Detention
She could hear her shoes clicking along the corridor, her cloak trailing off one arm as she clutched her satchel in her other hand, hurriedly trying to shove books into it as she ran. She burst into the classroom, hair dishevelled, face red and drawing in loud, deep breaths.
“Ah Miss Granger, we are finally blessed with your presence. I know we all owe you so very much but I will have to insist you are on time still Granger” Snape drawled. Standing at the front of the class, leaning his tall frame against his desk, a smirk lifting the corners of his mouth. His eyes didn’t hold any mirth in them.
“Apologies sir, I got distracted in the library.” Hermione muttered her apology as she moved towards her desk.
“The reason is inconsequential, 15 points from Gryffindor Miss Granger. Now if you have finished disturbing our class long enough we will continue” his arch tone both familiar and infuriating to Hermione. She plonked herself down, sending small smiles at Ron and Harry who gave her a small smile.
The lesson, a practical, on how to make a strong protection potion went along as normal. Hermione soon forgot her lateness and even the docked house points. Too wrapped up in the potion making. She loved it. She loved to watch as the colour of the potion changed before her eyes, watch as ingredients became something more. WIth potions she could watch the amorphous like strands of magic made physical. Despite her joy in potions she was never a natural, she knew she did not have the flair. She used to worry about it and fret but now. Now, she had fought a war and somehow the worry seemed less. It seemed almost selfish.
Her mind now solely focused on the potion, she paid no attention to the classroom around her. She was about to stir the potion ten turns anticlockwise when his hand came down on her wrist. She let out a small gasp as he made contact, shocking her out of her reverie. He stood to her right, her wrist in his large right hand. His grip was firm but not tight.
“Miss Granger” he growled out in a whisper. As she came to her senses she could hear the noises of chopping boards, stirring and the bubbles of cauldrons around the class, his voice was so quiet and yet it carried over all the sounds around her. “Whilst you are often insufferable I did not take you to be a complete idiot.” This too was said in his low and quiet voice and she looked at him confused. She felt hurt blooming in her chest and an unsettling queasiness rising within her, she had done something wrong but she knew not what. She began scanning the desk looking for clues. “The rod Miss Granger. The wrong rod” his eyes cut to her hand with a look that if one were charitable could be termed pity but really looked more exasperated. She looked down and bit her lip. She had been about to stir her potion with a copper rod in her distraction. A mistake which would have caused the cactus needles within the potion to react strongly to. Causing the potion to reach scorching heats and bubble over.
“I…I…I’m sorry sir” Hermione felt out of control, didn’t feel capable of getting her words out. Too shocked at her own stupidity. She could also feel the eyes of the students around her beginning to look up. Feel the attention on her back as they were drawn from focusing on their potions to the scene before them. She could feel the heat of embarrassment rise in her face and the sweat begin to slide down her back.
“First you were late Miss Granger and now this. I feel I have no choice but to give you a detention. Tonight, at 8, here. You will restart the potion” It was a tone that brook no argument and yet it was still so deathly quiet. With that he dropped her hand and vanished the contents of her cauldron. He continued walking between the rows as students hastily returned to their potions and looking as though they were busy.
Hermione turned back to her cauldron and began the laborious task of preparing the ingredients in the hopeless endeavour of having the potion ready for the end of class. It was silly really but even as she tried to tell herself it was nothing. A minor mistake. Something Snape had every right to pick her up on. Even so she felt the tears begin to pool in her eyes. It was him. Something that made her feel so small with him. He could command the room with his presence and she felt cowed by it. On her wrist she could still feel him, that firm grip that had encircled her. She hated it, wanted to go to the nearest bathroom and scrub at her wrist. She was reminded of being the insufferable, know it all, a small girl in their magical world. Even after everything.
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Ron and Harry attempted to cheer her as they walked to dinner that night. They briefly discussed how, with their new fame, they could make Snape’s life very difficult. Harry suggested commissioning a portrait in their professor's honour, to thank him for his service during the war. Knowing that it was exactly what their acerbic teacher would hate most. Hermione allowed a small smile to grace her lips, imagining the dour, sharp man’s face at even more idolatry.
After the war, sitting in the muggy, close air of Grimmauld, Harry had told her and Ron about Snape’s incandescent rage in St Mungo’s. Upon waking he was told not only had he survived the war, and that he was being exonerated, his memories and love of Lily Potter had served as his defence in the realm of public opinion. Apparently his magic had created a maelstrom in that small room. Harry had told this tale with a look of gallows humour, recounting how he had expected the professor to dock points as soon his voice recovered. Snape had become the dashing and dark romantic hero of the world around them. Hermione had held some small hope in her heart that he had been on their side after everything. She had welcomed the news of their good and true turncoat. This had been before they had returned to school, before the seismic changes to their world had been buried beneath homework and an attempt to return to normality.
She picked at her dinner, dreading the coming detention. She could feel it now. He would mock her, pick at her. The moniker ‘brightest witch of her age’ had been given to her. At first she had glowed in that praise, so proud of it. Now, after everything, it was more of an annoyance. Professor Snape, under his hushed and velvet tones he could turn it into a rich seam of embarrassment. Something once again to make her small.
After dinner her and the boys headed back to the common room. She had done all of her homework ready and up to date. She read as Harry and Ron peppered her with questions about their homework though. It was at times like these she thought nothing would ever change. Even if the common room was quieter now, and felt colder even with the roar of the fire.
She left for the dungeons at some time around 7:30, traversing Hogwarts was longer now. There were some corridors she couldn’t go down anymore. Thankfully the stairs seemed more obliging these days. The descent into the dungeons was marked by the cool, damp air that lived down there with no breeze to stir it. She knocked on the door to the potions classroom, and it answered at her touch.
“Miss Granger”, his drawl coming from within the classroom, she could not see him yet. She stepped gingerly into the room. Unsure of the mood of the man inside. He was sitting behind his desk, papers laid out before him. A small fire illuminated the room but cast no warmth. The yellow of its light casting long shadows. The greenish glow coming from the Black Lake dulled by the fall of night. On one of the high tables towards the front of the class there lay three large trays of oysters and a small knife. The smell of the sea permeated the room. She came to a stop beside the desk.
“You will shuck these by hand Miss Granger” when she looked at him bemused she could swear he was about to roll his eyes. “The fourth years are doing love potions Miss Granger, and as I’m sure, tucked away in that vast intellect somewhere, you know that oysters are crucial for several of those potions. You will do this by hand, I will protect your hands with a spell, you will do as many as you can in an hour Miss Granger. I will demonstrate this only once.” with that he rose from his desk, the dark wool cloak falling back into place around him. His dark boots clicking against the floor as he languidly stepped towards her. Once in front of her his long, scarred fingers picked up the blade. He held the oyster in his hand and pushed the small blade into the shell and twisted, the shell popped open. He moved the knife around the shell as it popped open. He decanted the slimy mollusc into a large jar. It slapped onto the glass, the only one in there so far. It all looked so simple. He cast a quick charm, a bluish light spread of her hands before looking as though it was absorbed into her skin. A light tingling spread across her palms. He barely looked at her as he did this and walked back to his desk. No glance was cast in her direction.
It seemed to take her an age to get the knife in. She missed several times, the knife skipping across the shell and coming to rest against her palm. Eventually she got the knife in and twisted, hard. Hearing the shell prize apart. She soon got into a rhythm, picking the shell up, prizing it open and dropping the mollusc into the jar with a satisfying splat. Her world reduced to the repetition.
“Miss Granger” his low, mellifluous voice carried across the still dungeon. His voice was behind her now, in the absorption of her work she had not heard him move, had not sensed it. He had moved up behind her silently. She felt a nervous energy stir behind her sternum. She dropped the knife and gripped the work bench. She felt his cloak at her ankles. It felt so cold in that dungeon all of a sudden.
“You’re so angry with me Miss Granger” as he said it he moved closer to her. Still not touching her. She could feel his solid presence behind her.
The statement surprised her.
“I’m..I’m not sure what you mean, Sir” she whispered it out, breathless and unsure. Her grip on the bench became firmer. The nervous energy building behind her sternum began coiling its way around her. She felt unsettled, as though she were standing on a precipice.
“Oh I think you do Miss Granger” Snape tucked some of her errant curls behind her right ear as he purred the words. She felt his breath on her cheek. Her eyes fluttered closed and she felt herself sway, just a fraction, back into him. Her lids felt heavy and her brain clouded.
Professor Snape was behind her, he had tucked her hair behind her ear. Professor Snape had tucked her hair behind her ear. Professor Snape, the great bat of the dungeon. A man who allowed so much wrong by telling himself he was good. She blinked, it felt as though the world was becoming clear again. She pulled herself away from his presence, standing tall and rigid. The cold of the dungeon seeping back into her bones. It was like she was coming back to herself.
She spun sharply on her heel and looked up at him. And there he was. Snape. As he always was, his arms now folded in front of him. He had moved back a fraction. A challenging glare levelled at her. He was looking at her as though he was waiting for something. If she could not recall in that very moment his warm breath on her, the feeling of his cloak crowding her legs, blocking the heat, and her hair tucked behind her ear she would say it was a daydream.
But she knew it to be true. She looked up into his eyes. There was something there, dancing in the darkness, humour? Sarcasm? So that was it. He was laughing at her. Hermione Granger did the only thing she could think to do at that moment and ran.