Surprises in the mirror

Author's Note: This is my new story. I hope you all enjoy reading it! This was an idea that my mind just wouldn't give up, so I just decided to write it and hopefully clear my brain out a little bit!

Disclaimer: I own nothing, except the plot.

As Hermione walked down the hallway to Divinations class, she thought about what she wanted in life. I know it isn't the most original of topics to think about but as per usual for her, she wanted to get a jump start and know exactly what she wanted for the future. She really hadn't thought about it much other than she knew that she wanted to graduate from Hogwarts and get a job at the Ministry of Magic and start a Magical Creatures Rights Act. But beyond that she had no clue. She walked past a portrait that was trying to get her attention without as much as a glance in its direction. The hall was wide with grey brick walls. There were portraits all along the walls and every one of them were moving and speaking, which in a muggle dwelling would be very strange but here at Hogwarts it was normal.

She finally arrived at the Divination's tower and walked through the door into class with Harry and Ron, both of whom had been trying to figure out more tragedies that would happen to them for their next assignment in divination. The room was stuffy as usual and the windows were covered so that the light wouldn't interrupt the "flow of the inner eye" as the teacher always told them. The room was a half circle in shape and the tables that were meant for the students were on a stage like platform and there were three tiers of tables.

"Boys, you know I hate this class, but that is not how you finish your homework." Hermione scolded, sitting down at the closest table to the door in the chair closest the door.

"Why are you still taking this class if you hate it so much?" Harry asked, sitting down at the same table next to her and behind the table. Ron sat across the table from Hermione and listened.

"One, you guys are in it and I want to make sure that you aren't getting into any trouble. And two, this is an easy class. I know that is not something that you hear from me often but this is the one class that I can take and not actually have to participate in much." She replied.

Harry and Ron couldn't comment on this because Professor Trelawney walked in and started her lesson. Since she knew it would be a boring class like always, Hermione spaced out and continued to think about her future while the teacher spoke. At least she did so for about a minute until the teacher walked to the corner of the class room and pulled what Hermione assumed had been a window drape off a tall item. As soon as the mirror was revealed, Harry leaned over toward Hermione.

"That's the Mirror of Erised. You know the one I found in First year. I wonder why she has it here." He leaned back as the teacher began to speak again.

"This mirror is called the Mirror of Erised and it shows your deepest desires. Sometimes it will show you something that you never even realized that you wanted until now. Each of you will come up here and look into the mirror and tell me what you see. If you don't want to tell me just say so and you may write a paper on what you saw that will be due in one month. You will have to explain why you believe you saw what you did and what you think you can do about fulfilling this deepest desire." Trelawney explained, walking up to the tables. She walked over to Lavender and Parvati's table, which was the furthest from Hermione's table, to indicate that they would go first.

By the time it was Harry, Ron, and Hermione's turn only 2 people had chosen to do the paper instead of telling the class what they had seen, Dean Thomas and Seamus Finnagan. Harry went first. He walked up to the mirror and at first he stared at it, then after a moment, he smiled at what he saw. "I see my parents standing behind me. Mum has her hand on my shoulder and they are both smiling at me. Also, my grandparents are behind my parents." He glanced at the teacher and she nodded at him to go back to his seat. It was Ron's turn next. As he walked up to the mirror he glanced at Harry and Hermione quickly and when he got to the mirror he looked at his reflection and his deepest desire. He watched the mirror intensely and his ears began to turn red. After a minute, he spoke in a shaky voice that sounded short of breath. "I will write the paper". Hermione looked at Harry and they both looked shocked. When Ron sat down, they both looked at him expectantly. When he refused to look at her, Hermione stood to walk to the mirror.

When she stood directly in front of the mirror, she nearly fainted at what she saw. Standing behind her, with his arms wrapped around her waist, was Severus Snape. As she watched, he smiled at her and leaned down to kiss her neck softly while her mirror image smiled and closed her eyes. She jerked backwards away from the mirror and it took her a moment before she could speak. "I want to write the paper."

Divination was Hermione's last class of the day, so when it was finally over she told the boys that she was going to go to the common room to begin her homework. The boys still had to go to Transfiguration, so they waved at her as they headed to class. She started walking to the common room down a hall that looked like all the other halls in the castle with talking pictures and suits of armor lining the walls and thought. What did she think about? Snape, of course. Why had she seen him in the mirror? Ok, she knew that the mirror showed her deepest desire, but did she really want Professor Snape as… more than a teacher? As a friend? Dare she think it? As a… Lover? She started to run to get to the common room faster. She was panicking now. She turned a corner and…

WHAM!

She ran into something hard, knocking it and herself to the floor with her on top. When she got her breath back, she realized that the thing under her was a person. A male person. She looked up and gasped as she saw that she had just knocked over the person that she had just been thinking about. His eyes were closed. She figured that he had hit his head on the floor and had been knocked unconscious. "Oh No! What have I done?" She tried to get up but when she tried to use her left hand to push herself up, she cried out in pain and brought her hand to her chest. "Did I break my hand? How could I possibly have broken my hand? It wasn't that far down. But then how could I have knocked Sever… Professor Snape unconscious also?" She sat there trying to think about how either of those things could happen, when finally she came to her senses and shook her head. "No time to think about how. I have to get Sev… Snape… and myself to the Hospital Wing." She stood up using her right hand as leverage. She took out her wand and levitated him and started walking toward the Hospital wing.

It didn't take very long to get there and she walked in and levitated him over to an empty bed and set him down. She looked around for Madam Pomfrey and saw the door to her office. The hospital wing was pretty basic. It contained several beds and separation drapes. The windows were large so that lots of sun could flood in. On the walls there were only a few pictures, all of them of nurses. There were a few doors along the walls also. 5 doors in all, including the nurse's quarters and her office. She walked up to the door that she knew to be the nurses' office and knocked.

Madam Pomfrey answered immediately and stepped out to find out who needed what. When she saw Hermione, she seemed surprised, but smiled anyway.

"What do you need, dear?" She asked.

"I knocked Professor Snape over and I think his head hit the floor and it knocked him out. I also think that I broke my hand on the way down." Hermione explained pointing at Snape on the bed behind her and then lifting her left arm to show the nurse.

"Ok, dear. Go sit on the bed next to the professors while I check to make sure nothing else is wrong with him, ok?" Madam Pomfrey ushered her over to the bed next to Snape's and then bustled over to Professor Snape. When Hermione got to her bed, she sat down and watched the nurse work. As she checked Snape for other injuries and such, Madam Pomfrey's expression changed from concentration to confusion and then to fear quickly.

"Is something wrong?" Hermione asked, standing back up and walking over to the nurse.

"Yes, dear, there is. Did you see a potion vial nearby? When you both fell? Or something that could have held a potion?" The nurse asked seriously.

Hermione searched through her memory. "No, not that I can remember. Why? What's wrong?"

"This is no ordinary sleep or unconsciousness. This was potion induced. He seems fine except the being unconscious part. Let me fix your wrist and I will go try to find something to wake him up with." Madame Pomphry replied, walking Hermione back over to the bed. Waving her wand over her wrist, the bone mended itself quickly. The nurse then hurried to her office.

Hermione slid off of the bed and walked slowly over to Snapes bed and looked down at him. As she watched him, he seemed to change. The grey in his hair turned as black as the rest of it. The wrinkles on his face smoothed out and disappeared. Hermione looked around for the nurse for answers. She couldn't see her so she looked back at Snape and took the chance to actually look at him. But before she could register what she was seeing, he vanished. She shook her head and realized that she had been asleep and class had ended. 'It was a dream. I didn't really knock into Snape or break my wrist.'

Leaving class, she told Harry and Ron that she needed to go to the library to work on her paper. Hurrying along, she wondered why she had that dream and what it meant. She was so into her thoughts, she didn't see the obstacle in her way and she ran right into the object of her dream. They both fell just like they did in her dream except for not as hard. Hermione lay there having had the wind knocked out of her. 'What am I going to do or say? I am laying on top of the man who I just found out I want the most in my life. Why am I thinking about this? I should be moving off of him.' Before she could think about anything else, she felt him move. He just shifted slightly to one side. But that little shift pressed something against her that she hadn't expected and she sat up quickly. She knew her face showed a shocked expression as she stared into his black eyes, but she didn't care. A minute later she realized that sitting up had not been a very good idea, because now she was straddling her potions professor. She scrambled to move off him and stand against the wall to wait for him to take house points for her running in the hall or something of the sort. After a moment, she realized that he hadn't said a thing since she had run into him. Glancing at him again, she found that he was still lying on the floor, but there was something happening to him.

Her dream seemed to be coming true. Well, mostly. Severus' hair was returning to the jet black that it probably was in his youth. His face was smoothing out and he shrank a couple inches. His eyes were kind of glazed, as if he was in a trance. Finally, his eyes focused again and he looked around. Seeing her, he stood up.

"Miss. Granger! Why were you running in the hall?" He would have kept interrogating her if he hadn't register 2 things. She was staring at him in astonishment and the fact that he didn't have to look as far down at her as before. Looking down at himself, he realized that his robes didn't fit as well as they had only seconds before. "What did you do to me?" He demanded, looking back up at her.

"I didn't do anything! I swear. Come on; let's go to the Hospital Wing. Maybe Madam Pomfrey can tell us what happened." Hermione said, quickly he couldn't speak any more than necessary. She waited a moment. He looked at her and after a small amount of time, he nodded and started walking in the direction of the Hospital Wing. Sighing in relief, she followed. If she was honest, she was just bit curious as to what HAD happened.