Conundrum

Thank you to karelia for her final polish!

Hermione threw herself into her studies with all the energy she didn't spend on having friends. Her books became her closest companions. The incident with the mountain troll had left a lingering good will amongst her peers...it seemed nearly dying was all it took to gain a certain amount of respect...but she only smiled and went on her way whenever someone tried to include her in a bit of conversation or enlist her in a scheme. Harry and Ron remained affable and distant, and Neville seemed to have found his niche with them, leaving him less time to be companionable. That was fine. She wasn't interested in maintaining any closeness with him anymore anyway.

Life was easier now that she had chosen not to have friends, as opposed to being condemned to not having any.

She made sure to be cordial at all times, only offer her help on an assignment when asked, and to be pleasant to everyone she passed. What she gave, she received. For the most part. Certain personages, Malfoy being the most glaring example, would never be amiable. She had tried to cultivate an acquaintance with some of the students from Slytherin House, in deference to her professor, but all she gained for her efforts was a more nuanced view of insults.

Mudblood was such a curious word. It was such a random choice of verbiage. At first, she hadn't even understood she was supposed to be mortally offended. That hadn't gone over very well. The term seemed so silly. Mudblood. She often came up with other terms in her mind that sounded equally dim-witted. Inkspit. Dirtpaste.

Sadly, the more she heard it, the more weight it seemed to gain.

She stopped bothering to even try and be pleasant where Slytherins were concerned. She just made sure she was never in the wrong and held her head up high. She also resumed her practice of shouting the filthy things that Stephens had taught her within the confines of her own head while holding her face frozen in a polite smile.

The whole blood status argument was worth an essay on its own. The fact that every race of magical human on the planet held equal status, as long as their families had never mixed with Muggles, actually bolstered her opinions on just how ludicrous her grandmother's posturing was. It reaffirmed her belief that a person should be judged on character, not the random luck of birth, or in her grandmother's case, a most advantageous marriage. The fact that the same wizards and witches looked down on her because of her own parentage was patently ludicrous. She was obviously as talented as they were. All of their arguments in favor of her lesser humanity only fueled her desire to show them all up.

She did wonder if at some point their beliefs would begin to gain weight as well.

Her lack of a social life seemed to please her perverse professor. That was obvious when he first spied her sitting alone on the bench eating her meal in silence the morning after the troll incident. As the school bellowed its gossip into the air around her, he gave her a look filled with unmistakable approval. After that, he seemed to make a point of seeking her out with his eyes at some point during each meal, as if her continuing solitude was a talisman that all was right in his world.

Unfortunately, her lack of outlets for amity seemed to be the only thing he approved of. He definitely continued to insist on detesting her essays. She knew because he had told her that he abhorred lengthy explanations; however, when he expressly asked for three feet of parchment, why would he take points because she filled in as much information as she needed in exactly three feet? Surely it wasn't because she had eliminated margins and found a spell to reduce the size of her written hand? How else was she expected to cite her references and clarify the subject matter in such a limited space? She thought she deserved points for her initiative. It was three feet exactly, and it got the job done rather nicely. From the amount of spiky red ink, it was clear he didn't find her clever in the least.

She sighed and re-rolled her latest Potions debacle and turned her attention back to the game. Contrary to how it would seem, considering the sheer amount of energy that went into it, the all-important Quidditch that everyone, including her professor, seemed to think so highly of, was in actuality more pointless than watching grass grow.

She couldn't make heads or tails of the rules, and the behavior of the players was mind-boggling. Take, for example, Harry. It was her understanding that he was supposed to be looking for the Snitch. Instead, he was jittering around in midair for no apparent reason other than to show off his admittedly astounding skills. She acknowledged a certain amount of ugliness in her own manner. She disliked brooms and detested flying. It was the one aspect of the Wizarding world that she seemed to fail at spectacularly. But even setting her petty resentment aside, it would still seem that dangling one-handed from the broom was a bit vulgar.

She looked at the people around her, looking to see what the proper response to such an exhibition was, and was rather alarmed to see shock and fear. She turned her head back and reassessed the situation. It was plain, now that she understood, that Harry wasn't showing off, he was hanging on for dear life.

"Somebody help him!" she called.

"It's Snape!" Neville called out. "He's hexing him!"

"WHAT?" She snatched the spyglass without even a by-your-leave and turned her focus on the teachers' grandstand. Sure enough, Professor Snape was staring intently at Harry while his lips moved in a constant mutter. She saw Professor Quirrell doing the same thing. McGonagall was chattering away as well, but that looked more like running commentary than a hex. She scanned the rest of the stand and saw several people whose lips seemed to be in constant motion.

She handed the spyglass back to Neville. "Don't be foolish. Half the adults in the stands look like they're casting spells," she snapped.

Mr. Hagrid concurred that they were overreacting, but Neville and Ron took off to see what could be done anyway. Hermione pulled out her wand and wished she knew something, anything, which would help. She had managed to learn an enormous amount on her own, but, clearly, silly little magics such as Bluebell Flames weren't going to be much help in this situation.

Harry held on, managing to get one leg back on his broom, while the rest of the students shouted encouragement.

A rise in the level of noise had her turning toward the faculty grandstand. She reached up and grabbed the spyglass back from Seamus. Professor Snape was flailing at his robes, which seemed to be twisting around his body, trying to strangle him like a fast growing vine.

In the sudden commotion, no one at first noticed that Harry had finally regained control of his broom. The roar of laughter resulting from her professor's distress turned into a roar of joy when Harry zoomed around the field in command of his broom again.

Hermione looked away from Harry, who appeared to be fine, and looked back at her professor, who appeared to be furious. He also seemed to be fine. People had turned their attention away from him to Professor Quirrell, who appeared to have been upended during the fracas. She handed the spyglass back to Seamus with murmured thanks.

There was another roar, and she looked down to see Harry pulling the Snitch out of his mouth.

What an asinine sport.

She gathered up her satchel and made her way out of the stands.

Hermione dragged her trunk through the hallways on her way out the door to the carriages. She nodded and smiled and bid her au revoir to friendly faces as she passed.

She was looking forward to going home for Christmas. She couldn't wait to see her parents. Granted, she wouldn't be able to explain anything about her new life to them, but her previous months of letter writing had given her the skills and practice to be able to dance around the truth without lying. Thanks to a good bit of help from Professor McGonagall, she had been studying a normal course of Muggle education in her free time, and so could truthfully report on her progress in that area.

She did so wish she could tell them the truth; a part of her knew they would be fascinated and thrilled, but that was the childish part. She understood completely how little they would be able to assimilate this new reality, and they were better off ignorant. Her parents were progressive, but they were still Muggles. The fear that had kept her silent after her accidental use of magic the night before they left for London was squarely rooted in that long ago shared look of fear when a very young Hermione took such fierce exception to not being believed. Even as a young child, she'd instinctively known that her parents didn't want to believe her, because the alternative was too terrifying.

She waved to Harry and Ron, who were off to the side watching the other students leave and then waited patiently as her trunk was loaded on a carriage. She saw Professor Snape overseeing their departure and, on a whim, walked over to him.

"Sir, may I have a moment of your time?" she asked as she kept pace with his patrol along the line of carriages.

"It would appear to be unavoidable."

"Would you tell me, please, sir, exactly what I am doing wrong on my essays? I have applied myself to the task of improving them to no avail. I simply do not understand by what measure you are grading them, and it gives me no end of frustration that I cannot seem to please you. Just... tell me what you want."

He stopped and whirled around to face her.

"Instead of answering your question, I will ask one of my own. I do not want the answer straight away. I expect you to think about it on the way home to your family.

"Which do you think would give me the greater pleasure, watching a toddler struggling to climb stairs that are too high for him? Or watching a monkey trained to play violin?"

Hermione blinked rapidly several times, trying to make of his odd words.

He pulled open the door to one of the carriages and stepped aside with a curt gesture for her to get in.

"Your answer and accompanying explanation for why you chose that answer, is to be written on no more than one foot of parchment. Any longer, and I will burn it unread."

"Yes, sir." She climbed into the carriage and turned to face him. "Happy Christmas, Professor."

He grunted and shut the door in her face.

"Lady Granger requests your presence in the parlor."

"Thank you, Charles."

Hermione set her fork down next to her unfinished tart and followed the footman out of the nursery.

How very vexing it was to be treated like a child again after being held accountable for her own conduct at Hogwarts. It wasn't as if there was no supervision; it seemed that they were still terribly constricted once they were there, but it occurred to Hermione that if treated like young adults, children frequently rose to the occasion.

As she dawdled on her way to be presented to her grandmother, the merchant's daughter and widow of a minor Baronet, it also came to mind that the opposite was quite true as well.

She patted at her hair, smoothed a wrinkle out of her best muslin frock, settled her shawl around her shoulders, and lifted her chin before entering the parlor.

"I tell yeh, in my day we wouldn'a stood for it a'tall! And we didn'! When the wool merchants got their poxy tax on the cotton in eighty-four, and I were shut out o'the mill along wit t'other fellows. Do yeh know what we dun, boy?"

Severus knew exactly what the old man had done. He'd come home and beat his wife and son for a year until the Cotton Tax of 1784 was lifted and the mill reopened. He didn't bother looking up from his newspaper and tea. In fact, he didn't even bother listening. He'd heard the same words so often that his father only needed to supply the tone and Severus could sing the tune himself.

"We dealt wit it like gentlemen. We got up a petition, we did. Eighty thousan' signatures we got. Changed that law right' back to way it t'was before. There were none of this violence and strikes like they got today. No. These days they're all mad as hatters. We used our heads, we did."

The sound of the door opening put a merciful end to the moribund diatribe. Severus set down his tea and folded his paper as he got up from the table. There was only room for two chairs at the table in the kitchen. In order for his mother to sit, someone would have to give theirs up, and it would never be the other one. Not once in all these long years.

"Yer back then, Eileen? Did yeh get me medicine? Yer useless son's been bangin' on about his witchy ways again. I shoulda showed him the back of me hand, but I knew it would make yeh un'appy, and a'sides, 'e still runs too fast. Useless little coward. Yeh remember how fast our Sev'rus used to run, mother? All knees an' elbows flying up t'lane like demons were on his tail?"

Tobias Snape roared with laughter at his own humor because he was actually stupid enough to believe that making a joke about the old days made everything all right.

His wife patted him on the shoulder, as if he deserved a reward, and handed him the rum she'd gone out for. She scooped up a bowl of the stew and, before she sat, pulled a packet of letters out of her net bag and tossed them onto the table.

Severus leaned down and scooped them up and left the room, with a murmured, "There's tea for you as well."

He headed up the creaking stairs while flicking through the letters and arranging them into an order of importance based on some nebulous criteria that never fully presented itself to the light. He stopped when he saw a letter he had been half expecting but was still surprised to see. He headed into his room and closed the door. Dropping the rest of his correspondence onto the small desk, he flicked the tails of his coat out of the way and sat.

He untied his cravat and carefully folded it, laying it on his desk before popping the first two buttons of his lawn shirt. Then he pulled open the drawer of his desk, took out a ruler, and used it to pop the wax seal on the letter. He carefully folded it out and measured it. Satisfied, he replaced the ruler and closed the drawer. He sat back in the chair and settled one long, lanky, leg on the top of the desk before he started reading.

'Professor S. Snape, Hogwarts Academy for the Gifted

Hermione J. Granger, Southwark, London."

He tossed the letter onto the desk and picked up the next one from the stack and popped the wax with his thumb. He spread it open but then stopped and looked back at the letter from his student. He dropped his leg with a heavy sigh and snatched up a quill and a piece of foolscap.

Hermione sat in her chair in her bedroom and tried to read her text by the dreary light of the window. It was another overcast day and the sky was swollen with rain that coquettishly refused to fall.

A quick knock on her door was followed by Mrs. Crabtree's entrance. "You have a letter, dear."

"I do?"

"Aye. Your mother asked me to bring it to you right away."

"Thank you, Mrs. Crabtree. That was most kind."

"Your mother also asked me to tell you that your father has a patient coming very soon, and it looks to be another bit of fuss."

"Oh. Again, thank you, Mrs. Crabtree."

"T'was my pleasure, dear."

The door closed and Hermione looked quickly at the missive. To her surprise and delight, it was from her professor. She hadn't expected an answer from him, assuming he wouldn't receive her letter until he'd returned from his own holiday. What was even more surprising was that she had only sent hers yesterday. She had posted her letter as instructed when using Muggle methods and so had assumed it would take quite a bit of time to travel back to Scotland. However they did it, her letter seemed to have made it to wherever her professor was in good enough time for her to already receive his reply within eighteen hours.

She looked at the seal, but like hers, it was just a flattened blob of red wax and nothing special. No Slytherin House crest, or ornamental S.S., most likely the butt of a letter opener, as she used.

She didn't know if she should feel let down or validated.

She popped the seal and unfolded the letter and let out a squeak of indignation.

'Miss H. Granger, Southwark, London

Prof. S. Snape, Spinner's End, Manchester.'

Hermione glared out the window as if seeking him on the street so she could run out and give him a piece of her mind.

A rising cry that quickly broke into a piercing shriek came up through the floorboards. She snatched two small twists of cotton out of the palm of her fingerless gloves and jammed them into her ears, cursing the restrictions on underage magic.

She read the short missive through one more time, before jumping up and throwing open her trunk to grab a quill and her ink.

Severus strode swiftly through the streets with his hat pulled down low against the bitter wind that tore at the flaps of his greatcoat. There were few people out on the streets, only a small cluster gathered around a broken dogcart that someone had cheerfully set ablaze. Since there was no one to watch out for, he read his post as he walked.

Prof. S. Snape, Spinner's End, Manchester.

H.J. Granger, Southwark, London.

He refolded the letter and slipped it into his pocket with the rest of the day's post. From the corner of his eye he spied a huddled figure on the corner. He reached into his pocket again and made his way over to the boy.

"Mr. Snape, sir! I hope you're havin' a good day, sir. Reading letters I see. Anyone important writin' to you?"

"No." He dropped several coins into the boy's shaking hand. "Go get out of the cold, Simon."

"Bless you, Mr. Snape. You have a good New Year, sir."

Severus was already moving on.

He was not far from his parents' home when a door he was passing opened. Elspeth Spanner stopped just short of dousing him with the bucket of dirty water she'd been about to throw into the street. She gave him an amused, apologetic smile before turning to the side and emptying the bucket with more care. She straightened and gave him a direct look before turning back inside with a lingering glance over her shoulder. She didn't completely close her door.

Elspeth hurried across her one-room house and replaced the bucket by the stove. She wiped her hands on her apron as she quickly untied it and pulled it off. She checked to make sure her baby was still fast asleep in his crib and tucked one more fold over him, to keep the chill off. She tossed a bit more wood into the stove and was just shutting the door on it when her front door was pushed open.

She straightened up with a slow smile and turned to face Mr. Snape, who had already stripped off his hat and gloves and closed the door behind him.

"How long will your husband be gone?"

"A fortnight. His mother has taken ill in Surrey."

Mr. Snape didn't reply, he just continued to unbutton his greatcoat. Elspeth snatched up a pan from the top of the stove, and, lifting up her heavy quilts, she ran it up and down the sheets to heat the bed. She hurriedly stripped out of her woolen dress and scrambled under the quilts in her shift and knee-length stockings, pulling her shift up around her waist.

When she saw him about to strip off his waistcoat, she stopped him.

He gave her a quizzical look.

"I want you to keep your clothes on."

"Why?"

"If you're naked, you are just a man like the rest. Your fine clothing reminds me of what I gave up. It makes you special to me."

He lifted an eyebrow at her, and she shivered. Mr. Snape was special in other ways that Elspeth could never explain, but always anticipated with relish. That fact that he always left a discreet pile of money was a bonus as well. The baby needed food, and her Henry had left them with too little to keep them until he returned.

The bed creaked from his extra weight as he pulled off his polished boots and dropped them to the floor, revealing thick, woolen stockings.

She helped him get settled under the quilts, accommodating his weight with pleasure, thinking of the lumpy oaf she'd run off with. She fumbled with the placket of his breeches and shoved them down his narrow hips for him. A bit of spit and a small amount of attention was all that was needed. She'd been ready to go since she'd seen him passing her door. He always had that effect on her.

It always started the same. The bed creaking rhythmically and his face shuttered by his long hair, so it looked like she was being tupped by a stringy wig with a nose. At this point, it was always just a pleasant business transaction. But Elspeth knew there was magic to be had if she was patient enough. Sometimes it took longer than others, and once, it didn't happened at all. He'd just spent himself with a grunt and rolled off her, and she'd gone for days feeling like a dirty whore. She hoped it happened again this time. She was desperate for it to happen.

He pushed his arms straight so he was high above her, and she helpfully pulled the tails of his shirt out of the way. Mesmerized by the patterns in the watered silk of his waistcoat, she traced a swirl with her finger.

He let out a long, deep breath, and she knew the magic was going to happen this time. Her belly fluttered in anticipation, and he twisted his head far to the side and stared unseeingly at the wall, as his mouth dropped open. A small moan escaped her. His black eyes found hers with an almost violent force, and she felt herself clench around him in reaction. 'Do it. Do it!' she chanted in her head, needing the magic.

And then it happened. She groaned loud and long when his eyes seemed to ignite and his gaze slipped down to her lips. His face collapsed into that magical look of raw need as he tossed his hair to the side and crashed down on top of her to capture her mouth with his own. His long hands dragged at her shift, seeking her skin, seeking her, as he unleashed a need deeper than mere physical release.

This was what she craved. This was the magic. This was the moment when it changed from a pleasant way to make a few bob to two desperately unhappy people stealing heaven in a flash. In that magical moment, as simple fucking turned to passionate love-making, he was her entire world, and she knew without a doubt that she was his as well, for as long as this stolen minute lasted.

Afterwards, she marveled again at how quickly he could shut himself away. It always ended as it began, with few words and little connection. He would go back to being the aloof, respectable man who always stood out like a strange and exotic creature in a neighborhood already turning to squalor despite its newness. And she would stay in love with him for a few days before her practicality, which had waited until she had well and truly ruined her life to show its face, reasserted itself.

She shoved the pile of shillings into an old tea tin and hid it behind the leg of the stove before sitting down to peel potatoes for her dinner. She glanced at her remade bed and sighed. She should have left it. It would have made that moment of magic seem more real.