Chapter Seven - Hair

At the start of each year of an apprenticeship, an apprentice is expected to submit a proposal for the project they will work on during that year. Hermione chose to use the concepts and theories we discussed regarding the innocuous Bluepea flower, along with Mandrake, to see if she could extend the powers and duration of Wolfsbane. She had a sound theory that, with the addition of these ingredients, she could strengthen the potion's shelf life and its potency. If her Arithmancy calculations were correct, a werewolf would only be required to take the potion once a year instead of at the beginning of the full moon each month.

Although I wanted her to succeed, I told her I truly thought, even with her typical Granger determination, she'd bitten off more than she could chew. Wolfsbane is a tricky and irritating potion to create on its own; adding these new and untried factors could not only prove dangerous but expensive should it fail. Still, I was impressed with the initial findings. I thought if she could pull it off, this one project alone would more or less guarantee her the coveted Golden Cauldron, the most highly sought-after award given by the Consortium. It was only presented to one senior apprentice per year, and while I thought it the most hideously ugly trophy I'd ever seen, it not only assured your place as a Potions Master but it practically promised your reputation was secured, and any job was yours for the taking.

As Hermione's Master, naturally I wanted her to be the best Any plaudits she received would reflect very highly upon me. Any glory she would obtain from her successes would cement my reputation as well. I want it stated clearly I couldn't give a Jarvey's fart about their opinions of me, but I wanted Hermione to excel, and my reputation with the Consortium was, as you can imagine, spotty at best. It's a shitty type of fame, but I knew my fellow Consortium members. I didn't want Hermione to suffer because of my checkered past with the arrogant bastards.

I also realised that it might be a double-edged sword, with both edges slitting my own throat. She would be highly sought after, both as an instructor and a potioneer; many tempting offers would be made throughout the Wizarding world for her services. It would be supremely ironic if I succeeded in assuring her a place within the Consortium, only to lose her to a lucrative brewing or research contract in another country, where I would never see her again.

Still, I had to give her leave to try. The proposal was accepted, and she began her trials on what she optimistically called Extended Wolfsbane. I provided her with the initial funding for tests and ingredients, and she happily started harvesting mandrakes and milking Bluepeas. The very mention of it made my face burn. I could not get the image out of my head of Hermione watching me as Pomona played that very silly trick on me. I owed Pomona one; I was already scheming how to retaliate.

In the meantime, I was faced with the completely arousing site of my apprentice lifting flower after flower and stroking it until the juices literally ran down her arms. The aroma alone would arouse any male in the vicinity; I was practically awash with it, so I stayed away as much as possible. I was already embarrassed enough about the pelvic massage debacle to tell her that her project was giving me an erection.

I tried to avoid watching her milk the flowers. My own experience with them had made me all the more aware of my apprentice, and the thought of watching her methodically stroking those flowers, imagining that the movements she made were the same instinctual way she touched herself... Oh, Merlin, Merlin. By now, she consumed my every thought; she disturbed my dreams. I ate, slept and breathed her. I craved being near her almost as much as I convinced myself to stay out of her way.

During the first two weeks, she met failure after failure with the preliminary formula. I had inadvertently caused one of her test batches to fail by interrupting her and making her lose count of her stirring. The look she gave me was enough to make me feel guilty for days, so I slunk away and let her be. I had provided her with enough funds to make ten test batches, but she had missed the mark, and was still doggedly trying to conjure a success from what seemed to be an unpromising situation. I hoped against hope that she would admit defeat and turn to something else, but I suppose I knew her too well to truly believe that would happen.

I should have been with her in that lab every minute of every failure. I should have put my petty, selfish timidity aside and taken her in hand, been a proper Master. Instead, I was too afraid of showing my insecurities; too afraid she would look push me away and break my heart. In other words, I was as afraid she would succeed as that she would fail.

I was the reason she seriously hurt herself.

"Thirteenth time's the charm," Hermione murmured to herself, as she set out her ingredients once again to brew the Extended Wolfsbane Potion. When she had chosen it as her annual project, she had thought of it as a sort of thank you to Remus for giving her the idea to ask for the apprenticeship in the first place. Some days, she actually was grateful. Other days, though, she was tempted to spike his Wolfsbane with Fungiface Potion to show him what she really thought about her apprenticeship.

The original Wolfsbane was horrifically tedious to brew, and the modifications Hermione's theory called for made it even more difficult and fiddly. Master Snape had warned her of this. He had skeptically given his permission to experiment, but so far her results had been less than encouraging. She knew she was correct; she could feel it in her waters that she was close to a breakthrough. She just needed a little more time and testing.

Twelve batches had to be discarded – a waste of valuable time and even more valuable ingredients. Master Snape had given her ten chances on the school's budget. The last two and the present one had come out of her own pocket, and she really didn't have the money for a fourteenth attempt, should this one fail. So far, this one had gone far better than the first twelve; she had progressed four steps farther than any other trial, and the potion was doing well enough for her to feel a cautious optimism.

Snape had left her alone. He had accidentally been the cause of failure number nine when he interrupted her stirring and she got off rhythm, causing a very nasty cauldron incident. There was now a parchment pinned to the door saying "Brewing: Do Not Disturb," and so far he had honoured it. He had actually been helpful, if Hermione was perfectly honest. At the end of each failure, he'd helped her through a 'post mortem,' helping her ascertain where the potion fell over and how to correct it the next time. Rather than smirking over each spoiled batch, he'd been surprisingly supportive, almost encouraging.

Even if he was a baffling git at times, Hermione still felt a warmth when she thought of his remark after failure number eleven. He had looked at the noxious sludge that coated the bottom of the cauldron, gave her an almost sympathetic shrug and said, "It is a learning process, Apprentice. If there is a solution, I'm sure you will find it, but it will not be today. Come and have a cup of tea. Minerva sent us some chocolate biscuits. It would be a shame to waste them feeling sorry for yourself, wouldn't it?" As comfort went, it was the equivalent of a hug, coming from Master Snape.

Step ten of nineteen had just been successfully completed, and Hermione licked the sweat off her upper lip. She was entering the most critical part of the brewing process when it happened. She moved too quickly when reaching for the Bluepea nectar, and she caught sight of the catalyst for her disaster see-sawing lazily through the air: one of her own mad, curly long hairs. It caught and gleamed in the light, and for a moment, she saw it silhouetted against the beam of sunshine coming through the upper window. It floated lazily in the thermals of the warm current of the steam rising from the cauldron.

"Oh, no you don't," she moaned, praying as she frantically grabbed for it, missing it entirely. "No, please, no!" she cried, but the impetus of her own action stirred enough of a breeze to catch it and waft it into the cauldron, where it landed in the middle of the potion with a mocking little hiss. Immediately the contaminated potion started folding back on itself, congealing down to a black, gooey residue that looked like black mud and smelled like compost. She watched impotently as the brew belched like a tarpit, and swelled, spilling over the rim of the cauldron and Hermione heard a horrible, rasping sound; it was her own harsh, sob-choked breathing.

Her stomach lurched, and she felt the sick realisation of another failure she could ill afford, the latest in a long list, and suddenly, it was all too much. The apprenticeship, Master Snape, Harry and Ron, the Wolfsbane, her own irritating hair; all of it was more than her overwrought nerves could bear, and something literally snapped. It was the stirring rod in her hand.

"NO!" she wailed, then screamed, "Fucking not AGAIN!" She stamped her feet as the smooth black liquid oozed out of the cauldron like a living thing, putrid and viscous. As the cauldron started to melt, Hermione stood still, overtaken by the feeling of her own rising fury. A red mist descended over her senses as if a veil had been lowered, and her personal meltdown commenced.

Magic was forgotten; expensive and irreplaceable items were forgotten. Propriety and apprenticeship and Bluepeas and Snape were forgotten in a mad whirl of failure and helplessness and inadequacy and blinding sweet fury, and Hermione became a screaming, sobbing, flailing mass of destruction.

"I'm never gonna fucking get this right!" she shrieked. She grabbed jars and smashed them against the walls. "Never-" She slung the vile mess across the room with a strength she didn't know she possessed. "-fucking-" Spontaneous bursts of magic caused vials of noxious liquids to disintegrate. "-GOOD ENOUGH!" And all the while the gnawing, snapping animal of anger chewed into Hermione like the carcass of a dead rat.

She was barely aware of Snape dashing into the room, bellowing, "Apprentice, cease this tantrum at once!"

"Nothing I ever do is good enough!" she shrieked. "Say it! Say I'll never be good enough for your fucking standards! Why don't you just say it!" Glass jars of preserved fuck-knows-what spontaneously exploded like bombs across the room.

She saw his wand in his hand, but her magic shielded her, and he had to dodge his own spell as it rebounded. "Miss Gra- Hermione!" he shouted, his voice cutting like glass through the madness in the room. She was only aware of him in the vaguest of senses; all she could hear was her own destructive, blind rage and failure, screeching and cackling at her. It sounded like Bellatrix Lestrange's laughter.

Not that it mattered. Inside her was a machine, overwound, running and running until it either broke or ran down from exhaustion. She didn't even slow down when the imperious voice rang out, "Hermione, stop now!" All she knew was her own voice, her own madness. Tables were overturned, shelves were wiped clean with a swipe of her arm. The acrid smell of solvents and preservatives filled the room, making it difficult to breathe, but she no longer cared. Her hand dragged carelessly across a broken bottle, slashing deep into her wrist. She howled at the pain, but in only served to enrage her further. She wailed impotently, unable to focus on anything but the fury unraveling inside her head. The coppery scent of blood joined the cacophony of odours in the room, clogging her lungs.

Suddenly, a vice-like arm clamped around her waist from behind and lifted her off the floor. She fought and kicked to break the grip, screaming wildly, sobbing, cursing at Snape to put her down. She was barely aware of being carried out of the almost unbreathable atmosphere of the lab and into Snape's study. His grip hurt; he was holding her so tightly she could barely breathe, and he was speaking to her, his voice urgent and close to her ear. A wandless spell healed her bleeding hand while he wrapped both arms around her waist and held on to her thrashing, struggling form.

She finally realised he was urging her to calm down, to breathe deeply, but she could not. White spots were flashing behind her eyes, but she still fought him. She struggled even as he fell back onto his sofa, his arms still tight around her. She landed heavily against his chest, winding him, and his grip loosened. "Let me go!" she shrieked. "Leave me alone-"

Without warning, she was flipped over and pressed face down across his lap. An iron grip clamped down on the back of her neck and squeezed hard, as if she were a cat needing to be contained. The pinching grip hurt and caused her to scream in panic.

"Hermione! Calm down, please!" Snape hissed, breathing heavily, trying to be heard over her mindless wailing. "I don't want to Petrify you!"

"Let me go, dammit!" she screeched, her voice scissoring into the room. "I'm so fucking sick of it a-"

A hard hand came down sharply on her arse and the smack shut off her cries as neatly as if he'd switched off a radio.

Hermione felt her entire body flood with chilling clarity. It was quickly replaced with the abject humiliation of being spanked like a child - for throwing the most childish of temper tantrums. She keened helplessly, a desolate sound that was pitiful to her own ears. It must have seemed so to Snape as well, who relaxed his crushing grip on the back of her neck. A whispered spell, and a cool, soft cloth was pressed against the back of her neck.

"There. Now, take a deep breath." Snape's voice, while slightly breathless from his exertions, was soft, almost gentle, and Hermione obediently breathed in, but a sob escaped. "Shh," he murmured, squeezing her neck gently, almost affectionately. "Calm down. You can do it; that's it. That's a good girl. Shh." He poured warmth into her with his voice. "Oh, Hermione, what were you thinking, working yourself into such a state?"

The tone of his voice was so strange, so foreign to her that it confused and broke her utterly, and she felt as if she'd completely destroyed the only thing in her life that was giving her any purpose. Helplessly, she began to cry monotonously, sick with embarrassment, bawling like a child. She'd never felt so mortified in her life at her own actions. The thought brought fresh tears, and she sobbed in great, braying hiccoughs.

"I know, it's difficult right now. You must relax for me. I've got you. Master has you now," Snape crooned. "I was sure you had seriously harmed yourself," he said, and there was an anxious, placating tone to his voice she had never heard before. He pressed the cooling cloth firmly against the back of her neck, soothing her, and she was aware of his hand rubbing her back gently, like a parent calming a child. She lay helpless, trembling; enthralled by his words and his voice, she gradually relaxed as her tremours lessened. He must have felt it, too, and his hands slowed and became more languid, and she moaned softly.

"Let go, Hermione. Let go of the anger; let go of the tension. Good. Deep breaths. Yes, that's it. That's my good girl." Hermione lay awkwardly across her Master's lap, too exhausted to feel anything but his hands, too confused to be anything but mesmerised by his crooning voice. Calling her a good girl... Her body flushed again.

"I'm so sorry-" she gulped, and Snape gently shushed her as he slid his hand beneath her head and raised it slightly. He renewed the Cooling charm on the cloth and used it to clean her face. Her skin felt tight and shiny, as if she had a fever, and the cloth felt like summer rain on her tear-ravaged cheeks. Snape's fingers threaded through her hair, and kneaded her scalp as he bathed her face, all the while crooning soft nonwords of comfort. She did not dare look up at him, but when he placed the cloth over the back of her neck, she dropped her head and let the tears slide down her face once again. She took a shaky breath, then sighed, feeling so tired she couldn't think properly.

"Better?" he said, his voice still gentle. She took this to mean he wanted her to rise, so she nodded and made to stand. Strong, firm hands held her down. "I'm not finished, Hermione. You are still distraught, and I'm here to help you. Merlin knows it's about time." She sensed in him the slightest of hesitations, but then his voice washed over her, strong and deep. "I know I have not given you many reasons to believe me, but I do know what is best for you. Will you trust me?"