At nine the next Thursday, Hermione fluffed her bushy hair (which she preferred to think of as free flowing and vibrant, like that of an exuberant temptress out of a Waterhouse painting) in a fit of adolescent angst, and snapped her transfiguration book shut with a resounding crack. She ambled over to the corner where Harry and Ron were pawing through her copy of Candide with looks of chagrined puzzlement on both their faces.

"May I have my book back?" she asked.

"This book..." replied Harry, "it's supposed to be a comedy? It's not funny, Hermione. It's not funny at all."

"Pretty lousy comedy," replied Ron, chomping on his twenty second chocolate frog of the evening, "everyone's dead and raped and mutilated."

"Kind of thing those dirty Dark wizards would like," replied Harry, fingering his wand.

"Wait a second Harry..." said Ron, "what about when the old woman gets her buttock chopped off! Now that's funny!"

"That's true. But I still say the rest of it is pretty black. Downright evil, even."

"Harry's right," replied Ron, nodding solemnly, "mutilation is bad. And sex with monkeys is just weird. Evil people"

Ron opened another chocolate frog packet, and the creature made a desperate break for freedom before Ron caught it, devouring its tiny, flailing legs one by one.

"It's an awful book," proclaimed Harry, handing the novel to Hermione with aggravated disdain. "Who gave it to you?"

"Professor Snape," she replied, tucking the book back into her satchel.

"Well, that figures," snorted Harry. "Greasy git."

"I don't think I get that book," replied Ron, "it doesn't make any sense, most of the time."

"Probably because you're a cretin," Hermione muttered.

"What?" said Harry.

"Nothing. Oh, and don't forget about the transfiguration homework. I marked it on your syllabus."

"Wait," replied Harry, "where are you going?"

"Harry, really. We've been over this. I have to go help Professor Snape make a potion which will defeat Vol -"

Ron twitched convulsively, crushing a chocolate frog (a frog who had always dreamed of seeing Paris or anyplace outside the confines of his box) beneath him.

"- demorte. It's supposed to be a punishment for helping Neville, but I view it as a reward. I'm going to save the wizarding world."

"Well, that's nice," said Harry. Ron said nothing, as he was busy opening another box of frogs.

Meanwhile, down in the dungeons, Professor Snape was poised with a knife over a package. He stabbed it once. Then again. And again, each time with increasing ferocity. "Bloody packing materials," muttered Severus. Next to the box, along with some glittery green ribbon, lay a small, silver embossed card, across which a message was scrawled in sticky red fluid. 'Sevvie-' it read, 'I hear you're having a book club. I love it! Too cute for words! But what's a book club without cookies? Hope these help, hugs and kisses – Bellatrix.'

Just as Severus finally managed to pry open the box and dump the sweets onto a plate, Hermione entered, her Waterhouse-esque temptress hair billowing behind her.

"Hello," she said, walking towards to the armchair where Severus sat. "Oh," she exclaimed, "you made cookies!" She reached down and picked one up, staring at it with a puzzled expression before sitting down in the chair across from him.

For the first time Severus glanced down at the cookies and realized, with a gasp of horror, that each of them was a perfect, delicately rendered replica of Lord Voldemort, giggling and clutching his scaly belly with his skeletal hands.

"These are very unusual cookies," said Hermione, readjusting the licorice forked tongue on hers. "They're snake-people, aren't they? I like the way you used the red Bertie Bott's Beans for the eyes. Are they the strawberry ones? Or the cinnamon ones? Because cinnamon ones make me sneeze. I just thought I should warn you."

"Actually," replied Severus, "I'm really not sure. A friend of mine made them."

"You have friends!?"

"Well, it's not an exceedingly wide social circle, but yes, I have some very close friends."

"Oh, then that explains it..."

"Explains what?"

"Fifth year, I felt really sorry for you because I didn't think you had any friends. You're a little grumpy, and you insult people a lot, it was probably an unfair assumption on my part, but you seemed like you were really angry about Christmas."

"That's because I'm an atheist and a moral relativist. The Christmas season reminds me of the Crusades, and witch burnings, and inquisitions. I still do give presents, though. I just try to regard it as a gift giving bonanza day."

"Yes, that's just it. I decided you were angry because you didn't get any presents. So I bought you this wonderful copy of Paraganum by Paracelsus, and then I crept down into your office to leave it on your desk when you were eating lunch in the great hall. I imagined it was going to be this one bittersweet present all by itself, and I was going to leave an anonymous card, then a whole series of wacky mishaps would ensue, which would eventually end with you discovering my identity; but when I got to your desk I found there were about fifteen presents already there. I figured a lot of other students had the same idea about the anonymous card and wacky mishaps. And as it was a really good book, and you had other presents, I decided to keep it for myself.

"What a terrible pity. I don't have a copy of Paraganum."

"Well, I could loan it to you. It's rather marked up now, though."

"No, no, that's alright. The Predilections and Passions of Pygmalion's Piquant Protégé was quite enough excitement for one week."

"Oh, you read it!" Hermione squealed excitedly, and then bit the head off her cookie, which triggered a violent sneezing fit. "Cinnamon. Definitely cinnamon."

"Pluck their eyeballs off before you eat them. And yes, I read it. I thought it was utter rubbish, though I admit that when Duke Darington died fighting in the Goblin rebellion I was depressed for the next three days."

"Come now, wasn't it better than you thought it would be?"

"Certainly not. Here," he picked up his book and turned to a bookmarked page "look at this, for instance: 'She had the wistful passion of a wild bird.'"

"Oh, don't you just love that? I go absolutely mad for sentences like that. I think if I could write like that I could go through life like a pearl surrounded by oyster spittle."

"You'd be the spittle."

"What?"

"You'd be surrounded by oyster flesh; quite literally you'd really be a grain aggravating it."

"That's not the point, Professor Snape."

"Quite right. The real question is which bird, Miss Granger? It does make a difference, you know. Did she have the wistful passion of a screech owl? A cuckoo, perhaps?"

"You obviously don't have the mind for this sort of thing. The world doesn't need more literalists of the imagination."

"You're telling me I have a bad imagination?"

"I'd never be so bold, Professor."

Snape laughed.

"You laughed!" exclaimed Hermione.

"Is that so shocking?"

"Well, you're Professor Snape. You don't laugh."

"I do when something's funny, Miss Granger. What's more, I don't really think my imagination is at fault. Surely you've noticed that in every romance novel..."

"So you've read them before!"

"A little... in every one I've read the heroine is always sweet and virtuous, but just a touch stupid."

"That's because," Hermione replied, speaking very slowly, "stupid women are the story. Practical girls don't run off into the city and get chased by brigands and end up marrying the Prince. Practical girls stay home, and marry the neighboring baker, and have lots of well behaved children and get 'Dutiful Wife and Mother' written across their gravestones, if they get gravestones at all."

Snape reached over and picked up a few of the cinnamon beans which were rapidly mounting on the side of Hermione's plate.

"Besides," Hermione continued, "clichés like that are awfully appealing. There are so many of them; it helps to signal that the book is going to end with guaranteed joy all round. For instance, the girls all have to have regular teeth, and pluck, and both breasts the same size, and no excess facial hair. You can always rely on them to know where band-aids are, and to transform the hero from a potential scoundrel and rapist into a beautifully dressed country gentleman with a nice vocabulary and clean fingernails."

"How are you able to figure all this out when, since the age of ten, you haven't had a single class in literature?"

"I am a clever girl, aren't I?"

"For a Gryffindor, you do alright."

"Come on, Professor. I think we all know what your mentality is about discriminating against Gryffindors."

"I certainly don't. What is it, pray tell?"

"Well, you know that come the final battle we'll all be fighting on the side of good, while Slytherins will be fighting on the side of evil. And by giving the Slytherins high marks all the time, regardless of how poor their potions are, you guarantee that they'll be ill equipped to fight against us. You're being noble, sir."

"No. No, actually I just really hate Gryffindors. I think you're crass, blatant people with no panache."

"Oh. Really?"

"Of course. Did it never occur to you that if that were my intent, I wouldn't write insulting comments on their papers? I would, in fact, be more encouraging so they would want to invest extra time in the subject."

"But that's because you can't do that, because then the Slytherins would tell their parents and Voldemort would kill you!"

"I think the Dark Lord would be too sensible to be in favor of someone displaying loyalties in the class room which would clearly establish them as a Death Eater. He's a little subtler than that, Miss Granger."

"That would be true if he weren't stark raving mad, and we all know that he is."

"Well, he's definitely quirky. Most dictators are, though. Lenin for instance, if we're to use a muggle example, was said to have an unusual fondness for pencils, and would spend hours happily sharpening them. I've always liked that image, Lenin hunched over his desk, giggling frantically as he sharpened."

"I bet Freud would have had something to say about that."

Professor Snape chuckled. "But really, Miss Granger, this shouldn't be a political discussion."

"You view the Death Eaters as political?"

"As opposed to a source of raw, amoral evil? Yes, I view them as political. But that's really not something we have time to cover. Did you like Candide?"

"Ron and Harry think it's terrible."

"And you?"

"I think it's one of the funniest things I've ever read."

"I'm glad. Not just that it offends Mr. Potter and Mr. Weasley, though that is a very good sign."

"But don't you think it gets just the tiniest bit... Hufflepuff at the very end?"

"You mean with the moral that everyone should work, and mind their own business?"

"Yes. I didn't like the ending very much."

"Really? I'm quite fond of it. But then I'm in favor of being left alone."

"It might be the sensible answer, but you have to admit it was a lot more interesting when they were running around the world and seeing things like El Dorado."

"I agree. And as a romance, it fails miserably."

"Do you have any romances? Any ones you approve of, I mean."

"I'll loan you my copy of Wuthering Heights. It's really the first romance, and if you like that line about the birds, you'll love the "wild, sweet Cathy" quotes. And a friend told me I should give you some Chekhov. I've got a copy of Ivanov around here somewhere; there are some very lovely bits in that."

"Professor Snape?"

"Yes, Miss Granger?"

"This is probably going to sound silly, but why are you being so nice to me? Were you put up to it?"

"I was advised to socialize with you. I didn't like the idea when it was mentioned, to be perfectly honest, but now that I've talked to you, I think you're what I'd call... tolerable."

"I'll take that as a compliment."

"You should."

"Are you still going to deduct points from Gryffindor when I leave?"

"Only ten points. I'm feeling generous. It's probably the cookies."

"Well, well. You know, I've always admired you, but I never thought you could be pleasant before. This is really very enjoyable. It's not often I get to talk books with people. Do you think we could do it again?"

"Next week? Same time?"

"That sounds perfect. So, tell me, I've been reading up on my muggle history, do you think Voltaire is making fun of the Prussian army - when he talks about how Candide is taken into the army because he's the right height?"

"Why, you know," mused Severus, nestling further back into his chair "I've never even considered that before..."

Severus and Hermione sat avidly discussing the merits and flaws of Candide well into the evening, until the cookies were all devoured, and only a small mountain of cinnamon beans remained between them.