Rating:
PG-13
House:
Schnoogle
Characters:
Hermione Granger Severus Snape
Genres:
General Romance
Era:
Multiple Eras
Spoilers:
Philosopher's Stone Chamber of Secrets Prizoner of Azkaban Goblet of Fire
Stats:
Published: 10/03/2003
Updated: 10/17/2003
Words: 94,798
Chapters: 20
Hits: 77,297

Ordinary People

Hayseed

Story Summary:
How do ordinary people cope with their extraordinary circumstances? A SS/HG romance that strives for realism.

Chapter 06

Posted:
10/06/2003
Hits:
3,663

The unlikelihood of change--

Only one more night of detention. One more night of bending to Albus' bizarre whims, and then he and Miss Granger were free. At least, until she did something stupid and wound up in his detention again. Quite frankly, Severus had lost count through the years of the number of detentions he'd given Miss Granger. Although he'd noticed a certain exponential growth trend through the years. She went from a student terrified of a simple reprimand from a professor to one who barely batted an eyelid at being threatened with the removal of an obscene number of House points. If it hadn't been such a gradual transition, he would have tested her for Polyjuice.

Severus recalled that first night of detention, when they'd spent five minutes arguing over some physics equations and wondered dimly if he would ever be able to have such a conversation with her again. She'd actually given him quite an insight into his work in those few moments--he realized how sloppily he'd been treating the math. A missed star symbol made the difference between the improbable and the all-out impossible. Damned Muggles and their obsessive notation, he thought sourly, doodling in the margins of the parchment he was contemplating.

A quiet knock at the door signaled Miss Granger's arrival. "Come in, Miss Granger," he called, not taking his eyes off the parchment.

She stuck her head through the doorway. Two weeks spent in each other's company and she still treated him as if she went in mortal terror of him. Except for the rare moments where she actually forgot he was her professor and treated him as the comrade he sort of thought they'd become. After all, she'd saved his life, and he'd comforted her (if awkwardly) in the aftermath. Together they'd scrubbed out stables, stalked evil textbooks, helped the house-elves do the laundry, restored an entire hallway worth of portraits under Filch's glaring eye, polished all of Sinistra's filthy and rusty telescopes, and waxed Trelawney's crystal balls (Severus still hadn't gotten the reek of incense out of his hair), among the other devious tasks Albus had devised. And tonight would indubitably be among the worst of them.

He waved his hand at an empty chair. "He's farmed us out to Minerva this evening," he said without preamble.

Miss Granger's features brightened a bit. Of course she would like a night of McGonagall, Severus reflected dismally. The Transfigurations teacher all but sang Miss Granger's praises at every turn. She'd tried to make the girl a prefect back during her fifth year, but Dumbledore had actually put his foot down. "Maybe that won't be so bad," she said gingerly.

"Oh, it will be," Severus replied. "We'll be helping her fix the Transfiguration equipment. A whole night of reversing whatever awful botched effects you brats have caused. It makes my head ache just to consider it." He forced himself to put his quill down with considerable effort. "She expects us in the Transfiguration classroom at half past the hour. We have about ten minutes, Miss Granger."

The girl's brow furrowed in thought. "Okay," she said. "I guess I have a bit of work I can do."

Severus mentally sighed. It was now or never. "Actually, Miss Granger, I was hoping you could take a look at something I've been working on. More of those infernal equations."

She actually smiled at him--Severus was taken back; she'd never given him a genuine, full smile before. "Really?" she asked hopefully. "May I?"

"Oh, by all means," he replied, shoving the parchment at her. "I find I've reached another block in my calculations. That final result is quite frankly nonsensical, and I simply cannot find my mistake."

Miss Granger frowned at the parchment, considering. "Actually, Professor, I've reached the same wall in my own work. It just doesn't seem possible to describe magical energy as a field. The mathematics have not been devised yet--Muggle math seems incapable of capturing it. It's easy to theorize that there must exist a smallest magical unit and in some sense to talk about it in a wave function sense, but it just doesn't conform to any quantum mechanical standard." She sounded even more frustrated about this fact than he was.

"Maybe it's the organic component?" Severus offered, mind working furiously.

She shook her head a bit. "If our bodies can be described, at least theoretically, with this formalism, then it can encompass all organic structures. Although, I confess, magic seems to only thrive properly in living beings, above and beyond an organic matrix. Maybe that's got something to do with ... holy buggered apeshit!" Miss Granger suddenly yelped, crumpling the parchment in her hands.

Severus was startled--he'd never heard her use quite that level of profanity before. Not even in dealing with Malfoy. "Miss Granger?" he asked cautiously.

"Living beings ..." Miss Granger said thoughtfully. "And most particularly animals! Plants and inorganic matter aren't magical unless infused with it by another living being. Don't you see?" She gave Severus a pleading look. "It's in our blood, Professor! It's all biochemical! Magic isn't a field in the air, it's in us!" Eagerly, she snatched up a clean sheet of parchment and began scrawling on it.

Severus felt his mouth fall open. "Like ... cellular material?" he asked in a tone halfway between curiosity and excitement.

The girl was nearly shaking with the impact of her insight. "And that's why blood is so powerful. It's the closest thing to raw magic we have! Unicorn's blood, dragon's blood, even the blood of your enemy. That's where the magic is. And that's why Harry Potter didn't die when You-Know-Who hexed him. All that blather about his mother's love is nonsense--it was her blood that saved him. A blood sacrifice." Her hand continued to fly across the parchment, covering it mostly with words but a few biochemical scrawlings as well. "I bet our cellular structure is slightly altered. Random fluctuations. Oh, Professor, don't you understand? We can find out where magic originated!"

Severus began to catch on. "Magic came about through perfectly normal fluctuations in human structure during evolution. And that we can trace. If we can tack down the actual magical component in our blood, we can track it back to the source. Like mitochondrial evolution!" He found himself becoming excited as well.

She was shaking her head over the paper. "It's so much more complicated than I'd ever envisioned."

He leaned across the desk and put both his hands on her shoulders. "Miss Granger, you must publish this as soon as you can get a paper together. This might be the most important discovery in magical theory to date!"

She nodded. "I'll owl Edoras immediately and ask him what issue he's got room in."

Severus froze in place, gripping her shoulders more tightly. "How on Earth can you be on a first-name basis with Edoras Griffiths?" He was baffled as to how Miss Granger knew the all-important first editor of MRL.

Something hardened in Miss Granger's face. "Uh ... Professor ... you see ... well, think about it."

And think about it he did. How could Hermione Granger have come in contact with ... oh ... he had it now. Severus felt incredibly stupid--he'd been staring the solution in the face all along. "Hermione Granger," he said out loud. "H.G. Not a particularly original pseudonym ... You're the new mystery theorist?" he asked her incredulously. "That means ..."

Miss Granger nodded. "I published my first article when I was sixteen years old. I submitted under a pseudonym because I knew no one would take a sixth year student seriously. But I didn't think much about my pseudonym because I didn't think I would be accepted."

Severus regarded the girl with a renewed sense of awe. "Hogwarts stopped teaching you anything somewhere during your second year, didn't it?"

She grinned self-deprecatingly. "Well ... I didn't finish the library until fifth year," she said. "And I have the characteristic social issues to work through, of course."

Still staring at her, Severus willed himself to shut his mouth. And then he happened to let his eyes flick up to read the clock. "Oh, Merlin's beard," he said. "We were supposed to be in Minerva's classroom fifteen minutes ago. Have your cuts healed enough to run for it?"

Miss Granger shrugged a bit. "We'll find out, now won't we?" And with that, she leapt out of her chair and took off for the Transfiguration classroom at a dead run, Severus dogging her heels, not even caring whether or not any students saw him. If they were too late, Dumbledore would likely give them another night's worth of work.

Minerva McGonagall was sitting primly in the middle of her classroom surrounded by boxes of disfigured beetles, broken buttons, and other half-Transfigured debris. She simply looked down her nose at Severus and Miss Granger, both staggering in her doorway, gasping for air.

"I was wondering when you two would show up," she said. "Miss Granger, I've got a handful of poor half-slippered rabbits you can try your hand at. Severus, how are you at music box parrots these days?"

"We'll see," he panted, flinging himself gracelessly into a nearby chair and pulling out his wand. Miss Granger followed suit, prodding a hapless rabbit thoughtfully.

"Professor Snape?" the girl asked into the silence of the classroom as the strange trio worked.

He grunted, mind struggling to remember what the exact words used to turn a parrot into a music box were.

"Does Hogwarts have any microscopes lying around?" she asked, that excitement still making her cheeks flush.

"Micro-whats?" McGonagall asked, startled from her box of buttons.

"Does that answer your question, Miss Granger?" Severus replied with a smirk. "Strictly a Muggle instrument, a microscope is."

She sighed. "It would be nice to get a hold of a uni quality one. For, you know, experiments." Miss Granger gave him a knowing look, and he immediately understood what she was talking about.

"You're certainly in a strange mood this evening, Miss Granger," McGonagall commented, putting down a box of newly restored beetles and turning to the box filled with beetles caught halfway to buttons.

"I just, um, had an interesting idea, Professor," Miss Granger replied evasively, eyes flicking back to Severus for a moment.

He gazed back at her reflectively. They shared a secret now, and it felt good. Severus hadn't felt this sort of camaraderie in years ... decades, really. And when she was in the middle of a thought, when she was practically sparkling with a new idea, she very nearly looked beautiful.

Startled, Severus dropped the parrot he'd been poking on the floor where the bird landed with a pitiful squawk. Beautiful? Where did that come from? She was a student. A snarly Gryffindor with an overblown sense of honor and the most unruly hair he'd ever laid eyes on.

But her eyes were warm and her smile was somehow intriguing. She would never be a true beauty. Actually, not many would even consider her very pretty. But there was something about her that snagged his attention. More and more, lately.

Severus suppressed a mental snort and picked up his poor bird, finally completing its awkward transformation back into complete parrot and setting it in a prepared cage. As if he had any room to talk. He was entirely too thin for his frame, and his nose more than outsized the rest of his face. He knew he wasn't exactly ugly, per se, but there was a reason he'd never actually been in a meaningful relationship.

As if he was standing in front of a mirror, Severus conjured up a mental image of himself in his mind's eye, giving it a critical once-over. He needed to gain about twenty pounds of muscle, and he could stand to go out in the sun once in a while. His teeth were an absolute wreck--he cleaned them dutifully these days (after hearing one of the Weasley twins refer to him as a 'yellow-toothed bat' some four years ago), but they were still as crooked as ever. The nose was better unmentioned--Lucius Malfoy had broken it some twenty years ago, and it hadn't been a particularly attractive feature even before that. And his hair. If he didn't spend the day in a dungeon full of potion fumes, it was tolerable, although a bit too fine for his tastes, but that was a rare day indeed. Most of the time it was a horrible, greasy, lanky mop. Severus had actually debated shaving his head on more than one occasion but in the end refrained, deciding he looked bad enough already. There was no need to add a milk-white, blue-veined scalp into the equation.

He turned the next music box/parrot back into its original form with little effort--the Transfiguration had gone mostly correctly and there were few mistakes to unravel. The next one, however, proved to be quite a puzzler--it outwardly looked like a parrot, save a suspiciously wind-key shaped set of tail feathers, but instead of emitting an avian squawk, it sang the first bar of "The Blue Danube" whenever it opened its mouth.

"You may just want to leave that one, Severus," McGonagall said, glancing up from her beetles. "I think the only thing that will reverse that is time."

"Bloody students," Severus grumbled, shoving the parrot into a cage, where it gazed forlornly back at him, blinking every now and then.

"Come, Severus, it wasn't as if you were any better," McGonagall chided.

He sent her a glare of pure venom and noted out of the corner of his eye that Miss Granger was smirking at him.

"In fact," McGonagall continued, ignoring him entirely, "I recall one particularly disastrous day in your sixth year when you managed to produce a living mouse that coughed up salt from your salt cellar. I kept him, you know. Could never figure out what you did. And I suppose I ought to let you know that he lived to a healthy old age and learned to enjoy salted cheese."

Severus felt the blush spread across his cheeks. He hadn't been a particularly good Transfigurations student--he couldn't focus enough for it. Potions and Charm work required a mind good at multi-tasking; Transfigurations asked for the complete opposite. As a student, Severus had blown a great number of transformations by simply being distracted from his task by something trivial. That was why Gryffindors were usually quite good at it, he considered with an evil sort of internal grin, they were generally unhealthily single-minded.

Miss Granger was regarding him with near devilish glee. "Foolish wand-waving, eh?" she asked teasingly.

"A thousand points, Miss Granger," he shot back, grabbing his next music box so tightly it squawked in protest.

She just rolled her eyes at him and sat her newly restored rabbit on the floor, giving its ears a gentle pat.

McGonagall's jaw dropped. "A thousand ... Severus, really," she cried.

It was his turn to roll his eyes at the indignant Gryffindor. "I wasn't serious, Minerva," he drawled. "Contrary to popular belief, I do happen to possess a sense of humor. It's just not puerile enough for you bloody single-minded Gryffindors to appreciate."

Miss Granger snorted through her nose and attempted to hide it with a smothered cough. McGonagall appeared not to hear her, but Severus gave the girl a rather sly look.

"I suppose, Miss Granger," he said in a dulcet voice that usually signaled he was about to be particularly verbally abusive, "that you excel at Transfigurations."

"I find the subject a useful exercise in maintaining concentration," she replied with a sugary sweet smile. "Although it does not come to me as naturally as, say Charms, I enjoy the rather meditative qualities that Transfiguration encourages. Perhaps you would benefit from such study, Professor."

He winced. Touché, Miss Granger.

McGonagall looked back and forth between the pair. "I believe, Miss Granger, that you have been spending entirely too much time around Severus. And Severus, what's gotten into you? I would think Miss Granger would have lost at least seventy points by now and been given a handful of detentions besides."

Shrugging, Severus turned away from Miss Granger. "I've tried. It doesn't bother that one at all, and I absolutely refuse to hand her any more detentions after the past two weeks."

"The past two weeks?" McGonagall echoed, confusion apparent in her features.

Severus was incredulous. Probably Miss Granger was as well, although she masked it well. "You mean, Albus didn't tell anyone what happened? Not even you?"

"The headmaster doesn't tell the staff everything, Severus. Surely you've realized that by now." She gave him a sideways look.

"Two weeks ago, Miss Granger and I ... um ... disappointed Albus severely ,and he assigned us detention for the duration. Tonight is the last night." He picked up the last parrot in the box and began turning it over in his hands.

"What in Merlin's name did you two do? Albus hasn't personally assigned detention to my knowledge since he was still teaching. Oh, wait," she said shrewdly, "this has to do with the reason that the both of you disappeared for two days. If I'm not mistaken, young Harry Potter was gone as well. Why isn't he here?"

Miss Granger coughed a bit, fidgeting in her seat. Severus decided he could tell her the truth. Well, bits of it at any rate. "Potter was taken, Minerva," he said. "And Miss Granger and I took it upon ourselves to liberate him."

Surprise and confusion were the predominate emotions in McGonagall's eyes. "Why?" she asked blankly. "Why didn't Albus go?"

"Oh, he did," Miss Granger said, surprising both professors. "But there was another place that Professor Snape didn't remember until it was too late to alert anyone. Don't worry, though, Professor. Everything's all right now."

Realization dawned in McGonagall's eyes, and she put the box of completely restored beetles to her side. "That's how you were injured," she breathed, looking at the girl with new respect.

"Madam Pomfrey says that in another two weeks I'll be completely healed," Miss Granger replied with some satisfaction in her voice. "And most of the scars will disappear. Except for the worst ones."

"Scars?"

Severus gave Miss Granger a vicious look--of course McGonagall didn't know about the girl's real injuries.

Widened eyes told him that she'd just realized this as well. "Someone had a knife," Miss Granger replied, unwilling to elaborate further.

"Oh, my dear girl!" McGonagall cried, wringing her hands.

"Like I said, Professor," she said, clearly uncomfortable. "I'm nearly healed. And I'm done with the rabbits. Is there anything else?" she asked in a clear attempt to abandon the subject.

McGonagall glanced around the room and saw two dozen content rabbits, a cluster of parrots dozing happily in their cages (one was still humming "The Blue Danube," but there was nothing Severus could do about that), and her seething box of beetles. Still looking slightly dazed, she shook her head. "No, dear, I think you two can go for this evening. Thank you--you've saved me about five hours worth of work."

Severus and Miss Granger escaped the room as quickly as they could, tucking wands back into robes. He put a hand up to his aching forehead ruefully--Transfiguration always did give him a headache. Perhaps he had something in his office to take care of it.

"Professor, sir?" Miss Granger was asking hesitantly.

He grunted.

"Can I please retrieve my papers from your office? I'd like to continue to work on the theory." She was looking down at her feet as she said this.

"Of course, Miss Granger," he replied impatiently. Another thought struck him. "You may, if you wish, continue to work in my office. I'm certain it's more quiet than your dormitory," he said, deliberately inserting an off-handed tone into the offer.

She looked up at him sharply, narrowing her eyes as she regarded him. "Really?" she asked. "Although," the girl continued, practically talking to herself, "I suppose we ought to work on it together. If you like, of course, sir," she said, looking startled as she realized he was still there.

He was flabbergasted--she was willing to share the credit for her discovery with him? And more to the point, she wanted to continue to work with him? Severus smothered his grin with considerable effort, trying to hide it under his best scowl. "That would be ... acceptable, Miss Granger. Although I confess that it has been many years since I have accomplished any noteworthy research." Severus began walking toward his office, eyebrow indicating that she should follow him.

She began chattering again, her speech rapid and fluttery as she thought aloud. "I just wish we could get our hands on a microscope. And maybe a centrifuge. It would be so much easier to do proper research with ... I guess the theory should be fleshed out first, though. Wouldn't do to begin experimentation without a proper thesis ... it's just ..."

"You do realize, of course, Miss Granger, that any sort of Muggle equipment you use would have to be modified to handle the magical environment?" Severus asked, doing a fair amount of thinking out loud himself.

She flapped her hand absently at him and picked up her pace as they walked down the corridor. "That shouldn't be a big deal," she said. "A lot of the equipment we'd need wouldn't be electric anyway. And the centrifuge could be charmed, I think ... they can't be that complex and once we take it apart ..."

"Yes," Severus continued her train of thought, "we might be able to construct a magical device that simulated the motor, as long as it was not a complicated one. We'd have to obtain some tools, as well, though."

They were standing in front of his locked office. Severus dropped the wards with a wand flick and opened the door, letting Miss Granger walk in under his arm without a thought. "I wonder, though," Miss Granger continued, "if it is a separate component in the blood or actually infused into the cellular structure." She sat down in the same chair she'd previously occupied.

Severus sat behind his desk and leaned over it, reading the parchment she'd been working on. "Separate component, I'd think. How would it be infused into the cells, Miss Granger?"

She was shaking her head, pulling out a quill. "That seems unnecessarily complex, Professor. Besides, we don't know its manifestation. Just because it defies a proper quantum mechanical description doesn't mean we aren't discussing structures of atomic size."

"Like, what, ten Angstroms? A hundred nanometers?" He tapped his fingers on the wood impatiently. "Although if we're to consider all the possibilities, we might as well posit another natural element, present only in hemoglobic systems."

"Only if we can isolate it," she retorted. "And I'd hesitate to call it an element yet. It may not be structured that way. Maybe more of a protein. Or something to do with junk DNA."

"You sound like a Muggle science fiction novel, Miss Granger," he said with a smirk. "Although that's as good as anything I've got. But look here ..." He plucked the quill out of her ink-stained fingers and scrawled out a line full of symbols.

She snatched the quill back and crossed out one of the symbols. "No ... that goes somewhere else. Maybe ..."

----------

They'd gone back and forth for the entire night, working through an entire stack of parchment. At one point, Hermione actually crawled up on Snape's desk and she'd stayed there, cross-legged and bent over their growing list of equations. "It doesn't balance!" she cried, nearly snapping her quill with frustration.

"Everything's mostly water and empty space anyway," Snape retorted placidly. "Good Lord, Miss Granger, do you realize it's six in the morning?"

Hermione swore under her breath. "Class in less than two hours," she muttered, scratching her head and shoving curls out of her eyes. "But look, Professor, all of this is a moot point if the unit is present in a pre-existing structure," she continued, tapping a set of equations he'd been working on.

"But it doesn't make sense any other way," he protested

"Why not?" she argued. "We share ninety eight percent of our DNA structure with the rest of the animal kingdom. That much in common means that you don't have to have an independent unit to share between magical beings. It might as well be in an already developed matrix. Simple rules, complex behavior, sir."

"How would identical units evolve simultaneously in that many creatures, Miss Granger? The odds are not that great--you're talking about a statistical probability so close to zero it doesn't bear consideration. And besides, Miss Granger, I have to sit through three hours of yapping Ravenclaw and Slytherin third years, beginning in the next two hours, and I'd rather do it with at least a cup of coffee in my system. No more of this nonsense--you can persist in being incorrect later." He gave her a pointed look that was part condescension and part humor.

She glared in reply. "I hate you," she spat as she stalked out of his office.

"Good," he retorted as she vigorously slammed the door.

"Arrogant bastard," she hissed at the closed door.

"Careful, Miss Granger," Snape warned through the same door, making her jump with fright. She hadn't known he could hear her.

Hermione proceeded through her shower and her breakfast as mechanically as she could, mind still busily working over the possibilities of their new theory. She was so distracted, in fact, that Harry had to actually shake her shoulder before she noticed him. "I'm sorry, Harry, were you saying something?" she asked breathlessly.

He gave her an odd look. "I've only called you about a dozen times, Hermione."

"So ... what do you need?" She absently shunted her cold eggs from one edge of her plate to the other.

"I was going to ask you how your detention went last night. It was your last one, wasn't it? Must have gone late--didn't notice you in the Common Room." Shoving his glasses up his nose, Harry smiled sympathetically at her.

"McGonagall was in charge," she said with a shrug. "We helped her straighten out the mis-transformed equipment. It wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been." And then she drifted off again, immersed in her thoughts.

Her classes passed in the same fashion--she barely noticed that anyone was speaking. Hagrid had actually taken off five points when she failed to respond to his question the third time he put it to her.

"Good Lord, Hermione, you're acting like Ron when he's got a new crush," Harry whispered in Defense Against the Dark Arts. "Who are you mooning over?"

She blinked once or twice. In love? Yes ... Hermione was certainly in love. Just not with a person.