Author's Note: This story was written as a response for Fleable for the Livejournal Snape/Hermione Ficathon. You can find an almost obscene number of great fics there (which, sadly, I can't link to. Blame the archive. Search for 'lovedraughts' at livejournal dot com). Hopefully, it will turn into an annual thing.
An Indefinite Article
Hermione Granger, Potions Mistress and Ministry of Magic researcher, was nearly beside herself with worry. Ars Alchemica, the premier potions journal of the Wizarding World, had not yet contacted her regarding the article she'd submitted to them for review. For over two months now, she had languished in her own personal, anxiety-laden hell.
Unsurprisingly, Hermione-the-Adult was no less terrified of failing than Hermione-the-Student had been. While she knew, rationally, that no word was simply a sign that her article was still being reviewed, it didn't make her worry obsessively any less.
It was her first article – her first attempt at publishing her research findings. And, quite possibly, the most important thing she had done to date (excepting, of course, surviving her years at Hogwarts and managing to help Harry Potter, The-Boy-Who-Beat-Seven-Kinds-Of-Hell-Out-Of-Voldemort, fulfill his destiny, but what was assisting in the defeat of an insane, terrifyingly powerful megalomaniac compared to actually being published?).
So it was really quite understandable that her fingernails had been chewed to the quick, and that she had barely slept in weeks.
Harry and Ron, both of them already well-respected and accomplished Aurors, had tried patiently to sympathise with and calm her through a variety of methods, the most successful thus far having been to get her completely pissed.
While Hermione did appreciate their baffled concern and half-hearted attempts at comprehending her distress, she was starting to worry about her liver.
But really, how long did it take to read and assess a mere thirty-foot article? Could her reviewers really be that busy? Unlikely, Hermione told herself. Maybe they were all just getting together and laughing about her miraculous breakthrough (as she liked to call it) with memory-restoring potions. Just because ramora oil hadn't been used before (despite the proven benefits of Muggle fish oil) didn't mean it was ridiculous. Hermione sometimes wondered if the Wizarding world was always loathe to accept change in any way, shape or form, or only when the innovation was introduced by Muggle-borns.
She sighed, and let her head fall forward to thump loudly against her research bench. She couldn't work with something so huge hanging over her. Besides, it was almost 6 o'clock, and she hadn't gotten anything done, which, in regards Hermione, meant she had only written five reports and completed two experiments. Clearly, it had been a wasted day.
She tidied up her small lab quickly, putting everything back in its place, and was about to walk out the door when there was a tapping at the soot-covered window behind her desk.
Dropping her satchel and the dozen rolls of parchment she had stuffed under one arm, Hermione dashed over and threw the window open.
A rather put-out looking owl fluttered in and perched on the back of her chair. It gave her an unimpressed glance, and held out its leg.
Hermione rifled through one of her desk drawers and dropped a handful of dusty owl treats on top of her blotter before untying the parchment from the owl's leg. It's work done, the owl hopped onto her desk, bolted down the treats, and was out the window before she could even unroll her letter.
Hermione sat down in her chair and, with shaking hands, opened the parchment.
Dear Miss Granger, it began, We are delighted to accept your submission to Ars Alchemica. Your article was received very well, and whilst our policy requires that your reviewers remain anonymous, you will be pleased to know that some of the most prestigious experts in the field lobbied to be allowed to review your paper.
Their comments and notes are being Floo'd to you and will probably arrive shortly after you receive this letter.
There was a thump from her fireplace. Hermione looked up and saw a lumpy package, wrapped in brown paper and tied with string, sitting on the floor in front of the fire. She looked back down at the letter.
Some of the reviewers may have offered suggestions or critiques. While we have decided to print your article regardless, you may find it prudent to make some revisions.
We look forward to receiving your final article,
Yours sincerely,
Bartholomew Brecht
Editor, Ars Alchemica
Hermione reread the piece of parchment, and then read it again. What did they mean, it would be prudent to make some revisions?
Tossing the letter aside, she dove for the package, and tore off the brown paper. Two of the fat rolls of parchment slithered out of her grip and splayed out on the floor, but the third remained balanced on her open palm. She unrolled the first foot of it, and stared.
There wasn't a mark it. She kept unrolling, until all thirty feet were piled up in front of her. Finally, at the very end, there was a small paragraph. It read:
Your use of both magical and Muggle methods leaves much to be desired. Simply assuming that the oil from a magical fish would have similar properties as oil from a Muggle fish is both careless and sloppy, and I would have expected more from you. Had you seen it fit to sufficiently back up your work with ramora oil, perhaps your new recipe for a memory draught would make more logical sense, considering the rather vital role that ingredient seems to play. As is, I see no solid foundation for this article.
Hermione's mouth dropped, and she stared at the parchment.
Sloppy? Careless? She had done months of work with ramora oil. And, bearing in mind how difficult the damned fish were to come by, she considered the fact that she had been kept relatively well supplied in the stuff both a feat of epic proportions and a testament to the faith the Ministry put in her abilities.
And now, she was being called sloppy and careless, and being accused of having no solid foundation for her article. By a perfect stranger no less.
Resisting the urge to scream and rip the parchment into tiny shreds, Hermione stood up and dusted herself off. She re-rolled the parchment, albeit rather sloppily, and stuffed it into an inner pocket of her cloak, not particularly caring how crushed it got.
She stepped up to her office fireplace, and took a pinch of silvery powder from a small jar, crammed in between photographs and trinkets.
Hermione tossed the Floo powder onto the fire, and once it flared up, sparkling and green, she stepped into the flames.
"Ars Alchemica offices," she called out, and carefully tucked in her elbows.
"Let. Me. In." Hermione snarled through clenched teeth.
The receptionist looked longingly at the open Witches Weekly on the desk in front of her, and glared up at Hermione.
"As I've already told yeh – yeh need to make an appoin'ment."
By way of a response, Hermione held up a rather ragged looking roll of parchment. The offending comments, scrawled in red ink at the bottom, were smudged but visible.
With a sigh of long suffering, the receptionist looked at the parchment, read the paragraph, and gave Hermione a vaguely disgusted look.
"Tha's from one of your re-view-ehs," she said slowly, sounding out the word. "They don't work 'ere."
"Then tell me who they are."
The girl looked affronted. "We don't do tha'. Ever. It's against journal policy. I'm afraid there's nothin' I can do."
Hermione put both her hands on the receptionist's desk and leaned forward.
"I'm not leaving until you give me a name," she hissed.
After a very angry and foul-mouthed Hermione had been levitated out, one of the clerks who had come out to watch the entertainment turned to the receptionist. "What was all that about?" he asked.
Looking up from her magazine, the girl replied "She's a first-timer, and got a nasty review."
"Ahh," the clerk said knowingly. "She got him, did she?"
"Yea. They usually react that way, yeh know. Seen it 'undreds of times."
The clerk looked puzzled. "But I heard he actually asked to see her article. Specifically lobbied to be one of the reviewers."
The receptionist shrugged, and looked back down at her magazine.
Once Hermione had calmed down enough to look at the situation rationally, she realised she had been suffering from a nagging feeling of déjà vu since she first read that horrible review. It was driving her mad – she felt that she was missing something that was both very important and very obvious. But try as she might, no answer was forthcoming. If something about that infuriating little paragraph was familiar, it was always just out of her memory's grasp.
The other two reviews were almost entirely positive, and very supportive, but this did little to soothe Hermione's battered professional ego. Instead, she focused on re-evaluating her article. As far as she was concerned, it made perfect logical sense and all her work was backed up sufficiently, but she wanted to make sure the science was airtight by the time it was published. Hopefully then she would find some small measure of satisfaction with a job well done.
Until then, she scrutinized and poured over ever scrap of research she had done regarding ramora oil. On the following Saturday, she even went so far as to pull out the dusty boxes she kept shoved in the back of her closet. These boxes were home to all of her notes, essays and projects from her Hogwarts days. Hermione was of the class of intellectual that tended to hoard. Everything was kept, because you never knew when you might need to take a look at that essay written in first year, on the properties of levitation charms.
In this case, however, Hermione was searching for one of her N.E.W.T. level Potions essays – specifically the essay that marked her first interest in memory-restoring draughts and ramora oil.
After much digging and coughing, Hermione emerged victorious, and the parchment in question was carried triumphantly away from the disembowelled bins. She dusted herself and her essay off, sat down, and unrolled it.
Once she finished staring in surprise, Hermione calmly rolled the parchment back up, got up from her seat, and swore quietly to herself.
After a moment's deliberation, she went to the fireplace, retrieved a pinch of Floo powder from the bowl on the mantelpiece, and tossed it into the flames.
She stuck her head into the green fire, and called out "Albus Dumbledore's office!"
In hindsight, Hermione decided that it was probably a good thing that it was already late June, and classes were finished at Hogwarts. Otherwise she'd have been tempted to Apparate into Hogsmeade, march straight up to the school, and hex her quarry into a million, squishy, drippy pieces. As it was, she was instead strolling down Diagon Alley, enjoying the cooling, midsummer's evening.
Dumbledore had been kind enough to inform her that her no-longer-so-anonymous-reviewer was not actually in the castle, but was rather in the process of shopping for supplies for the upcoming term. Apparently he was in the habit of personally inspecting all the more rare and esoteric potions' ingredients the school supplied for the Potions classes.
Hermione would have expected no less from Severus Snape, extraordinarily nasty and anal-retentive bastard that he was.
How could she have ever not recognized his cramped, spidery handwriting? And if that hadn't been enough, his personal brand of nastiness and cruelty should have been a dead giveaway.
But that really didn't matter now. Hermione was simply enjoying the evening, and if she happened to run into Snape, well, that certainly would be fortunate.
Resisting the urge to whistle nonchalantly, Hermione sauntered up to Slug & Jiggers Apothecary and ducked inside.
She resisted the urge to gag as the door shut behind her. No matter how often she visited the Apothecary, the smell never got any better. Weaving around the barrels of ginger root and dried nettles, Hermione made a fair show of inspecting the bottles and jars of ingredients. She almost surprised herself when she casually backed up, directly into a rather put-out Snape. He stumbled, almost dropping the jar of bubotuber pus he was inspecting.
He spun around, a nasty rebuke clearly at the ready. It died on his tongue, though, when he saw who the culprit was.
Pulling himself up to his full height, Snape sneered down at Hermione. "Miss Granger. I should have known. If you'll excuse me."
He swept past her before she could respond, heading towards the rear of the shop. Hermione, thinking fast, dashed after him.
"Professor, I actually wanted to speak to you," she said to his quickly retreating back. Snape stopped, and visibly stiffened. Hermione took this as a sign to proceed.
"I've submitted an article to Ars Alchemica," she said mildly, walking up beside him. Snape grunted in a non-committed fashion, and examined a hanging bundle of jobberknoll feathers.
"I'm quite pleased with my finished article, and apparently, so was the editor. However, one of my reviewers wasn't quite as impressed." Hermione paused, and glanced at Snape's face. It was impassive as he studied a feather individually. She continued, injecting a hint of sickly sweet venom into her voice. "In any event, you've had far more experience in our field than I, and I was curious – have you ever had to deal with less than stellar reviews, from people who are clearly bitter, jaded and rude, and have no real grasp of the article?"
Snape carefully placed the feather he had been examining back among its fellows, and turned to face Hermione. "I have never been published," he said mildly, and slid past her. Hermione stood quite still for a moment, unsure of how she should respond. It was the sound of a register chiming that brought her back to herself.
She spun around in time to see Snape's back, retreating through the open door of the Apothecary. She rushed to catch up.
He was walking quickly, and Hermione struggled to catch up with him. Panting slightly from the effort, she finally managed to pull abreast of him. "You've…you've never been published?"
Snape raised a brow and glanced askance at her, but didn't slow down. "No, I have not."
"But…why?"
Snape snorted, and pulled up short, causing Hermione to stumble as another pedestrian bumped into her. "I fail to see why I must justify anything to you," he snapped, glaring down at her.
Hermione's cool was rapidly escaping her. "You fail to see? After that miserable, nasty review you gave me? And you've never even been published!"
"That has nothing to do with it!" Snape snarled.
"I suppose you would say that," Hermione said tartly. "But then again, I've always heard that those who can't do teach. My, that does apply to you, doesn't it? I suppose the same must also be true for research – those who can't do, review!"
With that, she spun on her heel, fully intending to march away with a burning sense of superiority at getting in the last word. Sadly, Snape seemed to have other ideas.
He grabbed her by the forearm and forcibly twirled her around.
"How dare you, you insolent cow. I taught you everything you know!"
Hermione, rather intimidated but far too angry to back down, scoffed. "You most certainly did not. I could have done just as good a job if left alone with a text book and a cauldron. Besides, if you were half as brilliant as everyone seems to think, you wouldn't need to see every damned scrap of parchment pertaining to my research with ramora oil! The introduction to my article specifically outlines my basis, enough such that any idiot could understand!"
"No, it does not," Snape snarled. "Any idiot could not understand, which was why I wrote what I did. Believe me when I say I am a sodding expert when it comes to educating the lowest common denominator of any given population. Longbottom, who I recall was your on-going Potions-class project-cum-sycophant, springs to mind!"
"Neville was not my sycophant, nor was he as stupid as you seem to still believe!" fumed Hermione. "Besides, the lowest common denominator, as you so nastily put it, does not read Ars Alchemica!"
"It's still a flaw!" Snape bellowed, causing passers-by to scurry away in alarm. "You're making assumptions based on work you do not sufficiently explain in your blasted article! For all I know, you could have made it all up!"
Hermione gaped, aghast. "Excuse me? Excuse me!? I most certainly did not make any of it up!" she hissed.
"Prove it, then!" Snape yelled.
Hermione, too angry to think straight, wrapped her arms around Snape's waist and shrieked "Apparate!"
They popped into existence in Hermione's flat. Pushing herself away from Snape, Hermione stomped over to her desk, grabbed a thick folder, and shoved it into Snape's hands.
"That," she hissed, "is all my research on ramora oil. Feel free to read through it. I'm making tea. She stomped off into the kitchen, and banged pots and pans around for a while until the senseless violence of it made her feel slightly better.
Grudgingly, she poured a cup for Snape as well.
Stomping back into the living room, she was only half-surprised to find him sitting quietly in her best armchair, flipping through the folder. She put the mug down on the end table beside him, sat on her couch.
Making herself comfortable, she crossed her legs, glared at Snape as he carefully read over the first page in the folder, and blew on her tea.
Three hours later, when long shadows were stretching across the floors and walls of Hermione's flat, Snape closed the folder, put it on the coffee table in front of him, and sat back in the chair.
"Well," he said, pressing the tips his fingers together in front of him. "You certainly were exhaustive. Exactly how many of those incredibly rare and expensive fish did your project squander?"
"None," Hermione said through clenched teeth. "I put each ounce of oil I was given to good use. So either get on with admitting my article is flawless, or kindly get the fuck out of my flat."
"No, I don't think I'll be doing either of those," Snape said mildly. Hermione dug her nails into the sofa cushions.
"As I said originally in my review of your article, I expected better from you," Snape sneered, standing up from the chair. "But you seem hell-bent on dragging some sort of overt praise out of me, which, I can assure you, simply will not happen."
"Oh, really?" hissed Hermione, standing up from her chair and skirting around the coffee table.
"Yes, really."
"I can't believe I actually respected and defended you while I was at school," Hermione spat out, her voice rising.
"Defended me? To whom, the more useless members of the Golden Trio?"
"To everyone! Everyone hated you! And I defended you when they were nasty! Even after that horrible comment you made in fourth year!"
"I don't recall ever asking for your protection," Snape muttered, his face growing red.
"No, of course you wouldn't!" Hermione yelled. "You were always too busy being a complete and utter prick!"
Snape, his cheeks flushed with anger, turned and stalked towards the door of the flat.
"I don't think so," Hermione snarled, rushing past him to bodily block the door. "No, you're staying right here 'til you explain to me why you're always so keen on putting everyone else down and making them feel like utter shit all the time."
She could hear Snape grinding his teeth together as he approached the door. "Move."
"No," she responded, glaring at him defiantly, "Not until you explain why my belief that there was actually something redeemable about you is so obviously wrong."
"Why on earth were you foolish enough to believe such a thing?" Snape sneered.
"Because I had a crush on you, you useless twat!" Hermione yelled. She took a deep breath, and continued in a calmer voice. "Clearly it just was some twisted, masochistic, redemption fantasy – I can see that now. But I still want an explanation as to why you really are such a prat, so that I can begin despising you properly."
Snape had the decency to look surprised, and more than a little alarmed. "You…had a crush. On me. Are you mad?"
"Obviously I was," Hermione snapped, stepping towards him and jamming one finger directly into his chest. "You are the vilest of all people I have ever known. You are a nasty, vicious, unpleasant git, and your personal hygiene is questionable, at best. You are creepy, odd, and smell funny. And your teeth? They're atrocious. I should know."
Snape apparently ignored her tirade, and seemed to still be deep in thought. "So…you had a crush on me."
"Yes!" Hermione sighed, rolling her eyes.
"I don't believe you."
"You…wait, what?"
"I said I don't believe you," Snape said, eyebrows furrowed.
"Oh for god's sake. Do you need me to submit research on it?" Hermione said, exasperated.
"Well…" Snape trailed off.
"Oh shut up," Hermione said, and kissed him.
Several hours later, after some initially disheartening, but generally not-too-bad sex, Hermione pushed her hair off her sweaty forehead and rolled onto her side.
"So…you really do have a crush on me," Snape said, lying beside her.
"No, I did. Now I hate you, remember?"
"Ah," Snape said, linking his fingers together on his chest. "Does that mean this was a once-off thing, then?"
"Not necessarily," Hermione mused. "Just because I hate you doesn't mean I can't sleep with you. Besides, I'd be willing to invest time to help you improve. Your technique is really lacking in some areas, and I feel it's my…my duty, really, to assist you."
Snape glared at the woman beside him. "I could just as easily begin to hate you too, you know."
Hermione grinned. "Oh please, don't take it personally. It's just that I would have expected more from you."