Thirteen

Disclaimer: They're not mine.

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She had no idea why he'd insisted on escorting her back to her room, but Hermione wasn't going to complain. Their footfalls pounded out a gentle rhythm against the stones of the castle floor, her soft slippers whispering against the insistent but graceful click of his boots. His proximity, to her right and slightly behind, held her constantly on the edge of her nerves, but in a delicious and slightly addictive way.

She was profoundly relieved to be sharing a room with only Ginny, separate from the other seventh-years. Somehow the act of having him escort her back to the Gryffindor common room would have felt unbearably childish, but they were able to walk past that area to the more secluded location of her room. She fretted that he was privy to everything: the way she buried her hands in her pockets and dug her fingernails into her thighs, hoping to distract herself from her attraction; the ridiculously increased rate of her breath; and the way she kept swallowing compulsively, desperate to begin a conversation and hear his voice but unsure how to make herself physically capable of listening to it.

If he noticed any of these physical indicators, he offered no visible sign himself. His own breathing was inaudible, but if she turned her head just slightly, she could catch in her peripheral vision the tension in his body. Finally, he drew to a stop and faced her directly. His eyes were pools in the dark, but the faint light cast by nearby torches lent his skin a softer, healthier glow, bringing out the warm undertones she'd never before noticed.

"I should not have kept you up so late, Miss Granger," he intoned formally. "Please accept my apologies."

Hermione smiled. Her lips, dry with nervousness, felt unnaturally stretched across her teeth. "It's hardly your fault, Professor. I need to stop staying up so late in the library. Your detention sentence is pretty lenient compared to what I deserve."

Snape inclined his head minimally in agreement. "I am willing to overlook your indiscretions for the sake of your research." He paused. "But I trust that you will be punctual in attending your single detention sentence tomorrow evening."

"Absolutely, sir," she said with warmth and sincerity. "I won't keep you waiting."

He nodded again, more slowly this time, drawing out the motion as though reluctant to conclude the conversation. Or perhaps that impression was only the result of her fevered and desperate imagination.

"Thank you, sir, for listening to my proposal," she found herself saying suddenly. Her tone was rushed with her anxiety to have the words out in the open between them. "I'll do my best to ensure that you don't regret it."

Snape remained silent and implacable, and Hermione began to fidget uncomfortably. Did he expect something else? More profuse thanks? A wish goodnight?

"Well... Good night, sir," she finished lamely, studying her slippers. It was maddening to be unable to see his eyes and predict what he thought or wanted. She lifted her head and leaned in closer, wanting to grasp the last chance of taking in his dark, slightly herbal scent, hoping the movement would go unnoticed by him.

That seemed to be his cue. She could feel it on some instinctive level she'd never before encountered, the heat of realization flaring across her chest and into her lower abdomen. He took one step forward, then two, until their faces were mere inches apart. So close to him, Hermione wondered how a man physically below his prime could still give off such heat and energy. She sucked in a breath and licked her lips, praying fervently to each and every deity whose name she could recall that his movement held some significance.

Slowly, drawing out her anticipation, he lowered his lips to meet hers. They were warm and dry, and he tasted of chocolate. She gasped against his mouth and stiffened, hating herself for her uncertainty and inexperience, but it hardly seemed to faze him. She could feel his lips move slightly, as though he'd smiled despite himself, before his hands descended on hers and he backed her firmly against the wall, every inch of her pinned by his body.

Hermione relaxed into him, melting with the awe that anything could feel so good. He deepened the kiss, grinding his lips slightly more roughly against hers, and she moaned and pressed forward to meet him. The way he moved his hips firmly into hers made her dizzy. Somehow, despite the fuzziness of her arousal, she managed to extricate her hands from his and brought them up to his shoulders, running them along his arms to feel the tension in them. She heard his breath hitch, and then he shifted against her, running his right hand along the contour of her body.

"Miss Granger," he murmured, his voice low and gravelly, "perhaps..."

"Hermione," she murmured, twining her fingers in the short hairs at the nape of his neck. She pulled lightly at them, experimentally, and he closed his eyes in pleasure. "Please call me Hermione." Her breath came in almost ragged gasps.

"Hermione," he amended, one skillful finger tracing the shape of her hip and dropping dangerously toward her legs. "I believe..."

Hermione arrested any second thoughts he might have had with another, even more passionate, kiss, moaning his name reflexively when his fingers began to part her robe.

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"Damn it!"

She sat bolt upright in bed, quite suddenly, immediately conscious of the slick perspiration that covered every square inch of her body. Her breath still heaving, she collapsed back against her pillow and stared out the window. It couldn't have been more than six o'clock in the morning. Struggling to regulate her breath, she peeled off her damp pajama top and removed her legs from the tangled bedcovers. The heat seemed to radiate off her in waves.

Thank goodness Ginny wasn't there to witness her discomfiture. She'd had graphic dreams about him before...or what she'd thought were graphic dreams...but they'd never progressed much beyond the general area of her upper body. Hermione had been almost unable to imagine what his fingers would feel like against and between her legs because even in consciousness she flushed so deeply, and was so blatantly affected, that she couldn't afford to indulge in the thought. What she'd just felt as his fingers had traced their way over the thin fabric covering her legs, pausing so obviously against the heat of her, was the furthest her dreams had ever ventured.

It was only a matter of time, she thought with a groan, before she was having full-blown sex dreams about him...and with her luck, Ginny would be present to enjoy the entertainment.

Despite Ginny's absence, Hermione still felt an acute flash of mortification. Coupled with the desperate ache in her abdomen, the result was nausea. Rolling over onto her stomach, she flipped over her pillow and sought refuge in the opposite, cool side, relishing its relief against the hot skin of her face.

She couldn't believe the extent to which her imagination...or, perhaps more accurately, her libido...was able to blow even the most innocuous social interaction out of proportion. Snape had indeed agreed to accompany her to the kitchens, but he hadn't walked her back to her room, and what had transpired during the scant half-hour they'd spent together had been nothing so scandalous. She'd expounded awkwardly but determinedly on her plans to try at least three of the recommended ingredients, dedicating especial detail to her belief that a combination of two in particular might prove most effective. Snape had paid her the startling courtesy of remaining totally silent. He hadn't appeared to be judging her in the slightest, though Hermione was too suspicious by half to believe that he'd completely approved of her plan and hadn't thought it at least somewhat too ambitious for her limited education.

If he had any lingering doubts as to the validity of her hypotheses, however, he hadn't voiced them. He'd simply stated, tonelessly and quietly, that he would brew two more batches of the healing potion on consecutive evenings that week and that he expected her to be present to assist with the process and the addition of the new ingredients. Hermione had nodded eagerly and offered to make the trip to Hogsmeade herself the following weekend to pick up the third item, which he'd immediately stated that he did not have in stock. The fact that it would mean spending Valentine's Day browsing an apothecary hadn't even crossed her mind.

"That will not be necessary, Miss Granger," he'd replied simply, rising from his chair and leaving his hot cocoa untouched. She, on the other hand, had been nervously stirring patterns in hers with a cinnamon stick since the moment they'd entered the kitchens and been beset by cheerful house-elves happy to cater to their whims. "I shall procure the items myself. I will expect you at my lab Monday evening at eight o'clock."

Hermione had paused in her ministrations and held the cinnamon stick in sugary, slick fingers. "I thought you said you wanted to start on Tuesday, sir."

"Detention, Miss Granger. Be grateful I have reduced your sentence from three evenings to one."

And with that he'd turned on his heel and left her alone to gulp down her cocoa, confused and on edge, the hot liquid burning her dry lips.

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Even scrubbing the cauldrons didn't seem like much in the way of punishment. Hermione was too distracted by the fact that Snape had been within arm's reach for the past hour and a half. The physical act of restraining herself was exhausting.

Ginny had had her fun theorizing all the dirty jobs and positions he might have dreamed up for her, but Hermione had merely laughed as she had changed into casual clothes, slung her robe over her shoulder, and headed toward the dungeons for her detention. It was an unusually warm day outside, and the ambient temperature in the castle had risen as well. She'd found herself pushing up the sleeves of her blue jumper and pulling her hair off her flushed neck before even knocking on his door.

The scrubbing would have done her in altogether if she hadn't been so preoccupied with watching him. As she cleaned equipment the Muggle way, washing and rinsing with a delicate cloth, he disdainfully tested the third-years' potions, leaning over the sink next to the one at which she toiled. She couldn't permit her observation to be noticed, so she restricted herself to occasionally glancing at him out of her peripheral vision, alternately amazed and amused by the wealth of reactions that crossed his face at the simple task of grading student assignments.

What must it be like to be a teacher? she wondered. She'd read and witnessed his work; she knew that, under other circumstances, healthier and better circumstances, he'd have been revolutionary in his field. Teaching duties alone hadn't impeded those aspirations, but the war, and his obligations to both sides, had surely taken over his life. She longed to know what he'd loved, what he'd worked on, before his own desires had been subjugated for the greater needs of others. She'd kept a closer eye on the major Potions journals since her fourth year in the hope of seeing something to which he'd contributed, but she knew it was expecting too much given the life he'd been leading.

An unpleasant fizzing broke through her concentration. Glancing to her right, Hermione saw that the potion Snape had been testing had bubbled over in its vial, creating a foul-smelling, putrid froth. Wrinkling her nose, she stepped delicately to the left and shot him a sympathetic smile. Snape did not return the smile, but his eyes lingered on hers a moment longer than their usual dismissive glance.

"I recall making that potion, sir," she ventured with a nod in the direction of the mess that had begun slithering its way viscously down the sink.

"And do you recall my specific instructions to avoid this unnecessary unpleasantness?" He disposed of the remaining potion and vial, then paused to make an angry red slash in his grade book. Hermione's heart went out to him. He needed recovery and rest, and he certainly didn't need to spend what energy he possessed on the menial task of grading third-years' abysmal failures.

"I believe you told us to be sure we thoroughly ground the beetle wings before adding them in the fifth step." She set the cloth aside and swiped the back of her hand across her sweaty forehead. She had a momentary self-conscious twinge in her stomach at the thought of how he must view her...sweat-streaked, covered in water and cleanser, practically panting...but he didn't look unperturbed himself. His skin glowed with perspiration, and though he hadn't removed his frock coat, he'd pushed back the sleeves.

"Explicitly," he said, voice seeming to caress the word. Her sight was arrested by the dusting of black hair along his forearms. Neither sparse nor too thick, she found herself fascinated by it. The boys her own age had barely a dusting of such hair, and she remembered vividly its distribution over his body. In a different situation, outside the sterile and clinical atmosphere of the infirmary, the emphasis it lent to his chest and the way it trailed toward his hips would have stolen her breath.

Hermione realized too late that Snape was observing her with a peculiar intensity. She'd spent too long daydreaming, and he'd become suspicious. "I remember Neville using the wrong instrument," she said hastily, grasping for the first memory she could trawl of that long, miserable Potions period during her third year. "I tried to help him, but by then..."

"They had been improperly sheared." Snape nodded shortly, his eyes once again on the student assignments. "Mr. Longbottom's... attempt... provided a most spectacular explosion when I later tested it."

"Explosion? Really?"

"When improperly sized, the wings cannot macerate appropriately in the base before they are treated secondarily." His voice grew sharp. "I expect you to recall such things, Miss Granger. We did spend a rather sizable lecture on the theory."

"Yes, sir. But I could swear that I gave Neville some of my ground wings to put in the base so that he wouldn't have problems later... Oh, Neville." She sighed and hung her head. "He added them both, didn't he? He made it worse by mixing the two forms, and that would have made the base unstable..."

She looked at her teacher, who, for the first time she could remember, had a smile in his eyes. His lips hardly curved, but the black pools softened somewhat, and she realized with shock that they were not black but a beautiful, rich dark brown, changeable in the faint light of the classroom.

"Neville," she said with an exasperated sigh, unable to vocalize any other thought rationally. Snape, his movements unceasing, watched her for a moment.

"You sound as though you now regret aiding him, Miss Granger."

"Yes!" she exclaimed unnecessarily loudly. "I'm sorry, sir, it's just... I spent a long time on those wings!"

A definite smile tugged at the corners of his lips. "I do not doubt it, Miss Granger. If it is any consolation to you, I did and still do deem you single-handedly responsible for Mr. Longbottom's managing to pass my classes...in every year."

She blushed. "I shouldn't have interfered so much. Neville might have been good at Potions, and I couldn't keep my hands to myself. I thought I knew better than he did every time, and maybe I really didn't. Maybe he'd have managed to get through and improve on things if I'd left him alone and attended to my own business."

"That is the danger of a laboratory," Snape murmured neutrally. "It is difficult to become accustomed to performing well-established procedures in a different manner, or even watching another person do so. Scientists both Muggle and magical tend to become, to the detriment of their fields, overly reliant on their own practiced methods."

"They find it difficult to adapt and modify, you mean?" she asked, thinking, quite to the contrary, of Harry's Potions book in sixth year. Snape, by his early moniker, had been anything but predictable and mired in routine.

"Very much so."

"But not all people can be like that," she protested. "I saw Harry's Potions book during sixth year...the one that you used...and your modifications were very original, sir. I didn't understand the theory behind most of them, but you weren't at all stuck in your ways, so to speak."

Snape was silent for a long spell. Hermione, fearing she'd pressed too far in bringing up any aspect of his adolescence and arguing with his professional wisdom, fought the urge to smack her head against the faucet. She ranted at herself, mentally chastising, until he spoke again.

"The difference lies in a student's willingness and an instructor's approach." Having finished with his current vial, Snape marked down the student's grade and picked up another, his movements so fluid that her own halted while she watched him. "Improvisation is the mark of great understanding, true, but it is not something in which obedient students generally indulge. I had a great deal of experience developing and trying alternate methods because I was not the most... obedient student."

Hermione was grinning despite her desire to remain serious and respectful. "Even in Potions? Sir?" she added hastily.

He nodded shortly, and though his eyes remained on the potions before him, she thought she saw the telltale gleam of amusement enter them. "Especially in Potions."

She laughed appreciatively, but her smile faded when she looked down at her hands and thought of the harried, desperate hours she'd spent poring over her Potions textbooks. Year after year she'd read and reread chapters, studying and reviewing, seeking to understand and anticipate. Year after year she'd told herself that she would finally impress him and gain his approval and his praise. High marks had never sufficed; she'd burned to have some kind of recognition from him, a remark that wouldn't contribute to her usual feelings of hapless fumbling and, at best, half-formed comprehension.

"Is that the mark of true talent in Potions?" she asked in a small voice, and Snape's hands stilled. "Understanding well enough to improvise? Not having to be so afraid of making a mistake because you don't understand it that you can't bring yourself to do anything other than what your instructor specifically stated?"

"In a way."

She was surprised by the lack of judgment in his voice, so she dared to look up. He hadn't turned to face her, but the set of his shoulders was somehow more relaxed, more approachable. "You are not an untalented Potions student, Miss Granger. I sincerely hope you possess the maturity to realize that my objective observation does not constitute a blanket statement regarding your abilities in all disciplines."

"Yes, sir."

"And it is," he continued, his fingers deftly writing in his grade book, "objective."

Hermione felt perilously close to tears, so she chose not to speak. She'd thought herself capable of moving past what had happened months ago, and she felt that she'd accepted his assessment of the extent of her Potions aptitude, but to address it with him made her feel dangerously out of breath. She felt almost dizzy with relief when, upon resuming her cleaning, she realized that he'd finished with his grading and was preparing to leave.

With her head bent, scrubbing industriously, she almost missed his low voice as he paused behind her. His right arm hemmed her in from the side, its long fingers poised gracefully against the countertop. Hermione forcefully resisted the urge to gasp aloud when she turned her head to be confronted with his shoulder, so close as to seem imposingly, intoxicatingly large.

"You have, Miss Granger, more talent for Arithmancy than I could hope to achieve with years of the most intense study."

She didn't know if she'd merely imagined the way his breath actually struck the skin at the nape of her neck. He walked away swiftly, his footsteps staccato against the stone floor. Hermione prayed he hadn't seen her shiver.