"It was creak, I'm sure of it," Colin said stubbornly. "Or creek, like a stream. But it wasn't leak and it wasn't reek and it wasn't any other 'eek' either."

"How does a tear creak, though?" Maisie asked.

Hermione grinned to herself and strolled on through the Library.

"Three weeks and they're still struggling," she reported to Snape when she reached her office. "No progress at all, from what I overheard."

He looked up from the stack of essays and raised his eyebrows. "If they find it impossibly difficult, and lose interest …"

She shook her head. "No sign of that. They're absolutely bent on solving it. How are you going with my marking?"

Snape made one final notation in a margin. "Finished. Although I presume you will insist on correcting my work."

"Well, how can I resist?" Hermione said. "After all the years you spent excoriating mine?" She reached across the desk and took the essays from him, although in truth she didn't expect to need to give them more than a cursory glance. After several lectures on her part, a prolonged period of sulking on Snape's part, and her firm insistence that she wasn't going to budge an inch on her standards for good marking, Snape had grudgingly acquiesced. He still seemed unable to resist the occasional sarcastic comment — on the very top essay she held, Hermione could see he'd written Chose one way to spell 'aconite', and stick to it. You may still be wrong, but at least will demonstrate courage in your convictions — but he limited his barbs and refrained from personal insults.

If this keeps up, I might let him in the classroom in the New Year.

Under very strict supervision, of course.

"This Saturday is the last before Christmas," she said.

"I'm aware of both the date and the days of the week," Snape said acidly.

"We take gifts. To the group," Hermione explained. "Well, a gift. A sort of lucky dip."

His eyebrows went up to the very limits of possibility. "Are you trying to tell me I am expected to identify the correct gift to give a random Muggle?"

Hermione nodded. "Yes, that's exactly what I'm trying to tell you. It doesn't have to be anything very fancy. I got socks, last year, nice woollen ones."

Snape picked up the latest issue of Potions Monthly and opened it. "Very well. I will purchase socks."

"And you'll get a gift, and you'll have to be nice about it," Hermione warned him. "I mean, polite."

He sighed. "Any other surprises?"

"Do you have plans? For Christmas?"

"Luna Lovegood is under the impression I will be spending Christmas with her and her father," Snape said.

"That will be …" Hermione struggled to find an appropriate word, mind boggling slightly at the mental image of Severus Snape and the two Lovegoods in one room.

"So my plans include being as far from the Lovegood residence as humanly possible."

Hermione put the essays back on the desk and dropped into her own chair. "Oh, Severus, you can't do that, she'll be disappointed."

"I shall fake my own death."

"You've already done that, she'll see through it."

"I will turn myself in to the Ministry and spend Christmas in Azkaban."

"Or you could turn up, spend thirty minutes being polite, and spend the rest of the day sulking in the dungeon."

"I do not," Snape said icily, "sulk."

Hermione snorted. "Keep telling yourself that."

It earned her a glare. "Granger …"

She raised her hands. "Peace. I surrender. You don't sulk. You brood."

The corner of his mouth turned up slightly. "Acceptable," he conceded. "What sort of socks?"

"What?"

"What sort of socks did you receive? Since I apparently must acquire some similar."

"Grey, with little red dots on, but you can't get exactly the same thing, Severus. Just … think of something you'd like to get, and get that."

"A subscription to the Atlantic Journal of Poisons?"

"Something non-magical."

"A new quill, one charmed to make sure you don't chew the end."

"Non-magical," Hermione repeated.

"A copy of the latest edition of Moste Potente Potions."

Hermione narrowed her eyes. "Now you're baiting me."

He raised an eyebrow. "Is it working? No, clearly not. Granger, I have no idea what Muggles give each other as gifts. I barely have an idea what wizards give each other as gifts."

"Socks, soap, a new scarf, a book voucher …that's it. We can go early on Saturday and get a book voucher for one of the Brighton bookstores."

"Another problem presents itself. I have no money, Muggle or otherwise. Being, as you know, dead."

"I'll buy it," Hermione said. "After all, you're probably morally entitled to part of my salary."

"And here I was thinking you assumed I slaved for the love of it, a house elf in a wizard's body."

Hermione smiled. You know very well that's exactly why you do it, you fraud. Because as much as you detest 'dunderheads' and delight in verbally flaying them, you enjoy that expression of sudden understanding on a student's face as much as I do. "I very much doubt anyone would mistake you for a house elf, Severus."

"Really? You order me around, force me to work, ignore my wishes, berate me when I disagree with you …" He pursed his lips. "The conclusion that you labour under precisely that misapprehension is unavoidable."

Hermione leaned to one side, and then the other. Snape raised his head from the journal he was perusing and gave her a level look.

"What, exactly, are you doing?"

"Looking at your ears," Hermione said with studied innocence. "They do seem a little larger than they ought to be."

He gave her a dark look, and for a moment Hermione thought she'd gone too far, and then a spark of amusement lit his eyes. "I must remember to renew the Disguising charm."

Hermione smiled. "I'll have to give you socks for Christmas and free you from your condition of servitude."

"If they have red spots on them, I'll spell them to chase you around the castle … and then strangle you in your sleep."

"Green?"

He narrowed his eyes. "Slytherin green."

"Done."

"Which means you'll have to come to Christmas at the Lovegoods'," Hermione said blithely. "Because Luna's invited me too."

Snape looked at her expressionlessly for a moment. Hermione was certain he was composing a blistering reply, and was taken aback when he said, "And your parents?"

Hermione shrugged a little. She made her voice light. "I'll see them in the evening. It's generally best if we don't spend too much time with each other. An hour and a half is about right." She fiddled with the cuff of her jumper. "They're almost like my parents. Almost, but not quite, which I sometimes think is harder than if they were completely different. It's like the uncanny valley of personality."

"That must be difficult," Snape said.

Hermione blinked at him. Nimue's naked nipples, Severus Snape is talking to me about my feelings. And doing it without showing any signs of being about to upbraid me for foolish sentimentality. "It is. I get … I try not to, but after a certain amount of time, I get angry. With them, which is unfair, because I did it to them."

"Would you make the same choice again?"

She bit her lip. "I … I probably would, you know. I mean, they would never have gone without me, even if I'd told them the truth. It's hard to explain just how thoroughly Muggles believe that calling the police will sort everything out, even Dark Lords hell-bent on murder. And I had to go with Harry and Ron. Even if Voldemort hadn't just killed Mum and Dad outright for being the Muggle parents of a witch, he would have used them to get to me, like he used Luna to get to Xenophilius."

Snape nodded slightly. "He would have. And then he would have given them to his Death Eaters for entertainment. Instead, they are alive, and perhaps they resent you for having the power to do what you did, and if twenty years of teaching has given me any insight into the attitudes of parents, they are also a little shocked by the abrupt realisation that you are an adult, and your own person, and have a life they no longer share."

Hermione smiled. "Don't tell me you spent long hours discussing your students with their parents."

The corner of his mouth turned up. "Of course not. Those would be hours profitably spent doing almost anything else, such as dissecting Horned Toads with a blunt spoon. I was Head of Slytherin House, though, as well as a classroom teacher, and as such I was the unfortunate recipient of many an owl bearing parents' pleas to force their offspring to chose different subjects, to change their career plans, or to otherwise cease being independent individuals and return to being extensions of their parents' expectations."

"And what did you do?"

"Put them in the fire," Snape said with a slight shrug. "If parents can't control their children, that's certainly not my problem." He smiled a little. "I assure you, I had no such trouble with those students, or any other. Speaking of which — has Fiona Firesmith's behaviour improved?"

"Well, she hasn't hexed anyone in class again, so that's something." Hermione sighed. "She still looks at me like something she needs to scrape off the sole of her shoe."

"I'm surprised at you, Granger, I would have thought you'd be used to being hated."

Her eyes widened. "Well, thank you very much!"

He snorted. "As I recall, there was very little love lost between you and Draco Malfoy."

"Yes, but —" Hermione paused. "You're saying that I should just accept that some students will dislike me, for no reason?"

"Some people will dislike you for no reason, or for spurious reasons such as your fame, your intelligence, and yes, your parentage. Some of those people will be young people in your classes. Filius contends with the occasional student who looks down on him in more than the literal sense. I'm sure your fellow students enlightened you as to their opinions of Septima." He raised an eyebrow. "The important thing is that your students learn, whether they learn because they love the subject, because they wish to impress you, or because they fear the consequences you will visit on them if they don't."

"And we're back to ruling by fear." Hermione shook her head.

Snape sighed. He laid the journal aside and leaned forward, elbows on the desk and hands clasped loosely. "These first years will be the most difficult. You are young, and you are teaching students who still recall you as a contemporary. Time will cure both." He looked away, studying the fire blazing merrily in the hearth across the room. "Count yourself lucky that even the students who remember you in uniform know you as 'Hermione Granger, war hero' and not 'Hermione Granger, former Death Eater'."

"Was it hard?" Hermione asked softly. "Coming back here to teach?"

He shrugged, not looking at her, the corners of his mouth turning down. Just as she had made up her mind that he wasn't going to answer, he surprised her again. "I didn't have much choice. I needed Albus Dumbledore's protection to stay out of Azkaban, I was otherwise unemployable, and this was the only home I knew." His dark gaze flicked to her again, daring her to comment. "The attitudes of the students, and a number of my colleagues, was a considerable irritant, but for … various reasons I was largely indifferent to it."

"Was that when you met Charity Burbage?" Hermione asked.

Snape's mouth tightened. "No," he said, his tone making it a warning rather than an answer.

Hermione suppressed a sigh, knowing that pressing him on the subject — on any subject, once Severus decides he doesn't want to discuss it — would be useless at best. And at worst, ends with us shouting at each other. "You should probably think of what you want to get for Luna and Xeno, too," she said instead.

"I have," Snape said. He raised an eyebrow. "They're both fascinated by exotic creatures, I believe? So the perfect gift … from every perspective … is a Lethifold."

Hermione was certain he was joking.

Almost certain.