Though it wasn't well known or well-used amongst the first years, the professors did, in fact, keep office hours. Hermione suspected office hours were mostly used by OWL and NEWT students, but they were open to anybody.

Snape's office hours were scarce and generally late in the evening, and uncomfortably close to curfew some days. Hermione suspected that this was to discourage people from visiting him during office hours and to give preference to the Slytherins, who could make it back to their dorm much quicker than the other Houses to make curfew.

Even knowing Snape gave the Slytherins preferential treatment, it still took Hermione several minutes to get up the courage to knock on Snape's door.

"Enter."

Determinedly keeping her back straight and her shoulders up, Hermione entered.

Snape's office held similarities with his classroom, but had better light, a better chair, and carpet. There were shelves with unpleasant-looking things in jars behind him, but they looked less threatening when they were seen in better light. Hermione took her time looking around, noting with some astonishment that Snape seemed to have appropriated a cushioned Muggle office chair from somewhere.

Snape looked up at her from his grading and raised an eyebrow. "Yes, Miss Granger?"

Hermione closed the door and took a seat in front of him, fighting the urge to swing her legs and bite her lip.

"That night the troll attacked," she said finally. "You came and got me from the window sill."

Snape's face immediately grew shuttered.

"You agreed never to tell anyone about that," he said.

"And I haven't," Hermione said quickly. "But…" She hesitated, biting her lip and looking up at him.

Snape's voice gentled. "But…?"

"Will you teach me how to do it?" she asked, all in a rush.

Snape blinked. "Teach you…?"

"How to fly," Hermione said, biting her lip. "Without a broom. Just… myself. Like you did."

Snape, in general, wasn't an expressive person, unless it was sneering and smirking and scowling. Now, his eyes grew very large, and he looked like he was trying not to show what he was feeling.

"Why, Miss Granger," he demanded, "do you want to know how to fly?"

His voice was harsh again, and Hermione blinked at the change, tilting her head.

"Because it was incredible," she told him honestly. "And I'm not overly fond of brooms. I'd love to be able to fly, even if just a little, to reach the top shelves of a bookcase, or to stop myself from dying if I'm ever pushed from the Astronomy tower, or even just for fun, like the Quidditch team does."

"In case you are pushed…?" Snape looked alarmed. "Miss Granger, are people threatening you?"

Hermione looked away. "Not really. Just… making remarks." She shrugged. "My classmates are all pretty okay now, but some of the older students still hiss things under their breath at me."

Snape's eyes hardened. "Who?"

"I don't know their names," Hermione admitted. "Just… there are a lot. Slytherin puts a lot of value on pureblood ancestry. And… I don't have that."

Snape looked at her again, considering.

"Flying autonomously is very, very difficult, Miss Granger," he told her. "There are very few wizards who can do it."

Hermione nodded. "I figured that's why it wasn't common," she told him. "It'd make sense why you can do it, then, but not any of the other teachers."

Snape looked taken aback for a moment at the compliment, before refocusing.

"Because of this, you would not be able to fly," he told her. "You simply don't have the magical power necessary."

"I thought of that too," Hermione said quickly. "But sir, I'm much smaller than you, and I weigh much less. I know that it requires immense magical power to fly… but perhaps it would require much less for a smaller person to fly?"

Snape looked down his nose at her, raising his eyebrows.

"You want to try regardless?" he asked her. "Despite my confidence that it will not work?"

Hermione hesitated.

"Has anyone ever tried to teach a child how to fly?" she asked. "Or anyone that hadn't finished their growth spurt?"

Snape looked like he was actually considering it, now.

"I know of two people in the world who can fly autonomously, Miss Granger, and I am one of them," he told her. "The Dark Lord was the other."

If he thought she was trying to be like the Dark Lord, it explained why he was so alarmed she wanted to learn.

"Three's a good number of people," Hermione said, offering him a smile. "There's no harm in trying, is there?"

Snape stared at her, before reclining in his chair with a sigh.

"Regardless, I don't think you have the magical capacity yet, Miss Granger," he told her. "You are still very young. I doubt your power has even begun to exponentially grow yet."

"I'm very strong for my age!" Hermione objected. "And I've been practicing – wait, what?"

Hermione stopped and looked Snape.

"…what do you mean, my power hasn't begun to exponentially grow yet?" she asked suspiciously.

Snape looked amused.

"It is known that at the onset of puberty, a witch or wizard's power begins to grow exponentially, fully maturing when they are seventeen," he told her. "Currently, your power is only increasing linearly."

Hermione stared at him.

"Is this one of those things that everybody just knows?" she demanded. "Do all the purebloods just know that this is how power reserves work?"

"I doubt it," Snape told her. "I was made aware of this through somebody's… private research."

Hermione's mind was racing, and she started pacing the floor.

"If my power reserve started growing at eleven, and it stops at seventeen," she murmured. "In order to… Sir, what counts as the 'official onset of puberty'?"

Snape raised an eyebrow.

"For a witch, when she first bleeds," he told her. "For a wizard… generally, the first nocturnal emission, or emission done otherwise."

Hermione nodded, doing her best to seem professional, despite the topic.

"I've already been eleven for a year, and twelve for a few months," she murmured. "Average age for a girl to get her period is twelve and a half, so that's still half a year away. In order to maximize it…"

Her mind raced. She was going to have to figure out the optimal time to have her period, and try to force her body to have it then. She'd have to run numbers to see how best it would work – long enough that she had a good starting amount of power to increase exponentially, but not too long that it wouldn't increase exponentially for a long enough period of time. If there were actual numbers behind all this that controlled how much power you got, she had to try to maximize it. The risks if she didn't were too dire - what if Pansy ended up more powerful than her simply because she got lucky with when she got her period?

"Miss Granger, you are purposefully trying to maximize your magical power?"

Concentration broken, Hermione looked back to Snape.

"Of course," she told him. "If I'm going to convince everyone that I'm New Blood, I need to be a powerful witch. Very powerful, probably."

Snape didn't so much as flutter an eyelid at the mention of 'New Blood,' confirming Hermione's suspicions – somebody had already informed him of her claim.

"How are you doing this?" he asked her.

"I've been casting spells each night until I've completely expended my magical power," Hermione told him. "If I keep pushing myself to the limit, I find that the next night, I can do a little more."

Snape looked impressed despite himself.

"This is working?" he said. "I've never heard of anything like this."

"Well, I made it up," Hermione told him, tossing her head. "I used to be only able to levitate a book for a little while, but now I can levitate my entire chest for several minutes. I tried to levitate myself to fly, but that didn't work. I was only kind of able to make it work when I levitated my clothes, instead, with me still in them."

"And now you want to learn to fly properly."

Hermione offered him a small smile. "Yes? Please?"

Snape sighed and pinched his nose slightly, rubbing it.

"Fine," he said finally. "I will teach you, even if only to see if it is possible to teach a child. It will be an interesting experiment, to say the least. If it works… well…"

He trailed off, but Hermione was hugging herself tightly and making an excited noise that just seemed to be slipping out. Snape gave her a grudging smile.

"Students who are actively trying to learn and maximize their potential do not often come through my classroom," Snape told her. "If you are looking for a teacher, I will teach you."

Hermione beamed at him.