God, how I love you, Hermione…
She didn’t know whether to call it a dream, or a nightmare. She’d been in the middle of an anxiety-riddled dream of Quidditch, tests, and Draco’s drooling face as he kept trying to grab her breasts—which for some obscure dream-style reason he’d named the left one ‘Crabbe’ and the right one ‘Goyle’—when she’d heard it. His voice. Telling her that he loved her, with a depth of emotion that had bolted her upright out of her dream, and left her feeling very shaken.
It had taken her a long time to go back to sleep; unable to relax, she’d finally given up and worked on homework for a couple hours inside the privacy of her bedcurtains, until her sleepiness came back, predictably over her History homework. She’d finished off the scroll she’d been working on
between yawns, all the while lecturing herself that it had just been a dream, and that love was literally the last thing either of them could afford. He was her teacher, she was his student, strong emotional attachments were a weakness for Voldemort to exploit, he couldn’t possibly love her, she couldn’t possibly love him…
It had left her feeling restless all night, even when she did fall asleep. On the one hand, she didn’t want it to be true, because she wasn’t ready for something that earth-shattering to be true. But on the other hand, a treacherous little—alright, semi-large—part of her wanted it to be true, because she was afraid it just might be reciprocated.
Putting it firmly out of her head, or at least telling herself firmly to put it out, Hermione walked into the classroom behind Harry and Ron, feeling more than a bit at sixes and sevens, this morning.
*****************************************************************************
Author’s Note: I just found out where this phrase comes from, readers! “At sixes and
sevens”, commonly used in Britain to mean “topsy-turvy”, “blown about”, “confused”,
“muddled”, and other variants, actually refers to the positions of the Merchant Taylors’
and the Skinners’ guilds in the rankings of the top twelve guilds in England in the latter
Middle Ages. The two guilds disputed their positions on the charts as to which was in
sixth and which was in seventh place on the list in seniority; to solve the quarrel, they
eventually decided on switching positions every year. On one Easter Day, Merchant
Taylors would give ground to Skinners, and on the next Easter, Skinners would slip back
under Merchant Taylors.
The full list of the “Great Twelve”, if you’re curious, is: 1. Mercers, 2. Grocers, 3.
Drapers, 4. Fishmongers, 5. Goldsmiths, 6/7. Skinners, 7/6 Merchant Taylors, 8,
Haberdashers, 9. Salters, 10. Ironmongers, 11. Vintners, and 12. Clothworkers. These
groups are known as “Livery Companies” (and there’s over 100 of them in the U.K. by
now) because they were granted heraldic arms, and thus have the right to display the
two chief colors of those arms, or “livery colors”, whenever there’s a need for heraldic
pageantry. (For the HP universe, the livery colours of Gryffindor would be red and
gold, and the colours of Slytherin, green and silver—as if you couldn’t guess). Just
thought you’d find this little factoid interesting! ~Lotm
***************************************************************************** A swish of her wand at the stone shelves reserved for the seventh-year’s Advance Potions class levitated her cauldron with its simmering-level magical fire at the base. She started guiding it up the aisle, heading towards her lab-table at the head of the classroom, her mind on what would be needed for the next stage. As she headed up the central aisle, Hermione felt something hit the side of her neck. It started to burn, horribly.
Her cauldron wobbled as she gasped in pain and pawed at the neckline of her robes, burning her fingers but flinging the whatever-it-was off of her skin. It was a nasty shade of purply-brown, and the cut sides of the smallish slice were oozing a greenish-yellow mucus. Some of the brew inside her cauldron slopped out and splattered on the stone floor, sizzling against the stone, as her wand- hand shook with her frantic, left-handed pawing at the right side of her neck.
“—Malfoy! Buggane liver bile is a contact-poison! Detention!” Snape’s voice snapped. “Miss Granger, put your cauldron back on the shelf and get up here. Potter, clean up the mess on the floor.”
She shifted the floating cauldron back onto the stone shelf as Harry pointed his wand at the floor, making the spilled brew and the slice of liver vanish.
“Get over here, Miss Granger, now! Unless you want to drop dead in the next half-hour?” the Potions Master added sarcastically. His stygian glare swept over the rest of the class. “The rest of you, the instructions are on the board. Get to work!”
Hermione, hands and neck burning, hurried to join him as he entered the storeroom. Sitting her down on a stool, he had her remove the robe and drop it on the floor as he used his wand to cleanse her throat and fingers from a distance, then fetched a blue-glazed jar from one of the shelves, and some cotton swabs from another shelf. Holding her wrist in his hand, he daubed the ointment from the jar over her flesh with the swab.
[Damned prat,] he muttered as he worked, meticulously smearing the ointment all over the affected skin. The yellow-green creme smelled like fresh-mown clover and tingled like an ice- pack, soothing each burned spot before it went numb. Severus applied it with painstaking care, even wedging some of it up underneath her fingernails. [He’s lucky I have the antidote on hand.
I’ll have to incinerate your robes; I don’t want any of the house-elves accidentally poisoning themselves, trying to wash it.]
{I wish I could incinerate him,} Hermione muttered back, tilting her head to the side as Severus used a freshly dipped swab on the side of her neck, casting the other one onto her robe on the floor.
[I agree he could’ve picked a less lethal object to throw at you,] he concurred. For a moment their eyes met, and his mouth curled up into a smile; since his back was to the open doorway, Severus felt it was safe to do so. [But you’ll have to admit, all your friends in Gryffindor will be
howling for my blood now, giving him a mere detention when he clearly tried to poison you.]
{Nothing like a good spot of blatant unfairness to improve your dastardly reputation,} she retorted, masking her own smile in a grimace as he stroked more of the at least pleasantly pungent creme over her skin.
“Are there any other spots that burn, Miss Granger?”
She started to shake her head, then winced as her neck started burning again. “I think some of it got onto my shirt collar.”
Grunting, he used his wand to slice off the ring of fabric, tossing the severed, white strip onto her discarded robe with another flick of his wand. Swabbing the newest affected spot, he eyed her, waiting for it to go numb. “Anywhere else?”
“A little bit on my palm, here, I think.” A daub, a smear, and she nodded. “It’s all going numb now, sir.”
“Good. Detention, for slopping your potion on my clean classroom floor. And for being improperly dressed. Go change your clothes and be back here within ten minutes, or I’ll dock
Gryffindor ten points for every minute you’re late. And don’t forget to rescue your things from your school robe, or they’ll be incinerated, too.”
Sweeping out of the room, he heard her muttering “Accio” several times as she rescued whatever had been in the pockets of her robe. Sure enough, her Gryffindor friends were glaring at him, and even the Ravenclaw who was her partner for this term shot him a dirty look. Neither of them had bothered to keep their voices low as they’d spoken, though they hadn’t been overly loud, so most of the class had heard his treatment of Miss Granger. Severus watched the number of sympathetic glances shot her way as she hurried out of the storeroom, dumping her belongings on the desk as she passed the front of the class, heading for the door.
He wished he had even half as many people who cared about him as she clearly had who cared about her.
When she came back—with a minute to spare, apparently having slipped her little jar of Floo powder into a pocket to speed her passage, since it wasn’t one of the things on the desk—he watched her carefully for signs of buggane poisoning. The creatures, sort of a cross between giants and trolls, were native to the Isle of Man, living under the hills ridging the length of the small country. Their livers and their blood were useful for some of the more powerful healing draughts, and the bugganes had cut a deal with the wizarding community a couple hundred years before; they were permitted to live on the Isle—the only giant-like creatures allowed to do so in all the British Isles—if they donated blood three times a year, and a slice of liver once a year, since the liver could regenerate itself easily within their overgrown bodies.
It was quite useful once processed into healing potions with other ingredients, yes, but the bile a buggane’s liver oozed was a deadly contact poison in its own. Only the Advanced Potions classes were allowed to handle it , because by their seventh year, the students had enough control over their magic to prepare and handle their slices of liver strictly by magic. Malfoy had apparently used his wand and a levitating charm to fling the bit of liver at Hermione, without accidentally poisoning himself.
Halfway into the class, free for once to constantly glance her way, Severus grew worried. She seemed to be drooping in her seat. Striding over to her, Severus caught her chin, forcing Hermione to look up at him. With his other hand, he pried up her eyelids as she started to frown, staring at each eye. The whites of her eyes were a little bloodshot, but not yellowed, as far as he could tell. “Stick out your tongue, Miss Granger.”
She opened her mouth and stuck it out. Her breath smelled faintly like eggs and a cinnamon sticky-bun, no doubt left over from breakfast, though it was overlaid with the odor of mown clover from the ointment on her hand and neck. The color of the coating on her tastebuds was its normal faint white, and her lips their usual rosy red, thankfully. Anything hinting at a greenish or bluish hue would have spelled serious trouble for her.
{…Checking for signs of poisoning?}
[Yes. You don’t have any, thankfully. You look tired, though, and it worried me.] {Disturbing dreams, last night. I didn’t get much sleep.}
[I know what you mean—what did you dream of, last night?] he asked her sharply, tipping her head up further, as if trying to peer down her throat, giving him an excuse to continue touching her.
{Malfoy nicknaming my breasts, Quidditch flying, and test papers with too many legs and too
many teeth. I’d rather not recall it, thank you,} she added, firmly repressing her sub-thoughts
before they could stray to the part where she wasn’t sure if the part about him saying he loved her was just a dream…or disturbingly real.
Nodding, relieved, he released her jaw with a curt, “—It seems you’ll live, Miss Granger. Until tomorrow night’s detention, at least,” he added snidely, straightening to look down the classroom at Draco. “Dress for a tramp through the Forbidden Forest, both of you. I’m a little short on certain fungi. …Well? Don’t just stand there, girl; get back to work!” he snapped at Hermione. “You’re not dying, so you have no excuse!”