Touch the Air Softly
by Jessa L'Rynn
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters. J.K. Rowling created them and writes them with a genius that has never been equaled. Warner Bros. owns the right to do dumb things with them and doubtlessly will once Jo's finished with them, unless she kills them all. I try to fight the urge to put words into other people's visions. But every once in awhile, something yummy like this comes along and I find myself committing what I have been told is both crime and honor. With all due respect to Jo Rowling and her marvelous world, here is my attempt to "steal from the best".
Chapter 18: Orion Steps Down
From the moment he stepped into the circle, Snape felt their eyes on him - the cold, unnatural red eyes of the Dark Lord, and the hollow, heavy-lidded eyes of Bellatrix. He would have sworn the psychotic bitch was laughing at him.
There was the usual twenty minutes of listening to the Dark Lord rant, followed by three hours of mind boggling tedium as the various Death Eaters who were called to report groveled, slavered, and generally made themselves obsequious. There was the endless plotting, and the random violence punctuated by a very specific pattern of torture and reward. Snape was convinced that Avery wore kneepads under his robes from all the bowing and scraping.
After the circle finally broke, Snape having escaped completely, though mysteriously, unscathed, Pettigrew came up to him. Snape whipped out his wand and jammed it viciously under the nose of the Dark Lord's toadying slave, and laughed harshly as Pettigrew flung himself prostrate at Snape's feet. "What would your brave Gryffindor friends say to you, Wormtail, to see you down there licking my boots?" He might have gotten over most of his pointless hatred of the Marauders, but Pettigrew, the one who betrayed them, was still beneath contempt.
"Don't hurt me," Pettigrew whined. "The Dark Lord sent me to tell you to stay. He won't like it if you hurt me."
"Why not?" came the cold, high-pitched voice that was somehow hissing and sibilant, even without a single 's' in his words. "I would get the pleasure of watching you receive yet another well-deserved punishment, and then I could punish Severus for acting without orders."
Snape rolled his eyes. "I understand, my Lord," he said, then turned and bowed as one gesture.
"So proud, Severus, but you have done nothing to offend me. Does Dumbledore still trust you?"
"Completely, my Lord," he said, smoothly.
"Good." The serpentine mouth curled slightly into the closest thing the Dark Lord could come to a smile. "How is young master Potter?"
"Dumbledore keeps him guarded day and night, not so much from us, my Lord, as from some of the more... shall we say, enthusiastic of your potential initiates. You may wish to mention it to Lucius - his son is too precious a commodity to us."
"His son is a pawn," the Dark Lord snapped.
"A pawn in excellent position, my Lord," Snape reminded him. "We are all your pieces, my Lord. I know that."
"Call me a boot-licker," Pettigrew muttered. Everyone pretended not to hear him.
Bellatrix joined them, still proudly unmasked, and the only Death Eater who dared to touch Voldemort.
"Bring me the Gryffindor girl, Snape," Bellatrix ordered. "I have a need of her."
"Weasley?" he asked, his heart sinking into his boots.
"No, you idiot. Potter's mudblood companion." Her lips curled into a taunting and malignant smile.
"I've told you before, or don't you listen? Dumbledore keep the precious sextuplets under close guard, and she can't be lured, unlike the rest of them. I might can arrange the mad Ravenclaw girl, will she do?"
"I don't want one of the blood-traitor bitches that fawn around him, I want the mudblood - she's the one who remembers everything, she's most likely to have the information I need."
"But not guaranteed. Luring her into danger will make Dumbledore doubt me, and I'm unwilling to endanger my position as our Lord's spy simply for your dubious amusement." He looked at Voldemort out of the corner of his eye, hoping for some sort of sign as to how to proceed, but the Heir of Slytherin was watching the proceedings like a cat at a tennis match (complete with smug smile) and seemed completely disinterested in breaking up their conversation.
He knew what she would do next - fling herself on him and offer him her favors, followed by cheap shots against his masculinity and finally concluding with cold threats punctuated by the cruciatus curse. The only thing he didn't know was what the Dark Lord would do, and Snape hoped against hope that Voldemort would just get mad at him and kill him.
As Bella moved to the next step, he backed away sharply, and the Dark Lord reached out and caught her arm. "Come, now, Bella, Severus doesn't know our plans, and doesn't need to. Just tell him the good news and send him on his way. We have work to do."
Bella rolled her eyes, but as the Dark Lord was now behind her, only Snape was in a position to see this. He decided to save the smirk of wicked satisfaction for later.
"She will come to you, Snape. We're sure of it," Bellatrix said. Then she took the Dark Lord's arm and they walked away together to their chosen apparation point.
Pettigrew rose slowly to his feet. "You may go," he said arrogantly.
Snape snarled, itching to turn him into a guppy and leave him to flop out the last of his miserable life on dry land. Instead, reaching into a bag of tricks he had always wanted to forget, he waved Peter away, waited until the animagus was about 50 yards ahead, and charmed his clothes - every scrap and stitch of them - to reek of flowers.
The sound of Pettigrew shrieking as he charged away from a swarm of enthusiastic and helpful insects was truly music to his ears. Snape considered it a successful experiment as it obviously never occurred to the rat to actually transform.
The Dog Star was still high in the sky as he walked toward a good apparation point. Looking up at it, he grinned. "You owe me," he said. The star twinkled back in good-natured agreement.
Telling Dumbledore something unpleasant from the Death Eaters' circle had never been harder. Snape trudged up the gargoyle guarded staircase and was surprised to notice that his hand on the door handle was trembling horribly. The old man looked up with a smile of such obvious pleasure that Snape felt himself smiling back, despite the fact that he was sure he was shaking in his shoes.
Analyzing that reaction would take awhile, so Snape filed it away for later.
Fawkes swooped down from his perch and landed on the back of Snape's chair, then let out that single, plaintive cry that had always set the Potions Master's teeth on edge in the past. For some reason, tonight it made him feel warm and comforted, as though this would have to work itself out somehow.
Dumbledore seemed to take all this in very quietly, for he sat watching Snape with an expression of bemused wonder. "What?" Snape demanded crossly.
Dumbledore smiled benignly at him. "I take it the evening did not agree with you." He scribbled a quick note on a scroll and held it out for Fawkes. The phoenix flitted over and took the missive and then vanished in a showy ball of fire.
Snape scowled at him. "What was that about? Couldn't you floo Minerva?"
"No," Dumbledore replied. "Miss Granger refused to go to bed until I promised to let her know when you were safe."
The trembling started again, and this time it didn't stop. Snape opened his mouth to make an acid observation, but what fell out was hardly acid at all, but rather bleak disgust and bone-deep fear. It certainly felt like acid when he found himself choking over trying to get her name out.
"Making up your homework, Hermione?" Harry asked politely, worried that she hadn't said more than a quick hello to them in the entire eight hours she had been home.
"No," she said. "I'm studying portkeys."
"I hate portkeys," Harry said conversationally.
"So does Professor Snape," she muttered. "So do I, when it comes to it. I'm looking to see if there's a way to block them."
"What, you can portkey places you can't apparate?" She looked up at him and her glare was so Snape-like that Harry backed off half a pace. "Man, I didn't know he was contagious."
Hermione proved him wrong by laughing over that one. "So's Ron, apparently - you sound just like him."
Harry smiled sheepishly. "Yeah, a little, but he's my best friend from way back. When did Snape become yours?"
She grinned in what Harry interpreted as a completely naughty fashion. "This weekend. We had long conversations about our dreams in life, and pledged blood siblinghood, and we did each other's hair and makeup and everything."
Ginny tumbled into the conversation at that exact moment. "Oh, I know he looked simply darling in your Gryffindor red nail polish."
Hermione giggled. "Hey, you should see the dress he picked out for me!"
Ron flopped on the end of the sofa now, chuckling. "Please tell me you're not making this up and you got pictures."
Ginny thumped her brother with a pillow. "Idiot child," she snapped in a brilliant Snape imitation.
Hermione giggled. "He's much more pleasant when you get used to him," she added on a more serious note.
They all looked at each other and nodded, then turned as one and smiled at her kindly. "We're sure, Hermione," Ginny said soothingly. "Maybe we'll get a chance later, ok?"
Hermione was blinking at them, her face betraying utter puzzlement, interrupted when a ball of fire appeared just in front of her. "Oh, thank Merlin," she breathed and snatched the missive from Fawkes.
Harry looked intently at the others. They all nodded and tiptoed away quickly. "We're over here if you need us," he said softly and, once she had nodded, he moved away to allow her her privacy, but not before he had seen that the letter was from Dumbledore, used the words "Snape" and "safe", and also that Hermione was crying.
"Her eyes look funny," Ginny said.
"She's been crying is all," Harry and Ron assured her.
"This is so hard," said Neville. "I hate seeing her hurt like this - do you think Professor Dumbledore knows?"
"No," said Ron, "but I'm going to the library tomorrow - I want to look up some things."
"I'll help you," Neville volunteered.
"I wonder if we still have class Thursday?" said Harry.
"Probably," Ron said, "unless Snape's dead by then."
"Oh God," said Ginny, looking over at Hermione's fragile-looking form bending over yet another book, "please don't say that."
Ron looked at her, too. "Definitely not," he agreed softly.
Severus Snape spent all day Tuesday avoiding Hermione Granger. He felt he had a very good reason to do so. Dumbledore would probably force feed him poison if he caught Snape anywhere near the Head Girl after the revelations of last night. Of course, Dumbledore hadn't looked homicidal. He hadn't even given the look Snape most feared - the disappointed stare. The Potions Master had to agree – he couldn't be anything but an old pervert.
Snape felt he had done the right, if slightly Slytherin, thing to do by keeping the details to himself. He was sure they would anger and upset Dumbledore, and he told himself that Dumbledore should be furious with him, even as he told himself that Dumbledore deserved to hear better things from those in which he placed his confidence. The details just wouldn't bear the light of scrutiny, he thought in a noble fashion.
He crumbled into his armchair. Some of the details were simply too precious to ruin. Waking Monday morning and believing right up until the moment he opened his eyes that he would find her lying beside him, warm and welcoming and tender, was one memory he would hold sacred even if he lived another hundred years. But so was the memory of the look on her face when she told him how sorry she was that his life had been like it was - an innocent expression of clear-eyed empathy, forgiving and understanding at the same time. And the memory of the dream where they grew old in each other's company, as lovers, friends, and partners, was enough to keep him warm without the fire blazing in his quarters in front of him.
The depths of his loneliness could explain them all, of course. Self-exile was still exile, and he generally avoided anyone who tried to violate it. He had begun, over the past decade, to suspect that he wasn't meant to live in the Wizarding world at large.
Then, leave it to a blasted Gryffindor to try to tug him out. He was too strong for nonsense like that.
He tossed another log onto the fire, watching it turn dark and start to smolder. How could he explain the way her smile had felt like summer breeze? How could explain the nearly overwhelming desire to carry her away where no one could ever hurt her again? And how, how could explain the thrill he felt, like a tiny warming charm inside him, every time he caught a glimpse of her. He told himself, desperately, that he hadn't been looking for her, not at all. He was merely trying to avoid her, and the only way he could do that was to ensure that he always saw her first.
Staring into the fire, he thought hard about his sheer terror as he related to Dumbledore what Bellatrix had demanded. He remembered the confused delight he had felt when Dumbledore told him Hermione was worried about him. He remembered how good she had felt when they took the portkey together. He would never confess to anyone the courage he had had to summon to hold her that closely nor the control he had needed to hold her only that closely.
But he knew. Deep down in a vault in his soul, behind walls thirty feet thick with anger and pain and resigned black despair, was the truth, and he believed it, even as he paid lip-service to the denial closer to the surface. It was a majestic truth, a powerful one, an utterly crippling and disabling one. He couldn't hand her over to the Dark Lord, not even as bait for a trap. No matter what Dumbledore decided, Snape knew that he would sell his life dearly, but willingly, for her absolute safety.
Severus Snape was in love, for perhaps the first time in his life.
And so he resolved that he would never see her again. She would be safe, and he could tell the Dark Lord very honestly that Bellatrix was wrong, that Miss Granger was never anywhere near him except in her classes, which he could hardly snatch her from directly under Dumbledore's nose. He would not have to blow his cover and Bellatrix would have to answer for it. If this was going to destroy him – and he was sure it would – then it would be best if it destroyed Bellatrix, too.
With that grim decision calming his mind, Snape left the sanctity of his dungeon and went wandering in the late night stillness. The cold comfort of knowing that he had chosen yet another thing that was right but not easy was not the balm it should have been. Neither was the black silence of his nightly hunt for children behaving badly. He headed up to the fourth floor, unconsciously hoping that the library would bring her closer in his mind, since she would never be closer in fact.
He imagined her shocked expression if he told her. She was Hermione, so she would be kind, her rosebud lips would part with bald shock while turning down in intolerable pity. The second floor where the staff-room was passed by with only the flicker of remembering huge, chocolate brown eyes staring at him while she stammered and hunted desperately in her mind for some excuse – which she wasn't any good at. He passed a dozen places thick with memory, but none was so strong as the library.
Speaking of which, there was a faint light coming from there, and a sound like soft complaining.
Someone would pick her library to be arguing in the middle of the night. Of course, as he got closer, he began to suspect that he really was going to go mad. He could swear he was hearing her voice, and what was more, he would swear he heard her name.
He slipped out of the shadow finally, and to both his horror and relief, he found her, sitting there in the unruly nimbus of her bushy brown hair and murmuring quietly to herself. She was probably annoyed with her friends, he realized, because she had a frustrated look on her face and was definitely repeating her own name. Just before he could decide whether to approach her or flee for all his life was worth (though it wasn't much in his opinion), she looked up and took the decision out of his hands by smiling at him with such obvious pleasure that he could almost believe, for just a moment, that his new found love wasn't so unrequited as he thought.