It was strange, being back at Hogwarts.

"Just please don't make me be headmaster," he'd said, and the governors had laughed like it was a joke. Minerva taken him on as Deputy, posted him as Defense instructor, and ignored the griping of the rest of the world.

First had come the repairs. He'd spent a lot of time with Granger. She'd been the one to drag him back from the brink in that godawful shack. They spent the days together working, then the evenings trying to out-drink each other. Sometimes they brewed together.

At the end of the summer, he found out that she would be his student again, and he didn't know how he felt about that. He should have been more comfortable with it than he was—she'd been his student for longer than she'd been his… friend? His whatever she was to him.

Luckily, she was the only one of her class returning. He didn't think he could handle Harry Potter popping up around the corner like he had the first few weeks following the battle, asking questions about Lily. (Or worse, trying to thank him for what he did in the war.) Neville Longbottom would be back but as Herbology apprentice, so Severus wouldn't have to deal with him.

Potter and Weasley had run off to join the Aurors, because of course they had. They'd hung around for a bit, following after Granger like lost puppies until she'd shooed them off to the Ministry.

That was when she'd started spending more time with him. She'd even adopted a chair in his sitting room as her own for a bit.

"Can you tell me," Minerva asked halfway through the welcome feast, "why Hermione Granger is so studiously ignoring the staff table?"

Severus looked down at the student tables. Granger was indeed ignoring the staff table. She was at the far end of the Gryffindor table, listening and smiling politely as a third year talked her ear off. There was no doubt that she was keeping her eyes away from the staff, though.

"I have no idea," he told Minerva, scowling. "Perhaps she is just engrossed in Mr. Smith's story."

Minerva snorted, but left him alone.

"You said something rude to her, didn't you?" Pomona said, glowering at him. Or as close to glowering as Pomona Sprout could manage. She had too cheerful a face for it, so far as Severus was concerned.

"I usually do, so I probably did," he said. "And who is it I'm supposed to have been rude to?"

"Hermione Granger."

"Oh, bugger off," he said, his mouth not consulting his brain before it let the words out. "Did Minerva tell you I'd upset her cubling?"

"Cubling?" Pomona asked. She pulled off incredulous much better than she did the glower.

"I haven't spoken to Granger in weeks," he said, and it was true enough. She'd been avoiding him, and then term had resumed and they'd both been too busy to cross paths outside of classes.

"So you said something rude to her weeks ago, and the two of you have been stewing on it ever since?"

"Stewing on it?" He frowned at her. "Pomona, I can honestly say that I have hardly thought of Granger recently. She is much more tolerable without her trouble-making shadows."

It was a bald-faced lie, of course. He'd been thinking of very little else.

"Sort yourselves into pairs," he instructed. "You are going to practice dueling. Nonverbal spells only."

Severus gave them all a moment to sort themselves out, muttering and murmuring. It looked like Laurel Macintosh and the Milton boy had gotten over whatever emotions they'd had all tangled up.

Oh, bugger.

The Weasley girl was in the Hospital Wing still. There had been an incident with a bludger during the Gryffindor team's practice. Hooch had told him, but he'd forgotten.

Weasley always partnered Granger in his class. He had an odd number of students.

Granger stood at the front of his classroom glaring daggers at him.

"Looks like you're with me, then, Miss Granger," he said, trying to sound as though he'd been planning to partner the odd one out the whole time. He swept off the billowy outer layer of his teaching robes, drawing his wand from the sheath on his arm.

It began sedately enough. She cast a Jelly-Legs Jinx and he deflected it. He cast a Tickling Charm and she deflected it.

"I can hear you muttering your spells under your breath, Davenport," he chided.

"Sorry, sir," Davenport muttered. Severus could practically picture the boy's face screwed up in concentration as he tried to cast a proper nonverbal spell the next time.

They carried on. Granger didn't need the practice. Most of them didn't need the practice, but most of them did need the reassurance that a skill they'd developed under duress was something useful to their everyday lives following the war. Or maybe it was just Severus that needed to remind himself that dueling and nonverbal spells were standard Defense curriculum, not just oh-god-I-need-to-give-these-children-the-tools-they-need-so-they-don't-die curriculum as it had been before

Something changed in Granger toward the end of class.

There were no more Jelly-Legs Jinxes. Not even the tricky Sticking Charm she'd aimed at his feet.

No, in the last half hour of class, she began angling her Shield Charms to deflect his spells back at him rather than casting so that his spells were absorbed. And there was no more simple back-and-forth of practicing spells; she slung two or three at him, barely pausing for his returning volley before she'd adjusted her Shield Charms and cast again.

When she conjured an enormous pumpkin a meter above his head, forcing him to duck and roll to avoid it, he realized things had escalated much too far. The rest of the class had stopped their practice to watch the show.

"Very clever, Miss Granger," he said, carefully enveloping her in a domed Shield Charm of his own, just in case she decided to press the attack while he resumed his role of teacher. "If a bit messy."

He Vanished the remains of the pumpkin. A few of her classmates laughed nervously.

"I think that will be all for the day," he said, taking care to maintain the Shield Charm between himself and Granger even as he carefully didn't look her way. "That was much improved Davenport."

"Thank you, sir," the boy murmured, smiling.

"You are dismissed," Severus said. "Have a good weekend."

Most of them smiled at him, not only for letting them go a few minutes early but also for the casual nicety. It still surprised him how the simple things delighted students and staff alike; as if they didn't all know now that he'd been maintaining a front.

He'd also been completely miserable and quite snippy, but he preferred the narrative that he'd just been very good at playing the nasty old teacher.

The lot of them filed out, talking merrily together. Macintosh and Milton were holding hands.

Granger was the last to leave, shooting him a glare before gathering her things and heading for the door. At the last moment, Severus prevented her—a flick of his wand closed the door before she could reach it. She spun on her heel, wand in hand, glaring at him.

"What was that, Granger?"

"Professor?" she asked, the perfect picture of the innocent schoolgirl except for the wand clenched in her fist at her side.

"What. was. that. Granger." He crossed the room to stand in front of her in a few long strides. Her desire to take a few steps of her own back away from him played out over her expressive face, as did the moment she chose to hold her ground.

"You said we were to practice nonverbal dueling," she said. "That's what that was."

"No, that's what that started as." He crossed his arms and looked down his nose at her. Then he remembered that she had her wand in her hand, and he put his own arms down at his sides. Just in case. "That ended some sort of emotional outburst that I would not have expected of you."

She scoffed at him and looked like she wanted to flounce away.

"Well, sir, I am simply a student here. Are students not expected to have emotional outbursts?"

He frowned. She sounded as though she was making some sort of point that he was supposed to understand, a reference he was supposed to grasp. He couldn't place the source of it, though.

Before he'd come up with something intelligent to say in response, she'd turned and left. She slammed his classroom door behind her.

"10 points from Gryffindor," he said, loud enough that she'd hear it even as she stormed off. He had the troubling feeling that whatever it was that had gone up her nose was his fault, though.

Severus ignored her all the way through to the Christmas holidays. It wasn't until the staff meeting before term was to resume that he realized something was amiss.

Hermione Granger was not on his roster.

Had Hermione Granger dropped Defense? Dropped his class?

He had just looked up from his paperwork, intent to ask Minerva just what the hell that was all about, when Flitwick spoke up.

"I know you're not suppose to say, Minerva dear, but perhaps you could give us a hint?" he asked, eyes bright.

"I can't, I'm afraid," Minerva said, but she was smiling. "Anyway, you all know that our Hermione is quite outstanding."

Flitwick bounced in his seat. Hell, most of his colleagues were beaming at each other.

"Neville, you wouldn't happen to know any of her plans, would you?" Pomona asked, turning to her apprentice.

"Well, she was a bit shifty in her last letter, actually," he said hesitantly.

"Shifty?" Minerva prompted.

"She's staying with her parents. In Bristol." He looked around the table, then down at his hands, then directly at Minerva. "Actually, I'm a bit worried about her. I know she's been receiving job offers ever since the end of the war, but it sounded like she was planning to take some sort of Muggle N.E.W.T.s."

He'd used his Deputy privileges to access Granger's records and find her parents' address. He had no reference for a place nearby to Apparate, so he pulled out his Muggle clothes and got on a train.

The Granger house was a semi-detached corner plot on a cul-de-sac. It had a little garden with chairs set out on a patio.

"Dr. Granger, I presume?" he said when a woman answered the door. Her hair was the same color as Hermione's, but kept trimmed short. Possibly to manage the curls.

"Yes," the woman said. "Do I know you?"

"Professor Snape," Hermione said from the foyer. She looked very like her mother.

"Indeed," Severus said, trying very hard not to sneer.

Dr. Granger opened the door for him to enter the house, then smiled politely and left them alone in the foyer.

Hermione was wearing a Muggle dress. It was green. He didn't know why that surprised him—both the Muggle dress and that it was green.

"Hello," she said when they were alone.

"Hello," he returned, all his plans of haranguing her over future plans and leaving Hogwarts without telling him her intentions to do so flitting out of his head when he had to look her in the eye. It was easier to be angry with the idea of her than with the actual person standing in front of him.

She didn't make any effort to ease them into conversation. She simply stood there, looking at him.

It was disconcerting.

"You took your N.E.W.T.s early," he said.

"Yes."

"Was there a reason why?"

"I felt prepared to take the tests," she said, her words slow and deliberate. "And I was more than prepared to be done with school and sitting classes."

He remembered a day at the end of the previous summer. They'd finished whatever project they'd been helping with and had found a quiet spot in one of the courtyards for lunch. It should've been a pleasant afternoon—they'd developed a rapport; they'd enjoyed each others' company for weeks with barely a hiccup—but they'd sniped at each other. He'd been grouchy. She'd been petulant. Things hadn't been quite the same since.

Had that been the afternoon she'd remembered she had to sit through more classes, pass more tests? It had certainly been the day he'd remembered she was about to be his student again.

"Minerva implied you'd received your results back already?" he said after too long a pause.

"I have." She shrugged. "I did as everybody expected I would."

"Why don't you sound more pleased with yourself, then?" He raised an eyebrow. "Everybody expected you would do very well."

"And then what's next? Hm?" she asked. Growled, more like. She gestured at the scattering of official-looking enveloped stacked on the hall table. "Look here. I have offers from half a dozen branches of the Ministry. A teaching position at Beauxbatons, though why they want me I have no idea. St. Mungo's. Ron and Harry expect me to join them in Auror training. The only professors who haven't offered me apprenticeships are you and Trelawney. Three different companies I have never heard of want me to work in their R&D departments. And Flourish & Blott's thinks I'd be an excellent sales clerk."

"Flourish & Blott's is the obvious choice," Severus drawled. "There's a twenty percent employee discount."

She stared at him, then barked out a laugh.

"What do you want to do, Granger? Job offers aside," he asked. It wasn't the conversation he'd been expecting to have, but it was one he'd had plenty of times over the years as Head of House. "You have the test scores to open any door you want. What would you like to do?"

"I don't know."

Her parents interrupted the tense moment, walking into the foyer to collect jackets, making kindly apologetic faces at them.

"We do need to head out if we're going to get to our reservation on time," Dr. Granger, the mother, said, turning to slide her arms into the sleeves of the jacket her husband was holding for her.

"Would you like to just meet us there, honey?" Dr. Granger, the father, asked. He shrugged into his own coat and put a flat cap on his head. In Severus's opinion, the man looked unremarkable and yet very much like a dentist.

"Sure," Hermione said through clenched teeth. "That would be good."

"Alright, then."

With an awkward nod to Severus, the parents left.

"I scare them," Hermione said quietly after they'd listened to the family car start up and make its way down the lane. "They put a lot of effort into pretending everything is normal, into embracing magic, but they're scared of me."

"Is that why you decided to take A-Levels after you passed all your N.E.W.T.s?"

"No," she said, suddenly defiant and angry again. She jabbed a finger into his chest. "You said, and I quote: 'If you stay at Hogwarts, you will stagnate and die. There is nothing for you here.' And that fairly says it all, doesn't it?"

He blinked at her. He didn't particularly remember his exact words, but that sounded like something he'd say. He could remember one particularly bad day at the end of the summer…

"Are you implying that you moved up your N.E.W.T.s and made plans to leave the wizarding community because I was rude at lunch?"

She scowled at him and wouldn't maintain eye contact.

There was something nebulous and unspoken between them, and it was going to drive him mad.

A/N: The prompt for this one was from And FOREVER—dueling practice.