A/N: I am on a roll, folks! I have a new chapter for this story, two more stories started, and An Arranged Marriage is finished and just waiting to be beta read. You can thank the constant snow, (hello it's March!) and my lack of a vehicle, (which combined with the weather makes me loathe to stir from my apartment,) for my sudden burst of creativity.

Also I would like to announce that I have finally finished reading Harry Potter à l'école des sorciers; it only took me four months to read it! Did you know that in the French version Professor Snape is called Professor Rogue? I like that it describes him as a person but you lose the sibilance that comes with Severus Snape. Hogwarts is called Poudlard and muggles are Moldus. Leave it to the French to translate words that Rowling made up! But enough random facts, allons-y!

Chapter Three— Cows and Eyebrows

It had not been a good day at Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes. Hermione began to wonder why she had agreed to work there in the first place. Hadn't she watched in her fifth year of school as they tried their joke products on unwitting first years? Why she ever thought that their promise of, "oh you'll just be working on developing potions, you won't actually test them," was anything more than rubbish.

"Are your eyebrows purple?" Severus asked when he came to pick her up for dinner.

"Yes," she snapped. "Earlier today my whole head was this shade. It took me hours to figure out how to reverse it and I still haven't solved the problem of the eyebrows and eyelashes."

"I thought that you wouldn't be testing the potions?" he asked, looking at her strangely.

"Yes, well apparently they decided that I would be much more motivated to find an antidote if I needed it myself."

Would he still want to go to dinner with her looking like this, she wondered. She didn't even know if she wanted to go out sporting violet eyebrows. She could curse Fred and George for ruining both her day and now her evening.

"Maybe we should stay in," Severus offered.

She frowned. She had been looking forward to getting out of her tiny flat, its towers of boxes begging to be unpacked haunting her each evening when she returned home from work.

She shook her head, "I'm still unpacking."

"Still? You do realize that you're a witch and you could do that in minutes with a few waves of your wand?" he asked her snidely.

"That only works if you know where you want things to go. And besides I've had other things on my mind," she retorted, gesturing towards her violet eyebrows. She was not in the mood for his condescending sarcasm.

"The castle then?" he asked. She nodded and took the arm that he offered.

They didn't talk much on the walk back to Hogwarts, and Hermione wondered again if this relationship would work outside of school. The fact that it hadn't worked while she was his apprentice didn't necessarily mean that it would now that she wasn't—maybe they were doomed to fail.

She adjusted her hand in the crook of his arm. He reached his other hand and covered hers, lightly stroking the back of her knuckles.

"I missed you too," she said softly. He tensed at her words. Had she said something wrong? Hadn't he told her that he had missed her in his letter?

"It was indigestion," he said sharply.

"Are you sure one of your students isn't trying to poison you?" she snapped. She expected him to drop her hand, to tell her take her purple eyebrows and go, leaving him alone, but he didn't. Instead his mouth curled up in an almost smile.

"I haven't ruled that possibility out entirely," he said with a hint of irony. She chuckled softly. They lapsed back into silence again, except that this time it was more comfortable.

Once ensconced in his rooms he ordered them dinner from the kitchen.

"Did you really yell at the house elves?" she asked as their dinner appeared.

He gave her an enigmatic look that might have been sexy if she hadn't been too busy thinking about the plight of the common house elf.

She decided not to press the issue at the moment and listened instead as he told her about his week and the latest Hogwarts gossip. She had been engrossed in the dramas that played themselves out both in the staff room and the student common rooms and she had charged him with the responsibility of relaying it to her now that she was out of the castle.

Not that it would have mattered what he told her, just listening to him read the index of Most Potente Potions would have been enough for her at the moment. She had missed his smooth baritone voice that even softened the blow of his disparaging remarks about her cat and her friends.

And on the subject of potions, she wondered if he had any suggestions for her eyebrow problem.

"I rather like them," he told her dryly.

She snorted. "Would you like a matching pair? I'm sure I can arrange it. Maybe it will motivate you to help me."

He moved closer and leaned in until his nose grazed her cheek. "I need little motivation when it comes to you," he said quietly.

"So you'll help me?" she asked, moving her head to look at him, her lips brushing up against his lightly.

"Of course," he said before capturing her lips with his own.

The night had gotten off to a shaky start but had steadily improved. Severus only hoped it would end well. He had planned on bringing Hermione back to the castle after dinner. The fact that they had decided to skip it only hastened things along.

He had anxiously awaited their date since the moment his owl had returned with a short note in her loopy scrawl, "Pick me up at 7. Yours, Hermione."

He only hoped she would be his.

He had planned on wine, candles, and even had gone as far as picking out some 'mood' music. But this impromptu picnic in front of his fire was proving to be even more romantic than he could have hoped for even if her eyebrows were an odd color. He could barely fault her in the looks department. He had no illusions about his appearance, or his personality for that matter. He continued to be surprised that she had initiated and continued to pursue this relationship with him.

However, he was not a man to look a gift horse in the mouth, though he didn't mind gazing at hers. Her lips were less distracting than her eyebrows and simply begged to be kissed. Reluctantly, he turned his attention back to their conversation.

"Minerva and Mrs. Norris got into it again. Why McGonagall insists on trying to 'mark her territory' is beyond me, but it resulted not only in a catfight but a pretty heated argument between her and Flich outside the Great Hall for everyone to hear," he told her.

She had an insatiable appetite for gossip that he found surprisingly attractive. He had always assumed that as a self-declared bookworm that she would have sniffed at such stories, dismissing them as a waste of her time. But it had proven to be quite the opposite. She was still the uptight intellectual but she lived almost vicariously through the melodrama of others.

"Really?" she exclaimed. He nodded and bit back the sarcastic reply that threatened to escape. Of course 'really.' Did she honestly think he was lying to her?

"She would never say it but I think she was glad to see, if not me, then Crookshanks go," she told him.

"I think everyone was glad to see that furball monster go," he replied scathingly. He doubted the wisdom of her associations on a regular basis, (her best friends did include Potter and Weasley,) but her choice in a pet only solidified his opinion that she had no taste in people or animals.

When she changed the topic to her purple eyebrows, he used the opportunity to compliment her. For all of his life he had never seen the purpose of complimenting other people. He had never received them and so he never gave them, but though he knew practically nothing about women and wooing them, he did know that they liked to be complimented. Trying out some generic ones in front of the mirror, he had decided to stick to sincere ones flowing from the conversation at hand instead.

So he was a little surprised and disappointed when she had responded indignantly to him expressing that he "rather liked" her eyebrows. It wasn't true of course. They were a hideous color that was ill suited to her complexion.

Best to stick with sincerity from now on, but tempered with tact, he reminded himself. If it wasn't for the fact that he enjoyed her company more than anyone else's he never would have bothered. He certainly didn't hold back what he really thought with most people; of course he didn't care what most people thought of him either.

But all thoughts of other people left as he finally pressed his lips to hers in a sweet kiss. After several minutes he gently leaned into her, testing to see if she would yield. She did. Slowly he angled them from sitting to a more reclined position, with Hermione beneath him, his body covering most of hers.

Her hands that had been innocently perched on his shoulders when they started snaked around his neck. She tangled her fingers in his hair, scratching at his scalp before moving downward, rubbing and up down his back. He shifted his own hands from her shoulders and underneath her to her front. One hand cupped her face while he pressed small kisses at the corner of her mouth, teasing her, before kissing her again more deeply, while his other hand maneuvered itself under her jumper.

Her skin was so soft and warm, just like a baby's bottom. Not that he would know and he didn't dwell long on the thought, reminding him too much of the considerable age difference between them. Not like a baby, he decided, but silk, soft, inviting silk.

He fanned his hand out over her stomach. She tensed and he could feel a faint smile as he continued to kiss her. So she was ticklish. He filed away that tidbit of knowledge for future use as his hand slid further north. She moaned almost inaudibly into his mouth, and the sound of it made his blood run hot like fire. But just as he moved his hand to where he hoped would illicit more such moans from her, he felt her pushing him away.

"I think we should stop there," she said, sitting up. He looked at her in confusion.

"I don't see…" he started.

"I mean, why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free, right?" she asked, laughing nervously.

He stared at her, still reeling from their encounter and its abrupt end. She had pushed him away to talk about farm animals? Had his touches really repulsed her? She had seemed to be enjoying it. He didn't understand this sudden rebuff. He watched warily as she smoothed down her hair that had been tousled by his hands. Her face was flushed and when she turned and smiled at him, it took everything in him not to push her back down on the couch, tell her to forget the cow, and cover her mouth with his.

What had he done wrong?

TBC