Author's Note: Would appreciate reviews more than anything, even if you
hate it—give me some constructive criticism! Trying to make a point with
this, but I have to determine just where I'm going to take it first.
Inescapable
Chapter Two
"Just don't think about it," Hermione whispered to herself. Those five words now comprised her mantra as she made her way down the steps toward the Potions classroom. What had started as a blossoming curiosity about the youngest male teacher in the school was now full-fledged wondering, and she couldn't quit thinking about it. She had no idea how she was going to react in the classroom situation and was trying unsuccessfully to secure her thoughts on something academic.
She was the second person in the classroom; Neville sat nervously huddled in his seat, doing his best to appear invisible in the domain of his least favorite teacher. Snape, his back toward them, was writing the ingredients and directions for making that particular day's potion on the blackboard. Hermione allowed herself one glance in his direction and then forced her eyes to concentrate on the task of copying notes.
Harry and Ron entered several minutes later, laughing quietly about something. Snape eyed them angrily and appeared to be about to make a comment, but stopped when the other students began to filter into the room. When the classroom had at last filled, he went about the daily, arduous task of searching for ridiculous reasons to deduct points from Gryffindor. He now prided himself in his undeniably great ability.
"Miss Granger." Hermione was staring absently at the far wall of the classroom and was startled out of her reverie by his voice. "I would appreciate your full attention in my classroom. Five points from Gryffindor."
That was quick, she thought wryly. Nice going. Just don't think about it.
Snape proceeded to snap the day's directions, but Hermione wasn't fully listening; she had officially lost control over her brain and was noticing things about the classroom she had never been at liberty to discover before. Snape's desk, for example, was meticulously organized. It appeared, from where she was sitting, that what had once looked like random piles of corrected assignments were really stacks of papers organized by class hour and grade. She noticed file cabinets, partially hidden from view by the blackboard, in the front of the room. Numbers were written in tiny white labels on the front. Did he alphabetize things?
"Hermione!" Neville was hissing at her out of the corner of his mouth. She looked up just in time to see Snape's eyes on her again; he looked distinctly angry this time.
"Miss Granger, I'm losing my patience with your obviously blatant disinterest in my class. If you find yourself that bored, then perhaps you would rather make up the time in detention. Five points from Gryffindor and detention if I have to speak to you again."
"Sorry, Professor," she spoke timidly, but he didn't acknowledge it.
"Get started," he snapped. "Longbottom, copy down the instructions three times more to make certain you know what you're doing. I want to see your notes at the end of class."
Neville reached a trembling hand into his bag for his quill and began to copy and recopy the blackboard of notes. Hermione went about the mechanical task of making the potion; she was by now accustomed to reading absently the directions on the board, mixing the ingredients with little or no thought, and producing a perfectly concocted whatever-it-was potion by the end of the class period. Double Potions gave her even more time, which she didn't need, and by the time she'd finished her brain was more than ready to begin wandering aimlessly once more.
Snape was walking purposefully down the aisles of the classroom, examining every potion with a hawklike eye and never failing to make a hurtful criticism should the creator be a Gryffindor. Slytherins, even those with horrible grades and work ethic, always received silence and a slight nod, the best that any student could hope for in terms of a compliment from Professor Snape. Malfoy was the only one who'd ever received a verbal compliment, and remained undefeated.
"Longbottom." Snape had paused over Neville's cauldron, and Neville sat right next to Hermione. She turned her attention quickly back to her own cauldron and stirred the potion, embarrassed. Had he seen her watching him?
"Y-Yes, Professor?"
"Have you finished with the notes, or are you joining Miss Granger in her daily reverie?"
Neville was unable to speak, but snatched the notes off his desk with white knuckles and held them up timidly. Snape hardly glanced at them; he looked instead at the cauldron.
"I see you've forgotten to add the witch hazel."
"I—I don't have any, Professor, I forgot to buy some wh—"
"I don't want excuses, Longbottom, only a decent potion, but apparently after seven years of education at Hogwarts you cannot yet produce even that. Even I regarded your skills more highly than this."
Hermione was not sure she could stand much more of Snape's treatment of Neville. She reached into her bag, pulled out an extra portion of witch hazel, and held it in front of Neville wordlessly. He stared at it, wide- eyed, and then grasped it with sweaty palms and struggled to open the package. As Hermione glanced over to see Snape's reaction, their eyes met briefly.
"Detention, Miss Granger. Here, at eight o'clock."
She returned his stare but said nothing. Snape's eyes narrowed, and he gave her a suspicious look as he turned to finish his investigation of the class's progress. Neville was hyperventilating badly and appeared to be in an advanced state of cardiac arrest.
"I'm sorry!" he whispered. "You shouldn't have done that, you knew better."
"I know," she agreed, not bothering to keep her voice quiet, "but I don't care. The way he treats you is completely unfair and it's about time someone stood up to him anyway."
Snape heard her comment, and turned abruptly. She expected a rebuke, but none came; instead, he merely glared at her. She glared back defiantly and waited for a more severe punishment, but he turned wordlessly and kept walking. She wasn't aware until she exhaled heavily that she'd been holding her breath. Why hadn't he said something?
Neville was frantically going through the motions of completing his potion before the class ended, and Hermione, satisfied that hers was worthy of a perfect score, began to pack her things back into her bag neatly. She was nothing short of a control freak and her bag was a perfect example of the method to her madness; everything was placed exactly where it belonged and each and every object was within her quick and efficient reach. She misplaced nothing, nor did she ever have trouble obtaining her school supplies. Neville watched her jealously as his potion simmered.
"You're so good at this class," he commented. "You do everything so good."
"So well," she corrected automatically, and placed the cap on her inkwell and screwed it into place.
"See? You even talk perfect."
"Perfectly."
"See!" he expostulated, throwing his hands up in frustration. She couldn't help but chuckle at the exasperated look on his face.
"Just because Potions is not your strong point, that doesn't mean you shouldn't consider yourself a worthwhile student," she said gently, and watched with pleasure as he blushed.
"Thanks, but you're just saying that to be nice."
"No, I'm not. You're excellent at Herbology, you know that."
"But I'm horrible at everything else," he reminded her despairingly, wrenching the cork from a vial of serum and adding it to the potion. The liquid flared abruptly and then darkened to a moss green; several more minutes and it would be finished, just in the nick of time, she knew.
"It only takes one skill to make a career." He grinned at her wisdom and stirred his potion with more confidence. Feeling as though she'd accomplished something (in her brain-dead state, her own potion hardly counted) by making Neville's day a brighter one, Hermione realized that she was not dreading detention.
In fact, she was rather excited.
* * *
Compulsion drove her to smooth down her hair in front of a mirror seconds before she had to leave to report to the Potions classroom for detention. Parvati eyed her from across the common room and placed a finger on her fashion magazine, folded the pages, and drank in Hermione's girlish actions. Hermione was not one to care about her appearance; obviously, if she did, she would do something daily about her hair.
Not that her hair was all that bad anymore, Hermione decided, rather pleased with what she saw. Her hair had flattened out a bit, and did not stick out like it had years before. She'd learned to keep it under control better, as well; dampening her brush before she ran it through every morning minimized the static electricity that typically caused her hair to become bushy. It fell more softly now, and it was longer as well.
"Where are you going?" Parvati asked, even though both knew perfectly well that Parvati was familiar with where Hermione was going.
"Detention," she replied shortly, fastening the top button on her robes and pulling on her school shoes.
"Do you have a date or something?" Parvati teased relentlessly. Hermione rolled her eyes as usual and faced Parvati reluctantly.
"No, I don't have a date. I'm just making sure my hair won't be in my way, in the event that I may be dealing with potions ingredients." She could tell Parvati remained skeptical by the sly grin that crossed the other girl's face. Lavender, sitting in the corner, was now taking an interest in the conversation.
"Maybe she's meeting someone," Lavender suggested with a meaningful glance in the direction of the boys' dormitory.
Now Hermione was growing angry. She had to leave any second for detention, but if she deserted the conversation now, she'd only get flayed alive when she returned later. They would wait up for her, there was no doubt about that, and have plenty of new ammunition by that time.
"Are you insinuating that I'm meeting Harry or Ron?"
"We don't know. Are you?" Their evil smiles were identical and both had gleaming eyes and hungry looks.
"I'm going to detention." Her dignified exit was interrupted when she tripped over her robes. She regretted the fact that she couldn't slam the portrait; it opened slowly, and shut slowly, giving her plenty of time to cringe at the laughter coming from within the common room.
The hallways were eerily quiet as she made her way to the dungeon classroom. Peeves, who typically patrolled the corridors in the evenings looking for students to harass or snitch on, was absent that evening—or somewhere else in the castle. The sky was overcast and no moonlight from outside lent any light to the hallways, so she pulled out her wand and whispered, "Lumos." The Potions classroom was not much farther ahead.
She paused for a few seconds outside the door. There was no sign of Snape, so if she was late, he wasn't waiting to snap at her when she arrived. Odd, but maybe she was on time. A remarkable thought, considering that Parvati and Lavender had gone on for minutes and still been nowhere near finished with her.
She extinguished the light, pocketed her wand, and pushed open the door as quietly as possible. Professor Snape was not in the outer room, but she could see a light through the door to his office, so perhaps he was working. She wasn't sure whether or not she should wait in her usual desk or announce her arrival, so she decided to do the latter; no point in getting blamed for being late when she'd been on time.
When she turned the doorknob to his office and pushed open the door, he looked up from his place behind a second desk. Unsure of what to do or say, she gave him a small smile and closed the door behind her, standing straight and clasping her hands behind her back, awaiting her sentence.
"Good evening, Miss Granger." His voice, she noticed, was not nearly as loud as she was accustomed to in the din of the classroom, with students' voices and the clamor of glass vials to compete with. It was quieter now, and deeper; she jumped slightly.
"Hello, Professor." She could have sworn a smile tugged at the corners of his lips, but he merely looked back down and finished correcting the paper at his hands. She fidgeted uncomfortably and looked around his office. Everything was perfectly organized, just as his desk in the outer room was, but the furniture was not as sparse. Bookshelves lined the walls with literally hundreds of books; she gasped slightly and began to peruse the titles, not noticing that he had finished and was watching her.
"You are impressed with my literature collection, then?" His tone was still slightly insulting, but at least he hadn't spoken anything nasty to her. She only nodded and stood on her tiptoes to peer farther up. It was incredible; plenty of textbooks and reference books, but also traditional literature, much of it being of Muggle origin.
"You read poetry?" She pointed at a line of books on the very top shelf of one bookshelf, which was filled with collections of poetry, mainly old English authors.
"Yes."
"But sir, they're Muggle authors." He raised an eyebrow, seemingly amused at her surprise.
"I'm aware of that, Miss Granger."
"I thought you hated Muggles."
Now it was his turn to jump slightly. "Why should you think that?" He placed his pen back on the desk and looked at her with a puzzled expression, not the least bit mean. She was puzzled as well; why had she thought that?
"Well, I don't know, I thought all Slytherins did."
Now he was smiling. "Does that mean that all Gryffindors are as foolish and rash as the Dream Team?"
She shrugged. "Well, no, I suppose not. I'm sorry."
"No need." He rose, cloak swishing behind him, and headed toward the outer classroom. "I believe it's time for you to begin your punishment."
"Which is…?" She was shocked at her own daring; normally, she would have spoken as little as civility allowed her to get away with. Her voice was cool and confident, not cracking even the slightest.
"Preparing a month's worth of Sleeping Potion for the infirmary." He looked at her pointedly. "It should not take you long. I imagine you're familiar with it."
"Yes." She needed no recipe, for it was a simple and common potion, always fresh in her mind. She began to gather ingredients off the shelves he pointed toward, and dragged from the corner of the room the largest cauldron she could find. It was massive, ten times the size of her standard school-issue size two, and she had difficulty maneuvering it. Snape offered no help; he was rummaging through the file cabinets she'd noticed earlier and if he saw that she was struggling, he didn't acknowledge it.
Having moved the cauldron to the center of the room, she forced herself to clear her mind of insignificant thoughts and concentrate on the task ahead of her. A month's worth surely could not be that much; Sleeping Potion was not often doled out in the infirmary, only to students who were too traumatized or in too much pain to possibly find sleep on their own. Even Harry, who spent a great deal of time in the infirmary, had only received it a few times.
"I said a month's worth, Miss Granger, not a decade's." Snape gestured toward the gigantic cauldron and she sighed.
"How much is a month's worth?"
"Only a fraction of that. You may use the cauldron if you wish; just don't fill it. Perhaps an eighth of that would suffice."
"All right." She cut her ingredients into eighths and began to add them carefully, hoping she didn't make any mistakes concocting the Sleeping Potion from memory. Snape looked openly for any sign of a paper or textbook containing the instructions, and she smiled with some satisfaction when he frowned.
"You seem confident without a textbook," he remarked, not cordially but not spitefully, either.
"I am." She could have sworn he chuckled, but it seemed such a ridiculous action coming from him that she dismissed it from her mind and proceeded with the potion. She doubted this was going to take her any longer than two hours, and was surprised that he would give someone of her skill ability such a simple—even easy—detention assignment.
Half an hour passed uncomfortably. Hermione sat in silence on the floor and stirred her potion while Snape began to file away papers in the cabinets. Every so often, one or both of them would glance at the other, and several times their eyes met. He did not seem embarrassed, but she was, and would look down again immediately and nonchalantly. When the potion reached the point where it needed to simmer undisturbed, she folded her hands in her lap and waited for the snide remarks to begin.
But they never came. Snape disappeared into his office and remained there until she'd finished.
Odd. The liquid began to take on a sickly green tint, swirling in a circular motion from the center and spreading outward. When the boiling stopped and the entire potion looked like coagulated pea soup, she knew it was finished. Cleanup was relatively easy; just return the ingredients to the cupboards and wash off whatever else she'd held. When everything had been returned to its respective place, she was unsure what to do with the potion.
Snape was once again correcting papers in his office; this time, she recognized the pile as being essays they had turned in several days earlier. The seventh-year class was currently studying Veritaserum, a difficult undertaking and an extremely dangerous potion. She burned to know what she had received on her essay, but decided that he would most likely not appreciate her asking.
"Professor?"
He looked up. "What?"
"In what do you want me to put the potion? It's finished."
He nodded, scribbled down one last comment, and rose, walking quickly past her. She could feel his cloak brush her shoulder and tried to shrink against the door. Hermione was only of average height for a woman, not tiny but not tall either, and his height was intimidating to her.
Back inside the classroom, he pulled down several large flasks and handed them to her. She drained the potion carefully into each using a funnel and sieve to catch any floating debris or chunks of individual ingredients. Snape took them wordlessly when she'd finished, put labels on each, marked them, and set them in a box which sat on his desk.
"I have something to say to you, Miss Granger," he informed her as he placed the box to the side, "and I want you to listen carefully."
She was intrigued; her hand, clutching a scrub-brush, stopped moving inside the cauldron.
"I don't know why you were so distracted today," he said quietly, standing above her now, "and I do not make it a habit of mine to pry into the private lives of my students. However, I'd suggest that you reconcile on your own time whatever is bothering you, because it would be a shame for your grade in this class to suffer as a result of whatever that may be."
She could feel a giggle—a giggle, of all things, and in front of Professor Snape—starting within her stomach and demanding to be let out. What was he talking about? That was the closest he'd ever come to complimenting her; he was suggesting that her grade in his class was valuable.
Even though she stopped the giggle, she had to submit to a grin. "Are you complimenting me, sir?"
Snape looked taken aback. His black eyes grew wide and he seemed to be searching for words to knock such a ridiculous notion out of her brain. "Of course not."
"But you said it would be a pity if my grade were to suffer. That implies you consider my grades valuable." The word stung him deeply; he hadn't realized he'd said that, or if he had, he hadn't expected her to gloat about it.
"If I was complimenting you, Miss Granger, you would know it." He turned his back on her and crossed the room quickly to take refuge behind his desk.
"I think you were, sir." She dropped the scrub-brush back in the cauldron and began to rinse it out with a bucket of warm water. Snape looked as though he would have liked to strangle her then and there; he clenched his fists and did his best to frighten her with his glare. It could not possibly work; she was enjoying herself now.
"I was not complimenting you, Miss Granger."
"Ouch," she said sarcastically, dragging the cauldron back into the corner. A rebuke was expected, but he was merely studying her with that cruel, scrutinizing look he wore more than any other.
"Do you want me to dismiss you, Miss Granger, or would you prefer to spend the night here playing word games with me?" His voice held a tone of amusement. Was he enjoying this?
She was; she would have preferred to stay. It was the closest she'd ever seen Professor Snape to actually teasing someone to be playful, not vengeful. Not only was it unbelievable and amazing, but he was surprisingly adept at it.
"I'd like to be dismissed, sir." She stood, hands on her hips, and faced him. This time the giggle did escape, and he rolled his eyes.
"Fine. You are dismissed."
She scampered from the room and managed to shut the door before the giggle turned to laughter. What was that about? Her feet felt light as she made her way back to the Gryffindor common room. Peeves was once again absent, and she took her time. Things seemed to be going her way this evening: her detention had been simple; Parvati and Lavender would be asleep when she arrived; and unless she was grossly mistaken, Snape had reciprocated her affectionate teasing. Imagine!
Snuggling beneath the covers was not quite the relief she had expected it would be; her mind was far too active (as it had been constantly, lately) for her to catch any minutes of sleep. She thought once again about her conversation with Ginny at the dinner table, and the difference between boys and men. Other than age, she truly believed now that it was an aspect of personality as well. Only a grown man could have made what Professor Snape had done look mature. That was a talent she didn't often see.
Inescapable
Chapter Two
"Just don't think about it," Hermione whispered to herself. Those five words now comprised her mantra as she made her way down the steps toward the Potions classroom. What had started as a blossoming curiosity about the youngest male teacher in the school was now full-fledged wondering, and she couldn't quit thinking about it. She had no idea how she was going to react in the classroom situation and was trying unsuccessfully to secure her thoughts on something academic.
She was the second person in the classroom; Neville sat nervously huddled in his seat, doing his best to appear invisible in the domain of his least favorite teacher. Snape, his back toward them, was writing the ingredients and directions for making that particular day's potion on the blackboard. Hermione allowed herself one glance in his direction and then forced her eyes to concentrate on the task of copying notes.
Harry and Ron entered several minutes later, laughing quietly about something. Snape eyed them angrily and appeared to be about to make a comment, but stopped when the other students began to filter into the room. When the classroom had at last filled, he went about the daily, arduous task of searching for ridiculous reasons to deduct points from Gryffindor. He now prided himself in his undeniably great ability.
"Miss Granger." Hermione was staring absently at the far wall of the classroom and was startled out of her reverie by his voice. "I would appreciate your full attention in my classroom. Five points from Gryffindor."
That was quick, she thought wryly. Nice going. Just don't think about it.
Snape proceeded to snap the day's directions, but Hermione wasn't fully listening; she had officially lost control over her brain and was noticing things about the classroom she had never been at liberty to discover before. Snape's desk, for example, was meticulously organized. It appeared, from where she was sitting, that what had once looked like random piles of corrected assignments were really stacks of papers organized by class hour and grade. She noticed file cabinets, partially hidden from view by the blackboard, in the front of the room. Numbers were written in tiny white labels on the front. Did he alphabetize things?
"Hermione!" Neville was hissing at her out of the corner of his mouth. She looked up just in time to see Snape's eyes on her again; he looked distinctly angry this time.
"Miss Granger, I'm losing my patience with your obviously blatant disinterest in my class. If you find yourself that bored, then perhaps you would rather make up the time in detention. Five points from Gryffindor and detention if I have to speak to you again."
"Sorry, Professor," she spoke timidly, but he didn't acknowledge it.
"Get started," he snapped. "Longbottom, copy down the instructions three times more to make certain you know what you're doing. I want to see your notes at the end of class."
Neville reached a trembling hand into his bag for his quill and began to copy and recopy the blackboard of notes. Hermione went about the mechanical task of making the potion; she was by now accustomed to reading absently the directions on the board, mixing the ingredients with little or no thought, and producing a perfectly concocted whatever-it-was potion by the end of the class period. Double Potions gave her even more time, which she didn't need, and by the time she'd finished her brain was more than ready to begin wandering aimlessly once more.
Snape was walking purposefully down the aisles of the classroom, examining every potion with a hawklike eye and never failing to make a hurtful criticism should the creator be a Gryffindor. Slytherins, even those with horrible grades and work ethic, always received silence and a slight nod, the best that any student could hope for in terms of a compliment from Professor Snape. Malfoy was the only one who'd ever received a verbal compliment, and remained undefeated.
"Longbottom." Snape had paused over Neville's cauldron, and Neville sat right next to Hermione. She turned her attention quickly back to her own cauldron and stirred the potion, embarrassed. Had he seen her watching him?
"Y-Yes, Professor?"
"Have you finished with the notes, or are you joining Miss Granger in her daily reverie?"
Neville was unable to speak, but snatched the notes off his desk with white knuckles and held them up timidly. Snape hardly glanced at them; he looked instead at the cauldron.
"I see you've forgotten to add the witch hazel."
"I—I don't have any, Professor, I forgot to buy some wh—"
"I don't want excuses, Longbottom, only a decent potion, but apparently after seven years of education at Hogwarts you cannot yet produce even that. Even I regarded your skills more highly than this."
Hermione was not sure she could stand much more of Snape's treatment of Neville. She reached into her bag, pulled out an extra portion of witch hazel, and held it in front of Neville wordlessly. He stared at it, wide- eyed, and then grasped it with sweaty palms and struggled to open the package. As Hermione glanced over to see Snape's reaction, their eyes met briefly.
"Detention, Miss Granger. Here, at eight o'clock."
She returned his stare but said nothing. Snape's eyes narrowed, and he gave her a suspicious look as he turned to finish his investigation of the class's progress. Neville was hyperventilating badly and appeared to be in an advanced state of cardiac arrest.
"I'm sorry!" he whispered. "You shouldn't have done that, you knew better."
"I know," she agreed, not bothering to keep her voice quiet, "but I don't care. The way he treats you is completely unfair and it's about time someone stood up to him anyway."
Snape heard her comment, and turned abruptly. She expected a rebuke, but none came; instead, he merely glared at her. She glared back defiantly and waited for a more severe punishment, but he turned wordlessly and kept walking. She wasn't aware until she exhaled heavily that she'd been holding her breath. Why hadn't he said something?
Neville was frantically going through the motions of completing his potion before the class ended, and Hermione, satisfied that hers was worthy of a perfect score, began to pack her things back into her bag neatly. She was nothing short of a control freak and her bag was a perfect example of the method to her madness; everything was placed exactly where it belonged and each and every object was within her quick and efficient reach. She misplaced nothing, nor did she ever have trouble obtaining her school supplies. Neville watched her jealously as his potion simmered.
"You're so good at this class," he commented. "You do everything so good."
"So well," she corrected automatically, and placed the cap on her inkwell and screwed it into place.
"See? You even talk perfect."
"Perfectly."
"See!" he expostulated, throwing his hands up in frustration. She couldn't help but chuckle at the exasperated look on his face.
"Just because Potions is not your strong point, that doesn't mean you shouldn't consider yourself a worthwhile student," she said gently, and watched with pleasure as he blushed.
"Thanks, but you're just saying that to be nice."
"No, I'm not. You're excellent at Herbology, you know that."
"But I'm horrible at everything else," he reminded her despairingly, wrenching the cork from a vial of serum and adding it to the potion. The liquid flared abruptly and then darkened to a moss green; several more minutes and it would be finished, just in the nick of time, she knew.
"It only takes one skill to make a career." He grinned at her wisdom and stirred his potion with more confidence. Feeling as though she'd accomplished something (in her brain-dead state, her own potion hardly counted) by making Neville's day a brighter one, Hermione realized that she was not dreading detention.
In fact, she was rather excited.
* * *
Compulsion drove her to smooth down her hair in front of a mirror seconds before she had to leave to report to the Potions classroom for detention. Parvati eyed her from across the common room and placed a finger on her fashion magazine, folded the pages, and drank in Hermione's girlish actions. Hermione was not one to care about her appearance; obviously, if she did, she would do something daily about her hair.
Not that her hair was all that bad anymore, Hermione decided, rather pleased with what she saw. Her hair had flattened out a bit, and did not stick out like it had years before. She'd learned to keep it under control better, as well; dampening her brush before she ran it through every morning minimized the static electricity that typically caused her hair to become bushy. It fell more softly now, and it was longer as well.
"Where are you going?" Parvati asked, even though both knew perfectly well that Parvati was familiar with where Hermione was going.
"Detention," she replied shortly, fastening the top button on her robes and pulling on her school shoes.
"Do you have a date or something?" Parvati teased relentlessly. Hermione rolled her eyes as usual and faced Parvati reluctantly.
"No, I don't have a date. I'm just making sure my hair won't be in my way, in the event that I may be dealing with potions ingredients." She could tell Parvati remained skeptical by the sly grin that crossed the other girl's face. Lavender, sitting in the corner, was now taking an interest in the conversation.
"Maybe she's meeting someone," Lavender suggested with a meaningful glance in the direction of the boys' dormitory.
Now Hermione was growing angry. She had to leave any second for detention, but if she deserted the conversation now, she'd only get flayed alive when she returned later. They would wait up for her, there was no doubt about that, and have plenty of new ammunition by that time.
"Are you insinuating that I'm meeting Harry or Ron?"
"We don't know. Are you?" Their evil smiles were identical and both had gleaming eyes and hungry looks.
"I'm going to detention." Her dignified exit was interrupted when she tripped over her robes. She regretted the fact that she couldn't slam the portrait; it opened slowly, and shut slowly, giving her plenty of time to cringe at the laughter coming from within the common room.
The hallways were eerily quiet as she made her way to the dungeon classroom. Peeves, who typically patrolled the corridors in the evenings looking for students to harass or snitch on, was absent that evening—or somewhere else in the castle. The sky was overcast and no moonlight from outside lent any light to the hallways, so she pulled out her wand and whispered, "Lumos." The Potions classroom was not much farther ahead.
She paused for a few seconds outside the door. There was no sign of Snape, so if she was late, he wasn't waiting to snap at her when she arrived. Odd, but maybe she was on time. A remarkable thought, considering that Parvati and Lavender had gone on for minutes and still been nowhere near finished with her.
She extinguished the light, pocketed her wand, and pushed open the door as quietly as possible. Professor Snape was not in the outer room, but she could see a light through the door to his office, so perhaps he was working. She wasn't sure whether or not she should wait in her usual desk or announce her arrival, so she decided to do the latter; no point in getting blamed for being late when she'd been on time.
When she turned the doorknob to his office and pushed open the door, he looked up from his place behind a second desk. Unsure of what to do or say, she gave him a small smile and closed the door behind her, standing straight and clasping her hands behind her back, awaiting her sentence.
"Good evening, Miss Granger." His voice, she noticed, was not nearly as loud as she was accustomed to in the din of the classroom, with students' voices and the clamor of glass vials to compete with. It was quieter now, and deeper; she jumped slightly.
"Hello, Professor." She could have sworn a smile tugged at the corners of his lips, but he merely looked back down and finished correcting the paper at his hands. She fidgeted uncomfortably and looked around his office. Everything was perfectly organized, just as his desk in the outer room was, but the furniture was not as sparse. Bookshelves lined the walls with literally hundreds of books; she gasped slightly and began to peruse the titles, not noticing that he had finished and was watching her.
"You are impressed with my literature collection, then?" His tone was still slightly insulting, but at least he hadn't spoken anything nasty to her. She only nodded and stood on her tiptoes to peer farther up. It was incredible; plenty of textbooks and reference books, but also traditional literature, much of it being of Muggle origin.
"You read poetry?" She pointed at a line of books on the very top shelf of one bookshelf, which was filled with collections of poetry, mainly old English authors.
"Yes."
"But sir, they're Muggle authors." He raised an eyebrow, seemingly amused at her surprise.
"I'm aware of that, Miss Granger."
"I thought you hated Muggles."
Now it was his turn to jump slightly. "Why should you think that?" He placed his pen back on the desk and looked at her with a puzzled expression, not the least bit mean. She was puzzled as well; why had she thought that?
"Well, I don't know, I thought all Slytherins did."
Now he was smiling. "Does that mean that all Gryffindors are as foolish and rash as the Dream Team?"
She shrugged. "Well, no, I suppose not. I'm sorry."
"No need." He rose, cloak swishing behind him, and headed toward the outer classroom. "I believe it's time for you to begin your punishment."
"Which is…?" She was shocked at her own daring; normally, she would have spoken as little as civility allowed her to get away with. Her voice was cool and confident, not cracking even the slightest.
"Preparing a month's worth of Sleeping Potion for the infirmary." He looked at her pointedly. "It should not take you long. I imagine you're familiar with it."
"Yes." She needed no recipe, for it was a simple and common potion, always fresh in her mind. She began to gather ingredients off the shelves he pointed toward, and dragged from the corner of the room the largest cauldron she could find. It was massive, ten times the size of her standard school-issue size two, and she had difficulty maneuvering it. Snape offered no help; he was rummaging through the file cabinets she'd noticed earlier and if he saw that she was struggling, he didn't acknowledge it.
Having moved the cauldron to the center of the room, she forced herself to clear her mind of insignificant thoughts and concentrate on the task ahead of her. A month's worth surely could not be that much; Sleeping Potion was not often doled out in the infirmary, only to students who were too traumatized or in too much pain to possibly find sleep on their own. Even Harry, who spent a great deal of time in the infirmary, had only received it a few times.
"I said a month's worth, Miss Granger, not a decade's." Snape gestured toward the gigantic cauldron and she sighed.
"How much is a month's worth?"
"Only a fraction of that. You may use the cauldron if you wish; just don't fill it. Perhaps an eighth of that would suffice."
"All right." She cut her ingredients into eighths and began to add them carefully, hoping she didn't make any mistakes concocting the Sleeping Potion from memory. Snape looked openly for any sign of a paper or textbook containing the instructions, and she smiled with some satisfaction when he frowned.
"You seem confident without a textbook," he remarked, not cordially but not spitefully, either.
"I am." She could have sworn he chuckled, but it seemed such a ridiculous action coming from him that she dismissed it from her mind and proceeded with the potion. She doubted this was going to take her any longer than two hours, and was surprised that he would give someone of her skill ability such a simple—even easy—detention assignment.
Half an hour passed uncomfortably. Hermione sat in silence on the floor and stirred her potion while Snape began to file away papers in the cabinets. Every so often, one or both of them would glance at the other, and several times their eyes met. He did not seem embarrassed, but she was, and would look down again immediately and nonchalantly. When the potion reached the point where it needed to simmer undisturbed, she folded her hands in her lap and waited for the snide remarks to begin.
But they never came. Snape disappeared into his office and remained there until she'd finished.
Odd. The liquid began to take on a sickly green tint, swirling in a circular motion from the center and spreading outward. When the boiling stopped and the entire potion looked like coagulated pea soup, she knew it was finished. Cleanup was relatively easy; just return the ingredients to the cupboards and wash off whatever else she'd held. When everything had been returned to its respective place, she was unsure what to do with the potion.
Snape was once again correcting papers in his office; this time, she recognized the pile as being essays they had turned in several days earlier. The seventh-year class was currently studying Veritaserum, a difficult undertaking and an extremely dangerous potion. She burned to know what she had received on her essay, but decided that he would most likely not appreciate her asking.
"Professor?"
He looked up. "What?"
"In what do you want me to put the potion? It's finished."
He nodded, scribbled down one last comment, and rose, walking quickly past her. She could feel his cloak brush her shoulder and tried to shrink against the door. Hermione was only of average height for a woman, not tiny but not tall either, and his height was intimidating to her.
Back inside the classroom, he pulled down several large flasks and handed them to her. She drained the potion carefully into each using a funnel and sieve to catch any floating debris or chunks of individual ingredients. Snape took them wordlessly when she'd finished, put labels on each, marked them, and set them in a box which sat on his desk.
"I have something to say to you, Miss Granger," he informed her as he placed the box to the side, "and I want you to listen carefully."
She was intrigued; her hand, clutching a scrub-brush, stopped moving inside the cauldron.
"I don't know why you were so distracted today," he said quietly, standing above her now, "and I do not make it a habit of mine to pry into the private lives of my students. However, I'd suggest that you reconcile on your own time whatever is bothering you, because it would be a shame for your grade in this class to suffer as a result of whatever that may be."
She could feel a giggle—a giggle, of all things, and in front of Professor Snape—starting within her stomach and demanding to be let out. What was he talking about? That was the closest he'd ever come to complimenting her; he was suggesting that her grade in his class was valuable.
Even though she stopped the giggle, she had to submit to a grin. "Are you complimenting me, sir?"
Snape looked taken aback. His black eyes grew wide and he seemed to be searching for words to knock such a ridiculous notion out of her brain. "Of course not."
"But you said it would be a pity if my grade were to suffer. That implies you consider my grades valuable." The word stung him deeply; he hadn't realized he'd said that, or if he had, he hadn't expected her to gloat about it.
"If I was complimenting you, Miss Granger, you would know it." He turned his back on her and crossed the room quickly to take refuge behind his desk.
"I think you were, sir." She dropped the scrub-brush back in the cauldron and began to rinse it out with a bucket of warm water. Snape looked as though he would have liked to strangle her then and there; he clenched his fists and did his best to frighten her with his glare. It could not possibly work; she was enjoying herself now.
"I was not complimenting you, Miss Granger."
"Ouch," she said sarcastically, dragging the cauldron back into the corner. A rebuke was expected, but he was merely studying her with that cruel, scrutinizing look he wore more than any other.
"Do you want me to dismiss you, Miss Granger, or would you prefer to spend the night here playing word games with me?" His voice held a tone of amusement. Was he enjoying this?
She was; she would have preferred to stay. It was the closest she'd ever seen Professor Snape to actually teasing someone to be playful, not vengeful. Not only was it unbelievable and amazing, but he was surprisingly adept at it.
"I'd like to be dismissed, sir." She stood, hands on her hips, and faced him. This time the giggle did escape, and he rolled his eyes.
"Fine. You are dismissed."
She scampered from the room and managed to shut the door before the giggle turned to laughter. What was that about? Her feet felt light as she made her way back to the Gryffindor common room. Peeves was once again absent, and she took her time. Things seemed to be going her way this evening: her detention had been simple; Parvati and Lavender would be asleep when she arrived; and unless she was grossly mistaken, Snape had reciprocated her affectionate teasing. Imagine!
Snuggling beneath the covers was not quite the relief she had expected it would be; her mind was far too active (as it had been constantly, lately) for her to catch any minutes of sleep. She thought once again about her conversation with Ginny at the dinner table, and the difference between boys and men. Other than age, she truly believed now that it was an aspect of personality as well. Only a grown man could have made what Professor Snape had done look mature. That was a talent she didn't often see.