"Darling!!"

Snape was sure he could hear the exclamation points as Ms Patil squealed when Hermione entered the room ahead of him.

So far, he was regretting the expresso he had drunk on meeting Hermione earlier - or, at least, wished he had had the foresight to order it decaffeinated. A heightened state of senses was, emphatically, not the right state in which to enter Ms Patil's current domain.

The place was pink. Very, very, pink. If someone had deliberately set out to create the complete opposite to the Hogwarts' dungeons, this would be the result; it was not out of the question that such had been the intent, of course. The offices of Ms Magic were covered in every imaginable shade of pink, and then a few more shades that Snape was fairly certain he would never have imagined. Everything was pink and soft - cushioned, even to the walls. He wondered whether the effect was the result of charms, or whether some hapless fool had been employed to decorate it in this way.

The exception to the rule of pink was the staff; they all appeared to wear unrelieved black. That should have made Snape feel considerably more comfortable, but it was a style of black dressing that he had no real acquaintance with. In general it was over-tailored or under-endowed with fabric - he tried not to wince at the particularly short robes worn by a woman who, frankly, had no business exposing such legs to the rest of the population. At least, not without a warning. Pallid and pasty, as only English legs could be. She could at least have tried a tanning charm, thought Snape idly, trying to distract himself from the moment. Possibly even a toning charm.

Whoever she was, she of the ill-advised robes, she had been a Hogwarts pupil. Hufflepuff, he thought, although he couldn't recall her - but she clearly remembered him, watching him with horror and fear. It frankly amused him - and it was a quick way to tell which of the staff were English, for they all mirrored her expression. The others simply stared at him - the room had gone quiet when he walked in. No doubt all wondering what their worst nightmare was doing, walking into their office.

He followed Hermione, and the exclamation points, into the small room that served as the editor's office. Closing the door, he heard a babble of noise break out behind him. No doubt the Hogwarts alumni were enlightening the rest of the staff as to precisely who, and what, he was. Wildly exaggerated, of course.

The silence had passed into this room now; Ms Patil was staring at him, open-mouthed, clearly caught entirely speechless - she had obviously been expecting the wunderkind to follow Hermione.

A vision in pink, just as her staff wore black, and with an over-made up face, she was still recognizably the disinterested dunderhead he had taught for seven years. Unfortunately, she regained her voice all too rapidly.

"Hermione? Why is Professor Snape with you??" The exclamation points had been replaced by question marks.

*********

A few explanations later the exclamation points were beginning to edge their way back into the conversation. As Hermione had predicted, Ms Patil had swallowed their concocted reason for Snape's presence without comment or question - for some reason, once she had established that he wasn't there to present any kind of impediment to the Ms Magic skincare range that she was clearly determined to have made, she simply ignored him and addressed Hermione.

"Right," she announced after a while, dismissing the explanations once they had established that work would commence. She paced the room, with a DictoQuill scribbling on a parchment on her desk as she spoke. Snape found it interesting that she felt the need to record every conversation so minutely.

"I need haircare products - shampoo, conditioner, mask, oils - for four basic hair types," she said, rapidly, her rate of conversation speeding back up now that she had regained her equilibrium. She still shot the odd, nervous, glance at Snape but on the whole had apparently decided to ignore him as a necessary evil. Not much different from her attitude in class, as he recalled. "We'll need dry, normal, oily and dandruff; we need to be able to claim that it's comprehensive. Also facial products - cleanser, toner, face mask, moisturiser, intensive moisturiser. Dry, normal and oily skin, plus combination skin products."

"Would you prefer a foaming cleanser or a milk type?"

Snape almost smiled at Hermione's bitten-off acid tone; the list of requirements had been rattled off almost without breath and certainly without any pretence at social niceties. Ms Patil knew what she wanted, and she was obviously not inclined to pretty up the demands; he rather thought that she believed that Hermione's supposed poverty was enough to compel her acquiescence.

"Both," came the short reply in the middle of his musings. "And I'll need the prototypes for the board meeting just before Christmas. There won't be any problem with that, will there?" If ever a question had expected the answer no, this was it. "I can let you have a small advance on the fee for ingredients for testing - in fact, I'll set up an account at the apothecary in Diagon Alley for you. Just get whatever you need from there."

Snape eyed Patil; back-tracking on the advance was interesting. Did she not trust Hermione with the money? She had grown into a peculiar woman, in many ways: for all that she covered herself and her surroundings in pink, she was anything but the embodiment of that colour. Determined to have her own way, careless of others. Maybe not so different from the Hogwarts pupil after all. There was also something in her tone of voice as she handed them on the prototype date; she was worried about something and Snape wondered just how important this project was to her. And what capital he could make out of that importance. Details together added up to an insecurity that could be exploited - recording the conversation, the somewhat bullying tone, and the unwillingness to trust. It was ... interesting; it was also definitely at odds with the pink fluffy image that she painstakingly created.

Patil busied herself behind her desk, shuffling papers importantly and reaching for Floo powder, presumably to catch up on calls to other hapless individuals.

"I'll need samples of each, with the recipes. Oh, and we'll need lip balm, eye cream, and two types of hand cream - for normal and dry skin," she added as an afterthought.

"The rights to the recipes will not be available, unless you choose to pay an additional fee for those. You can have a licence only. The ... lip balm and so on will have to wait. It will take all the available time simply to reproduce the products you initially requested." Snape thought that, against his better wishes, he should bring himself into the rather one-way conversation. The range of products she had mentioned would take quite enough time to deal with and, besides, he had no potions recipes immediately available to deal with these new requests.

Whilst the concoctions would hardly tax his abilities, or Hermione's, he had had quite enough of Patil's steamroller mentality. He was also unimpressed by the idea that they should simply turn over the recipes for the rather meagre amount discussed; never mind that there was nothing particularly secret or unusual in the ingredients or processes. Besides, he disliked the concept of someone having things all their own way, particularly when that someone was a rather foolish young woman. Hermione seemed oddly silent and, as he risked a quick look at her, it was hard to tell whether she was smothering fury or laughter.

"We will also not be able to produce the products in commercial quantities, as you originally requested. We both have other things to do with our time. You can have prototypes and recipes, but no more." Other things to do - that was putting it mildly. Cleaning the laboratory with a toothbrush. Re-alphabetising the library. Anything but churn out cosmetics.

Ms Patil blinked at him, and Snape thought again that she had managed to tune him out of the meeting entirely. His interruption to her monologue was obviously not particularly welcome. She stared briefly at him, then shrugged.