Flotsam

Chapter Ten

"God dammit, Hermione, why are you so good at this game?"

"Triple word score as well, I'm afraid."

Danny sullenly scrawled Hermione's astronomical Scrabble score on a pad of paper as she rummaged about in the small bag for more letters. "I knew I should have just brought my Quaffle again," he said, frowning as he put the pencil down. Severus smirked at him from across the table.

"You're just angry that your vocabulary leaves much to be desired."

"Well, sorry if I don't talk as flowery as you all the time," said Danny, though his pout had become an impish grin. "I reserve all my big words for special occasions." Hermione nearly spit out her drink when he wiggled his eyebrows suggestively.

"'Special occasions'?" she sputtered, quickly wiping her face with a paper towel as she laughed. "What occasions might those be?"

He furtively leaned over the table toward her. "There are some things best kept secret, Hermione. Right, Sevvy-poo?" Danny said cheekily, wiggling his eyebrows at Severus. Hermione couldn't help but burst into laughter at the sight of Severus's expression and the subsequent dish rag that he threw at Danny's face.

They had been graced with Danny's presence again after it seemed he was struck with evening boredom, because he had suddenly showed up shortly after sunset with a worn Scrabble box under his arm. Hermione was beginning to suspect that his frequent visits to chat or play games were simply pretenses for monitoring the area around Severus's home for suspicious activity, but she found that it didn't matter to her much, as she'd grown to like his directness and sense of humor and they all seemed to have fun whenever he came by—Severus included. She had only woken up from her three-week coma two days ago, but he acted as though she'd never been comatose in the first place. Indeed, after she spoke with him the morning that she finally awoke, he returned in the afternoon with a Quaffle and they ended up talking and playing catch for nearly an hour.

Hermione had spent a good part of the morning out in the water with Severus in her arms that day. They had been silent the whole time following his rather distressing story about his attempt at disappearing into the Aokigahara forest—she had held him close in silence, and the only sounds came from the pulsing of the ocean and the wheezing of his lungs as he breathed. But she could tell that it did a lot of good for him; when they returned to the shore, the utter dejection was gone from his face and his body was relaxed again, the catharsis clear—no longer did he stomp tense with rage and frustration.

"Thank you," was what he quietly said to her before he left to put his surfboard away.

Relief had spread through her upon Danny's arrival with a Quaffle. He badgered the pair of them into playing catch and, after a few throws, it seemed that they were back to exchanging sarcastic remarks like nothing had ever happened. She was glad that Severus had someone like Danny around—Danny was shrewder than he appeared, and if she wasn't mistaken, it seemed Danny was deliberately piling on the witticisms and hurling the ball at Severus in order to keep his friend's mind off things. It seemed to work, anyway, even if he got a face full of Quaffle courtesy of Severus's throwing arm.

"Is 'rat' really all you can manage right now?" Severus drawled in mock boredom as he watched Danny place tiles on the Scrabble board.

"Dude, all I've got are vowels right now!" Danny said indignantly. "But we might as well be done—Hermione's beating the both of us and we're out of letters."

"I quite liked this game. It's been a while since I've played any Muggle games. Thank you for bringing it," said Hermione brightly as Danny piled the letter tiles back into the little velvet bag.

"I love Non games—nothing exploding or spraying junk at you," he laughed, wrinkling his nose. "I can leave it here if you want. You and Severus can have a rematch."

Regardless of what Hermione actually wanted, Danny ended up leaving her with the game once he took his leave. "So, Severus," said Hermione, turning on her heel to look at him after shutting the front door, "what sorts of 'special' things do you do with Danny?"

"Your brain would likely collapse upon itself if I told you such dark secrets. What would I tell Potter and Weasley when they find you brain-dead in my sitting room?" Snape said from the kitchen before he downed a glass of his crimson potion. After the battle with Sinclair and his little friends, he had resorted to taking the potion every few hours to keep from coughing up enough blood to repaint his walls. It seemed that the Cruciatus Curse had amplified the effects of Nagini's venom on his body and reduced the ability for the potion to cope with it—he still burst into coughs every now and again and had a noticeable wheeze whenever he took a breath.

"Perhaps that will be my next research project: the effects of Severus Snape's dark secrets on the human brain," Hermione laughed, taking a seat on the living room couch as she picked up a parchment on the coffee table and nestled herself into the cushions. "It can be developed into a revolutionary new alternative to the Dementor's Kiss."

"The crime rates are sure to go down should that take off," he said impassively, though Hermione glimpsed the smirk on his face before he wandered into the dark hallway and disappeared.

Hermione turned her attention to the parchment in her hands once Severus left the room. She had outlined the procedure for the Clearbell Potion one last time out of an obsessive desire to make sure everything was in order so they wouldn't catastrophically botch it. Yesterday she was able to convince Severus to begin brewing the potion—she couldn't quite understand why he was so reluctant to try it—so they were already finished with the first step of the admittedly short procedure. The only reason it would take two weeks to complete was the long period of time they allocated to allow for the clearbell's slow integration speed. If the potion still looked good tomorrow and wasn't spewing clouds of smoke into the room or oozing sentient globules of slime, then they'd continue with the most difficult part of the potion.

She looked up when she heard Severus approaching and found he was holding the same basin from when they rolled Pepperup potion into little, chewable balls. Peering into it curiously when he set it down on the coffee table, she found that this time it contained a light blue gel that reminded her of the ocean. It was almost translucent—almost like gel toothpaste. "Help me roll these?" asked Severus, taking a seat next to her and conjuring a jar.

"What kind of potion is this one?" she asked as she tentatively put her fingers into the basin. Unlike the Pepperup, which made her hand warm and tingly and felt like dung, this one was cool to the touch and felt like putty.

"Painkiller potion," Severus replied simply. "Try to do these quickly, because it will numb your hands."

Quickly indeed. If it was even possible, he was rolling the potion into balls faster than he had doing Pepperup—his hands flew from his hand to his jar at almost double the speed that Hermione was able to manage. But, it was a little easier to roll this potion than the Pepperup, she soon discovered. It only required a little coaxing to get it to take a spherical shape, almost as though it wanted to be a ball in the first place. She paused to watch Severus work when she finished her handful, in awe of the speed and dexterity of his fingers, before digging her hand into the gel once more. This time she tried to imitate him and use only her fingers to roll the balls instead of both hands, and found that it was much easier with this potion than the dung-like Pepperup potion.

"You learn quickly," said Snape in amusement, laughing without turning to look at her.

"Surely you knew that already, Professor," she said wryly.

"This potion is easier to roll than Pepperup, so I wouldn't get too cocky, Miss Granger." He turned to fix her with a wide-eyed and rather unsettling stare. It was obvious he was trying to bewilder her with his bizarre expression, but she was determined not to let him and, with gusto, she drew herself up and returned the wide-eyed glare.

Without either of them speaking a word, it turned into an impromptu staring contest. Hermione could feel her eyes watering and her lower eyelids twitching, while Severus seemed as relaxed as could be. Soon, her eyes threatened to wander, but with all her might, she refocused her gaze on his dark eyes—the dark, calculating, but as of late, warm eyes. After a moment, she felt her mind beginning to cloud over—lost in his eyes—and was suddenly struck with a vague and inexplicable desire to keep him out of her thoughts for fear of what he might find there, of what she might find there—

"Hermione? Hermione."

She blinked and found Severus watching her with a mixture of curiosity and concern and was gently tapping her cheek with his fingers to snap her out of whatever daze she'd somehow put herself in. "Wh-what?" she murmured in confusion.

"You were Occluding—a little too well, in fact. Why?" It wasn't a question.

"Was I? I'm—I'm not sure what happened. Sorry," Hermione said, shaking her head vigorously to get rid of the haze. She gave him a smile to indicate that she was A-OK, which seemed to satisfy him since he turned back to continue rolling.

"I suppose I should admit defeat," he said as he dropped another ball into the jar, "though you won that staring contest thanks to your underhanded strategy."

It was impossible for her to suppress her laugh. "'Underhanded strategy,' was it? I didn't put myself into some trance on purpose," she said, rolling her eyes.

"You must have something you want to hide—otherwise, that little trance wouldn't have happened," said Severus, tipping his head ever so slightly toward her. "There is a right way and a wrong way to perform Occlumency. I believe you just discovered the wrong way."

He didn't push the issue further, for which Hermione was grateful. If he asked what it was she was trying to hide from him, she wouldn't be able to tell him.

Or rather, she had some sort of idea, but it was a little unnerving and she preferred to push it to the back of her mind.

Deep in the back of her mind.

To her relief, he launched into a story about how he was prowling around the Hogwarts library a few years before she first attended and found a bright, enterprising seventh-year in an ill-conceived Occlumency trance, drooling all over a book from the restricted section. "I had to slap him in the face to snap him out of it," said Severus in amusement. "The boy nearly sprinted away once he packed away his things. Fell flat on his face when he tripped over his own feet."

"You had to slap him?" Hermione said incredulously. "Isn't there some sort of rule or something against things like that?"

"Indeed, but he wasn't about to wake up from me whispering gently in his ear," he said, shrugging and getting another handful of gel. "So I hit him."

"There was no in-between?" Hermione laughed, scraping the last of the potion out of the basin with some difficulty, as her hands were beginning to go numb. "Whisper gently or hit him? Were those your only two options?"

"I am a man of extremes," he said loftily as he finished with his handful. He watched in mild amusement as she struggled with hers—the numbness in her hands had come suddenly and unexpectedly and she found that she could barely move them anymore. When her fingers stopped working, Severus laughed and took the gel from her, quickly rolling the last few balls as she slapped her hands against her thighs in an attempt to get them working again.

"Why aren't your hands numb too?" she said, slightly cross when she realized he wasn't in nearly as much distress as she was.

"The skin on my hands is thicker than yours, and you were using your entire hand to roll," he said, smirking. "The numbness should wear off in thirty minutes or so."

"Thirty minutes?"

He held his hands up and rubbed his palms together. "Try doing this. The heat might make it wear off a little faster."

Obediently, she gave it a try and frowned when her fingers began lacing between each other so that she couldn't quite rub her palms together, and then got worse as the numbness began to spread to her wrists, making her hands flop around in a way that made it even more difficult to accomplish what should have been a simple task. She felt her face beginning to burn as she clumsily forged on, feeling intensely aware of the amusement that was spreading over Severus's face. It was becoming futile to continue—she was just about ready to give up in exasperation and wait for the potion to wear off.

Or she was, anyway, until Severus took her hand and began to vigorously rub them.

"What are you—?" she started, but he scoffed.

"Be quiet."

It was bizarre to watching him rub her hand—she couldn't feel it, so it was as though her arm was getting jerked around by some invisible weight on the end of her forearm. But ever so slowly, she felt a tingle that started in her palm and slowly spread to her fingers. "The feeling is coming back," she said, laughing nervously. He wordlessly released her hand and nodded expectantly to her other one.

She could have handled it from there, but she held up her hand nonetheless.

He proceeded in silence, quickly rubbing his palms against hers, until she managed to twitch a finger. Almost immediately he stopped and let go, before looking up at her expectantly. "Better?" he asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Y-yes, thank you."

"Good," he said simply before getting up to take the jar of painkiller balls and the empty basin back to the potion room.

Hermione watched his retreating form and hoped to high heaven that the flush she felt on her face wasn't as noticeable as she thought it might be. It slightly troubled her that she was feeling this way—it wasn't as though he meant anything by it, right? "It" being the hand-rubbing bit. And perhaps "it" was also the salve bit from when they rolled Pepperup potion. And perhaps—perhaps everything.

Severus Snape just did whatever the hell he wanted, right? He earned that right.

But then by that logic, it meant that he indeed wanted it.

Fuuuuuuck.

But perhaps she was trying to read into things a little too much. Maybe they were just delusions of a woman who just spent three weeks in a coma after being attacked by traitorous Aurors. Friendly Severus was different from Professor Snape, so perhaps this was simply par for the course for Friendly Severus. She thought for a moment, wondering if he'd do the same if, say, it was Luna rather than herself. Yes, she could see that happening. Perhaps not Ginny—Hermione expected she'd be too close to Harry for Severus to be comfortable with it.

Then again, she herself was a member of the famous trio; ergo, much too close to Harry for comfort. The insufferable know-it-all. The bane of his classroom existence.

And so she was right back where she started.

Everything he did was precisely calculated, she was sure of it. He was a master of timing—she'd choked on drinks more times in her month on the island than she could remember over the past few years. He knew exactly where to push to get her to react in an amusing way (which often involved her irritation). But she didn't want to get ahead of herself. She was reading much too far into the whole situation and should really just focus on the present. Presently, she was convinced that he didn't see her as anything more than perhaps a pet hamster or maybe an unlikely friend—she was just a former student that had washed up on his beach after an accident with a portkey and unfortunately got him wrapped up in a Ministry matter that didn't concern him.

But as she watched him emerge from the hallway and go into the kitchen to get a glass of water, she realized that she didn't really mind it—any of the "it." A bit unsettling, perhaps, but once she thought rationally about it, it probably wasn't as big a deal as her initial reaction to it was. Conversations with him were not tiring, but were instead quite enjoyable and often forced her to keep on her toes. He was not overbearing and didn't question it when she needed to be left in peace, and indeed, fed her every so often. Not to mention his droll sense of humor. And his physique was nothing to scoff at.

Oh dear.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuck me.

Er, not that she wanted him to do so. But that wouldn't be bad. Or would it? But why the hell would he want to?

…

What the hell.

Fortunately (or unfortunately), all thought was forestalled when she felt the left side of her face beginning to grow numb.

Horrified, she realized she was losing control of her tongue as well—as if a dentist had happily injected her mouth with local anesthetic without telling her. She brought her hand to her face and felt a thin layer of what must have been the painkiller gel on her cheek.

"Dammit, Theberuth, when did you pud id on my fathe?"

Wry laughter rang out from the kitchen.

Making pancakes turned out to be a good way to keep one's mind off things, which Hermione found to be quite helpful for her current predicament. She couldn't get a wink of sleep the night before—her mind simply hadn't let her—and she couldn't understand why. It was probably just a case of overthinking things. There was nothing fundamentally different now, was there?

Well, that's what she told herself, anyway.

Fake it till you make it, right?

The depth of her reflections was such that she didn't even notice that Severus was in the house until he was opening the cupboard to her left, wheezing heavily as he pulled out the flask of crimson potion. He was shirtless—judging by his damp hair, she presumed he had just gone surfing or swimming—and she saw the worrisome dark and veiny lines spreading out from the scar on his neck. The lines were now more dense and weblike, covering much of his upper torso and going down to his elbows and up to his jawline. Without a shirt, the heaving of his chest seemed all the more pronounced, and the tendons in his neck were stretched tight as he struggled to draw breath.

"How do you feel?" she asked quietly once he gulped down half the flask of potion and exhaled in relief. He gave a noncommittal shrug as he put the bottle away.

"Better now."

He leaned pensively against the counter a little way from her and watched as she poured the last of the pancake batter into the pan. "Is something the matter?" he asked after a few silent minutes.

"What do you mean?" she said, looking away from the pan and smiling at him. He arched an eyebrow at her and waited, as though expecting her to answer her own question, before he turned to pull plates out of a cupboard.

"You seem out of sorts is all, Hermione." And without another word, he busied himself with putting plates and silverware on the table.

Hermione watched motionlessly as he set the table before she finally tore herself away when she smelled burning pancake. As she hurriedly turned back to the stove and scraped the pancake off the pan to flip it, she felt incredibly self-conscious. How did he do that? Was he really just that good at reading people after a two-sentence exchange? With most people, it wasn't difficult to fool them into thinking that there wasn't anything wrong, with the exception of perhaps Luna, Ginny, and Harry.

But she quickly caught herself. It wouldn't do to go jumping to conclusions again.

"Shall we start on the second phase of the potion after we eat?" asked Hermione brightly as she brought the stack of pancakes to the dining table.

"I suppose," he said absently while he poured hot water into a teapot. There was that hesitation again. What was it about the Clearbell Potion that made him so reluctant? She was so confident in their combined calculations that it was probably more likely that a meteorite would smash into the island than it was for the potion to fail.

They ate in relative silence, Hermione rereading a few passages of a potions book while Severus read the day's edition of the Pacific Register, a newspaper that was apparently the go-to source for both national and international news for the Western US magical community. It was a typical morning—the both of them quietly immersed in reading material while eating and sipping tea or coffee—but Hermione felt ill at ease and it irritated her because she shouldn't be.

"It looks like the Ministry couldn't keep the media away any longer," he said with mild interest. "There's a small article here about how British Ministry employees were arrested in the United States. It's quite vague."

"Ministry 'employees'?" said Hermione, looking up from her book with her fork halfway to her mouth.

"It seems Potter has learned how to control the media, or the manipulate the Ministry bureaucrats that control it," he said with a small laugh. "No mention of Aurors or Hit Wizards, or of you or me. Well done, Potter."

It was a little odd to hear such an outright compliment for Harry—though she expected he voiced it because Harry wasn't around to hear—and she couldn't help but laugh. Severus looked up from the paper as though looking at her over the rims of invisible glasses. "Something amusing you?" he asked, the corners of his mouth turned up in a thin smile.

"To think that a compliment for Harry Potter would ever pass your lips," Hermione said cheekily.

"Quite shocking, isn't it?" he said, chuckling. He turned back to the newspaper, and then added, "I see you're in better spirits now."

"There wasn't anything wrong in the first place."

"Is that so?" he said without looking up from the paper.

Of course it wasn't and he knew it, but it wasn't like she was going to explain herself. He didn't speak of it for the rest of the meal—or indeed, didn't speak at all, and Hermione was inordinately relieved when she finished her plate. She silently swore at herself for being so "out of sorts," as Severus so aptly put it, and was only able to calm her nerves by vigorously washing the dirty dishes and reminding herself that the next step of the Clearbell Potion would require careful precision that she couldn't jeopardize with silly concerns.

"All right, then," said Severus once he got up from the table. He gathered up his plate and teacup and gently edged her away from the sink with a shoulder so that he could wash his own dishes. "Are you ready, Hermione?"

"Ready as ever, Severus."

She followed him into the potion room and began preparing materials while he warded the door shut. "No pain?" he asked once he finished. Hermione smiled and shook her head.

"None at all."

If anything good came from those three unconscious weeks, it was the fact that her body was almost completely tolerant to magic once more. Only the most advanced spells prompted any sort of twinge in her chest, like trying to perhaps conjure a healthy Labrador retriever or perform human transfiguration. Her initial worry after waking was that the battle with Sinclair and the Hit Wizards might have reset her recovery, but she had rejoiced once she realized that she was in even better health than she had been before her little coma. And when she thought back at the time frame in which Madam Pomfrey expected her to recover, she was right on schedule. She hoped that she'd be back one hundred percent by the time the Clearbell Potion was finished.

Then Severus could get her out of his hair and go back to doing whatever it was he did before she so rudely dropped in on him.

There was a tiny twinge of hesitation in a deep corner of her mind.

"The potion looks ready. What do you think?" said Hermione, busying herself with examining the cauldron on the worktable before them. It was a deep violet color and gently rippled at the slightest sounds in the room. Severus peered in, scrutinizing it briefly before nodding and passing her a glass stirring rod.

"I see no problems with it. Are you ready to begin?" he asked, readying a worn pocket watch on the table.

"Ready," she replied, squaring her shoulders to steel herself. They couldn't fail—not when clearbell was involved. The little, unassuming root's appearance was deceptive and looked harmless enough in spite of the fact that it could cause a catastrophic reaction should they handle it incorrectly. Severus carefully took the clearbell root out of its protective casing—a glass decanter whose interior was coated with a special shielding solution—and readied a silver knife as he carefully watched the second hand of the pocket watch tick closer to the twelve.

"Begin."

Hermione took three chips of Wiggentree bark and carefully dropped them into the potion. Immediately, it began to bubble and emit a faint vapor that smelled faintly of rosemary. Hermione waited calmly for Severus's signal—after two minutes, he nodded, prompting her to take a small vial of dittany oil and pour it into the cauldron. The bubbling became less pronounced, but the rosemary-scented vapor grew stronger and more pronounced. At this point, she allowed her mind to wander a bit—it would be seven minutes before the next portion—and thought that she rather liked having a competent lab partner that didn't blither foolishly or require constant direction. She had managed a total of two potions working with Richard before banishing him from the potion-brewing portions of their experiments: he was never confident in his movements and always second-guessed himself until she approved of whatever task he was trying to accomplish. It was faster and less stressful to simply brew the potions herself.

"In one minute, I will cut the first slice of clearbell," said Severus, readying his hands while Hermione readied the glass stirrer.

When the second hand of the watch reached the twelve, he took the knife and carefully cut a thin slice of clearbell root. He grunted and his hand visibly twitched when the slice left the root and fell into the potion, but Hermione didn't dare speak and break his concentration or hers—she did hazard a quick glance at him to make sure the clearbell hadn't affected him negatively. "I'm fine," he said quietly as she began stirring. She nodded to acknowledge him, relieved, and slowly stirred clockwise three times as Severus began counting off the seconds. After thirty, he cut another thin slice and let it fall in, his hand twitching again. Counterclockwise she stirred this time as he counted off another thirty seconds, his voice keeping her mind and body in rhythm. The rosemary-scented vapor grew fog-like and began spilling over the edges of the cauldron and off the table as she stirred, and she felt her arm tingle every time it passed through the vapor—eventually she had to switch hands to relieve it of the unpleasant tingling.

Beads of sweat had broken out on both Severus's forehead and hers by the time they neared the end of the clearbell root, both from the strain of slicing and stirring as well as the stifling heat generated by the potion. It was the tenth minute of their clearbell-stir procedure and the both of them were struggling to keep the rhythm going. Hermione's hands and arms were tingling uncomfortably due to the vapor, making it difficult to hold on to the stirring rod, and Severus's clearbell hand was quivering uncontrollably, making it difficult for him to make clean cuts. It was clear by now that, had either of them tried to brew the potion alone, failure might have been a very likely development. But they forged on, reassured by each other's presence, and when the clearbell root was finally too small to be sliced any more, Severus put the tiny, blackening piece aside and set the knife down in relief.

His counting didn't falter at all as he moved—Hermione still needed to stir for one more minute before this phase of the potion would be complete.

"Fifty-seven, fifty-eight, fifty-nine, sixty." He nodded to her as he ended his count, and Hermione gratefully removed the rod from the cauldron. The vapor suddenly receded, as though it was being sucked back up by the potion, leaving them with a brilliantly translucent violet potion sitting motionlessly in the cauldron. Hermione picked up her wand and tapped the cauldron's edge once.

"Pro veneno, viscera integratum."

As if in acknowledgment, the potion rippled before going still.

Hermione took a step back and sighed in relief she clenched and unclenched her stiff fingers. "That was more difficult than I expected," she said, giving Severus a weary smile. He seemed to return the sentiment and pulled his sweat-dampened hair away from his face as he exhaled slowly.

"Indeed."

The pair stood there in the stuffy, rosemary-scented potion room simply staring at each other in the midst of a rather pregnant silence that was punctuated by the sounds of his rattling breaths. Hermione felt as though words were trying to surface in her mind, but she couldn't quite grasp them and they fell back into ambiguity. "So…" she said lamely, nervously drumming her fingers on her forearm. He had the audacity to laugh at her anxiety, but it somehow dispelled all the tension in the room.

"Do you fancy a swim, Hermione?"

A/N: So I've run into a bit of a fix here. I can finish off Flotsam in about 2 or 3 chapters and leave the whole Sinclair thing for a different fic, or I can just make Flotsam really long. Well, not reeeaaally long, but still. Thoughts?

Pardon my bastard Latin. I think I spent about an hour trying to figure out how to use the correct verb and noun forms, but that's no substitute for actually learning Latin. Haha. And as always, please let me know if you notice any typos and stuff.

I'm actually going to be in Hawaii for the next week for a wedding, so please don't expect any updates for at least another two. Sorry! I'll have plenty of coconuts and macadamia nuts in honor of you guys. XD

Finally, here are some things I drew that you guys might get a kick out of (two links to deviantART, remove the spaces): http: / / fav. me/ d3bg7lx , http: / / fav. me/ d3bk610