Chapter 9: The Truth About Lizards

Hermione woke to find a pile of crooning vault lizards nuzzling her face with concern. She cupped a few in her hand and pulled them closer, tolerating their tiny licks and concerned nudges.

"He misses you," the blue lizards said. "He's practically destroyed the lower levels every night when he doesn't see you."

The purple lizards shook their heads. "You miss him too."

"What I feel is immaterial," she said dully.

"Are you really going to leave?" the young, disturbingly pink lizards chimed in. "Are you going to leave us?"

Hermione closed her eyes. "It hurts too much to be here," said.

Hermione felt the soul-deep emptiness in her heart every night since their parting. Every night they didn't share conversation. His gentle touch. His awkward affection. The feel of his warmth and magic— the distinctive scents of parchment and ink and rich deep earth.

It had become such a comfort. Natural. Wanted.

But he was the goblin king.

And she—

She was just Hermione fucking Granger. Social outcast. Whore to the masses. Pariah.

There were thousands of far more beautiful, eager women who would gladly be his queen and accept all that it entailed.

And she couldn't bear the thought that she'd have to see him with his arms around another woman— looking at them with passion in his eyes— comfortable in that they knew exactly who he was.

Smug—

Like bloody Ginevra.

She had foolishly thought they had something special.

She had thought it was real—

But it was just him looking for a queen to sit on the throne with him solely to satisfy some treaty.

"That's not true!" the purple lizards protested.

"He cares for you!" the red lizards added insistently.

"He longs for you!" the blue lizards argued. "We've seen it!"

The lizards all nodded together.

Hermione frowned, clearly dubious.

She tucked them into her hair and braved the outside, taking in the scent of earth and stone that had become so much more than home.

The call of the Earth magic sang in her blood, begging her to come and play.

The lizards were bickering in her hair and she frowned.

"If she goes, we go!"

"But we can't leave the Underground for long!"

"What's the Underground without her! No way! We have to go with!"

Hermione walked guiltily into the deeper vaults where the stone was older and more stoic. She had never wanted to cause a vault lizard rebellion, either. Just one more thing Insufferable Granger did to fuck things up.

She continued on her way into the deep caverns, comforted by the cooler temperatures and quiet. The lizards hummed and warbled to her, crooning soft encouragement that made her feel better despite her mood.

She found herself in the area that resisted any and all attempts at accepting her attempts to understand it.

It was almost as if the rock and soil didn't speak like the rest of the areas.

While the other areas seemed eager to be understood, even excited to welcome a new geomancer, this one place—

It was a mystery.

And Hermione Granger loathed being in the middle of a mystery.

She had enough half-truths and mystery during the war— enough to last a lifetime.

Was that why she had such a problem with Severus not telling her sooner?

Could she even trust anything he said knowing that he'd been searching for a queen to satisfy a treaty the entire time she'd been getting to know him in the Underground?

Why did it hurt so much?

Why did she long to touch him again?

To be touched by him?

Why did it hurt so much to be apart?

She sat down and picked up a smooth black stone from the vault floor that had fiercely resisted any and all of her attempts to communicate. Hell, even the goblins hated this floor—

As she picked up the stone this time, however, she hissed in pain and hastily dropped the stone.

What the—

That one was different. It felt…

It felt like human magic.

Only now that she knew what goblin Earth magic should feel like after months and months of fighting to learn it did she recognise why the stone was not responding to her attempts at Earthmancy.

Before, the magic had felt compatible—

But now that she knew what goblin Earthmancy was supposed to feel like, she knew why the rock had been so adamantly stubborn.

It felt— human .

It felt— unnatural in the matrix of the Underground.

Earthmancy was a goblin specialty. Few if any humans had the patience to learn it, nor did they wish to. To learn Earthmancy was to submit to the Goblin Nation, which was something most humans resisted strongly.

Goblins were a lesser species if you believed the masses.

With a suspicious twitch, she put the stone down in a circle, and she pulled out her wand and drew another circle with strictly human magic. She added another, layering the protective wards until she was in her own separate warded circle thrice over.

The lizards hissed nervously, sensing her suspicion.

"You can leave the cavern, my friends," Hermione said encouragingly. "Be safe."

The vault lizards seemed reluctant to leave her alone.

"Nuh-uh," a blue one said, diving into her collar.

"No way we're leaving you!" a purple one said.

The pink babies bit her ear together in solidarity.

Hermione winced, feeling the tingle of their venom spread through her blood— again.

She was never going to see like a human again—

Worse yet...

Her hands spasmed as her nails seemed to elongate into longer claws, tiny scales erupting and spreading out over her skin.

She signed in resignation, examining her hands to see a fine, shimmery-scaled webbing forming between her fingers.

The lizards hummed together in clear approval of the development.

"I'm starting to feel like it is my fate to be assimilated into various cultures and species."

The lizards crooned encouragement.

"Do I even get a choice in all this?"

The lizards whispered together.

"Don't you like us?"

"You know I do."

"We like you too!"

"I think you're mutating me."

"We want you to stay here with us forever."

"I cannot stay forever, even if I could. Humans grow old. Eventually, they die."

"Good thing we're biting you, then," the lizards agreed. "You're a keeper."

"What are you turning me into?" Hermione asked, both resigned and amused at the same time.

The lizards hummed. "Ours."

"Don't you want to be ours?"

"We love you."

"Yeah!"

"Don't you love us?"

"You know I do."

"I suppose there are worse things than being owned by a clan of subterranean flying lizards."

The lizards hummed loudly in approval.

"Yeah, you could be one of those manky slugs that even we don't eat."

"Blech."

"They're disgusting."

"Totally."

"They smell like bum."

"Hey, my bum is clean."

"Not your bum. You know, a manky bum."

The lizards seemed to chatter in back and forth in argument with each other.

Hermione smiled, scratching her chin with her elongated fingernails, looking on in amusement. Surfacers, as the goblins called them, tended to go quite insane when bitten by a vault lizard. The incessant chatter of the lizards found anywhere from garden to forest would soon drive a human utterly mad. Underground, however, she had time to get used to it and learn how to filter through the chatter— they had actually taught her how— and she'd grown to truly love them.

Apparently, they thought the same if not more of her if they were trying their level best to mutate her into something distinctly not human.

Hermione could hear the boat being rowed further back in the vaults where they were complete and functional even over the distant roar of a waterfall. Someone was obviously coming down from above to visit their vault. It was rare to have visitors in the lower levels. Most people who had vaults lower and deeper only came to throw something of extremely high value inside or take something that had been hidden for centuries out. Purebloods and the very well-to-do had the lowest vaults.

This level, however, was a bit of an anomaly— having never been finished due to the stone within stubbornly refusing to work with anyone.

Minecarts were the only way to access the vaults on the level, and it was a remnant from when the vaults had once been "the lowest and deepest." It hadn't stayed that way, however, and many levels of vaults were now buried even more deeply.

She hadn't known at the time when they robbed the Lestrange vault, but the only dragons Gringotts had were dragons that were literally on the slab to be killed due to exceptionally bad behaviour and had been identified as a great danger to everyone. They were rejects from the sanctuaries that had killed off other dragons and people. The goblins conditioned them to be reptilian guards that responded to their clackers, but otherwise left the dragons' vicious, murderous personalities fully intact.

So, while they weren't exactly treated like royalty, the dragons were given plenty of food and were not killed— while they would've been promptly put down had they remained on the surface.

She started to realise that there were many things she had never truly understood while working with the Goblin Nation— things she had simply assumed she knew about, as with her initial view of the enslavement of the house-elves.

Hermione slumped as a painful realisation steamrolled her.

"I'm doing exactly what I always do," she said with a disgusted snort of self-loathing. "I assumed . I didn't even let him try to explain. I was so convinced I had every right to be hurt and angry. I am an idiot. A bloody fool."

"No more so than I," a painfully familiar voice said.

Hermione turned and stared to see Severus standing in the glow of the lichens, a vault lizard attached to his nose with its tiny teeth.

"That— looks quite painful, Severus."

"It is," he said.

Hermione held out her hand. "Inigo, come here, love."

The aquamarine vault lizard released Snape's nose, glowered, and then bit his eyebrow before flying back to Hermione and diving into her hair.

Severus winced in pain, having obviously received the "dry bite" that was all pain and no comfort.

"I'm sorry. They— kind of have their own agendas," Hermione said. She closed her eyes. "And I'm sorry that I never let you explain."

"You had every right to be upset with me," he said. "I should have told you, but I didn't want to scare you away. I wanted you to accept me for me— not as a king. Not a goblin. Not some official simply looking to have a queen—" Severus stared into the gloom. "We had a friendship I didn't want to lose, but I wanted more. I wanted everything— but I feared your rejection more, which is why I hesitated to take the risk of telling you. I didn't want to risk ruining something so precious. I feared it would mean destroying all that we had built together."

"But every time we were close. Every little touch. Every time you drew closer to me—" He winced painfully. "I never wanted you to leave. I never wanted to let you go. It— hurt to let you go."

He closed his eyes as he pinched his nose, rubbing it where the lizard had mauled it. "It still hurts to see you there— hurting because of me— not able to touch you."

"I want you to touch me," Hermione whispered.

Severus took a few great steps to stand at her side and enfold her in his arms, his eyes squeezing shut as the agony of being parted was replaced by the overwhelming ecstasy of her touch. The sound from his throat was like a hiss as his arms wove around her, pulling to him as though they could merge into one being simply by proximity. He panted heavily, the intensity of her physical presence moving things in his mind and body that had never before been actualised.

"Hermione—" he tenderly cupped her face between his palms. "To be with me is to become a goblin. We are forever outside the word of humans— touching but not fully a part. The treaty was my father's desire to free the goblins from oppression. But what I want is not so virtuous. I want you. At my side. For all time. For here, in the very heart of the Goblin Nation, with us bound together by both magic and choice, it would be forever."

"I would put a crown upon your head but never a chain around your neck, Hermione. I want you, more than anything I have ever wanted before, but in that need, I also want you to choose this life of your own free will. Be with me. Bind yourself to me, and I will be your slave for eternity."

Hermione pressed her fingers to his lips. "I do not want a slave, Severus. I just want you and only you."

"And us!" a few lizards butted in.

Hermione made a face as she smiled at him. "And a few adamant lizards."

"How could I deny you your stalwart devotees?" he said with a tug of a smile on his lips. His face darkened. "Come to the ball, and let the fawning females grasping for my riches see you for the treasure you really are—"

"What am I to be to you, Severus?"

"The only one for me, she who holds my heart in her gentle hands," he whispered.

"I do come with a certain amount of baggage," she said softly. "And they have very sharp teeth."

"I will endeavour to— survive."

"I seem to be turning into a lizard," Hermione confessed, lifting her hand to display her delicate claws and the spread of fine, iridescent scales on the webbing between her fingers.

Severus lifted his own hand and allowed his natural form to take over, exposing pale, shimmering,-scale-covered skin. The oil coating his long black mane suddenly seemed to evaporate, and it promptly sprang upwards into a spiky mass of hair. The contours of his eyes shimmered with dark and light scales, framing the place where his brows would be. His teeth sharpened, glinting in the darkness. "No, my love. You're becoming a goblin ."