Ok WOW! I have been away for a long time! I really do apologize for that. My last computer unfortunately croaked (RIP old mac) so I had to wait to get a new one. But the technical difficulties have been fixed, so all should be well again. But yeah, we're coming back with some SS/HG time, so yay
Thank you to everyone who reviewed the last chapter. (We've hit 200 reviews!)- so excited! You guys are great and of course a lovely thank you to my betas, Emilia Wolfe and McGonagall's Bola.
(This has been beta'd now!)
Last Time: (since its been forever)
"Even if you're right about Uncle Severus, it doesn't mean you're right about Granger. The second we approach her, she'll go blabbing off to Saint Potter to help her from the big, bad, Slytherins."
"WE won't be approaching her. I will."
"And how do you plan on doing that without having the whole of Gryffindor House raining down on us in some misplaced sense of justice?"
Blaise smiled at him sweetly and said, "Very easily, Draco. When one wants to make friends, one only has to be friendly."
Chapter 23
Harry nervously watched Hermione sigh, yet again, as they walked down to the dungeons. He was hovering, and once more he knew that he was being irritating with his hovering too. Honestly, he was a little surprised that Hermione hadn't cursed him yet. Well, she hadn't tried to curse him tonight at any rate. (He still had a small burn mark on his backside from when she stung him last week in the Great Hall).
She wasn't far from it. He could tell she was already losing patience, from the way her mouth was squeezed into a firm line, and how the pointer finger on her right hand twitched as if it were seeking out her wand.
In the back of his mind he knew that he was taking this whole 'guardian' thing too far. If there were any person in this world that could take care of herself it was Hermione, and yet….and yet, he couldn't banish those harmful thoughts away, the ones that screamed at him that he was going to lose his friend if he let his guard down. She could slip through his fingers just as easily as Sirius had. And then what would he do? She was his sister, as integral a part of him as the Weasleys were. He couldn't lose her too.
Hermione grunted quietly, and Harry realized that he had subconsciously drifted to her side again. Space was quickly put back in-between them.
"Sorry," he said sheepishly, "I'm being a pest, aren't I?"
"A little, yeah." She smiled wryly at him.
Harry ducked his head in embarrassment. "I know, I'm—"
"Sorry?" Hermione finished for him, causing him to blush.
"Yeah…I know you can take care of yourself, but I'm just worried."
Hermione snorted inelegantly. "Over what? I'm perfectly safe here."
He wasn't liking how flippant she was being about her situation. As ridiculous as he was being, she WAS in actual danger. How could she not see that? "Voldemort is looking for you, Hermione. And you know he has people watching you here. They could try something at any moment!"
"They could try, yes, but that doesn't mean that they'll succeed," she replied. She placed her hands on his shoulders. "Look, I'm not being complacent or lax. If anything should happen, I'll be prepared for it. I promise. But seriously, I doubt any of the students here are actively plotting my demise. Their parents, maybe, but not the kids."
"What?!" Harry looked at her incredulously. "How can you say that? Draco—"
Hermione stepped back. "Not this again."
"Yes, this again! You know what kind of person he is. Why do you keep defending him?"
"I'm not defending him, Harry. But he's been really quiet lately. Hell, he hasn't even looked at me sideways in forever. I really doubt that he's planning anything sinister."
"But I SAW him sneaking around last night after curfew. If he's not planning anything then why would he be sneaking around?"
The blonde ferret had had such a shifty look about him last night that Harry just knew he was up to no good. And that wasn't the first time that he had caught him slinking around Hogwarts. About a week ago, he had caught a glimpse of green robes and blonde hair twisting around a corner, but when he had followed after him, the arrogant Pureblood had been nowhere to be seen.
Two nights later, he had been greeted with the same sight and had immediately set after Malfoy under the safety of his dad's cloak. He had managed to follow him all the way to an empty classroom on the fourth floor, but just as he was about to pull open the door, a strange need to walk away had overwhelmed him and he had turned back down the hall not seconds later. It wasn't until he was back in the Gryffindor common room that he had realized that he had been bamboozled with a Privacy Charm.
Lesson learned, he had gone back again to that same floor, but this time he halted around the corner, far enough away that any Confusion wards would have no effect on him. And he had waited. And waited. Until finally Malfoy had emerged in his fancy school robes from the room. Following him had been another person that Harry hadn't been able to identify. Not only had their hoods up, covering their faces, but they had been too far away to make any defining features out. He could only tell that they were a girl. But by the velvet green of her cloak, Harry had only been able to see that she was a Slytherin as well. No surprise there. It just confirmed in the Gryffindor's mind that Draco must have been up to no good.
But so far, whenever he brought it up with Ron and Hermione, they shrugged it off. Ron, had at least agreed that there may be something going on, but Hermione wouldn't hear any of it. For some reason she thought Draco was 'reformed' of all things—Draco Malfoy, Pureblood supremacist and child of Voldemort's most trusted follower, reformed. It was so insane an idea that Harry wanted to pull his hair out.
"What were you doing out after curfew?" Hermione asked, breaking him from his thoughts.
"What?"
"You said you saw Draco out after curfew, but the only way you could've seen that was if YOU were out after curfew too."
"Well, yeah, I was, but this isn't about me! This is about Draco and the fact that he's probably trying to get rid of you."
"Okay, first off, yes, this is about you too. You shouldn't be wandering around the school at night, abusing your Invisibility Cloak. It's for emergencies only."
"I'm not abusing it! I'm using it to protect my friends," he responded angrily. How could Hermione say that he was abusing his cloak? He had never used it unless it was completely necessary. She knew that!
They came to a stop in front of the Potions classroom and Hermione turned to him, and seeing the look on his face, she stopped whatever she was about to say.
"Harry," she began and something about her gentle tones soothed a bit of his anger. "I'm not trying to say you're overreacting or anything like that. I just think that we should give Malfoy a chance."
"But he was meeting up with another Slytherin. I saw her," he insisted, "and they looked like they were up to something."
An amused look passed over Hermione's face that Harry couldn't decipher. "Well," she said, "he does have a certain reputation among the female student body. Maybe he was meeting up with this girl for an entirely different reason."
The meaning behind his friend's words caused his cheeks to blush red. He did NOT want that kind of image in his head of the ferret. "I don't think that's the reason, Hermione," he grumbled, looking away.
"If you say so," she laughed, then gave him a quick peck on the cheek. "I have to go take my Potions exam, so I'll see you later. Thanks for walking me, Harry."
She waved at him as she opened the dungeon door and slipped inside, leaving Harry to shuffle back to the common room, his face still red and muttering the whole way.
The classroom was eerily quiet when Hermione walked in and…very empty. She cast a precursory glance around the room and noticed that her Potions professor was nowhere to be seen. How odd.
Peeking at her watch, she noted that she was exactly on time not a minute over or under the time frame the professor had given her after class today. So where on Earth was he?
She took her usual seat towards the front of the class and placed her bag down. Her quill set and ink were taken out shortly after and primly placed in front of her just so, and after a moment's deliberation (and a quick glance around the room to make sure she was truly alone) she took out a well-used notebook and flipped it open to a dog-eared page.
Her cramped handwriting filled the page, covering nearly every surface of paper that could be found. There were ink blots and slashes and words angrily crossed out. The words that you could see made absolutely no sense, and were just randomly strewn about the page. For anyone who knew Hermione and her meticulous note-taking skills, they would have been appalled by the sight, and thoroughly confused. Which was what she wanted.
She tapped the page with her finger, letting a bit of her magic caress it and like a switch being turned on, the page morphed, rearranging themselves until they were neat, orderly and back in place.
"Slytherin Research" was printed boldly at the top and below it were all her quickly growing notes on the Slytherin House; whom she thought was innocent, whom she thought were spies, and whether or not her peers were supporting Voldemort because they wanted to or because they had to.
Her notes had become quite extensive, quickly filling up several pages with her theories surrounding the different families involved. She had taken the lesson the Strumbard sisters had taught her to heart. She wasn't going to let House prejudices blind her from the truth and not only would she figure out what was going on with the Slytherins but she would find a way to help.
Currently, she had no idea how she was going to help anyone. It wasn't like she could go up to any of them and offer them a knitted hat, or a shoulder to cry on. They would look at her like she was loony. Plus "fraternizing" with a Gryffindor might get them in trouble, and she didn't want that. There was a barely-formed plan of going to Dumbledore with her information but she wasn't really sure where that would take her.
So, for now she just had a notebook filled with information that she had gotten from sleuthing. She had kept her ears open to gossip, listened in on conversations in class, and followed around her fellow students while Disillusioned.
Well, she wasn't all that proud of the last one. It certainly smacked of hypocrisy considering she just had reprimanded Harry for trailing Malfoy, but in her defense she hadn't followed them after curfew, only during the daytime. And she certainly hadn't been doing it so she could accuse them of criminal activities later.
For all the discomfort that her stalking of the Slytherins left her with, it did glean her a lot of useful information. Probably one of the most important bits of information that she had gathered from it, had been the fact that there was, indeed, someone in Slytherin who was helping their fellow Housemates escape Voldemort's influence. She didn't know who they were, only that they were offering a way of escape and quietly sowing seeds of dissent in the Snake Pit.
There was a bit of speculation going around about who this mystery person was, but so far no one knew anything specifically about them, only that they were being called Red Dragon. It was an impressive name, most likely taken from the the fable of Merlin and the two dragons. Her mother had read the story to her when she was younger once, explaining how two dragons, a red dragon and a white dragon were in a constant struggle. The red dragon, the weaker of the two, for the longest time seemed to be losing the battle until finally it gained the upper hand and defeated the white dragon. When questioned about what the battle could mean, Merlin prophesied that it was a sign that the native English (the red dragon) though weaker for now would soon overcome the saxons (the white dragon). It was an ingenious name that sent a message that could be easily rallied around and it made her who would be behind it.
She had a list of suspects, of course. It was nothing impressive. She certainly wouldn't wow anyone with her poor attempts at playing Sherlock Holmes, but it was a start. So far, she had whittled down the pool of possible candidates to someone in Slytherin House (despite the color of the dragon), because quite frankly, the only House that cared about Slytherin WAS Slytherin (as sad as that thought was).
For a time she had thought that maybe it was Professor Snape behind all the rebel activities, but she didn't think the Potions Master would have the time to orchestrate such elaborate plans, as well as do his normal teaching duties and his spying. He simply couldn't be in multiple places at once. The other professors, while they might have time on their hands, weren't as familiar with the Slytherins as him, and whoever this mystery vigilante was, they definitely knew the Slytherins intimately, so it couldn't have been the other professors either.
Slytherins from families that had less political influence (and yes she included blood status in that, as mad as that made her) were also crossed off the list, because even if the snakes didn't follow Voldemort, that didn't mean that they would just listen to anyone. So that left her with just the Purebloods and a handful of Half-Bloods left. Something told her this person was a Pureblood, though. As a fellow Pureblood, the Red Dragon would automatically have their peers' respect, and they would be able to negotiate with anyone within the House.
She figured that they also must have a boat load of money at their disposal too, because all of the favors they were doing couldn't be done with mere chump change. Actually, because of that fact, Hermione had once entertained the silly idea that it was Draco behind all this—yes, Draco, of all people. Which she knew was completely ridiculous. Sure, Malfoy had been quiet this semester and she didn't think he was living in Voldemort's pocket anymore, but she doubted he had completely changed his spots. She was pretty sure he would still scream bloody murder if he had to even stand in the same room as a Muggle, so him being the figurehead behind a rebellion to stop Voldemort was a little too far-fetched for her tastes.
Wonder what Harry would say to that idea? she wondered, snorting as she imagined the look on her friend's face, especially after their conversation today.
Hermione looked down at the list of names and fondly crossed out Draco's name one more time. It was no use letting her imagination get carried away.
A whispered "Miss Granger," suddenly came from behind her, causing her to jump in her seat with an undignified yelp. Her quill was dropped, but fortunately for her and her pride, her instincts came to the forefront and her wand was whipped out not even a second after the regrettably instinctual noise.
Snape looked down at her only a foot away, a self-satisfied smirk on his face. His arms were crossed as he eyed her wand indifferently.
"What the hell!" She shrieked, inappropriately, but she didn't care at the moment. That man had possibly just scared ten years off her life.
Surprisingly enough, Professor Snape didn't pounce on the opportunity to destroy Gryffindor's chances for the House Cup. He merely raised a curious eyebrow, choosing to let her little outburst slide for whatever Machiavellian reason of his.
Probably so he can use it against me later, Hermione's thoughts grumbled, as she straightened her robes in an annoyed huff. Well, if he wasn't going to bring up a punishment (or even apologize for scaring the spit out of her), then neither would she.
His eyes moved to the notebook in front of her, and she quickly shut it, glaring at him.
"I had called you several times, Miss Granger. You weren't responding."
"I didn't hear anything," she said accusingly, knowing deep down that he had probably done no such thing.
Snape shrugged away the comment, tilting his nose up. "I cannot help it that your hearing is faulty, Miss Granger. Instead of blaming your deficiencies on others, why don't you visit Madame Pomfrey to have yourself checked?"
Her mouth opened to make a smart comeback when he smoothly interrupted her.
"Nevertheless," he said, gliding over to his desk, "I believe that we have an exam to deal with, and we're already behind."
Hermione stiffened minutely. "I was here on time…sir."
Snape continued as if she hadn't said a thing to him. He was composed and completely unaffected. Reaching into his desk, he pulled out a smooth packet and walked over to place it on her desk. His hand rested on the top as he stared at her with a challenge in his eyes, as if he was hoping she would try to say something else. Something cutting or rude, something he could use to cut her down to size, but she wouldn't give him any more ammunition against her.
So, she bit her tongue, swallowing the snide comment she had on the tip of it and with some effort managed to smile sweetly at him. Her cheeks burned from the awkward stretch of her mouth, and a small voice in the back of her head suggested that she probably looked more deranged than happy, but it was entirely worth it to see the professor's small grimace of discomfort.
"You have an hour for your written. Begin," he stated, ending the short battle of wills. He headed back to his desk, sat down and grabbed a leather book, not sparing her a second glance.
She rubbed at her cheeks, as she picked up her test and gave it a cursory glance. It seemed relatively easy, much like her other tests. It seemed a little longer than usual, with more short answer questions, but it was nothing too strenuous. Funny, she could have sworn that Snape would give her a ridiculously hard test just to spite her, but it would appear as if her fears were unfounded.
Well, she certainly wasn't going to complain if the professor wanted to be fair, so she said nothing. Happily, she worked through each question at the same speed that she had with her other exams. Her answers were checked, then rechecked after she finished and she closed the packet with a satisfied sigh.
"Finished, Granger?" Snape asked, looking up from his book. He got up from his desk and walked over to the blackboard.
"Yes, sir."
"Good. You can place your exam on my desk," he said pleasantly—too pleasantly, actually.
Hermione paused on her way to the professor, his tone striking several warning bells in her mind, each one screaming at her that danger was on the horizon. She could liken it to the feeling that a deer might get out in the field and that sudden instinct that told it there was a predator nearby, stalking and waiting.
Perhaps she was right, when she thought that the test was too easy. Maybe she should look it over one more time, because the smug grin that the professor was wearing at the moment was practically screaming, 'It's a trap!'
No, I'm sure that I didn't miss anything. There's no way he could've snuck anything by me…But then, why does he look so bloody pleased with himself? Maybe…he reworded something? Or slipped in another question that I missed. No, I would've caught that. Gah! This is ridiculous!
"Miss Granger, your test, if you please."
She finally gave over the packet, resisting the urge to snatch it back from him and look over the questions again. Snape put the packet in his drawers before returning to her to stand in front of the blackboard.
"Now, for your practical." With a snap of his fingers the board flipped over revealing the potion, and again, she was confused as she looked at Snape's familiar spidery scrawl.
Babbler's Cure? But that's so…easy. What is he trying to pull?
Well, it wasn't necessarily easy. She herself was already brewing this potion by fourth year, but any other sixth year would probably find it a challenge, and that was the thing. It was right at her 'supposed skill' level for her finals. It was a potion that she could easily imagine her other classmates having to deal with at the end of June. So why was he giving it to her? She could have sworn that the practical was where he was going to try and pull a fast one on her. His behavior up until then had certainly implied that he was hiding something from her.
Or maybe you're making yourself more paranoid than you need to be again. Nothing was wrong with the questions, so why should there be anything wrong with the practical?
"Problem, Miss Granger?"
"Wha—no, no, I'm fine," she said, shaking her head and walking towards the supply closet in the back. A standard black, pewter cauldron was grabbed and she placed that on a low fire, allowing the cool metal to warm up while she went back to grab the appropriate ingredients from the back.
"Standard ingredient, Bicorn Horn…" she muttered as her fingers quickly picked up several glass vials. When she was finished, she went back to her desk, laying out her supplies in front of her in a neat fashion, then she got to work on grinding up the Bicorn Horn into a fine dust.
She soon found her mind drifting off as she fell into the familiar steps of a potion that she had brewed on more occasions than she could count (especially when Fred and George were still at the school—the Babbling Beverage had been a favorite of theirs). Her hands mechanically floated along and she found her mind wandering, specifically to a particularly confounding Potions Master not too far away from her. She watched as he flipped a page in his book. He looked very relaxed and completely indifferent to the world around him. In a way, seeing him like this, reminded her of her cat Crookshanks, when he got in one of his, "the world is a bothersome fly" moods.
"Is there a reason why you are not paying attention to your potion, Granger?" Snape asked, eyes still on his book. There was a sharpness to his tone that suggested he wasn't amused by her staring. "Perhaps you would like to share what has you so amused."
Hermione bowed her head over her cauldron once more, allowing the purple steam to hide her embarrassed face, and to block him from looking into her eyes. She could just imagine what he would do if he tried to peak into her mind and saw her thinking of him as a cat. Yeah, that would just go over swell.
She desperately searched her mind for another topic, and said the first thing that she could think of.
"This potion is for sixth years."
Alright, so it wasn't the most elegant and thought-provoking thing she had ever said before, but at least she had steered the conversation away from the potentially more dangerous land mine of how her professor embodied the virtues of an old cat.
Snape looked at her strangely, and silence grew like a heavy, awkward weight between them. Finally, he said, "Are you not a sixth year?"
"Well, yes, technically I suppose I am. But I was expecting something different for my test," she found herself admitting. Her inability to keep her thoughts sealed tight around this particular man, was something that she had noticed was happening at an alarming frequency. She didn't know exactly why she sought out conversations with him. Maybe it was because doing so, had yet to blow up in her face, and her morbid curiosity drove her to find out just how long she could squeeze these quasi-cordial chit-chats out of him before he tried to strangle her for her impertinence.
"You were expecting something else," he said, knowingly, "something more difficult."
"The thought had crossed my mind that you would try to challenge me in a way my other professors hadn't." She checked her potion as she said this, noticing that the color was the correct shade of lavender and turned off the heat accordingly. With a quick sniff to make sure it had the right fruity scent, she poured a small bit into a clean vial and closed it up. She brought the finished potion up to her professor's desk and placed it in front of him.
Snape looked over her potion impassively, and sniffed at her work. "I have no desire for your presence to grace my classroom next year," he informed her flippantly.
Hermione immediately bristled. "Pardon?"
He smirked at her, rolling the small vial between his fingers. "Granger, you and I both know that you have no talent for the art of potions. You lack the creativity and instinct for the subject and only get by because you follow directions to the letter. If I had given you something truly challenging, you would have failed, and then I would be stuck with you for yet another year. So why would I do that?"
She sputtered, shocked and incensed that he had the gall to spout such preposterous tall-tales, even as a small part of her had a sneaking suspicion that he was probably just trying to rile her up again. Still, even if he said it just to mock her, she wasn't going to just stand by and take it.
"Like hell I would! I'm the best student you have, and you know it!"
His smirk only grew with a taunting edge. "Come now, Granger, denial doesn't become you."
"And lying doesn't become you! You—you—" she struggled to find the right word.
"Careful, Miss Granger. You might want to watch how you speak to a professor," he suggested mildly.
Hermione huffed, crossing her arms as she looked down on his seated form. "Technically speaking, I've now finished all my exams and am no longer your student or a student of this school. So if I wanted to call you a bastard, I could."
His eyes narrowed. "That's true, but that would also mean that since you're no longer a student here I could hex you out of my classroom for the insult…'if I wanted to,'" he said, mimicking her.
The two glared at each other silently, allowing the tension to hang in the air like a heavy cloud. Just like in the Order meeting, Hermione felt a small probe against her Occlumency walls then, like a tentative push trying to find the cracks in her structure.
"That's still not going to work," she snapped. "I don't know why you keep trying."
Snape shrugged unapologetically. The tension dissipating slightly as he leaned back in his chair. "I have not spent the majority of my years fighting this war, to have all of my work uprooted by a witch who's bitten off more than she can chew. You may say that your shields are strong enough to withstand the Dark Lord's might, but you barely have an inkling of what you would be up against."
Grumbling, because Fera had said something similar to her when she would do her routine mind blast, Hermione backed up to lean against his desk. In a way he was right. The information that was in her head could make or break their chances at winning the war. It was sensitive stuff and because of that, her mental defenses had to be impeccable, which meant that sometimes there might be tests. She understood it, but that didn't mean that she had to like it. She said as much to him.
"Would you prefer that I not let my presence be known? I will continue testing you either way," he told her firmly.
She shivered at the thought of someone being in her mind, even on the outer fringes and her not knowing about it. "Fine," she muttered, "but you won't get in."
His black eyes seemed to stare through her, and she had to look away. "That remains to be seen," he responded smoothly.
A/N: Finally back in the game. And with some more sniping between Snape and Hermione. Not very romantic I know, but I needed to shift their dynamic first, get out all of the tension and inequality that their old roles created before they could move on. But there is more to come of them soon.
Up next: A peek into how meeting with the "Red Dragon" really go down and the return of Fera!
As always thanks for reading and remember to review~