** I don't own these characters or the stories they belong to **
And so, both having been secretly armed and instructed by the diabolical commander, who was Ginny Weasley, Severus and Hermione commenced their battle of sorts.
Severus began going frequently to Hermione's coffee shop to read or work on his book project, and when he discovered they had poetry readings at the coffee shop he joined those. He started accepting Mel's invitations to go to church with them. He added his own home into their rotations, inviting the Robertsons and Mel over and he cooked for them. When his coffee shop and church service attendance resulted in acquaintance with the people that had become Hermione's friends, invitations to their gatherings began to be extended to him and he accepted, little though he wanted to, because Hermione was there. He even joined in the summer neighborhood block parties.
Severus tried very hard to follow the directive he had been given in these matters. In none of them did he coerce Hermione's attention. He seemed almost to ignore Hermione, beyond politeness and casual acquaintance, except that he put extra effort into drawing out the contact they did have, brushing near her (seemingly on accident), letting his touches linger a moment and his fingers slide along as they withdrew with greetings, goodbyes, and passing things like coffee cups, food and dishes. The true extent of the effect of this on Hermione was unknown to him, but he did detect times when she flushed or when she got a blazing look on her face. And then he would withdraw or absent himself though it was the last thing he wanted to do.
And, of course, this was not unlike engaging fire with fire, because she was setting him aflame in the same ways. Hermione wasn't going to the same lengths to be in his presence, he had done the work there, but she didn't avoid him either. And when she was in his presence, she drove him to distraction. She found her own ways to brush against him without seeming to, to touch his arm or, when she gave him a cheek-kiss of greeting, to touch his chest and slide her cheek along his as she backed away. It didn't matter what she wore, either; dressed down or up, with makeup or without, it was all classy and Hermione, and he'd never seen anything so beautiful or so tempting. There were any number of things that she did to get him flushed and bothered, and she did them all without ever going beyond that damnable, hollow politeness. Additionally, Severus had to watch other men paying attention to her, had to watch her be very kind to them or flirt with them outright. It was a good thing his magic was bound or accidental acts of magic would have burst out of him whenever he saw this.
Also, the more Severus watched Hermione, the more he saw her goodness and kindness, the more he noticed all the things he had never seen before through the presumptions he had held and the images of who she had been as a child. She was truly lovely. Severus was constantly stunned by her warm brown eyes, her grace, her soft, dark hair, and the beauty of her kindness and smiles which she offered to everyone. She was good and kind and funny in a way that most people were not. She was also ferocious and thoughtful and brilliant, though few people realized the extent of this. And none of them, but Severus, knew that she was a hero in her own right, or saw the ways in which sorrow and experience had transformed her from a temperamental and insufferable know-it-all into wise young woman who could channel her anger into a terrifying, yet cool and calculated rage.
Hermione found Severus' suddenly-everywhere-presence truly maddening. And it wasn't like she could fume at him for stalking, because to all appearances, he had simply happened upon the same places and friends in a typical small-town way, and he was friendly to her while seeming to pay little enough attention to her otherwise. It was diabolical, and Hermione wondered more than once if Ginny had had a hand in this or if he had come to it on his own. For all that Severus 'just happened' to be in her proximity, it kept her in a constant worked-up state. At the coffee shop, she had to watch his hands, partially covered by his sleeves (as he liked them), and his fingers as they played along pages while he turned them and as he wrote diligently in his elegant scrawl. She had to listen to his deep, measured voice, which was made for reading poetry, apparently. And singing in church. At his home, she had to watch his long-fingered hands at work again as they chopped and cooked and passed and carried and washed. It was ridiculous the number of times Mel had caught her staring during these occasions. At gatherings, she had to watch him touch and hold things, listen to him speak to other people, watch his habit of standing perfectly still until he moved with startling rapidity and came again to a rest with slow, controlled movements, watch the motion of his long dark hair as it draped his face, see his depthless, dark eyes. She tried to 'kill with kindness,' as Mel had suggested and to 'tease and make him pay for it' as Ginny had advised, but it was becoming increasingly difficult to keep her emotions tucked safely away during these encounters, and ever since the stupid remember-why-you-like-Snape assignments set her by Ginny and Harry, it had been near impossible to keep her feelings for Severus in check.
This was especially the case when she began to see that despite his formidable nature and his apparent self-assuredness, there was a sense of isolation and insecurity that ran beneath the façade. However full of himself he seemed, when Hermione paid close attention, she could tell that it was his intellect and abilities that he was sure of and not he, himself. There was a social awkwardness about him that kept him from truly engaging with the people around him, and any time the waters became unsure he disengaged, raised his shields, deflected with sarcastic or biting words. He looked most comfortable when he was alone. And it was hard to keep herself from loving someone who deserved and needed so much to be loved, especially when she longed for him so much. Any time she felt herself to be in danger, she recalled his hate-filled words of rejection and his face as he had said them, and this allowed her to keep her own shields up. Just.