Beneath the Surface

A/N: The mention of drug-usage far below is meant to be humorous, while at the same time not meant to offend anyone. I have experienced (not firsthand) the effects of drug addiction on a person, and while they are not funny at all in reality, I find that they can be in theory. Yeah:P. So read on, enjoy, and PLEASE LEAVE A REVIEW!!!!!




Beneath the Surface

Chapter the Thirteenthe: Skewed Views

Good things about Professor Snape:

1) He is very intelligent.

2) He is an interesting and mysterious person.

3) He speaks honestly and doesn\'t try to hide what he is thinking.

4) He lets me talk with him personally.

5) He is tall and thin, which is my ‘type\'.

6) He is pale and has dark hair, which is also my ‘type\'.

7) His eyes are black like I\'ve never before seen, and he has very long black eyelashes.

8) His hands are beautiful.

9) His voice is beautiful.

10) HE is beautiful.

Hermione Granger sighed and let the quill fall from her fingers onto the desk she was currently leaning over. Reading over what she had written, she rolled her eyes and pursed her lips. She stared down at the trite words, which she was ashamed to know came from her own mind, for several more moments in annoyance. Still, she lifted her quill from the harsh wood and tilted her head in preparation to continue her writing. Writing her thoughts down on parchment always helped her mind to digest them more fully.

Bad things about Professor Snape:

1) He is harsh towards everyone, even the other Professors.

2) He is quick to pass judgment on others, and it is hard to change his mind once he\'s made it up about someone.

3) He favors the Slytherins academically, even though he is mean to them too.

4) He is VERY moody and unpredictable.

5) He...


Her eyebrows knitted together when she couldn\'t think of another flaw of Snape\'s character to record on her parchment, though she knew there were many. But, facts were facts, and the fact here was that there were more good points to Snape than were bad. Therefore, she would continue to see him and to try for a deeper relationship with him.

If he would let her, of course.

Therein lay her dilemma. How in Hades (as Snape himself was fond of exclaiming) was she going to convince him that she was a woman worthy of his romantic attentions?

‘When you become one, you nitwit,\' the sensible, if biting, part of her mind hissed at her. ‘Aha!\' The problem-solver took over. ‘That\'s the sion!ion! All I have to do is find a way to look and behave more like a woman, and then Professor Snape will see how much I care for him. ...But how does one act like a woman?\'

She hadn\'t spent enough time with her mother to know, and even when they were together, Mrs. Granger kept up an impenetrable mask of distant, if affectionate, good humor. She always spoke to her daughter as if she were someone else\'s small child; her voice was warm and her words were kind, but she never talked with her about complex issues or had deep conversations with her about life and how to prepare and deal with it. It was like she was responsible for Hermione\'s care and maintenance, but not obligated to be there for her when it came to matters of the heart.

Not that Hermione was aware that her mother was *supposed* to be close with her, to comfort her when she was feeling sad or upset; to laugh with her when she was happy or just about nothing at all; to encourage her in her work and the things that she cared about; or to even tell her that she loved her every day. How could someone be upset about something they were completely ignorant of?

It should be noted that all of her mother\'s deficiencies concerning her relationship with her daughter went for her father as well, more so even. Mr. Granger was just as untouchable and easygoing as his wife. Unlike her, however, he had never taken his daughter out for a casual outing whose purpose was to simply spend some time with her alone, to talk with her about her life and work. He had never held his daughter, never hugged or kissed her. It was always just that benign smile, the trivial words, and those empty eyes behind his glasses that never looked her in the eye.

If Hermione hadn\'t known better, she would have thought her own father was afraid of her. But that was silly; how could a man be afraid of his daughter, and what for? Preposterous.

If Hermione had been able to discuss her relationship with her parents as well as her feelings for Professor Snape with a psychiatric professional, they would most likely tell her that she was searching, however unconsciously, so desperately for the attention and love that she hadn\'t been getting from her parents that she was drawn to and came to crave the love of one of her own Professors—a figure of authority and approximately the same age as her mother and father.

The fact that this particular person displayed characteristics of antagonism and cruelty may seem to disprove the above theory, but the professional would say that they only went along with Hermione\'s stubborn and tendency to be hard on herself if she failed. To succeed in ‘getting\' this man would not only make her feel like she\'d passed the ultimate test in getting someone who loathed you to love you, but being with an authority figure who was so much older than her would also make her feel like she was finally getting the love and care that she had been missing all her life that she should have been getting unconditionally from her parents.

This was all a neat and concise explanation of things, but if Hermione were to hear them she would emphatically deny that her only reason for wanting to be with Snape was to make him a substitute ‘parent\'. The mysteries of the human psyche are so deep and complex that no one person, especially one who is not experiencing such emotions firsthand, could ever disentangle them so easily and with such a clinical explanation.

Hermione was beginning to fall in love with Severus Snape, and there was no easy way to rationalize or to isolate her reasons for it.

There was never any reason for love; it just happened. And there was nothing one could do about it once it did. Either make it happen or wait it out. And Hermione was the kind of person who was inclined to do the former.

\"Miss Granger!\" the harsh voice of Professor Snape cut across the classroom, aimed for her and finding its target in her wide, startled brown eyes. \"I hope for your sake that whatever you are so busily jotting down are notes on this lesson. Now, do be so kind as to. Pay. Attention.\"

Perhaps it was because of their increasing nightly meetings that he had decided not to make a fool of her by forcing her to read her parchment to the entire class. Of course, knowing how temperamental he was, he may just have been in a good mood that day and so was being charitable to her. Who could know?

She just hoped he would continue to be in higher spirits when she visited him tonight (they hadn\'t had a proper chat for nearly a fortnight, and Hermione had taken to seeing him at least once a week when her schedule permitted it).

Though she had no idea how she was going to pull it off, this was going to be the first night she would implement her plan to impress upon Snape that she was as mature as any adult woman, and that he should start to see her that way.

~*~

\"What can I do for you this evening, Miss Granger?\" Snape asked dryly from where he stood at his desk, his back to her while he shuffled through the myriad of papers that were always there. It had been rather a while since he\'d last seen the girl, and he hated to admit that he had been missing her buoyant chatter.

They had met half a dozen times, more or less, thus far, and during those one to two hour discussions they had started to get to know one another better. Though he had made the mistake of letting on how much he despised his father during their first meeting, he had allowed nothing more of himself be known to the child other than that he was largely Russian/Czechoslovakian by background (after which, despite his pointed glares and scornful sneers, the prat had taken to jokingly referring to him either as a ‘Czechie\' or by the name Rasputin, whom she insisted he looked like. He knew of the man, and failed to see the resemblance), and that his father had owned and managed a bookstore for a living.

Hermione had, of course, let on much about herself. He had so far gleaned nearly everything about her life from the talkative girl, but what stood out to him the most was that she had been born to emotionally negligent parents; had been ostracized during the years of her Muggle schooling because of her tendency to obsess over books and learning and lack of social skills; and that she desperately needed to prove her intelligence to the world, perhaps because it had not been recognized satisfactorily by others in her life.

She had not said any of these things aloud, rather, he had managed to pick them out from between her words and behind her anecdotes. Many circumstances in his life had contributed to his ability to listen so well and for just the right information.

He had come to realize that his job during these discussions of theirs was to sit back and listen while the child let off steam. Why he allowed himself—and more so, did not seem to mind it—to be reduced to such a pawn-like figure, he could not and was unwilling to say.

At the moment, he could feel the girl shifting her position from foot to foot behind him as surely as if he could see the awkward spectacle; again, his senses were keenly fine-tuned. He could tell by the tension of the air around them that she was attempting to try something new this evening. He was almost afraid of what it could possibly be—the unpredictability of this child was maddening!—but when he turned to face her, it was with his accustomed imperturbable expression.

The child did look quite distressed indeed. Of course, she was trying to appear quite the opposite, but he could see through her unsteady facade easily. She had pulled half of her unruly hair back into a clasp so thtiretirety of her face was revealed, and he became aware that he had never seen it before without tendrils of hair veiling the majority of it from his view.

It was a painfully honest face—ill-equipped to disguise her emotions from being plastered onto its features (which, right now, were acutely nervous). Her soft brown eyes now appeared to take up half of her face, fairly dwarfing her small nose and mouth. Reminded him of a doe. Or a fawn, rather, considering her age. He always considered her age.

Snape sat on the edge of his desk and studied her in a relaxed manner, his head tilted to the side, arms crossed loosely over his stomach. He raised a perplexed eyebrow when the timid smile she offered him quivered before sliding into a more confident one (one that she was certain concealed her imperfect teeth). She looked up at him through half-lidded eyes that were attempting to appear confident.

\"Good evening, child,\" he said, beginning this evening\'s conversation for her. His formal greeting appeared to relax her considerably, and she giggled softly at it, making sure to keep the tone of her voice low and smooth.

\"‘Evening, Czechie,\" she teased. He grimaced openly at the moniker.

\"Miss Granger, must you?\" he asked irritably, a hint of lightness in his tone. \"It\'s highly improper.\"

\"But of se, se, Professor,\" she assured him playfully. A comfortable moment passed them by before she forced herself to come closer to him; she wanted to begin this as soon as possible, lest her nerves get the better of her and she fail completely. She couldn\'t bear even the thought of that.

As he had done before when she\'d tried to get within arms reach of him, Snape discreetly shifted his body farther back against his desk, wondering why the girl insisted on insinuating herself into his personal space.

\"Professor?\" she asked him in the lower tones she wasn\'t yet used to.

\"Yes...\" he answered suspiciously. What was wrong with her voice? Was she ill? Did she have to look into his eyes so openly like that? It was making him uncomfortable. He tilted his head back away from her, but made sure to keep her gaze.

\"What was it like when you went to school here?\"

Snape blinked in surprise. This was rather personal information, and he wasn\'t sure that he would altogether like to share it with her. He cleared his throat, averting his gaze from hers. \"It was much like it is now, same classes, schedules, and so forth,\" he evaded. Hermione pursed her lips and looked up at him skeptically.

\"You know what I mean, Professor,\" she said. He sighed.

\"Yes, I know what you mean.\" He slid smoothly off his desk and stood with his arms folded, looking down on her. \"But I don\'t believe I\'d like to discuss that with you.\" Hermione gaped at his imperious tone, and he raised a challenging brow at her.

\"And just why not?\" she demanded, mimicking his stance. \"Do you think me undeserving of such information?\"

\"Don\'t be doltish, girl,\" he sneered at her. He could sense her hackles rising at the insult, and secretly took pleasure in the way that such a meaningless barb could get under her skin. \"They are simply memories that I am not fond of reminiscing upon. With anyone.\"

Snape dearly wished that he could retract his words, as they were having a curious response on Hermione\'s face: it had fallen as if in apology, all traces of frustration dissipated, and she was favoring him with gentle, sympathetic eyes. His brows furrowed in confusion. \"What is the matter with you, Granger?\"

\"What? ...No, it\'s nothing.\" She stared at her mary janes, as she tended to do when she was at a loss for words (which was not very often, Snape noted sardonically). \"Just...I\'m sorry it was so bad for you. But you know, my schooling was the same way. It was just dreadful in the Muggle world. Why, even now—\"

\"Miss Granger,\" Snape cut into her rambling, fingers massaging the bridge of his nose. \"Though I sympathize with your plight, I\'m sure I don\'t want to discuss mine. Understood?\" He shot her a warning look, which she bristled at.

She was only trying to help him ease his burden! Suddenly, a devious idea occurred to her, and a sly smile spread her lips. Perhaps she had benefitted in more ways than one from being so often in his presence.

\"Very well, Professor,\" she acceded good-naturedly. Snape fairly gawked at her, so unexpected was her surrender to him. \"Then I\'m sure you won\'t mind if I just tell you all about what it was like for me at school. You see, my first year of primary school was very—\"

\"Fine, fine! I\'ll tell you about my days as a student here, but only briefly, and I don\'t want any questions or interruptions from you. Is *that* understood?\" Snape cautioned her fiercely. Hermione nodded mutely, her wide eyes rapt as they stared up at him.

In truth, Snape immediately recognized the little game she was playing with him, but decided to go along with it, if only to speed up this discussion. He knew that she would fight him incessantly until he gave her the answers she wanted, and he was far too tired to argue with her.

Though he had to admiat iat it would feel good to lessen a small part of his heavy load of burdens to one who was in a position to better understand them. It wasn\'t as if the child was prone to telling tales, anyway.

And, truth be told, if there was one thing Severus Snape couldn\'t resist, it was being the center of attention, especially when his audience was paying it to him so worshipfully.

\"Alright then.\" Snape began pacing the room, making sure not to look directly at the child who was following him intently with her eyes. \"I started my schooling at Hogwarts in the year 1971. I\'d spent the summer before voraciously researching the subjects I would be taking in my first year, and, coupled with my already superior intellect, I was far and away ahead of the others in my year both academically and cognitively speaking. Though I devoted considerably less of my time to study as the years went on, I still managed to receive the highest marks in all of Hogwarts\' principal courses up to my final year as a student here.\"

As he got into his narration, Snape had begun to take on a lecturing tone. Speaking, however abstractly, about his past would be far easier for him if he could feel detached from it, as he did when he was teaching a class (though not when dealing with the students as individuals, of course).

\"As for my demeanor when I was a student—for I\'m sure you\'ll want me to describe *that*—\" Here Snape stopped to shoot Hermione a meaningful glare before resuming his pacing. \"I was quiet and rarely spoke up in class unless called upon by a Professor. The other children resented my silence, and perceived it either as my keeping to a mysterious secrecy or as plain and simple arrogance. In any case, I did not make many friends during my stay within these hallowed halls.\"

Snape had appeared to become bitter, and had desisted his pacing to stand beside his desk. He was squinting down at the floor, as if he could verily see his past unfolding before his eyes, and his arms wrapped around his gaunt frame defensively.

\"Any friends I did have hung about me only so they could view me up close and personal; they wanted to unravel the ‘deep secrets\' I carried always with me, and I knew that when they felt they\'d done so they would scatter to the winds, going about their lives without me as everyone always has.\" He smiled to himself, the saddest little smile that Hermione had ever seen. Tears welled in her eyes at the sight of it. She knew just what he was talking about; she knew that perpetual aloneness well.

Suddenly, Snape scoffed, straightening up a bit. \"Or the little idiots wanted to see if they could leach off of my intelligence, as if they thought spending enough time with me would somehow cause my good grades to ‘rub off\' on them. Infuriating.\"

Hermione nodded; she could definitely relate to THAT. Snape must have noticed the motion out of the corner of his eye, for he finally turned and faced her. They just stared at each other for a while, she knowing that he wanted no words of consolation for the pain he had suffered, he appreciating her blessed silence and basking in the understanding he found in her soft, dusky eyes.

\"Thank you, Professor,\" she finally intoned, her voice full in her throat after having been unused for so long. \"I\'m glad you told me that.\"

\"Hmm,\" was all he said in reply. He was beginning to feel ill at ease, and silently willed her to ask him another question (what was his world coming to?). She sensed his wish like a pinprick in the back of her mind, and was happy to grant it.

\"Professor?\"

\"Yes?\" he asked absently, a finger gently pressing the hollow above his chin.

\"Why is Malfoy your favorite student?\" Hermione herself knew not why she had asked him this, the question had simply popped out of her mouth as if it had appeared from nowhere. Snape came back to himself with a start, fully alerted by the strange inquiry. He fixed astounded eyes upon her, which she met uncertainly with her own.

\"Excuse me? Draco Malfoy, my ‘favorite student\'?\" Surprisingly, Snape let out a mirthful scoff, and an amused smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. \"Preposterous!\"

\"What?\" Hermione protested, flustered. \"But, Professor, you can\'t deny that you look the other way in class when he misbehaves, and you\'re always praising his work when you don\'t even notice the other students\'. How do you explain those things?\"

\"Rather easily, Miss Granger. I praise Malfoy\'s work because he deserves it; surprisingly, the boy\'s a gifted student.\"

\"But what about the first thing I said, that you let him get away with things in class?\" Hermione persisted. To her pleasure, Snape\'s confidence faltered and he looked away from her, his expression reticent. However, Hermione demanded an answer, and she stared at him unblinkingly, expectantly awaiting one. He finally cracked under the pressure, rolling his eyes.

\"Alright!\" he blurted out, throwing up his hands. \"I\'ll tell you why I\'m so benevolent to that boy, but you must give me your word that you won\'t ever repeat it to anyone.\"

\"You have it,\" she agreed earnestly. \"I promise you I won\'t.\"

Snape nodded grimly and turned his back to her. How did this sliver of a girl manage to get him into these precarious situations? He shook his head before speaking, throwing the words hastily over his shoulder at her.

\"You see, I have to be deferential to the boy, because...\" Snape pressed his eyelids together resentfully. He knew he was going to regret saying this, but it was too late to stop now. \"Because the brat\'s a cousin of mine.\"

The information had been muttered quietly under his breath, but the heavily tense silence that had descended upon the room told Snape that Hermione had not taken it with a grain of salt. He turned his face to look sidelong at the girl, wanting to gauge her reaction, and upon seeing it turned his body fully around to face her; Hermione\'s jaw had fallen halfway down her neck and her eyes bulged frighteningly from her sockets. She looked as if he\'d told her that Draco was his illegitimate son.
SeveSeveral times removed, of course,\" he amended, crossing his arms uncomfortably.

\"...Good GODS!\" Hermione finally exclaimed. \"I can\'t believe—you and Draco—whose side—which parent—WHAT?!\"

\"Calm down, Miss Granger,\" Snape told her firmly, putting up his hands as if to shield himself from her verbal onslaught. \"I might as well explain. You see, the Snapes and the Malfoys are connected by the marriage of my great-grandmother to Draco Malfoy\'s great-great-grandfather, who produced five children; in short, Draco and myself are closely enough related to see each other at certain family gatherings, but distant enough not to even remotely share the same immediate forefathers. And of course, we are also close enough for him to complain to his esteemed father that his cousin Severus isn\'t treating his son like family.\"

\"Wow,\" Hermione breathed in an awed tone as he finished. \"I believe that is the most bizarre thing I\'ve ever heard in my entire life.\" Snape rolled his eyes and sighed, but did not attempt to hide the smirk that curved his lips.

\"Melodrama doesn\'t become you, Miss Granger,\" he teased her dryly. His smirk widened to dimple his left cheek when Hermione huffed in disbelief; his sarcasm had achieved the desired affect upon her, as it never failed to do.

Seeing him smile (or the closest thing he would come to it) made Hermione do so as well, and she quickly forgot his little jest at her expense. She was honestly beginning to treasure these times that she spent with him, and looked forward to them more than anything else in her life.

Before she could boldly tell him so, however, Snape\'s body jolted as if in pain, his faint smile mutating into a tormented grimace as he gripped his left forearm with a clawlike right hand. Hermione instinctively flew to his side, her features contorted with concern as she looked questioningly into his eyes, but he only shook his head at them and offered her a stiff smile.

\"Forgive me, Miss Granger,\" he apologized, his voice slightly strained. \"I cut myself the other night while dicing up some new ingredients. It was foolish of me, if I do say so myself. I suppose my age is finally catching up with me.\"

Hermione laughed shortly at his joke, as she knew he wanted her to, but it was a hollow laugh that did not reach her eyes. It wasn\'t like Snape, the perfectionist Potions Master, to make such a careless mistake. She\'d no idea what could have caused him such pain, or how he\'d incurred such an injury, but it was obvious that he did not wish her to press him further about it. Whatever was bothering him, he wanted to deal with it alone, and she would grant him his privacy, as it was the least she could do for him after all he\'d given to her.

\"Well, Professor,\" Hermione said seriously. \"I have a lot of work to get done for tomorrow, so I\'ll just be going back to Gryffindor Tower, if that\'s alright with you.\" Snape appeared to visibly relax at her words, and gratitude shined behind the severity in his eyes.

\"Of course, child. I have much yet to do myself,\" he muttered darkly, then looked meaningfully into her eyes. \"I\'ll send word to you the next time I need help with my work.\"

Hermione smiled up at him, eyes sparkling. He returned her smile shortly before nodding politely at her, which she took as her cue to leave. After offering him a shy nod of her own, she gingerly exited the classroom.

Snape heaved a relieved sigh after the door had been closed, which caused another shock of pain to rock his body. Still clutching his left arm to his chest, Snape stared unseeingly at the floor, his eyes growing wide with fearful trepidation as tears began to prick at their corners. He squeezed them tightly shut, causing the salty liquid to spill forth through his lashes.

But when he reopened them, they were as cold and empty as they had ever been, black voids through which all life was indiscriminately absorbed. He clenched both his hands into fists and rushed to sweep through the small door that lay to the far right of the blackboard.

His tears had dried.

~*~

Hermione\'s expression was pensive as she slowly made her way to Gryffindor Tower. What had happened to her Professor just moments ago? She was at a loss.

It was her routine to go painstakingly over everything she could remember from her personal talks with Snape, as she mentally dubbed them. Each word that slipped past his lips, each gesture that illustrated his musings, each look that was directed her way, were all thoroughly analyzed by her during the long walk back to her Common Room.

Try though she did, Hermione could find no answer to the question of Snape\'s sudden ailment. Her brow furrowed in frustration; she so hated to leave a question unanswered. How could such a practiced Potions Master cut himself while working? Unless...

Unless he had lied to her about the cause of his injury.

But would a Professor ever *lie* to a student? The idea was unheard of to Hermione, who had been told all her life by her teachers (in whose company she spent more time than in her parents\', and so was most profoundly influenced by their words than by anyone else\'s) that one of their ilk couldn\'t possibly tell a lie to a student. Their job was to ingrain the seeds of knowledge into a child\'s unformed mind, so therefore everything they uttered *must* be the truth. Ergo, if one abided by their rules and believed everything they told them, the lives they would eventually lead would be good, honest, and above all, *correct*. As opposed to what, Hermione was never told.

Then why would Professor Snape lie to her? If he had, he must have a very good reason for doing so, she concluded. So now she must determine what that reason could possibly be.

She had heard of committing suicide by slitting one\'s wrists, but Snape had felt a pang in his arm, and only one, at that. She didn\'t think that a suicidal person would change their mind after having already completed half of the job; she also thought that Snape would know precisely where to make the fatal incision, had he the mind to do himself in. And, most importantly, her Professor, though ill-tempered and perpetually sour, did not strike her as the type of person who had so lost touch with life that they wished to remove themselves from it by their own hand.

Ok, so a botched suicide attempt was ruled out (‘thank goodness!\'). On to the next possible reason...

Oh! Perhaps, like her own father tended to do, Snape\'s hand had slipped while shaving and he\'d accidentally sliced his arm but was too embarrassed to tell her that, being the proud man that he was. Of course, that hypothesis was just as fallible as the first: for, if given the choice between eliminating one\'s facial hair by the use of a potentially dangerous and fairly time-consuming device or by the quick and painless recitation of a simple charm, a wizard would almost certainly choose the latter.

There was just no getting around it: Hermione Granger was stumped on this one. There was only one other reason she could think of that would explain mysterious shooting pains in a specific area of one\'s arm, but there was no way it could possibly be—

‘...Or could it? Oh, Gods.\' Hermione stopped dead in her tracks, mouth open in horror. Luckily for her, the only witnesses to the strange scene of Gryffindor\'s little know-it-alling ing dumbly at her shoes beneath the portrait which led to the Hufflepuff Common Room were a couple of wayward ghosts floating their way down the hallway.

Hermione was loath to even consider this, but it was too telling a solution to eliminate.

In the final year of her Muggle schooling, she and the other students in her year had been obligated to take a health class for one semester. During this time, their teacher, Mrs. Moorelies, had lectured them briefly on the evils of taking drugs and given them some tips on how to avoid them at all costs. Intrigued, Hermione had done some follow-up research of her own on the subject, and had learned about every method of taking a drug as well as the names of the majority of the drugs themselves. She had also read that one who is inclined to take drugs usually does so to escape disturbing memories and to avoid the mental anguish that they bring.

She had discovered that one of the most addictive and deadly drugs of all was heroine, which was most often taken through the veins by way of a syringe. A telltale sign of a heroine addict was painful-looking tracks running up their arms from having exhausted their veins with the drugged needle.

In conclusion to this train of thought: what if Professor Snape was a heroindictdict?
But Hermione had heard from her peers who had grown up in the wizarding world from birth that their ‘drugs\' were largely taken in potion form, so, why would Snape, being a Master in the art of Potions, stoop to going out to the muggle world to get his, if in fact he took them at all?

Did he take them at all?

Well, she would have to find out; she would not allow her dear friend (for that was what she now considered Snape to be, though she doubted he returned the feeling) to be damaged, or, at worst, killed, in such a wretched and needless manner. She had to help him.

Which would be difficult, seeing as she hadn\'t the slightest idea as to how to even broach the subject with him in the first place.

‘Don\'t worry, Professor, whatever happened in your past to make you do this in the first place, I will cure you of it! I don\'t yet know how, but I will save you from yourself,\' she vowed, determination setting her jaw.

If only Hermione knew how many people before her had made this same oath to rescue their significant others from the clutches of an evil they wholeheartedly embraced, and how many had inevitably failed.

More so, however, it was a pity she didn\'t know its swearing was unnecessary in the first place. Such knowledge would have saved both her and her Potions Professor quite a bit of trouble indeed.