Contrary to Popular Belief

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Chapter 6- Contrary to Popular Belief

He tried not to pay attention to it. He tried to train his mind to the intense conversation going on between the Malfoys and Krum. He tried to think of anything else in the world...even the Dark Lord...just so he would not have to concentrate on her legs. Unfortunately, that was just what drew and held his interest.

At dinner, the only thing he could pay attention to was her, sitting across from him. The way she cut her meat, the way she chewed thoughtfully and then swallowed, mesmerized him absolutely. The way she sipped from her goblet of wine, or dabbed her mouth with the cloth napkin was delicate and so unlike the Miss Granger he once knew. He had never had a chance to watch her at dinner at Hogwarts, as she was never in front of him. But this elegant dance she did during dinner was exceptional, and so very feminine.

Even that dinner conversation, during which she stayed curiously quiet except to answer questions directly posed to her, he could not concentrate on the damned words being spoken. All he could focus on was the way a few tendrils of her hair had slipped out of her hairdo, tickling the back of her neck, or the way her breasts rose and fell under the relatively revealing dress, in a delightful shade of green, he noted, barely covering her body.

Shortly after dinner they had all adjourned to the sitting room for coffee and desserts. He had thought he could break this spell during the move, but he found quickly that as she sat down, he could not. At least at the dining room table, he had not had a good view of her legs. Now, though, as she situated herself in a wingback chair and crossed her legs, his full attention was on her, even more so than it had been at dinner. And, oh, how he loved the way the material of the dress rode up a bit on her thighs when she sat.

Surely she had bewitched him. That was the only explanation for this. She had bewitched all the men in the room...

He was not oblivious to the fact that Viktor was stealing multiple glances at her, or that even Lucius and Draco had given her appreciative, yet snide, looks. He was jealous, though. For some inexplicable reason, he was jealous that Hermione Granger, bane of his existence, was being ogled by so many other men. This just would not do.

Perhaps he was finally losing it. It could have been some delayed spell from the Dark Lord, one that caused you to lose your mind, because he definitely would have never entertained such thoughts about a woman like Granger without a spell. She had been his student, and now she was his colleague. Entertaining such thoughts was immoral.

Wasn't it?

Damn it all to hell.

He had many sleepless nights before, but never were they due to a woman and the visions she left in his head. Wandering about the dark house, he tried to find some solace. Nothing offered what he sought, though, so he wandered towards the library. Maybe he could immerse himself in a book.

Oh, who was he kidding? There was nothing else that more symbolized Granger than a damned book. And to be surrounded by thousands of them would only mean more unwanted attractions.

Still, he found himself drawn towards the large double doors into the library. Letting himself into the room, he found that a fire lapped at the sides of the stone hearth, and candelabrum about the room flickered yellow and orange. Someone else was not sleeping. He closed the door softly and took a few steps inside, looking at the small sitting area near the fire. No one. Then around the bottom level. No one. Then his eyes caught movement on the top level, finding a body hanging precariously from a ladder with one hand, the other holding her wand for light.

Damn.

So much for not thinking about her.

There she balanced, in a fluffy-looking dressing gown, that only made him wonder what was beneath it, if anything at all.

Bloody hell.

"Professor?"

Had he verbalized that?

"Yes, Miss Granger," he said, walking into the light.

She busied herself with pulling a thick tome from the shelf and carefully descending the ladder, allowing him an opportunity to get ahold of himself. It was a fruitless opportunity, nonetheless, because he could only concentrate on her movements. Before he knew it, she had come down the stairs to the floor level and was looking at him curiously.

"Couldn't sleep?" she questioned.

He nodded.

"Welcome to the club." She chuckled ruefully and went to plop into one of the large chairs by the fire. She curled her legs up beneath her and opened the book, seemingly not caring that he was still in the room. Sure, the time they spent together at Hogwarts was slowly becoming less strained, but neither of them was completely comfortable with the other, yet. However, at that moment, she acted like this was absolute normalcy for her.

The dressing robe slipped away, exposing a bit of her leg. He drew a sharp breath.

Whenever he would see an old student of his, specifically one that was grown, had a job and a family of their own, he still only saw them as they once had been. They had always remained an insolent child in his mind's eye, and nothing more. But it was extremely difficult to make himself believe that Hermione Granger had once been his student and was still very much a child. At present, noticing Granger's very feminine form, he was beginning to see that she was indeed no longer a student. She was a woman, and a very fetching woman at that.

No!

He could not possibly be thinking like this. Not now, not ever.

He had not found a woman so alluring in the longest time, and usually only sated his needs through the work of his own hand. He had just never bothered looking, wanting to be alone for the sake of his involvement with the Dark Lord. No one would ever understand him or his associations. And he certainly did not want any of these feelings for a woman. Not after Lily and what she had done to him.

But then again, these feelings were instinctual. What he felt was a base lust like any man had probably felt at some point and time in their lives. It was not an emotional attraction. It was not an attraction like the type he so feared. He was no idiot, though. He knew that a physical infatuation oftentimes led to other things, even deeper and sometimes destructive feelings for a partner.

Perhaps in the past he had been so concerned with other problems that he had been wholly unaware of such interest, had he encountered another suitable woman in his day-to-day machinations.

However, now that the war was over, and the enemy vanquished for a time, he supposed this could be his first real test. Now he could actually contemplate a relationship with a woman, and his mind was telling him that. That was almost certainly the only reason why he noticed her now. Or perhaps something else was telling him he needed to think of other things, so that he would not wallow forever in his own self-pity.

It was the natural way of things, after all--the chemistry of opposite sexes. It had played out like this for eons. Friendship, love, attraction, sexual need. Who was he to rewrite the evolution of Muggle and magical people alike? Despite the popular consensus of the world, Severus Snape was a man who had the same sexual inclinations as everyone else. His had only lain dormant for some time out of the necessity to keep his mind fully on his tasks at hand with the Dark Lord.

Yet he still failed to see what any woman would want with him, the Greasy Black Bat of the dungeons of Hogwarts. Why should he even try? He could pursue women openly. But the probability of them returning his affections was slim to none. He was not attractive in the least; he knew that. His attitude was surly, at best. And he truly was comfortable by himself, alone and able to do as he pleased without someone else to think of.

Why the hell was he thinking of this anyway? They weren't getting married. They weren't seeing each other. They were simply colleagues at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, nothing more. They weren't even friends, for Merlin's sake!

And this was Hermione Granger he was thinking about.

"Are you just going to stand there, or will you join me?"

He met her eyes for a moment, and she shifted her gaze to the chair opposite her.

"You're either incredibly foolish or incredibly courageous to come with Viktor," he remarked in a vain attempt to take his mind away from the path it was currently traveling. He sat in the chair and let out a long sigh.

She let out a short, unladylike grunt. "I think it's a mixture of both, Professor, but I was curious."

"Curiosity killed the cat," he said automatically.

"I am well aware of that," she replied. "Though Lucius and Draco do little to scare me."

"They should scare you. If you only knew what was hidden in this house, or knew what they could do to you with a flick of their wands."

Hermione shrugged and gazed at him. "I've faced the Dark Lord himself. In comparison, I consider Father and Son Malfoy unimportant. And I was under the impression that the Ministry had raided the premises multiple times."

"Lucius has places that even magic can't find," he said flatly and sat back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest. "Aren't you intimidated at all?"

"Only when they start spouting their pureblood ideologies," she replied. Then she gave him a small smile. "Besides, I put up with the likes of you for seven years. I should think I at least learned something in dealing with less than amiable people."

He sighed, eyeing the liquor on the other side of the room. A bit of Ogden's sounded very nice right now. "Would you care for something to drink, Miss Granger?"

She looked up at him and then in the direction of the crystal decanters. Clearly she was surprised that he had even deigned to ask her. He smirked.

"Hmm?"

"Oh, um, just a bit," she said quietly. "I'm quite the lightweight when it comes to the hard stuff."

He went to filling two glasses half full of the amber liquid and carried hers over to her. Again she took her attention away from the book to look up at him. "Here."

She took the glass, her soft fingers brushing his, and considered the liquid for a moment. "That's a bit?"

With a shrug, he sat back into his chair again. "What has caught your attention tonight?"

"I'm not quite sure," she said, looking at the leather-bound book. "I can't very well concentrate with you talking to me."

"Then I'll stop," he replied. Not that he minded at all. It meant more time that he could watch her.

She shook her head and closed the book. "No, don't stop. It's nice to have a conversation without you biting my head off. I like to think that maybe I have impressed upon you that I'm not like I once was."

He let out a derisive laugh. "You haven't changed one bit, Miss Granger. Perhaps you have grown up physically a bit, and learned to control your outbursts a bit more, but you are still the same insufferable know-it-all that you were."

"Good to see no one changes then, not even you," she remarked, taking a long sip of the firewhisky. She set the glass down on the hardwood floor in front of her.

"No one ever really changes, Miss Granger," he pontificated. "Perhaps you may eventually learn something new about a person that changes your opinion of them, but no one ever changes themselves."

Her eyes held his for a long time, letting that comment seep into her brain, and she let a small smile form on her lips. "What happened to you referring to me as Professor Granger or Hermione?"

"Old habits die hard," he replied, pausing for a long moment. "Hermione."

"That they do." She nodded and looked back at her book.

They spent some time like this in silence, the only sound in the room coming from the popping of the fire beside them. He tried not to look at her, consider her, or appraise her physical qualities at all, but it was useless. She was the most fascinating thing in the room at the moment. Actually, he was quite sure that she was the most fascinating thing in the entire manor for the entire weekend. But he would not tell Draco or Lucius that.

After a bit, he felt eyes watching him closely, and he looked up from staring at the fire to meet her eyes. She had closed her book and placed it beside her on the ground, holding the whiskey to her lips now, taking small sips as though it were tea.

"How were your classes this week?" she questioned.

"Quite boring," he answered. "No one did anything truly horrid. I only took fifty points away from Gryffindor in total."

She laughed. "Perhaps you're just getting soft."

He fixed her with a harsh glare, and she blushed slightly. "No one changes," he repeated. "Your perception only changes."

"As far as I see it, you're still the same old Snape; the most malicious, cynical, antisocial, and unpleasant wizard in all the world. I don't think my perception has changed at all. And I still think that you may be getting soft."

It was hard not to let the corner of his mouth twitch up into a smile, hearing exactly what she thought of him. He knew that none of his students liked him--most feared him--and even his Slytherins had a healthy indifference to him. But never before had someone been so frank with him. Well, perhaps besides Albus or Minerva. "Twenty points from Gryffindor for being an insufferable, bushy-haired know-it-all and for disrespecting an elder."

She scoffed and shook her head. "It's good to know where we stand, then, Snape."

"It is." He nodded.

The girl was silent again and uncurled her legs, placing her feet on the floor. "Do you really still see me as I was?"

He would damn her for asking the question, but he had to give her credit for picking up on his interest at dinner. Not that his watching of her movements had been at all secretive.

"Professor?"

"Hmm?"

"Do you?"

Severus sighed heavily and considered the remainder of the amber liquid in his glass before swallowing it. He reveled in the burning sensation spreading down his esophagus and stomach and then through the rest of his body before meeting her questioning eyes again. She wanted an answer, and he would give it to her. But he was certainly not going to sit around and have to explain it to her, or discuss it. He was much too tired and the liquor was finally making him sleepy.

Standing from his seat, he walked over to the decanters of liquor, and set the glass down before heading toward to doors. He stopped and looked back at her. "That's the problem, Hermione. I don't see you at all like I used to."

He was sure he left her in a state of complete confusion, but he did not necessarily care. Actually, he did not even know what he meant by it.

The problem? A problem for him, maybe, but he had lied a bit. She was still insufferable and an incurable know-it-all. However, she was insufferable in a different way now...the way that it was almost impossible to be in the same room with her without getting those confounded thoughts of bare legs and elegant dances.

This was, without a doubt, the most maddening experience in his life. To him, everything had a clear-cut answer, even in the most ambiguous years when he played a double agent. But there definitely were no clear-cut answers in this department of attraction. In some ways, though, he did not wish to have a clear-cut answer, at least not yet.

Should he treat her like he always did, admire her from afar, and protect himself from the possibility of getting hurt? Or should he take the chance and try to get to know her better? Did he really need a mate?

If he did not need a mate, then he certainly needed some sexual release with a capable being. But she was too good for that. Even if she were attracted to him--which she most certainly was not--she would not give herself over to pleasure without more of a relationship with him. He had seen that firsthand with the way she acted with Krum. If he truly wanted her to sate his lust, he would need to risk having his heart ripped out and stomped on... again.

The question was: Could he handle it if she did that to him?

As much as these thoughts and questions of the feminine Hermione Granger annoyed him, he did enjoy the knowledge that he was capable of having such feelings. A few years ago, in the darkest part of the war and after killing Dumbledore, he had thought his life over whether he was sentenced to death, to Azkaban, or exonerated of all wrongdoing. And for a time, until she had come back to Hogwarts, he had had little care of anything beyond his classes besides retreating to his dungeons to drink himself to sleep. He had been, by all rights, dead to the world.

Now, though... now that she was back and aggravating him constantly, he did not feel so lifeless. Her presence, even when she was younger, made him volatile... so lively. He liked knowing that he was still alive, not to mention healthy and virile.

The rather obnoxious arousal in his trousers only proved that.