The Many Faces of Snape
She had left her room fifteen minutes earlier, assuming that the halls would do their best to keep the directions that Snape had given her from working properly. But she had made it, with forty-seven seconds to spare, slightly out of breath and feeling that she was quite out of shape.
"I tried my best," she answered, hugging her robes closer to her, trying to smother out the chill. "It's rather cold in here."
"It preserves the ingredients," Snape said, moving from the table to the cupboard and carrying several bins and bottles to the table. A cauldron floated to its position above a small, blue fire, and the room smelled of hot metal.
"So that is why your classroom was always so cold."
"Observant," he remarked dryly, stepping away from the table.
He had to be the most impossible man ever. If he ever appeared to be happy, Hermione would have sworn that he suffered from multiple personalities.
"Professor," Hermione began as she grated ginger onto a small dish. "Are you familiar with Muggle films?"
"I have seen a few, but I don't tend to make a habit of it." He continued to scribble directions on a piece of parchment, apparently uninterested in her questioning. The instructions were now six inches long, with tiny, crabbed writing that would probably be almost impossible to read. Good, Hermione thought. I like a challenge.
"Have you ever seen The Three Faces of Eve?"
"No, I do not think so."
"Oh."
He continued to write, thinking that she was just trying to make idle chitchat to fill the stale silence.
Later, the cauldron was bubbling and Snape had moved to his desk, carefully examining her as she worked. His cold eyes watching her made her uneasy.
And her stomach chose that exact moment to stage an angry protest. Her face burned as she bent lower, hoping that he hadn't heard. She had forgotten that they hadn't taken breakfast in London, and lunch was still two hours away. She tried to ignore the pleading pangs of hunger that tugged on her stomach and squinted at the instructions, wondering whether he had written "catnip" or "turnip" and whether that was eight or six grams. She frowned, bending closer to the parchment to see if any lines ceased somewhere. Wouldn't one of such a family background be able to write properly?
Once again, as if reading her thoughts (but only the most unimportant ones), Severus stated aloud, "I was born left handed."
She glanced up at him, taken by surprise. Her eyebrows lifted in confusion.
"I was born left handed," he repeated, tapping the quill gently against his desk. For the first time, Hermione noticed that he held it oddly, choked up on it as if he was trying to strangle it to extinction. "My parents were very traditional, with the mixed customs of both England and other parts of the world, where some of my ancestors were from. In the Middle East, it was improper to use your left hand in public for…various reasons."
Hermione nodded him onward, immediately understanding what he had meant.
"Therefore, when my left hand began to show dominance, they corrected me constantly, training my right hand to be my wand hand, as well as my writing hand. So, if you cannot read my instructions, blame the dead."
His eyes fell back onto his work, the mixed candle and sunlight gleaming on the waxy coat of his hair, and he continued to tap his quill on the desk rhythmically. Hermione squinted at him, trying to critique his conditions for finding the need to regale her with such a tale. There was none, that she could see, other than a lengthy excuse (which he was not well known for) to explain why his handwriting was less than satisfactory.
Curious.
She skipped over the catnip/turnip and moved onto preparing those that followed, building up the courage to ask him what he had really written. After his brief spiel about a mild childhood trauma, she conceived the notion that it, in Snapeish, translated to "You learned to read in primary school. Or were the Muggle teachers too busy whapping each other with clubs to teach properly?"
She bit her lip in concentration, trying to stretch out her shoulders, which were aching from hunching over the cauldron and instructions. When she finished preparing all the other ingredients, she let out a tiny groan and went back to the ingredient that she could not read to save her life. She decided to take her chances.
Taking sixty grams of powdered catnip, she gritted her teeth together, dumped it into the cauldron, and squeezed her eyes shut.
A sliver of brown peaked out from under a nude eyelid, gleaming with surprise. Nothing had happened.
Then it exploded.
Hermione ducked onto the ground, arms over her head, and burst out coughing as she inhaled smoke. After the bang stopped ringing in her ears, she heard the tiny crackle of fire from above her, followed by an irritated sigh and the sound of it being extinguished.
"Miss Granger, it is only the first day and you are already melting cauldrons? This does not show much promise for the remainder of the summer."
Hermione brushed back her hair from her face and slowly stood up, slightly dazed from the accident, and tried to sweep the soot from her hair. She coughed again to clear the dust from her lungs, smoothed her robes, and gazed at him in irritation.
Snape did not look happy, and his frown was growing more pronounced by the second. The nerve of the girl, to make an accident and then look at him like that, as if it was his fault!
"What turn of inescapable idiocy hindered you this time, Granger?" he said, almost sounding bored, as he rounded the desk and came upon the table, where the remains of the cauldron gurgled like a happy baby on its surface. The remnants of his instructions lay upon the floor, half burned with blackened edges. He picked them up and held them up to the light of the window, trying to read what he had written.
"I followed your instructions," she insisted stubbornly. Snape resolutely ignored her and squinted at the torched parchment that he held delicately between his fingers.
"What is that?" he muttered under his breath, looking at the same thing that Hermione had been puzzling over before.
"I thought that it said 'sixty grams of catnip', sir."
"What are you talking about?" Hermione couldn't help but think that he was again beginning to sound like a spoiled child. "This obviously says eighty grams."
Hermione tried to grab it out of his hand but he quickly pulled it away, holding it above her head to taunt her. Her fists balled up on each side of her hips and she glared at him with fire in her eyes, her lips pursed in annoyance.
"Let me see it," she demanded, holding out a red-striped hand.
"Ask nicely," he replied, a playful lilt in his voice. He noticed the corners of her mouth softened, but her eyes remained as stubborn and shining as before. He could tell that she was doing everything in her power to avoid asking for the parchment 'nicely'.
"Good sir," she said, clamping her teeth together and closing her eyes. Her eyelids twitched, closed tight and her eyelashes feathered together. "Would you be so kind as to lend me the parchment that is in your gentle hand?"
She slowly opened her eyes to see him standing there, the instructions still held tightly in his hand as he held it above her head. He was smirking smugly against a backdrop of flesh that shone pale in the gray sunlight.
"You forgot the magic word." He was teasing her, but he wasn't cruel. Hermione's heart fluttered in her throat. She quickly swallowed it, staring at the paper that swung above her, swaying back and forth in the drafty room.
A smile reached across her face and she held out her wand before he noticed that she had withdrawn it, and as she yelled "Accio parchment!", he immediately regretted buying her such a powerful wand. The delicate parchment tried to wriggle out of his fingers like a snake attempting to escape, and when it found that it couldn't, it sacrificed a tiny piece of itself to roll itself into the safety of Hermione's outstretched palm. With hungry eyes and a satisfied expression on her face, she turned and he stared at the back of her head, with the frizzy curls that cascaded past her shoulder blades, wishing that he could burn holes in her ears with just his eyes. He heard her unrolling the parchment and an immediate "ha!". Snape flinched.
She spun back around, the rouge of triumph in her cheeks, and her lips were stretched wide. "This is obviously sixty, not eighty."
"So you say," Snape said blandly. "I must admit that it was not clear, but it could have said either. You should have checked your resources before you completed the potion."
"You are my resource. Or have you forgotten that you wrote this?"
"Oh, oops." Snape said, poking his wand into the parchment. It immediately burst into flames and Hermione squealed and dropped it, stomping it under her foot. "Too bad." He gave a tiny smile in false sympathy and quickly added, "Well, I think that is enough destruction for today, and we have forgotten breakfast. I believe it is time for lunch."
He exited the room without another word, leaving Hermione to clean up the mess and stare thoughtfully at him, still unconsciously crushing the ashes of the parchment underneath her foot.
She had eaten too fast. Snape, in the back of his mind, was somewhat hoping for intelligent conversation, even if it was just with Hermione Granger, but had been sorely disappointed when the girl just bolted down her food and headed to the window, coloring with excitement.
"It's snowing," she observed, trying to keep the childish excitement out of her voice.
"Yes," Snape replied, pushing a floating carrot around his stew. The house elves still refused to cook his food to perfection, and Hermione had found a doorknob in her own. No wonder she had left the table early. "It tends to do that."
"It's fantastic here."
Snape dropped his spoon into his stew and looked up at her, eyebrows raised in surprise. She was still gazing longingly out the window. He chose his words hesitantly, carefully. "Do you really think so?"
A brown pupil glided into the corner of her eye, glancing at him before turning it back to the softly falling snow that was beginning to stick to stick in crisscrossed frost to the window.
"Yes…the snow's so white. It's not dirty at all." She stuffed her hands into her pocket and allowed tendrils of hair to escape from her ears and swing into her face. "I think I'm going to go outside and…play."
Severus concentrated on keeping the corner of his mouth under control. "I thoroughly hope that you enjoy yourself, then."
Her head finally turned to the side, and she tried to keep her mouth from dropping open in amazement. He was actually going to let her go and…have fun? And he was wishing that she did so? What was wrong with him? Had the elves slipped poison into his lunch?
"Right…" The awkwardness was back in full force, and her jumper was suddenly very itchy. "Would you like to join me?"
He looked surprised by her offer but quickly composed himself, settling on staring at her stonily and placing a long-fingered hand across his fork. His dark eyes were just shadows across the dim room.
"No. I will stay inside today."
"All right." Did she sound disappointed? No, of course not, he was imagining it. He stabbed an under-cooked chunk of potato with his fork. And with that, Hermione was gone.
He could see her out of his dining room window, balling snow between gloved hands, her cheeks rosy from the cold. She looked up at him every so often, her face expressionless, portraying neither satisfaction that he had stayed inside nor dismay that he didn't join her in the gray, frosty, summer day.
He had just nodded back to his stew, continuing to swirl vegetables through until the broth congealed, when he was startled out his chair by a loud thunk.
A large ball of snow had collided with the window, transforming into a white splatter that reached from pane to pane. He could see her eyes peeking from underneath before they were hidden from his view by half-melted snow sliding down the glass.
The coat rack immediately sprung to attention and leant forward toward Snape's seat as he tried to regain his composure. A dangerous smirk came over his face as he grabbed the green and silver scarf and wove it around his neck. It was payback time.
A/N: Sorry that updates are rather infrequent, school has been horrible lately. Also, for those who didn't recieve author alerts because ff.net was acting weird, Severus Snape's Diary was updated a little over a week ago.
Thanks to: Anarane Anwamane, Electryone (Yes, if he survives. Mwahaha), Slim Shady, Joshua Glass (Smile? Hmm...), Imhilien, Ana Morales (wow, I'm incredibly surprised that I'm attracting a small crowd of people who aren't fans of SS/HG. You have no idea how flattering that is), xmaverickf14x, Akasha Ravensong, Chibidaima, yeoldecrazy1 (Actually, I don't really get tired of it. But I do appreciate longer reviews :)), Zvezdana (the title? It's an html tag, but I can't show you here since html tags will either be stripped or turn into html. Drop me an e-mail and I'll tell you how), Aindel S. Druida, aNNiie sNapez (you have no idea), krisleigh, Luna Writer (a very evil person, like me), and M'cha Araem ( X2. Yes, yes it was :). I meant it to be that way...).
And, as always, thanks to my beta Laiagarien.
Reviews are much appreciated!