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The scorpion stinger lands in Hermione’s potion with a splat. A few drops of the soft blue potion go flying and land on the desk, crystallising immediately into tiny, durable snowflakes. A few land on her robes, where they do the same.
Around the scorpion stinger, the perfect, lovely blue liquid turns sickly green.
Hermione gapes at her potion. Looks up. Gapes at the man in front of it.
“Are you serious?” Nobody had told her dropping additional ingredients into her cauldron would be part of her mastery exam!
“Are you?” Severus retorts immediately, “seeing as you didn’t even cast a simple shield charm over your cauldron, apparently not. Do you even want this mastery?”
Overdramatic bastard.
“Do it again,” he says, turning away. In a fit of childishness, Hermione sticks out her tongue at his back.
The next time, he gets her by casting an actual stunner at her.
Hermione leaps out of the way at the last moment, slamming her hip hard into one of the benches along the wall. He doesn’t follow the curse up with a second one. Instead, his fingers hold his wand loosely, almost carelessly. A part of Hermione, a surprisingly large part, wants to kick him in the teeth. She took kung fu lessons for a while. She can do a mean kick.
Instead, she dusts herself off and grits her teeth against the pain in her hip.
“What was that for!”
“Distraction,” he provides smoothly. “Your potion is burning.”
She turns to the side, and of course it is. The sharp smell of burnt potion already rises to her nose, and she banishes the whole thing.
“If you can’t ignore distractions while brewing,” he says nonchalantly and hits her with a wordless bruise-be-gone charm, “you won’t make it through this mastery exam. Again.”
“That’s how you want to play then,” she mutters at the ginger roots she needs for her second try. Fine.
“Why are you doing this again?” Harry asks her a few days later, barely out of breath. Only the slight sweat at his hairline even hints at his exertion. They turn a corner, Hermione’s breath noticeably loud in the early spring air. While she’s stumbling along, Harry’s pace is steady and easy.
“I need to get some endurance,” she returns, pretending she doesn’t sound a little like a dying walrus. Harry, kind soul that he is, plays along. “Last time, he levitated the ingredients away from me, so I had to run all over the room to catch them.”
Harry stares at her incredulously. They turn another corner, and some neighbors wave at them. Harry waves back. Hermione hopes her attempts to swipe her sweaty hair away from her forehead count as a wave.
“Just charm them so they can’t be levitated,” he says and smirks. “You’re usually so good at spells.”
Hermione grits her teeth. “I did,” she hisses, “so he started throwing things. And some of these ingredients are very magic sensitive. I can’t use accios willy-nilly.”
Harry stumbles in surprise. His laugh is a wheezing thing. It makes Hermione feel a little better about her own shuddering breath.
“You know,” he tells her, “I know we say this a lot. But Snape is kind of nuts.”
For the first time, Hermione feels like she wants to agree with him.
Thing is – everyone had told her she was crazy for going to him in the first place.
“Snape was a horrid potions teacher when we were in school, and he’ll be a horrid teacher if he has an apprentice,” Ron had said, mashed potatoes spilling out of his mouth. “It’s just how things are.”
“He wasn’t horrid, ” Hermione protested through her grimace. “He was just strict. And maybe a little questionable in his teaching methods.”
“And you think that has changed?” asked Harry.
Hermione hadn’t said anything then. When Ginny approached her later, a worried frown scrunching up her freckled forehead and whispered, “I just think he may be mean to you. None of us want you to get hurt.” Hermione didn’t protest the sentiment. She even hugged Ginny.
It seemed like everyone and their mothers had an opinion about her possible apprenticeship with Severus. All of the Weasleys certainly did, and a multitude of their former classmates. Even Professor McGonnagal frowned at her when Hermione had gone to sign the contract.
“Are you sure about this, dear girl?” she’d asked, looking intently at Hermione. “With your marks, you can pick and choose your instructors.”
“I know,” Hermione said, signing the contract with a flourish. “But he’s the best.”
Interestingly, the only one who didn’t protest through all of this had been Severus himself.
Maybe that’s why he’s making me do this , Hermione thinks the following week as she stirs her potion. Around her, four different types of shield charms shimmer in the air. Her ingredients and utensils are charmed against all kinds of summoning and levitating magic, glued with spells to her workbench and, in some cases, physically tied to them. A few days ago, Severus discovered that he could inch the heavier ones along the surface with some strong pulling. He seems to have a lot of strength in his arms. Which is certainly not something she should be noticing. Not under the circumstances, not ever. He’s no longer her professor, but that doesn’t make him attainable .
But. Well. If a man has forearms like that, who can blame her for noticing.
Either way, punishment. Both overdramatic and unnecessary. He has put up with her for three years, he certainly can manage the three weeks till her mastery exam.
Out of the corner of her eyes, something moves. His hand, reaching for her fire.
She thwacks it with her ladle. The pink potion dyes the sleeve of his robes a soft purple.
“Spilling your potion? That could get the other person injured, if not killed.”
Hermione rolls her eyes. “You know as well as me that this potion is harmless until I add the porcupine quills,” she retorts, sprinkling the quills into the liquid. The potion hisses. Severus steps away with a nod.
It’s as much of a compliment as she’s going to get, and she feels warm with it. Maybe she is getting the hang of this, even if she’s not quite got the hang of ignoring how strangely attractive this man is.
Of course, that’s before the bagpipes start.
•──────✧✦✧──────•
Severus has to admit he’s having fun with this.
Of course, he’s reluctant to confess to any kind of enjoyment, lest someone smells it and comes along to ruin it. However, his number one fun ruiner (Minerva) is unlikely to sabotage her own fun just for the sake of boycotting his. He should probably count himself lucky. Severus would certainly not enjoy making a fool of himself, as Minerva is doing, even if it is to train the best apprentice he’s ever likely to have.
From his spot in the corner of the room, he watches Hermione dice and add ingredients. Her hair, impossibly bushy as always, is tamed in a braid. Her hand is steady as she stirs, despite the horrid cacophony of sounds Minerva is producing on her bagpipe.
After all these years, Severus still isn’t sure whether the woman can actually play the instrument, or if she’s just pretending it’s supposed to sound like that.
Either way, it works for his purpose.
After three days of this, Hermione seems to have gotten the hang of ignoring it. She barely even looks up as Minerva mangles her way through O Come All Ye Faithful. With a lazy wave of his wand, Severus provides some additional confetti (Slytherin colours, obviously). They land harmlessly on the shield Hermione has erected and drift to the floor around her.
They still have a week until the final test and somehow, Severus has to admit that he’s running out of ideas. He has tried everything, from outright hexing the girl, to tackling her, to throwing all sorts of things at her. There have been apples, wet rags, even a cauldron - which rebounded on one of her shields and gave Minerva quite the shiner. Severus himself ducked, and he regrets nothing. He set bees loose in the laboratory, stole her ingredients and her tools, replaced – on one memorable instant – her wand with one of the Weasley’s joke wands. It resulted in one of the best distractions to date, with her crouched on the floor laughing tears while the bright purple chicken strutted around her workbench with its beak raised pridefully.
He’s had Minerva playing in the room for three days now, and Hermione doesn’t even flinch anymore. He recruited Flitwick to sing, Hagrid to bring in some of his newest pets, and, in a moment of madness, invited in the whole Weasley clan. That afternoon gave him a headache unlike any of the other options.
Hermione looks up at nothing at all anymore, and her potions always turn out perfect.
It’s good. It’s a good thing, and he should be proud. He is, and isn’t that just massively disconcerting. He’s proud, and impressed, and he likes how professional she is being. And not even because it reflects on him as an instructor – which it does – but mostly because, he hates to admit it, he likes… her.
He grimaces. In seven days, she’ll do her mastery with perfect grades (because of course she will), and then she’ll leave. That’s what people do, he reminds himself. Even this unflinching, uptight, brilliant, witty, infuriating, surprisingly pretty know-it-all he’s watched grow up over the past few years.
He watches her stir. Whisps of brown curls fall into her eyes, which glint with the small fire beneath the cauldron. Her hand, slim and competent, nicked and scarred in places, seems almost indecent around the stirring rod.
The thing is, he muses as he pelts her half-heartedly with conjured kittens a few hours later, it’s not like anything in the apprenticeship contract says they can’t stay friends . Not that Severus has had many friends in the past few years, but he is familiar with the concept, and he’s not miserable enough to just reject the possibility outright. He knows he’s not the most amiable man around, but – how did Hermione put it last year after too much eggnog?– when he puts his mind to it, he’s a damn delight . That’s what she had said, eyes bright, cheeks flushed, hair a glorious disaster, red dress glinting in the candlelight. And she meant it, he knows.
The cats really aren’t doing it anymore. She barely glances at them. He vanishes them and raises the temperature of the room instead.
Over at her brewing station, thin beads of sweat start to form over her brow. Transfixed, Severus’ gaze follows one over the curve of her cheek, down the dip of her jaw, over the vast expanse of her neck. It disappears in her robes and he swallows.
Yes. Friends. That’s exactly what he’s aiming for.
The days race past, as they are wont to do when one attempts to treasure them. Before he can grasp how it happened, they have reached the day before her final exam.
When he enters the laboratory, she’s already there. She isn’t brewing yet, just laying out her tools, and he watches her for a while.
Her hands are practised, sure of themselves. They weren’t back when she first started. She’d tried to be confident, but her eyes and hands betrayed her insecurity.
Now, there is no insecurity anywhere in her bearing. She’ll be a wreck before the exam itself – as she always is – but now, a day away, she carries herself with well-deserved confidence.
He tries not to find it attractive. He makes a valiant effort.
She looks up suddenly. Over the years, she somehow developed a sense of him. She knows when he enters a room, when he’s watching her, knows if he’s particularly upset or particularly amused. Knows when he wants sugar in his tea and when he wants brandy.
He knows giving it all up will be painful. He knows loss, knows goodbyes. He knows how they taste, knows the feeling in the air as they approach. And still, he finds himself pushing away the knowledge.
He’ll be sad enough tomorrow. He can still enjoy today.
She smiles at him, and he gives in to it helplessly.
•──────✧✦✧──────•
Something is different about today.
It feels strange. When Hermione notices him standing in the doorway, he must already have been there for a while. It’s just a sneaking feeling, but she has learnt to trust her feelings on these things.
Was he… watching her?
Her hand shakes, and she frowns at it. She’s not getting nervous now , is she? The exam is so close, and her mastery too, but she knows she is prepared. She is ready.
Still, when he smiles at her, nervousness rises like a tidal wave.
Hermione worries at her bottom lip as he makes his way towards her.
“Just brewing today,” Severus says. “Pick a potion you’d like to practise.”
Hermione blinks at him for a second. That sounds like a trap.
But he looks relaxed. And she did so well these last few days – she can hardly imagine anything more he could do to unsettle her.
While she gathers the ingredients, he leans against one of the other desks and watches her.
“You did well recently,” he says eventually, unprompted, and it startles her so much that she almost misses the pickled mandrake root she is slicing. But she didn’t train for nothing and manages to pass it off as a mere moment of hesitation.
“Thank you,” she says. It’s awkward. Over all her years as an apprentice, he rarely paid her compliments. She’s not sure how to react to one.
Hermione glances to the side. He’s still standing there, hands in the pockets of the black trousers he wears under his robe. The robe is open, in a rare show of relaxation. The last time she saw him so unbuttoned must have been at that dreaded Yuletide party, where she drank all that eggnog. He was the one to drop her off at her rooms, not complaining even once despite all the giggling she was doing.
And why is she thinking about that now? There’s no point in it, she knows there isn’t. After all, she’s leaving soon – too soon. Not just leaving his employ, but leaving Hogwarts overall. Her chambers here will be cleared out, and she’s already packed. Possibly, he’ll take someone else on, and she won’t just leave, she’ll be replaced. It’s a chilling thought.
She mentally catalogues the particularly outstanding students of this year’s graduating class. Smith, possibly, could be apprentice material. Or O’Connor. Both very smart, lovely girls, with bright smiles and manageable hair.
She glances at Severus again. He’s still watching her. This time, her knife misses the root, and she cannot pass it off. The blade hits her cutting board with a clack. He shows no sign of having seen, although he must have.
Stop it, she tells herself firmly. Yes, she may be replaced. There’s nothing she can do about it, no more than she can do about her replacement probably being funnier, younger, prettier than her.
Not that it matters . She’s off for a great spot as a researcher in one of the Ministry-owned labs. She’s got the career, the education, the brains . What does it matter if Severus won’t remember her after this?
She peeks up at him. There he is, leaning against the desk. His dark eyes are watching her carefully, but there’s a softness in them. As she watches him watch her, his hand rises to rub against his bottom lip in thought.
Something strange happens in Hermione’s stomach. It’s a very nice bottom lip – matches his top lip in its surprising fullness, in its soft curve. Sometimes, when he smirks, it’s particularly alluring, and Hermione can’t deny thinking about–
Oh dear. No, no, no no no. She shakes her head viciously. You’ve spent years keeping your distance! Don’t you dare go down that rabbithole now, when you’ll never see him again after tomorrow!
That thought keeps her from glancing up for almost an hour. Unfortunately, at some point, the potion has to rest. She wants to curse herself into next Sunday. Why did she pick a potion with almost an hour of resting time?
Meticulously, she cleans her tools. Puts away the ingredients. Preps the next steps. Glances up at the clock.
Still fifteen minutes until she can touch the potion again and nothing to fill them with.
Helplessly, she looks up.
There he is.
Still standing by the stupid desk. He’s leaning back on his hands and his legs are crossed. They are very long legs. Hermione’s eyes follow them down to his boots, and up again. Past knees, and … thighs, and heavens no – crotch. He’s wearing a black waistcoat over his shirt, which is slightly untucked. It doesn’t hide the slight dip in his waist, though it hides his chest. It’s buttoned up all the way, his adam’s apple jotting out above the collar. There’s his sharp jaw, softly curved lips, the big nose. There are his eyes, dark and glittering, watching her beneath heavy brows.
Oh, Merlin, what is she doing !
There is no way he didn’t see her checking him out. Because that’s what she was doing , Merlin help her.
She knows she’s blushing before she feels the heat on her face. Hastily, she turns to her potion. What’s the next step again?
Ah yes, add the poppy seeds.
“Granger, what–” she hears, then she throws them into the cauldron. There is a brief second until her brain comes back online, just in time for her to tackle Severus against the ground as a booming explosion shakes the dungeons.
After, the silence is deafening.
Severus, Hermione thinks hysterically, is rather comfortable beneath her. She landed sprawled across him, head on his chest, and it’s a very solid chest. He smells like potions, though that’s hardly surprising, and like sandalwood. She likes it.
One of his hands is on her lower back. He must have put it there to keep her from crashing to the stone floor. It’s a warm weight somewhere close to her hip, almost on her bum. She can feel the warmth gathering there, and wishes there wasn’t as much cloth in the way.
She peeks up at him through her hair. He’s looking back. She expects him to look angry, but he just looks incredulous.
“What on earth, ” he says, still breathless from the impact of their fall, “was that. ”
Hermione nibbles on her bottom lip and winces. “I added the poppy seeds too early.”
He looks back at her. He’s not gaping, because Severus doesn’t gape, but it comes close.
“You did. You added the damn poppy seeds too early.” There is a pause. Then: “Why the fuck did you add the poppy seeds too early? That’s a third-year mistake!”
Hermione’s mouth opens and closes wildly. There really isn’t an acceptable excuse for that kind of thing. Still, it bursts out of her. “Well, it wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t kept looking at me like that!”
His hand leaves her back to gesticulate aimlessly. She mourns the loss. “Am I not permitted to watch my own apprentice brew? What is wrong with you today! We went through all that trouble to get you used to distractions and you crumble when I look at you?”
“When you look at me like that yes!”
“Like what !”
“Like– Like–”
He watches her struggle with keen eyes.
“Like that!” she yells, and almost pokes out his eye when she points at him. “You’re doing it again!”
He frowns at her, going a little cross-eyed in the attempt. Then he shakes his head and seems to remember they’re lying on top of each other like two slices of bread. Inappropriate bread. One slice of which would like to stay on the other slice, thank you very much.
Hermione tries to focus on the matter at hand.
Severus pushes the both of them up, steadying her with a hand on her elbow when her blood swiftly relocates and leaves her dizzy.
“I can promise you,” he says, much too close to her and hand sliding from her elbow to her forearm. It’s a very large hand, and Hermione stares at his long, pale fingers where they fit perfectly around her arm. Their nicks and scrapes remind her of her own fingers. They might look good together, she thinks, if you put them next to each other. Or even intertwined them. It may be an interesting experiment to conduct, for aesthetics.
Severus doesn’t continue his sentence.
Hermione looks up to find he is watching her. There is that fire in his eyes again – warm and steady like a burning hearth. Hermione wants to stretch out in front of that glow like a cat. Possibly on a rug. Definitely without her clothes.
Her tongue is out and licking her lips before she knows it. His eyes fix on the motion.
“I can promise you,” he picks up his previous sentence again. “If I were looking at you any type of way, I would know.”
It would, Hermione muses, butterflies in her stomach rioting, be a much more convincing statement if he didn’t say it to her mouth.
She is sure she is blushing. He’s still looking at her. Why won’t he stop bloody looking at her.
She thinks she knows why. The thought feels heady, intoxicating. Like an academic theory she burns to test, only – dare she think it – better.
It’s less than a day till her exam and despite all her victories, Hermione suddenly finds herself thoroughly distracted.
•──────✧✦✧──────•
To his credit, Severus really tries looking somewhere that’s not her lips.
Unfortunately, they are rosy, and glistening slightly from where she licked them. They are very plush, and look incredibly soft. Severus thinks it’s rather indecent of her to have those kinds of lips.
When he finally wrenches his eyes away, he is greeted with hers, looking at him steadily.
They are very brown. Soft, dark brown. He likes them. They are good eyes, sharp, full of intelligence, wit and badly hidden passion.
Right now, they look like he knows they do when he gives her a particularly hard puzzle to solve. The way they widen, allowing more of the flickering torchlight to glisten in her eyes, tells him she has just come to a revelation.
Judging by the little adorable gasp she draws in, it must be quite the thought.
He’s still holding her arm, he realises suddenly. It’s deceptively soft, though he knows she is strong enough to lug about heavy barrels of magic-sensitive ingredients on her own. All of her is so soft, warm and inviting, with steel hidden underneath.
From the corner, Hermione’s cauldron emits a mighty burp.
Before he knows how it happened, she has whirled away. He blinks at the space where she was standing just a moment ago. There’s some leftover warmth on the hand he still has extended dumbly, like an abandoned mannequin.
He turns to watch her take care of her ruined potion.
“I was going to say you are prepared for tomorrow,” Severus hears himself comment. “But recent events have led me to reconsider that statement.”
She carefully wipes off her assortment of knives. They were a gift for her twentieth birthday, and to see her use them thrills him more than he would feel comfortable admitting.
“I am prepared,” she says, and sticks her nose up in the air in a gesture of pride that he should not find endearing. “This was a hiccup. It won’t happen tomorrow.”
He frowns at her. His backs till smarts from the fall they took, but he refuses to think about it. She was soft and heavy on top of him, making him feel all sorts of things, none of them about the heavy stone at his back.
Right. Not thinking about it.
“How can you be sure of that? What if your examiner looks at you that way?” he asks instead.
Hermione lowers her arms from where they were holding up her silver knife to study it for stains. They shake slightly. Is she nervous now ? “Are you being obtuse on purpose? I don’t care about that . It won’t be you doing the looking, after all.”
Severus crosses his arms in front of his chest and her gaze flickers down. None of this is making any sense to him at all, but it’s almost like his body knows something he doesn’t. He feels flushed, which is a rare feeling. His heart is nearly racing out of his chest. For once, he doesn’t mind either sensation.
Hermione, as always, looks magnificent. Her hair is wild around her face, and her eyes glow with the excitement of a new discovery, and something else. Something warm, promising, something inviting–
Oh, he suddenly realises with a start. That’s what I was looking at her like.
He looks back up to her face. In a gesture she copied from him, one of her eyebrows lifts.
Maybe, in another situation, he would feel mocked. Right now, it feels more like gentle teasing.
Still, he can feel himself blushing uncomfortably.
Hermione nearly drops her knife. Within two strides, he’s at her side to take it from her, murmuring something about knife safety. Except, somehow, his hand ends up on hers.
Hermione’s hand is soft and warm. Severus likes it, even if it makes him feel like he swallowed a whole nest of pygmy puffs, and now they’re all jumping around inside of him.
He looks up.
He knows he must be blotchy with his blush, but Hermione doesn’t seem to care. Her lips quirk in a helpless smile.
“This is a bad idea,” she says. “I don’t see how I’ll concentrate at all when I’m doing nothing but thinking of you during my exam. But it’s your own fault, really.”
Severus opens his mouth, he doesn’t know what for. To protest? To ask what she means?
But then she stands on her tip-toes and suddenly, those lips are on his. Electricity zips through him. Before he knows how it happened, his hands reach up to frame her face and pull her closer.
They don’t practise brewing much more that day. But they spend plenty of time on distractions.