A/N: Yes, I understand that the whole "private lessons" thing is a bit trite and over-used, but please bear with me. I always do my best to keep things as fresh and surprising as I possibly can :D

Chapter One:

Severus Snape stifled a yawn as he stacked his paperwork into neat, albeit precariously balanced piles on top of his desk and put away his favorite quill. Easing himself out of his armchair, he stretched languidly, stubbornly ignoring the twinge of discomfort in his back which immediately followed. Years of bending over cauldrons had finally managed to catch up with him it seemed, and sitting at his cramped little desk for hours on end no longer agreed with him in his...

Old age, he finished with disgust as he methodically returned books to their shelves and caps to their ink bottles. Damn it.

It had been a long day.

To begin with, Severus had spent most of first period dousing cauldron fires for imbecilic first years, only to be later chastised by Minerva for his “unjustifiably harsh criticisms.” Then, at lunch, he had simply been sitting there at the staff table, minding his own business, when Hooch’s little bitch of a Peregrine Falcon had decided to gobble up his last piece of toast from right underneath his unsuspecting nose. Hooch had laughed heartily and ruffled the bird’s feathers with a sickening degree of affection, while Severus stared incredulously down at his empty plate. (And while this had not been an altogether extraordinary act of malice on Hooch’s part, he was still quite upset over the flight instructor’s appalling lack of table manners).

However, hands down the most taxing event of the day had arrived outside Severus’s laboratory door promptly following dinner, all wrapped up in her various, red and gold colored clothing assortments, beaming like a buffoon, and asking more questions than any person in the world had a right to wonder.

Tonight had been his very first two-hour session with Hermione Granger. And already he wanted to strangle the little Gryffindor twit.

How his colleagues managed to stomach her incessant yammering day after day, he had no idea. She was exhaustive and batty, stubborn in all the wrong ways. No matter that she was graduating in only a year, Severus wanted her gone now.

Though…

If he was to be truly honest with himself, Severus found that he was able to grudgingly admit that the encounter (their private lesson) had not been as entirely horrific as he had initially anticipated.

While it was indeed true that Hermione Granger continued to remain an ever insufferable know-it-all (and probably had been since the first day she opened that horrible mouth), she at least put on the appearance of listening attentively. She never needed to be told anything twice, and she seemed able to grasp a concept almost before Severus could even finish proposing it. And, most shocking of all, he had found himself very nearly impressed (‘nearly’ being the operative word) with her knowledge of the history behind the craft of potion making itself, rather than simply the names of the ingredients and their individual properties.

Of course, these attributes also served to make the girl twice as annoying as usual — after all, there was only so much noise he could take from one person — but Severus thought that if things continued to progress as they were, he might actually be able to survive the rest of the semester.

Or at least manage to refrain from putting the girl through a wall.

But why Granger? Why potions? Two things he had always thought should never be voluntarily mixed, and here he was haplessly stirring them together in his very own laboratory. Honestly, why did he agree to take her on? Just the thought of a faithful flunky of Wonderboy Potter flittering around in his personal stores was enough to bring bile to the back of Severus’s throat.

But persistence was definitely not an unfamiliar concept to one such as Granger; every single day, at the end of class, she had come to his desk, over-flowing book bag slung over her shoulder and potions text in hand. She had gazed dolefully up at him with those stupidly big brown eyes and begged him to give her private lessons: “Please, Professor Snape, it would only be once a week,” and, “Oh, please, I would really like to get my Masters in Potions likeyou, but I need more experience.”

Perhaps his current irritation caused Severus to exaggerate the pathetic aspect of her whine a bit more than was fair…But even without exaggeration, the constant sound of Granger’s voice was enough to make him want to grab an enormous pair of cymbals and start madly bashing her head between them.

Maybe this was the reason he had finally given in; his poor grated nerves had simply thrown in the towel and said “fuck it, Severus — just give the damn girl what she wants.”

Then again, perhaps deep down (very, very deep down) he had taken Granger on because he really could use the extra pair of hands.

Either way, it hardly mattered now. What’s done was done, and there was little he could do about it. Though, Severus still couldn’t help that niggling, bitter complaint in the back of his head which groaned on and on about how tedious the whole thing was, and how, despite its difficulties and inconveniences, he was not receiving a single knut for all that trouble.

Severus knew, of course, that it would be ludicrous to demand money from a student in order for him to do a job that he was already being paid to do. But honestly, it wasn’t as though he were rolling in Galleons or anything. The only thing he was sure to get were Minerva’s prickly, disgruntled looks, telling him just how much she appreciated him exploiting her precious little prodigy.

Hard be it for the fickle old woman to imagine that it actually wasn't his life’s ambition to ruin the future of Hermione Granger.

Though, it probably wouldn’t hurt to try, he thought with an amused grunt.

Severus flicked his wand as he left the room, the numerous candles on the walls sputtering faithfully out behind him.

But one last question remained lodged and unanswered in the back of his head as he prepared for bed: Why, oh why, in Merlin’s name, did Granger all of a sudden want to become a Potions Mistress? Granted, she made decent marks (a fact which vexed him greatly, as he always did his best to ensure that no Gryffindor ever had a shot in hell of scraping an acceptable mark in his class), but it wasn’t as though she had ever seemed particularly keen on the subject.

Severus gave an uncharacteristic sigh as, at last, he slipped into bed and buried himself beneath the thick comforter. It had been a long day, and trying to puzzle out the madness behind the madness of Hermione Granger only seemed to be making it longer. So, closing his eyes, and allowing himself to sink peacefully into his mattress, Severus vowed solemnly not to think again about said Gryffindor until at least the next morning.

Bloody hell. He cracked an eyelid and glanced at the clock. It’s four a.m. – it already ismorning. And with that last thought, Severus rolled over on his side and promptly went to sleep.

“I still can’t believe you would voluntarily take extra lessons with Snape,” stated Ron for what seemed like the hundredth time that morning as Hermione munched cheerily on a slice of buttered toast

“Don’t you get enough rubbish from the old bastard as it is?” Harry muttered into his pumpkin juice.

“Stop it already,” Hermione snapped. “And that’s Professor Snape to the both of you,” she added, glaring mightily at them from across the table.

Ron didn’t answer. Instead, he shoved another spoonful of porridge in his mouth and proceeded to chew around a heavy scowl.

Harry, on the other hand, did not seem hungry. “Again? I don’t believe this. Why do you even care whether or not we call him Professor?” he pressed, squinting at Hermione from behind his wire-framed glasses. “You’ve been acting strange all week. Haven’t got a fever, have you?” His tone was only half-serious, but he reached out and made as though to feel Hermione’s forehead.

She pulled away sharply. “I am in perfect health, Harry, thank you,” Hermione replied, wiping her mouth delicately on a red and gold fringed napkin. Then she reached over and used her fork to spear herself another omelet from the bowl in the middle of the table, taking a moment to wrinkle her nose at Seamus Finnegan who was currently drowning his own plate of eggs and sausages in a pool of ketchup.

This was disconcerting to Hermione — the fact that Harry had noticed something “strange” about her. She had thought her efforts thus far to appear normal had been mostly successful, if not admirable. But it was hard to get perspective. It was hard to tell what was different or strange in her behavior when she wasn’t used to studying herself.

Then again, her keen sense of reason had admittedly not been up to snuff lately—this owing to the fact that she spent the majority of her time feeling very…confused. Emotionally confused. Emotionally and hormonally confused. A confusion whose origins she had a hard time locating. But, if pressed, she supposed it must have begun, as most things do, at the beginning — the very first day she had met him (this man, this professor, this cause of all things disconcerting):

Tall, dark, sinister, fierce and imposing, powerful, brilliant, Master in his field; as an eager young student, bedazzled by the wonder and glamour of a new world, those words had come easily to Hermione when she first glimpsed that intimidating figure striding so boldly through the classroom doors. Those words were the very essences of her first impression of Severus Snape – and a strong impression it was to be sure. So strong, in fact, that despite the man’s perverse cruelty over the years, it had managed to imprint itself deep into her subconscious mind. Somehow that image of dauntless perfection had remained buried within her – hidden away behind a thick layer of forced indifference. She had ignored it for a long time, and yet, somehow, it stayed, quiet but persistent, lurking, waiting for a moment to break free again. For there was no denying that it had been trapped; so many walls had been built since that first day — walls of anger, of hatred, of betrayal and hurt. All of those feelings had come together to form an impenetrable force around that initial image; the clever, devious, riveting persona which had once struck her with such unrestrained fervor.

But somehow over the last year, those rigid walls had disappeared.

She had no idea if this had happened all at once, or gradually over time, but the point of it was that the walls were gone now — reduced to nothing more than a crumbled heap of ill-humor and bruised pride. She used to be able to look at Snape and feel nothing but indifference — occasionally anger or a profound sense of injustice — but now when she looked at him, she felt half-blinded by that initial, striking impression. It was that collective core, that aura of shrewd awareness and confidence and intelligence which seemed to radiate so fiercely from him now — an aura which never failed to give her delightful little shivers down her spine.

But why did it give her shivers? And what did those shivers even mean? Hermione had been cold before — shivered from a frosty wind, shivered from fear, shivered from anticipation. But this was none of those things. She wasn’t cold, she was, perhaps on occasion, a little afraid (but not that afraid), and she never anticipated anything from him but dark looks, an occasional sneer, and a plethora of thinly-veiled insults. This new shiver was something else entirely and she had no idea where to categorize it in her mind. Nothing about this made the slightest bit of sense!

Another cause for concern was what exactly had demolished those carefully constructed walls of hers in the first place. Could it have been a specific event? Or did the barrier simply deteriorate on its own? Worn slowly away by the occasional (yet forceful) waves of awe and admiration he sometimes inspired in her. But, most importantly, why oh why couldn’t she just leave him alone? — ignore him like she used to. She was no longer able to just bow her head and read her textbook like the diligent student she so desired to embody. Why did she all of a sudden find the impulse to watch him out of the corner of her eyes irresistible? Or the need to impress him even greater than it ever had been before? None if it made sense, and that did not sit well with Hermione. Not at all.

Who knew if this feeling was even attraction. Was it him as a person that appealed to her (though ‘person’ was rather a generous term), or was it the position and power he held? Was what she was feeling normal? Was it okay? Who could possibly understand what she was going through if she couldn't even understand it herself?

While Hermione made valid attempts at convincing herself that what she was feeling was really just a passing infatuation, she equally understood that whatever this ridiculous emotion was, she needed to get it under control, and soon. She couldn’t have a crush on Snape — he was her teacher! And a bastard besides.

Her reasoning therefore, was this: a person could never make an accurate analysis of something until they had all the facts. So Hermione’s first objective was to do what she did best — research. Then, once she had all the information (though she was not quite sure what sort of information she was looking for in this situation), she could piece everything together and finally have an answer.

That was her analytical approach, anyway.

Her other approach, her emotional approach, was perhaps a bit more unorthodox. But this one, at least, provided a much more immediate solution.

Instead of trying her best to stay away from Snape and hope that this unwanted emotion faded on its own, Hermione decided to exploit the man’s biting personality by spending more time with him rather than less, hoping that her heart would soon realize what a pain in the side he really was and leave her alone; hoping that perhaps she could replace that initial image with something a bit less…admirable.

But after her first couple of lessons in Snape’s gloomy dungeon — all of which were awkward and sometimes downright miserable — Hermione found that her theory proved to be outstandingly wrong. Though she had to admit, it was through no lack of trying on Snape’s part. Even after she had proved herself to him countless times, showing him that she wasn’t just an ignorant little Gryffindor girl and that she could indeed bubble a cauldron just as well as any Slytherin, he still continued to treat her like an ignorant child. (And if there was anything that Hermione hated most, it was being treated as though she were ignorant).

But, in a twisted way, the fact that Snape knew her greatest peeve and exploited it for all it was worth also gave Hermione hope. Perhaps that proved that her emotional approach wasn’t too far off after all. Maybe she just needed to keep on with her lessons, and her hatred for the bitter and prickly man would eventually overcome the infatuation.

Yes, keep on with the lessons — that sounded like a good plan.

It was quiet as usual in the cold, dark dungeon, with the exception of the soft scratching of Snape’s quill and the gentle hiss of the simmering cauldron which Hermione was so intently bending over.

When the outer rim turns green, I add the ginger root, she recited mentally to herself, trying not to be distracted by the constant tapping of her professor’s booted toe. There it goes!Quickly, Hermione scraped the finely cut roots off her cutting board and into the subtly bubbling cauldron, where the paper-thin slices disintegrated almost instantly. Turn blue, turn blue, turn blue, she silently urged the bubbling liquid.

“Yes!” she squealed as it turned a pleasing shade of navy.

“Pardon?”

Snape’s voice startled her and she whirled around, her elbow catching the edge of a finely made crystal container of Armadillo bile, which toppled almost apologetically off the table. But with a swoop of her arm and a sigh of relief, Hermione caught it and set it tenderly back on the counter, thanking every luck-giving entity she could think of that it had not broken. She knew only too well how embarrassing it was to drop a valuable ingredient when in the presence of a man like Severus Snape.

“Oh, nothing,” she replied, slightly sing-song, hoping that he had been too engrossed in his paperwork to see her near accident. “It’s just that stage one of the burn salve extract is almost finished.”

“You needn’t inform me when something is almost finished, Miss Granger,” Snape stated bluntly (and rather nastily, in Hermione’s opinion). He finished grading a paper with what looked like a depressingly extravagant D and transferred it into the steadily growing stack of papers at his side which each bore such a flourishing letter upon them. “Almost will never get you anywhere.” He glanced up briefly to scowl her way before turning back to his fourth-years’ Properties of Vampire Blood essays and resuming his furious, yet admittedly elegant, scrawling.

“My mistake,” she said lightly, determined not to let him bother her.

Normally Hermione would be thrilled that Snape was in such a foul mood (for that would mean almost no work on her part in trying to goad him into rudeness), but she had been having a good day so far, and for once she would actually like to concentrate on a lesson instead of trying to sabotage her heart. Ugh, I sound so melodramatic, she thought to herself, suppressing a giggle at what she imagined Ron’s expression might be if he heard her talking like this.

Her life, it seemed, had become quite the soap opera.

Hermione hummed lightly as she stirred the burn salve extract, which was beginning to form itself into a thin, cream-like paste. She actually didn’t know that she was making any noise at all until Snape slammed his palm down on the table and startled her once again out of a reverie.

“Would you kindly cease and desist that repulsive racket,” he hissed.

“Yes, alright,” Hermione replied, a little stung despite herself. “No need to be snippy,” she added in an undertone.

“What was that?”

A sigh. “Oh, nothing.”

Snape made a sharp noise of disbelief and turned back to his papers, once again grading with such fury that Hermione thought it a wonder he didn’t rip straight through the parchment. She watched the curve of his slender hand as it gripped the quill, and found herself, quite unexpectedly, wondering what his skin felt like. Was it warm like hers? She had always imagined his skin feeling cold — like marble or a smooth metal. But obviously he was every bit as much a human she was (physically speaking anyway — she wasn’t sure about morals or character), and he certainly had veins and blood and a pulse just as she did, so surely he—

“Eyes on your cauldron, Miss Granger,” Snape said suddenly without looking up from his papers.

Hermione frowned and shook her head, mentally urging herself to get a grip. She turned back to look at the salve and resumed stirring in a rhythmic, clockwise motion, repeating the instructions in her head over, and over, and over, and over…

It wasn’t long before Hermione’s lessons grew steadily less awkward, and she eventually found herself forming a genuine interest in her new studies.

She also came to find that her dark and brooding professor was aptly titled Potions Master, for he was wickedly cunning and so intelligent that she often had conversations with him which she didn’t fully understand until days afterwards (though she was almost always certain that there was a thinly veiled insult behind just about everything he said to her).

Another point of interest Hermione learned about her Professor, and to her great surprise, was that he did a great deal of potions-related work in his spare time which had nothing to do with either teaching or personal experiments. St. Mungo’s owled Snape a long list of cures and remedies just about every week that were in need of replacement, after which he would single-handedly brew, bottle, and send back each one within the confines of seven days (sometimes more when the potion required a longer time to make). But what was most surprising of all was the fact that he, Severus Snape, was never paid a single knut for all that trouble.

Despite herself, Hermione was impressed.

However, Snape hardly went without making his few extra galleons. He also had a rather important-sounding deal with the Ministry; a deal which consisted of working on potions that might counter a particularly bad hex or make the drinker invisible — basically anything to help an Auror in action. This he was paid very handsomely for.

Now, one might wonder how Hermione knew all of this, but when a person spends as much time with Severus Snape as she did, there are some things that simply cannot be kept a secret. He had owls flying in at every turn of the head, screeching and fluttering as they swooped down through a specially created pipe that led like a chimney to the outside. In fact, the owls were always in such a rush that sometimes they would mistakenly deliver their burden directly to Hermione, after which Snape would instantly snatch the letter away, glaring at Hermione as though it was all her fault the owl had become confused.

It was actually during just such an accident, and when Snape was most unfortunately not in the room, that Hermione finally got a chance to see the Ministry seal on the envelope and the enormous bag of galleons attached. This surprised her not only because of the money, but also because the only letters she had seen thus far were from St. Mungo’s — letters with order forms she had become entirely too familiar with, as Snape had recently taken to letting her deal with those almost completely on her own. At first she had figured that these unsupervised assignments were a reward, a show of confidence in her growing medicinal skills. But then she began to get the feeling that Snape simply did not seem to think those letters quite as important; when the first Ministry bird arrived, Hermione immediately realized why.

In any case, Hermione’s lessons continued, and soon she and the Professor got to the point where long silences were comfortable rather than awkward, and most times they would go the entire two hours without saying more than three words put together.

This should have made Hermione furious — after all, wasn’t she supposed to be hating him by now? But, instead, it made her happy, and she truly began to enjoy her time in the dungeons. After all, it was far more exciting than any of her other classes.

She had never had such an opportunity before to work so intimately with such powerful ingredients and concoctions. It was the greatest high she had ever experienced. The closest she had come to anything of this nature was the Polyjuice Potion that she, Harry, and Ron had brewed in their second year. But even then Hermione had found it almost below her skill level.

At last she had found something to test her knowledge.

And, most unfortunately, her patience as well…

“Not like that — like this! Do you want to ruin the whole batch?” Snape snatched the ladle out of Hermione’s hand and proceeded to stir the plum colored potion in what was apparently the appropriate manner (which honestly did not look very different in Hermione’s opinion). But a second later proved that she was indeed mistaken, and she felt her ears burn as Snape went on to explain.

“The angle of the wrist is very important, Miss Granger, I know I’ve told you that before — see how I turn it out rather than in?”

Hermione nodded, fascinated despite her irritation at being caught doing something wrong.

“I can’t hear your head rattling, girl, speak up.”

She jumped. “Oh, yes. Of course. I see.”

Snape gave her an irritable look and shoved the ladle back into her hand. “Good. I have other matters to attend to so I’ll trust you to finish up.” He sneered. “Assuming you can, of course.”

Hermione glowered at him as he left the room, resisting the strong urge to pick up the bowl of frog eyes next to her and hurl it as hard as she could at the back of his head.

A moment later however, she found herself smiling, and she turned back to stirring her potion with renewed zeal (though she paid particular attention to how her wrist was angled).

If that’s any indication, she thought proudly, then my plan must be working even better than I expected. Or so she thought, anyway.