Chapter Nine: Clearing the Air (Or: Just What Has The Luggage Been Up To??)
Now is as good a time as any to see just what that other creation of sapient pearwood, the ever more active and viciously tenacious piece of furniture, the irascible luggage, was doing.
It was outside, not unusual for such a lovely evening, warm and dry with a sunset of red, gold and streaming pinks and violets on the horizon. Many were the days that the luggage would spend sunset out upon the cobblestones, basking in the last hues of light. Sometimes it would be joined by Albus Dumbledore, and they would sit together in silence, each reflecting on whatever held its or his attention.
This night it was not unaccompanied, but not even one silvery hair of the affable headmaster's beard was in sight, let alone the man himself. The focus of the luggage's attention was perched, back arched, claws outstretched, hissing fiercely, upon a tree branch, glaring down as ferociously as only a cat can.
Its green eyes were sharp with surprise and fear; every taut muscle was as finely tuned as a bow, waiting to spring for freedom as soon as it got the chance.
But the luggage stood waiting, innocently, beneath the grand old oak, boards fairly humming and lid jiggling loosely. It was in that frame of mind known as making merry and to hell with the consequences. After Mrs Norris, the luggage was a little wary of eating anything that looked but didn't smell like Crookshanks, but that didn't mean it wasn't inclined to have a little fun with it. And this creature had reacted incredibly well. One look at the suitcase and it had streaked across the lawn, yowling in anguish. From the safety of its tree-branch it spat at the luggage, lashing its tail madly.
Clack, clack, snapped the lid. It had almost managed to catch the small grey thing, before it had leapt to relative safety. What use was it having so many legs without being well-coordinated? The luggage would hardly have earned its murderous reputation without being able to move as quickly as it could fight. It was very good at both.
As only a sapient pearwood suitcase with murder (if not dinner) on mind can, the luggage settled down at the base of the tree to wait.
On the branch, the cat gave a furious yowl of hatred, and dug its claws more firmly into the branch.
Snape was more than willing to help. Hermione had been incredibly nervous when she'd asked him if he'd consider assisting her in carrying the mirror from her room to the library. They could hardly study it in her bedroom, and it wasn't letting her get any sleep. This explanation was delivered in a breathless rush, and she finished it pleadingly, chewing on her lip.
He laughed.
Hermione noticed he'd already used a cosmetic charm to smooth away the redness of his eyes. Or had she just been imagining the candle's reflection on his skin?
If she hadn't, what to think of it?
Of course, he might just be touchy about the memories; whatever had made him cry – if it hadn't been her imagination after all - had to be painful enough (Or had it been her? Had he really been so offended by her? She'd only touched his hand!) that he'd wanted to forget it as rapidly as possible.
Then again, she didn't know the first thing about psychoanalysing Snape, and she didn't think she wanted to.
Try not to think about that, Hermione, she told herself severely. The mirror. Think about the mirror.
"It's driving me nuts," she said forthrightly. "If I didn't want to study it, I'd put an elbow through it. I could always repair the glass later."
"But the charms would be gone. Not, on the whole, a bad idea…"
"Don't get any ideas of dropping it," Hermione added hastily. "I still want to study it and the charms!"
"Yes, I know, you said. Now that we've finally managed to modify the describere spell, it would be a shame to smash the reason for our research."
Hermione nodded, thinking about the work they'd done. That morning they'd made the break-through she'd been dreaming about. It looked a little shoddy, of course, as cobbled-together spells always do, but it worked. That was the main thing. Now if you said something, the dicto-quill drew it. And did a pretty good job, to. Hermione suspected that was Snape's input. Her own artwork at school had always been limited to stick-figures. How horrible if the quill had been the same! How useless all their work would have been…
"Thinking, Miss Granger?"
"Just musing that I'm glad the quill can actually draw. I can't."
He smirked. "The Head-Girl admitting she can't do something? I'm shocked. Tut, tut."
"Head-Girl??" Hermione leapt onto the two words instantly. "What did you say?"
He affected a mock astonishment. It really was easy to bait her, thought the Professor, deeply amused. "What, you didn't know?" The dark eyes burned with mischievous mirth. "I'm sure the Headmaster will get around to telling you some day. Maybe even before school starts, if you're lucky."
"Very funny. How did you know about it?"
"Did you really think anyone else had a chance?" Snape's smile was fleeting, but genuinely pleasant. "Really, Miss Granger. Now I am surprised."
Hermione looked at him and shook her head. "Oh, shut up," she said mildly. "Now, are you going to help me move this mirror or not?"
The resilience of the Granger girl was a thing to be remarked on, thought Severus Snape as he trailed behind the girl towards her room. He had expected her to avoid him, to feel as awkward about that whole situation as he did, yet she seemed to have dismissed it as if nothing had happened.
It was a little harder for him to ignore. He hadn't slipped like that since before he'd come to Hogwarts. Even as a teenager often victimised by Gryffindor stunts, he'd received the injuries and the slights with snide sneer fixed firmly in place. Always ready to lash out harder than he was hit, always armouring himself while hunting for weak places in others. It had become a habit. No chinks in the armour, then. None till now.
(could mental armour rust?)
(what kind of polish could you use?)
So why?
(was he just losing his touch?)
And why now?
Analysing it would probably drive him mad, but if he didn't, that surely would.
Such a child, such a girl so raised in comfort and serenity… unaccustomed to the barriers she was even now scrabbling vainly against.
Unaware of what complexities the brush of human fingers could convey. How trite, how silly then, that touch should be such an expert skill in one so young and inexperienced, and such a losing battle for him, not so! Not young. Experienced, far too much. Un-innocent, even. The rough edges of the word suited him far better than polished and proof-read, grammatically perfect phrases straight out of Grandma's disapproving mouth.
Or the elegant mental litanies that would no doubt be the property of that aggravating girl. Aggravating Girl. Say it, think it, feel it. Forget it. Her.
Aggravating girl.
She'd revealed far more to him in their conversations than he suspected she realised; her life hadn't always been happy, but her parents had wanted to be together and both had desperately wanted a child. Hermione. Perhaps they saw her witchcraft as a rejection of them, and that as a betrayal, hurting all the more because it was from a child that they'd longed for. Perhaps they thought that all their energies were wasted. That though they'd wanted her, she hadn't wanted them.
Incredible. It flashed through his mind that if he'd longed for something that much and finally got it, he wouldn't dream of turning it away just because it wasn't what he'd expected.
"You're grinding your teeth, you know," said Hermione, bringing him back to reality.
They were standing outside the door to her room. Her hand lay on the knob and she was regarding him with a mixture of concern and amusement.
"Coming from a family of dentists, I believe there's about a hundred and one reasons why that's really bad. But mainly, it gets on my nerves. And it damages your teeth. Did you know?"
"Now I do," he said wryly. "Do you actually want help with the mirror or do you just want to lecture me on my dental habits?"
Hermione snorted and opened the door.
Twenty five minutes, 38 seconds and quite a bit of swearing later, the library doors clanked shut on screams of seeming mortal agony. "Damn thing," muttered Hermione, shutting her eyes. Nodding absently, Snape pointed his wand at the door and hissed "Arohomola". The light blue mist that this created settled on the lock and sunk into the metal.
"That's that, then," he said awkwardly. Stepped away from the doorway. "Good night, Miss Granger."
"Wait. Professor."
He half-turned on one heel, glancing quizzically back at her from underneath brows furrowed in absent thought. "Miss Granger?"
The girl took a step forward. Shifting uncomfortably, she stared at him for a long moment.
"Well?" he asked finally.
"I'm sorry about earlier, Professor."
"What the devil are you talking about?"
"You know, um…when you kicked me out?"
"No." Snape slipped his hands into the sleeves of his robes and hugged his upper arms thoughtfully. "I recall no such thing. After you had finished sharing your charming, innocent little thoughts with me, you felt tired and toddled off to bed. As I shall now. Good night, Miss Granger."
How dare he! Hermione's mouth fell open and worked like mad to shut, but was too astonished to manage. The gall. The shear, plain, unadulterated gall. The nerve…
"Miss Granger?"
"Yes?"
"You're grinding your teeth, did you know?"
That did it. Hermione left her place by the door and darted furiously at him. She put her hand in the middle of his chest and pushing him rapidly against the far wall.
"Stop mocking me!" Angrily. Fingertips quivering where they touched his body. Nails bending. Not caring.
"Stop being such a damn smart-arse. You just have to take every bloody opportunity to be such a freakin' wit, don't you? Sometimes you're almost decent and then you're opening your mouth again, putting me in my place, mocking me, belittling me, asserting your authority by laughing at me. I'm sick of it!"
Standing on tip-toes, she brought her gaze level with his. Her eyes narrowed. "What gives you the right to try and make me feel inferior, Professor? Why do you let me bawl my eyes out, say out loud things I've never told anyone before, then try and pretend the one moment where your guard slipped never happened? Why!? Sometimes I think I know where I stand with you and then you go and change the rules. Bloody hell." Hermione hesitated a moment and chewed her lip.
When she renewed her glare, she was breathing harder.
"So then what? Then I try and apologise for overstepping the boundaries and you push me away, not even doing me the courtesy of accepting my apology. You gave me a little lecture on respect, Professor; now I'll give you one. That's all I'm asking for. Just a little, goddamned respect! Hell knows I respect you, I even admire so much of your work, your character, your courage." She gave a bitter laugh. "But then when I think we're getting along fine, you turn around and swat me like a nervous first year. I'm not a first year, and I'm no longer nervous about anything you can do or say to me. I'm just pissed off." And she pulled away, gathering herself tall and trying not to look at his response. "Good night, Professor Snape."
For a long time Severus just stood there, resting against the wall. Bloody hell.
As she had said. The aggravating girl. That girl who seemed to think she knew so well what it was like to be a woman, yet who had barely even known the shattering of her innocence.
(she knew something, yes, but he knew far more)
He was the one who needed to be resilient now. And damned if it weren't harder than it looked. Much harder.
It took him a good few minutes of trying to understand Hermione's words before he realised she hadn't moved much, either. Now she was staring at him with a beseeching look on her face. 'Oops', said the expression. So blatantly childish. And even more delightful.
The only way this one could possess any 'Slytherin' qualities would be if she suffered more than he ever had. Her resilience was astounding.
Slowly he caught her eyes. Hermione blinked sheepishly but didn't look away. "Um, I got a little carried away. Sorry?"
She looked at the floor, something Severus was actually considering the merits of himself. The floor was quite fascinating, really. It was all shades of grey and such an interesting type of stone… More than that, it was safe!
Time to take a deep lungful of water. "I'm sorry, too, Hermione," he replied in a voice he barely recognised.
"You didn't get carried away. Well, not really." He allowed himself a slight smile. "I guess that what I'm trying to say is yes, I agree with you, you were right. I did push away a perfectly good apology.
"Will you accept mine?"
Gradually Hermione turned her study of the floor into a careful one of his face. Snape stood still, watching the unreadable eyes examine him. Finally she smiled. "You're forgiven," said Hermione.
Four steps to close the distance between them. Now she was barely inches away from him, making Severus even more aware that she was, as he had just belatedly realised, no longer a child. "You're forgiven," she repeated softly. "Am I?"
Severus took a deep steadying breath. "Yes," he murmured.
"Good," she said.
They remained in silence for a handful of heartbeats. Then Hermione raised her head to once again meet his eyes, only now her own were filled with amusement, not anger, and another sort of rueful apology. "I hope we don't bicker like this for the rest of the holidays."
He smiled again, a chuckle almost making its way to his lips. "Why?" he asked innocently. "Are you afraid of matching wits with the dreaded Potions Master?"
"Oh, absolutely," she murmured, amused, relieved, relaxing. "I can't sleep at night without terror."
She stepped back, allowing him some more personal space. Severus began to breathe again, not quite aware of when he'd stopped.
Hermione seemed to be toying with something. Finally she said, in a quick outrush of breath, "I seriously can't sleep after all that, though. Would the 'dreaded Potions Master' consider going for a walk?"
Surprised by her own boldness, she blushed hurriedly and starting re- examining the walls.
At this rate, she'd know all the physical features of Hogwarts like the back of her hand before school started.
(well, not all of them…)
Still, he did have a nice smile.
The blush, smugly triumphant, crept up the back of her neck.
And there Hermione felt his breath before the light, almost questioning, touch brushed along her arm. "He would be delighted," Severus whispered in response.
Risking another glance up into the fathomless dark gaze, Hermione nodded slowly and quashed an inward sigh of regret as his touch slid away.
She smiled. "Thank you," she said quietly.
He strode unhurriedly beside her up the passage. Hermione's smaller legs had to work a little harder. Eventually, he tugged on the heavy wooden door and gestured for her to precede him out into the golden evening air.
Author's Notes:
**Thank you to hundine from hermionenseverus who suggested the little incident with the luggage! Possibilities, possibilities…**
Disclaimer: As always.
Reviews:
Prettyflower&Prettyflower's EEEVVVIIILLL Twin – No review EVER means 'nothing'! I am delighted by all your incredible comments – and humbly honoured. Thank you!
Dorothy – the Luggage heard your call. Here it is! (It sends its regards, as well.) Thank you for your compliments about the Granger stuff. It's hard to get the right tone without going overboard, so I'm really happy you like it!
EvilGeniusSmurf – Sure. And I love your username!
Strega Brava – I don't know. I wouldn't want the poor trunk to be poisoned.
Jenserai – Look funny at them and mutter a few latin words under your breath. That should do the trick.
Ruby – That's facinating. Where did you learn that?
All my other lovely reviewers – Thank you. If I had more time I'd answer everyone.
Now is as good a time as any to see just what that other creation of sapient pearwood, the ever more active and viciously tenacious piece of furniture, the irascible luggage, was doing.
It was outside, not unusual for such a lovely evening, warm and dry with a sunset of red, gold and streaming pinks and violets on the horizon. Many were the days that the luggage would spend sunset out upon the cobblestones, basking in the last hues of light. Sometimes it would be joined by Albus Dumbledore, and they would sit together in silence, each reflecting on whatever held its or his attention.
This night it was not unaccompanied, but not even one silvery hair of the affable headmaster's beard was in sight, let alone the man himself. The focus of the luggage's attention was perched, back arched, claws outstretched, hissing fiercely, upon a tree branch, glaring down as ferociously as only a cat can.
Its green eyes were sharp with surprise and fear; every taut muscle was as finely tuned as a bow, waiting to spring for freedom as soon as it got the chance.
But the luggage stood waiting, innocently, beneath the grand old oak, boards fairly humming and lid jiggling loosely. It was in that frame of mind known as making merry and to hell with the consequences. After Mrs Norris, the luggage was a little wary of eating anything that looked but didn't smell like Crookshanks, but that didn't mean it wasn't inclined to have a little fun with it. And this creature had reacted incredibly well. One look at the suitcase and it had streaked across the lawn, yowling in anguish. From the safety of its tree-branch it spat at the luggage, lashing its tail madly.
Clack, clack, snapped the lid. It had almost managed to catch the small grey thing, before it had leapt to relative safety. What use was it having so many legs without being well-coordinated? The luggage would hardly have earned its murderous reputation without being able to move as quickly as it could fight. It was very good at both.
As only a sapient pearwood suitcase with murder (if not dinner) on mind can, the luggage settled down at the base of the tree to wait.
On the branch, the cat gave a furious yowl of hatred, and dug its claws more firmly into the branch.
Snape was more than willing to help. Hermione had been incredibly nervous when she'd asked him if he'd consider assisting her in carrying the mirror from her room to the library. They could hardly study it in her bedroom, and it wasn't letting her get any sleep. This explanation was delivered in a breathless rush, and she finished it pleadingly, chewing on her lip.
He laughed.
Hermione noticed he'd already used a cosmetic charm to smooth away the redness of his eyes. Or had she just been imagining the candle's reflection on his skin?
If she hadn't, what to think of it?
Of course, he might just be touchy about the memories; whatever had made him cry – if it hadn't been her imagination after all - had to be painful enough (Or had it been her? Had he really been so offended by her? She'd only touched his hand!) that he'd wanted to forget it as rapidly as possible.
Then again, she didn't know the first thing about psychoanalysing Snape, and she didn't think she wanted to.
Try not to think about that, Hermione, she told herself severely. The mirror. Think about the mirror.
"It's driving me nuts," she said forthrightly. "If I didn't want to study it, I'd put an elbow through it. I could always repair the glass later."
"But the charms would be gone. Not, on the whole, a bad idea…"
"Don't get any ideas of dropping it," Hermione added hastily. "I still want to study it and the charms!"
"Yes, I know, you said. Now that we've finally managed to modify the describere spell, it would be a shame to smash the reason for our research."
Hermione nodded, thinking about the work they'd done. That morning they'd made the break-through she'd been dreaming about. It looked a little shoddy, of course, as cobbled-together spells always do, but it worked. That was the main thing. Now if you said something, the dicto-quill drew it. And did a pretty good job, to. Hermione suspected that was Snape's input. Her own artwork at school had always been limited to stick-figures. How horrible if the quill had been the same! How useless all their work would have been…
"Thinking, Miss Granger?"
"Just musing that I'm glad the quill can actually draw. I can't."
He smirked. "The Head-Girl admitting she can't do something? I'm shocked. Tut, tut."
"Head-Girl??" Hermione leapt onto the two words instantly. "What did you say?"
He affected a mock astonishment. It really was easy to bait her, thought the Professor, deeply amused. "What, you didn't know?" The dark eyes burned with mischievous mirth. "I'm sure the Headmaster will get around to telling you some day. Maybe even before school starts, if you're lucky."
"Very funny. How did you know about it?"
"Did you really think anyone else had a chance?" Snape's smile was fleeting, but genuinely pleasant. "Really, Miss Granger. Now I am surprised."
Hermione looked at him and shook her head. "Oh, shut up," she said mildly. "Now, are you going to help me move this mirror or not?"
The resilience of the Granger girl was a thing to be remarked on, thought Severus Snape as he trailed behind the girl towards her room. He had expected her to avoid him, to feel as awkward about that whole situation as he did, yet she seemed to have dismissed it as if nothing had happened.
It was a little harder for him to ignore. He hadn't slipped like that since before he'd come to Hogwarts. Even as a teenager often victimised by Gryffindor stunts, he'd received the injuries and the slights with snide sneer fixed firmly in place. Always ready to lash out harder than he was hit, always armouring himself while hunting for weak places in others. It had become a habit. No chinks in the armour, then. None till now.
(could mental armour rust?)
(what kind of polish could you use?)
So why?
(was he just losing his touch?)
And why now?
Analysing it would probably drive him mad, but if he didn't, that surely would.
Such a child, such a girl so raised in comfort and serenity… unaccustomed to the barriers she was even now scrabbling vainly against.
Unaware of what complexities the brush of human fingers could convey. How trite, how silly then, that touch should be such an expert skill in one so young and inexperienced, and such a losing battle for him, not so! Not young. Experienced, far too much. Un-innocent, even. The rough edges of the word suited him far better than polished and proof-read, grammatically perfect phrases straight out of Grandma's disapproving mouth.
Or the elegant mental litanies that would no doubt be the property of that aggravating girl. Aggravating Girl. Say it, think it, feel it. Forget it. Her.
Aggravating girl.
She'd revealed far more to him in their conversations than he suspected she realised; her life hadn't always been happy, but her parents had wanted to be together and both had desperately wanted a child. Hermione. Perhaps they saw her witchcraft as a rejection of them, and that as a betrayal, hurting all the more because it was from a child that they'd longed for. Perhaps they thought that all their energies were wasted. That though they'd wanted her, she hadn't wanted them.
Incredible. It flashed through his mind that if he'd longed for something that much and finally got it, he wouldn't dream of turning it away just because it wasn't what he'd expected.
"You're grinding your teeth, you know," said Hermione, bringing him back to reality.
They were standing outside the door to her room. Her hand lay on the knob and she was regarding him with a mixture of concern and amusement.
"Coming from a family of dentists, I believe there's about a hundred and one reasons why that's really bad. But mainly, it gets on my nerves. And it damages your teeth. Did you know?"
"Now I do," he said wryly. "Do you actually want help with the mirror or do you just want to lecture me on my dental habits?"
Hermione snorted and opened the door.
Twenty five minutes, 38 seconds and quite a bit of swearing later, the library doors clanked shut on screams of seeming mortal agony. "Damn thing," muttered Hermione, shutting her eyes. Nodding absently, Snape pointed his wand at the door and hissed "Arohomola". The light blue mist that this created settled on the lock and sunk into the metal.
"That's that, then," he said awkwardly. Stepped away from the doorway. "Good night, Miss Granger."
"Wait. Professor."
He half-turned on one heel, glancing quizzically back at her from underneath brows furrowed in absent thought. "Miss Granger?"
The girl took a step forward. Shifting uncomfortably, she stared at him for a long moment.
"Well?" he asked finally.
"I'm sorry about earlier, Professor."
"What the devil are you talking about?"
"You know, um…when you kicked me out?"
"No." Snape slipped his hands into the sleeves of his robes and hugged his upper arms thoughtfully. "I recall no such thing. After you had finished sharing your charming, innocent little thoughts with me, you felt tired and toddled off to bed. As I shall now. Good night, Miss Granger."
How dare he! Hermione's mouth fell open and worked like mad to shut, but was too astonished to manage. The gall. The shear, plain, unadulterated gall. The nerve…
"Miss Granger?"
"Yes?"
"You're grinding your teeth, did you know?"
That did it. Hermione left her place by the door and darted furiously at him. She put her hand in the middle of his chest and pushing him rapidly against the far wall.
"Stop mocking me!" Angrily. Fingertips quivering where they touched his body. Nails bending. Not caring.
"Stop being such a damn smart-arse. You just have to take every bloody opportunity to be such a freakin' wit, don't you? Sometimes you're almost decent and then you're opening your mouth again, putting me in my place, mocking me, belittling me, asserting your authority by laughing at me. I'm sick of it!"
Standing on tip-toes, she brought her gaze level with his. Her eyes narrowed. "What gives you the right to try and make me feel inferior, Professor? Why do you let me bawl my eyes out, say out loud things I've never told anyone before, then try and pretend the one moment where your guard slipped never happened? Why!? Sometimes I think I know where I stand with you and then you go and change the rules. Bloody hell." Hermione hesitated a moment and chewed her lip.
When she renewed her glare, she was breathing harder.
"So then what? Then I try and apologise for overstepping the boundaries and you push me away, not even doing me the courtesy of accepting my apology. You gave me a little lecture on respect, Professor; now I'll give you one. That's all I'm asking for. Just a little, goddamned respect! Hell knows I respect you, I even admire so much of your work, your character, your courage." She gave a bitter laugh. "But then when I think we're getting along fine, you turn around and swat me like a nervous first year. I'm not a first year, and I'm no longer nervous about anything you can do or say to me. I'm just pissed off." And she pulled away, gathering herself tall and trying not to look at his response. "Good night, Professor Snape."
For a long time Severus just stood there, resting against the wall. Bloody hell.
As she had said. The aggravating girl. That girl who seemed to think she knew so well what it was like to be a woman, yet who had barely even known the shattering of her innocence.
(she knew something, yes, but he knew far more)
He was the one who needed to be resilient now. And damned if it weren't harder than it looked. Much harder.
It took him a good few minutes of trying to understand Hermione's words before he realised she hadn't moved much, either. Now she was staring at him with a beseeching look on her face. 'Oops', said the expression. So blatantly childish. And even more delightful.
The only way this one could possess any 'Slytherin' qualities would be if she suffered more than he ever had. Her resilience was astounding.
Slowly he caught her eyes. Hermione blinked sheepishly but didn't look away. "Um, I got a little carried away. Sorry?"
She looked at the floor, something Severus was actually considering the merits of himself. The floor was quite fascinating, really. It was all shades of grey and such an interesting type of stone… More than that, it was safe!
Time to take a deep lungful of water. "I'm sorry, too, Hermione," he replied in a voice he barely recognised.
"You didn't get carried away. Well, not really." He allowed himself a slight smile. "I guess that what I'm trying to say is yes, I agree with you, you were right. I did push away a perfectly good apology.
"Will you accept mine?"
Gradually Hermione turned her study of the floor into a careful one of his face. Snape stood still, watching the unreadable eyes examine him. Finally she smiled. "You're forgiven," said Hermione.
Four steps to close the distance between them. Now she was barely inches away from him, making Severus even more aware that she was, as he had just belatedly realised, no longer a child. "You're forgiven," she repeated softly. "Am I?"
Severus took a deep steadying breath. "Yes," he murmured.
"Good," she said.
They remained in silence for a handful of heartbeats. Then Hermione raised her head to once again meet his eyes, only now her own were filled with amusement, not anger, and another sort of rueful apology. "I hope we don't bicker like this for the rest of the holidays."
He smiled again, a chuckle almost making its way to his lips. "Why?" he asked innocently. "Are you afraid of matching wits with the dreaded Potions Master?"
"Oh, absolutely," she murmured, amused, relieved, relaxing. "I can't sleep at night without terror."
She stepped back, allowing him some more personal space. Severus began to breathe again, not quite aware of when he'd stopped.
Hermione seemed to be toying with something. Finally she said, in a quick outrush of breath, "I seriously can't sleep after all that, though. Would the 'dreaded Potions Master' consider going for a walk?"
Surprised by her own boldness, she blushed hurriedly and starting re- examining the walls.
At this rate, she'd know all the physical features of Hogwarts like the back of her hand before school started.
(well, not all of them…)
Still, he did have a nice smile.
The blush, smugly triumphant, crept up the back of her neck.
And there Hermione felt his breath before the light, almost questioning, touch brushed along her arm. "He would be delighted," Severus whispered in response.
Risking another glance up into the fathomless dark gaze, Hermione nodded slowly and quashed an inward sigh of regret as his touch slid away.
She smiled. "Thank you," she said quietly.
He strode unhurriedly beside her up the passage. Hermione's smaller legs had to work a little harder. Eventually, he tugged on the heavy wooden door and gestured for her to precede him out into the golden evening air.
Author's Notes:
**Thank you to hundine from hermionenseverus who suggested the little incident with the luggage! Possibilities, possibilities…**
Disclaimer: As always.
Reviews:
Prettyflower&Prettyflower's EEEVVVIIILLL Twin – No review EVER means 'nothing'! I am delighted by all your incredible comments – and humbly honoured. Thank you!
Dorothy – the Luggage heard your call. Here it is! (It sends its regards, as well.) Thank you for your compliments about the Granger stuff. It's hard to get the right tone without going overboard, so I'm really happy you like it!
EvilGeniusSmurf – Sure. And I love your username!
Strega Brava – I don't know. I wouldn't want the poor trunk to be poisoned.
Jenserai – Look funny at them and mutter a few latin words under your breath. That should do the trick.
Ruby – That's facinating. Where did you learn that?
All my other lovely reviewers – Thank you. If I had more time I'd answer everyone.