The Fire and the Rose Part 33

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MetroVampire & Rhosymedre

Part 33 - Thunder Entered Her And Made No Sound

Despite Snape's offer, in the end Hermione decided to talk to Dumbledore herself; needed to do it herself.

"I can't just go back to my life pretending that this didn't happen," she said with more confidence than she felt, standing away from Snape, away from his warmth and his support, putting all her effort into not throwing herself back into his arms, sobbing like a child, letting him pick over the wreckage of the previous evening for her. "I have to deal with it ... with the consequences."

Never mind that at this moment in time she couldn't imagine dealing with it; had no idea where to start. Snape didn't question her decision; he just followed her quietly to the Headmaster's study as night greyed into day.

She didn't ask him not to.

Dumbledore listened in grave silence to the news about Rudd and the other snippets of information that she had been able to glean. Her account was punctuated with nods and murmurs of encouragement and automatic sips of tea, and, as she described the moment when Rudd had stepped forward, she felt Fawkes land on the back of her chair, dropping his head to rub the side of his face softly against hers. The Headmaster was another man of counterpoints, she thought distantly. He was your favourite eccentric uncle, who dispensed sweets and surreal statements until you forgot that he was the wizard that even Voldemort hesitated to directly challenge. Currently, there was no trace of the slightly dotty old man with the engaging twinkle; in its place was the powerful presence, eyes alight with keen analytical intelligence, skilfully drawing out every last nuance of her encounter with the Dark Lord. The assumption of equality, the acceptance of her experience and her right to participate, steadied her more than any amount of quasi-paternal comfort would have. She felt the feeling of futility slowly recede, felt herself recapture the belief that it was worth continuing the fight, that the Light did have some aces of its own, hidden away in the deep recesses of its robes.

By the end of the interview she was still shocked and tired, but normality had begun to seep back into the fringes of her world.

As she finished the last of her tea, she became aware that the room had fallen silent. Dumbledore was watching her, concern in his eyes.

"You have been through something of an ordeal tonight, Hermione," he said gently. "If you need to rest today, arrangements can be made."

He was giving her the option of running away, if only for a short time. Instinctively, she looked over to the other person in the room; a still presence with an inner focus that did not belong to her.

Snape.

Snape who had held her. Snape who had offered to take this part of the task upon himself to spare her as far as he could. She swallowed.

"I don't recall," she said carefully, "that Professor Snape has ever taken a day off since I've been at the school. It would look odd for him to start now. I think I can get through the day." She paused, and smiled faintly. "Although I may be a little short tempered."

She thought that she caught the briefest flicker of an answering smile and only then registered that she had directed the answer towards Snape and not Dumbledore.

"In that case," acknowledged the Headmaster, as if she'd spoken to him directly, "you'd both better hurry. It's nearly time for morning classes to begin."

Hermione jumped a little at the words entering her head from an unexpected direction. She nodded and stood up. Snape stood up with her. Dumbledore's quiet, "Well done ... to both of you" echoed softly as they left the room and headed down the corridor. As they walked, Hermione thought of their last trip along this corridor, just after the accident; it had passed in mute hostility, all but physically jostling one another. Now, they were equally silent, but his presence was no longer a threat; it was a comfort, a strength that she didn't want to do without - couldn't do without. They eventually reached the gargoyle that would lead them into the main parts of the school; the point at which she had to take up the role of Snape once again.

She paused. She needed to say something else before the moment passed.

"I'm glad I talked to the Headmaster myself." She looked at her hands. "It helped. It ... steadied ... me, somehow. Made me feel that it was less ... hopeless."

"I usually find that it does." His voice was a quiet recognition of the layers of feeling implicit in the sentence.

"Is he always like that? Afterwards, I mean."

"Yes."

"I see." She stopped speaking but did not make any move to pass the gargoyle. There was something else. She pulled herself away from her study of her hands to look into his eyes; the brown that was hers, shadowed by the understanding and knowledge that was not.

"Thank you," she said simply. She couldn't say more, couldn't begin to elaborate on the statement.

His gaze did not falter and his voice was quiet and sincere.

"You're welcome."

January drizzled into February.

Hermione carried on walking through the steps of Snape's life and the Dark Mark on her arm remained quiescent. The nightmares from the meeting faded, but that night had changed her relationship with Snape irrevocably. Not in class; she was as dismissive of him there as she had ever been - if not more so, as if the fact that he knew - truly knew - freed her somehow, enabled her to hit out in the security that she wouldn't do harm. No, the difference was not in class.

The difference was in the evenings. Their time together had now taken on another quality, a deeper layer of unspoken communication. An awareness of the moods of the other, a bone-deep understanding of what underlay the flares of temper and flashes of frustration. She had never realised how much of herself she had held back until she no longer had to. It was exhilarating and intoxicating and calming and soothing and she wondered if he felt it as well.

Then there were the touches. A hand placed between her shoulder blades to tell her that there was a mug of coffee on the desk beside her; fingers laid on his arm to get his attention part way through an experiment; soft gestures of greeting and parting. Nothing overt - certainly, nothing public - just a subliminal checking and re-checking of the presence of the other. Something that barely sketched the edges of conscious thought.

And the constant question muttering through her mind; what he would do if, just once, she trapped his hand, raised it to her mouth, brushed it with her lips, tasted the skin ...?

"... Valentine's Day ..."

The words penetrated Hermione's thoughts and brought her back to the Great Hall with unpleasant suddenness. Given the time of the year, and interpreting the sidelong glances that some of the students were casting at the top table, it appeared that she had just missed the announcement of the annual Valentine's Day Ball. She had known about it - she could hardly have missed it seeing as she had been present at the staff meeting that had given Flitwick, Hooch and Hagrid charge of the organisation. However, she had been preoccupied, in more ways than one, with the events of the Death Eater meeting and had tuned out the pointed references to the "Top Secret" planning meetings in staff room conversations. Given the key organisational personnel, she thought that the school would be lucky to escape with nothing worse than a plague of singing dwarves.

The evening showed Snape to be no more enthusiastic about the Ball than she was.

"I'm sure that it will come as no surprise to you that Miss Brown and Miss Patil's first thought was to arrange another 'fun' evening when they could inflict further torture on me in the name of 'self-improvement'. Their second thought was to tell me that I absolutely 'had' to transfigure some of those 'dreamy' clothes for them. I barely managed to escape back to my rooms where I was greeted by a pile of semi-literate requests for bath oils and perfumes."

The expression on his face made her laugh outright.

"Sounds to me like you're a victim of your own success," she said unsympathetically. "All I have to do is survive a day when the students will even more inattentive than usual anddodge flying bludgers, inscribed with bad love poetry, delivered by hinkypunks charmed to look like cherubs. What could be easier?"

She was rewarded by a chuckle from his direction.

What could be easier?

The night of the Ball found Hermione battling a growing sense of unreality. It had been easy enough to ignore the whole thing from the sanctuary of the dungeons. Nobody would have expected Professor Snape to be entering into the spirit of the occasion; in fact, if she had shown the slightest hint of doing so, there would surely have been a flurry of anonymous referrals to the secure psychiatric wing of St Mungo's. She had blocked out the rising buzz of excitement and speculation, carefully avoided seeing the owled memos about decorations and glared viciously at Hooch when she made a comment about allowing the students "a little indulgence" for the occasion.

Hooch had only pushed her luck once on that score.

In the end, it hadn't been enchanted hinkypunks but enchanted leprechauns. They zipped around the castle on tiny charmed brooms, carrying cards, chanting verse of dubious quality and showering people with gold, and slightly wilted roses. The gold disappeared after a few hours; the roses didn't and, by the middle of the afternoon, had begun to constitute a Health and Safety hazard - a fact that Argus Filch pointed out loudly to anybody who could be persuaded to stand still long enough to listen.

Hermione dealt with the first - and only - leprechaun to enter the Potions Classroom by the simple expedient of drawing her wand and casting Petrificus Totalis without even breaking in her lecture to the class. As the immobile leprechaun clattered to the ground, Hermione strode to the door and seized the small broom, which was hanging riderless and looking as confused as was possible for an inanimate object. She addressed the class as she returned to her teaching position.

"This class will not be interrupted by this sort of nonsense. Carstairs," - this to a second year Ravenclaw - "move that creature to the side of the room. The rest of you, get on with your potions."

After that the dungeons were an oasis of non-Valentine's Day calm.

However, all oases must be left eventually, and the Headmaster had made it perfectly plain that he expected all his staff to be present in the Great Hall for dinner and the subsequent festivities. So, with a reluctance that surprised even her, Hermione made her way to dinner, passing Filch who was still sweeping up flowers with a big broom and muttering under his breath.

She sat at the High Table and ate mechanically, feeling disconnected from the ribbons and balloons and flowers and general pinkness of the occasion. She cast a glance over the Gryffindor table. Snape was sitting between Ron and Neville; there was chatter and laughter and she couldn't guess at his emotions from his body language. It all seemed a long way away to her. Once dinner was completed, there was a general scraping of benches and tables and the room obligingly rearranged itself to accommodate the dancers. Students milled around and Hermione lost sight of Snape in the movement. Restless, she moved away from the dais and began to prowl, as she had watched him do so many times at so many similar events.

There was almost a muted feel to the evening. She tried to glare at all comers without fear or favour, but her attention was constantly drawn by the glimpses of Snape; Snape with Harry, with Ron, with Dean, with Lavender - at least he seemed to have been able to avoid taking a date. The Gryffindors appeared to be existing as a pack whose members changed from time to time.

The music began and people started to pair up; still Snape did not appear to be with anyone, although Ron seemed to be hovering on the edge of his personal space. She wondered at that for a moment and then dismissed it. He was more than likely trying to talk her into using her privileges as Head Girl to get close enough to the top table to spike the punch. The dancers passed by her and the Gryffindor group disappeared. She stalked on.

The next time the crowd parted she saw Alice Lacock, staring in a way that bordered on vacant, at one of the Gryffindor boys. He was holding her hand as if it might explode at any moment, and was casting unhappy looks in the direction of a gaggle of Slytherin boys, clearly uncomfortable at the prospect of participating in a reenactment of some of the less romantic moments of Romeo and Juliet. Hermione decided to make a preemptive intervention, her glare heavy with the promise of detentions, disrupting the eye contact between the prospective antagonists and reminding the Slytherins of the virtues of privacy and subtlety and above all, not giving anyone an excuse to take house points from them.

The mission appeared to have been a success; the next time that Hermione saw them they were all pointedly ignoring each other. She tried to feel pleasure in her success at being Snape, but it wasn't there. She wanted to shout at them all; Three weeks ago a man died. Another man could be dying tonight, right at this moment, and all you care about is dates and house points. What are you thinking of? Don't you understand anything? On the dance floor, a gap showed her that Snape was dancing with Neville, very cautiously, and at as great a personal distance as possible. She couldn't even summon amusement for his predicament or sympathy for his feet. Inarticulate frustration clogged her throat and she suddenly had to get out of the noise and the heat and the oblivious people.

Out in the gardens, she sucked in a deep breath of the icy air, uncaring of the cold. The sky was bright and clear; as clear as it had been on the night when she had traced out the constellations and decided that she was still in England. She tried to crush the thought; this was ridiculous, she had moved on, she was coping. She took another breath, and let it out slowly, watching it condense and swirl, lit by the dim overspill of light from the castle.

"Are you all right?"

A quiet enquiry. Snape.

She hadn't realised that he had noticed her going. She tried to order her thoughts.

"It doesn't seem real," she said at last, not looking at him. He didn't question or comment, just waited for her to go on. "It doesn't seem right. After what happened." She wrinkled her brow, struggling to put words to the feeling inside her. "It's as if nothing has changed, and it should have."

"Nothing has changed for them," he said softly. "Something momentous happens and the sun still rises and the world still turns and Mr Longbottom still fails to complete the simplest task successfully." He paused. "Life goes on, Hermione. With you or without you."

She shivered.

"That's a cold thought."

"The world is a cold place. Those inside will discover that soon enough. Albus thinks that they should be protected as long as possible. I ..."

"You disagree," she finished for him.

"Sheltering people makes them vulnerable. That is something that I do not think we can afford."

No. Voldemort's circle was certainly no place for weakness.

She silently conceded that he had a point.

"Is that why you're ... like you are?"

"Yes. Well - that, and my innate unpleasantness."

The last remark was a tease meant to pull her out of the mood, she knew that. But after everything that had passed between them, it somehow felt inappropriate.

"You're not innately unpleasant," she said, the words more direct that she had intended, coming up from the part of her that was bedrock Hermione. Her breath hung in front of her, twisting, visible proof that she had really spoken. The charged silence between them made her acutely aware of the background noise of the Ball, filtering out into the night; the music, stripped of its treble, sounding intermittent bass notes; laughter and chatter, individual words and voices blending into a rough swell that rose and fell like the sea. She thought she heard him say her name, but it could have been the rasp of his breath in the air. She suddenly found that she didn't want to know where this was leading, or at least didn't want to find out standing in the cold of February, in a snatched moment that would have to be later excused and accounted for.

It needed time and care and attention, like the brewing of a rare and complex potion.

"You should get back to the Ball," she said, hoping that she didn't sound too unsteady. "The boys will miss you if you aren't there."

She felt him step back.

"Yes, you're right, of course. Good evening, Hermione."

She heard his voice close slightly, moving away more than physically. She didn't want that to happen. Not at all.

"Severus," she said, hoping that the use of his given name would stop him. It did. "I noticed that you hadn't checked on the experiments today. I wondered ... if you were planning to do so after the Ball."

He was silent so long that she thought that he had gone back into the castle without replying. Then he spoke.

"If that would not be inconvenient to you." His voice was careful, as if he was testing unsafe ground.

"Not at all," she said, hearing the same care in her own voice. "I would be happy to have your company."

"Then I will see you after the Ball."

She didn't say anything as he left her standing there. Casual banter would have been out of place. She had the feeling that the world had just moved again, without anyone other than her noticing it. Hermione took a deliberate breath, tensed her diaphragm and concentrated on exhaling in an even, controlled stream. She wondered exactly what it was that she had just set in train.

And exactly where the morning would find her.