AN: Ahhh, hi, it's been a long time! I know it took me longer than usual to update, but please know that I will never abandon this story. Sincerely, it is my child. An update will always come in the end, trust. This one is kind of short, but it sets up a lot of what will happen in the next chapter or two. It was really important for me to try and establish Sirius' emotional state here. Hope you like it, reviews are love! Happy Holidays y'all! I only skimmed this as a proofread, so feel free to yell at me if you find mistakes (I should really get a beta...).
Chapter 28: Dog Days of Winter
Hermione's immediate thought upon viewing Sirius Black for the first time in the new year of 1976 was that he looked utterly horrendous. And, unfortunately, there was no secret as to the reason for his dismal appearance. Though classes had resumed a mere two hours previously, in that time news of Black's disownment had managed to circulate to virtually every corner of the castle, and by now it seemed to Hermione that practically the entirety of the student body of Hogwarts was speculating wildly about what they thought had happened. Including the pair of Hufflepuff fourth years walking just ahead of Hermione and Lily as they made their way to Arithmancy.
"So his parents actually kicked him out?" the blonde in front of them said with a titillated gasp, raising a hand to cover her mouth, an action which provided only a flimsy cover for her expression of unmistakably delighted shock.
Her friend the brunette nodded knowingly. "Disowned him, as well," she said blithely. "I heard it got, like," she lowered her voice to the level of a dramatic stage whisper, a modulation which only succeeded in amplifying her next pronouncement, "violent."
And with that comment, Hermione found she was able to control herself no longer.
"Lily," she said with a bite, speaking loudly enough to ensure her words would carry and be heard by the two girls walking ahead of them as well as by her friend, "don't you think that it's exceedingly rude to gossip about situations which not only have nothing to do with you, but of which you also have exactly zero understanding?"
Lily glanced sideways at Hermione, noting the tight set of her friend's jaw. "I agree," she said pointedly, reaching out to grasp Hermione's hand at the same time and giving it a quick, supportive squeeze. Whatever the red head's own feelings about Black might have been, and they often hovered right around the 'irritated' marker, she certainly didn't believe he deserved to be gossiped about in such a cruel manner. And Hermione, whose feelings for Black Lily had long thought to be decidedly more complex than merely 'irritated', was clearly upset on his behalf.
The two Hufflepuff girls stopped talking abruptly, obviously aware they were being indirectly addressed. The brunette, whom Hermione had judged to be the little ring leader of the pair, tossed them a look over her shoulder, the livid expression etched on Hermione's face giving the girl only brief pause before she bolstered herself. "Don't look now," she murmured to her friend, "but the lions are circling."
The blonde giggled nervously, evidently more cowed than her friend at having been caught out by the pair of elder Gryffindor girls. The brunette, however remained unbothered, or at least determined to stubbornly maintain that affectation in the face of scrutiny. "Look," she said, propping a hand defensively on her hip, and turning to address Lily and Hermione directly, causing Lily to raise and eyebrow and Hermione to further bristle. "It's common knowledge around the castle what happened to Black over break, alright. It's not a crime to discuss it."
"Actually," Lily cut in, "As a Prefect, it's well within my rights to take house points from fellow students at my discretion. Keep talking, and I just might."
The brunette scoffed. "Really?"
"Really," Lily said flatly, staring her down. The red head may have been diminutive in stature, but she could be properly intimidating when she wanted to be.
"Wouldn't that classify as an abuse of power?" the brunette protested.
Lily was unmoved. "Wouldn't malicious gossip classify as a form of bullying?" she parried, arms folded stubbornly across her chest.
"Whatever," the Hufflepuff girl muttered, seemingly ready to admit defeat, though not without an attitude. She grabbed her blonde friend's arm, dragging her further down the corridor away from Lily and Hermione, though not so quickly that they couldn't clearly hear her complaining under her breath about 'uppity Gryffindors'.
"So rude," Lily declared, green eyes narrowed and nose scrunched in irritation as she watched the two Hufflepuff girls disappear around the corner up ahead.
"Hermione, are you alright?" she asked after a moment, refocusing her attention on her friend. Rather than glaring balefully after the vanishing Hufflepuffs, as Lily would have expected her to be doing, Hermione was instead peering with odd intent at a painting on the corridor wall labeled 'Diogenes', which depicted a man in a toga who seemed to be behaving quite bizarrely, even by the standards of Hogwart's portrait subjects. She did not seem immediately intent on resuming their march to Arithmancy.
"Hermione?" Lily ventured again, frowning slightly in concern at her still silent friend. "Are you sure you're alright? I know how protective you tend to be of Black-"
And that, as Lily had suspected it would, had the immediate effect of drawing Hermione back to her. Lily had come to find that when Hermione lapsed into one of her distant fogs, as she sometimes tended to do, and was indeed doing now, that mentioning Sirius Black often had the ability to prod her fellow muggleborn back to the present. And this instance was no different. Invoking Black, Lily noted wryly as her friend spun abruptly to face her, remained a highly effective ploy for garnering Hermione's attention. It seemed that her fellow muggleborn, for whatever reason, was still viscerally attuned to the mere mention of Sirius Black's name.
"I'm fine, Lily," Hermione assured her friend, turning away from the painting and attempting to tuck her abundant hair behind her ears. She succeeded in this endeavor only for the merest of seconds before her curls sprang back into the forefront. Hermione may have been largely capable of forcibly ordering her life, even while occupying the past, but she was rarely able to orderly marshal her hair in a similar manner. It was quite frustrating, as was Lily's assertion that she was protective of Black in any manner that went beyond the bounds of properly looking out for ones' fellow housemate.
"And I'm hardly over protective of Black," she continued dismissively, fully aware that she was taking Lily's bait and yet unable to stop herself from doing so. "I'm quite sure he's more than capable of protecting himself in most instances, at the very least physically," Hermione insisted. "Emotionally is another story, but it's certainly not my job to attempt to save Black from his worst rash impulses, and nor is it his to attempt to save me from mine."
Lily raised an eyebrow. "Have you been having very many rash impulses lately, Hermione?" she asked incredulously.
Hermione shrugged. "Perhaps a few," she admitted, before adjusting her shoulder bag and proceeding purposefully down the corridor in the direction of the Arithmancy classroom, leaving a thoughtful Lily briefly in her wake. Just what exactly, the red head wondered, did Hermione mean by 'rash impulses'?
"He's staring at his brother," Lily announced that evening at dinner.
"Who is?" Dorcas asked curiously around a mouthful of potatoes.
"Black," Hermione and Lily said at the same time, Hermione without bothering to look up from her asparagus.
"He's being remarkably unsubtle about it too," Lily observed, voice tinged with a degree of empathy she usually wouldn't have spared for Black. "I bet he wishes he could have taken Regulus with him, when he left," she speculated softly.
Dorcas raised an eyebrow. "Do you think so? They've never exactly seemed close, have they? I don't think I've ever even seen them talk to each other."
Lily shrugged. "Me and Tuney aren't close, either. We used to be though, and I do still love her, even if she's been completely horrible to me the last few years. Regulus doesn't seem completely horrible," she said quietly. "Severus says he's shy."
Dorcas raised her arms in a clearly sarcastic gesture of surrender. "Oh, well if Severus says!"
Lily sighed frustratedly. "My point is that sibling relationships are complicated, and Regulus Black isn't necessarily a bad sort just because his last name is Black and he's in Slytherin. Stop being so judgmental, Dorcas."
Dorcas looked mildly affronted. "I was judging Snape, Lily, not Regulus Black, in case that wasn't clear. I don't know anything about Black's little brother beyond that he always looks sullen. And contrary to what you might think, Lily, I do know that not all Slytherins are completely awful, " Dorcas said defensively. "Snape definitely is, though."
Lily met this pronouncement with stony silence.
"He is, Lily," Dorcas insisted once it became clear the redhead wasn't going to respond to her, Lily having opted instead to stare stubbornly at the tabletop, mouth pinched in a frown, avoiding the eyes of both her friends.
Dorcas reached for her, and Lily allowed the blonde to place a hand on her shoulder, though she still refused to look up. "Look babe, I know you don't want to hear this, but Snape isn't the innocent eleven year old you met in Spinner's End anymore. He's a moody teenager with a mean streak who feels entitled to your friendship and affection just because he's known you for half a decade and managed to spot you were a witch before anyone else did. Just ask yourself this, Lils: If he's really your dearest friend, why does he pall around with people who call you a mudblood?"
"Nobody's perfect," Lily whispered. "He's been my best friend, Dorcas. I don't want to hurt him."
"I know you don't, Lily," the blonde said earnestly. "But just...don't let him hurt you instead, alright?"
There was a moment of charged, heavy silence.
"People don't always grow into what you expect or want them to be," Hermione broke in eventually, having been quiet up until that point. For all that she was indescribably close to the two girls beside her, they still had a longer, shared history that she sat outside of. Not to mention the fact that Hermione had always been reluctant to comment very much on Lily's friendship with Snape, aware that her knowledge of him as an adult biased her opinion of the Slytherin. But Snape had shown her who he was in this time as well, and she couldn't let Dorcas confront this completely alone.
"Sometimes it's better to let go of someone," Hermione said sadly, reaching for Lily but finding her eyes drifting, almost unaccountably, to Regulus Black, "instead of trying desperately to hold on to a version of them that doesn't exist anymore. Or that never did at all."
"I don't want to talk about this anymore," Lily said flatly. But she didn't shrug off her friends' hands.
Very quickly into the new term it became clear to the fifth years that their Professors were now officially in the throes of what might have been termed OWL overdrive, and that they fully expected their relevant class of students to be likewise consumed by the malady. In seeking to accomplish this feat, their Professors had proceed to throw inhumanely massive amounts of homework at the fifth years the moment they returned to Hogwarts from their respective Holiday breaks. It was therefore unsurprising that the early January evening found Remus Lupin deep in the midst of the revision process, at least before he was distracted from his work by the looming presence of a preternaturally large black dog.
Remus sighed heavily, throwing aside his quill. "For fucks sake, Padfoot," he muttered, glancing hurriedly around the sparsely populated Gryffindor Common Room to ensure there was no one close enough to overhear his use of the telling nickname. No one was, but people were beginning to stare. Afterall, dogs weren't usually allowed as familiars at Hogwarts, so it wasn't every day you saw a large, bear like one traipsing about the castle. Though, Remus reflected grimly, the sight was becoming worryingly more common.
"You can't keep doing this," he admonished quietly. "Someone's bound to catch on, and it's not fucking good for you either, Sirius, and you know it."
Padfoot cocked his head to the side and whined, pawing obstinately at the plush read carpet in a clear expression of disagreement with Remus' assertion. It seemed that Sirius was determined to be contrary even in canine form. Typical. Remus eyed him with distinct exasperation and judgement, albeit with some inevitable reluctant fondness mixed in. Padfoot continued to peer plaintively back up at him, undeterred by the set of mixed emotions Remus' expression surely betrayed.
"For fuck's sake," Remus said again, annoyed. Nevertheless, he began clearing the area next to him on the sofa, transferring the mess of books and papers laid out beside him to the already crowded table in front of him. "Get up here then, you idiotic mutt," he said once he'd managed to make enough room to accommodate one ridiculously large dog. "But don't bother me," Remus warned as Sirius happily jumped up to settle next to him. "I'm trying to revise, which is something you'd consider doing if you had any sense. Go ahead though, fail your OWLS. It's not like they're vitally important for your career prospects or anything. Or were you planning to make the change to Padfoot permanent and trick someone into adopting you as a pet? Solid plan there, mate."
Padfoot simply stared up at him, as though waiting for him to be done, and Remus sighed once more, this time in defeat.
"At least you'll keep me warm," he allowed grudgingly, returning to his Potions notes. Padfoot huffed agreeably before burying face against the werewolf's side, Moony's fingers rising automatically to rest pleasantly atop his head, scritching occasionally. Maybe it was him, Remus realized warily, who Sirius was planning to trick into adopting him, though James certainly had more space.
"You know, Sirius," Remus said sometime later, having finally finished with Potions, but not yet mentally ready to move on to tackling Transfiguration. "You could try actually dealing with your emotions for once, instead of muting them by spending all your time as a dog."
Padfoot whined, raising his head and shuffling forward a bit in order to lay his head on Remus' left thigh, half in his lap. He may not have wanted to hear what Remus had to say, but at least the Werewolf knew he was listening.
"I know this might come as a revelation to you, mate," Remus said quietly, scratching Padfoot idly behind the ears, his petting an attempt to soften the blow of his words. "But just because something is easy and it makes you feel good temporarily, doesn't mean that it's good for you and you should keep doing it."
Padfoot sighed, staring at him dolefully for a moment before shifting his liquidly black eyes (darker than Sirius' were in human form) off to side. Remus would have liked to think that meant that the mutt knew he was right.
"This isn't good for you Sirius," he reiterated. "I know you feel like shit right now, but you can't just keep skipping meals and classes to mope around as Padfoot, and then drink yourself into a stupor at night when you think James and I aren't' paying attention. That isn't going to fix anything."
Padfoot whined once more, and Remus, knowing that Sirius had at least heard his point even if he hadn't entirely accepted it yet, let him be for the moment.
Whatever his friends may have thought, Sirius wasn't so irrevocably emotionally stunted that he was unable to see that Remus, and James, who was less direct about things but obviously just as worried about him as Remus was, were right. But it was just easier to be around other people as Padfoot right now, given how he was feeling. Easier to be around himself too, come to that. He knew he couldn't keep doing it so much, obviously; McGonagall would probably skin him alive if she ever figured out he was an illegal animagus. Sirius also liked to think she might be proud of him, but he wasn't deluded enough to think that would stop her from tacking his pelt up on the wall in her office as a dire warning to other students.
His emotions were simpler as Padfoot. He could still hear people gossiping about him, better even, with his enhanced hearing in that form, but it mattered to him less; didn't seem worth as getting bothered about. And he enjoyed the varying reactions people, especially girls, had to him as Padfoot. It tended to go one of two diametrically opposing ways; either they would react with fright, thinking he was a Grim, which Sirius found hilarious, or they would want to coo and pet at him, which he also enjoyed, at least coming from the girls. Sirius had always been tactile, and always rather shameless about it, traits he absolutely maintained when he was in canine form. It was probably a bit pathetic, hanging around the Gryffindor Common Room as Padfoot like he was, badgering Remus and various girls into petting him, but Sirius couldn't bring himself to care overly much at the moment. It may have been pathetic, but it felt a lot better than existing as human right then.
Besides, there were so many simple joys as Padfoot, so many good smells he just wanted to chase down and burry his muzzle in the source of to breath it all in as deeply as possible. There was a particularly enticing one he'd caught faintly before, but net yet been able to find out completely, beginning to permeate the air just now. It was distinct from Remus' inky bookishness, but not entirely dissimilar; baked apples, a warm hint of cinnamon, parchment. Sirius lifted his head, eager to inhale more of the scent, wherever it was coming from.
"My goodness, is that a dog or some kind of bear?"
Granger. Fucking of course. He should have known.
She reached out her hand to let him sniff, and Sirius caught the deep set scents of ink and parchment along with the general cloud of apple, cinnamon and an almost whiskey sweetness that surrounded her. Once she'd judged that he deemed her unobjectionable (Granger couldn't have possibly known how good she smelled to him when he was Padfoot) she reached out to scratch under his chin, Sirius tilting his head obligingly to accommodate her all too brief affection. He could feel Remus eyeing him judgmentally for the duration of Granger's administrations, but that was Moony's default expression when it came to him lately, so Sirius couldn't' find it within himself to be bothered. Not when Granger smelled so good, and not when what she was doing felt so good.
"Utterly shameless," Remus muttered out of the side of his mouth, low enough that only Sirius would hear him. Sirius shoved at him with his paw in retaliation.
"He certainly is pretty, isn't he," Granger observed, moving on to tangle her fingers in the coat of Padfoot's back, peering at him interestedly. Sirius felt himself puffing up in response, somewhat involuntarily.
"He'd like to think so, I'm sure," Remus responded wryly.
"Is he yours?" Granger asked, having knelt down next the sofa, better enabling herself to run her fingers through Padfoot's fur, much to Sirius' gratification. Like much of the population of Hogwarts, Granger's response to him as Padfoot was a vast improvement over her typical response to him as Sirius Black.
"In a manner of speaking," Remus allowed.
"What do you call him?"
"A nuisance, mostly," Remus quipped. Granger cocked her head to the side, evaluating him thoughtfully for a moment, before standing back up. "Hmm," she said, and Sirius wasn't even going to try and contemplate what she might have been thinking with that vague little exclamation. He did, however, whine softly at the loss of her touch, at which Moony shot him yet another supremely judgmental look, which was quite unsympathetic of him and wholly unnecessary, in Sirius' opinion. He was perfectly aware he was currently completely embarrassing himself, thank you very much. He didn't need Remus to point it out for him. Conveniently though, being a dog served fairly well as license to not give a fuck about anything, which was exactly the reason Sirius had been spending so much time as Padfoot lately in the first place. Which he knew Moony knew, because he'd just lectured him about it.
"Attracting strays now, are you Remus?" Granger queried.
"Yes, I suppose it's my inner animal magnetism that must draw them to me," the werewolf deadpanned, and Granger laughed.
"Actually," she ventured, tipping her head to the side thoughtfully once more. "I'd think with your…condition, that animals might be more cautious of you."
"Generally they are," Remus admitted, somewhat ruefully. "Not all of them, though, and this one seems to have had no qualms about bullying me into cuddling him all night. I'm headed up though," he said around a slight yawn, beginning to gather up his things, "so you're welcome to him. I wouldn't indulge him too much though, not if you expect to get anything done. He's something of an attention whore, I'm afraid."
Granger raised an amused eyebrow at that. Sirius couldn't find it within himself to be offended by the assessment.
"And you," Remus said, turning to him and leveling him with yet another pointed stare, "don't do anything ethically questionable."
Sirius huffed. His inhibitions when it came to certain things were undoubtedly lowered when he was in canine form, but it wasn't as though he was going to shove his muzzle up under Granger's uniform skirt just because he might have been able to get away with it as a dog. He might want to, but he wasn't actually about to do it.
Granger was frowning slightly at Remus, as though puzzled by the entire interaction she'd just witnessed. "Good night, Remus," she said eventually.
"Good night, Hermione," Moony replied with a soft smile for her, and then, with one last vaguely warning look directed at Padfoot, he left.
"Very odd," Granger muttered as she watched Remus disappear up the stairs to the boys' dormitory, before settling next to Sirius on the couch. "Very odd."
It was nice, Sirius thought muzzily, laying there next to Granger as she studied. He wasn't paying much attention to her, truth be told. Just enjoying the whiskey apple smell of her surrounding him, and the warmth from her side leeching into his. That was the upside of being Padfoot; Sirius didn't have to pay attention to things. Instead he could just enjoy them without worrying about any of the implications.
There was a nagging voice somewhere in the back of his head, one that sounded annoyingly like Moony (his conscience probably, Sirius reckoned, or whatever might have been left of his good sense) telling him that he couldn't keep this up; that it wasn't healthy, wasn't good, was everything Remus and James had been lecturing him about for the past two weeks. But the voice was easy to ignore. For the time being, anyway. And after all, Sirius figured, when had ever been healthy or good? Not anytime that he could remember. Granger was talking now though, setting aside her Transfiguration text before arching her back into a stretch, and Sirius elected to focus on that visual rather than the disjointed, unpleasant thoughts beginning to swirl around in his head.
"You know," Granger mused, looking at him. "I've always been more of a cat person."
Sirius snorted. That figured, didn't it. If he'd been a human, he'd have been tempted to ask why she hung around Remus so much then. But he was currently Padfoot, so he just looked up at her with a vague sort of curiosity. He didn't mind if she kept talking.
"I had a cat once," Granger continued. "Before." She bit her lip as she stroked the fur of his head, seeming wistful. "I've not been around dogs as much, but you seem alright, no matter what Remus says. I can tell he likes you, anyway. Doubt he'd put up with you the way he was doing if he didn't. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to call you, though. He wasn't very elucidating on that point."
She lent back slightly, surveying him. "You're quite large and frightening looking," she said mildly, almost amusedly, as she continued to pet at him. "Perhaps I ought to call you 'Grim'." Sirius thumped his tail enthusiastically in agreement, and Granger smiled. "Yes," she said. "I think that suits."
She gave him one last friendly scratch behind the ears before leaning over to rummage around in her book bag, emerging with a large tome with a faded black binding. While the book was outwardly labeled 'Troll Genealogy; An Account of the Prominent Medieval Clans' (something which Sirius could hardly imagine anyone ever wanting to actually read, even Granger) it looked rather suspiciously similar in shape to one of the volumes he'd stolen from the Black family library over Christmas. Sirius had sent the lot of them off to Granger by owl once he'd settled at the Potter's, eager to get any reminders of Grimmauld Place as far away from him as possible, and equally reluctant to spoil his welcome with James' parents by chancing one of them running across the banned books on blood magic and other such nasty topics he'd had stashed in his trunk.
It seemed Granger hadn't been slow to get into them, despite how much time Sirius knew she must have been spending revising for OWLs. Sirius had suspected for years that Granger didn't sleep as much as most normal people. She was always in the common room late at night, studying or reading or, more rarely, though Sirius had managed to catch her at it a few times, simply staring into the fire with an inscrutable look on her face. He'd also suspected for years that Granger was at least as fucked in the head as he was, if not more so. She was just generally better at hiding it than him. Not that she'd bothered to at the Slug Club Christmas party. Not from him, anyway. Granger was fucking ruthless, that much had become clear to him, even if no one else had quite realized it yet. Evans maybe, he conceded.
And yet, even while Granger was running around punching Prefect pricks in the face and drugging their Professors, there was still something undeniably delicate about her. Granger's was an elegant ruthlessness, underlined by vulnerability, and Sirius had to admit there was something he found attractive in the juxtaposition. Now, still focused intently on her book (his book? One of the ones he'd stolen for her?), Granger toed off her shoes, drawing her legs up fully onto the sofa and stretching them out till her stockinged feet were nestled under his belly. Sirius shifted slightly in response, and Granger let out a small, pleased hum.
"You're quite toasty, aren't you?" she said, wiggling her toes beneath him and Sirius moved his head to rest to rest on her shins, letting his eyes fall closed and managing to feel almost content.
"Harry thought he saw a Grim once," Granger said a while later. Sirius wasn't sure how much later, only that it was dark and he was mostly asleep. "Well, Ron thought Harry might have seen one, Harry reckoned it was probably just an overly large dog. Rather like you, I imagine."
She rested her hand absently on his head, staring somewhere into the distance as she spoke, having finally set aside her book. "I wonder sometimes, what they'd be like now," she said lowly. "What I would have been like with them. What they're like without me. Though I suppose they're not like anything quite yet."
Granger paused, eyes drifting downward . "They were though," she said. " And they will be. Maybe I'll even get to see." She smiled sadly, giving his head a scratch and seeming to come back to herself a bit. "Probably not, though," she whispered. "But it's nice to talk about them."
Sirius peered up at her, more awake now. What was Granger talking about? She certainly wasn't making any sense to him. She seemed sad though, and Sirius could understand that at least, so he shuffled closer, moving his head into her lap. Granger began to pet at him, and Sirius found himself drifting back to the edge of sleep with her motions. But even as he let himself begin to fall back into pleasant oblivion, Sirius couldn't help but wonder; Who the fuck were Harry and Ron?
"Happy with yourself?" Remus asked him the next morning as Sirius slunk back into their shared dorm, having spent all night in his animagus form curled up next to Granger on the couch in the Common Room.
"Not fucking remotely," Sirius spat, because whatever else he might have been, he wasn't a liar.
"Amos," Hermione asked later that same morning over breakfast, "Do you like dogs?"
She hadn't had much opportunity as of late to spend with the Hufflepuff outside the two of them revising together, each of them being occupied with their coming exams, OWLs and NEWTs respectively. As a result, Hermione had discovered in recent weeks that while she found Amos' companionship quite pleasant, on the whole, she also didn't miss him overly much when he wasn't around for long stretches. Nevertheless, she'd felt the impulse to seek him out that morning, and so she had.
"Well enough, I suppose," Amos said in response to her question, shrugging amiably. "Why do you ask? Haven't seen one around lately, have you?"
"Oh, I imagine you've been seeing quite a lot of one around lately, haven't you Granger?" broke in a silky voice from behind her, the last one Hermione might have expected to hear. Severus Snape rarely spoke to her unsolicited, and she was hard pressed to think of a time he'd ever done so when she wasn't with Lily.
Amos spun in his seat. "What are you on about?" the Hufflepuff demanded confusedly. "Snape, is it?"
"Yes," the Slytherin answered coolly. "Though I don't believe I was addressing you, was I Diggory?"
"See here," Amos started indignantly, but Hermione stayed him quickly with a hand on his thigh.
"I'm not sure I take your meaning, Severus," she said, turning to face the Slytherin as well, voice equally cool as his own had been mere moments previously.
Snape narrowed his eyes at her, possibly in response to her use of his first name. "Maybe you'll understand me better on the 15th," he said, eyeing her with a malevolent expectance, waiting for Hermione to put the pieces together. It didn't take her long. February 15th was the next full moon, and it was now crystal clear that Severus Snape wasn't talking about the mysterious stray she'd slept next to last night when he'd said she was spending time with dogs. He was talking about Remus.
"I've no clue what you're referring to, Severus," Hermione said flatly, unconscious of how her grip on Amos' thigh had tightened to the point of being almost painful. "Though I do wonder why you're seeking me out for this conversation when you ought to perhaps be speaking to someone you're much closer to. Or is it just that you know Lily doesn't take kindly to petty threats from her so-called friends?"
For half a second, Hermione almost thought Snape had the good grace and self-awareness to look somewhat ashamed. The moment passed quickly though. "Don't talk about me and Lily," he snarled.
"Don't try to intimidate me," Hermione countered. "You don't know what I've seen."
"I see more than you know, Granger," Snape spat, sending her one last palpably vicious look before stalking away. Hermione stared after the Slytherin, wondering how she was possibly supposed to contain this.
"Do you know him?" Amos asked curiously after Snape had left and he'd managed, with some difficulty, to pry Hermione's hand loose from his upper thigh.
Hermione shook her head ruefully. "Both more than I want to, and yet not as much as might be beneficial," she said cryptically.
AN: I won't even pretend to like Snape at all. Sorry lol. Please review, this pandemic has me struggling to write (or at least, that's what I'm blaming it on) but every time I get feedback it spurs me on. Love you all, thanks for reading and sticking with me! I can't wait for the next chapter, shit's about to go down.
Also, I included the Diogenes bit because the chapter was dog heavy and also I'm extremely pretentious and my partner has a philosophy degree. It will have no deeper meaning. Probably. Unless I decide it will ;)