Chapter Ten

Dark's Hollow

They didn't talk. Hermione wasn't sure what part of her expected he would say something—that part was surely foolish. She didn't know Snape well, but from what little she knew of him, she should have realised that he wasn't the sort to gush about his feelings.

Just in case she didn't arrive at that point, he was there to remind her the two times she tried (her, "Do you want to talk about it now?" growing ever quieter) with an increasingly venomous "NO."

It was made worse by the fact that she knew something had happened. She'd found him splattered with mud with his head in his hands by a pool in the forest, after he'd started chasing after a deer for no particular reason. She'd even told him that, "You know, they're quite rare, here, deer. They cause damage to the plant life so they try to keep the numbers down. We're very lucky," and yet she hadn't managed to get a rise from him at all, despite the fact that she knew he would bristle at the over-information.

He was even quieter after the after-lunch hike in the other direction (away from the marks on their map—"For control purposes," Hermione had said, though in truth she just wanted to escape from Mrs Jones). By the following morning, he was barely saying anything at all.

They caught the bus after breakfast. Hermione paid for his ticket because he was still only carrying large banknotes, like he didn't know how money worked, and she tried not to become agitated over the fact that he made no promises to pay her back. Socially inexperienced, Hermione reminded herself as he plopped down in a seat in the back of the empty bus, then, less kindly, added, Jerk.

He sighed as she slid in next to him. She began conversation as though he weren't ignoring her.

"Dark's Hollow," she said, shaking out the Ordnance Survey map. "If any place is going to be magical, surely with a name like that—"

"I wager five pounds the most interesting thing about it is that the Post Office opens for a half-day on Saturdays."

Hermione looked at him blankly.

"Was that a joke?" she said in disbelief.

"No," he replied, and turned to look out the bus window.

Hermione was feeling nauseous by the time they reached their stop, the undulating roads and pot holes doing all sorts of nasty things to the heavy full English in her stomach. Snape had fallen asleep—she had to knock him in the shoulder and scream at the driver to stop, as though their life depended on it, because he was about to close the doors and drive off again.

"Last bus is at three o'clock," the driver told her, annoyed already as though he'd end up waiting for her, then drove off, the doors still hissing closed, while Snape blinked up at a pristine limestone pub, said, "I'm going to spend the day by myself. See you at two fifty-five," then walked off without her.

He hadn't slept well last night. It had been difficult to align his brain on the right neurological paths, to coax his breathing into a smooth, regulated pattern. It was made worse by the fact that Hermione seemed to have fallen asleep as soon as her bushy head hit the pillow, so still beneath the covers that every so often, he would hold his breath, listen hard, just to make sure she was still breathing.

He didn't know why he was worried. About death. About her dying, in particular. It had been so long, he supposed, since he'd had a relationship beyond nodding to a hardened neighbour at the shops. She wasn't even his to lose; she was no more than an odd roommate, really, thrown together with him because of a shared disquiet of the mind. Her parents were right to look for her, he thought. If she were his daughter (the idea was laughable, and unsettling), he would have worried about her running off with someone like him, too.

She woke up once, when he was staring at her. She had gasped, frightened, then whispered, "What?"

Large brown eyes in the dark—for a moment, Snape could have sworn they'd flashed green.

"Sorry," Snape said, and turned over in his bed, set on sleeping, only able to do so an hour after her breathing had slowed.

"Are you looking for someone?"

Snape jerked in his seat to find the barmaid leaning toward him, messy, graying hair a curly mass about her head, floating around her shoulders, sticking to the condensation on the taps.

Snape glanced toward the door and took a sip of his drink. He barely even remembered stepping inside this pub. He wondered where Hermione had gone. Probably the library, he thought. While he sat at a bar, on what must have been his third pint, and it wasn't even midday.

His stomach churned.

"No," he said. He rolled his shoulders and pushed his half-empty glass across the bar. There were only three other people in there; career drunks, most likely. All dressed normally. He wasn't sure why he expected otherwise—what did he think they'd be wearing, pointy hats?

He wished he could do this professionally. Straighten his tie and push a business card across the bar, demanding quiet, succinct answers, or he'd take her to the station downtown (Hermione had fallen asleep to his 80s American crime drama the night before). Instead, he called for her—she didn't hear him, and he cleared his throat, said, "Excuse me," again, and waited for her to finish unloading a box of glasses onto a shelf before she came back to him, her expression bored.

"What sort of place is this?" Snape asked, and cringed internally. "Dark's Hollow," he added. "Odd name."

"Oh, it's legendary," she replied, her glum expression brightening, her dark eyes shining with a copper glint. "One of the most haunted places in Britain, actually. And it's legal to shoot a Welshman if he steps foot on our streets after dark."

"That's why I sleep in here!" A Welsh voice slurred from the fireplace, and the drunks laughed.

"Haunted," Snape said, his pulse quickening. "What do you mean?"

Did she just roll her eyes? "Haunted," she said. "Ghosts. Ghouls. Et cetera."

"Ghosts," Snape said. "You believe in that sort of nonsense?"

Her colour heightened, her lips pressing tight together. "You're the one asking questions."

"Where's the tour?" Snape asked.

She had the gall to laugh at him, though she tried to turn it into a cough.

"Leaves from the war memorial at half eleven. You'll probably be the only one on it, today." She looked at her watch, then back up at his drink. "Can I get you another quick one? Something stronger to take the edge off?"

"My edges are sufficiently smooth, thank you," Snape said, and the barmaid rolled her eyes again.

"As you wish," she said. "But you better chug it down. Moira isn't one to wait around for stragglers."

Moira seemed exactly the sort to wait around for stragglers. Snape could only identify her by her badge—she could've been any old woman sitting on the war memorial, reading a tatty romance novel, oblivious to the cold. He was surprised, though, that Hermione wasn't already there—he had more than half-expected to find her alongside Moira, notebook open, shooting off questions like a future star reporter badgering her way to new career heights.

Snape cleared his throat. Moira turned the page and read at least three paragraphs more before she looked up. Snape expected a smile (though he hardly ever welcomed one), but one was not given. Instead, her mouth hanging slightly open, her voice surprisingly high and breathy, Moira said with a Glaswegian lilt, "Are you here for the tour?"

"Yes," Snape replied, thinking he ought to offer some explanation as to why, but could come up with nothing that would make him appear less absurd. "How much is it?" he said instead.

"By donation," Moira said, her face expressionless except for the minute twitch of regret as she packed her book into her handbag. "All goes to the renovation and reopening of the Dark's Hollow Museum."

"Ghost museum?" Snape asked.

She didn't hear the irony in his voice, and replied, "General history." She looked from his face to her watch, then looked up again. "I don't except we'll be having anyone else. Are you ready to begin?"

She took him down the high street, beginning with the butcher's shop (a Victorian meat merchant still haunted it at nights, she told him—sometimes the tenants above could hear the clatter and scrape of hooks dragging across the floor). She said this all before she led him inside, then continued to place her order for a half-pound of beef mince, to be put on her account. "Next," she said, between licking crumbs of sample cheese from her fingers, "we have the corner shop."

Snape was becoming increasingly convinced that the schedule of the tour had been carefully adjusted to fit the timing of Moira's weekly shop. By the time they popped into the bakery, he found himself carrying two plastic bags, and Moira shouldering a mostly empty hessian sack while she waved to the rows above the opposite side of the high street, pointing out the black-beamed flats above a row of antique shops.

"Excuse me," Snape said, growing cold, tired, and exhausted of being talked at. Moira jumped, as though she wasn't used to hearing other people speak. "Could you please tell me," Snape said, trying to keep the snarl out of his voice, "where the name of the village comes from?"

"The name?" said Moira. She blinked at him and pushed her glasses up her nose. "Dark's Hollow."

"Yes," Snape urged her.

She was silent for an agonisingly long time before finally saying, "You see," she said, "it's an old story. Folklore." She frowned at the war memorial, then spotted a bench a few feet behind them. She backed up and lowered herself onto it, dropped her bags onto the ground, and waved her hand. Snape assumed that was her invitation to sit down, though she pressed herself against the opposite arm so that there was a clear few feet between his narrow hips and her ample ones.

"Well, you must know who the Dark is, of course," she said.

Snape said nothing, though the word inexplicably made him shudder.

"Why," Moira said, breathing in sharply, "it's Death."

Another beat.

"Dark's Hollow," Snape said, a chill flooding his tongue. "Death's Hollow."

"We've gone through a few name changes," Moira said, "though I can't think of the original for the life of me - not a native, you may have noticed - but for the past several centuries at least, that's the name we've been known by. Well, Death's Hollow, not that long ago, then when they realized it wasn't the most attractive to tourists—"

"Why, though?" Snape said. "Where did the name come from?"

"We were a plague village," Moira said, her blank face finally creasing into something resembling sadness. "As were many villages, in this area. We were quarantined, you see." She pushed her glasses up her nose again and sniffed. "Was a death sentence for near everyone. They didn't know what caused it back then. The story was that it was brought by Death himself, through the forest into our little hollow in the woods, and he knocked from door to door and greeted every inhabitant with a kiss, then found himself an empty house and made himself at home."

She ran the back of her palm across her lower lip.

"Folklore," she said. "Before they knew about blood-borne pathogens."

"Mm," Snape agreed.

"So that's where it came from," she said dismissively. She swept her knees with her hands. Snape wished they had kept standing—he had to readjust her shopping, and the carrier bags were starting to leave deep red grooves in his palms. Moira coughed and tugged her handbag back onto her shoulder. Snape was rather surprised he wasn't carrying that, too.

"Shall we carry on?" Moira asked.

They did. More stories, more shopping, until every supernatural trope in existence had been thrown onto Snape's deadened ears. He rather wished there was at least one other person to weather this with him—preferably Hermione, who would no doubt begin to laugh from the merest exchanged glance.

"Pardon me," Snape said, interrupting their trajectory toward the other side of the village. Moira had been talking so long that he had barely registered where they were—down a residential street from the village square, the war memorial still in full view. She came to a halt and doubled back to him, where he stood at the gate of a slumping black and white cottage, peering down at the plaque on the bars.

"Bagshot House," Snape said. He pointed at the plaque. "Is this on the tour?"

"Never thought I'd have someone more interested in names than ghosts," Moira grumbled.

"It sounds familiar," Snape said.

"There are those Lord of the Rings films—Bag End?"

"No," Snape said, having no idea what she was talking about.

"It's only a house," Moira said, eager to push on, already taking a faltering step backwards.

"Did someone important used to live here?" Snape said.

"No," Moira replied. "And if they did, I would know."

"Has anything unusual ever happened there?" he pressed on.

"Not really." She clawed at the handle of her handbag and pressed a dent in the mud with the the tip of her boot. Despite her assurance that Bagshot House was nothing out of the ordinary, she continued, "It's nothing, really. The landlord always lets it out to idiots. They never last very long."

Snape was silent, waiting for her to continue.

She sighed. "It's the last ones - no, the tenants before, I think - but the imbeciles must've brought it in. Found it running around the attic like it owned the place. Can't imagine how it must've got in if they didn't bring it in themselves, but they swore up and down they had nothing to do with it. Probably terrified of losing the deposit."

Snape blinked at her. "What on earth are you talking about?"

She huffed, a slack-skinned finger pointing to the roof. "In the loft," she said, her hand shaking. "Must've been twenty foot long, at least. A big, gigantic snake."

Something cold fell on to the tip of Snape's nose. He panicked, wiped it away, expecting congealed blood. Venom. The flicker of a tongue at his neck.

Water. It had started to rain.

"Are you all right?" Moira asked. She took a step forward as Snape lurched back, the glass jars of passata in the carrier bags clanging back against the gate. "Do you need to sit down?" she said. "It's snakes, isn't it? People can be so frightened of them. But you did ask—"

"I'm fine," Snape said, taking a hold of the gate. He looked up to the house, expecting movement, but the curtains were drawn, the windows dark, nobody home. Breathed deep through his nose. Out through his mouth.

"Perhaps it's time to head back," she said. "Unless you want to continue."

Continuing was the last thing he wanted. They went back to the war memorial; his hands were still shaking as he handed over her shopping, and in exchange, Moira produced a plastic bucket from her handbag. Behind her, Hermione suddenly appeared from around the corner, stopped, smiled, and waved.

"For the museum," Moira said, shaking the bucket in her hand; it jangled with coins.

Anything? Hermione mouthed over Moira's shoulder.

Snape shuddered as more drops fell, then slid a twenty pound note into the waiting slot.

"Something happened again," Hermione said as she urged Snape into a booth by the pub fire, then shuffled in after him, turning to warm her legs by the flames. "You can't pretend nothing did. I rather think I've come to know you better than that. What were you doing, anyway?"

Snape had another hot chocolate, was taking it down in gulps. It wasn't helping.

He shuddered and her back pressed up against his side. He wondered if it was deliberate, or if she couldn't feel him there through the fabric of her coat. Finally, she turned so they were side-to-side, their close proximity undeniable, though she seemed inexplicably unconcerned by it.

"Where were you," Snape grunted. Not really a question, didn't really care.

"At the library," Hermione answered, of course. She kicked her heavy rucksack further beneath the table. "Found twelve books, altogether. Might need your help, if we want to find anything in time."

Snape wondered for a moment what she was counting down to, then realised she had most likely been running through the past days on an internal clock, the minutes ticking away until she'd have to go home to her parents, until she'd have to leave him to his own pitiful devices. She had unsettled him so greatly, thrown a spanner into the workings of his mind. He felt so babyish around her, so wholly impractical, that he didn't know how he'd be able to function when she stepped back on the train to London. It was stupid how little he wanted to think about it.

He didn't even like her.

"You did see something," Hermione said, instantly proving his point. "Or at least feel it."

"You don't have a library card," Snape replied, deflecting her accusation.

She blushed brilliantly and whispered, "I'll post them back when I'm done with them. They hadn't been checked out in years, anyway." She brushed his change of subject aside. "We're here to help each other," she said. "I've been honest with you. You need to be honest with me."

Snape took another sip of chocolate. It pooled across his burnt tongue.

"What happened?" she said. "When I found you, it looked as though you'd seen a ghost."

Snape brought his hand to his neck and rubbed. It was aching terribly, a strange, burning patch of skin spreading from his shoulder across his throat to the underside of his chin.

"It was a ghost tour," he said.

"I noticed," she said. "The librarian kept blabbing on about the hauntings. What, did she say something?"

"Not about ghosts," Snape admitted, pressing harder, the cold skin of his hand numbing the pain in his neck. "I'm…" he began. "…I have a phobia." His voice dropped. "Of snakes."

"Okay," Hermione said (thankfully not laughing).

"It was something she said," Snape continued, "that a few years ago, they found a huge snake in the attic of one of the houses here."

"Just found it?" Hermione said, plainly incredulous. "It must've been someone's pet."

"Undoubtedly," Snape said. "And then the deer yesterday. It felt like…I knew it would be there. Like it had something to do with me."

He looked up at Hermione, and he was thankful to see her expression wasn't humouring. Instead, her head was cocked to the side, her brows furrowed.

"Was the house down Church Lane?" she asked.

Snape shrugged.

"It's just that…it sounds familiar. Only, I don't think I marked it on the map."

"Coincidences," Snape said and grabbed hard onto the handle of his mug.

"I'm starting to think about that," Hermione said. "I've been convinced for the longest time that there are things I've forgotten. Well, I know there are things I've forgotten. But I don't think that's it, not wholly."

"I'm starting to think it's not us," Snape replied, knowing exactly what she meant. "It's everyone else."

"And that these coincidences," Hermione agreed, "are perhaps, theoretically, symptomatic of a wrong world trying to right itself. I know it sounds mad, but—"

"But is this the wrong world?" Snape asked. He looked up at their surroundings, at the empty pub and the empty bar, relishing the fact that they were alone.

"Doesn't it feel wrong to you?" Hermione asked. "We think there should be things there aren't, a freak snake shows up in someone's attic—" She shuddered. "—and that somehow seems like something we expect to happen—"

"Coincidences," Snape said with a sneer. "The spots on the map, the rare deer we just happened to spot in the forest…"

Hermione nodded, and began to dig through her bag before extracting her diary from beneath the library books. "So the snake means something," she replied. She licked her thumb and flipped open to a free page. "As does the deer."

She fixed him with her wide-eyed stare, her brown eyes watery, sympathetic, as if she was trying to goad him into starting to cry.

"Tell me, Severus," she said, in her best therapist imitation, "how does this make you feel?"

He squirmed. His trousers made rude noises against the vinyl of the booth. Her knee knocked into his thigh.

His neck throbbed. Afraid.

He met her gaze and set his jaw.

"Empty," he said, his voice hard. "Like I'm missing something."

She sucked at her top lip and scribbled something down without looking at the page.

"Magic," she offered.

"Someone," he muttered.

Hermione flinched and whispered, "Whom?"

"I don't know," Snape said. "Who is Ron?"

She was going to start crying again. He tried not to feel too pleased that that comment shut her up, but couldn't help it.

He glanced at his watch. "Time to go," he said, gesturing toward the door. She wasn't looking at him, busying herself by re-packing her things into her bag. Snape slid out of the booth, refusing to help her, wondering why he suddenly felt angry with her. Again. "Bus will be here in five minutes," he said.

He'd lost his return ticket; Hermione had to buy him a new one. Still, she didn't say another word as he slid into the seat and she sat beside him, only allowed him to press his forehead to the bus window and watch the streets of Dark's Hollow retreat, the shops shuddering out of view as they turned off the high street, past the last few cottages on the outskirts of town.

One last cottage appeared: a stone ruin that appeared to smoke in the cold. Snape knocked his forehead into the window, leaving a mark, like he could slide through the glass and into the lawn. His pulse quickened, his throat tight with panic. He almost said something, almost pointed it out to Hermione, almost shouted to stop the bus so he could go: go see, go witness, go undo everything.

But a second later it had disappeared. One last rush of light from a pair of headlights and the ruin diminished into the deepening twilight, where it was only a house, windows glowing warm yellow, guttering twinkling with lights for Christmas, completely and spectacularly whole.