Beneath the Surface

A/N: Though I have already put in a disclaimer in my default chapter (which has unfortunately been eradicated by the oh-so-kind and liberal people that run ff.net, if that is the site where you are currently reading this), and I wrote it to count for the entire length of my fic, I will say here and now that some of the dialogue and description in this chapter was directly lifted from ‘Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets\', by (duh:P) J.K. Rowling. Ok, now that I\'ve gotten that over with, enjoy the story!!^_^ And PLEASE review it when you\'re finished reading, as it considerably hastens the writing of further chapters.
~SSS

Beneath the Surface
Chapter the Tenthe: The Exchanging of Smiles and Senses


It was a gloriously sunny day, the azure sky punctuated here and there by white fluffy ds tds that reminded the muggle children of cotton candy. Though the ecstatic yellow sun beat down mercilessly upon its worshipers, its intensity was dulled by the constant blowing of a gentle summer breeze that playfully rippled the warm green grasses and lovingly caressed the graceful arms of every tree that stood in its path. The birds were serenading all of nature with delirious love songs, and every kind and color of flower shot high out of the ground with exultant audacity. This was the type of day a romantic poet dreamed of; God\'s own picture of idyll.

It was making Hermione sick.

It was as if the world itself were mocking her misery. Such gaiety! Such beauty! Such SUNE!! E!!

Revolting, perfectly and utterly. Here she was, at the very threshold of Hogwarts, her beloved sanctuary, on the most heavenly day even she could conjure up, and she was more terrified than she\'d ever been in all of her life. It was all she could do to quell her body\'s shaking. After two whole months of dreading this day, it had finally crept upon her, and so stealthily that it was as if it were only yesterday that she had been here last.

Only yesterday since she\'d last seen *him*, and they\'d had that awful argument.

No, that wasn\'t right....SHE\'D had that awful argument. He\'d merely set off the bomb and then watched as it exploded, as he surely knew that it would.

Hermione\'s entire holiday had been a blur of texts, loneliness and fear. The latter of and inspired by one person: Severus Snape, a man who she would be forced to see nearly every day of her life for the next...six...years.

‘Oh, good gods,p mep me,\' she mentally implored. Her duress was such that it influenced her every movement, and she had never been a person that one would call guileful.

Why, even Harry and Ron would be able to detect that there was something bothering her! ...That is, they would if they were actually *present*.

Hermione would have been quite worried about her friends by now—having not met them on the Hogwarts Express as they had planned and seeing no sign of them upon arriving at the school—had she not been so preoccupied with her dread of seeing and then dealing with Professor Snape. As it was, nearly all the concern she might have felt for the two truant boys was completely obscured by vexation that they were not here for her when she actually needed the distraction their energetic banter provided.

At the moment, she was being jostled and pushed about by the crowd of her fellow students, who were traipsing eagerly towards the magical castle which housed their futures within its capacious stone walls. Ignored by all of the excited children, Hermione glared at the great wooden doors before them, her lips set in a resentful line. One nostril quirked erratically, as it tended to do when she was holding in her fury. If anyone had bothered to look, they would notice that her scowl could rival that of Snape\'s any day. She was positively livid.

Though she missed them, she wouldn\'t dare tell Harry and Ron the real reason she was so uneasy, even if they had noticed her discomposure and asked her about it. As she thought on it further, she found that she resented what she perceived as their callous behavior towards her personal life and problems. Given, she did nothing to reveal herself as a deeply sensitive person, and she knew that Harry and Ron could be fairly...well, thick, when it came to sensing and interpreting others\' emotions. Still, she was sure that if they knew how much their dismissive remarks and pigeonholing hurt her feelings, they wouldn\'t behave that way towards her.

Ron and Harry were most certainly not cruel people, that much was certain. Yet she still could not get up the courage to say these things to them straight out; she just did not know how. Any interaction with other people touched her profoundly (in many different spectrums of feeling), but she knew not how to communicate such to them. She lacked the training for it.

But she did not dwell on these dampening thoughts for too long. The many people surrounding her had finally stopped moving and their shouts and laughter had died down considerably: they had finally reached their collective destination and were about to be let into the school. Hermione again thought of one who, happily or not, awaited her return from within its depths.

As the majestic doors that led into the heart of Hogwarts were being slowly pushed open ahead of them, Hermione\'s own heart fluttered with the force of the hope that had been bubbling inside of it all summer.

~*~

\"Severus?...Severus!...Severus, my boy, WAKE UP!\"

Snape had been abruptly torn from his blessed (and so rare) slumber by a pair of soft yet insistent hands prodding at his angular shoulders. Disoriented, he rose on his elbows and groggily surveyed his surroundings. He was not in the House of Mirth, or any less respectable place of disrepute in which he\'d wasted away the tedious hours of his holidays, as he\'d thought.

No, he was in his own dungeons; their familiar musty yet aseptic scent and permanently dry, chilly atmosphere despite the warm weather outside were comforting to him. But there was something nagging at his mind, pricking at red rediscovered awareness as if to taunt him with his own forgetfulness. He rubbed his eyes wearily with his fists, then sat fully up to discover the identity of the one who had rather rudely awakened him.

Albus Dumbledore\'s bright blue eyes shined down on him in the most infuriatingly bemused manner, like an adoring father would upon his willful child. But Severus was *not* a child (he never really had been), and took offense at being treated like one, whether that was the old man\'s intention or not.

Snape scowled up at Dumbledore as if he were an unwanted intruder (which, in truth, he was at the moment), and crossed his arms over his naked chest. Once skin met skin, Severus\' eyes widened before darting down to check whether or not his lower half was also on display. He just stopped himself from exhaling audibly in relief when he saw that the thin bed sheets were securely swathed around his hips, obscuring from view anything that lay beneath them.

Though he was embarrassed at being seen by a fellow faculty member—his employer, at that—in such a state of deshabille, he stubbornly refused to reveal such to Albus, merely clasping his arms tighter across his chest and hunching over just slightly as he continued to glower up at the Headmaster, who had the audacity to chuckle warmly at him. Severus\' eyes narrowed further.

\"Severus, what are you still doing in bed?\" Dumbledore inquired buoyantly.

\"Well, Albus, I *was* sleeping, as I would hope you\'d realized,\" Severus growled, then tilted his sharp chin up at Dumbledore. \"Now, is there something I can do for you? If not, I will ask you to kindly leave me to my privacy, or what\'s left of it after this...rather awkward impromptu visitation.\" To Snape\'s further chagrin, Dumbledore chortled good-naturedly once again.

\"I hope you\'ll forgive me, but I simply cannot do that,\" he started, voice suffused with ill-disguised drollery. Severus was now so aggravated that he could only bring himself to raise a tense eyebrow high in question, not trusting himself to speak with even remote politeness. It would seem that he would have to, however, as Dumbledore made no move to explained himself.

\"Why in Hades not?\" Snape growled from between gritted teeth.

\"Well, you see, today is the first of September,\" Dumbledore stated matter-of-factly.

\"...Yes?\" Severus prompted impatiently, evidently oblivious of the date\'s significance.

\"...The first day of school?\" Albus reminded him, almost disbelieving that he could actually forget such an important day. He knew how Severus liked to arrive at the Sorting early so as to impress unequivocally upon each First Year who entered the building that he was a man not to be crossed by any means. He always succeeded in that endeavor, Dumbledore had to concede.

Severus\' jaw dropped open in abject horror upon hearing Albus\' words. In truth, he hadn\'t forgotten what the date signified; he\'d merely misplaced it in his memory, as he\'d failed to keep track of time all summer.

Glancing at an old clock perched high on his wall, he found that he onlyonly ten minutes to prepare himself for the Sorting. With a strangled gasp, he immediately made to leap from his bed and get his clothing on, but then halted abruptly with one foot on the cold, stone floor and the other tangled in his bedding as he remembered that he had a ‘guest\'.

Severus grabbed his sheet from the bed and wrapped it roughly around himself, nearly falling to the floor in the process because his left foot was still twisted up in the blanket. With as much dignity as he could muster, Severus extricated his leg from the sheet, drew up and swivelled to face Albus with an aloof expression schooled onto his distinct features. All that belied his air of forced calm were the white-knuckled hands that clutched the sheet tightly about his willowy frame.

\"Albus, if you don\'t mind, I\'d like to dress alone,\" he challenged airily, then arched one eyebrow. \"Unless you\'re in the mood for a little show, in which case I\'d have to charge you for services rendered.\"

Albus looked startled for a moment but nodded to him obligingly, that small smile never leaving his face as he turned and moved to exit the dungeons. It was all Severus could do to keep still while the man made his slow departure. However, before he closed the door behind him, Dumbledore hesitated.

\"Oh, and Severus?\" he asked softly, not waiting for Snape\'s reply to continue. \"I wouldn\'t have figured you to possess bed sheets of such a vivid shade.\"

Severus knew where this was going, and shut his eyes in resigned readiness, massaging his right temple with the spidery fingers of one hand.

\"It makes me wonder why you don\'t wear such colors during the day. I must say, violet becomes you,\" Dumbledore finished anticlimactically before swiftly securing the door behind him and scurrying off. Severus was fairly seething, this particular brand of mocking flattery having caught him off guard.

\"Must you always have the last word?!\" He shouted at the door from which Albus had left, but knew that the old man was long gone by now. Most likely giggling to himself all the way to the Great Hall.

\"Bloody hell, that blasted ceremony comes upon me more quickly every year,\" Severus muttered to himself in irritation.
He unwrapped the purple sheet from his body and tossed it over the bed before valiantly attempting to complete his morning ritual of grooming and dressing in record time.

~*~

As soon as all the students had arrived in the Entrance Hall they were met by the Head of Gryffindor House, Professor Minerva Mcgonagall, who quickly quieted and ushered them into the Great Hall, after which she hurried off to arrange the new First Years before the Head Table to await their Sorting. Hermione had taken her seat in the place where she usually sat across from Harry and Ron at the center of Gryffindor Table.

Others in their year resumed their places at the Table as well, cheerfully exchanging boisterous greetings to one another and trading personal accounts of the holidays. Hermione, save for a friendly yet brief ‘hullo\' to and from those around her, was for the most part ignored by her peers. Which suited her just fine, as she was rather preoccupied herself.

Though she had, after much difficult deliberation, resolved to altogether snub her Potions Professor unless they were in an academic setting, Hermione found herself scanning the Head Table for him with her eyes immediately after being seated.

Her stomach tensed into a worrisome knot which caused a wave of hot anxiety to wash over her senses when she couldn\'t find him. He was not in his regular place at the far end of the Table, nor was he occupying any other seat. Despite herself, she craned her neck around the Great Hall, searching desperately for some sign of him. But to her dismay, she found no familiar shock of tousled ebony hair, no telltale sweeping of long black robes. Her brow furrowed in consternation.

‘Why isn\'t he here? He always comes on time. Where *is* he?!\' Her mind raced in illogical apprehension.
What if he had decided not to come back for some reason? What if something awful had happened to him? What if she never saw him again? How was she going to function without his presence in her life? She had focused on him for so long that even the disquiet his person brought to her thoughts had become welcome to her.

But before Hermione could noticeably go into a panic, her terror was swept from her mind like storm clouds rolling from a sunny sky. A tremor of relief quivered from her head to her toes, cooling and relaxing her tense body. She slumped back into her seat, feeling suddenly tired but blissfully untroubled.

‘There he is,\' she sighed mentally, unmindful of the subtle smile that graced her lips as she watched him.

The teacher\'s door at the head of the Hall had been unceremoniously thrown open, banging dully against the wall as Professor Snape swept through it purposefully and without apology. His stride was brisk and his glare menacing, but he kept his eyes focused straight ahead as he made his way to his seat, as if all of those in the Hall were beneath his notice. Only those who knew him well understood that the reason he looked especially forbidding this morning was because he was ashamed at his lateness and so was trying to distract the others from with overall nastiness. His journey to his seat was smooth and graceful despite his obviously hurried demeanor.

For some reason unknown to those looking on, he bestowed an unusually spiteful sneer on Headmaster Dumbledore as he passed him by.

‘Damn Albus....If it weren\'t for him and his meddling, I would never have been...\' Severus\' sulking thought process trailed off as he remembered that if it *weren\'t* for Dumbledore\'s visit this morning, he would probably still be asleep. No matter how much he may dislike his occupation, he was not one to shirk responsibilities once they\'d been placed upon him. And punctuality was among the very least of the things he owed to the old man, for reasons he\'d rather not reminisce about.

‘Just....Dambus,bus,\' he continued to brood mulishly, despite his earlier deduced logic. He was not a man without his...considerable pride.

The eyes of many of Hogwarts\' students and those of all of the about-to-be First Years were trained on Snape unblinkingly, so fascinated were they by his mysterious magnetism and fearsome power. Poor Neville Longbottom, who was seated next to Hermione, had begun to hyperventilate audibly, but Hermione didn\'t turn from Snape as she placed a comforting hand on his shoulder.

‘Well, well, well,\' Severus mused. ‘This batch of whelps seem even more terrified than last year\'s lot. Perhaps I should always make my first appearances last; seems to have a more dramatic affect on the little prats.\'

Finally deigning to survey his audience with a grim sneer, which caused a muted gasp to issue forth from various people throug the the Hall, Snape settled his loathsome gaze on the new First Years, appearing to quickly measure them up and then to promptly dismiss them from his favor. Before abandoning his public to scowl into space as per usual, he decided to offer them a malevolent grin, his lips curling upwards at the corners to reveal viciously pointed incisors.

This time, Hermione had to turn to Neville and ask him if he was quite alright, for he had gone rigid and all the color had drained out of his face, leaving the normally ruddy-complected boy quite peaked indeed. But while she was assuring herself of his general health, she had to sneak a last glance up at Snape before going through with her plan to ignore him.

She was ruffled, to say the least, when she caught his eye and found that he was fixated solely on her. He did not waver upon meeting her gaze, instead deepening his own seriously as her eyes flicked wildly from his face to the Hall around them in her foundering determination to drag them away from him.

She should have known by now that such was impossible if *he* wished the opposite.

‘I\'m very sorry, Hermione.\' He tried to instill the words into her mind (a complex wizardly practice in which he was quite gifted), but it was inexperienced and not receptive to the intrusion. All she sensed from him was a spark of regret, of forthright apology emanating from him. She didn\'t know why, but it made her feel slighted by him. Underestimated.

With a sudden glint of anger that she had thought long dissipated, Hermione\'s eyes locked onto his as her consciousness surged with unyielding animosity. Snape\'s eyelashes fairly fluttered from the unexpected intensity of it, but his eyes stayed focused on hers all the same. Then, as if a curtain had been dropped before him, his stern features melted subtly into remorse, his eyes soft and seemingly supplicating. Hermione\'s fury faltered under it, her eyebrows rising in stupefaction.

‘What does he want of me now? I don\'t understand...\'

‘Forgive me...\'

And then Snape\'s eyes lowered from hers like a shade closing, and he slowly turned away to regard some point far to the end of the Hall. His face, its labyrinthine secrets once again locked from all, assumed a bored expression. After several moments of watching him (as she was sure Snape knew that she was), she too averted her gaze and bowed her head over the empty space of the table in front of her.

‘This is going to be a long year...\' she thought to herself. But when she heard how pitiful her inner monologue was sounding, her notorious courage and resolve returned, and Hermione raised her head and straightened her posture, looking every bit the intelligent, mature young lady that she knew she was. Her eyes had grown distant and steely, her lips firmly set.

‘But I\'ll be damned if I let HIM take it over!\'

\"...Uh, Hermione?\"

It had just come to Hermione\'s attention that several of her fellow Gryffindor acquaintances desired to capture it. She faced them with a blank expression.

\"Yes, er... sorry to interrupt,\" Seamus continued, his face appearing concerned. \"But the Sorting is over.\"

\"...\"

Hermione was at a loss for words. How many times had she reprimanded her peers for their daydreaming during school hours, and here she was doing the same thing herself? Inexcusable. She felt very... stupid.

She forced out an uncertain laugh, regaining the use of her tongue. \"What do you know. Well, we\'d better get to the Common Room before the First Years do.\"

Utterly humiliated, she quickly stood up and made to exit the Hall without looking back at the other Gryffindors, whose faces she knew held expressions of pity and confusion. Hefting her book bag onto her shoulders, Hermione walked somberly out of the Great Hall, her gait slow and her head down. She was one of the last to exit the massive chamber, awaiting patiently for the other students to hurry out of the doors be lea leaving herself.

Unbeknownst to her, a pair of slitted black eyes regarded her small form from the back of the Hall.
Professor Snape was standing frozen behind his seat like a pensive statue. This surprised the other professors, for he had always been the first of them to rush out of the Hall after a feast or ceremony, but they did not question his choice to remain behind for fear of his legendary reprisal.

The formidable Potions Master of Hogwarts even had his fellow staff members cowed.

‘Should I go after her? The little thing looks so forlorn...\' he debated with himself. When Hermione finally disappeared through the doors of the Hall, he rolled his eyes, heaved an annoyed sigh and quickly stalked after her.

‘I made the mess, so now I must clean it up...\'

~*~

Hermione was halfway down a long corridor adjacent to the Great Hall, her solitary figure engulfed by its immensity, when Snape got her in his sights. She hadn\'t heard him following her, and though his step was habitually silent, his voluminous robes were not as they billowed behind his hastening frame. When he came within ten or so feet of he he decided to verbally make his presence known to the young girl who was so irritatingly ignorant of it.

\"Miss Granger,\" he called to her in a low, sibilant voice.

Upon hearing it, she stopped dead in her tracks, her backpack striking her tense body from the force of her abrupt halt. Snape pursed his lips to keep himself from grinning. Though he was strangely unsure as to how to deal with this child—this child whom he\'d so egregiously wronged at their last meeting—he continually found their exchanges amusing.

‘Oh, Merlin, what shall I do?\' Hermione silently implored the ancient wizard, as if the deceased could help her when she herself was at a loss. The moment that she had both dreaded and desired in equal parts had come at last, but she was afraid to face her Professor and remained standing with her back to him irresolutely.

Back at the Hall, when they had struggled to communicate with their eyes, she thought she\'d finally conquered him, the control he unknowingly had over her emotions. She had been sad at the perceived loss, but confident that he\'d lost his hold on her.

But the shared gaze was nothing compared with his voice, which now flooded her senses with its silky depth and crept into her subconscious with its enigmatic undertones. She bit her lip, frustrated at the words that wouldn\'t come to her.

Severus, for his part, had wholly misinterpreted her actions. He had deduced that the passage of time since their altercation had in no way diminished her rancor towards him, and that she was standing still with her back to him only because she didn\'t trust herself to speak or even to look at him without the aid of hexes.

He sighed resignedly and crossed his arms loosely over his stomach, as he always did when preparing to say something uncomfortably meaningful. Slowly, he stepped closer to the girl, veering towards the wall behind and to the left of her (he wouldn\'t tempt fate by addressing her head-on) and leaned his back and shoulders leisurely against it. His relaxed posture belied his inner agitation.

Hermione sensed his proximity and stiffened further, shivering at the discomfort it caused her already rigid body. Snape again took this action for revulsion.

He was not personally hurt by what he perceived to be her feelings towards him, merely saddened that he had caused them. He had learned long ago to live by his wits and to bend others to his will through the manipulation of emotions, and he was now so accustomed to feigning them that he wouldn\'t recognize the real thing, were it to hit him. He sighed again.

‘I must be getting soft in my old age...\'

‘I wish he would just say something. I can\'t stand this utter silence, and I can\'t make myself speak!\' Hermione\'s mind buzzed hysterically.

\"Miss Granger,\" he finally said again. Her ears visibly pricked up, her heart skipping a beat. \"I\'m not going to mince words with you. I know what you\'re so... distraught over.\"

Hermione\'s eyes grew as large as saucers. She was very thankful that he couldn\'t see them.

‘He KNOWS?!\'

\"In fact, I must admit that the same has crossed my mind on...\" he gestured searchingly with a hand. \"Several occasions during the holidays. ...And that I have been likewise... distressed.\" He cleared his throat. Hermione nearly stopped breathing.

\"So I feel that it is my duty—my responsibility, to tell you that... Miss Granger, look at me when I\'m talking to you. Please,\" he amended. \"I can\'t say this to your back.\"

Hermione was afraid of what she knew was coming, no matter how much she had secretly hoped for it. But she forced herself with stilted movements to turn and face him.

When she did so, Snape was rather startled by her open, hopeful expression, but didn\'t allow such to appear on his face. The child had changed since last year. Only slightly, but noticeably so. She was still diminutive in stature, but appeared to have grown roughly an inch or so over the holidays. There was also something intangible, something burgeoning from within the girl. A tentative maturity, perhaps. Whatever it was, it seemed to be working from inside her mind to make her physical appearance more distinctive than it had been in her First Year. Memorable, in a peculiarly pleasing way.

True, her hair was still unwieldy and too frizzy, her skin too pallid, her limbs too skinny, but... there was something about her face. It had become more fully-formed, more defined. It now seemed too big for her body. Too old. But there was something else.

Something behind her eyes. A new spark, a developing fervor. Severus knew not what it could be, and he did not care to speculate, but this new phenomenon took him aback after having not seen the girl for so long. He rather... admired her, in some strange way.

‘I wonder if I\'d feel this way if I had a daughter...\'

The wholly unfamiliarernaernal feelings were upsetting, and he quickly pushed them back to the far corner of his mind from whence they came. For some reason, he was finding it difficult to hold the girl\'s gaze, but since he had asked her to look at him, he couldn\'t in all integrity deny her the same courtesy.

‘He\'s going to say it... I just know it,\' a voice in Hermione\'s head whispered as if it were in the throes of a fever. ‘His eyes already told me. Now he\'s going to *say* it...\'

\"Miss Granger,\" Snape began to speak again. He drew up higher against the wall before continuing. \"I need to tell you that...\"

‘Yes? YES?\'

\"That I\'m... very sorry for blowing up at you the way I did at our last meeting.\"

‘...WHAT?!\'

\"I...er...\" Snape was not one to stutter, but the look she was giving him was making him uncomfortable. \"It was inexcusable...yes...Miss Granger, are you quite all right?\"

The concerned look he was bestowing upon her only served to inflame her recovered ire. Yes, it was in quite good health now. Though, if she\'d examined its cause more closely, she would likely have found that it stemmed more from her anger at thinking he could reciprocate her feelings than the apology he\'d given her. Which, as she registered it, was quite kind...for a contemptuous bat in the belfry like him.

Hermione\'s posture both relaxed and straightened at the same time, and she placed her hands lightly on her hips in a casual version of a defensive stance. Her eyes had gone cold, and a reptilian smile had spread her lips. That it was so out of place on her innocent face only served to make it appear more disturbing.

\"I\'m perfectly fine, Professor Snape,\" Hermione said confidently. \"But thank you for your... concern.\" The last word eked from her mouth falsely. Snape\'s lips curved upwards just slightly, but the worried frown remained plastered to his brow. Apparently, the child\'s voice had lowered in pitch just the tiniest bit. The smile slid from Snape\'s mouth.

‘What is amiss with this child? I\'ve never seen such rapidly fluctuating pathos!\'

\"I hope your holidays went well. Excuse me, but if that is all, I am going to be late getting back to Gryffindor Tower,\" she said with a touch of arrogann hen her voice. Theiliailiar disdainful sneer that came over Snape\'s face was an almost welcome sight.

\"Oh, yes,\" he intoned dangerously. He raised himself from his repose against the wall and advanced upon her until she was nearly backed up against the opposite one. \"That is all I have to say to you. Except for this: you, Miss Granger, are the most immature, stubborn, ungrateful and impertinent *child* I have ever had the DISpleasure of instructing!\" With each word the volume of his voescaescalated, exploding in a snarl at the last syllable and echoing up and down the empty hallway.

Her cheek had all but disintegrated with his spite, and she stared up at him with fear in her large eyes. He smiled down upon her in satisfaction, then immediately pivoted on his heel and strode off in the direction from which he\'d come.

Hermione\'s feet were glued to the floor, mouth still agape in shock and spine arching backwards as if Snape were still hovering mere inches from her.

Snape was still smiling grimly to himself as he strolled almost jauntily through the corridor. After having put the disrespectful child in her place, he felt that he\'d resolved his every issue with her person and could now completely dismiss her from his consciousness. All the loose ends were tied up. And when he got back to the dungeons, he could start on that potion he\'d been meaning to—

‘Oh, BLOODY HELL!\'

He immediately turned round to speedily relocate the troublesome Miss Granger. All the loose ends were NOT tied up. Having stewed in his own guilt during various periods throughout the summer over the way he\'d treated the girl, he\'d completely forgotten that she was his Potions Assistant. Or had been. He\'de toe to see if she still wanted the responsibility *now*.

A hand rose unconsciously to massage his right temple as he found the girl standing right where he\'d left her, and in the same manner as well: petrified with fright. The guilt began to rise in his gullet again, but he squelched it down and focused on the more pressing matters at hand.

Hermione fairly leapt out of her skin when she heard her name called out again in that unmistakable timbre. He was back. What did he want with her *now*? She felt as if her body was trying to retreat into itself under his penetrating stare.

\"Y-yes, Professor?\" her vocal chords managed to squeak out.

\"Do you recall that you assisted me in some potions work last year?\"

This was unexpected.

\"Yes...\" she affirmed somewhat suspiciously.

\"Good.\" He crossed his arms again and shifted a bit. He felt rather silly at present. He turned his head so he was looking off to the side.

\"You still want the job?\" Snape asked her baldly and in a gruff, self-conscious tone she\'d never heard him use. Hermione lowered her face, looking up at him incredulously from beneath raised brows. Was . fi. fidgeting?
After a tense moment had passed, Snape snapped his head back in her direction, an expectant eyebrow raised over threatening eyes. Hermione straightened at once, trying to make her features appear placid despite her own uncomfortable squirming.

He still wanted her? After that disgraceful display? Well, she wasn\'t going to ask questions *now*.
\"W-well, y-yes, sir,\" she stammered shyly. \"You know, I actually h-hadn\'t thought of it all s-summer, and I\'m very h-happy you still want me t-to...\"

\"Good,\" he said again shortly. He just had to stop her before she made this awkward situation even more so for him; such seemed to be talent of hers. Another strained silence prevailed between them.
Until Snape did something that completely caught Hermione off guard.

Though he was still frowning at her, his lips began to quiver. At first she thought he was going to shout at her again, but instead his mouth spread into a small smile. His eyes gleamed with a sort of ironic amusement, as if to ask her, ‘aren\'t human exchanges ridiculous?\'

As she had long been of the same opinion, she couldn\'t help but to return his smile with a broad grin of her own. He widened his own smile a bit at her agreement, and then opened his mouth as if he were about to say something to her. Judging by his almost tender expression, she assumed that whatever it was would be kind and profound.

Unfortunately, she was never to know, for at that very moment they were interrupted by the abrupt and noisy pushing open and subsequent slamming of the oaken doors that lead into the Entrance Hall, followed by the sounds of labored breathing and a harried dialogue of boyish whispers floating towards them. If the respective tones of those whispers hadn\'t belonged unmistakably to Harry Potter and Ronald Weasley, Professor Snape may have chosen to disregard them.

\"Hey—Harry—come and look—it\'s the Sorting!\"

\"Hang on...there\'s an empty chair at the Staff Table...Where\'s Snape?\"

‘Professor Snape, Harry!\' Hermione insisted mentally. ‘As if it anything could possibly save him now...\'

A sinister look came over Snape\'s previously benign features as he registered this unusual infraction, but his lips quirked upwards into a darkly delighted smile. Hermione knew that nothing she could say now would keep him from hurrying off to punish her best friends. And she was quite correct in her reasoning.

Focusing on Hermione for a last split second, Snape nodded tersely before abandoning her in the hallway to apprehend his two favorite rule-breakers. As he swept past her still form, his rough, flowing robes grazed her cheek and arm. She pressed her eyelids closed so as to better savor the abrasive yet coveted contact.

But her ears were uncovered and therefore open to distraction, so within them she caught snatches of the conversation which resulted between Snape and her friends when the former had overtaken the latter.

\"Maybe he\'s ill!\"

\"Maybe he\'s left!\"

\"Or he might\'ve been *sacked*! I mean, everyone hates him—\"

Though she could sympathize with the current plight of her two good friends, she winced at that last statement. Though it was fairly impossible to tell whether or not Snape was hurt by overhearing such cruel things about his person, she still felt bad that such things were said at all.

\"Or maybe...\" the Professor started coldly, and Hermione heard two high gasps emanate from down the corridor, \"he\'s waiting to hear why you two didn\'t arrive on the school train.\"

Hermione had to allow herself a chu at at the way Snape could expertly pounce on his prey when the opportunity presented itself so well. Besides, she was too put out with her friends for their lateness to pity them just yet.

\"Follow me,\" Snape said, his tone brooking no argument. Her Hermione could detect the anticipation that hid behind his crisp command.

‘Well, they\'re done for,\' Hermione decided wryly.
There was simply nothing for it now; she may as well join the other Gryffindors in welcoming the newly initiated First Years at Gryffindor Tower (translation: she planned to sit in a far corner of the Common Room and do her best to ignore the noisy prattle while she got some studying in). Readjusting her books on her back, she continued on her way to the Tower.

Almost immediately after resuming her trek, the bizarre exchange of just minutes ago with Professor Snape flashed through her mind at a dizzying speed, slowing only when she recalled the kinder things tha had had said to her. Hermione let out an astounded breath as she heard Snape repeat in her mind that she was still his potions assistant. Now their continued interaction and proximity was all but guaranteed. She smiled unselfconsciously, the first true beam that had brightened her face since before summer had begun.

... No, that wasn\'t quite correct. It was the second.