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Wake of War	By : sshgdifferentfan Category: Harry Potter > Het - Male/Female > Snape/Hermione Views: 4061 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor any of the characters from the books or movies. The characters and canon situations in the following story belong solely to JK Rowling. I am not making any money from publishing it.

Chapter List
- 6
- 7
- 8
7. Unexpected

A few days later Hermione was enjoying a memory lane trip free breakfast in the Great Hall and as an added bonus a Malfoy free breakfast too. The idiot had gotten himself in detention with McGonagall for a nasty curse that got two Gryffindors fifth years in the Hospital Wing with boils in places she didn’t need to dwell on and a fourth year Hufflepuff too scared to show her face in the dangerous ever again. She was reading a book on Animagi that stood propped up on the coffee jug, one of the privileges of being a seventh year student, with a full cup of steaming hot rum coffee halfway to her mouth -- one of the advantages of being a returnee -- everybody tended to treat them like adults as opposed to near adulthood adolescents as was the case with the seventh years and the rum was just one of the perks -- when Cordelia Broadmoor, a third year Slytherin she knew well by reputation and not at all personally -- she made it her business to know all there was about the other students and have little to none contact if possible -- walked up to her.

The petite blonde girl fidgeted, coughed and even cleared her throat a few times before Hermione pried her eyes from the book -- in her defence, it really was an interesting chapter on human to animal partial transfiguration -- and glared at her with a combined look of surprise and annoyance. It wasn’t like she hadn’t noticed the little swot. Oh, she’d spotted the third-year since before she got up from the table. It was virtually impossible not to or maybe if she were to actually be a Gryffindor -- they kind of lacked the eyes for these sort of things -- but the girl had been shooting glances her way all throughout breakfast.

Still some way to go before learning not to give away everything, Hermione thought and had to cover her smile by taking a sip of her coffee when she remembered how long it took her to master the art.

Well, she wasn’t all that fair if she thought about it. In truth was the girl had been discrete enough to not draw too much attention to herself and she was willing to bet at least half her Gringotts savings -- which admittedly wasn’t much -- that the majority of the people present in the Great Hall hadn’t noticed a thing, but the rest did. The Slytherins had been onto her from the second glance her way and though some were more obvious than others, Hermione knew they had all been watching her since, and then there were the teachers which always seemed to notice stuff like that, not to mention Professor Snape that somehow knew what was going on at the Slytherin table before it even occurred. Well, the girl had been discrete, she gave her that, just not discrete enough for a Slytherin.

“Can I…” the girl started to say, but stopped at the sight of Hermione’s raised eyebrow, but tried again with “Miss…”. As the eyebrow shoot even higher and she stopped once more and grimaced slightly. Hermione stayed silent, glancing at the girl now and again, rolling her eyes around the room when the girl seemed to grimace once or twice, obvious lost for words, and taking small sips of coffee from time to time. Yet not even once had she said one word or encouraged the girl to speak in any way. She would talk on her own time or not at all; it made no difference to Hermione, though she was slightly curious as to why the young Pure-blood which was coming to her of all people when the two of them had never talked before except for a cordial, yet tense, nod when they meet in the library or the lavatory.

“I need your help,” said Cordelia Broadmoor about a minute later just as Hermione was turning her eyes back to her book. “I’m lousy at Potions and I thought…” she stopped at the sight of Hermione’s head snapping back to her with eyebrows raised so high they were dangerously close to disappear in her hairline. The girl gulped and lowered her eyes. “I heard…” she started addressing more her shoes than Hermione, but stopped again at the sound of Hermione’s book being snapped shut. The Pure-blood’s eyes glanced back at the older girl through tick lashes and Hermione couldn’t for the life of her stop a smile reaching her lips as she noticed the almost scared look Broadmoor’s pale blue eyes held.

“What’s in it for me?” questioned Hermione as she turned back from the girl and once again started taking small measured sips of her magically hot coffee. Merlin, how she loved the perks of magic when it came to stuff like the never-cooling mugs, self-inking quills or simply the array of spells she could perform with only a flick of a stick -- a magical stick no doubt, but a stick nevertheless -- and one barely whispered incantation.

“I can pay,” said the girl from behind Hermione and again she had to stop herself from smiling, though this time it was much closer to laughing than it was to smile. The girl was just too predictable. “I have money.”

“Not interested,” Hermione said in between two sips of coffee, giving the girl’s suggestion not even a thought as money had never been Hermione’s thing. She had money, probably not nearly as much as the Broadmoors had and surely not anywhere near as much as others like Malfoy or Greengrass had, but she had her share of it, and it was definitely more than the Weasleys had for example. But the truth was that except for buying books, potions ingredients, school supplies and some robes here and there she never really saw what the reason behind having money was. Even at home, with her parents -- she had to stifle a shiver as the thought of her parents brought back to the issue of the forever unfinished letter -- she never really understood their need to earn more and more money. They had some; they were living a good life -- they lacked nothing and had the possibility to buy something on a whim now and again -- they had money for her schooling be it Muggle or Wizarding and they had enough to go on at least two vacations a year, so why did they always needed more? She had no clue and honestly she wasn’t all that eager to have one, but what she knew was that she wasn’t going to accept money as a bargaining chip; not when there were so many other things to get, especially form spoiled rich Pure-blood kids.

Hermione made to say just that, but stopped when she noticed Professor Snape making his way towards the Slytherin table. She lowered her cup to the table and fully turned to watch him, smirking when the corner of her eye couth the younger girl’s fidgeting some more at the sight of their Head of House.

What the hell is she doing in Slytherin, she wondered as Broadmoor tried and failed to hide her nervousness.

“Miss Broadmoor,” greeted the professor his trade smirk showing up from behind the expressionless mask he usually wore.

Now, there’s a Slytherin, thought Hermione with admiration as Professor Snape turned his head towards her and nodded, “Miss Granger.”

“Professor,” the girls said as almost the same time and Hermione had to fight another smile as Broadmoor blushed all the way to the roots of her hair.

“I see you’ve taken my advice, Miss Broadmoor,” said the professor and Hermione’s gasp was much too loud and completely non-Slytherin, thus making the professor’s smirk reach twice its original size, but at the moment she was too stunned to even try to feel embarrassed by such a Gryffindorish display. She’d expected a prefect to direct Broadmoor to her, or one of her class mates -- she was known as something of a Potions wiz within Slytherin House, so that wouldn’t have been too farfetched. What she didn’t expect was for Professor Snape to acknowledge her as such. She got the highest marks in his class, that’s for sure, but that never stopped him form complaining and berating her on everything from the length of her essays, to the potions she brewed or her hand waving in class -- at least she finally grew out of the hand waving thing somewhere around forth year. But this, him suggesting another student to seek her out for Potions tutoring, was something so out of character that for a second she considered asking him some check questions to make sure there was no Polyjuice Potion involved.

Was this the acknowledgement she never received and always wished for, finally delivered in the most Slytherin of ways or did it have a purpose, other than the obvious one of getting what most likely was a female version of Neville Longbottom out of his hair and into hers? She didn’t know, but what she did know without a shadow of a doubt even, was that she would do anything he asked of her and if he wanted her to tutor Cordelia Broadmoor she’ll do it and do it brilliantly too.

***

“Now, if that’s settled,” said Professor Snape after Hermione agreed wholeheartedly to tutor Broadmoor three days a week, down in the unused Apprentice Potions Lab, “Miss Granger, a word.” He didn’t even wait for Hermione to acknowledge in any way that she’d heard him, but turned and took off out of the Great Hall in a whirl of billowing robes.

Merlin, he’s fast, thought Hermione as she finished gathering her things from the table and Professor Snape was nowhere to be seen. She threw the book bag over her shoulder and ran after him all the way through the halls of Hogwarts -- narrowly avoiding students and teachers coming in for a late breakfast or ghosts and pets on a morning stroll around the castle -- barely catching him in the dungeon, a few steps away from his office door, when he finally slowed his strode. He was already opening the door and holding it out for her by the time, an out of breath panting and whizzing Hermione, reached him and though she wanted nothing more than to double over in an effort to get her breathing back to normal, she strode past him and into his office.

The door clicked shut just a second later as a billowing Potions Master walked past her and behind his desk to his chair. He didn’t sit though, but stood until Hermione dropped herself fairly unladylike -- not that she cared at the moment for anything that wasn’t directly connected to breathing and the twinge in her side -- into the only other chair facing the desk, exhaled and inhaled a couple of times and finally catching enough breath offered a small, kind of embarrassed smile. She was so out of shape it wasn’t even funny.

Okay Granger -- two laps around the greenhouse ‘til you get it together, she decided as the twinge hit her again, already thinking of ways of squeezing it into her schedule.

The professor smirked at her as he took his seat. He leaned back for a second regarding Hermione as if she was a terrible interesting potion before summoning what seemed to be a scroll with the Hogwarts seal on top and thrusting it towards her. She hesitated only a second before reaching and taking the scroll out of his hand.

“That,” Professor Snape started to say in that drawled voice of his that scared the shite out of first years, “if you were wondering and as you are the resident know-it-all of the castle, you are most definitely wondering, is the reason behind your new task of tutoring Miss Broadmoor.”

“Did someone…” ‘asked for me to tutor Broadmoor? ‘ she would have inquired if not for the Professor’s low growl of “Don’t ask -- Read!” and the annoyed look he send her way. So she simple let her question unfinished and spared one last look at the professor before breaking the seals -- she only just noticed the second seal, that of the Headmistress -- and unrolling the scroll. The parchment was longer than she’d expected -- it kept on unrolling for what seemed like forever, or maybe that was just her nerves combined with excitement making her lose track of time -- and definitely had more writing than she imagined, but also large blank spaces scattered all around the text. She hadn’t read one word up to this moment, but at the sight of all those blanks she darted her eyes to the first line and starting reading, her jaw dropping around the first paragraph and never once closing as she went on reading down the page.
- 6
- 7
- 8
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Wake of War