Hermione sat in the middle of the common room floor, two notebooks open in front of her and half-open potions texts spread in an uneven halo around her. She pensively sucked on her quill, then scribbled a quick notation in the second notebook. Ron, coming in through the portrait hole, stopped dead and regarded her with an expression of horror.
"Sweet Merlin," he breathed. "That's not assigned for Potions, is it?" He looked vaguely ill at the idea.
"Hmm?" Hermione queried, still nibbling on the quill as she looked at him. "Oh, this? No. Professor Snape has asked me to be his lab assistant. I'm doing research for a potion he's working on developing. It's fascinating, really. Right now I'm compiling a list of possible additives, cross-referenced by their properties, as well as doing a bit of general background research."
"A bit?" Harry asked amusedly, looking up from his chess game with Seamus Finnegan. Hermione made a face at him.
Ron looked very slightly green. "Of course you don't mind all the extra work, Hermione, but do you really want to spend all that extra time with Snape?"
"That's Professor Snape to you, Ronald Weasley," Hermione scolded, softening her words with a wry smile. "But really, he's not that bad. I don't mind his sarcasms, and once you get past the cutting comments he really is brilliant."
"Sure," Harry agreed, grinning wickedly. "All that light reflected off the grease in his hair…"
Hermione threw her quill at him.
.i.
Hermione stared at the lumpy sweater Mrs. Weasley had sent her, along with accompanying masterpieces for Harry, Ginny, and Ron—belated Christmas gifts, as Mrs. Weasley had gotten a bit behind that year with her holiday knitting. It was Gryffindor red, of course, and it had a strange yellow blob on the front that Ron assured her was meant to be a lion. She valiantly resisted the urge to burst into tears.
"Hermione?" Harry asked, eyebrows drawn together very slightly. "Are you all right?" Ron looked up from the fudge he was unwrapping.
"I say, 'Mione, you do look a bit ill. Are you sure you ought to go down and help Snape tonight?" He looked a little ill himself. "All those slimy, crawly things…"
Hermione looked at her watch. "Oh, no, I'm late!"
"Hermione…" Harry said uncertainly, but she was already out the portrait hole.
.i.
Hermione arrived at the lab three minutes late, flushed and uncomfortable. Snape tutted. "Punctuality, Miss Granger, is of the essence."
Hermione bit her lip and set upon disemboweling the newt corpses piled in a gruesome heap on the lab table. She took a kind of morose satisfaction in it, working through them briskly. Snape leaned over her shoulder, perusing the grisly row of ruthlessly eviscerated newts. "The idea is to disembowel them, not ritually sacrifice them, Miss Granger." He swooped around to the side of the lab table. "Admirable as your very Gryffindor enthusiasm for your task is, Miss Granger, it is not particularly suited to the exact discipline required for potions-making."
She turned white. A wiser man might have noticed and taken warning, but Snape continued uninterrupted. "Regrettably, the fine art of subtlety seems to have been lacking in your early education. An oversight on your parents' part, I'm sure."
She threw a dead newt at him and promptly burst into tears. And not artistic, martyred tears, either. Full out, eye-reddening, undignified runny-nose sobs. More unsettled than he cared to admit, Severus picked the slimy body off of his robes and observed Hermione warily. He wasn't accustomed to crying women—as a rule he avoided them like the plague. The occasional student sniveling in his class was rarely a problem; they either stopped quickly or were tossed out. But Hermione showed no signs of stopping any time soon, and under the circumstances he hardly thought it would be appropriate to throw her out into the corridor: even he wasn't that much of a bastard.
"Miss Granger," he attempted. "Please calm yourself." The crying did not noticeably abate. He tentatively placed his hand on her shoulder. "Hermione," he tried again. He was startled and somewhat alarmed when she suddenly turned and buried her face in his shoulder. Rather awkwardly, he patted her back as she hiccupped and gasped.
"There, there," he endeavored. "Hush." The hiccups slowly degenerated into watery sniffles as he continued to rub her back, making what he hoped were soothing noises. Amazingly, he wasn't more than mildly put out by the rapidly expanding wet splotch on his teaching robes, or the fairly needy way she clutched at him. He supposed he was going soft; years of Dumbledore's infernal lemon drops rubbing off on him, perhaps.
He maneuvered carefully into a sitting position in the one comfortable chair in the room, then froze as she immediately curled up against him, still not removing her face from the safety of his robes. Slowly her breathing quieted, and her taut body relaxed into him. She was sitting crosswise on his lap, fingers curled into the front of his robes, face buried in his shoulder. Her chest rose and fell in a steady, even cadence.
Severus was uncomfortably aware of the trusting way she was curled into him; it had been years since anyone had been this close to him. He could smell her shampoo, feel the warmth of her breath against his collarbone, even through the heavy robes. He hoped she could not similarly feel his body's reaction to her.
"Miss Granger," he said softly. "Hermione." She murmured indistinctly and snuggled closer into his body. He sighed gently. She had fallen asleep.