Chapter Title: Puncuality (2/3)
Chapter Rating: PG - for a brief extreme masochist thought
Warnings: None really, except that thought.
Author's Note: I know that this chapter might seem a tiny bit dark in a couple of sentences, but I needed to set the tone of Hermione's total surrender to her obsession with someone that she should not desire.
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Here
I stand, desparately hoping that I drip of the same sensuality that
seems to premeate damn near every woman I know, instead of the
twisting anxiety that I feel gnaw at me. I inhale deeply, and lift my
hand to the solid red oak door that separates the broody professor
from the rest of the world. I release the fragile breath and rap my
tense knuckles against the wood.
One breath, in, out.
Two
breathes, I think I'm dying.
Three breathes, footsteps.
I
hear a grandfather clock gong my puncuality to the empty air. He
appreciates precision.
Before the seventh gong is complete, he
has opened the door and lifted a dark brow, accessing me.
I
feel his regard creep into the confines of my consciousness, and I
fight the impulse to openly twinge, "Hello, Professor."
"Miss
Granger," he acknowledges me cooly with every bit of even
assurance that I cannot quite posess.
He turns then, and
saunters to the large desk at the back of the room, which
complimented the door, floor paneling, and every piece of furniture
that decorates the spacious office, red oak, all of it. He stops in
the center of the open space, and I suppress a minute gasp of shock.
I expected dead things, potion ingredients, and macabre books
detailing horrendous tortures to be strewn about. The alluring room
held none of these. Instead of dark tomes, the bookselves held
classical literature. In lieu of prized animal carasses filling the
walls, paintings that display splashes of paint whose hues run into
shades rivaling my life's blood, and lovers entangled in a tantric
embrace devours the office's horizontal space.
This
man, made certain to reflect the smoldering heat I knew lay within
the ill-tempered Professor into his surroundings. I was lost on this
realisation alone.
This was not the man the other students,
especially the bitter, hissing girls, teased me about in the Common
Room as I prepared to come here tonight. I don't care if he does as
they say he will, and harms me beyond recognition. I want him to.
Then, at least, he will have touched me.
Belatedly, I
realize that he that he had begun listing my duties for the
night.
". . . and I want you to cleanse my tools
throughly. I expect there to be no trace of anything after you have
concluded your tasks. The last thing I need is a bottle or a cauldron
to explode whilst I am trying to get some work accomplished. Do you
understand?"
"Yes, Professor," I clear my
throat and brace myself for the impending onslaught, "Professor,
I wanted to be certain of all my tasks before I begin. You have
assigned me to clean your potion bottles and cauldrons. Is there
anything else?"
He whirls to face me, wearing an infamous
look of comtemptful disatisfaction, "You simple-minded child,
haven't you made any effort to listen to a word that I have spoken? I
don't know why I even waste my breath on you, as your mind never
seems to be in residence of your body."
He scoffs and
storms to his desk, "You will dust and straighten the
bookselves, dust the furniture, and go into my laboratory through
that door, and clean the potion supplies. Are we clear?"
My
eyes follow the end of finger which pointed to a door I hadn't notice
upon entering the room. I swallow my ego and reply, "Transparent."
I
silently scold myself for allowing me to believe that I could reach
beyond my limits, in hopes of acquiring what I could never have.
"Silly girl," I chide myself, "Stupid girl." I
bite the inside of my cheek. "Seven Year or no, he would never
have you," a cruel voice whispers to me.
"You may
get to work now."
I nod dumbly, sampling the tears that
are collecting behind my eyes as I look away at a far wall, "Of
course, Professor."
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TBC
