After some heavy editing, I feel like I'm actually happy with how this chapter turned out! As always, trigger warnings for the references of rape, and poor language through out. H. x

"Miss Granger!" Snape snarled, his yellowish teeth were bared in a predatory glare that would cause anyone to fear him. He was going to rain bloody hell fire upon that girl. He had been living with her for little over a week, and the stupid little chit had already caused a minor disaster in Snape's eyes.

The unknowing witch entered the front-room-come-library from upstairs, still blinking away the sleep from her eyes. She wore a t shirt and soft cotton shorts, her sleeping attire, which she usually changed out of before joining Severus for breakfast. The word engraved into her arm was pink against her pale skin, the surrounding area was reddened and sore and apparently still healing. The way she looked at Severus in her sleepy state almost made him feel bad for being angry at her. Almost.

"Tell me, what have you done with my papers?" He crossed his arms and tucked his hands snugly into the armpits of his black cloak, his favorite intimating teacher stance.

"You'll have to be more specific." She countered, matching his tone easily, her Gryffindor fire burning bright.

"The papers that detailed my research on removing the risk of lycanthropy from werewolf bites. Perhaps you might have seen them? You've been pilfering through my things all week."

"I have been organizing your bomb-site of a library! I have not simply been pilfering through your things for my own enjoyment!" She defended. "As it happens, no, I have not seen any such papers. Do you recall where you had them last?" Hermione raised an eyebrow and crossed her arms. She was mirroring Severus. Showing him that she could equal anything he threw at her.

"If I could recall where I had them last I would be able to find them, wouldn't I?" The sarcasm was heavy in Severus's voice. "I thought you were supposed to be clever."

Hermione huffed, and looked Severus up and down while trying to decide which route she would take this argument down. "Perhaps if you put things away, you might find them more easily." She returned

"I was able to find things very easily until you came along and messed everything up." Severus massaged his temples and turned his back to the girl. His morning coffee lay cooling on the kitchen table, and a pan lay dormant on an unlit stove from which he had planned to make Hermione sausage sandwiches for breakfast.

"I messed everything up?" Hermione scoffed, sounding braver than she felt.

"Yes. Finally something has penetrated your self absorbed mind." Snape's hand flew in the air.

Momentarily, he forgot to whom he was speaking. She was just another unfortunate student who would suffer his wrath for doing him wrong. He didn't consider how his words might impact her. Hermione Granger. The girl who was tortured and gang raped by an organisation that he was a part of. None of that came to mind when he laid his next insult into her.

"You have no use here Granger, and yet I remain stuck with you. Merlin is trying to test me."

She was Pompeii and today was volcano day.

"Funny. That isn't what your Death Eater friends said when they used me over and over again is it? You just stood there. Clearly I had some use to them!"

Hermione's chest heaved like she had been running a marathon. She was the type of girl who cried when she got angry. She usually kept it all pent up until the last second when the seams burst. She always struggled to articulate her feelings into words and that always ended in frustration. Hermione looked at the man who had taken her in and tended to her wounds, whom she thought had changed. Or at least she thought she had seen a softer side of him, that she had previously missed. How wrong she was. 

"Is it because I am a muggle born? Am I not worth saving? Would you have told them to stop if I was from a pure bloodline? You are no better than any of them. You skulk around, all high and mighty. A double spy. Savior of the Order. You are none of those things. You're an arrogant bastard who cares nothing of anyone but himself."   

Furious, Hermione was overly aware that she was only wearing a T shirt and pajama shorts. Her hair was matted with sleep and she had an inclination that she might resemble some sort of crazy cat lady. Even her feet were bare on the hard wood floor. 

"Enough, Miss Granger. Don't you dare talk to me like that in my own house. You haven't the faintest whiff of what I go through." Severus raged. 

"Of all the arrogant, self-centered people I could have gotten stuck with!" Hermione raged.

Severus snarled. "You ungrateful witch! I didn't have to save your life. I didn't have to stick my neck out for you! You act as though I want you here! I most definitely could live without an impudent know-it-all child whining about how unfair life is. Perhaps I should have left you there." 

The words fell out of his lips before he could stop them. The look on the girl's face was enough to make Severus want to dig his own grave. He knew he had hurt her. Really hurt her.

The way her mouth hung open didn't do justice to how Hermione was feeling. It was as though Bellatrix had carved the letters into her mind, as all she could hear was Severus repeating those words and the maniacal laughter of the lunatic Azkaban escapee. The room spun, much like when one was using the floo network, however gone were the warm emerald flames and instead Hermione was surrounded by a single pair of unforgiving obsidian eyes.

"Miss Granger? Hermione?" His voice was repeating as her knees began to shake and tears welled in her eyes.

She looked him right in the eye as she whispered. "I always gave you the benefit of the doubt. Harry and Ron would always call you nicknames and I would tell them not to. I thought that you just had your walls built up really high and that behind them, there might be a half way decent person. I suppose I was wrong. Perhaps I should have spent my time hating you like everyone else did."

"At least I am not ignorant to their hatred." Snape grinned evilly. "Yes, I am well aware of what they think about me, students and staff. I have grown weary of attempting to change my ways for the benefits of others. I do not care if people think I am greasy or heartless. It does me no benefit whether people think I am lonely because I am sexually defunct or any of that nonsense. I have heard it all. There is nothing that you can call me that can hurt me, Miss Granger. I do hope that you realize the futility of your situation. This is not a battle you will win."

Hermione was seething. "This is your problem! You walk around, looking down your nose at people and you assume everything is about you. Not once have you stopped and asked me if I am okay! Yet you can discuss the event over tea with the Malfoys, of all people,  like I am just another sob story in The Daily Prophet! You act like you are the only person to have made sacrifices in this war, but you are not. Do you think I wanted to obliviate my parents and send them to a far off country? Do you think I asked to go on the run from The Ministry or on a hunt to destroy magical objects?"

Severus buffered. He could do nothing other than open and close his mouth much like a codfish. Perhaps, to use her terms, his walls were breaking. Severus backed away from the girl who was stood in the center of the living room until his knees collided with his arm chair. Hermione couldn't help but let out a sob she had been holding in. Merlin, Severus didn't think he had done anything to earn her trust,  but even if he had, he had definitely tarnished it after everything he had just said. 

"I did not think." He stuttered, tucking a hair behind his ear.

"Nobody ever see's past Harry Potter. The chosen one." She admitted, collapsing into an armchair, her face stained with tears. 

Severus found it in him to laugh, something Hermione thought him incapable of. "If there is anyone who knows what it is like to be out shadowed by a Potter, then it is me, my dear."

"I don't understand." Hermione's words were muffled by her hands, which were covering her face. "What has Harry ever done to you?"

"Not Harry. James." Snape swallowed, the girl's overt display of emotion was not helping him to exercise control over his own.

"When I was a boy, I met a young witch, who was unaware of the magical world until her powers revealed themselves. We attended Hogwarts together and were sorted into our respective houses. I watched as she fell in love with Potter who bullied me to within an inch of my life for 7 years. He was hailed a hero for his efforts in the first war. I was hailed a villain and a traitor."

Thankfully, Granger had ceased her crying and was peering up at him rather curiously. "I had no idea." She whispered. 

"Foolish girl, of course you don't. None of you silly little children have any idea what you are doing. Hunting Horcruxes. You have no idea what you are up against!" He spat, and rubbed at his temples. it was too early in the morning for them to be having this kind of discussion. 

"That isn't fair!" Hermione protested. 

"Life isn't fair!" He shouted. "It isn't all fairy tales and romance novels, Miss Granger. Regardless of what Dumbledore lead you to believe." 

The girl was still collapsed into an arm chair, unable to move, as though his words had formed invisible chains that secured her to the spot. "Suddenly your little fantasies about life after school seem unimportant, don't they? Let me guess, you wanted to go straight into a Ministry job. The Department of Magical Law Enforcement? or may even the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures? You were going to marry Mr Weasley and have many ginger haired spawns of satan. You had hoped to stay away from the spotlight and grow old surrounded by family?" 

"Assuming that we should defeat The Dark Lord, then your dream should not be entirely too impossible, provided that you and Mr Weasley manage to get through the war partially unscathed. But should The Dark Lord remain undefeated, then you will most definitely will be forced into finding another option. That is, assuming that you are still alive." Snape said.

Hermione surveyed her Ex-potions Professor. On the surface, he was mean and cynical and rude. He had quite boldly assumed that she was a typical witch, with the same hopes and dreams of her future as a common teenager. He had belittled the conclusion that he had jumped to, without any thought into how it might hurt her. He was selfish and arrogant. He was a git. Yet when Hermione looked into his obsidian eyes, she saw his defenses like a great wall of steel. She couldn't help but wonder what lay behind the defenses that were showing signs of weathering and decay. 

Perhaps trust was something that Severus found difficult? Hermione considered Snape's companions. Judging by their interaction the other day, Severus had little faith in Lucius Malfoy, even though he was clearly his best friend. It seemed obvious that Severus could not trust anyone in The Dark Lord's circle, nor The Dark Lord himself. At school, his students would constantly lie about homework and spread nasty rumors behind his back. Professor Snape had kept his classrooms and stock rooms heavily warded as a result. Hermione thought of her teacher sat solemnly at the staff tables. He hardly ever spoke to any of the other teachers. Whilst Hermione had entertained that he might have possessed an amiable relationship with Dumbledore, it was strikingly clear that Severus did not hold the same regard for the man that he used to. Hermione supposed bitterly, that asking Severus to kill him might have been where Dumbledore had gone wrong.

She was onto something, Hermione thought. Yet she couldn't help but recall that she had trusted Severus without a moments thought. She had allowed him to take her home and to look after her. Of course, he had seen her in some precarious situations. He hadn't abused his power on her, when she was ill or even now she had physically recovered. Snape was her teacher, but above all he was her savior. She would always be in his debt. 

"Forgive me, I shouldn't have touched your papers. I will help you find them." Hermione said in a muted voice that caused Severus to snap his head in shock at her altered tone. 

Perhaps by re-organising his library, Severus had felt like she couldn't be trusted. Had she inadvertently set herself up for failure? Of course her actions were well meaning, but maybe she hadn't put as much thought into it as she should have. Severus was intelligent and she knew that he prided his high IQ above everything else. She understood that his library and his papers were an invaluable insight into his mind and by reorganizing it, Hermione was effectively rearranging his personality. Whilst it was therapeutic for her, to have something to set her mind to. It must have been akin to torture, for him. 

The Granger girl stood, and pulled out a leather bound notebook that he had assumed was empty. She opened it, and perused its contents. "I took the liberty of making a key, so that you know where all of your books and papers are. Its much like a muggle library, where one could type the name of the book into a computer and the system would tell you what shelf to look at. Using this method you only need to think of a topic, for example Lycanthropy, and it will highlight every book or paper with a mention of the topic and where in the room you will find them."

Hermione was aware of the silent footsteps and the breathing on her neck as Snape looked over her shoulder. "Of course, I haven't finished logging everything and assigning everything in your collection to a shelf yet." Hermione admitted. "If you don't like it, I can think of something else."  

"Its fascinating, Miss Granger." Severus was impressed at the witch. He had just assumed that she was alphabetizing his collection but instead she had managed to find a way to create order and prevent him from trawling through his myriad of books to find definitions or recipes. 

Beaming, Hermione turned to look at the man. "The tracking spells on the books should allow you to find them if you leave them anywhere in the house. There is the possibility that the magic would work if you were to lend a book to someone else, but I haven't been able to test it."

Severus perused his shelves as Hermione dashed off into the kitchen. He was a little confused at first, but soon found out the reason for her instant departure. She held a stack of parchment in her hands with an oddly triumphant smile on her face. Although it hadn't escaped his notice that she was still awfully pale and had tear tracks down her face from their argument.

"Thank you." Snape said curtly. He was sure he had looked in the kitchen. "You may continue to Re-organise my belongings if you wish. But, you must do so under my supervision" 

Hermione stuttered. "Really?" 

"Yes... I have proved ungrateful of your efforts. I see now that there was no maliciousness behind your actions." 

"Is that an apology?" Hermione smirked, putting a hand on her waist. 

Severus looked deadpan at the girl. "That's as close to an apology as you're going to get."

"Ill take it." Hermione smiled. 

Her first real smile since the incident. Severus felt a sense of pride that he had been able to bring it out of her, even if they had spent the morning at each other's throats.