At first, the letter that Hermione had written and slipped under Snape's office door was sufficient. More than once, her cheeks burned to think of his probable reaction. Would he even read it? Would he toss it aside with a snort of contempt, or a little roll of the eyes at the lovestruck schoolgirl who had written him a secret admirer note? Or would he read it and see what she was trying to say, understand the depths of respect and admiration and even love that she had tried to put into the lines?

She hadn't the faintest, and it bothered her. As she went about her classes that day, she fantasised about having signed her name to the bottom. Her usual, slightly flamboyant signature, complete with all the elegant loops and swirls. Yours, Hermione Granger. Would he have sought her out if she had? Would he have told her that perhaps he felt a similar way, that he would like to pursue something with her?

More likely, though, he would have scorned her. Mocked her and torn the page to pieces, then dropped them into the bin at his feet. Taken points from Gryffindor, although now that Hermione had been through a war, she found she cared much less about such frivolous things as House points. Perhaps he would have told other people, mocked her to his colleagues. She would go through her classes, not knowing what professor knew what, wondering if that was a look of pity in that one's eyes, or a glance of contempt in another's. Fancying the dungeon bat, You Know Who's prized Death Eater.

Despite Harry coming forward with Snape's memories of being a spy, of knowing that he'd only been working for Voldemort to help the Light, many people still distrusted the greasy-haired Potions Master. There had been an outcry at the beginning of term when everyone had discovered he was returning to Hogwarts to teach Potions. Minerva McGonagall had put her foot down, however. He was teaching, that was that, and if you had a problem with that, you could leave and enroll elsewhere. Her fierce brogue had left nothing to the imagination when she made that speech, her eyes snapping with angry fire. He'd proven himself to her, and that was all that mattered.

Still. He'd never been a favoured professor. He was too strict, too harsh in his classroom. He could leave a student in tears on the first day, drooped over their cauldron in slump-shouldered despair. Hermione disliked and appreciated this by turns. She'd figured out by second year that he had to be that way. Potions was not a class that allowed for mistakes, particularly once you got into the higher years. A disaster in first year would produce a wave of boils. A disaster in sixth year could blow up half the school. His harsh behaviour, although overblown and unnecessarily cruel, saved lives.

So she quietly loved him from afar, and one day, hyped up on the thrill of a perfect score on her last Charms exam when she'd thought she'd misread a question, and having drunk entirely too much butterbeer smuggled in by Harry and one of his casual girlfriends, Hermione decided to write him a letter.

Countless attempts littered the floor by the time she was done. There'd been so much she'd wished to say. So much that she couldn't. Some attempts were far more lascivious than she'd imagined she was capable of. Shaking scribbles of how she wished he would bend her over her desk, or press her up against a dungeon wall, his body tight against hers, his mouth hot and insistent. Maudlin ramblings, as well, wishing that she was older, that she could attract his attention, that she wasn't one of Harry's friends, even, so that perhaps she could have garnered his admiration as herself, no baggage.

Still, the final result was one that she felt that she could at least be semi-proud of, and she'd addressed it and ran to the dungeon before breakfast, slipping it under his office door and hoping that he at least saw it. With her luck, a house elf would discover it and toss it away, and all that angst would be for nothing.

Weeks, and then months, passed. Hermione's longing for the Potions professor did nothing but intensify. She found herself breathless and weak-kneed in every Potions class, her eyes watching him wander about the classroom, murmuring a stern word here, banishing a failed potion there. His robes fit closer about his body than she'd previously noticed, and she couldn't help but wonder what he looked like without them.

Such thoughts brought a flaming blush to her cheeks, and more times than she could count, she had to put her head down and stare fiercely at the stained wood of the table, willing her libido to subside, the longing to vanish beneath the soft blue flickering of the flames beneath her cauldron, the shimmering fumes of the assigned potion.

When graduation dawned, Hermione received her diploma, shook Severus Snape's hand, and assumed that it would be the last time she'd ever see the first man she'd ever loved. She dared not speak a word about her feelings to him. He would not reciprocate them, and no matter what his reaction, whether acerbic or trying to be kind, it would be too much.

Instead, she resolved to try and put those feelings behind her, to perhaps go on a date or two with Ron Weasley, who had still kept in close contact with her and Harry throughout her last year, and forget all about Severus Snape. The Ministry had offered her a conditional position in the Charms Department, she had a bright future glistening with promise ahead of her, and if she couldn't have what she truly wanted, well...she wasn't alone in that, now was she.

Life, however, had a way of disagreeing.