THE GRADUATE

Usual disclaimers apply. They're not mine, I'm just getting off on putting words in their mouths.

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Chapter 1: Dancing With the Dark

Hermione Granger was the type of woman who typically rolled out of bed, combed her hair with her fingers and headed out the door to her first class. Never one to be particularly interested in her appearance, she rarely looked in the mirror, and when she did it usually resulted in an impatient sigh of criticism at her reflection. Seeing only an unruly mop of mousy brown hair and a slightly uneven smile, she would pull a face and turn away, dismissing the image from her mind as quickly as possible. She had therefore failed to notice the development of her unconventional beauty or the ripening of her body since her first year at Hogwarts, though few around her had made the same mistake.

But tonight was different. Tonight as she studied herself in the mirror, she was pleased for a change with what she saw. She had been primping for nearly two hours, and now as she gazed upon the nearly finished work, even she had to acknowledge that it had not been in vain.

Her dress robes were a lustrously rich shade of purple, adorned with a moon-and-stars pattern in shimmering silver threads. She had darkened her hair a few shades and coiled it into a thick French twist at the back of her head, then clipped it in place with a bejeweled barrette. The pile of hair emphasized the long, regal curves of her neck, and she turned her head from side to side to admire its sensual effect in the mirror. Small, glittering stones at her earlobes completed the picture of a princess of olde. The finishing touch was a corsage of tiny red tea roses on a bed of ferns – a gift from her mother – which she pinned to her robes just above her left breast.

She was ready.

A delicious shiver of delight filled her as she looked at herself. This is what it feels like to be beautiful, she thought, awed at her transformation. It was a heady feeling. She gathered her robes around her, tossed her head one last time to admire the way the light played on her earrings, and turned to leave.

The atmosphere in the Gryffindor common room was charged with excitement this night. Hogwarts was hosting the first Yule Ball since the year of the Tri-Wizard Tournament, and the halls had been buzzing with anticipation for weeks. This time around, Hermione had decided to go without an escort; as Head Girl, she considered it her responsibility to act as unofficial Hostess of the event, and felt that bringing a date would distract her from that duty. She took it – as she took all of her responsibilities, real and imagined – very seriously.

Heads turned as she stepped into the common room, and she felt a happy thrill in her chest when most of those observing her entrance smiled warmly in her direction. Harry elbowed Ron – who had been exchanging crude jokes with Neville Longbottom – when Hermione entered, and both looked at her open mouthed, as though they had never seen her before.

"You look fantastic, Hermione!" Harry said enthusiastically as he and Ron crossed the room to greet her.

She smiled modestly, blushing. Her two best friends rarely seemed aware that she was a female, for which she was usually grateful. Now they seemed all too aware of it, and after all the work she had done to prepare herself she was just as grateful to them for noticing.

"Thanks Harry," she replied. "And don't you look handsome, as well?"

Harry didn't respond, looking her over from head to toe in an appreciative manner. "You look good enough to eat," he said finally, his still boyishly charming grin firmly in place. She smiled shyly and tapped him on the upper arm, ducking her head in embarrassment at the sincerity of his words.

"Where's Ginny?" she asked, looking around the room for her absent friend.

"I don't know," Harry sighed. "I hope she'll be along shortly." Ginny's habitual lateness was the one quality Hermione knew Harry deplored in his girlfriend. A moment later Ginny arrived, out of breath and looking radiant in deep magenta robes, and she and Hermione exchanged compliments.

En masse, the excited group of Gryffindors filed out of the common room and made its way down to the Great Hall. Along the way, they met up with a crowd of Ravenclaws, and Ron offered his arm to Helen St. John, a 6th year girl he had been dating for over a year.

As the doors to the Great Hall swung open, the group gave a collective sigh of approval. Hundreds of red and green candles floated over their heads, gently suffusing the huge room with their flickering light. The walls were decked with looping garlands of holly heavy with red berries, anchored every six feet with enormous wreaths of fragrant pine branches. But most breathtaking of all was the immense Christmas tree dominating the front half of the room. It reached to the enchanted ceiling and was decorated from top to bottom with hundreds of sparkling gold and silver ornaments. The four long house tables were gone, replaced by many small, round tables covered with rich linens and set with the finest china and silver.

The room was already crowded with students, and more were pouring in. Hermione scanned the room for a table with enough seats for all of them to sit together. "There's one!" she said, finally spotting one near the front of the room.

Ron craned his neck to see where she was pointing. "Of course that one's empty," he snorted. "Who wants to sit that close to Snape?" He jerked his head toward the adjacent table, where Headmaster Dumbledore sat chatting casually with Professors McGonagall, Sprout and Snape.

Ron, along with most of the students at Hogwarts, loathed Severus Snape. And with good reason, Hermione thought. A strict disciplinarian and owner of an acid tongue, he had made their lives hell for the past seven years, reducing each of them to trembling bundles of nerves at every opportunity. His primary sources of pleasure were snapping sarcastically at the students and deducting house points for the merest infractions, and most of the young witches and wizards had wished him dead on more than one occasion.

Hermione had as much reason to hate Snape as anyone. He had labeled her a silly know-it-all and busybody from the first day she sat in his classroom, and he rarely failed to crack these epithets over her head like a whip when speaking to her. Yet lately, she found herself looking at Snape in a new light.

The war with Voldemort had come to a head at the beginning of the term, and Snape had acquitted himself beautifully. When he, Harry and Dumbledore disappeared from Hogwarts just two weeks after classes began, Hermione was beside herself with worry. She and Ron had spent countless hours in the Gryffindor common room speculating about what was going on and whether their friend was still alive or not. The trio was gone for weeks without any news, and everyone feared the worst. The atmosphere in the castle grew still and grim. The students shuffled silently from class to class, heads hung, while the remaining teachers struggled valiantly to maintain the normal routine under the most abnormal circumstances imaginable.

And then, as suddenly as they had gone, they were back.

The details of what transpired remained a closely-guarded secret, known only to those involved and a few high-level officials at the Ministry of Magic. Harry, exhausted and disturbed, refused to discuss it with anyone. When pressed, all he would say was that Voldemort was no longer a threat and that Snape had saved both his and Dumbledore's lives. Neither Snape nor Dumbledore volunteered any information about what had happened, and no one was foolish enough to pursue the issue with either of them.

Life had quickly returned to normal at Hogwarts, the air heavy with relief and joy at the dissipation of the worst of the Dark forces. It soon became evident that regardless of what had happened to him, Snape's attitude toward his classes – and Harry in particular – had not changed a bit, and his reputation as a war hero soon faded in the face of the usual resentment and anger which had always dogged his steps.

Harry's attitude toward the potions master had changed, however. He seemed to bear Snape's insults with great patience now, and no longer joined in the post-class gripe sessions with the others. Hermione sensed that he had come to some kind of understanding with Snape during their adventure together, and as she trusted her friend's feelings, she began to develop a new respect for the professor as well – albeit a grudging one.

Ron, however…

Well that's his look out, Hermione thought. He always has been thick as a brick when it comes to the feelings of those around him.

"It's our only chance if we want to sit together, Ron," Harry said, shattering Hermione's reverie. Ron, shrugging, finally acquiesced.

The group made its way through the crowd to the empty table, and Hermione sat between Harry and Ron, each flanked by his girlfriend. Neville and Dean Thomas sat opposite her, their backs to the staff table. Between their shoulders, Hermione could see Professor McGonagall smiling warmly in her direction. Her favorite teacher rose halfway and said, "You look lovely tonight, Miss Granger."

"Thank you, Professor," she smiled. Snape, who was sitting with his back to the crew of Gryffindors, turned at McGonagall's words and raked Hermione with a brief glance, then turned back, his expression unchanged.

The feast got under way and the group ate happily, laughing and talking as they enjoyed both each other's company and the delicious food. Only Hermione ate sparingly, worried that she might spill something on her new robes. When the meal was over, Dumbledore rose and with a wave of his hand moved all of the tables back against the walls save the one at which the staff was seated. A band of goblins positioned beneath the Christmas tree had been playing dinner music, and they now struck up the slow, beautiful waltz that was the traditional beginning to the dancing. They would later be replaced by a group of wizards who would play the lively music preferred by the younger set attending the ball.

Hermione decided it was time to begin her work as hostess. She walked about the room, talking to everyone she passed, exchanging a word here, a compliment there. She was encouraging some second-year girls to ask a couple of boys they were interested in to dance when Ron appeared at her elbow.

"Stop embarrassing them," he chided, watching the young girls slink away to a corner as far from the boys in question as possible.

"Oh sod off, " she replied good naturedly. "It's no big deal."

"Oh yeah?" Ron said. "Then why aren't you doing it?"

"Well, er… I'm not a very good dancer."

"I see. Don't practice what you preach, eh?"

"Fine," she said, rising to his challenge. "You want to dance?"

"Well, no," he said. "I don't know how to dance, either. And besides," he continued quickly, seeing the sarcastic grin forming on Hermione's face, "it will piss Helen off." He looked around the room for a minute and then broke into a wicked smile. "Why not ask Dumbledore?" he suggested.

"Oh please," she dismissed the idea. "Don't be an idiot."

"Why not?" he demanded playfully. "Not scared, are you?"

"Not a bit," she insisted. "Just watch." And taking a deep breath to fortify her courage, she gently pushed her way through the crowd to the staff table.

Dumbledore was enjoying his second bowl of custard as she approached. "Excuse me, Headmaster," she said in a high, clear voice that hardly sounded like her own. "Would you care to dance?"

Dumbledore put his spoon down on the table and regarded her over his spectacles, wizened face splitting into a wide grin. "I would be honored, Miss Granger," he said formally. He stood and bowed, then gestured toward the dance floor. The crowd parted as they made their way toward it.

He was an accomplished dancer and whirled her around the dance floor effortlessly, compensating for her lack of experience by shortening his normally long strides and counting off the steps for her. When the song ended and they returned to the staff table, Professor Black stepped forward and bowed, asking, "May I have the next dance, Miss Granger?" before sweeping her out to the dance floor once more.

When they had finished their dance, Black deposited her back at the table, and Hermione looked up into the approving smile of Professor McGonagall. Snape stood next to her, a sneer of something close to disgust on his face. She caught his eye as well, and her smile faltered as his expression darkened into a glare. "Don't even think about it, Miss Granger," he snapped.

Hermione was startled by his reaction. Until that moment, the idea of asking Snape to dance had not even crossed her mind. She blinked rapidly and was about to disabuse him of his worries when Dumbledore clapped Snape on the shoulder. "Go on, Severus," he urged, giving him a nudge in Hermione's direction. "She's quite good. You might even enjoy it!"

"I doubt that," Snape replied.

His attitude grated on Hermione, who had never been one to back down from a fight. Steeling her resolve, she squared her shoulders and said in a loud, clear voice which carried well across the room, "Would you like to dance, Professor Snape?"

Heads turned and Snape found himself in the unenviable position of having every eye in the school upon him. Hermione could almost see the gears in his brain whirring as he tried to decide which would be worse: ignoring her request or being seen dancing with her. She was fairly sure he was about to refuse when a voice called out from the back of the room, "Go ahead, Professor! She won't bite!"

Malfoy, that stupid git, Hermione thought as the room erupted into shouts of encouragement. One last look at Dumbledore's encouraging smile and Snape shouldered his way to the dance floor. Hermione followed, smiling broadly until Snape turned and stood waiting for her to join him. His face was dim and she suddenly wondered what she had been feeling so victorious about. The last thing she wanted to do was be that close to him.

Or was it…?

Snape very properly held out his arms in a ballroom dancing position as the goblins struck up a Chopin waltz. She clasped his upraised left hand with her right and placed her other hand lightly on the small of his back. Holding her at the maximum distance possible for them to still be considered dancing partners, he swung her out on to the floor.

"Do try not to step on my feet, Miss Granger," he said dryly as the room broke into cheers.

"And you do the same," she retorted without thinking.

It was uncomfortable at first. Intimidated by her proximity to the former Death Eater and unaccustomed to being the center of attention, she moved gracelessly. Snape's legs were longer than either Dumbledore's or Black's, and she felt as though she had to take two steps to match every one of his. Worse yet, the goblins had apparently picked the longest song in their repertoire, and the dance seemed to go on forever.

After a few minutes, however, she relaxed into the music and unconsciously stepped closer to her partner. She could feel the muscles in his back flexing beneath her hand, and for the first time she became aware of Snape's humanity. He actually was living, breathing flesh under those impenetrable black robes, and from what little of his body she could feel he was lean and muscular as well. He suddenly seemed immensely powerful, though she could tell he was holding that power in check, coiled up tightly around his viscera and ready to spring like a serpent when called upon. It was exciting to be close to such vibrant strength, she realized with a start. Even the scent of him exuded power, a combination of earthy potions ingredients mingled with a hint of darkness and sweet-smelling perspiration. Altogether masculine. She took a deep breath and his essence filled her nostrils, thrilling her. How had she never noticed it before?

Stop it, she admonished herself, futilely willing her suddenly mutinous heart rate to slow. It was dangerous to acknowledge Snape this way, ridiculous to modify her opinion of him one iota, especially when one recalled who her best friends were. Still, she realized that being close to him was considerably more pleasant than she had expected it to be.

She risked a glance at his face. His expression was, as usual, totally unreadable. He was looking over her shoulder with complete disinterest, seemingly only marking time until the song ended so he could dump her unceremoniously and attend to Malfoy for his part in this public humiliation. She wasn't sure what she had been expecting, but his apathy bothered her far more than overt anger would have. A small dart of disappointment tugged at her.

At that moment, he looked down at her, a cold smirk forming on his lips. Her heart skipped a beat when they made eye contact and, flustered, she stepped on the hem of her robe. It snapped taut against her leg as she moved the opposite foot, and she stumbled forward.

Instinctively, Snape wrapped his arms around her to steady her, and she found her face pressed hard against his chest. In that instant, she could feel the hammering of his heart against her cheek. It seemed to be running like a freight train, and his shallow breathing echoed hollowly in her ear. Here his heady scent was almost overwhelming, and she stayed in his embrace longer than was strictly necessary, strangely content.

"Miss Granger," his voice vibrated through his torso, "are you quite all right?" When she nodded, he said, "Then would you kindly stop making a spectacle of yourself?"

She pulled back, blushing, and murmured an apology, suddenly aware of a group of snickering Slytherins standing nearby. Snape turned on his heel and stalked off the dance floor as Hermione kneeled to retrieve one of the tea roses that had fallen from her corsage as a result of their impact.

When she straightened, Dumbledore appeared at her side and lightly plucked the wilting flower from her fingers. "Ten points to Gryffindor for extreme bravery in the face of adversity!" he proclaimed, holding the rose above his head. The hall erupted into good natured hoots and catcalls. Dumbledore winked at her and returned to the staff table, still clutching the rose. He placed it on the table in front of his place and bent to say something in Snape's ear.

Hermione looked tentatively in the potion master's direction, but his back was to her now. Her chest contracted in another brief spasm of disappointment, but she had no time to reflect on it before she was surrounded by her friends.

"Ugh!" Ron cried. "You poor thing!"

"You OK?" Harry asked.

"Of course!" she said, covering her turbulent feelings with a short laugh. "It's not as if he used the Cruciatus on me or anything. We just danced."

"Ugh!" said Ron again while Ginny gave an exaggerated shiver.

"He was actually quite good," Hermione said, tossing her head a bit so her earrings glittered in the half light. She could still catch a hint of Snape's scent on her robes and her face felt flushed. She was grateful the lights were low.

The rest of the ball passed uneventfully. Uninterested in playing hostess any longer, Hermione spent the remainder of the evening talking with her friends. But she was unable to stop herself from glancing in Snape's direction from time to time, hoping to catch his eye and get some confirmation of what she was sure she'd sensed in his body on the dance floor. But long before the ball was scheduled to end, she saw him slip out of the Great Hall by way of a back passage.

She lay in her bed that night, turning the evening's events over in her head. She was both confused and excited at the sudden shift in her emotions and lay awake for a long time trying to talk herself out of the way she felt. But she couldn't deny the fact that her body was buzzing with some ill-defined longing at the thought of the repressed dynamo in whose arms she had spent part of the evening. She imagined that she could sense his presence even though he was half a castle away, as though some sort of conduit had opened between them so his strength could flow to her unchecked. It was a strangely pleasant sensation, this feeling that he was still present with her.

Mum always says power is an aphrodisiac, she thought, allowing her hands to roam over her body, her mind and fingers working together to quench the thirst that had been unwittingly induced by the touch of the potion master's hands.

****

Deep below the ground in his dungeon chambers, Severus Snape sat silently, watching the flames dance in his fireplace grate. In his present state of mind their writhing seemed both dangerous and erotic, as though they were snapping beasts caught in some kind of a lethal courtship ritual. He stared into the very heart of the orange-hot gyrations until it felt as though his eyes were also on fire, thinking hard.

Yes, thinking, always thinking. Never doing.

It was better that way. He had always been a vigilant man, jealously guarding his emotions lest they be perverted and used against him, and even with the final passage of the danger which had caused him to be so he found it a hard habit to change. Keep your distance. Build that wall and do not, under any circumstances, let anyone scale it.

Must it always be so?

He sighed and turned his face from the fire, though persistence of vision meant he could still see it undulating in ghostly green shadows as he focused on the stone wall of his quarters. His hand moved toward a thick book sitting on the table next to him. It was a dog-eared copy of Magical Draughts and Potions, and he considered it the closest thing to the Muggle Bible a potions master could have. Slowly he opened the book to the center and ran his fingers down the columns of familiar words. Then he reached into the pocket of his robes and removed the small, fragrant object, placing it in the middle of the page and closing the book gently on its red petals.

A/N: Thanks to Quillusion for the technical information about ballroom dancing. I know that strictly speaking Hermione shouldn't have her hand on the small of Snape's back if they are dancing correctly, but I really liked the idea of her touching him that way so I took a few liberties.