On Oaks and Reeds
Disclaimer
Anything you recognize belongs to JK Rowling; I am not making money on this and I certainly don't own anything, except the plot and the sacred right to steal from real literature...Oh, wait, I don't even own the whole plot, as this story is an answer to HermySnape's Impostor Challenge on WIKTT.
Warnings
This story may consider a love relationship between Severus Snape and Hermione Granger at seventeen. If such an idea disturbs you, please don't read it. Also, this fic will be concerned with torture and sexual ambiguity – you'll be warned in advance in the occurrence of graphic descriptions.
Chapter 10 – Indecent Proposal
Hermione woke up with a feeling of dreading coursing through her body. Judging from the light, it couldn't be later than day break.
Breathe, she told herself briskly.
He knows about the Glamour, said a panicked voice inside her.
I'll tell him some lie, she thought, trying to squash her fear. And anyway, he can't do anything to me.
That was the key, she decided. Snape was a prisoner; he actually had chains binding his writs and feet. He was confined in his quarters, which had been stripped and searched for dangerous items, and it was she, Hermione, who had the password to open an access to his lab. She had the wand, she knew things. Snape had been confined for two weeks. He couldn't do anything.
Hermione moved her hands over the blankets and found the little shuttle lost in the fabric. At the beginning of the summer, tired of knitting and hating the feeling of the wool on her sun-warmed hands, she had taken to tatting, but had not yet mastered the art. She passed her fingers on the little flower she'd been tatting just moments before falling asleep, and frowned. The flower was only half-finished, and already it looked irregular and somehow wrong.
To ease her nerves, Hermione cut the threads and started a new flower, moving the shuttle with clumsy fingers. Her thoughts darted back to Snape, and she saw again his figure, impressing in the shadows, as he told her to help Professor Flitwick. She heard his velvety voice as he sneered, And here I thought you had grown. Her fingers were trembling, and she breathed deeply through her nose. She saw that she'd forgotten to add a picot and she released the thread, touching it lightly until the last stitch went loose.
Concentrate, she thought firmly.
Four stitches, a little picot. Four stitches, a little picot. Four stitches, a big picot. Two stiches, another pig picot.
The sun was quietly raising, bathing her room in a red light. Hermione barely noticed it. She was keeping her mind on the thin thread running through his fingers, on the golden shuttle moving left and right, counting her stitches and occasionally stretching her legs under the covers. Slowly, cautiously, a little lace flower bloomed into her hands. Hermione chained the last petal to the first and blinked into the light. Her bedside lamp had turned itself off – it was charmed to submit to sun light. Hermione looked at her flower critically. It was not perfect, but there was a quiet beauty in it, a lopsided grace. She held it up to her window, and ti shined into the light.
She put it carefully between the pages of the book she was reading – Jane Eyre – and started to dress. As her hands closed on her skirt, however, she changed her mind. She wasn't hungry, and the thought to change into Harry's clothes later on unnerved her. With a quick movement she opened her wardrobe.
She didn't want glasses, she thought, surveying herself into the mirror. She'd say Snape that she'd used a Glamour on her eyes, and that would be her lie. And if he didn't want to believe her – well, she was fine with that. She was the one with the wand.
Slamming the door of her dorm, she crossed the common room and slipped off the passage under the sleepy eyes of the Fat Lady.
HH
Ron Weasley stood on the last step of the stairs, his heart thumping madly. He hadn't slept well, and it was a feeling of emptiness which had woken him up. Fighting against his bad dreams, he had opened his eyes and had seen that Harry was gone. His bed looked unslept in, his trunk was still closed.
Of course, it was unusual for Harry to wake up before Ron did, and to wander off to the Owlery or the Great Hall; but that morning, Ron had stared at the empty bed, and then at the other empty eds behind him – Seamus', Dean's, Neville's – and an eerie feeling had crept up his arms.
He'd dressed quickly, and was just about to cross the silent common room when he'd heard a door slam and he'd frozen in mid-movement. Harry was coming out of Hermione's room, a determined, fresh look on his face. Ron had the time to see that Harry was not wearing his glasses and that his clothes had a dirty, crumpled look about them, as thought he'd slept on them, before the other boy went out of the room and disappeared from his view.
Unbidden and unwelcome, sudden memories crowded into his head. Harry and Hermione circling the lake, fading into the distance; Harry and Hermione whispering in the corridors; Harry and Hermione studying in the common room, their heads together, when everyone else had gone.
Ron couldn't breathe. A cold hand had seized his stomach, and he felt it clenching his body and turning it inside out. He staggered, his hand on the wall. Then he steadied himself and ran out of the common room.
HH
Hermione entered the potions lab with some trepidation. It was the first time she was there on her own, and the familiar room looked forbidding. The walls seemed to close on her; the dead animals in the jars seemed to eye her beadily, as though they knew that she was not allowed there.
With a trembling hand, Hermione tapped her wand on the door which leaded to Snape's private rooms, and it opened. She stepped inside. It took her some minutes to get used to the feeble light of the dying fire, but as soon as she could see, she stifled a gasp.
The rooms were ruined. Two armchairs were lying upside down, their fabric viciously slashed; a couch, facing the fire, was still standing, but its stuffing was pouring out from various cuts. Book were everywhere, and Hermione couldn't suppress a feeling of rage when she saw that some of them had their spines broken and their pages teared. Papers littered the floor. Under her very feet was a parchment bearing the titles for third-years potions essays.
Cautiously, she stepped further in. Her nostrils were hit with the smell of close, unwanted, unwashed things.
She went closer to the fire, with the idea of stirring it up, but when she reached the couch she stopped, horrified. Over it, in a bundle of black fabric, Severus Snape was sleeping, his face hidden by a curtain of black hair.
Hermione stood silent for a long moment, watching him. In the dim light, she could barely distinguish his pale hands closed into fists against his chest.
Without warning, Snape sprang up and in one fluid movement he'd taken her by the wrist, his eyes boring into hers.
"Protego!" shouted Hermione, reacting istinctively, and he was thrown backwards, away from her.
The mark of his fingers burned her skin, and Hermione passed her right hand on her wrist, sure she would find an angry scald on it, but there was nothing.
"Potter," Snape whispered from the corner of the sitting room, making her jump. "To what do I ow the pleasure of your company?"
Hermione kept his wand on him, eying him warily.
"I need to brew a potion," she said, afraid of the sound of her own girly voice.
He can't see you, she reminded herself firmly.
"What happened to your rooms?" she asked, refraining herself to use his title – Harry would not to that.
"Experimenting with glamours, are we?" he answered, in a silky voice. "It's a wonder you can pass through doors with such a large head upon your shoulders."
Hermione didn't understand what he was talking about; then she remembered that she wasn't wearing Harry's glasses and forced her mouth into a smile.
"What do you know about artificial poisons?" she asked.
Snape didn't move.
"The question is not what I know," he said softly. "But rather what will I teach you."
He looked at her malevolently and Hermione suppressed a shudder.
"Lumen solis," she cried, and the room was suddenly very bright. "I'm going to look through your books. Why don't you eat something in the meantime?" she added, gesturing at the untouched plate of sandwiches lying on a low table.
Snape didn't answer. As she moved around the room, glancing at titles a sorting through volumes, she could feel his poisonous glare on her back. Finally, as nervous sweat was starting to form droplets on her foreheads, she read the title on a blackish little book. Fake but Real, it said. She picked it up and scanned through it.
To her disappointment, it turned out to be an essay, without actual indications for brewing. As she read passages here and there, she forgot Snape's silent presence. The book said that many magical substances could be recreated artificially; in some cases, though, specific properties were lost in the process. Apparently a Gudrun Lindgren had researched the possibility to synthetize poisons, and her article had been published in a revue.
"Do you have Alchemical Quarterly of 1988?" she asked, forgetting for a moment to whom he was speaking.
HH
Snape had knew at once that someone was in the room. After years of training, his sleep was very light, and his senses always alert. He'd been extremely displeased, thought, to find Harry Potter of all people standing into his private rooms.
The glamour was still on him, but after Potter's protection spell Snape was fairly sure the boy was telling the truth. He still remembered the only Occlumency class in which Potter had managed to break into his thoughts, using that very same panicked protego which he had just used.
Snape was not so proud as to say he would rather be in Moody's company again, but his return to Hogwarts had been less than pleasurable. He'd come back to find his rooms wrecked, his books thorned, his laboratory closed. He didn't care about the Minerva's glares, but he did care about his desk upturned and searched.
As if I'd keep something secret in here, he'd thought scornfully. Fools.
Potter looked younger without his glasses, and James had faded a little from his face. The boy now looked disturbingly like his mother, and Snape couldn't take his eyes off him. He'd been unable to move as he watched the boy move with a careful grace in his own ravaged rooms. As he followed his movements, Snape considered how he had never allowed students into his quarters, not even Draco; and yet, somehow, Potter didn't seem out of place. His hands were careful and loving as he picked up the ruined books and put them down and the shelves. His eyes, Lily's eyes, scanned quickly through titles and indexes, with an air of focussed attention Snape had rarely seen in his face. It was Lily's again.
"Do you have Alchemical Quarterly of 1988?" Potter asked suddenly, and Snape clenched his hands into fists.
He knew what he had to do; all the rest, even his dignity, should wait.
"It was on that shelf," he said neutrally, pointing at it with his chin.
The boy frowned at his polite answer, and his frown deepened as he took in the broken bookcase.
"Accio Alchemical Quarterly," he said, waving his wand, and about fifty volumes zoomed towards him, knocking him off his feet.
"How stupid are you, Potter?" Snape asked, curling his lips.
HH
Hermione gripped her wand first, and then checked to see if Snape had moved, but he was still in his corner, sneering at her. Mumbling a retort, she knelt and began to sort through the volumes, quickly locating the one she needed.
As she scanned Lindgren's article, she saw that she provided sketchy indications for the potion she needed. Her heart thumped faster.
So it's possible, she thought happily.
"Right," she said vaguely, standing up. "I'm off to the lab, do you want to come?"
Without waiting for an answer, she crossed the room and went back into the laboratory.
Two hours later, however, the bubble of joy in er chest had completely evaporated. She was unable to follow Lindgren's instruction. The potion was well beyond her skill.
Snape had slowly walked into the room about an half hour after she'd started with her first attempt. Occasionally she asked him things, but he never spoke. As her third cauldron of crap exploded to her face, covering her in a stinky brown liquid, Hermione could take it no more.
"Look, I need your help," she said, angrily.
Snape sneered.
"Do say that again, Potter. It's refreshing to hear you admit your inadequacy."
"Stop that! I've been working two hours on this potion – what do you want? We'll make a bargain, there must be something" Hermione broke up, noticing a slight shift in Snape's expression.
"There is something," said Snape slowly. He seemed most unwilling to phrase his thoughts.
"Which is?" snapped Hermione, cleaning her face with the back of her hand.
"I want to meet Miss Granger," Snape said. "Alone."
Hermione gaped at him. Her first, foolish thought was that he surely couldn't meet both of them at once – Fake Harry and Real Hermione. Then she remembered that he wasn't supposed to meet Real Hermione at all.
"Why?"
"This is not of your business," he said repressively.
Hermione glowered at him.
"You are not in the position to make ummotivated requests," she spat.
"Really?" he said, a dangerous spark in his eyes. "I thought you needed my help."
Hermione turned away from him and started to clean up the mess that had been a cauldron only minutes before.
The git, she thought as she Vanished spots of the burned thing on the table. She remembered Professor McGongall's worried face, and Charlie's anxious expression.
I need his help.
"Ok," she said, without turning round. "You'll talk to her, but I want it to be an honest bargain."
There was no answer. She turned slowly to face him.
"Artificial basilisk's poison can be made?" she asked steadily.
"Yes," he said.
"And you know how to do it?"
His eyes flickered in annoyance.
"I am a Potions Master."
"And you will help me," she said – half an order, half a plead.
Snape hesitated, his blank face unreadable.
"Yes," he said finally.
"Ok – then – I'll call her now, I've wasted enough time."
Without looking at him, Hermione went out of the room, softly closing the door behind her. She stopped into the cold corridor and pressed herself against the wall. She was sweating.
Ten minutes later, she was back as Hermione, wondering what the heck he wanted to talk about. She remembered with a sense of unease his urgency in Grimmauld Palace. We have more urgent matters to discuss.
She entered the overheated laboratory and tried to look uncertain, as though she was not sure about where things were and what she should do.
"Harry said you wanted to talk to me," she said, aiming for a submissive tone, trying to make as much contrast as she could with Fake Harry's voice.
Snape was standing at the further end of the lab, looking as forbidding as ever. Hermione could not see his bonds under the folds of his black cloak, and for a moment she had the most irrational fear that he'd taken them off.
"Come closer," he ordered, and she did.
"Closer," he said again.
Her mouth dry, Hermione took another step onwards.
"What do you want?" she asked nervously.
"I'm wearing a shirt under this cloak," he said, shrugging so as the cloak shifted a little and Hermione could see some white fabric.
She stared at him. Why was he talking about his clothes? You've been stroking that unicorn for ten minutes – you think I can't tell what it means? said Charlie's voice inside her head.
"I want you to rip off the first button," he said quietly.
Hermione stood rooted in place, gaping.
"Are you deaf, girl?"
She wanted her to touch him? To take his clothes off? Again, a flash of Charlie Weasley crossed Hermione's mind – You've not seen enough of the world to challenge a man like Snape – and she set her jaw. I'll show them, she thought angrily. She thought she saw a glimpse of approval in Snape's discoloured eyes, but only a split second later his face was again a blank mask. She walked carefully up to him and extended her arms, placing her hands on the velvety collar of his cloak and pushing it aside. Underneath it was a white shirt. Barely breathing, she seized the first button and pulled. It came free immediately.
"Very good," said a soft voice in her ear, and she jumped – they were so close. "Now raise your hand."
Completely disconnected from real world, she did as he asked and raised the button to his mouth. He blowed on it, very softly, and she felt goosebumps on her skin. She raised her eyes to look at him. Again, he had a most curious expression – determination, and – was it possible? fear. She looked at her own hand and saw that where a button had been was now a plain gold ring.
Without warning, Snape raised his chained hands and put them on top of hers, closing her fingers upon the ring.
Hermione looked at him again, her heart thumping madly – his eyes still had that desperate, settled expression, as though he was forcing himself to make a difficult choice.
"I need you to accept this," he murmured, his voice very soft.
A/N
Hi, and sorry for the delay – I wanted to make this differently, and Lucius Malfoy kept intruding, but in the end I convinced him that he has to wait for another chapter. Hope you'll like this one all the same, despite the absence of His Blondiness.
For those who are interested in tatting, it is a delightful activity and quite easy to learn. Here is the best site on the net, Jen's:
update: June 24th