It sucks that I have to have a disclaimer. Ok. I don't own Harry Potter. I'm not j.k. (just kidding) about the fact that I'm not J.K. Rowling. I am not affiliated with Warner Bros. nor do I make any claim to be. Fan writing FAN fiction. Enough said.
I really do just update this for the hell of it. Much love to Escoger for being such a sport and listening to me talk about this story.
Intellectually Correct
Chapter 28
As Odin and Hermione sat at an IHOP in Salem, marveling over the vast number of combinations they could get on their breakfasts, an owl tapped upon the window next to them. The bird was not as disheveled-looking as it had been before, but Hermione recognized it to be Snape's nonetheless, and she hastily abandoned Odin to retrieve the letter from its talons.
Miss Granger:
Doing well is not necessarily equivocal to being busy, and at the moment it means quite the opposite. I'd much prefer to be not busy and thus be doing better than I am now. But this is besides the point.
I think the information you sent is satisfactory. As to your deduction that I might be in Massachusetts-you're quite wrong, please do send the other requested lists, as well as those in Vancouver (Canada).
My 'offering', I confess, was meant far from an apology, but take its meaning as you wish, and, indeed, at this point if you would be obliged to consider it an apology, you may. I hereby give you the 'good-riddance' you seem to desire, as well, and that I give freely. And my giving of it is as far from the 'good-will' of my 'heart' as Timbuktu is to New York City.
No need to beg forgiveness of me; I admit to having a reputation for withholding mercy, but I know the value of forgiveness so much that when it is contritely asked for, I cannot in good conscience withhold it.
Your gift is...refreshing, in every sense of the word.
I must object to using the term 'pen pals'; it brings to mind brutally chipper Americans who are so desperate for someone in a foreign country to like them that they'll start a conversation with you in the loo! For no reason at all except to be an epitomical nuisance!
And you mustn't look down upon Fantine. I caught her myself.
-S.S.
"And now I've got a bit of bacon for you, my dear," Hermione cooed as she smiled over the letter, stroking the bedraggled bird. It was so cute how obvious Snape was on paper, despite how inscrutable he could be in person. His little observations on forgiveness were about as sentimental as he got, and she thought it was marvelous to see it-plus, she was charmed by how gruff and indirect the rest of his letter was after that. Despite this, and despite the fact that Snape didn't like to answer her questions, he'd still bestowed upon her some small praise: "Refreshing, in every sense of the word."
Her heart soared. Snape liked her shampoo! She couldn't have felt prouder, though she hurriedly whisked under her mental carpet the fact that she'd almost gone out and bought some commercial shampoo instead of brewing it herself.
And that wasn't all! Snape also...albeit indirectly...agreed to be her pen-pal. On that note-hey, he'd written back in the first place! As she decided in retrospect, she honestly wouldn't have been too surprised if he had refused to write back to her after having got his information.
Then again, was he just writing back because he needed more information? He was requesting that she send the "other requested lists"...was that just bluffing on his part, so she couldn't positively identify his location, or was he telling the truth?
"What are you reading, ma cherie?" came the voice of Odin from behind her, and Hermione raised her head.
"A letter," she admitted, and debated with herself as to whether she should show him or not.
"Will this be a secret letter?" asked Odin as he knealt beside her, teasing but also impatient. "Or one you would not wish to not share with me?"
"What a wordy sentence," Hermione stated, shrugging. "Here, you can read it."
"I have no use for letters that are not secret!" Here Odin stood, shaking his rounded shoulders out proudly and leaning a little bit backward. "I care only for mysteries! Namely, the mystery of that beautiful Becky Hawthorne!"
"I can't believe that you think you've fallen in love with her," Hermione replied, standing up and stalking towards the car while naming an argument that she'd been trying to shove through Odin's thick head for quite some time since the day before. "I really do think it's just...what you'd call a fancy, a crush."
"It is not!" Odin replied, following but getting truly beet-faced with his denial. "Nor is it lust, nor is it a sudden passion, nor do I have some unexplainable attraction for her."
"It seems fairly unexplainable to me," Hermione grumbled in return, getting into the passenger's seat of the car. "But I ought to mention...did you pay for our meal or did we just skip out?"
"Skipped," Odin confessed, turning his attention to leaping into the car and revving the engine. "Won't happen again, I promise. Tragic old habit from when I didn't have a cent."
"I'm beginning to miss being your girlfriend." On that sarcastic note, they left the parking-lot and headed towards the highway.
. . . x . . . X . . . x . . .
"Amanda Bright, the attorney, will be here in just a few minutes. Would you like a cheese danish?" Daisy suggested, carrying a plate over to where Snape stood by the open window, pensively looking out onto the Huckleberry bushes and front lawn. "Such a pretty day to open the windows. And I guess this place could be aired out; it's a little musty."
Not saying anything, Snape settled down onto the stiff cushion of the window-seat, remembering all too vividly (as his eyes cast upon the phonograph in the nearby corner) that humiliating day that he had imagined 'Lily' in that unbecoming manner in this very room. Unfortunately, his lower member didn't think it appropriate to remember anything but how to react when thinking about a half-naked Lily, and it poked insistently against the front of his trousers.
In the ensuing embarrassment, Snape turned to look out the window again, which was fortunate given that Daisy was staring in his direction. Fortunately, she seemed to be gazing more at his face than what hid below his belt.
"Becky's in the shower," she continued, "and little Thomas is asleep. Do you normally wake this early?"
He nodded, feeling a little queasy. He'd suddenly had an image of Granger in his mind, asking him that question, and he had to shake away the fanciful notion. No, I can't do to Granger what I did to Lily. I ruined Lily for myself in the domain of my own mind. I couldn't ever look at her again, much less become her friend again. I can't disrespect Granger in that way.
It was funny, though, that he was thinking of Hermione Granger so often now. Though he sensed that he couldn't talk to her in the way he'd talked to 'Lily'; it just wasn't right. She didn't leave me, like Lily did, after all. She didn't betray me, like Lily did, after all. I left Hermione, I betrayed Hermione. Maybe that is why she is not dead to me.
Daisy was still rambling on in a jovial sort of way.
"I don't know who you remind me of...perhaps you're a little like my grandfather. Very taciturn until you got to know him."
There was nothing more Snape hated than to be compared to anybody. How could he, such an extraordinarily wretched person who tended to have the world's sewage dumped at his feet every day, be considered like anybody else?
"But there was one thing he liked to tell me, when he was getting on," Daisy continued, approaching Severus in a too-friendly way that made him uncomfortable. "He liked to emphasize the importance of one having done something. How it was the doing of something that put one in a different class from everyone who didn't do anything. And...oh dear, I'm getting a bit muddled...how the doing of something was better to regret than the not doing of anything."
Snape just nodded, feeling acutely aware that somehow Daisy was reading him very well.
"Apparently, as I found out much later, he was from the South and had been on the police force there in his youth. There had been some terrible atrocities against minorities in his neighborhood that he regretted having never acted against. I don't know all the details, though I have been doing some research into old records and such."
"Why are you telling me this?" Snape asked suddenly, turning his bitter eyes towards the ground.
"I don't know," Daisy said. "I just supposed you might be in need of some encouragement."
Saying nothing, Severus shivered a little and folded up on the window-seat like an accordion.
"Why did you think that?"
The answer was startling.
"Are you certain that you're not...affectionate of Becky?"
"What?" He looked at her as she squeezed her bulk into a chair that looked altogether too small. "No, I'm really not. That's ridiculous."
"Are you certain?" the woman asked, persistent. "I could swear, you act like a man brooding in love."
He shuddered at the thought. I've always been in love, really, he thought. It's like that one really scratchy record from the cabinet, which goes..."I've been in love more than anybody else has, I guess..."
As he fell into a woolgathering mode, Daisy continued, "I'm curious. Do tell me. I shan't reveal it to her...or him..."
"Him?" spat Snape, a bit aghast.
"Sorry, I'm so sorry," Daisy replied fully apologetic. "One never knows these days which way a stranger might lean."
"Never mind," Snape replied unhappily.
"So, tell me about her," Daisy requested. "You're certain it's not Becky?"
"Becky is a kind, considerate soul, who deserves better than what she got out of her husband...but I doubt that I could muster true passion for her. I'm not what she deserves, at any rate," Snape noted, not sure if this would make him sound like he was in love with Becky.
"Then for whom do you have passion?"
Lily. Always Lily, Snape thought, but in the back of his mind he pictured a certain other Muggle-born Gryffindor.
"May I be honest?" he asked, changing the subject completely. "I have other things to do."
Daisy's smile was sweet, if not a little disappointed. "Of course, of course."
Standing and striding out of the room, he managed to say, "Thanks for the coffee."
. . . x . . . X . . . x . . .
Hey, if you want to, do check out my new page: Anachronistic Anglophile. There's lots of stuff there. I just update this story here due to its popularity.
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Do review. This story may be rubbish, but it's rather entertaining rubbish.
