When dinner was over, Hermione followed Severus outside to the Quidditch Pitch. She felt extremely frustrated that Professor McGonagall, her favorite teacher, had been so irritable. They left their Kneazle in the care of Stella and crossed the grounds.
Hermione was, however, excited for her 'date' to Hogsmeade with Severus. As they walked outside across the grounds, Hermione weighed in on exactly what was happening. She was stuck in the past, and the Slytherins were more hospitable then the Gryffindors. Not only that, but she was getting very close with Severus Snape, which was odd. He was almost an entirely different person at seventeen. Sure, his hair was still greasy, his eyes as dark as ever and his mannerisms were the same. The way he ate, and glared around, that was all the same. What was different was the way he spoke and acted. He was constantly nice, Hermione would even say sweet. He was never bitter or rude, unless of course James Potter and his gang were in close proximity.
Being with Severus was actually very much like being with Viktor Krum, and Viktor was someone that Hermione had liked a great deal.
Now the two of them were off to serve in detention, no thanks to James Potter and the Gryffindorks. As they crossed the green grass, the sun was getting low in the sky, and it began casting long shadows. It was still warm out, autumn hadn't really kicked in yet, and both Hermione and Severus took their black robes off and draped them over their arms.
"Well, it's about time," McGonagall stood near the locker rooms with her arms crossed. "Its five past six."
Severus narrowed his eyes and opened his mouth to say something but Hermione interrupted. "We're sorry, ma'am."
"Very well, Miss Greene," McGonagall handed them a roll of parchment. "I expect everything on this list to be finished tonight."
Severus opened the parchment and the bottom unwound, it was nearly two feet long. He glared at Madame McGonagall.
"Now, Mr. Snape, don't look at me like that. You're quite an accomplished wizard, you and Miss Greene may use your wands," she smiled thinly.
"Thank you!" Hermione smiled, that was the Minerva McGonagall she knew and admired.
"You're very welcome Miss Greene, if you two need further instruction I'll be in my office," McGonagall said before heading back to the castle.
"Well, what's first on the list?" Hermione asked taking her wand from her pocket, she was determined to have everything finished before nightfall.
"Cleaning the stands," Severus said, scrunching his nose.
"Well, I'll take Slytherin and Ravenclaw and you take Gryffindor and Hufflepuff," Hermione grinned.
Severus laughed. "No, I'll take Slytherin and Ravenclaw, and YOU can Gryffindor and Hufflepuff."
Two hours later, as the sun was disappearing behind the trees of the forest, Hermione met Severus back on the pitch, thoroughly exhausted. The quaffle was as red as a cherry once again, the bludgers were rejuvenated, and the tiny golden snitch glittered. The stands were sparkling clean and the locker rooms smelled like a spring meadow.
"If I have to disconjure one more piece of rubbish I think I may actually die," Hermione sighed. The Hufflepuffs happened to be incredibly sloppy popcorn eaters.
"Well I think we just have to adjust the cushioning charms on the field and polish the goalposts," Severus said, looking down at the parchment.
Hermione beamed and pulled out her wand. "This is something I can definitely do!" she said, pointing her wand at the ground. "I'm very good with charms, Campo do Coxim!"
She could feel the field beneath her feet give a lurch and a moment later she found herself walking on a cushion of air. "There," she said proudly, "now someone can fall one hundred meters off their broom and not get hurt at all."
"Maybe we can alter the charm to not cushion the Gryffindors…" Severus gave a half smile.
Hermione looked at him and opened her mouth to protest, then realized he was just joking.
Severus looked up at the rosy colored sky as the last rays of sunlight began to vanish behind the Dark Forest. "Well, we had better polish the goalposts and be done with it. I'll be right back," he said, disappearing into the locker room.
Hermione glanced around, feeling completely alone on the Quidditch Pitch. The leaves rustled in the forest and she couldn't help but feel someone was staring at her.
"Here you are," Severus said walking back to her, in each hand was a broomstick. "You can do this side and I'll do the far end?" he asked, handing her a broom.
She reluctantly took it and looked at him. "I can't ride a broom very well," she blushed.
"So you've said. It's quite easy, Haylie," he smiled. "Just kick your leg over the side and push off the ground."
Hermione simply stared at the broom. She could not ride a broom. Ron had tried to show her once before in their fourth year on Harry's Firebolt, but she fell off. She knew she wasn't one for athletics and she did not want to humiliate herself in front of Severus. 'Why do you care if you look stupid in front of him?', she asked herself. 'I don't care,' she insisted.
Severus sighed and took a step towards her. He tossed his broomstick on the ground, took Hermione's gently from her andd held it out horizontally. "It's very simple," he said as he stepped over the broomstick with one leg. "Once you've straddled it, you just push up off the ground."
Yes, it did look easy, but for some reason, Hermione felt this was something she could not do.
He smiled and grabbed her hand, pulling her close. "Haylie, step over the broom," he ordered. Hermione was suddenly reminded that this was Severus Snape, a man who gave orders regularly to a trembling Potions class. He had just ordered her to get on the broomstick and for a moment he sounded just like Professor Snape.
She took a deep breath and stepped over the handle of the broom in front of Severus. He reached around her front and positioned her hands firmly on the broomstick. She could feel him leaning against her, his breath warm on her neck. She closed her eyes and felt the heat spread through her.
"Now, just kick off the ground," He whispered to her, as she felt him get off the broomstick.
There was something about his voice that took control over her, she had to listen. She kicked against the cushioned Quidditch Pitch and suddenly felt weightless. She opened her eyes and looked down at the field which was already nearly ten meters below.
"That's it Haylie!" Severus said happily as he mounted his own broom and joined her a second later. "To steer you just give the handle a tug left, right, up, or down. It's the easiest thing in the world."
Hermione felt the breeze against her face as she rose higher and higher. She could see the tree tops of the forest against the pink and purple sky. She could understand Harry and Ron's passion for Quidditch, this was an incredible feeling.
Severus whooshed past her, making her hair blow back. "There's time for flying lessons later, Haylie, let's focus on the goalposts?" he smiled as he darted off down the field.
'What a Snape thing to say', Hermione thought to herself, but he was, as usual, right. It was getting dark quickly and those goalposts weren't going to polish themselves. She took out her wand (while clutching the broomstick very firmly) and pointed at the highest goal post. Hermione mumbled a quick polishing charm and watched the post start to sparkle. The grime from a season of Quidditch matches faded away, revealing the bronze posts.
She landed back on the cushioned pitch with a soft thud and looked down the field at Severus who was headed back towards her.
"Shall we go tell McGonagall we're finished?" she asked, walking back to the locker rooms with him to put away the brooms.
Severus looked up at the sky, which was slowly turning from lilac purple to dark blue. The first stars were faintly lighting up in the inky sky.
"It's such a nice evening, I don't believe I want to go in yet," he said. "Would you like to go for a stroll?"
Hermione smiled, 'Yes I want to go for a stroll!' she screamed inside. "Yes that would be nice," she smirked.
They left the Quidditch pitch and headed for the lake, which was perfectly still in the twilight.
"Do you miss your old school?" Severus asked, as they walked along the banks of the lake.
"Not as much as I thought I would…" Hermione smiled. It was a lie, she was enjoying the time she spent with Severus, and although she hated admitting it to herself, she even enjoyed Lucius and Bellatrix's company as well. She missed her Hogwarts a great deal though. She missed Harry and Ron and Ginny.
Severus walked a few feet ahead of her and sat down under a tree by the lake's shore. She watched him pick up a stone and sent it skipping across the water's surface. Hermione laid her robe on the ground next to him and sat down.
"Tell me about your parents," Severus said suddenly.
'Well,' Hermione told herself in her head, 'they're Muggles! I am a Muggleborns, a mudblood that would never really make it into Slytherin house!' That wouldn't do at all. She was stuck here in nineteen seventy seven and she was not about to give up the friends she had made, that would be foolish.
"My mum works at the Ministry of Magic," Hermione lied, feeling terribly guilty.
"So you've said. What does she do there?" Severus asked, tossing another stone into the lake.
Hermione thought for a moment. "She works in the Department of Mysteries, she isn't allowed to tell us what she does," she smirked.
"The Department of Mysteries? That's brilliant! I've always wondered what goes on there. I went with my mother to the Ministry of Magic when I was twelve and we went right past that department…." Severus trailed off; he had brought up his mother again.
"Well I've been down there before," Hermione said, thinking about her fifth year. "I wasn't supposed to be of course, but I had gotten lost of my way to my mother's office. Saw all kinds of strange things. Did you know they have a room for prophecies?"
"Prophecies?" Severus asked. "What do you mean?"
"All the prophecies made about the Wizarding World are kept down in the Department of Mysteries. They keep them locked away in these little glass orbs."
"That's brilliant! What else do they have?"
Hermione thought of the room with the veil where Sirius died. "A veil," she said softly.
"A veil?" Severus looked confused.
"Yes, I probably shouldn't be telling you, but they have a veiled entry way to the Afterlife!"
"The Afterlife? Bloody hell…." Severus looked thunderstruck. "What would happen if someone walked through there?"
Hermione gave an involuntary shudder. "I'd rather not think about it."
"What does your father do?" he asked, changing the subject.
"He's a healer at St. Mungo's," Hermione lied again.
"So both your parents are our kind then?" Severus asked.
Hermione realized he was trying to find out if she was in fact a mudblood. "Yes, I'm no mudblood!" she laughed nervously.
Severus smiled next to her. "Don't you just hate Muggles?"
Hermione gave another fake laugh. "Yes! Muggles are just awful!" She didn't believe that, and she felt thoroughly horrible for lying to him, but she didn't really see another way around it.
"I just despise them so much!" Severus clenched his pale fists.
"Don't think about them," Hermione smiled sweetly. "It's such a beautiful evening."
They looked up at the night sky, now black and full of glittering stars.
"It is quite nice for the middle of September," Severus commented.
Hermione inched closer to him so they were sitting hip to hip, shoulder to shoulder.
Severus looked over at her. "Haylie, I'm happy you've come to Hogwarts."
She looked back at him, his dark eyes warm beneath the starlight. "I have to admit, I think I'm happy that I've come here too."
He closed the distance between them, kissing her softly, and Hermione didn't know whether to be surprised that Severus Snape was kissing her or to just melt into the moment. She went with the second option and brought her hand up to his cool cheek, kissing him back. A moment later they broke the kiss, Hermione breathing heavily. It was the most incredible kiss she'd ever had. She had only kissed two other people in the past, Ron and Krum, but they were nothing compared to Severus. She looked into his dark eyes and smiled. He smiled back at her and bit his bottom lip. His cheeks turned a pale shade of pink and Hermione couldn't believe that the dreaded Potions Master was blushing.
Hermione closed the distance the second time, wanting to taste him again. Severus was a mixture of spearmint and Butterbeer, a very good combination. The met in an electric kiss again and Hermione felt the world dissolve around her. It was strange, the only thing she seemed to care about was kissing the Slytherin.
Her thoughts were suddenly interrupted by an icy cold sensation flooding over her. She gasped and pulled away from him, she was soaking wet. Severus sprang to his feet, wand out, robes dripping with cold water. Hermione got to her feet wondering what happened when she saw, two black shapes thirty feet away by the water's edge.
"Lumos!" Severus snarled, as the area around them was lit up. The two figures were James Potter and Sirius Black doubled over in laughter and pointing at them.
"You should have seen your faces!" James laughed harder. "When Sirius conjured that wave from the lake…" he was laughing so hard Hermione could barely understand him.
Hermione felt a surge of anger well up inside of her unlike any other. With out thinking, she pointed her wand at the pair of Gryffindors and yelled "Incendio!" It happened in slow motion, and she thought her voice sounded strange but realized it was echoed by Severus casting the same spell. Orange light sprang from their wands and enveloped the boys by the lake. Their cloaks caught fire and it took them a moment to magic the fire out.
Sirius glared at Hermione and Severus. "You'll pay for that!" he said before storming off with James, who was dusting the cinders off his robe.
She looked up at Severus after they had gone, his greasy hair was hanging down in front of his face like a very wet mop. She couldn't imagine she looked any better.
Severus smiled at her awkwardly. "I'm sorry," he offered.
"I'm really beginning to loathe them," Hermione said angrily.
Severus laughed quietly. "Want to go back to the castle?"
"I suppose we should before we catch cold," Hermione said, wringing out her skirt hem.
Sorry for the lack of updating! Hope you all enjoyed this chapter, more will come soon I promise! Review please!