* 35 *

Hermione awoke to find herself in an almost entirely dark room: only the remnant of a pathetic flame was left. It hadn't been lit today, she deduced. But as her sleepy senses awakened, she also soon inferred that she was clearly not alone.

Just then, she paid more attention to the sudden silhouette of a man beside her, and saw that he was moving.

She smiled in relief, recognizing him. "Good morning."

Snape stirred. He hadn't been fully awake, but now his dark eyes met hers. As he came to, he gave her a candid look of admiration that reawakened the butterflies in her stomach.

Hermione looked down when she finally was more aware of all of her senses again. Snape's hand was on top of hers; hers had been in his the whole night. Even if it wasn't a full grasp, the thought that he had held onto a part of her all throughout the night made Hermione giddy.

Snape's eyes glanced up at the clock. They laid together in silence for a couple of minutes before he stated, "We should be getting to breakfast about now. Since you weren't in your dorm last night, much less this morning, it is crucial for you to arrive earlier than usual."

Hermione nodded, despite being reluctant to follow his suggestion. She understood the gravity of the situation: if she was not only missing last night, but could also not be found this morning in her bed or at breakfast, a faculty member would likely be alerted, and she would have no guarantee that it would be Snape. In fact, she could almost guarantee that it wouldn't be. No Gryffindor (besides herself) took a great liking to the "overgrown bat", so there was a slim chance they would notify him first, of all people.

She began to sit up, and Snape, suddenly wide awake as he realized she was really leaving, got off of his side of the bed and rounded it to hers. He took her hand and helped her down, purposefully keeping her unnecessarily closely huddled to him to do so. Hermione didn't mind in the slightest.

When she was on her feet, she looked up to his face and rested her face in his neck before reluctantly breaking from his embrace and heading toward the Great Hall.

Snape replaced the signature cloak that had slipped from his shoulders the night before and followed Hermione shortly after her departure.

At breakfast, Hermione was yet again jubilant, and she had gotten no better at hiding it from her friends. Harry now looked sullen every time she looked outrageously excited, but Ron still gave her looks of absolute horror.

Harry hadn't seen Hermione come back up to Gryffindor Tower even once yesterday, even as the hours grew later and later. He had stayed vigilant and anxiously awaited her return in the common room, trying to act like the sheer amount of time he was sitting there was completely on purpose by thumbing through his school books. Ron had come to sit with him for a while, but Harry never admitted to him why he stayed planted there for so long.

Hermione had never come up. At least not in the time he was there, which was well into the dark hours of the bloody night. He hadn't finally gone to bed until midnight.

Now he poked at his food unenthusiastically, often darting his eyes in his indescribably pleased best friend's direction to see if she locked eyes with the Potions professor.

But Snape and Hermione went the entire meal without glancing once at each other. They were absorbed in their thoughts and had finally taken to heart that they should learn to at least try and control their expressions—including the frequent wandering of their eyes—so as to evade suspicion. Though Hermione was failing with her general expression, her lack of eye contact with her becharmed professor was top notch.

Hermione had the entire day to herself besides lunch and dinner, to which she would be sure to turn up. Snape had classes to teach that day as it was a Friday. Hermione wanted to spend more time with her Potions professor, but she also hadn't spent as much time with her friends as she used to as of late.

She decided to rectify this by devoting the entire day to hanging out with Harry and Ron, just like old times. As the three made their way outside, Hermione, who had been regularly happy over the past several weeks, took a few moments to admire the brickwork that was a haunting yet beautiful hallmark of Hogwarts.

Once outside, they went beneath their favorite tree and sat down in the snow, looking out over the misty lake.

When he was settled, Ron asked, so suddenly that it even surprised Harry, "So, what's been up with you, Hermione?"

Harry's mouth fell into a small "o". He had difficulty picking his jaw back up again for many seconds.

Ron did not mean this in the way she initially took it, and her face briefly showed signs of pure horror before she realized she had to be mistaken. He couldn't possibly have known.

"The same as always: homework and frequent visits to the library," she said evenly. But, feeling as if she needed to apologize to them for being away so much (except during DA meetings, of course), she added, "I'm sorry for neglecting you two."

Though she could easily say she had simply been in the library all this time, she could not bring herself to tell bald-faced lies to her best friends like that. She already wasn't being completely honest with them, and she knew how shoddy that made her feel all by itself.

Harry was unconvinced this was all it was that kept her away from them. After all, she hadn't said a thing about Snape, and he knew there was something going on there. But he didn't want to tip her off too quickly. "It's alright, we've been busy ourselves, too," he decided to admit truthfully with a drudging sigh. "I've absolutely no idea how we're going to tackle these next few assignments." Indeed, since he had been so preoccupied with what was going on with Hermione and the bat, he hadn't taken the proper time for his subjects in several days.

"The homework's been much harder without you around," Ron lamented seriously. He didn't know how many more Hermione-less essays he could write.

Hermione sighed. "Oh, Ron," was all she said, and shook her head in faux anger. She slunk forward and set her elbows atop her knees, staring contentedly at the lake. She had a brief glimmer of thought of Snape, but she pushed these ruminations to the back of her mind for now: she would have more time to think of and be with him later, but right now she was with her friends.

"You look possessed, staring off into space like that," Ron commented.

Hermione rounded up enough snow to procure a snowball and threw it at him.

After their snowball fight – likely the last for many months, given that the snow was paltry now that spring was almost here – the trio came inside. They still had half an hour before lunch, but Ron was already complaining that he was hungry again.

"Oh, come on, you've only to wait a few more measly minutes," Hermione teased. "Honestly, Ron, you're unbelievable."

Ron looked over at the playful witch and shot her a smile in response to her needling. Hermione was taken aback for a brief moment, but then matched his expression with coquettish brown eyes.

Harry looked between the two of them. At least they seemed to be happy, the delighted brunette and the redhead – the redhead who appeared not to be much concerned with Hermione's only half-answer to his question hours prior.

But their flirtatious glances were cut short when a draped bat rounded the corner. Ron was unaware of the arrival, but Hermione was facing that direction head-on. She almost immediately dropped her glance with the fifth-year and replaced it with a split-second reaction to the arrival of their Potions professor:

Excitement.

A now fully alert Harry had caught it before it faded from her face in the next nanosecond. He looked, mouth agape, to Snape, who was himself focused on Hermione. In the next moment, the man was upon them.

"Good morning," he called sternly, his tone of voice not at all befitting his benign words.

Ron whipped around while Hermione composed herself and said coolly, "Good morning, Professor."

"Morning," Harry added to the tense air, trying not to seem too overtly skeptical.

Snape walked swiftly past them, but Hermione's gaze lingered after him a little too long. Harry's eyes flitted to hers.

He had to figure this out. It was driving him mad.

Hermione steeled herself. She badly wanted to go after Snape to have a word just before lunch, but she didn't want the timing to be too obvious. She waited another ten minutes, chatting and talking only half-interestedly with her friends, then said, "I'll be in the Great Hall at lunch; I have to go to the ladies' room."

Ron made a face. "You don't need to go and tell us all that," he said. But he unassumingly began making his way to the lunch hall as soon as the young witch left.

Harry hadn't replied to her comment. He watched as she headed in the direction of Moaning Myrtle's bathroom, but he wasn't convinced that was her actual destination.

"I'll be right there, Ron," Harry called after him, and before Ron had even turned to reply, he was perplexed to see that the bespectacled wizard was already gone.

Harry crept around the corner to the girls' bathroom. He felt like such a pervert, hiding around the corner and watching girls come in and out of the bathroom, but nonetheless he watched the door for a good minute or two, enduring the stares with a stolid face. There was no sign of Hermione. It felt like last night in the common room all over again.

That was strange to him. Even if, as his suspicions dictated, she hadn't gone to the restroom, she would at least pass by it with the direction she was heading. Unless she split off just before…

He looked toward the hall to his left, then slowly began making his way down the hall to investigate his hunch.

Sure enough, when he came to a fork at the end, he spotted Snape. Hermione was soon to be there, Harry was sure of it.

But even though he was expecting it to happen, it didn't make him feel much better when he found he was right.

Hermione rounded the corner and stood face-to-face with Snape, though she kept an almost unnatural amount of distance away from him, even between professor and student. Her hair was also covering her face on both sides far more than it usually did. Harry guessed she had manually placed it there.

Finally, Hermione called, "Hello."

Harry blinked at the odd sound of her voice. Was she being…shy?

"Hello, Miss Granger," Snape returned. Though it didn't have any particular emotion attached to it, his tone still almost sounded a bit too even. He was a man Harry knew to drawl and draw out his syllables to an almost unnatural degree. Hearing him not do so was a peculiar change indeed.

"Should we talk about…" Hermione began, then hesitated. "Well, you know," she finished mysteriously.

"Not right now," he responded blankly. "And moreover, does anything specific need to be said?"

Hermione considered his question for a moment. "No, I suppose not. You did make it quite clear in the cupboards," she replied.

Harry's brain triggered the memory of the two of them backing into the closet that contained Snape's potion cupboards.

"Then I shall see you later," Snape said simply. There was no harshness to this dismissal, just a clear mutual understanding between the two of them that was lost on Harry, yet tangible.

Snape and Hermione made their way to the Great Hall separately. Harry took a different route and ran to arrive first.

It seemed that whatever was going on, the two of them were learning to be very hush-hush and clandestine about it.

Harry wanted to take a fistful of his hair and rip it straight out.