Chapter 2: Detention scene
Hermione Granger was dreading detention on Friday. If was bad enough that she was feeling distracted all the time around Ron, but to feel distracted around professor Snape too, she just didn't understand it. At first when she'd just had these feelings around Ron she has dismissed it as a crush, but to have this distractedness around Snape too, and what if these feelings spread? What is she began to feel this way around everyone else too?
She knocked on the door to the potions classroom.
There was a short wait before the door opened.
"Miss Granger, I see you've decided to grace me with your presence."
"Yes Sir." She replied, looking down at her shoes.
She followed him into the potions classroom.
"Tonight you will be cleaning and re-organising my potions store." He said, "I trust after your last excursion and brewing experiment you are familiar with the location of the ingredients."
She blushed and looked down at her feet.
This man made her feel so scatterbrained.
"Without magic." He said.
He turned away from her and walked over to his desk, sitting down next to a pile of marking, effectively dismissing her. Turning towards the store room walked across the classroom and went inside.
The storeroom was stacked with thousands and thousands of ingredients, rows and rows, dust covering the bottles and shelves, with potions and ingredients stacked randomly and haphazardly.
Hermione sighed at the prospect of the task ahead of her.
She climbed up on a stool and began sorting through the potions on the first shelf.
Time dragged slowly and Hermione found herself beginning to sort through the potions on the second shelf. Rearrange the potions into alphabetical order, Hermione reached out for a potion just slightly out of her reach to the left of her. Leaning a bit more towards the potion Hermione felt herself begin to slip and pitching forward she found herself crashing towards the ground, bringing a few potions down with her.
She hit the ground with a loud bang, catching the back of her head against a shelf and bringing a few potions down on top of her. She could feel the back of her head throbbing in agony, feeling sick and nauseous, exacerbated by a cloud of potions mixing together.
She could feel the stickiness of the liquid over her skin and she was suddenly painfully aware of one of the potions beginning to to burn.
She let out a sob and she tried to sit up and find her wand, which she had lost somewhere in the fall. The potion was burning its way through her clothes and beginning to burn at her skin. Hermione writhed against the floor from the pain.
As Hermione struggled to sit up, scrabbling around for her wand the door opened and in came Professor Snape.
"What on earth are you making so noise for?"
His faced turned from anger to concern as he noticed her on the floor. He bent down supporting her head and conjuring a pillow, allowing her to rest her aching head.
He waved his wand over her, scanning for and severe injuries.
"You've got a concussion." He said. "No breaks."
He continued to scan over her and detecting nothing worse than the concussion he began to work on the burns.
The potion had burnt its way through her clothes and now it felt like she was left with mere scraps covering her underwear. She should be embarrassed about being half naked in front of Professor Snape but instead she felt relieved that it was him here helping her and not somebody else.
He summoned a bottle down off of a shelf and opening it he began to rub it into her skin. Immediately the burning sensation began to ease.
He continued to massage the salve into her arms and legs and Hermione found herself begin to relax. The burning had stopped and the feelings were being replaced with a warm feeling. The tingling was beginning to spread, a heat forming in the base of her stomach.
For the first time all year she felt completely at peace and whole, like this was where she was meant to be in the whole universe.
She was aware of how close there were were, and that state of her undress. Electricity hummed through her and she felt a pull at the centre of her chest, pulling her towards him. It was a small cupboard and her she was, practically naked, lying on the floor while he massage cream into her skin!
His eyes burned, and just as she thought he would lean in and kiss her he turned away and she felt a sharp pain in her heart and the calm that surrounded her five minutes before disappeared. She attempted to keep her composure as she watched for his reaction.
"Leave Miss Granger. Leave now." He commanded, throwing his robe at her.
She covered herself up with his oversized robe, fumbling for her ward and transfigured it to fit her.
"Leave." He commanded.
And with that she fled the room, feeling a deep ache within her chest like nothing she had ever felt before.