An Easy Job

A/N - No really, this is just four chapters, I have two other major stories to write and while this plot bunny just wouldn\'t die, I don\'t have the time and energy to turn it into a full-length novel. Yet. Kate is snowed in, so everyone think warm thoughts for her! Okay in four chapters this is the only one without smut! LOL

Thanks to: Helen, Tessa, Kate, Droxy, Zephyr, Rilla, Sherrafina, Topaz, tamargirl, Aoibheann, deblovesdragon, yncarn8 (EEEEEEEEE! You are one of my favorite authors! I am so excited! (I\'m such a geek)), Shteffi, Javen Green, Anon, Deeble (kisses, sorry), Dianne, xXphoenixXx, Seraphina, eurydice\'s falling, Halcyon, influenza 1918 (My great aunt died in that epidemic, btw)

Chapter 3 – I Have a Secret

She looked around the dorm room she had seen little of for the last four years. Her work at Madam Nell’s had paid for the magical education that her parents had wanted for her, even though they would have been horrified by how she obtained it. The work had been steady and the money excellent but it had left little time for the collegiate life her roommates had enjoyed. However, after her parents’ murder, there had been no money for college and Hermione had been desperate.

Harry would have paid for it, had he lived; she knew that, but the Dursleys had gotten the Potter fortune, thanks to the fact that they were his last living relatives. The Weasleys had even less money than Hermione had had, and her only remaining option had been to either get a loan from the Goblins or marry Draco Malfoy. She had decided it was better to be an honest whore than a lying wife, and so she had agreed to the Goblins’ proposition with trepidation but also a fierce resolve.

Four years of discrete prostitution -- her identity protected and her safety assured -- had bought her the best education the wizarding world could provide. It had been an easy job; she had even enjoyed it sometimes, and she had been damn good at it. There was only one stain on the entire four years, one solitary night when she had broken every rule of her profession and done the unthinkable: she hallenllen in love.

She picked up the letter again and stared at the familiar crest. Professor Dumbledore had offered her the Potions position at Hogwarts, as Snape had finally achieved his life’s ambition and been made DADA teacher.
She was nervous. Well, to be honest, she was terrified. She brushed the mass of tangled brown hair into a semblance of order with fingers suddenly gone clumsy. Her wide brown eyes showed white around the edges as apprehension leaped about in her stomach, sending waves of panic through her.

Four years of university had provided her with an exceptional education in every subject except the one that had kept her single and longing for the last two: the complexities of adult relationships. But now the final exam in the course she’d never taken was being given. Today she would board a train and go to Scotland. Today she would see him again for the first time in two years. Today she would find out if she had the courage to tell him the truth.

Hermione Granger had never before doubted her sorting into Gryffindor as much as she did today. Where was her renowned Gryffindor courage? She straightened her shoulders in front of the mirror and adjusted her robes one last time. She forced a look of cool confidence onto her face and, turning abruptly, grabbed her purse, slung it over one shoulder and marched from the dorm room she had hardly lived in for four years.

She had done things in the last four years that prim and proper Hermione Granger, Hogwarts student, would never have imagined possible let alone done. She had been cool, calm and collected in the most unusual situations. She had faced down Voldemort and Lucius Malfoy. She had talked down a man with a sausage stuck somewhere unnatural and kept him from hexing his partner.

After that she could do anything. She could even talk to Severus Snape. She could, really.

Or maybe not. She could hardly meet his eyes when Professor Dumbledore introduced her as the new Potions Professor. He had nodded at her sharply and then let his eyes slide off her as though she was of no importance. Her heart had plummeted into her boots and she had turned away to hug Professor McGonagall, who was thrilled to have her back.

As dinner began, she had talked to Minerva, as she was now to call her, but Snape hardly said a word, restricting his dialogue to requests to pass dishes. She noted his preferences in tea and food with a sad hunger, desperate to learn more about what he liked and disliked. There had to be some way to approach him, to talk to him.

All the strength and confidence she had felt before was fading fast. As a prostitute, she had worn a different face and voice; it had been like acting, it hadn’t really been herself that she was risking. Here, her heart was in danger. What if he had forgotten, what if he had felt nothing that night, what if he didn’t care? Looking at him now, buttoned up tight and eyes shuttered, it was hard to reconcile the passionate lover he had been that night with the icy man who sat beside her.

What if she were completely wrong about him? It had been two years since she’d last seen him; she could have romanticized it all out of proportion to what had actually happened. There had to be a way to find out.
“Professor, are there any promising students in Potions I should particularly watch?” She asked him with a somewhat nervous smile. He looked up, startled from his soup, and raised an eyebrow.

“Not a one, they are all dunderheads.” He sneered at her, his eyes angry and hostile and she wondered what she had done to irritate him. There had to be a way to find out if he remembered her. If he didn’t, well, then she would put aside her foolish obsession and get on with her life. Still, she had to be absolutely certain.


Severus looked up at the new Potions Professor angrily. When Albus had told him a young lady would be taking the position, he had had a moment of hope. Then the Gryffindor know-it-all had arrived and he had felt his despair washing over him again. He would never find her, the woman who haunted his dreams. Obviously, she had merely pitied him and been kind; there had been no real feeling there for him. Had she cared for him, surely she would have sought him out by now.

“Not one?” Professor Granger interrupted his misery with her inane chatter again. “Surely there must be some student who can name the correct order of the ingredients for the Deflating Draught?” He froze and looked up at Hermione Granger in shock. Her cool eyes and professional demeanor stopped his sudden hope dead. Nonsense, man, this is Granger -- Miss Prunes and Prisms; she wouldn’t be a prostitute in a brothel, no matter how high-class.

“I believe I had said as much, Professor Granger.” He snapped back, now really angry at having his hopes dashed yet again. She simply nodded as though he had answered her question with great civility and he was baffled by her composure. Where was the over-eager energetic Miss Granger? Where was the girl he had so easily reduced to tears with a few harsh words? Where was the incessant arm-waving need to shove her intelligence down everyone’s throat?

She turned back to Minerva and he was left to ponder her odd behavior. Her question had roused his interest. Why had she asked about Deflating Draughts in particular and why with that specific wording? He still remembered every question he had asked the woman he had lost his mind over, still remembered every answer. Just the memory of her breathless recitation of the twelve uses of Dragon’s Blood could arouse him.

He glanced at the new Potions Professor and wondered suddenly. Could she be…? It had to be impossible; after all she was a silly schoolgirl. Two years ago she would have been still in university. As it was, she was twenty-one now, still an unformed child in his opinion. She couldn’t have been the confident lover of his memory at a mere nineteenrs ors of age.

He began to study her surreptitiously as he ate, wondering if he were missing some vital clue. Severus noted Professor Granger’s development from schoolgirl to adult. She had grown, though her hair was still a bushy mass barely controlled by the judicious use of hair clips and probably a charm or two. Her gawky adolescent body now had a woman’s grace and her eyes sparkled with a wisdom that had certainly not been there at seventeen.

A tiny hope bloomed in him and he squashed it immediately. It was impossible that the black haired, gray-eyed woman had been Hermione Granger. It was simply inconceivable. Still, there was no harm in testing a hypothesis.