3: The Interview

Chapter 3: The Interview

When Hermione showed up at Professor Snape's office door that evening she was feeling a bit faint. She couldn't be sure if that was because she had hardly been able to eat anything that day due to her growing anxiety over the interview with her soul mate or if it was simply the prospect of the soul mate being Professor Snape.

She did some research in the library that afternoon, learned a bit about the potion used in the chocolates, and wasn't very happy with the outcome.

Most of the day passed while she came up with increasingly complex and painful ways to make the twins suffer. Hermione was sure even they would be impressed with her ingenuity...when they eventually recovered.

Feeling as though she would fly apart if she didn't get into Professor Snape's office, but afraid he would flay her alive when she walked in, Hermione stood at the door for a long moment before giving into her longing to see him. Professor Snape sat behind the desk, his hands clasped together on what looked like Fred and George's letter, which sat open on top. His eyes were hooded and scanning her. Hermione wasn't sure if the look was one of interest or simply an attempt to find the best way to cut her to the quick.

Normally, the second possibility would undoubtedly be the true answer, but that was before the Soul Mate Potion came into play. Everything she was experiencing now was without precedence in her experience. Just the sight of him was enough to increase the effects of the potion. Hermione longed to run into his arms, but worried that would be suicide. Just call me Sybill, it's like I have two different people inside me. "Here I am, sir," she said as the door shut behind her. He hadn't said anything yet and it made her nervous. Usually he was far from reticent about his thoughts and feelings, especially the negative ones.

Professor Snape slid one long, thin finger down his lips to rest on his chin, appearing deep in thought. Hermione stood, feeling as though she were under a microscope...if only wizards had those. "Sit down, Miss Granger," he finally said after nearly a full minute had passed.

Hermione wasted no time following his directive and took one of the hard wooden chairs opposite him.

"Am I to understand then that the Weasley twins are responsible for the . . . circumstances we are involved in? I'm assuming you did some research today." She nodded and he continued, "You found no cure then? No way to defeat the power of the potion, aside from the inane suggestion Mr. Weasley made?" It seemed more a statement than a question. He knew there was no solution.

She shook her head. "As far as I can tell, and I spent a couple hours today searching, it is impossible to break. I haven't given up searching but, well." It hurt that he was fighting so hard against the enchantment, even though Hermione knew she was no happier about it than he was. Holding a man in high regard is not the same as wanting to be in love with him. At the same time she was in love with him, even if by artificial means, which made it imperative to move a little closer. The desk between them seemed as wide as a lake and twice as impossible to cross. With great restraint she held herself to the chair.

Snape seemed to understand her point, though she hadn't finished it. He stood from his desk, turning his back on her to look over the tomes lining on the shelf behind him. "What have you learned, exactly?"

"Amoriata, also known as the Soul Mate Potion, was developed in the year 1327 by Heloise Madrigore as she wanted to be able to find her true love. She was growing older and hated being alone. She felt the potion would help her cut down her list of suitors to find the one man she should spend eternity with. It took her two years of redosing herself weekly before she found her soul mate, only to learn he was already married. She died three years later, driven insane by not being able to be with the man.

"Over the centuries the potion was occasionally used with more or less success. Its use was widely discontinued a couple hundred years ago due to the tendency for unrequited loves driving the users insane. Why more of them didn't just dose their loves I wasn't able to figure."

The silence was deafening as Hermione waited for her professor to respond to her recitation. She glanced around the walls at the grotesque pictures of those injured by the dark arts and shuddered.

When Snape turned to face her, she knew he was not happy. "My research picked up your points plus a little more. If you look at those known to have imbibed the potion, none of them have lived more than a few years without their soul mate. None. Whether the soul mate lived a separate life or died from other circumstances, the dosed member of the couple didn't live long." He let that hang in the air, his face a blank mask as he stared at her with obsidian eyes.

After a lengthy pause, he continued slowly. "I may not have more than a few days, or months left to live, but you are young and full of potential. What the twins have done to you is inexcusable. I'll grind them into potions ingredients." His face turned savage with this last sentence.

It thrilled her that his concern seemed more for her welfare than his own. "You'll have to beat me to it." The glint of anger in his eye, far from terrifying her as it once would have, only made her longing to be in his arms strengthen. The thought that he didn't expect to live out the war angered and terrified her as well. Now that she had found him, she wanted to get to know him better, longed to be by his side always. She was terrified at the thought that her own life expectancy might be so short. Not that she hadn't acknowledged the low chance of her surviving the fight against Voldemort. Still, the twins would be paying. Highly.

He quirked an eyebrow and she got the impression he was amused by her response. He walked around the desk and took a couple steps in her direction. "Miss Granger, I find we have come to an impass. You are a student here, I a teacher. To answer the potion's mandate would certainly put the relationship in dangerous territory." He drew slowly closer, and she could see his eyes dilating, the hunger in his expression. She felt her own grow in response.

He continued, "Yet, I had to struggle to focus today, knowing you were only a few floors away, and you do have my class tomorrow. It is unlikely I..."

Unable to help herself, she reached out and let her fingers brush the back of his hand.

That seemed all the impetus he needed. "Oh sod it all. George had the right idea." He swept her into his arms and pressed a savage kiss to her lips.

Hermione felt the rush of emotion all the way down to her toenails as she slid her hands under his teaching robes and grasped the jacket beneath, pulling him even closer as she returned his kiss with equal fervor. She'd kissed before, boys, but had never felt anything a tenth as strong as what she currently felt in Severus Snape's arms.

His arms slithered around her back, pulled her solidly against him as he plundered her mouth, tilted his head further to the side, and took some more. As she gave, her mind too thick to think, what little control she had previously possessed shattered. Nothing she'd experienced, nothing she'd read, had prepared her for this one moment of bliss. The need for more raged within her, and she wondered if she would drown completely before they were through.

"Oh my dear, Hermione," Snape said as he pulled back to place a hundred kisses across her face and neck. "I thought that was supposed to ease things but instead..."

"It's only getting worse," Hermione supplied before she found his lips and dived in again.

Several more minutes passed as they clawed their way closer, their clothes nothing but a hindrance in their frenzy. To Hermione's surprise, they were both still fully clothed when Snape pried her away from him. She had no clue how she had managed to rest one hand on the skin of his neck, and he had pulled her blouse from her skirt to caress the bare skin of her back.

"Don't. You must . . . . Sit." He finally ended his garbled sentence and moved back until they were no longer touching. "Let's just give that a few minutes to see if it helped any. I need my wits about me, can't go on this way." He turned his back to her, put a couple more feet between them, running a hand through his long, black hair.

Though Hermione knew his hair was greasy and heavy, she wished she could be the one to play with his dark tresses. She imagined the strands would be silky beneath her hand. As the long moment passed, however, she felt herself begin to equalize again. Her brain began to clear, and her heart stopped dancing the polka in her chest. When she felt enough in control to return to her seat, she did so.

Snape turned around, his eyes looking much calmer than they had when she first entered the office. He returned to his seat behind the desk. Hermione felt a trickle of annoyance as she suspected the move was made simply to return them to their teacher/student roles. She found the idea of pretending none of this had happened utterly ridiculous.

"That seems to have helped somewhat," he said calmly, his hands clasped on the desk again. "Now that we have that much out of our systems, we need to discuss the future."

Feeling his rejection down to the bone, Hermione let her shoulders droop. "What future? You've already determined we won't have one, haven't you?"

His voice returned to it usual grating irritation. "Though part of me is strenuously opposed to my putting space back between us, I believe we both know now is not the time to get tangled in something. I don't want to want you. This little prank could have cost me my life before the Dark Lord last night."

She felt stricken by the news. "Oh, sir, is that why you looked so tired this morning. I'm so sorry." Now that she had touched him, she couldn't bear the thought of losing him. It was little wonder so many loves left behind simply withered away if they felt as she did now. Though the connection to him had been strong before, after their kiss, the power of it was overwhelming, even if she could think a bit clearer now.

"I do not need or want your pity, Miss Granger. Thankfully he didn't spend much time on me last night, and I was able to keep my Occlumency shield up for the short time. If we don't get this compulsion under control, I may not be so lucky another time." His voice was harsh, as she had heard it many times before, his eyes flashed with anger and disgust. "I need only know what kind of time frame we have to work around this before the situation becomes desperate."

"Desperate?"

Irritation flashed across his face again. "I am not in the habit of bedding down my students, Miss Granger, nor would the Headmaster appreciate it if I made an exception in this case. You are a child, no matter how my libido may respond to you."

The bald statement was enough to make Hermione wince. She'd never thought of him bedding down anyone ever until the previous day. During the long hours since, she had repeatedly wondered what such an experience would be like. She had no experience beyond heavy kissing and had a healthy curiosity for what came next, though she didn't consider herself ready to deal with the whole of it. Not yet. "No, sir, I am not a child. I turned seventeen last September. I'm of age."

"Semantics, Miss Granger." He waved a hand, indicating her being of age didn't change her childhood status in his eyes.

"There don't seem to be firm guidelines on this area, sir. I doubt most people make much of a study of the potion, considering the results. One would have to be mad to undertake it themselves."

"For if they weren't already, they would certainly become so." The words were barely more than a murmur as he spoke to himself more than her.

After a short time he looked up at her, his face serious. "I'm afraid, Miss Granger, I can promise you no future and am very likely to earn your eternal hatred. Yes, you can hardly believe so now, can you? Though I support Dumbledore's cause and that will not change regardless of what's to come, I think it highly likely you will soon develop an enduring dislike of me...even stronger than the hate you already carry." He ran a hand along his jaw line, as if pulling the thoughts from deep inside. "Yet, though I am destined to lose you, and thereby we may both be driven mad with need, I am a jealous man by nature. It would be rather in your best interest not to court any other man's attention. In this case," he paused to roll his eyes and frown, "any boy's attention as it will undoubtedly call my wrath upon you both."

Hermione pursed her lips, then nodded her understanding. It hardly seemed possible at this point that she would even notice another male, so caught up was she in the enchantment between them. "Yes, sir, I would make the same comment except I doubt that should you find yourself in such an opportunity, I would ever know. But, I don't like to share, either."

"I suppose then, I will offer to have our relationship, if you can call it such, remain mutually exclusive for the time being. I imagine that would be acceptable to you."

She nodded, fidgeted with the bottom of her skirt and uncrossed her legs, re-crossing them the other direction. "And I don't hate you. I never have."

"I know how the students see me." He rubbed a hand over his face. "I'm sure you were horrified at the thought that I, that we, well. There's no need to dissemble."

"I wouldn't, not with you. I haven't really liked you much, granted, but I don't hate you. You're a brilliant Potion master, have really taught us a lot in defense class. I admire your brain and ingenuity. You may be surly and bad tempered, but you have your reasons."

Professor Snape blinked in surprise, then his expression grew unreadable again, though he said nothing.

"I have a question," she said after a moment.

"Of course you do." The comment was spoken with resignation, but his manner didn't discourage her.

"Professor Slughorn told us at the first of the year that a love potion can't create love, they only create a temporary obsession. It doesn't seem so temporary at the moment."

With far more patience than she had ever thought to see him display in answering one of her questions, the professor nodded. "This one doesn't create love, it only exposes it. At least, that's the theory behind it. Madrigore dosed herself for two years before meeting her true love. If it created something, surely she would have found someone else in that time period. In theory, the potion works only with the potential within us. But again, extensive studies have not been conducted on it."

"So if it is based on potential, is there more than one person out there for us? If it hadn't been you I touched first, could it have been someone else here?"

"Been panting after Mr. Goyle, have we?" The acerbic question was far more in keeping with Hermione's experience with the man.

She huffed in irritation as both disgust and indecipherable jealousy shot through her. "Eww. Don't even say things like that."

He shifted in his seat and tipped his head, a calculating look in his eye. "And would your response to me have been so different only two days ago if someone had suggested you would fall for me?"

Hermione tried to be honest, to think without the haze of potion interfering with her thoughts. It was no easy feat. She wet her lips with her tongue and noticed the way his eyes tracked the movement. It sent a thrill through her that this virile man was so interested in her, even if it wasn't by his choice. "I certainly never thought of you in that way before, but at least I respected you. I can't say the same for Goyle. He's nothing more than a thug with an IQ of thirty-five." She considered asking the question of him in return, but was certain she didn't want to hear the answer. His expression didn't change when he heard her words, so she decided to get the discussion back on track. "About the potential for multiple possibilities?"

Severus shrugged, a singularly strange action for him. "It hasn't been studied enough to know. It's impossible to find out. Perhaps if neither of us had been dosed for a decade, our soul mates would be different, as we would have been different then. Or perhaps there is only one soul mate for us each. If we never met them, but we continued to look only for them, the potion could have an adverse reaction. Maybe with enough doses we would pine for that one, unknown person until we withered away, regardless of never finding them. There's no way to be certain."

Hermione nodded, then winced as another thought crossed her mind. "What will you tell the Headmaster? Will you tell him? I couldn't stand it if he sacked you."

Severus Snape merely shook his head. "I don't know. I must tell him something. He's already harboring so many of my secrets, I doubt one more will make much difference." He spoke slowly, his eyes averted as though pained by the thought of his secrets. "If I didn't tell him and he found out later . . . it would be a great betrayal of trust. I will have to talk to him soon."

He continued, "The research I did on this situation indicated that proximity and touch, even innocent ones, can keep the compulsion at bay. Spending time together and getting to know one another are supposed to help. I don't suppose there's much you would like to know about me, and certainly not much I care to share, but we'll have to work something out. I'll speak with the Headmaster about it. This situation must remain our secret for now. None else must know, especially your friends Potter and Weasley."

"Definitely not them. That would be a complete fiasco." Hermione could only imagine the response she would get from Harry and Ron. There was no one Harry hated worse than Professor Snape, not even the Dark Lord himself. No, the last thing she needed was to bring them into it.

"Quite. You should tell them . . . you spoke back to me at our meeting and I gave you detention for Thursday night. Eight o'clock. That will give us both time to learn more and for me to meet with the Headmaster. We will be able to discuss this again at that time. Do not be late, Miss Granger, or I may have to set another detention."

His eyes glittered with promise, but this time Hermione didn't feel threatened. She rather thought she might enjoy detentions with him if their kisses were any indication. "Yes, sir." She smiled and took one last longing look at him before turning and vacating the classroom.

It wasn't until she was nearly back to her common room that she realized he still had the twins' letter.