A Knight in Shining Armor

My sincerest thanks to everyone who reads this... I was a little off in my two month prediction last time I updated. However, there should be pretty regular updates from now on, so stay tuned.

A big hug, flowers, and chocolate-covered, ambiguously dark wizards to my wonderful betas, Keladry and Subversa.

Chapter 9- A Knight in Shining Armor

The following two months were a veritable blur. Hogwarts finally fell into the term routine, the students settled into their work, and Hermione found her niche in the staff. She enjoyed everyone immensely, and most of them accepted her with open arms. Snape still kept his arms firmly crossed against his chest, but she could not blame him. She had been a horrible little monster starting this position when he had never deserved such a thing. It had taken her this full month, and falling into the new groove of her life, to realize she had let her anxiety over teaching and proving herself to everyone manifest itself in behavior unbecoming in a mature, intelligent woman of twenty-nine.

Her interactions with Snape had calmed as she had, and he seemed relieved. Well, as relieved as the man could ever get. He always appeared on edge. But Hermione found she could empathize with Snape now...with any of her professors, for that matter. Being a teacher was hard work. Yes, Snape had been an utter bastard to students during the war because of other issues, but just teaching students must have driven him batty. Teaching was quickly making her a little Trelawney-like, in the fact that alcoholic beverages were the only things that calmed her annoyances since she had signed the contract to teach these imbeciles.

But she was being hard on some of her students. Some of them actually wanted to learn, and though she desperately wanted to favor them, it was important not to do so in a class where the other students would see it. She refused to show preferences, unlike some of her own professors had.

Yes, her own professors' preferences were unmerited much of the time, and she strove to champion only those students who deserved it academically while pushing the others along in hopes that they would do better.

Even if it was remotely possible.

One thing was certain, though. If she had to clean up one more melted cauldron, she would scream.

And Atticus seemed to be on his way to doing that right at the moment.

"Mr Malfoy!"

The blond, pug-faced child started.

"What did I say about handling aconite?" Hermione watched with pleasure as Atticus' eyes quickly grew wide, and the plant in his hands was dropped unceremoniously to the workbench.

"Gloves, Mr Malfoy."

She had wondered if working with such a volatile substance would be too difficult for the first years, but she was following Snape's lesson plans from when she had been in school. Surely if her classmates had been able to handle it, then her students could.

Well, except for Neville, but he was usually an exception to any rule.

The classroom door burst open at that minute, a pang of uneasiness flooding through her because it had been thrown open with such a recognizable panache. However, it was not Severus Snape who stomped into the room, ready to give a glowering lecture. Instead, it was his fairer miniature that ran through the classroom and grabbed tightly onto Hermione's hips for dear life. Hermione looked down at the top of the inky-black head, letting the shock of this appearance finally dissipate. And as it wore off, she could feel the little body shaking and hear the quiet sniffling buried within her teaching robes.

She had not chosen this position of pseudo mother-nanny-friend that had been foisted upon her, but she had enjoyed it thus far even if Snape took too much pleasure in dropping his child off on her doorstep each evening he had "business" elsewhere. It was not odd that Thea, if she had gotten into an argument with her father, would come to her for comfort. What was odd was that the girl was home on a school day.

Not only that, but she was out of the headmaster's apartment and visible to most students. Despite the students' supreme and utter dunderheadedness, they could put two and two together enough to know this child looked like a much younger and prettier version of their feared headmaster. Was that not why Snape kept the princess locked up in her tower?

Hermione glanced up at the class who was not thoroughly enthralled with the newcomer. She let out a small sigh. "Go back to work."

She then set down onto her haunches to look at Thea. Her eyes were red with tears. "What is it, Thea?"

The girl could not stop her sobbing.

"What is it, Thea?" Hermione repeated, comfortingly.

"I-I-It's Father, Miss Hermione," she cried.

Hermione had expected as much.

"H-he... I-I... flash of... r-red."

"Is he hurt, Thea?" Hermione asked, feeling her chest tighten for some odd reason.

She nodded her head forlornly.

Hermione stood up quickly, surveying the room. There was no way she could leave them to continue brewing on their own. She just did not trust them enough not to kill each other. She would have to Floo the hospital wing. Except today was the one day Madam Pomfrey was not in the castle; Madam Pomfrey's niece had just had a child in France, and she had gone to call on them.

Running through her mind the list of other staff members who were not in classes at the moment, she remembered that Kingsley had his free hour during this period.

"I will be back in a moment," she said, motioning for Thea to sit in her seat behind the desk. She added to the students, "And I said get back to work."

Hermione walked back into her private office and grabbed a pinch of Floo powder, wasting no time in finding Kingsley. She found him in his office, either marking papers or preparing for his next lesson.

"Ah, Hermione! To what do I owe this pleasure before lunch time?" he asked, turning to look at her.

"Would you please go check on Professor Snape for me?" Hermione asked. "Thea just ran down here sobbing about something happening to him, and I can't leave my class."

He was up and moving to the door before she said anything else.

"Thank you!" she called and turned back to her classroom.

-----

Severus woke laying supine, a blinding headache throbbing tremendously. The world and colors slowly returned to normal, fuzziness drifting away from the corners of his sight. He attempted to sit up, but the headache did not allow for sudden movements. It almost felt like a sloshing of his brain. But he knew for a fact he had not been drinking, and this was not a hangover.

The events before he fell unconscious quickly came back to him them, and he reached up to pinch the bridge of his nose.

"Here, take this," said the feminine voice.

He opened his eyes again to see the tired face of his deputy looking down at him inquisitively. In her hand was a vial of an olive-colored potion. Knowing what it was, he reached for and downed the headache relief potion in a quick second.

"Where is she?" he asked quietly.

"Sleeping."

"What time is it!?" He sat up quickly, a wave of nausea moving through him.

"It's only three in the afternoon," Hermione replied. "I gave her a Calming Draught. She was very upset."

Severus pressed the heels of his hands into his closed eyes, waiting for the potion he had consumed to take effect. Slowly he felt the warm, soothing tendrils of relief curling around his brain.

"I suspect Thea was not very happy and let her magic get the better of her," she said and moved on quickly from Thea. "When you fell, you hit your head, and that's what knocked you out."

Hermione sighed and moved away from his side. Now that his head had stopped throbbing, he found he was lying on the couch in the front chamber of his apartments, not in the hospital wing.

"Where's Madam Pomfrey?"

"Visiting her niece in France, don't you remember?"

Severus was quite mortified, not remembering where the matron had gone, but the day's earlier occurrences slowly filtered back into his mind.

"You'll be fine," she said. "Those medi-witchery courses at University actually paid off."

Hermione collected her things: a stack of parchments, a quill and a bottle of ink. "If you need any other potions, you know where to find me."

"I will use my own potions, thank you," he snapped.

She spun on a heel and gave him a hard look. "As you wish, Professor."

He watched her walked to the door, suddenly bewildered by her. Of all things he had anticipated, he had not expected her to refrain from questioning him endlessly about what had actually happened.

"You're not even curious as to why Thea is here and not at school?" he questioned, nearly disbelieving he had asked it. Really, he could not tell why he had an overwhelming need to discuss the situation with her, but he felt it was important. Perhaps it was because he knew Thea cared so deeply for the insufferable chit.

"Of course I am curious, Professor, but would you have answered me, had I asked?"

He frowned. "Touché."

Hermione shrugged her shoulders and reached for the handle on the door. But she stopped again and turned around. "You may have to do some damage control, though, Professor. After you had been knocked out, she came running down to the dungeons. The children we teach are thick, but I'm certain a few put two and two together."

"Don't you mean one and one?"

She let out a derisive chuckle, perhaps more mocking than she had meant it. She worried her bottom lip between her teeth. "It's not important. Good day, Professor."

As she was shutting the door, he called a soft, "Thank you," hoping that she would not hear him. At least he would know he had thanked her, and that would be sufficient.

-----

Hermione stood outside the headmaster's door, staring at the ancient wood. She felt an odd compulsion to open the door and ask what he had just said, but if she did that, he would only say something contrary. She was quite certain, though, that he had thanked her.

This pleasant thought carried her back to her office to put her things away and then to her storage room where she began to pull ingredients out to make replacement potions for the infirmary.

She worked slowly this Friday. There was no rush for these supplies, so she did not feel compelled to move quickly. It allowed her a little while to speculate on how incredibly odd the day had been since Thea had shown up in her classroom, sobbing from anger and worry. There were millions of explanations as to why Thea had been angered enough to use her magic, but Hermione could not possibly pin one reason down. After all, no one really knew Snape's mind except Snape himself, so how was she supposed to know what had started the chain of events?

Whatever it had been had thoroughly enraged little Thea, though. Truthfully, Hermione had been quite surprised that something like this had not happened sooner. Snape was an unpleasant man; more tolerable than he had been "back then," but he was still unpleasant. There was no reason for him to change, even for a child. And, yes, she would admit she had seen some major promise for his sociability because of Thea, but that did not mitigate the point. Snape was an arse most of the time.

That Thea had never been angry enough since Hermione came to Hogwarts to cause uncontrolled magic was even more promising. Maybe he was not so horrible as Hermione had originally thought?

This notion kept her perplexed and a little preoccupied when she should have been paying attention to her brewing. What was the number one thing she yelled at her students for? Not paying attention to what they were doing. But then again, it was only Pepper-Up, and she had brewed it countless times before. There was little chance of her cauldron melting or exploding.

After working for some time, Hermione grew warm from climbing up and down the ladder in between standing over boiling cauldrons and decided to divest herself of the heavy teaching robes she had been wearing. However, even getting rid of the bulky robes and her sensibly heeled work shoes did not prevent her from losing her balance on the ladder when a deep voice called to her from behind.

It was a combination of futile movements all rolled into one: first she jumped at the sudden intrusion into her thoughts, then a quick movement of her hand away from the breakables on the shelf, ending with a movement with the other hand to hold on for dear life. She had been high enough on the ladder to hit her head on the stone ceiling when she jumped, knocking two jars of salamander eyes to the ground, and her other hand totally missed the rung of the ladder to steady herself.

Most people might have screamed, but only a low, guttural sound of complete shock escaped her as she scrambled, her arms flailing. Expecting to land unceremoniously on the stone ground, she had enough mental capacity to relax her body for the fall. Instead of landing, hard and ungracefully, though, she was caught by two extremely strong arms.

Hermione let out a gasp of air, as she slumped back into the hold.

"What I've always wanted," said the voice behind her. "A woman falling at my feet."

Hermione pushed away from the broad chest and turned around to face Kingsley. "I didn't fall at your feet."

"You would have if I had not caught you," he chuckled, his smile brilliant in the dim light.

"And here I was going to proclaim you my knight in shining armor," she said.

Kingsley shrugged. "You can still do that, if you like. You know how Slytherin egos like such things."

Hermione pursed her lips together, stepping back from him and running a hand haphazardly over her clothes to do a quick check to make sure she had not injured herself...even though she knew she had not.

"Thank you for saving me from a most horrible fate, good sir knight," she teased and stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek.

But he pulled back from her, meeting her eyes. "I thought we had gotten past that nonsense."

Hermione felt heat rise to her face.

Since the beginning of the year, they had spent quite a few nights over dinner, regaling each other with their exploits teaching that day, whether this was in the Great Hall or privately at a restaurant. More than once, they had ended up back at one of their apartments to continue the evening.

The relationship...if one could call it that...was purely sexual in nature and seemed to be exactly what the both of them needed. She did hold a genuine affection for the strong, serious man who, in her eyes, had once been the very paragon of valor. However, they both recognized that they were too dissimilar to make a serious, committed relationship out of it.

Hermione had realized early on that she was actually enjoying not being committed to something. For a woman who was used to always having a reason for doing something, it had been a rather large step to take. Though it was a far cry from what she craved...that of a husband and family...it was an oddly liberating experience to take part in a liaison that was for the sole purpose of amusement.

And, she rationalized, everyone had to have at least one of these mindless flings before they settled down. Didn't they?

She smiled suggestively and reached up to pull his head down to meet hers. The exchange was slow and tentative at first, but quickly changed into headiness that had her pressed against the storeroom ladder and praying the ladder would hold the weight they were placing upon it.

When his soft and amazing mouth moved down her jaw to her neck, she chuckled throatily. "I have potions brewing."

"Hmm," he said, catching her earlobe between his teeth.

"I really should get back to them."

Kingsley pulled his head back to look down at her, a smile on his face. She was acutely aware that his large hands were on her hips and gripping into her clothes and flesh.

"I suppose I can't let the Potions mistress blow up the Potions lab," he said. "It would look bad."

"Very bad," she said, stretching her neck up to kiss him again, her teeth grabbing his bottom lip for a split second before pulling back again.

He groaned softly, not allowing her to get away that easily. "You know better than to do that and expect to get away with it."

Hermione giggled and pushed at his chest. He stepped back reluctantly, motioning for her to leave the room in front of him, allowing him a few moments to calm himself in case anyone should be outside the door.

"Oh, the sala..." she said, pivoting back to look into the storeroom.

"I saved them as well. They're on the floor," he replied. "Were you putting away or retrieving, though?"

"Putting away," she said and turned back around, leading him to the semi-private Potions lab. Semi-private because Snape still used the room for brewing his own things. And semi-private because he had chosen today of all days to show up and inspect her work.

He looked up from the cauldron he was stirring. "You know better than to leave a cauldron unattended for this long. I have completed the next step for you."

"I-I...er... thank you," she said.

Snape looked up from the cauldron then, his eyes narrowing first at her and then at the man behind her, then back again, as realization dawned. She was certain she looked quite disheveled despite trying to remedy that when they had separated in the storeroom.

"I see," Snape said. He looked pained as he took in the situation in front of him, but quickly masked it. He turned back to the cauldron. "I will require more headache relief. I find that I am out in my own stores."

Hermione wanted to ask why he had not gone to the infirmary, but decided not to and risk bringing out his snark. She considered it a small godsend to not have him harping on seeing Kingsley and herself in such a state. "I'll get it; one minute, Professor."

She turned around to look up at Kingsley and shrugged her shoulders at him. Standing on her tip toes, she kissed him quickly. "I'll see you later?"

He nodded and left the room, a devious look on his face.

Had Hermione been facing the other direction, she would have noticed the other occupant of the room twitch and tense at the affection between herself and Kingsley. But she did not, so she moved quickly back to her storeroom to hide her own embarrassment over the situation.

But she was not quite sure what she was embarrassed about.