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