The Love Department

Severus picked up a jar on Granger’s desk and immediately wished he hadn’t. The contents suspended in agar were amorphous, wrinkled, and disgusting – but undeniably recognisable.

“Why do you have one of these on your desk?” he asked incredulously, curiosity getting the better of him. “Do you consider the rest of the man unnecessary?”

A mixture of amusement and irritation passed across Granger’s face, but not a hint of embarrassment. She folded her arms across her chest and leaned back in her chair. Today she wore velvet cobalt robes with ballooning sleeves that emphasised her delicate wrists.

“My date thought the blackout restaurant was a great opportunity to trick me into touching it without asking.”

Severus was speechless. He’d seen some disturbing things during his time teaching hormone-crazed adolescents, but this was literally a crime. It bewildered him and provoked outrage on his behalf as well as hers, since it was this sort of thing that gave his sex a bad name. ‘Sex pest’ was not a brush he wished to be tarred with.

What did her date even expect? That she would be pleasantly surprised? Overcome with arousal? 

He probably hadn’t expected her to hex it off and take it away with her. Good thing Granger could handle herself.

Severus replaced it on the desk. “I must say, you’ve had awful luck. First the toesucker, and now this lech. How long are you planning on keeping it in a jar?”

“I’ve told Barnaby Scribbins he can have his penis back when he sends a letter of apology.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

Severus was fairly confident it could be regrown with the right potions, though it would require an embarrassing hospital visit. 

Granger smiled wickedly. 

“In that case, I’ll be sending it to his mother,” she said airily. 

Christ on a bike! Severus shivered involuntarily and sat down, instinctively protecting his vital equipment behind the solid wood of the desk. He knew not to get on the wrong side of her, but that was a step beyond degradation.

“How was your date last night?” she asked, plucking a pencil from behind her ear and toying with it absent-mindedly.

Severus had initially been competitive about the position in Mysteries, wanting to do better than her and delighting in schadenfreude at her disastrous dates. He gave up on this very quickly for two reasons: firstly, she was young and vibrant and he wasn’t, so more often than not he was the one having disastrous dates. Secondly, it was becoming necessary for his sanity to have someone to commiserate with. The research was collaborative anyway, so there was no sense in being competitive. Especially not with someone as industrious as Granger.

“Excellent, compared to yours,” he said. “I remain unmolested.”

“Can’t have gone that well, then,” she remarked sotto voce.

He carried on: “Although she did order raw onion with her meal.”

He found it difficult to recollect Ms Guinevere Cockburn’s face due to the thick curtain of smoke from other diners hanging in the air, but he did remember her breath.

“Well, that’s a faux pas, isn’t it. How do you feel about garlic?”

“I have nothing against alliums. They’re completely blameless. Yet ordering them on a first meeting signifies a lack of consideration.”

“Do you think she ate them on purpose, to keep you away?” 

Granger smiled teasingly and smacked a post-it note with ‘ONIONS’ written in block capitals on her cork board. It now resembled a police incident board, with lines of red string joining various seemingly unrelated items such as height, cleanliness, punctuality, eye colour and voting status.

“Ha-ha.”

When she teased him he was unsure if, and if so how much, he should be offended. He’d been trying to be civil towards her, and in return she was always happy to talk to him, but wasn’t as respectful as a stranger her age might have been. She treated him like a classmate rather than a former professor. It was refreshing. But made it impossible to find his footing with her. If he could only be friendly with her, maybe he could prove to her that he wasn’t a foul, miserable, wretched bastard.

Not that he cared. It didn’t matter if she liked him. He didn’t need her approval.

But for some reason, not having it made him restless. They spent every day in close quarters; there wasn’t a foot between their desks. It was hard to be so close to someone physically, but distant emotionally.

“Personal space. Put that down as a factor in this blasted Recipe for Love.”

She picked up an Ever-Sharpened pencil. “That’s a good idea. It’s personal, but it’s also cultural, isn’t it? In some cultures women don’t shake the hands of men to protect their modesty, and in Japan they don’t shake hands at all, they bow. Or so I’ve read. If someone stands too close to you or breathes on you, that’s a real turn off. As is indecent exposure…”

Severus might have welcomed a bit of indecent exposure on his date, simply to liven things up.

“...and respect for boundaries in general is a factor,” she continued, “although that’s very subjective. A question that’s too personal for one person might be acceptable to another.”

“Speaking of boundaries: how did you find my address?”

Granger paused, pencil poised. “You’re in the phone book.”

The phrase brought back a vague memory of a thick book full of telephone numbers and addresses. The Yellow Pages? White Pages? He had one at home, propping up the chest of drawers in the spare bedroom.

“Are you telling me you have discovered a loophole in the Fidelius Charm?”

“It’s not a loophole, it’s the same as sharing your address with someone who isn’t your Secret Keeper. You have to strike it from non-wizarding government records as well as wizarding ones if you don’t want to be found. Most wizards don’t seem to know about Muggle directories, especially purebloods, but it’s still an oversight.”

You’re telling me, he thought, feeling now more than ever that it was a miracle he survived the war.

＊

The arresting pinkness of the office regularly gave Severus a headache that he feared only trepanning would solve. But after walking a mile through the dull, grey streets of Muggle London he began to miss it. 

A cloudy sky and persistent drizzle cast shadows over the city, washing out colour from the faces of ant-like commuters scurrying across the pavements. Below Westminster Bridge the river flowed like dirty dishwater.

In London he became anonymous once again, merely a face in the crowd. The chance of running into someone he knew was as slim as a bowtruckle: all his acquaintances were dead or in Azkaban, and it wasn’t like he could drop in on any members of the Order and expect a warm welcome. Molly might endure his presence in exchange for offloading information about her many spawn, but it wasn’t the same as meeting an old friend.

He wasn’t ready to return to the castle. Too many memories, and too many regrets. His relationship with Minerva had always been strained, since she’d been his teacher first before she’d been his colleague. And he knew she had argued with Albus strongly against hiring him, thinking him too young for the position. He could hardly blame her. They’d been cordial over the years, sharing the same gripes about student behaviour and curriculum changes, but they’d never been close. 

Severus passed through Soho Square and into a dingy underground club where he endured two hours of fatuous conversation with a drunken witch who ended up asleep with her head on the bar. He paid for her drinks, put her in a black cab, and sent her home alone. 

That was his job now, he thought dismally, Apparating back to the beige streets of Cokeworth. His house remained shadowy, mildewed and stained. Going home felt like walking into his own grave.

In the Love Department it was perpetually spring, thanks to the branches of cherry tree visible through the skylight, imparting an ever-fluttering stream of rosy petals. The pink stone walls brightened up Granger’s face, even though the overtly feminine hue displeased her.

In a moment of madness –or perhaps lucidity– Severus banished his sofa.

There was no reason he should have to live in, as Granger had called it all those months ago, a hole. The kitchen cabinets were outdated and stairs creaked, the bathroom floor tiles were peeling and the attic was unmentionable. The wallpaper was torn and stained, and the tiny windows made the whole place stuffy and damp.

He could replace the windows. He could paint the walls. He’d need a specialist to take a look at the damp, but he could knock a wall through himself and open the space. A magical house would modify its layout according to its owner’s wishes, but Spinner’s End would have to be renovated the old-fashioned way. 

He hurried upstairs and surveyed his disgrace of a house, throwing open the doors to each room and adding more and more items to an already long and fast-growing list.

He could reinvent it, make it a blank slate. Bohemian style was falling out of favour, but Nordic design was becoming popular: grey tones and pale Scandinavian furniture on spindly legs that looked like it was ready to scamper away at any moment. Or he could copy from Narcissa and construct a miniature manor, complete with ridiculously opulent Baroque ceiling roses and engraved headboards. His taste was simpler, however. Perhaps dark wood panels and rich leather furnishings, space for his books, large windows to let the light in…

He made no decision and fell asleep dreaming about a new life.

＊

“Good grief!”

Narcissa clutched her stomach, overcome with laughter. The colour of the office had her tickled pink.

“Severus, I apologise, I thought you were exaggerating. Even the stone! The pink salt is a nice touch. There’s a sweet little café in Belgravia designed in much the same vein, but I never pictured you in it. Porscha’s? Porschen’s? I forget. Anyway, really, you haven’t thought to alter the place with aesthetic charms?”

He sagged deeper in his chair. “I tried. Maintenance had something to say about that.”

Two heads turned as Granger appeared from the kitchenette holding a steaming cup of chai and took a seat behind her desk. She was in smart forest green robes today, nipped in with a cropped waistcoat.

“Mrs Malfoy! I thought you were on house arrest?”

Narcissa’s tinkling laughter immediately hardened into glacial reserve.

“Miss Granger. My probation officer and I have an understanding.”

“An understanding,” Granger repeated sceptically.

Narcissa raised her eyebrows. “Did I stutter?”

Severus detected a fire in Granger’s eyes that had often preceded an inventive hexing, so he interjected to defuse a potential situation. He suspected Narcissa had not invited herself down to Mysteries to scope out the interior design.

“Coffee, Cissa?”

“If you would.” 

She perched primly on the satin loveseat and crossed her legs. Severus’ working theory was that a well-timed swelling charm on Narcissa’s leg before the Aurors fitted her ankle bracelet meant that it was loose enough to allow her to slip it off whenever she fancied a trip out of the house. 

He returned from the kitchenette with a steaming cup and two Swizzles Love Hearts placed on the saucer, which made her smirk. She leaned back in her seat and sipped delicately.

“So, what is it you do here?”

“We’re not at liberty to say,” Granger said sternly. 

Narcissa raised her eyebrows questioningly at Severus for a second opinion. He could tell she was amused.

“Oh?”

“You heard her,” he said. “We’re not at liberty to say. It’s more than my life’s worth to contradict Miss Granger.”

Narcissa hid her smile in her cup while Granger looked pinched. “How mysterious. I was only trying to make conversation.”

A silence followed this in which nobody spoke for a quarter of an hour. Granger busied herself writing a report Severus thought she’d already finished last Tuesday, while he tried to stay impassive as Narcissa looked between them interestedly. The ticking of the clock echoed awkwardly about the room.

“Well, it’s been lovely chatting with you,” Narcissa deadpanned, rising from her seat.

“Goodbye, Mrs Malfoy. Please note I’ll be following up on your house arrest.”

After Narcissa had left Severus summoned the paper Granger had been writing on. When she made no effort to snatch it from him, he took a look.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet was written forty times.

“Wanted to look busy,” she grumbled. “What were you doing?”

“The crossword,” he admitted.

＊

“Knock, knock.” 

“Potter,” said Severus, without looking up, “that must be your dulcet tones I hear, since nobody else in this building is asinine enough to say ‘knock, knock’ without actually knocking.”

True enough, Harry Potter’s tousled head poked through the door. Granger didn't look up either, as she was busy scribbling on a lengthy roll of parchment.

“Be right with you, Harry, I just have to finish this form…”

Potter plonked down on the arm of the sofa and let tumbling blossom from the enchanted skylight gather in his outstretched hand. 

“Sorry Snape, did I interrupt some serious work? ‘Cause from here it looks like you’re eating sweets and reading smutty books.”

Severus hastily swallowed a flying saucer and snapped shut his copy of A Centaur’s Conquest.  

“This is research. I understand that it’s a foreign concept to you, but—“

“Right, all finished!” Granger jumped up and swept her violet cloak around her shoulders. “See you tomorrow. By the way, Harry, who is Narcissa Malfoy’s probation officer?”

Potter opened the door for her and scratched his hair, presumably because it was full of nits. 

“Um, me. Is this about her house arrest? Thing is, we have an understanding…”

Granger’s remonstrations trailed away as they closed the door behind them and travelled out of earshot. Severus reopened A Centaur’s Conquest.

These lovemaking scenes were hideously unrealistic. Or were they? 

It wasn’t that he hadn’t spent any time doing youthful experimentation. It was just that he had spent more time youthfully experimenting with cauldron thicknesses than with girls.

Was this what women wanted nowadays? Certain acts seemed anatomically improbable and physically impossible.

He would ask Granger’s opinion, if he wanted his organs hexed off and put in a jar.