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MetroVampire & Rhosymedre
Anyone who had been passing by the dungeons at that moment would have been treated to one of the rarer sights in the history of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry; namely Severus Snape, bent nearly double, propping himself up on a workbench and roaring with laughter. Had anyone subsequently recounted this tale they would have been immediately shipped to St Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries by concerned relatives who wanted to ensure that their demonstrably deranged loved one did not pose any further risk to the community.
Eventually, Hermione regained enough control over herself to straighten up, still holding her aching ribs.
I needed a good laugh, she thought, after everything that's happened.
Snape, however, did not seem to share her mirth; or if he did, he was doing an exceptional job of disguising it. In fact he was still looking distinctly cross. Surely, that couldn't all be down to the afternoon's experiences?
"Look," she said, struggling to contain her merriment, "I'm sorry you didn't get away quickly enough, but it can't have been that bad." She shrugged. "Having your legs waxed doesn't hurt that much and I know that Lavender and Parvati can be a bit overwhelming at times but they don't really mean any harm by it...."
She trailed off. His face wasn't getting any happier.
"The personal grooming talents of Miss Patil and Miss Brown were not the only discoveries I made this afternoon."
She composed her face into something like seriousness and folded her arms, waiting for him to get to the point and still surreptitiously biting her lip to prevent her mouth from twitching.
"This afternoon," he continued in acid tones, "I discovered what one particular pupil at this school thinks of me."
She racked her brains. Ron? Harry? Well they didn't like him, but that should hardly have been a surprise of any magnitude to him.
"This afternoon," he repeated, "I heard myself described as 'sweet' and 'wonderful' by Miss Lacock - a Slytherin, no less."
Ah.
Her desire to giggle faded; she should have known that that impulse of sympathy would come back to haunt her.
"Well, what was I supposed to do?" she said, a little defensively. "The poor girl had just had her family attacked by Death Eaters."
Snape pinched the bridge of his nose in something that might have been irritation or might have been weariness.
"Miss Granger, how many times do I have to tell you that you are not playing at my life. How long do you think it will take for the news that I am 'sweet' to get back to Voldemort or his followers. However you feel about it, you cannot go about being sympathetic to students whenever you feel like it."
Hermione fought the urge to justify herself like a student. She met his angry gaze squarely.
"I'm sorry," she said, as calmly as she could. "I've never had to do anything like that before and I didn't know what to do. The Headmaster wasn't here, and I didn't think that I could be seen running to the Head Girl for advice. I did the best I could."
To her astonishment the expected caustic retort didn't come.
"Suppose you tell me exactly what happened between you and Miss Lacock. That way I can decide what needs to be done about it."
Hermione recounted the details of her conversation with Minerva McGonagall and her subsequent meeting with Alice Lacock in Snape's office. When she had finished, she wrinkled her brow, trying to put together some disconnected pieces of information.
"Alice came to me on a few occasions for counselling - well, for more of a chat, I think - she never truly told me what was going on." She thought a bit more. "I always got the impression that it was some kind of boyfriend trouble, but she didn't go into details...."
From the look of abject horror on Snape's face, it was clear that he had put two and two together at about the same time that Hermione had. She bit her lip again, even more fiercely. She doubted that another explosion of laughter would help the situation.
"She's been to see me as well," he breathed in an appalled tone, "but I didn't really listen to what she was saying. Oh Gods, this can't be true...."
"I'm afraid it is," said Hermione, her voice wobbling slightly with the effort of controlling it. "I think that our Miss Lacock has had a crush on you for a long time, Professor. I don't think that I had very much to do with it."
He glared.
"It's not funny," he snapped.
She shook her head.
"No," she agreed, with manifest insincerity, feeling tears pricking at her eyes "Although," she couldn't resist adding, "Madam Hooch has been making some very... erm... playful suggestions since the Halloween Ball...." She let the notion hang in the air.
His scowl deepened.
"Just remember, Miss Granger," he hissed, clearly forgetting that it sounded nowhere near as effective in her voice, "there will come a time when I can give you detentions again."
She nodded, not able to trust herself to speak. Who would have thought that there would ever some a time when the threat of detention from Professor Snape would reduce her to tears of laughter.
His expression was still baleful, but she could have sworn that she saw a flash of something else cross his face; something that contained the barest hint of self-mockery, perhaps?.
"Now, if you've quite finished undermining my authority, Hermione, maybe we could move on to the next of the looming crises in our joint lives."
The tone was sarcastic, but there was definitely an undercurrent of irony there, even a vestigial sense of humour. And he was using her given name again. Which meant that he was calming down. He wasn't so bad, she reflected, once you got the hang of his changing moods.
"Well," she said after a pause, "I don't think there's anything truly awful about to happen. Unless you count the Yule Ball."
He shuddered; she sympathised. After all, he had just spent an afternoon with the Makeover Queens of Gryffindor. And formal dress functions were the moments that Lavender Brown and Parvati Patil were born for.
"Thank you for reminding me that we need to do something about your ballroom dancing skills. Or more precisely, your lack thereof."
It was her turn to shudder. She suspected that he would use the opportunity to revenge himself for the twin insults of unrequited teenage passion and non-consensual depilation.
"In the meantime," he continued smoothly, "you wanted to learn some more about potions making?"
--
Hermione managed to avoid dance class until the day before the Yule Ball.
She left the Great Hall as soon as she decently could after dinner and fled back to Snape's rooms, to seat herself at the end of the large table that she had appropriated for herself, and surround herself with a protective barrier of books and homework. She hoped desperately that Snape would simply leave her to her occupations and busy himself with his potions. She couldn't imagine for one minute that he would have the smallest interest in teaching her to dance, and would even welcome the reprieve.
One look at his slightly amused face when he walked into the room told her that she was destined to be disappointed.
"I might be more impressed," he said tartly, "had I not actually been in the classrooms when all of these assignments were given out. Thus, I know that at least two of these," he gestured at the pile of books, "are supposed to be done over the holidays."
She sighed.
"Is this really necessary? I can simply leave quickly, and spend the evening patrolling the grounds or something."
"Yes it is really necessary, Hermione. Whilst I avoid dancing wherever possible, I am at least conversant with the basic steps. If you are called upon to dance again, you must be more competent than you were on the last occasion."
Somehow she didn't think that that was likely to be achieved any time soon.
He stood back waiting for her. When she didn't immediately move he said rather acidly:
"Shall we begin? I should add that it is customary for the man to ask the woman to dance, and not the other way round."
Reluctantly, she got up and moved towards him. As she got clear of the table, he took his wand out and gestured with it. The furniture moved back towards the edges of the room. Hermione jumped a little at that.
"Dancing means moving about." he pointed out. "Which means the need for space."
She fought not to flush at that.
"Very well," he said. "Now come here."
Nervously, she approached and stopped at a safe distance. Something that had been reasonably easy to do in the middle of the dance floor, under the none too subtle direction of Albus Dumbledore, became nearly impossible in the privacy of Snape's rooms, with no pressing outside influences to drive it.
He took a step towards her, until he was so close that she was aware of the faint floral perfume surrounding him; she recognised some of the potions that he had taught her to make - "her" thriving beauty business - what on Earth would happen if the truth about that came out, she wondered? Unbidden came the vision of a whole line of cosmetics marketed under the House of Snape label - not to mention the cut-throat competition to be This Year's Face of Snape. It all struck her as faintly ludicrous. It also made her relax fractionally.
How bad could this be?
"Place your right hand just below my shoulder blade," he instructed her, "and hold up your left arm."
She obeyed tentatively, and found herself holding Snape - well, herself - closely enough to be aware of the warmth of his body, the weight of his hand resting on her right arm, fingers curled over her shoulder and the rise and fall of his chest as he spoke, guiding, explaining. He spoke a word and the room was filled with a medium tempo Muggle swing tune; Moonlight Serenade she identified, in surprise. Then he was describing the steps, half pulling her with him as he attempted to show her the correct moves.
She was concentrating so hard that she must have begun to hum under her breath, for he asked with a tinge of derision:
"You have a comment to make on the music?"
"I've just never thought of you as a Glenn Miller fan."
He snorted.
"I imagine that it is possible to dance properly to wizard music, but I've never mastered the skill."
"I like it," she added, referring to the music playing. "It was a favourite of my grandmother's."
"Thank you, Miss Granger. I now feel suitably old."
His voice held the inflection that she was beginning to interpret as his sense of humour. The near-joke distracted her enough to lose concentration and she stood on his foot, making him yelp suddenly.
"Sorry," she said contritely.
"Hermione," he said, in exasperation. "This really is not difficult. It simply requires you to be able to count to four. It is considerably less difficult that learning the rules of Quidditch, and you managed to do that adequately and to sufficiently master the art of flying as I recall.
"Sorry," she mumbled again. "I've never been any good at dancing."
"Well, there's no good reason why that I can see. You are blessed with the ability to count, perfectly functional hearing, normal co-ordination and a fair sense of balance. My body knows how to do this, but your mind is getting in the way again. If you would just relax and stop trying so hard, I believe that you would find it a great deal easier. And for Merlin's sake, don't mumble."
This was worse than being six years old and watching the looks of amused pity on the faces of the mothers who had managed to give birth to more physically graceful creatures than she.
"Look," she said striving for resigned cheerfulness, "everyone has things that they just can't do. With me, it's dancing. I read books and study. Other people dance." She shrugged. "Why don't we just write this off as a lost cause?"
He just looked at her and she didn't think that there was annoyance in his eyes; no, it was something closer to... understanding? And then it was gone.
"I'm going to assume that I didn't hear you say that, Miss Granger. I assume that someone at some time told you that you were unable to dance, and for some extraordinary reason you elected to believe them." He shrugged in his turn. "Now, I suggest that you regain some of your annoying persistence, and let's try this again."
Seething with irritation, all thoughts of understanding thoroughly banished, she stood up. This time she succeeded in completing the dance without stepping on him, albeit a little stiffly.
"Well done, Miss Granger," was the ironic comment. "I think that if we try it one more time, with a little less fury, we might be able to stop for the evening."
Somewhere in that was a compliment, she realised She could have laughed at the irony of waiting six and a half years for recognition from Snape and finally getting it in the context of ballroom dancing.
--
In the end Snape insisted on several more times before he pronounced himself satisfied, and towards the end Hermione was almost enjoying it, despite her aching feet and the rather edged commentary from her partner. She wondered what it would be like to dance with Snape when he was... well, himself. She suspected that, for one thing, he was having a hard time remembering not to lead. Finally, he called a halt to the session and she automatically went over to the fire to begin making tea.
She was stopped by Snape's voice.
"Hermione, you suggested to me this evening that everyone has skills that they are unable to acquire for whatever reason." She blinked a little. "I would venture to suggest that tea-making might also be placed on your list of such skills."
She stood back from the fire. His voice had had little true malice in it; she suspected another joke of sorts.
"Be my guest," she said, conscious of the irony of using the phrase in his own rooms.
He caught it as well, for he simply gave her what she was beginning to consider as One Of His Looks.
She sat back in one of the deep leather armchairs, as he proceeded to make the tea, lecturing her as if it were a demonstration potion.
"Best practice suggests the use 2g of tea - to a margin of error of plus or minus 2% - for every 100ml of water. It must be remembered that tea flavour and appearance will be affected by the hardness of the water used." He paused to lift the kettle from the fire. "The pot must be filled to within 4-6mm of the brim with freshly boiling water. After the lid has been placed on top, the pot must be left to brew for precisely six minutes." Carefully placing the now full pot back on the hearth, he added, "milk should be added at a ratio of 1.75ml of milk for every 100ml of tea. The pot should be lifted with the lid held in place, then "pour tea through the infused leaves into the cup". He fixed Hermione with a glare. "It goes without saying that one should always pour in the tea on top of the milk to prevent scalding the milk."
She nodded meekly, as he imparted this information, resisting the urge to remove her boots and massage her feet, which seemed to have become miraculously more painful now that they no longer needed to bear her weight.
As he busied himself, she was struck once more by the odd notion of anyone having a crush on Professor Snape. Before this had happened she would have considered the idea laughable at best. And now - now, she knew the man a great deal better - in fact, in quite intimate detail when you thought about it. The sight of his muscular naked body was now familiar to her; the responses of his body to... stimulation... pleasure... were well known to her as well. But she thought of his body as her body. Didn't she? She tried to imagine how she would react to it as a stranger... as a woman.
And felt a slight tightening in the region of her balls.
Hastily, she turned her thoughts to other things, to the cup of tea that was being proffered.
Plainly, precisely six minutes had now elapsed.
It was amazing how six minutes could change your view of the world.
A/N: The instructions on how to make tea may be found in that most arcane of rare Potions works - the British Standards Institute's BS 6008: Method for the Preparation of a Liquor of Tea for Use in Sensory Tests reference BS-6008:1980/ISO-3103:1980. Who says that fanfiction can't be educational :) Thanks to Coral for finding it and emailing it to me.