"JUST LET IT HAPPEN"

Summary: A childish prank goes awry and Hermione is forced into the position of saving Snape's life. When an assault on the castle by rogue Death Eaters leads to Hermione's capture and her life is in peril... will Snape return the favor?

*Authors Note* Thank you so much to everyone who has read this story over the many years, to those who returned, and a very warm welcome to any and all new readers!

CHAPTER ONE

The Beginning

"Extra lessons. With Snape. On purpose." Ron stared Hermione down with withering disgust across the Gryffindor breakfast table as she munched halfheartedly on a slice of buttered toast. "There is a masochistic streak in you that baffles me sometimes, Hermione."

"Honestly you've been acting off for weeks," Harry muttered into his pumpkin juice. "Haven't got a temperature have you?"

"Of course on purpose, don't be ridiculous," Hermione snapped. "They are development lessons not remedial, and it was incredibly difficult to earn the arrangement so I'll thank you to congratulate me and shut up about it. And that's Professor Snape to the both of you."

Ron didn't answer. Instead, he shoved another spoonful of porridge in his mouth and proceeded to chew around a heavy scowl. Harry, too, let on a tense silence while eyeing her suspiciously over his pancakes.

"I'm in perfect health, Harry," she stated bluntly. "Eat your breakfast."

Harry did not seem hungry. But, after a pointed and (she thought), rather infantile sigh, he let the subject drop.

This was disconcerting to Hermione, the fact that Harry had noticed something "off" about her. She thought her efforts thus far to appear normal had been mostly successful, if not admirable. But it was hard to get perspective. Her keen sense of reason had not been up to snuff lately, this owing to the fact that she now spent the majority of her time feeling very… confused.

There was no better word to describe it. Her mind was muddled, her emotions in turmoil. She felt like she was constantly walking around in a miasma of nondescript distraction. At mealtimes, in class, even study sessions in the library, nowhere was safe, her fragmented thoughts were always in disarray, impossible to untangle.

And she furthermore couldn't get to the root of the issue because every time she tried to face the cause of this inner chaos, she felt so startled, so shocked by the very notion, her every instinct raged against the possibility...

The only thing she knew for certain was there had been an inciting incident. A time before which she had been her normal self and a time after which she lived in a perpetual, troubling malaise.

It had happened barely a month ago, the very first week of term.

Potions class had begun as it often did, with Professor Snape declaring a ludicrously difficult brew that he expected everyone to complete without mistake or else suffer horrendous demerits to their quarterly grades. This somehow never failed to surprise everyone but Hermione, even though the Potions Master was famous for starting each term with a deliberate difficulty check in order to, as she had once heard him say, "separate the earnest from the aimless."

This year had been no exception, especially given that this was their seventh and final year, so it was no holds barred. The Langar's Refugium indeed sent everyone scrambling frantically for their textbooks in a rush of flustered anxiety.

Tensions were high but everyone muddled through as best as they could. About halfway through their allotted time, Seamus and Ron got into a tussle, wrestling over a half empty bottle of Shrew Tallow that each swore up and down was theirs.

The tussle had started playfully but turned serious when Ron took a painful elbow to the ear and then lashed back reflexively, causing Seamus to stumble backward into Neville. Neville then dropped his entire potions kit, most of which ended up on the floor in a clatter of glass and pewter cups, but one bottle went further than the rest.

Hermione had been at the front of the class, collecting her Rafflesia pollen from Snape's desk for the final stage of the brew when she heard Seamus's shout and the resulting crash.

Hermione turned just in time to see the resulting 'plop' of whatever had been in Neville's hands land into her own gently simmering cauldron.

Her instinct was to groan with frustration, realizing her perfect potion had now been entirely ruined. She'd have to start all over. And there wasn't enough time left in the lesson to redo it properly. Still, she started queuing up the necessary steps in her head, weighing out how many minutes she might shave from certain stages, but all of that left her head immediately when she heard the sharpness of Snape's sudden words.

"Longbottom!" he barked loudly, causing Hermione to jump. "What were you holding? Out with it, I need to know exactly what you just dropped into that cauldron and don't stutter or so help me you will be in detention until March."

"I… I… I... it was…"

Before poor Neville could manage to find his tongue, Hermione saw the silver bottle float to the top of her concoction, quivering menacingly on the surface as the potion turned pitch black and started to churn into an ever growing roil.

"Oh," Hermione squeaked. The pit of her stomach dropped. She felt herself break out in a cold sweat. She recognized that bottle. "Extract of Lepidella," she whispered.

In that moment, Snape whipped around to face her, his gaze catching hers. An electric charge of understanding shot through them. They both knew the properties involved, the latent reaction that was about to take place.

"You've already added—" he said.

"Yes" she cut him off.

Blister beetles, Hermione thought silently. She was certain her face masked nothing, that she was white as a sheet, mouth trembling, pure fright entire.

But Snape's eyes merely widened briefly with alarm, and that was all.

"Very carefully—" he began to say. But he was cut off again, and this time not by her.

In the blink of an instant, Hermione's cauldron gave an enormous bang. She felt Snape's hand grasp the back of her neck and push her forcefully to the ground. A split second later, the emptied bottle of Lepidella that had been ejected from her cauldron like a cannonball whizzed mere inches from where her head had just been, smashing into the wall behind her.

At the same moment, she heard Snape cast a spell. She looked up, tossing her hair out of her eyes to see that he had thrown a modified protego shield over her cauldron, encasing it like a cap on a bottle. With his other hand, he appeared to be conjuring a secondary wandless spell, holding the cauldron together against the immense pressure that was building within it.

And Hermione knew the thing building inside it was monstrous. The Lapidella was reacting with the blister beetles to create a noxious, necrotic abomination threatening any moment to break free. Deathly fungal fumes that, if let loose, would spill into the room and kill everyone in an instant.

"Out," Snape snapped into the terrified silence. "All of you out, leave your things at your desks, get out now."

There was no questioning the lethal authority in his voice. At once, the entire class flew into a flurry, scrambling over each other to be first through the door.

Hermione, too, hurried to get to her feet.

"Granger," Snape hissed sharply, stopping her in her tracks. "You will retrieve the Elementum Aequus from my robes. A small vial, front left, upper pocket. When I say so, you will approach your cauldron, I will lift the protego, and you will put in two drops, no more, exactly two drops. Quickly. If your hand shakes, if you have slow fingers, say as much now and leave with the rest of your idiot classmates. Otherwise, if this simple task is not beyond your juvenile powers of dexterity, then do it. Now."

And she did it. There was no time to think. She simply reacted exactly as he had asked.

Heart quaking, knees jelly, her stomach writhing, she gently sifted through the front pocket of Snape's robes, retrieved the vial and approached the menacing cauldron. On his count, she raised the bottle of dewy liquid and the moment he lifted the shield, she held her breath, extended her arm, and tapped two perfect droplets inside.

As terrified as she was, even as her very nerves seemed to vibrate beneath her skin, her hands were as steady and nimble as a surgeon's.

Within seconds, the boiling cauldron reduced to a demure and placid simmer once more. Hermione promptly leaned against the nearest desk, deathly pale and nearly in tears, her breath coming in short, hitched gasps.

Snape lowered his wand and grunted, looking her over with clear disdain.

"If you're going to faint," he said snidely, "have the courtesy to do so in the hall. I've enough to clean up without your inert body to step over."

Then that was it. The ordeal was over.

Except that it wasn't over.

Because she couldn't let it go.

She couldn't stop thinking about it. Those precious few minutes of peril.

Her entire world as it had previously revolved now entered the orbit of something with much greater gravity. And hard though she tried to deny it, Snape was somehow at the center of this new and dizzying revolution.

His reflexes, the way he had reacted, his almost prophetic powers when the bottle had launched, throwing her to the ground yet miraculously managing to contain the danger at the same time.

She was mesmerized by the coolness of his decisions, his tactical command.

She kept replaying in her head that thrilling second, horrifying though it had been, when Snape met her eyes and that charge surged through her as she realized they were the only ones in the room smart enough to know, to put the pieces together, to do something about it.

But he had been so much quicker than her, calmer.

She had done nothing. She had frozen. He had not.

The longer she lingered on this fact, the more overwhelming and confusing her feelings became. Because there had to be something more than just her simple inaction.

She used to be able to look at Snape and feel only a mild curiosity, occasionally anger or a profound sense of injustice. But now she felt half-blinded by this new striking impression, this collective aura of shrewd awareness, of confidence and steely cunning.

While she made valid attempts at convincing herself that this feeling was, at most, a fleeting infatuation with the man's intelligence, she equally understood that she needed to get it under control, and soon. She couldn't have an infatuation with Snape, he was a Hogwarts professor! And a bastard besides.

So her ultimate reasoning was this: A person could never make an accurate analysis of anything until they had all the facts. Therefore, her first objective was to do what she did best, research. Once she had the pertinent information (though she wasn't sure exactly what information classified as "pertinent" in this case), she could piece her findings together and draw some notion of a coherent conclusion.

That was her analytical approach, anyway.

Her other approach, her emotional approach, was a bit more unorthodox. Though she thought it might provide a much more immediate solution.

Instead of trying her best to stay away from Snape and hope this unwanted emotion faded on its own, she decided to exploit the man's biting personality by spending more time with him rather than less, hoping that she could perhaps replace this new image of dauntless perfection with something a bit less… admirable.

Severus Snape stifled a yawn as he stacked his paperwork into neat, albeit precariously balanced piles on top of his desk and put away his favorite quill. Easing himself out of his armchair, he took a moment to indulge in a languid stretch, stubbornly ignoring the twinge of discomfort in his back that immediately followed. Years of bending over cauldrons had finally managed to catch up with him it seemed, and sitting at his cramped little desk for hours on end no longer agreed with him in his...

Old age, he finished with disgust as he methodically returned books to their shelves and caps to their ink bottles. Damn it.

It had been a long day.

To begin with, he had spent most of first period dousing cauldron fires for imbecilic First Years, only to be later chastised by Minerva for what were, as she deemed, "unjustifiably harsh criticisms." At lunch, he had done nothing but sit in pensive silence at the staff table, minding his own business, when Hooch's little bitch of a Peregrine Falcon managed to gobble up his last piece of toast from underneath his unsuspecting nose. Hooch had laughed and ruffled the bird's feathers with a sickening degree of affection, while Severus stared incredulously down at his empty plate. And while this had not been an altogether extraordinary act of malice on Hooch's part, Severus was still rather horrified by the flight instructor's appalling lack of table manners.

However, hands down, the most taxing event of the day had arrived outside his laboratory door promptly following dinner, all wrapped up in her usual shrouds of various Gryffindor-proud décor, beaming like a buffoon, asking more questions than any person had a right to wonder.

Tonight had been the first of an impending semester's-worth of extra curricular potions instruction with Hermione Granger. A mere two hours and already he wanted to strangle the nettling twit.

How his colleagues managed to stomach her incessant yammering every day, he hadn't the faintest idea. She was exhaustive and batty, stubborn in all the wrong ways. No matter that she was graduating in only a year, Severus wanted her gone now, hermited away in some basement Ministry office, a mere entry level grunt, climbing her precious corporate ladder one grueling rung at a time.

Though…

If he were to be truly honest, Severus conceded that her ascent up that ladder would hardly be grueling. For, while it was true that she remained an ever-insufferable-know-it-all (no doubt statues would one day be erected, sonnets penned in eternal ink, the know-it-all of the mythic ages) she was certain to meet career standards for almost any office. She listened attentively, never needed to be told anything twice, and often seemed able to grasp a concept almost before Severus could finish proposing it.

Yet... He struggled. Granger. Potions. Two things he would not voluntarily mix had he any other choice. It wasn't her, necessarily, vexing though she was, it was merely the thought of a faithful flunky of Wonderboy Potter flittering around in his personal stores that brought bile to the back of Severus's throat.

But, persistence ran the marrow of her very bones, it seemed, and such was his undoing. Every single day for a month, at his desk before class, appearing like a ghoul around corners in the halls, stalking him between the stacks on late afternoons in the library, she had found him, overflowing book bag slung over her shoulder and Potions text in hand. She gazed dolefully up at him with those inanely big brown eyes and begged him to give her private lessons: "Please, Professor Snape, it would only be once a week," and, "Oh, please, I do so yearn to earn my Masters in Potions like you, but I need more experience."

Perhaps his irritation caused him to exaggerate, upon reflection, the pathetic nature of her whine a bit more than was fair. But even without exaggeration, the sound of Granger's voice was enough to make him want to grab an enormous pair of cymbals and start madly bashing her head between them.

Maybe this was the reason he had finally given in. His poor grated nerves had simply thrown in the towel and said, "Just end it, Severus, just give her what she wants and for the love of all that lives the torment will one day stop."

Then again, perhaps deep down (very, very deep down) he had taken her on because he really could use the extra pair of hands. His workload had recently graduated from waring to all out grueling.

Either way, it hardly mattered now. What's done was done, and there was little he could do to reverse it without a significant sacrifice of dignity. The only recompense he was sure to receive for his efforts were Minerva's prickly, disgruntled looks, telling him just how much she appreciated him exploiting her precious little prodigy.

Hard be it for the fickle old woman to imagine that it actually wasn't his life's ambition to ruin the future of Hermione Granger.

Though, if opportunities presented...

Severus gave an amused grunt, flicking his wand as he left the room, the numerous candles on the walls sputtering faithfully out behind him.

As he prepared for bed, one last question still remained lodged and unanswered in the back of his head. Why, in Merlin's name, did Granger all of a sudden wish to become a Potions Mistress? Granted, she made decent marks, but it wasn't as though she had ever seemed particularly keen on the subject. And after that nearly catastrophic Langar's Refugium debacle, he would have guessed she'd be more horrified than intrigued.

But, after all, what in the world did he know about the chaotic sensibilities of female youths?

Severus gave an uncharacteristic sigh as, at last, he slipped into bed and buried himself beneath the thick duvet. It had been a long day, and trying to puzzle out the madness behind the madness of flighty, harebrained try-hards only seemed to be making it longer. So, closing his eyes, and allowing himself to sink slowly into his mattress, Severus vowed solemnly not to think again about said Gryffindor until at least the next morning.

He cracked an eyelid and glanced at the clock, whose hands plainly indicated that it was well after four.

Bloody hell and damn it all.

And with that last thought, Severus rolled over on his side and promptly went to sleep.

After her first several lessons in Snape's gloomy dungeon, all of which were awkward and sometimes downright miserable, Hermione found that her theories were not quite panning out the way she'd hoped.

This was through no lack of trying on Snape's part, however. Even after she'd proved herself innumerable times, showing him that she was not your average anything-to-scrape-by Gryffindor chest-thumper, and that she could indeed bubble a cauldron just as well as any Slytherin, he still continued to treat her like an ignorant child. And if there was anything that Hermione hated most, it was being treated as though she were ignorant.

Yet, in a twisted way, the fact that Snape knew her greatest peeve and exploited it for all it was worth also gave Hermione a glimmer of encouragement. Perhaps her emotional approach wasn't too far off after all. Maybe it just needed more time to settle, to corrode.

She just needed to keep on with her lessons, she conjectured, and her hatred for the bitter and prickly man would eventually overcome the infatuation, inch by painful inch...

It was quiet as usual in the cold, dark dungeon, with the exception of the soft scratching of Snape's quill and the gentle hiss of the simmering cauldron Hermione was so intently bending over.

When the outer rim turns green, add the ginger root, she recited mentally to herself, trying not to be distracted by the intermittent tapping of her professor's booted toe. There it is. Quickly. With a swift proficiency, Hermione scraped the finely cut roots off her cutting board and into the cauldron, where the paper-thin slices disintegrated almost instantly. Turn blue, turn blue, she silently urged it. Turn— "Yes!" she squealed as the bubbling liquid became a pleasing shade of navy.

"Pardon?"

Snape's voice startled her and she whirled around, her elbow catching the edge of a finely made crystal container of Armadillo bile, which toppled almost apologetically off the table. With a swoop of her arm and a sigh of relief, Hermione caught it and set it tenderly back on the counter, thanking every luck-giving entity she could think of that it had not broken. She would have been mortified otherwise.

"Nothing, Professor," she replied, forcing nonchalance, hoping that he had been too engrossed in his paperwork to witness her near accident. "It seems stage one of the burn salve extract is nearly finished."

"You needn't inform me when something is nearly finished, Miss Granger," Snape stated bluntly (and rather nastily, Hermione thought). He finished grading a paper with what looked like a depressingly extravagant 'D' and transferred it into the steadily growing stack of papers at his side which each bore such a flourishing letter upon them. "Nearly is merely the motto of the inadequate." He glanced up briefly to scowl her way before turning back to his Fourth Years' essays on the properties of Billywig Stings, and resuming his furious, yet admittedly elegant, scrawling.

"My mistake," she said lightly, determined not to let him bother her.

Normally, Hermione would have been thrilled that Snape was in such a foul mood, as that would mean almost no work on her part in trying to goad him into rudeness, but she had been having a good day thus far, and for once she actually wanted to concentrate on a lesson instead of wasting time attempting to sabotage her heart.

Ugh. How revolting, she thought to herself with disgust, then suppressed a smile at what she imagined Ron's expression might be if he heard her talking like this.

Her life, it seemed, had become quite the soap opera. Well, in her own head at least.

Hermione hummed lightly as she stirred the burn salve extract, which was beginning to form itself into a thin, cream-like paste. She was in fact unaware that she had been making any noise at all until Snape slammed his palm down on the table and startled her once again out of a reverie.

"Would you desist," he hissed.

"Yes, alright," Hermione replied, a little stung despite herself. "No need to snipe, toe-tapper," she added in an undertone.

"What was that?"

She sighed again. "Nothing, Professor."

Snape made a sharp noise of disbelief and returned to his papers, once again grading with such fury that Hermione thought it a wonder he didn't rip straight through the parchment.

She watched the curve of his slender hand as it gripped the quill and found herself, quite unexpectedly, wondering what his skin felt like. Was it warm like hers? She had always imagined his skin feeling cold, like marble or a smooth metal. But obviously he was every bit as human she was (physically speaking anyway, she was not entirely sure what qualified in terms of moral fiber), and he certainly had veins, and blood, and a pulse just as she did, so surely he—

"Eyes on your cauldron, Miss Granger," Snape said suddenly without looking up.

Hermione frowned and shook her head, mentally urging herself to get a grip. She turned back to the salve and resumed stirring in a rhythmic, clockwise motion, repeating the instructions in her head over, and over, and over…

It was not long before Hermione's lessons grew steadily less awkward, and she eventually found herself forming a genuine interest in her new studies.

She also came to find that her dark and brooding professor was aptly titled Potions Master, for he was wickedly talented and so clever that she often had conversations with him that she did not fully understand until days afterwards.

Another revelation Hermione discovered was that he did a great deal of work in his spare time that had nothing to do with teaching or personal experiments.

St. Mungo's owled Snape at the first of every week with a long list of cures and remedies in need of replacement. He was also entangled in a rather important-sounding deal with the Ministry, one that consisted of experimenting with potions that might counter a particularly bad hex or make the drinker invisible. In short, anything to help an Auror in action. This, he was apparently paid very handsomely for.

Despite herself, Hermione was impressed.

Prior to these lessons, Hermione would have been staggered to think she might learn so much about the morbidly secretive Professor Snape. However, when a person spent as much time with the man as she did, some things simply could not be kept hidden. He had owls flying in at every turn of the head, screeching and fluttering as they swooped down through a specially created pipe that led like a chimney to the outside.

In fact, the owls were usually in such a rush that they would oftentimes deliver their burden to Hermione by mistake. In every such event, Snape would instantly snatch the letter away, glaring daggers at her as though she had somehow intentionally befuddled the owl herself.

In any case, Hermione's lessons continued. Soon, she and her taciturn professor progressed to the point where long silences were expected rather than endured, and most of the time they would go the entire two hours without saying more than three words put together.

This should have made Hermione furious. After all, was she not supposed to be hating him by now? Instead, it made her content, and she truly began to enjoy her time in the dungeons. These lessons were arguably more exciting than any of her other classes.

Until now, she had never had the opportunity to work so intimately with such powerful ingredients and concoctions. It was a thrill she had never fully been granted. The closest she had come to anything of this nature was the Polyjuice Potion that she had brewed for Harry and Ron in their second year. Even then, Hermione had found it almost below her skill level.

Now, at last, she had thousands of ingredients at her fingertips, dozens of books detailing every facet of fascinating potion imaginable, the likes of which made her head spin with ambition, determination and excitement. At last, she had found something to test her knowledge.

And her patience as well…

"Not like that, like this, foolish girl. Do you mean to ruin the whole batch?" Snape snatched the ladle out of Hermione's hand and proceeded to stir the plum-colored potion in what was apparently the appropriate manner (which honestly did not look very different in Hermione's opinion). Though a second later proved that she was indeed mistaken, and she felt her ears burn as Snape went on to explain.

"The angle of the wrist is very important, Miss Granger, I know I've told you before. See how I turn it out rather than in? The infusion of Hollyhock will not properly oxidize otherwise."

Hermione nodded, intrigued despite her irritation at being caught in error.

"I can't hear your head rattling, girl, speak up."

She jumped. "Yes. Of course, Professor. I see."

Snape gave her an irritable look and shoved the ladle back into her hand. "Consider me beside myself with relief," he deadpanned. "I have other matters to attend to at the moment, so I'll trust you to finish up." He sneered. "Assuming you feel capable."

"I'll manage, sir," Hermione said through gritted teeth. She glowered at his retreating back as he left the room, resisting the strong urge to pick up the bowl of frog eyes next to her and hurl it as hard as she could at his head.

A moment later however, she found herself smiling, and she turned back to stirring her potion with renewed zeal (though she paid particular attention to how her wrist was angled).

If that's any indication, she thought proudly, things are definitely on the right track.

I'll be despising him in no time.