Author's Note: I'll be out of town and net access from next week onwards for a conference. Since I'm busy with prep, Chapter 5 is going to wait a week or two, so that I can edit and polish it properly. Next week, instead, I'll be transferring across my other fics, which are also accessible through my LJ account, linked in my profile. They aren't, sadly, HP fics. About the short length of this one, I'm sorry. Chapter 5 should be back to a respectable length :)

Edit: Small britpicked fixes made. Thanks very much to whitehound for the comments!

Chapter 4

I never did get around to reading Ron's letters. Instead, I fell into a tiring but comfortable pattern for a few weeks. Breakfast, apparition to work, Snape's slowly improving sandwiches for lunch, more woodwork practice and first-aid, dinner at the pub, home. On Saturdays, for about a month, I met with Harry and Ron for ice-cream. Ron seemed alright, even. Not angry or fuming or desperate or heartbroken, but almost normal. I felt a little upset at first, because surely there should be some heartache, something left from the feelings that had made him feel so betrayed.

I didn't like to think that he had that temper usually. Yes, he had always been a little stubborn and argumentative, but he'd been my friend for years. I didn't want to allow the thought that Ron could be that bitter, that petty, into my head. It lent a sour aftertaste to the ice-cream, and left me a little off-centre as we caught up that first time.

But, then, the bubble burst, and I was reassured, if that is the best language for it, of the strength of Ron's emotions for me. He hemmed and hawwed, fiddled with his dirty spoon on the table, and then looked sternly into my eyes for a few quiet moments.

"Ron?" I asked, and Harry excused himself to the bathroom apologetically. I tried not to wince, able to anticipate what was coming.

He rubbed his neck, and fiddled for a few more seconds before speaking.

"I'm sorry," He looked around, and paused, "I mean, I was obviously taking it too fast for you, and I want you to know, Hermione,"

He leaned across the table and reached for my hands. I pulled them back, clenched into fists so tight that my fingernails bit into my palms, head shaking silently.

"I..." he seemed a little thwarted by my physical withdrawl, but he pushed onwards. "I'll wait for you, for as long as you need."

I wanted to punch him, throw his conciliatory tone and oblivious stupid misconceptions through Fortescue's glass window. I took a deep breath, and tried to control my frustration. Ron was my friend, Harry was my friend, and we could get past this.

"I don't need it Ron," I eventually managed, "I'm never going to think of you in that way."

He sputtered, and nodded. Shook his head. Scratched at a freckle on his arm. Smiled guilelessly and warmly at me.

"Hermione, you can't pretend that we weren't making love all summer."

Deep breaths, I reminded myself. This was an awful place to have this conversation, and I'm sure that Ron mistook my leaning forwards as some sort of acceptance. His rude shock when I spoke showed clearly in his eyes.

"We didn't make love, Ron. We fucked. I was numb, and empty, and traumatised, and we fucked. I'm sorry that you thought it was anything else, and I'm sorry that I used you like that – I never would have if I'd known how you felt – but... I..."

He looked very worried, so I gave him a minute.

"I'd just like to go back to being friends, all of us. I'm a little glad, that you slipped me that ring. That the spell on it went off, that it pushed us apart. Who knows how long we'd have been in that horrible situation, otherwise?"

He grimaced, then pursed his lips very tightly. As if summoned by a secret signal, Harry traipsed back happily from the bathroom. My angry glare at him was lost, as his attention was focused mainly on Ron.

We carried on alright, if a bit strained. Later in the afternoon, I brought the subject up with Harry, who reassured me that everything would be alright. Ron would understand, was already beginning to understand. That next week would be better, different.

It wasn't. Again ice-cream, again Harry Potter and the Sudden Urge to Urinate for Great Lengths of Time. Again Ron reached for my hand, smiling.

"You're still wearing the ring, love."

I shook him off, and showed him pointedly the name engraved inside.

"Snape hated it, so he told me to keep it. It's become a symbol for me, of my freedom from that whole mess." and you, I was tempted to spit out. But, instead, I spent another half hour calmly trying to talk Ron through it all. Harry spent another half hour later in the day reassuring me that, yes, indeed, things would be different next week.

When I sat down at lunch, the fourth Monday after the fourth Saturday of ice-cream, I tore my first sandwich half into shreds, throwing the scraps of bread and cheese mercilessly up at Owls coming to and from the postal office.

"You know, you'll never hit them with a throwing arm like yours," Snape jibed. I ignored him, and ate the other half, wishing I hadn't wasted so much Branston pickle on the dumb birds and kicking my heels against the steps of Ollivander's.

He grunted, accepting my petulance, and ignored me in favour of his food for a while.

"It's Weasley, isn't it? I told you when you first mentioned it, that I thought those outings were a stupid idea."

"Harry, actually."

He nodded, and then spat the word out in the same way he had during school. "Potter."

It felt good, to hear it said with so much spite. I nudged Snape with my elbow. "Ooh-er. Say that again."

He raised an eyebrow at me, and I scowled at him.

"Old bat. You're no fun at all."

Perhaps being a teacher for all those years had given him an uncanny sense for words left unspoken. After a few minutes of silence and lunch, I explained it all, feeling as if I was admitting to sneaking out after curfew or something else nominal and silly.

"Ginny invited me to The Burrow on Sunday. She said Harry and Ron were doing something with George, so I didn't risk running into them."

I took a deep breath, more to control my fury than anything else.

"She told me that Harry had confided in her; that he thought I was upset about the cursed ring, not the fucking proposal or anything. That he's been encouraging Ron, of all things! After listening to me, and agreeing that things were unhealthy as they were, and sympathising with me, and promising he'd help sort things out, and he was really just..."

I stop talking, for fear of shrieking like a banshee on the steps of my workplace. Snape salvaged the day by squinting out at the street and swearing.

"Fucking Potter. Arsehole, thoughtless, feckless cunt!"

I smiled.

"Both of them, I mean," He appended.

We tidied up our crumbs, and headed back into the shop. Snape had taken to hanging around for a little afterwards. Just me, Snape, and Ollivander in the shop usually, with the occasional customer. Snape moved to the back room sink, to refill the kettle and boil it with a careful hex. Ollivander maintained that as long as Bob was kept busy pedalling, tidying wood scraps and dusting the boxes, Snape could make himself useful.

I'd made verbal my doubts that Bob ever did any dusting, but that that was no business of mine, apparently. The chronometer in the corner ticked softly, and dust floated in the early afternoon light.

"You really should do something." I suggested to Snape, "Like apply to the Ministry for financial assistance, or do some mail-order brewing, or if you've a spare room, you could get a tenant."

Snape's back stiffened, and he scoffed at me.

"If the pricks at the Ministry wanted to help me, they'd unfreeze my bloody Teacher's pension. I've taught their sproggs for long enough that I've legally earnt it!"

Ah, it was going to be one of those days. I carefully tiptoed around Snape and sat back down at the desk, pretending to sort through some invoices.

"And," He grumbled, decanting the boiling water into a teapot, "I don't think there's a market, with the community this small, for mail-order potions. Aside from the basic fact that Owls usually drop their packages from great heights, or..."

I nodded as solemnly as I could, and tried not to laugh as Ollivander shuffled into the front of the store, muttering about needing to dust. I realised, as Snape ranted and I did my best to ignore him, that this was almost reminiscent of fifth year. Before things went strange, and all tent-shaped. Just me, Ron, Harry, sitting around tables. Daydreaming and pretending I couldn't hear them bitching about Snape's last class.

I bit my tongue inside my mouth, and hoped that the pain would provide enough of a distraction to keep the tears from leaking out. I didn't even miss Hogwarts, as such, or all those books in the library, as much as I missed how simple and straightforward things had seemed then. How obvious and positive the future had looked.

I drew my mind back to Snape's voice, which had softened somewhat.

"...and anyway, I doubt that a community that won't feed or employ me would have any constituents willing to pay to breathe the same air as me."

He fell silent, and I clenched my fingernails into my palms. I was sick of this mood, already. Tired of these mood swings and the desperate ache inside my chest. I was employed, happy, safe. I was over with Ron, and had my memories back, and was goddamn fucking fine!

I was fixed. All better. I didn't want to spiral back into those feelings of helplessness. I hated the feeling of impotence, the thought of being one of those shivering, sniffling, crying girls that wrote life-experience stories for Witch Weekly magazine about their losses in the war. It was over, I was past it. Determined to be past it all, and wake up one day feeling calm, composed, and in control. I swallowed heavily against the thought that, perhaps, I would never wake up alright again.

Snape took a deep, rushed breath, and forced out the words "But thank you for trying to help, anyway. I value your, er, commiserative qualities almost as much as I do your friendship in, er, general."

He patted my free hand with his own uncomfortably, and shifted. I blinked until my eyes felt less damp, and forced a smile. Looked up, saw his awkward and half-constipated face, and couldn't help but laugh.

"Fuck me, I'm bipolar today," I smiled apologetically. He scratched the left side of his head.

"You're much coarser than I thought you were, before," He ventured. I felt stronger and warmer inside, just hearing it. Coarse, rough. Tougher than he thought.

"Shit, sorry." I wasn't really, but said so anyway. Basic manners, I suppose, like saying "yes, please" when somebody offered up a pot of Earl Grey, even if it did taste like dishwater.

He shook his head, and then peered a little shyly out from under his hair.

"Don't be. I like it..."

He coughed, then, red-faced, and turned away from me. He muttered about de-gnoming the vegetable patch, and same time tonight, mumble.

I stared at the door for some time, just a little shocked. He'd disappeared before I'd been able to process what had happened. I could half-feel emotions clarifying in my heart, but my mind was numbed and derailed by the thought. It repeated itself, bold words, like a mantra for the entire afternoon.

Snape blushes.

Ollivander gave me a very concerned but knowing look. He closed the books on my fingers,and pushed me bodily towards the shopfront.

"No meddling with dangerous substances like wand-cores today, missie." He answered my questioning look with a stern one of his own, and nodded towards the piles of empty boxes clattered beside the bench.

"You can keep yourself busy sorting those."

I was listless and absent, as I repaired and paired lids with boxes, stuffed felt lining back in, threw out damaged ribbons and other silly archaic padding from the older packaging. It was as if my entire self was so focused upon moving, shifting and changing, that my conscious self was left idle. I spent the time trying not to think about Snape's strange behaviour, or wonder why it was bothering me so much.

When I realised it was dark outside, and I could see his sillhouette framed in warm streetlight against the front window, I felt my face grow uncomfortably warm. Rugging up, to create a warm excuse for a pink face, I rushed out the door to an unmistakable soft laugh from Ollivander. I felt a childish surge of petulance, and then walked briskly and silently beside Snape to the pub.

When we sat down, I felt out-of-place and gawky. I wished to whatever high heavens were left in the world, if there were any at all, that I hurried myself up and realised whatever it was that I was feeling. Not knowing, being unable to put it into words, was frustrating and displacing.

"I feel like a crapulent, broken record. Reeking of discontent and saying the same things, over and over again." He held his hands together, set them apart on the table, and gathered them up again. Sighed, as if he wished he could retract what he'd said.

I winced in sympathy, and smiled as our dinners were set down before us. Greasy and chipful and comforting.

"You're not that bad. You just need to stop sulking, read some enjoyable light fiction, get out into the sunshining happy brilliant world." I bit viciously into a chip. "Or some shit like that."

He grunted, and smiled a little into his glass.

"Or, like me, you could find a dark corner to lurk in, with a miserable bastard."

He snorted, but was silent. Nothing much was different from the night before, or any of the nights before, really, but something felt irreversibly changed between us. I sighed heavily myself, when I was half-finished, and decided to launch into my own tirade.

"Well," I complained, "at least you have a bedroom. I can't stay in my parents' house, not now at least, and all I own in the world currently are my old schoolbooks and a duvet. In fact, you probably have a bloody bookshelf! A fireplace to burn your unwanted mail in!"

He smiled at me. Openly, guilelessly. It hooked into that weirdness inside me, and I hurriedly turned back to my meal. Ate quickly, and almost choked chasing the hot potato chips down with my drink.

"If it's a real problem," He suggested, as I stood to leave, "you could always rent the spare room."

I stared at him. It was all too much, really. A long, confusing, awkward, awful, gut-twisting day.

"You have an income, after all. I could cook, and you could nag me to stop skulking in the laundry as if it were a dungeon."

It was a terrible idea. I was still trying to shake off Ron. Though I had intellectually moved beyond the war and everything, I was still obviously emotionally hungover. Snape apparently blushed, and smiled, and I was still catching up to myself. There were endless reasons that could justify why this was an impossibly awful idea.

"Alright, then," I heard somebody say. Snape nodded, surprised, and set his cutlery down on the table. He took my hand and led me, still somewhat dazed, over to the fireplace. He took a handful of powder, and waited patiently for me to follow suit before he leant down to whisper his address into my ear.

"What?"

He repeated it. His hair itched on my neck, which was somehow worse than if it had brushed or tickled or touched. It itched like a disease.

"No, I mean, what?"

"Come have a look at the place. See if you want to, after all. Negotiate a price, all that."

I said "Oh. Right. Sure," still sounding like someone else, flat and otherly. I threw the powder into the fire, and said "Spinner's End." resolutely.

I stumbled a little, righted myself, and moved out of the way. Snape arrived quite soon after I did, and he fumbled around with lighting spells. He put a kettle on, and walked me through the place. Downstairs was about the size of Iphigenia's flat's main room, but lined with bookshelves instead of benches and windows. His fireplace looked awkward in the room, too old and large and grand to be surrounded by the old and ratty furniture, the mess of books and papers that were squeezed and double-stacked into shelves that looked like they'd been nailed together from scrap wood. They quite possibly had been.

There was a front door beside a threadbare couch. A back door beside a high, small, blackened window. I opened the door curiously, to discover a two-foot wide strip of old stained concrete, a dark mess of overgrown grass, and air that reeked of refuse and decay. There was a visible lack of any vegetable patches.

"The pond," He shrugged, so casually that I knew he must be embarrassed. He cleared his throat, and showed me a concealed stairway. It led upstairs to a narrow landing with three doors. One led to a bathroom, and another to a sparsely furnished room with a few cardboard boxes in a corner. Snape waved his wand and banished them.

"You didn't have to do that. I mean, I have hardly anything, myself."

"They were my father's." He shrugged, and led me back downstairs. Just as I was realising that I had heard him put a kettle on, but hadn't seen a kitchen, we reached the bottom of the stairs and I followed him in a strange twist that had us entering a small, thin, shadowy bare kitchen. The lino was scuffed, scratched and dirty. One of the drawers was using an old button and a rubber band as a knob, and one cupboard was missing its doors entirely.

If I had come here from Hogwarts, with only memories of my parents' house and the castle itself, seeing this place would have broken my heart. Instead, it seemed wonderful. Dark, like most of the Wizarding world. Confusing, comfortably so. Of course, it did need work. But Snape had time, and my rent would buy us enough raw materials.

I felt the uncertain listless emptiness of the afternoon soak away into a flood of bloody minded optimism. I knew where I stood, with hopeless battles. With dodgy tents and abandoned shacks and desperation. Cursed hallways. Twisting paths. Missing knobs.

I accepted my tea, and waited for Snape to fetch his own and some biscuits. We settled down into old leather chairs in the sitting room that let up clouds of must and crackled under our thighs like dry mud.

"Obviously you don't want to stay here," He admitted glumly, letting his eyes weigh heavily on the wallpaper that had peeled to rest in curlicues of dust and cobwebs along the top of his bookshelves. "I'd forgotten myself, how awful it looked, until I saw you in it. Seeing a person here other than myself, that is, it throws this place into a harsh relief."

I blinked at him, crossed my legs, and raised my nose.

"Don't be stupid, Severus. There's a bed, which is more than I've had for a month or so. There's you, a grown accomplished wizard, who will renovate this house with my rent money. If you managed to produce the lunches you have in the kitchen that's behind us, then I've no doubt that you'll do wonders with the carpet."

He gave me a very baleful and disbelieving look, so I planted my feet firmly on the floor and stood to look sternly at his bookshelf.

"You're not getting more than twenty-five galleons a week, but I'll pay the deposit up-front. I should be able to afford that."

We finished our tea, and I waved a goodbye, told him I would bring my things over on the weekend, and apparated home.

When I had sat down amongst my bedding, dressed for bed and brushed my teeth, I lay awake in the dark. I could feel tension I hadn't known I was carrying seep away from my body. As if I was grounded by cushions, it flowed from me. I could almost feel it sinking through the honeycomb of walls and floors and doors beneath me, down through the asphalt and dirt and pipes.

I knew I had made a very definite and awful mistake. Living with Snape would be awful, for all it would be affordable and comfortable and blissfully reclusive. I knew I could survive his habits, because of our time in Grimmauld Place.

I wished that I'd never agreed to move in to Grimmauld, but I hadn't really had any options at the time. I wished that it had never fractured and fell apart. I missed breakfasts with everyone, and that half-calm sense of belonging.

Which was part of the mistake. I wasn't going to recover that old sense of comfort and false stability at Spinner's End. It was going to be a cramped, depressed, confusing experience. Living in the dredges of Snape's childhood was presumably a bad idea, irrespective of my own emotional baggage. It hadn't been all that difficult to notice that he had given me the larger bedroom. The master bedroom. Presumably, he was still sleeping in his old bedroom. Lying down with all of his past, every night.

My breath hitched at the thought of living like that. I couldn't contemplate living in my parents' leftovers and remnants, and I hadn't had a traumatic childhood. No wonder he'd always been a reserved, tetchy, grumpy person. Who wouldn't be, in a situation like that?

I sighed, tired and exasperated with myself. I wasn't thinking, wasn't trying to catch hold of that unnerving afternoon. As if I was shying away myself from the thought that I might just like Snape. Want to...

I swore under my breath, and let myself daydream about forming interestingly shaped wand handles. I focused on form and shape, on curling wallpaper and dusty boxes and cheap sandwiches. I most certainly did not think about Snape as I fell asleep.