Chapter Three

Hermione Floo'd home for a change of clothing before heading to the second meeting of her Advanced Contemporary Potion Making class. Ron was not yet home from work, so she shed her Wizengamot robes, gobbled a quick meal of leftover chicken and headed upstairs, Fort dogging her footsteps the entire way.

"Fort!" she said, exasperated, as she bent to rub his pointy ears. "I'm going to step on you one of these days, and then where will you be, you bad old thing?"

Fort wriggled and licked at her fingertips, whether from affection or the smell of chicken, she neither knew nor cared. "I know, boy, but I have to go to class. Ron'll be home soon and then you can play," she said. She rose and entered the bathroom.

"You're looking peaky," the mirror helpfully informed her, and she stuck out her tongue at the glass. It was true...she did look peaky: tired and harassed, and her hair, which had been forced into a tidy, professional chignon this morning, was frizzing up and out of its containment. She sighed. It didn't really matter what she looked like, she supposed. It was just a class, and everyone in it was likely coming from a long day at work somewhere. Still, though. She'd sort of hoped to look... formidable this evening. Professor Potage hadn't called roll during the last class period, so he hadn't matched her face to her name, but surely after the events of last week, he'd be more interested to know who exactly had destroyed his desk (and probably the floor, too) of his classroom. She'd prefer that when he identified Hermione Granger-Weasley, she look as intimidating as possible. Snape, she was sure, would have no difficulties on that score.

She changed quickly into black trousers and a tailored, short-sleeved shirt, throwing her light-weight summer robes on overtop. She loosed her hair and cast a strong Smoothing Charm on it, hoping for the best.

"Verdict?" she asked the mirror.

"Better than nothing," the mirror said with a sigh.

Hermione huffed and applied some blusher and lip gloss. "And that's all you get," she declared, turning on her heel to Apparate.

"More than what I'd hoped for, my dear," the mirror replied somewhat bemusedly as Hermione disappeared into the ether.

***

She arrived in the classroom to find that Snape had yet to make an appearance. Hermione made her way to their empty workstation, wondering at the profound sense of disappointment she felt. It wasn't as if she didn't understand why he would choose not to return; even if he hadn't participated in harassing a professor on the first day of class, the material itself did not seem to have much to offer... and yet, she had looked forward to seeing him again. If last week had been any indication, he did not find her to be quite the officious little nitwit of years past, and she'd hoped that they might continue to... er, collaborate on these class assignments...and that she'd learn something of how he had passed the last two decades along the way. That mystery was far more interesting than anything Advanced Contemporary Potion Making had on offer.

She glanced to the front of the room, trying to assess the damage that their little stunt had caused, but there was nothing to indicate that anything was out of the ordinary. Professor Potage was pacing to and fro, glancing frequently at a piece of parchment, but he paid her no particular attention. Hermione found that she was unaccountably disappointed once again.

"Yes, erm, hello," Potage began, looking up from his parchment at last. "If I may have your attention please, class. Will Hermione Weasley and Severus Snape please see me before we begin?"

Hermione sighed and closed her notebook again. She rose and walked to the front of the classroom, head held high and a look of polite query upon her face.

"I am Hermione Granger-Weasley," she said crisply. "I regret to say that Mr Snape is not present at this time."

There was a sudden cough from the doorway, and Hermione's heart leapt at the sight of Snape standing there. He was looking at her rather sharply, but she disregarded it, turning back to Professor Potage.

"Potage. Weasley," he said.

"Yes. Very well, then, Mrs Weasley, Mr Snape. It seems I was remiss in neglecting to set a standard duration for Stasis Charms," Potage said. "In the future, please cast your charms to a length of no less than three hour's time. It is a large class, after all, and I would hate for you to lose points because I could not get to your potion before it... deteriorated."

Or before it ate a hole straight down to the bedrock, Hermione thought uncharitably. Well, if this was how he wanted to handle things, it could certainly prove amusing. She wondered how many times they could force him to admit to these regrettable omissions.

She glanced at Snape, hoping to share in a glance her take on the situation, but he only nodded sharply at Potage and strode to their workstation, leaving her to follow in his wake like a chastised student.

Professor Potage made a few more laps of the front of the classroom and then called the room to order, launching immediately into a lecture on Preserving Charms.

"...better than a simple Stasis Charm, which simply holds the ingredient at the precise stage of decomposition it had attained when the charm was placed. As all of you have surely experienced, when the Stasis Charm is lifted, the ingredients deteriorate rapidly, and must either be used at the very instant that the charm is removed or be rendered unusable. This has been a drawback to preserved ingredients for years, leading many to believe that certain potions can only be brewed at specific times..."

Hermione glanced over at Snape. His attention was riveted on their Professor, but his features had twisted into a look of disdain. He scratched down some notes without looking away from the front of the room. She wished she could lean over just the slightest bit and see what he had written.

"In fact, by employing the Preserving Charms correctly, one can arrest the development of the ingredient...be it leaf, stem, or berry...at the very moment it has been plucked. There is no further decomposition of its properties, magical or otherwise, leaving the ingredients nearly as potent as they were when they were still growing. The Preserving Charms require no removal...extensive research has been done on this for the last ten years, and the resounding agreement of the Society of Potioneers has been..."

Snape made an explosive noise with his lips, quiet enough to escape the notice of their professor, but loud enough to draw Hermione's eyes back to his face. Did he truly not believe in the Preserving Charms, or was he scoffing at the idea of charm work encroaching upon potion brewing? So far as she could guess, Snape belonged to the Society of Potioneers...he certainly had done when they were at Hogwarts...so he'd surely heard of all this before.

"Would you kindly cease staring at me, Granger?" he hissed.

"It's Weasley," she hissed back, earning her a furious glare. She turned immediately back to her notes, blushing all the way up to the tips of her ears. She hadn't really been staring at him so much as thinking while looking in his general direction. He needn't act as if she'd been goggling at him like a first-year.

"...drawbacks is how many potions recipes have been designed around using substandard ingredients. If, for instance, you were to use a Preserving Charm on the moonflower...gathered at the new moon, of course...to be used in Dreamless Sleep, you would find that you had created a brew strong enough to fell a manticore. Therefore, it is necessary to use caution when employing..."

Hermione doodled in the margins of her notes. She could see where the lecture was heading...an equation would be necessary to determine the amount of fully potent ingredient that should replace a weaker version for any given potion. Really, it would be best to run an arithmantic prediction for the overall potion to see what the benefits and drawbacks would be of increasing the potency of any ingredient in a given brew. She began to draw out such an equation for Pepperup Potion, as it was simple and the ingredients leapt neatly to mind.

Her attention was called back to the present by a practical demonstration of the Preservation Charm on some lovage. Hermione noted that Potage withdrew his arm as he cast and added the kind of jerky upswing to his wand that she associated with the Tergeo Charm...perhaps drawing the most magical aspects of the plant to the forefront...and finishing with a jab that reminded her of a Freezing Hex. She wondered if she was witnessing the wizarding equivalent of flash freezing. It was something to look into in the future, and she made herself a note.

Before long, each student had a pile of lovage on his or her desk with instructions to practice the Preservation Charm. Professor Potage made no mention of the danger of handling fresh lovage, but having no wish to inflame her brain, Hermione donned gloves before picking up her wand. She was inwardly quite pleased with herself when she saw Snape do the same.

"Conservatio!"she said, mimicking the wand movement as best she could and concentrating on the idea of drawing the magic to the surface and freezing it there. The lovage was briefly enveloped in a faint sparkle of magic and then fell quiescent. Hermione moved it to the corner of her desk for inspection and turned to see how Snape was progressing.

He jabbed his wand fruitlessly at the pile of leaves and roots in front of him, repeating the incantation in a more and more imperious tone, as if demanding that the spell take effect. Hermione squashed the smirk that threatened her lips and tried to determine the exact nature of his difficulty.

"I think you're missing the upward swing," she said.

Snape rounded on her, his black eyes hard. "I believe I already asked you to stop staring at me."

"I wasn't staring for Merlin's sake, I was thinking. You happened to be in my line of sight," she retorted, quickly stepping behind him and closing her right hand around his. "Like this: Conservatio!" Either his bafflement or the force of her will allowed her to dominate his wand hand, guiding him quickly through the charm.

Recovering himself, Snape tore his hand from her grasp. "Don't touch me," he growled.

Hermione returned to her area, both hands held up in front of her in a gesture of innocence, feeling somewhat stung. "Fine. Don't learn the charm," she said.

"The charm," Snape said, "is perfectly useless. Not only does it create ingredients that are out of balance with the needs of the potioneer, it somehow weakens the overall brew. I have seen countless tests run...the notion that there is agreement among the Society is preposterous."

"Weakens the brew?" Hermione asked.

"Because that simpering idiot didn't mention it, it must not be true? I assure you, you will find whatever we make out of this mess will be less...not more...effective than the traditional recipe."

Hermione turned back to her notes and reviewed the equation she'd written for the Pepperup Potion. There was nothing in the Arithmancy to suggest that the potion would be weakened by a stronger ingredient. She pulled absently at a stray curl as she ran through the equation again. It might be that Snape was right and that it was the addition of a stray charm into the recipe that changed the balance. She scratched away at her parchment, attempting to take into account the additional bit of magic...

Her attention was returned to the class by the increasingly noisy throat-clearing sounds issuing from the wizard next to her, and she found that this time, Snape seemed to be staring at her. But before she could open her mouth, he said, "Out of the way. We have forty-five minutes to brew a Befuddlement Draught, and I refuse to spend the time watching you daydream."

This time, there was no mention of tandem brewing as they gathered their ingredients from the front of the classroom. Hermione wasted no time in being disappointed, however, as she was determined to find the cause of the weakening of the potion that Snape had described.

She Preserved her sneezewort and scurvy-grass, chopped and diced, and before long, was ready to light the flame under her cauldron. As she waited for her ingredients to begin the slow simmer that was called for in the beginning stage of the brewing, she surreptitiously watched Snape from the corner of her eye. He had managed the Preservation Charm without too much difficulty (she humphed a bit in her mind...not that he would show a scrap of gratitude) and was also beginning to brew. She glanced back at her cauldron to find that instead of warming toward a boil, the contents therein seemed to have cooled.

Odd. Hermione checked the recipe against the flame she had conjured and determined that it was, in fact, at the right level. She picked up her wand hesitantly. Increasing the heat would not be particularly wise. She'd seen too many cauldrons explode on impatient students who couldn't wait for a simmer. She risked a glance at Snape and saw him checking his own flame. Very odd.

It occurred to her that she'd earlier compared the Preservation Charm with a Muggle flash freeze. Was it possible that the ingredients were somehow frozen on the inside, and that they were affecting the temperature of the brew? Hermione tentatively raised the intensity of the fire beneath her cauldron. She heard a sharp exhalation from Snape.

"I believe you mentioned earlier the importance of keeping one's eyes to oneself," she said, but couldn't resist adding, "I've had an idea, and I'm testing it out."

"I have no wish to visit St Mungo's this evening based on one of your ideas," Snape replied.

Hermione resisted the urge to poke out her tongue for the second time that evening.

With the additional heat, Hermione's potion began to take shape as she had expected, and she spent the rest of the class period attending to it. When she was finished, she filled three phials and labeled them, tucking two into her handbag and reserving one to hand in. She began to tidy her workstation, noticing with some amusement that Snape was still brewing.

When he had finished, Hermione approached his potion with an empty phial in hand.

"May I?" she asked.

Snape looked incredulous.

"What? It's not a personal potion...there's nothing of you I could steal or use. I just want to test my theory...and yours, really, since you're so sure you've brewed a substandard potion."

"Explain," he said.

"After," she replied, and helped herself.

She could feel him seething next to her, but somehow, Hermione felt not just unconcerned, but exhilarated again. There was a chance she was really onto something...and even if she weren't, she knew that once she'd explained herself, he would be interested, and perhaps they could get back some of the camaraderie they'd lost.

***

Standing beneath a streetlamp in front of the Potions Building, Hermione gave him the quick version. "There's more to it than that, of course, but I thought..."

"Yes, I can see your line of reasoning," Snape interrupted, not looking at all convinced.

She shifted uncomfortably for a moment. "I have an extra phial of my own potion, if you you'd like to experiment with it," she said, debating and then adding, "sir."

"Severus will do," he said shortly and held out his hand. She quickly produced the phial and handed it over.

"Well, I... I suppose I'll see you next week," she said, rolling her eyes toward the building.

"Indeed," he said and then surprised her by saying, "Perhaps we should meet briefly afterward to discuss the results of this experiment. That is, if you can tear yourself away from the homestead for that long."

"Oh, yes! Yes, that would be fine," she said. "And Severus, I was wondering if you might make me a list of some of the articles you mentioned...effects of the Preservation Charms on brew quality."

"The Ministry hasn't so rotted your brains that you've forgotten how to research?" he asked, raising an eyebrow.

She gave a soft huff. "Of course not. I'd only hoped to speed the process."

"Merlin save me from overachieving students," Snape said. "I'll bring you the bloody articles."

She smiled openly at him for the first time, and he looked rather uncomfortable. "Next week, then," she said, turning to Apparate. Hermione felt the warm weight of his hand on her shoulder, suddenly, arresting her departure.

"I trust you will not be experimenting on yourself," he said sternly.

"No more so than you'll be," she said, smiling again, and spinning away into the night.

***

Several weeks later, Hermione's home was filled with the sounds of laughter, clinking glasses and a crackling fire. Harry and Ginny were visiting for the first of their much-planned and often daydreamed-about "empty nest" nights.

She was standing in the kitchen, refilling glasses, and regaling her friends with tales of her new Potions class.

"So we tandem brewed it to save time and managed to stop just as the potion became a corrosive. We never did get to see the damage, but I'd be surprised if there was much desk left after the Stasis Charm lifted."

"I want to hear about the part where you've been having drinks with Snape," Ginny said, laughing. "Ron tells me you're practically best mates these days."

Hermione handed her a glass and sat down on the couch next to Ron, who wrapped his arm around her shoulder. "My wife, who soothes the savage beast."

Hermione tried not to blush, since there was absolutely no reason to do so. "Hardly. We meet after class to discuss a project we're working on...trying to make Preservation Charms work for potion ingredients."

"Is that not the most Hermione thing you've ever heard of?" Ron said.

"Still, I can't believe you can actually have a pint with him," Harry said, smiling ruefully. "If you could go back in time to when we were at school and tell yourself that someday you'd have drinks with that man..." Harry shook his finger at the look she gave him. "I'm not saying he wasn't on our side...I'm just saying he certainly wasn't helping us with our potions homework then."

She humphed. "He's not helping me with my potions homework, Harry. We're collaborating on an experiment. And he's perfectly pleasant to be around." Most of the time, that was. Hermione smiled to herself. Just last week he'd done such a spot-on impression of Professor Potage that she'd laughed until tears had started to leak from her eyes.

When she refocused on the conversation, Harry was speculating on how the children were doing in potions.

"Lily and Al seem to have got the hang of it," Harry was saying, "but James takes after me. He couldn't brew his way out of a paper bag."

"He does not take after you," Ginny said. "You, at least, tried. James is too Quidditch mad to think about his classes."

"I don't know, Ginny," Ron said. "We were pretty Quidditch mad, and we did all right. I think we just weren't very good at potions." He laughed. "Remember the time that Neville blew up the Shrinking Solution? I was inches from doing the same myself...would have done, if the explosion hadn't kept me from adding the powdered newt."

Ginny glared at her brother. "You did all right because you had Hermione to coach you. I hardly think Genevieve Fenallen is helping James with his classes."

"Oh, lay off poor Genevieve," Ron said, leaning over and shoving his sister and nearly sloshing wine out of her glass. "She looked terrified of you all summer. And they're only fourth-years. I don't think you need to read too much into it."

"No? So you're fine with the fact that James reports Simon Brocklehurst hangs about Gryffindor Tower, waiting for Rose to emerge?"

Ron reddened slightly but kept his voice even as he replied to his sister. Hermione watched the two of them baiting one another with a kind of fond amusement. She glanced at Harry to share a look that only the spouses of siblings could, but found that he was as invested in the faux-argument as the others. Her amusement was suddenly tinged with an odd feeling of being slightly out of step with the others, as if looking at them through a fine film of glass.

In fact, she had known about Simon Brocklehurst, and if she had neglected to tell Ronald, well, it was because she'd wanted to spare Rose, for a time, from this slightly flushed, white-knuckled version of her father. It was... good to be noticed...invigorating to feel singled out, chosen for attention, and Hermione knew that she had longed for that at Hogwarts, even if she'd experienced it rarely. Well, she amended mentally, she'd certainly been singled out for attention often enough as the best friend of Harry Potter, but there'd been no swains waiting outside portrait holes, and she didn't begrudge her daughter those first adolescent stirrings of affection. Desire. Power. Whatever it was.

"Excuse me for a moment," she murmured, getting up to go and check on her potion. The others continued on in their teasing, and Hermione glanced back as she left the room. These were the people dearest to her heart, Harry and Ginny curled together on the hearth rug, Ron splayed out upon the sofa, and she wondered, for a moment, why she suddenly felt so claustrophobic, so pulled toward the silence and solitude of her makeshift lab.

Perhaps she was just missing the children and all the talk about them and their exploits this evening had made this melancholy ache inside her. She made a perfunctory check of the new Befuddlement Draught that she and Snape were working on. It was fine; it hadn't really needed checking, just a few days to mature before they met to compare notes. She just needed a moment, really, just a moment to feel like herself again.

She picked up a quill from her lab table and pulled out a roll of parchment. She felt the oddest urge to communicate, to be connected to the thrill and pull of life again, though she'd just left the room in which her life was ostensibly taking place. Oddly, she felt she wanted to write to Snape, which made no sense at all. She wouldn't even know where to send him a letter, and what on earth would she write? Dear Severus, as I'm sure you've guessed, I've completed the potion. It's fine. Sincerely, Hermione?

Maybe the wine was going to her head.

She picked up the quill once more.

Dear Hugo,

Mum

Hermione set the letter aside, still feeling a bit out of sorts. But she was able, now, to rise and return to the living room, to sit down among the people she loved and reach... reach toward happiness.

"Everything okay, Oh Potions Mistress?" Ron said, scooting over to make room for her on the couch.

She smiled a rueful little smile. "More or less," she said.