The Headmistress looks at Hermione sternly across her desk. "Did you really call Professor Snape a bully and storm out of his classroom?"
"Yes."
The Headmistress sighs. Then she reaches across the desk and lifts the lid off her cookie tin. "Have a cookie."
Hermione stares back at McGonagall incredulously. "I'm sorry, Headmistress?" she says, thinking she misheard.
"Have a cookie!"
Hermione takes a cookie. It's a lemon cookie. This makes the corner of her mouth twitch up a bit.
"Now," says McGonagall, "What do you hope to accomplish by your actions?"
"Excuse me?"
"Professor Snape is a vile, nasty man. He's going to say and do vile, nasty things."
Hermione chews her lemon cookie and studies the headmistress. She looks tired. And old. Suddenly, Hermione feels ashamed for wasting this woman's time with trivialities. 'is that what my feelings are to me now?' she thinks to herself, 'trivialities?' Then she says, "Professor Snape can be vile and nasty all he wants. But not to me. Not any more."
The headmistress sighs again. "He has assigned you a month's of detentions."
At this Hermione laughs out loud, spraying McGonagall's desk with bits of half chewed lemon cookie. It is not a cynical laugh either, but one full of genuine humor. As soon as she has control of herself, she uses her wand to silently vanish the cookie, still chuckling to herself.
"Let's go over the facts, Professor, shall we?" Hermione says, and then continues without waiting for a reply. "Ginny and I were held up today in the infirmary after lunch. We made sure to get a note from Madam Pomfrey, knowing that Professor Snape is a stickler for the rules. When Ginny and I entered his dungeon, he promptly took points and spoke disrespectfully to us. When I tried to apologize to him and give him the note, he took more points and then called us 'self righteous twats.' That is when I informed Professor Snape that I wouldn't be bullied by him, put the note on his desk, and left. So please, tell me, which one of us behaved badly in that scenario?"
Professor McGonagall looks a little stunned. Apparently, she hasn't heard the entire story. Hermione feels bad for putting her favorite professor in such an awkward position, but she crosses her arms across her chest and holds her ground.
"Hermione, dear, you aren't wrong. Look, I can talk to Professor Snape about the language he used with you two. But he has made it very clear he won't take you back in his class unless you agree to the detentions."
Hermione shrugs and gathers up her books, standing to leave. "I don't need Snape's instruction to pass my potions Newt-"
"Professor Snape," McGonagall says gently.
"Not mine," Hermione says. "Snape can take his month of detentions and shove them up his self righteous twat."
At that, McGonagall rises to her feet as well. "Miss Granger!"
"I'm sorry, professor, I'll do all the detentions you want me to for that remark, but I will do them for you, not him!"
The headmistress sits back down again with a huff. Then she looks back up at Hermione, and really looks at her, as though she is looking for the first time. The nervous, eager, bushy haired child is gone. A woman has taken her place, and she is all angles and edges. There is a hardness in Hermione that makes Minerva McGonagall want to weep with shame and regret. 'How did this happen, Albus?' she thinks to herself. 'How did we send our children off to fight our war? And why am I so shocked now when they refuse to be treated like children once more?' She just looks at Hermione. She is at a complete loss for words, and suddenly feels very, very tired.
"It's a shame," Hermione says softly. "Severus Snape is a genius. He is proud and brave and brilliant and I was so looking forward to studying with him this year! I mean, Harry became the best in our class just from reading the notes he made as a student in the margins his textbook!" She laughs at this.
"Why can't you?" McGonagall asks her urgently. "Why are you taking this so personally?"
Suddenly Hermione feels very tired, too. She sits back down. "Did you know it was me, in the shrieking shack?" she says. "I had the antivenin, loads of it. I was worried about Nagini. I brewed about a gallon of the stuff before I ever left home. I poured it all into Snape, and then all the blood replenisher I had, and then I cast every healing spell I knew, and then it seemed like he was still dying so I just held him and-" here, Hermione begins to cry, "I told him he was good, and that I would tell everyone about how he tried to help us at the end-" and here she breaks down, and sobs onto the desk like a child.
This is when Minerva McGonagall, Headmistress of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, reaches her limit. "Come out from behind that cabinet, Severus," she says, her voice a trembling, angry, rasp, "And see what you've done."