Chapter Three
The Grangers'
The last time Hermione had had a boy (man? She was twenty-five - surely it was acceptable to call them men, by now?) at her house…well, it had not ended well. In hindsight, Hermione herself was very capable of criticising her own choices, talking herself down from the headiness that had inspired her to slip her number into his hand, as though he couldn't have looked it up himself, and tell him, "Do visit. It would be so nice to see you somewhere that isn't here."
He had red hair. They usually had red hair - she found herself gravitating toward gingers since it happened. There had to be few red-headed, single males of a reasonable age left in London whom she hadn't dated, and one of them had been her mental health nurse. He had a wide, friendly smile, his skin so freckled that they all joined up across his cheeks, casting the bridge of his nose in bronze. He'd sometimes excuse himself for a fag break, only to slip a hardback from the nurses' desk and huddle outside to read amongst the smokers (their backs just visible from the ward window). He always managed to slip Hermione extra jelly with lunch. The final token of his affection, if she could call it that, was when once, when no one else was around to hear, he leant in close and whispered, smiling, "I still have no idea why you're in here."
"Does that mean I'll be going home soon?" Hermione had asked, hope fluttering in her chest. She could already feel the soft fur of her cat's tail sliding between her hands, and the smooth plastic of her laptop keyboard beneath her fingertips.
"No promises," he had told her with that exact same smile.
She left three days later. He followed them out to the car, carrying her bag for her. Her parents thanked him, shook his hand, and he waved as they reversed out of the crowded parking spot, kept waving as Hermione's dad rushed to the ticket machine, red-faced at having forgotten to pay for parking.
Four days later he was at the Grangers' when Hermione's parents were at work. "Day off," he'd told her, his ears going red. She'd smiled and invited him inside.
The relationship did not last long. Whilst Hermione was (as always) meticulous in her workings, seeing him out forty-five minutes before her parents were due home and disposing of condom wrappers in the public bin on the high street, she knew that forbidden things were always found out. In the same way that she stored away her secrets, terrified that her parents would read her mind, she was similarly frightened of being caught unawares, and having what little control she had stripped away from her. Add in the fact that they had started speaking more - between awkward, pale sessions between her nobbly cotton sheets - and it was becoming clearer and clearer that actually, he really did understand why she had been in hospital in the first place. Their last meeting, during which he'd asked her if she ought to check herself back in ("I'll get to see you more," he's said, still - always - smiling) had her blurting out to her parents at dinner that evening that she was seeing someone. "Who?" her father had demanded, a speck of chicken escaping the corner of his mouth. "Isn't it a bit early?" her mother had asked.
"A nurse," Hermione had replied demurely. "And I'm starting to think so."
Her parents exchanged poisonous glances, knowing full well which nurse she meant.
Hermione never saw him again. In a fit of enveloping guilt (distracting her from the always-nagging feeling of wrongness that she was finally learning to swallow up, jam deep down into the pit of her stomach), she rang the hospital but was told he'd gone on holiday, and a few weeks later that he no longer worked there. She half-expected a police officer to show up on her doorstep, demand to talk to her relating to a "sensitive investigation," but one never did. She Googled him once, the only closure awarded her the fact that the computer had no clue what had happened to him, either.
She Googled Snape, too, the moment she arrived home from Grimmauld Place - but he was nothing but a village in Suffolk, with six hundred people to his name.
Her parents weren't home. Hermione was both relieved and nervous at this revelation, and confused, her mind not yet accustomed to the oppressing darkness of mid-winter (had the sun even risen today? She couldn't remember).
It had taken twenty minutes - minutes spent walking from one underground station to the other under the guise of the second being the most direct route home - for her to decide whether or not to bring him here. She had changed her mind at least four times, her nerves only settling once he sat down next to her on the District Line, looked up at the advertisements plastered to the wall above the windows, and loosely folded his pale hands together, as though them sitting on the train together - in adjacent seats, even, though the carriage was mostly empty - was the most natural thing in the world.
They spoke little on the walk to her house. She was curled up in her coat, the paper of the poppy chafing her neck beneath her turned-up collar, as Snape walked beside her with his hands stuffed in his pockets. She wondered if the neighbours would see them walk up the drive to her front door. She watched the windows, waiting for the flick of curtains, but the adjoining houses were dark, no one yet home this early in the day.
She was proud of herself for not fumbling with her keys. She was less proud of forgetting to undo the deadbolt and swearing as she rammed hard against the door with her knee. "Are you all right?" Snape asked. Hermione didn't answer, just grumbled as she shoved her key into the deadbolt and let him into her home.
"Shoes off, I'm afraid," Hermione said. "Mum's just had new carpet put in."
She bent down to undo her laces. The belt of her coat was fastened too tight; it winded her, and made all the blood rush to her head. Bright spots dotted Snape's black coat, and she felt breathless as he carefully, silently shut the door after them.
"Tea?" Hermione asked. She was balancing on one foot, prying off her other shoe, praying she wasn't about to see his hand reach sideways and slide the deadbolt back into position whilst a manic gleam lit in his eyes.
He kept his hands in his pockets, his expression unreadable. "Please," he said.
She disappeared into the kitchen.
Her thoughts boiled along with the kettle, bubbling, agitated, ready to explode. Crookshanks came in, mewling for food. Snape followed soon after, looking curiously at the cat's bottle-brush tail sticking straight up into the air, only hooked slightly at the tip, like a question mark.
Snape didn't even say anything but Hermione felt duty-bound to defend her pet.
"She's a Persian," she said. "Her face is just flat that way."
"Did I do something to offend?" Snape asked, drawing out a chair and looking at her for permission. Hermione flicked her fingers and the kettle clicked off; he sat, and she nearly dropped a mug as she threw open the cupboard door.
"She doesn't look it, but she's very clever," Hermione said. "The lady at the shelter said she'd been there for six months, because no one wanted her, even though female gingers are so rare."
"I can't imagine," Snape said, and Hermione bristled, feeling as though she was being made fun of; the anger died down immediately when she felt the little nip of cat teeth at her calf, reminding her that she still hadn't slid bits set in jelly into the bowl by the refrigerator.
"Bugger off," Hermione told her, and the cat disappeared into the sitting room with a jingle of her bell.
"Kept bringing in mice," she told Snape, who was obviously bored of talking about the cat. "I'd find them stuffed inside the folds of the morning paper. Quite terrible, actually. Milk?"
"Please," Snape said.
Finally, Hermione fell silent as she sat down across from him at the breakfast table. She'd forgotten the sugar bowl, but Snape hadn't asked for it, and she didn't feel brave enough to climb to her feet to retrieve it.
"Sorry," she said.
"What for?" he asked, staring into the swirls of his tea.
"Being nervous," she said. She glanced at the kitchen clock - they'd been in her house for ten minutes and he still hadn't tried to murder her. A point in her favour, she supposed. Or against it. Half a point each for her delusions and her sense.
"What do you do?" she asked him, not lifting her tea to her lips - not at all confident that she could drink without spilling it down her front.
"I work in academics," he replied.
"Oh!" she said. She set her mug down and fanned her burnt fingers.
"You sound surprised," he said.
Hermione blushed. This was becoming an embarrassing habit.
"And you?" he asked.
"Oh, bits and bobs. I've floated around a bit since I finished school." Translation: I've been useless since I failed my A-levels. It was a transgression she still couldn't forgive herself for. Her parents hadn't either, though they rarely admitted it. "I worked in a bookshop, actually, on Charing Cross Road, but was laid off last year." I was fired after my parents and employers decided I was spending too much time loitering in the fantasy section and bending back all the spines. "So," she continued, her voice chipper, "have you ever been sectioned?"
Snape choked on his tea. She half-expected a sputtering I beg your pardon? but it didn't come. Instead, he coughed into his sleeve and said, "Have you?"
"For a bit," she admitted. "I had a sort of…accident."
He pressed his lips together and leant into the back of the chair; it creaked beneath his slight weight. "I'm afraid I haven't," he said. "Not really."
"Oh," Hermione said, selfishly disappointed.
"Most likely for want of family than for anything else," he added.
Hermione started - she hadn't even thought of him having family. Knowing that she had been right in not thinking about it made her feel quite sad, rather than wary.
"Your parents must care for you a great deal," he said.
"They do," Hermione replied, wondering if that was bitterness in his tone. She shifted, her knee (the one still feeling quite bruised) pressing into the narrow leg of the kitchen table.
"So," Hermione said. "This."
"This," Snape agreed. He set his mug down and folded his hands on the table, narrow face patient, waiting.
"What is it?" she said.
"I don't know if it's anything," he replied. "Not really."
"You could just be stalking me," Hermione conjectured.
His lips twitched. "Or you could be stalking me."
"Unlikely," she said, and chewed hard on the inside of her cheek. He may have frowned - she didn't notice. "Statistically, women are much more likely to be victims than perpetrators."
"Only one of us in this room has been sectioned," Snape said, and Hermione scoffed.
"I wasn't a danger to others!" she protested. She laughed, and Snape visibly relaxed - she wondered if he just realized he might have offended her. Coming from someone else, it would have. Why hasn't he?
"I apologise," he said. "This is new to me."
"What is?" she asked.
"I don't know," he said, and finally, he smiled at her. Not handsome, Hermione reminded herself, though the slash of his mouth made her palms start sweating, her heart stutter forward, like she had just broken into a sprint.
She finally took a sip of her tea. Too bitter. She slid it aside.
"When did it start for you?" she asked him, and wiped her palms on her skirt.
"I'm not sure what it is," he replied.
"You know what I mean," she said.
He sighed. His fingers were obscenely long, threaded through the handle of his mug, only the faintest lines of her old school's logo curling between his knuckles.
"There wasn't really a point of starting," he said. "I've always felt…off."
"How?" Hermione asked.
Snape shrugged, uncomfortable.
"It was over six years ago, for me," Hermione told him. "I was eighteen." He seemed to start at that - she wasn't sure why. Had he thought she was younger, or older? Why did he care? "And everything sort of went to pieces after that."
Snape's fingers were going white, his circulation being cut off. "I wasn't afforded that luxury," he said.
"Sorry?" Hermione replied.
"I don't really fit in," Snape said.
"Spot on," breathed Hermione, relief swelling in her chest.
"But I don't know if that's a problem in particular to my…beliefs-" Snape continued. "-I really don't know if that's the right word, by the way - or because I'm unfortunate enough to be rather uneasy with people."
"I was never popular," Hermione said, "even before I was in hospital." Hermione's face tightened. "I have a history of pedantry that never endeared me to my classmates."
"As do I," Snape said, and allowed her another of his small, frightening grins.
Hermione started, suddenly remembering through the onslaught of nerves what they'd come to her house for. "Back in a moment," she said. She scooted her chair out, feeling a bit lightheaded, panicked for a moment that Snape had somehow managed to spike her tea.
She made it to the top of the stairs without fainting, and didn't hear any sign of him following after. She held her breath as she pulled out her under-bed drawer and rifled carefully through, her ears pricked, waiting for footsteps other than the cat's. Nothing but the scratching, wintry fingers of branches against her window.
Then, downstairs: "Hermione?"
"Just a moment!" She found it stuffed beneath her exercise kit (little used), shut with ribbon tied in a very particular knot.
She nearly fell down the stairs on the way back, and arrived panting in the kitchen with the notebook wedged beneath her arm, only to stop in the doorway, frozen.
"Mum!" she said.
Mrs Granger was not smiling. She was standing in the middle of the kitchen, her handbag clutched tight in her arms, slick, blond hair (so exactly unlike her daughter's it was almost comical) pulled high in a pristine bun, her face tight with worry.
Snape was on his feet by his chair, leaving his mug on the table: a mortal sin in the Granger household. Her mother had noticed, her eyes fixed on the wet ring it had made on the wood.
"I should be going," Snape told Hermione.
"Pleasure to meet you," Mrs Granger told Snape, her voice dry, and Hermione realized with a slick, sweet, heavy feeling in her stomach that the two of them might be around the same age. She hadn't thought of it at all, when they first met, barely even when he sat down across from her at the pub - it seemed stupid, only now realizing that he was old. Not ancient. Not on the cusp of death. But middle-aged. Forty, at least. She could read the words as though they'd been written on her mother's alarmed face: Too old for you!
"We're not seeing each other," Hermione blurted out.
"No," Snape agreed. "We share a common interest."
"No!" Hermione cut in, knowing that was the last thing her mum wanted to hear. As far as Mrs Granger was concerned, for the past six years, Hermione had had only one true interest, and it was not to be encouraged.
Snape pushed past. The front door opened. A draught blew through, making Hermione hug herself - she realized she'd never taken off her coat; the poppy still chafed the sensitive skin of her neck.
He was on the front step, the door already closing before she could even wish him goodbye, her mother's worried expression immovable, before Hermione shouted, "Wait!" and ran after him. She shoved the black notebook - her old diary, marked with 1998 in the corner of the leather cover - into his hands. "Here," she said. "Take it."
"What is that, Hermione?" Mrs Granger asked from the doorway of the kitchen, Crookshanks winding about her ankles.
"Something I've been working on," Hermione said, her eyes never leaving Snape's. "I want you to look at it, and let me know what you think."
His thumb fell between the front pages, wedging it open as far as the ribbon would allow.
"I will," he said.
"Goodbye," Hermione said.
"Goodbye," Snape replied. He stepped back, and Hermione closed the door so slowly, with such an ache in her muscles, that it felt like she was shutting a door between worlds.
She was on the wrong side.
Her mother threw the deadbolt and turned on her, hands on hips.
"The study," she said, "now," and Crookshanks mewled a traitorous agreement from the kitchen table, her yellow eyes aglow.
