After a long day and night spent moping in the third floor corridor, Hermione forced herself to straighten up and be sensible. Mustering her soggy determination, she smoothed her robes, pulled up that droopy sock once more, and mopped away the last of her tears with a handkerchief before thrusting it back into the same pocket she'd found it in. Feeling better, if not exactly ready for battle, she marched through the wooden door in search of answers. Enough time had been spent imitating Moaning Myrtle. There was a problem to solve.
Ironically, she' no sooner she left the third floor and begun drifting down towards the main portion of the castle than one possible source of information was brought to her attention. Drawn by the sound of muffled shrieks and curses accompanied by abysmal singing, Hermione left the central stairwell for one of the smaller staircases.
Peeves, the multicolored poltergeist and arguably Hogwarts' most notorious spirit resident, was making up rude lyrics as he tormented the portraits hanging on the walls. Most of the subjects had managed to sidle from one frame to another, but a few were not so quick and were trapped as Peeves plucked their canvas from the wall and swung it wildly around and around until the occupant shouted for mercy. Those shouts only made the vindictive little spook chuckle loudly and reverse directions.
Fortunately for the portraits, Peeves had a low boredom threshold. If the reaction from his current victim was not sufficiently panicked, he quickly abandoned that particular piece and moved on. Some of the frames, however, were attached more securely to the wall. When grunting and swearing did not liberate his prize, Peeves settled for turning the paintings to one side or the other, and in some cases actually getting the portrait to hang the wrong way up on the wall. Cackling, he left the painted people dodging falling furniture and attempting to keep their hats clapped to their heads while hanging upside down in a most undignified manner.
Watching him wreak havoc, Hermione was intrigued. "How do you do that?" she asked loudly.
"Do what?" Peeves shot back suspiciously. He had just broken the wire on a small landscape and swung the miniature image of a shepherdess back and forth, oblivious to her screams and the distraught bleats of the sheep she refused to abandon.
"Move things," she elaborated. "I can't touch anything."
Scratching his chin thoughtfully, Peeves gave her an appraising look. "What's it worth to you?"
Hermione thought quickly. "I happen to be friends with Fred and George Weasley. I can get them to send you a package of their Wizard Wheezes."
The poltergeist chortled and rubbed his hands together gleefully, dropping the unfortunate shepherdess to fall on the floor with the rest of the pictures. He held the Weasley twins in high esteem ever since their dramatic exit two years ago, mostly because they were the only humans who'd ever managed to cause as much mayhem as he did. A maniacal grin stretched across his wide mouth, revealing teeth that were spaced like a picket fence.
"And all you want to know is how I move things?"
"Exactly. Teach me that, and I'll even see if I can get them to send you some of their experimental items – things they haven't even put out for sale yet. You'd be the first to have them."
Peeves' legs began to jerk about in an ugly little mid-air dance, ecstatic at the thought of the trouble he could cause. "Oh, Filchy's little eyes will pop right out of his head! Oh, oh, oh, oh, YES!" he crowed.
"But not until you teach me," Hermione warned, beginning to get a bad feeling about the entire bargain. She was not reassured when Peeves abruptly stopped his jig and gave her another assessing glance.
"You want to know how? Do you REALLY want to know how?"
"I wouldn't have asked if I didn't want to know," Hermione ground out.
"Because I can!" he cackled madly, grabbing his ridiculously long feet and rolling himself down the stairs. Hermione watched with narrowed eyes as the colorful poltergeist went bouncing over the trick stair and ricocheted across the landing.
"He's an absolute, buggering psychopath," she muttered to herself with a sigh. On the floor below, a sheep gave a plaintive bleat in agreement.
Knowing it couldn't possibly have been that easy, Hermione pondered on whom next to question on the subject of ghosts and the movement of inanimate objects. The possibility of touching a live creature was out of the question, as they were far too uncomfortable to handle. The Bloody Baron had told her that was because ghosts and living things had incompatible energy. She supposed it was similar to positive and negative polarity, but that was a hypothesis to investigate another day. Today's investigation was on manipulating things, and the more she considered the matter, the more Hermione began to think Moaning Myrtle might be a valuable source of information on that.
Unfortunately, Moaning Myrtle was no more helpful than Peeves. When asked how she flooded the girls' lavatory, Myrtle could only report that the toilets seemed to overflow when she became upset. Even as she spoke, Myrtle's close-set eyes began to well with tears and she fled to her toilet. Hermione was left to watch a geyser of water erupt over the walls and eddy in waves across the floor, accompanied by the sound of Myrtle's wailing echoing up from the pipes.
Faced with the option of either asking Professor Binns or figuring it out on her own, Hermione chose to retreat to her place of death and do some serious thinking. The answer was just out of reach, of that she was certain. If she could just get the pieces in her mind to align themselves, the answer would reveal itself in a flash of brilliant deduction.
For a bit she wondered about the elemental magic children performed without conscious thought, but soon abandoned that line of thinking. Elemental magic involved live creatures performing magic without touch. She was a non-living creature, wanting to touch something without magic.
Engrossed in her own thoughts, she paid little attention when Severus Snape entered the dungeon classroom. He, however, noticed her and his thin mouth narrowed even further as he watched her float aimlessly near the rafters.
"Miss Granger, I would appreciate it if you would not clutter up my ceilings." His tone left no doubt that it was not a request.
"I'm thinking," she muttered, otherwise ignoring him.
"Do it elsewhere."
"I like it here," she replied truculently. She did, actually, both as the site of her death and as the classroom where she was most challenged during her school days.
"Sadly, I must remind you that this is my classroom, Miss Granger," he began as he rummaged through the texts on his desk.
"For the duration of your teaching career, sir," she interrupted. "My lease on this room seems to be a bit longer. When you're dead and gone I'll still be here."
Snape shot her a sour look, then narrowed his eyes in a calculation. "Do you realize I can see your knickers?" he asked blandly.
Without thinking Hermione dropped towards the floor and clapped her hands to her thighs, making sure her weightless black robes did not whip up too high. "Wait a minute," she objected. "You couldn't possibly see anything. And I'm not even sure I have knickers."
"Perhaps not," he replied, "but it got you off my ceiling."
Severus allowed himself a small smirk when she did not reply. When he found the book he was looking for, he glanced up to see if she'd left the room yet. In that, he was disappointed, since Hermione was merely standing still, a crumpled handkerchief in her hand. What did catch his attention was the wide-eyed look in her eyes, startling on a ghost. Then, to his dismay, she began to undress. The long black student robe swiftly came off, revealing her white uniform blouse. The gray school sweater had been tied around her waist. It, too, was removed from her person.
"MISS GRANGER! Do you MIND not stripping in the middle of my classroom?"
"What? Oh, I'm not stripping, as you put it, Professor. I just wanted to know what happened to my clothes." She regarded the ghostly garments lying draped in translucent folds over the nearby chair. "Odd."
Snape heaved a martyred sigh. "As much as I may regret asking, Miss Granger, what is odd?"
"Well, I know several of the ghosts here dress up for caroling during the winter season. And Sir Nicholas has a variety of ruffs he changes out depending on the weather. So where do these clothes come from?"
Hermione picked up the student robes and frowned at them. Recognizing the furious expression as one of deep thought and intrigued despite himself, he kept silent. The sooner she solved her problem, the sooner she'd be out of his dungeon.
In moments, the black cloth in Hermione's hands lengthened, the edges growing ragged, flowing into outlandishly elaborate dags. With a flourish Hermione swept the newly formed cloak around her shoulders, the fluttering bits suitably dramatic for a ghost.
"HA!!!" she proclaimed. "Eureka! YesYesYesYESYESYES!!! That's it! That explains everything!" The dags flew every which way as she danced in a gleeful circle, one remarkably similar to that performed by Peeves earlier.
"It's a cloak, Miss Granger, and has no powers of speech. It didn't explain anything."
She flipped one trailing cloak edge over her arm, her excited energy burning. "Why can Nick change his ruff at will? Because he does it - at WILL. Moaning Myrtle's been lurking in the girls' toilet for more than fifty years, picking at her disgusting spots, because she doesn't WANT to do anything else. How does Peeves make such spectacular messes? BECAUSE HE CAN!!!"
Snape leaned negligently against his desk and regarded her as if she'd lost her mind. Ignoring him, Hermione crossed the dungeon classroom and stopped in front of the freestanding blackboard. A single piece of white chalk lay in the tray. With a slightly shaking hand, she reached out and poked it with her finger. A finger that went right through it.
Three more pokes had similar results, leaving Hermione scowling at the chalk in annoyance.
"Well, that's certainly progress," remarked Severus Snape, making no attempt to disguise his amusement. He tucked his book under one long arm and left the classroom, a jaunty lilt in his step.
As soon as the door closed behind the smug professor, Hermione set her jaw in a ferocious scowl. With a wordless scream, she lashed out at the chalk with all the anger and frustration she'd bottled up since she'd first woken to her afterlife, coupled with seven years of suffering under the yoke of Muggleborn prejudice and the overwhelming injustice of one sarcastic bastard of a Potions Master.
The chalk lay in its narrow wooden bed and was supremely unconcerned.
Dejected, Hermione let out a groan and slumped to the floor, sitting cross-legged on the flagstones. Her newly formed robes settled in a puddle around her, and slowly she let her eyelids droop shut as she forced herself to think once more.
"All right, Granger," she muttered to herself. "That stupid hanky exists because you thought it should exist. You never carried one before, but this one is always here when you need it. What does that mean?"
Her knees drew up, and she hugged them to her chest as she tried to make sense of the nebulous threads of ideas running through her head. Long minutes passed as she pondered on Moaning Myrtle, Peeves, and endless essays on the Goblin Wars marked by a ghost who'd been boring Hogwarts' students for the better part of a century.
Nearly an hour passed unnoticed before Hermione rose to her knees and confronted the problem once more. This time, however, her face nearly passive. Only her eyes, which never needed to blink but did so out of habit, stared unwaveringly at the innocuous piece of chalk. Neither did her hand tremble when she reached out and grasped the short white length. It made a faint chinking noise as it lifted out of the tray and a louder clatter as she dropped it in surprise.
Anyone standing out in the hallway might have heard a bright burst of delighted laughter coming from a classroom better known for causing misery. Had they lingered, they might have soon heard the tentative scratching of chalk against the blackboard, a sound that grew more and more decisive and confident as the hours passed.
&&&&&
Shortly after breakfast the next morning, Severus Snape returned to his classroom to work on his private projects and lesson plans for the coming year, only to stop abruptly in the doorway. Near the far wall stood his favorite blackboard, the sight of which had reduced many a student to tears once they saw the pop quiz he'd put up. This morning, however, it was covered with marks and scribbles, not to mention a few games of tic-tac-toe and, given the medium, a rather respectable rendition of Professor Dumbledore. The sentence 'My name is Hermione Granger' appeared multiple times, with varying degrees of neatness, and beneath it all, in large letters, appeared the legend 'Because I Can!'
"Wonderful," growled Snape to the empty classroom, reaching for the battered eraser. He took no notice as his agitated movements released a fine white dust that settled onto his black robes. "Perhaps the next time she might be so considerate as to NOT leave this nonsense on my board!"
"Sorry about that, Professor," Hermione replied.
He hadn't been expecting a response and so looked up and around, startled, trying to locate the voice. Near the ceiling, Hermione briefly turned herself visible.
"I'll clean it up next time," she promised, then yawned delicately behind one hand as she faded from view once more.
Left alone in the classroom, Snape briefly considered hiding all the chalk, then dismissed the idea as fruitless and turned once more to his preparations for the day. True to her word, his blackboard was clear every morning, though he had to requisition a new box of chalk from the notoriously tight-fisted Filch.
After a week of watching his chalk supplies steadily dwindle, Snape was unsurprised to enter his dungeon and find Hermione Granger seated at his desk. His own pen was scratching out a note on one of the bits of spare parchment he had left lying about, held by Hermione's white, translucent fingers.
"Please do make yourself at home, Miss Granger," he told her as he closed the door behind himself with an emphatic thump.
"Thank you, sir," she returned evenly, ignoring his sarcasm. "I'll be done in just a moment."
He watched as the ink flowed, a bit blotchy in places, but undeniably Hermione's handwriting. "I do hope you've addressed that to Minerva McGonagall, and not myself."
"I have," Hermione told him. "Though I would like to be able to tell her you've already agreed to let me sit the Potions N.E.W.T."
He thought about it for a moment, but she had fulfilled the condition he'd set. "You may," he allowed finally. Her hair swung down as she leaned over her letter again, but it did not quite hide the smile as she added another line.
Minerva McGonagall, however, was not smiling when she cornered Severus Snape in his dungeons a few hours later, brandishing the same scrap of parchment. "Severus Snape! What is the meaning of this?"
He glanced up at it, and then returned his attention to the potions journal he had been reading. "It appears to be a piece of parchment, Professor McGonagall," he replied. Is there any other bit of divination I can perform for you?"
"Don't start with me, Severus. You're far too old to be developing a sense of humor."
"Minerva, you could not possibly appreciate my humor. You're a Gryffindor, through and through." He gave up attempting to read and leaned back in his chair, oblivious to the glare the older witch directed at him. Sometimes, teasing Minerva was more fun than pulling a cat's tail.
Her lips pursed in displeasure. "What is the meaning of this letter? I can tell you one thing, Professor, it's in very, very poor taste."
The scrap of parchment was thrust under his nose, giving him no choice but to take it or find out exactly what it did taste like. Once opened, it was exactly as he'd seen it being written, with the addition of Hermione's neat signature at the bottom.
"It appears to be a request to take the N.E.W.T.s. Surely this isn't beyond your scope as deputy headmistress of Hogwarts."
"This isn't a joking matter, Severus."
Snape raised an eyebrow at her choice of words. "No, it isn't. In fact, I have cause to know exactly how sincere that request is, but if you don't believe me, ask the author." He rose from his chair and peered into the shadowy ceiling of his dungeon. "Miss Granger!" he called sharply. "Show yourself, if you please."
Several long moments passed, while the head of Gryffindor fumed and her Slytherin counterpart refused to acknowledge her temper. He called once again, and just as Professor McGonagall inhaled to deliver a sharp set-down, Hermione rushed through the heavy wooden door and came to a halt in front of him.
"I beg your pardon, Professor – Professors," she amended, seeing McGonagall standing in the room as well.
Snape nodded at her apology and held out the parchment. "This is your note, Miss Granger? Stating you wish to take the N.E.W.T. examinations?"
"Yes, sir," she replied, trying very hard not to get her hopes up. McGonagall's expression was not encouraging, and her next words were even less so.
"It's out of the question."
"Why?" asked Hermione, at the same moment Snape said "Why not?"
Minerva looked pained. "It's obscene, Severus. Hermione Granger is dead."
"That's apparent to a first year," he responded. "And she's right here, why don't you address her yourself?"
"She's a ghost. She cannot sit the N.E.W.T.s with her classmates."
Snape's dark eyes narrowed in irritation. "I hold in my hand ample evidence that she is capable of writing her answers. As for her classmates, they've certainly gone, and I'd hardly say I was sorry to see the back of them. But loathe them or love them, I still saw to their education."
"Don't try to take the high road on that one, Severus, you'll fall off," McGonagall snapped. "The ghost of Hermione Granger cannot take the N.E.W.T.s for a variety or reasons, the most significant of which is the fact that she cannot perform the practicals." She gave Hermione's pale form a dour look. "She does not possess a wand, and she's incapable of magic even if she did. It's out of the question."
Satisfied she'd adequately squelched the subject, Professor McGonagall gathered the edge of her robes with an angry snap. "Now, if you've finished with this taradiddle, I'll be in my office attending to the real business of this institution." The heavy door squealed on its hinges until it closed with a definite thud behind the departing witch, and a stunned silence fell in the room.
Mystified by his counterpart's reaction to a fairly simple request, Severus reclaimed his chair and his journal. The faint sound of his movement seemed to bring Hermione back to herself. She turned her head towards him and smiled wistfully over her shoulder.
"Thank you, sir, for trying. I very much appreciate your efforts." She abruptly faded from view, but not before he saw her hand pressed to her mouth, as if to stifle a sob. He heard only the faintest rustle headed towards the heavy dungeon door, accompanied by another sound that might have been muffled sobbing, or it might have been just a draft in the hall.
Frowning slightly, he crumpled the note in his hand and cast it into the empty fireplace before going back to his reading.
&&&&&
In the midst of grading the first homework of the new school year, Severus Snape gradually became aware of the pale form hovering at the edge of his field of vision. Rather than acknowledge it, he continued his work and did his best to ignore whoever it was. Some of the ghosts simply liked to watch the 'live ones,' and to take any notice of them at all was to invite inane conversations regarding the most trivial aspects of life. Professor Binns, in Snape's opinion, was one of the worst, and could drone on for hours about something as stupid as the flavor of tea, until his conversational counterpart was willing to commit either murder or suicide to escape.
"Severus. If I might have a word with you," came a baritone voice finally.
Snape didn't answer immediately, other to hold up a single finger; he was having a hard enough time deciphering the poor grammar and even worse handwriting without the additional difficulty of holding a conversation. Besides, ghosts were by and large immensely patient beings and none more so, for him at least, than the resident spirit of Slytherin House.
When he'd finished, Snape scrawled a short condemnation of sloppy thinking in the margins and gave the paper, in his opinion, a very generous score of fifty-eight.
"Of course, Your Excellency. I'm at your disposal."
The Bloody Baron drifted closer to the desk, his silver stained robes glowing in the light from the candle on the corner of Snape's desk.
"I wished to discuss something with you," began the Baron, a far cry from his normally menacing demeanor. Snape had learned many of his own intimidating tactics from observing the Slytherin ghost. "It's of a somewhat delicate nature."
"Delicate?" questioned Severus.
"It has to do with our newest resident," the Baron elaborated.
"Don't. DON'T," Snape interrupted firmly, putting out a hand to stop any further discussion. "I don't want to hear it."
"Miss Granger is constantly asking questions," the Baron pressed in an aggrieved voice. "Every day, she keeps asking! And for every inquiry we answer, she thinks of two more! And then she wants to know why, and why not, and what if!"
"Welcome to my hell, Baron," Snape told him without sympathy. "She's been in my class for years. Now she's your problem, and I wish you joy of her."
"Surely you can give me some advice," the ghost insisted desperately. "She's nearly as troublesome as Peeves, if in a completely different way. She says she's even considering writing a book about her death and what it's like to be a ghost! If she does that, the rest of us here will be the laughingstock of the afterlife!"
"My only suggestion is to keep her busy," Snape replied. "She was a Gryffindor, and as such is susceptible to a sense of duty. Put her in charge of Peeves. That ought to keep her out of your hair, and too busy to be an embarrassment."
"She hasn't the power yet to handle that monstrosity," the Baron objected. "Was she really that bothersome when she was alive?"
Snape tapped his finger against his quill, paying no attention to the fine spatters of ink it left on his papers. "She was relentless, in both her personal quests and in her studies," he said after a moment. "Her desire to learn was a craving that could not be satisfied. Still is, it seems. Interesting."
"What's interesting?"
He shrugged carelessly. "That she still hungers to know, even though she should be beyond those things." Almost instantly, Severus knew that was the wrong thing to say. The temperature in the room dropped dramatically, and an unnatural draft caused the candles to gutter and flicker alarmingly.
"We ghosts are not beyond anything, sir," the Baron said sharply, his voice colder than the room. "Just because we no longer eat, it doesn't mean we don't hunger. I'd give a great deal to taste food once more, or to touch a living being. If the chit wants to learn, I'll not stand in her way. I was simply asking your advice. I should have known you'd have no better idea of how to handle her now than you did when she was alive."
With a cold rush of air, the Baron charged through Snape's desk and the wall beyond, leaving a whirlwind of paper and bad temper behind. Severus raised a single eyebrow at the shambles left in the Baron's wake, watching as the last scraps of parchment drifted to the floor. Unconsciously, his fingers tapped on the quill again, leaving more fine spatters of ink on the papers as he thought.
&&&&&
"Stop right there!" screeched Filch, breaking into a shambling trot as he pursued Hermione down the hall. "Madame Pince says you ain't to be taking those books!"
Serenely ignoring the caretaker and the scattering students who were leaving the library just before curfew, Hermione held her prize high out of Filch's reach and headed for the stairs. Only the doorframes gave her any difficulty, when she was forced to drop far enough down from the arched roof supports to allow her solid prize to go through the doorway. If there was a way to make whatever tangible object she held intangible, she had yet to discover it.
The months since her unfortunate interview with Minerva McGonagall had been hard to endure. Dying before her final exams had been annoying, but to have that prize literally within her grasp once more and then have it taken away was galling and painful. In an attempt to find another subject to occupy herself, Hermione had thrown herself into researching what it meant, exactly, to be a ghost in a wizarding society. That had proved to be less than successful, as most of the other spirits in the castle and in Hogsmeade were appalled when asked any personal questions and irritated by her general surveys.
"You'll learn," was the only answer she got from the Gray Lady, which was at least more polite than some of the other retorts. Sir Nicholas had merely looked embarrassed by the queries, and had swiftly moved on to ask Hermione about a few things, including her plans for the next few evenings and was she interested in accompanying him to the next Headless Polo match?
Hermione had fallen back on the often used excuse to go the library, which had been perfectly understandable as a student but not so much as a ghost. And then Ron Weasley's words had come back to haunt her, as it were. The library was full of books she hadn't read, and now she had no curfew, no roommates to complain if she left the candles burning late, and no such thing as needing a teacher's permission to access the Restricted Section.
Madame Pince had been speechless when Hermione first announced she was checking out a book, standing still with her mouth gaping open as Hermione recorded her name in the big ledger on Pince's desk. The witch had recovered from her shock enough to fervently protest, in strident whispers, all of Hermione's subsequent checkouts. In her efforts to deny Hermione access to the library, Pince had threatened to bring down the wrath of both the Bloody Baron and the Headmaster. Those threats had only strengthened Hermione's determination to continue, though the most support the librarian had been able to garner thus far was that of Argus Filch.
Hermione left Filch sputtering impotently at the bottom of the stairs as she flew straight up into the dim reaches of the staircase. The windows at the very top were open, letting in the late fall air and allowing one to see out to the stars and the rising moon. The landing at the very top of the huge shaft was barely large enough to hold a small bench, and only occasionally would the rickety stairs that lead to it deign to be in place. Hermione had never discovered it while she was alive, a fact that she regretted. It was the perfect retreat for someone who wanted to read alone. Now, it served her that purpose, and although she didn't need the tiny lantern hanging from a simple wrought-iron holder on the wall, Hermione loved the warm, cozy glow it cast as she read.
It was also a wonderful place from which to watch the sunrise over the eastern mountains. In life, Hermione had always enjoyed a sunset. Now, with her existence topsy-turvy, her days nights and her nights days, the sunrise marked the end of her alert period. Many a time she watched the sun rise and was comforted with the endless repetition.
This night, however, Hermione was having trouble concentrating. Although it was just past curfew, she had the oddest feeling she was supposed to be somewhere. It was a sensation she had first experienced when Ron or Harry had wanted to talk to her, once she became a ghost, and one that came over her now and again for no discernable reason. Shrugging to herself, she left the book on the stone bench and went off in search of whoever had wanted her.
No sooner had she appeared in Snape's dungeon than he snapped, "You're late. Now come here and make yourself useful." His table was covered with ingredients and several cauldrons, some already bubbling away.
"How can I be useful?" she asked, even as she drifted to where he'd indicated she should be. "I can't do anything."
"You can read, can't you? Read this – I need both hands free."
Snape lay an ancient book open in a heavily carved holder and began chopping something yellow into even finer bits than it already was. Ginger, and something else, going by the smell. Hermione wondered at her own ability to smell, even as she focused on the Latin text in front of her and began to read the preparation instructions for whatever it was Snape was working on.
Severus Snape kept his hands busy on the chopping and kept his mind from dwelling on the wisdom of what he was doing, even as listened to her steady voice declaiming the ancient text of Dioscoride's herbal. De Materia Medica was a bit stiff for most seventh year students, but he doubted Hermione Granger would have any trouble with it. In this, she did not disappoint him, though she stumbled once or twice on the verb tenses.
After that page, Snape began a steady barrage of questions on the properties of the ingredients he'd just added and demanded she either confirm or refute Dioscoride's allegations. After the herbals, he moved on to animals, peppering her with questions as to the effectiveness and dangers of feathers, spines, quills, and other bits and pieces of every beast that crawled, flew or slithered.
Afraid to guess or speculate, terrified to hope, Hermione gave answer after answer while she stirred, chopped, and grated. The section on minerals gave her a bit of trouble, but she managed to remember more than she thought she would have. It was only when Snape asked her the incantation to transform a gelatinous brew into a powder that she froze.
"I can't perform the spell," she confessed.
"I didn't ask you to perform it," he reminded her testily. "Just tell me which spell."
She did so, and then as an afterthought described the movements necessary. Snape grunted absently as he scribbled onto a piece of parchment. Moments later he slid it across the worktable to her, wordlessly ordering her to take it.
The sheet held several problems on it, including one incredibly tricky issue involving cutting a potion recipe by odd ratios, and several ingredient substitution puzzles. It took nearly an hour to finish.
In all, over four hours had passed before Hermione handed in her paper and stood to one side of Snape's desk while he looked over her answers. In a sharp voice he ordered her to see to the potions they'd begun, giving her no choice but to do as she was told. Several of the concoctions were nearly complete, so she finished them up, turning off the flames (though the round knobs were a bit tricky to master) and adding the final ingredients in others.
Though she tried to concentrate on the tasks at hand, Hermione found herself dwelling on the exam, if it was indeed an exam. She hadn't studied, she wasn't prepared for this. The complete inanity occurred to her of taking an exam that would do no good, get her in to no college, and she found herself debating the wisdom of having stayed through the examination.
"Congratulations, Miss Granger," came Snape's deep voice, startling Hermione out of her circling thoughts. "I'm taking off marks for the incantation you are unable to cast. The balance of your examination, however, is sufficiently high to overcome this." He was still at his desk, straightening papers and carrying on as if it weren't two in the morning.
"Sir?" she questioned, not quite able to believe what she was hearing.
Snape's face assumed the same patient grimace he used on particularly dense students. "You've passed your Potions N.E.W.T., Miss Granger. With flying colors, as some idiots would say. I'll have your score added to your transcripts." He glanced up to see if she had at last comprehended his meaning.
Slightly disconcerted by the sight before him, Severus felt his own mouth lift in unthinking reflex to the amazingly happy smile Hermione gave him as she slowly faded from view. "Thank you, Professor Snape!" came her disembodied voice.
"You're welcome, Miss Granger," Severus managed, still stunned. He had never realized that a ghost could, quite literally, glow with happiness.