A/N: So, I'm back from hibernation. And by 'hibernation' I mean graduating school, finding a job, and opening a retail store. It's been a busy year. But I missed writing too much to stay away.

Chapter 3: Magic, Copyright

In the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom, Severus's eyes flicked to the clock for the fifth time in as many minutes. Close enough. Rising to a stand, he cleared his throat. "Class dismissed. Leave your essays on curse scars on my desk before you go. I hope for your sakes that you didn't all choose the same topic this time. There were only so many essays on the Hope Diamond that I could read before my brain disengaged and my hand started doling out Ts indiscriminately."

As the students shuffled to the front one by one, the pile on his desk grew steadily taller. Unusually, Granger was the last of them to come up; she gingerly laid her scroll on top of the stack of parchments, and took a step back, catching his eye. Good God, was the girl — was she actually smiling at him? He must have scowled at her in surprise, because her hesitant smile suddenly wavered as she dropped her gaze to the floor, a flush colouring the apples of her cheeks.

Before he could ponder her reaction any further, he caught a flash of platinum blond out of the corner of his eye. Sure enough, the little shit was trying to slip out the door unnoticed. "Draco, stay behind," he called out. When he looked for her again, Granger was already gone.

Severus waited until the last of the students had cleared out, before he shut and locked the door with a wave of his wand, then threw up a Muffliato for good measure.

Draco hesitated, then started to mumble, eyes on his shoes, "I'll get the essay in for Wednesday, I swear. Last week's as well."

Severus sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "This isn't about the essay, Draco, and you know it. Why didn't you come to my office yesterday? I sent for you."

Draco remained silent, shifting in place from foot to foot. It was disconcerting to see his Godson so subdued, and Severus felt his anger ebb away in favour of genuine concern.

He tried again. "This isn't like you, Draco. I know you are under a lot of pressure right now, which is exactly why I wanted to talk to you this weekend. The sooner we come up with a plan, the sooner this can all be over," he murmured, ending on a plea.

But Draco immediately recoiled, his lips twisting into an ugly sneer. "We? There is no 'we.' The Dark Lord gave this task to me, and me alone. I'm not going to let you steal all the glory!"

"The glory?" he repeated, staring back at Draco incredulously. Draco glared back with defiance in his eyes, but Severus noted the flush colouring his ears. He knew Draco well enough to know that it wasn't anger, it was embarrassment - no doubt at how ridiculous the boy sounded even to his own ears. Severus threw his hands up in the air, twisting at the waist as he did so. "Oh for fuck's sake Draco, grow up! I'm only trying to help you."

"Help me? You think I'm stupid? You just want to find out what I'm up to so that you can run and tell the headmaster!" There was a genuine fear in his wide eyes that Severus hadn't expected to see there.

A chill ebbed at his spine, and he resisted the urge to shiver. Ah, so that's what this was about. His own godson didn't trust him…truly didn't trust him…thought he would rat him out to the Headmaster without a second thought. What he should be concerned about was the fact that Draco doubted his loyalty to the Dark Lord, and the threat that this represented to his cover. But it was difficult to focus on that threat when he felt nearly crippled by the dull pain in his chest that was suddenly making it difficult for him to catch his breath. This boy…this frustrating, impetuous, brat of a boy that he had held in his arms as a ruddy faced newborn, that he had allowed to call him Uncle Sev and that he had now Vowed to protect not just with his life, but with his very soul at stake…But of course, Draco didn't know any of that. Couldn't know any of that.

Severus let his eyes un-focus for a moment, and concentrated on his breathing, on the passage of air through his nose and past his throat, until he began to feel his mind clear and his heart beat slow. "And why," he said softly, utterly controlled now, "would I do a thing like that?"

But Draco, stubborn as he was, refused to back down. "Aunt Bella says that you're not really on our side. She warned me — told me that you'd be sniffing around —"

"Your dear Aunt Bella is a lying cunt," Severus said slowly, deliberately. "And yes, you can tell her I said that."

Draco couldn't keep his mouth from falling open, Severus noted with satisfaction. He'd never spoken quite so profanely in front of his Godson before, and it had made an impression, just as he'd intended. He watched Draco struggle to recover himself. "Maybe she is wrong about you," he finally conceded. "But I don't believe for a minute that you haven't got ulterior motives for offering me your 'help!'" Draco spat, drawing air quotes around the last word.

What could he say to that? The boy was right, damn him. He gaped a moment in silence — a moment in which Draco seized to spin on his heel, unlock the door, and wrench it open.

Severus started forward after him, calling out, "Draco!"

But all he got for his trouble was a door slammed in his face.

Severus drew back his leg and gave the door an almighty kick. As soon as his foot made contact with the heavy oak, he staggered backward, wincing. Motherfucking hell, that hurt! He really needed to stop doing that.

Severus thanked fuck, not for the first time, that he'd had a vasectomy (never trust a woman who says she's on the Pill, his dad used to say, and that particular wisdom applied equally well to contraceptive potions). Teenagers were little shits. Every last one of them. He should know — he had been one himself not too long ago.

He may have avoided the curse of fatherhood, but somehow he had still ended up as Guardian and Protector to two equally troublesome boys - one as dark as the other was fair. So help him God, he was going to get both those ungrateful little whelps through this war, even if it meant that he had to get creative with his moral code to manage it.

At that very moment, he spied her scroll out of the corner of his eye. It had fallen to the floor with the slam of the door. He bent to retrieve it, then collapsed backward against the edge of his desk, unfurling the scroll as he did so. There was a second small piece of parchment rolled in with it. He grasped it in his left hand, discarding her homework assignment with his right. It crumpled back onto the floor. He began to read:

There is no such thing as Dark Magic? But in our first class you said: "The Dark Arts are many, varied, ever-changing and eternal. You are fighting that which is unfixed, mutating, indestructible." See, you're contradicting yourself! If there is no such thing as the Dark Arts, then why did you give us a definition for them?

He shuddered involuntarily. Good God, as if it weren't bad enough that she regularly quoted the textbook verbatim without even paying lip service to the art of paraphrasing...now she was quoting him! He almost wanted to take points off for her failure to cite him in her bibliography. It would serve her right.

Granger may be hopelessly obtuse, but he didn't want to lose sight of his objective. And teaching Granger not to take everything so literally was not the objective of this little endeavour of his. Which was to draw her in closer, not push her away. This epistolary exchange was...cute...in an old fashioned sort of way, but he needed to move their interaction from the page to the face to face variety.

What could he use as a lure? The answer was so obvious that it practically smacked him upside the head.

By the time that the end of Defence class had rolled around on the afternoon of September 19, Ron had yet to acknowledge that it was her birthday, and Hermione was in a right foul mood. But when Professor Snape handed back their essays, she momentarily forgot all about Ron in her eagerness to lay eyes on his response.

Unable to wait until she was back in her dorm, she ducked into an alcove and hastily unfurled her homework assignment. Another E. But no matter. There was the extra strip of parchment she had slipped in with her essay. For a moment, her heart dropped when she didn't see any evidence of his spidery scrawl on the paper. But then she flipped it around, and sighed with relief. There it was. Her heart started to beat a staccato in her chest.

I'm not contradicting myself, Miss Granger. If you want to know why, I suggest you start with some background reading: Magic, Copyright. We can continue our discussion when have finished the book.

Hermione took a deep breath and tried to smother her smile. A book. He was recommending that she read a book. Now that was something that Hermione Granger knew very well how to do.

The next day, after classes were finished, a considerably humbled Hermione stood in front of Snape's office door, shifting from foot to foot. Should she go in? She had to...but he would be so disappointed in her. Could she bear it? But what choice did she have? Steeling her resolve, Hermione knocked timidly on the door, and slipped in quietly at Snape's answering 'Enter.'

He was marking. She could make out the great slashes of red ink littering the parchment in front of him, and cringed in solidarity with whichever poor soul he had verbally eviscerated this time. His nose was almost to the parchment now as he emphatically scribbled his comments at the bottom of the offending assignment. He didn't even look up at her as she approached his desk.

She took a deep breath. "Sir — could I please have a pass to the restricted section?" she asked quickly, fiddling with the strap of her rucksack.

Snape unhurriedly finished his sentence and placed his quill back in its inkwell, before leaning back in his chair and peering up at her. "And why would you need that, Miss Granger?" he asked in an entirely neutral tone of voice. His expression gave nothing away. She may have been literally standing over Snape, peering down on him as they spoke, but even from his semi-reclined position, the Professor exuded such an air of authority that Hermione felt like little more than a firstie who had just exploded her cauldron.

"Because," she said haltingly, "I searched the whole library for Magic, Copyright, but I couldn't find it —"

"That would be because the library hasn't got a copy of it," he answered her in a bored, matter of fact tone of voice.

Her jaw dropped. "What? How is that possible?" she asked, and thought she caught a curl of amusement grace his lips.

"This may come as a shock to you, Miss Granger, but the Hogwarts library doesn't actually contain every single book ever written," he drawled. She felt a flush creep up her neck. Great, he was mocking her now.

She corralled her remaining courage and forced herself to struggle on. "But — but how am I supposed to read it, then?"

He gave her a long look, which made her shift uneasily in place. "The library hasn't got a copy of it, but I do."

"So you'll lend it to me then?" she asked quickly, excitement undisguised in her voice.

"I'm afraid I can't do that."

She frowned indignantly. "What? Why not? I mean — why would you recommend a book to me if you knew the library didn't have a copy of it and you weren't willing to lend me yours? That's — that's not very nice!" She sounded petulant even to her own ears, and had to catch herself before she stamped her foot.

Snape continued regarding her calmly. "I can't let you take that book back to your dorm with you, because it is banned." He paused, leaning to his left to open a desk drawer, and started rummaging inside it while he continued: "However, you are welcome to come to my office after class and read it there, if you wish." His eyes remained fixed on the contents of his drawer as he spoke.

"It's banned?"

He abandoned the drawer to favour her with a smirk. "Notoriously so."

"But why?"

"You'll just have to read it and tell me why you think it is so." His tone was light and his smirk curled into a sort of teasing half-smile that Hermione had never seen on his face before. It was a good look on him.

She bit her lip. "I — perhaps it is better that I not read it then," she said slowly. "I mean — if the Ministry and Professor Dumbledore don't want us reading it…maybe they've got a good reason…" Her indignation that a book - any book - was banned warred with her faith in authority figures.

He shrugged nonchalantly and turned back to his marking. "Suit yourself." The door flew open with a casual wave of his left hand.

Suddenly, Hermione couldn't think of anything more awful than leaving the room and ending this...exchange...between them. "Wait. I changed my mind. I want to read it."

"Is that so?" he asked lightly.

Firming up her resolve, she raised her chin and forced herself to look him directly in the eyes as she spoke. "Books — they shouldn't be banned anyway. Censorship is wrong. It doesn't accomplish anything other than reinforcing ignorance."

He gave her a searching look for several long seconds, and Hermione had to force herself not to shy away from his scrutiny. "Very well then, Miss Granger," he said finally. "See you in my office this evening after supper."

A/N: It took me a while to work up the courage to post this chapter...my writing has gotten rusty and I've lost confidence...so I would really appreciate any words of encouragement, feedback, etc.