Dealt

A/N. Just a quick thank you to all my readers. Your reviews make my heart swell.

Hermione woke up in the wee hours of the morning, like she always did on Mondays, and dragged herself to take a shower. Seeing her reflection in the mirror, she groaned. She looked like something Crooks would drag in, and even he had better taste, probably. Her hair was a clutch of Devil's Snare saplings, and her skin looked whitewashed, with two strategic blotches of purple around her eyes. Apart from that, it appeared she had a light fever: just enough to make her skin tender and her joints let her know they existed.

Shedding her nightclothes, she was about to step under the torrent of steaming water when she heard a dainty pop behind her. What the..., "Lop? What are you doing here?" she yelled.

Her hands were torn between placing themselves on her hips in righteous indignation and making a meager attempt to cover her nakedness.

Lop, Snape's very own house-elf with sails for ears, stood there with a scroll in its scrawny hand.

"Lop is better asking forgiveness than permission, miss, Master is saying all the time," the creature screeched in a faux sweet tone that suggested that no kind of asking for forgiveness was, in fact, on the platter.

She had trouble picturing her mentor asking for either, but another burning problem was to be solved. That being her, still standing naked in front of a cocky, of all things, cocky house-elf, who really deserved a sock being stuffed into his condescendingly smiling little mouth. Or was it her? Hermione really couldn't tell.

Fuming, she made a few steps towards a towel rack, grabbed a large fluffy towel, and wrapped it around herself.

"Your Master rubs off on you the wrong way, Lop, if you think it is fine to intrude upon people taking showers," Hermione chided and tried to look very offended. She hoped she sounded like one of those snobs who loved to have their house-elves perfectly trained.

"Lop is promising to iron ears for Miss today," the elf answered with as much sincerity as his master would put in apologizing for making a first-year Hufflepuff cry. Hermione thought it might be the only case when ear ironing would do any good. Those wrinkly ears were hideous to look at.

"What are you here for?" she asked curtly. Obviously, no amount of superior displeasure could humble the elf, so she might as well make it quick by cutting on the pleasantries.

"Master is saying you are to have this, miss. He says, give it to the irritant personally," Lop answered eagerly and smiled, revealing a few sparsely placed, crooked teeth. His Master's elf, indeed.

Hermione snatched the offending scroll from a knobby hand none too gently and waved at the offending creature in clear dismissal. Lop remained unfazed and in one place. The sheer audacity of the elf! She glared at him with a look she hoped was enough to induce a bout of penitential head banging in any elf. Lop sneered.

"Master says if miss needs anything, miss is to call Lop." Could elves leer? Lop certainly could.

"Thank you, Lop. That is most kind of your Master, now... scram." Her patience was being detrimentally reduced.

With another dainty pop, Lop blurred out of the picture and left Hermione to her shower and her crowding thoughts.

First things first, she unwrapped the scroll. It was the official letter of excuse from her first morning class, which happened to be Charms. There was a note attached to the scroll, written in a familiar scrawl with haughty capital letters and never a single ink drop.

Miss Granger,

Well, he could stuff number one and number two where the sun did not shine. As if infused with spiteful purpose, Hermione set to scrubbing herself clean and arranging her thoughts.

She wished she could be Loki or Player. Or even Walker. Those seemed like something one would find on the pages of Marvel Comic books. Vibrant, mysterious. Attractive. She thought of Fred and George and of their vivacious nature and how just being around them made one carefree and laughing. And then she thought of Venla and her spark that lighted whatever space she occupied.

What kind of name was Middler? It sounded mundane and... unpretty. She felt so Lavender for thinking it, but that was exactly how it felt when she said it to herself. Middler. The ever unlovely, clumsy creature with ratty hair, bony knees, pale skin no tan would to ever stick to, and a future which seemed to include only books, loneliness, and bitterness. And, perhaps, a few cats if she were lucky. Immediately, her taciturn professor sprang to mind, and Hermione was shocked to realize how well he fit that same description. Not that she'd ever seen his knees, but judging from his slight, lean form, she supposed they would be bony as well.

And whatever 'between' was Venla talking about? What was she supposed to connect? What was she capable of interpreting and rendering? Hermione hated to feel confused, and the lack of information felt like the lack of ground under her feet. Like she was treading through a swamp without as much as a pole. Any minute now, she could be sucked in an abyss full of stale water and swamp sludge. She willed the uncomfortable thoughts away and proceeded with lathering up her hair with grim determination.

When she stepped out of the shower, she felt her bubble of purpose burst and syphon away. All the weight of last few days sat in a leaden burden over her shoulders. And it felt like at least one third of it was currently pulling her eyelids down. Refusing to go along with Professor Snape's recommendation to skip Charms, Hermione slapped on some lotion and got dressed. Maybe, a good ole' cuppa would get her motor running.

Good ole' cuppa surely did, but only enough to get her feet to the Charms class without plaiting themselves into a little feet braid. When she staggered into her seat, she felt completely knackered. Damn him to all circles of possible hells for knowing better. She almost imagined the smug git giving her an 'I told you so' eyebrow.

Professor Flitwick fluttered into the classroom, bringing a whiff of simple mirth and crispy, businesslike resourcefulness with him. He was reading out the assignment for the day's lesson when she felt it. An uncomfortable little inkling. Nothing alerting, just a feeling. She made an act of dropping her quill and used the pretense to turn around to see what was causing it. Sure enough, Draco Malfoy was regarding her with... suspicion? Interest? That kind of interest (or, Merlin, please, no)? Hate? Awe?

She watched him just long enough not to be conspicuous about her little spy act and caught a glimpse of Blaise elbowing him in the ribs slightly to regain his attention. This new aspect of Draco's treatment of her scared her witless. She'd prefer he sneered, blathered on about her blood status in no gentle terms, and was generally a prick she was used to. A colossal prick, but a familiar prick.

On top of her exhaustion, she really, really did not need to have this entire Draco situation to mull over. And she didn't even start to handle the situation with Harry and Ron, who were giving her cold shoulder and acting like she was a see-through waif who didn't deserve consideration.

Professor Flitwick noticed her only when the separating charm she was studying (which was supposed to segregate dried peas from sunflower seeds, all mixed in a bucket) produced a gooey, stinky porridge. It was quickly bubbling over and threatening to take over her workspace. Hermione was beyond mortified.

"Oh, Miss Granger! Has your spell gone wrong? How peculiar! But hasn't Professor Snape had you excused from my class today?" Flitwick asked, the three feet of his good-natured self almost jumping with excitement of taking the little arrogant should-have-been-a-Ravenclaw down a peg. The tall stack of books he usually occupied to make himself a bit more imposing shook precariously under his feet.

The cold shoulder Hermione got from Harry and Ron was quickly switched to smoldering glares. From the corner of her eye, she noticed the younger Malfoy give her a knowing smirk. A knowing smirk. Ye gods, what had she got herself into?

"Hey, what's up with Snape writing you off from classes all of a sudden?" Ron hissed from behind her where he was sharing a desk with Harry.

She glared back at them and showed them the business end of her wand, hoping it was enough of a threat.

"Oh, I'm sorry, Professor Flitwick, it's just... a little experimentation on my part. And I was doing something for Professor Snape, which he thought would require more time, but I'm finished with it, so this wasn't necessary," she said demurely, fixing her work station with a few wand swishes. She immediately felt that she had to readjust her efforts with her wand. She knew enough about Muggle cars to see that the readjustment wasn't like the one a driver of a small fuel economy car would have to make when his butt was firmly planted in a muscle coupe's seat. It was the shift in the magic quality, not quantity and force that needed different handling, and she couldn't yet quite put a finger on it.

The tiny, half-goblin professor smiled at her mischievously and continued on with the lesson, till the end of which Hermione purposefully ignored Ron's questioning hisses and Harry's brooding glares.

As soon as the class filed out into the corridor, she felt her upper arm snatched and dragged away.

"You've got some explaining to do," Ron's voice gruffly informed her, and before long, she was being led rather unceremoniously down to one of the less frequented passages of the Ravenclaw Tower.

As soon as they stopped, Harry asked with the sternness she found disconcertingly saddening, "What are you up to?"

Neither of them had yet addressed her by her name, and it hurt.

She was riled up, and her wand hand itched to dole out a whopper to the two interfering, mistrustful twits she called friends.

"Don't you think, for one second, Harry Potter, that if I had anything to tell you, I would say it without a minute's hesitation?" she asked acidly.

"What has Snape to do with you, Hermione?" There was hurt in Ron's voice that mellowed her.

"I'm just assigned a project. That is all," she answered tiredly.

"A project that makes you take off with him and get back after curfew, and next morning you wake up with black circles under your eyes?" Damn Harry and his quiet, observant perception.

"A project that is important enough," she answered firmly.

"Important enough that we don't get to be included?" Harry pressed.

"Important enough that I'll ask you to just trust me for now? Please, Harry," she asked with a hint of desperation.

And was treated to the view of Harry's backside as he was retreating and leading Ron away by the forearm. She sighed heavily and hoped to all deities that confrontations were over for today. She wished; and the wishing was interrupted by a snort. Leaning on the opposite wall, Draco Malfoy gave her a dirty look. She was almost glad it was dirty. Finally, something familiar.

"Trouble in your little Gryffindor paradise, Granger?" he asked casually, checking out his nails.

"Why, would you like me to cry on your shoulder, Malfoy?" Hermione retorted, spitting out his name like it was a cuss word.

"Merlin, no. I would take forever to get rid of your... muddy snot." Draco made a show of looking profoundly disgusted. Hermione was unperturbed, however.

"Then I suggest you run along. Crabbe and Goyle seem to only have half a brain between both of them and probably need you to walk them from one class to another right about now."

That certainly got Draco. His two henchmen were nowhere as fun and smart as hers, and she knew he knew it. Not that... it actually looked like she had any henchmen anymore.

Who would have known that the delicate bone structure of Draco's pretty face could contort in such a gruesome expression of rage.

In a second, he was holding her against the wall, roughly and carelessly, like one would handle a sack of last year's potatoes. Hermione thought it was probably what she was to him, anyway.

"Don't. Provoke me," Draco ground out between his teeth, his face disgustingly near hers.

"Don't. Threaten me," Hermione replied with much more confidence than she actually felt.

Draco's forearm pressed hard against her neck, and she felt a definite poke of a wand against her ribs. She was very well aware that most probably, Draco was just trying out some new grown-up intimidating techniques, that he was more bark than he ever would be bite, but despite that, she felt a trickle of fear. A trickle that quickly turned into a flare of something else, something that felt alien and yet, she knew, belonged to her. It was her magic, she realized, and the thought was panicky. What to do, what to do? Hogwarts is safe, I'm safe , she chanted in her mind. She could feel the pull that new, unharnessed power was exerting on her. Closing her eyes and trying to concentrate on not losing it, she realized that the magic was quite literally about to leak when a cheerful voice sounded nearby. Relief flooded her as the unknown uprising wave seemed to abate together with Draco unhanding her.

"Miss Granger? Mister Malfoy? Is there a problem?" Professor Flitwick asked, eyeing both of his students with a simpering lack of suspicion.

"Of course not, Professor," Draco answered, back to his charming prefect self. "We were just... catching up here. We will be on our way."

He gave Hermione a meaningful glare and was off in a flourish of his expensive school robe.

"Um, yes, I think I better go as well." Hermione smiled lop-sidedly at Flitwick and hurried away. In the opposite direction from Draco.

The rest of her day was filled with menial school things, like scheduling and dropping an indecent amount of books at the library (and checking out an even more indecent amount), breaking a few confrontations, letting a homesick first-year cry on her shoulder, and such. She went by on sheer indignation, fueled up by her altercation with Harry and Ron and Malfoy's impudent and weird stalking.

When she plopped down at the dinner table next to Lavender and Ginny and relaxed her legs, when Hogwarts' excellent, solid, hearty food made her mellow, she couldn't understand how her feet even managed to support her. Her eyelids, at least, needed matches or a spell to stay up. The thought of having to drag said feet down to the Dungeons and keep said eyelids up and away from shutting her eyes for the night in the middle of the hallway made her very marrow groan in protest.

Her only incentive to leave the warm, cozy Great Hall (where she could at least sit) was Harry, who was giving her looks which clearly meant to make her feel like she was standing over his soul's wounds with a salt shaker.

Sighing in defeat, she left.

For once, the chill of the Dungeon's came handy as it shook her up some. She made her way through the intricate maze of corridors into Snape's classroom and then further, through the narrow, home-to-claustrophobia tunnel into Snape's study and knocked.

The door creaked open to a shadowy figure, backlit by the fire. He looked her up and down, as if actually deciding whether to let her come in or to shut the door in her face. She felt a presence fluttering about in her head, like an evasive back thought. Which was definitely not hers.

"Don't use Legilimency on me," she said, offended. She knew well enough that he could be much more subtle than that, and for him to make such a careless job of it was a way to show her just how little he cared about her sentiments on the matter.

"Don't use that tone of voice with me," he replied flatly and let her pass over the threshold.

"You didn't have to make it so off-handed. You could have asked whatever you needed to know," she said petulantly and averted her face.

"I don't feel like I'm inclined to coddle you in any way." Good gods, but he had the audacity to shrug as if he hadn't just breached one of the ground rules of polite Wizarding behavior: don't snoop around in others' heads and be seen.

"Now, explain why you disregarded my explicit orders and forwent the few necessary hours of sleep." His tone could turn Sahara into a snow waste. So, that was what no more coddling was about.

"I'm not going to miss out any of my classes unless I absolutely have to."

"And who has told you that you are in a position to judge what you absolutely have to do?"

Hermione felt his low, frigid voice crawl right up her spine to raise wispy hairs at the back of her neck.

"It was not an explicit order, Professor," she said, a little too breathily, "I thought it was just you... being nice." It took her everything not to cringe at the word.

Her mentor's lips thinned into an almost non-existent line.

"I shall keep it in mind that, despite your ridiculous fight for some semblance of fair treatment, you only respond to orders or threats."

Oh, she had walked right into that one. But never had Hermione Granger been known for being a sore loser. She summoned all her dignity.

"I really appreciate the gesture, Professor, in spite the way it was delivered." Lop's patronizing sneer still swam at the back of her head, giving her creeps.

"I don't really care for your appreciation." He waved, dismissing her about-to-be-an-apology callously. It hurt more than it should have, Hermione quickly registered. "I felt a rise in your magic about ten in the morning, relate the cause now."

"Draco Malfoy was...I guess he was threatening me. There's something disconcerting about his behaviour," she answered through some reluctance. She really did not want to nitpick it with him.

"Lucius knows," he said simply, instead of chewing her for details as she had expected. This new knowledge wrapped around her in a cloak of suffocating fear.

"Did he... guess?" she croaked.

"He most certainly did. I'm not sure to what extent he had enlightened Draco of your... situation. You will be wary of him from now on."

Like she hadn't been before. But she let it pass.

"Did your magic escape?" Snape asked in a manner of one asking about two-week-old puppy, escaping from its basket.

"No, but..."

"Then that will be all for today." A graceful movement of one hand indicated the direction of the door, and he turned away, not even waiting for her to see herself out.

He had to be kidding. She dragged herself all over the castle just to be handled? Like this? Fury shot up inside her in a flashing release of adrenaline into her blood stream.

"That will most certainly not be all." She put as much derision into it as she could.

He watched her with a condescending benevolence of a pack leader wolf, eying a pup, small enough to have innocence and gall to bark at him.

"I would like to see you try, little girl."

She caught herself thinking that, perhaps, this was the most threat-laden thing he had ever said to her.

"I'm here to learn," she insisted. A bold part of her decided that she had little to lose, after all.

"Well, I'm not here to teach you." The same glacier coldness.

"Dumbledore said you are to train me!" she all but cried in desperation.

"Train you to contain yourself." He was absolutely unmovable.

"But I need this education..."

"What you need can perish in balefire, for all I care."

She recoiled, as if slapped. He went on, to make himself glaringly clear.

"I'm here to prevent a disaster from happening. Your own self-preservation instincts are thoroughly lacking. Now, I've done my duty by you for the day, so I suggest you remove yourself from my study before you face my displeasure."

Oh. So it was a study, after all. Hermione looked around the room, which could have been anything at all, so eclectic it was, as if a clue would present itself somewhere in her surroundings.

She knew she had no leverage over him whatsoever. Her heart was doing cartwheels inside her chest, and when she practically sensed that he was about to remove her bodily, she acted on a whim, blurting the words and stifling the urge to think over the repercussions.

"I'll make you a deal!"

That got his interest. If Hermione didn't think Professor Snape had all the sense of humour of a bear, woken up in the middle of winter hibernation, she'd think she had amused him.

"A deal?" That disdainful eyebrow again. "What could you possibly offer me in exchange for teaching you? I see absolutely nothing of interest of any conceivable kind." He looked her up and down, and Hermione felt really, really uncomfortable and self-conscious. She should have really thought that one over.

"I don't have much money, and my parents are not exactly rich, but..."

"But I don't want your money, girl." There was resentment in his voice that wasn't there before. Had never been, even when he was at his vilest with her or her friends.

"Sir, is there anything, anything at all... You are my last chance." Hermione felt the heaviness of untimely moisture at her bottom eyelids.

"No, I'm not. You can ask Dumbledore. Professor Dumbledore," He corrected himself swiftly, and suddenly she felt the elation of a drowning man who was grasping at a straw and realized it was strong enough to pull himself out. They had the same reasons to be wary of the old Player.

"No, I cannot ask... Dumbledore." She omitted the formal title, and immediately there was a flash of something in her mentor's eyes. A flash of something she liked.

"A favour, then." He said simply.

"A what?"

"Your end of the bargain. A favour. A debt. Not a life debt, but a debt nonetheless. Sworn at a wand point. I may call it in when the need arises."

"And what would it be?" she asked, a slight feeling of unease seeping into her. She thought eerily of standing on a very verge of a quicksand. It all looked innocent and calm, and then it started to suck you in with the deliberation that was excruciating in its slowness and inevitability.

"Oh, I don't know," he answered lightly and gave her a reptilian grin. "Anything."

Oh, what the stinking hell.

"Fine."

She drew out her wand and touched its tip to his while he chanted a simple binding spell.