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H.G.'s Guide to Workplace Harassment	By : dezzu Category: Harry Potter > Het - Male/Female > Snape/Hermione Views: 8404 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
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[Interlude]
Let us take a brief repast, dear reader, from the events which are unfolding between two of Hogwarts’ finest, Profs. Hermione Granger and Severus Snape, to peruse some scenes from the recent past.
Yes, yes...I’m eager to see what Miss Granger has in store for our beloved Potions Master too, but please—indulge me. You’ve been indulging me so very well thus far.
We find young Hermione in her last year at Hogwarts; flourishing as Head Girl and exceeding at everything she sets her sights on. She is bright, beautiful; supportive and encouraging of her friends and fellow students, who lean on her a great deal.
She is also very good at concealing all traces of the emotional trauma she harbours from the events of the war.
To her close friends, she seems eager to leave the walls of Hogwarts to see what the world has to offer her; inwardly, she is terribly afraid to return to the world outside of the school—a world full of adults and their agendas and deceptions.
And we also find Severus Snape, of course, seemingly cursed to forever deliver exceptional training in Potions to students who are not nearly as exceptional as he would wish for.
He finds himself in the happy situation of being currently under contract by a magical book publisher— tasked to produce a manuscript on a subject of his choosing. Not so happily, but flattering all the same, he receives encouragement and approval from the Headmistress to take on an apprentice.
He is very adept at hiding the slight inflation of ego that he’s derived from the chance to be published, even if the material is to be of a rather frivolous nature. He is skeptical and apprehensive about his choice of apprentice candidate.
Of course, he manages to ruin both opportunities in a single stroke.

***

A lot of prominent wizards and witches had done their share to contribute to the literary wealth of the wizarding world. Some of them chose to do so under pen names, especially if the material happened to be salacious, highly-controversial, or simply humorous.
For his first foray into long-form writing, Severus Snape decided to write his book about the art of spying. Few who knew him would argue against his choice of subject matter.
He’d learned many methods, from minor to grandiose, for gleaning details of the personal and professional lives of others—some of them bordering on the absurd.
He’d originally planned on describing hysterically complex techniques that yielded little useful information—for example, brewing teas that would color someone’s urine in such a way that you’d be able to tell how long it had been since they’d last had an orgasm.
That sort of material would, indeed, be of vital importance to the wizarding world.
He’d been making rather fruitful progress on the manuscript, when his work was almost completely derailed by a monthly meeting with the Headmistress. Their conversations were usually short and to the point; but on this occasion, she’d spent an inordinate amount of time trying to convince him to seriously undertake the process of selecting an apprentice from amongst this year’s graduating class.
He really did not need the encouragement, especially not from a higher power, to focus more attention on the one student he would ever consider for the role—and the sole object of his all-consuming lust—Hermione Granger.
He was an adaptable being, believing himself initially to be fully capable of handling two such large undertakings at once.
However, it didn’t take long for the two ideas—assembling material for a book on spying, and soliciting Ms. Granger’s interest as an apprentice—to bleed into one another.

***

She was keeping a lot of secrets from her friends at the moment—one of them being that she had approached the Headmistress about applying to be an apprentice to any interested teachers at Hogwarts, if any were to be found.
She had placed a rather significant emphasis on wishing to apply to be the apprentice of a particular Potions Master.
Hermione had never harbored such a long-standing crush on anyone. She held no denial about the fact that she’d been trying to model herself to be his perfect student for years. Her interest in Professor Snape as a man hadn’t waned since she was a young girl, and it felt like a part of her now.
And she felt like she couldn’t share that part of herself with anyone; especially not with him, if she wanted to maintain any kind of dignity. He’d certainly tear her girlish crush to pieces.
If she could become his apprentice, she imagined that she’d be perfectly content—isolating herself from the rest of the world, able to remain at Hogwarts, and putting her livelihood into the hands of one of the few people she harbored respect for.
All terrible reasons to want to want to pursue an apprenticeship. All built upon a foundation of desperation, loneliness in matters of the heart, a slice of denial at her own ability to grow and flourish outside of Hogwarts, and just a smattering of residual teenage immaturity.
Her attempts at relationships with the male student body at Hogwarts had often left her angry, disappointed, and sometimes questioning her self-worth. The idea of encountering more such men out in college increasingly filled her with panicked dread; would she forever be some sort of try-but-never-buy girl to these fumbling fools until they went off and landed wives?
After her meeting with the Headmistress, who had given her no inclination as to if and when next steps would occur, Hermione tried to go about her days, duties, and classes as usual.
Within about a week of the meeting, though, she began to suspect that she was being watched.
Within about two weeks, she began to suspect that she was being watched by Professor Snape.
Within about three weeks, she was thoroughly convinced that she was being watched by Professor Snape.
It was only in her bed at night that she was able to shake the sensation of his eyes being on her. The thought of being under such constant scrutiny from a party that had remained completely silent filled her with a bit of fear. It began to dawn on her that perhaps he was not the man she believed him to be, and as the silence and inaction for her apprenticeship dragged on, her carefully-constructed persona of him began to crumble.
Months went by, and graduation was swiftly approaching.
A not-so-close friend—a former Hogwarts student, now working at a particular magical book publisher—had owled to meet for lunch on a Saturday at a small café in Diagon Alley.
During that lunch, she learned that a particular Potions Master was writing a book on the particular subject of spying, and that her friend had seen the manuscript.

***

A/N: Thank you so much for the reviews! :)
WritersAudio, thank you for your feedback, and I’m very glad you’re enjoying this. I hope to put at least 15 chapters into this one.
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H.G.'s Guide to Workplace Harassment