12. Offended

A/N: As always, thank you for the wonderful reviews, all of you: those who just drop a note to let me know what you think and those who offer continuous cheer and support. I couldn't wish for better readers! And a special thank you with a bow on top to potionsmistress23, my wonderful beta.

~oOo~

"But, sir, we have to do something!" Hermione pleaded with her pacing mentor, her sense of justice blaring at her to get up and act, act, act.

"And what is it you suggest we do, girl?" Snape asked snidely and gave her a glare that screamed, "you're dangerously close to entering the realm of Stupid, capital S."

Hermione squeezed her eyes in immense concentration.

"Give me the quill, please," she said, her hand outstretched.

"Whatever for? You've only tried to do it about a thousand times already," he reminded sarcastically, "and have never seemed to get anything else out."

That was true. All they knew was that someone named Fazeem Noorta was somewhere in mortal danger, that he or she was a Mage and...a piece, provided by Professor Snape...that the quill belonged to Lucius Malfoy; how it had become one of the Dodo's prized possessions was still a mystery to be uncovered.

"Well, we obviously can't confront Malfoy about the quill," Hermione said, putting her preferred technique of verbal brainstorming with self or peers to work.

The professor rolled his eyes at her and emitted a pained 'ugh', showing with his entire appearance that, for the life of him, he couldn't wrap his mind around the reason why something that obvious even needed to be stated out loud.

"Obviously, your Gryffindor bluntness is as incurable as metastasizing cancer, Miss Granger. And I advise you to keep your inane musings to yourself, unless you have something of value to add to the conversation."

"Oh, I wasn't aware we were even having a conversation, sir, why, with your verbosity," Hermione retorted tartly, offended by his treatment of the one approach to thought processing that had always worked for her.

"You are forgetting yourself, Miss Granger," Snape said in a deceptively dulcet tone of voice, and Hermione shrugged uncomfortably.

Spurned and irritated by his neglect when her own sense of justice screamed for something to be done, Hermione picked up her bag, fully intent on leaving the surly bastard to his own devices.

"I don't recall giving you permission to leave." His cold voice stopped her in her track.

"I don't have any practice scheduled right now," she answered petulantly and lifted her chin up. "Apparently, you're planning to sit and wait while whatever is happening to this poor person continues to happen, and I still have Transfiguration homework to do."

He was at her, fast as a viper in a flurry of black, his hand on her throat.

"Yes, I will sit and wait, and you will do the same, Miss Granger. And if I sense as much as a stray thought in your obviously empty head about doing differently, you will regret it," he hissed slowly and in such a dangerously low voice that Hermione trembled.

His hand was not limiting her air supply or even hurting her, but the mere presence of his fingers, warm and firm on her skin, did a number of disconcerting things to her senses. She felt like he was letting her know, in no uncertain terms, that he was perfectly capable of snapping her neck with an easy twist. It occurred to her that she'd never actually comprehended the power he held over her.

Slowly, she raised her own hand, wrapped it around his wrist and tugged. He loosened his hold but did not give completely.

"I wish I didn't have to give two shits about your safety, idiot child. But since it has been thrust to me as a duty, a duty it is. And as of now, your safety is compromised. So you will do as I say or I'll shackle you up to your bed in Gryffindor Tower until I see it fit to release you. Do. You. Understand?"

"Yes," Hermione answered, blinking back tears of powerless rage, and castigated herself. It didn't have to take a painful lesson to learn that Snape did not take kindly to being treated like Harry or Ron when they were particularly dunderheaded about something, and she tried to get her point across.

"Yes?" Snape sneered at her, a clear prompt in his eyes.

"Yes, sir."

"Good girl. Now scram."

Humiliated and hurt, Hermione shot out of his quarters like a bullet. When she was a good distance away from the dungeons and her breath didn't leave her mouth in tiny, hysterical puffs, her hand flew up to rub her throat of its own accord. Most disconcerting things, indeed.

~oOo~

A few days had passed, and not even once had Hermione heard of the blasted quill, its owner or the mysterious Fazeem Noorta from Snape. She was driven mad with worry for the poor sod, whoever it was, her sense of justice gnawing at her innards like a dog at a marrow bone. At her sessions with Snape, they were mainly focusing on trying to figure out the patterns of her 'reading' skills, and once, Hermione had managed to summon enough boldness to ask if she could 'read' the quill again. She had received such a thorough lashing that she had regretted ever taking the quill to Snape, whose status in her own books had gone from that of a mentor with the knowledge she craved to a control freak who wanted to dole out the very air she breathed.

Sitting at breakfast between two swotty fifth years, under the false pretense of giving out tips for their OWLs, Hermione threw covert glances at her two formerly best friends. It was apparent even to a most inattentive daydreamer that there was a rift between Harry and Ron now as well. They munched breakfast, each engrossed in their own business or conversations, with Ginny placed strategically between them, looking as if she were the only link connecting the two boys.

Hermione sighed and, for the first time in a long while, felt like she truly had no backup, were something to threaten her. No one to go to. Abandoning her breakfast, she fled to the Owlery – for a much needed respite as well as to send a quick note to Fred and George, asking them if they would fancy a Butterbeer over the weekend. The same tiny owl, which took up to delivering most of her posts, descended down from the dome like a dusty, hooting feather-ball and nipped gratefully at the piece of bacon offered to it. Tying her letter to an outstretched leg, Hermione patted the bird's polka-dotted head and watched it take off in slightly lifted spirits.

At dinner that day, Professor Sprout made an announcement to her sixth-year NEWT Herbology class. The next day, they were supposed to be taking a field trip to the Forbidden Forest and were advised to dress warmly and get re-acquainted with a few mild protection spells, since they would be going to a part of the woods where the thicket of undergrowth was apt to rip one's clothes in shreds and leave a multitude of nasty, little scratches. Amidst all the whining and complaining (which, Hermione suspected, was largely connected with the lack of previous acquaintance with said spells), the Gryffindor Prefect was the only one excited. Finally, something to take her mind off all her worries. She smiled primly at her classmates, but her smile turned into a bland mask a few minutes after Sprout's plump shape found its way back to the High Table. A neatly rolled parchment, tied with a dainty, green bow, popped at her eye-level. She snatched the offending missive before the less attentive Gryffindors started pestering her with questions, but out of the corner of her eye, she noticed the way Draco Malfoy tensed and watched her with eyes like a shithouse rat.

A word with you in my office after dinner.

The note was written in his usual, angular script, and Hermione caught on to the feeling of slight annoyance and a deep-lying worry underneath. Not letting it get to her softer parts, she scoffed and watched the letter disintegrate.

Waiting exactly two minutes after Snape had left his seat at the High Table, towards the end of dinner, and strolled away, she got up, grabbed her bag and set off.

The corridors of the ancient castle were always so quiet at meal times. The majority of the Hogwarts populace was accumulated in the Great Hall, and only ghosts and occasional overly studious Ravenclaws roamed about. Hermione carefully trod through the dungeons, dimly lit and frigidly unwelcoming, her brow furrowing the closer she was to her destination. She was still miserably upset about the quill. Fazeem Noorta, whoever the hell he or she was, accounted now for a few dozen hours of lost sleep, purple smudges under her eyes and sparks coming out of her wand spontaneously.

Suddenly, when she was about to round a corner, someone stepped out of the shadows. The young witch stopped dead in her tracks as soon as she saw a swish of finely combed blond hair.

"And what are you doing in the dungeons, Mudblood?" Draco's scratchy falsetto reverberated in the dark arches around her.

"I don't answer to you, Malfoy, now, move," she answered, pushing calm out and trying to hide how unnerved she was by his sudden appearance.

"Granger, you're on my turf. You don't get to tell me to move, here. Not that you would get away with it anywhere else."

"Oh, I'm scared," Hermione said, going for sarcastic, and was suddenly visited by a self-mocking certainty that she was, indeed, scared. "Now, let me pass or I'll hex you."

"Maybe I should let you do just that and up the number of times you see my godfather," Draco drawled with a leer.

So, he didn't know of the true nature of her and Snape's arrangement. Thank Merlin for small mercies.

"Maybe you should. If you're sure it's worth it; I know some really..." she started saying but was intercepted by his sudden move, and a flying second later, she was pressed against a wall, banging her head on the stones painfully.

For a moment, Hermione wished she didn't have her excess magiс purged from her with a ridiculously wasteful result of a few anemones on Snape's robe ("That would be five points, Miss Granger, since you absolutely missed the colour"). How she wished she could release the unfettered thing upon Malfoy's sorry arse.

"I hate touching you, you know?" Draco's face twisted in a horribly genuine disgust inches away from hers, as he held his forearm across her throat. "Your very blood reeks and makes me want to spit in your face."

"Then let me go, you ferret, before you waste your bodily fluids on me," she answered heatedly, hurt, though she had long ago promised herself to ignore his hateful barbs.

"Not unless I know what it is about you that makes your godsdamned existence so necessary."

"If this is your subtle way of letting me know you were sent to watch me and learn things about me," she hissed, "you can't conceivably know the first thing about subtlety."

This made the blond Slytherin so angry that he actually bared his teeth at her and growled.

A surge of desperate (and foolish, her inner voice would have added) bravery possessed her, and she laughed, a bitter, angry sound which made him press on her throat and down, scraping her already injured head on the roughness of the wall.

"Look at you, snarling like an animal," she observed in her mad mirth.

"Filth! Are you sure you want to take such liberties with me?" he returned with such unchecked malice that Hermione had to pull all her courage about her to suppress a shudder. He was strong, he was absolutely (and quite rightfully so) assured of his perfect impunity, and he was dangerous.

Just about when she thought his next move would be to backhand her, a nastily pitched voice sing-songed from above.

"Ickle-fickle Muddybloody, cheating on Potty, hiking skirts up for Ferret Boy!"

Hermione had never been so glad to see Peeves in her entire life at Hogwarts.

Draco's anger was immediately redirected at the sniggering poltergeist, and Hermione thought there was a flash of red behind her as she ran, Disillusioning herself on the go and trying to calm down her breathing.

A few minutes later, she was mincing about in front of Snape's door.

Snape took in the frazzled look of his charge and motioned her in, rolling his eyes.

"What, didn't your tracking thing work this time?" Hermione spat angrily, pathetically fighting tears, now that she was out of immediate danger.

"Why, should it have? You weren't on the verge of another magical overflow, as far as I know," Snape replied, sounding supremely bored.

"I was in danger."

"The main purpose of the tracking device, Miss Granger, is not to protect you, but to protect from you," he explained with malicious satisfaction.

That stung.

Biting her lip, Hermione held back an angry snarl.

"What did you want me for?" she asked, looking into the space next to Snape's shoulder pointedly.

"Aren't you going to require assistance, first? I think I heard you mention being in... danger," he returned with a mock concern.

"Don't act like you give two shits," Hermione bit back and folded her arms protectively across her chest.

"Watch your tongue, girl, or I'll be forced to resort to such measures as washing it with soap." He narrowed his eyes at her, and for a second, she was overwhelmed with their fire.

She stood, bold under his fury and scrutiny, holding her ground and her chin up high. After a few small eternities, his physical proximity started to feel difficult to handle, in some vague way, and Hermione took a cowardly step back and averted her eyes.

"Why are you so angry at me, Professor?" she asked quietly.

He ignored her question and started rummaging through a stack of papers on his table.

"Are you quite over your misguided attempts at chivalry?" he questioned, holding a tightly rolled scroll of parchment.

"What?" The question did not make sense to her, and apparently, it was written all over her face because he actually cared to elaborate.

"I need to trust your discretion in this matter and be absolutely confident that you are not going to compromise your safety, if you can help it. Which means, no idiotic plans to rescue this Fazeem Noorta shall be entertained."

Before Hermione could scramble up a reply, there was a knock on the door. It immediately became clear that Snape was not expecting visitors, and whoever came a-knocking was not a welcome guest.

Whipping out a wand, he tapped her head and dragged her into the corner of his eclectic room-study-library, placing her strategically behind a dusty stack of random books as tall as her. Hermione covered her mouth with her hand to stifle a squeak, as the strongest ever Disillusionment Charm rolled over her like a bucket of stinging ice water, and backed into the wall.

Giving his room a quick once-over, Snape measuredly strode to the door and opened it with great flair.

In walked none other than Lucius Malfoy.

"Severus." A regal bow of a majestic, blond head.

Snape answered with a rather elegant, if curt, nod of his own and invited Lucius to occupy one of the chairs next to the fireplace. Farther away from Hermione.

She thought she forgot how to breathe when the elder Malfoy swept by, leaving behind a trail of some elaborate scent Hermione couldn't even start to place, and took the offered chair.

"Lucius, what brings you here tonight? Going about to drop in on Draco?" There was a new cadence in Snape's smooth baritone that was completely unfamiliar to Hermione, and it resonated with something deep insider her and made her long to be addressed in such a tone. Her hand flew to her mouth as she realized that she, in fact, was longing for Snape's affection.

"Severus, I think we have a conversation to have, and it's long overdue," Lucius said as he accepted a dainty cup of tea from the tray, brought by Lop, who popped in from Merlin knows where. Holding the delicate handle with two fingers as if it were a dead rat's tail, Lucius sniffed the contents and placed it on the small, iron-wrought table.

"Quite succinctly put," Snape quipped as he sipped thin, Hogwarts-standard tea, hiding his face behind the cup, "but I would advise you to start it only when our privacy is complete and undeterred by anything, my friend."

Hermione trembled in her little nook, thinking for a second that her trust might be misplaced, but her mentor gestured vaguely at the portrait of Salazar Slytherin hanging over the mantelpiece. Salazar was seemingly napping in his chair, but Malfoy senior took the hint.

"Very well, my friend, very well. I still hope we can come to an agreement, as I am loath to resort to any drastic measures. I always say that I prefer having you on my side, Severus, and I do not care to see it changed, if I can help it." There was a clear, if veiled in courtesy, threat in Lucius's drawl, and it was so completely divorced from the diplomatic well-meaning of his words that Hermione felt bile rising in her throat. No one could be that duplicitous, surely. Or could they?

Lucius rose to his feet and gave the professor a courtly half-hug, placing his hands on his forearms quite cordially.

"Then I shall go see my son," he said and turned to the door.

"Lucius, I am of the opinion that Draco has taken to your task with a great zeal. But sometimes, he takes a plunge for it, and his crass ways may... frighten our subjects and sow the seeds of suspicion."

"Indeed?" Lucius quirked an inquisitive eyebrow, and Hermione thought that it might be something all Slytherins are taught at some secret, compulsory class held in their common room. "I shall have words with him, then. Thank you, my friend."

Snape watched the door closing behind the stately wizard, appearing calm and collected, relaxed even, to Hermione's eye. When Lucius's steps stopped echoing in the corridor, he released her spell with a quick Finite and slumped heavily in his chair.

"To precede the imminent question I practically see bouncing in your brain, Miss Granger, we were talking about you," he confessed, rubbing the bridge of his nose.

Hermione stood, gaping at him, taken completely by surprise by her mentor's honesty.

"What does he..." she started and clapped her mouth shut, as if not voicing the question would make the danger less prominent.

"In the long run...I do not know. For now, he wants to purchase you. He thinks it's a, dare I say, more civil way of going about the matter than kidnapping you."

For a moment, she was so appalled by this that she simply stood, tight as a wrung string, and trembled violently.

"Purchase me?" she finally squeezed out in a voice that sounded too high-pitched to belong to her. "What does he think it is, the twelfth century?"

"Oh, do spare me another fit of your righteous indignation," Snape spat disdainfully.

"But this is barbaric!" she shrieked.

"I never said it wasn't."

"And you are actually discussing it with him?" she demanded shrilly, feeling betrayed on more levels than she could count.

"What would you have me do, challenge him in a duel to defend your virtue?" Snape was getting more and more angry by the second.

Luckily for Hermione, her brain started to catch up with her temper, and she reined it in, giving it a second thought.

"Does it mean you are not going to... going to... go along with his plan?"

"Right now, I wish I did, more than ever," he replied, his tone bitingly acid, and glared at her.

Hermione swallowed hard and fidgeted. Her sore head started to throb a little. After a painful few seconds, he rolled his eyes and gave her a look that, on him, could pass for an almost amused one.

"Do give me some credit here, girl. Now, come, let's see your head."

It took her all her strength not to dissolve in a disarray of relieved sobs.