A/N Thanks for your reviews! I'm honestly surprised that anyone's still reading this after I've taken so long to post... and I'm really grateful to all of you who commented. As to the raincoat... well, Hermione's still exacting her revenge on him. She figures Snape wouldn't know about either raincoats or jackets, but... this is where I shut up before I start giving away too much 'plot.' Yes, believe it or not, there actually is one... although that's not actually the main plot... oh dear. I'll shut up now. Here's the chapter, thanks for reviewing, and please review this chapter too? Hope you enjoy it!

By the time Snape arrived in town, he was thoroughly pissed off. Not only was he soaked through, but he had seen no less than four muggles out in the rain wearing some kind of bright yellow coat that repelled water. It was probably lucky that Hermione wasn't there with him, he reflected, because if she had been he would have killed the girl. Slowly, he thought with a malicious smile, and very painfully. He was, thankfully, fifteen minutes early for his dinner with Sarah. With luck she would not yet be there, and he would be able to surreptitiously cast a couple of drying charms.

Luck, of course, was not with him, as Snape realised when he entered the restaurant and saw Sarah sitting at a table towards the front, biting her lip. He would have to sit through the entire meal soaking wet. He forced a smile as he approached her, and kissed her proffered hand awkwardly.

"Good evening, Sarah," he said, no less awkwardly, and sat down.

"Good evening, Alexander. Did you... you're all wet! Why are you all wet?"

"It's raining outside," he snapped. And then, realising that he ought perhaps to be less terse unless he wanted to have to apologise and sit through another meal again, "I walked from my house in the rain."

"How far away do you live?" she asked in shock.

"I live in the forest."

"In that house! And you walked all the way in the rain!" Was it the lighting or was she looking... pleased about something?

"I did," Snape admitted. Then, casting around for something to say and vaguely remembering her prattle from the evening before, he asked, "You have a son, don't you?"

"Daniel! Yes, he's just turned three. You remembered from last night?"

Snape forced another smile and nodded. This evening, he felt, would be a long one.

By the time they had finished the dessert course, Snape had learnt that Sarah Watson was a twenty-six year-old single mother of one Daniel Jacob Watson, the light of her life and the most adorable child ever to grace the planet. She had been working in the restaurant for the past two years while taking night classes in medieval history and, for some reason unfathomable to Snape, musical history and theory. She loved singing and playing the piano, she read murder mysteries in her free time, and she talked non-stop. Snape had found out that murmuring 'understandingly,' giving sympathetic glances, and occasionally nodding his head seemed to be received extremely well, and so proceeded to do just that throughout the meal. The few times she had tried to engage him in conversation he had swiftly steered the subject back to her, and listened in a manner that she apparently considered encouraging. At last she finished her chocolate mousse, and Snape decided that he could probably finally get away.

"It's been a pleasant evening, Sarah," Snape lied smoothly, "and I thank you for agreeing to come. I'm afraid I must take my leave, however; my niece is home alone and I feel that I really cannot justify staying away any longer as we're new to the town."

"Of, of course! I've kept you so long!" The she looked at him through lowered lashes. "Will I see you again?" she asked shyly.

"I expect I shall run into you again at the restaurant in the near future," Snape answered, surprised and slightly confused - it was, after all, a small town. It would be almost impossible to not see her again. "And now I really must go. Thank you for an excellent evening," he lied again, "and I now bid you farewell. Good evening, Sarah." With that, he kissed her hand once more and left the table, blissfully unaware that Sarah was watching him leave, completely smitten.

A quick stop in a dark alley left Snape with a vaguely muggle-style raincoat and an umbrella that, by all the laws of physics, should not have worked but managed to do so anyway. Then he made the journey back to the house, considerably dryer and much more cheerfully.

Hermione was finishing her dinner in front of the fire and checking the answers to her Charms practise NEWT when Snape returned. She looked up as he entered, and choked on a mouthful of salad when she saw the bright yellow... thing he had donned to keep of the rain. In response to her spluttering, Snape raised an eyebrow.

"I transfigured the waterproof to look like those the muggles were wearing to town today. Far more practical than the clothes I was wearing earlier, don't you agree?" he asked in a deceptively calm tone of voice.

"Ih," she squeaked. As his second eyebrow rose to match the first, Hermione swallowed, coughed, and tried again. "Yes, sir," she managed. "But... I hadn't thought... that is..."

"'You hadn't thought,'" he repeated. "That much is obvious."

"But... it's yellow, sir!"

"As are all the muggles' coats."

"But... you... black..." Hermione was having trouble getting the words out when faced with Snape, a vision in canary yellow.

"I see your isolation has rendered you incoherent," Snape "I am most displeased that you saw fit not to provide me with a raincoat this evening."

He's gone all autocratic again, Hermione thought grumpily, suddenly not at all at a loss for words. Then, oh, what the hell, what can he do to me if I say it? "You're back to your usual dictatorial self, I see, sir. I assume your evening went well?"

"Dictatorial?" he spat. Hermione saw an argument looming, and suddenly felt herself looking forward to it. Yelling at Snape was strangely... well, fun.

"Yes, dictatorial! And righteous, too. I was wondering how long you'd last before you started snapping at me as if I were an errant three-year-old." Hermione suspected that she probably shouldn't answer back, but she was not going to take anything from Snape. They were living together, here, and she had no intentions of allowing him to treat her as if she was an idiot. Or, for that matter, a slave.

Snape glared at her, took a deep breath, and slowly let it out. Calmly, he said, "We will not be having this argument a second time in the space of two days. I'll talk with you tomorrow, in the hopes that you act in a manner slightly more fitting to a person of your age." He swept out of the room, somehow managing to convey an impression of billowing robes dressed even as he was in jeans and a shirt.

Hermione sunk into a chair, and put her head in her hands. Why do I suddenly feel guilty? She asked herself. He had it coming to him. I've told him I'm not going to be treated as a house-elf. Suddenly, she was on the verge of tears. Having nobody but Snape for company for three days does that to you, Hermione reflected, stifling a sob. Why am I behaving so differently here? If Harry and Ron could see me now, she thought, and the sob turned into a watery smile. They'd be shocked. She wondered what her parents would think of her, and suddenly felt like crying once more. She didn't normally miss her parents in term time, but this enforced isolation with Snape was doing strange things to her emotions. It's a pity I can't blame it on PMS, really, she reflected, because that would account for all this strange behaviour. Maybe it's a reaction to such an extreme change in circumstances. Mentally adding 'buy a psychology textbook' to her list of things to do, Hermione sat back in her chair and took up her Charms paper and answer sheet once more.

Snape, upstairs, was doing some thinking of his own. Hermione had changed rather drastically from the person he had thought her to be at school, and he didn't like the change. On the one hand, it was reassuring to find out that she did, in fact, have a personality, and was capable of doing more than regurgitating textbooks. On the other, he was extremely unused to being contradicted or challenged in any way, and Hermione was doing so on a daily basis. And, he thought, feeling an emotion akin to panic, she's not afraid of me. He wondered when that had happened; certainly she had been afraid of him that first day they had moved in. When had the change occurred? Shaking his head, he thought through his options. He would either have to thoroughly intimidate her again, and bring back the fear, or accede to her requests. Would it be so difficult to treat her as an equal? Yes! was his immediate response, but, with a mental discipline that was surprising, he thought through the consequences. There would be no arguments, save the mundane day-to-day details they differed on - house-elves, for one. Then again, he would be treating a nineteen-year-old girl as his equal. She was inexperienced, garrulous, downright irritating, naïve, and extremely inexperienced in the many ways... and yet, she had intelligence, and a spark of life that was strangely refreshing. After debating internally with himself for a long time, Snape reached a decision. She had, after all, invented a number of charms. He would treat her as a colleague. Which, he reflected with a smirk, did not necessarily mean an equal.

Suddenly, from downstairs, he heard a crash and a shriek. Immediately whipping his wand out, he was halfway to the door when he heard thundering up the stairs. He eased his door open carefully, marginally, and caught a glimpse of brown hair flying towards him. He stepped back, eyes wide in alarm, before realising that Hermione was actually sprinting up the stairs towards her own bedroom, her face split wide in a huge grin. Catching a glimpse of the papers she was holding, the first of which had "206" written at the top in red, he allowed himself a small smile and gently closed the door. Hermione, it seemed, had not remained angry for long.

In a surprisingly good mood, for no reason that he could fathom, Snape decided to go to bed early that evening. They would be busy tomorrow, making the house muggle-friendly for the muggle welcoming contingent tomorrow. Still with a small smile on his face, Snape muttered "Nox."

A/N I'm afraid this chapter wasn't very interesting... and sorry for that, but I had it written and I thought, since you had to wait so long for the last update, I might as well just post it and start worrying about the other chapters. I actually do have a plot, believe it or not... there's a lot more to come... chapter-wise, too, because these chapters are much shorter than those I generally write in other stories. Anyway, I'm going to shut up now and let you review... because I know you want to. Thanks in advance (I'm being optimistic here), and hopefully I'll update again much sooner than last time.