The Houses Competition (or THC)
House: Gryfindor
Class: Potions
Category: Standard
Prompt(s) chosen: Severus Snape, Travel
Word Count: 1101
Under Lapis Skies
Severus Snape had never had strong feelings about camels before. They existed, he existed, and never the twain shall meet. And yet here he was.
On a camel.
In the desert.
It was all Granger's fault, of course. And she was most certainly Granger now. People who dragged their long-suffering spouses into the depths of the Sahara based on some rumors and a Muggle film did not deserve the use of said spouse's surname.
He was fairly sure he was getting sunburn.
But back to the camels. Camels, as it turned out, were the single most stubborn creatures on God's green (although you couldn't prove it by what he had been looking at for the past few weeks) earth. They were awful. Like Death Eaters without the charm.
They stank.
They spat.
They bit.
And every single one of them hated one Severus Snape with the fiery passion of a thousand suns. He wasn't sure what he'd done to deserve the loathing of an entire species, but there it was. Perhaps they were all James Potter reincarnated. He took a moment to ponder the thought of Saint Potter reincarnated as a smelly, spitting beast of burden, and found it good.
A moment later, Hermione came up beside him, looking elegant and mysterious on top of her own camel. It fell into step next to his with the precision of a dressage horse, and its smooth gait hardly even rocked her. Of course all the camels adored her. It was his wife's fate to be beloved of grumpy creatures everywhere. Unlovable cats, sarcastic potions masters and now, apparently, camels. He certainly had not intended to love her. He had not, in point of fact, intended to love anyone ever again. Anonymous liaisons had been about the most intimate he'd thought he'd ever be with another human, but Hermione had a way about her. He wasn't sure if it was charm or sheer bullheadedness, but she had bullied her way into his hospital room after the final battle, nagged him out of his depression after he'd healed, and strode right into his heart as though she owned it. Which she did, of course. The situation would verge on the terrifying if he wasn't so sure that he owned her heart as well. After the incident with the dragon spit, he was fair convinced that she loved him. If she hadn't loved him quite madly, she would have left him so fast his head would have been spinning. But she was still here, so evidence suggested that she did, in fact, love him.
Severus gave his own camel a filthy look, which it pretended not to notice, and then turned a beady eye on his wife. The love of his life, apple of his eye, owner of his heart and author of his current misery looked tanned and delighted, balancing a great big book on her lap. It was an ancient reproduction of some even more ancient Akkadian scrolls, which in turn had been copied and translated from temple hieroglyphs. Severus, looking at some of the phrasing, suspected that the original had actually been in Sumerian.
"Not long now," Hermione said, her smile blazing with enough joy to momentarily lift Severus' mood. "We should be there before the end of the day."
Not that Severus was entirely sure why she was so enthused about visiting a place that rejoiced in the title City of the Dead, but that was one of the dangers of marrying and archaeologist. They tended to get excited about things that normal people – sane people – avoided like the plague.
Marrying an archaeologist was how Severus had ended up spending his honeymoon in Wizarding Pompeii, exploring the ruins of the Secret City that had once occupied the island. And now, for their anniversary, they were headed into the deep deserts of Egypt, looking for a city that had been lost for six thousand years and could, as far as Severus was concerned, stay lost for another six.
However, Hermione was determined, and he loved Hermione, and so here he was.
On a camel.
In the desert.
Getting sunburn.
On the other hand, he couldn't exactly complain. It was only fair that he accompany his love on the search for Hamunaptra. Certainly after the incident with the troll toenails he owed her this.
And, he comforted himself, it would be better once they had actually reached the city. He had learned that the ancient Egyptians had known how to build for the heat, much better than modern man did. Their cities tended toward being cooler than average, placed to take advantage of what breezes there were, with ancient architectural cooling systems that continued to function even millennia after the last human had abandoned them. And if the cities were magical…well then. If there was any trace of magic in Hamunaptra, the city would be an oasis, and Severus would lose himself happily in the study of whatever spellcraft remained after so long.
Which was usually a surprising amount, if he was being honest. Those ancients did build to last, whether that was architecture or spellwork. Surprisingly sophisticated, too. Elegant and not wasteful – not at all like modern magic. He was quite fascinated by it.
It suddenly occurred to Severus that discovering Hamunaptra was going to be quite as exciting for him as for his wife. And she must have known that. She knew of his fondness for ancient magics, how much he enjoyed studying and analyzing them. She was, after all, the person who had ordered twenty copies of his first paper on the subject of Babylonian Runecrafting, forced him to sign them, and handed them out to everyone of their acquaintance.
He glanced at her from the corner of his eye, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth despite his precarious perch, and watched her shoot up straight in her seat, her keen dark eyes fixed on the horizon.
"There!" she cried and, following her pointing arm, Severus saw the shimmer on the sands. It could be the lost city, or it could be a mirage, but before he could say anything Hermione was already in motion, her camel's gait lengthening smoothly until it was running.
Severus contemplated following at a more sedate pace. He was a man grown, after all, not a reckless child. But then he grinned, and he laughed, and spurred his own camel into a lumbering run.
In the end he supposed it didn't matter whether they found the ancient city or a load of sand. They were together, and that was all that mattered.