Caught

Summary: In which everyone seems to know what Hermione is thinking, including (finally!) Hermione.

A/N: In celebration of Ari's and Professor Snape's both finishing marking a set of essays, a rather longish chapter for you. My thanks, as always, to my alpha readers, Anastasia, Indigofeathers, Mia Madwyn, and AnnieTalbot (who also beta-read this chapter, saving me from many a rampaging Hippogriff). A huge welcome home to Lady Karelia.

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28: Caught

Professor Snape smirked and continued grading.

-----

Severus's senses were attuned to the potion, and regardless of Hermione's continued absence, Athena's dubious wisdom, should she exist, or Mimi's fondness for shiny things, it needed attention. He arose from Hermione's side, and, after a lingering touch on her cheek, he went into the kitchen.

---

"You are dismissed. Return tomorrow, immediately after lunch."

Not daring to look at him, Hermione nodded and collected her things. "Goodnight, sir."

He hesitated before replying. "Goodnight, Miss Granger."

That pause, that "Goodnight, Miss Granger," nearly proved the undoing of her ability to leave his classroom, but she insisted, and her feet obeyed. As she made her careful way through the darkened dungeon corridors and began the long climb back to Gryffindor tower, his voice seemed to follow her, padding as softly and insistently behind her as Crookshanks.

The Kneazle darted lightly up the stairs; she, only human, climbed them wearily, her mind full of the echoes of his silence and his voice.

Something felt off – his hesitation before he replied to her leave-taking.

She paused on the stairs.

She was no actor, she knew. Unlike her professor, she had no way of keeping her thoughts to herself; just managing not to blurt them out as soon as they occurred to her was itself an accomplishment, and one that pushed the limits of her discretion as far as they could reasonably be expected to reach. Especially at fourteen.

At the top of the stairs, she leaned against the banister, adjusting her heavy bag on her shoulder.

In her mind, she heard it again – the pause, then "Goodnight, Miss Granger."

Why had he paused? What was he thinking?

Did he suspect something?

She shrugged slightly. There was no help for it; he was simply too observant, too perceptive and probably too paranoid not to realize that all was not as usual with Miss Hermione Granger, Hogwarts Fourth-Year.

She stood for several minutes, lost in musing on the obscure silences and devastating voice that together comprised Severus Snape.

An accusing shriek brought her back to herself, and she started, pressing her back instinctively to the wall.

"You!" A bespangled figure draped with several moth-eaten velvet shawls was staring at her from the grand stair, eyes owlish behind over-large spectacles.

Oh, fuck me. "Good evening, Professor Trelaw–"

"You!" Professor Trelawney repeated, taking a cautious step. "I felt some disturbing Presence as I cast the crystals in my silent tower, so I descended into the mundane halls, seeking its source..." She took another step. "My Sight led me to you," she finished in a theatrical whisper.

Merlin on a muffin.

"Your aura is conflicted... never before have I Seen such marked disturbance on the Inner Planes..."

Must she capitalize every word? Hermione wondered, locking her jaw against whatever she might say, her eyes darting about for an alternate route toward her common room.

Professor Trelawney descended the grand stair as rapidly as her multi-layered robes would allow. Stopping several steps shy of Hermione, she raised her hands and intoned, "Begone, Spirit! I Cast you out! Return, return to the Dark Places whence you Manifested!"

That sounded a fine idea, but Hermione had barely time to blink before a low, even voice floated up the stair behind her.

"What is this caterwaul?"

Professor Snape. Hermione closed her eyes and let her head fall back against the stone wall, silently reminding the perving tides that now would be an excellent time to send her home. Or... wait. No. Fourteen-year-old Hermione Granger would have no idea how to –

"Severus... stay back – stay back!" Professor Trelawney held her hand in a warning.

"From what, you twittering idiot?"

Don't mince words, Professor, Hermione thought wryly, not moving.

"Some Dark Spirit has Possessed the unfortunate Miss Granger... I must Cast it out."

"You couldn't cast a budgie off your table with a Beater's bat."

Hermione tried not to smile. Too right.

"What seems to be the trouble?" another voice called calmly down from an upper gallery.

Professor McGonagall. Help.

"Sybill is having an episode –"

"Our poor Miss Granger's shuttered Inner Eye has made her vulnerable to Spiritual Invasion – some dread Spirit Possesses her even now!"

"Oh, surely not," Minerva said briskly, coming downstairs. "Miss Granger, curfew is moments from now. Off to bed with you."

Hermione stepped away from the wall with relief.

"One moment, Minerva," Professor Snape said. "Stay," he ordered Hermione.

Woof, she mentally snarled.

"The Spirit must be exorcised, and, as I am the only one who can See ..."

"Hush, Sybill," Minerva said. "Severus, what did you need?"

"Despite tremendous reluctance to grant an iota of credence to this –"

A wordless protest from Professor Trelawney.

Professor Snape added a distinct edge to his voice and finished, "there are one or two items that warrant discussion with her Head of House."

"Stand back – save yourselves! I shall Cast it..."

Hermione, caught at the epicenter of two of Hogwarts' most powerful professors and one of its loudest, merely intensified her plea to the perving tides, any awkwardness for her fourteen-year-old self be damned.

Professor McGonagall ignored Professor Trelawney. "Yes, Severus?"

"Miss Granger has demonstrated knowledge beyond what is appropriate to her year and seems suddenly unable to manage her familiar. As intractable as felines often are..."

Minerva's eyes narrowed.

"... there is something distinctly odd about her behavior."

Rather, Hermione thought sourly, although she did not move.

Apparently deciding to let the feline remark pass without comment, Minerva pursed her lips and turned to Hermione. "Miss Granger. Are you feeling quite well?"

"Reasonably well, thank you, Professor," Hermione said.

"The Dark Spirit speaks!" Professor Trelawney made to step forward, to do what, Hermione could only guess, but Minerva stopped her with a firmly outstretched arm.

The gong announcing curfew sounded loudly throughout the castle, drowning out Minerva's "Stuff and nonsense."

The professor waited for the echoes to die away before continuing. "It is only natural for students to mature and change over the summer holidays, and it's not remotely unusual for Miss Granger to read ahead in the curriculum. Only today you yourself awarded her Special Merit for her work in Potions..."

"Merit she can hardly have earned unaided, Minerva, as I told you," he said smoothly, "given that she has no particular aptitude."

Unaided? Hardly. Hermione firmly squelched an ironic and slightly hysterical laugh, which was threatening to erupt at any second.

"Furthermore," Professor Snape was saying, "the Felix Felicis potion is not part of the standard curriculum, and she has not received my permission to access the Restricted Section for Potions texts."

"Of course she hasn't. Oh, very well." Minerva turned to Hermione. "Where did you hear about the Felix Felicis potion?"

"I read about it over the summer, Professor."

"In what text?"

Hermione visualized the appropriate section of the Archive and named one of several volumes Demetrios had shelved between four-leafed clovers and the White Rabbit.

Professor Snape drawled, "Murphy's Fortuna was lost three centuries past."

"His original notes are kept at the Archive," she blurted out, startling all three professors into momentary silence. Instinct told her not to lie. "I... I've been to the Archive."

"It speaks... the Dark Spirit speaks..."

"Hush, Sybill."

Professor Snape smirked. "Untrained witches or wizards are not permitted in the Archive without a magical guardian. How do you even know it exists?"

"The Dark Spirit Speaks through her!" Professor Trelawney intoned.

"Cease, both of you," Professor McGonagall commanded. "Severus, you're interrogating the child pointlessly; no doubt she's heard of the Archive. Several of our older Muggle-born Ravenclaws have engaged Filius as temporary guardian when doing advanced research; he often accompanies them over holidays, and she must have heard them speak of it."

"Ignore my warning at your peril, Minerva... peril..."

Professor Snape cut Professor Trelawney off. "Miss Granger is not in Ravenclaw."

"To Filius's lasting dismay."

Crookshanks grew bored and tried to climb Hermione's leg.

She reached down to pat his head.

"There," Minerva said, gesturing toward the Kneazle. "Were Miss Granger truly, hm, possessed, her familiar would not behave so."

Thanks, Crooky.

"Rrrr," he replied, stretching toward her hand.

"But I must insist –" Professor Snape stepped forward.

"Have you ever had a familiar, Severus?" Minerva asked gently, so gently that Hermione assumed her Head of House already knew the answer.

He stopped. "You know I have not."

"Then you must take my word, regarding felines particularly. The bond between wizarding kind and their familiars is allowed as evidence even by the Wizengamot."

"Which does not explain how she was able to enter the Archive."

"My parents appreciate the Muggle branch of the Library," Hermione said carefully, fighting the childish urge to cross her fingers in the folds of her robes. "And I... well, I've found the entrance to the Wizarding Branch." Once a day, for several years, she finished mentally.

Professor Snape's eyebrow twitched skeptically, and he crossed his arms. "And where is the entrance located?"

"I'm sorry, sir, but it's not a 'where,' it's a 'how.' There's a passage on the Rosetta Stone which, if read aloud by a witch or wizard, reveals the entrance."

A long silence. "You expect us to believe you accidentally discovered that knowledge."

Shite. Don't lie. "We studied Hieroglyphics in Ancient Runes, sir, and I..." Hermione dropped her gaze from his buttons to his boots. "Sometimes I show off. A bit." There. That you'll believe.

His voice lowered. "And how is it you were allowed to examine the actual holdings?"

She reflexively raised her chin and caught herself before her defiant look could reach his eyes. Staring determinedly at the bridge of his nose, she said, "The curator is very kind, sir, and he proved willing to indulge my curiosity." Which is exactly what landed me here. Making a mental note to blast Demetrios across the Archive with a forge bellows should she ever return to her own time, Hermione waited as if for a verdict.

"Kindness and curiosity - that is Demetrios to a T." Minerva chuckled. "Is he still enamored of Elizabethan tavern songs?"

"I... I don't know, for sure." Hermione cast about for a random musical form. "He may have mentioned light opera... Rossini?" Considering that Demetrios mentioned almost everything that had ever existed several times a fortnight, she hoped her answer would both satisfy Professor McGonagall and pass for truth given Professor Trelawney's entirely unwelcome newfound acquaintance with accuracy.

Professor Snape shifted his weight, his robes rustling softly in the silent Hall.

Knowing herself unpracticed at evasion and feeling keenly that despite her truthful words he knew – he must know – she was hiding something, she was suddenly very conscious of not looking toward the source of the sound he'd made. It would have been natural to look, she chided herself, but nonetheless, she instead found herself facing Professor Trelawney, who was staring at her with myopic wonder. "A Dark Spirit cannot speak truth... yet It does not lie... what strange Portent is this... some Portent of Doom, when a Spirit walks amongst us yet does not lie!"

Professor Snape snorted and started to speak again, but Professor McGonagall held up a slender hand, forestalling further discussion. "Come along, Miss Granger. It's past curfew. I shall escort you up to Gryffindor Tower, and..."

Professor Trelawney drew breath, and again Professor McGonagall intervened. "I shall have her see Madam Pomfrey tomorrow morning for a full work-over. I trust that will be acceptable to you, Severus?"

He nodded shortly. Turning abruptly, he slipped into the darkness of the stair.

The hairs on the back of Hermione's neck told her he was still listening.

"The mediwitch can only see the mundane," Professor Trelawney began.

"Poppy knows the standard tests for Darkness. There is nothing wrong with this child except that she is out after curfew and falling asleep on her feet." Professor McGonagall cast Hermione a sly look out of the corner of her eye.

Hermione let her eyelids droop in what she hoped was a reasonable facsimile of "tired."

"Goodnight, Sybill."

Still moaning about portents and doom, Professor Trelawney wafted away in a flutter of spangled shawls.

To Hermione's surprise, Professor McGonagall emitted a small, satisfied laugh. "Oh, dear, Miss Granger. To be caught between those two – I'm glad I happened by when I did."

Hermione heard Professor Snape tread fade away in the corridor below-stairs, and she smiled faintly as relief made her knees wobble. "Thank you, Professor. It was rather... awkward."

"Of course, Miss Granger. Of course." Professor McGonagall gestured companionably and they headed for the stair. "Your familiar is looking particularly smug this evening."

"Perhaps he believes himself responsible for my, hrm, rescue?" Hermione ventured politely.

"No doubt he does."

---

"... there is something distinctly odd about her behavior."

Severus grimaced and continued stirring as his memories doubled. He forced himself to finish stirring, adding powdered yarrow from the height of his heart.

The potion surface yielded, and the yarrow disappeared into its depths.

Its color did not change, and Severus nodded, glancing automatically at the kitchen clock.

Only then did he move slowly to sit at the table.

Something odd about her behavior, indeed, he thought, replaying the memory of the scene in the Entrance Hall, wondering how long it would take his former self to connect her damnable eyes with her knowing things she shouldn't.

He remembered the feel of her in his arms, and he flinched.

Mimi's ears appeared over the edge of the table-top, and she put a delicate paw on the table. "Meee," she said softly.

He nodded, distracted. "You're right, kitten." About what, he didn't think to wonder.

Forcing himself to focus on his memories of her eyes – she was looking at his past self rather too often for comfort – he tried to pinpoint what about them, exactly, he found so very disconcerting.

Brown. They were brown. That wasn't it.

Stop flinching, he told himself.

There was a lightness to most students' eyes that was missing from hers.

They weren't as... shallow, for want of a better word. Nor could they be as easily as read as other students'. In his first years as a teacher, he'd quickly learned to recognize duplicity, fear, shame, the occasional spark of intelligence as one or another of the older ones grasped a concept for the first time.

He adjusted his seat, stretching his legs out before him.

Mimi padded to his hand and butted it. "Meee," she said again, very quietly.

He rubbed a knuckle along her whiskers, reviewing his newest memories.

As Hermione had leaned against the stone wall, her eyes closed, she could have been the Miss Granger of his original memories. It was only when she opened her eyes and stepped away from the wall that...

Ah.

Then...

You bloody fool.

For once, this was directed at himself in the present, not the past.

He'd missed seeing it before.

As Hermione stood between Minerva and that lunatic Divination professor, he realized that she looked no different than she had yesterday. Sometime between third and fourth year, Hermione Granger had grown up.

He doubted she was a hair's breadth taller now.

Still stroking Mimi's cheek, he shifted slightly in his chair.

He'd had it backwards. It wasn't that her eyes didn't fit her physical body; it was that they did.

He supposed he could be forgiven for paying little heed to the inevitable maturation of his students. Children grew; it was a natural process requiring neither his assistance nor his supervision, and he'd been more concerned with herding them through seven years of increasingly volatile potions than with their physical changes. That was neither his purview nor his concern; he'd reserved his attention for rather more urgent matters.

He rifled through his memories.

Boys, he recalled, almost inevitably went through a clumsy phase – all elbows and splashed potions as they grew accustomed to limbs that seemed to grow overnight.

Girls – well. He'd heard the faculty whose classrooms required wand use chuckle as young witches experienced the inevitable odd burst of unpredictable magic, but that usually settled out within a few months. No, girls...

He quirked his lips.

Girls seemed to grow into their elbows more smoothly than boys.

He again recalled the image of Hermione as she'd she'd turned away to avoid looking at him.

His past self had merely cataloged her evasion, but he saw rather more now: that between her third and fourth years, Miss Granger had grown into her elbows.

He'd no doubt that, were she to suddenly arise from the lounge and appear before him in her school uniform –

He shifted uncomfortably in the chair.

– should she appear before him in her school uniform, it would fit, and there would be little difference between the student whose record he was systematically destroying and the mature Hermione Granger, whose breath he'd felt soft on his skin not twenty-four hours before.

Blast.

He stood abruptly and paced her floor.

He knew that his past self, his attention having been sparked, would remain forever attuned to whatever object had ignited his instincts. Especially then, with the Dark Mark intensifying on his forearm.

He would, he knew, be watching Hermione Granger for the slightest, most subtle clues.

To what scarcely mattered. It had never been his role to interpret clues, merely to catalogue them, assess them for potential threat, and use them to his advantage whenever possible.

"Be careful, Hermione," he whispered.

Mimi trotted past him, heading for Hermione's bedroom.

Without thinking, he followed, lighting the lamp at her bedside with half a thought.

His eyes swept her empty bed, the white counterpane still slightly rumpled from when she'd last arisen, and he swallowed hard, his mind awash with vague notions and sounds of unimaginable softness.

"Don't be daft," he muttered.

Mimi glanced up at him and leapt onto Hermione's pillow.

"You are not helping."

Drawing himself imperceptibly straighter, he glanced at the magically shrunken wardrobe and began the Charms that would unlock and enlarge it.

The bubbles appeared, swirling slowly before him.

He knew their secrets and, without stopping to question his intent, he initiated the unlocking sequence, and seven bubbles wafted into line.

Parchment. Ink. Sealing wax. Silver...

He closed his eyes and breathed in the scents she'd long ago unconsciously associated with him, scents from the night he'd called Potter with his Patronus and hidden the sword.

It was almost unthinkable that she'd created this sophisticated locking Charm and remained unaware of its basis in Amortentia.

But then she'd never been talented in Potions.

Capable, yes.

Talented... no.

And besides, why would she have wanted to examine too closely her own desire? Why, indeed, when the wizard she desired was dead?

He popped the last three bubbles, inhaling their scents.

In the last day, pine had become peony, and old canvas, leather.

But loss remained.

---

In bed at last, and at last alone save for Crookshanks, Hermione drew out her reading notes.

"Mimi?" she whispered.

"PRFSSR SAD."

"I'm sorry, sweetheart."

"KITTEH NO LYK."

"What's he doing?"

"BUBBLZ."

"Oh? Oh."

Hermione closed her eyes and recalled home. Her things. Her wardrobe, all chaos save for her school uniforms, which she'd kept in painstakingly perfect order. Her locking Charm.

"Parchment, ink, sealing wax..." she whispered, a comfort in the darkness, "pine, silver, bloody Hell!"

"Hermione, shut it; do... can't you study silently for once? The quiz isn't until Tuesday week."

"Sorry, Parvati."

Hermione buried her face in her pillow.

Amortentia. Of course.

It all made sense now.

The night in the forest when Ron had returned. She'd known the sword had to have been Headmaster Snape's doing as soon as she'd seen it. She'd said nothing to the boys, of course – saying anything might have disturbed the fragile truce they'd reached in the woods.

No, best not to tell them that the only person with access to the sword, the only person who made any sense at all was Headmaster Snape.

The appearance of the sword had confirmed her privately held suspicion that he and Professor Dumbledore had hashed out a plan, probably long before, and...

It had always been her role to interpret clues, and she was usually right.

She'd built her entire career on it.

That said, it usually didn't take her quite this long. Several years ago, she had based that locking Charm not only on remembered scents, but also, she now knew, on Amortentia.

She swore silently. Why must she realize this now, and not after she returned to her own time? Or if not then, why not before?

Well, she had been a bit distracted, what with being first haunted and then kissed passionately, and finally ending things with Ron.

She stifled a groan. She did not want to live through the Ron business again, especially knowing that she would refuse to marry him because she'd been in... well, enamoured with the memory of Severus Snape, double agent, murderer, and their past – her current Potions professor.

Too buggering ironic to realize about the Amortentia now. Of course, it made a kind of twisted sense that since she could see him she could also see her own heart.

How superbly literal. The irony was almost Greek in its...

Oh, right – Athena. Not "almost" Greek; it was Greek.

Lovely.

She wrinkled her nose and silently told the Goddess of Wisdom to bugger off; she needed to sleep.

She drew the covers over her head and mentally repeated the locking scents.

Parchment. Ink. Sealing wax. His memo. She'd not known it consciously, the scents mingling with those of her own supplies. Pine. Old canvas. Those were obvious.

Silver. The sword itself, a silver so pure it smelled faintly cold, faintly sharp.

And loss.

That had come later.

She wouldn't let it happen again.

She opened her eyes. "Crooky... is Mimi still there?"

---

Severus heard a plaintive "Meee" from the kitchen and, leaving the wardrobe fully expanded, joined the kitten by the table.

The cereal had moved.

"PRFSSR?" it read.

"I'm here."

"SRY 4 BUBBLZ."

So, she'd realized. Well, of course; in her temporal location in the previous decade, he wasn't yet dead, so there was no real impediment to...

He coughed.

... excepting, of course, that he was her professor, and she was his fourteen-year-old student.

---

"IN A MINNIT – PRFSSR CHOK."

I rather imagine he does... "Tell Mimi I didn't realize about... about the bubbles," Hermione told Crookshanks. "Not until just now."

---

Mimi blinked at Severus, amused.

"Quite."

Mimi looked at him curiously.

"Tell her that I did."

---

"I'm so sorry," she whispered.

"NO NEED."

---

Notes on Sources and Other Things:

1. Any perceived allusions to Trelawney as a kind of Cassandra are entirely Greek to me.

2. Four-leafed clover: Supposedly a bringer of luck, perhaps because anyone looking that closely at the ground might reasonably be expected to wander heedlessly into the path of a rampaging Hippogriff.

3. The White Rabbit: Character (created by Lewis Carroll in Alice in Wonderland) who, like Hermione regarding the small matter of Severus's death, always perceives himself as "too late." Nonetheless, he always makes his narrative entrances spot on time. Hm.

4. Murphy's Fortuna: Imaginary tome based on Murphy's Law, which states that "Anything that can go wrong will." Double hm.

5. Rosetta Stone: Stone tablet located in the British Museum that bears the same text in three written languages. Not so much three ways of looking at a blackbird; more three ways of saying the same thing.

6. Yarrow: Flower associated with healing.

7. Hermione's locking Charm first appears in the story in Chapter 4.

~ A.