Grimmauld Place - August 1995

Hermione had her nose in a book as she entered the kitchen. It was late, nearing midnight, and the house was quiet. She moved quietly across the room and managed to fill the kettle and put in on the burner all without looking up from her book.

She was so engrossed that she failed to see the man sitting at the end of the table in the kitchen.

A gentle clearing of his throat made her freeze and look around slowly. "Professor Snape, I'm sorry, I didn't see you."

"Obviously," he replied dryly but without any particular snideness.

He was apparently waiting for some other member of the Order to arrive, there had been a lot of late night comings and goings since she had started staying at headquarters. She noticed that he had nothing in front of him. No one had offered him tea or a drink. Given what she knew he was doing for the order and the constant danger he was in that just didn't seem right, and downright rude even.

She gestured towards the kettle. "Would you like some tea, sir?"

Snape regarded her for a long uncomfortable moment. Her reception was by far the most considerate he'd received since the Order started using Grimmauld Place as its headquarters.

Politely he replied, as there no need to be rude in the face of her consideration, "Yes, thank you, Miss Granger."

She gave him a nervous sort of grin in response and she took two teacups out of the cupboard with her free hand, her other still occupied by her book.

He had seen plants of some sort on the cover of the book she was reading and he asked out of idle curiosity, "May I ask what you are reading?"

"Oh, it was a gift from my father. It's a guide to natural medicinal plants in Britain. It's a… Muggle book, sir."

"May I?" he asked as he held out his hand. Oddly pleased when she didn't hesitate to hand it to him.

Hermione was trying not to be flustered over the fact that he seemed to be genuinely interested in what she was reading and his polished manners. This was so out of sorts with how he was at Hogwarts. She handed him the book. She was surprised when he carefully kept one of his fingers marking her page as he perused other sections of the book. It was uncommonly courteous thing to do, too often people lost her place in books and she found it frustrating.

While he browsed through the book she fixed the tea and she asked, "How do you take your tea, sir?"

He looked at her over the book and blinked, apparently having been engrossed in some passage. He lowered the book, still marking her place and said, "One sugar, no milk, thank you."

She babbled as she fetched the sugar and doctored their tea. "My father loves natural medicine. He's always sending me books and articles he finds particularly interesting."

He asked, completely devoid of his normal patented sneer in his voice, "As I recall, your parents are Muggle healers of some sort?"

She turned and placed his cup in front of him. She nodded. "They are dentists, um… they tend to people's teeth."

Snape looked at the cover of the book, committing it to memory, and handed it back to her making sure she didn't lose her place in the transfer.

"That appears to be a fairly comprehensive volume on the topic. And for the record, Miss Granger, I am aware of what a dentist is."

She swallowed hard, thinking she had inadvertently offended him. "Of course, sir, I didn't mean to imply that you… I'm just so used to having to explain it to everyone I say it automatically now."

He nodded once in acknowledgment and sipped his tea, noting that it was doctored to perfection.

They were sitting quietly for several minutes when Snape's stomach growled loudly.

He froze in mortification and Hermione instinctively channeled Molly Weasley.

"Have you not eaten, Professor? We had a wonderful chicken stew for dinner. I'll heat some for you."

He was about to tell her not to bother when his stomach made another obnoxious noise.

Without letting him say yay or nay, she jumped up and held out her book to him to free up her hands. He took it knowing she wouldn't want to put it face down and break its spine.

Hermione was a bit floored that everyone seemed to treat Professor Snape with such casual disregard for even the most basic of manners. He had been waiting there for who knows how long. And who knew how long it had been since he had last eaten given his work for the Order.

She dished out a large portion of stew and heated it on the stove. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Snape leafing through the book again. When the stew was hot she ladled it out into a bowl and prepared a small plate of bread and butter and plunked it all down in front of the Professor.

He looked at it all in surprise for a moment. He met her eyes and handed her back her book.

"Thank you, Miss Granger."

"You're welcome, Professor. Can I get you anything else?"

He shook his head.

"Okay. It's getting late, I'm going go read for a bit more before bed. Good night, sir."

She had reached the doorway of the kitchen when he called out, "Miss Granger?"

"Professor?" she asked as she turned.

"In these times, such as they are, being as distracted as you were when you first entered this room isn't prudent."

She held his gaze a moment as she mulled his words. "You're absolutely right, Professor, I'll be more aware of my surroundings in the future."

He nodded once and she left.

Snape lifted the soup spoon she had so genteelly placed on a napkin next to his bowl and tried to put some perspective on the whole encounter. As he ate thought of how different she was now compared to when she first arrived at Hogwarts. She had grown from an awkward pre-pubescent into a confident young woman. She was still an insufferable little know it all, but given the quality of her schoolwork and the innumerable hours he saw her studying around the castle he could almost not begrudge her that. It surprised him to realize that he held a sincere hope that she survived this war.

He dug into the food, almost letting a little sigh of pleasure escape his lips, it had been a long time since he last ate at breakfast.

"Snape never eats here," came out of Ron's mouth as he shared with Harry and Hermione rolled her eyes. She hadn't told anyone about her encounter with the Professor in the kitchen last week. It felt private somehow, something she wanted to keep to herself, for herself. She had seen the genuine look of gratitude in Snape's eyes when she had put the food in front of him. It was only a flash that she caught before he hid it behind the cool mask he always wore, but it made him human to her, a real person behind the terrifying visage he always presented to the world. His manners had also surprised her, the pleases and thank yous had come from his mouth without hesitation or snideness.

She could not imagine how difficult his life must be, to be a spy for the Order, the constant danger he was in, the loathing so publicly thrown at him. She knew they were all in danger, but at least she and the others had friends and family to support one another. She wondered who Snape had in his life to turn to, it made her sad to think that the answer to that was probably no one. She had decided that if nothing else, that she would be polite and courteous to the surly professor going forward.