Meager Revenge

Disclaimer: Don't own it.

Chapter 4 – Meager Revenge

The next morning dawned on a braver, more resolute Hermione. She hadn't let Professor Snape get to her in the last years of her schooling, so there was no reason to let his younger self start now. She would go back to Spinner's End at the agreed-upon time, either to continue their research or pay him for his time.

She paused as she was setting down a dish of cat food. 'Maybe I'll get there early to take a look at that well,' she thought. She was finally well ahead in her chores, having stayed at Madam's house the entirety of yesterday, and Snape wouldn't necessarily be looking out for her, especially not early. A hungry feline yowled and stretched up on her hind legs, wrapping paws around Hermione's arm and nipping her wrist. Shaken out of her musings, she set down the dish and reached for the next.

When the cats had been fed and the garden watered, she showered and dressed in a set of pretty butter-yellow robes (not pastel) in lightweight cotton, edged with green piping that set off the highlights in her hair. The loveliness of the robes was not what concerned her. She needed ease of movement.

She had given herself an hour and a half to find and study the well. Apparating into the phone box on Spinner's End at half past eight that morning, she peered out of the cracked door as she slowly pushed it open and scanned the street for irate Potions masters. She would have to face him sooner or later, but at the moment, later would be preferable. The coast was clear, but for good measure, she cast a quick Disillusionment spell, shrugging off the cold, runny sensation trickling down her scalp.

Sidling out of the phone box, she darted into a narrow alley between two boarded-up houses, her breath coming in sharp pants, her heart racing far more quickly than the short sprint should require. After a quick glance around the corner of the house, assuring her that Spinner's End was deserted, she grinned to herself. This "sneaking around" was exciting.

The thrill of her little adventure made the upcoming ordeal of returning to Snape a bit more bearable. She had made up her mind the night before: she would have to apologize. Never mind that the ugly scene had been his doing. She knew from several years experience with Ron that it was simply easier, and a lot less time consuming, to be the Bigger Person and Admit Fault.

Post-adolescent males had little more sense than adolescent males and were more stubborn, due to, in Hermione's opinion, owning an Apparition License. This allowed a male to easily avoid his girlfriend and crash at a friend's pad. After several liberal applications of Firewhisky, partaken at said friend's pad, the male wouldn't have much memory of the incident, anyway, and would have convinced himself (and the friend) that the girlfriend was entirely to blame. Therefore, as much as it flew up her nose, Hermione had practice apologizing for fights she hadn't caused. She made him pay for it later, though.

Stepping carefully on the balls of her feet, she slunk along the fronts of the houses, her eyes fixed on Snape's porch except for the brief glances she threw down each tiny alley. She knew that the gate to the Industrial Graveyard was down one of those tiny passageways, but she couldn't quite recall which one. She'd been distracted by a young (handsome, charming) Lucius Malfoy chatting her up. Even Minerva McGonagall would have been distracted by that.

"Ah-ha!" Hermione hissed quietly to herself, beaming down the alley at the small wire gate at the end. With a quick look back to verify that Snape's front porch was as empty and dreary as ever, she walked briskly between the houses. The gate was closed with a simple hinged latch that protested noisily as she folded it back, but no more loudly than that gate, itself. She prodded the hinges with her wand and thought a lubricating charm, nodding when the gate glided silently outward.

Despite her Disillusionment, Hermione felt exposed as she trudged into the field along the path worn into the grass, her eyes darting around the grass for the first sign of the well cover and over her shoulder toward Snape's summer residence. The well wasn't visible from it, and as far as Hermione could tell, the only way he would know that she was "sneaking around his backyard" was if he'd set perimeter wards. She wouldn't put it past the paranoid prat; she would simply have to be on alert. Every few steps, she cast a quick Revelo in case the path had been warded, but found nothing. However, she couldn't shake the feeling that someone or something was watching her. It was silly; there was no living being in sight. Just the same, the tiny hairs on the back of her neck prickled, and gooseflesh crawled down her arms.

Quite suddenly, the well emerged out of the grass, marked by a large, rectangular board covering the opening. Had she not been looking for it, she would have passed it by, assuming it to be a piece of rubbish. She stared at it apprehensively for several long minutes, sizing it up and trying to convince herself that the Well Creature would not come flying out to maul her the moment she removed the cover. After a disgusted sigh, Hermione decided that she had let herself go soft if time-portal bogeys could shake her determination.

A quick flick of her wand, and the cover scraped aside.

It was all rather anti-climactic, not to mention disappointing, Hermione decided as she wandered back up the path toward the gate. She'd cast diagnostic charms, Finite Incantatem, and several different flavors of revealing charms, only to find what she already knew: the well was used as a potions waste treatment facility. She supposed some potions and ingredients were too unstable to Vanish, requiring neutralizing, dumping and dissolving (there was quite a bit of lye down there), but none of that had shed any light on a solution to her little time-travel problem. As far as she could tell, after sending a bluebell flame into the well, it did, in fact, have a solid bottom and was not some strange black hole into the future. Several stones followed the flame and rested innocuously in the dirt.

She released the Disillusionment as she stepped out of the alley, brushing away any residual bits of detritus that might have attached itself to her person while she traipsed through the field. With a small moue of disapproval, she noted that Pumplenoose had deposited white hairs on this set of robes as well. She would have to have a word with that cat regarding appropriate napping locations.

With only a small quiver of trepidation, mainly right behind her sternum, she strode up Snape's porch steps and raised her hand to knock. Before her knuckles could make contact with wood, the door swung open, and Snape ground to an abrupt halt. His eyes widened momentarily before narrowing to slits and fixing on her right ear. Hermione tucked her hands behind her back and tried to look repentant.

"Yes?" he hissed resentfully, and the quiver in Hermione's chest became an outright wibble.

"Well, I thought... that is to say, I hoped... and I'm sorry that I... you look nice," she finished the last thought rather lamely, staring unabashedly at the man before her. He had cleaned up and done something with his hair that gave it more body than usual. It still hung in his face, and his expression was as unapproachable as ever, but combined with the tailored black robes that accentuated his shoulders and narrowed his hips, complete with forest green cravat, he looked less the surly teenager and more the man he was becoming. He could have given Victor Krum a run for his money. "Are you going somewhere?"

"Obviously."

"Oh." Clever, Hermione, very clever. "Look, I am sorry for storming off like that. I overreacted."

Any minute, she expected to be dismissed with a barked insult, but still he stood, staring impenetrably at her left shoulder. It was beginning to make her uncomfortable. Stepping backward off the porch and onto the top stair, she said, "I suppose I could come back later, or tomorrow..."

When he didn't respond, she sighed and, pushing aside her pride, asked, "May I come back tomorrow?"

"I suppose." Those two words were spoken with less antipathy than his first responses, so Hermione congratulated herself on progress made.

"All right, then. Ten o'clock, and I won't be late." She flashed him an apologetic smile and turned to walk down the steps. Hearing the door shut behind her, she glanced over her shoulder to see him lock it behind them with a key attached to a small, leather fob. Curiosity got the better of her, and without pausing to think, she asked, "Where are you going?"

He stowed the keys in his robes and gazed pensively at the doorknob, seeming to wage some internal war. Hermione thought it a simple enough question, even if it wasn't her business. She winced. "Never mind. I'll see you tomorrow."

Sighing, he glanced up at her through a curtain of silky, black hair. "If you must know, I am going to Hogwarts. Teacher's meeting," he added as her eyebrows shot up.

"Really? Do you think the library would be open? Could I come?" Hermione blurted the questions in quick succession, wondering why on earth she hadn't thought of checking Hogwarts' library before. Granted, they probably wouldn't have admitted her without a staff member as chaperone, and none of her professors would know her yet, but it still seemed such an obvious oversight, especially since she was bunked up in Hogsmeade. The idea that those same professors might recognize her later gave her a moment's pause, but she decided that, even if she were to meet one of her former professors, it was highly unlikely that they would connect her face to one they would know twenty years later.

Except, perhaps, Dumbledore.

A desire to see the old wizard clenched at her heart, but she quashed it immediately. Of all of the Hogwarts staff, she was certain that Albus Dumbledore would see through her weak disguise and recognize that something was wrong about her. He might be able to help her, but she would seek him out only as a last resort.

"You want to go with me?" Snape asked slowly, carefully, his eyes partially hidden behind dark lashes that once again snared her attention.

"Well, if it wouldn't be too much of a bother..." Reflexively, she smoothed her hair, wishing she'd braided it back instead of letting it run rampant down her back. He seemed indecisive, so she continued, "I promise to stay out of your way; I just thought we might be able to find something useful there. In the Restricted Section, perhaps."

He drew himself up and straightened his robes. "I dare say being a 'bother' has not stopped you before," he said finally, and though the words were laced with disdain, Hermione recognized a capitulation when she heard one.

"Not when I can help it."

Severus was treated to a brilliant grin, and the last vestiges of his anger vanished like malodorous wisps of steam. Though he had expected the witch not to appear when ten o'clock had come and gone yesterday, his mood had blackened and spiraled into a heavy funk. He had spent a good portion of the afternoon reading up on Dark tracking spells, the kind that caused their subjects a variety of discomforts and some that bent the subject to the tracker's will. He'd cast a lesser spell on a couple of cat hairs that had been transferred from her robes to one of the kitchen chairs, but when the results had pointed to Hogsmeade instead of Canterbury, he'd chucked the spell book at the wall and had a light dinner of Ogden's Old, rounding off the evening by passing out on the couch.

All over a phial that only might be what he needed.

When he had opened the door to her contrite face, the urge to stun her and grab the phial warred with such an intense wash of relief and gratitude that he'd been thoroughly offended, and momentarily immobilized, that a witch he hardly knew could affect him so strongly.

And here she was, apologizing for a situation that he had created, asking to go with him on an errand. He had no illusions that it was remotely similar to a date or that she was interested in anything other than the Hogwarts Library. It made her suggestion safe; he could accept it with minimal guilt, even if he did enjoy her company.

She'd said he looked nice. No one, apart from his dearly departed mother, had said he looked nice. Not even her. He would have preferred to believe it flattery to get back into his good graces, if he thought her capable of guile.

If her earlier trek into the field behind his house was any indication, then she had all the subtlety of a troll. The wards that he'd placed around his potions dump were the same he'd used to guard his possessions at Hogwarts: relatively uncommon and hard to detect, unless one knew to look for them, but harmless to the witch blundering through them. They had alerted him to her presence, not that he had been able to take action from the shower.

When her tinkering had stopped, he'd fully expected her to disappear again. If it weren't for the blasted teacher's meeting, for which he was now threatening to be late, he would have followed her out there, either to collect the phial (she could get another good look at the well from its bottom) or samples for use in tracking spells – the nastier kind – for prying into his business and dangling the carrot of companionship in front of his nose.

He was standing there staring at her, he realized with a small jolt, and she was waiting for him to do something, a slight twitching together of her eyebrows signifying her growing concern. It irritated him irrationally. He looked away, scowling, and grunted, "Very well, then."

Without waiting for a reply or confirmation, he Apparated to the gates of Hogwarts.

After a brisk walk through the castle grounds, Severus dropped off Hermione at the library. She had seemed to know her way, furthering his suspicion that she wasn't who she'd said she was. She had had no trouble Apparating to Hogwarts, either. There was a chance that she was a Ravenclaw who had graduated several years his senior, in Lucius' class perhaps, and he had just not noticed. But Malfoy hadn't known her either. And her hair would have been hard to miss.

Nevertheless, the staff meeting was due to start in five minutes, and he still had to navigate the stairwell that sometimes wasn't. At the start of his first year as a professor, McGonagall had hinted that there was a trick to it, but as one of the new staff members, Severus had had to figure it out for himself. Now in his second year, he knew quite well that for staff members late for a meeting, the stairwell would became a corridor leading to a closet stuffed to the brim with clocks (all set to a slightly different time, and therefore guaranteed to be chiming whenever the hapless professor opened the door) instead of the teacher's lounge.

Severus arrived with a minute to spare, but was disappointed to find that all the chairs furthest from the head of the table had been taken. The closer to Dumbledore one sat, the more attention one had to pretend to pay. He wished he'd learned McNair's trick of sleeping with his eyes open. If the Dark Lord hadn't caught on, then surely Albus Dumbledore would be fooled.

Staff meetings reminded Severus nauseatingly of Death Eater gatherings. Though the topics were different, the tedium and seeming endlessness of them were strikingly similar. So was the fact that most his fellow staff members wanted little to do with him. He kept his eyes on the table and his mind blank, resisting the urge to sigh when Sprout began her harangue on the decline of moral values, as seen by the number of older students caught in her greenhouse without their robes, or trying to grow "extra-credit" coca and cannabis plants. That would be Pomfrey's cue to comment on the rising number of alcohol-related accidents, and the new Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor (whatever her name was, Severus hadn't been paying attention) would be sure to throw in her two Sickles about Death Eaters and What This World Was Coming To, dragging the meeting to twice its allotted length. At least Lucius had had the courtesy to serve aperitifs when he'd hosted.

As soon the meeting was adjourned, Severus was out like a shot and heading directly to the library. To his surprise, Miss Greenglass was waiting outside its doors, shifting restlessly from foot to foot. She caught sight of him and seemed to melt in relief. "There you are! I thought you were supposed to be done an hour ago!"

"I was."

"Severus! Severus, a word!" Professor McGonagall called out as she swooped toward them, long, burgundy robes fluttering behind her. Miss Greenglass hunched slightly in what he perceived to be guilt. "I wanted to remind you that you must submit your syllabi to me two weeks before the start of term so that I may review them."

"Of course, Professor," Severus said stiffly, wishing she could have said this somewhere other than right in front of Miss Greenglass. It wasn't that he was trying to impress her, but a professional did have his dignity.

"Please, call me Minerva. We are colleagues," she reminded him impatiently, though her tone was that of a professor speaking to a student. "And I also wanted your help this afternoon..."

"I'm sorry, Professor," Hermione interrupted Professor McGonagall as politely as she could, "but you see, Pr...Sev and I have made plans to have tea today."

"Sev! Tea!" McGonagall looked between the two young people, delighted and somewhat taken aback. "And here I thought... well, no matter. Good to see you getting back in the saddle, as they say." She winked at Snape and sent a mischievous, wholly un-McGonagall smirk to Hermione. "If that's the case, then by all means, away with you! I'll be happy to find someone else to do the job."

With one last smile that encompassed the both of them, she gathered her robes in her hands and sashayed down the corridor as quickly as she had come, her chuckles echoing off the stone walls long after she had disappeared around a corner.

"Tea?" Snape asked in a disbelieving drawl when McGonagall's mirth had finally died out.

"Tea," she repeated firmly, nodding her head. "I have something to show you." Hermione had been the Bigger Person early this morning, giving him ample time to apologize in return. He hadn't, so she had moved to Phase Two of Making Amends, namely, Payback. 'Let's see if he can survive an afternoon at Madam Beetlebump's without getting cat hair on his robes,' she thought, pleased with herself that her vengeance could be put to good use.

Hermione tried to keep a straight face as Snape stared down a fat tortoiseshell that had just stolen a biscuit off his plate.

Getting her former professor to Madam's for tea had been touch-and-go for a while. He had been quite reluctant to accept the invitation, going so far as to charge her with lying when she'd told him that they were going to a small house in Hogsmeade and not to Canterbury after all.

His countenance had darkened, and he'd stopped in his tracks, mere meters from the gates of Hogwarts. "You said you were from Canterbury," he had spat at her accusingly.

Hermione had blinked, nonplussed. "I said my family was from Canterbury. I never said that I lived there." A thunderstorm had begun to brew behind his eyes: one she had recognized from her school days that was usually followed by lots of shouting, loss of house points and detention with Filch. She'd sighed heavily. "If you must know, my parents and I have... difficulties understanding each other. I thought it best that I find my own place." It was, more or less, the truth, though not in the sense that he would invariably take it.

"I see," he'd said quietly, and the clouds had lifted from his face.

He hadn't so much as batted an eye when she'd explained about lodging with the Madam and helping around the house, though she'd left out the part about the cats until they had been walking down the tidy path from the low front gate to the doorstep, on which lounged a gray tabby cat.

"If I recall correctly," he'd drawled in a tone that held little doubt that he did not, "you usually have white cat hair on your clothes."

"Yes..." Hermione had stalled as she led him into the house and ushered him to the back garden where she and Madam usually took their tea. She had left him on his own to divine Madam Beetlebump's unique method of conversation, grinning wickedly as she hurried to the kitchen.

Now, Hermione, Snape and Madam Beetlebump sat at a black, wrought iron table with a mosaic-tiled top, placed at the center of an herb garden. Plots of thyme, rosemary, basil, sage, lavender, several different varieties of mint, asphodel, dittany, mallowsweet, puffapod and many different plants that Hermione couldn't name were planted in concentric rings broken by tidy gravel paths that emanated from the center of the garden like spokes on a wheel. A large patch of catnip, at that moment hosting a total of eight happy cats, grew along the garden fence at the back of the yard. Dark clouds were beginning to gather around the tops of the mountains, crowding out the white puffs that had scuttled across the sky all day and threatening rain in the near future, but doing little to dampen the warmth and peacefulness of the afternoon.

Bartholomew, biscuit thief extraordinaire, gave Snape a final, contemptuous glance and polished off his pinched treat in three large bites. He licked his whiskers in a manner that dared Snape to retaliate.

"Bartholomew, that's a bad kitty!" Madam chastised the cat perfunctorily from her chair, then handed the cat the last bite of her sandwich.

"One would think I don't feed you," Hermione stated as Bartholomew began to wind around her legs and send her sandwich predatory glances. "Don't even think about it."

"You could lose a little weight," Madam said speculatively, brushing crumbs from her own protruding belly. "Unlike Heidi, here, who is much too scrawny." She sniffed in disapproval. "And her young man! All bones and no flesh!"

"But..." Hermione tried to interrupt unsuccessfully.

"I'm not saying that bone on a wizard isn't a good thing." She leered at the cat and winked broadly. "Heavens, no, Bartholomew! But he has to have some meat on him, some bits to hold on to!"

Snape choked on a sip of tea and had to set down his cup to tend to his coughing fit. Blushing fiercely, Hermione patted Snape on the back and wondered if her brilliant plan for payback was blowing up in her face. "Madam, please..."

Regaining control of his breathing, Snape sat up straight in his chair and glowered down his nose at Madam Beetlebump, who was still chattering at Bartholomew. He had no more than opened his mouth when Pumplenoose took that opportunity to leap into his lap. With fluffy tail held high, just beneath Snape's outraged nostrils, she began to knead the tops of his thighs, and from the pained look on his face, she was not sparing her claws.

"Oh, Pumplenoose!" Hermione was quick to pluck the purring feline off Snape's legs, noting with satisfaction that his black robes were now sprinkled liberally with long, white hair. "Not every one likes to have their laps perforated."

"That... that beast-" Snape sputtered ineffectually in his disgust as he pointed at the cat, which was unfazed and butting her cheek against Hermione's chin.

"I'm sure you didn't mean to irritate our guest," Hermione cooed, forestalling whatever awful thing Snape had been about to say. She gave her a quick cuddle, then set her back down on the ground.

"There's no accounting for taste." Madam sniffed her disapproval to Bartholomew, who ignored her in favor of watching Hermione's sandwich. "What young man wouldn't want a pretty lady in his lap?"

Deciding that vengeance had been won, and that she had better do something before Snape choked to death or hexed Madam Beetlebump, Hermione rose from her seat.

"Se..., ah, Professor Snape and I are going to go into the kitchen so that I can show him something important," she informed Pumplenoose and quickly gathered the tea things, leaving Madam's cup and the teapot still on the garden table. Snape followed closely on her heels.

"You are insane!" Snape snapped at her as they passed through the door and into the house.

"I'm insane?"

"To live here! And so is that woman. Exactly how many cats does she have?"

Hermione counted quickly in her head. "Fourteen, but that isn't important." She pulled a tiny book from her pocket and performed a silent Engorgio. It grew to a large tome with a cracked, leather binding and faded, gilt lettering. Grinning wildly and almost bursting with excitement, she brandished the book at him. "This is it!"

"Did you... steal a library book?" He tilted his head, eyes glittering oddly in the afternoon sunlight that streamed through the kitchen window.

"What? No!" She flushed guiltily and refused to meet his gaze. "I borrowed it. Unofficially." Hermione shifted her weight from one foot to the other, fidgeting with the book in her hands. As Snape's silence drew on, her shoulders began to hunch. "The librarian wouldn't let me check it out. Not even under your name. You can take it back when we're done; we'll need it for a while."

"Indeed."

Shoving a curly lock of hair behind her ear and doing her best to ignore his bemused, irate stare, she opened the book to the marked page and pointed to a small illustration of a faceted crystal bottle that was glowing from within.

"It's called the Starglass."

A/N:

Thanks for reading! The Starglass' name is from "The Lord of the Rings." However, this one is completely different.