Hermione was back next to Trelawney for breakfast the next morning, but that was fine. Trelawney ate her porridge and read her Quibbler in silence more often than not. She usually missed lunch. It wasn't until dinner that the gloom and doom came about. Hermione usually brought a book (hidden carefully behind the serving dishes so the students wouldn't know she wasn't watching them).
Better, Trelawney was entirely absent from breakfast. Hermione ate her toast and drank her tea, read her paper. Brewer made his appearance just as she was finishing up, and she handed her paper off to him on her way out.
She spent her Saturday morning going over the proof of her submission to Alchemist Today, an essay on arithmancy in alchemy. It would be in the next issue unless she found any major errors. As paranoid about faulty work as she'd ever been, she re-ran all of her calculations and triple-checked her punctuation.
She took lunch with Ginny, catching up a bit and making tentative plans for Christmas. There was a bit of shopping, and then Hermione whiled away the afternoon in the window seat in her sitting room, enjoying the natural light while she read the book she'd chosen from Snape's coveted shelf.
Trelawney was in full bluster at dinner. If she was to be believed, Hermione would soon suffer an awful foot fungus. Nobody, especially men, would want to be near her from the smell of it. The description almost put her off her soup.
"Come along, then, before you contract anything nefarious," Snape said while Hermione was still trying to think of something to say about the foot fungus. The comment didn't surprise her; his hand on her shoulder did.
"Right," she said, choosing to believe it was Trelawney's comments still throwing her off, not how warm his palm was.
She followed Snape to his office, elbows brushing every now and again. She tried to remember if they normally walked close enough to brush elbows or if it was a new development. And why should there be a new development?
"Did you finish the Waverly yet?"
"Mostly."
"Only mostly?"
"I had a lunch date with Ginny."
"Oh, to be able to leave the castle at a whim."
"You can leave whenever you want."
"Head of House," he said, holding the door to his study open for her. (He'd always done that; she remembered that much.) "I have to tell McGonagall before I go anywhere."
"She doesn't let you go?"
"She wants to talk about it. And usually sends me to sweets shops."
"You poor thing." She grinned at him. And he grinned back.
