BITE AND SWALLOW

Disclaimer: This is a non-profit tribute to the works of JK Rowling who created and, together with her publishers and licensees, owns the characters and settings elaborated herein.

A/N: Spoilers, seventh year fic, begun after OotP and not compatible with HBP or DH. Thanks to all my reviewers and especially to my previewers, Bellegeste and Lady Memory.

It was silly to expect an immediate response to her last letter. She had asked him something so personal, so difficult, that it was only natural he take some time to consider his answer. Yet she fretted.

How had she dared ask him that? What right did she have? She was not his sister, his lover, his wife, and their friendship was too new to be so recklessly tested; so soon, too, after she had made him question its durability. She was an idiot.

The canteen was crowded. She paid for her cheese and lettuce roll and lukewarm coffee and sat down absently at a table with one occupant before realising it was Draco. He was grimly picking bits of onion out of his spaghetti bolognaise and dropping them on the side of his plate, but he glanced up when she sat down

"Oh. Hi," he said.

"Hi. Why order it if you don't like it?"

He shrugged. "Least bad option, I suppose. Everything else is either too dry – like your sandwich – or too greasy." He shrugged again. "I'll live."

"You could bring your own," she suggested dubiously.

"Why don't you?"

"Too much of a rush in the morning. Besides the rolls aren't bad." She grimaced. "Well, not that bad," she said. "On good days. When the lettuce isn't wilted." She opened her roll to check if it this was a good day. It wasn't.

"Didn't know you liked Severus," he said, twirling a few strands on his fork and looking at them critically. "When did that start?"

"After I stopped being his student." She took a small bite and a swallow of coffee. "Not that I ever disliked him, exactly. But you know how he is about Gryffindors. He wouldn't give me the time of day before."

"Hmm." He chewed and swallowed and twirled more spaghetti.

"You've known him a long time, haven't you?"

"Always."

"What was he like?" she asked, leaning forward.

His eyes shuttered. "Mostly – uncomfortable."

"You mean, uneasy? Not fitting in?"

"No, though I daresay he felt it." He twirled and twirled his spaghetti. "I meant like the chairs in his office. You know they won't break under you, but there's always a knob or an edge sticking into your back, however much you wriggle."

"I always thought you liked him."

He snorted. "As if that mattered. He's family. All that's left."

"But you have other family. Your Aunt Andromeda, your cousin –"

"No, Hermione. They're not family, they're only relatives. Severus is family. The only person in the world who'd lose a wink of sleep if I disappeared and was never seen again."

She opened her mouth to deny the implication and closed it again. His parents had died trying to protect him and his school friends had scorned him for changing sides. Who else was there?

"I would, I think. Lose a few winks, anyway."

He forced a smile. "That's because you're you, not because I'm me," he said. "But thank you for trying."