She stood outside the dungeon doors for a second and stared at the aging wood. Her palm were sweaty and her heart raced with nerves. When professor McGonagall recommended she take the intern program in potions she hesitated. Severus Snape already disliked her. Everything about her. Her voice, her eagerness, her frizzy hair. Any chance he got he would criticize her... She was pretty sure he just hated her existence. God, why did she agree to this.
She stared at the door a second longer before watching her own knuckles knock on the door. It opened slowly.
The room was dim and humid, and her eyes took a second to adjust to the low light emitted by only candles. Cauldrons at the front bubbled and hissed, steaming the room and creating a slight haze of smoke. Her professor was leaning over his desk, long black hair over his pale face mumbling words to himself. Parchment spread across his desk, he seemed agitated, and Hermione wanted to turn and leave.
"Why are you just standing there?" He looked up, his brow furrowed, his forehead beaded with sweat.
"If you're busy I can come back," Hermione offered, not moving from her place in the doorway.
Snape grumbled to himself before motioning for her to come closer to the desk. "Close the door, you're letting the heat out."
Hermione walked towards the front of the classroom, hearing the large oak door closed heavy behind her. The light from the candles cast eery shadows on jars lining the shelves. She had been in this classroom hundreds of times in her 6 years at Hogwarts, but had never seen it like this. So dark yet so peaceful.
"What do you see here," he prodded at a ragged piece of parchment on his desk. Hermione walked around the table to stand beside her professor. She could smell his cologne in the steam, like cedar and spices. His shirt was wet from sweat. "I can't make out the word on this page."
She squinted at the faded script, handwritten and worn from years of being unrolled and rolled back up. She shook her head and looked up at her professor. "It looks like owls blood, but… I'm not sure."
He stood up and brushed his hair back with his hand letting out a small laugh. She marvelled for a moment, she had never seen her professor be anything but calloused and proper. "That's genius." She stared at him wide eyed, replaying the word genius in her head over and over. "So simple, you would think it wouldn't be." He rushed over to a cupboard and opened the doors, sifting through vials and pulling out a dark red tube. Putting just two drops in the cauldron and a dark red steam rose, the smell of cinnamon filled the air.
"Amazing…" Hermione whispered, and as if he only suddenly realized she was there he spun on his heels to face her.
"Right. Well, good job Granger." He rolled up the old script, replacing the wax holding and motioned with his head towards a pile of dirty cauldrons. "I left those for you to clean up. Honestly, what do they want me to do with an intern."
Severus watched the girl carefully as she walked to the other side of the room. He had been trying to solve that potion for weeks, down to the last ingredient and she came in and stole his glory. She was a smart girl, he would admit, but still an annoying brat. Nothing was going to change his mind about that. He started to clean up the papers on his desk. The room was even hotter now with the last potion at full brew.
He heard a rattle in her direction and looked up to see Hermione's back to him, on her hands and knees scrubbing the inside of a low cauldron. She had begun to sweat, the stream frizzing up her hair and dampening her skin. She looked up and he quickly looked away, busying himself with the papers on his desk, ignoring the thoughts that run rampant in his mind.