Chapter 3: "Why do I always have to think so much?"

Disclaimer: I'm not making any money from this. Anything you recognise is not mine but Jo's. Sadly.

A/N: Thanks again for everyone who reviewed. You really make my day! ^.^ Anyone who'd like to have a particular scene of HBP rewritten to suit this story please tell me. I already have a few in mind but I still need a few more (hint).

This chapter was absolute murder to write. RL intruded into my little story-writing haze and took my hamster from me.

Please don't laugh. I really miss the little bugger. *sigh*

Thanks again to Bi for reading it over, taking the time to reassure me that everything is going to be just fine when I'm having another crisis and offering encouragement in my time of grief *sniff*. Thanks also to SnarkyRoxy, my wonderful beta, once more for smoothing over the rough edges.

And as always I thank my baby girl just for starting to crawl the day I beat this chapter! ^.^

Have restarted my Livejournal which I will try to keep as up to date as I can. Comments and help regarding HTML will be appreciated under:

http://shalimar1981.livejournal.com/

since I don't know di%& about it, I'm afraid. %D

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The time between breakfast and dinner passed slowly, much too slowly for Hermione's taste. Since she was used to things not going her way by now, however, she bore it like she had borne the last few weeks, stoically.

After Professor Snape had left the library, it had taken only a moment's hesitation on Hermione's part, staring after him, eyes wide with horror, before she'd dashed out of the room. She had run up one flight of stairs and into the room she shared with Ginny, had slammed the door behind her and had barricaded herself inside for the rest of the day.

So since Ginny was visiting the twins in Diagon Alley that day, Hermione had plenty of time to torture herself by pondering the morning's events.

She had long since stopped trying to analyse why Ron behaved the way he did. It led absolutely nowhere and only gave her a headache.

Judging from his parting shot, however, he was probably jealous. Again. Not only of Hermione's advantage of age and ability to do magic outside of school, apparently, but also still of Viktor Krum.

Though the reason why eluded her.

She and Viktor had been close in her fourth year, but after he'd left at the end of the Triwizard Tournament, they had been nothing more than pen-pals.

In her opinion, there was nothing to be jealous of.

Ron had the right to write her whenever he wanted to, yet he never did. Probably heartily sick of her emphasis on intellectual pursuits, even in her letters to him. She couldn't help it, and Quidditch only ever interested her when Harry (and Ron, of course) played for Gryffindor.

She had also spent a lot of time with him and Harry. Plenty of time to show her he cared for her as more than just a friend. And yet despite some slight overtures in that direction, he'd never even asked her out. Not that she would be too thrilled, mind, if he did.

At one time, she would have been thrilled had he shown any interest. But now? Not really. It wasn't like they had all that much in common. And she was just plain tired of always having to justify how and who she was. Which brought her back to her current dilemma.

Since this avenue of speculation had very quickly run dry, she turned her mind to dinner, or more accurately, what awaited her for dinner.

RATHAG – or in full: Ron's Ability To Hold A Grudge – was legendary and had always held a mild fascination for her. It worked so completely outside the realm of logic or common sense that she often wondered how It decided when and how to start operating.

In one of her less occupied moments, she had even tried to analyse the data she had gathered on RATHAG over the years, but It had not been interesting enough to keep her attention, and so she was left without a definitive conclusion on that project. It was probably the only time she had abandoned something.

Er, apart from Divination, of course. And S.P.E.W. was only temporarily on hold while she tried to figure out how to make it more popular among Wizarding society.

Therefore, she had no concrete idea what exactly to expect for dinner. Ron alone might be predictable enough, but Ron in a fit of temper was completely unpredictable. Even for someone who took Arithmancy at school.

Will he continue to sulk, as he so often does? she thought, lying on her bed again, staring at the ceiling, tense muscles aching from the effort to keep herself from getting up and pacing.

Or will he start another scene over... Ah! Roast chicken! Her mind wandered to the meal being prepared downstairs as her stomach growled loudly at those tasty scents.

Hmmm...

Then she admonished herself sternly and turned back to pondering, doing her best to ignore the loud growling permeating the room.

Wondering what horrible scene Ron would undoubtedly start later in the kitchen certainly kept her mind blissfully free of dangerous thoughts about the puzzle that was her teacher. For a while, anyway. They had tried over and over again to occupy her thoughts whenever she wasn't quick enough to push them away.

But since changing a subject with one's own mind was an ideal but nevertheless unrealistic endeavour, her thoughts always turned back to Professor Snape.

This new side of her teacher she had seen during her last few encounters with the man was very disconcerting. It made her almost wish for his petty and insulting sarcasm to return.

Almost.

If the persona Professor Snape presented to the world was only a facade, could the real Professor Snape really be so very different on the inside compared to the facade?

Some clues she had gathered since her very first day at Hogwarts as well as her interactions with him in the past few weeks certainly seemed to support that conclusion.

What if...

No.

This was not the time to analyse her teacher's character, but to figure out what might await her during their planned encounter later on.

OH. She blushed guiltily.

"And to wonder how awkward dinner will be, of course," she muttered to herself self-consciously.

She was almost convinced that Ronald wouldn't miss the opportunity to behave like a total prat again. At the thought of dinner, she looked at the clock on the wall, covered her face with her hands and groaned in dismay.

Although she had been waiting for the day to be over since their argument in the kitchen, now that the time had come to go downstairs, she wanted nothing more than to hide in her closet like a little girl.

But since she was no silly little girl, and a brave Gryffindor, no less – a thought that didn't help in the least – she withdrew her hands from her face, swung her legs over the side of her bed and got up.

Now she couldn't shake thoughts about Professor Snape. Wonderful.

She really couldn't make head nor tails of it: his behaviour at school and towards her here at Grimmauld Place were so contradictory.

She frowned at her reflection in the mirror of the vanity as she tried to brush the more obvious tangles out of her bushy hair.

The meeting between him and the Headmaster and the conversation afterwards. Her illicit potion brewing and his obvious approval. And finally her breakdown, how he'd behaved towards her afterwards and that he'd – possibly – invited her to help her with her situation.

All in all, they were a very confusing series of events, which went totally against the Professor Snape she knew at school. Not that she really knew him, of course. She wondered briefly if anyone truly did.

If she didn't know better, she would've thought it was someone else under Polyjuice Potion – it was featured in those Ministry pamphlets for a reason – but she knew it was him all right.

He always answered the mandatory question correctly before entering the house. Not to mention the fact that the house wards only admitted individuals loyal to the Order of the Phoenix, an added measure of security courtesy of Mad-Eye Moody.

Professor Snape, the Greasy Git of the dungeons, the heartless bastard, was familiar – comfortable even. Meanwhile, she knew how to handle him. She knew exactly how far she could go without seriously annoying him in class. She'd pushed those limits with him often enough to know it now by heart.

Familiar was good. Familiar was safe.

She nodded at her reflection absent-mindedly, although she was not quite satisfied with her result, and made her way to the door.

After his failed Occlumency lessons last term, Harry had also mentioned Snape being very similar as a student to how he was now. How Harry knew that, he'd never fully explained. But that knowledge, the abrupt end to their lessons and the disaster at the Ministry suggested a much different reason behind it all than the one Harry had initially volunteered. Maybe Harry had once again failed to realise that curiosity killed the cat.

Hmm. She couldn't deny being quite curious herself.

It helped keep her mind off other things, at least.

She walked down the stairs with one hand on the banister as she was musing about this hopelessly difficult topic.

She didn't know what to make of this 'feeling' Snape at all. He confused her and intrigued her, she had to admit. But confusing was not good. Not good at all! No matter how intriguing he was. He was not a challenge or a riddle to solve. That way lay only disaster, considering the kind of man he was, his position at school as well as in the Order – not to mention his position with Voldemort.

There is probably a perfectly rational explanation for all this, she thought a bit desperately, perfectly willing to grasp at any straw in her vicinity. Maybe he was feeling a bit under the weather, causing him to let his guard down. Or was it the argument he'd had with Dumbledore that was dragging him down? She'd never yet seen the pair disagree over anything.

Perhaps because Professor Snape never openly disagreed before? A voice piped up inside her, the very same voice that had been extremely interested when that very same professor had decided to take up the topic of werewolves half a year in advance during her third year.

Perhaps the strain of his spying activity was finally getting to him, causing him to act so out of character.

In that vein, Hermione continued to try to convince herself that her observations were false and that any evidence she had gathered to the contrary was inconclusive. She conveniently forgot that her judge of character had never yet failed her - Oh, all right! But she had been twelve for heaven's sake and Lockhart was... Lockhart – and that it had always insisted on respecting and trusting Professor Snape, regardless of how he behaved towards her and her friends.

But since it seemed to be the easiest, most obvious and logical explanation, she convinced herself that she would get another setdown and/or a punishment from him on the subject that she needed to reign in her uncontrollable emotional impulses.

She couldn't make sense of his words, otherwise. It sounded too much like he was being nice to her and offering a way to help her.

And that was as different from the Professor Snape she knew as it could get.

Except for a Lockhart in disguise, of course, she thought with a nervous giggle as she reached the last landing.

Some kind of worm or insect seemed to have lodged itself in her stomach as soon as he'd left her in the library earlier today, and it had fluttered about uncomfortably ever since whenever she'd started to think about what might await her after dinner.

It hadn't really been a choice to go to the attic later, no matter how his comment had been phrased. Of course she would go.

She wanted to know what she could do against this frustration, and if there was even the slimmest chance he might provide a solution to her dilemma, she was prepared to brave the consequences, even if it was much more likely she would be serving her first ever during-the-holidays detention. She simply couldn't resist.

Maybe I'm not much different from Harry in that regard after all. I'm such a hypocrite! That voice mocked her as she hesitated in front of the kitchen door for a moment.

She hadn't been down since her confrontation with Ron after breakfast, skipping lunch in favour of bolstering her self-confidence a bit by reading Ginny's copy of 'Wizards are from Mars, Witches are from Venus – A Theory on Sexuality or Muggle Space Travel?' for a change from her wool-gathering. So she was now quite ravenous, but at the same time probably too nervous to eat much due to the thought of what would follow.

With a deep breath, she pushed the kitchen door open and came to a halt just inside.

Snape was still there. Eating. At the same table as Harry.

Now it was clear. The world as she knew it had ended.

Why would he stay for dinner? He never stayed for dinner!

Did it have something to do with his 'invitation'? Maybe that explained it. If he'd said he wanted to meet her after dinner, why shouldn't he eat with them as well? The only reason she could think of was that he'd never done so before. But there were probably hundreds of things he'd never done in her presence, so that was hardly a sufficient reason for him not to do one such thing now.

Her short perusal of the room showed that apart from Snape, who seemed quite unperturbed and engrossed in the task of eating, the rest of the house's inhabitants were anything but and had obviously waited (read: dreaded) for her to come down.

Smiling much more cheerfully than was normal for her these days, Mrs Weasley motioned for her to sit down in the chair across from Professor Snape and as far away from Ron as possible. She didn't know whether to be grateful for that or not. Curiously enough, the insect in her stomach was rolling around far more insistently when thinking about Professor Snape than what an embarrassing scene would ensue when Ron finally decided to speak.

She kept herself from looking at both men directly, though she didn't think she was quite successful at smothering a snort when she caught a look of her hand's imprint still visible on Ron's cheek. She might have imagined it, but she could've sworn she heard an answering snort from opposite her.

Naturally, dinner was a very tense affair. For the most part silent, the only ones who really seemed to be eating their fill were Professor Snape, and Shacklebolt and Tonks, who came in later and openly wondered what had gotten into the rest of them.

Thus, most abandoned pretending to eat fairly quickly and adjourned into one of the sitting rooms.

Hermione left before Professor Snape finished eating and went up to her room to contemplate for the umpteenth time what he would tell her later. The others left her to brood on her own. Today was one of the rare instances she had the room to herself. They probably thought they could lower the chance of her flipping out again this way. Ron probably also needs baby-sitting while I can be left to my own devices, that nasty voice piped up again, uninvited.

At half past seven, she finally decided that not much could be garnered from postponing the inevitable and climbed the stairs up to the attic.

While she trudged up the stairs, she wondered for the first time if maybe Professor Snape's invitation and her resulting anxious contemplations hadn't in fact been the punishment she'd been expecting all day, as she remembered one curious fact: as far as she remembered, there was no third door on the right side in the attic.

When she had been illicitly brewing healing potions the week before, she'd had the opportunity to explore the unused and almost completely empty rooms at her leisure. There were four rooms in total on the fourth floor, two small ones, one a bit larger and the fourth was a fairly long and narrow one. Only one of them was on the right side.

She pondered this for quite a while, standing in the hallway of the fourth floor with her arms crossed beneath her breasts, then opened each door to investigate.

All were as empty and dusty as she remembered.

Staring for a minute longer at the long strip of wall on the right-hand side, she came to one conclusion: the only room on the right side was one of the smaller rooms. The length of the wall, however, suggested that there had to be at least two more rooms mirroring those on the opposite side of the hallway.

But where were the doors leading to them?

She walked along the stretch of the wall, feeling all over it with both of her hands. Nothing.

Contemplating this curious puzzle, she removed her wand from the back pocket of her jeans – constant vigilance or not, it was the best place for it.

She thought hard, all the while staring blankly at the wall. Then all of a sudden she stiffened and with a purposeful flick trained her wand at the wall.

"Reveal your secrets."

Nothing happened.

"Show yourself."

Again nothing.

She made a frustrated sound and resumed thinking.

"Revelo."

Nothing. She was getting seriously annoyed.

What had he said?

'On the other hand, if you meant your other 'difficulties', I'd try the third door on the right in the attic after dinner.'

"Difficulties."

Nothing.

"Argh! For God's sakes, open already!"

And thus appeared two doors on the wall to her right, one of them – incidentally the third one – opening conveniently.

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A/N: Ohhh, am I cruel or what? *maniacal laughter*

After having had such a horrible time rewriting the mess I call my notes, the third chapter got rather long and in a fit I decided to renege on my promise to reveal the secret of the "third door on the right in the attic" in this one and divided it into two parts.

Don't sharpen your spears however for part two of this one will be up in a week. Got my taste for cliffhangers incidentally from Jocemum. Compared to hers, mine are relatively mild.

So since you're all just 'hanging there'(Pirates of the Caribbean), anyone care to guess once more what's in store for Hermione?

Another quote, from The Show of all Shows: The X-Files (at least before it went down the drain). And I twisted the title of the all-time self-help book women all around the world can live without: Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. Huh! As if we didn't know that already. ;)