Disappointed

A/N: I'd like to thank all of you readers. And especially those of you who care to share your thoughts about my story. They are very appreciated, and my muse rejoices! I would also like to send thanks, bags of chocolates and lemon drops to potionsmistress23, my beta.

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Fairy tales, regular children's fairy-tales, especially those with enchantments and evil, ugly, princess-snatching creatures, became one of Hermione's biggest fears after she had discovered the living fairy-tale that was the Wizarding world more than six years ago.

For the year after she had received her Hogwarts letter, her impression of the Magical Britain consisted of the prim and proper Professor McGonagall, who came to deliver the news and talk to her shocked Muggle parents. She had then quickly shifted into her cat form, coughed up a hairball, and leapt out of the window, lithely climbing down the vines. It filled young Hermione's eager, inquisitive mind with all sorts of chimaeras no child should encounter. Ever the skeptic, even in her early years, Hermione found it extremely hard to reconcile the anthropogenic hubbub of the twentieth century, as she had known it, with the Victorian, wand-wielding surrealism of this new, hidden, magical world.

What if the stuff from fairy-tales was true, the eleven-year-old-but-already-practical-beyond-her-years Hermione wondered? What was the extent of things that could be achieved with magic? Could one person control the minds of others? Tell them what to do, and they would mindlessly obey? Reach some point of indestructibility and dispense with the disagreeable at one swish of a wand? Raised on the horrors of modern wars and conflicts, violence on TV and in the streets, Hermione shuddered to think of what could happen if some mad fanatic on a mission to 'make the world a better place' had a powerful wizard at their disposal. She spent sleepless nights wondering why the world had not yet met an untimely and horrible end.

Seven years after, having learned a thing or two about the magical society and about Voldemort, she thanked the gods that the Dark Lord detested Muggles and seemed content to wreak local havoc. She secretly found his cause dumb, his scale appeared ridiculously petty, and his course of actions seemed absolutely aimless. He might have been able, in her opinion, to create a skirmish in a passive, easily scandalized Wizarding Britain. He was definitely capable of whipping a handful of Death Eaters into blind following. But he was nothing as compared to Muggle tyrants in ways of thinking.

Secretly, Hermione was not afraid of Voldemort on a grand scale. She was only terrified that he might hurt those close to her, and that was her own personal and most important reason to actively support Dumbledore's cause. Because, all in all, Hermione Granger just could not bring herself to believe that the snake would ever win, considering his tactics. His claims to world domination seemed to her as credible as those of the fat and funny lab rat from a Muggle cartoon she had once watched.

Nevertheless, each time a new layer of all things magical unveiled before her, she became tetchy, and all those childhood fears sprang back to life. Combined with Dumbledore's oblique hints about destiny, right now they made her feel unpleasantly precious about herself.

She skipped dinner, unwilling to face Harry and Ron and their impending interrogation just yet. Instead, she drew shut the curtains of her maidenly, narrow bed in the room she shared with Lavender and Parvati, let Crooks cuddle at her feet, and tried to lose herself in her Charms essay. If she was lucky enough, her two obnoxiously protective friends would forget all about today and just focus on begging her to help them with their homework.

Her hopes were crashed by a loud bang at the door.

"Hermione, come out, we know you're there, what happened?" Ron's demanding voice, slightly muffled by the mass of heavy oak which separated them, yelled.

A more tentative knock was followed by Harry's careful invitation to come sit with them in the common room.

She tried her best to put on a no-nonsense face, reluctantly un-piled herself from an array of pillows and blankets, and went to open the door.

The sight that met her eyes mellowed her and made something tug at her heart painfully. Ron was standing there with a mug of steaming hot chocolate, and Harry was balancing a plate with cherry crêpes on top of a pile of books. Obnoxious and single-minded these two might be, but they were her friends, she mattered to them, and she didn't care to lose them.

Oh, damn, she thought.

"Oh, look, mate, she isn't moping around here!" Ron elbowed Harry, causing the plate with crêpes to wobble dangerously.

"And why exactly would I be moping here, Ronald?" Hermione asked, her hands finding their way to her hips as she assumed her classical 'I'm Hermione, I'm bossy, and I'm scolding you' position, as Harry liked to call it lovingly.

"Oi, 'Mione, Lavender told us you were crying your heart out here because you got kicked out of that study group and McGonagall gave you a dozen detentions with Filch for shaming Gryffindor," Harry said and winked at her lamely.

The shame of Gryffindor slumped her shoulders; she took the mug from Ron's hands, murmuring her thanks, and moved to the common room.

Flopping down on the settee in a most unladylike manner, Hermione looked at Harry and Ron expectantly.

"Well, what happened there, 'Mione?" Ron didn't hesitate, as he plopped in right next to her.

"Nothing much. I tackled it. And got your darling points back."

The last bit was said loud enough for the other students present, who were covertly stealing glances in her direction, to hear.

"They just let you off? Just like that?" Harry asked, incredulous.

"Just like that," she grumbled, hiding behind her hot chocolate.

"And the points? Whatever did you do to get them back?" Ron managed to say through half a crêpe in his mouth.

"Look, this was just a huge misunderstanding. I've sorted it, and it's all good now," Hermione replied, getting disgruntled. "Now, do you boys remember that we have a Charms essay to hand in on Tuesday?"

"Hermione, you fail magnificently at subterfuge. Perhaps you should work on your diversion tactics and poker face. Take some lessons from the greasy bat, maybe," Harry suggested and shook his head in disbelief.

Something inside of his subterfuge disaster of a friend shook at the notion of how close to the mark he was.

"What's poker face? A face that pokes? Then lessons from ole' Snape sound like a good idea, 'Mione, what with that beak of his," Ron guffawed, sputtering pieces of dough and cherry stuffing all over.

Before Hermione could seize the opportunity to steer the conversation away from this dangerous theme and dive into a lengthy explanation of the concept of poker, Harry looked at her suspiciously and shooed his snickering friend into silence.

"Are you hiding something from us, Hermione?" Harry asked seriously after shaking the remains of food from his robes.

"Are you doubting my words, Harry Potter?" Hermione started to get defensive.

Hurt flashed across Harry's face.

"No, it's just... never mind. Sorry I pushed." He narrowed his eyes and got up from the settee, gathering his books and taking a place at one of the tables to supposedly immerse himself in his homework. But Hermione knew better than that. Harry was offended.

"He's been a bit touchy lately... He cares about us, Mione, and it's even harder for him to show now. He still mourns Sirius more than he shows." Now that there were no crêpes left to occupy him, Ron's voice sounded sadder, and the clear perception in his words was more uncomfortable than Hermione cared to accept.

Suddenly, she had a most disquieting feeling that a rift was laid out between her and her friends, and each passing second made it wider and deeper. She wanted to run and hug Harry fiercely, to tell him that it was going to be okay, to tell him the truth.

"Oh, Ron, I..." For the first time in a long while, Hermione was lost for words. She was sure that her friends did not deserve some inadequate platitudes, but it was all her brain seemed to be able to conjure, and the truth was out of bounds.

"'s okay, 'Mione. Just... whatever it is, I hope it's worth it." Ron patted her awkwardly on the shoulder and left, giving her a lop-sided smile that made her feel like she had just cast an Unforgivable. Not that she knew what that felt like.

Oh, when had these two grown up? And why hadn't she noticed?

Hermione pressed her lips together and tried to breathe deeply through her nose to stop herself from breaking down and dissolving into a deluge of tears and sniffles.

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Her sleep was fitful, the regular nightmares about that day at the Ministry interspersed with absurd dreams of Ron, pale and still, spewing giant, malevolent cherry crêpes that enveloped her in slimy, buttery sheets, restricting her movements and stuffing sickly, saccharine cherries down her throat. The truthsss, something whispered all around her, and the crêpes kept coming over, wrapping her up tighter, and finally she thought she was hearing the ugly, horrific, gurgling sound of oil, sizzling on a frying pan.

She woke up with a muffled scream, sheets drenched and wrapped around her like a cocoon. With a shudder of revulsion, Hermione thought she'd never eat anything with cherries in it again.

It was not even dawn yet; grey, feeble light flooded the room, its other two inhabitants sleeping peacefully, thanks to her well-placed Silencing Charms.

Her muscles stiff, as if she had run a marathon without previous training the day before, Hermione dragged herself to the window. The view before her was far from magnificent: just a strip of a gently sloping field, cropped by the frame of the protruding Hogwarts towers, and a bright spot of Hagrid's pumpkin patch further off. Still, she loved it. She loved Hogwarts grounds in deceitful, early morning light. With most of the students and the staff still drifting around Morpheus's obscure realm, the ancient castle looked its age during those brief, quiet hours.

Hermione gave the view before her one last, loving look and made a beeline for the showers.

The sting of hot water on her cleansed skin had always helped her to clear her mind. It was her habit to plan her day and make decisions in the shower, nothing distracting her from concentration. Standing under the scalding torrent, she closed her eyes and tried to outline her... her actions? Decisions? Things to do?

The recent changes in her life seemed so profound that she was reluctant, bordering on scared, to contemplate the implications. The scale of things demanded thoroughness. But one thing seemed quite certain to the girl. At this point, 'a Mage' was yet nothing to her, merely a label on a set of unknown attributes. Scrubbing herself clean with fervor, as if she were trying to peel her previous life and social roles off, she made a vow to herself. If she was stuck with Snape being her mentor, she would take the most out of it. Learning would come first, and emotions would be held in an iron fist. Snape's knowledge appeared truly ecumenical, and she had yet to see him fail at anything academic. He was brilliant, Mage or not, and here and now, she decided that if she was placed in this situation, by some destiny, or by certain manipulative wizards, she'd milk it dry.

There was only one little thing left. To learn to abstract from whatever vile wrapping this education came in. She was willing to put effort into it.

She toweled herself dry and forced a tortoise-shell comb through her hair. It was going to be a long day.

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The Dungeons felt even creepier in the early morning. Hermione left the Great Hall, where she had a hasty breakfast, when the first students, some studious Ravenclaws, started trickling in.

A small part of her wanted to rebel against being set up with Snape, and her purposeful stride in the direction of his office just a few minutes after seven was a part of this rebellion. She had already realized that being a Mage had one certain advantage: she would be a force to be reckoned with. In an uncharacteristic bout of Slytherinesque thinking, she quickly understood that it was her only way to stand up to her mentor if needs be. Immediately, this realization brought about a feeling of certain freedom of movement, and she pondered just how much she could get away with.

Hermione approached the heavy, intricately carved door. Deep inside, she actually hoped to disrupt something. Preferably, a nice Sunday lie-in. The man had told her to come after breakfast, and since breakfast started at seven and she had already had it... Wouldn't it be fun, she thought to herself, if she were to impose her person on a sleep-tousled Potions master? Would he wear a Victorian nightgown, complete with a long cap with a tassel? Something equally embarrassing? She'd seen plenty of those in Wizarding clothes catalogues, men's sleepwear pages, and they had never failed to amuse her beyond all decency.

Practically giggling, Hermione knocked.

Before she had an opportunity to make the knock impudently loud, the door opened slightly, displaying an inviting stripe of light in the otherwise grim darkness of the Dungeons. Slightly surprised, she pushed it open and stepped inside the office.

She'd never been there before. Of course, just like any other teacher, Snape's position as the Potions master, as well as the Head of Slytherin, obliged him to keep office hours, but she'd never heard of anyone actually taking advantage of this particular time. Maybe his Slytherins did, but what took place in Slytherin usually stayed in Slytherin.

To her surprise, the office appeared rather at variance with Snape's forbidding persona. It was a very impersonal room. She'd even go to the extent of calling it comfortable. On a small podium, there was a large, cherry-wood table, which appeared to be standard for staff offices in Hogwarts, a high wingchair behind it, and a small upholstered one in front of it. Knowing who was residing in this office, Hermione would have expected an ascetic stool, created with a purpose of humbling and shaming.

The room was lined with shelves of books, but Hermione didn't feel the pull or anything remotely stirring about them. That, combined with a visible film of dust on them, told her that they were probably not his. Not anyone's, in fact. To her, they felt faceless, neutered. Not even Muggle books felt this way. Probably, no one had touched them for decades.

Heavy, mute-coloured, ancient gobelins, depicting the foundation of Hogwarts, hung on the upper parts of the walls, unusually high for the Dungeons, and Hermione stopped for a moment to look at them. This was when she realized she was, actually, alone in the room.

She quickly looked around in search of her mentor and felt her boisterous mood dampening. He was nowhere in sight, but just to the left of a small desk, topped with a large stack of periodicals and a huge Wizarding terrestrial globe, there appeared to be a very discreet door. As soon as Snape's new trainee set her eyes on the door, it creaked ajar in a clear invitation.

Without contemplation, she scurried to it and entered into whatever room from which it separated the Potions master's office.

It appeared that this was not a room, but a long, narrow corridor. It was so narrow, two people would not be able to pass abreast, and the low, arched ceiling beetled just a few inches above her not so prominent height. The floor was, probably, flagstone, but she couldn't really see since the few torches that were lighting the corridor were too sparse and too dim.

Hermione ran along, and just when she started to get claustrophobic, the corridor ended in a small door. She pushed it open and stumbled inside with an embarrassing urgency.

"Did it not occur to you to knock, Miss Granger?" Snape's melodic voice flowed from across the room, which appeared to be an odd mix of a potions lab, a sitting room, a study, and a library.

Eclectic, bustling with energy and magic, this room was everything the office was not. Her new mentor was standing with his back to her in front of a narrow workbench where a small cauldron was placed over a burner. He had obviously got up hours ago, and Hermione's spirits were fogged further by disappointment. The potion emitted small puffs of lovely golden smoke now and then, and the professor sprinkled something powdery in it.

"Are these your quarters?" she asked, not caring to apologize for her abrupt entrance or note that if he hadn't wanted her to enter, she wouldn't have, Mage or not.

"Yes," was his answer, and he still had yet to look at her.

"Why am I here instead of your office?"

"I thought the reasons were obvious." He sounded reproachful but mild, as if he were talking to a particularly dunderheaded Slytherin first-year, oddly, the only student species Snape appeared to have some patience for.

"Oh... So, we'll be meeting here, I gather? For the training, that is."

"Sometimes."

"Where else?"

"Various locations."

This brevity, as well as the fact that she was still talking to his back, started to grate on her.

"I have questions," she said, not even trying to hide the irritation in her voice. This might as well be a good time to test the limits of his patience.

"Ask."

"Are you a Mage?"

"Yes."

"Why didn't you say so in the Headmaster's office the other night?"

"Minerva."

"She's not a Mage?"

"That she is not."

"But she knows? Is it because she's Head of House?"

There was a silence, during which Hermione desperately scrambled to gather some of her previous brash mood and register the fact that the usually uptight professor had referred to her Head of House as 'Minerva'.

"Is this some part of the code you have, not talking about each other when non-Mages are around?" she asked, thinking petulantly that asking questions with obvious answers and getting away with it by having Dumbledore's express permission was a good way to show she was not to be trifled with.

"We," Snape's answer came. The man was still as serene as a sunny Mediterranean midday.

"We what?" Hermione asked dumbly.

"We, not you. You are a Mage too, and it would do you well to keep that in mind."

His highly suspicious lack of insults, disparaging comments, and general nastiness was very disconcerting.

Before she tried to discern how much of it could be attributed to the fact that he was within his own space and how much to the obviously volatile potion, which he was now decanting in a plain vial, he turned to her and gave her a head-to-toe look.

Hermione felt like he was surveying what he was saddled with but bore his scrutiny with dignity.

"Take off your robes," he said as if he were asking her something as mundane as taking out a quill.

"What? Why ever for?" Her eyes went wide. She did have a uniform under the robes, which was only wise, considering the autumn chill, but what kind of a request was that, coming from a teacher?

There finally was a flicker of impatience in his otherwise impressively dispassionate face, but he said nothing. Instead, he dipped something minute in the remainder of the potion he had just brewed and, with a few brisk strides, was by her side and grabbing her by the collar of her robes.

He caught her completely unawares, and while she was busy shifting her focus from his inexplicable request to the fact that he was now pulling at the collar to shove a hand down her back, and that the front of her high collar was now digging uncomfortably into her neck, she felt a pang of something simultaneously hot and cool somewhere around her twelfth vertebra.

The feeling itself was not altogether uncomfortable, but its strange novelty certainly was, and as soon as she was free from his hold, she stumbled forward and tried to reach behind her back, her hands commanded by a subconscious defense mechanism.

The burning and cooling spread around her body and clouded her vision for a moment. She stumbled forward blindly, grabbing for purchase, when an unexpectedly considerate hand supported her elbow.

"It would all have been much easier if you were able to follow a simple command without making it into ridiculous Gryffindor mulishness galore," Snape noted, letting go of her elbow when she was able to see clearly.

He looked at her meaningfully, and she would have been a fool not to understand that, in his books, this had been the first lesson. The rebellious Gryffindor inside her huffed at such unceremonious treatment, but she felt showing too much objection would just be foolish, knowing full well that she had walked straight into that one.

It appeared that trust was another issue on the plate to be tackled. She decided to give it a thorough pondering later.

"What was it?" she asked instead, with a slight sulk in her voice.

"A tracking nugget," Snape answered in the same off-handed manner he used when he asked her to lose the robes.

"A what?" The bastard, how dare he...

"A tracking nugget. The potion has keyed it to me so that I can monitor the state of your magic. You are a walking disaster, and I'd rather you were contained, but since the Headmaster insisted that your academic life remain as unchanged as possible, it's a necessary precaution. In cases of emergency, it will act as a Portkey," Snape answered without even batting an eyelash, while her entire being was quaking with indignation.

"How could you?! Without so much as asking! This is an atrocious breach of my personal space and privacy! I can't believe that you would..."

He was at her within seconds, the emotionless mask finally melting off his face like spring morning ice sheen.

"Now, I will only say this once, Miss Granger," he hissed, towering over her, his eyes burning coals of menace. "There will be rules. Rule number one, you do as I say at all times. Rule number two, if it seems to you that some particular time is an exception, see rule number one. Do I make myself clear?"

"Crystal," she spat back at him, her fury a much needed leverage for keeping remarkably unfazed by his intimidating glare.

"Oh, and Miss Granger," Snape continued with a malevolent glee in his voice. "There will be many more breaches of privacy and personal space on my behalf, which is always a requirement of such training. Do your sensibilities a favour and remember it during this sham of an express course on how to be a Mage for dummies."

He withdrew, and Hermione immediately felt weak. If she was going to stand up to this man, she'd need much more than petty daydreams of catching him in embarrassing attire or interrupting his beauty sleep.

Snape seemed to have composed himself fast and now looked at her with a patronizing curiosity.

"Don't get your hackles up. I'm not subjecting you to any special treatment because you are a Gryffindor, or an annoying, know-it-all irritant, or Potter's brain storage, or because I abhor the situation I'm placed in, or for whatever reason you think it is," he said, in a tone which clearly suggested that while these might not be the reasons for his off-handed treatment, to him, they all were stand-alone, glaringly obvious facts.

Hermione returned his gaze with her own, noting grudgingly how much, indeed, she had to learn. How easily he had read her. She sighed and looked away, making a mental note to read on Occluding and mind-shielding. Not like it would keep her mind safe from Snape, but it gave her the necessary illusion of hoping to have a safe place, one day, even within her mind, where she wouldn't feel so naked.

Snape turned from her and walked to one of the bookshelves.

"That will be it for this meeting. You will see me here each Monday and Thursday after dinner and each Sunday after breakfast, unless I notify you otherwise," he said to his books.

Hermione felt so relieved that it was over that she didn't even feel like asking all the questions that had become stocked at the front of her brain overnight.

Once again, Snape strode to her, a book in his hand.

As soon as Hermione laid her eyes on the book, she felt a ringing elation wedge itself amidst her emotional tumult. Now, that was certainly a book she hadn't seen before. In fact, she hadn't come across anything remotely resembling it. She looked at it and felt her hands tremble slightly, as if she were an addict looking at her fix.

"Here, take this," Snape said with an indifferent note in his voice which suggested he did not share her reaction to the book.

She didn't know what to think of that fact. But, then again, she still didn't know so many things about Mages. Maybe this was how she was unique? Maybe this was her specialty, her kind? She almost laughed out loud at the irony. Snape's words from the meeting with the Headmaster sprang to her mind: very possibly, one of the most ridiculous ones.

"Read it, and then we will have an educated discussion. I'm unwilling to put up with the amount of sheer ignorance on the matter you have so far displayed."

"What is this book, sir?" She reverted to polite treatment, hoping to glean as much information about the exciting tome from him as possible before it told her its tale.

"It's a book of Mages. The closest word would be 'a registry'. From the earliest known to some of the more recent. It contains myths and facts alike, all in all, the entirety of the Mage lore is here," the professor answered, and once again, she was uncomfortably poked by the lack of reverence in his voice, which the book so tangibly inspired in her.

"Now, see yourself out, Miss Granger. And meet me at eight sharp outside of Hogwarts Gates."

"Where will we be going, sir?" Hermione asked.

"We are going to see the Midwife," Snape answered with such an ease, as if she were seeing midwives on the regular basis.

"Who is the Midwife?" Hermione frowned. She really did not like his assumptive tone. Ignorance was a sin in her books, too, but only when it was voluntary. Hers was anything but.

"A kind of a Mage. Rather unique, really. But you'll see for yourself," Snape divulged and gestured towards the tiny door.

"Tonight at eight," he said, and she ran back to his office through the claustrophobia-igniting corridor.

It was not even nine yet. Her mind itched and etched her to find a secluded corner, throw a couple of Cushioning Spells and drown in the fascinating folio clutched to her chest. However, it was a Hogsmeade weekend, and the students would be leaving in an hour. She used all of her willpower, and the desire to immerse herself in the book slightly buckled under her resolve.

It literally hurt to make this decision, but, seeing as Snape was not the most willing conversationalist, it looked like a visit to Fred and George was in order. After enduring a quick internal struggle between her newly found adventurous side and her old sensible self, she decided against sneaking out to London on her own. Instead, she made a quick run for the Owlery.