Hi and thanks for all the nice reviews – I appreciate people enjoying my work – it makes me want to work harder.
Now, I do have one I need to explain. duj, you're absolutely right, her list is a little skewed, and that's actually done on purpose. There's a tendency in people to only accept guilt where they feel remorse. There's only one instance of canon remorse that I can locate in Hermione in all the books which is the PoA scene "We attacked a teacher…" We do not see everything from her point of view – it's entirely possible that Hermione has apologized for setting Snape on fire in first year – it's certainly the Gryffindor way, aside from being in character for Hermione. As for stealing the ingredients, there may be something she knows that we don't, but what we do know for sure is there is no point where Hermione feels guilt for it that we see. She's unlikely to see some instance where she doesn't feel she's done wrong as "doing something" to Snape. So that's why. Oh, and the other stuff, Snape has no one to blame but himself – you treat people like dirt, they're going to bury you.
Touch the Air Softly
by Jessa L'Rynn
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters. J.K. Rowling created them and writes them with a genius that has never been equaled. Warner Bros. owns the right to do dumb things with them and doubtlessly will once Jo's finished with them, unless she kills them all. I try to fight the urge to put words into other people's visions. But every once in awhile, something yummy like this comes along and I find myself committing what I have been told is both crime and honor. With all due respect to Jo Rowling and her marvelous world, here is my attempt to "steal from the best".
Chapter 6: Bottomless Air
"Severus Snape," Minerva McGonagall snarled, her hands on her hips curled into fists, her eyes blazing with power and with fury. Snape had never quite gotten over the breathless awe he had felt the first moment he met this woman and now, more than three decades later, she hit him with it full force. "What did you do to Miss Granger?"
'Nothing,' he thought, in the piping little voice of the first year who had earned her wrath in his first week at Hogwarts. He shook his head, trying to get the child in his skull to stop whimpering. "Whatever problems Miss Granger is having with her own personal water works, I assure you that I have no explanation and certainly no cause to believe that I am at fault."
"'He hates me'?!" she demanded. "Who on Earth else could the poor girl be referring to?"
"Potter, Weasley? How am I to know what goes on in the addled mind of a 16 year old inattentive witch?"
"She's 17," McGonagall said, bluntly. "Technically, I suppose she's well on her way to 18, but nevermind that. She certainly wasn't fighting when Mr. Weasley and Mr. Potter carried her up to the Hospital Wing."
"She was calm enough when I carried her, too..." Snape snapped.
"She didn't know you were carrying her," McGonagall interrupted. "You know what, Severus, I think you're jealous."
He sputtered, swore, sputtered again, tried to think of something to say and tried to fight the urge to scream when McGonagall just looked at him with enormous satisfaction.
"You're jealous," she proclaimed decisively. "You know she's the cleverest witch in the whole school, and probably the cleverest we've produced here in years. She's easily your intellectual equal, she beat you in ALL your O.W.L.s AND she's in Gryffindor, instead of your own house."
He muttered, "You forgot to say Muggleborn." He rubbed a hand up the bridge of his nose. "I've no idea where you got these preposterous accusations, Minerva, but I assure you Miss Granger and her academic prowess mean absolutely nothing to me."
"Well, they should," McGonagall snapped.
Snape frowned. She'd trapped him neatly. "Believe what you like. I have to report to Dumbledore."
"Tell Albus that I said if you frighten Miss Granger again, even she won't be clever enough to find the bits of you."
"I didn't do anything!" he shouted after her. What was it with witches that they always had to have the last word?
"Did too!" came echoing up the stairs at him.
"Do come in, Severus, have a seat." Dumbledore murmured when he arrived at the Headmaster's office. "Tea? Brandy?"
Snape sighed. He wanted the brandy, but hadn't lifted anything alcoholic to his lips since the night before the horrific events of the Triwizard Cup Final in Potter's fourth year. There was too much at stake, too much risk that one glass too many would soften his brain just so and render his tongue from clever to wagging. "Tea, please, Headmaster."
Dumbledore waved his wand and conjured tea and tea service. Snape had always found Albus's personal blend to be quite tasty, if a little imaginary. While Dumbledore poured out, Snape looked up at the portrait of Phineas Nigellus, who looked back at him with a calculating smile. Nigellus was the last Slytherin Headmaster of Hogwarts, and the portrait fully expected Snape to be the next. Snape, personally, expected to be dead before there was another Headmaster at all, since he had long decided that the Dark Lord would get Dumbledore only over Snape's dead body.
"Did you have a chance to check on Miss Granger?" Dumbledore asked kindly.
"Madam Pomfrey said she left the Hospital Wing with Ginny Weasley this morning in reasonably good spirits and that, apparently all the girl really needed was a good night's sleep." He looked at Dumbledore's kind smile for fully five seconds before he realized that he'd been tricked. He glared at the nosy old codger, but all Dumbledore did was nod kindly.
"As you may have noticed, since you were in the Hospital Wing today, there are fifteen students from Gryffindor and Slytherin houses in various states of hex and jinx recovery."
"I had noticed," Snape agreed. He'd used it as his cover to Madam Pomfrey, actually. It would NEVER do for anyone else to know that he'd been checking up on the Head Girl.
"Seventeen," Dumbledore corrected as a paper airplane with Madam Pomfrey's writing on it sailed to his desk and unfolded itself. "It seems there is a bit more animosity between the Houses this year, probably a result of the upcoming Quidditch match."
"Potter, again," Snape complained. "Just yesterday, Mr. Malfoy told me that he had caught Potter and Weasley whispering something about hexing the Slytherin beaters into oblivion."
"Possibly this was due to the fact that the Slytherin beaters in question had stolen Mr. Weasley's broom?" Dumbledore asked. "Professor McGonagall managed to sort everything out, Severus, the game will continue."
Snape smiled as much as he could manage. He should have known Malfoy was in the middle of a mess and just telling the one small part of the story that suited the boy's convenience. Imagining the various ways in which he would make Lucius Malfoy's evil child suffer for this, he found himself missing what Dumbledore said next. "I beg your pardon, Headmaster?"
"I'd like you and Professor McGonagall to serve as crowd control during tomorrow's match. You can both ride broomsticks and watch the crowd. This is a much better way to prevent any dangerous fights than hoping someone will notice them in time."
Snape rolled his eyes. "I'd love to be here when you tell Minerva," he said with a bitter sigh.
"Tell me what?" McGonagall said as she entered the room, bringing a vial with something party-colored and strange with her. "I didn't realize you'd still be here, Severus. Good." She set the vial on Dumbledore's desk, tapped it three times with her wand and it started repeating Snape's voice very quietly and concisely from one of his Potions lectures. "The latest from Weasley's Wizard Wheezes. Voice recorders."
"Have you considered that those boys make better spies than pranksters, Headmaster?" Snape asked with a sigh.
She tapped the vial again, so it began speaking only select words. "I.Sever.us.Snape.have.a.pain.in.my.bum."
"Or not," he said, grimly. Why did everyone find annoying him to be so particularly amusing? "Excuse me, Minerva," he said. "I've a class to prepare for. Why don't you tell her the good news?"
As he reached the bottom of the stairs, he heard McGonagall's voice, serious and furious. "I will get you for this, Albus Dumbledore," and Dumbledore chuckling.
Potter dived out of the sun, barely missing McGonagall by inches, pelting madly after the golden snitch. Snape watched with great interest as Draco Malfoy looped the Gryffindor seeker and they both lost the snitch. He certainly couldn't find it, though he did find two sixth year Slytherins using a knotting charm on the hair of two second year Gryffindors. He hovered over them. "Ten points from Slytherin and don't let me catch you again." The emphasis was on the "catch" part, of course, as these were Slytherins.
Draco dropped spectacularly through a formation of the Gryffindor chasers, barely dodging a bludger hit at him by his own stupid beater. The Slytherin seeker pulled up from his dive several feet above the ground, when he realized Potter wasn't following. Potter circled closer to the Slytherin goal-post, looking intently around him for the walnut-sized ball that had avoided them for two hours now. The score was even and incredibly low for such a long game, but then both teams were experienced and both Weasley and Malfoy trained them incessantly. A cheer went up from the Gryffindors in the crowd - Ron Weasley had blocked another shot.
Ginny Weasley had the Quaffle now and charged into the middle of a melee. Snape pulled his eyes back to the crowd and docked Gryffindor twenty points for the sticking charm a fourth year had just tried on a Slytherin fifth year. Thankfully, it hadn't worked. "At least try to perform it correctly, please Miss Johnson," he said and flew to another section of the stands.
Hermione Granger was here with Miss Lovegood of Ravenclaw and other young women of her own House. She was half out of her seat and half in it, her hands in her mouth, her hair a total wild shambles. He noticed a Slytherin prefect just behind her with a wand-tip ablaze. "Five points from Gryffindor, Miss Granger," he called down. "Your hair is causing complications." She turned her head up, hair pulled into her hands, and glared at him.
Behind his eyes was the sudden image of himself, stepping off of his broom, into the stands next to her. She met his eyes with an intense expression, not of hatred, but of passion and desire. Her hand reached up and almost touched his hair.
Snape found himself involuntarily pulling his head away from her, though she was physically no where near him. He floated up into the higher circle above the game where Draco and Potter manuevered and attempted to avoid each other. They both spotted the snitch, suddenly, and plummetted as though their brooms had evaporated. Curious, Snape followed them. Then, Draco did something that was definately a foul and definitely not caught by the referee. He reached out and kicked his opponent hard in the leg. Completely focused on the snitch, Potter lost his balance and fell.
Surprised, Snape turned his broom deeper into the dive and tried to reach Potter's flailing hand. He felt something slip.
The Gryffindors won the game - Potter caught the snitch on his way down, even as he tumbled down a curtain of heavy cloud he conjured beneath himself. Severus Snape did not find this out until much later, however. While Potter landed neatly on the ground, with only a broken leg for his trouble, Snape tumbled to one side of him through the seemingly bottomless air and managed to notice only the ground coming up very quickly to make his acquaintance.