Chapter Two

She'd settled on Athene University in London both for its reputation and for its location to and liaison with the Ministry. Most of the Aurors trained at Athene, and many of the solicitors in her office, Hermione included, had taken courses there to keep abreast of developments in the wizarding law of other countries.

Although she'd been pleased with the courses she'd taken at the school in the past, the selection outside of the law department disappointed her. She'd been able to find nothing on mind magics (except in the Divination department, which Hermione dismissed without further thought), nothing on the new Rune theories in the Charms department, and nothing in Arithmancy that she felt she hadn't already covered either in school or her own private studies. But Ron had been adamant that she study something outside the realm of her professional life, and since the class was really his grand gesture, she felt she should consider his wishes.

She decided, finally, on Advanced Contemporary Potion Making. The description indicated that they would be learning new, state-of-the-art brewing techniques, including charming ingredients for maximum potency, extended shelf-life potion preservation, and Arthimantic recipe prediction. It also stated that each student would be trained in brewing some of the newest and most difficult potions of day. This excited Hermione in particular. It had taken her several months to master the creation of Wolfsbane, one of the trickiest potions she'd ever attempted, but she'd done that without formal assistance of any kind. With instruction, she was certain that she could master several finicky potions within the term. It would be something to add to her resume, anyway, and Hermione had always enjoyed the methodic, rhythmic nature of potion brewing.

When the first day of class arrived, Hermione was amused to note that she was actually nervous. It had been some time since she'd been in a classroom...even longer since she'd studied anything at which she wasn't already an expert...and that old need to prove herself was beginning to assert itself. Of course, these days, she thought she could restrain the urge to wave her hand in the air at every question. In fact, she thought, as she walked into the laboratory, it might be better not to sit in the front row. She was a conspicuous persona even without her tendency to participate enthusiastically in class, and she wouldn't want to create a distraction. And perhaps, she thought a bit ruefully, she could use the reminder to sit back and listen.

That classroom was nearly full, but she spotted a workstation with an open seat toward the rear and made her way toward the table and its only occupant, a stringy-looking wizard in shirtsleeves, with long black hair in a queue down his back. He had a sour, beaky face, and in a way, he reminded her of Snape, which she supposed was vaguely appropriate for a potions class. She'd already set her notebook on the table and begun to pull out the chair when she realized that it was Snape, and she froze.

She wasn't at all sure what to say, and it was impossible to pretend she hadn't seen him when she was standing less than three feet away¬¬...and equally impossible to retreat now that she'd begun to seat herself.

"Hello, sir," she managed, sliding into her chair. She opened her notebook to the first page and began to root around in her bag for a quill. She wasn't sure that she could look at him without staring, and she was already trying to brace herself for whatever he might say to her.

"Miss Granger. What a pleasant surprise," he said in a tone that indicated it was anything but, barely cutting his eyes in her direction.

There was a moment of charged, dangerous silence. Finally, she said, "If you'd prefer to work alone, sir, I'd be happy to move to another workstation." She pulled her notebook toward her and prepared to rise.

Snape finally turned toward her and arranged his face into a look of predatory anticipation. "And where, pray tell, would you go?"

Hermione made a quick survey of the classroom and determined that, in fact, the remaining seats had filled. But before she was obliged to make an awkward reply, the instructor began to speak, and she turned toward him as if to grant him every ounce of her obedient attention.

In fact, she heard nothing that the man was saying.

There's no reason to be so shocked, she told herself sharply. It wasn't as if she hadn't known he was out there somewhere, although she actually couldn't remember the last time she'd considered where he might be. After the war, he'd had the good sense to lay low until things were safely settled and Kingsley had been made Minister for Magic. There had been some public outcry, of course, and he'd had to endure several less-than-comfortable hearings, but Hermione herself had ensured that he was not treated by the MLE as a former Death Eater, and he was not subjected to the same tracking spells that those war criminals existed under to this day. So why should she have known where he was? He could have been anywhere these last twenty years, and here was as good a place as any. There was no reason that her heart should be galloping along frantically like a runaway Abraxan.

Still, it was fascinating to see him after all this time, and Hermione wished she could somehow Stupefy the entire room, so that she might drink in his face and absorb the changes there at her leisure. Snape had been in his late thirties when he had taught her at school, she figured quickly, and that would make him nigh on sixty now, though he didn't look it...not by Muggle standards, anyway. His face had always been pinched and lined, and although it seemed nonsensical, it actually appeared as if the deep creases that she remembered delineating his scowl had lessened. He was still slender to the point of being boney, but his cheekbones and chin looked less as if they would tear through his skin at any moment. His hair was as dark as it had ever been. Whatever he had been doing all these years had been good for him, she thought.

And what had he been doing all these years? Not teaching, she was certain. She'd have known it if his name had turned up as an educator on any of the Ministry's lists, and besides, the Daily Prophet would have had a field day with the notion of Hogwarts' Dark Headmaster returning to the profession. Mentally, she pursed her lips. The press had never been kind to Severus Snape. Not even after, when they should have known better. No, if they'd known a thing about his life since the war, it would have been splashed across the headlines in the most lurid terms possible.

But Hermione found that she didn't much care to speculate any further on where Snape had been and what he had been doing. She just wanted to stare at the man who'd played such a prominent role in her childhood and then disappeared from her life as quickly and seamlessly as he'd entered it...and now suddenly materialized beside her like... well, like magic.

The man in question gave an almighty humph, and she focused on the fact that their syllabi had come winging across the room to settle before them. Hermione pulled hers to her, aware nearly the first time since she'd arrived that she was in class and she was not paying attention. But she quickly determined the reason for Snape's disdain as she read over the paper she'd been given. Matching your cauldron to your brew? Keeping a tidy workstation? Hermione snorted and pushed the syllabus away again, leaning back in her chair and sizing up the wizard who'd written it. He didn't seem to understand just whom he was teaching. Surely he'd received a roster... but then, if appearances were anything to go on, he was younger than she, and she knew that the events and players of a political war were likely much less captivating to those who hadn't lived through it and felt its effects intimately.

"Might as well be taught by Potter," Snape was muttering, and Hermione couldn't help but be sympathetic. This was not what she'd imagined when she'd signed up for the class, and it must seem even worse to Snape, who'd mastered the subject almost before she'd been born. She pulled out the course guide to double check her recollection of the description. She touched her wand to the text, circling in red the parts about state-of-the-art brewing techniques and instruction in the creation of the newest and most difficult brews of the day.

She hesitated for a moment before sliding it toward Snape. Was she really about to whisper to Professor Snape in the middle of a lecture? She gave herself a mental shake. He wasn't her professor anymore, and this class was preposterous.

"Any of this look familiar?" she hissed.

He glanced sharply at her, and then seemed to make the decision to reserve his ire for...Hermione glanced at the syllabus to check the professor's name...Dempster Potage. Turning his burning gaze on the round little wizard nattering on at the front of the room, he slipped his wand casually under his folded arms and touched it briefly to her paper.

Insulting at best, sabotage at worst. His spiky handwriting snaked onto the page. Are you going to speak up or shall I?

Hermione suppressed the smallest of smiles. There was something very pleasing about the idea that Snape might trust her to castigate this idiot for the both of them. She touched her wand to the paper.

Please, go right ahead.

Snape gave her a brief nod and then cleared his throat loudly several times. When Professor Potage continued blithely on, she watched with suppressed amusement as Snape reddened angrily, glanced about, and then, as if he were resisting the Imperius, raised his hand.

"Yes?" Potage said.

"Am I to understand," Snape began, "that this is a beginner's course?"

"Oh, no, sir!" Potage said. "Perhaps you've come to the wrong room? This is Advanced Contemporary Potion Making."

Hermione bit her tongue, eyes widening, and braced herself for the spectacle about to take place. Strangely, she felt the slightest thrill of anticipation, a reaction she'd never before experienced when faced with one of Snape's tirades.

"I shudder to think what you must teach in Beginning Potions," Snape replied. "The art of breathing in and out? How to differentiate between a cauldron and a hole in the ground?"

Hermione stifled a chuckle.

"I suspect that the good people before you today covered the basics of cauldron selection and the importance of keeping volatile ingredients contained when they were approximately eleven years old. Do you, or do you not, intend to cover anything that was advertised in the description of this course?"

Potage was blushing furiously, but he bit back any reply that he might have made to Snape's words and jabbed his wand sharply at the blackboard. The ingredients and instructions for the Felix Felicis Potion appeared in block letters.

"As you seem to feel that you are adequately prepared to begin," Potage said, a bit breathlessly, "please follow the instructions on the board. I will collect your potion at the end of the class period this evening. Perhaps I will revise next week's objectives based on your level of success tonight. However, I rather doubt it."

That said, Potage sank into the chair behind his desk and began to rapidly turn the pages of the book before him. Hermione glanced at Snape who raised an eyebrow as if to say, if you must.

"Sir," Hermione said in a loud voice, and several of her classmates jumped along with the instructor.

"Yes, miss? A bit confused about the directions...perhaps you'd like a bit of guidance?"

"On the contrary," Hermione said. "I've brewed this potion several times before and feel confident that I will be able to do so again. However, as we both know, Felix Felicis cannot be brewed in a mere two hours. Even if it were possible to complete the steps in that time...which I assure you, it is not...the potion must mature through a full moon cycle."

Professor Potage wrung his hands in frustration. "I'm well aware of the requirements of the potion, thank you. If you will simply follow the directions on the blackboard..."

"I intend to do so, Professor," Hermione interjected. "However, by my reckoning, when the two hours are up, I will have reached the stage at which it is necessary to infuse the solution with ground Unicorn horn. As I'm sure you've realized, if the potion is stopped at the point and the Unicorn horn is not added, there will be nothing to counteract the acidity of the Re'em blood, and what will result is..."

"Yes, yes, a solvent so strong that it will dissolve anything contrived to contain it. Thank you for your concern, my dear, but I assure you that you will not have reached that point in the brewing in two hours' time. Please begin."

Snape took a step toward the aisle to collect his ingredients, and Hermione quickly stepped out of his way, but he came up beside her, so close that she could feel the whisper of his breath against her hair. "In the interest of... efficiency," he said quietly, "I suggest that you handle the insect components and I will prepare the powders."

He strode away without waiting for a reply, and Hermione grinned broadly as she selected a cauldron and several knives, measured out a few liquid ingredients, and collected enough eyes, wings and eggs for the both of them. She hurried to her station and set about dicing and counting, leaving Snape to grate and grind as he would.

When she had prepared several precise mounds of ingredients, she felt a gentle nudge against her foot. He was ready to begin.

She carefully coated the interior of her cauldron with bat's blood and conjured a low flame beneath it, not bothering to check herself against Snape's progress. Several moments later, he slid a vial of elderberry juice across the desk to her, which she added to the cauldron, trusting his measurements. She indicated one of the piles of lacewing flies, which he levitated into his own cauldron.

After half an hour of furious brewing, it occurred to her that Snape had often known various additions and techniques that improved the output of a given recipe. While she certainly did not want to give him the impression that she needed help to brew this potion, any... extraordinary... results could only strengthen their case against the hapless Professor Potage, who was steadfastly not looking at anyone, willing, she supposed, to allow an explosion if it were going to prove his point.

"Sir," she began in an undertone, "I don't mean to interrupt, but I wanted to ask... that is, I wanted to indicate that I was," she paused, "open to advice that might achieve more... efficacious results."

Snape did not turn toward her, but she saw the corner of his mouth curl into a smirk. "I will be sure to keep that in mind, Granger," he said.

They brewed in silence for the rest of the hour, each taking ingredients from the other without hesitation. When Potage stood, Snape tapped Hermione's foot beneath the table with his own once more. She tipped her eyes to his briefly and then took up her wand.

"Please finish the step that you are working on," Potage said, "cast a Stasis Charm and decant your potion. You may deliver it to my desk on your way out."

Hermione cast her Stasis Charm and felt another nudge as Snape passed her a pair of Dragonhide gloves. "Just in case," he said gruffly.

When they had both decanted their potions and gathered their things, Hermione pointed her wand at the two perfect piles of ground Unicorn horn remaining on their worktable. "A shame we didn't get to work with such a valuable ingredient," she said.

"Indeed," Snape said and Vanished it himself.

Still gloved, they returned their cauldrons and other supplies to the front of the classroom, dropped their labeled potion phials into the stand Potage had left upon his desk and departed.

The night was hot and windy when Hermione stepped out into it from the well-lit hall of the Athene Potions Building. The breeze caught her hair and robes, and she felt almost exhilarated by the weather and the last two and a half hours. When was the last time she'd felt so mischievous, so full of latent power?

The door opened behind her, and Hermione turned to see Snape emerging, the look on his face as close to amusement as she'd ever seen.

"What was the duration of your Stasis Charm?" he asked.

"Twenty-five minutes," she replied, unable to suppress a grin.

"Soft-hearted," Snape said. "Mine was four." And with that, he Apparated to Merlin alone knew where.

Hermione did not wait for the inevitable chaos that would begin momentarily in the potions classroom, instead Apparating to Ottery St Catchpole. She was still infected with a kind of bubbling excitement left over from what could only be described as sassing a professor, and she wanted to walk a bit before she had to rejoin the real world.

How amazing to have seen Snape tonight...unexpected and unexpectedly amicable. She would have thought that they'd have fallen right back into their old roles as unreasonable professor and insufferable student. As she walked along the cobblestone lane to her home, it occurred to her that she'd allowed Snape to call her Miss Granger for the entire evening without correcting him. That was odd, especially because she'd been so desperate for the world to see her as anything other than Harry Potter's school friend...to see her as an adult in her own right...that she'd spent years demanding that the press call her by her married name. She'd have thought it would have been important to her on some level that Snape acknowledge that she'd grown up, that she was no longer the annoying little Miss Granger. She frowned. Well, it was hardly of any consequence. Although they had called each other by their old names, the spirit of their interaction was wholly different. She was actually looking forward to class the next week, to seeing him again and facing together whatever their actions tonight had brought about.

Besides, she thought as she climbed the front steps, she'd felt like Miss Granger tonight...young and bright and a little bit of a show-off.

"Hellooo!" she trilled as she opened the front door.

"How was class?" Ron called.

She made her way down the hallway to the living room, where she found him sprawled on the sofa, surrounded by books and papers covered in large scrawling letters.

"Oh, dreadful," she said, smiling. "An absolute joke, really, but you'll never believe who was in the class with me."

"Who?"

"Professor Snape!" she said. "Truly! And he was my lab partner."

Ron grimaced. "Has he hexed you? Why on earth are you smiling? That sounds like a nightmare."

"It should have been, I know, but it was actually... fun." She gave him a little shrug. It was difficult to explain why this thoroughly infuriating class in which she had been paired with one of the sternest taskmasters of her youth had been so enjoyable. "We... well, I guess you could say we taught our professor a lesson about underestimating his students."

Ron laughed. "I think just the combination of you and Snape should make any professor quake in his boots a bit. No wonder Voldemort never stood a chance."

Hermione smiled, but somehow the mention of Voldemort put a damper on her strange enthusiasm.

"How was your day?" she asked, settling on the couch beside him.

"Quentin Diggle got frustrated with multiplication and blew up his desk," Ron said, fingering the bridge of his nose. He began to gather the children's work into piles and set it aside.

"Oh, dear," Hermione murmured.

"And then Finn got scared and cried for nearly a half an hour. I'm starting to wonder if I shouldn't be seeing these kids privately in their homes instead of trying to do it all together."

"Would that even be possible, though? There aren't enough hours in the day!"

"I'd have to give up some time in the evenings, yeah," he replied. "But it might be worth it if it means they're actually learning something. I'm starting to understand why their lessons have been so patchy. It seems like they go along okay until something upsets them, and then there's some kind of outburst, and the teachers have just sort of... skipped over whatever set them off."

Hermione sighed. "I know. You're doing a really good thing, Ronald, teaching these children in an environment where an exploded desk just means a simple Reparo, rather than an Obliviate and a lot of fear and mistrust. I hate to take magical kids out of the Muggle schools, because I think they need to understand Muggles, but I have to say, I think you're doing a better job for them than the schools could."

Ron beamed at her and took her hand. After a few moments, he said, "Easy for you to say...a woman who just came home from terrorizing her teacher."

"Speaking of which," Hermione said, extricating herself from the couch, "I'm going to Floo Harry and Ginny and tell them about Snape."

"Hermione! You'll put them off their dinner," he said.

She waved a hand dismissively and grabbed the Floo Powder from the mantle. For a few more minutes, she wanted to talk about what had happened tonight and maybe recapture that odd feeling she'd had on the way home, that powerful feeling that anything was possible.