2
He looked like Snape, and he didn't, although she didn't know why she was so sure of that; she hadn't seen the man for more than ten years.
Ten years; halfway through her fifth year at Hogwarts--she had been made a Prefect, Harry had been appointed captain of the Gryffindor Quidditch team--and Snape had disappeared. Harry and Hermione and Ron, who knew Snape's double life, assumed that he had fallen in the line of duty, and mourned him with respect, if not fondness. The headmaster's face had been dark and grave for a long time; it was an expression they had never seen before, and did not truly see again until the second war, just a year after Hermione had graduated.
And now, three years after the war had been won, Hermione was on duty keeping the well-won, slightly uneasy peace, and she ran into a dead man.
He looked paler, if possible, and somehow more elegant. Handsome. Dangerous. She wouldn't have used "handsome" or "elegant" to describe Snape when she was still at school. Perhaps that had more to do with her own perception, rather than him actually changing...and "dangerous" was spot on...but he didn't look any older.He arched an eyebrow. His position, stretched gracefully across the sofa, was almost catlike in it's relaxation. "Relaxed" had never exactly applied to him either. He looked bored, almost childishly, and swirled the wine glass like one would do brandy. Hermione's attention flicked to it. The wine looked rather too bright...and rather too opaque.
Cogs turned, despite the clouds-and-cotton in her brain.
She flinched. "You're a vampire, aren't you?"
No shock could quite overcome Hermione's reserve; in her own ears, the tremble in her voice made her sound ten years old, but the voice that came out was that of a scholar.
"Ten points, Granger," he said sourly.
"10 years..."
"Such a bright girl."
"...how?"
"The usual way, of course." The voice was as darkly sarcastic as ever, although his voice was more tired and bitterer than it once had been.
"I'm sorry..."
"Oh, well, that changes everything, doesn't it? Alert the presses, should we? The world is alright because Hermione Granger is sorry."
She flinched again. Her fear was probably perfectly visible--deadpan was something she'd never be good at--not that it mattered, he could probably read her mind anyway... "Everyone thought you were dead."
"I am."
Hermione was still standing. Aside from the tiny movements of his hand, he hadn't moved. She bit her lip; localized pain was always a good solution for tears. Composure was never something she'd mastered, as she was well aware. He turned slightly, and studied her face.
"You're going to start crying," he said dispassionately. "Not just for me, of course. Everything. Its so overwhelming, and you've been bottling it up for years because you have to be strong and its all...just...too...much. Am I right?" By the end of his tirade, his soft voice was more cruelly mocking than even Malfoy's had ever been.
"Oh God, shut up!" Hermione snapped, horrified and angry.
"I was a bastard when I was alive, too."
Comprehension dawned. "You're trying to get me to back off."
His childish frown relieved a great deal of the intimidation. "Clever little witch. Perfect, clever little busybody of a witch. Go away."
"I haven't even considered killing you," she offered. Clouds-and-cotton was fading away, which wasn't really all that great, all things considered. *Granger, you idiot, you're standing her talking to a vampire.*
"Familiarity breeds carelessness. I'm sure even our heroic Potter would hesitate before decapitating me."
"You know, If Harry wasn't an actual hero at a school, he certainly is one now," she said stiffly. She and Harry still kept in touch, but with more tradition than enthusiasm. He and Ron were family people, warm and outgoing...and heroes. "You can stop hating him for that, at least."
"I don't hate Potter, I--No! I am not going to explain myself. Certainly not to a sweet, clever little witch twenty-five years younger than I am."
"About ten, I'd say," she said without thinking. *That was tactful.* Her weak composure managed to stop her from placing a hand over her mouth.
He looked like he'd been slapped. His dark eyes flamed, and he stood, carefully placing the glass of opaque-red-stuff-that-probably-wasn't-wine on a side table.
Snape towered over her, just as he had at school, his robes flaring out with a certain sinister drama. Hermione stepped backward; a certain point on her spine was screaming at her to Run Fast Now!
Fight-or-flight instinct kicked in, and also informed her that fighting was not a very good idea. He was at least a foot taller than she was, but the nerves seemed to be getting their signals from the expression on his face.
He bared his teeth. The upper canines flashed brightly against his lower lip. They curved inward, like a sharks; built for piercing and holding on. The bottom incisors were sharp as well, although not much longer than most teeth. He growled, softly, like a wolf or a bear or some other creature that could kill a clever little busybody witch in a heartbeat.
And she stood her ground.
He sneered. It was better than snarling, but it still revealed the fangs. "Of course. Gryffindors are famed for their bravery, if not their intelligence."
"I'm not going to dignify that with an answer. Although, speaking of answers..."
He looked ready to strike her. "No. Go away. I don't need you, and I certainly don't want you leaning on me. People must deal with their own pain."
"That's not true."
"Go away...please go away. Lean on Potter. Weasley. Any of them. Just leave me to my fate." For the first time, there was weakness in his voice. She had to tune her perception up a great deal, but he sounded almost plaintive.
"I don't believe in fate. And I haven't leaned on Potter for a long time."
A faint smile, almost without cruelty. "No? Good girl."
"No."
It might have been a laugh. It was just a tiny huff of breath, but as breathing was unnecessary, it might have been a laugh. "Always knew you should have been in Ravenclaw."
"Not Slytherin?"
It was definitely a laugh. "They would have eaten you alive on your first day."
"Right. I tend to forget about the Mudblood thing, what with Draco not reminding me about it every day."
He gave a theatrical sigh, the mention of Draco stirring something in him that she couldn't decipher. "You aren't going away, are you?"
"Yell at me some more. Old times' sake." Hermione smiled cheerfully.
*Shock,* whispered a voice in her head.
*Fine,* she answered. *Better than terror.*
He didn't return the smile, but he sat down again. Hermione perched on the edge of a chair.
"Staying for a while, Miss Granger? Can I get you some tea?"
Hermione nearly jumped out of her seat. A bookshelf blocked the view of the front desk, and she had forgotten that Borgin was there.Snape gave another little breath of laughter, and not kindly.
"Don't mind Mr. Borgin. He can't hear us. Doesn't know we're here. Deaf and blind, poor fellow."
"And senile," Borgin added, who looked like he was about forty. "Won't remember anyone's been in my shop not ten minutes after they leave. Memory's failing me."
"Poor man," Snape agreed with mock sympathy. "But sometimes that hearing of yours improves dramatically ex post facto, as it were, when the medicinal properties of somebody else's gold kick in."
The proprietor of the sordid magic shop shrugged. "Its been known to happen."Snape rose and stretched his shoulders. "I suppose that if I leave, you're likely to follow me," he told Hermione.
"Most likely."
He drained the wineglass and stood. There was a small clink as he tossed a few galleons on the table and he swept out.
Hermione hissed with irritation; it was past midnight and the street was dark, and Snape could apparently move deceptively fast.
The voice of reason in her head told her, quite firmly, that she was being an idiot. That she was in shock, and in a couple of hours, she would realize that she had been talking calmly with a vampire, not to speak of trying to find him in a dark alley in the middle of the night full of people who were, despite all appearances, blind and deaf unless bribed not to be.
*Go home, Granger. Pretend this hasn't happened. Go back to work tomorrow and do some good in the world and leave this one little mission to somebody with more nerves and fewer arteries and just let it go...
...he's a monster, now, after all...you know some fo the things they say about vampires...and it's dark, and you're shaking and you're still in Knockturn and WHY ARE YOU STILL WALKING? YOU REALIZE YOU NOW HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA WHERE YOU ARE?!*
Lost in the most unsavory neighborhood in England, Hermione suddenly wanted to find Snape before he found her. Vampires, she recalled, could move very fast. Snape, as she expected, had successfully ducked her. And further wandering around in Knockturn alley, as might be expected, did not turn out to be a particularly good idea.
"Not nearly as bright as everyone pegged you for, are you?" Draco, from behind her, said smoothly. Hermione started. People, in her experience, did not sit on outdoor terraces at night. The bar he was hunched outside of was fairly quiet, but in a rather sinister sense. As if it was quite full of very quiet people. A few torches by the door did little more than add texture to the shadows. Draco lounged in an elegant wrought iron chair, sipping a glass of wine; white wine.Hermione, who had had her fill with Slytherins that evening before any run-ins in Knockturn, tried to ignore him and simply walk away.
She didn't get half a step before he grabbed her wrist.
She tugged, and his hold tightened, painfully. The expression on his face remained one of calm disdain.
"Open act of aggression against a Ministry offical, Malfoy? And with you still under investigation, too."
"Keep talking, Mudblood. It won't do you any good." He was closer, now, and she was feeling particularly small and short and female tonight.
"Come off it, Malfoy. This bigger and stronger bully thing didn't work at school, and it's obviously not working now."
"Ah, but you're all alone now, aren't you? No Potter or Weasley to protect you."
"It not exactly like we had you outnumbered, is it? You had your charmingly inbred bodyguards...whatever happened to them? And Parkinson, the dear little dog? Did that ever work out?"
*Taunt the incredibly dangerous guy with the upper hand. Good idea.*
Fury tightened his face, and he dug his nails into her hand. Hermione was surprised at how painful it was, and she made another attempt to jerk away. Of all the times for her wit to kick in...
and Malfoy reached for his wand. Her own was tucked inside her sleeve. Specifically, the sleeve of the arm that he had hold of.
And Snape, stepping out of the shadows as if he was one of them, laid a hand on Malfoy's shoulder, lightly, but a little closer to the neck than the normal comforting pat. "Let go," he ordered.
Malfoy's face twisted in confusion, and then rebellion, and he stood and backed away, dragging Hermione with him.
In a blur of movement, Snape was behind both of them, digging his fingers carefully into nerves in Draco's arm; Draco hissed with pain. As his grip loosened, Hermione wrenched her wrist away. Draco did not move. He wore the same dazed expression he had before.
"Go home, boy," Snape commanded, and Draco stumbled away almost drunkenly, although Hermione would have bet that the glass of wine was the only drink he'd had.
She rubbed the wrist, which was already starting to look delightfully bruised.
"You shouldn't take him so lightly," Snape said coldly.
"I didn't mean to run into him! Anyway, he's an idiot. He may be strong, but the instances when that is a real problem for me are few and far between."
"He may be an idiot, but he's dangerous all the same. Isn't it your responsibility to keep him under observation? You aren't doing a very good job."
"If we knew what was going on, it might help..."She broke off. Snape wasn't listening. Or, rather, he seemed to be listening very intently to something else.
"Someone's following us. Draco probably doubled around." He groaned, softly. "I'm never going to get rid of you."
His eyes flashed here and there in the dark. He didn't exactly look nervous. He looked predatory. Although they had many of the same symptoms; eyes flashing here and there, searching the dark corners, weight shifting slightly to be able to move quickly, there was an important difference. Predatory had fangs.
Snape's hands curled into fists, and his face twisted. She knew the look. At school, it had been the face of a man saving Harry Potter's life. She assumed--hoped, rather--that it held a similar meaning for her.
"I'll get you out of here," he said at last, very sourly, and he took a firm hold of her wrist in a very strong and disturbingly cold hand and started walking, doubling between buildings and down obscure little allies. She could not see. He walked very fast. He always had, nothing superhuman about that. His legs were too long for him to do anything but outdistance her, and Hermione was forced to jog. It was either keep up or be dragged, and since by the second or third turn she had no idea where they were, the latter was not an option.
All her life she had been short of both dignity and stamina. Both of them were now being pushed to the test. She had always known about the dignity, but stamina had not, until now, been much of a concern. But she was so out of breath that all she could manage was a halfhearted gasp, relying on vampire hearing to stop him.
It did, luckily. Snape turned, and her knees buckled. Apparently her internal shock absorbers had worn rather thin that evening, and brilliantly glowing eyes in pitch darkness were more than she could handle. He didn't let go of her wrist.Hermione, in that rather awkward position, couldn't quite kneel, as her legs had intended. Instead, she dangled, trying and failing to find her balance again as Vampire Snape's iron grip slowly pulled her shoulder out of its socket.
"Yes?" he said calmly.*Calm-blue-ocean-calm-blue-ocean-calm-blue-ocean* Hermione chanted in her head.
It was her mother's mantra in times of great stress.*Calm-blue-ocean, calm-blue-ocean.*
She took a deep breath. "I was going to ask you to slow down. But for now, I'd settle for you letting go of my arm, or at least holding on to the other wrist." She tried to inject as much confidence into her banter as she could, but evidently he could hear her rasping breathing.
He let go of the wrist, and he bent down and scooped her up.
It was a terrifyingly intimate situation.
"Best not to look at my face again," was all he said. "If the eyes gave you such a start."
Hermione nodded and settled against him. She was shaken enough, without adding the catlike glowing eyes into the equation. He wasn't exactly cold; the night wasn't cold, and his body was almost exactly the same temperature as the air. But his arms and chest felt like they were made of stone, and she was aware that he had to be careful with her, and that he wasn't used to it, like a child with his first pet mouse. She got the impression that neither of them was exactly comfortable.
"You can put me down," she said firmly.
"Quite likely, but I'm not going to. Your breathing is unhealthy and I can inform you that you're quite pale, if you are unable to tell. I recognize the irony. If you go any further into shock, it may do actual damage. And I can see, and you can't, which makes this quite as practical as dragging you."
She tried to concentrate on "calm-blue-ocean" and breathing evenly, but it only made her more aware that she was being carried somewhere in the middle of the night by someone who didn't breathe.
*Oh, and it's a weekend. I won't be missed till Monday.*
He looked like Snape, and he didn't, although she didn't know why she was so sure of that; she hadn't seen the man for more than ten years.
Ten years; halfway through her fifth year at Hogwarts--she had been made a Prefect, Harry had been appointed captain of the Gryffindor Quidditch team--and Snape had disappeared. Harry and Hermione and Ron, who knew Snape's double life, assumed that he had fallen in the line of duty, and mourned him with respect, if not fondness. The headmaster's face had been dark and grave for a long time; it was an expression they had never seen before, and did not truly see again until the second war, just a year after Hermione had graduated.
And now, three years after the war had been won, Hermione was on duty keeping the well-won, slightly uneasy peace, and she ran into a dead man.
He looked paler, if possible, and somehow more elegant. Handsome. Dangerous. She wouldn't have used "handsome" or "elegant" to describe Snape when she was still at school. Perhaps that had more to do with her own perception, rather than him actually changing...and "dangerous" was spot on...but he didn't look any older.He arched an eyebrow. His position, stretched gracefully across the sofa, was almost catlike in it's relaxation. "Relaxed" had never exactly applied to him either. He looked bored, almost childishly, and swirled the wine glass like one would do brandy. Hermione's attention flicked to it. The wine looked rather too bright...and rather too opaque.
Cogs turned, despite the clouds-and-cotton in her brain.
She flinched. "You're a vampire, aren't you?"
No shock could quite overcome Hermione's reserve; in her own ears, the tremble in her voice made her sound ten years old, but the voice that came out was that of a scholar.
"Ten points, Granger," he said sourly.
"10 years..."
"Such a bright girl."
"...how?"
"The usual way, of course." The voice was as darkly sarcastic as ever, although his voice was more tired and bitterer than it once had been.
"I'm sorry..."
"Oh, well, that changes everything, doesn't it? Alert the presses, should we? The world is alright because Hermione Granger is sorry."
She flinched again. Her fear was probably perfectly visible--deadpan was something she'd never be good at--not that it mattered, he could probably read her mind anyway... "Everyone thought you were dead."
"I am."
Hermione was still standing. Aside from the tiny movements of his hand, he hadn't moved. She bit her lip; localized pain was always a good solution for tears. Composure was never something she'd mastered, as she was well aware. He turned slightly, and studied her face.
"You're going to start crying," he said dispassionately. "Not just for me, of course. Everything. Its so overwhelming, and you've been bottling it up for years because you have to be strong and its all...just...too...much. Am I right?" By the end of his tirade, his soft voice was more cruelly mocking than even Malfoy's had ever been.
"Oh God, shut up!" Hermione snapped, horrified and angry.
"I was a bastard when I was alive, too."
Comprehension dawned. "You're trying to get me to back off."
His childish frown relieved a great deal of the intimidation. "Clever little witch. Perfect, clever little busybody of a witch. Go away."
"I haven't even considered killing you," she offered. Clouds-and-cotton was fading away, which wasn't really all that great, all things considered. *Granger, you idiot, you're standing her talking to a vampire.*
"Familiarity breeds carelessness. I'm sure even our heroic Potter would hesitate before decapitating me."
"You know, If Harry wasn't an actual hero at a school, he certainly is one now," she said stiffly. She and Harry still kept in touch, but with more tradition than enthusiasm. He and Ron were family people, warm and outgoing...and heroes. "You can stop hating him for that, at least."
"I don't hate Potter, I--No! I am not going to explain myself. Certainly not to a sweet, clever little witch twenty-five years younger than I am."
"About ten, I'd say," she said without thinking. *That was tactful.* Her weak composure managed to stop her from placing a hand over her mouth.
He looked like he'd been slapped. His dark eyes flamed, and he stood, carefully placing the glass of opaque-red-stuff-that-probably-wasn't-wine on a side table.
Snape towered over her, just as he had at school, his robes flaring out with a certain sinister drama. Hermione stepped backward; a certain point on her spine was screaming at her to Run Fast Now!
Fight-or-flight instinct kicked in, and also informed her that fighting was not a very good idea. He was at least a foot taller than she was, but the nerves seemed to be getting their signals from the expression on his face.
He bared his teeth. The upper canines flashed brightly against his lower lip. They curved inward, like a sharks; built for piercing and holding on. The bottom incisors were sharp as well, although not much longer than most teeth. He growled, softly, like a wolf or a bear or some other creature that could kill a clever little busybody witch in a heartbeat.
And she stood her ground.
He sneered. It was better than snarling, but it still revealed the fangs. "Of course. Gryffindors are famed for their bravery, if not their intelligence."
"I'm not going to dignify that with an answer. Although, speaking of answers..."
He looked ready to strike her. "No. Go away. I don't need you, and I certainly don't want you leaning on me. People must deal with their own pain."
"That's not true."
"Go away...please go away. Lean on Potter. Weasley. Any of them. Just leave me to my fate." For the first time, there was weakness in his voice. She had to tune her perception up a great deal, but he sounded almost plaintive.
"I don't believe in fate. And I haven't leaned on Potter for a long time."
A faint smile, almost without cruelty. "No? Good girl."
"No."
It might have been a laugh. It was just a tiny huff of breath, but as breathing was unnecessary, it might have been a laugh. "Always knew you should have been in Ravenclaw."
"Not Slytherin?"
It was definitely a laugh. "They would have eaten you alive on your first day."
"Right. I tend to forget about the Mudblood thing, what with Draco not reminding me about it every day."
He gave a theatrical sigh, the mention of Draco stirring something in him that she couldn't decipher. "You aren't going away, are you?"
"Yell at me some more. Old times' sake." Hermione smiled cheerfully.
*Shock,* whispered a voice in her head.
*Fine,* she answered. *Better than terror.*
He didn't return the smile, but he sat down again. Hermione perched on the edge of a chair.
"Staying for a while, Miss Granger? Can I get you some tea?"
Hermione nearly jumped out of her seat. A bookshelf blocked the view of the front desk, and she had forgotten that Borgin was there.Snape gave another little breath of laughter, and not kindly.
"Don't mind Mr. Borgin. He can't hear us. Doesn't know we're here. Deaf and blind, poor fellow."
"And senile," Borgin added, who looked like he was about forty. "Won't remember anyone's been in my shop not ten minutes after they leave. Memory's failing me."
"Poor man," Snape agreed with mock sympathy. "But sometimes that hearing of yours improves dramatically ex post facto, as it were, when the medicinal properties of somebody else's gold kick in."
The proprietor of the sordid magic shop shrugged. "Its been known to happen."Snape rose and stretched his shoulders. "I suppose that if I leave, you're likely to follow me," he told Hermione.
"Most likely."
He drained the wineglass and stood. There was a small clink as he tossed a few galleons on the table and he swept out.
Hermione hissed with irritation; it was past midnight and the street was dark, and Snape could apparently move deceptively fast.
The voice of reason in her head told her, quite firmly, that she was being an idiot. That she was in shock, and in a couple of hours, she would realize that she had been talking calmly with a vampire, not to speak of trying to find him in a dark alley in the middle of the night full of people who were, despite all appearances, blind and deaf unless bribed not to be.
*Go home, Granger. Pretend this hasn't happened. Go back to work tomorrow and do some good in the world and leave this one little mission to somebody with more nerves and fewer arteries and just let it go...
...he's a monster, now, after all...you know some fo the things they say about vampires...and it's dark, and you're shaking and you're still in Knockturn and WHY ARE YOU STILL WALKING? YOU REALIZE YOU NOW HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA WHERE YOU ARE?!*
Lost in the most unsavory neighborhood in England, Hermione suddenly wanted to find Snape before he found her. Vampires, she recalled, could move very fast. Snape, as she expected, had successfully ducked her. And further wandering around in Knockturn alley, as might be expected, did not turn out to be a particularly good idea.
"Not nearly as bright as everyone pegged you for, are you?" Draco, from behind her, said smoothly. Hermione started. People, in her experience, did not sit on outdoor terraces at night. The bar he was hunched outside of was fairly quiet, but in a rather sinister sense. As if it was quite full of very quiet people. A few torches by the door did little more than add texture to the shadows. Draco lounged in an elegant wrought iron chair, sipping a glass of wine; white wine.Hermione, who had had her fill with Slytherins that evening before any run-ins in Knockturn, tried to ignore him and simply walk away.
She didn't get half a step before he grabbed her wrist.
She tugged, and his hold tightened, painfully. The expression on his face remained one of calm disdain.
"Open act of aggression against a Ministry offical, Malfoy? And with you still under investigation, too."
"Keep talking, Mudblood. It won't do you any good." He was closer, now, and she was feeling particularly small and short and female tonight.
"Come off it, Malfoy. This bigger and stronger bully thing didn't work at school, and it's obviously not working now."
"Ah, but you're all alone now, aren't you? No Potter or Weasley to protect you."
"It not exactly like we had you outnumbered, is it? You had your charmingly inbred bodyguards...whatever happened to them? And Parkinson, the dear little dog? Did that ever work out?"
*Taunt the incredibly dangerous guy with the upper hand. Good idea.*
Fury tightened his face, and he dug his nails into her hand. Hermione was surprised at how painful it was, and she made another attempt to jerk away. Of all the times for her wit to kick in...
and Malfoy reached for his wand. Her own was tucked inside her sleeve. Specifically, the sleeve of the arm that he had hold of.
And Snape, stepping out of the shadows as if he was one of them, laid a hand on Malfoy's shoulder, lightly, but a little closer to the neck than the normal comforting pat. "Let go," he ordered.
Malfoy's face twisted in confusion, and then rebellion, and he stood and backed away, dragging Hermione with him.
In a blur of movement, Snape was behind both of them, digging his fingers carefully into nerves in Draco's arm; Draco hissed with pain. As his grip loosened, Hermione wrenched her wrist away. Draco did not move. He wore the same dazed expression he had before.
"Go home, boy," Snape commanded, and Draco stumbled away almost drunkenly, although Hermione would have bet that the glass of wine was the only drink he'd had.
She rubbed the wrist, which was already starting to look delightfully bruised.
"You shouldn't take him so lightly," Snape said coldly.
"I didn't mean to run into him! Anyway, he's an idiot. He may be strong, but the instances when that is a real problem for me are few and far between."
"He may be an idiot, but he's dangerous all the same. Isn't it your responsibility to keep him under observation? You aren't doing a very good job."
"If we knew what was going on, it might help..."She broke off. Snape wasn't listening. Or, rather, he seemed to be listening very intently to something else.
"Someone's following us. Draco probably doubled around." He groaned, softly. "I'm never going to get rid of you."
His eyes flashed here and there in the dark. He didn't exactly look nervous. He looked predatory. Although they had many of the same symptoms; eyes flashing here and there, searching the dark corners, weight shifting slightly to be able to move quickly, there was an important difference. Predatory had fangs.
Snape's hands curled into fists, and his face twisted. She knew the look. At school, it had been the face of a man saving Harry Potter's life. She assumed--hoped, rather--that it held a similar meaning for her.
"I'll get you out of here," he said at last, very sourly, and he took a firm hold of her wrist in a very strong and disturbingly cold hand and started walking, doubling between buildings and down obscure little allies. She could not see. He walked very fast. He always had, nothing superhuman about that. His legs were too long for him to do anything but outdistance her, and Hermione was forced to jog. It was either keep up or be dragged, and since by the second or third turn she had no idea where they were, the latter was not an option.
All her life she had been short of both dignity and stamina. Both of them were now being pushed to the test. She had always known about the dignity, but stamina had not, until now, been much of a concern. But she was so out of breath that all she could manage was a halfhearted gasp, relying on vampire hearing to stop him.
It did, luckily. Snape turned, and her knees buckled. Apparently her internal shock absorbers had worn rather thin that evening, and brilliantly glowing eyes in pitch darkness were more than she could handle. He didn't let go of her wrist.Hermione, in that rather awkward position, couldn't quite kneel, as her legs had intended. Instead, she dangled, trying and failing to find her balance again as Vampire Snape's iron grip slowly pulled her shoulder out of its socket.
"Yes?" he said calmly.*Calm-blue-ocean-calm-blue-ocean-calm-blue-ocean* Hermione chanted in her head.
It was her mother's mantra in times of great stress.*Calm-blue-ocean, calm-blue-ocean.*
She took a deep breath. "I was going to ask you to slow down. But for now, I'd settle for you letting go of my arm, or at least holding on to the other wrist." She tried to inject as much confidence into her banter as she could, but evidently he could hear her rasping breathing.
He let go of the wrist, and he bent down and scooped her up.
It was a terrifyingly intimate situation.
"Best not to look at my face again," was all he said. "If the eyes gave you such a start."
Hermione nodded and settled against him. She was shaken enough, without adding the catlike glowing eyes into the equation. He wasn't exactly cold; the night wasn't cold, and his body was almost exactly the same temperature as the air. But his arms and chest felt like they were made of stone, and she was aware that he had to be careful with her, and that he wasn't used to it, like a child with his first pet mouse. She got the impression that neither of them was exactly comfortable.
"You can put me down," she said firmly.
"Quite likely, but I'm not going to. Your breathing is unhealthy and I can inform you that you're quite pale, if you are unable to tell. I recognize the irony. If you go any further into shock, it may do actual damage. And I can see, and you can't, which makes this quite as practical as dragging you."
She tried to concentrate on "calm-blue-ocean" and breathing evenly, but it only made her more aware that she was being carried somewhere in the middle of the night by someone who didn't breathe.
*Oh, and it's a weekend. I won't be missed till Monday.*