Les Sylphides, chapter 9: Dancing with Giselles (Epilogue)

by flax, June 2003

JK Rowling owns the characters. They're only in this daydream for a profitless romp. :)

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Hermione Granger was cutting up the clover roots, only generally concentrating on this beginning to her potions project. If she got this done today, it would be ready for the more involved steps tomorrow.

And for whatever reason, her professor choose now to be puttering down at the front of the room himself. Which left her mostly uncomfortable. She'd decided to not bring up the whole mistaken identity thing - she wasn't supposed to be at the party at all, even though _everyone_ had gone. And she'd gotten caught after curfew, and she'd done her detention. But still, there was something deeply awkward about adults and their lives, and Hermione didn't know how to say anything, and wasn't sure there was anything for her to say.

She was looking surreptitiously at the focus of her ambivalence when he growled out, "Spare me the comedy routine, Miss Granger."

Hermione blinked rather shocked at her clover roots.

"I was trying to figure how to offer sympathy, professor," she said, wrinkling her brow and not looking up.

"If you ever want a free evening in the library here again, you will not mention this again," said the professor looking up.

Surprised, she looked up too, thinking he was being a real jerk.

And then he laughed, looking back down at his work.

And Hermione decided adults are clearly from a different planet.

"Why were the sylphs here, Miss Granger?" he asked, beginning to mix ingredients down at his table.

Granger puts her cutter down and says, "to see the light of the window?"

"And why do that?" he returned.

"That was unclear," replied Granger.

"I expect a hypothesis, Miss Granger."

"Well there was a legend," she began, stopping when he snorted with disdain, but then kept up when he clearly waited for a response. "They have a species migration that they make together, and drinking in some light all at the same time was part of it."

"So why were the sylphs doing it here?"

Granger paused. There was nothing she and the boys could figure was special about the window when they saw it. The light clearly came from and around the sylphs. So none of this made sense, unless the sylphs had a personal reason to come do this at Hogwarts - the window was incidental. And then Padma and Parvati's little bit about no sylphs left behind came to mind. "I don't think I want to discuss this, sir," she said carefully.

Snape looked down but Hermione was pretty sure that he wasn't sneering or glaring. "Alas," he said, "the library will still be overused for the rest of the year." Granger got back to work, happy to have both admitted and not discussed things. "Watch your lines, those grape leaves should be even," he growled from the front of the room.

Hermione looked at her perfectly even cut up grape leaves. And there was no way Snape could see that. "Why Hogwarts?" she asked.

"Can you think of another place that could cope with a couple hundred beings who have a great deal of power, and a near childlike understanding of responsibility? And don't round the measurements, Miss Granger."

(I'm not rounding my measurements, she thought with a snarl.)

"I didn't hear that, Miss Granger," he taunted.

"I didn't say anything, professor," she replied.

"They say dancing with giselles is intensely frustrating and leads to unpleasant moments of clarity, Miss Granger," he said, pouring off his caldron and beginning to clean up. "But I believe rather that the giselles have a different sense of time. They don't bargain with the future the way humans do."

Granger blinked. "Which frustrates humans?"

Snape laughed. "That's what I hear."

Snape cleaned up and ceased giving Granger advice she didn't need.

FINIS.