Dissectional Interlude

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Hermione toed off her shoes under the desk and curled her now only-sock-constricted toes. Loud cracks echoed through the silent office as the knuckles of her little piggies cracked and popped. It was a testament to how engrossed in his project Severus must be that he did not immediately straighten and bark at her. He often told her – as often as she committed the crime – how much the sound bothered him. As she continued her ritual by rolling her feet around on the joints, eliciting more cracking from her ankles, she cringed in anticipation of the ear bending to come.

She looked back at Severus, but he didn’t display a single twitch of annoyance or disgust.

Hermione felt herself so shocked by Severus’ uncharacteristic lack of venom that she almost rose to go to his side and investigate what he hunched over, rapt attention focused on.

But, of course, she already knew what he was doing, and found it not just disgusting but despicable.

Having enjoyed Chemistry, as it was so similar to his own craft of potions, for almost a week, being challenged and yet enraptured by physics – and how muggles sought to explain things that most wizards had either never pondered of just attributed to some sort of ancient magic (which was not always true) for another week, Severus had moved onto the study of biology a week before. He was currently dissecting a frog.

Severus was still, forceps in one hand, holding back what Hermione assumed was a part of the deceased frog’s skin, the scalpel in the other hand, poised to make an incision. He was so focused on his dissection that Harry and Ron could have bust through the office door, battling to the death with Death Eaters led by Lucius Malfoy – back from the dead – and an apparently not-so-vanquished Lord Voldemort himself and Severus would not have raised a single inquisitive eyebrow.

Hermione thought herself fortunate that she did not have some urgent matter to discuss with her friend and teammate that instant, nor did she have to compulsion of so many girls her age to constantly be the object of attention of every man in a room, for she had the notion that to distract Severus from his apparently riveting dissection would require a hand to be placed in a very unfortunate location between the opened frog and the scalpel. The deep gauge that would result, though easily fixed by magic, would involve a trip to the Muggle emergency room that she was neither ready nor willing to endure. She shuddered at the thought of the hard plastic chairs and unsympathetic hospital workers, then shuddered again as she thought once more about what Severus was doing.

Severus, convinced that the best results would come from the freshest specimens possible, had procured two live frogs, one male and one female, from a local pet store. Hermione had quickly become attached to the two would-be pets and named them – Sevvie and Hermie – despite Severus’ stern admonitions. She now understood why, as her heart broke for poor little Sevvie as he watched his mate be butchered in the name of ‘science.’ Hermione knew it was little Hermie on the table primarily because Severus had called her over to look at the caviar-looking ovaries after he sliced open the poor frog. However, she was sure that if she got closer she could identify the bodies by certain distinguishing brown marks each had around their eyes and across their backs.

She was therefore certain that it was poor little Sevvie occasionally “ribbit”-ing in dismay as Hermie met and became thoroughly acquainted with the blade of dissection.

Hermione was so moved by the plight of Hermie and Sevvie – as well as their dissection-doomed amphibian brethren – that she half considered campaigning on behalf of the unfortunate creatures’ rights. The Benevolent Association of Rights for Frogs, perhaps.

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A few moments, or perhaps minutes, later, Hermione was startled to find Severus leaning over her desk. She half-consciously noted that the sleeves of his dark-blue shirt were still rolled up to the elbows, though his surgical latex gloves had been removed, and his hair was still pulled back in one of her elastics, though a few long black straggly pieces hung around his face, almost dashingly. He was staring at her, so it was not strange that, while she was still processing his presence and preparing a question, he was quicker than her and able to speak first.

“You have been mumbling for a while,” he said, sounding only mildly irritated. “Spelling out words. B…a…r…f…, ..s…p…e…w…, are you ill? Or in a rude spelling bee, perhaps?”

She was about to answer, though she wasn’t sure how, when the phone began to ring. She was halfway to standing, and just taking a breath to say “I’ll answer it” when the doorbell, too, began to sound.

Fully risen and headed toward the half-open door between the hallway and their office, without shoes, Hermione turned to see Severus – no longer hunched over her desk to look her eye to eye, now standing fully erect – watching her.

“I’ll get the door,” she told him, back in her bossy know-it-all element and aware that he had a much better phone persona than if he were face-to-face with someone. “You answer the phone.”

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Author’s Notes