A MUTUAL DESIRE
Disclaimer: This is a non-profit tribute to the works of JK Rowling who created and, together with her publishers and licensees, owns the characters and settings elaborated herein.
A/N: Spoilers, knowledge assumed. Thanks to all my reviewers
(Tabari Avaren: I don't think it's whiny for Hermione's eyes to prickle with tears that she doesn't actually cry. It isn't about a silly incident three years earlier; for her this symbolised finding a place in the Wizarding world and reversing the way pureblood wizards have made her unwelcome.)
Hermione scowled as the tall, black-clad figure stalked through the door. She'd known, of course, when she took the job at Slug and Jiggers Apothecary, that there was a good chance of seeing him sooner or later. Yet she'd hoped, since she was there only two days a week, that he'd come on one of the other days.
No such luck. Here was Professor Sarcastic Snape walking in like he owned the place, six weeks after they'd professed a mutual desire of never seeing each other again. She dropped her eyes and busied herself with the fuzzy-haired witch who wanted to pick through the beetle eyes to find the best ones.
"I assure you, madam," she repeated, "all our beetle eyes are of the finest quality and all are equivalent to each other. Only five Knuts a scoop and I guarantee you won't find any damaged ones."
Across the room, a pale face curtained by greasy hair turned from contemplation of finest Canadian Tamarac bark to glance in her direction. Sharp, black eyes held hers for a moment, then he jerked the tiniest nod and shifted to inspect the long-stemmed adder's fern and turpeth.
It was his fault she was here, well, partly his fault. No, not really. She was the one who'd stolen from his private stores with Harry's assistance in second year. She was the one who'd chosen to confess and beg forgiveness. To pay back the value of her theft was only fair. Inconvenient, but fair.
Against her will, her eyes returned to him. He'd known. He'd known it was her (well, her and Harry), he'd known exactly how much she'd taken, he'd even calculated the cost and been ready with a restitution claim. He'd known it all and yet for five and a half years he'd said nothing on the subject. Amidst the sneers and insults he scattered around the classroom, he'd never mentioned it to her knowledge. She was unhesitatingly sure that if she hadn't confronted him he'd have gone on saying nothing forever.
Not that he would have forgotten. He never forgot a wrong done to him. It would have lain between them for the rest of their lives as an unpaid debt he chose not to claim. She wondered uneasily, for one moment, if he would have reminded her at some future time, demanding payment in service rather than money, secure in the knowledge that her Gryffindor mentality would enforce compliance.
The witch had requested two scoops of beetle eyes and was now looking over the dried angleworms, poking at them with a wrinkled bony finger. Hermione hastened to remove the jar.
"Please don't touch."
The witch bought three Knuts worth then very grudgingly pulled out sixteen silver Sickles for an ounce of dragon liver, watching with quick, suspicious eyes as Hermione weighed it on the silver balance-scales.
Professor Snape had moved on to toadstools and agarics. His eyes roamed over smoothcaps, deathcaps and inky caps to rest at last on the stinkhorn. After that one glance, he hadn't looked her way again, yet she couldn't escape that feeling of being under observation.
It's just a throwback to Potions classes, she told herself. I'm so used to him watching me, I must be just imagining things. He'd stalked around the classroom in mostly silent inspection, with a curl of the mouth or a lowering of the brows as he loomed up behind them. Occasionally, he'd rebuked their carelessness and incompetence with short stabbing sentences; more rarely, he'd offered words of cold praise – but only to Slytherins of course. Other Gryffindors simply breathed a sigh of relief if he found nothing to criticise.
She hadn't been satisfied by his silence. She'd wanted him to acknowledge her careful preparation, her immaculate technique. Even a single nod of approval would have sufficed, but he only deigned to notice her if he could snipe at her for helping Neville.
Hermione wrapped and bagged the witch's purchases and pasted a professionally cheery smile on her face as she handed them over. It faded abruptly as she found herself facing "the greasy git".
That had always been Ron's name for him at Hogwarts, but she'd always scolded him whenever he'd used it. She'd never called him that herself, not even in the privacy of her thoughts or after a particularly disastrous encounter, but, after their last meeting, he'd figured in her mind exclusively under that name. It was the only thing that seemed to numb the ridiculous ache of being rebuffed so comprehensively when she'd tried so hard. Ornery, obstinate, greasy git.
"Miss Granger," he acknowledged her with a calm stare. "Is Slug here?"
"I'm afraid not, Professor, but -"
"I'm not your professor anymore."
"Do you mean I should call you Mr. Snape?"
Not mister, Master," he corrected, with a curl of the lip.
"Master Snape?" Her eyes widened and she hid a smile. That sounded like something she might call a six-year-old if she was in a particularly formal mood.
"Really, have I discovered a fact the little know-it-all doesn't know?" he sneered with overdone satisfaction. "How surprising. The correct mode of address for all Potioneers is Master, or Mistress for a female of course. A name is added to avoid confusion only in the uncommon event that more than one Potioneer is present."
She ground her teeth. Pompous, patronising, greasy git.
"I'll stick with calling you Professor, sir, if I may." By supreme effort, she managed to keep her voice sweet.
"I imagine you will do as you choose, Miss Granger, but nothing will more surely mark you as uncouth than refusing to adhere to the norms of polite society."
She worried her lower lip as she thought that over. She didn't want to seem out-of-place in the Wizarding World, but the thought of calling him Master sent the angry blood rushing to her head and scalding words to her lips. Call him Master? She just wouldn't call him anything.
"Thank you for the warning." She hid her clenched fists in her robes. "I'm sure you know everything there is to know about polite society." The slight emphasis on "everything" and "polite" conveyed the none-too-subtle insult.
He smirked.
"I don't claim to know everything. There is only one know-it-all in this room."
Quarrelsome, quick-tempered, greasy git.
"You're not my professor anymore," she echoed him. "If I'm a know-it-all, at least you don't have to suffer me in the future."
"Seven years was more than enough suffering for a lifetime," he murmured.
She swallowed a lump in her throat, transported back to a dusty third year classroom and a lesson on werewolves. Her efforts to impress him had been punished as usual with an insult. She wasn't that uncertain little girl anymore and she didn't have to take his put-downs in silence.
"Yes, that's what all your students said about you," she snarled.
"Did Slug and Jigger hire you to insult their patrons, Miss Granger? I find that highly doubtful."
"No, it's a free service, reserved entirely for you!"
She waited for an explosion that never came. Cold, black eyes travelled slowly down her form and up again to her glowering face. Her former teacher raised an eyebrow and spoke in his silkiest voice.
"Still trying to impress me, with all your Gryffindor recklessness intact? I see graduation hasn't changed you at all. You always did far more than was requested or desirable."
She gritted her teeth. Rotten, razor-tongued, greasy git. The angrier she got, the more he smirked. Oh how she wanted to slap that smugness off his face!
But that would only get her in trouble. She'd lose this job and gain a bad reputation that might prevent her finding other work. Of course, she could always work at her parents' dental practice, as she did the other three days of the week, but she really wasn't that much interested in teeth, especially not in painful and painstaking Muggle ways of fixing them. If her parents had allowed it, she'd have shrunk her teeth already in first year. She'd found a spell for the purpose weeks before the troll incident had curtailed her library time by giving her friends.
Besides, he had enough battle-experience to grab her hand before it connected with his face and then he'd mock her for not controlling her temper. She took a deep, calming breath.
"You haven't changed either, sir. You're still the nastiest, most disagreeable man I've ever met."
"Like you, I aim for excellence," he murmured, unfazed. "Only I find it comes rather effortlessly."
The customer is always right; be patient, pleasant and polite," she chanted to herself. "Keep your temper, keep your cool; if you explode then you're the fool." Three brisk repetitions brought her blood pressure down enough that she could fix a polite smile on her stiff face.
"Mr. Slug should be back in less than half an hour or I could fetch Mr. Jigger from the backroom if you prefer," she said aloud. "Unless you'd like to trust your business to me?" And let him dare intimate he thought her incompetent!
His eyes dropped to her hand that was longingly fingering her wand, then returned to her face.
"I wouldn't advise it," he warned in a menacing whisper.
Her hand jerked as she caught her breath. Sour, scary, scowling, greasy git.
"No, sir."
He held her gaze for a moment longer, hard black eyes boring into defiant brown ones.
"I'll wait for Slug. He prefers to deal with the annual Hogwarts inventory himself. You may show me the latest shipment of nixie toenails. I understand Jigger's found a new supplier."
"Yes and I believe he's proving very reliable." She settled into shoptalk with relief. ""Mr. Jigger is negotiating with him over several new lines he's promised us." She pulled out a crystal jar from under the counter as she spoke and placed it in front of him.
"Excellent. I'll have a word with Jigger later."
He put out his hand and she gave him her little gold tongs and magnifying glass without argument. He extracted one dripping nail – as nixies were water sprites their bits needed to be stored wet – and inspected it through the glass, turning it this way and that.
She knew he was an expert, he could brew Wolfsbane, but she'd never actually seen him at work. The intent frown, with mouth relaxed into an almost-smile, took years off his age. She remembered with a start that he was not quite forty. Most of the time, he looked closer to sixty. She smiled just a little, picturing him in his office, his capable elegant fingers chopping and stirring.
He carefully replaced the nail in the jar before handing everything back. His face stiffened into its usual sour lines as she wiped the counter. What she'd always thought pure bad temper, she now identified as strain, fatigue and, she thought, wary defensiveness.
"I didn't see you here two weeks ago," he remarked.
"I've been working here all summer, but only on Mondays and Thursdays," she answered the implied question.
"I wouldn't have thought they paid you enough to cover the amount you gave me." He had turned that look of intense concentration on her. She hated that it brought the blood to her cheeks.
"They don't. I work in the Muggle world the rest of the week," she snapped.
"Still torn between two worlds, not sure which one you belong in?"
"I've never belonged in the Muggle world." She gave him a scathing look. "It would have been pleasanter to be welcomed in this one."
"Yet the harder one fights for something, the more one values it," he reflected.
He'd made her fight very hard. She opened her mouth to blast him and closed it again. Maybe he hadn't welcomed her, but he'd spent two decades ensuring there would be a place, a safe place, for her and other Muggle-borns. If actions spoke louder than words, that had been a far more useful welcome than kind words and agreeable smiles.
"You learnt that the hard way, didn't you?" she said, after a long silence.
"Doesn't everyone?" He scowled.
It struck her suddenly that he was speaking to her as adult to adult, not teacher to student. Now that she came to think of it, he'd done that the last time they spoke as well. She'd been so caught up in the disappointment of his rebuke, she hadn't even noticed till now.
No threats, no looming, no crushing assumption of authority; they were arguing as equals, snap and counter-snap.
"If they ever learn it at all. You taught me a lot more than I ever realised," she mused.
"I spoke rather harshly at our last meeting," he admitted.
"I don't think you've ever spoken to me anything but harshly."
You thoroughly deserved most of it. But not quite all." He paused, frowning. Their eyes met. "That comment about your teeth was unnecessary."
"Unnecessary? A fine euphemism for just plain rude!" Yet one corner of her mouth tugged upwards. Was this an apology? She was sure it was the only one she'd ever get.
Git. Touchy, testy, tight-lipped, temperamental, not-quite-intolerable git.
A/N Most of the Potions ingredients in this chapter are non-canon.
