For the Potions Master's Amusement
Chapter 18: Penitence
Hermione skipped breakfast the next morning and went early to lunch, bolting her food and running off to the library before the boys had properly served their plates. She couldn't bear seeing her professor sitting coolly at the head table, ignoring her and eating his meals as if nothing of import had occurred—as if he was not systematically tearing Hermione's heart to pieces.
Walking down the chilly dungeon corridor to Potions that afternoon with Harry and Ron, Hermione kept up a constant internal monologue. 'I won't look at him. I won't look at him. I won't look at him. I won't look at him.'
As soon as she walked through the door, however, her eyes flew to the front of the room—and there she saw the Headmaster, smiling benignly from behind Professor Snape's desk. She froze.
'Oi, Hermione!' Ron complained as he bumped into her. 'You're holding it up, here.'
Harry gently pushed her from behind until she was fully in the room, then guided her to their usual table. 'Are you all right?' he muttered, watching her face.
Hermione mechanically began to set up her cauldron between her friends, her mind not at all upon what she was doing. 'Fine,' she answered tersely, darting fearful glances toward Professor Dumbledore.
Where was he?
'Good afternoon,' the Headmaster said cheerfully as the class came to order. 'I will be teaching your Potions lesson today, as Professor Snape is a bit under the weather.'
Ron snorted softly. 'It must be our lucky day,' he muttered.
Hermione began to jerkily chop her daisy roots for the potion written on the chalkboard. 'Must you be such a child?' she hissed, her mind awhirl with disordered thoughts.
Was he really ill? Or had he not returned from his tryst with Taffy-the-shop-girl after all?
Harry started preparing his ingredients. 'Anything that gives me one Snape-free day is all right with me,' he said flatly.
'Professor Snape,' Hermione snapped at him, throwing one scoop of pickled eel bladder into her cauldron.
'Someone's hormonal,' Ron muttered darkly, but Hermione ignored him.
The boys murmured to one another over her head as she mechanically prepared the Toenail Fungus Remover. Had her professor read her entry in the journal before he slipped away for the meeting with his lover? Or had he returned in the night after fucking Taffy to find the pages torn from his book? Would he be too ill to see her if she went to his office after dinner?
'… has something to do with You-Know-Who?'
Hermione's head jerked up, and she carelessly sliced the tip of her finger with her silver dagger. 'What do you mean?' she gasped.
Harry grabbed her hand. 'Be careful!' he said, marching her to the stone basin and pumping water from the gargoyle head to cleanse her fingertip.
'What were you and Ron talking about?' she demanded.
Harry did not answer her, but held his wand carefully over her finger to cast a Healing Charm on her cut. She watched him as he concentrated on her injury.
'We were talking about Order business,' Ron said softly from behind her. She glanced over her shoulder at him, knowing she should feel grateful for the care he and Harry demonstrated for her, but she was so agitated about the absence of her professor that she could think of little else.
'Is everything all right back here?' Professor Dumbledore asked.
The three turned to face him.
'I was healing Hermione's finger, sir,' Harry informed him. 'She cut herself with her dagger.'
Dumbledore took Hermione's hand and studied the injured finger over the tops of his half-moon spectacles. 'Good job, Harry,' he said cheerfully.
'Sir,' Harry said in an urgent whisper, 'does Snape's absence have something to do with Order business?'
'Professor Snape,' the Headmaster corrected automatically. Then he glanced around at all their faces and leaned closer to them. 'He was called away last night and has not yet returned.'
Harry questioned the Headmaster more closely, but Hermione was not listening to their words. Called away? Not off to indulge in shagging the shop girl, but summoned by Lord Voldemort? She felt suddenly light-headed, and there was a plunging sensation in her mid-section. She had been jealous, thinking her professor had gone off to meet with his Hogsmeade honey, when in reality he had taken himself into danger on behalf of the Order.
She was so ashamed she could barely draw breath.
Blindly, she followed Harry back to their table and cleared away her things; class was over and she was free for the day. Where could she go? What could she do to atone for her faithlessness?
'I'm tired of waiting,' Harry said, and Ron echoed, 'So am I.'
Hermione looked between them, suddenly back in the present. 'Waiting for what?' she said.
'Waiting to fight Voldemort,' Harry said. 'I'm ready to fight him—I've trained long enough.' He took a deep breath. 'I think it's time to go find him.'
Ron darted an anxious look to where the Headmaster was entering information in the Potions classroom attendance book. 'Dumbledore says if we wait just a bit longer …'
Harry slung his bag over his shoulder and moved past them towards the door. 'I don't expect anyone to go with me,' he muttered.
Hermione hurried after him, a new anxiety layering over his concerns for her professor. 'Harry, I think we have to trust the Headmaster,' she said, pulling abreast of him in the deserted dungeon corridor. 'One mistake with You-Know-Who could ruin everything. You're too valuable to be careless with your safety!'
Harry did not argue with her, but glared defiantly ahead as he strode along. Ron, on the other hand, touched Hermione's shoulder and gave her a half-smile of thanks. It became more difficult all the time for them to rein in Harry's impatience to face his parents' murderer in battle.
Hermione went early to dinner and remained at the table until the head table was deserted, but Professor Snape did not show up. Disconsolately stuffing her book into the pocket of her cloak, she debated what she ought to do. How could she find him—how could she help him?
What would he want me to do? she wondered as she made her way back to Gryffindor Tower. What would Master Maximus want t to do in this situation? She smiled to herself as she gave the password to the Fat Lady and passed through the Gryffindor common room. How ludicrous, to imagine Master Maximus and his submissive in the middle of the war with Voldemort. Their community of Dominants and submissives was far removed from the world in which Hermione existed, where she and everyone she cared about lived in daily expectation of war—indeed, lived in daily dread of death and devastation.
Closing the door of her dormitory behind her, she shed her cloak and moved to lift her journal from its drawer. Why had she ripped out the pages telling her professor of her fantasy about him? How could she have been so faithless? She ran a hand lovingly over the green leather binding. Oh, how she wished she was in his presence now, kneeling at his feet in the submissive's pose, eagerly anticipating his next command. There was nothing she would not do to atone for her doubt.
She hugged the journal to her breasts and bit her lip. How would she know when her professor was safely returned from his mission to the enemy camp? Did she dare to visit his study without permission to seek him out?
…but what if he doesn't come back? the treacherous voice in her mind inquired. Hadn't the Headmaster seemed a bit surprised—perhaps even a bit worried—that Professor Snape had yet to return from his summons? What if her professor had been found out—had been summarily executed—what if she were never to see him again?
Hermione bent over, the arms which held her journal to her now holding her tummy as well, her stomach roiling with anxiety. She didn't know how she would go on if something happened to her Dominant when she had not even had the opportunity to tell him what she felt for him—how she lo—No! She wouldn't think that word, wouldn't think of the things she wished she had said to him the last time she had seen him. It had been only two days before, and already it seemed like an aeon since she had been in the soothing—and simultaneously electrifying—presence of her Dominant.
A sob wrenched from her throat, and she threw herself down on her bed, her journal still clutched in her hands. She opened the cover and began to read her earlier entries, imagining him as he read them. She flipped through the pages, looking for the entries where he had written to her, the tip of the finger Harry had healed tracing over the spiky handwriting with near reverence. She turned the page then, and her face filled with shame to see the ragged edges of the pages she had ripped from the binding.
Faithless! she taunted herself, putting the book aside and staring at the canopy of her bed until she fell asleep.
When she awoke, the moon was high in the sky. Hermione struggled to sit up, wondering how late it was. Her candle had guttered out, so she lifted her wand and murmured Lumos to check her watch. It was just after ten o'clock; she had slept for over two hours. She stood to undress, thinking it would be best to pass the rest of the night beneath the bedclothes. She saw her abandoned journal and picked it up to put it away … but there was new writing on the page after those she had torn from the book.
Come to study, the unsteady looking spiky handwriting instructed her. Rules suspended. Portrait for access. Give name and gift.
Her eyes darted frantically to the bottom of the page where one word was written, the dramatic tail of ink drifting off the edge of the page implying the condition of the writer.
Hurry
She flew along the corridors, encountering no one save the occasional ghost at this late hour. She had done nothing but throw on her cloak over her school clothes; she was fairly sure the suspended rules meant she was permitted to enter the study fully clothed.
His office door opened for her before she touched the door handle and the study door followed suit. The gas lamp flared to light as she entered the room where she had been spanked and fingered and licked and sucked past the point of sanity by the man whom she now sought. Her heart raced with fear, though, rather than anticipation as she moved into the room, searching for a portrait. She did not recall ever seeing one before, but it hung on the far side of the room, almost in the corner, behind the table upon which she had lain while her professor devoured her quim like the succulent fruit of a ripe pomegranate. Trying to push the erotic memory from her, she approached the long, narrow portrait and halted before it.
The name plate on the bottom edge of the wooden frame proclaimed, Salazar Slytherin.
The occupant was an old man clad in rather opulent robes; he wore a pointed wizard's hat, and his unfriendly eyes looked her up and down as his lip curled disdainfully. 'Mudblood!' he spat.
'Hermione Granger,' she returned, anger clearing her thoughts of everything but her objective: to get to her professor. 'Shut up and do your job.'
Slytherin's long arms crossed over his loden green velvet robes, which were heavily embroidered with silver thread. 'And what gift did the Head of Slytherin House give to you, Mudblood?' he demanded.
'A hairbrush,' she replied tersely, and the portrait swung forward, granting her entry to the private chambers of Professor Severus Snape.
A/N: Don't kill me! Next chapter should be up tomorrow … Thank you so much for your reviews! I know I don't answer them all, but I do read them avidly, every single one of them! I've been spending my spare time plotting, outlining, and writing ...
