4
The fourth time he saw her, she approached him. But he also had given her detention for being out past curfew, so she was serving it with him.
"Are your sleepless night's constant?" He questioned her. She stopped cutting and labeling specimens, looking up at him in mild surprise. Her brown doe eyes wide and her untamable hair put in a tight bun (but a few damned curls managed to escape).
"Why would you like to know?" she asked wearily, he went back to grading papers, small reading glasses perched against his nose.
"As a professor it is my duty to look after students," Hermione had to hold her tongue with how he had treated Harry and herself years prior. "I also have a potion that could help you sleep better, it's not dreamless sleep or a sleeping draught. It's one of my own design," his eyes met her from over the glasses he wore, "it was useful when I actually had to appear rested in public. It does wonders, I assure you."
Hermione's breath caught in her throat and she was sure her heart skipped three beats in her chest.
"Why are you offering this to me?"
He went back to grading.
"You organize my shelves for when I get new ingredients, I give you three nights worth of the potion. Sounds like a fair trade?"
"What if it doesn't work on me?" her jaw clenched, the unmentioned knowledge burning at the forefront of his mind: Dreamless Sleep and Sleeping Draught don't work on her.
His lips curved into the smallest smirk.
"It will."
A/N: Review please