Author's notes: Without further ado, here we go.
Hermione read on.
~~~w
Employment Agreement
This agreement made as of the 17th day of July 2001, between Severus Snape (hereinafter referred to as "Employer"); and Hermione Jean Granger (hereinafter referred to as "Employee").
Whereas the Employer desires to obtain the benefit of the services of the Employee, and the Employee desires to render such services on the terms and conditions set forth.
The parties agree as follows:
1. Employment
The Employee agrees that she will at all times faithfully, industriously, and to the best of her skill, ability, experience and talents, perform all of the duties required of her position, i.e. no slacking is allowed. (I wouldn't dream of it, Hermione thought.) In carrying out these duties and responsibilities, the Employee shall comply with all Employer rules and regulations as are announced by the Employer from time to time. It is also understood and agreed to by the Employee that her assignment, duties and responsibilities may be changed by the Employer without causing termination of this agreement.
2. Position Title
As an Assistant / Chief Organizer and Optimizer of Obstacles / Associate to the Chief Inspiration Director (or whatever is the Employee's desire to call herself), the Employee is required to perform the following duties and undertake the following responsibilities in a professional manner. (Hermione raised her head fighting to keep her face impassive; Snape returned her gaze calmly, not a muscle moved in his face.)
(a) Everything connected to the business the Employer may ask the Employee to do.
(b) Other duties as may arise from time to time and as may be assigned to the Employee.
(c) Messing up should be done with true professionalism. ("I think I can manage the part '2', section 'b' quite well," she commented mildly. "Strange, I didn't think you've had much experience in that department," was his reply. It was unclear whether he meant messing up or doing it professionally.)
3. Compensation
As full compensation for all services provided the Employee shall be paid at the rate of 354 Galleons (1770 pounds) per month. (It was a little less than her salary at the Ministry, but not that much for her to complain.)
4. Holidays
The Employee shall be entitled to holidays in the amount of six weeks per annum.
5. Probation Period
It is understood and agreed that the first thirty days of employment shall constitute a probationary period during which period the Employer may, in its absolute discretion, terminate the Employee's employment, for any reason. (This was interesting. At least she had a definite time window for survival.)
6. Confidentiality
The Employee is to be careful with information concerning the Employer at all times, as Employer does NOT want to suffer the inconvenience of death in the workplace. (This feeble warning was pretty redundant at this point. How long did it take him to come up with that anyway? she wondered. Probably two seconds.)
Signed in the presence of:
Name of employee _
Signature of Employee _
Name of Employer _
Signature of Employer _
~~~w
Hermione finished reading, took a deep breath and boldly put her name and big signature in the assigned spaces. There. Done. No way back. The new and hopefully better chapter of her life had just begun.
"So, what's next?" she looked expectantly at her new Employer.
Snape took the document from her and briskly put his own name and spiky signature where necessary. Hermione noticed that he deliberately omitted Tobias which, as far as she knew, was his middle name; although it wasn't unanticipated, and he had her full sympathy.
"It's not magical, isn't it?" she inquired cautiously. He glanced at her.
"Not as far as I know," he answered simply. Yet another fact to the list of things that confused her understanding of his stance on magical-non-magical relationship.
"And that pen is also completely ordinary?"
"Sorry to disappoint, but yes." He didn't elaborate. For some reason she felt slightly let down.
Then he took a blank piece of paper and scribbled something on it before handing it to her.
"Memorize this," he said curtly.
~~~w
Merstone street 3, Carisbrooke village
~~~w
"Got it," she said after several seconds putting the paper on the desk.
"Good." He took out his want in a flash and incinerated the innocent part of a tree; Hermione watched mesmerized as the meagre heap of ash slowly drifted down to the surface.
"See you there then," he announced standing up and disappeared with a sharp 'pop'.
For a moment she was alone in the room wondering what waited for her on the other side.
When Hermione emerged from the tightness of the interspace nothingness and felt the sunrays on her skin, she saw Snape already striding away towards the house that was located on a small hill. The house that caused so much uneasiness appeared to be a small manor; and she enjoyed an excellent view of it from here.
It was built from cream coloured stone occasionally sprinkled with red. The big veranda with triangular Greek pediment propped by small white columns drew the attention, inviting the one to sit and appreciate the scenery, such as it was. There were many broad windows, including a couple of oriel ones, with half circle top. The red slated roof was hipped and asymmetrical; one side of the building was taken by a round tower, a chimney decorated with geometrical patterns was sticking out of the other one. It was unusual architecture to say the least; she had never dared to think that Snape of all people could live in a place like that, if she even thought about his place of residence at all.
Some sort of greenery surrounded the place. As she was getting closer, she discovered that the garden, and that was a serious stretch of the imagination, was a pitiful sight, indeed. Evidently not a single soul took care of it in many years. Her eyes started to catch more details. The house had general appearance of neglect: the roof was chipped in places, the walls were stained with muck, a few windows were cracked; the fence that might have existed in the past was only hypothetical.
At some point she felt a peculiar sensation akin to passing through a cobweb; she whirled around but there was seemingly nothing that might have caused it.
Overall, it didn't look like a house Snape would voluntarily inhabit or spend any sum of money on, more like a house you would have to pay him for living there; maybe that explained its shabby appearance. Then a number of questions arose such as why he was doing this to himself or in the second case who payed him. Or maybe some spiky gothic house was hidden behind this one, full of coffins and bats and sinister organ music echoing from the walls. Her mental picture of Snape distorted even further.
"Miss Granger. Are you going to stay there gaping all day or are you going to come in?" the annoyed voice broke through her reflection making her jump. With his arms folded across his chest, Snape was watching her from the veranda's steps.
"I was just appraising my new workplace," she replied casually.
"And how is it to your liking?"
Hermione couldn't tell if this was a serious question or a rhetorical one, so she answered honestly, "It's far from what I expected."
"I wager you expected something ominous with bats, coffins and cobwebs?" The perceptiveness of his reply unnerved her slightly, but again it shouldn't be that difficult for him to imagine what his ex-student thought of him.
He opened the front doors and stepped aside letting her enter first.
"Why didn't I apparate closer to the building?" she asked suddenly as she moved past him.
"Because it is surrounded by numerous protective charms," he started to answer as he was closing the door. "No one, except me and I have to show you the way this time, can apparate inside the barrier; every visitor has to physically cross the border. Even if you aim inside, you'll still land just before the border. It's similar to Hogwarts' protection with a few differences." Her intuition told her that 'a few' implied rather more than to be expected.
Hermione looked around. It appeared that the interior of the house was only a step away from cobwebs, and she imagined he removed them just before her visit. However, under all that accumulated dust and dirt was a fine old-fashioned décor. How difficult it is for a wizard to remove dust? she wondered. It must have been enormously hard to wave a wand a couple of times.
The warm beige walls were partly hidden behind the oak planks that extended one third to the ceiling; delicate patterns made of white stucco adorned the ceiling, but the wooden floor was covered with the moth-eaten carpet. Now she got even more evidence that Snape moved in here only recently. Above the main doors there was a coat of arms that looked oddly familiar. It consisted of the shield held by a crowned lion and a unicorn chained to the ground below where a thistle, a rose and a shamrock grew. The shield itself depicted two crossed wands alight. Below the motto La magie et mon droit was written, which again looked far too familiar for her not to remember where it was from and yet she didn't. The metal plate was polished and unaged; Hermione even fancied it emitted a glow by itself.
Directly across the entrance there was a grand staircase thankfully not covered with another spoilt carpet that could crawl away from under your feet with sheer insect overpopulation. Wide rooms were visible on both sides of it, decorated in the similar style.
Doubtless this used to be a pleasant and elegant house for people to live in; Hermione supposed it still had potential with renovation or at least with a lot of rigorous cleaning.
Meanwhile Snape led her up the stars to the first floor.
"That coat of arms over the door… It strongly reminds me of something," she mused.
"I have no idea what it could be, Miss Granger, but you can research it yourself if you like," Snape answered as if absentmindedly. "You're bound to find something interesting." He made a little noncommittal gesture with his hand. She stared at his back: it was almost a direct invitation for her to try it; in that case she would certainly see what she could do. She suspected that he actually knew perfectly well what it was and just wanted to irritate her.
"How long have you been living here anyway?" she asked boldly and received an equally bold answer.
"I don't believe it's any of your business, Miss Granger."
They reached the top of the stairs and turned left past the smaller stairs leading to the second floor. Hermione stopped abruptly and gazed longingly at the rows and rows of leather-bound books feeling saliva gathering in her mouth. The sad truth was that she didn't have an opportunity to visit a proper library since leaving Hogwarts; and nowadays it's not like she could saunter in there uninvited and read for hours. Occasional trips to the bookstores and to a small accumulation of books in the Ministry just had to gratify her ardent desire to read.
Evidently Snape noticed the hungry look in her eyes because he drawled, "You can 'explore' as much as you want. I really don't care, as long as you do everything you're supposed to and refrain from setting foot in my laboratory or my bedroom. Understood?"
Smiling happily from ear to ear Hermione nodded feeling her fingertips itch, barely suppressing the urge to jump up and down and clap her hands. Snape just rolled his eyes, one side of his lips curled up possibly in mockery of her childish happiness.
"Of course," she chirped. "So, what should I do? Because it's not really … ah, how shall I put it, clear from the agreement."
He silently motioned her to the large table stacked with various books in the middle of room.
"I regret to inform you but I'm in the habit of writing things down in the most convenient of places when an idea comes to my mind, it's usually the book I'm reading," he started explaining. "Although I try to get out of it with the relative success. As a result, some books that went through my hands might be slightly spoilt by my notes on the margins; on this table you can see all such books I've managed to find so far." He made a semicircle with his open hand in the direction of the numerous piles. "Therefore, your first task would be to carefully go through them, writing down my every note in some separate notebook."
Hermione nodded listening attentively, bubbling with enthusiasm at the prospect of book reading and notes making. Meanwhile, Snape continued.
"Your second task would be to reorganize my bookkeeping, because frankly it's a disaster now. You may find current records here." He ironically raised a tattered notebook from the corner of the table causing some loose sheets to glide on the floor. She noticed curiously that it was a paper and not a parchment. "Your third task is to find out in our bottomless Ministry how to register a business and pay taxes. However, I advise you to start the campaign on Monday, I anticipate you wouldn't get anything done on Friday since they think this day is too closely related to Saturday." His observation was pretty accurate, Hermione conceded, picturing her former co-workers scrambling to get their weekend plans in order all day instead of doing any actual work.
"That's all for now," he finished. "There are no set working hours, I trust your organizational skills. And everything must be done in reasonable time, of course. If you proved anything at Hogwarts, it's that you can manage your time properly." She wasn't sure if this was a hidden jab in her direction, so she ignored it; come to think of it, even if she was sure she would have still ignored it.
He added, "It's self-explanatory that you're not allowed to take anything out of this house without my permission. Any questions?"
"Yes, where can I get writing utensils?"
"Right here." He looked under several books, then got to the table from the other side, looked under a few other books, shuffled some more books around and finally produced a pile of blank paper and a pen.
"Or do you want parchment and a quill?" he asked doubtfully.
"No, not really," she answered instantly raising her hand mock defence for extra emphasis. "By the way why do you use muggle pens and paper?"
He regarded her with mild disbelief for several seconds before replying, "For obvious reasons that it's quicker, more comfortable and I prefer to bite on a pen rather than on a quill."
"Well, I can't argue with that," she huffed.
"Is that all?" He raised an inquiring eyebrow.
"No, the last question." Snape signed theatrically. "Why haven't you removed all that dirt and dust?" at last Hermione asked the question that was nagging her since she entered this house.
"Oh, I challenge you try it in your free time," he answered nonchalantly. "I daresay you'll find some rather, ah, startling complications. Inform me if you reach some feasible progress. I'll be in my lab on the second floor, on the left, my office is nearby. Good luck then."
The conversation was clearly over as he turned around, once again giving a flashback of the billowing robes, and strode away.
That was reassuring, she thought looking around a spacious room; on one side of it there was a broad window bereft of curtains that let the sunlight inside freely. By the unknown force she drifted to the nearest bookcase and lightly brushed her fingers over the old covers without focusing her attention on specific titles. She sighed in content. More than enough dust had gathered on the shelfs unprotected by glass though; she withdrew her wand and murmured Tergeo. The dust disappeared as it was supposed to. A moment later Hermione watched in bemusement the dust literally growing back out of the wood. She blinked and tried a few different cleaning spells with the same result, the shelfs persistently produced returned to the initial state. Or was it the shelfs that did the trick?
Slowly she gazed at the dirt in the corners on the floor and pointed her wand at it; as expected the lack of result was the same. No wonder Snape's answer was so peculiar; apparently, he went through the same sequence of events. Or maybe… Experimentally she reached out and wiped a patch of the shelf, with disappointment she watched the dust restore itself. Nope. A completely different approach was needed, but which? She will just add that to the list of things she currently needed to do a research on and that list was growing with each minute she was here. You know, I have this problem, I'm an adult witch and can't clean the dust off…it's stalking me… That will certainly earn you a special kind of help.
She strolled over and looked out of the window. A cheerily green field with trees scattered here and there welcomed her meditative eyes; other houses were visible far away. Snape surely wouldn't have any problems with neighbours.
How many more mysteries could this house contain? This certainly was an old wizarding home akin to Grimmauld Place or Malfoy Manor, the one that was inhabited by many generations and then unexplainably abandoned. Where would that leave Snape? His mother was a Prince, a member of another pure-blood family, who married a muggle, hence Half-Blood Prince; that was about as far as her knowledge of his ancestry extended. So, was this a Prince residence? It might be, or with higher probability it might be just another old house he had bought, though all the clues pointed to him doing it a short time ago.
In this case nothing explained his choice of the building with such extraordinary architecture. Hermione smirked slowly. Maybe the Prince family was as eccentric as Weasleys; however, she could hardly imagine that with their only offspring in mind. Or maybe Snape had suppressed eccentricity at heart that had never quite got a much-needed output or better still got an output in the form of this house; that was an interesting thought, which certainly shouldn't stay in her head for too long. She shook her head ruefully. Time to get to work.
She walked over to the table and considered what she should start with. The answer came to her quickly – definitely sorting everything out. She picked up the notebook Snape showed her and carefully set it aside, in its vicinity she found a similar looking notebook and put it over the first one, mentally dubbing the forming pile as Records. She the paper and a lonely pen nearby. Loose sheets of paper wouldn't help, she would have to buy separate notebooks for that later, but that would do for now. Then she took a second glance at the pen, took it again and turned. It was a standard mechanical black pen, but Marks & Spencer was written in lime green on its side and their mind-boggling slogan Exclusively for Everyone from a year ago below. She remembered this slogan very well, because it was like a person trying to reach around his head to scratch his nose. She smiled. The company certainly succeeded in drawing her attention at that time, but not for the reasons they were aiming for; the phrase was so contradictory that it just stuck in her head. For everyone, indeed. Even for some atypical wizards it seems. And witches, she mentally added.
She wasn't sure how to sort the books; she would have sorted them by date the notes were made since she was quite sure Snape had done all the notes in a certain book while reading the said book, but she had no way of knowing this information and asking the author would be useless. So, she settled on just arranging them in neat piles by size, clearing herself a writing space.
Hermione experienced a moment of perplexity when she found a deeply familiar potions textbook, she tentatively opened it and indeed saw This is the property of the Half-Blood Prince in spiky handwriting on the inside of the cover. How did it wind up in its owner's hands again? Harry had hidden it in the Room of Requirement, or he hadn't. She pursed her lips. Or possibly they just weren't as smart as they thought they were at the time, or their teachers weren't as stupid, or both. And evidently now Snape deemed her grown-up enough to be trusted with this treasure; on the other hand, she thought he was embarrassed by his teenage foolishness, hopefully he had come in terms with it now. Well, to each his own meaning some have embarrassing relationships and generally behave like a moron in their youth, others just create fatal curses and create anagrams; although becoming a Death Eater could count as embarrassing relationship she supposed.
She immediately decided that this book would be the first in line for her inspection. With everything ready she sat on the curved chair and opened it. Age hadn't been merciful to this particular textbook; it was already old during her schooldays and now it was almost falling apart. She carefully leafed through it writing down notes about potions and spells on two separate pieces of paper; there were only spells she already knew and there weren't many of them, it was mostly corrections of existing potion making techniques to make them quicker and more effective. Sometimes it was really hard to decipher what the past version of Snape was trying to say since he crammed his spidery words in little spaces in between lines, but Hermione persisted hoping that the task would become easier with practice. This hadn't happened, at least today.
Around 2 p.m. her stomach's rumblings remined her that it was a good time to take a lunch break. She stood up and stretched her arms and back; when she was stretching her neck muscles, she glanced at the ceiling with dark smudges on its white surface. Then she directed her calculating gaze at the books deciding that she should start her cleaning problem research with those; maybe she would find a manual with the title How to Train Your House.
Hermione ascended the stairs to the second floor, entered a soft blue parlour and looked around curiously. The room wasn't the usual rectangular form, the semicircle was cut out due to the base of the tower she had seen earlier. She hesitated for a second, then turned to the left, approached a wide double door and knocked. Silence. She waited. Silence. Finally, the door glowed briefly and opened letting out a piano melody and the sound of bubbling potions. Snape put away his wand and raised an eyebrow questioningly.
"Yes?"
Hermione stared at him; he exchanged his shirt for a less formal dark green t-shirt, his hair was gathered back from his face with a hair tie, thus his appearance became even more unconventional. Her eyes naturally gravitated to his left forearm, but it was wrapped in silky black cloth. Why, Mr Snape, is your t-shirt from Marks & Spencer too? Do you also prefer the quality of the well-established muggle brand or do you just like their juicy chocolate pudding?
She managed not to voice it, instead she said, "Am, yes, I wanted to ask you if I can go home to have a lunch."
He seemed mildly surprised either by her request or by the fact that it was already a lunch time. He stepped back and glanced somewhere up. Yep, definitely the second one.
"I don't see why not, but if you want there is food in the kitchen." It was Hermione's time to be surprised.
"And you don't mind my eating it?" the words were out of her mouth before she belatedly realized how dumb they sounded. She raised her hand and momentarily closed her eyes. "Wait, don't answer it."
His lips quirked, but he merely said, "Anything else?"
She considered raising the question of dust again but decided the effort would be moot.
"No," she replied slowly. "No, I don't think so." The door closed abruptly.
Author's notes: I know I promised Severus' point of view, but it will totally be in the next chapter. This part turned out to be quite a bit longer than I expected.
By the way, if anyone is interested, that number represents e constant, the key constant in math and physics.
Disclaimer: Sadly and unsurprisingly Marks & Spencer doesn't pay me for this sincere promotion, it's all my own doing:)