Green and Growing

By quicklime

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Author's note:

Well, I don't want to give away too much of the story just yet. Suffice it to say, one of the major supporting characters is going to be an OC-if you don't like that sort of thing, don't read this. The same goes for Snape/Granger romances, which this will *eventually* turn into.

As always, none of the characters in this belong to the author and no profit is being made.

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Chapter 1

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She was overenthusiastic and far too confident, Snape mused. She had a tendency to lean towards arrogance (after all, she was a Gryffindor.) She was, for all her brains, desperately impractical sometimes and dangerously impulsive. She frequently didn't know when to give up, and, honestly, she was damned irritating.

But Hell on earth, but the girl was a Godsend.

He would never admit it, of course, but he often wondered how he had ever managed without her. Or, worse, how he was going to manage when she graduated.

It had been midway through her Sixth year when Hermione Granger had become his unofficial Potions assistant. It had become official-ized at the start of Seventh, which, he knew, still irritated her, as she had been forced to choose between the Assistant position and Head Girl. (It hadn't been a choice, really, although certainly that was what would go on her transcripts. Being Head Girl would have made her too much of a target, and she was enough of that already. Better to be quietly secluded in the dungeons--it would look nearly as good when University rolled around, and meanwhile keep her, at least on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, more-or-less out of trouble.)

He had, he supposed, been angling for her when he mentioned to the Headmaster that it would be nice if he, like many of the other teachers, could find a student from one of the upper forms suitable for a few extra-curricular hours of service. Of course, he had gone on, there had been rather a string of particularly idiotic students for the past few years, and he rather doubted there was any one of those morons up to the challenge.

He had then allowed the bemused headmaster to convince him, after nearly half an hour, to take the one he'd had his eye on the whole time, both of them knowing the eventual conclusion of the conversation, but both retreating into polite formality and genteel argument because it was what they always did, and both men saw the humor contained within.

Minerva was still fuming. It wasn't enough that he was perfectly happy to victimize her entire house. No. He was Severus Snape. He had to steal her best student as well.

If it was worthwhile for nothing else, the fact that she hadn't spoken to him for months was enough.

But of course, out of the context of class, in which she had been since first year, and still remained, a dreadful nuisance, and into an arena where every overactive, sparking brain cell could be put to use, Granger was something of a miracle.

Hermione, even after several months of routine, wasn't quite comfortable around him yet, and Snape was, well, not really comfortable around anyone, but they'd worked out "companionable silence" reasonably well. She was nervous around him, and he hadn't quite gotten over the fact that she was a Gryffindor yet, and thus someone to be held in, at best, contempt, at worst, hatred.

But during their slow evenings of potions work, sleeves rolled up and hair pulled back, she was just another gifted witch, chopping or grinding or stirring, when he needed another pair of hands, with nearly as much skill as he did. Or, sometimes, sitting, looking particularly small and young at his huge, dark oak desk, grading papers nearly as harshly as Snape himself. (Well, as far as grades, anyway. Hermione had been raised in an environment of "constructive criticism," and did not believe that belittling small childrens' intelligence, work ethic and personality based on a few homework assignments was particularly beneficial to their overall education.

But after a while, she saw the humor in it anyway, and after a few months, the tidy red cursive was no less feared throughout the school than the jagged red scrawl.

Her hide had thickened, over the months, to his insults, to the point that she wondered why they had ever bothered her so much in the first place. Of course, he was less insulting as their working relationship progressed, unless of course she managed to make some mistake, in which case he certainly let her have hell. Not that he ever managed to compete with her own irritation at any small fumble in a skill that, in her mind, should have been perfected long ago.

But potions was a frustrating art. He knew that perfectly well.

Summer hadn't really been a break for either of them. Hermione had spent most of it with the Order, and Snape, although firmly opposed to actually living with the ragtag group, had visited, reluctantly, quite often. And every time he saw her, there was the occasional potion to brew or lesson plan to go over or theory to bounce. So by mid-September, they were back in stride, tolerant of each other's company to a degree that obviously sickened her friends (another plus.) Hermione, to his amusement, had been rather resentful of the fact that she'd been forced to choose -Snape- over Head Girl, but that too had eventually faded into the oddly satisfactory arrangement that they'd worked out.

It was a few days past Halloween (it had fallen on a Friday night, to everyone's delight) and they were working, as usual, in silence.

Hermione was chopping Formierre root, her sleeves rolled up and forearms. He found himself watching her. Her movements were precise; chop, chop, chop, pause to dip the knife blade in the small bowl of water at her elbow, chop, chop, chop. Her hands and arms bore the marking of one who worked too long at potions; small scars, from slips of the knife and splashes of various burning liquids.

Her hands looked very much like his. Mildly scarred, un-calloused, pale and graceful. She didn't seem to care much about the scars. (Her first one, a splash of boiling oil, had been responded to with a puzzled, annoyed look and a: "Oh. Er. Ow" and a: "Burn lotion, second cupboard on the right in the back of the office" and that had pretty much been it.) And he knew perfectly well how painful boiling oil was on sensitive skin, and how nervous boiling anything could make you after you'd been burned for the first time.

He had been wondering, for a long time, if she would eventually choose a career in Potions--she was undoubtedly well-suited for it, and it might be nice if he could remember, in his old age, inspiring a love of his art (rather than just inspiring fear) in at least one student.

She was looking uneasy today (she often did, in his presence) and very much absorbed in her work, which was going far slower than usual. So it happened that she didn't notice when Snape walked up behind her, to gaze at the chopping.

"Miss Granger," he said calmly, and she started, violently, like a rabbit, scattering root bits over her cutting board, jarring one elbow against her water bowl and dropping her knife to the floor, where it landed perilously close to her boot. "I see you are attempting to chop your fingers off. However, as your Professor, I am going to advise you not to do so."

"Aha," she said, panicked. "you startled me..." She trailed off.

He raised an eyebrow. "Clearly."

"Um...I'll clear this up..."

"You will indeed," he said coldly. "I do recall telling you not to come if ever you were unfit to do your work."

She rallied a bit at 'unfit.' "I'm fine, Professor. I'm just a little jumpy, and you snuck up on me."

"I did, did I? Why on earth, I wonder, would it occur to me to do a thing like that?"

"Oh, er, I didn't mean...that is to say, I didn't notice you there and so...you didn't sneak up on me, of course, I just wasn't...and I,er, got startled."

"Why, then, Miss Granger, are you so easily startled this evening?" He picked a small section of root ('chop with a sharp knife at an angle to between ten and twelve centimeter segments...') secretly admiring the craftsmanship.

She shrugged.

"Miss Granger."

"Oh, it's nothing really...You wouldn't be interested. It was just that I was planning on asking you for a recommendation for University and then I decided that I probably shouldn't since you clearly have enough to do already, but that if I asked Professor McGonagall she might still be angry at me for choosing an Assistanceship in Potions instead of Transfiguration, and that it would look odd if the Professor I had my Assistanceship with wasn't the one who wrote it. You know, I don't think Assistanceship is actually a word," she took a deep breath. "But anyway, that's why I'm a little nervous."

He almost laughed. He managed to transfer the humor into a single raised eyebrow.

"It isn't."

"No, I didn't think so."

"That's it, then?"

"Uh-huh."

"You realize that there's no reason I wouldn't be willing to write a recommendation for you?"

She looked blank. "You'll do it?"

He was exasperated. "Clear this up and put the roots in one of the large glass jars, and go away. You can finish this on Thursday, if you're feeling somewhat more competent."

"Oh. Alright."

"With another two hours on Friday afternoon to make up for the time you lost this evening."

She almost smirked. Only Snape would give her detention, so to speak, for her volunteer work. "Yes, sir." (They had an unspoken agreement that any mistakes made on their evenings together would not count against her house points, and, while he could assign any extra work her found appropriate, words like 'detention' and 'punishment' would under no circumstances be used.)

Snape went back to the essays he was grading, and she cleared up the roots and put them in the jar. She rinsed off the knife and put it back in the knife drawer. She washed off the cutting board and put it back in its cupboard, emptied and rinsed the water dish and put in back under the sink---she wiped down the counter with a damp cloth and left, careful to close the door quietly behind her and was halfway up to Gryffindor tower before she allowed herself a sigh of relief and a slight smile.

So that was all fine then. The Boys would fume and fuss about her being given extra work, voluntarily spending any more time with Snape than absolutely necessary, refusing to go to Hogsmead for the second weekend in a row because she wanted to study for her NEWTS and whatever else was bothering them about her lately. But that was nothing to worry about really. Between The Boys and what they saw as friendly, helpful advice on not studying to hard and learning to have fun and Snape's near-constant, skillful, subtle barbs, there wasn't a lot that could get under her skin these days.

Anyway, he was almost certainly going to write a recommendation for her now (her fear, in actuality, had been more asking him than the prospect that he'd refuse to do it.)

He was. Back in the classroom, Snape sighed with amusement, and put down the red pen that had been engaged in one of his more successful insults to date ("You would do well to start cheating off a more adept student, Mister Luctefeld") to shake his head.

So McGonagall was still angry with her, was she?

Hah. Marvelous.

He grinned, a rare expression indeed, at least when he wasn't alone. Truth to tell, he was rather fond of the acerbic Headmistress, and without the fun of, in turns, baiting and being baited by her, life at Hogwarts would have been a great deal more boring. She was one of its redeeming features, and those, in Snape's opinion, were few and far between.

Students were certainly rarely numbered among them.

Even Granger, he had to admit, had her irritating moments. He'd chased her out that evening, true enough, but not really because she'd spilled a chopping-board of root fragments. More because he'd learned from experience that if he didn't say something cruel and dismiss her, assigning some token reprimand, he would have to hear about it all evening.

("I'm sorry about those roots, really I am, Professor!")

And there was nothing more irritating than being apologized to for something insignificant for hours on end. He'd groveled long and often enough in his life to develop an extreme distaste for it, and that was something the Granger girl could not for the life of her seem to grasp.

Gods forbid she ever do anything -really- wrong or he'd never, ever hear the end of it.

He shuddered.

He hadn't asked her what she intended to study. Likely she hadn't decided yet. Likelier, she would spend several years double-majoring before she found some noble, holy cause to pursue until her death.

Silly chit. ("You'll do it?")

He snorted. Of course he'd write that miserable, brilliant little brat her recommendation. And for the love of Merlin, she'd better not ever get her hands on it.