Author's Note: Sorry it took me so long to update :P

Disclaimer – I don't own Harry Potter, the universe it takes place in, or any of the characters and I'm not making any money from this.

CH 4 – Making the Grade

"Here you are, Miss Granger," Snape said as he plopped a 2 foot high stack of parchment on the desk in front of Hermione after class.

Hermione simply stared at it. These were all the essays Snape had assigned over the first week of school. He had only given essay assignments to every single class except the first years (he was the only Professor to do so within the first week of classes) and the number of essays was astounding.

"Uh, sir, do you want me to grade all of these?" Hermione asked tentatively.

"Why else do you think I gave them to you?" he asked, looking down his nose at her, "don't look so scandalized Granger, I've been doing the grading all by myself the whole time I've been teaching. I expect that as my assistant you can at least manage to do this for me. Or can you not manage this work load? In which case I would be most pleased to allow you to quit the job."

"No, Professor, I can do it, you can count on me," Hermione replied.

"Good, then I expect them in three days. If the average grade you give on these essays deviates from my usual average by more than 2 points, you will be fired."

"I assume there's no chance you would tell me what your usual average is, Professor?"

"No," was his only response as he turned and swept from the room.

Hermione returned her gaze to the stack of papers, what had she been thinking, getting herself into this mess just so she could live at Hogwarts?

Back in her personal office, the one thing she thankfully did not have to share with Snape, Hermione stared at the stacks of essays before her. She had separated them by year and was wondering which it was best to start with. She had spent a long time thinking about how Snape graded. Despite the scathing criticisms he had given her on a regular basis, she had still usually received an O on her potions homework, proof that Snape could give good marks. Harry and Ron's grades had been more erratic but she remembered their highest and lowest scored essays and thought she could use those as a base to figure out how to score the essays that lay before her. She wondered briefly if Snape gave Gryffindor lower grades and Slytherin higher grades than everyone else but finally decided that even he would not stoop so low.

Finally settling on starting with the second years and working her way up Hermione grabbed the first essay. It was riddled with spelling and grammar mistakes from the very first sentence and was totally wrong in its analysis of the essay topic. Hermione raised her red quill and thought that after hundreds of essays like this one perhaps it would not be so difficult to grade like Snape.

3 days later:

"Here are your essays, Professor," Hermione said proudly, dropping the two foot high stack of essays on the desk in front of him after class.

"Ten points from Gryffi-," Snape began, "Damn it! I can't take points from you if you're no longer a student."

Snape looked around Hermione to see which students remained in the class room. There was one very unfortunate first year Gryffindor boy who was still packing up his bag, Snape smirked.

"You there, ten points because you allowed Miss Granger to drop these essays, and another ten because you're taking so long to leave my class."

The boy looked up opening his mouth as if he were about to protest, Hermione shook her head ever so slightly at him. The boy took the hint and ran from the room, his bag still open and his books practically spilling from it.

Hermione looked back at Snape, his smirk had grown even larger and his body was shaking ever so slightly. Hermione wondered if there was something wrong with him until she realized that he was laughing silently - she hadn't known Snape was capable of laughter!

"Well, Granger," Snape said, "that's one problem solved, every time I want to take points from you I'll simply take them from whatever Gryffindor happens to be in the immediate vicinity. I will look over your grading of these essays. You are dismissed now."

Hermione nodded to him and left the room as swiftly as she could while still retaining her dignity. She prayed the average she had given on the essays was close enough to what Snape gave so she wouldn't be fired.

Snape sat at the desk in his office reviewing the essays Miss Granger had given him. He was becoming more frustrated with each essay. He had thought there was no way that Granger could ever match the grades he gave on essays, she would be too nice. But he had been sorely mistaken. Granger's average grade was exactly .5 points below his. He simply could not accept the fact that the Gryffindor who had been willing to help the likes of Longbottom brew potions was a harder grader than he was.

It couldn't be, he thought. He looked through the essays again wondering if Granger had found a spell that would change the grades when he looked at them to be closer to the grade he would have given them. He examined all of the parchments thoroughly but could find no sign of magic.

He turned his attention to the actual comments Granger had written on the essay. Her writing was the same neat and rounded script she used when writing essays and the comments themselves had a forgiving tone, pointing out was wrong with the essay and gently making suggestions on how the essays could be improved. He would have to stress the fact that he had not been the one to grade these or students might start thinking he was gentle despite their low grades on the essay.

Hermione sat at her desk in the Potions lab completely engrossed in calculations for the Polyjuice potion. She almost had it. She had decided to add a cocktail of ingredients that would serve as a catalyst so that the potion would take less time to brew. But unfortunately that mixture would strength several other ingredients in the potion so she needed to figure out how much of them needed to be put in the potion.

The door swung open with great force, slamming against the wall. Hermione's head snapped up from her calculations as Snape swept into the room. He approached her desk with long gouging strides, "How did you figure it out Granger?"

"How did I figure what out, sir?" Hermione asked, totally confused.

"These," he said, dropping the stack of essays in front of her.

"Does this mean that the average I gave was close enough?" Hermione asked, excited at the possibility that she might have passed this test.

"Answer the question, Granger," Snape snapped.

" I'll just take that as a yes then," Hermione said, "I didn't figure anything out. I just looked the essays and thought that if I were you I would take points off for any inkling of incompetency, that's it. I didn't poll everyone in each class to see what grades you had given them if that's what you're thinking, sir."

"I'm finding it rather difficult to believe that you came up with this average all by yourself, Miss Granger," Snape said.

"Why is that, sir?" asked Hermione.

"Because, not only did you get within two points of my average score, you were actually .5 points lower than my usual score."

"Well, I supposed I assumed that you would give low grades and so maybe I purposely graded harder."

"I suppose I can accept that explanation," Snape said, "continue with whatever you were doing."

Hermione turned back to her calculations; she was so close to completing them. It was only a matter of days before she finished the first task Snape had set for her.

Author's Note: I'm not that happy with this chapter but I'm having an easier time with the next chapter so far :)