She realized as he was walking away that it had been the first time he'd looked at her with respect.
Not when he was drawing the roughness of his fingertips over the softness of her skin, not while she was employing her tongue on incredibly sensitive parts of his anatomy, never while they were holding back screams for fear the delicate silencing charms would break, revealing their secrets to the entire dungeons. Not once during those secret rendezvous did he ever look at her like that.
But here, now, he respected her for brewing a perfect potion. She wondered how she could have ever let herself think she wasn't being used.
Then she realized she had just brewed a powerful and unbreakable silencing potion. She glanced up at the desk and Professor Snape nodded.
And Hermione realized Severus would never respect her, and she didn't want him to.