I squeaked off the shower and wiped my face with my wet hands, pressed my finger tips into my eyes. It was always like this. It had been this way since I was a student, and he was my Potions Professor. He would yell at me, hiss at me, spit insults at me. But they were always intended to make me better, stronger. I didn't realize that until years later when I discovered I had become all the things he'd tried to make me. My skin was thicker, my temper more even. I was more focused, and I knew what I wanted. And it was all oddly thanks to Snape. Too bad I didn't do anything about it.

And when he found me languishing at the Ministry, hating my 9 to 5 cubicle job that never took me anywhere the brochures promised me they would, he yelled at me again. "Stop wasting your life, Granger! If you stay at the Ministry, you're as stupid and as foolish as you were back at Hogwarts!" Right there in the middle of my flat where I had invited him out of pure politeness, he peeled back all those layers he'd built up in me. And all that pent up resentment from my childhood, all the things I wanted to shout back at him when I was young, they all came out.

I must have cried for an hour, and still he never left. I can't say he was particularly comforting. It wasn't like in the movies, where the man makes the woman cry with self-realization, then holds her as she sobs and tells him all her insecurities which are inevitably based on her father leaving at a young age. I sat on the floor and soaked my favorite snuggling pillow with mascara-tainted tears and smudges of lipstick. He sat at the far end of the couch and looked at me like the pathetic thing I had become: a bureaucrat who had left every good thing she had ever done behind her. He never said it in so many words, but he felt sorry for me, and this was how he showed it. He was doing it all over again, just like when I was a child. The only thing I didn't understand was why?

After I'd come to my senses I let him take me to Germany for the weekend. Snape showed me around the Consortium, introduced me to some of his colleagues, made me jealous for the life I had been denying myself.

And then he did the most surprising thing of all. He took me to dinner. It was a decidedly un-Snapelike thing to do. But it seemed to be the icing on the cake. About halfway through the meal, he produced a cream-colored linen envelope and slid it silently across the table.

In it were maps of the area, my first month's pay, and, most striking, a key to a flat less than a mile from the main building of the Consortium.

"I never said I would accept," I protested. But it was in vain.

"You are going to accept, Miss Granger."

I took a long slow drink of my wine and looked Severus Snape straight in the eye. "You can't scare me. I'm not thirteen anymore. I can make my own decisions." It was obviously a lie; if I could make proper decisions, I wouldn't have been sitting there, at his mercy, denying a position I so desperately wanted.

"Miss Granger, I cannot make you take this position. But I will insist upon it. As you say, you are no longer a thirteen year old student of mine. But I am considering this a personal mission of mine. I see in you many qualities from which the Consortium could benefit, while allowing you to ... Reorganize your... Professional tract." Snape himself took a sip of wine and kept his eyes on the table cloth.

I foolishly took his lack of eye contact for a sign of weakness.

"Well, thank you all the same for considering me worth a 'personal mission,' as you say. But don't you have better things to do than waste your time on me when you've got such an illustrious career of your own languishing somewhere?"

I immediately knew it was a mistake.

Snape replaced his glass on the table and dabbed his lips with his napkin. "Miss Granger," he began, and I was back in the dungeons, second row back, next to Harry and Ron. I could swear I could hear Neville's cauldron boiling over. "You helped to defeat Voldemort." This was the first mention of the Dark Lord on Snape's part; not once since we had re-met had the War been brought up. "You aided Harry Potter in destroying the most powerful dark wizard in all of history. You alone perhaps saved Harry Potter himself from himself by encouraging him, caring for him, and guiding him through the mazes Albus Dumbledore left behind in order to pace his process. Moreover, I have it on good authority that you personally solved many of the riddles standing between Potter and the defeat of Voldemort. You saved me from certain death," he added after the proper length of pause. "Had it not been for your sure knowledge of potions, I would not be here, buying you dinner, trying to save you from your self-inflicted exile from the academic and erudite lifestyle which you so deserve."

I played what little hand he had dealt me.

"Erudite? My God, you really are a snob, aren't you?"

"Shut up and take the job, Granger," he replied blandly. "I need an assistant and you desperately need to get the hell out of the Ministry. Their walls are closing in on you."

I knew when I had been beat. I accepted the job by simply staying silent, which I think pleased Severus more than anything.

Four years of being his assistant and three years of being the Consortium's Assistant Record Keeper (a much more prestigious position than it sounded) and working for the Ministry was nothing more than a memory, a temp job. My new apartment was a stunning two floor model which made my old place look like a slum. The paychecks were just shy of triple of what I was making at the Ministry. I had my own office even though I started out as Severus's assistant. I was writing a book, people begged to make appointments and consults with me; I was in heaven. Eventually Snape and I fell into a kind of truce where I readily assisted him regardless of my growing duties at the Consortium and he used his considerable clout to buy me time and space to explore my own experiments. Before I could count the years gone by, people had forgotten I was his assistant and called me "Professor Granger" even though I had never professionally taught. I think Severus thought it trite, but I had never felt so appreciated.

And so here we were, Severus Snape and myself, in the middle of Las Vegas on a four day convention and two expense accounts that rivaled those of most Ministry members. And with just a bathroom door between us. If only I had known what accepting Severus Snape's invitations could lead to! I reached for a towel and wrapped my hair into a crisp turban. I reached for another towel and wrapped it around my body. Since meeting Severus Snape. everyday had been an adventure.

A/N: I purposely decided to change Hermione's voice from previous fanfics. Having her be "really British-sounding" was too overwhelming. I'm trying to break out of my self-inflicted box of Hermione sounding like Kira Knightly in Pride & Prejudice. So please forgive me for what may seem like laziness. I really have tried to make the GENERAL overtone of the story sound somewhat authentic.