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Shared Flame	By : TheLadyMiya Category: Harry Potter > Het - Male/Female > Hermione/Voldemort Views: 58981 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 5
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter and I do not make any money writing this.

Chapter List
- 8
- 9
- 10
Hello! Sorry for the delay, real life tends to get in the way when you want to update… oh, well. This chapter is dedicated to Ankoku Dezaia as a late birthday present! And I also want to thank Nerys and Serpent In Red for betaing it and pointing out what I can do better.

Review reply can be found here: http://www2.adult-fanfiction.org/forum/index.php/topic/20494-shared-flame-by-lady-miya/

Chapter 8
Hermione didn’t see him the next day and for that she was grateful. Their encounter had shaken her. It was clear that he had been hiding a large part of his personality from her. Perhaps for good reasons. It frightened her, yes, but not as much as it intrigued her. Now that she knew there was so much more to him than what she had seen before, she no longer found him boring. Instead, there was suddenly a whole spectrum of secrets she couldn’t wait to find out about him. Yet, she didn't have time to dig into his past and unravel his emotions. She had nannies to find and interview before her classes started. After interviewing the most dull and irritating individuals, she finally spotted one whom she liked: Miss Julie Cooper. So, she’d sent that witch an owl, stating the time and date when Miss Cooper could start.
When Hermione got back from the university’s owlery, she saw Marcus for the first time since the incident. He was on his way out, wrapping a long, green cloak around his shoulders when she spotted him. He looked up at almost the same time, and a fire lit at once in his eyes. She slowed down, and he began walking toward her. She stopped outside her door, withdrawing her wand to open it. He stopped right in front of her, letting his eyes wander over her hungrily. He wasn’t hiding what he wanted anymore, that much was clear. She held her breath, not knowing if she wanted him to ravish her against the door or not. She was disappointed when he just smirked and stepped past her before continuing downwards. She watched him until he disappeared out of view, but he didn’t look back.
The weekend was spent with Ginny, Harry and Ron. They were finally able to spend time together in the same relaxed way they always had. Although, there were some subjects they stayed away from. No one asked about Althea’s father or Hermione’s love life in general, or the fact that they had missed four years of each other’s life. If there was anything Hermione couldn’t relate to, someone would explain the history like she had just been away that day, and she did the same on the few occasions they talked about her life in Australia. It wasn’t that they weren’t interested in what she had experienced. It was only that it would require too many background stories for them to understand, and Hermione had never been very keen to speak a lot about herself.
Monday came, and even though Hermione would only spend twenty minutes in school, she still got butterflies in her stomach when she got herself ready to leave. Since she only needed to register on the course she would be taking and pick up her schedule, she had decided to bring Althea along. Perhaps it were the feeling of guilt for previously neglecting her daughter but this time, she wanted to establish to everyone right away that she was a mother.
It was a cold October day, but the sun was shining and the trees were beautifully coloured by the fall. Hermione enjoyed the walk with Althea down to the big, grey university building. The building fit right into the classical architecture of the campus.
“Mum, wha’s that?” Althea asked and pointed at a big fountain that was standing in front of the school building.
“That’s a fountain,” Hermione explained.
“Why’s there water in it?” Althea wanted to know.
Hermione thought about it. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s for the birds to bath in? We’ll have to look it up when we get home.”
She helped her daughter up the stairs to the wide-open doors. When she entered the building, she found herself standing in a great hall. In the middle of the hall, there was a high pillar where someone had put a board on. It gave directions to which room you could register for your course of choice. Underneath the text, there was a map. Hermione memorised it and went to the classroom for Transfiguration.
The classroom surprised her. She had expected something like at Hogwarts with the teacher’s desk up front and benches for the students to sit in. Well, there were benches and desks of course, but they were placed like in a classic Greek theatre on different levels in a half-circle. A few students were sitting there, talking in low voices to each other. Two girls caught Hermione’s attention. They were giggling and glancing over to the other side of the room. She followed their glances.
Just a few yards from the lowest seats was a big stage. The biggest blackboard she had ever seen covered the whole wall behind it. In the middle of the stage, a desk was standing and behind it sat two teachers. She recognised Marcus instantly, and the moment she saw him, he looked up as well and gave her a smile before he looked back to the student he was talking to. Hermione had a feeling he was the reason for the girls giggling. A flash of jealousy ran through her, but she tried to shut it down. She had no reason to be jealous. Just because she and Marcus had a history didn’t mean she had any claim over him. And he was a handsome wizard. Of course other students would notice and talk about him.
Trying to ignore the girls and the handsome professor, she turned her attention to the other professor. He was also male but looked ancient. His white hair was thin and long, and his hands shook slightly as he wrote something on a parchment in front of him.
She used the three-step stairs to get up on the stage and walked to the older teacher who wasn’t occupied by another student. He looked up as she came closer and seemed a bit surprised to see her with Althea, but his smile was welcoming.
“Hello,” she said. “I’m Hermione Granger.”
“Ah, yes, I’m Professor Thellius. You are a postgraduate?” His voice was as dry as his hands seemed to be, but it held a warmness that made her think about Dumbledore.
“Exactly. I’m really looking forward to begin,” she admitted.
“Glad to hear. Your wand signature here, please.” He held out a paper for her, and she signed it. “Excellent. Here is your schedule, but I’m afraid that if you have any questions, you’ll have to ask Professor Foster here. I’m the teacher for the undergraduates.”
Right then, the student Marcus was talking with left, and he turned his attention to her.
“Hello, Hermione.” The tone was friendly but not like they intimately knew each other.
Hermione nodded at him, uncomfortable talking to him in front of another teacher. What if the old wizard could tell something was going on between her and Marcus? Thankfully, she was saved by Althea, who didn’t seem aware about those sort of things.
“Marcus!” Althea cheered, let go of her mother’s hand and walked up to the edge of the desk. She had to stand on her tiptoes to be able to see him over it.
Marcus smiled at her. “And Althea! Are you here to start school as well?”
Althea just giggled. Hermione was thankful the girl heeded her warnings from that morning and wasn’t calling Marcus “Dad”.
“I told you about my new neighbours, right, Cornelis?” Marcus asked his colleague.
Thellius chuckled. “Indeed, you did. And so did Professor Cox-Trotter. Even our dear Minister had only good things to say about Miss Granger when he heard she would continue her education here.”
Hermione wasn’t sure if Thellius was teasing her or was just stating facts, so she just stood there, smiling uncertainly to him. It felt strange knowing these people had talked about her. Even Kingsley, the new Minister of Magic, whom she hadn’t spoken to for four years, apparently had.
“Oh, and you forgot to mention Master Nabelius,” Marcus commented. “Since Miss Granger is such a famous addition to Oxford, it’s of course only through his achievements that we were able to get her here.”
“Every good addition to Oxford is Master Nabelius’s achievement,” Thellius said. “Whatever would we do without him?”
“Wallow in decadency of course. Listening to him, one would believe that we give into our primitive desires at every lecture,” Marcus said, his eyes on Hermione.
Thellius just chuckled, not noticing the sudden tenseness between his colleague and Hermione.
Marcus was definitely teasing her, and she felt a blush creeping up. Should she comment on what he had just said? She was relieved when Marcus asked her another question.
“Do you think you have everything in order for tomorrow, Hermione?” Marcus asked.
“Yes, I think so. When I got the information letter from the university a month ago, they said I could expect lectures to begin at eight. I have already bought all the books necessary and got a babysitter for Althea ...” She trailed off when she saw Marcus’s amused look. She felt her blush increasing. Of course he didn’t mean for her to tell him every single thing she had in order.
Thellius cleared his throat. “You’ll note on your schedule that most of them won’t begin before ten,” Thellius remarked and then added dryly: “Somehow, Professor Foster has yet again managed to make sure he gets his beauty sleep while everyone else has to begin at eight.”
Hermione muffled a laugh and decided that she liked the old man and was sorry she wouldn’t have him as a teacher.
“Well, I do want to look my best for my students. And clearly it’s working since I have the highest attendance percentage of all Transfiguration professors,” Marcus teased while winking at Hermione, clearly getting a kick out of making her feel uncomfortable.
And she had thought he was nice.
Before he could say anything else to make her blush, she bid them good day and left the classroom with a second glance at the other students in the room. All of them seemed to be younger than her, and they clearly knew each other. Perhaps they were all undergraduates? She wondered how many people would be in her class. In Australia, there hadn’t been many postgraduates. She remembered Cox-Trotter mentioning something about a lot of students being older than Hermione, but that didn’t say anything about how many would be taking Transfiguration. Preferably, there wouldn’t be too many. Hermione liked to be in a small group since it was easier to have fair discussions. If there were too many, it was harder to allow everyone to have their say in the matter.
She sighed. She would just have to wait until tomorrow and see.
Just as Thellius had said, she didn’t begin until ten the next morning. There was only one lecture and it would take three hours. The schedule was not very taxing, lecture-wise. She would have two lectures a week and the rest of the time she would be studying on her own. Since she was only studying half-time, she wouldn’t have to write as many essays as the other students had to, even though they would all have the same lectures. That meant she had more time to read the mountain of books they had been assigned on the course.
Since she had asked her nanny, Julie Cooper, to come at eight, Hermione decided to go to school at half past nine. Althea, however, was not very fond of her leaving.
“Why do you go?” Althea demanded to know, her arms crossed over her chest and her eyes narrowed.
Hermione had been packing her bag, but now she sat down on her knees in front of her daughter. “I have to go to school to learn things so I can buy us food and clothes. But I’m sure that once I’m gone, you and Julie will have lots and lots of fun and you won’t even know I’m missing.”
She glanced up at Miss Cooper who nodded to Althea. The woman was just a few years older than Hermione but already had a great deal of experience dealing with children. She was the oldest child of four and had helped her single mother a lot during her teenage years. The fact that her mother was also single made Miss Cooper very sympathetic of Hermione, something the other nannies hadn’t been.
“Yes, Althea, perhaps we can read a story together,” Miss Cooper suggested in a heavy London accent. “What is your favourite story?”
Althea seemed a bit doubtful.
“Why don’t you show Miss Cooper your collection of Grimm-stories?” Hermione asked.
“Oh, can you?” Miss Cooper said, probably exaggerating her eagerness. “I have never heard about the Grimm-stories.”
Althea hesitated. “Mmkay.”
When Althea had taken Miss Cooper to her room, Hermione left, hoping that Althea wouldn’t notice anything. She would only be away for three hours. Sometimes, Althea could spend such a long time playing alone in her room after all.
Even though she was early, she wasn’t the first one in the classroom. It was the same room as she had been in the day before, and at the first level of seats, two women were sitting. They seemed to be around her age, and when they heard her enter, they looked up.
“Hello,” the women to the left greeted her. She seemed to be a very tall, black woman with long, brown hair and thick glasses. “Postgraduate, too?”
Hermione nodded. “Hello. Yes, I am.”
She was a little on her guard. She was not used to being on a friendly tone with other women. Even though no one had been directly mean to her since Hogwarts, no one had actually been friendly either. Just polite.
“I haven’t seen you here before,” the other girl remarked with a distinct French accent. She was the complete opposite of the girl next to her. She was short with dark blond hair and had the bluest eyes Hermione had ever seen.
“No, I studied in Australia before, but I got accepted here this fall. I’m Hermione Granger.” She went up and shook hands with them both, feeling a bit hopeful. Perhaps she would actually be able to make some female friends in this class?
“Cynthia Bernard,” the black woman introduced herself, smiling. Now Hermione could hear a faint French accent in her voice as well.
“Rosaline Morel.” The smile on the blond woman’s face wasn’t as warm, but not unfriendly either. “Are you that Hermione Granger? Harry Potter’s friend?”
“I am,” she replied, trying to sound natural, hoping she didn’t have to answer a lot of questions about Harry.
“Okay, my boyfriend has mentioned you once or twice,” Rosaline said with a shrug. “Apparently, you went to Hogwarts together.”
“Oh?” she asked, surprised. “Didn’t you go to Hogwarts yourself?”
“No, both Cynthia and I are from Beauxbaton.”
“Ah, okay. Who is your boyfriend, then?” she asked, curious.
The blonde’s face broke into a smile. “He is right there. Draco!”
Hermione could feel her whole body tense as she heard the name. She turned around slowly, begging to Merlin that there was some sort of mistake. Of course it wasn’t. He was taller, held his blond hair longer and had a few wrinkles on his forehead, but it was still him. The person who had bullied her through Hogwarts just because she was Muggle-born. Draco Malfoy.
He stared at her with equal disbelief. “Granger?”
“Malfoy,” she replied frostily.
“Aren’t you in Australia?”
How on earth did he know that? “I got back. Aren’t you in prison?”
He paled, but step up to them. “I got out. They’ve only sentenced me with three months, you know.”
“Right.” She grimaced as she remembered reading about it in the newspaper.
“Yeah.” There was an uncomfortable silence between them. “So, you are a postgraduate at Transfiguration as well?”
“Yes. Are you?”
“Ah, no … or yes. I’ll be here but not really … It’s complicated.” He sounded so sad it almost made Hermione feel sorry for him. “Well, er, I’ll sit here and …” He didn’t look at her as he went around the bench and sat down next to his girlfriend who patted his back and then sent Hermione a glare. The other young woman wouldn’t meet her eyes at all.
Hermione sighed. For a moment, she had thought that she might be on good footing with her classmates. It seemed like she was always doomed to be the lonely student. Feeling a bit down, she went up two levels and sat down close to the wall. She pulled out a notebook and pencils. In Australia, they hadn’t been so big on quills and parchments. Since paper and pens were less expensive and easier to handle anyway, Hermione hadn’t minded at all. She didn’t bother to change back now.
The class was bigger than she had expected. At five to ten, twenty more people entered the room. Some seemed to be new and alone like Hermione, but most students greeted each other and sat down in groups. Hermione recognised a few of them from Hogwarts. However, they were all older than her and had been in other Houses, so she didn’t know their names. Then, one minute before the clock struck ten, a girl she recognised from Gryffindor stepped into the room. She was short with a boyish hairstyle and dressed in Muggle clothing: jeans and a big pink t-shirt. Hermione wasn’t the only one spotting her. Everyone else in the room was wearing different kinds of robes. However, Hermione liked the fact that someone dared to wear Muggle clothing. It made her smile. Just then, the girl looked her way. Since Hermione didn’t want her to think she was smiling at the way she looked, she kept smiling in a friendly way. The girl came up next to her.
“Is this seat taken?” she asked.
“No, not at all,” Hermione answered, pleasantly surprised that she wanted to sit next to her and annoyed that she couldn’t remember the girl’s name.
“You’re Hermione Granger, right?” the girl asked, making Hermione feel even worse for not remembering her name.
“Yes, and you were in Gryffindor, too, right? Sorry, I can’t remember …”
“Victoria Cole. Can’t blame you for not remembering. I was two years over you and didn’t spend a lot of time in the common room. I just recognised you because you were always hanging out with Potter.”
“Story of my life,” Hermione replied, only half-joking.
“I can imagine. So, you are new here?”
“Yes, I took my bachelor in Australia.”
“Good for you. The great Down Under.” She pulled out a pencil-box from her bag and showed Hermione that it was covered with koala bears. “Love them! Anyway—”
Whatever Victoria had planned to say was interrupted by the entrance of Marcus. Everyone got quiet at once. Hermione could see three women a few rows away nudging each other. One of them actually licked her lips. Hermione rolled her eyes. Marcus wasn’t that spectacular. Sure, he was handsome, clever and a great kisser, but there were other things that were important in a man. Okay, Hermione couldn't think of anything more she wanted in a man right now, but still ...
Yet, she couldn’t really keep her eyes away from him when he stepped up on the stage and placed his briefcase on the desk before facing the class. He was wearing a tailored navy-blue robe and looked much more professional than Hermione had ever seen him. However, she could feel a small itching in her fingers at the thought of what lay underneath. Merlin, now she was licking her lips. Hermione scowled at herself and blushed when his eyes wandered over everyone in the class. She sank back in her chair, hoping he hadn’t seen her flaming cheeks. Thankfully, he didn’t look at her but addressed them all.
“Good morning. I’m Marcus and I’ll be teaching you Transfiguration at its highest level.” He paused, once again letting his eyes sweep over the class. “I want to begin by saying that if you don’t understand something, ask. It’s worse to fail the course than to admit that you didn’t fully understand everything. This course is hard, and the theories you are expected to understand will seem like … well, I can’t say ‘Ancient Greek’ because that is a perfectly understandable language. Especially compared to this.”
A few people in the class chuckled.
“Then, there are the practical spells as well.” He brought out his wand and waved it in a complex motion.
Suddenly, they were all sitting on the grass in a forest. Hermione felt the grass beneath her like it was really there and could smell the forest around her. It was too vivid to be an illusion, but she had never heard of a spell capable of transfiguring so much at once. The next moment, the forest disappeared, and they were sitting in the benches again. Some of the students let out cries of amazement.
Marcus twisted his wand between his fingers. “Does anyone have any idea if I just transfigured the room or your vision of it?”
No one answered. Not even Hermione.
“Good. If anyone had known the answer and said it out loud, I would have had to come up with a new assignment for you to hand in on Friday,” Marcus said with a pleased look on his face as he flicked his wand toward the blackboard. The assignment showed up.
“It’s important that you follow the assignment specification to the letter. When I say I want five hundred words, I mean five hundred words. Ten words more or less. I have better things to do than to read overambitious students’ unnecessarily long reports.”
Hermione smiled and blushed a little of embarrassment at the memory of when she had been a student at Hogwarts and always written longer than required. Back then, she had thought it just showed how good she was, but when she had tried to do the same at the university in Australia, the teacher had not been happy. Now Hermione could see how stupid she had been. Of course none of her teachers had cared for all the extra work she’d put into her homework all the time. It had been only more work for them to go through. Quality before quantity was her new academic motto.
“Now, over to today’s lecture.”
Marcus launched into a long monologue about Welkin’s law and its adaption to Transfiguration. Hermione quickly realised that Marcus was rather fond of taking theories from other fields in magic and mixing them with Transfiguration. It delighted her because she liked to do the same thing. It was all magic after all, so why divide it?
They got a small break halfway through the lesson where Hermione took the opportunity to flex her cramping hand and talk more to Victoria.
“He is so tough,” the other girl remarked with a grimace, also massaging her hand.
“But he knows a lot,” Hermione commented, hoping she didn’t sound as jealous as she felt.
Marcus hadn’t even had to glance at his notes more than a few times as he’d talked. She was sure he knew everything by heart, and that was amazing considering how utterly complicated these theories were. She wasn’t sure she was fully able to wrap her mind around it. She would have to reread her notes when she went home, and maybe even look some things up to gain a better comprehension. But he’d just stood there, writing on the board with his wand as he’d explained things. He had also been able to answer every question thrown at him without having to think for more than a few seconds. But then again, he was older than her and had a lot more experience with Transfiguration. When she reached his age, she would probably (hopefully) do the same.
“Oh, he knows everything. And he is a good lecturer as well. I had Professor Thellius last semester and he is good, too, but sometimes he starts to speak about totally unnecessary things he has experienced when doing this or that. Marcus, at least, stays on the subject and always knows the answer when you ask him. He is like a bloody walking dictionary!”
Hermione giggled. “Isn’t it weird though, that he lets everyone call him by his first name?”
“Nah, I don’t mind. It feels like he really cares about his students. When you ask him something, he really listens. And he’s got great connections. I knew another postgraduate who took her doctoral degree last semester, and he managed to get her a job like this fast.” Victoria snapped her fingers to illustrate. “Now she got this really good job at some research company in the U.S.A.”
“Oh? That was nice of him,” Hermione remarked with a frown.
Didn’t that sound a little suspicious?
Glancing down at him, she could see that two students were standing there, talking to him. The female student was bending slightly forward, probably giving Marcus an eyeful of her cleavage. Hermione silently huffed at the tasteless behaviour.
“Yeah, according to some of my friends he is the nicest professor here,” Victoria said, smiling.
That made Hermione frown even more. Hadn’t he told her he wasn’t nice at all? She glanced down at him again, and their eyes met for a second before he looked away. She blinked. Had there been hunger in his eyes?
The class began again, and when it was finally over, Hermione’s head felt close to exploding after all the new knowledge was stuffed in there. Her shoulder and arm were aching from holding the pen so long. So, she was really looking forward to going home and taking a long, relaxing bath. However, when she was about to leave, Marcus called for her. She bid Victoria goodbye and turned toward the stage were Marcus was standing together with three other male students. One of them was Malfoy to Hermione’s annoyance. Yet, she went up there just the same.
Marcus smiled at them. “You four are not taking this course full-time, and therefore, I don’t expect the essay to be handed in until next Friday. You should also know that you are not required to read all the books on the literature list this semester. I have made a selection, and you only have to read these now.” He handed them each a scroll. “This means that you don’t have to do all the assignments, like the next one I’ll be handing out, either. Are there any questions?”
“Sir?” Malfoy asked. “Could I have a word in private about my … situation?”
“Certainly. Anyone else?”
Hermione and the other two shook their heads.
“Until Friday, then,” Marcus said and dismissed them.
Just before she turned to leave, he caught her eye again. For just one moment, she saw his desire, and it left her feeling a bit breathless. If he looked at the other women in class like that, she couldn’t blame them for looking at him. But she really hoped he didn’t.
A bit reluctant, Hermione left. However, she had a feeling she wouldn’t have to wait to Friday until she saw him again.

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