Chapter 12 - Greenbottle's Tonic

Hermione stopped in disgust as she got close to the dungeon classroom. What on Earth was that smell? It was like a wall that hit her as soon as she got within three feet of the door, and it took a great deal of effort to force herself forward and into the classroom.

The Potions classroom was a mess. Harry and Ron were standing in the center of the room, with four large cauldrons around them. Their sleeves were rolled up to their elbows, and their arms were stained a dark green. The same green stained their robes, the benches, and the floor. Each cauldron was filled almost to the brim with the dark mix, bubbling loudly, and occasionally producing large bubbles, which would then pop, releasing clouds of green gas into the air, and showering the area with a heavy dust, which settled over everything. Harry's face showed smudges of green, where he had wiped his cheek with a dirty hand, and Ron had even managed to get the stuff in his hair, the red and green contrasting strongly.

Between trying not to gag at the foul smell which seemed to get stronger by the minute, and trying not to laugh at the sight of her friends (who did not seem to find the situation even remotely amusing), Hermione almost choked herself, and covered her mouth and nose in an attempt to hide both sensations.

"What are you making?" she finally managed to splutter.

"It's called Greenbottle's Tonic,' Ron answered her grumpily, "and we need to make fifteen jars of it for Professor Sprout." He pointed to the row of large empty bottles - seemingly the only things in the room that were still not green.

Harry motioned towards Snape's office. "Snape said that if you wanted to work on your project, you could work in there." He quickly turned to stir one of his cauldrons, narrowly preventing it from bubbling over. "He said he'd put a charm on it, so he didn't have to smell this stuff! Urggh!"

That, at least, was a relief - partly because she needed to speak to him alone, but mostly (and this now seemed to be taking priority) to get away from that smell! She mouthed a "Sorry" to her friends, knocked at the office door, and entered in response to Snape's irritable grunt.

Severus stood hurriedly as she entered, waiting for her to close the door before speaking. "Potter told me Dumbledore stopped you!" he said urgently. "What happened?"

After a couple of relieved breaths of the cleaner air, Hermione answered him, crossing the room to perch on a chair. "We have a problem," she said simply. As closely as possible, she recounted the conversation she'd had with the headmaster, trying to remember the exact words that had been used, in the hope that Severus could to glean more information from them than she could.

"He said he'd heard that you had been spending a lot of time in the dungeon?" he asked, repeating her words.

Hermione nodded. "And then said that some people found you difficult to work with. He seemed to be trying to see my reaction."

The words that seemed to worry Snape most were Dumbledore's comments that if his suspicions were correct, he could not approve. What did he suspect?

"Do you think he really knows about us, Severus?" Hermione asked, tentatively, reaching for his hand.

He lifted her fingers to his lips and kissed them. "Yes," his voice was serious. "I can't be certain, but I believe that he knows everything." A faint smile caught the corner of his mouth as he re-considered this statement. "Well - perhaps not everything!"

Hermione smiled at that. He was a mystery to her. For more than five years, he had been cold, aloof, harsh and even frightening. Now, he was a passionate man, with a love of life and a dry sense of humor. Had he always been this way and she'd simply missed it?

She forced her thoughts back to the problem in hand. "Professor Dumbledore said that I was old enough to make up my own mind," she said thoughtfully. "He said I should use caution and discretion." Snape said nothing, but allowed her to continue. "Assuming that he does know, does that mean that he won't interfere as long as we're discreet, even though he disapproves?"

"I just don't know, Hermione," he answered, his shoulders sagging. "Dumbledore is a law unto himself. The fact that he had said nothing to me almost makes me feel that he is not sure, but ... I just don't know."

Hermione sighed. "I suppose all we can do now is to be discreet, and assume that he knows."

"No," contradicted Snape, "we must continue to assume that he doesn't know! We need to draw as little attention to ourselves as possible."

Hermione thought of something else that Dumbledore had said. "What do you think he meant by 'use caution'?" she asked Severus.

Again - that smile at the corner of his mouth. "I think he was telling you to be careful about getting mixed up with someone so - dark! It's good advice, Ms. Granger."

Hermione smiled. "Actually, the phrase he used was 'a powerful wizard'! I like the sound of ..."

Both of them were startled by a sudden knock at the door. Hermione instantly jumped up and moved towards the store cupboard, and looked deeply engrossed in searching for a missing bottle by the time Ron had opened the door at Snape's growl.

"Sir," Ron said, poking his head round the door, "we've run out of Bowerroot." As he spoke, he made the most of the air inside the office, then hurried back to the classroom, as the professor snapped out instructions on where to find more of the ingredient.

"Maybe it would be best," began Hermione, as the door closed behind him, "if we didn't see each other tomorrow. It might let things cool down a little." She hated saying it. Not seeing Severus would be torture, but they could not let things get out of hand with Dumbledore so interested in what was going on.

Snape seemed to see this too, but the pain in his eyes was evident. "Not seeing you could be the death of me, Hermione," he moaned. "But you're right. Discretion."

Feeling unable to stay in the office for too long without raising suspicion, Hermione left shortly afterwards. She stopped at the doorway to give him a long and longing kiss, but eventually had to force herself to leave. She was a little behind on her schoolwork, and headed towards the common room, making the most of her time alone. It was very late by the time Harry and Ron returned to the Gryffindor tower, still green and reeking of the foul-smelling potion. As they, in turn, questioned her about what Dumbledore wanted, she realized, with a pang, that she had not mentioned the possibility of her work being published to Severus. She couldn't wait to talk to him about it!


The previous night, Harry and Ron had been too tired to ask much about Hermione's chat with Dumbledore, but the next morning, they were keen to hear the full story.

"Did he say when it would be published?" asked Ron, eagerly, as they headed towards the Great Hall for breakfast.

"No," replied Hermione, "but he said he'd be keeping his friend informed about the progress, and it sounds like the book is already half written."

"It's a pity you don't know his name," said Harry. "We could have looked in the library for anything else he's published." Hermione agreed, and wished that she'd thought to ask Dumbledore for his friend's name, but at the time she had been thinking of the other things the headmaster had wanted to discuss.

By the time they reached the Great Hall, Harry was all for going to Dumbledore to ask him more about his friend's book, but Hermione was not keen on the idea of approaching him. "Maybe he doesn't want to tell me too much, so he doesn't get my hopes up," she suggested. "Let's just wait. He'll tell me when he wants to."

She was extremely pleased that Ron and Harry were taking such an interest in her news. They were good friends, and they seemed almost more pleased for her than she was for herself. Ordinarily, she would have been over the moon about the news, but her excitement was dampened by the other things on her mind.

Changing the subject, she asked, "So, what happened in your detention?"

The two boys told her the whole story. Snape had given them the book that contained the instructions for the Tonic, and had then sat at his desk staring at them.

"I don't know what was up with him," said Ron, "but he seemed in a really bad mood. He just sat there staring and criticizing for ages."

The potion they were making had been going okay for the first ten minutes or so. The ingredients had already been prepared for them by two Ravenclaw second years, who had been unfortunate enough to land themselves with detention a few nights previously. (Severus had told Hermione about the hilariously gruesome incident that had led to that detention, but she kept this news to herself.) The potion had been a little messy and they'd spilled some from one of the cauldrons onto the floor, but they thought things were going well - especially when Professor Snape had finally stopped scrutinizing their every move, and left the classroom. He'd told them he would be in his office and that 'Granger' could work on her project in there, if she ever arrived. At first, they had thought it a little odd that the professor would suggest that Hermione work in his office, but they soon realized the reason.

"The sneaky git must have been watching for when we'd be adding the leech juice," complained Ron, bitterly, "because he left just before everything went crazy!" The potion had called for two drops of the dark liquid in each mixture, and the boys had added this in all innocence. Without warning, the green potion had begun bubbling and steaming, pouring over the edges of the cauldrons and sending up plumes of green smoke. That was when the smell had hit them.

Harry screwed up his face at the memory. "No wonder he told us he wanted to give someone detention so he didn't have to make that stuff himself!" he seethed. "He got out just in time. It had all been okay until a few minutes before you arrived!"

"It was pretty foul by the time I got there!" Hermione agreed, trying to sound sympathetic, but holding back her laughter once again, at the memory of the two of them standing in the middle of the classroom, covered in the dark green potion. "You're both still green, by the way," she told them. Their hands were still stained, even though they looked liked they had been scrubbed raw in an attempt to remove the coloring, and there was a trace of the stuff on Harry's face. Even a small section of Ron's hair still showed evidence of their detention task. By the look of it, the only way to remove that would be to cut his hair!

"Anyway," Ron continued, "it took us ages to get the stuff ready and into the bottles. Then we had to clean it all up. That was just as bad as making it."

They told her that Professor Snape had, at least, given them the option to finish cleaning up that morning, but they had been determined to get it out of the way. His mood had evidently improved a little by the time they left, which Harry put down to the fact that he had enjoyed making them suffer so much.

"The only thing that can make him happy is to make everyone else miserable!" he stated. Hermione suppressed a wry smile. She happened to know one or two more ways to make him happy!

Instinctively, she glanced round to the teachers' table in time to catch a pair of dark eyes on her from across the room. She looked back at Harry and smiled, knowing that those dark eyes knew the smile was for them. "You're right, Harry," she grinned. "He just lives to make everyone else's life Hell!"

She couldn't help another glance at the top table, but this time it was not Severus that caught her attention, it was Dumbledore. His gaze was not on her, though, it was on the Potions Master, and this must have registered on her face, as, when she looked back to Severus, he had turned away.

Hermione purposefully looked away from the staff table, but Ron had apparently caught someone's eye, and was giving a cheerful grin in that direction. "Well, at least they're not all like Snape," he smiled. "Good old Dumbledore. It's such great news about your project, Hermione!"

She smiled weakly, and avoided looking over at the headmaster, wondering how much he had seen of the glances that had passed between herself and Severus. It was beginning to appear that spending time apart was not enough to avoid the headmaster's suspicions. It seemed that, even in a crowded room, they could barely keep the fire under control!

As Hermione, Harry and Ron headed out of the Great Hall, a voice called out to them, and Professor Sprout hurried to catch up. "I'm so glad I caught you," she said. "Professor Snape brought down my batch of Greenbottle's Tonic first thing this morning. I wanted to thank you two boys for the wonderful job you did with it, and to award you ten points each for Gryffindor." She looked over her shoulder, then leaned conspiratorially towards the three of them. "Just don't tell Professor Snape!" she whispered. "He'd hate you to get points for something you did in detention!"

The four of them laughed and the professor set off down the corridor. Then she seemed to think of something and turned back. "You know, my Uncle Albert taught me almost everything I know about Herbology," she said, "but he did occasionally run into problems - such as," she gestured towards Harry and Ron's hands, "turning green from making Greenbottle's Tonic! You might want to look in the library for a book called '101 Magical Gardening Disasters (and How to Recover From Them)'. We used to have to use it a lot, with my uncle around!" She gave them a grin, and headed off in the direction of the staffroom.

"We'd better get to the library then, as we all have a free period," said Hermione, setting off that way.

Ron and Harry followed. "I'm getting this strange feeling of déjà vu," said Ron. "I think I've heard you mention the library once or twice before."


Snape waited until the three students were well clear of the Great Hall before leaving it. It was best to avoid running into Hermione wherever possible - especially as he seemed to be finding it impossible to keep his eyes off her while she was around. How much had Dumbledore seen? He almost wished that the old professor would confront him and get it over with - it had to be better than constantly worrying about what was going on in the headmaster's mind.

Worse, still, if the situation was so apparent to Dumbledore, did that mean that others could see it, too? He thought he always had his emotions under control, but Hermione was changing that. She was throwing him off balance and confusing his feelings. Maybe his face was betraying his emotions for the entire world to see.

No! He had to control this. Objectivity and control, Snape, he chided himself.

He would have liked to get out of the castle and clear his head, but he had classes to teach. It wasn't until the evening that he had chance to leave the school. Without really thinking about it, he headed for the lake. There was a cold wind outside and, coming straight from dinner, he had no cloak with him, but that was good. Perhaps it would help to clear his mind, and he had never been worried by the cold.

He allowed his thoughts to drift as he walked, letting his feet and his mind lead him wherever they would.

How could things have changed so quickly? A month ago, he had known who he was and what he felt - but then he had encountered a part of his being of which he had not been aware. His feelings for Hermione had come out of nowhere but they were so powerful. His emotional control had been severely shaken, but it was worth it.

Whatever his feeling about the past few weeks, he knew that what he felt now was somehow more 'real' than everything that had gone before. As though he were suddenly seeing the world in its true colors in the bright sunlight, instead of in shadows. Whatever Dumbledore thought or knew or said no longer seemed to matter. He had seen the look in Hermione's eyes when they were together. He had felt her touch as she kissed him the night before. Those were the things that mattered to him now.

A little month.

His feet led him on as he thought. Occasionally, he stopped and stood still, drinking in the air around him, or looking across the dark lake, then set off once again, with no direction in mind. The peace and the solitude were exactly what he needed, and when he returned to the castle many hours later, he felt as relaxed and refreshed as though he had been out for a short stroll.


In the Gryffindor common room, Hermione Granger was curled comfortably in an armchair in front of the fire. It was late evening, and many of the Gryffindors had already gone to bed, but she stayed to enjoy the peace in the glow of the flames. She gently stroked the sleeping cat on her lap as she held her book to the light. "Practicality in Potions" - it was a book Severus had given to her from his library. She smiled at the thought, and read on.

In his rooms in the dungeon, Severus Snape sat comfortably in an armchair in front of the fire. He turned his book over in his hand - "The Complete Works of William Shakespeare". He had owned it for many years, but, while some pages were well worn, others had never been turned. He allowed the pages to flick through his fingers. Maybe he would select something different, tonight. The Sonnets, maybe? He smiled at the thought, and read on.


AUTHOR'S NOTE (14-May-2018): Well, I'm home from the funeral I had to go to. I took a few days for vacation while I was there, as well as spending time catching up with family.

I did a bit of writing while I was gone, but not much. I'm enjoying writing this, but I feel like I'm not getting a lot of feedback, or knowing whether people are enjoying reading it. To be honest, I'm surprised that after 30000 words this story has only 7 reviews - it makes me think that people aren't enjoying it and that it's not worth continuing. Anyway, I hope you like this chapter.