Chapter 8: History

Author's Note & Anti-Litigation Charm

We all know who owns the Harry Potter universe, and it isn't me.

My love and thanks to all countless number of you who have read, subscribed, favorite, and reviewed this story so far. Keep it up – you are all tremendously helpful and encouraging and I couldn't do this without you.

When she returned to Spinner's End Monday morning, Snape held out his hand in an unspoken demand of her notebook and read through it, keeping her standing on the doorstep until he was satisfied. Returning the book to her, he ushered her inside and shut the door behind him.

Hermione smiled brightly and thanked him as she stepped into the parlour.

The last two days had passed without incident – as far as interactions with her professor had been concerned, at least – and she felt reassured by that. While Snape had retained much of his caustic tone, he had never gone out of his way to denigrate her; and he had, after all, allowed her the afternoon off to celebrate her birthday. As a result, Hermione was feeling much more confident in the fact that the persona of 'Professor Snape' had been left in the Hogwarts classrooms, and that as long as she didn't do anything to outright earn his ire and scorn, he might be – if not pleasant – at least tolerable. This decided, she wanted to get them both used to attempts at conversation on her part. Hermione didn't want to allow the next three years of her life to be dominated by a relationship in which she wasn't comfortable talking, and planned to work against that as quickly as possible. Remembering Lupin's comments about the limited amount of basic decency that Snape had been shown throughout his life, Hermione was determined to provide a positive experience.

Snape ignored her thanks, his expression as neutral as ever as he lead her down into the lab. Without saying anything, he left her at 'her' workbench, where she saw a variety of ingredients set out with empty boxes already labeled – 'Cabbage, Chinese Chomping – whole leaves' said the first box, with 'Caterpillars – pickled' and 'Cockroaches – dried' sitting next to it. Drawing in a shuddering breath, Hermione lifted her chin resolutely. They're just ingredients, she told herself sternly, you'll be working with these for the rest of your life.

Despite this determination, she couldn't resist pulling a face as she picked up her first handful of cockroaches and began preparing the drying process. She rationalized that working backwards would allow her the 'reward' of chomping cabbages at the end, which, while tricky, were at least not disgusting.

Hermione set up the cockroach preparation in silence as Snape ducked into the store room. That process set in motion, she turned her attention to the caterpillars, figuring out how best to speed through the preparation of the three sets of ingredients. As she turned into the storeroom to fetch some vinegar, she passed Snape, who was on his way out with his arms full of jars and boxes.

"How was your afternoon?" she asked, lofting her voice as she searched the bottom shelves for the pickling solution.

"Quiet," Snape responded. While he made no move to elaborate, his tone had been without rancor of any sort, which gave Hermione heart. Besides, she figured that her last two days with him had been quiet enough that it couldn't have been a personal commentary.

"That's pleasant," she said evenly, trying to hold onto the thread of conversation. "I had lunch with Remus, Harry, and Ron," she added, unable to keep a trace of resentment out of her tone when she mentioned the last name.

Snape, who was lighting a fire under his cauldron and setting out the ingredients that she now recognized as making up his potion for invalids, took a moment to respond. "Wonderful," he half-grunted, his mind clearly elsewhere.

Still, she thought encouragingly to herself, he is responding.

"We went to a little café in Paris," she explained without prompting. "It was really quite delightful, run by an old friend of Remus'."

"That ridiculous diner?" Snape asked with a surprising tone of recognition.

"You know it?" Hermione asked, somewhat taken aback.

"Monsieur Deforge is one of the few Frenchmen to welcome foreigners," Snape replied coolly. "Seems to feel a sense of non-existent fellowship with anyone who has passed through Hogwarts' hallowed halls," he drawled.

"He seemed very pleasant," Hermione said, but she got no response from Snape, who seemed to have entirely forgotten her presence in an instant, the whole of his attention focused on his cauldron.

In a blessedly short amount of time, Hermione's ingredients were prepared, and she was none the worse for wear – although she had almost lost bit of one finger to the chomping cabbages before she thought to put on the hide gloves she'd brought along. Feeling quite pleased with her success, Hermione shelved the results and watched patiently as Snape labored over his potion, of which she noticed he was making a significantly larger batch than previously, and brought it to a point where she knew it was meant to simmer for quite some time.

"I've finished with the ingredients," Hermione stated, though she knew the information was unnecessary. In all her years in his classroom, Hermione had almost never known Professor Snape to be unaware of anything happening in his classroom; his reputation of omniscience was legend.

Snape glanced up at her. "Timer one," he said, flicking his gaze back to the cauldron, "thirty-seven minutes. Now."

Hermione saw the clock obligingly wind itself and start ticking off the time while Snape began restoring ingredients and tools to their clean and shelved positions. "Make your lists for daisies, dill, doxy eggs, dragon blood, and dragon tissues. You have," he said with a swift look, "a little less than two hours. Make certain they are accurate."

"Yessir," Hermione responded quickly as she retreated upstairs to the study. She worked with hasty efficiency, dictating what she knew of the separate lists as she pulled out references to check for anything she had forgotten, making sure to check certain books and journals that he had repeatedly sent her back to for more archaic tidbits. The time passed very quickly as she worked, and she was in the process of triple-checking the synergies of dragon blood when Snape appeared in the doorway.

He quirked one corner of his mouth at the sight of her, wide-eyed and up to her eyebrows in her research. It was a long way from a smile, but it wasn't a sneer either, which Hermione took heart in.

"I'm done," she assured him. "I was just, uhm, re-checking myself."

"As you should be," Snape responded with an inclination of his head, his expression returned to its normal impassive state. "As your time is up." He unceremoniously pulled the notebook out of her hand and began leafing through her latest entries.

Minutes passed in silence as Hermione watched Snape carefully make his way through her lists, his face a mask of concentration.

"Do not fail to include the Eiterubrenner Salve in your list of uses for dragon tissue," he said at length, pushing the notebook back at her. [1]

"Eiterubrenner?" Hermione clarified. "But that wasn't mentioned in the Concordance on the Uses of Magickal Goods."

"The Concordance,' Snape replied with a silkiness that gave lie to his irritation, "was compiled by a near-sighted bigot. He couldn't stand the thought of someone improving on an out-dated recipe, and so included only the potions of which he approved."

Hermione barely managed to keep herself from gaping at Snape as he turned and left the library. After he'd left, she recollected herself and dutifully added the Eiterubrenner Salve to her list, and then checked several more books for any other additions. To her further consternation, Hermione found another three potions for her list, which she thought really ought to have been included in the Concordance. Frowning over that thought, she left the library to find him and re-check her lists. She hadn't gotten more than a few steps, however, when Snape came back up the lab stairs and headed down the hallway towards her.

"Come eat."

With this order, he headed for the kitchen, leaving Hermione to follow after. It was a little early to be eating lunch, but she didn't mind the break from her studies. Once she reached the kitchen, she found tea already set, with several delicate little sandwiches on a platter. Seating himself, Snape took one sandwich, taking a tiny bite at one corner.

Hermione sat and poured tea, which Snape accepted with a nod of his head.

"Tell me about dragon's blood," Snape said, initiating the conversation as Hermione helped herself to three of the sandwich wedges.

Hermione dutifully listed off its properties and synergies, making a brief note about some of the minor differences between species.

"And what, in your mind," prompted the man, "is the most…interesting…use of dragon's blood?"

"I would say its use in potions that promote understanding and comprehension of languages," Hermione responded after a moment's thought.

"And what do you know of Muggle stories that incorporate that idea?"

Hermione cocked her head as she thought, nibbling absently on one sandwich.

"I've read a few stories – I was mad about mythology and folklore even before I knew that most of it was real," she said with a grin, " – that mention it. There was one where a dragon made a boon of a drop of her blood, and the girl who received it could understand languages from then on out. But that was really recent – there's a hero in different Norse, German, and Scandanavian stories who is told variously to have drunk dragon's blood, eaten a dragon's heart, or bathed in the blood of a dragon, and it always ended in some sort of ability to understand languages or the gift of prophecy."

Snape nodded.

"So was that common knowledge at some point?" Hermione asked.

"Magic-users have always kept themselves separate," he answered, "but it used to be to a much lesser degree. To begin with, when the population of the world was lower, there was less of an inequality between the numbers of the magical and non-magical. It was more accepted as a result, and certain facets of wizarding knowledge were wide-spread."

"What made the difference, what called for all the secrecy?" she asked, glad that Snape was talking so freely.

"The steady growth of the non-magical population," Snape responded, setting aside his half-eaten sandwich and picking up his tea. "As well as the revolution of thinking and technology – the Renaissance."

"Hadn't technology been advanced at other points before the Renaissance?" Hermione responded, thinking of her conversation with her parents from the night before.

"Never to this degree. Civilizations wear down, and often leave a vacuum in their wake. In that vacuum, the magical community often reared its head again, before the next great advancement," Snape answered readily.

"But not this time," Hermione affirmed, to which Snape again nodded. The conversation turned back to dragon's blood and its properties, and before they stood up from lunch, Snape had thoroughly rooted through all of Hermione's knowledge on the subject. When that topic was exhausted, he gave her a sharp look, and asked if she'd updated her lists.

"Oh, yes," she assured him hastily. "I've included Eiterubrunner, and added a few others that I found."

Snape gave an affirming nod.

"What I don't understand," she trailed on, "is how – aside from you telling me – I was supposed to know that. I've never seen any mention of the Concordance's shortcomings."

"Is not the whole point of an apprenticeship," Snape asked with a bored look, "to enable you to learn what you cannot glean from books?"

"Well, yes, I suppose it is," she agreed, nodding thoughtfully, "but I just…"

"You have long been over-reliant on books, Miss Granger. I have been trying for years to tell you to trust them with a little less blind devotion. Books are as fallible as those who write them – very fallible, in other words."

Hermione had no answer to that, but simply took the reprimand in stride. Snape set her to more potions ingredients and then retreated to the lab, leaving her with a long list of materials to study and research before returning the next day.

As the week wore on, Hermione deliberately avoided visiting either Lupin or Harry, hoping to delay the confrontation with Ron that she knew was coming. Instead, she buried herself in her work for Snape, and extra-curricular studies that answered questions raised in the progress of working on his assignments.

Snape made no mention of their impending departure – not even to give her a more exact timeframe of when to expect their trip to begin - but on Thursday, Hermione noticed that he stepped up the pace of her assignments, setting her ten materials to research that afternoon along with two directives that she look into the relationships between distinct ingredients. Each of these research assignments was followed by a thorough verbal interrogation, in which Snape always acted as if he hadn't read any of the research that she so painstakingly prepared – often questioning her while she was in the lab working.

It was challenging, it was frustrating, and Hermione loved it.

The frenzy of studying was new enough to have all the excitement that a new school year held for her, balanced with the feeling of invigoration – if a rather frenzied invigoration – that she associated with exams. It was so delightful to be purely devoted to her studies, to not worry about trouble in the hallways, Quidditch, or attempts on Harry's life. Snape brought her up to a level, intellectually, that she'd never before been consistently engaged on. It was thrilling.

In this way, time passed quickly – and it was the next Monday, with only a matter of weeks or days left until the journey, before she knew it. That morning, she received a note from Harry, saying that he hoped Snape hadn't locked her in the library, and that she should come by to the flat for one of the last dinners before she was off on her adventures.

The knowledge that this would inevitably bring a meeting with Ron hung like a thunderhead over Hermione's day, blocking out the peace and concentration that she'd begun to enjoy in Spinner's End.

Ron was suspiciously alone when she went to visit the London flat that night. Given the tell-tale ruddiness of his neck and ears, and the forced-casual air with which he greeted her arrival, Hermione was immediately suspicious.

"Harry had to run out," Ron said in a slightly strangled voice, just barely missing making eye contact.

"Did he," Hermione said, torn between wanting Harry around for support and not wanting anyone to witness the exchange that was sure to arise soon.

"I thought we could use that as a chance to talk a bit," Ron continued, apparently oblivious to her skepticism.

"Want to try to pressure me into something more?" Hermione asked archly.

"I wasn't pressuring you," Ron returned, his temper jumping to the surface in spite of his previous attempts at a calm demeanor.

"Then what would you call giving me jewelry so that it 'stayed in the family'?" asked Hermione as neutrally as she could.

Ron side-stepped the question. "It's not like you ever made any signs that you didn't want it," he stated as he gestured vaguely, stretching his arms out as if to show how much 'it,' whatever 'it' was, entailed.

"Aside from doing absolutely nothing to pursue a relationship?" Hermione asked, "Yeah, I can see how that seemed like such an invitation."

"I thought you just wanted time to figure out what you wanted to do."

"Then I guess I should have been more clear that marrying you wasn't going to be on that list," she retorted.

"I guess you should have," Ron answered hotly, "so I could've found some witch who had feelings like a real human being."

He blinked at the vehemence of his own statement, but put on a mulish expression which suggested that he didn't want to admit his mistake.

"If that's what you really think," Hermione said very quietly, "then I think we would both have been doing ourselves a disservice to go ahead in a relationship."

"I – I didn't mean that," Ron said half-heartedly.

"Then what did you mean, Ronald?" Hermione asked in the same quiet voice.

"It's just that – I don't understand, Hermione. I thought that we were for sure. I mean, there was Krum in fourth year, but there was never really anyone else for you. And there was never anyone else for me." Hermione didn't see fit to remind him of the months that he'd spent entangled with Lavender, so let him continue: "And then Harry had Ginny, and at the Final Battle… I just figured it wasn't something we really had to talk about anymore."

"I'm sorry," Hermione said, and she felt it, "but this isn't the kind of thing that you can just not talk about."

"I guess I see that now," Ron said, although Hermione thought his words sounded suspiciously hollow, "and how that might upset you. So we can talk about it, when you get back we can –"

"Didn't you just hear me, Ron?" Hermione asked, her tone sharpened by her disbelief at the complete turn-about Ron had just made from trying to be understanding to going right back to making assumptions. "I don't want that relationship with you."

"But why not, Hermione?" Ron asked, a pleading note in his voice, "All these years we've been friends, why not?"

"Because we're just friends," Hermione said patiently. "I thought we might have been something more at one point, too, but honestly – we can't go a week without being at each other's throats about something or another anyway, do you really think that would work out?"

"We always come through it okay, don't we?" Ron mumbled, but Hermione saw that it was a token effort. She reached a hand to take his, but checked herself and settled with patting his shoulder gingerly.

"We have – as friends. Nothing ever has to change that," she said, as warmly as she could. "Now, let's get dinner."

Alone in her bed that night after a pleasant dinner – in which a very quiet Ron had made a valiant effort at good cheer – Hermione reflected on their meeting.

She was relieved to have gotten the conversation over with, but that didn't mean she had enjoyed it. For all that she wasn't in love with Ron, Hermione did love him – as a friend and a very courageous, loyal young man. Having to let him down – and seeing his response, hearing his angry words – hurt.

Crookshanks' weight was a welcome presence as she lay in the dark, thinking over Ron's behavior and blinking back the tears in her eyes. As much as his words had hurt her, Hermione knew that Ron had also been wounded in the conversation, and regretted the necessity of it. He was her friend, after all, which meant that she ached to see him in pain or confused. It's necessary, she told herself. Just think how miserable you'd both have been if you went ahead with this.

Trying to bolster herself with this thought, Hermione drifted into slumber.

When Hermione next went down to the laboratory, she found her workbench set with a single, filled potion vial and a loose parchment. It took a moment for her to place the objects – the phial held the same mysterious potion that Snape had had her brew just before giving her the apprenticeship. Upon closer inspection, the parchment proved to be the recipe for that potion.

Snape came out of the study, another parchment in hand. He jerked his chin in the direction of the phial.

"What is it?" he asked, moving to one of the tall stools against the far wall and seating himself.

"I still don't know, sir," Hermione admitted – though it wasn't really for lack of trying. She hadn't had loads of spare time, but what little attention she had devoted to the search had proven fruitless.

"Was it properly brewed?" Snape asked after a moment.

"I think so," she answered, thinking back to her concerns about the colour of the potion.

"'I think' does no one any good, Miss Granger. Take a stand."

"Yes," Hermione amended quietly.

"Does it match, in every way, the expected result?" he asked after another pause.

Hermione toyed briefly with her answer. The colour was really only off by a shade…

"No," she said heavily. "The colour isn't right."

Snape looked at her pensively, his lips pursed as his fingers worried at the parchment in his hand.

"What should you have done to make it properly?" he demanded, after yet another lapse of time.

"I followed the steps exactly!" Hermione objected, lifting her chin and straightening her back. Had she any hackles, she was sure they would have been raised at this suggestion that she was anything less than thorough in her attention to the recipe.

"That does not answer the question," Snape said curtly.

"Then I'm not sure what answer you're looking for, sir."

They stared at each other in silence for a few moments, as Hermione racked her brains for what it is that could have gone wrong. Her mind flitted to the time that Snape had made mention of cross-contamination from poorly washed cauldrons ruining a potion – but no, that couldn't be right. She had been using Snape's own equipment, that he himself had washed. Surely he wouldn't have sabotaged her efforts, would he? A sneaky voice in Hermione's mind told her that that would be an excellent way to teach her to double-check her equipment, but Hermione dismissed it. She didn't think that even Snape would deliberately set out to make her fail. While he might not be exactly a cheerleader to those under his tutelage, she'd never got the impression that he actually enjoyed seeing students fail. After all, a botched potion could be rather catastrophic, depending on the magnitude of the error. It was in Snape's own best interests to see to the success of his students – however little he may have seemed to.

Eventually, Snape walked over to her workbench, placed the sheaf on the table next to the potion recipe, and returned to his perch. Hermione leaned forward and saw that this parchment was nearly identical to the first. It listed the same ingredients and went through almost the same steps. The only difference was whether a single ingredient – dried aloe sap – was added before or after turning up the flames.

Hermione looked up at her professor in confusion. He was watching her with hawk-like intensity, but made no move to speak.

"Sir?" she said at last. "I don't think I understand…" she trailed off, a little intimidated by the way he was watching her.

"Which recipe is correct, Miss Granger?" he asked of her. She was pleased to hear that his voice was softer than the stare he was directing her way, but that did little to ease her uncertainty.

She looked back down at the two parchments before her, looking for some other disparity that would make the answer evident. There was none.

"I don't know," she said at length. "I've never seen either of these outside of this lab, so I couldn't say."

Snape gave her a quelling look. "Seven years of studying Potions theory, and that's the best you can do?" he scoffed, his voice rife with disdain.

"The second one," she responded.

"Why?" Snape shot back immediately.

"Because the first one obviously isn't right!" She said, forgetting her respectfulness in her frustration.

"That's hardly a good enough reason." Snape's speech was as precisely controlled as ever, but she could hear the tinge of heat to his words.

"Well, what do you want from me?"

"I want you to think for yourself, girl, think," he said with growing irritation. This statement was abruptly followed by a question. "What was the greatest accomplishment you achieved, singly, in your first year?"

It took a moment for Hermione to answer, so taken aback was she by his unexpected question.

"Solving your riddle, I suppose," she said. It had been a moment of great pressure, it had aided Harry in his rush to stop Voldemort's sudden return, and it had been something that many adult wizards would not have been able to achieve.

"You were able, then," he said with great deliberation, "to take a set of facts from a single location and draw the proper conclusion."

Had he not sounded so annoyed, Hermione could almost have taken that as a sort of compliment.

"What you need to be able to do is to take facts from several sources and still draw the correct conclusion." He watched her as he let those words sink in, his expression fierce. "Do not blindly accept what is laid out before you. As the Concordance's oversight concerning Eiterubrunner should have shown you, the books to which you so desperately cling are far from faultless. Test everything against your own knowledge, and be ever watchful of opportunities to increase that precious stock."

It was an impressive speech, and Hermione – much as she would like to rail against the aspersions cast on her precious textbooks – found herself stirring at his words. He thought she could do this. He would not have gone to such trouble in the last few months if he didn't really think that she was capable of what he expected. It was a greatly encouraging thought.

"Now," he said, standing and placing his hands on his own desk, "why is the second set of instructions correct?"

Hermione took a deep breath as she re-read the recipe in question. "The aloe has to be added after the heat has been increased," she said slowly, "so that the solution's in a proper state to bind with it straight away. Otherwise," and here she looked up in triumph, sure of her answer, "all its properties are expended without really enhancing the potion."

Snape stared at her for a long moment, as the glow of pride flushed through her and dissipated.

"There may yet be hope," he said at length.

The rounds of ingredient research and preparation continued. While she was still focused on the positive side of the work – with Snape unexpectedly quizzing her on the properties of different ingredients, she felt more sure of her at-command knowledge than ever before, and she gained more confidence in her movements with every over-large batch of ingredients – Hermione was pleased to note that the alphabet was quickly skipping by, which she hoped meant that she would shortly be coming to the end of this monotonous phase. Of course, she thought grimly as she painstakingly plucked, combed, and stored Jobberknoll feathers, he might just go through the alphabet again and have me prepare everything that we skipped this time.

So it was that, in the haze of research and lab time, the last days before her departure passed quickly, and suddenly it was Thursday evening two weeks later, and Snape was blocking her departure, having apparently decided that now was the appropriate time to discuss their leave-taking. Thank Merlin that packing's easier for magical folk, Hermione thought, trying not to be annoyed with her reticent professor.

"Prepare to be gone for an extended period of time," Snape instructed her tonelessly, his gaze resting on his bookshelves, "and pack accordingly. Any books which you do not take with you should be brought and shelved here. I expect you to avoid frivolities, as this is hardly a sight-seeing tour. Noon tomorrow." He moved from where he was blocking the door and gestured for her to make herself scarce. "Good evening," he said as he shut the door behind her.

It was typically short, but Hermione took a moment to remind herself that Snape's clipped manner of speech wasn't necessarily indicative of his actual opinion of her, and headed home to pack.

She hadn't spared a great deal of thought for the trip ahead. She still didn't know where they were bound, still didn't know how long a trip it would be, and her closed-mouth professor had given her very little idea of what to expect. Given that, there had really been no point dwelling on the departure. It was easy enough, given the routine that days at Spinner's End had settled into, to imagine that life –wherever they were headed – would differ but a little from life as it was arranged now. Hermione took comfort in that, and did her best to not worry at questions that only time would answer. As she packed, though, she found herself becoming more and more excited at the prospect. She had never felt herself to be much of an adventure-hound, but she decided that a change of scenery could certainly do her good. The fact the scenery change would benefit her studies only heightened her sudden enjoyment of the notion. "That will do you good," she heard Headmistress McGonagall's words echoing in her head, and found that she quite heartily agreed.

A/N

[1] – Eiterubrunner is, so far as I am aware, the creation of ladyofthemasque. I came across it in her story In Annulo, which was part of one of the rounds of SS/HG awards from quite some time ago. The story itself is a little more outlandish than I normally subscribe to, but it has a few truly beautiful elements. If you're interested, you'll find it over at the Petulant Poetess archives.

Sorry this chapter was a bit shorter. It weighs in at about 4700, whereas most of the others are ranging between six and eight thousand. But this seemed like the most logical pausing point.

Sorry if the chapter title doesn't make sense. I'm not particularly inspired in my titling, I've noticed. Anyway, this chapter deals with literal history, as well as Hermione's history with Ron, her history of reliance on books, and such. So that's that, in case you were wondering.

Unfortunately, I'd advise you to not expect another update until next weekend. I'll be typing like mad in every spare moment I get this week, but won't likely be able to devote my time to the chapter until this hell-week is over.

And lastly… my dear reviewers, you are the light of my life. It is a thrill like no other to know that you're out there, reading this and even sometimes liking it. To everyone who has taken the time out to write a note of encouragement or critique to me, you have my eternal gratitude. To anyone who hasn't done so...doesn't this just make you wish that you had? You know it does. Seriously.