Interesting

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*****

“Good-morning class!” Hermione greeted the fifth year potions class with the same syrupy voice she used with the customers at the shop. They looked at her uncertainly and she motioned for them to take their seats. “My name is Miss Granger,” she said. “I’ll be substituting for Professor Snape today.”

“I know you,” a Slytherin boy piped up. “You’re his apprentice.”

“Yes, that’s right,” Hermione smiled.

“So where’s Snape?” the boy asked.

Hermione fought the frown from taking over her face. “Professor Snape,” she emphasized, “is out.” She forced herself not to look over to the corner where her master has disillusioned himself to watch her teach for the first time. He’d talked it over with Minerva and they’d decided that if she could learn the ropes, then he could have the day off now and then to work on his own research. The disillusionment spell was complicated, but only Hermione could see and hear him, so he could help her out if she needed assistance. Snape had been sketchy with the details of the spell and Hermione had her suspicions that it wasn’t entirely white magic.

“Alright,” she said, “please open your books to page two-hundred-and-two. Today we’re going to learn a useful healing potion that you can use this afternoon after your Caring for Magical Creatures lecture.”

Most of the class knew that she was teasing them and they giggled at their pretty teacher’s joke. As far as they were concerned, she was better than cranky old Snape any day!”

“I’d like to see her two-hundred-and-twos,” the same boy snickered to his friend. They elbowed each other in the ribs and laughed.

“Excuse me?” Hermione asked, hardly able to believe his cheek. She suddenly felt very self-conscious of her snug red sweater. She’d worn it to show her Gryffindor colours, but now she was wondering if she was asking for trouble.

“I was just double-checking the page number, Miss Granger,” the boy said, sweetly.

Hermione hesitated for a moment and then decided to ignore him. Maybe she’d misheard what he’d said. She moved to her cauldron to teach the students a new stirring technique they’d need.

Snape shook his head and chuckled. “You should have come down on him like a ton of bricks,” he said. “They’ll eat you alive now.”

Hermione didn’t look up or respond, but she hoped her master was just trying to frighten her for kicks. She turned to write some notes on the board for them and a hail of magical spitballs rained down on her. Behind her, she could hear Snape laughing his ass off.

*****
Hermione watched as two Gryffindor boys passed flying note back and forth. She knew they shouldn’t be doing it, but she really didn’t want to take points from her old house. They settled down when they saw her approach, but as soon as she’d turned her back, she heard the paper flying around again.

A Ravenclaw girl wads hunched over her textbook, studying the spell intently, but as Hermione walked by the girl’s shoddy potion, she noticed that the copy of Witch Weekly tucked inside the book. The girl wasn’t working at all!

Hermione ground her teeth as she caught the Slytherin brat staring at her breasts again and she found herself wishing that she could hex a student… Minerva had made it very clear, though, that it was not allowed.

A Slytherin girl and her Ravenclaw friend were actually working very hard on their potion and Hermione was very proud of them. It was great to see that the houses had started to mingle together now that the pureblood-mudblood nonsense was largely over. The girls were clearly annoyed by the distractions in the classroom and Hermione wished that everyone would settle down and let the smart girls do their work.

“I’ll bet you didn’t see any of this when you were sitting in that desk,” Snape drawled. “Turn around and you’ll see Mr. Finnegan tossing your weresquirrel nails into other people’s pots.” Hermione whipped her head around in time to see nearly every potion in the classroom turn grey and start to smoke. The little dunderhead had ruined them all! She shook her head as she started for the boy… she wouldn’t start calling the students names, like Snape did… that was just wrong.

“All those nights you spent in the Forbidden Forest, collecting ingredients,” Snape said silkily. “All that time you spend chopping, grinding, and bottling… it was all a waste.” She suddenly heard Snape’s chair scrape and her eyes shot to his corner. He’d jumped to his feet and was trying to get across the classroom in a great hurry without touching any of the students. “Hermione, hurry!” be barked and pointed.

Hermione looked for the cause of his distress and gasped. Snape would never make it in time. She ran down the aisle and tackled a sweet Hufflepuff girl to the floor before her cauldron blew up. The bratty Slytherin boy had dumped something in her cauldron when she wasn’t looking.

“Is she alright?” Snape asked, his face full of concern. Hermione gave a tiny nod as she turned the poor girl around to check for chemical burns.

“I’m okay, Miss,” she said, nervously. “Sorry about the mess… I don’t know what I did wrong.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Hermione said, kindly. “You were doing very well, actually.” Inside, she was seething. The girl could have had her face bathed in the napalm-like potion and that bratty boy was laughing about it!

“She could have been very badly hurt,” Snape said. “Do you see now why I have to rule my classes like a tyrant?” Hermione gave a small nod and stood to brush herself off. Snape stood before her with his arms folded. “What would the great bat of the dungeons have done to that dunderhead back in your day?” She hesitated and he flashed her a smile. “Did I forget to tell you that substitutes can take points and give detention?” he said.

Hermione didn’t need any further encouragement. She rounded on the boy, who was still laughing. “You’re doing a lot of smiling for someone who just earned himself a week’s detention with Filch,” she growled.

“You can’t give me detention!” the boy laughed. “You’re just a substitute!”

“Think of the slips and wave your wand at my desk,” Snape said. Hermione did as he said, and seven red detention slips appeared on the boy’s desk. He looked surprised.

“Fifty points from Slytherin for endangering another student,” Hermione hissed. “Twenty more for being a rude little brat, and another fifteen for making me run in heels!” She looked at the two Gryffindor boys. “Ten points from Gryffindor for passing notes,” she said. She pointed to the Finnegan boy and said, “Three days detention and twenty points from Hufflepuff for wasting ingredients and sabotage!” A flick of her wand sent more red paper flying. She pointed to the girl with the Witch Weekly magazine. “And ten points for wasting my time!”

“Bravo!” Snape cheered. He applauded enthusiastically as she stalked back to her desk.

“Now clean up that mess before it peels the varnish off the woodwork,” Hermione added. “Professor Snape will not be happy if you damage his laboratory.”

*****

Snape leaned back in his chair in the corner and propped his hands behind his head as the seventh years filed into his classroom. Hermione was in his adjoining office, getting the correct text book and she stalked out with the determination of a caged animal as the students took their seats. She gave them a hard look and said in a slow, clear voice, “Good-morning, class. My name is Miss Granger. I am Professor Snape’s apprentice and your substitute for today.”

A Ravenclaw boy snickered and Hermione said, “Ten points from Ravenclaw,” without missing a beat. The giggling stopped. “Open your books to page four-hundred-and-seventeen,” she enunciated clearly, so that there would be no further… misunderstandings. She flicked her wand and the chalk wrote the instructions on the board for her so that she didn’t have to turn her back on anyone. “Today we will be learning a blood-replenishing potion,” she said, darkly. “I hope that none of you will need to use it before the class is over.”

The students looked at each other, nervously… Snape’s apprentice was not someone to mess with.

“They’re terrified, Miss Granger,” Snape grinned from his corner chair. “Well done.”

*****

Hermione waited until the last of the students had left and then she sank down at the teacher’s desk and put her head in her hands. She’d turned into a monster.

A warm hand touched her shoulder and she looked up into the amused eyes of her potions master. “You did much, much better this time,” he said. “They’re only children… it’s your job to protect them, even if it’s from themselves,” he said.

“Was I ever that awful in class?” Hermione moaned.

“No,” Snape chuckled. “Not you. I wouldn’t have taken you on as an apprentice if you’d be a dunderhead like the rest of your class.”

Hermione groaned and put her head down on the desk. “What a rotten morning,” she sighed.

Something banged heavily on the desk and she jumped in surprise. A huge stack of parchment had appeared in front of her. “It’s going to get worse,” Snape said. “We have a free period now, so we’re going to grade all of these so that we can patrol the hallways tonight.”

“All of them?” Hermione gaped.

Snape conjured up a second chair and sat down opposite her. “All of them,” he confirmed.

*****

Hermione sneered at the essay in front of her. It was exactly the same as the last one she’d read. “They’ve copied off each other!” she exclaimed.

“Is that Susie Bones and Peter O’Neil?” Snape asked without looking up from the paper he was grading. He’d graded far more papers than she had and she was wondering how he did it so fast.

Hermione checked the names. “Yes,” she said.

“Susie’s the smart one,” he said. “You can either pass them both or fail them both, but you must give them the same grade.

Hermione bit her lip and rubbed her temples. Snape was looking at her now, waiting for an answer. “She shouldn’t let him copy her exact essay,” she said. “He won’t learn anything and he’ll blow someone up… I have to fail them both, don’t I?”

“Sadly, yes, since you can’t actually prove who copied whom… although I know damn well who did,” he said.

Hermione’s pen slashed angrily over the silly girl’s paper and then her idiot friend’s. She moved on to the next essay. It was too short… way too short. The student had put no effort into it at all. She gave him a failing mark and grabbed another essay. It was copied word for word out of the potions text. She failed the girl. The next essay was illegible. She failed that one too. Hermione found herself getting more and more irritated as she worked through the stack of parchment. Very few students received a passing mark.

“This wasn’t a hard assignment,” she grumbled to herself. “It’s a second-year subject. They’ve done this!” Fail. Fail. Fail. Pass. Fail. Pass. Fail. Fail. Fail… “If they spent less time acting up in class and more time listening, they’d all pass,” she grumbled and blinked at a particularly bad paper. “Idiot,” she grumbled as she slashed a large F across the top of the page.

She slammed the last paper down on the pile of graded papers and was surprised to see Snape watching her with soft eyes. She was beautiful when she was angry. He wanted to tell her how sexy it was when she looked dangerous like this, and he wanted to tell her that when she’d marched back to her desk after her point-deducting rage in the first class, every boy’s eyes had been glued to the wiggle of her hips in that pencil skirt. The Hogwarts boys were going to worship her the next time she substituted.

He checked his pocket watch and stood up. “Let’s get some lunch,” he said.

*****

Hermione collapsed on Snape’s couch and kicked off her shoes. Her back hurt, her feet hurt, and she had a horrible headache. “Is teaching always this hellish?” she moaned.

“No,” Snape chuckled. “Sometimes it’s worse.”

Hermione cried out in despair and covered her eyes with her arm like she’d fainted. She’d wished she could have a pepper-up potion, but after her master had lectured her for two hours on how easy it was for a potions master to become an addict and had forbidden her from taking any potions unless it was a medical emergency, she didn’t think it was too likely that she’d get one.

“The first day is always the worst,” he said. He sat down on the end of the couch and hesitated for a moment before pulling one of her swollen feet into his lap and massaging the underside with his strong thumbs.

Hermione lowered her arm to look at him. She was surprised that he was touching her like that, but it didn’t feel wrong. The looked at each other for a long moment and then he applied some more pressure and she let out an involuntary moan. “What was your first day like?” she asked.

Snape thought for a moment and said, “It was exhausting… I wound up knocking back half a bottle of fire whiskey and passing out on this same couch.” Hermione raised an eyebrow and he shook his head. “I’m not plying my virgin apprentice with booze,” Miss Granger,” he said.

He was teasing her and she knew it. “Hermione,” she said. “I like it when you call me Hermione.”

He moved to her other foot. “Alright,” he said. He applied more pressure. “Hermione.”

Hermione mewled in pleasure and shut her eyes for a moment. “I don’t have to call you Severus if you don’t want me to,” she said. He watched how the firelight gave her blond and red highlights… Gryffindor hair.

“You can,” he said quietly. “But not in front of the students. The staff try to remain very formal in front of the students.”

“They seemed surprised to see me today,” Hermione said.

Snape snorted. “Flitwick wants you to substitute his class next Wednesday. I told him to get his own apprentice and stop trying to poach mine.”

Hermione laughed and tucked one arm under her head. “It’s nice to be wanted,” she said. Her voice was very soft and her breathing evened out.

Snape shook his head and rolled his eyes good-naturedly. He couldn’t believe she was falling asleep! He stroked the tops of her feet gently and wondered if he should risk trying to massage his way up her slender calves. He decided against it and contented himself to watch her chest rise and fall as her lips parted slightly.

He wasn’t sure what to do with her. When had they gotten this comfortable with each other? If it wasn’t for the fact that she was a virgin, put some serious effort into seducing her, but given how determined the young witch was to succeed at everything, he wouldn’t put it passed her to just sleep with him to improve her magic strength. He frowned as he saw his old hands caressing her young skin. What would a beautiful girl want with an old wizard? Nothing.

The clock on the mantle chimed and Hermione sat bolt upright. Her face was so close to his that he could feel her breath on his cheeks. A heartbeat later, her lips were pressed against his and he wasn’t sure who had moved first. As the clock continued to chime the hour, he pulled her into his lap and finally let his hands feel her tiny waist and the swell of her hips. Her tongue brushed his lips and he let deepen the kiss as her hands ran up his arms, over his shoulders, and into his hair.

Severus pulled away from her and rested his forehead against hers. “We have to patrol the hallways,” he whispered.