Privileges Of An Apprentice

The dining room at the manor was much fancier than the small one that everyone usually crammed themselves into for big dinners together at Grimmauld Place. But despite the ability to accommodate everyone with comfort, the majority of the Order went about their discussions and plans as they ate the food that Molly had cooked for them.

All except Hermione. When Remus had found her wandering in the orchard, she had refused to join him and the others for dinner. Instead she had decided to go and settle into her room, promising that she would fix herself something to eat when everyone had gone. When Hermione had picked out a room, she only had a few moments before Severus had come to move her to another room.

"What's wrong with the room I chose?" she asked him curiously as she followed him into the north wing.

"As much as I loathe being here and letting the Order use this place for a headquarters, it does have its advantages: one being the lab, which is much more adequate than the one that used to be at Grimmauld, and the other being that we are going to be the only ones with knowledge of the lab's location. That way we can actually manage to work in peace," he replied as they reached the end of the hall and he opened the door next to his own. "This will be your room. Through this door to your left is access to my own room. Follow me and I'll show you the upstairs entrance to the lab," he said as he led the way into his room, toward the mirror. "Give me your wand," he demanded suddenly, looking at her reflection in the mirror. He waved his own wand over hers, effectively bringing down the wards for the doorway for her own wand. "To enter you have to wave your wand in front of the mirror; it will open to this spiral staircase, which leads directly down to the lab. There is a second entrance in the library; the mirror down there looks the same as this one. Any questions?"

In fact, Hermione had a lot of questions that came to mind. But she decided to respect his obvious bad mood and shook her head before heading back to her new room. She had some clothing and such to order from the catalogues Remus had given her to replace her wardrobe that had been destroyed at Grimmauld Place.

Severus watched her quietly exit his room into her own. Deciding not to worry about her quiet demeanor, he waved his wand over the mirror and proceeded to prepare the lab for their work the next day.

~{}~

Hermione's thoughts about the move and the loss of her things were two-sided. It almost helped that she was in a new environment, someplace that held no memories of her capture. But the loss of certain items, mainly books and some trinkets that had been gifts from Harry and Ron, were hard to bear. She pondered the likelihood of replacing those things as best she could as she scanned the catalogues, choosing her clothing carefully. It was a relief that she would have plenty of shirts and sweaters that would adequately cover her back and neck; she even ordered eight turtleneck sweaters, something she wouldn't have done before as she preferred a rounded or V-neck style. But if she was to see the rest of the Order on a more regular basis, she would be more comfortable with her new situation if her scars were properly covered.

She was so engrossed with the catalogues that she jumped when there was a loud knock on her door. "Who is it?" she asked as she carefully stacked the catalogues on the little coffee table in her room.

"It's Remus. I've brought you some dinner," he replied patiently, waiting for her to open the door. When she did, she stood back and let him enter. "I thought it might be best if I brought you the food instead of you waiting for the others to leave. It seems there is an impromptu meeting going on, so most of them will likely stay the night," he said as he set the tray down on the coffee table. "I see you've got your clothing orders all filled out. I'll take them to Molly. She's volunteered to turn in all our orders and bring them to us when they're filled," he said, picking up the orders.

"Thank you, Remus. Hopefully she'll have them before the meeting in a few days when I have to present this new potion," Hermione replied quietly, taking a seat and reaching for her silverware.

"Hermione, is something bothering you?" Remus asked, sitting down next to her. "Besides the meeting, I mean."

"What am I going to say to Harry and Ron when they return, about what happened to me? Part of me wants to never tell them, but too many people know already. They'd find out, and it would be worse if they found out that way," she replied, dropping her fork and laying her head in her hands.

"Just tell them the truth and ask them to honor your wish to not speak of it unless you feel like it. They'll be upset, to put it mildly. But they love you. If you don't want them to ask you about it, tell them that," he offered.

Severus stood in the doorway, having listened to this part of their conversation before he decided to interrupt them. Clearing his throat and startling them both out of their conversation, he said, "I thought it would be prudent to advise you both that I have to leave. The Dark Lord has summoned me, most likely so I can be present when he punishes the morons who attacked Grimmauld Place. I may be all night, so I won't be able to finish arranging the lab. Could you please finish while I'm gone, Hermione? All that's left to do is to properly store all of the ingredients in the new cabinets in an orderly fashion. It shouldn't take you more than a few hours to accomplish, and that way we can get back to work tomorrow afternoon after I've rested," he said, never taking his eyes off her as he said it.

"Severus, it's getting pretty late. I would be more than happy to help organize your ingredients if Hermione wishes to get some sleep. I've seen how you categorize your stocks, so..." Remus began, but Severus interrupted him with a roll of his eyes.

"As much as I appreciate your offer, Hermione is my apprentice, and as such she will have the privilege of this task. Not to mention the small fact that you do not and will not know the location of the lab. I relented when you forced the idea of using this manor as the new headquarters. The one satisfaction I gain from it is the knowledge that I can have absolute peace while I'm here. If you wish to summon myself or Hermione when we are in the lab, send out a Patronus. Now, Hermione, will be you able to do this tonight or not?" Severus said, effectively hushing any response to this "exile" that Remus might have made.

"I'll take care of it, Severus," Hermione replied quietly. The intense look that Severus was giving her was making her a little nervous.

"Very well. I'll see you tomorrow, then," Severus remarked stiffly as he tore his eyes away from her and exited out her door, leaving Remus oblivious to the fact that Severus had entered through his own room to begin with.

After a hasty "Good evening", Remus left Hermione to finish her meal before she headed down to the lab. Remus waited in a dark portion of the hall, out of sight, for almost an hour, hoping to follow her to the lab. When she never emerged, he finally peeked into her room and found her gone. He left to seek his own bed, wondering how she had managed that.

~{}~

Severus sank to his knees before the Dark Lord, as was expected of him, before rising and joining the others in the circle. "Severus has confided in me what actually happened this day at the Order of the Phoenix's headquarters. Therefore I will leave it to him to punish the survivors of this unsanctioned attack that set back his work for me. Severus, do you wish to toy with them first or just kill them?" Voldemort asked.

Severus, knowing the smart move all around, answered swiftly. "I believe toying with them first might help teach everyone here this evening what to expect if they disobey you in any way, my lord."

Voldemort smiled as he waved his hand for Severus to start their night of entertainment. As Severus raised his wand to deal the first bit of torture, he hoped that in doing something as horrible as this he might be able to get his mind off the apprentice who awaited him.

~{}~

Hermione couldn't help herself when she first entered the lab. Before getting to work she inspected the whole room from top to bottom, marveling at the absolutely perfect design and layout. It must have taken him months to build this room! she thought in amazement. When she inspected, she found only one cabinet that she couldn't open to use for storage. Upon waving her wand over it, she discovered that it was very heavily warded. While wondering what Severus would guard so secretly, she left it alone and started the task of sorting the ingredients into their respective places.

After an hour of hard work, she was finished and excited about this new lab. Not feeling at all tired, she retrieved her supplies and started working on her potion base for the "blood" portion of the Avada bomb. She was merely practicing the steps up to the point where one was suppose to add actual blood; since Severus had given her strict orders to not go beyond that point, she stopped the potion there and bottled it to give to Severus as proof of her ability to properly execute the potion with ease. She had already bottled eight phials of the base and set them upon his desk by the time he walked into the room around three in the morning. She didn't even notice his arrival, affording him a few moments to watch her closely as she concentrated on her work.

She had a little bit of moisture around her brow line from the constant steam her cauldron emitted. She alternated between chewing her bottom lip as she read a passage from the instructions to pursuing her lips slightly when she measured the ingredients and added them to the cauldron, and finally breathing slowly, in perfect time with her strokes either clockwise or counter. These actions were something he had noticed every time they worked together. Only one other person had ever aroused such interest in Severus Snape, and she was long dead.

Lily.

Shaking his head to clear it of such thoughts while telling himself that he needed to concentrate on work, he swept away from the doorway, startling Hermione. He quickly put away his Death Eater garb and looked closely at the phials she had waiting for him. With a wave of his wand, he tested each phial and smirked when the hazy blue color that appeared above the stoppers confirmed they were absolutely perfect. "I see you're ready to attempt the finished potion," he said suddenly. He rolled up his sleeves and approached her cauldron, making sure to keep a good amount of space between them.

"Thank you, yes, I'm ready for that. But shouldn't you at least eat first, maybe even get a few hours of sleep before you start cutting yourself?" she asked hesitantly as he pulled a dagger from the drawer next to her that housed an array of potions knives.

"Thank you kindly for your concern, but we are both awake, and now is better than later when we still have so much work to complete before the meeting," he said in his "bored" tone of voice, barely wincing when he cut deeply into the palm of his right hand. "Now, hold this phial very steady as it fills up. Good. When you pour it into the potion, make sure to pour it carefully and slowly, making sure that it doesn't splash upward while you mix it into the cauldron. It needs to look like it's disappearing into the potion... That's it. Now step back, it's about to bang," he said calmly, smirking at her shriek when the potion seemed to explode before settling nicely into a deep blood-red color that bubbled lightly over the heat. "Now remove it from the fire and start bottling it. It needs to sit for twenty-four hours before we can test its strength," he instructed while carefully healing his hand and setting up his own work station.

When she was done with the bottling, she started to pack up her area, often glancing at Severus as he began to work on his own base potion, the one that would contain the Avada Kedavra spell. "Is there anything I can do to help you with the Avada base?" she asked him hesitantly. She leaned on the table, watching him stir his cauldron with steadied, practiced movements.

"As a matter of fact, there is. Read through the section on the Avada curse, the section on bottling dangerous spells, and the section on combining bottled spells and body magic carefully. I need you to start listing the possible ways we should approach this. There are any number of ways to combine the steps, but there will be only one way to get the maximum effect without killing ourselves in the process. As you write out the procedures, contemplate everything you know about this potion carefully. I'll look over your notes tomorrow after we confirm your blood magic phials are perfect."

Hermione went straight to work. She made herself pay close attention as she studied the chapters and wrote down the problems they needed to avoid, making it easier to determine the order for the steps. She couldn't let Severus down by screwing this up, not when he was trusting her with something so important, something he had asked her to do that was so unlike him. Another occurrence for her to ponder later, when she was alone in her room.

~{}~

Molly Weasley tapped her foot on the carpet in an impatient manner as she scowled at Remus. Before she went to bed, she had mentioned to Remus that she wanted to talk to Hermione, just to check on her really. Remus told her not to bother, that Hermione was busy working in the lab. When Molly asked him where the lab was, Remus had told her truthfully that Severus refused to share that bit of information with him. So there they both sat, awkwardly waiting for Hermione to come back into her room. Two hours after sitting down huffily and refusing to leave, Molly heard the other door open and in walked Hermione, unmistakably from Severus's own bedroom.

Molly didn't know what to say, so she quickly managed "Is Severus in there?" as she shot up off the couch. Remus was close behind, an uncomfortable look on his face. Molly burst through the door Hermione had come through, startling Severus who was in the process of untying his shoes. She nearly slammed the door on Remus's arm when she quickly shut the door behind her before Hermione could manage to get through as well.

"What do you have to say for yourself? What exactly is going on here?" Molly asked Severus boldly, motioning toward the door that led to Hermione's room. Hermione could be heard knocking insistently on the door, wanting to add to whatever "discussion" was going on.

"I have no earthly idea to what you are referring, Molly. I certainly hope you have a good explanation for what I could possibly have done to cause you to come bursting in here to disturb me," Severus answered smoothly, continuing to untie and remove his shoes.

"I'm talking about your sneaking around with Hermione. Remus and I just witnessed her coming from your bedroom in the middle of the morning! Not to mention the amount of time you both have been hidden away in the house in a lab you tell no one else how to get to! What are you doing with that child? I demand to know!"

Severus was pissed, to put it mildly. "How dare you throw accusations like those at me? Not that it's any of your business, but there's a hidden entrance to the lab from this very room. That is why I created a door for her, so it would be easier for her to get to the lab and do her work! We've spent the last few hours working on a potion that could very well end this damned war and save your nosy little life!" he said stiffly, anger filling the room even though he hadn't raised his voice at all.

"This whole situation is just not right!" Molly persisted. "Hermione is a child. She's been through enough. It's just not fitting for her to be in such close and unsupervised contact with a man your age. I'm putting a stop to it right this instant, for her own good!"

Severus didn't even have a chance to answer before the door between their rooms blew off its hinges and crashed against the far wall, knocking Remus to the ground in the process.

Hermione entered the room swiftly, apologizing briefly to Remus before she whirled around to face Molly. "No, this is going to stop right now! First of all, I am NO child, Mrs. Weasley, so stop using that word because it will never be fit to describe me again! Secondly, yes, I've been through hell. I was tortured and raped repeatedly by that bastard Lucius! But I refuse to stand by while you try to 'protect' me from the world. We're in the middle of a war. The best way for me to contribute to the fight is to help Severus, which I WILL continue to do, without your or anyone's supervision! How you can think such things at a time like this I'll never understand, but it ends now. Severus is my boss, and also... my friend. I trust him with my life since he risked his to save it! Don't you ever question that in such a manner again!" she finished heatedly. She turned and stalked from the room, leaving the others in a mild state of shock after her outburst against Molly.

Remus, not knowing what else to do, said, "Well, I'll get this door back on its hinges, and then I'm off to bed. Molly, let me walk you out...."

Molly stormed out of the room, embarrassed but still believing she was in the right.

Severus sat down in the large chair near the windows after Remus left.

Her friend. She considers me her friend, he thought, remembering the fiery passion in Hermione's eyes when she had defended him to Molly. Something changed inside of him right then, though he would never admit it. He was starting to care for Hermione Granger deeply.

A/N: Wow... That is the longest chapter I've written in a while lol. I hope you enjoyed this update... Please read and REVIEW! *HUGS*