Flame of Existence

--> See Introduction for warnings/disclaimer.

FLAME OF EXISTENCE
/ by Bella

Chapter Six

Snape decided that today was going to be, indeed, a very rough day to get through. After breakfast in the Great Hall, he found himself roaming the hallways lamely trying to clear his head. Somewhere near the library, he busted two Seventh-Years snogging behind a drapery, and then on his way towards the dungeons for his first class of the day, he was attacked by none other than Mrs. Filch.

The stupid feline had come straight toward him in the hallway, acting like she owned the place. When he passed her, she clawed into his leg and bit his calf. He shook his leg repeatedly until the cat went flying down the hallway and scurried off.

And now, here he was standing in front of his own classroom entrance, debating on whether or not his day could get any worse. Taking a deep breath in attempt to clear his mind, Snape opened the door to his dungeon classroom and walked in quietly.

The two contrasting seventh-year groups were as rowdy as ever, so much that they didn’t even hear their professor come into the classroom. He took a second to glance around the room at them before he cleared his throat loudly.

“Enough!” He started to walk towards the front of the room. “Open your books to page one hundred and seventy-three. Today you will be learning how to brew the Jarweed Potion. Can anyone give me the properties of Jarweed?”

Several hands raised, but he ignored them and looked straight at the Head Girl who was attempting to hide behind her book. “Miss Granger?”

Hermione’s head snapped up behind her book and she sat it down, turning red in the cheeks. “I don’t know, sir.”

“You don’t know?” He raised his eyebrows. “Well, well, well... Pigs have flown then, I suspect.”

With that, he continued to ignore the still-raised hands that were waving in the air and turned to write the properties on the board. He grinned to himself. He was in this for Dumbledore, nobody else – he owed none other.

Sweet? Severus Snape? Ha. He just showed her how sweet he could be.

Hermione sat at her lab station and bit her lip to stop herself from scowling. The nerve of him, she thought, after she wrote him such a nice thank-you note. Of course, she had known the properties of Jarweed, but ever since the... incident, she didn’t want to bring attention to herself.

However, what Hermione didn’t know was that she was simply attracting more attention by trying not to.

When class was nearly over, Hermione bottled her completed potion and took it up to Snape’s desk for grading. She set it on the tray where a few other full vials were placed and glared at Snape who wasn’t even paying attention to her.

Halfway back to her seat, Hermione stopped dead in her tracks and turned back around and looked at the professor who was indulging in some book. Grinning to herself, and proud that she figured out what his problem was, Hermione sauntered back to her seat and ignored the remarks and snickers from the Slytherin side of the room.

Snape looked up from his book and looked around the room. His eyes stopped on Hermione Granger who was sitting at her desk smiling. At him.

Bloody hell, he thought. What the fuck is she smiling about?

Raising an eyebrow and continuing to watch her... smile, Snape tried to ignore that clenching in his gut that made him want to bang his head in to a wall or vomit, or something. Then it came to him, so he smiled back – that sugary, fake smile that made his cheeks push his eyelids into small slits where the black intensified. His teeth, believe-it-or-not straight, speared right into the girl who was purposefully trying to piss him off, and made the smile on her own face fall flat.

Triumphed with another win, Snape ordered the rest of the students to bring up their vialed potions and when the class was over, he watched them file out one by one. Hermione was one of the last ones to leave, he noted, and she glanced over her shoulder at him and scowled.

“Stupid, stupid git,” she mumbled under her breath as she pushed past the flocks of students in the hallway. She was so frustrated. The stupid git, as she had called him, had completely reacted the wrong way to the note she sent him. Hell, she hadn’t even expected a reaction out of him. The note was simply a token of gratitude, that was all.

But, it bugged her to hell to think of why he detested a simple gesture of thanks. It was normal to write a thank-you note after being given something, right? What the bloody hell was his problem?

Hermione, who was headed towards her Head Girl’s rooms to pick up some other books, turned on her heel and marched straight back to where she came from – the dungeons. Throwing the door open to the classroom, she noted the brief look of surprise that passed over his face, and marched straight up to his desk.

Hermione slammed her potions book down onto the desk and stared Snape straight in the eye. “What is your problem, sir?”

There. She had asked it. No use in wondering about it all day to the point where she couldn’t think. For a second she actually shook in shock that she would even confess to thinking about Snape outside of the classroom. Her thought, or shiver moreover, was interrupted by Snape.

“Miss Granger, who the bloody hell do you think you are marching your little insolent ass into my classroom and asking me what my bloody problem is?” He stood, handing her book back to her.

“Insolent! Ha!” Hermione picked her book up again and dropped it. “There’s insolent for you, sir. That note this morning was just to thank you for the potion, that’s all. Nothing more, nothing less. I appreciate what you did. I really do. Thank you.” Her tone had gotten no softer, her words had still been crisp, but sincere. “Not many people would do that for me.”

Snape looked her in the eye, about to retort with something equally as effective, but the Headmaster’s words echoed in the back of his mind. Make sure that she can trust you.

“You’re welcome. Now leave, if you will. Your detention is at the same time tonight, Miss Granger. And do try not to be late this time.”

When she left, Snape let out a long sigh and sat back down in his chair, rubbing his temples with his fingers. She had balls, he’d give her that much. And oh, she looked so cute with that look of determination in her eyes.

Wait a minute. Cute? Severus Snape did not just think cute.

Throwing his hands up with exasperation, he groaned. The day definitely couldn’t get any worse, he decided. Grabbing his quill, he took out a piece of parchment and began writing a list of supplies that he knew he would need to get when he went into Hogsmeade.

His planning and lunch periods were spent in Hogsmeade, gathering the ingredients and supplies that he had previously written down on parchment. Unfortunately for him, his mind wasn’t completely on the materials he sought, but more on the young witch back at Hogwarts who was sitting in the Great Hall wondering where he was.

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Hermione had always prided herself on being able to control herself, if necessary. But the second she got into the Great Hall, her eyes sought out Professor Snape, but he wasn’t there. Never before had he been the person with whom her eyes looked for when she entered the hall. That fact alone sent her fingers into a tailspin of shakiness, and her mind into a blunder of questions.

Why? She wondered to herself silently as she made her way to the Gryffindor table. Why was she worrying about Snape, the evil git who seemed to set out each morning to piss her off? Why did it seem like her hand couldn’t gasp the fork to lift the salad from her plate to her mouth?

An easy solution: she was losing it.

Hermione was seated between Harry and Ron who were discussing the usual topic of Quidditch. It was their last school year and they were both still on the Gryffindor team - their first practice was going to start the following week.

While the two continued to talk, Hermione pushed around the green leaves on her plate and sighed. She wasn’t tired, if anything she was more than well rested. That one night of dreamless sleep did her wonders. Miracles.

That tight little knot of depression was still settled in her chest, solid as the day she was raped. It’s color had turned from a deep onyx to a mat black – a good sign, right?

Throughout the lunch period, Hermione glanced up at Snape’s empty seat, wondering if he would show up anytime during the meal. It was a little less than disturbing to question why the young witch would wonder about her teacher, especially the one dubbed evil by every Hogwarts student currently breathing.

It’s because he selflessly helped you, she reasoned with herself as she looked down at her plate. He probably broke school rules – but why?

A part chimed in and said because he was really a good guy. After all, he had spied for the Order so many years before, hadn’t he? That had to count for something. But, it was hard for Hermione to think of the Professor than more than just a cruel bastard whom she respected for his years of service.

She couldn’t see the emotions and feelings behind his masked eyes. She couldn’t feel the warmth radiating behind his thick teaching robes. His eyes and robes - they’re only excuses. If she really wanted to see, all she would have to do is look.

Look, she told herself as she stood to get ready for her next class. Just look.

Before Hermione knew it, she was back in the Great Hall for supper, and this time her eyes weren’t focused on an empty chair, but on the man occupying it. Snape. He sat with his shoulders squared, looking out over the Slytherin table, with his countenance set at blank.

A tide of mixed emotions waved through her and she found herself looking down at her clasped hands, blushing. She was confused, more than not, and she didn’t know exactly about what.

Looking up at the staff table again, she saw that Professor Dumbledore told him something quietly in his hear. A moment later, Snape’s eyes flashed over to Hermione with a brief look of annoyance. When he saw that she was looking at him, his face went blank again and he turned to say something back to the Headmaster.

Up at the head table, Professor Snape forked a piece of steak into his mouth and glared at Professor Dumbledore. Yes, he was doing the older man a favor by... meddling into the young witch’s life. Yes, he planned on doing it in his own way. But no, no he most certainly did not need smart ass comments from the Headmaster about his ways of doing it.

“Well today,” the Headmaster had asked a few seconds earlier. “I can already see the progress.”

Snape had turned to him. “Progress, sir?”

“Miss Granger looks at you as if you were her knight in shining armor.” The Headmaster had leaned in to say that part, jokingly of course.

However, Snape didn’t like to be referred to as 1) any object of that chit’s and 2) a knight in shining armor. So he sat there eating, sending quite menacing looks towards the older man, and secretive glances over to the Gryffindor table. He wondered if what Dumbledore had said held any truth.

Settling with himself that it probably didn’t, and that Dumbledore was just meddling in Severus’s meddling, Snape finished his supper and quietly retreated to his dungeon classroom. There, he sat behind his large oak desk, looking over the stacks of papers to be graded and wondering if the approaching migraine would only be intensified when Miss Granger arrived.

“And she has arrived,” Snape commented when the knock on the door sounded. “Enter.”

Unlike the last time she entered the classroom, she knocked. She didn’t feel that spending four hours with Snape should be started with her barging into the room like she did that morning.

“Good evening, sir,” Hermione said somewhat cheerily as she entered the classroom. “I missed you at lunch.”

She stopped mid-step, wondering if she really said that last part aloud. Seeing Snape’s raised eyebrows, she scolded herself and tried hard not to redden at the cheeks.

“Were you looking for me, Miss Granger?” Snape was amused.

Hermione, unable to formulate a reasonable response, simply shook her head and continued on her walk to his desk. “What am I doing tonight, sir?”

“Tonight you can help me put away the ingredients I bought at Hogsmeade today during lunch.” Standing from his seat, Snape showed her into the stock room off to the right of the classroom. There, they squeezed a variety of ingredients into labeled jars. The duration of the assignment was silent except for a few questions on Hermione’s side.

By the time they were done, it was only halfway through the detention, and Snape directed her back out to the classroom and handed her a stack of papers.

“I trust you can correctly grade the Second-Years’ essays, Miss Granger.” He handed her a stack of papers from his desk and sat down to start grading himself.

Hermione nodded and took the papers from him. Grabbing a spare quill from his holder, she began marking on the top parchment. Through her head ran many of the same questions she had asked herself earlier about the Potions Professor.

Hermione looked up from the parchment she was grading and watched the Professor read over a separate essay. His shoulder-length black locks hung down almost completely in front of his face as he concentrated on the paper in front of him.

At the cessation of Hermione’s quill’s scratching, Snape looked up and found the much younger witch staring at him. Again.

“Miss Granger, why in the name of Merlin do you keep looking at me?” There. He had asked it.

Hermione gathered up some courage. “I was just wondering why you are so bitter, sir.”

Snape sat back at that and crossed his arms across his chest. “And I, Miss Granger, wonder why you are so damned nosy all of the time.”

“I am not nosy, sir,” Hermione huffed, mirroring him and crossing her arms across her chest. “I’m serious. You’re always so defensive. Like just now, for example. I wasn’t insulting you when I said ‘bitter’, yet you felt the need to retort. I don’t get you.”

Snape stared at her. “You aren’t supposed to get me, Miss Granger.”

She sat for a moment, thinking, contemplating what to say. “But I want to.”

“You can’t know everything, child,” he spat, uncrossing his arms. “I’m not a book.”

“I’m not a child anymore, sir, whether you care to realize that or not. Excuse me for trying to fathom you as a normal wizard with feelings for one bloody second. I guess I was wrong.” Hermione picked up her quill and began marking again.

Snape sat there staring at her curly hair, wondering why the hell she was even trying to make small talk about him, anyway. Finally snapping out of his short reverie, Snape went back to grading his own papers again. Little did he know, the younger witch was staring up at him behind her curtain of hair.

End of Chapter Six / To Be Continued

A/N: There you go. I think it’s beginning to move along nicely now. Sorry for the week’s delay - I’ve been really busy. Don’t be surprised if my updates are only weekly (or biweekly)... life happens, you know?

Thanks for the reviews: lo_malfoy, JTBJAB, divine angel, Morrigan Malfoy, Branwen, anya, Estella, Nightowl2411, ShadowandFlamePanther (your review really made me smile - thanks for the stars and rec!)

Any more are appreciated! :D