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Close Proximity	By : MissLibrarian Category: Harry Potter > Het - Male/Female > Snape/Hermione Views: 2385 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own the magical world of Harry Potter nor any of the characters within it. I am not making any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 1-I
- 2-II
- 1
- 2
A/N: Hallo all! I am back once again with an AFF SS/HG exclusive for you all to hopefully enjoy very much :) I would say that this is a bit different from other things I have written, but all of my stories seem to have a life of their own in any case, there's never any knowing where any of them will end up to be honest.

I must admit that I haven't got the greatest reputation for being a very regular uploader (to say the least :/) but I promise I will try my hardest to keep my updates regular this time! If waiting for any chapters leaves any of you horribly frustrated at any time then please take a look at my other SS/HG stories.

This story is dedicated to all of the wonderful people who rated and reviewed my story 'In The Restricted Section', and who kept me writing throughout that tale and after, you guys are amazing. Thank you so much.

Also would just like to add that as always I am unbeta'd so please forgive any silly mistakes.

Thanks for reading, please leave me a review to let me know if the idea seems interesting or even if you just enjoyed it, I love hearing from you guys. Enjoy! ~Marie

Close Proximity

I

Hermione Granger felt breathless, there was very little air, she felt herself starting to panic as her breathing sped up in the darkness. She reached for her wand, struggling to move in the confined space, as soon as she felt the smooth wood in her fingertips she cast a light to try and make sense of where she was. Rough wooden boards were only inches from her nose and felt hard beneath her, as she flailed her arms to press her palms up against the splintering boards she felt her elbows scrape against the close wooden walls, she pushed up desperately with all her might but the lid above her would not give way.

The nightmarish realisation dawned on her as adrenaline surged through her body. She was in a coffin, buried alive.

She beat her fist against the coffin lid in an absolute panic, but even as she did so everything shifted, and she sat up in surprise in her bed – breathing deeply – trying to shake off the lingering horror of her bad dream. Someone was knocking on her door. She pulled the sheets up around her and called out,

“Hello?”

Harry Potter opened the door and came in.

“It’s me. Didn’t you hear me knocking?”

“Sorry, I was lost in a dream, one I admit I’m glad to be out of,” Hermione said as she wrapped the sheets more tightly around herself and climbed out of bed. “What time is it?”

“Nearly six,” Harry replied, turning to face the wall as Hermione dragged some clothes on. She went to the window and pulled the curtains apart, blinking in the bright orange light of the dawn. “You asked me to wake you as soon as the Minister made his decision.”

“And?” She turned anxiously to her best friend, holding her breath.

“He’s given it the go-ahead,” Harry told her, his handsome grin curving on his face while she made a noise of triumph, clenching her fist. “There is a condition,” Harry continued, his smile getting even wider, “he’s insisting on his own particular choice for the team Elements expert.”

“You’re kidding!” Hermione gasped in dismay. “Who is it?”

Harry’s green eyes glinted in amusement.

“You’re not going to like it,” he told her.

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He seemed taller than she remembered, now she saw him again, he loomed in the corner of the room like a sinister shadow. He watched her as she approached him, his dark eyes staring at her unblinking beneath his deeply furrowed brow, his spine straight and shoulders pulled back by the heavy chains that bound his hands together behind him. She stopped a few feet away from him and glared right back.

“Miss Granger,” he said, the merest hint of a sneer in his voice. He bent his head forward in a half-hearted bow, but his thin lips were twisted into his usual mocking smile, one eyebrow infuriatingly quirked in an insolent way.

“Snape,” she said curtly, the word as short as her own nod of her head. “I can’t say it’s a pleasure.”

His smirk grew the smallest amount, while his dark eyes roved down her body and back up again, making her feel dirty. “You wound me,” he muttered intimately, and she turned away in disgust.

She concentrated on getting her gear together. The last thing she needed was to be unprepared should something not go according to plan. As she worked, however, she couldn’t help but be aware of the feeling that she was being watched. Sure enough, when she glanced his way, his dark eyes were still staring at her across the busy room. She slammed the lid of her analysis case shut with a bang.

“It’s always nice to catch up with old friends, isn’t it?” Harry whispered teasingly, putting his case on the desk next to hers, his green eyes laughing at her again.

“Keep up with that and I’ll make them leave you behind,” Hermione threatened, though her tone was just as teasing, and she had to fight to keep a smile from her lips. “I’m going to have enough trouble dealing with one sardonic bastard without you digging your oar in.”

Harry laughed at that, winking at her as he shouldered his backpack, testing the weight of it on his shoulders.

“Well it’s not too late to back out,” he reminded her. “There’s still time to say no.”

“I’m not going to give this opportunity up, Harry,” she murmured, her eyes fixed on the dark-haired man being busily prepped by a team of Aurors. “No matter what deterrents the Minister tries to lumber us with. Something happened to Harding and the others down in those caves and I won’t give up until we’ve found out what.”

“I know it,” he said, his tone more serious now. “Just try not to let him get to you too much.”

“I’ll try,” she promised, still looking across at Severus Snape while Harry touched her shoulder as he walked away.

She suddenly remembered back to the very last time she had seen him. She remembered the small, dingy room, with the faint fuggy smell of sweat and blood in the air. She remembered the way she had resorted to begging in the end, attempting anything she could think of to appeal to his human nature, and the way he had stared up at her with dark eyes in a cruelly bruised face and a resolutely-wordless smirk. She remembered the raging frustration.

This mission was going to be a tough one. She tried to ignore the niggling feeling of intense apprehension in her gut.

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The rainforests of Borneo had a soupy, pungent and close atmosphere which pressed and clamoured near to Hermione, as soon as they apparated. The heat and humidity were almost unbearable. She wiped the back of her hand across her instantly-sweating forehead.

“This way,” Harry said, and four people followed after him.

Only a few awkward, stumbling steps through the thick, tangled undergrowth and the ancient plant-life suddenly gave way to reveal the gaping hole in the Earth that was the entrance to the caves. Though she had read about it in plenty of books, and had even seen muggle videos of the place, Hermione still wasn’t prepared for the awesome and breathless wonder that the cave-mouth instilled in her. Nearly a quarter-mile across, with tall crowded jungle clinging round the edges on all sides, the enormous pit seemed to lead right down into the belly of the planet. A single fast-flowing stream raced off over the edge at one side and fell down into the endless black of oblivion, Hermione’s eyes followed it deep down into the vacuous and overwhelming void, and felt chills race up her spine.

“Right then,” said Harry, taking point as team leader. “We didn’t apparate all this way to just stand here gawping at it. Let’s get down there. I’ll take first position, McKinney and Harris come down after me with the supplies, Granger and Snape’ll follow behind. We’ll regroup at the bottom. Any questions?”

“Yes, I have one,” Snape sneered, raising one of his now-unshackled hands like a schoolchild. “Don’t suppose I could trouble you for a wand, could I? I’m rather reticent to leap without one.”

“Sorry, old chap,” Harry replied, imitating the older man’s sarcastic politeness quite admirably. “Ministry rulings dictated that all convicts in this team should remain unarmed. Granger will be responsible for your safety during the duration of the mission,” he added, the amused gleam in his green eyes again. “No more questions? Right, off we go, then.”

And, without further ado, Harry took out his wand and leapt off the edge of the hole into the dark depths within.

Aurors Harris and McKinney glanced at each other nervously, and shuffled cautiously to the edge, before deciding to go together on the count of three. Hermione watched the star-like shapes of their falling bodies until they disappeared, then glanced out of the corner of her eye at Snape watching her, and felt the kick of apprehension in her stomach again.

“Not the first time I’ve been forced to put my life in your delicate hands, Miss Granger,” her ex-professor murmured in their sudden moment of privacy. She turned to look at him fully. “I can only pray that it’ll be the last,” he added mockingly, his thin lips smirking one again.

“Why don’t you try shutting up?” She suggested, then she took a step forward, and shoved him hard off the edge of the cliff. His arms flailed for a moment and then he turned into the fall and disappeared into the darkness. Hermione hesitated for a mere moment and then jumped after him.

The fall was thrilling. The wind whistled up past her, pulled at her face, made her long curly hair stream out behind her and rushed through her outstretched fingers. She laughed out loud at the feeling. She could see her former teacher falling a few meters below her, and soon enough she saw the flaring light of Harry’s wand showing the bottom of the cave, so she cast a cushioning spell and brought Snape and herself to land lightly on their feet. She tilted her head back but the massive entrance of the cave was only a pinprick of daylight above her. She lit her wand and looked around.

“Hey,” McKinney exclaimed, shining his wand around the cave with the others. “This is really something, isn’t it?”

It was. Sparkling crystal rock formations hung from the ceiling and grew up from the floors, and in the centre of the cavern a wide freshwater lake reflected the shimmering rocks like a mirror. The wide stream that rushed to oblivion far above became nothing more than a light drizzling mist in their wandlight. Even Harry took a moment to drink in the surreal and alien beauty of the caves.

“Well, I’m sure we’ll be sick of them by the time this mission’s over,” he said as he shone his wand on the pile of supplies. “Let’s get moving, we’ve got a lot of ground to cover. Ministry intelligence shows Harding’s laboratory to be east from here. We’ll head through these larger caverns as the plan suggested. Harris, you follow behind.”

“Lovely,” Harris muttered, shouldering his backpack and glancing round the cave anxiously.

In a moment everything was gathered up and Harry lead the way around the edge of the underground lake towards the next large cavern. Snape hadn’t said a word since they descended into the caves but now, as Hermione pushed him towards the narrowing path at the water’s edge, he stood aside and gestured for her to go ahead of him, his mocking eyebrow rising towards his hairline. She stopped.

“No, please, after you,” she said coldly, her own glare counteracting the politeness of the words. He smirked but yielded, walking ahead while she kept a hawk’s eye on him from only a few feet behind, and Harris followed after them at the rear of the group.

“You can wrap yourself up in cold civility, Granger,” he said then, talking back over his bony shoulder. “But it’s obvious you can’t keep your eyes off me.”

Hermione scoffed, glancing down often to find her footing, studying the rocky floor of the cave in the light of her wand.

“Hardly,” she said, with her usual coldness. “Aside from fulfilling my role as Auror in charge of a convicted felon.”

“Excuses, excuses,” Snape muttered, then he stopped suddenly and turned to face her.

She pulled up quickly but still found herself less than two feet away from him, having to tilt her head back slightly because of his height, his face was strangely and sinisterly shadowed by her wandlight.

“I think we both remember a time when our professional relationship was not quite so strained, eh, Granger?” He sneered.

“That’s enough from you!” Harry called sternly, stepping out of line at the front of the group to deliver his reprimand. He shone his wand in Snape’s face. “If you want your sentence shortened as agreed then you will approach this mission with the placid and helpful attitude that you promised so faithfully. You will follow the orders of any and all of these Aurors, without question, and there’ll be none of your Machiavellian nonsense. The most personal thing I want to know about you after this mission is what it sounds like when you’re pissing. Understand?”

Snape blinked once in the wandlight before answering.

“Now we all know who’s in charge,” he murmured, the merest hint of a smirk on his lips. “And I will follow your orders without question.”

“Good,” Harry said a little bitterly, taking the lead at the head of the group again.

“But I think you’re wrong about one thing, Potter,” the older wizard added, his deep voice echoing loudly round the lonely endless chambers deep beneath the earth. “We are all in very real danger of finding out too much about each other before any of us see the light of day again. Whether you like it or not.”

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A/N: Thank you for reading! Please R&R =)
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Close Proximity