Disclaimer: All characters belong to JK Rowlings. No money is being made from this story.
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Chapter 2 ~ Detention with the Potions Master
Severus Snape looked over the neatly printed list Hermione had made of his so-called attributes using the letters of his name. He had laughed at a couple of the words, scowled at others, but the one that intrigued him was the last. Erotic. So, the Gryffindor witch thought he was erotic. Interesting. That explained quite a few things he had been noticing about the witch. Nothing too glaring mind you, just a bit on the odd side. Normally Miss Granger was on point in his class, attentive and ready to participate in discussions. Whenever he fired a question at her, she would fire the answer back quickly, taking only seconds to process the correct response. Lately however, he would send a question at her and she would look at him dazedly, and he would have to repeat the question in order to get an answer.
He had also noticed an unusual amount of clumsiness whenever he would stop and observe her working on a brew in class. Her normally sure hands would hesitate and falter, and on more than one occasion he’d had to rescue her work, keeping her from exploding her cauldron. He scolded her scathingly when she made such stupid errors. She was his best pupil. Such sloppiness was completely unacceptable. He would ask her what in the world was wrong with her, and she would look at him with a Longbottomish expression on her face and shrug lamely. This infuriated him. He was harsh on her as far as marks went, not wanting her to get a big head about her abilities, but he found himself actually having to give her lesser marks due to her poor showing. Looking at the list, he saw the young witch was obviously conflicted…about him.
The indomitable Miss Hermione Granger, toppled off her game by something as simple as a case of puppy-love. An infatuation. A crush on her Potions Professor and the Slytherin Head of House, no less. Godric Gryffindor would be doing handstands in his grave. Snape sighed. He was already swamped with dealing with a continuous flow of overwrought Slytherin females and their love problems, passing out tissues and listening to their horror stories of unrequited love. Now he had to deal with Miss Granger’s imagined attraction to him. He had to locate her “off switch” and click of the flow of hormones flooding the witch before it got out of hand. This had happened to him once before.
He had put off dealing with the smitten young woman, thinking the infatuation would wear off on its own, and found himself in quite a compromising position several weeks later when the desperate witch marched into his classroom one afternoon, warded the doors, disrobed and begged him to fuck her. Snape had been hard put not to do it. The witch was lovely, and implored him so sweetly and passionately…but he steeled himself and flooed Albus, informing him of his situation. The Headmaster dealt with the witch for him, but afterwards reprimanded Snape for not taking action to discourage the young woman sooner. He did not want relive the situation with Miss Granger.
He looked at the time. It was seven forty-five. The initial words on the list would not be difficult to get through. He would make her uncomfortable about them and deduct points for each one, according to how offensive he actually found them. Some of them were apt descriptions, such as sarcastic, rude, vicious, and nasty. He really fit these descriptions, particularly when dressing down someone who raised his ire. The term ‘eldritch’ had cracked him up. Miss Granger dug deep for that one. He was up in the air about “evil”.; He did have a very dark nature, but believed he just stopped short of actually being evil, though his students would definitely disagree with his summation. As far as being ugly, that could be applied either to his personality, his features or both. Actually, some women considered him handsome in an intense, dark, mysterious kind of way.
The remaining words were definitely ones that would be applied to him by an irate student pissed off by point loss. Miss Granger had described him as slimy, sickening, putrid and an asshole after he had reduced her house total by fifty points. He could understand her wrath, but still she was stupid enough to wave her little list around and let him get it, so she had to pay the price. The term ‘asshole’ would cost her.
But the word “erotic.” What in the world would a little virgin like Miss Granger know about anything erotic? He would have to discover what her definition of ‘erotic’ was in order to get to the root of her infatuation with him. This exploration would definitely make her squirm, and he had no intention on letting her off the hook about it. Making her open up about her attraction, then by discussion letting her see how ridiculous it was, would hopefully have the desired effect of getting her back to her former level of work. If she wasn’t candid enough, he could always apply Legilimency to see what she found erotic about him and use that as a basis to discourage her. As it was, she was seriously distracted, and in a class as exacting as Advanced Potions, distraction could be lethal. He wondered if this crush on him was affecting any of her other classes. Hopefully it wasn’t. Hopefully it was only in his presence that Miss Granger lost her concentration and her cool.
There was a knock on the door. Snape straightened his robes and folded his hands on his desk.
“Come in, Miss Granger,” he called.
Hermione opened the door and walked in, her shoulders slightly slumped. She was dressed in her school robes, her uniform under them. She had worried over her detention all day, the last word on the list taunting her. Now the Professor knew that she had impure thoughts about him, and it was embarrassing to say the least. It probably amused him to think of her pining over him like a lovesick billywig. Little Hermione Granger longing for the touch of her Potions Professor. She wished she could find a rock and crawl under it.
She walked up to the Professor’s desk and stood in front of it, her eyes on the floor.
“I’m here for detention, Professor,” she announced unnecessarily.
Snape’s black eyes passed over Hermione slowly as she stood before him with her head bowed. He could tell she had punished herself about the list, probably agonizing over the last word, and embarrassed to death about his discovery of her infatuation with him. He smirked. The darker side of him flared up for a moment, tempting him to take her humiliation to an even greater level. He pushed it aside.
“Sit down in your usual seat, Miss Granger,” he said.
Hermione turned, walked around the long table in the first that served as a communal desk for Snape’s pupil, and sidled in to the seat located in the middle, directly in front of his desk. She pulled the chair out, sat down and slid herself closer to the desk, folding her hands and looking at him directly now. His dark eyes met hers knowingly, and she felt a tug of apprehension in her belly as he pulled the list out of his pocket. She attempted to soften his reaction.
“Professor, I wrote that list when I was very angry at you. I didn’t mean those things I wrote,” she said, looking at him with pleading eyes.
The Professor scanned the list, and looked at her. She saw no compassion in his dark eyes.
“Miss Granger, I’ve found that people are most honest when under emotional turmoil. When you wrote this list, you certainly did mean it. Every word. Don’t try to convince me otherwise. You will be wasting your time,” he said, frowning at her. “Now, why do you think I’m slimy, Miss Granger?” he asked.
Hermione swallowed, “I was going to change that to slithery, sir,” she confessed, “because of the way you slink around trying to catch rule-breakers.”
Snape raised his eyebrow.
“Miss Granger, you are not a complete idiot. You know rules must be enforced or the whole system will fall into chaos. My ‘slinking’ around helps maintain order at Hogwarts and protects the students from themselves. Ten points from Gryffindor for that description.”
Hermione just looked at him. So that was his game…she had to justify what she wrote about him or lose house points. Very well. Snape looked down at the list.
“The next word is ‘evil’. How am I evil, Miss Granger?” he asked her.
Hermione warmed up to the challenge.
“It depends on the definition used, Professor, ” she said. “In this case I define evil as causing ruin, injury, or pain. Something that is a cause or source of suffering. The way you unfairly punish and embarrass your students is as far as I’m concerned, something you do to be cruel.”
“Wrong in one, Miss Granger. If the student were acting in a manner that was acceptable, I would not be able to take points, assign detentions or dress them down. And even when I do, that can hardly be called ruin, injury or pain. In the student’s mind, perhaps it is hurtful, because they aren’t free to pursue their own plans for that evening, or feel badly about losing points for their house, but in that case they mentally cause their own suffering, when the solution is to merely accept their losses and continue on. As far as fairness goes, this is my classroom and I set the rules. I must be able to enforce them. This is not a democracy, Miss Granger. Ten points from Gryffindor for that inapplicable description.
Hermione kept her face immobile. That was two down. The Professor did have a point.
The Professor perused the list again.
“I am going to put the following descriptions in one bag, Miss Granger and save you the trouble of trying to justify them. ‘Vicious, Rude, Sarcastic and Nasty.’ These are all perceptions of my personality and my preferred mode of operation when dealing with others who invoke my ire or my wrath. I can be particularly vicious and nasty with my delivery if I feel a person needing correction is too thick for reason alone. Most are, and so require the extra impetus. I am also rude to those who assail me with their stupidity or unwanted approaches. I am sarcastic by nature, so you will lose no points for that. But my viciousness, rudeness and nastiness are determined by the way others cause me to interact with them. It is not my nature. So thirty points from Gryffindor.
Hermione frowned at not having the chance to address the descriptions, though once again the Professor had justified himself very well. Everyone had different perceptions of another’s motivations for acting the way they do, and there was no way to be sure the perceptions were correct, so the words Hermione used were unable to clearly define the wizard’s actions.
The Professor continued going through the list, debunking each description Hermione had used and deducting house points. As far as the term ‘asshole’ was concerned, that little description was deemed a direct insult and resulted in a fifty-point loss. Hermione winced. Her housemates were going to kill her. Now they were behind Slytherin house as far as the House Cup went. The Gryffindors would have to suck up to a lot of Professors to make up those points, and hopefully win the next couple of Quidditch matches. In total she had lost them one hundred and forty points. And there was one word left.
The Professor rose from behind his desk and walked around it. He stopped in front of Hermione, whose heart was beginning to pound. This was the word that revealed her secret attraction to the Potions Master. A secret he now knew. Snape leaned back against the desk and studied her, watching as she began to blush under his gaze.
The Professor was enjoying the normally unflappable Gryffindor’s discomfort and embarrassment because of her crush on him. To see the confident Miss Granger brought to her knees by her emerging sexuality and natural curiosity was, well, satisfying. She was someone who put a lot of belief in the power of intellect and logic, and spent hours upon hours honing hers to the point of excluding the other aspects of life. It really must weigh heavily on her that she found her snarky Professor was arousing feeling in her that had nothing to do with her mind.
He let his eyes flick over Hermione a bit more until the blush that began at her face crept over the rest of her body. Then he addressed her.
“Miss Granger, the word at the end of your list had a much different connotation than the previous. A much more personal one. Much more…intimate in nature. It leads me to believe, Miss Granger that I have aroused your interest in a way not connected with our teacher/student relationship. Am I correct in my assumption?” he asked quietly.
Hermione simply looked at him. She was unable to admit the truth of his statement. She sat at the desk and lowered her eyes.
The Professor looked at her, amused.
“So the mouth that roared goes silent,” he mocked, “It seems, Miss Granger, I have finally found the question that you can’t answer.”
Hermione’s eyes flashed at him angrily for a moment, before returning to the desktop. The Professor stood up and walked a bit closer to Hermione’s desk, put both his hands on it, and leaned closer to her.
“You described me on your list as ‘erotic’ Miss Granger. Tell me your definition of erotic, and why you find me so,” he said silkily, using the power of his voice on the young witch to make her respond.
Hermione looked up at him. He wanted to know why she was attracted to him. Her attraction was purely physical. She couldn’t tell him she dreamed about him doing things to her body that lovers do.
The Potions Master scowled at her.
“Miss Granger, if you do not tell me, I will be forced to use Legilimency on you and see for myself. That is far more invasive than answering my question. At least you can choose what to tell me if you answer me. You will have no choice concerning what I see in your mind,” he said evenly.
Hermione looked at him with a shocked expression. If he looked in her mind, he would see everything he thought and dreamed about concerning him. He would know she thought about him fucking her, worse he would see the fantasies.
“Please don’t use Legilimency on me, Professor,” Hermione said in a panicked voice, “Please, sir, don’t do it!”
The Professor was taken aback by the fear in her voice. She sounded terrified. He became instantly curious. What was she hiding in that mind of hers that made her beg him not to look?
“Well then, Miss Granger, what is your definition of ‘erotic’ and what do you find erotic about me?” he asked her again. “This is the last time I will ask you. I will find out for myself if you do not answer me truthfully.”
Hermione drew in a steadying breath. She was going to have to tell him. Showing him would be so much worse.
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A/N: Mmm mmm. You have to confess to your delicious teacher why you find him soooo delectable, Hermione…or else he will see your randy little fantasies about doing the do. Ah, decisions, decisions. Please review.
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The Burning Pen
The List
by Ruth Solomon
The story content is adult in nature and can contain graphic sex and violence. Those under the age of 18 are asked to leave this site immediately. You are not welcome here. The author is not responsible for those under-aged who view these works.