I hope you enjoy my dementedness. Thank you for reading and thanks to Loyd1957 and Guiltypleasure2 for being my first reviewers! Loyd1957 – kind of. ;) xoxo Dena

Chapter 2

That old battle-cat nearly spat out her tea, barking in laughter, "He wants you to what?"

"I know! It's demeaning! I knew I could count on you to see the ridiculo-"

"Oh, no, no, my girl, you misunderstand me. I think you should do it."

Hermione sat, stunned, blinking, with her mouth hovering open above her teacup. A cog fit back into place in her head and she snapped her mouth shut along with the tea down to the table. "I think you misunderstand, Minerva."

Her former head of house let out a deep, throaty chuckle and a knowing look that said otherwise. She smiled, showing a little bit of teeth on the side of her mouth that flashed one of her slightly feline incisors, and leaned back in her seat, regally. "Long ago was the last time I was asked to perform any act in front of a man, even more one so relatively harmless." Minerva regarded Hermione a little too closely for her taste, "Do you have some reason to deny such a simple thing, other than your belief in its...degradation?"

Her lips pressed flat as her brow as she exhaled in frustration, "How could it be anything but degrading? Women only do that sort of thing if they're paid to, and for a man's pleasure, not her own."

Minerva blinked, perplexed. After an awkward moment when she thought perhaps she had misconstrued the afternoon's events entirely, her former head of house continued, "Hermione, I'd been led to believe that you'd had a rather healthy...er...enjoyment of men. Especially after the way you and Luna go on about the Quidditch celebrities that stop through on recruitment?"

Oh, right. Well, she did appear to act a little forward...sometimes... "Um...well..." She dipped her head and looked at her madly twisting fingers, then grabbed her teacup again to hold them still. "I have no problem with...looking."

The "Oh" resulting multisyllabically from Minerva's mouth made Hermione's molars grind in embarrassment. So what if she was a virgin? It hadn't ever...really...quite come up more than a few times...before now...

If Ron hadn't been such a git and gone off with Lavender again, perhaps that wouldn't have been an issue—

"So is it an exception to Severus?"

Hermione looked up in surprise at Minerva's challenging tone and could think of no other answer but the truth, "No, of course not."

The immediacy of the answer was a surprise to both of them, but Minerva quickly recovered with a knowing smile that grated on her nerves.

Oh, bugger it! She'd probably get farther with Filius. He was always a stickler for propriety. She thanked her former head of house for the tea and wished her a happy evening.

Now, where would the little old charmer be?

/

"I still don't understand, Miss Granger." He turned to Pomona, who had conveniently been taking sherry in his office when she came to call. Hermione had declined the offer, hoping to maintain an even keel to press the issue.

"Well, don't you think Professor Snape will be upset? Embarrassed?"

"Oh, I daresay he has nothing against small, fuzzy animals...?" His voice filtered off when Hermione looked helplessly to Pomona, who looked the shade of one of Luna's floating plums, but not in anger, oh no. No, she was ready to burst into laughter.

Filius blinked at his fellow head of house. "Pomona? Are you alright?"

Apparently, this was enough to finish her eruption, for she looked between the two of them three times and snorted into a bray of laughter loud enough to ring off the stone walls of Flitwick's office. Hermione rolled her eyes and slouched in her seat.

When she finally caught her breath, Pomona ventured forth, nearly squealing in her laughter, "Hermione-dear, if-if-if Severus would sit through th-that from anyone, it would be you-hoo-hoo." At Hermione's shocked silence, she continued blithely, wiping her face of tears with a proffered handkerchief from Filius, "Oh, I'd pay galleons to see his face. There's no way in the Elysian Fields I'd give up a chance to see this. Albus has my backing." At that, she broke into a rocking kind of laughter that only matrons can do and Hermione grimaced.

She ventured one last look at Filius. He shrugged his little arms, helplessly. "I still don't understand what Severus is supposed to do with small animals at a birthday party, but if she thinks its alright, then it must be. Why don't you give it a try, eh? Can't hurt."

Pomona exploded again at his unfortunate implication of Severus and animals, but he'd just blinked obliviously.

He smiled at her with his dear little old man face and she ground her back molars into a grimacing smile in return, thanking them for their time before going off in search for someone reasonable...like Vector.

/

"Ha! If you think I'm standing in the way of that meddling old fool, you've got another thing coming!"

"But I-"

"You don't know half of what goes on in this castle, young lady, and trust me, you'd rather not." She narrowed her eyes thoughtfully at Hermione, "You know, I was once a bit upset that you decided not to take the apprenticeship I offered, but I see that Potions will do you better. Numbers never lie, and neither does Arithmancy."

"Please, just give me-"

"No."

Slam!

Well.

She looked down the hallway to make sure she'd not been seen or embarrassed by anyone, straightened her workrobes and strode off towards Sinistra's parlor.

/

"What did Minerva say?"

"Well, she...um...said for me to do it. But I don't think she sees my point-"

"And you also have already consulted the other heads of houses?"

"Yes, yes, they all jumped on the bark-wagon." She sighed into her newest cup of tea. "I'm beginning to wonder at my own convictions, actually, since so many are against the way I see it."

"Well. I'm afraid the stars won't help you. Or rather...they will." She smiled in her own, small way and motioned for Hermione to follow her through the parlor into her workroom.

"I beg your pardon?"

"The stars." Aurora waved a hand at the ceiling above them and the glimmering constellations she was used to seeing above the astronomer's desk wavered and disappeared in favor of another view. "They favor your extroversion in spite of your recent tendency to bury yourself in your work. It's all right here, really."

She pointed to an amazing ceiling full of natal charts, constantly moving and shifting, showing conjunctions and oppositions...so many things shifted through Hermione's mind as she stared from her own chart to...

"Is that his?"

They moved over to a brilliant emerald green double circle denoting the Head of Slytherin. Ancient symbols moved clockwise and counterclockwise in a microcosmic pattern of possibilities. Her eyes watched this slow dance for a moment, then looked down to Aurora in question.

"You know, I shouldn't be letting you see these, especially others', but it's nothing I haven't given you the tools to do yourself."

With that, she smirked and absented herself to her private chamber door, calling over her shoulder, "Lock up when you leave, will you? The usual wards will do."

She called out a hesitant and bewildered 'thank you', but Aurora was already gone.

Well.

It wasn't as if this were prognostication or some sort of sham fortune-telling that Trelawney dabbled with. No, this was what she'd missed with Firenze and what Aurora had only hinted at in her classes, focusing instead on the power of the positions of the planets in relativity to the Earth and how it affected a witch's or wizard's personal powers. Of course, one had to understand their own natal chart to bring reference into the relationship, but it was all there, all math, all science.

She stared at the glowing green sigils and wondered...perhaps not for the first time, but the first time taking it seriously, at the synchronicity of her own chart with his. It wasn't, after all, as if she hadn't fancied him for, oh, months now. It would be impossible not to, after knowing what she now knew of him and watching his slow reintegration into society. Every small revelation of what was him and what was put on for the sake of war held some knew device of understanding between them and she knew she wasn't the only one.

She couldn't be.

Could she?

Then again, even now, he was an incredibly private man that clung to his shadows and quiet. It had taken her months to break through enough just to get him to call her Granger instead of Miss Granger. He'd still not unbent enough to allow her to call him anything other than Professor Snape to his face, regardless of her first-name-basis with the other teachers. She did it behind his back just to...

Well, practice wasn't really the word, was it?

Hmm.

She looked over to her own chart, a dimmer gold shimmering several spaces away and after a few wand-pauses, one out of confirmation of the spell and two out of reaffirmation that what she was doing was all right (sanctioned by Aurora, even), she cast a synastry spell between the two—his and hers.

And frowned.

Blinked.

Thought about it...

"Oh, what the hell."

She banished the synastry casting and locked up Sinastra's office, warding it well before she left for her own rooms. Hermione had some planning to do if she was going to go through with this and even if Albus' plan was silly, she was nothing if not a perfectionist.

However...there was the one last string to tie off if she wanted this to go perfectly.

She made a u-turn for the dungeons.

Muahahah! So, what do you think will happen next? How did you like my interpretations of the Hogwarts staff? Thanks everyone for reading and I'll hopefully see you tomorrow! Xoxo Dena