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“Stand down! Crookshanks for heavens sake!” Hermione hissed as quietly as possible to the orange ball of fur that consisted of her familiar. The familiar who now meowed cutely at her while sitting perfectly still with his white feather prize sticking out of his teeth and tail wrapped loosely around his small paws. The menace who had just before been in the process of making enough racket to bring attention where it was not currently wanted in hopes of gaining said feather he had been chasing about everywhere. Once more resigned to the haven of her First Year in order for some semblance of peace away from Ron and Lavender, Hermione now sat on the bathroom floor with her back leaning against the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets.
A half formed opaque rose made of pure magic floated in front of her as she cocked her eyebrow upwards in imitation of a familiar potions master.
“Look at you Crooks, sly as a fox in gaining your prize for yourself.” Her voice turned softer in response to the smile that appeared on his furry face as he sauntered up to her, yellow eyes disappearing behind eyelids as she scratched the silk like fur between his ears and down his spine to the tip of his tail. They flew open though with a little yowl once she laughed at his purring pleasure in her touch as she pulled him into her lap and smothered his face in kisses, hugging him tightly.
“We musn’t get caught, my love,” Hermione told him, leaning her head atop his while looking at her project. She was hiding from everything. Professors, classmates, friends. Friend. Harry anyway, he was the only one who knew enough of her to be truly called a friend these days with Ron off with his blonde girlfriend.
Emotions were a very difficult thing at times, sometimes you knew exactly how you were feeling and then you would encounter a situation that would have you feeling in a particular way you had no idea what it meant or how to deal with let alone fix. She never knew what to do with unknown emotions, which was probably why some people thought her frigid. Which was exactly what Ron had decided to call her when the pressure in her chest began making her short and cold with him after his public snogging session in Gryffindor Tower. Since then she had been off, which in turn made her magic slightly spastic.
Something that was absolutely unacceptable at this stage in her schooling, and now lead her to her current position of practicing an advanced piece of magic on the floor of a haunted bathroom in order to put herself back on track. The act of conjuring a completely alive and fully complex piece of nature with each perfectly imperfect petal, vein, thorn, color, and texture all calling for a clear and focused mind. At this moment her efforts turned out a slightly glowing rose the length of her arm whose white paperlike petals flared out to the size of her palm.
Harry tried his best to get her to talk to him, but this feeling was something she had not encountered before and needed some time alone to process. A feeling in which she didn’t think she would be able to permanently fix by herself, but very well was going to try seeing as how she shouldn’t have to completely rely on another person to fix what was broken within her. But even in telling herself that, she still hasn’t seemed to be able to make it fully go away in her distraction. How could she possibly explain to her best friend a deep empty hole low in her stomach that had began once she had noticed him and Ginny making eyes at one another? Explain it deepening when their other friend found a girl to call his own as well? Everyone around her just seemed so happy with their significant others, even in the midst of a war. Meanwhile Hermione gets called frigid, and cold while all the same feeling like she would never find someone to look at her as she sees others doing with each other.
She had thought Ron was looking at her that way once before, but no longer. There was nothing for it.
No, this type of loneliness was best left to fade by itself in silence without words giving it form lest it stay longer than necessary. In the meanwhile, clearing her mind to focus on this task was enough. Had to be enough or else she just might drown in it all.
She had just painted on the last delicate vein upon the dark green petal when she felt her purring boy’s ears perk up where he still lay on her lap, but still continued to admire her accomplishment before her. Right up until a deep baritone interrupted the silence that had surrounded her for the last few hours that made her feel almost normal again. Almost. For even Myrtle had seemed to feel the girl’s melancholy and fled back down the pipes.
“Curfew is almost upon us, Miss. Granger. I so would hate to once more deduct points from Gryffindor house.” Professor Snape stood hovering over her, looking down to her slightly sprawled out form weighed down by the young Kneazle.
The curly haired girl blushed slightly yet was not intimidated in the slightest by the dark man’s tactics. Once you have seen the most feared man of the halls of Hogwarts dressed in only boxer shorts with hair mussed with sleep and a toothbrush sticking out of his mouth, you seem to shed any fear you once had for said man. Even if you had been embarrassed beyond comparison at the time. That silent morning in Grimmauld Place seemed to have thrown even the Professor for a loop, his scathing remarks towards her lessening severely in company since that summer day as he had slammed the bathroom door in her heating face and avoided her eyes all together as he had later descended the stairs for the Order meeting. But her embarrassment had faded in record time once she concluded what the dark stain upon his bare forearm had been. After that accepting that her professor with the seemingly painted on dark circles beneath his eyelids was simply a person and not a crotchety reaper was easier than meeting his eyes.
Hermione rose to her feet silently, cuddling and kissing Crookshanks once more before allowing him to jump from her arms before taking ahold of her perfect rose. Watching as he swiped his side along the familiar man’s black robes, leaving behind his orange hairs to be found later though the owner never seemed to mind. Or at least comment on the beast leaving his mark, something he had dubbed her familiar during the few weeks they had cohabited Sirius’ home along with Harry and the Weasleys once he himself was able to maintain eye contact for more than a second at a time.
“Yes, Professor Snape. I’m sure you would absolutely hate that.” She smiled slightly, twirling the rose in her fingers as they exited into the cold deserted hall.
“I will escort you,” he said. “One must not allow you to get lost on your way.”
She nodded yet said nothing more, the odd feeling inside her seeming to lessen with each silent footfall of his beside her causing his unique smell of potions fumes and spices to waft over her nose pleasantly. She was oddly content in a way she had not been for weeks.
They arrived at the portrait of the Fat Lady who, when she saw the Professor, squealed slightly in fright and exited in a hurry but leaving the door slightly ajar for the girl to slip through.
“Thank you, Professor Snape,” her small voice floated up to him, most unlike the one filled with know-it-all confidence she had within his classroom. Even if it had been slightly sparse as of late. Her hazel eyes stared silently up at him in some sort of expectation he knew not what to do with nor which she knew she was projecting.
He twisted away from her, cloak billowing out behind him as he took a step away from her person. Although, for some reason or another, he paused briefly to speak over his shoulder, “An extraordinary piece of magic, Miss. Granger. That rose. Quite an accomplishment for your age, but nonetheless expected from you.”
Hermione looked at him in surprise at the praise she didn’t even know he knew how to project towards someone not of his own house when even then it was sparse. She blinked down to the pale petals of her creation, and on a sudden impulse called out to the departing man who turned back towards her just in time to see small fingers lightly touch the white petals and them bleed into ones as black as night. As if the sun were being swallowed up by the dark of the moon.
She held it out to him silently with even more expectations until he slowly wrapped his own fingers around the stem, careful of the sharp as knives thorns. “Thank you, Professor.”
He said nothing as her curly head bounced away behind the empty portrait feeling lighter than ever, rose still held aloft in his hands without knowing why he now felt something filling up within him. Growing within that space that had been bereft of something ever since a dark haired boy had stolen a green eyed girl away from him.
That simple gift of a rose would then cause much more than murmured rumors and speculation upon his student population as it then appeared upon the corner of his classroom desk the next morning, sitting prettily and perfect in it’s new delicate crystal vase. The girl who gifted it smiling lightly as she finally turned to Ron and asked how him and Lavender were getting along before class began. Dark eyes watching her from afar all the same as hazel ones watched him when she believed he was no longer occupied by her.