A/N:

For Brandon279: Yes Hermione will still be working for Snape even though he will be the DADA Professor when they go back. What they are working on has nothing to do with whatever his position is at Hogwarts.

For Tricorvus: Yes I did make Fleur completely impossible on purpose I thought that this would be another thing that Hermione and Snape could have in common.

I don't own anything it all belongs to JKR!

Read & Review Please!

Chapter 5: Friendship

It was finally morning and Hermione had barely gotten any sleep all she could do was think about why Snape had had to leave so urgently. Maybe it was about Harry maybe he was hurt. When she looked at the clock for what felt like the hundredth time that morning. It was quarter past six. With that she flung off her bed linens and got dressed and as calmly as she could, walked next door to Snape's lab. Unfortunately when she walked in she looked around and noticed that he wasn't there. She walked over to his door and prayed that she wouldn't be waking him up. She knew that it was almost impossible that he would still be asleep at this hour. After working with him for almost two months now she had noticed that he didn't seem to sleep much. He would always stay in the library long after she went to bed, and on the occasions that she would arrive at his lab early he had usually been up for hours.

She timidly knocked on his door there was no answer. Suddenly it occurred to Hermione that maybe he hadn't even returned from last night! What would she tell everyone when they asked where he was? Then she realized with a sinking of her heart that nobody would even notice his absence. Nobody besides her would care if he was in danger or worse even! He was probably just sleeping, he probably got home only an hour or two ago and is taking a nap, I am here quite early after all she reassured herself.

She decided to get started on her day. Luckily she and Snape had talked about what they were going to do last night while they were taking turns stirring. Today was a restocking day for their simple supplies. All the potions and salves that Snape made for the hospital wing at Hogwarts, he also had his own stock in all of his labs for emergencies. Hermione had noticed that they were starting to run low on some items the day before and after mentioning it to him last night he had decided that they would have an easy day and just restock everything.

She decided to start on the burn salve first since that was what they were lowest on at the moment. Hermione had been very accident prone in her first few weeks and had been the one who had used up most of the supplies they were now very low on she thought with embarrassment. She got out all the supplies and started working on the base. Another reason that she had wanted to start with the burn salve was because she had recently read an article that had suggested a different way to brew it. Hermione was curious to see the results of this new discovery. The article had said to slice up the mint leaf in the last step instead of adding it whole. Apparently it was supposed to speed up the healing time even more than before.

Hermione had now been working on the burn salve for just under an hour. She had been very pleased with the tip about the mint leaf, it had seemed to work quite well as the salve had turned an even richer shade of green. She was just starting to put the burn salve in a container when suddenly the door behind Snape's desk opened.

At first Hermione didn't look up as she was in the middle of something. "Oh hello Professor! Sorry I know I'm early but I have just finished with the burn salve and I think next I'll-" Hermione had just looked up to see Snape glaring down at her. He looked terrible. Not just because he looked ready to tear her head off he also looked extremely tired. When she looked into his eyes not only did she see fatigue she saw pain, anger, and the most surprising of all sadness.

"Professor! What on earth happened to you? Are you-"

"Miss Granger what in heavens do you think you are doing!" Snape said with such anger his entire body shook uncontrollably.

"What do you mean?" Hermione said still in complete shock from the look on his face.

Snape picked up the container she had forgotten she was holding and examined it.

"What on earth is this supposed to be!"

"It's…It's the burn salve I just finished." She said now completely terrified.

"What pray tell have you done to it? It looks as though you have added green peas to it!"

"Sorry I just read this-"

"Oh! You're sorrrry are you! Well if you're sorry then I guess its okay isn't it! Just as long as you're sorry!" He said in a mocking tone.

"Look I don't know why you are being so mean to me but it is NOT okay! You cannot treat me like some FIRST YEAR! I refuse to be scolded like some child!"

"Oh but Miss Granger you are a child don't you see? You are still in school you are still underage, and you are still an annoying, immature little know-it-all!" He said his face getting closer and closer to her with every word until she was able to see each of his individual eyelashes. She took a step back to compose her thoughts.

"Obviously you are upset about something because I have done nothing to deserve this. How dare you come in here yelling at me without even listening to my side of the story! You are a rude, rude man!" As soon as she said it she regretted it. She immediately deflated seeing a flash of hurt across his face. He had quickly wiped the emotion off his face and if she hadn't been standing so close she might have missed it. But she didn't.

"I'm sorry I shouldn't have said that." She said sadly.

"Why not it is honest at least. I am a rude man." He said in still a quite angry tone but at least now he seemed to have his temper under control. They were both silent for a moment. "So I assume something very bad happened last night? Is everyone okay?" she was going to say is Harry okay but she thought it was best not to bring his name into it at the moment.

Snape grunted, "Yes everybody is fine…. for now." She heard him whisper it so low that she wasn't even sure that it had been said for her ears.

"Miss Granger do have any idea what its like to not know what the difference is between right and wrong? I do." Hermione didn't know what to say.

"Being who I am and doing what I do I am constantly asking myself what the right thing to do is. And I fear that I may never be able to find my way back to a time when I was so sure about my choices. Where I never had to question them never had to fear that I might have chosen wrong."

Hermione's eyes had started to well up with tears, but still she said nothing. It was obvious that he had been holding all of this in for a long time and that this was the first time he had ever spoken about it. Hermione couldn't believe that he had chosen her to say all of this to.

"I thought that Jarvis was a good man, a man that I could trust. I was wrong. After I found out what kind of man Jarvis truly was I started to think about how I could have missed that he was not someone to be trusted. How could I have missed the evil side of him. And then it hit me. I myself am no better than him, we are both on the path of wrong and all the qualities that I had missed in him were qualities that I myself have. I then realized that there is nobody in this world that I can trust because I can no longer trust my own judgment."

Hermione looked at him his face was like stone, frozen in a mask of bitter regret and anger. "You can trust me and the people in the Order." Snape scoffed at this. "No, really I mean it! Yes maybe it is true that none of them like you but you can trust them. None of them would ever betray you. And if you can't trust them you can trust me. I am your friend after all." She said matter-of-factly.

"You are not my friend Miss Granger you are my assistant." Snape said cuttingly.

"Well I consider you my friend." She said nonplussed.

"And what on earth would make you think that Miss Granger?"

"Well…. this." She said gesturing back and forth between the two of them. We are having a conversation at the moment that only friends would have. Co-workers would never have a conversation like this." Snape looked as though he had just realized all the things had just confessed to her and had seemed to regret it by the look on his face. But then he said something that Hermione still couldn't believe. "Yes I suppose you are right. I suppose that does make us friends." They both stood in silence for a moment realizing that they had both just admitted to being friends and the absurdity of it all. "Well I guess we better get started with the work on the anti-venom."

"But I thought we were working on restocking the salves and potions today?"

Snape shook his head at this. "No, change of plans. We will be working on the anti-venom today."

"Okay"

Three hours later Hermione and Snape were bent over a cauldron as frustrated as ever. "We can't go onto the next step until we can figure out how to get the healing process to go faster so it beats the venom to the heart!" Snape said frustrated. They had been thinking in circles for over an hour now. They had been working on this particular problem for the past two weeks and hadn't made much headway. Both of them were starting to loose hope that they would ever be able to think of the answer.

"We just need to figure out how to speed up the healing time and then…." Hermione gasped, and starting jumping up and down not able to say anything yet.

"Stop all that infernal jumping woman you look ridiculous! What is this all about."

"I've got it! I've got it!" she said excitedly.

"Well stop jumping up and down like a first year and tell me!" he said annoyed but Hermione could tell that his entire focus was on her.

"It's just like the burn-salve!"

"What do you mean it's nothing like a burn salve!"

"No! No! Remember earlier when you got mad at me because the burn salve I made was too green? Well it was because I did something different that I had read about in Potions Monthly. In this article they said to slice the mint leaf instead of throwing it in whole! Apparently slicing it speeds up the healing process! Maybe the same thing would happen if we slice up the dittany leaf!"

"I read Potions Monthly and I don't ever remember reading this article. What are you talking about?"

Hermione went over to her desk and picked up an issue of Potions Monthly that he had never seen before. "It only came two days ago and you had me take it from the owl and then I asked you if it would be alright if I could read it. Remember?"

"Yes I remember now." Snape seemed to be in deep thought as he worked through the conclusion to make sure that it could actually work. "Yes….Yes that could definitely work." He said as he rushed out of the room. When he came back he had a few dittany leaves in his hand carefully he sliced them up and then slowly he went to put them in the cauldron. "Careful! The leaves are highly flammable!" Hermione said worriedly.

Snape looked at her and raised one of his eyebrows as if to say "Do you really think I don't know that already?"

Hermione blushed in embarrassment. "Sorry you probably knew that didn't you?"

Snape didn't say anything he just turned around to look at the leaves as he dropped them in. The reaction was instantaneous. While it had been a dull grey color before as soon as the leaves dropped in the entire potion turned bright gold! "Oh my! It worked! I can't believe it! We did it!" Without thinking she turned and hugged him. He smelled nice like spices and grass and a smell that she couldn't really place it was his smell, nobody else smelled like he did that was for sure. And then she realized that she was hugging him. She quickly stepped back from him not sure if she had just crossed a line that he was not okay with. It seemed however that while he was a little surprised by the action he did not seem to be upset by it. Hermione smiled at him.

"Congratulations Miss Granger you have just made a huge discovery that has gotten us that much closer to finishing the anti-venom." He said with respect in his eyes she was sure of it! "Thank you sir! I believe it! This calls for a celebration! Don't you think so?"

"What did you have in mind?" he said hesitantly.

"Hmmm… Oh! I know just the thing! Ill be back in half an hour!"

"Miss Granger where on earth are you going!"

"Don't worry about it Ill be back in half an hour!" And she was out the door before Snape could protest anymore.

Thirty-five minutes later Hermione walked back into the lab with a bag in tow. "Professor I'm back!"

"Where on earth did you go?"

"I went out!"

"You went out unsupervised! Do you realize how dangerous that is? Every week I go to revels and every week I hear a new plan about how to kidnap someone from the golden trio what if a death eater had seen you! You could have been kidnapped!"

"Relax I had Mrs. Weasley go with me I was safe! I'm not stupid enough to go out there all on my own!"

"Why did you even need to go out? What was so important?"

"I went to get you this." She said as she held out the bag for him to take. He quickly snatched it from her and looked inside. It was a white box about 9x9 in size. He put it down on the counter and opened it, inside was a dark chocolate cake with Chocoballs all around the edge of it. Snape was speechless.

"How did you know that Chocoballs were my favorite?" he asked completely shocked.

"Oh well I once saw you eating one and was shocked that you actually liked sweets. So when I got to Honeydukes I could only remember that you liked those. I didn't know they were your favorite." She smiled at him. "Come on lets have some it looks delicious!" she said enthusiastically. He conjured two plates and two forks and a knife. They both sat in silence as they enjoyed their chocolate cake.

"So are you ever going to tell me what happened last night? Its okay if you don't want to talk about it."

"No I'm not planning on telling you anytime soon. I imagine you will find out eventually, or you will figure it out all on your own, being you and all."

"Yes probably." She said jokingly. They sat in companionable silence once more until Snape said, "So did you hear the splendid news?" he said sarcastically.

"No what?"

"Potter is due to arrive late tonight or early tomorrow morning."

"Really! Oh that's wonderful news! Does anyone else know! Molly didn't say anything to me while we were out buying the cake."

"I was supposed to pass on the message to the rest of the house and this is me passing it on. It is now your turn to let everyone else know."

"Oh I'm so happy this is such great news!" She jumped up from her chair. "I better go tell Ron and everybody else they will want to know!" And she was out the door before Snape could say another word.

He couldn't believe it as soon as she had heard that Potter was showing up she had literally run away from him. "Some friend she is." he thought to himself. He started to clean up the plates and leftover cake when he heard someone coming through the door.

He turned around to see Hermione. "Did you want something?" he said coldly. She pretended not to notice the tone of his voice. "I just wanted to know if you were coming to dinner tonight." He was surprised that she even cared if he was coming to dinner now that she had her precious Potter's arrival to look forward to. What did she need him for anymore? If he had to admit it to himself he was quite pleased that she had come back to ask him.

"Yes I think I will this way I wont have to have dinner with Potter until late next week." Hermione rolled her eyes. "Okay. Is there anything else you wanted to work on today it is only one in the one in the afternoon." She said coming more into the room.

"No it is alright I was just going to refill the stores and maybe have a short day and end at five." Hermione walked over to the supply room and walked back out with ingredients and started organizing them next to her cauldron.

"What do you think you are doing? Go away." He said halfheartedly.

"No." She said simply. "I am your assistant and I am assisting you with your work." She smiled brightly at him while he just rolled his eyes back at her. "Gryffindors." He smiled secretly when her heard Hermione's laugh.

A/N:

Also I REALLY need a BETA so if anyone is will please PM me!