Rebel Without a Cause Quiz
Once upon a time, some ingenious fangirls decided to encourage reviews on the sshg_exchange by creating exchange_bingo! One of the prizes was a custom made SSHG Quiz. The winner, juniperus, came up with several quiz themes and this Special Edition quiz is her prize. She requested Scoundrel!Snape in all his nasty, ambiguous, rotten glory!
Since it's Thanksgiving weekend in the States, we decided to post early this week to give everyone a bit more time to play. Trust me, you'll want more time to play, because there's a special prize for this week's winner! Have at it, fangirls. There's a prize at stake!
Welcome to our Special Edition Quiz! What makes it a Special Edition, you ask? Well, there's a prize made of SSHG goodness waiting for the fangirl who wins this quiz! To play, simply comment to this post with your answers. All comments containing answers will be kept screened until the answer sheet is posted on Monday. Then the names of all the fangirls with the correct answers will be entered in a drawing and the Magical Hufflepuff Mug will pick the winner! If you'd like a chance at the prize, simply play at any time over the weekend prior to the answers post on Monday. Good luck, my little quizzlings!
Match the quote to the story title:
A Matter of Timing by Zhaneraal aka ashtoreth
Discrete by influenza1918 aka bubonicplague
If He Were a Better Man by ubiquirk
Luring the Enchantress by southernwitch69
Geneamorology by septentrion1970
Academically Speaking: Knowledge Comes with Hardships by Andil (WIP - Abandoned?)
Snape's Redemption by Juliet
What E'er Therein Is Promised by deeble
Archaeologist by wonderfulwrites
Erotic/Erratic by lowlands_girl
Be Careful What You Ask For by shiv5468
Forever and For Always by Mother of Tears
1. Challenge.
She wanted a challenge.
Hermione pulled the contract out of his reach, buying herself time. Were it anyone else, she would have to wonder - have to reconsider …
But this was Snape, for Pete's sake. The teeth incident wasn't the only time he'd made it clear that he found her unattractive. Besides, she felt instinctively that, while he could be relied on to be a tosser about the small things, he was absolutely trustworthy. He had fought with them against Voldemort, even when every sign had suggested that the Light would lose.
She looked up at him; his face revealed not the faintest sign of interest in her decision. She looked back down at the uncomplicated contract, seeing in its spare words the promise of knowledge and skill.
After five years of trying to win this prize, she wasn't going to throw it away on the ridiculous notion that he planned to bed her when it would be exceptionally awkward for her to say no.
“I'm prepared,” she said, signing her name neatly under his spidery line of script and then touching her wand briefly to the ink. The rushing sensation of unexpectedly strong magic flowed through her as the contract took effect, like Snape's potion multiplied threefold, leaving her momentarily breathless and blinded.
She came back to herself to find him holding her wand in one hand and tucking the parchment into his robes with the other. Then he leaned back in the chair and smiled slowly.
Horribly.
“Miss Granger,” he said, “you are more foolish than I had ever imagined.”
2. Severus smiled contentedly at the moon rising above him. Remus would usually be beginning his change, but not tonight. Tonight would be different.
Albus had come to him and said that he should put the past behind him and work on a cure for the 'poor man' as some recompense for his work during the war. Yes, poor Remus, leading such a dreadful life sitting in the safety and security of headquarters whilst others went out risking their life and life spying for the Order. But spying was a dirty business, and seldom got the respect it deserved. It wasn't brave or noble or reckless enough; it wasn't Gryffindor.
He’d demurred; a reaction that Albus had clearly expected and prepared for. His arguments that a cure wasn’t possible had been brushed aside as polite understatement of his abilities. His complaint that he wouldn’t have enough time to work on the cure, with all his teaching responsibilities, had been brushed aside too.
It seemed Albus had an answer for everything, because, to compound the insult, he'd been given an assistant. And he had been firmly instructed to take her under his wing. Her. Miss Granger. She of the enquiring mind and the helpful suggestions. And of the shapely arse and the trembling breasts: he could watch her prepare ingredients for hours.
Not that she'd ever looked at him.
3. Hermione shakes her head, despite knowing that the question is entirely rhetorical. There is a certain amount of shame in being terrified of him, but she knows that if she wasn't afraid, she would be incredibly stupid. "So, um, the location of this magical item Voldemort wants to protect in exchange for a photograph?"
"No, a photograph in exchange for a magical item. You will bring me the former before I give you the latter."
"If I bring you the photograph first, there's no reason for you to give me the location of the magical item. In fact, there's no reason for you to let me live."
"That is true. I suppose that you must decide whether it is worth the risk of trusting me. If it isn't, I'll Obliviate you and obtain what I want by other more destructive means."
Hermione nibbles her lip, weighs her options. Yes, she is probably stupid and reckless beyond the telling, but if Snape is telling the truth and can give them Ravenclaw's staff, the risk is more than worth it. But he is also a murderer and a traitor, and this could be an elaborate trap for her and ultimately for Harry, and there are so, so many reasons why she shouldn't be doing this. And yet…
Snape sighs and shifts impatiently. "If I had known that offering you a means to destroy the Dark Lord would have rendered you mute, I would have tried this years ago. Do you want the staff or not?"
"Yes!" she nearly shouts, blushing with the knowledge of how desperate she sounds. "All right. I want it. But aside from the complications of getting into Hogwarts, the Aurors have warded your rooms. They are the only ones permitted in there, now."
Snape rolled his eyes. "Despite your beliefs to the contrary, Miss Granger, some of us are as capable of forethought as you are." He pulls a piece of parchment from the pocket of his transfigured robes and offers it to her.
4. “What is this?” she asks, her voice clipped and angry. This time I do look up. She’s flushed, defiant, and her hair is standing off her head with all the grace of a Bernoulli sphere that mated with a Medusa. I stare at it.
She glances surreptitiously behind her, checking for the source of my fascination, and then one hand awkwardly goes up to smooth the back of her hair. It’s about as nonchalant as anything a Gryffindor does, and I stifle a snort. She looks even angrier.
I stand, folding my arms and giving her one of my best, specialized glares. The one that is a mixture of boredom and antipathy. “What is what? Do get to the point.”
“This!” she says, as if that should be sufficient. “What is this between us?” She gestures wildly between me and… herself.
“Air?”
The pure, indignant rage radiating from her is beginning to become more amusing than annoying. Oh, there was a time that this would most certainly not have been the case, but her fits of pique have a way of infusing tiresome, unending days with a bit of …a distraction. She’s almost as rewarding to tease as Minerva - perhaps more so, as Minerva can hold a grudge longer than any Death Eater of my acquaintance, and is not above “dispensing justice” (i.e. retaliation) in any fashion she sees fit.
“You know what I mean!”
I’m rather afraid that I do, but I’m certainly not going to voice such subtleties, especially to the likes of Hermione Granger. I simply raise an eyebrow and wait for her to bluster her (tactless) way through her shamelessly emotional outpouring. She’ll no doubt feel foolish and contrite later, and then I won’t have to endure the arduous and revolting task of gathering skrewt droppings.
5. It was a waiting game. He had to wait for her to approach him, but be sufficiently available for her to do so easily, naturally. Preferably, she would come to him and think that it was her idea.
He attended Ministry functions, lurked in Flourish and Blotts. Eventually, they were seated next to each other at a Ministry dinner. She smiled at him, and he was not unfriendly. Halfway through dinner, she leaned in close, and he could smell the spicy scent of her hair.
“I never thanked you for what you did after the funeral.”
He shook his head, hoping she would interpret it as bashfulness, a gesture of ‘think nothing of it.’
She put a hand on his arm and he froze, flinching away slightly. A look of abashed horror flickered across her features and she took her hand away as if it had been burned.
“No, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have been so familiar with you. I understand if you want nothing to do with me, but…” she trailed off mid-sentence. Snape sat stiffly, staring at his plate, hoping she would take the opportunity his silence afforded her.
“I’m terribly sorry, I’ve embarrassed us both. I just wanted you to know that I hold you in the highest regard, and that…”
Here he looked at her out of the corner of his eye, never raising his head to look at her directly, not quite making eye contact.
“What I mean to say is… well… I’ve found a book on geomantic principles, and perhaps you’d like to come by my flat to have a look?”
Snape allowed himself to smile inwardly, while outwardly he nodded. “I’d like that,” he said softly.
6. Severus left Grimmauld Place without seeing her again, but he didn’t care. Things were progressing nicely. He could have throttled Weasley for touching her as he had, but it was for the best really. This would all be later used for his advantage. He’d witnessed on two occasions that the girl was slightly adverse to sexual acts. He chuckled to himself. That would be easy enough to remedy. She simply needed to be seduced, not pawed over.
Molly would see to it that the pair stayed apart for the rest of the holiday. Once she was back at the castle, he would set his plans in motion. His plans were simple enough. He would slowly befriend her, slowly get closer to her, slowly start to show her his intentions, and slowly begin to make love to her. “Make love,” he said aloud with another chuckle. “Interesting choice of words.”
There was Ronald Weasley to deal with. As far as he could see, the boy was well on his way to losing her already. That wouldn’t be a problem any longer. He could see that she cared for the little blighter though. She would likely be devastated, and as the Dark Lord predicted, it would leave the trio parted for a while. He would use that moment to be there to help her pick up the pieces.
With a smirk, Severus walked towards the headmaster’s office. He supposed that Dumbledore should be aware of his plans, but he wasn’t ready to confide this to him. Not yet. There were other issues that needed to be discussed.
7. I’ve had them! I’ve pulled a fast one on them all! All I had to do was to take credit for Wormtail’s activities, and I’ve been acquitted. I’ve even managed to make them buy that Dumbledore had orchestrated his death with me. Really, the Wizengamot’s members must be senile. But let’s see how things proceeded.
Two days after my being captured, and one and a half days after I imagined my plan, I was tried. The Minister of Magic, Scrimgeour, was in charge of the hearing-though he seemed a bit deaf to me. He was proudly sitting upright on the bench in front of me. His hands were free and were holding his wand, while I was chained to the prisoner's chair. At least it was warmer than in Azkaban.
“Severus Snape,” he thundered, “you’ve been brought in front of the Council of Magical Law to be tried for your membership to a proscribed organisation known as the ‘Death Eaters’, and for the murder of Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot.”
“I cannot deny that I have been a Death Eater, but if you have read the file about my trial in 1981, you should very well know that Dumbledore himself refuted the fact that I was still one of them.”
“You lied to him, and he believed you.”
“Do you really think Dumbledore was that naïve?”
There, I’ve hit a weak spot. How to justify the old codger’s trust in me without ridiculing him? Nevertheless, Scrimgeour quickly regains his composure.
“Then, enlighten us about the whys of Dumbledore’s trust in you.”
“I was spying on the Death Eaters and on the Dark Lord for him. The information I provided him, then Potter, with was crucial.”
8. While Albus lived, Snape could refuse him nothing. He was the one man whose regard the Potion's master truly cared about, the mentor who had given him a second chance in his youth, the only true father figure he had ever known. Because of that, he had followed his orders, kept his promise, and executed the headmaster in order to fulfill his ultimate role as a spy. After having done so, he had ascended almost immediately to the highest ranks of Voldemort's council, perfectly positioned to strike from within when the time finally came. But with Dumbledore dead, Snape's misgivings, fueled by grief from the monstrous thing he had been forced to do, began to grow within him and torture him.
He was to wait within Voldemort's circle, poised to help Potter destroy his hated dark master, knowing that the end of it would also be his own death. Potter, of course, would destroy him too. Years of mounting, carefully nurtured hatred would see to that.
For Snape, the irony was sickening. He had spent seven years ensuring that the boy- who-lived continued to do so, and then- after all that trouble and all that effort- the ungrateful wretch would simply pay him back by killing him. The injustice of it all roiled within his soul like fountains of molten poison.
Naturally, it was he who received no reward at all for all his pain and suffering. It had been the story of his entire life: a miserable childhood, a lonely adolescence, a despised and misunderstood adulthood, and then an ignoble death at the hands of that benighted boy! He would die as hated as he had lived. The Wizarding World would discover, only after his death, the truly noble thing that Severus Snape had done, and Snape, himself, would never see their approbation. It wasn't fair. It was grossly unfair, and the tortured spy couldn't help but recoil from that fate.
9. He realised what a prize he had before him. She obviously knew a lot about Potter's involvement with Dumbledore and the contents of the "private lessons" Potter had been receiving. This was just getting better and better. Severus Snape was truly beginning to believe that his luck was starting to change.
"Miss Granger!" Snape's voice cut through her musings. Hermione raised her bleary eyes from her hands and focussed once again on him.
"Miss Granger," he continued, his voice now cajoling. Hermione unconsciously leaned forward towards him. Snape smirked slightly. "Do you have any idea what happened in the meetings between Potter and the Headmaster?"
"Oh, yes," she asserted brightly. "Harry told us everything. All the memories about Tom Riddle, and the prophecy and what the Horcruxes might be. Headmaster Dumbledore said that he needed us to help him, like back in first year with the Stone." Suddenly, she collapsed back onto the couch and dropped her gaze to her clasped hands. "But it's not like that. You can't go back. They don't listen to me. No-one ever does..."
Suddenly, another pair of hands covered her. They had long, aesthetic fingers which were slightly callused, catching against her skin as they rubbed reassuringly across the backs of her hands. Her eyes flew up to find Professor Snape kneeling before her, his eyes gazing searchingly into hers as his fingers continued to roam over her hands and then slowly up her arms.
"Miss Granger," his sibilant hiss filled the air between them. "I will always listen to you. I need your help, too. You were right, right about everything. But I need a vow from you that you will do everything in your power, to help me."
His hands were now up on her shoulders and his fingers made small, seductive circles against the bared skin he found there. Hermione's tongue peeked out and wet her lips.
"Oh, of course, sir. I'll do anything to help!"
"Stay here," he gently commanded. "I'll be back shortly."
10. He tore his attention away from his small intruder to the letter. The insignia on the back was enough alone to make his stomach drop. HG. It only meant one thing, Hermione Granger. She was gone now, what in the world would she possibly want from him now?
After resisting the urge of just tossing the thing into the fire he opened it, and stared at it blankly. The girl was mad... But it held so many possibilities. He read the note again.
Professor Severus Snape,
I write you this letter to inquire about an apprenticeship with you. After many hours of research, I have found that you are the highest rated Potions Master in all of Europe, and I believe that I would find the most challenge under you. I have contemplated going to university, but after reading, and completing their entire curriculum, I don't believe that I will gain my full potential there. I do hope that you consider my proposal, and shall eagerly await your response.
Sincerely,
Hermione Granger
As he read over the letter again his the corner of his lips started to twitch upwards. Yes, there were definitely many possibilities... And obviously the silly girl had no idea what she was getting herself into.
While he started to write a return letter to the girl, the thought that she had no idea what a true potions apprenticeship meant crossed his mind, and he immediately threw out the idea of informing her of it. After all, what fun would it be, if she knew?
Since it's Thanksgiving weekend in the States, we decided to post early this week to give everyone a bit more time to play. Trust me, you'll want more time to play, because there's a special prize for this week's winner! Have at it, fangirls. There's a prize at stake!
Welcome to our Special Edition Quiz! What makes it a Special Edition, you ask? Well, there's a prize made of SSHG goodness waiting for the fangirl who wins this quiz! To play, simply comment to this post with your answers. All comments containing answers will be kept screened until the answer sheet is posted on Monday. Then the names of all the fangirls with the correct answers will be entered in a drawing and the Magical Hufflepuff Mug will pick the winner! If you'd like a chance at the prize, simply play at any time over the weekend prior to the answers post on Monday. Good luck, my little quizzlings!
Match the quote to the story title:
A Matter of Timing by Zhaneraal aka ashtoreth
Discrete by influenza1918 aka bubonicplague
If He Were a Better Man by ubiquirk
Luring the Enchantress by southernwitch69
Geneamorology by septentrion1970
Academically Speaking: Knowledge Comes with Hardships by Andil (WIP - Abandoned?)
Snape's Redemption by Juliet
What E'er Therein Is Promised by deeble
Archaeologist by wonderfulwrites
Erotic/Erratic by lowlands_girl
Be Careful What You Ask For by shiv5468
Forever and For Always by Mother of Tears
1. Challenge.
She wanted a challenge.
Hermione pulled the contract out of his reach, buying herself time. Were it anyone else, she would have to wonder - have to reconsider …
But this was Snape, for Pete's sake. The teeth incident wasn't the only time he'd made it clear that he found her unattractive. Besides, she felt instinctively that, while he could be relied on to be a tosser about the small things, he was absolutely trustworthy. He had fought with them against Voldemort, even when every sign had suggested that the Light would lose.
She looked up at him; his face revealed not the faintest sign of interest in her decision. She looked back down at the uncomplicated contract, seeing in its spare words the promise of knowledge and skill.
After five years of trying to win this prize, she wasn't going to throw it away on the ridiculous notion that he planned to bed her when it would be exceptionally awkward for her to say no.
“I'm prepared,” she said, signing her name neatly under his spidery line of script and then touching her wand briefly to the ink. The rushing sensation of unexpectedly strong magic flowed through her as the contract took effect, like Snape's potion multiplied threefold, leaving her momentarily breathless and blinded.
She came back to herself to find him holding her wand in one hand and tucking the parchment into his robes with the other. Then he leaned back in the chair and smiled slowly.
Horribly.
“Miss Granger,” he said, “you are more foolish than I had ever imagined.”
2. Severus smiled contentedly at the moon rising above him. Remus would usually be beginning his change, but not tonight. Tonight would be different.
Albus had come to him and said that he should put the past behind him and work on a cure for the 'poor man' as some recompense for his work during the war. Yes, poor Remus, leading such a dreadful life sitting in the safety and security of headquarters whilst others went out risking their life and life spying for the Order. But spying was a dirty business, and seldom got the respect it deserved. It wasn't brave or noble or reckless enough; it wasn't Gryffindor.
He’d demurred; a reaction that Albus had clearly expected and prepared for. His arguments that a cure wasn’t possible had been brushed aside as polite understatement of his abilities. His complaint that he wouldn’t have enough time to work on the cure, with all his teaching responsibilities, had been brushed aside too.
It seemed Albus had an answer for everything, because, to compound the insult, he'd been given an assistant. And he had been firmly instructed to take her under his wing. Her. Miss Granger. She of the enquiring mind and the helpful suggestions. And of the shapely arse and the trembling breasts: he could watch her prepare ingredients for hours.
Not that she'd ever looked at him.
3. Hermione shakes her head, despite knowing that the question is entirely rhetorical. There is a certain amount of shame in being terrified of him, but she knows that if she wasn't afraid, she would be incredibly stupid. "So, um, the location of this magical item Voldemort wants to protect in exchange for a photograph?"
"No, a photograph in exchange for a magical item. You will bring me the former before I give you the latter."
"If I bring you the photograph first, there's no reason for you to give me the location of the magical item. In fact, there's no reason for you to let me live."
"That is true. I suppose that you must decide whether it is worth the risk of trusting me. If it isn't, I'll Obliviate you and obtain what I want by other more destructive means."
Hermione nibbles her lip, weighs her options. Yes, she is probably stupid and reckless beyond the telling, but if Snape is telling the truth and can give them Ravenclaw's staff, the risk is more than worth it. But he is also a murderer and a traitor, and this could be an elaborate trap for her and ultimately for Harry, and there are so, so many reasons why she shouldn't be doing this. And yet…
Snape sighs and shifts impatiently. "If I had known that offering you a means to destroy the Dark Lord would have rendered you mute, I would have tried this years ago. Do you want the staff or not?"
"Yes!" she nearly shouts, blushing with the knowledge of how desperate she sounds. "All right. I want it. But aside from the complications of getting into Hogwarts, the Aurors have warded your rooms. They are the only ones permitted in there, now."
Snape rolled his eyes. "Despite your beliefs to the contrary, Miss Granger, some of us are as capable of forethought as you are." He pulls a piece of parchment from the pocket of his transfigured robes and offers it to her.
4. “What is this?” she asks, her voice clipped and angry. This time I do look up. She’s flushed, defiant, and her hair is standing off her head with all the grace of a Bernoulli sphere that mated with a Medusa. I stare at it.
She glances surreptitiously behind her, checking for the source of my fascination, and then one hand awkwardly goes up to smooth the back of her hair. It’s about as nonchalant as anything a Gryffindor does, and I stifle a snort. She looks even angrier.
I stand, folding my arms and giving her one of my best, specialized glares. The one that is a mixture of boredom and antipathy. “What is what? Do get to the point.”
“This!” she says, as if that should be sufficient. “What is this between us?” She gestures wildly between me and… herself.
“Air?”
The pure, indignant rage radiating from her is beginning to become more amusing than annoying. Oh, there was a time that this would most certainly not have been the case, but her fits of pique have a way of infusing tiresome, unending days with a bit of …a distraction. She’s almost as rewarding to tease as Minerva - perhaps more so, as Minerva can hold a grudge longer than any Death Eater of my acquaintance, and is not above “dispensing justice” (i.e. retaliation) in any fashion she sees fit.
“You know what I mean!”
I’m rather afraid that I do, but I’m certainly not going to voice such subtleties, especially to the likes of Hermione Granger. I simply raise an eyebrow and wait for her to bluster her (tactless) way through her shamelessly emotional outpouring. She’ll no doubt feel foolish and contrite later, and then I won’t have to endure the arduous and revolting task of gathering skrewt droppings.
5. It was a waiting game. He had to wait for her to approach him, but be sufficiently available for her to do so easily, naturally. Preferably, she would come to him and think that it was her idea.
He attended Ministry functions, lurked in Flourish and Blotts. Eventually, they were seated next to each other at a Ministry dinner. She smiled at him, and he was not unfriendly. Halfway through dinner, she leaned in close, and he could smell the spicy scent of her hair.
“I never thanked you for what you did after the funeral.”
He shook his head, hoping she would interpret it as bashfulness, a gesture of ‘think nothing of it.’
She put a hand on his arm and he froze, flinching away slightly. A look of abashed horror flickered across her features and she took her hand away as if it had been burned.
“No, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have been so familiar with you. I understand if you want nothing to do with me, but…” she trailed off mid-sentence. Snape sat stiffly, staring at his plate, hoping she would take the opportunity his silence afforded her.
“I’m terribly sorry, I’ve embarrassed us both. I just wanted you to know that I hold you in the highest regard, and that…”
Here he looked at her out of the corner of his eye, never raising his head to look at her directly, not quite making eye contact.
“What I mean to say is… well… I’ve found a book on geomantic principles, and perhaps you’d like to come by my flat to have a look?”
Snape allowed himself to smile inwardly, while outwardly he nodded. “I’d like that,” he said softly.
6. Severus left Grimmauld Place without seeing her again, but he didn’t care. Things were progressing nicely. He could have throttled Weasley for touching her as he had, but it was for the best really. This would all be later used for his advantage. He’d witnessed on two occasions that the girl was slightly adverse to sexual acts. He chuckled to himself. That would be easy enough to remedy. She simply needed to be seduced, not pawed over.
Molly would see to it that the pair stayed apart for the rest of the holiday. Once she was back at the castle, he would set his plans in motion. His plans were simple enough. He would slowly befriend her, slowly get closer to her, slowly start to show her his intentions, and slowly begin to make love to her. “Make love,” he said aloud with another chuckle. “Interesting choice of words.”
There was Ronald Weasley to deal with. As far as he could see, the boy was well on his way to losing her already. That wouldn’t be a problem any longer. He could see that she cared for the little blighter though. She would likely be devastated, and as the Dark Lord predicted, it would leave the trio parted for a while. He would use that moment to be there to help her pick up the pieces.
With a smirk, Severus walked towards the headmaster’s office. He supposed that Dumbledore should be aware of his plans, but he wasn’t ready to confide this to him. Not yet. There were other issues that needed to be discussed.
7. I’ve had them! I’ve pulled a fast one on them all! All I had to do was to take credit for Wormtail’s activities, and I’ve been acquitted. I’ve even managed to make them buy that Dumbledore had orchestrated his death with me. Really, the Wizengamot’s members must be senile. But let’s see how things proceeded.
Two days after my being captured, and one and a half days after I imagined my plan, I was tried. The Minister of Magic, Scrimgeour, was in charge of the hearing-though he seemed a bit deaf to me. He was proudly sitting upright on the bench in front of me. His hands were free and were holding his wand, while I was chained to the prisoner's chair. At least it was warmer than in Azkaban.
“Severus Snape,” he thundered, “you’ve been brought in front of the Council of Magical Law to be tried for your membership to a proscribed organisation known as the ‘Death Eaters’, and for the murder of Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot.”
“I cannot deny that I have been a Death Eater, but if you have read the file about my trial in 1981, you should very well know that Dumbledore himself refuted the fact that I was still one of them.”
“You lied to him, and he believed you.”
“Do you really think Dumbledore was that naïve?”
There, I’ve hit a weak spot. How to justify the old codger’s trust in me without ridiculing him? Nevertheless, Scrimgeour quickly regains his composure.
“Then, enlighten us about the whys of Dumbledore’s trust in you.”
“I was spying on the Death Eaters and on the Dark Lord for him. The information I provided him, then Potter, with was crucial.”
8. While Albus lived, Snape could refuse him nothing. He was the one man whose regard the Potion's master truly cared about, the mentor who had given him a second chance in his youth, the only true father figure he had ever known. Because of that, he had followed his orders, kept his promise, and executed the headmaster in order to fulfill his ultimate role as a spy. After having done so, he had ascended almost immediately to the highest ranks of Voldemort's council, perfectly positioned to strike from within when the time finally came. But with Dumbledore dead, Snape's misgivings, fueled by grief from the monstrous thing he had been forced to do, began to grow within him and torture him.
He was to wait within Voldemort's circle, poised to help Potter destroy his hated dark master, knowing that the end of it would also be his own death. Potter, of course, would destroy him too. Years of mounting, carefully nurtured hatred would see to that.
For Snape, the irony was sickening. He had spent seven years ensuring that the boy- who-lived continued to do so, and then- after all that trouble and all that effort- the ungrateful wretch would simply pay him back by killing him. The injustice of it all roiled within his soul like fountains of molten poison.
Naturally, it was he who received no reward at all for all his pain and suffering. It had been the story of his entire life: a miserable childhood, a lonely adolescence, a despised and misunderstood adulthood, and then an ignoble death at the hands of that benighted boy! He would die as hated as he had lived. The Wizarding World would discover, only after his death, the truly noble thing that Severus Snape had done, and Snape, himself, would never see their approbation. It wasn't fair. It was grossly unfair, and the tortured spy couldn't help but recoil from that fate.
9. He realised what a prize he had before him. She obviously knew a lot about Potter's involvement with Dumbledore and the contents of the "private lessons" Potter had been receiving. This was just getting better and better. Severus Snape was truly beginning to believe that his luck was starting to change.
"Miss Granger!" Snape's voice cut through her musings. Hermione raised her bleary eyes from her hands and focussed once again on him.
"Miss Granger," he continued, his voice now cajoling. Hermione unconsciously leaned forward towards him. Snape smirked slightly. "Do you have any idea what happened in the meetings between Potter and the Headmaster?"
"Oh, yes," she asserted brightly. "Harry told us everything. All the memories about Tom Riddle, and the prophecy and what the Horcruxes might be. Headmaster Dumbledore said that he needed us to help him, like back in first year with the Stone." Suddenly, she collapsed back onto the couch and dropped her gaze to her clasped hands. "But it's not like that. You can't go back. They don't listen to me. No-one ever does..."
Suddenly, another pair of hands covered her. They had long, aesthetic fingers which were slightly callused, catching against her skin as they rubbed reassuringly across the backs of her hands. Her eyes flew up to find Professor Snape kneeling before her, his eyes gazing searchingly into hers as his fingers continued to roam over her hands and then slowly up her arms.
"Miss Granger," his sibilant hiss filled the air between them. "I will always listen to you. I need your help, too. You were right, right about everything. But I need a vow from you that you will do everything in your power, to help me."
His hands were now up on her shoulders and his fingers made small, seductive circles against the bared skin he found there. Hermione's tongue peeked out and wet her lips.
"Oh, of course, sir. I'll do anything to help!"
"Stay here," he gently commanded. "I'll be back shortly."
10. He tore his attention away from his small intruder to the letter. The insignia on the back was enough alone to make his stomach drop. HG. It only meant one thing, Hermione Granger. She was gone now, what in the world would she possibly want from him now?
After resisting the urge of just tossing the thing into the fire he opened it, and stared at it blankly. The girl was mad... But it held so many possibilities. He read the note again.
Professor Severus Snape,
I write you this letter to inquire about an apprenticeship with you. After many hours of research, I have found that you are the highest rated Potions Master in all of Europe, and I believe that I would find the most challenge under you. I have contemplated going to university, but after reading, and completing their entire curriculum, I don't believe that I will gain my full potential there. I do hope that you consider my proposal, and shall eagerly await your response.
Sincerely,
Hermione Granger
As he read over the letter again his the corner of his lips started to twitch upwards. Yes, there were definitely many possibilities... And obviously the silly girl had no idea what she was getting herself into.
While he started to write a return letter to the girl, the thought that she had no idea what a true potions apprenticeship meant crossed his mind, and he immediately threw out the idea of informing her of it. After all, what fun would it be, if she knew?