Chapter 8
Tanned, freckled, and rapturous over her date the previous evening, Hermione swanned into Romantic Love twenty minutes late and launched into an animated monologue.
“...never been before, because I didn’t even know there was a magical area of Kew Gardens! I must ask Neville if he knows, it’s through one of the barriers past the Chinese pagoda – of course, it just looks like construction work, like the street entrance to St Mungo’s or the entrance to Gladrags in Edinburgh. It was wonderful! It’s so light in the evenings at this time of year, we managed to catch golden hour in the Palm House. Did you know you can view it from the top? There are circular staircases – the building was built in 1848, the design of the Hogwarts greenhouses are inspired by it, I remember reading that in Hogwarts: A History– and we took pictures with his camera. Oh, it was brilliant. We saw the orchids, ferns, succulents, the rock garden, the rose garden, the Japanese zen garden and the Minka house…”
“Lovely,” said Severus tonelessly, who had spent his evening stubbornly refusing to go on fairground rides. “Who were you with?”
Hermione arranged her stationery, humming a sing-song tune and placing a beeswax candle as a bookmark between the pages of Love in the Time of Cholera. “David,” she smiled.
He looked up. “I thought you met David the day before?”
“I did. We went out again.”
Again? She saw the same wizard twice?
“But then– who did you go ice skating with last week?”
“Also David,” she said, positively glowing. “We haven’t made it official, but we’ve been seeing each other for a while.”
Severus was taken aback. “You’re seriously considering a relationship with him?”
Hermione stared right back at him, bewildered. “...Isn’t that what we’re meant to be doing?”
It shouldn’t have shocked him, but she was right. That was what they were meant to be doing. The prospect of finding a relationship seemed so unlikely to him because his blind dates had been catastrophic disasters.
Alright, some of them had been pleasant enough, but none of the experiences had measured up to simply chatting in the office with Hermione. None of the witches had measured up to her.
Oh.
Panic. That was the feeling seizing him, sudden and violent as a snakebite.
Three feet away from him she carried on humming and sorting paperclips, completely unaware that he was realising he had fallen in love with her.
Fallen damn hard. And realised it far too late.
＊
He cornered Potter alone in the evidence locker where he was wrestling a jabberwocky into a cage to keep it away from a frumious bandersnatch.
“Her what?” Harry asked, holding the growling beast in a headlock.
“Her new beau.”
He still looked blank. Severus rolled his eyes.
“The wizard she’s been seeing.”
“Ohhh. David. Yeah, I’ve met him. He’s been round the Burrow a few times.”
“And? Tell me about him. How old is he?”
“Uh, I dunno, early thirties, maybe? I didn’t ask.”
“Once again, Auror Potter, your observational skills astound me.”
Harry locked the cage and twirled the ring of keys deftly around his index finger. “You know, you could ask her yourself.”
He definitely couldn’t ask her this. He made an effort to sound casual.
“Is he good-looking, this David?”
“...Er.”
“This is for research, you understand.”
“Suuure,” Harry said, not believing him in the slightest. He leaned against the wall and folded his arms, pondering. “He is good-looking, but he’s kind of too handsome, if you know what I mean.”
“Elucidate.”
Harry shrugged. “He seems like he thinks a lot of himself. Hermione tends to go for more modest types. Ever since Lockhart,” he grinned, as if this was a private joke Severus was meant to understand. “But they seem to really like each other,” he added, and there was a definite note of pity in his voice.
＊
A chilly winter faded into a temperate spring, and throughout the next month Hermione brightened up the windowless halls of the Department of Mysteries with her sunny disposition and floral print cardigans. She’d grown more relaxed, swapping smart robes for acid-washed jeans and trainers.
And less punctual, Severus noted irritably. The cup of tea he’d made for her had been sitting under a warming charm for over an hour. She’d probably run into an old school friend in the atrium and stopped to bore them to tears raving about how great David was. How he was just the perfect height. How he got on so well with her friends. How he was good with animals and good with children.
Severus was good with children. Extremely good. He’d taught children ages eleven to seventeen for over two decades and managed not to murder any of them, even though he’d really, really wanted to.
The tea remained undrunk. She didn’t arrive.
She was probably with him right now, Severus fumed, waiting in line at the Portkey Office for a Maltesers wrapper that would take him to the Drizzlecombe Stone Rows.
Nice for her, he thought bitterly, bunking off to snuggle with Perfect David while I’m out here in the arse-end of nowhere. They were probably sitting under a warm blanket babbling about plants together.
Severus knew about plants. He was a potioneer, for Merlin’s sake. He could have taken her to the botanical gardens if she’d asked. Kew’s arboretum was large, yes, but it wasn’t half as interesting as the Poison Garden at Alnwick.
Signalled by a crack of thunder, a storm broke and rain crashed down in sheets. Peering around the immense and largely featureless landscape for his date, he tripped and fell into a funerary cist.
＊
Hermione wasn’t at work the next day either.
Typical of her generation not to take work seriously, Severus thought cynically, but the sheer volume of research scattered about her workspace and pinned to the walls told him this couldn’t be the case. Hermione took research extremely seriously, and she wasn’t a typical witch by any standards. She was an extraordinary witch.
But she was also not here.
What if she’s leaving Mysteries? he thought with a hollow pang of anxiety. What if she was quitting and he had to work with someone else? Things were clearly going so well with David that she’d forgotten about work altogether.
What if she gets married? he thought, tensing his jaw and nearly cracking a tooth on the boiled sweet he was sucking. He might as well go back to Drizzlecombe and climb back into the cist.
When she didn’t show up on Friday afternoon Severus barged into the Auror Office and demanded to see Potter.
“Not here,” grunted Weasley, whose expression said he hadn’t forgiven him for the soap in mouth incident. Which Severus privately maintained he’d brought on himself, and publicly denied all involvement in.
“Where’s Miss Granger?”
“How should I know?” Weasley complained. “I’m not her keeper.”
“She’s missed work for three days.”
Weasley frowned. “That’s not like her.”
“Give me her address.”
“I can’t.”
“Your friend is missing, and you are choosing now to be completely useless. Tell me where she lives.”
Weasley’s hands twitched as if he was thinking about throttling him.
“No, Snape, I really can’t. Her address is protected. I’m not the Secret Keeper, Harry is, but he’s up in Manchester: illegal potions bust in Moss Side.”
Severus turned on his heel and walked swiftly out of the department. Weasley called after him.
“Oh, right, just bugger off then!”
Severus flipped him off over his shoulder without stopping.
＊
Kneeling on newly installed carpet and surrounded by telephone directories for all the London boroughs, Severus scribbled an owl to Maude Madeley to inform her that he unfortunately couldn’t attend tonight’s date, but do enjoy the tour of the pencil making factory.
One thing that could be said for Severus Snape was that he was level-headed in a crisis. Not that this was definitely a crisis, he thought, calmly weighing up one set of possibilities (snogging David, quitting the Unspeakables to spend more time snogging David) and another (abducted, held to ransom, being violently tortured) as he scoured pages and pages of names.
Granger, Harold.
Granger, Hamish.
Granger, Harriet.
Granger, Helena.
Granger, Henrietta.
Granger, Hercules.
Granger, Hermione Jean.
The two trains of thought (taking a break from snogging David to answer the doorbell? already buried in a shallow grave?) carried on running until the split second before Hermione Granger opened the door of her flat in north London.
“Severus! What on earth are you wearing?”
“Clothes,” he answered dumbly, simultaneously overwhelmed with relief (not missing, not dead, not being tortured) and annoyance (bunking off! Perfect David!).
She was positively staring at him. He’d grabbed the nearest clean items he could reach, which happened to be a t-shirt and jeans covered in flecks of paint. He was still living out of a suitcase while he finished structural work on the upstairs. She, meanwhile, was wearing crumpled flannel pyjamas. She clung on to the doorframe for support.
“Right. Yes. I can see that. It’s just I’ve never seen you wear– you look– oh, never mind that, what are you doing here?”
“You missed work,” he said, the excuse for tracking down and showing up to a colleague’s house after work hours sounding flimsy even to his own ears. Then again, she’d come to his house unannounced, all those months ago.
“Come to tell me off?”
“Come to check you’re alright,” he said honestly. “And to tell you off,” he added.
Hermione hovered in the doorway, chewing the inside of her cheek and looking embarrassed. Severus noticed the feeling contagiously crawl up his back. If he’d interrupted her and–
“Come in, then,” she said, and pulled him inside.
He found himself in a space that was small and cluttered, but made elegant by high ceilings, period features and bay windows. A large framed mirror above the Georgian fireplace reflected the greenery of the garden it was facing, and would have bounced sunlight off the white walls had it not been late evening. Hermione led him to the living area, dropping a kiss to the head of a monstrously large ginger cat snoozing on a pile of newspapers on the way.
“I am alright,” she said thickly, curling up in a mustard yellow armchair and offering Severus a seat on the sofa. “But it’s over between me and David.”
It was then that he noticed her hair looked as if she’d been dragged backwards through a hedge and her eyes were red-rimmed in a way that made his heart clench. There was a half-eaten tub of ice cream on the table.
All the hallmarks, if he wasn’t mistaken, of a woman who had just been dumped.
“I’m very sorry to hear that,” he lied smoothly. His heart was skittering all of sudden.
“It turns out, he’s married.”
“He’s married!? ”
Severus had unfortunately picked up her habit of repeating everything people said, and chastised himself. But really, married?
Hermione buried her face in her hands and let out a loud groan.
“I had the stupidest fight with Harry, because he told me David reminded him of Lockhart. Do you remember Gilderoy Lockhart? He’s still in hospital, that’s Ron’s fault. Well, no, it’s his own fault, but it was Ron’s wand. Anyway, Harry tried looking him up – David, not Lockhart – and said there was no wizard registered by the name of David Dickinson, only a Muggle. And I said it was none of his business and he shouldn’t be nosying about in my love life just because he’s bored down in the Auror Office, and he said he was only trying to protect me… so I confronted David and he folded like a cheap accordion. Not David, actually. Derek. He was using a fake name so his wife wouldn’t find out. He told her he was working overtime when he was really out with me.”
“And is he now in St Mungo’s as well? In pieces?”
She smiled, but weakly. “I told his wife. That’s revenge enough.”
Severus leaned forward and put a hand on her wrist. “Let me make you a cup of tea.”
“Oh, um, yes, thanks. Second cupboard on the left.”
“I’ve said it before, you have awful luck,” he said, opening all the drawers to look for a teaspoon and finally conjuring one. Hermione flopped onto the arm of her chair like a rag doll, using her crossed arms as a pillow.
“I think I’m the problem. I’m the common denominator…”
“Nonsense.”
“Oh,” she winced, gratefully taking the mug that was handed to her, “You’re the guest, I should be making you tea.”
“At your service, Miss Granger.”
This made her laugh, despite feeling the exhaustion of a few days of anger and melancholy. He seemed so incongruous, showing up out of nowhere in a paint-stained shirt. She supposed he did have somewhat the air of butler, but a rude and sarcastic one from an Oscar Wilde play or a P.G. Wodehouse novel.
She was momentarily cheered, but then deflated.
“It’s not nonsense. I’m always dumped.” She could feel tears pricking at the corner of her eyes, unshed emotion from old wounds only half-healed. “Ron dumped me. Because I said I didn’t want kids.”
Severus hadn’t known. He’d said so to get under her skin, to hit back at her insinuation that he was undesirable, but had he given it a moment’s thought he would have bet his savings it would have been the other way round. Her reactions whenever the youngest Weasley boy had been mentioned suddenly made a lot more sense.
“He was picturing us in a big house in the country. A boy and a girl and a white picket fence, and Harry and Ginny living next door with their kids… In another life, maybe. He acted like I was throwing away a happy future, but– but it’s not the future I want! He told me I’d change my mind. We both knew I wouldn’t.”
“Good riddance. You’re completely unsuited to each other.”
This shocked her out of her sniffles. “What? Why would you say that?”
“Pardon me, Hermione, but you strike me as the sort of witch who read Austen when she was sixteen and set her sights on a tall, dark and handsome Mr Darcy. Am I correct?”
Hermione wiped her nose on her sleeve and smiled wryly. “Wrong. I read Austen when I was twelve. And I always preferred Colonel Brandon, actually, from Sense and Sensibility.”
“Yet Ronald Weasley matches neither of their descriptions. From everything I know about you, given the nature of our shared research, you and Weasley are completely unsuited. He’s not academic or cerebral, he’s younger than you and not particularly mature for his age, he’s a dog person, tall but not dark, and definitely not modest about his achievements. The only thing he has going for him is an understanding of your non-magical heritage and culture.”
She laughed bitterly. “And he doesn’t even have that. Ron can’t even say the word electricity; it’s Arthur who likes Muggle things. If his children learned anything about Muggle culture it was completely by accident and forgotten two seconds later.”
Severus stared at her. “Then what the hell did you see in him?”
“We were friends,” she shrugged. “Although we never got along, right from the beginning. We were both friends with Harry, is nearer the truth. He was there, and I was there, and… I think frisson and irritation are hard to distinguish when you’re young and stupid. But it was supposed to work. Harry and Ginny met on Platform Nine and Three-Quarters. And his parents met at school, and so did Ron’s, and Lavender’s, and Neville’s, and–”
“You do know you can find love with a man you didn’t meet on the train to Hogwarts?” he interrupted.
She sagged. “Oh, I don’t know. Can I? Will I?”
“Yes,” he said strongly. Please, he stopped himself from adding. “Think about it this way, at least this experience provides you with a lot of material for our white paper.”
“Mmm, ‘The Importance of Honesty in Relationships.’ Or, ‘Monogamy: Not For Everyone.’”
“Seven Ways to Dismember a Cheating Bastard.”
She laughed, but the sound was outdone by her stomach rumbling.
“I was going to order a takeaway before you came. There’s a fish and chip place in Brighton that takes Floo orders. What do you say?”
He certainly wasn’t going to turn that down. Once her head reappeared from the Floo she flopped down on the sofa next to him and hugged a throw pillow into her chest.
“Do you believe in love at first sight?” she asked.
“I believe in lust at first sight,” he hedged. “Infatuation, obsession, desire. But not love.”
“You know, I agree. You can’t really love someone until you know each other. And first impressions aren’t always accurate. Like bloody Derek. And you, of course. I thought you were a literal vampire when I first met you. Now I see how much you had to hide… You were forced into misanthropy by both sides. I never could have predicted we’d be in Love together. And I never thought someone so strict could have such a hankering for foam shrimp.”
“They’re not mutually exclusive. Anyone can like sweets,” he argued, while she smirked into her pillow.
“I’m surprised you aren’t Hagrid’s size, with your diet.”
“I have a strict exercise regime,” he explained.
“Really?”
“No.”
She clicked her tongue and moved to biff him with the pillow she’d been clutching. He dodged, heart fluttering as she scrambled even closer to him.
“My first impression of you was accurate: an extraordinarily intelligent girl who didn’t mind bending the rules.”
“Are you telling me off now? You did say you’d come to tell me off.”
“I was concerned,” he said truthfully. Her smile dropped and she bit her lip.
“Sorry. I should have sent an owl to explain. Or lied and said I was ill. But I felt so stupid…”
“A point from Gryffindor for not paying attention. I just said you are extraordinarily intelligent.”
“Are you nice to everyone now, or just me?”
Hermione looked up at him, her face open, searching, and gently mocking. He was close enough to kiss her and struggled to convince himself it was a monumentally bad idea.
The Floo chimed. They startled apart. Hermione jumped up to retrieve the order and soon they were eating fish and chips and nattering about nothing like the moment had never happened.
＊
“He could have gone pro. He should have gone pro.”
“Didn’t want to steal Ginny’s thunder,” reasoned Hermione, licking salt off her fingers.
“He’ll do that anyway, he’s on the cover of the Prophet whenever there’s a slow news day. ‘Harry Potter Buys Sandwiches’ was the last one. Egg and cress was sold out for weeks.”
“Maybe he didn’t want to ruin his enjoyment of flying by doing it full time.”
“Hmm.”
The enormous ginger cat came over to beg for bits of leftover fish, which Severus gave to it.
“Or he feels it’s his duty to protect the wizarding world, given the prophecy and Voldemort and everything.”
“Rubbish,” Severus said instantly. “I’ve seen how he slacks off; he’s in Love with us for at least two hours every Thursday. If anything, it was his duty to lend his Seeking skills to the International Quidditch League so we can stop getting utterly thrashed by Germany in the UEQA Championships.”
Hermione turned to face him, propping her head up against the back of the sofa. “Okay, do you want to know the real reason he went into Auror training?
“Go on.”
“Because Ron was doing it.”
“Ahh. Now that I do believe. And you didn’t join them?”
“They wanted me to. But I’m not suited to high pressure situations, I’m much more at home with research. My parents wanted me to go into Healing, but quick thinking really isn’t my forte, and in medicine it could be life or death. When I was choosing my NEWT subjects for the second time I decided I’d really had enough of life or death situations. But I still wanted– oh, I don’t know…”
“To do some good?” Severus asked softly, remembering what she’d said when she’d arrived at Spinner’s End with a black envelope, fiery and caustic.
“Are we doing good?” she asked him in slight despair, sinking deeper into the sofa in her crumpled pyjamas.
By going on shitty dates? He didn’t see how. Severus wanted to reassure her, but he didn’t want to lie to her.
“It’s preposterous!” she burst out, enlivened by righteous indignation. “We should be studying the practice, not the theory. And we haven’t been doing any magic!”
“That’s hardly necessary, unless we’re obliged to hoodwink somebody. True love isn’t magic.”
It’s an affliction, he thought.
Hermione gasped and smacked him on the arm.
“Of course it’s magic! Why would we be working on it if it wasn’t? Harry was protected by his mother’s love to the extent that Voldemort couldn’t even touch him. Blood, too, love runs in our blood. It’s Harry we should be studying! Not meeting random people and hoping to infer enough to develop a theory. That’s the problem with inductive reasoning, it wastes time and more often than not produces the wrong result. I’ve been so frustrated with the approach Mysteries is making us take. We should be studying the effects of love, not attempting to produce it at random. The Recipe for Love, I swear to Morgana–”
“Would you quit?”
She sighed at length. “I promised myself I’d see out the year, no matter what.”
“Oh, I see, even if you happened to be forced to work with your worst enemy?”
She swatted him on the arm again, but gently. “Don’t flatter yourself. My worst enemy is whoever designed the interior of our office.”
“Ha. So, you’ll stay until the end of the summer?”
“We have to present our research to the head of the department, don’t we? I’ll see how it goes after that.”
He had a few months left with her. He’d better make them count.