All characters and subject matter taken from and used in the following are from Harry Potter and therefore owned by J. K. Rowling.

A/N: Dear lord, I apologise profusely for the lack of updates… my beta reader has apparently decided she doesn't want to be my beta reader any more by virtue of the fact that I had to update chapter five without her input… so if I have any fans who are better at English than I am then feel free to correct me and even apply for the job as beta reader. I don't hold it against SS that she stopped god knows we are all very busy with the evil of exams at the moment so… I'm flying solo and here goes.

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"Hermione my dear, don't worry about Alastor, he's here to teach you some things that I thought better be taught by a true expert as opposed to me, the pupil of the pupil of the expert."

Hermione was shocked; she had never heard Severus give anyone such a frank assessment of his own skills. She realised that it wasn't only his students that Severus was absolutely truthful with, it was himself too. This would give her something to think about, but not now because currently Severus was asking her about what she had learnt last night. She eyed Mad-eye Moody carefully and began.

"First of all you must realise that because I was on my own with three men it was very difficult to get them to do anything but make jokes about women not knowing anything about sport, honestly sometimes men are so…" she trailed off as she realised she was out numbered by two particularly dangerous members of that part of the human race.

"Hmmm yes, so after a few drinks I managed to get the boys on to the subject of what they would be doing in the department. I mentioned the fact that I wanted to join the department, and that I was worried about the stability of the other departments what with Voldemort getting stronger." Here a curious gaze from Severus interrupted her.

"I hope you didn't phrase it exactly like that," He said disapprovingly, "it would be most unwise to show any allegiance to either side when you are trying to ascertain exactly where unknowns loyalties lie."

"I most certainly didn't. I said it with the utmost tact and diplomacy and didn't manage to rub anyone up the wrong way." Unlike you she considered adding, however she continued her report with, "Needless to say the two Slytherins pounced on a chance to discuss politics, they should really add that to the list of traits in the sorting categories at Hogwarts. Anyway, I digress, the two boys from Slytherin discussed with me the likelihood of an uprising in the near future and the effect it would have on the Department of Magical Games and Sports and the international relations on which the department is based on. Anyway I managed to get them to talk about the particularly tricky subject of their death eater sympathies whilst we had dinner, the first was easy to play, he told me that he would be joining the lower ranks of the minions of the dark-lord any time now. To be honest I think he was trying to recruit me!" Here she paused because she sensed that Sev was going to say something.

"Hermione you didn't flat out refuse did you? That could have serious side effects on the work we have you doing in that department." He said with a disapproving and worried look and an even more disapproving tone.

"Professor," at this Severus again interrupted:

"It's Severus outside of school hours, Hermione, you know that."

"Sorry, but I felt I needed to emphasise that any mistake I made could not possibly be entirely my fault, when a student is wrong, the teacher is blamed and therefore if I made a mistake…" Hermione left the end of this offensive statement hanging knowing quite well that if she so much as looked at Alastor moody she would burst out laughing at the fact that she had just dared to criticise Professor Severus Snape's Teaching skills.

"Miss Granger," Snape exploded and then stopped, realising that she was merely pointing out that it was probably impossible for her to make a mistake due to his high level of teaching skills and also her high level of intelligence. Severus adjusted his tone and continued in a less explosive voice, "We both know that no mistake could be made in that way so please continue."

"Thank you Severus. If you really want to know I managed to give him the idea that someone of a higher rank in The Dark Lord's followers had already propositioned me, and as a lesser minion he was over stepping the mark. Or a mark at least." At this Hermione stopped, took a deep breath and smiled a self assured little smile, "It must be said I never realised exactly how easy it would be to put a thought into someone's mind until I actually had practice at it." She paused as she realised that both men were looking at her with considerably worried looks. "Don't worry Severus, I haven't gone all power mad on you. I don't plan on doing it again. It took too much energy up the first time!" Here she realised that she had been standing giving this report as if she was on trial. Having thought about it she took out her wand and drew up a chair, quite literally given that she was a witch and the easiest way for her to get herself a chair was to create one by directly transfiguring the air molecules into molecules of wood. This, therefore, required her to create an outline of the chair to contain the spell within those bounds. As she did this she remembered her first attempt at this extremely complex spell, she had managed to create a distinctly odd looking chair because she had been distracted by Harry's latest Quidditch obsession (The fact that he had now perfected the Wronski Feint and many people had been congratulating him on it!) and had left a small hole in her outline, creating a leak of the spell and therefore a line of wood between the chair and next area of non-air molecules, the wall. This caused the chair to hang bizarrely in mid-air until she could remember the counter spell.

Memories aside she knew that this day was going to be a long one, so, taking a deep breath, she summoned up courage and continued with her report. Having given the boring details of how she had managed to get the next Slytherin to talk about his loyalties – not decided but, his parents are both in Voldemort's grip, so it is more than likely he'll will join the minor death eaters. She continued to her talks with the Ravenclaw boy.

"He was more troublesome," she started after pausing to think of a phrase to sum him up, "he decided straight off that I was his property, and therefore he could touch me when ever he wanted. It was a little upsetting but the worst was when," Here she stuttered, unable to think of the correct words to sum up his outrageous behaviour, and to help herself bite back the…

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A/N: I am aware that leaving this there is a completely evil cliffhanger, but I need the cliffhanger, because otherwise no one will read my next chapter. R&R please. I haven't had a review in ages and am beginning to feel unloved. Thank you anyway!