A/N: This is a very dark and depressing angst-fest with an implied love quadrangle (complicated, I know) and an unusual ending. I think it's the saddest thing I ever wrote in my life. Please RR so I know what everyone thought of it. I'll be posting another chapter to my other, unrelated story tomorrow.

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter. :sigh: I can only dream of being that good a writer.

Monsters

by Barbara Lestrange

I.

On the first day of the new term, Potions was quiet. It wasn't so much that Snape had managed, somehow, to get more intimidating during the summer between their fifth and sixth year--though he had. He was thinner; his eyes sunk deeper under his dark brows; his hair fell into his face and cast its shadow across his sallow complexion. His ever-present scowl had intensified, and with one look he dared Potter--yes, dared him--to say anything at all about the Death Eater parents of the Slytherins, now enjoying the accommodations at Azkaban.

No, the quiet had nothing to do with Snape himself as he hissed the rules of order for the term. Something had come over the students, Gryffindors in particular. They were subdued, almost withdrawn, Snape noted; their gaze as cold as any Slytherin's. He studied each student as he listed off the course objectives; he met with defiant looks as he read off today's instructions. The nastiest of all came as a surprise: it was on the face of Hermione Granger.

"Have you any questions?" he asked, brushing back the oily shock of hair from his face.

No one answered.

"Miss Granger?" he grunted.

"I have none, sir," she replied icily.

"Then you may begin. You have an hour and a half."

If he was taken aback, he didn't show it. Instead, he slunk back behind his desk and sat down, tapping his long, bony fingers together, watching the class.

Longbottom--miserable failure that he is--was intently focused on grinding the ingredients together in his mortar. He kept on grinding even past the point where he had made a fine powder, growling to himself and mashing the pestle violently.

Potter kept adding too many drops of the syrup of hellebore. Each time, the mixture frothed and foamed, and he zapped it away with his wand, beginning again.

Weasley wasn't even working. He moved the vials around on his desk, and occasionally feigned effort at the assignment. By the time an hour had passed, his cauldron still contained only the first two ingredients--and damned if he seemed to care.

Granger was by far the worst of the lot. She was going through the motions, of course, thoroughly enjoying herself as she stirred her potion--which was perfect, as always. A fine gold vapour rose from the top of her cauldron and she smiled thinly, eying Weasley contemptuously.

It looked for all the world to Severus that she had snapped.

The House of Gryffindor was fractured.

When Snape called time, the Slytherins and Hermione brought a flagon of their potion up to his desk for testing. The rest of the Gryffindors cleaned up in silence and shuffled out, except for Ron. He was waiting, arms crossed and wand in hand, for Hermione. Looking out the door, Snape could see that Harry was waiting for both of them, looking rather exasperated.

"Evanesco," said Hermione, and her perfect potion vanished. As she turned to leave, Ron stepped in front of her. "Excuse me," she snarled--snarled! Snape could hardly believe his ears.

She reached up and touched Ron's arm, and with a sigh and a shake of her head she shoved him aside. He stumbled and fell onto a desk, cracking his arm hard against the edge of it.

"Are you all right, Ron?" called Harry.

"Why, you. . ." Ron growled, rubbing his sore arm.

She spun around, drawing her own wand. "You wouldn't dare!" she spat.

"I would," Ron hissed.

"TWENTY POINTS FROM GRYFFINDOR!" Snape roared. "Weasley, Potter, OUT; OUT!" He swooped down on Ron and Harry like a monstrous bat; they fled and he sent their belongings chasing after them. "And detention for you both!" he bellowed down the hall.

He turned around to face Hermione, zapping the door over his shoulder. A heavy bar clunked down into place and locked them in--all the better for disciplinary discussions.

But there was something in the way she looked at him that, as he opened his mouth to reprimand her, made him think twice of it. It was. . .a sorrow in her eyes, perhaps. It was a shade of defeat, or possibly regret--or possibly all of them together. Whatever it was, it stirred something in him that he had not felt in a long time.

So instead, he gestured for her to sit down--and much to her surprise, he sat beside her.

"What happened?" he said rather than asked as she stared at him.

She sat for a moment without answering, obviously trying to think of an acceptable response that wouldn't reveal the full truth.

"There was a fight last night in our common room. Most everyone is still sore about it," she said.

"Clearly," he began, "you think I am a fool; that I did not notice."

She fell silent, looking sullen. That wasn't what she thought at all.

"To think," he amended, "I once considered you my best student."

She bit her lip, and an awkward silence passed between them. Hadn't he hated her? She'd been so sure that he had; that he could never view a non-Slytherin--much less a muggle-born Gryffindor--as anything more than scum. Well, surely that was his feeling now.

"Well," he said, looking down his long nose at her, "have you nothing to say in your defense?"

Hermione shook her head slowly, sadly. What had she gotten herself into? Why, why had she thought it would be all right to destroy her life--and for whom? For Viktor Krum! She'd been back two weeks now and there'd been no owl. He'd promised he'd write. She'd written.

All the things Ron had said on that first night back at number twelve, Grimmauld Place--never did they seem more true than they did now. Sure, he'd been angry and jealous, but what had given her the right to shove it in his face? Maybe he was right and she was filthy mudblood trash; after all, hadn't Malfoy been saying so for years? None of the others wanted anything to do with her. And now, she'd lost the respect of a teacher, the very one she'd worked so hard to impress for five years. All this, over three miserable weeks with Viktor Krum.

She buried her face in her hands and tried desperately not to cry.

"Accio tea," said Snape, and a tea set floated over to where they sat, square in the middle of the dark classroom. Hermione watched from between her fingers as he poured two cups; one for him and one for her. "I have no class immediately following yours," he said casually, pouring a bit of cream into his cup and raising his eyebrow inquisitively. At her nod, he put a few drops in hers as well. "So you have a choice: you can talk to me now, or you can do so in detention."

Her eyes were red but she had managed not to cry. This strange display of mercy--of compassion--was so shocking, coming from Professor Snape, that she was able to choke down her tears, pick up the tea, and take a small, welcome sip.

"Thank you," she said quietly. "I suppose I'll talk now."

Snape wrapped his fingers around his teacup, watching her intently without even a hint of a smile.

"For a long time, I have been corresponding with the international quidditch star Viktor Krum. I'm sure you remember him," she said slowly, trying to get some measure of what he was thinking; why he would want to hear any of this mess.

He simply nodded for her to continue, and sipped his tea.

"Anyway, it all began quite innocently. He fancied me, but I didn't feel anything for him. We talked; there was the ball incident and the Triwizard Tournament; he went home and...we wrote letters. Then, sometime last year. . ." She paused as her voice trailed off, feeling very embarassed to be telling any of this to Severus Snape.

"Go on," he said.

"Sometime last year, around, well, Valentine's Day I think it was, my feelings started to. . .change. I didn't notice it at first, since we were all so absorbed in Harry's visions. And then, after the fight with. . .with He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named, when I was recovering, I got a letter that..." She looked directly at Snape. ". . .That said he was in love with me, and wouldn't I like to visit him in Bulgaria. And ever since Fred and George set off those fireworks I felt this need to. . .to do something different, so I decided that I would. I didn't tell anyone about it, either; I asked my muggle parents to send me, and they agreed."

She stirred her tea a little; the cup shook and wriggled its little china legs.

"I got back two weeks ago. When I said where I'd been, no one was pleased--least of all Ron and Harry."

Snape simply nodded. No one in the Order had been particularly pleased, himself included. Of course he had been there--there at the home of the late Sirius Black--that night she had returned from the continent. She simply hadn't noticed him there: who would, when all he did was lurk in a shadowed corner, away from everyone else? Of course he had heard it all before, but to hear it again, in her own regretful words, was something different. It was something almost special; it was private and far more personal than teachers and students often get.

"We had a row. Things were said that maybe weren't meant, but maybe are true anyhow." She looked him in the eye. "No one speaks English in Bulgaria, Professor. And I don't speak Bulgarian, though I tried translation charms and everything I could think of to get by. Viktor's friends are all older than I am; I was dragged to places that make the Hog's Head look like a right proper little tea shop. I drank grog and firewhisky and drinks that I didn't recognize; I flew recklessly on the back of his broomstick; I did things that proper little Hermione Granger would never do. And then I bragged about them because I was proud."

"Are you, still?" Snape asked quietly. He poured a perk up of hot tea into his cup and hers.

"No," she replied. "No, I'm not."

"That's a start," he replied calmly.

"I realize now that there was nothing to be proud of," she said in a voice that was barely audible. "It's not as though I actually chose to do any of those things; I just went along with whatever Viktor wanted because. . ."

She trailed off once again, sure that she had seen her teacher's lip quiver. When he said nothing, she started up again.

"Last night I was waiting for my owl because I was sure he'd have written back to me by now. And I was so flustered, because without her I can't send off another letter. So I. . ." She reddened a bit, looking down into her tea which was letting off a few soft wisps of steam. "So I asked Harry and Ron if I could perhaps borrow one of theirs."

"I see."

He was glowering now, looking angrier than she had seen him in a long while.

"And so that's how it started. It spread through the whole house rather quickly, I'm afraid," she added quickly, not quite sure what it was that she'd said to set him off.

And just as suddenly as he had grown so ferocious-looking, his expression softened to one of contemplation.

"I suppose I am a filthy mudblood who rides in muggle flying machines and drinks far too much grog, who rides with dangerous boys and forgets about her friends when it's convenient," she grumbled. "And I shouldn't have rubbed it all in their faces. I shouldn't have told Ron I didn't care for him; I just. . ."

Snape nodded slowly. Hermione could feel her hair stand on end.

"I just wanted to know," she finished, and turned away, taking a burning swig of the tea. Her hands were shaking.

There was a long silence.

Finally, Snape broke it. "I want this trivial business settled. No fighting; no curses, hexes, or jinxes; no ignoring my class over petty rivalries."

Hermione's ears grew hot. That was it? Just told to end it? When it was so obvious she didn't even know how or she would've already? She swallowed the lump in her throat and hung her head in shame, hoping that her hair would hide her face. He called her agony trivial. Her loss of her dearest mates, trivial. Where did he get off saying such things? It's not as though he ever had friends to lose!

"You will offer your apologies to Potter and Weasley, and to the other members of the Order whom you have worried or offended. You will patch together your house, and go back to being who you were last term: a mildly irritating but hardworking student devoted to her work and to the well-being of her associates. Do you understand?"

She nodded and suppressed a sob. It came out as a tiny whimper, and she clamped her hands over her mouth to keep anything else from escaping.

It didn't go unnoticed.

Severus knew he'd never been good with emotions, less still those of women. He had no patience for any of it; certainly he had no patience for the boy-troubles of a teenaged girl. He had thought, since she was so close to Potter, that growling at her until she relented would work for both of them: she would do as she was told, and he would ignore her until she aggravated him again. And yet he found himself consumed by guilt at the sound of her crying; guilt that he had no comforting words for her. Guilt that he knew exactly how she felt, and yet would strike at her when she was most vulnerable.

Guilt that he had been like her, once: shamed and regretful, lost to unfathomable emotion and desperately lonely.

She straightened up in her chair and pushed the hair back from her face. Her eyes were bloodshot and puffy and her breath was shaky, but she had that determined air about her--a trace, if only a trace, of her normal self: the self he related to so well. She vanished her tea and made as if to stand up to leave; it would soon be time for her next class, and it was too late to consider heading to Transfiguration.

He knew he had to say something.

"You will hear from Viktor Krum," he said softly. "And when you do, I want you to come find me."

Their eyes met.

She stared at him, her eyes narrow with resentment, eyebrows furrowed in confusion. Slowly she backed away from him, nudging into a few desks before turning and breaking into a run. The door unbolted and swung open, and she was gone.

His expression was frozen in place as he rose from the desk, drifting like a ghost toward the window that faced the Forbidden Forest. In the glass, he caught a glimpse of his reflection: No wonder she had run from him: that was the look of death, not sympathy. With a grunt of disgust he drew the curtains and whirled on the classroom. The Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff fifth-years would be coming soon; there was no time for self-pity, and nothing he could do but teach as though nothing dreadful had happened.

Fine. He had mastered that art ages ago.