Chapter 6: A Union of Scientists

Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author.

Many thanks to VIVAvivacious for all of her help beta-ing this chapter.

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Humanity needs practical men, who get the most out of their work, and, without forgetting the general good, safeguard their own interests.

– Marie Curie.

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Wythenshawe, Manchester: 28th June, 2009

Hermione groaned when she heard the sharp tapping begin against the glass window of her study and hauled herself to her feet.

Opening the window, she allowed Snape's owl, Hephaestus, to fly into the room with yet another small scroll attached to his leg. After untying the ribbon that bound the parchment there, she fed him an owl treat before sending him on his way. Because it was a fine day outside, she chose to leave the window open before returning to her armchair and flicking the seal open with her thumbnail and unrolling Snape's missive.

I think that combining the Dragon's blood and Raven's blood is too dangerous – if not watched carefully, it could combust, and then we would be forced to begin again. Let's not waste our time with such drastic ideas and attempt something doable.

S.

Hermione sighed heavily and sat back in her chair, tossing the scroll onto the coffee table in front of her and closing her eyes. Snape was so fast to reject many of her ideas, and she was beginning to pick up a pattern. She knew he thought because she had less experience in the field than him, that she was some sort of incompetent student, mixing anything together and creating messes to clean up. But that wasn't the case. She was a professional, and much more open to the modern advances in potion-making that Snape seemed to have decided were nonsense.

Their main problem was that they were from two different eras of Potions, and while Hermione was willing to embrace new things, Snape was reluctant in all things. He was too traditional. Their second problem, one that Hermione felt more apt to deal with in the near future, was their means of communication. They were wearing their familiars out with all of the letters they sent back and forth to one another during the day. Hermione had once counted a total of ten letters each.

Finally tired of everything being Snape's way or the highway, she summoned a piece of parchment to her, picked up her quill, dipped it into some ink, and began to write.

Once she was finished, she sealed it and walked over to where Ophelia was perched, head tucked beneath her wings as she slept. Hermione stroked the top of her head, gently waking her from her slumber. Without Hermione even having to ask, the owl stuck her leg out to receive the letter she was about to send off. She smiled and tied the note on with a purple ribbon, and after allowing the owl to creep up onto her arm, Hermione carried her to the window and let her launch into the air.

She knew she had done the right thing, sending a letter to Snape complaining about his closed-minded behaviour.

It was yet another road block in their efforts to create the potion, and Hermione was trying to remove them while they still could. If she could get Snape to give just a little bit more, it would make their work easier in the long run.

Deciding to take a break from the work, she went to the kitchen and heated a bowl of leftover pumpkin soup from the night before. She sat down at the table to eat it while sorting through the mail she had collected from her post box earlier in the day. Because she lived in a Muggle area, she still paid rates, electricity, and water bills just like everyone else.

After she had eaten and prioritised her mail, she Apparated to the alley behind the post office and went in to pay all of her bills for the month before returning home to clean the kitchen up. She returned to the study and saw that Ophelia had dropped a letter on the top of her desk, most probably from Snape.

She decided to leave it there and take a nap while it was warm and quiet. She always worked better during the night, anyway.

Later, when she awoke and found herself in her dark bedroom, she felt a moment of disorientation before realising she had moved herself there to sleep in the first place. She stumbled through the bathroom to attend to her needs before walking back into the study and yawning as she picked up Snape's letter from her desk that Ophelia had delivered earlier.

'What did Snape send for me this time, hmmm?' she said, looking up to see if her familiar was on her perch or not.

Though she found the perch empty, she disregarded it. It was a nice night, and her owl had most likely gone out for a hunt. Turning her attention back to the note, she opened it and sat down in the chair behind her desk to read it.

Granger,

S. Snape

Hermione found the photo of Snape's house attached with a mundane little Muggle paperclip on the back of the letter. She couldn't help but smirk a little at that. Who would have thought Snape even knew how to use Muggle stationary? Shaking her thoughts away, she stared at the photograph and saw that his house was a simple two-storey Victorian, not unlike her own home. She did notice that her own front yard and gardens appeared to be a little more tidy and kempt than his did, although she had no idea when the photo had been taken.

Sighing for the second time that day, she placed the letter and photo, along with the rest of Snape's correspondence, in the top drawer of the desk before securing it. The next few weeks looked as though they would be very telling.

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Greenwich, Ipswich: 29th June, 2009

It was almost nine in the morning, and Snape had found himself pacing his sitting room for the better part of an hour already.

Hermione Granger was due to arrive at his door at any minute, and he was nervous. It was unlike him to be in such a state, but her first impression of his house and how he lived mattered for some reason, especially as he was certain that she would be spending a lot of time there in the weeks to come. He supposed inviting her to his house first would be a way of extending a hand of companionship in her direction, to fix whatever problem he had inadvertently caused by corresponding with her in the way they had begun. Admittedly, he was not an expert by any means when it came to the minds of women, so he was just going with his gut on this.

He had been finding himself continually surprised by Granger while reading over all her notes during the past week and a half. She was much more comprehensive and innovative than he had thought she would be, and he knew that he had made the correct decision in conceding to the collaboration, but he was not yet ready to accept that they would need to take any drastic action where the potion was concerned. Although he knew they very well might have to try different and newer techniques, the old ways had never failed him yet.

He was disturbed from the thoughts rattling around in his brain by the sound of the doorbell ringing before a light knocking sounded on the front door.

The wards on the house recognised there was another magical signature on his property, and he assumed Granger had arrived for the day. Straightening himself out a little, he strode from the sitting room to the door and pulled it open to reveal Granger wearing a set of mauve robes over what he assumed was Muggle attire. She had a briefcase clutched in one hand, the other moving up to smooth a stray curl behind her ear. She had worn her hair tied back in a loose braid, and flyaways were the result.

'Good morning, Professor,' she greeted cheerfully.

Snape nodded at her gruffly, standing aside and opening the door wider to allow her passage into his house. 'You needn't be so formal with me, Miss Granger,' he said as he ushered her out of the front hallway into the sitting room, then through the next door into his study. 'Make yourself comfortable in the spare armchair.'

She complied without question and opened up her briefcase, reaching in and pulling out the bundle of his notes and placing them on the table in front of her. 'I have already been through all of this twice, and I have highlighted the points that I think we need to work on,' she informed him.

'I think you know what my stance is on your suggestions,' Snape said, cutting across whatever it was that she was going to say when she opened her mouth to continue speaking.

He watched as Granger crossed her arms over her chest and gave him a look that clearly said he had best watch what he said around her. He decided to ignore it. After all, it was his house.

'Professor Snape, if you aren't going to respect my opinions and accept me as an equal partner in this project, then why on Earth did you agree to collaborate with me in the first place?' Hermione asked, stirring him from his musings.

'Are you quite finished laying down the law, Miss Granger?' he asked, stalling anything else she had to say when she opened up her mouth for a second round.

She snapped her mouth closed and breathed out a heavy sigh, one filled with a weariness he had not recognised until that point. He could see she was much paler, and the dark circles beneath her eyes were more pronounced than the last time he had seen her just a few short weeks ago. When she had been a student of his at Hogwarts, she had been a lot shorter and weightier than the woman who sat in the armchair adjacent to him.

He sucked in a deep breath. Granger had grown up, and he had missed it completely. He had been so set in seeing her the same way she had been as a student that he had overlooked that she had matured quite a bit. She even had the beginnings of crow's feet beside the outer corners of each eye. She was the type of person who would have wrinkles from smiling. Resigned to his fate, he stuck out an arm in the direction of his desk and summoned the stack of Hermione's notes to him.

'Let's get to work then,' he said quietly. 'We'll discuss your Dragon and Raven's blood idea another time – when we are closer to that stage of the potion.'

A small, triumphant smile lit up her features, particularly her chocolate brown eyes that still seemed large, even then. 'Well, to begin with, I think we should come up with a schedule of whose house we shall work in on which days, and days when either of us will be too preoccupied with other tasks,' she said, whipping out a clean sheet of parchment to jot the days down.

'I do research from Monday to Thursday, and work on other potions I supply to various apothecaries on Friday and Saturday,' Snape listed off. 'Sunday is the day I do my deliveries, in the morning, and in the afternoon and evening, I do not work.'

'You don't work on a Sunday afternoon? Why, Professor, I am shocked,' she said, the hint of teasing in her tone belying her words.

'What about you, Miss Granger?' he asked, choosing to ignore her comments.

She sobered up immediately from her teasing. 'I do research on my weekends, twice a week during the school term when I am not required to teach,' she answered, listing off her duties on her fingers. 'As it is the summer, and I am not required to do any teaching, I spend five days a week doing research, and on the weekends I visit my friends occasionally and work on potions to restock the college medical centre.'

'I propose that on Monday and Wednesday we work at your house, and on Tuesday and Thursday at mine,' Snape said simply. 'Four days a week collaboration should be enough to begin with, unless we come to a point where we find we need to invest extra time into the project.'

After agreeing, the pair fell into silence as they began reading over each other's work for their individual potion bases. By the time it was afternoon, they had debated over the various positives and negatives of both, and decided that they would work with Granger's base consisting of lemon balm, lemon grass root, ginseng, ginger and camomile with pure spring water. The ingredients would create a calm base to work with, which would decrease the risk of creating a volatile reaction in the later stages of the potion, when the ingredients were slightly less calming.

When Snape saw Granger to the door that evening, both were pleased with the progress they had made, and they agreed to each brew a base potion with which to work the following day. As soon as the door was closed behind him, he leaned against it, allowing himself to sag against it wearily. It was not very often that he was subjected to the presence of another person for that length of time. Even though he had found her company to be less irritating than he had expected, it still exhausted him.

Returning to the study to tidy up the papers they had been writing notes on, he carefully stacked them in order and bound them, putting them with all the notes he would be taking to Granger's house the next day. He pulled out the small sheet of parchment she had written her address on and handed to him at the front door as she left and attached it to the corner of the stack with a small paper clip.

He sighed and dropped into his usual armchair before the fireplace, closing his eyes and tilting his head back so it rested against the cushioning of the back.

When he next opened his eyes, the house had grown rather cold, and it was pitch black, the fire having been extinguished long ago, as it had consumed all the firewood. He pulled out his pocket watch, squinting to see the face to read that it was already two in the morning. Groaning, he rubbed a hand over his weary eyes before hauling himself out of his chair and stalking out of the study and down the hall to the bathroom. Stripping out of his clothes from the day and tossing them into the hamper, he turned on the taps of the shower and allowed the warm spray of water to wash over him.

Once he bathed, he dressed in the long cotton pants he had hanging on the towel rack in the bathroom and walked into his bedroom, sliding beneath the covers.

He was wearier than he had thought, too tired to even think about food. Rolling over onto his back, he let his arms rest on top of the covers and stared up at the white ceiling. He was collaborating with Hermione Granger on the Cruciatus regeneration potion, and they were going to be spending an inordinate amount of time with one another. She was a surprise in every meaning of the word. She surprised him with her knowledge, creativity, and innovation. She was surprisingly easy to put up with. She was surprisingly easy to look at, as well.

'Get a grip, Snape,' he said to himself, rolling over onto his side and groaning, pushing thoughts of Granger out of his head. 'Focus on the Cruciatus potion.'

He forced himself to concentrate on the work. As he was going over the calculations and amounts of the ingredients for the base potion that he would begin later in the morning in his head, he finally drifted off to sleep again.

A few hours later, the sound of crows calling from the tree right outside his window woke him. After spending several minutes trying to ignore it and go back to sleep, Snape found himself unable and finally swung his legs over the edge of the bed and got up. After finishing his morning ablutions in the bathroom, he dressed in his sturdy black work trousers and shirt, pulling on his frock coat over the top without bothering to button it. After he made himself a cup of coffee in the kitchen, he took his notes with him out the back to his laboratory.

He was so focussed on his work that he barely noticed the time until he checked it to write down the time of completion for the base. He saw it was already ten minutes to nine, and he had yet to wash up from his potions work. Grumbling under his breath, he put the potion under a stasis spell before quickly cleaning up the workbench and washing all his tools.

After he was certain everything was in order, he locked up both the lab and his house, casting the wards on the property before collecting his notes and journals to take to Granger's house. He thought about her address and Apparated, reappearing in front of an old Victorian house that looked as though it had been repainted within the last couple of years. An immaculate front garden lined either side of the pathway leading up to the front porch.

He walked up to the front door and pressed on the doorbell once. He heard short footsteps almost immediately afterwards and was unsurprised when he was greeted by Granger wearing a stained apron with her hair pulled back in a messy bun, dragon hide gloves protecting her hands.

'Ready for work?' she asked with a smile.

Snape was surprised by her lack of mention of his lateness. 'Lead the way.'

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To be continued.