Part I: Chapter 4: Winter Wonderland

Chapter 4: Winter Wonderland

When Hermione woke up the next day, it was to find snow falling outside her windows. Feeling terribly Christmasy, she pulled on an old jumper with a picture of Father Christmas and his reindeer, unmindful that it was rather too small for her now – tight across her breasts and leaving a bit of midriff bare each time she lifted her arms. She pulled on her favourite low-riding denims and a thick pair of socks, accompanied by her sturdy boots, then ran down to the kitchen.

Snape sat at the table with his customary plate of toast, but he had braved the automatic coffee maker and successfully brewed a pot of coffee.

"Luxury!" Hermione moaned, opening the fridge to pull out the milk and pour a dollop into her coffee cup. She grabbed a handful of biscuits from the plate on the counter and joined him at the table. "Isn't it beautiful out? I just love it when it snows!"

Snape lowered the paper and watched the child begin to eat spice biscuits for breakfast. "I am quite sure there is porridge available for nuking, Miss Granger."

Hermione giggled before eating another biscuit. "Yes, but there's something so holiday-like about eating biscuits for breakfast!"

Snape's lips thinned in disapproval, but he went back to reading the paper.

"I'm going tobogganing!" Hermione announced, setting her empty coffee mug in the sink. "Would you like to come?"

"You'll do no such thing!"

"The park is just down the block, Professor, and no one will be there – I'll be perfectly safe! I haven't been sledging at home in years!"

Snape watched helplessly as the impossible girl went into the connecting garage and returned with two red wooden sledges. "Aren't they beauties? They were my father's! I haven't been home when there was snow on the ground since I went to Hogwarts. Come with me, sir ... it will be fun!"

Snape bowed to the inevitable, wrapping a Slytherin scarf about his throat before donning his cloak.

"That doesn't look like the Slytherin scarves now – is it an old one?" Hermione asked as she wound her Gryffindor scarf about her neck.

"From my student days," he replied shortly, and was moved to smirk by her look of amazement. "That does not make it an antique, Miss Granger," he added.

To Snape's amazement, it was rather enjoyable to go tobogganing with Hermione Granger. The park was a small, neighbourhood affair, with a play park at one end and one good hill, perfect for sledging. As the girl had prophesied, there was no one else there, and it took her a little less than an hour to persuade him to take his turn sliding down the hill.

They had been at it for long enough for both of them to be quite red in the cheeks and chapped at the lips from the cold and the wind. The snowfall had ceased and children were beginning to show up in the park, with older siblings and parents in tow.

"One last trip down the hill," Hermione wheedled, when he suggested that they go. "I'll race you."

He scoffed. "That would not be a race at all."

She laughed. "You are an arrogant Slytherin!" she taunted.

His eyes glinted devilishly. "You are a foolhardy Gryffindor," he answered. "What would be the purpose of a race? What would the winner receive?"

She thought for a moment. "The loser has to cook breakfast every morning for the rest of the week and do all of the dishes."

He lifted one superior eyebrow. "I like my toast dry and my tea unsweetened."

She laughed again. "I like my toast with strawberry jam and I take two sugars in my tea; thank you for asking!"

Snape lowered himself to his sledge. "How very kind of you to share that information, but I cannot conceive of what use it will be to me."

Hermione threw herself onto her sledge. "All right, big talker – on the count of three!"

Snape was clearly off to a cleaner, faster start, but Hermione desperately wanted to win. Pushing too hard, she overbalanced herself and tumbled off the sledge, head over heels, until she slammed into a horrified Severus Snape and knocked him off of his sledge as well.

They came to rest in a tangle of arms and legs, three feet farther down the hill than the spot where the two sledges had collided and stopped. Hermione had the wind knocked out of her and could not catch her breath.

Snape realized that he was virtually on top of the child and began to move away from her, until he noticed the panicked look in her eyes. "Hermione? What's the matter? Are you hurt?"

His hands were frantically pressing her arms through the fabric of her Muggle coat. When she was able to drag in a lungful of air, she answered, "No ... not hurt ... no air ..."

Snape supported his weight on his forearms, looking down into her face, anxiety for her clearly written in his face.

Hermione took another lungful of air and, to Snape's amazement, began to laugh.

"What are you laughing at?" he demanded, scowling.

"You!"

"Me?" He raised himself to his hands and knees, neatly straddling her inert form, and pinned her wrists to the snow. "I won the race, I have you pinned in the snow, and you're laughing at me?"

Hermione nodded, but at the same time, she felt a strange excitement rising within her. She had been in this position more than once with Ron, when he was kissing her, though Ron had never held her wrists down. The immobility was increasing the wild feeling swelling up from her tummy, into her chest. She thought the feeling would come bubbling out of her lips like laughter, but she felt the urge to laugh dying in her throat as she became more aware of the body of the man on top of her.

Snape watched in fascination as Hermione's thoughts and emotions played over her face; suddenly, he became aware that he was still pinning her to the ground, and that the moment when such an action could have been passed off as playfulness was gone. He had a healthy, vibrant, entrancing woman beneath him – not struggling, but submitting to his dominance – and the primal center of his hindbrain began a chant: take her, take her, take her, take her, TAKE HER!

With a Herculean effort, Snape wrenched himself away from her, standing, and beginning to brush the snow from his cloak. As he stood, the rest of world came crashing back into his consciousness, and he realized that he had ceased to be aware of the presence of the other people in the park.

Wordlessly, he held a gloved hand out to Hermione and helped her to stand; as he did so, he reflected that these days of living alone with her in her parents' home had a dream-like quality to them, completely at variance with their true, real lives as student and teacher, Order member and Death Eater, Gryffindor and Slytherin.

I don't care! he thought defiantly, bending and grasping the sledges in his hands. I can have this time. The rest will take care of itself.

And they trudged back to the Grangers' house, their previous camaraderie reasserting itself in the aftermath of the awkward moment on the ground, almost as if the interruption had never occurred.

Snape and Hermione left their snowy boots in the garage and hung their outerwear over straight chairs before the fire to dry. Hermione went into the room where the machines which she referred to as the washer and dryer were kept and emerged with two large, fluffy green towels in her hands.

"You can use the shower in my parents' room, and I'll use the one in my bathroom," she told him, handing him one of the towels. "Don't forget to bring the track suit to change into after your shower!"

Snape stood in the middle of the sitting room in his stocking feet with a towel in his hands, feeling rather foolish.

"That won't be necessary," he began.

"Don't be silly! I know you haven't had a proper shower since you got here! You'll catch your death if you don't get warm and into some dry clothes! Besides, it will give us a chance to wash your shirt and your under things. I'll get you a nice, warm pair of socks to put on, too."

He had followed her to the foot of the staircase, but he stood there, irresolute.

"Come on, then!" she said, smiling over her shoulder at him. "It's my fault that you ended up going arse over teakettle into the snow, anyway."

With his eyes fixed on the arse in question, he followed her up to the promised shower.

An hour later, Hermione descended to the kitchen to find Snape stirring a pot of stew. The container in which her mother had frozen the stew was in the sink; the aroma was mouth-watering.

Snape was wearing the track suit and the thick grey socks she had found for him in her father's drawer; she hoped he was also wearing the clean pants she had put out with the socks. He looked cosy and comfortable and altogether unlike her professor. She liked him this way. Except ...

"Your hair isn't clean!"

Snape turned to see her standing in the doorway and he glared at her fiercely. "Good afternoon, Hermione," he said, as if he were speaking to a recalcitrant six year old. "Did you have a nice shower? Are you warm, now?"

She wore pyjama pants adorned with Christmas trees, with an oversized crimson sweatshirt; her hair had been pulled into a plait, and her feet were stuffed into those preposterous bear-shoes. The sight of her gladdened his heart.

"Why didn't you wash your hair?" she demanded, reaching up to rub a strand between her fingers.

"I did wash it," he snapped. "Get your hands out of my hair."

"Wait ... I'll bet there wasn't any shampoo in the shower, was there? What did you use to wash it?"

"Bar soap. Leave me alone!"

She left the room and he heard her climbing the staircase; moments later he heard her coming back. She entered the kitchen with a bottle in her hand. "I knew I had this in my bathroom! It's from the summer I decided my hair would behave better if I used a more astringent shampoo." He turned to look at her and she grinned. "No, it didn't help! But it's the perfect formula for your hair. Come on, I'm going to wash it."

Panic seized him. "I am not showering with you!"

Hermione chuckled as she pulled a chair over to the sink. "I can do it right here – you're tall enough. Just sit down and lean your head back."

Snape's self-hatred told him to refuse, but there was a part of him that wanted to feel her fingers in his hair. With a huge sigh, as if he were making a great sacrifice on her behalf, he sat in the chair and allowed her to drape a towel around his shoulders. She began to run the water and he could feel the heat as the water warmed.

"Lean back a bit," she encouraged, and he did, extending his neck and letting his hair fall into the sink. She used a small nozzle attachment which he had seen, but not tried to use; it flooded his scalp with warm water, and her fingers worked the shampoo into his hair with firm, circular strokes. Snape nearly purred as she massaged his scalp, and as she bent over him he could smell the mint from her toothpaste and the spicy perfume she had put on her throat. He felt he could remain there forever with her so close and the warm water cascading through his hair, but all too soon she was finished with him, and the moment was past.

"Sit up!" she said, and as he did, she moved closer to him, using the towel about his shoulders to wrap his hair and squeeze the water from it. He was acutely aware of her torso, inches away from his face, and he wanted nothing so much as to bury his face in her fragrance and rest his cheek upon her heart.

"It's really clean now," she murmured, drawing a wide-toothed comb through his hair, while holding her wand and casting a drying charm.

Abruptly, he stood, moving away from her. "If I'm clean enough for you now, shall we eat?"

Hermione bit her lip, drying her hands on the towel he had abandoned. She had really forgotten to whom she was speaking, feeling as if she had been talking to ... a friend – a dear friend, whom she could trust and with whom she could share her thoughts.

But he wasn't her friend. He was her greasy, unpleasant Potions professor, her natural enemy from the moment she set foot in Hogwarts, hater of Mudbloods and all things Harry Potter.

No. No matter how he seemed at Hogwarts, here he had been different. Just the two of them, alone in her home, were living a very companionable life – one she enjoyed far more than being with her two best friends, if truth be told. Whatever was happening now, though, could not last. He would never behave this way with her if Harry or Ron – or Draco Malfoy, or any other student from his House – were present to see it.

I don't care! she thought, moving to take down bowls from the cupboard. This is the way it is right now – and now is enough. What will be, will be.

All of the excitement of the morning of tobogganing had exhausted her, and once she had filled her tummy with two bowls of her mum's stew, she was drowsy. Still, she sat down on the sofa and popped in one of her Christmas movies; if she was surprised that she drifted off after the movie had been in the machine for less than twenty minutes, Snape was not. He smirked to himself and covered her with his blanket, wielding his wand to stoke up the fire. All he needed now, to create perfection, was a glass of brandy. Perhaps Mr. Granger partook?

He prowled down the unexplored back hallway and opened the door to the room beyond the bathroom. It appeared to be a man's study – and on the sideboard stood two decanters with glasses.

Pouring three fingers of the brandy, he returned to the sitting room, and found himself being pulled into the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, which he watched while the fire crackled merrily and the girl on the couch slept on.

As Hermione stirred on the sofa, the first thing she realised was that her muscles were sore. She smiled to herself as she remembered climbing the hill and sliding down on her sledge repeatedly. Pushing herself into a sitting position, the first thing she saw, on the far side of the hearth, was a large pine tree, covered with snow.

She blinked.

There was no pine tree in her sitting room! She had wanted one, but Snape had refused. What in the world –

"Is it straight?"

The voice came from behind the tree, which moved fractionally to the left.

Hermione went to the wall and flipped on the overhead lights, which showed her Severus Snape, standing behind the tree and holding the trunk, his arm thrust through the branches.

"Lean it forward just a bit," Hermione said, entering into the spirit of the thing. She had no idea why there was a tree in her sitting room, but had wanted one, so she would not ask questions – even though it was very difficult to restrain herself.

Snape leant the tree forward, as requested, and Hermione said, "Perfect!"

A muttered spell secured the tree in place and Snape released his hold on it, stepping back and pulling his sap-stained gloves from his hands. He looked uncommonly relaxed and rather pleased with himself.

"Oh, your gloves!" she exclaimed, going forward to take them from him. "You got that sticky resin all over them!"

Snape's hand closed instinctively over hers and he peered down into her face with a speculative look in his glittering black eyes.

Hermione's breath hitched in her throat and there was a great swooping sensation in her tummy. She was acutely aware of his long fingers, closed about her hand, and as she took another step closer, she could smell the tang of the shampoo she had used on his hair and something that reminded her of her father – was it whisky?

"You've been drinking," she said, unable to break the connection of her eyes gazing into his.

"Some of your father's brandy," he replied. "It was cold outside."

"Where did you go?"

A small but genuine smile touched his lips. "The park. No one will ever miss it."

She followed his gaze to the tree and pulled away from him, diverted. "You stole that tree from the park?"

"I didn't steal it!" he objected. "It's a tree, Hermione. You cannot own a tree."

"Of course you can own a tree!" she said. "My parents own every tree planted in our garden!"

"Well, that tree did not come from someone's garden, did it? It came from a wood. Hagrid brings Christmas trees from the Forbidden Forest every year." He snorted, turning from her and beginning to remove his cloak. "As if I would stoop to thievery."

Hermione watched as he moved back into the hallway to hang his cloak, then she laid his gloves upon the coffee table, holding her wand to them and murmuring, "Tergeo" to remove the sticky substance from the soft black leather. Well, as long as the police did not come knocking at her door, demanding the arrest of the person who had stolen a tree from a public park, she would not worry about it. Her stern, grim Potions professor had gone out of his way to cater to her whim – and straddled her hips and held her down in the snow, but she absolutely would not dwell on that – and she was simply going to enjoy decorating her Christmas tree.

After all, tomorrow was Christmas Eve!

Snape thumbed idly through Potioneer Quarterly and cast the occasional glance at the girl as she fussed over the tree. After they had finished their meal of pizza, which was delivered to the house, she had gone into her father's study and brought out the brandy, putting it on the end table beside his armchair. He had been coerced into "helping" her put lights on the tree, which she referred to as a "two-man operation," but she had done the rest of it herself, humming along with the music she played on the stereo while she hung ornaments on the branches of the tree.

"There!" she said brightly, stepping away from the tree to survey its splendour. "Isn't it beautiful?"

Snape darted a glance at the tree from the corner of his eyes. "I am no judge of Muggle holiday decorations," he said flatly.

Her face fell a little. "Well, I think it's lovely."

From behind the curtain of his hair, he watched her as she shifted her weight from one foot to the other. He felt frustrated to note that non-greasy hair did not hang about his face the same way his usually oily hair did. It made it more difficult for him to watch her covertly.

Finally, she seemed to come to a decision.

"Well – good night, sir. Thank you for the tree."

"Good night," he replied and permitted himself to watch her as she left the room, her demeanour a bit dashed by his lack of enthusiasm. He had shown a bit too much enthusiasm thus far, that day. Restraint was what was now required.

Hermione sat up late that night, her pillows propped against her headboard, her Transfiguration text open across her knees. She was too overwrought from the excitement of the day, and the long nap of the afternoon, to sleep just yet. The bedroom door was cracked open and she found herself listening for sounds from the sitting room.

She had just begun to doze over her Transfiguration notes when the now-familiar sounds of her professor's night-time distress reached her. Without hesitation, she padded down to the sitting room to check on him.

Crookshanks crouched on the arm of the sofa near Snape's head, his yellow eyes shining in the patch of moonlight which sliced across the room. The blanket and pillow were both on the floor; the top portion of the track suit was rucked up almost to his chest by his thrashing about. For a moment, Hermione stood near his feet, letting her eyes dwell upon his stomach, with the intriguing line of dark hair which trailed from the dip of his navel down under the edge of the tracky bottoms ...

Forcing herself to stop staring at him, she bent to retrieve the blanket, only to have her upper arm clamped in a merciless grasp. Crying out, she instinctively reached for her wand, only to have his wand thrust under her chin.

"Don't spy on me!" he grated, the fingers holding her arm in a bruising grip.

Hermione jerked her arm from him, her other hand coming up to rub the sore spot. "I wasn't spying!" she cried. "You were having another nightmare – I was only checking on you to make sure you were all right."

He sat up, rubbing his face with his hands. "Do not approach me when I am sleeping. My self-defence reactions are swifter than my cognitive reasoning." He scowled at her. "Go back to bed."

Hermione glared back at him. "I am going to make some cocoa. Shall I make enough for two?"

She took his grunt as assent.

They sat side by side on the sofa, the fire crackling in the hearth and the Christmas tree lights twinkling gently, making a colourful pattern on the ceiling. The homemade cocoa seemed to soothe them both, Snape's nerves no doubt helped along by the dollop of brandy he added to each of his mugs of the hot chocolate.

"You have a nightmare every night," she told him, conveying both deference and concern in her tone.

"I don't have nightmares," he replied tersely. "I am a restless sleeper."

Hermione did not contradict him, but kept her eyes on the fire. "I have nightmares, sometimes." She chanced a glance at his face and found him gazing into the firelight, as well. "I dream about the Department of Mysteries."

Snape's nod was nearly imperceptible, but Hermione felt it was an invitation to continue.

"I remember when the curse hit me; my last thought as I began to fall was that I would never know what marks I made on my O.W.L.s."

Snape snorted. "Why does that not surprise me?"

"I imagine that you did well on your O.W.L.s," she said.

He gave her a sidelong glance. "As well as you did."

She felt a glow of satisfaction. "You know my O.W.L. scores?"

"I am one of your teachers; of course I know." He snorted again. "Besides, your Head of House natters on about you in the staffroom. No one is ignorant of your scores."

The fire burned lower as the time passed by, the two intellects meeting and retreating in one area of discussion, only to circle about and approach again from another direction. Snape continued on in his stubborn belief that his interactions with the girl were somehow separate from his everyday life; recklessly, he relaxed into her kind concern and her flattering attentions.

"...but it was humiliating, having one's boyfriend take up with another girl."

"From what I understand, you left your mark – so to speak."

Hermione choked over her cocoa. "You know about that?"

"The school matron takes her tea with the rest of the staff, you know. I imagine the entire school is aware of your particular skill." He slanted a sideways glance at her. "Interesting curse, to carve actual words in their flesh. That required some control."

Hermione dipped her head. "I was very angry."

"Don't be ashamed. It was a curse worthy of a Slytherin."

She made a face at him. "I'm not sure how to take that."

"Consider the source," he advised her.

She tilted her head to one side and regarded him thoughtfully. "A compliment, then."

"Of the highest order," he replied with a slight quirk of his lips. After a moment, he added, "I've heard of worse things in such situations."

"At Hogwarts?"

"Lovers' quarrels in Slytherin House are the stuff of legend, I promise you."

"Tell me," she wheedled, turning sideways on the sofa to face him, crossing one leg beneath her.

He considered her for a moment, his head resting against the back of the sofa, his clean hair falling back away from his face. He was relaxed and at ease, a heady feeling for him. The fire lit one side of her face, leaving the other in shadow; it was as if he were seeing only a part of her. Perhaps she, too, was taking this as time out of the context of her reality, leaving her school-self dormant, in the shadowed portion of her psyche, and letting her doppelganger conduct her actions for this holiday.

"You are the oddest girl, Hermione," he said lazily, narrowing his eyes at her.

"Tell me about world-class Slytherin rows, Severus," she said coaxingly.

"Cheek," he murmured and was oddly pleased with her soft, easy laughter.

The fire died down to embers before Hermione could tear herself away. It was amazingly comfortable, sitting in the dark with her professor, talking about everything that crossed her mind. He would not speak much of himself, smoothly directing the conversation away from personal matters of his own, but he listened to her personal observations, her confidences, and occasionally let fall a word of counsel.

As she settled beneath the duvet on her bed, she reflected that over the last few days, it had come to seem as if Professor Snape were a different person. He had a wry sense of humour, a sharp mind – and a sharp tongue to go with it, she had to admit – but he also listened to her as if what she had to say was worth hearing, unlike the boys, who squirmed and fidgeted in those circumstances. If his calm guidance was obviously the same as what her own Head of House would tell her, there was still something in his manner that seemed far more personal than Professor McGonagall had ever appeared.

As her eyes drifted closed, she smiled to herself, holding the thought of her new friend close to her heart.

Severus.

Snape punched the blameless pillow beneath his head and turned to his side, inconveniencing Crookshanks, who had been curled up on his stomach. The cat leapt down with an indignant "mrow" and trotted out of the room.

"Go on," Snape muttered bitterly, tugging the blanket over his shoulder. "You can go sleep with her."

Hermione.

He closed his eyes, and for a moment a spasm of emotion passed across his face.

"You're a damned fool," he said flatly – though it was not clear whether he was speaking to the cat or to himself.

Beta reading thanks to Snarkywench and Brit-picking kudos to MagicAlly.