In Wisdom's Creed

This one's a bit short, and rather mellow, but I felt the pace of the story needed a little bit of reflection, to get Hermione and Snape's thoughts out there.

Enjoy!

*****************************************************************************************

Hermione stood staring at the doorway that Snape had just walked through. She couldn't believe he'd agreed to work with her. She couldn't believe she'd complimented him. That hadn't gone at all as planned, not that she'd really planned it, more worried about how things were going to turn out.
Suddenly she realised Lucius was talking to her. She turned to him with a smile and sat down again.
"Sorry Lucius, what did you say?"

"You seemed to handle that rather well," he said with a grin, "Especially the compliment. Got him exactly where you wanted him."

Hermione chuckled softly, "Well, that wasn't my intended reaction, but at least he'll work with me now. I think if I had given him another piece of my mind... well... I might not be here now!" She finished dramatically.

"You gave him a piece of your mind?" Lucius enquired curiously.

"Well... yes..." Hermione suddenly grinned, feeling much better about the whole episode. "He was being really horrible to me about this whole project. I was really rather rude to him... I wonder if I should apologise."

Lucius laughed at this, "Only if he apologises to you, Hermione, only if he apologises to you. Besides," he continued, "from the sound of it, it's probably best not to remind him about it."

Hermione laughed.

Hermione chatted for another hour or so with Lucius, though they didn't really get much work done, but that seemed to be what their meetings were like nowadays. Hermione didn't mind, and Lucius certainly seemed happy, and Hermione had just abut convinced herself that was just important.

- X - X - X - X -

That evening Hermione left the Gryffindor common room to a hearty round of commiserations and headed to the dungeons for her detention with Snape.
She was a little aprehensive; Snape had seemed to come around, but she really had been rude to him, and Snape never took that kind of talk back.

She wondered whether he would talk about her potion ideas in the detention, or whether she'd have to see him twice a week until the detentions were done with.
She crossed her fingers and hoped desperately that he'd be nice enough to talk about the project in detention.

* * *

Snape sat at his desk, papers neatly stacked in two piles before him.
He knew he had been far too harsh on Hermione. It wasn't her fault that Lucius was here. He could not bring himself to trust Lucius' intentions though, and he could never believe that Lucius had been under the Imperio.
He really did seem to be different though...
Snape grunted in frustration and vented his anger by putting a large red 0 at the top of the paper he was currently marking. It didn't even warrant a proper grade.

He turned his thoughts back to Hermione. Dumbledore was right, of course, she was not just a student; she was the only person he could think of that actually excelled in every single subject, which made her the perfect person to work with experts in each subject.
She could see things that each of them could not.
He sighed.
She was still a student though.
And best friend to Potter.
And now, seemingly, to Lucius.

Yes, he had been too harsh on her, but he knew the students were all talking about how she had shouted at him. That could not happen again.
The students needed to be taught a lesson. Miss Granger needed to be taught a lesson.

He smiled cruelly as he realised it would be fairly easy to give her what she wanted, whilst showing he was still the one in charge here.