Six

A/N: My heartfelt thanks to OpalJade for the beta, and ScatteredLogic for the prompt.

The most baffling thing about the kiss was that it seemed to change exactly nothing. He'd woken for the first few days following his strange encounter with Granger to an unfamiliar sensation in his gut. It felt partly like the feeling of impending doom that he'd often experienced during the final year of the war, but also partly like the thrill of expectation. And though he knew quite well that she would likely apologize sooner or later, stammering and horrified at what she had done (and he'd planned several scathing responses to this), his true feeling was that he would like to do that again. He was not a man with great experience in being kissed, and he'd found it a rather pleasant, if unsettling, event.

But the fact that no apology or repeat performance seemed forthcoming left him feeling that he must have misunderstood the gesture altogether. Perhaps it was some strange custom of the young; perhaps she'd said goodnight to Malfoy and the lot of them in exactly the same way, and she was waiting for an apology from him. Well, she could wait for eternity before she'd get any such thing.

Still, it was strange that, whoever's misunderstanding it had been, Granger did not appear to be avoiding him in any way. In fact, his contact with her was becoming ever more frequent. Though he continued to vacate his rooms before she entered the loo in the mornings, more often than not, when he returned to his room, he would find a missive from her in the sink.

Once, it had been:

What do you think of naming the houses by color? Purple, Orange, Brown, Red? Chartreuse, Vermillion, Indigo, Azure?

To which he had replied:

I can hardly imagine a section of the populace screaming, "Go Orange!" The others do not merit comment.

Fine, she'd left the following morning. Animals, then? Bear, Hawk, Lion, Boar?

Boar, Granger? And I'd beware anything that seems too much like the former. Hawk and Lion are too reminiscent for my taste.

In seeming frustration, she'd written, Nitwit, Blubber, Oddment, Tweak, which he had Incendio'd and left in the basin for her to clean up later.

But this was far from their only contact with one another. She'd taken to leaving out her books in the library at night with notes scrawled to him on bits of parchment, sticking out willy-nilly from the text. And finally, nearly two weeks after their trip to Hogwarts, she'd come home early, burst into the library, and asked if he would join her for dinner downstairs.

He didn't know why he'd expected it to be just the two of them. Though he'd spent numerous meals alone in the dining room, experience should have told him that if he desired the others to stay away, they would flock to the table en masse. En masse this evening only involved Malfoy and Longbottom, but that was enough masse for Snape.

"Hello," Hermione trilled as they entered the room.

Draco looked up and nodded; Longbottom smiled and said, "'Lo Hermione," through a mouthful of pot roast.

"Malfoy. Longbottom," Snape muttered as he settled into the chair beside Granger's.

Kreacher appeared with loaded plates, and both he and Granger set to eating before anything else was said. Snape was not sure whether she, too, had intended them to dine in private; though he knew that everyone was aware of her plans for Hogwarts, he was not sure whether they knew the details of said plans.

"I've decided on names," she said, turning to him at last. Not a secret, after all.

"Mmm?"

"Dragon, Hippogriff, Sphinx, Unicorn."

"Acceptable, though a bit dangerous," Snape said after considering them for a moment. "Magical creatures... Does that make this the Augurey?"

Hermione scowled at him, but Draco laughed.

"What are they names for?" Longbottom asked.

"New houses at Hogwarts," Granger replied, favoring her friend with her warmest smile. See, she seemed to say. This is how normal people conduct conversations. "Why dangerous?" she said to Snape.

"Dragons are a bit like serpents, and as they are forbidden, perhaps an equation will be drawn. Sphinxes associate to wisdom; Hippogriff sounds passingly like Hufflepuff. Although, as the Gryffindors can hardly be considered pure and gentle, I suppose the system breaks down there."

"It's impossible," Hermione said. "There are not four things in the world that will work."

"I said those were acceptable," Snape said. "They play well both as house and as team names, and each is either dangerous or coveted, so the students will be proud no matter the house they are sorted into. Correlations will be drawn no matter what you choose. You will simply have to be wary of it. Tell me, how do you plan to sort?"

"Well, that's what I wanted to talk to you about. I was thinking that it might be wise to use a quota system."

"A quota system? Based on what?"

"Well, based on bloodlines."

"Is that a message that you want to send? That you are sorting according to bloodlines?"

"Don't twist my words around. Obviously, I wouldn't be separating the Purebloods from the Muggleborns."

"Yes, but isn't your point that the amount of wizarding blood a person has shouldn't matter? By basing your sorting on it, you seem to be saying that it matters a great deal."

"Ideally, no, it wouldn't be considered at all. But think about it--I'm not devising a house system based on personal characteristics in which bloodlines should be irrelevant. And we've rejected the idea of grouping by age. The entire point of this change is to make people more familiar with each other, and the issue of blood status is one of the most divisive in wizarding culture."

"So you intend there to be a certain number of Purebloods, Half-bloods, and Muggleborns in each house?"

"No, I'm not aiming for some magic number. I just think that if there are six Purebloods in an incoming class, each house should get at least one."

"As much as I hate to say it, old man," Draco said, setting his fork noisily against his plate, "I agree with Granger. What's the point of dismantling the old system if you aren't going to have the new one address the problem?"

"I don't recall asking for your opinion, oddly enough," Snape said, who was, strangely, most annoyed by being called 'old man.' "But since we are, apparently, opening this discussion to all and sundry, perhaps Longbottom has something to add."

Snape glanced at Longbottom, who was doing his best to blend in with his chair. He looked nervously between Snape and Granger, and Snape wondered for a moment which one of them he was more afraid of crossing.

"I am a Pureblood," he said quietly, after a moment. "If the system had quotas, the likelihood that Draco and I would be in the same house would be very small. I thought the point of what you were doing was to stop the hostility between the houses. There are Purebloods in every house as it is. I think... I'm sorry, Hermione, but I think a random system would be better."

Snape could not even properly take pleasure in having a supporter, as Longbottom's comment seemed to change the mood of the table to a somber one. Had he encouraged Granger to become too focused on blood status? He'd only meant to educate her on its underlying causes, but Longbottom had made him feel as if he'd missed the point of this endeavor altogether.

"How random is random?" Draco asked, seemingly unfazed by the atmosphere. "Are we talking about pulling names out a hat?"

Snape snorted at the metaphor and watched with interest as Granger opened her mouth and shut it again. He wondered what she'd thought of Longbottom's criticism. "I'd prefer some kind of Arithmantic equation, if it comes to that. Personally, I wouldn't mind a name-pulling of some sort, and I'd even go so far as to say that I'd like it if someone could draw names, lay them out, and make sure that chance hasn't grouped people together in an unfavorable way--"

"Unfavorable to whom?" Snape interrupted.

Granger shot him a look. "I'd like it if someone could safeguard that some bizarre chance hasn't got all the Muggleborns in one house or something, but I recognize that there is great danger in allowing any one person to make final decisions about who belongs where. So perhaps Arithmancy could divide the students and remove any potential meddling."

"And would the equation have blood status as a factor?" Draco asked.

Snape glared at him. He had no idea why he'd come to feel proprietarily about Granger's little project, but it annoyed him that Malfoy was asking the questions that he himself would like to ask.

"I don't know," Granger said, and she rested her chin in her hand. "I don't have enough time to get this proposal together properly. I'm due to appear in front of the Board of Governors in three weeks, and I'm still working out these very basic ideas." She sighed. "Which, I suppose, is what happens when you change horses in midstream. On the one hand, I'd like to see all kinds of things factored in: nationality, blood status, wealth, family background... but the more I think about it, the more it seems to me that Neville is right. Once all those things have been accounted for, what's the likelihood that the divide would be any better than just assigning every fourth student to Hippogriff? And I don't want to open us up to all kinds of speculation as to why a particular student was placed where he was."

Snape had barely begun to feel affronted by the 'horses in midstream' comment--was he to be blamed if he'd had a better idea than she? His most sincere apologies--when Malfoy spoke.

"I have a few hours to spare tonight," Malfoy said. "We could make a test batch of students and run them through different equations to look at the split."

"Would you?" Granger asked, and she favored him with a smile of such grateful intensity that Snape wanted to hex that Malfoy prat into a steaming pile of hippogriff dung. But before he'd worked out the intricacies of such a hex, they were gone, leaving him alone with Longbottom.

He said nothing, but began to eat peas as if his life depended on it, chasing them about his plate with his fork and stabbing at them with the tines. How had all of this happened? Less than an hour ago, he had been working peacefully in his library, and now Granger was gone off with Malfoy and he was having dinner with Longbottom. Well, with any luck, the boy would flee the table directly.

"Professor," Longbottom said in a tremulous voice.

He'd never had a surfeit of luck, come to think of it.

"Yes?" Snape said shortly, as if he were quite engaged in the business of pea stabbing and resented the intrusion.

"Um. How do you know when the fangs of a Venomous Tentacula are ready to be used in potions?"

"Why?" Snape asked, dragging the word out slowly and imperiously, one eyebrow creeping toward his hairline.

"Because I... well, no reason. I was just curious."

"Why?" Snape repeated.

"I'd like to grow some magical plants; that's all. I love working in Professor Sprout's garden," he hastened to add, "but I miss Herbology."

"I see," Snape said. Well, he could hardly blame the boy. As oddly relaxing as he found Muggle gardening to be, pansies and azaleas could not hold a candle to the subtle vibration of a flutterby bush or the flight of a leaping toadstool. Still, Venomous Tentacula was a rather extreme example, and he shuddered to think of the notoriously accident prone Longbottom handling one. "If you would like to grow plants for potion making, I might suggest the Bobotuber," he said. "It seems a bit more your speed."

Longbottom flushed a deep red and stared down at his plate. Snape silently congratulated himself for deterring Longbottom from endangering the household and ending the discussion at the same time.

"I was top of my class in Herbology; did you know that?" Longbottom said suddenly. Snape looked up and was surprised to see that the boy had laid down his fork and was looking at him with angry determination.

"Mmm," Snape said noncommittally. This was a very strange turn of events, he felt.

"I was. Professor Sprout says I was one of the best she ever taught. And if I want to grow a Venomous Tentacula, I will."

Snape leaned back in his chair and assumed a look of boredom. "Go right ahead, Longbottom. I'm certain that growing one of the wizarding word's most aggressively poisonous plants in your bedroom is a marvelous idea."

Longbottom stood abruptly, the legs of his chair screeching against the hardwood of the floor. "Come with me," he said.

"I beg your pardon?" Snape was utterly off balance. Was this the same Longbottom who so feared him that his Boggart had taken on Snape's own visage?

"Come on, then. I have something to show you."

Snape rose from the table, more from surprised compliance than any real desire to see whatever it was that Longbottom wished to show him.

Longbottom stomped down the hall, and Snape realized uncomfortably that they were headed for the boy's bedroom. What was he going to be shown? Framed Herbology marks? Longbottom's Shrivelfig collection?

Longbottom opened the door and ushered Snape in, hissing, "Sshhhhhhhh," and quickly shutting the door behind him. Snape looked around, struck mute by what he saw. Tendrils of Maidenglory climbed the doorframe and dangled from it, swaying gently in a breeze only they seemed to feel. The left wall of the room was covered from floor to ceiling in wooden shelves, each obscured by plants from Alihotsy to Flitterbloom; Snape thought he spied a Fanged Geranium in the mix, as well as Mallowsweet, Bobotuber and Fluxweed; Gurdyroot, Puffapod and Asphodel. Along the floor were the large, deep pots housing the vines. The Devil's Snare grew up full and thick in the southeast corner, climbing the wall and pressing its leaves hopefully against the magical barrier that Longbottom had erected around it. In another corner was the largest Mimbulus Mimbletonia that Snape had ever seen in Britain. He wondered vaguely why Longbottom did not constantly smell of stinksap.

But truly, the most amazing sight in the room was the greenhouse. It seemed, through efforts both magical and Muggle, Longbottom had enlarged the window in his room until it was equal to the size of the wall. As he had never noticed it from the outside, Snape assumed that Longbottom had somehow rendered the wall into one-way glass, a complex charm that he would not have thought the boy capable of. The greenhouse itself extended several feet into the room and was bounded by a glass-filled, wooden framework. Inside there were enormous blooms shaped like umbrellas; a purple, beating Heartflower; and a medium-sized, but very healthy looking Venomous Tentacula, gnawing diligently at a gigantic ham bone.

"Great Merlin," Snape said under his breath as he took a step toward the greenhouse.

"It's teething," Longbottom said, a note of quiet pride in his voice.

"Not for the first time, I assume," Snape said. He pressed his hand against the glass, and the Tentacula raised an inquisitive feeler.

"Only once before," Longbottom said. "I kept the fangs, but I don't think they will be worth anything. By the time I realized that they needed to be removed, some had fallen out on their own, and I didn't know how to preserve them, so...." he trailed off.

"May I see them?" Snape turned reluctantly away from the Tentacula. He had no idea how Longbottom could sleep in a room with that thing, no matter how well contained.

Longbottom opened his desk drawer and removed a heavily warded box. He touched his wand to the lid in several places and Levitated the top. Snape peered in.

"A bit overripe, as you said," Snape said. "But still useful. Take them to Arsinius at Slug and Jiggers. He will perform the necessary tests, but I imagine you'll get a tidy little sum."

"Or you could have them," Longbottom said.

Snape paused, confused. Aside from the fact that he had no brewing facilities, and hence no need whatsoever for Venomous Tentacula fangs, he had no idea why Longbottom would be offering him such a valuable gift.

"In exchange for what?" he said.

Longbottom looked slightly chagrined. "Just advice," he said. "When to harvest, when to prune, that sort of thing. You know, for potions."

"Have you offended Pomona in some way?" Snape asked bluntly. "Because I can hardly see why you are troubling me with this. Surely, she would be delighted to help her pet pupil."

Longbottom colored. "It's just... well, it's just that this is a gift for her. I'd like it to be a surprise."

"A surprise," Snape repeated.

"Yes, for Christmas. So I wouldn't need help for long, just a couple of weeks. Then she'll know, and she can help me herself. Though I wish... I just would like to do this for her, and for her not to have to do anything at all." He paused. "Do you know how much she lost?"

Snape said nothing. Yes, he knew how much she'd lost. A lifetime's worth of plants, a lifetime's worth of work. Much more than Longbottom could ever recreate in a boarding house room, magically enhanced or not. But he saw what the boy had been trying to do. And, much as Snape was loath to admit it, he'd done well with what he had; it smelled dank and loamy in here, and the humidity was nearly unbearable. Tiny rain clouds drifted over the shelves. A miniature thunderstorm rained down above the Flitterbloom, while a shroud of darkness engulfed the Devil's Snare. More charmwork than he could imagine had gone into this room, and all without help from Pomona?

"I assume you've been combing the Maidenglory regularly," he said. "Save whatever strands it sheds in a cool, dark container. You may braid its tresses if they begin to obscure the doorway, but cut off the entire braid if it begins to darken and store it separately from the other hair."

Longbottom sat down at the desk and began to write.

"How are you accessing the Tentacula?"

"There is panel that can be unspelled and lifted away," Longbottom replied. And I wear dragonhide gloves."

"You'll want to invest in graphornhide. I'll ask Granger to check the dungeons on her next trip to Hogwarts. There may still be a pair in the laboratory."

"Thank you, sir."

Snape waived his hand as if to silence an annoying insect. "Brush the fangs with a soft-bristled brush every two to three weeks. And keep giving it the bones--even as the teeth mature. When they reach an inch long, you may harvest them. I trust you know to Stun it before you attempt any such thing. How old are the Mandragora?"

"Still infants, sir."

"Good. Is their chamber sound-proofed?"

Longbottom glanced up from his parchment and gave Snape a look that suggested he might be somehow impaired. "Of course."

"Given your track record in potions, I could hardly fail to ask."

Longbottom huffed softly. "I think you'll find I'm much better with plants. They are less likely to loom over your shoulder, commenting on your failings." The last he said sotto voce, although it was impossible for Snape not to hear. It was hardly as if they were in the Great Hall. However, instead of being offended, he merely felt the same sense of dizzying disconnect that so often accompanied his interactions with his housemates. Who were these strange people? What had the last year done to them?

In an effort to regain some semblance of normalcy, he asked, "Who performed the charms on the greenhouse?"

"Sir?"

"As you've said, your talents lie in Herbology, not in Charms. Who designed the greenhouse?"

Longbottom looked away and sighed. "Hermione helped me with the wall," he said after a time. "And Mr Filch built the wooden supports."

Whatever thrill of victory Snape might have felt was obscured by the shock of this information. "Argus Filch?"

Longbottom nodded. "And Harry helped."

Good God. Snape felt he needed to lie down.

"Mr Longbottom," he said formally, "if it suits you, I will return next Thursday after dinner and each Thursday thereafter, provided that there are no incidents." He turned toward the door, momentarily disoriented by the swaying of the Maidenglory.

"Wait--" Longbottom said, "the fangs."

"I have no laboratory here, as you might have noticed," Snape said. "Keep them. As I said, they should fetch a pretty penny at Slug and Jiggers."

"But sir, I don't feel right asking for your help without--"

Snape was struck by sudden inspiration. "Grow me a Phoenix Flower."

"Pardon?"

"A Phoenix Flower, Longbottom. If you can handle Venomous Tentacula, I should hardly think it any tax on your resources."

"It's not. I mean--it would be no trouble, sir. Just--why do you want a Phoenix Flower?"

Snape turned away and smiled slightly to himself. "For a surprise," he said.

***

Once back in his rooms, Snape decided to complete his evening rituals before Granger returned. It would not do to seem to be waiting up for her, he felt, and brushing his teeth, et cetera, now would ensure that they would not need to negotiate over the loo.

He looked at himself in the mirror and wondered what his dinner companions had seen when they looked at him. Did they still consider him their professor? Both Malfoy and Granger used his given name, but it seemed more than likely that they still said 'sir' in their heads, even if they did not say it aloud. He pulled back his hair experimentally, but he looked the same to himself, the same as he always had. Then he let his hair loose and decided that he must be going mad.

That, or he was overworked. Which was probably the case now that he'd added Longbottom's adventures in magical gardening to the library, Pomona's garden, and Granger's research. This house took over the life of anyone who dared to live here, it seemed. And yet, what better way to kill the time than to be constantly occupied?

Snape was cleaning his teeth when there came several furious knocks upon the door.

"Miss Granger, the lavatory is engaged," he said around a mouthful of toothpaste.

"Look, I can hear you brushing your teeth. Let me in! I have something I want to show you."

"Something that cannot wait until I have finished in--"

Snape stopped as he felt the tingle of Alohamora in the air, and before he could protest, Granger had burst in, eyes bright, and thrust a bit of parchment at him.

"What is this?" he said without looking at the paper. He briefly considered letting a gob of foam fall onto it.

"You were right! The split was actually consistently more favorable with the application of an equation designed to create a random yield than one that took various factors into account. Look--" she said, jabbing at the parchment. "We used the students from our own class. Eleven times out of twenty, Harry and Draco ended up in the same house. And you can see here that of the remaining times, Neville and Draco were placed together six times, and Ron and Draco, three times. "

Snape peered at the parchment. He saw what she so desperately wanted him to see, and he was pleased that he had been proven correct--perhaps even more pleased, in some obscure way, that she wanted so badly to tell him about it. But he could not help but notice that in many instances Granger herself had been placed in houses without Potter, and in some cases without both Potter and Weasley. And it seemed to him that her placement, as a Muggleborn, was just as important as anyone else's, although perhaps he was placing too much emphasis on blood status again. He scowled at Longbottom in his mind and spit into the sink.

"And your placement?" he said.

"What do you mean?"

"Only that in... what, eight cases? You were sorted away from your friends. Sometimes both of them."

She looked up at him, and he felt acutely uncomfortable, as if she'd seen something that he had meant to conceal.

"Are you asking if I mind that, in this new house system, Harry and Ron and I might not have been friends?"

Snape looked away and rinsed his mouth vigorously, as if she had never interrupted his washing up. "We have discussed the obstacles to friendship-forming in the past," he said.

She was silent for a moment. Snape glanced in the mirror and was surprised to find her looking back at him.

Snape dropped his eyes, trying to imagine a world in which Harry Potter would have had to save the world with Draco Malfoy and Justin Finch-Fletchley for sidekicks.

"Severus," she said, laying a hand on his arm and startling him into turning toward her. "You don't think I would have made other friends?" There was no anger in her tone, only a strange searching quality that made him think that she was asking just as much on his behalf as on hers.

He shook his head dismissively. "You don't think that perhaps the hat knew--"

"No," she said firmly. "I don't think that hat knew anything. I think we all put far too much stock in a bit of millinery and not enough in chance."

That was, he supposed, the heart of her argument: the power of chance.

"I wasn't meant to help Harry any more than I was meant to be a witch. I think you just... do the best you can with what you have."

Snape looked at her, trying once again to make sense of the woman before him. How had she accomplished so much growing up in so short a period of time? He could hardly reconcile the fact of her with the name on the parchment.

And then the thing that he had hoped for--the thing he had most dreaded--occurred, and she rose onto her toes and kissed him.

This time, Snape did not hesitate, but slipped an arm around her waist and dove into the kiss. The last fully rational thought that he had was to be grateful that he had just brushed his teeth and would not taste of this evening's pot roast.

Despite his enthusiasm, the kiss began haltingly. They separated several times, a simple pulling back to breathe, and Snape found himself with an intimate view of Hermione Granger's closed eyes and cheekbones, which he found not at all unappealing. She was flushed and warm, and her mouth tasted of mint. He wondered if she had applied some kind of Freshening Charm before entering the loo, and the thought made his stomach take an uncomfortable and pleasurable leap. He leaned in again.

Granger was stroking his lower back with one hand, and the other was slowly migrating its way up his chest. A dim part of his brain insisted that he should probably be doing something other than just standing there, so he touched her hair experimentally. He could feel her smile against his mouth.

There was a wet sound each time their lips shifted or realigned, and it was much too loud in the small space that was the loo. At first, Snape found it uncomfortable, but as the minutes stretched out and there seemed no end to this kiss, it began to signal some new sensation or experience, and he began to look forward to it. Now she had taken his bottom lip between hers; now she licked the roof of his mouth. She made him feel rather desperately inexperienced, but the events themselves were so pleasurable that he tried very hard not to mind. And he quickly learned that she was most likely to try what she liked herself; when he gently sucked at her bottom lip, she practically writhed against him.

This presented a new set of problems, as Snape had no desire to let her know that his erection was ready to burst out of his trousers. He'd been holding her firmly, but there had remained a space--however small--between them until now. He attempted a slight step backward, but she followed him, and he felt the soft press of her breasts against his chest, which made the entire situation worse. He tilted his hips away from her, but her hands snaked around him and pulled his pelvis firmly back into place, holding him against her.

He groaned, and her lips left his to press against the base of his throat. This was maddening, outstanding. He had never known anything quite like it. He ran his hands up her sides, felt her arms lift away to expose the sideswells of her breasts, and dared to run his thumbs over them, feeling her shift and shudder in response. She latched her arms around his neck and returned to this kiss, deepening it beyond its former boundaries, making him feel as if he were falling into it, a fall that would never end. His tongue moved against hers, and he tasted the sweet, rich warmth of her, and found he had no desire for it ever to end.

Except that she was trembling. It had only just begun, but he could feel the slight vibration under his hands and against his lips. It was possible, he thought, that she'd just come to her senses and realized that she was pressing herself wantonly against one Severus Snape, former professor and Death Eater, and that she was afraid and disgusted at the thought. Why didn't she run, then? he thought angrily. Did she think he'd hex her if she pulled away?

He broke the kiss. "You're shaking," he said almost coldly.

She looked down and smiled slightly at the floor. "I... yes, well. You're very much taller than I am, Severus. My legs are getting tired."

Relief pulsed through him, touching all the spots inside him that desire had. He reached out to touch her again immediately, even though it was only a brush of her arm.

"Why didn't you say something?" he said.

"Because I didn't want to stop."

"I hardly think my height is an insurmountable obstacle," he said, his voice cracking slightly, much to his annoyance.

She looked up at him and gave him a sideways smile. "You're a very literal person sometimes; do you know that? No, I don't think your height is an insurmountable obstacle. I just knew that the moment we came back down to earth--for whatever reason--life would be filled with practicalities again. Like whose room to go to, and the fact that I have to be up early in the morning and should not spend hours snogging in the loo, and whether we were sure about this, and--" she opened her hands, seeming to encompass the bathroom, the house, the world, "everything."

"It hasn't been hours," Snape said, latching onto the one thing he felt he could argue about. When he had held her, everything had felt so certain. All the weeks of worrying about what she'd meant by kissing him that night had Transfigured themselves into so much ridiculous mental flotsam. Now he felt his hold on these things drifting away again.

She glanced at her wristwatch. "It's been over fifty minutes."

Had it? It had felt like ten. Or six. "I apologize for keeping you," he said.

She sighed and leaned forward, touching her forehead to his chest. "So prickly," she said under her breath. Then, in a normal tone of voice, "Can we do this again tomorrow?"

"I believe I am free after eight," Snape said, laying a tentative hand on her back.

"Good," she said. "I'll look forward to it." He could tell by her words that she was mocking him, but it seemed not to matter. They would be doing this again tomorrow.

"As will I," he said.