SNAPE IN A SCRAPE
Disclaimer: This is a non-profit tribute to the works of JK Rowling who created and, together with her publishers and licensees, owns the characters and settings elaborated herein.
Post-DH MLC, no smut (But be warned. This story's not for children.)
A/N: Thanks to my previewers Bellegeste and Lady Memory. I started writing this five years ago, and it's been stalled at three chapters for almost as long. I just want to set it free of my hard-drive and out into the world, so here it is. Maybe this will unplug my inspiration and start me writing again.
Ron pinched the smell of polluted canal out of his nose, and pondered Bubble-Head charms.
"I can't believe they matched you with Snape!" he said.
Hermione didn't even bother to roll her eyes. "It's the Ministry, Ron. Where Umbridge came from. What's not to believe?"
"Yeah, but that was then. This is Kingsley!"
"It's because it's Kingsley that there's a problem. Fudge and Scrimgeour believed in good old-fashioned nepotism."
"Nepper-what?"
"Looking after your mates, Ron." Not that they'd ever been matey with Fudge or Scrimgeour. "Kingsley's been infected with Muggle concepts like fairness and equal treatment, even for the famous." And infamous. Like Snape.
"Yeah, but Snape, Hermione! He should be in Azkaban, not part of the flipping Marriage Lottery! Slimy Pensivision King."
"Prince," she said automatically, and scowled. Azkaban was too good for that snake. First, he'd manipulated Harry into Dying For Dumbledore, then he'd repudiated the Lily memories at his trial - "Love someone with the poor taste to marry a Potter? Me?" - and advertised his new business by faking on the spot a Nineteen Years Later vignette of them seeing their children off to Hogwarts. The Daily Prophet Viewer's Poll had rated "Albus Severus ... bravest man I ever knew" and Muggle-Confunding "I'm extremely famous" Ron Weasley and his oblivious wife as two of the top three jokes of the immediate post-Voldemort era. They'd all become laughing-stocks, and Snape's Pensivision Video Vials - "Set your mind free, with 3-D PVV!" - had gone on to outsell all other wizarding entertainment media for the last six years.
"Whatever," Ron said. "Greasy git."
Ditching the love story had seemed a risky ploy, but Snape had oiled his way out of Azkaban as easily as he'd oiled his way into Dumbledore's confidence seventeen years earlier.
"By their fruits you shall know them," he'd said, pointing out that he was the only Hogwarts headmaster in recent memory to keep all the students alive during his tenure. "And unlike Dumbledore and Dippet, I was hampered by a Death Eater administration trying to do the opposite."
When he'd added that the first death occurred within an hour of the House Head consortium chasing him out, Professor McGonagall had had to be removed from the courtroom...
Spinner's End was surely the dirtiest of these dirty streets.
"What a dump," said Ron. "The richest man in Britain, and he lives here."
Hermione's eyes travelled along the row towards the house at the end that was about to become her new home.
"Maybe he doesn't care. What does he have to spend it on, anyway?" 'Books?' she thought doubtfully. He'd always ridiculed her reading habits, but surely a person didn't become as knowledgeable in his fields as Snape was without a reading habit of his own.
Ron snorted and rolled his eyes. "The usual?" he suggested. "Presumably, he must have working parts or he wouldn't be part of this mad lottery business, would he? They'd have exempted him for non-fertility."
"Pity they didn't exempt him for non-humanity!" Hermione muttered. "Who'd want to touch Snape with anything but the point of a pitchfork?"
"Well, there you are, then," Ron said. "Just like I said. How else can he get any?"
"I don't know and I don't care, just as long as I can stay out of it."
"But you can't, more's the pity." Ron looked at his friend's set mouth and decided to make the ultimate sacrifice. 'Look, love," he said gently. "I can ask you know who for his Cloak and hex Snape's third leg while he's not looking."
"No, they'd be sure to think it was me, and then I'd never get out of Azkaban." She scowled. "It kills me to think we fought Voldemort all those years for this! I still think I should just refuse. It's only a year of mouldering in a cell. A high profile refusenik could be exactly what this stupid law needs. Maybe people will think twice before agreeing like sheep."
"A year of Dementors is enough to send most prisoners mad."
"I'm already mad, and I don't think I can get any madder!" she said. "Don't you think it would be worth it?"
Ron shook his head. "If people won't risk Azkaban for their own futures, why would they risk it for yours?"
The door opened. Snape's hair looked as if it hadn't been cut or washed since his trial.
"Weasley," he said. "What do you want?"
He didn't move out of the doorway. Ron stepped forward and bounced off a wall of hard air that explained why Snape hadn't bothered to draw his wand.
"To carve out your liver," Ron said after regaining his balance. He rubbed hard at his nose and scowled. "But I'd settle for knocking your block off."
"Indeed? It's been, what? Seven years next month? And you still haven't managed to save up enough for a copy of Snape in a Scrape?" The older man regarded his grimy fingernails thoughtfully, his hair sliding forward over his bent face. "My best seller, you know. Would have made me a household name, if I hadn't been already."
Ron snorted. "I've better uses for my dosh than pretending to kill you."
"How disappointing." Snape turned his hand slowly this way and that, watching the sun's dim reflection slide back and forth across his nails.
"How do you like knowing everyone's just lining up to punch your face in?" Ron said.
"Thus proving their taste as poor as their intelligence. And paying me for it too. How could I possibly feel but smug? Vindicated." Snape tipped his head back the better to look down his nose. "Let's not forget who really saved the wizarding world, however you all like to ignore it."
Hermione's hand on Ron's arm enforced his silence. "Shut-up, Snape, and let us in. You know why we're here," she said.
Snape gave an exaggerated start, as if he hadn't noticed her until then, and she ground her teeth. "I know why you're here," he sneered. "Gold-digger."
"Grave-digger more like, where you're concerned."
Snape bared his teeth. "While you look forward to making yourself a rich widow, do try to remember it means you get to share a cell in Azkaban with my mouldering corpse."
"It's the only way I'd touch you!" she spat.
"It's the only way I'd let you."
She lifted her chin at him. "If you mean that, we can do business."
"And if he doesn't, you'll be past his wards and able to try the mouldering corpse option," added Ron helpfully.
"Thanks, Ron," Hermione said. "I'll take it from here."
"I thought you wanted me to protect you."
"How were you planning to do that? Did you think you'd be following us into the bedroom?" Snape looked him up and down. "I'm afraid you're not my type."
"Not fond of red hair?" Ron asked, deliberately misunderstanding.
Snape eyed him again. "Red hair, blue eyes, long nose. You look remarkably like Albus Dumbledore. Are you sure you're your mother's child?"
Hermione growled, and both men turned with a jump. "Enough with the flirting! This isn't about Ron! I'm here! We're married! Now what are you planning to do about it?"
Snape shrugged. "What are you?"
"Let me inside and I'll tell you."
Ron banged the gate shut behind him.
"Well," Hermione said after hearing his pop of Apparition. "Aren't you going to let me in?"
"Three conditions. You don't free my elf. You don't gossip about me. And no one passes my wards under any circumstances."
"Any circumstances? Even if you're dying and you need a healer?"
Snape was still staring behind her at the closed gate, his eyes narrow. "I'll live longer without one. Have you forgotten who I am?"
Her breath caught momentarily, but no, he was loathsome. He deserved it.
"And if I break your rules?" she said.
"You'll wish you'd chosen Azkaban."
"I still might," she muttered, and raised her voice. "I have conditions too."
"No," he said instantly. "You have entry to my house, but my life remains my own." He opened the door wider. "And yours remains yours. Do as you choose."
She pushed past him, her hand on her wand, and stared. Walls covered in books, a worn sofa, an armchair that still held the imprint of his body and a small table with a congealing fried egg on a plate.
"Do I get the tour?" she asked, searching in vain for doors or a staircase.
He shrugged. "My study. The books stay in here. Watch out for the top shelves. They bite. And don't talk to me while I read." He pointed to one side, where she could almost distinguish the outline of a door around the middle bookshelf if she squinted. "The kitchen." He pointed to another wall. "The stairs. The big bedroom's mine. Stay out."
"Suits me," she said. "Where's the bathroom?"
"Toilet's out the back."
"Toilet?" she repeated disbelievingly. "Where do you wash?" She glanced at his hair and winced. Silly question. But he was answering.
"Tub in the kitchen," he said. "Stay out when I'm there."
"A tub?"
"Are you a witch or not?" he said. "Aguamenti, Fervesco, Evanesco; it's perfectly feasible." He looked at her disgusted face. "Merlin's sake, Granger! Surely you can manage a bit of magical plumbing if it's that important to you."
She bit back her acid comment about it obviously not being of importance to him, and conjured herself a rose chintz armchair, just because he was sure to loathe it.
"Right," she said, sinking into it and kicking off her shoes so hard one hit him on the shin. "Let's talk about getting round the consummation requirements. Any ideas? I was thinking a Switching Spell."
He bounced back out of the chair he'd just sunk into and levelled his wand, his other hand hovering protectively where she refused to look. "Are you insane, woman? D'you think I'd let you -"
"I meant fingers, you idiot, not..." She rolled her eyes. Her Ministry ring was not infallible, but she needed to insert something genetically Snapey to trick it.
He glowered at her for several seconds before slowly sitting back down. "Twice a week," he said, enunciating with bitter precision, "I will provide you with a vial of fertile matter. You do what you want with it. Use it, denature it or toss it in the bin."
She looked at him again, more closely this time. "You're not even going to check what I do? Don't you care if they cart you off to Azkaban?"
She hadn't thought his lips could hold any more sneer. But he didn't answer.
"Iggle!" he called, when they'd glared each other out of countenance long enough. A dark-eyed house-elf in a clean pillow-case appeared with a crack and pounced on the forgotten plate of egg. "Master dids not eat his dinner again," it squeaked. "Bad Iggle mades nasty tasteless dinner."
"Iggle!" Snape said sharply. "Leave it and turn around." He waved a hand dismissively at Hermione. "This is Mrs Snape. You may obey her wishes when they don't conflict with mine. Is that clear?"
"Yes, Master Snape, good Master Snape. Iggle wills listen."
Snape cut across the elf's fulsome babble of greetings. "Iggle will let you in any night you arrive after 10pm. If you don't want him waiting up, don't keep him waiting." And with that, he got up and stalked out of the room.
