trivial thing like not having a good reason stop him from punishing a Gryffindor. It was not until he had stalked back to his desk did she detect a hint of amusement in his smirk.
At five fifty nine that evening she straightened out her uniform, squared her shoulders, and prepared herself to knock on the door to Professor Snape's chambers. The night before she had been running on sleep deprivation and pure adrenaline, both tended to fortify her Gryffindor bravery. However, by the light of the day after, she was decidedly more nervous about approaching her foreboding professor. It wasn't that she had any doubts about his trustworthiness, no, she had her reasons for trusting him polished and ready for analysis. It was more a question of his prickly nature and predisposition towards removing points from Gryffindor because the sun was in the sky. She grimaced at the thought. I can do this. Something about pushing a boulder up a hill came to mind.
Sisyphean tasks aside, she raised her hand to knock on the door, only to have the door open before her knuckles made contact, revealing her scowling, yet decidedly amused, potions professor.
"You are fortunate that telepathic knocking will not be on your OWLs next year. You may find more success using your hand as a first resort next time."
A year ago his tone would have had her running for the door, but she had been observing her sarcastic professor very carefully (and very subtly) over the last year and she had slowly realized that, if you ignored the venom with which the words were spoken, his quick and dry wit was actually immensely amusing. She would rather be force fed potions ingredients before she admitted it, but she greatly enjoyed some of his verbal eviscerations of her classmates, as long as he didn't carry it too far.
She entered the room and waited awkwardly for instructions, not wanting to seem too presumptuous. This was a detention after all. Hearing her unspoken question, Professor Snape closed the door behind her and broke the silence.
"If I am satisfied by your answer, conversation and possibly even tea await you. If not, I have a bucket of newt carcasses whose eyeballs need removal. Answer with caution, Miss Granger."
This was the part for which she had a day to prepare, so the nerves were hardly visible as she spoke, evenly and precisely enunciating every word.
"I trust you for five different yet related reasons. First, I stand by my statement last night. Dumbledore possesses far more information about the situation at hand than I do, so his opinion is relevant to matter, even if it cannot stand alone as grounds to trust you."
Without giving him time to kick her out for contradicting him she barreled on, "Second, you are far more intelligent than to support a violent and radical movement with the full witness of history to the fact that powerful leaders who base their regimes on brutality and the fear of others are always defeated in the end. You are intelligent enough not to cast your lot on the wrong side of history."
She saw that the eyebrow had begun its ascent, but continued, "Third, Harry said you were genuinely surprised at Crouch's reveal and it wouldn't make sense for the Dark Lord to have two of his followers in such close proximity to each other without some kind of knowledge so you didn't interfere with each other's missions."
"Fourth, you did all you could to stop Quirrel from getting the stone for the Dark Lord and you helped revive those petrified by the Baselisk, both of which were directly against His best interest."
He looked at her to see if she would continue, but she acted as if she was done talking.
"You said you had five reasons. I only counted four."
Color rose to her cheeks as she let out (and quickly stifled) an embarrassed giggle.
"I once set you on fire thinking you weren't trustworthy. I don't like making the same mistake twice."
With this Hermione saw an expression she could not identify come over her professor's face. She began to worry until one corner of his mouth twitched once, twice, and then he barked out a single, deep, velvety guffaw of laughter. Rising, he shook his head in defeat.
"You win, Miss Granger. How do you take your tea?"
As Hermione got settled in the same chair she had occupied the previous night, she took a second to look around. She had been here for hours the previous day, but between the dramatic events of that evening, the worries over what Professor Snape could be enduring at the moment, and her desire to touch as few things as possible to minimize the point loss to Gryffindor due to sneaking into a professor's rooms uninvited, she hadn't really taken the time to analyze her surroundings.
Professor Snape's sitting room was actually alarming close to what she would have done with the space we're she to occupy it. Every wall that could support a bookshelf was currently doing so, making it quite difficult to actually see the walls at all but for the masses of books. She currently occupied one of two overstuffed armchairs that were situated where they could both see the fire, each other, and the door. In the back corner was a monumental black wooden desk so abundant in dignity that it made her briefly question just how many pieces had been made from the HMS Resolute. Finally, along the back wall there were two doors. One, she assumed, led to his private rooms, the other to a small kitchen. It was from the second that Professor Snape now emerged, carrying a tray with tea and biscuits.
He must have seen the question floating in her mind, for seeing her face his eyes seemed to chuckle and he remarked explanatorily, "the house elves and I have an understanding of sorts."
She saw from his expression that the matter was obviously not one about which it would be wise to ask further questions, so she simply nodded and accepted her tea, silently sipping from the warm mug as he sat down in the chair opposite.
"So a fourth year and her Arithmancy notebook have figured out that of which I have been trying to convince Albus for years. Do you care to elaborate on your conclusions?"
Hermione shifted slightly in the urge not to reach for her notes, but managed to school her voice as she spoke.
"I started plotting the events that have already happened to try to get a baseline of the behavior of all the main people who are key players in the conflicts. Obviously Harry, Dumbledore, the Death Eaters, and the Dark Lord," her eyes flicked up to see if he noticed that she hadn't said the name this time. No expression other than polite attention crossed his face, but his left hand remained unclenched at his side.
"Somehow you, Ron, and I always manage to get drawn into the mix, so I gave us individual equations as well." She paused and looked up, clearly expecting a response.
"As much as I protest being placed on any list next to Mister Weasley and yourself, I cannot deny your conclusions. Let me guess, the more information you added to your equations, the more behaviors you added for each party involved, the more dire the picture became? And when you factored in last night's return of the Dark Lord the result became Potter's certain demise at the hands of the Dark Lord?"
Hermione nodded meekly, yet he could see the questions brewing behind her eyes.
"Ask, Miss Granger. I fear if you don't you might relapse into that infernal hand waving behavior, just when I thought you had the habit under control."
Chagrined at the image of a first-year Hermione waving her hand so high in the air it almost pulled her off her seat, Hermione again schooled the tension out of her body and collected herself before speaking. She could tell that Professor Snape was not fooled, of course the head of Slytherin wouldn't be, but he looked sufficiently pleased with the effort, so she counted that as a win for the time being.
"If I came to that conclusion," she paused briefly, "and you came to that conclusion," a bit longer this time, "surely the Headmaster must have realized this ages ago", another pause, seemingly hoping he would interrupt her with an answer before she had to finish her question. When no such help came, she finished with a hint of outrage, "why hasn't he done something about it? Why isn't he preparing Harry? Why isn't he…" she trailed off and finished with an accusatory look so strong he was momentarily grateful the accusation was not directed at him.
"The headmaster believes that Potter will find out what he needs in his own time. He wishes to let him keep his innocence," he sneered the word as if it was a foul-smelling substance scraped from the bottom of a dirty cauldron, "intact as long as possible."
"But clearly that is the most idiotic idea possible! Harry needs to be trained, prepared, he needs to be taught something! What use is innocence if you only live a few more years to enjoy it?" She finished with a huff of breath to accompany her flushed face. Instead of responding right away, Professor Snape eyed her with the same look he would direct at a potion that may be ready but might need another dozen stirs anticlockwise. When he spoke it was slow and measured.
"Is that really such an easy sacrifice to make? Could you simply abandon your childhood to fight in a war that you knew going in you only had a small chance, if that, of winning?"
Her gut instinct was to immediately and vehemently answer in the affirmative, but replaying Professor Snape's comments about child's answers and infernal hand waving she took a second to really think about the question he had asked.
It's not a rhetorical question at all. It's an offer! A Slytherinish offer, but an offer nonetheless. It still didn't take her much time to come by a decision, but she tried match his even tone as she answered.
"Yes, Professor. I think I could. I was taught to fight for what I believe is right. I wouldn't be a proper Gryffindor if I let fear or selfishness stand in the way of that. Plus, I'm the muggleborn best friend of the Boy Who Lived, so I hardly think that if the Dark Lord won he would let me live happily on." She paused and tilted her head as if in thought, then seemed to resolve whatever it was she was thinking and finished resolutely, "Yes, Professor. I would sacrifice whatever is necessary to defeat him."
He didn't have to ask if she was sure.
"So be it, Miss Granger." He nodded once and stood up. "I'll expect you back at the same time tomorrow night. If you think you will have trouble getting here without being seen I would be more than happy to assign you another detention. We have a lot of work to do before summer holiday begins and not too much time in which to do it."
He held open the door for a more than slightly confused Hermione.
"What just happened, Professor?"
"You just decided to become an adult, Miss Granger. Welcome to fight. I shall see you tomorrow."
With more questions than answers, she headed back up to the privacy of the drawn curtains of her four poster bed. She felt another round of Arithmancy equations coming on.