More Than She Aksed For

Hermione swallowed the last bite of her stew and got up from the Gryffindor table. She was one of the last ones in the Great Hall; she came down to dinner almost a half an hour late, and by the time she sat down everyone had almost finished. She had been avoiding people for the entire day. She just couldn't stop thinking about it...that awful night. It was easy to blame her preoccupation on an upcoming exam; it was certainly a believable excuse, and no one raised an eyebrow at her behavior. As she walked out of the hall and towards the stairs to the dungeons, she was careful not to catch anyone's eye. She had only one thing on her mind, and it involved a trip to her least favorite classroom.

The door to the potion professor's office was propped halfway open, a small pewter cauldron serving as the doorstop. She stepped through the doorway silently, observing the man for several seconds before speaking.

"Professor Snape, Sir, we need to talk."

He looked up from the stack of parchment on his desk, trademark scowl already in place on his pale, haggard face. Hermione braced herself for what was about to come; it had been a long time since she had seen the potions professor in such a fowl mood.

"On the contrary, Miss Granger, we have never needed to talk less. If you need to talk to me, it can most assuredly wait until your lesson tomorrow. If, Merlin help me, I ever need to talk to you, I will send for you. Fortunately neither one of these scenarios is taking place at the present, so good night." He slammed his quill down and moved violently on to the next parchment.

Hermione flinched, but stood her ground. She was determined to get to the bottom of this. She took a deep breath, and laid her cards on the table.

"I saw what you did to those muggles last night." She stated it like a fact from a textbook, with only mildly accusatory undertones in her voice. Almost as an afterthought she added an icy, "Sir."

If she had been expecting some grandiose reaction from her professor she would've been disappointed. Truth be told, she hadn't known for certain what to expect. She had imagined him denying her claims, and she had seen herself giving calculatingly incriminating testimony, convincing him that she knew everything. What "everything" was, she wasn't sure.

"Miss Granger," spat the now agitated Snape, "I don't know what you are babbling on about, but as you can see from the large stack of parchment in front of me, I have no time for silly

That's where she cut him off. What she had seen that night had been many things, but silly was not one of them. There was a new note in her voice when she next spoke: a quiet anger that existed in Hermione Granger, but did not often surface.

"You may have been dressed in your ridiculous Death Eater costume, Severus Snape, but you should know by now that appearance is not the only way to identify a wizard." Using his first name frightened her, but she did not expect a reproach. This issue transcended their relationship as student and teacher, and she hoped by using his first name she could approach him not as an inferior, but as a fellow member of the magical community.

It was perhaps the first time in her life that Hermione had ever seen the Potions Master at a loss for words. His scowl had lifted into an expression of faint surprise, and as she watched him his eyes quickly ran the length of her body, as if seeing her for the first time. She was almost certain no student had ever spoken to him like that before.

His amazement was short-lived, and after a moment he regained his composure. His expression unreadable, he leaned slightly towards Hermione and addressed her in a harsh whisper, as if he was shushing a child in the library. "Haven't you learned anything from your involvement in the Order, however indirect it may be?" He got up from his desk and stepped towards the back door of his office, pushing the desk chair in behind him.

"Follow me," he commanded. "It we're going to have this discussion, we must have it in more private quarters." Hermione followed him through the door and into a cold, ancient looking stone hallway, dimly lit by torches mounted on the wall every fifteen feet or so. She tried to imitate the professor's soundless footsteps, but ended up creating an eerie, resonating scuffle sound with her feet. Unsure of what to expect, her heart was pounding in anticipation, and she was sure its loud thumps were audible. Eventually they came to a large wooden door, intricately carved, with a definite serpentine motif. The professor uttered a few unintelligible words, then took a large, old-fashioned silver key out of an inside pocket of his robes. It appeared to perfectly match the keyhole that had just appeared in the door. Snape unlocked the door, opened it, and stepped inside, leaving the door open for Hermione to follow.

She took several steps into the room, then stopped. She found herself in a place she certainly never expected to see. The room was circular, and constructed of the same stone as the hallway. Directly across from her, built into the curved wall, was an imposing fireplace, alight with bright flames. To the right of the hearth was a tall, gothic-style window, which stretched all the way up to the vaulted ceiling. She was sure that the window, which now looked out onto the starry night sky, was enchanted, and she was fairly certain that the ceiling was as well. How else could such a large room be explained this deep in the dungeons? Off the left of the door was a little room, a breakfast nook, really, that had been converted into a laboratory of sorts--even now a cauldron was quietly bubbling over a soft blue flame. Further past the nook, directly across from the charmed window, was an opening into what appeared to be, judging by the large four-poster bed closed off by black velvet curtains, Snape's bedroom. Hermione was standing in what seemed to be the sitting room. Bookshelves, filled with volumes of all shapes and sizes, lined the wall from the fireplace to the opening of the bedroom. A soft emerald green couch sat in the center of the room, accompanied by a black coffee table and angled to allow exposure to the fireplace as well as a view of the window. Positioned directly in front of the window was an armchair, also emerald green but far more worn looking than anything else in the room. As Hermione's eyes passed over the lone chair she wondered how many hours her professor spent gazing out the window, lost in his thoughts.

Upon walking into the room Snape had busied himself with his key, hoping the girl would go sit down, or maybe run away, but now he turned around to find her looking like a deer in the headlights- eyes wide, drinking in his private quarters.

"Sit down," he snapped. As she quickly moved towards the couch he walked over and shut the door, then stalked back to the fireplace and addressed her once more.

"Although I believe my office to be, for the most part, secure, there is no doubt that a powerful, well-placed listening charm could get us both killed. Now, on to the discussion topic of the night--what were you doing there?"

Now seated on the couch, Hermione began her story. "Well, Professor, I was..." Looking up at Snape, who seemed even more menacing that usual standing in front of the fireplace, Hermione stopped her story. She had intended to make Snape feel guilty about his exploits, but for all of her planning and plotting, she had forgotten that she herself was guilty of something as well, something that was both against the law and essential to her story.

Snape's cold voice snapped her out of her thoughts. "Miss Granger, this is not the time to fall victim to stage fright. Tell me what you were doing in that forest."

She took a deep breath, and decided to tell the truth. "Well, Sir, as you perhaps know, I've always been a bit more...ambitious than other students." At this statement Hermione thought she saw a bit of a smirk on the professor's face, but she wasn't going to test him. "I've always done a fair bit of self-study, 'getting ahead,' if you will. Several weeks ago I was going through some of the books I had borrowed from the library when I came across a particularly interesting work on the subject of portkeys. It reduced the whole theory of portkey transportation to a very simple concept, and, inspired by this apparent simplicity, I decided to attempt to make my own portkey. I was confident that I would be successful; the spells required were hardly beyond basic, and the patterns and incantations necessary to bring a protkey to the functioning level were easy to memorize. I read, researched, double-checked, and finally made myself two portkeys, one to get out of Hogwarts and one to get me back in. Last night was the night I had selected for testing my creations. The first portkey was designed to bring me into the forest outside of Hogsmeade, near a secret passageway back into the castle that I could use to get back if the other portkey didn't work. It turns out that that's exactly what happened: my first portkey successfully transported me from the prefect's bathroom into the forest, and the second portkey didn't work, thus it transported me nowhere. The trouble was, I couldn't find the secret passageway back to the castle. The journey jolted me, it was only my second time ever traveling by portkey, and the forest looks quite a bit different at night. I didn't know what I would do- I had to get back to the castle by morning, but what if I couldn't? Would I be expelled? Put in prison? I started to panic. What if I wasn't even in the right forest? What if the portkey malfunctioned, and I wasn't even in England? I was about to start shooting up sparks, in the hope that someone, magical or not, would find me, when I heard voices. I decided to follow the voices, hoping they could help me figure out where I was."

Hermione paused in her story to look up at Snape. If anything, his scowl had intensified. She quickly diverted her eyes back to the coffee table, and continued to speak.

"I crept behind them, not daring to light up my wand. The only words I could hear were the spells they used to blast the bushes out of their way; otherwise they spoke in low, murmuring voices. I at least knew they were magic, and was about to speak up when they stopped. I looked around and noticed the trees had thinned, and they had entered a clearing. I didn't know what to do, so I hid behind a tree with a clear view of the clearing. Then...I saw it. The things you did to those poor girls. I was nearly sick." Hermione swallowed, the images of that night swirling around in her head. She hoped she wouldn't have to describe what she had seen; living it once had been enough for her. Luckily, Snape saved her from continuing.

"So, you created an unregistered, illegal portkey, used it to leave the grounds after curfew and travel to a dangerous location, and then ended up in the middle of a night of Death Eater revelry. This is something I would expect from the famous Mr. Potter, but not from you, Miss Granger. That aside, I am at a loss as to why you feel the need to discuss it with me. It is common knowledge that muggle baiting and torture is a well-loved practice among the Dark Lord's followers, surely you know this."

Hermione could not contain her reaction. How could he discuss this so passively, with so little emotion? She leapt up, now face to face with Snape.

"But you were leading it! Not standing off the to side, casting a hex or two like some of the others, but encouraging them. You cast the most spells, you committed the foulest deeds imaginable, and then you laughed. You laughed at their pitiful attempts to escape, and the way they wept when they failed. It was the most...the most disgusting thing I've ever seen in my life."

Any sympathy Snape may have felt towards the girl for having witnessed those atrocities vaporized with the disdain he heard in her voice. He took a step forward and leaned down so his face was directly in front of hers, and his voice was low and steely when he spoke.

"Miss Granger," he began, "I will not lie to you. I have always thought of you as rather bright. Obviously you know that I am working as a spy for Dumbledore, participating in Death Eater activities in order to feed the Dark Lord misinformation about your dear friend Potter. What you have clearly failed to consider, however, is what is necessary to convince the Dark Lord of my allegiance. Those muggle baitings are only one portion of what I have endured to convince him of my faithfulness. If I do not put on a convincing performance each and every time...well, let's just say that more than my life is at stake."

He whipped around and stalked over to the window, obviously very upset about what he had just had to say. As he stood next to the chair, staring determinedly into the night, Hermione's mind was racing. What other tortures had the man gone through? She knew they were likely far worse than raping a few muggle girls and pretending to enjoy it. She shuddered at the thought. All at once, the heavy silence of the room fell on top her. Feeling very suffocated, she couldn't suppress the urge to speak.

"I healed them, you know," she began tentatively. "After you were gone, I snuck into the clearing and did the best I could to stop the bleeding. I also tried some simple memory charms, so they wouldn't remember the worst of it. It looked like they were going to be OK, once they woke up." She said it almost as an apology, though she wasn't what exactly she was apologizing for, or if that was the appropriate statement. She looked hopefully towards her professor's back.

"How very Gryffindor of you," he said neutrally, his voice as unreadable as his back. "Now, if I am not mistaken, I believe this interview is over."

Hermione walked softly towards the door. As she pulled it open she took one last look at Snape, still staring out the window, and let herself out.