"As I said, this is just a formality." Her smile was gone, hidden behind the layers of professionalism and placid calm that she was projecting almost forcefully over their meeting. Her hands shook as she patted the parchment into a respectably neat square and placed a quill balanced over it. "But, before we begin, do you have any questions?"
Severus cleared his throat. "I, ah… I actually wanted to apologise to you, Miss Granger." Her head tilted, setting waves of brown curls battering against one another. He swallowed. "I was incredibly rude to you that night in the Medical Wing."
"Oh, that!" The smile that broke through the ice was one of pure joy and cheerfulness. "No need to apologise-"
"I wasn't done." He cursed himself silently when she deflated, but he really needed to get this out into the open. "I was embarrassed, angry and honestly still very much worked up from the events of that night, and I channelled all of that against you. I had no right to do so, and I sincerely feel sorry that I ever used magic against you."
She swallowed, her fingers playing with a thin metal necklace around her neck, and then she smiled again. This one was less the generous joy of the sunrise, more a gentle hearthfire warmth, and Severus could feel himself melting into it. With an effort, he kept his back straight and his shoulders squared.
"Thank you, then. But I didn't blame you. You must have been out of your mind with pain, and you had taken a combination of potions that I deemed… unwise, given that we had no idea what else you may have prepared yourself with. I know you to be a rational man, even in your rage - you were always in control. I knew it was not you."
"Then why did you refuse my apology?"
The words slipped out without Severus' permission, and he swore silently again. His damned lips were trying to get him to look the fool, and his heart was no help. It hadn't stopped beating like a drum since they'd sat down in this small room and their knees had brushed against one another under the cramped table.
"Your apology?" She frowned, the lines on her forehead somehow endearing to Severus. He fought the urge to shake his head free from such thoughts.
"I sent you a bouquet of… herbs."
Although her eyes rested on him for several long seconds, he could tell that she was searching her memories. He saw the moment she found it by the way her eyes hardened and her mouth pursed.
"The ingredients to a muscle relaxant, with a small jar of pixie laughter hanging from the ribbon."
Her rage bubbling underneath her words gave him pause. "...Yes?"
"I'm going to kill him." She stared at him, her jaw clenched, for a few moments more. "Ronald must have intercepted them. He handed them to me on his way home from work. I thought it was a rather more romantic gesture than normal, given that he usually forgot I existed. That bastard."
Severus gulped. She'd thought it was romantic? Who in Britain would think receiving a bouquet of ingredients romantic?
His Eri had gone completely insane.
But still there was something warm in his chest at the thought that Hermione found his bouquet romantic. As a gift from a paramour, but still.
Still.
Her preoccupation gave him a few moments to study her, the way her hair tumbled free of the binds she attempted to place on it to frame her face, cascading down her shoulders.
Severus coughed.
"Oh, right. Sorry, yes, we're here for a reason."
He could feel his eyebrow twitching, but with a manful struggle he kept it firmly in place. He didn't want to terrify the girl, not if they were going to strike up a friendly relationship of a sort.
With a wave of her hand she released the quill, which shuddered in its eagerness to begin taking notes, beads of ink gathering at the tip.
"So, Professor Snape," she said, tearing his focus back to those chocolate eyes. "Tell me a little about your teaching style."
The interview took a little over two hours all told. The questions were by turns infantile and insulting, but the presence of Miss Granger - and the way her facial muscles struggled not to scowl as she read the next question - kept him from stalking from the room. She seemed to be rather delightfully on his side, which was a new phenomenon for Severus. He could only hope she was actually on his side, that this wasn't some kind of scheme to have him removed from his position.
He'd take the damned mirror with him and break it into a million pieces, if she turned out to be a liar.
Alone in his chamber, the fog that had seemed to overtake his brain cleared a little. Eri had never moved before, and it seemed unlikely that the Mirror would suddenly reveal her face to him: and so soon before she visited? Unlikely to be a coincidence.
Had someone charmed the mirror to reflect her face?
The thought was like swallowing ice, but Severus was a practical man, used to the many hardships and trials that life had to offer. He wasn't going to pretend it wasn't a possibility.
That would mean, though, that someone knew about his late night walks to the Room of Requirement, that someone had followed him there enough times to know it was a habit, somehow spied on his activities, gone in after - or before - him, and cast a spell on one of the most powerful artifacts in Britain. It seemed… unlikely at best.
For one thing, he'd been there when the Headmaster had hidden the Philosopher's Stone so many years ago, the multiple times the spell failed to hold, the way it had taken three of them - Albus, Minerva, himself - to finally get the charm to stick to the frame. His magic had felt like it was coercing the mirror, flattering it, persuading it - rather than forcing its way inside.
There was no-one still alive who could cast even a rudimentary trickery spell over that mirror. Not alone. So either he was looking at a conspiracy, the vision had been a fluke brought on by relief, he had been drugged or spelled himself, or…
Or the mirror had been waiting until after the war to show her face, waiting until she was no longer a student. Because he could never want a student, so at that point in time she couldn't have been his true heart's desire.
But now…
His knuckles creaked at the strain he was putting them under, squeezing fists around his office desk, and he abruptly stood up. He would have to go to Eri to be sure. If she was still Miss Granger, and he could detect no spells on the surface of the mirror, then he would have to…
Have to what? Tell Miss Granger that she was his heart's desire, and therefore that she must move in with him posthaste? The woman would slap him, think he'd gone mad.
Severus wasn't entirely sure he hadn't gone mad.
Alright, so he didn't have a plan for what to do if the mirror wasn't lying but he could at least figure out whether it was true or not.
With a muttered curse word he swept from his office and devoured the corridors between himself and the mirror, the stone flags a blur beneath his feet.
AN: Thank you ever so much for all your interest in my humble musings! I do hope you are continuing to enjoy the story!
