He sees the world—or at least some of it—through a different light when he lives with her. Severus never admitted defeat, merely deflected; yet this was a time when in his darkest moment he knew that a little girl had radically redefined his entire moral and thought system. Sometimes he considers what this tells him (mainly that he should be more receptive to change) but for the vast majority of the time he merely calls her names.
It was better that way; it kept him sane.
He remembers the night when it all clicked together.
Swishing towards the dungeons, he found himself in an almost chipper mood; his scowl was half-hearted, and to Minerva's "Good night, Severus" he hardly had the sarcasm left to muster up a meager "What's going to be so good about it Minerva?" but her feline eyes saw all, and she merely laughed at him. It was in this mood that he stumbled—typical, he thought as the floor welcomed his jaw—and it was in this mood that Hermione Granger changed his life.
She walked along with Harry-bloody-Potter and every time Severus saw them together his heart clenched unwittingly. He knew why. It was a bloody waste of her talent. Severus knew that if the girl worked up the courage to ask him for the apprenticeship Minerva told him she so desperately wanted, even the miser of the dungeons could not refuse. He dreamed of molding her mind from Gryffindor fluff to a hard, impenetrable diamond, devoid of the emotion that made Potter such a fop. She was a one-woman think tank, that Granger girl, and it bloody killed him that she loved Harry Potter as she did.
Potter was a dolt, and the world knew it in their heart of hearts. Severus knew that Dumbledore thanked every god he knew for giving them Granger instead of another Longbottom or Weasely. She knew how to use her mind and ignore her heart, something he held in the highest regard. Yet here she was, arm in arm with him, and Severus couldn't help but feel disgusted. They didn't even see him, so the glare was futile; in retrospect it was for the better, for at that moment the girl laughed.
Snape was no romantic by any means; the closest he came was holding the door open for Minerva (the only woman—until Granger—he respected enough to not dismiss immediately) yet at that moment all his other thoughts dissolved to nothingness. Her laugh defined what he considered perfection and instantly he was made jealous that Harry-bloody-Potter could bring it out of her. For the love of Merlin, Potter couldn't even understand most jokes, let alone tell any smart enough for the girl to laugh as fully as she was now. He wondered what it was that could knock her so out of her senses, and what in Hades Potter could have said.
Snape remembers remembering his position, and dusting himself off. He doesn't remember what made him follow the peals of Granger's laughter instead of following his intended path, but all the while he felt like some twisted voyeur. He decided to justify it to himself later, but his intense resentment of Potters and all they took from him drove his movements now.
"Oh Harry, you mumble mumble such things" he vaguely heard her finish.
"Herms, you know it's true."
Hearing the baritone voice he'd grown to despise always made him grind his teeth. (Albus enjoyed planting a picture of Snape-the-toothless-wonder in his head during revels to make him jumpy.) Now was no exception. But he tried to keep himself quiet to hear her response.
"Potter, someday you'll go too far," she grinned, and Snape thought she should be horrified at the light inflection she gave such heavy words, and the flippant way they knew it to be true. Did they have no respect for life and the wizarding world's safety? But what else could he except from Gryffindors.
"Until then, Herms, I'll just be content with going just the right amount. Besides, everyone seems to think The-Boy-Who-Lived defines what "the right amount" is, so really, Herms, I don't see what there is to be worried about."
She laughed again, and Snape understood why. Even the boy's selfishness was charming. Like his father. But he didn't understand how Granger was endeared to such a mundane, oft-found trait. There must be something else. Granger never took anything lightly.
Then it hit him so hard that his face nearly reunited with the floor.
Granger never took anything lightly.
Granger laughed with Potter and spent more time with him than was needed to solidify an acquaintanceship.
Granger, if given the choice, would read rather than eat or sleep.
The only conclusion he could possibly come to was that there was something in Potter that was better than books for Granger.
He seethed.
Granger was seeing something he wasn't. Snape always assumed he could see right through Potter, into every crevice of his very shallow soul. Snape's sometimes uncalled-for comments were mostly made in rage against the cruelty of the fates that it had to be Harry-Bloody-Potter and not his annoyingly clever Granger that was the "savior" of the world. If it had been Granger, Voldemort would have died her first year in that chamber with the Stone. He thought Potter too thick to think quickly, if at all. He justified his bullying by telling himself that Potter had no qualities to redeem him, and therefore needed Snape to fill out the personality gaps. Make him think about more than just his pitiful "Good versus Evil" world where someone either wore a white hat or black and where eventually the Golden Trio would save the day and peace would fester until the end of time. Snape justified becoming an oppressor like James Potter by telling himself that he was saving the man's son.
And now she was forcing him to rethink that. Knowing as he did her intense desire to check and recheck everything, he doubted that she would still be Potter's friend for the last 7 years if there wasn't something studiously appealing about him.
"Right, you need to go Harry. Merlin knows who or what is lurking around." She looked back, almost right at Snape, and he was fiercely reminded of Dumbledore.
"Yeah, Herms, you're right per usual. Wouldn't want to turn the corner and have Snivellus breathing down my back." Despite his recent revelation, Snape nearly obliged the boy, so angered was he at hearing that name for the first time in 2 years. He could already see images of Potter's strangled face. But Granger's voice stopped him midstep.
"Harry James Potter! I told you to never use that name again! How dare you use it in front of me! Snape isn't a good or open person, but you have no excuse calling him anything if you sink to your godfather's lever! That makes you just as bad as Snape!"
"Alright, Hermione, I'm sorry! I forgot that you stick up for everyone even those who don't deserve it."
"Oh Harry, I'm not having this argument for the billionth time. You know I'm right and you're just being a stick-in-the-mud. You're being just like what you accuse Snape of. So stop it! Snape's..." she sighed.
"Jeez. Just go to bed, Harry. There's no use being angry with each other over something we'll never agree on."
"You only say that because you know I'll concede eventually, you--" he cleared his throat and when he spoke again he sounded like the man who listened behind them, "—you know-it-all Gryffindor suck up who doesn't know when to stop proving me wrong!"
Snape expected her to be more incensed, yet he heard instead another bout of laughter. He decided not to expect anything from a couple of Gryffindors. No matter; he had much to figure out. Like why Granger would stick up for a man she was supposed to hate and yell at the boy she was rumored to love. Obviously she make fair points, but one hit him closer than he wished: that Potter and Snape, in Granger's eyes, were acting like the same blind boy. That she put them in the same category hurt his pride; in some twisted way, he wanted her good opinion. Rather, the good opinion of all the intelligent people around him, and that included Granger.
He wondered if Potter even cared about having Granger's good opinion, which led him to question whether he and Potter were at all similar.
'Oh Merlin,' he thought.
'Is Potter not the emotional idiot I thought him to be? Have the concrete truths I've built my life around these past 7 years been all this time actually pretense?' His thoughts flew to all the memories he had of Potter's rash actions, but for the first time he took them out of the context of hating Potters. For an eleven-year-old boy...
'Ohh, Merlin.'
Refusing to be bested by that damnable girl, he followed her rather than Potter, for the first time since the boy's arrival at Hogwarts. Once she rounded the corner near the stairs, he let his right foot fall heavily; she wheeled, obviously with a sarcastic question for the curfew-breaking student... which died immediately on her lips when she raised her head to recognize the greasy face of Professor Snape. Before he could even let loose a scathing word, she began her incessant rambling.
"Oh professor, you probably heard everything. I'm so sorry, and oh, Harry didn't mean it, you know, he says mean things but it's just his defense against getting close to anyone, he doesn't really hate you, I think he secretly respects you actually, but I'm sure he'd apologize profusely if he knew you... oh bugger, professor, you must hate him even more now, but why didn't you just interrupt us?"
He merely raised an eyebrow. His mind, though, quickly shuffled through everything she had let loose. He wondered at the girl that, while seeming to ramble like a hormonal woman (redundant, the back of his mind thought automatically), deftly psychoanalyzed her friend and in turn Snape himself. Damn! She was right; they were similar. He marveled, but he'd be damned if she ever knew.
Meanwhile, Granger stared at him, a hand smacked across her betraying lips. He didn't realize his eyes bored into her until she found the recklessness to let out:
"Are you going to give me detention or not, Professor? Head Girl patrol is really important, as you know, and I'm already late." She didn't even bother to wince at his other eyebrow raising, making him wonder if he was losing his touch or if her will had hardened under his very nose.
"Ms. Granger..." the insult died before it could form; the questions bubbled, and after all she'd shown him of himself, he had no right. The defense wouldn't—didn't work with her. He'd attempted to drive her away and yet somehow he found himself following her like the an old letch.
"Ms. Granger," he repeated, "please follow me."
He turned to stalk to the dungeon and sensed Granger following out of habit.
Snape gave himself credit: he stalked down three stairs before turning back. In some part of his mind he realized that he was at eye level with the girl for the first time. He remembers that her eyes were opaque, and he couldn't see anything in them but the odd brown color—the description eludes him still. The crinkles around them told of an underlying irritation she attempted to suppress. The echo of her words forced him to speak.
"Did you mean what you said, Granger? Am I the same to you as Potter?"
Eyes widened, then narrowed dangerously.
"Why would it even matter? Because of your need to be better than his father? Sir, you are the smartest man I've ever met—I include Dumbledore in that—but I think it's funny that you and Harry act in the same idiotic manner about the ones you love. I don't presume to know you or anything about your life, but the whole world must be blind to not see that the more you love, the crueler you are. Sir, stop being so selfish before the ramification of your actions is more than the risk of loving outright."
He growled in angry denial of all her truths. Damn her, anyway. She made him feel; no one was allowed to make him so weak.
"Damn you, anyway, Granger, you know-it-all. Be wrong for once."
Instead of breaking down as he had perversely hoped, she laughed. It was that thought-killing laugh, and he almost hoped it wasn't at him, but he was five years too old to lie to himself and call it honor.
"I will, sir," she told him as she started walking down the stairs, "when you allow me to." And it was then that he realized that he never wanted her to be wrong. Who needed self-proposed truths when you had granger?
"That's right, sir," she said. "Depend on me. I'm willing to carry the load you find you cannot bear."
He resolved as he walked in tandem with her down the stairs to talk to Minerva about the apprenticeship tomorrow.
Which, by lunch, he had, and by graduation, he found himself transfiguring the couch near his library into a bed more often than not, and a year after they published a ground-breaking discovery in lycanthropy (her idea), and in the end, she, that Granger girl, had known all along that Severus would take her in. Their minds needed the company, she told him one night over a cauldron of mutated forgetfulness potion. She knew it would be better if Snape realized he wasn't omniscient before she came to him in all her Gryffindor glory. Of course, he glared at her when she vocalized it, but secretly he was profoundly grateful for proof of her reciprocated affection. And in her favor, he never unjustly punished Harry-Bloody-Potter again---- well, almost never.
Every time he feels like killing the fop, he remembers that it's Snape that hears her laughter ringing in the dungeons, and not Potter. He's more selfish than ever, but he's blessed, and she made him realize it. He grudgingly gives her that.
FIN
A/N: Thanks to J.K. Rowling for letting me play with her dolls. Thanks to F. Scott Fitzgerald for a line in "The Great Gatsby" that I used for this fic. Thanks to you, dear reader, for taking the time to make your way through this story. All comments, positive and negative, will be appreciated for what they are worth.