AN: As of 5/21/15 I'll be slowly going over these older chapters to correct some things that have been pointed out in the comments. I'll date the updated chapters as I go so that it will be apparent which have been modified. The changes will be small, mostly punctuation and POV slips. These earliest chapters were written a lot of years ago, before I expected to be publishing this anywhere. I was mostly just writing for myself for fun. If you're new to this story, I'd love to hear what you think about it in a review. So far I've had some invaluably awesome reviewers who have been sticking with this story from the beginning. Thanks to them, I'm able to tweek it a little and make it better. Quick thanks to notwolf, irezei, OCfan, Twilightmoonbeams and Nightmareprince for reviewing pretty much every chapter so far! You guys are pretty much the reason I've been keeping on with this whole long-ass thing.

Misunderstanding

Severus Snape was one of the most deliberate, careful men she knew. That was part of his appeal to her. He would tell you exactly what was on his mind, no pampering, no sugar coating, even if what he was saying was unpleasant. She could depend on him for that.

So now she asked him to repeat whatever it was that he had just muttered, because she hadn't caught it.

oOoOoOo

He was unnerved by what he had just revealed and couldn't meet her eyes. Turning his head away, he let his hair swing forward to cover his face. 'Why did I say that?' he internally berated himself.

And why had he? Was it the warm spring breeze rustling through the leaves of the tree they were sitting under? The way it shifted her hair and made the curls dance around her face and brush against her cheek so that he had the urge to reach over and wind one around his finger and tuck it back behind her ear? Or was it the way the sun slanted over her face lighting up the deep blue of her eyes right before she closed them and leaned comfortably into the tree? Maybe it was the blades of grass tickling at her bare feet as she flexed and curled her toes like a cat stretching in the sun. Or perhaps it was the toes themselves, with the nails painted a deep and shiny purple in the Muggle fashion that he didn't understand but still enjoyed all the same.

It could have been any of those things, or dozens of others. In truth, he enjoyed being with her. It was something he thought he would never ever admit to anyone, much less blurt out to her, but he had. He wasn't used to having a friend to talk to. His last experience with a friend of the opposite sex hadn't gone that well. And this one was a Muggle. It was still hard for him to accept that he could want to spend time with her. But she was so smart...and so pretty, and she had a way of looking at things that intrigued him.

He could feel color seeping into his cheeks and was appalled at himself all over again. 'How am I going to fix this?' he wondered, still hiding behind his hair and refusing to meet her eyes.

oOoOoOo

"Severus?" she asked again, tilting her head and leaning forward she reached out her hand, meaning to brush the hair from his face so she could see his eyes.

She liked his eyes, the blackness of them. They held secrets that she was sure he had never told a soul, and probably never would and that was fine with her. She had her own secrets and never begrudged others their own.

He was still hard for her to read, their friendship was fairly new and could still be awkward, but she'd found that the best way to judge what was in his mind, was by looking into his eyes.

oOoOoOo

He knew what she was trying to do and looked sharply away.

oOoOoOo

"Fine!" she spat, suddenly angry.

He must have made another of his snide Muggle jokes, just when she was so sure that he'd fallen out of that annoying habit. This was always what he did when he slipped up and let something snide about her heritage slip.

Well, she wasn't going to be his Muggle punching bag. If he still harbored his dislike of Muggles, then he could just leave her be and let her spend her time with people who didn't care if she had magic or not.

"Just...fine," she pushed herself up, slid on her sandals, and looked down at him. "You know where to find me if you want me." she shot over her shoulder as she swiftly turned and walked off muttering under her breath about how some people had some nerve, seeking out others and making them think they wanted to be friends when all they really wanted to do was insult them.

oOoOoOo

He sadly watched her retreating form, still yelling at himself in his head. 'You are a right prat, Severus' he said to himself. 'What did you say that was so bad? It's not as if you accidentally insulted her again, or confessed some hidden, burning love!'

He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes then got to his feet and started across the grounds all the while wondering what was wrong with him, because his self admonishments had just raised a good question in his mind. It was something he'd wondered briefly about once or twice before feeling guilty and pushing the thoughts away.

Did he love her? No... he didn't think so... it didn't feel like it had with Lily. He liked spending time with her, he liked talking to her and listening to her, he even missed her when she went home during the summer and looked forward to seeing her again in the fall. There was that pleasant little twist in his belly when the post owls delivered her letters over the holidays, and most of the time he even wrote back. But was that love? He didn't think so. That was the beginning of good friendship...wasn't it?

He was just getting old feelings of friendship and secret love mixed up with this new friendship because she was a she...wasn't he?

Definitely, probably, maybe. He sighed at his thoughts. Things had been so much easier when he had just had his classes to teach and the schools hallways to prowl, and points to remove from dunderhead students.

Besides all that though, even if he did love her, he probably wouldn't act on it. She still wore a wedding ring though her husband had died several years before Severus had even met her. Even though she said she only wore it as a reminder now, Severus felt that there was something deeper in that gesture than she would admit.

Doubly besides all that, he already loved someone else.

Wishing he had more experience with matters of friendship, he entered the castle and thought about going straight to the dungeons and his private quarters even though lunch was being served. He chanced one glance into the Great Hall and saw her there, talking to Minerva and Albus. Albus was shaking with laughter at the story she was telling him and even Minerva was smiling. Severus was momentarily amazed at how quickly she could change gears. You wouldn't have known by looking that anything was bothering her.

Severus watched her animated hand gestures and decided that she was probably telling the story of when she had been filming a documentary in Brazil and had fallen out of a tree while trying to catch a snake. He was amazed that she could take a story that would normally be told and taken very seriously and make people laugh about it, and not feel bad about laughing.

He remembered the end of the previous school year, her second year as a teacher, when she had told that story to him. It had been around the very beginning of their friendship and he had asked about the very small hitch in her gait that he had been noticing since the first day she'd been at Hogwarts.

"It was awful Severus," she had said with laughter in her eyes. "We had been tramping around the rain forest for days without finding so much as a lizard. So when I saw the snake, I shot straight up that tree without even blinking an eye. The snake was already almost a third of the way up, but I knew I could get it. I can climb like a monkey and I caught up with it in no time."

"One second I had this beautiful boa in my hand, and the very next there was a horrible snapping sound as the branch I was standing on gave way. All I remember was falling like I was in slow motion. It felt like I cracked my butt on almost every branch on the way down. My crew said I landed with an almighty thump, held up the snake and yelled, 'I still got it!', then passed out." She had chuckled as she told him this.

He had been concerned, and when he'd asked if she had gotten badly hurt she had answered in the affirmative, saying something about her hips having to be pinned back together and how she was very lucky she could still walk at all, let alone walk almost normally and without the assistance of a crutch or cane.

"I don't remember anything until a few days later when I woke up in the hospital," she had stated when he asked how she had survived the pain. "By then they had me on so many pain killers I don't know what was real and what wasn't."

She hadn't seemed to want to talk about that particular part of the story, so he had asked if anyone else knew about her fall. She had forced a laugh then and said,

"Of course! It was all caught on film. It was practically the only 'good' footage from that whole trip. There is a blooper TV program in America that uses that clip when they open the show, so lots of people have seen it. At least once every few weeks back home someone runs up pointing and saying 'oh my God! It's that chick who fell out of the tree on that show!'"

She had smiled wryly and shaken her head. "It's really discouraging to be known more for that than all the rest of the documentaries combined. I actually have seen the footage and it WAS pretty funny. I looked like a crash test dummy holding a short piece of rope. I didn't really hit that many branches on the way down, but I hit enough."

Severus shook himself back to the present and continued on to his quarters. He wasn't hungry anyway. A foul mood was coming on and even glaring at a group of first years hard enough to send them scurrying off did nothing to raise his spirits. He entered his rooms and flopped down in his favorite chair to think.

Not two minutes later he was up and pacing the length of the room with long, jerky strides. He couldn't quiet his mind, and he couldn't think clearly either. Picking up a book, he sat down again to read. Fifteen minutes later, after reading the same paragraph at least three times, he tossed the book aside and strode to his desk to mark essays. He had a feeling it was going to be a long weekend.