b A/N. /b The reason for the delay, apart from my own procrastination, is that my draft of the second chapter went missing. I was not lying when I said that, at the time I posted the first chapter, the second was already written. To finish this "revised" chapter I've had to work from scratch, which wasn't the easiest thing to do.

To be perfectly honest, people reviewing that they would like to see where this story leads made me uneasy. This short story is actually just what the summary says it is—a teacher's dilemma. It won't have any unpredictable twists. It just explores the idea of a teacher unable to imagine how or why any sort of interest in him should be expressed, and trying to put a stop to any such unhealthy interest. It's an idea that we in the SSHG subfandom take for granted—student falls for teacher (or vice versa) and after expressing a few scruples they fall into each other's arms, or not. I just wanted to explore that dimension without going into the "Oh no, I'm a monster, I don't deserve her" litany.

ii. Cruelty

It was not difficult to find her. If he could find any fault with her, it would be that she was too predictable. He could sum her up in a few sentences: She was hideously sentimental and very much ashamed of it; she liked being thought of as clever but would never take any credit that didn't rightly belong to her; as sensible as she usually was, she was gullible and prone to hero-worshipping her elders; she wanted to be attractive to boys but didn't have the time or patience to try, for the most part. And she was attracted to him.

Her table at the library was (predictably) in a far corner, surrounded by Herbology books that nobody but Neville Longbottom was interested in. She was still unaware of his presence. As he made his way to her he mused that even her interest in him was predictable. It had something to do with both her propensity for hero-worship and her penchant for standing up for people she perceived as underdogs.

Closer to her table now, he stopped for a moment to observe her. She was very young. That much was apparent. Perhaps in another lifetime he would have found it funny—her tight sweaters, her brushed hair, her shorter skirts. The more mature she tried to look the more she underlined the fact that she was still a child. He pinched the bridge of his nose, feeling suddenly tired. He did not need to be bothered with a schoolgirl infatuation. He had so much more to worry about—his duties, his loyalties, his work, the members of his house. Should he have to worry about sparing the feelings of a delusional child? He sighed.

She looked up at the sound, startled, then pleased. The smile spreading across her face reminded him of sunrise and the way the light crept through the forest at daybreak. It made him unreasonably angry. The object in his hands—the bright, offending apple—reminded him why he was here.

He closed the distance between him and her desk, slamming the apple down between them. The smile on her face disappeared and she seemed suddenly afraid. He leaned down until their noses were nearly touching. The knuckles gripping the edge of her side of the table where white, and he could see his reflection in her wide, scared eyes.

"Do not think," he said slowly and in as menacing a way as he could, "that I don't know what you're doing."

It was also predictable, the way she cried.

- - -

When he left the library five minutes later, he could still hear her sobbing. As he moved to open the door, he spotted Madame Pince a few paces away from her desk. She was standing uncertainly, as though torn between returning to her work and going to comfort Miss Granger, whose soft sniffles were the only sound in the otherwise deserted library.

- - -

He was surprised to find her standing in his doorway again. He thought he had put a stop to those visits, and he fought the twinge of annoyance beginning in his gut. She had worn her school robes and so he could not see whether any changes had been made to her inner clothing; he did not know what to expect. He fixed a scowl on his face and braced himself for the worst, and started practicing, in his head, how to tell her to leave.

Whatever he had expected, it wasn't this. She walked quickly and self-consciously to his desk to place a piece of paper in front of him. It took his eyes a moment to focus and see that it was a list from the infirmary.

"Madame Pomfrey told me to give this to you when I came to give her the last batch," she said quickly. She was obviously nervous. He was reminded, all at once, of the first time he had detected her interest in him, and of the frightened look in her eye when he had confronted her in the library. She obviously wished she were somewhere else now. In taking down Pomfrey's note, had she been conjuring another excuse to see him? Or was this what she saw as her last errand for him, and one she was obligated to fulfill despite her own misgivings? He was startled to discover that he could not be sure.

"Yes," he said slowly, trying to read her and not the note. He extended a hand to get it, and was both triumphant and frustrated when she snatched her hand away from it, avoiding any contact with him. "That much is obvious. If that will be all?"

She nodded, and left hurriedly. He was thankful that she shut the door behind him, although it did annoy him that she left the room smelling of freesia, and left him with the vague stirrings of an uneasy conscience.

- - -

"Put everything in a box," he said to the house-elf the next day. "And put the box by the door. Disturb none of the set-ups. Those are mine. Just collect the notes, and that atrocious chewed quill, and those notebooks you see over there."

He didn't linger in time to see the curtsy or hear the house-elf's squeaked "Yes, sir!" In moments was out of the lab, where reminders of Miss Granger lingered still, and in his office. He sat down and stared at nothing.

It was all over now, of course. It had been a mistake to let her assist him, letting her think she was in any way special and allowing her interest to blossom further when it should have been nipped in the bud. Why should a young lady expose herself to such ridicule? He did not understand it. And why would she ever think that he might find a girl—with all of her inexperience and incomplete views of the world--attractive? He had no illusions as to his own appeal--he was sure, in fact, that her attraction to him could only mean temporary insanity on her part--but surely she could see that hers would be lacking to a man twice her age.

Her pretentions to maturity, clashing with her childish behavior… this was the wrong way to go about capturing his attention—in a favorable manner at least, he amended, for he had to admit that his attention was precisely what she had. He had been turning the problem over and over again, in his mind, for some time—almost obsessively. It was like a sore tooth. As annoying as he found her, he could not resist speculating on why such a promising individual, who had previously shown herself as possessing good sense, should embark on something so obviously hopeless. He thought again of her hair and the way she had brushed it, and wondered whether he would have taken kind notice of it if, say, he had been younger, or he had been her friend.

A knock sounded on his office door. He jumped, and composed himself, unconsciously smoothing a hand over the front of his robe while his annoyance rose to new heights. He had told her, hadn't he? She'd been cowering behind her desk in the library and he'd been so sure she understood. She'd nodded fearfully at everything he'd said. He'd been temporarily distracted by the bounce of her curls. But in the end he had managed to tell her, in no uncertain terms, that she was not welcome--

"Sir?" Dennis Creevey poked his head into the office.

Snape sank back in his chair. He felt, horribly and irrationally, as though he had been cheated.