The weeks had raced by until suddenly it was Halloween and the term was halfway over. For Severus, the passage of time was a blessing, for he relished his time spent alone, for days on end, working in his dungeons.
He set down his quill and rolled up the parchment he had been massacring with red ink. That was the last of the third year midterms and he was thoroughly disgusted by the lot. He thought that surely after two years of his careful and guided tutelage, some of them might actually grasp the basics of potions brewing; but they all appeared to lack the potions making instinct.
His thoughts turned briefly to Draco Malfoy, one of his brightest students, along with Granger, his mind wouldn't let him forget. Too bad Draco hadn't been able to escape his own father's influence. However, judging by that pathetic excuse for Veritaserum he had concocted for Lucius, perhaps Draco was slipping and becoming careless.
He stood, stretching to relieve the tension in his back. The feast was due to start in a few minutes and Dumbledore had made it clear that he expected Severus to attend. He stalked through the corridors to the Great Hall, pleased to deduct twenty points from Gryffindor for a pair of snogging fourth years.
He entered the Hall and paused, eyes taking in the entire room, nodding briefly in the direction of the Slytherin table. It seemed the feast had already started, judging by the heaping platters on the tables. He started to the Head Table and caught sight of Granger giggling with the Muggle Studies professor, something Wilde; it would not be worth his time to try to remember her first name.
He had known from the moment Dumbledore told him, Granger would be trouble. Despite his efforts, she did not try to avoid him, but in fact actually sought him out on occasion. Just last week she had the nerve to ask him to brew up a batch of Veritaserum for her sixth years. Severus had finally agreed, knowing she would tattle to Dumbledore if he didn't. She arrived early to pick up the potion, which led to a few awkward minutes while he finished brewing. She wandered quietly through the workroom, inspecting his jars of ingredients and looking at his other ongoing projects. She didn't ask about them, and he certainly didn't volunteer any information.
Granger glanced over at him, in mid-sentence, and their eyes locked for a moment, until Severus scowled and looked to Dumbledore, who was smiling broadly at him. How he hated that man at times. He wondered how soon he could sneak out without being noticed.
Severus sat on his usual end by Slytherin, nodding tersely to Flitwick who sat to his left.
"Have you finished all of your mid-terms, Severus?" Flitwick asked as Severus filled his plate.
"Nearly."
"Any prodigies in the first years?"
Severus snorted but didn't answer, and Flitwick abandoned all efforts of polite conversation with him.
He couldn't remember ever being a social person. From a young age, he had discovered that he preferred the quietness of his own thoughts over the inane chatter from others. Once every few years, he would allow Albus or Minerva to talk him into an evening drink, or even a trip to Hogsmeade, but he still preferred the quiet and dark of his dungeons.
Finally dinner ended, and Dumbledore instructed everyone to stand. With a wave, the tables and chairs moved against the walls, the lighted jack-o-lanterns dimmed, and the walls began emitting some hideous Muggle music. He didn't recognize it, but many of the students did, judging by the clapping and squeals of approval. He prowled the Hall for several songs, until he could take no more, then slipped out under the watchful eye of Dumbledore.
Hermione walked slowly back to her rooms, stuffed from the wonderful feast, and she allowed her mind to wander. Ever since she had been in Snape's dungeons for the Veritaserum and had seen the potions he had been working on, something had been tickling at the back of her mind, some thought that seemed to slip further when she tried to focus on it.
Yawning, she gave the password to Lucinda, in the portrait to her quarters, and headed straight for her bedroom. She disrobed, pulling on a cotton tank top and shorts, then climbed under the covers and reached for the book she had been reading on Alchemy, Water Into Wine and Other Miraculous Feats.
Suddenly, something clicked in her mind and she jumped out of bed and ran to her sitting room where she pulled out Moste Potente Potions. Flipping through the pages, she found what she was looking for: the mortalis fallax. As she reviewed the ingredients list, she realized that he must have been experimenting on his own, because the list did not match what she had seen.
But why mortalis fallax?
She vaguely remembered him confronting her about the potion right before graduation, but she didn't understand his motivation then when she was a seventh year, and she still didn't understand, five years later. She was determined to find out this time.
She grabbed her teaching robes and pulled them on as headed back into the hallway and towards the dungeons. She stopped first at his classroom, which was empty, then knocked on the office door, but there was no response. Hermione remembered that he had left the Halloween festivities early, so he could have already retired for the night. She decided it wouldn't hurt to take a glance at the potion, just to see if she was indeed correct.
She opened the door to the converted classroom and held in a gasp as she saw Snape standing over a cauldron, his back to her. "I'm sorry, Professor --"
"What do you want?" he snarled, turning to her, his face showing surprise for an instant before the snarl resurfaced. "Yes?"
"Are you brewing mortalis fallax?"
"How disappointing that it took you a week to figure that out."
She ignored his snipe and asked, "But what are you doing with it? The ingredients don't make any sense at all."
"You tell me, Professor."
Hermione met Snape's gaze squarely, saw the implicit challenge, and the old unquenching desire to prove herself, to him especially, resurfaced.
Snape crossed his arms over his chest and watched with subdued interest as she studied the ingredients spread over one table, becoming amused when she examined the Belladonna and began muttering under her breath. She moved to the other table, and whirled to face him.
"You're trying to beat the killing curse, aren't you?"
He nodded, turning back to his cauldron. "Since this was the subject of your seventh year project, you should remember what mortalis fallax does."
"It causes the body to momentarily shut down, to die in essence. And if the body is dead when avada kedavra hits it, then nothing happens."
"Theoretically, yes," Snape answered. "Continue."
"But you'd have to adapt it so that the potion lies inert until the curse triggers it."
"Yes."
"And you would have to increase its potency so that one dose would be effective against multiple attacks, while reverting back to inert until the next such attack."
"Yes."
"So judging by what I see here, you're using Belladonna and root of asphodel to make it inert, which could work, and dragon's blood for the potency."
"Very good, Professor. The Belladonna and root of asphodel do indeed work, better than any other combination I have found."
She stared at the jar of Belladonna and shook her head. "But the Belladonna might interfere with the longevity of the potion, since it breaks down so rapidly. It will probably need an extender."
"Yes, I have had that problem."
"How exactly do you test the potion?"
"Why don't you test it for yourself?" Snape walked to another door in the far corner of the room, and threw it open. When she didn't follow immediately, he added, "Or are you unable to perform the killing curse?"
Scowling, Hermione retorted, "You were around the last time I used it, remember? That nice little moonlight-filled romp through a werewolf infested forest?"
She strode purposefully to the open door, only breaking from his stare when she reached the room. It was another unused classroom, and she was surprised to see a wire cage holding several rats resting on one long table.
"But how do you know the potion will be as effective on humans--"
"Because unlike Muggle medicine, potions function exactly the same on all creatures, due to their magical properties. The only adjustment is to change the dosage based on body mass."
He walked to the table and opened the cage, removing one squirming rat. He pulled a flask from inside his robe and deftly uncapped it, poured a drop of liquid down the rat's throat, and returned the flask to his pocket. He then placed the rat in one of two empty cages on the far end of the table and motioned to her.
"Test it for yourself."
She nodded, glad she had left her wand in her teaching robes as she fished it out. She approached the solitary rat hesitantly, her wand lowered. She murmured the words and green light flashed out of the tip of her wand, hitting the rat and throwing it against the cage. She bent to examine the rat, who was blinking up at her, looking a bit disoriented.
"Incredible!"
"Try it again."
She complied, and again examined the rat. This time, he lay slumped in the corner of the cage, chest barely moving. Hermione looked at Snape, a question forming in her mind, but he spoke before she could ask anything.
"It would not survive a third attack. I was able to use the dragon's blood to extend the life of the potion from one attack to two, but have made very little headway since."
"So what happens to the rat?"
"The rat will slowly recover for eight to ten days until it is perfectly healthy. It seems even though the potion prevents death, the body is heavily drained. Each additional attack, of course, compounds the damage done."
He removed the quivering rat and placed it alone in the other cage, which had food and water, where it could recover. Snape turned back to Hermione, who was lost in thought.
A very strange turn of events for the evening, he told himself as he regarded her. Perhaps Granger could be useful. Perhaps. But if she turns back into that fucking know-it-all --
Suddenly, her very presence irritated him beyond reason, and he scowled.
"I have exams to grade. Is there anything else?"
Hermione glanced at him sharply, taken aback by the sudden hostility in his voice, and as she moved to leave, her voice quavered, "No, I'm sorry, I didn't realize you still had exams."
"Of course you wouldn't. No doubt yours were graded that day," he sneered, and he felt a momentary sense of glee when her cheeks reddened.
Hermione ignored the fact that her eyes were beginning to tear up, and forced her voice to be strong as she met his glare.
"Thank you for showing me your potion, Professor Snape. If you will excuse me."
She turned and left the room without looking back. She kept from running by telling herself it would be improper for the DADA teacher to be seen fleeing the dungeons. All the while, she managed not to cry. She did not go directly to her room, but instead decided to walk around the castle while thinking, trying to make sense of everything that had happened.
Everything had been going so well, or so Hermione had thought. Snape was being unusually civil, they were discussing the potion and exchanging ideas, until he had snapped at her, with no apparent provocation. She came to the conclusion that he had been the same with her as a student, how for days, or even weeks, Snape would ignore her in class, but the peace would always end, and he would resume torturing her at every possible moment. Sometimes it was through Neville's mistakes, and sometimes for being a know-it-all, but most common was when it was just for being a friend of Harry Potter.
Having been wrapped up in her thoughts, she had walked without direction, until she realized she was approaching the Fat Lady. Her heart wrenched and she felt sick as she suddenly missed Harry and Ron. She ran back to her room, tears streaming down her face, but luckily, no students were out of bed to see.
Severus sat at his desk, scowling at the few remaining seventh year exams. He yawned and decided to finish them in the morning, sweeping them into a desk drawer. He decided it was time for some sleep, something he usually considered a luxury. He had stopped sleeping regularly roughly four years ago, and he felt privileged if he slept more than three hours in a night. Albus heavily protested this habit, though he could not force Severus to take a sleeping draft.
He went to his quarters, through another usually concealed door in his office, and pulled off his robes, hanging them neatly by the door. The sitting room large and dark, full of tall mahogany bookshelves filled with books of every conceivable topic. A dark leather couch and two armchairs stood opposite each other, on top of an ornate rug, before a great fireplace. With a flick of his wrist, a fire leapt up and soft light filtered through the room.
He stopped at one set of bookcases, studied them intently, and then withdrew three different volumes. He carried them to a table and sat down in an armchair. He thumbed through the first book, then quickly changed to the next. As the fire warmed the room, he began to feel drowsy and his thoughts drifted to Granger.
Severus had been impressed earlier by her knowledge, which was not the first time Granger had had that effect on him. But it was the first time she had proved herself an equal to him, when she had figured out in a few weeks what it had taken him five years of trial and error to produce. The combination of the two had caused him to unceremoniously throw her out of his workroom.
He saw the tears beginning to form in her eyes, heard the nearly inaudible quiver in her voice as she sincerely thanked him, and he knew that she was hurt. That he had hurt her. And for once, Severus felt a bit sad at having caused Hermione pain.
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A/N:
So we finally get some real interaction w/ our hero/heroine, so LMK what you think!!! Thanks so much for the encouraging reviews!
Also, probably 2-3 weeks on Ch. 11 ... Have 2 papers and 2 finals in 2 weeks, then nothing for all summer!!!