Talking back

Author's note: My chapters will be longer from now, I promise. Do let me know what you think of the interactions so far!

"Weasley and Potter.. you'll be sorting Flobberworms, without gloves. Do make sure none of the rotten Flobberworms are left in the good pile. We'd hate to have our savior in detention again when he should be answering his Quidditch fan mail, would we?". Harry shot him a furious look and the two reluctantly proceeded to the worms he indicated.

"And now for Miss Granger.." the low silken quality in his voice for some reason brought the color to Hermione's cheeks. Unbidden a flash of an old memory came to her mind, an evening in Grimmauld place when she had unseen, watched Sirius prowling in the Black library, something about the intensity of his eyes, the overgrown unkempt hair, the loosely unbuttoned, tattered silk shirt over a half-hidden tattoo.. It had made her flush like she did today, deeply and uncontrollably.

There is nothing in the world quite as frightening and as thrilling as growing up.

"Granger." he said with a sudden sharpness that made her jump. He paused.

"You will be rewriting every single essay you have ever turned in over the length limit, this time restricting your incessant urge to babble and show your so-called intelligence. Any of the rewritten essays that are again overflowing with your excessive verbosity, you may rewrite five times again."

"But that's not fair!" Harry burst out. "You've given us hundreds of essays!"

Snape's eyes flashed. "Twenty points from Gryffindor, Potter, for speaking out of turn." His voice grew softer with menace. "Perhaps you would like me to deduct another twenty for your insolent disregard of my instructions?". The last few words were nearly shouted. You'd do well on the stage, her unrepentant mind murmured, nice voice modulation, that.

"Oh, and Granger?". The hint of a malicious smile was on his face. "Do make sure that this time you get to the point and answer what the questions asked. Regurgitating whatever the textbook says does not fool the reader into thinking you have brains, believe it or not Granger, quite the opposite."

The git. Hermione, burning with humiliation, came forward and took up the essays she had labored over for countless hours, bent over innumerable texts in the library.

Scanning over the pages, she did cringe at the excessive explanations in some of them. But the references had been so interesting, she couldn't resist adding more than the question asked for. The questions asking her opinion she had the most trouble with, her panicked mind unable to formulate a decent response that was sufficiently safe. There were instances, yes, when she had literally copy-pasted the relevant paragraphs from the textbook, the author's words seeming so much more right than her own simple ones. Some of those she could have come up with better, more concise answers for now, but it was impossible in the heat of the deadline, with her desperate urge to write what was correct and would retain her position.. with the sarcastic ghost of Snape breathing down her neck every time she put a quill to parchment. Her position as a good student, the smartest one in the room, the most hardworking.. she was suddenly struck by the emptiness, the futility of it all...

"While you might be too struck with your own written brilliance to formulate anything shorter, Granger, I suggest you get to it." Hermione, suffused with indignation, swallowed her pride and began.

Gritting her teeth, she set to writing brief answers with a vengeance, though it almost pained her sometimes to leave out some detail. Funnily enough, as she got into it, it was almost entertaining to see how much she could write in as few words as possible. Some of her essays would not write themselves in shorter sentences, not in her head at least, tax as she would her mind. With a sudden shame, she realized that in some rare cases, the exception rather than the rule and yet they were there- she had not understood truly what she was describing, rather like the three blind men of a story she had read long ago, who attempted to map an elephant and ended up concluding that it resembled a tree trunk, a rope and a barrel respectively.

The ones which asked her to provide her own answers were the worst. One in particular stood out to her and she paused before it indecisively. Give an explanation as to the possible causes why a freshly plucked acanthus is used in the Draught of Renewal. The properties as per her reference book for all forms of the acanthus were identical. The textbook had simply stated in a single line "Freshly plucked ingredients are often used as per various indigenous traditions." She elaborated on the same. And yet she herself had sometimes suspected.. tossing in an entire lotus that she had conjured versus adding the dried essence.. Theoretically it was the same and yet the explosiveness of the potion's magic.. The magic of a potion, something nobody ever mentioned.. Some authors even turned up their noses at the notion of potions being anything less than an exact science that relied on weights and measures.. Yet wasn't there an intuition in it? An intuition that made it an art.. An intuition she was scared to exercise.

Had she nothing to lose, what would she have written? Acanthus flowers are associated with rebirth and thus used both symbolically and due to the element of "magic" within them. The "magic" of an ingredient is hard to quantify, and yet it is this unknown element that provides a potion its value. Using live ingredients has a greater impact in potions. One can observe that even using fresher nettles rather than dryer ones in common cleaning potions increases the "sparkle" when they are used.

An art, yes, an art. That was what she wanted to do.. Master what she learnt, probe its depths, appreciate its complexities.. Not memorize a set of facts dutifully, fearful of straying. Suddenly an old memory of Snape popped up in her mind.. The subtle science and exact art of.. Oh heavens, what a dramatic man. Stalking in like a vampire in his long hanging robes, scowling at small first years.. She suddenly remembered the tiny children they had been and thought of him trying to scare them and burst out laughing.

"Miss Granger".

She started and looked up. Snape had stalked forward to her desk, dark robes rippling about him. The top button of his high necked black robe was half-undone. She could see a slender line of thin pale skin beneath a resolute jaw. From the angle of the light she saw a faint greenish shadow of stubble on his usually immaculate chin. His eyes were dark-rimmed. For some reason it seemed to humanize him yet again to Hermione, despite the glowering anger of his expression. He looks tired, she realized, tired and desperate and older than his years. Not old, but older than his years.

His nostrils flared in contempt. "So, you think yourself clever enough to laugh at the foolishness you have written, Miss Granger? Perhaps your habit of reciting textbooks verbatim and the company of Mr. Potter, " it was almost a curse in his mouth, "have so inflated your head that you think yourself above the assignments your peers are given? Let me assure you, Miss Granger, that you have not done a single thing to prove to me that you have a modicum of talent. Let me assure you that being hand in glove with Potter, while it might win you accolades with those outside, will never have any merit with me."

The words hurt, and she felt dizzy for a moment before the onslaught. And yet there was a voice in the back of her head, a steady wise voice - cruel words.. And yet he doesn't have the power to make them true.. Only I have.. I can choose or choose not to live my life this way..

"Twenty points from Gryffindor." he deliberately walked back to his desk. Harry was shaking with rage, poor Harry, always so upset by Snape.. As though summoned by Harry's glare the Potions Master whipped around. "Potter!".

"Yes?".

"Yes, sir. Tell me Potter, are you attempting to act like more of an imbecile than you usually are, or have your Quidditch fans thickened your skull? Tell me -"

"No sir."

Snape's face whitened with anger at the interruption. His voice grew soft, in a way far more deadly than his shouting could have been. "So, you think you can interrupt your betters, is it Potter?", his voice sank to a near-whisper. "Let me assure you, I have not seen a less skilled or more arrogant little boy who thinks he is above the others because of his fame - "

"I don't think I am above everyone else!" Harry cried. Oh, Harry. "Nobody else thinks I'm coasting on my fame!"

"Do you not, Potter? Then why, may I ask, are your Potion marks so abysmal that I'd trust a first year to brew a Pepper-up better than you? Why, despite the hours I have dedicated, have you failed to put in even the smallest bit of effort to perform better at the lessons the Headmaster himself has told you are essential to your wellbeing, boy?"

"Don't call me boy!" Harry burst out. "You don't explain anything! It's just clear your mind, clear your mind again and again! I'm sure Dumbledore wouldn't have thought you wouldn't teach anything -"

"Are you attempting to instruct me on how to conduct my classes, Potter? Perhaps if you had even a modicum of talent, even your father -"

"Don't talk about my -" and feeling like she was separating two half-crazed men in a brawl, she stepped into the fray.

"If you'll excuse me, Sir?" her voice sounded shrill and high-pitched. In the back of her mind a voice was screaming at her for not knowing this, "if you'll excuse me Sir, I don't think berating your students helps them learn any better." She could see Ron's eyes turn round in disbelief. "In fact the wizard and philosopher Benedict Aspen says that -" what was wrong with her?

"Indeed, Miss Granger?" his voice was poisonous. "Do enlighten me as to what book I must refer to in order to conduct my classes, before I assign at least a month of detention for your wilful disregard of instructions and disrespect to myself. How high do you think of yourself, girl, that you can presume to attempt to teach me how to run my classroom?".

Something in her, some frightened part seemed to have broken free. Her voice was mild and soft as she answered, "With all due respect Sir," she said, the sound of her words growing steadier as she spoke. "Your students are terrified of you. They make mistakes when you are around. You never explain the instructions in Potions, nor do you attempt to allow the students to make their own discoveries. You blame me for not thinking for myself" her temper was rising. Suddenly she realised how she had longed to stand before this man and tell him things she knew were true but had never dared even to think. "You blame us for not thinking for ourselves when you don't help us with a single thing, a single thing - you may be a brilliant potioneer sir, but you are a terrible teacher." The surge of adrenaline seemed to have flooded her nerves with a strange elation and lightheartedness. "A teacher who is incapable of teaching his students. Why teach if you do not want to, sir? It is pretty obvious that you'd rather be doing anything else."

He was silent, looking down at her in a way that was truly frightening. She felt a slight quail as she continued, voice softer than ever. "I don't think insulting your students is the hallmark of a good teacher, Professor. And I don't think someone who scares children to feel better about his miserable life is much of a man."

There, she had said all she wanted to say, to his face. Even the darkening of his expression, his eyes that could be described as nothing short of livid, could do little to erase the exhilaration she felt at this.