Hermione put the pile of papers - which had grown by the size of one book and been unceremoniously thrust back into her hands - down on the corner of the lab table. The door closed behind her and she listened as Snape's footsteps faded hollowly away and were gone. She gave them a good minute to stay gone before she allowed herself to sink onto one of the lab stool and bury her head in her hands, sighing heavily. A good night's sleep in the Gryffindor guest rooms had not managed to fully compensate for the fact that the night before that one had been absurdly disturbed; for it was absurd to be so restless when one was returning to a place that held so many good memories and old friends. Her mind was not quite prepared to accept that those memories might contain a sub-category of unfinished business.

Ten years had passed, she was back at school, back in the potions classroom in a sort of figurative way and the potions master was clearly determined that he would be no easier to deal with than he had ever been. Rather than rekindling their friendship, she seemed within forty-eight hours to have moved from a civil, if reserved, correspondence, through one nervous coffee and a somewhat tetchy supper, to the re-emergence of the full student-teacher relationship complete with all the "Miss Granger"s and "Professor Snape"s you could want.

By tomorrow night he'll be taking house points from me again, she thought, the wry humour a weak attempt to distract herself from wondering precisely why his abrupt descent into old formalities was bothering her so.

Another tried and tested route of escape from introspection was work; Hermione took a deep breath and looked around. Clean parchment, fresh quills and ink were laid out neatly on the table exactly where she was expecting them to be. Exactly where I'd would have put them myself, she told herself firmly. Now provided with quill and paper there was no excuse for not making a start.

Carefully, she began to plot out grids; one for hair care and a larger one for skin care. Four columns gave the hair/skin types, rather more rows gave the types of product. That made a basic total of forty preparations to devise in under a fortnight. She sighed again, this time at the thought of the sheer intensity of the work, even aided - or not, as the case might be - by Snape. Ever methodical, she took a third sheet and headed it Optional Extras. Under this went the things that Snape had told Parvati that she couldn't have and then, as an afterthought, added Bath Products and underlined it twice. They might never make their way into the Ms Magic Magazine signature range, but she was willing to bet that any kind of relaxing bath oil would be a necessity for her very soon.

She returned her attention to drawing up some kind of basic plan of attack. It was likely, she thought, that although there were a lot of individual items, they would all share a common base. She shook her head in irritation; this ought to be something that she should recall. But try as she might she could not summon to mind a picture of the potions classroom complete with cauldrons of cold cream and pitcher of jojoba oil - at least not one with any basis in recalled reality. She took a fourth sheet of paper and wrote Basic Ingredients in large script. So, what were the bases they would need to make? Decoctions and tinctures should be no problem; there was always water to hand and ethyl alcohol was a common potions ingredient. Similarly with witch hazel, beeswax and kaolin. However, when it came to cocoa butter, wheatgerm oil and almond oil she paused. In general terms Snape was never usually concerned about his salves being moisturising and conditioning - only effective. In fact, she would not have been surprised if he used anti-comforting ingredients sometimes, just to make a point. None of which ruled out the possibility that in some dark and dusty recess of the potion stores, there might be some odds and ends, testament to that moment, ten years ago, when Severus Snape created something that was "of no earthly use to any creature, living or dead".

Long forgotten habit had taken her half way to the stores, wand out ready to cast the wards that would allow her access, when she stopped dead, unsure whether to laugh or cry. For an instant - or more properly another instant - she had been back in the time when this had been her home and her right to come and go as she pleased had not been questioned, least of all by her. She felt dislocated, as she had when she entered Snape's rooms for the first time since leaving school. By all rights there should have been a change, something should have been different, unfamiliar. To come back to something left, to know instinctively when things were in their place, to be at home in a place that was not, was an eerie and not entirely comfortable feeling.

And yet it could have been last month, or last week or yesterday that she was here. The same leather chairs, cluttered table, overflowing bookcases; the same copper and bronze tones, incongruous in their warmth. Maybe there were some more odd pieces of bric-a-brac, certainly there would be more books, but she had had to physically fight the urge to take the coffee and the book and curl up in a chair in front of the stove with her notes on the floor in front of her. And maybe that was what he was trying to avoid. Perhaps that was why he had so pointedly told her to work in the lab, detached and objective. She was disturbed by the sudden tightening of her throat, and turned sharply on her heel. Wards were something to ask Snape about later. In the meantime she had a deadline to meet.

**********

She was gratified to find that old habits did not fail her, and once engaged on a task her mind obediently shoved all other unwanted noise conveniently off her conscious radar. By the time that the bell rang signalling the end of morning classes, she had managed to sketch out a rough plan of a basic hair care range, with some alternatives and variations. Not only that, she feeling decidedly peckish.

Lunch at the top table was always slightly less relaxed than dinner; friendly chat was punctuated with shop talk and the silent understanding that there was an afternoon of work ahead. Feeling a little bit of an oddity amongst a staff that was clearly "at work", she was reluctant to disturb an earnest conversation between Minerva McGonagall and Ermengarde Sprout which seemed to be about some new administrative requirement. Moving in the direction of Snape, with a vague idea that she might talk to him about wards and access, she suddenly found herself being gently, but firmly, seated in the empty seat next to the DADA teacher - what was his name? Ferdinand? No, Peregrine, that was it, Peregrine Queroz. Distinguished as the first person to return for a second term in office since - well, probably since records began.

Although, she thought loyally, Remus Lupin would have come back if he'd been allowed to.

Now, she was being graced with a smile and hand that was pouring her a glass of water.

"Unless," he said, with a slight incline of the head, "you would prefer wine,"

She smiled in response.

"Not at lunchtime, thank you. Not if I want to get any work done at all this afternoon."

Another smile.

"Ah, you too. Tempting as it would be to sleep through the afternoon, I suppose I really should prevent my over-enthusiastic pupils from destroying themselves and possibly sections of the castle."

She raised an eyebrow.

"I think you probably should."

He looked mournful.

"You're right. It's not the guilt you understand; I just couldn't handle the paperwork."

That made her laugh out loud. And take a good look at him for the first time. She hadn't really been aware of him the night before. Tired from her broken night and the journey, the excitement of reunion fading, she had only been conscious of him as a graceful presence, bidding her a soft and charming welcome to Hogwarts; something of a contrast to her reception by Snape who, for some reason, had made a point of coming to the station especially to be chilly and ungracious.

He was bigger than Snape, she thought - wider shoulders and fuller of face. Dark hair neatly cut, dark eyes with an amused glint, olive skin and good cheekbones. And more, he didn't seem inclined to indulge in the lunchtime chatter but rather to prefer paying attention to her, never being too intrusive, but always seeming interested in her replies. After an early encounter with Snape followed by a solitary mornings work, an inconsquential but charming conversation was just what she wanted. It also managed to supply a goodly amount of information about Professor Queroz. No, he hadn't been to Hogwarts; a private college in Segovia. No, he wasn't Spanish, but Portuguese, sent to study in Spain by his parents. He had one brother and three sisters, all magical. He couldn't explain how he had managed to survive to return for a second year as the DADA teacher, he could only put it down to luck and the fact that no one better wanted the job.

Hermione tried not to wince at that; if Snape had still wanted the job it hadn't been a very kind thing to say. Then again, it may be that Queroz didn't know about the traditional wrangling over the job. Or perhaps Snape had given up applying for it. Incipient afternoon classes prevented her from exploring the matter, however, and the thought got lost as the school geared itself up for the rest of the day.

**********

It was well after the end of class when Snape finally put in an appearence in the lab and Hermione was engrossed in devising a set of complementary skin care products. It had occurred to her that it would be useful if they were could be made cross-compatible, so that one could, say, take one from the combination range and combine with with another from the dry or normal range. Needless to say that substantially increased the complexity of the task. She was so taken up in her charts that Snape's entrance made her jump.

He glared at her startled yelp, and swept across the room without speaking to her. Her explanation died on her lips and she tried to remember whether this was a day with a particularly awkward combination of classes. She didn't think so, but then his timetable could have changed in ten years. Perhaps he had a headache. She remembered those only to well.

Before she could ask he had picked up some of her papers, scanning her preliminary ideas. His only reaction was a series of grunts, from which she could deduce neither approval nor disgust. It was time, she thought, to assert herself.

"I've made a list of the base preparations that we'll need. We need to check against the supplies and order in the right quantities of what we'll need."

For a moment she thought he hadn't heard her. Then she thought he was ignoring her. But as she was about to repeat herself he spoke.

"Why haven't you already done that? I assumed I wouldn't need to oversee the basic steps."

She gritted her teeth.

"I don't have the passwords to disable the wards to the storeroom. For some reason I thought that that might cause me some difficulty."

He looked at her strangely, as if he was somehow disconcerted by her words. Odd, she thought, it wasn't that sharp.

"You already have them," he said eventually.

She blinked.

"I know what they were ten years ago. You're surely not telling me you haven't changed the wards in ten years?"

He made a movement that could almost have been diffident.

"After the fall of the Dark Lord there was little need to change on a regular basis. I selected a set that were familiar and have retained them."

She simply nodded; she needed some time to process that snippet of information. As if he felt the need to reclaim the initiative, he added:

"Speaking of not changing things, do I deduce from this that you are still using products designed for teenage problem skin?"

That took her breath away momentarily. She had been there barely twenty-four hours and he was already picking at her life. A stray idea from the afternoon presented itself. She smiled sweetly.

"Interesting you should raise that, Professor." She gave his title a slight stress. "I've been thinking that it wouldn't be a great deal of extra work to widen this range to include products for men. More emphasis on herbs and the pharmaceutical properties, but it would be basically the same."

Snape's expression was edging close to outright horror.

"A range for men? Men don't use this sort of thing."

"They're very popular amongst Muggle men," she replied innocently.

"Oh Muggle men", he sneered.

"Oh yes. Some even go to beauty therapists for manicures and facials. And waxing," she added gleefully.

"Miss Granger, nobody will be interested in ... stuff ... for men," he hissed.

"Tell you what," she said brightly, "how about if I write to Parvati and suggest it and we'll let her decide?"

**********

The following morning Hermione arrived in Snape's rooms, brandishing a viciously pink sheet of parchment and feeling decidedly, if childishly, victorious.

"She likes the idea," she announced without preamble.

Snape's glare could have boiled water.