Sprouting Blueberries

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Chapter 17- Sprouting Blueberries

"So? How'd it go?"

Hermione barely had a moment to sit down and situate herself at the head table before Tonks was probing for information. Hermione, however, was not in the mood to go straight into details and giggle like a little schoolgirl. She had exhausted every possible scenario in her head last night while trying to fall asleep, and when she did manage to fall asleep, it was riddled with dreams of him and what she had almost allowed him to do in the laboratory.

She was sure anyone would agree that after a fitful night of pseudo-sleep, giggling or even thinking about the man in question was the last thing her pounding head needed. Tonks should have picked up on that.

"Oh, come on," Tonks said. "You can't stay mum like that."

"Watch me," Hermione said, reaching over for the water kettle and bag of tea.

It sounded like Tonks whined. Hermione let a satisfied smirk cross her lips.

"I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to end this right now, if your being around him makes you as snarky as he is."

Hermione rolled her neck slightly from side to side, trying to get the stiff muscles to loosen a bit. Tonks continued to glare at her for not immediately dishing on the evening she had spent with Snape, and then at her own cup of tea until Remus hobbled into the Great Hall. He sat down slowly into his seat, letting out a long sigh. One day until the full moon and already she could see the change taking its toll on him, instead of directly afterward. It was such a vile, incurable disease.

"How are you two lovely ladies this morning?" he asked, leaning over to kiss Tonks on the cheek.

"I'm fine," Tonks said. "Hermione, on the other hand..."

"Bad date last night?" he asked, raising a sandy-blond brow at her. "Viktor didn't seem too happy this morning either."

"You saw him?" Hermione asked.

Remus nodded. "He was with his mates, and they were discussing women. Well, what I understood of it anyway. Mostly just body language and whatnot. I'm definitely not an expert at Bulgarian."

"Well, I suppose I was the topic that started that then," Hermione said. "I told him to back off, but in nicer terms of course."

"I see," Remus said. "He was good for you, though. Why?"

Tonks made to open her mouth to answer her paramour, but Hermione quickly silenced her with a well-placed kick to her shin. The witch let out a loud yelp and grabbed at her leg. Remus only laughed at her. "I see, then. You're keeping a secret from me."

"I'm keeping a secret from a lot of people," she muttered under her breath.

"It didn't sound like Viktor was planning to give up on you anytime soon," he said. "Be careful there."

Hermione sighed. "But he seemed fine last night when I told him I didn't want to see him romantically. I thought he might just give up and move on and find some other witch richer and more beautiful than I am. I mean, he is Viktor Krum, Quidditch Star. Surely there are legions of beautiful women out there just throwing themselves at his feet."

"There are," Tonks said.

"But he wants you," Remus added. "Not them. And if you don't mind me saying, you obviously haven't been looking at yourself in a good mirror recently."

Hermione felt a low blush creep to her cheeks, but she hid it with a sip of her tea instead. She could feel the force and swish of the air created from his black robes and swift glide before he even said a thing. Or perhaps she had just felt the electricity of his presence?

"Ladies," said a deep, silky voice form behind them. "Remus."

He sat down in his usual spot, leaving Minerva's space free between him and Hermione. Severus moved about gathering a few bits of food on his plate, and a goblet of pumpkin juice, obviously trying to show that he was not concerned that Hermione was looking at him inquisitively. It took him a few moments to look up through a curtain of dark hair, though, and instead of remarking on her blank stare, he glanced over to Remus.

"The potion is ready for you when you need it, Lupin," he said.

"Thank you," Remus said with a nod and turned back to his meal, as did Snape. It was a strained silence at best, and Hermione always wondered why it was when Remus and Severus spoke to each other. They had gotten over all the Sirius and James wrongs from the past, hadn't they? Nonetheless, though, the head table clouded over with only the sounds of metal utensils hitting the pewter plates sporadically.

Hermione found that she was not very hungry, and only picked at the muffin in front of her, considering closely the blueberries inside it.

"You won't grow a blueberry bush by staring at it, Miss Granger, no matter how magical you are."

Hermione looked up quickly to see Professor Sprout walking past Snape and down a few seats for her breakfast. The plump teacher smiled, her cherubic cheeks glowing pink with mirth. It was hard not to smile whenever the woman smiled at you, no matter how bad you felt.

"Thank you, Professor," Hermione said and pushed the plate away from herself, elbowing Tonks to stop laughing at her expense.

"You're just lucky Snape didn't comment on it," Tonks said lowly, but still loud enough that Severus would clearly hear the comment.

Hermione grumbled and glared at Tonks. "I have some papers to grade and a lesson to research. If you need me, I'll be in my office or in the library."

Her whereabouts not necessarily hinted at in the most veiled of terms, Hermione knew that Severus would seek her out eventually that day. Or perhaps he would not, only to play with her emotions some more. Perhaps it would be good to be completely free of the man for a day, now that she had issued her provocations. Like a dratted wizard chess match, the next move was up to him now, and he knew that well enough. It would be his choice if he continued to confuse and play with her, or actually get down to the physical business of checkmating.

-----

"Sometimes I wonder," Hermione muttered to herself, placing her quill down on the table beside the stack of essays. How could anyone think that this rubbish was worthy of a passing grade? It was like reading one of Harry's or Ron's essays over and over, never able to change anything to add more detail or to even make the writing appropriate English, including sentences with subjects and predicates.

"You wonder what?"

She jumped at the sudden intrusion into her quiet little cubby, but relaxed when she realized who it was. Severus was never this predictable. What was he doing here anyway? But then again, she knew how the male mind worked, and in the pursuit of sexual pleasure, any male mind was the most predictable thing in the world.

"This drivel," she said and reached up to pinch the bridge of her nose. She really should have had more for breakfast than the tea and the bit of muffin. Her caffeinated energy was quickly crashing and causing her original headache to worsen.

"Now you know why I am the way I am," he said.

Hermione shook her head. "You are like you are for other reasons. This just catalyzes the nastiness."

"I suppose," he said and sat down into the chair cattycorner from her. He pulled a leather-bound book toward him from her stack, considered it carefully for a moment and then pushed it back. "Muggle?"

"Hm?"

"The book," he said. "Is it Muggle?"

"Oh, that," she said, drawing herself from the void of her thoughts. "Yes. It'll add a little bit of Muggle-study to my next lecture. A lot of the things magical people don't understand in the Muggle world are like the things Muggles don't understand in our world. Transfiguration is just one of those things."

He smirked. "That's an entirely different class."

"It's called cross-curriculum teaching, Severus," she said.

"That would be like allowing wand work in my classes," he said.

Hermione nodded. "Exactly."

"Never." He shook his head.

"And you can use Arithmancy in Divination, though I wouldn't wish to muddle such a sound science as Arithmancy with the reading of tea leaves," she said. "We really incorporate a lot more than we think."

"But Potions is Potions," he said.

Hermione scoffed and rolled her eyes. "You know, it could do you a world of good to see outside the box for a change."

"I like my box, thank you," Severus answered and leaned back in his seat, crossing his arms over his chest. Hermione went back to her grading under the watchful eye of her former professor-turned friend-turned... whatever. It made her slightly uncomfortable that he was sitting so close and watching every word she wrote or correction she made, but it was also quite rewarding when he gave her a satisfied smirk after reading over one of the essays she had already gone over.

Hermione knew what the smirk meant and only chuckled lowly. "What do you expect? After seven years with you grading my papers... I should hope I at least learned how to grade properly."

"You must have seen Potter's and Weasley's essays then," he said. "I do not recall an over usage of red ink on your own parchments."

"I saw theirs," she said, "but nothing compared to Neville's."

He grumbled. "How that dunderhead made it into Auror training, I'll never know."

"Because you weren't his Potions professor the last two years," she said. "You intimidated him so much and he was confused easily."

She knew that this conversation was getting them nowhere by reminiscing about times past, but she was enjoying it, strangely enough. It was just skirting around the real reason he had surely come to speak with her about, but the ball was in his court. He seemed to sense where her train of thought was going and let the conversation drop after her mention of Neville and him being intimidating, considering her closely. Hermione glanced quickly at his eyes and then darted them back to the parchment in front of her, feeling a blush on her cheeks.

"I see the brave lioness retreated into her den," he remarked.

"She's resting," Hermione replied.

"Is she now?" he asked, crooking a brow up. "Then perhaps she will make a reappearance later on this evening?"

Hermione paused for a moment, her mouth falling open at his comment and question. It almost sounded hopeful. The last thing she would have bet on was Snape actually enjoying her taking control of that situation last night. "Excuse me?"

"It was refreshing for a change not having to dominate," he replied with a suggestive tone to his voice. "I suppose I am like that in every aspect of my life, and I am ashamed to say that I am tired of being that way all the time."

Hermione scoffed. "Who are you and what did you do with Snape?"

He gave her a roll of his eyes, settling back into his impassive state. "I assure you, Miss Granger, no one has made effective Polyjuice Potion in this school since your fourth year. I took care of protecting the ingredients after Crouch."

No one ever quite said "Miss Granger" like he did. A large part of it was his voice, and anyone under Polyjuice could imitate that, but in the way he said, it almost made it sound like an endearment. No one else had ever made it sound so nasty and so... so... amazing at the same time. It had to be him.

"I believe you," she said.

"Would you care to join me for dinner this evening, to discuss this more in depth?" he asked, pinning her to her seat with his gaze, daring her to decline his offer.

Hermione chuckled, "Severus, I wasn't going to say no, even if you were put up to this as some horrible prank."

"And if you found out that this was all a jest?" he asked. "And I had no interest in you at all, except for a horrible little game and winning a bet?"

"I believe you have more respect for me than that, even if you show otherwise outwardly," she said.

He nodded and sighed. "I do."

"Where should we meet?" Hermione asked.

"Outside the front gates at seven," he said.

Hermione tried not to wonder why he had requested meeting her outside the front gates, but it was hopeless for Hermione Granger not to wonder and try to find an answer. Perhaps he was just not in practice? Or perhaps he did not want to be seen with her inside the castle? It was most likely just a fanciful thing, or a Muggle tradition to be picked up at your door, but still... it would have been nice...

"Where are we going?" she asked.

"Out," he said.

Hermione laughed. "No, Severus. For dinner? I need to know how to dress."

"With clothes," he replied in a completely serious tone. He stood up and straightened his frock coat. "Though, if you were to wear nothing, I would not complain."

"You know what I mean," she said.

He rolled his eyes in disgust. "Witches and their clothes! Is that all you ever think about?"

"Not all of us have such fashion sense as yourself," she said sarcastically. "Though I admit having only one style of clothes to wear all the time does have its appealing qualities."

He moved toward the door of her office, the one she had not heard him sneak through, and stopped to look at her. "Choose whatever you like, Miss Granger. You know what I shall be wearing."

Hermione chuckled. Of course he would give her that roundabout answer, wouldn't he?