Detention in the Dungeon

Disclaimer: Is any of this mine, really? Well... no.

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That evening...

Severus set the basket of spurge cuttings on a worktable at the back of the classroom and moved to the supply cabinet to gather gloves, goggles, a nasal filter, a metal bowl, a silver knife, and a large glass beaker. He had just set the equipment down next to the spurge when a knock sounded on the door.

He felt the first tendrils of a headache curling behind his eyes.

'Enter,' he growled, and the door swung open to admit Dean Thomas and Hermione Granger. Severus's lip curled in a reflexive little sneer.

'Mr Thomas, you will be working over here.' He spread his hand out to indicate the table with the spurge. 'Don't touch anything before I have given you your instructions.' He turned his gaze to the girl. 'Miss Granger, your cauldron is on the bench and the supply cabinet is unlocked. I suggest you choose a workspace as far from Mr Thomas as possible. His immediate vicinity will soon be... unpleasant.'

Severus returned his attention to Thomas. 'Tonight you will be milking this spurge. I believe Professor Sprout covered spurge with you several years ago?'

Thomas screwed up his eyes and said rather noncommittally, 'Erm, yes...'

Granger was still standing nearby. Out of the corner of his eye, Severus saw her actually start to lift her hand for permission to speak...no doubt the relevant passage from One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi was burning a hole in her tongue. Incredible. She's like a barely trained Labrador puppy. He ignored her.

'Let me refresh your memory on the salient points, Mr Thomas. Spurge sap is caustic. It sticks like burning tar to whatever it touches. It's a violent purgative. This particular spurge is at the height of its potency. Do I have your attention?'

The boy nodded gloomily.

'Very well. Tonight you will squeeze the sap from the stems in this basket into this beaker. Watch me.' Severus drew on the goggles, nasal filter, and gloves, picked up the knife, and plucked a fat stem from the basket.

'Make a series of little slits in the stem and roll it between your fingers, like this, to press out the sap.' Drops of a pungent, sticky white substance oozed out of the punctured plant. 'When you are sure a stem is wrung dry of sap, put it in this metal bowl.' Severus dropped the spent stem in the bowl and pulled off the safety gear.

'If you don't want to end the evening in the infirmary with weeping skin ulcers, pay attention to what you're doing. Don't get the sap on your skin or clothing; if you do, spell it off immediately. Don't drip it on the table. Keep your mouth closed so you don't breathe it in. Don't touch your eyes or mouth or nose with anything that has touched the sap. When you are done, Scourgify your hair and clothing. Do you understand?'

'Yes, sir,' said Thomas tonelessly, and reached for the nasal filter.

'Good. Since the fresh sap is volatile, I am going to set a ventilation charm and a vapour barrier around your workspace.' Severus flicked his wand and the air around Dean's table shimmered briefly and began to hum slightly.

He turned and paced up the aisle. At the front of the classroom, Granger was just setting her bag down next to a worktable. Merlin, are those wands sticking out of her hair? The girl's long brown hair was pulled back and twisted into a messy knot, which seemed to be held in place on the back of her head by two wooden sticks. The effect was oddly pleasing. He had to ask.

'Miss Granger.'

She jumped as though stung and spun around to face him. 'Sir?'

The alarm in her eyes just... bothered him. It shouldn't. But the contrast between the unguarded expression he'd seen in her earlier and this look of watchfulness made him feel hollowed out. I'm like a Dementor. Sucking a bit of joy out of any room. But almost before the thought formed in his head, he had performed the usual mental alchemy, transforming his painful reaction into cold disdain.

'What are those... objects... in your hair?' He injected a note of distaste into his voice and flared his nostrils as though he smelled something off. She smells of lemon verbena. He added a slight grimace.

'Oh.' Her hand flew up to touch one. 'Hair sticks. Well, chopsticks really. But they work just as well, and I, um, my mum wears her hair this way and...' She stopped mid-babble. Mercifully.

'Quite.' He infused the word with contempt.

Severus moved on around his desk. The sight that met him there was not cheering: forty each of Second-Year and Third-Year essays. He closed his eyes, acknowledging the spreading dull ache between his temples.

For a while, the quiet of the dungeon was broken only by the scratching of quill and the rustling of parchment; the quiet chopping and clinking sounds from Hermione Granger's table; and, once, a sharp yowl followed by a muttered spell when Dean Thomas came in contact with a bit of spurge sap.

After twenty minutes or so, Severus looked up at Granger.

She was absorbed in her work...focused and relaxed. He breathed in; she must have just added the shaved bolete. It smelled exactly right...loamy, with an acrid note. Clever girl.

As he watched, the thought hit him that it was a rare thing for him to work alongside someone else...someone working competently and quietly on her own project. It felt collegial and... cosy.

Cosy. His sneer was for himself this time. What a soft-headed notion.

***

Some fifty minutes after she entered it, Hermione closed the classroom door behind her. She sank onto the stone bench in the corridor, absently clutching a wooden box on her lap. The best thing would be to collect her thoughts before she went back to the common room. She was aware she was a bit undone.

Closing her eyes, she slumped against the wall and reviewed the past hour...

* * *

As she and Dean descended from Gryffindor Tower, Hermione reckoned she was half curious and half apprehensive about the prospect of seeing Professor Snape.

Was she going to act like an idiot? Mess up her potion? Give him an excuse to sneer at her? Or would she find that her reaction to him this morning had been a fluke, and that he was just her unpleasant Potions teacher after all?

By the time they reached the dungeons, she had begun to tense up, the centring effects of her run leaching away into anxiety.

When Dean opened the door, Professor Snape was standing right at the back of the classroom...closer than she had anticipated...and her pulse leapt alarmingly.

But Snape almost immediately turned his attention to Dean, whose task would apparently involve spurge.

She lingered, mercifully ignored, near Dean's worktable.

At first she was half afraid Professor Snape was just going to leave Dean to sort out the spurge himself...and she was pretty sure Dean wouldn't remember the details of a Herbology reading from their second year.

But Snape actually spent five minutes explaining the task and its dangers, and even demonstrating the proper technique. He wasn't the least bit warm or encouraging, but his instructions were clear and complete.

He can be a good teacher when he wants to be, she thought.

And in the few moments she stood there unobserved, watching her teacher interact with her fellow student, she fell through the looking glass completely.

This morning she had noticed how beautiful his hands were. Tonight, nothing about him seemed the same as before. His mouth. The way he moved. The cut of his clothes. His eyes. Eyebrows. Cheekbones. The way he held himself.

And his voice, gods. Muggle actors were paid well to use their voices like that. It was resonant, cultured, precise. Every sound came out as though it had been chosen and placed exactly where he wanted it. The minute movements of his mouth as he formed each word were... hypnotic. And the tone, low, rich, and velvety smooth, seemed to issue from some place deep inside him. It was a glorious, dark, seductive voice; how had she never realised it?

She caught herself staring at his mouth and forced her eyes away before she was discovered.

She managed to move to the front of the classroom before he was finished with Dean, only to be electrified moments later when he said her name.

'Miss Granger.'

She turned to face him, trying to school her features into some sort of neutral expression.

'Sir?'

'What are those... objects... in your hair?'

She felt her eyes pinned helplessly to his mouth. She wasn't entirely sure what she said then...some nonsense. Apparently all he had to do was say a half-dozen words to her and she'd lose her mind. Bad, this is bad and stupid...

'Quite.' He bit out the word and sailed on to his desk.

She breathed in and out slowly. Twice.

Well. So she had just acted a bit of an idiot, and he had sneered at her a little, but it had passed.

She risked a glance at him. He did not seem to be in the mood to bait or insult her...or to talk to her at all. Indeed, he just looked tired as he surveyed the piles of parchment covering his desk.

Okay, good, fine. I can do this.

Once she had collected her cauldron and ingredients, she was able to lose herself in her work...even with Snape working a few steps away.

The quiet of the classroom was soothing. At one point it occurred to her how pleasant it was to be able to concentrate on her own work without interruption.

Hermione's potion was a success, she knew. But she wasn't sure exactly what to do with it once it was finished.

'Professor,' she ventured.

He raised his eyes and lifted one eyebrow. 'Yes, Miss Granger?'

'I'm finished, and I think it is, erm, correctly done. Shall I... do you want to give it to Madam Pomfrey if it's, you know, okay?' Her voice was not obeying her, but was coming out all squeaky and shaky.

'Bring it here.'

She lifted the steaming cauldron and carried it to him, carefully setting it on a brass trivet on the desk's corner.

He rose and, seizing a long-handled silver spoon, dipped it into the potion. (Lord, the way he moves...) First he dribbled a bit of the potion back into the cauldron, checking its colour and consistency. Then he lifted another spoonful to his nose and breathed in the vapour. Finally, he dipped the tip of his little finger into the potion in the spoon, and (omygods) brought it to his lips for a taste.

The slight pursing of his lips as he tasted his own finger sent a jolt of heat through her. I want that to be my finger. Or, let me taste yours. Her teeth caught a bit of her upper lip into her mouth, and as she released it, the tiniest whimper escaped her throat.

He narrowed his eyes and stiffened at the sound, seeming to radiate a sharp displeasure.

'This will do,' he said icily. 'Kindly wait while I decant this. I will ask you to take the completed bottles of Blood-Replenishing Potion up to Madam Pomfrey on your way back to your dormitory.'

He picked up her cauldron and stalked through the door to his office.

His robes move like that because they're gathered at the shoulder, Hermione babbled inwardly as she stared at the door. And because he moves quickly. Or really, because he'll be quite still, then he'll move, then he'll be quite still again. He wastes no movement whatsoever. She wondered how she could ever have thought he was anything at all like a chittering, swooping bat. Shaking her head to clear it, she moved to clean up her work space.

As she fastened the buckle on her bag, Professor Snape reemerged with a wooden box full of clinking glass bottles.

He set it on the corner of her table, said, 'Goodbye, Miss Granger,' and turned back to his desk.

'Good evening, Professor,' she murmured.

Dean, face half obscured by his safety gear, mumbled a wistful sounding 'G'bye' as she passed him.

She gave him a sympathetic but wobbly smile in return. She really couldn't trust herself with more.

This morning she had been shocked to discover that Professor Snape was attractive, even sexy. Tonight she knew better. He's not just sexy. He's bloody well made of sex.

Maybe after all this wasn't going to be fun, strictly speaking.

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A/N: Love and thanks to my beta greenstuff and Brit-picker lifeasanamazon, and to everyone who posted a review for the first two chapters! Meeting you all makes this even more fun.

Curious about spurge? Check out http://www.botanical.com/botanical/mgmh/s/spurge84.html