A/N I feel guilty even in feeling guilty for having this so late. I've had parts of it written for ages, but the last 1000 words came together when I read your review asking me to update. So yes, your reviews did motivate me to continue! Thank you for all of them… I can't tell you how pleased I am to know that people actually read this, and on top of that, people like it. Anyway, I've changed style a little here mainly because I think it's appropriate… if I was Hermione, this is how I would write it. Although technically I am… let's not go there. The next chapter of WUBD is 75 percent written, and will be out within two weeks. I promise. It might even be out by next weekend if I get my internal assessments done. Loads of thanks to Gem for steering this along. There's not much left to go! And now I'll shut up and let you get on to the very delayed chapter.
The next day was a Saturday, and I don't think I had ever been more grateful to see a weekend. We spent the day in the library, researching anything and everything we could use to split us apart. We even worked through lunch, due to a combination of not wanting to go into the Great Hall and really wanting to separate ourselves. Dumbledore had been even worse that morning, cheerfully asking us how we were going. When Snape had asked him if he was planning on helping at all Dumbledore had just smiled and said that he would leave that to "the more experienced researchers." I've not often wanted to smack the headmaster, but believe me when I say I really wanted to then. Still, the stream of abuse Snape let off as we left the hall went a long way to appeasing me; it appeared I wasn't the only one upset with Dumbledore.
We worked until the library closed, compiling a list of things to try. The charms we tried then and there, to Madame Pince's obvious annoyance, but the potions and hexes we decided to leave for Snape's quarters afterwards. Hexes have always been fairly shady magic, and the reason we waited to try the potions is obvious enough. Needless to say, none of the charms worked. Harry and Ron stopped by at one stage, eyeing Professor Snape nervously but then steeling themselves to approach us.
"How are you, Hermione?" Harry asked, still looking warily at Snape.
"We're surviving," I told them, marking my place in a book and ignoring Snape scowling next to me. "We're trying to find a way to separate ourselves, but we're not having much luck.
"Neville says to say sorry," Ron offered, sympathy in his eyes. "I don't think he quite dared to, um…" Ron trailed off, shooting glances at Snape. I rolled my eyes.
"Gryffindor bravery at its finest," Snape commented, speaking for the first time. "Twenty points to Gryffindor."
Ron and Harry's mouths dropped simultaneously. I laughed for the first time all day.
"He's being sarcastic," I informed them gently.
"Whatever gave you that idea?" Snape asked. He was really in fine form today. "I'm glad the boy hasn't seen fit to offer you his condolences. Shows quite admirable restraint on his part."
I actually felt quite sorry for the boys. "Er… right," Ron said. He looked a little pale.
"We'll be off then," Harry added. "Um… good luck with all this Hermione," he said. "Uh, and you, Professor," he added as an afterthought. They turned and fled then, and I began laughing before the door had even closed.
"Find that amusing, did you, Miss Granger?" Snape asked in my ear. I jumped, pulling him out of his own seat a little by doing so.
"I thought you said you wouldn't call me that anymore?" I said crossly. There was something just so wrong about this situation.
"How am I expected to address you if I may not call you 'Miss Granger?'"
I half-turned in my seat, looking at him incredulously. "Funny thing, Professor. Most of us actually have first names."
"Five points each to Slytherin, Ravenclaw, and Hufflepuff," Snape said, smirking.
"You can't do that!"
"Why not?" He was still smirking. I narrowed my eyes at him.
"Because Professor Dumbledore…" I began, but Snape cut me off.
"Forbade the taking of points from you, not giving others points."
"Two can play at that game," I informed him sweetly. "I promised not to purposely annoy you. Still, I'm sure you won't mind if we sit at Gryffindor table for dinner this evening. And now I come to think of it, Lavender promised to show me her new nail polish this weekend. It would be such a shame to disappoint her."
Snape looked positively terrified as he said, "No!"
"That means you won't give points in order to hurt Gryffindor anymore?" I asked, not about to let him away without promising.
"Yes," he replied heavily.
"Good." I turned back to my work.
"But, Miss Granger, I cannot call you by your first name."
"Why not?" I asked, putting my book back down with a thump and turning to glare at him.
"It would be improper."
"Right, and sharing a bath with me isn't?" I asked loudly. There was a gasp from the next table, and wide-eyed students stared at me in horror. I frowned at them and they hurriedly turned back to their work. "Well?" I asked Snape, in a much lower tone.
"That is beside the point. It is improper for a professor to address-"
"They do it all the time in muggle schools."
"This is not a muggle school!" he said, with rising irritation. I knew I was pushing it, but really, it was not such a big deal.
"Professor Dumbledore calls Harry by his first name."
"They have extenuating circumstances."
"And we don't?" I asked in frustration. "Look, I don't care how you address me. You can call me Little Miss Muffet for all I care, just please don't call me Miss Granger."
"Very well." I didn't like the look in his eye when he conceded the point, but I wasn't up to arguing with him or questioning him again. Instead, we both went back to our work relatively peacefully. I wondered what I'd let myself in for.
We ate dinner that night in the Great Hall, arguing fairly amiably about our situation.
"What if we used a Permanent Severing Hex?" I asked him in an undertone.
"Out of the question," he snapped.
"Why?"
"Why? Would you agree to getting your arm amputated so that I could have the use of it?"
"Of course not!"
"That, Miss Mary, is the reason I don't want to use the Permanent Severing Hex. I wish to find a way that leaves me with the use of my arm, not both of us armless."
"Miss Mary?" I asked, puzzled. Snape's only reply was to smirk and to seize advantage of my pause to use our arm to cut a piece of lamb into smaller pieces. "Why Miss Mary?" I persisted.
He shrugged. "You told me not to call you Miss Granger anymore."
"But…" Suddenly it dawned on me. "I'm not contrary!"
"No?" he asked archly. He continued eating, ignoring my outraged spluttering beside him. Contrary indeed!
The days after that, believe it or not, fell into a kind of routine. We woke up in the morning, dressed, and ate breakfast in the rooms to avoid Dumbledore in the Great Hall. Then Snape and I took turns supervising the classes, doing our own work where possible. At lunchtime we would eat while we worked, researching arcane knowledge in centuries-old books and trying whatever we could. Afternoon classes passed in the same way as the morning ones, and after they were finished I would do a mini class with Snape to cover the practical potions that my classmates had done during the day. Oddly enough, this was even more awkward than what I had begun to term Bathroom Activities in my mind, because the man attached to me became Professor Snape in those moments. At all other times he was just a person, which was difficult to deal with (especially since he happened to be male), but not nearly as difficult to deal with as facing up to the fact that he was my Potions Professor.
After the lessons we worked on potions that might separate us, fruitlessly, as it turned out. Then we ate in the Great hall for the first and only time of the day, ignoring the stares from students that became less and less frequent as time wore on. After dinner I would usually have a perfunctory and distinctly awkward conversation with Harry and Ron, and those too were as awkward as the Bathroom Activities, for the same reason; Snape was beginning to thaw out around me usually, but he froze faster than Siberia in winter when Harry and Ron were around. Maybe it was the fact that he couldn't take points from me, or that he didn't teach me in class anymore, or maybe it was even my insistence that he call me something other than "Miss Granger" that caused him to behave progressively more like a friend than simply… well, a physically attached student.
I suppose that if I wanted to I could track Snape's ever-changing view of me on how often he forgot and called me "Miss Granger", to what he wore to bed. I know it sounds odd, but what doesn't about our situation? And it was true. After the first week or so Snape began removing his cloak before going to bed. Just a small thing, and believe me, the first night he did it I almost died of fright; all I could hear were those three little words he had uttered on our second night of sleeping next to one another (not together, that came later), the words "I sleep naked." I imagined him stripping off, him lying next to me in bed naked, and I imagined myself scarred for life, never able to sleep again. Of course he didn't (and thank God for that… I don't think my eyes or my brain could have coped with it back then, naked Snape at bath time was bad enough.). He simply removed his cloak, folded it, and Banished it to a chair. About a week later he began removing his robe before bed, but he still had trousers and a shirt after that. That was the week I began to feel almost friendly with him. It was strange at first; I didn't feel that we were friends, but I began to enjoy his company more. Of course, that could have been because he opened up his bookcase to me…
"Professor?" I asked.
"Severus," he responded absently, immersed in the book he was reading and continuing to ignore me, bored and idle by his side on the couch.
"You know I can't do that. It's just weird." That got his attention. He glanced up and smirked.
"Yet you expect me to not call you 'Miss Granger?'" he asked.
"Point. But don't distract me! I was in the middle of whining to you that I'm bored."
"Oh really."
"Yes really. I finished my book ten minutes ago-"
"And you've been plaguing me with not-so-subtle hints since," he interrupted.
"You noticed!" I was annoyed; he had realised I was sitting bored with nothing to do and he hadn't so much as looked up from his reading?
"How could I not? You fidget incessantly when you aren't occupied."
"I have nothing to occupy myself with," I retorted.
"With which to occupy yourself," he corrected, smirking.
"You're annoying."
"I'm merely showing you how your friends must feel in conversation with you."
"I thought we had agreed on no friends insults?"
"I wasn't insulting them," he returned mildly. I scowled at him.
"Anyway, I have nothing to do. I really don't want to sit here bored for the next however long it takes you to finish the book."
"Very well, then."
"Um?" I asked, not sure what he was agreeing to.
"You may choose something from my bookshelves." I know it was a small favour he was granting me. I knew it, but I revelled in it. It meant that Snape trusted me, that he viewed me as a responsible person… but mostly, it meant that I would have new books to read!
That day, I think, more than anything else, was the beginning of our friendship. Our romance was yet to come.