Chapter Eight - Trail
My profound thanks to PJ and Nomdeplume for providing inspiration for this chapter *waves Hi*
There was a weight on his chest. He groaned and felt a small furry paw touch his lips. Severus' eyes fluttered open, slowly adjusting to the low near-light.
"Mrroaw."
"Gerroff me, cat."
He brought his hand up to move her, but she ducked beneath his palm and Severus ended up stroking Ushanka's fur. The two glared at each other.
"Blasted cat."
She followed his hand and insistently wriggled her head under it, coaxing him to pet her, conniving him to scritch her ears.
"Demanding thing."
Ushanka made no apologies and she got what she wanted. Severus found cuddling up and scratching her to be soothing and gratifying. Her deep rumbling purr let him know how appreciative she was of his attention. It made caring for and feeding the miserable cat nearly worth it. Ushanka allowed him the pleasure of stroking her fur for a few more minutes before she had enough. Once properly adored, the fickle beast got up and walked out.
Severus stretched and brushed a few stray cat hairs off his bedclothes. It was a near useless fight. He dressed and made his way to Hermione's apartment, curious about her plans for the weekend, but feeling strangely unsettled that his own schedule seemed to revolve around hers.
Her apartment was dark and quiet. Only her tom seemed to be about. The ginger monster gave him a sniff and settled on the couch, pretending to doze, but keeping a sleepy gaze fixed on him.
Severus listened at the bathroom door. It was silent. He knocked on her bedroom door. It was also silent. He weighed his options and slowly turned the doorknob. Hermione was sprawled out across her bed; her messy hair was splayed out a hundred different directions and her sleepshirt crept up her ribcage. She was sound asleep.
Severus shrugged. "First shower is mine."
Hermione snuggled deeper into her bedclothes and reveled in sleeping in. Every Friday night when she got to turn off the alarm on her clock, she smiled.
Crooks nudged her, butting his head beneath her chin. Sleepily she scratched the top of his head. He nudged her again.
"M'kay," she mumbled. "I'll get breakfast."
It took all of her discipline not to fall back asleep, but Hermione dragged herself from bed, Crooks fast on her heels. She put fresh water and Kneazle Kibble down for him and stretched her tired bones. Quietly padding to the bathroom, she pulled the door open, intent on morning ablutions.
She screamed.
Severus turned toward the sound.
Completely stock still, Hermione stared at him, her mind blank and her eyes taking in the image before her. Severus was at her vanity, poised with his razor in hand as he whisked away the last bits of foam from his skin.
But he was naked.
Naked.
Oh, god. He was naked. Naked beneath the towel slung low across his hips. Her eyes followed his slight but well defined chest down his stomach to the small points of his hipbones that framed a thin trail of dark hair leading to a knotted towel.
She was staring. Staring at his towel.
Severus smirked. Hermione was frozen in place. Severus smirked and cleared his throat. She looked up, startled and wide-eyed.
"Hi," she said breathlessly.
"Can I help you?"
Hermione winced and averted her eyes. "Uh, no. Sorry… I was just… I'm going to go now, okay? Bye."
The door closed and Hermione could hear his rich belly laugh coming from within. She slunk off to hide under the covers of her bed. She could die there. Weeks later when they found her body they'd discover the cause of death as mortification.
"Idiot. Idiot. Idiot," she repeated, banging her head into a pillow.
A knock sounded on her door. Reluctantly Hermione turned her head. Severus stood in her door frame, a smile barely evident in the tilt of his eyebrows. He was clothed this time, his black robes wrapped around his frame. From the top of his collar bone to his ankles he was swathed in black. The sleeves stretched down to his wrist bones – except she knew how he looked shirtless. Shirtless and with a treasure trail. She'd seen him slightly wet and wrapped in a towel. It was a mental image that wouldn't leave any time soon.
"Yes?" she asked weakly.
"The bathroom is empty," he teasingly announced. "I'll start breakfast."
"Okay."
Once he left she banged her head into the pillow a few more times for good measure. What had she been thinking, standing there staring like that?
Hermione rushed through her morning routine. It did not go unnoticed that Severus was smirking into his coffee mug.
Arse. He was enjoying her discomfort. As soon as breakfast was cleared away, he left her alone, running off to do whatever it was that Severus Snape did all day long.
She knew he was hiding himself in the tent. She knew that, of course, because she'd watched him, her fingers parting the blinds like some nosey neighbor, and spied on him as he trudged through the garden and disappeared beneath the invisible tent flaps. If anyone else had been spying, it might have seen suspicious – a man suddenly disappearing in the unkempt garden – but the anti-Muggle warding kept them from being curious.
Hermione nodded to herself when Snape was gone. The whole afternoon stretched out before her. She could do anything she wanted without bother or distraction. Hermione grabbed a book and got comfortable on the couch.
Leah was a police dispatcher with an eye on Nate, one of the flirtatious patrolmen. The annual charity ball was approaching when, before she had the opportunity to ask Nate to go, she lost a bet and had to go with Phillip as forfeit. Phillip was the antithesis of Nate in every way...
And Hermione didn't care.
She dropped the book and rubbed at the small headache forming between her brows. Flinging herself from the couch, Hermione rummaged through her dwindling potions supplies. Holding the cobalt phial up to the light, she inspected how much of it was remaining and made a mental note to buy more Headache Relief. She'd been going through quite a bit of the sludgy green stuff recently – Hermione blamed Severus for that. Given his behavior at Hogwarts, the wizard had been more polite than she originally expected of him, but it was still stressful having him around the house. Each day seemed to start and end with a nagging headache.
Hermione pinched her nose and took a swig. Somewhat sweet and earthy (which was a nicer description of something that tasted like mud and mildew), the chicory root sat heavy on her tongue. She made a face before cupping her hands beneath the tap and rinsing her mouth with cool water. The pounding in her head momentarily subsided, Hermione gave up on finding something interesting to do, and settled for bothering Severus.
After all, it was only fair that she return the headache.
Severus looked up briefly as his outer wards were breached, then idly flipped a page. Only three people on earth could pass through his wards without being eviscerated, a fact which was downright neighborly, but only one of those three knew where he lived. There was something vaguely irksome about knowing that overnight, Hermione Granger had become part of his 'trusted few,' but it was best to blame the great bearded bastard.
Hermione stuck her head between the tent flaps.
"Hi. Want some company?"
"If you must. I don't suppose I have a choice here."
Hermione entered the canvas wall tent and belatedly recalled her personal vow never to step inside it again. It was perhaps a promise bound to be broken.
"Probably not," Hermione returned. "I'll just inflict myself upon you wherever you run off to."
"Oh goodie." Severus sat up straighter on the stiff cot, in a half assed attempt at playing host. "Would you like a chair? I can offer you a bunk bed or a milk crate to sit upon."
Hermione made a face before grabbing the milk crate, upending it and sitting upon it. "That was Ron's bunk," she explained. "I'd rather not sit there, if you catch my meaning."
Hermione bit back a smile as his expression turned to horror. "Don't worry, Severus. You're sitting in my bed. Nothing untoward happened in it – not as far as I'm aware. And at least I bothered to clean the sheets when I was able. Ordinarily, Ron does his laundry every four to six months, whether it needs it or not. "
Severus dropped the book he held in his lap. "I suppose I should be grateful for small mercies then."
"Very grateful. In comparison this tent is spotless right now. I can't even begin to describe how smelly this place was when the three of us inhabited it. Adolescent boys are dirty anyway, but…." Hermione shuddered with the chill of old memories.
"You needn't describe it to me, I am well aware of the hygiene habits of spotty teenagers."
"What kills me sometimes is how needless some of this was." She spread her arms wide to include the folding card table and dirty camp stove. "This couldn't have been part of some master plan for us. Professor Dumbledore couldn't have foreseen this; he didn't even know about this tent, anyway. Of all the details, the intricacies and intrigue, I struggle with understanding how there was no plan to take care of us. It's not like Care of Magical Creatures and Herbology prepared me to pick berries and snare rabbits to keep from starving."
It was too easy to slip into the trap of memories as they began to flood her thoughts. They had been so young and headstrong. She had believed she was prepared. Her list had seemed infallible; she'd packed supplies for whatever contingency into a single, highly-portable bag. At the time, this had given her the confidence to mount the imagined challenges. So naive...
Their raw youthfulness had barely been tested at Hogwarts. There was a wide world of difference between a Troll in the girl's bathroom and the battle that came. Professor Dumbledore had known what they were up against – he'd known it right from the start and allowed them to flounder about, stringing half-clues together. If Rita Skeeter hadn't written that tatty tell-all biography, they'd probably still be hunting Horcruxes.
A few quiet words from him wouldn't have gone amiss. Hell, even if he'd circled an important page in The Tales of the Beedle Bard, that would have been something…
Severus cleared his throat gently. "I don't think you were ever meant to live like this. I believe there were other contingencies for you and the other children. When Draco and I were forced into hiding, we stayed at a safe house that Albus had secured for us, but we never knew how we'd been played until Albus' plans revealed themselves."
"Like our marriage," she said sourly.
He nodded. "Like our marriage."
"Everything did go tits up, didn't it?" she said with a lopsided smile.
"Story of my life," Severus said affably.
He stretched, working kinks from his back, and reached to feel a knot that had formed at the crook of his neck. Giving up his book as a bad job, he stood and began opening up some ration tins.
"Since I surmise you're not going to depart my domicile any time soon, can I offer you some stale biscuits? Or I have a bag of Kneazle Kibble – now with more of that great tuna taste Kneazles love."
"Hm… I'm more of a chicken and cheese kind of girl."
"Snob," he snarked. Severus rummaged a bit more before producing an old tea tin. "What about a lovely cup of Tesco's finest?"
"How can I refuse an offer like that?"
Severus took a whiff of the tea canister and pulled a face. "On second thought, let's not. I cannot identify what has created the pong, but I believe the tea has been ruined. I suppose that just leaves the whiskey."
"Whiskey?"
Severus reached behind a milk crate and produced a nearly-empty old bottle of Johnnie Walker.
"The boys nicked that from Arthur's shed," she informed him.
The misty quality of her voice and faraway look did not go unnoticed by Severus.
"A sentimental bottle then? Something to save for when the Harry Potter Museum comes knocking?"
"I suppose you could say so. Although, I didn't approve of it at the time – obviously."
"Then perhaps it's best we left the bottle untouched."
"Agreed. And not just for memory's sake. You do realize it's not even noon, right?" Hermione pointed out in the tone of reproach she typically reserved for the boys. "I mean, I know it's five o'clock somewhere, but that somewhere is probably Indonesia."
Severus only raised an eyebrow. "In Indonesia, at this time of day, it wouldn't be amiss to drink a concoction of ginseng, vanilla, and fermented tea. I can make a Portkey. Would you like me to make that happen for you?"
"An illegal Portkey." Hermione rolled her eyes. "For a wizard who has just left Azkaban, you sure do come up with some pretty inventive ways of getting thrown back in. Why don't I just pop upstairs to get my things and we can go for a walk?"
Not bothering to wait for a response, Hermione took the initiative and headed for her flat.
As soon as she left, Ushanka sauntered in, issuing a loud, "Mrrroww!" which clearly conveyed, I thought she'd never leave.
"Yes, well there is there is the small issue of it being her property," Severus addressed his feline companion.
Ushanka's tail twitched before she jumped up on the bedspread Severus had recently vacated and curled herself into a ball where the warm spot lingered.
"An illegal Portkey," Severus mimicked before taking a healthy swig of whiskey.
His robes wouldn't pass outside. He'd scare the locals. With a sigh, Severus changed into his white lawn dress shirt and set to rolling up the sleeves. He'd just uncovered the faint silver traces of his Dark Mark when Hermione bounded in.
"Hey, I just had a thought; today's vintage day under the Westway. Fancy tripping through some antiques to spruce up this place?"
Vintage was a word poor little rich kids used when they thought they were being cute by slumming it. Vintage shopping was a fun and exciting treasure hunt and not a necessity brought on by poverty. People who vintage shopped didn't go to charity shops and jumble sales just to scrape by. Severus scowled.
"You want to go shopping?" he said blandly.
"You could use a proper lamp in here," Hermione offered. "I used to keep Bluebell flames in glass jars, but always lamented the lack of a proper lamp."
"Why Muggle, Hermione? There are plenty of wizarding secondhand shops where anything we purchase wouldn't have to be refit with charms." He watched her tread from one foot to the other, gently as she formed an answer.
"You avoided Zabini's," Severus observed. "I haven't detected another magical signature on this block."
"There aren't any wizarding families close by," she answered calmly, jutting up her chin slightly. "There's a very nice elderly gentleman two streets up from here, but he's a Squib and his family shuns him."
"You're damn hard to find."
"I'm not supposed to be found," she countered, remembering quite clearly that she was overdue for her little chat with Harry. He had given her away to Severus and likely thought he was helping them both. She needed to rein in her reckless Gryffindor until she was certain they could truly trust Snape.
"The question remains. Why?"
"Do we have to talk about it now? I have the strangest craving for butter pastries and I know exactly the stall that sells them." Hermione gave Severus a teasing smile and held out her hand for their side-along Apparation.
There was a Ministry-approved Apparition point near the Chepstow Villas and Severus made a mental note not to side-along with Hermione anymore. Her technique was sloppy; the feeling of being sucked through a vacuum tube was common and of second nature to him, but she'd batted him about and left him feeling crushed and side-splitting. Their landing was atrocious too, so bad in fact that Hermione had to gasp hold of his sleeve to keep from falling over.
"Feeling faint?"
"Just a bit dizzy," she replied blurrily, her legs still shaky and unable to hold her up. Severus righted her with a guiding hand to her lower back and moved them out of the way of any incoming Apparating wizards. She breathed slowly, as he tilted her head back touching her neck softly. Her eyes remained slightly out of focus, Severus noted, pupils dilated and glassy. As he leant over her, Severus inhaled her lightly sweet perfume, scenting delicate notes of gardenia and freesia, her lips parted - and a stray thought entered his mind to taste her lips.
He withdrew and stepped back far enough to avoid the lingering scent of her alluring perfume, but Hermione held tight to his arm.
"This usually doesn't happen to me," Hermione said woozily. "I'm quite good at Apparition, actually."
"Yet your pupils are still dilated."
"It must have been the Headache Relief I took earlier then," she muttered. Hermione held on to his sleeve a moment longer as the revolving world righted itself. "It didn't taste off, but it might have been."
Severus gave her a keen look. "If you're feeling under the weather you should not have attempted a side-along in the first place. We could have been splinched. You should have alerted me, I am more than capable of transporting us."
"I'd never have splinched us. I've never splinched anyone! It was just a tension headache," Hermione gritted out, feeling the tension headache returning. "I'm feeling much better now," she lied.
There was only a half mile that separated Portobello Road and Elgin Crescent and yet on a bright and sunny Saturday, when all the loud stalls and arcades were open and every tourist clutching a guide to London was out bargain hunting, navigating the half mile was near impossible. Moving slowly with the herd of bodies, Hermione was able to nab her pastries and Severus a cinnamon scone.
At first he appeared tense and it was obvious to her that Severus did not like large crowds. Hermione wasn't fond of them either, but there was something appealing about the sights and sounds of the large public market. The crush of people, colorful vendors hawking cheap wares with a few gems mixed in, and the collectables from all time periods gave them so much to look at and consider.
Hermione was as shrewd a deal maker as he was. He could appreciate that quality in his wife. As originally they'd set out to hunt for a lamp, they examined all sorts of lamps, ignoring the cords and wiring in favor for the suitability to charms and overall aesthetic appeal, but when it came right down to it, Hermione wanted the best deal possible and wasn't afraid to walk away in favor of another stall further on.
Severus held up a battered and dingy pewter art nouveau lamp and nudged Hermione who was looking at a round modernist piece. Probably Swedish, Severus mentally scoffed.
"You like that one?" she whispered.
Severus felt the base, weighing it again in his hands. "It's of good weight and craftsmanship."
"Iris flowers?" She looked at him skeptically. "Rather feminine."
"My masculinity can withstand the judgment, and the lampshade is pristine."
Hermione's eyes lit up and she gently tapped the edge of the lampshade with the nail of her finger listening for the rattling pitch. "It is mica," she whispered more softly. "Might have been replaced though."
"Possibly."
Hermione scanned the price tag thoughtfully. "The problem is, these art nouveau pieces are rather fashionable and snapped up by idiot tourists willing to pay outrageous sums. This one isn't so bad, but it's going to be difficult to talk him down by twenty-five percent."
"Twenty-five?" Severus gave his wife a dubious look. She hadn't been successful talking any of the vendors down by twenty percent yet.
"My parents are fond of antiquing and used to drag me out when we had weekends together." Hermione shrugged. "It's given me an appreciation for the market. If he wants the sale, that's my price. Incidentally, I think you'll enjoy meeting my parents, Severus."
"Can I hope they're still in Australia?"
"Not hardly."
Just then a burled wood box caught Severus' eye. It was open to display a rather fetching collection of crystal Potions phials. Occasionally magical items made it into antique shops, labeled as miscellaneous; these were labeled as 'Antique Chemist Flasks.'
"Oooh, they are beautiful," Hermione said, admiring one of the vials. She noted the quiet gleam in his eye. Desire. "There's quite a bit of dust here; they've been sitting on the shelf for ages. You want?"
"Don't be silly. Glass is just as good as crystal and much more practical."
"Unless you're working with less stable ingredients," she pointed out. "Then crystal is the preferred carrier."
"Thank you for the first year lecture, Professor Granger. May I also remind you that I haven't got a lab and probably won't be working with less stable ingredients for some time."
"You will," she said confidently, lifting her chin.
Hermione deposited the lamp into Severus' hands and picked up the heavy case of Potions vials and brought it to the cash register with a small grin tugging at the corner of her lips. Severus listened impatiently as she bargained with the reedy man.
"Do you think they might make a good spice rack?"
"Honestly Ma'am, I don't know," he said in a harassed voice. "It's an antique."
"Well, what is it good for, then?"
He pulled his overlarge glasses off and proceeded to clean them thoroughly while working up an answer. "They're more of a display piece. If you had an Apothecary or Chemist shop, they'd be just the thing to put in your shop window."
"I haven't got a shop," Hermione said dismayed. "What about thirty percent off?"
"I can't do that."
"No? Are you sure?" Severus watched, amused as Hermione pouted and pushed out her hip. "Well what about the lamp?"
"What lamp?"
Severus held his lamp up.
"Will you take thirty percent off the lamp if I buy the flasks?"
"Sure."
"And I want fifteen percent off the flasks."
When they exited the small shop, Severus and Hermione traded quiet grins.
"I'm famished," she exclaimed.
A few streets up they found a café that had an available table, which was the best bit of luck they'd had all day. On the outside patio, they had the opportunity to watch all manner of people stream by as they perused the menu offerings. Under the guise of people watching, Severus examined his dining companion, his wife.
Were he the romantic sort, he could be inclined to say the way the sunlight hit her wavy chestnut hair brought out vivid streaks of gold and ochre, the warm colors of autumn, of long afternoons and dusky breezes. Except he wasn't a romantic sort, and her brown hair was only catching the light because it was unruly and escaping the haphazard ponytail she attempted to hold it back. Her face was still flushed with exuberance from her earlier triumph, and a small smile played around her lips as though she were the cat that had caught and eaten the canary.
Severus decided not to mention that in his years as a Potions master he'd only found crystal phials useful a handful of times. They were objects of lust, but any Potions master worth his brew was a hoarder of fine things. Small trinkets and tiny bits of this and that, which could be scraped up and used somehow, somewhere, in some potion. Though she'd bought them, for him, with nary a thought to the price – only to the hunt of the deal. Strange bird, his lovely wife.
Their waiter came by and they placed orders for lunch; that was when Severus seized the opportunity to surreptitiously add some discrete listening charms to their table. The noise of the crowd was a bit deafening, but he never left anything to chance. He heard her swift intake of air as she felt the cold trickle of charms wash over them, and the noise of their surroundings faded gently into the background.
"So, how is it you've come to live like a hermit, Hermione?" he asked, meaning to pick up their earlier conversation – the one she had attempted to avoid.
She stiffened, and the gentled smile disappeared from her lips. "I don't live like a hermit."
"You don't keep a Floo pot on your mantle."
"The Floo powder is kept in a cupboard," she replied defensively. "I rarely travel by Floo."
Severus took a sip of cool water and shot her a dismissive look. "Care to explain to me why that is? When you were nothing but a slip of a girl in my classes, with your hand waving dramatically in the air and following Potter into every one of his misdeeds, I expected you would grow into a witch of some great importance."
"Whoever said I haven't?"
He could watch her back teeth gnashing.
"My apologies, my comment was–"
"Arrogant? Condescending? Thank you for casting judgment on what constitutes success in life," she said tartly.
"I meant only that you appear to have Fallen Out," he replied sotto-voice. "It's not something I would have expected from you, Hermione. You had such potential."
She averted her eyes and was thankful for the interruption of their lunch arriving.
Falling Out was a term usually reserved for Muggle-borns who returned to Muggle life because they failed to integrate into wizarding society. It was a mark of failure and shame. Pure-bloods, highly critical of sending Muggle-borns to Hogwarts, loved learning of witches and wizards Falling Out. After the first war, Severus recalled the Prophet publishing statistics of how many Muggle-borns had left, but those numbers had been bunk, just as many pure-bloods had escaped or gone into hiding. His own mother had Fallen Out. She'd left rather than accept an arranged marriage, and been shunned by the Princes for it her entire life. But a scandal as big as The Falling Out of Hermione Granger, Hogwarts' best and brightest, would set every tongue wagging.
"I didn't Fall Out." Hermione tore viciously into her salad, chopping the thin greens into shreds. She looked up at him, into his expectant eyes and huffed. "I live off the grid so I can have some peace. I don't fancy the Prophet reporting on my social life and every movement. Plenty of wizards do the same."
"Don't like the attention?" he taunted.
"Do you?"
"Point taken," Severus conceded. "But surely they don't report on your every movement. It can't be that bad that you have to take such drastic measures."
Hermione looked up with a blank expression. "Yes. Yes, it is. Do you recall a student named Romilda Vane?"
"How can I forget," he cringed at the memory.
He was accustomed to teaching stupid, fawning, tickle-headed girls who wanted to spend their Hogwarts years in pursuit of an acceptable marriage contract by graduation. He would have happily written-off Vane as just another boy-obsessed witch except for her rare, natural gift with Potions. Stupidity and talent was a dangerous combination.
"Her graduate internship was with Rita Skeeter, before Skeeter retired to write novels full time. And Vane has inherited her mantle as the Gossip Columnist for the Prophet."
Hermione set her fork down and beset him with a look of intensity he'd not seen since the war. "She's pure evil."
Severus sat back and took a moment to watch the stream of Muggles pass by. She felt safer here amongst the mob; less chances of getting caught or recognized in the squeeze of humanity. There was safety in numbers, anonymity in a faceless crowd. He nodded quietly to himself.
"I have had every aspect of my life reported on," she began to elaborate. "Though, humorously enough, not our marriage, thank Merlin for small mercies. Every random encounter with an eligible bachelor reported as a date, and some of those were staged in advance by Romilda. Lovely witch."
Hermione grimaced and stabbed a tomato.
"Each time Ron and I broke up, it made headlines – front page, mind you. That was always delightful. And of course, before I moved to my current flat, she liked to publish personal details about how to find me so strange wizards and stalkers could show up at my workplace or home. She once convinced poor Gilderoy Lockhart, who's not quite right in the head, that I still have my schoolgirl crush on him, because she thought it would be hilarious to get a few tacky photos of us together under the headline of Hermione Granger's New Heartthrob."
Severus clenched the utensils in his hand and silently avowed to make life very unpleasant for Miss Vane.
"Steering clear of wizarding society has kept my life free of that drama," Hermione concluded, swiping her mouth with a napkin. "I have a life that's comfortable and a job I love, and well… until you showed up I thought that it would be like that forever."
"And just what do you do for a living?" Severus enquired politely.
"I'm one of the editor's assistants at the publishing firm that produces Ars Alchemica and Potions Quarterly - rags only fit to line owl cages, I believe you called them."
Severus succumbed to a coughing fit.
When Hermione suddenly went pale,
No infirmity had caused her to ail.
From pale she went flush,
Cheeks prettily blushed,
At the sight of his dark treasure trail.
