For the Potions Master\'s Amusement

For the Potions Master’s Amusement

Chapter 6: An Invitation


Hermione sat in the embrasure of her dormitory window, staring out onto the moonlit grounds. She still wore her school uniform, and the residue of her slick arousal had dried upon on thighs, the odour mixing with that of the sweet-smelling ointment he had tenderly rubbed into the skin on her bottom. The very memory caused a new ache to awaken in her, filling her with despair.

What am I going to do? she thought, wrapping her arms about herself and hugging tightly. He makes me want things I know are sick and wrong. If anyone had ever told me about a teacher behaving such a way with a student—or even a man behaving that way with a woman—it would have filled me with disgust. How can he … how can I …

She began to rock herself in an unconscious comforting motion, staring almost unseeingly out into the night. She remained that way until a tiny, shadowy figure passed through the school gates onto the road to Hogsmeade. It was him! He was off to keep his engagement.

All thoughts of wrongness left her, and she jumped down from the window seat, casting a Cleansing Charm and already formulating a plan.

---

Shivering beneath Harry’s Invisibility Cloak, Hermione hurried down the road to Hogsmeade in the wake of her professor. If his destination had not been the village, she had no hope of finding him, but perhaps he was sitting in one of the pubs, having a pint with friends. Did Professor Snape have friends? It was a funny thought, really. Schoolmates from his own year were obviously not to his taste –she had seen how he behaved with Sirius and Professor Lupin in the Shrieking Shack—but perhaps he had friends from the village … perhaps he dated women from the village.

Why would I care? she thought, even as she hurried her steps towards the Three Broomsticks. He has no interest in me that way … he’s made it very clear. Still, she had to know, if she could, just whom he was meeting at ten o’clock on a Friday night.

Out of breath, she arrived at the village and hurried down the High Street to the pub, whose windows spilled warm light onto the darkened street. Hermione was pleased to see a group of laughing, middle-aged wizards exit the pub. Holding the Invisibility Cloak closely about her, she slipped past them into the interior, hugging the wall.

She saw him immediately at a table near the back of the room, sitting at his ease across from a witch with soft, golden brown hair. As Hermione watched, her professor laughed and reached forward to refill the witch’s goblet from the bottle of honey mead on the table between them. Hermione felt her heart drop to her feet as the uncomfortable, twisting feeling in her tummy returned. She knew the woman—a shop girl, really, who worked for the village apothecary, measuring out armadillo bile and dragon scales for the customers. Her name was Taffy, or Hetty, or something equally ridiculous.

Tears burned Hermione’s eyes as she stood, watching them interact. The shop girl was younger than he was and watched him with wide blue eyes, seemingly a bit in awe. Hermione wanted to cross the room and slap that shy smile from the other witch’s face—to grab her by her soft, non-bushy, non-frizzy hair and drag her out of the pub and back to the apothecary shop, where she rightfully belonged.

The pub door opened, admitting a smiling, hand-holding couple, and Hermione took that opportunity to bolt into the street. She began to hurry back to Hogwarts, unmindful of the angry tears streaming down her face.

She can’t give him what he wants, the traitorous voice in her mind whispered.

Hermione shook her head, as if to disagree with the voice. She didn’t care—she was finished. If she had to chain herself to her bedposts at night to keep herself from going to him, she would do it.

Finished.

---

Existence had taken on a dim, dingy, ashen quality. The absence of the possibility of time with him removed all the colour from her world, darkened her life to the point that some days, she had difficulty putting one foot before the other. Food tasted like ashes, and she began to lose weight. The boys noticed there was something wrong, but she scarcely knew what to tell them.

‘I’m feeling a bit under the weather,’ she explained.

‘You’d better see Madam Pomfrey,’ Harry said, his green eyes warm with concern.

‘I will,’ she promised, knowing she wouldn’t go, but needing to speak the words to send Harry on his way.

The only thing for which she could muster energy was schoolwork. Doggedly, she went to classes, completed her assignments well ahead of time, and turned them in … except for Potions. In Potions, she sat at the back of the room, kept her head down, and did not look at or speak to her professor while she was in his classroom. It was bad enough to hear his hissed instructions to the NEWT Potions students, conjuring up memories of silkier tones whispering filthy things to her as he fingered her, but it was infinitely worse to look up and find his glittering black eyes on her, a frown between his brows.

Infinitely worse.

She lay in her bed at night, staring listlessly out the window. No longer did she ache and pine for him: She felt nothing. She did not permit herself to feel. Feeling made her want him, made her debase and humiliate herself. It was better not to feel than to be used and discarded like waste tissue.

Wasn’t it?

---

By mid-October, she had lost enough weight that she had to fasten her skirt with a Muggle safety pin; by the week of Hallowe’en, she had begun to physically weaken, so that her magic became less precise. Still, she clenched her teeth and persevered, determined not to give in. A tall, dark figure haunted her dreams, and lack of nourishment and insufficient sleep began to blur the line between sleeping and waking, until it seemed that the dark figure of her dreams followed her even in her daylight hours, but she did not let it tempt her or deter her.

On Hallowe’en, she sat in solitary state at her table in the very back of the dungeon Potions classroom, struggling to comprehend the instructions scrawled spikily across the chalkboard.

‘Minced daisy roots,’ she murmured to herself, setting out her ingredients. ‘Skinned shrivelfig,’ she said, taking up her silver dagger.

Blearily she worked, struggling to concentrate, concerned because she could not see Professor Snape anywhere in the classroom. Had he gone into his office? He usually sat at this desk marking essays as they worked. She took up her measuring cup and poured out pomegranate juice, and a bruising hand closed about her wrist before she could pour the liquid into her cauldron.

‘Is it your desire to cause an explosion?’ the dreaded—No, desired! her inner voice babbled—voice hissed.

Hermione stopped dead. She did not move or breathe, think or blink.

‘Answer me!’ he demanded.

Hermione bit her lip and did not speak. Instead, she squinted at the directions on the chalkboard and saw the formula called for peppermint oil, rather than pomegranate juice. She closed her eyes, feeling a bit sick to her stomach. She had never made an error of that type—Except on purpose! the know-it-all within reminded her—in all her years of Potions classes. It was one thing to wish to avoid Professor Snape and to take every precaution against the temptation to return to his study and subject herself to his commands, but it was another thing entirely to so compromise her health that she almost blew up herself and her nearest classmates, simply because she was unable to concentrate properly.

‘Hermione.’ He had never spoken her name except when they were alone, and the tone of his voice woke a glimmer of heat within her.

No! She wouldn’t falter!

With less a less than gentle touch, Professor Snape wrenched the cup from her hand and set it on the table, Vanishing its contents first, then the contents of her cauldron with a vicious jab of his wand. She was about to protest his actions when the bell rang, and she realised the class period was over—she could never have completed the assignment, even if she had poured the proper liquid into her cup. That had never happened to her before—she had always completed her assignments …

He man-handled her onto her stool, pressing her down with his hands upon her shoulders, then gave his next instructions.

‘Place your properly labelled samples upon my desk and clear your workspaces,’ the professor said, his low, clear voice ringing across the classroom. The NEWT students complied with his instructions, scurrying out the door as quickly as they could, and still he remained directly behind Hermione. She began to clear away her ingredients, repacking her Potions kit, waving Harry and Ron off with a grimace, as if she had to remain behind to be told off by Professor Snape. When the classroom was empty, the door slammed closed and locked itself, and Hermione gripped the edge of the table before her, steeling herself against what was to come next.

‘Into my office,’ he said, but she did not move from her spot. His office was but a doorway away from his study … and how could she possibly prevent herself from passing through the hidden doorway if it glowed green before her? No, she didn’t dare to move.

He leant closer, crowding into her personal space, his breath, smelling of the dark cherry tart they had been served at lunch, fanning over her cheek. ‘Do not push me, Hermione,’ he warned.

In answer, she shook her head violently, but it was a poor choice of action. Once in motion, she could not seem to stop the spinning of the room, and before her professor could utter another threat, she slid neatly off her stool and crumpled at his feet.

---

‘Wake up now, Hermione,’ he commanded.

Her eyes fluttered open—how could she fail to do as he asked? —and he crouched at her side, his austere face hovering mere inches from her own.

‘Thank Merlin,’ he breathed and drew farther away from her.

Hermione struggled to sit, but he restrained her with one hand upon her shoulder.

‘When did you last eat?’ he demanded.

‘At lunch,’ she said, her voice scratchy.

He frowned. ‘Pushing food from one side of the plate to the other does not constitute ingestion, Hermione,’ he snapped.

She blinked. ‘Were you watching me eat?’ she asked him.

He did not respond but stood, bending and scooping her into his arms.

‘Where are we going?’ she asked fearfully, but he did not answer her. He carried her into his office and placed her in the chair before his desk, standing beside her for a moment as if to make sure that she did not slide out of it.

‘You’re not sleeping either, are you?’ he said harshly, his glittering black eyes boring into hers, and before she could even think to look away, he was in her mind, making free of her memories.

What tiny bit of strength she retained she mustered to push him away, but she was no match for him, either physically or magically—certainly not in her weakened condition. In quick succession she saw herself in the Invisibility Cloak in the Three Broomsticks; she heard her vows to herself not to go to him again for any reason; she saw a string of sleepless nights, interspersed with barely touched meals; and always, she heard the litany which had become her mantra over the last few weeks. Stay away from him! Don’t look at him! Don’t speak to him! Don’t go to him! Don’t think of him! Don’t think at all! Don’t feel!

Then he withdrew from her mind, and she struck at him with her hands, infuriated but weak. She landed a glancing blow to the side of his head, but he seemed not to feel it; he simply captured her hands in his own and remained quiet as she struggled to free herself from his grasp.

When at last she subsided, he released her hands. She looked up at him, tears of indignation standing in her eyes, and he studied her face.

‘I would like to have the opportunity to speak with you,’ he said with careful neutrality. ‘I would like to invite you to enter my study, where I would like for you to ingest some nourishment and have a conversation with me. Will you consent to do that, Hermione?’ he asked.

Do it! the chorus in her mind screamed. She looked down at her hands, gripped desperately in her lap. ‘But I’ve worked so hard not to,’ she whispered brokenly.

He knelt before her, until he was looking up into her downcast face. ‘I am aware,’ he said, and his tone was almost gentle, as one might speak to a frightened unicorn. ‘On other visits to my study, you have been under a certain set of rules. Today, I would like to suspend those rules, and institute some special ones. Today, if you consent to enter my study, you are not required to do anything you do not wish to do. You may stand up and walk out at any time with no negative consequences. You may say whatever you wish to say to me.’

She looked dubious, and a glimmer of a smile touched his thin lips, nearly humanising his face.

‘Will you come? I would be very pleased.’

Ignoring the excited murmurs of the chorus in her mind, she looked down into his hook-nosed face and desperately tried to consider. All he wanted was for her to eat and talk to him—she didn’t have to wait until spoken to before speaking or do as she was told without question—she could walk out at any time.

‘All right,’ she said.

‘Good girl,’ he murmured, and the glowing green doorway appeared behind his desk. He put a hand beneath her elbow and helped her stand, maintaining his hold as the moved around his desk. ‘I’m not taking any chances on you fainting again,’ he explained, then the study door opened, and the rippling green light poured over them.

And in spite of her best intentions, Hermione entered the professor’s study with a genuine lightening of the darkness in her soul.