The Potion\'s Final

The Potion\'s Final
by Amile Lenin


\"This is taking forever!\" mumbled Harry to his friends Ron and Hermione as they stood in the long hallway of Hogwarts\' dungeons one sunny afternoon (not that they could see the sun).

They\'d been waiting for over a three hours now for Hermione to go into her seventh year final Potion\'s exam, since all the other students had gone before her. As it stood now, only Harry, Ron and Hermione remained waiting.

Ron and Harry had already taken their final exams earlier that morning, and had come to stay with Hermione as means of moral support. They had evidence from prior years that around this time, she did tend to be a bit manic.

\"His are always the longest, every year,\" agreed Ron with an exaggerated yawn, stifling it only as he viewed Hermione\'s serious glare from beside him as she crumpled the piece of smudged parchment she\'d been reading from, in her hand.

\"Well I didn\'t say you two had to wait with me,\" snapped Hermione, her cheeks going a violent crimson shade as she spoke. Exam time truly brought out the worst in her.

\"It\'s hard enough trying to remember all these figures and ingredients without you two rattling on about how tired you are. At least you\'ve completed your exams; I\'m the last to go into this one! You can\'t possibly know how trying this is for me!\"

Hermione, although she was terribly clever, was still more nervous than Ron and Harry combined about this Potion\'s final. This may have been the result of watching a sobbing Patvil rush from the classroom, wailing about how she\'d\" failed the entire bloody thing!\" moments beforehand.

Now Draco Malfoy resided in the classroom taking his final, undoubtedly scraping by only to come out beaming with that simpering smirk of his, trying to intimidate Hermione into thinking she\'d never pass one of Snape\'s infamous exams.

\"I\'m just glad I\'m not writing it,\" Harry added after a moment of surveying the murky surroundings, suppressing a shudder. \"Taking Potions more than I have to sounds like a nightmare. I hear Snape\'s even stricter than usual when it comes to his seventh year classes.\"

Harry had been in the most chipper of moods ever since the defeat of Voldemort, which his friends found to be something to be highly appreciated. It was almost as if things were completely right with the world, if you didn\'t count Snape\'s final.

\"He is strict, but it\'s been worth all the heartache. I\'ve learned more in his class than in any other,\" Hermione said smartly before closing her eyes and quickly recalling the ingredients to an anti aging potion. Harry and Ron exchanged surreptitious looks of equal disbelief and horror.

\"Miss Granger,\" a low rumbling voice suddenly sounded as the door to the potion\'s room burst open. All the students who happened to be passing by in the vicinity dropped their eyes, and the entire dungeon grew silent. Draco Malfoy came sailing out of the room, giving Hermione the exact look she had been expecting, not that she noticed.

Hermione\'s eyes instead widened at the familiar voice of Snape, darting upward to view the pale and sullen face of her Potion\'s professor. She gave a low gulp, finding it suddenly difficult to breathe. This exam was the hardest she would ever have to right, and the thought of failing was making her queasy.

\"It\'s okay, Hermione,\" whispered Ron, noticing his friend\'s sudden blanching of the cheeks, giving her hand an encouraging squeeze. \"You\'re going to be brilliant, I just know it.\"

Hermione -who did appreciate what Ron was trying to do for her- would have given her friend a small mention of thanks, had it not been for Snape\'s sudden upward sneer, with a voice that grew as icy as any arctic wind.

\"I haven\'t all day, Miss Granger,\" he hissed irritably, watching as the girl bid her leaving friends a meek farewell before rushing towards him. He suppressed a disgusted sneer as he crossed her name off of his list with his spindly script.

It was speculated the castle over, that after the fall of Voldemort, Snape may just be a new person. A new, happier, more easygoing sort of person. Hermione had been one of the few to know that this was not to be, but it didn\'t stop her from acting disappointed about the lack of change with her friends. Secretly however, she was more than glad that he hadn\'t changed. She liked continuity, and a miserable but brilliant Snape was expected.

Snape watched as Hermione walked into the classroom before him, looking around nervously as her fingers twisted together. Snape was amused to note that she was muttering various potions under her breath. He slammed the door soundly behind them, suppressing a smirk as she twitched visibly.

Miss Hermione Granger wasn\'t one of Snape\'s favorite people. In fact, if he were to choose the three most annoying of his students, she came in at number two. This wasn\'t to say that he disliked her more than others; she simply managed to try his patience more than most.

She was incessant in her questioning, and when she did speak -often- she did so in such a manner than irritated him. He suspected it was the bossy, know-it-all tone in her voice. And so, seeing the young woman in such a state of bungled nerves gave him an extreme sense of satisfaction.

\"Worried, Miss Granger?\" Snape inquired almost innocently, save for the sinister smirk that begged to be released at the sight of her obvious nerves. When she didn\'t answer him, he continued on rather casually.

\"This is your last exam, is it not?\"

\"Yes sir.\"

\"And you\'re confident in your abilities?\"

\"I believe so, sir.\"

Snape made no move to reply to this, and instead had turned his attention back to his parchment. Hermione watched in silence a moment before she felt she was about to burst.

\"Sir?\"

\"What?\" Snape snapped, looking up quickly. The sight of his dark eyes flashing caused Hermione\'s heart to jump a bit. She knew she shouldn\'t feel this scared about what she was about to tell him, but she was.

\"I just want to say that I appreciate all you\'ve taught me, sir,\" Hermione said respectfully, \"I feel-\"

Hermione was suddenly taken aback as Snape rolled his eyes at her and turned from her quickly. His tall frame made it\'s way from her own, melting into the darkness of the room.

\"I couldn\'t care less how you feel, Miss Granger. Enough buttering up,\" he muttered testily before turning back, handing her a long piece of parchment roughly. He didn\'t notice how Hermione\'s face had fallen deeply at his words as she took the paper from him.

It wasn\'t his business to care about those sorts of things. He did notice however, that the girl started a bit as their fingertips accidentally brushed against one another as he handed her the parchment. This wasn\'t his business, but it did intrigue him.

\"I shall give you precisely five minutes to gather the ingredients on the list from my storage,\" Snape muttered without glancing up at her, raising a glimmering gold pocket watch in front of him.

\"Begin.\"

Hermione felt her heart and stomach lurch at the unexpected order, and her eyes swam as she looked at the small, barely legible words on the parchment she held before her. She felt her legs shaking as she recognized the ingredients, going to the storage room quickly, noting with relief that his labels were far easier to read than his list.

Although Snape was in the other room, she felt as if she were being watched, which only added to her nerves. Her stomach hollowed every time she thought of Snape\'s black eyes, and sinister sneer. She went through the items on the parchment, reappearing into the main classroom moments later, placing them on the table before her.

She made several trips, and was careful not to drop one thing. She knew that one misstep would mean a failure. Snape would use anything, even the smallest sneakiest excuse to take off marks. He was a Slytherin after all.

\"Stop.\"

His voice was crisp and commanding, and Hermione couldn\'t help but let out a large sigh as she stood behind the table holding her various items. She hadn\'t missed one, even though Snape\'s handwriting was almost impossible to decipher. She guessed he\'d saved that list especially for her, and every other Gryffindor student of his.

Snape held his parchment in front of him, glancing at the items he\'d ordered to be brought forth, not hiding the sneer caused by the girl\'s unnerving ability to do exactly as ordered. He supposed it was this, which caused him to do what he did next.

As he surveyed the objects, suddenly, almost casually, the edge of his dark quill tapped against a small vial of Beazol tears. Hermione had been so caught up in watching her professor\'s face, that she didn\'t even notice it until it was too late.

Both Snape and Hermione watched in silence as the small vial toppled precariously on the edge of the table before sailing onto the stone floor, smashing into several jagged shards. Hermione felt her stomach whirring as she viewed the green mixture spilling onto the ground.

\"Oops,\" Snape said flatly, without a trace of empathy as he made a dark X upon his paper, \"seems you forgot one, Miss Granger. Tsk tsk, how silly of you.\"

Hermione felt her cheeks flaming with the injustice of it all and she wished desperately that she could find the courage to talk back to him. Just this once. She\'d had the courage to punch Malfoy, to go up against many dangers, to help Harry defeat Voldemort, but standing up to Severus Snape was just one thing that she could not find the courage to do.

\"Clean that up,\" Snape ordered, motioning to the green tears upon the ground, \"and be quick about it.\"

Hermione felt her face almost burning as she did as she was told, knowing there was no other way. She grasped her wand and following the many orders Snape had given her class in the past, she disposed of the vial and the mixture in their appropriate containers before returning to where Snape stood waiting impatiently before another desk, which held a large cauldron.

Hermione swallowed thickly in the silence of the Potion\'s room. She never noticed how quiet it could be. Or how dark. Or how cold. Even though it was June, she was still chilly in her uniform. She allowed a sneaking look back at her professor, only to view him skeptically staring back at her. She felt her heart do a strange and mismatched beat before dragging her eyes away.

\"There are three vials here holding various ingredients,\" Snape finally said stiffly, \"choose the correct item required for this potion, and brew it as needed. You have one half hour.\"

With that, Snape placed another sheet of parchment on the desk next to Hermione\'s trembling hand, this time actually taking note of her shaking. Hermione nodded with a thick gulp, her eyes scanning the parchment quickly. Almost at once she selected the blue vial, and began hurriedly working on the potion she was creating.

Snape walked by on occasion, glancing at the potion she was working on and marking little notes down on his parchment, causing Hermione to begin breathing spastically. When Snape was close to her, she found it very hard to concentrate. What could he be writing? What if he was lying right there on his parchment? She wouldn\'t be able to stop him.

Snape\'s \'visits\' were short and sporadic, and therefore Hermione was on a roll by the half time mark of her potion making, and although she was normally confident in all her scholastic endeavors, she was positively pulsating with fright over this one.

Hermione had been nervous during Snape\'s exams before -what rational student wasn\'t?- but this one was different somehow. It was much harder than usual, and timed! And it didn\'t help that Snape continued to disappear and reappear all the time. She felt as if she may-

\"Time\'s up.\"

If only it hadn\'t been for Snape\'s whispered order in Hermione\'s ear, she may have been able to finish her exam with pride in having completed a highly complex potion. Instead, it seemed Snape had timed the exact moment when she would be off her guard to tell her that her time was up.

With a sudden jolt at the sensation of his warm breath against her ear, and notion that he was inches from her back, and sheer surprise of his arrival, Hermione had upset her cauldron, sending it sailing off the edge of the desk. And in a sudden, desperate manner that wasn\'t very demure, Hermione went sailing after her cauldron, trying in vain to grasp its rickety handle before it fell...But was seconds too late.

Hermione could only watch in horror as her creation clanked to the ground with an unearthly rattle, and spill its entire contents, leaving her sprawled over her desk, and trying not to sob. She didn\'t even care that Snape was still behind her, watching as her head gently fell onto the desk in despair.

\"Twice in one afternoon,\" came the silken voice of Snape from behind her, \"that\'s quite a feat, Miss Granger. It would appear you’ve been taking lessons from Longbottom.\"

Hermione couldn\'t find the strength to fight or even answer him, and instead prepared to slide back into her chair, with her head slumped into her chest, and tears nearly blinding her. But Snape\'s sudden drawing nearer prohibited her from doing so. As she backed up off the table, she did so into the knowing form of her professor.

She felt her entire body growing rigid as the contact was made. Snape\'s hips against the small of her back. She felt her stomach bottoming, and was ashamed to note that it was bottoming out with thrills of enticement and not of horror. She didn\'t move at all, knowing that if she did it would only make this moment more inappropriate.

She felt a gasp dying within her chest as one, lean hand made it\'s way slowly up the small of her back, coming to rest at the end of her mussed hair. She felt as Snape\'s finger coiled around one haphazard curl, pulling at it, which caused a sensation of painful enjoyment, followed shortly by his hands coming to rest heavily upon her shoulders.

It was in this moment that Hermione suspected a trade was in order. A good mark for a good shag. While with any other figure she would be horrified at this exchange, the thought that Snape might be proposing such an erotic act thrilled her deeply. It was tall, dark, frightening Snape after all. The man was raw power and sensuality all at once, and Hermione found herself hoping desperately that he was silently making such an offer.

As if answering such a request, Snape\'s hands slowly placed on her shoulders now descended slowly down her arms, slipping around to the front so surreptitiously that she hadn\'t time to properly gasp when his palm grasped at her left breast roughly.

Hermione winced at the contact through her shirt, feeling that familiar painful pleasure shooting through her as his fingertips danced around her swelling breast. She felt her head involuntarily slipping backward, resting on his shoulder.

She did gasp however when Snape\'s warm and surprisingly soft lips came to kiss her neck softly, sneakily. She didn\'t move against the jolting sensation, and felt the sparks of desire going off as his kisses moved to her jaw, then chin, then lips which he hungrily coveted. His hand had slipped from her breast along the way, and now lay flat on the front of her skirt, almost possessively.

And just as Hermione felt herself melting entirely into the experience, finding that Snape\'s kisses were more than she could have even imagined in the darkest and most erotic realm of her mind, he stopped. He pulled away quickly, moving from her even faster.

Hermione\'s eyes weren\'t even open by the time that he was several feet away from her, writing something on his parchment. She watched on in confusion as he wrote something down, his quill moving madly. Seconds later his dark eyes flicked back up at her.

\"Replace all the ingredients in their proper places while I tally up your mark,\" Snape said with a merry smirk, \"and since I don\'t believe it shall take long to do so, I suggest you work quickly.\"

Hermione, feeling as if the world was ending, kept in the tears of her failure rather well as she nodded, gathering the various items from her first task and went about putting the ingredients back in their respective places in the storage area. She did all this however, with a very heavy heart. Every time she swallowed she could feel the thick lump of defeat, reminding her.

It was stuffy in the storage room, and lit by only the open door leading into the classroom, and one small candle on a shelf above her. She felt suffocated and sucked dry, which she thought aptly went with her dark mood. Was he failing her for not kissing him back? What had she done wrong?

She\'d never failed at anything in her entire life as a student. Ever since she had attended school, muggle or wizarding, she had excelled. She had been the top of her class every time. And now, all at once, her academic career was lost over one, stupid, unfair exam.

She had nearly completed her task when she felt the unmistakable sense that she was being watched again. This time it was so strong, that she actually turned sharply and suppressed a thick gasp.

Snape stood casually leaning against the doorframe, watching her as she worked. She felt her cheeks burning at the prospect that he may have seen some of the tears that snuck down her cheeks moments before.

His face however was unreadable, and she couldn\'t tell if he was vexed with her. In the end she was sure he had come to tell her that she\'d failed her exam, and was merely savoring the moment beforehand. She was about to question him when he stood straight, slowly closing the door to the storage room behind him.

\"Why did you not voice your opposition?\" Snape murmured swiftly, drawing nearer to her. He noted the way her eyes followed the path his feet were walking. He was a tall, foreboding man and Hermione was frightened at the knowledge that she was locked in a small storage room with him.

\"My opposition?\" Hermione said dazedly, trying to concentrate through all the madness, \"to-\"

\"To what I did to you, you silly girl,\" Snape snapped rather irritably. For such a brilliant girl, she seemed a bit slow on the uptake, \"knocking over your Beazol tears.\"

\"Oh, I thought you did it by accident,\" Hermione stuttered, finding that Snape\'s close presence was more than distracting. She felt her stomach flutter strangely as Snape\'s hand came to rest on the shelf above her shoulder.

Ron and Harry wouldn\'t be waiting for her, she realized as Snape\'s face came to rest inches from her own. She\'d told them to go back to the common room and that she\'d be up later just before she\'d come into the exam. There was no one to find her.

And for some dark reason, this thrilled her.

\"You\'re lying,\" Snape murmured darkly, his eyes scanning her face. Hermione could clearly detect the scent of herbs and something unmistakably manly with it. It was a pleasant scent that tickled her nose.

\"I\'m not,\" Hermione finally managed to get out rather weakly, wishing she had more confidence in her tone. She felt her own eyes becoming heavy, as if she wanted to sleep, but didn\'t properly fit with the consistent thud of her heart.

\"Oh, but you are,\" Snape whispered sinisterly, \"it clearly shows in your eyes. Gryffindors are horrible liars.\"

Hermione wanted to defend her house, but found that the sight of Snape\'s mouth was slowly becoming distracting to the point of leaving her completely speechless. She could only watch in shocked interest as Snape\'s other hand came to rest on the shelf above her other shoulder, trapping her.

\"And what of my actions at the desk?\" Snape murmured darkly, his eyes not leaving her own. Hermione felt her heart and head spinning, and knew that she couldn\'t answer that.

\"Did I fail my exam, professor?\" Hermione suddenly squeaked, not knowing what else to say in such a situation. It was entirely inappropriate, and went unanswered. She felt her breath sucking in as Snape\'s hands lowered to her hip, slowly drawing around to the front.

\"Answer my questions first,\" Snape teased darkly, his eyes trained on her blouse, which he then untucked from her skirt, \"why did you not defend yourself this afternoon?\"

\"I don\'t know,\" Hermione answered quickly, which was partly truth. This entire scenario was more than startling, and it was hard to come up with rational answers to strange questions. Why, her own professor had just untucked her blouse from her skirt!

\"Did you wish to please me?\" Snape offered in an almost bored manner as his hips swiftly came into contact with her own. Hermione felt her eyes widening in shock at the sensation, but did nothing to stop it.

\"Yes,\" she offered softly, her eyes unblinking and staring into his own, \"I wanted-\"

\"Yes?\"

\"I don\'t know exactly,\" Hermione answered truthfully, \"But I knew that if I said anything, you\'d just be cross with me and tell me if it was my own fault. I didn\'t want to get you angry.\"

\"I see,\" Snape said in a pondering tone as he glanced her up and down. She felt her cheeks burning at the inspection, but found that she couldn\'t look away from him.

\"Are you afraid of me, Miss Granger?\" At this, Snape looked more than interested in her answer. His eyes actually flashed, and Hermione could see her own pale and frightened face reflected in his dark, enlarged pupils.

\"Yes,\" Hermione breathed softly, not even realizing until moments later that she\'d spoken the word aloud.

\"Why?\"

\"Please professor,\" Hermione said thickly, finally finding her voice. \"I don\'t feel-\"

\"I couldn\'t care less how you feel,\" Snape said strictly, causing something within Hermione to stir in a highly enticing manner. Something in his urgent whisper that demanded she stop. \"I wish for you to answer my questions.\"

Hermione didn\'t answer for a long time after that, mainly because she was unsure of what to do. Part of her wanted to rush from the storage room. But the larger, more swaying part of her wanted to stay right there and see this thing through. The sensation of his groin against her own mixed with the closeness his face and scent of his skin were all commanding that she stay.

And so she did.

\"I\'m afraid,\" Hermione offered hopelessly seconds later, \"because you make me feel strange.\"

\"Strange?\"

Snape scanned the face of Hermione openly now, curious as to what \'strange\' exactly meant to a girl like her.

\"In my stomach,\" Hermione responded like a true student wishing to know the root of her questioning. Her answer spoken however made her feel entirely foolish and before she could say more to salvage what little dignity she had left however, she felt the cool hand of Snape, slipping up the bottom of her untucked shirt and resting on her upper abdomen.

\"Here?\"

In a haze that could only be lust and adrenaline, Hermione shook her head slowly, her own arms limp at her side. She felt as if all she could feel in the entire room was the heat from Snape\'s body, and the cool touch of his hand.

\"Lower.\"

She waited for the inevitable release, for him to move away from her in disgust at taking this game too far and order her from his sight. In anticipation at this, Hermione turned her head from him in shame. But the cry and the disgust did not come, and instead Hermione felt Snape\'s hand slip to the lower part of her abdomen.

\"There?\" Snape offered huskily, causing Hermione\'s entire body to shudder in delighted anticipation. The sound of his voice, and the heat of the room combined with Snape\'s slow strokes over her stomach were causing her to grow weak in the knees. Still, she could not face him to answer \'lower still\'.

Suddenly Hermione\'s jaw was grasped rather roughly with Snape\'s free hand, and brought to face him once more. She was about to say something, anything, to break this spell he had over her, but found her voice gone when Snape\'s hand did slip lower as if on her unspoken request, down into her most private of areas.

She felt the contact instantly, causing jolts of pleasure to soar up through her center. She felt her entire form shuddering soundly, her eyelids dropping heavily as two lean fingers began stroking her yearning sex, as she arched against the shelves behind her.

\"Oh,\" Hermione shuddered deeply, her body tingling with every pinch and stroke Snape induced. If she had opened her eyes she would have seen the satisfied gleam in his dark eyes, before his too closed.

Without another word spoken between them, Snape\'s free hand grasped the back of Hermione\'s head, dragging her mouth to his own, nibbling and sucking at her as she moaned into his mouth, his dark tresses tickling the end of her nose. His stroking below became deeper, rougher, causing her to thrust into his greedy hand, yelping and whimpering for more.

It wasn\'t moments later before Hermione felt herself building up more and more, her entire body shaking when Snape\'s finger\'s suddenly left her still waiting for that ultimate release. Her eyes darted open in frustrated shock only to view Snape looking rather flushed and with eyes half shut.

\"This isn\'t right,\" Snape said almost flustered as he looked to her darkly. Hermione felt herself rubbing against his trousers needily, not caring that she seemed a wanton woman. She\'d never felt anything like this in her life, and didn\'t want it to stop. She didn\'t know what made Snape stop suddenly, but he did, looking to her severely as if she should oppose what they were doing.

But she didn\'t.

There was something about it being so wrong that made it so good, she supposed. Snape must have felt it too, for it was only moments later before he\'d ripped her blouse open, pulling down her bra to reveal swelling breasts for him to taste.

She watched in fascination as his hands grasped them in his open palms, kneading them as Hermione head fell back in bliss. His mouth descended upon one pert and eager nipple quickly, and she pulled his dark head closer to her, gasping thickly as his tongue swirled around each nipple deftly before sucking harshly, leaving Hermione begging.

All the begging obviously had an effect on Snape, because not even a full moment later before his trousers were off and he was pumping into Hermione. She bumped against the shelves crying out for more as she gripped his broad shoulders tightly. He ground deeply into her, groaning loudly from time to time at the titillating sensation she caused within him.

Hermione felt her entire body pulsating with need for him, and as he pinned her to the shelves with his powerful thrusts, she felt that overwhelming heat beginning to spread from the apex of her legs up her stomach, to the tip where Snape had touched her this afternoon.

It was then that Snape pressed his entire body against her own, rocking against her and sweeping into her deeply as she let out a pitchy cry of intense pleasure. Snape continued on seconds longer, with swift pumps of friction that had him moaning shakily into her damp hair in the end.

They stood pressed against one another tightly for only a moment, breathing harshly and loudly in the small room, with Hermione\'s forehead against Snape\'s chest. Then they broke away, with Hermione shaking slightly as she rearranged her clothes quickly and Snape disappearing from the storage room.

Hermione smoothed down her hair one final time, and came out of the storage room rather flushed, surprised to see Snape before his large desk, holding out a piece of parchment before him.

\"Take a seat,\" he said darkly, absently motioning to the chair. Hermione swallowed thickly, coming to rest before him. She felt something was entirely wrong with this set up, although she knew that this was routine from years of his finals. He was now going to tell her the grade she\'d earned.

\"You\'re marks are as follows,\" Snape said smoothly, as if their inappropriate coatis moments before hadn\'t even occurred. He held the parchment out in front of him, reading it stiffly.

\"1. Ingredient retrieving: 35 points out of a possible 40.

2. Potion brewing: 40 points out of a possible 50.

3. Extra knowledge: 10 points out of a possible 10. \"

At this Snape looked to see Hermione\'s face falling at an unnaturally rapid rate. She wasn\'t moving at all, and had acquired a rather startling pale pallor to her cheeks. She knew that she had done poorly with her potion brewing, and was lucky not to have failed it entirely. But she couldn\'t stop the horrified shrieking in her head that told her she was barely above average.

\"Which gives you a final total of 85 out of a possible 100,\" Snape finished, looking triumphantly to Hermione. \"Although I\'m sure you already knew that, didn\'t you, Miss Granger?\"

Hermione at that moment felt lower than she had ever felt in her entire existence of being. He hadn\'t been offering a trade. He hadn\'t said anything of the sort; she\'d merely assumed it. It was then that she remembered just who Professor Snape was. He was the sneaky, underhanded type. But she refused to let him have the upper hand, and instead merely nodded as she stood.

\"I see,\" Hermione offered, \"since this may be the last time I see you until my graduation ceremony tomorrow, and therefore the last time I may ever talk with you in private, please let me extend my thanks for your expansive tutelage, I have learned much in your classes and shall strive to do the best in whichever career path I eventually choose.\"

With that thoughtful speech, Hermione allowed herself to turn swiftly, moving to the door of the classroom with defeat thrumming in her ears. She didn\'t care to look back and see the malice in Snape\'s eyes that she knew would be there.

\"If you wish to heighten your mark, Miss Granger\" Snape suddenly added before she could leave, \"I shall expect a twenty page essay on how to brew the perfect sleeping draught, along with it’s side effects and so forth on my desk tomorrow morning. Perhaps then you shall earn your usual 100 percent.\"

Hermione turned back slightly, trying not to let the pleasure shine in her face at his words. Although it hardly seemed like a favor, Snape never offered deals like this to anyone, not even his own precious Slytherin\'s. And Hermione knew that her essay would earn her the rightly deserved 100 percent.

\"Thank you, sir.\"

Snape waved his hand absently at her, wishing for her to leave from his sight. Hermione also knew that she would not see him tomorrow morning when she dropped off her paper and received her perfect mark. This was the end of it.

\"Good afternoon, Professor Snape,\" Hermione finally offered as she slipped out the door of the classroom, not waiting to hear Snape\'s response, because she knew there wouldn\'t be one waiting for her.