A/N: An extra long chapter by my normal standards. I hope you enjoy it! I must say I'm having lots of fun writing this story!
Chapter Four—Blue and Lavender
The night before had proven confusing for Hermione and as usual she tried to analyze the situation using logic and reason.
How many dates had they been on so far? There was the first that had been so awkward at Merlin's. They had gone to the lecture and then to dinner on the second, ending the night under the mistletoe.
And then…well and then they had decided that dating while she was his apprentice would be a bad idea. Certainly she had sat in front of his fire before, and she had kissed him once or twice more, but if she wanted to be technical then this had only
been their third date.
Was she the type of girl to do what she had been wanting to do last night after only two 'real' dates? She didn't need legilimency to tell her that he had wanted much more last night, and she wasn't all that sure she was ready to give that. But neither did she want to discourage him either. After years of having boys as friends, she understood that though they appeared rough and tough, their egos could be as frail as spun glass. It was all too confusing!
Hermione needed help and the only person she could think of that was anywhere near qualified to give it to her happened to be Lavender Brown.
"HiLavenderIneedsomeadviceonromance," Hermione said quickly when Lavender opened her door.
"You?" she asked. "You need advice from me?"
"Yes," Hermione admitted meekly.
"The great Hermione Granger who said romance novels were a waste of the paper they were printed on?" Lavender accused her.
She nodded. Had she said that? She didn't remember saying that; it must have been sometime before she discovered Molly Weasley's cache of the witch's equivalent to Harlequin. She had read dozens the summer before her seventh year, not that she would ever admit that to anyone.
"The great Hermione Granger who dumped an internationally famous Quidditch player because it interfered with her school work?"
"That's unfair! There were other considerations at the time, one of them being his interest in the Dark Arts," Hermione protested.
"The great Hermione Granger who hung around the two cutest boys of our year and never gave either one a second glance?"
"Are you done?" she snapped. Scary how much she was beginning to sound like Severus, but really, if anyone deserved it, it was Lavender. Of course she couldn't be too short with her, she did need her help after all.
"Not yet," Lavender said. Hermione waited while she tried in vain to come up with something else. With a look of consternation, she admitted defeat.
"Fine, I'm done. You can come in," she said motioning her through the door.
She ushered her into a small living room whose walls were covered with flowers on a putrid pink background. Hermione didn't realize that one person could own so many knick knacks.
While trying to ignore the set of unicorn figurines that ambled back and forth on a crowded shelf, Hermione explained her dilemma—how she wanted to both let Severus know that she liked him but also that she wanted to take things slower.
"But who is the lucky man?" Lavender pressed her after she had finished. Hermione had hoped to leave Severus' name out of this. It could only result in cries of outrage and disgust, wasting precious time and possibly resulting in a refusal to dispense any advice. Snape didn't have any friends among his former students, and Hermione thought that Lavender might not be happy to see him find love.
"You don't know him," she lied.
"He's a teacher though."
"Well, yeah. How did you know?" she asked and then instantly regretted it. Lavender had been Trelawney's sycophant since third year and she could already see that misty brainless look crossing her face.
"My inner eye," Lavender said gravely. Hermione tried hard not to laugh at the sudden transformation from giggly gossip monger to the affected serious pose of a "true Seer."
"I predicted long ago that you would either fall in love with a teacher or become a teacher," she told Hermione.
"How long ago?" she asked suspiciously.
"Last month."
"Last month? Lavender I was Snape's apprentice last month. You do realize that the purpose of becoming an apprentice is to study so that one day I can teach the same subject." This was exactly why she had stormed out of Trelawney's classroom all those years ago…well as much as one can storm down a rope ladder.
"Yes," she huffed. "So?"
"Well, I was working towards becoming a teacher and I was with teachers every day so the likelihood that I would fall in love with a teacher was much greater and the probability of me becoming a teacher was 100! So you're 'prediction' doesn't seem all that extraordinary."
"If you put it like that," Lavender said. "Of course, you're not his apprentice anymore and there aren't that many teachers at Hogwarts to fall in love with are there?"
Well there was that.
"It's not like I predicted you would fall for Snape," Lavender laughed.
Well there you go, Hermione thought. Her contemptuous regard of Divination could remain unchanged. She decided to move this conversation along onto the part where Hermione was helped so she could leave.
"So what should I do?" she asked.
"I'll tell you what my grandmother always told me…Always leave 'em wanting more," Lavender said, giggling.
"What does that mean?"
"It means play hard to get, don't make it too easy for him. Men are hunters by nature. They like the chase and if something is too easily gotten then maybe it wasn't worth having like they thought."
Well she had already done that. He certainly had looked disappointed when she had cut their make-out session short. But she didn't want to confuse him. This would take careful handling, she thought. Not manipulation, per say, but something very close.
After Hermione's abrupt departure last night, Severus needed advice on how to proceed. There were only two people in the world, outside Hermione, that he could stand to talk to for more than three minutes, which meant that he would have to ask either Albus or Minerva. He decided on Minerva, being a woman he hoped she had some insight to the female mind, and besides Albus was nearing 150 and was still hopelessly alone.
He decided to go to her office instead of asking her in the Great Hall or in the staffroom where he risked being overheard by the other teachers, or god forbid, a student. He listened intently for gossip to tell Hermione but he would work hard to ensure none of it pertained to him, her, or their relationship, however dubious that happened to be at the moment.
"Severus!" McGonagall exclaimed when she saw him. "It must be something important; you never visit me in my office."
"It is," he said tersely. She motioned for him to sit down while he explained his problem, trying to use as few words as possible. He wanted to get this over with quickly so he could fix whatever the problem was and he and Hermione could get back to doing whatever they were meant to be doing at this stage in their relationship.
"She said something about buying milk and selling cows," he told her. Minerva looked at him confused.
"Are you sure that's what she was talking about?" she asked.
"Yes, of course," he snapped. It was, wasn't it? But in all honesty he had still been recovering from her kisses for him to have really heard her.
"I don't what to tell you, Severus," Minerva said. "Except that women are rarely forthright creatures. You are going to have to learn to read between the lines. Listen to what she's not saying as much as what she is saying."
What she's not saying! Read between the lines? His head felt muddled at the prospect of trying to figuring out the enigma that was Hermione Granger. He wondered again if it would be better to resort to legilimency. In fact, he surmised it was just situations like this that the magical art had developed in the first place. He decided to mull the matter over and then decide his plan of action.
Arriving back in his quarters, he found an owl waiting for him. It held in its beak a short letter written in Hermione's hand. His heart skipped a beat. Was this a note telling him she never wanted to see him again after he had forced himself on her last night?
I need you! Please hurry, Hermione.
He breathed a sigh of relief as he read her note. He had been expecting something much worse. He probably deserved something worse, but he decided not to dwell on it, instead he wondered why she felt the need to send such an urgent message. Perhaps she was feeling bad about last night; perhaps she had realized that she needed him after all; or perhaps her drain was clogged and she needed a 'man' to fix it. That seemed the most likely situation. Arriving at her flat, he realized it was neither. There had been another accident at Weasley Wizarding Wheezes.
"Are you blue?"
"Do you mean am I sad or is my entire body a lovely shade of royal blue?" she snapped.
"Both." He stared at her in disbelief. Her skin, usually pale with a few freckles, now resembled that of a Cornish pixie.
"Yes, I'm blue. There was an accident at work today," she said before collapsing into tears. Her whole body shook and she appeared to be having trouble breathing.
"I don't know what to do," she wailed. At least that was what he thought she said. He strained to understand her through the sobs, but he quite agreed with her. He had seen someone cry before, but usually they were crying at something he had said. He tried hard every year to make at least one first year cry the first week of class. Last year he had managed three on the first day—his personal best. But though he was quite experienced in making a person cry he knew practically nothing about helping someone stop.
And he definitely wanted her to stop. She looked horrible with her face purple, (apparently that was the color blue skin turned when it was flushed,) blotchy, and with stuff leaking from her nose. He tried patting her gently on the shoulder, but to his horror, she took this as a cue to throw herself into his arms. Now her tears and other bodily liquids were seeping into the front of his shirt, but he didn't think she would appreciate it if he pushed her away and grabbed for his wand. That's what he wanted to do, but instead, he held her until she finished.
"Do you want some milk?" he asked. Minerva had mentioned reading between the lines and he had figured that her odd speech about cows and milk had been her strange way of telling him she had been thirsty, although he was a little offended that she had chosen that moment to bring it up. But he was determined to play the sensitive and caring date now. He had been a spy for years, forced to pander to the Dark Lord, pretending that he agreed with every grandiose but equally idiotic idea. Certainly he could handle this, couldn't he?
"Milk?" she asked, looking confused.
"Or something else to drink?"
"No, I'm fine now." She didn't look fine to him. She still trembled slightly from where she had been crying and her skin remained an awful shade of cyan. She even smelled blue, like slightly rotten blueberries.
"Do you want to talk about it?"
It was official. He was crazy about her. He would have to be, to be sitting here with her in his arms while she cried on his shoulder and instead of snapping at her and pushing her away, instead he encouraged her to 'talk about it.'
"From the first day of sixth year I had the rest of my life planned out. I was going to apprentice with you in Potions. I wanted to teach at Hogwarts or maybe Beauxbatons and I was going to invent a cure for one of the Unforgivables. I wanted to get married and have one or two kids, who would be magical, of course, and I would live happily ever after."
"Life rarely goes the way we plan it," he said sardonically, thinking about the Mark on his arm.
"I know," she sniffed. "I just don't think this job is going to work out. I'm going crazy every day thinking there might be something in my coffee and usually there is, something that turns me blue!" Tears started streaming down her face again. Severus tried not to sigh too loudly. It appeared it was going to be a long night.
"Then quit."
"And do what?"
"Anything," he said, clutching her closer to him. Amazing how well she fit him, he thought, as she snuggled close, her arms reaching up to encircle his neck while he ran his hands up and down her back.
"Everything," he whispered in her blue ear.
"I just don't know," she murmured against his neck. He felt a twinge of guilt, knowing that his scheming to convince her to quit her apprenticeship with him had put her in this position, but he ignored it and instead dwelled on the fact that sitting here like this with her in arms had been worth seeing her nervous breakdown moments earlier. Suddenly he heard a loud crack of someone apparating.
"Hermione! We need to talk to you about…YOU!"
The bane of his existence, Harry Bloody Potter, strode into the room, Ron Weasley trailing behind, with murderous looks on both their faces.
A/N: Sorry to leave you with a cliffhanger! I seem to be doing that a lot lately, but I was having trouble knowing where to end this chapter, it was either really short or neverending.