Her hands still warm, Hermione rushed back up the stairs to the Gryffindor tower. She made it back to her room without incident, and without running into Harry or Ron. Putting her new, treasured book aside, she dug ferociously through the wooden chest until finding the anthology she needed. It was rare for anyone her age - Muggle or magical - to appreciate Romantic poetry, but she was a rare girl.
Turning the pages, Hermione finally found the poem she was looking for: Byron's First Kiss of Love. Pulling out a clean piece of parchment, she copied the words from the page with shaking hands. She hoped that he would understand the sentiment underlying the words written almost two hundred years ago. Surely Severus would be refined enough to appreciate poetry, she rationalized, signing her name and the date at the bottom. Hermione wanted to take the parchment to him immediately, but it was far too late. Or was it? He had ordered her to bed, but that was under his usual stern and bitter guise. She could easily make it to the dungeons without being seen, and a short visit wouldn't hurt anything.
Giddily, Hermione shook her head. She was being irrational at best; it was unlikely that he was even awake at this hour, never mind that it was long since time to be in bed. If she were caught wandering the halls at this hour, she'd be in major trouble. Delivering the present would have to wait until tomorrow at the earliest, she decided, directing her unwilling feet into bed. They had spent an agonizing eternity at ends with each other, so a wait of eight hours should be tolerable.
Severus Snape, meanwhile, was staring into the absolute blackness of his dungeon bedchamber. His heart felt lighter than it had... well, since they had fought. He had spent several months' salary on the book, and he was lucky that she had welcomed him with open arms. If not, he would have begrudgingly added the tome to his own library, putting it in such a place that it would not remind him of her when he looked at it. But he could not be bitter with her for injuries he had originally caused; the time he'd spent ignoring her was agonizing. Every Potions class, he'd wanted to ask her to stay behind, but seeing Weasley dangerously close to her made his stomach churn angrily. It seemed she was someone else's, and he had lost his chance... but tonight proved that was not so.
He tried to pinpoint when he had first become aware of Hermione, but could trace it to no particular date or incident. Over the last few years, a sense of similarity, of equality and quiet understanding, had subconsciously developed between the two. It began when he saw how brilliant she was at Potions, as well as every other subject. But he had not fallen in line with the other professors and allowed her to become his pet. He recognized that they were becoming intellectual equals, and it scared him that she was a mere slip of a girl, only half his age. His respect of her had deepened when heard her defending him to her friends. She was growing up too, he mused. She was less a girl and more a woman; her classmates, however, were still children, at best. He acknowledged that he had felt a quiet kinship with her for some time now, willing to admit it or otherwise. Then, the asphodel had mysteriously appeared, it seemed such a short time ago. It led him to her that first night, and they had went from there. Severus Snape was scared at best, he had no idea where this wild ride was going. But he felt something for the girl, and it was the first good thing he had felt in a very long time. Ultimately, secretly, he was as scared of being hurt by her as he was of hurting her.
When the morning came, he was still awake. His owl startled him by landing beside the pillow, a small sheet of parchment clutched in its claws. Unfurling the paper, Severus felt his body grow warm as he read the introduction: This is your partridge in a pear tree. Reading the contents three times over he pressed the parchment to his lips, knowing full well that she understood the connotations of sending him Byron. Dear heart, she had sent him Byron. She was the only other person he knew who enjoyed Romantic poetry; perhaps they were even more connected than he was willing to admit.
True to her words, Hermione continued to send him other Romantic passages for the next eleven days, all via his owl. He was amazed at the creativity and sensitivity of her selections, but he feared that even small smiles in the Great Hall would give him away. The twelfth day was when the students were expected to go home for the holidays; Snape grudgingly spent time in the Main Hall seeing his Slytherins off. He was shocked to see Hermione standing with McGonagall, not hauling her own trunk and her ginger cat out into the powder...
(To Be Continued, soon!)
AN: Sorry I've been so remiss with updates! I hope to have the second half of this posted within a week or two. School has kept me... occupied... sigh