Albus had suggested that Severus attend to Hermione. As though he hadn’t enough on his mind. But the Headmaster had spoken with that tone that tolerated no objection.
Severus sighed. He hadn’t objected, but he hadn’t undertaken any plans to help Hermione either. Unfortunately for him, he had to revise his decision that evening.
He was grading essays from Ravenclaw fourth years when someone suddenly knocked on his door. It couldn’t be someone sane, not at this ungodly hour, he thought. Albus, or Minerva perhaps, wanting to remind him of the promise to tend to Hermione.
He made a disapproving sound and lifted himself sourly from his chair to go scare the intruder away. He strode to the door, opened it and found to his surprise“
“Miss Granger?” he said disbelievingly.
“Good evening, Severus,” Hermione replied happily. There was an air of excitement about her.
“Professor Snape to you,” he growled, throwing the door shut.
Hermione, however, didn’t let herself be easy to get rid of. She quickly put a foot between door and door frame.
“What?” Severus bellowed, ripping the door open and putting his worst do-not-disturb-face on. He was seething.
Hermione looked to the floor, as though she didn’t dare tell him why she came to visit him. Severus thought she was blushing slightly, but he wasn’t sure. She shuffled her feet uncomfortably.
“WHAT?” He asked again, irritated even further at her lack of an answer.
Hermione lifted her face to meet his eye and produced parchment and quill from behind her back. “Can I have your autograph, please?” she asked him sincerely, eyes wide, looking like a puppy that wants to be cuddled.
“Enough! Go back to your dormitory or Gryffindor won’t have any points left by tomorrow morning,” he threatened.
Hermione was unaffected by his threat. “Oh, please, please give me your autograph,” she pleaded. “I really need it!”
“What you need is someone to hit you on the back of the head. They say this increases the intellectual power.”
Again, Hermione wasn’t perturbed by this. “I’ll be forever grateful if you give me your autograph. If you don’t want to put it on the parchment, you can sign everywhere else!”
“I’ll sign nothing!” he shouted at her, trying to shut the door again. But her foot was still there. “Take your foot out of my door and get off!”
It was as though he was talking to the wall. Hermione ignored everything he said. She just went on asking him for an autograph. He would have to resort to physical action, and despite what everybody in the castle believed, he wasn’t one to do that. If a problem could be solved without violence, he preferred it that way. He remembered that he had already gotten rough with her in their last Potions lesson and he was determined not to repeat it.
“Will you leave now?” he demanded impatiently when Hermione pushed the quill into his hands.
He thrust the quill back to her and finally, Hermione showed a reaction, if not the one he wanted. She looked up at him, lips trembling, tears threatening to flood her eyes. Then she suddenly turned around, sulking and refusing to move, her foot still in the door.
Severus rolled his eyes. He needed a fresh approach. “Look,” he began in a softer voice, attempting to make her see reason. “It’s late and“”
But Hermione cut him off, turning around to him again and flinging her arms around his neck, letting out a cry of happiness. “I knew you’re not the bloody, selfish, daft, mangy, intimidating, power-hungry, violent, barking, slimy, greasy, snorting, bastardy git that everybody thinks you are,” she told him joyfully when he had peeled himself free from her over-enthusiastic embrace.
Before he could open his mouth to answer he found his vision obscured by something red. Hermione was waggling a rose before his face and its tiny prickles were dangerously close to his nose, threatening to scratch it.
She took a step backwards and looked expectantly at him. “I’m very sorry that I didn’t manage to come down here yesterday,” she apologized while he stared at the rose in confusion. “But I had a lot to do and I gathered you weren’t in the brightest of moods.”
“What do you-”
“It was your biiirthday yesterday!” Hermione exclaimed, stretching the word “birthday” as though Severus didn’t know himself when his birthday was. “I wanted to congratulate you.”
“Well, you’ve done so, so you can go now,” he tried, hoping that she would finally take the hint.
“But you haven’t had your birthday song!” Hermione shrieked, shocked and apparently oblivious to the obvious cue to leave. She launched immediately into all the birthday songs she knew.
This was a serious threat to Severus’ reputation. If a prefect was presently making his or her rounds in the dungeons (which he doubted; they usually stayed clear of that area, but you never know) and heard Hermione, they would assume he had gone mad and by next morning the whole school would know of his little birthday party. His image would go to the dogs. Nobody would respect him anymore. The students wouldn’t be frightened by him. Minerva wouldn’t stop teasing him. He might as well openly admit his coffee addiction.
No, he had to prevent that horrifying scenario. And seeing as Hermione couldn’t be persuaded to go back to Gryffindor Tower, he hastily ushered her into his private quarters, where she finished her collection of birthday songs.
When she had finished, she looked at him, expecting him to clap. He didn’t, which didn’t dampen her spirits in the least. She looked around, found the room acceptable and let herself fall into one of the armchairs near the fireplace.
Severus quickly schooled his face back into his usual scowling expression, realizing that he must appear extremely flabbergasted and dumbstruck, much like Neville when handed a potion recipe.
He could deal with mad Headmasters that offered him lemon drops at intermittent intervals. He could deal with megalomanic Dark Lords and supercilious Death Eaters, with students who cocked up their potions and senselessly wasted his stored boomslang skin. He could deal with Potter’s never-ending arrogance and Weasley’s oafishness. But he couldn’t deal with top students that suddenly decided to go insane and worship him.
“You know,” Hermione started, throwing off her shoes und putting her feet on the small table in front of the fireplace. “You look amazing! I can’t remember ever being near someone as handsome as you.”
Severus strongly doubted this. Maybe, in her clouded state, Hermione had resorted to some kind of made-up language in which “beautiful” meant “deplorable” and “Happy Birthday” equaled “best greetings from hell.”
He stepped before her lolling figure and tried once again to make her go. But she simply gazed at him in admiration.
“Your skin is white as snow, your lips are red as blood and your hair is black as ebony wood,” she doted, looking as though she wanted to throw herself around his neck again. “You are the man of my dreams “ handsome, patient, witty and single. Je t’aime, Severus, Maître Des Potions Et Seigneur De Mes Rêves Les Plus Sauvages.”
Severus snorted, causing her to adopt a hurt expression. He didn’t especially like being compared to Snow White. Even less did he like her suddenly getting up and madly waving her wand through the air, sending sparks at the walls. “Stop brandishing your wand like that! You could accidentally hit something!” he said, concerned for the well-being of his rooms.
This wasn’t quite the reply Hermione had expected to get for her confession. “But “ don’t you have anything to say to this?” she asked, looking horror-stricken that he hadn’t pulled her into a fiery hug.
Severus had quite a lot to say, for that matter, but he thought he’d best do this while nobody was within earshot. “I have to say that I would like to see you running towards Gryffindor Tower,” he growled.
“Not before I have my autograph.”
Severus was becoming desperate to get her out of his quarters. “You will leave when you have your bloody signature?” he asked to be certain of her intentions.
Hermione nodded solemnly and then had to visibly fight to restrain herself from kissing him due to overwhelming thankfulness when he handed her the signed parchment.
“Now go!”
Fortunately, Hermione complied with him this time and went to the door of his room, humming jubilantly to herself.
He sighed when he saw her closing the door “ from the outside this time. She was really getting annoying. What was worse, she seemed to have taken an unhealthy liking in him. Unhealthy for him, because it didn’t leave any time for himself. In the time it had taken to have her invade his rooms he could have graded tons of essays, but no! Trust the Gryffindors to always find a way to bother him.
He glanced at the pile of lemon drops that still lay on one of his tables. Maybe she was good for reducing the pile. He should offer her some the next time she decided to come down to the dungeons. But upon reconsideration, he really preferred the lemon drops over Hermione’s attack on his privacy.
There was another dire aspect of her obsession with him. Now her problem had become his; something he had wanted to avoid at all costs.
Hermione had almost closed the door behind her when she suddenly thought of something. “Severus?” she said, jerking the door open again and peering inside. “Ron thinks you have the empathy of an eggcup.”