The only notable exceptions had been the Slytherins - they easily comprised most of the class. Other than that, there was a small group of Ravenclaws, a lone Hufflepuff, and again, Hermione. Not many Gryffindors would willingly choose to subject themselves to an advanced class in which Snape gave them his personal and exacting attention.
But, as always, Hermione's unconscious clamouring for praise and academic recognition had taken control, and though she did truly enjoy Potions, there was more to her choice than an honest enjoyment of the subject. Snape was one of the few professors at Hogwarts who had never given her the praise she felt she deserved. Even a simple, approving nod of the head would have sufficed. But the only real acknowledgement she had ever received, other than being referred to as 'Potter's little friend', or being told to put her hand down in class, had been that horrible, horrible incident with her teeth in her 4th year. That sort of acknowledgement was certainly not what she had wanted.
Hermione took a deep breath and closed her eyes, trying to relax. She could feel the knots in her shoulders and back, and stretched, arching her spine and twisting her arms about, trying to release some of the tension. She sighed, and let her head fall over. Exhaustion was catching up with her - she had been getting around four hours of sleep a night all week, and it was catching up.
Thank god for the weekend, she thought, closing her eyes.
She felt rather than heard Snape come up behind her, and the fine hairs on her arms and the back of her neck rose. She knew it was Snape; who else could be so completely silent?
Hermione opened her eyes and stared forward. If he wanted to snap at her, she wasn't going to help him by playing the scared little girl.
"Miss Granger," he said softly, his voice lacking its normal malice.
Hermione turned her head to the side, and she could see him faintly out of the corner of her eye.
"Sir?"
"You're early."
"Yes, I was in the library, and thought I'd come down before everyone rushed out of the Great Hall and crowded the corridors."
She thought she saw Snape nod, and turned her head back.
She still felt as though she was being watched though, and, uncomfortably aware of her slouching posture, she sat up straight, and threaded her fingers together on the table in front of her.
Snape snorted.
"Don't feel you have to put up the 'apt pupil' façade for me, Miss Granger."
Hermione stiffened, and thought Ahhh. There's the Snape we know and love.
She sat up straighter and stared blankly ahead, a tactic normally reserved for nagging parents.
"How very…petulant."
Snape's voice slithered over her shoulder and caressed her earlobe. She fought back a shiver, and wondered again why he insisted on using The Voice. It worked perfectly for instilling mind-numbing fear in 1st through 4th year students, but after the girls (and some of the boys, to be fair) began hitting puberty…well, it still induced terror, but it had the added quality of sending the plethora of hormones normally present in any given teenaged body into an orgy of delight.
Or so Hermione hoped. She had never worked up the courage to ask Lavender and Parvati what they thought of The Voice. But they didn't seem the types who liked dark-mysterious-and-angsty - they were more pretty-muscular-and-mind-numbingly-stupid kind of girls.
Hermione sighed, in both sexual and intellectual frustration, and half-turned in her chair again.
"If you're trying to make me cry, would you mind speeding it up a bit?"
Snape had the decency to look abashed, before he scowled.
"That remark has just cost Gryffindor 30 points, Miss Granger. I hope you're pleased."
She just turned in her chair again and waved a hand tiredly.
In actuality, she wasn't all that pleased. Rather alarmed, really, that she had just said something so blunt and rude to a professor.
But, she rationalised, it's Professor Snape. Regardless of his work for the Order, his personal opinion stopped counting in 4th year.
This, of course, brought the unfortunate Teeth Incident to the forefront of her mind. Hermione's already bad mood quickly took a further downward spiral. She scowled.
Snape had since moved to his desk, and was completely ignoring her.
The rest of the students began filing into the classroom. Her lab partner, Blaise Zabini, slid into the seat beside hers, and watched her warily.
"What?" she snapped, not looking up at him.
He jumped, and grinned slightly.
"Wake up to find a house elf stoking your fire, Granger?"
"No Zabini, I thought they were all being tortured in the Slytherin Bondage Room?"
He chuckled, and pulled out his quill and a sheet of parchment. "Touché. But wrong, unfortunately. It's only on Thursdays and Saturdays that we miserable Slytherin bastards engage in any elf-torture."
Hermione continued scowling at the table, willing it to spontaneously combust and kill her in the process.
Blaise snapped his fingers in front of her face a few times.
"Oi, snap out of it, Granger, we have work to do here." He leaned closer, and lowered his voice. "And if you don't, I'll pour slug juice down your robe."
Hermione looked at him with contempt. "I thought we had progressed beyond that point in 5th year, Zabini."
Blaise winked, and murmured, "Of course we have, but I can't be acting as though I were concerned about you - imagine how tarnished my reputation would become. And since I'm not willing to sacrifice my image without sufficient compensation, it'll have to be the slug juice."
Hermione blinked, and stared at him, feigning naiveté. "Sufficient compensation…?"
Blaise raised an eyebrow, grinned and shook his head. "Merlin's balls, Granger, you Gryffs really are thick. Though," his grin widened, and he leaned closer again, "I do rather like the whole innocence thing."
In their tumultuous 5th year, Snape decided he had finally had enough of Hermione coaching Neville in Potions class. In the middle of the autumn term, he had (much to her unspoken relief) declared that she was to never partner with Neville again. With a few pangs of guilt at her barely masked pleasure, Hermione wondered what other partnership would have to be broken up. It was then that she noticed the malicious grin on Snape's face.
Five minutes later, she was sitting next to a surprisingly calm Blaise Zabini, and Neville had been partnered with the hulking horror that was Millicent Bulstrode.
With a shiver, Hermione looked away from her cringing ex-partner, and eyed Blaise. He had also been watching Millicent and Neville, but his expression was far removed from Hermione's - amusement instead of dismay.
She immediately bristled - how dare he laugh at poor Neville's misfortune?
Or Bulstrode's, her inner voice added.
Hermione sighed and looked back at Blaise, who was now grinning at her.
"Seems as though we've both lucked out," he said quietly. "I've finally gotten away from that troglodyte, and you will be spared the humiliation of being the focus of Longbottom's woeful, longing stares for the fifth year running."
Hermione gaped at Blaise.
"I was never the focus of anything of Neville's," she hissed.
Blaise raised an eyebrow.
And so it began. Once Hermione realised that Blaise was just testing her and seeing how well he could push her buttons, she stopped responding. Though she might be a Gryffindor, she was anything but thick, and she was well aware that Slytherins were all about power-games.
So, after a few days of careful deliberation, she started to play.
Blaise was pleased, and obviously so. They had been brewing a rather complex concealing concoction, and Blaise had remarked that perhaps, if he poured the slug juice he was currently adding to the cauldron over Hermione's robes, it might "mask that wretched Gryffindor scent."
Hermione, without blinking an eye, pointed out that by the same token she could quite easily douse him with the essence of Bicorn liver she was measuring out, which would turn him a charming shade of purple, as well as kill him.
Blaise had just laughed.
So she had a hard time masking her relief when Snape paired them up. He had sneered, as usual, but she caught a glimpse of something else when he glanced at Blaise. Blaise, being the Slytherin he was, pretended he had no idea what she was talking about.
Hermione, understanding (unlike most of her housemates) that discretion was the better part of valour, gave up, after only a quarter of an hour - a new record for her.
Their classes had progressed much as usual up till this point, and Hermione, irritated as she was, knew it was futile to hold on to her foul mood as long as Blaise was trying to make her laugh.
They didn't have much chance to talk before they had to focus their attention completely on the project at hand. Snape, though a strong factor, was not the sole reason few students took the NEWT Potions class - it was a difficult course, and not all students who applied for it were accepted.
It wasn't till the end of class, while they were cleaning up, that Blaise slipped a scrap of parchment into Hermione's hand. He threw her a wink, and walked out of the class before her, with the rest of the Slytherins.
Hermione didn't read it till she reached her dormitory - her last period on Friday was a spare, and both Lavender and Parvati were blessedly absent.
The note read: You, Me, and a study date in the Astronomy Tower after dinner. No excuses Granger! You're starting to slip in Potions, and I can't have you dragging me down with you.
Hermione snorted. Slipping, indeed. He probably just wanted to go over the homework for next week. She crumpled the note up, and incinerated it with a murmured spell and swish of her wand.
She was thinking about Blaise. He didn't seem to be at dinner tonight, which only gave more fuel to that train of thought. She couldn't make heads or tales of the boy most of the time - she had just learned to feign confidence in front of him, and apparently that was the way to win a Slytherin's…a Slytherin's what? Respect, attention, affection?
She frowned at her plate, and started turning an unfortunate pile of peas into green mush with the flat of her fork.
It's just a study date, Hermione. Get a hold of yourself, she thought.
But no matter how many times she repeated that mantra, there remained a niggling little worry at the back of her mind. He had called it a date. No matter if it was in jest - in all the time they'd been meeting up, generally in some abandoned classroom, to study, he had never called it a date.
And why the Astronomy Tower, of all places? It was The Place where students went to engage in extracurricular activities. Very extracurricular activities. On Friday and Saturday nights, there was a queue.
Hermione frowned and dropped her fork onto her plate with a clatter. Harry and Ron looked up in surprise at the sharp noise.
"All right there, Hermione?" Ron asked, looking mildly concerned. Apparently, they had actually noticed how quiet she was.
She smiled slightly, and nodded. "Yeah, I'm just a bit preoccupied with some Arithmancy."
The A-word made Ron shudder - he had learned by now that it was far better to simply leave well enough alone where Hermione and scholarly musings, particularly Arithmancy-related ones, were concerned.
"Don't worry, I'm sure you'll do brilliantly at whatever it is," Harry said.
She smiled again, and pushed back from the table.
"I'm going to go to the library, I'll see you back in the common room later?"
The boys nodded, smiled, and quickly returned to their conversation.
Hermione hefted her ever-present satchel, and walked out of the Great Hall. They were sweet boys, they really were. But sometimes she really wondered if they saw her as anything other than a walking encyclopedia that tended to nag around exam time. She sighed, and headed up the stairs to the Astronomy Tower.