The Quicker Fixer-Upper

Wow, is it just me, or are things really moving slowly on the old AFF these days? I almost feel productive. Oh, and the reason that I’m pussyfooting (harharhar) around the ACTUAL work they’re doing is because I can’t write that stuff and have it sound okay. I’ve tried… and failed.

Chapter Five
Hard Day’s Night

Hermione was officially in a funk. She was, unfortunately, very much the type to dwell on and relive her mistakes over and over and over again. Sometimes it was just crippling. She spent much of the next four hours in her rooms alternately lecturing her pillow and sobbing into it. Finally, with a mighty gasp of breath, she pressed a cold towel to her eyes and kicked herself in the butt.

“Hermione, you great baby! For heaven’s sake, get a grip on yourself.” The authority in her voice was strange, and not in conjunction with how she was feeling, but it helped. Gathering her wits about her, she made her way toward the restricted section of the library hoping to learn more about the wolfsbane potion. Her recovery was not one hundred percent as she had expected, she discovered when she found “wolfsbane” in the first index, she felt the prickling of tears in her eyes and knew that today was going to be completely forfeit. She had no desire to return to her room, knowing what awaited her there. She opted instead to find a dark corner of the library where she could sit in silence and peace; where no one would find her. Much to her delighted surprise, Hermione managed to dose off in a very pleasant plush chair in the restricted section, obscured by rows and rows of books.

Meanwhile, down at dinner, Minerva had set her beady eyes on Severus in a way that was making him rather uncomfortable. He hadn’t felt this way in… a good long time, and her change of demeanor was almost welcome compared to… well. No matter how he felt about it, it was time for Severus to face the fact that no one in the wizarding world would ever see him the same way, ever again. Particularly not those like Minerva, who had always flaunted an icy superiority, the origin of which he imagined was based in a feeling of moral supremacy. He snorted. This was familiar; this he could live with.

“If you have something to say, Headmistress…”

“Severus, I was wondering where your assistant might be,” she stated in sotto voice, watching him carefully.

“As it happens, there was an accident in the lab this afternoon, and my assistant was rather shaken up. I gave her the afternoon off. I haven’t seen her in hours.”

“Her absence is suspicious; surely she would have mentioned if she were leaving,” Minerva pressed.

“As difficult as you may find it to believe, Headmistress, Miss Granger is an adult now, and hardly needs permission to move freely.” Why was this so blasted important?

“Nevertheless, Severus, I would feel better if you were to perform an adequate and thorough search of the grounds for her, immediately after dinner.”

It was only a shame that school was not in session and he wasn’t getting out of rounds.

“Fine,” he clipped. Pushing back his chair with a little more force than necessary, he excused himself.

Walking briskly out of the great hall, he muttered to himself, “Silly witch, probably sleeping in her rooms—or in the library with her nose buried in some dusty tome.”

Unsurprisingly, he was about half right on both counts. After going to Hermione’s rooms and attempting to wake her, it became evident she wasn’t there so he left for the library, where he found her asleep, with her nose buried in some dusty tome. His search technique was not particularly methodical or thorough as the Headmistress desired, but it was the case that in spite of himself, Severus knew his assistant. He shuddered as he made that admission to himself. Something about it seemed somehow… improper. Scoffing at himself, he couldn’t help but think that now was a very, very strange time indeed to grow a conscience.

Severus carefully schooled his face into a neutral expression. Precisely what was the most appropriate way to wake another person? It wasn’t something he’d ever had to do before. He truly dodged a bullet (or hex as it were) when his assistant began to stir at the intensity of his scrutiny.

She yawned hugely, stretching and falling out of the chair, coming face-to-face with his boots. She colored brightly as she looked up at him with huge eyes. That was an image he did -not- need, thank you very much.

“Professor,” she said, trying her damnedest to sound formal while picking herself up off the floor and dusting off her bum, “what can I do for you?”

He smirked.

“It seems, Miss Granger, that it is what I can do for you that counts. The Headmistress sent me to fetch you and inform you that you have missed dinner.”

“Oh,” she said, sounding disappointed.

“Are you—are you… hungry?” It seemed so odd to be asking her the question. So… domestic.

“No, not particularly,” she lamented, “but I know how hard the house elves work, and I hate to think that they put in all that time and effort and I missed it.”

Leave it to her to worry about the bleeding house elves.

He was about to open his mouth and suggest that she could summon an elf to bring her whatever she wanted, but figured he’d offend her with the notion that she would set one of the poor creatures to work just for her.

Hermione had dropped back into her chair, after retrieving the book she had dropped when she fell out of the chair. Severus noticed it was on the wolfsbane potion. He had chosen the right assistant, there was no doubt in his mind. Even after the fiasco that afternoon.

He gestured uselessly, conversations and people were not his strong point.

“Is there anything…” he began.

“Do you mean it?” she asked eagerly.

“I probably wouldn’t have said,” he groused.

“It’s just that… would you mind to stay a while and catch me up a little on the potion. I can read about it, but you’ve worked with it so much, I think I could get a better idea,” she paused briefly at the look on his face, “that is, if you don’t mind, if you aren’t busy. But I can do it for myself, I don’t want to waste your time.”

“Do stop babbling, Miss Granger,” he snapped. “If we are going to have a conversation of that length, I require that we retire to my rooms.”

At the slightly shocked look on her face, he added, “You have monopolized the only good chair in the library, and I refuse to discuss potions while my posterior goes numb. Are you interested, then?”

Hermione nodded eagerly, and he motioned that she should follow him, which she did.

When they were comfortably seated in his study, she piped up immediately.

“Professor, thank you for—”

“Miss Granger,” he barked, “are you hear to talk or are you hear to listen?”

“Listen, sir,” she said, taken aback.

“Very well.”

Hours and hours they talked, well into the night. She got her questions out of the way relatively quickly, and he began to talk about his past attempts, a topic he was apparently very animated about. So animated, in fact, that he did not notice when (and in retrospect could not remember) Hermione fell asleep on his couch. For the second time in a day, he faced waking her. He still did not know the proper way to wake a person up. His mischievous side said to leave her—listening to her explain herself in the morning would be absolutely priceless. He listened to his mischievous side, like he often did.

He went to his closet and retrieved a spare blanket, throwing it over her, haphazardly. He then retired to his own room, closing the door and warding it soundly. She was totally harmless, but that didn’t mean he trusted her. Hell, he didn’t trust the house elves, didn’t trust Minerva, didn’t trust himself. Why should he trust anyone else, least of all this little slip of a girl? Then the answer came to him: he had already trusted her with his lab; and if he couldn’t trust her with everything else, she surely wouldn’t have been allowed in there.

Well, she was a bloody Gryffindor; they had honor radiating from their… he arrested that thought. The last thing he needed to be doing after that little event in the library was imagining anything that had to do with any of her orifices. Perhaps he should’ve set the wards to keep him in, rather than to keep her out.

Objectively, there was no reason for him to be thinking about her this way. Sex was not something he invested much energy in. Ever. And he certainly never thought of students, ex-students, co-workers, or the giant squid, no matter what some fucking stupid mauraders implied.

Severus tossed and turned all night, plagued by dreams of an almost hallucinogenic quality. Upon waking he resolved to pay a visit to the house elves and inform them on no uncertain terms that they were never to serve last night’s dinner again.

Dressing in his typical manner, and smirking more than a little, he made his way to the sitting room to observe his house guest. This was going to be priceless, indeed. He threw open the curtains and the sun fell across his assistant’s face. She merely snuggled into the sofa, pulling the blanket over her face. She was a sound sleeper, he gave her that. Offended that the blanket had offered her an out, he clutched the corner of it and pulled it slowly but surely away from her. He managed to extract most of the blanket from her, except she seemed to have a death grip on the corner.

He tugged harder; no dice. Harder still, she actually slid a little on the sofa. Then, as he was fixing to give the blanket an almighty tug, she pulled first and he fell to the floor.

“That’s what you get,” she said, standing smoothly and striding past him to his bathroom. He heard water running in the sink. Surely she wasn’t using his toothbrush. He shuddered. As long as she didn’t break his hairbrush off in that crazy mane of hers, he supposed he’d live.