So, I was a little bit hesitant to just throw in a second POV character at this late stage of the story - you know, it's just not done. But then I decided to just go for it. (Foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, after all!) And anyway, there would be no way we'd ever get to see this scene if I stuck to Ginny's POV...
6. Pay Attention, Now
Severus stalked back and forth in front of his sixth-year double Slytherin/Gryffindor potions class, lecturing on the complicated potion they were to make that day. Severus hated lecturing. If it had been his other sixth-year class, he would have simply slapped the instructions up on the board and let the students at it, complexity be damned. But his Slytherins were in this class, and he suspected that some of them risked failing rather embarrassingly if they did not receive step-by-step guidance before, during, and after brewing.
He reached the end of his circuit and punctuated his lecture with a question, then snapped around, giving himself a mental pat on the back as his robes swirled and billowed impressively around him. It was an art that had taken him some practice to master.
On the Gryffindor side of the room, Granger's hand shot up automatically. Severus ignored her for as long as he could, until it became obvious that no other students planned on raising their hands – that was the other thing he hated worse than lecturing: students who didn't raise their hands in class. And ones who did, for that matter. "Yes, Miss Granger?"
"I –" her certainty faltered. "Um, could you please repeat the question?" she asked, biting her lip and looking nervous.
It was a sight that could have warmed his heart, if he had one. Which he didn't of course; such things as hearts were the crutch of the weak.
"Twenty points from Gryffindor for coming unprepared to class," he enunciated, relishing every word.
Granger blanched and Severus let the smallest smirk play about the corner of his mouth. He repeated the question, but cut Granger off from answering, saying that she had already wasted her chance. Oh, revenge was sweet. This came very close to making up for all the times she had tried to fool him with that know-it-all act of hers. On the opposite side of the room, Draco raised his hand. The boy had his text book open in front of him, and had obviously looked up the answer while the professor had been distracted with Granger - which warmed Severus's heart still further. It was such a perfectly Slytherin thing to do.
With one final exhortation to, for Merlin's sake, make sure to add the ingredients in the proper order, Severus set the students to their brewing and swooped down on the chair behind his desk, to supervise their efforts from afar. By sixth year, even the most mediocre of students should be able to produce a potion without him breathing down their necks. Well, actually, that was his favorite part of class, but his legs were tired from all that pacing.
The classroom transformed into a flurry of feverish activity as everyone rushed to get their ingredients and set up their equipment in the limited time left of the period. Or rather, he noted with interest activity everywhere except for one corner of the Gryffindor table. Severus leaned back and watched through half-lidded eyes.
Granger was still sitting in her seat, having made no move to get started, with her head propped up on one hand. She was rolling one earlobe between her fingers and had a dreamy look in her eyes as though she were a million miles away. Severus wondered what she was thinking about, and then decided hurriedly that he didn't want to know. He had seen that look on other student's faces before, and it usually signaled a severe state of infatuation. Disgusting.
As he watched, Potter arrived back at the table with his ingredients and prodded his daydreaming friend, startling her out of her reverie. Severus thought he could hear something him asking her something, and then she said something to him and dashed off to the supply cabinet. Damn girl would probably still manage to brew the potion perfectly, Severus thought with distaste.
He gave the classroom one more scan – good, no impending disasters yet – and summoned the pile of essays that had been passed in at the beginning of class from the far corner of his desk. He might as well get started on them now, seeing as he had nothing better to do. And also he was loath to give up more of his free time than was strictly necessary to grading student's essays, what with their painful spelling errors and absurd grammar choices. Did no one teach children to write, these days? And that wasn't even to mention the fact that they rarely had anything useful or original to say about the topics he assigned…though of course, it did take a refined mind to grasp the intricacies of Potions theory, one that he could not expect the average student to possess.
He took the top essay off the pile and vindictively marked off a spelling mistake in the first sentence in the poison green ink that he reserved for correcting essays. It was a tedious task, to be sure, but not without its rewards. Severus took small pleasures where he could find them.
The class was already halfway done with their potions when he arrived at Granger's essay. Hers were not usually as entertaining as the others; while he did enjoy marking her off for following the textbook to religiously, even that got boring if it was all you could do. He scanned down the essay, looking in vain for a single spelling error, when his eyes lit on something far better. There, in the margin of her otherwise impeccable essay, was a heart. A heart with initials in it. Granger had just handed him the perfect weapon. If Severus had been thirty years younger, he might have crowed.
Across the room, Granger was working away at her potion, drizzling dragon's blood into her cauldron in a desultory fashion. She looked distracted…and earlier, she had been daydreaming…oh, this was rich. The Gryffindor genius, brought down by love. He wondered who the lucky chap was – if he ever found him, he would offer his most sincere congratulations at a job well done.
Looking around the room, he didn't spot any likely candidates; there was no one here to whom Granger was paying particular attention. Severus squinted at the obscene marking on the essay again. The bloke's name was apparently "W" … or perhaps "GW"; he couldn't tell whether the middle character was supposed to be one G or two. Or maybe Granger had been ensnared by someone with the initials "HGW"? But he had the feeling that she would have included both of their initials in there; girls had the disturbing tendency to do that…
Severus took grim joy in circling the heart and scrawling "INAPPROPRIATE!" next to it in large, severe letters, and in taking off an absurd amount of points from her grade. Oh, this was perfect…if only she kept it up, then all would be right in the world.
At lunch, Severus made sure to keep an eye out for anyone that Granger might be paying an unusual amount of attention to. While he was quickly retreating from the idea of a handshake – that was really not his style – he thought that a nice anonymous bunch of flowers or box of chocolates by way of thanks wouldn't go amiss. And if they acted to strengthen this budding romance, then so much the better. Romance, of course, was abhorrent in itself - but when inflicted on one's enemies, it could have the most delicious results. Results such as the ones Severus had already tasted earlier in class, for instance…
The youngest Weasley – the irritably peppy one, whatever her name was – walked past Granger's seat at the Gryffindor table and made as if to greet her, but was given what looked like an obscene hand gesture in response. The redhead made off quickly in the direction of an empty seat further down the table, but Granger's gaze locked on the other girl and followed her as she walked away.
Severus dismissed this strange interchange as largely irrelevant and served himself some asparagus. He chewed patiently, waiting for the mystery bloke to show up. All the students were in the Hall at the same time during meals; he would be impossible to miss if Severus looked close enough.
But the only person that Granger paid any attention to was the Weasley girl; she kept looking down the table at her for long periods of time, forgetting to eat, and then looking down at her plate and turning red as soon as the other girl glanced in her direction. Girls, Severus thought with a shudder. They were such incomprehensible and distasteful creatures, on the whole. There was clearly some simmering animosity at play here, if Granger's earlier gesture and their studied avoidance of eye contact were any indication.
Albus, who was sitting at Severus's right elbow, followed his gaze to the Gryffindor table and sighed wistfully, putting down his own forkful of asparagus.
"Ah, young love!" he exclaimed nonsensically.
"Excuse me, Headmaster?"
He sighed again, his smile distant. "It brings back fine memories of my time with Gelly. Oh, those were the days; so young and carefree…" He was now regarding the bushy-haired girl with a twinkle in his eye.
"But of course," Severus murmured. Inwardly, he rolled his eyes. He didn't even want to know who or what "Gelly" was, and it was just better to smile and nod when the old headmaster started rambling like this. It would be asking too much to expect any of it to make sense.
Albus watched the Gryffindor table for the rest of the meal with that absurd twinkle in his eye, and he even leaned over and tried to include Minerva in on the joke, whatever it was. Severus couldn't tell what she made of it; that woman's reactions were always damned hard to read. She probably appreciated hearing whatever it was, though; she was always much more patient with the headmaster's eccentricities than Severus was.
Try as he might, however, Severus never did spot Granger's love interest, and he left the Great Hall in a foul mood. He hated to be thwarted, even in such unimportant matters as these. His only consolation was that his Hufflepuff/Ravenclaw class was this afternoon, which always provided an excellent vent for his anger.
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Aw, Snape's so silly! But honestly, I thought that it might be good to get out of Ginny's head for a minute and see how Hermione's reacting to all this...and meanwhile, the plot thickens...but if this was a supremely bad idea, tell me!!!