Duelling Lessons

by UltramarineOrchid

Summary:

When Hermione wants to complete her Duelling Mastery with someone who won't hesitate to give her more hands on experience, she turns to Severus Snape.

Chapter 1

The wards were impenetrable. 

Hermione mentally shook herself, feeling almost ashamed that, after everything she’d been through in her life, she’d default to thinking something might be impossible. They couldn't be impenetrable. They were just — inaccessible. Unusually difficult. A tiny bit unwieldy .

She grit her teeth, determined to reframe it. A challenge. It was a challenge. And she’d always enjoyed a good challenge.

The more days she spent pacing outside what she was still only mostly sure was Severus Snape’s home, though, the more she was starting to wonder if challenges were overrated. She was increasingly certain that the riddle she’d been so terribly proud of solving when she was a 12 year old stupidly trying to help her friend go to his death was intended  to be easily solved.

These wards were not intended to be solved.

She frowned as she tried to parse the glowing lines before her for what felt like the thousandth time, internally debating whether it might be helpful to cast the strongest protection shields possible and see if she could trigger them to blow up.

Unfortunately, she knew that if the man in question had felt particularly vindictive when casting, exploding the wards could very well lead to her death rather than her entry, and so she bit her lip and thought hard as she continued to stare at the interconnected threads of the wards. Slowly but very definitely she waved her wand in a counter-clockwise figure eight, then, as nothing happened, repeated the movement. With a nearly-indiscernible flicker one of the tiny lines vanished and she fought the urge to pump her fist. Instead, she slowly lowered her wand and made a notation in the notebook she had on hand.

The little threads were interesting but the biggest problem was obviously the pulse of dark amber underlying the wards. Unless she was much mistaken, this was an indication that blood wards were present, and if the vivid shade of the amber was any indication, they were strong ones.

While she couldn’t say she knew much about Snape’s psyche, she was a bit astounded that someone who had so dramatically stood against the pureblood culture would utilize something so quintessentially pureblood — barbaric really — as blood wards. But then, if one wanted to be truly sure that only they could access their property, it was a logical if troubling step.

Of course, though, blood wards could be broken, just like any other wards could, it was just a matter of figuring out the weak spot…

As though determined that today wouldn’t be that day, someone flicked the lights on inside the house. Hermione frowned as she imagined Snape inside. Even though the lights shone too brightly for her to truly believe it was the result of torches, in her mind the inside of his home looked exactly like the Slytherin dungeon. Snape would be frowning, and doubtless dressed in black. She imagined he'd always wear full robes, even in sleep.

She took the impending darkness as her cue that it was time to leave for the day. With incredible care, she waved her wand and redid the layers of wards she’d managed to disassemble since 9 am.

She knew she’d be back tomorrow, but for now she was late for dinner.

---

Dinner with Ron and Harry was quiet, as it usually was nowadays. It would be disingenuous to say something trite like ‘they’d grown apart’, since they very, very deliberately had all three of them done everything possible to keep that from happening. However, it was something of an understatement to say that they didn’t have a great deal in common any more, and their dynamic had never completely recovered from her breaking her engagement to Ron, nearly 5 years ago, now.

Hermione had the sudden, uncomfortable feeling that even thinking of the question probably meant she had finally gone insane, but she decided she may as well verbalize it anyway.

“Er- Ron? I don’t suppose your family is related to the Prince’s to any degree?

Ron stopped chewing, looking nonplussed. “Er- well, yeah, I reckon. My mother’s mother was Eileen’s second cousin once removed—”

“So you’re related to Snape,” Hermione said slowly.

Ron looked at her like she may have gone a bit mad, but then shrugged, resuming shovelling food into his mouth just as he would have done at the Hogwarts Great Hall. “Suppose so, at that.” He cracked a wide grin. “Can you imagine the greasy git’s reaction if I’d thought to bring that up at school?”

Hermione had long lost patience with Ron’s attitude toward Snape, even though she hadn’t seen the man in almost ten years, and she didn’t need to see the thin line Harry’s mouth had compressed into to know he felt the same. Actually, Harry might feel even more strongly judging by his yearly letters to Snape which, to her knowledge, had all returned unopened bar one, which had told him in the strongest possible language that he did not have Snape’s permission to give Albus the middle name Severus.

Maybe she wasn’t as much better than Ron as she wanted to believe since she’d been secretly happy when Harry had done so anyway.

“I cannot,” she quipped frostily in response to Ron’s question, then half regretted it as she remembered what her next question to Ron had to be. “Erm—” she started, wondering how to possibly segue to it, then she decided there was no possible way to segue to it. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to let me have a small vial of your blood.”

Ron frowned, looking confused by the direction of the conversation. Harry, on the other hand, looked immediately suspicious. He’d come a long way, Harry.

“Er— for you, right, not for Snape?” Ron asked, sounding as stymied as he looked.

“For me,” she confirmed definitively, stunned when at her words Ron just shrugged and shoved more pasta into his mouth. 

“Well, that's alright, then,” he said, and not for the first time she wondered how on earth she’d dated him for almost six years.

“ Ronald, ” she hissed. “You can’t seriously intend to give me your blood without asking why. Do you have any idea what kinds of potions someone could make with it?”

He shrugged again. “Not like you’d do anything to hurt me, is it?”

Just like that her annoyance turned to something closer to guilt. Ron was her oldest, truest friend.

“No,” she confirmed. “I wouldn’t.”

“What do you want it for, though?” Harry asked, sounding more like an Auror than like Harry.

She bit her lip, wondering how much she could say before deciding that a short version of the truth would probably be as effective as anything else.

“Well– you know I’ve been working toward my duelling mastery with Kingsley—”

“Oh, yeah,” Ron said, as though he actually had forgotten that completely when she’d, at least in theory, been spending 30 hours a week on it for a year and a half. Ron hadn’t understood why she wanted to get a second mastery at all, though, so she supposed she couldn’t be surprised he’d also stopped thinking about it. “How’s that been going? It should be ending soon, shouldn’t it?”

“Yes, sort of,” she hedged, unsure whether her friends would actually consider six months soon. “The thing is, I don’t want to finish the Mastery with Kingsley.”

This, evidently, was a shock to both men. 

“But—” Harry said, then shook his head, as though unsure how to continue.

“You never quit anything,” Ron took up the mantle. “And—” he hesitated. “I thought the mastery was important to you?”

Ah, Hermione thought, rather cynically. He’d hesitated because he hadn’t ever actually been listening closely enough to be sure how she felt about her apprenticeship. Typical. She decided to just address the first part of his comment.

“I wouldn’t be quitting, Ronald. I’d simply be completing the last six months of the mastery with a different Master.”

“Oh, neat,” Ron nodded. “Who?”

“Severus Snape, if I can get past his blood wards and convince him,” she said, primly, ignoring the clinking sounds as both Ron and Harry dropped their forks.

---

She didn't have much hope that Ron’s blood would actually work — blood wards were an intense, specific magic. They would be no use to a family such as the Malfoy’s if any Black could just as easily get across them by virtue of being second cousins— and of course if Snape was using blood wards to keep people out that would certainly include any number of purebloods who probably wanted to kill him despite being tangentially related to his mother.

She wondered if she might be able to figure out if his Muggle father had any family. Of course that would mean either breaching the Statute of Secrecy or confounding them — it would probably involve both. Maybe she could confound a medical professional instead during a routine blood draw. That is, if Snape had any family and if that family was furthermore scheduled for a routine blood draw in the next week or so —

She cast a few protection spells over her body and in a circle around where she’d be standing. Then she braced herself and pulled the vial of Ron’s blood out of her bag. She emptied it directly onto the perimeter of the wards before she could lose her nerve, and then jumped backwards away from them.

For a moment nothing happened as the blood connected with the earth, and she inched half a step closer to inspect the amber thrum of the blood ward — 

Only to be thrown backwards violently as the very ground in front of her exploded as though a bomb had been planted there. As violet smoke filled the air she had the presence of mind to cast a bubble head charm. A fire blazed both backward, toward her, and forward, toward the house itself, though as she scrambled backward on the grass away from the flames she noted that the fire’s progress toward the house halted neatly, perfectly, six feet from the boundary of the small garden that Snape seemed to keep out back.

The fire itself progressed quickly from a violet blue that matched the smoke still emerging to a more temperate yellow, and then an orange that recalled the sunset. After what seemed  to be several minutes of the hazy orange flames, they progressed to a deep red before burning out altogether, both the flames and the smoke vanishing as though they’d never been.

The instant they had vanished a black banded owl made straight for Hermione, and for one terrifying and exhilarating moment she truly feared it was going to fly, full speed, directly into her head.

But then it came to a graceful stop that almost recalled the man the owl must be from directly in front of her, seeming to hover in midair as it held out an imperious claw.

The handwriting was very neat and very bold, asking simply Are you mad?

She pulled a muggle ballpoint pen quickly out of her bag, fearing that even her self-inking quill would take far too long and turned the paper. She quickly scribbled, in handwriting much messier than his own,

Let me in and find out.

She hesitated before handing it over to the owl. She knew it wasn’t hitting quite the right notes. He’d likely find it too abrupt, and definitely find it too cheeky. He’d doubtless not let her in and he’d probably even try to take 50 points from Gryffindor.

But even as she tried to cross her words out out the infernal bird ripped the note out of her hand with its beak, having evidently decided that the twenty seconds that it had waited were more than enough.

Hermione thought about screaming after it, but it wasn’t like the bird would listen to her. In fact, if it were anything like its master, her words might have the opposite effect.

Not expecting any answer to her missive, she set to work on the wards again, deciding it would probably be prudent to ignore the blood ward piece for now. Over the weekend she’d surely have ample time to look into Snape’s father’s side. For all she knew Snape’s father himself could still be alive, and if so his blood could certainly be used to bypass the wards. If not with any luck there might be an aunt or uncle, who would likely be a close enough match. First cousins were less certain, but at a last ditch effort they—

Her mind went silent as the back door of the houses directly in front of her slammed open with such force that, despite her being a good quarter mile away, the sound it made recalled Snape’s more dramatic entrances into the potions classroom when she’d been just a child. She wondered if he’d done something to magically amplify the sound, decided he must have done, and then put it from her mind, because it wasn’t as though she could very well ask him about it after he got done…

Hermione found, unpleasantly, that she hadn’t actually given nearly enough thought to what Snape was likely to do once she finally got him alone. She hadn’t imagined he’d be happy  to see her, she wasn’t as delusional as all that, but she had thought that, perhaps, they could meet as intellectual equals, or at least as neutral parties. Somehow this didn’t seem likely, now.

As Snape drew closer Hermione was somewhat taken aback. He looked exactly as she’d expected in some ways. He was indeed wearing full black robes, and she almost thought he must have cast a spell on them to make them swoosh so dramatically as he stalked toward her.  Maybe he’d just honed a way of walking that was particularly conducive to it over the years, though. No…  a spell was more likely. To make them move that way would surely require some hip motion, and his walk was as straight and determined as his posture.  His collar was, impossibly, even higher than it had been at Hogwarts, so high that she felt confident even a Victorian Vicar would have protested that the man was overdoing it. She imagined it might be due to the snake bite and felt a brief flash of guilt at the direction of her thoughts.

His face was as severe and hard as she remembered, but as a teenager she’d always thought he looked old, and, if not ugly, certainly a bit unsightly . His skin had been somehow simultaneously sallow and pale. His nose had seemed hooked, his hair greasy.

His hair did still have a certain unmistakable shine, but the nose that had once seemed so terribly hooked to her now looked more aquiline. His skin was still ivory, but then, so was hers, and his cheeks had a certain rosiness to them that wasn’t unattractive.

Her mind short circuited its perusal of his appearance as she began to hear the dull crunch of his feet through the dirt close to her, and she braced herself for what he might have to say. She supposed he’d be right to be furious at her botched efforts to circumvent the blood wards. In his position she knew she would be.

To her surprise, though, other than the glare on his face which did not diminish whatsoever as he turned from her to face the wards, he was downright taciturn.

He didn’t bother removing her spell that illuminated the beautiful rainbow colours of the wards, and so she watched him intently as he set about removing them. A few times she fought the urge to smack her forehead and scream ‘of course!’. At other moments she wished she could see him make a particular movement again as she was very sure she’d never seen it before and doubted her ability to remember it.

After an indeterminable amount of time that felt both like an hour and sixty seconds to Hermione, Snape pointed his wand at his hand and preformed what she imagined must have been a wordless diffindo, though he didn’t seem particularly concerned about the wand motion, and she wondered how powerful he might truly be.

But of course, that power that she’d glimpsed in him even when she was still a teenager was part of why she was here.

As his blood dripped onto the ground the amber pulse that had represented the blood wards flared brilliantly outward, but unlike earlier when Hermione had started a fire this looked more like a spectacular sunset, the kind that might take your breath away on a beach.

For the barest second Hermione thought Snape might find the spectacle beautiful too— his face wasn’t open, never that, but it lacked the severity she’d always associated with it and that had been present mere moments before.

It vanished as quickly as it came, though, and so did the amber pulse, leaving nothing in its wake but the twilight and the smell of cedar in the fresh autumn air.

Without so much as a look at her Snape began to walk forward, back toward the house. She stood immobile, feeling suddenly like a student again, unsure whether she was meant to follow him or if he’d Avada her if she so much as dared—

His sigh carried even though by the time he stopped he was several steps ahead and turned away from her. “Were you intending to come in, or were you just using the dismantling of my wards as a truly bizarre academic exercise during your quarter life crisis?” he inquired, bitingly, but even though his words and tone were harsh, his voice was deeper than she remembered it, and far smoother too.

He began walking again, and this time she followed.

Notes:

It is my sincerest wish that this will one day be updated, but I have no definite timeline regarding when I might be able to do so. Evil Author day is Evil for a reason.

Comments and kudos are ever so treasured.

Chapter 2

Hermione had expected that, were she to enter Snape’s home, she’d experience the Slytherin dungeon come to life again.

The room she stepped into, however, could hardly have been less like the dungeons had it tried. Natural light spilled in from high windows, bathing everything in the warm golden glow of autumn. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves were absolutely crammed with hardcover books of all sizes, but they were the only hint of clutter. Everything else was so impeccably tidy that it was almost hard to believe someone lived there at all. There was a plain wooden coffee table on which sat a single recent copy of Potions Quarterly and nothing else; a pristine and unobjectionable sofa was stationed nearby. A wingback armchair rounded out the room. There were no personal effects of any kind.

It smelled like parchment, books, and cedar, with perhaps the faintest whiff of tea.

“I suppose,” Snape said, sounding very much as though the words were being dragged out of him under the threat of the cruciatus, “That I’m required to make an offer of tea.”

His expression very clearly indicated that he had no intention of making tea, regardless of what the room might smell of, and for one wild moment Hermione thought about his reaction were she to say some version of the words oh, delightful, thank you so very much, I’ve always been particularly fond of a well-brewed Earl Grey…

But she didn’t actually want tea, whether Earl Grey or not, she wanted him to agree to take over her apprenticeship, and so she shook her head firmly. “I don’t think there’s any need for that.”

He arched a single dark eyebrow. “How novel. I suppose that it was a statistical eventuality that we’d eventually agree on something.”

Hermione looked at him closely, wondering if she dared to crack a smile on the assumption that it had been intended as a joke. Regrettably, his expression was as inscrutable as she’d ever remembered it being, and so she decided it was better to just nod, making sure that she was, again, doing so firmly.   It wouldn’t do any good to give the impression of being weak or uncertain.

As silence came over them, she wondered whether or not she ought to assume that Snape kept up with The Daily Prophet , and, even if so, whether she could dare to hope that he didn’t just violently tear out any articles pertaining to her, Harry, or Ron without reading them. Possibly he’d incendio any paper that so much as bore their names—

Or maybe she hadn’t actually been such a large spectre on his life as he had, to some degree, been on hers. More likely he’d read about her various ministry appointments and then promptly forgotten them.

Only, looking up into raven black eyes, she couldn’t help but feel a grim certainty that this man had never forgotten anyone or anything.

“As you may be aware,” she began, carefully, “I made a lateral transfer into the Department of Magical Law Enforcement a little over three years ago.”

“Which was incredibly quickly followed by two promotions, only one of which was most definitely the result of nepotism; the other of which was merely clouded with the heavy suspicion of it,” Snape drawled, and she supposed she had her answer both to whether he subscribed to The Prophet and to whether he had followed her career.

Hermione badly wanted to defend herself, but she suspected that he was counting on that… and besides, while she’d like to be able to claim her ascent through the ministry had been based solely upon her merits as an individual, she couldn’t deny that the events of the War and Kingsley liking her as much as he did had greatly eased her way. 

“I’m qualified to hold my current position,” she offered instead, and was surprised when Snape snorted.

“I wonder if Marietta Hendrix would agree with that assessment.”

“If Marietta Hendrix weren’t an absolute cow she could have had the position twenty years ago,” Hermione snapped a bit indignantly. 

To her even greater surprise, Snape snorted again. “I suppose one can’t argue with that,” he mused, sounding almost approving. “But I imagine you’re not here to discuss your miraculous and wholly expected ascent through the ministry?”

Hermione felt confused. From another person that might have bordered on a compliment.

“Er, no,” she finally offered, deciding not to push her luck. “My being here is unrelated to my work at the ministry.”

Snape looked at her keenly. “If the next words out of your mouth are something about how Potter sent you, I will be obliged to incinerate you where you stand.”

Hermione again wondered if she dare risk a smile, and decided against it in case he was serious. “No,” she said. “It’s certainly nothing to do with Harry.”

After a moment Snape gave a barely-there wave of his hand that she imagined meant she should go on, so she braced herself, trying to remember her carefully crafted speech that he’d already so effectively derailed.

“I’ll come to the point. Around 18 months ago I cut my hours at the ministry to ten a week.”

Snape tilted his head, looking contemplative. “I had wondered why there’d been no news of your next promotion. Or, I suppose it’s about time for what you so euphemistically call a ‘lateral transfer’. I will confess, I hadn’t imagined it was due to your giving up work. Surely you’re too young to have had a nervous breakdown.”

Even as he said it he looked uncertain, in a way she couldn't help but find offensive. “Though I suppose a psychotic break would, in fact, explain quite well your single-minded obsession with breaking through my wards—”

“I’ve been pursuing a second Mastery, actually,” Hermione cut him off.

Snape understood far more quickly that Harry and Ron had. He visibly shuddered, holding up a hand. “Far be it from me to assume that the great and golden Hermione Granger has deigned to consider me an acceptable individual from whom to pursue the last six months of a Mastery,” he began cuttingly. “But in the event that this is where this is heading, I feel honour bound to tell you directly that I shall never take a potions apprentice again, be it you, Neville Longbottom, or Merlin himself. ” He hesitated, and when he spoke again his voice was somehow gentler, and perhaps slightly curious. “Have you discussed whatever issues you’re having with your current Master? Whilst it may be standard in most mastery contracts that the apprentice is free to pursue outside instruction in the last six months, there’s a reason that it’s generally not done. I imagine your Master would take any concerns seriously and wish to address them to your satisfaction.”

He had understood, and yet not, and so she pushed on, trying not to sound eager. “Sir, it’s not a potions Mastery that I’m pursuing, and while my teacher is regarded as the very best in the field, I think you'd have a more… practical approach to the subject in question. Minister Shacklebolt refuses to discuss proceeding in a way more in line with what I want.”

Snape blinked almost owlishly, looking, if anything, reluctantly intrigued. “Kingsley is your Master? Surely you can’t mean you’re pursuing occlumency or legilimency?”

“Oh — no! Though, if you’ve the extra time, I would be incredibly interested in your perspective on—”

“I have not,” he interrupted her, sounding scandalized. “And in any case, if you’re neither pursuing Potions nor advanced mind magics I don’t see how I could help you even if I wanted to, which I do not,”  he snapped. “I’ve no qualifications, whether academic or practical, that would qualify me to give mastery level instruction in any other subject.”

Hermione felt, somehow, that he must be joking. “I have to disagree. You’re more than qualified to give practical duelling instruction regardless of your academic credentials.”

Snape’s facial muscles didn’t waver whatsoever, but he half-arched a single eyebrow and she thought he must have surprised him, though she didn’t know what could be so surprising about it.  

“I cannot imagine what might have inspired you to believe me qualified, but I can assure you my duelling experience is rudimentary.”

Hermione shook her head. “There’s no need to insult my intelligence. Your duel with Professor Lockhart alone—”

“Miss Granger,” he sneered. “You would have been fully capable of disarming Gilderoy.”

She nodded. “Disarming him, yes. You didn’t just disarm him, though, did you, even though that was the only spell you cast. And… I’ve seen Harry’s memories of the night of the final battle. When you duelled Professor McGonagall—”

Snape scoffed. “You mean when I jumped out a window? If anything I was on the defensive—”

“There’s great value in defense,” Hermione said earnestly, and Snape’s eyes narrowed, as though he were considering her for the first time. “But… I don’t think that what you just said is true. You were on the defensive but you were on the defensive while convincing everyone you were on the offensive, and you still didn't hurt Professor McGonagall. In the meantime you simultaneously rendered other people unconscious and made it seem like it was an accident. That’s not something most wizards could have done. In fact, I’ll venture it would be hard to name anyone else who could have done it.”

Snape hesitated for the first time. “Given the right circumstances, Filius and Minerva both could have done the same,” he finally offered. “And I can assure you that Albus’s duelling would have made my own seem childish.”

“Headmaster Dumbledore is dead, though,” Hermione stated relentlessly. “And the other reason I'm here is because when I asked Professor McGonagall and Professor Flitwick who they'd least like to face in a true duel to the death they both said you.”

Snape waved a dismissive hand. “And did it not occur to you that might be because they think I've the disposition needed to actually kill someone rather than that they've any particularly high estimation of my skills?”

Hermione pondered this, then shrugged. “Even if that were the whole of it, it would still make you a step up from Kingsley. And don't try to tell me you're not qualified again. I’ve carefully researched all rules pertaining to apprenticeships in England and in the wider European Wizarding community. It’s only necessary that the person giving instruction during the first 18 months be regarded as ‘qualified’ to give mastery level instruction on the topic of the apprenticeship, Furthermore, there are virtually no enumerated requirements associated with the additional hours whatsoever—”

“Yes, another of the many reasons such situations are frowned upon,” Snape interjected dryly.

“If you knew me at all you’d know I don’t give a chimera’s ass what anyone frowns on,” Hermione snapped. “I’m not pursuing the Mastery for academic or career-related reasons, and I think you’re the person best positioned to teach me what I do want to know.”

Snape rolled his eyes heavenward. “I do not care why you’re pursuing the Mastery.”

Hermione hesitated, then pulled a small stack of assorted parchment out of the pocket of her robes. “If you’ve no objection, I’ll tell you anyway. I’ve been getting these, occasionally. Duelling isn’t simply an intellectual pursuit, or a passion project, or something I’m trying to prove like some people seem to think. Duelling is of real, pressing interest to me due to my life experiences fighting in a war and my current experiences as someone who is being threatened.”

Snape hesitated too, then, with the barest flick of his wand, snatched the papers from her and skimmed over them so quickly that she felt sure he couldn’t truly have taken in what they said. When he sent them sailing back toward her, though, this time without any noticeable flick of his wand, his eyes met hers sombrely for a long moment before he looked purposefully away.

“I get the same,” he said, with another wave of his hand, as though it were inconsequential, and even though she knew rationally that she really oughtn’t to be surprised, Hermione felt her mouth drop open.

“But — that’s awful,” she said quietly. “When did it start? Does the handwriting look similar? Don’t you worry about it?”

He looked at her for a long moment as though unsure whether she had gone round the twist, but when he next spoke, his gaze was, perhaps, ever so slightly gentler. “You’ve tried to get through my wards; inconsequential as I’m sure I’ve been to you until the moment you took it into your head that I might be more willing to perform the cruciatus on you than Kingsley is it can’t have escaped your attention that I’m rarely seen in public. I don’t know that it would be quite right to say I worry about it. Compared to what I’ve faced in the past the missives are downright childish, and I imagine on some smaller scale you must feel the same. But I do take them seriously, and I do understand how it might have led you to believe you’d like to be able to defend yourself.”

“Yes,” Hermione breathed, once more feeling that he’d somehow both understood her completely and not at all. “I do want to better know how to defend myself, and I do want you to perform the cruciatus on me. I want you to perform the imperius curse on me too, and I don't want you to hold back. But that's not all that I want. I want to know absolutely everything Kingsley hasn't been able or willing to teach me. I want you to do everything I've asked Kingsley to do and that he hasn't and I want you to teach me everything that I've never even thought to ask about. I want to incendo his carefully curated list of hexes and counter hexes and never again in my life be quizzed about ceremonial duelling forms that would end with anyone in a true duel being dead. I myself want to crucio anyone who criticizes how low I bow before a duel as though someone who wants to Avada me will wait for me to bow!”

Hermione was breathing hard when she finished, and at some point during her tirade Snape's narrowed eyes had caught hers again and held. She wasn't really sure how to parse the look in them, but whatever it was it was neither the scornful indifference nor the tired boredom that had characterized nearly the entirety of their conversation thus far.

After several tense moments Snape shrugged one shoulder and looked away again. “A pity that one with neither aptitude nor respect for the subject in question would develop such an unlikely passion for it.”

Hermione took umbrage with his use of the word respect, as she quite firmly felt she’d never shown anything but respect for any branch of magic, or indeed for Professor Snape himself. She very much doubted that she’d be able to change his opinion about that by arguing with him, though. Her aptitude, on the other hand, had dramatically improved since the last time he’d had occasion to see her duel, in part because of Kingsley and in part due to the countless hours she’d spent practising on her own once it became clear that Kingsley only intended for his instruction to go so far.

She decided it would be best to show Snape what she’d learned, and she tilted her chin upward. “I’m happy to provide a practical demonstration of my skills.”

He looked at her critically and with a heavy air of doubt. “Very well, then,” he sneered. “Begin.”

Notes:

I’ve left this tagged Evil Author Day even though I have decided to update it because I want to be very honest about what is going on: this is un-betaed and only lightly edited by myself, and at present it is unfinished. I can’t make any guarantees about subsequent updates and when they will or won’t be posted. Unless I post something different in a future author’s note this will remain the case. While I’m incredibly flattered and happy about the relatively large amount of attention/comments/kudos this has gotten for something clearly tagged Evil Author Day, reading this is at your own risk.

Comments and kudos remain incredibly appreciated; I will try to update again soon.